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HISTORY of the CHRISTIAN CHURCH*

CHAPTER XII:

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CATHOLICTHEOLOGY IN CONFLICT WITH HERESY.

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§ 137. Catholic Orthodoxy.

I. Sources: Thedoctrinal and polemical writings of the ante-Nicene fathers, especially Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus,Tertullian, Cyprian, Clement Of Alex., and Origen.

II. Literature: Therelevant sections in the works on Doctrine History by Petravius, Münscher, Neander, Giesler, Baur, Hagenbach, Shedd,Nitzsch, Harnack (first vol. 1886; 2d ed. 1888).

Jos. Schwane (R.C.):Dogmengeschichte der vornicänischen Zeit. Münster, 1862.

Edm. De Pressensé: Heresy and Christian Doctrine, transl. by Annie Harwood. Lond.1873.

The specialliterature see below. Comp. also the Lit. in Ch. XIII.

By the wide-spread errorsdescribed in the preceding chapter, the church was challenged to a mightyintellectual combat, from which she came forth victorious, according to thepromise of her Lord, that the Holy Spirit should guide her into the wholetruth. To the subjective, baseless, and ever-changing speculations, dreams, andfictions of the heretics, she opposed the substantial, solid realities of thedivine revelation. Christian theology grew, indeed, as by inward necessity,from the demand of faith for knowledge. But heresy, Gnosticism in particular,gave it a powerful impulse from without, and came as a fertilizingthunder-storm upon the field. The church possessed the truth from thebeginning, in the experience of faith, and in the Holy Scriptures, which shehanded down with scrupulous fidelity from generation to generation. But nowcame the task of developing the substance of the Christian truth in theoreticalform 934fortifying it on all sides, and presenting it in clearlight before the understanding. Thus the Christian polemic and dogmatictheology, or the church’s logical apprehension of the doctrines of salvation,unfolded itself in this conflict with heresy; as the apologetic literature andmartyrdom had arisen through Jewish and heathen persecution.

From this time forth thedistinction between catholic and heretical, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, the faithof the church and dissenting private opinion, became steadily more prominent.Every doctrine which agreed with the holy scriptures and the faith of thechurch, was received as catholic; that is, universal, and exclusive.935 Whatever deviated materially from this standard, every arbitrarynotion, framed by this or that individual, every distortion or corruption ofthe revealed doctrines of Christianity, every departure from the publicsentiment of the church, was considered heresy..936

Almost all the church fatherscame out against the contemporary heresies, with arguments from scripture, withthe tradition of the church, and with rational demonstration, proving theminwardly inconsistent and absurd.

But in doing this, while theyare one in spirit and purpose, they pursue two very different courses,determined by the differences between the Greek and Roman nationality, and bypeculiarities of mental organization and the appointment of Providence. TheGreek theology, above all the Alexandrian, represented by Clement and Origen,is predominantly idealistic and speculative, dealing with the objectivedoctrines of God, the incarnation, the trinity, and christology; endeavoring tosupplant the false gnosis by a true knowledge, an orthodox philosophy, restingon the Christian pistis. It was strongly influenced by Platonic speculation inthe Logos doctrine. The Latin theology, particularly the North African, whosemost distinguished representatives are Tertullian and Cyprian, is morerealistic and practical, concerned with the doctrines of human nature and ofsalvation, and more directly hostile to Gnosticism and philosophy. With this isconnected the fact, that the Greek fathers were first philosophers; the Latinwere mostly lawyers and statesmen; the former reached the Christian faith inthe way of speculation, the latter in the spirit of practical morality.Characteristically, too, the Greek church built mainly upon the apostle John,pre-eminently the contemplative 'divine;' the Latin upon Peter, thepractical leader of the church. While Clement of Alexandria and Origen oftenwander away into cloudy, almost Gnostic speculation, and threaten to resolvethe real substance of the Christian ideas into thin spiritualism, Tertulliansets himself implacably against Gnosticism and the heathen philosophy uponwhich it rests. 'What fellowship,' he asks, 'is there betweenAthens and Jerusalem, the academy and the church, heretics andChristians?' But this differencewas only relative. With all their spiritualism, the Alexandrians stillcommitted themselves to a striking literalism; while, in spite of his aversionto philosophy, Tertullian labored with profound speculative ideas which came totheir full birth in Augustin.

Irenaeus, who sprang from theEastern church, and used the Greek language, but labored in the West, holds akind of mediating position between the two branches of the church, and may betaken as, on the whole, the most moderate and sound representative ofecclesiastical orthodoxy in the ante-Nicene period. He is as decided againstGnosticism as Tertullian, without overlooking the speculative want betrayed inthat system. His refutation of the Gnosis, 937written between 177 and 192, isthe leading polemic work of the second century. In the first book of this workIrenaeus gives a full account of the Valentinian system of Gnosis; in thesecond book be begins his refutation in philosophical and logical style; in thethird, he brings against the system the catholic tradition and the holy, scriptures,and vindicates the orthodox doctrine of the unity of God, the creation of theworld, the incarnation of the Logos, against the docetic denial of the truehumanity of Christ and the Ebionitic denial of his true divinity; in the fourthbook he further fortifies the same doctrines, and, against the antinomianism ofthe school of Marcion, demonstrates the unity of the Old and New Testaments; inthe fifth and last book he presents his views on eschatology, particularly onthe resurrection of the body—so offensive to the Gnostic spiritualism—and atthe close treats of Antichrist, the end of the world, the intermediate state,and the millennium.

His disciple Hippolytus givesus, in the 'Philosophumena,' a still fuller account,in many respects, of the early heresies, and traces them up to, their sourcesin the heathen systems of philosophy, but does not go so deep into theexposition of the catholic doctrines of the church.

The leading effort in thispolemic literature was, of course, to develop and establish positively theChristian truth; which is, at the same time, to refute most effectually theopposite error. The object was, particularly, to settle the doctrines of therule of faith, the incarnation of God, and the true divinity and true humanityof Christ. In this effort the mind of the church, under the constant guidanceof the divine word and the apostolic tradition, steered with unerring instinctbetween the threatening cliffs. Yet no little indefiniteness and obscuritystill prevailed in the scientific apprehension and statement of these points.In this stormy time, too, there were as yet no general councils to, settledoctrinal controversy by the voice of the whole church. The dogmas of thetrinity and the person of Christ, did not reach maturity and final symbolicaldefinition until the following period, or the Nicene age.

Noteson Heresy.

The term heresy isderived from ai{resi' which means originally either capture(from aiJrevw), or election, choice (fromaiJrevomai), and assumed the additional idea of arbitraryopposition to public opinion and authority. In the N. Test. it designates achosen way of life, a school or sect or party, not necessarily in a bad sense,and is applied to the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and even the Christians as aJewish sect (Acts 5:17; 15:5; 24:5, 14; 26:5; 28:22); then it signifiesdiscord, arising from difference of opinion (Gal. 5:20; 1 Cor. 11:19); andlastly error (2 Pet. 2:1, aiJrevsei'ajpwleiva'destructive heresies, or sects of perdition). This passage comes nearest to theecclesiastical definition. The term heretic (aiJretiko;' a[nqrwpo') occurs only once, Tit 3:10, and means a factious man,a sectary, a partisan, rather than an errorist.

Constantine the Great stillspeaks of the Christian church as a sect, hJ ai{resi' hJ kaqolikhv, hJ aJgiwtavth ai{resi' (in a letter to Chrestus,bishop of Syracuse, in Euseb, H. E. X. c. 5, § 21 and 22, in Heinichen’sed. I, 491). But after him church and sect became opposites, the former termbeing confined to the one ruling body, the latter to dissenting minorities.

The fathers commonly use heresyof false teaching, in opposition to Catholic doctrine, and schism ofa breach of discipline, in opposition to Catholic government. The ancientheresiologists—mostly uncritical, credulous, and bigoted, though honest andpious, zealots for a narrow orthodoxy—unreasonably multiplied the heresies byextending them beyond the limits of Christianity, and counting allmodifications and variations separately. Philastrius or Philastrus, bishop. ofBrescia or Brixia (d. 387), in his Liber de Haeresibus, numbered 28Jewish and 128 Christian heresies; Epiphanius of Cyprus (d. 403), in his Panavrion. 80 heresies in all, 20 before and 60 after Christ;Augustin (d. 430), 88 Christian heresies, including Pelagianism;Proedestinatus, 90, including Pelagianism and Nestorianism. (Pope Pius IX.condemned 80 modern heresies, in his Syllabus of Errors, 1864.) Augustin says that it is 'altogetherimpossible, or at any rate most difficult' to define heresy, and wiselyadds that the spirit in which error is held, rather than error itself,constitutes heresy. There are innocent as well as guilty errors. Moreover, agreat many people are better than their creed or no-creed, and a great many areworse than their creed, however orthodox it may be. The severest words of ourLord were directed against the hypocritical orthodoxy of the Pharisees. In thecourse of time heresy was defined to be a religious error held in wilful andpersistent opposition to the truth after it has been defined and declared bythe church in an authoritative manner, or 'pertinax defensio dogmatis ecclesiaeuniversalis judicio condemnati.' Speculations on open questions of theology areno heresies Origen was no heretic in his age, but was condemned long after hisdeath.

In the present divided state ofChristendom there are different kinds of orthodoxy and heresy. Orthodoxy isconformity to a recognized creed or standard of public doctrine; heresy is a wilfuldeparture from it. The Greek church rejects the Roman dogmas of the papacy, ofthe double procession of the Holy Ghost, the immaculate conception of theVirgin Mary, and the infallibility of the Pope, as heretical, because contraryto the teaching of the first seven oecumenical councils. The Roman churchanathematized, in the Council of Trent, all the distinctive doctrines of theProtestant Reformation. Evangelical Protestants on the other hand regard theunscriptural traditions of the Greek and Roman churches as heretical. AmongProtestant churches again there are minor doctrinal differences, which are heldwith various degrees of exclusiveness or liberality according to the degree ofdeparture from the Roman Catholic church. Luther, for instance, would nottolerate Zwingli’s view on the Lord’s Supper, while Zwingli was willing tofraternize with him notwithstanding this difference. The Lutheran Formula ofConcord, and the Calvinistic Synod of Dort rejected and condemned doctrineswhich are now held with impunity in orthodox evangelical churches. The dangerof orthodoxy lies in the direction of exclusive and uncharitable bigotry, whichcontracts the truth; the danger of liberalism lies in the direction of laxityand indifferentism, which obliterates the eternal distinction between truth anderror.

