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HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT 
 
 OF THE DOCTRINE OF 
 
 THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 
 
 BY 
 
 DR J. A, DORNEK, 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GOTTINGEK. 
 
 DIVISION TIKST, 
 
 FIKST FOtIB CENTUEIES. 
 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
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PEEFACE. 
 
 The subject to which this work is devoted, is one which has 
 repeatedly engaged the attention and occupied the pens of 
 theologians in this country. Besides the palmary work of 
 Bishop Bull, entitled, " Defensio Fidei Nicense," published first 
 in 1680, we have the treatise of Priestley on the " History of 
 Early Opinions," 4 vols. 8vo, with the controversy between 
 him and Bishop Horsley ;* the later work of Wilson, entitled, 
 " An Illustration of the Method of explaining the New Testa- 
 ment by the Early Opinions of Jews and Christians concerning 
 Christ," — an admirable work, published first in 1797, and of 
 which a new edition was issued at Cambridge in 1838 ; and the 
 still more recent work of Mr Stanley Faber, on " The Aposto- 
 licity of Trinitarianism," 2 vols., London, 1832. "Works such 
 as these attest the interest which the question of the History of 
 Opinions concerning the Person of Christ has awakened in this 
 country. But, though these works have their merits, and some 
 of them possess a high and permanent value, they for the most 
 part labour under two defects : the one is, that, being originally 
 and primarily polemical, they are all more or less one-sided in 
 their representations ; and the other is, that they are lacking in 
 scientific fulness and development. It may be added, that they 
 are all confined to the Ante-Nicene period, and take no cogniz- 
 ance of the progress of opinion subsequent to the Council of 
 Nice. 
 
 1 Priestley's Letters to the Archdeacon of St Alban's; Horsley's 
 Tracts in controversy with Dr Priestley on the Historical Question of 
 the Belief of the First Ages in our Lord's Divinity. 1783-86. 
 
VI PBEFACE. 
 
 The work of Dr Dorner will be found peculiarly to excel 
 exactly where these most fail. Purely scientific in its character, 
 and the result of long and patient study of the original sources, 
 it supplies a comprehensive, impartial, and exhaustive survey of 
 the whole subject of which it treats. The author preserves 
 throughout the tone of a judge, calmly and perspicuously weigh- 
 ing all the evidence that can be brought to bear on the case ; 
 patiently collecting every particle of evidence pertaining to the 
 subject; and pronouncing his decision without regard to po- 
 lemical considerations, or the interests of parties. 
 
 The form in which this work first appeared, was that of two 
 essays in the Tubinger Zeitschrift; the former of which appeared 
 in the fourth number for 1835, the latter in the first for 1836. 
 In introducing them, with the motto, "Descendit Deus, ut 
 assurgamus," the author said, " It is gratifying to see how, in 
 the long conflict between Christianity and Reason, the point, on 
 the handling of which the decision of the controversy turns, has 
 become ever more and more distinct to the consciousness. The 
 energies of all parties engaged in this conflict are gathered ever 
 more and more around the Person of Christ, as the central- 
 point at which the matter must be determined. The advantage 
 of this is obvious, as respects the settlement of this great strife , 
 as in other things, so here, with the right statement of the 
 question the answer is already half found. It is easy also to 
 see that, in point of fact, all lies in the question, whether such a 
 Christ as dwells, if not always in the words, yet ever in the 
 mind, of the Church, — one in whom the perfect personal union 
 of the divine and human appeared historically, — be necessary 
 and actual. For, let us suppose that philosophy could incon- 
 trovertibly establish, and carry to the conviction of all thoughtful 
 men, that the Person of a Christ in the sense above set forth is 
 a self-contradiction, and therefore an impossibility; there would 
 be no longer any conflict between Christian theology and philo- 
 sophy, because with the Person of Christ would be abolished the 
 Christian theology, as well as the Christian Church, altogether. 
 
PREFACE. VH 
 
 " And, conversely, were it brought under the recognition of 
 philosophy, that the idea of an historical as well as an ideal 
 Christ is necessary, and were a speculative construction of the 
 Person of Christ once reached, it is clear that philosophy and 
 theology, essentially and intrinsically reconciled, would thence- 
 forward have a common work, or rather, properly speaking, 
 would have become one ; and philosophy would consequently 
 not have relinquished her existence, but confirmed it. 
 
 " Hence it is well for both, in the great conflict between the 
 mighty powers of Christianity and Keason, when the struggle is 
 ever more and more concentrated on the point where alone all 
 is ultimately to be won or lost. This is well for Christianity, 
 not because, driven from so many positions, otherwise esteemed 
 essential, she as it were has to call forth her very last forces for 
 the protection of the Person of her Chief against the pressure 
 of His opponents ; but rather because this Person alone, as the 
 central-point of the whole, is able to determine the positions 
 which may and must be maintained, and to oppose all as a com- 
 plete whole to the attacks of opponents, and defend it against 
 them. Philosophy, however, knows now the point whither her 
 attacks, in case she must strike, must be directed; or if she 
 prefer to present herself in peaceable and friendly guise, rather 
 than in open hostility, — a phsenomenon which we frequently 
 see in recent times, — it is salutary for her to know from what 
 position the Christian theology cannot depart, before she extends 
 the hand to her. Otherwise, it is only an untrue, precipitate 
 reconciliation that can be effected, which will be soon dissolved 
 again, and but tends to hinder and defer the true reconciliation. 
 
 " But not only has a clear perception been obtained of 
 the point that must be reached, if the controversy is to be 
 decided in one or other of the ways indicated ; we even hear 
 numerous voices which exclaim that the decision is already 
 obtained, though only from the philosophical side, and from 
 this in a very disputed way. Some we hear saying, The in- 
 ternal reconciliation of philosophy and theology is concluded, 
 
Vlll PKEFACE. 
 
 the Person of Christ speculatively construed ; whilst others prove, 
 speculatively also, that the judicial process may now terminate, 
 the impossibility of a Christ who shall be at once historical 
 and ideal being demonstrated. If we know not, in consequence 
 of this, whom to believe, the confusion is increased by the voices 
 meanwhile which fall on us from the side of theology ; which, 
 delighted that the kingdom of speculation is divided against 
 itself, not only asserts her right to abide by her own domain 
 until philosophy shall have healed her own divisions, but also 
 commands to relinquish the attempt to understand the Person 
 of Christ scientifically, as an empty and vain undertaking of the 
 Reason. To this last view we cannot resign ourselves, unless 
 we would hold that between Faith and Reason there is a great 
 gulf fixed, so that they that would pass from this side cannot, 
 and they that would come thence to us cannot. Whoever 
 reveres Christianity as accordant with the highest reason, must 
 also assume a progressive unfolding and strengthening of Reason 
 through the power of Christianity, and that no term can be 
 fixed for Reason in this advance. If in Christ be found, as 
 theology must hold to be the case, the key to the world's history, 
 and the solution of all enigmas, it is not humility, but a self- 
 willel inactivity, to refuse to seek how we may ever better and 
 better apply this key for the resolution of all mysteries. 
 
 " To the establishment of our decision concerning the true 
 state of the matter, the critical treatment of the history of the 
 development of this dogma will in the most fundamental way 
 contribute. It will thus be best proved to the one party, that the 
 question has not been validly settled either in the one way or 
 the other, but that much still remains to be done ; and to the 
 other party, that much has been already accomplished, so that 
 the work cannot be viewed as a hopeless one. This historical 
 path, also, must be the fittest to prepare for the further de- 
 velopment of this dogma. 
 
 " In attempting this path, we pass by the personal ministry 
 and history of Christ on earth, and address ourselves alone to 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 the consideration of the mode of construing his Person in itself, 
 except where this itself demands something further." 
 
 In further elucidation of the author's design and method in 
 this work, the following sentences from the preface to his first 
 edition may be cited. " I have not, I confess, concerned myself 
 about an historical objectivity apart from a dogmatical back- 
 ground; nay, I count every history of the development of a 
 dogma which is without this, as among the impossible things 
 with which people deceive themselves and others. Whether, 
 however, it is brought in as a foreign criterion from without, 
 or springs from the same spirit which created this great history, 
 the history itself must show. And in this respect I resign my 
 work to criticism with an easy mind ; for its ground-idea, that 
 neither a merely historical nor a merely ideal and metaphysical . 
 significance belongs to Christ, but rather that both are abso- 
 lutely one in His perfect Person, whereby He is the Head, and 
 humanity is not a mere mass but an organism, — this ground- 
 idea I have not, thanks be to God, to boast of having discovered ; 
 though, alas ! there are many ears in which in the present day 
 it sounds strange; but I have received it through the com- 
 munication of the Church of Christ, true to the word of Scrip- 
 ture, and I give it back again as it has been reproduced and 
 found in me." 
 
 The appearance of this elaborate and thoughtful work pro- 
 duced a great impression in Germany. It was felt not only to 
 furnish a full and final annihilation of the old Socinian preten- 
 sion to trace the root of their system to primitive Christian anti- 
 quity and apostolic teaching, but also to subvert the basis of 
 that more recent form of antichristianism, which, presuming to 
 call itself " the higher construction" of Christianity, renounces 
 with disdain all attempts to prove itself in harmony with the 
 teaching of Christ and His Apostles, and remands all that men 
 have been accustomed to take for history, both as respects the 
 Founder of Christianity, and as respects the working of His 
 Apostles and their immediate followers, to the cloudland of myth 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 and fable. The work was thus one eminently " for the times" 
 in Germany ; and there can be no doubt that results of a most 
 important kind to the cause of truth have flowed from its ap- 
 pearance. 
 
 Whether the work will find equal acceptance, in the form of 
 a translation, in this country, remains to be seen. The author's 
 style of thought and mode of expression are certainly very dif- 
 ferent from what we are accustomed to, and it is to be feared 
 that complaints of obscurity and incomprehensibility will be 
 uttered against the work. As one of its translators, I dare not 
 say that the blame of this, so far as the charge may be well 
 founded, lies with the author ; but I may be permitted to remind 
 the reader, that the work is written, not for popular use, but for 
 those who are students and thinkers ; and it may be confidently 
 expected of such, that they will not allow themselves to be 
 deterred from reaping the treasures of learning and thought 
 which this work contains, simply because the author has occa- 
 sionally got a little into the clouds, or his translators, it may be, 
 have occasionally failed to convey a clear and adequate render- 
 ing of his words. 
 
 For my own part, I must frankly confess that I have made 
 no attempts to turn Dr Dorner's somewhat rugged German into 
 graceful or fluent English. I would not say that it is im- 
 possible to do this ; but I stand in doubt of all such attempts, 
 and for myself would rather struggle through the difficulties 
 of a literal version, which preserved not only in substance all 
 that the author has written, but gives it with the hue and cha- 
 racter of the author's idiosyncrasy upon it, than peruse a trans- 
 lation, the ease and elegance of which constantly would awake 
 suspicions of liberties having been used with the author, such as 
 it is not competent for a translator to use. And here I cannot 
 refrain from introducing some sentences from the pen of Dorner 
 himself, bearing on the alleged obscurity of German theologians, 
 and in reply to a wish uttered by the Bishop of Cork, that they 
 would express themselves so as to be understood by English- 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 men. " Were we," says he, " to set ourselves up as teachers 
 of other peoples, it would be reasonable to require of us that we 
 should make use of the modes of speech of these peoples. But 
 it is not so. Our theology is primarily German theology, and 
 we speak in the manner natural to us, that is, in the manner 
 most suited to the subject as we see it ; and we think it is fitting 
 that whoever will participate in what we have, should put him- 
 self to some pains to understand us, as we all have to do with 
 respect to the ancients. If it be that German theology (in 
 many cases, it may be, misunderstood) is exercising an unde- 
 sirable influence in England, this requirement becomes doubly 
 pressing even in the interest of England herself. If negative 
 forces, such as we have long known, and in a measure have over- 
 come, are stirring in England, if they prop themselves especially 
 on the reputation of German thinkers and critics, it would afford 
 no remedy were we to propose, through some change in our 
 method of speech, to spare any the labour of scientifically pene- 
 trating into the depths of the subject. Each has as much know- 
 ledge as by his own labour he has obtained ; a dead handing over 
 or importing even of the best, is no better than a sham gift." 
 He adds, however, that " it is only what courtesy requires, when 
 men converse with each other, that they do their utmost to be 
 understood ; at the same time, when one fails to be understood, 
 the fault is not always with the speaker." 1 
 
 The justice, on the whole, of these observations all must feel; 
 at the same time, one cannot help wishing that our Teutonic 
 brethren would take a little more trouble to make themselves 
 intelligible than they are apt to do. It is not Englishmen and 
 Frenchmen alone who find it difficult to understand them : 
 I have frequently found their own countrymen quite as much at 
 fault ; and I have sufficient reasons for doubting whether they 
 always take pains to understand themselves before committing 
 their thoughts to writing. With regard to this work of Dorner, 
 I cannot in this respect better express my feeling than by 
 1 Jahrbiicher fur Deutsche Theologie, 1861, p. 404. 
 
XU PREFACE. 
 
 adopting the words of Socrates in reference to a treatise of 
 Heraclitus : "A fiev avvr)ica, <yevvaia' rilfiai Se ical a fir) avvrjica. 
 ir\r)V Arjklov 76 twos SetTat KokvfifirjTOv. 1 
 
 One difficulty with which the translator of a German theo- 
 logical work has to contend, arises from the use which German 
 theologians make of philosophical terms. In regard to these, 
 the German hasthe advantage of the English, in respect both 
 of variety and the precision with which terms are fixed to spe- 
 cial meanings. The word " idea," for instance, is loosely used 
 by us in at least four different applications : as designating, 1. 
 the perception of an external object by the mind ; 2. the repre- 
 sentation or picture of that object in the fantasy ; 3. the notion 
 or concept which the mind forms by abstraction ; and, 4. the 
 intuition of what can neither be perceived nor represented. 
 Now, for all these mental modes the Germans have distinct 
 terms, which they generally use with scrupulous precision. I 
 have done what I could to adhere to this in the translation. 
 " Vorstellung " I have always rendered by representation ; " be- 
 griff " (the gripping up of objects), by concept ; " idee," by idea ; 
 and " bild," by figure or picture. I have also retained the word 
 " moment," so constantly used by German writers, in the form 
 of momentum. It is not easy to define the sense in which they 
 , use this word ; but it answers generally to an operative element, 
 i.e., a constituent which not only is part of a whole, but has an 
 operative effect in producing that whole. The word in this 
 sense has dropped out of use with us, but it occurs in our older 
 writers. 
 
 I have only to add, that the Notes in the Appendix have, 
 with the exception of one short one, been translated by Mr 
 Simon. 
 
 1 Diogen. Laert. Bk. ii. ch. 5, § 7. 
 
 W. L. A. 
 
 Edinburgh. 
 
ANALYSIS. 
 
 Tage 
 
 Preface, . v 
 
 INLriODUCHON. 
 
 1. The fundamental idea of Christianity, that which it gives of the 
 
 God-man, can be elucidated neither from Judaism nor from 
 Heathenism per se, though it be that of which both are 
 in quest, ....... 1 
 
 A. "Western and Eastern Heathenism ; — Hellenism, Parsism, 
 
 Buddhism, ...... 4 
 
 B. Hebraism and the later Judaism, . . . .13 
 
 a. Maleach Jehovah, Chochma (comp. p. 43, Servant of God, 
 
 Son of God, etc.), ..... 13 
 
 b. The Son of Sirach ; Book of Wisdom, . . .18 
 
 Philo, . 19 
 
 Philo's doctrine of God, . . 19 
 
 of the Logos, . . . .22 
 
 of the world and man, . . .31 
 
 c. Theologoumena : Adam Kadmon ; Memra ; Shechinah ; 
 
 Metatron, ...... 41 
 
 2. This fundamental idea is original to Christianity, and essential to 
 
 it ; but to develop it, and adequately to set it forth to the 
 consciousness, is the task assigned to the age that follows, 45 
 
 3. Nature and design of a history of dogmas, with especial reference 
 
 to our dogma. The testimony of Christ and His Apostles 
 must necessarily be taken into account, in so far as this 
 forms the impulse whence the dogmatico-historical process 
 in the Church proceeded, ..... 47 
 (Comp. pp. 73-76.) 
 Higher form of Christological doctrine : 
 
 Paul, John, Epistle to the Hebrews, . . . .50 
 
 Lower form : 
 
 a. The Synoptic Gospels, ... .51 
 
 &. James, .....:. 62 
 
 c. Peter; Jude; 2d Epistle of Peter, . . . .67 
 
 (Note on the concept of Heresy, Appendix, Note U ; comp. Note 
 TVY.) 
 
XIV ANALYSIS. 
 
 Paga 
 Cours3 of the development of the dogma in the general, in opposi- 
 tion to Hellenism and Judaism in the primitive Church, . 73 
 Division into periods of the entire history of the development, . 83 
 
 FIRST PERIOD. (TILL A.D. 381.) 
 
 PERIOD OF THE SETTLING OF THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF THE 
 PERSON OF CHRIST ON THE DIVINE AND HUMAN SIDES. PRE- 
 SUPPOSED OR IMMEDIATE UNIO PERSONALIS. 
 
 FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 THE WITNESSING CHURCH. AGE OF THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS, TILL A.D. 150. 
 
 Chapter I. Evidence of the faith of primitive Christianity concern- 
 ing Christ, ...... 92 
 
 GENERAL CHARACTER OF THIS EPOCH. 
 
 I. The Christian writings of this age according to their Christo- 
 logical import. 
 
 A. The ideal tendency under the Apostolic Fathers. They pro- 
 
 pagate the apostolic doctrine of the higher Divine nature 
 
 in Christ, and His pre-existence, . . . 96-121 
 
 1. Clement of Rome. Romish Church, . . .96 
 Appendix. Second Letter of Clement, . . . 101 
 
 2. Ignatius. The East ; Antioch, . . . .102 
 
 3. Barnabas. Alexandria? ..... 113 
 
 4. Polycarp. Asia Minor, . . . . .116 
 
 5. Dionysius of Corinth. Greece ; Publius ; Quadratus ; 
 Aristides ; Agrippa Castor ; Aristo, . . . 119 
 
 B. The realistic (Judaeo- Christian) tendency. Setting out from 
 
 the manifestation (/5^«, Xo'yo?) of the divine (xj/sS^*), 
 to be perfected at the second coming of the historical 
 Christ, they advance to the position that in Christ the 
 manifestation became a Person ; then that personal Word 
 was pre-existent, and also world-creative ; and in fine, that 
 it was the Wisdom (aotpU as fnp* or SiW/it/j), . 121—161 
 
 (Comp. Note WW, p. 403.) 
 a. Christology of the Judaeo-Christian tendency. 
 
 1. The Shepherd of Hermas, .... 123 
 Montanism.j 
 
 2. Papias, ....... 135 
 
 3. Hegesippus. 
 
 Development of the Logos-doctrine in the Hellenizing 
 and Judseo-Christian tendency, . . . 137 
 
ANALYSIS. XV 
 
 Pago 
 I. The Judaeo-Christian tendency in respect of eschatology. 
 Significance of the eschatology of the ancient Church in 
 general. Christological movement proceeding thence, 
 («) from the glorified to the pre-existent Christ, (6) 
 from the kingly office to the priestly, . 142-150 
 
 Chiliasm. 
 
 1. Sibylline Books, . . . . .150 
 Book of Enoch; The Fourth Book of Esdras, . . 151 
 
 2. Testament of the XII. Patriarchs, . . . 154 
 
 3. Other apocryphal writings, . . . .160 
 Review, ...... 160-161 
 
 II. Writings of Non-Christians of this Period, a.d. 266-273, 162-167 
 Celsus, ....... 162 
 
 Lucian ; Arrian ; Pliny; Hadrian, . . . .165 
 
 Jewish opponents, ...... 166 
 
 III. Worship of the primitive Church in so far as it is sustained 
 
 by a Christological idea, .... 167-184 
 
 1. The formation of liturgical elements in the usages of the 
 
 Church (Lord's Supper ; Baptism ; Rule of Faith ; Doxo- 
 logies), ....... 167 
 
 2. The gradual setting apart of Holy Seasons (Sunday ; Easter ; 
 
 Whitsuntide ; Epiphany ; Christmas), . . . 172 
 
 3. Beginnings of Christian Art and characteristic usages (Holy 
 
 Symbols ; Christian Hymns), .... 179 
 
 Chapter II. The Cavils of the heretics of this Period against the 
 
 Person of Christ in the general, . . . 184-217 
 
 Certain forms of opinion which cannot as yet be called Chris- 
 tian heresies (comp. Appendix, Note U, p. 344). Simoni- 
 ans ; Ophites ; Elkesaites ; Carpocrates, . . . 185 
 
 I. Opponents of Christ's deity, .... 188-217 
 
 The Ebionites. Rise ; Division. 
 
 A. The Nazarenes. Maintenance of the supernatural birth of 
 Christ without advance to a pre-existent hypostasis of the 
 
 Son, 192 
 
 B. Cerinthian Ebionites. Denial of the supernatural birth of 
 Christ. His baptism viewed as the commencing point of 
 
 the higher endowment of Christ, .... 194 
 
 C. The Gnostic Ebionism of the Pseudo-Clementines. Per- 
 version of the natural and ethical Divine Sonship in favour 
 of a poor construction of the official Sonship of Christ as 
 the eternal Prophet of Truth. In Christ a higher power, 
 2o<p/«. Passing of Ebionism over into Doketism, . . 205 
 
 Appendix, Note BBBB, p. 444. The Recognitions of the 
 Pseudo-Clement. 
 
 b 
 
XVI ANALYSIS. 
 
 Page 
 Chapter III. 
 II. Opponents of thi humanity of Christ, . . 218-252 
 
 The Doketism c the Gnosis. 
 
 A. The Gnosis in the general ; its varied relation to the concept 
 
 of God. Division on the ground of this, . . 221-228 
 
 1. The Gnostic systems with a physical (ethnico-pantheistic) 
 concept of God. (a) Of a Dualistic, (6) of a Monistic 
 kind. In the former, God viewed as a Light-nature ; in 
 the latter, as Absolute Being (Life, Power; Blessedness or 
 Beauty) and Knowledge, ..... 224 
 
 2. The Gnosis with a negative, ethical, or juridical concept 
 of God. The Pseudo-Clementines. God = Bighteousness 
 (comp. pp. 204, 224), . . . . .226 
 
 3. The Gnosis with a positive ethical concept of God. Mar- 
 
 cion. God Love (without Bighteousness), . . 227 
 
 B. The Gnosis in its relation to Christology, . . 229-252 
 
 1. Doketism common to all the Gnostics in respect of the 
 Person and work of Christ. Its different sources in the 
 different forms of the Gnosis. Ophites ; Valentinians ; 
 Pseudo-Clementines ; Marcion, .... 229 
 
 2. Its various forms. 
 
 a. In reference to Christ's higher nature. Valentinus and 
 his school ; Marcus ; Heracleon ; Pseudo-Clementines ; 
 Marcion. ...... 230 
 
 6. In reference to the relation of the higher nature in Christ 
 to the human. Basilides ; Ophites ; Valentinians ; Mar- 
 cion (239) ; Apelles (243), . . . .235 
 Review. — Regression of Doketism into Ebionism by means of 
 
 that Gnosticism which did not by Marcion's steps pass 
 
 over to the Church's path, .... 246 
 
 Retrospect, . . . . . . ' . 251 
 
 SECOND EPOCH. (A.D. 150-325.) 
 
 AGE OF THE COMPLETION OF THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPT OF GOD. 
 E/cKXrjala 8e6\oyov<ra. 
 
 FIRST SECTION. 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS AND THE DOUBLED MONARCHIANTSM. 
 
 Chapter I. Suppression of Ebionism and Doketism by the Church's 
 
 completion of the doctrine of the Logos, who truly became 
 
 Man (a.d. 150-200). 
 
 Character of this age. 
 
 1. The Letter to Diognetus unites (as does Justin Martyr) the 
 
 Hellenic Reason and the hypostatic, world-creating real- 
 
ANALYSIS. xvii 
 
 Pftg« 
 principle in its view of the Logos. This Logos it calls it ait, 
 and equals Him with God. Distinction in God without sub- 
 ordination of the irais, but at the same 'time without ac- 
 commodation to the Divine Unity, . . . 260 
 2 Justin Martyr, Theophilus, and Tatian approximate in their 
 thought of the Divine Unity to a certain subordination of 
 the Logos (ttputop yivunfix w«t/ioV). Hesitating to infer a 
 hypostatic distinction in God Himself, they misplace the 
 hypostasis of the Logos on the world-side (hoyo; irpoipo- 
 pmos), whilst they leave His essence (ow/«) to rest eter- 
 nally in God (Tio'yoj eiihiaSeros). There is thereby threat- 
 ened internally, an identification of the Logos with God as 
 such, — externally, an identification of the Logos with the 
 world ; i.e., the possibility of Sabellianism, as of Arianism, 
 is not yet destroyed, .... 264-282 
 
 a. Justin. Doctrine of the Logos. Generation of the Logos 
 by the will of God. Equality of essence with determinate 
 subordination of the Logos. Analogy of the hypostatic 
 in the Logos with a finite person, . . . 264 
 
 Christology, ...... 275 
 
 6. Theophilus of Antioch. 
 
 The Logos, the Divine Intelligence proceeding to the creation 
 of the world, and hypostatizing itself, . . . 279 
 
 c. Tatian. 
 
 The Logos as the ideal world still in indistinguishable unity 
 with God's essence, separates itself, and becomes a hypo- 
 stasis in the manifestation of God in the creation, . 280 
 3. Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, and Irenseus set them 
 selves against that subordination of the Logos (see No. 2), 
 and ever more and more throwing aside His identification 
 with the principle of the world, or the world, carry back 
 the Logos to the inner essence of God. He is the Reason 
 of the Father, which is at the same time actual. But 
 whilst the tendency of Faith to a full equality of essence 
 of the Logos with the Father is thus satisfied, proportion- 
 ally little is accomplished towards a setting forth, in new 
 form, of the distinction of the Logos from the Father 
 through means of the idea of the world asserted by the 
 earlier writers, the consequence of which is a transient 
 tendency towards Monarchianism (of the Patripassian 
 form), ...... 283-326 
 
 a. Athenagoras rejects the hypostatizing of the Logos by the 
 creation, but gains as yet, apart from the world, no defi- 
 nite distinction of the Logos from the Father, . . 283 
 
 I. Clement of Alexandria prefers a personal Logos and revealer 
 of the incomprehensible God. Sabellian threatening of the 
 distinction of the Logos from the Father. The Logos, as 
 
XV1U ANALYSIS. 
 
 Page 
 
 the speaking creative Word, and the supremely manifested 
 Wisdom and almighty Power of God, retains a relative inde- 
 pendence in relation to the Father in His eternal essence, 285 
 Survey of the Logos-doctrine thus far, . . . 289 
 Christology of Clement of Alexandria, .... 294 
 
 c. Irenseus, ....... 303 
 
 This \mter characterized. 
 
 Doctrine of God, . . . . . .304 
 
 Doctrine of the Logos, ..... 305 
 
 [The Logos the unity of Reason and Word]. 
 
 The incarnation of the Logos, .... 312 
 
 Necessity of this. The mystical element in his Christology, 317 
 
 True humanity of Christ, ..... 320 
 
 Its difference from ours, ..... 322 
 
 Mode of the union of God and man, . . . 323 
 
 Christ's doctrine of the Holy Ghost and Lord's Supper, 323, 466 
 
 Apendix, ........ 327 
 
INTKODUCTION. 
 
 HUHE idea of tlie God-man [of a union of the deity with 
 man] is not one which belongs only to this or that re- 
 ligion ; rather may the germ of it be found in all, and 
 that just because they are, and in so far as they are, religious ; 
 and with this, as may be supposed, each as it reaches maturity, 
 presents essential differences as to the way in which the unity 
 of the Divine and the human is aimed at and conceived. It 
 will ever remain the ideal of human life, that it is God-manlike, 
 sustained and influenced by Divine power; and, as soon as 
 thought is directed to this relation, this holy life, this life blessed 
 in God, will be conceived no otherwise than as the unity of the 
 Divine and human life. Not less, conversely, when the subject 
 is viewed from the side of God, will the ideal of the condescen- 
 sion and manifestation of God be ever placed in this, that God 
 reveals Himself not merely in signs and natural phenomena; 
 nor in hallowed Palladia and pledges let fall from heaven ; nor 
 even in Nature, which, blind and dumb, knows not for herself 
 Him by whom she is known : but that God knows and repre- 
 sents Himself in the form of a being who knows Him as he is 
 known of Him. 
 
 This concert of the Divine and the human — of which not 
 only is religion the vital sphere, but to which also genuine science 
 and its history not less give testimony — is not to be imputed 
 to anthropomorphic constraint, of which, as one sometimes hears 
 said, it is only with difficulty and approximatively that we are 
 able to rid ourselves ; but its cause is the objective bearing of 
 the matter itself. Were it not so, it would remain a puzzle how 
 reason ox science in its progress, in place of gradually repu- 
 
 VOL. I. A 
 
2 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 diating that as profane, ever more and more deeply enters into it. 
 Whilst in the beginnings of religions, and of thinking, the ade- 
 quate form for a full revelation is not found in the Divine- 
 human shape, it is, on the contrary, seen as the result and 
 acquist of the whole religio-historical and philosophical process, 
 that the Divine and the human conspire towards unity. In 
 point of fact, it came at an early period to this, that the 
 human was viewed as something not capable of being united 
 with God ; the latter being regarded as purified from all fini- 
 tude, as an essence abstract and shut up in itself, to wbich men 
 hesitated to ascribe existence, since it was rather the virepovaiov, 
 not Being in the concrete, but the universal Being, that is equi- 
 valent to the Nothing. And when, consequently, the only thing 
 aimed at was to get rid of anthropomorphisms, and not to reach 
 a living relation between God and man, all was quickly accom- 
 plished that could be attempted. But when the former has come 
 to be realized, there must always be a passing over to the opposite, 
 — to a revelation, a living communion between God and man ; 
 not only because an absolutely hidden God is for man virtually 
 no God, and such a pretended purification of the concept of 
 Deity closely approaches to Atheism, but also because the con- 
 cept of Deity cannot otherwise be preserved from self-contra- 
 diction. If God be thought as the pure Absolute, in the sense 
 that He cannot come into contact with the finite, then is He no 
 longer the Absolute ; since He can have nothing to do with the 
 finite, the latter is without Sim ; that is, He is no more the 
 Absolute, if it is not He who reveals Himself in the finite. 
 
 Christianity, however, asserts the idea of the God-man in a 
 manner altogether peculiar. In Jesus of Nazareth, according 
 to the universal and perpetual belief of the Christian Church, 
 the unity of the Divine and the human has appeared in a 
 personal and unique mode. Some decenniums ago, it formed 
 part of the tactics of the opponents of Christianity to depreciate 
 the originality and peculiarity of her system by adducing 
 parallels, especially from earlier times ; and it would seem as if 
 of late something of the same kind is again to be attempted. 1 
 
 1 See Gfrbrer, Das Jahrhundert des Heils, Stuttgart, 1838, 1st and 2d 
 Parts. He observes, ii. 431, " that to every doctrine, almost to every pro- 
 position of the New Testament, a parallel may be adduced from the Talmud, 
 the Sohar, the Midrashim," etc. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 So far, indeed, as this is designed to serve as an objection to 
 Christianity, its time is past, and its force materially reduced, 
 since men have ceased to treat Christianity onesidedly as doctrine, 
 rather than as Divine fact ; and, on the other hand, have begun 
 to find its peculiarity, in a theoretical respect, in this, that in it, 
 as the organism of the truth, the elements of truth, elsewhere 
 here and there to be met with in a scattered form or a disfigured 
 guise, come together in unity, — a unity which, as it personally 
 appeared in the God-man, so in the course of history ever more 
 and more rises upon the consciousness of mankind. But only 
 the more decidedly does the problem present itself, viz., to 
 determine the relation of the Christian religion to what is 
 beyond the pale of Christianity, both as respects their unity and 
 their essential diversity. Under such circumstances, all con- 
 tributions must be welcome which serve to throw light on the 
 province of religion anterior to Christianity. Whether they are 
 advanced in a spirit friendly or in a spirit hostile to the Chris- 
 tian theology, is a matter of indifference to it, provided only they 
 set forth what is true. For the more thoroughly we understand, 
 in its entire compass, the religious domain previous to Chris- 
 tianity, so much the more clearly, on the one hand, will the pre- 
 paration for the latter by all religions, and its historical necessity, 
 be made apparent ; and, on the other, on a retrospective view, 
 as set over against all phenomena in this department, will that 
 same newness and originality become apparent, which, looking 
 forward, a sound historical sense has long ago assigned to it, — 
 such a sense as takes into view its world-pervading, inexhaustible 
 force. Nay, we must say, that for proof of the truth of Chris- 
 tianity, and especially of its all-sustaining, fundamental idea, 
 the absolute man-becoming of God in Christ, the more restricted 
 position — that which sets out from details, inspiration, prophecy, 
 and so forth — may be abandoned only for the sake of recognising 
 from the more comprehensive position of the entire historical 
 process of religious belief before Christ, how the whole pre-Chris- 
 tian world aspired after Christianity ; how in this the common 
 senigma of all pre-Christian religions is solved ; and how in it, 
 especially in its ground-idea, lies the key by which all these 
 religions may be better understood than they could understand 
 themselves. Though speculative divinity may always exempt 
 itself from the proof of the inner truth of the idea of the God- 
 
4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 manhood, so long as philosophy and history refuse to coalesce; on 
 its historical side, Christianity will hover in the air so long as 
 all religions are not recognised in their essential relation to it, 
 as negative or positive preparations for it. 
 
 This is not the place to illustrate this in detail. All that can 
 be here shown is, that whilst the ground-idea of Christianity 
 cannot be elucidated either from heathenism or Judaism, in and 
 by itself, there yet lies in it that which both, from very different 
 sides, seek and forebode. 
 
 To resort to heathenism as the source of the Christian 
 ground-idea, might be suggested by the consideration, how much 
 the Jewish national spirit must have recoiled from the idea of 
 the man-becoming of God, and in fact did recoil ; of which 
 we have evidence in many phenomena of the early Christian 
 Church, such as the various forms of Ebionism, which were not 
 so quickly extruded from the Church. Even in the New Testa- 
 ment, the evidences of faith in the Deity of Christ are by no 
 means proportionally distributed through the different books : 
 in the Epistles of Peter and James, for instance, and in the first 
 three Gospels, they are comparatively deficient. It is not till 
 after the fall of Judaism, and the reception of the heathen 
 world into the Christian Church, that the Church's conscious- 
 ness of the Deity of Christ becomes free and unrestricted. And 
 since, moreover, of the Apostles themselves, it was those whose 
 sphere of action was within the heathen world who set forth 
 most prominently the Deity of Christ, one might be induced to 
 ascribe this doctrine to a pagan influence. What of truth there 
 is in this, demands a closer consideration. And, in the outset, 
 we must distinguish the Orientaliram the Occidental heathenism. 
 As representative of the former, we may take the Indian reli- 
 gion ; of the latter, the Hellenic. It is common to both, not 
 with sufficient precision to distinguish God and the world, and 
 hence both may be called Nature-religions ; nevertheless, the 
 point of departure of both is opposite. The East sets out from 
 the Objective, the Divine; the West, from the Finite: but 
 both seek the same end, the unity of the Divine and the human. 
 Hence, in the former, the doctrine of the frequent incarnations 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 of God, in which He assumes the most perfect form, the 
 human, 1 for the purpose of teaching men the truth, and recon- 
 ducting them to heaven. In Greece, on the other hand (as also 
 in the religions of Rome and the North), men become gods ; 
 they by virtue and valour ascend Olympus. From this side 
 of Hellenism it is impossible to illustrate the Christian ground- 
 idea ; for, according to the fundamental Christian notion, which 
 is not wholly repudiated even where Christ is chiefly thought 
 of as a man (as in the different forms of Ebionism), God has 
 descended to earth, and manifested Himself in Christ. In 
 Hellenism, man celebrates his own apotheosis ; in Christianity, 
 the condescending grace of God is glorified. 
 
 And this belief is so essential to even the first centuries of 
 Christianity, so assuredly to be referred originally to the very 
 self-consciousness of Christ, that we must hold it as established. 
 However much, in other respects, there may seem to lie in 
 Hellenism, as distinguished from Judaism, what is akin to the 
 Christian ground-idea, we cannot trace the latter to that side of 
 Hellenism on which its belief was in a deification of man. For 
 this representation, which must have come forth as the primary 
 form of the doctrine of the Deity of Christ, had this sprung out 
 of Hellenism, is not to be found at all where first the Deity of 
 Christ was spoken of, and only appears at a later date with Paul 
 
 1 As Crishna. [Crishna, i. e. the Black One, appears in the Indian mytho- 
 logy as the ninth incarnation of Vishnu, the Crishnavatar, t. e. the descent 
 into the person of the Black One. He is said in the Bhagavat to have been 
 the son of Vasudeva and Devagui, sister of King Kamsa. He was the last 
 of seven brothers, and the only one whom his mother succeeded in saving 
 from the hatred of her brother. When he grew up, he avenged himself 
 and his parents by the slaughter of Kamsa ; and after many proofs of his 
 deity, amongst which may be mentioned his destruction of the serpent 
 Caliga, and many proofs also of the reality and badness of his humanity, he 
 was put to death by being shot with an arrow on a tree, leaving behind the 
 prediction, that thirty years after his death the Kali-yuga, the iron age, 
 would begin. He is represented as a black man, with a figure of the sun 
 on his breast, the lotos round his neck, and on the soles of his feet and the 
 palms of his hands a triangle or quinquangle as signum et principium 
 omnis generationis. In the Amarasinha he is called, He of the Strong Curly 
 Locks, Husband of Lakshmi, Lotus-eyed, Enemy of the Giant Madhu, 
 Slayer of King Kamsa, Son of Devagui, Best of Men, Crowned with Flowers. 
 See Kleuker, Das Brahmanische System, p. 66 ; Creuzer, Symbolik u. Mytho- 
 logie in Auzsug, p. 204 ; Asiatic Trans, iv. 66. — Tr.] 
 
6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of Samosata, whose doctrine was so abhorrent from the Chris- 
 tian consciousness, that, according to the decree of the Council 
 of Nice, its adherents were required to be rebaptized. And yet 
 he had only subordinated the grace of God descending upon 
 Christ to the Hellenic mode of representation ; he by no means 
 wholly set it aside. 
 
 One might be inclined rather to go back to the iheogony of 
 the Hellenes ; for the Olympians, for instance, though coming 
 into being in time, are yet not deified on account of their 
 excellences, but are from the commencement of their existence 
 divine essences. But even this does not correspond ; for in the 
 Hellenic theogony a plurality of gods and their finitude were 
 assumed, whereas the professors of Christianity never allowed 
 the Deity of Christ to endanger monotheism, and, as is well 
 known, retained an abhorrence of polytheism, the influence of 
 which, had the Deity of Christ implied polytheism, would have 
 been rather to hinder than to incline them to ascribe that to 
 Him. Moreover, the concept of a Hellenic god never compre- 
 hended what the Church from the beginning saw in Christ. 
 For none of these gods passes beyond the national limitation ; 
 nay, to none of them does Deity, in its true sense, belong ; 
 for over them and behind them stands that remnant of mono- 
 theism — banished into the shadowy background, but not alto- 
 gether extinct — Fate, which threatens even them. This is 
 the Absolute of heathenism ; but it is shut up in itself, rigid 
 and unchangeable ; from it no theogony issues, so as that the 
 gods, transferring to themselves its essence, and thus raising it 
 to subjectivity, might in a sense present an absolute personality: 
 rather are the gods not true absolute essences, as indeed their 
 plurality sufficiently indicates. The Christian Church, on the 
 contrary, recognises itself as in the God-man, as placed in the 
 closest union with the absolute God ; and hence for it the God- 
 man must have, not a national, but a universal significancy. 
 
 But the theogony conducts us to the East. Does the Eastern 
 mode of looking at things supply a connecting point for the 
 Christian ground-idea ? Without doubt, more than the Hel- 
 lenic. For there we have the incarnation of the second member 
 of the Trimurti ; Vishnu becomes, among other things, truly 
 man; and thus we have the idea of the God-man as a Divine 
 condescension. We should also, doubtless, greatly err, were we 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 to deny entirely the diffusion through middle and hither Asia, 
 and especially in Alexandria, of Indian religious ideas ; it is, 
 especially, well known how eagerly thousands in the time of 
 Christ snatched at foreign modes of worship and religious ideas, 
 and how closely allied to Indian representations is much that is 
 to be found prevailing at that time, and long after, in those 
 regions. 1 
 
 Nevertheless, it is easy to see that it is not by reference to 
 the Indian religion that the Christian ground-idea is to be 
 explained. For the incarnation in human form of Vishnu is 
 no true assumption of humanity, as is sufficiently evinced by 
 the plurality of the incarnations, in the most diverse forms. The 
 essential unity of the Divine and the human, which the Church 
 recognises as for ever complete in Christ, does not appear in 
 Crishna ; for Crishna returns to his heaven, and lays aside again 
 his humanity. His redemption is therefore transient; another 
 kalpa (world-period) may succeed, during which evil shall be tri- 
 umphant. 2 The basis of all this lies in the dualistic view of the 
 relation of the Divine to the finite. This dualism absconds in 
 pantheism ; but to the Indians there is an irreconcilable opposi- 
 tion between the finite and the Infinite, and hence it is that the 
 Divine with them is All, and the world can attain to only a 
 seeming being. But the idea of the God-man is not thus to be 
 truly reached. Where these two come together, this is effected 
 only by an intermixture, a non-discrimination of what should 
 be discriminated, which must forthwith degenerate into an 
 annihilation of the one member, — naturally, on Indian ground, 
 of the finite. This dualism, which lies at the basis, and which 
 can admit of only a doketic God-manhood, becomes most clearly 
 apparent in this, that the creation or rise of finitude is also 
 that of evil ; and also in this, that it is only by the laying aside 
 of finitude, the annihilation of the individual, that the pure, 
 perfect spirit is to be reached. When we consider, farther, how 
 superficially sin is here viewed, how entirely the ethical has been 
 made to vanish together with the physical ; and how the germs, 
 lying from the beginning in this religion, tend to Buddhaism, 
 
 1 We need only here refer to the doctrine of the Macrocosm and the 
 Microcosm, and the frequent emanistic theories prevailing in the time of 
 Christ and afterwards. 
 
 2 See Stuhr, Eeligionsystems des Orients. 
 
"8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 where a world-denying pantheism falls over into a nominalism, 
 which in turn denies the independent existence of God, and 
 transfers all that is Divine to the world, especially that of Buddha; 
 we shall find it impossible to discover in the religion of India a 
 source or a rival in respect of the ground-idea of Christianity. 
 The Indian religion has a long and rich development, such as 
 no other heathen religion has. Awakened in the heroic era to 
 a consciousness of libertj*, the Indian mind, that before had 
 yielded itself up onesidedly to the All-life (Atma), was in 
 Buddhaism turned round against the Divine, so as to enunciate 
 its non-existence ; and thus according to the contemplative or 
 simply practical tendency of the individual, either the subject, 
 as Buddha, laid hold of deity for himself, or there was a falling 
 into materialism. 1 Thus the Indian religion finished its course ; 
 it reached to the opposite extreme from which it started, for 
 there is for it no longer God : He is expelled. But that from 
 this last form also of the Indian religion the Christian ground- 
 idea is irreconcilably different, may be seen from this, that the 
 unity of the Divine and the human, as Christianity acknow- 
 ledges it in Christ, has here no existence. The Buddha aims at 
 the annihilation of the human, the resolution into the Nothing : 
 Dualism, which from the beginning coalesces with the Indian 
 religion, comes on the other side into being just as both the 
 human and the Divine are annihilated. Of the materialistic 
 mode of thought, which is closely associated with this, it is 
 needless to speak; for its relation to the ideal character of 
 Christianity is antipodal : there, God is suppressed, and the 
 world in proportion brought into prominence; the far has 
 become the near ; the kingdom of China is likewise the king- 
 dom of heaven. 
 
 Little, however, as the pre-Christian religions of heathenism 
 possess the ground-idea of the Christian, that which, never- 
 theless, they sought, was none other than that which is the 
 ground-idea of Christianity. In the East, the mind, setting out 
 from the simple All-life, sought to arrive at a consciousness of 
 the personality and presentiality of God. But its best efforts 
 proved fruitless, because of a fundamental dualistic bias. Just 
 
 1 Herein lies the cause why, in China, Buddhaism has become almost the 
 national religion. The modifications it has there received are not opposed 
 to its essence ; but unfold it only on a new side. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 where it comes nearest to the finding of rest in the true idea of 
 the God-man, in the stages antecedent to Buddhaism, i.e. the 
 Bhagavad Gitta, it flings itself over impatiently to the other 
 extreme ; and in the realm of the immoveable middle, the fiery 
 ideal spirit, that would be and have spirit alone, arrives at this, 
 that it becomes only world. 
 
 In the West a similar course has been pursued, only that 
 the development begins from the opposite terminus. Here the 
 starting-point is not that of patient resignation, but that of the 
 self-consciousness of the free subjective spirit, which seeks to 
 bring forth its inner ideal world-form itself, and so to become 
 worthy of participating in the blessed life of the gods, — the 
 Apotheosis.* But as this is rather a practical than a religious 
 course, so the act is rather finite than ideal. The untruth that 
 lies in it, — the would-be production of the Divine from out of 
 ourselves, the treating it as something to be brought forth in 
 and out of ourselves, instead of being, on the contrary, some- 
 thing to be received by us, and which is to be brought forth by 
 God condescending to us, — displays itself principally in the 
 tragic fate which befell the whole Occidental world. With the 
 attainment of its end, the empire of the world, Borne became 
 deprived of freedom, a slave : with the efflorescence of the 
 Hellenic genius, in which it attained to full consciousness of 
 itself, with the possession of science, began also its decay ; and 
 in place of rejoicing over its spiritual empire and its splendour, 
 in the clearness of the consciousness, its opulent world dis- 
 appeared from it, — it became poor. Thus the effort of the 
 West after the union of the Divine and the human degenerated 
 into its opposite. There remained to it but a deified world ; 
 and as this could neither be proved true in itself, nor find 
 acceptance especially with so intellectual a people as the Greeks, 
 it is not to be wondered at, that this world also sank into nothing 
 as an object of spiritual apprehension ; and that thus nothing 
 was left for the Neo-Platonists but the simple Monad, the one 
 Divine substance, before which everything finite is but pheno- 
 menal. The Hellenic setting out from man and his power ends 
 where the Oriental began — but there also found its grave. And 
 
 * [The bliss of the Oriental heathen is passive absorption into the Deity ; 
 the bliss of the Occidental was elevation, by an active process of intellectual 
 and moral culture, to the society of the gods. — Tr."| 
 
10 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 since its starting-point was where the Oriental ended, the entire 
 cycle of the heathen world has thus been completed : returning to 
 its poor unsatisfying beginning, it has pronounced judgment on 
 itself — and the sentence is one which all history confirms — viz., 
 that it has not attained to the true idea of the God-man, though 
 its entire spiritual history has unmistakeably its meaning in this, 
 that it seeks the inner and true interpenetration of the Divine and 
 the human. It could not find this, though it sought it, because 
 it set to work precipitately ; that is, without allowing to the dis- 
 tinction between the two, in the first place, its due weight. The 
 confounding of what should be discriminated, which thence 
 arose, entailed as its penalty, that both sides of the distinction, 
 which neither in their difference nor in their unity were under- 
 stood (else had their confusion been impossible), cannot be set 
 in stern antagonism to each other so as to become mutually 
 exclusive. And in this respect the history of the pre-Christian 
 religions affords a very instructive example for any history that 
 seeks to trace the dogma of the God-man within the Christian 
 Church ; and suggests how these pre-Christian modes of looking 
 at things did not immediately vanish with the advent of Chris- 
 tianity, but exercised the most marked influence on the Christian 
 Church. 
 
 Thus far the opinion must seem well founded, that the 
 entire vast region of heathen religion contains nothing that can 
 impeach the originality of the Christian ground-idea ; whilst, on 
 the other hand, the whole of Heathendom strains after this idea, 
 without being able, from its stand-point, so much as distantly to 
 approach the conception of it in its truth. And the blame, high 
 above all, is due to what has not hitherto been adverted to, viz., 
 that heathenism utterly wants a profound moral view of the 
 world ; a defect which also shows itself in the confounding of 
 the consciousness of the world and of God ; for thereby also is 
 the ethical idea physically conceived and bedimmed. Ethics 
 includes chiefly the rectitude by which man is put in relation, 
 not only with his fellows, but primarily with God, and so arrives 
 at personality. Thus this idea of rectitude, essential to the 
 ethical, and ever immanent in it, preserves the distinction between 
 God and the world; and without it, love itself would not be love. 
 An idea, therefore, of the unity of the Divine and the human 
 not mediated by the idea of the ethical, can of necessity be only 
 
INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 of a physical kind, and superficial, such as we must pronounce 
 that to be which among the Hellenes was consummated in the 
 idea of the beautiful, or of art. We have not there the true 
 spiritual Infinite presented in a finite form, nor have we even 
 man conceived as the true living work of art ; and hence this 
 beautiful Greek world fell to pieces, because it had only the 
 form of naturality. 
 
 "Where the moral consciousness is not cultivated, the anti- 
 thesis between man in his naturality and the Divine will be 
 easily removed, since even involuntarily the form of the latter 
 will be borrowed from the former. But in such a case the idea 
 of the unity of the Divine and human is deprived of its high 
 spiritual significancy. Hence in the whole heathen world the 
 idea of the God-man has never been even remotely approached 
 in the sense in which it always lived in the Church's conscious- 
 ness. The only apparent exception to this is furnished by 
 Parsism, in which the ethical elements approach so nearly to a 
 free development, that there have not been wanting those who 
 incline to withdraw it from among heathen religions. But 
 however noble the position of this among others of the heathen 
 religions, it has, nevertheless, not risen by any means above that 
 stand-point of natural religion, through which ethical concep- 
 tions are contaminated. Resting on the fundamental represen- 
 tation of the natural antithesis between light and darkness, it 
 thereby acquired sufficient elevation to obtain, veiled in this, 
 the ethical opposition between good and bad. Still, on that very 
 account did this opposition remain but a veiled one. The 
 Persian dualism, however (into which the opposition of the two 
 elements, already lying in the Indian religion, but there appear- 
 ing as a successive one, has become condensed, since here both 
 elements enter simultaneously, and stand in the rudest tension 
 over against each other), admits no true unity of the Divine 
 and human ; as even within the Christian Church itself is 
 sufficiently proved by Manichasism ever lapsing into Doketism. 
 And supposing this dualism to be completely overcome in the 
 Persian religion, there would still, even then, remain another ir- 
 reconcilable antithesis, that, namely, between Zeruane Akerene,* 
 
 * ["Zoroaster (Zerdusht), during the reign of Gushtasp (Darius 
 Hystaspes), assumed, according to the common opinion, the existence of 
 an infinite original essence (Zeruane-Akerene, the boundless time), from 
 
12 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 on the one hand, and Ormuzd and Ahriman, on the other. The 
 relation of the former to the latter is very obscure ; nevertheless 
 the idea of the absolute truly Divine, so far as this religion 
 possesses it, belongs to Zeruane Akerene. As, however, it is 
 immoveably shut up in itself, the Persian religion cannot possi- 
 bly know a unity between the finite and the truly Divine. 1 
 
 In the Persian religion we find the knot with which all sys- 
 tems of natural religion are coupled most of all firmly tied ; 
 for here comes out into clear consciousness that dualism which 
 unconsciously perverts them all, and historically works from one 
 extreme to the other. It is assumed as the starting-point, and 
 aims at an ethical result. But however deep may be the moral 
 earnestness which lies at the bottom, neither the moral nor the 
 religious (the latter even less than the former) receives its due ; 
 not the latter, because from the thoroughly practical character 
 of this religion it knows nothing of a condescension and com- 
 munication of God, though it commands to produce the divine, 
 the good. And in this respect the Persian religion, albeit pro- 
 posing to itself a different problem, stands on a parallel footing 
 with the religions of the West. In estimating, however, its 
 moral earnestness, we must not overlook the reverse of the 
 matter — namely, that if evil be treated as a substance, and be 
 transposed into Nature, the spirit comes off guiltless. Thus 
 must Parsism, in place of going deeper into itself and introduc- 
 ing a spiritual process, take its direction to what is outward — 
 must stand spiritually still, and persist in the insoluble enigma 
 and contradiction which, rather than its confession of faith, it 
 utters. On both sides, the ethical and the religious, it is the 
 Hebrew religion which holds that which Parsism seeks or needs. 
 
 which eternally proceeded by means of the Word (Honofarj two principles 
 of things, Orrmizd and Ahriman. Ormuzd is the purest endless light, the 
 wisest and most perfect one, the author of all good. To him Ahriman as 
 the principle of darkness or evil, is opposed, either originally, or through 
 defection from Ormuzd." — Tennemann Gesch. d. Phil. § 70. See also 
 Hengstenberg's Christology, vol. iv., p. 320, Eng. Tr. — Tr.] 
 
 1 According to Stuhr, the hero Sosiosh belongs to a later period, and 
 shows traces of the influence of the Hebrew idea of a Messiah. For the 
 rest, this personage affords a proof of how the Persian religion strives after 
 the idea of the God-man, without being able, however, to rise above an 
 Arian mediator between God and man. The reason lies in the deistic con- 
 ception of the Absolute, Zeruane Akerene. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 In it is the solution of the enigma, at which Parsism vainly 
 toils; 1 and in so far as that which lies unconsciously at the 
 basis of the rest of the religions of Heathendom, namely, the 
 dualism between the Divine and the finite, is in this brought out 
 clearly, and is fully recognised, the Hebrew religion contains 
 the revelation of the mystery that lies as a burden on the whole 
 world outside the testament.* Not that the Hebrew religion 
 has not here also its new and deeper enigmas and mysteries, 
 but that in it the enigma of heathenism, which lies in this, that 
 it ever falls involuntarily into the opposite of that which it 
 would, or, at any rate, hesitates in its advance, is solved.f It 
 remains for us to inquire whether the Hebrew religion could 
 have engendered the idea of the God-man. 
 
 B. 
 
 The Hebrew religion stands distinguished from all the pre- 
 Christian religions by this, that it clearly discriminates God and 
 the world, and so acknowledges alike the personality of God 
 and man. As the former is exalted high above nature by 
 His spirituality and Oneness Q^p) } and man is regarded as 
 created in the image of God, the distinction is duly maintained ; 
 so that only an ethical mediation of unity remains to be thought 
 of here. Of an essential relation of the world, and particularly 
 of humanity, to God, there is scarcely an intimation ; the 
 Hebrew people were but little addicted to metaphysical in- 
 quiries. Still, that ethical mediation must not be regarded 
 under a Pelagian aspect ; for in the mind of the Hebrew people 
 
 1 One might so far — though the same thing applies in a sense to all 
 ethnic religions — designate Parsism the Hebrew religion barbarized, and 
 thus many peculiarities in both religions would be denoted according to 
 their significancy. In this case, the attempt — certainly not often made — 
 to reduce the higher form of religion, the Hebrew, to a dependence on the 
 lower, and to represent it as receiving influences therefrom rather than 
 the converse, must appear unnatural ; for where in all the world does the 
 youth learn more readily from the boy than the reverse ? Hence Stuhr 
 justly pursues the opposite course. 
 
 * [Aussertestamentlichen Welt. — Te.] 
 
 t [To those who are interested in this inquiry, it may be worth while to 
 recommend the (unhappily unfinished) work of the late Archdeacon Hard- 
 wicke, " Christ and other Masters." — Te.] 
 
14 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 it rested on a religious basis, on a Divine condescension ; and 
 this became always clearer to the people. And as the finger of 
 God at the first inscribed the law on table3 of stone, so the 
 divinely-inspired prophets anticipated, in the lapse of time, a 
 period when God would cleanse away the sins of His people 
 and write His law on their hearts. But at the basis of the 
 Christian idea of the God-man there lies a relation of essence, 
 and not merely a moral or religious one; hence it does not 
 appear presumptively probable that it is from the spirit of the 
 Hebrew people that such an idea could be derived. That Jeho- 
 vah, He who is highly exalted above all that is finite — who, 
 in the sense of forming a conception of Him, cannot be seen, 
 yea, the very sight of whom would consume — that He should 
 come down to this world, should put on a finite nature and 
 become man, is an idea which never could have come into the 
 Hebrew religion out of itself. On the contrary, we must assume 
 that, as the boast of the Hebrew religion, in opposition to the 
 whole heathen world, lay in its upholding the holy personality 
 of God pure and highly exalted above nature and the whole 
 world, it could not have held fast this personality if it had main- 
 tained a homoousia, as of man and God for instance, in any 
 sense. In order to sustain itself above the nature-religions, it 
 must, in virtue of its ethical method of dealing with things, 
 have formed such a metaphysical view of the relation between 
 God and the world as was far removed from an incarnation of 
 God, nay, such as removed the Hebrews, and by law precluded 
 them from such a thought as this, although, as already hinted, 
 the Hebrew people speculated but little on the relation of the 
 Divine essence to the essence of the world in the general. It 
 cannot be alleged against what is here advanced, that under 
 the ancient economy Jehovah by no means appears as afar off 
 from the world and uncommunicative, but rather nigh to the 
 world, yea, filling it with His omnipresence ; revealing Him- 
 self first to the patriarchs in manifold manner, and especially 
 afterwards being nigh to His covenant-people as their Lawgiver, 
 Judge, Avenger ; who inspired their magistrates and prophets, 
 and by many appearances and signs made Himself known to 
 them. For all this is quite compatible with what has been said 
 above ; neither excludes the other. Who can say that all this 
 even in the most distant manner approaches the idea of the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 incarnation of Jehovah, who is, and who was, and who is to 
 come ? It is not to be denied that the Hebrew popular spirit, 
 especially at a later period, when, less subject to a living reli- 
 gious process, it turned more to investigation, sought to fill up 
 the gap which existed metaphysically as the reflex of the ethical 
 view, between God and the world ; and here the idea of the 
 Maleach Jehovah (the mediator between God and the patriarchs, 
 latterly between God and the theocratic people) furnished a 
 point of connection. But neither is the mediatorial office con- 
 stantly ascribed to him, for Jehovah in many instances reveals 
 Himself, without a Maleach, in visions, voices, symbols, etc.; 
 nor does the Maleach in the Old Testament appear as endowed 
 with an abiding personality, on the one hand, distinct from the 
 choir of created angels, who bear in themselves, but not as he, 
 nirv DE>, and on the other, not continually sinking back into, 
 and losing itself in, the personality of Jehovah. An hypostasis 
 so purely parastatic, consequently, does not stretch out much 
 beyond the personification of what was ever a theocratic work ; 
 at least it does not serve to mediate the relation of the essence of 
 God and the world. At the utmost, we have in the Psalms 
 some passages, 1 in which not merely a theocratic but a cosmical 
 significancy is given to the Maleach Jehovah. But there he 
 appears either only as a personification, and consequently not as 
 an hypostasis ; or, if the latter, as a creature. Under the former 
 aspect, the Maleach Jehovah is set forth in the '"loan, ao<f>la. In 
 the latter case, he stands among the angels, who certainly in 
 the lapse of time acquire more and more of significancy ; but 
 still, far from mediating the essence of God and the world, they 
 rather make it perfectly clear that Jehovah's essence comes not 
 into contact with the world. And as to these angels is attributed 
 ever more and more what belongs to God — such as creation, 
 preservation, and government — and they become His vicegerents 
 in the world, so there comes to be a gradual falling off from the 
 purer religious consciousness of earlier times towards the wildness 
 and fantasticality of heathenism, whilst the living God passes into 
 the background. It is well known into what insipid and wanton 
 fancies the Jewish traditions before the time of Christ passed 
 over in this respect — how the waxing angel-lore of these filled 
 
 1 Comp. Ps. ciii. 20, cxlviii. 2, xxxiv. 8, xci. 11. 
 
16 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 heaven and earth, Paradise and Gehenna, with histories full of 
 marvel and romance. But to propose to place the Christian 
 fundamental idea in relation with these traditionary beings is 
 inadmissible, not only on the ground that they are all creatures, 
 whilst the Christian Church recognises in Christ always the 
 truly Divine, but also, still more definitively, on the ground 
 that this angel-lore, occupying the foreground of the conscious- 
 ness, places and holds the truly Divine in the background ; 
 hence it first begins to appear in this guise from the time when 
 God had ceased to speak with His people, when there is no 
 longer a living approximation and revelation of the Lord. 1 
 
 As respects the n 9?0 0I " the Proverbs, the o-o<f>ta of the Apo- 
 cryphal books, it has certainly a cosmical significancy. In it lies 
 that which came nearer to the Hebrew genius, religion, and ethics, 
 and became manifest over the relation of the essence of God to 
 the world. — The Wisdom of Prov. viii. 22 ff. has an inner 
 relation to the world, to its wise arrangements — i.e., to the form 
 of the world. Though, accordingly, only teleologically con 
 ceived, and ever in inner relation reverting to the practical, it 
 carries nevertheless into the world, under one aspect — that of 
 form — Divine thoughts, and thus establishes an inner relation 
 between God and the world. Wisdom itself is introduced 
 speaking, as a personality distinct from God ; still the passage 
 does not clearly lead to a hypostasizing of the Chochma. In 
 Ecclus. i. 1-10, xxiv. 8-10, Wisd. of Sol. vii. 22 ff., the mere 
 personification is still clearer. The Son of Sirach conceives 
 under Wisdom the whole world-plan — the eternal idea of the 
 world as existing in time and space, and according to its inner 
 measures: "He has poured out wisdom upon all His works, 
 and on all flesh, according to His grace ;" i. 9, 10. Here Wis- 
 dom is conceived not simply as form, but also as substance — 
 as poured forth on all things, a power wisely forming all ; but 
 manifestly not as a person. In the twenty-fourth chapter of 
 the same book, Wisdom identifies herself with God's word, 
 
 1 Whilst this angel-lore at a later period assumed a pantheistic garb, 
 and ascribed the creation of angels, as well as their distinction from God, 
 to emanation, there nevertheless thus still remained the fundamental repre- 
 sentation, that the true Absolute is known only afar off, and along with 
 this, a system of subordination ; so that in the doctrine of jEons the Church 
 never could recognise herself. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 17 
 
 says that she broods over the whole earth ; and ascribes to her- 
 self omnipresence in the depth, in the sea, and on the earth. It 
 thus approximates immediately to the idea of the Logos among 
 the Alexandrians. The Wisdom of Solomon and the Book of 
 Ecclesiasticus lead us directly to Philo. In the beautiful seventh 
 chapter of the latter of these books, for instance, Wisdom 
 is conceived as the all-operative, and yet as that which is 
 limited by nothing. Hovering over all, it both physically and 
 spiritually enters all ; and entering therein, it is yet not bound 
 thereby. It is called, ver. 27 ff., Sir. xxiv. 14, " abiding," 
 that is, eternal, and yet it has relations with time ; growing as 
 a, palm-tree, Sir. xxiv. 18 ; spreading forth its branch like an 
 oak ; seeking and finding a firm abode in Jacob, Sir. xxiv. 11 ; 
 for ever and ever communicating itself to holy souls, form- 
 ing prophets and friends of God, and yet not bound to these, 
 since it pervades all spirits, Wisd. of Sol. vii. 23, 24. It is 
 viewed as the principle of the many, the diversified, and yet 
 as one, vers. 22, 27. In the Wisdom of Solomon, however, 
 Wisdom appears more decidedly than in Ecclesiasticus, not 
 merely as a formal, but as a real principle, which is doubtless to 
 be put to the account of a strong Hellenic influence upon that 
 book. But the more universal the meaning of the cro<f>la thus 
 becomes, and the more akin to the Philonian Logos, so much 
 the more does the possibility vanish of deriving from it the 
 Christian ground-idea. It is true that by all thin the strongly 
 determined distinction between God and the world, recognised 
 by the Hebrew people, was somewhat softened ; but, on the 
 other hand, the universalism of the Hellenic Logos-doctrine 
 precludes its furnishing to the Christian ground-idea any anthro- 
 pological and theological basis, inasmuch as the Stand-point of 
 historical revelation, which forms one essential side also of the 
 Christology of the Church, is forsaken, and is volatilized into 
 a general inward revelation of God in the spirit ; and under 
 this aspect nothing but a Dohetic Christology could be formed 
 on this basis. On the whole, where this generality and pure 
 spirituality in the agency of the Logos is retained, there remains 
 no longer any reason on the side of men for an incarnation such 
 as that in Christ. In fine, this conception of the Logos, through 
 the immediate universality of his operation, as well as through 
 the constant relapsing of his hypostasis into God, i.e., in mere 
 VOL. I. B 
 
18 TNTRODUCTION 
 
 personification, utterly excludes the thought that this entire 
 Logos, and not merely a part of him, an efflux of his power, 
 appeared in Christ. And this is, Christologically considered, the 
 Ebionitish aspect ; an aspect which does not satisfy the Christian 
 idea of the God-man, to which this Alexandrian construction of 
 the doctrine of the Logos must lead. 
 
 In the Book of Sirach there is shown a remarkable attempt 
 to meet this modification of the idea of the universal ao^la, so 
 uncongenial to theocratic principles and to historical revelation 
 generally, and to amalgamate it with these interests. Wisdom, ac- 
 cording to Sir. xxiv. 10-16 ff., seeks an abiding, certain place, 
 i.e., a place of perfect revelation, concentratedly : " Amongst 
 all men, amongst all heathen, she has sought a dwelling, that 
 she might find a place. Then the Creator of all things appointed 
 her a dwelling in Jacob, and granted her a settled place in 
 Zion." — But it is only as opposed to the heathen that the repre- 
 sentation of Wisdom as rooted with this honoured people has its 
 truth ; just as Israel generally is called niiT *njj in contradistinc- 
 tion from the heathen, without being the servant of God in the 
 full sense. But where in Israel is the proper throne of this 
 ao<pta, and her full revelation? Ver. 15 points to the temple 
 (and with this coalesces the later Jewish doctrine of the She- 
 kinah), vers. 32, 33,* to the Book of the Covenant, the Law, 
 whence wisdom flows. But were the author to abide by this, 
 not only would the Messianic idea be lost for him in the delu- 
 sive notion that the temple and the Book of the Covenant are 
 eternally sufficient, but he must also satisfy himself with a 
 purely external dwelling of the ao^ia in Jacob. But little as 
 we find in him, or in the Book of Wisdom, as to the aotpla being 
 placed in conjunction with the idea of the Messiah, 1 yet both 
 know well that the aoj>la has her satisfaction neither in the 
 general rooting in Jacob, nor in that outward dwelling with 
 him. Hence the Son of Sirach represents her as striving after 
 an ever-growing extension, vers. 17-22 [13-16]. More he 
 
 * [These references are to the arrangement of verses in Luther's transla- 
 tion. The corresponding verses in the original, which the English Version 
 follows, are 10, 23, 24.— Tr.] 
 
 1 This was not in itself to be expected, since in these ideas there prevails 
 an antitheocratic, philosophic element ; whereas the idea of the Messiah 
 grows only within theocratic bounds. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 19 
 
 seeks not ; an extensive growth satisfies him. In like manner, 
 the author of the Book of Wisdom, who is still less theocratic 
 in his tone of thought, is even more satisfied with a /Merafialvetp 
 of the aofyia into the i/rt^? otrta?. But in recognising only a 
 communication to many, they know nothing of a concentration 
 in one ; they lose also more and more, as they become in a two- 
 fold way superficial, the need of the same. The Palestinians 
 maintained, indeed, the theocratical stand-point, but the religious 
 process came to a stagnation ; and in place of an intensive 
 progress, in place of the Messianic idea becoming ever clearer 
 and richer, they soiight progress in extension, in proselytizing, 
 and hoped for a political Messiah to succeed therein, according 
 to their notion, to the utmost extent. 1 The Alexandrians, on 
 the contrary, as already the Book of Wisdom shows, through 
 their appreciation of heathen wisdom, and by a process of vola- 
 tilization, lost sight of the need of an historical God-man ; nay, 
 in the Hellenic mixture they lost even the solid principles of 
 their religion, and the firm faith of their fathers. Philo would 
 thus form an exception ; and he, in the present state of our 
 inquiry, requires a more penetrating investigation. 
 
 The Book of Wisdom shows that Philo was not alone in his 
 tendency, but that in him we have the blossom of a philosophical 
 school, growing up on Jewish ground, and without doubt 
 spreading wider. This makes it all the more worth while to 
 confer with him a little more closely, since he not only is a con- 
 temporary of Christ, and, whilst Palestine saw the Saviour, is 
 the most remarkable among the extra-Palestinian Jews; but 
 also since his system forms at once the directest antithesis to 
 Christianity, and at the same time shows an apparent concur- 
 rence with it which has deluded many. In him Judaism, tinged 
 with Hellenism, struggles upwards even to the attempt to realize 
 by the force of thought what the Messianic idea intends, and 
 thereby at the same time to supersede the Messiah, and render 
 Him superfluous. From this process of the ideal interworking 
 of the heathenish and the Jewish, which in him affords a sort 
 of prelude to what was consummated under Christianity, may 
 be explained the fact that, during a period of little acuteness in 
 historical composition, he should be held for a Christian ; as well 
 
 1 Mohammedanism is the continuation of this Judaism. 
 
20 INTBODUCTION. 
 
 as his own fluctuating between opposite points of view, which 
 set at defiance all attempts at union. 1 
 
 The two opposite sides of Philo's system, now approaching 
 to, now recoiling from each other, cannot be rightly represented 
 if the attempt be made, for the sake of vindicating their unity, 
 to derive the one from the other. In Philo himself there is no 
 perfect union of these to be found ; the fact historically with 
 regard to him is, that the old Hebrew concept of God is dissolved 
 in his mind by means of a pagan view of the world, and thereby 
 a sort of theogonic process begins to introduce itself to him ; 
 and the abstractness of his concept of God is, by another ethnical 
 ingredient, the emanistic, rendered to a certain extent relaxed.* 
 On the other hand, however, his abstract monotheistic conscious- 
 ness reacts on that objective and eternal definiteness in God, so 
 that the more concrete form which he would be led to construct 
 out of his simple absolute essence, is again negatived and set aside. 
 Philo's monotheism lets slip the highest element in the Hebrew 
 monotheism, namely, the ethical energy which is expressed in 
 the righteousness of God and His holiness, ever sure of its end; 
 from the old Hebrew ethics he falls back into the pagan physics; 
 so that it is self-evident that he holds, and does not hold, the 
 distinction between God and the world ; sets forth the theogonic 
 process as well as the cosmogonic ; and consequently mars his 
 concept of God by that of the world, and that of the world again 
 by his idea of God. 
 
 Prejudice in his favour has led many recent students of 
 Philo to present him prominently as holding that God is in His 
 pure absoluteness the One and Unchangeable. They further 
 say that this absolute retraction of God into Himself renders a 
 mediatory being, the Philonian Logos, necessary; and he is not to 
 be confounded with God, for then would God again be brought 
 into contact with the world, but must be regarded as a proper 
 hypostasis, though of subordinate rank. It is true that the 
 passages in Philo are numerous that speak of God's sublimity. 
 That God is, says he, 2 we may know from the world; for such a 
 
 ' See Appendix, Note A. 
 
 * [Fliissig, fluid, liquefied. — Te.] 
 
 2 Philo de Monarch. L. I. § 3-6, Opp. ed. Mangey, T. II. pp. 216-218, 
 ed. Eichter, IV. 289-93 ; de poster. Cain. Mangey I. 258, § 48 in Eichter; 
 de Bomniis, L. I. 40, Mang. I. 655, Eicht. III. 264. 
 
INTRODUCTION., 21 
 
 work of art, such a mighty city, is not of itself. But how God 
 is, we cannot find. We must, indeed, constantly search after 
 this, for the inquiry is too attractive to be relinquished; hut 
 nothing in the world can teach us how God is. " Show me 
 Thyself, cried Moses. In the whole world I find no one who 
 saith to me what Thou art ; Thou must show Thyself to me. I 
 beseech Thee, be entreated by Thy humble worshipper, and 
 bring help, for Thou alone canst. For as the light manifests 
 itself without aid from another light, so must Thou also show 
 Thyself." It has been thought, since he sets a high value on the 
 desire to know God, as noble and divine, he stands in this 
 respect on the threshold of wisdom, longs after the knowledge 
 of God through God, through revelation. But how does he 
 make God answer Moses, the representative with him of God- 
 fearing men, his wise man ? " What thou desirest is indeed 
 praiseworthy ; but thy prayer befits no created being. To Me, 
 indeed, it were easy to grant it, but not to thee to receive it. 
 I give to each, deserving grace, what he can bear; but heaven and 
 earth cannot comprehend Me, how much less a human being?" 
 And not only is the incomprehensibility of God by men asserted 
 by him simply, but also His infinitude is, after the manner of 
 the apophatic* theology, described so that all and every quality, 
 such as goodness, loveliness, is denied of Him objectively, and 
 only the attribute of indeterminateness remains. 1 
 
 But with equal justice might others say : With Philo, God is 
 anything but a being shut up in Himself ; very much the con- 
 trary. Over all is He, the beginning and bound of all. Not 
 only is it in a sense said of the Logos that he is the creator of 
 the world, and is poured out upon all, but also of God generally 
 is it said, He fills all and penetrates all, and there is nothing 
 which He hath left empty or destitute of Himself. 2 He was 
 and is the Maker of the universe, the world-Father, who sustains 
 earth and heaven, water and air, and what therein is, and rules 
 
 * [I suppose the author alludes to what divines are accustomed to call 
 the via negationis, i.e., our way of apprehending God by what He is not. 
 The term anoQaTixo; is used by Aristotle, see e. gr. Analyt. Pr. Bk. II. ch. 
 15 ; but its use in theology is a neologism and an affectation. — Te.] 
 
 1 Appendix, Note B. 
 
 2 irauru yxp ■xtirt.'iipmiiii o &eo; k»\ 8/<J vaiiruv liihfavhv, x.t*i kiiioii oiJs\ 
 cirHs eptiftoo ciiro't.i'AoiTrfj iuvTOV. 
 
22 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 over them. 1 Here also comes in his doctrine of the trpovoia of 
 God. Moreover, so far is he from describing the simple, self- 
 resting being of God as anyhow satisfying His essence, that he 
 calls Him, as also afterwards the Logos, the place of ideas, the 
 fulness in Himself and through Himself, 2 the place of the 
 universe, that is, He who has the universe for His fulness, and 
 that not viewed in its separateness, as it appears to us, but in 
 its unity. The world belongs necessarily to God, and thereby 
 is made sure of eternity and incorruptibility. 3 Were it to 
 perish, God would, from want of occupation and terrible inac- 
 tivity, lead a life not worth living. Nay, if it be lawful to say 
 so, the consequence of perfect solitude would be OavaTos for 
 God. By this also may His freedom in Himself from all need, 
 of which Philo says so much, be rightly apprehended : it is to 
 be understood so as that there is, in virtue of His goodness, a 
 need to Him to leave nothing without participation in the Divine 
 essence ; and all that Philo repudiates is the affirmation that, 
 conversely, God partakes from the world, or that this can give 
 Him anything which He has not in Himself. Pervading all 
 things, omnipresent, He is not comprehended by the world; 
 receiving nothing from it, He communicates Himself to all, 
 without which there-would be nothing. So entirely does it live 
 by participation from Him, that He Himself is its reality as 
 the ideal world, which He, under one aspect of His essence, is. 
 But He Himself does not participate with it as the sensible 
 world; untarnished by it, He is in it ; taking nothing from it, 
 He is the active principle (Spcurrijpiov), whilst it, by itself con- 
 sidered, is purely passive and determinate {iraO^riKov, ovaia= 
 
 With by far too much confidence has it often been asserted, 
 that the Logos of Philo is an individual essence, occupying a 
 middle place between God and the world, a distinct hypostasis 
 from God. But how could Philo in this case have described, in 
 numberless places, God as in the manner above indicated coming 
 into immediate contact with the world, only signalizing the 
 ■n-aOrjmcbv, matter, as something external to Him, receptive from 
 Him ? Against an individual hypostasis of the Logos he speaks 
 
 1 Appendix, Note C. 2 Appendix, Note D. 
 
 3 De Mundi incorrupt., Mangey, T. II. 503, 504, 508 ; § 16, 17, 20, 21. 
 
 4 Appendix, Note E. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 23 
 
 most decidedly when he says : " Nothing Divine communicates 
 itself by means of separation ; it only extends itself." 1 In so 
 far, then, as the Logos is Divine, it is only the extended, or the 
 self -extending God. But the Logos has nothing in himself not 
 Divine ; matter (ovaia) is not created by the Logos, he only 
 conforms it to himself like a seal ; and as this is also numberless 
 times ascribed in the general to God, the Logos can be regarded 
 in no other light than as God Himself viewed under a definite 
 aspect. Where does Philo show the least anxiety to reconcile 
 his doctrine of the Logos with the unity of God ? And yet this 
 he could hardly have avoided, had he co-ordinated the Logos 
 with God as a hypostatic essence. 2 If, in order to represent 
 God in the definiteness of His self-extension, of the ivepyeia or 
 the world-idea of the creative thought, he constructs proper 
 categories and names for Him, he does not omit the necessary 
 correctives in order to preserve what he considers the right 
 monarchian view (comp. especially De Leg. Alleg. II. 1, Tom. 
 I. pp. 66, 67). It is true he not only calls the Logos (De Mundi 
 Opif.) the world-thinking and world-making power of God, 
 which was its proper concept, so as thereby to denote that aspect 
 of God under which He appears as in active relation to the 
 world, as Spaarijpiov, but he calls Him Son, First-born of God, 
 the link between God and the actual world; to which may be 
 added such appellations as Mediator, High-priest, Advocate, 
 Surety, Archangel, Pillar, etc. 3 But from the use of the term 
 Son by Philo it will not do to infer a hypostasis, because he 
 calls the world also a son of God ; and by this cannot be 
 denoted a personality, although the world, this younger son of 
 God, at least in unity with the Logos, the elder Son, appears as 
 animated and intelligent. If it be considered also how different 
 are the meanings which the Logos has with Philo, though it is 
 not in every case of a different object he speaks, there will 
 arise fresh and weighty doubts as to the assumption that his 
 Logos is an individual, a second personality distinct from God. 
 If it be assumed, as it must be, that his 0ew? \6yos is always 
 conceived as one and the same, though under varying relations, 
 his individual personality must be accordant with all his signifi- 
 cations ; if not so, one would be led to inquire whether the 
 
 1 Appendix, Note F. 2 Appendix, Note G. 8 Appendix, Note H. 
 
24 INTRODUCTION.' 
 
 expressions referred to, that sound as if personal, are not to be 
 understood as personifications. 
 
 1. The Logos with Philo is, first, a Divine faculty, whether 
 of thought or creation, or both together. 1 No one would wish 
 to affirm that Philo conceived of God as without wisdom or 
 might ; and yet this must be done if he placed the faculty of 
 thought and action in another being than God, in the individual 
 hypostasis of the Son. 
 
 2. But the second leading meaning of the Philonian Logos is 
 the Activity itself. The Logos is not only thought-power, and 
 creation-power, but also the thinking-creative. 2 But neither thus 
 does he arrive at an hypostasis distinct from God, but only to a 
 position fluctuating between self -sustenance and attributiveness, 
 which accords well with a doctrine of Divine .potences. God 
 saw that there could be no fair image without a fair model ; that 
 nothing sensible is faultless, unless as it is formed on an arche- 
 type and a conceived idea. Wherefore He created, when He 
 would form this visible world, first the ideal world, in order to 
 have an incorporeal, God-like type of this corporeal world, this 
 later image of the earlier. This supersensible world, consisting 
 in ideas, may not be allocated to any place. Where it existed, 
 may be indicated by the analogy of the architect who plans a 
 city in his mind, and expresses each particular which he formed 
 in idea on his soul as on wax. This city exists in no place ; 
 but by means of it he constructs the city from stone, according 
 to the type. So was it with God when He would construct this 
 world, this Megalopolis. 3 Here it is again clear that to God is 
 ascribed the conception of the ideal world, the fcoo-fio? votjtos. — 
 He then proceeds thus : As the soul of the artist is the place of 
 this ideal city, so has the world consisting in ideas no other place 
 than the Divine Logos who formed it. Thus it is evident that 
 the Logos is the understanding of God, which thinks the world. 
 Immediately thereupon he says : The world-forming might has 
 also its source in the truly good. The truly good is with Philo 
 God. Since, then, he finds in the Logos the tottos for all 
 powers, he must by the Logos understand God under a certain 
 definite relation. The Father and Creator, says Plato, is good ; 
 and hence He grudges not His very best to matter (pvaia). 
 
 1 Appendix, Note I. 2 Appendix, Note J. 
 
 8 De Opific. Mundi, T. I. 4, § 4. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 25 
 
 For it had no good out of itself, though it may become all. 
 Without, then, using any other help — and what other was there 
 for Him to use? — only drawing on His own resources, God 
 resolved to endow with superabundant grace Nature, which out 
 of itself could not become a participant of any good. 1 
 
 3. But as the Logos is, with Philo, the thinking, i.e., the 
 ideal-world-forming God, 2 so is He, thirdly, the thought, or the 
 thing thought, i.e., the ideal world itself. "If one," says he, 
 " may speak openly, the ideal world is nothing else than the 
 Logos of God already conceived in the formation of the world " 
 [el Si Tt? eBeXijaeoe <yv/jLVOTepoi$ xptfcracrBaL tois ovofiaatv ovSev 
 av erepov eliroi rbv votjtov elvai tcocrfiov, rj ©eov Tuyyov 77877 
 tcocrfj,OTroiovvTo<;~]. 3 As the ideal city in the architect is not dis- 
 tinct from his mind, having no objective existence, but being 
 only a determination of his mind, not more is the ideal world dis- 
 tinct from the Logos ; whilst, again, this is not distinct from 
 God, but is God, thought as intelligence, or world-forming power. 
 " It is manifest that the archetypal seal which we call the ideal 
 world is itself the archetypal model, the idea of ideas, the Logos 
 of God." 4 In Him a multiplicity of ideas, the fulness, is not 
 to be denied ; rather does Philo speak of IBiai, Xoyoi, in this 
 sphere also ; but here these are in their eternal harmony and 
 connection (in the /MOvaSiKt] <j>vcri$, I.e. § 9), not in their spatial 
 and temporal antithesis, as they appear in the sphere of the 
 sensible world, the Koafio'; alaBrjTos, at least to the party con- 
 templating. 6 
 
 4. As respects, fourthly and finally, the actual sensible world, 
 icoo-fios alaOriTos, the Logos is here, certainly, frequently called 
 the active Divine principle. He arises (avarikXei), is begotten 
 of God, for the end that this world may be (T. I. p. 414). Here 
 is the point at which alone any special personality of the Logos 
 can be supposed. Nevertheless this by no means follows from 
 the words which denote his proceeding from God, since the same 
 
 1 De Opific. Mundi, T. I. 4, § 6. 
 
 2 It is true there are passages in Philo where God is represented as the 
 self -illuminating light ; but the meaning there must be, not that He thinks 
 Himself, but that He reveals Himself according to His existence. Of the 
 Divine self-consciousness he had no idea ; for the Divine thought he had no 
 other contents than the world ; comp. II. 216-218, 415. 
 
 8 lb. § 6. It is worthy of note that he does not say xosfioiroitltira 
 4 Ibid. 6 Appendix, Note K. 
 
26 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 expressions are used of the world, to which no personality is 
 ascribed. Innumerable times is it called the younger son of 
 God, so that, if the more obscure is to be explained from the 
 more clear, the elder Son of God would have as little claim to 
 personality as the younger makes ; and this the more, that the 
 one is a world as well as the other, — the latter the actual world, 
 the former the ideal world. Or must this latter be a person, in 
 order to attain the end of entering the v\rj % If Philo had in 
 view an actual creative act, which he ascribed to the Logos and 
 not to God, there might be on this point reference to a Divine 
 hypostasis ; but the Emanatist doctrine requires nothing of this 
 for the transition from the ideal world to the visible, but rather 
 repudiates this. 
 
 But, as already observed, the forming of the world is ascribed 
 also to God Himself. This world, the younger son of God, was 
 not formed by the agency of the Logos as a representative of 
 God, but God, " availing Himself of Himself, and of the help 
 of none other," Himself created the world, in that He impressed 
 His conception of the world, as the elder Son of God, as a seal 
 on matter. Matter is to Trafriyrumv, soulless, and not self-moved 
 (De Opif . p. 2), without order, without attribute, full of hetero- 
 geneity, disharmony, and contradiction. But it may become 
 anything, being capable of transformation into its opposite best : 
 order, precision, animation, congeniality, symmetry, coherence, 
 and harmony (same pi. p. 5). It is moved, informed, besouled 
 by the Divine intelligence ; and thence comes the most perfect 
 work, this world, the Megalopolis. Although commonly he 
 represents matter as given to the Divine agency, 1 not created 
 thereby, he nevertheless bestows on the world the predicate of 
 being created (createdness, de Opif. 2) ; meaning by that, how- 
 ever, only that this infusion of the Logos into the world, or this 
 self-extension of God into the vXt), which takes place for the 
 latter in order to a communication of Himself to it, has always 
 its cause in God. The nature of the world (as well on the side 
 
 1 In the fragment preserved by Euseb., Prsep. VII. 21, and contained in 
 Mangey's Philo, T. II. p. 625, from the treatise vipl ■xpamla;, it is said that 
 God found (laToixuaaTo) adequate material for the formation of the ■world 
 neither more nor less than was required. Oomp. de Incorr. Mundi. cinirip 
 ix. Toil fty ovtos oiihiu yli/iTXi, oi/V el; to fiy ov (pfaipirui. 'Ex rav yelp oiiiocfcij 
 Suros up.irx/ty&v lort yii>i<r6xi ri 
 
INTRODUCTION. 27 
 
 of matter as on that of the Logos) has not come to be in time, 
 passes not away in it, is incorruptible. 1 The world is God's son, 
 vc6<s, eVyow?, for, in its relation to God, it is nothing else than 
 the ideal world placed in all its fulness in relation with the HXtj, 
 and appearing in it. The distinctive, discriminative principle, is 
 not the v\t), it is not by it that unity becomes multeity ; but 
 the k6<t/jlo<; votjtos is already in itself a membered, ordered 
 multeity of ideas, which separation Philo sets forth as the pre- 
 supposition of true harmony. 2 And this unity, which at the 
 same time is Fulness, is viewed in relation to matter, together 
 with it the world of actuality. So little does Philo bring it to an 
 actual separation between God, or even the Logos, and the world. 
 Of creation there can be no mention ; for the ideal world comes 
 to be the objective actual world, not by any new determination 
 in itself, but only by its becoming, in relation to the vXrj, what 
 in itself it is from eternity (de Opif. p. 2) ; there being in this for 
 the ideal world or the Logos nothing new, but only for the vKtj? 
 
 Let any one now take what has been said, according to 
 which the Logos is partly identical with the world, and therefore 
 not personal, partly identical with God, and only in Him per- 
 sonal — the personality, however, not being per se — and apply it 
 to Philo' s monotheism, which so decisively excludes any duality 
 of Divine persons (e. gr. de Somn. 1. 39), nay, denies even creative 
 power to any but God Himself ; and the hypothesis, that with 
 him the Logos is an hypostasis, will be utterly destroyed. Even 
 the later Church doctrine, that the hypostasis of the Son issued 
 from the inner Divine selfr'diremption, must be quite foreign to 
 him, since in his view the inner nature of God is and must be 
 simple, indivisible. Where God is little known in His free 
 self -sufficiency, He is as little contemplated ethically ; He there 
 remains, of necessity, only the substance or the Divine basis of the 
 world, in which latter alone, therefore, can any distinctions exist. 
 
 At the same time, it must be considered how these apparently 
 personal designations of the Logos are to be taken, and how, in 
 
 1 De Incorr. Mundi, p. 496. Comp. the above passages, -where «.irp*%la 
 and 'tpyi[A.ia are represented as for God equivalent to 6ki/xto;. See p. 22, 32. 
 
 2 Under this aspect the Logos is ro/ttv; tZv okav. Quis rer. div. hser. 
 p. 491. But this is also ascribed to God Himself, p. 491. Comp. de Mundi 
 Opif. § 6, T. I. p. 5. Ou8e yap h uowrii iro^i; tztpiv rt l<m» % 6 toS 
 dpxnUrovos TiOyiafto;, jj'5)j rw a.\a6trt%v irohw ryi uomrti xti£h» hxvoovftivov. 
 
 3 Appendix, Note L. 
 
28 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the general, Philo combines the Divine activity in respect of the 
 world with the abstract essence of God. 
 
 After what has been said, it is not difficult to estimate his 
 appellations of the Logos. If the Logos, as the koct/ao? j/ot/to? 
 in the sense alleged, is the principle of the actual world as one 
 subject to order, he may also be called the Eegent of the world, 
 and of the powers therein diffused. Inasmuch as these powers 
 are called, not in a hypostatic, but evidently in a personified 
 sense, \6yoi and IBeai, also ayyeXoi, he may also, as their unity, 
 be called ayyeXos irpeafivTaTos, apxcuyyeXos ttoXvcovv/aoi;. 1 In 
 order to indicate that God has His adequate representation 
 (el/ccbv) in the tc6<rfio<; vorjrbs, and that His Divine agency in 
 relation to the sensible is not of equal date with His agency in 
 conceiving the ideal world, in which God abides identical with 
 Himself, at home with Himself ; 2 Philo may call the Logos, in 
 his relation to the world of sense, the Legate or virap^o's of the 
 cosmical host. 3 God is 7roifif]v k. e., but He has set His first- 
 begotten Son over the world of His reason ; i.e., the Divine 
 agency in relation to the world has always, as its last principle, 
 the source in itself, that out of which the all-ruling and pene- 
 trating world-idea sprang. It is thus that we arrive at an 
 understanding of the name High-Priest, which is ascribed to 
 the Logos, or to God as the Logos. The Logos 4 stands on the 
 boundaries (of the actual and the ideal world) ; to him, the 
 archangel and oldest Logos, hath the Father, the Creator of all, 
 given the most distinguished gifts, that he, standing on the 
 boundaries, might keep the created separate from the Creator, 
 and the evil away from the good. Thus he, the warder of fini- 
 tude, is the limit against pantheism, in so far as by the category 
 of the Logos it is affirmed that the world never can be God as 
 He is in Himself ; though by this is not excluded the position, 
 that it is God viewed in relation to His vitality and agency. 
 Yet even this Philo will not fully admit, inasmuch as to the 
 world in its actuality matter belongs, which in itself is altogether 
 ungodly. He thus is saved from pantheism in the last resource, 
 
 1 De Confus. Ling. T. I. 426. 
 
 2 De Migrat. Abr. T. I. 437. The Logos— here the ideal world— is 
 Gorl's house. 
 
 8 De Agric. T. I. 308, § 12. 
 
 4 Quis rer. div. T. I. 501 ff., § 42. See Note H in App. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 29 
 
 not by his concept of God, for this is not held ethically, but 
 only by his view of matter, or his dualism. In reference to this, 
 he calls the world of the Logos also God's garment (de Profug, 
 § 20, T. I. p. 562). For this actual world, "the mortal, how- 
 ever, the same Logos is at once intercessor with the Immortal, 
 and ambassador of the Lord to the subject ;" consequently 
 mediator under both aspects. And he delights in his office. 
 " I stand," he thus introduces him, " mythologically speaking 
 (T. I. pp. 501, 502), between the Lord and you ; for I am neither 
 unbegotten as God is, nor begotten like you, but the middle 
 between the extremes, a surety to both : — to the Creator, that 
 He may be sure the entire race shall not be consumed and 
 perish, choosing disorder in place of order ; — to the creature, 
 that it may have good hope that the gracious God will never 
 neglect His own work. For I will be the herald of peace, who 
 brings to the creation from God, the eternal Guardian of peace, 
 the message of peace." 1 Similarly elsewhere the High-Priest 
 is the Divine Logos, blameless in birth and essence ; his Father 
 the voik, his mother the crofyia, Wisdom. The oldest Logos is 
 surrounded by the world as by a garment : by earth and water, 
 air and fire, and what proceedeth thence. He is, as the reason 
 of the Existing One (God), the bond which unites all parts as 
 the members, just as the soul of man the members of his body. 
 The Logos is called also the High-Priest once, as the faultless 
 unity of the world, which he represents as the icoo-fios votjtos, 
 the world-idea ; and in this idea is the individual reconciled and 
 represented to God. In so far, however, as it is not an inopera- 
 tive idea, but makes the actual world with its plastic matter into 
 an impression of itself, of the Divine seal, or into the garment 
 wherein He eternally lives and moves and represents His ideas, 
 it is real. And as this living, powerful unity, it gives bail at 
 once to the world for its perfection in God's eyes, and to God 
 Himself, the Existing One. For it is the world itself in respect 
 of that which constitutes it a /coafios, — not simply ideal, but real. 
 Nevertheless in this world-idea no reference to history is con- 
 tained. The Logos is not the world-idea to be realized from 
 the world, the free essence, ethically, from God by revelation in 
 the course of history ; but this world-idea is immediately actual, 
 
 1 De Profug. § 20, T. I. 562. See Appendix, Note M. 
 
30 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 i.e., physical. Here comes into view the point at which the 
 deep antagonism of the system of Philo with the Christian idea 
 clearly emerges ; for in what has been already advanced, there 
 is often, at least in expression, a deceptive resemblance to 
 Christian dogmas. But before we enter on Philo's relation to 
 the Messianic ideas of his people, we must cast a glance back 
 on what has just been advanced. 
 
 From what has been said, it clearly appears, that not only is 
 there nothing to necessitate our taking the Philonian Logos 
 hypostatically, but that all that is customarily advanced as 
 favouring that, when more narrowly looked at, is against it ; as 
 also, that such a hypostatic plurality in God would be utterly 
 opposed to the modes of thought of one under the influence of 
 an impulse so strongly pressing from plurality to unity of sub- 
 stance. To this tendency he has sacrificed the deep ethical 
 distinction which the old Hebraism made between God and the 
 world, and is saved from sinking into an indiscriminate unifica- 
 tion of God and the world only by the narrow ridge of the vkrj. 
 
 But it does not certainly follow that the entire Logos-doctrine, 
 with those depending from it, is so to be sunk in the absolute- 
 ness of the simple Divine essence, as that it should be immedi- 
 ately identical with the Divine essence. The Divine Logos is 
 as little God per se (to "Ov), as he is a hypostasis. But since, 
 as what goes before shows, the Logos is certainly again to be 
 ascribed to God, we are constrained to say that in the Philonian 
 doctrine of the Logos there is a path opened, though from far, 
 to the doctrine of a distinction in God Himself. God is dis- 
 tinguished as respects His self-existence and His vitality. (A 
 higher category Philo could not reach.) As self -existent, He is 
 to "Ov ; as an actual being, He is the Logos. To these two chief 
 elements there is added a third, inasmuch as He as Logos is, 1. 
 inseparable, and thus He is at once the world of the Divine 
 thoughts and the thinker of them; and, 2. the revealer of 
 these in master, which he makes the medium of actuality in the 
 ideal world. 1 We have thus the Divine life contemplated in three 
 stages, through which it advances or extends itself (T. I. p. 209) : 
 God in Himself, the Ideal world, and the Actual world. But to 
 distinguish these three remains only an attempt: the distinguished 
 
 1 Appendix, Note N. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 31 
 
 sink again, when narrowly viewed, tack together into them- 
 selves ; thus the actual world, so far as it is to be viewed as a 
 determination of the Divine life, is not in itself distinct from 
 the ideal world, hut only by means of something outward, its 
 relation to matter. The ideal world itself, however, — nay, the 
 Logos in the general, cannot be fixed as an objective distinction 
 of God from God ; for were the Keason to fall actually only on 
 the side of the Logos, God would hardly be to be called God ; 
 or were one to say, The Logos is God as thought, the 0eo? with 
 the ero^ua of the thinker, this could not, on the one hand, be 
 carried through strictly, since the Logos is also called the 
 thinker of the ideal world ; and, on the other hand, we should 
 thus have no making of God the object of thought, since what 
 is thought is rather only the world. In fact, he calls God and 
 the Logos alike the place of the universe, which embraces all 
 and is embraced by nothing, since He is Himself One and All : 
 he desires that the Spirit might in the height of thought tran- 
 scend the plurality of numbers, the Triad, and even the Duad 
 neighbour to the Monad, and might ascend to the unmixed, abso- 
 lutely simple and independent Idea (see App. G and K). All 
 apparent plurality in God's working, whether in reference to 
 the ideal or to the actual world, is attributable, therefore, to the 
 beholder. If he, on the one hand, in order to avoid representing 
 God as Himself appearing, describes the Old Testament the- 
 ophanies as irradiations of His powers (e. gr. de Abrah. § 22, T. 
 II. 17; de Nomin. Mut. T. I. 581; de Oonfus. Ling. I. 430, 
 431, § 33), he yet, on the other, regards these powers as not 
 separate from God, but each as infinitely in Him (de Monarch. 
 Lib. I. § 6, T. II. 218). As Moses could not see God, he at 
 least wished to behold His satellites, the Divine powers, which 
 in their unity are called the Sofja of God. But God answered 
 that they also are invisible and ideal, incomprehensible as God 
 in respect of their essence, but they radiate forth an impression 
 and image of their ivepyeia. For to that which is formless and 
 without attribute they give form, without in aught altering their 
 eternal essence. Thus the powers come to be placed by the side 
 of God Himself : " Hope not to comprehend either Me or My 
 powers as respects essence ; the attainable for thee I give thee 
 readily and willingly. Therefore I summon thee to the con- 
 templation of the world" (same place, p. 219). 
 
32 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The whole world framed by God exhales, morning and even- 
 ing, a thankoff ering. 1 It is vital and intelligent ; 2 Reason inborn 
 i n it is the law, the ordering of the universe. It is the son of 
 God, itself a 6etov, peyaXoiroXK; 777305 aXijOeutv. It is through 
 and through one and whole ; its power is invincible, for it 
 embraces all in itself ; it cannot be divided into parts, but is 
 indestructible (comp. de Mundi, T. II. p. 616 ff., § 14 ff.). It 
 cannot fall into confusion ; nor even so much as increase, and 
 have various stages and ages ; for then would it at first, like 
 children, be a child, aXoyos, which is without God. It cannot, 
 he maintains, be denied without sin that the world is always 
 perfect, soul and body 3 (a^evvrjTo^ km, atfi&apTos, T. II. pp. 496 
 and 505). He is especially vehement against the doctrine of a 
 consuming of the world by fire ; indeed, generally, of any 
 palingenesy of the world; 4 for the world seems to him to be 
 fair and perfect : he has imbibed Hellenic draughts, and misses 
 nothing in it. Having sunk back from the ethical to the physical 
 Stand-point, he has no sense, no need of history ; there is, in 
 truth, for him no discord in the world, and no proper need for 
 reconciliation. But as, when he has to speak of God, he lays 
 hold of only the world as the content of God (in place of 
 thinking Himself in His absoluteness, his God thinks only the 
 world) ; so with' the same mingling of concepts, when he speaks 
 of the world, he expresses himself so that he denies it to be 
 a world properly, and substitutes for it immediately Divine 
 predicates. 
 
 In the world man holds the first place ; nevertheless, strictly, 
 to him this is true only of the primal man, whom it is impossible 
 to discriminate from the Logos, 5 and who, consequently, can 
 hardly be reckoned as belonging to the actual world. In the 
 actual world, however, man, with all his imperfection through 
 the body, nevertheless represents the world in little (T. I. p. 494). 
 The world is the great man, man is the little world, and combines 
 in himself corporeally the four elements. 6 Above all has God 
 
 1 Quia Eer. Div. T. I. p. 501, § 41. 
 
 2 See on what follows, especially the treatises De Opif . Mundi, and De 
 Incorrupt. Mundi, T. I. 28-34, T. II. 495-507. 
 
 a De Mundi Incorr. T. II. 496, § 9 ff. * lb. p. 505. 
 
 8 De Opif. Mundi, pp. 32, 33, § 46, 47. 
 6 De Opif. Mundi, p. 35, § 51. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 33 
 
 given to him the lordly reason ; the same that is in God is also 
 in man. From this, indeed, it follows, that as the content of the 
 Divine reason is the world, it cannot be held to be otherwise with 
 that of man. Yet man forms the point of unity in the actual 
 world; and most of all, such an one as is one in thought and will 
 with the order and reason immanent in the world, which in the 
 human consciousness comes to be the vo/ios. 1 Such is the pious 
 (T. II. p. 407) and wise. Among nations, the Jewish represents 
 this blossom of manhood ; 2 within Israel itself, this place is due 
 to the prophets, the interpreters of God (T. II. p. 222, de 
 Monarch. L. I. § 9), and the wise men, for the wise is of equal 
 worth with the world (tcroTt/xo? ra> Koa-fia, T. I. p. 165, de sacrif. 
 Abel, § 3). This nobility of man is a reconciliation, a ransom 
 for the world. The Jews particularly, the people loved of God, 3 
 discharge in constant and regular manner the office of priest and 
 that of prophet (which both stand above that of king, II. 124, de 
 Vit. Moys. I. § 50) for the whole world. Hence the high-priest, 
 when he goes into the Holy Place, bears the symbols of the 
 whole world, for he represents the universe before God. 4 Other 
 priests intercede and offer only for friends and citizens ; the high- 
 priest of the Jews presents prayer and thanksgiving, not only 
 for the entire race of men, but also for the elements of nature, 
 earth, water, air, and fire, inasmuch as he regards the world, as 
 in truth it is, as his fatherland, in whose stead he is bound by 
 prayer and entreaty to make reconciliation with the Prince. 
 This substitution has thus also again a physical character : the 
 world is reconciled through Israel without knowing it, and with- 
 out personally in itself completing the reconciliation. Not less 
 is the essential equality of all men' yet unknown, hidden by a 
 hierarchia terrestris, which is a copy of the heavenly ; and this 
 gradation, again, stands connected with the physical character of 
 his system. Still more is this apparent, as well as the contra- 
 dictions thence arising, from this, that the high-priest, and by 
 consequence also the wise man, has not the world-reconciling 
 
 1 De Opif. Mundi, p. 34, § 60. 
 
 2 T. II. p. 15, de Abrah. § 19. They have assumed the priesthood and 
 prophethood for all nations. 
 
 3 lb 
 
 4 De Vit. Moys. L. III. § 14, T. II. 155. De Monarch. L. II. § 6, T. 
 II. 227. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
34 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 power in himself. But this same world, which he has to recon- 
 cile before God, is to him again the Son, the perfect Paraclete, 
 which he himself resembles as the little world, the aid of which 
 he needs to make his service of God of effect. For therefore 
 must he bear the symbols of the universe, in order that in its 
 entireness the individual (and thus the high-priest as well) 
 may compensate for his deficiency, and God through it may see 
 all to be good. 1 He has on his holy garments the emblem of 
 the universe, that he, by the constant contemplation of it, may 
 make his own life worthy the nature of the universe, as well as 
 that he may in his service have the whole world as his co-wor- 
 shippers. 2 Now, had Philo admitted a historical development 
 of revelation and of mankind, this might have been taken in the 
 sense that through the whole the individual would be reconciled ; 
 for to the whole world there belongs the sum of the future 
 development, which, had he held the idea of the Messiah, would 
 be through him rendered certain. But it is the world as it is 
 that reconciles man ; which, if man be also included in the 
 world, means as much as that he needs no reconciliation : he is 
 by his being at one with God, he is, as he is, good and well- 
 pleasing to Him ; or, if he must be reconciled by the objective 
 world, then again is the world the higher, and the apparent 
 nobility of man, his distinction, sinks away ; 3 as a difference and 
 mediation for which, a fictitious ground had been assumed. 
 
 It is now scarcely necessary to deduce the consequence, that 
 Philo did not participate in the warm desires and hopes which 
 filled the heart of the believing Jew. 4 The idea of the Messiah 
 has become in him a dead coal : nothing but the phlegma of it 
 remains with him, the hope of a miraculous restoration of the 
 scattered Jews from all parts of the earth to Palestine by a 
 superhuman Divine appearance (6'i/a?), which shall be recog- 
 nisable only by the just ; 5 and this strangely contrasts with the 
 
 1 De Vita Moys. L. III. § 14, T. II. p. 155. 
 
 "■ De Monarch. L. II. § 6, T. II. p. 227. 
 
 3 This lies also in the position : The whole heaven and the world cannot 
 comprehend God, how much less the <pi<ri; dvOpanov 1 T. II. de Monarch 
 L. I. 218. 
 
 * "We may even infer from T. II. p. 656, that these were not otherwise 
 than displeasing to him. 
 
 De Execrationibus, § 9, T. II. 433 ff., comp. De Praem. etc. § 16, 
 T. II. 423, de Vita Moysis, I. § 29, T. II. 107. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 35 
 
 ■world-citizenship which he ascribes to his people as a com- 
 mendation, and with his satisfaction with the whole world. 
 This last remnant of the Messianic idea is with him evidently a 
 hereditary possession ; as heterogeneous to his system, as in it 
 without significancy ; but it affords us, in its singularity in 
 Philo, an intimation of the energy of the Messianic hopes among 
 even the Alexandrian Jews of his time, for it is to his connec- 
 tion with them that this tribute is due. It remains, however, 
 to ask, why the Messianic idea, and especially the idea of the 
 incarnation, to which latter he so often approximates, 1 find no 
 place with him ? The answer is, that a reconciliation appears to 
 him unnecessary on account of his concept of sin and the Divine 
 righteousness ; whilst the incarnation would be for him an 
 absolute impossibility. 
 
 It is true that he ascribes freedom to men ; but he imme- 
 diately appends to that, that God excepts nothing from His 
 power ; and with this, viewed from Philo's stand-point, the 
 former hardly consists. For he takes no cognisance of the 
 category of holy love. Very instructive, however, is what he 
 says of the creation of man. 2 The higher nature of man, his 
 rational type, must have been engraven by the Divine Logos, 
 not by God, who is before the Logos, and better than all 
 Logical nature. 3 Hence God speaks of Himself, in Gen. i. 27, 
 as of another : " I have made man after the image of God." 
 But why does God speak of Himself, in the plural (Gen. i. 26, 
 iii. 22, xi. 7), "Let Us make man," etc.? This language 
 relates to His surrounding Powers, for it did not beseem Him 
 (as *Ov) to have immediate connection with the world. The 
 Powers (angels, ISecu) had to form the mortal part of our nature, 
 
 1 See, for instance, T. II. p. 462, Quod omnis probus liber, § 16 ; T. I. 
 pp. 280, 283, Quod Deua sit immut. § 10 ff. 
 
 2 The principal passages are, De Confus. Ling. T. I. pp. 430, 431 ; De 
 Profug. p. 556 ; De Opif. Mundi, pp. 17-19. In all these passages Philo 
 reiterates the same doctrine. This his constant doctrine, therefore, must 
 be kept in view in the interpretation of the above-cited fragments (T. IT. 
 p. 625), in -which he may appear to speak otherwise. 
 
 3 For the extensive infinite, which in truth does not surpass the phy- 
 sical, he shows here also such reverence, that everything Logical and 
 Spiritual is represented as inferior, since it is a definite thing in God ; on 
 the other hand, since it also is a definition of God, it is represented as 0«f, 
 
 though iivrtpo; Qfie. 
 
36 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 imitating the skill of Him who formed the princely part in us. 
 This princely part the Prince of all things framed ; the lower 
 part, lower Powers. But man must be able to choose between 
 good and bad, whilst other beings either can have no fault 
 and no virtue, like Nature, or have only virtues, like the stars ; 
 and thus must God transfer the yevecns /caiccbv to other beings, 
 whilst He retains with Himself the source of good. For the 
 mixture [of good and bad] is partly in keeping with God, in so 
 far as the ISea of the better is therein mingled, and partly not 
 in keeping, on account of the antithesis, since the Father cannot 
 be the cause of evil to His children. Accordingly, evil has its 
 origin in the creation in which the more subordinate Powers 
 participated. Elsewhere he reverts to matter as the source of 
 evil. 1 In this way it is difficult to arrive at any personal blame; 
 since even Philo speaks of evil as if it did not belong to the 
 concept of it to be posited of the will of man. But if there be 
 only such physical evil, there is really no evil. In fact, the 
 evil would, according to him, be easily retaken. He ascribes to 
 each soul immediately the divine power of virtue, 2 as he else- 
 where says : " Not to sin at all, belongs to God only, perhaps 
 also to a divine man." This fluctuating laxity culminates in 
 the concept of God, in the relation which, according to him, 
 the Divine rectitude has to goodness. " God is not unmerciful, 
 but gentle by nature. He who believes that, comes easily to 
 repentance, hoping that God will forgive." 3 But since Scrip- 
 ture speaks not of gentleness and goodness only, but also of 
 righteousness and wrath, he attempts to reconcile them by 
 comparing the lawgiver to a physician, who in what he says 
 regulates himself by a regard to his patient, not always strictly 
 by a regard to what truth would dictate. Hence, to terrify the 
 fierce, and to benefit thoroughly and universally, the lawgiver 
 must represent God as angry. 4 Of the earnest strifes in which the 
 noblest of the Old Testament folk engaged, to mediate between 
 the holy rectitude and the grace of God, he knows nothing. He 
 
 1 This position was still more fully worked out by the Gnostics. 
 
 2 T. II. p. 462, Quod omnis probus liber, § 16 ff. 
 
 3 T. I. p. 561, De Profugis, § 18 ; De Creatione prinoip. § 14, T. II. 
 p. 373 ; De Justitia ; De Execratione, § 8 ff . Sometimes the old Hebraic 
 feeling of rectitude breaks out, T. II. p. 419, De Praem. etc. § 12. 
 
 4 Quod Deus sit immutab. T. I. pp. 282, 283. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 37 
 
 obliterates that which gives the religious process its tension — the 
 holy righteousness, and treats it as a mere figure of speech ; 
 whereby the whole becomes relaxed, the hope, nay, the aspira- 
 tion after something better is destroyed, and the etbical con- 
 sciousness eudsemoniacally poisoned. For a Divine goodness 
 that is not righteous can but sink back into the physical ; and 
 as its highest end, can have only enjoyment, only well-being, 
 even though this well-being may in its highest degree be the 
 feast of knowledge. 1 This knowledge does not thus find its 
 highest object the spiritual, the divine, but remains a world- 
 wisdom, world-consciousness, intuition and knowledge of the 
 world, as of the holiest theatre. 2 And in this undervaluing of 
 the Divine righteousness, Philo is a predecessor of Gnosticism ; 
 by his doctrine of the Divine goodness, he has an appearance of 
 something Christian, something surpassing the Old Testament 
 and the stand-point of law, but in reality he sinks back below 
 this, and renders the Christian redemption superfluous. In the 
 places where he speaks of the return of his people, he could not 
 altogether lay aside the old Hebraic doctrine of the necessity of 
 a foregoing expiation ; but the Jews, according to him, will be 
 richly supplied with intercessors before the Father, for 3 they 
 will have three irapaicXriToi, tuv KaraXTuuyaiv : 1. The gentleness 
 and goodness of God Himself, who ever prefers the remission of 
 punishment. 2. The holiness of the progenitors of the race ; for 
 the souls set free from the body, which offer pure and unsullied 
 service to their Lord, present not ineffectual intercessions for their 
 sons and descendants ; as a mark of distinction, the hearing of 
 their prayers is certified to them by the Father. 3. The third 
 Paraclete is the amendment of those who shall be brought under 
 the covenant. — We have seen above, that according to him the 
 world is always reconciled to God, always reconciles itself, since 
 it always stands before God as blameless unity in the Logos, 
 which from the beginning is immanent in it. Hence to him any 
 further progress of revelation must have appeared superfluous, 
 disturbing to the peace, the unity, and the entireness of the world, 
 
 1 De Opif. Mundi, p. 18. Appendix, Note 0. 
 
 2 De Opif. Mundi, p 18, and T. II. p. 229, De Monarch. L. I. § 6, where 
 God says to Moses, " And so I call thee, since thou canst not know Me, to 
 the contemplation of the world." 
 
 8 De Execrat. § 9, T. II. p. 435. 
 
38 INTRODUCTION 
 
 looking at it as he did, not ethically, but Hellenically. The 
 law which Moses gave is one with the law of the world. The 
 world is rational ; the law, which is immanent in it, Moses 
 expressed to the consciousness ; therefore is it eternal and not 
 far from us. 1 It is complete and whole, and leaves nothing to 
 wish beyond. 2 
 
 According to his doctrine of the Divine image in man (which 
 he, indeed, without carrying this through, yet intimates to have 
 been of a progressive character 3 ), his participation in the Divine 
 Dogos already by nature (see above), one would expect that 
 Philo would set forth the closest relation between the Divine 
 and human nature, and that the idea of the incarnation could 
 npt be strange to him. He speaks 4 of heroes, in whom mortal 
 and immortal elements were mixed, in whom the mortal was 
 overruled by the immortal part, and intimates it as possible that 
 other such may appear. But with all this, the Divine remains 
 foreign to the human according to its nature. Where the Divine 
 light shines forth, there the human fades (Quis rer. div. hseres, 
 § 53, T. I. p. 511), and where the former sinks, the latter blazes 
 up. 06/m? jap ovk ecrn Ovryrov aBavara awoti/crjcrai. Hence 
 to the idea of Prophecy, ecstasy belongs. The reason of this lies 
 not so much in this, that Philo distinguishes a hidden God from 
 the actual; for he brings in God as saying to Moses, 8 " To Me 
 it would be easy to give what thou askest, but not for thee to 
 receive." It is rather, on the one hand, in his idea of God 
 ever falling back to simple physical endlessness, and on the 
 other, in the v\r] mingled with all mortals, that we are to seek 
 the reason why " God according to the greatness of His grace 
 is not communicable, but is to be received according to the 
 capacity of the creature. His power is insuperable; all the 
 powers of God are without limit, endless ; that which has come 
 into being is too weak to receive His greatness: 6 and so God 
 gave to our nature not all, but only so much as our mortal com- 
 plexion could apprehend." 7 If man would reach a higher being, 
 he must leave the body. We have seen that he knew to dis- 
 
 1 T. I. p. 34. s De Justitia, T. II. p. 360. See Appendix, Note P. 
 
 3 See e. gr. De Confus. Ling. I. 426. 
 
 4 Quod omn. prob. lib. T. II. p. 462, § 14 ; De Migr. Abrah. § 31, 
 T. I. p. 463. 
 
 4 De Monarch, p. 216 ff. " De Opif. § 6. 7 De Opif. p. 35, § 51. 
 
INTEODUCTION. 39 
 
 tinguish God and the world, so that the former is the Agent, 
 the Unchangeable, — the latter, the Mutable, the Passive. This 
 distinction would have seemed to him confounded were God to 
 become man. For he knew neither to treat suffering as an act, 
 nor the body as other than limit and bound; whereas Christianity 
 treats it as not merely the organ of the spirit, but also as a 
 representation of it, or as the essential momentum of its self- 
 realization. His Christ, if he needed any, could only be the 
 A6<yo<; ai'Sio? (comp. the fragment in Eusebius, Prsep. Evang. 
 vii. 13) ; consequently a Doketic Christ; but never once does he 
 indicate a longing for a new Theophany. So little, also, has he 
 of even a metaphysical union of the cosmical opposites, God and 
 the World, that Man, who at the highest is viewed as the point 
 of unity in which the extremes meet, inasmuch as the Divine 
 Logos and the vXtj are united in him, nevertheless under two 
 aspects does not truly represent this unity. For God remains 
 foreign to the actual humanity ; Philo's concept of God is 
 widely removed from the acknowledgment of the man-being or 
 the man-becoming as a determination placed in God Himself ; 
 whilst man himself remains so foreign to the other extreme, the 
 vXrj, that it is without it he has his true development, as Philo 
 conceives the original man and the perfected man ; so that both 
 termini, God and vKt/, lie without man, absolutely limit his free- 
 dom and his knowledge, and an absolute mystery as well as in 
 superable might of gravity stand over against him. They stand, 
 however, also unreconciled over against each other; and as 
 their dualism, mirroring itself in the consciousness of men, must 
 impose the deepest unholiness, he sets also over against God, 
 who cannot become perfect Master of matter though He would, 
 a dark Fate, robs the concept of God of its monotheistic abso- 
 luteness, and impresses on it one of a pagan character. , 
 
 Philo, imbued with the Hellenic idea of beauty and wisdom, 
 knew how to clothe over these contradictions, and to give to the 
 scientific, ethical, and religious cheerlessness of his position the 
 colouring of brightness and beauty. But very far from that 
 nature-growth of beauty of the Greeks was the artificial har- 
 mony which he composed. This appears to him at the same 
 time as something higher, namely, that union of the heathen 
 and the Jewish which as a historical problem was imminent ; 
 and it must be acknowledged, that in his system the human 
 
40 iNTRODUCTIOtf. 
 
 mind lias made the attempt to complete the union of the pre- 
 Christian religions. To Christianity, hardly then in its dawn, 
 he presents himself in this respect as a rival. But blinding 
 as is the resemblance, on a superficial view, of many of his 
 ideas and modes of expression with Christianity, the principle 
 of both is fundamentally different, and even the seemingly 
 similar, when taken in its connection with the whole, has a quite 
 different meaning. With Christianity he would let the world 
 celebrate an eternal reconciliation through the Logos ; but 
 what the fact of the Divine condescension was intended for 
 the first time to establish, and what the ancient saints, in fulfil- 
 ment of their pious longing, were authorized to expect as a 
 Divine fact, that he imagined as already done, nay, eternally 
 happening, and thus set aside Christianity. So that his system 
 came, like an apparitional contrast, to the cradle of Chris- 
 tianity; or appeared like an impalpable dissolving "Fata mor- 
 gana on the horizon on which Christianity had to arise. 
 
 At the same time, it is not to be denied that this system has 
 contributed somewhat to Christianity in the course of its deve- 
 lopment ; but this is the service which all opponents of Chris- 
 tianity, even its antipodes, render : merely that he should have 
 something in accordance with Christianity, was demanded of 
 him by his system as historically unfolded, and, still more, that 
 Christianity should with it. Philo's mind, and without doubt 
 that of many of his contemporaries, laboured philosophically at 
 the same problem as that which the person of Christ in fact, 
 and from Him the Church historically, has solved and is solv- 
 ing. And since also the Christian fact, as it is the historically 
 realized idea of religion, and seeks to be so recognised, has to 
 reproduce the ideal according to all its moments the same, the 
 tendency thereto was the earlier called forth from the circum- 
 stance that Christianity entered a world impregnated with ques- 
 tions and ideas which were allied to it. As thought began to 
 place the Christian idea in relation with the sphere of reason, it 
 came in most intimate contact with those pre-Christian essays 
 and ideas, and allowed itself at first, as we shall see, not seldom 
 to be drawn out of its own proper track; but the Christian 
 principle, for which these questions were essentially modified by 
 the entering in of the fact of Christianity, not only again col- 
 lected itself, but had allowed itself to enter into that alliance 
 
INTRODUCTION. 41 
 
 with philosophy in order to take in its own time the reins in its 
 own hand, and to initiate a new era in philosophy. Of this 
 influence of the Philonian collective tendency on the Chris- 
 tian world, the Alexandrian Gnosticism is the most remark- 
 able monument, though by no means the only one, as, for 
 instance, Justin Martyr and the Alexandrian Church-fathers 
 show. 1 
 
 From what has been advanced, it appears that the deriva- 
 tion of the idea of the incarnation of God from Hebraism or 
 Judaism* is untenable. It is not from the former ; for it is 
 utterly foreign to that development of the idea of God which 
 we find in the Old Testament, that the only God, Jehovah, 
 should have condescended to the finite so as to become man in 
 time, to mingle in the commonness of every-day life, and expose 
 Himself to the vicissitudes of human existence. There may be, 
 in the judgment of some, more probability of the Christian idea 
 being connected with Judaism. But the two principal parties 
 whom we best know, the Alexandrian and the Palestinian 
 Jews, were demonstrably ignorant of the idea of an incarnation 
 of God. We must consequently betake ourselves to that varied 
 mixture of heathen and Jewish modes of religious representa- 
 tion which is to be found in secret doctrines, or in the dim 
 fancies of small individual sects about the time of Christ. But 
 these contain partially marvellous and fantastic things, such as 
 the doctrine of the Adam Kadmon, or First Man. The one 
 side of this mystical doctrine is that according to which is in- 
 tended by him the male-female first being from which, by means 
 of a separation of the sexes, an emanation begins ; representa- 
 tions which have evidently come over into it from the nature- 
 religions, and would be abhorrent from the whole character of 
 Christianity. The other version of this doctrine is, that by the 
 Adam Kadmon is to be understood a high created being, made 
 in the image of God, whether we call it JEon or Archangel. 
 
 1 See Appendix, Note Q. 
 
 * [The German divines distinguish. Hebraism from Judaism, applying the 
 former term to designate the religious system developed in the Old Testa- 
 ment, and the latter to designate the system of traditionary belief which 
 arose after the closing of the 0. T. canon. The distinction of nomenclature 
 is founded on a passage in Josephus, Antiq. XI. 5, 7. See De Wette 
 Lehrbuch der Christ. Dogmatik, vol. I. p. 53, third edit.— Tr.] 
 
42 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 This Adam Kadmon passes through a whole series of incorpo- 
 rations : he has appeared as Adam, as Enoch, as Noah, etc. , 
 and last of all he appears in the Messiah. It need hardly be 
 pointed out that the Christian idea of the God-man receives no 
 illustration from this : in the incarnate Archangel there is no 
 manifestation of God in manhood ; only an Arian Christ could 
 be illustrated from this, which is no Christ, since he leaves God 
 in the background. Nor does the pantheistic Emanationism 
 improve the matter, it rather makes it worse ; for by the multi- 
 plicity of incarnations, each individual incarnation is degraded. 
 How much, however, with all these mystics the proper Divine 
 essence is the far-off, self-enclosed original essence, to which it 
 is consequently a contradiction to become man, not simply do- 
 ketically, but in reality, is shown directly by that gradation of 
 being, or incorporations of the same high Being, which at least, 
 as apparently mediating between the true Divine essence and 
 man, are placed between them. A third phase of this doctrine 
 is, that from the original Being Adam Kadmon sprang as a her- 
 maphrodite, which forthwith split into two sexes, the Son and the 
 Holy Ghost. Against this notion unite the reasons which have 
 been adduced against the two former, between which it unde- 
 cidedly wavers. But enough of these perplexed and fantastic 
 ideas. They are instructive to us in so far as they, whether origi- 
 nated in the time of Christ or later, show how the mind ever 
 felt itself pressed towards the same problem, to see an essential 
 inner unity established between God and man. But the un- 
 biassed feeling must judge whether the Christian doctrine of 
 the God-man stands related to this as its copy, or this is not 
 rather a paganized caricature of the archetype which appears 
 historically in Christianity. 
 
 Of the Theologoumena of this time, there further come 
 under this head the Memra (Word=\o<yos) and Shechinah, as 
 also the Metatron. Of all these, however, it is to be said, 
 that either they never grew into the assertion of an hypostasis, 
 but affirmed only the parastatic appearance of God, or the 
 mere symbol of His presence, and hence the Targums identify, 
 e. gr., the Memra with Euach ; or, conversely, though they are 
 made to represent a personality (especially to the Metatron), a 
 higher heavenly being, he is still a creature, so that the truly 
 Divine lies ever beyond it. To the idea of an incarnation of the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 43 
 
 properly Divine these Theologoumena never as a whole con- 
 ducted. 1 
 
 Up to this point we have considered how far the Old 
 Testament and the Jewish modes of treating the relation of 
 God to the world, and consequently the path from above to 
 below, are opposite to the New Testament. It remains to take 
 the converse view, the anthropologic, for the purpose of seeing 
 how the concept of man conforms to that of the God-man. The 
 Hebrew popular genius framed for itself in the divinely-inspired 
 prophets an ideal of man, and sought in this the balance and 
 reconciliation between God and man. The ideal is the servant 
 of God, that is, the subject in which the Old Testament right- 
 eousness, the Tsedaka, is so represented, that he is the perfect 
 servant of God, that is, does God's service perfectly, in obedience 
 and piety. Now, even if we adopt Nitzsch's fine remark, and 
 say that the Old Testament not only recognises a SouAo?, but 
 also sees realized a nearer relation to God, e. gr. in Moses, — 
 who appears hence to be called afterwards Oepdirwv, nay, rises to 
 the idea of an oIkovo/jlos, who, as a steward over the house of the 
 Lord, is trusted by Him as a confidential servant, — still there is 
 a long way from this to the New Testament Son of God. It is 
 true that this phrase occurs not seldom in the O. T., having re- 
 ference in the theocratic sense to a moral or particular per- 
 sonality ; as e. gr. Jer. xxxi. 20, " Is not Ephraim My dear son, 
 My beloved child V ' Hosea xi. 1, " When Israel was young, 
 then I loved him, and called him, My son, out of Egypt ;" 
 comp. Jer. xlix. 15, and so also Ps. ii. 7 of our subject. But 
 the metaphysical, the essential unity of this riin ,, _ — J3. -with God is 
 not sufficiently to be proved even from the last passage. On 
 the other hand, the nin^aj? is certainly concentrated ever more 
 and more into a high personality, in which the scattered fea- 
 tures of all the servants of God in Israel become collected. He 
 is not merely a moral person, identical with Israel as opposed to 
 the heathen, or with the prophetic body as opposed to the Spirit- 
 forsaken Israel, but the servant of God. Still more the three- 
 fold theocratic office, the royal, the priestly, and the prophetic, 
 never united in any ordinary man, is represented as combined in 
 David's Son, and herein is completed the image of the Messiah. 
 
 1 Sue Appendix, Note K. 
 
44 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Still, even in this there is no going beyond the theocratic 
 ideal of the servant of God. It lies, indeed, in the nature of 
 the case, that the human ideal sometimes in its predicates passes 
 into a higher sphere. If the inspiration which is ascribed to the 
 prophets is ascribed to them in the fullest measure, it can no 
 longer be represented as an operation from without, but passes 
 into an essential being and dwelling of God in the prophet ; the 
 prerogatives of kingly might, conceived in their fulness, pass 
 over into the Divine predicates of eternal and all-embracing 
 rule ; and, in fine, the idea of the perfect high-priest leads to a 
 not merely symbolical, but to a practically powerful and actual 
 substitution, and this again oversteps the limits of man as an 
 individual related to others simply as brother. 1 — When, in fine, 
 it is said, Dan. vii. 13, "I saw One like unto a son of man 
 coming with the clouds of heaven to the Ancient of days ; who 
 gave Him power, glory, and kingdom," etc., there is undoubtedly 
 showed in the vision the glorification of the human to the higher 
 majesty; for had only the form been human, Daniel would 
 certainly have said " an angel." But not mankind in general, 
 but only Israel, seems, according to verse 27, to be understood 
 by the son of man, so that as before with " the servant of God," 
 we have here a moral personality brought to become an actual 
 anthropological one.* And so, on the anthropological side also, 
 we arrive at the result, that from the Old Testament stand-point 
 it was impossible to announce that a man was God, or God's 
 son, not simply in a figurative, but in an actual, metaphysical 
 sense. 
 
 Now, had there been no passing beyond the Old Testament 
 ideas, the concept of the revelation of God, viewed from above 
 downwards, would have remained incomplete, the ao§La would 
 have found no sure and abiding place ; looked at from below 
 
 1 Comp. Is. ix. 6, 7, xlii. 1, liii., with Ps. xlix. 8, 9. 
 
 * [This inference by no means follows ; for the fact that the people of 
 the Messiah are represented as in and through Him sharing in His power 
 and glory, no more proves that the phrase, " son of man," is a collective 
 designation of them, and not a personal designation of Him, than the same 
 fact occurring in the N. T. would prove that the terms applied to designate 
 our Lord are not personal but collective. In ver. 27, " the people of the 
 saints of the Most High " are distinguished from the latter ; and the language 
 used of them is such as to lead to the impression that this term is employed 
 to designate the same being who in ver. 14 is called " A son of man." — Tr.] 
 
INTRODUCTION. 45 
 
 upwards, the Old Testament ideal itself would not have been 
 completed. The self-revealing God, or Logos, and the concept 
 of man, stand so related to each other, that the one reaches its 
 perfect actuality and truth only through the other ; i.e., only as 
 the condescending grace of God is a humanification of the 
 Logos, is the latter the absolute revealer of God ; and only as 
 He is a man who is at the same time the Logos, is the entire 
 idea of manhood realized. In this lies the reason why the entire 
 Old Testament mode of thought arrives first at its truth in the 
 idea of the God-man, so that this religion, as well as the pagan, 
 struggles after this idea. Thus there lies not less in the above 
 the proof that this idea came as little within the bounds of 
 Hebraism and Judaism, as those of heathenism. 
 
 And so, in the retrospect of all religious history before 
 Christ, we find this as a Prseparatio Evangelica in the fullest 
 sense, and as serving for a proof that Christianity gives expres- 
 sion to that which all religions seek, that it embraces within 
 itself whatever is true in Heathenism and Judaism; but not less 
 for a proof also that the idea of the God-man, which so 
 peculiarly characterizes Christianity, has not emerged from 
 without Christianity, but wholly from within it. To Christianity 
 this idea is original and essential. The beginning was the fact, 
 and the fact gave the knowledge. 
 
 Whilst, however, all genuine historical investigation presses 
 to the result that the Founder of our religion was Himself, 
 through His own self-consciousness, and the utterance of that 
 to others, the cause at once of the introduction into the minds 
 of men of the Christian idea of the God-man and of the attri- 
 bution of that to Him ; it would be rash to conclude, that from 
 the first it was a constitutive element of the Christian doctrine 
 expressly and consciously to ascribe to Christ all that without 
 which the idea of God-manhood, in its truth and in its whole 
 extent, cannot be thought. Such an opinion would be wholly 
 at variance with the picture which we must form especially of 
 the first centuries, when a very respectable party of Christians 
 did not by any means ascribe to Christ all that is involved 
 in the concept of perfect Godhead — nay, when the Church 
 itself affirmed neither of this, nor of the humanity of Christ, 
 all that belongs to the concept of each respectively. Such 
 
46 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 an opinion would also indicate a want of perception of how it is 
 that the mind arrives gradually at consciousness in religious 
 things. 
 
 The Church, indeed, from the first received the Christian 
 truth in its totality, but not in a fully developed form. Hence she 
 could not immediately diffuse, in sharp, definite, dialectic shape, 
 the contents of the faith which she bore, shut up within her, com- 
 plete in all its parts ; but she abode by declarations such as the 
 immediate necessity required, and which were to a certain extent 
 unsatisfactory to a later age, and in want of completion. She was 
 not thereby, however, deprived of a certain tact which guided 
 her securely to the detection and excision of what was hostile to 
 the faith. As in reference to morality the conscience, though 
 unable in every moment to determine quickly and securely how 
 the moral problem is to be solved, yet knows by a safe tact to 
 discriminate what is evil; so there is a faith-conscience; and 
 this is the less deceptive the more the Church remains in the 
 concentrated sincerity of her primitive state, and the more 
 immediately the questions mooted approach the central point of 
 Christianity. Hence that clearness and firmness which we find 
 in the Church decisions of the first centuries; hence the spiritual 
 authority which, after so many centuries, is willingly conceded to 
 these decisions. In this state of affairs, it need not seem strange 
 to us that the Church, when called upon by the assertion of 
 unchristian positions, either to repudiate these, or to assert the 
 Christian truth in opposition to them, should have had no con- 
 viction that she had in the strict sense aught new to assert; but 
 rather, that she had to maintain and freely utter that which she 
 had always borne within her. 1 By more recent investigations, 
 indeed, the progressive working of the Christian mind from 
 element to element has been brought to be recognised, and con- 
 sequently it has been shown how the definite and conscious 
 adduction of each individual element is certainly new; but, on 
 the other hand, we should grievously err were we, overlooking 
 
 1 When the ancient Church, after the fitting enunciation of a theological 
 truth, uttered as it were from her very soul, was found by some of her 
 teachers, expressed this by saying, This teacher has not said this as its 
 author, but t»j!/ Tijf iniiKnaia,; i*v<rruw)» ipftivtvaai ■uupcciouiv, the essential 
 fact was thereby expressed. The Church teachers are not authors of dogmas; 
 but interpreters, or the mouth of the Church. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 4f 
 
 that original implantation of the truth in its totality (though 
 as yet in immediate or relatively unconscious form), to incline to 
 the opinion, that nevertheless the individual articles of the faith 
 only gradually came into being, and so have only a Church 
 validity. He who would adopt this latter view, and would 
 thence deduce the accidental character of the particular dogmas, 
 their purely human origin, or, it may be, their untruthfulness, 
 would betray an ignorance of the organizing plastic power of a 
 new principle such as Christianity is, and a deficiency in pro- 
 founder historical insight, akin to that of those who conversely 
 believe that Christianity itself is to be conceived through 
 pre-Christian parallels. 
 
 We shall set forth this more minutely, with direct reference 
 to our dogma. 
 
 The reason of the general impulse to think the elevation of 
 Christ in a peculiar way, which is evident enough even in the 
 Judseo-Christian tendency, and which cannot rest until it finds 
 satisfaction in the assertion of a ofioovcria of the Son with the 
 Father, is based in the essence of Christianity itself. The fact 
 that men strictly trained in Judaism, like Paul, give, in their 
 writings, to Christ such high Divine predicates, which stand in 
 direct contradiction with strict Jewish monotheism, remains 
 inexplicable, unless we presume a total and overmastering change 
 of their religious views, by which these were transposed into an 
 entirely new element of thought and life. There wants not, 
 indeed, from the beginning, an objective doctrine on the nature 
 of Christ. His declarations concerning Himself would be 
 transmitted ; for the two statements stand connected, " I believe, 
 therefore have I spoken," and " Faith itself cometh by preach- 
 ing." But this dtfctrine came to be truly and spiritually appro- 
 priated first in the following way: — They had experienced 
 Christianity as a Divine history of their inner being ; believing 
 in Christ they had obtained access to God, in the Son they had 
 found the Father. In this innermost, most certain fact of their 
 consciousness, there lay for them the impulse and the necessity 
 to place the person of Christ, the founder of this their new 
 fife, in the closest, most vital relation to the Father. 1 In this 
 all Christians were at one; but the first preachers of Christianity, 
 
 1 See Appendix, Note S. 
 
48 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 no less than Christians of the following times, differed from 
 each other as to the measure of knowledge they possessed of the 
 relation between God and Christ. Besides the divers measure 
 of individual impulse and natural inclination to Christian gnosis, 
 there must with the Apostles have been an especial effect pro- 
 duced by outward circumstances and relations, through which 
 the Christian spirit of some would receive a more universal 
 culture (as with Paul and John), but through which it would 
 become more difficult for others quickly, and when set loose from 
 the fetters of traditional modes of thought, to advance in free 
 Christian knowledge. Hence, as we shall presently see, the 
 former already unfold more specially the relation of Christ to 
 God, but the latter not. 
 
 The History of Dogmas, as such, has to do, not with the 
 utterances out of which faith springs, i.e., not with the objective 
 doctrinal declarations of Christ and His Apostles, but with the 
 faith that is exhibited to the knowledge of men, or developed into 
 Church doctrine. It belongs to other departments of inquiry 
 to set forth the doctrine of Christ concerning Himself, and the 
 testimony of the Apostles, since the import of the canon cannot 
 become the first link in the chain of Dogmatic History. History 
 of Dogmas has to show how the objective testimony concerning 
 Christ, given for all times, is, in the entire fulness of all its 
 elements, more and more disclosed to the consciousness of the 
 Church in virtue of her work, conducted by the Holy Ghost. 
 No generation of the Church, least of all the first, has the entire 
 riches of the apostolic preaching vitally in it; the word of Christ 
 and His Apostles rather stretches beyond and over each, as the 
 all-sufficient norm, even to the end of time. But in spite of this 
 its dogmatic position, the testimony of Christ and the Apostles 
 finds its place also in the History of Dogmas ; it forms the 
 impulse which must be presupposed in the dogmatico-historical 
 process of the Church. To view it merely as a part of this 
 process itself, would be to treat it erroneously as respects its 
 characteristics; but starting from it as the impulse without which 
 the spiritual movement, which Dogmatic History has to describe, 
 would be incomprehensible, we gain at least this much, that the 
 sufficient cause of this movement is brought to light. For this 
 however, the highest types of doctrine in the canon are not 
 required; the lower will suffice. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 49 
 
 When Dogmatic History occupies itself with the Christian 
 truth, inquiring how it has become a subjective possession in 
 the Church, and has more and more developed itself under the 
 guidance and direction of the written accredited testimony of the 
 Apostles, the differences which appear in the canon on even 
 Christological points, have, as respects its beginning, but little 
 significancy. For Dogmatic History cannot in that case expect 
 or show at the beginning, in the collective conviction of Chris- 
 tians, a mirror of the highest which the canon contains on the 
 Christology; on the contrary, it is only natural and in full 
 order that that canonical form of doctrine should soonest find 
 vogue which approaches nearest to the pre-Christian modes of 
 thought. Only the specifically Christian element therein must 
 ever be preserved unadulterated ;* a condition which we must 
 extend, in part, to everything that is the object of Dogmatic 
 History. For phenomena in which the specifically Christian 
 element is no longer retained, or never has existed, no one has 
 any right to draw into a history of Christian dogmas. Where the 
 Christian fundamental presumption is wanting, i.e., where there 
 is not an acknowledgment that in Christianity something Divine 
 has become historical, and that something Divine of a decisive 
 significancy, and furnishing the complement of religion ; then it 
 is no longer Christianity of which men speak, but something 
 pre-Christian which has some appearance of Christianity. But 
 neither a reflection of the whole, nor of some one Christian 
 element, is a Christian element itself. For one Christian ele- 
 ment is not where the other elements, though it may be in 
 fettered state, oppressed, nay, menaced by the overweight of the 
 one, are not to be found. This is the peculiarity of the Chris- 
 tian truth, that it either exists wholly — though, it may be, in a 
 very incomplete form — or not at all ; and this is involved in 
 the relation of Christian thought to belief, the latter being the 
 prior, and not that which receives its first establishment through 
 thought. 2 
 
 If now we pass over to the introductory consideration of the 
 impulse which the concept of a history of dogmas presumes, 
 there are two things against which we must be on our guard. 
 First, we must beware of treating it so narrowly as to presup- 
 
 1 See Appendix, Note T. s See Appendix, Note U. 
 
 VOL I. D 
 
50 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 pose in the appearance of Christ, and the testimony of His 
 Apostles concerning it, nothing essentially new. If we do this, 
 we shall, to speak briefly, deprive Dogmatic History of its proper 
 and peculiar principle. Secondly, however, we must guard 
 against setting forth this impulse, as it operated in the Church, 
 as so dogmatically formed from the beginning, that we shall 
 accredit the Church with the immediate possession of what was 
 the collective property of the Apostles. But it is according to 
 nature that the development within the Church, just that it may- 
 be really its own, that it may proceed systematically and not in 
 a desultory manner, begins with what is still for the majority 
 indefinite ; which, as such, is, dogmatically (not practically) con- 
 sidered, at the same time, as yet, the most imperfect form of thp 
 Christian truth. Hence the right course will be here to considei 
 somewhat more closely only that form of apostolic doctrine 
 which undoubtedly stands nearest to the Christological stand- 
 point of the primitive Church, and represents the sure as well 
 as sufficient impulse for its dogma-framing activity. We would 
 not thereby exclude the fact, that at a later period the Pauline 
 and Johannine form of doctrine obtained a decisive guid- 
 ing and directing influence. But as Paul and John do not 
 essentially differ from the others, — rather only as the advanced 
 development differs from the germ ; so does the synoptic age 
 of Christology not essentially differ from that later age in 
 which the influence of Paul and John predominates : the later 
 Church did not receive something new as from without, 
 but only a higher form of the doctrine held by the primitive 
 Church. 
 
