Читать книгу Church History (Vol.1-3) - J. H. Kurtz - Страница 40

The development of the system of Christian doctrine must become a necessity when Christianity meeting with pagan culture in the form of science is called upon to defend her claim to be the universal religion. In the first three centuries, however, there was as yet no official construction and establishment of ecclesiastical doctrine. There must first be a certain measure of free subjective development and wrestling with antagonistic views. A universally acknowledged organ is wanting, such as that subsequently found in the Œcumenical Councils. The persecutions allowed no time and peace for this; and the church had enough to do in maintaining what is specifically Christian in opposition to the intrusion of such anti-Christian, Jewish and Pagan elements as sought to gain a footing in Ebionism and Gnosticism. On the other hand, friction and controversy within the church had already begun as a preparation for the construction of the ecclesiastical system of doctrine. The Trinitarian controversy was by far the most important, while the Chiliastic discussions were of significance for Eschatology.

§ 33.1. The Trinitarian Questions.—The discussion was mainly about the relation of the divine μοναρχία (the unity of God) to the οἰκονομία (the Trinitarian being and movement of God). Then the relation of the Son or Logos to the Father came decidedly to the front. From the time when the more exact determination of this relationship came to be discussed, toward the end of the 2nd cent., the most eminent teachers of the Catholic church maintained stoutly the personal independence of the Logos—Hypostasianism. But the necessity for keeping this view in harmony with the monotheistic doctrine of Christianity led to many errors and vacillations. Adopting Philo’s distinction of λόγος ἐνδιάθετος and λόγος προφορικός (§ 10, 1), they for the most part regarded the hypostasizing as conditioned first by the creating of the world and as coming forth not as a necessary and eternal element in the very life of God but as a free and temporal act of the divine will. The proper essence of the Godhead was identified rather with the Father, and all attributes of the Godhead were ascribed to the Son not in a wholly equal measure as to the Father, for the word of Christ: “the Father is greater than I” (John xiv. 28), was applied even to the pre-existent state of Christ. Still greater was the uncertainty regarding the Holy Spirit. The idea of His personality and independence was far less securely established; He was much more decidedly subordinated, and the functions of inspiration and sanctification proper to Him were ascribed to Christ, or He was simply identified with the Son of God. The result, however, of such subordinationist hypostasianism was that, on the one hand, many church teachers laid undue stress on the fundamental anti-pagan doctrine of the unity of God, just as on the other hand, many had indulged in exaggerated statements about the divinity of Christ. It seemed therefore desirable to set aside altogether the question of the personal distinction of the Son and Spirit from the Father. This happened either in the way clearly favoured by the Ebionites who regarded Christ as a mere man, who, like the prophets, though in a much higher measure, had been endued with divine wisdom and power (dynamic Monarchianism), or in a way more accordant with the Christian mode of thought, admitting that the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in Christ, and either identifying the Logos with the Father (Patripassianism), or seeing in Him only a mode of the activity of the Father (modal Monarchianism). Monarchianism in all these forms was pronounced heretical by all the most illustrious fathers of the 3rd cent., and hypostasianism was declared orthodox. But even under hypostasianism an element of error crept in at a later period in the form of subordinationism, and modal Monarchianism approached nearer to the church doctrine by adopting the doctrine of sameness of essence (ὁμοουσία) in Son and Father. The orthodox combination of the two opposites was reached in the 3rd cent, in homoousian hypostasianism, but only in the 4th cent. attained universal acceptance (§ 50).

§ 33.2. The Alogians.—Soon after A.D. 170 in Asia Minor we meet with the Alogians as the first decided opponents from within the church of Logos doctrine laid down in the Gospel by John and the writings of the Apologists. They started in diametrical opposition to the chiliasm of the Montanists and their claims to prophetic gifts, and were thus led not only to repudiate the Apocalypse but also the Gospel of John; the former on account of its chiliast-prophetic contents which embraced so much that was unintelligible, yea absurd and untrue; the latter, first of all on account of the use the Montanists made of its doctrine of the Paraclete in support of their prophetic claims (§ 40, 1), but also on account of its seeming contradictions of and departures from the narratives of the Synoptists, and finally, on account of its Logos doctrine in which the immediate transition from the incarnation of the Logos to the active life of Christ probably seemed to them too closely resembling docetic Gnosticism. They therefore attributed to the Gnosticizing Judaist, Cerinthus, the authorship both of the Fourth Gospel and of the Apocalypse. Of their own Christological theories we have no exact information. Irenæus and Hippolytus deal mildly with them and recognise them as members of the Catholic church. It is Epiphanius who first gives them the equivocal designation of Alogians (which may either be “deniers of the Logos” or “the irrational”), denouncing them as heretical rejecters of the Logos doctrine and the Logos-Gospel. This is the first instance which we have of historical criticism being exercised in the Church with reference to the biblical books.