The apostles, guided by morethan human wisdom, and endowed with more than ecclesiastical authority, judgedseverely of every essential departure from the revealed truth of salvation.Paul pronounced the anathema on the Judaizing teachers, who made circumcision aterm of true church membership (Gal. 1:8), and calls them sarcastically'dogs' of the 'concision' (Phil. 3:2, blevpete tou;' kuvna' ... th' katatomh'). He warned the elders ofEphesus against 'grievous wolves' (luvkoi barei') who would after his departure enter among them (Acts 20:29); and hecharacterizes the speculations of the rising gnosis falsely so called (yeudwvnumo' gnw'si') as 'doctrines ofdemons' (didaskalivai daimonivwn, 1 Tim. 4:1; Comp. 6:3–20; 2Tim. 3:1 sqq.; 4:3 sqq.). John warns with equal earnestness and severityagainst all false teachers who deny the fact of the incarnation, and calls themantichrists (1 John 4:3; 2 John 7); and the second Epistle of Peter and theEpistle of Jude describe the heretics in the darkest colors.

We need not wonder, then, thatthe ante-Nicene fathers held the gnostic heretics of their days in the greatestabhorrence, and called them servants of Satan, beasts in human shape, dealersin deadly poison, robbers, and pirates. Polycarp (Ad Phil.c. 7),Ignatius (Ad Smyrn. c. 4), Justin M. (Apol. I. c. 26), Irenaeus (Adv.Haer. III. 3, 4), Hippolytus, Tertullian, even Clement of Alexandria, andOrigen occupy essentially the same position of uncompromising hostility towardsheresy is the fathers of the Nicene and post-Nicene ages. They regard it as thetares sown by the devil in the Lord’s field (Matt. 13:3–6 sqq). HenceTertullian infers, 'That which was first delivered is of the Lord and istrue; whilst that is strange and false which was afterwards introduced' (Praescr.c. 31: 'Ex ipso ordine manifestatur, id essedominicum et verum quod sit prius traditum, id autem extraneum et falsum quodsit posterius inmissum'). There is indeed a necessity for heresies and sects (1 Cor.11:19), but 'woe to that man through whom the offence cometh' (Matt.18:7). 'It was necessary,' says Tertullian (ib. 30), 'that theLord should be betrayed; but woe to the traitor.'

Another characteristic featureof patristic polemics is to trace heresy, to mean motives, such as pride,disappointed ambition, sensual lust, and avarice. No allowance is made fordifferent mental constitutions, educational influences, and other causes. Thereare, however, a few noble exceptions. Origen and Augustin admit the honesty andearnestness at least of some teachers of error.

We must notice two importantpoints of difference between the ante-Nicene and later heresies, and the modeof punishing heresy.

1. The chief ante-Niceneheresies were undoubtedly radical perversions of Christian truth and admittedof no kind of compromise. Ebionism, Gnosticism, and Manichaeism wereessentially anti-Christian. The church could not tolerate that medley of pagansense and nonsense without endangering its very existence. But Montanists,Novatians, Donatists, Quartodecimanians, and other sects who differed on minorpoints of doctrine or discipline, were judged more mildly, and their baptismwas acknowledged.

2. The punishment of heresy inthe ante-Nicene church was purely ecclesiastical, and consisted in reproof,deposition, and excommunication. It had no effect on the civil status.

But as soon as church and statebegan to be united, temporal punishments, such as confiscation of property,exile, and death, were added by the civil magistrate with the approval of thechurch, in imitation of the Mosaic code, but in violation of the spirit andexample of Christ and the apostles. Constantine opened the way in some edictsagainst the Donatists, a.d. 316.Valentinian I. forbade the public worship of Manichaeans (371). After thedefeat of the Arians by the second Œcumenical Council, Theodosius the Greatenforced uniformity of belief by legal penalties in fifteen edicts between 381and 394. Honorius (408), Arcadius, the younger Theodosius, and Justinian (529)followed in the same path. By these imperial enactments heretics, i.e. opendissenters from the imperial state-religion, were deprived of all publicoffices, of the right of public worship, of receiving or bequeathing properly,of making binding contracts; they were subjected to fines, banishment,corporeal punishment, and even death. See the Theos. Code, Book XVI. tit. V. DeHaereticis. The first sentence of death by the sword for heresy wasexecuted on Priscillian and six of his followers who held Manichaean opinions(385). The better feeling of Ambrose of Milan and Martin of Tours protestedagainst this act, but in vain. Even the great and good St. Augustin, althoughhe had himself been a heretic for nine years, defended the principle ofreligious persecution, on a false exegesis of Cogite eos intrare, Luke 14:23 (Ep. 93 ad Vinc.; Ep. 185 ad Bonif., Retract. II. 5.). Hadhe foreseen the crusade against the Albigenses and the horrors of the SpanishInquisition, he would have retracted his dangerous opinion. A theocratic orErastian state-church theory—whether Greek Catholic or Roman Catholic orProtestant—makes all offences against the church offences against the state,and requires their punishment with more or less severity according to theprevailing degree of zeal for orthodoxy and hatred of heresy. But in theoverruling Providence of God which brings good out of every evil, the bloodypersecution of heretics—one of the darkest chapters in church history—hasproduced the sweet fruit of religious liberty. See vol. III. 138–146.

§ 138. The Holy Scriptures and the Canon.

The works on theCanon by Reuss, Westcott, (6thed., 1889), Zahn, (1888). Holtzmann: Kanon u.Tradition, 1859.Schaff: Companion to the GreekTestament and the English Version. N. York and London, 1883; third ed.1888. Gregory: Prolegomena toTischendorf’s 8th ed. of the Greek Test. Lips., 1884. A. Harnack: Das N.Test. um das jahr 200. Leipz., 1889.

The question of the source andrule of Christian knowledge lies at the foundation of all theology. Wetherefore notice it here before passing to the several doctrines of faith.

1. This source and this rule ofknowledge are the holy scriptures of the Old and New Covenants.938 Here at once arises the inquiry as to the number and arrangementof the sacred writings, or the canon, in distinction both from the productionsof enlightened but not inspired church teachers, and from the very numerous andin some cases still extant apocryphal works (Gospels, Acts, Epistles, andApocalypses), which were composed in the first four centuries, in the interestof heresies or for the satisfaction of idle curiosity, and sent forth under thename of an apostle or other eminent person. These apocrypha, however, did notall originate with Ebionites and Gnostics; some were merely designed either tofill chasms in the history of Jesus and the apostles by fictitious stories, orto glorify Christianity by vaticinia post eventum, in the way of pious fraud at that time freely allowed.

The canon of the Old Testamentdescended to the church from the Jews, with the sanction of Christ and theapostles. The Jewish Apocrypha were included in the Septuagint and passed fromit into Christian versions. The, New Testament canon was gradually formed, onthe model of the Old, in the course of the first four centuries, under theguidance of the same Spirit, through whose suggestion the several apostolicbooks had been prepared. The first trace of it appears in 2 Peter 3:15, where acollection of Paul’s epistles939is presumed to exist, and is placed by the sideof 'the other scriptures.'940 Theapostolic fathers and the earlier apologists commonly appeal, indeed, for thedivinity of Christianity to the Old Testament, to the oral preaching of theapostles, to the living faith of the Christian churches, the triumphant deathof the martyrs, and the continued miracles. Yet their works contain quotations,generally without the name of the author, from the most important writings ofthe apostles, or at least allusions to those writings, enough to place theirhigh antiquity and ecclesiastical authority beyond all reasonable doubt.941 The heretical canon of the Gnostic Marcion, of the middle of thesecond century, consisting of a mutilated Gospel of Luke and ten of Paul’sepistles, certainly implies the existence of an orthodox canon at that time, asheresy always presupposes truth, of which it is a caricature.

The principal books of the NewTestament, the four Gospels, the Acts, the thirteen Epistles of Paul, the firstEpistle of Peter, and the first of John, which are designated by Eusebius as'Homologumena,' were in general use in the church after the middle ofthe second century, and acknowledged to be apostolic, inspired by the Spirit ofChrist, and therefore authoritative and canonical. This is established by thetestimonies of Justin Martyr, Tatian, Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus,Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, of the Syriac Peshito (whichomits only Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and the Revelation), the old LatinVersions (which include all books but 2 Peter, Hebrews, and perhaps James andthe Fragment of Muratori;942also by the heretics, and the heathen opponentCelsus—persons and documents which represent in this matter the churches inAsia Minor, Italy, Gaul, North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. We maytherefore call these books the original canon.

Concerning the other sevenbooks, the 'Antilegomena' of Eusebius, viz. the Epistle to theHebrews,943the Apocalypse,944the second Epistle of Peter, thesecond and third Epistles of John, the Epistle of James, and the Epistle ofJude,—the tradition of the church in the time of Eusebius, the beginning of thefourth century, still wavered between acceptance and rejection. But of the twooldest manuscripts of the Greek Testament which date from the age of Eusebiusand Constantine, one—the Sinaitic—contains all the twenty-seven books, and theother—the Vatican—was probably likewise complete, although the last chapters ofHebrews (from Heb.11:14), the Pastoral Epistles, Philemon, and Revelation arelost. There was a second class of Antilegomena, called by Eusebius'spurious' (novqa), consisting of severalpost-apostolic writings, viz. the catholic Epistle of Barnabas, the firstEpistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, the Epistle of Polycarp to thePhilippians, the Shepherd of Hermas, the lost Apocalypse of Peter, and theGospel of the Hebrews; which were read at least in some churches but wereafterwards generally separated from the canon. Some of them are evenincorporated in the oldest manuscripts of the Bible, as the Epistle of Barnabasand a part of the Shepherd of Hermas (both in the original Greek) in the CodexSinaiticus, and the first Epistle of Clement of Rome in the Codex Alexandrinus.

