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1915

By IQirsopp Lake

The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of
Jesus Christ
The Stewardship of Faith

THE STEWARDSHIP
OF FAITH
OUR HERITAGE FROM EARLY
CHRISTIANITY

BY

KIRSOPP LAKE...
PROFESSOR OF EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE IN
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

LOWELL LECTURES IN 1913-14

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
dbe "ffcnicfcerbocher press
1915

Copyright, ioiS
BY
EIRSOPP LAKE

MecLI

Ube Kmfcfeerbocficr frees, flew Jgotft

PREFACE
THE following pages are based on a series of
lectures given at the Lowell Institute and
in the King's Chapel in Boston in 1913.
They have been rewritten and somewhat enlarged,
but not seriously altered.
The title, The Stewardship of Faith, has been
given because I feel that the most important fact
which emerges from the study of Early Christianity
as I have tried to present it, is that the Church
owes its position to the endeavour of past genera
tions to hold up to mankind a standard of life in
religion, morality, and politics higher than that
reached by the world in general. Christians were'
men who had seen a vision. Faith was their
trust in the Guide who offered to lead them to
wards it, and of that Faith they were the Stewards.
It was expressed in many different ways: in a
series of theological and metaphysical propositions;
in the splendour and pomp of sacramental liturgy;
in the imposing structure of Christian ethics.
But all these things were the expression, not the

iv Preface
essence, of the Faith which overcame the world;
and the churches will fail in their stewardship if
they confuse the expression with the reality, and
forget that it is their office to protest against the
world as it is, in the interests of the world as it
might be.
The responsibility of those who teach Chris
tianity at present is twofold. First, never to lose
sight of the vision of a better world, and to teach
their pupils to join with them in seeing visions and
dreaming dreams; secondly, by the study of the
past, and by keeping keen the edge of the intellect
of themselves and of others, never yielding to the
temptation to obscure the difficulties of fact by
taking refuge in the ambiguities of language, to
further the exact knowledge of the world as it is,
in order that those who have the vision may also
have the practical ability to use it in the service of
progress. I have tried to show the way in which the first
Christians did this work, by translating their
message from the terms of Jewish thought to those
of the Greco-Roman world, and adding to it
considerably in the process. And I have also
tried to suggest that the churches of to-day ought
to consider seriously the necessity for moving on
in the same direction and giving to the world a

Preface v
theology which will comply with the reasonable
claims of the intelligence, an organization which
will be capable of serving adequately the spiritual
requirements of human souls, and an ethic which
will satisfy both the individual and social needs of
a New Age. For a New Age is coming speedily
upon us, and whether it is to come in light or in
darkness depends on the clearness of vision and
singleness of purpose of the Stewards of Faith.
Kirsopp Lake.
Cambridge, Mass., October, 1914.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. — Apocalyptic Judaism . . . i
II. — The Teaching of Jesus and the
Background of Apocalyptic
Judaism  22
III. — The Spread of the Church to the
Roman Empire .... 58
IV. — The Antiochene Mission and Early
Gentile Christianity . . 91
V. — The Church and Heathenism . .123
VI. — The Church and Gnosticism . . 145
VII. — The Church and Uninstructed
Christianity . . . .168
VIII. — Conclusion  189
Appendix. ..... 213
Index ...... 231

The Stewardship of Faith

CHAPTER I
APOCALYPTIC JUDAISM
Introduction — Nationalism — Babylon — Rome — The Jews — The
Catastrophic View of History — Apocalyptic Literature —
Enoch — Its Intellectual Justification — Importance as a
Spiritual Factor — Baruch — Jewish Hopes for Hastening
the Coming of the Kingdom.
OF recent years we have been repeatedly
warned that Christianity is at the cross
roads. If closely analyzed, however, this
warning does not throw doubt on the value of
religion, or on the great part played by the Chris
tian Church in the history of Western civilization;
but it is a serious indictment of the Christianity
of our own time as a satisfactory expression of
religious life.
For Christianity is, and has long been, in some
sense more than religion. It is religion, for it
represents the feeling of intercourse between man

2 The Stewardship of Faith
and some higher power, and also the struggle on
the part of man to develop that side of his nature
which, although his own, yet seems so strangely to
be different from the rest of his consciousness, and
to be a link between him and some world of higher
realities. But it is also the attempt to express
these two factors — always central in religion as
such — in intellectual language, and so to give us
not merely religion but also theology; for the
ology is the expression of religion in the language
of the intellect. Moreover, not only is Chris
tianity theology as well as religion, it is also the
expression of religion in action, and has become a
code of ethics — of conduct. It has gone even
further, and has striven to give institutional
expression to rehgion, theology, and ethics as
mutually dependent on one another, in a series
of communities which represent the coming to
gether of those who feel that somewhere at the
centre of their Hves there is common experience
expressed in more or less common intellectual
phraseology, and manifesting itself in more or less
common codes of conduct.
Thus Christianity is not only rehgion, it is also
theological, ethical, and institutional life. The
suggestion that Christianity is at the cross roads
implies the indictment that there is a danger that

Apocalyptic Judaism 3
its theology is not taking sufficient note ofthe
growth of knowledge and the changing attitude
of thinking men to the problems of thought, so
that it is becoming the repetition of shibboleths
rather than the expression of experience. It
implies that the moral code which is traditionally
Christian needs expansion and revision because
it has not taken sufficient note of the change of
requirement due to the passing of the storm-centre
of the modern world from individual to social
problems. Finally it implies that there is a danger
lest, partly from timidity, partly from the more
honourable motives of reverence for the customs
of our forefathers, we should sacrifice the cause
for which the Christian Church was founded in
order to perpetuate the accidents of its con
stitution. With this indictment I do not propose to deal
directly — in the main it seems to me to be true;
but I desire to make the only contribution possible
from a student of history to the attempt so to
influence the minds of the Christians of to-day
that they may choose the right road and enable our
children to plead not guilty to an accusation which
we ourselves are obhged to admit. I wish to go
back to that distant period when the Church was
young, in order that we may realize that then also

4 The Stewardship of Faith
there was a time when Christianity was at the
cross roads, and may see the way in which our
spiritual forefathers passed successfully through
the period of rapid change which took them out
of the comparatively simple life of Judaism into
the much more complex one of the Roman Empire.
I wish to emphasize how in that generation the way
of life was the constant sacrifice of identity of
expression, in order to preserve the unity of
experience under changed surroundings. The
Church did not triumph because it preserved its
theology, its ethics, or its institutions unchanged,
but because it changed them all, and changed
them rapidly, in order that they might express
more adequately and more fully the spiritual life
which remained the same, though the forms with
which it was clothed were altering with extraordin
ary rapidity.
First of all, then, I propose to consider the
nature of that aspect of Judaism which is the
immediate background against which we have to
place the figure of the historic Jesus. I shall then
go on to set against that background the teaching
of Jesus himself, as it seems to be revealed by the
historical criticism of the gospels. After that it
will be necessary to consider the characteristics of
the world of the Roman Empire into which Chris-

Apocalyptic Judaism 5
tianity passed and to notice the changes in
Christianity brought about by the different sur
roundings into which it then travelled. Thus
I hope to sketch the way in which this process of
readjustment produced the Cathohc Church, and
throughout to consider the legacy which has come
down to us from Christianity as it passed through
this period of rapid change, and the responsibility
which is put upon us of so treating our inheritance
that we may really develop it, not contenting
ourselves with the fatal policy of burying our
"talent" in the ground in order to avoid the risks
of the market-place, and of the changes which
seem so dangerous and are yet the necessary and
sole conditions upon which continued life is granted
to men or to man's institutions.
It does not, I hope, require any lengthy argu*
ment to justify the method of treatment thus
adopted. It is obviously impossible to treat of a
period in which events followed one another with
such rapidity and of which the records are rela
tively so imperfect without the omission of many
details of considerable though secondary impor
tance. In order to be clear, it is necessary some
times to be summary in the treatment of problems ;
but I have not been writing so much for special
students of early Christianity as for that wider

6 The Stewardship of Faith
public which studies the past primarily as a mirror
in which it may see the future approaching, and is
more interested in the development and result of
streams of tendency than in the exact cataloguing
of successive incidents.
What was the dominating feature of the life of
the Jews which it is necessary to comprehend for
the proper appreciation of the impression which
Jesus made upon his hearers? It can best be
understood if we realize that one of the most
important sides of the story of the Jews is a chapter
in the history of nationahsm. That is to say, it
was a phase of the struggle which has gone on
throughout the course of civilization between the
great empires and the small nations. The Jew
naturally looked at this struggle from the point of
view of a small nation, but we can probably grasp
it best if we first consider it from the point of view
of the great empires.
If we go back some centuries before Christ, we
find the Babylonian Empire as the centre of
civilization. If we could have asked an ancient
Babylonian how the empire was progressing
(though he would of course have expressed it in
quite a different manner from the modern phrase
ology here attributed to him) he would, I take it,

Apocalyptic Judaism 7
have said something hke this: "Yes, the empire
is flourishing. We have succeeded in extending our
boundaries; we have succeeded in civilizing a
large number of wild and savage tribes; we have
brought them into the empire ; we have made them
useful members of civilization. "
If we had then gone one step further, and asked
him to tell us what was the pohcy of his empire,
he would have said: "Well, whenever we find a
small nation which is hindering our progress, we
transplant it. We break it up and move it, a
Httle here and a little there. We transplant it so
that it is able more readily to assimilate itself to
our civilization. The process is not always appre
ciated by the small nation at the time, but it
makes for the good of the world in general."
That was the policy of Babylonia, and if we look
at history we cannot but recognize that if a Baby
lonian statesman had spoken in this way he would
have been justified. His empire was doing the
work of the world. It was bringing about a certain
progress of civilization, just as the great nations of
the world are doing to-day; though we can also
understand that the Jews, and other small nations
which were transplanted, looked on the process
as mere catastrophe, and as the tyranny of enemies
whom God would ultimately destroy. It seems

8 The Stewardship of Faith
to me that it is particularly interesting to realize
that, with one important difference, the United
States come nearer to being the inheritor of the
Babylonian method than any other nation in the
world. They are carrying on what may be caUed
the Babylonian experiment, with the exception
that the transplantation is not being effected
against the wiUs of the smaU nations, but at their
own desire, and it is that which, if we look at the
United States from the point of view of the world
outside, constitutes the greatness of their work in
the world — that they help to educate and to civiHze
the failures, or some of the failures, of the old world
by forming them into a new and great empire.
But, nevertheless, it is weU to remember that by
adopting the methods of Babylonia they become
also the heirs of the difficulties which Babylonia
had to face, and must beware of the dangers which
led to the ultimate failure of that experiment in
Babylonia, because it overtaxed its powers, and
absorbed more foreign elements than it was able
properly to assimilate.
If we now go on one step further in the history of
the Jews, again from the point of view of the great
nations, passing over the Greek period, we come to
the Roman Empire. If we could have asked the
Roman official in those days how the empire was

Apocalyptic Judaism 9
progressing, he — Hke the Babylonian — would have
claimed success for his government. But if we had
asked him what was the method of deahng with
foreign nationahties adopted in the empire he
would have said that the Romans did not feel able
to carry out, and did not wish to carry out, the
Babylonian experiment; that they were trying
something else, and were proposing to preserve
the nations as they were, but to weld them into a
higher unity by putting before their eyes the higher
concept of Empire as opposed to Nationahty,
making them look up to Rome not so much as one
of the nations, but as the "common superior of
nations." Once more, if we ask ourselves whether the
Roman was right, we are bound to say that he was.
He was really carrying on the work of civihzation. '
His claims were just; and, although his experiment
failed in the end, it is surely interesting to remem
ber that, just as the United States represent the
Babylonian experiment, so the British Empire is
the natural inheritor of the Roman experiment,
because it is trying to do what the Roman did —
to develop an organization in which it is possible
1 It was noted by Roman historians that those who fought
hardest against Rome were the fathers of the men who were
most pleased to call themselves Romans.

io The Stewardship of Faith
for various nations to preserve their identity, and
yet to feel that there is a higher unity of Empire
above them.
Such was the attitude of the great nations which
once dominated the world. Now let us turn
round, and do a much more difficult thing, — con
sider the facts from the point of view of the small
nation of the Jews. Instead of looking at history
as the triumphal procession of civihzation, they
necessarily regarded it much more as the warding
off — and the not always complete warding off —
of a series of catastrophes. Everything seemed to
be constantly going wrong. Actual disaster might
be averted, but by no possible means could they
regard the existing state of things as satisfactory.
They had thought they were the chosen people;
they had expected that dominion and power should
be given to them; and they were, at the best,
merely fighting for a precarious existence, con
stantly threatened with extinction by the struggles
of great nations.
Under the pressure of that constant adversity, a
very pecuhar type of thought was developed, and it
is this which is especially important as being the
ultimate background of the thought of the first
generation of Christians. It was intensely mono
theistic; it believed in the existence of the one

Apocalyptic Judaism n
God of the Jews, and of him alone. It was intensely
moral; it had a high — an extraordinarily high —
code of ethics. And the Jews used both their
monotheistic creed and their high ethical standards
as a fence to protect themselves against the ag
gression of foreign nations. Finally they devel
oped, within the circle of monotheistic ethics, a
special catastrophic view of the universe. That is
to say, under the influence of their national dis
asters, they came to regard the whole course of
history as a succession of great dramatic catas
trophes, and looked forward with hope to the
coming of one great, final cataclysm, after which
the tyranny of the great nations would be trodden
underfoot, and the children of Israel would take
their place as the chosen people of God, under his
direct governance, with his anointed king as his
representative on earth.
That catastrophic view of the universe (which
the theologian has learned to call eschatological,
because it deals with the IoxaTa> or "tne las't
things ") was the source of a whole Hterature, which
was produced more or less after the close of the
canon of the Old Testament, and before, or at the
same time as, the rise of Christianity. It is a
literature which even among theologians is not
yet sufficiently weU known, though the amount

12 The Stewardship of Faith
which we know now is enormous as compared with
what was known even fifty years ago, thanks to
the discoveries of documents in Egypt and other
places, and to the more scientific editions of pre
viously known sources.
In this Hterature there was a constant attempt to
explain history by starting from the beginning of
creation and stating it, not in the terms of actual
events, but in the terms of the supposed inter
ventions of various supernatural beings, some of
which were derived from Babylonian mythology,
so that we can trace under the guise of the narra
tive of these supernatural interventions a series of
aUusions to the great events in the history of Israel.
At the end, however, there is usuaUy given an
imaginative sketch of one more great intervention,
this time entirely in favour of Israel, which is to
close the history of the world as it is now, and
inaugurate a new age and a new society, in which
there is to be neither enemy of Israel, nor wicked
men, nor sorrow, nor any that oppresses, nor any
that suffers wrong. That is the picture of the
future which they painted. An example may be
taken from the book of Enoch, z in which the writer
describes how he saw a vision of the great day
which was to inaugurate this last intervention :
1 Enoch xlviii., I.

Apocalyptic Judaism 13
And in that place I saw the fountain of righteous
ness, which was inexhaustible, and around it were
many fountains of wisdom, and all the thirsty drank
of them and were filled with wisdom, and their dwell
ings were with the righteous and holy and elect. And
at that time the Son of Man was named in the pres
ence of the Lord of Spirits, and his name before
the Head of Days. . . . He shall be a staff to
the righteous whereon to stay themselves and
not fall, and he shall be the light of the Gentiles
and the hope of those who are troubled at heart.
. . . And in those days shah the countenance
of the kings of the earth be downcast and the strong
who possess the land, because of the works of
their hands. For in the day of their anguish and
affliction they shall not be able to save themselves,
and I will give them over into the hands of mine
elect. As straw in the fire shall they burn before
the face of the holy; as lead in the water shall
they sink before the face of the righteous, and no
trace of them shall any more be found. . . .
In those days a change shall take place for the
holy and the elect, and the light of days shall abide
with them, and in those days shall the earth also
give back that which was entrusted to it, and shall
also give back that which it has received, and Hell
shall give back that which it owes. In those days
the Elect One shall arise, and he shall choose the
righteous and holy from among them; and he shall
sit on my throne, and his mouth shall pour forth all the
secrets of wisdom and counsel, for the Lord of Spirits
hath given them to him, and hath glorified him, and
the earth shall rejoice and the righteous shall dwell
upon it, and the elect shall walk thereon.

14 The Stewardship of Faith
We recognize at once that this is the story of the
hope of the coming of the kingdom of heaven upon
earth, and of the coming of the Anointed One, the
Messiah, to be the king of the elect in that kingdom.
And it is of primary importance that when we talk
about the kingdom of God in early Christianity
and the idea of the Messiah — which translated into
Greek is "the Christ" or into Enghsh is "the
Anointed One" — we should set them against the
background of this contemporary eschatological
thought which was the direct outcome of the strug
gle of Israel against the great nations of the
world, if we wish to know what they meant to the
men of that generation.
It is very easy for us to be scornful about this
view of the universe, and the eschatological ex
pectation of the Jew. It is obvious that it was ex
clusive, that it was frequently narrow, and, above
all, that it was in the end an illusion, because it has
not come true. That is very easy to see. What is
less easy, but what is much more important, is to
appreciate the great spiritual and even inteUectual
value which it possessed.
If you look at it first from the intellectual point
of view, of course it is true that the eschatological
hope was an illusion; it was not going to happen.
But can we be quite sure that illusions are not very

Apocalyptic Judaism 15
often the source of progress? Let me take an
example. What was the intention of Columbus
when he discovered America? It was to find a
way to India,1 and if he had not been under a
complete illusion as to the geography of the world
he would not have troubled to find what was then
a wild and savage country.
Similarly throughout history the great men who
have done great things have, as a rule, been in
fluenced by illusion. That is to say, when they
have tried to foresee the future, they have foreseen
it wrong. Probably no one does anything else if
he tries to foresee the future on any large scale.
But the man who helps the world is not he who
is content to say: "I cannot foresee the future;
therefore I. will keep my eyes fixed rigidly upon the
present," but he who allows himself to dream
dreams and to see visions, although he knows that
they are, from the necessity of the case, of the
nature of illusions, because his intuition gives him
the higher wisdom which teaches that it is just
that sort of iUusion, that sort of vision, which has
always been the driving power in the history of
civilization. Men find out quickly enough that
1 Not only was this his intention, but he seems to have died in
the belief that he really had done so. Columbus never knew what
he gave to the world.

16 The Stewardship of Faith
the dream is but a dream, and that the vision is an
iUusion; they soon go back to things as they are.
But they remember the vision which they have
seen, and it becomes the incentive which helps
them to make the world approach, if it be but by a
Httle, somewhat more closely to the vision of that
better world which they have seen.
For this reason then it was a good thing for the
world as a whole that there should be a Httle nation
which was under an illusion as to the course of
history, but which was, nevertheless, able to be
queath to succeeding generations a vision of life
as it never has been and never wiU be on this earth,
in order that that vision should become the ideal
which has animated, stimulated, and guided cen
turies of Christian endeavour.
Or again, stiU remaining at the inteUectual point
of view, of course the eschatological expectation
is wrong, as a prognostication of the future; it
supphes, however, the antidote to some of the
things which we exaggerate in our generation. We
are constantly told that history is the history of
human progress, and in the end that is no doubt
true, but nevertheless I venture to beheve that
many of us carry that sort of thing to quite a
ridiculous point, always picturing history as a
steady process, and forgetting that, if we look at

Apocalyptic Judaism 17
history from a national point of view, the Jew
was perfectly right when he said it was a catas
trophic process, even though he was wrong in the
way in which he pictured the supernatural man
ipulation of these catastrophes. Our generation
would do well to remember that the lesson of
history is not that nations constantly go on in a
steady line of progress; it is rather that there are
sudden periods of florescence, when enormous pro
gress is very rapidly made; and then a period in
which life stays on a level. Then, again, when
men become greedy and lazy, there comes a sudden
fall — a catastrophe — when the rubbish and rank
luxuriance of civilization is torn up and destroyed,
in order to leave the ground clear for a new harvest.
That was a truth that the Jew knew perfectly well,
and I am not sure that we always do. *
But it is not only on the intellectual side that
this catastrophic view of history, the eschatological
expectation, was justified, not by its accuracy,
but by its influence on the minds of those who held
it. If we turn to the side of spiritual life we find
that this, expectation of catastrophe was one of the
things which so often took the Jew out of the
Httlenesses of life, and made him feel that, after
1 This was written in 1913. Few of us thought then how near
the catastrophe might be.

18 The Stewardship of Faith
all, the important things in the world are not
merely those of relation, but that there are certain
absolute values which we have with us now, and
shaU take with us, even if we go hence — so long as
we are "we" at aU.
It was in that way that the Jews became the
greatest contributors in history to the feeling that,
besides the duty which a man has to the society to
which he belongs, there is also a duty which he
owes, as it were, to his own soul, calling on him so
to Hve that he is not entirely dependent at the
last upon his relationship to any particular group
of men, or to any special institution; so that his
soul has a real life of its own, apart from its
relationship. This is illustrated again and again in the apoca
lyptic Hterature of the Jews, often coming as a
refreshing subject, when we are beginning to get
tired of the constant cycle of supernatural mytho
logical imagery. Baruch, for instance, warns his
hearers of the necessities laid upon them by this
view of life * :
Before therefore judgment exact its own,
And truth demand that which is due,
1 2 Baruch lxxxv. (I have slightly altered the wording of the
last paragraph, so as to avoid a certain roughness of expression,
but the meaning has not been changed.)

Apocalyptic Judaism 19
Let us prepare our soul,
That we may have hope, and be not put to shame,
That we may rest with our Fathers, and be not
punished with our foes.
For the youth of the world is past, and the strength
of creation is exhausted,
And the coming of the time is at hand,
And the ship is nigh unto the harbour, and the pilgrim
reaches the city,
And life is close unto its end.
So then prepare your souls, that,
When you rise up, and leave the ship of your pilgrim
age,
You may rest, and pass not into condemnation.
Is the feehng not justifiable that the view of Hfe
which could make a man write this is not a thing
which we can throw on one side and say that it is
merely apocalyptic illusion? As an expectation
of the future it was mistaken, but as an insight
into the reahty of life it was true.
Let me now pass on to one more important detail
in the Jewish thought, connected with their eschato
logical hope. Supposing we believed, as the Jews
did in those days, that the last great supernatural
intervention was at hand, that the kingdom of
God was coming, what question should we ask?
Probably we should say: "What can we do to
hasten the coming of that kingdom?" That is
exactly what the Jews in their generation did ask.

20 The Stewardship of Faith
They considered again and again what was the
right pohcy for them to adopt in order to bring
about this last intervention which they so much
desired. The first, perhaps the most influential and
important, answer was that of the Scribes, the
students of the law. They said : " Keep the law.
Observe it down to the last letter. Live with
meticulous accuracy according to its every pre
cept. If ever the day come when the whole of
the law is observed, then the kingdom will come.
It is the sins of Israel — its transgressions of the
law — which are delaying the coming of the king
dom. Therefore, keep the law. That is what is
necessary!" But there was another party among the Jews
who said: "Not so. We know that before the
kingdom can come there will be a great war; there
will be rebellions; there will be disasters. The
horrors of that last time will eclipse everything
which we have yet suffered. We have it in our own
hands. If we provoke war, and all its horrors, by
action, or rebeUion against the enemies of Israel,
then we shall bring about the condition of things
which wiU mark the last days, and as a reward for
our faith, God will intervene at the last moment,
when all seems lost, and will miraculously destroy

Apocalyptic Judaism 21
our enemies. Therefore fight against the evil
ones; resist the enemy; rebel; destroy."
That was the pohcy of the party called the
Zealots.1 You will understand that they were
looked upon with especial disfavour by the Roman
authorities. But for us their significance is that
they are a very important part of the background
against which we have to set the teaching of the
gospels, and that they are often overlooked.
Pharisees we know, and Sadducees we know — or
think we do — but Zealots we neglect, because they
are not often mentioned by name in the gospels.
Yet that is not really strange when we realize that
from their attitude to the Romans they necessarily
could play no part in the final tragedy in Jerusalem.
Nevertheless they were certainly a power in Juda
ism, and in the next chapter the suggestion will be
made that there is not a Httle anti-Zealotic polemic
in the gospels.
1 An especially interesting account is given by H. Windisch in
Der messianische Krieg.

CHAPTER II
THE TEACHING OF JESUS AND THE BACKGROUND OF
APOCALYPTIC JUDAISM
The Sources — The Fourth Gospel — The Synoptic Question — The
Gospel of the Kingdom — Repentance — Scribes, Publicans,
and Sinners — The Sabbath — Zealots — World-renunciation —
Hostility of the Priests — Jesus' Expectation of Death —
Jesus' own View of Himself — "Messias Geheimniss" — The
Son of Man — Criticism and Faith.
IN the last chapter an attempt was made to
describe the most important features of the
background of Jewish thought, against which
the figure of the historic Jesus must be placed.
It is, however, first of aU necessary to ask what
are the sources from which this figure can be recon
structed, because it is here that the real difference
can be found between the standpoint of the present
time and of fifty years ago.
If any one had been trying in those days to study
the choice of sources to be consulted for the recon
struction of the Hfe of Jesus, he would have cer
tainly taken the four gospels, and have treated
them as a more or less co-ordinated whole. That
22

The Teaching of Jesus 23
is to say, he would have assumed aU four of them
to have the same, or almost the same, value as
historic evidence; and would have placed them in
his mind, as it were, side by side.
Since then we have passed through a double re
volution of thought, generally known by the title —
I was almost; going to say by the opprobrious title
— of higher Criticism.
It is called "higher criticism," not from any at
tempt to claim for it any superior rank or value,
but simply in allusion to a metaphor which com
pared this sort of criticism to the attempt of the
explorer who is working his way up some great
river, and is trying to go higher up towards the
sources. This is all that the word means: but it
has suffered from the insinuations of obscurantists
who have found the apphcation of adjectives an
easier form of controversy than the refutation of
arguments. The result of this kind of study has been that in
the first place, students of early Christianity have
seen for some time that they cannot place the four
gospels side by side in the old manner. There has
been a long critical argument, resulting in the
recognition that the fourth gospel, the gospel of
St. John, clearly belongs to a later period, and
that the writer does not give the facts as they

24 The Stewardship of Faith
happened, but reinterpreted, rewritten, and recon
sidered in the Hght of one or two generations of
thought and experience, so that it is for the his
torian of less value than the first three gospels.1
The discovery of this was the first revolution.
The second came, almost within my own memory,
at aU events in England, when students began to
realize that we could not even put the first three
gospels side by side; to see that even here we
have not the ultimate sources from which we
can reconstruct the Hfe of Jesus, and that it
is possible to go behind the text, and reconstruct
some at least of the traditions upon which it is
based. To come to the result without giving the very
long history of the investigation, the end was that
critics in almost every country came to two con
clusions: (i) Behind the first three gospels is a docu
ment which is almost, if not entirely, identical
with our gospel of Mark, so that in the passages
in which we have the same story in Matthew,
Mark, and Luke, Mark must in the main be taken
• That is to say, for the historian of the life of Jesus. But for
the history of Christianity the situation is reversed. The
Catholic Church is not merely founded on the facts as they hap
pened, but even more on the interpretation of the facts — in other
words, on the gospel of St. John, rather than on the synoptics.

The Teaching of Jesus 25
as the original, and the other two gospels as the
earhest commentaries on Mark.
(2) Behind Matthew and Luke, in passages
where they do not cover the same ground as
Mark, there is also a common source which is
very early.
This source is generally known as Q, because the
German scholars who first drew attention to it
called it Q(ueHe = source), in order not to beg the
question by giving it some more definite name. *
No serious critics suggest that Q and Mark repre
sent the whole truth, but they do say very em
phatically that the historian must begin with these
two documents, Mark and Q, and treat them as
the earhest and best authorities for any attempt
to reconstruct the life of Jesus.
According then to these narratives we find that
Jesus is represented first of all as having been
1 It should however be noted that there is often a tendency to
treat Q as if we knew all about it. As a matter of fact we only
know that certain sections of Matthew and Luke are mutually
dependent on a common original: it is convenient to call this Q,
but we do not know whether this Q is always the same document,
or whether many or few sections in Matthew or Luke, with no
parallels, do not come really from Q. Moreover the recon
structions of Q are — except in a few points where editorial touches
are obvious — either works of the imagination or, still worse, un
intelligent compilations which try to conceal their mechanical
nature by a claim to being objective.

26 The Stewardship of Faith
baptized by John the Baptist. At that moment
he experienced the vision of the heavens being
opened, and heard a voice from heaven saying
that God recognized him as his son. Then, after
a period in the wilderness, he began preaching in
the synagogues in Gahlee, and here we come to
the first serious question: What did he preach?
We may be quite sure that any writer will put
into the foreground the message which he regards
as central, and it is therefore very important to
notice that at the very beginning Mark tells us
that the message was: "The kingdom of heaven
is at hand; repent!"
If we remember the background of Judaism,
that can only have meant to his audience that the
last great catastrophe was at hand, when the
Messiah would come and intervene on behalf of
the Elect — therefore, repent ! It imphes the same
background of thought as Enoch, and the same
message as Baruch's: "Therefore, prepare your
souls!" Continuing the narrative we find that, shortly
after this, there was a quarrel between Jesus and
the rulers of the synagogue, and he went out to
preach on the hiUside by the shore of the sea.
From that moment Jesus was outside the syna
gogue. He was now beginning his own organiza-

The Teaching of Jesus 27
tion, and we may reaHy say that this is the moment
when the Church began to exist.1
We then find a long period — at least long if we
reckon by months, — the period of preaching in
Gahlee, and the growing conviction that, though
the kingdom is at hand, more and more stress must
be put upon the old belief that the last days before
the coming of the kingdom wiU be terrible, and
full of suffering. Finally there is a visit to Jeru
salem, with the same message iUustrated, according
to Mark, by a long discourse emphasizing the hor
rors which are to come at the last day, and then the
betrayal and crucifixion. There we reach the end
of the ministry of the historic Jesus of Nazareth
on earth. With the story of the resurrection
which follows there comes a new chapter, a chapter
which deals with the history of the community
which remained.
It has been possible to pass very quickly over
this account of the Hfe of Jesus, because its details
are so generally familiar. But it is very desirable
to reiterate how much there is in the oldest strata
of the gospel which really bears out the contention
that the preaching of Jesus at this period, with
regard to the coming of the kingdom, was homo
geneous with the type of Jewish teaching in the
1 Cf. F. C. Burkitt, Transmission of the Gospel Narrative.

28 The Stewardship of Faith
last chapter. We are too apt to explain things
away. We do not give their fuU significance to
passages such as that in which Jesus says: "There
are those who stand here who shaU not taste of
death until they see the kingdom of God come
in power." Or again: "This generation shaU
not pass away until all these things are fulfilled."
The world of ideas to which these passages belong
is the same as that of Enoch. Or again, emphasiz
ing that, although this was true, yet no man knew
the exact moment of the coming, "concerning that
day or hour knoweth no man save the Father;
watch, for ye know not when the time is." We
are reminded at once of Baruch's: "Prepare ye
your souls ! The time is at hand. " It is the same
spirit, and without realizing that this sort of
teaching was not something new, but brought with
it a whole series of associated ideas weU known to
the Jews, it is impossible to understand what sort
of impression the preaching of Jesus must have
made upon his contemporaries.
The condition which Jesus laid down for en
trance into the kingdom was in principle not
unacceptable to the Scribes. He demanded repent
ance, and to a Jew this could only mean one thing:
"Turn round and change your mode of Hfe; alter
your evil ways; walk in the path of righteousness;

The Teaching of Jesus 29
lest when the day comes, and the kingdom is here,
you may be left outside."
That is teaching which any Scribe would in
principle have accepted : but its development made
manifest certain important differences. The caU to
repentance is expanded in various places in Mark
and, at much greater length, in the document
which we caU Q, especiaUy in the Sermon on the
Mount. If we try to place the general result of
these expansions against the background of
contemporary thought, we find that it partially
accepted a great part of the teaching of the Scribes,
who took the view that if men observed the law
they would be able to enter the kingdom, but it
went beyond it. It said: "Observe the law"—'-
as the Scribes did — but it added to the law by
making it something which dealt not merely with
the code of outward conduct, but also with the
intention of the heart; supplementing, rather
than rejecting, the teaching of the Scribes it said :
"Except your righteousness exceed that of the
Scribes and Pharisees ye shaU not enter into the
kingdom of heaven. "
The ftdl message of Jesus is given in epitome in
the primitive account in Mark: "The kingdom of
heaven is at hand; repent, and beheve the good
news." Its centre, so far as controversy was

30 The Stewardship of Faith
concerned, was "repent," but, by a curious mis
understanding, Christians have often read into
"beheve the good news" all the implications of the
later Pauline or even Lutheran theology, and by
translating the Greek by "gospel" instead of by
"good news" have entirely changed its meaning.
The original signification of "good news" here
was the announcement which had just been made
— the coming of the kingdom. The "faith " which
Jesus asked for was faith in the truth of his mes
sage. It is not faith in him as Messiah which is
required; that was the "good news" which the
Christian missionaries preached, and therefore
faith to them often came to be almost, if not quite,
identical with beheving the proposition that the
Christ is Jesus, and, as the Jewish connotation of
this phrase was lost sight of, this developed into
the equivalent of a judgment made on past events.
But that is not the meaning of faith in the synoptic
narrative1: it is always an attitude of expectancy
as to the future, not of credence in a certain view
of the past. It sometimes refers to the heahng of
a sick person, 2 sometimes to the forgiveness of sins,
1 It has however changed its meaning in the fourth gospel, in
which it certainly means a definite opinion as to Jesus. Here
again the fourth gospel is valuable for the history of Christian
thought rather than for the faith and the life of Jesus.
1 Psychologically this is important. Faith healing depends on

The Teaching of Jesus 31
but here, at the beginning of the gospel, it has its
normal meaning — the behef in the truth of the
announcement that in the immediate future the
kingdom of God would come.
The announcement that the kingdom was at
hand, and the appeal for belief in its truth, was thus
a message which was unlikely to provoke active
opposition. It was, indeed, to every Jew "good
news" and even though many might be sceptical,
none would be necessarily hostile to an assurance
that an event was approaching for which the
prayers of the pious were daily offered.
The hostihty recorded in the gospels arose in
connexion with the class of persons to whom Jesus
made the offer of entry into the kingdom, and the
practical interpretation which he gave to repent
ance as the necessary condition for this entry. On
these points the teaching of Jesus differed sharply
from that of the Scribes and the Zealots, and in the
oldest strata of the gospels we can clearly trace the
existence of controversy with both.
So far as the Scribes were concerned the teaching
the firm conviction on the part of the patient that he is going to
be cured : any other belief is only valuable so far as it produces this
result. It may be reasonable or it may be ridiculous, but, how
ever ridiculous, it is nevertheless valuable if it helps to bring a
conviction of convalescence — that is, of future health — to the
sick person.