 Now, within the New Testament canon, which presents to us 
 the apostolic form of doctrine, there is no writing to be found 
 in which the Christian fundamental presupposition — and that in 
 its double form, the Christological and the anthropological — is 
 not expressed. For our present object, there are at least three 
 principal types of doctrine to be discriminated : 1. That which 
 approaches nearest to the Old Testament, and to which James, 
 the Synoptists, Jude, and Peter conform ; 2. the Pauline, which 
 presents what is specially Christian in its distinction from the 
 O. T., and construes it rather in the anthropological than in 
 the Christological form ; and, 3. the Johannine, in which the 
 objective Christological form predominates, and which, conse- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 51 
 
 quently, though not destitute of an Old Testament background, 
 is yet especially adapted to suit the Hellenic mind, and to show to 
 such, in Christianity, as well the truth contained in the heathen 
 theory of the world, as its difference therefrom (1 John v. 20, 
 21). But the two latter may be dismissed here with the single 
 remark, that there can be no doubt about them ; in the First 
 Epistle of John, the genuineness of which is unquestioned, not 
 less than in his Gospel, in the earlier epistles of Paul not less than 
 in those to the Colossians, the Philippians, the Ephesians, and 
 the Pastoral Epistles, there is ascribed to the Son not merely a 
 moral but an essential divinity, a not merely economical but an 
 ontological or metaphysical relation to the Father ; so that He, 
 with the Father and the Holy Ghost, a Holy Triad, renders the 
 work completed by this Person the absolute end of the creation 
 of the world, accomplishes the completion of religion through 
 the reconciliation with God in Christ. 1 Not less with Paul and 
 John is the true manhood of Christ, and its perfect historical 
 reality, indubitably taught and presupposed. 2 
 
 1 See from Paul such passages as 2 Cor. v. 17-21 ; Gal., ii. 20 ; Eom. 
 viii. 11, SI «., vi. 1-10 ; 2 Cor. i. 19-21 ; 1 Cor. xvi. 22 ; Gal. iii. 17, 22, 
 
 26, 27, iv. 6, 26 ; 2 Cor. v. 10, xiii. 13 ; Col. i. 13-21 and Phil. ii. 6-10 
 comp. 1 Cor x. 4, 9, xv. 22-28, 45, 47 ; and 1 Tim. iii. 16, which passage, 
 even with the reading £'?, asserts the pre-existence of Christ according to 
 His Godhead. Comp. also 1 Tim. i. 15. From John comp. 1 Ep. i. 1-3 ; 
 Gosp. i. 1-4, 14, 17, 18 ; 1 Ep. iv. 2, 15, ii. 23, v. 5-7, 9, 12, 20 (God in 
 Christ is the true God), i. 7, ii. 2, iv. 10, iii. 5, 16, 20, 21, comp. Gosp. i. 
 29, iii. 14-16, xi. 51, 52, x. 15, 17, vi. 51. Christ's eschatological position, 
 1 Ep. iii. 2, ii. 28 ; Gosp. v. 26-29. His oneness with God not merely in 
 a moral sense, Gosp. v. 17, xiv. 9^ 10, 30, xvii. 5 comp. 1 Ep. ii. 23, 24, 
 iv. 9, 10, 15, 16. The Divine Triad, e. gr., 1 Ep. iii. 23, 24, ii. 24 comp. 
 
 27, iv. 13, 14, v. 10 comp. 6 ; Gosp. xiv. 16, 17 comp. 23, 26, i. 33, xv. 26, 
 xvi. 7-9, 13. From the Apocalypse comp. xix. 11-16, v. 6-8, 12, 13, i. 5, 
 17, 18 comp. 8, iii. 14, 21, vi. 16, 17, vii. 15-17, xi. 15, 8, xii. 11, xiii. 8, 
 xvii. 14, xix. 7, 8, xx. 6, xxii. 13. 
 
 2 John i. 14 comp. xvii. 2, i. 32, 52, ii. 18, iv. 6, v. 27, vi. 27, 53, vii. 
 39, viii. 16, 28 f., 40, x. 11, 15 comp. xv. 13, x. 33, xi. 15, 35, 38, 41, 50 
 (comp. ix. 11, 24), xii. 23, 27, 34, xiii. 23, 31, xix. 17, 18, 26, 28, 30, 34, 
 xx. 11, 17 ; Apoc. xiv. 14, i. 17, 18, xi. 8, i. 5 ; Eom. i. 3, ix. 5, iii. 25, 
 v. 6-10, vi. 3-10, vii. 4, viii. 2, 3 ; 1 Cor. i. 23, ii. 7, x. 15, 16, xi. 3, 
 24-27, xv. 3-8 (comp. Acts xxiii. 6, xxii. 8-10, ix. 5, xvii. 31) ; 1 Cor. 
 xv. 47 ; o Itirifos Zufyuvos Rom. v. 14, 19 ; 2 Cor. iii. 18 (comp. 1 Cor. 
 xv. 49), iv. 6, v. 16 ; Gal. ii. 20, iv. 4 ; Eph. i. 20-23, ii. 6, v. 23 ff. ; 
 Phil, ii 6-10 (comp. Eom. xiv. 9, 11 ; 2 Cor. v. 10) ; Col. i. 13-19, 24, 
 
52 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 As respects the rest of the New Testament writers, special 
 consideration must be given to the Synoptists, as it is well known 
 that the proclamation of the Gospel commenced not so much with 
 doctrine as with history, in which the doctrine was contained. 
 The history of Christ forms most certainly the common good of 
 the first Christians ; above all, the fact of His death and of His 
 resurrection. But with that was conjoined the relation of His 
 miracles, of His discourses, which even with the Synoptists refer u3 
 to His person as the central point. Among these discourses, those 
 especially important for our present object are the eschatological. 
 
 In the synoptical Gospels Christ has commonly the names 
 utos 0eov and ui'09 avOpmirov. Of these the Apostles usually give 
 Him the former when they would designate Him worthily ; the 
 latter they do not apply to Him, it is His own self -chosen name. 
 The title, Son of God, in the Synoptists, does not refer to the 
 meaning of this phrase in the Old Testament ; He is not merely 
 a son of God, as was David, or other kings of Israel, or pious 
 men of this people, or as the prophets ; He appears, in general, 
 not as one among many, not as one of the sons of God, but as 
 The Son, the only, the well-beloved ; and, though they do not 
 use the expression, " Only-begotten," they have the meaning, 
 that which ascribes to His Sonship exclusiveness* (comp. Matt. 
 iii. 17, xvii. 5, xxii. 42-45, xxi. 33 ff. comp. 37 ; Mark xii. 6). 
 In contrast with Him, the great men and prophets stand as hovkoi 
 before the wo? : David's Son is also David's Lord. But there 
 are principally three meanings which the phrase wo? @eov has in 
 these Gospels. The first we may call the physical (Matt. i. 23 ; 
 Luke i. 35), because He has this name by nature, and on 
 account of the mode of His birth. Of John it is said, " He 
 shall be filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb " 
 (Luke i. 15) ; where the existence of the person of John pre- 
 cedes the filling with the Holy Ghost. Of Jesus it is said, 
 Because He comes into being through the power of the Holy 
 Ghost (Luke i. 35), because He is conceived by the power of 
 the Holy Ghost (Matt. i. 20), and so is from a Divine essence, 
 
 ii. 9, 14 ; 1 Tim. i. 16, ii. 5, 6, iii. 16 ; 2 Tim. ii. 8 -, Tit. ii. 12-14 ; Heb. 
 i. 3, ii. 7, 10, 14, 17, 18, iv. 15, v. 1, 2, 7-9, vii. 26-28, ix. 11-16, x. 10, 
 14, 20, xiv. 20, xii. 2, 24, 25, xiii. 12. 
 
 * [Einzigheit. We want an equivalent for this in English. Might one 
 form a word, and express it exactly by " soleity " ? — Tr.] 
 
INTRODUCTION. 53 
 
 He has the name Son of God (Luke i. 35, 32) ; there is in Him 
 God with us (Matt. i. 33) ; God has in Him redeemed His 
 people (Luke ii. 11), yea, all mankind (Luke ii. 14, 31) ; and 
 He has become the Sun of mankind, who brings a new morning 
 (Luke i. 78), inasmuch as in Him God is historically present. 
 And it is not one of the natures that has this name, but the entire 
 Person. But what this is by nature and in itself, that must it 
 become through a truly human development. So far as He veri- 
 fies and morally realizes this His natural Divine Sonship, we have 
 thereby the concept of the ethical Sonship of God (Luke ii. 52, 
 49, iv. 3, 9). That He also, in this sense, perfectly represented 
 the Sonship of God, was, for the time preceding His public 
 manifestation, attested by the utterance at His baptism (Matt, 
 iii. 17). But as, without the physical Sonship as a presupposi- 
 tion, the ethical would be impossible, whereby He is the Holy 
 One of God, the sinless man, come to bring, above all personally 
 in Himself, the good, the Divine law, into actual manifestation 
 (Matt. v. 17) — but even on that account, in a perfectly human 
 way, in a progressive manifestation, advancing through conflict 
 (Matt. xix. 16, 17 ; Mark x. 18 ; Luke iv. 13, xiii. 49, 50) ; so, 
 without both, the physical and the ethical, the third, the official, 
 would be impossible, which conversely is as naturally and neces- 
 sarily the end of both these, as the ethical is of the physical. 
 This third meaning of the phrase is indeed that commonly attri- 
 buted to it as a designation of the Messiah by His cotemporaries ; 
 but this will not justify any in reducing the Christian idea of 
 the Divine Sonship within the meagre limits of the Jewish ideas 
 of the Messiah. If we would know what concept the Synoptists 
 and the first Christian churches had of Christ as God's Son, 
 we must not ignore the first two meanings ; if we do, we shall 
 not obtain the historical representation of their idea of Christ 
 in its totality. It is when we view them together that we first 
 come to conceive also His work. To those united to Him by 
 faith (which He desires to be faith in His Person, Matt. xvi. 
 16, 17), He can, as He does, assure union with God only if 
 in Him there is God-with-us. 
 
 According to the Synoptists, Jesus boldly announced Him- 
 self as the Son of God where it was necessary (Matt. xxvi. 63, 
 64, xvi. 16, 17) ; but commonly He did not so designate Him- 
 self ; his favourite appellation of Himself was the Son of Man- 
 
54 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Certain as it is that He would not have so called Himself had 
 He not known Himself to be true and perfect man, 1 it is never- 
 theless not enough to stop at the fact that He did so call Him- 
 self ; we must ask, further, why He called Himself by a name 
 which in some sense is common to all, and by which on that 
 very account no one besides has designated himself ? It is usual 
 to refer to Dan. vii. 13, 14 on this head; but we are not 
 thereby furnished with what is necessary for the explanation : 
 at the utmost, this passage shows that Jesus might have used 
 this expression also, but not why, among the many other names 
 for the Messiah, He should have chosen just this as the stand- 
 ing one. That explanation will hit upon what is needful which 
 avails to show that this designation was, and why it was, at 
 once the most natural for His personal self-consciousness, and 
 for use in respect of His office the most appropriate ; neither 
 without the other. Not through modesty, which conceals what 
 is higher lest the charge of self-seeking should be incurred, — 
 not from Divine love, which treats men as its equal, has this 
 phrase been constructed or selected ; for a modesty which con- 
 cealed just what is most needful for men would have been 
 wanting in love, and a favourite expression which should not 
 at the same time be the natural efflux of His personal self-con- 
 sciousness would have been wanting in truth. But this desig- 
 nation must be the product of a self-consciousness for which 
 the fact of human sonship, or being the son of man, was not 
 that which lay nearest to it, a thing of itself, a matter of course, 
 but that which was secondary and superinduced. But if the 
 self-consciousness of Christ were so modified that His being 
 human was presented to Him as something secondary, then the 
 primary thing in His consciousness must have been something 
 else, that which is expressed in John xvii. 5 ; and the original 
 wherein His self-consciousness knew itself immediately at home 
 (comp. Luke ii. 49), must, at least from the time when He 
 had Himself entire, when His innermost reality came into 
 being, have been the Divine.* In this respect it deserves 
 
 ' By this name, which never was lost from the remembrance of the 
 Church (comp. even Acts vii. 54, Apoc. xiv. 14), Doketism is signalized as 
 contradictory to primitive Christianity. • 
 
 * [Das Urspriingliche, worin sein SeTbstbewusstsein sich unmittelbar 
 heiniisch weiss (vgl. Luc. ii. 49), muss, wenigstens von der zeit an, wo er sich 
 
INTRODUCTION. 55 
 
 especial notice, that this apparently humblest name first occurs 
 in the time of His maturest consciousness ; first, therefore, when 
 His personal self-consciousness has teen perfected, and passes 
 through means of the generic consciousness into the official. 
 
 Thus far only one-half of this appellation, namely, why He 
 calls Himself a man, is explained. But He calls Himself The 
 Man-son, or the Son of man. In point of fact, it is impossible 
 that one, in whom the Divine was the primitive and constitutive, 
 should be only one man among others, imperfect or, it may be, 
 sinful like them. But in Him pure humanity must be presented 
 as it nowhere else is ; and that it may be so, even the irvevfia 
 dyiov (i.e., the Divine essence) forms the constitutive for the 
 formation of His person. Since He calls Himself not a Man- 
 son, but the Man-son, also not the son of a man, but the Son of 
 man, there lies therein of necessity, along with a perfect equa- 
 lity with others in what is essential to humanity, at the same 
 time the intimation that He corresponds more perfectly than the 
 others to the concept of man, that He is man of a nobler ex- 
 traction, the pure Son of man. 1 
 
 Since He thus unites in Himself the Divine and human 
 Sonship, He has the latter through the former; but so that 
 first in the latter does the former satisfy its own proper concept. 
 Or, inasmuch as He is both, God's Son and Man's Son, is He Tfie 
 Son simply (Matt. xxiv. 36, xi. 27 ff., xxviii. 20 ; Luke xi. 52 ; 
 Mark xiii. 32 ; Matt. xxi. 36 ff.), is the Sonship in Him per- 
 fected and brought to light. "We may thus understand why He 
 so often, and in so many especially weighty passages, compre- 
 hensively calls Himself simply the Son, who stands to the 
 Father in such peculiar relations that He never, as sharing with 
 His followers, calls Him Our Father, but always My Father 2 
 (Matt, xviii. 10, 19, 35, xx. 23, xxvi. 53, xxv. 34 ; Luke xxiii. 46), 
 from whom He, as the only and well-beloved Son (Matt. xxi. 37), 
 received witness in words on the occasion of the Transfiguration, 
 
 selbst ganz hat, wo sein Innerstes Wirklichkeit geworden ist, das Gottliche 
 gewesen seyn.] 
 
 1 A thought which gives the Christian version of the doctrine of the 
 Adam Kadmon, and is especially unfolded in the Pauline doctrine of the 
 second Adam, who completes the creation of the first ; 1 Cor. xv. 45-49 ; 
 Rom. v. 14. 
 
 2 The only apparent exception is in the Lord's Prayer ; but this? more 
 closely surveyed, proves anew what is above asserted. 
 
56 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and by His resurrection ; but who not less stands among men 
 as the Son of the House, the Freeborn and the Free among the 
 servants, not that He may enjoy His dignity alone, but that He 
 may make the servants brethren, to which, apart from Him, they 
 are only destined without being able to get rid of the schism in 
 which they are with their destination, — a schism which only He, 
 through the overmastering power of His boundless love, is able 
 to heal (Matt. xx. 28, xxvi. 28). 
 
 In proceeding to consider briefly some special passages in 
 which this peculiar position of Christ as the Son of God and the 
 Son of man is presented by the Synoptists, we shall not adduce 
 the whole range of His miracles, since others as well as He 
 wrought miracles, and the peculiarity of His miracles becomes 
 apparent only in connection with His history in general. We 
 may also pass by the fact, that, according to the synoptic 
 account, He transferred His miraculous power to His followers ; 
 for something analogous to this may be drawn from the history 
 of Moses and Elijah. But neither Moses, nor Elijah, nor the 
 Baptist, imparted the forgiveness of sins ; whilst He not only 
 says that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins, 
 but makes use of this power.- nay, places His miraculous power 
 in the service of this (ilatt. ix. 2-6 ; Luke v. 20-24), which is 
 challenged by the Pharisees as a blasphemous pretension ; and 
 in this they would have been in the right had the Ebionite re- 
 presentation of Christ been the true one, the one answering to 
 His self-consciousness and self-witness. So also, when He in- 
 stitutes the rite of baptism, not merely in the name of the 
 Father and the Holy Ghost, but in His own name as well, He 
 intrudes in a most unbecoming way into the sphere of the 
 Divine, if His Person, after the manner of other founders of 
 religion, is merely accidental or indifferent to the religion, and 
 not rather that without which there can be no mention what- 
 ever of the idea of the completed religion. But the Synoptists 
 also adduce the ground on which He places Himself so pecu- 
 liarly in relation to the Father and the Spirit, and on which He 
 assigns to His name a religious significancy (Matt. x. 32, 33, 
 36 f.; Luke xii. 8, 9; Matt, xviii. 19, 20). For "no man 
 knoweth the Son but the Father, and no man knoweth the 
 Father but the Son, and He to whom the Son will reveal it'' 
 (Luke x. 22; Matt. xi. 27). The Son hath the power of 
 
INTRODUCTION. 57 
 
 sending the Holy Ghost ; of baptizing not with water, but with 
 the Holy Ghost and with fire (Acts i. 5, comp. Luke iii. 
 16 ; Matt. iii. 11 ; Mark i. 8) ; as He also not merely imparts 
 the forgiveness of sins, but is also the Mediator thereof (Matt. 
 xx. 28, xxvi. 28). As He in the passages cited ascribes to 
 Himself the peculiarity of knowledge of the Highest, nay, calls 
 Himself (Luke vii. 35, xi. 49, comp. Matt, xxiii. 34, xi. 19) the 
 Wisdom (<ro<f>ia, comp. X0705 in John) ; as He ascribes holiness 
 to Himself, setting Himself above the holiest thing in Israel 
 (Matt. xii. 6, comp. iv. 5), and above the greatest men of the 
 old covenant (Matt. xxi. 33 ff., comp. 37, xii. 41, 42, xi. 11 ; 
 Luke vii. 28) ; as He, in fine, not only recognises it as His 
 vocation to fulfil the law, but also has at the close of His earthly 
 career the consciousness of having fulfilled His vocation : so He 
 ascribes to Himself a power which extends infinitely beyond the 
 measure of the human, and in this respect puts Himself on an 
 equality with God (Matt. xi. 27 ; Luke x. 22 ; Matt, xxviii. 
 18) : " All power is given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go ye 
 therefore, and bring all nations to be My disciples, and baptize 
 them for the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy 
 Ghost." It is true that, according to the Synoptists, He recog- 
 nises His appearance as a historical fact among others, as a re- 
 velation among others, and places it in close relation to these 
 (Matt. xi. 11-14, xxi. 25-37, xvii. 11, 12 ; Lukexvi. 16, 29-31 ; 
 Matt. v. 17 ff., xix. 8) ; but He no less recognises it as perfectly 
 singular, and of eternally more valid significancy; — of such a 
 kind, indeed, that the continuous development of mankind is not 
 thereby consummated, but rather for the first time set rightly 
 in motion ; but this so that He also resumes in Himself what is 
 yet future. This deserves closer examination. His appearance 
 is set forth by the Synoptists as all-comprehending in respect 
 of time and space, and as absolutely decisive within the highest 
 sphere. ■ This is declared negatively in the strongest manner by 
 the representation that not individual forms of evil, but the 
 principle of evil itself, the Prince of this world, comes into 
 decisive conflict with Him (Matt, iv., xii. 27-29, xiii. 37-39, 
 parall.) ; whilst Christ recognises it as His vocation to overcome 
 this principle (Luke x. 18). Obviously here, there lies at the 
 foundation the conception, that in Christ the universal principle 
 of good itself has come into a struggle for life or death with the 
 
58 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 universal principle of evil, and in dying has conquered. The 
 same idea, that in Christ the good itself has become personally- 
 present, lies in the numerous passages which assert that no one 
 can be judged before he has entered into that historical relation 
 with Christ which belongs to the quickening of faith. By the 
 acceptance or rejection of Christ, viewed as final, is the absolute 
 worth or worthlessness of the man in an absolute manner de- 
 cided upon ; and this is explained only on the assumption, that 
 in Christ there is accepted or rejected, not one of the manifes- 
 tations of the good, but the good itself. Hence it is said, Matt. 
 xxiv. 14, that the end (the judgment) shall come when the 
 Gospel shall have been testified to the entire circle of nations on 
 the earth (Mark xiii. 10). Hence is it held to be a sin never to 
 be forgiven, to sin against the Holy Ghost ; i.e., to go on to an 
 unsusceptibility of the operations of the Holy Ghost, without 
 which no one obtains the bliss-giving faith in Christ (Matt. xvi. 
 16, 17). — If, for the universal significancy of His appearance, a 
 particular place was in the first instance to be secured ; if for the 
 everlasting life on earth a firm historical centre had to be laid, 
 in order that, spreading out from this on all sides (Mark xvi. 15), 
 it might secure universality also outwardly and historically ; 
 yet in His kingdom universality in an inward sense intimately 
 inhered from the beginning, and is involved in the universal 
 significancy of Christ as the Son of Man, is also by Him in the 
 strongest manner affirmed. The field for His sowing is nothing 
 less than the world ; and the whole mass is to be leavened 
 (Matt. xiii. 38, 32, 41; Mark iv. 32; Matt. xxiv. 14,xxviii. 
 19 ; Mark xi. 17, xvi. 15, 16 ; Matt. xxvi. 13, xxi. 43, viii. 11 ; 
 Luke xiii. 29). Not less comprehensive, however, is Christ's 
 recognition, according to the Synoptists, of the significancy of 
 His Person and His work in relation to time, than in relation to 
 space or to the nations of mankind. He knows Himself as the 
 final revelation of God ; a larger, a higher, is not to be expected ; 
 so that, according to the judgment of the Synoptists, every pre- 
 tended advance beyond Him is really a falling behind Him. 
 This is, however, so understood by them, that they impute to 
 the entire representation of Christ, to which they ascribe this 
 all-decisive significancy, not only the features of His earthly 
 appearance, but also the eschatological, in which, for the first 
 time, their representation of Christ receives its decisive comple- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 59 
 
 tion. During His appearance on earth, it was not yet made 
 manifest what He was to be, nor was it until His ascension to 
 the Father that the element was supplied, in which the doctrine 
 of Christ reaches through Him the power of producing faith 
 (Acts i. 2-5). This His exaltation (Luke xxiv. 51 ; Acts i. 
 10) to the right hand of the Father (Acts ii. 33 ; Mark xvi. 19), 
 is in itself the power of sending the Holy Ghost (Acts i. 5, 8, 
 ii. 33), which, designed for the entire race (Acts ii.), gives to it 
 the certainty of true redemption, of absolute perfection (Acts 
 iii. 15, 20-23). Every man who has faith is now a prophet, 
 and knows with Divine certainty, as well that in Christianity 
 the decision has taken place, the religion is completed, as also 
 that the outward appearance of its triumph had commenced, 
 and that no enemy was a match for it (Acts ii. 17, 21, iii. 21). 
 As, however, the exalted Christ sends the Spirit, so to Him 
 belongs in the general the ending of the world. His parousia 
 will bring the final and also the public judgment. As He is 
 the absolute Lawgiver, in whom is represented the unveiled and 
 fulfilled holy and gracious will of God (Matt. v. 17) ; so will 
 He be also the Judge of the whole world at His second coming, 
 of which He so often speaks (e. gr. Matt. vii. 2-23 ; Luke xiii. 
 25 ; Matt. xiii. 41, xxiv. 31, x. 32 ; Mark viii. 38 ; Matt. xxv. ; 
 Luke xvii. 30, xii. 35 etc.), and at which His Person, which may 
 still be misunderstood (Luke xxii. 68, 69), shall be revealed, so 
 that nq one shall be able to refuse submission. Now, since the 
 Person of Christ gives to Himself and His work an actuality 
 of value through His coming the second time to judgment, so 
 faith in the eschatological discourses of Christ conveys, as no- 
 thing else does, a view of the absoluteness of the Christian reli- 
 gion, whose final momentum is objective actuality and supre- 
 macy, the kingdom of glory or power. To this Love, renouncing 
 self and laying aside immediate power, must be restored if she 
 is actually the highest and alone truly real, and if to her inner 
 absoluteness belongs (Matt. xxvi. 63, 64, xix. 28, xvi. 27 ; Luke 
 ix. 26; Mark x. 29, 30). As this is foreshadowed in Christ's 
 Person, in the indissoluble connection of His resurrection and 
 ascension with His death (Matt. x. 24, 38 ff., xvi. 24 f. ; Luke 
 xvii. 33), the same course is repeated in His believing followers, 
 in His Church ; and so firm is the tie which binds the vv/x<f>io<; 
 (Matt. ix. 15, xxv. 1) to her, that He regards the time of her 
 
60 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 servile estate, as well as all her misfortunes, as His own humilia- 
 tion and shame (Matt. xii. 48, x. 14, 40, 41 ; Mark ix. 37, 41 ; 
 Matt. xxv. 35 ff., xviii. 5, 20 ; Luke ix. 48), and will, out of the 
 fulness of His majesty, bring it to an end. Then will He allot 
 the kingdom to His followers who have believed in Him, as the 
 Father has allotted it to Him (Luke xxii. 28-30)— the kingdom 
 prepared for them from the beginning of the world (Matt. xxv. 
 34) ; then will He eat the new, the perfect supper with them 
 (Luke xxii. 16-18 ; Matt. xxvi. 29). 
 
 Taking the notices of the Synoptists together, it thus appears 
 that for all eternity, also for the tforj ald>vw$ in heaven, the 
 Person of Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Man, forms 
 the centre point of the Christian religion, in the trials and in 
 the triumphs of individuals and of the Church. He is the 
 perfect Lawgiver ; He not merely reveals, but He realizes as 
 well, the holy and just as the gracious will of God ; hence is 
 He also the Judge of the world. He has and exercises power 
 over the whole world, even as He does over the spiritual ; He 
 communicates here the forgiveness of sins and the Holy Ghost, 
 there eternal felicity; and the summit of the latter is ever formed 
 by perfect fellowship with His Person. He has left His 
 followers only in appearance; for wherever two or three are 
 assembled in His name, there is He in the midst of them ; and 
 He is with His own always, even to the end of the world (Matt, 
 xviii. 20, xxviii. 20). To know Christ in this nearness, belongs 
 consequently, characteristically, to the Christian worship; and 
 the meal of His institution is appointed as the highest means 
 for the enjoyment of this nearness for the Church on earth 
 (Matt. xxvi. 26-28). 1 
 
 It may be boldly affirmed, that the entire representation of 
 Christ given by the Synoptists may be placed by the side of the 
 Johannine as perfectly identical, inasmuch as faith, moulded by 
 
 1 Those who reject the Gospel by John on account of its glorifying of 
 Christ, can hardly have set themselves in clear relations with the synoptic 
 Christology ; otherwise must this have either covered that of John, or drawn 
 more decidedly upon itself that one-sided dissent expressed towards the 
 latter. This would indeed have been a breach with the united tradition of 
 primitive Christendom ; but it is on all sides better that this, where it 
 exists, should come into consciousness, and so to examination, than that it 
 should abscond through, e. gr., a falsification of the historical relations 
 of things. 
 
INTRODUCTION. fil 
 
 means of the synoptic tradition, must have essentially the same 
 features in its concept of Christ as the Christ of John has. 
 The passages in John which speak the most loftily of Christ, are 
 those to which the Synoptists supply exactly the closest parallels, 
 whilst some of the strongest traits in the latter find no parallel 
 in John ; comp. Matt. ix. 2-6 with John v. 14 (viii. 11), Matt, 
 xxviii. 18-20 with John iii. 5. But as these latter synoptic 
 traits are assuredly capable of being without difficulty incorpo- 
 rated with John's representation of Christ; so, on the other 
 hand, may what John, with Paul and the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 advances that goes beyond the Synoptists — that, namely, which 
 has relation to the element of Pre-existence — be brought into 
 relation to them. The Christ of the Synoptists stands already 
 so high above the Ebionitic Christ ; He is, especially through 
 His eschatological aspect, so linked with the world-idea; that to 
 the synoptic faith there needs to be added not so much a new 
 object, as simply a stronger interest of Gnosis ; and so also it is 
 that this faith can find satisfaction in no narrower utterance 
 concerning Christ, than in such an one as the dogma of His 
 Pre-existence will enunciate. In point of fact, there are not 
 wanting in the Synoptists themselves the beginnings of such : 
 comp. Luke vii. 35, Matt. xi. 19, where Christ calls Himself 
 The Wisdom, with Prov. viii., Matt. xi. 27; especially, however, 
 Luke xi. 49 with Matt, xxiii. 34, Matt. xiii. 17, Luke x. 23, 24, 
 with John viii. 56 ff. 
 
 It is deserving of notice, that, as respects the argumentative 
 force of what has been said, it is matter of indifference which of 
 the leading views regarding the origin of the three first Gospels 
 is most generally embraced. For suppose, e. gr., that they owe 
 the form of their historical narrative, wholly or in part, to oral 
 tradition — nay, suppose that this has determined also, in part, 
 even the substance of their contents, they thus remain as the 
 common possession of the primitive Church, to attest incontest- 
 ably the character of its belief as neither Doketic nor Ebionitic. 
 If it be assumed, also, that all later heresies are to be viewed as 
 results of the Church agitation of the dogma itself, faith in Christ 
 as the Son of God and of man, in the meaning proved, did not first 
 arise out of an Ebionitic or Doketic tendency and its prevalence, 
 but precedes both these, nay, is presupposed by them both; since 
 they, according to what has been adduced, become Christian here- 
 
62 INTKODUCTION. 
 
 sies only through this presupposition. But whether this Church 
 faith itself, which is presupposed as well in the case of heresies 
 as in respect of the construction of dogmas by which these were 
 overcome, has operated much or little on the formation even of 
 the contents of the Gospel tradition followed by the Synoptists, 
 this much sober historical inquiry must hold fast, that just the 
 weightiest and the highest, i.e., what is most characteristically 
 Christian, cannot have been the product or the projection of this 
 alleged Church faith; for, in order to be able to produce, it must 
 first be, and Christian faith itself comes into being through what 
 is characteristically Christian, and not antecedently to it. A 
 faith of individual Christians, or of a Christian community, which 
 is devoid of the Christian element, — a faith which deposits the 
 Christian element rather than apprehends it, is an intellectual 
 nonentity, a monster of perverted thought. The Church cannot 
 have contrived the representation of Christ, because the rise of 
 the Church was conditioned by the antecedent representation of 
 its Lord. 1 Thus, exactly that in the Synoptists which is chiefly 
 new in relation to all pre-Christian ideas (i.e., the highest Christo- 
 logical utterances), is necessarily to be viewed as most surely the 
 historical, faith-establishing impulse, to be presupposed in order 
 to the mere existence of the Church. 
 
 We have still James and Peter to consider, who, in a Christo- 
 logical respect, are most allied to the Synoptists. As Luther 
 complained of the Epistle of James, that it was not occupied 
 with Christ, so in more recent times an inclination has been 
 exhibited to regard James, as he appears to us in his Epistle, 
 as the representative of the faith of the earliest Christians, and 
 hence it has been deduced that the Ebionitic doctrine was the 
 primitive. A conclusion in every respect over-precipitate ! For, 
 first, the design of James is such, that it does not fall to him to 
 set forth in order the faith and its contents, but to maintain the 
 w/arts rather according to its ethical significancy, and to contend 
 against all antinomianism. The 7rtan<; he presupposes; he 
 does not seek to plant it for the first time ; and hence it is in- 
 competent, nay, unjust to him, to treat his Epistle as if he 
 began with the beginning, and meant to set forth the fundamental 
 principles of Christianity, which as yet were not in dispute. 
 
 1 See Hanne, Der moderne Mhilismus, S. 176. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 63 
 
 But, secondly, it would be still more hazardous from this short 
 Epistle — which, according to its avowed design, aims to unfold 
 the ethical and not the dogmatical aspect of Christian truth — to 
 form an estimate of James universally, of whom we have no right, 
 since in other respects he is at one with the synoptic tradition, to 
 assume that in respect to Christological ideas he stands opposed 
 to it. Thirdly, utterly untrue is the assumption, that James is 
 to be viewed as the representative of the faith of the earliest 
 Christianity. Rather is his letter, with its polemic against a 
 one-sided faith, an evidence that there was another tendency in 
 the Church, which laid chief stress on faith not in its ethical 
 purifying power, but viewed principally as an object of know- 
 ledge, ao(f>ia; consequently, more in respect of its dogmatic import, 
 and that in a fruitless way, and which held participation in 
 Christianity in this sense for justifying. Over against this 
 theoretical faith 1 he places that which is practical. Still more 
 weighty is what we would adduce fourthly: viz., that it cannot 
 be denied, that to the individuality of James the ethical was the 
 most congenial, and hence drew him to give especial effect to 
 the refutation of this false tendency (for by the ethical, as by 
 nothing else, is the presence or absence of the Pauline 7u'crTts 
 tested, to which, also, it is only by the severity of the law and 
 repentance that one can be led back). But his ethic is the 
 Christian ethic, and proves itself to be such, not merely through 
 the apprehension of the law as a complete whole (ii. 10), and 
 as the perfect law of liberty (i. 25), so recognised because to it 
 love is the royal principle of what is ethical (ii. 5, 8) ; but also 
 by the founding of this love in faith (ii. 22), of which it is the 
 most perfect fruit, or in the new birth through God's free grace 
 
 1 Which is not that of Paul, but rather the approaching gnosis which 
 Gnosticism proclaimed (i. 13, 14, 17, iii. 1, 15, 16, iv. 1, 2, 10, i. 9, 10, 
 v. 19, 20). For already there appears in it a parting asunder of that 
 immediateness of faith, and an entrance one-sidedly on the tendency to the 
 contents of the faith as it is for knowledge. Though this tendency names 
 itself by the faith, not by the yuaais, the faith is yet made but a mere 
 means to the oaQia., and Christianity is viewed rather as illuminating 
 than as sanctifying. It is true it always regards Christianity as redemp- 
 tion, and for this . uses the Pauline expression iixaluais, as well as tha 
 name vlvri; for its theoretical tendency ; but evidently it is no longer the 
 Pauline wurric; and hxaiaan;. We may rather say that in James i. 13-17, 
 there is a position refuted which reminds of the gnosis in the proper sense. 
 
64 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 (i. 17, 18, 21). Not every man, however, is born of God (i. 18); 
 but Christians are so, in whose souls Christianity, the word of 
 truth, is implanted (i. 21), and who by this word are transformed, 
 so that they become the first-born of creatures, the crown of 
 creation (i. 18). The law also was a word, X0709; but it was 
 not X070? Te\eio<;, not a plastic word, like the word of God which 
 brought forth the world; for it was onlyimperative, and to the shall 
 was wanting the be, the willing, and as the shall still remained, 
 though the will was opposed to it, the will was consequently not 
 free.* The Christian Logos, however, is X070S aXrjOeias, vo/mos 
 reKeios t>5? ikevdeplw;, i.e., in Christianity is given the Word, 
 which corresponds to the concept of the word of God ; for the 
 word of Christianity not only prescribes, it also is powerfully 
 operative and creative, so that now within the spiritual sphere the 
 same is effected as the creative word effected in the physical, and 
 now in the highest sphere it is not merely said, He speaks, He 
 commands, but also, It is done and stands fast. But in the birth 
 which is effected by means of the creative word is the creation of 
 man himself perfected, and the dignity of the First-birth, to which 
 he was by his creation destined (iii. 9), comes now to be perfectly 
 realized (i. 9, 18, ii. 1). The Christian principle does not im- 
 prove in this or that particular, it embraces and forms the whole 
 man, and perfects him (i. 4, 21), and elevates him to a height at 
 which all earthly distinctions disappear. The author is there- 
 fore full of the essential equality of all Christians, 1 and he in- 
 dignantly casts from him whatever tends to infringe on this ; 
 in which again we trace the consciousness of the absoluteness 
 of Christianity, before which all earthly distinctions sink as it 
 were into nothing. Hence he exhorts the lowly to a con- 
 sciousness of their highness and absolute dignity, in order that 
 they may not, through false modesty, fall in with a divisive 
 inequality, which would rob them of their due ; those of high 
 estate, on the other hand, to humility (ii. 1-9). 
 
 What has been said already shows that James had before 
 him the Christian presupposition in anthropologic and soterio- 
 logic form ; and were there nothing more in his Epistle, there 
 would be enough here to exempt him from the charge of 
 
 * [Dem Sollen fehlte das Seyn, das Wollen, und weil das Sollen doch 
 blieb, obwohl der Wille ihm entgegen war, so war der WiHe nicht frei.] 
 1 Appendix, Note V 
 
INTRODUCTION. 65 
 
 Ebionitism, especially as he says nothing against the higher 
 idea of Christ's Person. But there are not wanting in him 
 strong Christological features. He calls himself (i. 1) $ov\o<; 
 Kvplov 'Iijarov XpiaTov ; and this, on the supposition that he was 
 " the Lord's brother," is worthy of double notice. He calls 
 Him icvpios rjfiobv 'Irjcrovs Xpiaros (ii. 1, v. 7, 8), so that He is 
 to James Lord and Messiah ; icvpio<; t?}? Bo^i (ii. 1), which in 
 any case expresses a majesty akin to the Divine, even though 
 communicated. But a reference to the Xo<yo? akr)6eia<; carries 
 us still further. As this word of truth is the Christian word, 
 Christ is, in the view of James, the bearer of this word of truth. 
 And as this word partly communicates the truth and the wis- 
 dom (i. 25, 18, comp. i. 5, iii. 17), viz., that from above, and so 
 is a Divine revelation, partly also is operating, powerful, and 
 creative (i. 18), he thus ascribes it to Christ, the bearer of this 
 truth, not only that He is a revealer or teacher, but also that 
 there is in Him a creative kingly word. The prophetic and 
 kingly offices furnish the chief features of his representation 
 of the Messiah ; and these two are well discriminated by him, for 
 he recognises a knowledge of Christianity in which the word has 
 not yet become powerfully operative to liberty (i. 22-24), as 
 well as royal functions of Christ, which relate not simply to re- 
 generation through the word of truth (v. 7, 8). How high he 
 exalts Christ as a teacher, appears from the many passages in 
 his Epistle which cite Christ's words, chiefly according to 
 Matthew. These words are principally, yet not exclusively, of 
 an ethical kind. As respects the royal office of Christ, the 
 acknowledgment of it lies already in the recognition of Him as 
 XpLaTos and Kvpio$ t?5? So^?. But the royal function of Christ 
 is expressly presented in the second coming of the Lord to judg- 
 ment (v. 7-9). He is not only the bringer of that law which 
 is to form the standard of judgment (ii. 12), but He also gives 
 the final decision. The blessedness of the one party, the con- 
 demnation of the other, is His deed (v. 8, 9). If Christ, as 
 Lord of glory, has the full power (comp. also ii. 1, 5) to com- 
 municate the highest boon, blessedness ; if the last decision is 
 His act ; then it is not to be denied that James also recognises 
 in Christological form the absoluteness of the Christian religion. 
 Elsewhere he expresses himself so as to show how near, in his 
 estimation, Christ is to God. For he calls both God and 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
66 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Christ, Kvpw, and he says (iv. 12), "One is the lawgiver anl 
 judge, who is able to save and to destroy."* Now, as by law- 
 giver here he evidently intends God, and as he imputes to 
 Christ full power to judge, power o-axrcu koI diroXecrai (v. 7-9), 
 his doctrine concerning the oneness of the lawgiver and the 
 judge can be reconciled with the doctrine of Christ's eschatolo- 
 gical position, only on the supposition that in the kingly might 
 of Christ there is present that of God. All the more certain is 
 it, then, that though he says nothing expressly on the subject 
 in this Epistle, he would have placed regeneration in connection 
 not merely with Christ's prophetic office, but also with His kingly 
 office ; consequently, that in the creative power of the word is 
 to be seen also the act of Christ. 
 
 It is true that in James there is no reference to the high- 
 priestly office of Christ. He mentions the death of Christ, but 
 only according to its exemplary significance (v. 11). On the 
 mediation, consequently, of the forgiveness of sins and redemp- 
 tion, which he certainly finds in Christianity, he does not en- 
 large. At the same time, there are indubitably acts which he 
 (v. 14 ff.) desires in the name of the Lord (especially prayer), 
 desires in the name of Christ ; and in this is involved the 
 thought, that Christ is our intercessor with the Father, the 
 Paraclete, through whom oar prayers are acceptable unto God, 
 and are heard by Him. There is thus a recognition of the one 
 side of Christ's high-priestly office. 
 
 Near as James approaches to the Old Testament, which he 
 sees only fulfilled in the New, with the design and inner essence 
 of which he as a Christian finds himself fully and freely at one, 
 yet the Christian element which he has, presupposes an immense 
 revolution in the ordinary consciousness of a Jew. The seek- 
 ing of the Old Testament law is in Christianity, by the word of 
 truth which proceedeth from Christ, brought to that at which it 
 aims : all unrest of the Shall is brought to the Be,f all schism 
 
 * [The received text gives only tig imrm v popx/Mr-vs ", but all the critical 
 editors, from Griesbach to Tischendorf , give, on the authority of the best 
 witnesses, sfg tartu 6 liopaOi-rns *«i xpinli; as the correct reading. — Te.] 
 
 t ["ATle Unruhe des Sollens zum Seyn" is the author's expression. 
 The meaning 1 take to be, that what Kant calls the categorical imperative 
 produces a state of unrest until it -eventuates in act:; all law disturbs until 
 it is fulfilled.— Tr.] 
 
INTRODUCTION. 67 
 
 to unity (ii. 12, i. 25). What the law could not bring together 
 is now conjoined ; the Spirit has attained from the external plu- 
 rality of laws to inner unity, as well with itself (i. 5) as with 
 God (i. 21, 18). For Christians are partakers of the Holy 
 Ghost (iv. 5). 
 
 If James attaches himself more to the Law, — yet not to the 
 ceremonial law, but to what is eternally ethical therein, the for- 
 merly mere ideal existence of which now through Christ reaches 
 actuality in free men, in love, — Peter sees in Christianity, above 
 all, the fulfilling of Old Testament prophecy, as is indicated 
 both in his discourses in the Acts of the Apostles and in his 
 Epistles. 1 
 
 From this stand-point, however, on the other hand, the 
 ceremonial law also receives its due; for as it is not merely 
 symbolic, but also typical, it in its way predicts Christ, especially 
 as respects its centre-point, the sacrificial service. In this re- 
 spect Peter occupies the same ground as the author of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews. 
 
 The discourses of Peter in the Acts, having for their object 
 the establishment of the faith among unbelievers, all present 
 the Christology as their centre-point. This, however, as is 
 natural, is at first so treated that preponderance is given to the 
 historical starting-point, and the individual elements of Christ's 
 history are set forth ; whereas in his Epistles these individual 
 elements are collected into the unity of one complete represen- 
 tation, and in it pervade the whole. Further, the Christology 
 of Peter in the Acts is expounded more in the Old Testament 
 form. To this belongs the appellation, Servant of God, Trots 
 Geov, 2 which is taken from the Prophets, and the assertion of 
 the anointing with the Holy Ghost. 3 As respects particulars, 
 the fortunes of Christ are, according to Peter, predicted by the 
 Prophets (Acts i. 16, ii. 16, 34, iii. 18,. 22-26, x. 34; 1 Pet. 
 ii. 7, 22-25, i. 10), as well as the outpouring of the Holy Ghost 
 (Acts ii. 16, 23, 31, L 16). Christ Himself is anointed with 
 the Holy Ghost and with power (x. 38); by God is made both 
 Lord and Christ (ii. 36), as God hath glorified Him (iii. 13), 
 appointed Him to be Prince and Saviour, the Judge of the 
 
 l - See next two notes ; Acts ii. 23-31, 34, 35, 39, iii. 13, 18, 21-25. 
 iv. 11 ; 1 Pet. i. 10-12, 20, ii. 7, 10, 25, i. 19, ii. 24, iii. 20, 21. 
 a Acts iii. 14, iv. 27. 3 Acts x. 38, coll. iv. 27. 
 
68 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 living and the dead. Here everything, in accordance with the 
 historical starting-point, proceeds from the humiliation of Christ: 
 His exaltation and glorification, in accordance with this, are 
 represented supremely as the act of God, as a reward for His 
 sufferings. But the end at which this representation aims from 
 the first is, that He is the Prince of Life (Acts iii. 15), whom 
 the bonds of death could not hold ; who has gone up into heaven 
 (ii. 33, xxiv. 31), and is now Lord of all (x. 38), as in His name 
 rests the power of miracles (iii. 6) ; and His glory shall be shown 
 by His coming again to judge the world (iii. 20, 21, x. 42). 
 Now the heavens have received Him glorified (iii. 13, 21), until 
 the time of the final completion of all things. From the right 
 hand of God He commenced the outpouring of the Holy Ghost 
 on the day of Pentecost, and continues it through holy baptism 
 (Acts x. 47, xi. 15, xv. 8-11). But baptism takes place in the 
 name of Christ, and in no other is there salvation (iv. 12). 
 Now, since the representation, setting out from the humiliation, 
 thus ascends till it reaches Him, the exalted One, who is at the 
 right hand of God, it must from this be advanced that faith not 
 merely says, Though or since Christ was humiliated, so is He 
 also exalted ; but the idea of the glorified Saviour is primarily 
 the true idea of Him, from which, conversely, the humiliation 
 of Christ is to be conceived from the first on to its consumma- 
 tion on the cross. From the apprehended idea of the living 
 and ever-abiding word of God, which was in Christ personally 
 (1 Pet. i. 23, 25), and in which idea faith finds first her 
 resting-place, she looks back and recognises that, in such a being 
 as Christ, suffering is to be conceived as a free act, and humi- 
 liation as an operative element of His self-manifestation and of 
 His work. A step towards this is already made when His 
 resurrection and exaltation are represented as not simply God's 
 act towards Him, but as, according to the concept of His Person, 
 necessary development and self-manifestation (comp. Acts x. 40, 
 ii. 31, coll. iii. 15 and ii. 24). But this comes out in fuller 
 clearness in the Epistles. There it is not merely, as in the Acts, 
 said that Christ's death came to pass by wicked hands through 
 the fore-purposed counsel of God ; not merely that the Prophets 
 who had predicted Him had to be fulfilled ; but as this mode of 
 representation always leaves it still possible to present Christianity 
 onesidedly, as the completed birth of the Old Testament, and to 
 
INTRODUCTION. 69 
 
 place the external historical dependence of the one on the other 
 too high, by treating Christianity as a mere child of the Old 
 Testament, there is added to it in the Epistles the complementary, 
 though apparently contradictory position, that the Old Testa- 
 ment, in its highest functions, is a product of that which is the 
 principle of Christianity (1 Pet. i. 10, 11). In the Prophets 
 the irvevfut, Xpio-rov was operative ; it wrought in them its own 
 preparation, foretelling the grace in Christ, His sufferings, and 
 the glory that should follow. Thus is Christianity of old, eter- 
 nally founded in the world-idea of God, which by it is from 
 eternity determined and overruled. For in Christ are we chosen 
 from eternity (1 Pet. i. 2) ; we are eternally contemplated by the 
 Father as standing in the sanctification of the Spirit; as destined 
 for obedience and for purifying through the blood of Jesus 
 Christ (1 Pet. i. 20). With this it is already taught that the 
 Christian principle, though as such not revealed until the last 
 times (1 Pet. i. 20), was yet pre-existent and operative from 
 the beginning, and is thus eternal, not merely in the Divine 
 predestination, but as really operative (1 Pet. i. 11, iSrjXov to 
 iv aiiTol'i 7rvevfia XpiaTov). It is true that the doctrine of the 
 Trinity, which is here glanced at, is not more fully developed by 
 Peter; nor is personality ascribed to the pre-existent Christian 
 principle : but so much the more certainly is it taken along with 
 the Divine Spirit itself. As respects the historical appearance 
 of Christ, there is ascribed to Him true manhood, according to 
 the body (1 Pet. iii. 18, iv. 1, i. 24), and to the soul (1 Pet. iii. 
 19). Thus the Epistle is as far from Doketism as from Ebion- 
 itism, though it teaches nothing of a duplicity of nature. God 
 appears in it as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ ; and in 
 this is involved that the latter is the Son of God (1 Pet. i. 3). 1 
 Christ is the Mediator of our regeneration by God (i. 3), from 
 incorruptible seed (i. 22). In faith in Christ is awrripia, which 
 is partly future (i. 5, 9), partly already present. Regeneration 
 takes place from Divine seed, i.e., from God or the Holy Ghost 
 (comp. i. 12), but by means of the living and abiding word 
 (i. 23). This living word is in this case not the act of preach- 
 ing (i. 25), but that word whose contents are the means of 
 regeneration by the Spirit. These contents are, indeed, also 
 
 1 Though in the first Ep. vio; &tov does not occur, we have it in 2 Pet. i. 17. 
 
70 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 doctrine, truth ; but they are eternal truth which has become 
 historical; i.e., Christ, as reconciler, is the substance of the joyful 
 message. We have no right, in the place of a person, to put an 
 abstraction, a neuter — redemption, for instance; but just in 
 the Person, and nowhere else, have we, according to Peter, the 
 eternally determined, and so eternally valid, though historically 
 accomplished redemption (1 Pet. i. 19, 20). Thus the word is 
 described as " living and abiding for ever," because Christ forms 
 its substance, and is properly that which is operative in the 
 preaching of the word. Nay, it may be asked whether we should 
 not here abstract entirely from the word as preached, and should • 
 not rather view Christ as summarily designated the living and 
 eternal Word of God. Peter will then have taken the term 
 " word" as equivalent to revelation of God, since it, as spoken 
 by God (as in Gen. i.), is determined to be the medium of the 
 new creation. 1 In this case Christ is, according to Peter, not 
 only the bearer and possessor of the word, as were the Prophets, 
 but in Him is the perfect revelation apparent personally, and 
 so as that the form (that of man, historical personality) corre- 
 sponds to the substance of this revelation essentially. This leads 
 to the assertion, that Christ, according to Peter, not only has 
 God's word, but is God's Word (i. 18-20, ii. 7). As, however, 
 He acts the part of God's Mediator to us by being a mission of 
 God to us, — for He is the bringer of the Divine to us (i. 23), — 
 so, on the other hand, He, as the sinless One, as the spotless and 
 blameless Lamb, is He who represents us before God ; our sins 
 are slain from the Divine view in His crucified body (comp. 
 1 Pet. ii. 24, iii. 18, coll. Is. liii. 5), with the intent and the 
 result that we through Him (reconciled, presented as holy) may 
 be brought before God (iii. 18), and having suffered in Him 
 for our sins, knowing ourselves punished in Him (iv. 1, comp. 
 Rom. vi. 7), may desist from sin (i. 18, iv. 1). Thus He is 
 Mediator on both sides; His death, however, forming the central- 
 point of His mediatorial office, that which is the distinctive 
 element (1 Pet. iii. 18, aval; anedavev). Yet he shows the 
 death of Christ so closely connected with His resurrection (iii. 
 18-21), that baptism also is first completed by the latter (comp. 
 i. 3), which, in connection with what we have heard from Peter 
 
 1 Appendix, Note W. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 71 
 
 of the death of Christ, requires the meaning that he who, believ- 
 ing in Christ, has seen himself as punished, also rises again in 
 Him ; so that Christ shall be viewed as not only substituted for 
 us in intention and effect, but as living in us. He who has 
 risen again is the Lord, who hath passed into the heavens to the 
 right hand of God, and to whom all powers are subject (1 Pet. 
 iii. 22). Therefore He hath the power to convey the blessing 
 of baptism (1 Pet. iii. 21, comp. L 22), the Spirit, by which 
 Christians are born again. 
 
 But, in fine, though Peter sees in Christianity the fulfilling 
 of Old Testament prophecy, yet he represents what we in this 
 life already receive from Christianity as only the earnest of the 
 glorious inheritance, only the beginning of the Divine harvest. 
 To him, therefore, Christianity is still a prophetic religion (the 
 iirar/yeXta and eX-Trk) ; but the future is its future, its revelation. 
 When that which is new comes, Christianity shall not cease, but 
 shall become manifest, altogether different from the pre-Christian 
 prophecy. This self-equality,* as well as the endless fulness 
 which shall yet be exhibited, is again linked to the person of 
 Christ, whose glory in the present is yet concealed, though 
 already in itself perfect (1 Pet. iii. 22, i. 4-7). His second 
 coming, however, will remove the contradiction which subsists 
 between the real idea of Christianity as yet only in Christ (i. 8) 
 and its full realization. 
 
 Jude also places Christ along with the Father in the formula 
 of salutation (ver. 2), and in the doxology (vers. 24, 25) : through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord is God our Saviour, and is glorified ; the 
 being kept in the true and most holy faith (ver. 20), is a being pre- 
 served in Christ Jesus (vers. 1,3), and in the Holy Ghost (ver. 20). 
 Believers are ayioi through their tt torts; and they are called to 
 contend (ver. 3) for the faith delivered by the Apostles (ver. 17), 
 and to keep it in faithful remembrance; that they may not be like 
 those intruders who, holding themselves for spiritual (ver. 19), 
 and, proud in their hearts, setting themselves above others, unite 
 with the Christians outwardly, but only to be spots on their 
 love-feasts, and to defile these by participating in them. The 
 grace of God they turn to lasciviousness, to what is sensual 
 (vers. 4, 10) ; and therefore shall the righteousness of God turn 
 
 * [Sichselbstgleichheit.] 
 
72 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 against them. The persons whom Jude opposes are not merely 
 such as have practically swerved from the right way, they are also 
 teachers of error (vers. 15, 8) : they deny our only Prince and 
 Lord Jesus Christ (ver. 4) ; a sin which is damnable, and from 
 which there is scarcely deliverance by penitence and return to 
 Christ (vers. 5, 22, 23). The second coming of the Lord to judg- 
 ment (ver. 14), which to the believer is full of grace, and brings 
 eternal life (ver. 21), shall be to them for a terror (vers. 13-15). 
 Similar, though somewhat more formal, are the Christo- 
 logical elements in the Second Epistle of Peter. Here the writer 
 insists more on the side of knowledge, the gnosis, which, how- 
 ever, is not severed from the practical. 1 The Epistle has more 
 definitely to do with errorists ; hence it opposes the false views 
 of Christian knowledge (ii. 1), which is described as a morning 
 star that had arisen in their heart, as in a place formerly dark 
 (2 Pet. i. 19), doubtless with reference to the fact that Christ 
 is the substance of the iirvyvaxro^ (2 Pet. i. 2, 3). The Divine 
 power bestows on us, through the knowledge of Christ, all that 
 is necessary for life and godliness ; gives the most precious 
 promises, purifies, and makes to partake of the Divine nature 
 (2 Pet. i. 4). For to Christ belong fj,er/aXeiOTrj<; (i. 16), Soga, 
 KaL'aperq (i. 3); He is the beloved Son of God, in whom He is 
 well pleased. He is our (Ttorijp (i. 1, 11, iii. 2), our Lord (i. 2, 
 8, 11, 16), who hath an everlasting kingdom (i. 11), and for 
 whose exaltation there needs not cunningly-devised myths, but 
 the history of Christ, attested by the Prophets and the aposto- 
 lical tradition, are sufficient (i. 16-18, iii. 2). From this it 
 comes to pass, that what they receive rises in their hearts like a 
 morning star, and thus the history becomes a living knowledge, 
 governing the life through and through (i. 5-9). The false 
 prophets whom he assails are described as preachers of liberty 
 (2 Pet. ii. 19), as Antinomians (aOea-fwc), who make their appeal 
 to Paul, but wrest his words : they turn grace into indulgence 
 in sinful lusts, dread not the judgment and second coming of 
 Christ, but defile and entangle themselves again with the world, 
 and live and teach as if all were to endure for ever, as it had 
 been from the beginning of the world (2 Pet. ii. 3, iii. 4). The 
 
 1 iiri'yi/uois, as in the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians. As in 
 the First Epistle, the leading idea is the ihir];, so in this it is the iviytatnt. 
 Comp. 2 Pet. i. 2, 3, 5, ii. 20, 21, iii. 18. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 73 
 
 tarrying of the Lord is grounded in His long-suffering, which 
 still seeks that many should be saved (iii. 9-15) ; but His day 
 is coming like a thief in the night, to cause the fashion of 
 this world to pass away, and to form a new heavens and a 
 new earth. 1 
 
 Thus fruitful were the germs which, by the representation of 
 •Himself given by Christ and the testimony of the Apostles, were 
 planted among men ; and yet there was neither thereby given 
 nor withheld the framing of the Christian doctrine into dogmas. 
 Not the former ; for in the New Testament Christianity does 
 not appear in exactly constructed dogmas, but in the form of 
 Christ's witness of Himself by word and deed, and of the faith of 
 the Apostles testifying concerning Him; with which witness 
 that of the Holy Ghost is conjoined, to establish faith in those 
 who have received it through the word, in whom a new life in 
 union with God arises. But the further work of forming dogmas 
 in unison with the objective Christianity, is not superfluous or 
 forbidden. For it is the tendency of the Christianity, which 
 has through the Holy Ghost become subjective, to penetrate 
 the whole sphere of the soul ; and the man who should attempt 
 to except the knowledge department from that, and to abide in 
 simple immediate belief, would subject belief itself, which has 
 already knowledge as an element in it, and thereby consecrates 
 the knowledge faculty itself, to similar infirmities with those 
 which we see arise where faith does not pass over into practice, 
 but seeks to hold this sunk in itself. It is indeed true that the 
 testimony, though dogmatically indeterminate, can establish the 
 faith in Christ, as this testimony also endures through all ages ; 
 but the historical vocation of Christianity will not be satisfac- 
 torily fulfilled where men rest contented with being firm in the 
 faith, with the deliverance of souls from the world, but only 
 there where Christian knowledge, or science, is also held to be 
 the work and vocation of the Church along with that. This, 
 itself springing out of the true Church, works back, enriching 
 and fructifying, on the Church's testimony ; and in this case is 
 an absolute good in itself, and has an essential bearing on the 
 full development of the Divine image in man. 
 
 1 Appendix, Note X. 
 
74 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The most immediate problem of Christian Dogmatic His- 
 tory is to contemplate not the Church testimony, but the Church 
 knowledge in its history. The former, standing nearer to faith 
 as its immediate source, preserves in all ages more of essential 
 identity with itself, and is less affected by fluctuations than the 
 latter. This difference, this relative independence one of the 
 other, exhibits a higher grade -wherever both, are rooted in the 
 Christian faith, and remain conscious of their common relation- 
 ship; but it begins its course in the Church only gradually. 
 In the first centuries of the Church and of councils, both func- 
 tions are to a great extent unseparated ; and hence one can 
 understand how, since the Church consciousness has been again 
 more powerfully aroused, many among us desire from the History 
 of Dogmas, that it should relate to us the development of the 
 Church's belief, and not of its knowledge ; that it should tell 
 how the Church belief attested itself in the councils, the great 
 gathering points of the Church faith-power, and conducted the 
 further development of the dogma; that it, in short, should 
 teach us to conceive historically the formation of the Church 
 dogma in its present form. But here much confusion prevails. 
 This view has its full right, as against those who put forth a 
 claim for the consideration of what lies outside of Christianity, 
 — namely, the philosophic thinking that was not determined by 
 Christianity, — in tbe History of Dogmas ; for at the bottom of 
 this confounding of the distinction between the History of 
 Philosophy and the History of Dogmas, without doubt, lies a 
 fundamental want of clearness as to the essence of Christianity, 
 and a flattening of the distinction between it and what is not 
 Christian. Nor let it be denied that the problem thus proposed 
 is worthy of being handled as a separate subject of inquiry ; but 
 for it there is an acknowledged science, Church Symbolik, which 
 is sufficient. To seek to drag the History of Dogmas back to 
 this, arises from a contracted ecclesiastical interest. The Church 
 needs rather a history of the Christian knowledge of faith, as 
 assuredly this knowledge itself, and the history of this knowledge 
 in the Church, is the proper object of a History of Dogmas. 
 Creed-forming epochs in this history are those in which the 
 previously more detached attempts after a more definite know- 
 ledge of what was believed have so prevailed and been illustrated, 
 that the doctrine, positively or negatively determined, has ripened 
 
INTRODUCTION. 75 
 
 to a dogma, the common-good of the Church. The utterance 
 or the confession of this attained conviction manifests it as a 
 united conviction, as a common-good ; and in the act of bringing 
 this to pass, the advanced knowledge again coalesces with the 
 Church belief, reverts, as it were, into it, and becomes thence- 
 forward common belief, or belief of the Church, to which now 
 the further development of the knowledge is joined. The dogma 
 is not simply identical with the belief, but it is the belief as at 
 the same time more fully thought out and more conceptually 
 apprehended. And for this task there must be a place given in 
 the Church, just as there is a place for the history of it in Church 
 science. — In times when creed-making does not prevail (truly not 
 only in our own days), the essays at faith-knowledge so diverge 
 from each other, that to many all faith in the possibility of a con- 
 currence of convictions will vanish. But at no time has a problem 
 been proposed to Christianity which she has not, though amid 
 the conflict of the sharpest antagonisms, been able to solve. 
 And those who know best how to stand and act in our depart- 
 ment hold fast, what all Dogmatic History teaches, that the 
 most violent antagonisms amid which, often for many centuries, 
 or for ever, the Church truth seems to be distracted in its pro- 
 gress towards becoming known, always, through a friendly 
 sustaining hand, are brought to a point where they rest in a 
 well-matured common conviction ; whilst only the more igno- 
 rant, those who are less instructed in history or not firm in the 
 faith, in place of working for a new step in the common consent 
 of the Church, hold the point of transition for the conclusive 
 position negative or positive, — the school or the previous step 
 of faith-knowledge for the spiritual or Christian universe. 
 
 Thus to the Christian intellect, after Christianity had been 
 planted in the heart of mankind, the pure initiatory impulse 
 eternalized by the writings of the Apostles, and the objective 
 documentary Christianity made sure to men for remembrance, 
 there remained to give itself up to the nature of Christianity 
 and of the founder of the Divine life in man, to understand 
 more exactly and conceptually what had been diffused by Him 
 over mankind. It must consequently be admitted, that at first 
 a Christology in the strict sense was not delivered. It was the 
 attacks on Christianity that contributed chiefly, in the first 
 instance, to consolidate the doctrines, and give them a conceptual 
 
76 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 stamp. But the Christian doctrine thus constructed is not, 
 therefore, a mere human product, not something merely fabri- 
 cated: on the contrary, the knowledge of the Church also 
 partakes of the Divine Spirit ; and the fact, that the cavils have 
 always contributed to the consolidating of the doctrine, is a 
 proof that, though at first there were wanting exact conceptual 
 expressions, yet the thing itself is from the beginning present 
 in another form, in the form of intuition, which is an element 
 of belief ; and to this original source science reverts from every 
 negation of a definite form of doctrine, to receive a new impulse 
 forward ; as, on the other hand, in every stage where science has 
 made a positive advance, and brought belief to its more adequate 
 expression, this advance is elevated into a pure gain for the 
 certifying of what faith possesses immediately, and to this is 
 brought back. 
 
 If, in fine, we place before us the relations and laws of this 
 development of the Christian knowledge, it will appear that 
 since Christianity was set up in the midst of Judaism and Hel- 
 lenism, this could not avoid being affected and defined by the 
 surrounding world. This has been done both negatively and 
 positively. In the former case, the chief weight was naturally 
 laid on what was mostly opposed to the one or other of these 
 two antagonist systems ; in the latter case, what was analogous 
 was borrowed from both to further the apprehension of the 
 Christian system. For, as we have seen, however little the 
 origin of Christianity is illustrated from either, nevertheless 
 Christian thought clothes itself necessarily, at first, in previously 
 found, antique forms, though only tentatively. To Judaism, for 
 instance, is allied the idea of the primitive prophet and man in 
 the Ebionitic tendency; to Hellenism, the doctrine of the Logos, 
 which, in the second century, is seen to be most powerfully 
 influenced by Alexandrian philosophy. The onesidedness of 
 the Jewish element furnished the counterpoise to the Hellenic, 
 and conversely. As, however, minds were, according to their 
 training, prepossessed towards the Jewish or the Hellenic mode 
 of representing Christ's Person, differences arose by which not 
 only the riches of Christianity were exhibited, but, in the con- 
 troversy they excited, the Jewish and the Hellenic element 
 always more intimately interpenetrated each other, influenced 
 by the Christian principle implanted in both, which proved itself 
 
INTRODUCTION. 77 
 
 to be the higher common unity of both by this, that through it, 
 by constant intercourse, both received completeness from each 
 other. And this is only the other side of the above ; and it is 
 to be maintained, both that the being of Christianity is not to 
 be accounted for from either Hebraism or heathenism, and that, 
 on the other hand, it alone brings both to their truth. It cannot 
 be derived from them, because it is a fact antagonist to both 
 of them ; nor, for the same reason, is it merely a doctrine of 
 such a kind as that Judaism and Hellenism might, by their 
 mutual interpenetration, have produced it ; whilst, on the other 
 hand, it alone presents the true substance of both religions in a 
 higher unity, wrought out in the person of the God-man. The 
 greatest thing in heathenism is the idea of the very close 
 proximity and indwelling of the Divine life in free human form; 
 but the Divine which comes to an indwelling in man is yet so 
 predominantly thought as physical, that where only a more 
 powerful form of life appeared, be it as strength or as beauty 
 or as intelligence, there an apotheosis was the first suggestion 
 of heathenism. Now, since this does not do justice to the dis- 
 tinction between the Divine and the human, and the Divine 
 which is displayed in the world is not the truly Divine ; on the 
 other hand, that Divine Essence, more purely expressive of 
 absoluteness, which is undoubtedly found in the background of 
 the heathen religious consciousness, that impersonal existence 
 which also soars above the gods, is, at the same time, partly of 
 a predominating physical character, partly cannot come to a 
 manifestation ; and if it could, it would from the heathen view 
 arrive first in Christ at personality, which it had not before ; 
 and this would have been theogony through the form of human 
 life and human act. 1 Judaism had for its basis not something 
 dim and selfless, no blank substance, but a subject, a personality; 
 and this is conceived above all as just and holy. Through the 
 ethical idea, however, was justice done to the distinction between 
 God and the world, especially mankind. This is the great thing 
 in the Old Testament religion. But the monotheism of Judaism 
 is in itself powerless to reduce the distinction to unity ; to it the 
 man-becoming of God appears as a blasphemy. 
 
 1 "We may refer to Gnosticism, which so deeply wounded the Christian 
 consciousness by presupposing a free personal God to all that comes into 
 being, to all finitude. 
 
78 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Both the leading forms of pre-Christian religion, though 
 when viewed from Christianity they represent opposite elements 
 of the religious idea, yet cannot, unless they pass into a higher, 
 maintain themselves before each other, hut at last fall over into 
 each other in fruitless alternation ; and the same may be said of 
 the heresies in which their principles predominate, — a proof that 
 their mutually exclusive elements yet tend to be united, seek 
 each other. This tendency produces, according to circumstances, 
 alluring imitations of that unity of both which is found in 
 Christianity. This may also be mirrored here and there in the 
 Church. But, more closely viewed, this unity of the Divine and 
 human passes in heathenism into dualism ; especially in the 
 department of thought, its unity is resolved into a 6chism as 
 soon as that Absolute in the background of heathenism advances, 
 and, as the physically conceived Infinite Being, excludes from 
 itself all definiteness, recoils from all finitude, and so leaves the 
 world absolutely outside of itself, as a phenomenon. Since 
 this phaenomenon is nevertheless indispensable to it, because it, 
 though it is something positive, can itself be thought as some- 
 thing only in the negation of the finite, this infinite itself is 
 essentially encumbered with dualism. Subjectively expressed, 
 heathen thought ends in a dualism between ideal and empirical 
 knowledge. Conversely, Judaism, when it is diverted from 
 going on to something higher, by which its ethical category may 
 be established and secured against falling back, sinks ever again 
 into bare identity of God and the world, and thereby produces 
 at the highest the imitations of what is Christian, already men- 
 tioned. This showed itself within the religious sphere even in 
 the earlier times of the people, whilst as yet Prophecy, so essential 
 to this religion, had not furnished the complement of that which 
 the Hebrew intellect, in order to be itself, must have felt to be 
 yet wanting. In the sphere of thought, however, this shows 
 itself in the last period of Judaism, especially among the Alex- 
 andrian Jews; and not less in the unbelieving remains of 
 Judaism in our own day. So long, indeed, as the holiness of 
 God is only directive and lawgiving, God Himself is thought only 
 as absolute Moral Law, not as yet as Love. From this there 
 are only two possible ways of bringing the unrest of the " shall" 
 to the " be." Either the Law tends forwards to Prophecy, is 
 an imperative word of God to which entity [das Seyn, the being] 
 
INTRODUCTION. 79 
 
 does not fail, but -which announces a higher revelation whereby 
 the idea of holiness is powerfully presented, and thus the reve- 
 lation of the Divine holiness is for the first time established in 
 the world and completed ; or the world as it is,, imagined to be 
 good, the living pulse of historical progress, and the hope of a 
 better future, is mortified ; whereby, however, the ethical idea 
 again sinks into the physical, where cessation has its home 
 despite all movement of life. 1 The wisdom of God, thus deprived 
 of its most hallowed sphere of manifestation, the history of 
 mankind, finds responsive utterance to its purport hardly from 
 anything else than from demiurgic thoughts : with holiness 
 vanishes also the idea of rectitude; for if the former be degraded, 
 the latter misses the Absolute norm, nay, with the Absolute end 
 departs also the justification of the proofs of the Divine recti- 
 tude ; and to a concept of God so mutilated, there remains 
 nothing but a thought and a willing, which contains not itself 
 as something spiritual and Divine, but only the world, physical 
 might and wisdom. In this case, the distinction between God 
 and the world, which had arisen in the ethical consciousness, is 
 again lost, and the pagan unity of God and the world as a more 
 presumptive step onwards is wrung out of the thinking which 
 doubted of the progress of the world through manifestation. 
 And even the third attribute, the Divine goodness, 2 at this stage 
 so highly prized, which, as the higher attribute, is fitted to heal 
 the ethical and religious schism which the Old Testament leaves 
 unmitigated, is only an apparitional image of Christian love ; 
 for it does not communicate itself through the Divine rectitude 
 and holiness, it has not these for its contents and end ; and 
 hence, instead of fulfilling these, it also receives a physical 
 purport, and beeomes a ministress of Eudaimonism. But, 
 indeed, the thinking which seeks the reconciliation of dualism 
 in a retrogression to the physical, in place of pressing forwards 
 and upwards, cannot thus succeed in gaining unity. For in 
 
 1 This tendency was exhibited practically, as it appears, by the Sadducees, 
 theoretically by the Alexandrians, especially Philo, who had no greater boast 
 to make of the law than that it is at one with the creation, and who could 
 assign no higher ideal to man, the microcosm, than that he was in order 
 and beauty like the macrocosm, the great creation ; whereby the distinction 
 between man and nature is characteristically at once given and retracted. 
 
 2 xyctSirri; with Philo. 
 
80 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the domain of the one is found the exact and exclusive 
 opposite of the other ; and not less, as has been shown in the 
 case of heathenism, is the physically-conceived Infinite the 
 exclusive opposite of the finite. It is only in a higher sphere, 
 in the domain of the Spirit, that the contradiction is solved, — 
 a contradiction with which the nature-life is by itself encum- 
 bered, and in which a thinking in mere physical categories 
 flounders, and to which even the law by itself does not rise 
 superior. 
 
 This solution is found in Christianity : it is the truth of 
 both these religions, since it truly and really presents in the 
 incarnation of Christ as well the distinction as the unity of the 
 Divine and human, as well the concept of God as that of man. 
 Did heathenism long after the apotheosis of the human nature 1 ? 
 In Christ this is given; for here is a Man who is also God. 
 Did genuine Judaism seek the fulfilling of the revelation not 
 completed by the law ? did it strain after the love of God as 
 the fulfilling of the holy law ? In Christ is this given : here is 
 the innermost revelation of the mystery, the fullest condescen- 
 sion of God; for God has in Christ become Man. Here is 
 the point at which the bond of unity between God and the 
 world, on which heathenism loved most to linger, is displayed, 
 but in such a manner as that the ethical idea, that of rectitude 
 and holiness, which forms the chief excellence of the Old 
 Testament, receives its due ; for that all per se are God's off- 
 spring, of which heathenism made so much, is in Christianity 
 of so little moment, that it is reckoned among the humble ele- 
 ments, and finds its place in the first preaching to catechumens 
 (Acts xvii.) ; for, according to it, this depends on the actuality 
 of the human personality, on the divinity of actual thinking 
 and willing ; and this is so little implied in that per se, that 
 therein rather lies only the determination to this, the as yet 
 mere possibility of it, such as consists even with a complete 
 disfiguring of the Divine image : a determination, consequently, 
 which in and by itself is so indeterminate, that it may conduct 
 as well to the judgment as to personal perfection. In Christ, 
 however, appeared the Man who is not merely essentially 
 Divine, but whose natural Divine Sonship finds its complement 
 in an ethical Sonship through the Divinity of His whole human 
 thinking and acting. He did not appear in order to be the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 81 
 
 Son of God, as if this were the ultimate end ; but the ultimate 
 end was the glorifying of man, and therewith of God, in Him 
 and through Him ; and in the very conception of this, ethical 
 personality is desiderated : with mere essence, or being per se, 
 it is not satisfied. Hence His thinking and acting, as well 
 as His suffering, in its ethical completeness, are also for us ; 
 He is also officially God's Son. On the other hand, His ethical 
 and official Divine Sonship presupposes also a natural Divine 
 Sonship in a peculiar sense ; for it must correspond to its end, 
 according to which the love of God united to manhood, as well 
 as manhood united in full love with God, must come to a 
 manifestation in Christ. As respects ourselves, however, we 
 know that we are in our own life and being ungodly, whereas 
 in Christ we come into a state of godliness, or sonship to God ; 
 and in this relation also Christianity becomes, in its principle, 
 the solution of Jewish and heathen error : it removes their 
 contradiction by the realization of the truth to which they tend. 
 Heathenism desires physical sonship with God, without regard 
 to ethical ; Judaism desires ethical sonship with God, and over- 
 looks the presupposition without which this never can come to 
 pass, — the transformation of the spiritual condition through 
 the "being born of Divine seed." Christianity makes the 
 believers, both physically and ethically, God's children and 
 brethren of Christ ; but it desiderates for this, on the one hand, 
 in opposition to heathenism, an ethical, on the other, in opposi- 
 tion to the legal principle, a jeligious process. In these ethical 
 religious processes, sentence is passed on the fantasy of imme- 
 diate deification and ethical perfection ; and therewith is the 
 old man judged and dies, and room is made for the new, which, 
 participant of the Divine nature through grace, and thereby 
 raised in the Holy Ghost to immediate participation of the 
 natural Divine Sonship of Christ, advances, like Christ, to ethical 
 Divine sonship, love to God in Christ; and, in fine, is also, 
 according to office or calling, vitally inserted as a member in 
 that body of which Christ is the eternal Head. This Chris- 
 tianity wills to be and to accomplish. We have also discussed 
 the essence of the heathen and Jewish error, which is ever 
 clothing itself in new forms. 
 
 From these premises it follows as of course, that not without 
 strenuous effort, in many cases a continuous series of strifes and 
 VOL. I. F 
 
82 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 victories, could the higher Christian principle, planted in the 
 midst of the Jewish and heathen world, overcome both com- 
 pletely, i.e., so as that the essence of both should be expelled 
 from the Christian consciousness. Masses of heathen and 
 Jewish error such as it encountered were not to be dispersed as 
 by a magic stroke, but only by hard toil, even although, wherever 
 Christianity was embraced, these were already in principle 
 renounced, and deprived of their power of growth the more 
 that Christianity built itself up on its own field of thought. But 
 out of all the conflicts and agitations to which the Christian 
 truth was exposed through the pressure of non-Christian prin- 
 ciples, — nay, into which it voluntarily threw itself in order to 
 become to the uttermost the property of mankind, — it ever 
 emerged, through its inborn conquering might, to advancing 
 clearness, and ever richer unfolding of its fulness. 
 
 Could we succeed in representing the dogma, on the one 
 hand, in its undisturbed assurance of victory, yielding itself up 
 to human development, to the process which draws it into 
 divestments and disfigurements without number ; but not less, 
 on the other, partly also in its quiet work on the minds of men, 
 into which it sinks deeper and deeper, partly when again the 
 hour is come, in its grand victorious career, when, as if by a 
 magic stroke, the band falls from the eyes of the Christian com- 
 munity, the clouds flee away, and the clear image of Christ in 
 richer fulness than before stands before their view : then would 
 the historical delineation of this dogma be faithful ; for in that 
 case the same pulse that beats through its history would be felt 
 also in the delineation of that history. Where, on the contrary, 
 the development of the dogma in the Church does not come to 
 knowledge and representation, there must be unconsciously a 
 deficiency of historical fidelity, whether the idea of development 
 is negatived by a later acquisition being dated back to the early 
 Church, whereby the side of the renunciation of the dogma is 
 misapprehended, which were the Doketism of historical writing, 
 or by that self-renunciation of the dogma being taken for the 
 whole, whilst the development of its strength and fulness is 
 regarded as an idle byework which has come in between ; and 
 this latter method, which changes the history of the development 
 into a history of the evacuation of the dogma, would be the 
 Ebionitic error. The dogma itself has forced its way through 
 
INTRODUCTION. 83 
 
 the midst of both ; it is for the historical delineation to follow 
 as it best can. 1 
 
 Accordingly, if we enter closely into the history of our 
 dogma, it will divide itself into three periods. 
 
 In the first, which embraces the first four centuries, we 
 have the beginning of the development in the consciousness of 
 the belief that, in the Person of Christ, the. Divine and the 
 human are, in the general, conjoined. From this immediate 
 totality of the Person of Christ, the Church development pro- 
 ceeds to the establishing of the concrete elements which belong 
 to the concepts of Divine and human. But since now both 
 sides stand over against each other, no longer merely in the 
 general, but as concrete quantities, it becomes a possible and 
 necessary problem to investigate the How of this union. Neces- 
 sary ; because the more justice is done to the recognition of both 
 sides, the more is that immediate presupposed unity put asunder, 
 and is to be anew restored to thought. Possible ; because such 
 an inquiry may be successfully pursued only when, and in so 
 far as, that which is to be conjoined is thought as actually given 
 according to its concrete distinction. 
 
 The second period advances to the problem for which the 
 first has furnished the data, and works on these data. These 
 are : the elements which belong to the concept of the Divine, 
 and the elements which belong to the concept of the human, 
 whose difference is comprised in the duplicity of the Natures. 
 Setting out from this distinction, it has to investigate the 
 How of the unity of both in the Person of Christ; for the 
 That, or the actual existence of this unity, remains the first 
 presupposition, always present, as vouched for by faith. So 
 long, however, as either the concept of the Divine or that of , 
 the human is so thought as that the one, if it does not exclude, 
 yet prejudices the other, their union in the Person of Christ 
 can only imperfectly be understood, — that is, in such a way as 
 shall fail to do justice alike to both sides. According as in any 
 epoch the preponderance falls on the one side, will the other be 
 necessarily depreciated. Now it is a feature of the dogmatic 
 thinking of the time before the Eeformation, that in it the 
 Divine element had a onesided preponderance; and, on the 
 
 1 Appendix, Note Y. 
 
84 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 contrary, in the century after the Keformation, anthropology 
 was elevated to a false preponderance over theology. Thus the 
 second period falls into two epochs, between which the Kefor- 
 mation stands ; and that not merely outwardly, but so as to 
 denote a real transition-point in the history of the world, inas- 
 much as it, by resuming the truth taught in the old time, opened 
 a free course for the right knowledge of the human side. Thus 
 the time of the Eeformation itself shows how a new beginning, 
 which unites in itself the essential elements, must rise above the 
 onesidedness which characterized the second epoch, and form 
 the direct reverse of that of the first. 
 
 The third epoch, in fine, which begins with the present 
 century, has to do with the problem, to cognise the Person of 
 Christ as the unity of the Divine and the human, in the equipose 
 and distinction of both sides. 
 
THE EIEST PERIOD, 
 
 TILL THE YEAR 380. 
 
 the first period, the elements of the Person of Christ 
 are to be established ; the faith which accompanies the 
 theoretic process always presupposes their unity ; this 
 is for faith immediately certain, though not as yet narrowly 
 defined, not as yet mediately cognised through the knowledge 
 of the distinct elements, which in it are combined. Indeed, to 
 any form of Christology, there must be attached from the 
 beginning the attempt to bring again into union, somehow, the 
 elements which have been thus far wrought out ; but it is also 
 true that every such attempt can have only a passing and mo- 
 mentary significancy, so long as, on either side of the Person 
 of Christ, perhaps essential elements are left out of account. 
 Hence it is only in the rational and necessary course of the 
 matter, that the Church, during the first period, should above 
 all have undertaken the problem of shaping forth, element by 
 element, both sides of the Person of Christ, so as to allow these 
 at first to separate from each other as widely as possible, that it 
 might hand over to the second period — both sides being com- 
 pletely established — the task of closely cognising the mode and 
 manner in which, in the Person of Christ, these extremes are 
 brought together. 
 
 If, further, we compare the epochs of the first period to- 
 gether, we shall see that the first asserts the real Godhead and 
 the real manhood of Christ only in the general. As respects 
 
86 THE FIRST PERIOD, 
 
 the latter, the outermost limit, the true human body of Christ 
 is most decisively asserted; and, indeed, not only its actual 
 existence generally, but also its functions and natural affections; 
 and along with that, the truth of the principal weighty facts of 
 the earthly life of Christ — His resurrection, His death, His 
 growth from childhood upwards, even to the most difficult of 
 all, His real birth by Mary — formed the common conviction of 
 the Christian world. But still the second element on this side, 
 the soul of Christ, remained undeveloped ; and with this there 
 was, for a great part of the history of Christ, room left for a 
 Doketic mode of treating it. This was the case especially with 
 reference to the sufferings of His soul in the history of His 
 passion, as well as His baptism and temptation ; nor could the 
 post-existence of the manhood of Christ, or its indissoluble union 
 with the Divine nature, be established so long as the Church 
 had not a secure consciousness of His true human soul ; and 
 this was the case neither in the first nor in the second epoch. 
 Likewise, as respects the Divine side, in the first epoch there 
 was not merely, in opposition to Ebionism, the recognition of the 
 truly Divine in Christ generally, — not merely the admission of 
 a momentary or a permanent prophetic endowment with which 
 the Church was furnished ; but the Christian community knew 
 itself to be eternally reconciled and united with God in Christ, 
 in whom was manifested the absolute religion which, a parte 
 post and a parte ante, is the final end of the world. This 
 consciousness the earliest Christians had at first in an escha- 
 tological form, or in the belief in the return to judgment of 
 Him who had come, — of which judgment the turning-point is 
 the position of each individual in relation to Christianity ; and 
 thereby, in the consciousness of the Primitive Church, the kingly 
 office of Christ was conjoined with the prophetic ; and this could 
 and must be conceived from the extreme end back to the begin- 
 ning [so as to cover the whole manifestation of Christ], or to 
 the development of the position, that all must be made by Him 
 for whom all has been made. But from these works of judg- 
 ment and creation the Church returned to the earthly life of 
 Christ, and now learned to understand this in a new and higher 
 light as Divine history. His death, the result of love, was 
 recognised as the radiative central-point of the manifestation 
 of God in Christ; by this death God reconciles mankind to 
 
TILL THE YEAR 380. 87 
 
 Himself, with a view of bringing the race, at the end of the 
 days, to that perfection which was the eternal purpose of their 
 creation. Thus the reality of the death of Christ becomes, 
 through the recognition of His Divine nature, the reality of the 
 reconciliation ; and the high-priestly office of Christ, in which 
 righteousness and love are mediated, and thereby the strenuously 
 ethical character of Christianity is established, is added to the. 
 other two offices, in which might and wisdom are displayed. But 
 however certain it is that Christianity must recognise the truly 
 Divine in Christ, and however much this consciousness is 
 enriched and confirmed to Him by the elements, already named, 
 of His entire work ; yet, just because in Christ personal truth 
 and wisdom, love and might, are recognised, there is only the 
 more decidedly a pressure towards the yet undetermined ques- 
 tion, how the Divine in Christ stands related to the Divine of 
 the Father — to the idea of God generally, to which unity is 
 essential. The significancy of Christianity showed itself grasp- 
 ing even deeper : there was an irresistible pressure towards a 
 commutation of the pre-Christian, nay, the Old Testament 
 concept of God. This extreme and boldest task Christianity 
 undertook, but unwillingly; for a long time she resorted to 
 palliatives, the character of which may be briefly described 
 thus : There was no disposition to abridge in the least, in the 
 doctrine of the office and work of Christ, His Deity, because it 
 was only through this that its adequate expression could be given 
 to that which the Christian consciousness carried in itself as 
 divinely assured of; but, on the other hand, in view of the 
 unity of God, concessions were permitted in regard to this, 
 which, if they were not forgotten again in effect, could not but 
 seriously impair it. But in the second epoch, after what has 
 been noted was won, the Church would be drawn irresistibly to 
 the conscious, Christian constituting of the concept of God. 
 Besides the positive impulse which lay in the Christian prin 
 ciple itself, the Church was constrained to this problem, which 
 was solved in the second, the Trinitarian epoch, by the great 
 heresies of the third and fourth centuries, in which these pallia- 
 tives were consequently carried out into great systems, and 
 therewith weakened the nerve of the Christian consciousness. 
 It is the thoroughgoing Monarchianism, which, in ever clearer 
 and firmer systems of an antagonist, a deistic or pantheistic 
 
88 THE FIRST PERIOD, 
 
 character, following each other stroke upon stroke, opposed 
 itself with all its force to that concept of God to which the 
 Church was tending; whilst at the same time it could not but 
 hasten the birth of that concept in the clear consciousness of 
 the Church. For this great stride, the work of the second epoch, 
 — which had for its object to set aside entirely the unity of God 
 as it had been previously held, and to substitute for that a unity 
 mediated through diversity, in other words, the Trinity, — the 
 work of the first epoch had not only given strength, but had 
 made precise preparation. For one thing, it had established the 
 base-lines, by help of which Christianity could assume its proper 
 position with ease, even in the most difficult and recondite of 
 its elements. Then, in particular, the Christological labours of 
 the first epoch had secured for the concept of God also the 
 , Christian doctrine of the Divine attributes. The threefold office 
 of Christ, which had its higher Christian significance only in 
 virtue of the Divine side of His Person, contains already the 
 stamina of the concept of God, because the attributes ascribed 
 to Christ on account of His work, cannot be otherwise than 
 referred to God. Towards the end of the second century the 
 first Christian teachers held fast, first, that to God belongs not 
 merely omnipotence and wisdom, such as He has displayed in 
 the creation of and the sure completion of the world ; for these 
 attributes may in themselves allow of a monistic, heathen con- 
 struction, without departing from the heathen principle, the 
 physical concept of God, the stand-point of natural religion ; 
 and on this a Divine history of an ethical or teleological cha- 
 racter, such as Christianity is, would be impossible. They 
 held, secondly, that not even rectitude satisfies the concept of 
 God ; for on that the unbelieving Jewish world could stand, 
 which, in accordance with its juridical stand-point, could set God 
 and the world over against each other, and could arrive at no 
 other union between the two than that of the relation of the 
 Lawgiver or Obliger to the obliged ; and, on the other side, the 
 relation of service and debt to the sentence of the Judo-e by 
 whom reward or penalty is apportioned. But in place of this 
 deistic stand-point of Judaism, the Church found it needful to 
 seek room in her concept of God for grace, of which she felt 
 herself to be the recipient : in place of the mere God-and-the- 
 world-discriminating rectitude, to permit the uniting love to 
 
TILL THE YEAR 380. 89 
 
 enter. But in fine, thirdly, — and this is the weightiest point of 
 all, — these Church-teachers recognised the fact, that this love is 
 not to be viewed as exclusive of the physical and juridical ele- 
 ment in the concept of God, but is rightly recognised only 
 when in it the physical as well as the juridical concept is pre- 
 served, — is in it, as it were, regenerated ; inasmuch as love 
 without creative power and wisdom would be either egoistic, or 
 blind and powerless ; whilst a love without rectitude, or without 
 the liberty and independence of creation, would of itself neces 
 sarily relapse into a physical thing, of an emanistic pagan 
 character, even although under the most plausible show of what 
 is Christian. They knew that all these elements are rather to 
 be combined in the Christian concept of God, and are combined 
 in the doctrine, that one and the same God is the Creator and 
 Lawgiver, the Redeemer and Perfecter ; not distributing these, 
 with Gnosticism, among different principles, or denying the one 
 or the other of them. Now, the more consequent was the deve- 
 lopment of the Monarchian heresies of the third and fourth 
 centuries, above referred to, which were most obstinately opposed 
 to the representing of the Divine unity as a trinity, the more 
 definitely was it made apparent that, in following out their 
 course, they must, with the denial of the Trinity, strand either 
 on the pantheistic confounding of God and the world, or on 
 the purely physical idea of God, or, in fine, on the purely 
 juridical, i.e., the one which deistically separates God and the 
 world. Hence it became for the Church manifestly impossible 
 to abide by one or other of the forms of Monarchianism, the 
 way to the Trinity being laid down, and the difficult stride from 
 the pre-Christian to the Christian concept of God already taken. 
 We shall see what essential fruit in reference to the basis of 
 the doctrine of the Trinity, i.e., the Christian doctrine of the 
 Divine attributes, was contributed by the struggles of the 
 Church with the different forfns of the Gnosis. 
 
 As respects the Trinitarian epoch itself, it was inaugurated 
 by the great heresy of Patripassianism, which gradually evolved 
 itself into Sabellianism, i.e., by the Hellenizing, ethnic mode of 
 viewing the love of God in Christ. Leaving out of sight other 
 elements favourable to it, there comes to be considered especially 
 the result by which it was arrived at by the Church. After the 
 latter had already, in the earliest times, obtained from the 
 
90 THE FIRST PEEIOD, 
 
 primitive eschatology the most definite views of the pre-existent 
 hypostatic form of the Divine in Christ (in which, however, 
 there was inherent in the Divine hypostasis of the Son, viewed 
 from the terminus of the Person of Christ, the condition of 
 finite personality, which in this form could not be introduced 
 into the Godhead itself), the concept of the Divine hypostasis 
 came to be more and more, since the doctrine of the Logos 
 became the common property of the Church, stripped of that in 
 it which was inadequate ; and not less was the subordination- 
 theory, which we find still clinging even to Justin, for instance, 
 more and more put away ; and, in fine, His distinctness from 
 the world, and therewith that of God, was more and more 
 brought out, and He was recognised at length, not any longer 
 predominantly as the spoken Word of the world, or as the Ideal- 
 world, or as the Divine Idea of the world, but in self-substan- 
 tiality as the One who speaks in relation to the world. His 
 purport and significancy ceased to be summed up in relation to 
 the world : He found His meaning in Himself ; for the Beloved, 
 spoken of or witnessed to by the Father, who is "Wisdom and 
 Power, glorifies and loves, according to Irenseus and Clement, 
 the Father in turn, who is in Him and He in Him. But if the 
 distinction between the Logos of God and the world was thus 
 more sharply defined than by the older apologists, and thereby 
 a barrier was erected, or an advantage won, against a physical 
 or Hellenizing representation of the relation between God and 
 the world, yet was that purchased by a previous enfeebling of 
 the hypostatic distinction between the Son of God, who as 
 Logos is simply the Divine reason and power, and the Father, 
 to whom both these must be ascribed ; so that, consequently, at 
 the end of the second century the state of the question in the 
 Church favoured Monarchianism under the form of Patri- 
 passianism. 
 
 Whilst the Church of the third century, occupied with the 
 refutation of this heresy, was, by the labours of Tertullian, 
 Hippolytus, and Origen, determining more precisely and putting 
 together the elements of the hypostasis of the Son, and, in order 
 to be secured against a relapse into the ethnic principle, was 
 emphasizing the distinction of the Son from the Father, whilst 
 their unity was less attended to ; there arrived the favourable 
 time for the second of the great heresies above named, which, 
 
TILL THE YEAR 380. 91 
 
 deistic in its principle, having begun in weak, already super- 
 seded, Ebionitic forms, now grew to a frightful extent. Allied 
 with ethnic elements, it set over against the decisive point at 
 which the Christian dogma of the Trinity should come forth 
 clear and an object of consciousness, and which aims to be the 
 higher unity of the Jewish and heathen principles, an imitation 
 of the Christian truth, a mingling of the Jewish and heathen. 
 But with the Council at Nice, by which the third epoch was 
 introduced, this heresy received its death-blow ; and therewith 
 was one of the sides, which in the first epoch had remained in 
 one leading point undetermined, Christologically established, 
 viz., the Homoousia, or hypostatic equality of essence of the Son 
 and the Father. Great and severe as was the struggle of the 
 next fifty years, it established finally, not merely the Church's 
 acquisition in respect of the Son, but this also led to the doctrine 
 of the Holy Ghost as well. 
 
 And now, after the second epoch had been occupied almost 
 exclusively with the higher nature of Christ, and the weighty 
 utterances of an Irenseus, a Tertullian, and an Origen, which 
 might have served to the completion of the doctrine of Christ's 
 perfect manhood, had been laid aside, there arrived for this also 
 a time in the third epoch. The Sabellian tendency, which had 
 entered the Church as antagonist to Arianism, sought a final 
 tenure, on the ground that it answered in the negative the 
 hitherto open question of the true human soul of Christ. The 
 pregnant system of Apollinaris furnished the Church with the 
 occasion of entering more fully and exactly into this question ; 
 and the decision, that Christ could not without a true human 
 soul be the Saviour, placed the topstone on the doctrine of the 
 second, the human side of Christ, about the year 380. From 
 this time forward the Church returned with full Christological 
 force, and more definitely, to the task of determining how the 
 two natures, now posited in their perfection, but also in their 
 entirely unconfounded separateness, could be combined. And 
 this forms the object of the Second Period. 
 
92 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 FIRST EPOCH 
 
 THE AGE OF THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS, TILL A.D. 150. 
 
 CHAPTEE FIRST. 
 
 EVIDENCE OF THE FAITH OF PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 
 IN CHRIST. 
 
 There is undeniably a very significant distinction between the 
 written productions of the Apostolic Age and those of the age 
 immediately following; and it is hardly possible to represent 
 the relation of the one to the other more erroneously, than when 
 the Apostolic Age is called, in a dogmatical respect, a germ and 
 beginning, whilst the age of the Apostolic Fathers is regarded 
 as the fruitful unfolding of that germ. It is true that, to a 
 certain extent, on one side an advance was to be expected in the 
 later age ; for this is according to the law of history. But if we 
 try each of these ages by the standard of its Christian know- 
 ledge, we shall find beyond all doubt a serious falling off in the 
 age following that of the Apostles. What was in the earlier 
 age the actual spiritual possession of the distinguished men 
 whom the Lord chose, trained, and equipped, was far from 
 being all retained by the succeeding age; much less was a 
 higher stage of Christian knowledge attained. Such a retro- 
 gression, following times of unusual spiritual elevation and 
 expansion, is quite in accordance with the laws of historical 
 development, as we see in other cases, — in the time of the 
 Reformation, for instance ; and if at first sight this seems to be 
 something surprising, it is better to endeavour to conceive it as 
 a phenomenon which is altogether in order, than to cover over 
 the inconvenience which lies therein — -arising from the appear- 
 ance of an interruption of the dogmatic progress, on the 
 assumption of the genuineness of the principal books of the 
 New Testament — by artificial palliatives, be they exegetical or 
 
THE AGE OF THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS, TILL A.D. 150. 93 
 
 be they critical, which, at the best, can minister only a mo- 
 mentary satisfaction. 1 
 
 The solution is this. The Apostolic Age is full of primal 
 fire and spirit ; in it occurs the greatest spiritual revolution 
 which has ever happened to man ; and it is, besides, an age rich 
 in ideas, fruitful of classic-Christian works. But as the ideas 
 which Christianity has implanted in men are of an essentially 
 practical kind, assure the long-cherished desire of final satisfac- 
 tion, and aim at the renewal and sanctification of life ; so there 
 followed on that first age, which enjoyed also higher illumina- 
 tion, an age of a predominantly practical tendency, in which the 
 Christian idea strove above all to operate in the world, in the 
 depths of men's souls, to remove the contradiction between 
 its intensive nature and its as yet restricted appearance by 
 extensive growth of the Church. This age, rejoicing in having 
 secured religious satisfaction, emancipates itself from the stain 
 of having a sinful community of life with the pre-Christian 
 forms, and thus assumes something of a world-shunning cha- 
 racter, a trait of practical dualism; at the same time that it 
 burns with zeal to convey to others, as much as possible, the 
 enjoyment of its own blessings. According to all the accounts 
 which delineate to us the Christian community of this age, its 
 most characteristic mark at first was not the Christian gnosis, 
 but a holy, divine life, whereby it shone forth as a light in the 
 midst of Judaism and heathenism. At first this was sustained, 
 negatively, through antagonism with the tfocryito?, positively and 
 principally, through the same holy common spirit ; but latterly, 
 as that antagonism was weakened through the pressure of 
 worldly, schismatic, or heretical elements, and the Church was 
 
 1 To these palliatives may be referred Dr Baur's attempt to reduce by 
 some degrees the dogmatic height of the Apostolic Age ; and when, with 
 this view, he subjects one of the apostolic chiefs, Paul, to an exegetical 
 treatment which does not commend itself by its correctness (see Trinitat., 
 p. 81 ff."), whilst the Gospel of John is, on account of its doctrine of the 
 Logos, extruded from the Apostolic Age by a critical operation. After, by 
 this most artificial way, a dogmatic poverty has been adjudged to the age of 
 the Apostles, it is easy to get rid of the distinction between it and the follow- 
 ing age ; and thus room is made for postponing the higher representation 
 of the Person of Christ, i.e., the rise of Christianity, for a century later. 
 Whether it is history itself, or the hitherto used method of history, that is 
 damaged thereby, must be seen from what follows. 
 
94 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 thereby robbed of the clearness of self-consciousness, she betook 
 herself to protective, sustentative, prefinitive forms, which at 
 first had in them nothing mechanical or hierarchical, but were 
 only the pure expression of the organizing instinct which dwelt 
 in this new historical power, at first so formless, but which 
 carried in it a principle of overwhelming strength, capable of 
 restoring to society its youth. It would be a mistake, conse- 
 quently, to construe that relapse as if the growing Christian 
 community were a do-nothing, spiritually purposeless mass, on 
 no side advancing or operative. Rather does primitive Chris- 
 tianity resemble a young, vigorous, well-directed tree, which, 
 however, is rather occupied in growing than in bringing forth 
 the fruits of Christian knowledge. There is no lack of parallel 
 cases, which prove that in circles where no particular attention 
 is devoted to the side of Christian knowledge, but which are 
 practically alive, the Christian ground-ideas may be long pro- 
 pagated incorrupt. 1 For such circles may possess the most 
 lively interest for what produces a Christian living faith, and so 
 may carry with them, if not in a mediated scientific form, yet 
 in its original guise, that Christian knowledge of divine things, 
 which is always immanent in faith, and without which, indeed, 
 faith cannot exist. And though what they thus originally carry 
 in them they may not make the object of mature reflection, yet 
 as little can it be said that they propagate Christian truth only 
 traditionally, and without a spiritual appropriation of it; but 
 what they believe, that they testify. In this testifying they 
 have their free life, their free action, whether it find scope in 
 hymns and odes, or in forming Christian usages and worship, 
 or, in general, in life and conduct ; to which thoroughly adjusted 
 formation, in particulars and on the whole, such an active period 
 advances all the more energetically and irresistibly, the more 
 firmly the as yet undisturbed faith is held as a guiding assump- 
 tion. 2 There is no poverty, withal, in this age; but, as ever 
 where activity predominates, a vital fulness and sense of inner 
 satisfying wealth. What characterizes it, is not dependency 
 and passivity, but a sense of freedom, which practically operates 
 in common life no less than in martyrdom. And thus there is 
 
 1 Thus the Waldenses in the Middle Ages ; so the Moravian Brethren 
 and the Herrnhuters. 
 
 2 Appendix, Note Z. 
 
THE AGE OF THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS, TILL A.D. 150. 95 
 
 no standing still : in the first century after Christ the Christian 
 principle is seen advancing still, though chiefly on the practical 
 side ; and it leaves to the following age, as a significant legacy, 
 as the future development of the dogma's sustaining and leading 
 power, two principal works of the Church's common spirit, the 
 forming of an ecclesiastical organism, and the collecting of the 
 New Testament canon, both of which works stand in the closest 
 mutual relation. 
 
 Further, the retrogression of this age from that of the 
 Apostles, must not be wholly regarded as worthy of blame. 
 Rather, when Christianity is one whole, which is either there or 
 not, it follows that an age which regresses in respect of dogmatic 
 culture, nevertheless possesses fully in its faith that out of which, 
 in due time, dogmas may be constructed. If, as is indeed certain, 
 it be the business of Dogmatic History to consider, not so much 
 what is faithfully handed down, as when there occurs what bears 
 the trace of a free Christian spirit, — free, yet in unison with 
 objective Christianity, so that it may really be held as a valid 
 gain and attainment of the Christian intellect ; nevertheless it is 
 not to be overlooked, that just in this practical direction does the 
 Christian intellect first set itself to work according to its inner 
 freedom and independence of mere tradition ; there it produces 
 works which, though practical, yet presuppose an intellectual 
 significancy and a definite consciousness, which in its own time 
 will become clearer and more immediate. And thus, though 
 this age, dogmatically viewed, presents only the rudest form, yet 
 there is in it a foundation gained for all dogmatic development, 
 the actual existence of an independent Christian common faith. 
 Be its testimony poor, yet it comes out of the living fountain of 
 the heart ; be it only elementary, yet it is the vocation of the 
 age just to lay foundations, on which the process, advancing from 
 what is most general — theoretically viewed, most abstract — to 
 what is more definite, may rest so as to be solid and continuous ; 
 and the entire dogmatic structure may yet be really the free work 
 of the Church, from which the Holy Spirit has never retired. 
 
 We shall view this primitive Church, which may be pre- 
 eminently called the witnessing Church, under the different 
 aspects which belong to our subject. First, we shall adduce all 
 the written documents which have been preserved to our time 
 so far as they are connected with Christology, and thus endea- 
 
96 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 vour to construct for ourselves a complete representation of the 
 dogmatic stand-point of the existing leaders of the youthful 
 community. "We shall, after that, consider the features of the 
 spiritual life which furnish to us keys to the collective Ohristc- 
 logical faith of the Church of this age. 1 
 
 We name, first, Clement of Rome. Judging from his First 
 Epistle to the Corinthians, 2 his characteristic is especially a soul 
 full of harmony and clearness ; and in this respect his epistle 
 has a close resemblance to that to Diognetus. " Let us," he 
 writes, " fasten our regard on the Father and Former of the 
 Universe, and adhere to His excellent and surpassing gifts of 
 peace and benefits. Let us contemplate Him in thought, and 
 behold with the mental eye His long-suffering [gracious] coun- 
 sel. By His command the heavens moved, and in peace are 
 they subject to Him; day and night complete their course 
 ordained by Him, and impede not each other. Sun and moon, 
 and the choirs of stars, evolve their courses according to His 
 command, in unison, without error."* This harmony he sets 
 forth again in detail (c. 20), specifying how therein goodness 
 is manifested towards men. In chap. 53 he resumes this 
 description, and advances to man, thus : " But besides these, He 
 hath with holy and pure hands formed man, the most excellent, 
 by dignity of intellect the loftiest of animals, as an impression 
 of His own image (■^apaKTripa ttj? elicovos eavrov) ; . . . and 
 after He had adorned Himself by His works, He rejoiced. . . . 
 The multitudinous throng of angels stands ready to do His 
 will; and so ought we to be gathered together harmoniously 
 in one (c. 34), and as with one mouth we ought to cry unto 
 Him. . . . But in the world of men there is hatred, envy, 
 pride; it alone does not harmonize in the general chorus of 
 creation." 
 
 But through Christianity, harmony has been restored not 
 only between man and man, but also between man and the rest of 
 the world ; and Clement could remind the Corinthians how they 
 
 1 Baur has, in his work on the Trinity and Incarnation, as good as passed 
 over this inquiry ; and yet it must be viewed as the decisive basis of all 
 further investigation. 
 
 2 Its authenticity may be regarded, in the present state of the inquiry, 
 as settled. 
 
 * [Ep. ad Cor. I. c. 19, 20.— Te.J 
 
CLEMENT OF ROME. 97 
 
 had become, through Christ, called and sanctified. " Holy and 
 honoured, your name is beloved by all men (c. 1). What 
 stranger but must acknowledge your firm faith, rich in virtues ? 
 but must admire your Christian piety, full of discretion and 
 gentleness ? but must praise your abundant hospitality, and 
 joyfully celebrate the perfection and stability of your Christian 
 knowledge ? How you did everything without respect of per- 
 sons, according to God's command; subject to the president, 
 and showing the presbyters fitting honour ; teaching the young 
 moderation and uprightness, women to live in all respects in a 
 blameless, honest, and pure conscience, to love their husbands 
 according to the order of subjection, and to administer their 
 household affairs in all good morality ! (c. 2.) Ye were all of 
 an humble spirit, without self -exaltation; preferring to be subject 
 rather than to rule, to give, than to receive : satisfied with the 
 viaticum which God gives, and pondering His word, you were 
 rich in compassion,* and had His sufferings before your eyes. 
 Thus was a deep and precious peace diffused over all; and along 
 with that, a boundless desire to do good ; and the fulness of the 
 Holy Ghost was poured out on all. And, full of holy purpose, 
 ye stretched out your hands in joyful, trustful confidence to 
 God Almighty, beseeching Him that He would be gracious, if 
 ye had involuntarily committed sin. Day and night ye strove 
 for the united brotherhood, that the whole number of the elect 
 might be saved. Upright were ye, and without deceit, thinking 
 no iniquity against each other. All division and schism was an 
 abomination to you ; ye mourned over the sins of your neigh- 
 bours, their defects ye looked on as your own ; of no good deed 
 did ye repent, ever ready for new good works. Thus adorned 
 by a walk rich in virtues and demanding respect, ye did all 
 things in the fear of God, and His commands were written on 
 the table of your hearts." 
 
 * [The original is 'foripiHatiivot %rt ro7s B , 7r'htt.y%vots, which is rendered in 
 one Latin version, "dilatati eratis in visceribus," ed. Colomesii, Lond. 1687 ; 
 and in another, " intime recondita in visceribus servabatis verba ejus," ed. 
 Dressel, Lips. 1857. Mr Faber translates it thus: "Ye received them 
 into your very breasts and bowels." (Apostol. of Trimtarianism, I. p. 151.) 
 The rendering given by Dorner accords with the first of these ; but seems 
 wholly unauthorized. The verb cripi/lfr/tat, " I embrace, take into my 
 heart," especially with the addition h (nc'h«.y%mi5, conveys very much such 
 a meaning as Mr Faber has given. — Tr.] 
 
 vol. i. a 
 
38 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 Such fruit of a holy, godly life had the Corinthians to thank 
 Christianity for, before the discords which then reft them had 
 sprung up. And since they could return to their first honour- 
 able estate in no other way than by a return to that which had 
 at first produced this change in them, he reproaches them with 
 that from which they had partially fallen, for the sake of 
 humbling them. We thus have an opportunity of learning 
 clearly from Clement what his preaching of Christ contained. 
 It is rather Christ's work, especially His death, than Christ's 
 Person, of which he treats at length in this epistle. 
 
 A glance at the sufferings of Christ consumes pride, teaches 
 us humility, draws us in the death of repentance (c. 7) under 
 His gracious yoke (c. 16), and to follow Him. It is therefore 
 a principal work of the Christian, and a necessary occupation 
 for him, to have Christ's death always before his eyes. 1 His 
 opinion is not simply, that Christ has in dying set us an ex- 
 ample of humility and patience, and has thereby acquired a 
 right to be exalted (comp. Phil. ii. 6) — though this thought 
 also is not foreign to him (c. 16) — but the death of Christ is 
 with him the principle of true operative repentance, i.e., it pro- 
 duces repentance which in faith obtains the remission of sins ; 
 for " His blood has been shed for us, for our salvation ; He has, 
 according to God's will, given His body for our body, His soul 
 for our soul." Every interpretation of this passage is forced 
 which does not recognise in it the idea of substitution, and that 
 as well subjective, Christ's substitutionary design, as objective, 
 the actual fulfilment of that design, and its objective results. 
 There is connected therewith the fact, that with Clement, as in 
 the Ep. to the Hebrews, the name " High-Priest" is frequently 
 applied to Christ. Comp. chap. 36, 58 (ap%t,epeii<; to>v irpocr- 
 <f>opaiv rjfjiwv, irpocnaTr)<;, /3<njdo<}). 
 
 Now, in this there is a recognition not only of Christ's sin- 
 
 1 C. 2. xkI rcii •7ra.6qfia.TU. xiirov jji/ icpi btyQa.'hft.uv iifisav. C 7. aTitilaoifiit 
 g/f to ottficc rov X/wroy xaX fhofiiii, ag sort Tiftiop ru Qsu aJfccc ccyrov, o ri Oici 
 Tqii iifiiTipa.il aarnpia.ii \*.%vth itani ru xiaftqi fitTavoia.; xapiv i/vijvtyx.io. 
 C. 16. o xvptos iipcav 'I. X. ovx, vjh&eii in xofiTry dhx^opslus oi/Se iwcipYi<pa.pi«s, 
 KXttrip ovudfisuof, dhXet TtficitPQtyptiPUP. C. 21. to» xiptop qptaii 'I. X. oJ to 
 uAfia v%ip qftup iho&Yi iPTpccTrZpcep, C. 49. to etifia ctVTOv s<iaxip virip Tifiup 
 i XpurTOS 6 x-vpio; %y.up tp h^vjf.a,Tt &eciv, xetl TW aapxa virip t^; oxokg; ij-cup, 
 
 KOCl T'W T^VftVlP ilTTip TUP ^WfcUP qUOJV. 
 
CLEMENT OF ROME. 99 
 
 lessness, but also of an entirely peculiar relation to the Father. 
 For this One is for the salvation of the whole world (c. 7) ; He 
 is well-pleasing to God in His offering ; it took place according 
 to God's will, and God has received it (c. 49). But He is not 
 simply man as we are. He has, it is true, body and soul 
 (c. 49), which is elsewhere expressed in the one word aap^ ; l 
 but this is only one side of His being: 2 that there belongs to 
 Him also a higher, is certified in the faith that we are reconciled 
 to God in Christ. As respects this latter side, I would not ad- 
 duce the passage in chap. 2 as a proof that Clement calls Christ 
 God : " Giving heed to His (God's) words, ye were rich in 
 compassion, and His sufferings stood before your eyes :" for a 
 mere carelessness of style may be the cause of his placing, as in 
 one series, and as if speaking of one subject, what belongs to 
 God, and what is peculiar to Christ. Still, such an omission of 
 the name of Christ in connection with His sufferings becomes 
 rightly explainable only by the fact, that in his view Christ is 
 approximated to God, and God's work towards men is the 
 doing of Christ. This lies plainly in many passages of the 
 epistle. Thus, near the beginning, it is said in the salutation, 
 after the manner of the Apostles, that we are called and sanc- 
 tified by God through Christ; in two passages, 3 a doxology 
 seems to be addressed to Christ, so that He is therein placed on 
 an equality with the Father ; 4 at any rate, He is included in 
 ( the doxology, and it is even said (c. 59), " Through whom 
 (Jesus Christ) be to God glory, honour, might, majesty, and 
 dominion, for ever and ever." The Apostles have their words 
 from Christ ; Christ has His from God (c. 42). His words 
 all are bound to obey. In Him is the complete revelation, the 
 truth and the gnosis, communicated (e. 35;. He is the first- 
 fruit of those raised from the dead (c. 24), and has a kingdom 
 (c. 50) in which there shall be. no decay or passing away. 
 Already we have great and wondrous blessings even here 
 (c. 35) : an immortal life in us, righteousness, truth with free- 
 dom, faith with confidence. But what no eye hath seen, no 
 ear hath heard, is reserved for those who shall reach the land of 
 
 ' C. 32. 
 
 2 Same plaee : f| ceirov (rov Icexafi) 6 xvpios Tuo-oSf to ««r« napx*- 
 Comp. Rom. ix. 5, i. 3 
 
 3 C. 20 ; 50. * Cwap. e. 32. 
 
100 FIEST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 the godly at the time of the revelation of the kingdom of 
 Christ, because they shall be perfected in love (c. 50). Until 
 then, Christ is the High-Priest of our offerings, 1 who brings 
 our thanks and praise, our offerings before God, and not less 
 conveys the Divine grace to us. For He is our advocate and 
 helper in our weaknesses. 2 " Through Him," exclaims Clement, 
 " we fix our glance on the height of the heavens ; through Him 
 we behold His spotless and lofty countenance as in a mirror ; 
 through Him are the eyes of our heart opened; through Him 
 our ignorant and darkened mind effloresces to His marvellous 
 light ; through Him it is the will of the Lord that we should 
 taste immortal glory, — Him who, being the radiance of the 
 Divine glory, is as much exalted above the angels as He hath 
 obtained a more excellent name than they." 3 In this passage 
 lies not only the affinity of Christ to God, not merely that He 
 is the revealer of God, but also the essential equality of His 
 higher nature with God. From what has been said, light is 
 cast on the difficult expression in c. 16 : " Christ our Lord, the 
 sceptre of the majesty of God." In the term aicfympov, in- 
 deed, one may find the meaning of property, inheritance (as the 
 Heb. t33B> also means ; see Ps. lxxiv. 2), and thence infer that, 
 as in c. 29 and c. 30, Israel is called God's inheritance, so it 
 suits to call the twelve sons of Jacob, who in chap. 31 are 
 mentioned as BaSetcao-KiprTpov, His inheritance, His befitting 
 KXrjpovo/jLia. But the forced character of this is manifest ; and 
 in c. 32 the oitrprrpa are decidedly the tribes (comp. Test. Patri- 
 
 1 C. 36 ; 58. 
 
 2 Same place. This passage assumes Christ's nearness to His people in 
 all their necessities, and His power to help. Comp. Matt, xviii. 20. 
 
 3 C. 86. It is partly from this passage, where Christ is called the asrwu- 
 yxirfia of the Divine majesty, partly on account of the relation of this trea- 
 tise to the Bp. to the Heb. generally, that it is probable that also in the 
 passage above cited (c. 33), under the expression ilx.au 0eo5, whose %a,p«.x- 
 riipx. man bears, we are to understand the Son. The words, c. 36, " Through 
 Him (Christ) we behold His pure and lofty countenance as in a mirror," 
 may be referred to God's countenance ; so that here we have only the con- 
 verse of what we have in Hie second chapter. The passage before us how- 
 ever, shows why, for Clement's Christian intuition, this transition is so easy : 
 Christ is for him the mirror and the radiance of the Divine majesty • in 
 God's image, i.e., Christ, he sees God's countenance (comp. 2 Cor. iii. 18 
 iv. 6). On dirxvyaafi*, wherein effulgence of essence lies, see Bleek on 
 Heb. i. 3. 
 
CLEMENT OF ROME. 101 
 
 arch. IV. 24), which in the BaSeKda-Krjirrpa are viewed as 
 unity. When in this 16th chapter, then, Christ, who accord- 
 ing to the flesh is of them, and thereby honours them (c. 32), 
 is set over against them as the crKfjirTpov of the Divine majesty, 
 the better interpretation is that which regards Him as the true 
 stock, the Son of the Divine majesty simply. Nevertheless this 
 interpretation is not probable, because the antithesis to the 
 &a)$eicdcricr)TrTpov (c. 31) would have been here (c. 16) more ex- 
 tensively enunciated. The connection of the passage before us 
 excludes every interpretation which does not find Christ's 
 supreme power as the leading idea. For Clement is seeking to 
 exhort them to humility by the example of Christ, who, though 
 He might, as the sceptre of the Divine majesty, have come in 
 splendour and power, yet did not so come, but was humble- 
 minded. The sceptre is the symbol of government ; in it rests, 
 and by it is transferred, the royal majesty. In Christ, conse- 
 quently, rests the Divine majesty — that lies in the word ; He 
 is the organ and the personal representation of the Divine im- 
 perial majesty. In the words, " though He was able to have 
 done so" [icahrep Zvvdpmio<f\, compared with Phil. ii. 6, there 
 lies an allusion to His pre-existence, [Clement's belief in] which 
 is evident from another passage, 1 where it is expressly said that 
 in the O. T. Christ had spoken by the Holy Ghost. There is 
 thus room for asking whether the passage in c. 27 2 is not also 
 to be referred to the pre-existent nature of Christ. In the 
 much-canvassed passage, c. 34 [33], something analogous is 
 said of the creation of man, if under the image of God, whose 
 character or impression man bore, Christ in His higher nature 
 is to be understood. 
 
 The Second Epistle shows less peculiarity and another spirit. 
 Though I do not regard it as genuine, but hold it to be later 
 than Clement, yet it bears on it a character of high antiquity, 
 and hence may be here legitimately considered. Its doctrine 
 concerning Christ is somewhat more developed, as already there 
 are Christological opponents to be encountered. "My bre- 
 
 1 C. 22 : rxuTd Si naura. /}t/3aiol % In ~K.punu itlcris. K«< -yap avro; <S;a£ 
 Toy wpgy^aTOc tov ayiov ovru TrpoaKochelrai 9j ( ««f : after which, passages ara 
 quoted from the Psalms. 
 
 2 'Ez* Tioyut rvjs f&£ya.'hatjvi>yi$ u.vrov avvtoryiaecro rol it aura, xoti h'j Tio'yfij 
 oi/i/xt a.i aiiTK xxTxarptipxi. See .Appendix, Note AA. 
 
102 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 thren," says the writer (c. 1), " we must think of Jesus Christ as 
 of God, as of the Judge of the living and the dead ; and not 
 think little of our own salvation. For if our thoughts of Him 
 be low, our expectations also will be little. If we esteem Him 
 lightly, and act as we think, we sin, and are unmindful whence 
 we have been called, and by whom, and to what, and how much 
 Jesus Christ hath endured on our behalf." Their former 
 heathen state is then described; after which he says : "We had 
 no hope of salvation but from Him; He called us when we 
 were not, and willed that we should come out of non-being into 
 being." This is uttered against Judaizing teachers, who would 
 not acknowledge the newness of Christianity, and the dignity 
 of the Person of Christ. Hence, also, in chap. 2 he sets 
 the Church over against the Jewish community, and already 
 hails her as the more fruitful mother of the two. But the 
 author also opposes those who deny the resurrection ; and the 
 representation which the epistle gives of Christ under an escha- 
 tological aspect is especially prominent. " He will appear as 
 God." (Comp. c. 1, 12). Also, in order to prove the worth 
 of man's body, he speaks (c. 9) of the pre-existence of Christ. 
 " Let none of you say that this flesh comes not into judgment, 
 nor rises. . . . Christ our Lord, who hath saved us, was at first 
 spirit (comp. Kom. i. 3 ; 1 Cor. xv. 45-47), and became flesh, 
 and so called us; and so in this flesh we shall receive the 
 reward. 1 
 
 According to ancient testimonies, preserved by Eusebius 
 (Ecc. Hist. IV. 23, III. 16), the epistle which Clement wrote to 
 the Corinthians was long preserved in Corinth, and publicly 
 read in the Church. At the time it was written there appears to 
 have been peace and unity in the Church at Home (comp. also 
 the salutation in the Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans, where 
 he calls this Church well-ordered and ^Krrovofioi). The East 
 presents a totally different picture. Here the desire of know- 
 ledge was from an early period lively, as is shown in the 
 productions as well of the Church as of the heretics ; and here 
 the heretics brought the doctrines of the Churchmen to a 
 quicker development. The half -mythic forms of Simon Magus, 
 Menander, Dositheus, Saturninus, prove, at least, that in the 
 
 1 See Appendix, Note B13. 
 
IGNATIUS. 103 
 
 Syrian regions there were, at an early period, movements con- 
 nected with Gnosticism : Asia Minor, the earliest seat of the 
 higher Christian culture (and especially Ephesus, where even 
 in the first century Cerinthus with his doctrine of the Logos 
 opposed the Apostle John), was at an early period agitated by 
 various partially heretical tendencies: Acts viii. 9 ff. 19; Col. 
 ii. 18-23; 1 Tim. i. 4-9, 20; 2 Tim. ii. 17-23, iii. 7-9, 13, 
 iv. 3 ff. 14; Tit. i. 10-16; 1 John ii. 22 ff., iv. 2, 3; Jude 4, 
 comp. 1 John iii. 4 ; 2 Pet. ii. ; Tgnat. ad Eph. 9, etc. ; as also 
 the appearance of a Cerdo before Marcion, and, at a later 
 period, of Montanism, attests. In Syrian Antioch especially, 
 where Peter and Paul had been,— the town of the heathen 
 Christians, the antipole of Jerusalem in the Acts of the 
 Apostles, the seat of an unusually numerous congregation, rich in 
 men who were well qualified for various offices, the chief staple- 
 place for missionary activity in the primitive Church, — there 
 could not fail to be various tendencies at an early period ; and 
 there was thereby communicated, as well as through means of 
 the heretics, — who seem especially to have been gathered to- 
 gether in this city, — a much stronger occasion for the more 
 rapid development of the Church than elsewhere. Here, at the 
 beginning of the second century, was Ignatius (who, according 
 to ecclesiastical tradition, died in the year 117), a man of re- 
 markable spirit. In him there appeared in the early Church a 
 talent for organization ; full of living sympathy with the pre- 
 sentative element in worship and polity, ardent, eloquent, 
 inspired with enthusiasm for the idea of his life. Excited in 
 many ways from without, — tempted, as he himself says (ad 
 Philad. 7), by errors on the one hand, on the other hand en- 
 riched by the spirit of John, and still more by that of Paul, — he 
 assumed in respect of doctrine a high, nay, the highest place 
 among the Apostolic Fathers : but his soul was bent on the 
 organization of the Church, and to that he devoted all his 
 strength ; so that with him the practical predominates, — nay, it 
 is through his practical bent alone 1 that he has been conducted 
 to a higher view of the nature of Christianity. For as, accord- 
 ing to him, participation in the faith of Christ is a participation 
 ui his theanthropic manifestation, so, in turning his mind with 
 
 1 See Appendix, Note CC. 
 
104 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 special energy to the idea of the Church, there was presented 
 to him, as the problem which the community of believers had 
 to work out, How to set forth an image and a continuance of 
 the Divine-human life of Christ. In the Church, Christ is 
 brought to be eternally present ; it has the power, above all, of 
 setting Him forth in worship, life, and polity, where alone, 
 pneumatically and corporeally, can appear the unity in which 
 the plurality of the believers first realizes its idea. 
 
 Thus there are with him two sides, the Divine and the 
 human, in respect of Christ, and in respect of the Church, His 
 image, alike important ; so much so, that in his view neither is 
 anything without the other. As Christ is one with God, so 
 must the Church be one with Christ (comp. John xvii.) ; and 
 He must dwell in it as His temple (ad Ephes. 9, 15). But in 
 this is implied not only one spirit and mind in undivided hearts, 
 not only the absence of all schism and all strife from amongst 
 them ; but, as in Christ, so in His Church, the evacK must 
 have a spiritual and a bodily side (ad Magn. 1, 13 ; ad Eph. 2 ; 
 ad Polyc. 1, 2). 
 
 It is only thus that the evwcns of <rap% and irvevfia which 
 was in Christ, and in which manhood reaches its truth, can be 
 exhibited ; only thus is Christ in it, the principle of all unity of 
 the Divine and human. This unity is realized only in progres- 
 sive presentations or reflections. As Christ according to the 
 flesh was subjected to the Father, so is the company of the 
 Apostles and the whole Church subjected to Christ, and to the 
 Father, and to the Spirit. Christ is, consequently, again the 
 animating, vivifying principle for the Church as His crdp^. 
 But in the Church itself, also, again is this relation propagated 
 after the original type ; for otherwise there would be a unity 
 of the members with Christ, but not with each other ; there 
 would be only a Trvev/xaTtKrj evwcri<;, whereas this should be also 
 aapKiicrj. Hence there is an office there invested with Divine 
 authority and power, the office of the bishop, who is the 
 teacher, liturgist, and leader of the Church, and whose it is 
 to represent her in her unity in and beyond the worship, to 
 verify and realize her true ideal corporate will, as well as her 
 unity in doctrine. 1 To this bishop the Church again stands 
 
 1 Appendix, Note DD. 
 
IGNATIUS. -105 
 
 related as the human side of Christ does to the Divine ; for he 
 is the source of action in the Church, and the Church has in 
 the willing and thinking of the ideal bishop of Ignatius alone 
 her own innermost sense and volition objectively present, she 
 recognises herself in him according to her unity and truth. 
 The bishop, however, on the other hand, is not to be thought of 
 without his congregation, as Christ is not without the Church 
 (ad Trail. 11 : "The head cannot be born without the mem- 
 bers, since God wills the unity which He Himself is") ; but 
 each side desiderates the other, — the congregation is not actually, 
 but only potentially, a congregation by faith : it becomes actual 
 first by love through the evwais ; and this union in love first be- 
 comes firm, orderly, and general by the Church giving itself to 
 the bishop. On the other hand, the bishop first becomes what he 
 is when he stands in the midst of the congregation as the animat- 
 ing spirit, as the impersonation of the common will of the united 
 congregation. With this view, the latter makes him permanently 
 her bishop, who without her, as she without him, is a latent 
 power. But the truth of both is the union of both; and where 
 this is, there is a representation in pattern of the union of the 
 two natures of Christ, or His relation to the Church in the 
 whole (ad Trail. 11). In both parties, however, Christ lives ; 
 and He, or rather the union which He typically exhibits, is 
 supremely the creative principle, which further and further 
 propagates this union of what is congenial, and brings it about, 
 in all relations, that all bear God and Christ, and exhibit a 
 theanthropic character. Thus a further mirror of this unity 
 is the relation of the bishop to the presbyters (ad Magnes. 6 : 
 "They are fitted to him as the strings to a lyre," ad Eph. 4), 
 and of the latter to the deacons, the relation of marriage (ad 
 Polyc. 5), of the believers to each other (ad Magn. 13) ; and, 
 in fine, it is also reflected from Christians in their individual 
 being (ad Magn. 5), only that the individual being is, according 
 to him, in a state of untruthfulness unless it is at the same 
 time incorporated with the congregation. 
 
 Now, since the theanthropic life-unity of Christ thus pro- 
 pagates itself throughout, it follows that Christ is throughout 
 present, — all Christians are %piaTO(f>6poi, 6eoj>6poi (ad Eph. 
 9, 15 ; and Trail. 3) ; and naturally the bishop must be chiefly 
 so, since he officially represents to each congregation the rela- 
 
106 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 tion of Christ to the Church universal (tvttov ad Magnes. 6). 
 And it is characteristic that he postpones to this presence of the 
 objective Christ in the Episcopate the Gospel itself, i.e., the 
 Scripture (ad Philad. 8, Smyrn. 5, 7), and the Lord's Supper. 
 He, indeed, calls the Gospel crap/co, Xpicrrov (ad Philad. 5, comp. 
 ad Smyrn. 5, 7 : " I flee to the Gospel as to the flesh of Christ, 
 and to the Apostles as to the presbytery of the Church ; " i.e., 
 the Apostles, by which he means, as the context shows, the 
 apostolic writings, are for the Church as a whole what the 
 presbytery is for each congregation) ; and even so the Gospel 
 infers the objective Christ in all times, brings Him nigh to the 
 Church. Further, he also views Christ as present in the Sup- 
 per (ad Smyrn. 7 : " The heretics abstain from the Eucharist 
 and from prayer, because they confess not that the Eucharist is 
 the flesh of our Saviour ;" he calls it " a medicine of immor- 
 tality, an antidote against death, operating so that we live eter- 
 nally in Jesus Christ," ad Ephes. 20). But, 1. He founds little 
 on the Scripture ; and though a collection of Christian writings 
 had begun to be made in archives, and many in his time laid 
 stress thereon (without doubt also with a view of contravening 
 his episcopal idea), he has yet done nothing for the canon ; 
 he shows little confidence in the archives ; and though he recog- 
 nises apostolic writings, he opposes those who betake themselves 
 to these : " An archive to me is Christ ; my incorrupt Biblio- 
 theca is Christ's cross, death, and resurrection " (ad Philad. 8). 1 
 This is not to be taken as if he were indifferent to the historical 
 side of Christ's appearing (o-aplf) ; on the contrary, he lays 
 great stress on this being kept pure for all times. But the 
 more the Church becomes a united historical power, so much 
 the more is there for him in it, in its confirmed organism, an 
 eternalization of the historical side of the appearance of Christ, 
 whilst there is room for a falsification of the apostolic testimony 
 in the Church Bibliotheca. To other forms of this eternaliza- 
 tion, for instance the evcuyyi\iov, he allows weight as auxiliary ; 
 but his ideal, in which all requirements are in his view satisfied, 
 was ever the Church Unity, represented as also acting by a per- 
 
 1 This passage bears the stamp of high antiquity ; it is, however, intelr 
 ligible only in connection with his whole style of thought. On its negative 
 side it has quite the same tone as the well-known word of another aposto- 
 lical father, Papias. 
 
IGNATIUS, 107 
 
 sonality filled with God. To this he ever reverts also, 2. with 
 respect to the Lord's Supper. For the many places where he 
 speaks of it (ad Eph. 5 ; ad Trail. 8 ; ad Eom. 7 ; ad Philad. 
 Introduction ; ad Smyrn. 7, 8, where he likewise treats of bap- 
 tism) show that the high value he set on it arose from his 
 regarding it as the means and organ of Christ, whereby He 
 communicates the spirit of unity to His people, makes His 
 Divine-human life to be the life of the Church, nay, partly, and 
 this almost especially, because he regarded the Eucharist as the 
 most flourishing representation of the unity and love of the 
 Church, as the altar (dvaiacrTijpiov) on which the Church, 
 acting in the bishop, and represented as Unity, presents the 
 offering of its praise and thanksgiving, — with Christ, and under 
 Him enters together into a Divine-human unity ; as one body 
 with many members by one Spirit. 
 
 The same is clear from the free use which Ignatius allows 
 himself of the words " flesh and blood of Christ," but which 
 from his point of view is quite natural. See ad Trail. 8 ; Horn. 
 7 ; Magn. 1 ; Philad. 1, 5 ; Smyrn. 1, 7, comp. 6. The aaol; 
 of Christ, he says, is Faith, and the alfia is Love ; both in 
 their unity, Faith and Love, are the All (ad Eph. 9, 14). Both, 
 <rap^ and alfia, stand inseparably united. Since, looking at the 
 subject from another point, he conjoins crapi; and Trvev/xa, one 
 must presume that between the alfia and irvev/xa he found a 
 close relation. His thought is this : — The flesh (crap!-) of 
 Christ, i.e., His objective and historical manifestation, corre- 
 sponds to Faith (for it begets this in all the various forms in 
 which it can be presented), but the blood of Christ answers to 
 Love. He does not mean by this that the soul or inner being 
 of Faith is Love, but he rather compares Love with the blood of 
 Christ because it circulates as the common life's blood in the 
 veins of the Church. But the expression has, moreover, a defi- 
 nite relation to the death of Christ. It is a favourite thought 
 of Ignatius, that Christ's death draws us into fellowship with 
 Him, and likewise is continued in mankind. With him the 
 death of Christ is the principle of Love in the world, because it 
 draws all to death, in order that all may rise again as new crea- 
 tures actuated by love. Now, of this Love-principle we become 
 partakers only by means of the Supper ; there are we drawn 
 into His dying love ; there His love becomes our love. And 
 
108 FIRST PEEIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 thus Christ's blood, primarily that shed on the cross, afterwards 
 no less that which is present in the Supper, is the objective 
 principle which founds love, as Christ's historical appearance in 
 the general founds faith. Naturally, to him as to Paul, this is 
 furnished by Christ's death in combination with His resurrec- 
 tion. The love which Christ's death operates, however, is pre- 
 sented by him under two phenomenal forms : on the one hand, 
 that which tends to unity, and is represented continuously in the 
 worship as in the constitution of the Church ; on the other hand, 
 as the sentiment of substitutionary love which Christ awakens 
 in His own. In the latter he shows himself thoroughly of the Jo- 
 hannine school (comp. Euseb. H. E. iii. 23 : "I will give account 
 to Christ for you. I will give my soul for yours," says John to 
 the fallen youth). Not only was the union of the crap!; and 
 irvevpa, constituting the Person of Christ, typically and as a crea- 
 tive principle of like unity in the world, ectypically represented 
 in the Church, but also His office, especially His substitutionary 
 love. The death of Christ on the cross is, indeed, the principel 
 of this substitution for men ; but there remains for Christians 
 also a substitution, though only in the sense that in this conti- 
 nuous offering of love for others, the self-offering love of Christ 
 is continued (ad Eph. 18, 21, 8 ; Smyrn. 10, 13 ; Polyc. 6). He 
 calls himself wyviapa, irepv^qpa, avTiifni^pv, for the Christians. 
 What has been said may suffice to indicate the fundamental 
 idea of Ignatius. Only from this can we arrive at a just 
 understanding of what he says concerning the Person of Christ. 
 For, as we find it, he has constructed his view of the Person of 
 Christ precisely so as throughout to subject it to the practical 
 thought, that the idea of the Church is to carry forward the 
 Person and work of Christ as His continuous living copy ; and 
 that in such a way as that He ever abides immanent in it as the 
 uniting principle of the Divine and the human. 
 
 This also is, by consequence, with him, the fundamental con- 
 cept for the Person of Christ ; in Him is the eVwcri? of the aapi; 
 and -rrvevpxi absolutely complete. " He was conceived by the 
 Virgin Mary according to the counsel of God, of the seed of 
 David and of the Holy Ghost" (ad Eph. 18). "In Him is 
 the awcrt? crap/cbs km irvevpaTo*} (Magn. 1, 14, 15 ; Eph. 7 ; 
 Smyrn. 1, 3) ; He is the Lord, who is truly of the lineage of 
 David according to the flesh, but the Son of God according to 
 
IGNATIUS. 109 
 
 the will and power of God ; born really of a virgin ; baptized 
 by John, that He might fulfil all righteousness ; really crucified 
 under Pontius Pilate in the flesh ; to whose fruits we belong.* 
 He hath lifted up a standard for all times, by His death and 
 resurrection, for the unity of the Church (Smyrn. 1). He is 
 the new leaven (Magn. 10), the new man, the Son of man 
 and Son of God" (Eph. 20). With this definite distinction of 
 the o-api; and the irveu^a in Christ, of the human and Divine 
 sides, he links himself closely to the Apostle Paul (Rom. i. 3, 4, 
 ix. 5). It is likewise quite Pauline when he describes Christ as 
 born only in respect of His humanity (comp. also Gal. iv. 4), 
 whilst His higher nature is called vlos Qeov (hence ryevv7]rb<} 
 /cat ar/evvr]To<;, Eph. 7). God has manifested Himself in a 
 human form in Christ (Eph. 19; comp. 1 Tim. iii. 16) ; hence 
 he calls Him also 0eo? (Eph. 1, 15 ; iv aapicl ryevo/xevo? ©eo?, 
 ib. vii. 18 ; Rom. init. 3), which can be regarded only as the 
 more indefinite expression of what wo; 6eov is to him. For 
 he says (Smyrn. 3), Christ is our true, inseparable (Eph. 3 ; 
 Magn. 15), immortal life (Eph. 7, 19, 20) : "Three mysteries 
 have been prepared in the silence of God, and remained hidden 
 to the prince of this world, — the virginity of Mary, the birth 
 of Christ, and His death. . . . All the bands of the wicked 
 were dispersed, ignorance was abolished, the old kingdom upset, 
 when God appeared in human form to bring a new eternal life 
 to light" 1 (Eph. 19). According to his fundamental view, 
 however, the union of the irvevjia and the crap% in Christ must 
 
 * [" Zu dessen Friichten gehoren wir." The words of Ignatius are, 
 dip' ol x.K.pmv fast;, from whose fruit are we; i.e., as Pearson explains it, 
 from Him crucified, as the fruit of the tree on -which He hung, are we,= 
 we are members of the Crucified. The whole sentence reads thus : " From 
 ■which [or whose] fruit are we by His divinely -blessed passion, that He might 
 rear a standard [a rallying-point, aioBYificw'] for ever, by His resurrection, 
 for His saints and believing ones, whether among the Jews or the Gentiles, 
 in the one body of His Church." — Te.] 
 
 1 What this passage further says concerning the star of the Magi could 
 have been so set forth only before the formation of the canon, and after 
 the more sober representation of Matthew. [The passage is as follows: 
 " A star shone in the heavens beyond all that were before it, and its light 
 was unspeakable, and its novelty caused surprise in all who saw it. All 
 the rest of the stars, along with the sun and moon, became a company 
 (xopos) to the star, but it excelled them all in brightness ; and men were 
 troubled to account for this novel phenomenon.."— Tr.] 
 
110 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 be regarded by him as one not to be dissolved through all 
 eternity, since it must be every moment the living principle of 
 the unity of God and man in the world. This he expresses 
 (Magn. 15 ; Smyrn. 3) : " I know and believe Him to be in the 
 flesh even after His resurrection" (comp. Eph. 11 ; Philad. 9). 
 Not less, in fine, does he, with Paul, go back to the time before 
 His earthly appearance. The denial of the one or the other 
 side of the Divine-human being of Christ, rendered it necessary 
 to make the one objected to an object of more definite thought 
 than before ; and though Ignatius still abides by generals, and 
 only expresses in the gross the integrity of the two sides in their 
 difference, — the union of which is also the principle of Chris- 
 tianity, — yet the more precise fixing of both sides has already 
 constructed a sort of confession of faith for him (Eph. 7, 17 ; 
 Mag. 9, 11 ; Trail. 9 ; Smyrn. 1). As respects the human side, 
 lie concerns himself not with the special parts of the human 
 nature, but with the confutation of the denial of a human life 
 of Christ at all, the denial of the leading facts of the history of 
 Christ, in which His course of life is represented. Already 
 had opposition directed itself against three essential elements of 
 His human life, — against the birth of the Son of God by a 
 woman, against His sufferings, and against His resurrection. 
 On the affirmation of these three elements as historical facts, 
 Ignatius establishes the humanity of Christ, without, however, 
 attempting to determine what goes to the concept of the truly 
 human. Of these three, again, it is the two latter on which he 
 lays the principal stress, as well for the refutation of the heretics 
 as for the establishment of Christianity (comp. Magnes. 9 ; 
 Trail. 10; Smyrn. 1, 2, 7), on account of their relation to 
 Christ's work, and because the immediate life-unity of the 
 Divine and human had not reached its idea until it was tho- 
 roughly perfected by death and the abolition of the same. On 
 this point it was that his zeal was chiefly excited. Thus he 
 says (Trail. 9, comp. 10 ff.) : " Stop your ears when any man 
 says aught against Christ, who was truly born, truly crucified 
 and dead, truly raised from the dead by the Father. But if 
 any godless persons, i.e., unbelievers, say that He suffered only 
 in appearance, they themselves having only an apparent being, 
 why am I in bonds 1 why do I desire to contend with the wild 
 beasts ? I should thus die without reason, and lie against the 
 
IGNATIUS 111 
 
 Lord. Wherefore shun the wicked parasitic weeds, which 
 produce deadly fruits. He that eats thereof dies, for they are 
 not plants which the Father hath planted. Had they been so, 
 they would have appeared as shoots springing from the cross, 
 and would have been imperishable." Likewise, Smyrn. 2-7 : 
 " They who turn the sufferings and resurrection of Christ into 
 an appearance, are themselves bodiless. Beware of them, as of 
 beasts in human shape ; only pray for them, that haply they 
 may repent. Though their conversion is difficult, yet is it 
 possible, through Christ our true life. If Christ has only 
 apparently existed, my bonds are in vain. But near the beasts 
 and in bonds, I am near God." The heretics teach otherwise 
 than Ignatius and the Smyrnseans know. "They will not be 
 convinced by Moses, the Prophets, the Gospel itself : but he 
 who believes not in it, is partaker in the guilt of His death. 
 They loved the martyrs, but deny that Christ was in the flesh : 
 he that believes not this, has utterly denied Him, and bears 
 death in himself." He could mention names, but will not, 
 until they are converted to the suffering which is our resurrec- 
 tion.* " They are not to be spoken of privately or publicly ; 
 but regard is to be paid to the Prophets, and especially the 
 Gospel, wherein the suffering is depicted, and according to 
 which the resurrection of Christ is accomplished." Since he 
 has confessed that the mystery of Christianity consists not in 
 that there is a Divine and a human, but solely in the union of 
 the two, he is necessarily led to say, that whosoever denies that 
 Christ came in the flesh has wholly denied Him, i.e., affirmed 
 that there is no Christ ; and these heretics are, consequently, 
 only in appearance Christians, in reality unbelievers. The 
 same would naturally be the case with those who denied the 
 Divine side. The only thing that is remarkable here is, that 
 after the first glance he speaks no more of such ; besides these 
 Doketse (who probably were also Jews), he directs his strictures 
 only against the 'IovSa'i<Tfib<} of holding the Sabbath-laws, and 
 the like. Magnes. 10 : " Not Christianity believes in Judaism, 
 but Judaism in Christianity. It is inconsistent to call Jesus 
 the Christ and to Judaize (as if the Messiah had not come)." 
 