The first express definition ofthe New Testament canon, in the form in which it has since been universallyretained, comes from two African synods, held in 393 at Hippo, and 397 atCarthage, in the presence of Augustin, who exerted a commanding influence onall the theological questions of his age. By that time, at least, the wholechurch must have already become nearly unanimous as to the number of the canonicalbooks; so that there seemed to be no need even of the sanction of a generalcouncil. The Eastern church, at all events, was entirely independent of theNorth African in the matter. The Council of Laodicea (363) gives a list of thebooks of our New Testament with the exception of the Apocalypse. The last canonwhich contains this list, is probably a later addition, yet thelong-established ecclesiastical use of all the books, with some doubts as tothe Apocalypse, is confirmed by the scattered testimonies of all the greatNicene and post Nicene fathers, as Athanasius (d. 373), Cyril of Jerusalem (d.386), Gregory of Nazianzum (d. 389), Epiphanius of Salamis (d. 403), Chrysostom(d. 407), etc.945 The name Novum Testamentum,946also Novum Instrumentum (a juridical term conveying theidea of legal validity), occurs first in Tertullian, and came into general useinstead of the more correct term New Covenant. The books were currentlydivided into two parts, 'the Gospel'947and 'the Apostle,' andthe Epistles, in the second part, into Catholic or General, and Pauline. TheCatholic canon thus settled remained untouched till the time of the Reformationwhen the question of the Apocrypha and of the Antilegomena was reopened and thescience of biblical criticism was born. But the most thorough investigations ofmodern times have not been able to unsettle the faith of the church in the NewTestament, nor ever will.

2. As to the origin andcharacter of the apostolic writings, the church fathers adopted for the NewTestament the somewhat mechanical and magical theory of inspiration applied bythe Jews to the Old; regarding the several books as composed with suchextraordinary aid from the Holy Spirit as secured their freedom from errors(according to Origen, even from faults of memory). Yet this was not regarded asexcluding the writer’s own activity and individuality. Irenaeus, for example,sees in Paul a peculiar style, which he attributes to the mighty flow ofthought in his ardent mind. The Alexandrians, however, enlarged the idea ofinspiration to a doubtful breadth. Clement of Alexandria calls the works ofPlato inspired, because they contain truth; and he considers all that isbeautiful and good in history, a breath of the infinite, a tone, which thedivine Logos draws forth from the lyre of the human soul.

As a production of the inspiredorgans, of divine revelation, the sacred scriptures, without criticaldistinction between the Old and New Covenants, were acknowledged and employedagainst heretics as an infallible source of knowledge and an unerring rule ofChristian faith and practice. Irenaeus calls the Gospel a pillar and ground ofthe truth. Tertullian demands scripture proof for every doctrine, and declares,that heretics cannot stand on pure scriptural ground. In Origen’s view nothingdeserves credit which cannot be confirmed by the testimony of scripture.

3. The exposition of the Biblewas at first purely practical, and designed for direct edification. Thecontroversy with the Gnostics called for a more scientific method. Both the orthodoxand heretics, after the fashion of the rabbinical and Alexandrian Judaism, madelarge use of allegorical and mystical interpretation, and not rarely lostthemselves amid the merest fancies and wildest vagaries. The fathers generally,with a few exceptions, (Chrysostom and Jerome) had scarcely an idea ofgrammatical and historical exegesis.

Origen was the first to laydown, in connection with the allegorical method of the Jewish Platonist, Philo,a formal theory of interpretation, which he carried out in a long series ofexegetical works remarkable for industry and ingenuity, but meagre in solidresults. He considered the Bible a living organism, consisting of threeelements which answer to the body, soul, and spirit of man, after the Platonicpsychology. Accordingly, he attributed to the scriptures a threefold sense; (1)a somatic, literal, or historical sense, furnished immediately by the meaningof the words, but only serving as a veil for a higher idea; (2) a psychic ormoral sense, animating the first, and serving for general edification; (3) apneumatic or mystic, and ideal sense, for those who stand on the high ground ofphilosophical knowledge. In the application of this theory he shows the sametendency as Philo, to spiritualize away the letter of scripture, especiallywhere the plain historical sense seems unworthy, as in the history of David’scrimes; and instead of simply bringing out the sense of the Bible, be puts intoit all sorts of foreign ideas and irrelevant fancies. But this allegorizingsuited the taste of the age, and, with his fertile mind and imposing learning,Origen was the exegetical oracle of the early church, till his orthodoxy fellinto disrepute. He is the pioneer, also, in the criticism of the sacred text,and his 'Hexapla' was the first attempt at a Polyglot Bible.

In spite of the numberlessexegetical vagaries and differences in detail, which confute the Tridentinefiction of a 'unanimis consensus patrum,' there is still a certain unanimity among thefathers in their way of drawing the most important articles of faith from theScriptures. In their expositions they all follow one dogmatical principle, akind of analogiafidei. Thisbrings us to tradition.

Noteson the Canon.

I. TheStatements of Eusebius,

The accounts of Eusebius (d.340) on the apostolic writings in several passages of his Church History(especially III. 25; comp. II. 22, 23; III. 3, 24; V. 8; VI. 14, 25) aresomewhat vague and inconsistent, yet upon the whole they give us the best ideaof the state of the canon in the first quarter of the fourth century justbefore the Council of Nicaea (325).

He distinguishes four classes ofsacred books of the Christians (H. E. III. 25, in Heinichen’s ed. vol.I. 130 sqq.; comp. his note in vol. III. 87 sqq.).

1. Homologumena, i.e. such as were universallyacknowledged (oJmologouvmena): 22 Books of the 27 of the N.T., viz.: 4 Gospels, Acts, 14 Pauline Epistles (including Hebrews), 1 Peter, 1John, Revelation. He says: 'Having arrived at this point, it is properthat we should give a summary catalogue of the afore-mentioned (III. 24)writings of the N. T. ( jAnakefalaiwvsasqaita;' dhlwqeivsa' th' kainh' diaqhvkh' grafav'). First, then, we must placethe sacred quaternion (or quartette, tetraktuvn) of the Gospels, which arefollowed by the book of the Acts of the Apostles (hJ tw'n pravxewn tw'n ajpostovlwn grafhv). After this we must reckon the Epistles ofPaul, and next to them we must maintain as genuine (kurwtevon,the verb. adj. from kurovw, to ratify), the Epistle circulatedas the former of John (th;n feromevnhn jIwavnnou protevran), and in like mannerthat of Peter (kai; oJmoivw' th;n Pevtrouejpistolhvn). Inaddition to these books, if it seem proper (ei[ge faneivh),we must place the Revelation of John (th;n ajpokavluyin jIwavnnou), concerning which we shall setforth the different opinions in due course. And these are reckoned among thosewhich are generally received (ejnoJmologoumevnoi').'

In bk. III. ch. 3, Eusebiusspeaks of 'fourteen Epp.' of Paul (tou' de; Pauvlou provdhloi kai; safei' aiJ dekatevssare',) as commonly received, but addsthat 'some have rejected the Ep. to the Hebrews, saying that it wasdisputed as not being one of Paul’s epistles.'

On the Apocalypse, Eusebiusvacillates according as he gives the public belief of the church or his privateopinion. He first counts it among the Homologumena, and then, in the samepassage (III. 25), among the spurious books, but in each case with a qualifyingstatement (eij faneivh), leaving the matter to thejudgment of the reader. He rarely quotes the book, and usually as the'Apocalypse of John,' but in one place (III. 39) he intimates that itwas probably written by 'the second John,' which must mean the'Presbyter John,' so called, as distinct from the Apostle—an opinionwhich has found much favor in the Schleiermacher school of critics. Owing toits mysterious character, the Apocalypse is, even to this day, the most popularbook of the N. T. with a few, and the most unpopular with the many. It is aswell attested as any other book, and the most radical modern critics (Baur,Renan) admit its apostolic authorship and composition before the destruction ofJerusalem.

2. Antilegomena, or controverted books, yet'familiar to most people of the church' (ajntilegovmena, gnwvrima d j o{mw' toi' polloi', III. 25). These are five (or seven), viz., one Epistle of James,one of Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John ('whether they really belong to theEvangelist or to another John').

To these we may add (althoughEusebius does not do it expressly) the Hebrews and the Apocalypse, the formeras not being generally acknowledged as Pauline, the latter on account of itssupposed chiliasm, which was offensive to Eusebius and the Alexandrian school.

3. Spurious Books (novqa), such as the Acts of Paul, the Revelation of Peter, the Shepherd(Hermas), the Ep. of Barnabas, the so-called 'Doctrines of the Apostles,' and the Gospel according to the Hebrews.' in which those Hebrewswho have accepted Christ take special delight.'

To these he adds inconsistently,as already remarked, the Apocalypse of John.' which some, as I said,reject (h{n tine' ajqetou'sin), while others reckon it amongthe books generally received (toi'oJmologoumevnoi').' He ought to have numbered it with the Antilegomena.

These novqa, we maysay, correspond to the Apocrypha of the O. T., pious and useful, but notcanonical.

4. Heretical Books. These,Eusebius says, are worse than spurious books, and must be 'set aside asaltogether worthless and impious.' Among these be mentions the Gospels ofPeter, and Thomas, and Matthias, the Acts of Andrew, and John, and of the otherApostles.

II. Ecclesiastical Definitions of the Canon.

Soon after the middle of thefourth century, when the church became firmly settled in the Empire, all doubtsas to the Apocrypha of the Old Testament and the Antilegomena of the Newceased, and the acceptance of the Canon in its Catholic shape, which includesboth, became an article of faith. The first Œcumenical Council of Nicaea didnot settle the canon, as one might expect, but the scriptures were regardedwithout controversy as the sure and immovable foundation of the orthodox faith.In the last (20th or 21st) Canon of the Synod of Gangra, in Asia Minor (aboutthe middle of the fourth century), it is said: 'To speak briefly, wedesire that what has been handed down to us by the divine scriptures and theApostolic traditions should be observed in the church.' Comp. Hefele, Conciliengesch.I. 789.

