The apostolic age of the Christian church

Front matter

B/

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

BOOK I THE EAELIEST JEWISH CHURCH Chapter I. — The Beginning. PAGE

§ 1. The Assembling of the Disciples . 1

2. The Christophanies . . . 7

Chaptek II.- — The Extension of the Church.

§ 1. The External Position . . 20

2. The Promulgation of the Gospel . 28

3. The Doctrine . . .32

Chapter III. — The Church

§ 1. Nature of the Society . . . 43

2. The Common Meals and the Treatment of the Poor 52

Chapter IV. — The- Check and the Advance

§ 1. General View . S9

2. Stephen . . 62

3. The Consequences 71

4. Agrippa I. .75 viii CONTENTS

BOOK II THE APOSTLE PAUL Chapter I. — The Apostle's Vocation. PAGE

§ L His Conversion ... .79

2. The Accounts of Paul's Conversion . . 81

3. Antecedent Conditions . . 85

4. The Event . 90

5. The Apostle to the Gentiles . 92

6. The First Mission to the Gentiles . 93

7. The Three Earliest Years . . 94

8. The following Fourteen Years 98

9. The Account of the Acts . 102

10. Paul's Preaching to the Gentiles 110

11. Polytheism and Monotheism 114

12. The Ethical Motives 117

Chapter II. — The Theology of Paul.

§ 1. Introduction . . . . 123

2. The Theology of the Primitive Church 124

3. The Kingdom of Heaven 125

5. The Death of Christ . . .129

6. The Sources of Paul's Doctrine — The Proof from

Scripture . 131

7. The Spirit . .135

8. Paul's Dialectic . 137

9. His Polemic . . 139

10. The Doctrine of Christ — The Historical Christ 140

11. The Nature of Christ . . .144

CONTENTS ix Chapter II. — Continued.

PAGE

§ 15. The Death of Christ . 159

16. Grace and Justification . 165

17. Conclusion . . 172

Chapter III. — Paul and the Primitive Church.

§ 1. The Jerusalem Concordat . . 175

2. Paul's Journey to Jerusalem . 177

3. The Assembly of the Church . 180

4. The Treaty with the Early Apostles . 185

5. The Dispute in Antioch . 189

6. Paul and Peter . . . 190

8. The Acts of the Apostles and the Decree of

Jerusalem . . 199

9. The Acts and the Galatian Letter 200

10. The Sources of the Book of Acts . 208

11. The Historical Value of the Decree . 213

Chapter IV. — Achaia

§ I. Corinth — The Founding of the Church 303

2. The Earliest Preaching 313

3. Until the First Letter 318

4. The Factions . . 325

5. The First Letter . 334

6. The Second Visit • 341

7. The Dispute . 349

8. The Christus-Party 354

9. The Second Letter 359 10. Eesults . . 368

Chapter V. — Asia

I 1. Paul in Ephesus . 376

2. Ephesus in the Acts ■ 389

3. The Ephesian Church 391

4. The Issue . .401

EERATA.

P. 6, 1. 9 from bottom, for 'absolute' read 'immediate,'

and for ' the ' read ' its.' P. 13, 1. 14 from bottom, for 'graces' read 'gifts.'

Book I The Earliest Jewish Church

CHAPTEE I

THE BEGINNING

1 1. Tlu Assenibliiig of the Disciples.

'This denomination had its origin from Christus, who in the reign of Tiberius had been executed by the procurator, Pontius Pilate. The deadly superstition, though suppressed for a time, broke out again and spread not only through Judaea, which was first to suffer from it, but through Eome also, the resort which draws to it all that is hideous and shameful.'