 * [M&XP<S ov ftiTUvaiicroaiv tl; to xceftof S farm tifiav di/aarairi;, " i.e., donee 
 resipiscant, et Christum reapse mortuum esse et e mortuis resurrexisse 
 credant." Dressel. — Tk.] 
 
112 FIRST PEEIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 Eather is Christianity a new leaven : " Put away from you the 
 bad leaven, which has become old and sour, and be changed 
 into the new, which is Jesus Christ." But the letter to the 
 Magnesians speaks of some who acknowledged in Christ only 
 the Teacher. " He is our Teacher," says Ignatius (Magn. 9), 
 " but He alone is ; and so little is He merely one of the teachers, 
 like Moses and the Prophets, that, on the contrary, He superin- 
 tends them as their Teacher. They were His disciples, and 
 waited on Him in spirit as their Teacher. Therefore did He, 
 when He came, awaken them from the dead " (Matt, xxvii. 52). 
 " If we live still according to the Jewish law, we acknowledge 
 thereby that we have not yet received grace " (Magn. 8). We 
 see here, also, how the Christian spirit, by an inner necessity, 
 tends to fall back upon the pre-existence of Christ. The historical 
 dependence of Christianity on Judaism impeaches the indepen- 
 dence and newness of the former. If it be dependent, it has 
 no peculiar principle. How then can the Church seek to differ 
 from the Synagogue? In this way it soon comes to be brought 
 out that the Christian principle is not posited by Judaism, but 
 Judaism by that principle which is older than it, which as Divine 
 truth is eternal. And since the Christian principle is personally 
 given in God's Son, who has been already definitely discrimi- 
 nated on the human side, the expression thereof comes to be 
 this : As there is one God, so also in all revelation there is one 
 Revealer, His Son, by whom also the Old Testament was 
 given. " He is the Door to the Father, through which Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob, and the Prophets, and the Apostles, and the 
 Church enter. This one Revealer, the Son of God, is His 
 eternal Word, not, as Jewish errors and myths teach, sprung 
 from silence. 1 Before the Aeons was He with the Father, and 
 appeared at the end (Philad. 9 ; Magnes. 6). He, timeless, 
 viewless, is for us visible ; impalpable, impassable, for us suf- 
 fering" (Polyc. 3). Among the New Testament writings, it is 
 in the Epistle to the Hebrews that we find this way of deve- 
 loping the pre-existence of the Son of God out of the Christian 
 faith most clearly maintained. Nevertheless, though Ignatius 
 speaks of the Logos after the manner of John (John i. 1 ff . ; 
 1 John i. 1 ; Apoc. xix. 14) only in two places (Smyrn. Introd. 
 
 1 See Appendix, Note EE. 
 
BARNABAS. 113 
 
 and Magnes. 8, comp. Eph. 15), it cannot be denied that, 
 besides the decided influence upon him of Paul, there was also 
 an influence from John affecting him; especially, there are 
 found in him so many allusions to passages that belong to 
 Johannine tradition. 
 
 How much the mode of thought of Ignatius is spontaneous, 
 bears out and out a character of originality, and announces a 
 significant transition-point in the primitive Christian Church, — 
 at the apex of which there is presented in him a peculiarly 
 gifted and powerful mind, — is apparent, still further, particularly 
 from his relation to the expectation of the speedy coming of 
 Christ. By him this is greatly thrown into the background. 
 The very characteristic reason will be announced afterwards. 
 The sincerity of his Christian piety, the fervour of his love to 
 Christ, opened for him also a higher understanding of the 
 nature of Christianity. " It is pleasant," says he in his letter 
 to the Romans, " to set to the world in God, that I may 
 again rise to Him. In the wild beasts I shall find my grave , 
 I will be an offering of God. Suffer me, hinder not my death; 
 were I there, I should have light and be a man of God. Suffer 
 me to imitate the passion of my God. My Love is crucified ; 
 there is no fire in me desiring earthly fuel : that which lives 
 and speaks within me says, Home to the Father!" Above all, 
 it is especially the death of Christ in which his love and con- 
 templation is absorbed. Christ's sacrifice is with him a world- 
 sacrifice ; on His offering, things in heaven, and on earth, and 
 under the earth looked (Trail. 9). It is to him the altar where 
 the flame of love is kindled in mankind. In the innermost 
 heart of humanity he would have the objective history of Christ 
 received ; as Christ-bearer, humanity ought to copy Him, not 
 merely in individuals, but in an organic being in which He ever 
 renders Himself present. 
 
 By Barnabas also are his Christological positions drawn from 
 Christ's works, among which His death is to him of chief mo- 
 ment. His line of remark is determined by the antagonism, 
 not of Doketism, nor of Gnosticism, — to neither of which is 
 there any allusion in his epistle, — but of Judaism, and that 
 too in a practical form. By setting forth the meaning of His 
 death, he attempts to raise Judaism above itself; and in so 
 doing, resorts, as does. Ignatius, to the assertion of the now 
 vol. i. n 
 
114 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 revealed principle, that Christ is the creative principle also of 
 Judaism, or the assertion of the pre-existence of the Son of 
 God. The doctrine of Christ's second advent, however, is 
 much more'strongly presented than by Ignatius ; his eschatology 
 is more complete ; and the significance of the historical appear- 
 ance of Christ is concluded by him to be found, not merely in 
 reconciliation by His death, but also in the announcement of 
 eschatological hopes. 1 
 
 " It is a sin and accumulation of guilt," says he, " to assert 
 that the old covenant is binding also on Christians. Christians 
 should labour to attain deeper knowledge, so as to understand 
 the difference. Christ has indeed instituted a law ; but it is a 
 new one, without the yoke of constraint. The tables of Moses 
 are broken, that the love of Jesus may be sealed in our hearts. 2 
 Sacrifice and circumcision are abolished ; their meaning was not 
 outward: a broken heart is the sacrifice with which God is pleased, 
 and his is the circumcision of the heart and the ear (c. 4, 9). 
 The true temple (c. 16, 4) are men in whom God dwells; the 
 true place of promise is Jesus (c. 6), who is manifested in the 
 flesh." As, however, he does not deny the Divine origin of 
 the Old Testament, the question arises, how so much that is 
 imperfect and transitory could be ordained by God. This 
 reconciliation of the Old and New Testaments he holds to be 
 the special problem of the gnosis. For himself, he takes refuge 
 in the antedating of the New Testament in the time of the Old, 
 and in partly regarding the Old Testament saints as alreadv 
 looking on the Son, and thus, by believing anticipation, living 
 under the New Testament, partly by means of allegorizing inter- 
 pretations, reading the New Testament in the Old, as its deeper 
 and indeed only meaning. 3 Christianity itself, however, he 
 
 1 The author abides much niore than Ignatius by individual Chris- 
 tianity; and as the idea of a continuance of the Divine-human life of 
 Christ, of which the Church is to be the image, is quite foreign to him, so 
 he approximates, in the general, rather to the Petrine model of doctrine 
 than to the Pauline or the Johannine. With thoughts borrowed from 
 Peter, he opposes Judaism within Christianity. 
 
 2 C. 4. The Judaists, consequently, to whom he refers, are deficient in 
 gnosis ; and the writer exhorts, without indicating any abuse in this direc- 
 tion, not to rest content with vurris, '!»» finoi riis irlariu; v/auu tiKiim 
 expire x.a.1 ryu yvuttii). 
 
 3 Comp, c. 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 17, 
 
BARNABAS. ]15 
 
 thus describes : " Christ worked that we might obtain another 
 type — might become in soul as children; He transforms us. 
 The last formation, however, must be as the first : a holy temple 
 for the Lord shall the hpuse of our heart be ; though the 
 dominion over the world, which man has, shall be complete 
 only in the future! (c. 6). How can God dwell in us? By 
 His word that calls to faith, through His call to promise. He 
 Himself predicts, He Himself dwells in us^ opening the door 
 of the temple, which we are, i.e., the mouth ; granting us re- 
 pentance, He carries us into the everlasting temple (by which 
 he understands the inner man, to which also he ascribes self- 
 legislation and self-counsel, c. 21). This new man the forgive- 
 ness of sins begets (c. 6) ; to which holy baptism brings us 
 (c. 11). All our salvation we owe to Christ; He gives eternal 
 life, through the tree, His cross (c. 11). He has given His 
 body, that through the forgiveness :of. sins we might be sancti- 
 fied, i.e., through sprinkling with His blood (c. 5). The Son 
 of God, the Lord and future Judge of living and dead, could 
 not suffer except on our account, 3 — in order, that is, that His 
 wounds might procure salvation for us. For our sins, Christ 
 presented the vessel of the spirit as an offering" (c. 7). He 
 refers Isa. liii. to Christ's substitutionary death. As the per- 
 ception of the necessity of a forgiveness of sins conducted him 
 beyond the mere prophetic office of Christ, and in His high- 
 priestly office presented to him also a higher representation of 
 His Person, so, on the other hand, the death of Christ receives 
 a higher significancy from the dignity of His Person. " The 
 Son of God," says he, " could not suffer, save on our behalf " 
 (c. 7). His death has a special value, because He is Lord of 
 the world, to whom God said, op. the day before the comple- 
 tion of the world, Let Us make man. From Him had the 
 prophets their gifts, and they prophesied of Him; but it 
 was not till later that He manifested Himself as the Son of 
 God. All is in Him, and of Him (c. 12) : He is the Son of 
 
 1 The Judaists could not be familiar with the relation of the death of 
 Christ to the forgiveness of sins ; they would regard it as a martyrdom 
 which He endured through the sin of the Jews. In his opposition to them, 
 Barnabas delights to present this latter aspect of Christ's death, so as to make 
 it part of His design to complete the sins of the Jews, the murderers of the 
 prophets, and so to bring the ko'iuii. 
 
116 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 David and the Son of God ; hence also David's Lord, having 
 all things under His feet. Him, who hath redeemed thee from 
 death, shalt thou glorify" (c. 19). The incarnation, on the 
 contrary, is in itself, according to his view, not an element of 
 independent significance : so far is he from viewing it as the 
 culminating point of the manifestation, that he says, " Had He 
 not come in the flesh, how could we men, seeing Him, have 
 remained unscathed 1 For even the sun, which is one day to 
 cease to be, and is His work, is such that we cannot look on in 
 the brightness of its radiance." 1 High as is the representation 
 here given of the majesty of the incarnation of the Son of God, 
 it is, nevertheless, rather as a veiling than as a revealing that this 
 is viewed. And it is in the death of Christ that he sees the 
 manifestation of Divine love, as in His miracles that of Divine 
 power ; and finds in His discourses and His resurrection the 
 announcement, that He shall effect the resurrection, and act the 
 part of Judge. 2 
 
 Among the Apostolic Fathers, Polycarp of Smyrna also 
 deserves consideration, — the more that, from the high respect in 
 which he was held in Asia Minor, and from his long and dis- 
 tinguished service, he may be regarded as the representative of 
 a large circle. 3 In the salutation of his epistle he wishes 
 " mercy and peace from God Almighty, and the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, our Saviour" (comp. c. 12). "He is our Saviour; for 
 we are justified by grace, not by works (c. 1 ; Eph. ii. 8, 9). 
 He has for our sins submitted even unto death, has become a ser- 
 vant of all (c. 5) ; and by His death for us is our hope, and the 
 surety of our justification (c. 8, 9). His death begets love to 
 Him (c. 9, 3), awakens the desire to glorify Him, whilst we 
 tread in the footsteps of His suffering (c. 8, 9). This honour 
 from us is due to Him, for God hath also raised Him from the 
 dead, given Him glory and a seat at His right hand (c. 1, 2, 12); 
 
 'C. 5. 
 
 2 To this belongs his view of the great world-Sabbath, and the world- 
 days or world-ages thereto corresponding (c. 15). And here his opposition 
 to Judaism comes out in the fact, that it is not the seventh but the eighth 
 day, consequently the one corresponding to the Christian Sabbath, that he 
 says will be the beginning of another world ; a world in which there is no 
 wront;. where all is new, where we, made holy, shall sanctify for the first 
 time the whole day. 
 
 3 See Appendix, Note FF. 
 
POLYCAEP. 117 
 
 to Him all things are subjected in heaven and on earth ; Him 
 every living thing worships ; He is coming as Judge of the 
 living and the dead (c. 2, 6). The worst sin is unbelief in 
 Him ; His blood has been shed for the unbelieving ; for those, 
 to whom the Son of God, Christ Jesus, the eternal High 
 Priest (c. 12), does not bring the forgiveness of sins, which His 
 death procured, is His death a source of condemnation. The 
 incarnation is spoken of by him, after the manner of John, as 
 e'Xeucrt? tov Kvpiov f)jj,S)V (c. 6), eXeucrt? iv (rapid (c. 7). What 
 forms unbelief had assumed within the Church at the date of 
 this epistle, are shown by the passage (c. 7) : " Withdraw from 
 those who bear the name of the Lord in hypocrisy, and seduce 
 vain men. For whosoever confesses not that Jesus Christ is 
 come in the flesh is an Antichrist , and whosoever acknowledges 
 not the martyrdom of the cross is of the devil ; and whosoever 
 accommodates the Xo^ta tov Kvpiov (here, probably, as with 
 Papias, the history and sayings of the Lord) to his own lusts, 
 and says there is neither resurrection nor judgment, is the first- 
 born of Satan." 1 "The faith delivered unto us is the mother 
 of us all ; her eldest daughter is Love, her second, Hope (c. 3). 
 If we walk according to the Lord's truth, and are well-pleasing 
 to Him in this world, we shall obtain the world to come, as He 
 hath promised to us to raise us from the dead ; and if we walk 
 worthy of Him, we shall also reign with Him (c. 5). Ye 
 believe in Him, though ye see Him not ; and, believing, ye 
 rejoice with the joy unspeakable and full of glory, into which 
 many long to enter." 
 
 It is evident from these quotations how strictly and word 
 for word applicable to Polycarp, in this epistle, is the testimony 
 of Irenseus (Adv. Haer. iii. 3 ; Euseb. E. H. iv. 14), that he 
 11 ever taught what he had learned from the Apostles, and what 
 the Church still delivers;" to which also, as Irenssus, himself 
 a Minor-Asian, says, all the Churches of Asia and Polycarp's 
 successors bear witness. He himself was called in his lifetime 
 the Teacher and Father of Asia ; daily were his earnest prayers 
 
 1 Irenseus also, adv. Haer. iii. 3, adduces this concluding phraseology 
 as what was peculiar to Polycarp ; also, the conclusion of the fragment of 
 the letter to Florinus shows the same form of thought, which has undeni- 
 ably a Johannine hue. The word fiapripioi/, moreover, so used, is from the 
 Johannine sphere of speech. 
 
118 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 presented to God for the peace and rest of the churches 
 throughout the world ; and it would appear that he laboured 
 also by means of great journeys, especially to Rome, to promote 
 the unity and purity of the Christian doctrine. 1 
 
 In Asia Minor we find, during the two first thirds of the 
 second century, the prevalence in general of the liveliest Chris- 
 tian life. This district had been long cultured by two of the 
 most distinguished of the Apostles, Paul and John ; and both 
 had left deep traces of their spirit behind them. Christianity 
 had here struck its roots most firmly at an early period ; here 
 we find the first traces of a living endeavour to establish the 
 Church ; here it can be proved (Euseb. E. H. v. 25) that as 
 early as the beginning of the second century there were bishops. 
 Polycrates in Ephesus, who, when he wrote to Victor, had been 
 sixty-five years a Christian, and who, from among the seven 
 bishops who were his relations, mentions several whose successor 
 he was at Ephesus, evidently had no other arrangement than 
 an episcopal one in his mind ; and he even calls John a lepevs 
 who bore the priestly badge.* Here was the earliest combina- 
 tion of churches, with the earliest synods. Here also, in the 
 region of dogmatics, was the greatest movement of minds. 
 Asia Minor is the birth-place both of Marcionitism and Mon- 
 tanism. Both of these, however, which began to excite 
 attention about the year 150, were preceded by preparatory 
 appearances, of which we need mention here only Marcion's 
 teacher, Cerdo, and the prophets and prophetesses who even 
 before Montanus were known in Asia Minor to Christian anti- 
 quity (Euseb. E. H. iii. 37 ; v. 25). But, still further back, 
 the letters of Ignatius are a proof that at the earliest period 
 Hellenism and Judaism were at war here with each other, 
 within the Church; and already the excommunication of 
 Cerinthus, and the abhorrence with which the memory of his 
 Ebionism was held in the Church, must satisfy us that in 
 Asia Minor Ebionism cannot have been prevalent or domi- 
 nant, not even before Montanism or Marcionitism. On the 
 other hand, the First Epistle of John, which was known to 
 both Papias and Polycarp, shows knowledge of Doketse; but 
 
 1 Iren. iii. 3. See Appendix, Note GG. 
 
 * ["Oj eya/yDy !epii>; to ott«^o» iretyopixa;. On this singular statement, 
 see the learned note of Le Moyne in his Varia Sacra, vol. II. p. 25. — Te.] 
 
DIONYSIUS. 119 
 
 from such these teachers knew themselves to be essentially 
 separated. 
 
 If now we turn to cast a glance on Greece, we not only find 
 Dionysius in Corinth about the middle of the second century, 
 •whose epistles Eusebius was acquainted with, and for whose 
 orthodoxy he vouches, but we know also even more precisely 
 that he held the epistle of Clement in high esteem, and used it 
 in his church, — nay, that, according to ancient custom, it was 
 read there from time to time (Euseb. iv. 23). Eusebius has, 
 further, preserved to us a trait of him, which is a proof to us 
 how far he was from Judaistic leanings. Pinytos, bishop in 
 Cnossos, laid great stress on celibacy; and opinions allied to 
 Montanism were strongly prevalent there at that time. There 
 was no intention in this to fall back to what was Jewish : on 
 the contrary, there was rather a belief that the Church had 
 lived long enough on milk (i.e., without a severe asceticism) ; 
 and that now at length was the time of its maturity, when the 
 Church must enter on a higher and more perfect career. Now 
 from this Dionysius kept himself ; as also he did not approve of 
 extreme severity against those who had fallen (Euseb. iv. 23). 
 This affords us a glimpse into the spirit of the Christian Church 
 before the middle of the second century, inasmuch as the 
 friends of a severe asceticism and a new legalism did not appeal 
 to Christian antiquity as on their side, but, on the contrary, 
 felt that they were in opposition to it, and sought to introduce 
 a new and more perfect form ; by which, however, they were 
 so far from wishing to coalesce with Judaism or Ebionitism, 
 that they failed to perceive how with their high perfection they 
 had only fallen back to the legal stand-point, the Jewish prin- 
 ciple. We have thus listened to an accordant testimony, though 
 with different measures of knowledge, against righteousness by 
 works, from the lips of Clement, Ignatius, Barnabas, and 
 Poly carp. 
 
 Take along with this what Dionysius further says of this early 
 period of the Church, as lying nearest to him. In his letter 
 to the Athenians, fragments of which have been preserved to us 
 by Eusebius, he reminds them not only of Dionysius the Areo- 
 pagite, but also, that after the martyrdom of Publius (whose death 
 must have happened at the time of that of Ignatius), Quadratus 
 obtained the bishopric of Athens, and quickened anew their faith. 
 
120 FIKST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 Bat Quadratus delivered to Hadrian an apology for the Chris- 
 tians in the year 20 of the second century, which Eusebius had 
 read, and of which he says, that it affords illustrious proofs 
 of the genius and apostolic orthodoxy of the man. He was 
 esteemed in the second century as a man full of the Holy 
 Ghost. 1 In his apology he has referred to the miracles of the 
 Lord, which he contrasted with the pretended cures of his own 
 time : " Some," says he, " of those healed by our Saviour 
 (<r<0Tr)p) have survived to our time." At the same time Aristides, 
 "a faithful man, and zealous for our religion," gave to his 
 contemporaries a similar apology, which also Eusebius knew. 
 Both of these were taken by Justin Martyr as his model soon 
 after (Euseb. E. H. iv. 3). Both are especially worthy of 
 notice, as they were highly cultivated men. Like Justin, who 
 came later, Quadratus calls Christianity a philosophy, and even 
 as a Christian wears the philosopher's cloak. Thus we have, 
 at the very time when Gnosticism began to be powerful, a 
 tendency within the Church itself to combine Christianity with 
 the Hellenic philosophy, without thereby becoming Gnostic. 
 It would be interesting to know whether they are the first who 
 combined the Hellenic doctrine of the Logos with Christianity. 
 But their writings are not extant ; and all that is certain is, that 
 Justin, in whose apology (about A.D. 139) the Hellenic doctrine 
 of the Logos plays an important and already familiar part, made 
 use of both as his models. The way also in which Justin uses 
 the doctrine of the Logos, shows strikingly that he does not 
 introduce it as a novelty, but regards it as something already 
 naturalized in the Church, as even Zeller (1. c. p. 60 ff.) is 
 impartial enough fully to acknowledge. 
 
 There are still two. men whom we must notice here, Agrippa 
 Castor, and Aristo (Aristion, according to Maximus, Comment, 
 in c. 1 Pseudo-Dionys. Areop. de myst. theol.) of Pella. The 
 former (Hieronym. de viris illust. 21) was an opponent of 
 Basilides, and, according to Eusebius (H. E. iv. 7), lived in 
 the time of Saturninus in Antioch, and of Basilides in Egypt. 
 We still possess two fragments from him, both directed against 
 the Gnostics (Eus. iv. 7 ; Hieron. 1. c). Eusebius ranks him 
 among the ecclesiastical men who, chiefly on grounds of reason 
 
 1 Comp. Eouth, Eelig. Sac. I. 74. See Appendix, Note HH. 
 
AGRIPPA CASTOR AND ARISTO. 121 
 
 (XoyiKcorepov), contended for the apostolic and ecclesiastical 
 faith, and left to posterity in their writings prophylactic aids 
 against that heresy. With his work, which could not thus bear 
 an Ebionitic character, Eusebius was acquainted. Aristo like- 
 wise flourished under Hadrian and his successor ; and of him 
 Origen (c. Oels. iv. 52), Eusebius (E. H. iv. 6), and Jerome 
 (Coram, ad Gal. iii. 13) make mention. His writing, entitled, 
 " Disputation between Papiscus and Jason," was known to the 
 philosopher Celsus ; and Origen testifies of it (1. c.) that it was 
 ably executed, and that the part of the Jew, who disputes with 
 the Christian, is well sustained. He proves particularly the 
 divinity of Christianity from the Old Testament, and especially 
 the Deity of the Son ; and though he was a Jewish Christian, 1 
 he not only held the pre-existence of the higher nature of Christ, 
 but also ascribes, as in the Proverbs, a share in the creation of 
 the world to this higher nature, which he calls the Son of God. 2 
 He seems also to have defended the propitiatory death of Christ 
 against the Jews. 3 
 
 Aristo conducts naturally to the Jewish- Christian tendency, 
 which, so long as there were no Gentile Christians in Jeru- 
 salem (i.e. till about A.D. 130, Eus. H. E. iv. 5), found in this 
 city a centre, along with the keeping up of Jewish nationalism. 
 But after the second war of extermination against the Jews, 
 Jewish nationalism was broken up, and retained no longer any 
 place within the Christian Church. Even in Jerusalem, after 
 this begins the series of Gentile bishops. The principle of 
 Judaism, indeed — its legalism, and what arose out of that — was 
 not thereby annihilated ; but this arose from its being not purely 
 a Jewish element, but rather a principle of as general a signi- 
 ficancy as paganism, and into which mankind is ever prone to 
 sink as a religious malady. Hence, even from an early period, 
 may be seen a legalistic tendency among Gentile Christians, 
 especially among the Romans ; which furnishes no proof of the 
 prevalence of a Judaic Christianity in the Gentile world. At 
 the same time, it must be admitted, that up to Hadrian's time 
 the legalistic tendency, wherever it showed itself in Christianity, 
 had always a certain dependence on the Jewish-Christian com- 
 
 1 As appears from his doctrine concerning the seven heavens ; comp. 
 Maximus 1. c. and Test. Patriarch, iii. 
 
 2 Appendix, Note II. 3 Appendix, Note JJ 
 
122 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 munity at Jerusalem. "We shall now consider the monuments 
 which have been handed down to us, either of the Jewish- 
 Christian tendency itself, or of the tendencies within Gentile 
 Christianity which stood principally related to it. We may 
 class these, in the general, under the name of attempts to make 
 good the unity of the New Testament with the Old. Here we 
 have to notice the Shepherd of Hermas, Papias, and Hegesippus. 
 — In passing, we shall cast a glance on the ancient Christian 
 eschatology and its course of development, with the relative 
 apocryphal and other writings, as well as the apocryphal gospels 
 hereto appertaining. But as it will be seen by this investiga- 
 tion that even within this tendency there was an advance, 
 which succeeded in clothing all the elements that went to con- 
 stitute the Hellenic-Christian doctrine of the Logos in an Old 
 Testament form, though in a different order ; so, in fine, the 
 Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs shows us how this tendency 
 advanced from the royal office of Christ to His priestly, and 
 thereby began to construe conception ally the innermost vital 
 point of Christianity, and to lay a basis for the Deity of Christ 
 which excluded all danger of a relapse on the part of this ten- 
 dency into what was Judaic and Ebionitic. With this, more- 
 over, was the inner union of the realistic with the more Hellenic 
 or idealistic tendency, as respects the work no less than the 
 Person of Christ, completed, as the succeeding flourishing epoch 
 within the Church shows. The former tendency, issuing from 
 eschatological considerations, goes back to the beginning ; the 
 eschatologic Christ is pre-existent, is the Creator- Word, is the 
 Wisdom. Conversely, the second, the Hellenistic, setting out 
 from the eternal reason, advances to the Creator- Word, and 
 combines more and more its ideal principle with the real, and 
 especially with the history of the Person of Christ. For both 
 tendencies, however, the union of the ideal and real aspects of 
 this Person is effected, and the dangers threatening both Doket- 
 ism and Ebionitism overcome, only after the necessary historical 
 manifestation of the Eternal* in the Person of Christ, and 
 conversely the eternal significancy of the historical in Christ, 
 begins to be recognised ; and this is effected by the propitiatory 
 work of Christ being viewed as the centre-point of His work 
 
 * [Das nothwendige Geschichtlichwerden des Ewigen.] 
 
HERMAS. 123 
 
 on earth, whilst the opposite views, which rest satisfied with His 
 kingly and prophetic functions, are excluded. 1 We now pass 
 on to particulars. 
 
 If Clement of Eome appears as a disciple of Paul, Ignatius, 
 with Polycarp and the author of the Epistle to Diognetus, as of 
 the Johannine and Pauline school, and Barnabas as most allied 
 to that of Peter, the Shepherd of Hermas may be viewed as 
 approaching nearest to the style of James, 2 though belonging 
 to a later age. 3 
 
 According to it, Christianity is the true law, but implanted 
 in the hearts of those who have believed (Simil. viii. 1—8). By 
 means of this law, the Son of God is preached to all the ends 
 of the earth. To despise Him, to deny the name which is called 
 upon us, to become an apostate from and a betrayer of the 
 Church, is deadly sin. By such persons the seal (of baptism) 
 is dissolved ; they are dead to God, and they never come to 
 repentance (Sim. viii. 6). Next to them stand those who intro- 
 duce vain doctrines : yet for such repentance is possible ; but 
 if they do not repent, they perish. Vides igitur in pcenitentia 
 peccantium inesse vitam : non agentium vero pcenitentiam mor- 
 tem paratam. Now penitence, which he seems to have viewed 
 in part as a good work (Vis. 2), is viewed by him, on the other 
 hand, also as a gift of God (Sim. viii. 6) : it is bestowed on those 
 whom God foresees to be sincere and of a true heart. Penitence, 
 however, with him' becomes a Christian characteristic through 
 connection with baptism ; and by a severe penitential discipline, 
 which gathers around baptism as its centre, and a severe doctrine, 
 on the other hand, as to the necessity of baptism, he seeks to 
 unite inseparably the two, baptism and penitence. No penitence, 
 no righteousness even, that is without baptism, saves from death ; 
 but if baptism do not constitute a point of conversion for any, 
 there is no repentance afterwards, and consequently no salvation 
 (Simil. ix. 13, 15 ; Vis. ii. 2, iii. 7 ; Mand. iv. 3). " The Church 
 is the Tower, built upon the water (of baptism) ; your life is 
 
 1 Appendix, Note KK. 
 
 3 Comp. Jas. v. 16 with Vis. ii. 1, iii. 1 ; Jas. v. 1 ff. with Vis. iii. 6, 
 Simil. i. and ii., ix. 20 ; Jas. iv. 5 with Mand. v. 3 ; Jas. iv. 7 with Mand. 
 vii. ; Jas. i. 6-8 with Mand. ix. ; Jas. i. 5 with Mand. ii. ; Jas. iv. 12 with 
 Mand. xii. 6. 
 
 8 Appendix, Note LL. 
 
124 FIRST PEEIOD. FIRST EPOCH 
 
 saved by water. For it is founded by the word of the almighty 
 and glorious name ; it is upheld by the invisible power of God " 
 (Vis. iii. 1 ff.). The Church is imaged by him as an aged 
 woman (Vis. ii.), because she is the first formed of all, and for 
 her sake has the world been made. In the Church is the renewal 
 of the spirit (Vis. iii. 8) by the Holy Ghost, who dwells in them 
 that believe (Mand. v. 1, 3 ; Mand. x. 12). 
 
 But in what relation does the Church stand to Christ? By 
 the glorious name (pf), whose word formed it, is to be under- 
 stood the Son of God (in Vis. iii. 3 He is called verbum omni- 
 potentis et honorifici nominis, invisibilis virtus Dei, and is 
 referred to in connection with baptism), who is consequently so 
 designated as God in the Bevelation. Hermas does not see 
 (Simil. 9) the Son of God Himself, which is also a proof that 
 he regarded Him as a superhuman being ; but He appeared to 
 him as a spirit in the form of the Church (ix. 1 : Ille enim 
 spiritus, qui loquutus est tecum in effigie ecclesise F : 'ius Dei 
 est). It is only by especial strengthening from abo u that he 
 is enabled to bear even the intelligence that it is the Son of God 
 who has appeared to him in this form. This has sometimes 
 been understood as if Hermas identified the Son with the Holy 
 Spirit; but he knows also other spirits, nay spiritus sanctos, 
 besides the Holy Spirit (e. gr. Sim. ix. 13 : hac virgines, inquit, 
 spiritus sancti sunt. Mand. v. 1). If Hermas, indeed, calls the 
 higher element in Christ only Holy Spirit, he cannot have seen 
 in Christ anything beyond humanity filled and perfected by the 
 Holy Spirit. But it would be more correct to say that the Holy 
 Spirit is not presented distinctly by him, as the Son of God is. 
 The virgins, who clothe those who are to go in through the door 
 in white raiment, he calls holy spirits (spiritus sanctos), collec- 
 tively spiritus (Sim. ix. 13 ; comp. Vis. iii. 8) ; and, in fact, the 
 virtues which these virgins represent, are, according to Mand. v. 1, 
 viewed as effects of the Holy Spirit (comp. Sim. v. 7). But of 
 these it is also said (Sim. ix. 13) that they are the powers of the 
 Son of God. " He that bears the name of the Son of God 
 must bear their names also, for the Son also bears their names." 
 There is thus the appearance of teaching that the Holy Ghost 
 is retracted into the Person of Christ, and is not discriminated 
 from Him ; but there is not the slightest ground for the opinion 
 (asserted by Baur and others), that by Hermas the Holy Ghost 
 
HERMAS. 125 
 
 is set forth in the place of the Son. Eather does the matter 
 stand thus : The Son of God is, according to Hernias, also a 
 "spiritus ;" an assertion which has nothing dubious about it, for 
 John [Jesus] calls God also a spirit, and Paul says, " The Lord 
 is that Spirit" (2 Cor. iii. 17, 18 ; comp. also Rom. i. 4) ; and 
 yet both distinguish the Son and 'the Holy Ghost ; and so does 
 the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews distinguish the Holy 
 Ghost and the Trvevpara. The appellation "spirit" is certainly 
 a very indefinite designation ; but on that very account is it 
 wrong to identify every spiritus sanctus with the Holy Ghost of 
 the Trinity, or to believe that the distinction between Son and 
 Spirit is thereby excluded. Hermas himself does not adhere to 
 this appellation : in the only instance in which he calls the Son 
 a spirit without a figure (Sim. ix. 1 : Hie spiritus, qui tecum 
 locutus est, Films Dei est), there follows the closer description, 
 " this Spirit is the Son of God," and Christ's common designa- 
 tion by Hermas is Films Dei. See this repeatedly in the same 
 Simil. ix. Hence it remains to ask, 1. In what relation does 
 the Son, according to Hermas, stand to the Father" Is He 
 hypostatically distinguished from Him, and that before His in- 
 carnation, or only, according to the Ebionitic view, after that ? 
 And if the former, in what relation does He stand to the other 
 spirits, — above them, or beside them, or under them ? 2. In what 
 relation does he place the Holy Ghost to the Father and the 
 Son ? Has he only one Holy Spirit who is identical with the 
 Filius, hypostatically distinguished from the Father; and is, 
 consequently, the Holy Ghost of the Trinity by him retracted 
 into the hypostasis of the Son, of whom also it is predicated that 
 He is a Spiritus ; or is the Spiritus, termed Sanctus collaterally 
 with the Spiritus who is Filius Dei, presented as a distinct 
 hypostasis by Himself ? 
 
 As respects the former of these questions, the Son of God 
 is by Hermas definitely and hypostatically distinguished from 
 the Father, and there are ascribed to Him the predicates of the 
 Old Testament Wisdom. By the word of the Son of God has 
 the Church been founded, which is one spirit and one body, and 
 of one colour (Sim. ix. 13). He has redeemed it by His suffer- 
 ings, and is therefore exalted by God (Sim. v. 6). He is thus, 
 of course, distinguished from the Father, and that as one who 
 has suffered and been rewarded ; whereby a patripassian view 
 
126 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 is excluded. But at the same time the Ebionitic distinction of 
 the Son of God from the Father is not that of Hermas. This 
 is most clearly attested by the mention of His sufferings for the 
 taking away of our sins ; and still further by what Hermas 
 teaches concerning the pre-existence of the Son of God. Pre- 
 vious to His incarnation He is represented as distinct from the 
 Father, and as exalted above the sphere of other beings. The 
 same who founded the Church, is with the Father the Creator 
 of the world. It is said of Him (Sim. ix. 12), that He is anti- 
 quior omni creatura ; in consilio patri suo adf uit ad condendam 
 creaturam ; ] 4. totus orbis . . . omnis Dei creatura susten- 
 tatur ab eo. It is, however, worth while to consider more closely 
 the ninth Similitude, in order to see whether he whom, notwith- 
 standing his singularities, some would make the representative 
 of the apostolic Fathers, may be adduced as a witness for the 
 alleged Ebionism of the early Church. In this Hermas sees a 
 huge white rock rising up out of the middle of an extensive, 
 plain, encompassed by twelve hills. The rock is higher than 
 these hills, and such that it can bear the whole globe. " It- 
 appeared to me to be ancient, but it had a new door, that seemed 
 newly cut out, and whence came a lustre brighter than that of 
 the sun (comp. Barnab. 5) ; and at the door stood the twelve 
 virgins" (c. 2). The meaning is this (c. 12) : This rock and 
 the door is the Son of God. " Wherefore," asks Hermas of his 
 conductor, " is the rock old, and the door new 1 " " Because," 
 is the reply, " the Son of God is indeed older than any creature, 
 so that He was in the counsel of His Father at the creation of 
 the world ; but the door is new because He hath appeared in 
 the world in the latter days, 1 that they who desire salvation may 
 through Him enter into the kingdom of God." "He that 
 enters not by the door, i.e. believes not on the Son of God who 
 hath appeared, and is baptized into Him, so that thenceforward 
 he bears His name (that is, the nomen honorificum), cannot enter 
 into the kingdom of God" (same place). "On the rock and 
 on the door," he continues (c. 14), "the tower (the Church) is 
 
 1 I regard the reading, -which has also the authority of MSS., of apparuit 
 for apparebit to be the right one, from its connection with what follows. 
 According to Hermas, there is an entering into the kingdom of God, before 
 the second advent of Christ, through baptism and conversion ; and it is of 
 this he is speaking in the context. 
 
HERMAS. 127 
 
 built, because the rock and the door is the Son of God, whose 
 name is great and infinite ; and the whole earth, every creature 
 of God, especially those who bear His name with all their heart, 
 are sustained by Him. He consequently is their foundation, 
 and sustains them willingly." 1 That Hermas regarded this pre- 
 existent Son of God, exalted above all creatures, as distinct from 
 God, and yet as on an equality with God, is expressly declared 
 by him thus : " The Lord hath sworn by His Son, him that 
 denieth the Son and Himself, They also shall deny in the days 
 to come." 2 
 
 That Hermas, then, in his doctrine concerning the Son of 
 God, followed an Ebionitic mode of thinking, is an utterly ground- 
 less hypothesis, at which no one can arrive who does not ignore 
 the passages adduced. 3 However it may be with the doctrine 
 of the Trinity in Hermas, his Christology recognises in the 
 Saviour a real hypostasis, distinct from the Father, Divine, which 
 was present at the creation of the world and took part therein, 
 whose name is great and infinite, and by whom the world is 
 sustained. This very Divine nature has appeared in Christ ; He 
 Himself will judge the world. 4 From such a union of the pre- 
 existing Filius Dei with the man Jesus, who is also Filius Dei, 
 because He "plurimum laboravit, plurimumque perpessus est, ut 
 aboleret delicta eorum" (Sim. v. 6), it cannot be doubted that 
 Hermas saw in Christ the incarnation of his pre-existent Filius 
 Dei : the only thing admitting of question is, whether, according 
 to him, this Divine being, which in himself and in Christ is per- 
 sona], had only a theophany in Him, i.e. a body without a 
 human soul (as Baur assumes), or whether the union with Him 
 was an abiding one. In the former case, Hermas would not (as 
 Baur thinks) deserve to be reckoned among the Ebionites, but 
 evidently rather among the Doketse ; for it was not in the Divine 
 but in the human that there was in this case a shortcoming. 
 But this is not in itself probable ; for the human part of Christ, 
 
 1 Appendix, Note MM. 
 
 2 Vis. ii. 2. By this passage they are doubly confuted who find Judaism 
 in Hermas. If the Lord here swears His highest oath by His Son, then is 
 His Son also His other self, and hence the term, putting them on an 
 equality, "They." In the beginning of this chapter also, compared with 
 the close, it appears that the Son is called Gloria Dei. 
 
 8 Appendix, Note NN. * Appendix, Note 00. 
 
128 FIEST PEEIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 which in tli3 fifth Similitude is called corpus (ahpi-1), is in Sim. 
 ix. 6, 12 designated "Vir." 1 
 
 But it is more easy to settle the question concerning the 
 Ebionitism of Hennas, than to determine with security what 
 answer to give to the second of the above questions, namely, 
 whether the Holy Ghost is represented by him as definitely and 
 hypostatically distinct from the Father. On this point it is the 
 fifth Similitude that comes principally to be considered. 
 
 There is so much difficulty about this Similitude, the text of 
 which is partially corrupt, that all we can say with certainty is, 
 that as in Similitude ix. the Son of God is distinguished from 
 God, so in this God and the Holy Ghost are distinctly intro- 
 duced separately ; whilst, on the other hand, the relation of the 
 Son to the Spirit remains obscure, because the Similitude has to 
 do, not with the pre-existent Son of God, but with His state of 
 humiliation, and with the Sonship of Christ only as it was a 
 reward conferred on the suffering humanity of Christ. If on 
 this account this Similitude cannot, from its place, give a satis- 
 factory answer to the question how the Holy Ghost is related 
 to the Son, who " antiquior est omni creatura," or in general to 
 the Divine nature of Jesus ; so neither has any one the right 
 to draw conclusions from it against the presence of this Filius 
 Dei in Christ, and to hold what is said in the passage concern- 
 ing the union of the Holy Ghost with Jesus for the sum of 
 Hermas' s doctrine of the incarnation ; nor can the relation of 
 the hypostasis of the Son to the Holy Ghost be unfolded with 
 certainty from the passage. Against the former we have the 
 decisive fact, that in that case Hermas would contradict himself ; 
 for in Similitude ninth he would enunciate the Church doctrine 
 concerning the pre-existent Son of God, and in Similitude fifth 
 would speak only of an infusion of the Holy Ghost into the 
 humanity of Christ. It has been proposed to restore the balance 
 here by supposing that in Similitude fifth the subject of discourse 
 is an incarnation of the Holy Ghost. But this cannot be main- 
 tained, because it would involve the unsuitable notion that the 
 Holy Ghost counselled with the Father concerning His body or 
 human nature, and the reward thereof ; besides, since according 
 to Hermas the Holy Ghost dwells in all Christians, it would be 
 
 1 Appendix, Note PP. 
 
HERMAS. 129 
 
 inconceivable how in that case Christ should have obtained the 
 pre-eminent position elsewhere assigned to Him by this writer. 
 In fine, it must in this case have been naturally expected that 
 here or elsewhere Hermas should have said, that by the Divine 
 which is both the ancient rock and the new door, i.e. the Divine 
 which became man in Christ, is to be understood, not the Son 
 of God, but the Holy Ghost. 1 On the other hand, the explana- 
 tion, according to which the passage is understood as touching 
 upon the relation of the incarnate Son of God to the Holy 
 Ghost, is not without harshness; still, as it alone harmonizes 
 with Sim. ix., nay, since it alone makes Sim. v. consistent with 
 itself, we feel constrained to give it the preference. We now 
 pass on to the Similitude itself. 
 
 It must be well considered, before everything, that the proper 
 object of this Similitude is not Christology ; and hence we are 
 not to expect to find here the author's doctrine concerning Christ 
 in a connected and complete form. The proper object is Fasting 
 (Sim. V. 2) and its true idea ; what is dogmatical, and particu- 
 larly what is Christological, comes into consideration for the 
 most part only casually, and as something conceived for another 
 end, and fully intelligible only from it ; consequently, the Simili- 
 tude, already complete, can receive a Christological meaning 
 only as something supplementary, and by an artificial turn. A 
 man, so runs the Similitude, entrusted his vineyard to his most 
 faithful and approved slave, and promised him freedom if he 
 would, during his absence, bind the clusters to the stakes. The 
 faithful slave not only did this, but more besides, and had the 
 vineyard in the best condition. When the master came, he was 
 pleased, and called the Son, who was dear to him and his heir, 
 along with his friends, to consult. He told what the slave had 
 done, and they rejoiced with him. Then he made known his 
 purpose : I have, said he, promised freedom to the slave if he 
 
 1 In place of this, we find the converse ; for Hermas says expressly, that 
 what in the Similitude he has called the Son of the Lord is not the Son of 
 God, but the Son of God is Christ ; only figuratively, or, in the Similitude, 
 he calls that the Son of the Lord of the vineyard, which properly is called 
 the Holy Ghost. Beuter (Eepert. E. P. 1845, iii. p. 213) thinks that we 
 must admit a contradiction on the part of Hermas. For the rest, he repudi- 
 ates as a prejudice the opinion that Hermas identifies the Son and Holy 
 Spirit (p. 214). 
 
 VOL. I. 1 
 
130 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH 
 
 followed my command ; but he has done more, and filled me with 
 much joy. Therefore will I make him joint-heir with my son. 
 This pleased the son and the friends. Immediately thereupon 
 the householder sent from his own table costly viands to the 
 slave, who took only what was enough for him, and divided. the 
 rest among his fellow-slaves, to the great delight of the latter, 
 who wished he might come still more into favour with the 
 master since he acted so towards them. On hearing this, the 
 householder again summoned his son and friends, and announced 
 to them what had occurred, which made them still more approve 
 of his making the slave joint-heir with his son. 
 
 The meaning is this : First keep the commands of God ; then 
 add thereto some good beyond what God has required : so shalt 
 thou acquire the greater merit, and be honoured by God. If 
 thou keep the commandments, art pure in heart and mouth, 
 and fastest so as to give to the poor, then is thy fasting good, 
 an offering well-pleasing to God (c. 3). 
 
 As a supplement to this interpretation, there is another 
 which seems to have been a sort of after-thought, arising out 
 of the remembrance that the self-sacrificing love of Christ 
 presents the most perfect doctrine respecting the true fast. 
 According to this, then, the Lord of the vineyard is God ; the 
 servant is the Son of God, who has done and suffered much to 
 take away the sins of men, — consequently, Jesus Christ. But if 
 by the servant in the Similitude we are to understand the Son 
 of God, who is the son of the householder ? This cannot be the 
 Son of God, Christ ; for the Father takes counsel with him 
 respecting the servant, i.e. Christ, who, according to other 
 passages, as according to the interpretation of Sim. v., is the 
 Son of God in a peculiar sense, on account of the pre-existent 
 Son of God in Him ; and to make Him in any sense enter into 
 consultation about Himself would be incongruous. There 
 remained, therefore, nothing else than to assign the remaining 
 part in the Similitude to the Holy Ghost, already known to 
 every one by the baptismal formula. 1 It is certainly unusual 
 to apply to the Holy Ghost the title of Son ; but He is called 
 
 1 Orbem terrarum fundus ille significat qui in Similitudinem est positus. 
 Dominus autem fundi demonstrator is qui creavit cuncta et consummavit et 
 virtutem illis dedit. Filius autem, Spiritus Sanctus est. Servus vero ille 
 Filius Dei est. C. 5. 
 
HERMAS, 131 
 
 Son of the Father in the Similitude, whilst in the interpretation, 
 consequently, properly speaking, it is the servant who is the 
 Son of God. 1 And that even in the Similitude this discourse 
 contained what was unusual in his time, is acknowledged to 
 superfluity by Hermas himself, who seeks to guard against 
 the misunderstanding into which moderns also have fallen. 2 
 "Why," he asks, " is the Son of God in this Similitude put 
 down in the place of a servant, since He is the Son of God, and 
 consequently, in the more correct interpretation of the Simili- 
 tude, behoves to be the Son of the Householder, that is, of God ; 
 whilst in the Similitude the Holy Ghost appears as the Son with 
 whom the Father takes counsel concerning His proper Son, 
 Christ 1" " He is not placed in the rank of a servant," is the 
 reply, " but in great power and majesty ; for over those whom 
 God hath given to His Son hath He placed presidents to protect 
 them individually," as the servant in the Similitude binds the 
 clusters to the stakes. " But He Himself hath toiled and suffered 
 much to take away their sins. — After the taking away of their 
 sins, He hath showed to them the ways of life, inasmuch as He 
 gave to them the law which He had received of the Father. 
 Seest thou, now, that He is Lord of the people, and hath re- 
 ceived all power from the Father?" (c. 6). So far is Hermas 
 from Ebionism, so contrary is this to his time, that he rather seeks 
 in part to retract the representation of the Son as a servant in 
 the Similitude, and even to represent His earthly work as power 
 and majesty ; whilst what remains of His humiliation, such as 
 His sufferings, he treats as the work of His free love, as the 
 means of the taking away of our sins, and as the point of passage 
 to a higher perfection. Such exaltation, indeed, cannot be 
 conferred on the pre-existent Son of God, in Himself ; but it 
 may be on humanity forming with Him one life-unity. On 
 this the conclusion reflects ; and this point gives then occasion a 
 
 ' Baur, 1. c. p. 134, interchanges what is similitude and what interpre- 
 tation of the similitude, when in the place, loosely considered, he finds proof 
 that Hermas recognises only one Son of God, the Holy Ghost; whereas, 
 conversely, as in the Similitude the son of the householder and his servant 
 are distinguished, so in the interpretation are the Holy Spirit and the Son 
 of God. 
 
 2 With which, however, we ought not to have met, after George Bull's 
 setting forth of the distinction. 
 
132 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 second time to settle the arrears, and thus to show wherein the 
 connection between the Holy Ghost (called in the Similitude 
 the son of the householder) and the servant who is the Son 
 of God consists ; a connection which must be presupposed when 
 the Holy Ghost is brought into council by the Father regarding 
 the Son in the form of a servant, nay, when the Holy Ghost 
 has in the Similitude the name which, strictly taken, even upon 
 earth belongs to Christ, unless the latter has, in assuming the 
 form of a servant, wholly laid aside His Divine Sonship. We 
 shall consider both these points. 
 
 The former, the exaltation of Christ, relates, according to 
 Hennas, to the body ; for so he designates Christ's humanity : 
 so that it cannot be understood of the pre-existent Son of God 
 in Christ, but only of that part of Him which was capable of 
 exaltation. Of the body, and of it alone, he says that He stands 
 to the Holy Ghost in a relation of subordination, and in that of 
 a servant ; but also, since He always obeyed the Holy Ghost, 
 used His body righteously and purely, never defiled it, never 
 was subject to it, that body, though it went forth subject to 
 weakness and like a servant, was yet, through union with the 
 Holy Ghost, evinced to be mighty and well-pleasing to God. 
 " This powerful course, therefore, pleased God, because He 
 (Christ) was without spot on the earth, since He possessed in 
 Himself the Holy Spirit in counsel." 1 "Hence he (the House- 
 holder) summoned the son and the good angels to him, that also 
 to this body, which has served the Spirit without complaint, 
 might be given some place of abiding, that he might not seem 
 to have lost the reward of his servitude." 2 The Holy Ghost is 
 thus summoned by the Father as a witness and judge, along with 
 Himself, of the holy walk of the body of Jesus ; only to this 
 does the humiliation relate, and the elevation for reward. — As 
 
 1 Placuit igitur Deo hujusmodi potens cursus, quia maculatus non esset 
 in terra, possidens in se Spiritum Sanctum in consilio. Since the word 
 used is not maculatum, it cannot be referred to "corpus" in what goes 
 before ; nor can it to " cursus," since to that the words " possidens," etc., 
 would not fit : consequently it must be understood of Christ, in whom the 
 Holy Ghost is thus a co-counsellor (Sim. v. 6). 
 
 2 Ut et huic scilicet corpori, quod servivit Spiritui Sancto sine querela, 
 locus aliquis eonsUtendi daretur, ne videretur mercedem servitutis suae per- 
 didisse. This place has a clear reference to that Doketism which separates 
 the Son of God from the body in death, and so gives up the body itself. 
 
HERMAS. 133 
 
 respects the second point, the union between the Holy Ghost 
 and Christ, it is clear from what goes before that Hermas can- 
 not intend to say, as Baur thinks, that the human body filled 
 with the Holy Ghost is Christ ; for, as we have seen, the Holy 
 Spirit is by him distinguished from the Son of God, and hence 
 he must also, as he sees in Christ an appearance of the Son of 
 God, have left a place for Him also in Christ (Simil. ix. 14 ; 
 note 4, p. 127). To this also other things point. For in one 
 place he says that Christ hath possessed the Holy Ghost in 
 Himself as co-counsellor (Sim. v. 6, possidens in se Spiritum 
 Sanctum in consilio). "As He was co-counsellor in Christ's 
 walk, so it is proper that He should be also joint-judge of the 
 worth of His walk." But still more : " The Holy Ghost stands 
 also from the beginning in the closest relation to the body (the 
 humanity) of the Son of God, but not so as that He has appointed 
 that body. He becomes (it is said) co-counsellor, in the Simili- 
 tude, concerning Christ's manhood, because he is co-worker of 
 the same according to its designed propriety for the indwelling 
 of God." "The revealer of God," who is also called in the Old 
 Testament sense, as by Justin, airoaTokos, the Nuncius, i.e. the 
 Maleach kwt itjoxtfv (as in Vis. iii. 1, the majestic name ; per- 
 haps also in Vis. ii. 1, the gloria Dei), "hears that Holy Spirit 
 which has been infused first of all into that body in which God 
 should dwell." x Here the dwelling of God as the end and object 
 is distinguished from that whereby it was prepared : the pre- 
 paration is ascribed to the Holy Ghost ; the indwelling of God 
 
 1 Nuncius audit ilium Spiritum Sanctum qui infusus est omnium primus 
 in corpore in quo habitaret Deus (Sim. v. 6). The passage is probably cor- 
 rupt. Baur makes no attempt to explain it. A good sense, however, is 
 obtained if by nuncius be understood the Filius Dei, as Gieseler also sug- 
 gests. Comp. Sim. ix. 1 ; Mand. v. 2 ; Sim. viii. 3 ; which passages clearly 
 show how variously Hermas uses the term Nuncius, and what a high sig- 
 nificance it has with him, since in Sim. ix. 1 it is also used of the Son of 
 God, who, according to ix. 12, 6, stands in the middle of the six highest 
 nuncii, excelsus, higher than the tower, the Church itself. Now this Nun- 
 cius *. i. draws the Holy Ghost into counsel and aid in reference to the body 
 in which God should dwell. The aid which He receives from the Holy 
 Ghost is in the preparation of the body of Christ for the indwelling of God, 
 i.e. of the Son of God. [In Dressel's edition of the Pastor, the correct 
 reading of the passage above cited is given from the Palatine Codex, thus : 
 " Spiritui illi sancto qui creatus est omnium purus in corpore, in quo habi- 
 taret, Deus fundavit atque statuit electum corpus quod ei placuit." — Tr.] 
 
1 34 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 itself must consequently be ascribed to the revealer, or the Son 
 of God. Kather by far than say that the indwelling God is 
 here described as the Holy Ghost (in which case the " first of 
 all " and the " should inhabit " would be meaningless), one might 
 mark it as a defect here, that a moment seems to be supposed in 
 which the body of Christ existed, and was consecrated by the 
 inpouring of the Holy Ghost, while as yet the indwelling of 
 the Son had not taken place. But this also is relieved in the 
 principal matter by the connection. The Holy Ghost is poured 
 in by the revealer ; the latter has, by the inpouring of the 
 Holy Ghost, Himself made the preparation for His indwelling, 
 i.e. made the humanity capable of, and strong enough for, His 
 indwelling (Sim. ix. 1), — consequently, in the operation of the 
 Holy Ghost, established the first element of His indwelling in 
 the man, of His incarnation, Himself. 1 Similarly, also, else 
 where (Sim. ix. 13) the Son of God is designated as He who 
 goeth forth by the power of the Holy Ghost. All this has been 
 admirably presented, 2 thus : The Holy Ghost is in the Similitude 
 the one drawn into counsel with the Householder, because He is, 
 first, the ground of the possibility of the dwelling of God in 
 man ; secondly, the norm to which man has to be faithful ; and, 
 thirdly, the measure of security for the fulfilling of this norm. 3 
 Putting all together, it appears that Hermas represents the 
 absoluteness of Christianity in the pre-existence and eternal 
 post-existence of that subject which is the personal bearer of 
 Christianity, the Son of God ; and treats the connection into 
 which He entered through the co-working of the Holy Ghost 
 as an indissoluble one. According to him, He is higher than the 
 whole Church, higher than the highest angels, and, as He took 
 part in the creation of the world, so is He the Founder of the 
 Church ; and this not simply as Lawgiver, but primarily as the 
 bringer of the remission of sins to those who repent. By His 
 sufferings He hath taken away sins ; and holy baptism in His 
 
 1 This is the meaning of the passage in the larger text, ■which is probably 
 taken simply from the Greek : Collocavit enim eum (sc. Spiritum Sanctum) 
 Intellectus in corpore, ut ei videbatur. As the revealer or Son of God is 
 above (Sim. ix. 12) identified with the Wisdom of the Proverbs, so is He 
 here called Intellectus (see Fabric. Cod. Pseudepig. V. T. p. 1154-55). 
 
 2 By Wolff in the Zeitschr. fur Luth. Theol. 1842. 
 8 See Appendix, Note QQ. 
 
PAPIAS. 135 
 
 name assumes the forgiveness of the sins of those who hence- 
 forward walk in the new law which He hath introduced into the 
 world, and who defile not the Holy Ghost whom Christ sends 
 (Sim. ix. 13). However little he has sought to reconcile these 
 Christological positions with the Unity of God, which he so 
 strongly asserts (Mand. 7), he nevertheless has the former no 
 less than the latter. Of that which was characteristic of hereti- 
 cal Judaism, namely, the rejection of the ablution of sins by the 
 sufferings of Christ, and the retention of only His prophetic and 
 royal office, we find no trace in him, but the very opposite. And 
 it is only in the roundabout way formerly noticed (Appendix, 
 Note LL) that he, in the same way as Montanism, falls back 
 into Judaizing, not in reference to the Person of Christ, but 
 rather in the relation of justification to sanctification. Some- 
 thing analogous is found where no imputation of Ebionism can 
 be made ; as, for instance, in the case of Cyprian, and in the 
 Catholic Church. It especially, however, deserves to be noticed, 
 that from the way in which the supernatural in Christianity is 
 with him concentrated especially in baptism, the foundation 
 is laid for giving a magical aspect to this act ; and in this an 
 entrance was given to a similar treatment of the laying on of 
 hands in ordination. In the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies both 
 are still more strongly set forth, as well as the Pelagian element 
 which always goes by the side of the magical. 
 
 The realistic tendency of Hermas is shared, in somewhat 
 different ways, on the one hand by Papias, and on the other by 
 Hegesippus. 
 
 Papias, according to Irenseus, adv. Haer. v. 33, was the 
 hearer of John and the friend of Polycarp ; but Eusebius 
 (H. E. hi. 39), who in this case is especially critical, and had 
 before him five books of Papias (entitled e^j/yiyo-t? XcytW 
 Kvpia/c&v), found no hint of intercourse on his part with the 
 Apostle John : and on this, had it happened, Papias would 
 certainly not have been silent. Papias, however, collected with 
 care the information which the disciples of the different Apostles 
 were able to give him concerning their doctrines ; nay, he even 
 knew two men who seem to have been disciples of the Lord 
 Himself. His high antiquity is evident from his relation to the 
 Christian writings. Besides the first Epistle of John and the 
 first of Peter, he knew also the Gospel of Mark and a Gospel 
 
136 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 of Matthew (MaTdcuo?rcl\6ryta<rvveyptfyaTo,== Discourses and 
 Histories, for both are included in the similarly entitled work 
 of Papias, as appears from Eus. iii. 39) ; but he looked for more 
 benefit from the living testimony which still existed than from 
 the reading of books. But this oral tradition contained, besides 
 the fundamental stock of the Gospel-tradition, parables and 
 teachings of the Lord, and, as it appears, also narratives which 
 were not introduced into our Gospels. — It is probable, as 
 Eusebius also hints, that the Chiliastic positions which Irenseus 
 advances at the end of the last book, and which he ascribes to 
 an ancient presbyter (v. 36), are taken from the work of Papias, 
 as well as those for which he expressly cites Papias (v. 35) .* 
 For all these positions Papias himself has referred to presbyters 
 who were disciples of the Apostles (Eus. iii. 39), especially 
 Ariston and the Presbyter John, whom probably Irenseus has 
 confounded with the Apostle John. 
 
 First, then, as respects his Christological views : the faith 
 of Papias can in no case have embraced less than is expressed 
 in the Gospel by Mark, for this he fully acknowledged (Eus. 
 iii. 39). The same may be concluded also from the citation by 
 him of passages from the first Epistle of Peter and of John 
 (ibid). 2 In particular, we know that he taught in his books the 
 death of Christ and the treachery of Judas ; 3 that Christ is the 
 Redeemer, who hath been exalted to heaven. 4 He referred the 
 work of the six days allegorically to Christ and the Church, 5 
 
 1 Eouth also, Beliquiae Sacrse I. 9, 10, is of a similar opinion. 
 
 2 The Apocalypse also he held to be Johannine ; comp. the passages of 
 Andreas Caesar. Proleg. Comment, in Apocal. in Eouth, Bel. Sac. I. 15 ; 
 also the Catena in Epp. Cathol. ed. Cramer, Ox. 1840, p. 360, 361, 176. 
 Nay, he knew also the Gospel of John, according to the fragment of the 
 Bodleian, Cod. MS. 2397, Grabe Spicil. II. 30, Eouth, Eel. Sac. I. 16 : 
 Maria Jacobi Minoris mater, uxor Alphei, soror fuit Marise matris domini ; 
 quam Cleophse Joannes nominat, etc. Comp. John xix. 25. Also the quota- 
 tion of the passage John xiv. 2, in the discourse of the Presbyter in Irenseus 
 v. 36, belongs in all probability to the work of Papias. 
 
 3 According to Apollinaris of Laodicea in CEcumenius, Coram, in Acta 
 c. ii. ; Routh, 1. c. 9. 
 
 4 Met« ni* tow 2mt»)/>o? avahyrtyiv. — Euseb. iii. 39. 
 
 5 Anastasis Sin. Contempl. in Hexaem. L. I. in Eouth 1. c. 15. This is 
 to be understood in connection with the fact, that, like Clemens and Pan- 
 tsenus, he took the six days' work as symbolical of the six world-ages (comp. 
 Ep. of Barnabas), which are to be followed by the Millennium Sabbath. 
 
HEGESIPPUS. 137 
 
 and also paradise; 1 and says that in heaven, in paradise and 
 the kingdom of God, Christ will be seen according as those who 
 thus see Him shall he worthy of it. " This is the appointed 
 order and division in the triclinium of the guest-chamber 
 (Matt. xxii. 10) of those who shall be saved, say the presbyters, 
 the disciples of the Apostles ; 2 and through these three stages do 
 the believers advance, — through the Spirit to the Son, through 
 the Son to the Father, because the Son yields up His work 
 unto the Father," as also the Apostle says, 1 Cor. xv. 25-28 
 (Iren. v. 36, 2). We must presently speak continuously of the 
 Christological significance of the doctrine concerning the Last 
 Things, as it appeared in the second century. Here we only 
 remark, that in the eschatology of Papias, Christ is represented 
 as the King, the Bringer of blessedness, which, on the other 
 hand, is consummated in Him or His appearance, whence He 
 is represented as the Highest Good of Christians. The millen- 
 nial reign is as little with him as with Irenseus the closing scene : 
 had it been so, it might with justice have been said, that the 
 highest end was conceived by Papias after a material fashion, 
 and so, that Christianity was not recognised on the whole in 
 its ideal import ; but the last end, according to him, is God the 
 Father in the Son and the Holy Ghost. 3 
 
 Hegesippus (about 150 ; see Euseb. ii. 23, hi. 16, 20, 32, iv. 
 22) takes nearly the same stand-point as Hermas. He deserves 
 notice more particularly, because with him an edifice of opinion, 
 to the effect that in the former half of the second century the 
 Ebionitic view was virtually that of the Church, stands or falls. 
 Hegesippus, a converted Hebrew, who bestowed particular at- 
 tention on the divisions of the Jewish sects, and saw many 
 of their errors clothed in the form of Christian heresies, in 
 his zeal for unity of doctrine (the vyirj icavova tov aarripiov 
 Krjpvy/iaTos, Euseb. iii. 32), travelled to most of the bishops to 
 discover what the faith was, and found in all churches the 
 same faith as the Law, the Prophets, and the Lord had pro- 
 claimed to him ; and this unity he set over against the heretical 
 
 1 See Appendix, Note KR. 
 
 2 This reminds of the words of Papias in Euseb. iii. 39 : tovs t2» 
 irpiorfivripm dvszpivov >Jyov; , t;" Auspice; . . are . . . oi tov Kvpiov fi«8inr«i 
 hsyovatv, 
 
 3 Appendix, Note SS. 
 
138 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 varieties. The fruit of his studies was his five books called 
 Hypomnemata, of which valuable fragments have been preserved 
 by Eusebius. The questions raised thereupon are, first, What, 
 according to Hegesippus, belongs to the sound canon of salvation- 
 bringing announcement ? and next, How far is his testimony 
 regarding the accordance of the churches trustworthy ? If we, 
 are in circumstances to show that he was not an Ebionite, his 
 testimony becomes very weighty, provided he be worthy of credit; 
 for there is no doubt as to the historical fact of his journeys. 
 If, however, he was an Ebionite, it remains at least a problem 
 to show how he could declare what was so untrue. For untrue, 
 it may be assumed at the outset, his testimony would be, since 
 it would be in contradiction with himself. For how could he 
 contrive, for instance, to think as an Ebionite, and yet to treat 
 the first Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians as Christian 
 (which he did, according to Euseb. iv. 22, comp. iii. 16) ? or 
 how would his position be before Polycarp, Justin Martyr, 
 Quadratus, Aristides, who are far from leaving the impression 
 that they were only the representatives of a small party, which 
 stood opposed to the pretended Ebionitic Church ? Or how 
 shall we account for his position at Rome, and his visit to Ani- 
 cetus, considering how strongly an anti-Judaizing order of things, 
 especially in respect of Easter, at that time agitating the Church, 
 was rooted there, so that out of the Jewish Passover a Christian 
 festival of Easter on the Sunday had been instituted ? 
 
 It must be acknowledged that it may be almost included 
 among the axioms of recent Church History that Hegesippus 
 was of Ebionitish views ; and in the opinion of many, he was so 
 in a Christological respect. The grounds of this are these : — 
 
 He represents the piety of James the Just in an Ebionitic 
 manner (Euseb. ii. 23). But however great might be his 
 reverence for James, it does not follow that the piety of the 
 latter was the exact expression of his own ; for in this case we 
 should have in the portrait by Hegesippus one which, in its es- 
 sential features, did not rest on genuine ecclesiastical tradition ; 
 in which case his testimony as to the unity of the Church belief 
 with his own would have little weight. But further, James the 
 Just himself must be otherwise judged of. What, in 150 after 
 the overthrow of Judaism and the dissolution of connection 
 with Jewish customs, would have an appearance of Ebionism, 
 
HEGESIPPUS. 139 
 
 is in the first generation of the Church entirely consistent and 
 innocent. What though James the Just did not hold the obser- 
 vance of the Jewish law as necessary for salvation (of which 
 Hegesippus says not a word), and consequently did not impose 
 on the heathen, whom Hegesippus tells us he converted, the 
 yoke of this, whilst yet he himself, as a Nazarite, and since the 
 Jewish people were thereby more accessible to him, did not feel 
 called upon, so long as the temple stood (and he died before its 
 destruction), openly to break with the law and customs of his 
 nation % x The picture which Hegesippus gives ns of him is in 
 perfect accordance with what we gather from the Epistle of 
 James, and with what is recorded concerning him in the Epistle 
 to the Galatians and the Acts of the Apostles (see ch. xv.) ; the 
 one, indeed, completes the other. That he could keep that per- 
 fect law of liberty of which his epistle speaks, who can doubt ? 
 But more than this : if, according to the history of the Acts, 
 James regarded the law as not abolished for Jewish Christians, 
 but ascribed to it, if not a dogmatic, at least an historic right, 
 in accordance with which he exhorted even Paul to present an 
 offering in the temple, which the latter also did (Acts xxi. 18) ; 
 the statement of Hegesippus, at least concerning James, is shown 
 to be credible, and that without its following either that James 
 was ail Ebionite, or that Hegesippus, who treats him with the 
 utmost reverence, as his wisdom and piety deserved, should be 
 regarded as intimating that this form of piety was the only right 
 one, or was that which he himself professed (Eus. ii. 23). 2 Or 
 must he be held to be an Ebionite because he was a Hebrew by 
 birth ? because he has narrated more of the Church at Jerusalem 
 than any other ? or because he probably used the Hebrew Gos- 
 pel, as did also Ignatius, Papias, and Origen, and which was, to 
 say the least, closely allied to that of Matthew 1 or because he 
 recorded Jewish traditions of which we know not what they 
 
 1 We should rather expect the opposite, if, for instance, we compare the 
 History of the Reformation. Sulpicius Severus (Bk. ii. 45) informs lis 
 how on the Church at Jerusalem, though acknowledging the Divinity of 
 Christ, there lay, till the destruction of the city under Hadrian, a certain 
 pressure, because they could not free themselves from the law ; and how, 
 on the other hand, the dispersion of the Jews brought deliverance from the 
 bondage of the law. 
 
 2 Appendix Note TT. 
 
140 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 were, or whether he himself believed them or not ? or, in fine, 
 because he included among heresies (though he wrote no proper 
 Heresiology) the Jewish sects ? This last he could have for- 
 borne to do, only if by these sects truths which formed tenets of 
 Christianity were not attacked. It is true that on this ground 
 he might also have included heathen errors ; but his not having 
 done so may be accounted for by the consideration, that he was 
 both better acquainted with, and more deeply interested in, the 
 Jewish sects. Still more ; he did not speak of them as sects of 
 Christianity, but, according to Euseb. iv. 22, 1 expressly dis- 
 tinguished between the Jewish sects which are against Judah 
 and Christ, and those which carried false doctrines into the 
 before unsullied Church. 2 We shall now collect the Christo- 
 logical elements out of the few remains that have been preserved 
 to us ; whereby (according to the witnesses adduced in Appendix, 
 Note TT.) we are entitled to ascribe to Hegesippus a higher 
 representation of the Person of Christ than the fragments show 
 of him. 
 
 It will not be denied that his Christological faith must have 
 embraced those elements of the idea of Christ which he represents 
 James the Just as expressing. Now James, according to his ac- 
 count (Eus. ii. 23), was asked by the Jews, ti? 17 Qvpa tov 'Irjcrov 
 tov o-ravpcodevTOs ; This may mean either, What is the key to the 
 right judgment concerning Jesus ? or Qvpa, here may be equi- 
 valent to "WK>, What is the right appreciation of Him % or 'Irjo-ov 
 may be the genitive of apposition, What is to be understood of 
 Jesus when He is called the door ? The latter interpretations 
 accord best with the answer ; the third, however, like the first, 
 is linguistically harsh, though Ignatius, Philad. 9, Hennas, 
 Simil. 9 (comp. John x. 9), and Routh, 1. c. I. 217 ff. 220, 
 support it. James answered, " Jesus is the Christ, the acoTijp. 
 He is the Son of Man, and sits in heaven on the right hand of 
 Supreme Power, and will come again in the clouds of heaven. 
 When He comes, the judgment will take place ; He will be the 
 Judge of all." He preached to heathen and Jew, as a true 
 witness, that Jesus is the Christ. The second advent of Christ 
 appears to have formed a leading article of the creed of the 
 Church at Jerusalem, for the Jews were wont to desienate the 
 
 1 Appendix, Note UU. 2 Appendix, Note W. 
 
HEGESIPPUS. 141 
 
 becoming a Christian as " a waiting for Jesus Christ." Still it 
 is not expressly stated what it is through which Christ is the 
 Saviour. Hegesippus held Him for the Teacher by whom the 
 Law and Prophets had been fulfilled but not destroyed, comp. 
 Matt. v. 17 (Euseb. iv. 22) ; also for the King who sits at God's 
 right hand. But that he also attributed to Him the forgiveness 
 of sins is probable, from that faith in the Crucified which, ac- 
 cording to him (ii. 23), belongs to Christianity, and is an offence 
 to the Jews. Had he, like the Ebionites, regarded Him as a 
 mere man, he would not have laid any stress on this. But that 
 he did not so regard Him is most evident from his calling (iii. 
 32) the contemporaries of Christ the <yeveei ra>v avral'i aicoais t% 
 evOeov Ilo<f)ia<; eTraicovcrab KaT^uofievcov. If Christ is to him 
 the Wisdom (comp. Matt. xi. 19; Luke xi. 49), and that ev6eo<s, 
 it is not too much to conclude that Hegesippus viewed the 
 Person of Christ in connection with the " Wisdom " of the Pro- 
 verbs, which was with God as His counsellor at the creation of 
 the world, and that in such a way as to regard the wisdom which 
 was with God as appearing in the Son of Man, so that the latter 
 might be called the personal Wisdom, the <ro(j>la ev&eo?. This 
 conclusion, which in the case of a converted Hebrew is in itself 
 highly probable, is expressly authorized by Eusebius, who (iv. 
 22) relates how highly Hegesippus esteemed the Proverbs of 
 Solomon, and how he, "with Irenseus and the whole choir of 
 the ancients, called them the iravaperov So<f>iav. ,n 
 
 Hegesippus (as well as, according to his account, the leaders 
 of the Church at Jerusalem) had not by any means a carnal, 
 Judaizing concept of the second coming of Christ. His king- 
 dom and parousia were, indeed, looked for as nigh at hand ; and 
 this brought persecution on the relations of Jesus who were 
 presidents of the Church in Jerusalem. But when they were 
 asked before the tribunal concerning Christ, and of His king- 
 dom, of what kind it was, when and where it was to appear, 
 they replied that it was not in any respect an earthly kingdom, 
 but one heavenly and angelic, which was to commence at the 
 end of the world, when Christ coming in His glory would judge 
 the living and the dead, and assign to each according to his ser- 
 vice ; whereupon Domitian dismissed them with contempt (Eus. 
 
 'Appendix, Note WW. 
 
142 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 iii. 20). Notwithstanding, however, this spirituality in his re- 
 presentations of the Messianic kingdom, we are not entitled to 
 presume that he denied its visibility ; even Paul held this along , 
 with the former. 1 
 
 Putting all together, we conclude that Hegesippus cannot at 
 all be reckoned among the more noted and gifted or dogmatically 
 productive men : his Hebrew origin betrays itself in his speech, 
 as well as in his prejudice in favour of his people and of the 
 Christian Church in the midst of them ; but as respects his 
 Christological views, the charge that he was an Ebionite is 
 utterly unfounded. He has intercourse also with churches of 
 heathen Christians, nay, is made happy by his reception among 
 them, and finds himself at one with them in belief. From his 
 fragments, we are led to concur in the judgment of Eusebius, 
 that he was a man of the simplest faith, but at the same time a 
 representative of the sound doctrine of apostolic preaching. The 
 Son of Man is with him the personal Wisdom who appeared on 
 earth, and is now exalted to the right hand of God. And now 
 we are entitled to take what he says of the universal concurrence 
 of the Church, in which he approvingly sympathised, as a 
 weighty testimony at least to the fact, that the essentially Chris- 
 tian doctrine — that of the true manhood of Christ and His Divine 
 pre-existent being — was, about the middle of the second century, 
 the prevalent doctrine in the leading churches ; though it does 
 not follow from this, that there were none of another way of 
 thinking. Hegesippus himself knew of heretics ; uniformity in 
 all points was not yet in the Church : still his testimony is 
 weighty in favour of the unity of the principal churches in funda- 
 mentals, especially Christology. 
 
 What has been said may suffice to subvert the principal sup- 
 ports of the hypothesis of the original Ebionism of the Church, 
 which have been afresh adduced by some recent writers ; nay, 
 the very men who are brought forward in support of it we re- 
 cognise as witnesses against Ebionism in Christology. It only 
 remains thatwe should considerthe Christian apocryphal writings, 
 and the eschatological expectations of the ancient Church ; on 
 which it is the more necessary that a thorough and well-grounded 
 judgment should be reached, since many mistakes have been 
 
 1 Appendix, Note XX. 
 
ESCHATOLOGY. R3 
 
 entertained, especially on the latter, from the time of Corrodi, 
 and since some have adduced these Christological expectations 
 as a leading argument for the alleged Ebionism of the ancient 
 Church, whereas, rightly viewed, they form one of the clearest 
 proofs of the contrary. It may be permitted, for the sake of 
 connection, to go somewhat beyond the limits of our epoch. 
 
 In the outset, it is to be asserted that Christian antiquity, 
 as a whole, possessed an eschatology, nay, that during the second 
 half of the first century as well as the second century, especial 
 care was bestowed on this subject. All were at one, — men of the 
 Johannine school, as Polycarp and Papias — of the Pauline, as 
 Ignatius and Clement of Rome — of the Petrine, as Barnabas — 
 of that of James, as Hermas and Hegesippus, 1 — all were at one 
 as to the fact that a return of Christ was to be expected, when 
 He should raise the dead and hold the judgment, and when the 
 Church should be perfected by the separation from it of the 
 evil. The source of interest in this subject, it may be at the 
 same time remarked, was not the same in all ; just as we may 
 observe it down to our own day. And in this respect, it is cha- 
 racteristic that those who were more deeply impressed with the 
 secular vocation of Christianity, or those who more profoundly 
 recognised the eternal life appearing in Christianity, were less 
 interested in the developing of the eschatology. This is apparent 
 even with John in the Gospel, as compared with the Apocalypse j 
 a comparison which also affords a very instructive hint as to the' 
 fact and the reason of the existence in the Church of a pre- 
 dominantly eschatological age, preceding that stand-point of 
 Christology which the Gospel possesses. It is self-evident that 
 in the beginning Christianity was, to the majority, rather the 
 precious pearl which the heart finds, than the leaven which is to 
 penetrate mankind and revolutionize the world. The first form 
 of Christian piety must loosen itself from the preceding world 
 of the spirit which was the product of another principle — must 
 concentrate itself on itself ; and the tendency to association and 
 the formation of relations, towhich Christianity certainly prompts, 
 must at first be, for the most part, overruled by an aiming at the 
 separation of Christians from non-Christians, as well in worship 
 
 1 Clemens Roman. 21, 50 ; Barnabas 7, 15, 20 ff. ; Herm. Simil. 8 and 
 9 ; Hegesipp. ap. Euseb. iii. 20, ii. 23 ; Ignat. ad Ephes. 11 ; Polycarp, 
 Ep. 5, 6. On Papias, see above. 
 
144 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 as in Christian manners. Over against the huge unchristian 
 world the young Christianity stood as an almost invisible planet, 
 and the most unpleasant relations possible subsisted between its 
 intensive essence and the utterances to which this necessitated, 
 and which it justified, and its extensive value. The few Chris- 
 tians felt themselves to be the soul of the world; 1 and yet it 
 was a soul as it were without a body, or rather, the carnalized 
 world did not as yet obey the soul. Even the moral law would 
 be impotent, and not the alone enduring Divine truth, were it 
 satisfied with perpetually presenting its demand, and at the 
 same time perpetually remaining unperformed, renouncing 
 every other reality except that of requirement. In like manner 
 Christianity could not do otherwise than assert with absolute 
 certainty its future universal supremacy. To this confidence 
 there are so many discourses of Christ which give a right; 
 but besides, every individual who had become a Christian, had 
 thereby become a partaker of that absolute union of the ideal 
 with the real which appeared in Christ prototypically. If under 
 the Old Covenant the prophetic spirit which announced the com- 
 pletion of the kingdom of God was communicated only sporadi- 
 cally, under the New Covenant there was given, with the being 
 a Christian, also the absolute certainty of the victory of Christ 
 over the world, and the prophecy had become a general one. 
 And thus had the history of Christ come to be viewed as a type 
 for the history of the Church. Not power first, but endurance 
 and suffering. Not the immediate sovereignty, which as such 
 would have been carnal and physical ; but first the dying a death 
 of love, after that the glorification, in order that holy love might 
 be recognised as that which is higher than immediate power, 
 and then that from this power might be again born ; so that to 
 love, the spirit's truth, nothing should be wanting to its being 
 made to appear as the highest thing in the world, as the inner- 
 most and abiding power of the world, to yield to which brings 
 eternal felicity, to oppose which, eternal condemnation. 
 
 The eschatological expectations undoubtedly contained many 
 traits from the Old Testament and Judaism. This has been 
 made to serve as a proof of the Ebionism of the ancient 
 Church; but in this has been forgotten only the principal 
 
 1 Ep. ad Diog. c. 7 ; Justin Mart. Apol. ii. 7. 
 
ESCHATOLOGY. 145 
 
 thing, namely, that the pre-Christian age expected the Messiah, 
 but that the Christian Church in its eschatology hoped for the 
 return of no other than Him who had already come. The 
 Christian hope of the Coming One grew entirely out of faith in 
 Him who had come. It may as well be said that it was the 
 Christian principle which by an inner necessity sketched out 
 for itself an eschatology, that spontaneously concurred in its 
 essential lines with the Messianic representations of the Old 
 Testament, as it may be asserted that the purer representations 
 of Messianic eschatology were of necessity transferred to Him 
 who was recognised and believed in as Saviour of the world. 
 The absolute reconciliation with God, the completion of Religion, 
 is made known by Christianity as come in Christ ; and therein 
 also the completion of the world or the kingdom of God as 
 certainly to come, through the second coming of Him who 
 has already come. 
 
 But what meaning has this preponderance of eschatological 
 representation, which is shown as well in Christology, in the im- 
 portance which, at first especially, was attached to the resurrec- 
 tion of the Lord, and His exaltation to royal dignity at the 
 right hand of the Father, as in what is closely connected with 
 this, the living interests for the final history of the Church, 
 which is itself again a part of the history of Christ % What, in 
 short, is the significancy of this for the development of doc- 
 trine 1 ? 
 
 We find that in all scientific systems the popular thinking, 
 in order to gain a conception of them, asks before all, not so 
 much what is the principle or beginning and the processes, as 
 what is the end, the result. So it was with the entrance of 
 Christianity into the world. The disciples always sought most 
 readily after the end, the result; for it was thereby that 
 they had the summary of the momenta which were to be dis- 
 tributed before their eyes only in process of time. Eschatology, 
 consequently, in which the circle of these momenta first becomes 
 defined as a whole, is that in which the full idea of Christianity 
 is first presented to the mind ; just as religions of a less ethical 
 character look back to the beginning, to Paradise. Eschatology 
 may thus be justly called the succulent swelling germ from 
 which, as from the whole, from the matured, completed idea of 
 Christianity, one momentum unfolds itself towards another ; in 
 
 VOL. I. K 
 
146 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 which all dogmas are included, yet ever so as there is a regres- 
 sion from the last to the first. 1 
 
 In eschatology the Christian principle celebrates its absolute- 
 ness, its apotheosis ; for the entire universe is determined by it. 
 "What is not an integral part of the eternal kingdom shall be 
 absolutely cast aside at the end of things, as powerless and 
 worthless. In this there already lies the principle, that in it, or 
 rather in Christ, who is not now viewed as He that is come, but 
 rather as He who is to come again, is that which absolutely 
 confers worth ; for by faith in Him who has appeared, is deter- 
 mined blessedness or rejection through Him who is to come 
 again. Hence it is clear, that wherever this identity of Him 
 who is to come again, and who as Judge and Perfecter of the 
 world must be regarded as exercising Divine prerogatives, with 
 Him who has appeared, is held fast, there Ebionism is impos- 
 sible ; and that this can exist only where this identity is denied 
 and perfection is expected from another principle, or where the 
 idea of perfection is stript of its absoluteness and rendered 
 inept, in which case Christ is brought into only a loose relation 
 to it. To the latter Cerinthus must have had a leaning ; to the 
 former the old Montanism, in so far as it anticipated a new 
 state of things in the dispensation of the Holy Ghost. Where, 
 on the other hand, neither of these is the case, as with all 
 the Fathers hitherto considered by us ; where eschatology is 
 placed in the closest relation to the Person of Christ ; and where 
 it is held fast that the perfection which He brings is not of 
 eudsemonistic, but of absolute worth, and brings the spirit to 
 its truth ; there Ebionism has become an impossibility, or at the 
 utmost can exist only in faint traces. In this case there is 
 rather, conversely, found in eschatology the complement of 
 Christology, by means of which that which in Christ's state of 
 humiliation remained latent is connected, for the anticipation 
 of faith, with that which has been already manifested, so as 
 to form the entire image of the Person of Christ, with the out- 
 
 1 In' respect of this, it is noticeable how during the ecclesiastical develop- 
 ment of 'the first age there was a greater tendency towards what is last, 
 eschatology ; whilst in the Gnostic development, the tendency was to the 
 beginning, to cosmogony, nay, to theogony. Both, however, in their progress 
 must meet and mingle. In this also is mirrored the difference between 
 the idealistic and the realistic tendency. 
 
ESCHATOLOGT, EBIONISM, DOKETISM. 147 
 
 lines of jvhich the knowledge of the historical Christ first be- 
 came a reality in the mind. 1 Now, as surely as the Church, in 
 its independent construction of Christianity, had to begin with 
 the end, and to be assured of that, so surely did this initiatory 
 preponderance of the eschatological exert a dangerous influence 
 in a dogmatical respect, which could be avoided only by pro- 
 ceeding vigorously in Christology from the end to the now 
 newly illustrated construction of the intermediate momenta. 
 The dangers incurred are of an Ebionitic and Doketic kind. 
 
 If regard is fastened only on the exalted Lord, the King, the 
 central point of His earthly life — His propitiatory agency — may 
 be almost overlooked ; and in this case there remains only the 
 Teacher, and the returning Lord of glory, who is to rule over all. 
 Such an Ebionitic, outward, and unethical view of His work may 
 easily pass over to an Ebionitic view of His Person, for Pelagian- 
 ism and Ebionism are internally allied. Still more immediately 
 is Ebionism brought in when the mind turns to eschatology in 
 the narrower sense with so unsatisfied a longing, that it feels as 
 if by the first advent of Christ nothing was done or ameliorated 
 essentially, but that all depends on His second coming. In this 
 case Christ becomes merely the prophet of His own future, a work 
 which another might have discharged, and for which no peculiar 
 equipment was necessary ; this, consequently, if it became ne- 
 cessary at all, would be resorted to only afterwards. So was it 
 with Cerinthus, who maintained that the resurrection of Christ 
 itself is to be referred to His second coming. Doketism also 
 may obtain a point of egress from this preponderance of the 
 eschatological, and may penetrate into the Church even where, 
 from its realism and its eschatology, it might seem closed against 
 such Doketism as came from the Gnostic side. For if the idea 
 of Christ is formed only one-sidedly from an eschatological point 
 of view, — if He is regarded only as the exalted Lord, — there is 
 a danger of His Divinity, which in eschatology comes forth with 
 peculiar glory, though in union with humanity, being too ex- 
 clusively regarded in connection with His appearance on earth. 
 This dissipation of the true humanity of Christ appears especially 
 in several of the apocryphal writings (see further on) ; but the 
 tendency to this may be discerned at a very early period. Thus 
 
 1 Appendix, Note YY. 
 
148 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 Doketism on realistic grounds, and from an undue preponde- 
 rance of eschatological considerations, was introduced in re- 
 ference to the beginning and the earthly life of the God-man. 
 But the same risk of Doketism arose only in another quarter, 
 namely, in reference to the end, when the longing after the 
 return of the Lord led in the manner described to a deprecia- 
 tion of what had been already done, and referred all to a second 
 advent of a totally different character. Such a view of Christ 
 has in itself something of a Doketic character ; but this is greatly 
 strengthened when over against the world as it is now a dual- 
 istic variance impends, and the entrance of the kingdom of 
 God and the returning Christ is not conceived as historically 
 mediated, but as abrupt. The magical entrance of the reign of 
 God of necessity has a Doketic effect also on the Christology. 
 This latter form of Doketism is especially instructive, from its 
 explaining what at first sight is an enigmatical phenomenon, 
 namely, that the ancient Ebionism is at least partially coupled 
 with Doketism, and vice versa. For it is evident that this 
 Doketism of the end has an Ebionitic view of the earthly life 
 of Christ as its presupposition (see above) ; so that the peculiar 
 drama of the alternation between Ebionism and Doketism may 
 be exhibited in one and the same mode of thought. Both sides 
 of the Person of Christ are acknowledged ; but in place of 
 being simultaneously interpenetrative, they are severed, they 
 are presented one apart from the other ; and as the one side 
 becomes prominent in consciousness, the other retires into the 
 background, or is excluded. To this also the ancient Mon- 
 tanism must have come, had it taken a Christological direction 
 instead of confining itself to the work of Christ. For if it 
 looked on the historical work of Christ, the result of this could 
 not satisfy its impatient longing after the other world, its dual- 
 istic view of the world, but must appear poor in comparison 
 with what was yet to come. If it looked on the new Jerusalem, 
 the historical being and work of Christ would evanish before 
 the suddenly-working, the absolutely new-creating power of the 
 glorified, returning Christ. The old world would be annihilated, 
 the new would come in its place. This dualism is the funda- 
 mental view which is common to both Montanism and Gnos- 
 ticism. In Montanism, however, both sides appear successively : 
 in Gnosticism the dualism is not of a successive, but of a simul- 
 
ESCHATOLOGY, GNOSTICISM, MONTANISM. 149 
 
 taneous kind ; and this is in accordance with the fact, that its 
 point of issue is rather theory, while that of Montanism is prac 
 tiee. To Gnosticism, the position, that the resurrection has 
 happened already, is essential ; it has no toleration for an escha- 
 tology. On this the old Montanism concentrated its entire Chris- 
 tianity. 1 Hence these two so violently clashed. As, however, 
 the Christian truth, which was then making way in the Church, 
 unites the theoretical and the practical, and does not allow the 
 one to exclude the other, so in eschatology it atoned the contra- 
 diction between Gnosticism and Montanism ; as it did not deny 
 either the presence of the Eternal in Christ or His impending 
 return, but assigned their rights to both by removing the dualism 
 on which both stand, and rendering possible such a historical 
 mediation as posits both a future end and an already present 
 power, objectively realized in Christ, to accomplish that end. 
 And thus both the Gnostic joy over the already present light of 
 truth, a joy approaching to haughty triumph, and the longing 
 after a more perfect state of things, approaching to sadness 
 and depression, were morally united in the joyous activity called 
 forth in the furthering of the design of Christianity to be a 
 leaven of the world. Hope has assumed an ethical character, 
 or seeks to reach the perfecting of the world through a love 
 which ensouls the world ; and the ethical has as its basis the 
 reconciliation as already accomplished (not in theory merely, 
 but for the innermost life), — that is. it has faith for its basis. 
 Without this advance to the ethical, faith ceases to be faith, and 
 must pass over either into Gnosticism or Montanism, according 
 as those in whom it is are of a more theoretical or of a more 
 practical cast of mind. 2 
 
 As before the time of Gnosticism and Montanism there were 
 not wanting men in the Church (see p. 143, note 1) who were 
 not only free from a fantastic scheme of eschatology, but who 
 did not exclude either of the two sides, — either the presence of 
 the Divine in Him who had appeared, or the hope of His return ; 
 
 1 The difference and analogy of the two may be thus stated : Both have 
 to do with an ideal world ; but Gnosticism construes it as the highest truth, 
 Montanism as the chief good. 
 
 2 Philastrius casts on the old Montanists the taunt of a " vitse tempus 
 vanum et infructuosum '' (Hseres. 21). Similar reproaches are much more 
 frequently cast on Gnosticism. 
 
150 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 so also, during this time itself, there were those who discriminated 
 the two sides in order to unite them again in a higher and more 
 intelligent manner. It is Irenseus, however, in whose works 
 especially this reconciliation is shown, with the advantages 
 which the Church derived from the preceding conflict. 1 
 
 It is undeniable that Christianity first sketched out from its 
 principle its theory of the world in its eschatology; in this is 
 the consummatio of the world's history, and consequently this, 
 as well in respect of its final end and aim as in respect of the 
 reality of this end, is fixed. In it the anthropological side, the 
 perfected manhood, is united to the Christology, so as to be 
 seen by the mind. Having fixed the definitive aim and secured 
 its reality, all that preceded has unity, connection, regularity ; 
 and on this side it is impossible to mistake the speculative 
 element of eschatology, though presented in a preponderantly 
 historical form. 2 Passing on from this to cast a glance on the 
 New Testament Apocrypha, and that as well on the apocalyptic 
 as on the rest which have been handed down to us, the most 
 important of the former which come before us are the Sibylline 
 Books, the Book of Enoch, and the appendix to it, the Testa- 
 ment of the Twelve Patriarchs. 
 
 Of the Sibylline Books, it is the fourth and the fifth we 
 have here especially to consider ; of which the former belongs 
 to the first century, the latter to the beginning of the second. 
 The fourth book exhorts men to be baptized, and, raising their 
 hands into the air, to implore forgiveness. If they do not that, 
 fire shall consume the world; whereupon God shall raise the 
 dead and institute the judgment. The earth shall again cover 
 the impious ; the pious shall again live on the earth ; God shall 
 give them spirit and life ; and they shall all again find them- 
 selves (Oracula Sibyllina cum variorum commentariis, ed. Serv. 
 Gallseus, Amst. 1689, pp. 530-539) Of more importance 
 is the fifth book. In the oracle against Memphis (p. 556, v. 
 60-72) it is said : " Thou hast raged against my God-anointed 
 children (7ratSa? devxpiGTovi) ; 3 thou shalt weep, and see the 
 eternal, the immortal God in the clouds. 4 A strong king sent 
 
 1 Appendix, Note ZZ. 2 Appendix, Note AAA. 
 
 3 At p. 641, the pious are called "Kotos 6i6revx.ro;. 
 
 4 That this relates to Christ (Matt. xxiv. 30) cannot be doubtful ; at the 
 same time, however, it proves that eschatology is not secured against Doketism. 
 
THE SIBYLLINE BOOKS. 151 
 
 forth of God shall sustain all great kings. 1 A world-conflagra- 
 tion, and a battle of the stars with each other, will bring in the 
 end." Then shall there come (p. 600, v. 257 ff.) again from 
 the air a distinguished man, who on the fruitful tree stretched 
 forth His hands, the best of the Hebrews, who once for all estab- 
 lished the sun, who spake in pleasing discourse and with holy lips. 
 " There has come," cries the Sibylle in a passage further on, in 
 prophetic anticipation, " from the heavenly regions the man who 
 went home, holding the sceptre in His hand which God hath 
 delivered unto Him. Gloriously does He build up Jerusalem 
 and the holy temple ; even unto heaven reacheth His building." 2 
 The author of this oracle shows himself to have been a Jewish 
 Christian; 3 but already we find great stress laid by him on 
 Christ's death, and he does not confine his regards to Him as 
 risen. The cross is to him the wood that brings much fruit. 4 
 On the other hand, the coming of Christ in the clouds to judg- 
 ment is directly called by him the manifestation of God. 
 
 It is almost more difficult to pronounce judgment on the 
 Book of Enoch. Is it the production of one author or not, of 
 a Jew or a Christian % In any case, eschatology so predomi- 
 nates in it, that the Christ of history is forced entirely into the 
 background; and so that comes to pass here which we have 
 
 } With especial fervour does the oracle speak against Rome and Italy, 
 because through them many of the saints, the believers, and the true 
 temple (i.e., the temple of the true God) have fallen. 
 
 2 At p. 628, God is called xt/Vtjj.c uaidia f&iyitrrov. For the rest, it is 
 doubtful whether the temple is thought of as a spiritual one, consisting of 
 holy men, though this has much in its favour (p. 623 : oTxov dil SaKhovTo., 
 Qeov TYipquovu. i>a.ov } If; ayiuv ytyccZmx., KtxX oltpdnov uisl kovrcc). What 
 follows, also, seems to me to refer to a temple consisting of the souls and 
 bodies of men, to a worship without clay or stone or gold, consisting wholly 
 of the offerings of the God-inspired. 
 
 3 As in the description of the holy city and the holy land, which shall 
 in the time of the Messiah show the heavenly Jerusalem and Canaan (fete, 
 yevis, p. 602) also in visible reality (euaxpx.ov, p. 627) ; further, at p. 598, 
 where the Jews, who enter the Messiah's kingdom, are called a godly 
 race, holy inhabitants of heaven ; and in fine, pp. 600, 601, where the 
 Messiah is called " the best of the Hebrews." On the other hand, the 
 passages above cited forbid our regarding the author as a Jew. See a dis- 
 sertation by Bleek on the Sibylline Oracles in the Theologische Zeitschrift 
 of Schleiennacher, De Wette, and Liicke, H. ii. p. 188 ff. 
 
 4 Appendix, Note BBB. 
 
152 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 above noted, that a one-sided eschatology approximates to Doket- 
 ism. Nevertheless there is much that favours the conclusion, 
 that it is on the whole a Jewish product, which probably owes 
 some touches to the hand of a Christian. 1 The entire stand- 
 point of the book is essentially Jewish. Of what is peculiarly 
 Christian — the incarnation of God, the name Jesus, His earthly 
 life and death, His resurrection and ascension, the work of re- 
 demption as a whole, Baptism and the Lord's Supper — not a 
 trace is found, whilst the Sabbath is represented as an eternal 
 ordinance (c. x. 23). The Messiah, indeed, has a high place : 
 He is called the Elect, 2 the Son of Men, 3 the Man's Son, 4 the 
 "Woman's Son, 6 the Son of God ; 6 His name was called beforn 
 the sun in the presence of the Lord of spirits; 7 He sits next 
 to Him on the throne, in the hidden place, from the beginning 
 to the end of days; 8 but He shall be manifest then, when as 
 Judge He shall utter the decisive word which God approves on 
 the day of judgment (lx. 10 ff., lxviii. 39), which is the chief 
 object of the book. Hence the author knows not of any 
 appearance of the Son of Man besides that to judgment 
 (lx. 17). Then shall the saints dwell with the Son of Man, 
 and eat, and lie down and rise up with Him, for ever and ever 
 (c. lxi. 17). There is no doctrine of a Trinity in the book ; 9 the 
 Messiah is not called the Word nor the Wisdom. 10 And when 
 
 1 Appendix, Note CCO. 
 
 2 C. lx. 7, 10, 16, lxi. 1, 10, xl. 5, xlv. 3, 4, xlviii. (xlvi.) 2, 4, 1. 3, 5, 
 li. 5, 10, liv. 5. 
 
 3 C. xlvi. 1. 2, lxi. 13, 17, lxii. 15, lxviii. 38, 39, lxix. 1, etc. Noah 
 also is called this, lix. 11 ; perhaps also Enoch, lxx. 23. 
 
 4 C. lxviii. 40, 41. Enoch also is thus addressed, c. lxx. 17 : " Thou art 
 the man's son, born to righteousness." 
 
 5 C. lxi. 8-13, especially 9. « C. civ. (cvi.) 2. 
 
 7 0. xlviii. 3-5. 
 
 8 0. lxi. 10, xlviii. 5 : " The elect and the hidden one was in the pre- 
 sence of the Lord of spirits before the world was, and evermore." 
 
 9 See Hoffmann on lx. 13, lxx. 9. 
 
 10 Yet He judges the spirits by the word of the name of the Lord 
 (c. lx. 11), or by the word which is a sword of His mouth (comp. lxi. 4, 
 lxii. 15). Wisdom, on the other hand, is ascribed to Him as an attribute ; 
 but He Himself is not called Wisdom. His peculiar characteristic, under 
 which the book thinks the Messiah, is rather righteousness (ch. xlvi. 2 
 xlviii. 16, xlviii. (xlvi.) 3, 1. 3) ; and it is almost only for the judgment 
 that wisdom comes into consideration. The Messiah is not the world- 
 
BOOK OF ENOCH. 153 
 
 he calls Him the Woman's Son, there can be no doubt that the 
 author, had he been a Christian, would have referred that to 
 His birth of the Virgin : as used by him, it has its full explana- 
 tion if we either take it as a circumlocution for " man " (as in 
 Matt. xi. 11 ; Luke vii. 28), or, what is better, regard it as 
 referring to the seed of the woman in the Protevangelium, and 
 understand it of the Messiah. His speaking of the Son of Man 
 as existing with God before the creation of the world, and as 
 worshipped by all being, receives an explanation of a striking 
 kind from Daniel's Son of Man ; from Persian or allied ideas, 
 which are elsewhere found in the book ; in fine, from the place 
 which the doctrine of angels holds in this book, and other 
 similar performances. The passage from Daniel (vii. 13, 27), 
 on which we have already commented (see p. 44), hovers be- 
 fore the author's mind ; but the term, Son of Man, is more 
 definitely applied to the Messiah by him than in Daniel. He 
 is, without doubt (and to this, Persian ideas may have con- 
 tributed), regarded as the Primal Man, who precedes the rest of 
 creation as its idea. The doctrine of angels, when brought to 
 such validity and extension as it must have been at the time 
 of the writing of the Book of Enoch, could not but ally itself, 
 in the mind of a Jew who adhered to the prophecies of his 
 people, with the idea of the Messiah ; and this took effect in 
 the Messiah being conceived of, after the manner of an angel, 
 as the Primal Man (xlvi. 1). But the Messiah, who exercises 
 judgment on all evil, and consequently on evil angels, — a subject 
 on which this book greatly dwells, — must, on the other hand, 
 be placed above angels. Thus His pre-existence was implicitly 
 asserted. There is no ground for regarding this representation 
 as a general one in pre-Christian Judaism ; on the contrary, the 
 dialogue of Justin with the Jew Trypho rather shows (e. gr. c. 
 48) that the mass of the Jews were expecting a Messiah who 
 should be simply a man from among men, and who should 
 receive a higher personality through the anointing of Elias. 
 But more than this : even if the representations of the Book of 
 
 creating "Wisdom of Proverbs, but the -world has been created by an oath 
 (i.e., by God's powerful word, which is not to be identified with the Mes- 
 siah; c. lxviii. 21-29). So tittle is this oath (i.e., God's word) the Son 
 of God, that it is rather of the rebellious angels that the discourse is, who 
 availed themselves of that oath as a powerful form of incantation. 
 
154 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 Enoch were general among the Jews, against which is the tes- 
 timony of the Gospels (which represent the opinion of Trypho 
 as that of the nation, Matt. xxii. 41 ff., ii. 4 ff. ; John vii. 41 ; and 
 only make a few allusions to any other view, John vii. 27, conf. 
 Heb. vii. 3), still we should be far from having in them the 
 Christian idea of the Person of Christ. Especially, we have 
 not there the right view of the humanity of Christ : we have 
 only the eternal, immutable idea of Manhood hypostatized with- 
 out passing into the state of becoming (werden), consequently 
 no incarnation. This Son of Man of Enoch is only the 
 abstract, rigid Logos of Philo evolved out of Daniel ; and 
 hence more definitely hypostatized than by Philo, who never- 
 theless calls his Logos the Primal Man. Moreover, this Son of 
 Man has no true Deity. Righteousness, not love, is his funda- 
 mental characteristic ; and as respects his essence, he does not 
 belong to the inner circle of the Divine, but he stands, if as 
 first, or, if it be preferred, as king and representative, yet still 
 only among the cherubim, seraphim, and ophanim, — all angels 
 of might and majesty, — and praises, in unison with them, the 
 name of the Lord of spirits to eternity (c. lx. 13, 14). He is 
 an attendant of the Head of days, the Father of spirits (e. gr. 
 c. xlvi. 1). 
 
 Whilst, however, we regard this book as wholly a Jewish 
 production, and though the Messiah whom it describes, in spite 
 of analogies to the Christian, is not thought of as having come 
 in Jesus, or even as promised by Him, still an evidence may be 
 drawn from it of how the momentum of pre-existence in the 
 concept of the Messiah is not only not difficult to reach, but in 
 the universality of its significancy the trait is most readily 
 acknowledged, since already implicitly it lies there. Not less is 
 the early diffusion and recognition of the writing a proof how 
 early, in Christianity also, the idea of the pre-existence of Christ 
 must have found general acceptance. 1 This brings us to the 
 Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. 2 
 
 Judah and Levi are appointed protectors of the people till 
 God come, to dwell in the midst of Israel (Levi 4 ; Judah 23). 
 With the light of knowledge shall Levi enlighten, and stand as 
 the sun in Israel (Levi 14), until the Lord bring home all the 
 
 1 Appendix, Note DDD. 2 Appendix, Note EEE. 
 
TESTAMENTS OF THE TWELVE PATRIARCHS. 155 
 
 heathen in the compassion of His Son for ever. Judah, on 
 the other hand, is entrusted with the sceptre, the rod of 
 righteousness, which in the day of the Messiah shall ascend 
 to judgment and salvation over all Jews and heathens (Judah 
 24). In the union of both offices consists Israel's salvation 
 (Dan 5). There shall not be two heads ; for all that God 
 has made has but one head, and one head all the members of the 
 body obey, though they be double (Zeb. 8). The royal, how- 
 ever, is lower than the priestly dignity ; God has subjected the 
 former to the latter : to the former He has given what is on 
 earth, to the latter what is in heaven ; and as the heaven is 
 exalted above the earth, so is the priesthood above the king- 
 hood (Judah 24). Grievous, however, as the sin is to rise up 
 against Judah or Levi, and to set up a double kingdom or 
 priesthood, yet the perfection of both shall be reached only 
 when the Lord shall raise up a man who shall be of Levi as 
 high-priest, and of Judah as king ; a person who combines the 
 earthly and heavenly, as @eo? zeal avOpwrro'i (Simeon 7). The 
 author does not mean by this, that the Messiah is in any way 
 to spring bodily from the two tribes (see rather Judah 23), or 
 that Mary sprang from the tribe of Levi, as several later here- 
 tical sects averred, especially the Manicheans. But the Messiah 
 is to be born of a virgin of the tribe of Judah (Joseph 19) ; 
 who, however, is seen in Joseph's dream in clothing of byssus 
 (c. 19) ; — a thought which, it may be remarked in passing, is 
 more fully wrought out in the Protevangelium Jacobi, where 
 it is stated that Mary descended indeed from the family of 
 David, but was brought up in the temple, and was by her 
 parents from her youth dedicated to the Lord ; where one may 
 discern the same effort to unite in the king of Israel also the 
 glory of the priesthood. From the virgin, who wears a stole of 
 byssus, Joseph sees proceed a lamb without spot, and at her 
 right hand was as it were a lion. All the beasts attack it, and 
 the lamb vanquishes it. Since, consequently, Mary, though not 
 by birth, yet by inner and outer consecration, sustains some- 
 thing of the priestly character, it is said, Out of Judah and 
 Levi shall be born to you the Lamb of God, with whom the 
 symbol of the kingdom is most intimately bound up (comp. 
 Sim. 7; Jos. 19; Iren. Fragm. ed. Massuet, 345). Other 
 tokens of the appearance of Christ on earth are given, as 
 
156 FIEST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 follows : — The salvation of God (a-coTijpiov tov Qeov) will arise 
 on you in Him who is God and man (Sim. 7 ; Dan 5 ; Benj. 
 9). The Lord, the great God of Israel, appears on earth as a 
 man, assumes a body (Sim. 6) ; God visits (eVwr/eeTrreTat) all 
 peoples through the compassion of His Son (Levi 4) ; dwells 
 among men amidst Israel (Levi 4, 2 ; Naphth. 8), and eats with 
 them (Sim. 6 ; Asshur 7). His advent is unspeakable, and He 
 is as a Prophet in His aspect and habit (Levi 8). God plays 
 the part of a man (®eo? ek avSpa vTTOKptvo/Mevo^, Asshur 7). 
 Though His appearance is the visit of the Only-begotten (/wvo- 
 yev rji), 'yet is He to appear on earth as a man of humiliation 
 (Benj. 9, 10). But in this humiliation He is nevertheless God 
 come in the flesh (Benj. 10), on account of whose birth men 
 and angels, and the whole earth, rejoice. 1 He is the Saviour 
 of the world (Levi 10, 4). His baptism points to His sacrifice. 
 The heavens are opened above Him, 2 and Jacob sees the conse- 
 cration (ar/idcr/ui) come upon Him out of the temple of the 
 Divine Majesty, with a voice from the Father such as was that 
 of Abraham to Isaac. Hence it is He who renews the law in 
 the power of the Highest (Levi 14) ; He is the shoot of the 
 Most High God, and the spring of life for all flesh (Judah 24). 
 In Him is the Lord Himself present (Zeb. 8) ; He is God in 
 the form of man ; the light of righteousness arises in Him, sal- 
 vation and compassion are under His wings. He must, however, 
 suffer much through the sins of men, especially the Jews, and be 
 crucified. He must fight with Beliar; visible and invisible 
 wars must He carry on (Jos. 19 ; Dan 5 ; Beub. 6). He dies 
 as the Lamb of God (Benj. 3), or Mediator between God and 
 men (Dan 5). He who is without fault is given up for the 
 transgressors, and the sinless dies for the godless (Keub. 6), that 
 His blood may establish the covenant, and lay a basis for the 
 
 1 The author describes (Levi 19) the star which appeared at Christ's 
 birth in the same way as Ignatius, Bph. 19. Also there is much resem- 
 blance between these two in the signs which they give of the incarnation 
 of God, as well as in the doctrine of Christ's death and priestly office. 
 
 2 That this passage relates to Christ's baptism (comp. Jud. 24) is unde- 
 niable. Grabe finds something Jewish or Ebionitic in the words ftera. <pa»ij? 
 Ka.Tpix.viz, a; eswo ' AfSpadu ircvrpo; 'lacta.». But the meaning is, that the 
 relation of Christ to the Father is as close as is that of a human son to his 
 father. There thus lies in the words rather the equality of Christ with 
 God the Father. 
 
TESTAMENTS OF THE TWELVE PATEIAECHS. 157 
 
 salvation of Israel and the heathen, and that Beliar and his 
 servants may be vanquished (Benj. 3). By the sufferings of 
 the Highest shall Hades he enriched (Levi 4 ; Benj. 9). The 
 vail of the temple is rent asunder (Benj. 9 ; Levi 10). A new 
 priesthood is instituted (Levi 8, 18) ; He Himself is the High- 
 Priest without succession (Levi 18). And now is He exalted 
 after having been humiliated (Benj. 9, 10). The Spirit of God 
 is transferred from the synagogue to the heathen, and is poured 
 forth, as fire (Benj. 9 ; Jud. 24), by the water and by faith 
 (Levi 14 ; Assh. 7). There is hope again for Israel only after 
 the heathen (Benj. 10 ; Jud. 24). But he that believeth not 
 in God who hath come in the flesh, the Saviour, to him will 
 Christ be a judge after the resurrection from the dead (Jud. 
 25 ; Benj. 10). His shall be an everlasting kingdom (Jos. 19) ; 
 and men shall, through the Spirit sent forth by Christ, the 
 spring of life, become truly sons of God (Benj. 9 ; Jud. 24 ; 
 Levi 18). For under His priestly agency all sin shall die, the 
 pious rest in Him, and He rejoices in His beloved. The 
 gates of Paradise He opens ; the sword by which Adam is 
 threatened He sheaths ; and He grants to the holy to eat of 
 the tree of life (Levi 18). 
 
 The author of this book shows, by the way in which he ex- 
 presses himself, that in his view the personal and active in 
 Christ was God. Though he does not in so many words assert 
 the pre-existence of the Son, yet this must be regarded as 
 assumed by him, partly because of his constant reference to the 
 Book of Enoch, where this is undoubtedly taught, and partly 
 because of the use of the term fiovoyemj';. But he does not 
 direct his attention very closely to this more speculative side. 
 He does not connect Christ either with the " Word" or with 
 the Wisdom, which, as we have seen, was the case with the 
 forms of Christianity which were developed in unity with the 
 Old Testament ; but rather adheres to the anthropological side, 
 and is marked by this, that he represents to us the advance 
 within Jewish Christianity from the kingly office of Christ 
 and the Christian eschatology to the priestly office. It is true, 
 as we have seen, that those who attached special importance to 
 the eschatological concept of Christ, did not deny His higher 
 being and the absolute significancy of His Person. But in the 
 book now before us, though somewhat Judaistic, there is a ten- 
 
1 58 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 dency which, not satisfied with the royal office of Christ, evolves 
 from it, what is nevertheless bound up in it, namely, that not only 
 the consummation, but above all, and that for the sake of the 
 consummation, reconciliation is given in His Person. And this 
 momentum the author of the Testament has apprehended with 
 such decisiveness, that in his view the Divinity of Christ appears 
 to be denied if He is not regarded above all as the Mediator. 
 The kingdom fpower) seems to him to have only an earthly 
 (physical) significancy: it is the mediatorial office, the high- 
 priestly work of Christ alone, that is, in his esteem, heavenly 
 and divine. And so he advances to show, in the dying Lamb, 
 in the sufferings of the Highest, above all, the agency of the 
 Divine in this Person. There is thus elicited from the concept 
 of the perfected Lord of glory, that momentum which gives His 
 history an essential and eternal significancy. And not only 
 may the historical Christ thus receive His full rights, but His 
 Church also, where it is still entangled with national Judaism, 
 may attain to a history of which that undue preponderance of 
 eschatology hindered it. The Jews of Palestine did not venture 
 to break that integument which hindered the free formation of 
 the Christian principle, and kept it from constructing a world 
 of its own. The creation of such a world they did not acknow- 
 ledge as their vocation ; but bore the yoke of the law, looking 
 for the speedy return of the Lord. Those who were enlight- 
 ened, of whom there were not wanting some (Acts xv.), acknow- 
 ledged, in that they exempted the heathen from the law, that the 
 law had now sunk to a subordinate significancy, and that salva- 
 tion did not come through legal righteousness. But since they 
 dared not altogether break with the law themselves, especially 
 venerated as it was by their contemporaries, as was the case till 
 the time of Hadrian, there remained nothing for them but to 
 give up the untying of the knot of the Saviour's speedy return, 
 and in order to maintain the Christian character, despite out- 
 wardly unaltered customs and modes of life, to wait with stedfast 
 gaze for the Lord, who was not to tarry long. But the length of 
 the tarrying, the influence of intercourse with their people, cus- 
 tom, the power which the outward so easily resumes over the in- 
 ward, nay, the af terworking of inborn Jewish pride, caused others 
 to think that they would, by means of a strict observance of the 
 law, attain at least a higher grade of righteousness than the hea- 
 
TESTAMENTS OF THE TWELVE PATRIARCHS. 159 
 
 then converts to Christianity ; and thus they assigned to the law 
 again a part in justification, and thereby ascribed to it again 
 a permanent significancy even within Christianity. By this, 
 indeed, was loosened the attent longing after the returning 
 Lord, but this in such a way that they again tended to Judaism, 
 became more zealous for the law, and depreciated the intrinsic 
 newness of Christianity. In this state of relapse Paul already 
 found the Church at Jerusalem on the occasion of his last visit ; 
 and the Epistle to the Hebrews, which was composed shortly 
 before the destruction of Jerusalem, is directed to this state of 
 things. The Hebrews to whom it is addressed had, in some 
 cases, deserted the assemblies of the Christians entirely, whilst 
 in others, though they still professed to be Christians, yet by 
 holding up what belonged essentially to the ceremonial of 
 Judaism as of perpetual validity, and thereby depreciating the 
 propitiatory work of Christ, they found themselves inclined to 
 undervalue also the newness and greatness of Christianity, and 
 to think less highly of the Person of Christ. This mongrel 
 state, which afterwards led to decided heresies, was indeed, for a 
 season, interrupted ; the leaning to Judaism became less decided 
 than before. This we infer, partly from the impression and effect 
 of the destruction of Jerusalem ; partly from the extrusion of 
 Jewish-Christian heresies which made their appearance at this 
 time, which was a time of sifting ; partly, in fine, from what has 
 been above referred to, the spiritual and revivified eschatological 
 expectations in the Church at Jerusalem towards the end of the 
 century. But up to the time of Hadrian the suppression of 
 Christian liberty by the law continued. For the Christians in 
 Palestine, and especially in Jerusalem, still lived in society with 
 the Jews, and under bishops of the circumcision. And thus 
 the ever reviving danger of a relapse into Judaism could be 
 effectually counteracted only by the Jewish ceremonial being set 
 aside by the priesthood of Christ, and abrogated by the promi- 
 nence given to the propitiatory death of Christ. In this the 
 Christian principle was reponed ; with the eschatological de- 
 velopment of the royalty of Christ, there came to be assigned 
 to Christianity as her task, now that the ancient system was 
 fallen, to construct a new world out of herself. To have con- 
 duced to this result is one of the services of the work we have 
 been considering, which, in this respect, follows in the train of 
 
160 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews. 1 The manner, however, in which 
 it does this, by so decided a repression of the royal office, and 
 by signalizing the priestly office as the properly divine, could 
 hardly have found place at a later period ; rather as soon as the 
 latter was acknowledged in its independence, the royal office, 
 which had for the moment been put in the background, 
 would be again developed out of the priestly, and so reinstated 
 in its rightful place, as we find to be already the case, in the 
 second half of the second century. 2 For the rest, the book 
 stands not alone in its time; but in Barnabas and Aristo of 
 Pell a, whom we have previously considered, we see a similar 
 tendency. 
 
 Other Apocryphal writings, in so far as they may come into 
 consideration for the period now before us, however much 
 that is fabulous and however much that is Judaistic they may 
 contain, equally enunciate the acknowledgment of the truly 
 divine nature of Christ. 3 
 
 If at this point we look back on the path we have followed, 
 it will appear that the hypothesis of the Ebionism of the 
 primitive Church is on all sides untenable. Even the evidence 
 adduced in support of it, when more closely examined, proves 
 the opposite. Among those we have considered, there appears 
 no small diversity, but not one of them is an Ebionite. Viewed 
 as a whole, they are rather, so far as respects their rank in a 
 Christological respect, only a feeble copy of the Apostles, each 
 
 1 That form of Jewish Christianity which did not advance to the high- 
 priestly office of Christ, relapsed ever more and more, in the course of the 
 second century, into an exclusive regard to His prophetic office, and came 
 to ascribe to His kingly office little more than a casual significancy. This 
 party of Jewish Christians, however, perished after the manner of sects. 
 
 2 In this development of the knowledge of Him who had come, there 
 is a recapitulation in rapid current of the history of the development of 
 the prophetic Christology of the Old Testament. For this also started with 
 the kingly state of the Messiah, then advanced, and this was the most 
 difficult step, to His condition as a servant, and attained in His deepest 
 humiliation the highest spiritual elevation, the yielding up of Himself in 
 vicarious love, or His office as a propitiation. But hardly had this been 
 reached, when in Isaiah we see His power and kingdom born again from his 
 high-priestly love; and thus the end returns in higher manner to the 
 beginning. In Zechariah there is already the presupposition of the like 
 authorization of the kinghood and priesthood. 
 
 3 Appendix, Note FFF. 
 
RETROSPECTIVE VIEW. 161 
 
 of whom numbers among them his representative, who is at the 
 same time a witness of his influence. Nay, we may say that those 
 who are most akin to James, have, in a Christological point of view, 
 something higher than the Epistle of James expressly contains. 
 However much there was in Judaism that tended to hinder 
 a free development of Christology, and however much that 
 tended to further it lay in the peculiar endowments of Hel- 
 lenism, the Church, in order to attain a higher representa- 
 tion of Christ than the Ebionitic, had not to wait for an 
 influx of Hellenistic ideas. But, as the New Testament proves 
 that a form of Christology preceded Ebionism of which the 
 latter fell far short, so we have seen that, even independently 
 of Hellenic philosophy, that very tendency which, in closest 
 connection with the Old Testament, abode within the Church 
 up to the year 150, had completed a higher development 
 along two lines, both of which set out from the cultivated 
 eschatology which preponderated in it. The one issued from 
 the completed eschatological concept of the Person of Christ, 
 or, by a retrogressive process, from the end to the beginning, 
 and constrained to the positions that He is to be thought of first 
 as the Creator- Word, and next as the eternal Wisdom of God. 
 The other, however, more deeply immersed in the religious 
 element, unfolded from the royal office of Christ, which is pre- 
 sented to the view completed in eschatology, his propitiatory, 
 mediatorial office. And as the earthly manifestation of Him 
 who is the Word and the Wisdom is thereby recognised in its 
 essential significancy, and consequently is rendered capable of 
 being established to consciousness, and as this opinion recoils 
 from the former path, which was scarcely a match for Doketism, 
 to history, or the true manhood of Christ ; so, by the course it 
 pursues, a deeper basis is found for the divinity of Christ, than 
 was to be found lying in His kingly office. At the same time, it 
 must not be conceived that, even where both lines or paths meet, 
 as was the case with many of the Apostolic Fathers, and where 
 there was posited by them in a definite manner the absoluteDeity 
 of Christ, which existed in Him essentially, not simply as power, 
 it is nevertheless left very indeterminate whether His humanity 
 was not a mere apparition of God, who was perhaps thought of as 
 corporeal and patible, and consequently how the Deity of Christ, 
 the Son of God, was conceived of in relation to the Father. 
 
 VOL. I. L 
 
162 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 With this result accords also the testimony of those who 
 were the opponents of Christianity. However variously they 
 have misunderstood the nature of Christianity, and hence have 
 brought the most contradictory accusations against it, yet all 
 stedfastly concur in what they represent as the faith of the 
 Christians in respect of the Person of Christ. The opponents 
 of Christianity in the second century, heathen and Jewish, 
 attest with one mouth that the Christians reverenced the 
 crucified Jesus of Nazareth as God. Celsus, who wrote his 
 Xo-yo? aXrjdrj<; against the Christians soon after the middle of 
 the second century, lays it down as a well-known fact, that the 
 Christians held Jesus for God, and the Son of God j 1 and only 
 seeks to show that He was not what they took Him to be. The 
 reasons, also, which he adduces in opposition to this, are of 
 significancy for us. That He was God, and God's Son, cannot, 
 he says, be proved from the deeds which are recorded of Him (ii. 
 30). In a case where it would have been of avail, when a sign 
 was demanded in the temple (i. 67), He performed no miracle ; 
 and when He appeared after His decease, it was not to His judges 
 and enemies (ii. 63, 67). If He were God's Son, why did He 
 not avenge His disgrace, at least at the last moment (ii. 35) ? 
 What rational man would have endured such things if he could 
 have helped it (ii. 17) ? God's Son would not have suffered 
 Himself to be so mishandled. The Christians, indeed, hold 
 Jesus for God's Son, because they know that the punishment 
 He endured was for the vanquishing of the father of evil. 2 
 But he makes the Jew, whom he introduces as the bitter foe of 
 Christianity, speak thus : How shall we hold him for God who 
 fulfilled nothing that he promised, who hid himself and fled, 
 who was shamefully bound, and by those whom he called dis- 
 ciples betrayed? God is not subject to flight, nor to be carried 
 away in bonds : he who would be credited as the Saviour, as 
 God's greatest Son and Messenger, must not be forsaken and 
 delivered up (ii. 9). Why did he not suddenly disappear from 
 the cross (ii. 68)? Celsus, consequently, plainly intends his 
 Jew to insinuate that Jesus was a mere man (ii. 79). The 
 
 1 Orig. oont. Cels. i. 26, 28, 41, 66 ; ii. 9, 30, 36, 47, 67 ; iii. 41, 34 ; 
 iv. 2 ; vi. 47, 74, 75. 
 
 2 The Christians say, lafiiu nic x&hetaw eti/reiu iwlp xotOxipevea; tow ictmfit 
 T/f xxxlx; ytyotvitw : ii. 47. 
 
CELSUS. 163 
 
 reality of His manhood, which was shown in His sufferings and 
 in the blood which flowed from His side, and which was not 
 lX<°P (ii- 36), nay, which was manifest from the beginning, is 
 of itself, to Oelsus, a proof that he could not be God and God's 
 Son. Why did His parents flee with Him into Egypt ? God 
 is not in danger of death (i. 66). Different as He is from us 
 in voice, speech, behaviour, still He cannot be believed to be 
 God (vi. 75). A being in mortal body cannot be regarded as 
 God : the Christians, however, hold themselves to be religious 
 in that they reverence Jesus as God (iii. 41), and shrink not 
 from doing as the barbarians do — worship the dead (iii. 34). So 
 zealous does his Jew become, that he addresses Jesus Himself, 
 and blames Him for asserting His Godhead and supernatural 
 birth (i. 28, 38, 41). Amidst the many fables which Celsus 
 and his Jew allege, there is not the slightest trace of their re- 
 garding it as a fable that the later Christianity had ascribed to 
 Jesus the honour of being God and God's Son ; and yet, had 
 it been possible to assert this, nothing would have been more 
 fitted to bring a stain on the Christians, by putting them in 
 antagonism with their own antecedents, nay, with Christ Him- 
 self, and so to demonstrate the arbitrariness and groundlessness 
 of the Divine honours which they offered to Christ. In place 
 of this, we find a man who, to conclude from the objections here 
 collected from all quarters, possessed intimate acqiiaintance with 
 the opponents of Christianity, especially the Jews, and who had 
 knowledge of many Christians and their books, adducing no 
 objection more constantly and more directed against the Chris- 
 tians as a body than this, that they regarded Jesus as God and 
 God's Son. They say sophistically, exclaims his Jew (ii. 31), 
 the Son of God is the Logos itself (avT6\o<yo<;), and do not set 
 forth the pure and holy Logos as the Son of God, but as a man 
 of humble estate who was put to death. 1 He is not, indeed, 
 
 1 The Jew continues, ei'ye i Tio'yo? larm if&h vios rov ®tov, x.a.\ bifitis 
 eirxtvovfiiti. On this Origen says, that though he had met with many Jews 
 who were esteemed wise, he had never heard this from one of them. Cel- 
 sus seems here, therefore, to have represented the Jew incorrectly (comp. 
 Justin, Dial. c. Tryph. 48). Be this as it may, it is the immediate appli- 
 cation of the doctrine of the Logos to Jesus which the Jew cannot admit. 
 The Christians, however, had, in the middle of the second century, gene- 
 rally made this application, which again presupposes that the Christians 
 hitherto had not been of Ebionitic tendencies. 
 
164 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 ignorant that the Christians universally regard the death of 
 Christ as the propitiation for the world ; but as he treats sin in 
 the general as indifferent, and is surprised that Christianity 
 seeks not holy men, but sinners, he attaches naturally little 
 weight to that (ii. 47). Moreover, he knows well (ii. 67) that 
 the Christians distinguish between a state of exaltation and a 
 state of humiliation for Christ ; that it is only since His death 
 that they call Christ 0eo? in the full sense, regarding Him at 
 first as so sent into the world that His Deity was hidden. But 
 the Cross, on which the Christians lay so much stress, is to him 
 foolishness; standing on the ground of mere natural religion, self- 
 offering love appears to him an exhibition of weakness, a mere 
 piece of impotency. 
 
 Up to this point, Celsus is at one with the Jews ; but he 
 breaks off from his allies at a most decisive point. Genuine 
 Judaism is susceptible of progress, through its ethical charac- 
 ter ; and this progress is viewed in the general as effected 
 through revelation. Heathenism is not secure or master of its 
 own domain, the stand-point of a nature which remains always 
 essentially like itself, unless the possibility of a progressive 
 revelation is excluded. Hence Celsus attempted a decisive 
 blow, which should overwhelm both Judaism and Christianity — 
 a blow which should settle the impossibility of any such appear- 
 ance as that of Christ. Neither God, says he, O ye Jews 
 and Christians,, nor God's Son, has come down hither, or can 
 come (iv. 2). The reason is assigned in ii. 31 : because then 
 the Logos would be no more the spotless and pure ; there would 
 be, in a word, the Neoplatonic dualism, according to which the 
 finite as such is evil and hostile to the spirit. Celsus, indeed, 
 on the other hand, ascribes to the world what he refuses to man, 
 which — and here he is inconsistent — is in contradiction to the 
 above. A man cannot be God's Son ; but the world is God's 
 son : and, indulging in bold conjecture, he suggests that the 
 Christians, in calling Jesus God's Son, have preserved that 
 from the ancients, who gave this name to the world as a whole 
 (vi. 47). In this sharp conflict between the old world and 
 Christianity, it is apparent that even heathenism, though to it 
 the idea of a sonship of God is more familiar than to Judaism, 
 is yet as much offended by the Christian idea as Judaism. 
 Affinity of nature between man and God is not altogethei 
 
LUCIAN, ARRIAN, PLINY, HADRIAN. 165' 
 
 foreign to it ; tut this is conceived of physically, and without 
 the thoroughgoing ethical distinction. An incarnation and a 
 manifestation of the divine in the pure spiritual form of self- 
 renunciation, is altogether as strange to heathenism as to Ju- 
 daism. It deserves especial notice, however, and this is as clear 
 as possible, that Celsus not only adduces belief in Christ as 
 God, and as God's Son, as characteristic of Christianity, but 
 is as good as ignorant of such as thought otherwise of Christ ; 
 so much must Ebionism have become, even in the middle 
 of the second century, an almost vanishing, if not lost element, 
 in the great body of Christianity. His Jew maintains (ii. 1, 
 3, 4 ; v. 61) against the Christians, especially, that they pro- 
 perly depend on the Old Testament, issue from the Law and 
 the Prophets, which they are bound to hold as divine ; " if any 
 one has prophesied of Christ as God's Son, then there hath a 
 prophet gone out from us :" and he blames the Christians, not 
 for believing in Christ whilst they maintained the binding obli- 
 gation of the Law (i.e., being Ebionites), but for having rejected 
 the law of their fathers, and of their own arbitrary choice 
 adopted another name and another mode of life. 1 
 
 Other opponents of Christianity, such as Lucian, a con- 
 temporary of Celsus, and the Stoic Arrian, furnish us with a 
 picture of the Christians of the second century wholly corre- 
 sponding to that given by Celsus. (See Lucian's Peregrinus, 
 and Arrian Diatrib. iv. 7 ; Neander, Gesch. der christliche 
 Kirche, I. i. 268-273, Eng. Trans, vol. i. p. 214-218.) 
 
 But we are carried still further back, even near to the be- 
 ginning of the second century — that is, close on the limits of 
 the apostolic age — by the famous letter of Pliny to Trajan 
 (about a.d. HO). 2 It is here testified, that the Christians of 
 that day were accustomed on a certain day to assemble before 
 sunrise, and to utter responsively among themselves a song 
 of praise to Christ as God. 3 The letter also of Hadrian to 
 Servianus, 4 whilst representing the Egyptian polytheism as 
 
 1 Appendix, Note GGG. 
 
 2 Ep. Plinii, x. 97 ; Olshausen, Histor. Eccles. Veteris Monumenta 
 Prseeipua, 1820, I. 23 ff. 
 
 3 Affirmabant autem [the Christians brought before him] hane fuisse 
 summam' vel culpse suse vel erroris, quod essent soliti stato die ante lucem 
 convenire, carmenque Christo quasi Deo dicere secum invicem. 
 
 * Olshausen. 1. c. 27-29. 
 
166 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 meaningless and frivolous, contains evidence, that though the 
 Christians are monotheists, they yet worship Christ. 1 Most em- 
 bittered against the Christians were the Jews, 2 but not against 
 all of them alike : those who continued to adhere to the Mosaic 
 institute, and wished to regard themselves as Jews, they suf- 
 fered in their synagogues, because in their case the difference 
 did not appear so important as what remained in common. The 
 expectations of a Messiah were among themselves so variously 
 formed, that they were not turned into a dogma, but were in a 
 way left as an open question, a free theologoumenon. Whilst 
 many were, on the one hand, endured in the synagogue who 
 had quite given up the hope of the Messiah — and many diver- 
 sities in this respect at a later period divided them, — so, on the 
 other, there was no necessity, from the Jewish point of view, to 
 eject from the synagogue those who were willing to leave all 
 else unaltered, and only to stipulate for permission to believe 
 that Jesus, whom the Jews had crucified, was the Messiah. 
 There would, indeed, have been a weighty point of difference 
 here, had they viewed the appearance of Jesus as the advent of 
 the new age itself, and thereby have appreciated His historical 
 significancy. But this was not the case : there happened here 
 what has been already noted, — they laid stress only on His 
 second appearance. His first advent thus sank into little more 
 than an announcement of His second ; His prophetic office 
 became that of most importance j His royal office was the ob- 
 ject of hope, while His priestly office was cast into the shade by 
 the retaining of the righteousness which is by the law, and to 
 which saving power was ascribed instead of Christ. Such a 
 nominal Christianity was the more likely to please the Jews, 
 from their having at a later period, perhaps in connection with 
 these Ebionites, adopted a distinction between a Messiah Ben 
 Joseph and a Messiah Ben David ; and in this case it was of 
 no moment whether the former, to the idea of whom obscurity 
 was attached, had appeared historically or not. Even to the 
 
 1 Ipse ille patriarcha cum JEgyptum venerit, ab aliis Serapidem adorare 
 ab aliis cogitur Christum. — Unus illis Deus est, hunc Christiani, hunc 
 Judsei, hunc omnes venerantur et gentes. 
 
 2 It is not without reason that Celsus brings in a Jew as speaking against 
 the Christians. The same is apparent from Justin's Dialogue with Trypho, 
 and from Aristo's work above mentioned ; comp. also Euseb. iv. 15. 
 
JEWISH OPPONENTS. CHRISTIAN EITES. 167 
 
 identity of this double Messiah much weight could not be 
 attached, if the former was only the forerunner and announcer 
 of His real advent, not the personal appearance by which the 
 Messianic kingdom was to begin. This much is clear, that 
 such a Christianity was at war with itself, and was not only not 
 dangerous to Judaism, but was really little else than a Jewish 
 sect itself. But the very fact that this was endured in the 
 synagogue whilst the Christians were persecuted by the Jews 
 with the bitterest hatred wherever they had the power, — as, e.gr., 
 under Bar Cochba, and in many of the Christian persecutions, — 
 affords the clearest proof, even on the side of Judaism, that Chris- 
 tianity was at no time, as a whole, Ebionitic, but that Judaism 
 recognised in Christianity a principle antagonist to itself. 
 
 In closing this investigation, we may cast a glance on those 
 tendencies in the Church which sprang from a definite Christo- 
 logical idea. Here three points deserve special attention : 
 1. The formation of liturgical elements in the Church; 2. 
 The gradual setting apart of holy times, where the Christian 
 principle, as opposed to that of Judaism and that of heathenism, 
 was the directive power ; and 3. The beginnings of Christian 
 art and characteristic customs. 
 
 1. Under the first of these we may begin with the Lord's 
 Supper and Baptism. That the former has always been ob- 
 served by the Christians, no man doubts; but that in the 
 earliest age its central-point was the Person of Christ, — that it 
 was regarded by the heathen as a sort of mystery, and by the 
 Christians as the sacred mystic meal, by means of which we 
 come into union with Christ, — appears as well from the New 
 Testament itself, as from the writings of Clement of Rome, 
 Ignatius, and others. 1 Now, for the higher view of the Supper, 
 and still more of Baptism, the presupposition of the propitia- 
 tory effect of the sufferings and death of Christ is necessary ; 
 and that this was never wanting in any age of Christianity, nay, 
 that even the Jewish Christians were ever more and more 
 definitely forced on this, we have above seen. 2 We shall, there- 
 fore, not say too much if we designate the Supper the climax 
 
 1 Honing 1. c. Kheinwald, Axchseol. § 93, 114. Besides the Ignatian 
 letters, see Justin Apol. i. 65 ; Dial. c. Tryph. 210 ; Iren. iv. 18. 
 
 2 The Ebionites, on the other hand, mutilated also the Supper ; Epiph. 
 Iter. 1. 16. 
 
168 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 of the ancient Christian worship, in which the congregation cele- 
 brated its reconciliation with God in Christ, the Mediator be- 
 tween God and men ; and find in its uninterrupted celebration 
 the first proof of the stedfast faith of the Church in the divine 
 nature of Christ. As the second we may mention Baptism. 
 Numerous as were the washings which found place both in 
 Judaism and heathenism, there has always been, so long as the 
 Church has existed, a Christian Baptism essentially different 
 from them. First of all, there was included in this rite, not 
 merely a baptism for repentance, but also for remission of sins ; 
 and thus it stood connected with the higher estimate of Christ's 
 Person, inasmuch as the basis of remission was laid in Christ's 
 propitiatory work. Secondly, Christian Baptism is, above all, 
 not mere water-baptism, but in its truth spirit-baptism ; and we 
 have seen that men of the age now before us, even when in- 
 clined to Jewish modes of thought, ascribed the sending of the 
 Holy Ghost to Christ alone, and connected the communication 
 of the Spirit with faith in Christ. Thirdly, and this conducts 
 us to the liturgical element in the ancient Church, Baptism has 
 always been administered in the Church in the name of the 
 Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, according to Matt, xxviii. 
 19. How ineradicably this usage was fixed in the Church, ap- 
 pears most clearly from the fact, that even those to whom the 
 formula was dogmatically unsuitable, the Ebionites for instance, 
 did not venture to dispense with it. 1 
 
 This baptismal formula, which expresses the substance of 
 the Christian confession according to its concept, must neces- 
 sarily, from its express discrimination and parallelizing of Father, 
 Son, and Spirit, and on the other hand from the conjunction of 
 these in the one Baptism which was done in their name, have 
 given occasion, we may say impulse, to the construction of the 
 
 1 In the Bbionitio system (see Horn. Clem. iii. 72 ; ix. 19, 23 ; xi. 25 : 
 a-rrohovvuftivoi iir\ rij Tpiafonxxpix iTrovofiaatcf), this formula has the ap- 
 pearance of a remnant, which clearly enough shows their later advent, and 
 that they carried with them as a dead heirloom the poor remains of a 
 richer ecclesiastical inheritance ; for no one will venture to say that this 
 formula is the adequate expression and product of the higher-standing, 
 later Ebionism of the pseudo-Clementines. This formula never could have 
 been constructed from this tendency : all it could hope for would be, by re- 
 taining this, to pass for Christian ; and in this supposition there is proof of 
 an opposite common spirit of great power, to which it could not but succumb. 
 
BAPTISMAL FORMULA. APOSTLES' CREED. 1G9 
 
 Christian doctrine of the Trinity. In order, however, to see 
 more definitely how there was secured in the words of the 
 baptismal confession a higher conception of the Person of 
 Christ, it must be remembered that the mention of the Son 
 was the most indispensable among the three, and that a baptism 
 which was not in the name of Christ was not held to be Christian 
 Baptism; as also in Acts viii. 37 a baptism is mentioned in 
 which the Father and Holy Spirit are not named. Through 
 the Son alone, as mediating on hoth sides with the Father and 
 the Spirit, can a baptism into these be obtained. 
 