The first Council whichexpressly legislated on the number of canonical books is that of Laodicea inPhrygia, in Asia Minor (held between a.d.343 and 381, probably about 363). In its last canon (60 or 59), it enumeratesthe canonical books of the Old Testament, and then all of the New, with theexception of the Apocalypse, in the following order:

'And these are the Books ofthe New Testament: Four Gospels, according to Matthew, according to Mark,according to Luke, according to John; Acts of the Apostles; Seven CatholicEpistles, One of James, Two of Peter, Three of John, One of Jude; FourteenEpistles of Paul, One to the Romans, Two to the Corinthians, One to theGalatians, One to the Ephesians, One to the Philippians, One to the Colossians,Two to the Thessalonians, One to the Hebrews, Two to Timothy, One to Titus, andOne to Philemon.'

This catalogue is omitted inseveral manuscripts and versions, and probably is a later insertion from thewritings of Cyril of Jerusalem. Spittler, Herbst, and Westcott deny, Schrökhand Hefele defend, the Laodicean origin of this catalogue. It resembles that ofthe 85th of the Apostolical Canons which likewise omits the Apocalypse, butinserts two Epistles of Clement and the pseudo-Apostolical Constitutions.

On the Laodicean Council and itsuncertain date see Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, revised ed. vol. I. p. 746 sqq.,and Westcott, on the Canon of the N. T., second ed., p. 382 sqq.

In the Western church, the thirdprovincial Council of Carthage (held a.d.397) gave a full list of the canonical books of both Testaments, which shouldbe read as divine Scriptures to the exclusion of all others in the churches.The N. T. books are enumerated in the following order: 'Four Books of theGospels, One Book of the Acts of the Apostles, Thirteen Epp. of the ApostlePaul, One Ep. of the same [Apostle] to the Hebrews, Two Epistles of the ApostlePeter, Three of John, One of James, One of Jude, One Book of the Apocalypse ofJohn.' This canon bad been previously adopted by the African Synod ofHippo regius, a.d. 393, at whichAugustin, then presbyter, delivered his discourse De Fide et Symbolo. The acts of that Council arelost, but they were readopted by the third council of Carthage, which consistedonly of forty-three African bishops, and can claim no general authority. (SeeWestcott, p. 391, Charteris, p. 20, and Hefele, II. 53 and 68, revised ed.)

Augustin, (who was present atboth Councils), and Jerome (who translated the Latin Bible at the request ofPope Damasus of Rome) exerted a decisive influence in settling the Canon forthe Latin church.

The Council of Trent (1546)confirmed the traditional view with an anathema on those who dissent.'This fatal decree,' says Dr. Westcott (p. 426 sq.), 'wasratified by fifty-three prelates, among whom was not one German, not onescholar distinguished for historical learning, not one who was fitted byspecial study for the examination of a subject in which the truth could only bedetermined by the voice of antiquity.'

For the Greek and Roman churches the question of theCanon is closed, although no strictly oecumenical council representingthe entire church has pronounced on it. But Protestantism claims the liberty ofthe ante-Nicene age and the right of renewed investigation into the origin andhistory of every book of the Bible. Without this liberty there can be no realprogress in exegetical theology.

§ 139. Catholic Tradition.

Irenaeus: Adv. Haer. Lib. I. c.9, § 5; I. 10, 1; III. 3, 1, 2; III. 4, 2; IV. 33, 7. Tertull.: De Praescriptionibus Haereticorum; especially c. 13, 14, 17–19, 21, 35, 36, 40, 41; DeVirgin. veland. c. 1; Adv. Prax. c. 2; on the other hand, Adv.Hermog. c. 22; De Carne Christi, c. 7; DeResurr. Carnis, c.3. Novatian: De Trinitate 3; De Regula Fidei.Cyprian: De Unitate Eccl.; and on the other hand, Epist.74. Origen: De Princip. lib.I. Praef. § 4–6. Cyril of Jerus.:Kathchvsei' (written 348).

J. A. Daniel: Theol. Controversen (thedoctrine of the Scriptures as the source of knowledge). Halle, 1843.

J. J. Jacobi: DieKirchl. Lehre von d. Tradition u. heil. Schrift in ihrer Entwicketungdargestellt. Berl.I. 1847.

Ph. Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, vol.I. p. 12 sqq.; II. 11–44. Comp. Lit. in the next section.

Besides appealing to theScriptures, the fathers, particularly Irenaeus and Tertullian, refer with equalconfidence to the 'rule of faith;'948that is, the common faith of thechurch, as orally handed down in the unbroken succession of bishops from Christand his apostles to their day, and above all as still living in the originalapostolic churches, like those of Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, and Rome.Tradition is thus intimately connected with the primitive episcopate. Thelatter was the vehicle of the former, and both were looked upon as bulwarksagainst heresy.

Irenaeus confronts the secrettradition of the Gnostics with the open and unadulterated tradition of thecatholic church, and points to all churches, but particularly to Rome, as thevisible centre of the unity of doctrine. All who would know the truth, says he,can see in the whole church the tradition of the apostles; and we can count thebishops ordained by the apostles, and their successors down to our time, whoneither taught nor knew any such heresies. Then, by way of example, he citesthe first twelve bishops of the Roman church from Linus to Eleutherus, aswitnesses of the pure apostolic doctrine. He might conceive of a Christianitywithout scripture, but he could not imagine a Christianity without livingtradition; and for this opinion he refers to barbarian tribes, who have thegospel, 'sinecharta et atramento,' written in their hearts.

Tertullian finds a universalantidote for all heresy in his celebrated prescription argument, which cuts offheretics, at the outset, from every right of appeal to the holy scriptures, onthe ground, that the holy scriptures arose in the church of Christ, were givento her, and only in her and by her can be rightly understood. He callsattention also here to the tangible succession, which distinguishes thecatholic church from the arbitrary and ever-changing sects of heretics, andwhich in all the principal congregations, especially in the original sects ofthe apostles, reaches back without a break from bishop to bishop, to theapostles themselves, from the apostles to Christ, and from Christ to God.'Come, now,' says he, in his tract on Prescription, 'if youwould practise inquiry to more advantage in the matter of your salvation, gothrough the apostolic churches, in which the very chairs of the apostles stillpreside, in which their own authentic letters are publicly read, uttering thevoice and representing the face of every one. If Achaia is nearest, you have Corinth.If you are not far from Macedonia, you have Philippi, you have Thessalonica. Ifyou can go to Asia, you have Ephesus. But if you live near Italy, you haveRome, whence also we [of the African church] derive our origin. How happy isthe church, to which the apostles poured out their whole doctrine with theirblood,' etc.

To estimate the weight of thisargument, we must remember that these fathers still stood comparatively verynear the apostolic age, and that the succession of bishops in the oldest churchescould be demonstrated by the living memory of two or three generations.Irenaeus in fact, had been acquainted in his youth with Polycarp, a disciple ofSt. John. But for this very reason we must guard against overrating thistestimony, and employing it in behalf of traditions of later origin, notgrounded in the scriptures.

Nor can we suppose that thosefathers ever thought of a blind and slavish subjection of private judgment toecclesiastical authority, and to the decision of the bishops of the apostolicmother churches. The same Irenaeus frankly opposed the Roman bishop Victor.Tertullian, though he continued essentially orthodox, contested various pointswith the catholic church from his later Montanistic position, and laid down,though at first only in respect to a conventional custom—the veiling ofvirgins—the genuine Protestant principle, that the thing to be regarded,especially in matters of religion, is not custom but truth.949 His pupil, Cyprian, with whom biblical and catholic were almostinterchangeable terms, protested earnestly against the Roman theory of thevalidity of heretical baptism, and in this controversy declared, in exactaccordance with Tertullian, that custom without truth was only time-honorederror.950 TheAlexandrians freely fostered all sorts of peculiar views, which were afterwardsrejected as heretical; and though the paravdosi'ajpostolikhv playsa prominent part with them, yet this and similar expressions have in theirlanguage a different sense, sometimes meaning simply the holy scriptures. So,for example, in the well-known passage of Clement: 'As if one should bechanged from a man to a beast after the manner of one charmed by Circe; so aman ceases to be God’s and to continue faithful to the Lord, when he setshimself up against the church tradition, and flies off to positions of humancaprice.'

In the substance of its doctrinethis apostolic tradition agrees with the holy scriptures, and though derived,as to its form, from the oral preaching of the apostles, is really, as to itscontents, one and the same with there apostolic writings. In this view theapparent contradictions of the earlier fathers, in ascribing the highestauthority to both scripture and tradition in matters of faith, resolvethemselves. It is one and the same gospel which the apostles preached withtheir lips, and then laid down in their writings, and which the churchfaithfully hands down by word and writing from one generation to another..951

§ 140. The Rule of Faith and the Apostles’ Creed.

Rufinus (d.410): Expos. inSymbolum Apostolorum. In the Append. to Fell’s ed. of Cyprian, 1682; and in Rufini Opera, Migne’s'Patrologia,' Tom. XXI. fol. 335–386.

James Ussher (Prot.archbishop of Armagh, d. 1655): De Romanae Ecclesiae Symbolo Apostolico vetere, aliisquefidei formulis.London, 1647. In his Works, Dublin 1847, vol. VII. p. 297 sqq. Ussherbroke the path for a critical history of the creed on the basis of the oldestMSS. which he discovered.

John Pearson (Bp.of Chester, d. 1686): Exposition of the Creed, 1659, in many editions(revised ed. by Dr. E. Burton, Oxf. 1847; New York 1851). A standard work ofAnglican theology.

Peter King (LordChancellor of England, d. 1733): History of the Apostles’ Creed. Lond.1702.