32 The Stewardship of Faith
of Jesus as to the class of persons who could be
admitted to the kingdom was wholly unacceptable.
In their eyes this was the especial privilege of the
righteous and pious in Israel; but Jesus announced
that he had come to call sinners. In the later
forms of the text this is softened by changing the
phrase to "caU sinners to repentance." In one
sense, no doubt, this change is justified : Jesus did
not teU sinners to continue sinning, and neverthe
less offer them entry into the kingdom. But it ob
scures the fuU importance of the message. The
Scribes did not seriously consider the possibihty
that a "Pubhcan"1 or a "Sinner" — that is to say,
any one who did not observe all the obHgations of
the Scribes' interpretation of the Law — would be
admitted to the kingdom, nor did they take any
special pains to convert these despised elements
among the people. Jesus, on the other hand,
regarded himself as having a special mission to
these classes, and offered to those who would

1 It is scarcely necessary to say that the publicans were tax-
collectors, or perhaps more exactly custom-house officers; but I
prefer to keep the old translation, because the whole point is that
the "publicans" of the Roman administration were a hated and
despised class; this connotation, which is essential, is not pre
served by the translation "tax-collector, " because, however much
taxes or customs may be disliked, no one — except momentarily —
passes his dislike of them on to the tax-collector, or custom-house
officer.

The Teaching of Jesus 33
foUow him in his mission of preaching and pre
paration the certainty of entry into the kingdom.
It should be noted that this fact is sometimes
exaggerated: Jesus did not say that only those
who foUowed him would be admitted, and he did
not deny the existence of "righteous" in Israel, to
whom he was not sent, who needed no physician.1
The claim to have the exclusive right of entry to
the kingdom of heaven — the essence of ecclesiasti-
cism in the bad sense of the word — was perhaps
made by the Scribes, or at least by some of them,
but not by Jesus, though Christians have in this
respect not always followed his example.
On the one hand, then, the teaching of Jesus
was in agreement with, and even went beyond,
that of the Scribes. Therefore just as later on in
the Rabbinical writings many passages were an
imated by what we have come — not quite fairly —
to regard2 as a specifically Christian spirit, there
were, in the time of Jesus, undoubtedly many among
1 1 cannot see that we have the least reason to suppose that
Jesus was ironical when he spoke in this way.
' It is not necessary to be a great Talmudist to realize that
Christian theologians have for centuries been unfair to Rabbinical
Judaism. I may perhaps be allowed to commend to the serious
attention of those who desire to hear the Jewish side stated with
fairness and learning, and by no means unsympathetically to
Christianity, Mr. C. Montefiore's Judaism and St. Paid, and his
The Synoptic Gospels.
3

34 The Stewardship of Faith
the Jews who heard him gladly and accepted his
teaching. But, on the other hand, this agreement
was echpsed by the fact that his teaching was
obnoxious and roused hostihty because it opened
the door of hope to a despised and hated class.
Moreover, serious friction arose, because whereas
the teaching of Jesus went beyond that of the
Pharisees in the intensive value attached to the
law, as claiming the obedience of desires and wishes
as well as of actions, he refused to go as far in the
extent of the control which it demanded over con
duct. Jesus put on one side the Sabbath law and
the ceremonial law. He regarded with abhorrence
the meticulous care which the Scribes devoted to
indifferent actions. It was on this point that
collisions most often arose, and heated controversy
ensued. The synoptic narratives are fuU of this
controversy, largely because it was continued in
a modified form by the apostles, and therefore
appealed to the present as well as to the historic
interest of the writers of the gospels.1
1 It is again worth noting how far the writer of the fourth gospel
departs from the facts, and rewrites them in the light of the
controversy of his own time. The discussion with the Jews re
mains; but it is scarcely at all concerned with the observance of
the law. The question discussed is the nature and functions of
Jesus, which had, of course, become the burning point of dispute
between Christians and Jews a generation after his death, but was
scarcely discussed at all during his life. In this instance, too, the

The Teaching of Jesus 35
The polemic against the Pharisees and Scribes
in the gospels has always been recognized: but
that against the Zealots is quite as important, and
has unfortunately been often overlooked. * Much of
the teaching of Jesus becomes intelligible only when
we place it in contrast to that of the Zealots. He
demanded that men should beheve that. the king
dom would come, not because of their fighting,
but because of their suffering. "In your suffering
— your patient endurance — shall you win your
Hves " ; "he that suffers to the end shaU be saved " ;
"resist not evil" and similar passages seem to
be clearly directed against the exactly opposite
Zealot teaching.
The positive side of this teaching is carried still
further. It calls upon men to give up all their
possessions, to abandon their wealth, to cut them
selves loose from the ties of family ; it excludes the
rich from the kingdom — at least, that seems to be
the plain meaning — and it cans on men to foUow
one who has not where to lay his head. It is the
synoptic narrative justifies its historical nature. Second-century
Christianity would never have invented a story concerned only
with a controversy which, even if it still existed, was no longer the
main issue.
'Honourable exception must be made of H. Windisch: Der
messiamsche Krieg und das Urchristenlum, and K. F. Proost:
De Bergrede, hare herkomst en strekking (The Sermon on the
Mount, its Origin and Tendencies).

36 The Stewardship of Faith
extremest negation of all possible kinds of what
we call social values. It is a caU to men to set
themselves free of everything that ties them down
and binds them to society as it is. I submit that
it is only inteUigible if you understand that it
comes from a circle which beheved that society in
its existing form was doomed, and that those
would have the best chance — the only chance,
indeed — of entering into the coming age, the new
society, the kingdom of God, who were not tied
down and smothered by that which was so soon
to perish.
After all, if we were quite certain that this world
was going to cease to exist in a few months, we
should not take any interest in social conditions or
pohtics, or even in the smaller problems of private
Hfe ; nor would it be rational for us to do so. The
reason why it is rational for us to do these things,
and is wrong for us not to take a Hvely interest in
them, is because we are as firmly assured that
society is going to continue as the disciples of
Jesus were convinced that it was coming to an end.
But if this view of the gospels be correct do we
not reduce the whole teaching of Jesus to some
thing which is negligible, because it was based on
a complete misconception of what was going to
happen? On the contrary, for that very reason

The Teaching of Jesus 37
it was able to put certain values of the greatest
possible importance into clear Hght, and it could
have done so in no other way. It cut out the
social values. That is true, but an iUustration
wiU serve to show the gain of this omission. Those
who have ever studied photography know that
usually they are deahng with plates which are too
sensitive to blue and insufficiently sensitive to
yellow Hght, so that difficulties arise if they want
to photograph something which contains a great
deal of yeUow. They therefore use a screen of
yellow glass, which cuts out the other rays of hght,
so that they obtain artificiaUy a world in which
there is Httle except yellow Hght, and thus overcome
the Hmitations of their plates. From the point of
view of this illustration our minds are photographic
plates Which are too sensitive to certain social
values, and not sensitive enough to certain spiritual
values; and I beheve that the eschatological point
of view of the Jews and of Jesus has served as the
yellow screen which has enabled us to overcome
this lack of proportion.
Broadly speaking, it may be said that there are
two aspects of ethical teaching. The first is that
with which in modern times we are so familiar, the
teaching which says that the first thing a man has
to do is to be a good citizen. This is the world-

38 The Stewardship of Faith
affirming ethic which says that this world as we
have it is God's world. That is a perfectly true
statement: We are put here to work, and if we
scorn society, and do not do our fair share, we are
shirking the responsibihty which has been put
upon our shoulders. Therefore it is our duty to
take part in aU such things as social, pohtical, and
national duties (which may not appeal to us very
much in themselves), because they are the things
which we are put here to do.
But there is also another kind of ethical teach
ing — the teaching which denies the world; which
says that these social and national claims are
doubtless vahd, but there is something beyond
them aU, and a man is more than a good citizen.
There are times when he has the right and the duty
not to be hurrying about, and busily doing some
thing, but rather to go aside and think about the
meaning of Hfe. There come times when he will
not even be able to do his work in the world prop
erly, if he do not throw aside the world alto
gether for a moment, and stand apart from the
hurry and toil of life as it is now, to ask himself
what he wiU do in the end thereof. This is the
world-renouncing1 ethic which says that, although
1 It is not quite clear to me whether "world-renouncing" is really
the best possible expression for what is intended. In some ways

The Teaching of Jesus 39
many possessions and wide interests enable a man
not only to enjoy Hfe, but also to do much good to
other people, if he be not able at times to throw
off all their claims he becomes the slave of his own
surroundings. Stated in terms of modern Hfe, it reminds us
that although it be true that society, so far as we
can see, is permanent, and that the world is not
speedily coming to an end by means of some dra
matic cataclysm, it is nevertheless true that we
personaUy are coming to an end, so far as the
world or society is concerned, within a period
which, after all, cannot be so very long. And,
stated in the terms of ancient Jewish life, it is this
ethic which is presented most vividly and most
strongly in just those parts of the New Testa
ment which represent the teaching of Jesus when
he and his hearers were looking at Hfe under the
influence of the eschatological expectation.
The effect of that expectation was to hide almost
entirely the more obvious duties of a "world-
"self-renouncing" would be better; but this also is not wholly
satisfactory, and therefore, though with some hesitation, I have
conformed to the usual phraseology. What however is important
is to distinguish clearly between the world-renunciation or self-
renunciation of Jesus, which does not imply any dualistic theory
that the "world" or the "self" is inherently evil, and the Gnostic
doctrine which demanded world-renunciation because it con
demned the world as incurably evil.

40 The Stewardship of Faith
affirming ethic" in daily Hfe, but in the darkness
thus induced some of the eternal hghts shone out,
as the stars during an echpse. It is the fashion
to call an ethic conditioned by the eschatological
expectation an "interim ethic," but though there
is of course a sense in which the phrase is correct,
it is weU to remember that the "interim" element
is not inherent in the ethic, but rather in the cir
cumstances to which it is apphed. In a very real
sense no ethic is so truly "interim" as that which
affirms a world to which our relationship is but
the transitory and fleeting measure of earthly
existence; and none deserves the name so Httle
as that which emphasizes man's ephemeral nature,
even though it form an inaccurate image of the
method of his passing away.
Of course there are other views as to the inter
pretation of the gospels. For instance there are
critics who maintain that aU the eschatological
teaching is a later addition to the gospel. They
cut it out by the somewhat free use of the critical
knife. But I do not think that they are successful
in explaining its origin. If it be not genuine, who
invented it? Can they seriously ascribe it to a
later generation, Hving when the expectation of
the coming of the kingdom had been shown by

The Teaching of Jesus 41
the event to be illusory? Moreover they nearly
always explain away the world-renouncing
teaching. But by this sort of interpretation they are
surely not giving us what the historic Jesus really
said in aU its strength and vividness. They are
giving us a mixture of what he said toned down
by what they feel to be the claims of the world-
accepting ethics which are necessary for modern
society. And the tragedy, to my mind, is that
they give us something which is neither very good
world-accepting ethic nor very good world-renounc
ing ethic. They bring it all down to a common
place level, and, by cutting out the eschatological
element from the gospels, they not only make
Jesus into some one who does not really belong
to the first century, but also, to my mind, does
not, with their reconstruction, really belong quite
adequately to any century. Their Jesus is not
historical, and the just nemesis is that they do
not seem able to give an adequate answer to the
rising school of students of Hterature in Germany
which has more or less taken their reconstruction
of the historic Jesus, and has said that it is not an
historic figure at aU, but a production of second-
century Christianity. But this reconstruction of
the historic Jesus which they attack is really the

42 The Stewardship of Faith
product not of second-century Christianity but
of nineteenth-century Liberahsm.
There arises here, however, another difficulty.
If the teaching of Jesus was the suggested com
bination of a Jewish eschatological expectation
of the coming of the kingdom with a world-re
nouncing ethic, why was he crucified by the
Romans at the instigation of the high priests?
One answer which is sometimes given is that the
Messianic claim was deeply resented as blasphe
mous. This was no doubt used as an excuse to
secure a condemnation, but it does not appear
that Jesus ever openly claimed to be the Messiah :
that was in any case a secret revealed only to a
very small circle of disciples who were forbidden
to make it pubhc. It is even possible that this
secret was what Judas betrayed,1 but it is in any

1 The betrayal is a difficulty which is not at first felt, and is
often overlooked. Usually it is supposed that Judas betrayed
some secret hiding-place; but there is nothing in the narrative to
justify this. What the priests wanted was evidence to justify a
condemnation, not information to lead to an arrest. It is also
probable that the publication of the Messianic secret (perhaps
perverted, see p. 45) was the reason why the crowd in Jerusalem so
suddenly changed from cries of "Hosanna" to shouts of "Crucify
him." They gladly welcomed the announcement of the coming
of the kingdom, but the claim to be Messiah, when the kingdom
was obviously not yet come, was regarded as a blasphemous
absurdity. Possibly, too, the choice of Barabbas by the crowd

The Teaching of Jesus 43
case clear that the official hostility is inadequately
explained by a secret which had played no part
in the pubhc teaching of Jesus. We are thus
driven to look in a different direction to find the
reason for the hostility of the priests, and especiaUy
for its suddenness.
So far as we can see, there is no serious contro
versy between Jesus and the priests, often iden
tified with the Sadducees,1 until the last week
in Jerusalem. This is natural: the priests were
certainly as much opposed to the Zealots as was
Jesus, and they do not appear to have accepted
the Scribes' teaching as to the law. They were
probably rich and somewhat pohticaUy minded
ecclesiastics ; to have doubted that the kingdom of

was a movement towards Zealotism in preference to Quietism;
but the problem of Barabbas is very difficult.
1 The view which is generally accepted is that the Sadducees
were a political party rather than a sect, and that the priests
mostly belonged to it. This fact would be connected with the
meaning of Sadducee, which is probably merely "Zadokite,"
from Zadok, David's high priest. It is unnecessary to discuss the
question here, but I would wish to protest that the whole question
of the real nature of Pharisees and Sadducees is not yet settled.
The evidence of Josephus is usually less widely studied than that
of Schurer, whose deservedly famous work has in some circles been
treated with more respect than the documents on which it is based.
There are instructive articles by B. D. Eerdmans and H. Oort in
the Theol. Tijdschrift, January and May, 1914, on the question
of the Pharisees, and my friend, Prof. Wensink, has drawn my
attention to Leszynski, Die Sadducaer.

44 The Stewardship of Faith
God was coming — ultimately — would have seemed
to them a dangerously sceptical opinion, but the
interim ethic which appealed to them was the
adequate support of institutions rather than
the promulgation of new ideas. That a GaHlean
fanatic was convinced that the kingdom of God
was coming immediately might be disturbing to
the crowd, but fortunately his teaching that men
should abandon their possessions would go far to
neutrahze any bad results; and the doctrine that
it was better to suffer persecution rather than rise
in rebelhon would have a positively beneficial
effect upon minds apt to be inflamed by the dan
gerous incitements of the Zealots. But this com
placent attitude received a rude shock when Jesus
reached Jerusalem, and at once protested by word
and action against the sale of animals and the
changing of money in the Temple.
We are apt to overlook the significance of this
event; but it was, I think, the immediate cause
of the crucifixion. The priests were in possession
of a commercial monopoly: in practice1 no one
could offer a sacrifice in the Temple except by
buying a victim in a market controUed by the
1 In theory it was no doubt possible, if any one were fortunate
enough to find a victim which the priests would accept as without
defect.

The Teaching of Jesus 45
priests. No one could give money except in
Jewish coin, to obtain which he was obliged to
exchange the current Roman coinage at the table
of the money-exchangers — also controlled by the
priests — and for this of course he would pay a
commission. Thus the same supply of Jewish
coin would keep on an endless circuit, passing
from the money-changer to the pious Jew who
wished to contribute his offering, from him to the
priest, and from the priest back to the money
changer, and each time the circle was completed
there was a profit on the transaction.
It was against this commercial monopoly that
Jesus protested when he spoke of a den of thieves.
The den of thieves retaliated by accusing him of
rebelhon against the Romans, and in spite of his
teaching of non-resistance to persecution they
secured a conviction by making use of the infor
mation that Jesus regarded himself as the coming
Messiah, who would reign in a kingdom which
would take the place of the Roman Empire.
By a curious but intelligible process Christians
came in the next generation to put on the Scribes
and their successors, the Rabbis, the guilt of the
judicial murder of Jesus. That is because the
controversy between the Christians and the Jews
was primarily a matter which concerned the

46 The Stewardship of Faith
Scribes. It centred in the exposition of the law,
and the interpretation of Scripture, especially the
Messianic passages. It was natural to connect
the existing Jewish opponents with the death of
Jesus. But it seems to me that financial interest
rather than theological hatred was the real cause
of the accusation of the priests, though they
dressed it up in a partly political, partly rehgious
form. I do not think that history gives us reason
for supposing that the financial interests of" a
wealthy class are an inadequate explanation of
a failure of justice.
Another question may be conveniently raised
at this point: did Jesus himself expect to be put
to death? It is clear that the disciples beheved —
after the event — that he had foreseen this result,
and interpreted his sayings in this manner. But
it must always remain doubtful whether Jesus
went up to Jerusalem with the expectation of
death or of the coming of the kingdom. That he
expected rejection by the rulers of Jerusalem is
clear; but did that imply death? Again, that he
expected ultimate triumph after this rejection is
also clear; but was this triumph to be the parousia
— the coming of the Son of Man revealed as
Messiah — or a resurrection from the dead? In

The Teaching of Jesus 47
the light of history Christian tradition decided
for death and resurrection, rather than rejection
and parousia, which is postponed to a future date.
But did Jesus speak in this way himself? If he
were convinced that he was going up to Jerusalem
to die and rise again, why were the disciples thrown
into such consternation by his death, what is the
meaning of the cry of despair on the cross, and
why did the disciples explain their downcast ap
pearance by saying that they had hoped that
he would redeem Israel? All these are questions
easy to ask and difficult or impossible to answer;
but they are really inherent in the gospels and
are not raised by any love of destructive criticism.
Thus two related questions are finally reached,
which almost all Christians since the time of St.
Peter at Caesarea Philippi have put in the fore
ground, yet Jesus himself never emphasized and
probably never discussed in public. What did he
think of himself? And what did he say of himself?
It is necessary to distinguish clearly between
what Jesus openly said of himself, and what he
thought and allowed a small circle of his disciples
to know, but not to publish.
So far as can be seen from the synoptic narrative,
when Jesus was speaking in public he said nothing
of himself. He preached the kingdom, "for this

48 The Stewardship of Faith
cause," he said, "I came out."1 So far as his
public activity was concerned his personaHty was
entirely subordinate to his preaching. He might
know, by the special revelation of God, what was
the high position reserved for him in the coming
kingdom, but it was his secret. For the pubhc
it was enough that he should dehver his message,
that they should beheve it and repent. Disciples
or demoniacs who guessed at the truth were
alike forbidden to reveal it; even John the Bap
tist, when he sent from prison to ask whether
Jesus was "he who should come," received no
definite answer. That he spoke as a prophet —
in the spirit of the Lord — he admitted ; those who
said that he cast out devils by Beelzebub blas
phemed not mail, but the Holy Spirit. Very
probably,2 too, he took to himself the passages in
1 Mark i., 38.
2 The reason for hesitating is that the clearest indications are
found only in passages peculiar to Matthew or Luke (cf. Matt.
xii., 18, and Luke iv., 16 ff.) ; there is little or nothing to bear on the
question in Mark. Personally, however, I think that although
the teaching [of the disciples may have emphasized the connexion
of Jesus with the "Suffering Servant" more than Jesus did him
self, it is still probable that the idea may be traced to him, because
it is implied in the answer given to the disciples of John (Matt. xi. , 5
=Lc. vii., 22), in a passage which comes from Q. The designa
tion of Jesus as irots in Acts iii. and iv. is perpetuated in early
liturgical usage (1 Clement, Didache, Martyr. Polycarpi, etc.),
but it gives us little help in consequence of the difficult problem of
the sources of Acts, raised in its most acute form in these chapters.

The Teaching of Jesus 49
Isaiah which referred to the "Servant of the
Lord" who was anointed with the Spirit in order
to preach good news to the poor and was destined
first to suffer rejection and indignity and after
wards to be exalted by God; but it is noteworthy
that though this passage was afterwards regarded
by Christians as Messianic, it was never given
this interpretation by the Jews.1
This — that Jesus did not announce himself
pubhcly as Messiah or Christ — is one of the most
certain facts in the gospel narrative.2 It is ob
scured if the fourth gospel be put on a level with
the synoptic gospels, but it can scarcely be doubted
if modern synoptic criticism be accepted.
On the other hand, it seems equaUy clear that
Jesus was convinced that when the kingdom came
he would be the Messiah,3 — the King anointed
by God, — and a very small inner circle of disciples
had been aUowed to share, or in any case had
1 Noticeable too is the way in which the "triumphal entry"
into Jerusalem is greeted by the crowd with cries in honour of the
coming of the kingdom: it is in Mark not personally Messianic,
though it is possibly so in Matthew, and more plainly so in Luke.
2 The use of the phrase, Son of Man, does not invalidate this
conclusion. It would break the line of the discussion too much
if the point were argued in the text, but an additional note on pp.
54-57 endeavours to give the main points of the problem.
s Might we formulate this opinion more sharply by saying that
Jesus believed that the exaltation promised to the Suffering
Servant was his appointment as Messiah?

50 The Stewardship of Faith
discovered, this secret. Probably, too, this con
viction of Jesus was intimately connected with
the voice of God which he had heard when he was
baptized by John the Baptist. Unless the gospels
are so hopelessly corrupt that no historical evi
dence can be gained from them, I do not see how
this can be doubted. Jesus did not aUow his
disciples to pubhsh the secret during his Hfetime,
but after his death they announced the fact in
Jerusalem and regarded the resurrection either as
the proof that Jesus was the Messiah, or as the
moment when he became Messiah. It was this
inner circle of disciples, and their preaching of the
Messianic secret, which became the foundation of
the Christianity which survived, but it is important
to notice at once that on the one hand there must
have been many disciples who had neither heard
of nor accepted the Messianic secret, but remained
waiting for the kingdom of God, and endeavouring
to Hve as Jesus had instructed them, and on the
other hand, that even the teaching of those who ac
cepted the Messianic secret was very far removed
from the developed doctrine of the incarnate Word
which ultimately conquered the Roman Empire.
Such is a general statement of the view of the
teaching of Jesus and of some of the difficulties

The Teaching of Jesus 51
surrounding it, which seems to be reached by a
study of the earliest parts of the gospels in the
light thrown by Jewish apocalyptic Hterature.
It has been caUed the tragedy of faith, but it
reaUy only represents the shipwreck of the hope
of Liberal criticism in the nineteenth century to
find in a critical reconstruction of the historic
Jesus a solution for the problems of the present
generation. If we go back a Httle we find that
men beheved in an infallible Bible, and that behef
has been forced from us by the undeniable proof
of fallibility. The same may be said of the behef
in an infallible Church. But Liberal Protestantism
in the nineteenth century thought that historical
criticism would remove all the misrepresentations
of later tradition and reveal the figure of the
historic Jesus as infallible.1 Is that hope also
to go? Yes, I fear so. It is impossible to find
its fulfilment in Jesus if he conditioned his teach
ing by Jewish apocalypticism, and beheved in
1 Moreover, there is a constant tendency, not only among
Liberal Protestants, but also among many who would indignantly
renounce the name, to confuse — not identify — Jesus with the
Logos (see p. 158 f). It is permissible to explain Jesus in terms of
a philosophy which he never used, but scarcely to make claims on
his behalf to powers which he neither claimed nor exercised. It
is, I think, the permanent contribution of Dr. Gore to modern
theology that he made this so plain to those who were students in
Oxford in the nineties, though of course I do not imply that this
was his intention.

52 The Stewardship of Faith
what was, after all, an illusory expectation of the
coming of the kingdom of God. But is this a
tragedy? It is, if we have any right to look any
where for an infalhble guide; but what if the de
sire for infalHbihty is altogether wrong? What if
truth is something which we can grasp only in
approximation, which can only be presented to
the human mind in forms which are imperfect,
so that each generation, and each individual, has
to struggle to pierce, as it were, through the form
to the underlying reality? Rehgion — to take a
single manifestation of truth — may be regarded
(though this is but one way of looking at it) as
conversation between the Heavenly Father and
his children. But that conversation is not carried
on without difficulty, or without effort on the
part of the children. It is their natural but
mistaken instinct to try to find some way of escap
ing that difficulty and effort. For the striving
of the Spirit in personal rehgion they have tried
to substitute an infalhble Church, an infallible
Bible, an infalhble historic Jesus. But aU these
have failed us, and we are driven back to a Hving
religion of communion with God, without the
intervention of any other guide claiming to be an
infallible substitute for personal effort.
It is not a tragedy; and those who fight against

The Teaching of Jesus 53
it as threatening to extinguish faith seem to me to
be like men who have worked through the night
and at break of day wish to cover up the windows,
lest the Hght of their candles be made dim by the
rising sun. For in the end — if men have but faith
not in formularies but in the guidance of life —
they come back to aU that seems lost and find in
it new and greater values. They come back to
the Church and find in it a community of men who
in every age have known best, and described
best, what rehgion was to them. They come
back to the Bible and find in it a collection of
writings which have given classic expression to
some of the secrets of spiritual Hfe. They come
back to the historic Jesus, and find, not an infal
hble escape from all those "modern difficulties,"
which are their own, for them to solve, but a guide
who shows them the ultimate values of life, lifts
them — if only for a moment — above the details
of daily duty, and reveals to them the eternal
verities, in order that they may return to the work
of the world, and the responsibilities of Hfe, and
work out the problems of this "interim" existence
in the Hght of the vision which they have seen.

54 The Stewardship of Faith
ADDITIONAL NOTE
the meaning of "son of man"
To have discussed this question in the body of the
chapter would have disturbed the line of the argument
to an undesirable degree. Nevertheless, without at
tempting to add to the knowledge of the professed
theologian, it is probably well to summarize the main
points of this extraordinarily difficult problem.
(i) In Aramaic "Son of Man" means a human
being, * and is not a strange phrase, as it is in Greek or
Enghsh. (2) In Daniel the supernatural being who represents
the kingdom of the Most High is described as "like
unto a Son of Man" — i.e. a human figure in distinction
to the supernatural beings representing the kingdom
of Babylon, etc., which were like the lower animals.
Moreover in Enoch, apparently with a literary remin
iscence of Daniel, the "Elect One," who may with
some certainty be called the Messiah, is described as
"a Son of Man, "2 and in the course of the visions he
is referred to more than once as "that Son of Man,"
until at last he is given a name of supreme eminence,
and appointed to act as judge at the assize of God.
It is thus in Jewish Hterature the designation of a
"man" in heaven, not on earth, who is predestined
to become the Messiah.
(3) In the gospels, Jesus is frequently referred to as
the Son of Man, not as the Messiah; but in the Acts
and Epistles, he is frequently referred to as the Mes-
1 The Aramaic (bar nasha) could be translated literally as
"son of man" or idiomatically as "a man. "
2 Dr. R. H. Charles has argued in his edition of "Enoch" that

The Teaching of Jesus 55
siah (Christ), and only once as the Son of Man.
Son of Man, therefore, in the opinion of Christians,
was correct as a designation of Jesus during his life,
but not after his resurrection and ascension. It is
thus in the gospels not the name of an essentially
heavenly being. It is this which seems to differen
tiate the usage of the gospels from that of Jewish
apocalyptic literature.
(4) In Oriental religions there are traces of a doctrine
of a primeval divine Man, and it is thought by some
scholars that this has affected, directly or indirectly,
the Daniel-Enoch tradition. Personally I am scepti
cal on this point, though there is very little doubt
but that the "Man" of some gnostic speculations is
connected with this doctrine.1
Such are the main facts: there is comparatively
little difference of opinion as to their nature, but much
as to their application. Certain things seem to be
probable, but the subject is eminently one which calls
for caution, and the opening for error is considerable.
In the first place the possibility is great that in the
earlier chapters of Mark "Son of Man" is merely a
misunderstanding of Aramaic tradition, written or
oral, and that it means2 "a human being." This
applies with peculiar force to the incident of the Sab
bath. The question was not what the Messiah might
"Son of Man" in itself means "Messiah"; but the facts seem to
be against him. Nor does there seem to be much in favour of the
view that "Son of Man" in the gospels is the same thing as the
"Suffering Servant, '"though in later Christian thought Messiah,
Suffering Servant, and Son of Man were almost interchangeable.
1 See W. Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis.
' Not that the writer of the gospel meant it in this sense, but
that this had been its force in the original tradition.

56 The Stewardship of Faith
do, but what ordinary human beings might do on the
Sabbath. "The Sabbath was made for man, not
man for the Sabbath, therefore the Son of Man is
lord also of the Sabbath," is the Marcan text, and
the "therefore" is meaningless unless the "Son of
Man" in the conclusion is the same as the "man" in
the premiss. The same argument also applies to the
discussion of the forgiveness of sin at the healing of
the paralytic. The point was not what the Messiah
could do, but what a man could do, and the question
of Messianic claims is not alluded to.
In the second place it seems to me almost certain
that Jesus often referred to the coming of the Son of
Man with a conscious allusion to Daniel, and probably
to Enoch. But though it follows from the ' ' Messianic
secret" that he believed that he was this "Son of
Man," it equally follows that he did not say so openly,
and as a corollary from this it follows that the use of
the phrase in the gospels, as we have them, has been
influenced by the interpretation of the disciples, who
desired to make the identification of Jesus with the
Son of Man more obvious, and sometimes said "Son
of Man" when Jesus really said "I," and sometimes
perhaps "I," when Jesus really said "Son of Man."
I incline to doubt whether Jesus referred to himself
as the Son of Man except in eschatological passages;
and probably his hearers did not at the time realize,
and were not intended to realize, that he meant him
self. Of course criticism of the narrative on these
lines is subjective, imperfect, and, no doubt, often
inaccurate; but it seems to me to give a more intel
ligible explanation of the facts than any other method.
Finally, I must admit to being puzzled by the fact
that "Son of Man" is characteristically used in the

The Teaching of Jesus 57
gospels, including the fourth gospel, but only rarely in
other books, and seems to have been interpreted by
Christian writers as a description of the earthly Jesus,
though the apocalyptic books and Jesus himself used
it as a description of the heavenly Messiah, before he
takes up the work of the Messiah.1 One would have
expected that it would have been used by the Chris
tians as a description of the exalted Jesus: but this is
not the case, with the single exception of the dying
vision of Stephen,2 in spite of the fact that Jesus
himself describes the Son of Man coming from heaven,
The other difficulties in connexion with the Son of
Man admit of possible, though tentative, solutions;
but I know of no complete explanation of the fact
that Luke did not use the phrase for the ascended
Jesus in agreement with Jesus' own usage, and that of
the apocalyptic writers, but applied it to Jesus in the
days of his flesh. Moreover, it seems probable that
the same thing is true even of Mark. Son of Man in
the mouth of Mark, as distinct from the passages
where it is probably an accurate quotation from
Jesus himself, means Jesus on earth. It is thus not
the equivalent of Messiah, a title which Mark avoids,
but is rather " he who is to be Messiah." To some
extent this may be explained as a somewhat confused
recollection of Enoch, but the difficulty still remains
that in Enoch Son of Man is a human figure in
heaven, not a human figure on the earth.
1 Once more the eschatological side of the synoptic gospels vindi
cates itself: it is plain enough that the writer used "Son of Man"
as meaning "Jesus on earth"; but in the passages in which it is
certain that Jesus uses it of himself, it refers to his coming as a
heavenly being. Thus these passages are not Christian invention .
' In Apoc. i., 13, "like unto a son of man," is merely literary
reminiscence from Daniel.