 Besides the baptismal formula, we find in the New Testa- 
 ment many short compends of the Christian dogma intended 
 for doctrine : Matt. xxvi. 64 ff. ; Heb. vi. 1, 2 ; Acts xxvi. 22, 
 ii. 33, iii. 20, 21 ; where always an important place is assigned 
 to the eschatology. Paul dwells especially on Christ's death 
 and resurrection (1 Cor. xv. 3, 4) ; John, on Jesus as the 
 Christ, the Only-begotten, come in the flesh (1 John ii. 22, 
 iv. 2, 9 ; John xvii. 3). Each of the Apostles had something 
 peculiar, though not exclusive, and these peculiarities have mani- 
 festly been adopted into the Apostles' Creed, which grew out of 
 the baptismal formula, and these wrought into a combined form ; 
 so that the old tradition, that each of the Apostles contributed 
 his share to that symbol, has its truth, though this incorporation 
 was the gradual work of the Church. We have no need to 
 revert to heretics in order to explain how the Christians came 
 to expand the few words of the baptismal formula (which may 
 have remained unaltered in the baptismal act itself) into the sort 
 of commentary form, out of which the Creed arose. The im- 
 pulse to add to the baptismal formula a second, developed out 
 of the former, the subsequent Apostles' Creed, was produced by 
 the necessity of collecting the elements of apostolic preaching 
 for the ends of doctrine and confession, and thereby to whet 
 the consciousness of the faith characteristic of Christians in 
 such a way as beseemed an entrance into Christianity. Now, as 
 every self-consciousness has as a momentum for itself the dis- 
 tinction from others, so also the Christian ; and the more deter- 
 minedly that which is foreign to it sought to penetrate it, the 
 more would a reaction from the innermost Christian conscious- 
 ness in unity with the apostolic doctrine be produced, and so 
 much the more would those parts of the confession by which 
 
170 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 the corruption or renunciation of the points of faith was 
 guarded against, become a weighty constituent of it. Such a 
 symbol, which, as the confession-formula and recognition-badge 
 of the Church itself, became as a rule of faith a bulwark against 
 and a test of heresy, was by no means formed for the first time in 
 the Nicean Council ; but had long before had a gradual growth, 
 as necessity demanded. The Synod against Paul of Samosata 
 appealed to an ancient symbol (Euseb. E. H. vii. 30). Even 
 in the second century it was a reproach cast on the Artemon- 
 ites, that they had violated the rule of the ancient faith (lb. v. 
 35). Tertullian and Irenseus frequently, in their controversial 
 writings or dogmatic investigations, refer to the rule of faith, 
 which they in a certain way acknowledge as a judge above 
 them. 1 This rule of faith does not correspond word for word 
 as given by different writers, nor does the same writer always 
 give it the same form in different places ; the rule of faith of 
 the Oriental family is also more copious than that of the 
 Occidental, which arose from the greater frequency of occasions 
 among the former of opposing heresies, and from the early 
 peculiar constancy, especially of the Eomish Church (Tertull. 
 de praascr. haer. 36), in preserving the same forms. But no 
 man who reads these rides of faith can deny that their subr 
 stance is the same throughout, and that of this identity the 
 doctrine of the true divinity and true humanity of Christ forms 
 in a special manner an element. 2 " And this faith," says 
 Irenseus (i. 3 ; iii. 4), " the Church preserves, though diffused 
 
 1 Iren. adv. Hser. i. 2, 3, 19 ; iii. 4, 20 ; Tertull. Prsescr. adv. Hser. c. 
 13, comp. 36 ; de velandis Virg. 1, comp. adv. Marcion. i. 21 ; iv. 36 ; Const. 
 Ap. vii. 41 ; Cypr. Ep. vi. 12 ; Orig. de Princ. Pr. 2 ff., ed. de la Rue, IV. 
 47 ff. For the rest see Hahn, Bibliothek der Symb. und Glaubensregeln 
 1842, p. 63, B. 1 ff., and his Zeitsohr. 1842 ; Rudelbach, Das Apost. 
 Symbolum, 1844. The expansion of the baptismal formula into a formula 
 of confession and the rule of faith cannot be definitely discriminated in 
 the olden time ; but the former may come in the place of the latter. Later, 
 the former became the Apostles' Creed ; in place of the latter came the 
 decrees of Councils. Comp. Ter. de cor. 3 ; de bapt. 6 ; Iren. i. 9, 4 ff., ed. 
 Massuet. 
 
 2 See Bull, Judicium Eccles. Cathol. de necessitate credendi quod Dom. 
 nost. J. Ch. sit verus Deus, Lond. 1703 ; c. 4, De Symbol, primaevse Eccl. p. 
 80 ; c. 5, De Symb. Apost. p. 35 ff ; c. 6, De Symb. vet. Orientali, p. 47, with 
 the annotations of Grabe, p. 61 ff. Hahn aad Rudelbach 1. c. Bingham, 
 Orig. Eccl. vol. iv. Bk. x. c. 3, 4. 
 
KEG SLA. FIDEL 171 
 
 over the whole world, carefully as dwelling in one house ; she 
 believes it as with one heart, proclaims it as with one mouth. 
 Though the languages be different, the tradition is one and the 
 same. The German Churches do not believe differently, nor 
 the Iberian, nor the Celtic, nor the Oriental, nor the Egyptian, 
 nor the Libyan, nor those built up in the middle of the world 
 (the Palestinian). As the Sun, God's work, is one and the 
 same for the whole world, so does also the preaching of the 
 truth illuminate all places. And even where apostolic writings 
 have not reached, as among many of the barbarous nations, 
 there have those who believe in Christ salvation written on their 
 hearts, by the Holy Ghost, without paper and ink, preserv- 
 ing carefully the ancient tradition, believing in one God, the 
 Creator of heaven and earth, through Jesus Christ the Son of 
 God;" and to this he appends the article of faith concerning 
 Christ, almost exactly as we have it in the Apostles' Creed. It 
 is possible that Irenseus may have described a unity which is 
 too ideal; but this at least is certain, that to hirn, the far- 
 travelled and well-read, it was without doubt that the great 
 mass of Christians of all times unanimously believed and con- 
 fessed what was in his esteem the essence of Christianity, the 
 doctrine of the true divinity and true humanity of Christ. 
 That, moreover, all the leading parts of the Creed had been 
 handed down before the time of Irenseus, is proved, partly by 
 the Oriental character of his rule of faith, partly by the circum- 
 stance that several clauses of it are intelligible only as anti- 
 theses to heresies which were in vogue only in the second 
 century. 1 
 
 The rule of faith extant at an early period along with the 
 baptismal formula, and perhaps, in a somewhat altered form, 
 also suited for the baptismal act (Iren. 1, 9, 4), proves, of 
 course, that the Christological element in the ancient Church 
 was essentially the same as in the later Church ; an identity 
 which is not less demonstrated by the writings of the New 
 Testament and of the Apostolical Fathers, which at an early 
 period passed into use both privately and in the public service 
 
 1 See Bull and Grabe 1. c. The Christological element of the Apostles' 
 Creed was the germ round which what was added grew, and is found 
 already formally, and almost wholly, in Ignatius ad Trail. 9 ; Smyrn. 3 ; 
 comp. 1 Tim. iii. 16, vi. 13. 
 
172 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 (Justin, Apol. i. 67 ; Euseb. H. E. iii. 16). The same iden- 
 tity of the older and later Church is attested by the old Doxo- 
 logies to Christ, 1 which exhibit one type from the beginning, 
 and that the apostolical, as already lying in the writings of the 
 New Testament. In these we have just the baptismal formula 
 and the rule of faith thrown into the form of worship. The 
 doxologies are thus the answer, the repercussive, reverberative 
 echo, by which the believing Church utters the revealed word 
 of the Father, Son, and Spirit as the blessed word of its own 
 faith. 2 And the same thing is to be observed in these doxo- 
 logies as in the baptismal formula, that if any of the three Per- 
 sons is omitted, it is least of all the Son ; a fact which, on 
 evident grounds, is even more significant in this case than 
 in the case of the baptismal formula. In Christ the soul 
 rests as its highest good and end, not in the Father alone. 
 (Comp. Ignat. ad Ephes. introd. and c. 21 ; and Magnes. in- 
 trod. and c. 15 ; and Trail, introd. and c. 13 ; and Rom. c. 9 ; 
 and Philad. c. 11 ; and Polyc. introd. and c. 8 ; Barnab. 17 ; 
 Clem. Ep. ad Cor. introd. and c. 59 ; Polycarp ad Phil, 
 introd. comp. c. 14.) 
 
 2. The setting apart of Holy Seasons, as already in the 
 second century was the usage, has also a dogmatic, a Christo- 
 logical significancy. In the ordering of festivals among the 
 Hebrews, the Sabbath, the festival of the creation of the world, 
 constituted the central-point and the regulative principle. For 
 the New, the central-point was the first dayof the week, the memo- 
 rial of the second creation, the day of the Lqrd's resurrection. 
 
 1 See Socrat. vi. 8 ; Ignat. ad Magn. 7 ; Euseb. v. 28 ; Iren. i. 1. 
 Bingham, vol. v. 1. 13, c. 5. 
 
 2 See Polycarp's prayer, Euseb. iv. 15 ; Ignat. ad Eom. introd. ; and 
 Philad. introd. ; and Smyrn. introd. ; Clement ad Cor. 1, introd. and 
 c. 59 ; Justin, Apol. i. 67 ; even Clement. Horn. iii. 72. In relation to the 
 matter before us, the oldest doxologies may be ranked in two groups, the 
 one of which contains those which ascribe glory to the Father through 
 the Son, the other those which ascribe glory to the Father with the Son and 
 Holy Ghost. But, as already in the New Testament both forms occur with 
 the same writer, and consequently the former indicates no lower Christo- 
 logy than the latter, but only glances at Christ's mediatorial office, whilst 
 the other, adhering more closely to the baptismal formula, rests more on 
 the exhibition of His Person, — the same variety in the oldest Churches 
 is to be looked at in the same way. See Bingham, vol. vi. 1. 14, c. 1, § 8 ; 
 c. 2, § 1. 
 
HOLY SEASONS. 173 
 
 As the early Church, with or instead of the daily assembly, 
 with or instead of the Sabbath, observed the Sunday, they 
 were led to this by a conviction that with Christ's resurrection 
 a higher world had its beginning, a divine life had arisen for 
 mankind. Whether, indeed, in the time of the Apostles, con- 
 sequently in the first century, the Sunday was kept as a holy 
 day, cannot be certainly gathered from Acts xx. 7 ; 1 Cor. xvi. 
 1, 2 ; Apoc. i. 10. But even if the Sunday were an institution 
 of the later Church, the proof would be the more striking that 
 the oldest post-apostolic Church was not Ebionitic. Not only 
 the contests, however, about the Passover, and the frequent cele- 
 brations of Easter on the Sunday from the year 150, presup- 
 pose a much earlier weekly observance of that day ; but we 
 have other and express proofs for the keeping of Sunday as 
 early as the first half of the second century. Barnabas says 
 (Ep. c. 15), "The Sabbaths that now are, hath God said, are 
 not pleasing to Me. The beginning of the eighth day I will 
 make to be a Sabbath, which is the commencement of another 
 world. Wherefore we keep the eighth day as a day of joy ; 
 on it Jesus arose from the dead, and, after He had showed Him- 
 self, ascended into heaven." 1 Thus consequently, and quite 
 naturally after the earlier, did that Christological momentum 
 which, though containing already the dawn of a new world in 
 Christ's appearing, nevertheless is mostly inclined to eschato- 
 logy, obtain from the beginning its expression in the order of 
 Christian worship. 
 
 Christ's death and resurrection mutually condition each 
 other ; there cannot be assigned to the latter a place of such 
 significancy, as we have seen, without in equal measure also the 
 recollection of Christ's death being thereby quickened, especially 
 since Christ's sufferings were regarded by all, the Ebionites 
 and several Gnostics excepted, as sufferings for our reconcilia- 
 tion. Now, as we have seen that even where a tendency in 
 the Church approximating to that of Judaism has dogmati- 
 cally evolved out of the idea of Christ the Lord of glory, the 
 idea lying therein as in germ of Christ as the Mediator and 
 Saviour ; so also in public worship, from the celebration of the 
 resurrection of Christ there was developed the celebration of 
 His death by fasting and penitence. " If we die with Him, we 
 1 Appendix, Note HHH. 
 
174 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 shall also live with Him." But there are two ways in which 
 that may be done. It may be done by men setting out from 
 the idea of the Christian Sunday (on which, as Justin informs 
 us, the Lord's Supper was already observed, Apol. i. 60), and 
 making every week a memorial of the Passion Week of Christ 
 (of which we have already some traces in the Shepherd of 
 Hernias) ; and hence, when at a later period there was added 
 to this weekly observance a more solemn annual festival, it was 
 natural, in order to continue in harmony with the previous 
 weekly festival, 1 and with the day of the week on which — on the 
 14th of Nisan — Christ's sufferings had happened, to select a 
 Friday for the special annual festival of Christ's death, and to 
 make the following Sunday the Feast of Easter. The other 
 way in which the festival of Christ's death was introduced, was 
 that every year the exact day of the year on which He died, 
 the 14th Nisan, was observed, on whatever day of the week it 
 chanced to fall ; and two days after, the resurrection of Christ 
 as an annual festival was kept. This Christian festival, conse- 
 quently, synchronized with the Passover, of which, indeed, it 
 took the name. But though the Jewish custom of eating a 
 paschal lamb had continued in the Church from the days of the 
 Apostles downwards, there came to be attached to the Christian 
 Passover a polemical aspect in relation to that of the Jews, from 
 the circumstance that Christ was regarded as the paschal lamb, 
 of which the Jewish Passover was but the type ; that out of the 
 festival of the temporal deliverance from Egypt was established 
 the festival of the spiritual deliverance by the death of Christ. 
 And this opposition was made still more pointed from the 
 annual festival of the institution of the Lord's Supper being 
 very naturally connected with the festival of the death of 
 Christ. 2 
 
 At a pretty early period in the second century, 3 there was 
 added to the Feast of Christ's resurrection the Feast of Pente- 
 cost. An inducement to this lay in the Jewish feast which fol- 
 lowed the Passover (Acts xx. 16) ; but there is also to be seen 
 
 1 Traces of this are to be found in Hermas, Simil. v. 1, 3 ; Victorinus 
 Petav. in Routh, Relig. Sac. iii. 237 ; Bingham, 1. xxi. c. 1. 
 
 2 Appendix, Note III. 
 
 3 Irenseus, in the fragment of his Tio'yof wspi rot! ra^ee, ed. Mass. p. 
 S42 j Tertull. de Idolat. 14 ; de Bapt. 19. 
 
SACRED FESTIVALS. 175 
 
 here prominent the transforming power of the Christian prin- 
 ciple. A festival of fifty days, as a continuation of Easter, was 
 dedicated to this feast ; these seven weeks, commencing with 
 Easter and ending with our Whitsuntide, 1 were the festival 
 week, as it were, of the year. Now, as the resurrection of 
 Christ was viewed as the beginning and the principle of the 
 Feast of the Passover, which already lay in the outward arrange- 
 ment, there is indicated, in the common conviction and feeling 
 which led to the adoption of this usage, again that view of 
 Christ which regards Him as the source whence the Holy Ghost 
 is poured forth, and every heavenly blessing comes. 2 
 
 Finally, the rise of the Feast of the Epiphany belongs to 
 the epoch now before us. It originated in the East. This fes- 
 tival' was of various significancy, and in its full import gradually 
 included the commemoration — 1. of Christ's baptism, or the 
 manifestation of His Messiahship ; 2. of the manifestation of 
 His miraculous power at Cana, or also in the feeding of the 
 multitude of five thousand ; 3. of Christ's birth ; and 4. of 
 the advent of the Magi from the East. All these four indicate 
 weighty momenta for the Person of Christ ; the first and third 
 are, for the older history of this festival, of especial importance. 
 On what principle of order the one is joined to the other, it is 
 not so easy to say ; this much, however, is certain, that the 
 Church at a later period came to keep a festival of Christ's 
 birth as a baptism festival. 3 And this corresponds to the full 
 with the dogmatic progress of development which we have 
 learned to recognise in what we have already considered : first, 
 the eschatological form of the Christology, or that of the re- 
 sult, then that of the beginning (the pre-existence). From the 
 stand-point thus attained, they advanced to the historical life of 
 Christ, and contemplated it. The birth of Christ, however, 
 could not be first fixed and celebrated from its own momenta ; 
 but in the foreground there required to be placed Christ's office, 
 His work of propitiation, or that which He is for us. His work 
 and office, however, gave the impulse to an ever-progressive 
 knowledge of his Person ; and just so in the festival it was not 
 
 1 The former from the beginning, the latter of a later date. The Feast of 
 the Ascension is also of later origin. 
 
 2 See Neander K. G. i. 1, p. 517 ff., ed. 2 [Eng. Tr. vol. i. 409]. 
 * Appendix, Note JJJ. 
 
176 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 merely the gift or the work that was celebrated, hut in the gift 
 the Giver, i.e., the Person of the Saviour. 
 
 Thus, under a constant impulse from the office of Christ, or 
 from Christ for us, the festival advanced from the last momenta 
 of the historical Person of Christ to the first ; and the retro- 
 gressive movement in the history of the festival may be taken 
 as a true picture of the order in which the dogmatic importance 
 of the individual momenta of the life of Christ entered into 
 the consciousness of the Church. The first, as we have seen, 
 was the resurrection, from which, as a continuation, Pentecost 
 was developed. The second was Christ's death. In both, 
 regard was had neither simply to the Person, nor simply to the 
 office ; but the royal and priestly offices of the Messiah were 
 celebrated, because in Christ they had become historically 
 realized, and the Person of Christ was celebrated, because in 
 His sufferings and resurrection it had an official significancy. 
 The third, by a regress to the momentum from which the 
 absolute union of this Person and the Messianic office was fully 
 realized in consciousness, was His baptism, i.e., the commence- 
 ment of the official life of Christ. It is possible, also, that the 
 historical impression of the important moment when Christ 
 appeared as the Messiah may have conspired to cause this 
 festival to be observed at an especially early period ; and this is 
 favoured also by the fact, that among the Jewish Christians, 
 and the Churches lying nearest to them, it seems to have been 
 among the earliest. In this beginning there was celebrated by 
 the Church the unity of the momenta previously celebrated, 
 and at the same time the introduction to the offices as a whole. 
 Christ's baptism is His inauguration to His Messianic office by 
 the Father Himself. He is thenceforward the manifested Son of 
 God, — no longer merely the King of thfc new dispensation, but 
 He who, in the baptismal symbol, is also consecrated to death 
 and resurrection. But not merely was Christ's inauguration to 
 His priestly and royal office celebrated in the commemoration 
 of His baptism ; when with this was combined the commemora- 
 tion of the first miracle at Cana, it was not a celebration of the 
 miracle as a thing of itself, nor of the power of working miracles 
 in the general, that was intended thereby, but of this power in 
 its connection with the Messianic office, of which it was an 
 illustrious revealing manifestation (John ii. 11) ; so that, in 
 
SACEED FESTIVALS. 177 
 
 point of fact, it was a celebration of what we include in the 
 prophetic office. And thus was the baptismal festival rounded 
 off: in it the Church viewed the entire fulness of the Mes- 
 sianic office in its unity, as present in its commencing point. 
 From this, again, it is but a short step to the festival of Christ's 
 birth, because already in the baptism the various historical and 
 official momenta are brought together in the unity of the 
 Messiah's Person, in which all these momenta were prefigured, 
 and at the same time brought to a simultaneous, self-penetrate 
 ing present. The Church, which thus observed the baptismal 
 festival without a birth festival of Christ, did not thereby in- 
 tend, by any means, to date the presence of the Divine in 
 Christ from His baptism : this would have been contradicted 
 by the Gospels, which are older than the baptismal festival, and 
 also by Paul ; indeed, even by the doctrinal type of the Apos- 
 tolical Fathers, as we have found. Rather in the baptismal 
 festival there was celebrated the commencing point of His Mes- 
 sianic office, and this as a manifestation of His higher person- 
 ality, which had been from the beginning. But to the Doketae, 
 no less than the Ebionites, the temptation and inducement was 
 great so to remain by the baptismal festival, as that there should 
 not be an advance to the festival of the birth, i.e., to make it a fes- 
 tival of the birth of the Messiah, in place of the festival of the 
 manifestation of the already born and concealed Messiah. We 
 find, also, that, in fact, they laid the greatest stress on the baptism 
 of Christ and the baptismal festival ; they chose to see in the 
 baptism the absolute beginning of the Messianic personality of 
 Jesus. In this they could not be consentaneous with the 
 Church; and the more a baptismal festival without a birth 
 festival laid the Church open to Doketism as well as Ebionism, 
 and was calculated to obscure its true opinion of the meaning 
 of the baptism of Christ, so much the more requisite was it that 
 a regress to the beginning-point of the earthly life of Christ 
 should be hastened, in conjunction with the suppression of 
 Doketism and Ebionism. The first trace, however, of a festival 
 in celebration of the birth of Christ, occurs in the second cen- 
 tury, and in Alexandria ; and that as arising from an impulse 
 communicated by Doketism towards the setting forth of this 
 festival as one peculiarly opposed to this heresy. This regress 
 from the beginning of the Messianic office to the temporal 
 vol. i. M 
 
178 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 commencement of the Person itself, was, however, also necessi- 
 tated by the conviction that the union of the divine and human 
 in Christ would be incomplete, and that His Messianic office, as 
 appropriate to His Person, would be without basis or ground, if 
 His Person were, anterior and up to His baptism, hardly dif- 
 ferent from other men, and was then, no one knows why, 
 chosen and appointed to be the Messiah ; so that already the 
 incarnation of God is in itself of the highest import for faith. In 
 a double way, however, was this regress to the first step of 
 Christ's life on earth completed. On the one hand, the existing 
 baptismal festival became also the birth festival; 1 and this was 
 only a more thorough carrying out of the original idea of this 
 festival, inasmuch as the Epiphany or appearing of Christ was 
 intended to be therein celebrated. In the child Christ, it is true, 
 the Divinity was for the most part concealed ; it was there 
 in essence, not in actual manifestation. But on that account was 
 the visit of the Magi, and their adoration, readily recognised; 
 and thus the birth of the child Jesus was celebrated as the ap- 
 pearance of God, as the birth of the Saviour. This was the 
 course pursued in the Oriental Church. In the "Western, where 
 the order of the annual feasts was more gradually formed, the 
 baptismal festival was not, at least for a long time, introduced 
 at all. As in this part of the Church there was a tendency to 
 consecrate a festival to the beginning, as formerly to the end, 
 of the historical life of Christ, Doketism and Ebionism had been 
 already there and been worsted, and Christological knowledge 
 had been advanced by the fact, that in it that middle-point, the 
 baptism of Christ, had been overleaped, and so the regress had 
 been at once made to the true beginning, the birth of Christ. 2 
 It is possible that in it, as with the Passover festival so also with 
 this, an arrangement entirely independent of the East may have 
 developed itself, and local influences and opposition to heathen 
 festivals may have operated upon it. But as this independence, 
 in its free, and as respects the time of the festival, diverse re- 
 
 1 Epiph. fiber, li. 16 ; Expos. Fidei 22 ; comp. Bingh. 1. xx. c. 4, 2. 
 
 2 We know that in the time of Chrysostoni the 25th of December came 
 to be regarded aa the day of Christ's birth in the East, through the influence 
 of the West ; but we do not know either how old this Christmas festival 
 was in the West, nor when the festival of Christ's baptism, which cannot 
 be shown to have existed there before the time of Jerome, passed over into 
 it from the East, and how far the observance of it spread. 
 
CHRISTIAN AET. 179 
 
 suit, affords an illustrious proof that the Occidental Church 
 was the seat of an independent development, not of a Jewish 
 Christian, but of a heathen Christian character ; so is the 
 essential identity of the result in both great sections of the 
 Church (i.e., the tendency of their order of festivals to the 
 same beginning, the birth of Christ) an evident proof that it 
 is essential to the Christian consciousness, to think the divine 
 and the human as perfectly united in all the steps and in all 
 the momenta of the historical life of Christ. Of this Irenseus, 
 who was the first to unite the East and the West (see under), 
 was conscious ; and this he has expressed, anticipating at least 
 the festival-order of the latter. 1 
 
 3. In fine, we have to speak of the beginnings of Christian 
 art and characteristic usages, so far as appertains to our sub- 
 ject. Little as the primitive Church was friendly to art pro- 
 perly so called, 2 and little as its holy symbolism can lay claim to 
 the name of art in the strict sense, there is nevertheless here a 
 beginning of the same ; and this is for us the more important, 
 inasmuch as the dogmatic idea is more openly displayed in 
 the art-symbol than in properly artistic work. 
 
 Among these symbols, 3 that of the cross may be expected 
 
 1 If we survey the course of development of the Christian festival-order, 
 we shall find the extreme Christian East and the Christian West forming 
 the opposite poles. In the former, the impulse to an order of festivals goes 
 forth more from the historical stand-point, the positive or negative is more 
 closely bound by a regard to Judaism ; in the latter, especially in the 
 Eoman Church, heathen Christianity fashions itself more freely. Between 
 the two, in Greece, and especially in Asia Minor, both tendencies came into 
 collision ; here are the earliest deep-going struggles of an ecclesiastical and 
 dogmatic kind. In these struggles, both tendencies seek and find, under 
 influences of a Hellenic kind, that equipoise which is exhibited to us in 
 the Second Epoch, rich and flourishing in great men. 
 
 2 That there is nothing unfavourable to the idea of the beautiful itself in 
 Christianity ; that, on the contrary, it rather provides for it a place in the 
 higher region of perfection, only that in this secular state, in a world which 
 deifies the beautiful, there is prescribed for the Christian toil and suffering 
 — appears plainly from what has been already said about Chiliasm ; not less 
 from the picture which Christianity has always kept before it of the glori- 
 fied Saviour. Here Miinter is inexact (s. u.), H. ii. 6. 
 
 3 See Munter, Sinnbilden und Knnstvorstellungen der Alten Christen, 
 Heft I. und II., 1825 ; Schbne, Geschichtsforschungen uber die kirchlichen 
 Gebrauche und Einrichtungen der Christen, u. s. w. ; Bingham, 1. c, vol. 
 
180 FIRST PEBIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 to be the oldest. 1 Wherever this occurs in ancient Christianity, 
 it must be taken as the symbol of salvation through Christ, 
 through His suffering and death. The idea of the suffering 
 Saviour, however, lies outside of Ebionism, as well as of Doke- 
 tism and Gnosticism, and would never have been conceived 
 by any of these. A favourite emblem of Christ's Church was 
 a ship sailing hence: the mast which sustains and expands 
 the sail is the cross ; Christ is the steersman (Munter, 1. c. i. 
 99). An especial favourite was the figure of the Good Shep- 
 herd and the lamb (same, p. 60 ff. 80 ff.), either represented, 
 according to John x. 11, as the Shepherd who gives His life for 
 the sheep, or, according to Luke xv. 4, 5, as the Shepherd who 
 seeks the lost sheep, and brings it back to the fold with joy. 
 If the latter symbol, as well as that very old one of the Fisher 
 (1. c. viii. ix. pp. 48, 52), expresses the idea of salvation more in 
 the general, the Shepherd who gives His life for the sheep is 
 identical with the Lamb dying for the sins of the world. This 
 Lamb alternates with the ram, which appears as a substitution- 
 ary offering in the history of Abraham : frequently the Lamb is 
 found with the cross. But by the side of the longsuffering love 
 of God stand power and royalty : He who is figured as a Lamb 
 is also the Lion out of Judah (Apoc. v. 5). 2 In fine, I mention 
 the Lyre, the emblem of Christian hymns. The finest monu- 
 ment on which it appears, a large Christian sarcophagus, assigned 
 by Munter to the time of the Antonines (1. c. xx. 84, repre- 
 sented Tab. III. 61), is remarkable not only from the figure of 
 the Shepherd (Luke xv.), but especially from its representing 
 the whole of a Christian family service of worship in this age. 
 On the one side are three women standing round a virgin, who 
 
 iv. and vi.; Bellermann, Die christlichen Katacomben; [Maitland, Church 
 in the Catacombs, Lond. 1846.] 
 
 1 Munter, 1. c. i. 33, especially pp. 68-79. " The sign of salvation was 
 supremely hallowed to the primitive Christians. We find it so regarded at 
 so early a period, that it may be reasonably presumed that it belonged to 
 the oldest symbols and signs, from the days of the Apostles. The Christians 
 saw it as a sign marked on all nature." Comp. Justin Mart. Apol. i. 72 , 
 Tertull. Apol. 16; De Orat. 19; De Cor. Mundi, c. 3; Barn. Ep. 9. Pro- 
 bably there is already in the Apocalypse, xxii. 4, a trace of this symbol 
 Comp. xvi. 2, xx. 4. 
 
 2 This symbol is seldom found among the Christian antiquities (see 
 Munter, i. 87). Still other symbols of the second century are mentioned 
 by Clement of Alexandria, Psedag. iii. 11, ed. Potter, p. 289. 
 
CHRISTIAN HYMNS. 181 
 
 is playing on the lyre ; on the right are four men, with several 
 rolls in their hands, from which they seem to be singing. If 
 Mimter's suggestion be correct, this monument is a proof that 
 already in the second century there were collections of Chris- 
 tian hymns, which were in use even in domestic life. At any 
 rate, this is historically certain : the author of the Small Laby- 
 rinth could, towards the close of the second century, appeal, 
 against the Artemonites, to a number of ancient poems, the 
 object of which was the praise of Christ (Euseb. E. H. v. 28). 
 " How many psalms and odes," says he, " are there not, which 
 have been written by the Christians from the beginning, and 
 which theologising celebrate Christ as the Logos of God?" 1 
 Already in the New Testament there are not only promptings to 
 Christian hymns and odes — Eph. v. 19 ; Col. iii. 16, — but even 
 traces and beginnings of such ; Eph. v. 14 ; Apoc. xv. 3. (coS^ 
 apviov), xix. 1-8, v. 8 (the Hallelujah of the Apocalypse gives 
 honour to Christ, who is the Alpha and the Omega, along with 
 the Father ; the twenty-four elders, with harps in their hands, 
 fall down before the Lamb, and sing to Him ; in fine, it is said 
 in Eph. v. 14, " Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the 
 dead, and Christ shall give thee light") ; and so also the young 
 teeming Church sends forth its praise and thanks to Christ in 
 numerous songs. Among the oldest portions of the Sybilline 
 verses above referred to, are to-be found pieces of the nature 
 of hymns to Christ ; and, what is deserving of especial notice, 
 there is already in the Christian songs a type very different from 
 ours, and reminding rather of the Hellenic odes and hymns in 
 the Mysteries, as also of those of Synesius and of the old 
 Christian hymn which Clement of Alexandria has preserved 
 for us. What abundance of Christian song there was at this 
 time, earliest and most refined, as it appears, in the Syrian 
 Church, especially in Antioch, where Ignatius laboured, 2 may, 
 
 1 Comp. the Ep. Synod, and Dionys. (Mansi, i. 1098) against Paul of 
 Samosata, whose.assertion, that the hymns to Christ are the work of recent 
 writers, as it proves itself to be a pretext for the removing the use of these 
 from the Church, so is it refuted by the passage from Busebius above 
 quoted. 
 
 2 Ignatius is mentioned by Socrates, E. H. vi. 8, as the inventor of the 
 antiphonal hymns in the Christian service ; which, however, is destitute of 
 internal probability. See for the rest Eheinwald, 1. c. p. 264 ; Bingham, 
 vol. vi. Bk. xiv. c. 1, § 11. 
 
182 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 amongst other evidences, be seen by the fact, that the Gnostics 
 Valentinus and Bardesanes were hymn-writers. On the other 
 hand, it may be regarded as characteristic that we hear no- 
 thing of the sort from among the Ebionites. The old Christian 
 hymnology, according to the traces of it which we possess, had 
 for its chief object the praise of the Divine Son (Ep. Plin.). 
 As in the Psalms of the Old Testament we have the most in- 
 structive monuments of ancient Hebrew piety, and thereby 
 ascertain what passed over from the ancient revelation into joy 
 and life, what filled the heart and burst forth from it in song, 
 so may we regard the old Christian hymnology. On this 
 account the commencement of the oldest Christian hymn which 
 has come down to us in a complete form may be cited here : x 
 
 Bridle of untamed colts, 
 "Wing of unwandering birds, 
 Never-wavering Rudder of youth, 
 Shepherd of the royal flock f 
 Thy blameless 
 Children gather 
 Holily to praise, 
 Sincerely to laud 
 With consecrated lips- 
 Leader of youth, Christ,* 
 King of saints ; 
 Of the Highest Father, 
 All-administering Word ; 
 Dispenser of wisdom ; 
 Support of the suffering ; 
 Lord of immortality ; 
 Saviour of mortals ; Jesus ! 
 Shepherd and Father, 
 Eudder and Bridle, 
 Heavenly Pinion 
 Of the consecrated flock ; 
 Fisher of men, 
 Of the heirs of salvation, 
 Whom Thou from hostile flood, 
 
 1 It is preserved by Clement of Alexandria, Paedag. iii. 12, fin., ed. 
 Potter, 811. 
 
 * [In Potter's text this line reads •naliau qyiiTopcc Xpiarov, and ought 
 therefore to be connected with what goes before, as containing the object of 
 tuvuv and ifti/uii. I know not on what grounds Dr Dorner has preferred 
 a different reading. But the rendering he has given, which is that of 
 Miinter, does not adhere to the original in several places. — Tb.] 
 
SUMMARY OF RESULT. 183 
 
 In sea of evil, 
 
 With sweet life, 
 
 The pure fishes catchest : 
 
 Lead us on, Thou 
 
 Shepherd of rational sheep I 
 
 Lead us on, Holy One ! 
 
 Prince of youths undefiled. 
 
 We sucklings, 
 Fostered by soft lips, 
 From the spiritual breast 
 Filled with sweet song,* 
 Sing sincere praise, 
 Genuine hymns, 
 To Christ the King : 
 
 Sing sincerely 
 The mighty Son. 
 peaceful choir, 
 Te, the Christ-begotten, 
 Thou holy people, 
 Praise together the God of peace ! 
 
 If, along with these witnesses of the inspired feeling, we 
 take the witnesses of inspired deed and self-offering for the 
 Christian faith, which are to be found in their purest form 
 in the first two centuries ; if we consider that martyrdom was 
 viewed as a higher act of worship, 1 a baptism of blood ; that 
 denial of Christ, and apostasy from Him, was regarded, not as 
 falsehood and unfaithfulness towards a man, and towards what 
 was to be held as a sacred remembrance, but as a renunciation 
 of eternal salvation and fellowship with God, — as a death-sin, 
 from which recovery was hardly possible ; we shall conclude, 
 taking into account all that has been adduced, that the Church, 
 up to the middle of the second century, deserves the title, not 
 merely of the witnessing Church, but particularly of the Church 
 witnessing for the true Godhead and the true manhood of Christ. 
 This is .impressed upon us, whether we look at the Church's 
 writings, or its liturgic elements in public worship, or the prin- 
 ciple of its arrangement of festivals, or the beginnings of 
 
 * [Lieblichen Oden erfuUt. I suspect a, misprint here of oden for 
 odem. The original is wiiivfcwri 'dpoaipw ifiiri'Tr'hajj.tvoi, filled with a dewy 
 spirit. — Tr.] 
 
 1 Comp. Euseb. v. 28 ; Ep. Plin. 97 ; Letters of Ignatius. 
 
184 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 Christian art and characteristic usage. Here the Churches of 
 the East and the West are at one. One faith essentially, even 
 that which is ours, and was that of the Apostles, is enunciated 
 by the mutually independent life-systems of the young Church ; 
 for one soul besouls it, the Spirit of Christ. And this free 
 inner concurrence of the most diverse regions may be con- 
 clusively viewed as the most decisive proof of the unity of the 
 universal view of faith in Christ, and of the existence of a new 
 creative principle in the Church, through faith in the Son of 
 God. The Church of the epoch now before us has not only 
 received and kept what she obtained from the Apostles and 
 their immediate disciples, and what was ever anew given to her 
 by the reading of the apostolic writings, and especially the 
 Gospels 1 — a practice early introduced, but has put out to usury 
 the treasure entrusted to her. 
 
 1 Justin. Apol. i. 67 ; Bingham, vi. c. 3. 
 
OPPONENTS OP CHRIST'S DEITY. 185 
 
 CHAPTEE SECOND. 
 
 OPPONENTS Or THE DEITY OP CHKIST. 
 
 Christianity, having its fundamental doctrine in the perfect 
 union of the divine and human accomplished in Christ, came 
 in consequence of this into antagonism alike with Judaism 
 and heathenism. The principle of Hebraism abides by the 
 distinction of these; that of heathenism by their amalgama- 
 tion. Christianity presents the distinction brought to unity, or 
 a unity of which the distinctions are the presupposition and 
 abiding elements. Where, therefore, heathenism or Judaism 
 does not transcend its essence, a Christian heresy is not at all 
 possible. It is not peculiarly Christian to believe that Jesus 
 was a man, though the true manhood of Christ is an essential 
 momentum of Christianity, for Jews and Mohammedans also 
 believe that; nor is it peculiarly Christian to believe in a 
 divine in the general, or indeed in a supreme being distinct 
 from God as the bv, without an incarnation of this divine, and 
 that in Christ ; for we find what is akin to this, as we have 
 seen, beyond the pale of Christianity; and even the name 
 Christ, which may through the historical influence of Chris- 
 tianity be given to such a higher being, does not in the least 
 alter the thing itself. Doketism and Ebionism, when both are 
 consequent, stand thus on the outermost verge, to go beyond 
 which is to cease to be Christian, especially when there did not, 
 through a wholesome inconsequence, lie preformed a higher 
 Christology in a purer construction of the work of Christ. 
 They are rather phenomena of heathenism or Judaism, rendered 
 apparent perhaps by Christianity, but not penetrated by its ra- 
 diance ; attempts, perhaps, which both made to transcend them- 
 selves in order to oppose Christianity, but empty and without 
 result ; if they refract the penetrating beam of Christianity, they 
 take from it only what they already have or may have, whilst at 
 
186 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 the same time they hold that which is common to them with 
 Christianity otherwise than it is in Christianity. Hence we 
 must discriminate such forms as have resting on their core only 
 the shadows of the pre-Christian world, from such as already, 
 though in a yet imperfect manner, recognise the union of the 
 eternal and divine with the historical, the human in Christ. 
 Where also there is only a holding by that union given in 
 Christ or His work as by a delicate thread, there we have not 
 what is unchristian, though it may be that there we have Chris- 
 tian heresy. Among the forms of the former kind which do not 
 at all belong to our object, are to be reckoned the doctrines of 
 the Simonians and the like, the Ophites and Elkesaites, which 
 stand within the sphere of Paganism. To Hebraism run wild, 
 the nearest resource was a relapse into a pagan form of 
 dualism : it is the ethical principle in union with the Messianic 
 idea alone which has power to bind this dualism, and to recon- 
 cile the Hebraistic principle with itself in its completion. Several 
 of those named show their Paganism also by their Polytheism, 
 and set over against or by the side of the revelation of God 
 in Jesus of Nazareth, themselves or others as revelations of the 
 supreme power. 1 To this class also belongs Carpocrates. 2 Ac- 
 cording to him, Christ was a religious Genius, to whom he 
 erected a statue along with Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, 
 and to whom he assigned a place in his Genius worship. Born 
 of Joseph and Mary, Jesus, according to him, was like all others ; 
 only he was distinguished by virtue and good conduct. Since, 
 however, his soul was of unwonted elasticity (svtovos), it re- 
 membered what it had seen when it circled in the train of the 
 unknown Father. This same Father had sent powers into 
 Christ's soul, in order that it might remember what had been 
 seen, and be strengthened to contemn the world-creating angel 
 and the law, to pass through all acts and conditions of men 
 without being denied or entangled, through any possible con- 
 tact with this world, and, being delivered, to ascend to the Father 
 
 1 Here also might be placed the Phrygian Montanism, were it suffi- 
 ciently attested that Montanus sought to be reverenced along with the 
 Father and the Son as perfect divine power, as the incarnate Paraclete, 
 and not simply as the prophetic organ thereof. 
 
 2 Iren. i. 24. He lived pretty early in the former half of the second 
 century. His scholar Marcellina came to Rome in the time of Anicetus. 
 See Bpiph. Hser. 27 ; Euseb. iv. 7. 
 
OPPONENTS OF CHRIST'S DEITY. ] 87 
 
 above. And in like manner kindred souls with his fly up to 
 freedom, so soon as they have performed all, and in all proved 
 their freedom. If later writers cast on him and his school 
 the reproach of licentiousness, it is to be borne in mind that 
 they are not supported in this by Irenseus, the oldest source of 
 information concerning Carpocrates. 1 But the place which he 
 assigns to Jesus among other human geniuses 2 might lead us 
 to place him among heathens, as, for instance, Porphyry has 
 done. The pre-existence which Carpocrates allows to Jesus is 
 that of Plato's souls ; his higher endowment is resolved into a 
 merely more vivid recollection of what others, with more of im- 
 perfection and confusion, know from their ante-mundane state. 
 And this recollection he owes partly to his virtuous soul, the 
 energy by which he contemns and negatives this world, partly, 
 but secondarily, to divine powers such as the Father refuses to 
 none who are virtuous. This tendency were to be designated 
 Ebionitic (in a dogmatical sense) had it somewhat pantheistically 
 represented all men, and so Christ, as essentially divine in re- 
 spect of their soul ; 3 and indeed, as it retains nothing even for 
 the work of Christ, 4 it is Ebionitic in the sense of the negative 
 limit of what is Christian. 5 
 
 In like manner, at the outermost point of what is Jewish 
 and not yet Christian stands the tendency which, on the one 
 hand, not only commends the observance of the Mosaic law as 
 allowable, but holds it for necessary and saving ; with this view 
 continues the observance of circumcision, Sabbaths, new moons, 
 etc., after the manner of pharisaic Judaism, despises the heathen 
 Christians who did not concur in this as unclean, and pursues 
 a Paul, as in life, so after death, with reproaches and excom- 
 munications : on the other hand, though receiving a powerful 
 impression from Christ's historical appearance, especially His 
 miracles and moral teaching, and holding Him to be the Mes- 
 
 1 Appendix, Note KKK. 
 
 2 An eclecticism which Hadrian justly censures. Ep. Adriani ad Serv. 
 
 3 This Carpocrates might have affirmed in accordance with his doctrine. 
 * Comp. Epiph. Hser. xxvii. 2. 
 
 s Iren. Bk. I. c. xxvi. 2. Hierosolymam adorant quasi Domus sit 
 Dei.— Justin, Dial. c. Try. ed. Col. p. 266. Peihaps to this also belongs the 
 second class of the Itrrol 'Efiiaiict7oi of Origen, by whom a natural birth of 
 Christ was asserted (Xpiarov yiywqallcei <i?T0ti? Koitov; Antpavevs). Epi- 
 phanius also knows such, Hser. 30 ; Orig. prom, xviii. in Jerem. c. 12. 
 
188 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 siah, yet maintains that He was the son of Joseph and Mary ; 
 denies His supernatural birth and special Divine endowment, 
 since it regards the birth of the Son of God from a virgin as 
 heathenish ; views his exaltation to Messianic dignity, conse- 
 quently, as a reward for His legal righteousness and holiness ; 
 and in the general expects and desires in the Messiah, not the 
 union of the divine and human (which are rather markedly 
 kept apart), but only the bringer of outward felicity. For this 
 party the Messianic age has in truth not appeared ; but all is 
 to be expected only from the eschatology. The appearance of 
 Jesus descends into an announcement or prophecy of the com- 
 ing Messianic age, and is, in its obscurity and humiliation, not 
 essentially different from that Theologoumenon, which still 
 finds place even within Judaism, according to which the Mes- 
 siah may have already appeared somewhere, but as yet only in 
 obscurity. For, the identity of the Person of the Messiah in 
 both appearances., which the former hold, is yet only apparently 
 a prejudice, so long as they know not to gain a spiritual signi- 
 ficance either for the historical Person or the work of Christ. 
 Hence they are justly regarded by Origen and others as 
 scarcely to be numbered among Christians. 1 The less that 
 they were attached to Christ by a spiritual gift, in which they 
 had the pledge that the consummating Messiah must be the 
 same as had already appeared in Jesus — the less they thought 
 Jesus to be peculiarly endowed, so much the more indifferent 
 did His appearance become, so much the easier also was a 
 relapse into Judaism, in which also there wanted not a prophecy 
 of that which is yet to come. 
 
 After this glance at the extreme limits, we advance to 
 Ebionitic heresy. It admits, that in a sense the divine was in 
 a peculiar manner united to the human in the Person of Jesus ; 
 but so as that this divine remains only an accident of the 
 Person of Jesus. What is accidental here shows itself in 
 this, that it is either not fixed for itself, or is thought as not 
 essential to this person, i.e., as not from the beginning and for 
 ever, or not in a peculiar manner, united to it. Ebionism views 
 the divine in Christ doketically, as Doketism does the human. 
 It deserves notice, that this party from the beginning has the 
 character of a certain ignobility in it. We can neither ascer- 
 1 Appendix, Note LLL. 
 
EBIONITES. 189 
 
 tain in what age it was formed, nor has it an historically signi- 
 ficant personality under it, nor, in fine, does any historically 
 ascertained person stand at its head. It had, indeed, its original 
 place within Judaism. Whether it be viewed as a relapse or 
 a remnant, it has been already shown in the first chapter that 
 it cannot be regarded as Judaic Christianity, but only as a 
 fraction of this. Kather, from its position, may it be concluded 
 that it unintentionally and unconsciously might become from 
 a Christian heresy a Jewish sect, which plainly could not be said 
 of Judaic Christianity in the general. 
 
 If we seek after the traces of this tendency, we shall find 
 the most ancient in the Epistle to the Hebrews. From that 
 zeal for the law, with which Paul had to contend, the Judaizing 
 spirit was led not at first to impeach the Christology, but rather 
 the Soteriology, or the work of Christ. But the consequence 
 of the legal stand-point soon showed itself. The party which 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews has in view must have over-estimated 
 the law of the Old Testament regarding holy times, places, 
 acts, and persons alike, and have been wanting in the Christian 
 knowledge which knows how to secure to the Old Testament 
 its abiding significancy, which it has as a Divine institute, 
 without imperilling the newness and conclusive completeness of 
 Christianity. They have already by baptism tasted of the gift 
 of the Holy Ghost ; nor are they yet fallen from Christ, but 
 are willing still to hold by His Person. But it could not fail 
 that the significancy of that Person should ever be diminished 
 the less there remained for it to accomplish, i.e., the more the 
 law was regarded as sufficient and permanent ; and hence the 
 Epistle shows, that in the law there was not revealed the inner- 
 most being of God (it was given by angels) ; that it was transi- 
 tory, because internally unsatisfying, inasmuch as it did not 
 secure eternal reconciliation, and was therefore permanent only 
 in respect of its typical character. As a type, it was set aside 
 by the appearing of Christ, the pre-existent Son of God, who 
 is higher than angels, the Word of revelation itself, the true 
 Reconciler, but at the same time the Judge. The author thus 
 seeks, by vivifying their view of the Son of God, to preserve 
 them from extremities, — from that entire apostasy from Him to 
 which they were exposed, if they retained the old world, which 
 was constructed upon another principle, unaltered, along with 
 
190 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 the new principle, which they had not yet renounced, — refused 
 to this development, thereby assailed, its very existence, and 
 made it only apparent. How far their view of Christ had been 
 already lowered by the vitiating influence of the old world theory, 
 cannot be decisively gathered from the Epistle ; very likely it 
 was different in this respect with different persons. But it is 
 certain that a higher view of Christ than that which is suited 
 to the legal stand-point must have belonged to them at an 
 earlier period, — nay, that such was still recognised by them, and 
 afforded to the writer of the Epistle a firm point from which to 
 operate ; and with this, therefore, he begins. His Christology 
 might, indeed, be higher than theirs ; still he must have been sure 
 that he was not saying to them what was wholly strange and 
 unknown in what he advanced on this head, as he could remind 
 them that they had through faith in Christ received the gift 
 of the Holy Ghost, and had tasted of the powers of the world 
 to come. We know not, however, of a single name which we 
 can mention as connected with this tendency, unless Thebuthis, 
 who belonged certainly to this age, 1 is to be reckoned as such. 
 
 The destruction of Jerusalem brought, according to Epi- 
 phanius, many Christians from Judea and Jerusalem to the dis- 
 trict of Pella. We find, indeed, soon after this, Jerusalem 
 again the centre-point of the non-heretical Jewish Christians 
 (see above, p. 159) ; but from this it cannot be concluded that 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews, or the destruction of Jerusalem, 
 had annihilated even for a season the heresy attacked by the 
 former. But whilst the kernel of the Jewish Christian Church 
 assembled, after the ancient fashion, in Jerusalem up to the time 
 of Hadrian, many remained in Pella and the surrounding re- 
 gion, under leaders without name, proclaiming their want of 
 consequence and coherence by their coalescing with the Essenes, 
 and even in part, as was especially the case with the Elke- 
 saites, falling into heathenism. Elsewhere also was Christianity 
 grafted upon such a Judaism decaying and tinged with heathen- 
 ism; as in Phrygla, Asia Minor (comp. the Epistle to the 
 Colossians and the Pastoral Epistles), and Alexandria. Out of 
 this amalgamation arose the families of the gnosticizing Ebion- 
 ism, which Epiphanius especially describes. 2 Nevertheless it 
 
 1 Buseb. iii. 32 ; iv. 22. Comp. for the rest, Schliemann, p. 459 S. 
 3 Epiph. Hser. 30 ; Homil. Clementirue. 
 
EBIONITES. 191 
 
 must not be assumed that all who dwelt in the Decapolis were 
 of this party. As little, conversely, must we conclude that the 
 society of Jewish Christians who returned to Jerusalem, and 
 who observed the law, held thoroughly by the apostolic type of 
 doctrine ; the same danger which the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 indicates, must have arisen from continued intercourse with the 
 synagogue. As under Hadrian it was forbidden to the Jews 
 to enter the sacred city, there must have emerged a crisis j 1 and 
 the question must have come before the Church at Jerusalem, 
 whether to adhere to the Jews, who must depart, or to the 
 Christians, who might remain. The answer seems in point of 
 fact to have been threefold. Some, and these not few, as Sul- 
 picius Severus intimates, renounced the bondage of the law ; 
 and they had no other resource than to join the society of a 
 purely heathen Christian character, which soon after was col- 
 lected at JElia Capitolina. Others left Jerusalem ; but as they 
 did not sever themselves from the synagogue, and did not unite 
 with heathen Christians, they became withdrawn from the life 
 of the Church and its motives, and gradually became a sect. 
 Among these, however, some held faithfully by the supernatural 
 birth of Christ ; they wished to remain Christians without giv- 
 ing up the hope of seeing their Jewish brethren collectively 
 converted to Christianity ; 2 whilst others, following out the legal 
 principle which they firmly held, were thereby drawn into con- 
 cessions to unbelieving Judaism, and to a lowering of their 
 position concerning Christ. Of these, the former disappeared 
 among the heathen Christians ; the latter could not submit to 
 
 1 If I do not attach to this catastrophe, which betook the national 
 Judaism, as much weight in conducing to the rise of Ebionism, as Schlie- 
 mann does, p. 406 ff., inasmuch as undoubtedly earlier traces of Ebionism 
 are to be found, on the other hand, I think Neander (K. G. i. 2, 953 
 [Eng. Tr. vol. ii. 12.]) has under-estimated its significancy. 
 
 2 Hieronym. Ep. 112 ad August, e. 13. Quid dicam de Ebionitis qui 
 Christianos simulant ? Usque hodie per totas (Mentis synagogas inter 
 Judseos haeresis est qui dicitur Mineorum, et a Pharisseis nunc usque dam- 
 natur, quos vulgo Nazarasos nuncupant, qui credunt in Christum Filium 
 Dei, natum de virgine Maria et eum dicunt esse, qui sub Pontio Pilato pas- 
 sus est et resurrexit, in quem et nos credimus ; sed dum volunt et Judsei 
 esse et Christiani, nee Judaei sunt nee Christiani. But they deserve not this 
 harsh sentence ; they sought to be Christians in respect of faith, to be Jews 
 in respect of nationality. Epiph. Hser. xxix. 7, 9, comp. Iren. i. 26 ; Orig. 
 C. Cels. v. 61, 65 ; Euseb. iii. 27 ; Pamphil. Apol. i. 
 
192 FIKST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 the sacrifice which was laid upon them — and which was required, 
 alone of all nations, of the converted Jews — the sacrifice of na- 
 tionality, and lived as Nazarenes, called by the Jews Minseans, 
 at first among the Jews, afterwards also with them; 1 whilst the 
 last, who might be strengthened from other quarters, though 
 they did not relapse into Judaism, degenerated in various ways, 
 — e.gr., they might approximate to the sect above delineated, 
 which is properly to be called a sect of Judaism, 2 or come nearer 
 to gnostic Judaism. 3 These last are the Ebionites, properly so 
 called. 4 We give the precedence to the Nazarenes, who held 
 by the supernatural birth of Christ, though they would not go 
 the length of admitting the pre-existing hypostasis of the Son. 
 The most fully developed form of these, on the other hand, are 
 the gnosticizing Ebionites ; whilst between these two extremes 
 of Judaizing Ohristology there are appearances which we shall 
 shortly term Cerinthian, because they all concur in dating the 
 higher nature of Christ from His baptism. 
 
 A. The Nazarenes.* 
 
 The Nazarenes could not justly be designated heretics, were 
 it not that to abide by the first elements of doctrinal develop- 
 ment, and to arrest its progress, must unconsciously and invo- 
 
 1 Comp. Hieron. de viris illustr. 3. 
 
 2 Epiph. Haer. xxix. 7 ; xxx. 1, 2. 
 
 3 Comp. Orig. c. Cels. v. 61, 65 ; Euseb. iii. 27 ; Epiph. Hser. 30. 
 
 * The names Ebionite and Nazarene have probably a similar history, 
 namely, that originally they were nicknames which the Jews gave among 
 themselves to the Christians, and which afterwards the Jewish Christians 
 appropriated and kept as what they received from the heathen Christians, 
 from whom they stood aloof (comp. Neander, K. G. i. 2, 596 ff. 603 [E. 
 T., vol. ii. p. 13 ff.]). Frequently all are called Ebionites who still 
 observed the Mosaic law ; but where greater precision is observed the 
 Nazarenes are distinguished from the Ebionites, because they did not, in 
 fact, share the Christological heresy of the proper Ebionites. Irenseus does 
 not exactly apprehend and discriminate the different kinds of Ebionites ; 
 but this is done by Origen, Eusebius, Jerome, and in part by Epiphanius. 
 
 * [Before entering on this part of the book, the reader may with ad- 
 vantage refresh his memory by reading Neander's account of these early 
 heretical sects, as Dr Dorner presupposes in his readers a somewhat familiar 
 acquaintance with them. — Tr.J 
 
NAZARENES. 193 
 
 luntarilylead to an alteration of the truths which, if left to their 
 natural course, would be the principles of a development 
 Continuing till at least the fifth century, they presented to the 
 Church the picture of the first commencement of Christological 
 knowledge ; but only as a child that has grown in years with- 
 out growing in size, and from the impeded growth of its limbs 
 cannot save itself from being crippled. But we must set out 
 from this, as well because among those named they are the purest 
 outshoot of the post-apostolic Jewish Christians, as because they 
 are the stock from which the two forms of proper Ebionism 
 grew, misled by the attractive power of foreign principles. 
 
 The Nazarenes had the Gospel of Matthew in the Hebrew 
 tongue, and that complete (ir\7]pearaTov), as Epiphanius and 
 Irenaeus attest. 1 As they consequently did not want the first 
 two chapters of Matthew, they accepted the supernatural birth 
 of Christ. 2 They thought of Christ as born of the essence of 
 the Divine Spirit, or as the Son of the fountain of the Holy 
 Ghost. 3 But they did not hold a pre-existing hypostasis of the 
 Divine in Christ, but only His pre-existence in God generally 
 and His Spirit (Euseb. iii. 27). We might thus even venture 
 to ascribe to them a belief in an hypostasis of the Divine in 
 Christ from His birth or His baptism ; for this could not be 
 avoided where the ftiiV rrn was hypostatically distinguished from 
 God. Most probably they called God the fountain of the 
 Holy Ghost (fons omnis Spiritus Sancti) on account of the 
 baptism, and with reference to Is. xi. 1 ; and in so far as Jesus 
 knew Himself to be born from this Divine Spirit, He might 
 figuratively, according to them, call it His mother. But, as 
 Neander shows, the strongly poetical passages in which this is 
 stated cannot be permitted to furnish ground for constructing a 
 
 1 Epiph. xxix. 7, .9 ; Iren. i. 26,. Appendix, Note MMM. 
 
 3 Appendix, Note NNN- 
 
 3 Characteristic of the three classes that are to be bespoken is the form 
 in which each of them represents the baptism of Christ (comp. Schliemann, 
 p. 508). The Nazarene gospel narrates (Hieron. Com. in Jes. xi. 1) : Factum 
 est autem cum ascendisset Dominus de aqua descendit/on* omnis Spiritus 
 Sancti, et requievit super ilium et dixit illi Fili mi, in omnibus prophetis 
 exspectabam te, ut venires ut requiesurem in te. Tu es enim requies mea, 
 tu es Filius meus primogenitus qui regnas in sempiternum. The object 
 spoken of is not called " Spiritus Sanctus," as according to the interpreta- 
 tion of recent writers one might suppose, but "fons omnis Spiritus Sancti." 
 
 VOL. I. N 
 
194 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 dogma of the Nazarenes respecting a special hypostasis and 
 pre-existence of the Holy Ghost. They thus stand nearer to 
 the so-called Patripassians of the second and third centuries, 
 who also dwelt in the same district, than to the ecclesiastical 
 doctrine of the Logos and Pneuma. Jerome relates (Comm. 
 in Hab. iii. 3) of a Nazarene, that he explained the passage 
 thus : Quod Bethlehem sita sit ad austrum, in qua natus est 
 Dominus salvator, et ipsum esse, de quo nunc dicatur Dominus 
 ab austro veniet, hoc est nascetur in Bethlehem et inde con- 
 surget. — Et quia ipse qui natus est in Bethlehem legem quon- 
 dam dedit in monte Sinai ipse est sanctus qui venit de monte 
 Pharan. — Ipse qui natus est in Bethlehem et qui in Sina, i.e., 
 in monte Pharan legem dedit, semper in universis beneficiis 
 autor est et largitor. From this passage one would certainly 
 conclude that He who gave the law on Sinai was the same as 
 He who was born at Bethlehem ; but whilst there is nothing in 
 the language of the Old or New Testament to support the idea 
 that the law was given by the Holy Ghost, as little can we say, 
 with Schliemann, that Christ is, according to this passage, 
 identified in His pre-existence with the Holy Ghost, but 
 rather with God Himself (comp. Schliemann, p. 455). In 
 fact, and this deserves special consideration, they seem also to 
 have taken no offence at Christ's death on the cross, but rather 
 to have attached special importance to it, as also to His resur- 
 rection. 1 But certainly their Christology has still something 
 indefinite and fluctuating in it, and thereby they are distin- 
 guished from the Patripassians. It is certain that with them 
 Christ stood personally distinct from God. The Divine had 
 come into Him in an abiding operativeness, had come to an 
 objective mode of being in Christ ; and the expressions they use 
 sound strong enough to lead us to think that they regarded the 
 Divine in Christ as personal, — not, indeed, as a proper power, 
 but that God Himself, in so far as He is fons omnis Spiritus 
 Sancti, abides and rests in Him. On the other hand, however, 
 these strong expressions do not necessarily go beyond the asser- 
 tion of a distinction between the manifested and the concealed 
 God, which by no means posits a hypostatic distinction in God, 
 but only involves a leaning to that. Moreover, this entire ele- 
 vation of Christ dates only from His baptism; so that His 
 1 Appendix, Note 000. 
 
CERINTHIAN EBIONITES. 195 
 
 human personality, wonderful indeed, and proceeding from the 
 Holy Ghost, was already there before it became participant by 
 baptism of that highest indwelling of God. 1 
 
 B. Cekinthian Ebionites. 
 
 Whilst the Nazarenes placed the physical God-sonship first, 
 and made the ethical to follow thereupon or therefrom, — which, 
 we cannot determine with certainty, — and gave to the baptism 
 of Christ a marked importance in reference to His equipment, 
 the Cerinthian Ebionites decidedly set the baptism of Christ in 
 the place of His supernatural birth. They first obtained a suf- 
 ficient motive for giving pre-eminence to the baptism of Christ, 
 as the Nazarenes also partially did, from their conversely mak- 
 ing the ethical Sonship the cause of the physical, so far as they 
 held this. According to their view, it was His baptism which 
 first made Jesus the Messiah, not His birth ; for such a dis- 
 tinction could be conferred only on one who by his righteous- 
 ness and virtue had made himself worthy of it. The period 
 before His baptism, and an existence of Jesus before His 
 exaltation to be God's Son, were consequently necessary, in 
 order that God might remain just, — that He might not arbi- 
 trarily make a person holy, and then reward him for that which 
 was not his desert, but the effect of his nature. Thus this class 
 stood most markedly over against the preceding. They were 
 constrained, from avowedly ethical, but more strictly from legal 
 grounds, to utterly deny the supernatural birth of Christ : they 
 must regard Him as not more perfectly endowed than other 
 men, in order that He might, in the season of trial before His 
 baptism, approve Himself by virtue, and then be endowed with 
 grace, i.e., be rewarded. 
 
 In support of this legal motive there came, in close connec- 
 tion with the preceding, to this second stricter Jewish class, a 
 Judaistic more than an Old Testament concept of God, which 
 markedly separated God and the world, and to which it seemed 
 a heathenish fable that the Son of God should be born of a 
 virgin. The preceding also found, indeed, no distinction in 
 God, no doctrine of a hypostatic Trinity, but still a living, 
 i Appendix, Note PPP. 
 
196 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 self-manifesting God. Here, on the contrary, God was con 
 ceived only in His infinite supremacy over the world, not in 
 His condescension ; the religious interest was repressed ; the ab- 
 stractly understood made itself valid ; although still the main 
 tilings were not theories or speculations, but what was practical, 
 i.e., moral or eudsemonistic, had the preference. As through 
 this the doctrine of the Gospels concerning the original endow- 
 ment of Christ was necessarily denied, so through this also the 
 kind of higher endowment which they actually allowed to -Christ 
 was determined. Of a personal indwelling of God — from assent- 
 ing to which the Nazarenes were not excluded, nay, to which 
 there were many features of their system which inclined them — 
 these could not so much as speak ; and so there remained for 
 them only to maintain, either the communication of Divine 
 power, or, what was more consequent on their deistic concept of 
 God, the union with Jesus of a power not Divine, but created, 
 and which could thus without difficulty be represented hypo- 
 statically. 
 
 This class attached itself more to the law, approximated to 
 pharisaic Judaism, and was hostile to the Apostle Paul. It 
 clung firmly in the general to the Old Testament, and thereby 
 was obviously distinguished from the third class, which was 
 retrogressive to a primitive religion. 1 
 
 At first their doctrinal system had naturally a very unde- 
 veloped, transient form ; they issued only from a tendency 
 within Judaic Christianity, which had no existence save where 
 the law was still held to be binding. Among such, some would 
 still stand aloof from the Christological conclusions, whilst 
 others would advance to them, hut that in a sadly infelicitous 
 way ; and a while nmst elapse before they, after giving up the 
 supernatural birth, could again firmly plant their foot and 
 settle themselves on a doctrine which secured to them the name 
 of a Christian, and not merely, like those above excepted, a 
 Jewish sect. 
 
 With this concurs wholly the account above, taken from 
 Hegesippus, of the initiatory covert ^accumulation of the here- 
 tical poison, until under Thebuthis (of whom we know nothing 
 beyond this) heresy appeared with uncovered front. The end 
 of the first, or the beginning of the second century, seems to 
 1 Appendix, Note QQQ. 
 
CERINTHIAN EBIONITES. 1.97 
 
 be the time when this form of Ebionism assumed a more defi- 
 nite shape. 1 New strength was conveyed to it by the relations 
 under Hadrian (see above,, p. 190). 
 
 a. As the first representative of name of this tendency, 
 appeared Oerinthus in Asia Minor. He, on account of his 
 chiliastic views, cannot be reckoned among the Gnostics, 
 though he, with the entire class to which he belongs, marks a 
 middle path, which, on the one hand, conducts to gnosticizing 
 Ebionism, and on the other, to a proper Doketism and Gnos- 
 ticism, with which he had much in common, especially his con- 
 cept of God. 
 
 According to Cerinthus, Jesus, the child of Joseph and 
 Mary, was not at first the Christ. The Father, who, infi- 
 nitely exalted above. all world-creating powers and angels, is 
 by a long series of beings separated from us, ayvcocrTos, was 
 at first also unknown by Jesus. Nevertheless the latter, by 
 virtue, wisdom, and righteousness (Iren. i. 26), was so distin- 
 guished from all other men, 2 that the X/Dtaro? — whom he con- 
 ceived as akin to the JEons, but exalted above the angels, and 
 called, according to others, also .40709 — found Him worthy that 
 at His baptism He should descend and sink into Him in the 
 baptismal act, whereby He became the Messiah. After this 
 Jesus knew the Father, declared Him, the Unknown (Theo- 
 doret, Hser. Fab. ii. 3), and performed miracles. Christ's prin- 
 cipal work, according to Cerinthus, was not that of redemption, 
 but that of revelation by doctrine. The Christ avoided the 
 sufferings of Jesus, in which he saw no Messianic act, but 
 only human sufferings ; to which, consequently, he attached no 
 value in relation to redemption. With this is connected the 
 
 1 Appendix, Note RBR. 
 
 2 Comp. Euseb. iii. 28 ; Iren. i. 26 ; Theodoret, Haer. Fab. ii. 3. Ire- 
 nseus says, Non a primo Deo factum esse mundum docuit, sed a virtute 
 quadam valde separata et distante ab ea principalitate, quae est super uni- 
 versa, et ignorante eum qui est super omnia Deum. Jesum autem subjeoit 
 non ex virgine natum (impossibile enim hoc ei visum est) ; fuisse autem eum 
 Joseph et Marise filium similiter ut reliqui omnes homines (cf. Origen 
 c. Cels. v. 61), et plus potuisse justitia et prudentia, et sapientia ab homi- 
 nibus. Et post baptismum descendisse in eum ab ea principalitate quae 
 est super omnia Christum figura columbae, et tunc annunciasse incognitum 
 Patrem et virtutes perfecisse ; in fine autem revolasse iterum Christum 
 Patrem de Jesu, et Jesum passum esse et resurrexisse, Christum autem 
 impassibilem perseverasse, existentem spiritalem. 
 
198 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 fact, that he, or at least many of his disciples, taught, that 
 though Jesus indeed died, Christ did not participate in that ; 
 and that Jesus has not arisen, nor will he arise, until the ad- 
 vent of the new kingdom (Epiph. Hser. xxviii. 6). 1 The work 
 of Christ is rather, partly to make known the unknown Father, 
 consequently to fulfil the prophetic office; partly — and this 
 seemed to him the principal thing — to introduce the millennial 
 reign, and so to fulfil the kingly office. But of the latter there 
 came forth hardly a single ray during Christ's first appearing ; 
 this rather only predicted the true future, and on this side alone 
 was it prophetic. There may be found, moreover, in the 
 accounts of the sensuousness of his Chiliasm, something exag- 
 gerated, introduced from foreign interests ; but his representa- 
 tion cannot have been very spiritual, because he viewed only 
 power and rule as a worthy category of the divine, not love ; 
 otherwise he would not have thought of Christ as separated 
 from the sufferings of Jesus. 2 Two things, however, are note- 
 worthy of him : first, that in him Gnosticism and Ebionism 
 manifestly crossed, and were not sundered ; second, that Christ, 
 distinct from Jesus, was viewed by him as a proper pre-existing 
 hypostasis above the world-creating powers, not merely an im- 
 personal power which descended upon Jesus. 8 Though by him 
 Christ is introduced abruptly, and in a manner absolutely 
 supernatural, his fundamental view of Christ's significancy 
 remains Ebionitic. He did not attain to a personal union of 
 the divine and human. Eather, with him, these mutually ex- 
 clude each other. If the divine is there, the human is bound, 
 and, as it were not there, overmastered by an extraneous power ; 
 
 1 According to Irenaeus, i. 26, Cerinthus admitted the resurrection of 
 Jesus. But if he did, it must have remained for him a meaningless fact. 
 See Neander 1. c, p. 688. 
 
 2 Comp. Iren. i. 26 ; Euseb. iii. 26 ; Epiph. Hser. 28 ; Theodoret, Hser. 
 Fab. 23. Caius and Dionysius maintain this Judaism of him only in respect 
 of eschatology. 
 
 3 From the character of the oldest heresies the hypothesis is proved to 
 be unhistoric, that the Son of God (called by Cerinthus Christ) was not 
 regarded as a proper hypostasis before the Montanists. The unity of God 
 might have been easily held along with that by Cerinthus ; for he could 
 call in the aid of a Gnostic emanation doctrine. This, however, like his 
 KKTqp clyvmros, who must be essentially one with uty% is again a sign 
 that about the end of the first century there could not have been wanting 
 significant beginnings of Gnosticism. 
 
CERINTHIAN EBIONITES. 199 
 
 if the human is to perform its ethical functions, the divine must 
 be excluded. The ethical is not conceived as a revelation of 
 the divine ; and however high it is apparently placed, yet it is 
 banished to the ante-Messianic region, as it cannot be regarded 
 as an end to itself, unless it be equally a revelation of the 
 divine. Hence it becomes, consistently with him, in the last 
 reference only a mean, as also becomes apparent in his escha- 
 tology. 
 
 b. The Ebionites, whom Justin Martyr names, 1 may well 
 be joined with Cerinthus ; for they appear also to have been in 
 Ephesus, though many of them were spread abroad elsewhere, 
 in the second century. In respect of his mild judgment of 
 them, it is to be borne in mind, that at that time heretics were 
 not cast out of the Church, where they did not exclude them- 
 selves ; also, that dogmas had not yet been determined by any 
 Church decrees, but that the sound faith had first to form itself 
 from within, and through the labour of individuals to be brought 
 to the objectivity of Church doctrine, and had for its task to 
 prove, in free equal fight with opponents, its conquering might. 
 Now, had the Ebionites of whom Justin speaks been only de- 
 niers of the supernatural birth of Christ, without offering any 
 compensation on any other point, they could hardly be called 
 Christians ; and it is inconceivable how Justin could reckon 
 them among Christians, since they would rather have belonged 
 to the Jewish sects, which we saw reason above to mark out. 
 But he could do this with justice if they were willing to regard 
 Christ as nevertheless the true Messiah, made so by a Divine 
 act. If they made this concession, they must have laid stress on 
 Christ's baptism, and thus were allied to Cerinthus on the main 
 point ; and thus might the Christian truth which they already 
 had, rise superior to what was unchristian in their views, and to 
 the legal stand-point which, the higher and more divine the 
 Messianic dignity was held to be, led to the conclusion the more 
 strongly, that it could not be imparted to Him without respect 
 to previous worthiness, and consequently could not come to Him 
 by birth. In accordance with this, Justin also proceeds. He 
 does not say that it is a matter of indifference whether the super- 
 nato ral birth and pre-existence of Christ be denied (as this pas- 
 sage has often been understood) ; but, as he has already proved 
 1 Appendix, Note SSS. 
 
200 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 the higher Messianic dignity of Jesus, before which the legal 
 stand-point must give way (c. 10-17), he sets out from that, and 
 seeks to show, since this is already established, that the super- 
 natural birth and pre-existence of Christ must be assumed, whilst 
 he at the same time mentions that there are many who refuse 
 to go this length. As the reason of this, he adduces their ad 
 herence to human doctrines. Against these are the Prophets, 
 and the doctrine of the Lord Himself. It is quite clear from 
 these passages, that they formed by a great deal the minority 
 of the Christians. Justin's Ebionites can have differed, at least 
 in part, from Cerinthus only in this, that they kept at a greater 
 distance from Gnostic views, said nothing of a hypostatic Christ 
 before baptism, but, resting on the passage Is. xi. 1, and on the 
 narrative of the baptism, they assumed that in the baptism the 
 seven powers of the Holy, i.e., the Divine Spirit, descended into 
 Jesus. 
 
 They were at one with the Jewish canon, hia to eppo/juos koI 
 TeXe/ea? 7ro\iTeve<r0ai avrbv Karq^iwcrOat, rod eKXeyrjvai eh Xpi- 
 crrbv ; but they also saw fulfilled in Jesus the Jewish expectation, 
 that the Messiah should be unconscious of Himself, and without 
 power, until Elias should come and baptize Him. 1 We have 
 also an express witness for this in the history of Christ's bap- 
 tism, as it is set forth in their recension of the Hebrew Gos- 
 pel. 2 His baptismal day is His birth day as Christ (a-rjfiepov 
 yeyevvrj/cd <re) ; then did He, who was before but an ordinary 
 man, become the Son of God. They concluded that, if His 
 baptism had thus such significancy for Him, — if before He 
 could enter as the Messiah He had to be anointed by Elias, 
 and to be filled with the powers of the Spirit, of which Isaiah 
 speaks (xi. 1), — then He must have previously wanted these, 
 and so could neither have pre-existed nor been supernaturally 
 born. (Comp. Justin, Dial. c. Tryph. c. 49 ff. 87 ; Hieron. 
 Comm. in Jesai, 112.) The more, however, that they placed 
 Jesus before His baptism on a perfect level with ordinary 
 men, the more definitely did the conclusion press itself on them 
 that Christ must also have had sins to confess to the Baptist. 
 
 1 Justin, Dial. c. Tryph. ed. Col. 1686, p. 226 : *«i oils, say the Jews, 
 ccinog ira kavrw litlertvreu, ouSe \yjii Tjivotfitii riua f*i)cpis &* shiau 'Rhine 
 
 * Appendix, Note TTT. 
 
CERINTH1AN EBIONITES. 201 
 
 Hence Justin Martyr seeks, conversely, to maintain the super- 
 natural birth of Jesus as necessary to His sinlessness (Dial. c. 
 Tryph. c. 23, p. 241 B.). This conclusion, it would appear, some 
 amongst them also conceded. 1 
 
 They had, nevertheless, no interest in ascribing sinfulness 
 to Christ before His baptism, as a principle, and not simply as 
 a consequence. Rather were they concerned to maintain the 
 sinlessness of Him who is the Saviour; only they date this 
 from His baptism, and hold it to have been produced by this. 
 But if His moral worthiness becomes complete only with His 
 baptism, they evidently break off from the principle from which 
 they set out, namely, that not the special Divine equipment was 
 the cause of the Divine Sonship, but, conversely, His holiness 
 and wisdom rendered Him worthy to be exalted to be God's Son. 
 It is quite manifest at this point, that they could not conse- 
 quently carry out their principle. For, so long as they held 
 by a sinless Messiah, consequently still kept within Christian 
 bounds, and had not become a Jewish sect, they must do one of 
 two things : Either, they must regard this sinlessness wholly as 
 His own work, and not at the close have recourse again to a 
 supernatural grace ; in which case Christ has no religious sig- 
 nificancy, and His baptism would sink, contrary to their wishes, 
 to a mere epideictic act promulgatory of His holiness, from which 
 men would reap small benefit, since they, even according to these 
 Ebionites, stand in need of forgiveness of sins ; and moreover 
 that one, the child of sinners, should himself be sinless, would 
 be to them an inexplicable riddle : Or, if they regarded His 
 sinlessness as not wholly His own work, without help from God, 
 but that its first operative cause was His baptism, they had no 
 longer any right to offer objections to the doctrine of Christ's 
 higher qualification from His birth on the ground of God's 
 righteousness. 2 
 
 This consideration might of itself have already conducted 
 back to a supernatural birth of Jesus. To this, however, was 
 added, that this Ebionism approximated to Gnosticism not by 
 
 1 As also the author of the Kypvy/tx Tlirpov and Basilides. Comp. note 2, 
 p. 194. Whether Cerinthus also, as Schliemann, p. 259, note 21, and before 
 him Neander, Leben Jesu, p. 76, note 2, ed. 8, suppose, I venture not to 
 say decidedly, since the irpoxo^ti does not lead us to infer sinfulness. 
 
 2 Appendix, Note UUU. 
 
202 FIEST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 the form which saw in Christ's baptism the equipment with the 
 powers of the Holy Ghost, but rather by the other which saw in 
 Him from His baptism a union with a higher Spirit, a Christo- 
 phany, which is found in Cerinthus as well as in other Ebion- 
 ites (Epiph. Haer. xxx. 3 ; see last note). If nevertheless they 
 attached to the reconciliation effected by Christ's death no such 
 weight as would have led them to say more of His work than 
 that He was a teacher and example of virtue, which of itself 
 leads to the Gnostic stand-point, then speedily the abstract in- 
 tellectual stand-point is raised to the theosophic or speculative 
 desire of knowing. That they connected the forgiveness of 
 sins with baptism into Christ, could not in that case any longer 
 ward off the pressure of Gnostic influences, especially during an 
 age impregnated with theories about angels and .ZEons. The 
 magical character which they ascribed to baptism demanded no 
 deep religious and ethical process, and was also at peace with 
 Gnosticism. So also their external and poorly got up eschatology 
 could not securely set the jejuneness of historical consciousness 
 over against Gnosticism. Besides, an earthly-conceived king, 
 who yet does not reign earthlily, is hardly to be called a king. 
 
 Now, this union with Gnosticism, which had been gradually 
 introduced, is instanced by the precursors of the Pseudo-Clemen- 
 tine system, known to Epiphanius. 1 If the birth of the actual 
 Son of God from a virgin was offensive to Ebionism, to which 
 it appeared as a heathen myth, the Gnostic turn offered in lieu 
 of this what seemed more intelligible, in that it maintained that 
 not God Himself, but only a superior being, had appeared in 
 Jesus. Thus might Ebionism — at the cost, indeed, of the truly 
 divine in Christ, of which the other Ebionitic section itself had 
 not entirely disowned the impression — resolve to return to a 
 supernatural origin of Jesus, and to avoid the stumbling-block 
 of the descent of Jesus from Joseph ; and this the more easily, 
 that it had been accustomed to regard the humanity of Christ 
 from His baptism as only a veil, and that by replacing His 
 higher equipment in the momentum of His origin, they ob- 
 tained deliverance from the contradiction above noted. Whether, 
 for the rest, any Ebionite, before the Clementines, had arrived 
 at the form of the supernatural birth of Christ shared with 
 Doketism, cannot be made out. 
 
 1 Appendix, Note VW. 
 
THE PSEUDO-CLEMENTINES. 203 
 
 C. The Gnostic Ebionism of the Pseudo-Clementines. 
 
 With the Pseudo-Clementines we find ourselves at once, 
 though through the mediation of the preceding forms of 
 Ebionism, upon another stand-point. These forms have some- 
 thing unsettled, and transitory, and are seeking for a firm 
 scheme of doctrine ; hence they are destitute of any notable 
 impulse to production, in general of any significant life-power, 
 and bear the character of stagnant or dissolving and perishing 
 forms. Quite otherwise is it with the Clementines, in which 
 the Judaizing principle, furnished with all the means of culture 
 which the age supplied, collects itself as for the last stroke. 
 But, indeed, there is indicated along with this a sort of despera- 
 tion. They give up everything, even to the last fortress, in 
 order to save the Judaizing concept of God as the pretended 
 pure, monotheistic, primitive religion; they sacrifice even the 
 best part of the Old Testament, that they may set out from this 
 against the deity of Christ, with which they see the Church to 
 be filled, but which they regard as the last delusion, more 
 dangerous than the first, that of heathenism. The Ebionites 
 already considered, Cerinthus himself not altogether excepted, 
 retained still a sort of old Hebraism ; and though the transition 
 of Ebionism to Doketism had already commenced with them, 
 they were yet far from paganism, they knew and loved the 
 Old Testament. It is otherwise with the Pseudo-Clementines. 
 In them the old Hebrew monotheism has already undergone a 
 pagan decomposition, through dualistic and emanistic ideas. 1 
 They are pervaded by a feeling hostile to the Old Testament, 
 especially to its prophetical parts, in which is presented the true 
 living monotheism of the Hebrews, by which Dualism and the 
 category of substantiality (to "Ov) are truly overcome. 
 
 If we take many passages of the Clementines by themselves, 
 it may be doubted whether they belong to a Christian, or 
 not rather to a Jewish sect. For they most zealously protest 
 against Christianity being something new. He may be blessed 
 who obeys Moses, though he knows not Jesus ; and he also who 
 obeys Jesus though he knows not Moses, or does not submit to 
 
 1 This is seen in a still further degree in the Elkesaites : Epiph. Hser 
 xxx. 17, liii. ; see above. 
 
204 FIEST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 him, provided neither blasphemes Moses or Jesus. Both, how- 
 ever, deserve censure : the true doctrine is, that Moses and 
 Christ are one and the same (Horn. xvii. 4 ; xviii. 4, 13, 14). 
 There were righteous persons before the appearing of Jesus (xi. 
 25 ff.). The freedom of the will is inviolate (ii. 15 ; x. 4, 5 ; 
 xi. 8). On the other hand, however, there appears in them 
 the strongest form of supernaturalism, especially in their doc- 
 trine concerning the Prophets of truth and concerning baptism, 
 i.e., concerning illumination and the forgiveness of sins. In 
 order to survey the connection of their system, we set out from 
 their material and formal principle, for they carefully set forth 
 both. 
 
 The material principle is God's absolute unity. The funda- 
 mental definition of God is, that He is pure being, rest (avar- 
 iravcns), and out of Him is only nothing (xvii. 7, 8). Thus 
 He, thought as the bv, 6Wg>? bv, is Himself also the All. This 
 would involve us in those dark absolutes to which the concept of 
 God in perverted Judaism and heathenism gravitated, as to their 
 common centre. The world, including man, stands over against 
 this bv as the vacuum which has to be filled by the Being who 
 is. But, with Philo, they do not abide by this definition of God 
 as the bv ; the Hebrew concept of God comes to the rescue of 
 their chief definitions. God is good, and especially righteous. 
 The goodness is thought as physical, and hence is justly placed 
 deep under the ethical attribute of righteousness. Since^ con- 
 sequently, righteousness is the highest in God, God can reveal 
 nothing higher of Himself than this ; and He also, because 
 He is righteous, cannot convey this revelation to the earlier 
 races (xviii. 13 ff.). The great weight, however, which is thus 
 laid on the (though imperfectly apprehended) ethical, conducts 
 still further ; it imposes the necessity of thinking God as per- 
 sonal. This is so done as that form (a-^fjfia, fiop<j>Tj) is ascribed 
 to Him. He is the original beauty, thought under a human 
 type. He has members — eyes, ears, etc., — not because He 
 needs these, for He sees and hears everywhere, but still He has 
 them ; and we can thereby come to Him, for the formless is 
 unapproachable. As He has a body, however, — infinitely more 
 glorious, indeed, than the living spirit is in us, — so He has also 
 a soul ; and this is wisdom in Him, or the Pneuma (xi. 22 ; xvi. 
 10 ff.}. Thus He is not the abstract Simple, but the Living- 
 
THE PSEUDO-CLEMENTINES. '205 
 
 there is motion and distinction in Him ; and here appears already 
 a melting of the rigid monotheism, a leaning to a doctrine of 
 the Trinity, though it be only an advance of the Monad to the 
 Duad. 
 
 This motion, indeed, does not exist, if regard be withdrawn 
 from the world of revelation ; but God, viewed by Himself, is 
 eternally united with wisdom as His spirit (xvi. 12), and His 
 body all- outshining. But His revelation is a movement of God 
 Himself, flowing forth in the double act of expansion and con- 
 traction of Himself, of which the heart of man is the type. 1 
 The Spirit of God (in this place, xvi. 12, called the wisdom), as 
 He is internally, as the soul of God, eternally united to God, is 
 externally the self-stretched-out hand which completes revela- 
 tion, forms the world, etc. The world of revelation is conse- 
 quently God unfolding Himself : under this aspect, there is 
 finitude and time in Him. He does not, however, rise and 
 set in the world; but sustains Himself in this self-expansion, 
 which is also represented as the radiance of a sun abiding in 
 eternal rest. To each act of self-expansion there is a corre- 
 sponding retraction, the crvcrrokr], whereby God is ever again 
 the Monad. Of these expansions, the Clementines appear to 
 establish six ; to which correspond, in time, the six world-epochs, 
 which in the seventh find their point of rest in God ; in space, 
 there correspond to these the six directions, right, left, above, 
 under, before, behind. God, as the eternal rest in history and 
 the world of space, is the eternal sabbath and the moveless 
 centre. But though the world and revelation come into 
 actuality only through the self -unfolding and communication of 
 His essence, — nay, in a certain sense, the world is a momentum 
 of the Monad, which only as a duad is the concrete God, — they 
 .nevertheless seek to maintain intact the concept of creation. 
 God in His inner being remains unchanged, the eternal rest : 
 He is., as has been said, under this inner aspect, not simply ov 
 but personal ; and this process of dilatation and contraction re- 
 lates only to His superficies, is His actuality. As respects His 
 inner essence, He is eternally different from all things that have 
 
 1 A beginning for the position of a movement in God, though apart 
 from revelation, lies in the predicate, hypothetiqally assumed indeed (and 
 rejected by the Eecognitions), that He is not simply unproduced, but that 
 He is producing Himself (Horn. xvii. 15, 16). 
 
206 FIKST PERIOD. HRST EPOCH. 
 
 come into being, or exist in space ; that essence can coexist 
 with no other being, but is exclusively peculiar to Himself — is 
 thus His mystery. 1 
 
 In the created world man is the highest ; whose idea in like 
 manner brings all antitheses of the world to a concrete unity 
 in itself, as in the highest stage God does all antitheses in 
 general, of which motion and rest, dilatation and contraction 
 are the last. In the sphere of the world, however, the fluc- 
 tuating position of the general in relation to the individual is 
 repeated ; similar to what was found in the relation of the rest- 
 ing God to His i/crao-eis, in which He as much is not as is, and 
 which hence have as much a mundane independent existence, as 
 on the other hand they must not have this, the latter, inasmuch 
 as the world is again conceived as a momentum of the Divine 
 self-movement. Entirely similar stands in the created world 
 the idea of man, man simply — called also Adam, and Christ, 
 and the Son of God — over against the particular individual. 3 
 Wherever the idea of man appears perfectly in an individual, 
 there is rather only a form of the appearance of Christ, the 
 created real idea of man ; there the momentum of individuality 
 and personality becomes /Moptftrj, — Christ is lowered to be the 
 garment of the eternal. On the other hand, freedom is 
 ascribed to each man, and the choice personally to turn to God 
 or not. 
 
 This brings us to the formal principle of the Clementines. 
 Had they confined themselves to viewing the world as a self- 
 unfolding of God, they could have had nothing to say of a 
 world and revelation : there would have been nothing but a 
 Divine life-process ; world and history would have eternally re- 
 trograded into the Divine rest ; all becoming and all motion 
 would have become a mere appearance in the eternal God Him- 
 self. But as this Divine motion already contemplates the world 
 as its end, so we have seen also that the Clementines, in fact, 
 
 1 Horn. x. 19 : To the Divine nature alone is it suited, and it is impos- 
 sible it should dwell with another, that He alone, as the Creator of all, should 
 excel all : excel in power, for He creates all ; in greatness, as the infinite in 
 contrast with the limited; in appearance, for He is the fairest ; in holiness, 
 understanding, etc. 
 
 2 And that this was the case with Adam, is assumed as certain in the 
 Homilies, as he proceeded immediately from the hand of God, not mediately 
 through a finite agent. 
 
THE PSEUDO-CLEMENTINES. 207 
 
 propose to maintain the momentum of the independent exist- 
 ence of the world and of its distinction from God ; and this in- 
 dependent existence culminates in the freedom, or the ethical 
 destination of men. By the placing of this in men, the posi- 
 tion that God alone is all substance, the Being, and that all out 
 of Him is the nothing, the void, is not contradicted. For free- 
 dom is itself only the void ; the form or the vessel for the sub- 
 stance which God must give (comp. xvii. 8 with viii. 4 ; ii. 14 
 ff.). He gives it, on the one hand, by nature, whose unity is 
 the earth-spirit ; on the other, by the Prophet of truth, that per- 
 petual created idea of man = Christ. 1 The former moves down 
 towards this world by all sensible phsenomena in which it dwells ; 
 the latter, on the contrary, solicits man's free will to the choice 
 of that which is to come. Both must God propound, that man 
 may choose. Now were freedom nothing but the void, which 
 may become full or remain empty, all would depend on what 
 first entered to fill the void. Hence it is said " that the soul of 
 man is invested with the Divine breath or spirit " {'rrvor), -rrvevfia, 
 Horn. xvi. 16) ; further, that God first calls men, and produces 
 the good desire to hear His word. Thus this is not their 
 thiov, their meritorious act. Since, however, there is already 
 something akin to the divine placed in them, and living in 
 them, and likewise, on the other side, there are also earthly de- 
 sires in them, they are beings who have to act under a twofold 
 tendency, and which side they shall yield to is their own matter. 
 If they had of themselves willed to act as reason dictated, there 
 would have been no need for either Moses or Jesus. But the 
 race of man is in a state of alienation from God ; the earth has 
 become like a house full of thick smoke, so that we can no 
 longer see the sun ; and the earth-spirit, in its thousand forms, is 
 become the only, irresistible power over man, since man can no 
 longer choose, as now only one object remains for him. 2 
 
 1 Appendix, Note WWW. 
 
 2 By means of the Fall a reversal of principles has come to pass. 
 Whilst at first, according to the law of the Syzygies (ii. 37 ; iii. 21, 23, 33), 
 the first (Adam) was the right (li^ioii), the imperfect left (Eve), which 
 follows upon the perfect, was the second, now in the world it is the imper- 
 fect that is first, though unconsciously it mediates the perfect (see preced- 
 ing note ; Horn. viii. 10, 11). And this is the Divine side of the matter, 
 -which prepares the way for the opinion, that so the history of the world has 
 
208 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EFOCH. 
 
 Hence, from time to time Christ appears, the eternal Prophet 
 of truth in perfect men (Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, 
 Jacob, Moses, Jesus). Particularly, there are seven columns 
 (before Christ), placed like light-towers in the ages, which re- 
 present the presence of truth upon the earth, or restore it when 
 lost. They have essentially the same always to announce ; yet 
 it is impossible for this system to escape a certain progress. 
 Thus, before Moses, God was revealed more as the Good Being, 
 by Moses as the Just One. Rectitude is the highest in God, and 
 hence the revelation in Jesus cannot transcend this. But still 
 there is an advance onwards, derived from Him. The limits of 
 particularism are broken through; errors that have crept in, 
 such as circumcision, sacrifice, and the like, are removed : on the 
 other hand, the remission of sins, connected intimately with a 
 definite institute, holy baptism (which here takes the place of 
 circumcision), is always within reach of the penitent ; and the 
 conservation of truth on the earth is assured through the con- 
 tinuance of the office of that Prophet of truth. The priest- 
 hood, indeed, is wholly abolished; 1 but the Episcopate is the 
 Divine institution by which, through means of ordination, the 
 prophetic office is preserved on the earth, until Antichrist come, 
 when Jesus the true Christ will again appear (ii. 17). 2 
 
 Occasion is thus found for a supernatural revelation, from 
 the absolute darkness in which the creation of God would other- 
 wise be (ii. 6-10). This revelation is partly an inner, partly an 
 outer one ; though the relation of these to each other is not 
 very clearly set forth. Both are under the direction of the 
 everlasting Christ. On the side of the inner as well as the 
 outer, however, by-paths are refused ; neither visions nor the 
 Holy Scriptures are the proper trustworthy vehicle of revelation. 
 In both, the evil spirit is operative (ii. 38 ; iii. 8, 46 ff.). On 
 the other hand, the deductions of reason do not suffice. 3 But 
 
 been willed by God. (What in God's thoughts or in the world must, as 
 the highest end, be first, that is actually the second and last.) 
 
 1 Horn. iii. 19 ; xi. 16, 32 ; iii. 26. The bishop is the visible repre- 
 sentative of Christ (Horn. iii. 66 ff.). He unites with Christ. 
 
 2 The Homilies know nothing of a propitiatory office of Christ. Christ's 
 sufferings (xii. 7) are noticed only as a pattern of patience and service for 
 others. Sins are partly atoned for by suffering (xii. 10) and virtue, 
 partly forgiven by God without atonement. 
 
 3 Horn. XV. 5 : «?iX)j tjiatyopei fiSTci%v hotrifiiias "hiyaa x.a.1 xau rtjs (pito- 
 
PSEUDO-CLEMENTINE HOMILIES. 209 
 
 there needs the Prophet of truth, who, as soon as He has 
 authenticated His claims, is to be believed in respect of all things 
 remote. To this authentication it belongs, negatively, that He 
 does not impeach the fundamental truth of the Divine unity and 
 rectitude ; that He does not deny that the world is God's work 
 (ii. 16 ff.), and consequently that He says nothing against God's 
 glory (comp. ii. 40, 51) : Positively the criterion is, that He fore- 
 tells what is purely contingent, not by means of natural know- 
 ledge, consequently supernaturally ; and that He states simply 
 what is full of mystery (hi. 12, 15). The mysteries, indeed, which 
 He utters may not contain aught essential to religion j 1 for the 
 essential doctrine is that of the unity and rectitude, etc., of 
 God. " Faith in God's unity and rectitude," it is said, ix. 20, 
 " forms a new creature ; and as no man can do good if he does 
 not know that God is just (iii. 31), so the man who is full of 
 this faith is not in a condition to sin." 
 
 This knowledge, however, of the unity and rectitude of 
 God cannot be revealed for the first time by the Prophet of 
 truth, since it is rather the criterion by which He Himself is to be 
 tried ; all that His appearance can do, is to vivify what has been 
 already delivered. We are thus referred to the inner revela- 
 tion which is presupposed by the outer. The soul is divine 
 breath, and invests with immortality, being capable of assum- 
 ing God's image (xvi. 10). Nevertheless, this natural innate 
 knowledge of God also is brought into relation with the Son, 
 the ante-mundane Christ. Not that He is to be thought as 
 the creator of it, for God alone creates (ii. 16, 10, 19) ; but 
 He, with ineffable hand, reveals it to the inner sense which 
 mysteriously lies in all men's hearts (xviii. 6) ; and thus He 
 is the principle of the development of the inner sense. In 
 this way He is in a certain degree the world-spirit, as Nature 
 has its unity in the world-soul. By means of His pre-exist- 
 ence in hypostatic form, He corresponds in a certain degree to 
 the idea of the Logos; but only on the ideal side of the 
 Logos, not on its creative, actual side. He represents, in the 
 
 naXKiKoyia; irupixfiw ix aro)ca<TfiZii lioxu TnpwTqi/ raj airoitl^us. Comp. ii. 
 6-10. 
 
 1 The new thing which Christ reveals in Jesus is only the glory of the 
 eternal kingdom (Horn, xviii. 17). 
 
 VOL. I. O 
 
210 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 sphere of the formed, God as spirit, the world-soul nature in 
 God. 
 
 The Prophet of truth has as His peculiar gift, that He 
 always knows all, and can neither fail nor sin. Man could 
 not see God without being blinded, — nay, not even a higher 
 being, an angel or the Son of God ; but the Son has showed 
 God, for He Himself has a form which transcends what is 
 gross and sensible (acrapico<; elBea, Horn. xvii. 16). His eye is 
 infinite, and His spirit eternal (iii. 12) ; from the Spirit of God 
 He knoweth all things (Horn. ii. 6, 10 ; iii. 11, 12, 17, etc.). He 
 is called the image of the Eternal King (Horn. iii. 17), and Him- 
 self King (iii. 19 ; viii. 21, 22). To the Son, who is from the 
 foundation of the world (air app^? almvoi), was it alone ap- 
 pointed to reveal to whom He will the Father (Horn, xviii. 13) ; 
 in this world He has the kingdom of the law, i.e., He is the 
 ruler by doctrine as moral lawgiver. Still, high as the Clemen- 
 tines thus place Him, they nevertheless do not identify Him 
 with crotpia, but hold Him to belong to the sphere of the created 
 (xvi. 10 ff. 14-18). As, however, the angels, though aaapicoi, 
 can yet change themselves into bodies, so the Son also, to whom 
 alone it is given to look upon the Father undazzled (xvii. 16). 
 As often as He appears, His appearance as the Prophet of truth 
 displays God's image for the age in which it happens. Thus 
 Adam had the pure spirit of the Messiah in him, as he was 
 born of the pure hand of God ; and so in others has the spirit 
 of the Messiah exhibited itself historically. It would be im- 
 pious 1 to refuse that to the first man, and to attribute it to 
 another, the product of sinful seed by the coition of the sexes. 
 It is alone pious, however, to regard the Messiah-spirit not as 
 associated with every individual of the species, but to vindicate 
 this as the privilege only of that subject who, standing above 
 individuals, runs through all time from the beginning of the 
 world, changing His name with His form, until he fall upon 
 His own age, and, anointed by God's grace, for His labours' sake 
 shall find eternal rest. This being is proved worthy already in 
 Adam to be a lord and ruler of all things. 
 
 It thus appears that His appearance also in Jesus is only 
 one among others. The same thing is shown under another 
 
 1 Appendix, Note XXX. 
 
PSEUDO-CLEMENTINE HOMILIES. 211 
 
 aspect. As the active and the passive in God are distinct, and 
 united as masculine and feminine, so does the perfection of the 
 world consist in its being an image of this unity. Hence the 
 active principle in the created world (the Son of God) seeks the 
 passive, the human form, to determine it and fill it ; and the 
 soul of man correspondingly, as a bride, finds in the Son of God 
 as it were her bridegroom (Horn. xiii. 16). These together in 
 their union represent God's image. And this union of the mas- 
 culine and the feminine is represented ethically in the funda- 
 mental virtue <f>i\av6pa>Tria. For this is compounded of com- 
 passion, which is passive, and Eros, the giver of the masculine 
 impulse. 1 We should have thus a sort of general incarnation of 
 the Son of God, not indeed in the immediate natural form, but 
 where everything is presented under an ethical point of view. 
 Still there remains hardly any distinction between the Just Men 
 of the Old Testament, who are so reckoned by the Clementines, 
 or even believers since the appearance of Christ in Jesus, and 
 Jesus Himself. It is evident that the Son pf God is thought 
 here as the common spirit of the true Church ; and that in con- 
 sequence of His not being discriminated from the Holy Ghost — 
 of whom also, in the doctrine of the Church, a sort of general 
 incarnation is predicated — the author has been involved in the 
 impossibility of vindicating for Jesus Christ an exclusive place. 
 He feels himself, indeed, constrained to view the Son of God 
 hypostatically ; but in order to this, he severs Him from the 
 divine, so that by becoming united to this All-Christ, we do not 
 at all become united to God Himself. The last cause of this 
 is, that he recognises in God and God's image — the world that 
 is to become the Church — only a duadic, not a triadic process. 
 He knows not, that is, to assign a place to the second, the 
 mediating momentum, in which, on the one hand, the distinction 
 of God from the world must culminate (not in sin, but rather 
 in the highest act of free love) ; and on the other hand, the union 
 of God with the world and the world with God is in its prin- 
 ciple posited : he hastens to the goal, which, however, from 
 neglecting to take the way that leads to it, he reaches only 
 apparently, whilst in truth, and logically, he has not got essen- 
 tially beyond the beginning. He contents himself with an 
 
 1 Horn. xii. 6, 7. The Qihavlpuvl* is uppiuotSifrv. Comp. Horn, 
 rvi. 12. 
 
212 FIKST PERIOD FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 apparent mediator, a Christ who may as well be called the 
 Holy Ghost, and yet is not the Holy Ghost of Christianity. 1 
 
 As respects the death and resurrection of Christ, the Cle- 
 mentines know not to obtain for them any dogmatical signifi- 
 cancy. Nevertheless, to the manifestation of the Christ in 
 Jesus there still remains a place all its own. Were this wholly 
 wanting, these Homilies could not be viewed as a Christian 
 phsenomenon. Besides what has been said above on Baptism 
 (viii. 22, 23 ; ix. 19, 20, 23 ; xi. 25 ff.) and on the Episcopate 
 (Horn. iii. 60-70), there belongs to this head the doubtful pas- 
 sage, which speaks concerning the metamorphoses of the Son of 
 God, who pervades the duration of the world (iii. 20). For 
 this manifestation shall not continue without end, but the 
 Christ finds His goal and His time from which He has an 
 abiding repose. The state of rest, however, He finds along with 
 His last manifestation ; and this last is that in Jesus. Jesus 
 Christ is King of the pious ; His virtue is rewarded with lord- 
 ship (iii. 19, 20) ; the manhood of Jesus, consequently, must 
 also endure ; though it is nowhere said that He shall judge the 
 world. In Jesus, the Son of God is the bringer of the universal 
 law, which quenches the fire of altars, and brings peace, love, and 
 remission of sins (iii. 19, 26). He endured temptations to sin 
 (viii. 21) ; He also spared not His blood (iii. 19) ; as a father He 
 cared for His children. He was endowed also with a firm, all- 
 embracing will ; and it would be heathenish to say that He, the 
 Prophet of truth, as He proved Himself to be by His predictions 
 concerning Jerusalem, possessed the knowledge that was peculiar 
 to Him at one time, and had it not at another (iii. 11-17). 2 
 
 The author is well aware that he has not, in what he has ad- 
 vanced, come up to what was held determined in the Christo- 
 logy then predominant ; 3 he feels that he is at variance with 
 the rest of Christians, and is peevish and vexed on account of 
 this. Christianity cannot be satisfied with seeing in Christ 
 only a semi-doketic middle-being ; for, if the mediator is only 
 a creature, the reconciliation between God and the world remains 
 only half-accomplished : it is not a reconciliation which reaches 
 to the being and to the basis of the human heart and the heart 
 of God. But to the author of the Clementines it is an offence 
 
 1 Appendix, Note YYY. s Appendix, Note ZZZ. 
 
 * Appendix, Note AAAA. 
 
PSEUDO-CLEMENTINE HOMILIES. 213 
 
 that deity should be ascribed to Christ. The monarchy of God 
 is for him the highest ; idolatry is the summit of ungodliness 
 (Horn. ii. 20, 19; iii. 6). It seems to him a small gain that 
 the world should be converted from polytheism to a belief in 
 the deity of Christ ; on the contrary, in his view, the last de- 
 ception thus propagated is worse than the first. Hence he 
 endeavours to invalidate the grounds on which the Church 
 rests the deity of Christ, and gives his own explanation of some 
 of the principal passages on which that is founded. The 
 utterance, Gen. i. 26, "Let us make man," has reference, 
 according to him, not to Christ, not even to the Son of God 
 from the beginning, but to the Spirit of God, or the Wisdom 
 which created the world. The passage, Matt. xi. 27, " No 
 man knoweth the Son but the Father, and no man the Father 
 but the Son, etc.," Peter explains, in opposition to Simon 
 Magus, who defends the deity of Christ, as meaning that 
 Christ has brought nothing essentially new, no new idea of 
 God. Jesus, it is true, says that no man knows the Father 
 but He ; but this cannot mean that the pious under the Old 
 Testament did not possess the true idea of God ; on the con- 
 trary, it means that the wicked live as if they knew not God, — 
 the discourse being of practical knowledge ; or, It is the Son of 
 God from the beginning, the alone appointed revealer, and none 
 other, through whom all pious men have known and acknow- 
 ledged God; or, in fine, the words, "No man knoweth the 
 Father but the Son only," mean, No man knows whose son I 
 am, — they think I am David's; which is also the meaning of 
 the words, " No man knoweth the Son but the Father." For 
 the rest, there are endless ways of viewing the passage ; and 
 so the author lets the matter rest with the conclusion, that 
 Adam, Noah, Abraham, etc., have known the Father (Horn, 
 xvii. 4 ; xviii. 13, 14, 4). 
 
 He also, however, brings dogmatical- reasons against Christ's 
 deity. A prophet who seduced to other gods, was, under the 
 law, to be stoned to death. It was consequently the mark of 
 a false prophet, that he sought to introduce another than God 
 into His place. It is true that angels are called gods, but only 
 abusively. It was an angel who spoke to Moses from the bush, 
 who wrestled with Jacob, and was born as Immanuel (Horn. xvi. 
 14). To the Magus Simon the author makes one say, " If 
 
214 FIKST PERIOD. FIKST EPOCH. 
 
 whosoever speaks against the just and only God is worthy of 
 death, then was thy teacher deservedly put to death." To 
 which Peter replies : " Our Lord neither taught other gods 
 along with Him who made all things, nor did He announce 
 Himself as a god; God, however, justly rewarded with bless- 
 edness Him who called Himself Son of God, who made all 
 things." Simon asks, " Does it not appear to you that He is 
 God, since He is of God ?" Peter : " How that can be, say 
 thou ; for we cannot tell it to thee ; we have not heard it from 
 Him. It appertains to the Father not to be begotten, to the 
 Son to be begotten. That which is begotten cannot be com- 
 pared (ov a-ujKpiverat) with the unbegotten, or, it may be, the 
 self-begotten." Simon : " But they nevertheless are at one in 
 this, that they are begotten, though not in the same way." 
 Peter : " He who is not in all respects the same with any one, 
 cannot participate with him in all his appellations. The One 
 is self-begotten, or, it may be, unbegotten ; that which is be- 
 gotten cannot be at the same time this, even though he be of 
 the same nature. Human bodies also have immortal souls 
 which are invested with God's Spirit, and, proceeding from God, 
 are of the same nature, but yet are not gods. If, however, 
 any one will, nevertheless, on this account call them gods, 
 then must all souls of men, the dead and the living, the born 
 and those yet to be begotten, be gods. Wilt thou, then, from 
 mere love of opposing me, affirm this, that they also are gods ? 
 In that case, what great matter is it for Christ to be called God? 
 For He has that which all have (c. 16). We call Him God to 
 whom just that is proper which no other can have." 1 In what, 
 then, does this consist, according to him ? In purely physical 
 attributes. God is on all sides without bounds ; hence He is 
 also called Infinite. Now, since no one but He is boundless, it 
 is absolutely necessary to call Him Infinite. He who denies 
 that lies ; for there cannot be together two infinites in all re- 
 spects, as one would limit the other ; and thus is one the In- 
 comparable. " I seek not," continues Peter, " to denote to 
 thee the name of God, for it is unspeakable ; but it expresses, 
 according to convention among men, a fixed concept. If thou 
 give this name to another, thou wilt readily also ascribe to him 
 the essential quality belonging to it, without intending to do so. 
 v What is peculiar to God is consequently incommunicable. 
 
PSEUDO-CLEMENTINE HOMILIES. 215 
 
 The spoken name is also the precursor of what at first was 
 not wished to be said. In this way the exaggeration is extended 
 to that which before had remained unsaid, and the honour be- 
 longing to God is transferred to that which was before unknown." 
 Here we see clearly how this Monarchian accounts for the rise 
 of the belief in the deity of Christ. Since he cannot believe 
 in it, even though the words of Christ Himself lead to it, and 
 since he has not found, or as yet known, in his religious expe- 
 rience, which fluctuates unsteadily between the Magian and the 
 Pelagian system, the point of rest, the true reconciliation, in 
 possession of which a man is constrained to think nothing less 
 of Christ than that He is Mediator as God-man, he seeks to 
 trace the origin of the belief in Christ's Godhead to the word 
 " God," which had been applied to Christ ; which is almost on 
 a parallel with the wisdom of Anselm's Gaunilo, who seeks to 
 derive the belief in God from the sound of the word " God."* 
 And it is quite the same with the instance which is adduced 
 from God's infinitude against the Godhead of Christ. For 
 thereby the writer announces that, much as he speaks of recti- 
 tude, the central element in the concept of God lies not in 
 spiritual, but in physical qualities, in an outward infinitude. It 
 is worthy, however, of notice also, how he in this way comes 
 into collision with himself. For when he, in order to view God 
 as a person, and perhaps still more through the influence of the 
 physical stand-point with which he is entangled, calls God the 
 Beautiful, and ascribes to Him form and body, Simon retorts : 
 " If God has form, then has He a place, and is limited." To 
 which Peter replies : " God is the Existent One ; His place is the 
 non-existent. But the non-existent cannot be compared with 
 the existent ; for space, when it is not filled, is virtually nothing. 
 Thus the non-existent comes to be space, or a containing thing, 
 only through the Existent One. Moreover, that which is sur- 
 rounded is often greater than that which surrounds ; e.gr., the 
 
 * [Gaunilo was a monk who, in reply to Anselm's Proslogimn on the 
 being of God, wrote a tract under the title " Liber pro insipienti," in allu- 
 sion to Anselm's use of Ps. xiv. 1 in his treatise. In this Gaunilo main- 
 tained, that from the mere fact that a certain fixed concept is attached to 
 the word " God" in the understanding, it does not follow that God is so 
 comprehended as to be realized, that is, to be believed in as an actual 
 existence. In the text, the author seems to me to have fallen into some 
 inaccuracy as to the position of Gaunilo in this dispute. — Tk.] 
 
216 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 sun, which is surrounded by the aether. As it sends forth 
 beams, so does God also, whose it is to send forth an infinitely- 
 diffused communication." But if, without prejudice to the 
 Divine personality (<r%f}fia, popffi Qeov), and the actual exist- 
 ence of the world of space, it must be possible to think God as 
 infinite and unlimited, since the world is posited as the momen- 
 tum of theJDivine life itself, and this as surpassing all bounds, 
 and yet ever abiding constant ; this either amounts to nothing, 
 or this solution of the antinomy in the relations of the definite 
 and limited to the unlimited must tend to the advantage of 
 Ohristology. If God is not actually immediately infinite, but 
 if this is only a secondary quality in Him mediated by will, 
 inasmuch as infinite extension is only possible in space, in a 
 world, and this cannot be given Him, but only can exist 
 through His will, so that the willing of a world and the willing 
 of Himself in it must precede His endless existence in it : if 
 this be so, one cannot see why there should not be for Christ as 
 well as for God, who is conceived as of perfect beauty, an all- 
 dominating, all-embracing infinitude, mediated through the 
 inner intensive infinitude by an act of will ; i.e., why the author 
 does not, in place of God endowed with beauty and form, pre- 
 sent the idea of the perfect God-man. 
 
 But, indeed, as the principle of finitude, which in the doc- 
 trine of the Church is represented by the Son, is transferred 
 to the Father as possessing form and shape, there remains for 
 the Son no essential, independent position. As, however, this 
 momentum of finitude is immediate in God as the beautiful, 
 and is that in God by which the mediation of a transit to the 
 world and the becoming man has been made possible, by which 
 the fixed concept of the quiescent God has been embodied; 
 and though then, by means of the e/ccrTacrt? and ctvcttoXtj, the 
 rigid concept of God has been relaxed, yet, as we have seen 
 above, the Son, who must represent as well as mediate the dis- 
 tinction, is thus shorn of His rights ; and the same is true of the 
 difference between God and the world in the simply dyadic 
 process. The longing which conducts the soul to the idea of 
 an incarnation of God — in which the difference is alike fully 
 set forth, and the union is in principle begun — is here assuaged 
 by the assumption that God is possessed of form and beauty in 
 Himself ; and with this there is left for Christ only a place 
 
PSEUDO-CLEMENTINE HOMILIES. 217 
 
 among the created. And yet this Adam-Christ, who is in a 
 certain measure the truth in all the pious, fluctuates incon- 
 stantly hither and thither between Divine attributes, or the 
 universal world-spirit, and a created hypostasis of the nature 
 of an angel. One may state the matter thus : The tendency 
 which conducts to Sabellianism and that which conducts to 
 Arianism are as yet confused, muddily mixed together ; just as 
 in the beginnings of Ebionism, Ebionism and Doketism lay 
 bound together in the mind of Cerinthus. They begin to sepa- 
 rate in the beginning of the third century, as the Recognitions 
 of the Pseudo-Clement prove. 1 The Ebionitic heresy has in 
 the Homilies become so far developed, that it sets forth its 
 reverse side, Doketism, and falls over into this. How loosely 
 the two sides of Christ's Person were conceived to be united, is 
 expressed, partly, in the multiplicity of the appearances of 
 Christ, which of necessity renders the form as compared with 
 the substance a matter of indifference ; partly in the slight 
 significancy which the Clementines attach to the human side of 
 Christ. A similar career we shall see in Doketism, to which 
 we now proceed ; so that both, in so far as they are Christian 
 heresies, pass over into each other, and only for a period flow 
 on side by side as unconscious doubters of each other, till at 
 length the necessity will arise to bring out a common principle 
 of error in both, whose multiform variety and flexibility retains 
 nevertheless this of uniformity, that it is always serviceable to 
 the growing development of the Church doctrine. 
 1 Appendix, Note BBBB. 
 
218 FIRST PERIOD. fIRST EPOCH. 
 
 CHAPTEK THIRD. 
 
 DOKETISM. 
 
 Ebionism, which took its stand on the history of Jesus as a 
 teacher or prophet, a worker of miracles and a lawgiver, ad- 
 hered as a vis inertia to the dogmatico-historic movement. In- 
 stead of this movement, it sought itself to be immanent as a 
 momentum — to set itself up as an independent magnitude for 
 itself — to subject the Christian principle to itself — to hold and 
 bind it to itself. It met the development in the Church seduc- 
 tively, and received from it, in many points, support ; as in the 
 at first not yet vanquished disposition to overestimate the escha- 
 tological element, to lay too little weight on the reconciliation in 
 Christ, as well as to abide too much merely by the prophetic and 
 royal offices of Christ, the necessary result of which was a post>- 
 poning of the Person of Christ, and of the act of His becoming 
 man, to His baptism, by which He was inaugurated to these 
 two offices. Nor was its seductive power broken, until, through 
 the sound development in the Church, the possibility of Ebion- 
 ism was excluded in all points. This development, however, 
 was not a little furthered, both negatively and positively, by 
 means of the Ebionitic heresy : negatively, because Ebionism 
 in its separate peculiarity stood forth as a clear and significant 
 warning beacon, teaching what the consequence would be if the 
 principle of Ebionism was suffered by the Church to remain 
 not wholly conquered ; positively, because it represented a per- 
 fectly legitimate element of the Christology, and had a just 
 ground against the Church so long as she neglected to incor- 
 porate, as an essential element in the Christology, the actual 
 manifestation of Christ in His humiliation, of which it was 
 never weary of reminding her, and to bring this into harmony 
 with His higher nature ; i.e., so long as Doketism was still 
 
DOKETISM. 219 
 
 capable of exerting power. And thus was Ebionism rendered 
 by the Lord of the Church a blessing to her, so long as in her 
 temporal manifestation an Ebionitic or a Doketic tendency re- 
 mained unconquered. In fact, the development in the Church 
 in the course of the two first centuries was not as yet secured 
 in itself against Doketic lapses. There needs only to be recalled 
 to remembrance here, that the one-sided inclination to eschato- 
 logy, and to the viewing of Christ as the Lord of glory, already 
 opened a door to Doketism. On the other hand, the sudden 
 and convulsive impression which Christianity made by her en- 
 trance on mankind, bursting as she did like an illuminating 
 and discriminating flash into the ancient night, with the new 
 heavenly world which she unfolded, with the new concept of 
 God which sha brought, could not but have a similar effect 
 upon minds recollecting themselves as from a chaotic dream-life, 
 gathering themselves up above themselves, above the old world 
 and the new ; so as for a time to induce to a snapping asunder 
 of all the threads of the historical past, in order the more purely 
 to construct according to its nature the new supernatural state 
 of things, so essentially different from the old. In the general, 
 however, this is the especially grand thing in Christ's appear- 
 ance, that in it the extremest ends and antitheses marvellously 
 interpenetrate. But to the as yet unexercised Christian think- 
 ing there lay in this a temptation, since it knew not how to har- 
 monize directly the extremes, to abide by that which seemed 
 best to accord with the newness and greatness of Christianity, 
 and rather to dispense with the lower, the human side, than to 
 detract from the higher. It was impossible, certainly, alto- 
 gether to overlook the former ; for in that case the revelation 
 in Christianity could not have been regarded as a reality, and 
 such a thoroughgoing Doketism could, as little as the cor- 
 responding Ebionism (see above, p. 199), lay claim to be called 
 a Christian heresy. But if we take our stand by those Doketa? 
 and Gnostics who did not seek utterly to deprive the Christo- 
 logy of a historical basis, but were willing to allow that in 
 Jesus the eternal idea of the Christ came somehow to reality, 
 it may be said of them, that a higher strain of Christian con- 
 sciousness was suffered to infuse its influence into this tendency, 
 however dangerous it was in other respects. And this is shown, 
 too, not only in its relation to the jejune and frigid Ebionism, 
 
220 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 but also in the hymnology, which appears to have reached a 
 flourishing condition soonest among them. 
 
 The most ancient trace of Doketism is found in the New- 
 Testament. 1 But it reached its higher significancy first in the 
 more fully developed Gnostic systems. This is not the place 
 to sketch these in their full extent ; nevertheless, something 
 by way of introduction must be premised. The common 
 element in Gnosticism is opposition to the simple empirical 
 faith, with which the Gnostics reproached the Church gene- 
 rally, as being founded merely on authority, and having for 
 its contents not the inner truths of Christianity, but merely 
 its shell ; its aim was positively to apprehend the spiritual con- 
 tents of Christianity in a spiritual manner. In itself, this is 
 none other than what the Church doctrine aspires to ; but the 
 spiritual manner with which it has to do is primarily religion 
 and religious experience, according to which the contents of that 
 which must be taken up by the spirit are determined. In reli- 
 gion as such the point of issue is not spontaneity, but depend- 
 ence on and receptivity of the reconciling grace ; and it is from 
 this, but only secondarily, that true spontaneity in knowing and 
 doing is developed. With the Gnostics, on the contrary, if we 
 omit Marcion and Apelles, the principal thing is not the re- 
 ligious interest, but that of knowing? which in the sphere of 
 religion is only one momentum among others. In the region of 
 reconciliation they tarried only contemplatively ; contemplation 
 is their avdwavai^. The way to this eternal rest of contemplation 
 is with them knowledge; in apprehension and knowledge, how- 
 ever, human spontaneity is already the principal thing. Where 
 knowledge is constituted the supreme excellence of man, there 
 results by consequence an intellectual Pelagianism, since no 
 moral and religious regeneration of the man is desired by 
 knowledge, but this itself is sought as perfection^ just as a 
 
 1 1 John iv. 2. The heretics referred to here (tturixprnmi) do not deny 
 that Christ has come at all, but only that He has come in the flesh. The 
 other passage, 1 John ii. 22, signalizes those who distinguish Jesus from the 
 Christ ; which may be either Ebionitic or Doketic, as in Cerinthus both are 
 found in turn. The heretics also referred to, Col. ii. 8, 17 f., and those of 
 the Pastoral Epistles, if they followed out their principles in Christology, 
 were Doketic. That Ignatius and other apostolic Fathers mention this 
 heresy, has been already noticed. 
 
 2 Appendix, Note CCCC. 
 
GNOSTICISM. 221 
 
 practical Pelagianism emerges where the dignity and worth of 
 man are viewed as lying in work and ethical deed. 
 
 Viewing Gnosticism as thus a one-sided system, which has 
 its correlate in the ergismus of Jewish Christianity, we may say 
 that the simple New Testament Pistis, which combines the prac- 
 tical and the theoretic in a higher unity, is in these two divari- 
 cated very much as individual peculiarities existing previous to 
 the reception of Christianity determined. 1 It would be a mis- 
 take here to seek to arrange according to nations ; in Gnos- 
 ticism, where men born Jews hellenize, etc., we rather see how 
 the pre-Christian nationalities are reducible to mere types of 
 certain one-sidednesses of human nature generally. 
 
 Gnosticism is one of the notable phsenomena of the Christian 
 Church. In it the interest in Christianity as the truth was 
 aroused to the greatest extent, and the previously languidly 
 advancing development of Christian knowledge received an im- 
 pulse which operated through centuries. Looking at the age 
 now before us, we may say that never had so powerful a desire 
 for knowledge been sent forth upon Christianized humanity as 
 there was then. It is true that before Christ a great process of 
 religious philosophizing had been introduced upon many points, 
 and in various ways ; and to this, which evidently had a bearing 
 on the preparation for Christianity, the initiatory Christian 
 gnosis attached itself. 2 But it was in Christianity that, for the 
 first time, the decisive ferment was introduced which completed 
 that decomposing process which was going on confusedly in the 
 pre-Christian religions and religious ideas, and at the same time 
 also completely effected the separation and clearing off of what 
 was heterogeneous. It may, indeed, certainly be said, that in 
 
 1 It is to be understood that none of these one-sided views is altogether 
 detached from religion itself ; otherwise they could not form the subject 
 of treatment here. What concerns us here is only the preponderance of 
 the one over the other. The Gnostics sought a religious knowledge, the 
 others a religious practice. 
 
 2 To the PMlonian religious philosophy, after a Hellenistic manner, 
 there attached themselves especially Valentinus and his school ; to the 
 Dualistic in Syria and the surrounding country, represented, probably, 
 already before Christ by an ophitic system (comp. Baur, Die Christliche 
 Gnosis, p. 194, n. 36), Saturnilos, the Christianizing Ophites, the Se- 
 cundians, Bardesanes, etc. ; in fine, to a Judaizing theosophy, Cerinthus, 
 Basilides, the Gnostic Ebionites about Bella and Arabia, and the Pseudo- 
 Clementine homilies, ^e note EEBE in Appendix. 
 
222 FIRST PERIOD. FIKST EPOCH. 
 
 Gnosticism generally the still unsubdued remains of Paganism 
 and Judaism pressed into Christianity and disfigured it ; and 
 this is to a certain extent true, as well as the conflict of the Chris- 
 tian principle against this disfigurement. But, on the other 
 hand, the historian must here also recognise the great drama, 
 that all that had been strong and great in the faith of those who 
 lived before Christ pressed on all sides, in the various forms of 
 Gnosticism, into the sphere of the Christian principle, that, freed 
 from error, it might through the Christian principle survive for 
 ever amid the decay of the ancient world. And from it Chris- 
 tianity itself became a great gainer. Now, for the first time, 
 could it be proved the absolute religion for all mankind ; for, 
 by contact with all the principles of pre-Christian religious 
 power, with which it had to do in the heresies that arose in its 
 own bosom, and thereby as with itself, or a part of what it pre- 
 sented to the world, it learned for the first time to know itself 
 in concreto, and proved itself to be the truth of all that was pre- 
 Christian. Now the Church is constrained to show all the mo- 
 menta which before were scattered and one-sided, as what she 
 herself carries in far higher manner in her proper substance. 
 The whole spiritual world of the pre-Christian period, rich but 
 confused, drinks and draws into itself the Christian principle 
 which has been historically displayed; there begins to be con- 
 structed out of the material of the old its own proper world of 
 thought ; and though the erection be at first fantastic, though 
 it ethnicizes after a dualistic or Hellenistic manner, the Chris- 
 tian principle in it always remains true to its vocation, to be the 
 religion which comprehends and encloses the truth of all that 
 was pre-Christian in itself. One might even say that the whole 
 process of religious history before Christ is rapidly recapitulated 
 in Gnosticism ; turned on all sides, there is in it an utterance 
 that the Christian principle is conscious of, and it has to show 
 that there is given in it the all-sided, the entire truth ; that it is 
 what are justly called religions in their truth. The ethnic de- 
 sire to form gods had been extinguished : it is the aim of the 
 Gnostic thinking to preserve these as categories clothed in 
 symbol, and to construct a sort of Christian Olympus. But as 
 a consequence of this, it follows that the Christian principle to 
 which they were approximated overpowers them, or assimilates 
 itself A work certainly of boundless significancy, for the 
 
GNOSTICISM. 223 
 
 making of Christianity, hitherto enclosed within narrow limits, 
 actually a world-religion. 1 
 
 If we regard the Gnostics only as those who completed this 
 noteworthy fact in the world's history, the spectacle is indeed 
 unsatisfying, for each of them appears too much in love with 
 that form of pre-Christian belief which he undertakes to in- 
 corporate with Christianity, or to show to be in it ; and so it 
 is not the pure Christian principle itself which this work com- 
 pletes, and the advantage of which it promotes. If also there 
 was with them a bringing of all that was pre-Christian into 
 connection with what is Christian, if this was already raised 
 above itself, and if the power of the Judaic and ethnic prin- 
 ciple Was already somewhat broken by the beginnings of Chris- 
 tian thinking, — still it was only when the full Christian prin- 
 ciple co-operated in this, that the exclusion of the false and the 
 reservation of the eternal were completely effected ; when it 
 links itself to the movement of these true momenta by which an 
 entrance is promoted, and regenerates them out of itself. In 
 the simple faith, neither Gnostic nor ergistic, but such as is to 
 be presupposed as the unity of both of these, the purer Christian 
 principle has always had its representatives, who came forward 
 at the right time reconciling and uniting, and who confirmed 
 and ratified the common faith as well by the conscious master- 
 ing of possibilities which had always been manifest, as by the 
 conscious adoption and use of new momenta of what the faith 
 contains. They did not, however, accomplish this by deter- 
 mining against the gnosis, but by the Church's entering into it ; 
 without giving up its peculiar religious character, the Church, 
 after the momentarily distracting and stormy Gnostic period, 
 entered upon that season of bloom which begins soon after the 
 middle of the second century. 
 
 The tendency to gnosis, accordingly, viewed in the gross, 
 was not an arbitrary undertaking of reason, but was one which, 
 led on by the pre-Christian history, was for the first time 
 brought into a right track by the Christian principle, and con- 
 ducted to aim at an intelligence above Christianity and the pre- 
 Christian religions. 
 
 1 Comp. Baumgarten-Crusius, Lehrbuch derDogmengeschichte, i. 131. 
 " The Gnostics introduced studies, literature, and art into the Christian 
 Church." 
 
224 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 As the fruit of the common working of Gnosticism and the 
 Church Fathers, less cannot be signalized than the conscious 
 gain of the essential momenta of the Christian concept of God. 
 Every religion is what it is through its concept of God. • This 
 is alike the signature of each. It is not the problem of evil, 
 nor is it the cosmogony, which, on the whole, is the question 
 Gnosticism proposes to deal with ; but if we recognise in it an 
 attempt to reconcile all the principles, all the concepts of God 
 in the pre-Christian religions, with Christianity, we shall reach 
 the point from which all the species of Gnosticism diverge, and 
 may be recognised according to their actual significancy by 
 considering what is the Christian concept of God, and what 
 those were that lay beyond Christianity. As respects the latter, 
 they were, when viewed in a religio-philosophic light, in their 
 ethnic forms pantheistic, partly dualistic, partly monistic ; which 
 two are the reverse of each other, like joy and grief. 1 In all 
 forms of both, the physical predominates : the concept of God 
 remains bound in physical definitions. It is true, that since 
 Hellenic science penetrated like a corrosive fluid all these reli- 
 gions, the ancient form of the collective nature-religions dis- 
 appeared ; the old deities, and polytheism itself, came to be 
 reduced to the "Op, the absolute simple substance. But as this 
 is not the one living God of religion, thought cannot rest here, 
 but turns into the dualistic or monistic faith of Pantheism, as 
 before the religious instinct had done the same in order to gain 
 a concrete concept of God. The intellect before Christianity 
 was, in all that it laid down positively, thoroughly fettered by 
 ethnic presumptions. 
 
 Now, in the ethnic religions and systems of a monistic form, 
 God is the absolute Being and Life, Power and Beauty, in 
 some respects also Wisdom. If He is thereby also determined 
 to be Goodness, still this has not ethical aims, but something 
 finite for its substance, just as those other attributes are taken 
 physically. Dualism, on the contrary, recognises in the <f>vai<; 
 the diversity which lies hidden in it from the beginning ; and as 
 it becomes more clearly apprehended by the mind, it enunciates 
 this as the antithesis no longer simply of light and darkness, of 
 friendly and hostile powers, but of spirit and matter ; and this, 
 whether in a more rugged form it repudiates all mediation, or 
 1 Appendix, Note DDDD. 
 
ETHNIC AND JUDAIC GNOSTICISM. 225 
 
 slips in something rriediate (e. gr. the psychical). Here God is 
 thought as a spiritual Nature ; spirits are an emanation from 
 Him ; the world is also, nevertheless, as much a process of the 
 Divine life and passion as an act of the Divine will. Dualism 
 cannot be a teleological form of religion, though it is conceived 
 in the effort towards this, but must always have a character 
 rather aesthetic and fatalistic than ethical. In fine, the Hebrew 
 religion is teleologic Monotheism. Its pre-eminence does not 
 lie in its possessing unity in place of duality or plurality. For 
 Pantheism also, the stand-point of substance has a unity, 
 though a transient one. But its greatness lies in this, that in 
 it the duality of the natural and spiritual physis is made to 
 coalesce in the common dependence from a higher principle, 
 which marks out for each its proper place, that, namely, of rec- 
 titude, which apportions to each its problem and its lot accord- 
 ing to its worthiness. The idea of rectitude first established 
 the Monotheism of the patriarchal religion, and it is the 
 essential substance of the Law. 
 
 These three stand-points, which correspond to the three 
 chief forms of the pre-Christian religions, stand over against 
 each other in Gnosticism as religio-philosophic. 1 Some sought 
 to abide by the view of Christianity which regards it as that by 
 which the antithesis of spirit and matter was first fully brought 
 to view, and the structure of a pneumatic world out of this 
 hylic world, elevating itself to heaven, is begun ; whilst the old 
 world, including even Judaism, was hylic, and belonged to an 
 evil, dark God. The Valentinian system sought hellenically to 
 soften the wild, fantastic dualism in its oldest form, the ophitic, 
 and by the extrusion of the pantheistic side in the dualism to 
 produce unity. It recognises no absolute principle in matter, 
 for it teaches its annihilation ; in order to mediate the antitheses, 
 the physical, according to the Platonic trichotomy, was interpo- 
 lated. The idea of beauty retained its place. But the idea of 
 rectitude and of ethical love was wholly excluded ; for the 
 object here is to remove the transcendence of God. On the 
 contrary, the Divine is defined as the All-life in diverse forms 
 and stages, as the world-forming, governing, and perfecting 
 power, — above all, as knowledge. 2 The most strenuous efforts 
 
 1 Appendix, Note EEEE. 
 
 2 It is noticeable, that whilst the system distributes everything else to 
 VOL. I. V 
 
226 FIKST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 are made to comprehend all being under thought, to represent 
 it as different phsenomenal stages of the Spirit as the thinker. 1 
 Knowledge itself is the highest form of life ; and Christianity 
 perfects and deifies life by the absolute knowledge which be- 
 gins with it. 
 
 Against both these tendencies, in which we have represented 
 to us only Paganism under the double aspect of a dualistic and 
 a monistic Pantheism, the Judaistic form of the gnosis is fully 
 valid. This brings forward the ethical problem, and holds fast 
 by rectitude as the highest momentum in the concept of God ; 
 thus presenting a higher Monotheism than that pantheistic one 
 is, such as essentially involves the concept of creation. Here 
 also Christianity must be regarded as that which perfectly 
 realizes the rectitude of God ; partly, inasmuch as it perfectly, 
 and without fail, announces to the world the will of God ; 
 partly, inasmuch as this revelation, along with the forgiveness 
 of sins for those who better themselves, prepares and justifies 
 the decisive eschatological judgment for the unworthy. So 
 Cerinthus, and, after him, the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies. 2 
 
 These three tendencies thus aimed to construe Christianity 
 as it were by physics, or logic, or ethics, and to represent God 
 as the pneumatic nature, or thought, or rectitude. Hence it was 
 proposed to unite what was true in these systems ; for the one 
 stood in exclusive opposition to the others, and only the first two 
 could in a certain way be viewed as homogeneous complements 
 of each other. In these, however, the principle of nature-reli- 
 gion stood in direct opposition to the ethical principle of Ju- 
 daism. Each was valid against the other, and each also had its 
 weak point ; for neither can rectitude be the highest in the 
 concept of God, nor, on the other hand, can His physical attri- 
 
 bo many hypostases after a mythological fashion, the full Divine conscious- 
 ness is ascribed only to One, the Only-begotten. He alone forms wholly 
 the original reason. He is in God Himself the Mediator of the Divine con- 
 sciousness ; and, as the perfect mirror of the Propator, takes without ques- 
 tion the highest place along -with Him. 
 
 1 Appendix, Note FFFF. 
 
 2 Basilides, on the other hand, only partially belongs to this class, 
 through his doctrine of rectitude. His view of the universal etftupTYtriwii 
 in men, of the pneumatic exTioyj), and in general of grace fulfilling right- 
 eousness, would bring him nearer to Christianity, were it not that with him 
 everything ethical is viewed physically. Comp. Grabe, Spicil. ii. 41. 
 
MONTAOTSM. MAECION. 227 
 
 butes. A rectitude which only claims, but does not effectuate, 
 is impotent : a benevolent power which dispenses its gifts only 
 arbitrarily, and which, treating sin as only apparent, leaves no 
 place for rectitude, is unethical. Both sides are unable to in- 
 struct each other, and can only convert to the opposite error ; 
 for none of them, in so far as they speak of the supreme God, 
 has in his gnosis the higher unity of the momenta in their 
 equal validity, none has the pure Christian concept of God. 
 Only a bold creation from the fresh source of Christianity itself 
 could deliver the gnosis from its internal bonds. 
 
 Certainly there now appeared, as a rugged ergismus and 
 antagonist to the proper gnosis, a reaction of the religious feel- 
 ing, which was spread widely through many lands, in Mon~ 
 tanism ; but though in its earliest, enthusiastic form, in which 
 it was hostile to clear knowledge, it was indeed an enemy to 
 the death to the gnosis (though as onesided as itself), it could 
 neither give a reason for it, nor by its ecstasy overcome it. In 
 it there was threatened, in its religious definitiveness, an ergis- 
 mus which erected piety into a good work. No sooner was it 
 matured, than the religious spirit and force dwelling in it must 
 needs come forth as productive and conflictive in the ecclesias- 
 tical course. 
 
 It is, rather than anything else, a new form of the gnosis 
 itself, which attacks victoriously both those earlier principal 
 forms by means of a higher principle. If they had obscured 
 the Christian principle by recognising in it only the perfection 
 of the pre-Christian; Marcion brought forward boldly and 
 enthusiastically his absolute newness [of Christianity]. The 
 newness consists in this, that therein a new concept of God is 
 given : God is love. He is not, consequently, ethical goodness, 
 not a pneumatic nature, not knowledge ; but He is spiritual 
 love. As against the Judaic principle, he says : God regards 
 not desert nor service ; but His greatness is His pre-eminent 
 grace. Others, indeed, before him had viewed what preceded 
 Christianity in the gross as the time of the dominion of an 
 antitheistic, or, at least, not truly Divine power ; but yet none 
 of them had been able, from their stand-point, to do otherwise 
 than assume the existence of pneumatic natures determined to 
 gnosis before Christianity; so that Christianity could only 
 awaken the slumbering germ, already posited, of these pneu- 
 
228 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH 
 
 matic natures, and thereby complete the pre-Christian. It 
 could create nothing new, nor, consequently, transmute the 
 old world into a new. And the Judaic principle also, accord- 
 ing to which the revelation of righteousness must suffice, pre- 
 supposes an incorrupt state of human nature, and thereby 
 leaves for redemption only a precarious place. Marcion is the 
 first more clearly to present the antithesis between the old and 
 new world, as he is so filled with the new, the highest momen- 
 tum in the concept of God, that he first, in the strength of this 
 new positive element, love, sees across the cleft which separates 
 the old from the new. 1 To him, heathenism and Judaism are 
 so different from Christianity, that he believes he can describe 
 the new thing that has risen upon his view only as a new God, 
 who, as the alone true, is also the eternal, though not before 
 revealed. 2 He lays no stress on a preparation for Christianity 
 through the previous circumstances, development, or deed of 
 mankind ; but the more grace manifests itself without prepara- 
 tion, so much the more pre-eminent is it ; the less it already finds 
 of what is good and meritorious, so much the more divinely 
 does love beam forth in it, — that love which is not ashamed to 
 communicate itself to the unworthy. 
 
 As the pre-Christian religions were thus, in his estimation, 
 very far below Christianity, so also were the chief classes of the 
 gnosis, the ethnicizing (in both its principal forms) and the 
 Judaizing, very far below the Christian gnosis, the knowledge 
 of the unknown Father as He who hath revealed Himself in 
 Christ, and His death as the freely forgiving love, and by jus- 
 tification and the remission of sins, as the thoroughly perfecting 
 love. He will have neither the heathen, unethical concept of 
 God, as his Doketic principles show, nor again does he recog 
 nise as in accordance with his view the Jewish God : it is only 
 the Christian idea of God that he will have, and he believes 
 that this can be preserved in its purity only as all that is pre- 
 Christian is separated from it. 
 
 Though Marcion thus set forth the higher principle which 
 is competent to the just union of all the momenta in the con- 
 cept of God, still the conflict and antagonism within the gnosis 
 
 1 Characteristic is the question to the Roman Presbyter : Tell me what 
 means this — No man puts new wine into old skins? etc. — Epiph. Haer. xlii. 2. 
 
 2 Appendix, Note GGGG. 
 
GNOSTIC CHEISTOLOGY. 229 
 
 itself was only thereby rendered the stronger. For he was able 
 to construe the Christian concept of God only in its antithesis 
 to the pre-Christian momenta, but not as the unity of these. 1 
 It was only Church Fathers like Irenaeus and Tertullian who, 
 by recognising as well the historical as the ideal aspect of 
 Christianity, were able, from the stand-point which a living 
 faith gave them, to deliver the gnosis from the antitheses in 
 which it was put under bann, and to collect the different mo- 
 menta of the concept of God, of which its various tendencies 
 gave a onesided representation ; and this they did, not in the 
 way of mere summation, but speculatively, since, penetrating 
 into these antitheses, they demonstrated in the inner unity of 
 those which seemed especially antagonistic, righteousness and 
 love. 2 
 
 By what has been hitherto advanced, the picture of the 
 Christology within the gnosis is sketched out. 
 
 What seems at first to most the common point of resem- 
 blance between the Gnostic forms, is Doketism. But this has 
 not, as is often supposed, the same basis in all ; on the con- 
 trary, in each tendency its basis is different. Though certainly 
 in ultimate reference there abides in the Gnostic systems gene- 
 rally a dualistic fundamental trait, by which something Doketic 
 is posited for Christology, yet is this dualistic element very dif- 
 ferently construed in the different forms. The oldest ethnicizing 
 dualism (which subsequently comes to unity hellenically in Valen- 
 tinus, and was purified christianly by Marcion) views Christ as a 
 being whose nature is light, and who cannot come into positive 
 intercourse with the darkness, with matter, or their domain, to 
 which also carnal humanity belongs, without being defiled. 3 
 
 The Doketism of the school of Valentinus comes forth in 
 another fashion. Here the ideal, the light of thought, is the 
 alone true being ; and hence in reference to all reality of the 
 actual world there is a certain indifference. This school ap- 
 proximates most to a simply ideal Christ, whilst those just 
 named sought to express the profoundest impression of the 
 supernatural character of the appearance of Christ. Never- 
 theless the ideal Christ was so represented by this second class, 
 that He was historically conceived of. He must have an objec- 
 
 1 Appendix, Note HHHH. 2 Appendix, Note IIII. 
 
 3 Appendix, Note JJJJ. 
 
230 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 tive historical significance in the process of the world's history, 
 yet not so as to give Himself up to finitude, and relinquish His 
 fixed position as opposed to the outward reality. 
 
 Marcion's Doketism has again another root. For he makes 
 use of it to make evident the ahsolute newness of Christianity ; 
 and hence his prejudice in favour of the suddenness of its ap- 
 pearance. It is only thus that his laying so much stress on the 
 death of Christ is to be accounted for ; for as, according to him, 
 all lies in the newness of Christianity, which consists in the 
 revelation of love, to deny the death of Christ would be to lose 
 hold of the highest proof of love ; and accordingly he held fast 
 by the death of Christ, without, however, supposing that with 
 that the curse of the Almighty was in any way connected. 
 