Herm. Witsius (Calvinist,d. at Leyden, 1708): Exercitationes sacrae in Symbolum quod Apostolorum dicitur. Amstel. 1700. Basil. 1739. 4°.English translation by Fraser. Edinb. 1823, in 2 vols.

Ed. Köllner (Luth.):Symbolik aller christl. Confessionen. Part I. Hamb. 1837, p. 6–28.

*Aug. Hahn: Bibliothekder Symbole und Glaubensregeln der apostolischkatholischen [in the new ed. deralten] Kirche. Breslau,1842 (pp. 222). Second ed. revised and enlarged by his son, G. Ludwig Hahn. Breslau, 1877 (pp. 300).

J. W. Nevin: The Apostles’ Creed, inthe 'Mercersburg Review,' 1849. Purely doctrinal.

Pet. Meyers (R.C.): De Symboli Apostolici Titulo,Origine ei antiquissimis ecclesiae temporibus Auctoritate. Treviris 1849 (pp. 210). Alearned defense of the Apostolic origin of the Creed.

W. W. Harvey: The History and Theology ofthe three Creeds (the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian).Lond. 1854. 2 vols.

*Charles A. Heurtley: HarmoniaSymbolica. Oxford, 1858.

Michel Nicolas:Le Symbole des apôtres. Essai historie. Paris, 1867. (Sceptical).

*J. Rawson Lumby: The History of the Creeds (ante-Nicene,Nicene and Athanasian). London, 1873, 2d ed. 1880.

*C. A. Swainson: The Nicene and theApostles’ Creed. London, 1875.

*C. P. Caspari: (Prof. in Christiania): Quellenzur Gesch. des Tauf, symbols und der Glaubensregel. Christiania, 1866–1879. 4 vols,Contains new researches and discoveries of MSS.

*F. J. A. Hort: Two Dissertations on monogenh;' qeov' and on the 'ConstantinopolitanCreed and other Eastern Creeds of the Fourth Century. Cambr. and Lond.1876. Of great critical value.

F. B. Westcott: The Historic Faith. London,1883.

Ph. Schaff:Creeds of Christendom, vol. I. 3–42, and II. 10–73. (4th ed. 1884.

In the narrower sense, byapostolic tradition or the rule of faith (kanw;n th' pivstew', regula fidei) was understood a doctrinal summary of Christianity, ora compend of the faith of the church. Such a summary grew out of the necessityof catechetical instruction and a public confession of candidates for baptism.It became equivalent to a symbolum, that is, a sign of recognition amongcatholic Christians in distinction from unbelievers and heretics. Theconfession of Peter (Matt. 16:16 gave the key-note, and the baptismal formula(Matt. 28:19) furnished the trinitarian frame-work of the earliest creeds or baptismalconfessions of Christendom.

There was at first no prescribedformula of faith binding upon all believers. Each of the leading churchesframed its creed (in a sort of independent congregational way), according toits wants, though on the same basis of the baptismal formula, and possiblyafter the model of a brief archetype which may have come down from apostolicdays. Hence we have a variety of such rules of faith, or rather fragmentaryaccounts of them, longer or shorter, declarative or interrogative, in theante-Nicene writers, as Irenaeus of Lyons (180), Tertullian of Carthage (200),Cyprian of Carthage (250), Novatian of Rome (250), Origen of Alexandria (250),Gregory Thaumaturgus (270), Lucian of Antioch (300), Eusebius of Caesarea(325), Marcellus of Ancyra (340), Cyril of Jerusalem (350), Epiphanius ofCyprus (374), Rufinus of Aquileja (390), and in the Apostolic Constitutions).952 Yet with all the differences in form and extent there is asubstantial agreement, so that Tertullian could say that the regula fidei was 'una omnino, sola immobilis etirreformabilis.'They are variations of the same theme. We may refer for illustration of thevariety and unity to the numerous orthodox and congregational creeds of thePuritan churches in New England, which are based upon the Westminsterstandards.

The Oriental forms are generallylonger, more variable and metaphysical, than the Western, and include a numberof dogmatic terms against heretical doctrines which abounded in the East. Theywere all replaced at last by the Nicene Creed (325, 381, and 451), which wasclothed with the authority of oecumenical councils and remains to this day thefundamental Creed of the Greek Church. Strictly speaking it is the onlyoecumenical Creed of Christendom, having been adopted also in the West, thoughwith a clause (Filioque) which has become a wall of division. We shallreturn to it in the next volume.

The Western forms—North African,Gallican, Italian—are shorter and simpler, have less variety, and show a moreuniform type. They were all merged into the Roman Symbol, which became andremains to this day the fundamental creed of the Latin Church and herdaughters.

This Roman symbol is known moreparticularly under the honored name of the Apostles’ Creed. For a longtime it was believed (and is still believed by many in the Roman church) to bethe product of the Apostles who prepared it as a summary of their teachingbefore parting from Jerusalem (each contributing one of the twelve articles byhigher inspiration).953 Thistradition which took its rise in the fourth century, 954is set aside by the variationsof the ante-Nicene creeds and of the Apostles’ Creed itself. Had the Apostlescomposed such a document, it would have been scrupulously handed down withoutalteration. The creed which bears this name is undoubtedly a gradual growth. Wehave it in two forms.

The earlier form as found in oldmanuscripts, 955is much shorter and may possibly go back to the third oreven the second century. It was probably imported from the East, or grew inRome, and is substantially identical with the Greek creed of Marcellus ofAncyra (about 340), inserted in his letter to Pope Julius I. to prove hisorthodoxy, 956and with that contained in the Psalter of KingAethelstan..957 Greek wasthe ruling language of the Roman Church and literature down to the thirdcentury..958

The longer form of the Romansymbol, or the present received text, does not appear before the sixth orseventh century. It has several important clauses which were wanting in theformer, as 'he descended into hades,'959the predicate'catholic' after ecclesiam,960 'the communion of saints,'961and 'the lifeeverlasting.'962 Theseadditions were gathered from the provincial versions (Gallican and NorthAfrican) and incorporated into the older form.

The Apostles’ Creed then, in itspresent shape, is post-apostolic; but, in its contents and spirit, trulyapostolic. It embodies the faith of the ante-Nicene church, and is the productof a secondary inspiration, like the Gloria in Excelsis and the Te deum, which embody the devotions of the same age, and whichlikewise cannot be traced to an individual author or authors. It follows thehistorical order of revelation of the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,beginning with the creation and ending with the resurrection and life eternal.It clusters around Christ as the central article of our faith. It sets forthliving facts, not abstract dogmas and speaks in the language of the people, notof the theological school. It confines itself to the fundamental truths, issimple, brief, and yet comprehensive, and admirably adapted for catecheticaland liturgical use. It still forms a living bond of union between the differentages and branches of orthodox Christendom, however widely they differ from eachother, and can never be superseded by longer and fuller creeds, howevernecessary these are in their place. It has the authority of antiquity and thedew of perennial youth, beyond any other document of post-apostolic times. Itis the only strictly œcumenical Creed of the West, as the Nicene Creed is theonly œcumenical Creed of the East.963 It is the Creed of creeds, as the Lord’s Prayer is the Prayer ofprayers.

Note.

The legendary formulas of theApostles’ Creed which appear after the sixth century, distribute the articlesto the several apostles arbitrarily and with some variations. The following isfrom one of the pseudo-Augustinian sermons (see Hahn, p. 47 sq.):

'Decimo die post ascensionemdiscipulis prae timore Judaeorum congregatis Dominus promissum Paracletummisit: quo veniente ut candens ferrum inflammati omniumque linguarum peritiarepleti Symbolum composuerunt.

Petrus dixit: Credo in Deum Patremomnipotentem—creatorem coeli et terrae.

Andreas dixit: Et in Jesum Christum, Filiumejus—unicum Dominum nostrum.

Jacobusdixit: Qui conceptus est de SpirituSancto—natus ex Maria Virgine.

Joannes dixit: Passus sub PontioPilato—crucifixus, mortuus et sepultus.

Thomas dixit: Descendit ad inferna—tertia dieresurrexit a mortuis.

Jacobus dixit: Adscendit ad coelos—sedet addexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis.

Philippus dixit: Inde venturus est judicare vivoset mortuos.

Bartholomaeus dixit: Credo in Spiritum Sanctum.

Matthaeus dixit: Sanctam Ecclesiamcatholicam—Sanctorum communionem.

Simon dixit: Remissionem peccatorum.

Thaddeus dixit: Carnis resurrectionem.

Matthias dixit: Vitam aeternam.'

§ 141. Variations of the Apostles’ Creed.

We present two tables which showthe gradual growth of the Apostles’ Creed, and its relation to the Ante-Nicenerules of faith and the Nicene Creed in its final form.964

II. COMPARATIVE TABLE OF THEAPOSTLES’ CREED,

ShowingThe Different Stages Of Its Growth To Its Present Form. The Additions Are ShownIn Brackets.

FormulaMarcelli Ancryani
About a.d. 340

FormulaRoma
From the 3^rdor 4^th Century

FormulaAquileiensis
From Rufinus (400)

FormulaRecepta
Since the 6th or7th Century
(Later additions inbrackets)

The Received Text

Pisteuvw eij' qeo;npantakravtora

Credo in Deum Patremomnipotentem.

Credo in Deo Patre omnipotente,
[invisibili etimpassibili],

Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem,
[Creatorem coeli etterrae],

I believe in God the Father Almighty,
[Maker of heavenand earth].

Kai; eij' Cristo;n jIhsou'n, to;n uiJo;n aujtou' to;n monogenh',to;n kuvrion hJmw'n,

Et in ChristumJesum, Filium ejusunicum, Dominum nostrum;

Et in ChristoJesu, unico filioejus, Domino nostro;

Et in JesumChristum, Filiumejus unicum, Dominum nostrum;

And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord;

to;n gennhqevnta ejkPneuvmato' aJgivou kai; Mariva' th' ' parqevnou,

qui natus est de Spiritu Sanctoet Maria Virgine;

qui natus est de Spiritu Sanctoex Maria Virgine;

qui [conceptus] est de SpirituSancto, natus ex Maria Virgine;

who was [conceived] by the HolyGhost, born of the Virgin Mary;

to;n ejpi; Pontivou Pilavtou staurwqevntakai; tafevnta

cruicifixus est sub PontioPilato, et sepultus;

cruicifixus sub Pontio Pilato,et sepultus;

[passus] sub Pontio Pilato,cruicifixus, [mortuus], et seupultus;

[suffered] under Pontius Pilate,was crucified,[dead], and buried.