CHAPTER III
THE SPREAD OF THE CHURCH TO THE ROMAN
EMPIRE
The Marcan Tradition of the Resurrection — The Church in Jeru
salem — The Hellenists — Cornelius and Modern Prob
lems — The Roman Empire — The Cult of the Emperors — •
Astral Stoicism — The Mysteries — The Synagogue — The
God-fearers.
THE events immediately succeeding the Cru
cifixion are the most obscure in Christian
history; but certain facts emerge, even
though the course of events cannot be precisely
foUowed. For the first days of the period the best infor
mation given us is stiU to be found in the gospel
of Mark. Although the narrative of the actual
events no longer exists, * it is clear from the indi
cation in Mark xvi., 7 ("TeU his disciples that he
1 Mark xvi., 9-20, by the common consent of almost all critics —
I know of no exceptions, though such may possibly exist — is not
part of the original gospel. It is not, however, probable that the
gospel ended with the "for they were afraid," of Mark xvi., 8,
though a few eminent scholars, such as Wellhausen, take this
view. Unless they are right the one thing certain is, as stated
above, that the appearance of the risen Lord was placed in Galilee.
58

The Church in the Roman Empire 59
goes before you to Gahlee, there you wiU see him"),
that the disciples went to Gahlee, and first saw
the risen Lord there, and not in the neighbourhood
of Jerusalem. There is no reason to doubt this
narrative. It was perfectly natural for the dis
ciples to scatter back into Galilee when their
journey to Jerusalem had ended in the crucifixion
of their Master instead of in the coming of the
kingdom. Nor is there any reason to doubt that
they "saw" the Lord in Gahlee; all are forced to
agree on this point, even if they differ as to the
nature of the vision. But after this the Marcan
narrative gives but partial help.
It gives us, however, sufficient to enable us to
see how the foUowers of Jesus arrived, not at only
the fact that he had risen, but at some of the
attendant circumstances. His grave had been
found empty by certain women who had visited
it; and a "young man" had spoken words which
seemed to assure them of the Resurrection. It
must be remembered, however, that whilst scien
tific criticism is bound to follow the best tradition
so far as it relates facts, it is not obhged to accept
their traditional explanation. We may concede
the fact that the tomb was empty, even though
we think it improbable that the corpse of Jesus
had been materially resuscitated, or doubt whether

6o The Stewardship of Faith
the report ofthe words of the "young man" has
not been coloured by subsequent Christian behef.
To foUow the story further it is necessary to
turn to Acts. This is unfortunately less convincing
in the earher than in the later chapters. Com
paring the third gospel and Acts with Mark it is
clear that the writer of the former books omits
altogether the episode of the flight of the disciples
to Gahlee and the vision of the risen Jesus. He is
unaware of, if he does not dehberately reject, any
story involving the absence of the disciples from
Jerusalem. Nor does he give us any information
as to the return of the disciples, nor specify the
events leading to the estabhshment of a community
at Jerusalem. Some things may, however, be
gathered from his narrative and regarded as
certain. The new community did not separate
itself from the Jewish rehgion. The brethren
remained steadfast to the same teaching as Jesus
had given — the behef in the coming of the king
dom, and the need of repentance — but they seem
to have laid less emphasis on the points of difference
between themselves and the dominant parties of
the Jews: we hear nothing more of controversy
as to the Sabbath or the laws of purification.
Thus they continued to frequent the Temple,
and the leaders of the Jews, apart from some not

The Church in the Roman Empire 61
very severe attempts at repression, took no active
measures to expel them permanently. Only in
two aspects did they differ seriously from their
feUow-countrymen. In the first place, they be
heved that Jesus was the predestined Messiah, in
support of which view they appealed to the Re
surrection rather than the more ethical questions
which Jesus had put in the foreground, until this
gradually became the main subject of contention
between them and the hierarchy. In the second
place, they claimed that they had been granted a
special outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and this
— doubtless based on psychological experience —
they regarded as the gift of the exalted Jesus,
and as the fulfilment of eschatological prophecy.1
1 One of the most difficult problems of interpretation is to find
out what relation was supposed to subsist between the Spirit and
the risen Jesus. As a preliminary we need to know what was the
Jewish conception of the event which justified the statement that
"the spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha." The spirit which spoke
through Elijah — or the other prophets — was the Spirit of the
Lord, but it was also in some sense the spirit of Elijah. I take it
that the disciples regarded the Holy Spirit which came over them
as in the same way the Spirit of God, and also the Spirit of Jesus.
Another point of importance is the analogy from the other side
of pneumatology — demonology — afforded by the fact that, as
Josephus says, the demons were the ghosts of wicked men, and
that yet the demons were also diabolic beings. Once more, what
is the connection between these facts, the Syriac custom of giving
the title of Lord to dead persons of eminent sanctity (much as
Western Christians use the title Saint), and the Pauline identifica
tion of the Lord and the Spirit? The problem is obvious, but I

62 The Stewardship of Faith
This gift of the Spirit, accompanied by curious
physical phenomena — as extreme emotion fre
quently is — was especially valued, and was re
garded as the confirmation of their behef, and
the assurance of their favoured position in the
kingdom. The conversion of some HeUenistic Jews in
Jerusalem changed the situation. Born or edu
cated, as these had been, in different parts of the
Empire outside Palestine, they naturaUy united the
Hberal principles of the Dispersion to the teaching
of Jesus. Their doctrinal innovations provoked the
authorities to put to death the leader of the move
ment, the proto-martyr Stephen, and to disperse
the Christian community. But the Apostles, we
are told, remained, and the older Hebrew Chris
tians apparently ralhed again in Jerusalem in a
church which, according to tradition, continued
for some two generations. But the story of Chris
tianity is the story of those who were driven out
of Jerusalem, not of those who remained, and
the most remarkable fact — assumed in Acts, but
passed over without explanation — is that Peter,
the original leader of the community at Jerusalem,
moved over to the Hellenistic development, and
do not know of any treatise which satisfactorily deals with the
whole subject.

The Church in the Roman Empire 63
the leadership of the disciples at Jerusalem was
taken by James, the Lord's brother.
The Hellenistic movement, urged on by perse
cution, spread rapidly to places which were more
Gentile than Jewish; and the question could not
long be postponed, whether the gospel might be
preached to Gentiles without insisting on their
becoming Jews and submitting to circumcision.
The author of the Acts gives in order the stages
in which the treatment of this problem developed.
First comes the conversion, reception of the Spirit,
and baptism — notice the order of events — of the
Roman centurion, Cornelius. This settled the
question of principle, and the Hellenistic move
ment next spread rapidly to Antioch, where it
formed a new centre of activity and under the
leadership of Barnabas and Paul undertook a
further extension of missionary work. Then we
have the account of the mission to Cyprus and
Galatia of Barnabas and Paul, representing the
church of Antioch, with a wholesale and appar
ently unconditional admission of Gentiles. This
stimulated the older community at Jerusalem to
protests and hostile propaganda, and to the de
mand that all converts should be circumcised
and observe the Law. Lastly, we have the story
of the council of Jerusalem, which laid down some-

64 The Stewardship of Faith
what obscure conditions for the conduct of Gentile
Christians but was in the main a triumph for the
Antiochene mission.
Henceforward Hellenistic Christianity was com
mitted to missionary propaganda in the Roman
Empire on lines differing from those of the Jewish
missionaries or of Judaistic Christians, and —
though this was no doubt not recognized at the
time — it was inevitably destined, as the condition
of success, to adopt Grseco-Roman or Graeco-
Oriental forms of expression, both in theology and
cultus, and to lose much of its originally Jewish
character. It is therefore necessary at this point
to break off from the history of Christianity and
turn to the consideration of the Roman Empire,
into which it now began to make its way. But
before entering on this subject it is well to em
phasize the abiding importance of the first of the
incidents just enumerated — the acceptance by
St. Peter of the Roman centurion.
The conversion of Cornelius represents the
recognition of facts and a consequent change of
principle. Up to that time nationality, whether
obtained by birth or by proselytism, which is only
another name for naturahzation, and circumcision,
which was the national custom, were the neces
sary conditions of entry into the kingdom of God.

The Church in the Roman Empire 65
When the kingdom came all its members would
enjoy the gift of the Spirit, and the Christians
who had received the Spirit had done so as a fore
taste of the privileges of the Messianic period.
That any one should enjoy the gift of the Spirit
and nevertheless be outside the kingdom of God
was a contradiction in terms. Therefore when
CorneHus received the gift of the Spirit, though
he had neither become a Jew nor been circumcised,
the Christians drew the conclusion which the logic
of facts impressed on them, "Then to the Gentiles
also hath God granted repentance unto life."
The early founders of the HeUenistic church
accepted the witness of the Spirit as superior to
the authority of custom or tradition, even though
the tradition had the authority of the words of
Moses and of the thunder of Sinai.
It is impossible not to feel that one of the ways
in which official Christianity in the great orthodox
churches, as weU Protestant as Cathohc, is stand
ing at the cross roads, is that it is hesitating
whether to foUow the example of the HeUenistic
or the Judaizing Christians. What makes a Chris
tian ? is a question more and more often heard. The
official churches answer, according to their respec
tive tenets: "Baptism," "The acceptance of a
Christocentric creed," "Episcopal orders," "The

66 The Stewardship of Faith
recognition of the Pope,"' and appeal to the
Scripture and the authority of tradition. His-
toricaUy they are aU more or less right, and on
the whole the more "Cathohc" the greater is
their historical justification. But historicaUy the
Judaizing Christians were right, for the authority
of tradition and scriptural proof was on their side.
The one thing necessary, however, was the evi
dence of existing spiritual life, and that was on the
side of CorneHus and St. Peter. So it is also
today. There are Quakers and Unitarians who
have Httle claim to be regarded as Christians if
the matter is to be settled by an appeal to his
torical evidence. But they have the testimonium
spiritus sancti, the witness of existing spiritual
Hfe. No one who has ever had the privilege of
admission to their devotions can doubt that their
rehgious life has exactty the same spiritual quahty
as that of the Christians who are historicaUy most
correct. The "great churches," if they rely on
historical evidence, have unanswerable arguments
in favour of rejecting the claims of this new type
of Christianity,2 and can do aU over the world
what they have done in HoUand — degrade " Chris-
1 Or they combine these in varying proportions.
2 1 am not writing in the interests of "reunion" — which I
distrust — but of a frank recognition of the value and equality
of many institutional forms of the one spiritual life.

The Church in the Roman Empire 67
tian" to the recognized title of a special type~of
theological thought. But if in this way they rest
their appeal on the past, to the past they wiU soon
belong, for, in the language of St. Peter, who are
they to withstand God? In whatever language
it be expressed, the foundation of Christianity is
the possession of the Spirit, not theological for
mulae or the preservation of traditional forms,
and the Spirit wiU not long remain with those
who refuse to Hsten to its witness.
The most remarkable feature of the history of
the early Empire is that it represents a double
stream of progress. Pohtical progress was con
stantly moving from West to East, but rehgious
Hfe was moving from East to West, and the con
fluence of these two streams produced many
strange eddies of opinion and practice.
At the time when Christianity first began to
enter the Empire at Antioch — high up in the west
ward flowing stream — the Empire was still young.
Many things, such as the government of the
provinces, were comparatively undeveloped, but
it is allowable for the present purpose to look
somewhat further ahead, and regard the Empire as
it became after a slightly longer development, in or
der to understand the principles which it embodied.

68 The Stewardship of Faith
If we consider the Roman Empire first of all
from its pohtical side, which was in many ways
the most important, it is impossible to avoid no
ticing in how many ways it reminds us of our own
time. Again and again in reading about it we have
an uncanny feeling that it is not a description of
something past, but only a shghtly distorted
picture of what is going on now, or may be going
to happen in the immediate future. And, though
the policy of the Roman Empire with regard to
nationahty was more Hke that of the British
Empire than anything else in modern civiHzation,
the condition of society in the Empire resembled
some sides of American life as much as anything
existing in the old world.
In the first place it was a society in which the
governing class belonged, as a whole, to a different
race from the classes which were being governed.
There was at the head of affairs a small Roman
population which was with extraordinary skiU
managing affairs, and extending the limits of
civiHzation, but below it there was a great crowd
which was not Roman, but was serving the Romans
and doing the work of the Empire under their
guidance — a crowd drawn from Greece, Gaul,
Spain, Syria, Armenia, Egypt, Africa, Mesopo
tamia, and being slowly welded together by learn-

The Church in the Roman Empire 69
ing to work better, and in some cases to think
more straightly. That was the task which the
Roman Empire was trying to fulfil by a system
of provinces and municipalities, each with some
degree of autonomy, but all ultimately responsible
to the central authority.
No book gives a more interesting ghmpse of the
working of the system than those letters which
preserve the correspondence of the Emperor Trajan
and PHny when the latter was governor of a
province. It shows that the Empire was faced
by certain grave difficulties; and those which
most come to the front are, in the first place,
that there were not enough good men who were
prepared to take up the service of the state, and,
in the second place, that in the province over
which PHny was set the local administration was
partly foohsh and partly corrupt. The men who
were in charge of the government of the towns
were spending money not in the real interests of
the town to which they belonged, but in the in
terests of themselves, and of their friends. The
municipal government was corrupt, and where it
was not corrupt it was often foohsh, so that the
municipal authorities became the easy prey of the
rich Greeks or Syrians who made their living as
parasites upon the system of the municipal govern-

70 The Stewardship of Faith
ment. It was faihng, then, because it was partly
corrupt and partly unintelligent. And as the
necessary outcome of these difficulties there was
a constant tendency on the part of the authorities
to truckle to the baser parts of the population, to
spend money in organizing games, wild beast
fights, and other things which appealed to their
lower instincts.
Those were the difficulties against which an
upright and able governor like Pliny had to fight ;
they were throughout its history the difficulties
of the Roman Empire on the political side. We
cannot but admire the enormous energy of that
comparatively small body of Romans who did,
in spite of these obstacles, contrive for at least
three centuries to maintain a successful struggle,
even though we are obhged to admit that in the
end the Empire failed ; partly because it did not
succeed completely in overcoming its difficulties;
and also, I think, partly because that smaU body
of men was unequal to the task. They became
a tired nation, they let the work fall from their
hands, and the Dark Ages came. '
1 Such, at least, is the impression made on me by the picture of
society in the fourth century so graphically presented by Dr. Dill.
The great country houses of Italy and Gaul show us great culture
and considerable piety, but not much energy. A hundred years
later they had ceased to exist.

The Church in the Roman Empire 71
If we turn to the stream of Oriental rehgions,
which was flowing westward into the Empire,
and look for the part which was most closely con
nected with the progress of Roman civiHzation,
there can be no hesitation in choosing the cult of
the emperors.
The behef that kings are divine is originaUy an
Oriental behef, so far as the history of the rehgious
Hfe of the Roman Empire is concerned, though it
may have belonged in almost prehistoric days to
primitive Roman rehgion and is probably part
of primitive rehgion almost everywhere.1
Its immediate history in the period which con
cerns us seems to be that it was found in the East
by Alexander the Great, was adopted by the
Ptolemies and the Seleucid kings, his successors
in Egypt and Asia, and passed from them to
the Caesars. It was at first especially strong
in the eastern provinces, but gradually be
came the central cult of the official Hfe of the
Empire. The memory of the struggle for Hfe and death
which was waged between this cult and the Church
in the second and third centuries makes us inchned
to ignore its true nature. To us it is a ridiculous
1 Cf. J. G. Frazer, Lectures on the Early History of the
Kingship, and the third edition of The Golden Bough.

72 The Stewardship of Faith
superstition, only possible to sycophantic courtiers.
But it had its other side. The pagan world of
the first and second centuries was not so keenly
alive as the Jewish or Christian churches to the
claims of monotheism, but it felt deeply the truth
of a theology which emphasized the working of
/God in the world through the institutions of
established society. Nor is it wonderful if it saw
something divine in the Roman Empire and in its
head — the Caesar. The period which ended with
Actium had been a century of incessant struggle.
Massacre, civil war, revolution, bloodshed, pro
scription, and terror were its predominant features.
Property had been without protection, and human
Hfe without security. But with the reign of
Augustus a new age seemed to have begun, the
golden years of peace had returned — it was the
work of the gods. Just as the Jews had comforted
themselves with the hope that the kingdom of
God was at hand, the Romans were proud to
beheve that it had already come ; nor for a genera
tion to whom the working of God in the world
seemed always to appeal most vividly when it
was presented in human form, clothed with the
majesty of exceptional abihty and unusual power,
was it difficult to believe that Augustus, whose
efforts had thus wonderfully brought peace and

The Church in the Roman Empire 73
order into a world of strife and confusion, was
himself divine.1
This form of heathenism naturally brought with
it a world-affirming ethic. This and its concept of
law were its permanent contribution to progress. 2
It calls men to forget their personal interests not
for the sake of their neighbours as individuals,
but for society regarded as a Hving organism, worth
more, in some mysterious and almost mystical
way, than the sum of the individuals which com
pose it, just as a man is more than the sum of his
members. It was in one sense a rehgion, inas
much as — at least to some minds — it was the
working of God in the world, and the service of
the state was really the service of God who willed
the state. It would be very unfair to deny to
this attitude a spiritual character and an insight
into truth. But the intellect asks for more than
the mere recognition of "God in Society"; it
* A rich collection of inscriptions and quotations referring to the
emperors as " Divine, " "Saviours," etc., is given by P. Wendland
in an extremely important article, adrrrip, in the Zeitschrift fur
neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, 1904, p. 335 ff.
2 Of course I do not mean that no other system ever had a
world-affirming ethic. But the Roman Empire so stamped it
into the human mind that within the limits of existing Western
civilization it can never again be forgotten. Men may evade or
exploit it, but even if with Pecksniffian lips, they will recognize
as an axiom their "duty to society," which is a different (though
allied) concept from the evangelical "love of neighbour."

74 The Stewardship of Faith
desires a "view of the world," and the inteUect of
the Roman Empire found this not in the inherited
Roman rehgion (which it supported, at the insti
gation of Augustus, partly as an interesting form
of archaeology, partly as a convenient sedative for
the lower classes), but in a combination of Stoicism
and Astrahsm1 which formed another eddy in
the westward-flowing stream of rehgion and theo
logical speculation.
This Astral Stoicism, perhaps best known to us
now through the writings of Seneca, was probably
introduced in the first place by the influence of
Posidonius of Apamea. He had many pupils,
of whom Cicero is the most widely known, and
Manihus, the author of the Astronomica, perhaps
the best representative.2
The main features of this Weltanschauung were
a strict determinism based on the observation of
the unvarying movements of the astral world and
the theory that the same unswerving "fate" which
1 1 think that Astralism is a better word than Astrology,
because in practice Astrology has come to mean foretelling the
future by the stars. The teaching of — for instance — Manilius
is a great deal more than this.
2 Cf. the Disputationes Tuscidanai and especially the
Somnium Scipionis. Posidonius' own writings are not extant;
of the growing modern literature on his work and influence some
of the most important are Corsen, De Posidonio Rhodio, and
E. Bevan's Stoics and Sceptics.

The Church in the Roman Empire 75
guided the sun and planets and stars also guided
human beings, so that there was a fixed connection
between the circHng stars and the cycle of mortal
Hfe, because the stars were partly subject to the
same "Destiny" which reigned supreme in the
universe, and partly were in some mysterious
manner its agents. "Fate rules the world and all
is estabhshed by fixed law"' is the conclusion to
which Manilius comes.
The supreme end of man was the complete
surrender of himself to this omnipotent force, that
he might so be identified with the deity as to find
his sole pleasure in submitting to the decrees which
he could in no case avoid, and thus in a certain
sense achieve the presence of God in man —
inpendendus homo est, deus esse ut possit in ipso.''
There was probably some degree of difference
between individual members of this type of re
hgious thought as to the emphasis which was laid
on the direct influence of the stars or planets ; and
the most elevated natures, such as Seneca, seem to
have been Stoics and Determinists rather than
Astral worshippers. They had broken with the
1 "Fatareguntorbem, certa stant omnia lege." — Man., iv., 14.
2 Manilius, iv., 407. The best statement of this view is F.
Cumont: Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans,
1912. Cf. also his La Religion solaire du Paganisme romain,
1909; and Fatalisme astral et Religions antiques, 1912.

76 The Stewardship of Faith
ancestral mythology, and they did not replace it.
In general terms they perceived the working of the
same law in the natural and spiritual worlds, and
they recognized the mediated working of that law
alike in the stars of heaven and in the ruler of the
Roman Empire on earth. They submitted to both,
and so far as in them lay co-operated with both ;
they beheved that in the end this was the way of
Hfe and the road of happiness, but they did not
pretend to explain in detail why it was so. It was
an austere rehgion, but it was in no sense a bad or
false religion. A true feeling for an anima
naturaliter Christiana almost made the Christians
of later centuries regard Seneca, its most remark
able adherent, as a Christian saint, and I cannot
refrain from quoting part of Dr. DiU's briUiant
and sympathetic description of Seneca's rehgious
position: Seneca had one great superiority over other equally
religious souls of his time, which enables him to
approach mediaeval and modern religious thought — he
had broken absolutely with paganism. He started
with belief in the god of the Stoic creed. He never
mentions the Stoic theology which attempted to
reconcile him with the gods of the Pantheon. In spite
of all his rhetoric he tries to see the facts of human
life and the relation of the human spirit to the Divine
in the light of reason, with no intervening veil of

The Church in the Roman Empire 77
legend. God is to Seneca the great Reality, however
halting human speech may describe him as Fate, or
Law, or Eternal Reason, or watchful Providence.
God is within us, in whatever mysterious way, inspir
ing good resolves, giving strength in temptation, with
aU-seeing eye watching the issue of the struggle. God
is without us, loading us with kindness even when we
offend, chastising us in mercy, the goal of all specula
tion, he from whom we proceed, to whom we go at
death. The true worship of him is not in formal
prayer and sacrifice, but in striving to know and
imitate his infinite goodness. We mortal men in our
brief Hfe on earth may be citizens of two common
wealths, one the Rome or Corinth of our birth, the
other that great city of gods and men, in which aU
are equaUy united, male and female, bond and free,
and children of a common Father. In this ideal
citizenship, in obedience to the law of the spiritual
city, the eternal law which makes for righteousness,
man attains his full freedom and final beatitude in
communion with kindred souls.
Yet, as in mediaeval and Puritan theory, there is
in Seneca a strange conflict between pessimism and
idealism. To the doomed philosophic statesman of
the reign of Nero the days of man's life are few and
evil. Life is but a moment in the tract of infinite age,
and so darkened by manifold sins and sorrows that it
seems, as it did to Sophocles, a sinister gift. On the
other hand, its shortness is a matter of no importance;
the shortest Hfe may be full and glad if it be dignified
by effort and resignation and conformity to the great
law of the universe. The wise and pious man, ever
conscious of his brief time of probation, may brighten
each passing day into a festival and lengthen it into

78 The Stewardship of Faith
a life. The shortness of life is only an iUusion, for
long or short has no meaning when measured by
the days of eternity. And the philosopher may unite
many lives in one brief span. He may join himself
to a company of sages who add their years to his, who
counsel without bitterness and praise without flattery;
he may be adopted into a family whose wealth in
creases the more it is divided; in him all the ages may
be combined in a single Hfe. To such a spirit death
loses all terrors. The eternal mystery indeed can be
pierced only by imaginative hope. Death we may be
sure, however, can only be a change. It may be a
passage into calm unconsciousness, as before our
birth, which will release us from aU the griefs and
tumults of the life here below. It may, on the other
hand, prove to be the morning of an eternal day, the
entrance to a radiant and untroubled world of infinite
possibilities. In any case, the spirit which has trained
itself in obedience to eternal law wiU not tremble at a
fate which is surely reserved for the universe, by fire
or flood or other cataclysms! change. The future in
store for the soul is either to dwell for ever among
things Divine, or to sink back again into the general
soul, and God shall be all in aU. '
That is heathenism at its best: it is very Hke
some forms of Christianity, and is certainly not a
rehgion of which anyone need be ashamed. "We
can only know in part, while we Hve here, and we
may be sure that when that which is perfect is
1 Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, second edition,
P-33I/-

The Church in the Roman Empire 79
come Christ wiU own many as his friends who have
borne the Cross without hoping for the Crown."'
For indeed the Hfe of a man like Seneca, trying to
serve Nero in the empire, which was God's
institution, and yet to keep his soul clean, is truly
a picture of one who tried to bear the Cross in the
form in which it was presented to him.2
Yet Seneca, and the Stoics generaUy, failed.
Their rehgious system proved to have no real
vitahty or power of convincing the majority of
their hearers. One reason was because the spiritual
atmosphere of Seneca's rehgion was too rarefied
to be breathed by the ordinary man: it dealt too
much in abstractions. But even more important
is that in its presentation so much emphasis was
laid on conduct that it ceased to be primarily
rehgious, and became a system of ethics, touched
with emotion, and justified by being brought into
connection with a general view of the universe.
It is very near religion, and contained many
rehgious elements, but these were not central, and
the more definitely rehgious, though far less
'Dean Inge in Contentio Veritatis, p. 103.
"Other views have of course been held aboutSeneca's character:
no doubt he had his failings, as indeed he admits, but I feel that
the more anyone reads of Seneca the higher becomes the opinion
formed of him.

80 The Stewardship of Faith
intellectual and often far less ethical, classes turned
in a different direction to the so-caUed mystery
religions, which also came from the East, and
frequently contained a large proportion of the
astral stoicism of the followers of Posidonius.
All the many forms of these Oriental mystery
religions have certain points in common, though
each has its own distinguishing features. Roughly
speaking, they were cults, which narrated how at
some epoch of history there had been a great being,
either man or god, who, while hving on the earth,
had found not only a way through the difficulties
of human life, but also, by traversing the road of
suffering, the secret of a safe passage along that
dangerous journey which the soul of man must
make when it goes at death from -the regions of this
world into that which is beyond, and tries to win
a path to the divine realms of bliss. To their
foUowers they had entrusted this secret; so that
men, by accepting their teaching in faith, and by
performing certain mysterious acts, might foUow
their example, and rise superior to the misfortunes
of Hfe now, and at death find salvation from the
snares and onslaughts of their "ghostly enemies."
There was a great number of mystery rehgions,
and the more inteUectual of their adherents pro
bably thought that they were all different ways of

The Church in the Roman Empire 81
stating the same truths, and of obtaining the same
advantages. Moreover all of them were united,
to a varying degree, which it is not easy to define
precisely, with astral philosophy. Possibly to
some minds the mysteries were nothing more than
divinely instituted means by which man can more
fully and more consciously unite with the purpose
and with the very Hfe of God. To such minds the
mysteries were not inconsistent with determinism;
they were the means of accepting, not of avoiding,
Fate. But probably they were a minority: to
many minds determinism is an unattractive and
even horrible doctrine, and the most attractive
appeal which any cult can make is the offer of
providing a means of escaping destiny. Thus
there were probably many who approached the
mysteries in the behef that by linking themselves
in this way to a Redeemer-God they would be able
to escape the decrees of the Fate which was
determined by the stars. It was probably a ques
tion of education and surroundings which decided
whether an initiate regarded any or aU of these
redeemer-gods as identical with the Logos, which
was one of the philosophic descriptions of God,
or accepted a more definitely separate existence
for the gods or heroes of the local mythologies, such
as Tammuz, Attis, Isis, Mithras, or Sandan. It
6

82 The Stewardship of Faith
will be obvious that there was room for a great
number of shades of thought. Moreover though
the original and best form of the mysteries was
probably in sympathy with the desire of union with
the astral powers, and the Destiny of which they
were the agents, the longing to escape Fate led to
the development of what came to be known as
Gnosticism, in which the planets and Destiny
were regarded as whoUy evil and hostile to man.
Such a theory is obviously reaUy the very reversal
of the creed of Seneca: it leaves no room for any
world-accepting ethics, and at the same time it is
not reaUy aUied to the world-renouncing ethic
of Jesus, but is a world-condemning ethic. Pro
perly understood the teaching of Jesus never
condemns and hates the world, and his ethic can
be made complementary to a world-affirming ethic :
but that is impossible for the teaching of the
Gnostics. This question, however, must be dealt
with later, for Gnosticism, in a partiaUy Christian
form, was one of the most formidable enemies of
the Church in the second century.
In whatever form, however, the mysteries found
acceptance, they were genuinely rehgious. On the
ethical side they were weak, but they strove to
attain that experience of union with a higher reahty
which is central in rehgion: and with an instinct

The Church in the Roman Empire 83
which seems to be universal in humanity they felt
that this was effected by means of the common
facts of daily life which, to the unseeing eye, are
but the processes of generation and birth, eating
and drinking, washing and dressing, and, the last
act of common Hfe, dying; for to the initiate all
became touched with sacramental splendour and
eternal significance as the outward visible signs of
the progress of a Divine Hfe, which was born again,
nourished, cleansed and cared for, and finally
passed through the last great mystery to free and
untrammeUed expression.
The imagery was often confused, but it led in the
mysteries to countless combinations of rehgious
feasts and of ceremonies in which birth and death
were symbohcally represented. Our knowledge
of the actual ceremonies and Hturgies is very small,
as almost aU documentary evidence has been
destroyed, but in a famous papyrus at Paris1 we
have a Hturgy which has been copied and used for
¦Supplement gree de la Bibliotheque nationale, No. 574,
published by Wessely in the Denkeschriften der K. K. Akademie
zu Wien, Philosoph-hist. Classe XXXVI. (1888), p. 56 /., and
afterwards edited as Eine Mithras Liturgie, by A. Dieterich with
great learning and acumen. The view expressed in his title
connecting it with Mithras has not met with universal approba
tion, and is rejected by F. Cumont: the point is obscure, and
those who find the mysteries at the circumference rather than
the centre of their studies will do well to avoid too fixed an
opinion.

84 The Stewardship of Faith
magical purposes. The Hturgy itself is probably
not earlier than the middle of the second century,
but it may be used with some reserves to illustrate
the point of the mysteries at almost any period.
0 first source of my being1 . . . [says the initiate,]
if it indeed be thy good will to grant that I pass, from
the nature which now binds me, to the birth of immor
tality, that after this present necessity which now
presses me down I may enjoy the vision of the im
mortal beginning through the immortal spirit . . .
that I may be born again in spirit,2 that I may be
consecrated, and the Holy Spirit3 may inspire me. . . .
The Greek is not easy to translate accurately but
it is clear that the general sense is that the initiate
is praying for a regeneration to eternal life in a man
ner which illustrates and is illustrated by Christian
practice. In the same way in the same document
the initiate says at the end of the service :
O Lord, I have been born again, and depart that I
may grow, and having grown I die; through birth
that gives life I have been born, and I go to be released
in death, as thou hast created, ordained, and instituted
the sacrament.4
1 yheais irpi&Tij rrjs ifiijs yeviffeias.
' tva voimaTi. p£Tayevv7idw. 3 wve&a-Q iv i/xol rb lepbv wveSfia.
4 The Greek is so full of playing on the word that it can only be
translated very imperfectly: "icipie iriXiv yevbpievos bvaylyvoiuu
avt:6/x€vos, Kai aH-qBels TeXeuTiS, itrb yeveaeus fuoybvov yevd/xevos els
iiroyevarlav &va\v0els iropeiofuu, iis ail im-uras, us <ri ivoimS4Tt]<ras
Kai iirol-qaas /juxTT^pioy."

The Church in the Roman Empire 85
It is surely difficult to ignore the rehgious mystic
ism of these utterances. Or, again, who can refuse
to recognize the truly rehgious spirit in the prayer
of Lucius to Isis? ' Yet though this also belongs to
the second century it almost certainly reflects the
spirit of the mysteries of an earher period.
Holy one, constant Saviour of the race of men, so
bountiful in cherishing them, so tender in the mother's
love which thou dost bestow on the wretched. Nor
day nor night nor shortest moment passes unmarked
by thy benefits without the help of thy protection for
men on sea and land, without thy succouring hand
outstretched to ward off the storms of life. Powers
above and powers below alike wait on thy will.
Thou makest the world to revolve, thou givest his
Hght to the Sun, thou art ruler of the universe, thou
dost tread Hell under thy feet. To thee are due the
harmony of the spheres, the return of the seasons,
the obedience of the elements. At thy bidding the
breezes blow, the clouds gather, the seeds of the earth
bring forth their fruit. Birds which pass across the
sky, beasts which wander on the hills, serpents which
lurk underground, the monsters which swim the deep,
all tremble before thy majesty. But I am too feeble
in ihind to speak thy praise, too poor in worldly goods
to pay thee sacrifice, nor have I wealth in utterance to
tell forth all that I feel of thy grandeur. A thousand
lips, a thousand tongues, and unbroken eternity of
unfailing praise would not avail; yet what the pious
soul, poor though it be, may do in its humility, that
¦ Apuleius, Metamorph., xL

86 The Stewardship of Faith
will I perform. For ever more shaU thy holy god
head be treasured in the thoughts of my inmost
soul. Such was the mystery rehgion. It was spirit-
uaUy strong, but it was weak intellectuaUy and
ethically ; it had not cut itself free from mythology,
and its ethic was lower than that of Seneca or of
the phUosophers in general.
If we now go on a Httle further we come to
another eddy in the westward-flowing stream of ¦
rehgion, the Jewish mission, of which the history
has not yet been properly written, partly because
it has been approached chiefly by Christian writers,
who seem to have thought that it would detract
from the honour due to God to ascribe any merit
to his chosen people, partly because a knowledge
of Semitic life and letters has rarely been combined
with an equal knowledge of the conditions of life
in the empire. But for the present purpose it is
sufficient to notice that on the one hand the Jews
were learning quite as much as teaching: the
evidence of Philo, who regarded himself as a
moderately conservative Jew, and of the Sibylline
oracles shows that Judaism was moving very
rapidly along Liberal Hnes, as we should call it,
and giving up much of the distinctive character
of Palestinian Judaism. Perhaps for this reason

The Church in the Roman Empire 87
it was proving very attractive to the Graeco-
Roman world, and the synagogues were drawing to
themselves many who desired a monotheism which
was clear and definitive, but not united to so
uncompromising a determinism as marked the
teaching of the philosophers.
To these three factors — the astral determinism of
the Stoic philosophers, the sacramental rehgion of
the mysteries, and the monotheistic teaching of the
Jewish synagogues, the Christian mission added
itself, as another eddy in the stream of cults from
the East. But it must not be supposed that the
Christian mission, or the other forms of Eastern
rehgion, succeeded mainly by means of converting
the convinced members of other cults. The truth
seems to be that in the Roman Empire the ancestral
rehgion — a combination of Roman and Greek cults
— had ceased to hold the greater part of the popu
lation. The agricultural gods of the Latin race,
and deities of the Greek Olympus, had been silently
abandoned by aU except their official representa
tions, and Hved only in popular phrases or in
poetic Hterature; they no longer represented the
religious Hfe of the community. Nevertheless the
men of the first century were essentially rehgious;
they were constantly seeking not so much after
God as after an adequate theology and satisfying

88 The Stewardship of Faith
worship, to stimulate the spiritual Hfe of which
they were conscious, and express the experience of
God which they enjoyed. Their heritage from the
past was faihng them and they turned for help to
the Oriental cults which were streaming into the
empire. Yet perhaps not many accepted them
without reservation, and convinced and whole
hearted adherents of any form of rehgion were
few in comparison with • the large numbers of
' ' honorary members of aU rehgions. ' ' These were
inclined to take an inteUigent and sympathetic
interest in every cult, but to see the mixture of
merit and demerit in each clearly enough to dislike
the limitations of an exclusive membership in any.
In every age aU growing forms of rehgion have
been surrounded by a wide circle of these "hon
orary members. " They have spread by absorbing
them more and more into the central body, and
during the period of vigorous youth the preachers
of each cult have done their best to meet the
requirements of their "honorary members" in the
matters of institutional life or theological expres
sion, because they have felt that these things are
subordinate to the Divine fire which it is their
privilege to hand on, and that it is the living flame,
not the torch carrying it, which is important. It
is more or less of an accident that the circle of

The Church in the Roman Empire 89
this kind which surrounded the Jewish mission
— the "God-fearers" (oi csgd^svoi tbv @e<5v) — is
that best known to ujs, for no doubt a similar
circle surrounded all the other Eastern cults. But
it is in any case clear that, the God-fearers, the
honorary members of the Synagogue, were the
most frequent converts to Christianity. The
Christian missionaries from Antioch used habitu-
aUy to preach in the Jewish synagogues so long
as they were permitted, and their teaching, which
avoided the circumcision and the ritual law, so
distasteful to the Gentile mind, found a ready
hearing among the God-fearers. It is also easy
to see that this did not tend to soften the attitude
of the Jew to the Christian. It is bad enough to
find that a preacher whom you have aUowed to
speak to your flock is a heretic, it is infinitely
worse if he proves more attractive than yourself to
those whose conversion had seemed to be almost
accomphshed. Thus the history of the progress of Christianity
in the empire soon became that of the conversion
of God-fearers, and Cathohc Christianity is the
outcome of the influence upon one another of the
Christian missionaries with their primarily Jewish
and eschatological-ethical teaching, and the " God
fearing." pubhc which brought with it a great

90 The Stewardship of Faith
portion of the world-accepting ethic, the Stoic
philosophy, and the sacramental mysticism which
were to so large an extent part of the inteUectual
current coin of the first and second centuries.