 In fine, the Judaizing form of Gnosticism became Doketic 
 from this, that, as in general it aims to resolve in its way the 
 antithesis between freedom and grace, but knows only to place 
 the human subject over against the divine according to its 
 juristic principle, or to suffer both to alternate in their value, 
 so it dealt also with the Person of Christ. Further, it arose 
 from this also, that, in accordance with the same deistic stand- 
 point, it could unite with the man Jesus, not God, but only one 
 of the higher spirits ; and thus there is given of itself a sup- 
 pression of the true manhood, or a lowering of this to a simple 
 Doketic form. 1 
 
 As we have seen from what precedes, in the first place, 
 what the different Gnostics sought to know as the peculiar 
 essence of Christianity, and, along with that, what we owe to 
 Christ (the work of Christ) ; from which it appears that all 
 except Marcion place this work in his doctrine, whether ethical 
 or theoretic (cosmogonic and theogonic) ; and as, in the second 
 place, we have pointed out Doketism as what is common to all 
 the Gnostic systems, and have deduced this from the principle 
 of each ; it only remains for us to consider the different forms 
 of this Doketism. 
 
 Here, first, in reference to the higher nature itself, it appears 
 that they felt bound to call Christ Saviour, and to view Him 
 hypostatically ; 2 that all, Marcion alone excepted, refused to 
 admit that it was the Divine Being who appeared historically, 
 but held that it was only an 2Eon, Christ. He is an emanation 
 
 1 So in the Pseudo-Clementines. 2 Appendix, Note KKKK. 
 
GNOSTIC CHEISTOL06Y. 231 
 
 or irpofiokr) of the Highest Being (e.gr. according to Basilides, 
 Epiph. Hser. xxiv. 1). He is, indeed, a divine being ; but that 
 which is divine K.i. abides by itself, does not come forth; and, 
 on the other hand, all the pneumatic natures before Christ, 
 whose existence only Marcion ventured to deny, are in essence 
 like Him. Certainly this JEon Christ is so preferred before 
 all, that he can give the fullest announcement as well con- 
 cerning the entire Pleroma as concerning the abysmal Divine 
 essence itself. This has been worked out beautifully, especially 
 by the Valentinian school (Iren. i. 2). No sooner (on the fall 
 of Achamoth) was a link in the chain of the Pleroma broken, 
 and, for the establishment of what still stood, Christ was brought 
 forth and the Holy Ghost by the Monogenes (consequently 
 after the fact which the creation of the world made good), than 
 the whole Pleroma determined, rejoicing in the unity and har- 
 mony thereby established, to unite whatever each 2Eon had 
 that was most beautiful and glorious, and thereby to produce 
 for the glorifying of the Bythos a perfect beauty, a luminous 
 star, the common effulgence as it were 6f the Pleroma. This 
 was done in Jesus, whom they call also Soter, and Christ, and 
 Logos, and All, since He is from all. And in this product of 
 the common joy and unity the Pleroma shows and establishes 
 its harmony. Christ is, according to this, the former of Nature ; 
 but it is Jesus, or the Soter, who brings the pneumatic element 
 as hidden seed into the world, and, through the historical ap- 
 pearance of Christ, to form, in the perfect knowledge which He 
 communicates. 
 
 They endeavour in various ways to set forth the Soter per- 
 fectly ; x as, e.gr., when they see in Him a Swa/tt? itself, even of 
 the Sige or the Arrheton, not merely collect the forces of the 
 Pleroma in Him, as Marcus (Epiph. xxx. 10), or when they 
 identify Him with the primitive essence, or derive Him from 
 this (see what is said of a party of the Colorbasians in Epiph. 
 xxxv. 1, and the Marcosians, ibid, xxxiv. 8, 10). But, how- 
 ever various their efforts for this end, He always remains, in 
 their judgment, an JEon who began to be, and is subordinate 
 to the Supreme Being. And if some of them (as Heracleon, 
 Epiph. xxxvi. 2, xxxv. 1) call the Supreme Father of the uni- 
 
 1 See a multitude of these in Epiphart. Hear. xxxv. 1, xxxiv. 8, 10, 
 xxiv. 1-3, xxxi. 7. 
 
232 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 verse Himself, the first Principle, no longer Bythos, but pri- 
 mitive man, "AvOpwiroi, and boast of it as a great mystery that 
 the highest, the all-embracing, and over-all-existing Power, is 
 called Man ; still there is nothing in this, as we already have 
 seen in the case of the Clementine Homilies, favourable to the 
 idea of the incarnation. On the contrary, as seems to have 
 been exemplified at least with Heracleon (see note KKKK), the 
 universe being pantheistically conceived as an incoherent mul- 
 teity of which God is the unity, there remains for the Soter 
 nothing else than to be one of the powers of the primal man. 
 It deserves also to be mentioned, that the gnosis, in none of its 
 forms, ascribes world-creative power to the higher principle in 
 Christ ; but at the utmost, as in the school of Valentinus, only 
 world-framing power. It is precluded from the former by its 
 hostile position towards the Hyle. It is instructive to see how 
 the gnosis, however high may be the flight it takes, always in- 
 voluntarily sinks back again into what is particularistic : Christ's 
 significancy is a limited one ; it is valid only for the pneumatic 
 class which it already is by nature; 1 with the hylic the divine 
 itself can become ready only through annihilation. As, how- 
 ever, the gnosis has thus in it something of the nature of caste 
 or aristocratic exclusiveness towards the one human class, so, on 
 the other side, there is a just retribution and consequence, in 
 that the highest divine in it alone retains something exclusive 
 towards the pneumatic powers themselves. For, as they do not 
 view God as love, they have not the God who can surmount 
 the hylic, not the supreme, God. But their highest God, who 
 remains to them, has always something physically limited, re- 
 mains always the strange, either exclusive or consuming 
 Bythos, 2 if they do not, as happened to the later Gnostics, 
 pursue the converse direction, transpose all that is divine into 
 what is present, and so, with the abrogation of all self-existence 
 in God, give up the highest good itself, the blessed communion 
 with God in knowledge and love. It is self-evident that the 
 Judaizing gnosis can receive no more favourable sentence. 
 For, with the antagonism between God and the world, which is 
 posited by the mere principle of rectitude, there is necessarily 
 
 1 Comp. e. gr. Heracleon in Grabe 1. c. ii. 237. 
 
 2 The reader may remember the Horos and its activity (comp. Baur, 
 Gnosis, p. 128") 
 
GNOSTIC CHEISTOLOGY. 233 
 
 thought a transcendence of God without immanence, and the 
 innermost essence of God as incommunicable ; so that in Christ 
 there is not a truly Divine being. — A totally different position was 
 assumed by Marcion through the Christian idea of love, which 
 is not to him, as to the other Gnostics, a simply unmeaning word, 
 but, inasmuch as the presupposition of his gnosis is a living 
 Christian consciousness, is the fundamental category of his 
 concept of God. With him, God as love comes in the place 
 of the obscure basis, the Bythos, which never comes into mani- 
 , festation ; and thus in his view the revelation in Christ is not 
 the revelation of a subordinate potence or emanation, but of 
 the Supreme God Himself. The only contribution which he 
 casts into the Gnostic treasury is, that he views religion ex- 
 clusively by itself, as severed from nature and the creation, and 
 thus falls into a religious particularism, as they do into a parti- 
 cularism of gnosis. Thus limiting the universal significancy of 
 Christ by a sort of doctrine of predestination, he is able to 
 think Him not as Creator of the world, but only as Saviour 
 and Redeemer. He leaves it in the general doubtful in what 
 relation the truly Divine, whose innermost essence Christ mani- 
 fests and represents, 1 stands to God. That he thought it as a 
 truly Divine hypostasis in God, is not probable ; least of all could 
 he represent it as a subordinated _ZEon. There remains only the 
 patripassian or Sabellian representation ; but we have no proof 
 that he followed either. What is most probable is, that he did 
 not follow out his peculiar principle of love further in this 
 direction ; and thus, that the first or third view was preferred 
 by him as possible. His own gnosis lingered, like that of his 
 favourite Apostle Paul, by preference in the anthropological 
 region ; in the theological gnosis he remained dependent from 
 Cerdo (Epiph. Hser. xli. 1, comp. xlii. 1-3). 
 
 In what has been said we have gained the premisses for 
 understanding the relation in which, according to the Gnostics, 
 the higher in Christ stands to the human. In general, they, 
 Marcion excepted, regard the humanity of Christ as the organ 
 for the revelation of the Divine truth : it is the merely momen- 
 
 1 Tertullian ad Marc. i. 19 : Deus noster non ab initio — non per condi- 
 tionem (creation) sed per semetipsum revelatus est in Christo Jesu. In 
 i. 22, and i. 19, Tertullian calls the Marcionite Christ alterius Dei quam 
 creatoris circumlator (comp. i. 11, iv. 7). 
 
234 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 tary medium (pyyiui) for the introduction of the eternal truth 
 into history, which was afterwards, when this end was attained, 
 allowed to perish ; for the Divine which this was the medium for 
 introducing is neither hylic nor psychical, but rather pneu- 
 matic. Were His real self-representation in concrete human 
 guise recognised as an essential determination of the Divine, 
 there would be extended an eternal significancy to the side of 
 the humanity. The best developed Gnostic systems, however, 
 secured to the humanity of Christ no other significancy than 
 that of being a symbolical representation of the eternal truth. 1 
 Only Marcion assigns to the humanity of Christ an essential 
 place. 
 
 Nevertheless there is an unmistakeable advance in the 
 relation of the higher nature to humanity. As that medium of 
 revelation the man Jesus was viewed by the older Gnostics, 3 
 whether He was supernaturally conceived or not. They thus 
 first laid down that Jesus was a mere man (which we have 
 above designated the Ebionitic element in Doketism) ; but then 
 they instantly exalt Him above Himself for the time when He 
 must be nothing but the medium of revelation. 3 This necessi- 
 tates the fixing on the baptism of Christ [Jesus ?] as the epoch 
 when the higher .ZEon Christ came on Him, in order to reduce 
 Him, for the time during which He must become the revelation 
 of the truth, into a mere passive selfless organ of His. During 
 this time the human in Jesus is submitted and restrained ; and 
 one might view this as a prophetic state of ecstasy, were it not 
 that it is a permanent state, and the spirit that descended on 
 Jesus is not a hypostasis, but merely the power or hand of the 
 Divine Spirit. The .ZEon is personally and permanently abiding 
 in Christ for a long time, and so a significant approximation 
 to an incarnation is posited. Since, however, this .ZEon is not 
 essentially united with the man Jesus, but only reduces him 
 to a restricted personality, it thus becomes possible for Gnos- 
 ticism to maintain, what is of so much importance to it, the 
 
 1 Thus among the Valentinians, since to them the suffering Jesus is a 
 type of the world-soul, which suffers outside the Pleroma. 
 
 2 So the Ophites (if they are to be reckoned here), Basilides, Valentinus, 
 Cerinthus, as well as Marcus, etc. 
 
 3 The latter was held by some Valentinians (Orig. Ep. ad Tit. Opp. 
 ed. De la Hue, iv. 695, vol. 1) ; probably also by Basilides, since he ascribed 
 a x/ixpTYiTixiu to Jesus. 
 
GNOSTICISM AND DOKETISM. 235 
 
 excluding from the Pleroma what is concretely human, and 
 the admitting into it only of what is pneumatic. After the dis- 
 pensation, the time of revelation is passed ; the higher essence 
 can, without having been defiled by the Hyle, lay aside the 
 man Jesus, who always remained outside of it, and return to 
 the Pleroma ; but the man Jesus, who through the Christ was 
 rendered worthy of such elevation, is fully honoured in that he 
 enters into the blessedness of heaven, after he has let drop the 
 hylic. It thus appears that the double personality of Jesus 
 and of the Christ, which are introduced as alternating, has for 
 Gnosticism its importance ; for the Pleroma is thus preserved 
 pure from the concrete man, yet without its being necessary to 
 set aside the humanity of Christ as an empty shell, which 
 would have been altogether offensive to the Christian con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 All these theories, however, are nevertheless Doketic, be- 
 cause, in proportion as they lay stress on the .ZEon Christ, to 
 which they assign only an outward and transient union with a 
 man, they assert only an apparent humanity. The Church 
 Fathers consequently, who give them the name of Doketse, were 
 justified in so doing, and placed themselves on their own proper 
 stand-point. 1 
 
 But Gnosticism, however unessential and of only transient 
 significancy the manhood of Christ was held by it to be, had 
 nevertheless to advance to show that the medium, the man 
 Jesus, was the fitting or adequate organ for this union of him 
 with the -ZEon Christ. Here three paths lay open, and we find 
 that all were followed. 1. It might be said : The man Jesus 
 has, by his purity, virtue, wisdom, become pre-eminently capable 
 of being made this organ, and so it is just he should be so made. 
 Thus Cerinthus, from the Judaizing point of view; and this 
 falls into Ebionisth, unless the greater stress be laid on the 
 supernatural descent of the Divine essence ; and as this does not 
 appear to have been done by Cerinthus, we have consequently 
 ranked him among the Ebionites. 2. Conversely it might be 
 said: That Jesus should become this organ, rests on the free 
 Divine election ; which is most strongly enounced in this, that 
 though from his birth not free from the sinful nature common 
 
 1 Appendix, Note LLLL. 
 
236 FIEST PEEIOD. FIEST EPOCH. 
 
 to men, he was nevertheless for a season 1 destined to receive 
 thus the Christ ; and it is this Christ coming upon him, or into 
 him (at the time of his baptism), who delivered the man Jesus 
 from sin, perfected him, and so fitted him as a perfected organ 
 for the purpose of his revelation. So Basilides. 3. Since a high 
 degree of wisdom and purity presupposes a superior, natural, 
 God-bestowed endowment, whilst it is not to be fundamen- 
 tally perceived why the higher authorization of the man Jesus 
 should be given so late, seeing the capacity 3 for the perfecting 
 inworking of the _ZEon Christ already leads to the presupposi- 
 tion of something congenial to it in him, it was with greater 
 consequence taught that his birth was supernatural, and that 
 thereby he was fitted as no other was to be united with the 
 Soter. So the Ophites and the Valentinians. 3 According to 
 the latter, who alone deserve notice, this Soter of the Pleroma, 
 to whom the forming of the world gave offence, had prepared 
 for His perfect appearance among men by this, that a pneu- 
 matic germ from Him (concealed from the principle of the 
 Psychical, the Demiurgus) had not merely been planted in the 
 soul of the world, the Chochma, but had from it been com 
 municated to men also. It might thus seem that redemption 
 was not needed ; for the Hyle cannot be redeemed, and the 
 Pneumatic requires not to be redeemed. But, nevertheless, the 
 Valentinian system seeks to leave open a place for redemption 
 by representing the Pneumatic as in a germinal state, and so 
 standing in need of development. — The Soter above described, 
 the flower of the Pleroma, descended upon Jesus for the first 
 time at his baptism, in the form of a dove ; but found in him 
 a point of affinity, in that he was already prepared for the full 
 
 1 That is, up to the time of his sufferings, when the jEon left him, not 
 only according to Basilides, but also according to Cerinthus and the 
 Valentinians. 
 
 2 The faxrizvi liafcvts of the Valentinians, or the pneumatic germ 
 dwelling from the beginning in human nature. Comp. Grabe 1. c. 102. 
 
 3 Comp. Heracleon in Grabe 1. c. p. 99. Salvation comes from the 
 Jews ; not that Christ was born of the Jews (i.e., of Mary, with a side glance 
 at the unbelief of the Jewish people), etc. Valentinus himself (Epiph. 
 Hser. xxxi. 7), Marcus (ib. xxxiv. 10), Saturnilos (ib. xxv. 1), Christ have 
 come tv trx'ifturi diittptwrov and /Si« (tony. T« va.no. 5i iv tq Soxe?» wjtoiyi- 
 *£!/«;, Tovrhri to ysyssjj<r$«;, to TrepnTUTiiH) ro ivTavtaiai, to iriKovQii/at. 
 Comp. Epiph. Hser. xxxvi. 10. 
 
GNOSTICISM AND DOKETISM. 237 
 
 reception of the superior nature. But as the condition of the 
 inferior Jesus is thus determined by the higher, and there is 
 no more a mere man's becoming kindred and congenial to the 
 revelation, there is removed what was a disturbing element in 
 all the Gnostic systems, arising from the hylic element in 
 Christ's manifestation. The Person of Christ is, indeed, more 
 fully determined by the superior Christ, the Idea, than in the 
 earlier forms of Doketism, but only in this way, that the cor- 
 poreal, which in them remained undisposed of, is wholly allowed 
 to drop, and the inferior Jesus is perfectly endowed so as to 
 be the bearer of the Christ-spirit. For this end, the inferior 
 Jesus received from the Soter a pneumatic germ ; nay, this 
 germ is here already more definitely viewed as a part of the 
 manifestation of the Soter, by which, as the beginning and 
 peculiar receptacle [of the higher nature], was announced be- 
 forehand the full advent of the Soter at the baptism. This 
 germ was deposited in the psychical Messiah by the Achamoth ; 
 and him the Demiurgus was on his side led to promise and to 
 form, through the blind impulse which draws the psychical to 
 the pneumatic. The Demiurgus bestowed on his Messiah the 
 best he has (not knowing, it is true, to what still higher end his 
 work must become allied), creating not only a human soul, but 
 for this soul a psychical body ; a special work of art, not 
 grossly corporeal, and yet such as that it was palpable and 
 susceptible of suffering. Now, this man, fully adapted to the 
 economy, with the pneumatic germ, the psyche and soul-body, 
 undefiled by the Hyle, and yet bearing in it the first fruits of 
 that which it was to save, passed through Mary as through a 
 conduit, developed himself without sin, and from the time that 
 the Soter united Himself to him at the baptism, he revealed 
 God the unknown to men, and purified and cultivated men by 
 wholesome doctrine. 1 This Christ, they expressly say, is the 
 Holy Ghost that descended on Jesus, and speaks through him. 
 By this economy the Soter has abolished death, and made 
 known the Father. 2 
 
 1 Comp. on Heracleon, Grabe 1. c. 100 ; on Marcus, Epiph. Haer. xxxiv. 
 8-10, 19. Another expression for this is the salvation of the Light spark 
 (ami/Hyp), Epiph. xxiii. 1. 
 
 2 So far do they bring the two — the Christ, whom they also call the 
 Father of Jesus (Epiph. xxxiv. 10), and the inferior Jesus— together, that 
 
238 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 This marvellous theory, which in the second century, how- 
 ever, was divided by many into various modifications, forms 
 without doubt a notable advance towards the uniting and 
 inner coherence of the two sides [of Christ's Person], the higher 
 and the lower. The latter is no longer now a mere organ in 
 the general, but a copy of the Christ who is present in his 
 image as long as the economy lasts ; and hence the acting and 
 suffering of Jesus are construed as symbols of the higher 
 world. But never does the man Jesus form a part of the 
 Christ Himself ; but intrinsically they remain separate ; there 
 is here a double personality. And in order to be in some 
 measure a true image of the incorporeal Christ {XpurTos acrap- 
 Koi), everything hylic must be withdrawn from Jesus. One 
 might, indeed, proceed to ask, since in the last reference it is 
 only community with the Soter that is brought into considera- 
 tion, and the latter (or Christ) is not psychical, what becomes of 
 Jesus, the psychical organ and copy of Christ ? In so far as 
 he is psychical, he is not a true copy of the Christ ; and how can 
 he then conduct to Him % and in so far as he conducts to Him, 
 he must be in essence like Him, must be pneumatic ; and how 
 then can he remain His organ and copy ? Is not the superior 
 Christ, whose very idea it is to shun and repel the psychical 
 and hylic, necessarily only Himself Mediator ? Must He not 
 exclude all and every organ ; or, if He assumes such, must it not 
 be without mediatory function, and consequently without signi- 
 ficance, and only as for appearance % In fact, the Gnostics of 
 the Valentinian school 1 constantly are enforcing (Heracleon, 
 for instance, frequently) that the Holy Ghost and the power 
 of the Christ, but nothing external, brings the gnosis (comp. 
 Grabe I.e. ii. 94 ff. 108). The psychical, indeed, serves the be- 
 lievers ; but these were only psychical. It is not on the works 
 of Christ, not on His sensible appearance, that men are to be- 
 lieve, but on the Logos (1. c. 110). This same question may be 
 otherwise put thus : If the organ of the revelation has an essen- 
 tial significancy, wherefore is it, as organ at least, perishable? 2 
 
 the latter is called also in himself an image QZofioiatris xul fiiptymig) of 
 the superior Christ, or of the Anthropos, vrho has to come upon him and 
 from him (xapeiif). 
 
 1 We have seen the same above in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, 
 ■where we spoke of the u<ppctcro; %t!p of their Son. 
 
 2 Appendix, Note MMMM. 
 
MAECION. 239 
 
 and if it has no essential significancy, to what intent is the 
 whole artificial Christology; and why go beyond the eternal 
 Christ without humanity, who, as none other, excluding the hylic 
 and psychical, is the truth, and consequently must immediately 
 reveal Himself pneumatically? 1 
 
 It may certainly be assumed, that the powerful impression 
 produced by the appearance of Jesus, — the consciousness that 
 the higher consciousness, the consciousness of the Christ, and 
 the absolute truth revealed in Him, had in and through Jesus 
 come to pass historically, and become the common boon of 
 mankind, — co-operated materially to produce this contradictory 
 Christology. It may be further said, that though it did not 
 concern these Gnostics to view the humanity as an essential 
 quality of their Christ, or even to unite so much as his activity 
 essentially to a humanity any way closely bound to him, they 
 would nevertheless beware of regarding the superior Christ 
 Himself as simply a projection of their subjective conscious- 
 ness, and thereby as a subjective phantasma ; so that with 
 them Jesus, and the preserver of the Christ in him, had this 
 significance, that it denoted the objectivity of Christ, and His 
 real entrance within the domain of history. But the above 
 question ever returns : for Jesus could accomplish neither of 
 these, unless he is himself, as he is, an essential, not accidental 
 momentum of the Christ ; or it is possible to construe such 
 extreme abnegations of the higher in Christ as birth and 
 death into an essential manifestation of His love. 
 
 From what has been said, it may be easily conjectured how 
 great was the further advance which, in this respect, was made 
 by Marcion. He forms in Christology the decisive turning- 
 point where the gnosis in principle, and within itself, overcame 
 Doketism, and allied itself with the Church. To his course the 
 future belongs ; whilst Gnosticism, on the contrary, so long as 
 it adhered to the ancient path, decayed, and passed over more 
 and more to what was not Christian, as we have already seen, 
 since it fell back into Ebionism. 
 
 1 This thought is perhaps the cause of the opinion which TertuUian, 
 De Came Christi, c. 15, opposes, that Christ had a pneumatic body (comp. 
 Origen, T. iv. 691, ed. De la Rue). TertuUian, it is true, names Valen- 
 tinus as the person he has in view ; but he knew to distinguish the psychi- 
 cal and pneumatic body (c. 10, coll. 15) : so that probably scholars of 
 Valentinus are meant. 
 
240 FIEST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 At first, indeed, Marcion marched under the standard of 
 Doketism. He did not allow that Christ was born of the 
 Virgin Mary ; for Christianity, the absolutely new, could in no 
 wise be interwoven with the laws of the old world, of the Demi- 
 urgus and of matter : that would have been, in his view, a de- 
 pendence upon things whose reign was rather now to end. 
 In the fifteenth year of Tiberius, Christ descended suddenly 
 from the hitherto unknown Father into the synagogue at 
 Capernaum, and came forth with the doctrine of the good God. 
 In Him appeared the Father, who revealed Himself in Him by 
 Himself, not by mediation of the Virgin, or of a body com- 
 posed of the elements of creation. 1 He says nothing more par- 
 ticularly concerning the origin of His body : in his view, how- 
 ever, Christ must have sprung immediately from the supreme 
 God Himself ; and Tertullian's censure, that he taught a phan- 
 tasma, can refer only to the alleged suddenness of Christ's ap- 
 pearance, and to the fact that, according to TertuUian, what is 
 not born is only apparently of our species. Irenseus says, more 
 discreetly (i. 29), only that, according to Marcion, God has re- 
 vealed Himself in hominis forma. In any case, the body of 
 Christ, according to Marcion, was so framed that it was adapted 
 to serve for the manifestation of God, who is present in Him. 
 The humanity of Christ is, in his view, nothing but an organ, — - 
 not, however, assumed from the world or mankind, but issuing 
 from God, and that essentially ; for, according to him, there be- 
 longs to the revelation of Love not mere doctrine, of which it 
 may be thought that its subject-matter comes into consciousness 
 in an inner manner through the ideal Christ, but work and 
 suffering. The appearance of Christ among men is itself an 
 act of love, since in Christ the Divine love wills to dwell with 
 men and walk with them. And therewith is the human ap- 
 pearance of Christ already distinguished as the necessary 
 essential organ of love ; and any other organ than humanity 
 would have been unfit for this. But still more is suffering an 
 act of love, into which God could not without humanity have 
 entered : the suffering of Christ, however, and His death — and 
 therewith His humanity — are with Marcion integral momenta 
 
 1 See Note, p. 233. Comp. also TertuU. adv. Marc. iv. 7 ; Epiph. 
 Ext. zlii. 7. 
 
MAECION. 241 
 
 in the idea of Kedemption. 1 In general, Marcion holds by the 
 truth on the whole of the evangelical history of Christ .(as given 
 by Luke), apart from the history of what preceded, and has, 
 throughout, no interest in seeking to depreciate the perfection 
 of the humanity of Christ, from the time that He descended, so 
 long as it does not impeach the newness of Christianity, which 
 with him is everything. He concedes to the Church that Christ 
 continued His work even in Hades ; and since he accepted His 
 actual death in the body, which was capable of suffering (see 
 preceding note), as well as His resurrection after three days^ 
 and probably also agreed with the Church in holding that dur- 
 ing the death of His body Christ went into hell, it is possible 
 that he also ascribed to Christ a human soul. 
 
 By the principle of love, Marcion obtained once for all a 
 quite different bond of union between the two sides in Christ. 
 Nor does this principle remain with him without effect in this 
 respect. The double Christ whom the others hold is not found 
 with him : he knows nothing of a pure human nature of Jesus 
 before the descent of Christ on him ; and by this the last 
 Ebionitic remnant of the other Gnostic forms is removed, and 
 no overweening importance can any longer be attached to the 
 baptism of Jesus. By means of love, which with him is the 
 supremely, most intrinsically divine, God on the one side, and 
 humanity, so far as it is adapted to receive the divine, on the 
 other, are united in this person. 
 
 Now, on the other hand, it certainly seems as if through the 
 omission of the inferior Jesus, by means of whom the Doketic 
 Stand-point of the other Gnostics was insufficiently concealed, 
 this Doketism comes into view much more openly in the case 
 of Marcion ; so that Tertullian says (de Carne Christi, c. 1) : 
 Marcion, ut carnem Christi negaret, negavit etiam nativitatem, 
 aut ut nativitatem negaret, negavit et carnem, scilicet ne 
 invicem sibi testimonium redderent et responderent, nativitas 
 et caro ; and he thinks that, after the example of others, he 
 may, in virtue of the licentia hseretiea, satisfy himself with 
 the denial of either of the two, either the flesh of Christ or 
 the birth of Christ. But this Marcion could not do ; on the 
 contrary, there is shown here, that it is the approaching higher 
 uniting principle which first sharpens the antitheses, and dis- 
 1 Appendix, Note NNNN. 
 VOL. I. Q 
 
242 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 misses all merely mediatory and apparent solutions 1 before it 
 can surmount these. Marcion deepened the antithesis in which 
 Gnosticism wearied itself, the Dualism which it alternately in- 
 sisted upon and concealed, and above which the pre-Christian 
 stand-point could not, either in Judaism or Heathenism, be 
 raised ; for he set over against the whole old world that which 
 is absolutely new, Christianity as the Divine love actually be- 
 come matter of fact. By this there is instituted a much 
 sharper and more real antithesis than between the highest ex- 
 tremes of the Gnostics, the obscure basis, the Byihos, and its 
 extreme Matter or chaos. For, in truth, when closely viewed, 
 these two, the obscure basis and the chaos, coalesce ; the Bythos 
 is really not the highest, but the lowest, because the merely 
 physical category of the concept of God. The distinction is 
 not so much in themselves (the Bythos and unformed Hyle) 
 as it comes up in the subject [the thinking mind], which un- 
 weariedly affronts the attempt to determine the Bythos as the 
 ideal, and yet believes it must relinquish the attempt (on ac- 
 count of its /j,eye8o<i) to reach determinations by which alone the 
 physical can be transcended. The concrete emanations are in 
 truth higher categories than itself ; but the subject knows it not, 
 and chooses it not, and so these are not truly recognised accord- 
 ing to their worth, but are ever threatened again with the physical. 
 But by the same stroke which in the manner shown deepens 
 the previous antithesis, is also gained the principle of union, 
 as well of the earlier as of the new. For the whole pre- 
 Christian world of actuality and thought is now combined in 
 one, over against which stands what is new. And only so far 
 now is a distinction in it acknowledged as it stands diversely 
 related to the new, that is, either as obstinately opposed to it, 
 or as receptive of it. But right as is the major premiss here, 
 nevertheless in the subsumed minor premiss Marcion is gnos- 
 tically bound ; for, though he views the psychical and no 
 longer the hylic as capable of redemption, the overstraining 
 of his principle of the absolute newness of Christianity must 
 on this side necessarily produce and relapse to the earlier, by 
 which, as even the overstrained antithesis proves, his principle 
 was nevertheless negatively bound. But the negative deter- 
 mination by the earlier stage is one thing, the positive is an- 
 1 Such as are to be found especially in the Valentinian school. 
 
MAECIONITES. 243 
 
 other; and since his Divine love is certainly not yet truly 
 free, since it excludes the hylic from itself, and cannot abso- 
 lutely surmount in conception the antithesis, — hence finds also 
 this world too low to be framed by the supreme God ; yet 
 must the limited, the physical, by which the Marcionite concept 
 of God and Christ is fettered, be regarded not as what was 
 willed and enunciated by him, but as an after-pain of his age, 1 
 which must pass away of itself, if only that be held firm and 
 cultivated on which everything for him depends. In fact, this 
 had been already prepared even in his school, which thereby, 
 so far as a more healthy impulse to development was in it, fell 
 in with the Church tendency. So with Apelles (comp. Euseb. 
 v. 13) ; 2 nay, with Marcion himself ; for there is no ground 
 for doubting Tertullian's statement (De Prsescr. 30), that at a 
 later period he desired reconciliation with the Church ; and 
 when it was proposed to him as a condition that he should bring 
 back his adherents to the Church, it was only his death which 
 prevented this being accomplished. Apelles, however, 3 who 
 was less important, did not rise altogether above Dualism, which 
 also clung to Marcion — that is to say, he did not thoroughly 
 evolve the Marcionite principle ; but through a mediate appa- 
 rent solution, by an approximation to Valentinianism (Tertull. 
 De Prsescr. 30 ; De Resurrec. 2), only softened his Dualism. For 
 if he had followed out the principle of love, he could not have 
 regarded Christ's body as without birth or sidereal. But his 
 
 1 As is already shown by the fact that he viewed the pre-Christian 
 world as capable of receiving Christ, and consequently recognised in it 
 something akin to Him ; and also the Demiurgus has not merely an attitude 
 averted from God, but a certain right remains with rectitude, only it shall 
 not will for itself to be the highest. Had Marcion reflected on this kindred 
 element in the pre-Christian time, which his system presupposes, he would, 
 with the Church, have referred it to the same source as has appeared in 
 Christianity, not to an evil principle, or to any other good one than Him 
 who alone is the good and highest God. 
 
 2 The above shows why it does not appear to me probable that the later 
 Marcionites have developed, as true disciples, what was in the esteem of 
 Marcion the essential. The Marcionites rather appear to have let slip the 
 positive, what in his view was the highest, the goodness and love of God, and, 
 on the contrary, to have attached themselves to Dualism, which was the 
 birthmark of his age, and hence to have allied themselves to Manichseism. 
 
 8 Tertull. De Carne Christi, 6-8, and De Praescript. Hser. 30 ; comp.. 
 51 ; Euseb. v. 13 ; Epiph. Haer. 44. 
 
244 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH 
 
 eclecticism proves (Epiph. Hser. xliv. 2) that he did not feel 
 himself at ease in Marcion's Dualism ; and his saying to Ehodon 
 (Euseb. v. 13), " He is blessed who believes on the crucified, if 
 he be found in good works ; but the obscurest of all is the ques- 
 tion concerning God : the Scripture could give no explanation 
 here, and he acknowledged that he had no knowledge that there 
 is a first principle, a God ; but his feeling declared to him there 
 is," — proves that he viewed faith as the basis of everything 
 Christian, and even that he held by that momentum through 
 which Marcion had gained an essential significancy for the 
 humanity of Christ, viz., His death. He thereby rose far above 
 a momentary angelic appearance, 1 and also, on occasion of the 
 vision of Philumene (Tertull. De Carne Christi, 6), sought to 
 vindicate for Christ's body a caro solida, not merely, with 
 Marcion, a body capable of suffering ; and he is already on the 
 way to assert that a body was given to Christ from the pre- 
 viously created world, 2 and to ascribe to the Demiurgus, whom 
 he calls Fire-spirit, only the earthly as his work and kingdom. 
 According to Apelles, Christ's sidereal body, the substance of 
 which He brought down with Him from the higher regions to 
 earth, condensed on it to a caro solida ; and this soliditas ceased 
 at His ascension ; His body returned to the higher regions of 
 the same gravity with them. But He had no substance from 
 the earth, and hence could leave none behind. There is no 
 ground for the assumption that Apelles denied the continuance 
 of Christ's humanity after His ascension. He rather made a 
 
 1 The passage in Tertullian, De Prses. Hsar. 51, is hence evidently unjust, 
 unless the meaning be that Apelles ascribed to Christ a parastatic body, as 
 it is presumed angels have when they appear ; comp. Tertull. De Carne 
 Christi, 6. [The proper reading of this passage is so uncertain that nothing 
 can be built on it. — Tr.] 
 
 2 Tertullian, De Carne Chr. 6 : De sideribus inquiunt et de substantiis 
 superioris mundi, mutuatus est carnem. The assertion, that it was taught 
 that this corpus sidereum et aereum was dispersed by Christ on His ascen- 
 sion into its original elements, I do not find authenticated ; for such an 
 assumption there was hardly even a motive in the case of Apelles. For it 
 was tbe earthly substance alone that was viewed by him as impure, pecca- 
 trix, and hence he would not ascribe it to Christ ; and, on the other hand, 
 Tertullian reasons so against him as that we must assume that he saw in 
 the siderea substantia nothing unworthy of Christ. Perhaps he is con- 
 founded with the author of the Anabaticon JesaisB (see Appendix, Note 
 MMMM), who has something like this. 
 
GNOSTICISM AND EBIONISM. 245 
 
 step in advance tqwards reconciling the new creation with the 
 old ; he conceded to the highest, the good, God, the creation of 
 the more perfect part of the world, and sought to give to the 
 humanity of Christ greater reality, in which he does not stand 
 alone. 1 
 
 The Marcionite Dualism is thus already on the regress ; and 
 if it for a moment comes to a stand, and will not advance from 
 the true death of Christ to a true birth of Christ, or from the 
 creation of the psychical by the good God to a creation also of 
 the hylic, this is of no avail ; for by the recognition of God as 
 love, the principle is given up in virtue of which alone Dualism 
 can keep its ground, namely, that the finite as such is ungodly, 
 and cannot immediately proceed from God. This may be thus 
 Christologically expressed, and thereby we put together what 
 has been already said. 
 
 After Doketism, having entered on the course in which it 
 became intertwined with Ebionism, recognised the baptism of 
 Christ as historical, and from that, though unsatisfactorily, had 
 caught back at the birth of Christ, — of which, however, it had 
 no other conception than that it was a preparation of the man 
 Jesus for the act of union [with the Christ] at the baptism ; 
 the decisive turning-point was taken by Marcion, who, especially 
 by taking into account the propitiatory death of Christ, or the 
 suffering and propitiating manifestation of Divine love, pre- 
 pared an essential, and no longer a mere symbolical, place for 
 the humanity of Christ. From this the Christian knowledge, 
 becoming ever more and more conscious of the almightiness 
 and world-creating power of love, reasoned back for the first 
 time with effect ; sought, under the guidance of the concept of 
 God as almighty love, to think the humanity of Christ ever 
 more and more as homogeneous with ours ; to bring His deity 
 forward in ever progressive superiority to the various stages of 
 worldly existence which must be united with it, until the last 
 link in the chain, which is to unite earth and heaven, was 
 reached, and the true birth of Christ, of our substance, from 
 the womb of Mary was found. It is natural that for this last 
 concluding point, in which Christ is first fuliy assigned to our 
 nature and becomes our brother, flesh of our flesh and bone of 
 our bone, there should be no particular party to be named ; for 
 1 Appendix, Note 0000. 
 
246 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 with this momentum heresy was at an end, and the Church 
 doctrine begins, to which we have now to pass over. 
 
 Before entering on this, however, as a parallel ending of 
 this with the preceding chapter, I must show, what was above 
 asserted, that Gnosticism, inasmuch as it would not apprcn 
 priate the higher stages which Marcion reached, fell over into 
 its apparent antithesis, Ebionism. 
 
 It has been already intimated that the later Valentinian 
 school always more and more treated the hypostatic world of 
 JEons as symbolical, preferred seeing one and the same power 
 in different forms of manifestation, and regarded the plurality 
 of the world as the composed letters of one great word, the 
 world. It is easy to see how near this approaches to the stand- 
 point of an Ebionitic representation of Christ ; for, consequent 
 on this, Christ could only be one form of the manifestation of 
 God among others, without any other peculiar dignity than 
 that which even Ebionism assigned to Him. The Pseudo- 
 Clementine Homilies appear (Horn. xvi. 16) to recognise a 
 similar view. But the gnosis, unless rendered somewhat sound 
 by the religious principle (as in the case of Marcion), must sink 
 below even Ebionism and the limits of what is Christian ; the 
 more, consequently, its principle of knowing is developed in 
 its entire strength and one-sidedness. It has been shown above, 
 that the Valentinian school, in which the principle of absolute 
 knowledge was most purely held, had no answer to the question, 
 What is the Christ who is united to Jesus % since in the ulti- 
 mate reference the idea by itself is everything (the Xpio-Tos 
 acrapKoi), and no other reality is acknowledged than what lies 
 in the idea as such ; and, consequently, it is not viewed as a 
 momentum of the idea, that it should be itself determined to 
 a natural being, to outward actuality. We have seen that to 
 the real-human side of Christ either a necessary place must be 
 given, or that it cannot remain what the Valentinian school, 
 influenced by its Christian or Church consciousness, would main- 
 tain it to be. If the former be refused, there remain as fac- 
 tors, having an actual significancy, only the invisible Christ, 
 who is distinguishable from the Deity only in name, and the 
 human spirit. According to this stand-point, the gnosis no 
 Tnore occupies itself with the historical God-man ; but the whole 
 process, from beginning to end, lies within the subjective 
 
GNOSTICISM AND EBIONISM. 247 
 
 spirit. For a season — so long, indeed, as the voice of the Chris- 
 tian and the Church consciousness reverberated — it was held 
 that the human subject, and the Divine Christ as object, were 
 to be distinguished as the receiver and the giver of the abso- 
 lute knowledge, so that thus, in the sphere of the inner world, 
 there should be preserved to Christ His objectivity and power 
 as Saviour. But the knowing subject, which had by its own 
 effort attained to the dignity of absolute knowledge, would 
 soon fall under the doubt whether the Christ, viewed as objec- 
 tive, was not rather a projection of the subjective consciousness, 
 which is fully declared by this, that the subject, properly, in 
 itself is Christ. The true Gnostic must, therefore, transfer all 
 external reality, even Christ Himself, within the limits of the 
 Spirit ; must know Christ in Himself, and deny all significancy 
 of any other objectivity. This comes very near to the finding 
 of Christ in self, to the knowing of self according to the truth 
 of the proper " I as Christ," and thereby to allow to Christ no 
 other significancy than that of " being the truth of the indivi- 
 dual Me." It is well known that the Mystics in all ages have 
 spoken after this fashion ; nay, several such expressions sym- 
 phonize with the innermost utterance of Christianity itself. 
 There is here a point where the line of demarcation between 
 what is intimately Christian and the abyss of blasphemy is fine, 
 and not recognisable by every one. The same words may, 
 according as they are understood, belong to the one side or the 
 other. But the cleft which separates what is blasphemous from 
 what is Christian is always objectively existing ; and it belongs 
 to science to determine precisely the line of demarcation, and 
 to exhibit the former as the deceptive though resembling cari- 
 cature of the latter. 
 
 I shall attempt to make this distinction evident in the case 
 of the historical figures of the second century. 
 
 Valentinians, like Heracleon and Marcus, though with them 
 the world was only the dislocated Word, or the " Man" sepa- 
 rated into his parts, and God only the unity of the many, yet 
 held fast God's self-existence : nay, Marcus and others call 
 Him the "AvBpmiros, and, as we have seen, concede at least 
 partially, and under the category of power, His union with 
 Jesus ; but this unity threatens to turn out a merely nominal 
 one (because it is not reflected on itself) ; and when this takes 
 
248 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 place, the self-existence of God is set aside, and the Deity is 
 transferred quite to the side of the world, the subject. We 
 have then a view which must be designated atheistic, since it 
 leaves only divine attributes or powers remaining, whilst it 
 denies the absolute subject of them. This, however, is not a 
 mere possibility ; it is a necessary consequence of the Gnostic 
 principle, inasmuch as it does not make religion, or knowledge 
 religiously determined, its abiding presupposition. For, as 
 ethical acting, in the strict sense, ceases to be ethical in so far 
 as it is viewed as something merely established and commanded 
 by God, and since it belongs rather to the concept of the ethi- 
 cal as distinguished from the religious that it is posited by 
 men, so it is certain that in the concept of knowing the essen- 
 tial element, that which distinguishes it from all besides, is 
 nothing else than that it is the thinking activity [denkende 
 Thatigkeit] of the subjective spirit. It does not, indeed, follow 
 as excluded by this, that the ethical activity does not presuppose 
 to itself its relative counterpart, a suitable being which is not 
 activity, nor posited by the activity of the subject, but a being 
 which the religious stand-point, without thereby approaching 
 too near to the ethical, teaches to construe into its foundation 
 as a being willed and established by God. And similarly know- 
 ing presupposes a being that is not first established by the 
 thinking activity, — a being, namely, at least of the thinking 
 subject itself; which again the religious stand-point, without 
 coming into collision with the knowing, teaches to construe as 
 a being thought by God, which is to be presupposed to the 
 thinking activity of the subject. But whilst neither of these, 
 regarded as secondary forms, the ethical and theoretical, in 
 itself and according to its idea, excludes religion, the latter is 
 definitively excluded, as soon as the secondary subjective ac- 
 tivity is viewed as first and sole, and it is overlooked that all 
 subjective activity presupposes a being not originated by this 
 activity, consequently one which is for the activity a something 
 given. 
 
 Now, so long as these Gnostics, though transferring every- 
 thing within the limits of the subjective spirit, yet held that 
 within this there was a distinction between what are given to 
 the subjective spirit, and which consequently it has received, 
 and between this activity and what are posited by it, so long is 
 
GNOSTIC SECTS. 249 
 
 the bond which unites the human consciousness with religion 
 still retained, and there is still left, within the subjective spirit 
 itself, a place, in virtue of which man can think himself as the 
 recipient, and God objectively as the Giver or the Disposer. 
 But where this consciousness becomes extinct, and the concept 
 named, of knowledge positing itself without being under law, 
 comes into its place, under the delusion that otherwise know- 
 ledge would not be knowledge, then the decisive step towards 
 the denial of God is taken, — then is the Divinity wholly usurped 
 into the individual subject, and, as respects the consciousness of 
 the subject, robbed of its objectivity, — then, though Christian- 
 like phraseology such as that named be still used, this becomes, 
 as respects its true meaning, the irreligious caricature of the 
 profoundest Christian ideas, which have for their presupposition 
 not a demoniac autonomy, but one mediated by Divine grace. 
 
 Parties who may have belonged to this are named by Epi- 
 phanius, especially Hser. xxv. xxvi. ; whether it be that they 
 are not yet or are no longer to be viewed as Christian. Epi- 
 phanius calls them Gnostics in a special sense, and passes 
 judgment on their writings. They have (xxvi. 2) a poem 
 which they call the Gospel of the Fulfilling (evar/yeXiov re- 
 Xeuoaewi), of the contents of which, however, he only says, 
 that there is in it Oavdrov koI irevOovs reXeimcris. Among such 
 the idea was secretly held, which appeared among others in a 
 more blameless way, that Eve's fall from God brought the true 
 gnosis ; and they showed a Gospel of Eve, in which she teaches 
 in the manner indicated the way to knowledge. 1 
 
 I stood, they say in it, on a high mountain, where I saw a 
 high man, and one mutilated. Thereupon I heard, as it were, 
 a peal of thunder, and a voice which came nearer, and said, " I 
 am thou, and thou art I ; and where thou art, there am I ; and 
 in all I am diffused. And if thou wiliest, thou collectest me ; 
 
 1 Such views are more harmless, where God, whose law was broken, is 
 only the Demiurgus ; for there disobedience against Him may be viewed as 
 obedience to the supreme God, as piety, especially by the Dualists ; so with 
 the Cainites and others. But Epiphanius ascribes no Demiurgus to those who 
 held the Gospel of Eve. Compare for what follows, Fabric. Cod. Apocry. 
 N. T. i. 349 ff. 373 ff. Epiphanius adduces many names of sects which 
 cohere with Pantheists of this sort, — Nicolaitans, Borborians, Barbelians, 
 Coddians, Phibionites or Stratiots, Zacchseans, etc. Hser. xxvi. 3, comp, 
 xxv. 
 
250 FIBST PERIOD FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 but if thou collectest me, thou collectest also thyself." 1 In 
 another writing, which they called the Gospel of Philip, 2 the 
 formula is given with which a departing soul may soar irre- 
 sistibly above all powers and intermediate steps. It runs thus : 
 " I have known myself and collected myself from all places : 
 I have not begotten children to the Archon, but rooted up his 
 roots : I have collected the separated members together, and 
 know thee who thou art ; for I am from above." 3 To this be- 
 longs also the opinion which Tertullian assails, that Christ has 
 brought to us nothing but the knowledge of Himself. To this 
 Tertullian replies : " The soul is in danger of losing salvation 
 not from its not knowing itself, but from its not knowing Christ, 
 the "Word of God" (De Carne Christi, 12). Thus there were not 
 wanting those who, even at that time, were indifferent towards 
 sin and salvation ; and, putting knowledge, the gnosis, in the 
 place of religion, aimed at removing the objectivity of God and 
 Christ, so as to absorb, " to collect" all, God and the world, into 
 the I, — only, indeed, to lead to the evacuation of the I, to the 
 removal of everything concrete, of all distinction, by which the 
 tabula rasa of the self-consciousness is rendered indistinguish- 
 able from the nothing of the Bythos. If God and the self- 
 consciousness (which condition each other) be degraded to being 
 in general, they become undoubtedly indistinguishable ; but 
 also both falsely, that is, only physically, determined. 
 
 "We leave these parties, which destroy themselves as well 
 theoretically as practically ; for, like Buddhism, they come 
 with their absolute highest knowledge only to a thinking of the 
 nothing, which in itself is an abnegation of thinking ; or, if 
 
 1 Epiphanius (Hser. xxvi. 4) relates of the Stratiots and Gnostics of 
 Egypt, what proves that they were in part given to a nature-Pantheism, 
 and called the quickening powers of nature Christ, or the body of Christ, 
 which they believed was to be given back to the Father of the universe by 
 offering. Whither the practical effect of such ideas tends, it is easy to 
 see. Those who believed that they had measured the entire circle of nature- 
 life, had collected and offered all power, said iyu ufii 6 Xpimo;. There is 
 a whole literature out of this puddle, of which Epiphanius has in part pre- 
 served the titles (xxvi. 8,12). Recent analogous phenomena warn us against 
 seeing in such statements mere slanders of the Fathers. Even in the time of 
 Epiphanius there were adherents of these sects (Hser. xxvi. 14, comp. vi. 17). 
 
 2 Epiphan. Hser. xxvi. 13. 
 
 8 Allied are the Manichsean Gospels and that of Judas Iscariot. Fabric. 
 1. c. 352, 353. 
 
SUMMARY 251 
 
 they seek a content for thought, they fall always away again 
 to that which to them is but an appearance, to be immediately 
 again removed. The only reason for naming them here is, 
 that they were consequent formations from that Gnosticism 
 which went straight to its end, without allowing itself to be 
 turned aside in its error, or through the category of love and 
 of what is ethical, in contradistinction from what is physical, to 
 be elevated to a higher stage, on which the nature-process, and 
 the endless play of placing and removing, is exorcised, and the 
 restless agitation from extreme to extreme is brought into the 
 course of a regulated progress, which at every stage has something 
 further to gain, but gives up nothing it has gained, and so has 
 a being in becoming, and a becoming in being. They are, to 
 use a figure of Schleiermacher's, buoys, which in themselves 
 are empty, but on that very account float on the surface, and 
 are of use to indicate to the mariner where he is not to steer, if 
 he would not run his vessel on the shallows. 1 
 
 In conclusion, let us glance back over the path we have 
 followed. The two Christological fundamental heresies, as we 
 have seen, through the remnant of truth that was in them, 
 tended, as if necessitated by their own one-sidedness, in the 
 course of the first and second century each to be transposed, in 
 so far as they were accordant with the Church, into its opposite ; 
 and, consequently, they must in the end have acknowledged 
 that they had failed of their own proper aim, and must have 
 given up, however unwillingly, their own partial view for the 
 whole truth. But since the aim of the one was changed sur- 
 reptitiously to its opposite, it attained its end on the side where 
 the other heresy had taken its commencement. The Church 
 truth, which it now assailed in a new way, could dread no 
 triumph for it, because the other fundamental heresy had al- 
 ready sought this long before with this its new presupposition, 
 but had had a similar unexpected course. It is not, however, to 
 be forgotten that an Ebionism and a Doketism, penetrated by 
 what was at first its opposite, became a more energetic form of 
 itself than the older forms of both. When heresies thus have 
 not themselves or their development in their own power, it is 
 manifest that the Church truth is the star that, even without 
 their consent, governs their course, since she, in virtue of the 
 1 Appendix, Note PPPP. 
 
252 FIRST PERIOD. FIRST EPOCH. 
 
 truth still adhering to them, ever draws them from each 
 aphelion back towards herself, — in paths, it is true, running 
 opposite to each other, for the two fundamental heresies have 
 from the beginning an opposite movement, — yet also in ever 
 diminishing circles. Error is always weaker than truth, because 
 truth has only one antagonist, error ; but the latter has always 
 two, namely, besides the truth, itself. 
 
 Ebionism put aside entirely the one side of the Person of 
 Christ, and asserted that the genuine Church truth held only 
 His humanity; Doketism took the converse of this. The former 
 presupposes that the humanity of Christ was universally ac- 
 knowledged by Christians ; for otherwise Ebionism could not, 
 by laying stress on this, have asserted to itself a Christian 
 character. But Doketism and Gnosticism, on its part, exempli- 
 fies the same thing. It proposes to find the deeper meaning of 
 Christianity by laying stress on the higher side in Christ ; 
 which presupposes in Gnosticism itself a consciousness that the 
 Church did not deny this higher side, but only represented it 
 imperfectly from attaching weight also to His humanity ; for 
 otherwise Gnosticism could not, by a pretended exaltation of that 
 side, have retained for itself a Christian character. With these 
 proofs mutually supplementing each other, they are the last, and, 
 as opponents, the indubitably credible witnesses for primitive 
 Christianity, attesting that, in its representation of Christ, the 
 higher as well as the human side was set forth. They are 
 further, in the same way, witnesses against each other ; for they 
 reciprocally accuse of omitting an essential part of Christianity. 
 In fine, as has been said, each witnesses against itself ; for each 
 at the end of the Epoch, assumes that very thing of which at the 
 commencement it had demanded the rejection. 
 
 As, however, in the course of heresies it was the Church 
 truth which, in and over them, was the principle that suffered 
 them not to rest, but ever drew them again towards the Church, 
 in which they often as heresies surrendered themselves ; so also, 
 for the development of the visible Church from an imperfect form 
 of consciousness to a more perfect one, the heresies were notmerely 
 serviceable as warning boundary marks, but, still more signifi- 
 cantly, they exerted an influence on the development, by showing 
 in themselves only an exaggeration of really Christian elements 
 which had not been duly estimated on the part of the Church. 
 
SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 TIME OF THE FORMATION OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 
 CONCEPT OF GOD— FROM 150 TO 325. 
 
 £Eieic\r]<rui OeoTwyovcra.) 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS AND THE DOUBLE 
 MONARCHIANISM. 
 
 CHAPTER FIRST. 
 
 SUBJUGATION OF EBIONISM AND DOKETISM THROUGH THE 
 church's FORMATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS 
 "WHO BECAME PERFECT MAN. 
 
 From the middle of the Second Century to the Third. 
 
 The simple faith of the confessing and witnessing Christianity 
 of primitive times was brought into the severest conflict by the 
 Gnosis, which widely assumed the upper hand ; and perhaps to 
 the present day the Church has not been in so difficult a posi- 
 tion as then. It may indeed be suggested, as it is by Schleier- 
 macher, that, in the general, Gnosticism was an affair of the 
 school, and not of the congregation. But that from the time 
 when the heathen world flowed into the Churchy and was no 
 longer simply a characterless soft mass which received its form 
 from the witnessing Church of the beginning, — that from the 
 time when the peculiar tendency of the Hellenic world towards 
 knowledge bestirred itself more freely and more powerfully, — 
 that just from this time so many of the more educated and 
 talented should attach themselves to Gnosticism, was evidently 
 a phenomenon of very grave import. For, under the plausible 
 appearance of seeking something higher than the simple faith, 
 Gnosticism, as we have seen (Marcion excepted), regressed to 
 
254 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 pre-Christian positions ; enveloped the historical manifestation 
 of salvation for the consciousness in a mythic cloud ; and set 
 aside or maimed it, as much as it could, though without this in- 
 tent. Those whom it seized upon and bewitched, as we have 
 seen, with a sort of magical power, were just those who, most 
 highly endowed, were destined to be the leaders of the congre- 
 gation : it was fitted to corrupt, or rather to abolish, the 
 doctrinal status, i.e., the future of the Christian Church. Had 
 Gnosticism remained unsubdued, it would have appeared as if 
 thinking, or science, and Christian faith contradicted each other, 
 and that the latter could only claim the praise of illiteracy, 
 could be only a plebeian faith. Thus there would have been 
 introduced into Christianity the intolerable distinction of an 
 esoteric and an exoteric truth, which would be as foreign to it 
 as Gnosticism itself. 
 
 If we compare in the general the literature of the age of the 
 apostolic Fathers with that of the apostolic age itself, we shall 
 find that already the glowing coals are covered with ashes ; so 
 that, if there is no failure as yet of warmth, there is a failure of 
 powerful light, a want of the clear lustre of Christian know- 
 ledge. Who, looking on the poor vessel of the simply believing 
 and witnessing Christianity of this age, could have augured that 
 it contained such a treasure of wisdom as was developed from 
 it ? It came into the light of day just as the gnosis was aim- 
 ing at the re-introducing of the old darkness under the name 
 of a new light, the highest consecration of knowledge ; and the 
 still burning coals broke out, just when they were to have been 
 buried, into a widely shining and blazing flame, annihilating 
 all edifices of composite human wisdom, warming the hearts, 
 and giving light to the Christian master-builders to whom we 
 now come. A glorious period, when Christian faith and Chris- 
 tian science flourished, began about the middle of the second 
 century ; and so rich a harvest was reaped, for the latter 
 especially, that at the end of the century hardly any one could 
 wish that the Church might have escaped the Gnostic storms. 
 
 What was it, however, that calmed these storms within the 
 Church ? Was it the Episcopate, which, at least by Clement of 
 Eome and Ignatius, was in various ways and with steady pro- 
 gress constructed, and in which was sought a firm centre for 
 the unity of the Church, though as yet without a claim to in- 
 
GNOSIS AND THE EPISCOPATE. 255 
 
 fallibility, without that sacrament of ordination which establishes 
 a gulf between the state of the clergy and that of the laity 1 
 By no means. It is true that there is every reason to assume 
 that when the two chief heresies broke out, the bond of unity 
 was drawn tighter by the Episcopate so far as it was developed : 
 what had previously been of service in securing to Christianity 
 a firm and definite position over against the synagogue and 
 heathenism, must also be productive of advantage in sustaining 
 the Church against the irruption of errors of Jewish and hea- 
 then origin. But this form of Church polity was by no means 
 a match for spirits of foreign origin : rather, as has been said, 
 those who sustained this office were threatened with the gnosis 
 if they were spiritual and living ; where they were not, the 
 danger was almost still greater. Then a one-sided dependence 
 on outward means for the preservation of unity slid in ; a be- 
 numbing mechanicalism was the more dangerous the less a rich 
 development of doctrine had been gained, and the more, con- 
 sequently, the public expression of the religious consciousness 
 was principally directed to what may be called in the widest 
 sense the liturgical elements of divine service. And the more 
 the administration and conduct of these liturgical acts must have 
 diffused a sort of hallowed lustre over the presiding minister, in 
 the eyes of those who had been accustomed to the priesthood 
 which prevailed all over the ancient world, — so much the more 
 where a certain delusion unobservedly took hold of both people 
 and leaders, under which the former forgot their spiritual priest- 
 hood, the latter humility and office, — did the minister become 
 obviously also the reconciling centre for the clearly awakened 
 desire for Christian knowledge. The insufficiency of the Epis- 
 copate to cope with heresy appeared however most manifestly in 
 this, that as, on the one hand, it attacked it rather outwardly by 
 the exclusion of persons than by the refutation of errors, so, on 
 the other hand, in opposing them, it enlarged its own power and 
 dignity in a way which introduced pre-Christian errors and dis- 
 tinctions of another sort into the Church itself. 1 
 
 Or shall we rather assign to Montanism, the second oppo- 
 
 1 About the year 150, the age could no longer think of the Evangelist 
 John without a a-si-afco?, Eus. E. H. v. 24. From Clement and Ignatius to 
 Irenseus, the more eminent teachers, by discourse or writing, in the Church 
 are not bishops, or in general Church officers, but other Christians, [n pro- 
 
256 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 nent of the gnosis, the merit of having subdued it ? This is a 
 form full of vigour, and of widely influential significancy. In 
 it the original Christian feeling, the Christian people, the demo- 
 cratic basis of the Church, predominated against the gnosis, 
 and against the hierarchic elements. And with it there came 
 forth three powers or factors, whom we may distinguish as 
 Practical men, or Churchmen ; Theoretical men, or men of the 
 school and science ; and Montanists, to whom pious feeling was 
 everything. These three classes, however, stood so decidedly 
 apart from each other, that each was by itself against both the 
 others, and the only point of union almost between any two of 
 them was found in their common opposition to the third. And 
 among these three, again, Montanism was the shyest and most 
 self-sufficient. 
 
 The Church life depended for its health on the union of 
 these three ; but none of them produced, or could produce this : 
 this could be effected only by men who had not fallen into 
 these one-sidednesses, and were of sound Christian piety. The 
 simple apostolic belief, where it existed, was not inimical to the 
 Christian knowledge, nor to the formation of the Christian con- 
 gregational life ; it, and it alone — the necessary gifts being pre- 
 supposed — was in circumstances to meddle with, otherwise than 
 simply to repudiate, the gnosis, and at a, later period Montanism, 
 and thoroughly to vanquish them. 
 
 In point of fact, the Church must at this trying period have 
 had many men rich in faith, and love, and knowledge, who, 
 penetrating into the gnosis, and being gentle and favourable 
 towards what was true in Montanism, and along with this 
 attaching great importance to the unity of the Church, had skill 
 to reconcile the mutually repelling and conflicting elements, and 
 to appropriate them to the Church, thereby overcoming contra- 
 diction, and resolving all into a higher spiritual unity. As 
 belonging to this class, and whose works have been preserved 
 to us, may be especially named the author of the Letter to Diog- 
 netus, Justin Martyr, Athenagoras and Theophilus of Antioch, 
 Irenasus and Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria and Origen. 1 
 
 portion as the bishops were practical, their dignity and the reverence showed 
 to them increased with the many ; but their intellectual eminence sunk at 
 the same time. 
 
 1 Appendix, Note QQQQ. 
 
EFFECT OF THE GNOSIS. 257 
 
 We have already seen how the Church development of the 
 FirstEpochwas principally conducted, in a Ohristological respect, 
 in accordance with the Old Testament doctrines of the Word 
 and Wisdom of God. It is, indeed, not true that the idea of the 
 Logos was first introduced into the Church about the year 150: 
 so far from this, we have found a progressive development of 
 this idea, growing out of the Word of God, the real principle, 
 and arriving before 150 at the Wisdom, the ideal principle; 
 and both referred to Christ, the historical principle, in propor- 
 tion as the conviction grew, that if we are to be reconciled to 
 God by Him, God Himself must come nigh to us in Him (see 
 above, p. 134, Appendix, Note QQ). And even the term Xo^yo?, 
 alternating with prjfia, in the sense of the Word of God who 
 appeared in Christ, is not strange to this period. How could it 
 be, since, leaving out of view the Old Testament and the 
 apocryphal books, in the New Testament, in the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, the First Epistle of Peter, and the Gospel by John, 1 
 it is used in this sense % On the other hand, it must be acknow- 
 ledged that before the gnosis the New Testament term Logos 
 was in part a little used treasure, and in part, taken in the sense 
 of reason, vovs, was not in general applied to Christ, who was in 
 this respect spoken of as the Wisdom ; 2 and as in general this 
 momentum remained unformed, still less was there any attempt 
 made by a reversed process to descend from the wisdom (to 
 which, proceeding from the Word of God, one must ascend), 
 and to acknowledge in the perfect ideality, or the eternal vovs, 
 which is also love, the principle of reality, or the creative 
 Word. So long as this was not done, knowledge could not be 
 satisfied ; but so long the Logos was not thought in His abso- 
 lute freedom, but simply in connection with the world, simply 
 as the world-principle. 
 
 At length came the gnosis. How it laboured from the 
 ideal world,, and particularly from the vow, to conceive the 
 
 1 In the word there lies primarily creative might, the coming into exist- 
 ence through an act of will. But intelligence is not thereby excluded ; 
 rather it is implicitly understood, as at least Heb. iv. 13, and John i. 4, 5, 9, 
 prove ; though it is still a work, a scientific step forward, to recognise the 
 momentum of intelligence in its special worth. 
 
 2 As even in the New Testament by Paul, 1 Cor. i. 24 ; Col. ii. 8 ; and in 
 Matt. xiv. 19 ; Luke i. 35, xi. 49. 
 
 VOL. I. R 
 
258 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 universe, nay, to find motives for the appearance of the Logos 
 in Jesus, we have seen. But as, on account of the Hyle, it 
 never came from thought, its point of issue, to being, so also it 
 could not elevate thought to knowing, to discerning. The 
 universe always was dissolved for it, in the best cases, into a 
 passing appearance. Thought, to be wholly itself, concluded 
 that no objectivity whatever should be suffered to continue ; but 
 it lost with that its own substance. And where this did not 
 happen, Gnosticism continued to stand in the ruder forms of 
 Dualism. Marcion's principle might have conducted further ; 
 but it was not from the gnosis that he had this : the category 
 of love he derived from the Christian faith. 
 
 But what the gnosis could not attain without going back 
 into the Church, it had still power to excite there. No man 
 can say anything rational concerning the supreme Divine region, 
 who has not first recognised the Divine love, where it is to be 
 recognised, in Christ. And no man recognises it by the simple 
 process of thinking, but only through the spiritual intuition of 
 love. But it is not every one of those who have the fundamen- 
 tal knowledge of God in faith and love, who knows also how 
 to make something of a doctrinal tenet out of that, and to appro- 
 priate the treasure which lies in the principle. Now, the gnosis 
 rendered to faith the essential service of almost compelling 
 it to reflect on itself, to address itself more definitely to know- 
 ledge, so as to discriminate the false from the true. This cannot 
 issue from the natural intellect bound within the lower sphere, 
 but only from the Christian spirit that is at home in the highest 
 sphere, or from reason come to itself as it is in Christianity. 
 
 In this consciousness went forth the succession of men we 
 have named. To them Christianity is the bloom of humanity, 
 the soul in the huge body of the race. To them, who for the 
 most part had gone through the systems of Hellenic philosophy, 
 Christianity is the Philosophy /car e^o^v, yea, the Divine 
 wisdom itself. 
 
 Of especial moment, however, for the solution of the diffi- 
 cult problem which then presented itself, was the fact that the 
 subjective Christian consciousness was now more distinctly 
 united with the objective representation of Christian truth in 
 the New Testament, and the latter assumed more and more its 
 canonical rights. Not only the gnosis, but also the Montanist 
 
ORAL TRADITION. THE CANON. 259 
 
 piety, had an anti-historical tendency: philosophy and false 
 spiritualistic piety appeared to combine to cover and obscure 
 the historical aspect of Christianity ; and the result of this 
 would have been, that Christianity itself must have sunk into a 
 sort of ghost flitting over the earth, to a momentary spiritual 
 convulsive fit falling on mankind. What came to the rescue 
 here was oral tradition and the Holy Scriptures of the New 
 Testament, both closely connected, and mutually supporting 
 each other. It was only natural that in the age of the apos- 
 tolic Fathers the living testimony of those who had lived with 
 the Apostles should give to oral tradition a preponderance over 
 the use of the apostolic writings ; though in this age there were 
 already commenced collections of the apostolic writings, 1 and 
 the use of them in Divine service. 2 But as the men who went 
 back to the apostolic age gradually retired from the stage, oral 
 tradition receded behind the apostolic written word ; this came 
 to be recognised as the canon ; and to the canon, as far as it was 
 formed, the first place was assigned ; and, above all, the utmost 
 efforts were made to contribute by historical testimonies and re- 
 collections, as well as by the internal evidence of their own 
 belief, to the completion of the work of forming the canon. In 
 the official system of the Church, oral tradition had found a 
 firm centre ; and the work of forming the canon, in which after 
 Irenseus the leaders of the Church were chiefly engaged, is the 
 pre-eminent historical act of the clergy of the second century, 
 and is the most important contribution which even the Episco- 
 pate, watching over the unity of the Church, made to the Chris- 
 tological work of the Church : by this the wild shoots and extra- 
 vagancies which had previously been so common were cut off 
 right and left, and a firm course of development entered on. 
 Without any formally conclusive decree, the apostolic writings 
 were treated as canonical, and the greater part of the writ- 
 ings in the canon as we now have it as apostolic. An exege- 
 tical activity commenced, by means of which great fruit and 
 
 1 As is shown by Marcion's canon, the passage of Ignatius Philad. 5, 
 the numerous citations of the New Testament in the apostolic Fathers, etc. 
 
 2 Comp. e. gr. the letter of Dionysius of Corinth, Euseb. iv. 23, Justin 
 Apol. i. 67. The reading of the New Testament writings, on the other hand, 
 was already customary with many much earlier, as with Clement of Rome, 
 Ignatius, Polycarp, etc. 
 
260 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 enrichment came to Christian knowledge and the dogmatic 
 impulse ; for it was not a slavish traditional relation to Holy 
 Scripture which prevailed, but the relation of a free love and 
 recognition, such as had also operated in the forming of the 
 canon. The vitality of the subjective side of Christian faith 
 at this time, is sufficiently proved by the far-spreading Mon- 
 tanist excitement, and still more by the men of whom we are 
 now to speak. 
 
 In the Letter to Diognetus there appears no longer a mere 
 simple faith, but one intimately affected by the gnosis ; and the 
 marvellous charm of the Letter lies in the exquisite combina- 
 tion of the depth of an inner emotional life with the freshness 
 of a knowledge which emancipates, which enlarges the circle 
 of vision and illustrates everything, and which yet withal re- 
 mains unpretentious. Here the proper ecclesiastical position 
 against Gnosticism is assumed. The world of Christians, the 
 writer says (ch. 12), is a paradise ; they produce fruitful trees 
 of all kinds. For in this place are planted the tree of know- 
 ledge and the tree of life. " But the tree of knowledge does 
 not kill ; it is sin that kills." Whilst he thus speaks against 
 an exclusive piety, he no less distinctly speaks against the 
 gnosis of Gnosticism : l God planted first in Eden the tree of 
 life, and by the tree of knowledge indicated the path to the tree 
 of life. But as the first human beings did not use it in purity, 
 they were stripped naked through the deception of the ser- 
 pent. For neither is life sure (atr^aX^?) without gnosis, nor is 
 gnosis certain without true life. Wherefore each of the two 
 trees was planted by the other. The Apostle censures not every 
 kind of gnosis (1 Cor. viii. 1), but he exhibits the power of union 
 of both, and censures that gnosis which men employ without 
 allowing themselves to be conducted from the truth to the life. 
 Whosoever thinks he can know anything without a true and 
 life-attested gnosis, errs, and is deceived by the serpent, because 
 he loves not the life. He, however, who reverently seeks and 
 strives after the life, plants with hope. " Let the heart be to 
 thee gnosis ; but let the true Logos, received into the heart, be 
 
 1 Which was fond of representing the Fall as the cause of knowledge 
 (see above). I believe I am not deceiving myself when I see all through 
 the twelfth chapter the pursuit of a middle path between Gnosticism and 
 abstract piety. 
 
EPISTLE TO DIOGNETUS. 261 
 
 to thee life. Then shall thy food be wholly divine, such as no 
 serpent touches ; then shall Eve be no longer deceived." 
 
 The Hellenic culture of the author is seen most strikingly 
 in this high estimation of the Christian gnosis. And this is 
 obvious also in his Christology. It is, indeed, not more fully 
 formed ; but the novel feature in it is, that he, after Hellenic 
 fashion, construes the divine side of Christ not as Word or 
 creative Power, which were also Wisdom, but originally as Truth 
 or Reason. But just so does the author remove himself widely 
 from the Gnostic idealism, which, confounding God and the 
 world, establishes neither concept. " No earthly contrivance, 
 no human mysteries, are given to Christians ; but the Almighty 
 Himself, the Creator of the universe, the invisible God, hath 
 planted From heaven in men, and hath established in their 
 hearts, the Truth and the Logos, since He sent not, as some 
 insinuate^ a servant, or angel, or prince, but the Artificer and 
 Creator of the universe Himself, through whom He made the 
 heavens and shut up the sea within its bounds, whose secret 
 laws all the elements obey truly, to whom are subjected and 
 whom follow the moon and the stars, etc., the heaven and what 
 is in it, the earth and what is on it, the sea and what is in it, 
 fire, air, the abyss, what is in the height, and what is in the 
 depth, and what is between. Him hath He sent to them : but 
 for what ? to terrify, and appal, and subdue them by force ? By 
 no means ; but in friendliness and compassion, as a king sends 
 his son, himself a king. Him as God (a>? @ebv) He sent as 
 to men, to deliver, not to destroy* — as a persuader, not a con- 
 strainer. For violence dwells not with God" (c. 7). 
 
 As the design of the appearance of Christ, he assigns re- 
 velation of God (c. 8, 9). Who knows what God is, unless 
 God Himself show it ? Heathenism answers with its lies. No 
 man hath seen God or known Him ; He Himself must show 
 Himself. He has, however, showed Himself through faith, to 
 which alone is it granted to see God. God is a friend to man, 
 and longsuffering towards him. That has He ever been, is now, 
 and ever will be, — kind and good, and without wrath, and faith- 
 ful : a great unutterable thought hath He thought, which He 
 
 * [" Urn zu retten nicht zu rechten." To preserve the paranomasia I 
 have substituted " destroy " for " contend with ; " and this also is more 
 in accordance with the original, as oa£cui> sTriftifiiii. — Tk.] 
 
262 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 hath communicated to His Son alone. So long as He kept 
 it secret, and retained His counsel, He seemed to have no care 
 for us. But when He uncovered that already prepared from 
 the beginning, and revealed it to us by His beloved Son, He 
 sent to us what no one could beforehand have expected. In 
 the preceding times, men were convicted by their own works of 
 being unworthy of eternal life, incapable by their own strength 
 of entering into the kingdom of God. Thus God delayed in 
 order that we might be made conscious of our own guilt and 
 impotency. But as that was filled up, and it was rendered 
 manifest that punishment and death duly awaited us, the one 
 love (jilcl wyaTrrj) continued true. It hated not, it departed not, 
 it remembered not evil ; but was longsuffering, and bore, nay, 
 itself took on our sins. It gave His only Son as a ransom for 
 us ; the holy for the unholy, the sinless for the wicked, the pure 
 for the vile, the immortal for the mortal. For what else could 
 cover our sins than the righteousness of Him ? Whereby could 
 the unholy and ungodly be justified but by the Son of God % 
 Oh ! sweet substitution ! Oh, what an unsearchable device, 
 what unexpected blessing ! The unrighteousness of the many 
 to be hid by the righteousness of the One ; the righteousness of 
 the One to justify many sinners ! In Him has God showed to 
 us a Saviour who is able to save what it was not possible to 
 save [without Him]. In Him has God first loved us ; how 
 canst thou sufficiently love Him in return ? But if thou lovest 
 Him, thou wilt be an imitator of His goodness. And marvel 
 not that a man may be an imitator of God ; he can be so if he 
 will. For, to rule, to be rich, to tyrannize, is not the true eudce- 
 rnony, nor can any man in such imitate God ; but such lies out- 
 side the Divine glory. He, however, who takes his neighbour's 
 burden on himself, becomes a god for those for whom he inter- 
 poses, he is God's imitator. — Gifted by nature with X&yiov, vow, 
 we are formed after God's image ; but, after the previous time 
 had showed to us the impossibility of our reaching life through 
 our own nature, He sent His only-begotton Son (c. 9, 10), the 
 Logos, that He might shine upon the world, and, speaking boldly 
 and clearly (c. 11), might reveal all things, — despised by the 
 people, preached by the Apostles, believed on by the Gentiles. 
 He, who was from the beginning, is He who appeared anew, 
 and is born anew continually in the hearts of the believers. 
 
EPISTLE TO DIOGNETUS. 263 
 
 He, who was for ever, is now reverenced as the Son, by whom 
 the Church is enriched, and grace displays itself, and increases 
 in the saints, giving understanding, opening mysteries. Thus is 
 the Logos established among men, since by Him light and life, 
 Gnosis and Love, are inseparably joined. What He reveals on 
 earth is God Himself, the Truth ; and this He does not by 
 word alone, but above all by His death. Thus also there is re- 
 vealed by deed the highest concept of God, the glory of God — 
 Love. On him who despises this, falls the weight of judgment 
 at the second Parousia of Christ. 
 
 When the author says (c. 8), "No one has seen or known 
 God ; He has revealed Himself," — it might seem as if he meant 
 that the Father had Himself appeared ; as also the words (c. 9), 
 " God has taken our sins on Himself," have a patripassian 
 sound. And since there is no reference to the Holy Ghost in 
 the Epistle, but all that happens to any one is ascribed to the 
 Logos ; since the Logos is represented as He that fills the 
 Church, adorns with His gifts, arouses to testify, dwells in the 
 Church as Teacher, and rejoices in it (c. 11, 12) ; it might seem 
 as if the Logos was, in the view of the author, nothing else than 
 God Himself viewed as revealed. But he very distinctly dis- 
 tinguishes, even apart from revelation, the Logos from God 
 absolutely ; and particularly by applying to Him the names, 
 Son (ttcus), Beloved, only-begotten Son (c. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11). 
 This was from the beginning, always (air o,pX^J^ix c - H) > an( ^ 
 the mystery of redemption was communicated by God to His 
 Son from the beginning, when He formed the plan (c. 8). He 
 knew all with the Son. The author is not satisfied by repre- 
 senting the Son as hypostatically existing at the creation of the 
 universe ; but, as the actual world was framed by the Son, so, 
 when the idea of the world was conceived, the Son also was 
 present. 1 These expressions consequently, which have so strong 
 a patripassian sound, prove that the author saw in Christ true 
 deity, and are explainable only on this supposition ; but they 
 do not aim at obliterating the distinction between the Son and 
 
 1 Thus is the Gnostic Logos-doctrine refuted. The world is not God's 
 son, but from the beginning the Son is with the Father. On the other 
 hand, the Logos is not an idea without a history, but is the idea which, 
 apart from the universe, subsists in the i&tyttkuoTvis of God, Love, the prin- 
 ciple of the Creation and of the Incarnation. 
 
264 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 the Father. How this Christology is to he reconciled with 
 God's unity, is not said. He does not point at the subordination 
 of the Son. Moreover, he does not seek to prejudice the 
 humanity of Christ, as is evident from his doctrine of Christ's 
 death ; and it is not accidental that he, after the incarnation, is 
 fond of speaking of the Person of Christ as the Logos or the 
 Son, by which, as we have seen, he intends the pre-existent 
 divine nature of Christ. On the other hand, he holds that 
 Christ is in the midst of us, inasmuch as he sees in the birth of 
 the new man an analogue, nay, strictly taken, a continuation of 
 the fact of the Logos assuming humanity in Jesus. It is He 
 who " was from the beginning, and appeared anew, and always 
 is born anew in the hearts of the saints." 
 
 Much more developed is the Christology, especially the doc- 
 trine of the Logos, of Justin Martyr. Through the latter he 
 has become of more decisive importance ; for in him, a Sama- 
 ritan by birth, were united the two previous tendencies in the 
 unfolding of the idea of the Logos, the Old Testament ten- 
 dency proceeding from the Word and ending in the iravaperos 
 iro(j>ia (Euseb. iv. 22), and the Hellenic, which sees in the 
 Logos the Divine Reason. He is the first of the Christian 
 teachers with whom intentionally the term Logos has its double 
 meaning, uniting and reconciling its two tendencies, of creative 
 Word and Divine Reason (Dial, cum Tryph. 61). In this feli- 
 citous word, no longer existing with ambiguity in the mind of 
 the Church, is found the key to the union of both tendencies, 
 which, as above shown, had already mutually formed each 
 other. Heathen and Jewish Christians were now conjoined by 
 the confession of the Logos in its double sense ; Ebionism and 
 Doketism were excluded by the higher truth in which the 
 Church had her expressed unity. The want of historical and 
 actual validity for the idea is removed, by the recognition of 
 the eternal truth as the Creator- Word that became man. On 
 the other hand, the idealess character of the history of Christ 
 in Ebionism is removed, by His being conceived as Fact, yea, 
 as the appearing of the eternal truth and reason itself. Thus 
 in fuller stream, and in one bed, thenceforward flowed on the 
 more richly acknowledged Christian truth. 1 
 
 Had Justin thought the objective essence of God after the 
 1 Appendix, Note RRRR. 
 
JUSTIN MARTYR. 265 
 
 supersubstantial form of Philo, his doctrine of the Logos would 
 have been unintelligible. For if God be the simply distinction- 
 less, abstract unity, then would such a preponderance be given 
 to the Divine monarchy, that there would remain for the Logos 
 only a higher creature nature, or a simply economic signifi- 
 cancy; the Logos must be viewed as necessarily outside the 
 Divine essence, in the highest sense. But though in Justin's 
 theology there are assonances to the Alexandrian theology, yet 
 he asserts not God's objective want of attributes, but His un- 
 nameableness, — not God's abstract simplicity, but His un- 
 fathomableness and incomprehensibility by us. It is true that 
 Justin's concept of God is not adjusted for the purpose of un- 
 folding to us, out of it, the doctrine of the Logos or the Christ- 
 ology ; otherwise he must have receded further from the 
 Alexandrian doctrine than he even has done ; but his doctrine 
 of the Logos, which is wrought out by him not a priori but 
 from history, from the experienced salvation which is in Christ, 
 and apostolic tradition, receives from his doctrine of God no 
 opposition. 1 It must not, indeed, be expected in Justin that he 
 will show the necessity of Christianity or of the appearance of 
 Christ ; the doctrine of the Logos is rather by him set forth in 
 the manner of a dogma, which he seeks especially to found on 
 the Old Testament., 
 
 The Dialogue with Trypho affirms, that with the Jews the 
 Christians hold Monotheism inviolate, and are at one with 
 them in opposing all Polytheism. But the Person of Christ 
 necessitates Christians to recognise in Him true deity. Christ, 
 the first-born of the creation, has also become the beginning of 
 another race, regenerated by Him through water and faith, 
 and through that tree in which rests the mystery of the cross.* 
 The purpose of His appearance was the transformation and 
 elevation of the human race. 3 He particularly recognises the 
 marvellous power, penetrating to the soul, of the discourses of 
 Christ. 4 There rested on Him, not a charisma ofjthe Spirit, 
 but the sevenjDOwers in their unity^and if the seed of reason 
 
 1 Comp. Semisch 1. c. ii. 247-260. One may even say, from Apol. i. 
 63, that the inconceivability of God in Himself by men, formed a reason 
 with Justin for His revelation in Christ. 
 
 2 C. Try. cap. 138. 3 Apol. i. 23. 
 * C. Try. 121 ; Apol. i. 10 * C. Try. 87. 
 
26& FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 is scattered over all, there rests in Him the All of reason (\oyf 
 kov to oKov), not a mere airipfia or filfirj/xa, but the Primal 
 Reason itself ; and Christianity is to be called divine wisdom, 
 divine philosophy (Apol. ii. 10, 12). But it is the perfect 
 wisdom, because it is not a powerless idea, but life-governing 
 truth ; because it fills with the fire of love, with the blessedness 
 of reconciliation. Because Christ exhibits power to deify man, 
 He is God. " As from one father Jacob," says he to the 
 Jew Trypho (c. 123 ff.) " all are named, so all we are, and are 
 called, true children, from Him who hath begotten us in the 
 divine nature, — from Christ the God we are worthy to be called 
 gods. 1 The whole race of man lies, since Adam's fall, under 
 the curse, and is subject to physical and spiritual death. Hence 
 Christ must become man. He must unite the essential life 
 with the mortal, in order to make the latter essentially immortal 
 (comp. the Fragments on the Resurrection). His positions con- 
 cerning the manner in which Christ hath accomplished what is 
 ascribed to Him, — viz., by the slaying of the serpent and the 
 evil powers, in general of death, by cleansing from sin and 
 renewal of humanity, — are but very vaguely expressed ; and he 
 is fond, however distinctly he deduces these fruits from the 
 death of Jesus, of referring to the cross as a " mystery," as it 
 were, in a sacred night in which the new Divine man was born. 
 He has not taught that He was given as a ransom-price to 
 Satan- ; as, indeed, none of the more eminent Fathers hold this 
 as expressing the entire significancy of the death of Christ. 
 It is also true, that what he places in the foreground is not the 
 Divine righteousness and the concept of guilt and punishment, 
 but that of evil and of sin, from which Christ delivers us. But 
 it would be an error to seek to exclude the concept of guilt and 
 punishment from him altogether. 2 But however vague the 
 
 1 Comp. Apol. i. 23. [It is but fair to state, that the above passage is 
 made up out of two different passages in Justin, of which it may be de- 
 sirable to give a translation here : "As therefore from that one Jacob, who 
 was also called Israel, your whole race is called Jacob and Israel, so [are] 
 we from Him who hath begotten us to God from Christ ; we who keep the 
 commands of Christ are called, and are, the true children of God :" c. 23. 
 Then having quoted Ps. lxxxii. 6, and commented on it, he says, " Be tha 
 interpretation of the Psalm what it may, it still remains certain that men 
 are deemed worthy to become gods :" c. 124. — Tr.] 
 
 3 Appendix, Note SSSS. 
 
JUSTIN MARTYR. 267 
 
 whole remains, Justin's central concept is the idea of substitvr 
 tion, which he sets forth in many ways. " God's Son, the 
 Logos," says he, in the Fragment on the Resurrection, c. 1, 
 " came among us, bearing a body, showing Himself and the 
 Father, giving us in Himself the resurrection of the dead." 
 In another fragment (from Leontius, see Grabe Spicilegium ii. 
 172 [Justin Opp., ed. Otto, ii. 251, No. 9]) he says, " Through 
 disobedience mankind received corruption into their nature 
 (<f>vcrifca><; eio-e8e£<zTo <f>6opdv). It thus became necessary that 
 he who would rescue man should destroy that essential prin- 
 ciple of corruption (<f>6opoiroibv ova-lav).'' In order to accom- 
 plish this, the essential life must be united with that which was 
 subject to corruption, in order that that life might cast out the 
 corruption, and elevate to immortality that which had received 
 corruption. Hence the Logos must assume flesh. Had He 
 simply by His death warded off death from us, He would only 
 have helped us from without. Death would have been pre- 
 vented from reaching his aim, but we should have remained 
 in corruption ; for we bear the principle of corruption in our- 
 selves. Thus it is only in Christ's essential life, which was 
 united with the mortal, that a universal principle is given for 
 the subduing of corruption in the general. In Him is corrup- 
 tion in us also overcome. For this a basis is laid in His incar- 
 nation ; but His death and resurrection, which Justin eagerly 
 sets forth together, have also this general significancy, that they 
 are regarded as concerning mankind, not one individual man. 
 Only thus is it conceivable how he sees in Christ's death the 
 death of death and of sin, and in Christ's resurrection the 
 foundation of universal eternal life, and in both together the 
 dying of an old and the resurrection of a new world, not only 
 intimated, but accomplished. This is the substitution, — not 
 a magical one, not one positing passivity, but the true and liv- 
 ing substitution, which is also the principle of the higher life, 
 planted by it in those men who have, by faith in Christ, their 
 part in His perfect victory. To this belongs also the passage, 
 c. Tryph. 116 : " Through the name of Jesus, the High 
 Priest, all become the true high-priestly race of God — all come 
 to be as one man, allied to the Creator of the universe ; through 
 the name of His First-begotten they have put off the unclean 
 garments, that is, their sins, and are inflamed by the word of 
 
268 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH 
 
 vocation." To this also must be referred his calling, according 
 to a Pauline figure, all Christians together one body with many 
 members ; and his representing believers as a synagogue, a 
 church, a soul, the daughter of God. The one soul in all the 
 members is the Logos. 1 
 
 High as in his esteem is the value of Christ's work, as 
 one truly divine, and hence as witnessing for Christ's true 
 deity, he is yet far from recognising no truth outside of Chris- 
 tianity. On the contrary, he counts the heathen philosophy, — 
 that of a Plato, a Socrates, etc., as well as their virtue, — to be 
 highly prized. 2 But he earnestly affirms the position, that in 
 the Son who was manifested in Jesus is the whole truth, the 
 whole Logos ; and that no longer is the mere seed, or the 
 shadow of it manifested. 3 And since in the Son who was 
 manifested in Jesus there is the whole truth, he justly con- 
 cludes, that where there is truth elsewhere, it must be a mo- 
 mentum or a portion of the Christian truth, placed by the same 
 Son who revealed Himself in His fulness in Christ. Thus he 
 was impelled, just by the recognition of a truth even before 
 Christianity, to a higher concept of Christ — a new phase of 
 the Church doctrine of the pre-existence of the Son. 4 In a 
 genuinely speculative manner he lays the grounds for this doc- 
 trine deeper, as respects as well the spiritual as the natural 
 world. The Logos pervades the latter ; nay, it has in itself an 
 immanent reference to the manifestation of Christ and to His 
 work. 5 As respects the soul, however, it has not merely an 
 inborn idea of God, but also a natural and essential relation to 
 the Logos (Apol. ii. 10, 6). Besides the creation of nature and 
 of men, however, the Logos has manifested Himself also in 
 history. The Old Testament revelations are revelations of the 
 Logos. He appears at one time in the form of a man, at 
 another in that of fire, at another in an incorporeal form (Apol. 
 i. 61, 63 ; c. Tryph. 61, 62) ; for the Father in Himself is 
 above space and time ; He comes not in any definite space ; 
 
 1 C. Try. 42, 63 ; Apol. ii. 8. 
 
 2 Apol. i. 46. He even calls them Christians. 
 
 3 Apol. ii. 8, 10. He does not, however, bring both quite together. 
 
 * Apol. i. 46, ii. 10, 13, orot ovv •za.poL trliist x.tt.T\u; tlpujai, ijfiaii t2» 
 KpiaTiavZn iaTin, through the power of the Logos <mtpit.a.tix.b{. 
 5 Apol. i. 55, 60 ; ii. 10, 13. 
 
JUSTIN 1IAETYE. 269 
 
 He walks not, and is not surrounded by a place — not even by 
 the whole world. But the Son, who, so far as He performs the 
 Father's will, is also called His Angel, is He through whom all 
 revelations are effected (c. Try. 127, comp. 56 ff.). This 
 theologoumenon was especially agreeable to Jews of Alexan- 
 drinian culture. In order to hold God free from the limits of 
 finitude, and yet on the other hand to allow to Divine revela- 
 tion its historical validity, many Jews had understood, under 
 the manifestations of God in the Old Testament, a power of 
 God, to which they gave different names : Glory (Jekaru, She- 
 kinah, Sofa), when its figure was indefinite ; Man, when the 
 form of a man was assumed ; Angel, when a message was 
 brought to men ; Word, when it brought a discourse from the 
 Father. This power they thought as not separate from the 
 Father, as the beams of light are not separate from the sun ; 
 when the Father wills, this power is suffered to burst forth 
 from Him ; and when He wills, He draws it again back. In 
 this Justin finds several things to blame ; but it serves him as 
 a point of junction for the higher Christology. This Power, 
 he says, is Christ ; and the Jews err, in that they think it with- 
 out connection with Him. Further, no angel can have any such 
 merely parastatic impersonal being as can be resumed into the 
 indistinguishableness of the Divine nature. Rather must this 
 Divine Swa/us be more than simply a name. He must be 
 something per se, existing for Himself in distinction from the 
 Father ; and since this being, especially in Christ, has to mani- 
 fest not merely Himself, but also the Father (De Resurrec. 1), 
 He must also be, what He is called in the Old Testament, where 
 the names Maleachjmd Jehovah are used interchangeably of 
 Him, He must^be God. He thus presses on the Jews, from 
 the Old Testament, the necessity of holding, not abstract simple 
 Divine essence, but a Monotheism which does not exclude plu- 
 rality of distinctions. 1 
 
 In the closer examination of the nature of the Logos, he 
 again attaches himself to the Old Testament, to the doctrine of 
 the Wisdom therein contained ; but in such a way, as that what 
 is there conceived indefinitely, and rather as a personification, 
 
 1 This is the meaning of the passage, c. 128, that the Son is dpillft q 
 trepan n in relation to the Father, and only this sense corresponds with the 
 indefinite-less of the expression. 
 
270 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 or, at the highest, as a distinction of wisdom from God in rela* 
 tion to the world, is now brought to the point of being regarded 
 as a firm, nay, eternal distinction in the Divine essence itself, 
 and is assumed even as a point of issue for the Person of the 
 God-man. 
 
 In the Dialogue c. Tryph. c. 62, Justin says, " Not to 
 angels nor to the world did God speak, when He said, Let 
 Us make man, but to His Son. He, begotten by the Father, 
 was before all creatures with the Father ; and with Him the 
 Father converses, as the Word by Solomon declares, that as 
 principle (apffl) before all creatures this birth was begotten 
 (iye<yivvT)To) which Solomon calls Wisdom" (comp. c. Tryph. 
 129). " He was (c. Tryph. 105) the only-begotten Son of the 
 universal Father, in a peculiar manner as Reason (\6yos) and 
 Power begotten by Him." 1 
 
 Thus far has Justin come on his way from the historical 
 manifestation of Christ. He knows, indeed, that the Logos 
 is not in title merely, but in essence also, truly God, and has 
 Divine power and honour. In one remarkable passage he even 
 labours to construe the Logos absolutely in relation to the 
 Father, not to the world alone ; 2 but he is unable to develop the 
 thought more clearly. " The Son of God, who alone in the 
 proper sense is called Son, the Logos, who before all creatures 
 was both with God and begotten by God, when God in the be- 
 ginning made and ordered all through Him (6 \6yos irpo t&v 
 irovrj/JU&TUV kclL crwwv ical yewd>fievo<; ore . ... St avrov iravra 
 eicTiae, «.t.\.), has a name." The connection demands decisively 
 the sense, that the Son had not received His name nor His being 
 through the world, or on account of the world; and hence 
 stress is laid on His being with the Father before the world, 
 because, apart from the world, He has His name, Son, on ac- 
 count of His relation to the Father. 3 There is certainly some- 
 
 1 Other names of the Logos, irparoToxcis &sov, m-pi leavtoti tuv xTtaftarav, 
 «ri tow varpos irpoji'h.nllh •yeviiYiftx, 6 fiovoysi/qs, or 6 fioi/o; xvpt'a; htyofievo; 
 v!6;. Apol. i. 23, 32 ; ii. 6 ; c. Tryph. 138, etc. 
 
 2 Apol. ii. 6. The Father, as unbegotten, has no name. For the words, 
 Creator, Father, Lord, etc., relate rather to His works and deeds than to 
 Himself. But His Son has a name, The Logos, before all creation, who 
 alone in a strict sense is called Son, etc. 
 
 3 The creation of the world and the begetting of the Logos are by no 
 means, as Semisch thinks (1. c. ii. 280), to be regarded as simultaneous 
 
JUSTIN MARTYR. 271 
 
 thing strange in the addition, " when God through Him made 
 all." But rather than the whole context should be disturbed 
 by this, the conjecture of mi for ore must be accepted ; because 
 otherwise in the same breath it would be said, The Logos is 
 begotten before the world, and with the world, — the latter of 
 which would be quite foreign to the connection. 1 But even 
 without this conjecture the difficulty may be surmounted, by 
 supposing that categories which he uses in an analogous case 
 wavered before the eyes of Justin. In c. Tryph. 128, he so 
 places the earlier appearances of the Logos in conjunction with 
 the incarnation, that whilst he calls them appearances hwdfiei, 
 the actual incarnation would be the ivipyeia of the earlier 
 simple potency of the incarnation. When this is applied to the 
 passage before us, it gives the meaning, that the Logos was with 
 God before the creation, not simply as an attribute, but Svvdfiei, 
 as potency; but that He came to ivepyeia when the world was 
 made. 2 In this way, certainly, the being and the work of the 
 Logos are still obscurely mixed ; there lies prominently in the 
 term axweivai the effort to represent Him even above the world 
 in distinction from the Father; but it would have belonged 
 to a more fully developed concept of the absolute Spirit, 
 had Justin been able to keep himself from always relapsing 
 into the poor pre-Christian category, so apt to lead into error 
 in a trinitarian respect, of the revealed and hidden God, 
 and therewith to miss the basis which he sought for the 
 hypostasis of the Son in the eternal Divine essence apart from 
 the world. 
 
 Into the momentum of actuality the Logos consequently — 
 because His content still too predominantly relates to the world* 
 
 acts, but, as the connection shows, the opposite. It is also doubtful if 
 Semisch is right in thinking that the being with God (trvueluai ra irarpt, 
 Apol. ii. 6 ; Try. 62) is to be taken as expressing the being of an " attri- 
 bute" in God, whilst the individual, personal existence lies in the yivua- 
 &6ai. What writer would speak so of an attribute ? Nay, how can the 
 assertion, that with Justin the Reason is but an attribute, be justified ? 
 
 1 For the conjecture it might be pleaded, that in many places the be- 
 getting of the Son before the time of the creation of the world is asserted, 
 whilst nowhere is there a passage that makes these simultaneous. 
 
 2 This explanation accords fully with the allied doctrine of Theophilus, 
 etc., concerning the Logos, irpotpopixo; and 'tjihlahrog. 
 
 * " Weil sein Inhalt noch zu vorherrschend sich auf die Welt bezieht." 
 
272 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 — enters only with the world, or, more exactly, with reference to 
 the world, whose principle He must be, and which in concept 
 He consequently precedes ; whilst He, on the other hand, is 
 actual principle only along with His work, the actual world. 
 The distinction between the hidden and the revealed God is at 
 first only Sabellian : Justin does not seek to abide by this ; 
 there is for him an dpidfXM erepov n with which he is concerned, 
 an essential and abiding distinction in God Himself ; and so 
 he enunciates the Logos as an hypostasis even in the state of 
 pre-existence (a-vvaw rm II.). But since he is still fettered by 
 that insufficient distinction, and is not impelled to a construc- 
 tion of the full concept of God in its independence, the hypo- 
 statizing of the Logos receives in his hands again a hasty refer- 
 ence to revelation or the world ; and thereby his doctrine of 
 the Logos, through an unsurmounted Sabellian element, re- 
 ceives an Arian aspect. On the other hand, it may be proved 
 that the just fear of thinking God emanistically in relation 
 to the Logos, and as passive in the procession of the latter 
 (consequently the fear of a theopassian tendency), led him even 
 to Arian expressions. In order that God might not be thought 
 as suffering, or as susceptible of change, through the doctrine 
 of the begetting of the Logos, he represents Him as having 
 proceeded by the will of God. 1 But had this been taken strictly, 
 as the Arians did, it would have been opposed to the position, 
 which beyond doubt possessed for Justin himself a much more 
 primitive significancy, that the Logos is of the essence of God, 2 
 and that He potentially is eternally in GocH BuTTffriiT note- 
 worthy, that we already see here two not yet refuted heresies 
 indicated from afar. The possibility of both exists ; Justin is 
 attached to neither of them, for both can, with equal justice and 
 equal want of it, appeal to him. Against the Arian represen- 
 tation there is this in Justin, besides what has been already 
 advanced, that he does not at all represent the Son as an object 
 of the Divine counsel and will, as he does the world — in a word, 
 he does not place Him on the footing of a creature ; but over 
 against the word epyaaia (c. Tryph 114) there stands ryevjirjfia, 
 which, as its full counterpoise, secures equality of essence, and 
 over against the word <yewa<r6ai, which has a passive sound, 
 
 1 Appendix, Note TTTT. 
 
 8 C. Tryph. 61 : 6 ©so? yiyitrnxi ovva.fA.lv tihx \% so-vtov Aoy«s)j>. 
 
JUSTIN MARTYR. 273 
 
 there stands the term Trpoipxeo-dat, (c. Tryph. 62, 129). If the 
 Son proceeds from the Father (which involves His pre-existence, 
 avvfjv t& varpi), the Father might appear as passive, since in 
 the Son divine essence proceeds from God ; and that Justin 
 held views, according to which this construction might appear 
 possible, — consequently, did not hold strict Subordinatianism, — 
 is shown by his resorting, in order to avoid giving the representa- 
 tion of a physical partition of God, to the will and the conscious- 
 ness of God as causes of this procession. 1 
 
 Justin indicates the relation of the Logos to the Father still 
 further negatively. " The Divine essence," he says, c. Try. 129, 
 " is not partitioned by the begetting of the Logos, nor trans- 
 muted into portions." He by this aims at excluding the sepa- 
 ration of the Logos from the Father, and also at indicating the 
 relation of whole and part as here an inadequate one. He feels 
 that this is simply a physical category, and that quantitative 
 definitions are not sufficient to indicate the relation between 
 Father and the Son. Such are undoubtedly, in his judgment, 
 inadequate in respect of the Father, because in this case it 
 would result, either that the entire quantum of the Divine 
 essence was no longer in the Father, but only in both together ; 
 or, if the Father remains the whole, that there is no getting at 
 an hypostasis of the Son, — neither of which he is prepared to 
 admit ; and hence it follows, that he must find them also insuf- 
 ficient as respects the Son. For, were the Son a section and part 
 hypostatically, it would follow that the Father also must be viewed 
 as a part, though the greater of the two. To this it must be 
 added, that Justin frequently asserts that the whole Reason-power 
 appeared in Christ (Apol. ii. 10, Xoyticbv to oXov) ; and also in 
 respect of power all limits to the Logos are denied, 2 when He 
 is called, " as respects power (or potential existence, essential 
 being), the Logos inseparable from the Father." Power rests 
 in essence, but the essence of the Logos is true deity. 3 
 
 1 Semisch is not correct when he finds (ii. 88) in Justin the strictest 
 " subordination of the Son." This is at variance with Semisch's own re- 
 presentation, p. 293 ff. 
 
 2 Cohort, ad Gr. : Ss rov &tov vTapx,ai> Tio'yo? u.x,i>pwTOs liviiafiei, x t.A. 
 Hence I cannot assent to the judgment of Semisch, that the Letter to Diog- 
 netus places Christ higher than Justin. 
 
 8 The term <mipf*cc, used of the Son, Apol. i. 32, is allied to yhimpa, and 
 belongs to the category of definitions establishing the essential equality. 
 VOL. I. S 
 
274 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 Further, Justin refuses the figure of the sun and its circle 
 of rays, not because this figure infers that the sphere of the 
 Son is greater quantitatively than that of the Father, but be- 
 cause it does not do justice to the Son's personality, seeing the 
 sun's rays are not of its essence (c. Tryph. 138) ; Philo, at one 
 with Justin in opposition to the aTrore/MvecrBai, preferred a 
 monad expanding itself into a dyad, and used for that the term 
 iicTeLvea-Ocu. According to him, the Divine monad becomes the 
 Logos by self-expansion. This view Justin adduces (c. Tryph. 
 128), but rejects it, because this Divine power (the Logos) is 
 another (than the Father) not in name merely, but in number 
 also. 1 This is, however, the classic figure of the later Sabel- 
 lianism (Epiph. Hser. lxii. 1). For this Justin himself presents 
 another figure, " which had been delivered to him," — the figure 
 of fire, at which another fire or other fires may be kindled without 
 its being itself diminished, or the others failing to be of the 
 same kind, fire like the first. This figure also, since the kindled 
 fire may become greater than that from which it was kindled, 
 shows that he was not concerned about the quantitative great- 
 ness of the Father and the Logos, but that with Justin Subor- 
 dinatianism adhered only to the manner in which he connects 
 the begetting of the Son with the design of an actual world, and 
 deduces it from the Divine will. 2 
 
 Justin is of importance for the further course of the doc- 
 trine of the Logos, in that he referred the begetting to the rela- 
 tion of the Logos to the Father. Before we proceed with this, 
 we must consider how he expresses himself concerning the mani- 
 festation of the Logos in Christ. 
 
 Semisch, however, cannot prove, as he attempts, ii. 291, that the Logos in 
 relation to the Father is called nnrippa only as Wisdom in heathenism is, ac- 
 cording to him, a airippix. in relation to the Logos. Still less is there any 
 proof of a representation of a qualitative partition of God in the passage, 
 c. Tryph. 61 : " God begot from Himself livxfti'ii riva. Mytxiii> :" for, as 
 Semisch acknowledges on another place, tiiuafitg connected with •/iyhmx.t 
 is not a power, but a hypostatic being. Why, then, might not Justin say, 
 God begot in the Person of His Son from Himself a rational personality, 
 without thinking of a quantitative definition ? 
 
 1 Comp. Simson, Summa Theolog. Joann. pp. 31, 40. 
 
 2 The old assertion, that Justin identifies the Logos and the Holy Ghost, 
 must be given up, since Semisch's thorough investigation, ii. 303 ff. It is 
 only in respect of the work of both that the distinction is somewhat un- 
 steady. 
 
JUSTIN MARTYR. 275 
 
 He is aware of a Christological view which indeed sees in 
 Jesus the Christ, hut to which He is only man of men, i.e., the 
 Ebionitic view (c. Tryph. 48). The gentle handling which he 
 gives to this in opposing it, especially as compared with Gnosti- 
 cism, 1 forms, at first sight, the strongest contrast to the decisive- 
 ness with which he insists on the deity, not of the Logos merely, 
 but of Jesus also (c. Tryph. 36). For explanation of this, it 
 may be remarked, in addition to what has been already advanced 
 (see p. 198), that in his time Ebionism had lost its contagious 
 power, and lingered only in fragments (th>€?) ; and besides, the 
 Ebionites to whom he refers did not renounce what was for him 
 such a weighty historical basis, the Old Testament, as did the 
 Gnostics and gnosticizing Ebionites. The Old Testament con- 
 tains in his view the Logos-doctrine, and with that a higher 
 Christology, so distinctly, that whosoever submits to it is easily 
 recovered from his error, if he only receives the right explana- 
 tion of the Old Testament. Whilst his Dialogue with Trypho 
 serves for the most part for a defence of the deity of Christ, he 
 also opposes Gnosticism as Doketism. Christ has truly become 
 man, capable of suffering. 2 He took flesh and blood (Apol. i. 
 66), took on Him man, who is made in the image and likeness 
 of God (Cohort, ad Gr. 38). So he calls Him the Logos be- 
 come man (X070? av$pa9ek, c. Tryph. 102). Jesus Christ, who 
 before was the Logos, and appeared now in the form of fire, 
 now incorporeally, has now, according to God's will (Apol. i. 23 ; 
 c. Tryph. 127), become man for the race of man, and hath 
 taken on Him to suffer all (comp. Apol. ii. 6, 13; c. Tryph. 100). 3 
 
 But not only are all the leading facts of Christ's life recog- 
 nised by Justin — His birth, baptism, teaching, death, resurrec- 
 
 1 He wrote (Apol. i. 26) against all heresies, according to Cedrenus, dur- 
 ing the reign of Hadrian (Semisch i. 43). This writing was probably- 
 directed against the Gnostics especially. Comp. Apol. i. 56, 58 ; c. Tryph. 
 35, 80, 82, 98, 103 ; De resurr. 10. 
 
 2 C. Tryph. 98 : tlirofeixi/vuv on cthri6Z>s yiyoueu avOp&nro; aj/TlXuTT/xd? 
 «r*02». C. 103 : " He trembles and is dismayed that we might know that 
 the Father willed that His Son should in these sufferings be truly among 
 us, and that we should not say that He who is the Son of God did not ex- 
 perience what came upon Him." 
 
 3 Other expressions : auiiaTovaiilaSai, ax.px.O'JcoiiiaSa.i., fiopQovatlai, aapx.x 
 txui/, qiopsit, etc. The riches of expression for this department of concepts 
 shows that Christian thought had already long dwelt on it. 
 
276 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 tion, and ascension, — but he enters still more closely into the 
 subject. Christ is born not as man of men, but without sin (S/^a 
 afiaprlai), of the Virgin, from the stock of Abraham (c. Tryph. 
 23, 54 ; De Eesurrec. 3). The Founder of a new race, Christ 
 (c. Tryph. 138) must show that the creation of man is possible 
 without a conception connected with sinful lust ; and that, as 
 the virgin even conceived by the word of the serpent, and bore 
 death, so also a virgin may by the word of an angel conceive 
 joy and faith (c. Tryph. 100 ; De Resurrec. 3). The word of 
 the Holy Ghost, who overshadowed the Virgin, Justin under- 
 stands, as before observed, of the Logos (Apol. i. 33). Decid- 
 edly as he refers the incarnation to the will of the Father, he 
 no less regards it as a voluntary act of the Logos. By Himself 
 has the Logos become patible like us (Apol. ii. 10), — nay, the 
 power of the Logos properly effects that, according, however, 
 to the will of the Father (Apol. i. 32, 46, 66 ; c. Tryph. 54), 1 
 and without exclusion of the mental and corporeal participation 
 of Mary. The potency of becoming man, which the Logos 
 always bore in Himself, and which He manifested when He in 
 the aforetime appeared in the form of a man, came thus alone 
 to actuality (c. Tryph. 128) ; and this passing into a human 
 being may figuratively be called a yewr)ai<; of the Logos, just as 
 the passing of the Logos that rested in God to action in the 
 creation may be so called, as it is by Clement of Alexandria. 
 
 Justin follows out into detail the self-emptying of the Logos. 
 Christ was a child, grew and passed through successive stages 
 of life as we do, doing full justice to each, ate all kinds of food, 
 and was capable of suffering (c. Tryph. 88, 98). Nevertheless 
 He had from birth His own peculiar power ; hence the Magi 
 might properly worship Him (c. Tryph. 88). And He did not 
 need baptism in order to receive through it, for the first time, 
 a communication of Divine power: in the Logos Himself is 
 the fountain of the Holy Ghost, and the unity of all His powers 
 named by Isaiah, c. xi. ; but in this man Jesus is the entire 
 Logos. His baptism took place in order to make Him known 
 to others ; and the passage in Isaiah, as well as the accounts of 
 the descent of the Spirit on Him, and which remained with 
 Him, are to be understood as intimating that in Him the pro- 
 phetic spirit had reached its goal, and the end of prophecy was 
 1 Appendix, Note TJUUU. 
 
JUSTIN MARTYR. 277 
 
 given in Him, who has presented the unity of the powers which 
 separately rested on the prophets of the ancient dispensation 
 (c. Tryph. 87). Throughout His life He remained, He was 
 spotless and sinless, living and dying obedient to the Father 
 (c. Tryph. 17, 35, 110, 41). After His death, He went into 
 Hades (c. Tryph. 72, 99). His enemies thought He would remain 
 in Hades like an ordinary man ; but Christ was not wanting 
 in the higher knowledge. Christ seems to have entered Hades 
 because He was man, and must pay to human nature its debt ; 
 but He did not remain there, because He was the Logos who 
 had become man. His going to Hades, besides, served to bring 
 to the pious there the joyful tidings of their salvation (c. 
 Tryph. 72). 1 
 
 After His resurrection, which he regarded as the Father's 
 boon, He lived still in the same body among us ; He was glori- 
 fied as He ascended to heaven. 3 
 
 There is no doubt that Justin regarded Jesus Christ as a 
 person in whom the Logos and humanity were vitally united. 
 We have also in the above to observe not an unsound prepon- 
 derance of the Logos, through which the reality of the human 
 nature would be trenched upon. But it requires a more exact 
 inquiry, whether Justin recognised also a human sowl in Jesus. 3 
 On the negative side of this it has been urged, that whilst 
 Justin conceives the human nature trichometrically, and ac- 
 cordingly ought to speak of four potences in the God-man, he 
 in one passage (Apol. ii. 10) names only three, crw/Ma, \6yos, 
 and -tyvyT). The soul (tyvxrj), according to his trichotomy, is 
 only the animal principle ; and hence it is inferred that Justin 
 viewed the Logos as supplying the place of the human soul. 
 But this proof is by no means conclusive. 4 Justin is not so 
 
 1 This doctrine is not so new as Semisch's representation (ii. 416) would 
 make it appear. What is said in the Acts and in the First Epistle of Peter 
 on this subject, was in the middle of the second century so expanded and 
 worked up, that already the office of preaching in Hades was ascribed to the 
 Apostles (Herm. Past. Sim. ix. 16, 17) ; and even Marcionmade the descent 
 to Hades an important article (Iren. i. 27, ii. 1, 24). See Neander Genet. 
 Enter, p. 301. 
 
 2 Comp. Semisch ii. 415, 412. 
 
 3 See Semisch ii. 409 ff., who calls Justin a forerunner of Apol- 
 Unaris. 
 
 4 The passage runs thus : " Obviously our matter is superior to all hu- 
 
278 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 decidedly a trichotomist, that he might not also hold the twofold 
 division, and under -^rvxv include both the animal principle of 
 life and the irvevfia, nay, by ^vxh might intend the irvevf^a. 1 
 
 It is alleged, on the other hand, that the expressions o-ap/co- 
 TroieiaOai, etc., as little exclude the human soul as Incarnatio ; 
 and that Justin, moreover, often uses the phrase, He became a 
 man, a human being, whilst, on the contrary, he says of the 
 earlier theophanies, He appeared as a man. His doctrine con- 
 cerning Christ's descent into Hades also, in which he speaks 
 of Him as still man, and so could not have regarded Him as 
 simply the Logos, has a bearing on this question. When these 
 things are duly pondered, there may seem reason for our de- 
 ciding on the opposite side. But these proofs also are wanting 
 in conclusiveness. For, though the later Church sought to 
 certify the soul of Christ by the article in the Apostles' Creed 
 concerning Christ's descent into Hades, there wants proof that 
 these two questions were viewed together by Justin. And 
 though the expressions, " He is truly a man," " has become a 
 man," prove conclusively that He was not doketically affected 
 (and consequently, if he had detected Doketism in the substi- 
 tuting of the Logos in place of the human soul, would have 
 rejected it) ; yet it is not certain that he did detect this, espe- 
 cially as this question did not come into discussion in the 
 Church for nearly a century later. We shall consequently 
 best hit on the truth by deciding, that Justin did not indeed 
 subject the human soul of Christ to special consideration, but 
 that he neither taught, nor was inclined to teach, anything 
 against the truth of Christ's humanity. If in the only passage 
 which can be adduced bearing on this he intends by tyvxy, 
 not the human soul, but the animal life-principle, and by X070?, 
 not the reason, but the Logos, yet that he must have been 
 familiar with the thought of Christ's being really and in all 
 respects a man like other men, is evident from his assertion, 
 that what men, apart from Christ, have of reason (i.e., their 
 
 man teaching, S;« to 'hoyix.ov to oAoc, toii ^>a.vhrct ii Siftag Xp«rroV, ytyo- 
 iitvat x.a\ o-afiux.a.1 "hiyav xal ipv%iii/." " Body, Logos, soul." It seems in 
 favour of the retaining of the word Logos in the translation, that other- 
 wise the Logos would not be mentioned at all. But He is indicated in the 
 words 7ioy/xo'» to Smd, and hence Xo'yo? may mean Reason here. 
 1 As even Semisch, ii. 361, feels constrained to admit 
 
THEOPHILUS OF ANTIOCH. 279 
 
 Pneuma), is to be conceived as a spermatic s indwelling of the 
 Logos in them ; so that Christ is not placed beyond the sphere 
 of the rest of mankind, if in Him, in place of the germ and 
 seed, the whole Logos, "koyiicbv to oKov, dwelt. 
 
 Even since His exaltation, Christ remains man ; for as the 
 Son of man shall He come again to the judgment (c Tryph. 
 31, 32 ; Apol. i. 52). The operations of the exalted Christ 
 are frequently called by him the operations of the Logos, like 
 those before His incarnation. If there may be detected here a 
 preponderance which the Logos had in his immediate Christian 
 consciousness over the God-man, there is to be set over against 
 this, that he very often also calls the pre-Christian Logos Christ, 
 even Jesus Christ, in which mode of designation he is obviously 
 determined by his setting out from a historical point of view. 1 
 
 The most allied to Justin's doctrine of the Logos is that of 
 Theophilus of Antioch, and that of Tatian. Theophilus also at- 
 taches himself to the Wisdom of the Old Testament (ad Autol. 
 L. ii.), and this in such a way, as that he seeks to show that in 
 Christianity there is nothing new, but that it is as old as the 
 world. With him, almost every other Christological considera- 
 tion is absorbed in his interest for the momentum of the pre- 
 existence and the doctrine of the Logos ; and in consequence of 
 this pnesidedness again, the incarnation is threatened with being 
 viewed doketically. The creation, as well as the appearances 
 of the Old Testament, and its inspiration, took place through 
 the Logos, who was always with God, and is called apyr] (ii. 
 10) by John (i. 1), as the principle of all things. His relation 
 to the Father is this, that the Father cannot appear within a 
 definite space (a^cop^ro? 6 trarrfp), whilst the Logos can (ii. 22). 
 Hence the Logos assumed in the world the part of the Father 
 and Lord of all (Trpoaanrov). What, however, Justin had be- 
 fore only hinted at, Theophilus brings definitely forward : The 
 Logos had a being before He came forth to create ; for He 
 is the Reason and the Intelligence of God (0eov vovs teal <ppo- 
 vi)<ni). He rested in God's heart, and was His counsellor 
 before aught was (ii. 22). As such He is called \6yo<; ivSid- 
 06to? (ii. 10). For the creation of the world, God sent forth 
 the Logos out of Himself. 2 The counsel which comes to God 
 
 1 Appendix, Note WW. 
 
 a Ad Autol. ii. 10 : i%av oSn o &tis rin ieturov Aoyon hhxOiroii h ralf 
 
280 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 from the Logos, as yet hid in God, relates solely to the world, 
 is the world-idea. Hence the Logos has an immanent relation 
 to the world. But since God willed to create what He had 
 determined (i.e., to realize the thought of the Logos), He be- 
 got this Logos as manifest (vpo^opiKov), as the First-born of all 
 creation. But God was not thereby emptied of the Logos (the 
 Beason) ; rather did He retain it in Himself, eternally convers- 
 ing with it ; and He begat only as yet the Logos. He means 
 to say, the Logos remained in God, since He is God's reason ; 
 only God placed His reason as the real-principle of the world, 
 placed Him in the momentum of actuality. 
 
 Here the knot is tied still more tightly than with Justin. 
 On the one hand, he appears to lay hold and establish still more 
 than Justin himself the hypostasis of the Son ; as is evidenced 
 by his using the term e%epevyecr8ai in the creation of the world, 
 and by his calling the Son the Logos hid in God (ii. 22). On 
 the other hand, it is expressly said, The Logos is the Divine 
 Beason itself, which also dwells eternally in God ; whereby, 
 indeed, the arianizing appearance of Justin disappears, but in 
 such a way as that it is no longer seen how the essential, ever 
 equally abiding quality in the Logos, is distinguished from the 
 Father. The more, however, this distinction disappears, the 
 more does that in the Logos Himself alone remain, the more 
 does all weight fall on the distinction between the hidden and 
 revealed Beason ; and in this case, as is self-evident, there ceases 
 to be any interest in speaking of the begetting of a hypostatic 
 Son before the creation. Theophilus still speaks of this ; but 
 though his effort goes further, it obtains, in its connection, no- 
 thing of importance beyond the self-determination of the Divine 
 Beason to place itself in the momentum of reality. 1 
 
 Tatian, the Assyrian Tertullian, says (c. Grsec. Orat. 5, ed. 
 
 (S/Jif (ra-X«yj£!i<wc, lyivvwiii ccvtou fifTX T«ij hxvrov aotplccg it-epevfzufiiiio; irpo 
 tuu o'Kau. 
 
 1 Hence Theophilus does not need a caveat against infringing on 
 Monotheism, as Justin ; and he cannot say that it is by the Divine counsel 
 that the Son came to be. Rather is He eternally as Son in God ; but a 
 contemplated distinction was abode by the more readily, that to Theophilus 
 the impulse was wanting which conducted others from the Christology to 
 the hypostatizing of the Logos. Semisch is incorrect, and he obliterates the 
 peculiarity of Theophilus, when (1. c. ii. 282, Note 4) he reckons him among 
 those who derive the Logos from a free act of will on the part of God. 
 
TATIAK. 281 
 
 Maur. p. 247), " God was in the beginning," i.e., stood in the 
 Bvvafii<s of the Logos. The Father of the universe, who Him- 
 self is the essential Being or principle {yirocrTaaii) of the uni- 
 verse, was in a certain sense alone, inasmuch as creation as yet 
 was not. Since, however, He had all power, and was Him- 
 self the essential Being of the visible and the invisible, He was 
 [not alone, but there was] with Him the universe, consisting 
 by the power of reason ; Himself that is, and the Logos who 
 was in Him (was the All, namely, the ideal). 1 But by His 
 simple (mere) will came forth the Logos ; not, however, pass- 
 ing into the void (like a sound or subjective thought), did the 
 Logos become the first-born work of the Father. This Logos 
 is the beginning of the world. He is become (this ?), however, 
 by impartation, not by excision ; for that which is cut off is 
 severed from the first, but that which is imparted has only 
 taken a choice for the dispensation in addition [to an equality of 
 essence, which continues in Him from the first,] without making 
 Him defective from whom it was taken. 2 
 
 Like Justin, Tatian thus seeks to preclude the idea of God's 
 suffering deprivation through the procession of the Logos from 
 Him. He maintains that there was no actual severance (airo- 
 Ktnrtf, ^mpi^eadat) through the Logos, but that a communica- 
 tion must be nevertheless assumed within the concept of the 
 Divine essence. Now, how does Tatian carry out this ? Not 
 in the Divine essence apart from the olicovoiila, the world of 
 revelation. He knows, indeed, of a Logos before the actual 
 world ; but in relation to this, he can make no distinction save 
 that of the Father from His own reason, — a distinction which 
 speedily comes to nothing ; for reason is in the Father, and He 
 
 1 Comp. Tertull. adv. Prax. 5 : Ante omnia Deus erat solus ipse sibi et 
 mundus et locus et omnia. 
 
 2 Ttyove 8i xa.rH fteptaftov ov xara. airoxovvtii. To yap diroTfividh rov 
 irpiirov xt%uptaTa,i, to ii fiepmhi/ oixovoftlag ryi> a'lpeaiv irpoc'Kafioi), oix ei/oex 
 riv ohii ithwrM vtmrnxH, after which follows the figure of one torch 
 kindled from another. The reference to Justin, c. Tryph. 128, 61, and the 
 polemic against him, is evident. Justin rejects there the ■xpnvrbav and the 
 partition of the Divine essence; Tatian adopts both. Daniel (Tatianus 
 der Apol. p. 157 ff.) explains the words, from xa.ro. (itpapou onwards, dif- 
 ierently from what is given above, thus : " What is torn away is severed 
 from its first ; what exists by communication has a part in the essence 
 whence it is taken." 
 
282 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 is not God without reason. — Further, the distinction between 
 God and the world is not clearly and thoroughly carried out, but 
 the world is taken in by him into the inner sphere of the Divine ; 
 God is with His Logos, the universe, according to His essential 
 eternal being {vTrodTaaii). Thus the Logos is irresistibly 
 brought to have no higher significancy than as the yet qui- 
 escent potency of the world in God ; He is simply the world 
 according to its truth ; and thus the Christian doctrine does not 
 transcend that of the Hellenes, whom Tatian so much despises, 
 with whom also the world is the Son of God. It is true, he 
 does not bring forward the last conclusion; but he finds no 
 distinction of the Logos from the Father apart from the world ; 
 and since he has already defined Him in the immanent Divine 
 being only as the ideal world-principle, he can find the non- 
 severing partition between the Father and Him, which he seeks, 
 only in that the Divine essence, in so far as it accepts or puts 
 on the momentum of revelation (olicovofilw; dipeaw irpoa- 
 "haftbv), is distinguished from the Divine essence as self-exist- 
 ing. Here, the distinction in God Himself is still less signifi- 
 cant than with Theophilus ; and in place of a distinction be- 
 tween Father and Son, there is pressed in a distinction between 
 God, who as unrevealed is with His Logos the universe and the 
 ideal world-principle, and God, who by His free purpose pre- 
 sents Himself as the actual real-principle — by the simple will of 
 the Father, and the Logos quiescent in Him, who irpoTr^Ba, not 
 ryevvarai from the Father. From this essentially Sabellian 
 manner of expression it cannot be seen whether and why the 
 Logos must also have a proper hypostasis only for the creation 
 of the world. He calls Him, indeed, the first-born work of the 
 Father, which the Logos has become, because He could not 
 glide into the void without result ; but since in this first-born 
 it is nevertheless only God Himself who is fixed in the momenta 
 in which He makes Himself the actual principle of the world, 
 the personality of the first-born has not even for the creation 
 a significancy with him. This remains for him only a tradi- 
 tionally accepted representation, which is the less in keeping 
 with his context, inasmuch as he does not seem to have been 
 brought to it christologically. 1 
 
 1 Tatian does not deny the incarnation of God, but here also his expres- 
 sions, corresponding with the above, have almost a patripassian sound. In 
 
ATHENAGORAS. 283 
 
 The representation of the hypostatizing of the Logos at 
 the creation is rejected utterly by the clearer and more cautious 
 Athenagoras, who, through his purer concept of God, opens 
 a way to an immanent relation between the Father and Son. 
 He very distinctly sets forth the proposition : " We call God, 
 The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ; at the same time 
 proclaiming their essence in unity, and a distinction in their 
 order (c. 10). It is the care and joy of the Christians to 
 know God, and the Logos who comes from Him; to see 
 what is the unity of the Son in relation to the Father, what the 
 communion of the Father with the Son, what the Spirit ; what 
 is the union of all these, and the distinction of the united — the 
 Spirit, the Son, the Father" (Leg. 12). Further, he fixes the 
 concept of God, per se, much more purely than Tatian. God 
 has not created the world from any necessity ; for God is Him- 
 self all to Himself — unchanging light, the perfect world, spirit, 
 power, reason (Leg. 16). Hence men are not formed for the 
 sake of one another, not even for the sake of God : neither 
 are they, however, without an end, for God is wise ; but as an 
 end to themselves, for the sake of their own proper life, which is 
 destined for the highest (de Resurr. 12), — consequently, from 
 the pure goodness of God. From this advance in the concept 
 of God it follows, that Athenagoras does not regard the Logos 
 as first begotten at the creation of the world. He calls Him a 
 yewrjfia, and that irpwrov, but not as if He had come into being 
 (for from the beginning, God, since He is eternal spirit, had 
 in Himself the Logos as eternally rational) ;* but in His going 
 
 c. 22 he says, the Holy Ghost is li'axovo; rou KtvovSiros &tov ; and in 
 C. 35, oil ftupalvop.il/, ai/ipes 'iXhwts, ©eoV h avipLnrov ftoptyy yiyoi/hai. 
 For the rest, the doctrine of the Holy Ghost is the central-point of his 
 system rather than that of Jesus or Christ, neither of which names occurs 
 in his Apology (Cohort, ad Grsec). Comp. Daniel, p. 214 ff., 211 ff., 
 167 ff. 
 
 1 Leg. 10. What must the Son (vu7s) be 1 He has the significancy 
 irparoi/ yii/VTifiet thai ra ■jrcerpi, oix us yeuofimov (s% dpfflS V&P »' &iOg, "ovg 
 xTtiiog ay, ti%sv ai/ros h sstvra rov 7*6yov, a'ioiug "Koyixtts uv), «XX as . . . • 
 ilia xal hipyua npoiHbav. The concluding words signify either, As He is 
 eternal idea, so must He also be ei/epyna ; or, He is called yhi/npia vparoi/, 
 inasmuch as, though He Himself has not come into being, yet the con- 
 ception of the world idea, as well as the creation, is represented as a pro- 
 ceeding from God. 
 
284 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 forth to be as idea, so energy, for the chaotic mass. It is 
 certain that Athenagoras here reduces the begetting of the 
 Son, at the creation, to a figure accommodated to the con- 
 cept of the creative utterance of the Son ; and equally so is 
 it, that he, apart also from the creation, places the Son 
 eternally in God. It may be doubted, however, whether he 
 calls the Son first in connection with the creation the world- 
 thinking Eeason, who bears therewith the idea of the world (IMa) 
 in Himself, as the creative principle of the same (ivepyeia), or 
 whether he thinks the idea at least of the world as eternally 
 given in the Logos. The latter is the more probable from 
 another place : " God's Son, the knowledge of whom the Chris- 
 tians have, is the Logos of the Father in idea and in opera- 
 tion ;" l i.e., the Son of God has a double being : He is and 
 remains Logos even in the actual world which has been made 
 by Him, but He is also primarily Logos in the ideal world itself, 
 the icoafio'; rekeios, the sphere of the Divine. 2 Since Athena- 
 goras calls the sphere of the Divine, or God Himself, a /cotr/Ao? 
 Te\etoy, there is thereby indicated already a reference to the 
 actual world, and consequently, according to him, the idea of 
 the actual world doubtless as eternal. But it ought not to be 
 overlooked, that Athenagoras does not call the Logos immanent 
 in God the idea of the world ; but he distinguishes a proper 
 and operative Logos-being in the Son. Hence one might 
 venture to say, that the essence of the proper eternal Logos is 
 simply to be the idea of the world. Athenagoras will not allow 
 the being of the Son to be expended merely in relation to the 
 world ; he ascribes to Him a previous relation to the Father. 
 He does not obtain a distinction between the Logos and the 
 Father first by means of the actual world, or its idea ; other- 
 wise, it would be inconceivable how he could call God an all- 
 sufficiency in Himself, even without the world, since the world 
 would nevertheless be again drawn immediately into God, if 
 God is the All-self-sufficient only with the Logos, and if the 
 Logos is only the idea of the world. This. is clear still further 
 from the words : From Him and through Him (the Logos) is 
 everything made, since the Father and the Son are one. But 
 since the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father 
 
 1 Leg. 10 : eon? o i//of tiXi ©sow Xoyo; toE irccrpot; in thief xetl hepysicf. 
 3 Comp. Leg. 16. 
 
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. 285 
 
 through the unity and power of the Spirit, so is the Son God's 
 intelligence, and Logos (reason) of the Father. 1 
 
 In Athenagoras also we miss the closer application of the 
 doctrine of the Logos to the Christology. But he has with the 
 clearest consciousness recognised under what has been cited the 
 double problem, to assign its due place to the unity and the dis- 
 tinction. This problem Clement of Alexandria further worked 
 out. 
 
 Clement of Alexandria is especially worthy of notice, not 
 only because his mind was formed by means of Greek and Phi- 
 Ionian philosophy, and he himself stands in closest relation to 
 Neo-Platonic speculation, but because he as a learner passed 
 through the different Oriental and Occidental tendencies within 
 the Church, and aims at a reconciliation of these. 2 The old 
 Ebionitic tendency had already as good as vanished ; he makes 
 no mention of it. On the other hand, he knows well the Ebi- 
 onism which was formed, after the flourishing period of Gnos- 
 ticism, out of the Gnosticism especially of the Valentinian 
 school (comp. Excerpta ex scriptis Theodoti Opp. Clem. Alex. 
 ed. Potter, ii. 966 ff.) ; the emanistic form of Sabellianism 
 (Strom, vii. 2, p. 831) ; the doctrine of the \6yos irpo<j}opi,Kb'; and 
 evSidSeTos (Strom, v. 1, p. 646), and of the impersonification of 
 the Logos at the creation (Strom, v. 3, p. 654). He also shows 
 himself familiar with the Theologoumena of the Hebrews and 
 Hebrew Christians, as well as with the writings of the Old and 
 New Testaments. 
 
 The First Cause is the Father, who is not to be denoted by 
 word or sound, but who is only to be thought, and with silent 
 reverence to be adored (Strom, vii. 1, p. 829). 
 
 But whilst God cannot be known or shown as He is in 
 Himself (Strom, v. 1, p. 643), it is otherwise with the Son ; whc 
 is first, indeed, the object of faith, but afterwards also of know- 
 ledge (Strom, v. 1, p. 643 ff., iv. 25). Man has a high nature, 
 the angels a higher ; but the most perfect, most holy and su- 
 
 1 Leg 10. Comp. the passage above adduced from Leg. 12, on what is 
 the joy of the Christians. 
 
 2 Strom i. 1, p. 322 ed. Potter. One of his teachers, for instance, was 
 from Greece (probably Pantsenus) ; one from Ionia, whom he met in Hellas ; 
 one from Assyria (Bardesanes or Tatian) ; one from Coelesyria (probably 
 the same whom he calls a Palestinian, t/3/>«?oj £i/exxfaii). 
 
286 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH 
 
 preme, the most venerable, the most princely, nay, kingly na- 
 ture, is that of the Son, which is in the closest manner united 
 with the one Supreme Ruler (Strom, vii. 2, p. 831). Thus far 
 the Son is not elevated above the sphere of the creature, and 
 hence no foundation is laid for a knowledge of God through 
 the knowledge of Him. But He is visibly exalted into the 
 sphere of the Divine itself when He is called Wisdom, Know- 
 ledge, and Truth (Strom iv. 25). The Son is the revealed 
 truth in Person ; x the Son is Logos of the Father, the unity of 
 the almighty creative word and reason (Strom, vii. 2, p. 832 ; 
 Psed. iii. 13, pp. 309, 310). He is supreme and always ; whole 
 light of the Father, whole intelligence ; never encompassed ; 
 wholly eye and wholly ear ; all-seeing and all-knowing (Strom, 
 vii. 2, p. 831). 2 Through Him Christianity becomes the Truth, 
 and communicates knowledge ; nay, is the Wisdom which renders 
 all philosophy besides superfluous. The Greek philosophy has 
 dismembered the truth of the Logos, as the Msenads did Pen- 
 theus ; Christianity has in the Logos the whole truth. 
 
 Thus the position, that God cannot be known in Himself, is 
 subjected to the limitation, that He cannot be known unless 
 He reveal Himself. Our Psedagogue, says he (Psed. i. 2, p. 
 99), is like God His Father. All the powers of the Spirit flow 
 together united in one, the Son (Strom, iv. 25, p. 632). Whilst 
 the Father is the First Cause, the Son in the ideal world, the 
 oldest by His birth, is the timeless and unbegun beginning ; at 
 the same time, firstling of existence (Strom, vii. 1, p. 829). He 
 is the Father's countenance ; in Him the Father has a cr^r]fia ; 
 He is the revealer of the Father's essence. 3 The purifying, 
 gentle, Divine Logos, in truth the most manifest God, the 
 Fellow of the Lord of all (igicrmdelsi), has most easily showed 
 to us God (Coh. 10, p. 85 ff. ; Strom, v. 1, p. 646). Since He 
 
 1 Strom, vi. 14, p. 801 : %poaa%ov r%$ isimivftiuns cthyht'xs o vlog roi 
 &eou. 
 
 2 Clement applies to Him the title &eo; innumerable times, a title in 
 the use of which he is very free. Still, when creatures are called by him 
 gods, they are so called only because of participation in the Logos. Strom, 
 vi. 1 ; vii. 11, p. 870 ; Pied. iii. 1, p. 251 ; i. 6, p. 127. He also calls the 
 Logos God's will, and gives Him the title Kctvrox.pa.Tap, Strom, v. 1, p. 
 646 ; (ti'A-r,ij.ci 7ntyx.paropix.6ii, Psed. iii. 7. 
 
 3 Tlpinuiroti rou nurpo; (Psed. i. 7, 132) ; i tow itarp^ov ftnvvrri; tittup.*' 
 roi (ibid.). Comp. v. 1, 647. Psed. i. 2, 99, &eos h axAftart ircvripog. 
 
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. 287 
 
 is the personal Logos, the truth has in Him become know- 
 able (Strom, v. 3). " Many," says he (Strom, vi. 8, p. 775), 
 " teach that there is much that is incomprehensible, of which 
 even the Gnostic knows nothing except that it cannot be com- 
 prehended. But to the Son there is nothing incomprehensible, 
 and hence through Him to the Gnostic." For him who thinks 
 the incomprehensibility of God absolute, even Christ cannot be 
 a revealer ; he stands still in the pre-Christian concept of God, the 
 "Ov. And he who does not see the perfect image of the Father 
 in the Son, to whom the Father is not wholly manifest in the 
 Son, subordinates the Son to the Father, because in that case 
 the Son has only partially what the Father has. And because 
 the Father, as the "Ov, still withholds much, which He does not 
 communicate with the Son, it follows, that either a further reve- 
 lation is possible, or this residue is simply incapable of being 
 revealed ; and thus there is probably given in Christianity the 
 greatest possible, but it is not the absolute Eeligion. 
 
 It is not to be denied that Clement, as also in part Origen, 
 is somewhat fettered by this view of God as the"Oi' ; but withal, 
 he still acknowledges that the Father is wholly in the Son, and 
 can be known only through Christ. 
 
 We find nothing in Clement about the subordination or the 
 creation of the Son, or about the incompleteness of the Christian 
 religion. The Son is to him in the Father, the Father in the 
 Son ; the knowledge of the Father and the Son is to him the 
 knowledge of the truth through the truth, as the Gnostic rule 
 requires (Strom, v. 1, p. 643 ff.). We may ask, however, 
 whether he holds any distinction between the Logos and the 
 Father. This inquiry fairly arises when we read (Strom, vii. 
 2, p. 833), that the Logos is an activity, an energy of the Father. 
 For this may be understood as meaning that He is the Father 
 in the momentum of revelation ; and with this, all intrinsic 
 distinction of God from God would be either wholly set aside, 
 or the distinction between God and the world would be swept 
 away. It may be added, that Clement platonizing, treats the 
 Son as (Sea tuv I8ea>v (Strom, v. 3, p. 654), 1 as the everywhere 
 
 1 Strom, iv. 25 : The Son is infinite in His powers according to their 
 idea. He is not, however, immediately or abstractly (urexi/Zs) One like the 
 One, nor plurality like parts, «XX' ug iraurx h, hQw x.a\ vaurct. For He 
 is a circle of all powers revolving and combining into one. Hence He ia 
 
288 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 diffused truth (Coh. 10, p. 85 f.), as the fountain of life, which 
 brings peace, covenant, and redemption. At the same time, he 
 will not think the Father a mere substantial basis, but the vov<s 
 belongs also to the Father. What remains to Him for a dis- 
 tinction from the Son ? 
 
 No answer to this question, such as shall fundamentally set 
 aside Sabellianism, is found in Clement. Still, the instances 
 named by no means affirm that he sought to place the distinction 
 between the Father and the Son only on the ground of revela- 
 tion. 1 That he rather intends a distinction without at all ap- 
 proaching nearer to Sabellianism, is clear from what follows. In 
 the above passage, where he calls Him the timeless and unbegun 
 beginning, he yet definitely distinguishes Him from the Father 
 (Strom vii. 1, p. 829). Elsewhere (v. 1, p. 643) he says, The 
 Father is not without the Son ; at the same time that He is the 
 Father, He is the Father of the Son. The Logos does not come 
 into being, according to him, at the creation of the world ; He is 
 not the spoken creative word ; Clement rather sets forth the other 
 side : He is the speaking creative word ; He is the almighty 
 Wisdom in God and with God, which, looking on the mysterious 
 ideas, works, but always has and manifests as immanent in itself 
 the Father's will, goodness, etc. (Strom, v. 1, p. 645 ; vii. 2, 
 p. 831). The Logos who comes forth is the author of creation 
 (Strom, v. 3, p. 654). Clement eagerly strives to remove from 
 the Logos all passivity, change, temporality, and therewith also 
 subordination ; and hence he appears not to have approved of the 
 expression, Xoyos irpo^>opiKo<s. " The Logos of the Father of all 
 is not that irpo^opiicbi;, but is God's most manifest Wisdom and 
 Goodness, and not less the almighty Divine Power" (Strom, v. 
 
 called also A and n ; and with Him alone does the end become again the 
 beginning, and ends again at the former beginning, nowhere entertaining a 
 break. The Logos is in his view, consequently, the self-encircling all-life ; 
 and to believe in Him and through Him, is to be monadically, indissolubly 
 united with Him. 
 
 1 The passage where the Son is called an energy of the Father, inter- 
 preted by the connection, must mean that every act of the Son, or the Son 
 in every act, has a reference to God the Father ; so that the Father is to be 
 thought as therein acting. Further, the Son is called the everywhere out- 
 poured fountain of life (Coh. 10) after His incarnation, where there can be 
 no doubt that he thinks Him personally. He is called Truth, Idea of Ideas, 
 etc., by such also as hold firmly His distinction from the Father. 
 
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. 289 
 
 1, p. 646). There lies here a polemic against the opinion, that 
 He is simply the spoken empty word, and not rather intelligence, 
 real, creative power. He would, however, have held a subordi- 
 nate position if He had been merely the creative word uttered 
 by God (7rpo(f)opiKosi). 
 
 The most convincing evidence, however, of Clement's re- 
 garding the Logos as relatively independent in respect of the 
 Father, and so of his having sought to distinguish God from 
 God in the eternal essence of God, may be said to he in what 
 follows. It may be assumed as settled, that Clement thinks Christ 
 personally through the Logos, not through His humanity. Now 
 he guards himself against the conclusion, that by means of the 
 incarnation, or even the creation, any change passed upon the 
 Logos, such, for instance, as the assuming of personality on the 
 part of a potency which before was impersonal, would have been. 
 "The Son of God," says he (Strom, vii. 2, p. 831), " never aban- 
 dons His watch-tower, 1 is not divided, not severed, travels not 
 from place to place, but is ever over all, never included, wholly 
 intelligence, wholly light of the Father." He would, conse- 
 quently, have ascribed to the Logos on His watch-tower the 
 same distinction from the Father which he ascribes to the Logos 
 in Christ. 
 
