Paul Elmer More - Christ the Word

7/27/2019 Paul Elmer More - Christ the Word

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CHRIST THE WORD


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THE GREEK TRADITIONFrom the death of Sooratesto the Council of Chalcedon

899 B.C. TO A.D. 451

INTRODUCTION: PLATONISMVOLUME I. THE RELIGION OF PLATOVOLUME II . HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHIESVOLUME III. THE CHRIST OF THE NEW TESTAMENTVOLUME IV . CHRIST TH E WORD

( Volume V in preparation)

London: Humphrey MilfordOxford University Press

CHRIST THE WORDBY

PAUL ELMER MOREAuthor of "Shelburne Essays"

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Copyright, 1927, Princeton University Press

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PRINTED AT THE PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESSPRINCETON, NEW JERSEY, U.S. A.

PREFACEI

WITH this volume the historical study of theGreek Tradition is brought to a close, the longjourney per tot discrimina rerum, from thedeath of Socrates to the Council of Chalcedon,just eight and a half centuries to the year, isended.I call the work historical, ye t perhaps Ishould say again that it is so only in a liberalsense of the word. Particularly in the presentcase, though the treatment is chronological,there has been no attempt to give a full andconnected account of the literature under con-sideration, bu t the material has been chosenand the discussion directed with a single thesisin view. The book is thus rather a monographthan a history. Such a method has seemed tome justifiable because the whole course ofGreek theology itself, though it branched offinto innumerable minor i s ~ u e s , was steadilycentred upon the one question of the authentic-ity and meaning and consequences of the In -carnation.


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VI PREFACEIn my insistence on the primacy of this thesis

it may appear that I have overdrawn the distinction between the East and the West andhave been unfair to the large achievement ofthe Latin peoples. To such an indictment I canonly repeat the plea made in the Introductionto the Religion of PlatoJ that I am by no meansinsensible to the grandeur of western Christianity, by the side of which the eastern Church,in its ages of decline after the fourth century,sinks into insignificance. But it remains truethat in some important respects the Occident,in so fa r as it has been dominated by Romanlegalism and medieval scholasticism, has addedelements unfortunate in themselves and aliento the original spirit of the faith. From thesereligion, if it is to hold the modern mind, mustbe freed, and can most easily be freed by returning, for the moment at least, to the moreHellenic type of theology. We need to reintegrate for ourselves the Gospels and the philosophy of Plato, as this was once done in thedogma of Christ the Word.

To complete the series there is yet to be written, from the same point of view, a volume ofessays dealing with such general topics as thedifference between an authoritative and an ab-

PREFACE Vl lsolute Church, the comparison of Christianitywith it s chief oriental rival, the role of mysticism, the interpretation of the creeds, and thesacramental office of the eucharist. Then tothose readers who have kindly come with me sofar, I may say:

Nos alia ex aliis in fata vocamur,T7obis parta quies.

P.E.M.Princeton, N.J.

April 10, 1927.


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CONTENTSPREFACE v

I THE EARLY CHURCH 3II THE SETTING OF GNOSTICISM 30

II I TH E CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHISTS 70IV TH E SETTING OF HERESY 114v SABELLIANISM AND ARIANISM 139

VI THE ARIAN SECTS 160VII ANTIOCH AND LAODICEA 184

VIII THE CLIMAX OF HERESY 215IX CHALCEDON AND TH E GREEK

TRADITION 243X TH E DOCTRINE OF TH E LOGOS 277X I TH E LOGOS (continued) 297

APPENDIX A 331APPENDIX B 334APPENDIX C 339


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CHRIST THE WORD


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CHAPTER I

THE EARLY CHURCHHowEVER we interpret the personal claimsattributed to Jesus, and whatever construction we put on the story of the Resurrection,one indisputable fact remains, that Christianity began with the belief in a superhumanfounder. To the band of apostles and disciplesgathered together in Jerusalem after thecrucifixion, this Jesus whom they had accompanied in his mission through the lake townsand among the hills of Galilee, a friend quickto respond to all the compassions of humanityye.t unyielding in principle and capable attimes of scorching indignation, a teacher whoarrogated to himself a sublime authority andwhose words, marvellously simple and direct,seemed yet to elude them with mysterious hintsof a new faith,-to these Christians, as theywere soon to be named, their Master appearedin memory to have been a man like to them-

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4 CHRIST THE WORDselves and at the same time something morethan man. Now at least, after his humiliation,he had been raised up to stand at the right handof God as judge and Lord of the world; and inrecollection they saw the light of that deifica-tion upon his face while he walked with them onthe earth. He was the Jesus whom they hadknown, one person, whether in the flesh or inglory; bu t his nature presented itself to themin a double aspect, human and divine. This wasnot a metaphysical theorem, no t a doctrinewhich they had reasoned out, bu t a convictionborn of experience.

That was the conclusion of our study of theNew Testament;

1and that must be the intro-duction to ou r survey of the literature fromthe Apostolic Fathers to the Council of Chal-cedon, in which this same Jesus of Nazareth,

under the influence of the Greek tradition yetwithout losing his original character, becameChrist the Word. In an earlier volume of theseries we have seen how for Plato the startingpoint of the religious life was philosophy, wherehe held that immediate truth could be attained,and how from thence he developed a theologyand a mythology with diminishing claims to1 The Christ of the New Testament, ~ S l f .

TH E EARLY CHURCH sc e r t i t u d e . ~ Here we shall see religion traversingthe same line, bu t in the reverse direction. TheChristian began with a myth, which he re-garded as a demonstrable event of history,while for him theology, as a system, and philos-ophy were true only in so far as they could bemade conformable to, and explanatory of, thatbasis of his faith. The extraordinary thing weshall have to note is that, despite the aliensource of the new myth, the theology and phil-osophy of the Greek Fathers should haveturned out in essential matters so thoroughlyPlatonic, or, more accurately expressed, couldhave been adopted from Plato with so fewmodifications. Such a coalescence may lead usto conjecture that the mythology which Platosought to substitute for the old tales of the godswas not so much antagonistic to the faith ofChristianity as imperfectly Christian. And thatis indeed the case: the poetical flights of thePhaedo and the Republic and the Timaeusneeded only to be stripped of their more fanci-ful elements to f,all bodily into the Christianz The Religion of Plato, 17.3 I must say here, what I have said before, that by th e use of theword "myth" nothing is implied prejudicial to the truth of theevent so designated. I t simply means that any commingling ofthe two spheres of the divine and the human, any revelation ofGod to man, must assume an anthropomor.phic character.


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6 CHRIST THE WORDscheme, and these dialogues, especially the

T i m a e u s ~ were accepted by the liberal Fathersas directly inspired by the Spirit of God or,more naively, as plagiarisms from the booksof Moses. From hints here and there it couldeven be surmised that Plato himself was dimlyaware of a theophany to come, of which hisallegories were a prophecy. Socrates in theApology had warned the Athenians of otherwitnesses to the soul who should appear afterhim and avenge his death; and elsewhere he hadadmitted that, for all the reasoning and highimaginings of philosophy, the full truth couldno t be known until revealed to man by thegrace of God (theia moira) . So in the parableof the cave the seer who descended voluntari lyfrom the vision of light to bring salvation tothose in darkness was easily taken to be a typeof the Redeemer , as was also the portrait of thesuffering just man in the second book of theRepublic.

I t is this fact, the Platonism of the philosophy finally developed by Christianity and thesemi-Christian nature of the mythology inwhich at the last Plato clothed his philosophy,it is this similarity of the ground traversed bythe two great spiritual movements of antiquity,

TH E EARLY CHURCH 7h t ustifies us in taking them together as ataJ . Ad' ' le body of religious expenence. n It IS

s t h i ~ g tradition, Platonic and Christian at theIS . . I l' ft e th is realization of an Immatena I e,cen r ,

wrought into the very texture of the Greek lan-e that lies behind all our western culture.guag'Without it, so fa r as I can s e e ~ we. should ha:emained barbarians; and, losmg It, we are mre . . 4T h kperil of sinking back mto barbansm. etasof the present day, as I see it, for those whowould oppose the threatening tide of di.ssolution and materialism, is to sever from this tradition the ephemeral intrusions of superstitionand metaphysics, and so to recapture the truthat the heart of it as a rallying point for the bestthought of our time as it was fo r the bestthought of the past.

To some critics it will appear-as I confessit seemed, or almost seemed, to myself at onetime-that the first step in this purgation wouldbe to go back to the method of philosophy, taking pure intuition as the starting point o.f religion, and allowing mythology to come m atthe end as a more or less serious play of theimagination. Does it not for the modern mind,such critics would say, endanger the very possi-4 The Religion of Plato, Preface, vii.


