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The Historians' History of the World 06 [The Early Roman Empire]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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During the course of the second century Christian doctrine did not abandon its peculiar character, but it assimilated more and more the ideas of Greek philosophy and so rendered itself more intelligible. At the beginning of the third century a great Greek philosopher testified of Origen, the most eminent teacher of the church, that concerning God and the world he thought like a Greek; the philosopher only deplored the intermixture of alien fables. When this same Origen is invited to lecture upon immortality before the queen-mother at Antioch, when another doctor of the church corresponds with an empress upon religious questions, and the emperor Alexander Severus listens with admiring attention to the words of Christ, we cannot but see how “doctrine” is becoming by degrees a connecting link between Hellenism and Christianity. Such a fact could not be devoid of consequences as regards the relations between state and church, for no state can permanently maintain a hostile attitude towards a spiritual movement which is held in high esteem by large bodies of its citizens.
(4) Nor must literature be ignored in this connection. Christianity was never altogether without literature, nay, rather, it possessed from the outset a literary work of the highest rank in the Old Testament, of which it had usurped possession. But its title to ownership was contested by the Jews and the heathen, and moreover early Christians produced the impression that they were unlettered folk. This made their claims appear singularly presumptuous and unjustifiable. But the beginning of the second century witnessed a change; the Christians, who at first would have nothing to do with the scribbling art—for why should one write if the end is at hand?—began to make use of this method.
Even in the first century brief writings, gospels, epistles, and apocalypses, had been drawn up for the edification of the congregation, but, being regarded as memorabilia to keep the truth in remembrance and in a measure as a gift of the Holy Ghost, they differed in plan and style from what was known as “literature.” Now, however, works began to be composed in which Christianity was endued with the garment of literature. Between the years 140 and 170 the smaller Christian party which is known as the Gnostic party all at once began to avail itself of every literary form, scientific monograph, commentary, systematic statement, scientific dialogue, didactic epistle, polemic, historical description, the novel, the tale, the ode, the hymn, etc. The great church, less apt and more cautious, gave place to this development slowly and hesitatingly. She was fully conscious of her responsibility; she was not blind to the lurking danger—the danger, that is, of the profanation of religion; nevertheless she gradually admitted one literary form after another, until, at the beginning of the third century, she also had a Christian literature, with every means of expression that Greek art and learning had created at command. But the fact that she was thus equipped with literary forms could not but have some bearing on the relations between state and church, for no state can persist in regarding a movement which has taken literature into its service as a negligible quantity. Through the medium of literature it influences all political conditions, and in so far as the state itself is the exponent of culture, and not merely of law and authority, such a spiritual movement becomes a part of it by the mere fact of its literary existence.
(5) Though public worship is essentially esoteric and the private concern of any particular religion, yet we must here take its development into consideration. As long as Christian worship consisted only in homely prayers, rude psalmody, and preaching, and in the simple celebration of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, it differed so widely from other forms of worship that the adversaries of Christianity did not regard it as worship at all. A few Greeks, it is true, were impressed by this purely spiritual worship, but the great multitude despised it. They saw no images, and consequently concluded that the Christians were “atheists”; they saw no priests, and felt that their worship lacked legitimate authority, solemnity, and dignity; they saw no sacrifice, and consequently doubted its efficacy with the Deity. Many of them held that the Christians had other religious services which they carefully concealed from other men, and that there they exhibited the secret “Sacra,” held wild orgies, and feasted at horrible banquets. There were, as a matter of fact, a few small Christian communities which practised evil rites in secret. But it is unlikely that these constituted the starting-point of the vile aspersions cast upon all Christians; they arose rather from the evil tendency, prevalent in all ages, to regard adherents of an alien faith as persons of evil life and to say the worst that can be said concerning both them and their assemblies. The populace takes every religion which differs from its own and which it does not understand for devil worship.
This view of Christian worship underwent no great change in the second century, but towards the end of that period the preliminary signs of change set in, and the development of Christian worship met the change halfway. Three great alterations were made in the services, and brought it nearer to the comprehension of the Græco-Roman mind: (1) after circa 190 a separate class of priests arose (under that title) in the Christian church; (2) the Lord’s Supper was elaborated into a solemn sacrificial rite; (3) the Lord’s Supper and certain other acts of public worship were invested with the glamour of mysteries. By these developments, which are to be accounted for by the unconscious influence of the world around, Christian worship approximated to the ceremonials of the Greeks and Romans. The absence of image worship, it is true, still marked the distinction between them, but there was no lack of pictures of saints and symbols of holy things. Already there began to grow up about the sacramental elements, the water of baptism, the sign of the cross, etc., a superstition second to none of the fancies of the heathen, and the sensuous element steadily encroached upon the spiritual. These changes were likewise bound to exercise a certain though indirect influence on the relations between state and church, the Christian religion adapted itself to conditions in which it could act upon the widest possible circle, and in the process modified the exclusiveness it had resolved to maintain.
(6) But perhaps the point best worth noticing is the way in which, in spite of persecution, the Christian estimate of the state grew more favourable in the course of the second century—not indeed in the whole body, by a long way, but among the most influential teachers. It is true that the suspicion that the Roman Empire was the kingdom of antichrist never wholly died away, and that it still came to the surface occasionally; but a succession of admirable emperors—Trajan, Hadrian, Pius, and Marcus Aurelius—made a profound impression upon Christians, and the world-wide monarchy of which Augustus had laid the foundations bore the aspect of peace, and hence of a fulfilment of the divine will. Justin was convinced—as was even Tertullian—that the “good” emperors could not have been and were not unfriendly to Christians; both believed that none but the wicked were really the adversaries of the Christian religion, and that nothing but better information was required to make the emperors extend toleration to their faith. It is possible that even Luke had a dim sense of a certain solidarity between the empire and Christianity, between Augustus and Christ; the apologists of the age of the Antonines were more decided in their utterances, the most decided of all being Bishop Melito of Sardis. In the Apology for Christianity which he dedicates to Marcus Aurelius, he writes:
“This our philosophy did indeed first flourish among an alien people. But when it began to prosper in the provinces of thy empire under the rule of thy mighty predecessor Augustus it brought a rich blessing upon thy empire in singular wise. For from that time forth the Roman Empire hath ever increased in greatness and glory, whereof thou art and wilt be the desired ruler, even as thy son also, if thou wilt protect this philosophy which began under Augustus and hath grown with the growth of the empire, and which thy forefathers likewise held in honour among other religions. And the strongest proof that our religion hath arisen together with the monarchy so happily begun and for the benefit of the same is supplied by the fact that since the reign of Augustus the latter hath been smitten by no calamity, but on the contrary, all things have but augmented the fame and glory thereof, according to the desires of all men. The only emperors who, led away by malicious men, strove to cry down our religion were Nero and Domitian, and from their time forward calumnious falsehoods concerning the Christians have been propagated abroad by the evil custom of the common people, who believe all rumours without examination.”