 Before we advance to Clement's doctrine concerning the in- 
 carnation, let us look back on the development of the doctrine 
 of the Logos thus far. We see, towards the end of the second 
 century, that the biblical tendency in the Church, which set 
 out from the Creator-Word, and the Hellenic, have become 
 thoroughly interpenetrated, and that, as a general symbol of the 
 coalition, the word Logos becomes the standing expression to 
 denote the higher nature manifested in Christ. But the peace- 
 ful bed of the Logos-doctrine, in which the distinct streams in- 
 osculated, became only the point of issue for new problems. 
 For if the Logos is equally in Himself the unity of Reason, or 
 Wisdom, and of the Word, the question arises, how He is to be 
 thought in relation to the world and to the Father. The Logos 
 is held to be a Divine nature, and that distinct as a personal 
 one, since the impulse proceeding from the appearance of the 
 personal Christ operates to produce the thought of the Logos 
 
 1 So, wholly similar, Theodotus, Excerpta ex Script. Theod. in Clem. 
 Opp. ii. 966 ff. 
 
 VOL. I. T 
 
290 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 as a pre-existent hypostasis. As all the Fathers of the second 
 century, without exception, derive the essence ef the Logos from 
 the essence of the Father, and cannot retract from this ultimate 
 basis of the divine that was in Christ in the Divine essence, 
 there already appears in the distance the difficult problem, how 
 the assumption of a second and third Divine essence is to be re- 
 conciled with the unity of God. 
 
 This problem was insoluble so long as the personality of the 
 Son was taken in exactly the same sense as the personality of 
 Jesus Christ in relation to men. For, were this person, regarded 
 as simply and immediately pre-existent, to be transposed into 
 the Divine essence, there is no escape from polytheism. Rather, 
 as the Church would not receive the latter, must the idea of 
 personality be modified ; the finite exclusive form which it has 
 in the sphere of men must be removed from the Logos, in order 
 that the Divine unity might not be destroyed by the Logos. It 
 is certain also that there was an authorized sensitiveness in re- 
 spect of the unity of the Divine essence, which moved so many 
 of the Church teachers of the second century to make every 
 effort to base the essence of the Son in the Divine essence itself, 
 yet, in respect of the personality of the Logos, which thus far 
 had been gained by a struggle, and was still too immediately 
 interwoven with the world, to pause at the threshold of the inner 
 Divine essence itself; and thus shall we understand the doctrine, 
 so strange to us, which belonged to that time — the doctrine of 
 the entrance of the Son into personality with the procession of 
 the same to the creating of the world. Prechristian philosophe- 
 mata concerning creation also may have contributed to this 
 preliminary notion ; but the strange theory of the conception of 
 the Son before the creation, and for it, could have established 
 itself on Christian ground for a length of time only in conse- 
 quence of its seeming to afford some balance between the desire 
 of the Christians to refer everything to the Christian principle, 
 nay, to regard all as made thereby, and the maintenance of the 
 unity of God. The true deity of the Christian principle was 
 affirmed by the Catholic doctrine, that the Logos is of the 
 essence of the Father, — consequently, essentially equal to God. 
 But the distinction of the Logos from the Father was as yet not 
 referred to the inner essence of God. The concept of God was 
 not such as yet to endure a distinction of God in Himself from 
 
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. 291 
 
 Himself, the idea of the free absolute Spirit not yet having been 
 formed ; and, moreover, the Logos was still too immediately in- 
 volved in the idea of the world, or rather the world itself, and 
 consequently, His being was still too immediately confused in 
 thought with His work, or the constitution of the world : He is 
 less fixed as the thinking, the speaking, than as the thought, 
 the spoken creative Word. If the thinking and speaking is 
 called also the inner Logos, still the distinction of this from the 
 Father remains a postulate. 
 
 This distribution of the momenta of the distinction and the 
 unity must be transient. This unity is menaced by the idea of 
 God; this distinction, which is transposed to the side of the world, 
 by the idea of the world. If God be not distinct from God, 
 then the distinction of the Son from the Father is not based in 
 the inner essence of God, but falls, so far as it exists at all, to 
 the side of the world. In this case, the Son abides in the mind 
 as a secondary, fortuitous being, as the world is a contingent 
 being : so that, if the distinction is not assumed in God, 
 an Arian method of thinking must be adopted. But against 
 this protests the Christian consciousness of these men; they 
 desire collectively the essential equality of the Logos with 
 the Father ; they will not think Him as a creature, but 
 as the Son. They do not deny that the distinction of the Son 
 from the Father regresses into the Divine essence itself. But 
 as little dare they, on account of the Divine monarchy, to 
 accept the challenge which already lies in the essential equality 
 of the Son, and to base in the Divine essence the whole essence 
 of the Son, as well in respect of His distinction from the 
 Father as in respect of His unity with Him. The conse- 
 quence, however, of their having gained, if not the roots of the 
 distinction, yet the distinction itself, by means of the creation 
 of the universe, is, that temporality and mutability are imputed 
 to the Logos, and this forms a contradiction to His essential 
 equality. But thus there was ascribed to the Logos, as contra- 
 distinguished from the world, an insecure hypostasis ; for, if He 
 is called its Maker and Lord, He is, on the other hand, equally its 
 unity — in a sense, itself ; and because God was not yet construed 
 generally in His self-distinction (whereby alone the Logos would 
 find a basis), the Logos was too immediately confounded with 
 the universe, and was still regarded as its nominalistic and 
 
292 FIEST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 pantheistic unity ; just as the human consciousness, before it 
 distinguishes self from self is still less capable of distinguishing 
 from the world, but remains given over to the consciousness of 
 the world, its only content. Since, on the other side, the unity 
 of the Son with the Father is endangered by a form of subordi- 
 nation arising from this view, with which the true divinity and 
 newness of Christianity could not consist, we are made aware 
 of a remarkable turn. As Justin, whilst energetically en- 
 deavouring to solve the question, how (the concept of the person- 
 ality of the pre-existent Son in the ordinary way being pre- 
 supposed) the procession of the Logos, the second Divine essence, 
 from the One, could be thought in compatibility with His unity, 
 in his solution too much confounded the generation of the Son, 
 His hypostatic being, with the world and time ; the Christian 
 interest pressed on towards a more definite distinction of the 
 Logos from the world, and this was accomplished by the Logos 
 being more definitely distinguished from Himself, the world- 
 creating Logos (irpoifwpucb?) from the Logos per se. Wher- 
 ever this distinction was accomplished, the main stress must 
 of necessity come to be ever more and more laid upon the inner 
 Logos ; for this vouches most for the true deity of the Person of 
 Christ : He is the Speaking ; the other, the Spoken. Justin's 
 hint, that God had begotten the Logos out of Himself, was so 
 pursued by others, that they even call Him the Understanding 
 and Eeason in God. It is easy to see, that though there is here 
 a determination of the distinction of the Logos from Himself of 
 great importance, as bearing on the distinction between the Logos 
 and the world, the second, the distinction of the Logos from the 
 Father, is not yet given ; rather is there a postponing provision- 
 ally of the hypostasis of the Son, and consequently more justice 
 done to the unity of the Logos with the Father, than to the dis- 
 tinction between them. But there must be a regression from the 
 world, nay, from the world-unity, into the inner Divine essence 
 itself, and the Logos must be placed in this, before the immanent 
 relation of the Father to the Son can be handled. With this dis- 
 tinction, however, of the Logos from Himself, was made the first 
 great step towards construing the Son, who had hitherto been re- 
 garded only in His activity, in His work (to wit, the creation 
 of the world), in His eternal being. The work does not thereby 
 remain less His work, but now it is assumed as possible that He 
 
CLEMENT OP ALEXANDRIA. 293 
 
 completed His work in comprehending Himself [" Dass er sich 
 selbst erfassend sein Werk vollziehe"], but did not immediately 
 pass over into it ; and thus, when this was followed out, as came 
 to pass, the foundation-stone was laid for the distinction of the 
 operatio ad extra from the immanent being of the divine per 
 se, — a distinction of decisive moment to the Christian concept of 
 God. Not more, certainly, than the foundation-stone. If no ad- 
 vance be made from the immanent being, if this does not extend 
 to an immanent distinction of the Father from the Son, the self- 
 distinction of the Logos is still insecure ; if the divine is not dis- 
 tinguished from itself in itself, also apart from the work (\0705 
 irpotyopacoi), the Logos has not yet perfectly comprehended 
 Himself : the world remains the object for Him ; in it alone He 
 knows Himself ; it is, in His own self-consciousness, the objec- 
 tive momentum, or the objective Son of God. Also, from the 
 time of their distinguishing the Logos from Himself, the ten- 
 dency of the Church Fathers, above considered, to fix upon the 
 work was in fact so strong at first, that in respect of His coming 
 forth to the work, a new determination, a change in His proper 
 essence, was presumed, and His generation remains as yet bound 
 up with the work of creation, and is only the other side of this ; 
 that also the inner Logos, still bound through relation to the 
 world, is filled immediately with the idea of the world. But 
 they were in earnest to distinguish the Logos from the world, 
 and the way to this was surely marked out. First, Athenagoras 
 took the course of denying the change in the being of the Logos, 
 — consequently, His generation and His becoming a person at the 
 creation, which he lowered to a figure, — and, on the other hand, 
 distinctly let the stress fall on the inner Logos. But Clement 
 of Alexandria consummated this tendency. He lays so much 
 stress on the inner Logos, that he entirely retracts the wpotyo- 
 piicbs, and exchanges this for the distinction — only indeed laid 
 down, not yet established — between the Father, who is never 
 without the Son, but Father only with the Son, and the Son, 
 who as the timeless, unbegun Logos, never quits His post, though 
 He creates and sustains all. Thus, in accordance with the 
 Christian consciousness, was Subordinatianism set aside. But it 
 must be confessed, at the same time, a path was opened as well for 
 Sabellianism as for the Nicene dogma ; for with the regression 
 into the inner Divine essence, the distinction of the Son from 
 
294 FIRST PEEIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 the Father remains above all a mere postulate. By giving up 
 the generation of the Son at the creation, there was also relin- 
 quished the firm position by means of which the Divine hypo- 
 stasis of the God-man might be established, without incurring 
 the risk of asserting a duality in the Divine essence. It now 
 remained, either to pass over to Sabellianism, or to establish 
 the distinction of the Son from the Father in another way. 
 We shall see how the Sabellian movement, which commenced 
 powerfully towards the end of the century, and was favoured by 
 so many circumstances, constrained the Church, as soon as its 
 consequences began to show themselves, just in order to pre- 
 serve entire the distinction of God from the world, not to rest 
 content with distinguishing the Logos from the world or from 
 Himself, but to advance to a distinguishing of God from God, 
 the Father from the Son. 1 By this means was the momentum 
 of the Son's hypostasis, which, for the sake of preserving the 
 unity of God, had for a season been thrown into the background, 
 anew restored to its proper significancy ; and that the more, be- 
 cause by the temporary retraction into the unity with the Father, 
 the concept of the hypostasis itself was purified. By the immer- 
 sion of the Logos in the inner Divine essence, the inadequate 
 views of the nature of the Logos — which were also irreconcil- 
 able with the Divine unity, by which He was confounded with 
 the world, and not sufficiently elevated above the exclusiveness 
 which is proper to a finite personality — were partially stripped 
 away ; so that the attempt might be made without severing the 
 unity of God, to give to the Son, and with Him to the Holy Ghost 
 also, that place in the Divine essence itself which had been as- 
 signed to them from the beginning, in the traditional confession 
 of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and accepted without doubt in 
 the Church, though without being theologically or anthropologi- 
 cally grounded. 
 
 We now return to Clement. That universal significancy 
 
 1 With what difficulty the Church made this, how it hesitated to venture 
 on this bold step, but at the same time how definitely it recognised that 
 Sabellianism was to be opposed at all risks, is shown, on the one hand, in 
 Tertullian, who will rather retreat to the abandoned position of the genera- 
 tion of the Son at the creation than go over to Sabellianism ; and on the 
 other hand, in Origen, who will rather, with Tertullian, assume something 
 of a subordination theory than not distinctly discriminate the Father from 
 the Son. 
 
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. 295 
 
 of the Logos which Clement has so strongly adduced, makes, 
 according to him, the incarnation of the Logos neither un- 
 necessary nor impossible. He maintains, against the Gnostics, 
 Basilides and Valentinus, that all better knowledge proceeds 
 from the Logos originally, and that a natural knowledge of 
 God does not suffice. Though, however, according to Clement, 
 the Logos has a place in the inner revelation, the Reason, he 
 ascribes to Him also capability for an outer, an objective appear- 
 ance. He thus appeared formerly in the Old Testament ; but 
 because we knew not God, He was sent down in Christ, as our 
 Teacher and Lord, as the mysterious, holy Revealer of the great 
 Providence. 1 In Him appeared a sea of blessings ; the Divine 
 power, shining upon the earth, filled -the whole with the seeds of 
 salvation. Issuing from the Father's will swifter than the sun, 
 He showed to us God most readily (Cohort. 10 ; Strom. 85 ff.). 
 He became flesh in order to be seen (Strom, v. 3, p. 654) ; to 
 be God more operative through the mouth of a man (Strom, 
 vii. 11). Thus He arose as the universal light upon the world, 
 which is brought nigh to each by the preaching of the Gospel. 
 First with the revelation of Jesus is decision given from God's 
 side ; now it for the first time can and must be demanded of each 
 (Strom, vi. 6, p. 762 ff.). He wills to give us part in the Logos, 
 that our life shall become a system of logical acts (Psed. i. 13) ; 
 even as He appeared to show what it is possible for men to attain, 
 in obedience to the commandments (vii. 2, p. 833), that we, deified 
 (Psed. iii. 1, p. 251 ; Str. iv. 25, p. 635, 642), should come to 
 undivided unity and gnostic combination. He would transform 
 us into the beauty of the Logos — our corruption, our mortality 
 into His immortality, and save us soul and body (Strom, ii. 5, 
 p. 440 ; iii. 17. ; Psed. iii. 1, p. 251). 
 
 The incarnation itself, the object of all that has been named, 
 is by no means only the incarnation of a part of the Logos ; 2 
 but the Logos is sent down (Strom, v. 1, p. 647). The entire 
 unbroken truth has appeared in Jesus, the Logos, who is always 
 above all, never included, not divided, nor moving from place 
 to place, but always entire Logos (Strom, i. 13, vii. 2, p. 831). 
 The Saviour is the revealed mystery (Psed. iii. 1, p. 251), God 
 in men, and man in God, and the Mediator who accomplishes 
 the Father's will. For the Mediator is the Logos, common to 
 1 Strom, v. 1, p. 647. 2 Appendix, Note WWW. 
 
296 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH 
 
 both : God's Son, on the one side ; on the other, the Saviour of 
 men ; God's servant, our leader. The flesh is servant ; He re- 
 ceives on Himself, assumes a servant's estate. A closer de- 
 scription of the incarnation occurs Pged. i. 6, p. 123, which, 
 indeed, is somewhat fanciful. Clement cannot be charged with 
 Doketism, if that word be strictly taken. In this passage he 
 calls Christ a fruit of the Virgin. Referring the passage con- 
 cerning the flesh and blood of Christ, John vi. 53, 54, to the in- 
 carnation, he says : His flesh was prepared by the Holy Ghost. 
 Under the blood is to be understood the Logos ; for like rich 
 blood is the Logos formed into His life. But the Lord is the 
 union of both, Spirit and Logos ; the " meat indeed" is the 
 whole Lord Jesus, the Logos of God, spirit become flesh 
 (irvevfia <rapicovfievov), consecrated, heavenly flesh. Elsewhere 
 this mingling of the Logos and the crapf; is described as the 
 act also of the Logos, who begets Himself into the flesh in order 
 to be seen (Strom, v. 3, p. 654 : eireira koX eavrbv yevva orav 6 
 A6yo<; aapl; ryevrjrai Xva ical deaBfj). It must not be concluded 
 from this, that Clement regards the Logos as having obtained 
 by the incarnation the personality which others suppose Him to 
 have acquired at the creation ; for he does not say that the 
 Logos was begotten at the incarnation, but that He begot Him- 
 self. In this there is implied that He previously existed ; and 
 since Clement rejects all change in the Logos, he can intend 
 by self -begetting nothing else than that He placed Himself in a 
 man ; and since, according to Clement, the Logos before Christ 
 was operative in men, whilst nothing is said of a self-begetting 
 of the Logos in their case, the expression must be understood of 
 the peculiar indwelling of the Logos, far transcending all 
 human <£v<7t? (Strom, ii. 5, p. 439), which we call the personal. 1 
 That Clement intends to ascribe to Christ a truly human 
 nature, cannot, it may be supposed, be doubted ; for he calls Him 
 not merely God in human form (Pasd. i. 2, p. 99), the Logos 
 bearing a body, the countenance (irpoa-wKov) of the Father 
 
 1 From Strom, v. 14, p. 712, where the entrance of the Logos into the 
 human nature of Jesus is presented under the figure of sinking into a deep 
 sleep, as in Gen. ii. 21, there might be inferred the bringing about of the 
 impersonality of the Logos through the incarnation. But the reference 
 here is rather to the xhaais of the Logos (Strom, iii. 1, p. 251), with which 
 no change in the Logos is posited by him (Strom, vii. 2, p. 831). 
 
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. 297 
 
 in the Pentad of the senses (Strom, v. 6, vii. 11 ; Paed. iii. 1), 
 but also a man who is God (Pasd. iii. 1, p. 251). But since he 
 calls the body a prison of the soul, and brings it into close rela- 
 tion to the irdOr], the inordinate lusts, which with him are the 
 principle of sin, Clement seems hardly in circumstances to 
 ascribe a true corporeity to Christ. To the same purport has 
 been adduced the well-known passage, Coh. c. 10, p. 86, where 
 Clement seems to describe the humanity of Christ as only a 
 mask, His life as man as only an appearance and drama. 1 And 
 with this is to be joined, thirdly, the remarkable assertion, that to 
 eat and drink was not in such a sense necessary to His body as 
 that He could not have subsisted even without food (Strom, vi. 
 9.) 2 To think this, appears to him ridiculous : rather was His 
 body sustained and supported by His holy power ; He ate, con- 
 sequently, not so much for the sake of His body, as that His 
 followers might not think erroneously of Him, might not ima- 
 gine His manifestation to be a mere Doketic one. — But these 
 considerations do not prove by any means that Clement held 
 Doketic views in the proper sense. His doctrine of the body 
 as a prison, or seat of the desires, relates only to the constitu- 
 tion of our body, not to the concept of body generally ; he 
 rather denies both that the soul is good and the body evil by 
 nature (Strom, iv. 26, p. 639). The body is different from the 
 soul, but not opposed to it according to its concept. But this 
 difference has become in man a conflict between the flesh and 
 the spirit ; and it was to heal this enmity that Christ appeared 
 (Strom, iii. 17, p. 559). " Holy, not unholy, as Valentinus, 
 Marcion, Cassian insinuate, is the birth of the world and its 
 being," he says ; " and without the body, Christ could not have 
 accomplished the work of redemption" (pp. 558, 559). As to 
 the correctness of the above explanation of the second passage, 
 
 1 'O Aoyo; tow tliiSpawov irpwaviiov £i>ahi*(Suv, koX aoipxX 
 
 (au.px.aT) ccvct7rXaa<ifiiiioi to aarqpiov Ip&ftct TJJ? ai>6pairoTnro; iirtxpiviTO. 
 Gieseler, Comm. qua Clem. Alex, et Orig. doctr. de corpore Christi expo- 
 nitur, Gott. 1847, translates (p. 14), " Hominis personam indutus quam e 
 came sibi formavit, hominis partes salubriter egit." But eupxl cannot well 
 be translated " out of the flesh," but either in came ludens, or it is better 
 to read axpxet, carnem instaurans. 
 
 2 Comp. Strom, ii. 7, where approvingly, as it appears, he quotes the 
 words of Valentinus, qaiit x.od iwita [blag, oix, dmhtiovs ra /ipafixTa. So great 
 was the power of the hyx o«T£/«inHim am x,al ftij (fOapw*' VA» TpoQrii in aiirif. 
 
298 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 there is ground for doubt in the opposition to Doketism thus 
 alleged (Strom, iii. 17, vi. 9). Also, if the drama in which 
 Christ played a part is to be taken as having the sense of a mere 
 epideictic act, or of anything of the nature of deception, it 
 would follow that, according to the words, the passage must be 
 referred to the redemption (a-anrjpiov Bpafia) as well as to the 
 humanity, which no one will impute to Clement. But if Clement 
 describes the humanity of Christ as a garment, a part (Eolle), 
 in this passage, the context, in which he treats of the hidden 
 dignity of the God-man, shows that he does not intend to say 
 that His life, and passion, and acting was not truly human, or 
 merely scenic : He is rather represented as a warrior and fellow- 
 combatant with His creature ; and the " drama," or battle-play 
 in the passage, is a figure in which the tertium comparationis is 
 not the simulation or appearance, but rather the publicity of a 
 struggle that is crowned with victory, in which the theatre is 
 the universe (Coh. 1). Further, in reference to Christ Himself, 
 the tertium comparationis between Him and an actor on the 
 stage, is only the contrast between Christ's outer and more 
 humble appearance and the inner essence of the Logos. To 
 the latter the passage itself expressly refers. 1 That the mean- 
 ing is nothing else than that Christ had His course and conflict 
 in the world (which was for Him a season of exinanition) 
 crowned with victory, is plain from the comparison of Strom, 
 vii. 11, p. 870, where, in praising the true Gnostic as the worthy 
 image of heavenly strength, he says that he blamelessly plays 
 through the drama of life which God assigns to him as an 
 agony. 2 It must, however, be conceded that the expressions 
 which are here used for Christ's humanity resolve it into a mere 
 dress. But the Church doctrine has always called the body of 
 Christ also an investiture, a clothing ; and this justly, provided 
 the whole humanity be not thus described, but only that aspect 
 of it according to which it is the vehicle of the manifestation 
 
 1 Coh. x. 11, p. 86 f. It is well known that Clement believed the out- 
 ward appearance of the Lord to be mean and unlovely ; e. gr. Paed. iii. 1 ; 
 Str. vi. 16, iii. 17. 
 
 ' 'Aftifitpa; roli/vu ivox.piVQftevti; to 'dpuua toS (iiov, oirep uti 6 ®to; dyaui- 
 aatrSai ira.f«.ts%fi. The Gnostic also has a veiled glory, is as it were in exile. 
 By this he certainly does not mean to ascribe a Doketic humanity to the 
 Gnostic, and as little is this intended of Christ in the above passage, whera 
 the very same words, Ipoifix vTroxpiuiaSai ttyuniaaafai, are used. 
 
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. 299 
 
 of the Logos. But Clement has never spoken of a laying aside 
 again of the humanity, or viewed it as the momentary investi- 
 ture of the Logos. It does not display a transient Christophany ; 
 but he knows also an incarnation of the Logos. The body 
 itself, he says, not the soul alone, is esteemed by the Saviour ; 
 He has delivered both from the appetites (prdOrj), from passive 
 existence ; He has removed the opposition that existed between 
 the flesh and the spirit, and showed it to be conquerable. Were 
 the hostility between the two essential, as the Doketse think, 
 how could He have communicated new strength to the one op- 
 posing member, the flesh, by assuming it and giving it immor- 
 tality ? But since the enmity was there through Adam's fall, 
 how could the economy of redemption in the Church have 
 reached its design without the body, had He, the Head of the 
 Church, passed through life without form and beauty in the 
 flesh, in order that He might teach us to look away to the 
 viewless and bodiless of the Divine cause? (Strom, iii. 17, p. 
 559). Christ is thus in his view the representative and the 
 principle (tce(f>a\rj) of the most perfect union of the flesh and 
 the spirit ; not the destruction of the former, but, on the con- 
 trary, its exaltation in the immortal essence. And with this 
 also the third point is discharged. Clement does not say that 
 Christ's body, viewed in itself, was of a different kind from 
 ours ; if he did, there would certainly lie in the above passage 
 a denial of the essential likeness of Christ to us. He rather 
 aiBrms in several passages that Christ's body in and by itself 
 was susceptible of suffering, could endure pain, did endure 
 pain. 1 He views Christ's death not as apparitional, but as 
 real, 2 and knows nothing of a withdrawal of the Logos from the 
 man Jesus before His death : and in like manner, without hesi- 
 
 1 Strom, vii. 2, p. 832 ; Pad. i. 6, p. 123. The Lord hath begotten 
 the Church ualvt aa.px.uty, p. 124, ivip qftun i^ix 11 " «"]»«! P»d. ii. 2, p. 177 ; 
 Strom, i. 8. 
 
 2 Coh. 10, p. 84 ; Strom, i. 21, pp. 407, 408, comp. Paed. i. 6, p. 124. 
 For the rest, the propitiatory death of Christ falls into the background 
 ■with Clement, in accordance with his concept of the Divine righteousness, 
 which is allied to that of Philo ; comp. Psed. i. 8, p. 138 fi. ; yet he derives 
 the Xti pmi; from Him (Psed. i. 6, 126). From love to us hath He suffered 
 (Strom, vi. 8, p. 775). The names Mediator and High Priest he gives to 
 Him, however, irrespective of His death, which in his view acquires a 
 higher significancy only in the Eucharist. 
 
'300 FIRST PEEIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 tation, avows his faith in the other leading facts of the life of 
 Jesus. If one might also assume that the preparation of the 
 body of Jesus by the Holy Ghost had, according to Clement, 
 endowed Him with peculiar advantages, — among which the 
 removal of inordinate appetites arising from the body must, 
 according to Clement, be found, — then was the body of Christ, 
 according to him, in and by itself a holy body from the begin- 
 ning, even although He had in Himself the iraBt\ aSid/3\i]Ta, 
 blameless infirmities ; as Clement says of the Gnostic, that he 
 can satisfy the natural wants of the bodily life without blame, 
 nay, must do so (Strom, vi. 9, p. 775). He says, indeed (vi. 
 9, p. 775, 6 Hcorrjp aira,%a'n : kS>'i airadr]^ r/v), the Saviour was 
 simply without passive emotion {jcivrifia TraOrjTiicbv of rjSovr] or 
 Xvij-Tj). But it would be rash to seek to refer this wholly to 
 the body ; the airadeia became part of Christ's humanity only 
 through its union with the Logos, which, though the flesh of 
 Christ is in itself capable of being affected (alaBryrri, ifiTraBr}?, 
 •7ra07]T i/crj), constantly keeps down all affections. Through the 
 ethic power of His will, consequently (iy/cpaTeia), not through 
 the special physical constitution of Christ's body, it comes to 
 pass that the whole person may be said to be raised above 
 affections. Clement thinks that he can assert the absolute free- 
 dom of the Logos in Christ only by withdrawing from Him even 
 the appearance of passivity. And in this sense he says, " Christ 
 ate not because His body required it, for by His divine power 
 could the Logos have sustained it for Himself ; but He ate in 
 order that His disciples might not think Him what the Doketse 
 afterwards thought Him" (Strom, vi. 9). One might even hesi- 
 tate to ascribe this superiority to the body of Christ : this much 
 is certain, that Christ's unity of essence with us must not, ac- 
 cording to Clement, be endangered by what is thought of His 
 body ; rather he is of opinion that the Apostles were herein like 
 the Lord. For his view, there is not a handling of a constitutive 
 momentum of human nature — otherwise he must have taught 
 differently — but rather of the removal of a want, and in particu- 
 lar, there remains to the body in and by itself the susceptibility 
 of suffering, there remains on earth its needs ; but by the ethical 
 will of the Logos is the body also raised above patibility. 1 
 
 1 Strom, vii. 2, 852 : og yt x.a.1 tijw oupza. tyiu ifiTr&Dq Quasi yivo/netrii/ 
 ecna7M/3uv si; \%iv uria&tia; iTrotibami). Ill Paid. i. 5, p. 112, f/.-i) Kcitou* 
 
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. 301 
 
 In Clement, however, we see two lines of positions which 
 stand directly over against each other, — in the one of which it is 
 affirmed, that Christ is in His earthly manifestation the counte- 
 nance of the Father, the Logos has assumed flesh in order to 
 be seen, He is the manifested mystery ; whilst in the other it 
 is asserted, that what He was, was not seen by men, who on 
 account of the weakness of the flesh could not apprehend Him 
 (Strom, vii. 2, p. 833), — to which also belongs the above cited 
 figure of a sleep for His incarnation, and his doctrine of the 
 external meanness of Christ's form. According to the latter 
 aspect, He appears to have assumed humanity to conceal His 
 deity ; according to the former, to reveal it. The solution of 
 Clement is this : Certainly there existed also objectively in 
 Christ this strong contrast of two sides. In His self-repre- 
 sentation in discourse, deed, and holy life, there was revealed 
 the Divine itself ; but on the other side this revelation was ob- 
 scured by His humble appearance. Thus there depends on the 
 apprehension of Christ the empiric, external, or the higher true. 
 The contrast in Christ's Person, however, objectively presented, 
 has, according to Clement, for its design to elevate the sub- 
 jective apprehension, to confound the empirical, and to provoke 
 to the negation of it (Strom, vi. 15, 17). 
 
 But if, according to Clement, Christ had not only a truly 
 human body, but such an one as presented at once the reality 
 and perfection of the human body, as these were viewed by 
 Clement, — the question, on the other hand, concerning the 
 human soul of Christ, as handled by Clement, occasions some 
 difficulty. The places where Clement calls Him a man do 
 not prove that he distinctly recognised a soul as included 
 therein, though certainly in this, and in his passages against 
 Doketism, there is involved that he could not deny to Him 
 anything that was consciously regarded by him as a constituent 
 part of human nature (Coh. 10, p. 84 ; Psed. iii. 1, p. 251). As 
 little can the conclusion be deduced from the trichotomy which 
 he recognises — Strom, iii. 17, p. 559 ; Psed. iii. 1, p. 250 — that 
 he must ascribe the voepbv or \oyr)nicbv } the 6v/j,ikov or eVttfu- 
 
 is, as Guericke and Gieseler rightly saw, to be referred to Christ's deity, 
 though the subject is Jesus. He calls Jesus, indeed, also ailiov, and the 
 same want of precision, though in the reverse direction, is exhibited Coh. 
 10, p. 81, iriartvaoi) . . . . t£ iruioiiTi ®i$ ^iiuri. Similarly Psed. i. p. 124. 
 
302 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 urjTiKov, each to Christ in order to have the reality of a human 
 soul ; for this trichotomy is not constant with him (Strom, iii. 
 9, p. 540, iii. 17, p. 559). It is not fitting to draw conclusions 
 from his far-fetched doctrine concerning Christ's descent into 
 Hades, because he admits that it is only Christ's voice or omni- 
 potence, or indeed only an apostle of His, that is to be thought 
 of as working in Hades (Strom, ii. 9, p. 452, vi. 6, p. 762 ff.). 
 The passage above cited (p. 296) from Pasd. i. 6, p. 123, is, as 
 the connection shows, to be taken as too freely rhetorical for 
 anything to be deduced from it with dogmatic precision ; and it 
 may be as easily deduced thence, that in Christ the irvev^a has 
 the place of the animal principle, as that the Logos supplies 
 that of the Trvevfia. " The Holy Spirit prepared the body of 
 Jesus, so that it may be named from the Spirit ; and the Lord, 
 into whose life the Logos was richly poured, may be called a 
 mixture of Spirit and Logos." If, however, it be attempted 
 from this to draw the conclusion, that Clement shows a strong 
 inclination to view the noblest part of man, and by consequence 
 of the Gnostic especially, as something Divine, to view the 
 reason as a partaking of the Logos, nay, as a relative being of 
 the Logos in man, it will not follow, assuming that the Logos 
 in Christ had taken the place of the soul in man (or trichome- 
 trically of the Spirit), that the essential similarity of Christ to 
 man is superseded ; on the contrary, it is affirmed, and that so 
 as to represent in the most perfect manner, what belongs in 
 general to the idea of the human essence, namely, essential union 
 with the Logos. But as Clement would not on this account deny 
 to the Gnostic a soul, as little would he to Christ. It is true that 
 the most manifest evidence of the soul as distinguished from the 
 Logos — namely, the freedom of will which can even turn to what 
 is evil — finds no place, according to Clement, in Christ, because 
 the holy power of the Logos rendered sin impossible in Him. 
 But that Clement should represent Christ as almost inde- 
 pendent of all wants and affections from without, and as par- 
 ticipating in the ana.Qe.ia of the Logos, no more necessitates his 
 denying to Christ a soul than it has necessitated his denying 
 to Him a body. This is proved by the passage, Psed. i. 2, 
 p. 99 : " Our Psedagogue is, like God, His Father, whose Son 
 He is, sinless and blameless, and impassible as respects the soul 
 (aTradr)<; rrjv ^v^i/) ; hence we must make our soul like Him. 
 
IRENiEUS. 303 
 
 He indeed is for ever free from human infirmities, and hence He 
 alone, as sinless, can be Judge ; but we must strive with all oui 
 powers to sin as little as possible." It is to be considered also, 
 that Clement indicates as the purpose of the incarnation (Strom, 
 vii. 2, p. 833), that Christ desired to show how far we might 
 attain in obedience towards God: He came to heal soul and 
 body; and since He removes in His person the enmity between 
 flesh and spirit, He is consequently the representative of the 
 perfect harmony of both. Considered from this general point 
 of view, it will become probable that Clement, as he certainly 
 viewed the assumption of a human body as necessary for the 
 salvation of the body (Strom, iii. 17, p. 559), no less certainly de- 
 siderated for the salvation of the soul the presence in Christ's 
 person of a human soul in its perfection. 1 
 
 Irenseus, the greatest Church teacher of the generation be- 
 fore Clement, is especially worthy of notice, because he com- 
 bines in himself the different tendencies in the Church, and 
 brings them to a harmonious interpenetration. Well versed in 
 Gnostic and Church literature, fitted by the events of his life 
 to be a bond of union between Oriental and Occidental Chris- 
 tianity, he had a mild, free, and open feeling for what was 
 true in all the often mutually exclusive parties ; and the deeper 
 he penetrated scientifically and practically into the essence of 
 Christianity, with so much firmer a hand could he unite what 
 was cognate and mutually attractive, and eliminate what was 
 abnormal. No one in the second century represents as he 
 does the purity and the fulness of the development within the 
 Church; scarcely any one in the Church of his time is so highly 
 esteemed as he. He respected the intensity of the subjective 
 piety of Montanism, but at the same time he desired to have it in 
 objective Church form ; he attached much value to Church mem- 
 bership, and recognised no unity but one that was organic. To 
 Gnosticism, as to heresy in general, he opposed biblical and 
 Church doctrine, but not in such a way as that only a historical 
 
 1 ' A.'ura.hia.. The soul of man is in itself iraStirix^ like the body ; hence 
 not good by nature, Strom, iv. 26, p. 639 ; but if in Christ it is nothing 
 else than the faculty of the hunan nature to receive the Tio'yo? ana-Hs, it 
 has, being inseparably joined with this, a more immediate share in the 
 itahtct than the body. 
 
304 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 and traditional knowledge should be adduced ; what he brings 
 forward is a practical knowledge that is at one with the inner 
 Christian consciousness. He does not strive to oppose Gnos- 
 ticism by falling back merely on authority, or on subjective 
 feeling ; and his entering into the substance of Gnosticism is 
 rewarded by his being enabled to bring forward a treasure of 
 Christian knowledge, and to present the most ingenious views 
 of the connection and organism of Christian doctrine. 
 
 Irenseus views justly, as the fundamental error (fons et 
 radix) of Gnosticism, the doctrine of the Bythos, or the concept 
 of God which abides by mere quantitative infinitude, by physical 
 categories. God, it is true, is here the obscure basis, the un- 
 knowable ; but in the esteem of Irenseus, that is so little the in- 
 nermost of God that he objects to the Gnostics, who are always 
 restlessly steering towards this, that they seek to float into the 
 infinite above God, but since they lift their thoughts above God, 
 they find no resting-place for thought ; let them, then, repent 
 (ii. 4, 44 ; iv. 22, 35, 36). God's quantitative greatness is im- 
 measurable ; but we are referred to His love ; it has been mani- 
 fested, and it is the highest, the innermost in the knowledge of 
 God. In the Word we have God (iii. 40 ; iv. 37, 40). The 
 Son is God's love and power. Whilst then the Gnostics call 
 the Bythos incognisable, Irenseus says that God is knowable 
 (ii. 5). Whilst they think the Bythos void per se, he says, 
 " si vacuum ilium confitebuntur, in maximam incidentes blas- 
 phemiam denegabunt id quod est spiritale ejus" (ii. 18). Whilst 
 they, striving to come nearer to the Bythos, and to conceive the 
 world, must have recourse to a development, a partition of the 
 Bythos, he says (i. 4) that there is work enough and reward 
 enough for the gnosis, though the question be not asked, 
 Whence God ? (ii. 44); ix., we must not attempt to deduce the 
 higher categories, through which alone God is to us truly God, 
 wisdom and love, from the Bythos as the last and highest ; but 
 must abide by them as the last and highest. There is lacking 
 to them, otherwise, true absoluteness, and the emanations from 
 the Bythos are always endangered in their divinity (ii. 15). 
 Bather, says he (ii. 14), must the successive Gnostic -3Sons be 
 thought simultaneous in each other as attributes of God, which 
 are eternally and inseparably combined in the concept of Him 
 as momenta. Either the Bythos must be acknowledged to be 
 
IRENJ5US. 305 
 
 void and lifeless, or all momenta must be transferred to it, and 
 in this case, becoming and defect must be excluded (ii. 17, 18). 
 No successive coming into being, consequently, no passion, can 
 be left in the world of JEons ; if this is to be reducible under 
 the true concept of God, there must be a renunciation of the 
 idea of .ZEons condensed, hypostatized, produced out of God, 
 and, instead of this, these must be regarded as belonging to the 
 Divine essence itself, consequently must be brought down to 
 momenta in the eternal Divine essence, as Irenseus does when 
 he calls the Logos multus et dives in Himself (iv. 37), — a con- 
 clusion to which the older gnosis, especially Valentinus himself, 
 according to Irenseus, showed a strong leaning. From this 
 there issues at once the opposition to the Gnostic •n-pofio'Kal, and 
 to the distinction of the Logos as hihiAOera and as 7rpoirf>opiic6<;. 
 In God there is no partition, no composition, no passion (ii. 15, 
 17, 18, 27, 48). The inner Logos is to the Gnostics awnwraTos 
 (ii. 17, 18), the -irpofopuco? a sounding voice, both of which are 
 false. Irenseus seeks to know God, as well as the world, as de- 
 finitely distinguished from the Logos, and only on the ground 
 of distinction does he arrive at unity. 
 
 If we consider more closely Irengeus's view of the Logos, 
 we shall see that, according to its concept, it is with him reason 
 as well as word (ii. 48, and ii. 15, 17, 18) ; and in his view 
 neither of these must outweigh the other (comp. iii. 40, iv. 
 37). God is wholly reason (totus mens), Logos ; and the Son 
 is this Logos : vovs and \6yo<s are one (ii. 48). The Son is not 
 a sounding, but a hypostatic word, uttered or spoken by the 
 Father (prolatus). 1 In this the essential deity of the Son lies 
 already so strongly enounced, that it is hardly necessary to speak 
 of it further. He is no creature (iii. 8) ; and Christ is not to be 
 called God in the sense in which other men are called gods. 
 For, strictly speaking, nothing created is to be called God. But 
 the Son manifested in Christ is actually God, because God is 
 only to be known through God (iv. 10, 14), and because He 
 has power to forgive sins (v. 17). The thought of Athenagoras, 
 by which God is first recognised in His independence of the 
 world, Irenaeus works out much more clearly, and in such a way 
 as that a higher significancy is thereby assigned to the Son. 
 " God did not create Adam as having need of men, but thai 
 1 Appendix, Note, XXXX. 
 VOL. I. V 
 
306 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 there might be one on whom He could accumulate His benefits" 
 (iv. 28). Consequently it is not because the world belongs 
 immediately to God's essence that it actually is ; nor is it because 
 the Son is the /coo-pos iw?to?. The hypothesis out of which the 
 origin of the world is to be conceived is, conversely, the absolute 
 perfection and independence of God, without which God could 
 not be pure, unselfish love. Absolute love seeks spontaneously 
 its proper work ; its essence is to place others as an object for 
 itself. " The Christian must learn how great God is : Gloria 
 enim hominis Deus, operationes vero Dei et omnis sapientise 
 ejus et virtutis receptaculum homo" (iii. 22). For Himself 
 (leaving His love out of view) He needed not the creation of 
 Adam. " For not only before Adam, but before all creation, 
 the Word glorified His Father, abiding in Him, and the Word 
 in turn was glorified by the Father, as He Himself says, John 
 xvii. 5." Thus Irenasus takes his point of issue from the ab- 
 solute concept of God, well knowing that wherever this is 
 thought as becoming (werdend), the thought remains object- 
 less, and without a resting place (ii. 4, 44). 
 
 But if he so definitely discriminates the Logos from the 
 world, 1 what does he teach concerning the relation of the Son to 
 the Father ? The Gnostics, he says, as good as affirm on this 
 point, that the generation of the Logos may be compared to that 
 of man's word from reason. Now, every man knows this 
 mystery, that from thought and understanding comes word ; 
 but it is mere arrogance to believe that by means of this trivial 
 truth we can conceive the generation of the Son from God (ii. 
 18, 48). " They transfer the production of man's spoken word 
 to the eternal Word of God, and assign to this a beginning of 
 production and generation like their word. In what, then, is 
 God's Word — nay, rather God Himself, since He is word — 
 distinguished from the word of men ? But in God there is no- 
 thing older or younger ; He has nought foreign in Himself, but 
 is wholly like Himself, eternally one (ii. 18). He is simple, in 
 all parts like Himself — simplex non compositus, similimem- 
 brius (6fj.oiofiepr]<s), et totus ipse sibimet ipsi similis et asqualis" 
 (ii. 16). He is wholly sense, wholly intellect, wholly under- 
 standing, wholly thought, wholly reason, wholly hearing, wholly 
 eye, wholly light, wholly source of all good (comp. i. 6, § 1) : 
 1 Comp. further, ii. 20. 
 
ibeNjEUS, 307 
 
 not like the sense of men and the outer light, but in relation to 
 these things unspeakable in His greatness (ii. 16). From this it 
 is clear that no doctrine of the Trinity could be satisfactory to 
 him in which the so-called Persons divide among themselves the 
 Divine attributes ; as respects the attributes (virtutes), these are 
 common to the ever self-resembling Divine essence. Even of 
 the Logos it is said, God is wholly Nov? and wholly Logos ; i.e., 
 God is ever whole even in the determination of Him as Logos 
 (ii. 18). Hence it follows certainly, that in his view the Logos 
 is wholly God, and no subordinate being. It is not, however, 
 clear what distinction remains for him between Father and Son. 
 When he has placed the Logos in the eternal Divine sphere, so 
 as to exclude from Him want, change, passion, he has trium- 
 phantly confuted the Gnostics ; he has showed that if their doc- 
 trine of projections was true, God would be torn asunder by 
 Himself (ii. 16) ; and should the Gnostics fall back at all on the 
 position that the projections have place within the Father Him- 
 self, it may now be asked, what projection can mean ? In this 
 case the expression would be superfluous ; for if the word means 
 anything, it means that a revelation of the projected lies outside 
 the projecting (ii. 17). But then how does Irena3us escape the 
 objection, that the same instance may be urged against all 
 and every distinction of the Son from the Father ? Here we 
 must take into account that Irena^us, in those principal passages 
 in which he assumes the Logos wholly into the Divine essence, 
 speaks not of the Father, but of God. He does not replace 
 the Son simply in the Father, but what he says is this : God is 
 wholly Logos, God is Himself in the Logos ; not outside Him- 
 self, like the Bythos of the Gnostics, but He is in Himself, gene- 
 rally (and consequently, also, under the three determinations, 
 Father, Son, Spirit), Reason and Word. (Comp. also ii. 13, 
 viii. 28, v. 6 ; and Duncker, Des Heil. Irenaeus Ohristologie, 
 p. 36 ff.) Whosoever speaks of the Mens Dei, and ascribes to 
 it a proper prolation, makes God to be a compound, as if one 
 thing were God and another the primal reason (ii. 48). As 
 soon, then, as it is acknowledged that the distinction between 
 the Father and the Son cannot be based on a distribution of 
 attributes or powers, but that all Divine powers must meet in 
 God, it must, as consequent on this, be admitted, that under 
 each of the trinitarian determinations God is Reason, etc.,— 
 
308 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 that is, it must be said, for instance, that the Father is Logos, in 
 so far, namely, as under Logos is understood only Reason or 
 Creative power. This expression, indeed, he commonly shuns ; 
 the word Logos was too definitely stamped and established by 
 usage as a designation of the Son, for confusion not to result 
 from its being applied otherwise. He, however, calls the Father 
 Reason, 1/0O?, mens ; nay, in one place (ii. 48), he says, God is 
 wholly Mens and wholly Logos, — what He speaks He thinks, and 
 what He thinks He speaks. For his Thought is "Word (\6yo$), 
 and his Word Thought, and the all-comprehending primal 
 Reason is the Father Himself. 1 If one, then, is anxious to draw 
 hasty conclusions, this passage furnishes abundant occasion for 
 this ; for, taking one's stand on it, nothing is more certain than 
 that Irenseus is a Monarchian, and that in a Sabellian form. 
 But whoever does this will find himself brought into difficulty 
 by the second part of the same section, in which there is avow- 
 edly presupposed, as has been already shown, that the Son is not 
 identical with the Father, nor with God as God. The solution 
 is furnished by what follows. Irenseus sees more distinctly 
 than all who preceded him, that the customary designation of 
 the Son by the term Logos has something inadequate in it, 
 whether there be understood by it reason or creative power ; 
 for, as reason and omnipotence, and, in short, all the Divine 
 predicates, certainly belong to the Son, it is not in them that 
 the distinction of the concept of Him from that of the Father 
 is to be sought. If, then, it were thus possible to call God, or 
 the Father, Logos, in the sense adduced, it is clear that by 
 the term Logos would be designated either something different 
 from what the word immediately expresses, namely, something 
 distinctive of Him from God as such and the Father, — in which 
 case it is time to say what this is, — or Sabellianism is the 
 genuine and true sentiment of the Church. 
 
 It is obvious that the Sabellian mode of thought was 
 chiefly supported by the perception that God is wholly reason, 
 and also in all His distinctions like Himself in that which be- 
 longs to the Divine powers and attributes. Nevertheless 
 Irenseus declares strongly against the Sabellian representation, 
 
 1 The passage iv. 37, ed. Gr., p. 333a, Omnia per Verbum ejus discunt, 
 qui (quia) est unus Deus Pater, is uncertain. 
 
Irenes. 309 
 
 as also Justin depicts it, that God now rests and is silent, and 
 anon is active (ii. 47). 
 
 Indeed, it cannot be denied that many of his highest utter- j 
 ances concerning Christ may be understood in a sort of patri- j 
 passian sense ; as when he adopts the saying of a presbyter i 
 earlier than his time : Mensura Patris Filius (iv. 8) ; or, Inter- 
 pretator Patris Verbum (iv. 27) ; invisibile Filii Pater, visibile 
 Patris Filius (iv.14). For the word mensura recalls the Sabellian 
 ■n-epiypcKprj ; and there might be found in this, as in the last 
 statement, that the Father is the content of the Son, and that 
 He, as circumscribed, is called " Son." But the meaning must 
 then be, that the Son is nothing but the visibility of the Father, 
 the Son is that manifested which the Father is hidden and in- 
 visible. Now, certainly all the three statements assert that the 
 Father, who is in Himself infinite, has in the Son entered into a 
 limitation necessary for us, and that the Son comprehended the 
 Father. But since, even if the Son be a wholly independent 
 image (selbstandiges Ebenbild), the Father nevertheless is mani- 
 fest in Him, it follows that all this may be said in a purely 
 economical sense, and it is to be inquired whether Irenaeus re- 
 cognised no other than an economical distinction. He calls 
 also the Spirit Figuratio Patris (iv. 17), so that in no case 
 could he regard the Son as only the manifested God. It 
 would be easiest to make out his antagonism to Sabellianism if 
 we found any traces of a subordination of the Son. But what 
 may be adduced as such, namely, that Irenaeus does not ascribe 
 to the Son omniscience (e. gr., ii. 49), proves nothing, since the 
 passages relate, or may relate, to the Son as incarnate. 1 In the 
 connection of the system of Irenseus it must be so taken, since . 
 in other places he says expressly that the Logos, the Son and 
 Creator of the world, knows all things (e. gr., v. 18) ; and, in 
 general, because, according to the above, it is peculiar to 
 Irenseus to view God as also wholly in the Logos according to 
 all His powers. Nevertheless there are found in him elements 
 enough of an anti-Sabellian mode of thought. 2 Above all, 
 
 1 So also expressions such as Filius administrans Patri, etc. (iv. 14, 17, 
 pp. 302, 304, v. 26, p. 4416), Filius maims Patris (v. 1, v. 6), are decidedly- 
 referable to the economical relation. To him the Word is uncreated, eternal, 
 without beginning. Comp. Duncker, p. 16 ff. 
 
 2 Duncker, in his otherwise admirable work, seems not to be aware that 
 
310 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 attention must be paid here to the pre-existence which he 
 ascribes to the Son and views as eternal ; and, further, to the 
 fact that he calls the Son invisibilis in Himself, as he calls the 
 Father visibilis for our sakes (iii. 18, p. 241, iv. 14, p. 3416). 
 After he has confuted the Gnostic prolationes, and their ap- 
 plication to the Logos, he insists that the Son (so he denomi- 
 nates the Logos when he would designate Him in distinction 
 from the Father) prolatus est a Patre. Whether this be called 
 prolation, or begetting, or nuncupatio, or adapertio, and though- 
 no man knows this generatio inerrabilis, the Father qui generavit, 
 and the Son qui est natus, know it (ii. 48). This generatio 
 took place not first in time, nor is the Son a creature, or passive 
 in His prolation, but He is eternally with God (non habet 
 initium prolationis, ii. 18). Before the world the' Father glori- 
 fied the Son, and the Son the Father (iii. 22). "That the 
 Word (i.e., the Son) was ever with the Father, hath He plen- 
 tifully showed. Yea, before all creation has Wisdom, i.e., the 
 Spirit, been with Him" (iv. 37, 14). Still this much must be 
 conceded, that though Irenasus desires definitely to recognise 
 these distinctions as posited in the inner Divine essence, he yet 
 does not represent the motive and ground of them as in the 
 Divine essence itself, nor does he accommodate them to the 
 unity ; but they are certified to him through the manifestation 
 of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Nevertheless he holds fast 
 the unity and simplicity of God thus determined. In these 
 distinctions God is homogeneous (6/jLoto/iepr)^) ; to each belongs 
 the like content of the Divine predicates ; He is in them One. 
 Whence it follows that Irenasus, far from all tritheism, must, to 
 be consequent, reject from his premisses every plurality of hypo- 
 stases subordinated to each other, or excluding each other ; and, 
 on the contrary, must maintain their inter-essence in virtue of 
 their equal Divine essence. All that he thus leaves room for is, 
 that the one Divine essence, even apart from the world, exists 
 per se in a threefold different form, but in each of these modes 
 of being the whole content of the Divine predicates is con- 
 tained. 1 We now proceed to the Incarnation. 
 
 God cannot be known without God (iv. 14). Without life 
 
 he first brings Irenaeus to a mere economic form of doctrine, i.e., to Sabel- 
 lianism (pp. 40-44), and then afterwards retracts this (pp. 50-57). 
 
 1 In iv. 17 it is said, Ministrat Patri ad omnia sua progenies et figuratio 
 
IEENJ5US. 311 
 
 we cannot live. Essential life comes from participation in God ; 
 but to have part in God is to know God, and to enjoy His good- 
 ness (iv. 37). The will of the Father, however, is to be known 
 (iv. 14). They who would now see the light must be in the 
 sphere of the light, and those who would see God must be in 
 the sphere of God (ivrb<s @eov, p. 332&, iv. 37), enjoying His 
 clearness. This clearness vivifies them, so that those who see 
 God have life. Wherefore the Unapprehended, the Incompre- 
 hended, the Unseen, hath made Himself visible, comprehensible, 
 apprehensible for those that believe, in the Incarnation, in order 
 to make those who apprehend and see Him blessed through 
 faith. His greatness is unsearchable ; but His goodness also is 
 not to be told by which He gives Himself to be seen (iv. 37, 
 p. 332). No one knows the Father save His Word, and in 
 turn only the Father knows His Word. The Father, however, 
 has .revealed Himself, inasmuch as He has made His Word 
 visible to all, and in turn the Son opens up the knowledge of 
 the Father by His revelation. The Lord says not that Father 
 and Son are simply not cognisable, otherwise His advent would 
 have been superfluous ; but only that without God, God cannot 
 be known. But the Father revealed the Son, and in the Son 
 Himself as the Father ; and the Son revealed, through His re- 
 presentation, as Himself, so also the Father as Him who hath 
 begotten the Son (iv. 14, pp. 300, 301). Thus, according to 
 Irenaeus, the revelation of the one includes that of the other ; 
 so that the revelation in Christ is to be viewed as no less the act 
 of the Father than of the Son. 
 
 Already in the creation the Word has revealed the Father 
 and the Son ; likewise in the Law and in the Prophets the 
 Word has preached Himself and the Father, and has ever sought 
 to draw to the belief of these. At length the Word has made 
 Himself visible and tangible by being born of Mary. For it is 
 the Son who is the organ of the Father from beginning to end, 
 and without Him can no man know the Father (iv. 14). From 
 the beginning the Son is with His work, and reveals to all the 
 Father, how and where He wills ; and hence there is in all and 
 through all things the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
 and one faith and one salvation (iv. 14, p. 302). Christ me- 
 
 Eua, i.e., Filius et Sp. Sanctus. On the Holy Ghost, see below, and 
 Duncker 1. c, p. 57 ff. 
 
312 FIRST PEEIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 diates the whole economy in relation to mankind, serving the 
 Father's will (v. 26, p. 441J). These positions he establishes 
 somewhat more closely. It was fit that the Son who is eter- 
 nally with the Father should be the universal organ of reve- 
 lation. He who created the world is the same who hath given 
 the law. Quomodo finis legis Ohristus, si non et initium? 
 (iv. 26). He moreover appeared to the patriarchs and pro- 
 phets; not always in the same form, but in another and an- 
 other, according to time and place (iv. 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 23, 
 26, 27, 37, 70, iii. 18, v. 18). Cleaving to His work, He is 
 ever in that which He has made, never retiring from it. But 
 wherefore did this stated presence with and in His work not 
 suffice ? wherefore, at least, did not the manifold appearances 
 before Christ ? On this point he enlarges, especially in opposi- 
 tion to Ebionism (e. gr., iii. 20, 21, 24, 29, iv. 51, 59). Where 
 he remains by general considerations, he says, We could not 
 have had part in immortality and incorruptibility had we not 
 been united thereto (adunati). But how could this have been 
 possible had not immortality and incorruptibility become what 
 we are, so that the corruptible might be swallowed up by the 
 incorruptible, and the mortal by the immortal ? This death, 
 which dwells in the first creation, has for him also an ethical 
 significancy ; and the Ebionites, denying the higher birth of 
 Christ, and in Christ of humanity, abide still in the bondage 
 (i.e., the state of penalty) of the old Adamitic disobedience ; 
 they abide still in the first birth, and the curse of death which 
 rests upon it (iii. 21, p. 249). They receive not the anti- 
 dote to death, and are subject to it. The Word has said, Ye 
 are sons of the Highest, and gods, but ye shall die like men ; 
 by this He refers to the thankless, on whose account He became 
 flesh, who despise the gift of sonship, and rob man of his ex- 
 altation to the Lord. For the Word of God has become man, 
 and the Son of God the Son of man united with the Word, in 
 order that we might receive sonship ; and whosoever receives the 
 Logos becomes a son of God (Ibid.). The Ebionites whom he 
 assails have, it is true, in their later forms retreated from Moses 
 and the law back to Adam. Him they exalt above all ; and in 
 their opinion there is no need of any other, but only of ap- 
 pearances of him from time to time. But, says Irenseus, all 
 who descend from Adam are under the curse ; of them none is 
 
IEEN^US. 313 
 
 called God or Lord (iii. 6, 31). But by accepting Christ we 
 bear God in us, we really become partakers of the Divine 
 nature, and sons of the Highest (iii. 21, iv. 37, 59, 68, v. 8, etc.). 1 
 
 Still more definitely does he assign an ethical and religious 
 significancy to Christ's incarnation, in that he sees in it the 
 taking away of sin and guilt. The law gives us no kingdom, 
 shows us not the king in us, but shows the manslayer (1 John 
 iii.), who hath sin in him, and is amenable to death. He, however, 
 who shall begin to destroy sin, and to deliver him who is amen- 
 able to death, must himself be what this one was, i.e., man, in 
 order that sin may be destroyed by man, and man may escape 
 from death. 
 
 " If," he exclaims to the Doketse, " Christ has not become 
 man, ye remain under the ancient curse and under death. For 
 we could not attain to the sonship unless the Son had entered 
 into fellowship with us and become flesh. His humanity is 
 not an appearance ; and so His works, the slaying of sin and 
 of death, and the vivifying of men, are realities" (iii. 20, 
 p. 248). 
 
 This thought, that Christ must become what we are in order 
 to redeem and perfect us, is pursued by Irenasus in detail. The 
 Gnostic canon, &v tf/ieWe <rd>£eiv, to? airapyhi air&v etXrjcpe 
 (L. i. c. 1, § 11), he fully adopts. "Through every stage of 
 human life Christ had to pass, in order that He might restore 
 to all communion with God" (iii. 20, p. 248). " He sanctified 
 each stage of life, for He came to save all by Himself ; all, 
 I say, who through Him shall be born again to God, infants 
 and children, lads, youths, and old men" (ii. 39). To the same 
 intent is his saying, " Had not our flesh been redeemable, the 
 Word of God had never become flesh" (v. 14). Every man 
 has a soul (ii. 62), and this also needs salvation. Christ gave 
 His flesh for our flesh, His soul for our soul (v. 1, vi. .9). This 
 thought, that Christ must assume all that belongs to us, and re- 
 present it in Himself, in order to be able to save us, is often 
 
 1 Already, before Tertullian, as Duncker has observed, Irenffius taught 
 that there were three stages in the development of the kingdom of God — 
 the revelation of the Father from the creation, the advent of Christ, and the 
 effusion of the Holy Spirit (iv. 38, 1, 3 ; 20, 6; v. 18, 2 ; 36, 2, 5; Duncker 
 1. c. p. 71 ff.). The frequent verbal agreement of Tertullian and Irenseus 
 renders this the more noticeable. 
 
314 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 expressed by him by the phrase, " recapitulatio plasmatis in 
 semetipsum." 
 
 But Irenseus does not limit himself to such general con- 
 siderations ; he goes still deeper into the reasons why Christ's 
 ability to redeem us depended on His being in all things like us. 
 Without His becoming man, without the offering of His body 
 and His soul, redemption could have been accomplished only by 
 the arbitrary power of the Divine nature, or by righteousness not 
 demanding what was due to it according to its idea. But this 
 demands, 1. That as it was a man who fell, it must also be a man 
 who fulfils the law, and conquers sin and the devil ; that the 
 universal guilt and punishment of humanity should be borne by 
 itself, and the universal disobedience of the race should be 
 covered by an obedience from the midst of it, even Christ's 
 whole obedience (lb. iii. 18, v. 21, p. 432a). 2. That even this 
 man should not conquer by way of power, of immediate phy- 
 sical force ; but by the indirect way through self-offering love. 
 Force (fiia), Irenseus says, with the author of the Epistle to 
 Diognetus (c. 7), dwells not with God ; it becomes God to con- 
 quer only by love. This love shows itself in Christ in the bear- 
 ing of the guilt and penalty, and in the fulfilling of the law. 
 3. The same righteousness requires that men also shall not be 
 brought to Christ by force ; but that the subjective redemption 
 of men must take the indirect path (force being renounced) of 
 rescuing from the kingdom of sin and the devil only those who in 
 the free exercise of faith allow the spiritual grace, the revelation 
 of love, to operate upon them. " It was fit that God should 
 bring to Himself that which properly belongs to Him (man), 
 not by application of force, but by the spiritual method of per- 
 suasion (secundum suadelam, suadentem et non vim inferentem 
 decebat Deum accipere quae vellet . . . quae sunt sua, v. 1, l). 1 
 
 This doctrine is intimately connected with the tlieology and 
 the anthropology of Irenasus. We see how high he places, in op- 
 position to Gnosticism, the spiritual attributes, the Spiritale Dei, 
 especially His love. Righteousness only comes with him between 
 the physical attributes, infinitude, omnipotence, etc., and the 
 ethical, compassion, love, etc., as occupying the place of warder. 
 Hence God will not and cannot operate on what is spiritual in a 
 physical way; He must gain men by a representation of what is 
 1 Appendix, Note YYYY. 
 
IREN^US. 315 
 
 spiritual, by the highest manifestation of His love. But that 
 this shall he a manifestation by suffering, is required by the same 
 righteousness as requires that it shall conquer only spiritually, 
 and shall renounce all force. For rectitude provides that every- 
 thing shall correspond to its essence and concept, and it de- 
 mands punishment when the spiritual has become carnal ; fur- 
 ther, if God as love wills that man should stand before Him not 
 as carnalis, but as spiritualis, it follows that, since sin and guilt 
 have entered the world, righteousness can be satisfied only by 
 the revelation of God's love being that of suffering, sin-bearing, 
 guilt-bearing, and at the same time substitutionary love, and that 
 in such a way as that the suffering Divine love shall assume all 
 the sin and guilt of man, shall comprehend in itself and absorb 
 in its holiness all that retained the first creation, so that all men 
 and every age of man, provided they have been in fellowship 
 with this revelation, should stand pure and holy before God and 
 themselves (iii. 20). But this brings us to the Anthropology of 
 Irena^us. According to him, freedom belongs to the concept of 
 man. God's love, in his view, as it were, woos man, because 
 it is only as we will it that we can have the gift of fellowship 
 with God. Hence man cannot be perfect TeXeto? from the 
 beginning, but only by degrees through training. Insensatum 
 esset bonum quod esset inexer citatum. We should also set little 
 value on the blessing of fellowship with God were we to obtain 
 it without freedom ; and with this it is not inconsistent, that in 
 order to full choice, man desires knowledge of what is set before 
 him, but can acquire knowledge of good and evil only by means 
 of experience (iv. 72, p. 387 ; 76, pp. 380, 381). Disciplinam 
 boni quemadmodum habere potuisset, ignorans quod est con- 
 trarium ? Firmior est enim et indubitata subjacientium appre- 
 hensio, quam ea, quse est ex suspicione conjectura. Mens per 
 utrorumque experimentum disciplinam boni accipiens firmior 
 efficitur. 1 God could on His part give us all as well from the 
 beginning, but we could not on ours receive it. A physical 
 good is in his view, consequently, of no or of little worth to men 
 (comp. iv. 71-74). Such stress does he lay on this freedom of 
 decision, that he, entirely dissenting from gnosticizing Ebionism, 
 does not place Adam very high, still less regards his condition 
 in Paradise as prototypal for us. Adam, indeed, was not made 
 1 Appendix, Note ZZZZ. 
 
316 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 sinful, but free, and greater than all of us (iv. 59) ; but there 
 could be no establishment there, Christ could not have been 
 received from the beginning ; and in this lies the position, that 
 the perfection of our nature becomes first possible through 
 Christ. He, however, as the second Adam, presupposes a first 
 creation. On this account the Son is in no wise dependent on 
 mankind, nor His incarnation on the free act of man (iii. 33), 
 but man in any case needs the incarnation. Whether man be 
 viewed dichometrically or trichometrically (comp. ii. 52 and 62 
 with v. 4, and especially 6), there must ever be reckoned as be- 
 longing to the concept of man the objective Divine irvev/ia, 
 which he must assume (v. 6), with which he must be conjoined, 
 that he may with this last momentum correspond wholly to his 
 concept. Antecedent to this, indeed, he is not without reason 
 or soul, — as man of the first creation he is Se/m/eo? of God and of 
 carnalia, i.e., he is free; but he is also not thereby perfect man. 
 Primum homines, deinde Dei (iv. 75, 76, v. 1) ; the latter, in 
 that the Divine irveQfut, belonging to our nature is freely assumed 
 by us men, or that we become true men. This participation of 
 the Spirit (which he also calls commixtio cum Verbo) Adam 
 could not have had, and so he stands far below Christ, the 
 second Adam (iv. 59, iii. 21). On the other hand, mighty as 
 the Son or Christ is, His appearance as a redeemer and per- 
 f ecter is conditioned by a first creation ; and since it is only by 
 free apprehension that man can enjoy that which belongs to 
 his concept, so it is on man's own account alike wise and right 
 that God should not immediately give him the highest boon, 
 and that, as respects redemption, a deliverance from guilt and 
 penalty such as instead of suadela should be (3la, — i.e., such as, 
 being spiritual, should be brought about in a non-spiritual, phy- 
 sical way, — was not possible. Hence it appears the Divine attri- 
 butes and the nature of man alike demand the spiritual process 
 by which Christ is changed into the likeness of man. 
 
 He has thus laid a basis not only for Christ's appearing in 
 humiliation, but, by means of the idea of the Divine rectitude, 
 also for His sufferings, namely, the necessity of a penal endur- 
 ance. In conclusion, he gives hints how this may turn out for 
 our good. 
 
 The concept of rectitude, which he was constrained by the 
 Gnostics, especially Marcion, more closely to perpend, de- 
 
IKENiEUS. 317 
 
 mands as well punishment for sin as that mankind should stand 
 before God not in an abnormal state, but according to its 
 normal development, and through that as well-pleasing to God. 
 Righteousness in the work of redemption is by no means with 
 him only the Divine, orderly method of this work, or its true 
 historical character (Duncker 1. c. 176 f.). This order may 
 belong to his idea of righteousness, but its main momentum is 
 formed by what is above named. 1 
 
 Humanity is since Adam's sin under the bondage of sin 
 and death, and cannot of itself come forth to eternal and divine 
 life. It was also impossible to change the once captivated, or to 
 suffer the sinner to enjoy salvation (iii. 20, p. 245). Now, that 
 truth might not fail, the Son appeared. If His coming as 
 man was needful because only so could we come into fellowship 
 with the immortal, the Divine one, not less needful was His be- 
 coming incarnate to suffer and die, when sin had to be taken 
 away. Here also righteousness forbade sin and death to be 
 immediately annihilated, or the abnormal development to be 
 viewed immediately as normal. A man had fallen ; a man must 
 make satisfaction. Thus only through the act of our race could 
 redemption come to be established ; for righteousness must hold 
 by our race. Now, none of the first birth were competent to 
 accomplish this act, to complete this undertaking. Neverthe- 
 less He who is conjpetent falls within the sphere of our race. 
 If to the concept of each of us belongs the participation of the 
 Spirit, there belongs also to humanity, as it is in God's idea, He 
 in whom the Spirit dwells without measure ; the fons Spiritus 
 Sancti (comp the 4th fragment, p. 469) is for all of us, inas- 
 much as and because in Him the Son became man. The Son 
 or Logos is the original type after which and to which man was 
 at first made. Thus from the beginning there belonged to the 
 essence of man a participation in Him, so that, so far from the 
 appearing of the original type among us, His copies, being pro- 
 nounced something contrary to the human nature or the idea 
 of humanity, the entrance of the original type is rather to be 
 viewed as bringing with it, for the first time, true and perfect 
 humanity (iv. 59, v. 16, iii. 21). 
 
 Hence he often says that the man bare and apprehended 
 1 Duncker (comp. p. 252 with 246) handles this concept with too little 
 precision and firmness 
 
'318 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 the Son of God (iii. 18, p. 240 ; v. 18, 20 comp. v. 8, 2 ; iii. 21, 
 iv. 37, 68, 75). It was not a Gnostic labes or ignorantia, nor 
 angels, that made the world, but God, who, bearing the world, 
 so made it that it could bear Him (v. 18), ue., as that it should 
 be susceptible from the beginning of an incarnation of God, 
 since it is by this that the creation begun in Adam is for the 
 first time completed and perfected. Hence he repeats, in view 
 of the earlier stages of the development of revelation, that the 
 human nature had by degrees to be accustomed to bear God ; 
 and also as respects the Word, he treats His earlier revelations 
 as a becoming of His incarnation, the end which from the be 
 ginning was to be reached (iv. 13, 14, 15, 17, 26, 27, v. 8, iii. 
 22, 33, 37). Now, if it belongs to love in general to act for 
 others, how much more to the Son, who is the revelation of love 
 (iii. 40, iv. 37) ? He can, however, assume the place of man 
 over against the law because He Himself is man, yea, huma- 
 nity in its entire intensity (compendium humani generis). He 
 comprehends humanity in Himself. 1 In Him has appeared the 
 original type with which humanity stands from the beginning 
 in essential vital connection, from which it sprang (iv. 37, 
 p. 330), and to have part in which, when it shall have become 
 real, completes each individual according to his concept (v. 1, 
 5, 6, 16). According to this, His history is the history of huma- 
 nity in its principle. And high as Irenseus places freedom, he 
 yet does not forget also the common basis of life. This, indeed, 
 as physical, has no power over us ; the Son, who is the basis of 
 our life, cannot save us j3ia ; but when He appears as Dilectio, 
 and so operates spiritually, He can, without disparagement to 
 righteousness, without annihilation of freedom, through the 
 power of love and His relationship to mankind, make their his- 
 tory His own, assume the caro inimica (iv. 14), gather the 
 e%6pa to Himself (iv. 78), and that in such a way as that this 
 same Dilectio, His personal righteousness, shall absorb and 
 abolish the e^0pa, sin and death. Justa caro reconciliavit earn 
 carnem, quae in peccato detinebatur ; and that by His assuming 
 no other caro than ours, the inimica. Thus are we in His 
 obedience ltrr\Kooi (v. 16), inasmucn as we believe, and in be- 
 lieving yield up the isolated personality (freedom of choice), 
 choosing Him, espousing ourselves to Him. 
 1 Appendix, Note AAAAA. 
 
IREN^US. 319 
 
 Mankind, in the wide distribution of itself, has taken an 
 abnormal direction. Hence salvation is, according to Irenseus, 
 a recapitulation of the history of mankind per oppositum. The 
 abnormal is rectified and secured by means of this, that ad- 
 vancing regressively, per recirculationem (iii. 33), even to the 
 beginning (recapitulendo longam expositionem generis humani, 
 iii. 20, p. 245), the same happens in a normal way in Him, and 
 through Him in whom is the idea of humanity itself. He must 
 join the end to the beginning, in order to unite in Himself all 
 peoples, tongues, and generations of men (iii. 33). Humanity, 
 however, is set forth as the normal man through the love of 
 Christ, which in that ideal regression to the beginning assumes 
 on itself all the sins, guilt, and punishment of men. This sin 
 and guilt it bears and expiates, and in this expiation there is ex- 
 hibited the holy humanity, that which suffers or that which 
 abolishes sin by its whole obedience (iii. 31, 20, iv. 37, v. 1, 16, 
 4245, Christus earn, quae in ligno facta fuerat, inobedientiam 
 per earn quae in ligno fuerat, obedientiam sanans). 
 
 After His infinite love, says he (L. v. praef. 3925), hath the 
 Word of God become what we are, in order that He might 
 make us what He is. Perfect in all things, as omnipotent 
 Word and real man He has in a spiritual way (i.e., not /3ia, 
 but rationabiliter) saved us, having given Himself up as a 
 ransom for those who are thus bound (v. 1). He has, full of 
 love, poured Himself forth to gather us into the bosom of the 
 Father (v. 2, 395). By the Spirit He has brought God to 
 men, and, on the other hand, has carried man to God by His 
 incarnation (v. 1, 393). God's glory is the living man (iv. 37, 
 p. 3335) ; man's life is the vision of God. Now, the Word 
 bare always in Himself the lineaments, as it were, of all future 
 things, and of all His revelations (p. 336a), and inclusively 
 also that economy by means of which men shall come to the 
 vision of God (332a), i.e., the incarnation, in which Christ re- 
 presented God to men and men to God (3336), espoused the end 
 to the beginning, man to God (3316). The Invisible became 
 visible, the Incomprehensible conceivable. He who was incapable 
 of suffering became liable to suffering, the Word became man 
 (iii. 18, 2416), uniting all in Himself and so also men, in ordei 
 that, as the Word is King in the supercelestial, invisible, and 
 spiritual sphere, so also He might take to Himself the rule in 
 
320 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 the visible and corporeal, and, placing Himself as Head of the 
 Church, might draw all to Himself at the right time. 
 
 By the doctrine of the incarnation all the doctrines of the 
 heretics are abolished. They utter what is foolish who would 
 make the appearance of Christ merely Doketic ; for then had 
 He made only a deceptive show, and the truth is not in Him 
 (iv. 1). Yain also is the declaration that our flesh is not capable 
 of receiving the immortal (v. 2). If He has not appeared, we 
 must await the appearance of another ; the old world (v. 14 : 
 antiqua plasmatio Adse) is rendered abortive, and we are not 
 saved (v. 1, 394). He was, therefore, what He seemed to be 
 (v. 1) ; He became what we are (iii. 32, 260a). But as we are 
 body from the earth, and soul which receives the Holy Ghost 
 from God, the Word has also become this, presenting His 
 creature as completed in Himself (in semetipsum recapitulans) ; 
 and hence He calls Himself Son of man (iii. 32, 260), the 
 principalis homo (v. 21, p. 432a ; iii. 18, v. 18). 
 
 He entered into Mary in order to take for Himself of her 
 substance : the old mass He must appropriate ; otherwise He 
 would not be similar to us (iii. 32). From the like substance 
 He has a body as we have ; else is He a stranger to us, and hath 
 not perfected man in Himself (v. 14, 421a). Had He His flesh 
 otherwise than from Mary, then is He not flesh. Caro enim 
 vere primas plasmationis a limo factae successio. He must be- 
 come that which had fallen. But this has flesh and blood ; and 
 consequently so also had Christ. 
 
 The soul of Christ was not especially called in question by 
 the Gnostics. Nevertheless in the above passage (iii. 32, 260a) 
 there is ascribed to Christ similarity with us in this respect. 
 And it will hardly do to regard yfrv^v as denoting the mere 
 principle of animal life. For when Irenseus says (v. 1), He 
 gave His <rct,p% for our acipf;, His tyvyr) for our '\jnj^al, the ■tyvyi) 
 no less than the aapl- of Christ must be taken in the same sense 
 as in us. But it is not probable that Irenseus would say that He 
 had redeemed our animal body, and not rather our soul also ; 
 and consequently yfrvj(r) here must mean soul, for which also 
 the plural i/w^at speaks. Nor is this an isolated statement with 
 Irenseus. He says (v. 14), caro Christi non peccavit, neque 
 inventus est dolus in anima ejus ; in iii. 32, p. 260, he adduces, 
 in pr )of of Christ's true humanity, the passage, Matt. xxvi. 38> 
 
IEEN^US. 321 
 
 "My soul is troubled;" and the passage, "He is not left in 
 Hades," is also referred to Christ (iii. 12, 225a). The Gnostics 
 think, he says, v. 31, 450, 451, that as soon as they die they 
 shall ascend above the heavens to the Demiurg. But the Lord 
 Himself was three days in Hades, as David had prophesied, 
 saying, "Thou hast delivered my soul from the lowermost 
 world." " The Lord remembered His saints who were dead, 
 and descended to them" (Eph. iv. 9). It deserves special note, 
 also, that in states which are opposed to the nature of the Logos, 
 as, e. gr., the temptation, he regards the Logos as resting in 
 Christ. For, since he views these states as not merely animal, 
 but as conscious (iii. 32, 260), there is presupposed for such 
 momenta as those in which the Logos is in repose, a human 
 consciousness, a soul. The fundamental thought, which is here 
 decisive, that Christ in order to redeem us must become what 
 we are, that the conquest of sin and of death might be the deed 
 of a man, is most clearly brought out ; and with this it would 
 be strange if there did not appear in him a progress in this to 
 something more definite. We have thus in Irenasus the fitting 
 transition to Tertullian's doctrine, which was still more precisely 
 formed through the opposition to it of the patripassian views 
 then coming into vogue. It is undeniable that in this matter 
 his peculiar anthropology was of service to Irena^us (see above). 
 A man is one who has a soul in a body, which soul is free 
 and receptive (he/cntcrf) of the carnal, the spiritual, the divine. 
 Through this his free soul man becomes a rational being, even 
 when through sinking himself in the carnal, he becomes brutish. 
 To his full concept, however, to his truth, it belongs that his 
 freedom shall accept the Divine Pneuma. Now, what this 
 Pneuma is in man, that was the Logos in Christ ; for a rational, 
 free human soul there is consequently room in Christ along 
 with the Logos, just as there is in men generally along with 
 the Pneuma. Hence the significancy which he finds in the 
 temptation of Christ (v. 21, 22, iii. 21). Whether the origin 
 of the soul by which man becomes a rational being is regarded 
 by Irenseus as by traduction or by creation, is, so far as our in- 
 quiry is concerned, of no moment. For the identity of Christ's 
 humanity with ours remains established in either case. 1 
 
 1 Hence it is a matter of indifference to us how Irenseus views the if/vxv 
 in relation to the tup* or eafta, hoymiu. The former is with him, besides, 
 VOL. I. X 
 
322 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 The more strenuously lie labours to show the thorough 
 identity of the humanity of Christ with ours (iii. 32), so much 
 the more does he seek to bring out His distinction from us. 
 
 " The Ebionites also," says he, v. 1, " talk foolishly, who do 
 not receive into their soul through faith the union of God and 
 man, but persist in the old leaven of a birth through which we 
 are heirs of death. They reject the mingling with heavenly 
 wine, and will to remain only earthly water, not receiving God 
 to mix with them. They thus adhere to him who has been sub- 
 dued and driven out of Paradise, Adam, not considering that, 
 as the Divine breath of life conjoined with Adam's frame pre- 
 sented a living rational being (animal rationale), so at the end 
 the Word of the Father and the Spirit conjoined, with the old 
 substance of the Adamic frame, produces a living and perfect 
 man, who apprehends the perfect Father ; so that we, who in 
 the living Adam have all died, might be all made alive in the 
 spiritual. For never did Adam escape the hands of God [the 
 Word and the Spirit], to which the Father said, Let us make 
 man after our image and likeness ! And in the end, not from 
 the will of the flesh, nor from the will of man, but according to 
 the Father's good pleasure, have His hands perfected the living 
 man in order that Adam might become according to God's 
 image and likeness." And v. 16, p. 424, he says: "It is said, 
 it is true, in past times, that man is in the image and likeness 
 of God, but this was not exhibited. For the Word was as yet 
 invisible, after the image (elicani) of which man was made. 
 Hence he easily lost his resemblance (opoiwfia). But when the 
 Word of God became flesh, then it certified both (iireicvpaiae). 
 For, on the one hand, He truly showed the, image (the original 
 type), since He became what his image was ; and, on the other, 
 established the similarity, the exact conformity of men, since He 
 
 the Xoy/xij £«)), the principle of the corporeal life. Comp. v. 4, 6-9. In 
 the former edition I brought into question whether the " soul of Christ " 
 ■was recognised by Irenseus. Further research, however, and closer con- 
 sideration of the above passages has convinced me that Irenseus distinctly 
 ascribes a soul to Christ, and this I years ago put down in the text. Since 
 then Duncker's work has appeared, and he, p. 206 ff., has, as it seems to 
 me, made this so evident, that henceforth it can hardly admit of a doubt. 
 He sets this forth in reply to me, but Irenseus himself had before convinced 
 me of it. So much the more have I cause to rejoice over the independent 
 agreement of our results. 
 
IEENiEUS. 323 
 
 made man like the invisible Father. He made Himself a man, 
 
 and men like Himself, that man by his resemblance to the Son 
 might become precious to the Father." 
 
 Christ is thus, according to Irenseus, a being not foreign to 
 mankind, but rather the representation of perfect humanity, the 
 idea on which Adam was at first created, but which was not 
 wrought out in Adam. As little, however, is He of the Adamic 
 race. He is truly conceived only as a descent of the Logos, 
 the primal type, into the world of those formed on His model, 
 in order to be in the world the real Head and Type (iii. 18, p. 
 2415). He was born of the Virgin without sin. 
 
 But since the Logos is elevated above becoming and suffer- 
 ing, and, on the contrary, the concept of freedom and growth 
 in man occupies so important a place with Irenseus, there arises 
 the difficult question : How does Irenaaus view the two as in 
 connection in the one person of Christ ? The medium of union, 
 according to him, is the Holy Ghost. It is not an adventitious 
 circumstance that both the Word and the Spirit are viewed by 
 him as operating in the incarnation ; this is for him altogether 
 a necessary determination. 
 
 The Holy Ghost, 1 who, according to Irenasus, inspires (in 
 different gradations) matter in general, does this especially for 
 men. Humanity would be like arid, parched land, falling to 
 pieces without unity, incapable of producing fruit, were it with- 
 out a moistening dew from heaven to keep together the mass 
 (i.e., without the inner bond). It would be like a dry tree, of 
 which the accuser could only demand the burning. The rain 
 
 1 When Baur (Trin. i. 179) finds a subordinational and montanistic doc- 
 trine of the Trinity in the words of the Presbyter in Irenseus, v. 36 : hane 
 esse adornationem et dispositionem eorum qui salvantur — et per hujus- 
 modi gradus proficere, et per Spiritum quidem ad filium, per filium autem 
 ascendere ad Patrem {he might also have adduced the passage still more 
 immediately appertaining to Irensaus, iv. 37, p. 3326), — he seems to have 
 overlooked that the passage speaks of a dispositio eorum qui salvantur, not 
 divinae naturse. It is not the Divine nature that makes progress (gradus), 
 but Christians. The same thought occurs iv. 37, and it is indeed clear 
 that a gradation in revelation belongs to a progress from step to step in 
 faith ; but this progress does not involve a gradation in the Divine essence 
 itself, still less the doctrine of an immanent Trinity besides the economic, 
 as a glance at iv. 37 shows. But how there is here anything of Montanism, 
 according to which the Paraclete is the last and highest revelation of God, 
 I cannot see. 
 
324 FIRST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 from heaven, the living water, the Holy Ghost, makes the dry 
 tree fruitful, produces the well-watered soil. He, aptans homi- 
 nem Deo (iii. 19, p. 244a), fits the human nature (adp/ca) to 
 receive the Son. And as He has already in the Prophets 
 accustomed men to the union of God with man, so hath He also 
 accustomed Himself with Christ to dwell in the race of man. 
 In the incarnation the Word and the Spirit so co-operated 
 (v. 1, p. 3946) that the Holy Ghost prepared the hominem spi- 
 ritalem (iii. 33), the second Adam, in which the Logos found 
 a man assimilated to Himself (ib.), who was His perfect organ. 
 This man, normal in every moment, gathered strength and 
 grew even in respect of the actual participation of the Spirit ; 
 and the baptism of Christ, which had reference only to His 
 humanity, is the perfect anointing of Him with the Holy 
 Ghost (iii. 10, 19). And now He is, even in His humanity, the 
 fountain of the Holy Ghost for all who believe in Him. Even 
 before Christ, whatever the Spirit wrought in men was also the 
 work of the Logos ; and Irenseus seems to view the relation of 
 the two in general, and also in the incarnation, in. such a way 
 as that he ascribes the Divine, in so far as it has become the 
 subjective actual Divine life of man, to the Holy Ghost, as the 
 principle of the /wpQaurR, as He Himself is called Figuratio 
 Dei and Sapientia ; whilst to the Logos he ascribes the creative 
 power itself which brings into being. Thus, in his view, the 
 agency of the Spirit presupposes the willing and working of the 
 Son ; and the second Adam, the spiritual Man, is not somehow 
 perfected by the Holy Ghost, before the Logos enters into Him 
 as into a place prepared for Him, but they act together, so as 
 that the formation of a living, nay, spiritual man, is only the 
 realization of the Son's will in love and power to become in him 
 a man. This may be also thus expressed : What in a later age 
 was called communicatio idiomatum, was in the earliest age 
 ascribed to the co-working of the Holy Ghost with the Son. 
 So in the Pastor of Hermas and by Clement of Alexandria. 
 
 It specially deserves notice that Irenseus seems, by this 
 agency of the Spirit in reference to humanity, to gain space for 
 a relative independence of the humanity of Christ, such as is 
 demanded by the concept of temptation, suffering, human 
 growth. Without detriment to the indissoluble unio of the 
 Logos with man, there is obtained from his positions the possii 
 
IREN.EUS. 325 
 
 bility of thinking the incarnation as by the fundamental act 
 not completed but begun. The idea of incarnation with him is, 
 that Christ is the presentation and reality of the original type, 
 or the Logos actually in a man ; that the principalis homo, the 
 second Adam, is nothing but the primitive in the momentum of 
 actuality. Now, since the primitive type has no becoming 
 (werden), still less liability to temptation, whilst in his view 
 the becoming of Christ is so important, it follows immediately 
 from his premisses that the incarnation of the primitive type 
 cannot be thought by him as one finished. In every moment, 
 indeed, of His earthly life, Christ is the invisible become visible 
 (iii. 21) ; and, as the light of the Father entered into the hu- 
 manity of the Lord, so it comes beaming forth from Him on 
 us (iv. 37, p. 331a) ; but that the humanity of Christ was from 
 the first adequate to the Logos, and thereby to its proper idea, 
 is denied expressly by his laying so much stress on the baptism 
 and temptation of Christ (see above). If, on the other hand, 
 there be taken in addition to this, the decision with which he 
 vindicates the concept of growth and freedom to the race of man, 
 there is desiderated therewith a relative independence of the 
 humanity of Christ ; and the perfected incarnation, the full 
 reality of that idea, according to which the man has assimilated 
 to himself the Word (Verbum homo assimilatus est), comes to 
 pass only in the exalted state of Christ ; not merely in appear- 
 ance, but objectively. In fact, his doctrine concerning the rjav- 
 Xa^eiv of the Logos, e. gr., in the temptation, leads to this. He 
 represses as yet His activity in its full compass, in order that the 
 free human development of Christ, His susceptibility of tempta- 
 tion, may find scope; consequently he leaves the humanity during 
 the earthly life of Christ still in a relative independence ; and 
 the process of the incarnation is an advancing one, until with 
 the perfecting of men both factors absolutely coincide. During 
 the period of the process it is the Pneuma, which unfolds itself 
 out of the Logos, in measure suited to each stage, in the hu- 
 manity of Christ, forms the humanity and brings it to an actual 
 existence, and also secures and mediates the union of the hu- 
 manity with the Logos Himself for the time during which the 
 former needs still a relative independence in order to have a 
 true human development. The idea of humanity, however, as 
 well as that of the incarnation of the Logos, is realized to 
 
326 FIEST PERIOD. SECOND EPOCH. 
 
 Irenseus in Christ's exaltation, although before that, at each 
 step of the development, Christ was a perfect man, i.e., one who 
 presented the norm and idea of each age in the life of man. 
 And He now preserves for ever humanity equalized with the 
 Logos, but not absorbed thereby; He will return to judgment 
 as the Son of man ; He went to heaven evcrapicos, and so will 
 He again appear (iii. 18, pp. 242-245). 1 
 
 1 Appendix, Note BBBBB. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 NOTES. 
 Note A, page 20. 
 
 In what follows, Philo's system will be considered principally 
 in the light of the Messianic idea, — a course, the justice of which 
 appears at once, when a correct view is taken of his very variously 
 estimated doctrine of the Logos. — Compare Dahne's " Ge- 
 schichtliche Darstellung der judisch-alexandrinischen Religions- 
 philosophie," 1834 (reviewed by Baur in the " Jahrbiicher fur 
 wissenschaftliche Kritik," 1835, November Number, pp. 95 f.) ; 
 Gfrorer's " Philo und die alexandrinische Theosophie," Stuttg. 
 1831 ; Grossmann's " Qusstiones Philoneas," Leipzig 1829 ; 
 L. A. Simson's " Summa Theolog. Joann. Diss." 1839, pp. 
 28-64 ; Georgii's Essay, " iiber die neuesten Gegensatze in 
 Auffassung der alexandrinischen Religionsphilosophie, ins beson- 
 dere des jiidischen Alexandrinismus," in Illgen's " Zeitschrift fur 
 historische Theologie," 1839, Parts 3 and 4; Dr Ed. v. Mu- 
 ralt's " Untersuchungen iiber Philo in Beziehung auf die der 
 (petersb.) Akademie gehorige Handschrift von 27 Tractaten 
 desselben, vorgelesen d. 5 Juni 1840;" Semisch's " Justin der 
 Martyrer,' ; vol. ii. 1842, pp. 267-274; Baur's "Die christliche 
 Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit und Menschwerdung Gottes," 1841, 
 vol.i., pp. 59-76; Baur's "Christliche Gnosis," 1835, pp. 42 ff.; 
 Liicke's " Commentar zum Evangelium Johannis," 3d ed., 
 vol. i. 253, 272 ff. (where also the older literature of this sub- 
 ject is given) ; A. Franck's " Die Kabbala, oder die Religions- 
 philosophie der Hebraer" (translated from the French by 
 Ad. Gelinek, Leipzig 1844, specially pp. 215-249) ; Eitter's 
 
328 APPENDIX. 
 
 " Geschichte der Philosophie" iv. 418, 446 ff. ; Neander's 
 " Church History," vol. i. ; not to mention expositions, at second- 
 hand, like that of Strauss in his " Kritik der christlichen Glau- 
 benslehre" i. 414 f.— The different views taken of Philo's 
 system appear to be gradually converging towards the one, 
 namely, that it is compounded of heterogeneous elements, and 
 that it carries out the old distinction between the revealed and 
 the hidden God, in a peculiar manner : — in the view of Liicke 
 (page 253), the theologumena of Wisdom and of the Word meet 
 and unite in the Logos, whom Philo distinguishes from God ; 
 in the view of others, the Logos of Philo was, in the last in- 
 stance, a purely ideal potence. (G. A. Meier, for example, in 
 his " Geschichte d. Lehre v. der Trinitat," vol. i., pp. 20 ff., 
 maintains that the Logos of Philo is a mere abstraction, the 
 idea of the world ; he concedes to it merely theoretical signifi- 
 cance.) The controversy relates principally to the following 
 questions : — ■ 
 
 I. Whether the Logos of Philo was a mere personification 
 or a real hypostasis ? Many of the more recent writers have 
 decided in favour of the latter alternative : for example, be- 
 sides Grossmann, Dahne, Gfrorer, Bitter, Liicke (page 279), 
 Semisch (page 274), also some of the older authors, as Keil 
 and Ballenstedt. Still Liicke has not failed to see that the 
 counter-arguments advanced by the Reviewer of the works of 
 Grossmann and Gfrorer in the Leipziger Litteratur-Zeitung 
 (see No. 126, pp. 1001 f., 1831 ; No. 255, pp. 2029 ff.) have 
 great weight. Simson, von Muralt, partially also Franck and 
 others, are opposed to the writers just mentioned. Both Liicke 
 and Semisch allow that Philo is not always self-consistent ; see 
 the remarks of the latter on the passage cited page 274 : " Philo, 
 it is true, does not throughout strictly recognise the personality 
 of the Logos ; sometimes, he apparently reduces it from the rank 
 of a person to that of a mere attribute," and so forth. — Lticke 
 brings together as completely as possible the arguments for the 
 personality of Philo's Logos : — 1. Philo terms the Logos ap%ar/- 
 yeXos. But he designates him also dp%i,epev<;, TrapdickrjTos ; and 
 Liicke allows that these words prove as little as <T(pparyl<; or Seo - - 
 p,6<;. Further, even supposing ap^dyyelwi should be taken in 
 the same sense as the Old Testament angels alluded to by Philo, 
 still these latter are so identified with the ISiai, Xoyoi, Swa/ieis. 
 
NOTES. 329 
 
 that their personality is often questionable. Nay more, as the 
 Logos, again, is represented as the unity of these Swa/neis or 
 ayyeXoi, instead of arguing, — because the angels are personal, 
 therefore the Logos also is personal ; the reverse course of argu- 
 ment might with equal justice be adopted, namely, either the 
 Logos is personal, and then the angels relatively to Him are not 
 personal, but the impersonal powers, of which He is the unity ; 
 or the angels are personal, and then the Logos, who is their 
 unity, is not personal. 2. Philo designates the Logos Sevrepos 
 0eo? (see Euseb. Prsep. Evang. vii. 13). But he immediately 
 adds, that he merely says that catachrestically ; for a SevTepos 
 @eo? would be, in his view, strictly speaking, a contradictio in 
 adjecto. The passage unquestionably relates to a less perfect 
 divine element, which is capable of coming into contact with 
 the world, whereas the highest divine element cannot do so. 
 But whether this less perfect divine element is personal, or 
 merely one aspect of God, to which in thought a kind of inde- 
 pendent existence is attributed, — the aspect, namely, of revela- 
 tion which, without being actually personal, may be personified, 
 — is not thereby decided. For, do not even more modern writers 
 speak of something in God which is not God, — of God in alte- 
 reity, and so forth % 3. The Logos is the image of God ; but 
 God is persona], therefore also the Logos. But the body of 
 man also is the reflex of his spirit ; and a mirror reflects back 
 the form. The Logos is undoubtedly living ; but so also are 
 impersonal forces. Besides, by the same line of argument, we 
 should be fully justified in asserting all nature to be personal, 
 on the ground that the Logos, whose reflex it is, is personal. 
 4. To these considerations some add (for example, Semisch) 
 the argumentation from the idea of the Logos as the being who 
 mediates between God and the world. Liicke himself, however, 
 rightly felt that the idea of mediator (ap%iepev<;) proves nothing. 
 Even God Himself, in one aspect of His nature, could effect 
 the mediation at which Philo aimed. Such a mediation is 
 not ethical, but simply physical or metaphysical. Baur acknow- 
 ledges the existence of a totally unreconciled contradiction in 
 Philo's system : in his view, indeed, it contains two systems — 
 a God who has no power at all to reveal Himself ; and again 
 a world, which, through the Logos, is a revelation of God (p. 63). 
 This Logos, Baur concludes to be, on the one hand, hyposta- 
 
330 APPENDIX. 
 
 tical ; in that he distinguishes between Him and <to<j>ui, repre- 
 senting the latter as an attribute of the Most High God, along 
 with the two others, subordinated to it, namely, power and good- 
 ness. Out of these three, specially out of wisdom, the Logos 
 was an hypostatic outflow. The ao^ia in God holds the same 
 relation to the Logos, as the X070? iv8i,d6eTos in man to the 
 X.0705 Trpo<f)opi,ic6s. But how anything more than the veritable 
 reality of the Logos can be deduced from this relation — how 
 His existence as a subject can be deduced therefrom, is not 
 shown. Nay more, Baur has failed to prove even that a settled 
 distinction was made between the Logos and ao<f>la : in order 
 to do this, he must point out passages where the latter is repre- 
 sented as speaking, creating ; and the former, as a creature, — 
 ideas which lay far beyond Philo's horizon. On the other hand, 
 Baur considers Philo's Logos again to be a completely empty, 
 formal conception ; he holds Him to be the idea of the world or 
 the world conceived as an unity, — on which supposition every- 
 thing would assume a nominalistic character (p. 74). In the 
 judgment of Franck also, the one system of Philo really embraces 
 two. He, however, postulates, in addition to the Hellenic factor, 
 a cabbalistic one, derived from Persia : in my view, on the con- 
 trary, all the main peculiarities of Philo's system may be ex- 
 plained by the conflict between the Hellenic Absolute, which 
 appeared to Philo infinitely exalted and imposing, and the Old 
 Testament conception of God. Unlike Plotinus, he did not 
 take his stand firmly and alone on the Absolute, the bv ; but, 
 however strong a hold that Hellenic idea had on him, the Old 
 Testament conception of God still retained an influence. His 
 endeavours to adapt the latter to the former, deemed by him to 
 be the higher, involved his whole system in a chaotic circling 
 and vacillation. He sinks under the undertaking to prove the 
 religion of the Old Testament to be identical with that of the 
 Hellenic Absolute, whose glory consists in the fact, that every- 
 thing besides it is a mere shadow of its own glory, which it shuts 
 up within itself. He thus sacrifices the ethical absoluteness or 
 exaltedness of God to a physical absoluteness, in the fancy that 
 he is thereby serving the interests of deoTrpeireia. But though 
 he makes this sacrifice, he never arrives at the goal of his wishes, 
 because the other factor, his empirical starting-point, was reli- 
 gion ; and the justification of his religion as the absolutely true 
 
NOTES. 331 
 
 one, ever remained his main object. It is true, he puts a new 
 construction on it, he universalizes and dissipates it, in order to 
 honour it ; notwithstanding this, he was unwilling to arrive at 
 the conclusion, that God alone really exists, or that there is no- 
 thing but the absolute idea and the knowledge of it. On the 
 contrary, his constant aim was the union of philosophy and reli- 
 gion, understanding by religion that of the Old Testament, 
 rightly understood and viewed in its inmost substance. How- 
 ever different these views may appear, all will without difficulty 
 allow that the Logos, if actually hypostatized by Philo, must 
 have been regarded solely as a being standing outside of the 
 Divine sphere, separated from and subordinated to God. If 
 Philo had the idea of creation, then, in case he hypostatized the 
 Logos, he must have held Him to be a creature, as did the 
 Arians at a later period. He does not, however, represent Him 
 as a mere creature, but as an emanation ; and thus apparently 
 approaches nearer to the Christian idea, which found expression 
 at a subsequent period in the term 6/ioovcria. In reality, how- 
 ever, an emanatistic conception of God stands nearer to heathen- 
 ism than to Christianity ; and in the very nature of the case, an 
 emanatistic personality is always characterized by a measure of 
 vagueness and shiftingness. And, inasmuch as a difference is 
 scarcely discoverable between an emanatistic conception of arche- 
 type, and the revealed, in distinction from the hidden, God, it 
 matters very little whether, w T ith Liicke, we hold the Logos of 
 Philo to be hypostatized, that is, after an emanatistic manner ; 
 or, deny the presence of a Divine hypostasis in Philo's system, 
 at the same time conceding the distinction between the revealed 
 and hidden God. The question respecting the personality of 
 the Logos of Philo is of a much narrower interest than is often 
 supposed, and may, to a certain extent, be described as a qua?stio 
 vexata ; for it lay entirely beyond his range of vision ; and as 
 the physical categories to which he confines himself shut out 
 every conception of personality, it was quite impossible for him 
 to answer it. 
 
 II. The second question is, — Whether Philo's Logos (what- 
 ever may be its relation to hypostasis) can be conceived as truly 
 Divine ? This question has been partially answered in the course 
 of the preceding remarks. We have, above all things, to ask, 
 whether Philo's conception of God Himself is truly Divine, or 
 
332, APPENDIX. 
 
 whether it is not rather physical % If the latter, its incompati- 
 bility with Christianity is manifest at the very outset. In the 
 Sphere which is subject to categories derived from nature, it is 
 impossible that full justice should be done, either to the dis- 
 tinctions or to the unity (compare, for example, the categories 
 of ground and existence, thing and its qualities, essence and 
 phenomenon, whole and parts, force and expression, substance 
 and accident, in the second volume of Hegel's "Logik"). 
 Accordingly, if Philo has not the true conception of God, his 
 Logos must of necessity be destitute of true divinity. But even 
 the Divine, according to Philo's idea of it, in which all things 
 are one, cannot really pertain to his Logos. For that which 
 he esteems the best and inmost part of God is incommunicable ; 
 or, regarded from another point of view, the Absolute acknow- 
 ledged by Philo, does not admit of distinctions in the inmost 
 Divine sphere, but merely has a circle of rays, a world of light 
 round itself, in which it is reflected : that is the Divine in its 
 aspect as a revelation, comprehended and summed up in the 
 Logos. Compare the " De Cherub." § 28, ed. Richter ; 
 Mangey i. 156. 
 
 Note B, page 21. 
 
 Compare "QuodDeus sit immutabilis," § 11, p. 281, Richter 
 ii. 77, — T&v avdpcoTrwv ol fiev "^tn^?, ol Se aa>fiaro<; yeyova&t 
 <f>{\oi. Ol [lev ovv ^u^? eralpoi votjtcu$ km, aawfidTOi<; <f>vcrecriv 
 ivofiiXeiv Bvvdfievoi, ovBefiLa tcov yeyovoTcov ISea TrapaftaKkovai 
 to ov aW ifi^i^aaavre'i avro TrdaTji ttoiottjto'; — ttjv Kara 
 to elvai fiovov cpavTaaiav evehe^avro, fxr] /j,op(pd>aavTe<; avro. 
 That is blessedness and the acme of joy, to think the yjnX^v 
 avev ■xapaKTrjpo'i ©eov vwapgiv. Lovers of the body, on the con- 
 trary, are unable to conceive God's pure simple nature ; they 
 conceive Him therefore as themselves (" de prsem. et poen." 6, 
 T. ii. 414, Richter v. 226). 
 
 Note C, page 22. 
 
 Compare "de Somn." i. 25 (T. i. 644). Jacob saw the 
 Lord in a dream, the ap%ayye\o<; inrepdva) yap to? appMTO*; 
 r\vloypv, fj a>? veto? KvfiepvtfTrjv, {nroXrjTTTeov "o-Taadcu to *Op, 
 eVl awfiaTav, iirl ifrvx&v, iirl OpefifiaTav, eVt \oycov, eVl ay- 
 
NOTES 333 
 
 yeKwv, 67rt <y?5?, etc. e7r alo-0T)TiKa>v Bvvd/ieav, eV dopaTwv (pv- 
 creoiv bcrairep Oeara Kal dBeara. Tov ydp Koafiov diravra e^dtyas 
 eavrov Kal avapTTjcras ttjv Too-avrrjv rjvioyeZ <f>vciv. 
 
 Note D, page 22. 
 
 "De confus. ling." § 27 ; Mangey, T. i. 425. On Genesis 
 xi. 5, " The Lord descended, to look at the city." It was thus 
 spoken on account of our dxf>e\eia. 'Tito Be tov Qeov ire-irkr)- 
 pasrat rd iravra, TrepteypvTOS ov irepieyofievov, a> iravTayov tb /cal 
 ovBa/^ov o-vfi^ej3r]Kev elvai fiova. He is nowhere, in so far as 
 it is impossible for Him to be in any space, who has produced 
 both space and that which is corporeal : He is everywhere, 
 oti t«? Bwd/j,ei<; avrov Bid yrjs Kal vBaros, depos -re Kal oipavov 
 reivas p.epo<; ovBev eprjfiov ayrroXeXonre tov Koafiov, irdvTa Be 
 o-vvarywycov Bid irdvTav dopants §<r^t<y£e Beo~p.oZ<;. " De Cherub." 
 § 24, Mangey, T. i. 153 : — "IBiov Qeov to iroielv b ov Oe/u? 
 iTTiypd-^rao-Oai <yevvr)Ta> (not therefore to the Logos, so far as He 
 was 'yej'MjTO?) 'iBiov Be yevvryrov to irdo-yeiv. 
 
 Note E, page 22. 
 
 Compare " De Cher." § 24, not. 17 ; but especially the "de 
 opificio mundi," T. i. 2, § 2. Ma>var]$ eyvto, oti dvayicaioTaTov 
 io-Tiv iv rot? ovo-i, to jAev elvai Bpacrrripiov a'lTiov, to Be TraQtyn- 
 kov. Kal oti to p,ev Bpao-Trjpiov 6 twv oXcov vovs eo-Tiv elkiKpv- 
 veo-TaTO<; Kal aKpai<f>veo-TaTO<;, KpeiTTiov Te rj dpeTr], icai KpeiTTCov 
 r) hrio-Trniii, Kal KpeiTTav r\ avTo to dyaOov, i) avTo to koXov 
 to Be iraOrfTiKov, atyvypv Kal aKivrjTov i£ eavTov, Kiwfiev Be Kal 
 a-yTjfiaTio-Oev Kal ■tyvywOev inrb tov vov, p,eTej3aXev ei? to TeXeto- 
 TaTov epyov, TovBe tov koct/iov. On the other hand, in the 
 " de opificio mundi," § 5, he remarks, el <ydp rts edeXrjo-eie Trjv 
 aiTiav, 7)<; eveica ToBe to irav eBrj/uovpyeiTO, Biepevvdadai, BoKel 
 /ioi fir) BiafiapTelv tov o-kottov <pd/j,evo<;, birep Kai twv apyauov 
 el-ire ti<? dya6bv elvai tov iraTepa Kal TroirjTtjv o5 ydpw ttji 
 dpio-T7]<i aiiTOV (^ucreco? ovk e^>66vr]aev ovala, p,r)B e'£ eavTrj<; 
 eyovo-y koXov, Bvvapevr) Be yevecrdai vdvTa. Matter is airoio*}, 
 ctyvyps in itself ; nay further, aTaKTos, dav/Mpavias, etc., fieo-Tr), 
 but susceptible of being animated by a soul and reduced to 
 harmony. 
 
334 APPENDIX. 
 
 Note F, page 23. 
 
 The soul is an aTroa-Traa/ia t?5? Oeias ical evSat/iovos tJw^?}? ov 
 SicupeTov. Tifiverat >yap ovSev rov 6e(ov K(vt anrapT7\<TW, aWa 
 fiovov i/CTeiveTM. Quod deterior potiori insidietur, § 24, T. i. 
 209. One might now imagine, that Philo did after all con- 
 ceive the soul to be personal, although he describes it as a mere 
 extension of God ; and that the Logos, therefore, was personal. 
 That would be correct, if Philo had not been necessitated to re- 
 gard the personality of man as a limit imposed by the body — a 
 limit from which the Logos is free. Compare the " De Leg. 
 Alleg." ii. 21, Mangey, T. i. 82 : tj d/cpoTO/Ao? Trerpay rj aofyia 
 rov Qeov iariv, ijv aicpav ical irpariarvfl) erepev dirb rcov eavrov 
 Svvd/xeav, etc. ; where the word erefiev must be explained in 
 agreement with the above passage. 
 
 Note G, page 23. 
 
 An attentive reading of "De Somn." L. i. § 37-41, T. i. 
 655'ff., leads to the conclusion, that in Philo's estimation, the 
 idea of a Divine duality or plurality owes its rise to the inferi- 
 ority of the point of view of him who entertains it : it originates 
 with the <f>avraata, as he elsewhere designates it (" de Abrah." 
 § 24, 25) ; and this holds true, he expressly says, of a Logos 
 alongside of God. This <f>avTaaia, he undoubtedly does not 
 regard as purely arbitrary, as something merely subjective ; for 
 the one God manifests Himself in different ways, for the benefit 
 of individuals, in order that at all stages they may be able to 
 apprehend something of Him. For this reason, this appearance 
 does not absolutely vanish, even on the highest stage of con- 
 templation, that is, of true contemplation. But it continues no 
 longer to be regarded as the highest ; still less does the mind 
 believe in the existence of two Divine persons : on the contrary, 
 the Most High God appeared and was, in the form of the Logos, 
 as the principle properly constitutive of the personality ; the 
 Logos, therefore, can only be regarded as the personal God, so 
 long as the Most High God is not , known. When once He is 
 known, the Logos cannot be conceived to be anything more 
 than the revelation of God, without any independent Divine 
 hypostasis of His own. 
 
NOTES. 335 
 
 Note H, page 23. 
 
 u Be Agricult." § 12, Mangey, T. i. 309, o TrpcoToyovo*; uto? ; 
 " de confus. ling." § 28, 6 irpanoyovo'i X070?; § 14, TrpecrfivraTOS 
 u('o? ; " de conf. ling." §§ 20, 28, and " quis rerum divin. hse- 
 res," § 48, elicd>v, " de somn." i. 39, T. i. 656, 0eo?; but, in 
 distinction from o 0eo9, we can only speak catachrestically 
 (Kara-^prjCFTLKo'i = misapplied) of more than one. In the same 
 sense also is the expression Sei/re/jo? @eo<j, in Eusebius' " Prasp. 
 Evang." vii. 13, to be taken. He is a mediator, when He is 
 termed (as in " Quis rerum div. hser." § 42, T. i. 502) jueo-os 
 ra)v aicpaiv, dfi<j)OTepot,<; o/Mijpevccv, because He is neither ungene- 
 rated like God, nor generated like men. Compare " de somn." 
 ii. 28, T. i. 683, 684, el to dXrjdes ehreiv Set, fieBopios tk @eov 
 (pvaK tov fiev eKaTTccv, dvdpdnrov he KpeiTTtov. " Who is He 
 then, if He is not man ? God ? That I should not like to say, 
 for Moses received that name when he was designated in Egypt 
 Pharaoh's god (that is, because it would be ethnic) ; but also not 
 man. He is the one who touches both extremes, the basis and 
 the apex " (that is, He is not a particular Divine person, but 
 God, as the one who diffuses Himself, as the living). He is 
 termed dp%iepev<;, ibid. § 27 ; " de profug." § 21. Through 
 Him God constitutes Himself the means or the mediation of 
 creation ; He did not need another besides Himself (" de mundi 
 opif ." § 6, T. i. 5) ; — to suppose that a creature can create, would 
 be a sin (" de Cherub." T. i. 153, § 24). Philo does not at all 
 regard Him as a creature ; but, on the contrary, as the guardian 
 of the boundary between the creature and the Creator. " Quis 
 rerum div. hay." § 42. In the same treatise He is also desig- 
 nated l/cirris, 7r/36o-/8ei/T^? ; as in the " de vita Moysis " iii. 14, 
 T. ii. 155, TrapdicKr)To<i. Like God, He is further termed dp^dy- 
 yeXos, Tjvlo'xp*;, ^yeficov. But also in relation to God the Soga 
 (" de somn." i. 40, etc.), <r K ih of God (" Leg. Alleg." iii. 31, 
 T. i. 106), aicia Qeov 6 X070? avrov eanv, a> KaGdirep 6pydva> 
 irpocryprjcrdfievo'; eKoafioirolei. Avttj Be rj gkicl teal to waavel airei- 
 KovicrfjLa erkpav ianv dpyervrrov. In His relation to the world, 
 also, impersonal designations are frequently applied to Him ; 
 besides opyavov, we find also acppcvyk, hea/x6<; tcoafiov, vo/ws, the 
 arrfKr) on which the All rests, the towo? or the .fmyrpairokv; of 
 the universe, the Ihea t&v ISe&v, equivalent to yevt,K<!>Ta,To<; \6yo$ 
 
336 APPENDIX. 
 
 in the " de mundi opificio," § 6, T. i. 5 ; " de migrat. Abr." 
 § 18, T. i. 452, — iicelvr) p,ev rj o-j>payh IBia ianv ISe&v, icaff ryv o 
 0eo? erxnrwae top koct/xov, dccbp,aTO<; Btfirov km voryrrj. 
 
 Note I, page 24. 
 
 Philo uses \6yos as identical also with vovs, both in man and 
 in God. So in the " de opificio mundi " (see above), to pkv 
 Bpaarrjpiov 6 r&v oXcov vov? etrnv, etc., where he attributes to the 
 vovs what he elsewhere attributes to the \6yos. In God Him- 
 self (see the " de migr. Abr." § 1, T. 1, 437), the Logos is desig- 
 nated the house, the dwelling-place, or the hearth (eo-ria) of 
 the Divine vovs ; it denotes, therefore, the fixed ideal centre of 
 God. The j/ou? consequently signifies the active principle, that 
 which elsewhere is termed \6yos. The X070S is the resting- 
 place of the world, also of the ideal world ; He is its two?, or 
 its possibility (" de mundi opific." § 5), ovBe 6 i/c t&p IBe&v icocr- 
 ao? aXKov av e^pi tottov, rj tov Oelov \6yov. All the Bwd/jLeis 
 also dwell in Him ; so also the Bvvafus Koo-fuiirotrjTiKr), which 
 must be the source of the truly good, has its seat (that is, its foun- 
 tain) in Him (ibid.). The X0705, in this respect, is identical 
 with the cro$ia.— In the " De Ebriet." § 8, T. i. 361, the eW 
 arr)iLt) of the Creator is represented as the Mother of created 
 things, even as God is the Father. Copulating with it, though 
 not after the manner of a man, God effected the generation and 
 birth of the world (ecnreipe yeveatv) ; " receiving into itself the 
 seed of God, it gave birth to the only, beloved Son of God, this 
 visible world." " Quod Deus sit immutabilis," § 6, T. i. 277, — 
 O Be iraTrjp /cat re^Uirr)? teal iirtrpoTro'; tSw iv ovpavm re real 
 KoaiMp 7T/30? akrjOeiav e'er™ (scil. 0eo?). The ideal world is the 
 elder, the visible world is the younger, son of God ; time is the 
 son of the world, and the grandson of God. 
 
 Note J, page 24. 
 
 " De vita Moys." L. iii. § 13, T. ii. 154 :— AtirXovv Be to 
 Xoyeiov ovk airo (tkottov. Altto<; yap 6 "Kayos iv re tco ftavTt 
 ical iv dvdpdoTTOv <j>vo-ei. Kara fiev ro itolv o,tb irepl tg>v cutco- 
 liarwv ical •jrapaBetr/p.ariKMV lBea>v, e£ av 6 pottos eirdyr) /coayio?, 
 ical Trepl r&v oparwv, a Brj fti/trf/iara ical mreiKovla^ara tu>v 
 IBe&v eiceLvcov icrriv. In this passage, the Logos is first described 
 in His relation to the ideal world ; — be it that He is represented 
 
NOTES. 337 
 
 as, as It were, the ideal material of which it was formed, or as 
 its formative principle. If the former, " de confus. ling." 
 T. i. 414, may be compared, where we read, — " The eldest Son 
 "imitated the ways of His Father, and, looking upon His arche- 
 typal images, created the forms (of the actual world) ;" — which 
 passage proves that the ideal world is in the vov<} of the Father, 
 that the Father is its producer, and that consequently the Logos, 
 when the same thing is attributed to Him, must be simply and 
 solely the Father's 1/01/9. In that case, all that remains for the 
 elder Son is to be the principle of the visible world. At this 
 point, for the first time, the question might be asked^-Is not the 
 Son, whom the Father yevvfj, avareXket, for the yeve<ri<; of the 
 world, an hypostasis 1 On the second supposition, namely, that 
 the Logos denoted the primal formative principle, we must bear 
 in mind that God also is described as the producer of the ideal 
 world, and that the Logos, therefore, must be identical with the 
 understanding of God, which conceives the idea of the world. 
 The second portion of the passage really does represent the 
 Logos as the actual principle of the real world. But then, 
 again, Philo quite as frequently considers God alone to be the 
 Father of the All (see below). 
 
 Note K, page 25. 
 
 According to the fragment in A. Mai vii. 98 b., he sees 
 everywhere in the actual world discord and strife. He speaks 
 differently, it is true, in the work " de incorrupt, mundi," — for 
 example, T. ii. pp. 495, 496. The only way of explaining the 
 inconsistency is to distinguish between a lower and a higher 
 view of the world, — a distinction which is repeatedly hinted at ; 
 —for example, " de Abrah." § 24, T. ii. pp. 18, 19 ; " de mu- 
 tand. nomin." § 3, T. i. 581 ; " de prEemiis" ii. 415 ; " quod Deus 
 sit immutabilis," T. i. 281-283. Compare Note B, page 21. 
 
 Note L, page 27. 
 
 He speaks, it is true, frequently of the ar/adorr]*; of God, 
 which takes pity on matter, and is the motive of the creation or 
 the formation of the world (for example, " de mundi opificio," 
 § 5, T. i. 5) ; but it is inaccurate and premature to identify 
 this aya86TT)<; with love. 'AyaBoTT)*; has more the character of 
 physical goodness. Further, if there had been no vKrj (the ex- 
 VOL. 1. Y 
 
338 APPENDIX. 
 
 istence of which Philo represents as contingent, relatively to, 
 because independent of, God), there would have been no cause 
 for compassion. Accordingly, he never advances beyond the 
 view of the creation of the world as something contingent. He 
 takes, it is true, a feeble step to a better view — feeble, because 
 it is not ethical, but rather pagan in character — when he re- 
 marks, that inactivity and solitude would be as good as death to 
 God. 
 
 Note M, page 29. 
 
 " De profugis," § 20, T. i. 562. Baur's gradation (1. c. 
 68 ff.) : — 1. Wisdom (God), with the fundamental forces of 
 goodness and power ; 2. Logos, — in the second stage corre- 
 sponding to ao<pia, — with 0eo? and icvpios — corresponding to 
 goodness and power in the first stage : — I do not find to be 
 strictly observed by Philo, on the one hand ; and, on the other 
 hand, it no more proves that he considered the Logos to have a 
 special personality, than that a particular thought (\6yos Trpeer- 
 fivTepoi) is something personal relatively to the act of thinking, 
 or that a word (X0705 irpofyopucos) is personal relatively to a 
 thought. That the determinations, power and goodness, along 
 with wisdom, play a very important part in Philo' s system, we 
 shall see further on ; they are important, however, not merely 
 relatively to the inner essence of God, — indeed, strictly speaking, 
 they are not at all important in that relation, — but he regards 
 them as potences, Bvvdp,et<; (T. ii. 261 ; " de sacrificant," § 13 ; 
 " de profug." § 18 ff., T. i. 560 ff.), having a significance, also, 
 relatively to the Divine activity. But of that essence of God, 
 on the one hand, no attribute is predicable ; whilst, on the other 
 hand, it must be presupposed as the source of all attributes, 
 though it itself posits no distinctions within itself. 
 
 Note N, page 30. 
 
 To this connection belongs the question, whether Philo ap- 
 plies to the Divine Logos itself the distinction between the \0709 
 evStaderos and the \6>yo<; irpofyopiico*;. He makes use of the fol- 
 lowing words in the " de vita Moysis," T. ii. L. iii. p. 154 : — 
 u Two Logoses are to be distinguished, both in relation to the 
 All, and in relation to man. In relation to the All, namely, we 
 must distinguish between that Logos which stands related to the 
 
NOTES. 339 
 
 incorporeal, archetypal ideas, of which the ideal world was com- 
 pounded, and that Logos which stands related to visible things, 
 to the imitations and copies of those ideas. In man, however, 
 we must distinguish between the X070S evSidOeros and the Xoyo? 
 •jrpo<f)opiKo<;, — discourse which is still immanent (thought), and 
 uttered discourse." In Philo's view, undoubtedly, both pairs 
 must answer to each other ; and he never wearies of carrying 
 out this relation of resemblance between the Logos and man. 
 By the \6<yo<; ivSidderos in man, however, he cannot mean rea- 
 son in a state of rest, but reason in its immanent activity — the 
 world of human thoughts, which corresponds to the /eoa/tos 
 yo7?T05 of the Logos. Thus apprehended, the distinction between 
 the Xdiyo? ivhiddero<; and the \070s Trpofyopucb<;, entirely in 
 Philo's sense, may unhesitatingly, nay more, must, in any case, 
 be substantially, transferred to the Divine Logos ; and it is to be 
 regarded as quite accidental that Philo did not, like some sub- 
 sequent writers, apply the distinction himself. The spirit of the 
 application he undoubtedly has, in that he teaches that, along- 
 side of God, in Himself, there is the Logos in the above-men- 
 tioned twofold relation. But these two relations of the Logos 
 are related to each other precisely as the Logos is related to 
 God as He is in Himself, who is so often termed His Father. 
 It pertains to the nature of likeness to God, that this relation, 
 to wit, the self-distinction which is immanent in all life, should 
 recur at every f^esh stage. 
 
 Note O, page 37. 
 
 " De opificio mundi," p. 18. Evils, as the consequence of 
 sin, he cannot of course deny ; but so far as he refers them to 
 God, he teaches that their sole end and aim is the benefit of 
 man (T. i. 306 ; " de agricult." § 9 ; " de opif. mundi," T. i. 
 19) ; and he represents the task of repentance to be the remind- 
 ing men of their own crvfi<f>epop. Hence also he defines the 
 righteousness of God to be the crar^piov, not of the Divine law, 
 of the unconditionally good, but of man and the world in its 
 parts (see the fragment, T. ii. 664). In accordance with this, 
 must the KoXaariKrj Swapis also, which he attributes to the *Ov, 
 be explained. Of the same character is his physical, and neither 
 ethical nor religious, demonstration of the providence and care 
 s>f God for us (T. i. ; de " opificio mundi," pp. 41-42) :— That a 
 
340 APPENDIX. 
 
 father should care for his child is <f>v<rea><; vofwis xal Oeo-fwU 
 avar/icatov. 
 
 Note P, page 38. 
 
 For this reason also, he terms the Scriptures Xoyo? 6eto<s 
 (" de migr. Abr." § 31, T. i. 463). We ought to be content 
 with even the ar/pa^a edr) of his nation, as they are, and to 
 make no alterations in them. (" De justit." I.e.) We must re- 
 member that these aypafya e6r) are the traditions, in particular, 
 of the Jewish people, in order to estimate how far his feeling for, 
 and interest in, development and history had died out, in con- 
 sequence of his reduction of Hebrew ethics to Hellenic physics. 
 
 Note Q, page 41. 
 
 In proof that the fundamental philosophic or theosophic idea 
 of Valentin and Basilides belongs to the same family as Philo, 
 compare the "Ov of Philo with the /3v66<; ; the Gnostic irkypafia 
 with the /c6cfw<s wwjto? ; his conversion of the angels into l&eai, 
 Swa/ieis, nay, even into categories, with the Gnostic doctrine of 
 the ^Eons ; the sympathy of God for the vXrj, with the compas- 
 sion of the o-aorijp for the sufferings of the Achamoth. Add 
 further to these things, the negative asceticism, and the lauda- 
 tion of knowledge. But special reference should be made to 
 his doctrine of the creation of man. Here, where he touches 
 on the point which had so much engaged the attention of the 
 Gnostics, — the question, namely, of the origin of evil, — his 
 system shows, of very necessity, a leaning to the answer given by 
 Gnosticism ; for the fault of imperfection and sin is thrown, in 
 an emanatistic manner, on lower creative powers, — which powers 
 are represented by Gnosticism as gathered into a focus in the 
 Demiurge. The difference between the two arises, partly from 
 the Christian element held by the Gnostics, and partly from 
 their taking a more lively interest in the question of the origin 
 of evil. That those who succeeded Philo did not rest contented 
 with the vacillating personifications of the ISeai contained in 
 his system, but went on to represent those IBeai as individual 
 beings, may perhaps have been due to the circumstance that 
 the historical fact of Christianity compelled them to view the 
 Xptarbs, to whom was assigned so distinguished a position 
 among the l&iai, as an actual personal phenomenon. But to 
 
NOTES. 341 
 
 represent the Pleroma as filled with personalities — with the, aa 
 it were, condensed potences of Philo — was to posit that mytho- 
 logical process, through the teaching of which Gnostics appear 
 to stand nearer to heathenism, and to which there are many 
 analogous elements even in Philo (compare Frank 1. c. pp. 
 222, 227). We find repeated here the very same thing that 
 must be remarked in the history of religion in general. Apostasy 
 from a monotheism of a character still thoroughly indefinite to 
 personal gods, is, on the other hand, to be regarded also as a 
 step in advance. For the union of substance and subject is the 
 proper goal of the idea of God. A monotheism of mere sub- 
 stance is no better than a polytheism, in which there is a super- 
 fluity of divine personalities. The Christian conception of God 
 first presented us with the union of the two momenta. It is 
 worthy of note, that according to an old report given by Irenseus, 
 the earlier Gnostics were still more closely allied to Philo, and 
 that the disciples of Valentin first taught the concrescence of 
 the wpofioXas into determinate persons, outside of the Pleroma. 
 
 Note E, page 43. 
 
 Gfrorer, in the above-mentioned work, notwithstanding all the 
 pains he has taken, and all the historical license he has permitted 
 himself, has not prevailed upon me to alter the proposition with 
 which I have concluded the above argument. Nor has he been 
 able to bring to light one passage, in which an incarnation of 
 the veritably divine was taught prior to the coming of Christ, 
 even if we should regard his proofs of the age of the religious 
 ideas of the Jews as more valid than the German public holds 
 them to be. Indeed, in the way of all attempts whatever to 
 derive the fundamental idea of Christianity from Judaism, the 
 undeniable fact, that during the first centuries an unbroken 
 series of attacks on the deity of Christ proceeded from Jews 
 and Judaizing Christians, appears to me to present a very great 
 difficulty — a difficulty, too, not set aside by Gfrorer. Heathen 
 Christians, on the contrary, and those who shared Hellenic 
 culture, took less offence at the doctrine. The testimony of 
 Justin Martyr (c. Tryph. c. 48), which Origen, in particular, 
 confirmed by his approval, may therefore be regarded as in- 
 vincible — the testimony, namely, that the Jews say, — Kai tyap 
 wdvTes i^et? rbv ypiaTov avOpanrov e'| dvOpanrwv TrpoaSoiccbfj.ev 
 
342 APPENDIX. 
 
 yevtfcreaBai, koI top , H\lav ^piaui avrop ekBovra. Without re- 
 sorting for help to Hellenic, and in general to heathenish, ele- 
 ments, which had been appropriated by Jewish writers, he 
 could never hope to discover the idea of an incarnation of 
 God within the domain of Judaism. But the advantage which 
 he might gain in this way (an advantage, be it observed, which 
 he does not altogether despise), is more than counterbalanced, 
 in that a deadly blow is given to the professed tenacity and 
 coherence of Jewish tradition, which forms the chief ground- 
 work of his proof of the great age of the religious ideas of the 
 Jews, by the undeniable — undeniable for any one with a true 
 feeling for the historical — penetration of foreign elements into 
 Jewish modes of thought. It is further clear from what has 
 been advanced, that an appeal to heathenism is by no means 
 sufficient to overthrow the claim to originality put forth by 
 Christianity, relatively to the true idea of the God-man. In this 
 case, as indeed in general, philosophy had neither the ability 
 nor the duty to anticipate reality, though it is able, and it is its 
 duty, to understand the reality when given. The Hellenic re- 
 ligion had not, in its gods, that true divinity which we behold 
 in Christ ; and, though the philosophy of heathendom awakened 
 the consciousness of the Absolute, the incarnation of God ap- 
 peared to it incompatible with that Absolute, even as the fact 
 appeared incredible to the Jews. The mixture of Hellenic and 
 Hebraic elements in Alexandrian and Hellenic Judaism, the 
 influence of which was undoubtedly felt in Palestine also, must, 
 it is true, have served to help forward the development of 
 the Old Testament idea of the Chochma, and thus to weaken 
 the metaphysical antagonism between God and the world ; and 
 we may be allowed to assume, that this was one of the things 
 ordained to prepare the way for the incarnation of God in 
 Christ. But even on that supposition, Judaism did not advance 
 beyond the dilemma, that the revealing principle must either be 
 conceived to be personal, — and then it is no longer truly divine, 
 but a creature, as, for example, an archangel, Adam, Messias, 
 and so forth ; or, if it be held to be truly divine, it is of so uni- 
 versal and indistinct a character, that its incarnation in an in- 
 dividual is inconceivable, and that, so far as it is veritably 
 divine, it threatens ever to fall back into the avroBeos, who 
 cannot become incarnate, nay more, who cannot even directly 
 
KOTES. 343 
 
 reveal Himself. From all this, Philo constitutes no excep- 
 tion. 
 
 Note S, page 47. 
 
 Baumgarten Orusius's "Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte" 
 ii. 1030. Two things must be recognised as historical facts : — 
 firstly, that faith in the deity of Christ owed its origin far less 
 to existing opinions and testimonies, than to a deep and elevated 
 feeling produced by the spectacle of that which Christ had been, 
 which He had done, and which he was constantly doing in the 
 Church, and in the souls of His disciples : secondly, that for this 
 reason, this faith was in no sense dependent on the apotheoses of 
 heathendom, or indeed, in general, on anything which apper- 
 tained to polytheism. In the note at the same place he remarks, 
 — "As far as existing opinions were concerned, we must at all 
 events maintain that there were no Jewish ones, which could have 
 given rise to, or helped forward, this doctrine." Immediately 
 thereupon is cited the above-mentioned passage (p. 36) from 
 Justin Martyr (c. Tryph. c. 48). In accordance therewith, how- 
 ever, and with what was advanced above, we must reduce it to its 
 limited truth in relation to Christology, when he says (p. 1129), 
 " Not even Jewish, much less heathenish, usage presented any 
 difficulty whatever, in the way of representing the Divine and 
 human as united in one being and life." For, such a divinity, 
 as satisfied the Christian mind, neither heathenish nor Jewish 
 modes of thought were able to attribute to a man. 
 
 Note T, page 49. 
 
 By assigning to that which is canonical, in distinction from 
 that which forms part of the history of dogmas, the position 
 above indicated, we secure the advantage, that the historical 
 development of dogmas starts with that which is most general 
 and indeterminate, and constantly advances to that which is 
 more determinate. (The higher forms even of the canonical, 
 did not rest satisfied with that indeterminateness.) The time 
 that followed immediately on the Apostles, was far from equalling 
 that of the Apostles. On the contrary, beginning with that 
 which is most indeterminate, that is, dogmatically regarded, at 
 the lowest stage possible in the domain of Christianity, when 
 Christian truth had, as it were, abased itself, by going back to 
 
S44 APPENDIX. 
 
 the form of a germ, that period initiated the entire process of 
 the thought of the Church in the most thorough manner possible. 
 "We may learn from this fact, that the Christian principle was 
 meant to become a natural thing in, not to be substituted in the 
 place of, the then existing world. The development was not to 
 take a sudden leap ; Christianity was not to be planted in the 
 world as a young tree, but as a seed which enclosed the entire 
 future within itself. 
 
 Note U, page 49. 
 
 The remark just made seems to me to contain the reply to 
 the difficult question of the relation between heresy and ortho- 
 doxy ; a question which is of special importance at the present 
 time, and which the Reviewer in the " Hallische Jahrbiicher" 
 has made it specially incumbent on me to consider. The said 
 Reviewer, to whom I owe many thanks, is quite right in main- 
 taining that most of the so-called heresies ought to be regardeu 
 as momenta of the dogmatic process of the Church itself. But 
 their claim to this position rests not on that which is erroneous 
 in them, even though the error should consist merely m the iso- 
 lation of a true element, but solely on the Christian truth embo- 
 died in and asserted by them. To the idea of an heresy, there- 
 fore, is necessary the acknowledgment by it, of the truth of the 
 fundamental idea of Christianity. For otherwise it falls tinder 
 the category of the heathenish or Jewish, on which the light of 
 Christianity has merely fallen : as such, it is perhaps right that 
 it should be cursorily mentioned in histories of the Church and 
 of Christian dogmas ; but it can never be termed an integrant 
 moment in the work of the formation of Christian dogmas, 
 unless we deny that in Christianity there is anything new and 
 whole, and derive it entirely from that which went before it. 
 On this supposition, which certainly cannot be that of the 
 Reviewer, the idea of heresy would be widened to such an 
 extent, that everything which belongs at all to the sphere of 
 religion, whether in Judaism or heathenism, would have to be 
 treated as a Christian heresy; a view, to which indeed the 
 historian of heresies, Epiphanius, and others, have approximated 
 as nearly as possible, but which can scarcely secure the appro- 
 bation of more cultivated and scientific minds. Applying this 
 to the well-known heretical compass of Schleiermacher, we 
 
NOTES. 345 
 
 shall say, — Strict pantheism and deism (materialism) occupy- 
 too low a stage, to merit the name of heresies : and the appel- 
 lation can only be employed when, alongside of religion in 
 general, the fundamental presupposition of Christianity is also 
 recognised. This presupposition may be viewed either objec- 
 tively, that is, Christologically, or subjectively, that is, anthro- 
 pologically. Each of these two forms contains the other within 
 itself, in such a manner, that the element which is still lacking 
 or misunderstood, will, with irresistible necessity, be supple- 
 mented from that which is actually recognised ; and if such a 
 supplementing does not take place, the element once recognised 
 will perish, in consequence of the reaction of the error with 
 which it is associated. The result would be, not an heresy, but 
 a complete lack of the Christian. That which is healthy may 
 effect the healing of the unhealthy, because that which is 
 healthy, wherever it exists at all, is the vehicle and bearer of 
 the virtue of the whole ; but where the healthy is overpowered 
 by the unhealthy element, Christian truth has either entirely 
 ceased to exist, or has never attained an actual existence. In 
 which case it is absurd to speak of heresy. The old Pelagianism 
 was an heresy, because it preserved the fundamental presupposi- 
 tion of Christianity in its objective, Christological form; the 
 same is quite as frequently true also of the later Manichseism. 
 Ebionism also was a heresy, so long as it retained, at all events, 
 an idea of the work of Christ for, and in humanity, from which 
 might flow the regeneration of its Christology. In a similar 
 position, too, was Docetism. But when the recognition of our 
 deliverance by Christ is absent either from the creed or the 
 doctrinal system, and, at the same time, the one or the other of 
 the constitutive momenta of His person, as the Redeemer, is 
 entirely denied, there, of a certainty, Christianity no longer 
 exists. For there is no third form, under which Christianity 
 might still exist or be preserved ; the history of dogmas, at all 
 events, knows of no such third form. And were it conceivable 
 that a man could preserve Christianity in his heart, in the 
 immediate and primary domain of religion, whilst in the domain 
 of the understanding he denied the fundamental presupposition 
 of Christianity, both in its objective and subjective form, he 
 would occupy, as to his thought, a position outside of Chris- 
 tianity, and would, therefore, be no subject for the history of 
 
346 APPENDIX. 
 
 Christian dogmas, until, at all events in one aspect, the life of 
 his heart and the life of his intellect had been brought into 
 accord. Until then, however, he could not lay claim even to 
 the title of heretic. The succeeding discussion will be guided 
 by these principles. From them the following conclusions may 
 be drawn. 
 
 I. There can be no word of heresy, save where a Christian 
 element is recognised, to which it forms the antagonism. That 
 which is, in itself, one and the same error, both within and 
 without the domain of Christianity, cannot be termed an heresy 
 unless it has come into more than a merely external contact 
 with Christianity, until the two have entered into a relation 
 of reciprocity to each other. 
 
 II. All heresies originate in the extra-Christian world; 
 and even the apparent exaggerations of Christianity are, not 
 merely in another aspect, but essentially, a lagging behind true 
 Christianity. For this reason, Christianity cannot have sprung 
 from heresies and their mutual interpenetration; but Christianity 
 is the truth whose existence is to be presupposed, and behind 
 which heresies lag, one in one manner, and another in another 
 manner ; nay more, Christianity is the power which must in 
 some sense dwell in heresies, with, at all events, partial inte- 
 grity, in order that they may continue to be properly heresies. 
 
 III. This Christian truth may possibly have attained to 
 clearness in the minds of some of the members of the Church, 
 whilst to others it still remains dim : should this be the case, 
 the latter must be referred to the former for cure, and from 
 them must receive what they need, but can give nothing in 
 return. Of such a nature the great heresies of old were not, 
 in so far as the Church itself undeniably arrived at a more dis- 
 tinct consciousness of Christian truth through its struggle with 
 them. These old heresies represented with peculiar clearness 
 of consciousness one momentum of Christian truth ; but their 
 tendency was to give this one momentum the importance of the 
 whole : they were not overcome until the Church itself had 
 learnt from them the lesson they were meant to teach, till the 
 element of truth, through which the error allied with it first be- 
 came dangerous, had been incorporated with, or, more correctly 
 speaking, had been developed out of, the general Christian con- 
 sciousness. For Christian truth is never arrived at by a way of 
 
NOTES. 347 
 
 combination, but solely by the unfolding of the plastic principle, 
 of the germ, in which the whole lies infolded, and which either 
 actually exists, or does not exist, and cannot be compounded. 
 With the first-mentioned kind of heretics the healing art of the 
 Church has to do ; in the second alone does the history of dog- 
 mas take an interest. 
 
 Now, as we cannot hesitate to consider heresies, in the sense 
 just given, to be momenta in the development of the Church's 
 truth ; nay more, to say that heretics, so far as they actually 
 recognise the fundamental presupposition of Christianity, not 
 merely with the intellect, but also with the heart, are not to be 
 excluded from the Church according to the Protestant idea 
 thereof, although they are to be deemed sick members ; as, 
 further, heresies in general cannot be completely and justly esti- 
 mated by the standard of the particular temporary form of the 
 Church with which they are severally confronted, but can only 
 be judged by the standard of Christian truth itself, or by the 
 Church, at a stage when it has set forth, definitely and without 
 ambiguity, the element of truth which those heresies repre- 
 sented : even so is it inadmissible to imagine the Church ever 
 to have been constituted solely of opposed heresies, and the truth 
 which united the extremes nowhere to have had an actual ex- 
 istence on earth, but to have been merely, as it were, the idea 
 hovering over, and guiding, the process. In the manner of de- 
 terminate knowledge, to which a course of conciliatory thought is 
 necessary, this truth did not, it is true, exist prior to the work of 
 the reflective intellect ; but it cannot, therefore, be said to have 
 been totally destitute of reality. Such a view, rigidly carried out 
 through the entire sphere of Christian history, would lead to an 
 aimless progressus in infinitum, of which the mere formal move- 
 ment is in itself the end, and would imply that Christian truth 
 is first generated and posited by the reflective and conciliative 
 intellect. How was it possible, save abstractly considered, that 
 Christian truth, in entrusting itself to humanity, should meet 
 solely with persons who would apprehend it heretically, that is, 
 who would put one momentum in the place of the whole ; and 
 that it should secure a higher form of existence, solely through 
 the medium of an exchange brought about by the conflict of 
 two extremes ? This, however, is by no means required by the 
 idea of humanity, or of historical development. An historical 
 
34& APPENDIX. 
 
 development, on the contrary, will more surely and happily 
 attain to its goal, and an end will be put to that continual flux 
 of one heresy into another, which is unavoidable so long as 
 they are left to themselves, when between the two extremes 
 there stands a middle power, which, from the very beginning, 
 in its own manner, aims at the same object as the heresies, and 
 evinces the tendency — a tendency, undoubtedly, fully developed 
 through the medium of the extremes — to seek that which shall 
 furnish a point of union for the two extremes. That such a 
 middle tendency at all times existed in the Church, may be 
 historically demonstrated : it is traceable primarily in the sphere 
 of simple faith, which, though predominantly concerned with 
 the practical, stands in an inner connection with Christian know- 
 ledge. In these regions, it is as certain that the unadulterated 
 fundamental presupposition of Christianity, to wit, that in Christ 
 the Divine and human were united, or that the eternal re- 
 demption had been historically effected, was always recognised, 
 as that there always existed redeemed men and a true Church 
 of Christ on earth. The very idea of heresy in the aforemen- 
 tioned sense requires that it have errors in doctrine ; as heresy, it 
 is a disease of Christian knowledge. Diseases of the life of faith, 
 by themselves, are not heresies ; and it is possible that the life of 
 faith may be in an, at all events, relatively healthy state, even 
 whilst the intellect is yielding to heresy, — not, however, for a long 
 period. This relative independence of the two spheres must not 
 be denied to faith, whilst at the same time it is allowed to be 
 pleaded in favour of heresies. But we must confess, what is 
 also the fact, namely, that the tendency to the development of the 
 intellectual aspect does not stir with equal force in all believers ; 
 many, on the contrary, content themselves, without its therefore 
 being right to designate their faith false, with that elementary 
 knowledge which is identical with faith itself, and of which here- 
 tics cannot be destitute if they expect to be considered, in the 
 true sense, members of the Church. The position occupied by 
 such believers relatively to knowledge, may, it is true, be marked 
 by imperfection ; nay more, such a relation to knowledge, may 
 keep their faith in a lower condition, and easily become a disease; 
 and lastly, it may be possible for such simple believers to fall 
 into error the moment they follow the example of heretics, and 
 devote greater attention to the aspect of knowledge : still, their 
 
NOTES. 349 
 
 fault lies in a direction quite different from that of heretics, 
 properly so called ; and their strength consists in their faithfully- 
 preserving that basis of irtaTis, without which heresy can never 
 be freed from itself. Whenever heresies have arrived at a 
 more developed stage, they take up in pairs, as two extremes, 
 a position of antagonism to that Christian truth which, in its 
 immediate spiritual reality, is the possession of all simple prac- 
 tical believers ; and just this simple faith is fitted to ward off 
 or to lay bare, as decidedly as possible, both those intellectual 
 errors; even though its first aim, in discharging this office, 
 should simply be to bring their advocates back to itself. Now 
 this faith, which is the common starting-point of all Christian 
 heretics who deserve the name, even when they bear opposite 
 characters, will rise up and testify against them. But something 
 more is necessary than the mere negation of the error ; nor will 
 it be enough merely to repeat the truth, which had previously 
 been received as authoritative, but a combination must be 
 effected, in the form of distinct knowledge, of those momenta 
 which, in the heresies, had come into antagonism to each other, 
 and into antagonism to the truth. For this is precisely the sig- 
 nificance of important heresies, that they cannot suffer the faith 
 to remain indifferent to them ; on the contrary, inasmuch as even 
 opposed heresies always agree on one point, to wit, in maintaining 
 that the two momenta of the truth, of which each of the extremes 
 represents and embodies one, are incompatible with each other, 
 whereas faith, without ceasing to be the vehicle and bearer of the 
 truth, cannot concede the alleged incompatibility, faith finds it- 
 self compelled to undertake the reflective conciliation of the 
 momenta. As the result of such efforts, it not merely secures 
 itself in the position it held before, but grows in inner determin- 
 ateness. But whenever faith withdraws from the task thus im- 
 posed upon it, it becomes crippled itself, and its earlier lack of 
 knowledge degenerates into error and becomes chargeable as 
 a fault ; for the principle of Christianity never stiffers its re- 
 presentatives to stagnate until it has itself undergone a change. 
 Those portions of the Christian body, which fail in the duty re- 
 ferred to, cease, in consequence, to participate in the general 
 movement of the Church, and are left behind in the form of 
 sects. Three factors, consequently, and not merely two — that is, 
 two opposed heresies — take part in the process through which 
 
350 APPENDIX. 
 
 the history of dogmas passes. No one of these factors can plead 
 quite guiltless when heresies arise. ^Relatively to its opposite 
 extreme, each of the respective heresies is completely justifiable : 
 and even simple faith cannot altogether excuse itself ; for it left 
 over to heresy a field which it ought to have cultivated itself. 
 But quite as clear is it that heresies will never convert each 
 other ; for they can scarcely possess the power to effect a conver- 
 sion to anything besides themselves ; and if it should happen 
 that one heresy effected a conversion in the domain of the other, 
 the persons alone would have altered their position, the heresies 
 would remain. Faith alone possesses the unmutilated power 
 and virtue of the whole : it is not under the sway of the prin- 
 ciple of isolation and exclusiveness, as are heresies ; in virtue of 
 the love whose roots it bears within itself, it is, above all, capable 
 of appreciating even antagonistic elements, of thus confessing 
 the collective guilt, and also of atoning it and gaining the vio 
 tory, through fetching up that which had been neglected. Now, 
 so far as faith is the constitutive element of the Church in the 
 true sense of the word ; and so far as faith and not heresy effects 
 the subjugation of error, and leads the dogma to a higher stage 
 (which would still be the case even if a heretic should attain 
 deliverance from error through the reaction of the healthy ele- 
 ment in his own system) ; we may say with justice, and in a 
 thoroughly Protestant spirit, that the representatives of faith, 
 which is the original and practical element of Christianity, even 
 though they should be, in the first instance, devoid of science 
 and dogmatic culture, constitute the Church ; and that the ten- 
 dency embodied in them, always conquering, as it does in the 
 aforementioned way, and never dying out in any generation, is 
 the true churchly tendency. Heretics, on the contrary, so far 
 as they are heretics, and have not preserved the faith, are ex- 
 cluded from the Church, according to its true idea, even though 
 they should be externally included within it. Heresy, there- 
 fore, is freed from error by means of faith ; and faith is freed 
 from its lack of conciliative or reflective knowledge through 
 the solicitations of heresy. 
 