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8 CHRIST TH E WORDbility of religion to demand that its foundationshall 'be a belief in some supernatural event oflong ago? And the implied answer is in harmonywith the present wide-spread desire to o:btainthe benefits of faith through a sort of vaguetheism without any definite content of dogma.But I am sure that this would not have beenthe answer of Plato himself, cou ld the questionhave been proposed to him in such a form. Hewould have felt that this myth of Christianitygave precisely the one thing, the unum neces-sarium, for which he had been searching all hislife, and that the compulsion it had laid uponhim was evidence of its veracity. He was ready,he says in that conversation which he imaginesto have taken place between Socrates and theyoung Phaedrus on the banks of the Ilissus-he was ready, if he could find any man so muchas able to discern "a One and Many in nature,"to walk in his footsteps as though he were a god.Suppose it could have been told him that aftersix hundred years a student of his works wouldbe applying these words to a person who didno t discern, bu t in himself claimed to be, theOne 'and the Many !5 Would not Plato havesaid, "My Lord and my God"?5 Clem. Alex., Strom., II , xx, 104, Fo r Plato's conception of such

TH E EARLY CHURCH 9At any rate there can be no doubt in regardto the position of the Christian missionaries. Tothem revelation by means of a mythical eventwas not a denial bu t a direct confirmation of

philosophy; as, indeed, the possibility of such anevent was implied in any satisfactory quest ofthe truth. "The maker and father of this universe," Plato had avowed in his old age, "is hardto discover, and, having found Him, one cannotdeclare Him to all men." I t was almost a challenge to such an avowal, when St . Paul madehis proud ,assertion on the Areopagus: "For asI passed by, and beheld your devotions, I foundan altar with this inscription, TO T H E UN-KNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you." An dJustin :Martyr, in a passage so notable as towarrant quotation at length, develops this ideaand adroitly connects the statements of Platoand St . Paul:

"What we have surpasses all human doctrineby reason of the fact that the whole rationalprinciple (to logikon) of the universe becamefor our sakes the manifest Christ, as body, reason (logos), and soul. All the fine sayings anddiscoveries of philosophers and lawgivers ina realization of philosophy in the life of Socrates, see myPlatonism, 303 (second edition).


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10 CHRIST TH E WORDthe past were their elaborations as by searchand speculation they laid hold of fragments ofthe logos. An d because they did no t know thelogos in all its parts as Christ, they often con-tradic ted themselves and one another. Even so,those who before Christ undertook to speculateupon these high things and to test them by thehuman reason were carried off to trial in thecourts as impious and overcurious. Thus Socra-tes, who set out on this path most boldly ofthem all, suffered the same charges as are laidagainst us: for they said that he introducednew daemonic powers and refused to accept thegods of the city. But really, by ejecting Homerand the other poets from his ideal State, hetaught men to renounce the evil daemons whohad behaved as the poets represented, andurged them on to recognize through rationalinquiry the God unknown to them, saying: 'Thefather and creator of all things is not easy todiscover, nor, having found him, can one safelyannounce him to all men.' But this is preciselywhat our Christ did through his power. For noone ever was persuaded by Socrates to die forthis belief, whereas by Christ, the Christ knownalso in part to Socrates (for he was and is thelogos in all men . . . ) , not philosophers andscholars only have been so persuaded, but la-bouring men and the very ignorant, even tocontempt of honour and fear and death. An dthat because the doctrine of Christ is the power

TH E EARLY CHURCH 11of the ineffable Father and no artifice of human ,6reasonmg.

I recall no other single passage in the Fatherswhich expresses so tersely and penetratinglythe relation of Christianity to the Greek tra-dition, or could so well serve as a portal to allthat will follow in this volume. I t shows at oncehow religion had gained in efficacy by takingits initial stand on a mythological fact, andhow the theoretical explanat ion of this fact hadcome to be clothed in language borrowed fromphilosophy.

On the theoretical side .Justin, though hespeaks as one of the Apologists, is in advanceof his age. At the first, in those writers com-monly grouped together as Apostolic, or Sub-apostolic/ there was little desire to connect theobject of their worship with the conquests ofpagan wisdom. Christ was primarily for thema beloved guide in the new way of purity andpeace, as opposed to the old way of lust anddistraction pursued by the heathen world. Re-ligion was emphatically a life, not a speculation,and the Church was a small body of saints setapart from society to await the second comingaApology, II , x.1 Fo r a chronological survey of the Greek Fathers see AppendixA.


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12 CHRIST TH E WORDof the Lord. In so fa r as they sought to accounthistorically for their faith, they were contentwith what came to them from the HebrewBible. The revelation of the Word, with itsmiraculous power to convert the heart, wasmerely a more authoritative voice of the Spiritwhich under the old dispensation had spoken toand through Abraham and Moses and theprophets.

This is seen clearly in the earliest of theFathers, Clement of Rome, who some timetowards the end of the first century, prob- .ably before the composition of the fourthGospel, wrote a letter of exhortation to thechurch at Corinth which had fallen in to dissensions. The great words with Clement are humility and concord. "Let us pu t on the garment ofconcord in humility,"8 he exclaims; and this isthe constant burden of his appeal. Now thevirtue inculcated by the Bishop of Rome islittle more than another name for the "fear ofGod" that to the prophets and moralists of .Israel was the beginning of wisdom and themeans of salvation. I t had a double source, onthe one hand springing from the creature'ssense of insignificance and impurity before the

TH E EARLY CHURCH 13face of the tremendous and holy Jehovah, onthe other hand, in its aspect of concord and ofpatience towards men, being an imitation of thelong-suffering temper of God (makrothymia)under the provocations of human sin and rebellion and faithlessness.9 Nor had the men of old,so commanded to fear and imitate God, beenleft without indications of His nature and work.Christ himself, the wisdom of God, the Word,the Holy Ghost, had conversed with them,though unknown, in his own voice and throughthe lips of those who without seeing ye t believed. Only now for us, in the fulness of time,this same Spirit of God has appeared in theflesh, as man amongst men, and has proclaimedthe truth in language which no one can misunderstand without sin.

The theophany is thus to Clement a naturalconsequence of prophecy; in it is contained thesum of faith and morality, and from it flow alsothe need of orderly worship, the sanctificationof the Church as the body of the Lord, and thesacramental institution of the eucharist. Butthere is no attempt to develop a Christology ora theology from this starting point, no hint ofthe great mystery involved in the Incarnation,u Ibid., I, xviii-xx.


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CHRIST TH E WORDviz. that by this gracious condescension whatunder the old dispensation was shown as thelong-suffering of God has taken the form ofhumility, not to say humiliation, within thedivine nature itself. There is even no true trinitarianism, though the three names occur in thedoxologies of Clement, but a kind of monotheism which in some undefined manner embracesthe Son, while the Holy Ghost is left in thepenumbra of divinity as the spirit of God inChrist, or as Christ himself, or as "the faith andhope of the elect.mo

Perhaps the sharpest formulation of thisearly belief was given by Ignatius, a somewhatlater contemporary of Clement, in his letter tothe Magnesians: "For the divine prophets livedaccording to Jesus Christ. Therefore they werepersecuted, being inspired by his grace to convince unbelievers that there is one God, the Godwho manifested Himself through Jesus ChristHis Son, who is His Word proceeding fromsilence."11 This is the substance of the myth forwhich the world was waiting and philosophy10 Ibid., I, lviii,11 I t is to be noted that this same Ignatius is an outspoken an -tagonist of any attempt to Judaize in the Church. So, in general,the early Fathers insist equally on the continuity of the faithand on the singularity of the new revelation.

TH E EARLY CHURCH 15was groping, and which was to supplant the intractable legends of Olympus and the extravagant theosophy of the Orient.Above all it is the life of the little communities scattered along the routes of the Mediterranean that amazes the reader of history.Ignatius travels from Antioch to Rome andmartyrdom under the guard of ten soldierswhom he calls leopards for their cruelty; andas he passes from one centre of faith to anotherthe people, or their leaders, come out to greethim as though he were a crowned victor. Ajoyous spirit of fellowship binds these societiestogether, and church sends encouragement tochurch across the boundless sea of paganism.And of the divine source of this new concordthe partakers were fully conscious, as can beseen in the so-called Epistle to Diognetus,which, though of somewhat later date, is commonly reckoned among the writings of theApostolic Fathers. There we learn that thedistinction between Christians and other menwas held to consist neither in country no r inlanguage. The faithful are found residing inGreek and barbarian cities, as it may be, andfollowing the local customs in all the outer circumstances of life. Ye t withal they display the


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16 CHRIST TH E WORDwonderful and confessedly invidious characterof a separate citizenship., They dwell in theirown fatherlands, bu t as if sojourners only; theyshare all things as citizens, while suffering allthings as aliens. They marry like other men,and bear children, bu t they do not expose theiroffspring. Their lot is cast in the flesh, bu t theydo not live after the flesh. They obey the law,bu t they go beyond the requirements of the lawin their own abstinence. To pu t it shortly, whatthe soul is to the body, that the Christians arein the world. For as the soul dwells in the body,yet is not of the 1body, so do Christians abide inthe world, ye t are not of the world. The fleshhates and wages war upon the soul, though itsuffers no evil therefrom, because it is pre-vented from gratifying its lusts, and in likemanner and for the same reason the worldhates the Christians. And as the soul loves theflesh which hates it, so do Christians love thosewho persecute them. And as the soul dwells immortal in a mortal tabernacle, so do Christianssojourn among corruptible things, waiting forthe incorruptibility which is in heaven. God hasappointed them to this great post, and it is no tfor them to decline it.1212 Epistle to Diognetus, V, vi. I have drawn largely on the trans-lation by Kirsopp Lake

