Chapter 36 Chapter 2 The First Four Centuries of Christianity

Christianity was originally passed on to Jews by Jews as a reformed form of Judaism.St. James, and to a lesser extent St. Peter, hoped that Christianity would not go beyond this.Without St. Paul, their ideas might have prevailed in the world.St. Paul resolutely allowed Gentiles to join the Church, and did not require them to be circumcised and obey the Law of Moses.The book of Acts records the dispute between the two factions from a Paulian perspective.There is no doubt that the Christian communities which St. Paul established everywhere were partly composed of Jewish converts, and partly of Gentiles seeking a new religion.The certainty of Judaism is attractive in a time of collapse of various religious beliefs, but circumcision is a great obstacle to conversion.The rules and regulations concerning food are equally inconvenient.These two barriers, if nothing else, were enough to keep the Hebrew religion out of reach.Thanks to St. Paul's influence, Christianity retained what was attractive about Judaism and removed some of the features that made it most unacceptable to Gentiles.

The idea of ​​the Jews as the chosen people of God was at any rate abhorrent to the ego of the Greeks.The Gnostics rejected this view outright.They, or at least some of them, believed that the world of the senses was created by an inferior god named Aldabos, the rebellious son of Sophia (the Wisdom of Heaven).They said that he was Yahweh in the Old Testament, and the serpent was not only by no means evil, but warned Eve not to be deceived by him.God the Most High allowed Alta Baus to move freely for a long time; he at last sent his Son to dwell in the human body of Jesus, in order to liberate the world from the absurd teachings of Moses.Those who hold this view often associate it with a Platonic philosophy; Plotinus, as we know, had some difficulty in refuting it.Gnosticism offered a compromise between philosophical paganism and Christianity, since it revered Christ but hated the Jews.The same is true of the later Manichaeism, through which St. Augustine converted to the Catholic faith.Combining elements of Christianity and Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism taught that evil is a positive principle embodied in matter, while the principle of good is embodied in spirit.It condemns meat-eating and all sexuality, even married life.This eclectic doctrine gave much aid to the gradual conversion of the Greek-speaking culture; yet the New Testament warns the faithful to rise up against them: "Keep what is entrusted to you, Timothy, and hide from the world The false talk, and the specious knowledge (Gnosis) that is against the true way. Some people have already claimed to have this knowledge, and they have departed from the true way."

Gnosticism and Manichaeism continued to prevail until the government converted to Christianity.After this period they were forced to conceal their beliefs but still had dormant power.Muhammad had adopted the teachings of one of the Gnostic sects.They taught that Jesus was an ordinary man, that the Son of God descended on him at his baptism and left him at his crucifixion.To maintain this view they cite the following text: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me"—we must admit that Christians often find this passage difficult to understand.The Gnostics believed that the Son of God should not have come into the world, as a baby, especially to be crucified.They say these things happened to the human Jesus, but not to the Son of God.Although Muhammad did not regard Jesus as God, he recognized Jesus as a prophet.He has a strong class feeling that a prophet should not have a bad ending.So he adopted the views of the Docetics (a branch of Gnosticism).According to this statement: what was crucified was only a phantom.In vain the Jews and Romans wrought their futile vengeance upon the phantom.In this way, some elements of Gnosticism were finally incorporated into the orthodox teachings of Islam.

Christians had long been hostile to their Jewish contemporaries.The generally accepted view is that God once spoke to patriarchs, prophets and other saints, and foretelled the coming of Christ; but after Christ came to the world, the Jews did not recognize him, so they must be regarded as evil ones.Moreover, Christ abolished the Mosaic law, and replaced it with the commandments to love God and neighbor; and the Jews obstinately refused to recognize them.Therefore, once Christianity became the state religion, anti-Semitism; in its medieval form, became an expression of Christian zeal in name.To what extent economic motives ignited the flames of anti-Semitism in later ages seems uncertain to what extent they played a role in the Christian Roman Empire.

The more Hellenized Christianity became, the more theological it became.Jewish theology has always been simple.Yahweh developed from a tribal god to the only almighty God who created the world; when people found that God's justice did not bring good people prosperity on earth, they pushed God's justice to the kingdom of heaven, and thus came into being The belief in the immortality of the soul.But Judaism, through its evolution, did not contain any complex metaphysical elements; there was no mystery in it, and it was comprehensible to every Jew. This Jewish simplicity, taken as a whole, still characterizes the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) but is no longer found in John.In this book, Christ has been equated with Logos of Plato, Stoic and other schools.The theological Christ interested the writers of the Fourth Gospel more than the human Jesus.This is especially true of the Fathers; the reader will find more reference to the Gospel of John in the writings of the Fathers than to the other three Gospels combined.Paul's letters contain a lot of theology especially on the question of redemption; they also show that the author was familiar with Hellenism - there is a quotation from Menander, and another allusion to the man who accused the Cretans of Of the liars, of Epimenides of Crete, and so on. —Nevertheless, says St. Paul: "Be careful lest someone with his philosophy and vain lies ... take you captive."