CHAPTER IV
THE ANTIOCHENE MISSION AND EARLY GENTILE
CHRISTIANITY
The Acts and Pauline Epistles — The Development of the
Church — Judaizers and Hellenizers — Greek and Jewish
Views of Salvation — St. Paul — Christology — Baptism — The
Eucharist.
FROM the time when the estabhshment of the
Antiochene and Jerusalem missions ensured
the passage of Christianity into the Roman
Empire its history may roughly be divided into
two parts — the growing divergence between the
two missions, and the mutual influence upon each
other of the missionaries and the "God-fearers,"
which produced the rapid development of thought
and practice from which the Cathohc Church
finally emerged.
We have, however, to remember that our sources
of information are very Hmited. The Acts and the
Epistles are aU that we possess; they only give us
glimpses into the development of events, and
confine themselves to the spread of Christianity
9i

92 The Stewardship of Faith
in Asia Minor and Europe under the leadership of
St. Paul. It is certain that there must have been
other missionaries, both from the Antioch and
Jerusalem schools, but we knew nothing about
them. Who, for instance, founded the Church
at Rome, or at Alexandria, and under what
circumstances? Moreover, our knowledge is limited not only
by the extent, but also by the special purposes of
the writers of the two extant sources. This is, of
course, obviously true of the Pauline epistles, even
though the fact has often been overlooked. There
has been a tendency to regard these epistles as a
body of theological Hterature intended for the pur
pose of explaining the doctrines of Christianity;
but, as a matter of fact, if we read the Epistles
without presupposition, it is at once clear that
they are controversial letters written not to de
scribe the central teaching of Christianity, but to
discuss points as to which Christians were not in
agreement among themselves. The central doc
trines are not argued about; they are the basis
for discussion; and thus, though it sounds a
paradox, if we wish to reconstruct them we must
not take the points which St. Paul discusses at
length, but those which he assumes as ground
common to him and to his adversaries, and there-

Early Gentile Christianity 93
fore states in a few short sentences. It is obvious
that this cannot always be done with any attempt
at completeness, and it is fortunate that we possess
in the Acts material with which to supplement and
correct our investigations into the Epistles. On
the other hand, if we turn to inquire into the
controversies of the primitive church rather than
into its central doctrines the Epistles are far more
important than the Acts, because in Acts a veil
seems to be drawn over many sides of the early
disputes. Who the writer of the Acts was, whether he was
St. Luke, the companion of St. Paul, or someone
who used Lucan material, is probably an insoluble
question. But in any case it is probable that the
book was written shortly before the end of the
first century,' and that the writer intended to per
form for Christianity the same office as Josephus
did for the Jews. He was writing in order to
influence Roman opinion, and selected his events
and the form of his narrative so as best to show
what had been the historical relationship of the
Church to the Jews, and to the Roman authorities.
1 An earlier date has been recently suggested by A. von Har
nack, but valuable though his contributions to the study of the
Lucan writings have been, he has not convinced many of his
German colleagues that the earlier date is right, and I do not
think that his arguments will ultimately prove acceptable.

94 The Stewardship of Faith
He therefore discussed the growth and develop
ment of Hellenistic Christianity as contrasted with
the Jewish Christianity of the church of Jeru
salem,1 but did not say anything about the
quarrels which took place between the different
parties within the HeUenistic movement. Thus
although it is possible to obtain a general picture
of the main features of early HeUenistic Christian
ity by using the Acts and Epistles together, the
details are often blurred, and any exact recon
structions are consequently doubtful, even though
they must sometimes be made to serve as working
hypotheses. The most important characteristics of this
nascent Gentile Christianity can best be seen by a
summary description of the stages which preceded
it, and of its ultimate form.
The first stage was the ministry of Jesus: Christi
anity" meant at that time the belief that he was
1 Acts is clearly concerned chiefly with Hellenistic Christianity;
but the writer is also anxious to prove that the Church of Gentile
Christians is the true successor not only of the Church of Jeru
salem but also of Israel itself. The Christians, not the Jews, are
the true inheritors of the promises of prophecy, which the Jews
had misunderstood. In this respect Acts prepares the way for
the Epistle of Barnabas, which, while claiming the text of the
Jewish scriptures for Christianity, ascribes the exegesis of the
Jews to the operation of the devil.
2 The use of the word is, of course, an anachronism, but it has
the excuse of convenience.

Early Gentile Christianity 95
right in announcing the speedy coming of the
kingdom, and in demanding repentance.
The second stage was that of the Church in
Jerusalem; it added to the behef of the preceding
stage that Jesus was the Messiah who should come.
It was not otherwise different, though the addition
made is, of course, considerable, and from it
emanated the Jerusalem mission. It did not
break radically with the Law or with Judaism.
The third stage is the Antiochene mission,
which in turn differed from the preceding only in
its altered relation to the Law and to Judaism,
opening the door to Gentile converts without
asking that they should accept circumcision or
the ceremonial law.
The fourth stage is Gentile Christianity which
extended the Christological behef concerning
Jesus so far as to regard him as the centre of a cult.
It therefore ascribed a divine nature to him, ' and
interpreted Baptism and the commemoration of
the Last Supper as the equivalents of the heathen
mysteries. This bald enumeration of the features of the
four stages is of course misleading when given
1 That is, of course, not a Jewish thought; however exalted the
Messiah may have been, he was not divine. The strict mono
theism of the Jews made them of all ancient nations the least
likely to ascribe divinity to a king.

96 The Stewardship of Faith
without further explanation, and it draws unduly
sharp Hnes of demarcation, but it serves the
purpose of showing that the main points of differ
ences between Gentile and primitive1 Christianity
are concerned with the development that made the
Christ the centre of the worship of the community
and thus necessitated the growth of a high Christ
ology and the transmutation of the rite of Baptism
and the Last Supper into sacraments with the
same soteriological importance as attached to the
heathen mysteries.
But these points were not yet the storm-centres
of controversy in the early days of the Antiochene
mission, and before discussing Christology and
sacraments it is necessary to spend a Httle time
on considering the course of the development of
the history, and the nature rather than the details
of the disputes2 which were central in the days of
St. Paul's missionary work.
Although it is convenient, and not inaccurate,
to describe the several stages just sketched as
first, second, and third, it is of course obvious that
1 Using "primitive" to mean the Christianity of the life of
Jesus and of the disciples in Jerusalem before the rise of Hellenistic
Christianity at Antioch.
1 The details are often lost beyond hope of recovery, and to dis
cuss them here would unnecessarily obscure an already sufficiently
complicated question by the introduction of many technical and
critical problems.

Early Gentile Christianity 97
the end of one was not coincident with the begin
ning of its successor. We know very little about
the Christians — if we may use the phrase — who
after the crucifixion perpetuated the pubhc teach
ing of Jesus without change, but on general
principles we may fairly assume that they must
have existed, even if not for many years. Such
disciples would continue the teaching of Jesus, but
would not regard him as the Messiah, unless they
came into contact with some of the inner circle
who knew the secret. We cannot suppose that
all the many original disciples of Jesus went up
with him to Jerusalem, or, if they did so, returned
there after the crucifixion. But it is also improb
able that they aU stayed permanently in Gahlee ;
some at least may have emigrated to the great
towns of the empire. It is not impossible — I
think it is probable — that this is the true ex
planation of the curious stories of the disciples in
Ephesus who seem to have been ignorant of the
gift of the Spirit until the coming of St. Paul, and
of Apollos who knew about Jesus,' but "only
the baptism of John," and apparently did not
preach that Jesus was the Messiah until he had
been instructed by Aquila and PrisciUa. Their
1 In the Earlier Epistles of St. Paul I adopted a different
explanation of this difficult passage, but I think that I was wrong.

98 The Stewardship of Faith
conversion by St. Paul and Aquila is no doubt
typical of the fate of the disciples of the first
period who had emigrated to the cities of the
empire. They were absorbed by one or other of
the chief Christian missions, and for this reason
the survival of the first stage of Christianity has
left very few marks on Christian tradition. Pro
bably, too, the majority of such disciples remained
in Gahlee and were, to use a modern phrase, in
communion with the Jewish Church, attending
the worship of the synagogues in Gahlee, think
ing of the days of that strange "Revival" when
they Hstened to the preaching of Jesus, and hoping
that if they followed his teaching and suffered to
the end they would win their Hves in the kingdom
of which he had foretold the advent. St. Luke
was probably wrong in fact when he omitted the
mention of such foUowers, and made Jerusalem
the sole centre of Christianity after the crucifixion,
but the value-judgment which his treatment
implies was correct, for this type of disciple soon
ceased to exist, and had no permanent influence
on the development of the Church.
The relations subsisting between the second and
third and between the third and fourth stages, or
in other words between the Antiochene mission —
which for us means St. Paul — and on the one hand

Early Gentile Christianity 99
the Jerusalem mission, and on the other nascent
Gentile Christianity, is much more important
and comphcated. It is above aU necessary to
emphasise that the epistles give no countenance
to the view, prevalent in the nineteenth century,
which depicts them as-representing the controversy
as a simple struggle between Judaism or Judaizing
Christians and St. Paul. In his own writings St.
Paul appears as standing between two extremes:
on one side of him the Jerusalem "Judaizers"
argued that Christianity was the child of Judaism,
and that the law was essentiaUy binding on con
verts, and on the other "HeUenizing" converts
sought to read into the teaching of the Antiochene
mission doctrines more in agreement with their
own desires than with the pronouncements of St.
Paul. Even though some leaders of the latter
movement may have been Jews by birth, they
were not so in spirit; they had given up the Law,
and in the reaction had become more Greek than
the Greeks. They argued for entire freedom;
Christianity was a rehgion of freedom and of the
Spirit, and it must know nothing of restrictions
which would check the most complete Hberty of
conduct. "AU things are lawful" was then-
party cry, and it is this type of Christianity which
is controverted in the Epistles to the Corinthians.

ioo The Stewardship of Faith
It is thus as standing in the middle between
"Judaizer" and "HeUenizer" that St. Paul
appears, and this probably represents the true
position of the Antiochene mission as a whole.
As against the Judaizers he argued that
righteousness — the antithesis to sin — which would
admit men to the kingdom of God and was the
basis of salvation from the wrath to come was
dependent on faith,' not on the works of the law.
As against the other — the HeUenizing — party he
argued that even if it were true that "all things
were lawful" the ethical and moral requirements
of Christianity were binding. The highest ethical
system2 in all its strength was emphasised as the
necessary obligation, though not as the previ
ous condition of membership in the Christian
community. To attempt to f oUow the details of the triangular
controversy thus revealed by the Epistles is scarcely
1 To some Protestant writers there is an inconsistency between
this emphasis on faith and the sacramental view of baptism; but
no Catholic ever felt this antithesis, and in this respect Ca
tholicism is primitive. Faith, not the works of the law, was
regarded as a necessary condition of obtaining righteousness, but
baptism was the means.
2 To ask whether these ethics were those of the Synagogue or
of the Stoa is somewhat useless; at the best, Synagogue and Stoa
approached very nearly to one another, and it is not important —
for the present purpose — to inquire into their relative obligations
to one another.

Early Gentile Christianity 101
desirable. Many reconstructions have been made ;
none are wholly satisfactory, because we have
reaUy not more than a series of ghmpses at the
facts. Luke, who might have told us, preferred
to be silent; and it is impossible fuUy to connect
all the fragments of evidence in the Epistles,
except by an unjustifiable use of the imagination.
But we may profitably ask what was the main
difference between the two sets of opponents whom
St. Paul had to face? It was two-fold : inteUectual
and psychological.
The Greek and the Jew were divided from one
another by education and general inteUectual
attitude, and this affected the form in which they
looked at the promise of "salvation" made them
by rehgion. Both desired it, but they formed
different pictures of the benefits conferred by it.
The Jew expected primarily security from the
impending wrath of God, and that he would belong
to the kingdom of God, when it should come.
That was the object of his hopes and his prayers ;
and it was the assurance of that which he beheved
that he found in his rehgion.
The Greek, on the other hand, meant that he
wished to feel safe in his personal life, not only
safe now, but safe after death; to him the main
thing was the assurance that he had obtained a

102 The Stewardship of Faith
personal salvation which not only gave him release
from the troubles and sins of this present world,
but also would conduct him after his death to
what we, in ordinary language, should caU heaven.
That was the point of view of the Greeks at
Corinth, and if we read i Cor. xv. we see that St.
Paul was standing between the Jew who beheved
in the coming resurrection as the only way in
which the dead can share in the kingdom, and the
Greek who asked what was the purpose, if he had
already obtained eternal hfe, of talking about
a resurrection. He had — so he argued — eternal
life already, and when he died he would merely
pass to a higher state.
St. Paul seems to have appreciated the Greeks'
point of view, and to understand the objection
that they felt to a resurrection of flesh and blood,
but he was, after aU, a Jew, and the behef in a
resurrection was an essential part of his eschato-
logy. For a time he seems to have succeeded in
maintaining a doctrine of a resurrection which
was not of flesh and blood, but in the end the
Cathohc Church came to a different conclusion.
This, however, is so important a part of the foUow-
ing stage of the development of Christian thought
that it wiU be more suitably discussed as a whole in
a later chapter; it is at present sufficient to em-

Early Gentile Christianity 103
phasize that the divergence between Greek and
Jew was due to varying inteUectual standpoints
producing a corresponding difference in the form
given to the anticipation of a future Hfe.
Besides this intellectual and educational differ
ence between the Jew and the Greek' there was
also a psychological difference. Both looked for
help from their religions, but they wished for
differing forms of help.
The Jew desired an answer to the question:
"What am I to do?" He required a code of Hfe
and of action; he would have thoroughly agreed
with Matthew Arnold that conduct was three
parts of Hfe; in fact he probably thought that it
was the whole of it ; and he wanted to know how he
was to act. He felt that his own action was often
wrong; that, left to himself, he was constantly
making mistakes; and that he needed guidance and
support. Therefore it was in no mean or unworthy
spirit that he required a rehgion giving him a law
to teU him definitely what to do.
It is interesting, in looking over the whole
stretch of Christian history, to see how the neces
sity of meeting the needs of this type of nature was
1 Jewish and Greek are, of course, only roughly true designa
tions: the distinction is really psychological, and there were many
"psychological Jews" of Greek nationality, and "psychological
Greeks" of Jewish blood.

104 The Stewardship of Faith
found too strong for any preconceived ideas of
the early Christians. Even when they thought
that they were most definitely abandoning the idea
of a law, events were steadily leading them back
to the fact that they could not in the end neglect
the requirements of the Jewish type, because the
man who requires his rehgion to teU him what to
do is not to be found among Jews alone. He
belongs to a psychological type which embraces
more than half mankind, and therefore in the
end, in spite of the breach with Judaism, aU
churches have been forced to produce codes of
conduct — those codes, partly written, partly
unwritten, which we describe as Christian morals,
Christian ethics, or Christian conduct; and some
churches, and still more some individual Chris
tians, have gone so far in the process of defining
exactly what a Christian may do and may not do,
that as a matter of principle there is not any
serious difference between their position and that
of legalistic Judaism. That it should be so was
psychologically inevitable.
On the other hand, the Greek did not ask,
"What am I to do?" but, "What am I to be?"
He wished to become — not to do — something
different. He did not feel so acutely that what he
did was wrong or unsatisfactory, or even if he did

Early Gentile Christianity 105
so it did not disturb him very much. What dis
tressed him was the feeling that his very being
was corrupt, and that there was something radi-
caUy perverted about his whole existence. He
said in effect that he wanted a rehgion to help
him to become a new being and to change his na
ture and, speaking in the language of the heathen
mysteries referred to in the preceding chapter, he
expressed the longing to be " born again. " To be
"born again" was the technical phrase for initi
ation in the heathen mysteries, but it was much
more than a reference to mere ceremonial ; it rather
represented a type of real psychical experience.
What is reaUy important is that these Greek
converts were convinced that by their rehgion
they did truly become something different. It is
one of the facts which we have to take as beyond
dispute that the Greek who was converted to
Christianity by St. Paul did beheve that he actu-
aUy had obtained a changed nature. We may
criticise or reject any particular explanation of
the fact, and we may even deny, if we see fit, that
the Greek was right in his belief; but we cannot
dispute the fact that the behef itself was unwaver
ing. There was thus a real basis of rehgious experi
ence to the Greek position, but it often was

106 The Stewardship of Faith
accompanied by a certain moral laxity, just as
the Jewish position was accompanied by a certain
spiritual hardness. It is not surprising that
neither Jew nor Greek understood or valued each
other's position; and St. Paul's arguments are
only to be appreciated when we perceive that he is
constantly standing between the two. Psycholo
gically, he was more Greek than Jew; he had him
self known the desire for rebirth, and felt that it
was this which was central in his own rehgion, so
that he protested indignantly against the Jew who
wished to subject all men to the bondage of the
law, and viewed religion primarily as a guide to
conduct. But by birth he was a Jew ; he knew the
value of morality and its permanent union — as
distinct from confusion — with rehgion, and he
protested with equal indignation against the
Greek who combined spiritual experience with lax
moral conduct and did not feel the distinction
between freedom from bondage and Hcence to
immorahty. Up to a point his efforts were successful. But
the conflict was not finished. "Greek" and
"Jew" stand not so much for national as for
psychological differences,' and Christianity has
1 It would, of course, be absurd to suggest that every one
belongs to one type or the other. Most of us in practice belong

Early Gentile Christianity 107
been successful in providing a world-religion only
so far as it has produced a system capable of
meeting the demands both of "Jews" who wish
to know what they should do, and of "Greeks"
who seek for a rebirth to a better life. Much,
however, of the unending friction in Christian
life has been due to the insistence of those who
belong to one type on their supposed right to
legislate for those belonging to the other, and to
their continual iUusion that aU good Christians
ought to have the same kind of experience. Es-
peciaUy is it true that the man of the Greek type
who has wished to obtain a new nature, and has
felt the assurance that he has obtained it, has
always considered there must be something wrong
with the man who feels neither that desire nor
that assurance, but nevertheless thinks that he,
in his own way, has received from his religion what
he wanted, and, to use the old phrase, that he also
is a child of God, though perhaps by birth rather
than by rebirth. All through Christian history
there has been an unintelligent friction between
these two types, and it would be one of the greatest
to a mixed type. But unfortunately in writing it is not possible
to do more than deal with strongly marked characteristics, and,
as a matter of fact, it is probably true that the great heroes of
religions have as a rule been pure examples of one or the other
type.

108 The Stewardship of Faith
blessings if the study of scientific psychology, ' for
that is what is reaUy needed, could lead rehgious
men to realize that we are not aU made alike;
that neither our needs nor our experiences are
always the same as those of our neighbours, but
that theirs are not, for that reason, less real or less
vahd than our own.
It is remarkable that the controversy between
Paul and the Judaizers should not have touched
the questions of Christology or Baptism; the fact
seems to be that on these subjects controversy
arose somewhat later, and that the Antiochene
mission was much more Jewish in its theological
conceptions than some of the converted God-
fearers who helped to form the next generation.
With regard both to Christology and Baptism
the situation was probably saved by the fact
that in the one case language, and in the other
custom, was in so far ambiguous that Jews and
Gentile God-fearers were able to adopt the same
usage, though with differing interpretations.
This is especiaUy clear with regard to Christo
logy; the Christians of Jerusalem and Antioch
agreed in saying that Jesus was the Christ — the
1 It is scarcely necessary to refer to the epoch-making work of
W. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, but, well known
though the book is, its practical application has rarely been
attempted.

Early Gentile Christianity 109
Messiah. But that is by no means the simple
statement which it seems; it imphes the whole
Jewish apparatus of thought as to the kingdom of
God, and the Messiah who was to reign in it. It
was a natural and inteUigible statement to people
who accepted the Jewish position. But it was
reaUy meaningless to the Greek world, and Christ
(Messiah) rapidly became a proper name — as it
has remained ever since, for aU except theologians.
The word which the Greeks preferred to use
was "Lord" (xiSpio?), and this was the means of
opening the way for a development of thought,
without causing an open rupture with the original
Jewish stock.
To a Greek a "Lord" in the theological sense
was divine. The phrase was used of the emperors,
and was especiaUy common in connection with the
"redeeming Gods" of the Oriental cults. At the
same time in a non-theological sense, and especially
in the vocative, it was a mere title of respect. '
The result was that the use of " Lord " was a long
step towards the claim of divinity for Jesus, and
was doubtless very soon so interpreted by Greeks
and God-fearing converts, but it was not a direct
infringement on the monotheism of the Jew, such
1 In which sense it survives now in modern Greek as the
ordinary equivalent of "Mr." or, in the vocative, "Sir."

no The Stewardship of Faith
as would have been the attribution to Jesus of the
title of God. Thus St. Paul freely caUs Jesus
"Lord," and even regards the use of this title as
the distinctive mark of a good spirit in a prophet,
but he never calls Jesus " God, " and distinguishes1
between Heathen, who have "Gods many and
Lords many," and Christians, who have "one
God — the Father — and one Lord — Jesus Christ."
It is extremely probable that if a Jew had been
asked whether this infringed on monotheism he
would have said "No," after a Httle hesitation;
while, if a Greek had been asked whether it con
ceded the divinity of Jesus, he would have said
"Yes" — also after a httle hesitation. The fact,
of course, is that the Jew and the Greek had
radicaUy different ideas of God. To the Greek the
ascription of divinity to the Emperor was rational,
and not really inconsistent with philosophic
monotheism; he believed in one God, who was
manifested as many gods. Deism was repugnant
to his system of thought, but a kind of monistic
Pantheism he could tolerate, and while inteUectu-
ally convinced that God is One he was prepared to
worship God in many manifestations, as "aU in
all. " To the Jew, on the other hand, monotheism
meant the affirmation that there is One God, which
¦ I Cor. viii., 5/.

Early Gentile Christianity in
is not quite the same thing as that God is One.
He was trembhng on the verge of Deism, and often
passed right over to completely Deistic thought.
The angels, and the Messiah, might be super
natural beings, belonging to the heavenly world,
but they were not God, even though God might
have appointed them as Lords. They might be
the sons of God, but the son is not the same
as his father — there is but one God, who has said :
" Thou shalt have none other gods but me. " Thus
the point which the Jew emphasized was the
majesty and uniqueness of God, whUe the Greek
laid stress on the comprehensiveness of God — the
fact that he must be looked upon as aU-embracing,
and "aU in aU." In this respect the "Lord"
terminology of the Antiochene mission as revealed
by the Epistles and Acts, was admirably fitted to
serve as a common language for hoth parties.
It was possible for a Christian of the Antiochene
mission, who dissented from Jerusalem in that he
desired to see the way of life made open to the
Gentiles without their sharing in the responsibih-
ties of the law, which was the special privilege of
Israel, to beheve sincerely that he was representing
the meaning of the word "Messiah" — to Greek
ears so uninteUigible — by saying that Jesus was
the Lord. But to a convert from the Gentile world

112 The Stewardship of Faith
the word brought with it all the connotations of
heathen theological language. To him it meant
the recognition of Jesus as the supernatural centre
of a cult. This cult indeed, was essentiaUy rehg
ious rather than theological, and spiritual rather
than inteUectual. It was inspired by a conscious
ness of a common experience of new Hfe, which
was the dividing Hne between it and the rest of
the world; its members had gained the gift of the
Spirit, and henceforth this Spirit was the directing
power in their hves. In the language of their day
they expressed this by saying that the Spirit was
the Lord, and they were his slaves, but the Lord
they also identified with Jesus Christ, more or less
ignoring the hnguistic facts, and regarding "Jesus
Christ" as a compound proper name. For such
Christians the centre of their community Hfe was
in the present, not as in the case of the original
Palestinian Christians in the future; Jesus was
not merely the future king of the kingdom of
heaven which was yet to come, he was the spiritual
being who was the centre of an already existing
community, in which he was ruling as Lord,
and he was looked up to as the source of salvation
both in this world and in the world to come. The
original eschatological view survived, but was
sinking into the background; the community of

Early Gentile Christianity 113
the Lord, the Church, is not yet formally identified
with the Kingdom of God, but it is not clearly
distinguished from it. How far St. Paul himself
moved along this line of development is a doubtful
question, because we cannot be sure that the
present form of the later epistles is really from his
hand. If it be, he had gone a long way; if not,
some of his foUowers had done so. The matter is
important for the history of St. Paul, but less so
for the history of Christianity. What is clear is
that before long the Christology of the Gentile
Christians definitely included the recognition of
Jesus as the supernatural spiritual head of the
community. On the part of the Antiochene
mission and its converts the way was made ready
for this development by the use of language which
could lead up to this result (especiaUy the use of
the word "lord"),' and by the existence among
the God-fearers of a theological atmosphere, de
rived from the Oriental mystery religions, which
1 The use of the phrase Maran atha (i Cor.) seems to show
that it was used in Aramaic-speaking circles before it was trans
lated into Greek. Bousset seems to me somewhat to under
estimate the importance of this fact; but his Kyrios Christos and
his article in the ZNW for May, 1914, make it probable that
Kyrios is not the use of Jerusalem. Probably it comes from
Semitic-speaking — not necessarily Jewish — or bilingual circles
in Antioch, but there is also perhaps more to be said as to the
influence of the LXX and its use of icipios — usually not b iciptos —
as the translation of Adonai = Jahveh.

114 The Stewardship of Faith
tended to make them look for a Redeemer-Lord
such as was the centre of almost every mystery
rehgion. But obviously the development of thought
could not stay here. Further attempts were in
evitable to explain the position of the Lord, as
the centre of the religious hfe of the community,
in more philosphic forms of theology. The Epistles
to the Colossians and to the Hebrews show clearly
the tendency to make use of current philosophical
language, and this culminates in the prologue to
the fourth gospel in the use of the word Logos,
which had already been rendered famUiar by
philosophers as the designation of God — absolute
reality — revealed in Utterance and in Reason.
To such philosophers the Divine Logos — the Word
or Reason of God — appeared as the agent of
creation and the sustaining power in the universe,
whom men approached in rehgion not entirely
as strangers but because in some paradoxical
manner the Logos was already in them, so that
in proportion as they came to him they came also
to their own true selves.
But the Logos was not only identified with the
agent of creation and the object and source of
religious life; an attempt was also made to iden
tify him with the gods of ancient cults, and explain

Early Gentile Christianity 115
the stories of mythology as illustrations of his
operations in the world. The Logos was espe
cially identified with Hermes, as is shown not
only by the Hermetic literature but also in the
Theologia Hettenica of Cornutus'; but there was
a strong tendency to find him in all the stories of
gods who had worked in the world. It was in
evitable that Christians should foUow the same
Hne of thought, and the fourth gospel represents
the complete identification of the Lord of the
Church with the Logos, and the recognition of
Jesus as the incarnation of the Logos. The prim
itive history of the Prophet of Gahlee, who an
nounced the coming of the kingdom, beheved
that he would reign as the Messiah when the
kingdom came, and caUed men to repent that they
too might share in the kingdom, was rewritten
as the story of the manifestation in word and deed
of the eternal Logos, by whom the universe had been
made and sustained, who had been constantly in
the world in his servants, and had come in these last
days to offer to mankind a share in his own eternal
Hfe, beyond the changes of this transitory world.
1 In its present form the Hermetic literature is not earlier than
the second century, though it probably represents a much older
tradition, but Cornutus certainly belongs to the early first cen
tury, unless his identification with the tutor of Persius can be
overthrown.

116 The Stewardship of Faith
The development of thought and practice with
regard to Baptism and the commemoration of
the Last Supper was probably similar to that
of Christology. It was the acceptance by God-
fearers of originally Jewish rites with an eschato
logical meaning as though they possessed the
significance of mysteries or sacraments.
The details, however, are very obscure. With
regard to Baptism the facts which emerge most
clearly are these. The baptism of John was
primarily eschatological in significance; it was a
baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.
Even here there is difficulty: a baptism which
effected the remission of sins — and the words can
scarcely mean anything else — is unknown in
Jewish Hterature before this time, except for a
possible aUusion in the Sibylhne oracles. It is,
however, legitimate to regard the baptism of John
as an extension of the principle involved in the
washing away of ceremonial impurity, since the
Essenes seem to have been moving in the same
direction. What is clear is the eschatological
significance ; men were baptized in order to escape
the wrath to come, and they were primarily con
cerned with their relationship to the future king
dom. There was no suggestion that their nature
would be changed — though this may be imphed

Early Gentile Christianity 117
in the Greek word for repentance it is not Jewish —
but rather that they were being prepared for a
change of society by the removal of, as it were,
the excrescences of sin, and the acceptance of a
new type of conduct. It is ethical and eschato
logical, but not in the Greek sense a sacramental
mystery. So much is tolerably clear. The same
may be said of the other end of the development,
which was certainly reached by the fourth gospel
and probably by St. Paul's Gentile converts. In
the Epistles baptism is baptism in the name of
Christ; it effects a union with his death and risen
Hfe; it is the putting on of Christ.' We are al
ready httle removed from the conception of
"regeneration" which is characteristic of the
mystery religion, is clearly expounded in the con
versation of Nicodemus with Jesus in the fourth
gospel, and is an essential part of the inteUectual
apparatus of Cathohc Christianity.
The difference between these two extremes is
great, but just as the word "Lord" was a point
of union between the Jewish missionaries of the
Antiochene school and their converts from "God
fearing" circles, though they did not really attach
1 Cf. Rom. vi. and Gal. iii. See also Heitmuller's Im Namen
Jesu and the article on "Early Christian Baptism," in Hastings's
Dictionary of Religion and Ethics.

118 The Stewardship of Faith
the same connotations to the word, so the rite of
baptism was also a point of contact, though it
was interpreted differently.1
If we try to trace the line of the development
from the baptism of John to sacramental baptism
in the name of Christ, it proves impossible to
attain clearly defined results. The unbroken
silence of the synoptic narrative goes to show that
Jesus recognized no baptism except that of John,
for the famous passage in Matt, xxvfii., 19, with
the Trinitarian formula cannot be regarded as
historical or even very early.2 This conclusion
is supported by the existence of Christians in
Ephesus who had only been baptized with the
baptism ot John.3 As suggested above (p. 97 f.),
these Christians, like Apollos, probably represent
the survival of those who had been foUowers of
1 St. Paul, however, seems to have been far more "Greek"
in connection with baptism than he was with Christology.
2 It may even be a textual interpolation. Eusebius and possi
bly some earlier writers seem to have had a text which read : " Go
and make disciples in my name, teaching them to observe all
things, etc.," omitting all mention of baptism. But in any case
the evidence of Acts and Epistles shows that the Trinitarian form
ula is not the earhest form of Christian baptism, and it is incredible
that this should be so if Jesus had directly enjoined it.
3 Acts xix., 1-7. The whole story gives the impression that
the relationship of Jesus to John the Baptist, and their respective
disciples, was closer than is stated. Those acquainted with the
history of Persia, and with the writings of Prof. Browne, will be
reminded of the relationship between the Bab and Beha.

Early Gentile Christianity 119
Jesus in Gahlee, but had not gone up to Jerusalem,
or heard the Messianic secret.
At what point did the Christians begin to
baptize in the name of Jesus Christ? According
to Acts, immediately after the Ascension. But
this is just one of the places where we have reason
to ask whether the writer has not projected some
of the customs of his own HeUenistic Christianity
into the picture of the Church at Jerusalem. In
the absence of evidence we cannot decide. It is
remarkable that in the speech of St. Peter in
Acts iii., which Harnack regards as a doublet
of the speech in Acts ii., baptism is not mentioned,
but repentance alone is required, as in the original
message of Jesus in Mark i., "The Kingdom of
Heaven is at hand. Repent!" Especially is this
important when it is observed that of all the early
chapters in Acts the third is that which most
certainly goes back to a separate (Greek?) source,
because it has peculiarities of diction which are
not found elsewhere in the book.
Similarly with regard to the Last Supper the
two ends of the development are much plainer
than its course. The account of "the institution
of the Eucharist" in Mark may perhaps be re
garded as an "institution," though it seems more
probably to have been a sign of the shortness of

120 The Stewardship of Faith
the time which was to elapse before the coming of
the kingdom, but it was scarcely a "Eucharist"
in the later sense. The point of the words seems
to be that the breaking of the bread and the out
pouring of the wine at the supper were symbols
of the approaching suffering' of Jesus whom God
would now so soon glorify in the kingdom which
was at hand. The background of thought is
eschatological and the sacramental conceptions
of Cathohc Christianity are absent.
On the other hand, the fourth gospel is abso
lutely Cathohc in the explanation of the Eucharist
given in John vi., and even if I Cor. x. does not
prove that St. Paul regarded the Eucharist as a
sacrificial meal, it at least shows that his Greek
converts took this view. It is very significant
that he regards this side of the matter as common
ground between himself and the Corinthians, but
thinks that it is necessary to remind them of
its eschatological significance, "Ye do show the
Lord's death, till he come."
To trace the details of the development is im
possible, and we may be sure that the writers of
the Gospels and of the Acts do not exaggerate
1 Possibly of his death, but see p. 46 f . In any case the repeti
tion of the rite was definitely connected with his death. Cf.
1 Cor. xi.