TH E EARLY CHURCH 17There is a striking difference between the

tone of the canonical books of the New Testa-ment and that of these documents of the socalled Apostolic age. One Inisses the note ofdirect authority; the writers are aware of theirsecondary position as maintainers merely ofwhat has been given. Nor have they the intellectual qualities that appeal to us in some of thetheologians of a later period; one feels thatthey are simple men preaching to a simple folk,without culture or worldly charm. Ye t it wouldbe a dull soul who could read these epistles without a thrill of elation. However clothed in humility, this new thing that has entered into thelife of mankind appears in them with a marvellous freshness of beauty and with kindlingpower. After many excursions in the broadlands of Christian literature, one may comeback to the untutored words of the ApostolicFathers as perhaps the best witness to the Inission of the Church as an organization. Here islife, and here in germ all that is needed of theology: belief in an all-creating bountiful God,who revealed His will through the prophets ofold, and now by a special act of mercy has manifested Himself in His Son; belief in the HolyGhost as the spirit of the Father and the Son


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CHRIST TH E WORDcommuning with the spirit of man; belief inthe divine law as exemplified in the character ofJesus; in the hope of life and glory as securedby the Resurrection; in the eucharist as themystical sign and instrument of the redemption of the flesh; in the Church as the body ofthe Lord and a ,chosen people; in the bishops asthe appointed channel of sacramental graceand as the authentic bearers of the tradition.Vast treasures of philosophy are to be expended on the myth of the Incarnation as thecentral fact of this faith; bu t nothing of essential importance will be added, while some ofthe actual additions will have rather the natureof intrusions from an alien world.Meanwhile the Church is growing, and theState is becoming uneasily aware of this im-perium in imperio. I t will endeavour to crushits upstart rival by physical persecution andmoral defamation. As for the former means it. 'IS a common saying that the blood of the mar-tyrs is the seed of the Church; but the historian,looking more dispassionately on events, mayask whether persecution would not have hadquite other effects if the early emperors hadproceeded to any such systematic measures aswere pursued by Diocletian and Maximin when

TH E EARLY CHURCH 19the enemy had grown too powerful to be suppressed, or whether even then the result wouldnot have been extermination had the policy ofthese rulers no t ~ b e e n suddenly, providentiallysome would say, stayed by political revolution.In fact however persecution, such as it was, didnot suppress Christianity, though it left to theChurch a heritage of difficulties in dealing withthe lapsed which narrowly imperilled her unity.

As for the work of defamation, this in themain was childish and strangly ignorant; no rtill later, when such defence was scarcely needed, did its refutation demand great intelligenceon the part of the so-called Apologists. Fromthe philosophical point of view the best workson the Chris tian side, barring always the ContraCelsum of Origen which belongs to another age,are the Apology of Justin and the Supplicationof Athenagoras, and of these the latter is themore exemplary.Athenagoras, supposed to be an Athenian

convert from philosophy, addressed his treatiseto the Emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus aJbout the year 177. Hi s plea in generalis based on the principle of equity, that theChristians should not be condemned merely fortheir name, bu t should stand trial on their be-

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20 CHRIST TH E WORDliefs and conduct like any other men chargedwith crime. With some inconsistency, perhaps,he then proceeds to prove that the actualcharges brought against the Christian doctrineand life are utterly false. These incriminationstouch the two aspects of religion: otherworldliness and morality,-under the former the indictment of atheism, under the second that ofOedipean intercourse and Thyestean banquets.

The answer of Athenagoras to the charge ofatheism takes the form of a scathing counterattack on the follies of polytheism and idolatryas practised' by the accusers of Christianity,and of arguments to show that, so far frombeing atheists, the followers of Christ worshipthe one God dimly divined by the wiser poetsand diligently sought by the great philosophers.Again, as in Justin, the retort runs that thedeity whom Plato had found hard to discoverand impossible to declare to all men, this Fatherand Maker of the world so passionately desiredyet still unknown to human wisdom, has revealed Himself clearly from old time throughthe prophets. He whom the Christians adore isthe Lord of all, uncreated, eternal, invisible,impassible, illimitable, encompassed rby lightand beauty and spirit and power unspeakable;

TH E EARLY CHURCH 21together with the Son, who is the Logos of theFather in idea and operation, by whom andthrough whom were all things made, the Fatherand the Son being one; and with them the HolyGhost, the prophetic spirit, which is an effluence of God, flowing from Him and returningback to Him like a beam of the sun. And thisassertion of Christian otherworldiness is completed ,by affirming the Platonic distinction between matter and spirit, the creature and theCreator , which, however, does not exclude faithin the resurrection of the body. Curiouslyenough, nothing is said of the Incarnation ofthe Logos, probably from a cautious desire tokeep the argument as simple as possible, and toavoid "topics irrelevant to the subject in hand."The charges of immorality are rebutted negatively by calling for evidence, and positivelyby showing how far the Christian ethics, basedon a pure theism and on the final accountabilityof all men in the day of judgement, surpass thehighest reach of paganism. I t is not strange, headds, that those who worship the Zeus of popular tradition should invent against th e Christianstales of promiscuous licence and Thyesteancruelty. In fact, as we know from other sources,there seems to have been a wide-spread belief


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22 CHRIST TH E WORDthat the Christian agape, or eucharist, wascelebrated by sacrificing and devouring an infant, and that at a certain moment the lightswere quenched for the sake of wild and indiscriminate debauchery.13 Rumours of a similarkind were promulgated by the orthodox againstsome of the baser of the gnostic sects. I t isquite credible, considering the age, that suchabominations were carried out here and there inthe conventicles of those who called themselvesby the name of Christ; but it was easy forAthenagoras to flout such accusations whenbrought against the body of the Church.

One wonders whether this powerful andreally unanswerable apology ever reached theears of the God-seeking and persecuting emperor to whom it was directed, and, if so, whatimpression it made on him.

'V e know nothing of the life of Athenagoras,or of the motives that drew him from philosophy to Christianity; bu t in the case of anotherof th : Apologists, Justin, who suffered martyrdom m the year 165, we have a vivid account ofthe transaction from his own pen, true, onebelieves, in substance, though romantically13 Justin ~ a r t y r , Theophilus, and Minucius Felix refer to thesame stones.

TH E EARLY CHURCH 23coloured in details. The story is told in the introduction to his Dialogue 'With the Jew Try-pho. He was, he says, walking one forenoonin the covered colonnade (probably of Ephesus), when he was accosted politely by Tryphoand several others, out of respect for the philosopher's robe which he still wore though aChristian. Their conversation soon turned tothe subject of philosophy, which the Je w avershe held in reverence because it discoursed ofGod and the providential government of theworld. And Justin admits, paraphrasing afamous passage of Plato/4 that philosophy isthe noblest possession of man-or at leastought to be so, and would :be so, had not thosewho made it their profession forgotten its hightheme and fallen into sectarian disputations.This defalcation Justin has learned from hisown sad experience, for he has passed throughthe schools and found them all wanting. Firsthe had tried a Stoic; but had left him when itappeared that this professor of the Porchneither had any knowledge of God to impartnor thought such instruction essential.15 Nexthe betook himself to a keen Peripatetic, but was14 TimaeuB, 47'B.15 This may sound strange of a Stoic, bu t it was precisely thedoctrine of Aristo of Chios, a disciple of Zeno.


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24 CHRIST TH E WORDrebuffed by the man's evident worldliness. Fromthe Aristotelian he went to a celebrated Pythagorean; but here again he go t no satisfaction,for his new teacher required a long training inmusic and astronomy and geometry before hewould approach the topic in which Justin wasinterested. God was very far from the Pythagorean's mind. An d so, as a l ast resort, Justinapplies to a Platonist. Here, surely, he shouldbe directed to the way he was seeking; and to acertain stag e he was no t disappointed. He saysof himself that he made marvellous progressday by day in wisdom, and that the opening tohim of Plato's world of Ideas gave as it werewings to his soul; in a little while he thought heshould veritably see God, for this is the pu rposeand goal of the Academic quest.

In this frame of mind, Justin continues, hewent out one day to a place in the country notfa r from the sea, thinking there to find complete solitude and a quiet space for the celestialvision. To his surprise he saw himself followedby an old man of mild and venerable counte- .nance, a Christian as it turned out, to whomJustin, on being questioned, makes professionof his philosophic creed.

TH E EARLY CHURCH"'Does philosophy, then, confer happiness?'said he, interrupting me." 'Assuredly,' said I, 'and it alone.'"'What then is philosophy?' he asked; 'andwhat is the happiness it confers? Prav tell me, if

there be no objection.'" 'Philosophy,' I replied, 'is knowledge ofthat which really is, and perception of the truth;happiness is the prize of this knowledge andwisdom.'" 'And what is it that you call God?' said he." 'That which remains ever the same, alwaysitself, and is the cause of being to all otherthings, that is God.' So I answered him, and heheard with pleasure."From this definition they pass to a discussion

of the question whether the Platonic philosophyreally confers the boon it professes to offer.Knowledge of God, the Christian demurs, isdifferent from that of the arts, and must comeby immediate intuition, not by practice andtraining.-Justin admits this, bu t asserts that,according to Plato, the high reason of man, thenous, is in nature akin to God, and thereforepossesses the faculty of divine v i s i o n . ~ H o wdoes it happen then, the Christian asks, that allmen do no t enjoy this privilege, as they wouldif it were merely a matter of the soul's kinshipwith God.-Only the souls purged and purified


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26 CHRIST TH E WORDby virtue, Justin replies, can exercise the faculty; and even to these the vision is barely possible save at those times when, not yet involvedin the obstructions of the flesh, they ranged aloftand came face to face with the object of theirconstant love.-But, retorts the Christian, wehave no recollection of such adventures in a prenatal life, and therefore, on that ground, haveno right to believe that we have seen, or evershall see, God. Neither, indeed, have we anyright to argue that the soul is immortal, agains tall the evidence of the senses. No, there is nothing for us bu t to abandon these guesses of thephilosophers for the books of the seers to whomknowledge of God was given by inspiration,and whose prophetic claims have been confirmed by history. Pray you, then, that thegates of light may be opened to you; for thesethings cannot be perceived or grasped save byhim to whom God and Hi s Christ impart thegift of understanding.-And so, Justin says tohis Hebrew interlocutors, by reflection on whatI then heard a flame was kindled in my breast,and you see me now a philosopher indeed, bu t aChristian too; and I would have all menhearken, as I do, to the words of the Saviour.