The synthesis of Greek philosophy and the Hebrew canon remained more or less accidental and fragmentary until Origen (185-254 A.D.).Origen, like Philo, lives in Alexandria.The city has been a center of learned syncretism from its founding to its downfall, thanks to its commerce and university.Origen and his contemporary Plotinus were both apprentices of Amonias Sachas.Sarkas was considered by many to be the founder of Neoplatonism.Origen's theory, as stated in his book De Prinoipiis (De Prinoipiis), is not only very similar to Plotinus's, but in fact goes beyond what orthodoxy allows.Origen says that there is nothing completely disembodied except God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.The stars are living, rational beings, to whom God has endowed with an inherent soul.He thinks the sun can sin too.The human soul, as Plato said, has existed since the creation of the world. When a person was born, he came from somewhere and attached himself to a deceitful body.Nous - differs from the soul roughly as stated in the philosophy of Plotinus.When Nu.S. falls, it becomes a soul; when the soul is virtuous, it becomes Nu.S. again.Eventually all souls will surrender fully to Christ, and will then be disembodied.Even the devil must be saved at the end.

Although Origen was recognized as one of the godfathers, he was condemned by later generations.Said that he advocated the following four heresies: (1) The preexistence of the soul, as taught by Plato; (2) Not only the divinity of Christ, but also his humanity existed before the incarnation. (3) At the resurrection our bodies will be reduced to absolute insubstantiality. (4) All people, even the devil, will be saved in the end. St. Jerome, who expressed some half-hearted admiration for Origen's revision of the Old Testament, found in hindsight that more time and energy would have been better devoted to refuting Origen's theological errors.

Origen was not only theologically out of line; he committed an irreparable error in his youth by taking too much of the literal interpretation of the following verse: "And some eunuch themselves for the kingdom of heaven." Origen This rash practice of this escape from the temptations of the flesh was condemned by the Church, and moreover it disqualified him from election to the priesthood, on which some clergymen seem to have had a somewhat different opinion, and have thus caused some ineducation. controversy. Origen's greatest work is "Anti-Sirsus".Celsus wrote a book against Christianity (now lost) and Origen refuted his arguments point by point.Celsus first opposed Christians, saying that they belonged to illegal societies; Origen did not deny this, and asserted that this was a kind of morality, just like killing tyrants.He then pointed to the undoubted real source of people's hatred of Christianity: Christianity, says Sirsas, came from the Jews, who were barbarians; only the Greeks could find meaning in the teachings of the barbarians.Origen replies that whoever turns from Greek philosophy to the Gospels will surely affirm the truth of the Gospels, and at the same time provides the Greek philosophers with a satisfactory argument, "The Gospels have their own arguments, which are more powerful than all Greek dialectics have proved." But also holy. This more holy method has been called by the apostles the manifestation of the Holy Spirit and power; and of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, because of the prophecies, especially those relating to Christ, all narrations are sufficient to generate faith in all readers. Regarding the power because of the signs and wonders which we must be sure of having been wrought; and on the following, among other grounds, because traces of them are still to be found among those who lived according to the teachings of the Gospels."

This passage is interesting because it contains the double argument for faith that is so characteristic of Christian philosophy.On the one hand, pure reason, when properly employed, is sufficient to establish the essence of the Christian faith, in particular: God, the immortality of the soul, and free will.The Bible, on the other hand, proves not only these qualities, but much more; the inspiration of God in the Bible is by the prophets foretelling the coming of the Messiah, by the works of miracles, and by the faith of the faithful. confirmed by gift.These arguments are old today, but the last of them is still used by William James.But these arguments were admitted by all Christian philosophers down to the Renaissance.

Some of Origen's arguments are peculiar.He said that magicians often prayed to "the God of Abraham," without knowing who God was; and this prayer was obviously more effective.Names are important in magic, and it is not indiscriminate whether God's name is called in Jewish, Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, or Brahmanic.Once a spell is translated, it loses its effectiveness.This leads one to imagine that the magicians of the time used the spells of all the famous religions, and that, if Origen is right, those spells of Hebrew origin were the most effective.The argument is all the more bizarre when he points out that Moses forbade the practice of witchcraft.