However little is to be learned from the account here given by the Eoman historian of the origins of the Christian Church, yet we can have no difficulty in perceiving his idea. The sect had been suppressed, or had withdrawn for a time into concealment after the death of its founder. It is obvious, besides, that it cannot have been otherwise. The historians of the New Testament, of course, look at the matter from another point of view than that of Tacitus or his authority. It is not the crisis that brings the disciples into public notice that first attracts their attention, but the still earlier impulse that causes them to reunite. This is, at least, the standpoint of the older tradition of the New Testament. It has adjusted the words of Zechariah (xiii. 7) about the shepherd and the sheep, so as to make them serve to explain and justify the dispersion of the disciples at the death of Jesus, Matt. xxvi. 31 ; Mark xiv. 27. The dispersion is brought to an

A end by a reunion, which the same tradition, immediately after quoting the prophecy, transfers to Galilee, Matt. xxvi. 32, xxviii. 7, 10; Mark xiv. 28, xvi. 7. They departed to Galilee in order there to look upon Him who had risen, and by Him to be themselves reanimated. Later on, indeed, the course of events is differently described, as we see from Luke's writings. Luke no longer knows anything of the dispersion. Everybody remains in Jerusalem in complete harmony and union. A definite period is also fixed by Luke for their reanimation, Acts ii. But this only relates to their entrance on their public activity. It is no longer the reunion proper. The same position is also taken up by the Fourth Gospel. But it then repeats the older tradition of the events in Galilee, though merely in the form of a loosely-connected appendix, c. xxi. Undoubtedly the Church became historical in the strict sense of the term first in Jerusalem. Even the legends, that place the introduction of the disciples to their life-calling in Galilee, Matt, xxviii. 19; John xxi. 15, make it point them away from the old home. Of a Galilean Church we have no trace in later times, until we come to the quite untrustworthy legend in Hegesippus, Eus. Ecc. Hist, iii. 20. If any such ever existed it remained at all events of no importance. Still we cannot pass over this earlier history, this preface to the origins in Jerusalem. We are concerned to explain those new origins so far as may on the whole be possible.

The purport of the older narrative is not merely that upon the death of the Master the disciples, by going to Galilee, turned their back for the moment on His cause, but that there they saw the all-determining appearance of the risen Christ. In Luke they remain in Jerusalem, precisely because it is there that this intercourse with the Master takes place. Now these two representations are irreconcilable. ISTor is there anything in the circumstances to decide which probably we ought to prefer. It is natural enough to suppose that the fate of Jesus struck His followers with fear and unnerved them. It is also far from unlikely that the repose of their native place, and the reawakening

Chap. I.] THE BEGINNING 3

of all their recollections should have helped to reanimate their spirits. But who would consider it impossible that they should have been rooted by their fear to the place of horror, or that a powerful reaction should have set in under impressions that were being contimially renewed ? And we must remember that the resolve to reside and to begin anew in Jerusalem must, in any case, have been formed soon enough. We are therefore forced to make our choice on other grounds. The question is decided by the account of the iirst two Gospels. Even this has been pragmatically conceived in the present form of the evangelists' narrative. But the fact is not invented. This is proved by the application of the prophet's saying, which is required to explain and interpret the dispersion as a divine decree. The prophecy did not first create the fact. The latter is the solid reality which prompted the interpretation. And our conclusion is only confirmed by the doubts with which Luke's narrative is confronted at every point.

But if the disciples of Jesus at first withdrew to Galilee after His death, then it is self-evident that there also they experienced the ' uplifting ' which impelled them so soon afterwards to return to Jerusalem. Now this uplifting was undoubtedly equivalent to the belief that Jesus lived, that He had risen. Here we have the kernel of all the narratives of the New Testament that refer to this time, however obscure and fragmentary they may be. That it is so is an inevitable inference from the place occupied by the resurrection in the earliest apostolic preaching. But we can illustrate the matter more directly from our best historical account of the Christophanies, that of the Apostle Paul, 1 Cor. xv. 4 ff. This statement closes with the one he himself witnessed ; what was that for him but the beginning of his faith, nay, the beginning also of his new vocation, his apostleship ? But what it was for the last to witness it, it was also for the first. When Peter saw the first manifestation, his faith arose. It was the starting point of his new faith, i.e. faith in the risen Christ, something quite different from his former trust in a living Master. And then also arose in him tlie certainty of his new calling and the impulse to fulfil it.