The rest of the dialogue consists of a long-

TH E EARLY CHURCH 27drawn appeal on the part of Justin to the Jewish scriptures, showing how everywhere theyare filled with symbols and intimations andplainly uttered warnings of that great eventin time when the eternal Son, the Logos, thecelestial Reason, which gave to the world itsmystery of ordered beauty and spoke of old toIsrael by the voice of prophecy, should appearvisibly amongst men as body and soul andspirit, and so should reveal once for all the willand being of God.

I t seems to me evident, from hints here andthere in other writings of the period, that themanner of Justin's conversion, though the particular incidents related by him may be fiction,was typical of the experience which was drawing the better minds into the Church. Howmany thoughtful men at that time were studying the philosophers of the past and testing thevarious schools of the present in the hope ofdiscovering a warrant for their faith which thetraditional mythology could not give them, orgave them only by violent distortions of a l l ~ -gory I An d something solid and secure they d1dfind, those of them at least who took the rightway. In the Ideal doctrine of Plato there hadbeen added to philosophy a conception of the


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28 CHRIST TH E WORDotherworld stimulating at once to t h e ~ . U ... . I.UIV!tion and the emotions, a conceptiona sound basis for morals and to the fineropening a door of refuge from an actualthat appeared to be sinking into the illusionstroubled slumber. The Christians themselwere not slow to recognize this gain, as mayseen by the generous admission of J ustin16as becomes clearer in the later adaptationPlaton ic imagery to the vision of the _._... . u ~ o : : - ~ . u uof Heaven. Bu t this alone was not enoughthe religious craving of that age, or of anyHe who penetrated into the sphere ofmight be likened to the prince of our fairywho strayed into the enchanted grove andace of the sleeping beauty, where all aboutwas a scene marvellously rich and peaceful,a silence also and an emptiness as of death.I do not mean to say that the Ideal worldPlato himself, or to such a pupil of theemy as Plutarch, held no living God-farthat. Nevertheless it is true that the deityPlato's religion was too much an inferencethe reason, too remote from humanity, andPlutarch's deity was too deeply involved in16 So his famous saying: OllK d.XXIYrpL&. E


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'',,. :

CHAPTER II

T H E SETTING OF GNOSTICISMTHE course of the Church was determined bythree great contentions-with pure paganism,with Gnosticism, and with heresy in its ownbody-which imposed their mark also on thethree periods of patristic literature after thecanonical and Apostolic writers. As for the firstof these conflicts, we have seen how the Apologists scorned their spiritual detractors andsought to placate their physical persecutors inthe pagan world. The battle indeed did not endwith them; but in principle the victory was wonby Justin and Athenagoras, and from thattime the better minds turned in ever increasingnumbers away from heathendom.

Meanwhile a foe of a different stripe wasgathering energy, more dangerous than theavowed enemy for the reason that it professedto be more Christian than the Church, whilebringing to religion a treasure of insight gar-

TH E SETTING OF GNOSTICISM 31nered from all corners of the known earth. Thi swas Gnosticism, a strange medley of follies andsublimities, a many-headed monster, whoseorigin has been a puzzle to scholars, and whosefascination is still felt in the most unexpectedplaces. To understand the situation at all onemust have in mind the two main currents circling through the religious atmosphere of theday, or, if you will, the two rocks of Scylla andCharybdis between which the Church had tosteer its perilous course. These were, in a word,metaphysics and superstition.

The metaphysical current sweeping over thesecond century, the flowering time of the Gnostics, was nothing new in history, nor did it ceasewith that epoch. I t is simply the very humantemptation to subject the total impression ofthe universe to some formula of the reason orthe imagination which will reconcile all the perplexing contradictions of reality in an ultimateunity. We see this process at work in the earliest philosophers of Ionia, who postulated asingle self-evolving substance, whether wateror air or fire, behind the variegated phenomenaof the earth. I t begins to reach out into the religious field among the so-called theologoi.


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Ir;I/:

32 CHRIST TH E WORD"Listen not to me but to the logos," says Heraclitus, "and admit the wisdom of the maxim Al lthings are one." Th e same 'belief, in abou; thesame words, was common to Xenophanes andthe Eleatic school; and it is sung by Aeschylus:

Zeus is the ai r and earth, and Zeus the sky All things are Zeus, and what beyond ma y lie:

I t dominated the later mystery-mongers (andfrom them gets into St . Paul) in some suchform as this: "One is the all, and through it theall, and to it the all."1

F?r m ~ s t part this is the innocent play ofthe 1magmatwn; and its characteristic note isthe sort of panthei sm echoes of which may beheard the world over, sometimes modulated tomusic of exquisite beauty, as in such outflowings of romance as inspired Wordsworth'sTintern A.bbey-and there it might be allowedto remain, floating in the vague of sentimentalrevery. The more specifically rationalistic treatment of the impulse took its rise in Greece withAristotle; and the direction here is rathertowards a harsh transcendence than towards afanciful immanence. From Aristotle to Ploti-1 Fo r other examples of this tendency see Norden AgnostoaTheos, 240 :If. '

TH E SETTING OF GNOSTICISM 33nus the way of the transcendental reason runsin a straight line.2Reason in its progress towards a transcendental monism and the imagination in its progress towards a pantheisti c monismmay seem tobe moving along divergent routes, bu t the difference is only apparent; their starting point isthe same desire to escape the limitations of experience, and in the end they lose their identityin an indistinguishable abstraction. So at theclose of our period we find the two ultimates ofpantheism and transcendentalism wedded together in the mystical rhapsody of the pseudoDionysius, where the mind jumps from the"positive way" of regarding God as the sum ofall Being to the "negative way" of regardingHim as pure Non-Being, or vice versa from absolute isolation above the world to absoluteconfluence with the world, and back again, with2 In holding Aristotle responsible for the invasion of rationalism into Hellenistic thought I do not forget the sounderelements of his philosophy, nor am I unaware that my treatment of this great name, owing to the limitations of my theme,is open to the charge of onesidedness. Bu t it is a fact thatAristotle, by absorbing both the God and Ideas of Plato's latertheology into his earlier conception of the Good (Republic, vi),and then raising the Good into an absolute telos as the UnmovedMover, did prepare the way for transcendental monism (seeHellenistic Philosophies, 006 :If.). Unfortunately in the periodwe are considering it was this special aspect of Aristotle's philosophy which combined with other currents of metaphysicalrationalism to influence the course of religion.


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34 CHRIST TH E WORDno appreciation of it s own acrobatic agility inthese dizzy heights-

Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.And, indeed, when once you have overleapt thebarriers of common sense it makes little difference in which direction you turn, and whetherat the last you say that God is all or that God isnothing. Against the debauch of reason the re-straining modesty of dualism was preservedfor pagan philosophy and handed on by suchnotable Platonists as Maximus of Tyre andPlutarch and Atticus. But outside of Chris-tianity the genuine followers of Plato in thisrespect were not many; the very atmospherebreathed by the theosophists of the second cen-tury might be said to be impregnated with themetaphysical virus.

As for the superstition of the age, one hardlyknows where to begin or how to select an illus-tration, so thick and dense and manifold wasthe stream of grotesque myths and morbid fearsflowing over the lands, like vapours driftingfrom the decay of dead religions. Read of themin Lucian's satires, or take up Cumont's popu-la r manuals or any of the treatises dealing withthe practices of magic,-it is as though, comingto them from Christianity, one were plunged

TH E SETTING OF GNOSTICISM 35into a 'backwash of foul waters. For our purposethe most significant of these superstitions, theone which most influenced the early Gnostics,against which the Christian theologians, begin-ning with St. Paul, protested most frequently,and which yet has persisted among large circlesof the ignorant down to the present day, wasthe belief in astrology. The scourge seems tohave had its source in Ba:bylonia, though prob-ably from a cul t much modified by the Persiandomination. In essence it taught that thisearth and our human souls are under the con-trol of the seven planets, or the daemons whohave their seat in the planets; and as theselords are of a more or less malignant nature, theprime office of religion is to divulge some magical formula which will set the initiate free fromtheir oppressive tyranny. These were the principalities and powers which Paul defied as unable to separate us from the love of God inChrist Jesus.