He also said that Christians should not participate in politics, but they can only work in the "Kingdom of God", that is, in the church.This teaching, of course, changed slightly after Constantine, but some of it has survived.This teaching is implied in St. Augustine's City of God.During the fall of the Western Roman Empire, this teaching guided the monks to treat the disasters of the secular world negatively, and to apply their outstanding talents to the practice of the church, the debate of theology and the work of the monastery system.Some traces of this teaching survive to this day: many people think that politics is "worldly" and inappropriate for a true saint. Church rule developed slowly during the first three centuries, but rapidly after the conversion of Constantine.Bishops were elected by the people; they gradually gained considerable power to lead the Christians in the diocese, but Constantine had little to no centralized administration of any kind over the entire church.Alms increased the authority of bishops in big cities. Bishops are in charge of the donations of faithful believers, and they have the right to give or stop giving alms to the poor.Thus a band of paupers arose who did what the bishop wanted.When the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as the state religion, bishops were given judicial and administrative powers.At least in matters of doctrine, a central administration was established.Constantine had been vexed by the quarrel between the Catholics and the Arians; having resolved to share his solidarity with the Christians, he expected them to form a united sect.In order to eliminate disputes, he convened the Nicene Council of Christians of All Nations, which formulated the Nicene Creed.So far as the Arius dispute was concerned, the eternal standard of orthodoxy was thus established.Until the separation of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Western Roman Empire, and the Eastern Roman Empire no longer recognized the authority of the Pope, so that such a conference could not be held, all church disputes during the period were still resolved through the Universal Christian Conference. The Pope, though by his office the chief figure in the Church, did not, until many years later, have the authority over the whole Church.The gradual growth of the Papacy is an interesting subject, which I shall return to in a later chapter.The development of Constantine's pre-Christianity, like the motives for his conversion, have been interpreted differently by different writers.Gibbeng listed the following five reasons: "1. The indomitable, or, we might say, the intolerant zeal of the Christians was indeed Judaism. But they were cleansed of that narrow and closed spirit which not only did not welcome Gentiles, but And hindered them from obeying the Law of Moses. "2. The teaching concerning the afterlife is improved by every new circumstance which gives importance and validity to this principal truth. "3. It is said that the original church has the power to perform miracles. "4. The purity and austerity of Christian morality. "5. The unity and discipline of Christianity gradually formed an independent and growing state within the Roman Empire." Broadly speaking, this analysis is acceptable, subject to the following notes.Its first reason—the indomitableness and intolerance that emanated from Judaism—can also be fully admitted.Today we have seen the benefits of intolerance in the work of propaganda, most Christians believe that only Christians can enter heaven after death, and that Gentiles will receive the most terrible punishment in the afterlife.The other religions that competed with Christianity in the third century AD did not pose this threat.For example, the worshipers of the "Great Mother" had a ceremony similar to baptism, the "offering of the bull".But they never taught people that whoever neglects this ritual will go to hell.Incidentally, it is mentioned that the "sacrifice of the bull" was an expensive ceremony: a bull was slaughtered and its blood trickled over the convert's head.The ceremony was too aristocratic to be the basis of a religion which appealed to the masses: rich and poor, free and slave.In this respect Christianity has a certain advantage over all its competitors. The doctrine of the afterlife was first spread by the Orphists in the West; it was then adopted by the Greek philosophers.Although some Hebrew prophets preached the resurrection of the body, the Jewish belief in the resurrection of the soul seems to have been learned from the Greeks.In Greece, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul had a popular form in Orphism, and an academic form in Platonism.The latter, based on impenetrable arguments, could not have been widely circulated; but the Orphic form seems to have had a great influence on general opinion in late antiquity.It affected not only Gentiles, but Jews and Christians as well.Elements of Orphism and some of the mystical religions of Asia have infiltrated Christian theology in great measure; in all these elements the central myth is the death and resurrection of the god.Therefore, I think that the theory of immortality of the soul is by no means as important to the spread of Christianity as Gibbon thought. Miracles have played a large role in Christian propaganda.But miracles were common at the end of antiquity, and were not exclusive to one religion.It is not easy to see why the miracles of Christianity competed for wider belief than the miracles of other religions.I think Gibbon missed something extremely important: Christians have a Bible.The miracles on which the Christians depended had their beginnings in the remotest days, in a country that seemed mysterious to the ancients; they had a consistent history from the beginning of the world.According to this: God often works miracles first to the Jews and second to the Christians.It is obvious that a modern historian would regard the early history of the Israelites as primarily legendary; the ancients did not think so.They believed the siege of Troy, Romulus and Remus and other legends described by Homer. Origen once asked, since you admit these legends, why do you deny the Jewish legends?There is no logical answer to this debate.It is therefore natural to admit the miracles