[descendit ad inferna];

[descendit ad inferna];

[He descended into Hades];

kai; th'/ trivth/ hJmevra/ajnastavnta ejk tw'n nekrw'n,

tertia die resurrexit a mortuis;

tertia die resurrexit a mortuis;

tertia die resurrexit a mortuis;

the third day He rose from thedead;

ajnabavnta eij' tou;'oujranou;'

ascendit in cœlus;

ascendit in cœlus;

ascendit in coelos;

He ascended into heaven;

kai; kaqhvmenon ejn dexia'/ tou'patro;',

sedet ad dexteran Patris;

sedet ad dexteram Patris;

sedet ad dexteram Patris[omnipotentis];

and sitteth on the right hand ofGod the Father [Almighty];

o{qen er[cetai krivneinzw'nta' kai; nekrouv'

inde venturus judicare vivos etmortuos.

inde venturus est judicare vivoset mortuos.

inde venturus judicare vivos etmortuos.

from thence He shall come tojudge the quick and the dead.

Kai; eij' {Agion Pneu'ma

Et in SpiritumSanctum;

Et in SpirituSancto.

[Credo] in SpiritumSanctum;

[I believe] in the Holy Ghost;

aJgivan ejkklhsivan

Sanctam Ecclesiam;

Sanctam Ecclesiam;

Sanctam Ecclesiam [catholicam],[Sanctorum communionem];

the holy [catholic] church, [thecommunion of saints];

ajfesin aJmartiw'n

remissionem peccatorum;

remissionem peccatorum;

remissionem peccatorum;

the forgiveness of sins;

sarko;' ajnavstasin [zwh;n aijwvnion]

carnis resurrectionem.

[hujus] carnis resurrectionem.

carnis resurrectionem; [vitamaeternam. Amen].

the resurrection of the body;[and the life everlasting Amen].

ComparativeTable of the Ante-Nicent Rules of Faith,
as related to the apostles’ creed and the nicene creed.

The Apostles' Creed. (Rome.) About a.d. 340.
Later additions arein italics.

Irenaeus(Gaul.) a.d. 170.

Tertullian(North Africa.) a.d. 200.

Cyprian(Carthage) a.d. 250.

Novatian(Rome.) a.d. 250.

Origen(Alexandria.) a.d. 230.

I believe

We believe

We believe

I believe

We believe

[We believe in]

1. In God the Father Almighty, Makerof heaven and earth;

1. ... in one God the Father Almighty, who madeheaven and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is;

1 ... in one God, the Creator of the world, who produced all out ofnothing ...

1. in God the Father;

1. in God the Father and Almighty Lord;

1. One God, who created and framed every thing…
Who in the lastdays sent

2. And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord;

2. And in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God [ourLord];

2. And in the Word, his Son, Jesus Christ;

2. in his Son Christ;

2. in the son of God, Christ Jesus, our Lord God;

2. Our Lord, Jesus Christ…born of the Father beforeall creation…

3. Who was conceived bythe Holy Ghost bornof the Virgin Mary;

3. Who became flesh [of theVirgin] for our salvation;

3. Who through the Spirit andpower of God the Father descended into the Virgin Mary, was made flesh in herwomb, and born of her;

3. born of the Virgin and theHoly Ghost…

4. suffered under PontiusPilate, was crucified, dead, and buried;

4. and his suffering [underPontius Pilate];

4. Was fixed on the cross [underPontius Pilate], was dead and buried;

4. suffered in truth, died;

5. He, descended into Hades;the third day he rose from the dead;

Evangelium Deutsch

5. and his rising from the dead;

5. rose again the third day;

5. rose from the dead;

6. He ascended into heaven, andsitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;

6. and his bodily assumptioninto heaven;

6. was taken into heaven andsitteth at the right hand of God the Father;

6. was taken up…

7. from thence he shall come tojudge the quick and the dead.

7. and his coming from heaven inthe glory of the Father to comprehend all things under one head, ... and toexecute righteous judgment over all.

7. He will come to judge thequick and the dead.

8. And I believe in the Holy Ghost;

8. And in the Holy Ghost ...

8. And in the Holy Ghost the Paraclete, theSanctifier, sent by Christ from the Father.

8. in the Holy Ghost;

8. in the Holy Ghost (promised of old to the Church, and granted inthe appointed and fitting time).

8. the Holy Ghost, united in honor and dignity with the Fatherand the Son.

9. the holy CatholicChurch; the communion of saints;

10. the forgiveness of sins;

10. I believe in the forgivenessof sins,

11. the resurrection of thebody;

11. And that Christ shall comefrom heaven to raise all flesh … and to adjudge the impious and unjust ... toeternal fire,

11. And that Christ will, afterthe restoration of the flesh, receive his saints

12. and the life everlasting.965

12. and to give to the just andholy immortality and eternal glory.

12. into the enjoyment ofeternal life and the promises of heaven, and judge the wicked with eternalfire.

12. and eternal life through theholy Church

The Apostles' Creed.

Gregory (Neo-Caesarean.) a.d. 270.

Lucian(Antioch.) a.d. 300.

Eusebius(Caesarea, Pal.) a.d. 325.

Cyril(Jerusalem.) a.d. 350.

Nicæno-ConstantinoplitanCreed. a.d. 325 and381.

I believe

[We believe in]

[We believe in]

We believe

We believe

We [I] believe

1. in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heavenand earth;

1. One God the Father;

1. one God the Father Almighty;

1. in one God the Father Almighty;

1. in one God the Father Almighty;

1.inone God the Father Almighty,Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible;

2. And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord;

2. One Lord…God of God, the image and likeness of the Godhead,…theWisdom and Power which produces all creation, the true Son of the true Father…

2. And in one Lord Jesus Christ his Son, begotten ofthe Father before all ages, God of God, Wisdom, Life, Light …

2. And in one Lord Jesus Christ his Son, begotten ofthe Father before all ages, God of God, Light of Light, Life of Life, theonly-begotten Son, the first-born of every creature, begotten of God the Fatherbefore all ages; by whom all things were made;

2. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begottenSon of God, begotten of the Father before all ages, veru God, by whom allthings were made;

2. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begottenSon of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; [God of God],Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of onesubstance with the Father (oJmoouvsion tw'/Patriv), by whomall things were made;

3. who was conceived bythe Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary;

3. who was born of a Virgin,according to the Scriptures, and became man…

3. who for our salvation wasmade flesh and lived among men;

3. who was made flesh and becameman;

3. who, for us men, and for oursalvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghostand [of, ex] the Virgin Mary, and was made man;

4. suffered under PontiusPilate, was crucified, dead, and buried;

4. who suffered for us;

4. who suffered;

4. was crucified and was buried;

4. He was crucified for usunder Pontius Pilate, and suffered,and was buried;

5. He descended into Hades;the third day be rose from the dead;

5. and rose for us on the thirdday;

5. and rose on the third day

5. rose on the third day;

5. and on the third day he roseagain, according to the Scriptures;

6. He ascended into heaven, andsitteth on the right hand of God the Father, Almighty;

6. And ascended into heaven andsitteth on the right hand of God the Father;

6. and ascended to the Father;

6. and ascended into heaven, andsitteth on the right hand of the Father

6. and ascended into heaven, andsitteth on the right hand of the Father;

7. from thence he shall come tojudge the quick and the dead.

7. and again is coming withglory and power , to judge the quick and the dead;

7. and will come again withglory, to judge the quick and the dead.

7. and will come again in gloryto judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end;

7. and he shall come again,with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have noend;

8. And I believe in the Holy Ghost.

8. One Holy Ghost,…the minister of sancitifcation, in whom isrevealed God the Father, who is over all things and through all things, and Godthe Son who is through all things — a perfect Trinity, not divided nordiffering in glory, eternity, and sovereignty…

8. And in the Holy Ghost, given for consolationand sanctification and perfection to those who believe …

8. We believe also in the Holy Ghost

8. and in one Holy Ghost, the Advocate, who spake inthe Prophets.

8. And [I believe] in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giverof life, Who proceedeth from the Father [and the Son, Filioque], who with theFather and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by theProphets

9. the holy Catholic Church;the communion ofsaints;

9. and in one baptism ofrepentance for the remission on sins;

9. And [I believe] in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church;

10. the forgiveness of sins;

10. and in one holy CatholicChurch;

10. we [I] acknowledgeone baptism for the remission of sins;

11. the resurrection of thebody;

11. and in the resurrection ofthe flesh;

11. and we [I] lookfor the resurrection of the dead;

12. and the life everlasting.

12. and in life everlasting (zwh;n aijwvnion).

12. and the life of the worldto come (zwh;n tou' mevllonto'aijw'no').

The words in italicsin the last column are additions of the second œcumenical Council (381);words in brackets are Western changes.

§ 142. God and the Creation.

E. Wilh. Möller: Geschichte derKosmologie in der griechischen Kirche bis auf Origenes. Halle, 1860. p.112–188; 474–560. The greater part of this learned work is devoted to thecosmological theories of the Gnostics.

In exhibiting the severaldoctrines of the church, we must ever bear in mind that Christianity enteredthe world, not as a logical system but as a divine-hurnan fact; and that theNew Testament is not only a theological text-book for scholars but first andlast a book of life for all believers. The doctrines of salvation, of course,lie in these facts of salvation, but in a concrete, living, ever fresh, andpopular form. The logical, scientific development of those doctrines from theword of God and Christian experience is left to the theologians. Hence we mustnot be surprised to find in the period before us, even in the most eminentteachers, a very indefinite and defective knowledge, as yet, of importantarticles of faith, whose practical force those teachers felt in their ownhearts and impressed on others, as earnestly as their most orthodox successors.The centre of Christianity is the divine-human person and the divine-human workof Christ. From that centre a change passed through the whole circle ofexisting religious ideas, in its first principles and its last results,confirming what was true in the earlier religion, and rejecting the false.