For the earthly span of man's life the way ofescape from these sidereal lords, or, if not es-cape, the means of adjusting one's course totheir fatality, was through the knowledge oftheir operat1on obtained by casting horoscopes;and there is evidence that this practice was


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CHRIST TH E WORDwide-spread from the palace to the hovel. Thesystem in vogue seems to have correspondedsubstantially with that employed in the MiddleAges, and may still be found in popular manuals and almanacs. One special difficulty, however, which the ancients encountered and ofwhich the critics of astrology made much, wascaused by the lack of time-pieces for registering the exact moment of birth, and of ephemerides for ascertaining the exact position of thestars; since the ar t of celestial divination depends on absolute precision in these matters.The fact, for example, whether Jupiter is justbelow or just above the eastern horizon whenthe horoscope is cast may determine the prediction of an infant's career as monarch or clown.In his Refutation Hippolytus, who traces allreligious aberrations 'hack to Babylon, gives anamusing account of one of the methods adoptedto obviate this difficulty. An attendant sits bythe bed of the woman in travail, and at the instant of parturition makes a signal by strikinga By the precession of the equinoxes the constellations whichgave their names to the twelve signs of the Zodiac have advancednearly 00 since the rules of astrology were laid down, whilethe signs have retained their old names. Thus the constellationAries is now in the sign Taurus. I t is a curious fact that modernastrologers take account of the signs, no t of the constellations,and calculate the effect, e.g. of the sign Taurus as if the Bullwere present in it .

TH E SETTING OF GNOSTICISM 37a metallic gong; and warned by .this ~ o u ~ d theChaldean, who from an elevated i t u a ~ I ~ n IS c o ~ -templating the heavens, n o t ~ s the rlSlng zodiacal sign and so constructs his figures. Where-on Hippolytus proceeds to show the fallacyup . . . tof the system by proving that parturition IS noan instantaneous event, and that, further, anindefinite interval of time elapses b e ~ o r e thesound of the gong reaches the observer.

For deliverance of the soul after death fromthe dominion of the planetary despots, knowledge was still the means, bu t of a ~ f f e r e n t s o ~ t .To this end the great ar t was to be n . s t r u c t e ~ mthe names of the rulers, such gnoszs carrymgwith it, as commonly in magic, an ascendencyover the possessor of the name. As a theme ofpoetry the superstition of the r e a c h e ~ hereperhaps its highest point; particularlyManichean sect the picture of the soul m Itstriumphant flight through the seven h o s t ~ l espheres up to reunion with the super-celestialdivinity has elements of epic sublimity. But onthe other hand this same notion of power obtained by mere utterance of "the name" is the4 Refutation, IV , iv. d II 5 The "name" among the Greeks and Hebrews, a? g ~ n ~ r a Y mthe ancient world, was the nearest e q u i v l l : l e n ~ h n g n s b c ~ I l y ~ owhat we mean by "person" or : ' p e r s o n a h ~ y . So to ta e t ename of God in vain was to offer msult to h1s person.


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CHRIST TH E WORDsource of the most grovelling forms of incantation.

These two currents, a speculative rationalismthat satisfies the demand for unity by the conception of an Absolute utterly severed from therealm mutability, and a superstition sinkingdown mto the grossest belief in magic anddaemonism, run all through the non-Christianliterature. There is something to astonish in themere contemporaneity of tendencies so diametrically opposed to each other; but astonishmentmay give way to bewilderment when we see

t h ~ m , as they often were, inextricably interkmtted. The most rarefied metaphysics and themost abject credulity would seem to be incompatible states of mind, yet a characteristic feature of the Hellenistic world is precisely thecoalescence of these contradictories. The pointof contact and fusion, I think, must be lookedfor in the theory of intermediaries. Just so sureas reason is allowed to play her game unchecked,and ~ u s , in contempt of life and experience, toconceive ultimate reality as an abstraction outof touch with all we know as real, just sd certainly will the mind, appalled at the chasm leftbetween the wbstract and the concrete, set towork to bridge the gulf by the invention of an

TH E SETTING OF GNOSTICISM 39ever increasing number of intermediaries; andon these intermediaries the mythopoeic facultywill lay hold with an audacity the more licentious because the restrictions of common sensehave been ruled out from the beginning. Naturewill have her revenge-tamen usque recurret.A notable example of this law may be foundin the metaphysical movement which attainedits apogee in Plotinus. Here we see the Absolute placed high in a region :beyond being andintelligence, isolated from life by reaches ofineffa:ble vacuity. Yet this Absolute, as the:final reality, must be the source of all that isreal; and thus the void between the One that isabove being and the absolute Multiplicity thatis below being, the abyss of being between thetwo non-beings, is :filled in with a series of intermediaries proceeding from the One by way ofsuccessive emanations which yet leave theirsource undiminished, unchanged, and unconcerned. Plotinus himself remains snugly withinthe safety of pure abstractions; hu t by the inevitable law of reaction the N eoplatonists whofollow him as masters of the school take advantage of these intermediaries to introduce a hostof daemons from the popular superstition andto debase their cosmic philosophy with magic


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CHRIST TH E WORDceremonies. History shows the break-down ofmetaphysics among the mystery-mongers whoswarmed about the court of Julian the Apos-tate.

A similar and striking illustration of the nat-ural course of metaphysics may be studied inone of the by-products of Judaism. Philo, distinguished as "the Jew," was born in Alexan-dria sometime in the second decade beforeChrist. He belonged to an important family ofthe Diaspora, i.e. of Israel scattered over theMediterranean lands outside of Palestine.From the New Testament these Jews of theDispersion are chiefly known to us fo r theirproselytizing zeal; and it was primarily to thegentile hangers-on or semi-converts of theirisolated synagogues that the early Christianmissionaries made appeal. But if these exilesfrom Palestine were the means of spreading theJewish monotheism over the world, they wereals? peculiarly open to influence from paganphilosophy; and of this ambiguous positionPhilo is a notorious example. He was, like St .Paul, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, fully convinced that his people were the appointed custodians of the very oracles of God. Ye t at thesame time he read the Scriptures with a brain

TH E SETTING OF GNOSTICISM 41steeped in Greek philosophy; and he interpreted them accordingly, nursing his patriotismthe while on the pleasant illusion that whateverof truth spoke from pagan literature had beenpurloined out of the books of Moses. His lifelong task was to demonstrate how what here-garded as Platonism lay concealed allegoricallyin the Pentateuch; so that in Jerome's day thesaying was current that either Plato Philonizesor Philo Platonizes. But, as with the Aristotelianism of the age, the Platonism he had imbibedcame from a stream much muddied in its longcourse and diverted into strange channels.

For some time there had been a tendencyamong the reflective Jews to elevate the J ehovah of tradition, certainly in His origin a veryhuman and even passionate deity, into a regionfa r above contact with the compromising affairsof life. His name was so awful that it could notwithout desecration pass through the lips ofmortal man. The tetragrammaton (i.e. thequaternion of consonants JHVH) could beuttered only with vowels borrowed from another word; or for the proper name was substituted bodily some such term as "Place" or"Height" or "Heavens." So thoroughly wasthis prohibition carried ou t that to the present

_..,..: ,r- ~ ~ - J!!''(


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CHRIST TH E WORDday the correct vocalization of what the Au thorized translators, following the Jewish cus-tom, wrote as JeHoVaH and modern pedantswrite as J aH VeH remains a matter of doubt.In part this process of sublimation was purelyreligious, instigated by reverence for the transcendent and ineffable holiness of the divinenature. Bu t in the case of Philo we see also adeliberate effort to reinterpret the theology ofMoses in terms of the regnant metaphysics;and it is not too much to say that this mesalli-ance of Jehovah with the Absolute of theschools was the chief cause of embarrassmentsfrom which religion has never yet shaken itselffree. "The sum of the matter," says Philo, "is inthe inspired oracles (the Bible), that 'God isnot as man'; but neither is He as the heavens orthe world. For these things are qualified formsand perceptible to the senses, whereas God isnot even comprehensible to the intellect, exceptin His being; what we comprehend of Him isHis existence, and besides bare existence noth-ing.m6 The grotesque form Jahveh, or J ahweh, has not even the ex-cuse of being probably correct etymologically; yet it has fastened itself upon us. If pedantry of this sort were only suicidal itwould be comparatively harmless, bu t it has the self-perpetuating power of malignant germs.7 Quod D (!Us J.rn., 69.

TH E SETTING OF GNOSTICISM 43And so, having refined the Jehovah of the

Law and the prophets out of all contact with:finite reality, Philo is confronted with theproblem of reuniting this bloodless Absolutewith the world as creator and providentialruler. To this end he follows the beaten track,thinking, like hundreds before and after him, toheal the breach by the aid of intermediaries,and 'borrowing these from whatever source layopen to him with not much care for their incom-patibility one with another. As an avowedPlatonist he will grasp at the mythology of theTimaeus: for, he says, God, perceiving that anyfashioned work must be made in imitation of apattern, and wishing to create this world a f ~ e rthe fairest model, :first formed a world of Illcorporeal Ideas as the archetype of that whichwas to be visible and corporeal. Philo does notsee that by depriving the pattern of its eternalindependence by the side of God and altering itto a creation of God he has introduced a con-ception totally disruptive of the Platonic myth,and so goes on serenely to divest Ideas of allsignificance by describing them as a bi_rth withinthe mind of the Creator, correspondmg to thes De Op. Mundi, 16. Characteristically Philo traces this supposedPlatonic theory back to Moses.

l''


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44 CHRIST TH E WORDdesign conceived in the brain of an architectbefore he begins to build.9

Bu t to give to Ideas the role of a true intermediary still another step must be taken: theymust be regarded as thoughts of the creativemind, yet as going forth also with delegated authority, like semi-individualized agents betweenGod and His work. Thus they become thePowers. An d then, lengthening the chain, Philowill separate the Powers from the Ideas as theactive from the passive instrument of creation,and relegate the latter to a still lower rank inthe scale. The order is no longer God andPower or Ideas, bu t God and Powers andIdeas. "For," as he now observes, "b y thesePowers was produced the incorporeal and intelligible world, the archetype of this phenomenal world, composed of invisible Ideas as thisis composed of visible bodies. mo

At this point the juncture of Philo's Hellenism with his Jewish inheritance becomes clear.These Powers, for all their Platonic and Stoic9 I?id; g4,_ T ~ i s t r a n s l a ~ i o n of Plato's Ideas from an eternalobJective reality to subJective ideas within the mind of G dwhoever is ultimately responsible for it , is one of the m ~ s t

m o ~ e n t o u s revolutions in philosophy. I t is taken over byPlotmus and the Neoplatonists; it becomes in Christian theologya source of endless controversy.lODe Oonf. Ling., 172.

