spiration leaves us, as to the authority of any alleged revelation, what criterion to set up by which we may separate the false from the true, or discriminate between the higher and the lower? The answer is, that is a matter which God always leaves to the moral consciousness of man. There is a spiritual judgment which all of us possess. It is reason enlightened through conscience and the education of the slow years of human training. This is the only tribunal to which we may submit any proofs of the nature of revelation, or of the inspiration out of which that revelation comes. Every claim of authority must rest on proofs; and those proofs are all to be submitted to the enlightened reason of mankind. No allegation of truth of the highest sort will convince any single generation, even though supported by the wonderful works of Jesus the Christ himself. The moral sense of men opens slowly to the truth. And it is only by long years of blessing and enlightenment, the growing evidence of divine authority and power, that the Holy Ghost attests his presence. But this may be taught as an incontrovertible law, that truth strengthens itself from age to age, and ever grows to a firmer hold on men's convictions. But error weakens year by year, and slackens her hold upon the world. "Fears and false creeds may fright the realms awhile, Rev. J. Coleman Adams. ARTICLE V. Dr. Harnack on the Origin of Christian Dogma. [Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte von Dr. Adolf Harnack, Ord. Prof. der Kirchengeschichte in Giessen. Erster Band. Die Entstehung des Kirchlichen Dogmas. Freiburg i. B. 1886.]1 THE three centuries which intervene between the Apostolic Council at Jerusalem and the death of Eusebius witnessed an 1 Manual of the History of Doctrine. By Dr. A. Harnack, Prof. in Ordinary of Church History in Giessen. Volume First. The Origin of Ecclestastical Dogma." astonishing change in the polity, cultus, and doctrine of the Christian Church. The extent of the change is most clearly seen when one compares the two extremes of the period. The one presents us with a picture of scattered assemblies, each a democracy, where equality is secured by the Spirit which inspires every believing heart and lends its authority to theenthusiastic utterance of prophet and teacher; the other discloses a vast world state, a hierarchy, where priests alone approach the sacred mysteries, and dispense the means of grace to a laity unable to command the Divine favor. The former shows Jewish traces in thought, no settled formula of belief; the latter reveals a complex scheme of doctrine elevated to a necessity of salvation, a Church heating its brain over the discussions at Nicæa, and preparing the parchment on which Athanasius is to pen his anathemas. To know the nature of the change is important, both to the mind and heart of the Christian. What is it, advance or retrogression, normal development of germs inherent in primitive Christianity, or mal-admixture of heterogeneous elements, ethnic, Jewish, Christian? Is the complex scheme of doctrine really creed, ipsissima verba of Deity, or only screed, at which to stop the cars; a pure river of water of life, flowing from its source in Jesus, augmented by tributaries fresh from the spirit-fountains; or only another Jordan, whose sources indeed are in the pure snows of Hermon, but which commingles with dark and turbid streams from Bashan, Gilead and Ammon, as it flows on to the sea of Death? Modern interest in the answer to these questions is shown in the numerous volumes which, within a few years, have been given to the public, of which the works of Hatch in England, Renan in France, and our own Prof. Allen, are specimens. The true answer is, of course, to be obtained only by an exhaustive study, not only of early Christian literature, but of the contemporary ancient world of Oriental, Greek and Latin thought. Then only can one know how great was the reaction of the pagan world upon the Christianity which conquered it, to what degree it affected the form and modified the substance of Christian thought. Precisely here lies the significance of the History of Dogma, by Dr. Harnack. Any work from him were indeed noteworthy, for though young, he has become the foremost patristic scholar of Germany, with Lightfoot in England as perhaps his only peer. But the special importance and interest of his work is that it is the endeavor of a master to answer the question, Whence came the dogmas which have held sway since the days of Constantine? To give a brief resumé of this answer is the aim of this article. The purpose of Volume First is to delineate the origin, as Volume Second will describe the development, of Christian Dogma. Dogmas are formulated articles of Christian belief which relate to God, the world, and the institutions of salvation, and are recognized in Christian churches as revealed truths necessary to salvation. Dogma is therefore dependent upon theology. But theology, the attempt to intellectually define and express the contents of revelation, is dependent upon many factors, especially upon the spirit and condition of the age. The origin of dogma, then, can only be found by going back of the theology of the