Almost all the creeds of thefirst centuries, especially the Apostles’ and the Nicene, begin with confessionof faith in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of the visibleand the invisible. With the defence of this fundamental doctrine laid down inthe very first chapter of the Bible, Irenaeus opens his refutation of theGnostic heresies. He would not have believed the Lord himself, if he hadannounced any other God than the Creator. He repudiates everything like an a priori construction of the idea of God,and bases his knowledge wholly on revelation and Christian experience.

We begin with the general ideaof God, which lies at the bottom of all religion. This is refined,spiritualized, and invigorated by the manifestation in Christ. We perceive theadvance particularly in Tertullian’s view of the irresistible leaning of thehuman soul towards God, and towards the only true God. 'God will never behidden', says he, 'God will never fail mankind; he will always berecognized, always perceived, and seen, when man wishes. God has made all thatwe are, and all in which we are, a witness of himself. Thus he proves himselfGod, and the one God, by his being known to all; since another must first beproved. The sense of God is the original dowry of the soul; the same, and noother, in Egypt, in Syria, and in Pontus; for the God of the Jews all soulscall their God.' But nature also testifies of God. It is the work of hishand, and in itself good; not as the Gnostics taught, a product of matter, orof the devil, and intrinsically bad. Except as he reveals himself, God is,according to Irenaeus, absolutely hidden and incomprehensible. But in creationand redemption he has communicated himself, and can, therefore, not remainentirely concealed from any man.

Of the various arguments for theexistence of God, we find in this period the beginnings of the cosmological andphysico-theological methods. In the mode of conceiving the divine nature weobserve this difference; while the Alexandrians try to avoid allanthropomorphic and anthropopathic notions, and insist on the immateriality andspirituality of God almost to abstraction, Tertullian ascribes to him evencorporeality; though probably, as he considers the non-existent aloneabsolutely incorporeal, he intends by corporeality only to denote thesubstantiality and concrete personality of the Supreme Being..966

The doctrine of the unity ofGod, as the eternal, almighty, omnipresent, just, and holy creator and upholderof all things, the Christian church inherited from Judaism, and vindicatedagainst the absurd polytheism of the pagans, and particularly against thedualism of tile Gnostics, which supposed matter co-eternal with God, andattributed the creation of the world to the intermediate Demiurge. This dualismwas only another form of polytheism, which excludes absoluteness, and with itall proper idea of God.

As to creation: Irenaeus andTertullian most firmly rejected the hylozoic and demiurgic views of paganismand Gnosticism, and taught, according to the book of Genesis, that God made theworld, including matter, not, of course, out of any material, but out ofnothing or, to express it positively, out of his free, almighty will, by hisword.967 This freewill of God, a will of love, is the supreme, absolutely unconditioned,and all-conditioning cause and final reason of all existence, precluding everyidea of physical force or of emanation. Every creature, since it proceeds fromthe good and holy God, is in itself, as to its essence, good..968 Evil, therefore, is not an original and substantial. entity, but acorruption of nature, and hence can be destroyed by the power of redemption.Without a correct doctrine of creation there can be no true doctrine ofredemption, as all the Gnostic systems show.

Origen’s view of an eternalcreation is peculiar. His thought is not so much that of all endless successionof new worlds, as that of ever new metamorphoses of the original world,revealing from the beginning the almighty power, wisdom and goodness of God.With this is connected his Platonic view of the pre-existence of the soul. Hestarts from the idea of an intimate relationship between God and the world andrepresents the latter as a necessary revelation of the former. It would beimpious and absurd to maintain that there was a time when God did not showforth his essential attributes which make up his very being. He was never idleor quiescent. God’s being is identical with his goodness and love, and his willis identical with his nature. He must create according to his nature,and he will create. Hence what is a necessity is at the same time a freeact. Each world has a beginning, and an end which are comprehended in thedivine Providence. But what was before the first world? Origen connects the idea of time with thatof the world, but cannot get beyond the idea of an endless succession of time.God’s eternity is above time, and yet fills all time. Origen mediates thetransition from God to the world by the eternal generation of the Logos who isthe express image of the Father and through whom God creates first thespiritual and then the material world. And his generation is itself a continuedprocess; God always (ajeiv) begets his Son, and never waswithout his Son as little as the Son is without the Father.969

§ 143. Man and the Fall.

It was the universal faith ofthe church that man was made in the image of God, pure and holy, and fell byhis own guilt and the temptation of Satan who himself fell from his originalstate. But the extent of sin and the consequences of the fall were not fullydiscussed before the Pelagian controversy in the fifth century. The same istrue of the metaphysical problem concerning the origin of the human soul. Yetthree theories appear already in germ.

Tertullian is the author of traducianism,970which derives soul and body fromthe parents through the process of generation..971 It assumes that God’s creation de nihilo was finished on the sixth day, and that Adam’s soul wasendowed with the power of reproducing itself in individual souls, just as thefirst created seed in the vegetable world has the power of reproduction in itsown kind. Most Western divines followed Tertullian in this theory because itmost easily explains the propagation of original sin by generation,972but it materializes sin whichoriginates in the mind. Adam had fallen inwardly by doubt and disobediencebefore he ate of the forbidden fruit.

The Aristotelian theory of creationismtraces the origin of each individual soul to a direct agency of God andassumes a subsequent corruption of the soul by its contact with the body, butdestroys the organic unity of soul and body, and derives sin from the materialpart. It was advocated by Eastern divines, and by Jerome in the West. Augustinwavered between the two theories, and the church has never decided thequestion.

The third theory, that of pre-existence,was taught by Origen, as before by Plato and Philo. It assumes thepre-historic existence and fall of every human being, and thus accounts fororiginal sin and individual guilt; but as it has no support in scripture orhuman consciousness—except in an ideal sense—it was condemned underJustinian, as one of the Origenistic heresies. Nevertheless it has been revivedfrom time to time as an isolated speculative opinion.973

The cause of the Christian faithdemanded the assertion both of man’s need of redemption, against Epicureanlevity and Stoical self-sufficiency, and man’s capacity for redemption, againstthe Gnostic and Manichaean idea of the intrinsic evil of nature, and againstevery form of fatalism.

The Greek fathers, especiallythe Alexandrian, are very strenuous for the freedom of the will, as the groundof the accountability and the whole moral nature of man, and as indispensableto the distinction of virtue and vice. It was impaired and weakened by thefall, but not destroyed. In the case of Origen freedom of choice is the mainpillar of his theological system. Irenaeus and Hippolytus cannot conceive ofman without the two inseparable predicates of intelligence and freedom. AndTertullian asserts expressly, against Marcion and Hermogenes, free will as oneof the innate properties of the soul,974like its derivation from God,immortality, instinct of dominion, and power of divination.975 On the other side, however, Irenaeus, by his Pauline doctrine ofthe casual connection of the original sin of Adam with the sinfulness of thewhole race, and especially Tertullian, by his view of hereditary sin and itspropagation by generation, looked towards the Augustinian system which thegreatest of the Latin fathers developed in his controversy with the Pelagianheresy, and which exerted such a powerful influence upon the Reformers, but hadno effect whatever on the Oriental church and was practically disowned in partby the church of Rome.976

§144. Christ and the Incarnation.

Literature.

*Dionys. Petavius (or Denis Petau, Prof.of Theol. in Paris, d. 1652): Opus de theologicis dogmatibus, etc. Par. 1644–50, in 5 vols.fol. Later ed. of Antw. 1700; by Fr. Ant. Zacharia, Venice, 1737 (in 7 vols.fol); with additions by C. Passaglia, and C. Schrader, Rome, 1857 (incomplete);find a still later one by J. B. Thomas, Bar le Due, 1863, in 8 vols. Petau wasa thoroughly learned Jesuit and the father of Doctrine History (Dogmengeschichte). In the section DeTrinitate (vol. II.), he has collected most of the passages of theante-Nicene and Nicene father, and admits a progressive development of thedoctrine of the divinity of Christ, and of the trinity, for which the Anglican,G. Bull, severely censures him.

*George Bull (Bishop of St. David’s, d.1710): DefensioFidei Nicaenae de aeterna Divinitate Filii Dei, ex scriptis catholic. doctorumqui intra tria ecclesiae Christianae secula floruerunt. Oxf. 1685. (Lond. 1703; again1721; also in Bp. Bull’s complete Works, ed. by Edw. Burton, Oxf. 1827, andagain in 1846 (vol. V., Part I. and II.) English translation in the'Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology,' (Oxford 1851, 2 vols.). BishopBull is still one of the most learned and valuable writers on the earlydoctrine of the Trinity, but he reads the ante-Nicene fathers too much throughthe glass of the Nicene Creed, and has to explain and to defend the language ofmore than one half of his long list of witnesses.

Martini: Gesch. desDogmas von der Gottheit Christi in den ersten vier Jahrh. Rost. 1809 (rationalistic).

Ad. Möller(R.C.): Athanasius der Gr. Mainz. 1827, second ed. 1844 (Bk1. Der Glaube der Kirche der drei ersten Jahrh. in Betreffder Trinitaet, etc.,p. 1–116).

Edw. Burton: Testimoniesof the ante-Nicene Fathers to the Divinity of Christ. Second ed. Oxf. 1829.

*F. C. Baur ((I. 1860): Diechristl. Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit u. Menschwerdung Gottes in ihrergeschichtlichen Entwicklung. Tüb. 1841–43. 3 vols. (I. p. 129–341). Thoroughlyindependent, learned, critical, and philosophical.