\

TH E SETTING OF GNOSTICISM 45colouring, are identified by him with the Spirit(ruach) or the Angels of Jehovah, who appearoften in the Old Testament as the means bywhich God makes Hi s will felt in the world andin the hearts of men. And these Ideas are substitutes for the eternal "counsel of the Lord"11by which He works out His providential government. Powers and Ideas together are bu t"the spirit of the Lord, the spirit of counsel andmight."

At the last all these symbols-Ideas, Powers,Spirit, Angels, Counsel--converge in the Lo gos. And, again, the terminology of Philo is ofmixed origin, deftly, though no doubt innocently, chosen to disguise at once the ambiguityand the revolutionary character of his thought,which are the despair of his critics. On the oneside the term logos came to him freighted withmeaning from its use by a long succession ofphilosophers, with whom it signifies the nous,or "intelligence," immanent in the world, theinner force whereby the manifold phenomenaof existence evolve in orderly sequence to forma cosmos. On the other side logos had alreadybeen adopted as a synonym for the counsel of11 The Sodh or 'Etaath Jehovah, as, e.g. Jer. xxiii, 18 ; Ps. xxxiii,l l ; Isa. xi, 2.


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CHRIST TH E WORDthe Lord by certain H ellenizing theologians ofIsrael who not long before Philo's day hadcomposed those works of the so-called "Wis-dom literature" now found in the Apocryphaof the Old Testament. In the further process ofamalgamation Philo was assisted by the doublesense of the Greek term not apparent in itsEnglish equivalent "word." For logos meansboth a thought within the mind and the utter-ance of a thought in language, or, as the Stoicswere fond of distinguishing, it may be eitherendiathetos or prophorikos. Now in the formersense (endiathetos) logos readily becomes forPhilo a convenient name for the Ideal worldregarded as the thought or plan in the mind ofthe Creator when He begins the task of creation, 2 and then, with equa l convenience, for theimage of God, His seal imprinted on the objects of His handiwork, and so, in a mannerhalf Stoic, immanent in those objects/ 3

From this to the theological use of the logosprophorikos (uttered) to denote the Wordgoing forth from God as his breath, or spirit,and acting as a true intermediary, the transition is easy. The first step indeed had already12 De Op. Mundi, 24, S5.13 De Fuga, H!.

TH E SETTING OF GNOSTICISM 47been taken in the Wisdom literature, where weread that "she is the breath of the power of God,and a pure influence flowing from the glory ofthe Almighty," and where, again, this "Wis-dom that sitteth by the Throne" is identifiedwith the Word by which all things were made.Nor were analogies lacking in the nativetongue of Israel. From such passages as thatin Genesis where the fact of creation followsthe mere fiat of the Creator ("and God said,"amar), the Rabbinical school had developed atheory of the M emra (Word, from the roota ar) as a power issuing from the mouth ofGod and manifesting itself almost, if neverquite, as an independent mythological entity.Whether this use of M emra follows or precedes Philo in time, may be a question; in eithercase it shows the way taken by him in adaptingthe ancient theology of his people to the newcurrent of metaphysics. He has to go only alittle further and Logos becomes a commonname for the two frankly intermediary Powersthat accomplish the will of God: the divineGoodness by which the world is created, andthe divine Authority by which the world isgoverned, the twain being symbolized separately by the Cherubim stationed before the


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CHRIST TH E WORDgate of Paradise or together by the flamingsword.14

Evidently, to anticipate somewhat on ourtheme, we are moving here in a field of ideascuriously resembling the prologue to the fourthGospel, and it is even possible that the terminology of the evangelist was directly inspired bythe Philonic usage. But it is equally clear thatthe identification of the Logos with a personwho, whatever his transcendental origin, ap-peared in the flesh and was known as a manamong men, gave this philosophy an entirelynew turn. I t is true that Philo falls into thelanguage of personification. So, for instance,he quite naturally compares the Logos, whowears for vesture the visible web of phenomena,with the High Priest, on whose robe the wholeworld is represented in symbols, and adds: "His(the Logos') father is God, the father of theuniverse; his mother is the Wisdom of whomall things have come into existence." And elsewhere, borrowing his terms f rom the same Wis-dom literature, he speaks of the Logos as thefirst-born son of God.15 But this is no more thanthe ambiguous figure of speech, common to14 De Cherubim, 'ft7 f.1 5 De Fuga, 109; De Vita Mosis, ii , 117 :If; De Agricultura, 51,et al.

TH E SETTING OF GNOSTICISM 49poets and philosophers everywhere; the Logosis personified, it is never a person. Such an ambiguity, indeed, adheres to the very notion ofan intermediary which, to fulfil its function,must be defined now as an independent hypostasis and now as a mere attribute of the Om-nipotent. Philo, as Zeller has well said, "combines both definitions without observing theircontradiction, nay he is unable to observe it, because otherwise the intermediary role assignedto the divine Powers would be forfeited, eventhat double nature by virtue of which they areto be on the one hand identified with God, inorder that a participation in the Deity may bytheir means be possible to the finite, and on theother hand different from Him, in order thatthe Deity, notwithstanding this participation,may remain apart from all contact with theworld.ms No w this "double nature" might seemto bring the metaphysical conception of an intermediary and the Christian dogma of a mediator close together; but in fact they are radically distinct. Practically considered, a personwho mediates between two natures by embracing both is very different from an impersonal16 Phil. der Griechen, III, ii , 365, quoted by Schiirer, The JewishPeople, V, 372.


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so CHRIST TH E WORDintermediary which hovers indefinitely betweentwo natures and so really represents neither;and, theoretically considered, the frank dualismof Christianity, thoug h it may be paradoxicaland difficult, does at least avoid the treachery ofa dualism which tries to swallow itself out ofsight. Al l this is implied in that revolutionarysentence of the fourth Gospel: "And the Wordwas made flesh."

Of the more debased forms of superstitioncommon to the age Philo, owing to his loyaltyto the Hebrew tradition, was happily free. Sofa r as he fails in this direction his error springsrather from an exaggerated belief in the literalinspiration of the so-called books of Moses, together with a desire to discover in them thesource of whatever is acceptable in Greek philosophy. As a result he is impelled to overlay theplain narrative of Scripture with extravagantallegories, which, if no t superstition, are at thebest a kind of transcendental credulity. Thus,to take a single illustration, the two accounts ofthe creation of man in the first and second chapters of Genesis are supposed by him to anticipate the Platonic dualism-fantastically transmogrified-of an Ideal man made in the imageof God as pure intelligence without body or sex,

TH E SETTING OF GNOSTICISM 51and a material man fashioned of the dust of theground.17 This is innocent enough. But in theCabbala, which had its commencement in therabbinical school of Philo's time and reachedits climax in the t hirteenth-century compilationof the Zohar, the Jehovah of Genesis, underthis same mania of metaphysics, evaporatesinto the En-Soph, the infinite conceived as NotBeing, while the Word, or Memra, by whichHe creates heaven and earth, is drawn out intoten intermediaries named Sephiroth, and isinvolved in a:bout the wildest nonsense ever begotten in the superstitious brain of man.18

This invasion of credulity into a metaphysicmitigated by intermediaries would seem to beuniversal, rooted in human psychology. Yo uwill find it in India; it gave life to the hagiolatryof the Middle Ages; it is a notable mark of theromantic movement of which we are drainingthe lees; it played havoc with the ancient scienceof astronomy and threatens to overlay the abstractions of modern physics; it was, as we haveseen, rampant in religion at the time whenGnosticism reared its head as the great rival ofthe Church.11 Legwm Alleg., i, 31 fl'.1s Vulliaud, La Kabbale juive, I, 389 et p a ~ ~ s i m .


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CHRIST TH E WORDNow the source and classification of the vari-ous gnostic sects which flourished in the second

and third centuries offer one of the most vexedproblems of scholarship. And, fortunately forme, it is not my business to write a history ofthis complicated movement, bu t merely to bringout its relation to Christianity:-

Ye PowersAnd Spirits of this nethermost abyss,Chaos an d ancient Night, I come no spy,With purpose to explore or to disturbThe secrets of your realm, but by constraintWand' ring this darksome desert, as my wa yLies through your spacious empire up to light.19

The birth of what is properly called Gnosti-cism, if it had any single source, may with someplausibility be found in the imposition of theZoroastrian religion of Ormazd and Ahrimanon the astrological science of Babylon. Into thiscombination would then enter the Syrian beliefin the Great Mother, fragments of the JewishLaw and story of creation, confused memoriesof Platonism and Pythagoreanism, and othermyths and mysteries from Egypt and the farcorners of the earth that were blowing over theMediterranean world like chaff in a windstorm.Mingle these in varying proportions, and then19 Paradise Lost, ii, 968 ff.

