Chapter IV: Jewish Christianity

So far in the course of our inquiry we have traced the development of Christian doctrine simply through the religious ideas of the Jewish people. But from this point we shall have to consider the relations of opposite tendencies, the collision between Judaism and Paganism in Christianity to which I have referred in the Introduction. And in dealing with this subject, it is a fair canon of historical criticism to say that so far as any dogma is distinctly Jewish, its origin should be assigned to the earliest period of the Christian Church, and so far as any dogma is distinctly Pagan, its origin should be assigned to a later period, after the conversion of the Gentiles had begun. The justice of this canon is evident when we remember that Christianity at the time of Christ’s death had none but Jewish adherents, and that thenceforth it grew to be more and more accepted by Pagans, until at last its ranks were filled with Pagans alone. The Atonement is the chief Jewish dogma, and the Incarnation the chief Pagan dogma of Christianity, and they obviously conform to the requirements of the canon. For the present we shall be occupied with the doctrines of Christianity which are mainly Jewish in form.

Though the Christian Church started with belief in the Atonement, the dogma at the beginning could not have been fully grasped and understood. For a time it was probably only latent in the doctrines of the Church. His disciples were not likely at once to recognize the significance of what Christ did at the passover supper; up to the last they could hardly have been prepared for his death. But even with a blind obedience they would naturally obey their lord’s commands. As they commemorated the Christian passover and repeated its forms, the meaning of it would gradually dawn on their minds. This repetition must have been from the first the centre of the early Church, a distinctive ceremony which brought the Christians together and marked them off from the Jews around them. While thus incessantly repeating the form of sacramental communion with the body of Christ, sooner or later they would be sure to recognize what this sacramental communion implied, the sacrificial character of his death. Then the latent dogma of the Atonement would be fully understood. As Jews, they would readily accept it; indeed, it would be to them an explanation of their strange position as disciples of a crucified Messiah.

As soon as the first Christians recognized that Christ’s death had been an atonement offered for their sins, a feeling of lightness and joy must have arisen in their hearts. Circumstances like those in which they were placed always tend to develop strongly a sense of sinfulness and of alienation from God. But here appeared a means of reconciliation to God and of escape from the burden of sin. And, accordingly, it is likely that now their missionary activity began. The dogma supplied them with a vindication of their lord’s greatness. Jesus, as the Messiah, had borne the sins of men, and had become the representative of men with God. The Jews, who had so unjustly slain him, were in special need of divine forgiveness; and we may be sure that the watchwords of the preaching of the early Christians, when they preached only to Jews, were “Jesus and the remission of sins.”

Though the commemoration of the passover supper was probably the means of impressing the doctrine of the Atonement on the minds of the early Christians, there is no reason to suppose that at first they attached to it an actual sacramental value. They would naturally repeat the forms of the sacramental feast they were commemorating without considering the repetition also to be sacramental. But before long, as we know from St. Paul’s words,[60] the repetition did become sacramental itself. The Christians then believed that the elements of Christ’s body were present in the bread and wine of their Lord’s Supper. At first this presence may have been regarded as symbolical only. It is obvious, however, that the delicate symbolism habitual in Christ’s language was sure in this instance sooner or later to be misunderstood by the grosser minds of his followers. The passage of St. Paul just referred to shows that he believed the flesh and blood of Christ to be actually present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist—that is, present in them by an act of faith, not changed into them by a formula of consecration. When the common feast of the early Christians had thus become a sacramental commemoration of the sacrifice of Christ’s death, their conception of that sacrifice must have been strengthened and made definite. And with this clearer conception of Christ as the victim that atoned for the sins of man, whose body was spiritually present in the food they ate at their sacred supper, would come a greatly enhanced reverence for him. He would seem to them more than human; his Messiahship would gather round it all the highest attributes ever dreamed of in the Messianic ideals of their race. Their full missionary energy would then be displayed. Probably the recovery of the Church from the paralysis that must have fallen on it after Christ’s death began with the recognition of the doctrine of the Atonement, and was finally completed when the Eucharist became a sacrament, a solemn and mysterious ceremony, the central expression of Christian belief.

The preaching of Christianity must have been far easier after its founder’s death. Reverence for Christ could rise to greater heights. Supernatural powers could be attributed to him without any fear of too dangerous a challenge. And, besides, the preachers could disperse themselves. So long as Christ lived he alone could properly preach his system, for all Christians would gather closely round him as their living head. But now every body of Christians was equally near him, no matter where they might be, and had the assurance of his spiritual presence in the elements of the Eucharist. Henceforth the mission of the Church was proselytism; growth became its evidence of life.