§ 33.3. The Theodotians and Artemonites.—Epiphanius describes the sect of the Theodotians at Rome as an ἀπόσπασμα τῆς ἀλόγου αἱρέσεως. The main source of information about them is the Little Labyrinth (§ 31, 3), and next to it Hippolytus in his Syntagma, quoted by the Pseudo-Tertullian and Epiphanius, and in his Elenchus. The founder of this sect, Theodotus ὁ σκυτεύς, the Tanner, a man well trained in Greek culture, came A.D. 190 to Byzantium where, during the persecution, he denied Christ, and on this account changed his residence to Rome and devoted himself here to the spread of his dynamic Monarchianism. He maintained ψιλὸν ἄνθρωπον εἶναι τὸν Χριστόν—Spiritu quidem sancto natum ex virgine, sed hominem nudum nulla alia præ cæteris nisi sola justitæ auctoritate. He sought to justify his views by a one-sided interpretation of scripture passages referring to the human nature of Christ.91 But since he acknowledged the supernatural birth of Christ as well as the genuineness of the Gospel of John, and in other respects agreed with his opponents, he could still represent himself as standing on the basis of the Old Catholic Regula fidei (§ 35, 2). Nevertheless the Roman bishop Victor (A.D. 189–199) excommunicated him and his followers. The most distinguished among his disciples was a second Theodotus ὁ τραπεζίτης, the Money-changer. By an exegesis of Heb. v. 6, 10; vi. 20; vii. 3, 17, he sought to prove that Melchisedec was δύναμις τίς μεγίστη and more glorious than Christ; the former was the original type, the latter only the copy; the former was intercessor before God for the angels, the latter only for men; the origin of the former is secret, because truly heavenly, that of Christ open, because born of Mary. The later heresiologists therefore designate his followers Melchisedecians. Laying hold upon the theory φύσει τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν ἰδέᾳ ἀνθρώπου τότε τῷ Ἀβραὰμ πεφηνέναι which, according to Epiphanius, was held even by Catholics, and also, like the Shepherd of Hermas, identifying the Son of God with the Holy Spirit that descended in baptism on the man Jesus, Theodotus seems from those two points of view to have proceeded to teach, that the historical Christ, because operated upon only dynamically by the Holy Spirit or the Son of God, was inferior to the purely heavenly Melchisedec who was himself the very eternal Son of God. The reproaches directed against the Theodotians by their opponents were mainly these: that instead of the usual allegorical exegesis they used only a literal and grammatical, that they practised an arbitrary system of Textual criticism, and that instead of holding to the philosophy of the divine Plato, they took their wisdom from the empiricists (Aristotle, Euclid, Galen, etc.), and sought by such objectionable means to support their heretical views. We have thus probably to see in them a group of Roman theologians, who, towards the close of the 2nd cent. and the beginning of the 3rd cent. maintained exegetical and critical principles essentially the same as those which the Antiochean school with greater clearness and definiteness set forth toward the end of the 3rd cent. (§§ 31, 1; 47, 1). The attempt, however, which they made to found an independent sect in Rome about A.D. 210 was an utter failure. According to the report of the Little Labyrinth, they succeeded in getting for their bishop a weak-minded confessor called Natalius. Haunted by visions of judgment and beaten sore one night by good angels till in a miserable plight, he hasted on the following morning to cast himself at the feet of bishop Zephyrinus (A.D. 199–217), successor of Victor, and showing his stripes he begged for mercy and restoration.—The last of the representatives of the Theodotians in Rome, and that too under this same Zephyrinus, was a certain Artemon or Artemas. He and his followers maintained that their own doctrine (which cannot be very exactly determined but was also of the dynamic order) had been recognised in Rome as orthodox from the time of the Apostles down to that of bishop Victor, and was first condemned by his successor Zephyrinus. This assertion cannot be said to be altogether without foundation in view, on the one hand, of the agreement above referred to between Theodotus the younger and the Roman Hermas, and on the other hand, of the fact that the Roman bishops Zephyrinus and Callistus had passed over to Noëtian Modalism. Artemon must have lived at least until A.D. 260, when Paul of Samosata (§ 33, 8), who also maintained fellowship with the excommunicated Artemonites in Rome, conducted a correspondence with him.