Early Gentile Christianity 121
the difference between the first and the last stage.
But it is clear that, granted the custom of a meal
in connection with the rehgious life of the com
munity, bound up in the mind of those who took
part in it with the death of Jesus, with the coming
of the kingdom and his manifestation as Messiah,
and with the foreshadowing of the Messianic
feast, together with the tradition that the Lord
had instituted this custom, converts from the
ranks of Greek God-fearers, who had accepted the
"Lord" as a Redeeming God, would inevitably
interpret this meal in the manner in which they
were accustomed to regard the rehgious meals
associated with the mysteries of other Redeeming
Gods. It is obvious that we have in this development
of Christological and sacramental thought the
recognizable beginnings of Cathohc Christianity.
Moreover, the Church, without ceasing to preach
and partiaUy to practise the world-renouncing
ethics of Jesus, began more and more consciously
to seek a synthesis with the world-accepting
ethics of the Empire. It became a society of
those who not only hope for a new age but also
accept the present age and the responsibihty of
taking part in its development. The Greek point

122 The Stewardship of Faith
of view, with its worship of the Lord and its sac
raments, became dominant, though the Jewish
element never whoUy died out; it was now neces
sary for the Church seriously to measure its
strength against its rivals and opponents. Some of
the consequences of this process and its permanent
value must be discussed in the three next chapters.

CHAPTER V
THE CHURCH AND HEATHENISM
Introduction — Plutarch and Justin — Intellectual Dishonesty —
Ethical Attitude of Heathenism — The Catholic Attitude —
Social Waste-products — The Sacramental Ministry — The
Catholic Position — The Protestant Position — The Sacra
mental View of Life — The Need of the Present.
THE general outlines of the Cathohc Christ
ianity, which resulted from the process de
scribed in the last chapter, are weU known,
whether it be regarded as an institution or as a
system of theology. As an institution it was a
sacramental ministry; as a theology it was the
appHcation of philosophy to the development of
the propositions that the Lord is Jesus and the
Lord is the Logos.
It is not my purpose to enter upon the details
concerned with the relation of Cathohc Christian
ity to contemporary thought; but rather to point
out how far it was modified by controversy with
rival systems, to emphasize the permanent ele
ments of truth which it so triumphantly expressed,
123

124 The Stewardship of Faith
though in its own way and under the conditions
of these controversies, and to show how it left a
legacy of thought and practice which every system
of theology must remember if it seeks to do for its
own generation what Cathohc Christianity did for
at least a thousand years to supply an inteUectuaUy
adequate system of thought and create a spiritu-
aUy satisfying corporate organization for the ex
pression of the common experience of rehgion.
It must never be forgotten that the main purpose
of Christian theologians during this period was
to obtain inteUectual correctness, a thing which
is never completely to be obtained, and is only
approached by the method of controversy. In
inteUectual life we are always engaged in dispute,
because in the attempt to enlarge the boundaries
of knowledge and logical thought our efforts are
always a mixture of failure and success. The
appeal for judgment is to our peers, and each man
who has any claim to be an original worker is in
turn judge and judged. Or to change the meta
phor, progress is obtained, as it were, by a process
of friction. One man's thoughts are rubbed up
against his rivals' until the excrescences are re
moved, and we obtain something which is not the
same as the original propositions, but is better than
either. The necessary condition for inteUectual

The Church and Heathenism 125
improvement in any society is the permission to
discuss and the recognition of the principle that
the less cannot judge the greater. The inteUectual
sterility of a great part of modern Christianity is
largely because free discussion has been rendered
impossible by the system of settling theological
disputes by discipline instead of argument, by an
appeal to past opinion instead of to logic or evi
dence, and by the authority of ecclesiastical officers
whose devotion to their own duties has rendered
it impossible for them to be in the forefront of
scholarship, so that they are often disposed to
ignore or misunderstand problems which students
have raised.
But it was eminently possible in the days of the
early Church, and the three opponents attacked
by the theological leaders of the day were Heathen
ism, Gnosticism, and what, for want of a better
name, may be caUed Uninstructed Christianity.
In none of these three disputes can we fairly say
that the whole truth was on the side of the Chris
tian theologian. But he was right on the case
as it was then presented by his immediate oppo
nent ; and if we study history with a view to under
standing its meaning rather than cataloguing
its facts, the important thing is to see why this
was so in each case. It wiU, moreover, be found

126 The Stewardship of Faith
to be roughly true that the development of the
sacramental ministry is more closely connected
with the struggle against Heathenism, the form
of the behef in God and the hope of a future life
with the struggle against Gnosticism, and the
development of Christology with the struggle
against Uninstructed Christianity.
In the controversy with Heathenism there is
nothing which so shocks the student as the dis
covery that again and again he is bound to admit
that the arguments of the Christian Apologists,
who were attacking Heathenism, often seem to be
wanting equaUy in justice and in logic. If we
compare the apology of Justin Martyr with, for
instance, Plutarch's book on Isis and Osiris, we
are struck by the fact that the Heathenism which
Justin attacks is a thing of straw which he sets
up in order to knock down, and that in some ways
Plutarch stands a great deal nearer to Justin than
he does to the caricature of Heathenism which
Justin attacks. Justin repeats again and again
all the arguments used by the Stoic philosophers
against the myths of Greek and Oriental theology;
Plutarch would probably have replied that he
fully agreed with the greater part of the Stoic
arguments, but that the whole complex of nar-

The Church and Heathenism 127
ratives were one long aUegory showing the working
of God and of the divine Logos in the world. If
you leave out the heathen mythology on the one
hand and the Old Testament history and the pre
sentation of the life of Jesus on the other, there
is very little difference between Plutarch and
Justin. Both regard the whole history of the
world as due to the working of the divine Logos,
both regard the chief end of man as his union with
the Logos, and both regard rehgion as the means
whereby this union may be accomphshed.
Plutarch was a cultivated, able man, spiritual
and reverent: he had aU the prestige of historic
continuity, social recognition, and ancestral tradi
tion on his side. The Christian Apologists were
fighting against aU these advantages and their
main weapon of offence, the prophetic interpreta
tion of the Old Testament, would not today find
any defender among the leaders of the study of
this subject. Justin argues that every event in
the life of Jesus is the fulfilment of some verse in
the Old Testament, and his powers of distorted
exegesis are almost incredible. Moreover, he
maintains that the demons, who masqueraded
as gods in Heathenism, knew these prophecies,
and produced false fulfilments in order to deceive
people. Thus not only the birth of Jesus, but

128 The Stewardship of Faith
also that of Perseus, was a fulfilment of prophecy
— the one the true fulfilment, the other the frau
dulent fulfilment by demons. The only thing
which the demons had not realized was the mean
ing of the prophecies of the crucifixion, and that
was the cause of their undoing. '
Why did this kind of argument succeed as
against Plutarch? One answer would be that it
did not really succeed. So long as the educated
serious heathen of Plutarch's type remained, so
long did the Christian Apologists make Httle
headway. The universal spread of Christianity
came when the decay of the Empire brought about
the disappearance of the intellectual heathen, or as
a prehminary to their disappearance their entire
retirement into private life. According to this
view Christianity conquered the Empire because
the educated classes despaired of dealing with the
proletariat and gave up the struggle.
There is an element of truth in this answer, as
can be seen by reading Dr. DiU's Roman Society
in the Fourth Century. It is probably true that
the Apologists made very Httle impression on the
¦ This view, that the redemptive work of the Cross was brought
about by deceiving the demons, who allowed Jesus to enter their
realms in ignorance of his triumph, is often found in early Chris
tian literature: cf., for instance, the Descensus ad Inferos in the
Acta Pilati.

The Church and Heathenism 129
better educated classes, and these rather died out
than were converted; but it is a mistaken view
if it be intended to show that the Christians were
wrong and the heathen right. The whole truth
was not on either side, but the balance of "right-
mindedness," rather than of correctness of thought,
was on the Christian side.
The defect of Heathenism was twofold: it was
intellectually not quite honest, for it subordinated
exact truth to the interests of an institution, and
it had a perverted view of the world-accepting
ethics which it ought to have taken over from the
best thought of the early Empire.
Plutarch and those like him were the victims
of a kind of inteUectual self-deception which would
amount to dishonesty if it were not unconscious.
They did not really beheve the mythology
which formed the basis of popular Heathenism
— they were too weU educated, and too intel-
Hgent. But they feared the breach in the conti
nuity of tradition which would be suffered if they
admitted its falsity. Therefore they said, "It is
true — symbohcaUy." A meaning was found for
everything, even the most obscene details and the
most foohsh trifles. Thus they could not really
escape the attacks either of merely destructive
philosophers, or of the Christians. The mytho-

130 The Stewardship of Faith
logy dragged them down with it, because they
could not see that it had become the distortion
instead of the expression of rehgion. It is true
that many of the Old Testament stories are as
mythological as those which Plutarch related:
but the difference was that the Christians abso
lutely beheved them. Sincere behef in a mistaken
creed does not always detract from a preacher's
message; but the pubhc ear is never kept by any
one who has constantly to stop in order to explain
that what he is saying is only symbohcaUy true,
when the language in which it is expressed was
clearly intended HteraUy by those who first made
use of it. The pubhc cannot always express its
meaning clearly, but what it feels is that the sym-
bohsm is not part of the original message: that it
is not extracted from the story, but put into it,
and that the same ingenuity could equaUy well
find any lesson anywhere. When a "sacred
history" — which is what Plutarch's mythology
was — has come to mean everything which the
preacher wishes, it has also come to mean nothing,
and his audience leaves him in the end for those
who say so.
Plutarch for aU his truly spiritual and beautiful
nature was looking to the past for the centre of
his rehgion. The Christians, in spite of the un-

The Church and Heathenism 131
couthness of much of their thought, found their
real inspiration in the present, and were Hving
for the future. And yet, even when we see clearly
that these educated heathen were wrong in their
attitude, both to the necessities of their less for
tunate neighbours, and to the inteUectual neces
sity for abandoning a mythology which they did
not believe to be true, and did not regard as really
essential to their rehgion — even then we leave
Plutarch with a sigh. He saw the value of historic
continuity, he wished to keep the inherited organi
zation, and recognized its enormous power. He
tried to do what Erasmus tried to accomplish in
the days of the Reformation. Both of them
failed, and their failure meant a real loss, because
the cause of progress proved in the end to have
passed to the keeping of those who were in many
ways greatly inferior in breadth of outlook and
in general cultivation.
Probably even more important" than this defect
in Heathenism was its ethical attitude. The Em
pire had developed a system of world-accepting
ethics, but in practice this had been degraded
by treating the preservation of institutions as a
substitute for the service of society, and by a
constant confusion between the maintenance of
privilege and the discharge of responsibihty. It

132 The Stewardship of Faith
is true that world-accepting ethics came from the
Empire rather than the Church; but it was the
Church which proved best to understand them
so that in the end they came to be known as
Christian ethics. Moreover at its best the Church
never overlooked the world-renouncing ethics of
Jesus: the expectation of the immediate coming
of the kingdom died away, but the truths which
it had rendered visible were never whoUy for
gotten. Cathohc teaching — always and neces
sarily in advance of Cathohc practice — combined
complementary truths without confusing them,
and produced generations of men and women who
proved their citizenship in the kingdom of heaven
by the faithful service of the society of mankind.
In this connection the real weakness of Heath
enism and the real strength of Christianity are
indicated by the famous sneer of Celsus' that
Christians appealed to the outcasts whom intel-
Hgent sects excluded. For in reahty the Christ
ian method was pohticaUy — using the word in
its proper sense — correct. The proletariat in the
Roman Empire like its modern analogue, was a
waste product of the social machine. The men
1 Origen, Contra Celsum, 3, 59. There is an admirable summary
of Celsus' arguments in T. R. Glover's Conflict of Religions in
the Early Roman Empire.

The Church and Heathenism 133
of the type of Celsus and the cults to which he
alludes were engaged in raising a barrier of "re-
spectabihty" between themselves and the less
desirable classes, by increasing and extending to
rehgious Hfe the wall of privileges separating them.
The uselessness of the waste products was ac
centuated. The Christians on the other hand
accepted the social outcast and endeavoured to
raise his general moral and religious standard.
They lessened the uselessness of the waste pro
ducts, and even succeeded in finding for them an
effective employment.
The failure of Heathenism, then, was because
it falsely interpreted the practical working out of
the world-accepting ethic which was pecuharly
its own message, while the Church reaUy carried
it into effect. It did so no doubt unconsciously,
and here again the abiding influence of the escha
tological expectation and of world-renunciation
can be traced. The Church called on the sinner
and social outcast to turn and amend his life, to
live soberly and honestly; it taught him right
conduct and pure thought. It did so in order to
prepare him for a New Age, which the angels
of the Lord would suddenly bring; but in fact
it produced a "new race" which possessed the
necessary virtues of good citizens, but were un-

134 The Stewardship of Faith
attached to the clogged machinery of the Empire.
Therefore, when the crash came and barbarian
armies rather than angelic hosts heralded a New
Age, it was the Christians, not the more cultivated
heathen, who were able to survive.
It is worth noting how closely these facts bear
on modern life, and how seriously they ought to
affect the thoughts of the leaders of Christian
churches. In the Roman Empire the accumu
lation of waste products became so great that
the machinery became clogged, and civilization —
which is rapid movement, not a stationary condi
tion — broke down.1 We now know the commer
cial value of finding uses for waste products, and
are well aware that a business in which the pro
portion of waste products is constantly increasing
is doomed to bankruptcy. Yet if we look at the
world as a whole, we find that there is practicaUy
only one business in which the percentage of
waste product is increasing instead of diminish
ing, and that is the factory of human lives. The
real tragedy of modern life is that whereas social
improvements are increasing the average length
of actual existence, economic methods are shorten
ing the period of efficient existence. That is to
1 The barbarians did not come because they were strong, but
because the Empire had become weak.

The Church and Heathenism 135
say, a man who does not happen to have the ad
vantage of belonging to the class of brain workers
has now the right to expect that he wiU Hve longer
than his grandfather did, but he has also the un
pleasant certainty that he wiU not be able to go
on working productively so long as his grandfather
did. In other words, there is in his existence a
longer period of life which, sociaUy speaking, is
a waste product.
Ultimately, if the process be continued, this
must bring the social machinery to the scrap-
heap, and only those parts of our "triumphant
civiHzation" wiU survive which have shown some
capacity for deahng with waste products. Would
this again be the Christian Church?
The sacramental ministry of the Catholic
Church is the positive side of this mission of
Christianity to the "waste products" and failures
of life. Those who are whole need no physician,
but, not only among the "waste products" in
the economic sense, there are always many who
are spiritually failures, and need help. To define
the relationship, in terms of cause and effect,
between the nervous system and the psychical
condition of those whom William James calls "sick
souls" is difficult; but the two things are inti
mately connected. There is always a large class of

136 The Stewardship of Faith
people who are suffering from the consciousness of
spiritual evil in themselves, with which they are
fighting a losing battle, and this consciousness
breaks down their nervous strength; just as on
the other hand there are those whose nervous
system is weakened by strain or overwork, and
betrays them into moral and spiritual faUure.
Such men need physicians and treatment. That
is exactly what the sacramental ministry sought
to provide.
Why are men miserable? asked the Church,
and answered the question by saying that it was
because of sin. It did not analyse closely the
concept of sin, but it offered release from it by
baptism. The original position was that baptism
alone was the cure for sin ; it was in itself sufficient
for the needs of the believer. Experience, how
ever, showed the difficulty of this position; it
became more and more clear that Christians were
not immune from the attacks of sin, and if sin
lessness were reaUy required from them as a con
dition of salvation few indeed would be saved.
Sin after baptism thus became a practical prob
lem; a second baptism, suggested by some, was
regarded as impossible, but nevertheless analo
gous rites — in so far as they were looked upon
as sacraments — were established. Penitence (or

The Church and Heathenism 137
Penance, to use the more customary word) and
the Mass came to be used as the sacramental
means whereby Christians could be cleansed from
the stains of post-baptismal sin, and the ministry
of the Church developed into a great system for
their administration, in order to heal and comfort
souls stricken with sin and calHng for the care of
a physician.1 It is impossible to ignore the fact that there is
in modern Christianity the widest variation of
opinion as to the value of this development. The
Cathohc regards the sacramental ministry as
the thing which he prizes above everything; the
Protestant as a miserable perversion of the truth
and the recrudescence of heathen practices. There
is, I beheve, nothing more important than the
correct understanding of the way in which both
of the positions are based upon an imperfect
appreciation, rather than on a complete misun
derstanding of the facts.
The Cathohc position is that believers2 obtain
grace through the outward forms of the Christian
1 The details of this development are obscure, but some of its
more important features are discussed in an appendix on pp. 213 ft.
2 It is worth noticing that the modern psychiaters would say
that the sacraments "work" by suggestion; the theologians say
by "faith." In the end they are not so far apart, and ultimately
they will probably learn to understand and value each other's
contributions.

138 The Stewardship of Faith
sacraments. The evidence of thousands of pious
Cathohcs is that this is really their experience.
They feel that the sacraments of the Confessional
and the Mass are for them really sources of spirit
ual life which help them in their difficulties, and
are for them the centre of their religious Hfe. We
have not got the least right to say that the Catho
hcs deceive themselves, that it is not so, and that
it is merely superstition. What seems to me to
be wrong is when Cathohcs say that no one else
can obtain the same grace by any other means.
There, I venture to think, the evidence is against
them, for if we take the case of the modern Pro
testant, and listen to his evidence with the same
respect which we have paid to the Cathohc, we
have to admit that he obtains the same grace by
other means. He goes to the Church Service on
Sunday morning, or Sunday evening. Is it not
true that he does again and again receive from that
service (which is not called a sacrament but is so in
reahty) exactly the same lifting up of his spiritual
life? It helps him, and it sends him on his way
a refreshed and a better man. Go on one step
further, and take the Quaker. He goes to his
Meeting, and there is no word spoken, yet he
also goes away from it feehng spirituaUy re
freshed and a better man, and I must add my

The Church and Heathenism 139
own testimony that so also do others who with
out being Quakers have been privileged to attend
their meetings.
Cathohc, Protestant, and Quaker in their re
spective ways all eat of the same spiritual food and
drink of the same spiritual drink, and we are faced
here by one of the really fundamental facts of
existence, that for the great majority of the human
race, and probably for aU of us, spiritual Hfe is
always conveyed along material channels. That
seems to me to be the truth which is contained in
sacramental teaching. "All things are double,
one against another," and we only obtain cog
nizance of the infinite and spiritual through the
finite and material world. Therefore aU these
statements of rehgious experience are true as long
as they are not made exclusive. All through we
have a series of what I prefer to call sacraments.
The Catholic has. the consecrated element of the
Mass. The Protestant — I am thinking mainly of
the Protestant of Holland — has his Church Service
with psalms and sermon, which is to him more than
an address by the preacher because it links him
up with the historic past of his church and nation,
and becomes to him a sacrament, though he would
not perhaps choose that word to describe it. The
Quaker has found in his Meeting a sacrament in

140 The Stewardship of Faith
which silence is the outward and visible sign.
Surely the same thing is true of life as a whole.
There are two ways of regarding life. We can
regard it as a finite existence in which we are irre
trievably imprisoned. Or we can regard it as a
continuing process of constant revelation of an
infinite world behind the finite one. That is
sacramental : it leads us to realize that everything
in life has a double value, and to see that suc
cess, failure, pleasure, and sorrow — to take some
of the elemental things — are not merely incidents,
favourable or unfavourable, in our existence.
They are things through which we obtain the
sacramental insight into the infinite world behind.
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be.
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore
And hear the mighty waters roUing evermore.
It was for that reason that in the history of Israel
the servant of the prophet at one moment saw
only the hiUs of Samaria, bleak and bare, and the
next moment they seemed to him fuU of horses
and chariots of fire.
Thus with regard to sacraments as means of

The Church and Heathenism 141
spiritual grace the Cathohc was right, and is
right, in claiming their efficiency as medicine for
the sick soul, or as food for the soul that is not
sick, and the Protestant has been right in resisting
the Cathohc claim to, as it were, an exclusive
control. The question becomes a Httle more
comphcated if one passes on to the question of the
physician, who is to administer the medicine —
from the sacramental rite to the sacramental
ministry itself. Here at first sight the Protestant
seems to have good reason for his attack: he can
say with justice that the Confessional and the
Cathohc priesthood have been responsible for
untold misery and crime. He is, I believe, per
fectly right: but he could say the same of the
custom of taking drugs. Abusus non totlit usum.
If a man is sick, whether physically or spiritually,
he needs personal care : of course he will suffer if he
faU into the hands of an ignorant, bad doctor,
but the true remedy for that is to improve medical
training, not to abohsh physicians. The reaction
at the Reformation against the Cathohc priest
hood led to the neglect of this fact.
It was felt, and rightly felt, that the Confessional
had been abused, and that the priest had only the
same power to "forgive sins" as any other man;
but the fact was overlooked that the element of

142 The Stewardship of Faith
value in the Confessional was that it afforded a
refuge for the sick soul. It was desirable to educate
the physician, and to change the method of the
consultation; but Protestantism forgot that, taken
at its best, the Confessional stood for the inter
course of the sick man with the physician. It was
right, I beheve, to abolish the Confessional; but
it was wrong not to provide some means for doing
the work which it was intended to perform.
The result has been that for many generations
in Protestant countries the pulpit, the preaching
of the Word, and the practice of philanthropy
have largely obscured the "one thing needful" —
the care of the spiritually sick; and the temptation
of the clergy has been too much to busy themselves
with the preaching of faith and the practice of
good works, to study too Httle the necessity of
those whose souls are crying out for help, and to
assume that all of them are suffering from the same
disease, and need the same treatment.
In the same way, to an extent which is perhaps
seldom reahzed, both the strength and weakness
of the Church of Rome1 are to be found in its
possession of the Confessional. It is its weakness,
* I do not feel that the same can be said of the English Church:
my own experience has been that the Anglican priest who encour
ages confession is, as a rule, much inferior in wisdom to the
Roman, though no doubt there are exceptions.

The Church and Heathenism 143
because by insisting on it for aU, whether they be
spiritually sick or not, it induces in the healthy a
habit of, as it were, spiritual drug-taking; it is its
strength, because it provides a means whereby
the spirituaUy sick can obtain advice and treat
ment from men who, even if they have only learnt
it empirically, have often a singularly good know
ledge of the pathology of spiritual Hfe.
In this respect no Protestant church can com
pete with the Roman Cathohc, and the future of
Christianity in Northern Europe depends on the
power and the willingness of the Roman Catholics
to change and develop the Confessional, and of the
Protestants to make good their deficiencies, not,
of course by a return to the Confessional so much
as by an attempt to do in a modern way what the
Confessional did in the manner of the Middle Ages.
The first step in this direction would be the scien
tific study of psychology. The generation in
which we Hve is one which pays less and less atten
tion to the homiletics and diatribes of the pulpit;
but it is also a generation which is spiritually
more dehcate than its predecessors; and it looks
for a Church which wiU help it back to spiritual
health, and wiU give individual attention to indi
vidual souls, recognizing the infinite variety of
religious experiences, both healthy and diseased,

144 The Stewardship of Faith
of which the human soul is capable. At the pre
sent moment in Protestant circles those who are
— consciously or not — spirituaUy sick probably
consult their doctor far more often than they do
the clergy, and because the doctor is usually the
man who, in the present constitution of society
has the most knowledge of the obscure sides Of
human nature, it is not surprising that they do so;
but the clergy should not forget that this fact is
in itself an indictment of their competence.

CHAPTER VI
THE CHURCH AND GNOSTICISM
Gnosticism — The Theory of the Pleroma — Creation — The
Christian Opposition — The Present Position — Redemption
— The Resurrection of the Flesh — St. Paul — Catholics and
Protestants — Purgatory — The Modem Man.
EVEN more important than the struggle
with Heathenism was that with Gnosticism.
Gnosticism' was an illegitimate child of
the Mystery rehgions. It accepted the prevaihng
astral theology and the Weltanschauung which
went with it, but it made concessions to the general
human desire to obtain freedom by avoiding the
determinism of destiny.
Its main features can easily be described,
though it is impossible to attain either' certainty
¦ Of recent literature the most necessary contributions are:
A. Hilgenfeld, Ketzergeschichte des Urchristentums; W. Bousset,
Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, and the articles Gnosis and Gnostiker
in Pauly Wissowa's ReaUEncyklopadie and E. de Faye, Introduc
tion d, I'Stude du Gnosticisme. See also P. Wendland, Die Hel-
lenistisch-rbmische Kultur, pp. 163-187, especially valuable as a
short account with full and instructive references to the literature
of the subject. For purely heathen Gnosticism Reitzenstein
Poimandres is indispensable, though to be used with caution.
10 145

146 The Stewardship of Faith
or clearness when the details are approached. It
was held that "in the beginning" there was one
primeval being, the AU Father, and the Silence
which surrounded him. Whether this is, strictly
speaking, Duahsm is perhaps not quite so certain
as is sometimes maintained: I am not sure that
some Gnostics were not trying to be Monists,
but were impeded by the difficulty of thinking of
existence without at once also thinking of non
existence as equally real. However that may be,
the Gnostics certainly went on to conceive of the
propagation of a series of Beings from this original
pair, AU-Father and Silence, until at last a complete
system of Beings was obtained — the Pleroma,1
or Fulness. These were (usually, at aU events)
regarded as a series of pairs, male and female,
and were estabhshed in a fixed order, each with
its own place in the Pleroma. But when one of
them, moved by curiosity, tried to leave its place
and to approach the Father, this was prevented,
though ultimately the erring being was restored
to its place. In the meantime, however, desire
to leave its place had given rise to passion, and
from this arose a new Being outside the Pleroma,
1 1 do not mean that the names of "All-Father," or "Silence,"
or "Pleroma" are to be found in all the systems, but they, or
something like them, are commonly met with, especially in the
partially Christianized forms of Gnosticism.

The Church and Gnosticism 147
who, directly or indirectly, became the creator of
the material world.' Matter thus divorced from
the Pleroma was inherently evil; but in it, as in
the creator, there was shut up a spark of the
original spiritual Hfe. To redeem this spark one
of the other spiritual beings came out of the Ple
roma, and in a more or less compHcated manner
effected the redemption of the spiritual from the
material, so that ultimately the one could be an
nihilated and the other be restored to the Pleroma.
The main point of such speculation is that
creation, including the stars, was a mistake, due to
a "slip" as it were, on the part of an originally
divine spiritual being, and that man is only under
the domination of the astral necessity so far as his
material nature is concerned; his spiritual nature
belongs to a higher world, remote from matter.
Therefore the chief object of man is to set free
his spiritual nature from its material imprison
ment, and this can be accomphshed by means of
secret "knowledge" and by making use of sacra
mental rites. The varieties of form in which this
principle was worked out were manifold. Some
of them — represented by the systems of Basihdes
and Valentinus — are known to us through the con-
1 In some systems, at all events, this Being repeated the series
of emanations in the Pleroma.

148 The Stewardship of Faith
troversial writings of Christian writers, such as Iren
aeus and Hippolytus, though their methods are pro
bably largely caricatured. Some were reaUy more
Christian than Gnostic, ' while other forms, such as
those found in the Hermetic literature, remained
purely heathen. Furthermore, in this multitude
of sects we have a similar variety of detaU in
the theology, from the comparative simplicity of
Poimandres or Marcion to the "witches' dance" —
to adopt Bousset's phrase — of the Pistis Sophia.
But whatever the details were the main points
remained always fixed: creation and redemption
were connected with one another, not by identi
fying the creator and the redeemer, but by bring
ing in the redeemer to undo the work of creation,
and human nature was split into two irreconcilable
parts — flesh and spirit. This division of human
nature did not always have the same effect.
Sometimes it resulted in extreme asceticism: the
flesh is evil; subdue it, ill-treat it, conquer it, was
the gospel of many sects, especiaUy perhaps the
earher ones.2 But the opposite opinion was also
1 Marcion indeed ought rather to be regarded as a Christian
who took over the Gnostic Weltanschauung, while Basilides was
more probably — certainty is here not to be attained — a Gnostic
who accepted the Christian story.
2 1 am not quite sure whether this chronological distinction
holds good: the point is not clear.

The Church and Gnosticism 149
held, that because the flesh was evil and the spirit
good, the acts of the flesh were unimportant, and
could be disregarded. Thus the same presup
position led to the opposed results of extreme
asceticism and extreme Hcence.
It was these sides of Gnosticism which Cathohc
Christianity combated. Against the doctrine that
creation was the wrong deed of a misguided
spiritual being, which necessitated the intervention
of a higher agency to redeem the results of its
mistaken acts, it set the account in Genesis of
the creation of a world originally pronounced good
by the Almighty Father himself, and explained
redemption as the act of his own son Jesus Christ,
who had come to men, not to free them from mate
rial existence or to destroy the world, but to
restore alike to mankind and to the world the
perfection of which the devil had robbed them. '
Similarly, against the radical division of flesh
and spirit it placed the fact of the essential unity
of human nature. On both points there can be
no doubt but that Gnosticism was wrong. But
1 It must be noted that much of the danger of Gnosticism was
due to its resemblance to the Christian-Jewish Weltanschauung.
In both systems — Gnostic and Christian — there was the idea of
a fallen spiritual being: in Christianity, however, he was not the
creator but the corrupter of the world, and man was not his
creation but his victim.

150 The Stewardship of Faith
each of them deserves further discussion, because —
as usuaUy happens — the form in which the Church
expressed its verdict though right as against its
immediate opponent, becomes an obstacle to
progress if it be regarded as a final statement of
absolute truth, and is wielded as a weapon in
controversies which were never heard of when
the classical dogmas of Christianity were drawn
up. The Christian opposition to the Gnostic view of
creation may be regarded as crystalHzed in the
first article of the Apostles' Creed, "I beheve in
God, the Father, almighty, the maker of heaven
and earth," which represents not so much the
desire to exclude heathen polytheism as Gnostic
dualism.' The Gnostics had said that creation
was not the act of the supreme God, whom they
approached in rehgion, but of an inferior Demiurge,
and that evil was part of its constitution. The
Christians accepted the Jewish cosmogony of the
first chapters of Genesis and held that the supreme
1 At what date the phrase "maker of heaven and earth" was
put into the Apostles' Creed is open to question. But the evi
dence of Hermas, Mand, I, is conclusive that the idea expressed
is primitive and goes back to the days of Gnostic controversy.
McGiffert's book, The Apostles' Creed, may not have succeeded
in showing that the whole creed is polemic against Marcion,
but I think that his view holds good if for "Marcion" we say
"Gnostic."

The Church and Gnosticism 151
God had created the world in a state of goodness,
and that evil having been introduced by inferior
beings — men and angels — was not inherent in
its constitution.
In other words, the Gnostics distinguished the
God of rehgion from the God of creation while
the Christians identified them. Looking back
on the controversy, it is now possible to see that,
while the Gnostics were clearly wrong, the Chris
tians claimed too much knowledge. There are
two fines by which we may approach the problem
of the existence of God: the philosophical, which
shows that the universe is due to a First Cause,
whom we caU God, and the rehgious, which shows
that in his spiritual life man is conscious of contact
with a being greater than himself and external
to himself, whom we also call God. The question
is whether there is evidence to separate or to
identify these two "Gods." The Gnostic was
certainly wrong in separating them, but was the
Christian right in claiming to identify them with
clear knowledge of the exact method of creation
and of the origin of evil? That seems to me to be
more than doubtful.
Two things are really important for defining
the general position of the modern man as com
pared with that of the ancient Church. First, we

152 The Stewardship of Faith
are convinced that there can be no antithesis
between the Source of existence and the Guide of
existence — or, to use abstract instead of concrete
terms, between creation and religion. So far we
agree entirely with the early Christians and reject
Gnostic dualism. Secondly, we need to recognize
with clearness that the primitive Church intended
to go further than this and to accept as literal
history the account of creation in Genesis. The
majority of us do not accept this any longer,
though some deceive themselves into thinking that
they do so by treating it as allegory. It was not
meant to be read as an allegory, and if you treat
as an allegory what was written as a statement of
fact you reject the intention of the author, even
though by a process of exegetical violence you
may succeed in persuading yourself that you can
use his words to express your own feelings. It is
an undeniable fact that to the educated world' the

1 What opened my eyes first to the importance of this was the
discovery, when I was a curate in Lumley — a pit village in Dur
ham — that the more intelligent miners, the "deputies," who
went to elementary classes in geology for professional purposes,
realized the contradiction between the teaching which they
received, the proofs of which they saw in the mines, and the details
of the story in Genesis. Such men did not doubt but that the
story in Genesis is the basis of Christianity, and therefore regarded
Christianity as disproved. Yet we are told not to preach about
"criticism." The great danger to Christianity is not the open

The Church and Gnosticism 153
cosmogony in Genesis is merely a piece of Semitic
Weltanschauung unacceptable to those who believe
in modern scientific research. It is perhaps only
theory against theory, but the modern world has
chosen its theory, and its view of God has changed
accordingly. The view which is represented in the
creed is that above the universe there is an Al
mighty Being, who called the world into existence
by a series of sudden acts, and at times still inter
poses in its working with acts of the same nature.
The modern view says very little about the begin
ning of the world ; frankly, it does not pretend to
know how the universe came into being. But it
recognizes a great purpose running through it so
far as it can be observed both in space and time,
and the modern man of good will is above aU
things anxious to bring his own efforts, whatever
they may be, into harmony with this purpose. It is
sometimes said that this is the abandonment of
the belief in a personal God, but this is a miscon
ception. From one point of view you cannot
have a purpose without a person, and from an
other it is noteworthy that in common parlance
"person" and "personal" have obtained a some
what different meaning from that in which the
attack, but the silent desertion of intelligent men, who go away
for lack of instruction which they can understand or accept.