That proselytism began immediately after Christ’s death is, of course, very unlikely. The Church probably took some years to recover from the shock of its loss. During this period it could barely have managed to survive as a small body containing the most faithful of those who had followed Christ. Among these picked disciples the development of latent doctrine went on, until the primary principles of Christianity were established on a sure basis. Then, proselytism beginning, every member of the original body probably became more or less a missionary. As a select few they were the preachers and authorities of early Christianity. The commands of Christ, as well as the nature of their religion, impelled them to preach with vigour. At first they would naturally address themselves to Jews alone. With the Jews of Palestine they were not likely to make much way. But when they extended their activity to the synagogues in foreign countries they would be more successful. Here, as the fanaticism of race was less, the spiritual ideal of Christianity would have fewer obstacles to overcome. Still in all their dealings with Jews they probably met with little success. To the Jews Christ crucified was indeed a stumbling-block which even the promise of his second advent could not remove. But as soon as the preachers of Christianity touched the Gentiles, they must have reaped an abundant harvest. Such was the disorganization of religion at this time in the Roman world that, notwithstanding the harsh exclusiveness of Judaism, Gentiles in large numbers were becoming proselytes to it. Under these circumstances Christianity, which had dropped all the harsh features of Judaism, and had added to the remainder much that was in harmony with Gentile ideas, must have easily made converts among them. Though probably very soon the majority of Christians were Gentiles, all the heads of the Church still were Jews, and its principles remained wholly Jewish. This period of Jewish Christianity may fairly be said to have lasted in full vigour until the death of St. Paul.

For more than the second half of this time the missionary activity of the Church centred in St. Paul. After Christ himself, no man influenced the circumstances and doctrines of Christianity more than he. The stress laid upon faith as a means of salvation in early Christianity was largely the result of his personal character. A renegade from the most rigid legalism of Judaism, he naturally, as a Christian, passed to the other extreme, and exalted faith above the righteousness of works. The same recoil from Judaism made him the apostle of the Gentiles. But though St. Paul was as little Jewish as an unhellenised Jew could be, and strained the doctrines of Christianity greatly in the direction of Gentile ideas, his religion was still essentially Jewish. In his epistles—putting aside his references to the resurrection of the dead, made because he was writing to Gentiles who were not familiar with the doctrine—as well as in the other books of the New Testament that belong to this period, we find stress laid chiefly on two dogmas, the Atonement and the second advent.[61] These two dogmas were closely connected, and were the strength of the early Church.

The doctrine of the Atonement was that Christ had died for the sins of the world. “God was in Christ,” says St. Paul, “reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.”[62] The term “world,” as used in this and kindred passages, can only be understood by keeping the doctrine of the second advent steadily in view. All the glories predicted by the prophets for the Messianic times were transferred in the expectation of the early Christians to the period of the second coming of Christ. They believed that when their lord returned there would be literally “new heavens and a new earth.”[63] This new world, then to be established in fulness, they held to have been actually founded by the death of Christ, which had rendered it possible by relieving man from the burden of sin. But in their case only had sin been thus put away, and accordingly they were the foundation of the world reconciled to God, which after the second coming of Christ would remain alone, the old world of sin and alienation from God which still survived beside the new being then finally destroyed. Christ had left them to preach the gospel, that is, to snatch souls from the perishing to the permanent world. The latter seemed to them the real world, and the other, which existed for a time beside it, only a vanishing shadow. For this real and permanent world, then represented by the Church, they believed Christ to have died. The more hopeful Christians might expect that the two worlds would yet become identical, through the conversion of all men before the second advent. Then Christ would come, not in wrath, but simply in love; not to punish, but simply to reward. This, however, could only have been a rare belief. In general the expectation of the Church was that Christ would come speedily, and sweep away all men outside it, and leave it alone on an earth renewed and glorified. Faith in him was the pass that procured admission to the felicities of his Messianic reign; to those outside Christianity his coming could only bring confusion and ruin.[64]

This new world, the creation of which was begun by Christ’s death, and was to be completed by his second coming, the early Christians regarded as a kingdom of light girdled on every side by the old world or kingdom of darkness. It was their mission, they held, to extend its frontiers, and continuously to encroach on the region given over to night. Every inch of ground they gained they believed to be saved from an imminent destruction. For the fervour of proselytism which possessed them rested on the dogma of the second advent. To it they looked forward as a blessing to themselves and a terror to the rest of mankind.[65] All men outside the Church seemed to be walking on the brink of a precipice, over which they were shortly to be hurled. Naturally to save as many as possible of these from a danger so immediate and so vividly conceived was to most Christians the chief object of life. Some of the sterner of them, as we know from the book of Revelation, which was written at the close of this period, expected with gladness the coming of Christ to take vengeance on his enemies. But the harsh and exclusive spirit of that characteristically Jewish work could not have been general; and we may be sure that the Christians, as a whole, felt only pity when they thought of the impending destruction of the proud non-Christian world.