In the narratives of our Gospels the course of events is different. The new faith took its rise in Jerusalem ; in Matthew and Mark hefore the disciples went to Galilee, in Luke without any mention of the return home, in the appendix to the fourth Gospel, c. xxi., with the latter event restored. In these accounts the first point is that the grave was found empty, according to the Synoptics by women of the company, according to John by them, and also the two leading disciples. The discovery is accompanied in the Synoptics by the announcement of an angel (in Luke there are two) that the resurrection had taken place. Immediately after the sight of the empty grave, after the series of events at the grave itself, Matthew and John, at least, state that women, while still in the neighbourhood of the tomb and during the same visit, were permitted to see Jesus, and that He spoke with them. And, finally, the whole cycle of narratives is closed by accounts which the evangelists, with the exception of Mark, give of various appearances to the disciples. These took place in the next few days, according to Luke and John in Jerusalem, according to Matthew and the appendix to John in Galilee. The events at the grave itself, however, form the central point on which everything else depends. In them we have the real evidence for the belief in the resurrection ; we have at the same time the manner in which the resurrection was conceived, the departure of the resuscitated body from the grave. Only in the after appearances in Luke and John it is suggested that the body was no longer subject to natural conditions.

When we compare with this the proof of the resurrection which Paul derives from the appearances of Christ, 1 Cor. xv. 4 ff., two points of difference at once suggest themselves. First, the Apostle does not make any reference to the events at the grave, in other words to the proof of the departure from it. Secondly, his account of the appearances that establish the fact of the resurrection differs decidedly from that contained in the Gospels.

Chap. I.] THE BEGINNING 5

Paul reminds his readers of the first and most essential parts of his preaching, what he had told them of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Both events had happened according to the Scriptures, therefore according to God's purpose. In this lay their saving power, and at the same time the necessity that everything should have happened as it did. The burial is also mentioned, but only as a fact, and without any reference to Scripture. It had no separate importance for salvation. It only showed that Jesus had really been dead, and that therefore there was a genuine resurrection to life. He does not speak further of the death. It was only the resurrection that was questioned, and therefore he proceeds to relate the appearances in order to prove the fact. Now, the circumstance that he passes over the events at the grave is striking, if only because he has just mentioned the burial, but chiefly because they would have served his purpose best. In the proof which he undertakes so earnestly and carries out with such precision, the absence of the first and most important link is in the highest degree suspicious. The only possible explanation is that the Apostle was ignorant of its existence. And this is important. For Paul's knowledge of these things must have come from the heads of the primitive Church. Therefore it is the primitive Church itself that was ignorant of any such tradition. And, still further, this tradition is directly negatived by the fact that among the Christophanies recorded by Paul, that of Peter is absolutely the first. If the series of appearances which prove the resurrection began with Peter's experience, those at the grave which exclude Peter cannot have preceded it.

The events enumerated by Paul extend, undoubtedly, over a considerable period, and therefore prove more than the mere fact of the resurrection. They show that in thus appearing the risen Christ lived and wrought on behalf of His cause. We are, of course, right in assigning a definite limit to these manifestations ; others which fall beyond the sphere thus defined, no longer belong for Paul to the same category. But our limit has nothing to do with the events at the grave. It is only determined by the e THE EARLIEST JEWISH CHUECH [Book I.

efifect of the appearances. Those fall within it which result, no matter when or where, in establishing faith in the present life of Christ. Their import is shown by the fact that he includes among them his own experience, namely that of his call. Like it all these appearances, and finally that which he witnessed, initiated the Apostles into their work, founded their mission, and originated the Church. It is as the historical origins of the Church that they obtain their meaning and character. Here we have the oldest conception, the apostolic recollection of the Christophanies.