§ 33.4. Praxeas and Tertullian.—Patripassianism, which represented the Father Himself as becoming man and suffering in Christ, may be characterized as the precursor and first crude form of Modalism. It also had its origin during the 2nd cent., in that same intellectually active church of Asia Minor, and from thence the movement spread to Rome, where after a long and bitter struggle it secured a footing in the 3rd cent.—Praxeas, a confessor of Asia Minor and opponent of Montanism, was its first representative at Rome, where unopposed he expounded his views about A.D. 190. As he supported the Roman bishop Victor in his condemnation of Montanism (§ 40, 2), so he seems to have won the bishop’s approval for his Christological theory.92 Perhaps also the excommunication which was at this time uttered against the dynamic Monarchian, Theodotus the Elder, was the result of the bishop’s change of views. From Rome Praxeas betook himself, mainly in the interest of his Anti-Montanist crusade, to Carthage, and there also won adherents to his Christology. Meanwhile, however, Tertullian returned to Carthage, and as a convert to Montanism, hurled against Praxeas and his followers a controversial treatise, in which he laid bare with acute dialectic the weaknesses and inconsistencies, as well as the dangerous consequences of their theory. Just like the Alogians, Praxeas and his adherents refused to admit the doctrine of the Logos into their Christology, and feared that it in connection with the doctrine of the hypostasis would give an advantage to Gnosticism. In the interests of monotheism, as well as of the worship of Christ, they maintained the perfect identity of Father and Son. God became the Son by the assumption of the flesh; under the concept of the Father therefore falls the divinity, the spirit; under that of the Son, the humanity, the flesh of the Redeemer.—Tertullian himself in his Hypostasianism had not wholly got beyond the idea of subordinationism, but he made an important advance in this direction by assuming three stages in the hypostasizing of the Son (Filiatio). The first stage is the eternal immanent state of being of the Son in the Father; the second is the forthcoming of the Son alongside of the Father for the purpose of creating the world; and the third is the going forth of the Son into the world by means of the incarnation.

§ 33.5. The Noëtians and Hippolytus.—The Patripassian standpoint was maintained also by Noëtus of Smyrna, who summed up his Christological views in the sentence: the Son of God is His own, and not another’s Son. One of his pupils, Epigonus, in the time of bishop Zephyrinus brought this doctrine to Rome, where a Noëtian sect was formed with Cleomenes at its head. Sabellius too, who in A.D. 215 came to Rome from Ptolemais in Egypt, attached himself to it, but afterwards constructed an independent system of doctrine in the form of a more speculative Modalism. The most vigorous opponent of the Noëtians was the celebrated presbyter Hippolytus (§ 31, 3). He strongly insisted upon the hypostasis of the Son and of the Spirit, and claimed for them divine worship. But inasmuch as he maintained in all its strictness the unity of God, he too was unable to avoid subordinating the Son under the Father. The Son, he taught, owed His hypostasizing to the will of the Father; the Father commands and the Son obeys; the perfect Logos was the Son from eternity, but οὐ λόγος ὡς φωνὴ, ἀλλ’ ἐνδιάθετος τοῦ πάντος λογισμός, therefore in a hypostasis, which He became only at the creation of the world, so that He became perfect Son first in the incarnation. Bishop Zephyrinus, on the other hand, was not inclined to bear hard upon the Noëtians, but sought in the interests of peace some meeting-point for the two parties. The conflagration fairly broke out under his successor, Callistus (A.D. 217–222; comp. § 41, 1). Believing that truth and error were to be found on both sides he defined his own position thus: God is a spirit without parts, filling all things, giving life to all, who as such is called Logos, and only in respect of name is distinguished as Father and Son. The Pneuma become incarnate in the Virgin is personally and essentially identical with the Father. That which has thereby become manifest, the man Jesus, is the Son. It therefore cannot be said that the Father as such has suffered, but rather that the Father has suffered in and with the Son. Decidedly Monarchian as this formula of compromise undoubtedly is, it seems to have afforded the bridge upon which the official Roman theology crossed over to the homoousian Hypostasianism which forty years later won the day (§ 33, 7). Among the opposing parties it found no acceptance. Hippolytus denounced the bishop as a Noëtian, while the Noëtians nicknamed him a Dytheist. The result was that the two party leaders, Sabellius and Hippolytus, were excommunicated. The latter formed the company of his adherents in Rome into a schismatic sect.