Many strange ideas entered into the expectation of the coming of Christ. It was even thought that at the last moment he would convert and save those who had been unreached by his earthly envoys. St. Paul believed that then, “after the fulness of the Gentiles had come in,” Israel would at length be saved.[66] As to what was to follow the second advent, opinions slightly varied. According to St. Paul,[67] Christ would establish after it an eternal and heavenly kingdom of the Christian living and risen dead; but according to the book of Revelation,[68] he would then reign for a thousand years on earth, afterwards beginning his everlasting rule.

From the new world then to be completed the Christians believed sin to have been put away by the death of Christ. The doctrine of the Atonement, as they understood it, meant actual deliverance from sin, and not mere deliverance from its penalty. Nothing could be clearer than St. Paul’s statement of this.[69] All St. Paul’s epistles are pervaded by a tone of grieved surprise that sin should be found existing within the Church. Sin in his eyes was essentially the mark of the old world. If, then, a Christian sinned, he showed that he did not really belong to the new world; he was under the law, and not under grace, and by the law he would be condemned; he would perish with the perishing world. Probably, under the pressure of such a belief, the Church at this time was the purest society of men that has ever existed. Considering the moral condition of the period, it is likely that the distinction then made between believer and sinner almost corresponded to actual fact. Practically within all was good, and without all was evil. In modern evangelical Protestantism language of the same kind is often used, but only as the shadowy semblance of what was once substantial reality.

The belief in the second advent of Christ in another way must have helped to maintain the purity of the early Christians. Living in the constant expectation of his immediate coming, worldly pleasures seemed too transient and unsure to be worthy of attention. Their belief too, was invested with a vivid sense of reality. They expected to see their lord in all his heavenly majesty, not under strange and unknown conditions only to be experienced by passing through the gate of death, but in the midst of the familiar associations of earth. They awaited his appearance “in the very world which is the world of all of us,” and the shadow of his coming lay on all the thoughts and actions of their lives.

With the fading of so beautiful a dream the real corruption of Christianity began. As the years passed by, and Christ did not appear, the hopes of the Church gradually died away. The doctrine of his speedy coming at length became the last refuge of fanaticism. With it “the freshness of the early world” of Christianity finally perished; the Church never knew again the simplicity and purity which marked this period of its youth.

The expectation of the immediate coming of Christ was the sustaining principle of Jewish Christianity. The loss of it threw the Church completely into Pagan hands. While it prevailed, Christians cared little about the explanation of their theology; existing conditions were regarded as too provisional. But afterwards, when a long life seemed to lie before the Church, theological “pseudo-science” was born. New and complex doctrines were needed to engage the thoughts of Christians, and these Pagan Christianity supplied.

Though the Christianity of this period was thoroughly Jewish in the character of its doctrines, the preaching of it was addressed chiefly to Pagans. St. Paul was their representative among the heads of the Church, and preached almost exclusively to them. In turning to them, Christianity had to a certain extent to adapt itself to their ideas. The nature of this adaptation is clearly visible in the writings of St. Paul.

I have said that, in preaching to Jews, the watchwords of Christianity probably were “Jesus and the remission of sins.” In preaching to Pagans, these watchwords would not have been worth much. Pagans looked for no Messiah, nor were they likely to be inconveniently conscious of sin. The great doctrine of the Church on which stress was laid when it preached to Pagans, as we have clear evidence in St. Paul’s epistles, was the resurrection. Christianity attracted Pagans mainly by promising them the resurrection of the dead. This was naturally the case, as to them, unlike Jews, it was a novel doctrine. But the strength of Christianity in dealing with Pagans lay not merely in its assertion of the resurrection of the dead, but in the proof of the resurrection it professed to give. This, again, is plainly evident in the epistles of St. Paul. He dwells so much on the resurrection of Christ that we might suspect him to have been tainted originally with the scepticism of the Sadducees. By this peculiarity, however, he was exactly fitted to be the apostle of the Gentiles. With his writings before us, we may be sure that he preached to Pagans, as he is made to do in the Acts of the Apostles, “Jesus and the resurrection.”[70] To him the resurrection of Christ was the evidence for the general resurrection of the dead; while his conviction that Christ had risen from the dead rested on the belief that he as well as others had seen Christ after his death.[71] And so St. Paul could preach the resurrection to Pagans in a very effective manner, declaring that the dead would rise again, and giving as proof of this the fact that one man, Jesus, was known thus to have risen, as after his death he had been seen by many credible witnesses, including St. Paul himself. If God had raised Jesus, why should he not also raise other men? Christ had risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept.