On the other hand, the appearances at the grave are empty and meaningless even in the oldest form in which they are given. They are a mere piece of display, and their only result is. to point to something further, to the true appearance which was to take place in Galilee. This is enough to show that they are a later product of the legend. But they show us also its gradual advance, and its manifold development under the influence of ideas borrowed from other sources.

For us also it is their practical importance alone that makes these experiences historical and intelligible. Even when we grasp this fact there remains something which we cannot further explain. Here, as at the beginning of all greater religious movements, we are in presence of the absolute in its creative power; and the ultimate cause lies beyond the range of historical inquiry. It is a historical fact that the men of whom Paul tells us, and among whom he himself is included, were convinced that they had seen the risen Christ. At the same time they were certain that the conviction had taken possession of them, that it had not originated with themselves. They could find no explanation for it in their own thought. But no proof is to be got from this for a bodily Christophany.

Chap. L] THE BEGINNING V

§ 2. The Christophanies.

The manifestations to his predecessors, 1 Cor. xv. 4 K, can only be understood by inferences from Paul's own experience. With regard to the latter we, may leave almost entirely out of account the narratives in the Acts. That book describes Paul's conversion three times (ix. 3 ff., xxii. 6 ff., xxvi. 13 K); in the first instance in its place in the author's narrative, afterwards in two of the speeches attributed to Paul. All three passages present variations which, if of no great importance in themselves, yet show conclusively that wei are not dealing with an actual tradition. The manner in which the writer treats his material proves that for him its importance lay, not in the accuracy with which it preserved the fact, but in its meaning. But in all these representations, whether the author tells the story, or makes Paul tell it in one or other of his speeches, he saw nothing but a dazzling flash of light; and he heard the voice of the Lord, precisely as great Jewish Kabbis in consecrated moments were enabled to see the light and hear the voice of God. That is enough for the author of the Acts, it was enough according to the ideas of the time to warrant the belief that the risen Christ had appeared to Paul. His own words presuppose something more. In the letter to the Galatians, i. 16, indeed, when he is telling of his conversion, he contents himself with giving its result, ' God revealed His Son in him.' He does not describe how the revelation was effected ; it is enough that he knew it to be a revelation.

But in First Corinthians, where he is emimerating the appearances of the risen Christ, he says more definitely, xv. 8, that Jesus appeared to him, ' was seen of him.' And in the same way, when in this letter, ix. 1, he is defending his equal right to be an Apostle, he establishes it by his experience : ' he had seen the Lord.' This seems to carry us beyond the mere flash of light; yet it does not prove the bodily appearance in the common sense of the words. When we come to consider what Paul understood by this ' seeing ' of his, we must not, indeed, compare it with the vision of which he tells us in 2 Cor. xii. 1 ff. The flights there mentioned into the third heaven and into paradise, of which he was ignorant whether he was in or out of the body, belong to a period and a kind of revelation in which he certainly does not include the vision that made him an Apostle. On the other hand, we are perfectly entitled to gauge this ' seeing ' of the risen Christ by the views he held of the resurrection, and the nature of the risen Christ. In the Philippian letter, iii. 21, we learn that Christ has a glorious body. When He comes He shall transform believers, giving them also a glorious body. But He has not to wait for it till His return; it is His already. 'Christ is,' 1 Cor. xv. 20, 'the first fruits of them that are asleep, the leader and author of their resurrection;' now, however, they also will arise clothed anew with a wholly different body, whose attributes are incorruption, glory, and power, whose nature is comprehended in the notion of the spiritual body, xv. 42-44. Hence, by His resurrection. He is our forerunner, and it is in this that He is the heavenly man whose likeness we shall wear, v. 49. Therefore His resurrection, Eom. i. 4, belongs to a wholly different sphere from that of the flesh into which His earthly existence falls. It belongs to the sphere of the spirit of holiness. Therefore also from that point ' Christ lives no longer after the flesh,' 2 Cor. v. 16.