formative period, to the relations and influences which, from within and without, modified and determined the thought of the Church. One may, indeed, object that the Christian Church has had from the beginning a definite religious faith, and therefore while one may truly speak of the development of dogna, he cannot properly trace its origin. It is true, however, that while the early church had a definite belief about God and Jesus Christ, this belief and the subsequent dogma are not related to each other as are a proposition and its development. Between the early faith and the later dogma intervenes an entirely new element : the Gospel appears interwoven with a theory of the world and of its origin, which it did not produce. The new religion became, therefore, a doctrine, which obtained from the Gospel This new ele its certainty, but only partially its substance. ment permeating the Gospel, was mainly Greek thought in its various forms: Platonic, Stoic, Philonic, Neo-Platonic. Dogma is, therefore, in its conception and development, a work of the Greek mind upon the soil of the Gospel. This is the main proposition of the volume, of which all that follows is only confirmation and elucidation. The author devotes himself to the task of tracing the intermingling of the fresh and vitalizing clements of the Gospel with the most vigorous of Greek philosophie and religious conceptions, until, in the fourth century, the commixture appears in the petrified form of dogma. Since dogma is thus founded on theology, which is the formulated expression of the contents of faith, we have first to trace the origin of the apostolic catholic doctrine. As factors in its formation we may posit: the Gospel of Jesus Christ; the proclamation of Jesus Christ in the first generation of believers; the current explanation of the Old Testament, the Jewish Messianic hopes and speculations, as they gave form to the earliest Christian preaching; the religious conceptions and philosophy of the Hellenistic Jews, as they modified the later formation of the Gospel; the religious tendencies of the Greeks and Romans in the first two centuries, and the contemporaneous Græco-Roman philosophy of religion. The simple preaching of the Gospel was early disturbed by speculation and divergent opinion. The common elements of the early preaching that the founding of the kingdom of God on earth and the sending of Jesus were the final cause of creation; that Jesus had received the position of ruler in the universe, and that in him God was revealed, led, even within the lifetime of the Apostles, to speculations concerning the nature of Christ. Some, as Paul, regarded him as a heavenly being, older than the world, manifest now in flesh. The fourth Evangelist only (who probably belongs to the second century) affirms that such a pre-existent being must be called Theos. Influential upon the early Church were also the philosophic conceptions, and especially the hermeneutic principles of Philo. But especially important in influence upon Christian doctrine was the revivification of religious life in the Greek and Roman world, which, beginning with the opening decades of the second century, went on with increasing force. Large masses of people, inclined to monotheism, longing for genuine religious satisfaction, fed with eagerness on the pages of Epictetus, Plutarch, Aurelius, adopted the mysterious rites of the Orient; until, won by Christianity, they swarmed into the Church, bringing into it their inheritance of Stoic and Platonic thought. Already in the Church we find Christological speculation; opinion inclining on the one side to the conception of Christ as a human being, chosen by God, and by Him endowed with the spirit, and placed in the position of ruler (the adoptionist Christology, as found in the Shepherd of Hermas); on the other to the view that Christ was a heavenly being, clothed for a time, indeed, in flesh, but at the completion of his work, returned to his true dwelling-place (the pneumatic Christology, as scen in Barnabas, the Clementine and Pastoral epistles). The latter easily won, since it more closely resembled the traditional polytheism, with its superior and inferior deities. There was yet no mingling of the two conceptions in the idea of a dual nature of Christ. The Eucharist takes on the double significance of an offering made by man to God and a mysterious impartation from God to man. More and more the original enthusiasm died away; prophet and teacher gave way to bishop and deacon, as antitypes of priest and Levite. But to the Gnostics, Christian and non-Christian, is largely due the first Christian theology. Gnosticism may be defined as the acute or rapid secularization of Christianity. The Gnostics were the first theologians: they first transformed Christianity into a system of doctrines, undertook to present it as the Absolute Religion, a religion, however, identical in substance with religious philosophy; they are, in fact, the Christians who sought to ally speedily Hellenic culture with Christianity, and thought by the surrender of the Old Testament to accomplish their object more easily. The importance of Gnosticism for the history of dogma NEW SERIES. VOL. XXIV. 4 |