Thus while the watchwords of the Church in preaching to Jews were “Jesus and the remission of sins,” its watchwords in preaching to Pagans were “Jesus and the resurrection.” That the evidence on which this preaching was founded should have existed is natural enough. The disciples of Christ, as Jews, necessarily believed that he, after his death, had ascended to heaven, and was living there with God. Such being the case, there is nothing strange in their fancying that he occasionally appeared to them.[72] The death of Christ must have immediately weeded out of the Church all but his most faithful followers. It is not surprising that these, in the midst of the disturbance and excitement of those early days, should have seen visions of their lord, should have imagined that he came sometimes from heaven to console them and strengthen them in their weakness. People so superstitious, in a period of so much supernaturalism, were almost certain to see such visions. St. Paul’s own particular vision, which played so important a part in the history of early Christianity, of course can only be explained by referring to the peculiarities of his personal character.

This basing the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead on the resurrection of Christ had nothing to do with the subsequent belief that he rose on earth and stayed there for a time. St. Paul evidently believed that Christ appeared to others as well as to himself by coming straight from heaven, and that his resurrection had been his entrance into heavenly glory.[73]

In another and a more important respect the influence of its Pagan proselytes affected the principles of Jewish Christianity. In preaching to Pagans it was necessary to determine the nature of Christ. For Jews it was enough to call him the Messiah; their imagination supplied the rest. But Pagans, who had no Messianic expectations, required an explanation of his position as founder of the Church. This influence naturally was most felt by St. Paul, and through him it had a considerable effect in shaping the development of Christian doctrine.

St. Paul believed that Christ “was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the son of God in power by the resurrection from the dead.”[74] Thus St. Paul, as Strauss says, began the deification of Christ. Of course, as Strauss also points out, this was due to the fact that he had never personally seen Christ. Entering the Church some years after its founder’s death, when already legendary influences must have been active in exalting him, St. Paul had no knowledge of Christ to check his natural tendency to glorify the master whom he believed to have appeared to him in a blaze of heavenly light. The other Christians who saw visions of Christ had probably all known him during his life, and this must have interfered with their impulses to magnify him. Naturally, then, St. Paul went further than the other leaders of the Church, and, having seen Christ only in a heavenly vision, thought of him only as a heavenly being. The conception he ultimately formed of Christ in consequence of this tendency to exalt him is somewhat obscure. The term “son of God” in the mouth of a Jew might have only a vague meaning applicable to any man. As employed by St. Paul, it evidently has a special significance. He seems to have believed that Christ was the true Man, Man as he ought to be. Adam was the first and imperfect man, Christ was the second and perfect man. Thus God was the father of Christ in a fuller sense than that in which he was the father of ordinary men, as he had imparted to Christ more of his own nature. Through this possession of elements of the divine nature, Christ was able to represent and redeem mankind fallen under the power of sin. All faithful followers of him were to be made partakers of his divine characteristics, were to become children and heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, were to suffer and be glorified with him.[75]

Christ was evidently regarded by St. Paul as made thus peculiarly the son of God by his possession of God’s spirit. No idea of his having had a miraculous human birth entered into this belief. God in the fulness of time sent forth his son in the likeness of sinful flesh, born under the law, that he might redeem those who were under the law.[76] St. Paul, however, seems to have believed vaguely in Christ’s pre-human existence;[77] but the pre-existence he assigned to Christ was potential rather than actual, Christ existing from the beginning of time as the destined deliverer of mankind.[78]

So the extent of St. Paul’s deification of Christ may be thus generally described. He believed that Christ was in a peculiar sense the son of God—that is, something more than ordinary man. Intermediate between God and man, he was at once God’s agent and man’s representative. But St. Paul clearly makes him inferior to God as well as superior to man, and allows him no power except what is delegated to him by God.[79] Thus as yet there was no sign of the doctrine of the Incarnation, though a path for it was being prepared. For the doctrine of the Incarnation, it must be remembered, is not a mere deification of Christ. It is important, not because it deifies man, but because it humanizes God. St. Paul undoubtedly, so far as he deified—it would be better to say divinised—Christ, helped the Pagan tendencies of later Christianity, but there was nothing actually Pagan in his belief.

The death of St. Paul marked the beginning of the end of Jewish Christianity. As the Jewish leaders died off, the vast Pagan majority seized upon power and impressed their ideas on the doctrines of the Church. Between the undiluted Jewish Christianity of its origin and the Pagan Christianity of the second century, Paulinism served as a link which enabled them finally to remain in nominal connection. In the spurious epistles attributed to St. Paul we can trace the steps of advancing Paganism, and observe the struggle for reconciliation which his followers inherited from him. Paulinism was ultimately lost in the Paganism with which its Jewish opponents had identified it. But it bridged the interval between the Jewish and Pagan periods of Christianity, and so saved the Church from a rupture it could not have survived.