§ 33.6. Beryllus and Origen.—Beryllus of Bostra93 in Arabia also belonged to the Patripassians; but he marks the transition to a nobler Modalism, for though he refuses to the deity of Christ the ἰδία θεότης, he designates it πατρικὴ θεότης, and sees in it a new form of the manifestation (πρόσωπον) of God. In regard to him an Arabian Synod was held in A.D. 244, to which Origen was invited. Convinced by him of his error, Beryll [Beryllus] retracted.—All previous representatives of the hypostasis of the Logos had understood his hypostatizing as happening in time for the purpose of the creation and the incarnation. Origen removed this restriction when he enunciated the proposition: The Son is from eternity begotten of the Father and so from eternity an hypostasis. The generation of the Son took not place simply as the condition of creation, but as of itself necessary, for where there is light there must be the shedding forth of rays. But because the life of God is bound to no time, the objectivizing of His life in the Son must also lie outside of all time. It is not therefore an act of God accomplished once and for ever, but an eternally continued exercise of living power (ἀεὶ γεννᾲ τὸν υἱόν). Origen did not indeed get beyond subordinationism, but he restricted it within the narrowest possible limits. He condemns the expression that the Son is ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ πατρός, but only in opposition to the Gnostic theories of emanation. He maintained a ἑτερότης τῆς οὐσίας, but only in opposition to the ὁμοούσιος in the Patripassian sense. He teaches a generation of the Son ἐκ τοῦ θελήματος θεοῦ, but only because he sees in Him the objectified divine will. He calls Him a κτίσμα, but only in so far as He is θεοποιούμενος, not αὐτόθεος, though indeed the Son is αὐτοσοφία, αὐτοαλήθεια, δεύτερος θεός. Thus what he teaches is not a subordination of essence or nature, but only of existence or origin.

§ 33.7. Sabellius and Dionysius of Alex. and Dionysius of Rome.—We have already seen that Sabellius had founded in Rome a speculative Manichæan system, which found much favour among the bishops of his native region. His assigning an essential and necessary place in his system to the Holy Spirit indicates an important advance. God is a unity (μονάς) admitting of no distinctions, resting in Himself as θεὸς σιωπών coming forth out of Himself (for the purpose of creation) as θεὸς λαλῶν. In the course of the world’s development the Monas for the sake of redemption assumes necessarily three different forms of being (ὀνόματα πρόσωπα), each of which embraces in it the complete fulness of the Monas. They are not ὑποστάσεις, but πρόσωπα, masks, we might say roles, which the God who manifests Himself in the world assumes in succession. After the prosopon of the Father accomplished its work in the giving of the law, it fell back into its original condition; advancing again through the incarnation as Son, it returns by the ascension into the absolute being of the Monas; it reveals itself finally as the Holy Spirit to return again, after securing the perfect sanctification of the church, into the Monas that knows no distinctions, there to abide through all eternity. This process is characterized by Sabellius as an expansion (ἔκτασις) and contraction (συστολή). By way of illustration he uses the figure of the sun ὄντος μὲν ἐν μίᾳ ὑποστάσει, τρεῖς δὲ ἔχοντος τὰς ἐνεργείας, namely τὸ τῆς περιφερείας σχῆμα, τὸ φωτιστικὸν καὶ τὸ θάλπον.—At a Synod of Alexandria in A.D. 261 Dionysius the Great (§ 31, 6) entered the lists against the Sabellianism of the Egyptian bishops, and with well-intentioned zeal employed subordinationist expressions in a highly offensive way (ξένον κατ’ οὐσίαν αὐτὸν εἶναι τοῦ Πατρὸς ὥσπερ ἐστὶν ὁ γεωργὸς πρὸς τὴν ἄμπελον καὶ ὁ ναυπηγὸς πρὸς τὸ σκάφος—ὡς ποίημα ὢν οὐκ ἦν πρὶν γέννηται). When bishop Dionysius of Rome (A.D. 259–268) was informed of these proceedings he condemned his Alexandrian colleague’s modes of expression at a Synod at Rome in A.D. 262, and issued a tract (Ἀνατροπή), in which against Sabellius he affirmed hypostasianism and against the Alexandrians, notwithstanding the suspicion of Manichæanism that hung about it, the doctrine of the ὁμοουσία and the eternal generation of the Son. With a beautiful modesty Dionysius of Alexandria retracted his unhappily chosen phrases and declared himself in thorough agreement with the Roman exposition of doctrine.