154 The Stewardship of Faith
theologian speaks of a "personal God. " I take it \
that when we say we believe in a personal God we
ought to mean that the highest form of reahty j
which we know is personality, and that therefore
God, who is the ultimate reahty, must be at least
as much as "personal" implies. In that sense
a personal God is certainly part of modern belief.
But I fear that the phrase is often wrongly used to
mean that personahty, the highest form of reality
known, is the absolutely highest possible form, or,
still worse, to express a belief in an arbitrary being, '
who is omnipotent, but only sometimes uses his
power. The difficulty is that the man in the street has
often a higher ideal than the man in the pulpit;
he believes intensely that the orderly universe has
a purpose, and rehgion means to him very precisely
just that subordination, previously aUuded to, of
his own wiU to this great purpose of which he sees
the signs everywhere. It seems to him that the
man in the pulpit very often teaches something
less, not greater, than this, and he rejects such
teaching, not because he is less rehgious, but be-
1 As an indication how far we have travelled from any intelli
gent understanding of orthodox theology it should be noted that
many will speak of God as " a person, " and not realize at all that
this is not an orthodox statement in any church of Christianity,
except, perhaps, the Unitarian.

The Church and Gnosticism 155
cause he is more intelligent, or, at all events, has
more knowledge, than previous generations.
But that is not all : belief in God, whatever form
it may take, is the basis of theistic rehgion. Christ
ianity is more than this; it is essentially a re
hgion of redemption. Its message is not merely
to the "healthy-minded, " of a great purpose in the
world, but also to the wanderers and to the sick
who ask help and succour. That is one of the
main gifts of religion; I do not think in the Hght
of the study of the history of religions it is possible
to maintain that only Christianity has given it,
and that no other faith has done so. On the
contrary, I feel sure that the same gift was found
by the initiates in many of the heathen Mysteries.
But certainly Christianity has been strong because
beyond all others it has made that gift to suffering
humanity. It has done so more by means of the
"consolations of religion," than by theological
arguments, but it has also connected the gift with
a certain definite theory to which, rather than to
the fact of rehgious experience, the name of
Redemption has been attached. The creeds
crystallized the theory into the phrase, "For us
men and for our salvation." It is important to
note that here again we have the aftermath of the
controversy with Gnosticism, and the historian

156 The Stewardship of Faith
cannot but sometimes fear that institutional
Christianity is in danger because it refuses to
distinguish the truth of experience — the same in
the present as in the past — from a form of expres
sion which served its day against the Gnostics and
is now worn out.
The theory of redemption accepted by the
Church was even more closely united with the
theory of creation than it was among the Gnostics.
It is primarily Pauline :
Therefore as through the one man Sin came into
the world and through Sin came Death, and so Death
passed on to all men ... so then as by one trans
gression the change to condemnation fell on all men,
so also by one righteous act there came a change on
all men to an acquittal of life, for just as by the dis
obedience of the One man the Many were put into
the position of sinners, so also by the obedience of
the One man the Many shaU be put into the position
of righteousness.
Against whom is St. Paul arguing? That is a
problem which is very hard to answer, but in any
case his statement soon came to serve as the foun
dation of the Christian theory of redemption. It
rests on two points regarded as equally decisive:
the life of Adam and the life of Jesus are counter
balancing historical facts. This is the view inher
ent in the creeds. But what becomes of it if you

The Church and Gnosticism 157
admit that one of these two facts is not historical
at aU? The apologist of ecclesiastical orthodoxy
is faced by this difficulty, and whether the realiza
tion of this will turn out to be the beginning of
a new period of vigour for Christianity or of de
cay and death depends on the way in which the
situation is faced.
The attempt to explain away the story of Crea
tion and the Fall by means of allegory, as Plutarch
dealt with his myths, offers no permanent help,
though it is at first sight the easiest way, for it
cannot be denied that the story was originaUy
meant and subsequently accepted as Hteral truth.
Such treatment can never satisfy the educated but
untheological public, which is quick to see in it
an evasion rather than a solution of the problem.
The alternative is to face the facts, and study
the nature of religion. What is it that forms the
experiential basis of aU theories of redemption?
It is the feeling of the bhnd man in the Gospel:
" This one thing I know, that whereas I was bhnd,
now I see" — the consciousness of health after
weakness and misery. That is the fundamental
fact of all "redemptive" religions. The welt'
anschauung of the Gnostic, and of the Catholic,
combined with experience, was bound to result
in Gnostic and Catholic theories of redemption.

158 The Stewardship of Faith
But we, almost unconsciously, have been obliged
to take over from geologists, anthropologists, and
biologists a new Weltanschauung1 which teUs us
that men have lived on the earth for innumerable
centuries, that there is no evidence of a "Fall,"2
that men have been always imperfect, but also
have always, though with many relapses, struggled
upwards, seeing the heights and stumbling towards
them. To express the facts of religious conscious
ness in the language of this Weltanschauung is
surely not an impossibility, even though it has not
yet been done adequately. Certainly it includes
the consciousness that the sufferings of the right
eous have always been the price of progress, and
that the Purpose which we recognize as Divine not
only wiUs the progress but also joins in the suffer
ing. And equally certainly it includes the con
sciousness of the sick and miserable that — to use
a metaphor — a strong hand has reached down and
helped them out of the slough into which they had
fallen and that they have passed out of their
troubles. Just as the beginning of the creed reflects the
struggle against Gnosticism, so also does the end ;
1 We are bound to do so, because it rests on observed fact which
cannot be put on one side.
2 That is in the sense of a single great historical fact which
perverted the whole race.

The Church and Gnosticism 159
the belief in the "Resurrection of the flesh"1 is
purely polemic against the Gnostic view which
separated spirit and flesh, making the spirit eternal
and the flesh of no importance. It is desirable to
understand clearly what the object of the Church
was, because here also this was unquestionably
correct, though it may be doubted whether it
found the final or the best way of attaining it.
The Gnostic split human nature into two parts,
one important, the other unimportant. Against
this the Church reacted, and said in effect that it is
impossible to split up human nature in this way;
a man is a man, and is not a fortuitous combina
tion of flesh and spirit, and action is not action by
the spirit or by the flesh, but by the whole man.
In many ways that is a healthy doctrine which
commands our assent; it is indubitably true of
our present existence. But the Catholic Christian
went, on to argue that therefore it must necessarily
be so, so long as man retains his identity. The
work of Athenagoras, for instance, on the Resur
rection of the Dead is full of this contention. The
difficulty is that we know that when we die our
bodies remain for a longer or shorter period in the
grave and are ultimately absorbed by the earth.
1 It is, in view of the loose translation familiar to us, necessary
to note that the Latin is resurrectionem carnis, not corporis.

i6o The Stewardship of Faith
If personal existence is only possible in the body of
flesh, obviously the dead remain dead, even though
they may rise again ultimately in a general resur
rection of dead bodies. If we cannot exist as
"we" without the flesh, no one whose flesh has
died is still alive.1 That position was not impos
sible so long as the expectation of the last day was
imminent, but as soon as that receded into the
background the difficulty was felt. What hap
pened was that the older teaching of St. Paul
was partially revived, and conflated rather than
combined with the simple anti-Gnostic doctrine
of the resurrection of the flesh.
St. Paul's doctrine was quite clear; he did not
believe in a resurrection of the flesh; so much he
conceded to his Greek opponents. He beheved
that the dead would rise changed into spiritual
beings, and that the living would be changed in
the same way but without dying. That doctrine
he applied to the general resurrection ; the question
of the position of the dead between their death and
the resurrection he does not touch upon clearly.2
1 Because if the ego consists of flesh and spirit, not of one or the
other alone, so long as one part — in this case, the flesh — is
obviously dead, the ego is in a state of non-existence.
2 2 Cor., iii., does not, I think, refer to the resurrection, but to
those who — and St. Paul regarded this as the normal experience
— survived to the Parousia. Philipp. i., 23 ff., however, perhaps
shows that, at least at times, he held more "Greek" views.

The Church and Gnosticism 161
The Catholics soon went further and applied it
not to the general resurrection but to the state of
each person after death. Thus there arose the
view that after death man exists as a spiritual
being, but that at the general resurrection this
spiritual being wUl receive back the body which
he had before. Going on one step further this
prolonged spiritual life was regarded as continu
ing the possibilities of development and improve
ment of the present life, even though its general
character was fixed.
Such is the general outline of the development of
the Catholic position as against the Gnostics, and
influenced by the desire to exclude the pernicious
doctrine that the acts of the flesh and of the spirit
do not affect each other.
If we wish to look at it from the point of view of
the necessities of the modern man, there are three
things to claim attention : ( i ) the way in which this
belief reacted on the form of belief in the resurrec
tion of Jesus; (2) the value of Protestant amend
ments of the Catholic position; (3) the general
possibilities which seem to be open to those who
think in the manner of the modem man.
(1) The original form of the belief in the resur
rection of Jesus is preserved by imphcation in 1
Cor. xv. The end of the Marcan narrative is

162 The Stewardship of Faith
missing in the gospel of St. Mark, owing to the
accidental or deliberate mutilation of the oldest
copies, ' and does not seem to have been foUowed
either by Matthew or Luke. St. Paul is not very
explicit on the subject, but he clearly regards the
resurrection of Jesus as a model which the resur
rection of Christians wiU ultimately foUow, and
he distinctly states that flesh and blood wiU not
inherit the Kingdom of God. As it is quite clear
that he regards Jesus as belonging to the Kingdom
of God, it follows that he regarded the resurrection
of Jesus as not of flesh and blood, but of a spiritual
body. Obviously this is more in agreement with
the Greek and ultimately with the Gnostic point
of view (though Pauline and Gnostic teaching are
in the main opposed to one another) than with the
Catholic position, and Catholic Christianity re
wrote the narrative in the later gospels, empha
sizing the belief that in the resurrection of Jesus
there was a resurrection or resuscitation of the
flesh. 2 In this way, owing to the influence of the
1 A few critics, of whom Wellhausen is the most distinguished,
think that the original narration really ended with Mk. xvi., 8, but
this seems to me very improbable.
' It is, I think, possible to trace a great part of the details of the
change which the narration underwent. I have endeavoured to
do this with considerable minuteness in the Historical Evidence
for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, published by Williams &
Norgate in England and by the Putnams in America.

The Church and Gnosticism 163
struggle with Gnosticism, the Catholic theologian
was brought to the behef in the resuscitation of
the buried flesh of Jesus, although this was not the
belief of St. Paul' — and if it was not the behef of
St. Paul it is not likely that it was the behef of
the other disciples.
(2) The Protestant reformation cut out from the
Catholic theology the behef in a period of further
probation and purgation after death. It kept the
behef in the final judgment of the last day. It
did so really because the belief in purgatory had
been exploited for financial advantage by the baser
elements in the Roman Church, and it justified
its act by the absence of proof in Scripture. To
the modern mind Protestantism on this subject,
as on others, seems to have chosen the wrong Hne.
To us a belief in purgatory, which imphes develop
ment and further education, is an infinitely more
acceptable doctrine than the Protestant presenta
tion of a period of age-long changeless waiting,
followed by a judgment which inflicts eternal
recompenses for temporal acts. We no longer
can dissociate life from development, or from
1 It is possible — I think even probable — that St. Paul believed
in a transmutation of the buried flesh into the risen spirit, but
that is not the same thing as resuscitation. I do not argue that
it is easier to believe, or has better evidence in its support, but
merely that it is different from the later Catholic teaching.

164 The Stewardship of Faith
continuity; the man of to-day can easfiy believe
that after death his life wfil pass into a new state
of existence, conditioned by his actions here, and
influencing his position in stiU remoter states, but
he not so much rejects as is unable to take seriously
the common Protestant theology which asks him to
believe that when he buries the body of some friend
he is to think that ' ' now the labourer's task is o'er "
and the dead are to "sleep until the Resurrection
day." The gospel of hope and faith is just the
reverse, that the labourer's task is not over, and
that the life which has here been faithful in a few
matters has gone forth to renewed service in some
other sphere of action. What we need is teaching
which keeps the idea of purgation and education
after death, and finally gives up the Jewish behef
in a single "day of judgment. "
(3) But in what form wiU this higher service be
achieved? There we pass the limits of human
knowledge, and it is not faith but superstition
which asks us to attach the value of certain know
ledge to unsubstantiated opinion. StiU, so far as
opinions go, there seem to me to be two lines upon
which modern thought is advancing, and the
Christian churches, if they wish to survive, cannot
ignore them.
First, we can believe in the permanence of

The Church and Gnosticism 165
individuality, apart from the body. That is to
say, we can beheve that when we die our bodies
wiU slowly disappear through the process of chem
ical dissolution, but that we, that which makes us
what we are, wUl survive; that there is not only a
continuity of Hfe, but a continuity of that form
of consciousness which makes our life what it is as
distinct from any one else's form of life. That is a
possibility. Of course if we beKeve this, we are not
necessarily obliged to say that we beheve that
that wiU be the last form of change. There may
be something more. Obviously, however, we have
here come to the limits of human understanding,
and it is reaUy not profitable to carry speculation
any further. But I do wish to express my own
feeling that there is more value in experimental
research in this direction than theologians have
admitted. It is a curious thing that, as a matter
of practice, the theologian who beheves most
strongly in the survival of life after death is very
often the last person to admit the cogency of any
evidence which goes to show that there reaUy is
such a survival. We find that the men who have
taken most interest in experimental research for
any signs of the survival of consciousness after
death are not theologians. Yet, though it is
doubtful how far the evidence takes us on this

166 The Stewardship of Faith
Hne, it is obvious that we cannot neglect it, if we
want to study the question properly. In view of
the extremely distinguished men of science who are
— I will not say prepared to accept such evidence —
but who are prepared to say that they regard it
as calling for further research I do not think it is
a possible attitude for theologians to put it aU
on one side. Whether the evidence will ultimately
prove convincing is to my mind still doubtful.
If it succeed in making good its case, the matter is,
up to a point, settled. If it fail, renewed emphasis
will be laid on an alternative possibihty.
The question will be raised, far more pointedly
than has yet been the case, whether we may not
be mistaken in thinking that the difference be
tween "you" and "me" is so very important.
Suppose that that is only the limitation of life,
not the expression of it; that what happens after
death is that the life which has been, as it were,
bottled up in our individualities, is released, and
goes back into the main stream. That is also a
survival of life after death.' We have no right
even to say that in that case it does not matter
1 Those who object most vigorously to this view seem to
confuse the survival of life with the survival of memory. Yet
the fact that few of us have any memory of our first two years
of existence does not usually make us deny that we were alive
during that period.

The Church and Gnosticism 167
what we do with our own little bit of life. It
does matter, because we are affecting the main
stream after we return to it. That is, therefore,
also a possibihty.
I am not personally able to go any further as
yet. I do not believe in a resurrection of my flesh;
I do believe in the permanence of life, but I do
not see that we have any satisfactory evidence to
enable us to say what form that permanence of
life will take. It seems clear that whatever form
it may take, the use we make now of our life bears
a direct relation to the value of life as a whole.
Therefore, it is, after all, the attitude of deeper
faith to be content to acknowledge our ignorance
of the details. Faith is neither a substitute for
knowledge, nor opinion unbased on evidence, but
trust in the guidance of a higher power. The
men of to-day do not feel willing to accept opinion
on points outside the reach of observation, but
though they use other language to express it,
they are willing to walk, unafraid, through the
valley of the shadow of death, because they trust
even then the guidance which they have followed
in the days of their strength.

CHAPTER VII
THE CHURCH AND UNINSTRUCTED CHRISTIANITY
Vulgar Christentum — Its Christology — History and Experience —
Docetism — Its Opposite — Catholic Christology — Applica-
cation to Christian Experience — The Modernist's Position.
THE Christianity of the uninstructed man1
forms in some ways a connecting link be
tween Gnosticism and CathoHcism, though
it was infinitely nearer to the latter. It was
for long somewhat overlooked by historians,
and the documents representing it were explained
away or neglected altogether, but in recent years
it has been brought to the front under various as
pects by H. Usener2 and C. Schmidt in Germany,3
and by F. C. Conybeare in England. Usener and
Conybeare speak of adoptionist Christianity, but
Schmidt's name of vulgar Christentum is a more
satisfactory name.4 From the nature of the
1 By this somewhat clumsy periphrasis I am trying to find an
equivalent for the German vulgar Christentum.
2 Especially in his Weihnachtsfest.
J Acta Pauli, pp. 183 ff.
« Especially since in some ways some forms of this type of
thought were at least as much docetic as adoptionist.
168

Church and Uninstructed Christianity 169
case there are no perfect representations in litera
ture, but II. Clement, Hermas, the Acts of Paul,
perhaps the Odes of Solomon and Acts of John,
and even the gospel of Peter may be taken as
typical examples. One of the most pressing needs
of modern research is a good monograph of this
subject, focusing the various subordinate questions,
but at present it is not possible to do more than
indicate its outlines.
The thought of the "uninstructed Christian"
was simple: his view was that the world was
created good (therefore he was not a Gnostic);
and that man had been given the special favour of
being the son of God,' but had lost this relation
ship to his Father through the Fall. From that
moment history had become a struggle between
God, who set to work to counteract the Fall by
means of his chosen people, Israel, and the prince
of this world, the devil, who resisted the efforts of
God, announced himself to be God, and bound
all humanity to himself by means of the lusts of
the flesh. The result of the devil's machinations
was ignorance, error, pleasure, and death, which
could only be abolished by the ultimate judgment
of God. But in his mercy God sent his holy spirit
into the Virgin Mary in order to redeem men and to
* Cf. loc. cit., 3, 38.

170 The Stewardship of Faith
destroy the dominion of evil over flesh by becom
ing flesh.' This holy spirit which thus became
incarnate was the same which had spoken through
the Jewish prophets, so that the Christian faith
rested throughout on the Spirit — the Spirit, who
had given " the prophets " to Israel and later on
had given " the gospel" through the Christ to the
Christians. This Christology is not the same as that which
became traditional. The incarnation is the in
carnation of the Spirit. Though such Christians
spoke of Father, Son, and Spirit, they meant by the
Son the being of flesh which had been the taber
nacle of the Spirit and had been taken up into the
Godhead, so that the Trinity consisted of the
Father, Spirit, and Jesus in whom the Spirit had
been and was incarnate. That is not the same,
we must observe, as the Trinity of orthodox
Cathohc theology, because it does not distinguish
between the Son, or Logos, and the Spirit.
The Shepherd of Hermas (Simil. 5) is one of the
most elaborate examples of this type of doctrine
of the incarnation. He describes how the Spirit
came to help mankind, and took up its abode in the
1 In some varieties of thought the baptism took the place of the
birth, and indeed there was for several centuries a confusion of
thought on the point, which is reflected in the history of Christmas
and Epiphany, as Usener has shown.

Church and Uninstructed Christianity 171
flesh of a certain human being who is never men
tioned, but is obviously intended for Jesus. As
a reward for perfect life this human being was
rewarded by the Father and the Spirit (who is also
caUed the Son in this connection), by being taken
up into the Godhead, and the same reward is
offered to aU who should Hve in accordance with
his example.
It is for this reason that this type of thought is
known as adoptionist, though it is not always clear
at what moment the adoption of Jesus into the
Godhead is supposed to take place — birth, baptism
or resurrection. To point out its logical defects is
not hard, and the better theology of Catholic
Christianity reacted against its errors, but as a
preliminary we must note the strength of this
popular Christianity.
It represented the life of Jesus as a career of
ascetic purity, culminating in apotheosis, and it
offered to Christians the reward which had already
been given to the Christ. God had become man
in order that men might become God. The une
ducated Christian stated it crudely, but in the effort
to improve away the crudeness theologians in the
end lost part of a necessary element of rehgious
thought. The first Christians spoke of Christ as the first

172 The Stewardship of Faith
bom among many brethren, and the believers as
joint heirs with Christ. "As many as are led by
the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God,"
said St. Paul, applying to the faithful the same
word as he does to the Christ. But in the desire to
emphasize the greatness of Jesus later Christian
ity sought to obtain, as it were, a heightened con
trast, and by ignoring that side of the teaching of
primitive Christianity, obscured the teaching of
St. Paul which represented the Christian as weU
as the Christ as a son of God. '
But the ordinary man in the second century had
not yet developed this tendency. His real hope
was that by means of his rehgion he could become
a son of God, and he had not yet learnt that curi
ous trick of language which distinguishes between
the " son of God " and the " child of God. " We aU
know how in traditional teaching it is quite a
commonplace to say that we are all children of
God, hardly ever to say that the Christian is a
son of God. The custom is partly based on
reverence, partly on deistic tradition, and partly
on mere lack of clearness of thought.
AU this is only to say in other words that this
1 Cf. also Heb. i., i: 'God who at sundry times, and in divers
manners, spake to the fathers by the prophets, in these last days
spake to us by a son " (vi*>, not tQ vl$).

Church and Uninstructed Christianity 173
vulgar Christentum kept a vivid consciousness of
the primitive behef of the first Greek Christians
that the Lord was the centre of the community,
that the Lord was the Spirit, that the Lord was
also Jesus, and that they also possessed the Spirit.
But it was inevitable that these simple affirmations
of the religious consciousness should on closer ex
amination be developed into a connected system
of theology. Attempts were made on various
Hnes, and the ultimate development of Christian
theology represents in the main the verdict of the
more inteUigent and philosophical theologians upon
the one-sided efforts of vulgar Christentum, to cope
with the rival, or perhaps more properly comple
mentary, claims of historical fact and rehgious
experience. In the first place there was the Hne struck out
by the Christian who, starting from the identifica
tion of the centre of his life with "Christ," and
the identification of this Christ with the Jesus of
history, under the influence of the conviction that
the Lord is the Spirit went on to say that this
Jesus, who was the Christ, was also a spiritual
being in the time of his human life in the same sense
as he is a spiritual being now. That is to say, they
threw back the conclusions of religious experience
on to the past, and subordinated historical evidence

174 The Stewardship of Faith
to their own spiritual experience. The result was
the statement that Jesus had never been a man of
flesh and blood, because he had always been spirit,
and that if he had seemed to be flesh and blood, he
was not really so ; he had adopted the form of flesh
and blood for the purpose of manifesting himself,
but not the reality of it — it was only appearance.
It is obvious that this is really the negation of
the original position: it destroys the paraUelism
between the Christ and the Christian, and it
rapidly becomes a Gnostic view of the flesh, though
without the Gnostic view of creation. The Acts of
John is probably a fair specimen of this "docetic"1
branch of vulgar Christentum. Nevertheless we
must, I believe, see in it a sincere attempt to act
in the supposed interests of religion. It was an
effort to reconstruct history in accordance with
religious experience, and it is extraordinarily
interesting to notice that the same thing is happen
ing at the present day in the movement headed by
Professor Drews in Germany and by Professor
Smith in America. These scholars have rejoiced in
arguments showing that there never was such a
person as Jesus of Nazareth, not because they are
enemies of religion, but because they think that
1 From SoKetv, to seem, because the humanity of Jesus was only
in semblance.

Church and Uninstructed Christianity 175
they are doing a service to religion by cutting it
loose from history. To a quite extraordinary
extent this repeats the history of the second cent
ury, and the controversy whether the Jesus whom
men knew as the centre of their religion had ever
been a real man of flesh and blood.
Such was the result of beginning with religious
experience, and attempting to make it a substitute
for historical evidence. The opposite line of
thought was also followed. There were those who
felt that their knowledge of facts justified them in
the statement that Jesus of Nazareth had really
been a man, a human being. They would yield
nothing to those who told them that his humanity
was in any sense merely apparent. Starting from
this they went on to argue that therefore the
Christ of religion must possess to aU eternity a
body of flesh and blood. He might be in heaven
at the right hand of God, but he was, nevertheless,
a Jesus with flesh and blood, and it was he, that
man of flesh and blood, who was to be accepted as
the adequate centre of religion. The basis of the
argument was the facts of history. If anyone felt
that his religious experience did not agree with it,
and urged that the Lord was a Spirit, it only
proved that his theology was heretical and his
rehgion a vain thing.

176 The Stewardship of Faith
These Christians were doing the exact reverse of
the docetic wing of vulgar Christentum. They were
true to the facts of history, and tried to make
religious experience yield to them, by forcibly
interpreting it just as their opponents were forcibly
interpreting history in mistaken loyalty to the
experience of religion. Each was doing the right
thing in the wrong place, and it would be weari
some to try and follow out the development of the
ensuing controversies which, in different forms,
went on for centuries, but in the interests of a much-
abused class the fact is worth emphasizing that
the effort of the theologians — as distinct from the
uninstructed Christians — was to do justice to both
sides of the question. On the one hand, they tried
to do justice to the facts of history by historical
methods. Their methods were not ours, and their
reconstruction of facts was not the same as ours
would be, but they did their best according to the
knowledge of those days. They insisted that
Jesus of Nazareth had really been human, really
flesh and blood, because they had the records, and
they judged history by historical methods. On
the other hand, they tried to do justice to the
facts of religious experience by insisting that the
centre of our religious life is spirit, and not flesh
and blood. Therefore they tried to settle all the

Church and Uninstructed Christianity 177
different forms of this controversy in such a way
that, when it was a matter of history, justice
should be done to the facts of history, and
when it was a matter of rehgion, to the experi
ence of religious Hfe. It was impossible to
find any single formula which covered the
whole case, and practically what happened was
that the Church occupied itself for several centuries
in saying "No" in various accents of emphasis
to inadequate propositions which were presented
for the speedy solution of insoluble problems.
For instance, an attempt was made to say:
"Jesus is God: we know that through religion.
He was also man: we know that through history.
Therefore, he must have been something between
the two, a sort of inferior god, or an exaggerated
superman." But the intellect of the Church
said that this was neither history nor religion, but
a confusion of thought. And Arianism and its
successors were never accepted.
Or again, it was sometimes said, "Jesus was
really two persons. He was a human person and
a divine person. " But the intellect of the Church
replied that this was also impossible, because
personality must be one. And what is known as
Nestorianism'was rejected.
1 It is very doubtful whether — to speak paradoxically — Nes-

178 The Stewardship of Faith
Thus in the end a series of statements was
developed which the scoffer can describe — though
very unjustly — as taking away with one hand
everything that has been given with the other;
and the reason why that way of deahng with the
matter is, after all, the most successful, is the fact —
so well known to the schoolmen — that all definition
is negation. Directly we begin to define anything
we imply that it is not something else. Can we
do that with God? The difficulty is that we can
not say God is everything, and at the same time
define him; because, directly we do, we begin to
say something which we have at once to unsay,
since, in so far as it is a definition, it is also a nega
tion, and we must not deny anything of God.'
If we apply this a little further to the person of
Christ, we see the necessary conclusion. It was
necessary to say "man," because of history; and
to say "God" because of experience. In so far
as Christ was God the epithets of eternal, omni
potent, omniscient, everlasting, were inevitable.
In so far as he was man they were impossible.
And yet no one could say that the human Jesus

torius was really a Nestorian; cf. Bethune Baker's Nestorius and
his Teaching.
1 Unless we can prove that there is no reality in that which we
deny.

Church and Uninstructed Christianity 179
was limited, temporary, or imperfect, and the
divine Christ eternal, omnipotent, omniscient,
everlasting, because, if so, the one personaHty was
spht into two. That was also impossible; the
facts of history were decisive, Jesus was one person,
and not two.
Thus it came to pass that when the intellect of
the Church finally attempted to sum up the results,
it was obliged to say that in the Christ there was a
divine nature and a human nature so united in one
person that they could not be separated, and yet
so that they must on no account be confused.
Unless men knew what they meant by it they could
scarcely say that Jesus was God, but if they knew
they not only could but must say it, for it meant
that the union between these two elements, as
we should say, or two natures, as the early theo
logians said, in the one person was so complete
that by a process of mutual exchange (the com-
municatio idiomatum) all epithets could be applied
to the one nature which were apphcable to the
other. It is a maze of theological subtlety which we
immediately enter as soon as we begin to express
our thoughts along these lines of reasoning; and
only those who by the expenditure of much time
have learnt to use the language of the first six

180 The Stewardship of Faith
centuries can reaUy appreciate how admirable it
is. It is not our language. We cannot "talk theo
logy" half so well in our language as the Greeks
could talk it in theirs sixteen hundred years ago,
and the pity is that so many people either pour
scorn on these subtle formulae, or apply them
mechanicaUy to other problems, without either
understanding their origin, or sympathizing with
their purpose. I should be the last person in the
world to suggest that we can take, for instance,
the Athanasian Creed as a representation of
modern thought, or correct in its prognosis of
damnation for the heterodox, but I am prepared
to say that if you can, by study, teach yourself the
way to use it, there is no document which more
adequately struggles to represent two sides of
truth simultaneously than the Athanasian Creed
does. I am bound to add that when you have
done this you may have reason to object to its use
by an ordinary congregation, because it is unedify-
ing to see or hear intelligent people reciting in
public worship documents which they do not under
stand, probably misinterpret, and certainly dislike.
Nevertheless the fact that the Athanasian
Creed is so unintelligible ought to remind us that
we have still to deal with the perpetual struggle

Church and Uninstructed Christianity 181
between history and experience. On the one hand
rehgion is a matter of personal, intimate experi
ence ; its centre is for each of us in our own hearts ;
and our own experience is valid for ourselves. It
is here, and it is now. Anything which takes
away from the full force of that perception is
wrong. But, on the other hand, we are the result
of a historical process, and are ourselves "historical
facts." Even our most intimate experience is
conditioned by history, because we ourselves
belong to it, and we cannot without harm attempt
to sever ourselves from the historical development
which has produced us, and which conditions our
experience. Therefore we have the same struggle
as our spiritual ancestors had. If we wish to be
intelligent and intelligible, we cannot state religious
experience without taking the facts of history into
consideration, and for the religious side of life
history means the history of the whole of Chris
tianity — not merely of its beginning. We cannot
without loss cut ourselves loose from it, and the
problem is, to make ourselves the heirs of history
without becoming its slaves.
But I do not desire to labour that obvious truth
so much as to come into closer contact with the
problem presented by the doctrine of the "two
natures" in Christ.

1 82 The Stewardship of Faith
It is perfectly plain that, as it stands at present,
this doctrine belongs to a past generation. We
can only appreciate it with difficulty, by learning
the language in which it is expressed. If we yield
to the temptation to put it on one side, we soon
find ourselves lapsing into mere hormletic platitude
or into some form of vulgar Christentum — in other
words, into heresy. It is therefore necessary to
grapple with it, and develop it until we bring it
once more into touch with the facts of life as we
see them.
We have, as an intellectual legacy from the past,
the doctrine of Jesus as a being, a person, with two
natures, human and divine. Leave that on one
side and turn to our own self-knowledge. Is it not
true that, as a matter of fact, in our own selves
there is a double element? It seems to me that aU
of us have constantly to deal with two elements in
life in ourselves and in other people. There is,
on the one hand, the element which makes it ex
traordinarily hard for us to understand anybody
else ; which makes it extraordinarily hard for any
two people to work together without quarrelling;
which makes us all have a tendency to quarrel and
fight for our own supposed advantages — the fact
that we resist it is the essence of civiHzation.
This element which limits, which separates, which

Church and Uninstructed Christianity 183
drags down, although there are certain objections
to the use of the word, may fairly be caUed "hu
man, " though the difficulty with all these points
is that thought is struggling with language, and
language often gets the better of the struggle.
Still I think that I run no risk of being misunder
stood in saying that this limiting, separating, and
dividing element, of which we are aU conscious,
is "human" nature in the narrower sense.
On the other hand, we are conscious of another
element which is unifying, which brings people
together, which enables us at times to feel that we
are understanding each other in some sense more
than the mere intellectual comprehension of care-
fuUy chosen phraseology. We are, as we say,
"in touch" with one another; we feel that we pass
our normal limitations, and that there is a sense in
which the truth that we are really aU "one" is
greater than the truth that we are all separate, for
we are not so much coming together as realizing
that on the highest side of life we have never been
separated at all. That is the element which is at
the centre of all corporate life, and makes for co
operation, for unity, for peace, for civilization, and
seems to me truly to deserve the name of
divine, because nowhere can I see anything
higher.

184 The Stewardship of Faith
But this is the appHcation to personality1 as a
whole of what Cathohc theology — a different thing
from vulgar Christentum — said of the one person of
Jesus, and though it is possible that the adjectives,
human and divine, and the substantives, nature
and person, could with advantage be replaced by
a different phraseology, it is in this kind of develop
ment that Christian theology has the opportunity
to keep the historical continuity of a great intel
lectual tradition, and at the same time to join
hands with modern psychology.2
Moreover, this Hne of thought enables us to
see more clearly than any other that progress,
not only in thought, but in Hfe as a whole, is the
conscious development of the one side and the
conscious keeping in check of the other side of
personality. That seems to me the inteUectual
statement of the real work of life: the conscious
effort of the individual and of society to develop

1 If anyone will read, for instance, Dorner's History of the
Doctrine of the Person of Christ, he will, I think, probably gain
the impression that the real contribution of the classical period
of Christian theology was to state the problem: "What is person
ality? " and to suggest the lines on which it must be faced. Here
again it is, to my mind, the modernist who is really taking his
inheritance and trying to develop it.
• I may be allowed to say that I believe that this amounts to
much the same as Dr. Sanday's position in his Christologies,
though it is differently expressed.