 Note V, page 64. 
 
 As in other respects, so also in this, James, rightly under- 
 stood, is most decidedly opposed to Catholicism, although it 
 
NOTES. 351 
 
 would fain constitute him its representative. With this his lofty 
 idea of the dignity and essential equality of all Christians in 
 divine freedom, is connected all that he says against the self- 
 exaltation of individuals, whether on the ground of higher wis- 
 dom, of rank, or of riches ; and the traces of Ebionitism, which 
 some profess to find in his estimate of riches and so forth, are 
 due solely to misunderstanding, and to the practice of drawing 
 conclusions from isolated passages, without the consideration 
 of the entire connection. Such a depreciation of wealth as is 
 contained in James's Epistle, is not the sign of a mind lacking 
 Christian force and substance ; but, conscious that the treasure 
 of Christianity is superior to all riches (ii. 5), he cannot but ex- 
 press his displeasure against those who aimed at restoring dis- 
 tinctions which belonged to an ante-Christian period, and which 
 threaten the royal liberty of all. — Compare i. 9, ii. 1, 5, 7, 15 
 ff., iv. 1, 3, v. 1-6, iii. 17, i. 27. 
 
 Note W, page 70. 
 
 I believe myself under the necessity of deciding in favour 
 of the latter ; though I by no means intend to attribute to Peter 
 the doctrine of the Logos as a pre-existent hypostatic being. 
 My reasons are the following : — 
 
 I. But a few verses further on (ii. 4) he designates Christ 
 \idos %5n>; compare verse 7, and therewith i. 23, \6709 0eov 
 £Si/ ical fieveov. 
 
 II. Verse 23 thus becomes at once more pregnant and clearer. 
 The sense will then be — the pqfxa, \6yos 0eov, to which such lofty 
 predicates belong, that is, Christ, is to be understood by the prj/j,a 
 evcvyyeXicrdiv, or the f ormer is the content which gives the latter 
 its power and influence. According to the other explanation, 
 the sense would merely be — the word of God abides eternally : 
 consequently, also, the joyful message brought to you ; for it 
 also is the word of God. (Compare Heb. iv. 12, 13, v. 11.) 
 
 III. The sense thus obtained does not in any way transcend 
 Peter's point of view. It is, on the contrary, a mere following 
 out of the Hebrew theologomenon of niiT 131: the Logos of 
 Peter is not that of Philo or the Hellenists, to wit, reason ; but, 
 in a genuinely Hebrew spirit, the revelation of God, the power- 
 fully operative word of the Creator : Heb. xi. 3, i: 3. The de- 
 signation itself is partly suggested by Gen. i., and partly by 
 
352 APPENDIX. 
 
 the standing title given to the law ; for the name almost 
 always given to the law was, " Word of God." In this histo- 
 rical connection, nothing was more natural than to designate 
 Christ also a Word of God ; nay more, as the consummation 
 of revelation, He was " the Word of God," that is, the perfect 
 revelation made in an human, personal (Saw), abiding (jiivav) 
 form. According to this designation, it is true, Christ would 
 be the word spoken, rather than the speaker ; and He is, for the 
 first time, more distinctly described as the latter in the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews (L 4), and in the Gospel of John (i. 18). But 
 even this latter designation would be nothing more than natural 
 from the pens of men who had drawn their culture and ideas 
 from the Old Testament. I cannot forbear here remarking in 
 general, that far too little effort has been made to follow out the 
 traces of a gradual formation of the doctrine of the Logos within 
 the New Testament Canon, although this ought to have been of 
 the first tasks. Many look upon John's doctrine of the Logos as 
 something foreign and strange, as a problem which can only be 
 solved by tracing it to extra-biblical sources, to such as Philo and 
 so forth. This procedure is only justifiable on the supposition 
 that there is no family resemblance whatever between the Logos 
 and other phenomena within the limits of Christianity. That 
 such a family resemblance exists, I maintain, because I am un- 
 able to discover the Hellenic idea of " reason " even in John's 
 doctrine of the Logos. From James (i. 18, 21) and the Sy- 
 noptics onwards to Peter ; and further, from Peter to the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews (iv. 12 ff.), the Apocalypse, and the Gospel of 
 John, the doctrine of the Logos may be shown to have pursued 
 a gradual, progressive, and connected course. 
 
 Note X, page 73. 
 
 The author appears to me to have been a Jewish Christian, 
 who was acquainted with, and recognised, Paul ; without, how 
 ever, making Paul's doctrine of faith and works the centre 
 of his own system. His antagonists were probably Gentile 
 Christians, a degeneration of the tendency of Paul, and, in 
 their antinomianism, forerunners of Cerdon and Marcion, 
 Their affinity with Gnostic elements is particularly evident from 
 their polemic against eschatological doctrines (c. 3); in agree- 
 ment therewith also, are the features of the second chapter. 
 
NOTES. 353 
 
 The views of the author himself were influenced, both nega- 
 tively and positively, by the antagonists with whom he had to 
 deal. They were influenced negatively, so far as this letter was 
 the fruit of the reaction of his Christian spirit against the 
 laxity, which led to the mixing up of the Church with the 
 world — a laxity which seized hold of the minds of many, as soon 
 as they found that the realization of their eschatological expec- 
 tations was postponed. Montanism may perhaps be regarded as a 
 continuation of this reaction; but, both in an ethical and an escha- 
 tological respect, it exaggerated expectation, until it assumed 
 an heretical form (compare also 2 Peter i. 19-21). That they 
 were probably influenced positively, we may judge from the 
 stress which the writer, in common with his antagonists, lays on 
 Christian knowledge ; though he differs from them in refusing 
 to let go his hold on, and even giving great prominence to, his- 
 torical tradition (i. 14-18, ii. 21, iii. 2, 15). In fact, he even 
 goes so far as to distinguish two classes of men, or two stadia in 
 the history of the same men. The first stadium is the ■rrporpe- 
 %eiv on the Tra/saSoo-t? of the Apostles. It is the duty of every 
 man to abide in this stadium until the second stadium shall be 
 initiated by the aid of Divine 8vva/ii<; (i. 19). This is historical 
 faith. The second stadium is the rise of the morning star in the 
 heart, the break of the day or of the higher consciousness (i. 19 ; 
 compare Jude 19). That is the true gnosis (i. 5), the fruit of 
 faith ; whereas false teachers possess merely a show of wisdom 
 (ii. 17, 18), and have fallen away from the 7ra/3aSoe7ts of the 
 Apostles (ii. 21, 22). Finally, as with wisdom, so also is it with 
 freedom (ii. 19) and with the nobility of human nature. That 
 of which heretics make a boast, and of which they in reality 
 possess the contrary (£o$os rov gkotovs, ii. 17, i. 9, blindness, 
 shortsightedness, forgetfulness, hovXeta, ii. 19, and degradation 
 to the level of a spiritless animal nature), is really possessed by 
 Christians (i. 3-8). In the knowledge of Christ they have 
 wisdom, all the fulness of spiritual blessings ; nay more, they 
 are partakers of Divine nature (i. 4). The last point is parti- 
 cularly noteworthy. The author, in teaching such a participa- 
 tion, shows that he has passed beyond the Jewish separation be- 
 tween God and the world ; that a mighty revolution of Jewish 
 conceptions has been brought about (compare Acts xvii. 28), 
 by the knowledge that the union of the Divine and human had 
 VOL. i. 7, 
 
354 APPENDIX 
 
 been actually accomplished in Christ. At the same time, when 
 we take into consideration i. 19, and the slight notice taken of 
 the doctrine of the atonement of Christ (which occupies so im- 
 portant a place in the First Epistle of Peter), we see clearly 
 that the writer attached higher importance to the Christ in 
 us than to the Christ for us. By consequence, he was able 
 to recognise as a Christian good the element of truth, which 
 the heretical gnosis, though lacking, at the same time sought 
 (i.3,4). 
 
 Note Y, page 83. 
 
 At first sight, it might be supposed impossible to discuss 
 Christology monographically, and without having previously 
 given a history of the conceptions entertained of God and man, 
 to which one could appeal. For the idea of the God-man pre- 
 supposes both a conception of God and a conception of man. 
 In its beginnings, Christian thought was undoubtedly deter- 
 mined, as to both points, by the representations handed down 
 to it ; and for this reason an account has been given of those 
 representations in the introduction, so far as seemed needful, in 
 the persons of their chief expounders. But, so far from the 
 Christian conception of God and Christian anthropology hav- 
 ing been the groundwork of Christology, history shows that 
 the appearance of Christ, and the gradually increasing deter- 
 minateness of the view taken of His person, were the most 
 powerful agent in the transformation of the idea of God and 
 the idea of man entertained by the ancient world. Moreover, 
 from the second century onwards, an extensive series of works, 
 devoted to investigations into the nature of God and man, owed 
 its existence to Christianity, or, more precisely expressed, to the 
 interest felt in the doctrine of the Person of Christ. That the 
 doctrine of the Trinity was indebted for its development to 
 Christology, is universally acknowledged ; but the same thing is 
 true also of the Christian doctrine of the Divine attributes (and 
 of this less notice has been taken). For, that it was necessary 
 and possible really to regard God as Love, could only be felt by 
 a faith which had beheld the Father in the Son of His love. 
 The world prior to Christ had not known God as love, but had 
 regarded Him either as mere goodness, or as mere justice and 
 holiness. In this respect also, therefore, the appearance of 
 
NOTES. 355 
 
 Christ came into conflict with the heathenish and Jewish con- 
 ception of God. Christianity tolerated neither the ascription of 
 an unethical goodness to God (and so far pronounced Judaism 
 to be in the right), nor of a righteousness and holiness which 
 are not perfected in love (and herein condemned the ergism 
 (epyov) and one-sided juridical character of Judaism). To the 
 conflicts with Gnosticism may so far, therefore, be traced the 
 genesis of the Christian idea of God, if only at first in its most 
 general and fundamental characteristic features. Next to Ire- 
 nseus, Tertullian rendered the most important services relatively 
 to this matter, by his work against Marcion. Not until good- 
 ness and power on the one hand, and justice and holiness on the 
 other, had been seen to be combined in love, — in that the convic- 
 tion had been arrived at, that a love which excludes, instead of 
 being the realization of, holy righteousness in all its strictness 
 and truth, would cease to be Divine, and that a holiness and 
 justice which fail to give the Divine love its due cannot subsist, 
 and must be either indifferent to, or powerless against, evil ; not 
 until thus, in the idea of love, which is the glorification, at once, 
 of goodness and power, of holiness and righteousness, the Chris- 
 tian conception of God had been arrived at, was a starting-point 
 secured for the development of the Christian doctrine of the 
 Trinity. The rigidness of the prior conceptions of God was 
 melted by love ; God was no longer a mere righteous Judge, or 
 the Exalted One, or the bv : on the other hand, after righte- 
 ousness and holiness had been recognised as essential to Divine 
 love, the Church ceased to be exposed to the danger of confound- 
 ing God through His love, after a pantheistic or pagan manner, 
 with the world. 
 
 Note Z, page 94 
 
 If this be the right view to take of the first Christian period, 
 it can occasion no surprise to find the lack of dogmatical pro- 
 ductiveness counterbalanced by the greater measure of moral 
 activity. Amongst the fruits of the moral activity of the first 
 Christians, we may count the giving to the Church a constitu- 
 tion and laws. And, although the Catholic idea of the priest 
 and bishop cannot lay claim to origination in the earliest stadia 
 of Christianity, it is both involved in the nature of the case 
 and attested by historical evidence, that the time which inter- 
 
356 APPENDIX. 
 
 vened prior to the awakenment of interest in strictly dogmatical 
 questions, was mainly taken up with the organization of the 
 Churches, and the development of the constitution under the 
 greatest variety of forms. It is an incontestable fact, that 
 the development of ecclesiastical arrangements was far in ad- 
 vance of the development of dogmas ; that by the former an 
 earthly seat was, as it were, prepared for the latter. Those 
 who show the keenest eye for everything in which the age of 
 the Apostolic Fathers fell short of the true Christian idea, ought 
 also, in order to be consistent, to follow up as keenly, and as far 
 as possible, the errors which, clothed in a practical garb, were 
 introduced into the Church by heathenish and Jewish society 
 and principles. Instead of that, they are chargeable with tho- 
 rough inconsistency; for, although they willingly allow, that 
 when the Church condemned heretical elements it was con- 
 demning its own past early condition, they are unwilling to 
 grant that the same defectiveness (and the charge of heresy 
 may be reduced to a charge of defectiveness) must necessarily 
 have manifested itself also in the ethical creations which pecu- 
 liarly belong to this period. For example, the rise of Episcopal 
 power and the Episcopal constitution of the Church they assign 
 to a later age ; and, on this ground, also attribute documents to 
 a later age, which, if assigned to their proper age, would throw 
 of themselves a decided light on the history of the Church 
 and its doctrinal development, and utterly annihilate the entire 
 hypothesis of an Ebionitic origin of the Church — an hypothesis 
 really borrowed from the Socinians. 
 
 Note AA, page 101. 
 
 Ev \o<ya> t?j9 fieyaXtoa-vvrj^ avrov crvveaTija-aro ra iravTa, 
 Kal iv Xoya Svvarac avra KaraaTpe^rai,. The addition of the 
 term fieyaXmavvr], which Clement frequently applies to the 
 higher nature of Christ, is favourable to the reference of \0709 
 to the pre-existent essence of Christ. It would then appear as 
 though the creative Divine Word were personified, exactly after 
 the manner of the theologomena of that period. Another and 
 particularly forcible reason, is the relation of our author to the 
 Epistles of Paul and the Epistle to the Hebrews, in both of 
 which the pre-existence of the Son is not only taught, but is 
 further brought into connection with the creation. Compare, 
 
NOTES. 357 
 
 besides the above passages from Paul's Epistles, Hebrews i. 3, 
 iv. 12, xi. 3. Our author was so intimately acquainted with 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews, and followed so closely in its foot- 
 steps, that the idea of the pre-existence of the Son cannot pos- 
 sibly have been strange to him (compare also Zeller 1. c. pp. 
 61 ff.). But he shows himself to be a faithful disciple of Paul, 
 not merely in his Ohristological principles, but also specially 
 in his doctrine of grace (c. 32). He says : It is not wisdom 
 and insight, it is not piety or the works of the sanctified heart 
 which we have done, that justify us'; indeed, we are not at all 
 justified by ourselves ; but we are called of God's gracious will 
 in Christ, through faith. Now this same Clement was the re- 
 presentative of the Church in Rome about the year 100 : so much 
 the more certainly, therefore, must we judge his faith to have 
 been in agreement with that of the Church in Rome, if he 
 wrote thus, not as bishop — that is, not officially — but as the one 
 who had been chosen in confidence to be spokesman. 
 
 Note BB, page 102. 
 
 Docetical and Ebionitical elements must, therefore, have 
 already manifested themselves in the Church. Compare 
 Schneckenburger's "Das Evangelium der ^Egyptier," 1834. 
 But when this scholar alleges that a patripassian Unitarianism 
 is taught in the epistle before us, he must have overlooked the 
 passage just quoted from c. 9. Baptism is highly lauded, and 
 connected rather with a stringent doctrine of penitence than 
 with faith (c. 8). "Beyond the grave there is no more oppor- 
 tunity for repentance ; even as a vessel may be improved so 
 long as it is in the hand of the potter, but not after it has 
 once been baked." The present world and the future, these 
 two al&ves, are hostile to each other (c. 6, compare Barn. c. 
 18). All these features are not in the manner of the first 
 epistle. Where the latter thought occurs, together with the 
 view of the world involved therein, some have supposed that 
 they had scented the traces of Ebionism. The circumstance, 
 that even this epistle, with its Christology, contains Ebioni- 
 tical elements, ought to have obtained greater attention, and 
 to have prevented the adoption of an arbitrary definition of 
 the idea of Ebionism. (Compare Schwegler's "Montanism," 
 pp. 112 ff.) He who holds such lofty Christological views may 
 
358 APPENDIX. 
 
 perhaps be called a Jewish Christian; nay more, he may Judaize 
 in many ways ; but an Ebionite, in the sense in which that name 
 is applied scientifically, he cannot be called. From c. 8 (\eyet 
 Kvpios eV t&) evarfye\i<p), the author would appear to have 
 already become accustomed to the use of Gospels ; but there 
 was not yet any canon. The epistle also contains an apocalyptic 
 passage (c. 11), found in the Gospel of the Egyptians. To 
 judge from the mode in which Docetism and Ebionism are 
 handled, and from the other marks taken together, the work 
 was probably not written later than the first half of the second- 
 century. The first epistle, on the contrary, was probably writ- 
 ten about the middle of the first ninety years after Christ. 
 
 Note CC, page 103. 
 
 He was well aware of his capabilities, and of the nature of 
 the task given him to perform : he styles himself dvdpanrov 
 irpb<; evaxiw KaT7jpTicr/j,evov (Philad. 8); he is assxired that the 
 impulse he feels to work for the settlement of the organiza- 
 tion of the Church, is an impulse of the Spirit ; and experience 
 forced irresistibly upon him the conviction, that such efforts 
 were called for by the circumstances of the time (Philad. 7). 
 At the time when the epistles were written, the organization of 
 the Church under bishops, presbyters, and deacons, had not yet, 
 by any means, been everywhere carried out, nor the principle 
 thereof recognised as necessary. Indeed, the aim of the epis- 
 tles was to lay down the idea, and, on the basis thereof, to initiate 
 a thorough realization of the whole. The highest purpose of the 
 Episcopate, according to his idea of it (the particular form 
 assumed by which was entirely the result of the struggle with 
 Docetism and Judaism), was the realization in the Church of the 
 divine-human life, whose unity in Christ, and therefore also 
 in the Church, the just-mentioned heresies threatened to dis- 
 solve. Gnosticism proper is not controverted in these epistles. 
 On the other hand, as the letters themselves acknowledge, the 
 way had already been prepared for his idea, — dogmatically, 
 in particular, by Paul ; historically by the development of the 
 constitution of the Church down to his time, although it had 
 undoubtedly taken a different course in different places, and 
 had not been consciously led by one principle (Polyc. 6 ; 
 Magnes. 4 ; Philad. 8). 
 
NOTES. 35S 
 
 Note DD, page 104. 
 
 He nowhere gives expression to the Levitical idea of priest- 
 hood. The bishop does not offer up Christ in sacrifice ; but is 
 the mouth and representative of the Church, which presents its 
 sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving to God (compare Honing' s 
 " Die Lehre der apostolischen Vater u. s. w. vom Opfer im 
 christlichen Cultus," 1841, pp. 32-44). He seldomer speaks 
 of him as the medium through which we obtain Divine gifts, 
 although a teacher, in virtue of his office, might without hesita- 
 tion be so characterized. No allusion whatever is made to 
 ordination, to a Levitical order, in contrast to the laity. On 
 the contrary, the universal priesthood of Christians continues to 
 be recognised ; and even of bishops it is said, that they do not 
 become bishops apart from the people (compare Ep. ad Philad. 
 10 ; ad Smyrn. 11 f. ; Polyc. 7). He never terms the bishops 
 lepels — although he might have employed the word without fear 
 of objection ;— Christ alone is, in his view, the apj(iepev<;. The 
 point on which he lays chief stress is, that the bishop shall re- 
 present the unity of the Church, acting as teacher and ad- 
 ministrator, and performing the representative (liturgical) acts 
 of the Cultus. He regards the bishop as the Xeorovpiyos ; above 
 all (in the states which were still heathenish), as the adminis- 
 trator of Church Regiment. Now, as Ignatius undoubtedly 
 did not consider it a matter of choice whether believers should 
 openly constitute themselves into a church or not, but held that 
 the setting forth of their unity in a visible form belongs to the 
 very idea of faith (see below) ; consequently, he whose office it 
 is to set forth that unity, as the mouthpiece or representative 
 of the Church, as the leader of individuals in the spirit of the 
 entire community, cannot be an accidental, dispensable per- 
 son. On the contrary, he held the office of bishop, in con- 
 nection with the presbytery and diaconate, to be necessary, 
 and of. Divine authority. Notwithstanding all this, he has by 
 no means laid down the Roman Catholic conception of a bishop ; 
 for even Protestants acknowledge the Divine institution of the 
 " ministerium." His fault does not lie in a wish to curtail the 
 rights of the community ; for he everywhere conceives the 
 bishop, on the one hand, to be the expression of the inmost and 
 truest will of the individual ; and the individual, on the other 
 
8(50 , APPENDIX. 
 
 hand, to be related to the bishop, not as a bondsman, but as a 
 freeman, united with him by love and confidence. The mem- 
 bers of the Church, says he, ought to stand related to the bishop 
 as the God-man was related to the Father ; and to establish 
 order, is by no means to put restraints on liberty. The weak- 
 ness of his theory, consists in his supposing his ideal of a bishop 
 to be more nearly realizable than it actually was ; in his esteem- 
 ing the idea of unity, expressed by the office of bishop, to be in 
 itself so elevating and purifying (Polyc. 1), and in general so 
 full of blessing and of power, that he forgets the possibility of 
 bishops being unworthy of their office, and overlooks the new 
 dangers to which the very unity of the Church would be exposed, 
 were the great power to be misemployed, which he desired to see 
 committed to the bishop and the presbytery. Unity is to him 
 the thing of prime importance : — not merely on account of the 
 heresies and schisms, which he would fain cut away, but because 
 he esteems its realization and preservation to be the highest 
 good, the great end and aim of the Church. On this founda- 
 tion rests, in his view, the Divine right of the Episcopate : and, 
 although he did not appeal so distinctly as did Clement (1 Cor. 
 42, 44) to the authority of the Apostles who instituted it, he 
 must have held it to be quite as certain as the Divine institution 
 of Christianity itself ; for he did not see any possibility of set- 
 ting forth that unity, wherein consists the truth of the Church, 
 otherwise than through the medium of the Episcopate, the 
 presbytery, and the diaconate. Solely as the expression of the 
 Church's unity, and on no other ground, did Ignatius esteem the 
 bishop higher than the presbyter. This Church order is the will 
 of God and Christ (yvd>fj,r), v6fio<;, Magn. 2, 3) ; in such a sense, 
 however, that through it the Church fulfils one of the ends of its 
 existence, — the end, namely, of manifesting itself as the image of 
 Christ (Magn. 6). Not to a particular Divine act, by which this 
 Church order was instituted, does he appeal ; he views it rather 
 as a Divine necessity involved in the very existence of the 
 Church; whereas a falsifier would certainly have felt himself 
 compelled to refer the institution, at all events, to the Apostles, 
 as did the Romish Church in the Pseudo-Clementines. Com- 
 pare, on the other hand, Philad. 8. Bishops he regards, after 
 the manner of Christian monarchs, as bishops by the grace of 
 God ; nay more, as themselves a grace of God (Magn. 2, @eov 
 
NOTES 363 
 
 %dpt<i) : we owe them obedience for the sake of God and Christ : 
 for all authorities can claim obedience by Divine right (Magn. 
 3) ; but that bishops, in conjunction with the presbyters, are the 
 rulers of the Church, he considers to be involved in the idea of 
 the Church (Trail. 3), the realization of which is both a duty 
 and a Divine right (compare Magnes. 6, 2 ; Eph. 1 ; Smyrn. 
 8, 9 ; Philad. 4). Ignatius speaks merely of the divinity of 
 the Episcopate, or, more correctly, of the divinity of Church 
 authorities, whose necessary apex, in every individual church, 
 is the bishop : to the mode in which personal fitness for the 
 office is secured, he makes no allusion whatever; in no place 
 does he speak of the communication of grace qualificatory for 
 office, through the medium of the sacrament of ordination. 
 Erom the characteristics thus furnished us, of the stadium at 
 which the development of the constitution of the Church had 
 arrived, we should judge this epistle to be of high antiquity. In 
 the first place, for example, such confidence as the author cherishes 
 in the cohesive energy of the Episcopate, and in its power to en- 
 sure the purity of the Church, is inexplicable, save on the sup- 
 position that he had as good as not found by experience, that 
 even the bishop and presbytery themselves were not safe from 
 heresy, and could not preserve the Church from it. The author, 
 therefore, as he himself confesses, must have lived at a time 
 when merely sufficient preparations had been made for the 
 actual realization of his idea of the Episcopate. In the second 
 place, inasmuch as, although by no means indifferent to the 
 personal character of bishops (Polyc. 1, 2, 8 ; Magn. 2, 3 ; 
 Epp. 1), it never seems to occur to him that his unity, " than 
 which there exists nothing better" (Polyc. 1), might degenerate 
 into a mere formality, and he suggests no provision either for 
 securing confidence in the personal worth of the bishops, or for 
 establishing it dogmatically (as do the Clementine Homilies, and, 
 with them, the Eomish Church, by the dogma of the communi- 
 cation of the Holy Spirit at ordination), we must judge these 
 epistles to have originated at -a period when such provisions had 
 not yet been felt to be necessary, — that is, at a period when the 
 Churches, but particularly their presidents and those who would 
 next be elected to the office, took care to exact and to furnish 
 pledges of personal worth (compare Clement, 1 Cor. c. 42, 44) ; 
 a period, especially, when the pure apostolic tradition (the 
 
362 APPENDIX. 
 
 o-ap!; XpiaTov) was represented in such a manner by a consider- 
 able number of disciples of the Apostles, to whom was entrusted 
 the leading of the Church, that it was possible for the written 
 tradition to be thrown into the shade — a thing which would have 
 been impossible at a later time. Ignatius, for example, thus pro- 
 ceeds. In this respect, even Justin Martyr occupies an essen- 
 tially different position (from the year 139 onwards) ; and still 
 more Irenseus. The latter (although bishops never cease, in his 
 view, to be also presbyters ; for presbyters they continue to be in 
 any case, even according to Ignatius, and constitute merely the 
 summing up of the presbytery, Eph. 4) already, laying stress on 
 the uninterrupted apostolical succession, and on the pure tradi- 
 tion conveyed through its medium, insists that oral and written 
 tradition mutually confirm each other, and solely in conjunction 
 with each other, constitute a certain source of the truth. He 
 holds much the same relation to the formation of the canon as the 
 Ignatian Epistles held to the development of the Episcopacy, — 
 that is, he took part in the matter, just when the preliminary 
 labours were being brought to a temporary close by the idea 
 of the canon ; and he endeavours scientifically to demonstrate 
 both the necessity and the nature of the canon (c. Hser. 3, 
 1, 11). Justin Martyr also attaches greater importance than 
 Ignatius to the apostolic writings. The formation of the 
 canon was preceded, and, as we learn from very clear traces, 
 was aided, by the organization of the Church, both in its 
 historical and dogmatical aspect ; for the bishops and presby- 
 ters are to be regarded, in particular, as the vehicles both of 
 the historical and dogmatical tradition (regula fidei, symbolum 
 Apostolicum), on which the matter depended. This organi- 
 zation, at all events in its bearing on the point which, in 
 the view of Ignatius, was the flower of the Cultus, and the 
 highest sign and manifestation of the unity of the Church, — to 
 wit, the Eucharist, — was universally established in agreement 
 with the idea of Ignatius at the time of Justin (compare Ign. 
 ad Smyrn. 8 with Justin Martyr's Apologia 1, 67). Justin's 
 idea of the unity of the Church is also similar to that of Ignatius, 
 although his entire tendency was less practical (compare the Dial, 
 cum Tryphone 63, 116). Lastly, I cannot but consider Nean- 
 der's remark appropriate, that Montanism is to be regarded, 
 partly as a reaction against the constitution of the Church of that 
 
NOTES. 363 
 
 day, and partly as an element which was, at a subsequent period, 
 reduced to a fixed form by the Romish Church. As a principle 
 of reaction, it bore principally on the idea of the Episcopate, 
 which, when the office was not held by men worthy of the dignity 
 (Ignatius confidently takes for granted, that the office will be 
 held by those who are fit for it), endangered the independence 
 of the Church and the Divine right of such as were moved 
 by the Holy Ghost, who, after all, must be the sole final source 
 of all ecclesiastical authority and dignity. In this aspect, Mon- 
 tanism was a reaction of the substantial, real principle against 
 the merely formal unity of the Episcopate, which entrusted 
 to the unworthy, and those who were destitute of the Spirit, 
 power over those who were filled by the Spirit. Viewed in 
 this light, Montanism may be styled a democratic reaction on 
 the part of the members of the Church, asserting their uni- 
 versal prophetic and priestly rank against the concentration of 
 ecclesiastical dignities and rights in the Episcopate. From which 
 it evidently follows, that a considerable time must have inter- 
 vened between the rise of Montanism and the state of things 
 set forth in the Epistles of Ignatius ; the former being a reac- 
 tion against the very thing which the latter treat as an object to 
 be realized, and which enkindled the fresh, unquestioning, and 
 confident enthusiasm of their author. Such enthusiasm is in- 
 telligible and right when a great idea has just been conceived, 
 and the soul is filled with the conviction that it is destined 
 shortly to become a living reality. In opposition to Ignatius, 
 the Roman Catholic Church justified Montanism in maintain- 
 ing, that not the office of bishop in itself, not the formal unity 
 which it is able to effect, is enough, but that personal equipment 
 with the Holy Spirit is necessary to the reality and truth of the 
 Episcopacy ; but it condemned Montanism for aiming at sub- 
 stituting in the place of the Episcopacy its sporadic prophetic 
 spirit, — an inspiration, fanaticism, or extasy, which both breaks 
 the historical link connecting the Church with preceding ages, 
 and carries within itself no pledge of purity. In this respect 
 it followed again the example of Ignatius, modifying his views, 
 however, by teaching that the Episcopate, as such, is made 
 partaker of the Holy Ghost by means of the rite of ordination. 
 An attempt was thus made to meet and do justice to the true 
 element in Montanism, and, at the same time, to incorporate it 
 
364 APPENDIX. 
 
 with the fixed order of the Church. But even so, there is still a 
 distinction to be noted. Bishops, in the view of Ignatius, are 
 the representatives, the images of Christ ; the presbytery repre- 
 sents the Apostles. This idea, as Gieseler truly remarks, was 
 transformed by the Church into the idea that Episcopacy was 
 the continuation of the apostolic office ; until, finally, Catholi- 
 cism put the Pope in Christ's place — the place assigned by Igna- 
 tius to the body of bishops. The foregoing remarks will be seen, 
 I trust, to justify the view I have taken, even though I should be- 
 lieve myself compelled, by the consideration last adduced, to date 
 the Epistles of Ignatius a full generation prior to Montanism, and 
 to decide, after the investigations recently instituted by Meier, 
 Baur, Lange, Kothe, Arndt, Huther (compare " Studien nnd 
 Kritiken," 1835, pp. 881 ff. ; 1836, pp. 540 ff.; 1839, pp. 136 ff. : 
 also Gieseler's " Church History" i. 142, Observ. 4), in favour 
 of the genuineness of the shorter edition, and that mainly on 
 account of the form which Episcopacy still bears in it. The 
 opposed view, defended by Baur, and the parallel drawn by him 
 between the romance of the Clementine Homilies and the Igna- 
 tian Epistles, had a somewhat dazzling effect upon me in the first 
 instance, but did not stand the test of a more thorough exami- 
 nation. Dusterdieck's supposition, that Lucian, in his Life of 
 Peregrinus, written about the middle of the second century, had 
 in his eye Ignatius the Christian hero, as he is set before us in 
 the epistles, is far more to be commended. The main point in 
 deciding on the genuineness of the epistles, is the question of 
 the Episcopate, and that has already been discussed. A further 
 objection is, that the history which forms the groundwork is 
 improbable. How weak these reasons are, Huther has ably 
 shown, in relation to the well calculated procedure adopted by 
 Trajan (see Illgen's " Zeitschrift fur hist. Theologie," 1841, 
 Hefele I.e. pp. xxxix. ff .) ; compare Gieseler's remarks (" Church 
 History," 2d ed. vol. i. p. 138) against Baur (" Episkopat." 
 p. 149). I here add the arguments advanced by Huther. Al- 
 though, in Justin's day, general persecutions of the Christians 
 were still less common than in the time of Ignatius, the former 
 speaks, as of a thing that was not rare, of Christians enthusias- 
 tically offering themselves for execution (Apol. 2, 12). Why, 
 then, shall we characterize the yearnings for death, to which 
 Ignatius gives expression in his Epistles to the Romans, as im- 
 
NOTES. 365 
 
 probable, especially as he did not inform against himself, but 
 may have owed his imprisonment to the information of false 
 brethren, or the hostility of those who were differently minded 
 from himself ? (The latter is rendered probable by the passage 
 from the Epist. ad Polyc. 6, where he designates himself avrl- 
 yjrvxpv t&v inroTaa-aofMevcov t& hruTKOTrcp, toi? trpeafivTepoLs, Tot? 
 Sta/ewot?, that is, a sacrifice for the idea of his life. Compare, 
 in addition, the passage concerning £j)\o? in Clement, 1 Cor. v. 
 How, if even in Antioch, and perhaps ere he himself became a 
 bishop, he had advocated the idea, which he develops in such 
 an original manner, with all his enthusiasm and ability, and had 
 endeavoured to reduce it to reality? — if, by the idea of the 
 obedience due to the Episcopate, he had aimed at subjugating 
 the heads of the parties, which, according to the Epistle of 
 Clement, at this time existed in Corinth, and which, to judge from 
 Philad. 10, Smyrn. 11, compared with ad Rom. 9, Trail. 13, in 
 Antioch also, would seern to have raised opposition on account of 
 the bishopric ; and had further, when elected bishop, employed 
 his episcopal authority against them % If such were the case, 
 we may easily suppose that informers might represent him as 
 the cause of the disturbances that arose, that he might thus 
 become a martyr, and in dying establish more firmly that for 
 which, living, he had laboured.) Moreover, the defects of 
 his character — its apparent contradictions, the alternation be- 
 tween a strong feeling of his own dignity and almost insulting 
 expressions of humility (especially in the Epistle ad Trail.) — are 
 quite explicable in a man of his fiery temperament, personally 
 possessed by such an idea. The author himself, too, betrays a 
 sense of the fact, that an element of impurity had mixed itself 
 up with his £?5\o? (Trail. 4) ; whereas a writer, whose object it 
 was to recommend Episcopacy through the mouth of the dying 
 Christian hero, would not have allowed him to hint at anything 
 of that sort : such expressions, therefore, are a sign of inner, 
 psychological truth. Further, his delineation of the heretics 
 who stood opposed to him, and who negatively aided in the de- 
 termination of his mode of thought, is quite different from what 
 it would have been had he written only twenty years later (that is, 
 about 137, instead of about 117), when Gnosticism had gained 
 its more important representatives. Their influence on himself 
 would also have been different. Gnosticism proper he never 
 
366 APPENDIX. 
 
 seeks to controvert (in the longer edition of his Epistles, Gnos- 
 ticism is attacked) ; he does, however, argue against Docetism. 
 — The passage in Magnes. 8 will be discussed below. Let it 
 suffice here, in the first instance, to remark, that Baur, in his 
 criticism of the New Testament, seems to be much more anxious 
 to remove books from their position in the canon, than to show 
 afterwards what position they ought to occupy ; otherwise, it 
 would be incomprehensible how he could pronounce the Ignatian 
 Epistles to be the product of a later period, amongst other rea- 
 sons, because this passage is directed against Gnosticism ; when 
 the Epistles to the Philippians and Oolossians, even if Paul were 
 not their author, must have been written, at the latest, about the 
 time of Ignatius, in order that there might have been interval 
 long enough to render them suitable, in the eyes of Marcion, for 
 adoption into his canon — as writings, that is, which were held by 
 the Church to be Pauline. Lastly, the remarks just made, bear 
 the following relation to Baur's hypotheses regarding the Pseudo- 
 Clementine writings. If it be right at all to attribute to these 
 writings an influence on the peculiar form assumed by the Episco- 
 pate in the Romish Church (although that form can be sufficiently 
 explained from the Judaizing principle, and from the national po- , 
 litical character of the Romans ; and, in any case, it is not neces- 
 sary, with Baur, to trace the hierarchical influence exerted by the 
 Pseudo-Clementine literature in the Eastern Churches, to Rome; 
 compare Bickell's " Geschichte des Kirchenrechts," 1843, Beil. 
 iv. pp. 148 ff . Nr. 63 ff .), it can only be on the ground of a point 
 common to them and the Church, to wit, the very weighty one of 
 ordination ; that is, on the ground of the very point which, accord- 
 ing to the account given above of the stadia in the development 
 of the Episcopate, was, at all events in the Church, unquestion- 
 ably a later one. The Clementines, therefore, set up a wider 
 distinction between the clergy and the laity than did Ignatius : 
 they give the bishop, in particular, a far higher position than 
 did Ignatius, and speak of a superior bishop (as it were Pope), 
 whereas Ignatius treats all bishops as equal. Ignatius, there- 
 fore, represents, so to speak, the ideal aspect of the idea of the 
 Episcopate : the other aspect, which unquestionably, at all events 
 in point of principle, marks a relapse into Judaism, is the 
 realistic one. In the view of Ignatius, the bishop is the teacher, 
 especially, however, the liturg and regent of the Church : ac- 
 
NOTES. 367 
 
 cording to the Clementine writings, his sole business, it is true, 
 is to distribute doctrine and the forgiveness of sin ; but ordina- 
 tion and the Spirit communicated by that rite, constitute the 
 Episcopate the continuation of the prophets of truth, apart from 
 whom it is impossible to attain to blessedness. In reality, there- 
 fore, they constitute the bishop a mediator, a Levitical priest, 
 whose word binds and looses, and who can either communicate or 
 withhold the Spirit. The Catholic Church holds neither the Igna- 
 tian nor the Pseudo-Clementine idea of the Episcopate by itself, 
 but endeavours, as we have shown, to combine the two. Baur 
 is right, therefore, when he maintains that the Catholic concep- 
 tion of the Episcopate did not exist at the commencement of the 
 second century ; and if the Epistles of Ignatius contained such 
 a conception, their authenticity could not be defended. He is 
 wrong, however, — and in this respect his combinations do not 
 stand the test, — when he fails, as do most writers, properly to 
 distinguish between the Ignatian idea of the Episcopate, and the 
 idea which subsequently prevailed in the Church. He also fails 
 to distinguish between the Pseudo-Clementine and the Ignatian 
 _dea. But for this, he would have seen that the idea entertained 
 by the Catholic Church, and to which Montanism had given 
 rise, had not become what it was all at once, but consisted of 
 several momenta, and had needed a long course of preparation : 
 he must also have reckoned the Ignatian idea of the Episcopate 
 amongst the things which had prepared its way ; and thus the 
 strongest argument against the genuineness of these epistles 
 would have been converted into the strongest argument for their 
 high antiquity, that is, into a strong argument for their genuine- 
 ness. — Indeed, in general, Baur's efforts to trace the origin of 
 the Episcopate to Rome, by means of the Clementines, seem to 
 me so far not to have been successful ; for those writings bear 
 tn their forehead the sign of the uneasy conscience of an iso- 
 lated, heretical party ; and it is much simpler and easier to say, 
 with Gieseler (" Church History" i. 140 ff.), that, on the death 
 of the Apostles and their disciples, the churches having lost their 
 leaders, and feeling the need of unity, sought for a substitute ; 
 such a substitute offered itself in the Episcopate, a pattern of 
 which might be found in the position occupied by James and 
 his successors in the mother Church of Jerusalem. The ex- 
 ample set in Jerusalem was imitated first by the neighbouring 
 
368 APPENDIX. 
 
 churches : in the more distant churches, the chief presbyters, 
 as presidents, assumed a similar position ; but, as far as any 
 power of exercising independent authority was concerned, were 
 little raised above the other presbyters. So Clemen, ad Cor. i. 
 44; Polyc. ad Philad. 5, 6. — This was the historically safe 
 method ; and it is a matter of more surprise that Baur should 
 have preferred the Clementine hypothesis, as he considers James 
 in Jerusalem to have been an Ebionite, and as that primitive 
 Christianity should have been Ebionitical, and that the Episco- 
 pate should have had an Ebionitic origin, would seem to consist 
 very well with that circumstance. It is true, the main, nay, in 
 the last instance, the only, argument against, would then be con- 
 verted into an argument for, the genuineness of the Ignatian 
 Epistles ; and, even as an hypothesis, the Ebionitic character of 
 primitive Christianity would no longer be tenable. 
 
 With regard to the age of the Pseudo-Clementine writings, 
 specially of the Homilies, nothing is herewith decided. Nothing 
 else preventing, they might be supposed to have contributed their 
 part towards preparing the way for the realistic aspect of the 
 Catholic Episcopacy : they were not, however, so favourably 
 situated for exerting an influence as the Ignatian Epistles, 
 which were not only not an heretical production, but were 
 most intimately connected with John, and especially with Paul 
 (Ephes., Col., 1 Cor.) ; whilst the former are by no means even 
 Petrine in character. For they neither merely repeat nor ex- 
 aggerate the distinctive features of Peter's Christianity, but are 
 Ebionitical, and therefore, after what we have seen above, 
 must be, at all events Christologically and soteriologically, 
 utterly irreconcilable with Peter. The only thing which they 
 have appropriated from, or in which they may perhaps be said 
 to have outdone, Peter, is his shortcoming in practice — a short- 
 coming which contravened his own principles. But their 
 attempt to conceal their dogmatic nakedness by such a theo- 
 retical accordance with Peter, was in vain. These remarks 
 are, strictly speaking, so self-evident, that there ought to be 
 no need of making them. But we are threatened at the pre- 
 sent time with such a confusion of ideas, such an arbitrary 
 commingling of terms like Petrinism, Judaism, Ebionitism, 
 that it is both necessary and appropriate to raise a protest. 
 Even the division into genuine and spurious portions, proposed 
 
NOTES. 369 
 
 by Neander, solely on account of the Episcopacy, appears to 
 me completely inadmissible. The epistles are so entirely of 
 one mould, and, in particular, their advocacy of an ecclesiastical 
 organization, as the means of securing ecclesiastical unity, is so 
 inseparably interwoven with everything else, that I should 
 prefer concluding the whole to be spurious, to supposing that 
 essential and important parts are interpolations. Neander's 
 hatred of the priesthood, especially in its Catholic form, seems 
 to have affected his judgment of the epistles, and to have pre- 
 judiced him against them. Reference has already been made 
 above to the historical objections which he might raise against 
 them. 
 
 Note EE, page 112. 
 
 Magn. 8. ol jap Oeioraroi Trpcxprjrai, Kara, Xpiarbv 'Irjcrow 
 etyj&av 8ia tovto teal ehiay^Orjcrav, ifnrveop,evoi viro ttj? yapno<; 
 avrov, — on 649 0eo? i<7Tiv 6 <bavepcoo-a<; eavrbv Bia, 'Itjctov Xpi- 
 cttov tov vlov ouTov, os ecrnv avTov Xoyo'; dtSios, ovk diro crc<yr]<; 
 •jrpoikOutv, o? Kara, irdvia evrjpeo-Trjaev tg> irepsty-avn avrov. 
 The word Logos can occasion no surprise, especially as, both 
 here and elsewhere, we can show it to be connected, not with 
 \6yos in the sense of vov<;, but with the expression pryxa ©eov. 
 For the same term is employed even by John ; and whether 
 we prefer referring to Apocalypse xix. 14, or to John i. 1, 1 
 John i. 1 if., the term at'&os must substantially be predicated 
 also of the Johannean Logos. Even Philo designates his Logos 
 alcbvtcx;. Similarly, the presbyters, the disciples of the Apostles, 
 speak in Irenseus v. 36 (probably according to Papias) of 
 Christ as the Verbum — a feature which points to the time of 
 Ignatius. So also, when the Logos is spoken of by Cerinthus, 
 or, at a somewhat later period, in the KtjpvyfMa lUrpov (see 
 Gieseler i. 153 ; Schliemann's " Die Clementinen," p. 252) ; or 
 when the fifth book of the Sibyllines (see below) designates the 
 Messiah 0eos affito?. This is the only passage of the shorter 
 edition in which a reference seems to be made to Gnostic ele- 
 ments ; and even in this passage the reference is quite a passing 
 one. For this reason we may assume that the letters were 
 written at a time when the chief representatives of Gnosticism 
 had not yet made their appearance. On the other hand, we 
 may judge from Philo, and the affinity of the various branches 
 
 VOL. I. 2 A 
 
370 APPENDIX 
 
 of the different members of the Gnostic family with each other 
 and with him, that, during the first century, there could have 
 been no lack of elements out of which Gnosticism might gradually 
 be formed. The fivdevfiara, to which allusion is made even in 
 canonical writings which existed prior to Ignatius, and of which 
 Ignatius himself speaks (Magn. 8), prepared the way for Gnos- 
 ticism, in particular, by giving a still more pagan character to 
 Philo's conception of God. This paganization was effected in 
 various ways : the angels played a great role, and their genealo- 
 gies were probably but a coarser form of the doctrine of the 
 ^Eons. Not only, however, was this akin to the ayyeXot, the 
 \6yoi of Philo, but the distinction drawn by Philo between 
 the "Ov and the X0709, involved essentially that drawn by the 
 Gnostics between aiyrj and the X0709. Given a Logology, and 
 it was the simplest possible process to develop therefrom the 
 word trvyq. Por, prior to the utterance of the word, there was 
 silence. The designation criyrj presupposes the doctrine of the 
 Logos ; but where the idea of God had been ethnicized, and 
 no hesitation was felt (as in the case of Philo) in positing a 
 change in God Himself, — that is, in supposing the Logos to 
 have sprung forth out of a preceding silence,— there the idea of 
 cruyr) is very naturally suggested by that of the Logos. Now, if 
 it be a fact, that fully developed Gnostic systems existed some 
 ten or twenty years after a.d. 117, instead of regarding with 
 suspicion the isolated traces of so important and widespread a 
 phsenomenon, discoverable at an earlier period, we ought to see 
 in them forerunners of those systems, historically natural and 
 to be expected. Accordingly, this passage, so far from warrant- 
 ing conclusions against the genuineness of the epistles, is a 
 strong testimony in favour of their high antiquity, especially as 
 the opponents referred to are Judaizers of the oldest Cerinthian 
 kind. Other writers suppose an interpolation. But there is 
 nothing to justify this supposition, especially when we compare 
 the longer edition, which altered the text in agreement with the 
 dogmatical views of a later period. The original of the other 
 two passages, translated in the text, from Magn. 6, and Poly. c. 
 3, runs as follows : — Xptarov, 09 irpb alcbvwv vapa irwrpX ?}v km, 
 iv reXet i<pdvrj ; and, tov virep tcaipbv irpoaBoxa, tw aypovov, 
 tov aopwrov tov Si rjfid'i oparbv, tov ayfrr/\d<p7]rov, tov aTradfj, 
 tov St Tj/m? TradijTov. 
 
NOTES. 371 
 
 Note FF, page 116. 
 
 Irenseus adv. hseres. 3, 3, 4 ; Euseb. H. E. 4, 14 ; Schlie- 
 mann's "Die Clementinen." The main source is his Epistle 
 to the Philippians, and then the fragment of the letter from 
 Irenseus (compare Euseb. 5, 20) to Florinus (compare Iren. 
 Opp. ed. Grabe, pp. 463, 464). Irenseus was acquainted with 
 several other letters addressed by Polycarp to neighbouring 
 churches and to individuals, which have not been preserved; 
 but, in lib. 3, 3, he gives especial prominence to the Epistle to 
 the Philippians, from which the ^apaKTTjp ttj? 7rtcrTe<u9 avrov 
 and the true Christian doctrine might be learned. In his 
 letter to Florinus — a letter which modern criticism would seem 
 to have almost totally forgotten — Irenseus says, — "I saw thee 
 in Asia Minor with Polycarp, when thou livedst in splendour 
 at the Imperial Court, and endeavouredst to gain importance 
 in the eyes of Polycarp. For, of that which then happened I 
 retain a better remembrance than of that which has recently 
 taken place ; for that which is learnt in youth grows together 
 with the soul, and becomes one substance with it." Then, after 
 detailing what he remembered of Polycarp — of his walk, of his 
 appearance, of his manner of life, of his discourses to the people, 
 of the accounts he gave of his intimate intercourse with John 
 and others who had seen the Lord, of their discourses, and of 
 that which he had heard from them regarding the Lord, His 
 miracles and His teachings, — he adds, that that which Polycarp 
 had received from those who had themselves seen the Word of 
 Life, even as he narrated it, was entirely in agreement with 
 the Scriptures (that is, of the New Testament, which Irenseus, 
 at all events at a later period, compared therewith). "Such 
 things I eagerly listened to, even at that time, by the grace of 
 God which was given to me, and wrote them down for remem- 
 brance, not on paper, but in mine heart; and by God's grace 
 I read them there ever afresh and unadulterated." That the 
 Epistle to the Philippians referred to by Irenseus is the same 
 with which Eusebius was acquainted (Church History 4, 14 ; 
 3, 36), is scarcely to be questioned ; and that the epistle now 
 extant is the same as that of Eusebius, is evident from the 
 remark made by Eusebius, — " The Epistle of Polycarp shows an 
 acquaintance with the First Epistle of Peter." This epistle is, in 
 
372 APPENDIX. 
 
 fact, most frequently mentioned ; for example, in c. 1 we find 
 1 Peter i. 8 ; in c. 2, 1 Peter i. 13, 21, iii. 9 ; in c. 5, 1 Peter 
 ii. 11 ; in c. 7, 1 Peter iv. 7 ; in c. 8, 1 Peter ii. 22, 24 ; in the 
 conclusion, which, with the exception of c. 10, exists solely in 
 an old translation, 1 Peter ii. 12. But it shows also an ac- 
 quaintance with the First Epistle of John, quoting 1 John iv. 3. 
 The author is, however, specially familiar with the epistles of 
 the Apostle Paul, and, like Ignatius, makes frequent mention of 
 him ; he also alludes to Ignatius himself and his epistles (Eus. 
 3, 36). The epistle contains congratulations to the Church of 
 Antioch on account of the actual re-establishment of the peace, 
 wishes for which had been expressed in the Epistles of Ignatius 
 (Ign. Ep. ad Polyc. 8). Hence Polycarp must have written 
 his epistle about the time of the death of Ignatius. That the 
 epistle holds a different relation to the idea of the Episcopate 
 from that of Ignatius, may be conceded. Unlike Ignatius, it 
 does not go on to characterize more definitely the first of the 
 presbyters, the (without doubt life-long) president, as the one 
 whose mission it is to represent the unity of the life of the 
 Church ; but nothing in the epistle justifies the opinion, that it 
 presupposes different circumstances from those of the Ignatian 
 Epistles. It is true, no distinction is made in the epistle between 
 bishop and presbyter ; but such a distinction as the one above 
 described, which was in agreement with the spirit of the age, 
 and beyond which Ignatius aimed at advancing, is presupposed. 
 Polycarp himself is represented as the spokesman, as the first 
 in Smyrna : he holds intercourse with other churches, he sub- 
 scribes the letter, he speaks in his own name therein — is, in point 
 of fact, the bishop ; whereas the opening words, " Polycarp 
 and the presbyters with him wish, etc.," would have led us to 
 expect something different, if the presbyters around him had 
 merely held the same rank with himself. He acts rather as 
 did Paul, for example, in 1 Cor. i. 1 ; Gal. i. 2. Furthermore, 
 even supposing Polycarp to have been much more strongly in- 
 spired by the idea of the Episcopacy than the simple character 
 of his piety allowed, a reason can be assigned why he should 
 have hesitated to lay stress on it in this epistle. In the Church 
 at Philippi, circumstances had occurred which the Ignatian 
 idea of the Episcopate scarcely anticipated, and for which 
 it was unprepared. According to c. 11, Valens, who, as it 
 
NOTES. 373 
 
 would appear, had occupied a high position in their midst, had 
 become a scandal in consequence of his improper conduct ; — he 
 had misused his office in a shameful manner. To have insisted 
 on the official rights of this president, would, therefore, have 
 been a very unseasonable thing; and, consequently, Polycarp 
 contents himself with the general exhortation, — which, though 
 so general, is somewhat Ignatian in tone, — " Be obedient to the 
 presbyters and deacons, as to God and Christ" (c. 5). For, 
 amongst the presbyters he includes also the president, whose 
 duty it was to act in their name, and whom Ignatius considered 
 to be the representative of the unity of the Church, not apart 
 from the presbytery, but as the logical carrying out of that 
 which appeared to him to be involved in the office of president. 
 I agree, therefore, with Neander and Gieseler, who see no suf- 
 ficient reason whatever for denying the authorship of Polycarp ; 
 at the same time, I would remark, that he shows himself, as far 
 as knowledge is concerned, to have possessed rather a receptive 
 than a productive nature. He is well acquainted with the 
 Scriptures of the Old, and with many books of the New Testa- 
 ment, but is, in the main, content with that which is directly 
 practical. 
 
 Note GG, page 118. 
 
 Irenseus 3, 3. The Epistle of the Church of Smyrna to the 
 Churches in Pontus (whence Marcion sprung), may perhaps be 
 taken as an evidence that Polycarp was well known, and had 
 laboured in that country (compare Euseb. 4, 15). The epistle 
 contains embellishments ; other parts, however, are simple and 
 thoroughly credible — specially the words attributed to Poly- 
 carp. So far as these bear upon Christology, they perfectly 
 agree with the Epistle of Polycarp. His martyrdom he terms 
 a participation in the cup of Christ; he designates God the 
 Father of Jesus Christ ; Jesus Christ Himself he styles irai<; 
 Oeov ar/airr/TOS /cat evXoyrjTos, and awawo? dp%iepev<; (compare 
 ad Philipp. 12). Through the Son, honour accrues to the 
 Father, together with the Son, in the Holy Spirit, to all eter- 
 nity. — If his death took place in the year 167, he must have 
 lived long after Irenasus, and have died irdvv yijpakeo? ; and if, 
 as Irenseus repeatedly alleges, he enjoyed intimate intercourse 
 with the Apostle John, the words of Eusebius (H. E. 4, 15), 
 
374 APPENDIX. 
 
 oryBo^Kovra Kal If err) BovXevw avTw, Kal ovBev fie ^SiK-rjae, must 
 be understood of the time during which he was a Christian, and 
 not of his age: — indeed, the words in themselves require to be 
 taken in this sense. The reading in Eusebius, which is the 
 older, does not run oySorJKovra Kal If err\ e^m SovXevwv. More- 
 over, the sense just given is more suitable to the context, which 
 speaks of the long continuance of the kindness of Christ, than 
 the mention of his natural age, especially as his age had just been 
 referred to by the Proconsul, and it was now his duty to reply 
 thereto. Polycarp had therefore reached an age not quite so 
 great as that of Simeon, or of some of the men who were healed 
 by Christ, and whom Quadratus speaks of as still living, in his 
 Apology; but merely, perhaps, the age of Pothinus, Bishop 
 of Lyons, who is said to have been sent thither by Polycarp. 
 The conclusion of the Epistle of the Church of Smyrna, with 
 its pure views on the subject of martyrdom and the venera- 
 tion due to martyrs, is peculiarly worthy of note : this passage, 
 by itself, is an undoubted indication of high antiquity. Now 
 in the same passage we read, — " The Jews carefully observed 
 us when we fetched the remains of Polycarp out of the fire 
 (they supposed, namely, that the Christians would make it an 
 object of worship). They knew not that we could neither de- 
 sert Christ, who died for the salvation of the entire world of 
 the redeemed, nor worship another. For we worship Christ, 
 who was the Son of God ; but the martyrs we love and honour 
 as disciples and imitators of Christ." 
 
 Note HH, page 120. 
 
 Compare Eouth's " Reliquiae Sacree" i. 74. The Martyr- 
 ology attributed to Bede praises in him a feature of an anti- 
 Judaistic character: — "Firmavit, ut nulla esca a Christianis 
 repudiaretur, quee rationalis et humana est." To a similar in- 
 tent speaks the author of the Epistle to Diognetus (c. 4). If 
 we are careful to note in the latter epistle, that the Jews are 
 represented as still sacrificing and as unswervingly adhering to 
 the religion of their fathers (c. 3, 4), and that the author styles 
 himself a disciple of the Apostles, we shall be inclined to adopt 
 the supposition of its high antiquity. Reasons might be advanced 
 in favour of the authorship of Quadratus, who elsewhere also 
 is called a disciple of the Apostles. The philosophic and 
 
NOTES. 375 
 
 rhetorical culture evinced in the epistle, its free and universal 
 point of view (c. 5, 6), and its ethical doctrine, especially of 
 evBaifioi/ia, quite agree with that which we know of the man 
 from other sources. Both the tone and the spirit of the letter, 
 and the entire circle of thought, show that the author was a 
 man in whom Christianity had been engrafted on a noble philo- 
 sophic culture. If this be true, the Epistle is an early and certain 
 illustration and proof of the fact, that even at the commence- 
 ment of the second century the doctrine of the Logos was pretty 
 commonly held. And, actually, Justin's doctrine of the Logos, 
 as expounded in his Apologia (of the year 139), is already more 
 developed than that of the epistle in question. To assign the 
 epistle to a still earlier period, with some of the older writers 
 (for example, Gallandius) and with Mohler, appears to me un- 
 warranted, because prior to Quadratus and Aristides we have 
 no traces of the union of Christianity with Hellenic <piXocro(j}ia. 
 But the question may undoubtedly be asked, — Whether the 
 work was not written at all events somewhat later than about 
 a.d. 130 1 In favour of a later date, may be urged, in particu- 
 lar, that the author represents Mary as the second Eve (c. 12), 
 in the manner constantly adopted by Irenseus ; and his employ- 
 ment of the expression $jv\ov %a>rjs koI lywoo-eo)?. His concilia- 
 tion of the claims of \jm) and of yva>cri<; (c. 12), which betrays 
 a higher, freer point of view, would also suit a later portion of 
 the second century. Lastly too, the conclusion, in which the 
 candles for Easter (c. 12) are spoken of, points in the same di- 
 rection. (It is useless, with the " Congregatio St Mauri" (the 
 Benedictines), to conjecture for icrjpol %opo\, or, with Sylburg, 
 iccupol.) In such a case, the author must have designated him- 
 self a disciple of the Apostles merely in the wider sense (c. 11) ; 
 and his judgment of Judaism would relate to its principle, which 
 was not renounced even after the universal exile, not to the 
 actual condition of its Cultus. Even the question regarding the 
 novelty of Christianity, which the author answers so beautifully 
 in the manner of Paul and John, was constantly brought under 
 discussion at a much later period. It is true, these arguments 
 for the later composition of the work may all be set aside by 
 adopting a particular division of the work. Semisch, Bohl, and 
 Otto take this course; Hefele also inclines thereto (see his 
 "Patres Apostolici," ed. 2, 1842, lxi.). To me, however, the 
 
376 APPENDIX. 
 
 division does not appear to have a sufficient warrant ; on the 
 contrary, cc. 11, 12, seem to me to exhibit the same compass of 
 thought and Christian colouring as the rest, and first to bring 
 the epistle to an appropriate conclusion. The twelfth chapter, 
 it is true, is addressed to several others besides Diognetus ; but 
 what was there to hinder the author, who had styled himself a 
 teacher of the Gentiles (c. 11), from expecting or desiring that 
 Diognetus would not keep the epistle entirely to himself I Be- 
 tween his doctrine of 7z>wcrt? (c. 12) and that of •jri'crTt? (c. 8) 
 there is no contradiction ; as we shall see, if we only consider 
 that in c. 12 he expresses his desire for %m] as well as <yv(ocn<;, 
 and that by the latter he means not discursive knowledge, 
 but the knowledge of the 6<p6aXfiol KapBias (^rco <roi icapBia 
 <yvu>aK : icapBia is the subject of the sentence). I grant that 
 the arguments just mentioned, which would show the epistle to 
 have been written after 150, are not decisive ; and in favour of 
 an earlier date, one might further, in particular, urge, — that the 
 citations from Paul are free in character, after the manner of 
 Justin ; that the question of gnosis is handled so guilelessly, 
 and no notice taken of Gnosticism ; and that, further, the author 
 shows, in his conception of God, that he occupied a point of view 
 from which love appeared as the distinctively Christian charac- 
 teristic of God, in opposition to mere power and justice. At 
 the time of Irenseus and Tertullian, on the contrary, nay, even 
 at the time of the earlier opponents of Marcion and others, the 
 Christian intellect considered the task devolving upon it to be 
 the reverse one of asserting for justice also a place alongside of 
 love, as an attribute of the Most High God, and, so to speak, to 
 reproduce the former as stored up and included in the latter : 
 whereas the author of this epistle, like Ignatius, feels blessed 
 in, and devotes himself almost solely to, the contemplation of 
 the love of God. Finally, in favour of the earlier date may 
 especially be adduced c. 11, — ' 'AirooroXcap ryevofievo? fjLaOrjTt)? 
 ylvoficu BiBcur/cako? edvaiv ; for such a division, at first sight, 
 reminds one in some measure of the earliest times. But even 
 at a later time such a division might have been employed with 
 perfect justice, and its use in the present instance is clearly 
 traceable to the individuality of the writer. It is undoubtedly 
 possible that, at a later time also, a peculiarly thoughtful man, 
 thoroughly and harmoniously cultivated, without taking part in 
 
NOTES. 377 
 
 the conflicts of the age, or, at all events, without wishing to in- 
 troduce his heathen disciple to the controversies then raging in 
 the Christian world, might have written this work. It breathes 
 an air of eternity ; it is marked by inner harmony and clear- 
 ness : and precisely because it was so direct an expression of the 
 eternal element in Christianity, does it bear so few traces of 
 any particular period ; indeed, it might have found a home in 
 any age of the Church's history. But if the division of the 
 epistle above referred to be adopted, it must have been written 
 probably not long after the year 120. Otto's acute and pains- 
 taking investigations have furnished strong reasons for agreeing 
 with some of the old manuscripts, which attribute the epistle 
 to Justin Martyr ; for my own part, however, I must confess 
 that the point of view seems to me higher, and the style nobler, 
 than that of Justin. But be its age what it may, caution would 
 suggest the advisability of employing the epistle at a later period, 
 in connection with a question so important as that of the age 
 of the Hellenic-Christian doctrine of the Logos. For the various 
 views on the subject, see Otto in Illgen's " Zeitschrift," 1841, 
 Heft 2, p. 80; and 1842, Heft 2, p. 54 f . ; further, his "de 
 Epist. ad Diognetum S. Justini Philos. et Martyris nomen prse 
 se ferente," Jena 1845. 
 
 Note II, page 121. 
 
 This follows from Hieron. Qusest. hebr. in Genesin : — Pleri- 
 que existimant, sicut in altercatione quoque Jasonis et Papisci 
 scriptum est, — in Hebrseo haberi, — In Filio fecit Deus ccelum 
 et terrain. (Even as Origen explains the ap^rj in John i. 1 
 and Gen. i. 1, ed. de la Eue ii. 52 ; iv. 17 ff., of the Divine 
 Wisdom.) Compare Eouth I.e. i. 91, 94. Of a doctrine of 
 the Logos taught by Aristo we know nothing : at the same 
 time, he belonged to the number of those who, in harmony with 
 the Old Testament, though without using the title Logos, de- 
 veloped, during the first half of the second century, momenta of 
 the doctrine, such as the pre-existence and the world-creating 
 power of the Son. Compare also Irenasus adv. hser. 2, 3. 
 Similarly Clem. Alex. Strom. 6, 16, p. 815 ed. Potter.— The 
 account of apologies being presented to the Emperor Hadrian, in 
 the eighteenth year of his reign, by Apelles and Aristo, contained 
 in the Chron. Alex. (ed. Eader. 600), is probably based on a 
 
378 APPENDIX. 
 
 misunderstanding of Eusebius. Fabricius supposes that Aristc 
 of Pella is the writer referred to. 
 
 Nora JJ, page 121. 
 
 Compare Eouth I.e. i. 94. Theodotion and Aquila trans- 
 lated Deut. xxi. 23 by XoiBopia 6eov; similarly also, the 
 Ebionites, according to Jerome, rendered it v/3/w. Both trans- 
 lations efface the idea of punishment, of curse. Aristo did not 
 understand Hebrew. But that he was acquainted with the 
 Septuagint, which gives a rendering of Deut. xxi. 23 more 
 favourable to his purposes (compare Gal. iii. 13), may be judged 
 from his explanation of Gen. i. 1 : — See the LXX. in loco. 
 
 Note KK, page 123. 
 
 As Irenseus, in his five books, felt conscious that he was set- 
 ting forth the same Christian doctrine, about the year 180, that 
 he had heard in his youth, from Polycarp, during the first 
 twenty years of the first century (Ep. ad Florin. I.e. ; com- 
 pare Flemmer's " de itineribus et rebus gestis Hadriani Imperat. 
 secundum nummorum et inscriptionum testim." Haun. 1836, 
 c. 3, 9), and on which the various churches of the world were 
 agreed (L. 3, 1-4) ; so also Eusebius, who had before him 
 many old documents now no longer extant, makes frequent 
 allusions to the essential agreement in matters of faith between 
 his own and former times ; and such an agreement could, at 
 that period, relate to one subject alone, to wit, that of a Christo- 
 logy (H. E. 4, 5, 7, 14, 23). There exists, however, another 
 testimony with regard to the faith of the then Christendom, 
 dating from the time of Aristo, Quadratus, and Aristides, if not 
 from an earlier period, — the testimony, namely, of that unknown 
 old man, by whose means Justin Martyr was brought to Chris- 
 tianity (Dial. c. Tryph. 3-7). That what Justin relates of this 
 old man is true, I regard as fully made out by Semisch (see I.e. i. 
 15 ff.) ; the same writer has also shown that Ephesus was most 
 probably the scene of the conversation (p. 21). Now, as Justin 
 presented an apology for the Christians as early as the year 139, 
 and was still a young man when converted, the conversation 
 most probably took place during the first twenty years of the 
 second century, if not earlier. But the old man, who is de- 
 scribed as a 7r«Xato? wpe<T(5vTq<; (c. 3), unquestionably produces 
 
notes. 379 
 
 the impression not merely of a highly cultivated mind, but also 
 of a ripened Christian ; so that what he says concerning Christ 
 must be regarded as the faith of Christians about the end of 
 the first, or the commencement of the second century. It is true 
 the old man enters so cordially and sympathetically into the 
 philosophical ideas of the young man, and his intention from 
 the outset was so decided, merely to awaken doubts of his 
 philosophemes, and to excite him to make a trial of the " friends 
 of Christ," that he says very little regarding the substance of 
 Christian doctrine. What he does say, however, is significant. 
 At the close of the third, and at the commencement of the 
 fourth chapter, the old man tries to show that, inasmuch as the 
 true evBaiuovla consists solely in the knowledge of God, and as 
 the spirit can know God alone through God, not through itself, 
 a twofold revelation is necessary. Firstly, an objective revela- 
 tion ; because, as the only way in which we know anything at 
 all, so also the only way in which we can know God, is by 
 means of an external appearance — by something which shall 
 affect the sense of sight or of hearing. Secondly, a subjective 
 revelation in the Holy Spirit, because the pure alone is sus 
 ceptible to the Divine. All this is, as it were, a direct outcome 
 of the doctrinal type of John (compare John i. 18 ; 1 John i. 
 1 ff. ; John v. 37, 38). Both (c. 7, ed. Col. 109), in the con- 
 viction of the old man, are given in Christianity, — that is, in 
 Christ the Son of God, who was announced by the prophets, 
 and sent by the Father : and in the Holy Spirit, through whom 
 God and His Christ vouchsafe knowledge to us, and open the 
 gates of light to him who prays. Foolish and unintelligible do 
 they seem (that is, Divine things and their revelation in Christ) 
 to all, whom God and His Christ do not make capable of under- 
 standing them. Compare the close of the Epistola ad Diog- 
 netum 8, 4. — Who the old man was, cannot be shown. Fabri- 
 cius suggests Polycarp ; but this is not very probable. He was 
 evidently a man of large mind and philosophical culture : but 
 still he seems to have been inferior to the author of the Epistle 
 to Diognetus, notwithstanding the many resemblances between 
 the situation of things and their fundamental ideas. The old 
 man also, as did Justin at a later period, stood in a relation to 
 prophecy, in which the other cannot be shown to have stood. 
 
380 APPENDIX 
 
 Note LL, page 123. 
 
 The following may be adduced as marks indicative of the time 
 when this work was written :— 1. One repentance (Vis. ii. 2, in. 
 7 ; Mand. iv. 3 ; " Poenitentia una est, Poenitentise justorum 
 habent fines"). All the weight falls on this one repentance: 
 over it is appointed an angel, as Prsepositus poenitentise. Here- 
 upon the question of adultery also is discussed. The idea of 
 marriage also indicates a later period (Vis. ii. 2 ; Mand. iv. 4). 
 2. With this is connected, in the second place, what is taught 
 regarding holy baptism. Even the pious in the nether world, 
 who stand in no need of improvement, cannot attain to blessed- 
 ness, until they have received through the Apostles the seal of 
 baptism (Simil. ix. 16). 3. The highest position is assigned to 
 martyrdom in Vis. iii. 1. 4. Christian piety has already created 
 a system of ascetical practices (" stationem habeo," Simil. v. 15). 
 5. The pastor everywhere raises his voice against the rigid forms 
 of the Church, which threatened to absorb the religious activity 
 of the rest of Christians in the functions of the presidents ; — in 
 one word, he sets his face against ecclesiastical formalism. This 
 is especially clear from his relation to the presidents of the 
 Church, and from the view he takes of the tendency to give the 
 presidents so prominent a position in the cultus and constitu- 
 tion. To the liturgical and episcopal representation of the 
 Church he opposes the ethical, and objects to a particular prin- 
 cipals in the Church (Simil. viii. 8; Mand. xii. 2). The false 
 spirits wish to hold the first cathedra. In Vis. iii. 9 we read, — 
 " And to you who preside over the Church (that is, to the 
 bishops, according to Sim. ix. 27), and who love the first seats, 
 I say, Be not like poison-mixers." — It is true, pillars are set up 
 in the vineyard of God, that is, presidents, who bind the people 
 together (Simil. v. 5) ; and the bishops, whose duty it was to be 
 a shadow to the people, had assumed, even in his day, the first 
 places (Simil. ix. 27 ; Vis. iii. 9, 5). Not, however, as bishops 
 are they incorporated with the ideal Church, which he beholds 
 in vision (Simil. ix. 27, 15) ; but some of the bishops alone are 
 the shadowing trees ; even as, on the other hand, such as are 
 not bishops occupy the same position. But the scornful attack 
 he makes on the cathedra is worthy of special remark. In the 
 third Vis. c. 11, we read, — " In the first instance, the Church 
 
NOTES. 381 
 
 appeared to Hermas as an old woman sitting on a cathedra :— 
 ' because your spirit is old and already fading. Like old women, 
 who cannot renew themselves, and expect nothing but sleep ; so 
 have you surrendered yourselves to sloth, have not cast your 
 cares upon the Lord, etc' " But on the cathedra sat the woman, 
 " quoniam omnis infirmus super cathedram sedet, propter infir- 
 mitatem suam, ut contineatur infirmitas ejus." (Compare Mand. 
 xv. 2.) The cathedra, therefore, is for such as are sleepy ; and 
 tends to rock persons to sleep. Weakness seeks in it a support ; 
 but that is unbelief : moreover, what is itself weak cannot 
 strengthen others. " Spiritus vester antiquior etiam marcidus 
 est, et non habens vim a vestris infirmitatibus et dubitatione 
 cordis." In the second Visio (Vis. iii. 12), the woman (the 
 Church) appears to him with a youthful countenance and joy- 
 ous aspect ; and yet still old as to flesh and hair. The explana- 
 tion thereof is, — " Her spirit is renewed, she has laid aside the 
 infirmitates, she is rejuvenated by repentance." But she never 
 attains a firm position, until she repents with all her heart. 
 Then he beholds her sitting, not on the cathedra, but " super 
 subsellium sedentem" that is the " fortis positio." He aims, 
 therefore, at asserting the equality of all ; relatively both to the 
 rich and to the dignitaries of the Church. Those who fight 
 about rank and dignities must submit themselves to repentance 
 (Sim. viii. 7). Such opposition of course presupposes experiences 
 which were impossible during the age of the Apostolic Fathers : 
 that which awakened the enthusiasm of Ignatius, — to wit, the 
 idea of the unity of the Church as an edifice, in which Apostles, 
 Bishops, Teachers, and Deacons fit into each other like stones 
 which fit into their propel places (Vis. iii. 5), — is not unknown 
 to him ; but he complain? that this organization of the constitu- 
 tion threatens, where there is a lack of fit persons, to overthrow 
 the equality of Christians, and introduces " a false spirit," a 
 worldly element, into the Church (Mand. xii. 2). But in con- 
 sequence of the predominance of the cathedra, and of all ac- 
 tivity being concentred in the bishop, the religious meetings 
 have a soporiferous character. Particular light is thrown on 
 his controversy against the representation of the Church through 
 the Episcopacy and the liturgy, by his ideal of the Divine ser- 
 vice of the Church (Mand. xi. 12). " The main point is 
 to have the Spirit; not the false spirit, but the Spirit from 
 
382 APPENDIX. 
 
 above. The spirit of man is earthly and trifling, speaks much 
 and yet has no power. The spirit from the earth speaks when 
 it wills ; but the true Spirit speaks when God wills, and not when 
 man wills. Accordingly, when a man who has the Spirit comes 
 into the assembly of the righteous, who believe in God, and 
 prayer is offered to God, the holy messenger of the Deity fills 
 that man with the Holy Spirit, and he speaks in the midst of 
 the multitude as God wills." The author, therefore, seems to 
 wish to bring back the free mode of worship which obtained in 
 Corinth ; he desires no fixed order, neither as affecting speakers 
 nor the subject of discourse. The sudden operations of the 
 Spirit, that which is abrupt, alone inspires him with confidence. 
 Forms that have grown up historically are human, earthly; 
 God alone ought to speak in the Church. Both in this matter, 
 in his remarks on repentance adduced above, and in his idea of 
 the Church (Sim. ix. 18) and of marriage (Mand. iv. 4), but 
 especially in his notion that all progress in knowledge must be 
 effected by means of visions, in an abrupt Montanistic form, he 
 was a forerunner of Montanus. That he represents his instruc- 
 tor as accustomed to appear to him in the form of a shepherd 
 (whence the book derives its title), is probably due not to acci- 
 dent, but to the afore-mentioned antagonism to the Episcopate. 
 Another point of affinity between him and Montanism is, that 
 the new elements communicated to him in his revelations are 
 principally of an ethical nature. Even the tendency of Simil. 
 iv. is ethical, — a point which must not be overlooked in interpret- 
 ing it. In his ethics, it is true, he takes up a predominantly 
 negative, consequently legal, position relatively to the world. 
 The Shepherd attaches little importance to the religious ascetical 
 practices prescribed by the Church, and so far represents a 
 freer point of view (Sim. v. 3) ; but to an ethical asceticism 
 he continues to adhere, and that forms the substance of his 
 new revelations. — From the features just described, it is evi- 
 dent, on the one hand, that the Shepherd of Hernias must be 
 dated prior to Montanism, of which, however, it was a fore- 
 runner (compare similar features in other writers of this period, 
 Euseb. H. E. iv. 23) ; and, on the other hand, that it must 
 have been written after the organization of the Church had 
 acquired, through the Episcopacy and other institutions, a 
 more compact form than it possessed at the time of Ignatius. 
 
NOTES. 383 
 
 Many things which were still matters of dispute in the days 
 of Ignatius, and needed some such energetical recommenda- 
 tion as is contained in his epistles, seem to have already he- 
 come actual facts at the time of the Shepherd. Experiences 
 of the lack of personal worth, and of dangers to the equality 
 of Christians, to the free movement of the spirit, and to true 
 and vital piety arising from the Episcopate, with which Igna- 
 tius could surely not have been acquainted, seeing that with 
 perfect artlessness he takes no notice whatever of them, have 
 now become frequent. In general, indeed, the unity realized 
 through the development of ecclesiastical institutions, appeared to 
 many (for the Shepherd cannot be regarded as an isolated pheno- 
 menon) to be of too formal a character, and led them to protest 
 against it in the name of the spirit of Christianity. Baur has 
 treated Hermas very imperfectly in his work on the Episco- 
 pate (pp. 75 ff.). Of the above passages concerning the cathedra 
 and the first seat, he takes no notice ; he advances no further 
 than the passage from Vis. ii. 4, which he explains to mean 
 that Clement is placed in the class of the Seniores. This pas- 
 sage, however, forms part of the dress of the epistle, which 
 required that circumstances should be represented as they had 
 been some fifty years previously, especially as Clement's name 
 was intended to secure for the epistle admission into the 
 Church. Besides, the shepherd himself would fain have seen 
 the earlier and simpler state of things restored. Further, the 
 passage does not at all describe Clement merely as one of the 
 Seniores. He is specially mentioned along side of the Seniores, 
 and was, therefore, at the very least, as even Baur must allow, 
 regarded as primus inter pares. In no passage referring to 
 the circumstances of his own time does Hermas speak of Pres- 
 byteri or Seniores, as Baur appears to think, but of Episcopi, 
 Doctores, Ministri. We must, therefore, agree with Routh 
 when he asserts (" Reliquiae Sacra?" iv. 33), that he sees no 
 reason for contradicting the canon of Muratori (ib. p. 5), which 
 testifies, — " Pastorem vero nuperrime temporibus nostris in 
 urbe Roma Herma conscripsit, sedente (in) cathedra urbis 
 Romse ecclesise Pio Episcopo fratre ejus" (compare also pseudo- 
 Tertullian in the Carm. adv. Marc). That a tendency akin 
 to Montanism made its appearance in Rome at a somewhat 
 later time, namely, about the third quarter of the second cen- 
 
384 APPENDIX. 
 
 tury, is attested in other ways also. A decided reaction against 
 that tendency did not hegin till the last quarter of the same 
 century. This is sadly inconsistent with the hypothesis, which 
 I am more and more compelled to regard as historically un- 
 tenable, that Ebionism predominated in Rome till towards the 
 middle of the second century ; for about the year 100, Clement, 
 who was there, was no Ebionite ; and Montanism likewise was 
 not Ebionitical in the matter of Christology, nor is its dis 
 tinctive character, in general, expressed by the term Ebion- 
 ism. Montanism, on the contrary, maintained that Chris- 
 tianity was a new thing in its every momentum ; and it did 
 not acquire a legal, that is, in point of principle, a Judaistic 
 character, until it began to exaggerate and stereotype this par- 
 ticular aspect. Whereas national Judaism, — to wit, the in- 
 sisting on the Mosaic law, on circumcision, on the eschatolo- 
 gical hopes of Israel and the like, — which, regarded apart from 
 Christology, constituted Ebionism proper, were never charac- 
 teristics of Montanism as such. Hennas himself, however, 
 to judge from the manner in which he speaks, was probably 
 a Jewish Christian. Judaizing elements may also be pointed 
 out in his work : amongst these may be specially reckoned the 
 value attached to good works, and, in general, to the law ; 
 besides such separate matters as, that Michael is the protect- 
 ing angel of the Christians (Simil. viii. 3) ; the great role played 
 altogether by the doctrine of angels ; the existence of a par- 
 ticular penitential angel ; the exclusiveness which he enjoins 
 in relation to the " exterse gentes" (Simil. viii. 9). At the 
 same time, the Judaizing tendency evinced in the matters above 
 mentioned, is such as might arise within the Church itself in 
 any age whatever: in other words, the Judaistic elements in 
 Hermas are not a proper continuation of the national Judaism 
 of the Jews. On the contrary, the author intended to raise the 
 strongest possible opposition thereto : for example, Michael was 
 the first protecting angel of the Jews ; now he is represented as 
 the protecting angel of the Christians ; nor is the aim of the 
 Visions to enforce the laws of the Old Testament, but rather to 
 oppose to them a Christian legislation. Still an antagonism of 
 such a character inevitably becomes partially assimilated and fixed 
 to that to which it stands opposed ; and however decidedly the 
 breach may have been between these men and national Judaism, 
 
HOTES. 385 
 
 they continued, as to principle, within the same sphere, namely, 
 that of legality which, in the wider sense, may be described as 
 Judaizing. It would be exceedingly instructive to trace out 
 the course taken by the Church at this stadium of its oppo- 
 sition to Judaism, playing as it did, against its own will, into 
 the hands of the principle to which it stood in antagonism. 
 It manifested itself, not merely in the ethical sphere, strictly 
 so termed, but also in the command to fast on the Sabbath, 
 in the order of festivals appointed for the Church, in the de- 
 velopment of eschatology, and especially of Chiliasm, in bap- 
 tism as related to circumcision, and in the holy Eucharist, 
 which was described as a Christian service of sacrifice, and 
 as such was contrasted with the ante-Christian service. A 
 careful investigation of all the aspects of this stadium, through 
 which it was historically necessary for the Church to pass, 
 would serve the cause of science better than the confusion of 
 distinctions — the classing of Judaistic elements of this nature 
 under Ebionism — with the design, if possible, of deducing 
 from, or rather importing into, the history, the conclusion, 
 that, during the earliest period of its existence, the Christian 
 Church was Ebionitical. 
 
 Note MM, page 127. 
 
 In view of the passages above adduced, it can only excite 
 astonishment to find Baur denying (see his " Trinitatslehre," 
 vol. i. 136, note) that Hermas designates the Divine in Christ 
 by any other terms than irvevna and irvevfia fo/iov. Not to 
 the manifested Christ alone does Hermas give the name Son of 
 God, but he believes also in a pre-mundane Son of God, hypo- 
 statically distinguished from the Father. And even supposing 
 he did designate this pre-mundane Son by the name Holy 
 Ghost (that he does not do so, is evident from what has been ad- 
 vanced above ; for although he regards the Son also as a spirit, 
 he never calls the Son by the name Holy Spirit, but His 
 standing title is Son), the idea of this hypostatical Holy Spirit 
 would be identical with the Son of God recognised by the 
 Church. If the Holy Spirit constituted the personal element 
 in Christ — which Baur does not deny, — then his Christology 
 cannot have been Ebionitical: — he cannot have been an Ebionite 
 of the vulgar sort, nor even of the Clementine order ; for, unlike 
 
 VOL. I. 2 B 
 
386 APPENDIX. 
 
 the Ebionites, he regarded Christ as more than a mere prophet; 
 and, unlike the Clementine writings, Hennas represents his 
 Christ-Spirit as taking part in the creation, and is thus able to 
 bring Him into close proximity to God. 
 
 Note NN, page 127. 
 
 For this reason the most judicious inquirers have, with one 
 accord, pronounced it to be a failure. Compare Gieseler's 
 " Church History" i. 151, 152. That writer remarks, — " Ten- 
 dencies of the most different nature were allowed to have their 
 way, so long as they left untouched the Divine and the human 
 in Christ, whose union was the condition of the redemptive and 
 exemplary character of the life of Jesus. Hence the Shepherd 
 of Hermas, notwithstanding the peculiarities of his Christology, 
 gave no offence." Schliemann (I.e. 421-426), who allows that 
 Hermas has an Ebionitical colouring in the matter of ethics, 
 pronounces him entirely free from such elements, in relation to 
 Christology. Meier also is of the same opinion (see his " Die 
 Lehre von der Trinitat" i. 47-49), though he considers that the 
 entire work of Hermas stands on the boundary-line separating 
 Judaism and Christianity. He is of opinion, indeed, that Simil. 
 5 by itself, if we disregard the circumstance that the Spirit is 
 termed Son of God merely parabolically, and rather take the 
 words as used doctrinally, discriminates hypostatically between 
 God and Spirit, — which would be compatible with an Ebioniti- 
 cal Christology ; for Christ might then be the avOpanros i|a\o? 
 in whom, as in other men, the Holy Spirit dwells, and who was 
 exalted in reward for His virtue. An incarnation would thus 
 be excluded. Still, this is not necessarily involved in the 
 hypostatical distinction drawn between God and Spirit, instead 
 of between Son and Spirit ; — a distinction whose existence 
 may be called in question. For, even if the Holy Spirit stood 
 in the same relation to the humanity of Christ as to other 
 men, " He might at the same time have stood in a personal 
 relation to another hypostasis ; and Hermas undoubtedly hints 
 at such a relation, as, for example, when he says, ' The Son of 
 God is older than all other creatures,' etc. Sim. 9, 12, etc." 
 Page 49, — "He teaches also the existence of a veritable incar- 
 nation, when he says, ' The old rock on which the tower of the 
 Church is built and the new gate — both alike are the Son of 
 
NOTES. 387 
 
 God, because He who is older than the world will appear in the 
 completion of the days.' " A still more decided opinion against, 
 not merely the Ebionism of the author, but also against the 
 assertion that he identifies the Son and the Holy Spirit, is ex- 
 pressed by L. Wolff : see his " Ueber den Begriff geschichtlicher 
 Entwickelung des Dogma's, in Rudelbach's und Guericke's 
 Zeitschrift, 1842, i. pp. 57 ff. ;" compare also Rossel's review of 
 Baur's " Trinitatslehre," in the " Berliner Jahrbiicher," 1844, 
 Numbers 41-45, specially pp. 337 ff. 
 
 Note 00, page 127. 
 
 Sim. 9, 12 : "Nemo intrabit in regnum Dei, nisi qui acceperit 
 nomen Filii Dei, qui est ei carissimus (who becomes a Christian, 
 not Christ, through baptism in His name). — Porta Filius Dei 
 est, qui solus est accessus adDeum. — Petra et Porta Filius est." 
 The Pock is old, the Door is new ; for " Filius quidem Dei omni 
 creatura antiquior est, ita ut in consilio Patri suo adfuerit ad 
 condendam creaturam, Porta autem propterea nova est, quia in 
 consummatione, etc. ;" see note on page 127. — Vis. 2, 2 : " Ju- 
 ravit Dominus per Filium suum : qui denegaverit Filium et se, 
 et ipsi denegaturi sunt ilium in advenientibus diebus." — Sim. 
 9, 14 : " Nomen Filii Dei magnum et immensum est et totus ab 
 eo sustentatur orbis. Si ergo, inquam, omnis Dei creatura per 
 Filium ejus sustentatur, cur non et eos sustinet, qui invitati 
 sunt ab eo, et nomen ejus ferunt, et in prseceptis ejus ambulant ? 
 Nonne etiam vides, inquit, quod sustinet eos, qui ex totis prse- 
 cordiis portant nomen ejus ? Ipse igitur fundamentum est 
 eorum, et libenter portat eos, qui non negant nomen ejus, sed 
 libenter sustinent ilium." 
 
 Note PP, page 128. 
 
 Moreover, the fifth similitude shows how much pains Hennas 
 took to assign to the humanity of Christ an abiding significance. 
 How can a " body" be rewarded by being exalted to the rank 
 of Son of God, and put on a level with the Holy Spirit? One 
 might with much greater reason say, that Hermas approximates 
 to the view of the Adoptianists, who held that the humanity of 
 Christ participated in Sonship, not so much on the ground of 
 its connection with the Son of God, as because of its own holy 
 walk. 
 
388 APPENDIX. 
 
 Note QQ, page 134. 
 
 Baur, in his comprehensive work on the History of the Doc- 
 trine of the Trinity and of the Incarnation, treats the age of 
 the Apostolic Fathers altogether scantily, and dwells but little 
 longer on Hernias, who, according to his notion, " may be re- 
 garded as the most faithful representative of this Judaizing 
 tendency (of the entire period of the Apostolic Fathers)." In 
 his review of Schliemann's "Die Olementinen," in Zeller's 
 "Jahrbiicher"j (1844), however, he has considerably modified, 
 nay, even partially withdrawn from, this position. Hermas, he 
 maintains, teaches that the Holy Spirit alone was the higher 
 element, which constituted Christ the Son of God. For this 
 reason, he deems himself warranted in drawing the further con- 
 clusion, that " others also, such as Barnabas and Clement, who 
 attributed, indeed, pre-existence and the creation of the world 
 to the Son, but without at all hinting at the idea of the Logos, 
 must be supposed to have shared the same view." Such a method 
 of proof seems to me to accomplish little. To constitute Hermas 
 the representative of all the Apostolic Fathers, and to judge 
 the rest by him, is not an historical mode of procedure, and 
 distorts the many-featured image of this period. Further, to 
 maintain that, where the word Logos is absent, there is no longer 
 any trace of the idea, is to estimate the idea of the Logos rather 
 by forms of expression, than by substance. But when the Son 
 of God is identified with the Wisdom of Proverbs (Sim. ix. 12) ; 
 when, further, He is designated " Intellectus," " Gloria Dei" 
 (compare Clemens ad Cor. i. 37), "nomen Dei magnificum, 
 nuncius kot i^o^ijv ;" nay more, when a creative " Verbum" (as 
 in Heb. i. 3) is attributed to Him (Vis. iii. 1 ff .), — surely we may 
 affirm the existence of more than mere hints of the idea of the 
 Logos in Hermas. (Compare Note AA.) Indeed, it is alto- 
 gether an abnormity to maintain that the discrimination of the 
 Holy Spirit, as a pre-existent subject, from God, took place at 
 an earlier stage than that of the higher nature of Christ. In 
 fact, the entire course taken by the development of the doctrine 
 of the Trinity must be misapprehended, ere we can deny that 
 it continually derived its impulse from the doctrine of the Son 
 of God in Christ, until at last the o/ioova-ia of the Son having 
 been established, that of the Spirit also was decided. The con 
 
NOTES. 389 
 
 fusion produced by the hypothesis of Baur avenges itself also 
 on his own view ; for he is entirely unable to explain how it 
 was, that the Holy Spirit, whose nature least urgently called 
 for hypostatization, was discriminated from God as a distinct 
 subject, or was even, as he supposes, designated Son of God, 
 prior to the Son, whose nature most urgently called for hyposta- 
 tization ; and any explanation he attempts, substantially throws 
 down what he had previously built up. He says, notwithstand- 
 ing, again (pp. 135 ff.), — In order to understand why the Holy 
 Spirit was conceived to be a pre-existent subject, and Son of 
 God, we must go back to the human appearance of the Son of 
 God, from which this name was transferred to the Holy Spirit 
 (the question was not one of a mere name, but of the deter- 
 mination of the Holy Spirit, as a personality distinct from God). 
 The Spirit is called the Son of God, " because He was from the 
 very beginning destined to appear as Son of God in a human 
 body." If this be the case, Hernias must unquestionably teach 
 that a Divine subject, pre-existent and distinct from God, had 
 become man, and that, on the ground of the complete correspond- 
 ence which existed between the incarnate form of this Divine 
 subject and its own essential idea, it bore from the commence- 
 ment the name Son of God: but what becomes then of the 
 Ebionitic element in the conception formed of the matter, with 
 the proof of the existence of which, Baur's entire theory of 
 primitive Christianity stands or falls? The doctrine of the 
 Trinity must have been affected thereby ; yet even it would not 
 have been affected, unless the term " Holy Spirit" had denoted 
 the person taught by the Church, and were not merely the more 
 indefinite name for the Divine principle in general, which was 
 thus advanced from the category of mere power to that of 
 personality. But no one could venture to call the Christology 
 therein involved, Judaistic or Ebionitical. — Even supposing, 
 however, there existed a greater or lesser party which first 
 defined the Holy Spirit to be a pre-existent hypostasis, dis- 
 tinct from the Father (for the pre-existence must be taken into 
 the bargain), and then went on to distinguish between the 
 Logos and the Holy Spirit — it would not favour the hypo- 
 thesis of the Church having been originally Ebionitical. For 
 the belief in an incarnation of the Holy Spirit could no more 
 be termed Ebionitical, than that in an incarnation of the Logos. 
 
390 APPENDIX. 
 
 The danger thus accruing would affect, not the doctrine of the 
 Divine in Christ, but merely, in the worst case, that of the in- 
 dwelling of the Holy Spirit in the Church ; inasmuch as the 
 Holy Spirit would be represented as possessed in His totality 
 by Christ. Nor, indeed, would this be a necessary consequence ; 
 for even the God-man is considered by the Church to stand in 
 a twofold relation to men — an objective relation, in that He is 
 outside of, and independent of men ; and a subjective relation, in 
 that He dwells in their hearts. But however various may have 
 been the starting-points in the development of Christology, there 
 is no trace whatever of the existence of a party which taught the 
 doctrine of an hypostatical Holy Spirit, subsequently embodied 
 in the creeds of the Church, prior to that of an hypostatical 
 Son of God, that is, of the Logos. In the apocryphal books 
 of the old Testament (especially in the works of Sirach), Word 
 and Spirit are still very imperfectly distinguished ; but in the 
 irvevfJ-a of those books, no one will think of finding the " Holy 
 Spirit" of the baptismal formula. When Matthew and Luke 
 speak, in connection with the incarnation, not of the Logos, but 
 of the irvevfia aryiov, and derive the divinity of Christ from this 
 irvevfj,a alone, irpev/Ma must unquestionably be taken in the in- 
 definite, comprehensive signification of the modern expression, 
 "the Divine in Christ:" — no one, therefore, ought to find in 
 it the Holy Ghost which now forms part of the doctrine of the 
 Trinity. This mode of speech is exactly parallel to that of 
 Paul (Rom. i. 3, ix. 5) ; and the more indefinite designation 
 could be, and alway was, employed along with the more defi- 
 nite one ; — it might therefore have been usual, at a time when 
 the solemn expression Logos, or Son of God, was the estab- 
 lished designation of the Divine in Christ. Compare above, the 
 numerous passages from the writings of Ignatius, who held 
 Christ to be the evacri<; crap/cbs ical irvevfuiTo<;, and along there- 
 with teaches the pre-existence of the Logos. In like manner, 
 Barnabas terms Christ's body a>cevo<; irvevfiaro^ (c. 7), notwith- 
 standing his doctrine of the pre-existent Son of God (c. 5, 12 ; 
 compare 1 Peter iii. 18) ; the Epistle to the Hebrews also 
 (ix. 14) says of Christ, — o? Sia Trvev/iaTos alavlov eavrbv 
 irpocnf)veyicev a/j,co/j,ov rm @eq>, notwithstanding the logological 
 opening (c. i. 1-3), to which not even the expression X070S 
 rod Qeov, which is parallel to that of the pre-existent vuti, is 
 
NOTES. 391 
 
 strange (compare c. iv. 12 ff.). Clement. Ep. ii. 9, — Xpv- 
 oro? 6 icvpios, $>v fiev to irpSiTov irvev/Ma, eyevero adp!;. Later 
 Fathers also were in the habit of using the word in the same 
 broad sense ; — for example, Tertullian adv. Marc. iii. 16, — 
 " Spiritus Oreatoris, qui est Ohristus ;" iii. 6 ; adv. Hermog. 18; 
 Apol. 21 ; de came Christi 18, — " Sic denique homo cum Deo 
 dum caro hominis cum spiritu Dei :" further, Cyprian, de idol, 
 vanit. ed Basil. 1558, p. 122, where the more correct reading is, 
 "hie in Virgine labitur, carne Spiritus sanctus induitur;" which 
 the hand of a stranger, whose mind recurred to the Holy Ghost 
 of the Creeds, when he read the expression, " spiritus sanctus," 
 converted into — " hie in Virginem illabitur, carnem Spiritu 
 sancto cooperante induitur." We must rather take the more in- 
 definite reading ; for in the "adv. Prax." 27 of Tertullian, the 
 Father also is designated " Spiritus." 
 
 It was of course necessary that the more indefinite expres- 
 sion irvevfia, employed by Matthew and Luke, should, in the 
 course of time, be left behind, and a more definite one adopted. 
 To this the Christian mind was mainly impelled by its convic- 
 tion, that in Christ the Divine had dwelt hypostatically, abidingly. 
 The effect thereof was, that instead of employing merely the com- 
 prehensive term " Divine Spirit," which, although it marked the 
 true divinity of the essence of Christ, did not distinguish the 
 Son from the Father, who is also irvev/ia, the Christian mind 
 proceeded to characterize and discriminate more carefully the 
 Divine in Christ from the Divine in the Father. To do so was 
 the more necessary, as the Divine in Christ, having been once 
 recognised as hypostatical, must needs also be decided to have 
 been pre-existent. Not until the Divine in Christ had been more 
 carefully defined and characterized, could the second work be 
 undertaken, to wit, the discrimination of the Divine in the 
 Church, or the Holy Spirit. 
 
 This discrimination of the irvevfia in Christ from the Trveiifia 
 of the Father (that is, from the Divine in general, not from the 
 Holy Ghost of the doctrine of the Trinity), which was required 
 also by the baptismal formula, found many points of connection in 
 such theologumena of the age as the rnjr or S6!ja, the Shechinah, 
 the Memra, the doctrine of the Metatron and Adam Kadmon, 
 of the prifia and \6yos ©eov with the 2o<j>la or Chochmah, on 
 the one hand ; and, on the other hand, in the Hellenic doctrine 
 
3.92 APPENDIX. 
 
 of the i>oC? or X070? (Reason) : it was plainly initiated also by 
 apostolic expressions orally handed down, and by others con- 
 tained in the canonical writings. For the purpose of distin- 
 guishing more carefully the Divine in Christ, which he terms 
 irvevjj.a, from the Father, Paul makes use of the expression Son 
 of God, which he refers not merely to the God-man, but also to 
 the Divine nature of the Son by itself (see above, page 73). At 
 the same time, he also applies to Him some of the above-men- 
 tioned theologumena : — for example, he calls Him the Second 
 Adam, the First-born of the creation, the elictov rod 0eov, the 
 Power and Wisdom of God (1 Cor. i. 24). As to the latter, he 
 resembles Luke, who, in the chief passage of his Gospel touch- 
 ing the incarnation (Luke i. 35), speaks not merely of -irveviia 
 in general, but also of the Svva/iis ir^ricrTov (on which expression 
 Acts viii. 10 throws an instructive light) ; and he represents 
 Christ also as styling Himself <jo<f>la (Luke xi. 49). This desig- 
 nation of the pre-existent Divine essence of Christ by the name 
 " Son of God," may be taken as the typical one of primitive 
 Christianity ; for we find it also in the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 (c. i.) ; and both the term /jovoyewj? employed by John, which at 
 an early period came into general use (as is clear from Gnostic 
 writings, and from the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs), 
 and Paul's w/jibtoto/co?, belong to the same family. Those, on 
 the contrary, who adhered more positively to the Old Testament, 
 would more readily go back to the Shechinah, or the ninj "O^, 
 for a designation of the higher nature of Christ in its distinction 
 from the Father. The latter we find in 1 Peter i. 24, compare 
 ii. 4 (whether we make pijfia or X0705 0eov out of it) ; in Apoc. 
 xix. 15, compare John i. 1 ff. ; in 1 John i. 1 ff. : — the former 
 in John i. 14, o Xoyo? — eaieffvaxTev iv rjfuv. 
 
 The early Church felt also that it was but more carefully 
 defining the indeterminate, when it understood the words of 
 Luke or Matthew — " The Holy Ghost will come upon thee ;" 
 " that which is born of thee, is of the Holy Ghost" — to refer 
 to a determinate Divine power (Suva/us vtyiarov, Luke i. 35) — 
 to the pre-existent, and from the Father hypostatically distinct, 
 Son of God, or to the Word — not, however, to the Holy Ghost 
 of the doctrine of the Trinity. Justin Martyr, in his Apologia 
 (i. 33), says, — to irvevfia kcl\ rrjv hvvafuv ttjv irapet rod &eov 
 (Luke i. 35 ; Matt. i. 20) ov&ev aXko vomeral 0ifu<s, rj tov \6jov, 
 
NOTES. 393 
 
 $? teal 7t/w»toto«o5 to) ©6o5 £<7tw. In an exactly similar way, 
 Tertullian (adv. Prax. 26, ed. Semler, 1828, ii. 197 ff.) remarks, 
 — " The Evangelist does not say, as Praxeas would lead us to 
 expect, ' Deus superveniet, et Altissimus obumbravit te,' but, 
 ' spiritus Dei, virtus Altissimi.' Portion em totiusintelligi voluit, 
 quae cessura erat in filii nomen." And he concludes, — "hie 
 spiritus Dei idem erit Sermo. Sic enim, Johanne dicente, — 
 ' Sermo caro f actus est,' spiritum quoque intelligimus in mentione 
 sermonis ; ita et hie Sermonem quoque agnoscimus in nomine 
 Spiritus. Nam et spiritus substantia est Sermonis, et sermo 
 operatio spiritus, et duo unum sunt." That Tertullian did not 
 hold the " spiritus" whose " operatio" is the " Sermo," to be the 
 Trinitarian Holy Spirit, is undeniable. We see, accordingly, that 
 the adopted mode of conciliating the nrvevfia aytov of Matt. i. 
 20 and Luke i. 35 with the Trinitarian irvevjjLa wyiov of Matt, 
 xxviii. 19, was the just one of taking irvev/ia ar/iov, in its first 
 usage, as a more indefinite designation of the Divine nature 
 of Christ, which continued to be employed even after the 
 more definite name had been set apart for the purpose : an ex- 
 ample thereof is John iii. 34. In addition to the above examples 
 of the freer use of Trvevfui, we may further adduce Theophilus of 
 Antioch and Athenagoras, out of the second century ; both of 
 whom prove that at that time the irvevfia spoken of in connec- 
 tion with the incarnation, was not considered to be identical with 
 the Trvev/ia of the doctrine of the Trinity. Theophilus says, — 
 The Word was the Father's helper at the creation of the world ; 
 He is the apyf), irvevfia 0eov, croQia, SiW/u? vtyi<nov, and entered 
 into the prophets (ad Autolyc. L. ii. p. 88, ed. Col. 1686). But 
 Athenagoras says, — Father and Son interpenetrate each other, 
 in virtue of the unity and power of their spirit: — by Spirit 
 must, in this case again, be understood the common Divine 
 essence. In like manner, Irenseus designates the Divine in 
 Christ, " spiritum Patris," L. v. 1 — " effundente Spiritum Patris 
 in adunitionem et communionem Dei et hominis, ad homines 
 quidem deponente Deum per Spiritum, ad Deum autem rursus 
 imponente hominem per suam incarnationem." § 2, Christ's ap- 
 pearance was not docetical, et fir/ &v avOpavo'; itpalvero avOpw- 
 <m>s, ovre, b rp iir akrjdetas, e/Meive, irvevfia ©eov, eirel aoparov 
 to irvevfia, ovre aXyOeid Tt? ?jv ev airS, ov yap ?\v eKelva, airep 
 icpalveTo. In § 3 express reference is made to Luke i. 35, and 
 
394 APPENDIX. 
 
 the " Spiritus Sanctus" is regarded as the "Virtus Altissimi," the 
 "Filius Dei," the " Verbum." Athanasius ad Serap. i. 980, c. 
 Apoll. i. 8 ; Greg. Naz. or. 42, 19. Hilary employs the term 
 " Spiritus," with special frequency, for " Yerbum;" for which 
 he assigns the reason (" de Trinit." 8, 25), that all the three, 
 both Father and Son also, are spirit. For other passages per- 
 tinent to this matter, see Geo. Bull's " Defensio Fidei Nic." 1, 
 2, 5, ed. Grabe, p. 19 ; and the introduction to the Opp. Hilarii, 
 ed. Maur. pp. xviii. ff. § 57 ff. 
 
 But even though it should be true that irvevfia, as used in con- 
 nection with the birth of Christ (Matt. i. 20 ; Luke i. 35), was a 
 mere predicate of the Logos, it does not therefore follow that early 
 traces of the proper Trinitarian use of irvevfia are not also to be 
 found. Even in the baptismal formula of Matt, xxviii. 19, 20, 
 the expression Trvevfui aryiov is used quite differently, in a specific 
 and narrower sense ; for it is distinguished from, and co-ordi- 
 nated with, the Father and the Son. Nor has there ever been 
 a time, when the Church did not feel, both that it was a par- 
 taker of the Divine Spirit, and that the participation of believers 
 in the Spirit was different from that of Christ. Hence, at an 
 early period, both in the Canon and in the Church, the Holy 
 Spirit, in the narrower sense, was regarded as the principle of 
 the subjective appropriation of Christianity. Now, so soon as 
 the irvevfia aryiov, in the Trinitarian sense, was somewhat more 
 clearly defined, it was necessarily conceived to be most intimately 
 related to Christ, — firstly, in so far as it proceeded from Christ ; 
 secondly, in so far as it exerted an influence on the Person of 
 Christ, as upon all human subjects. He it is who sends the 
 irvevfUL, the power from on high (Luke xxiv. 49 ; Acts i. 8 ; 
 John xiv. xv. xvi.) ; and in this aspect, Christ is the original 
 seat and source of the 7rvevfj,a ar/iov, the centre of unity of the 
 Seven Spirits, and so forth ; as He is designated, not only by 
 Hermas, but also by Irenasus (irrjiyri tov -irvevimTos, Iren. Fragm. 
 p. 346, ed. Massuet.). Similar terms are made use of by Ter- 
 tullian. This mode of regarding the Trvevfia ayiov, which is 
 based on John iii. 34, vii. 39, xx. 22 — "The Spirit was not yet 
 given, for Christ was not yet glorified," — whilst it very clearly 
 establishes the divinity of the Trvev/xa which is communicated to 
 believers, necessarily leaves the question of its hypostasis com- 
 paratively out of sight ; indeed, in general, it touches solely on 
 
notes, 395 
 
 the ceconomic aspect of the matter. But this view, according 
 to which the irvev/ia is simply the power sent by the exalted 
 Lord, streaming forth from Him, in whom its absolute fulness 
 had found a centre and resting-place (compare the Gospel of 
 the Nazarenes), was immediately supplemented by the opposite 
 view, according to which, this same irvevfia was not merely an 
 emanation of the Son of God, but was one of the constitutive 
 principles of His human personality, and exercised an influence 
 upon it. Such a supplementing was above all suggested by the 
 account of the baptism of Jesus, which represents a connection 
 as established between the irvev^a ayiov and the already existent 
 personality of Jesus. John (i. 29 ff.) and the Synoptics agree 
 entirely on this point. The notion thereof originally entertained, 
 seems to have been the following: — Although Christ was the 
 Son of God by birth out of the holy nature of God Himself, yet, 
 for His official activity, — that is, for His mission to baptize with 
 fire and the Spirit, — the union between Himself and that Spirit, 
 which, at the proper time, He would have to communicate to 
 believers, was first accomplished when He was Himself bap- 
 tized. A place having thus been left for the Holy Ghost along- 
 side of the indwelling Son of God, nay more, the complete 
 preparation of the humanity of Christ for its office being attri- 
 buted to Him, the idea that the Holy Spirit took part along 
 with the pre-existent Son in the work of incarnation could easily 
 suggest itself ; — and this we have found to be certainly the case 
 with Irenseus and others ; probably also with Hermas, if the 
 explanation attempted above be correct. Thence arose the temp- 
 tation to refer the word -rrvevfia used by Matthew and Luke to 
 this activity of the Trinitarian Holy Spirit, — a temptation to 
 which later writers frequently yielded. Against such a refer- 
 ence, however, Justin Martyr, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Ter- 
 tullian, justly protested, when the body of Christ was repre- 
 sented as the work of the Holy Spirit or of the Father ; whereas 
 the Logos must Himself have formed His own body out of 
 Mary. Compare Augustin. c. Maximin. L. 2, 17. § 2. 
 
 The initiatory, indefinite designation of the Divine nature of 
 the Logos (rrri/evfia, irvevfia Qeov) having thus been exchanged 
 for one more definite, the irvevfia of the doctrine of the Trinity 
 ceased to be applied to the Son. This was, on the whole, the 
 course taken in the matter by the Church, as we learn from tha 
 
396 APPENDIX. 
 
 works of the Apostolic Fathers and of the Apologists. Such a 
 course was natural, and is attested by the passages above ad- 
 duced ; whereas, to suppose that the 7rvev/j,a aryiov was first 
 conceived to be pre-existent and hypostatical, and that after- 
 wards followed the discrimination of the Logos, is an incom- 
 prehensible va-repov irporepov, utterly unsustained by historical 
 evidence. We by no means intend to assert, however, that all 
 actually advanced in the way indicated, from the indeterminate 
 Trvevfia of Matt. i. 20 (compare also Rom. i. 3) to the more de- 
 terminate designation of the Divine in Christ, by means of the 
 doctrine of the pre-existent Son or Logos. Some, on the con- 
 trary, contented themselves .with the more indefinite designation 
 of the Divine in Christ : — the consequence thereof was, that they 
 had no place for that idea of the Trinity, the general outline of 
 which had been furnished to the Church even by the formula 
 of baptism, and that a gulf arose between them and the rest of 
 the Church in the matter of doctrine, Montanists not even ex- 
 cepted. These were the proper Ebionites, of whom the Naza- 
 renes alone seem in part to have arrived at the idea of an 
 hypostatical existence of the Divine Spirit in Christ (thus tran- 
 scending Ebionism); although, as they did not recognise the 
 pre-existence of this hypostasis, it necessarily bore a vague, 
 indeterminate character. The other Ebionites, on the contrary, 
 sank gradually beneath the point of view of Matt. i. 20 (compare 
 Luke i. 35) ; for they came to look upon the higher element in 
 Christ as a mere divine influence, similar to that which worked 
 in the prophets, or as a higher created spirit, which either united 
 itself with Christ at an earlier or a later period, or manifested 
 itself docetically in Him. On this view, also, it was possible to 
 say, quite naturally, that a " spiritus sanctus " had appeared in 
 Christ. The Elkesaites, for example, were able to speak thus ; 
 at all events there was no great difference of opinion when they 
 taught the existence of a Svra/u; tcetcpv/i/jilvr], 'D3 7"/], which ap- 
 peared in Christ. Even Lactantius describes the incarnation 
 as follows (Instit. iv. 12) : " descendens itaque de coelo sanctus 
 ille Spiritus, sanctam virginem, cujus utero se insinuaret, elegit." 
 (For further details, see below.) 
 
 This is the proper place to add a word, by way of conclusion, 
 on the subject of Montanism. In the first place, it is necessary 
 to draw a much more precise distinction between the earlier and 
 
NOTES. 397 
 
 the later form of Montanism than is drawn by Schwegler. 
 Montanism was preceded by a widely diffused sickly condition : 
 when it accidentally broke out in Phrygia, it proved, indeed, to 
 be of an infectious nature, but at the same time assumed many 
 different forms, as is found to be the case also with physical 
 diseases. The disease which made its appearance under the 
 form of Montanism was primarily of a practical kind. There 
 was no desire to make any change in the faith of the Church ; 
 there was no inclination to speculation (compare Gieseler i. 
 197) ; nay more, Montanists were most violent opponents of 
 Gnosticism, both as a form and as a system of knowledge. Nor 
 did they evince any disposition to attain to theosophic know- 
 ledge by means of ecstasies. At first they were animated merely 
 by very intense religious feelings, hostile to the present world 
 and its arrangements ; and these feelings were heightened by 
 chiliastic expectations. They felt themselves endowed with 
 the power to inaugurate a practical reformation, and endea- 
 voured, in the name of God, to reduce their negative ideal of 
 the world to reality. They believed, it is true, that the new 
 Jerusalem would suddenly descend from heaven, and that it 
 cannot be built up by men ; but at the same time deemed it 
 necessary that the world should, even now, be judged and 
 weighed by the irveupaTUcoi, in accordance with that abrupt 
 ideal, — that is, that it should be treated negatively. The spark 
 thus thrown out, falling into the chiliastic expectations of the 
 Church, and the legal spirit now afresh growing up, kindled a 
 fire which speedily spread in all directions. The older Mon- 
 tanists laid their hands on the dogmas of the Church for the 
 first time in Asia Minor, when the prophetic utterances of 
 Montanus began to be grossly overvalued either by himself or by 
 his companions,— probably, therefore, after they had met with 
 opposition, especially from the bishops : in the next place, in 
 Africa, where Tertullian professed to have derived revelations 
 on dogmatical subjects, specially on the Trinity, from Montan- 
 istic prophetesses. In the first case, with a view to exalting as 
 much as possible the new Montanistic period, they represented 
 it as the inauguration of the masculine age of the Holy Spirit. 
 Whether it be a mere fiction of their opponents or not, that the 
 Montanists denied the presence of the Holy Spirit even in the 
 Apostles, much more in the world, prior to their time, this much 
 
398 APPENPIX. 
 
 is certain, that they considered the Paraclete never to have been 
 truly revealed prior to Montanus : according to Tertullian, the 
 Church was not ripe for this revelation till it had entered on its 
 masculine age. If now Montanism implicitly reproached the 
 Church with hitherto possessing too little of the Holy Ghost, it 
 is evident that, dogmatically viewed, the charge implies, that 
 however much the Church might have spoken concerning the 
 Son, or the Logos, and the Father, the doctrine of the Holy 
 Spirit had been hitherto kept in the background. In this aspect, 
 therefore, Montanus is a striking proof of the baselessness of the 
 theory, that the Church knew of the Holy Spirit alone prior to 
 Montanus. For then he would not have needed to raise com- 
 plaints, but merely to quicken the desire for the Holy Spirit, in 
 whom, according to the teaching of the Church, on the supposi- 
 tion that it was Ebionitical, every man may participate, even as 
 Christ Himself participated. On the contrary, his complaints, 
 and what he says of the Paraclete, so far as they have a dog- 
 matical bearing, have not their full meaning, except on the sup- 
 position that the Church of his day, although it acknowledged, 
 indeed, that the Divine was concentrated in Christ as the incar- 
 nate Logos and Son of God, had discriminated more clearly 
 the Son from the Father, than the Holy Spirit from Father 
 and Son, and had not fully apprehended the novelty of its 
 principle. Montanism thus becomes an indirect witness to the 
 earlier prevalence of the doctrine of the deity of the Son. As 
 regards the form assumed by Montanism in Africa, little can 
 be said for the originality claimed by it in relation to questions 
 of dogma. It has been already remarked by others (Gieseler's 
 "Church History" i. 197), that the description of these pro- 
 phetesses presents many points of similarity with our magnetic 
 clairvoyantes. Now, as it is a constant characteristic of these 
 latter to be, on the one hand, quite destitute of originality in 
 spiritual and divine things, and yet, on the other hand, to be 
 most keenly susceptible of the ideas of those with whom they 
 are en rapport; so, reasoning by analogy, we may conclude 
 that the utterance of the speculative doctrine of the Trinity by 
 Tertullian's prophetesses, instead of being a proof of its novelty, 
 was rather a proof that similar ideas were already floating 
 in the mind of the Church, on which such phenomena had 
 been ingrafted. Be this, however, as it , may, it is certain 
 
KOTES. 399 
 
 that Tertullian taught substantially the same doctrine of the 
 Trinity, in works written prior to his becoming a follower of 
 Montanus. Nay more, he himself felt conscious thereof, and 
 therefore treated the Montanist prophecies rather as a con- 
 firmation of the doctrine of the Church (adv. Prax. 2, 8, 13; 
 de resurr. earn. 63). — The circumstance (Epiph. hser. 49, 1) 
 that Christ appeared to the prophetess Priscilla or Quintilla in 
 the form of a woman, cannot fairly be taken as an evidence 
 that Christ was conceived as the Buach Jehovah, and that the 
 doctrine of the Word, or of the Divine Wisdom, was not known. 
 We might rather suppose, as in the case of the Shepherd of 
 Hermas, that Christ appeared in the form of the Church, which, 
 because the Holy Spirit had not yet found its full and proper re- 
 velation, was still conceived to be included in Him. The words 
 of Epiphanius, however, more readily suggest an entirely differ- 
 ent explanation. Christ appeared to the prophetess as Wisdom 
 (aofyia, feminine) ; for, to communicate wisdom was the end 
 and aim of revelation. She says, iv ISea yvvcuicbs ia^fiaTVcr- 
 fievos iv crroKfj "ka/nrpa rjX.de irpo's fie Xpiorbs, ical ivifiaXev iv 
 ifiol tt]v aocpLav, etc. Nothing whatever is said, in this connec- 
 tion, regarding the irvevfia. So that this proof, also, of the pro- 
 fessed Ebionitical character of primitive Christianity becomes a 
 proof to the contrary. 
 
 Note EE, page 137. 
 
 Inasmuch as he explained Paradise to be the Church, he 
 must have regarded the Church as the perfection of humanity, 
 as the realization of its archetype. Still, as in another passage, 
 probably also belonging to his book (in Irenseus 5, 36), he 
 gives to the "many mansions of the Father's house" (John 
 xiv. 2) the meaning, — either into heaven, or into Paradise, or 
 into the city of God, will every one come, according as he has 
 borne an hundred-fold, or sixty-fold, or thirty-fold fruit; and 
 well will it be to live in Paradise, — he designated by this title, 
 not the Church of the present, but of the future, or the last 
 age; intending thus, also, to indicate the original innocence 
 of humanity (compare the fragment of Papias amongst the 
 Scholia of Maximus on Dionysius Areopagita in Eouth I.e. 8), 
 and especially the re-establishment of concord between it and 
 nature, now that it has become the Church. 
 
400 APPENDIX. 
 
 Note SS, page 137. 
 
 Iren. 5, 36, 2. After what has been advanced above, it 
 would be perfectly unwarrantable to count Papias, in a Christo- 
 logical respect, amongst Ebionites. Whether he was an Ebionite 
 in the matter of eschatology, shall be discussed further on. For 
 the present, I must content myself with calling attention to the 
 fact, that his style is not Judaized, but rather evinces skill and 
 culture in the use of Hellenic expressions. His view of the 
 guilt of the angels on account of the evils of the world, the 
 government of which was entrusted to them (Routh l.c. 14, 
 from Andreas of Csesarea), is shared also by Ghurch Fathers 
 of a more Hellenizing tendency. That he was acquainted with 
 the doctrine of the Logos, is certain ; that he had himself appro- 
 priated that doctrine, appears to me probable, because the pas- 
 sage in Irenseus 5, 36, quotes an utterance of Christ, as having 
 been handed down by the presbyters, the disciples of the 
 Apostles, who were very likely the presbyters mentioned by 
 Papias, with the words, " quemadmodum Verbum ejus (sc. Dei) 
 ait." But, even supposing this passage were not from Papias, 
 it would be valuable as a testimony on the part of Irenseus, 
 who undoubtedly derived his information from old sources, that 
 the disciples of the Apostles had a doctrine of the Logos and of 
 the Trinity. The presbyters mentioned by Irenaaus in iv. 8, v. 
 17 (Edit. Grabe), however, I think, were of a later period, on 
 the ground of their more developed Christological views. See 
 below. 
 
 Note TT, page 139. 
 
 This is the passage on which is based the opinion that Hege- 
 sippus was an Ebionite as to his doctrine of the law. No other 
 is now extant. Eusebius, however, who was acquainted with 
 his work — it was known even to Stephanus Gobarus — reckons 
 him amongst the champions of the truth (i)Trepfidy(ov<; tj)? a\i]- 
 6eias, Euseb. 4, 7 ; compare 8), amongst the teachers of the 
 Church (4, 21), along with Dionysius of Corinth, Pinytus, 
 Apollinaris, Melito, Irenseus ; and remarks concerning all 
 these, Hegesippus included, that the bpQoho%La of the apostolic 
 lajpuyfia, and of sound faith (4, 8, 21), had been laid down by 
 them in writings. To any one who knows how Eusebius speaks 
 
NOTES. 401 
 
 of Ebionites, it must after this appear impossible that Hege- 
 sippus should have been an Ebionite. Similar evidence might 
 also be adduced from Jerome. 
 
 The entire endeavour to represent the Church, in the earliest 
 years of its existence, as Ebionitical, is not new, for the Socinians 
 had already done the same thing; and most of the arguments ad- 
 duced by recent writers are a mere repetition of those employed by 
 the Socinians. Compare the controversy between Dan. Zwicker 
 and George Bull, and the latter's " Primitiva et Apostolica Tra- 
 ditio dogm. de J. Ch. divinitate," Lond. 1705, C. 3, pp. 12-18. 
 
 Note UU, page 140. 
 
 Eus. 4, 22. "Ert Be 6 airrbs (after having spoken of sects 
 within the Church) ical ra<; iraXai yeyevrjfieva? irapk 'JouSai'ots 
 aipecreis Urropei \ey<w r)<rav Be yv&fiai ouiipopoi hi rfj irepiTOfJufj 
 ev viols 'IcrparfK r&v Kara tt)? <f>v\rj<; 'IovSa ical tov Xpia-rov 
 afrrar Ecreraloi, TdXiKaioi, 'H/MepofiavricrTal, Maa-ficoOcuoi,, 5a- 
 uapelrcu, SaSBovKaioi, $apiaaioi. It has also been regarded as 
 a sign of his Ebionism, that he does not mention the Ebionites 
 amongst heretics. That he does not mention Ebion, will not be 
 made a ground of suspicion against him; butCerinthuswas in Asia 
 Minor (see Note VV). Karpocrates, however, he has mentioned 
 (Euseb. 4, 22). Furthermore, if, as Baur and others maintain, 
 Ebionism was most intimately connected with, and grew out of, 
 Essseism ; if, further, Hegesippus mentions the Essenes (4, 22) 
 first of all, in his enumeration of antichristian Jewish sects, and 
 constantly directs attention to the fact, that the poison of false 
 doctrine was introduced into the Church from the Jewish sects ; 
 how is it possible at the same time to assert that he approved of 
 Ebionism ? 
 
 Note W, page 140. 
 
 This is the place to notice what Hegesippus says regarding 
 the virginity of the Church. Eusebius mentions it in two pas- 
 sages (Euseb. 4, 22, and 3, 32). " After the death of James 
 (post Christum 69), Tebuthis, who sprang from Jewish sects, 
 began secretly, under Simeon, to corrupt the Church, which 
 had hitherto been a virgin." In the other passage (3, 32) we 
 read — " After the death of the Apostles (that is, about a.d. 100), 
 the sects, which had heretofore remained secret and in the back- 
 
 VOL. I. 2C 
 
402 APPENDIX. 
 
 ground, broke openly out ;" here, also, he says again, that the 
 Church, up to that time, had been an unspotted virgin. From 
 which Baur draws the conclusion, that, prior to the end of the 
 first century, there were no traces of Gnosis ; — in support of his 
 conclusion, quoting a passage from Clemens Alexandrinus, who 
 (with the purpose of showing heretics to be latecomers, Strom. 
 7) puts them into the time of Hadrian. This latter passage 
 needs no refutation. It appears to me to be an arbitrary mode 
 of procedure to appeal, as Baur does, to 3, 32 alone : others also 
 have condemned it. Compare Vatke's review of Baur's work, 
 " Der Ursprung des Episkopates," in the " Jahrbiicher fiir wis- 
 senschaftliche Kritik," 1839, pp. 9 ff. But as far as regards 
 Hegesippus, the two passages referred to contradict each other, 
 if he represents the Apostles as having died subsequently to 
 James the Just ; and that he does so is undeniable, for he had 
 just before been speaking of the time of Trajan and the death 
 of Simeon, and had referred to that time the unmasked and 
 public appearance of the sects. Now, how could Hegesippus 
 call the Church an unspotted virgin, in one passage, till about 
 the year 100, and in the other, merely till the year 69 ? Hege- 
 sippus himself furnishes an explanation, and solves the contra- 
 diction. He does not deny in 3, 32 what he had said in 4, 22, — 
 namely, that a secret corruption of doctrine had begun far ear- 
 lier {ap^erat Te/3ov9i<; — vvocpdeipeiv), — but repeats it much more 
 strongly in 3, 32. He does, however, change his point of view : 
 in the one case, looking rather at the inner condition, he terms 
 the poison of false doctrine, which had already secretly crept in, 
 a spotting of the virgin Church ; in the other case, looking 
 rather at the open appearance, he considers the time during 
 which the sects were still forced to remain secret, as a time of 
 virginity, in comparison with a later period, dating from the 
 end of the century, when the unity of the Church was, even 
 outwardly, endangered. Besides, as Vatke also has justly re- 
 marked (1. c. p. 12), it must not be forgotten, that, for the 
 earlier time, the horizon of Hegesippus was principally bounded 
 by the Jewish Christians of Palestine ; and that, therefore, we 
 have no right to deny the existence of false teachers in other 
 parts of the Church, — for example, in Asia Minor or in the 
 European Churches, — prior to the year 69. The context indi- 
 cates that the expression, Bia tovto i/caXovv rrjv eicickrjaiav imp- 
 
NOTES. 403. 
 
 ffivov (Euseb. 4, 22), refers to Jerusalem. ; and it is only the 
 other passage, which marks a stadium when heresies, long actu- 
 ally existent, were on the point of becoming schisms, that can 
 be referred to the Church in general ; for it speaks of the de- 
 parture of the entire body of the Apostles. 
 
 Note WW, page 141. 
 
 The book is, it is true, here termed 7ravdpero<; Utopia, ; but 
 simply because it is a revelation, a self-representation of the 
 Wisdom which pre-existed with God — which same Wisdom then 
 appeared in Christ, as personal wisdom (compare Clem, ad Cor. 
 i. 57, ell. 36). But very noteworthy is, further, the hint given 
 by Eusebius in the above-mentioned passage. We find, namely, 
 that about this time, Christian teachers undoubtedly went back 
 frequently to " Wisdom " for a designation of the higher element 
 in Christ. Compare, for example, the present passage, and, 
 besides it, Hermas (Sim.il. 9, 12, compare Prov. viii. ; and per- 
 haps Simil. 5, 6). So also the Montanists (Epiphan. 49, 1). 
 By conceiving the Wisdom of the Old Testament, as having 
 personally appeared in Christ, not only was a bridge secured to 
 the Hellenic doctrine of the Logos, in which the idea of Reason 
 dominates over that of " Word," but essentially the same idea 
 was arrived at. Indeed, Fathers who held the doctrine of the 
 Logos put the doctrine of the Divine Wisdom on exactly the same 
 footing with it; and concerning the milder Ebionites, for example, 
 who did not deny the birth of Christ from a virgin, through the 
 Holy Ghost, Eusebius (3, 27) says, that they nevertheless fell 
 into the godlessness of the strict Ebionites, because they did not 
 believe in the pre-existence of Christ as \6<yos and aofyia. Ac- 
 cording to the judgment of Eusebius, therefore, Hegesippus 
 must be declared not to have belonged even to the milder class 
 of Ebionites. He, with Hermas and others who were still 
 known to Eusebius, is rather a proof that even men whose cul- 
 ture had been mainly of .the Old Testament kind, connected the 
 theologumenon of ao(pia with the creative Word, prjfia, which 
 primarily represented the realistic aspect of SiW/u?. In this 
 way the essential momenta of the as yet indeterminate expres- 
 sion, Son of God, were so analyzed and evolved, as that faith 
 recognised again that higher element in Christ which it had 
 aimed at characterizing by the name. These momenta were 
 
404- APPENDIX. 
 
 three ; and an inner necessity governed and ordered the pro- 
 gress from the one to the other. In the first place, under the 
 influence especially of the eschatological belief, that absolute- 
 ness would pertain to the Son at the end of the days, the Church 
 went back to the commencement, or the pre-existence ; an un- 
 derstanding of this doctrine of the New Testament was thus 
 arrived at, and it became the common property of the Church. 
 In the second place, therewith was directly connected the idea 
 of His participation in the creation of the world, as the " Word 
 of Power," pfjfia, Xoyos (compare also Memra ; Clem. Ep. i. 
 36, 16 ; Barn. v. 12 ; Herm. Sim. ix. 12 ; the presbyters in 
 Irenseus v. 36). Thus was the principle of the second creation 
 combined with that of the first (Barnab. 6), for example, by 
 Clement, Barnabas, and Hermas. Thirdly, and till about the 
 year 150, was added the " Wisdom of God." The momenta of 
 the idea of the Son of God were now for the first time more 
 fully unfolded. The starting-point of the Hellenic thinkers was 
 not Being, the real (the Creative Word), as was that of those 
 who still kept up their connection with the Old Testament reve- 
 lation, but Thought, i>oD? evvota ; and such was at first the signi- 
 ficance of the Hellenic doctrine of the Logos (see below, Gnosis). 
 But the task of the predominantly Hellenic tendency was to 
 effect the passage from Thought to Being: this passage Hel- 
 lenic thinkers gradually effected by learning ever more closely to 
 associate vovs and reality, and to identify the Divine Reason with 
 the pre-existent creative Word. Thus, that with which the real- 
 istic, Hebrew development started, formed the second stadium 
 in the Hellenic development : both, however, evolved essentially 
 the same momenta, and consequently met and united in the 
 word prjfia, which is at the same time '"^an, or in Reason, which 
 is at the same time Creative Word ; — in other words, they united 
 in the later doctrine of the Logos, the difference between which 
 and that of the New Testament, especially of John i. 4, is of 
 the same nature as the difference between an image arrived at by 
 reflection on, and the union of, its individual momenta, and that 
 image which is the source of the impulse, and which, being im- 
 mediate, has the advantage of presenting the intuition of the 
 totality of its object, in undivided fulness, simplicity, and purity. 
 Until the individual momenta which were combined in the later 
 doctrine of the Logos had been arrived at by these two main 
 
NOTES. 405 
 
 lines, frequent use might be made, both by heretics and Church 
 teachers, of such expressions as Xojof Qeov ; but the different 
 parties would employ them in very different senses. 
 
 Note XX, page 142. 
 
 Herewith is given the right point of view for understanding 
 the words, handed down to us by Photius after Stephanus Go- 
 barus (see Phot. Bibl. 232, 13, Rothomagi 1653, p. 894), and 
 which Baur asserts to have been directed against Paul. " To 
 say, ' Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, etc., the treasures 
 laid up in store for the righteous,' is foolish; and those who use 
 such language lie against the Divine Scriptures, and against the 
 Lord, who says, ' Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your 
 ears, for they hear, etc.'" Stephanus, who had the work of 
 Hegesippus before him, and quotes a passage from the fifth 
 book, expresses himself at a loss to explain why he displayed 
 so much passion (ovk <u&' o,ti teal Tra6a>v — ravra \ejei) ; for us, 
 naturally, quoted as they are abruptly and out of all connection, 
 they are still more difficult of explanation. Some recent writers 
 suppose themselves to have the key in the assumption that 
 Hegesippus was Anti-Pauline, and that he thus gave expression 
 to his antipathy to Paul's more spiritual tendency. But this 
 opinion is utterly devoid of support, and an absolutely worthless 
 combination. We find the words, it is true, in Paul (1 Cor. ii. 9) ; 
 but, according to the testimony of Origen (horn. ult. in Matt. 
 xxvii. 9), they were also found in the Apocalyps. Elise (compare 
 Schliemann, p. 450). The following consideration, however, is 
 still more important : — the largest and most essential part of the 
 words are quoted by Paul himself from Isa. lxiv. 3. From this 
 we may with certainty conclude, that Hegesippus cannot have 
 meant to describe the words in themselves, as a fiarrjv elprj/Mevov, 
 or as even a lie against the Divine Scriptures ; for they are con- 
 tained both in the Old and New Testaments. He must, there- 
 fore, have had in view a particular application of them. Now 
 this application cannot have been that of Paul in his Epistle to 
 the Corinthians ; for it clashes neither with the words of the 
 Lord referred to by Hegesippus — being, on the contrary, most 
 intimately connected therewith — nor with Hegesippus' own doc- 
 trine of the novelty and magnitude of the revelation with which 
 believers are favoured, and of the spirituality of the kingdom of 
 
406 APPENDIX 
 
 Christ (see above). Consequently Hegesippus, in the passage 
 under consideration, must be condemning an application of 
 Paul's words which involved a perversion of the meaning of 
 Scripture; — an application made either by the Docetists, who 
 despised the empirical appearance of Christ ; or, if the passage 
 refers to eschatology (as it probably does, to judge from the 
 connection in Stephanus Gobarus), by those who either denied 
 eschatology altogether, or treated it after a Gnostic fashion. 
 We arrive at a much more definite result by comparing the pas- 
 sage with Irenseus, 5, 36 (at the close). In the entire context 
 of the last chapters, Irenseus appeals to Papias, whom he recog- 
 nises to be an apostolic man ; at the close he adduces the very- 
 passage contained in Papias (1 Cor. ii. 9), and teaches, without 
 doubt in opposition to the same antagonists as those whom 
 Papias had in view, what is the false, and what is the right, ap- 
 plication of the words. The right application, says he, is that 
 according to which the entrance of the things which no eye 
 hath seen will take place after the resurrection of the righteous, 
 that is, after the so-called thousand years' kingdom : the false 
 application, therefore, would be that according to which the 
 earthly kingdom of Christ begins after the resurrection of the 
 righteous. Such, therefore, was probably the opinion both of 
 Papias and of Hegesippus. 
 
 Note YY, page 147. 
 
 The possibility, for example, of drawing an image of Christ 
 like that of John, depended on the attainment of a more deter- 
 minate and settled eschatology, which should admit of Christ's 
 being conceived in the element of eternity. We thus see also 
 afresh, why the next step taken in advance of eschatology 
 (through the medium of which the mind first became aware 
 of the absoluteness of the principle embodied in the Person 
 of Christ) necessarily was the doctrine of the pre-existence 
 of the said principle. The doctrine of the Pre-existence and 
 Eschatology are two poles, which mutually require and posit 
 each other ; and each of which is imperfect without the other. 
 Not the intermediate steps, which prepared the way for the final 
 result and consummation, most readily occurred to the reflecting 
 mind ; but, to a mind looking at the matter realistically, teleolo- 
 gically, the absoluteness of the consummation called for a cor 
 
NOTES. 40? 
 
 respondent absoluteness of the beginning : for, indeed, the abso- 
 luteness of the end is but a momentum of that of the beginning ; 
 inasmuch as an eschatological absoluteness would be unre- 
 alizable, if the principle dominating the beginning (the first 
 creation) were different from that which is manifested at the 
 end. We find also, on a comparison of the earlier and later 
 Epistles of Paul, that his mind followed a similar course. But 
 if the two termini are embraced by the Christian principle ; or, 
 if, as the Apocalypse describes it, it is the Alpha and the Omega, 
 then a broad and sure foundation for its further development is 
 laid, and the knowledge is substantially attained, that Christi- 
 anity, which brought in an absolute reconciliation, is also the 
 absolute religion, the absolute world of the spirit. 
 
 Note ZZ, page 150. 
 
 Liicke's " Versuch einer vollstandigen Einleitung in die 
 Offenbarung Johannis" is the best work on the subject of New 
 Testament Prophecy and Apocalyptics (Apokalyptik), written 
 in recent times. He distinguishes between the vpo<j)rjTeia, 
 which remains strictly within the limits of its fundamental idea, 
 and aTTOKakvtyis, which goes into concrete details, portrays, cal- 
 culates, symbolizes, and allegorizes. The latter is related to the 
 former, as the developed epos is related to epical popular tra- 
 ditions. Equally apt is the distinction drawn by him between 
 Jewish and Christian apocalyptics. It is true, the fundamental 
 form and main substance are the same in both ; but that which 
 for Daniel, the representative of Old Testament apocalyptics, 
 was still a dark goal, and existent merely in idea, has become 
 commencement, starting-point, clear historical fact for John, 
 the representative of New Testament apocalyptics. The pre- 
 supposition and basis of New Testament apocalyptics is the full 
 history of the Son of God on earth, — that earth which already 
 begins to be glorified by the Spirit. "The commencement, 
 already actually made, is no longer merely pattern, but the thing 
 itself — the full, real kernel, which includes within itself all the 
 forces, laws, and arrangements for the future ; so that the ac- 
 complishment of the entire development is absolutely secured." 
 Lastly, he distinguishes between apocryphal and canonical 
 apocalyptics. " Outside of the sphere of the canonical, there 
 exist productions both of a genuinely Christian and of a genu- 
 
408 APPENDIX. 
 
 inely Jewish character. Apocryphal productions, however, 
 •were mere imitations and unorganic repetitions of canonical pro- 
 ductions. Sound non-canonical productions, on the contrary, 
 were really the organic continuation and development of canoni- 
 cal productions." 
 
 Note AAA, page 150. 
 