Now from this it does not yet indeed follow that if Paul saw the risen Christ he could only have seen, as in the Acts, a flash of light. But it proves conclusively that what he saw was only visible to his spirit. For nothing else existed than a spiritual nature, a spiritual body. Any other 'seeing' was therefore impossible. And, accordingly, every assumption that involves the perception of the material body in its original form falls to the ground. Unless we would contradict his most distinct declarations, we must not figure to ourselves as material what he saw in the spirit. From this it is also clear how lame is the contention, that because Paul ranked his own vision with that of Peter and the rest, and because, further, the earlier witnesses must have seen Christ in the flesh, therefore we are to conclude that he

Chap. I.] THE BEGINNING 9

also did so see Him. There is absolutely no proof that Paul presupposed a physical Christophany in the case of the older Apostles. Had he done so he could not have put his own experience on a level with theirs. But since he does this, we must conclude that he looked upon the visions of his predecessors in the same light as his own. The statement of the Apostle negatives not only sense perception, but also all intercourse with the Christ dependent upon the senses. It can only be a spiritual vision that is in question. But our review of the facts can only be confused by introducing the antithesis of vision and reality into the Apostle's thought. What Paul saw when Christ appeared to him was not a mere conception or imagination but a reality. The spiritual nature and the spiritual body were to him quite as real as the flesh and the material body. But for our historical estimate of the fact this very distinction is decisive. We ought not to ascribe to sense perception what the Apostle does not.

The existence in the Primitive Church of quite another conception of the Christophany is most readily explained by the ideas current in the Gospels of the return and appearance of the dead in general. Thus Herod and his courtiers expressed the opinion that Jesus was John the Baptist, or Elias, or another prophet returned from the dead. And when Jesus asked His disciples, ' Who do men say that I am ? ' they quoted similar opinions held by the people. According to this view a dead man returns, not only to show himself in the body, but also to live again, and to work for a time under earthly conditions. It is wholly immaterial what historical foundation, if any, these reports may have had. Their reception into the Gospels proves in any case that the conception was not unfamiliar in early Christian circles. And it forms the starting-point for our criticism of the cycle of narratives that clustered ever more and more thickly round the recollections vouched for by Paul. The first addition to the story was, certainly, the legend of the women who found the grave empty, and were taught its meaning by an angel. Then this grew into the report that Jesus had appeared to them, a report which did not

10 THE EARLIEST JEWISH OHUKCH [Book I,

prevent them from retaining also their belief that all that had happened hitherto was merely introductory to the decisive appearance in Galilee. Precisely for this reason it was at first only the women who were permitted at the grave to convince themselves of what was the foundation of all that followed. It was the first step to an explanation and concrete presentment of the experiences of the disciples. But such a foundation was too slight for the men of later times. What they wished is shown us by the author of the Acts, when, x. 41, he makes Peter say, 'We did eat and drink with Him after He rose from the dead ' — a mode of representing the risen Christ as impossible to Paul, as it was adapted to the craving of the mass for palpable facts. In this way were formed the narratives preserved for us in the Third and Fourth Gospels. The transference to Jerusalem of the Galilean experiences is closely related to this inner development of the legend. The proof of the bodily resurrection demanded its completion on the very spot where the event had taken place, and we can still discover in the narratives the different views that influenced the development of the evidence. The appearance to the disciples at Emmaus in Luke is still half ghostly ; Christ is therefore not at once recognised, just as at the grave He had first to make Himself known. Therefore this appearance is followed by the second to the Apostles which removes the last doubt, since He lets them touch Him, and takes food before their eyes. The two appearances in Jerusalem of the Fourth Gospel follow the same order, so far as the sense is concerned; for here also He enters on the first occasion like a ghost through a closed door, but on the second, after doing so again. He adds the proof of His corporeality by permitting His body to be touched. And yet the narratives shrink to the last from carrying out these physical conceptions to their logical conclusion. They have found their way into Matthew's Gospel at least at one point, where, namely, the women in the neighbourhood of the grave, when they prostrate themselves, are represented as embracing Jesus' feet. But John's Gospel has corrected precisely this feature in the warning, only to be understood by its reference