Church and Uninstructed Christianity 185
the divine element which makes for unity, for
peace, for co-operation.
Is not this exactly what the best early Christian
theology expressed by its Logos doctrine? We
must of course allow for the fact that the men of
that generation, in theology as in everything else,
started with a general hypothesis and worked
inwards: we start from the other end and work
outwards, as we have learnt to do in every branch
of science. The theologian cannot claim any
right to make use of a method which has been given
up by everyone else. But aUowing for this differ
ence of attitude the ' ' Logos doctrine ' ' of the Church
and some such analysis of life as that sketched
above are reaUy two statements of the same view.
This brings me to one of the burning questions of
modern theological Christian thought. It is
often said that the "Modernist" is undermining
or even denying the central doctrine of the divinity
of Christ, and the answer to this accusation is
closely connected with the general subject of this
chapter. The "Modernist" believes that he is
the true heir of the Cathohc theology, while his
opponents seem to him to represent a recrudescence
of some of the one-sided and inteUectually inde
fensible positions of vulgar Christentum.
The doctrine of the "two natures" and the

1 86 The Stewardship of Faith
Johannine Logos doctrine of which it is the logical
conclusion are the expression of the view which,
if we accept certain metaphysical forms of state
ment, may reasonably be taken of a certain com
plex of facts belonging partly to history, partly to
religious experience. Although subject on the one
hand to development, so far as it deals only with
the life of Jesus, and says nothing about other
"persons," and, on the other, to amendment so
far as the historical facts dealt with obtain a
different complexion in the Hght of wider know
ledge and deeper study, it remains one of the
triumphs of human intellect, and the Modernist
has not the slightest hesitation in accepting it.
But it seems to him that the doctrines often pre
sented to him by those who think that they are
orthodox are something quite different. Men
have forgotten or put on one side as unintelligible
the Catholic theology, and have set up a rival
which puts "the historic Jesus" in the place of the
Logos. It is historically inaccurate and spirituaUy
unsatisfying. It is the sort of theology which
sings sentimental hymns about,
Those mighty hands which rule the sky no earthly
toU refuse,
The Maker of the stars on high an humble trade
pursues.

Church and Uninstructed Christianity 187
That is language which the extremest extension of
the doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum could
scarcely justify, and as most of those using it are
wholly ignorant of that profound and subtle dogma
it is in their mouths the merest recrudescence of the
Jesus-cultus of vulgar Christentum.
The Modernist worships the Logos : not because
of any ecclesiastical authority, but because heart
and mind agree to teU him that this is the way
of truth in which his fathers walked. He is not
prepared to narrow down his perception of the
Logos, or (to use more theological language) to
sacrifice his recognition of the divine working of the
Logos in all time and in all life in order to obtain
a spurious heightening of contrast for the recogni
tion which he gives to the Logos in Jesus.
Moreover, personally — I do not dare speak for
all Modernists — I feel that these admirable and
penetrating doctrines"of Cathohc theology are not
intelhgible to ordinary congregations. I know
that I cannot state them equally weU in any other
language. But I also know that in this language,
however admirable, they are not intelhgible to
most people, because the technical terms are un
known to them, or, still worse, have popularly
a different meaning. Therefore I prefer to restate
these truths in modern language, by which I mean

1 88 The Stewardship of Faith
in a different phraseology, and I dissent whoUy
from those who try to achieve what they caU
restatement by using the old phraseology in a new
sense. The Catholic theology is magnificent:
but it is not inteUigible except to properly trained
theological intellects. My wish is to make the
view of life which it represents intelligible by put
ting it into modern language, nor do I find this an
impossible task, but I admire the language of the
old theologians too much not to protest against
attempts to mutilate it or to pretend that it
speaks in our phraseology. Some of the ostensible
defenders of Christian theology understand neither
its history nor its meaning, and the parody which
they present is the greatest inteUectual danger
which Christianity has now to face.

CHAPTER VIII
CONCLUSION
Christianity as Movement — Modern Requirements — Justice —
The Atonement — Suffering — The Observation of Religious
Facts — Its Effect — The Churches and Research in Theo
logy — The Training of the Clergy — The Churches and
Schism — The Theory of Ordination — The Social Revolution
— The Need of a Higher Ethical Vision.
IN the preceding chapters I have endeavoured
to sketch the developments of the heritage
handed down to us from the Early Church in
the form of theology, ethics, and ministry. But
far more important than to trace the process
described in its details, many of which are certainly
obscure and possibly capable of other interpre
tation in the hght of increasing knowledge, is the
recognition that progressive movement, and not
the retention of a fixed position, has throughout
been the condition of vigorous life.
By fulfiUing that condition the Early Church
succeeded in giving to the world a theology which
satisfied the necessity of speaking in a language
intelligible to that generation. It was no more
189

190 The Stewardship of Faith
final than any attempt of the finite to explain the
infinite can ever be. But it was an adequate
representation of the reaction of the highest
spiritual Hfe upon the keenest inteUects of their
time. In the same way the Church produced a system
of sacraments and a ministry to which we cannot
refuse the praise of having built up the spiritual
life of Western civiHzation, even though we may
recognize that the theory based upon them was
often erroneous, and that in the end the abuse of
the system was often disastrous. SimUarly also
it provided a combination of world-renouncing
and world-accepting ethics which for generations
proved a satisfactory guide to the efforts of the best
men to serve the society to which they belonged
without forgetting that higher world of eternal
realities of which aU enjoy a vision at times,
though none see it permanently or with a steady
gaze. To do these things was the heritage, with modifi
cations, but not essentiaUy changed, passed on
from the single Catholic Church of the Middle
Ages to the many Churches of modern Christian
ity. It is now presented for our acceptance.
In this last chapter, therefore, I desire to emphasize
what seem to me to be the conditions which we

Conclusion 191
must fulfil if we wish to discharge the stewardship
offered to us.
Christianity has always been a movement: the
stewardship of faith is to carry on the movement.
We must continue the same process of changing
theology and changing institutional life which is
revealed to us by the study of history. To aU sides
of the problems raised by the recognition of this
fact, no man can give an adequate answer; but no
man who Hves in any degree in the present, and
sees the events which are changing the conditions
of human life, ought to faU to see that these are
facts which organized Christianity must take more
seriously than it seems to do at present. These
may conveniently be treated under the heads of
theology, the ministry of the Church, and the
extension of Christian ethics.
A theologian may perhaps be forgiven if he
begin with the duty of the churches toward theo
logy, even though he would be the last to claim
that this is the most important point. There is a
general consensus, even amongst the most con
servative, that "restatement" is imperatively
called for, but it is of primary importance to recog
nize that what the churches are asked to produce
is not a restatement of traditional theology but a

192 The Stewardship of Faith
restatement of rehgion in modern language. A
more or less ingenious amendment of mediaeval
theological statement wiU satisfy no one, for the
artificial admixture of modern thought and ancient
language produces something as remote from
an articulate and inteUigent theology as "pidgin"
English is from the language of educated Enghsh-
men. In the preceding chapters I have attempted to
explain, in modern language, some of the features
of religious life both among the early Christians
and in our own generation; but no one can at
present hope adequately to cover the whole
ground. More important than attempts to bmld
without' sufficient material is the effort to realize
some of the conditions of modern thought which
must be considered if we wish to produce a state
ment of religion which wiU help the next genera
tion. In the first place we have a different sense of
abstract justice from that which existed even a
century ago. This cuts at the root of many theo
logical statements which presented little difficulty
to our ancestors.
For instance, the theology of the past offered
little or no hope for the' salvation of an unbaptized
person, however good a life he may have led; even

Conclusion 193
the fate of unbaptized infants was regarded as
doubtful. At present it is safe to say that no one
who maintains such monstrous propositions wiU
even gain a hearing from the general pubhc. Yet
that is not because the old view misrepresented
the logical results of the traditional theological
system, but because the increased sense of abstract
justice puts such teaching out of court, and re
gards it as the reductio ad absurdum of the theory
from which it was deduced.
Or, again, the traditional presentation of the
doctrine of the Atonement is becoming daily less
and less acceptable to our generation because it
clashes with our sense of justice. It seems to
represent the suffering of Jesus as a unique in
stance of the redemptive power of innocent suffer
ing, to depict God as in some sense standing
outside this process, accepting it as an offering to
himself, and in some way changing his attitude
to the guilty in consequence of it.' If I am not
much mistaken, the clash between this teaching
and the sense of justice was one of the causes
which led the "Lux Mundi" school of theologians
¦ Theologians have, of course, from the time of Anselm, felt the
difficulty of the position, but they have never wholly succeeded
in meeting it. The important thing, however, is that the non-
theological but educated public is now aroused to a consciousness
of the problem.
13

194 The Stewardship of Faith
in Oxford in the nineties to say in their general
teaching so much about the Incarnation and so
Httle about the Atonement.
Yet here again the policy of leaving difficulties
on one side wiU not long be successful. Behind
the doctrine of the Atonement is the problem of
innocent suffering in general. No view of Hfe is
complete which does not recognize that progress is
conditional on suffering, and that this suffering
is effective in proportion as it is the suffering of
.the innocent.1 Moreover, we are obhged to go
further and say that the only thinkable belief
is not that God stands outside the world and wiUs
it to endure suffering, but that he, as immanent in
it, shares in its travafi, which he wiUs for himself as
weU as for us. The modern theologian feels that
this is the fundamental truth of the doctrine of the
Atonement: it is the eternal suffering of the Logos
which redeems and raises the Universe. Why
suffering should in this way be essential to life we do
not know: but whereas the figure of the suffering
God in a suffering world may prove — I think wiU
prove — to be irrecondlable with the traditional con
ception of omnipotence,2 it does not outrage the
1 Though the innocent cannot voluntarily seek it, but only
benefit the world by accepting the cup which is given them to
drink in the course of their appointed career.
- I mean that instead of regarding God as a being who has

Conclusion 195
sense of justice. More and more men accept the
suffering of the innocent as one of the facts of
Hfe, but they do so only if it be presented to them
as the birth pains of some better thing, not as the
torturing punishment inflicted by a judge. The
doctrine of the Atonement, like that of the Incar
nation of the Logos, has its permanent place in
human thought, but the churches wiU retain the
privilege of being its exponents only if they prove
equal to the task of beginning its explanation with
the facts of living experience, and place the suffer
ing of Jesus within and not without the ever-
widening circle of suffering yet redeeming and
triumphant Hfe. If the churches prove unequal
to their task, and sacrifice the truth of experience
to the tradition of expression, the world wiU pass
them by and Hsten by preference to men and
societies who are more alive to the necessities of
the present.
It wiU also be necessary to accept much more
definitely the fact that all modern scientific study
begins with the observation of fact and not with
the development of theory. In the Middle Ages
unlimited power to do anything in an arbitrary and miraculously
unconditional manner, we shall regard him as the repository of
"all the power that there is, " and look on him as "able to do all
things which can be done. " But I think that some Liberals need
to remember that this is not what omnipotence originally meant.

196 The Stewardship of Faith
theory came first and facts were quoted to prove
the correctness of accepted theory. That is no
doubt a branch of work which has its value, but we
have learnt that it is far more important to observe
facts and to modify theories in accordance with
them. In the field of theology this was done by WiUiam
James, who was a pioneer in this direction, and
though there may be some doubt as to whether he
applied his method in the best way, there can be
none as to the value of the method itself. Unfor
tunately the theologian, especially in England, is
too often primarily a historian father than a stu
dent of Hving religion, and I can certainly make no
claim to be an exception, but I would suggest that
the treatment of Christology on pp. 181 ff. is a
conscious attempt to adopt the appHcation of the
modern method of beginning with the facts of
observed rehgion, and of working back from them
to the appreciation of sirrular facts in history.
This method wiU mean that in the future theo
logians wiU give up trying to compress the truth
into short statements and claiming them as
authoritative. Theology can no more be stated
shortly than any other science, and no statement
has any authority unless it can be shown to be true.
No one thinks of testing the correctness of a great

Conclusion 197
chemist's view by his acceptance of a short state
ment, or of attaching authority to his opinion apart
from evidence. In the future it wiU seem equaUy
absurd to ask men to accept or reject statements
which profess to give short categorical solutions to
some of the most difficult problems of philosophy
and theology, and from their answers to pass
judgment alike on their theological and religious
standing. Theological statement wiU before long
be accepted exactly so far as it is based on evidence,
just as is the case with any other science, otherwise
it wiU be regarded as superstition. Moreover, it
wiU make no claim to special sources of knowledge
once revealed and now hidden, for whereas the
theological systems of the past were based on a
triumphant but unfounded belief in supernatural
knowledge, the systems of tomorrow wiU be
bounded, like those of other sciences, by the
securer though humbler recognition of natural
ignorance. We believe that we can see that life
is governed by purpose, and to that purpose we
endeavour to make our own wills subordinate;
but we are conscious that its fullness, its origin, and
its end are outside the scope of our understanding.
We are therefore not prepared to make the value of
religion, which is our present possession, depend
ent on the correctness of our guesses at things

198 The Stewardship of Faith
outside the limitations of our knowledge. We
cannot whoUy explain the Universe, and we are
weary of attempts to cover up the insufficiency of
the inteUect by a superabundance of words. We
know that we are limited in our powers and narrow
in our vision, but we seek in our better moments
to develop that element in our personaHty which
binds us to others and makes us work for the
general common good of all, even to the sacrifice
of ourselves. We know that we develop this
element, partly in our private life in which we
stretch out our hands to that power in the universe
which seems to be to us what we would fain be to
our children, and partly in the corporate life in
which we meet together with others. It is this
side of life, and aU that we gain from it, that we
mean by religion; we know that in it we some
times seem to approach more nearly than in any
other way to reahty, and to see through the vefi of
phenomena. The experience of it is the basis of
religious Hfe, and membership in the churches
ought to depend on its possession. The theologian
endeavours to make it articulate and to trace its
history, but to do so is a progressive science, and
the churches wiU not long retain the respect of the
educated world if they prefer to take their stand on
the theology of an age which has passed away.

Conclusion 199
It is this attitude to theology which wiU in the
end decide the vexed question of the creeds.
The allegorical and symbolical explanations which
proved fatal to heathenism (see pp. I29ff.) are being
applied far too much to the creeds. In itself this
is no more likely to be successful than it was in
heathenism, and the ecclesiastical theologian fails
to notice that interpretation is not the battle
field on which the question of the creeds is going
to be fought out, unless indeed it is to become
merely a squabble between the few survivors from
the wreck of great institutions. What men feel is
that if the Church is a society for the maintenance
of a close and defined system of theology it has
no message for them, and has as little claim to be
taken seriously as a society of chemists which
should take for its purpose not the discovery and
propagation of chemical truth, but the preserva
tion of the scientific theories of the Middle Ages.
The laity cling to the churches because they
believe that they are not intended primarily to
perpetuate theological opinion, but to develop
and organize religious life, and the time is rapidly
approaching when the educated classes will feel
and say openly that it is as absurd to tie down
theological science — that is, the intellectual ex
pression of religion — to a few formularies as it

200 The Stewardship of Faith
would be to impose the same bondage on other
sciences. What is required from theology is that
it should be so far as is possible true and logical.
Argument, not tradition, wUl say the last word.
Part of the heritage from the Early Church is that
it has shown the possibility of an inteUigent theo
logy which shall grow and develop in accordance
with the increase of knowledge, and the deepening
of perception. The men of today are essentiaUy
rehgious, but they ask also for an intelligible theo
logy. The development of such a theology is being
carried on at present in all the civilized countries of
the world by men who are devoting their lives to
this object. In the main they aU are working on
the same general lines, though there are startling
differences in detail, and they are, with few ex
ceptions, profoundly religious men. They have
been born and brought up in the various churches
of Christendom, and they desire intensely to keep
their inheritance. It is in no spirit of arrogant
self-assertion, but in the faith that their careers
have been guided by a higher power, which has
made use of their industry and scientific training
to lead the world to some deeper knowledge of the
truth, that they grieve over the reluctance of the
churches to hear their message. The world is

Conclusion 201
listening to them: the popular lecture room, the
pubhc press, the great universities are theirs, but to
many of them it seems that the great historic
communities to which they belong are turning a
deaf ear to messages which others accept, and are
refusing the offices of men who have the desire and
the abiHty to serve them weU. "Lo! we turn to
the Gentiles" is a simple phrase, but there never
yet was an Israelite who uttered it without yearn
ing in his heart for the people of the promise.
The sacramental ministry of the Church remains
in the churches of modern Christianity, though it is
in some of the Protestant communities changed
almost out of recognition. On pp. 137 ff., I have
emphasized my conviction that the sacramental
side of rehgious Hfe is permanent, and that a minis
try for the care of souls is an essential part of
organized Christianity. But Christianity cannot
adequately live up to this side of its stewardship
if it do not fulfil two requirements.
The first is easier to state than to perform: the
education of ministers in Christian churches must
be reformed so that candidates for the ministry
shaU be trained primarily in the facts of spiritual
life, in health and in sickness, and only secondarily
in the history of the religious life of the past.

202 The Stewardship of Faith
Only those who are actively engaged in teaching
understand how necessary this is, and how many
practical difficulties must be overcome.
EquaUy important, more controversial, and caU-
ing for much mutual forbearance is the second re
quirement. Christianity has to face and accept
the fact that it is no longer a church but a coUec-
tion of churches. It is impossible to undo what
has been done; not only has Catholic Christianity
itself divided into more than one branch, but also
there is alongside of it a whole series of Protestant
churches, in some ways more, in some ways less,
efficient than the older societies, with a spiritual
life as deep and true as that of Cathohcs, though
otherwise fostered and differently expressed.
Much harm has been done in this connection by
the use of the word schism. Schism is a meta
phorical expression derived primarily from tear
ing a garment. Now undoubtedly the tearing of
garments is undesirable under all circumstances; a
torn garment is an injured garment, and the piece
torn out is a piece of rag and not a garment. But
after aU Christianity is not a garment — dead and
inorganic — but a living organism. The appH
cation to living things of metaphors drawn from
the inorganic world is sure to be imperfect. Much
would therefore be gained if Christians would

Conclusion 203
remember that in the world of living organisms,
schism or scission is the recognized means of
perpetuating life. Cells split into two, in the
lowest forms of natural life, without effort or pain,
but in the higher forms the process of spHtting off a
new group of cells, and so producing a new living
being, is often attended by effort, danger, and pain.
StiU, we do not therefore look on it as evil. Life,
according to the biologist, depends on what he
caUs scission, and ordinary people caU birth.
Civilized life, according to the sociologist, de
pends on the recognition and sustenance of new
Hves, not in getting rid of them, either by exter
mination, or by an unthinkable process of re-
absorption. Surely it would be better if we were
to change the implications of the metaphor, and
see that the schism which led to the creation of the
various Protestant churches is the birth of new
organisms, and that the task of the future is not
reunion, but recognition and co-operation. Each
of us belongs to his church as he does to his own
family; we would not change even if we could, but
exclusiveness and pride is as unpleasant and fool
ish in a church as it is in a family.
It is of course true that this change of attitude
wiU call for the abandonment of many long-cher
ished illusions, especially from churches with the

204 The Stewardship of Faith
Cathohc tradition of episcopacy. It is essential
that the theory of a divinely estabhshed episcopal
order should be frankly abandoned, except in the
sense that the powers that be are ordained of
God. "Orders" are necessary to "order," and
order is necessary to life, but neither "orders"
nor " order " is the source of life. They come from
it, and do not impart it. Ordination ought to be
the recognition of "gifts" — charismata — and of
power, but it cannot confer them when they are
absent. It is the practice in many circles to dis
cuss this question on the basis of historical evi
dence and biblical or patristic quotations: I do not
propose to follow this method because it is not
really germane to the question. The point at
issue is whether episcopally ordained clergy have
spiritual powers other than those possessed by the
ministers of Protestant churches or by laity who
have never been ordained at all, not what past
generations may have thought about the matter.
I believe that the modern man has as a rule made
up his mind by observation that on the one hand
thereare manynon-episcopal clergy who constantly
further the cause of Christianity by word and deed,
and really are pastors of the flock and physicians
to the sick, while on the other there are some
episcopal clergy who, in spite of their ordination,

Conclusion 205
are obviously lacking in these gifts. Therefore
he concludes that ordination cannot confer gifts,
and though he values it he does so only as the
official sanction, necessary to all order and dis
cipline, to certain gifted persons to exercise a
ministry which, since it has been given them from
above, ecclesiastical authority can neither give nor
take away, but only recognize.
Nevertheless, although the Catholic, whether
Greek, Roman or Anglican, has much to concede
to the Protestant churches before co-operation can
reaUy be effective, the Protestant churches have
also something to learn from the Catholic. It is
true that the "gifts" of the true minister of the
Church — the pastoral instinct, the power of sym
pathizing with and helping the outcast, and of
inteUigible preaching or teaching — are not con
veyed by ordination, but a church is something
more than the sum of its members, and the office
of being its appointed agent is in itself a gift which
is reaUy conveyed by the Church and carries with
it power and authority. The Catholic has over
estimated this truth, and has often confused it
with the individual gifts of the spirit, but the
Protestant has often underestimated or ignored
it. At the same time this does not alter the fact
that the main issue is the power of ordination to

206 The Stewardship of Faith
convey "gifts," and that here the Protestant is
right and the Cathohc is wrong.
More obscure, more difficult, and yet, if I be not
greatly mistaken, even more important than the
intellectual problems of theology, or the partly
intellectual, partly practical, problems of the min
istry, is the question of ethics.
The ethical problem of the Church in the
Roman Empire was to raise the standard of
individual life, and it succeeded in doing so. No
one would maintain that the necessity of raising
the standard of individual life is now past, but
this ought not to obscure the fact that at present
the world is looking rather for something to raise
the standard of social and national life.
It is a platitude to say that we are living in a
period of rapid social change; but it may be
doubted whether it is equally weU recognized that
this rapid social change is bringing with it the
necessity for a widening of ethical theory to cover
the new complexities of life.
The facts as they appear to the ordinary ob
server are that modern commercial methods have
produced at one end of the social scale enormous
wealth, and a power for good and evil concentrated
in the hands of a few men such as no previous

Conclusion 207
epoch has known. But at the other end of the
scale even if distress and poverty have not actually
increased, the perception of them has become
more acute and has been greatly stimulated by the
wider outlook and enlarged powers of imagination
conferred by the extension of education, so that
general discontent is rapidly increasing. Pro
bably a majority of men would welcome a radical
change, but is held back by not unreasonable fear
lest its consequences should be worse than existing
evils. The cause of the trouble is partly economic, but
partly ethical. The ruthlessness of some commer
cial methods seems to be quite as opposed to a high
ethical standard as any caused by rmlitary opera
tions, and it is felt that new ethical standards
must be introduced into public life if it is to be
saved from disaster. Unfortunately to many,
especiaUy in the working-classes, it appears that
the organized churches of Christendom are con
tent with preaching submission to the poor and
philanthropy to the rich, emphasizing the virtue of
spending money properly instead of rather calling
attention to the duty of not earning it dubiously.
The quarrel of the working-classes with the
churches is therefore ethical rather than theologi
cal. For that reason more and more of them

208 The Stewardship of Faith
are turning towards the teaching of that whole
complex' of social and ethical propaganda of which
socialism is the most prominent.
Whether socialism as an economic system be
right or wrong I do not know; but it is plain that
the reason why it appeals to so many people is not
that they understand economic science, but that
they think that they have found in it an organi
zation which vigorously protests against the evUs
of the present day (whereas the churches only offer
paUiatives), and holds up before men's eyes an
ideal of life, and a vision of society raised to a
higher plane. It is asking men to believe in the
coming of a New Age which wiU be enjoyed by a
better human nature, and to prepare themselves
for it.
The parallelism between the present position of
socialism, with its allied methods of thought,
and early Christianity is extraordinary and very
disquieting. In both cases you have a body of
men asserting in a perhaps somewhat irritating
manner their aloofness from the estabUshed order
' I mean the whole group of -isms and anti-s which attract
those who are discontented with things as they are. The histor
ian of the future will quite possibly compare them with the "God-
fearers" of the Roman Empire, and point out that although they
lacked the elements of stability and permanence they were the
raw material out of which new systems of greater strength were
built up.

Conclusion 209
of society; in both cases you have a body of men
prophesying that society is doomed to come down
with a crash and that a New Age is at hand which
they and the outcasts of the existing system will
inherit; in both cases you find this body of men
attacked as irreligious, unpatriotic, and deluded.
That is the parallelism. How much further will it
go? The future is unknown to us, but we can
sometimes use the past as a mirror in which to
study its advance.
In the days of the Roman Empire the crash did
come and a new age did dawn, but it was not the
sort of new age which the Christians had foreseen.
It was instead the Dark Ages; and this was partly
because there was an element of truth in the
accusations brought against the Christians, that
they were neglecting things essential to the wel
fare of organized society, and partly because the
inteUectual and cultured classes of that day lacked
the faith and courage to lead the way to a new
world, but kept turning regretful backward glances
to the old order which was passing away. The
New Age was dark because it lacked the prestige,
power, and tradition of government which the
richer classes of the Empire had possessed, and its
leadership passed to the Christian Church because,
although it lacked these things, it had a clearer

210 The Stewardship of Faith
vision of a higher life, and the faith to foUow its
guidance through the darkness.
Moreover, recent events in Europe have shown
how important it is to extend the influence of
Christian ethics to international Hfe, and to recover
the concept — well known to the Church of the
Middle Ages — of a community of life on its highest
plane binding together men of different blood,
and providing the nations with a "common supe
rior" to whom they could yield obedience without
degradation, and submit their disputes without
dishonour. Christianity was once above nation
ality; and the present evils are largely due to a
perverted nationalism which leads men to act and
think as though it were the highest possible form of
life, and as though Christian ethics could not
apply to it.
When the men of the last century come to stand
before the bar of history two classes wiU be especi
aUy prominent. On the one hand there wUl be
the men of science, who have extended the bound
aries of knowledge with an unequaUed rapidity.
They have often rejected the name of Christian
because they have been unable to accept the
traditional Weltanschauung of the past ; but they
have followed closely the ideal of Christian ethics.
As a class they have been marked by a passion for

Conclusion 211
truth, and by wiUingness to help even at their own
expense aU animated by the same desire. They
have constantly sacrificed themselves to the good
of others, and have pursued controversy to estab
lish fact rather than to secure personal triumph.
On the other hand there wiU be the class of those
who have guided the international and national
politics of Europe. With few exceptions they have
kept the name of Christian, but their conduct has
been a cynical denial of Christian ethics. Their
skill has been to use language which should deceive
though it did not break the formal limits of truth.
They have obtained power for themselves at the
expense of others, and they have abused the
opportunities of controversy to obscure the real
issues. They have held up opponents to hatred
and contempt, as weU in national as in inter
national Hfe, and in the end they have subjected to
the horrors of war the countries which they pro
fessed to guide. Can it be doubted what the
verdict of history will be on these two classes?
and is it not the tragedy of Christian history
that the organized churches have aUowed Welt
anschauung to count for more than ethics?
The one thing which seems certain today is
that society as we have known it is drawing to an
end. Our children wiU inherit a New Age; wiU it

212 The Stewardship of Faith
be an age of light or of darkness? If it is to be
an age of Hght there will be required from its
spiritual rulers the establishment of some common
superior of nations to safeguard the development
and legitimate expansion of each against the
oppression or envy of any, and a new extension of
Christian ethics to raise the standard of social and
national life. Will the churches give this? Can
anyone else? It is the doubt expressed in these
questions which brings to the study of history at
the present moment so deep a sense of the shadow
of evil days to come, and lays on us the respon
sibility of warning those who at present enjoy the
heritage of Christianity how great is the task
before them, and how serious is the necessity for
faith in the guidance of life, for the love of truth
in study, and for courage in utterance to the
people.

APPENDIX
THE EARLY CHRISTIAN TREATMENT OF
SIN AFTER BAPTISM1
The primitive view of Gentile Christianity was that
those who were baptized were free from sin. They
had been born again into a state of sinlessness, * and it
was their duty to see that they never relapsed again
into the dangerous state which they had left; if they
should fail in this duty, it was questionable whether
they had any further chance of salvation.
The best-known statement of this doctrine is in the
Epistle to the Hebrews, apparently written at a time
when the doctrine had become a matter of dispute, and
needed clear enunciation. It is especially plain in two
passages: (a) in Hebrews vi., 4-8, "For as touching
those who were once enlightened, and tasted of the
heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy
Spirit, and tasted the good Word of God, and the
Powers of the Age to come, and then fell away, it is
impossible to renew them again unto repentance;"
(6) in Hebrews x., 26, " For if we sin wilfully after that
we have received the knowledge of the truth, there
remaineth no more a sacrifice for sins, but a certain
¦ This discussion, with a few changes, was originally pub
lished in the Expositor.
1 Sinlessness is a somewhat ambiguous term; it is here used as
the equivalent of posse non peccare, not of non posse peccare.
213

214 The Stewardship of Faith
fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of
fire which shaU devour the adversaries. "
These passages clearly imply the normal sinlessness
of Christians, and exclude the possibihty of forgive
ness for wilful sin after baptism. Nor is there any
reason for rejecting the unanimous tradition of early
Christian exegesis which explains "enfightened"
((pwtiaOlvTa?) in vi., 4, as a reference to baptism,
especially when it is remembered that Justin Martyr1
mentions that <fw:ia[).6q was the technical term for
baptism. To the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, then,
wilful sin after baptism was regarded as unforgivable.
The same point of view was that of St. Paul, but
in his Epistles the question is not yet a matter of
controversy, and is only implied or mentioned in
passing. For instance, if we read Romans vi. without the
prejudice which comes from our knowledge of history
and experience of Hfe, we are forced to admit that St.
Paul regarded the condition of the normal Christian
as one of sinlessness. "Reckon ye also yourselves to
be dead unto sin . . . being made free from sin ye
became servants of righteousness," etc., leading up to
the final conclusion that (viii., 1) "there is now no
condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus,"
because they have been freed from sin. That this is
St. Paul's position is obscured too often by a wrong
interpretation of vu., 24,* which really describes the
¦ Justin, 1 Apol., lxi.
2 This verse and those immediately preceding seem to me to be
a piece of the spiritual autobiography of St. Paul, and refer to the
time before his conversion. The main difficulty is that the writer

Sin after Baptism 215
condition of an unregenerate but distressed soul, fight
ing against sin, until at last it cries out in a rhetorical
question, "Who shall deliver me from this body of
death?" — to which St. Paul answers, "Thanks be to
God! through Jesus Christ." This exegesis makes
sense, is that of the earHest commentators, and agrees
with early Christian thought ; whereas the view which
explains it as referring to regenerate experience, intro
duces confusion into the whole argument, though
agreeable to later theological systems.
Moreover, just as in the Epistle to the Hebrews
the attainment of this sinless condition is connected
with baptism, so also in Romans the introduction to
the description of the breach between Christians and
sin is: "We who were baptized into Christ Jesus were
baptized into his death." (Rom. vi., 3.)
Similarly, if we turn to 1 John, we find sinlessness
regarded as the normal characteristic of Christians,
though the writer is largely occupied with the fact that
there are in practice many exceptions to this normal
type. "Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not"
(iii., 6) ; and "Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no
sin" (iii., 8, v., 18) represent the Johannine view of
what Christian hfe might be and ought to be.
The historical reason why the Christians thus re
garded themselves as sinless was that sinlessness in
the Hterature of the Jews, and especially in the Apoca
lyptic writings, was a necessary characteristic of the
Messianic kingdom, and the Christians were (no
makes a large use of the historic present, and that in v. 25 the
words x<W ¦ • • Kvpttm iinQv are a parenthesis, anticipating the
fact of redemption, while the rest of the verse refers still to
unregenerate experience.

216 The Stewardship of Faith
doubt to some extent in a proleptic sense) members of
that kingdom. For instance, in the Testament of Levi
(c. 18) we are told of the Messiah, "In his priesthood
shall sin come to an end, and the lawless shall cease to
do evil . . . and he shall give to the saints to eat
from the tree of Hfe, and the spirit of hohness shaU be
on them." Or again in Jubilees, v., 12, "And he
made for all his works a new and righteous nature, so
that they should not sin in their whole nature for
ever, but should all be righteous each in his kind
alway."1 It is impossible to doubt that sinlessness was ex
pected to be a characteristic of the Messianic kingdom
"in the last days." "Sinlessness" is the negative
method of stating this characteristic, just as "right
eousness" is the positive method, and it may be
suggested that an attempt to appreciate this fact is
far more Hkely to be fruitful in explaining the meaning
of 8txaio<jijvY] in the Pauline Epistles than somewhat
academic and barren discussions as to the "forensic"
or other character of the word. For it is at least
certain that to St. Paul it was already the " last days,"
and that he regarded Christians as the "saints"
who were to be members of the Messianic kingdom.
Thus, however strange it may be to us, in the light of
eighteen hundred years of Christian experience, which
has shown that Christians are no more sinless than
other people, in the first generation, for those who
beHeved that the Messiah was coming within the
fimits of their own Hfe, and that they were the mem-
1 These passages, with others of the same type, from IV. Ezra,
the Apocalypse of Baruch, the Apocalypse of Moses, etc., are
quoted by H. Windisch, Taufe und Siinde im dltesten Christentum
bis auf Origenes.