§ 33.8. Paul of Samosata.—In Rome and throughout the West general dynamical Monarchianism expired with Artemon and his party. In the East, however, it was revived by Paul of Samosata, in A.D. 260 bishop of the Græco-Syrian capital Antioch, which, however, was then under the rule of Queen Zenobia of Palmyra. Attaching himself to the other dynamists, especially the Theodotians and Artemonites, he went in many respects beyond them. Maintaining as they did the unipersonality of God (ἓν πρόσωπον), he yet admitted a distinction of Father, Son (λόγος) and Spirit (σοφία) the two last, however, being essentially identical attributes of the first, and also the distinction of the λόγος προφορικός from the λόγος ἐνδιάθετος, the one being the ἐπιστήμη ἀνυπόστατος operative in the prophets, the other the ἐπ. ἀνυπ. latent in God. Further, while placing like the dynamists the personality of Christ in His humanity and acknowledging His supernatural birth from the Holy Spirit by the Virgin, he conceived of Him, like the modern Socinians, as working the way upward, ἐκ προκοπῆς τεθεοποιῆσθαι, i.e. by reason of His unique excellence to divine rank and the obtaining of the divine name.—Between A.D. 264–269 the Syrian bishops held three large Synods in regard to him at Antioch, to which also many other famous bishops of the East were invited. The first two were without result, for he knew how to conceal the heterodox character of his views. It was only at the third that the presbyter Malchion, a practised dialectician and formerly a rhetorician, succeeded in unmasking him at a public disputation. The Synod now declared him excommunicated and deprived him of his office, and also transmitted to all the catholic churches, first of all to Rome and Alexandria, the records of the disputation together with a complete report in which he was described as a proud, vain, pompous, covetous and even immoral man (§ 39, 3). Nevertheless by the favour of the Queen he kept possession of his bishopric, and holding a high office at the court he exercised not only spiritual functions but also great civil authority. But when Zenobia was overcome by Aurelian in A.D. 272, the rest of the bishops accused him before the pagan emperor, who decided that the ecclesiastical buildings should be made over to that one of the contending bishops whom the Christian bishops of Rome and Italy should recognise. In these conflicts undoubtedly a national and political antagonism lay behind the dogmatic and ecclesiastical dispute (§ 31, 9e).—At the Synod of A.D. 269 the expression ὁμοούσιος, which since it had been first used by Sabellius was always regarded with suspicion in church circles, was dragged into the debate and expressly condemned; and so it is doubtful whether Paul himself had employed it, or whether, on the contrary, he wished to charge his opponents with heresy as being wont to use this term.