TH E SETTING OF GNOSTICISM 53add elements stolen from the Christian schemeof salvation and distorted so as to blend into thepagan background, and you have what is prob-ably the most extraordinary example of relig-ious syncretism in the whole range of history.Gnosticism was not a simple phenomenon, bu tresembled the polycephalic monster of Plato,with its ring of heads of all manner of beasts,tame and wild, which it was able to generateand metamorphose at will. 0

In this shifting medley there are, however,two or three factors so constant as to lend acommon characte r to the movement and to dis-tinguish it from the parallel course of Chris-tianity. Perhaps the most significant fea ture isthe peculiar kind of dualism that runs throughall the gnostic sects. Originally this dualismwould seem to be connected with the Persianmyth of the two hostile kingdoms of light anddarkness and with the Assyrian conflict of Marduk and Tiamat; but it was modified by theHellenistic contrast of spirit and matter whichpoints back to the O rphic mythology, and wasdeepened and blackened by the despondent out-look on life which was gradually eating its wayto the heart of pagan society. The result, though20 Republic, 588c.


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54 CHRIST TH E WORDit carries with it some of the ideas of the Phaed-rus and the Timaeus, is radically different fromthe Platonic dualism. To Plato evil was inher-ent in the phenomenal world as the dark resi-duum of Necessity, the blank resistance to purpose which lurks unaccountably in nature andin the breast of man; but creation itself was thework of a God who in His goodness designs acosmos that shall be so far as possible like Himself, good. To the Gnostic, on the contrary, thewhole realm of creation was in origin and es-sence evil, and whatever stray elements of good-ness may be discovered here are accidental,ravished, so to speak, from the region of lightand against their will imprisoned in the massof darkness. Even Plotinus and the N eoplaton-ists, much as they had in common with theGnostics, repudiated vehemently this slander-ous pessimism, while to the Christian idea ofcreation and the Fall it was totally abhorrent.

I t will be seen at a glance how readily theprevalent tendencies of the age-the meta-physical absolute, intermediaries, and supersti-tion-fitted into this frame of pessimism. Thegnostic deity is raised into the region of pureabstraction, above any possible contact with thegross world of phenomena; he is unknown and

TH E SETTING OF GNOSTICISM 55unknowable in the fullest sense of the word,"the Abyss," "the Silence," "the God who isnot," a stark negation of the reason set freefrom the trammels of experience. Then fol-lows the inevitable revulsion, and between thisinane abstraction and the realities of life therecreeps in a hierarchy of intermediaries, grow-ing ever longer and more complicated as secttreads upon the heels of sect. Under the in-fluence of Babylonia and Syria these interme-diaries would assume the form of the sevenplanetary spheres and their daemonic lords; inthe West, pursuing the course which culmin-ated in N eoplatonism, they lost their astrolog-ical character and became rather emanationsfrom the absolute One, extending down fromhim, or it, layer by layer, and composing withhim the divine Pleroma. But whatever theirnames or disguises and however intricate theirrelation one with another, they are everywherethe offspring of the same metaphysical neces-sity, and everywhere they are associated withthe superstitions of a moribund mythology.Somewhere in this scale of intermediaries theaccident or crime of creation is inserted. Thenature of the event varies with the mythologicalaffiliations of the various sects, bu t in one thing


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CHRIST TH E WORDall the accounts agree : the existence of the phenomenal world is never, as in Platonism orChristianity, depend ent on the will of the supreme deity, bu t is referred to the weakness orignorance of some lower power, if not to hisdownright malice; it is never a work of beneficence to be purged of necessary imperfectionsor restored to its pristine design, bu t is alwaysan alien intrusion, incapable of emendation andcalling for demolition. An d here is the point ofjuncture with the Old Testament. Jehovah tothe Jews was essentially the Creator, the Demiurge, He who evoked the world into being andgoverns it to His own glory; to the Gnosticsuch a deity cannot be supreme, he must beranked among the intermediaries and his workmust be degraded to a product either of mistaken zeal or of open maleficence. Hence thePentateuch, with its account of creation and itsimposition of the Law, is interpreted as anapology inspired by Jehovah for his own glorification and at the expense of the true God; itis to be accepted wi th condescending discrimination or rejected with indignant contempt.

The same harsh dualism, quite different fromthat of Platonism and Christianity, determinesthe gnostic theories of human life and morality.

TH E SETTING OF GNOSTICISM 57In some way-each sect has its own myth-aportion of the divine spirit akin to the supremeGod has been imprisoned in the created world,and yearns fo r deliverance. This spark of thedivine is particularly lively in man, or in somemen, and constitutes the human spirit as distinct from the body and soul. Good and evilthus cease to be the right and wrong use of thewill, or the upward and downward motion ofthe soul as a unit, and become respectively theproperties of two mechanically associated elements or natures. Actions are good that help toset the spirit free by breaking the bonds of thisunholy union, and the common precept of morali ty is: A'buse the flesh. As a result the ethics ofGnosticism fall either into an exaggerated asceticism or into gross licentiousness. In the onecase the flesh is abused by denying all its natural wants; in the other case it may be abusedby regarding it as so foreign to the spirit thatno amount of physical indulgence will have anydeteriorating effect on the spiritual life bu t willrather widen the ga p between spirit and matter.This latter form of inverted ethics was developed among the extremists who placed Jehovahat the bottom of the scale of intermediaries, andheld that his La w should be disobeyed out of re-


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ss CHRIST TH E WORDgard to our kinship with the true God; moralitywith these rebellious souls assumed the pleasantand facile duty of doing everything forbiddenin the Ten Commandments! Such antinomiansno doubt were the exception, whereas asceticism would appear to have been the commonrule of life among the Gnostics; bu t any onefamiliar with the ways of superstition and ofhuman nature will be slow to reject as slanderthe hideous stories of debauchery told by Christian writers, notably by Epiphanius, againstcertain of the sects.

I t may well be asked what place could befound in this conglomeration of moribundpagan myths for Jesus of Nazareth, and, prop-erly speaking, the answer would be none at all.But the notion of a deity who somehow, with orwithout his own volition, became entangled inthe corrupt mass of the world, or by his deathand dismemberment was the source of creation,and who by his victorious escape or resuscitationbecame a symbol or cause of human redemption,was wide-spread; and one can see how, underthe impulse of indiscriminate syncretism, such alegend might be transformed so as to includesome elements of the Christian soteriology.After all, it is one of the strong arguments for

TH E SETTING OF GNOSTICISM 59the authenticity of the new faith that it responded to a universal cry of the human heartfor redemption; and we can understand, fromthe o ther side, how the better Gnostics would beimpressed by the hope and sanctity of the followers of Christ, and would be sincere in theirdesire to appropriate from the Christian schemeof salvation whatever was available for theirown cosmological system. Here the J oanninedoctrine of theWord would come handy to theirpurpose, especially in those sects where the intermediaries were regarded as emanations fromthe Absolute. From the supreme God they imagined that there came forth a spiritual power,the Logos or Christos, which descended to earth,and by it s presence helped the kindred spiritin mankind to break from the fetters of thebody. I t sounds very orthodox, bu t in fact offered no more than parody of the true Incar-nation. With their pessimistic scorn of the material world the Gnostics could not admit, inany literal sense, that the Word became flesh,nor with the mechanical dualism of their psychology could they accept the dogma of aSaviour who combined the complete humannature with his divine nature in a single personality. Hence they were driven to one or another


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6o CHRIST THE WORDform of docetism. The Logos did not actuallypartake of human life, bu t merely took up itsabode for a time in a certain ma n named Jesus;it did not suffer on the Cross, bu t only seemedto do so, while the real sufferer was the manJesus, from whom it departed at the moment ofdeath. No r on the other hand was there anygenuine reconciliation of fallen human nature,bu t only a temporary and seeming ( docetic)union of the two natures for the purpose ofwinnowing out the spiritual from the nonspiritual and psychic. The end was not a consummation or restoration of the creative act,bu t a reversal of that act.2


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CHRIST TH E WORD(Reason) and Aletheia (Truth) , Logos(Word) and Zoe (Life), Anthropos (Man,i.e. the First or Divine Man) and Ekklesia(Church). These six Aeons, together with By-thos and Sige according to some authorities, oraccording to others with a fourth pair of em-anations, form the Ogdoad. If we are to lookfor any comprehensible meaning in this phan-tasmagoria, p robably Mansel is right in sayingthat "the first order of Aeons, the Ogdoad, isobviously intended to represent the SupremeBeing in two aspects: first, in his absolute na-ture, as inscrutable and unspeakable; secondly,in his relative nature, as manifesting himself inoperation. 23

From the Ogdoad springs a lower Decad offive couples,u where, again quoting Mansel, themasculine Aeons, with their feminine counter-parts, "are clearly meant to represent that com-bination of unity with variety, of the infinitewith the finite, of ident ity wi th difference, whichis implied in the notion of derived and definiteexistence." Third in order comes the Dodecad,23 Mansel, The Gnostic Heresies, 173. According to Tertullian,Adv. Valentinianos, 36, some of the sectarians took these Aeonssimply as the attributes or names of God in Hi s various activi-ties as thinker, producer, etc.2>4 Bythios and Mixis, Ageratos and Henc'lsis, Autophyl!s andHl!done, Akinl!tos and Synkrasis, Monogenl!s and Makaria.