Chap. I.] THE BEGINNING 11

to the earlier narrative, ' Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended to the Father,' xx. 17. Since the latter Gospel goes on to describe in the very next narrative how He afterwards bids Thomas touch Him, we can only explain the prohibition by a theory peculiar to the evangelist, that by the ascension the body of Jesus first attained its new nature, and the state that made His complete manifestation possible. In any case we cannot fail to observe in this series of representations the mobility of the narratives, and the shifting influence of reflection. And the doubts repeatedly mentioned by the writers (Matt, xxviii. 17 ; Luke xxiv. 11, 37, 41 ; John XX. 25 ; the secrecy of the witnesses, Mark xvi. 8), give just so many indications of their gradual origin. The last layer of tradition, the appendix of Galilean histories in John xxi., with its allegorical draught of fishes elsewhere assigned in a different form to the beginning of Jesus' Ministry, only shows in its main points how at last warrant and information were sought in mysterious and hitherto undivulged words of the risen Christ, for all manner of events or aspirations that in the future agitated the minds of men. And it shows, further, how the attempt took their thoughts back to Galilee.

Now it is especially remarkable that the experience of Peter, the event which, according to Paul, was the first and the basis of all the rest, is for a long time entirely absent from the history, and though adduced later never obtains its rightful prominence in the Gospels. Neither our Matthew nor our Mark is aware that Jesus appeared first to Peter. The only hint given by Mark of his peculiar position in this matter is the slight one, that the message of the angel intrusted to the women at the grave, while sent to the disciples generally, is especially directed to him. Luke (xxiv. 34) is the earliest to record the appearance to Peter as the first, but its mention in the form of a report shows undoubtedly that the statement depended on the writer's acquaintance with the passage in ■Paul. He had nothing to make a narrative of. Even the Fourth Gospel only states that Peter was the first to convince himself of the grave being empty, not, therefore, that Jesus had appeared to him.

Afterwards, in the appendix to the Fourth Gospel, he does indeed see Jesus. But there Peter is not alone ; besides, Christ has alreadyappeared twice to all the disciples. Even here, therefore, the divergence from Paul is absolute. It is impossible to imagine a more convincing proof that the history was entirely supplanted by legend. So strong was the tendency, that the reverence for Peter, in other respects one of the most powerful motives of the older narrative, could not prevail against it. Peter's actual experience was no longer sufficient. It could not be pressed into the service of the prevailing belief, and the reflections of the succeeding age.

In these circumstances we must at the outset abandon all hope of being any longer able to follow in the entanglements of the later narratives the traces of the various Christophanies, arranged by Paul in so definite an order, and with such an evident intention of securing absolute completeness. Here is his list : — i. to Peter ; II. to the twelve; in. to more than 500 brethren at once; iv. to James ; v. to all the apostles ; VI. to Paul. Of these six events, apart from the appearance to Peter, and the last mentioned, that to Paul himself, the Gospels have also lost sight of the appearance to James, nor is there any reference to it in the Acts. Nor can we find in these writings any hint of the 500 brethren cited by Paul in the third place. Our comparison is thus limited to the twelve under the second, and ' all the apostles ' under the fifth heading. But 'all the apostles ' we need not look for in the Acts or Gospels, if only because of the date. They appear towards the end of Paul's list, immediately before his own experience, while the Gospels and the Acts only contain appearances that took place in the early days, unless we are willing to suppose a wider range for John xxi. But, apart from the date, there is the question as to the personality of the witnesses ; for ' all the apostles ' are in Paul distinguished from the twelve, while the narratives do not extend beyond the latter. Therefore we are left simply with the appearance to the twelve. But who -will say whether our comparison should take into account the event reported by Matthew as having occurred on the mountain in Galilee, or one of the