 Liicke aptly remarks, — that ancient Christendom sketched 
 for itself, in its eschatology, a kind of philosophy of history. In- 
 deed, we may say in general, that prophecy and apocalyptics 
 introduced among men the idea of universal history. Apoca- 
 lyptics, which Liicke recognises to be a necessary step in advance 
 of nrpojyqTeta — though, because touching the sphere of the arbi- 
 trary and contingent, much more exposed to degeneracy — can- 
 not claim more than two proper representatives among all the 
 Fathers whose names have been mentioned, to wit, Barnabas 
 and Papias. And, rightly understood, neither Justin Martyr, 
 Dial. c. Tryph. c. 80 (compare Semisch's " Justin der Martyrer," 
 1842, ii. p. 467 ff.), nor Eusebius (in 3, 39) are opposed to this 
 statement. The latter merely says, " most of the teachers of 
 the Church," not all; and further, " most after Papias" (amongst 
 whom Eusebius mentions Irena?us), shared his views. Even 
 Chiliasm must be assigned to the sphere of apocalyptics, not to 
 that of Christian prophecy. This is not properly the place to 
 speak of Chiliasm : for it contributed nothing hew to Christo- 
 logy, that was not already contributed by Christian eschatology 
 in general. But as there still exist men who tread in the foot- 
 steps of Corrodi, — whose unpoetical nature, and mental inca- 
 pacity sympathetically to enter into these matters, led him to 
 prefer calculating how many butts of wine the chiliastic vine 
 of Papias and Irenseus should produce, — and as, further, since 
 the time of Corrodi, Chiliasm in particular has been adduced in 
 proof of the Ebionism of the early Christians ; it may be ex- 
 cusable to give the subject a brief consideration. 
 
 I. Christian Chiliasm, so far from being derivable from, 
 may in part be more justly regarded as a polemic against, 
 Judaism, on the part of Christianity. This is, in particular, its 
 character, where it has apparently borrowed most features from 
 Judaism. It is non-Jewish, so far as it represents the thousand 
 years' kingdom as brought in by the exalted Jesus of Nazareth, 
 
NOTES. 409 
 
 and as including both Jews and Gentiles ; whereas unbelieving 
 Judaism, in particular, will then undergo judgment. A point un- 
 doubtedly common to Jewish and Christian apocalyptics, is the 
 period of blessedness on earth : a further point in common is, 
 the city of God, Jerusalem, which plays a great role both with 
 the Montanists and Irenseus ; and the differences in the duration 
 of the Messianic kingdom on earth are rather accidental. (The 
 Sibylline Books have eleven ages of the world; the Book of 
 Enoch has ten, and so forth. The Jews taught that Messianic 
 blessedness would last 500 years ; Christians sometimes left it 
 undecided, as, for example, Irenseus ; at other times they adopted 
 the Jewish calculation of 500 years, as did the " Evangel. Nico- 
 demi," c. 19 : most frequently, however, they taught that it 
 would endure 1000 years. So Papias, the Montanists, Tertullian 
 and Barnabas also.) But the city of God comes down from 
 heaven to destroy the fleshly, Jewish Jerusalem, and to take its 
 place. Israel according to the flesh, — that is, Israel which con- 
 tinues unbelieving, — gives way to Israel according to the Spirit. 
 Further, ante- Christian, Jewish apocalyptics invariably teach 
 that Messiah will found the kingdom of earthly blessedness im- 
 mediately on His first appearance. It makes no reference to a 
 twofold irapovala : what it appears to know thereof, even sup- 
 posing it to be ante-Christian, is seen, on closer examination, to 
 be a mere deceptive semblance. For the Messiah who is in 
 secret (Justin. Dial. c. Tryph. c. 8, 110), in the depths of the 
 sea, or wherever else He is supposed 4o tarry, is by no means a 
 first manifestation, but merely a symbol of His certain and 
 speedy appearance, originating in impatience. Messiah Ben 
 Joseph or Ephraim, and Ben David, owed His rise to the desire 
 to show, that to the Ten Tribes also belonged the honour of 
 claiming Messiah as their Son. As two persons are there re- 
 ferred to, the unity plainly consists solely in the impersonal idea 
 of the Messiah ; and this presupposes a Christology, to which it 
 is a matter of indifference how many persons claim to be realiza- 
 tions of the idea. Finally, the Messiah out of Ephraim dies, it 
 is true, in war, and then rises again ; but, in the first place, he 
 then, notwithstanding, recedes quite to the background behind 
 the second Messiah ; and through this exchange of persons the 
 main point is evaded, — to wit, that the exalted one should be 
 identical with the sufferer : in the second place, the establish- 
 
410 APPENDIX. 
 
 nient of the earthly kingdom of blessedness by the second 
 Messiah follows immediately on the sufferings of the first. 
 Moreover, with the exception of the Book of Enoch, all attri- 
 bute judgment, not to the Messiah, but to God; and, in the 
 view of the Jews, the Messianic kingdom of earthly blessedness 
 was not merely a prelude to heavenly blessedness, but was itself 
 substantially the goal and final consummation. The dualistic 
 character of Judaism manifested itself particularly in the notion, 
 that heaven was too holy and majestical to be a suitable dwell- 
 ing-place for man (Corrodi's " Kritische Geschichte des Chili- 
 asmus" i. 389 ff.). Paradise and the earth were held to be the 
 abode of the pious, with which they are eternally content : Jews 
 were not even able to distinguish between the thousand years' 
 kingdom, and that renewal of the world which holds good for 
 all eternity ; for both relate, in their view, solely to what is 
 sensuous, and need nothing more than a perfect earth. Chris- 
 tians, on the contrary, distinguished from the very commence- 
 ment a double irapova-ia of the one Christ ; and, although they 
 soon took up with the notion of a period intervening between 
 the first and second presence, — that is, of a kingdom of Christ 
 upon earth, — they by no means looked upon this kingdom as final 
 and abiding; heaven was their eternal goal: — the kingdom, on 
 the contrary, formed part of the course of this world, and con- 
 stituted simply its appropriate termination. For this reason, 
 Christians represented the judgment as taking place at the end 
 of the golden period of the earth, and as forming a grand crisis; 
 whereas Jewish apocalyptical writers could only assign to it an 
 uncertain, unimportant position, owing to their idea that the 
 highest good lay in the realization of earthly blessedness. 
 Further, Christians invariably maintained it to be essential, 
 that Messiah should be the Judge. (Compare Corrodi i. 313 ff. 
 322, 381.) In relation, therefore, to this matter also, Chris- 
 tianity pursued an independent course — a course governed by 
 its own essential principles ; though it unquestionably applied to 
 the purposes of the edifice it was raising, elements derived from 
 a previous period. It would therefore be a more correct and 
 profitable procedure, to ascertain the distinctive character of the 
 principle of Christianity, to which everything else owed its 
 position and rank, than to resort to Judaism for an explanation ; 
 especially in face of the fact, that on the very point under con- 
 
NOTES. 411 
 
 sideration, Christianity took up a position of antagonism to 
 Judaism. The same remark holds good, even though we should 
 allow, as we must, that the form assumed by Christianity in 
 connection with this matter was partly due to its antagonism to 
 Judaism. Justin Martyr, Irenseus, and others, — nay more, not 
 a few down to the most recent times, cherished the hope of a 
 thousand years' kingdom ; and for this reason alone they cannot 
 be rightly understood, unless regarded from a point of view 
 entirely different from the Judaizing one. The Ebionitic 
 Chiliasm, of which Jerome makes mention in his " Comment, 
 in Jesaiam," c. 66, 20, did bear a Judaistic character; but why 
 Christians also cherished the idea of a thousand years' kingdom; 
 and why, instead of assuming that the absolute completion of 
 the kingdom of God in heaven would be the first result of 
 Christ's second coming, as we should have expected, they de- 
 layed that perfection, by intercalating a thousand years' king- 
 dom, — this is the question now to be considered. 
 
 II. The answer to this question is facilitated by Irena?us, 
 •who gives conscious expression to the motive which operated on 
 the Christian mind (5, 31; 2, 35; 1, 2, 36, 1). When the kingdom 
 of heaven was set into such a glaring contrast to the present 
 world, that the only possible relation between the two was a 
 negative one, one of hostility ; and when the coming kingdom 
 of heaven was represented as being simply substituted for the 
 existing order of things, the transition was too abrupt, the 
 first creation was practically excluded and annihilated by the 
 second. In such a case, the reconciliation of spirit and nature, 
 which was held to have been absolutely realized in Christ, and 
 to be principially (principiell) continued in believers, would 
 have taken place, at all events partially, in vain. Otherwise 
 viewed, the victory gained by Christianity over the world was 
 incomplete, if it exerted merely an annihilating, and not at 
 the same time also an ennobling, power on the first nature or 
 creation. Complete victor it can never be, until nature has 
 been reduced to the position of a momentum of itself, of 
 an organ in its service. Now, Chiliasm was the first conces- 
 sion made by the longing for the speedy coming of the Lord, 
 to the in some respects opposed tendency of Christianity to 
 become a vital power in the history of the world. It was not 
 meant that nature should exist in vain. On the contrary, as it 
 
412 APPENDIX. 
 
 was first the instrument of sin, and thus failed to answer its 
 true idea, so now the time had come when it should fulfil its 
 destiny, in being a willing instrument of the perfect man, that 
 is, of the righteous who are raised from the dead. This work 
 Christ could not leave unperformed : to say that Christ appeared 
 merely to judge and destroy the world, would have been to 
 represent Christianity as incapable of converting the antagonism 
 between nature and spirit into a true harmony. The period of 
 the so-called thousand years' kingdom having been thus secured 
 for the general history of the world, it became more and more 
 the custom to take the week of creation in Genesis as the 
 archetype of the history of the world. The history of the world 
 is the week of creation, distributed through time : each day of 
 the world, or each age of the world, comprises a thousand years : 
 corresponding to the sabbath of creation, which commenced after 
 man had been formed, there must be a sabbath of the world, 
 which shall commence as soon as humanity, having been restored 
 to its original innocence, stands on earth as did Adam in Paradise. 
 The entire period from the fall, which robbed us of Paradise, is 
 thus lowered, as it were, to the rank of an episode; and the further 
 development of humanity to perfection is connected with that 
 paradisiacal condition, as though the fall had never intervened ; 
 the sole difference being, that now, in consequence of the con- 
 flict with and vanquishment of sin, the holiness is firmly estab- 
 lished. — With this, however, it would seem to be inconsistent 
 that Chiliasts should universally have laid the greatest stress 
 on the restoration of the vital powers of nature, on their beauty 
 and their serviceableness to man, who is the ruler of nature, 
 and is set to enjoy it in the richest measure. Christianity, 
 which even in its abasement begins so ideally, here appears to 
 end eudsemonistically. The spiritual, which was at first recog- 
 nised as the highest good, for the sake of which everything else 
 was to be sacrificed, appears now to give way to nature, and 
 nature, as the final, to be constituted also the highest, end. 
 But it is false to say that any one of the Church writers con- 
 ceived the thousand years' kingdom to be the last ; on the con- 
 trary, they represent it as a stage of transition to eternal life. 
 Por this reason, also, it is unjustifiable to say that Chiliasm de- 
 grades faith and sanctity in this life to the rank of mere means, 
 whose end lies outside of themselves : they continue to be ends in 
 
NOTES. 413 
 
 themselves, though, at the same time, regarded as preparing the 
 way for a new and more perfect stadium. The present world is 
 a period of suffering, especially for the members of the thousand 
 years' kingdom. The spirit manifests its greatness, it is true, in 
 suffering — it displays there the depth of its love ; but still its con- 
 dition is an incongruous one; for, as the truth of the world, 
 the perfect man ought to rule over, instead of suffering from, 
 the world. To advance no further than the idea of resigna- 
 tion, of patience, would be merely in appearance a higher view 
 of Christianity. Hence the early Church, impelled by a desire 
 to reinstate the spirit of man, with its powers regenerated by 
 love, in its rights, developed the system of Chiliasm. At the 
 same time, in order to satisfy the peculiar claims both of love and 
 power, and lest, by the premature promise of power, love, which 
 can only reveal itself in the act of renouncing power, and by re- 
 nunciation recover power in a higher way, should be poisoned, it 
 drew a sharp distinction between the two, and assigned the real- 
 ization of the one to one period, of the other to another period. 
 Chiliasm, therefore, was the form in which Christianity first gave 
 conscious expression to the conviction of its destiny to rule the 
 world : Chiliasm was the assertion of the fact that Christianity 
 is related positively as well as negatively to the world : Chiliasm 
 declared that, by renouncing, Christianity was called to glorify, 
 the world. With whatever disfavour the early Christians 
 looked upon art, Chiliasm is the spot in which the beautiful, 
 the harmonious in spirit and nature, still find recognition — in 
 which a poetical, or, if one will, a romantic view of the world, 
 is tolerated. So certain as that the eye of Chiliasts was not 
 fixed on something merely spiritual, and that its proper and dis- 
 tinctive aim was the removal of the ban which lay on the life 
 of nature, and the restoration of nature to its ideal existence ; 
 even so mistaken is it to subject the imagination, whose office 
 it is to people this domain, as one in which poetry in its truest 
 sense is meant to dwell, to the laws of number and geometry. It 
 is easy enough to find contradictions everywhere ; but the self- 
 conceited mockery of a Corrodi, with whom one has learned to 
 treat mildly even the mythology of heathenism, instead of being 
 a mark of wisdom, is rather ludicrous and foolish. — It was not 
 necessary to Chiliasm to represent the thousand years' kingdom 
 as established in an abrupt and absolutely supernatural manner ; 
 
414 APPENDIX. 
 
 for Irenseus, on the contrary, attached great importance to 
 Chiliasm, precisely because the thousand years' kingdom seemed 
 to him to constitute a gradual transition between the present 
 and the higher world : indeed, he expressly treats it as a link of 
 connection between the present and the future. Only as the 
 Christian mind is alienated from the present order of things, 
 and as it groans under the pressure and restrictions of the world, 
 will it imagine the change to be an abrupt one. The more 
 the immanent world-transforming power of Christianity is re- 
 strained, the less Christendom is awakened to a consciousness of 
 the infinite energy of the principle of which it is the vehicle, by 
 works of far-reaching effect, the more decidedly will it feel dis- 
 posed to defer all to the second eoming of Christ, whose pre- 
 sence will bring with it the certainty of the full action of Chris- 
 tian influences. Nevertheless, as we have seen, Chiliasm was 
 also the fruit and sign of the advance of Christendom to the 
 conviction, that nature is destined by its inmost essence and idea 
 to stand in a positive relation to spirit. As such, it materially 
 aided in leading the Christian mind away from abstract and 
 general notions of the future, to those tasks of the present whose 
 performance would, in an immanent way, lay the foundations 
 of the future. In this light, also, Irenseus regarded it. Ac- 
 cordingly, Chiliasm conceived the Christian portion of the 
 world's existence to comprise three momenta, represented as 
 three periods. During the first period, that is, the period until 
 the thousand years' kingdom, spirit was held to be a sufferer, to 
 be in a state of humiliation, to be called upon to display patience 
 and love ; during the second period, it was conceived as ruling. 
 They failed, however, as yet to combine the two : on the con- 
 trary, the first period is too predominantly one of suffering, of 
 the vanquishment of the world ; the second period, again, was 
 one-sidedly held to be one of rule and enjoyment. At the same 
 time, the two essentially inseparable momenta receive recogni- 
 tion, in that they are represented as following upon, and inwardly 
 connected with, each other ; and in that the third period, — 
 namely, eternity, — witnesses their mutual interpenetration, and 
 their attainment of equilibrium. The ethical element, or the 
 idea of holiness, which manifested itself in so strong, though in 
 a negative, form in Montanism, was the chief motive which 
 impelled the Church to seek and find the union of the connected 
 
NOTES. 415 
 
 momenta of renunciation and the glorification of the world, in 
 that animating Divine love, whose influence alone was capable 
 of quieting down the ecstasies of Montanism, and diverting its 
 energies into the channel of calm and orderly Church activity. 
 The realization of chiliastic expectations was thus gradually 
 handed over to the Church, as the task to be performed by it in 
 the history of the world. The truth which it asserted justly 
 claimed a realization by Christendom, at every stage of its ex- 
 istence, in ever higher forms and increasing measure. Chiliasm, 
 therefore, had its time ; during its time it represented a noble 
 and precious principle ; and we may fairly demand for it a juster 
 treatment in the future. Its main opponent was Gnosticism ; 
 for Gnosticism threatened the existence of history, threatened 
 the teleological element, the realization of the ideal, and thus also 
 Christianity itself. On the other hand, Gnosticism, which, in its 
 way, clung to the idea of the presence of the highest good even 
 in this world— an idea totally misunderstood by Montanism — ■ 
 was fitted to direct attention to that element, which must be 
 presupposed by every truly ethical view of things, in order that, 
 as happened from the second half of the second century onwards, 
 Montanism and Gnosticism might alike be transcended. 
 
 Note BBB, page 151. 
 
 Similar words, written about the same time, may be found 
 in Irenseus (" ad Trail." xi.), who represents the cross as a fruit- 
 bearing tree. The predicate dittos ©eos (ical afiftpoTos), which 
 is given to the Messiah (page 556), also reminds one of the ex- 
 pression &6ov Xoyos dtfBw, employed by Ignatius in "Ad 
 Magn." viii. For evidence that the fifth book, or, at all events, 
 the passages adduced from it, fall into the time of Hadrian, 
 -and even into the commencement of his reign, see Bleek 1. c. 
 p. 173 ff., and Liicke, who shares the same opinion. — The sixth 
 book is almost entirely taken up with Christology ; but, on ac- 
 count of the fire which is represented as appearing at the bap- 
 tism of Christ, must probably also be referred to the second 
 century (compare Grabe's " Spicilegium" i. 28, 69). In the 
 seventh book much is already said respecting the Logos, not of 
 a strictly Gnostic character, but with a tendency in that direc- 
 tion. This also, as well as Book the Eighth, was probably 
 ■written in the second half of the second century.— That the 
 
416 APPENDIX. 
 
 Orphic Sayings are connected with Alexandrian Judaism, is a 
 recognised fact. The Aity, which, according to them, creates 
 the world, does not really transcend the Alexandrian doctrine 
 of the Logos, notwithstanding Justin's identification (Cohort, 
 ad Gr.) of it with his own view of the Logos. — When we com- 
 pare Virgil's fourth Eclogue, and its words regarding the 
 " virgo," the " nova progenies" from heaven, the " puer" with 
 whom a golden age begins, in which sin will be destroyed, the 
 serpent killed, and a son endued with his father's virtues will 
 rule the " orbis terrarum," with the well-known prophecies in 
 Tacitus (Hist. v. 13) and Suetonius (Vespas. 4) — passages which 
 all point to Eastern sources (compare Assyrium amomum, Virg. 
 Eel. 4, 4), opened up to the Romans partly by the Jewish 
 Diaspora, and partly through the restoration of the Sibylline 
 Books, effected by the collection of thousands of ancient and 
 recent oracles, undertaken in consonance with a decree of the 
 Senate, after the destruction of the Capitol by fire under 
 Sylla (see Suet. Aug. 31 ; Tacit. Annal. 6, 12), — we must 
 hesitate to place everything of this kind, bearing at the first 
 glance an astonishing resemblance to Christianity, to the ac- 
 count of Christian interpolation. The portions touched upon 
 in the text, however, belong, at all events in their existing form, 
 to the earliest Christian times. The ante-Christian elements 
 in the Sibylline Books, so far as they have any bearing on 
 Christianity, were both a positive and negative preparation for 
 the introduction of Christianity into the heathen world : — nega- 
 tively, in that they undermined the foundations on which the 
 self-confidence of the ancient world was built. In the days of 
 its greatest power, Rome was unable to get rid of inner trem- 
 blings at some fate near at hand, threatening ruin. Positively, 
 in so far as, probably through the influence of Hebrew pro- 
 phecy, the presentiment of a higher, pure, and guiltless exist- 
 ence, dawned on the subjugators of the world. 
 
 Note CCC, page 152. 
 
 Lawrence, Gfrorer, Gieseler, and with ever increasing de« 
 cidedness Hoffmann also, unlike Liicke, agree in considering it 
 to be not a Jewish-Christian work, or a work interpolated by 
 Christians, but a Jewish work ; whatever difference of opinion 
 there may be between them as regards the date of its compo- 
 
NOTES. 417 
 
 sition. The very latest date at which it may be assumed to 
 have existed in its present form, is the end of the first century ; 
 partly because it is appealed to by the Epistle of Jude, and 
 partly because of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. 
 The earliest date we can assume for the composition of the 
 whole, is that of the prophecies of Daniel ; one section, at all 
 events, must have been composed after the commencement 
 of the acquaintance with the Parthians (compare c. 54, 9) 
 But whether the whole should be referred to the post-Herodian 
 period, — say, prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, — or to the 
 time of Herod, as Lawrence thinks, or even to an earlier time, 
 as is Hoffmann's judgment, cannot be determined, partly be- 
 cause there is little reason for supposing it to be the work of 
 one author, and partly because the chief passage bearing on the 
 chronology (c. 89), does not clearly say whether the twelve 
 shepherds are Jewish or not. If they are not Jewish, as 
 Hoffmann has concluded, very wide room is left for hypotheses. 
 Furthermore, precisely this section (c. 84-89) awakens the 
 strongest suspicion in Hoffmann's mind (see his "Das Buch 
 Henoch," 2d Abtheilung, ix.), that the speaker here is a dif- 
 ferent person from the speaker in the other parts of the work ; 
 and accordingly he acknowledges that the foundation for the 
 critical determination of the date of composition is thus cut 
 away. The work in its present form would undoubtedly appear 
 to have been before the author of the Twelve Testaments, in 
 the second century. But this circumstance does not prove that 
 the book had one author, and is written in one spirit. Still less, 
 from the fact that the Book of Sohar appears to treat it as a 
 Hebrew work originating with Enoch ; for the passages made 
 use of by the Book of Sohar are not contained in the section 
 in which the Christological elements are found (c. 37-70), but 
 in c. 16—36. In favour of a plurality of authors, who added or 
 inserted one piece after the other (compare c. 71, 1 ; 81, 1, 2 ; 
 91, 1), may be adduced in particular also, the great difference 
 between the sections c. 16-36 and c. 37-70, c. 64-67, 1 ; if not 
 the whole of the 105th chapter, yet from ver. 21 onwards ; the 
 manifold disorder in the book (compare Hoffmann 1. c. i. 5, 6 ; 
 also c. 53, 54) ; the imitations of the earlier in the later por- 
 tions ; and also the custom, frequent in ancient times, of adding 
 new portions to an older well-founded edifice (compare the 
 VOL. I. 2D 
 
418 APPENDIX. 
 
 Fourth Book of Esra, the Sibylline Books, the Anabaticon 
 Jesaise, which is added to the Martyrion, and others). Whilst 
 maintaining, however, the plurality of authors, I do not intend 
 to assert that all who co-operated could not have been Jews ; I 
 only cannot venture absolutely to deny that some portions were 
 written after the Christian era, either by a Hebrew, who, 
 though somewhat influenced by Christianity, was in essence 
 thoroughly Jewish, or by an interpolating Christian writer. We 
 should, indeed, more easily understand how the Church, in its 
 first stadia, so quickly advanced to the idea of the pre-existence 
 of Christ, if Jews had already been led on to the same point, 
 prior to the appearance of Christ, by the Old Testament idea of 
 the Messiah. It is as clear as day that the way for the New 
 Testament doctrine of the Logos must have been thus in an im- 
 portant degree prepared, without, as we shall see, its distinctive 
 character being in the slightest degree impaired. But the very 
 importance of such a datum, renders double care necessary. 
 
 Note DDD, page 154. 
 
 The Fourth Book of Esra (Fabr. Cod. Pseudepigr. V. T. 
 ii. 173-307) contains elements which belon'g to this connection 
 (c. 1, 2, 7). The mention of Jesus by the Latin text, in the 
 latter passage, unmistakeably betrays the hand of a Christian, 
 especially as it is not found in the Arabic text (7, 28). More- 
 over, the first two chapters, in which (2, 43—47) the Son of God 
 is depicted as a youth of lofty stature, standing high above all 
 others on Mount Zion, and distributing crowns to those who 
 confess Him, or as a shepherd who bestows eternal rest, are not 
 contained in the Arabic text. Such a description does not in 
 itself transcend Hebrew ideas ; for even the Messiah of the Old 
 Testament is described as a judge and as a Son of God. But 
 still that Christian elements have been intermixed, is plain from 
 a comparison of i. 50 with Matt, xxiii. 37 ; of i. 35 with Bom. 
 x. 20 ; of i. 37 with John xx. 29. But even supposing it to 
 have been written by a Christian prior to A.D. 150, it contains 
 elements of a less peculiar character than the passage quoted by 
 Justin from Esra — tovto to irda-^a o SwTrjp r/fiav Kal Karwpvyr) 
 ■f)fi5>v (in Fabricius 1. c. i. 1152). When Justin complains that 
 the Jews had erased this passage from Esra, on account of the 
 -Christians, we must conclude that it had been interpolated by a 
 
NOTES. 4iy 
 
 Christian prior to the time of Justin, and had already found its 
 way into the manuscripts. From this, however, it follows again, 
 that at all events as early as the commencement of the second 
 century, there were men who, after the manner of Paul (1 Cor. 
 v. 7), regarded Christ as the true Paschal Lamb, the same thing 
 which we find also in John xix. 36. The Anabaticon of Isaiah 
 appears to be of a much later origin, though even it is ante- 
 Nicene. Its Christology is somewhat Docetical in character. 
 
 Note EEE, page 154. 
 
 Compare Nitzsch, " de Testament, xii. Patriarch." Wittenb. 
 1810 ; Liicke 1. c. ; Grabe's " Spicilegium" i. 129-252 ; Fabric. 
 Cod. Pseudepigr. V. T. i. 496-759. Origen, and probably also 
 Tertullian, was acquainted with the work (compare Fabricius 
 1. c. 499 f.). It must therefore have been written before the end 
 of the second century. We cannot, with Dodwell, conclude 
 from the Hellenisms of its style, that it belongs even to the 
 first century. The limits of the time within which the work 
 was composed, may be drawn more closely, than between the 
 Book of Enoch and the end of the second century ; if we note, 
 on the one hand, that Jerusalem is spoken of as already de- 
 stroyed (Levi xv. 16) ; that heathens already constitute the 
 majority in Christendom (for example, Leviviii. ; Benj. ix. 11) 
 —a representation which suits at all events the close of the first 
 century ; that an entire series of formulas to express the idea of 
 the incarnation of God, and which the author has at his fingers' 
 ends, had already been formed — a circumstance which points to, 
 at all events, the commencement of the second century ; and, on 
 the other hand, that the collective tendency of the work is to 
 teach that the priesthood is higher than royalty, but that both 
 are by their very idea inseparable. Christ, therefore, must not 
 be conceived merely as a King, but He is also the High Priest. 
 Royalty and high-priesthood must not be separated. Were any 
 reference to the constitution of the Church discoverable in the 
 book, one might easily suppose that its main purpose was either 
 to establish or overthrow the priesthood in the Church. Such, 
 however, is not the case : on the contrary, the author is dealing 
 with Judaism ; and he unweariedly reminds the Jews that the 
 Messiah is above all to be conceived as a priest, to whom the 
 old priesthood is called upon to resign its rights. Now, this un- 
 
420 APPENDIX. 
 
 doubtedly does not suit the time subsequent to the destruction 
 of Jerusalem by Hadrian : it would, however, suit the time prior 
 to that event. For, with the destruction of Jerusalem, all the 
 unity and infecting power of the Jewish ceremonial system 
 ceased. Furthermore, down to the time of Hadrian, the Chris- 
 tian Church in Palestine was seriously exposed to the danger 
 of a relapse into Judaism. For, to use the words of Sulpicius 
 Severus, " Christum Deum credebant," but " sub legis observa- 
 tione" (Hist. Sacr. L. ii. 31, ed. Lips. 1709, 245) ; or, more 
 precisely, Christ was conceived by them predominantly as the 
 one who is exalted, and who will come again as King, that is, 
 their conception of Him was an eschatological one ; but these 
 Christians at the same time clung to the law, and asserted its 
 continuous obligatoriness, at all events on Jewish converts. 
 Now this work attacks the separation of royalty and priesthood, 
 — attacks, therefore, the opinion of the Jews, that Messiah was 
 to be expected as a King, and not above all as a Priest. For the 
 same reason also, it attacks those Christians, who, whilst believing 
 in Jesus the exalted King, because they do not believe in Jesus 
 the Priest, regard the ceremonial law as still existing and binding, 
 and are therefore in danger of believing that what is best has not 
 yet been brought to light, — consequently, of taking an Ebion- 
 itic view of the work of Christ. With an emphasis reminding 
 one of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the authors show that Christ's 
 death put an end to the Old Testament law, and to its central 
 feature, to wit, the Levitical priesthood (Benj. 9, 11 ; specially 
 Levi c. 4-8, 10 ; Reub.9). The kind of prominence thus given 
 to the high-priestly, in comparison with the kingly, office of 
 Christ (Judah 21, 24), appears to me to suit only the first half 
 of the second century. At that time it was still possible unhe- 
 sitatingly to say (Levi 18), — Christ will continue King and 
 Priest for ever, and throughout all generations will have no suc- 
 cessor ; for this was not opposed to the idea which Ignatius 
 wished to see realized : it would, however, have clashed with 
 the spirit of the second half of the second century, when, in 
 consequence of the new significance ascribed to ordination, a 
 new priesthood was practically established. In the days of the 
 author, the Church had already begun to make a collection of 
 New Testament writings which were counted sacred (Benj. 11). 
 The question, whether the author were a Jew or a Christian, 
 
NOTES. 421 
 
 can be most certainly answered, from a consideration of the 
 fundamental idea of the entire book. In no one of the Twelve 
 Testaments is this fundamental idea forgotten. Were this the 
 work of an interpolator, we should have to assume the original 
 foundation to have been an Hebraizing moral treatise, for the 
 composition of which we can discover no sufficient motive. 
 Besides, the moral discussions themselves are partially enlisted 
 in the service of this idea (Zab. 8). The fundamental thought 
 of the entire Testament of Joseph (xi. 18, xii. 3) is the follow- 
 ing : Joseph is a type of the suffering Christ ; — apart from 
 this thought, its entire composition is a mystery. Now the 
 Testament of Joseph is for the most part the goal of the rest. 
 The idea seems to have been, so to group the sons of Jacob 
 around Joseph, that he should be the object of the hatred of 
 them all in their manifold sins, and yet, whilst apparently 
 perishing at their hands, be their deliverer. His history thus 
 becomes a type of the history of Christ, who suffers in conse- 
 quence of the sins of His people, in order, as the atoning Lamb, 
 which is at the same time King, to bring spiritual redemption. 
 The dying Jacob interprets the type, and sets it forth for coming 
 times, so that no one, when Christ comes, may fail to see in 
 Him the Reconciler. But though it is evident that the author 
 was a Christian, it cannot be denied that the entire style of the 
 work, its morality, and its doctrine of sin (for example, Zebulon 
 i. ; Reuben ii.), bear traces of a Judaizing tendency. Amongst 
 such traces, we may mention also the seven heavens (Levi i. ff.), 
 the 'Eyptfyopoi (Reub. v.), and so forth. We cannot, however, 
 with Grabe (compare Fabricius 1. c. 501 ff.), go so far as to 
 assume a Jew as the original author, and besides him a Christian 
 interpolator. Such a separation of the Christian element is 
 impossible, for the fundamental idea and the entire conception 
 of the work is Christian. More recent writers, specially 
 Nitzsch and Liicke, are of the same opinion. The author was 
 a Jewish Christian ; — assuming this, the Judaizing elements 
 are explained. Here also we have another illustration of the 
 untenableness of the opinion, that Jewish Christians as such 
 were Ebionitical, or, at all events, anti-Pauline. The passage 
 in Benj. xi. (compare Tertull. c. Marcion. 1 ; Scorpiac. adv. 
 Gnostic. 13) unquestionably refers to Paul. It runs as follows, 
 — In the latter days there will spring forth from the seed of 
 
422 APPENDIX. 
 
 Benjamin, the beloved of the Lord, who heareth His voice, and 
 doeth His will, who enlighteneth all the heathen with new 
 knowledge, and brings up the light of knowledge over Israel, 
 and, like a wolf (Gen. xlix. 27), tears it away from Israel that 
 he may give it to the synagogue of the heathen. It will abide 
 in the synagogue of the heathen till the end of the world, and 
 will be as a melody on the lips of their princes. And in sacred 
 books will be written his work and his words." The author 
 has, further, many Johannean features; — for example, "the 
 Lamb of God" (Test. xi. xii.) ; the slaughter which it under- 
 goes (xi. 19) ; fiovoyevr]<: is used of Christ (Benj. 9). Neander 
 (" Church History" ii. 602, 609) therefore appears to me to be 
 wrong, in judging this work to be an offspring of Ebionism. 
 
 Note FFF, page 160. 
 
 To this connection belongs the "Evangelium Nicodemi." 
 That the second part is of a far later origin (Cod. Apocr. N. T. 
 ed. Thilo, P. i. 666 ff.) is certain : on the other hand, with the 
 first part is connected the "Acta Pilati," with which even 
 Justin Martyr (Apol. i. 35, 48) was acquainted (compare " Thilo 
 1. c. cxviii. 796 ff., and his Easter Programme 1837 ; Insunt 
 Acta SS. App. Petri et Pauli," Partic. i. 26, 27). This work 
 has, on the whole, the synoptic conception of Christ ; it evinces 
 also an acquaintance with the miracles narrated in the Gospel 
 of John ; but it adds many features of a fabulous and incredible 
 character. Much simpler, on the contrary, is the tone of the 
 Epistles of Pilate to Claudius and Tiberius (Thilo 1. c. 796- 
 802). The avaipopa of Pilate is completely legendary (1. c. 
 803-813). Other apocryphal writings — such as the " Evange- 
 lium Infantise," "Nati vitas Marias," "Protevangelium Jacobi" — 
 contain rather a Docetical than an Ebionitical representation of 
 Christ. The former, for example, represents Christ as saying, 
 in His cradle, to His mother, " Ego quem peperisti, sum Jesus, 
 Filius Dei, 6 \6yos, misitque me pater meus ad salutem 
 mundi" (c. 1). Similarly also the Protevangelium Jacobi, 
 whose author classes himself amongst the vrvev/jiaTiicol, and 
 who, although he does not call the true humanity of Christ in 
 question, is at great pains to show that Mary still continued to 
 be a virgin, even after giving birth to Jesus, and must there- 
 fore have taken a Docetical view of the birth of Christ. The 
 
NOTES. 423 
 
 u Acta Pauli et Theslse," in their present form, cannot have 
 been written before the fifth century. What the older form 
 was, in which the Acta were known even in the time of Tertul- 
 lian, it is impossible now to ascertain. The work in its present 
 form is, indeed, gloomily ascetical, especially in relation to mar* 
 riage ; but these ethical errors have not affected its dogmatical, 
 particularly its Christological, orthodoxy. Not merely was Christ 
 designated in ancient times, 6 a^/airrfros kclL ayios iral? Qeov, 
 vto? toO vtylxTTov (c. 8, 10), but He was even worshipped by 
 Paul : to His sufferings also is attributed the virtue of saving 
 us from judgment. Accordingly Schliemann (1. c. 431 ff.) 
 must be allowed to be right, when, in opposition to Schwegler 
 (1. c. 262 ff.), he maintains that here there are no signs of 
 Ebionism. 
 
 Note GGG, page 165. 
 
 In his reply Origen demonstrated the ignorance of Celsus, 
 for in the deeper sense Christians do hold the law ; and even 
 the external law was not at once cast aside by Peter and the 
 Christians of Jerusalem. Nay more, even still later, there ex- 
 isted those who, like the two kinds of Ebionites, clinging to the 
 letter, wished both to recognise Jesus as the foretold one, and 
 also to retain the law of their fathers. But as Origen was not 
 in the slightest degree aware that these constituted the great 
 body of Christians, the ignorance of Celsus can only be ex- 
 plained on the supposition that the Ebionitic Christians had 
 escaped his notice through having become an insignificant sect. 
 In favour of this view, the passage v. 61 may also be adduced, 
 even supposing Celsus himself should have referred to the 
 Ebionites, and not Origen have quoted them as examples. 
 
 Note HHH, page 173. 
 
 L. c. apvrjv .r/fiipas 0780779 voiijcra), o Icttiv aXkov Kocrfiov 
 ucrvfiv. Aio ml wyop-ev rrjv rjfiepav ttjv 6y$6r)v et'? eixppoawtjv, 
 ev y ml 6 'Ir)<rov<; ave<TTr) en veicpwv, etc. Similarly Ignatius 
 adMagn. 9, — Christians who live in a new hope, are no longer 
 <raPPaT%ovre<;, aXKci Kara KvpiaKrjv &¥ S^e?, ev f, ml 17 £iaj) 
 fo&v AvireiXev St' avrov. Plin. Ep. L. x. 97,—" Quod essent 
 soliti stato die ante lucem convenire." Euseb. 4, 23, 24, 26 ; 
 Const. Apost. 10, 23,— to vaPfiarov pAvTOi ml ttjv KvpiaKrjv 
 
42 4 APPENDIX. 
 
 eoprd^ere, on to fiev Syfuovpyia,'; iarlv vTro/jLvrjfia, r) Se avaaTa- 
 o-ew?. 2, 59 ; 5, 20 ; 8. 33. Opposition to Gnosticism appears 
 to have been the motive for the longer retention of the obser- 
 vation of the Jewish Sabbath along with Sunday. Indeed, at 
 the outset the observance of both was almost historically un- 
 avoidable. From the time of Tertullian, the double observance 
 was due to the return of a legal, if even an anti- Jewish, spirit. 
 To give up the religious celebration of the festival of creation, 
 so long as the Creator was conceived by some not to be the 
 highest God, was almost an inward impossibility. This oppo- 
 sition to Gnosticism, however, might take two forms: either 
 both days might continue to be observed as festivals of joy ; or 
 the festivals of the first and second creation might be celebrated 
 on one and the same day, to wit, Sunday. The latter course 
 might easily be taken, inasmuch as the Son of God, who rose 
 from the dead, was from an early period held to be the Creator of 
 the world. The latter form was the freer ; it was also inde- 
 pendent of Judaism ; and at the same time almost more strongly 
 opposed to Gnosticism than the first mentioned. In the 
 Apologia of Justin Martyr (i. 67), we find a trace of the adop- 
 tion of the latter course by the Oriental Church during the first 
 half of the second century. According to the passage referred 
 to, Sunday is the festival day of Christians ; there is no word 
 whatever of a Sabbath ; whereas Sunday was also set apart for 
 the commemoration of the first creation. And we find, in fact, 
 that the Sabbath was not universally observed in the East ; but, 
 to judge from Justin Martyr, Ignatius, Barnabas, the " Epistola 
 ad Diognetum" 4, only where the influence of a Judaizing 
 Christianity was more strongly felt. In the very district which 
 deviated least widely from the Jews in the matter of the time of 
 celebrating the feast of Passover, to wit, in Asia Minor, the 
 custom of commemorating once a week the resurrection of the 
 Lord, seems first to have grown spontaneously out of the prin- 
 ciple of Christianity. We find accordingly that the polemic 
 against the Jewish Sabbath (compare Ep. ad Diognet. 4; 
 Cone. Laod. can. 29 ; compare Col. ii. 16, Apocal. i. 10) was 
 quite as vigorous in a great part of the Oriental Churches, 
 at all events in the second century, as it was in Rome, where an 
 endeavour was subsequently made, by the appointment of fast- 
 ing on the Sabbath, to change its character, in agreement with 
 
NOTES. 425 
 
 the Christian idea. The commemoration of the creation was, 
 naturally, then allowed to fall into the background (compare 
 also Bingh. L. xx. c. 3, vol. ix. p. 54 ff.). For the prohibition of 
 fasting on the Sabbath, which has a Judaistic appearance (Can. 
 Apost. 54), even Bingham assigned a much more probable 
 reason (L. xx. c. 3, § 5, vol. ix. p. 59 ff.) than the one alleged by 
 Baur (Episk. p. 135 ff.), — to wit, antagonism to Marcion and 
 others, who, according to Epiph. riser. 42, 3, by way of degrad- 
 ing the Demiurge, ordained a fast on the Sabbath. 
 
 Note III, page 174. 
 
 That Christ died on a Friday, the Orientals knew well enough 
 (Justin's Apol. i. 67) ; but they believed themselves to have done 
 enough for the commemoration of that day by the organization 
 of the Christian week, by celebrating Sunday as the day of 
 resurrection, and by adopting the division of the days which 
 naturally resulted therefrom. On the contrary, in the appoint- 
 ment of yearly festivals (the tendency to which showed itself 
 altogether at an earlier period in the East than in the West), 
 they endeavoured, especially in Asia Minor, to fix upon the true 
 date, the exact day. One motive for this accuracy, was the 
 desire to set forth, in opposition to the Jews, the Christian 
 festival of Passover as the fulfilment of the Jewish festival 
 (compare John xix. 36 ; Justini Martyris Dial. c. Tryph. 40, 
 111 ; Iren. Fragm. ed. Mass. p. 342). On the other hand, the 
 opponents of this procedure of the Church of Asia Minor, who 
 formed the decided majority (Euseb. 5, 23, 2), regulated the 
 yearly festivals in agreement with the weekly ; but their boast- 
 ing of this as a proof of their anti-Judaistic spirit, rested on a 
 misconception of the custom of the Church in Asia Minor. 
 Indeed, it is hard to say whether the latter custom was not more 
 decidedly anti-Judaistic than the so-called Roman, especially as 
 the Romans continued dependent on Jewish calculations. In 
 reality, however, neither party based its custom on the principle 
 of cleaving to Judaism. That those of Asia Minor, in particu- 
 lar, did not at all mean to allow the Divine obligatoriness of the 
 ,01d Testament law of Passover, is clear from the friendly 
 character of the intercourse between Polycarp and Anicetus, 
 notwithstanding their difference of opinion (Euseb. 5, 24). 
 Victor's behaviour, on the contrary, is rather to be termed Ju- 
 
426 APPENDIX. 
 
 daistic, — not indeed in the historical sense of the word, but in the 
 dogmatical. — Neander (Church History i. 1, p. 513 ff.) appears 
 to me to be right in understanding the Epistle of Polycrates 
 (Euseb. 5, 24) to mean, that the Church of Asia Minor regarded 
 as the main matter, not the paschal meal, but primarily the 
 commemoration of the suffering and death of Christ. 
 
 Note J J J, page 175. 
 
 It is difficult to understand how there could be any need felt 
 of a baptismal festival, after it had become customary to com- 
 memorate the birth of Christ. But the custom once introduced 
 of commemorating His baptism, we can easily understand how 
 the commemoration of His birth — that is, of the commencement 
 of the existence of Christ for us, of His official existence — might 
 for a time be conjoined therewith : — and, indeed, the Church at 
 a later period spoke of His baptism as a " secunda nativitas." 
 As early as the first thirty years of the second century (Clem. 
 Alex. Strom. 1, 21, ed. Pott. i. 407), the Basilidians celebrated 
 the festival of the baptism of Christ. With this fact are in 
 agreement the passages adduced above (p. 247 f.) from the 
 Sibylline Books, which belong to the time of Hadrian, and in 
 which the baptism of Christ is in particular a constant theme. 
 The Ebionites, also, probably observed this festival at an early 
 period ; for they in general attached the greatest significance 
 to the rite of baptism. Now it is quite certain that the Church, 
 which observed this festival at all events at a later period, did 
 not adopt it from the Basilidians; consequently, concludes 
 Neander (Church Histoiy i. 1, p. 519 ff.), with undoubted 
 justice, the baptism of Christ was commemorated by the Church 
 prior to the rise of the Gnostic sects. Possibly, indeed, as 
 Neander thinks, the passage contains a hint of the commemo- 
 ration by the Church, of the birth of Jesus ; — not, however, as 
 though it had any intention of thereby pretending to determine 
 the exact day of the birth of Christ ; for that was held to be a 
 secondary matter. Clement's meaning would then be, — "In 
 the view of the Basilidians, the day on which the festival of 
 baptism is observed is of importance ; the Church, on the con- 
 trary, is indifferent about the exact day, even in commemorating 
 the birth of Christ." The passage would accordingly tend to 
 show that the birth of Christ was held in greater esteem by the 
 
NOTES. 427 
 
 Church than His baptism ; a thing which was not impossible 
 about the year 200, although the festival of the birth continued 
 to be incidentally, irregularly observed. 
 
 Note KKK, page 187. 
 
 That, theoretically, he required men to experience every- 
 thing for themselves, that they might thus become conscious 
 and certain of their freedom, is, on the contrary, perfectly 
 attested. It is the principle, which elsewhere also is brought 
 forward, that nothing must remain unnegatived, if freedom is 
 to be perfect, and conscious of its perfection. This, however, is 
 merely the negative aspect of the new Christian principle, with- 
 out the higher filling up of the absolute void of formal freedom. 
 For this reason also, the required negation of everything opposed 
 to freedom, far from being identical with the denial of self and 
 the world, demanded by Christianity, is but the caprice of a 
 subject whose existence is vanity, and the heathenish counter- 
 part of Pharisaism ; for the apparent spirituality of Pharisaism 
 had also, as its reverse aspect, a finer and more poisonous form 
 of sensuality. 
 
 Note LLL, page 188. 
 
 In Matt. T. xi. 12 : ol 6\lry<p $ia<f>epovTe<s avr&v (that is, 
 from the awiMaracoi<i 'Ioi/oWo«) 'Efiiavcuoi. Similarly also 
 Justin Martyr in the Dial. c. Tryphone 1. c. After saying that, 
 in his opinion, those also can be saved who, whilst believing in 
 Christ, continue to observe the law for themselves, provided they 
 do not insist on the heathen undergoing circumcision, and hold 
 intercourse with free Gentile Christians. 'Eav Be ol airo tov 
 761/011? rov ifierepov inaTevetv Xeyovre? eVt tovtov tov Xpicrrov, — 
 e'« nravTO<; Kara rov Bta Mtacretu? BiarayQevTa vofiov dvcvyicdfyocn 
 {jgv tovs e'£ idvtav Trio-TevovTw;, — r) /Mr/ KOivmvelv avroLS — aip&v- 
 Tai, d/xo«»9 Kal tovtov; ovk diroSe-xpfiai. Schliemann (1. c. 553 f .) 
 justly condemns the translation of the last words — " I do not 
 agree with these." Evidently there should follow a stronger 
 judgment on them than on the first-mentioned class. Schlie- 
 mann proposes to translate — " I will not recognise them, even 
 as they do not recognise us." But as icdya) fails, we might trans- 
 late — "I cannot treat them after the same manner with those 
 first, more moderate ones." More moderate than the men who 
 
428 APPENDIX. 
 
 wished to lay upon the heathen the yoke of the Old Testament, 
 and esteemed the freer heathen Christians unclean, are those 
 heathen Christians who allow this burden to be laid on them- 
 selves, but continue to confess the Anointed of God. On the 
 contrary, tov? o/MoKoy^cravTa 1 ; /cal iiriyvovras, tovtov elvcu rbv 
 Xpicrrov Kal §Tivt oZp alria fieTafidvras eiri ttjv ewo/iov l 7roX(- 
 reiav, apvrjcrafievovs, on o5to? icriv 6 Xpurrbs /cat irpXv TeXeim}? 
 /xrj fieTcuyvovTas ov8' oX&>? awOriaeadat, aTrofatvo/iai. How easy 
 such a relapse was for both parties, is plain from the observa 
 tions immediately following in the text. 
 
 Note MMM, page 193. 
 
 What Irenseus says (i. 26) of the Ebionites in this respect, 
 must refer to the above-mentioned class. The Gospel of the 
 Hebrews, which many Ebionites possessed, and which Jerome 
 saw in the fifth century, seems to me to have been based on the 
 Gospel of Matthew. But as the introduction thereto, preserved 
 by Epiphanius, appears to intend to represent the Gospel as the 
 work of the twelve Apostles, and as amongst the extant fragments 
 of it there are unquestionably portions of Luke's Gospel (for 
 example, Epiph. Haer. 30, 22; ell. Luke xxii. 15), the most 
 probable supposition is the following : — The Gospel of Matthew 
 formed the groundwork, but underwent in process of time many 
 alterations, partly because it was meant to be the Gospel of the 
 twelve Apostles, and might therefore adopt portions, according to 
 pleasure, from other Gospel traditions, and partly from doctrinal 
 reasons, or from an inclination to certain apocryphal embellish- 
 ments. Thus arose necessarily a variety of recensions, some of 
 them containing the most arbitrary interpolations. (Compare 
 Epiph. Hser. 30, 3, 13 ; Grabe, Spicileg. i. 25.) Each of the 
 three classes above mentioned — the Nazarenes, and the two 
 kinds of Ebionites — had its own particular recension. 
 
 Note NNN, page 193. 
 
 The fact that Epiphanius does not accuse them of regarding 
 Christ as an ordinary man, but acknowledges that he knows 
 nothing about the matter, is in itself evidence thereof, and cer- 
 tainly a good sign. Irenaeus says (i. 26, 2) — "ea autem, qua? 
 sunt erga Dominum, non similiter ut Cerinthus et Carpocrates 
 opinantur." We need neither erase "non," with Cotelerius, 
 
NOTES. ' 429 
 
 nor, with Grabe, read." consimiliter" instead of "non similiter," 
 if we only refer the words to the Nazarenes. — Origen also was 
 acquainted with them (Orig. c. Celsum 5, 61, 65). 01 Sirrol 
 Efiuovaloi •fyroi e« Trapdevov6fioko<yovvTe<; 6/Wo)? rjfuv tov 'Irjcrow, 
 rj ov% ovto) yeyevvfjcrOai. Perhaps also the words of Origen, in 
 his Comm. in Joh. T. ii. 6 (de la Eue's ed. iv. 64), belong to 
 this connection : — "Apri eXafte /xe r) fUfrrip fiov to ayiov irvevfia 
 ev fiia tow rpiy&v fiov, ical airrjveyici fie el? to 6'po? to fieya &a- 
 f3a>p. For, though they may have styled the Holy Spirit the fi^Trjp 
 'Iijaov from the day of His birth, they can scarcely have so 
 termed Him from His baptism. Grabe is of a different opinion 
 (1. c. 327, 328). Origen's explanation is a marvellous one. The 
 view above given, I find also held by Neander (2d ed. 1, 2, 605, 
 606), who makes it probable that the words ev /iia tSsv Tpb^mv 
 fiov are intended to express in a poetical form the fact, that it 
 was the impulse of the Holy Spirit which animated and led Him 
 in all things. For the rest, these words, and the passage referred 
 to in Note 3, page 193, show that at an early period apocryphal 
 elements had found their way into their Gospel. That they 
 taught the birth from the Virgin, is clear from the quotation 
 from Jerome, given in the note to page 191. 
 
 Note OOO, page 194. 
 
 Hieron. Oomm. in Jesaiam, c. 31, 6, 7 ; Schliemann 1. c. p. 
 455 f. They neither required heathen Christians to observe 
 the law, nor regarded such observance as necessary to salvation ; 
 they trusted in the mercy of God, not in their own power. 
 Following Jerome, Schliemann (p. 457) gives an affecting 
 description of their sentiments. Bitterly persecuted by the 
 Pharisees, and hostile to them as to men whom they deemed 
 seducers of the people, they mourned deeply over their unbe- 
 lieving brethren, and looked with longing for the time when 
 their conversion should be effected. To sadden the spirit of 
 their brother, they considered to be one of the greatest sins ; and 
 in their Gospel one might read, — "Nunquam lseti sitis nisi 
 quum fratrem vestrum videritis in caritate." Optat. Milev. de 
 Schism. Donat. 4, 5, represents them as saying, — " Patrem pas- 
 sum esse, non filium." 
 
430 APPENDIX. 
 
 Note PPP, page 195. 
 
 What they meant by the birth of Christ from the Holy 
 Spirit, which they undoubtedly believed, is difficult to say. 
 Most probably it was a mere dead dogma ; otherwise they would 
 have been led into the development above indicated. But 
 whilst they stood still, Christian heresies grew up, one after the 
 other, and left the traces of their existence in the recensions of 
 their Gospel. Perhaps, therefore, the account given of the bap- 
 tism of Christ by the Nazarenes, was intended as an answer to the 
 notions embodied in these heresies — an answer serving also the 
 purpose of defending their own point of view against similar 
 charges. From the stress which, after their fashion, it unquestion- 
 ably lays on the baptism of Christ, their version may be regarded 
 as a kind of concession to the class to which we are just about to 
 call attention. They were not conscious, however, of putting 
 the birth of Christ into the background as compared with His 
 baptism, nor that their teachings respecting the latter did not 
 altogether accord with the full import of their doctrine of the 
 birth from the Holy Spirit. At this point, therefore, the heresy 
 begins. It is more difficult to assign with certainty the probable 
 motive of the stress laid on baptism in their account of the rite. 
 According to Theodoret, they honoured Christ as avOpasirov 
 Sikcuov (Hser. Fab. 2, 2). This we must take in the strict sense, 
 and not as Schliemann, without proof, takes it (pp. 260, 455), 
 who classes them with other Ebionites, on the plea that they attri- 
 buted to Christ, not absolute sinlessness, but merely a higher 
 degree of virtue. For if Jesus, as their Gospel narrates, when 
 called upon by His mother and brothers to allow Himself to be 
 baptized by John, answered (Hieronym. c. Pelag. 3, 2), — " Quid 
 peccavi, ut vadam et baptizer ab eo, nisi forte hoc ipsum, quod 
 dixi, ignorantia est," — the Nazarene Gospel, if these words 
 actually occurred in it, must have intended to teach that, though 
 Jesus prior to His baptism was chargeable with ignorance, — that 
 is, was not fully enlightened by, and endued with, the Holy 
 Spirit, — He had not the consciousness of sin. I am compelled 
 therefore to regard this interpolation, even if it really did form 
 part of their Gospel, as an answer to, or an apologetic declaration 
 against, those Ebionites, etc., who drew from the baptism of 
 Christ the conclusion, that He also needed to repent. Their 
 
NOTES. 431 
 
 answer would be — Baptism had a different significance relatively 
 to Christ : — what significance, they indicate when they represent 
 Christ as having an imperfect consciousness, or as being "in 
 ignorantia," prior to baptism. Perhaps also the circumstance 
 that, immediately before His baptism, Christ claims to have 
 kept Himself free from sin, is a hint that, in the opinion of the 
 Nazarenes, the distinction about to be conferred on Him was a 
 reward for His virtue. Or we might also say (especially if 
 " ignorantia" be taken reflectively, as a want of clear conscious- 
 ness of His moral condition), that the Nazarenes conceived Jesus 
 to have been, prior to baptism, in a completely unconscious, 
 childlike state ; and that at His baptism He first attained to 
 the manly form of perfect virtue, that is, attained to a fully 
 conscious virtue ; whereas His will had been ever equally 
 pure, and, as His birth from the Holy Ghost would lead us to 
 expect, had never transgressed. In both cases, Christ would 
 be affirmed to be sinless ; and we should then be obliged to 
 suppose, what in itself is quite possible, that for His baptism, 
 on which they laid such great stress, they assigned a motive not 
 altogether consistent with their belief in the supernaturalness of 
 His birth. I think it, however, more than questionable, whether 
 the passage was contained in their Gospel. If, as Credner 
 thinks, " ignorantia" should be understood to denote " sins of 
 ignorance" (compare Testam. Patr. vi. 1, ar/vota), we ought not 
 to seek for this passage in the Nazarene Gospel, but in another 
 recension of the Gospel of the Hebrews, — that, namely, which 
 was employed by the Ki]pvy/j.a Herpov. This latter also, accord- 
 ing to Hieron. de bapt. Hseret., adduces the passage. Now Jerome 
 characterizes the Ktfpvy/ia, Herpov as a book " in quo contra 
 omnas scripturas et de peccato proprio confitentem invenies 
 Christum." If this statement be correct (and there is no reason 
 for doubting its correctness, if the book were written in Alex- 
 andria some time before Basilides), the Ktfpuyfia must have re- 
 ferred the passage under notice to the unconscious sinfulness 
 of Christ prior to baptism ; but to attribute such a supposition 
 to the Nazarenes, would be thoroughly irreconcileable with their 
 belief in a birth from the Holy Spirit, or in the appearance of 
 God among men in Christ. Nazarenes who renounced the 
 tenets which constituted their characteristic difference from the 
 Ebionites, ought rather to be termed Ebionites. Compare Note 
 
432 APPENDIX. 
 
 TTT. The indefinite, amphibolical nature of the Christology of 
 the Nazarenes, is in agreement with their entire character. 
 
 Note QQQ, page 196. 
 
 As, among other things, follows from the fact, that at a later 
 period Symmachus, translator of the Old Testament, was a 
 leader of the second class, which after him were termed Sym- 
 machians. Their chief seat was on the east of the Jordan, and 
 for this reason Clemens Alexandrinus terms them IlepaTiKol. 
 They were also to be found in Cypria, Asia Minor, and Rome ; 
 perhaps also in Alexandria. Compare Ep. Barnab. c. 7, 12, 14 ; 
 Ignat. ad Magn. and ad Philad. ; Epiph. haer. 30, 18. See 
 especially the words of the latter respecting the Cerinthians : — 
 ovtoc dvb KqpLvOov 'IovSaloi Twes Tf)V TrepiTOfirjv av'xpvvrai, tov 
 Be /cocrfiov vir dyyeXcov yeyevfjo-0ai, XeyovTes, 'Irjcrovv Be Kara irpo- 
 iccnrrjv Xpitrrbv KeicXfjcrOai. Euseb. H. E. 3, 27 : 'Efiicovaiovs 
 Tovrovt; oi'/cewB? i-7re<p^fUcrov, TTTw^Sis ical Tairetv5)<; ra irepl tov 
 Xpiarov Bo^d^ovre^. Aitov fiev yap ainov nal noivbv rjyovvTO, 
 Kara -irpoicoirrjv i]0ovs avrbv /jlovov avQpumov BeBucaiwfievov, if; 
 dvBpos re koivcovUv; Kal TJ}? Mapias yeyevrjfievov. The word 
 BeBiKauo/Mevov perhaps contains an allusion to some act, by which 
 Jesus was proclaimed by God as Christ, on account of His 
 righteousness. 
 
 Note RRR, page 197. 
 
 Even the Epistle to the Hebrews would lead us to expect 
 this. Further, not only Hegesippus, but also the Chronic. 
 Pasch., and other information we have respecting Cerinthus, 
 point thereto. Schliemann decides for the time of Hadrian, in- 
 stead of that of Trajan ; but, all things considered, this is at least 
 thirty years too late : the decision is based on an over-estimate 
 of the influence of external events, such as the expulsion of the 
 Jews from the Aelia Capitolina. Even the name Heparucoi is 
 probably an indication that, of the Jewish Christians who con- 
 tinued in the neighbourhood of Pella after the destruction of 
 Jerusalem by Titus, some took an Ebionitic turn ; and there- 
 fore pursued a course similar to that of the fraction which 
 seceded from the mother Church of Jerusalem under Tebuthis. 
 
NOTES. 433 
 
 Note SSS, page 199. 
 
 Dial. c. Tryph. 48, ed. Col. 267 E. Kal yap elal rives, 
 OKJjiXoi, ekeyov, airb rov rifierepov yevovs, 6/ioXoyovvTes avrbv 
 Xpiarov eivai, avQpamov Be e£ avQpamwv dwocfraivofievoc o£? ov 
 avvrlde/iai, ov& av irXeiaroi, Tavrd fioi Bo^daavTeg e'fcoiev, eireiBrj 
 ovk avdp<OTrivoi<i BiBdy/iaai KeKekevo~p,e6a vif avrov rov XpiaTov 
 ireideaBai, aXXa rot? Bia, tuv /Mticapiav Trpo<pT)Ta>v Kt]pv^6elai 
 Kal Bi avrov BiBa^Oeiat. Compare G. Bull, Judicium Ecclesiae, 
 etc., c. 7, p. 69, with the Appendix of Grahe, p. 79 ff. The 
 proposal of the former, to read vperipov yevovs instead of rj/jLe- 
 repov yevovs, does not accomplish its purpose ; for the word 
 irXeiaroi, which occurs afterwards, implies that there were some 
 who held this view, whom Justin could not avoid reckoning 
 amongst Christians, even though chargeable with heresy. In 
 order to ascertain Justin's entire judgment of these Ebionites, 
 we must take into consideration c. 35, 81, and indeed his entire 
 Christology. How greatly the Ebionites were in the minority, 
 is evident from the circumstance, that although the conversation 
 had just before related to the legality of their spirit, the Jew 
 Tryphon (c. 10) attributes to Christians universally the charac- 
 teristic of the non-observance of the law. In a very similar 
 manner, Celsus (see Origen. c. Cels. 2, 1) brings the same re- 
 proach against Christians. 
 
 Note TTT, page 200. 
 
 Epiph. hser. 30, 13 : Tov Xaov fiairriaOevTOs rjkOe Kal 
 'Irjaovs, Kal ifiainiaOri inro tov ^Iadvvov. Kal a>? avrfkOev airo 
 rov vBaros, r]volrjT)crav oi ovpavol, Kal elBe to Trvevfia tov ©eov to 
 &yiov iv e'iBei Tteptarepas KareXdovarj^ Kal elaeXdovaqs ets ovtov. 
 Kal <pmvr) eyevero e'« tov ovpavov, Xeyovaa' 2v fiov el o vlhs o 
 dr/avrjTbs, iv aol TjvBoKTjaa. Kal iraXw iyio arjfiepov yeyevvrjKa 
 o-e. Kal evdvs TrepieXafiyfre tov tottov <£«? fieya. *0 iBwv o 
 'Iadvvt]? Xeyet, avrS- av Tt? el Kvpie ; Kal -irdXiv (pcovr) e'|? ovpa- 
 vov 7T/30? avrov Ovros iarw 6 wo? fiov 6 dyaTrrjTOS, ecj) ov tjvBo- 
 Ktjo-a. KalroTeo'Icodvvr]*} Trpoa-weacov avrm eXeye- Beo/iai aov, 
 Kvpie, av fie fSdirriaov. O Be eKcoXveVj avr£ Xeywv a<£es, on 
 ovTca^ earl irpevov itXtjeadrivat rravra. — The passage adduced 
 from Jerome in Note PPP must also be attributed to these 
 Ebionites, if "ignorantia" referred to sins of ignorance. In 
 
 VOL. I. 2 E 
 
434 APPENDIX. 
 
 favour of which, might further be alleged, that the class now 
 under consideration, which rejected the account of the child- 
 hood of Christ, and began its Gospel with His baptism, may 
 have represented the mother of Jesus as calling upon her Son 
 to allow Himself to be baptized by John, for the purpose of thus 
 hinting, that she, at all events, knew nothing of His super- 
 natural birth from the Holy Spirit. The words run as follows 
 (Hier. c. Pelag. 3, 2): — "Ecce mater Domini et fratres ejus 
 dicebant ei : Joannes baptista baptizat in remissionem pecca- 
 torum, eamus et baptizemur ab eo, etc." It is further deserving 
 of remark, that the Ebionitical Gospel intentionally transposes 
 the words of Matthew iii. 14, 15, to after the baptism. Prior 
 to the baptism, neither John nor any one else, not even Jesus 
 Himself, is supposed by them to have recognised Him as Christ 
 
 Note UUU, page 201. 
 
 This consideration is the more important, as they are by no 
 means sparing of expressions which imply that the Holy Spirit 
 of God dwelt in Him ; thus giving up the deistic point of view, 
 from which they had at first regarded the birth of Christ : see 
 Note TTT. (To Trvev/jia tov Geov to aryiov ev e'iSei •irepbQ~Tepa<; 
 KaTe\6ovo-r}<; ical elcre\8ovo~'r)<; el<s avrov.) In itself it is possible 
 that they held the irvev^a of God — that is, God as He reveals 
 Himself in the world of spirit — to have been personally present 
 in Jesus from the day of His baptism, as did the Nazarenes. In 
 that case, however, they could no longer be charged with deny- 
 ing the deity of Christ, — a charge, notwithstanding, constantly 
 brought against them. For this reason, I am compelled to agree 
 ■with Schliemann (p. 485), who takes -Trvev/ui impersonally, as a 
 power, — a view which is suggested also by Isa. si. 1, and by 
 Justin's %pUcT0cu. But unquestionably, if they held that all 
 the powers of the Holy Spirit entered into Him, in order to 
 His complete equipment, the Holy Spirit cannot have been any 
 longer outside of Him, but must have been in Him, and must 
 therefore proceed alone from Him. And if the entire Divine 
 Spirit was in Him, the only difference between this and an in- 
 carnation of the God-Spirit would be, that we must take the 
 •nvevpa, not in the Trinitarian sense, but either patripassianally, 
 or else as the principle of revelation ; and accordingly, if not in 
 name, yet in conception, as equivalent to the Logos, with the 
 
NOTES. 435 
 
 single modification, that, prior to the baptism of Christ, it was 
 not possessed of an hypostatic existence, distinct from that of the 
 Father. This consideration shows us, indeed, the path by which 
 it was possible for these Ebionites to have advanced forward to 
 the point of view occupied by the Nazarenes ; but we have no 
 evidence of their having done so. For in Hasr. 30, 3, Epiphanius 
 speaks of Ebionites No. 1, not of Ebionites No. 2 (see above). 
 Concerning one portion of the Ebionites, whom he did not con 
 sider at one with the third class mentioned above, he remarks, 
 iraXiv Be, ore ftovkovTM, \eyovaw ov%l, aXXa et? clvtov fjkde 
 to Trvevfia, oirep iarlv 6 Xpiarbs, teal eveBvo-aTO avrbv rbv 'Iijaovv 
 tcaXovfievov. The expression, eh avrbv fj\0e to irvevfui, reminds 
 one of the passage cited from the account of the baptism given 
 by the Gospel of the Ebionites now under notice. This evBv- 
 <raa6ai rbv 'Itjvovv, taught by the Ebionites whom Epiphanius 
 here has in view, certainly took place at the baptism of Jesus 
 (compare c. 29). If the irvev/ia be the irvevfia ayiov, their 
 meaning must have been, that from the time of His baptism, the 
 humanity of Christ was no longer the main matter ; that, on 
 the contrary, it was then reduced, as it were, to the rank of a 
 garment of the indwelling Holy Spirit, — an idea in remarkable 
 analogy with expressions used by the teachers of the Church. 
 But the addition, oirep eo-rlv 6 Xpicrrbs, hints that it was a per- 
 sonal pre-existent being which descended on Christ : — and this 
 would suit Cerinthus, and others related to him. We have here, 
 therefore, a new illustration of the looseness with which the 
 word irvevfia was used, and how much caution is requisite to 
 ascertain in each case its true sense. In the present instance, 
 it denotes a higher, but still a created spirit. Now, as these 
 Ebionites held the Old Testament to be a Divine revelation, and 
 were most closely related to the followers of Cerinthus, they 
 probably regarded this highest, pre-existent spirit as the prin- 
 ciple of all Old Testament revelations. In this way, without 
 resorting for help to the theologumenon of the "Word and 
 Wisdom, and independently of the Hellenic idea of the Logos, 
 they approximated, though employing other expressions, to the 
 Church doctrine of the pre-existent Son, whom they designate 
 X/3K7T0?. And, indeed, the doctrine of the Church itself did 
 not all at once get rid of the subordination of the pre-existent 
 hypostasis of the Son. It is, perhaps, further worthy of note, 
 
436 APPENDIX. 
 
 that so soon as, with Cerinthus and those last mentioned, the 
 higher nature which united itself with Christ was conceived to 
 be hypostatical, the soil of Ebionism (which, starting with the 
 human personality of Jesus, represented Him as a mere man, 
 exalted by virtue and the possession of the powers of the Holy 
 Ghost) was quitted, and an alliance was effected with Docetism. 
 Nay more, this higher ^Eon Christ, who descends into Jesus as 
 one person descending into another, dominates, so long as the 
 union lasts. The union, however, could not become a perma- 
 nent one, but continued dissoluble, inasmuch as there was already 
 a vigorous human personality, which had long enjoyed an in- 
 dependent existence. The other fraction of these Ebionites, 
 who maintained that Christ was merely endowed with the highest 
 measure of the powers of the Holy Spirit, might have held the 
 union with the man Jesus to be a permanent one ; and, indeed, 
 we have no account to the contrary. But, as Epiphanius (Hser. 
 30, 14) rightly remarks, the former could only recognise a avva- 
 (j)eta of the Xpurrbs with Jesus — such a avvdcpeia, namely, as 
 that the personality of the latter was either as it were absorbed, 
 or made latent, by the XpicrTos, during the continuance of the 
 union. In opposition to the incarnation of the Christos, they 
 quoted the words — " Who are my sisters and brothers'?" — that 
 is, I (the personal centre of the Messiah, whilst discharging His 
 office of Teacher) know no one amongst you of like nature with 
 Myself. (^Apvovvrai elvcu avrbv dvBpwirov Brjdev dirb tov \6<yov, 
 oi) elprjKev 6 %wrf\p' ti? p.ov kart p-tfriip f) 
 
 Note WV, page 202. 
 
 According to Epiphanius (Hser. 30, 3), some of the Ebi- 
 onites, with the undoubted design of favouring monarchian 
 ideas, gave the doctrine of the hypostatical being which united 
 itself with Christ the following development : — " Christ ( = 
 ayiov Trvev/ia) is from above ; was created before all things as 
 a spirit ; is above the angels ; is a Lord over all, and the heir 
 of the World to come. From this higher world He descends, 
 whenever He wills : thus He came in Adam, and appeared to 
 the patriarchs, clothed in a body, as in a dress. In the latter 
 days, however, He appeared in Adam's veritable body, allowed 
 Himself to be seen, was crucified, rose from the dead, and 
 went back whence He came." Others say, — " Adam, the pro- 
 
NOTES. 437 
 
 toplast, into whose nostrils God Himself breathed breath, wa? 
 Christ." We shall see immediately that these tendencies, not- 
 withstanding their apparent differences, prepared the way for 
 later phenomena, and were summed up in the system of the 
 Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, which taught a monarchian Do- 
 cetism up to the level of the Subordinatianism which, at their 
 time, still partially clung to the doctrine of the Church. 
 
 Note WWW, page 207. 
 
 The author does not believe in an eternal matter outside of 
 God, for that would be incompatible with his monotheism ; but 
 he teaches a TrpoftaXkeadcu of the four elements out of God, or 
 through God. From this we may probably conclude, that he 
 assumed the presence of a nature in God; and this conclusion 
 accords with his doctrine of the body or form of God. But the 
 nature in God is one thing ; that which has proceeded forth 
 from God, and is endowed with independence, another thing. 
 The former is most intimately united with the ao$La or the 
 irvevfia in God, and is, therefore, merely a constituent element 
 of the Unity (Monas) itself. Outside of God, however, it has 
 a predominant tendency to independence,' as it were, to gravi- 
 tate towards itself : having passed out of that unity in which it 
 constituted, not an empty susceptibility, but one replete with 
 the richest treasures, it has now the germ of evil in itself. 
 That oneness with itself and the -irvevna, which it enjoyed in 
 God, ceased, and it was discerpted into the four elements out 
 of which all things arose. These elements are, indeed, gathered 
 again into a unity, in the spirit of the earth, rj icadoXov km, -^rv^rj 
 yemSr]^ , but it is a false unity, brought about by the mixture 
 of the elements, and its name is Satan, who is free (according 
 to the Clementine idea of freedom), although he was .created 
 evil. That this unity is completely different from the unity 
 just pointed out in the Monas, is self-evident ; but it is equally 
 clear that the two are, notwithstanding, connected with each 
 other. Opposed to this mighty spirit, which holds possession 
 of the present world, is the Christ-Spirit, created from the be- 
 ginning as the right is created in correlation to the left. Its 
 claims on the human souls which are related to Him are, it is 
 true, in the present world, constantly resisted, through the too 
 great power of the spirit of the earth ; but He is Lord of the 
 
438 APPENDIX. 
 
 world to come. Thus, out of an original Divine unity, there 
 arose in the world a glaring dualism, which took the further 
 form of negative asceticism. Nature, which in God is so united 
 with the Trvev/ia as to constitute pure susceptibility {v\rf), — 
 susceptibility, moreover, which, being a momentum of God, is 
 good, — -becomes, in the world, an independent, and, as it were, 
 stubborn and seductive material. For this very reason, there- 
 fore, it cannot be represented as absolutely and simply evil ; it 
 corresponds to something which, in God — in unity with the 
 ■jrvevfia — is good ; moreover, the aotpui of God is its Creator. 
 This feature of their doctrine shows itself partly in their 
 avoidance of extremes, even in asceticism, and partly in the 
 observation (Horn. 19, conclusion), that nature also loves God, 
 — that is, in one aspect it is good, and possesses a susceptibility 
 to God, after whom it yearns. The same may be said concern- 
 ing Satan, who constitutes its unity. The good principle is so 
 certain of its victory, that the evil principle serves it without 
 either knowing or willing to do so ; for, though Satan himself 
 is not righteous, as God is, his work is righteous. When he 
 does mischief, he is executing a Divine punishment, which God, 
 as the Good, cannot Himself directly execute. Accordingly, he 
 is compelled, without being aware of it, to help on the victory of 
 the true, righteous God. At this point, the Satan of the Clemen- 
 tines may be said to approximate as nearly as possible to the 
 Demiurge of the Gnostics. Compare 3, 5 ; 9, 9 ; 11, 10; 7, 3 ; 
 15, 7; 8, 20; 19, 6, 12. The Clementine doctrine of Satan 
 and matter deserves to be compared with that of Bardesanes. 
 Compare Hahn's "Bardesanes Gnosticus, Syrorum primus 
 Hymnologus," 1819, p. 58 ff. The commingling of freedom and 
 necessity in the two also presents many points of similarity. 
 
 Note XXX, page 210. 
 
 Eav ra> wro %eipa>v ©eov KvocpoprjOevri avdpdnrqa to cvyiov 
 Xpicnov prj Bq> Tt? eyeiv -Kvevp-a, 7rw? eriptp nvl eic [ivcrapas 
 aTcvyovo? yeyevvrjfievq) BiBoii'i ej(eiv, ov ra fieyLtrra aaefiei; Ta 
 Be fieytara evaefirj, eav erepto p,ev p,r) Ban] e^ew, eiceivov Be fiovov 
 e%eiv \eyoi, o? air apyffi alcovo<s a/ut rot? ovofiaai piopfyas 
 aXXaaaav tov aioiva rpeyet, fieypts ore IBicav •vpovcuv rvycbv, 
 Bia tov? /capuaTovs ©eov iXeei %picrdel<} ek ael ef et ri)v avdiravaiv 
 k.t.X. Horn. 3, 20. 
 
NOTES 439 
 
 Note YYY, page 212. 
 
 It is to be highly rated, that the Clementines laid such 
 great stress on the idea of justice : they raised opposition to the 
 doctrine of the immediate goodness of God, laid down by those 
 Gnostics who rejected the justice of God. Not till the righteous 
 fire of anger has been brought into activity against the desires, 
 do they recognise the presence of virtue in man (11, 3 ; 3, 31). 
 In the history of the world, we find first goodness, then justice 
 (18, 3). Men did not continue' in possession of the original, 
 direct happiness, which was conferred on them; but begaii 
 to misuse their gifts, to be unthankful and forgetful of God, — 
 supposing, because they 'had not received the good in reward of 
 their previous righteous exertions, that all must necessarily be 
 as it was. Then followed just punishment ; and henceforth it 
 was ordained, that men should earn their blessings by work, 
 instead of receiving them directly. But, although the idea of 
 righteousness is the dawn of the distinction between spirit and 
 nature, the dawn of the ethical, the distinction between the two 
 can only be superficially determined, until love is recognised 
 as the positive element, — love, which effectually dethrones, by 
 making the sensuous its servant, until the distinction is at one 
 and the same time intensified to the utmost, and thus reconciled. 
 Applied to Christology, this signifies, — because Christ was only 
 — that is, regarded as the Righteous One, and not also as the 
 Reconciler — that is, as mediating love, therefore the conception 
 of righteousness itself is an imperfect one. A step was taken 
 towards mediation, and towards conceiving Christ as a mediator ; 
 but it was a fruitless one. However much the Clementines dis- 
 course of righteousness, when they come to the deciding point — ■ 
 when they ought to show how Divine justice and Divine grace 
 are reconciled — they turn round. Instead of a reconciliation, 
 they teach a remission of justice ; they fall back again upon the 
 unethical goodness of God, which, and not the activity of Christ, 
 they are compelled to regard as the cause of the forgiveness of 
 sin : whereas they were already half way towards finding for 
 Ohrist, by means of the idea of the Divine righteousness reveal- 
 ing itself in Him, an essential and independent position a3 
 mediator ; and thus further to substitute a triadic for the diadic 
 process which they had hitherto taught. 
 
440 APPENDIX. 
 
 Note ZZZ, page 212, 
 
 Thus also is excluded the opinion of the Ebionites, that a 
 time of "ignorantia" preceded the baptism of Christ. The 
 opinion of Cerinthus, that the human was completely in bondage, 
 and required therefore to be as it were ravished out of itself into 
 Christ, must also have worn the appearance of ecstasy to our 
 author. Inasmuch as the doctrine is laid down, that the Prophet 
 of truth cannot sin, cannot err, the earlier Ebionitic principle, 
 that it would have been unrighteous to elect Jesus to the office 
 of XpocrToi;, had He not previously merited it by His virtue, is 
 plainly given up. The Clementines, therefore, had no longer 
 any reason for supposing that, prior to being endued with the 
 necessary powers for His work, Christ lived for a time a merely 
 human life, such as is led by ordinary men (i|rtXo?, Xtro?) ; and 
 in point of fact, they ceased to lay any stress whatever on the 
 fact of baptism. But we must go still further. A man found 
 already in existence by the Christos, and who had been living a 
 considerable period apart from the Christos, would not at all 
 fit into the system. For such a man would, at all events, have 
 been exposed to vacillations of his free will ; whereas the Prophet 
 of truth must be exalted above such vacillations. Nay more, 
 according to the general tenor of the system, a man without the 
 Christos might be partially in the truth, and partially in lies. 
 Such a condition of vacillation, or even of former sinfulness, 
 must leave traces of itself even after the human had been united 
 with the Christ. The human would then no longer answer to 
 the predicates of the Prophet of truth ; and only in the way of 
 ecstasy — that is, by its being suddenly suppressed, and the con- 
 tinuity of its consciousness being broken — could such imper- 
 fection be removed. We see, therefore, that the author of the 
 Clementines, so far from having any reason for teaching that 
 the equipment for the office of the Messiah first took place 
 during the course of a human life (of which opinion no trace 
 is discoverable in them) ; such a view must, on the contrary, 
 have occasioned useless and insurmountable difficulties. They 
 probably, therefore, held the man Jesus to have been united with 
 the " Son," or Christos, from the first moment of his existence ; 
 an idea which, of course, presupposes his origin to have been 
 different from that of other men — to have been supernatural. 
 
NOTES. 441 
 
 This, however, does not imply that he was born of a virgin ; 
 nor do the Clementines contain any allusion to such a birth. 
 On the contrary, they appear to deny that Jesus was David's 
 son. In general, they seem not to have regarded David with 
 favour ; because he reminded them of the external theocratic 
 kingdom, which, as a kingdom of this world, the Clementines 
 assigned to Satan. It is possible, indeed, that, according to the 
 Clementine theory, Jesus must have participated in the lie and 
 sin of the " Left," had he been born of Mary. In point of fact, 
 the Clementines by no means felt the need of the deliverer's 
 passing through a true human development ; all that they re- 
 quired, was the outward appearance of a ready-made and fully 
 endowed prophet of truth, who, if he were in possession of his 
 knowledge at one time, must also have been in possession of it 
 at another. But, it may be asked, if they passed by the baptism 
 of Christ and His birth from the Virgin, what was their positive 
 view ? Without doubt, that Christ began at some time or other 
 — they give no precise point — to exist as Jesus, through con- 
 version into a complete man ; but that this conversion affected 
 merely the form, not the essence of the Christ. To the same con- 
 clusion we are also led by the analogy of the angels, one of whom, 
 even though the highest, is really and truly the Christos. The 
 angels have received from God the capability of transforming 
 themselves into bodies, and of living amongst men, exactly like 
 men ; and this same capability was possessed in still higher 
 measure by the Christos, who indeed was already, in Himself, 
 the archetypal man. The archetypal man assumed the form of 
 the individual Jesus, attained in him to an individual appear- 
 ance, which differed from His previous appearances in that it 
 was final and sufficient. Now, if the premundane Christos finds 
 in the form of Jesus that actuality which affords Him rest after 
 His labours, this appearance of His must surely have been re- 
 garded by the Clementines as the most perfect of all, although 
 they do very little to show that such was the case. — When Adam 
 is designated a man Kvofoprjdefc by the hand of God, inasmuch 
 as this hand cannot have been the left, we might understand the 
 reference to be to the crocjiia, which conferred on Christ that per- 
 fect body, by means of which He first became Adam, and in the 
 end, Jesus. And this is of importance; for, had the Christos meta- 
 morphosed Himself into a body taken from the nature which is 
 
442 APPENDIX. 
 
 independent of God, He must have been stained with sin and 
 sensuality, as happened to the angels, who took their bodies from 
 the elements of this world. — The womb which contained the 
 Christos, therefore (this will lie in the tcvo<popr)del<; ev X el p\ etc -> 
 which so often occurs), was not a virgin, not a woman of the 
 earth, nor the kingdom of nature in general, but the immediate 
 hand of God. 
 
 Note AAAA, page 212. 
 
 That his system was not that of the Church, nor authoritative 
 even in a single land, the author knows well enough. Hence 
 the solicitude expressed in the letter of Peter to Clement, the 
 pretence of secrecy, and the appeal to secret doctrines. Com- 
 pare 2, 39 ; 16, 21. But the most striking proof of its sectarian 
 origin is the system itself, the peculiarities of which, — as, for 
 example, its doctrine of the Adam-Christus, of the Spirit of the 
 Earth, of the union of the male and female in God and in the 
 world, — bear in no case the stamp of the Church ; but refer us, 
 if we allow Epiphanius to speak (and even Baur does that), to 
 the districts of Syria and Arabia, which, during the first and 
 even during the second century, swarmed with sects. In those 
 districts, namely, were conjoined higher, also Hellenic, culture ; 
 intercourse with the world (compare Ullmann's " Comment, de 
 Beryll. Bostr.) ; many Hebrew and Jewish Christian elements ; 
 and finally, such a form of Ethnicism as that of which we find 
 rich traces in the Clementines. But, however many sectarian 
 and extravagant elements have found their way into them, — for 
 example, in their doctrine of the Old Testament, of Satan, and 
 of matter, — they are notwithstanding in advance of the earlier 
 Ebionism, in the direction of universalism ; and their author, 
 partly on account of his rigid monotheism, and partly on account 
 of his faithful adherence to James the Just, under whom even 
 Peter appears to be subordinated, must be regarded as a genuine, 
 though a degenerate and isolated, offspring of the dispersed 
 Christians of Jerusalem. The occasion of the work and its 
 fiction, I consider to have been the efforts made to exalt the 
 Romish Episcopacy, during the second half of the second century. 
 In that Episcopacy, the Christianity of the heathen world had 
 then already begun to consolidate itself as in a centre. In support 
 of the opposition raised to this Episcopate, Peter and Paul, who 
 
NOTES. 443 
 
 were already regarded as the two distinguished founders of the 
 Romish Church, are made the subject of manipulation. With 
 this design, Clement of Rome, that disciple of Paul whose his- 
 torical significance relatively to Rome was higher than that of 
 any other, is taken from Paul, and is represented as converted by 
 Peter. Peter is therefore first constituted the heir of all Paul's 
 deeds ; but solely in order to the glorification of the cathedra of 
 James, on whom in the last instance he is dependent. Hence, 
 finally, Paul, having been robbed of his school and of his deeds, 
 is pushed aside. An heretical work or tendency like this, with 
 its entire web of lies, should scarcely be deemed worthy of the 
 honour of having its trembling assertion, that the Church was 
 originally Ebionitical — an assertion plainly advanced with an 
 evil conscience — believed, whilst the non-heretical witnesses to 
 the contrary are partially ignored, partially charged with falsifi- 
 cation, and partially set aside, by means of a critical or her- 
 meneutical procedure, the principal basis of which is the fiction 
 whose cause it is meant to serve. Taking their stand on these 
 homilies, so far as it answers their purpose, the writers referred 
 to have tried to construct the entire history of the Christian 
 Church during the first centuries. We find, however, the law 
 verified, that myths become history to him who treats history 
 as a myth. The merits of Dr Baur relatively to the History of 
 Dogmas, I shall never call in question ; he has the art of making 
 his combinations and hypotheses not merely plausible, even when 
 thoroughly untenable, but also suggestive and fruitful. I will- 
 ingly recognise, further, the high degree of acuteness and art 
 which Dr Baur has displayed, in his endeavours to justify his 
 view of the Ebionitic character of primitive Christianity ; but 
 at the same time, I fear that it is not a very favourable omen, 
 when such an expenditure of effort and such means are requisite 
 in order to give a cause some appearance of truth. 'PdBiov 
 t akr)6e<; ; error looks forced. It is true, the traditional view 
 of primitive Christianity needs rectifying in some points ; but, on 
 the whole, it is the only tenable one. But as little as its age can 
 constitute it true, even so little can the novelty of an hypothesis 
 be a pledge that it will not soon become antiquated. All de- 
 pends therefore on proof. Now, that there is no imaginable a 
 priori necessity for supposing Christianity to have first taken its 
 rise about 150 years after Christ, has been ably shown by 
 
444 APPENDIX. 
 
 Dietlein in his " Das Urchristenthum" (Primitive Christianity), 
 1845 (see the Introduction). And if we look for historical 
 proof, let us for a moment suppose, in order to comprehend the 
 position of the question at a glance, that what is really impos- 
 sible is actually the fact, to wit, that the hypothesis of Baur had 
 been as long and as universally held to be true, as has been the 
 view of the Church. Imagine, then, documents hitherto over- 
 looked or concealed (as in the case of the Clementine Homilies), 
 being suddenly brought to light — such documents, I mean, as 
 the Church writings which we have designated the Witnessing : 
 let me ask, would not the system of Baur or of the Socinians 
 experience a shock of quite a different kind from that which has 
 been experienced by the Church's view, in consequence of the 
 very recent discovery (as it were) of the Pseudo-Clementines ? 
 though, of course, these writings need to have an organic place 
 assigned to them in the history of the Church. In other words, 
 were not one standard employed by the hypothesis in question 
 for the Ebionites, and a different one for the Church, and were 
 but a portion of the skill, acuteness, and critical acumen brought 
 to bear on the claims of the Ebionites that have been brought 
 to bear on the claims of the Church, the Ebionitic myth would 
 not have been accepted as genuine coin and historical truth, nor 
 the, as I regard it, hypercritical procedure against the Church, 
 have ended in an uncritical procedure towards the Ebionites. 
 
 Note BBBB, page 217. 
 
 Written before Origen's day, and after the Homilies, and 
 therefore at the beginning of the third, century. In them the 
 Gnostic and Judaic-monarchian elements above referred to are 
 separated. The former elements are entirely excluded ; the 
 possibility of change in God is denied ; nay, even the self- 
 production or aseity of God (avTcmdTap, avToryevqi) — an idea 
 left half developed by the Clementine Homilies — is rejected, in 
 order that God may be absolutely simple, immoveable, fixed. 
 No process, such as is involved in His being both Father and 
 Son, not even an eternal one, is admitted. The author re- 
 garded it as absurd ; for he said that it would logically end in 
 a Trinity. All we can say of God is, that He is absolutely ; 
 and thus we are landed at the "Ov. The Eecognitions draw a 
 sharp distinction between two things, which the Homilies leave 
 
NOTES. 445 
 
 pretty un distinguished, to wit, between the process in the being 
 of God, through eWrao-ts and crvcrToXrj, and the act of will. 
 By the will of God alone do they conceive the world and the 
 Son of God to have been originated ; not by change, conver- 
 sion, self-division ; not by emanation, nor by extension (which 
 the Homilies leave an open question, notwithstanding the dis- 
 tinctness with which they affirm Christ to have been a creature), 
 Eecogn. 3, 8. Not something like Himself did God produce 
 when He began to be active ; for that would have been a 
 denial of His impassibility, inasmuch as He would have pro- 
 duced an effect in Himself. Then, too, there woiud be a 
 danger of involving Him in the distinction of the sexes (1. c. 9). 
 This view involves an important loss to Ohristology, on the one 
 hand, because the truly divine can no longer be said to be in 
 Christ, but is above Him, and He therefore is not the Mediator : 
 on the other hand, however, it is a gain. The form of the 
 Christos, which in the Gnostic or Sabellian system was left 
 vague and indefinite, now assumes more distinctly the consoli- 
 dated shape of an hypostasis. After saving the monarchy in the 
 above-mentioned way, the Recognitions no longer shrink from 
 giving Christ the highest possible predicates. They are under 
 the influence, not of an Ebionitical fondness for the Old Testa- 
 ment, and of a consequent desire to detract from the merits of 
 Christianity, but of a just concern to preserve the unity of God. 
 For this reason they stand considerably nearer to the Church. 
 The Son, they say, was born in an unutterable manner (1, 69) ; 
 He is designated the Only-born, because He derived His sub- 
 stance from the Unborn One ; and Son, because He was born 
 of the Unbegotten One. The Son, the First-born, who created 
 the world, and is the Father's perfect image, sets forth God's 
 entire power as a Creator (3, 9 ; 10, 20 ; compare 9, 3 ; 8, 62). 
 He is unalterable ; and the Holy Spirit was created by Him as 
 the fullest manifestation of His power (3, 11). He has a kind 
 of omnipresence, as He pleases (2, 22 ; 8, 62) ; He lives 
 through all ages as a true prophet (2,' 22), but not in meta- 
 morphoses (3, 11). He Himself is not, indeed, the Unborn 
 One ; but inasmuch as He is such as He is, and is so great 
 in divinity, He sets forth the entire power of the Unbegotten 
 One. Many, therefore, who are destitute of the fear and 
 knowledge of God regard Him as the Unbegotten One. — "We 
 
446 APPENDIX. 
 
 see that here Ebionism inclines completely towards Arianism, 
 With this is connected also the circumstance, that the Re- 
 cognitions devote little attention to the idea of the incarna- 
 tion. This question Arianism willingly passed over in silence : 
 beyond Docetism it was never able to advance ; for otherwise it 
 would have had to solve the difficult problem of conceiving two 
 finite beings in each other. It is remarkable that the Christology 
 which is set forth by Simon in the Homilies, as a possible one, 
 and which is attributed to a disciple of Peter (Horn. 18, 5, 6), 
 is adopted and carried out in the Recognitions (1, 45 ; 2, 42). 
 As Peter is not represented in the Homilies as absolutely re- 
 jecting it, we may judge that the germs of an ethnicizing 
 Arianism already lay in Ebionism ; and a new proof is given us 
 of the affinity of principle between a Judaism which does not 
 enter thoroughly into Christianity, and heathenism. A fur- 
 ther and quite as significant a characteristic of this entire ten- 
 dency, which was content with the semblance of the divine in 
 Jesus, and regarded the Most High God as exalted above the 
 Son, is, that it as good as left the idea of the atonement out 
 of sight, and never advanced beyond the sphere of law and 
 justice : indeed the Recognitions treat the appearance of Jesus 
 merely as that of the true Prophet, who is now our lawgiver, 
 and will one day be our judge. The rite of baptism, which 
 is supposed, like that of ordination, to exert a magical in- 
 fluence, not merely takes the place of sacrifices in the Recogni- 
 tions ; but the Divine forgiveness of sin, bestowed in connection 
 with it, takes the place of the high-priestly office of Christ. It 
 is further deserving of remark, that whereas the Homilies, in 
 agreement with the universal Ebionitical type (which, as we 
 have shown, the Church had already left behind in its doctrine 
 of the Word of God, and of Wisdom), represent the higher 
 principle in Jesus as Pneuma, although hypostatically (Filius 
 Dei Christus) ; the Recognitions clearly distinguish between 
 the Holy Spirit and the Son, and forbid designating the Spirit, 
 Son of God (3, 11). They rather assign Him a position similar 
 to the one He holds in the " Anabaticon Jesaise" (compare 
 Gieseler's " Anabaticon Jesaise"). In the last heaven, in the 
 highest sphere, is the " Filius dilectus" with the Father (in the 
 ^Ethiopic Recension " Dilectus"). The Holy Spirit is termed 
 "Angelus Spiriti sancti;" but is not of like nature with the 
 
NOTES. 447 
 
 other angels. The beloved Son, Isaiah sees descending at the 
 Father's behest through all the seven heavens. In the last 
 five, in order not to be recognised by the angels (who after the 
 manner of the Demiurge know nothing of higher things), con- 
 stantly changes His figure, and assumes that of the angels of 
 each sphere. Thus Christ assumed humanity also, walked in 
 the flesh, and was unknown by the devil, whom He came to 
 conquer. The devil killed Him, not knowing who He was. But 
 on that account Christ penetrated into the deepest depths of His 
 kingdom, bursting all bars, and triumphing gloriously over him 
 
 Note CCCC, page 220. 
 
 This scarcely needs proof. Markos says, — Eedemption con- 
 sists in reXeia yva>ai,^. This is the second birth of the Gnostics 
 (Epiph. Hser. 34, 19). The highest JEons are almost invariably 
 such as refer to knowledge ; as, for example, "Evvoia, vovs, 
 aKrjOeia, X0709, <f>p6vr)<Ti<;, and the like. The Logos, where 
 mention of Him occurs, is to be taken not as creative power, 
 but either as reason or as thought. So Basilides. Ptolemseus 
 .says (Epiph. Hser. 33, 1), — Thought, reason, is the first in God ; 
 the will is the second (iiriyivofievov). From thought and will, 
 vov<; (monogenes) and aXtfOeta axe then derived. Quite similar 
 are the words of Valentinus and others (Epiph. Hser. 35, 1 ; 
 31, 2). The world-creating or world-forming Wisdom receives, 
 like jdvvafjus, when it is mentioned, a much lower place. All 
 this displays to us the completest antagonism to Hebraism, 
 which held, not thought, but the creative Word and the Spirit 
 of God, to be the fundamental categories, on the basis of which 
 we must ascend to the ideal categories of thought, reason, etc. 
 
 Note DDDD, page 224. 
 
 Dualism first broke ground for the distinction between spirit 
 and nature ; but the freedom which is characteristic of mind 
 could not be rightly apprehended, until nature was recognised 
 as that which is posited by and dependent on mind. On the 
 contrary, however antagonistic the relation of mind to nature, 
 mind necessarily continues to be physically determined by na- 
 ture, and not even free from the natural element which pertains 
 to itself, as long as it is passively related to nature. Accordingly, 
 the dualistic religions have not yet outgrown either natural re- 
 
448 APPENDIX. 
 
 ligion (Naturreligion), or Pantheism, for even the evil principle 
 is represented by them as divine, absolute. On the other hand, 
 all Pantheism leads to Dualism, and contains the seeds of Dual- 
 ism within itself; for example, the Indian religion ended in 
 Parsism. For if the underlying, substantial life alone is divine, 
 all the concrete life of creation must be undivine, mere appear- 
 ance, which is to be practically annulled by ascetical practices, by 
 the burning of the world, etc. ; theoretically, by thought. Hence 
 all Gnostic systems are in one aspect interwoven with Dualism, 
 however unintentionally; for example, the school of Valentinian. 
 The Christian idea alone furnishes at once the reconciliation 
 between God and humanity, and that between spirit and matter. 
 
 Note EEEE, page 225. 
 
 1. Adherents of the Dualism whose character was pre- 
 dominantly physical, were the Ophites, Saturnilus, Secundus, 
 and subsequently the Manichseans : 2. of pantheistic Monism, 
 Valentine and his wide-spread school, especially Heraclion, his 
 contemporary, — Ptolemseus, Markos ; 3. of the Judaizing 
 Monism, Cerinthus, so far as he held Gnostic views, and the 
 Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitions. The connect- 
 ing link between number 2 and 3 is Basilides, in whose system 
 ethnic and Jewish elements hold equal balance. For in many 
 respects he resembles Valentine ; and any other Dualism than 
 that involved in the said resemblance, and in his doctrine of 
 justice and of the e/cXo7^, I am unable to discover in his sys- 
 tem, although several recent writers attribute to him another. 
 Bardesanes, on the contrary, appears to have occupied a middle 
 position between the first and the two others. For his system, 
 besides comprising Ophitic and Valentinian elements, lays 
 great stress also on freedom. 
 
 Note FFFF, page 226. 
 
 If this system, on the one hand, jars with the pure concep- 
 tion of God, in that, through putting the will and the ethical 
 into the background, it is unable to keep cosmogony and theo- 
 gony sufficiently apart, and subjects the divine life, in a mythi- 
 cal manner, to fate, to suffering, and to change ; it makes 
 amends for this, on the other hand, by introducing life and 
 motion into the conception of God, and thus preparing the way 
 
NOTES. 449 
 
 for the Trinitarian self-diremption, in opposition both to a rigid 
 Jewish monotheism, and to the idea of an abstract substance. 
 Ground was broken for the doctrine of the Trinity as far as 
 consciousness was concerned, by the distinction drawn, and re- 
 lation established, between Propator and the vov$, or Monogenes. 
 But whatever advance is made in the knowledge of the Divine 
 self-consciousness, is an advance also towards a right understand- 
 ing of cosmogony. First of all, however, it was necessary that 
 attention should be directed to the neglected ethical aspect of 
 the conception of God ; and this was done even by Gnostics. 
 
 Note GGGG, page 228. 
 
 It is probable that, at all events through Cerdo, his teacher, 
 a connection existed between Marcion and those Syrian Dualists 
 whose system Valentine sought to conciliate, by bringing to light 
 its pantheistic aspects. Valentine, however, in his system, either 
 diluted, or left unheeded, many dualistic elements. Hence 
 we find existing, alongside of Valentine and his school, a dual- 
 istic system which from the very commencement was hostile to 
 the Old Testament, and welcomed in Christianity the overthrow 
 of the God of the Jews. This same Dualism, however, being 
 but superficial, that is, having neither an ethical nor a religious 
 character, is not free from ethnic elements. Now Oerdo, what- 
 ever affinity there may be between him and Saturnilos (compare 
 Epiph. Hser. 23, 2, and 41, 1), did, as it would seem, put into 
 the background the ethnic elements of the earlier Dualism, de- 
 signated the unknown Most High God good, and thus gave 
 Dualism a more ethical character. Marcion, however, was the 
 first to define the character of this goodness as love, and thus to 
 secure for his gnosis a religious point of departure. 
 
 Note HHHH, page 229. 
 
 The exclusiveness chargeable on this form of Dualism, not- 
 withstanding its very high, or even Christian character, was 
 a sufficient justification of the existence and opposition of the 
 two other systems. As opposed to its " diabolization of the 
 world " (Weltverteufelung), the ethnic system of Valentine was 
 in the right ; as opposed to its rejection of the just God, the 
 " Deus ssevus," Judaism and the Judaistic gnosis were in the 
 right. And, in fact, we find that Ptolemseus, for example, in his 
 vol. i. 2 F 
 
4.50 APPENDIX. 
 
 Epistle to Flora, and the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, both main- 
 tain their position in opposition even to Marcion. But Marciou 
 made the deepest impression also on the Church. Even the Cle- 
 mentines were unable quite to withstand the superior force of his 
 principle ; but the result of their contact was, after all, merely a 
 mutual enfeeblement of the ideas of righteousness and love, and 
 the establishment of a kind of alliance between them, which 
 naturally left the supremacy still in the hands of righteousness. 
 
 Note IIII, page 229. 
 
 Compare Irenasus and Tertullian adv. Marc. The latter 
 in particular saw clearly that, in cutting away righteousness, the 
 very groundwork of " love " would be cut away, apart from 
 which it must necessarily relapse into mere unethical, physical 
 goodness ; for righteousness alone ensures the negation of the 
 natural, the spirituality and sanctity of love. In this direction, 
 Tertullian has given utterance to deep, speculative thoughts. 
 But he was less happy in his efforts to solve the other aspect 
 of the problem, that is, in showing how love is the true realiza- 
 tion of righteousness. We see that, at this point, everything 
 depended on the atoning work of Christ ; and this Tertullian 
 felt quite as strongly as Marcion. Marcion desired no unethi- 
 cal goodness, as is evident not only from the stress he laid on 
 the atonement of Christ, but also from the preference he gave, 
 in general, to Judaism over heathenism. One may say, there- 
 fore, that whereas the Valentinian school retained a merely 
 physical reflection of the idea of righteousness, in the Horos, 
 who guards the distinction between the " finite" and the " in- 
 finite ;" Dualism, in distinguishing between spirit and matter, 
 especially where the distinction took an ethical character, endea- 
 voured to assign its just place to " righteousness." Similarly, 
 Marcion also, in his much deeper Dualism, unconsciously tried 
 to find a place for righteousness. For an essential momentum 
 of righteousness is to uphold distinctions. Marcionitism also con- 
 stantly reappeared in the form of Antinomianism, etc., until 
 righteousness had been shown to be involved in love itself — until 
 it had been shown that, in the Divine manifestations of love, right- 
 eousness is not cast aside, without being first perfected and re- 
 alized in and through love : — that is, until righteousness had been 
 recognised as an essential and permanent, momentum of love. 
 
NOTES. 451 
 
 Note JJJJ, page 229. 
 
 The Ophites say a good deal, it is true, of the sufferings of 
 the croejiia in apostasy, and which the JEon Christos was in- 
 tended to obviate ; for which reason it was arranged that the 
 tyrant Jaldabaoth should cause Jesus to be born of a virgin, dis- 
 tinguished above all others for purity, wisdom, righteousness. 
 On him descended Christos, in union with the higher crocpia,, 
 worked miracles, and proclaimed the unknown Father, who is 
 above Jaldabaoth (the Demiurge of the Ophites). For doing 
 this, Jaldabaoth killed him. But these sufferings related solely 
 to Jesus ; the Christos escaped to heaven. Here, therefore, there 
 is no atonement ; the suffering cro<fiia must be classed rather 
 under the category of the suffering gods of heathenism. More- 
 over, the Perfect One is supposed incapable of having anything 
 to do with suffering ; for the true nature of love was not under- 
 stood. On the other hand, by His flight, the perfect Christos 
 confessed His weakness. In this case, further, there is no incar- 
 nation ; for Jesus and Christ are two distinct subjects, the for- 
 mer represented Ebionitically, the latter Docetically ; the union 
 of the two first began with the office they fulfilled, and was dis- 
 soluble in its nature, having for its sole aim the teaching of doc- 
 trine and the working of miracles. Redemption, therefore, is 
 conceived as instruction, and not as atonement — a view which 
 is further carried out in the system of Valentine. A hint of the 
 higher significance of the atoning work of Christ is contained in 
 the notion, that Jaldabaoth having unjustly killed Jesus, Christ, 
 as it were by way of punishment, takes His seat at the right 
 hand of the tyrant, and without his knowledge attracts to Him- 
 self all the germs of light diffused through his kingdom, till he 
 becomes powerless. All this is so completely ethnic, that it is 
 difficult to say whether the Ophites should be called Christian 
 heretics or not ; for their mode of expression leaves it doubtful 
 whether their sytem was a symbolical representation of Christian 
 ideas or not. 
 
 Note KKKK, page 230. 
 
 This hypostatization may indeed be looked upon as mythical ; 
 but to suppose that they intentionally clothed their ideas in the 
 form in which we find them, when they might have adopted 
 
452 APPENDIX. 
 
 another strictly logical form, is completely to misapprehend the 
 nature of Gnosticism. Besides, their terminology relatively to 
 this question is in reality very constant. The passage from Ter- 
 tullian adv. Valent. 4, had otherwise frequently suggested to 
 me the idea, that possibly the early gnosis had had more to do 
 with Divine powers, now inclining towards, and now away from, 
 hypostatization, as in the system of Philo, and that the giving a 
 more fixed hypostatis to these Divine powers was an effect of the 
 doctrine of the pre-existence of Christ. But that there were no 
 hypostases in the system of Valentine, as Tertullian there affirms, 
 seems to me very improbable, in face of the fragments of his 
 works which have been preserved by Clemens Alexand. (see 
 Grabe 2, 50 ff.). On the contrary, later Gnostics like Markos 
 were reproached with denying the Son of God to be an hypo- 
 stasis (Orig. Comm. Joh. T. iv. 22). Herakleon, also, probably 
 inclined thereto (compare the passages culled from the writings 
 of Origen in Grabe's Spicilegium 2, 87-89). It was perhaps 
 also the natural course, that the symbolical garment of the world 
 of JEons should gradually fall away, and that what then re- 
 mained to the Valentinian school, with its pantheistic funda- 
 mental views, were the manifold Divine powers, which were 
 afterwards conceived as the single sounds of the one great Word 
 of the world (Epiph. Ha?r. 34, 8-10 ; Grabe's Spicileg. 2, 89). 
 They then arrived again at the ante-Christian idea, that the world, 
 or man in himself, is the Son of God, — an idea which, logically 
 carried out, left Christ merely an Ebionitic position. What 
 Ebionites may be regarded as the continuation of this form of 
 gnosis, will shortly become clear. — The matter took an entirely 
 different shape with Marcion. He taught that the inmost essence 
 of God, love, appeared in Christ. In such case, Christ could 
 no longer be spoken of as an hypostasis subordinate to the Most 
 High God : those who adopted his view, ought rather to have 
 advanced onwards to Patripassianism, or even to the doctrine of 
 the Church ; which, whilst claiming for Christ true divinity, 
 escapes Patripassianism, by recognising those self-distinctions in 
 God, the way for which had been prepared by Gnosticism. 
 
 Note LLLL, page 235. 
 
 Compare respecting Basilides, Epiph. Hasr. 24, 3, — elvai 
 avTov (jyrjcri, <j>avracriav iv t$ (jxiiveadcu, fir) elvai Be avOpcoirov, 
 
NOTES. 453 
 
 firjSe adpKa el\rj<f>ivai. Baur is, therefore, not quite accurate, 
 when he says that Basilides ought not to be termed a Docetist 
 (Gnosis, p. 225). It would be correct, if Basilides had laid 
 stress on the avregovcnov, that is, on the human aspect ; but 
 such is not the case. On the contrary, as we shall immediately 
 see, he stands in direct antagonism to Cerinthus, however he 
 may at first sight seem to resemble him. Theodoret (Ep. 145 ; 
 compare Hahn 1. c. 65) says, indeed, Valentine, Basilides, Bar- 
 desanes, and Harmonios accept the birth from the Virgin, but 
 merely irdpohov hC avTrjs uairep Bub (raXijvos. 
 
 Note MMMM, page 238. 
 
 Several parties assume also a passing away of the body of 
 Christ, a dissolution of it into its elements. This comes natu- 
 rally to such as do not distinguish a man Jesus from the Christ, 
 but regard it as the design of His appearance to clothe Him- 
 self with a body, such as shall be suited to our planet, and be 
 composed of its elements. To render this process of assimila- 
 tion and decomposition of the body easy and natural to the 
 imagination, they represent Christ as descending through all 
 the heavens, and as assuming to Himself from each, as He 
 passed through it, a bodily integument from its elements, which, 
 the farther He descended, became the more gross, until Christ 
 came down to the most material of all, the earth. In His ascent 
 to heaven, the elements thus previously assumed, are, according 
 to His will, gradually deposited in their respective spheres 
 (comp. Anabaticon Jesaise). The Melchisedechians and Theo- 
 dotians also have something akin to this ; and we must add 
 Apelles, if credit is to be given to the passage, De Prsescript. 
 Ha*. 51. 
 
 Note NNNN, page 241. 
 
 Tertullian 1. c. 2, 27 ; 3, 21 ; " de came Christi," c. 5. But 
 this is especially clear from the long treatise by Epiphanius, on 
 Marcion's Codex, according to which he did not permit himself 
 to alter any passage, merely because it alluded to the death of 
 Christ and His atoning sufferings ; for example, he left the 
 passage, " Christ became a curse for us," standing (Epiph. Hasr. 
 42, 8), and drew from it the conclusion that we had been the 
 property of a stranger, because the creatures of the Demiurge, 
 
454 APPENDIX. 
 
 and that for this reason alone was it necessary to purchase us 
 into His life. Epiphanius remarks, — " He says r/yopcwe, but 
 Paul says egrjyopacre : he represents Christ as a curse (as a sub- 
 stitutionary ransom) in connection with this purchase ; but 
 Christ was no curse, He was the abolition of the curse." As 
 though Marcion would have denied the latter, and not rather 
 have endeavoured to show how the latter was brought about by 
 the former. Compare further, Epiph. ed. Petav. i. 313, no. 16. 
 317 ; no. 73, 76. Luke ix. 22, xxiii. 46 ; Rom. v. 6, so far from 
 appearing objectionable to him, were taken as the basis of ar- 
 guments. Compare in connection herewith, Baur's " Gnosis," 
 p. 242, who has employed the view of the system of Marcion 
 given by the Armenian Esnig in the fifth century (see Neumann 
 in Illgen's " Zeitschrift fiir historische Theologie"), for the pur- 
 pose of supplementing Marcion's doctrine of the atonement ; as 
 Marcion conceived the Demiurge, through whose heaven Christ 
 descended, to have been even then powerless against, although 
 hostile to, Him, as also at His death (compare Neander's Church 
 History i. 531), which he must have regarded as the result of 
 the free love of Christ, and not of the preponderance of the 
 jealous Demiurge. To the death, with which the Demiurge 
 threatened Him, His love surrendered itself, merely because the 
 Demiurge had a certain right to the men whom he had created ; 
 and to whose laws also Marcion concedes a relative truth. For 
 this reason Christ bought us, the property of a stranger, by His 
 death. The teachers of the Church, too, like Irenseus, were not 
 disposed to assert the absolute significance of righteousness in 
 such a manner as to exclude love. As regards Marcion, how- 
 ever, this is a fresh proof that he aimed at vanquishing justice, 
 not by the physical category of power, but by the higher one of 
 love. Compare, for a contrary view of the matter, Niemeyer's 
 " De Docetis," 1823, p. 44 ff. 
 
 Note OOOO, page 245. 
 
 Tertull. de Carne Chr. 6. " Quidam discentes Pontici 
 illius (pupils of Marcion), supra magistrum sapere compulsi, 
 concedunt Christo carnis veritatem, sine prsejudicio tamen re- 
 nuendse nativitatis. Habuerit, inquiunt, carnem dum omnino 
 non nativitatem." How easy it was for the Church to combat 
 heretics, who conceded as much as did Marcion and his school, 
 
NOTES. 455 
 
 from their own premises, is shown by the passage from Ter- 
 tullian's "De Came Christi" 6. In proof that Christ's body- 
 was sidereal, Apelles had appealed to the appearances of angels. 
 Tertullian replied, refuting him by his own doctrine, — " It de- 
 pends on the cause of the appearances ; the cause determines 
 also their nature. Nullus unquam angelus ideo descendit, ut 
 crucifigeretur, ut mortem experiretur, ut a morte suscitaretur. 
 — Non venerant mori, ideo nee nasci. At vero Christus mori 
 missus, nasci quoque necessario habuit, ut mori posset. Non 
 enim mori solet, nisi quod nascitur. Mutuum debitum est inter 
 se nativitati cum mortalitate." He makes the same reply in 
 another form (lb. c. 8), — " If the earthly substance, as such, be 
 peccatrix, so also is thine heavenly substance ; for only if the 
 world, the finite in general, delictum est, can the earthly sub- 
 stance be termed delictum and unworthy of Christ." Now, in 
 order that the v\t] also might be subsumed under the spiritual 
 nature of God, it was necessary, before all things, to abolish the 
 absolute limit between it and spirit, to regard the hylic as an- 
 other (for example) restricted stage of the psychical or pneuma- 
 tical. Efforts were made even by Gnostics to compass this 
 end. In this connection may be mentioned the remarkable view 
 spoken of by Tertullian in his " De Carne Christi," c. 10 ff., 
 which derived the body of Christ, not from sidereal elements 
 consolidated in the region of the earth, but from His own soul. 
 "Without doubt this was a view of the later Valentinians. 
 Christ's soul was conceived by them as a light-substance, which 
 became opaque and solid, either in consequence of its mere 
 passage through the earthly region, or for the sake of its pas- 
 sage through Mary. His body was, therefore, as to its sub- 
 stance, " anima, animalis, tenebras accipiens ;" and so we can 
 say, " His flesh became soulical, or even the soul became flesh, 
 body in Christ ; so that we saw it born, we saw it die, and, what 
 is still more, we saw it rise again." Tertullian, indeed, then 
 remarks, and justly, that such a body is either a mere mask and 
 untruth, — that the soul had therefore merely put on a surface 
 foreign to it, that it was not converted into body, and that, in 
 short, there was no actual body at all ; or, if this conversion 
 really did take place, the soul must have ceased to be soul after 
 the conversion. In the first case, the body of Christ would be 
 an unreality ; in the second case, the work of redemption must 
 
456 APPENDIX. 
 
 have been imperfect, inasmuch as Christ had no soul. And yet 
 this view was on the very verge of breaking through the dis- 
 tinction between the psychical and the hylical ; primarily, it is 
 true, merely as applied to the Person of Christ ; but the Person 
 of Christ had a more general significance. And some actually 
 at once raised the objection, that our nature in its truth, is to be 
 conceived like that of Christ, and that the psychical is the truth 
 and substance of the body. They had thus arrived at a point of 
 view directly opposed to that with which gnosis began ; for at 
 first, though the form of matter was held to be derived from the 
 divine, the substance was regarded as extra-divine, as an eKTpa>/j.a. 
 But Tertullian asks, with justice, how the dark body (tenebrse) 
 can show the light-nature as its truth ? which is but another form 
 of the question asked above, — How can concealment — for they 
 really do represent the psychical and the psychical crap^ as a veil 
 — be again required by them for the revelation of the pneuma- 
 tical aspect of Christ's being ? A contradiction which can only 
 be removed by regarding the external human appearance of 
 Christ, notwithstanding that in one respect it was characterized 
 by transitoriness, and was left behind even by the faith of the 
 Church, as, in another aspect, — to wit, in the very aspect which 
 was most essential, — as a necessary and constituent element of 
 the idea of the Christ : in other words, until it is viewed, not 
 as a veiling self-emptying, but as an utterance, as a revelation 
 in the form of act, as love which has become nature. Literalistic 
 extravagances in the estimate formed of the eternal significance 
 of all the parts of the body of Christ are chargeable also upon 
 the Church, and might, by another path, have led to Docetism. 
 Christian literature, even prior to Origen's time, had exhausted 
 the subject of the bodily life and functions of Christ (Origen. 
 ad Galat. de la Eue's ed. iv. 690 f.) ; — discussions, the details 
 of which, indeed, are of little interest to us, but which show 
 that that period of the Church's history, on which devolved the 
 task of settling the question of the true corporeality of Christ, 
 cannot be reproached with a lack of thoroughness and earnest- 
 ness. Compare the painstaking collection by Niemeyer in his 
 work, "DeDocetis," pp. 2-9, 32 ff. ; and in reference to the 
 combating of the Docetists by the Apostolical Fathers, especially 
 Polycarp (Ep. 7), Ignatius (Ep. ad Smyrn. 2 ; ad Trail. 5, 10), 
 p. 6, in the New Testament writino-s p. 29. What Ignatius 
 
NOTES. 457 
 
 says, — " Those who hold Christ's sufferings for a phantom, are 
 themselves a phantom," — are considered by Neander to belong 
 to the oldest epistle which he counts genuine. 
 
 Note PPPP, page 251. 
 
 Of all the Gnostics, no one was further removed from the 
 above described Pantheism, which leads to Atheism, than 
 Marcion. No one, less than he, treated Christ as though His 
 only office were to lead us to Gnostic self-knowledge, or set 
 forth in Christ that only which our Ego also is, in its essential 
 nature. On the contrary, Marcion was just the man who 
 taught that with Christianity an absolutely new thing had been 
 introduced into the world ; who exaggerated the consciousness of 
 sin and the religious point of view, to such an extent as scarcely 
 to leave even a susceptibility for Christ in the ante-Christian 
 world. It is the more surprising, therefore, that Baur (see his 
 " Gnosis," p. 292 ff.) should have deemed it right, whether to 
 his praise or to his blame, to class him amongst those who re- 
 garded Christ as the mere symbolical expression (reflex) of the 
 idea of God, arising in the subjective consciousness. He did 
 undoubtedly maintain that God as love was something new for 
 the consciousness of man (" agnitione novus," Tertull. adv. 
 Marc. i. 9) ; but cannot the Church also concede that ? Are 
 we therefore to deny that, according to Marcion, the new know- 
 ledge of the, it is true, eternal God of love, was conferred on 
 men by the new work of love, in the appearance and atoning 
 death of Christ ? Nor do I further understand how Baur can 
 hint (p. 294) that there was so great a difference between 
 Marcion's view of the significance of the external revelation of 
 Christ, and that entertained by Praxeas and Noetus. 
 
 Note QQQQ, page 256. 
 
 Many works written about this time have been lost (Euseb. 
 H. E. 4, 7) ; even their very titles are no longer known, although 
 Eusebius was acquainted with most of them (H. E. 4, 21). 
 Several authors are described by him as " orthodox men ;" — so, 
 for example, Philippus in Gortyna, who wrote against Marcion 
 (4, 25) ; Dionysius of Corinth, a man of freer tendencies (4, 23) ; 
 Modestus ; Musanus, the friendly antagonist of the Encratites 
 (4, 21, 28) : further, Agrippa Castor's licavcoTaTos eXeyxps 
 
458 APPENDIX. 
 
 against Basilides, which Eusebius knew (4, 7), — not to mention 
 the opponents of the Montanists, Apollonius (5, 18), CI. Apol- 
 linaris of Hierapolis, Serapion (5, 16 ; 6, 12). Compare also 
 Eusebius 5, 23-25. Of the above-mentioned Apollinaris under 
 Marcus Aurelius, and Melito in Sardes, his contemporary, fur- 
 ther of the author of the " Little Labyrinth," and the unnamed 
 presbyters in Irenaus, valuable Christological fragments of the 
 second century are still extant. Notice is merited by the pas- 
 sage from Eusebius' H. E. 4, 7 : " When the heresies arose, 
 Basilides in particular, and very many churchly men, fought 
 for the truth, and defended the faith of the Apostles and of the 
 Church in a more scientific (XoyiKdrepov) manner : at that time 
 also some provided for those who should come after, prophy- 
 lactic remedies against these heresies ; among these was Agrippa 
 Castor." Eusebius has aptly remarked, that shortly after the 
 rise of gnosis, and at its impulse, the period of the Church's 
 scientific activity commenced, — a tendency which was not 
 merely apologetical, which did not merely preserve, as Eusebius 
 seems to hint, but also developed, the old. In another sense 
 also, as the heading of the present section shows, his remark was 
 appropriate, that from this time onwards the combat was con- 
 ducted Xoyuccorepov. 
 
 Note BKEK, page 264. 
 
 It is true, that even in Philo the Logos has also the significance 
 of Word, and not merely of Reason. And so it might appear as 
 though the Church had now arrived, in the course of its develop- 
 ment, at the very same thing which Philo had taught a hundred 
 years before. But Philo was unable to distinguish between the 
 world in its unity, the idea of the world and the Son or Logos : 
 hence, either the Son had no true hypostasis, or the world had 
 no actual being (see above). On account of his doctrine of the 
 v\r] alone, his highest idea lacked that creative Word, whose full 
 energy was developed in the incarnation. The early Church, 
 however, took a different view of Philo, and imported more 
 Christian elements into his system than it really contained. We 
 have shown above that Philo's teachings cannot be regarded as 
 Christian : it can only be found in him, therefore, because it has 
 been first brought to him. The entire development of the 
 Church prior to Justin can be explained apart from Philo. 
 
NOTES. 459 
 
 Justin may have been acquainted with Philo's system ; but I 
 quite agree with Semisch (" Justin der Martyrer" 2, 297 ff.), 
 when he maintains that the real substance of his idea of the 
 Logos rests on Biblical and Church foundations. The Alexan- 
 drian and the Platonic philosophy may have aided, however, in 
 moulding the scientific form of the doctrine under considera- 
 tion. That the latter had an influence on Justin in this respect, 
 is certain. 
 
 Note SSSS, page -266. 
 
 As Semisch does, ii. 423 f . The passages adduced by Semisch, 
 c. Tryph. 90, 93, 95, 96, 111, do not deny that Christ became 
 a curse for us, — or was not Justin acquainted with the Epistle 
 to the Galatians ? — they rather assert it ; and all that Justin 
 refuses to allow is, that the Jews shall regard the Crucified One 
 as one cursed of God, that is, as a criminal ; or shall say, that 
 He was the enemy of God. The appearance he aims to do away 
 with (Sokovgo, Kardpa) is, that the assumption of the curse, and, 
 in this sense, the being a curse, was incompatible with the appro- 
 bation of the law, with being pleasing to God. It was the will 
 of the Father of all, that Christ should assume the universal 
 curse : hence He cannot be simply and alone described as One 
 who is cursed of God, for He was also the reverse ; had He not 
 been the reverse, He could not have abolished the curse. So 
 also was His assumption of the curse approved, and not con- 
 demned, by the law. " For," says he in c. 96, " that strengthens 
 the hope we have built on the Crucified One, that the law terms 
 Him who hangs on the cross, a Curse." 
 
 Note TTTT, page 272. 
 
 The regular expression is, Svvdfiet, koI fiovkfj. In the latter 
 word, the idea of counsel, of decree, is predominant ; so that it 
 implies will (deK-qcns, c. Tryph. 61) and consciousness (c. Tryph. 
 100). " He is begotten by the power and the counsel of the 
 Father ; not, therefore, as though He had been cut off, or as 
 though the essence of the Father had been divided ; in which 
 case, that which had been cut and divided would not be the same 
 as before." (lb. 128.) Now this expression, that the genera- 
 tion of the Logos also had been the object of a Divine decree 
 and purpose, is the strongest subordinatian expression employed 
 
460 APPENDIX. 
 
 by Justin. For the phrase, Trparrv) 8tW/«? /j,erh rov irarepa 
 (Apol. i. 32, 12), is not necessarily Arian in cast ; inasmuch as, 
 at all events logically, the Father does precede the Son, in the 
 Trinity. Still less should any conclusion be drawn from the 
 Sevrepa %<u/ja of the Son, alongside of the rpiTrj rdl;i$ of the 
 Holy Ghost, in itself (Apol. 1, 13). For he is there speaking 
 of the liturgical succession ; further, too, of Jesus Christ, not 
 of the Logos : so also, 2, 13. As little objection can be based, 
 in itself, on the circumstance, that, even in His earlier appear- 
 ances, the Son was termed Maleach, Angel, Messenger, or Ser- 
 vant (iiinjpeTris, c. Tryph. 93, 57) ; and that, in correspondence 
 thereto, the Father is styled Lord (c. Tryph. 127, 129). For 
 such terms do but give prominence to the fact of His being the 
 organ of the revelation of the Father. Of this same character 
 are the words, inrb tw irarpl Terar/fievo's (see c. Tryph. 56 and 
 126). 
 
 Note UUUU, page 276. 
 
 Semisch asserts, indeed (1. c. 2, 407), that in the view of 
 Justin, the Logos created for Himself His own body in the 
 womb of Mary ; but this idea does not he in the words, " He 
 became St' eavrov o//.ot£wa0^s." Much rather might the idea 
 be deduced from the following words of Clemens Alexandrinus, 
 who in other respects also was not quite free from Docetism : 
 o X070? &rjfiiovpyia<; airtoi eirevra ical eavrbv yevva, orav 6 \6yo<; 
 aap^ <yevr)Tai, Xva icai OeaQfj (Strom. 5, 3, 16). But from Ter- 
 tullian's (Justin's ?) words, by no means. Nor does the expres- 
 sion /wp(f>ova-0cu, to give Himself a form (Apol. 1, 5), prove this. 
 It is scarcely likely that Justin had reflected on the subject. 
 Indeed, we are led to a contrary conclusion by expressions such 
 as, " Jesus was the Son of David, because His mother was the 
 daughter of David" (c. Tryph. 43; compare 23, 100) : — spe- 
 cially, however, compare the passage, Apol. 1, 32, where Christ 
 is designated a blossom of the root of Jesse, immediately after 
 the blood of the grape, in Gen. xlix., had been referred to the 
 blood of Christ, on the ground that even as the former is not 
 made by man, but by God, so the blood of Christ is derived not 
 from human seed, but from God's power (c. Tryph. 54), that is, 
 from the Logos (Apol. 1, 32). The latter expression appears at 
 first sight decidedly favourable to Semisch. But the word al/ia 
 
NOTES. 461 
 
 does not imply that the body of Christ was created by the Logos 
 in Mary, and that she formed merely a point of transition ; it 
 rather denotes the animal life, which Mary undoubtedly could 
 not give, even as man cannot create the organic life in the vine. 
 Hence also the Divine share in the incarnation of Christ, and 
 Mary's, are described by one and the same word (Apol. 1, 32) : 
 oia irapQevov — Sub 8wa/x.ea>? Qeov anveicvrjOrj. He was, there- 
 fore, and had, flesh of her flesh. This follows also from Jus- 
 tin's doctrine of the Eucharist. 
 
 Note WW, page 279. 
 
 Whether in Apol. 1, 66, he conceives Christ to be present 
 in the Eucharist, cannot be a matter of doubt. On the other 
 hand, he makes no allusion to a conversion of the elements. 
 But it still remains to be asked, whether Justin represents the 
 Logos alone, or the Logos in His humanity, as united with the 
 elements. ' As an image of the union itself, he employs the 
 incarnation ; and this might appear favourable to the former 
 supposition : it would then follow, as Semisch supposes (2, 440), 
 that he held the Eucharist to be a constant renewal of the in- 
 carnation, in the more rigid sense. But this is met at the very 
 outset by the difficulty, that Justin does not teach that Christ 
 laid aside His humanity in the state of exaltation, but the con- 
 trary. Besides, the words, "the Tpo<f>r) tov aapicoiTOLTjdevTo^I^ci-ov 
 in the holy Eucharist, is koI crap!; ical alfia," are opposed thereto. 
 Justin conceives the entire Christ in union with the Eucharist. 
 This might also have been his idea in the use of the image of 
 the incarnation, inasmuch as Christ constitutes the elements the 
 visible organ of His activity and self -communication, and thus 
 restores the visibility of which men were deprived by His exal- 
 tation. It is not quite correct to identify his doctrine with that 
 of the Lutheran Church : at the same time, what has been said 
 is enough to show, that the two approximate most closely to each 
 other; Justin's going beyond that of the Lutheran Church, in 
 that he regards the Eucharist, not indeed as a new incarnation, 
 but at all events as a momentum of the one incarnation. 
 
 Note WWWW, page 295. 
 
 That in the writings of his which are yet extant there is no 
 trace of Ebionism, all allow. Photius (Cod. 109, ed. Eoth. 
 
462 APPENDIX. 
 
 1653, p. 286) says, indeed, that in the Hypotyposes (ynoivirm- 
 cevs) he maintained, that not the very Logos, but a power and 
 emanation of the Logos, the r\rrav Xoyoi, became man. Accord- 
 ing to this, he would teach two \oyoi, a great and a less one. 
 Along with this, further, the charge of Docetism relatively to 
 the o-apica)Or)vai — which scarcely accords with the former. Pho- 
 tius himself, however, was not certain whether he ought to 
 regard the errors blamed in the work before him as those of 
 Clemens. — With the detailed description given of the so-called 
 vTroTinrdxreis by Photius, would appear to accord completely 
 the view of the so-called " Excerpta Theod." as a fragment 
 of the " Hypotyposes." These " Excerpta" are in so far carelessly 
 thrown together, as one is frequently unable to say what be- 
 longs to Theodotus and what to the writer who made the ex- 
 tracts. Theodotus held the Ebionitic doctrine of a double Logos 
 (§ 61) : thus alone can we explain how Photius should have come 
 to attribute it to Clemens ; he did so, because he considered it 
 possible that Clemens was the author of the " Excerpta," though 
 he did not venture confidently to affirm it. — Another charge, — 
 to wit, that of teaching a merely apparent incarnation of the 
 Logos, — which Photius brought against the " Hypotyposes," 
 clung longer to Clement. Photius, however, did not find any 
 confirmation of the charge in the works which are still extant. 
 
 Note XXXX, page 305. 
 
 In favour of the signification " Word," if proof be needed, 
 may be adduced the contrast instituted between crvyt) and X0709 
 (2, 15) ; further, in particular, Irenseus' peculiar collocation of 
 Son and Spirit. These " Manus Patris " (5, 1, 5, 6) are also 
 described in such a manner, that to the Son are attributed love 
 and power (3, 40 ; 4, 37), — to wit, that creative love which has 
 no need of ought; and to the Spirit, wisdom, so far as it 
 informs itself into the world. " Verbum et Sapientia, Filius et 
 Spiritus," says he repeatedly, have created the world (4, 17, 37; 
 compare 4, 50). It is scarcely allowable 1 here to suppose that 
 the translator has rendered Logos incorrectly. Seeing that he 
 elsewhere views the Logos also as reason, and does not identify 
 the Spirit and the Logos, this designation of the Spirit must 
 occasion surprise, unless we remember that the Old Testament 
 theologumenon of Wisdom, after having aided in the formation 
 
NOTES. 463 
 
 of the doctrine of the Logos, now began to be pressed into the 
 service of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, — He being always set 
 forth as the Principle of Unity (compare ed. Grab. 331, 4, 37) 
 — as the inward bond of connection between God and the 
 world. The further course run by this doctrine is similar to 
 that run by the doctrine of the Logos. At first it was inter 
 woven with the conception of the world, and stood especially 
 for the immanence of God in the world. In this stadium many 
 things otherwise apportioned to the Logos were apportioned to 
 the Spirit. But gradually, as the idea of the Logos in His 
 distinction both from the Father and the world acquired a 
 more determinate and settled form, it became both possible and 
 necessary to distinguish the principle of unity — which was at 
 first the representative of wise order in the world, and was the 
 ground of its susceptibility to God (5, 2, 3, 6)— more clearly 
 from the world. Irenseus already directed attention to this 
 point in 4, 37 ; especially p. 331a. 
 
 Note YYYY, page 314. 
 
 The passage is misunderstood by Baur, in his "Versohn- 
 ungslehre" (see page 31). He refers "suadela," "suadentem," 
 to the devil : it was well that the devil should be convinced of 
 the justice of the method adopted by God. On this is based 
 the hypothesis, that the antagonist of Gnosticism himself here 
 reasoned according to Gnostic principles. I should be quite 
 unable to grant this, even if Baur's translation were correct ; 
 and it scarcely can be correct. " Suadere, suadela," signifies 
 "persuade," not "convince" (" persuadere ") ; and so indeed 
 Baur himself translates it elsewhere (p. 30). In other places 
 Irenseus treats men as the object of this "suadere" (see 5, 21, 
 passim). There must be a resemblance between the way in 
 which men fell and the way in which they are redeemed. They 
 fell, not by compulsion, but by seduction, persuasion, suadendo ; 
 accordingly, redemption must strike into the same path; although 
 the adoption of such a circuitous route was an advantage to the 
 devil, in so far as God, by giving up His right to the employ- 
 ment of force against him, His creature (5, 18, 21, 22), made 
 it possible for man, by virtue of his freedom, to continue in the 
 power of the devil. "We see that, because this circuitous path 
 left still a prospect open for the devil, he might be figuratively 
 
464 APPENDIX. 
 
 represented as demanding its adoption as a matter of right. 
 And we actually find later writers patting the thing in this way. 
 But Irenseus set the devil too far below God to be able to use 
 such language, even figuratively. The righteousness which 
 called for the adoption of such an indirect method, Irenseus 
 attributed, on the contrary, to God : it is, in his view, the prin- 
 ciple which guards the distinction between the physical and the 
 spiritual, if the latter is to retain its dignity and its rights, it 
 must determine to operate not in a physical manner. To the 
 devil, in himself, Irenseus concedes no right against God, not even 
 in the strict sense a right through God, his own damnation ex- 
 cepted. The devil seduced men solely through lies, consequently 
 unrighteously (5, 22) ; and he employs force against them as 
 though they were his property, although he really has no pro- 
 perty in them, and rules them contrary to their nature (5, 1, 
 sec. 1). The only thing in his favour, and which might strictly 
 be termed a right given to him by God over men, was, that 
 God, as love, desired free beings, and therefore could not 
 render a fall physically impossible; and, further, that it was 
 agreeable to the punitive justice of God, that those who had 
 voluntarily given themselves into the hands of the devil, and 
 who refused to lay hold on salvation, should be left in his power, 
 there to learn his lies and to reap death, instead of the promised 
 equality to God. With equal justice, or rather injustice, the 
 passage, Ep. ad Diogn. 7, from which Irenseus probably bor- 
 rowed the antithesis between /Sta and ireideiv, might also be 
 referred to the devil. 
 
 Note ZZZZ, page 315. 
 
 Experience (experimentum) gives us to know evil in its 
 consequences; whereas we know prior to all experience that 
 something is good or evil, and can consequently choose between 
 opposites. When, therefore, Irenseus taught that experience 
 first brings fixity, security, he had no intention of denying to 
 man, at the commencement of his development, freedom of 
 choice. His idea had an eschatological character ; it presented 
 to his view the triumph of the good. The superiority of the 
 good is seen in the fact that evil, though freely originated, and 
 permitted to work, is compelled to serve the good, — that the 
 passage through evil finally establishes man in good. To the 
 
NOTES. 465 
 
 adoption of this theory he was the more easily led, as he already 
 (not, as is usually supposed, for the first time Tertullian) had 
 taught the existence of an evil inherited from Adam. Relatively 
 to the latter point, compare Duncker 1. c. 140 ff. Strictly 
 speaking, Adam's sin alone was completely free ; for, with all 
 his weakness (resulting from the imperfect state in which 
 creation still remained), he might have obeyed the command. 
 His not having done so, and the consequent extension of the 
 power of evil over all men, is an apparent triumph for evil. 
 Irenseus, however, had an answer thereto, in the above-men- 
 tioned thought, which at the end reveals, on the one hand, the 
 powerlessness, and, on the other, the serviceableness, of evil. 
 
 Note AAAAA, page 318. 
 
 The word " recapitulare," so frequently used by IrenEeus, 
 signifies in general, " to return with anything to the beginning;" 
 that is, — (I.) "to repeat" (for example, 5, 33, p. 455a; 5, 12, 
 p. 417a; 5, 21, p. 432). From the meaning " to repeat," is 
 then derived the signification, "to sum up." To sum up, 
 namely, is a repetition in the form of a collection of the 
 momenta previously distributed. In this last sense the word is 
 very often employed by Irenseus. So, for example, 5, 25, p. 
 437, — the thought, " Antichristus omnem suscipiens diaboli 
 virtutem," is soon afterwards expressed in the words, " diaboli- 
 cam apostasiam in se recapitulans." Similarly also 4395, and 
 5, 28. 29; 3, 11, p. 223J, "in bestia veniente recapitulatio 
 fit universse iniquitatis et omnis doli;" p. 446a, " recapitulans in 
 se omnem, quae fuit ante diluvium malitise commixtionem." 
 Thus also of Christ. He comprised humanity with all its guilt 
 in Himself (3, 20, p. 245, 248&, 5, 21). But because such a 
 summing up in one, more fully exhibits a sphere, than would 
 the exhibition of its scattered momenta, such a collection is 
 more than a mere repetition, it is also a consummation of all 
 that had gone before (5, 14, p. 420Z>, 421a, 5, 21, p. 452a). It 
 is a return to the idea of the thing ; it is a fuller, a complete 
 representation of it. "With this is further connected a second 
 main signification . " Eecapitulare " denotes (II.) " to lead back 
 to the beginning, that is, to the original idea;" that is, (1) "to 
 complete," "to fulfil," "to bring into accordance with the 
 
 VOL.1. 2G 
 
466 APPENDIX. 
 
 idea." So 5, 23, p. 435, of the fulfilment of a type : 3, 30. 31 ; 
 1, 2, p. 45. Christ came in order to bring everything to its 
 source (caput), to its commencement (God), who is also its 
 goal. (2) Then very derivatively, " recapitulare " denotes, when 
 after a normal commencement an abnormal state has been in 
 troduced, " to restore," — that is, not to bring back to the former 
 condition, but to set aside that which contradicts the idea ; — 
 a work which Christ could not accomplish unless He recapitu- 
 lated humanity in Himself in another sense also. For Irenseus' 
 course of thought is, that Christ not merely summed up in 
 Himself the "longa hominum expositio" laden with sin, but 
 also completed and set forth humanity in its purity. " Omnia 
 recapitulans (Christus) recapitulatus est;" summing up all 
 in Himself, Christ is set forth as the summed up unity (com- 
 pare 5, 21 ; init. 5, 28, 4446). (III.) The passage 1, 2, p. 45, 
 ell. 3, 18, p. 2416, probably denotes, humanity is brought to 
 Christ as its icefaXr] ; which, however, is but a more concrete 
 expression of its idea, and therefore a realization of its ideal 
 commencement (compare also 5, 20, p. 4316). 
 
 Note BBBBB, page 326. 
 
 After what Irenseus says regarding the Holy Ghost, it is in- 
 accurate in Semisch (see Hahn's " Theol. Annalen," 1842, pp. 
 319-345) to maintain, that during the first three centuries the 
 doctrine of the Holy Ghost was too undeveloped for us to be 
 able to suppose that Irenseus conceived Him to be the mediating 
 principle between the outward elements in the Lord's Supper, 
 and Christ. A glance at Clemens Alexandrinus (see above) 
 shows the incorrectness of this view. 
 
 I must especially object to his declaring the second of the 
 fragments of Pf aff to be spurious, because it contains this doc- 
 trine. 3, 19, p. 244a ; 4, 37, 74, prove that Irenseus had this 
 idea. — Equally deserving of condemnation is it, when he repre- 
 sents Irenseus as saying that the Logos was in the Eucharist 
 without His humanity, and that merely the external elements 
 became the body and blood of the Lord. Where does Irenseus 
 say this ? Is it because he speaks of the Logos in the Eucharist, 
 and does not term Him Christ ? But it needs only a limited 
 acquaintance with Irenseus to know that when he speaks of the 
 Logos, he by no means refers merely to the a<rapico<i Xoyo?, but 
 
NOTES. 467 
 
 often refers to Christ (for example, 3, 21) ; and so, vice versa, 
 he calls the Logos Jesus (3, 10). In what passage, then, does 
 Irenseus allude to the Logos without His humanity, after the 
 ascension, in the place of Jesus, as though He had laid aside 
 His humanity I That would contradict his fundamental idea 
 of the necessity of the incarnation. And why does Semisch 
 supply &eov to eKKkr)<ria and not Xpiarov, who a-hp^ iyivero ? 
 If, as he allows, the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation is 
 excluded by the words of Irenseus, and no less also the Keformed 
 doctrine ; it does not therefore follow that they teach the 
 Lutheran doctrine, although it cannot be denied that the two 
 approximate. The mode in which Irenasus establishes a con- 
 nection between the Holy Spirit and the Eucharist, side by side 
 with the Logos, who, though He became, and will ever continue, 
 man, returned to His former invisibility, accords completely 
 with the fundamental type of the incarnation. It is as follows : 
 — the outward elements, neither converted into, nor merely de- 
 noting, the body and blood of Christ, nor again merely the 
 vehicle of the incarnate Logos, are rather, through the action 
 of the Holy Spirit, on the one hand, and of Christ, who assumes 
 them, on the other hand, raised to the position of momenta of 
 His humanity. They thus, therefore, in virtue of the sacramental 
 Unio, form part of the body and blood of Christ, who in them, 
 or through sacramental union with them, restores again and 
 again that objective actuality, that presence and visibility, which 
 He had, as it were, laid aside till He should come again to judg- 
 ment : — restored, it is true, merely for the eye of faith ; for not 
 only the word of God, but even Christ Himself, in His external, 
 historical manifestation, cannot be recognised as that which He 
 really is, save by faith. Compare the remarks made above on 
 Ignatius and Justin Martyr. 
 
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