of the Old Testament.Once the miracles of the Old Testament are recognized, their later miracles (especially due to Christian interpretations of the prophets) also give confidence. Before Constantine, there was no doubt that the morality of Christians was higher than that of ordinary pagans.Christians were persecuted from time to time, and were often at a disadvantage in competition with heathens.They firmly believe that virtue will be rewarded in heaven and sin will be punished in hell.Their strict sexual morals were rare in ancient times.Pliny's public office was to persecute Christians, but he also proved their high moral character.After the conversion of Constantine there were, of course, some adherents among Christians; but the eminent monks, with few exceptions, were still men of moral principles.I think Gibbon is right to attribute one of the reasons for the spread of Christianity to this high level of morality. Gibbon concludes by pointing out Christian unity and discipline.I think this is the most important of the five reasons from a political point of view.We are used to political organization in modern society; every politician has to take into account the Catholic vote, but these votes are conditioned by the votes of other organizational groups.A Catholic presidential candidate in America must be disadvantaged by Protestant prejudices.But if there were no so-called Protestant prejudices, the Catholic presidential candidate would be more likely than the other candidates.Constantine seems to have had this in mind.By favoring Christians, he can gain the support of a single organizational group of Christians.Although there were people who hated Christians they were not organized and therefore politically powerless.Rosdovtsev was probably right that most of the soldiers were Christians, and that this was the main factor that influenced Constantine.Regardless of this view, while Christians were still a minority, they had an organization.This is commonplace today, but it was novel then.Organization gives them the unparalleled political power of a pressure group.It was a natural consequence of their virtual monopoly on the zeal they had inherited from the Jewish tradition. It is unfortunate that Christians, immediately after gaining political power, were eager to turn against each other.Before Constantine, there had been many heresies, but the orthodox sect could not punish them.When Christianity was recognized as the state religion, power and wealth were openly contested by monks.For this reason there were electoral disputes, and theological disputes became disputes of secular interests.Constantine remained somewhat neutral to the theologians' controversies, but after his death (337) and until Theodosius' accession in AD 379, his successors—except the apostates except Julian—all tended more or less to the Arians. An important figure in this period was Athanasius (c. 297-373 AD), who throughout his long life was a staunch fighter for Nicene orthodoxy. Because of the political importance of theology, the period from Emperor Constantine to the Council of Calesidon (AD 451) is a special one.Two questions have continually shaken Christendom: first the question of the nature of the Trinity, and then the question of the incarnation.Only the first of these questions attracted the most attention in the time of Athanasius.Arius, a cultured Alexandrian priest, maintained that the Son was not equal to the Father, but that the Son had been created for the Father.Such a view would have probably attracted little opposition in earlier times.But in the fourth century AD, most theologians rejected this view.At last the prevailing opinion is that the Father and the Son are equal and belong to the same substance; nevertheless, they are two distinct persons.The Sabelius heresy, of which Sabelius was the founder, holds that the Father and the Son are not distinct; they are merely different aspects of one being.For this reason, orthodox doctrine has entered a narrow road: those who overemphasize the difference between the Father and the Son are in danger of falling into the Arians; Perils of the Borius sect. The teachings of Arius were overwhelmingly condemned at the Council of Nicaea (325 AD).In this regard, different theologians put forward different amendments, which were approved by different emperors.Athanasius was bishop of Alexandria from 328 AD until his death, and was exiled several times because of his enthusiasm for the orthodoxy of Nicaea.He enjoyed great fame in Egypt, and the Egyptians followed him unwaveringly throughout the controversy.Strangely enough, in the course of theological debate, national (or at least territorial) sentiments, which seemed to have died out since the Roman conquests, were revived.Constantinople and Asia leaned toward the Arians; Egypt fanaticized the Athanasiians; Western Rome insisted on the resolutions of the Council of Nicaea.After the Arius controversy had ceased, new ones of more or less analogy followed, in which Egypt represented one heretical direction, and Syria another.Heresy, persecuted by orthodox sects, undermined the unity of the Eastern Roman Empire and facilitated Muslim conquests.The schismatic movement itself is not surprising, but it is strange that they should be entangled with some extremely subtle theological problems. The emperors between A.D. 335 and 378 supported the Arian views within the limits of their audacity.One exception was Julian the Apostate (361-363 AD), who, as a pagan, maintained a neutral attitude towards disputes among Christians.In 379 AD, Emperor Theodosius finally fully supported the Catholics, and they won a complete victory in the empire.St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine, whom we shall deal with in the next chapter, spent most of their careers during this period of Catholic triumph.Nevertheless, what followed in the west was another Arian domination, during which the Goths and then the Vandals successively conquered most of the Western Roman Empire.Their power lasted for about a century, and was finally destroyed by Justinian, the Lombards, and the Franks towards the end of the century.Among them, Justinian, the Franks and the Lombards are all orthodox sects.In this way, the Catholic faith finally won a definite victory.