Sin after Baptism 217
bers of his kingdom, it was perfectly natural to think
that they were sinless and could and ought to remain
so. The psychological basis of the doctrine, which ex
plains why the Greek world could so easily assimilate
this view, is rather more compHcated. It turns
chiefly on the fact that until quite recently, at least
in popular thought, the word "sin" covered more than
one idea. The best way of making plain the impor
tance of this point for the present subject is by a
reference to Professor W. James's Varieties of Relig
ious Experience. It will be remembered that he
divides men roughly into two classes.
In the first place there are those who are throughout
their Hves fairly well contented with the world and
with themselves. They know that neither they nor
the world are perfect, and that there is an unpleasant
background of evil to Hfe in which pain, sorrow, and
sin are the prominent features. Yet on the whole
they are conscious that they are doing their best, and
however much they may state on official occasions
that they are miserable sinners, they feel in their
hearts that in them there is much health (instead of
none, as their Hps state); and even when things go
most obviously wrong they are constitutionally unable
to face the fact, and prefer to believe that somehow
"All's right with the world." These are the "once-
born" — probably much the greatest number of people
belong to their ranks. To such persons sin is — so far
as their experience goes, apart from doctrines which
they take on trust from others — either the act of con
sciously doing wrong, or the general imperfection of
human nature. The two things are, of course, quite
distinct, but are commonly confused. The result of

218 The Stewardship of Faith
this confusion is that a not too intellectual member of
this class can usually be found ready to state (i) that
he is a miserable sinner — by which he means that he
often makes mistakes and is generally imperfect; (2)
that he has rarely if ever consciously seen right and
defiberately done wrong. Such statements are only
inteUigible when one remembers that the history of
doctrine is the triumph of words over thought, and
that the word "sin" is used in a double signification —
sometimes it means human imperfection and falli
bility, sometimes it means a deliberate choice of evil
rather than good.
Over against this class — the " once-born " — stands
quite another type. These are they who have come to
appreciate the background of sorrow in Hfe more
clearly than the foreground of happiness. The im
perfection of themselves and of the world is a reahty
which they feel in their hearts, rather than merely
acquiesce in with their intellects. Those who have
not passed through such an experience can only judge
of it from the statements of those who have done so,
and have described their feefings in books, such as,
for instance, The Pilgrim's Progress. Sometimes this
outlook on life passes away gradually; sometimes it
remains throughout life, resulting in permanent un-
happiness; sometimes it degenerates into insanity; but
sometimes the sufferer (for so he can only be described)
wins through to a higher plane of thought, in which —
usually in some form of rehgion — he finds a higher
unifying principle. Such men are the "twice-born"
of Professor James's book, and probably they have a
truer and saner outlook on hfe than the "healthy-
minded once-born. "
Three further points are important for the present

Sin after Baptism 219
purpose. 1. The change from unhappiness to con
tentment often comes to the "twice-born" with great
suddenness, and in connection with some striking in
cident or some outward phenomenon. 2. Whereas the
" twice-born " are probably a small minority of man
kind at any time, the converts to a new religion, or to a
new rehgious movement, belong almost exclusively to
that class. The " once-born " are contented, they are
those who "need no repentance"; but those who are
suffering seek and find help in rehgious movements and
in spiritual "revivals." 3. There is a universal ten
dency on the part of the " twice-born " to speak of their
consciousness of imperfection and of the dark side of
life as a "consciousness of sin," and of their release
from their sufferings as "forgiveness," or "getting
rid of sin, " or some similar expression. Whether this
is the best formula or not is not important for the
present purpose, but it is at least certain that the
"twice-born" mean by it something which is outside
the experience of the "once-born," and the result is
that when, as is always the case with a religious move
ment which survives and becomes an organized
church, the majority of the members are no longer
"twice-born," but "once-born," "consciousness of
sin" and "forgiveness of sin" become merely theologi
cal formulae instead of a living experience, or in the
alternative there is a disastrous attempt to force the
experience of "once-born" persons into the mould of
the other type.
In the first century there was, as there is now, an
unusual number of people who were not, in Professor
James's phrase, "healthy-minded," and the result
was, then as now, a period of great reHgious move
ment. Of this rehgious movement Christianity was

220 The Stewardship of Faith
a part, and the first Christians were probably all
"twice-born." It was therefore perfectly natural
that they should look on themselves as set free from
sin, as having become sinless, and should express this
personal experience in language borrowed from Jewish
Messianic thought. Moreover they had found peace
in their acceptance of Christianity, which began with
baptism; it is therefore inteUigible that they had a real
experiential reason for connecting the attainment of
freedom from sin with baptism, l and for accepting the
dogmatic system which ascribed sinlessness to the
foUowers of the Messiah and regarded baptism as the
means of initiation into his kingdom.
Nevertheless experience of life soon showed that
the Christian after all was frequently not sinless — in
whatever sense the word sin be taken. Thus the
problem arose, what was to be done in the case of a
Christian who relapsed into sin?
The most obvious suggestion was to repeat the
baptism which had originaUy been the cause of sinless
ness. The polemic directed against this suggestion in
the passage quoted above from the Epistle to the
Hebrews is a sufficient proof that there was a party
which made this suggestion, and that it did not find
favour in the eyes of those who ultimately gained the
day; but the most important example which we have
is the famous heretic Marcion. According to Epi-
1 It is unnecessary here to enlarge on the fact that this train of
thought was facilitated by the general belief in the first century
that spiritual — and indeed material — results could be obtained
by the use of "names" in invocations, and by the widespread
opinion that water was a life-giving substance in more than the
physical sense, or at least that it could become so under correct
circumstances.

Sin after Baptism 221
phanius' the Marcionites admitted repeated baptism
in the case of sin, and he unkindly adds that Marcion
himself had been obhged to make use of this privilege.
It appears that this arrangement was defended by a
reference to Luke xii., 50, "I have a baptism to be
baptized with, " which was taken to imply a second
baptism, as Christ, when he spoke these words, had
already been baptized by John the Baptist. It would,
however, seem from the same passage in Epiphanius
that this repetition of baptism was limited to three
times. Probably this suggestion of rebaptism was the
earliest, as it is the simplest, method of dealing with
the question; but it was met with a resolute opposi
tion on the part of the Church, and, except for the
references to Marcion, the only traces which remain of
it are the polemical passages in Hebrews, and the
emphasis laid on the one baptism in Ephesians iv., 5,
and perpetuated — though with a probably different
meaning — in the Nicene Creed.
It is worth asking why this natural suggestion of
repeated baptism was so generally rejected. Pro
bably because it did not really correspond to psycho
logical fact in the way in which the original baptism
did. As was shown above, the fact which gave bap
tism its importance was that it so often coincided with
the turning-point in the experience of the "twice-
born." The first Christians had therefore a very
specious argument from experience at their disposal
when they regarded it as the cause of the change in
1 Adv. Haer., I. xiii. HawTurBels b icipios inrb rod 'Iwdvvov
H\eye rots imdirrais BiirTurim %x"> pamtO^wu, oBtoi rb BiSbmi ir\ela
/Soirrfe/wtTO iSoryiiAruTev.

222 The Stewardship of Faith
their hves, and inasmuch as this change was held to be
the passing from a state of sin to a state of righteous
ness, it was easy to identify baptism and the forgive
ness of sins.
But though one may use the same word — sin — to
describe both evil deeds and the state of unhappiness
of the "twice-born" before they find peace, it is quite
certain that this is a confusion of thought, and it is
similarly certain that the sin forgiven, or got rid of,
by the first baptism was as a rule sin in the latter
sense, while the sin which gave rise to the problem of
sin after baptism was sin in the former sense.
There was therefore a real psychological and ex
periential difference between the two cases. It was a
confusion of thought which led men to argue that what
baptism had done once it can do again; and although
the Cathohc was quite as confused inteUectuaUy on
this point as was the heretic, his instinct — based on
experience, not on logic — was more correct, and made
him distinguish the "forgiveness of sins" obtained in
baptism as something which could not be given twice
— at least not by the same means.
StiU, the rejection of rebaptism was no solution of
the practical problem. Perhaps the earliest of the
other attempts of which we have clear evidence is
presented by the famous verse in i John v., 16/., "If
any man see his brother sinning sin1 not unto death,
he shall ask, and he (i.e., the Son of God) wiU give him
life for them that sin not unto death : there is sin unto
death, not concerning this do I say that he should
1 The R.V. puts this translation of ipaprla into the margin,
and a sin into the text; but it is difficult, to see any valid reason
for doing so.

Sin after Baptism 223
make request. AU unrighteousness is sin, and there is
sin not unto death. "
The doctrine implied here is that there is a quahta-
tive distinction between different kinds of sin. Some
are deadly — the teaching which the Epistle to the
Hebrews seems to hold as applying to aU sin — and
others are not. These last can obtain forgiveness
through prayer, and through the intercession of Christ.
"My little children, I write these things to you that
ye sin not" — sinlessness is thus the ideal and normal
position which the writer hopes for — "and if any one
sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ
the righteous. "
Here we get two important developments of doc
trine: first, the distinction between mortal and venial
sin, and secondly, the attribution to Christ not only
of the function, which was originaUy that of the
Messiah, of cleansing from sin and admitting those
who had thus been made pure into his kingdom of
sinless saints, but of the perpetual cleansing and inter
ceding for the members of his Church. The changed
point of view with regard to the nature of Christians
necessitated a corresponding change with regard to
the functions of the Christ.
Over against this qualitative distinction between
deadly and venial as a basis for the solution of the
practical problem of sin after baptism, we find an
independent attempt in what may be called a quantita
tive manner. It wiU be remembered that Marcion,
though admitting the principle of rebaptism, imposed
a limit on the number of times that this might take
place. As compared with the method suggested in I
John, this may fairly be caUed a quantitative Hmit to
forgivable sin, and from the "Shepherd" of Hennas

224 The Stewardship of Faith
we find that in the Church at Rome, although Mar-
cion's doctrine of rebaptism was rejected, the quanti
tative system was introduced, probably even before
the coming of Marcion, in order to deal with the prac
tical difficulty of sin among baptized Christians.
Hermas discusses the matter in the third chapter
of the fourth Mandate. "I wiU venture," he says,
"to ask one thing more. ... I have heard from
certain teachers that there is no further repentance
beyond that, when we went down into the water, and
received remission (Sufeaiv) of our former sins. " It is
clear that, even if this be not a direct aUusion to the
Epistle to the Hebrews, which, as I Clement shows,
was early known in Rome, it is at least a reference to
the same stern attitude towards sin after baptism
which that Epistle represents. To this the angel
replied, "Yes, that is so; for he who has received
remission of sins must not sin again, but live in purity
(&tvel<t) '; but since you inquire into everything, I wiU
explain this point also to you, though without giving
occasion to future Christians or those who are faithful.
For these two classes are offered no repentance for sin,
but have remission of their former sins. So then for
those caUed before these days the Lord has appointed
a repentance . . . and to me has been given the
control of this repentance. But I say to you, said he,
after that great and solemn call, if a man be tempted
by the devil, and sin, he has one repentance; but if he
¦ This word indicates clearly the type of sin which loomed
largest to the early Christian mind. It also raises the question
whether marriage after baptism was contemplated as allowable.
Marcion, of course, forbade it; but this was not mere heresy, for
it seems probable that Tertullian, even in his prerMontanist
days, did the same, and so probably, much later, did Aphraates.

Sin after Baptism 225
sin lightly and repent, it is unprofitable for that man,
for scarcely shall he live. "
No one would maintain that this passage is in all
respects easy to understand — Hermas is not a writer
who attains clearness by attention to detail — but the
general meaning is tolerably plain. For the future a
modification is introduced into the original plan of
salvation, according to which sin after baptism was
deadly, and a chance — but only a single chance — of
efficient repentance is offered to those who have
thus sinned. This does not give a direct remission
of sins as baptism does, but offers the chance of
an ultimate remission, if the sinner does not again
fall, but remains constantly obedient to the angel of
repentance. It is plain that this conception of repentance is the
first step towards the Catholic doctrine of sacramental
penance, for though drawing a distinction between it
and baptism, it nevertheless places it in the same class.
We may also guess that there was some special reason
for the change, and this is likely to have been some
persecution or other crisis which had led to an ex
traordinary amount of backsliding; but the chronol
ogy of Hermas does not allow us to identify this
with any certainty; all that can be said is that not
long before a.d. 140 is the most generally probable
date. It should also be noted that Hermas is careful not
to throw any doubt on the original truth of the stern
doctrine previously held; he fully accepts it, but
claims to have had a new revelation of an offer made
by God in modification of it.
This elevation of repentance to a rank similar to
that of baptism was not the only way of dealing with
15

226 The Stewardship of Faith
the problem known to Hermas. He warns his readers
against the suggestion of postponing baptism in order
to escape the responsibility for a pure life (cf. Vis. 3,
7, 3). Such a suggestion was of course very natural
to those who (like the ordinary "once-born" person)
are quite well contented with the world as it is, but
wish, in order to be safe, to do what is necessary to
secure equal comfort in the world to come. Such
persons do not in the least cry out to be "released
from this body of death"; they wish to remain in it
as long .as possible; but they beheve, on authority,
that at death they will pass into a different sphere of
Hfe, and they desire to make certain that they are
doing what is necessary for their future well-being.
If they are told, as they were in the second century,
that initiation into the mysteries, whether Christian
or Pagan, wiU secure what they wish, they will be
initiated. But let there be no undue haste: the Chris
tian mysteries, at all events, entail an unpleasant
asceticism, and had better be postponed as long as
possible. Such reasoning, mutatis mutandis, is natural
to the "once-born" who has been forced into a system
produced originaUy by the "twice-born." It tends
at present in Protestant circles to a so-called "death
bed repentance, " and to a philanthropy deferred for
old age, or distributed later, though more lavishly, by
testamentary dispositions. In the early Church it led
to deferred baptism. Such a practice was never
encouraged in the great Church, though TertuUian in
his treatise on baptism (probably written before his
Montanist days) was inclined to think the danger of
premature baptism greater than that of a postpone
ment. Among heretics the custom was usual enough,
and some of them — for instance, the Marcosians

Sin after Baptism 227
mentioned by Irenaeus' — even practised a baptism of
— not for — the dead.
From the conception of repentance found in Hermas
to the idea of other sacraments to neutralize sin after
baptism was only a step. Exactly when and by whom
it was first taken is more difficult to say. Probably
there is much to be said for the view which sees a
connection between this movement and the difference
between the original Marcan text of the institution
of the Eucharist, and the Matthaean redaction. In
Mark we read (xiv., 24), "This is my blood of the
covenant, which is poured out for many," to which
Matthew (xxvi., 28) adds, "for the remission of sins,"
whue he also changes the preceding "and they aU
drank of it" into the command "drink ye aU of it."
It is as nearly certain as anything can be that the
earliest view of the Eucharist did not regard it as a
means of obtaining forgiveness of sins; while a little
later this was equally certainly a prevalent view.
May we not see some plausibility in the suggestion
that the problem of sin after baptism tended to give
a changed importance to the Eucharist, and that the
Matthaean text — as contrasted with Mark — shows
the change?
A similar suggestion may be made, though quite
diffidently, about John xiii., 1-20, which describes the
washing of the disciples' feet at the Last Supper. It
is, of course, weU known that the Fourth Gospel does
not describe the institution of the Eucharist, just as
it does not describe the institution of baptism, yet few
will dispute that it is from beginning to end thoroughly
sacramental, and that there are imphed references to
the Christian mysteries on almost every page. Here
1 Adv. Haer., I., xiv.,4.

228 The Stewardship of Faith
in chapter xui. the reference to the Eucharist is quite
clear, though only implicit, and I believe that the real
meaning may be that it is to be regarded as the means
of cleansing Christians from the stains of post-baptis
mal sin. Baptism was washing (XoiisoSctt, cf. the
XouTpov -rij<; xaXtyYsveufas of Titus iii., 5), and that
could not be repeated; therefore Peter's request — •
"Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my
head" — was refused. The disciples had been "wash
ed," they were clean, and of this washing there was
no need or possibihty of repetition. But even he who
has been washed may have need to remove the dust,
and thus must "wash his feet." When we find this
teaching so clearly glancing at baptism on the one
hand, and on the other given on the occasion which
was known to be connected with the Eucharist, I think
that there is much to be said for the suggestion that it
was intended to point to the Eucharist as a remedy for
the stain of sin after baptism.
However this may be, and of course the interpreta
tion suggested can never, at the best, be regarded as
more than possible, we can certainly see in heretical
bodies the- traces of other sacramental institutions
intended to remove sin after baptism. The history
of these is outside the scope of this note: it must
suffice to draw attention to two interesting examples.
The Marcosians, in the second century, were in the
habit of using a second sacrament, closely resembling
baptism, to which they gave the name of "Redemp
tion" (dtxoXikpwaK;), and explained aU passages in
the New Testament containing the word as references
to this sacrament (see Iren. I., xiv.).
StiU more striking is the teaching of the Pistis
Sophia a century or less later, which describes a whole

Sin after Baptism 229
series of sacraments or mysteries, and in chapters
civ -evi. gives a number of rules governing the admis
sion of backsliders to renewed participation in the
mysteries, based on the interpretation of Matthew
xviii., 21/. (which enjoins forgiveness "unto seventy
times seven") as a reference to sin after initiation
into the mysteries.
Thus in the first attempts of the early Church to
deal with the problem of sin after baptism we can see
the beginnings of the later elaborate ecclesiastical
edifice of doctrine and practice. The Shepherd of
Hermas shows us the origin of the doctrine of "pen
ance." The Johannine Epistles show the beginning
of the distinction between venial and deadly sin, which
is such an important feature of the later casuistry, and
of the propitiatory function of the risen Christ, which
is essential to the doctrine of the Mass. FinaUy the
Matthaean version of the institution of the Eucharist»
and the Johannine account of the washing of the
disciples' feet show traces of the general development
of the doctrine of sacramental cleansing for post-
baptismal sin, of which Penance and the Mass are the
surviving results.

INDEX

Acta Pilati, 128; Pauli (see
Acts of Paul)
Actium, 72
Acts, 60, 91, 93, 94, in; date
of, 93: of John, 169, 174;
of Paul, 168, 169; sources
of, 48, 119
Adam, 156
Administration, local, 69
Adoptionism, 169
Adonai-Jahveh, 113
Africa, 68
Age, New, 133, 134, 208, 209,
211
Ages, Dark, 70, 209; Middle,
19°, 195. 199
Alexander the Great, 71
Alexandria, 92
All Father, gnostic, 145
Allegory, 127, 152, 157, 199
Angels, in
Anointed One (see Messiah)
Antioch, 63, 67, 89, 91, 96, 108
Aphraates, 224
Apollos, 97, 118
Apocalypses, 18, 51
Apologists, Christian, 126-128
Apuleius, 85
Aquila, 97, 98
Arianism, 177
Armenia, 68
Arnold, Matthew, 103
Ascension, 119
Asceticism, 148
Asia Minor, 92
Astralism, 74, 75
Astronomica of Manilius, 74
Athenagoras, 159
Atonement, doctrine of, 193-
195
Attis, 81

Augustus, 72, 74
Authorities, municipal, 69
B
Bab, 118
Baptism, 65, 95, 96, 100, 108,
116, 118, 119, 136, 171, 220,
225, 227, 228; Second, 136;
sin after, 136, 137, 213-229
Barabbas, 42, 43
Barbarians, 134
Barnabas, 63 ; Epistle of, 94
Baruch, 18, 26, 28; apocalypse
of, 216
Basilides, 147, 148
Beelzebub, 48
Beha, 118
Bethune Baker, J., 178
Bevan, E., 74
Bible, 51, 52, 53
Birth, 171
Bousset, W., 113, 145, 148
Browne, E. G., 118
Burkitt, F. C, 27

Caesar, 72
Caesars, 71
Caesarea Philippi, 47
Catastrophe, 17
Catholic, 66, 157, 222
Catholics, 137, 138, 139, 141,
145, 161
Catholicism, 159, 168
Cause, First, 151
Celsus, 132, 133
Charismata, 204
Christ, the, 14, 49, 170, 171-
173, 178, 221; two natures
of (see Two natures of
Christ)

231

232

Index

Christians, 97; Hebrew, 62;
Gentile, 64; as the heirs of
promise, 94; Judaizing, 66
Christianity, 67, 87, 98, 99,
128, 191 ; Catholic, 89, 120,
121, 123, 124, 149, 162,
202; early, 23; Gentile, 95,
99; Hellenistic, 64, 94, 96;
modern, 125; as movement,
189-191; uninstructed, 125,
126, 168-188
Christmas, 170
Christology, 95, 96, 108, 113,
126, 178-188, 196
Church, 51-53, 71, 113, 133,
199; Anglican, 205; Catholic,
5, 24, 91, 102, 143, 190, 205;
Greek, 205; Protestant, 143,
202, 203, 205; Roman, 142,
205, 224
Churches, the, 66, 201-206
Cicero, 74
Circumcision, 63, 95
Civilization, 9, 10, 203
Clement, I., 48, 224, IL, 169
Coin, Roman, 45; Jewish, 45
Colossians, 114
Columbus, 15
Commercial method, 206-207
Communicatio idiomatum, 179
Confessional, 138, 141, 142
Continuity, historic, 131
Conybeare, F. C, 168
Corinth, 77, 102
Corinthians, 99, 120
Cornelius, 63-66
Cornutus, 115
Corssen, P., 74
Creation, 145, 157; gnostic
view of, 174
Creator, 147, 148, 150
Creed, Apostles', 150; Atha
nasian, 180; Christocentric,
65; Nicene, 221
Creeds, 199-201
Criticism, higher, 23; liberal,
Cross, 47
Crucifixion, prophecies of the,
128; cry of despair at, 47

Cults, Oriental, 88, 89
Cumont, F., 75, 83
Cyprus, 63 D
David, 43
Death, 78, 80; expectation of,
46
Deism, no, in
Demiurge (see Creator)
Demons, 61 ; false fulfilment of
prophecy by, 127
Demonology, 61
Descensus ad Inferos, 128
Destiny, 75, 82
Determinism, 74, 81; astral, 87
Determinists, 75
Devil, 149, 169
Didache, 48
Dieterich, A., 83
Dill, W., 70, 76, 128
Dispersion, 62
Docetism, 168
Dorner, I., 184
Drews, Prof. E., 174
Dualism, gnostic, 152
Durham, 152 E
East, 80
Ecclesiasticism, 33
Ego, 160
Egypt, 12, 68
Elect one, 13
Elijah, 61
Elisha, 61
Emperor, divinity of the, no
Emperors, cult of the, 71
Empire, Babylonian, 6; British,
9, 68; concept of, 9; Roman,
4, 8, 50, 62, 67-72, 74, 76,
79. 87. 91, 97. 121, 128, 129,
131, 132, 134, 206, 209
Empires, great, 6
Enoch, 12, 26, 28
Ephesus, 97, 118
Epiphany, 170
Epiphanius, 220
Episcopacy, 204

Index

233

Epistles, 93, 94, 101, ill;
Johannine, 229; Pauline, 91,
tA2Erasmus, 131
Eerdmans, B. D., 43
Eschatology, 11, 14, 16, 37,
40-42, 61, 102, 112, 116, 117,
120
Essenes, 116
Ethic, "interim," 40; world ac
cepting, 38, 73, 82, 121, 131,
133, 190; world renouncing,
38, 39. 82, 121, 132, 190
Ethics, 2, n, 37, 79, 100, 189,
206-212; Christian, 104, 132,
212
Eucharist, 95, 116, 119, 120,
227-229
Europe, 92
Eusebius, 118
Exegesis, Jewish, 94
Experience, 198; and history,
173-181; psychical, 105;
rehgious, 105, 124, 143, 173,
175. 176
Expositor, 213

Faith, 30, 100, 137, 142; heal
ing, 30
Fall, the, 157, 158, 169
Fate, 74, 75, 77. 81, 82
Faye, E. de, 145
Fights, wild beast, 70
Flesh, 148
Flesh, Gnostic view of, 174
Forgiveness of sins, 30
Formula, Trinitarian, 118
Fourth Gospel, 117, 120, 227
Frazer, J. G., 71

Galatia, 63
Galilee, 26, 97, 98; Jesus in
(see Jesus); prophet of, 115;
synagogues in, 98
Gaul, 68, 70
Games, 70
Genesis, account of ' creation

in, 149, 152; cosmogony in,
150, 153
Gentiles, 63
Glover, T. R., 132
God, of creation, 151; belief in,
126; in man, 75; modern
view of, 153; personal, 154;
of religion, 151; son of (see
Son of God); spirit of, 172;
union with, 82; in the world,
73
God-fearers, 89, 91, 109, 113,
116, 117, 121
Gods, Latin, 87
Gnostics, 169; Weltanschauung
of the, 157
Gnosticism, 39, 82, 125, 126,
145-168; Christianized forms
of, 146; redemption in, 147
Gore, C, 51
Gospels, 22; historical criticism
of the, 4
Grace, 141
Greece, 68
Greek, 101, 102, 104, 107, no;
modern, 109
Greeks, 69 H
Harnack, A. von, 93, 119
Hastings, J., 117
Head of Days, 13
Heathenism, 73, 78, 125-127,
129, 132
Heaven, 102
Healthy-minded, the, 155, 219
Hebrews, 114; Epistle to, 214,
215, 220, 221, 223, 224
Heitmuller, W., 117
Hellenistic movement, 62, 63
Hellenizers, 99, 100
Heretics, 222
Hermas, 150, 169, 170, 223-
227, 229
Hermes, 115
Hermetic literature, 115, 148
High priests, 42
Hilgenfeld, A., 145
Hippolytus, 148

234

Index

History and experience, 173-
181
History, Old Testament, 127
Holland, 66, 139
Hosanna, 42

Illusion, 14-16
Incarnation, 170, 194
India, 15
Individuality, permanence of,
165
Infallibility, 52
Inge, Dean, 79
Institutions, preservation of,
131
Internationalism, 210-21 1
Interpretation, symbolical, 152
Irenaeus, 148, 227, 228
Isaiah, 49
Isis, 81, 85
Israel, 20, 32, 140, 169
Italy, 70

James, W., 108, 135, 196, 218,
219
Jerusalem, 21, 43, 47, 60, 62,
63, 91, 108, 119; Church at,
94. 95. "9; Council of, 63;
triumphal entry into, 49
Jesus, 6, 25, 26, 28, 30-33, 37,
44-47. 49. 5°. 82, 95, 61,
108, no, 113, 118, 123, 171,
174-176; baptism of, 50;
crucifixion of, 97, 98; dis
ciples of, 36; divinity of, 109;
in Galilee, 119; historic, 4,
22,27,41,51,53, 173; life of,
24, 127, 156; "Lord," no;
preaching of, 28, 98; resur
rection of, 50; risen, 60,
61; suffering of, 120; teach
ing of, 34, 36, 42, 60, 97
Jews, 6, 8, 14, 17, 19, 20, 49,
101, 102, 104, 106, 107, no;
Hellenistic, 62
John, acts of (see Acts of

John); baptism of, 116;
the Baptist, 26, 48, 221;
Gospel of, 23, 24, 30, 34
Josephus, 43, 61, 93
Jubilees, Book of, 216
Judaism, 4, 87, 95, 98, 99, 104;
Liberal, 86; Palestinian, 86
Judaizers, 99, 100, 108
Judas, 42
Justice, abstract, 192-195
Justin Martyr, 126, 127, 214

Kingdom (see Kingdom of
God); coming of the, 46; of
God, 19, 26, 27, 29, 31, 33,
35. 36, 40, 47. 64, 65, 72,
100, 109, 112, 113, 116, 119,
120, 132, 162; of heaven
(see Kingdom of God) ; Mes
sianic, 215, 216
Kings, Seleucid, 71

Law, 77, 95, 99; ceremonial, 95;
the, 20
Levi, Testament of, 216
Leszynski, 43
Life, American, 68; eternal, 102;
future, 103, 126; permanence
of, 167; survival of, 166
Literature, apocalyptic, 18, 51;
Hermetic, 115, 148
Liturgy, 84
Logos, 50, 81, 114, 115, 123,
170, 185-187, 194; incarna
tion of, 195
Lord, 109, m-114, 117, 122,
123. 173, '75; of spirits, 13
Lucius, 85
Luke, 98, 101; Gospel of* 24,
25, 60, 162
Lumley, 152 M
Magic, 84
Manilius, 74
Maran atha, 113

Index

235

Marcion, 148, 150, 220-221,
223-224
Marcosians, 226, 228
Mark, conclusion of, 161 ;
Gospel of, 24-26, 29, 60, 162
Mary, Virgin, 169
Mass, 137-139, 229
Matthew, Gospel of, 24, 25,
162
McGiffert, A. C, 150
Meal, sacrificial, 120
Meeting, Quakers', 139
Memory, survival of, 166
Mesopotamia, 68
Messiah, 14, 26, 42, 45, 46, 49,
50, 61, 95, 97, 109, m,
115, 121, 216, 220, 223
Messianic claims, 42; secret,
42, 119
Miners, 152
Ministry, 189, 190; sacramen
tal, 123, 135, 137, 201-206
Mission, Antiochene, 64, 95,
96, 98, 99. 108, in, 113;
Jerusalem, 99; Jewish, 86, 89
Mithras, 81
Modernist, 185, 187
Money exchangers, 45
Monopoly, commercial, 44
Monotheism, io, n, 72, 87, 95,
109, no
Morality, 106
Moses, apocalypse of, 216
Mysteries, 82, 95, 105, 229;
Christian, 226, 227; heathen,
155. 226
Mysticism, sacramental, 90
Mythology, 115, 127, 129;
Babylonian, 12
Myths, 126 N
Names, in invocations, 220
Nationahsm, 6
Nationality, 9
Nations, common superior of,
9, 212; small, 6
Nero, 77, 78
Nestorius, 178

Nestorianism, 177
Nicodemus, 117

Olympus, 87
Omnipotence, 194
Once-born, 217, 219, 226
Oort, H., 43
Oracles, Sibylline, 86, 116
Orders, 204; Episcopal, 65
Ordination, 204-205
Origen, 132
Orthodoxy, ecclesiastical, 157

Palestine, 62
Pantheism, no
Pantheon, 76
Papyrus, Paris, 83
Paul, 63, 92, 93, 97-99. 105,
106, 108, no, 113, 117, 118,
120, 145, 160, 162, 214; acts
of (see Acts of Paul)
Penance, 137, 225, 229
Penitence, 136
People, the chosen, 10
Period, Messianic, 65
Perseus, 128
Persius, 115
Personality, 182-184, 198
Peter, 47, 62, 64, 66, 67, 119;
Gospel of, 169
Pharisees, 21, 35, 43
Philanthropy, 142
Philo, 86
Philosophers, Stoic, 126
Philosophy, astral, 81
Pilgrim's Progress, the, 218
Pistis Sophia, 148, 228
Pleroma, 145, 146
Pliny, 69, 70
Plutarch, 127, 128, 130, 131,
157; De Iside et Osiride, 126;
intellectual deception of,
129
Poimandres, 148
Politicians, 211
Polycarp, martyrdom of, 48

236

Index

Pope, 66
Posidonius, 74, 80
Preaching, 142
Priesthood, Catholic, 141
Priests, 45; Anglican, 142
Priscilla, 97
Privilege, maintenance of, 131
Products, social waste, 133,
134, 135
Progress, pohtical, 67
Proletariat, 132
Proost, K. F., 35
Prophet, 48, no
Prophets, Jewish, 170
Proselytism, 64
Protestant, 137-139, 141, 144,
145
Protestantism, 51, 142, 202
Providence, 77
Psychology, 108, 184
Ptolemies, 71
Publicans, 32
Pulpit, 142, 143
Purgatory, 145, 163, 164
Purification, laws of, 60
Puritanism, 77
Purpose, 197; divine, 158
Q
Q, 25, 29, 48
Quakers, 66, 138, 139
Quietism, 43

Rabbis, 45
Race, new, 133
Reality, 154
Reason, 77
Rebaptism, 220-222
Redeemer, 148
Redeemer-God, 81, 114, 121
Redemption, 156, 228;in Chris
tianity, 149; Gnostic and
Catholic theories of, 157;
Pauline theory of, 156
Reformation, 131, 142, 163
Regeneration, 84, 105, 106,
117

Reitzenstein, R., 145
Rehgion, 1, 52, 106, 198;
Jewish, 60; Roman, 74;
theistic, 155
Religions, mystery, 80, 86, 113,
145; Oriental, 71
Repentance, 117, 225
Research, psychical, 165
Responsibility, 131
Restatement, 191
Resuscitation of the flesh, 162
Resurrection, 46, 102, 145, 171;
of the flesh, 160, 167; general,
161 ; Gnostic view of, 159,
162; Paul's doctrine of, 160
Reunion, 66
Revivals, 219
Righteousness, 100
Romans, 21, 42, 45; Epistle to,
215
Rome, 77, 92; Church of (see
Church of Rome)

Sabbath, 60
Sacrament, 83, 84, 96, 120, 122,
136, 140, 190, 229
Sadducees, 21, 43
Salvation, 80, 101, 112; per
sonal, 102; of unbaptised,
192
Sanday, W., 184
Samaria, 140
Sandan, 81
Saviours, 73
Schism, 222-223
Schmidt, C, 168
Schurer, E., 43
Science, economic, 208 ; men of,
210
Scribes, 20, 28, 31, 33-35, 45;
teaching of the, 29
Scripture, 66; interpretation of,
46
Secret, Messianic, 48, 50
Semitism, 86
Seneca, 74-77, 79, 82
Sermon on the Mount, 29
Servant of the Lord, 48, 49

Index

237

Service, Church, 138, 139
Silence, 146
Sin, 136, 217, 220, 222; after
baptism, 213; meaning of,
217-219
Sinlessness, 214, 216, 220
Sinner, 32
Smith, Prof. W. B., 174
Social values, 37
Socialism, 208-209
Society, service of, 131
Solomon, odes of, 169
Son of God, 172
Son of Man, 13, 46, 49
Sophocles, 77
Soul, journey of, 80
Souls, sick, 135
Spain, 68
Spirit, 148, 171, 173; Holy,
48, 52, 61, 62, 65, 67, 97,
112, 169-171, 213
States, the United, 8, 9
Stephen, 62
Stoics, 75, 79, 100
Stoicism, 74, 90; astral, 74
Suffering servant (see Servant
of the Lord)
Suggestion, 137
Synagogues, 26, 87, 89, 100
Synoptic Gospels, 30
Syria, 68
Syrians, 69

Tammuz, 81
Teaching, Catholic, 132; Jew
ish, 27
Temple, the, 44, 60
Tertullian, 224
Testament, Old, prophetic in
terpretation of the, 127;
Old, symbolical interpreta
tion of, 130
Theology, 2, 87, 189; Catholic,

188; Lutheran, 30; Pauline,
30; Protestant, 164; Stoic, 76
Theol. Tijdschrift, 43
Tradition, 66
Trajan, 69
Transmutation of buried flesh,
163
Trinitarian formula, 118
Trinity, 170
Twice-born, 218-220, 226
Two natures of Christ, doc
trine of, 181-188 U
Unitarians, 66, 154
Universe, catastrophic view of,
11
Usener, H., 168, 170

Valentinus, 147
Voice from heaven, 26
"Vulgar Christentum" (see
Christianity Uninstructed)
W
War, 20
Wellhausen, J., 162
Weltanschauung, 74, 149, 153,
158, 210, 211
Wendland, P., 145
Wensink, J., 43
Wessely, C, 83
Windisch, H., 21, 35, 216
Wordsworth, W., 140
Word, Incarnate (see Logos)
World, Graeco-Roman, 87;
material, 147

Zadok, 43
Zealots, 21,31,35,43,44

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