TH E SETTING OF GNOSTICISMcomposed of six couples,25 where the masculineterms designate God "in his religious relationtowards man," while the feminine terms "repre-sent the gifts of Grace which that relation con-veys and implies." Al l of which may or may notbe a true interpretation, but is certainly agenerous attempt to discover sense where itscarcely seems to exist.

These three orders make up the divine Ple-roma of thirty Aeons. An d in that super-rarefied region of abstractions it should ap-pear that something like the drama of ourearthly life first takes place, and thus preparesthe way for the passage from the invisibleworld to the world of material phenomena.

Unfortunately at this point our sources aresadly confused. But so much we can learn: thatthe whole miserable business of existence de-pends on the illicit desire of Sophia, the lastof the thirty Aeons, to comprehend the beingof the supreme Father, who can be compre-hended, if by any, only by the highest em-anation, the N ous. The tragic drama withinthe Pleroma would thus correspond to man's25 ParaklHos and Pistis, Patrikos and Elpis, MHrikos andAgape, Axinous and Synesis, Ekkll!siastikos and Makariotl!s,

T h e H ~ t o s and Sophia. Fo r other interpretations of these Aeonssee F. Legge, Forerunners and IUva'ls of Ohri8tianity, II , 100.


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CHRIST TH E WORDtrust in the lower wisdom of the senses to graspthose transcendent truths which belong only tothe wisdom of divine insight. In the Pleromaitself a recurrence of this fatal presumption isforestalled by the emanation of a new power,the Christ or the Holy Ghost, who restores theAeons to a state of equilibrium, while stillanother Aeon called the Cross (or Horos, "lim-itation") is emitted to act as a boundary foreverenclosing and protecting the celestial sphere. Intheir jo y the Aeons now contribute each hispart to create a new Son, Jesus, who is thespiritual expression of the whole Pleroma, theresult or the cause (the records are ambiguous)of salvation to the heavenly Powers.

Meanwhile the unholy Desire of Sophia, hav-ing been ejected from the Pleroma, is endowedby this Jesus with form, though without know-ledge, and is personified as Achamoth (Aramaicfor Sophia, Wisdom). From the passion of hernostalgia in the outer region of shadowy empti-ness are born the elements of the phenomenalworld :-from her longing to return to God, thesoul of the world and the Demiurge; from herlaughter all that is bright; from her grief andconsternation the solid substance. Ou t of these,in some way not clear to us, the Demiurge

TH E SETTING OF GNOSTICISM(identified with the Jehovah of Scripture)fashions the lower order of existence with itshost of evil daemons, and creates man, a psychicand material creature, in whose progeny abidesa portion of the divine spirit which has de-scended to them from the Pleroma throughSophia and Achamoth.

The office of salvation is then to rescue thisspark of the heavenly spirit from its entangle-ment in the psychic and material nature ofhumanity; and to this end the Christ, or theJesus, of the Pleroma (or some other emana-tion of the same name) comes down to earthand dwells for a season amongst men as Jesusof Nazareth. But his body is a mere phantomand his semblance of mortal life a pure illusion.To those men who partake of the celestial nature, the pneumatikoi, he imparts the same sortof knowledge, or gnosis, as that which restoredthe shaken Pleroma to equilibrium, so that attheir death their spirits may escape to the heav-enly home. The drama of redemption on earthis a repetition, so to speak, of what had occurredon high; but of any true incarnation, or of anysalvation from sin by conversion of the repent-an t soul, there is nothing.As pure poetry the system of Valentine


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68 CHRIST TH E WORDThis influence can be seen primarily in thecharacter of the ethical dualism taught by Mar-cion. Creation was not the work of the goodGod, who dwells aloft in remote isolation, nor .

of Satan, who is the lord of evil, but of theDemiurge, the Jehovah of the Old Testament,who is no t essentially evil, nor yet essentiallygood, bu t is qualified by a kind of illusory virtuecalled justice. Under the old dispensation menknew no other God than this just and judgingJehovah, whose law was based on the principleof retaliation, "a n eye for an eye," and whoserule of meting out penalities for disobediencekept man revolving in a vicious circle of hatredand evil. Then in the fulness of time from theunknown God came the Son, whose mission itwas to reveal the true Father as the Lord, notof justice, bu t of pure love and compassion.Redemption therefore is not so much a conversion of the penitent soul from wrong-doing torighteousness (i.e. justice) as it is a calling ofthe soul from the service of Jehovah to trust inthe mercy of the hitherto unknown God; whilemorality consists on the one hand in the abstention from all acts that involve the soul moredeeply in the world of creation (for which reason marriage especially should be eschewed) ,

TH E SETTING OF GNOSTICISMand on the other hand in the practice of acharity that condemns nothing and nobody.

The originality of the heresy lies in the factthat it was the earliest effort to eliminate fromthe teaching of Jesus all its sterner and morevirile elements and to reduce Christianity to areligion of irresponsible sympathy. From theGospels the Marcionites isolated such sayingsas "love your enemies" and "present the othercheek," and made them the sole canon of ethicsand the key to the understanding of the divineBeing. Their creed might almost be summed upin the maxim that "God being good never pun-ishes." The reply of the Church was on the oneside to prove that the principle of love is notabsent from the Old Testament, and on theother side to show that the teaching of Jesus byno means shirked the sterner law of retribution.27 Marcionism thus represents a besettingtemptation to reduce Christianity to a kind ofeffeminate humanitarianism; and it is highlysignificant that in these latter days one of themost prominent of the historians of dogma hasopenly avowed himself a disciple of this ancientsemi-gnostical sect.u21 Adamantius (ed. Bakhuyzen), 118, 34, 98,2s Adolph von Harnack, in the Vossische Zeitung, February 9 to13, IWI.


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CHAPTER II I

TH E CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHISTSGNOSTICISM, whatever its faults and foibles,represents the effort of a troubled world torevivify the myths of a hoary antiquity with thebreath of a living philosophy. To many at thetime these convulsions of thought appeared tobe, as they appear to some of today, the birthpangs of a new religion; they were in fact theagony of death. To speak of Christianity as afavoured child of this movement is to misunderstand the situation, as it seems to me, lamentably; and the real problem of scholarship is notto explain how the disciples of Jesus, by selection and rejection, pu t together so pure a cultfrom elements so distracted and grotesque, bu trather to comprehend how such a cult, holdingfast to the simple tradition of its origin, cut away through the mythopoeic hurly-burly of theage and came out so little deflected from itscourse. A fair comparison of Christianity with

TH E CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHISTS 71its boastful rivals offers the strongest of allarguments for its unique claims, and, generallyspeaking, the comparative study of religions,often dreaded as a foe to the faith, tends reallyto confirm the notion of a special revelation.

The distinction of the Church then would be,not that it made a wiser adaptation than did itsadversaries of the three currents shaping thethought of the age-this riot of metaphysics,intermediaries, and superstition-but that it somiraculously avoided them. We must, however, while defending this assertion as true of theessential nature of Christianity, make gravereservations in regard to the attitude of certainDoctors of the Church towards the insidioustemptation of metaphysics. What happened toPhilo in his endeavour to give a philosophicalbasis to Judaism, happened also in some measure to the Fathers, notably to Clement andOrigen of Alexandria, whose appointed task itwas to create a sound gn6sis forthefaithagainstthe false gn6sis of those who had usurped thename. Thus to Clement, led on to meet his rivalsin their own high altitude, God becomes the infinite and unnamable One, rather the unthinkable somewhat beyond the One and above unityitself, even, in the dizzy language of Valentine,


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CHRIST TH E WORD TH E CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHISTS 75


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74physical theorem so much as a forcible expres-sion of the surpassing majesty and sublimityof the divine person; that such terms as "in-finite" and "omniscient" and "absolute" wererather the outpourings of the imagination be-fore a stupendous mystery than the conclusionsof a jejune dialectic, and were directed more tothe practical end of worship than to the satis-faction of the imperious thinking power. Onthe side of reason also, as Gregory of Nyssabrings out so well/ our constant temptation inthis plane of transient phenomena is to lose thestability of purpose and to float on the tides of.chance, so that for ou r very salvation we needto raise our thoughts to something in the uni-verse that is fixed and forever the same. For asour idea of God is, so do we tend to become. Theotherworldliness and morality of religion bothdemand this intuition of unity within the many,of an immutable will behind the affections thatchange to meet a changing world, of character,let us say in a word, that alters not even "whenit alteration finds."

No doubt it is possible on this ground to makeallowance for the apparent inconsistency of atheologian like Augustine, when we find him5 Or. Cat., 39.

on one page reasoning about God with the dryscholasticism suitable to a Plotinus and onanother page attributing to the same God allthat the most fervent, even anthropomorphic,worship could require. We may say, if we arecharitably inclined, that his metaphysics is notthe licence of reason bu t the superlative ofreverence. And the same defence may be of-fered for St . Anselm, the Augustinian par ex-cellence, who, while elaborating that nightmareof logic, the ontological proof of the being ofGod as that necessary something than whichnothing can be conceived greater, will almost inthe same breath write of a living Deity as dif-ferent from the idol of the schools as a man'sbody is from its shadow cast on the wall.6 Somuch we may grant to the imagination and thereason. Nevertheless it should not be forgottenthat unity of character is something quite dis-tinct from the abstract One of rationalism. Thereal God of Christianity is the object of venera-tion,-"the power not ourselves that makes forrighteousness" if you like, bu t a power capableof responding to the appeals and confessionsof the human heart, capable of feeling andpurposing

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Paul Elmer More - Christ the Word

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