§ 33.9. Chiliasm or the doctrine of an earthly reign of the Messiah in the last times full of splendour and glory for His people arose out of the literal and realistic conception of the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. The adoption of the period of a thousand years for its duration rested on the idea that as the world had been created in six days, so, according to Ps. xc. 4 and 2 Pet. iii. 8, its history would be completed in six thousand years. Under the oppression of the Roman rule this notion came to be regarded as a fundamental doctrine of Jewish faith and hope (Matt. xx. 21; Acts i. 6). The Apocalypse of St. John was chiefly influential in elaborating the Christian chiliastic theory. In chap. xx. under the guise of vision the doctrine is set forth that after the finally victorious conflict of the present age there will be a first and partial resurrection, the risen saints shall reign with Christ a thousand years, and then after another revolt of Satan that is soon suppressed the present age will be closed in the second universal resurrection, the judgment of the world and the creation of new heavens and a new earth. What fantastic notions of the glory of the thousand years’ reign might be developed from such passages, is seen in the traditional saying of the Lord given by Papias (Iren., v. 33) about the wonderful fruitfulness of the earth during the millennium: one vine-stock will bear 10,000 stems (palmites), each stem will have 10,000 branches (bracchia), each branch 10,000 twigs (flagella), each twig 10,000 clusters (botrus), each cluster 10,000 grapes, and every grape will yield 25 measures of wine; “et quum eorum apprehenderit aliquis Sanctorum, alius clamabit: Botrus ego melior sum, me sume, per me Dominum benedic!” After the time of Papias Chiliasm became the favourite doctrine of the Christians who under the severe pressure of pagan persecution longed for the early return of the Lord. The Apologists of the 2nd century do indeed pass it over in silence, but only perhaps because it seemed to them impolitic to give it a marked prominence in works directly addressed to the pagan rulers; at least Justin Martyr does not scruple in the Dialog. c. Tryph. addressed to another class of readers to characterize it as a genuinely orthodox doctrine. Asia Minor was the chief seat of these views, where, as we have seen (§ 40), Montanism also in its most fanatical and exaggerated form was elevated into a fundamental article of the Christian faith. Irenæus enthusiastically adopted chiliastic views and gave a full though fairly moderate exposition of them in his great work against the Gnostics (v. 24–36). Tertullian also championed these notions, at the same time rejecting many outgrowths of a grossly carnal nature (Adv. Marc., iii. 24, and in a work no longer extant, De spe fidelium). The most vigorous opposition is shown to Chiliasm by the Alogians, Praxeas the Patripassian and Caius of Rome, who were also the determined opponents of Montanism. The last named indeed went so far in his controversial writing against Proclus the Montanist, as to ascribe the authorship of the Johannine Apocalypse to the heretic Cerinthus (§ 27, 1). The Alexandrian spiritualists too, especially Origen (De Prin., ii. 11), were decided opponents of every form of Chiliasm and explained away the Scripture passages on which it was built by means of allegorical interpretation. Nevertheless even in Egypt it had numerous adherents. At their head about the middle of the 3rd cent. stood the learned bishop Nepos of Arsinoe, whose Ἔλεγχος τῶν ἀλληγοριστῶν directed against the Alexandrians is no longer extant. After his death his party under the leadership of the presbyter Coracion separated from the church of Alexandria, the bishop Dionysius the Great going down himself expressly to Arsinoe in order to heal the breach. In a conference of the leaders of the parties continued for three days he secured the sincere respect of the dissentients by his counsels, and even Coracion was induced to make a formal recantation. Dionysius then wrote for the confirmation of the converts his book: Περὶ ἐπαγγελιῶν. But not long after, opposition to the spiritualism of the school of Origen made Methodius, the bishop of Olympus, play the part of a new herald of Chiliasm, and in the West, Commodian, Victor of Poitiers, and especially Lactantius, became its zealous advocates in a particularly materialistic form. Its day, however, was already past. What tended most to work its complete overthrow was the course of events under Constantine. Amid the rejoicings of the national church as a present reality, interest in the expectation of a future thousand years’ reign was lost. Among post-Constantine church teachers only Apollinaris the Younger favoured Chiliasm (§ 47, 5). Jerome indeed, in deference to the cloud of witnesses from the ancient church, does not venture to pronounce it heretical, but treats it with scornful ridicule; and Augustine (De civ. Dei), though at an earlier period not unfavourable to it, sets it aside by showing that the scriptural representations of the thousand years’ reign are to be understood as referring to the church obtaining dominion through the overthrow of the pagan Roman empire, the thousand years being a period of indefinite duration, and the first resurrection being interpreted of the reception of saints and martyrs into heaven as sharers in the glory of Christ.—See Candlish, “The Kingdom of God.” Edin., 1884. Especially pp. 409–415, “Augustine on the City of God.”