G. A. Meier: Die Lehrevon der Trinitaet in ihrer Hist. Entwicklung. Hamb. 1844. 2 Vols. (I. p.48-l34).

*Isaac A. Dorner: Entwicklungsgeschichteder Lehre von der Person Christi (1839), 2d ed. Stuttg. u. Berl. 1845–56. 2 vols. (I. pp.122–747). A masterpiece of exhaustive and conscientious learning, andpenetrating and fair criticism. Engl. translation by W. I. Alexander and D. W.Simon. Edinb. 1864, 5 vols.

Robr. Is. Wilberforce (first Anglican, then, since 1854, R.C.): The Doctrine of theIncarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, in its relation to Mankind and to theChurch (more doctrinal than historical). 4^th ed. Lond. 1852.(Ch. V. pp. 93–147.) Republ. from an earlier ed., Philad. 1849.

Ph. Schaff: The Conflict ofTrinitarianism and Unitarianism in the ante-Nicene age, in the 'Bibl.Sacra.' Andover, 1858, Oct.

M. F. Sadler: Emmanuel, or, The Incarnationof the Son of God the Foundation of immutable Truth. London 1867(Doctrinal).

Henry Parry Liddon (Anglican, Canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral): The Divinity of our Lordand Saviour Jesus Christ. (The Bampton Lectures for 1866). London 1867, 9^thed. 1882. Devout, able, and eloquent.

Ph. Schaff:Christ and Christianity. N. Y. 1885, p. 45–123. A sketch of the history ofChristology to the present time.

Comp. the relevantsections in the doctrine-histories of Hagenback,Thomasius, Harnack, etc.

The Messiahship and DivineSonship of Jesus of Nazareth, first confessed by Peter in the name of all theapostles and the eye-witnesses of the divine glory of his person and his work,as the most sacred and precious fact of their experience, and after theresurrection adoringly acknowledged by the sceptical Thomas in thatexclamation, 'My Lord and my God!'—is the foundation stone of theChristian church;977and the denial of the mystery of the incarnationis the mark of antichristian heresy.978

The whole theological energy ofthe ante-Nicene period concentrated itself, therefore, upon the doctrine ofChrist as the God-man and Redeemer of the world. This doctrine was the kernelof all the baptismal creeds, and was stamped upon the entire life, constitutionand worship of the early church. It was not only expressly asserted by thefathers against heretics, but also professed in the daily and weekly worship,in the celebration of baptism, the eucharist and the annual festivals,especially Easter. It was embodied in prayers, doxologies and hymns of praise.From the earliest record Christ was the object not of admiration which is givento finite persons and things, and presupposes equality, but of prayer, praiseand adoration which is due only to an infinite, uncreated, divine being. Thisis evident from several passages of the New Testament,979from the favorite symbol of theearly Christians, the Ichthys,980from the Tersanctus, the Gloria in Excelsis, the hymn of Clement ofAlexandria in praise of the Logos,981from the testimony of Origen,who says: 'We sing hymns to the Most High alone, and His Only Begotten,who is the Word and God; and we praise God and His Only Begotten;'982and from the heathen testimonyof the younger Pliny who reports to the Emperor Trajan that the Christians inAsia were in the habit of singing 'hymns to Christ as their God.'983 Eusebius, quoting from an earlier writer (probably Hippolytus)against the heresy of Artemon, refers to the testimonies of Justin, Miltiades,Tatian, Clement, and 'many others' for the divinity of Christ, andasks: 'Who knows not the works of Irenaeus and Melito, and the rest, inwhich Christ is announced as God and man? Whatever psalms and hymns of the brethren were written by the faithfulfrom the beginning, celebrate Christ as the Word of God, by asserting hisdivinity.'984 The samefaith was sealed by the sufferings and death of 'the noble army' ofconfessors and martyrs, who confessed Christ to be God, and died for Christ asGod.985

Life and worship anticipatedtheology, and Christian experience contained more than divines could in clear wordsexpress. So a child may worship the Saviour and pray to Him long before he cangive a rational account of his faith. The instinct of the Christian people wasalways in the right direction, and it is unfair to make them responsible forthe speculative crudities, the experimental and tentative statements of some ofthe ante-Nicene teachers. The divinity of Christ then, and with this thedivinity of the Holy Spirit, were from the first immovably fixed in the mindand heart of the Christian Church as a central article of faith.

But the logical definition ofthis divinity, and of its relation to the Old Testament fundamental doctrine ofthe unity of the divine essence in a word, the church dogma of the trinity wasthe work of three centuries, and was fairly accomplished only in the Niceneage. In the first efforts of reason to grapple with these unfathomablemysteries, we must expect mistakes, crudities, and inaccuracies of every kind.

In the Apostolic Fathers we findfor the most part only the simple biblical statements of the deity and humanityof Christ, in the practical form needed for general edification. Of thosefathers Ignatius is most deeply imbued with the conviction, that the crucifiedJesus is God incarnate, and indeed frequently calls him, without qualification,God.986

The scientific development ofChristology begins with Justin and culminates in Origen. From Origen thenproceed two opposite modes of conception, the Athanasian and the Arian; theformer at last triumphs in the council of Nicaea a.d. 325, and confirms its victory in the council ofConstantinople, 381. In the Arian controversy the ante-Nicene conflicts on thisvital doctrine came to a head and final settlement.

The doctrine of the Incarnationinvolves three elements: the divine nature of Christ; his human nature; and therelation of the two to his undivided personality.

§ 145. The Divinity of Christ.

The dogma of the Divinity of Christ is the centre ofinterest. It comes into the foreground, not only against rationalisticMonarchianism and Ebionism, which degrade Christ to a second Moses, but alsoagainst Gnosticism, which, though it holds him to be superhuman, still puts himon a level with other aeons of the ideal world, and thus, by endlesslymultiplying sons of God, after the manner of the heathen mythology,pantheistically dilutes and destroys all idea of a specific sonship. Thedevelopment of this dogma started from the Old Testament idea of the word andthe wisdom of God; from the Jewish Platonism of Alexandria; above all, from theChristology of Paul, and from the Logos-doctrine of John. This view of Johngave a mighty impulse to Christian speculation, and furnished it ever freshmaterial. It was the form under which all the Greek fathers conceived thedivine nature and divine dignity of Christ before his incarnation. The termLogos was peculiarly serviceable here, from its well-known double meaning of'reason' and 'word,' ratio and oratio;though in John it is evidently used in the latter sense alone.987

JustinMartyr developedthe first Christology, though not as a novelty, but in the consciousness of itsbeing generally held by Christians.988 Following the suggestion of the double meaning of Logos and theprecedent of a similar distinction by Philo, be distinguishes in the Logos,that is, the divine being of Christ, two elements: the immanent, or that whichdetermines the revelation of God to himself within himself;989and the transitive, in virtue ofwhich God reveals himself outwardly.990 The act of the procession of the Logos from God991he illustrates by the figure ofgeneration,992without division or diminution of the divinesubstance; and in this view the Logos is the only and absolute Son of God, theonly-begotten. The generation, however, is not with him an eternal act,grounded in metaphysical necessity, as with Athanasius in the later churchdoctrine. It took place before the creation of the world, and proceeded fromthe free will of God.993 Thisbegotten ante-mundane (though it would seem not strictly eternal) Logos heconceives as a hypostatical being, a person numerically distinct from theFather; and to the agency of this person before his incarnation994Justin attributes the creationand support of the universe all the theophanies (Christophanies) of the OldTestament, and all that is true and rational in the world. Christ is the Reasonof reasons, the incarnation of the absolute and eternal reason. He is a true objectof worship. In his efforts to reconcile this view with monotheism, he at onetime asserts the moral unity of the two divine persons, and at anotherdecidedly subordinates the Son to the Father. Justin thus combineshypostasianism, or the theory of the independent, personal (hypostatical)divinity of Christ, with subordinationism; he is, therefore, neither Arian norAthanasian; but his whole theological tendency, in opposition to the heresies,was evidently towards the orthodox system, and had he lived later, he wouldhave subscribed the Nicene creed.995 The same may be said of Tertullian and of Origen.

In this connection we must alsomention Justin’s remarkable doctrine of the 'Logos spermatikos,' orthe Divine Word disseminated among men. He recognized in every rational soulsomething Christian, a germ (spevrma) of the Logos, or a spark ofthe absolute reason. He therefore traced all the elements of truth and beautywhich are scattered like seeds not only among the Jews but also among theheathen to the influence of Christ before his incarnation. He regarded theheathen sages, Socrates, (whom he compares to Abraham), Plato, the Stoics, andsome of the poets and historians as unconscious disciples of the Logos, asChristians before Christ.996

Justin derived this idea nodoubt from the Gospel of John 1:4, 5, 9, 10, though he only quotes one passagefrom it (3:3–5). His pupil Tatian used it in his Diatessaron.997

The further development of the doctrineof the Logos we find in the other apologists, in Tatian, Athenagoras,Theophilus of Antioch, and especially in the Alexandrian school.

Clementof Alexandriaspeaks in the very highest terms of the Logos, but leaves his independentpersonality obscure. He makes the Logos the ultimate principle of allexistence, without beginning, and timeless; the revealer of the Father, the sumof all intelligence and wisdom, the personal truth, the speaking as well as thespoken word of creative power, the proper author of the world, the source oflight and life, the great educator of the human race, at last becoming man, todraw us into fellowship with him and make us partakers of his divine nature.

Origen felt the whole weight of theChristological and trinitarian problem and manfully grappled with it, butobscured it by foreign speculations. He wavered between the homo-ousian, or orthodox, and the homoi-ousian or subordinatian theories, whichafterwards came into sharp conflict with each other in the Arian controversy.998 On the one hand he brings the Son as near as possible to theessence of the Father; not only making him the absolute personal wisdom, truth,righteousness, reason,999but also expressly predicating eternity of him,and propounding the church dogma of the eternal generation of the Son.This generation he usually represents as proceeding from the will of theFather; but he also conceives it as proceeding from his essence and hence, atleast in one passage, he already applies the term homo-ousios to the Son, thus declaring himcoëqual in essence or nature with the Father.1000 This idea of eternal generation, however, has a peculiar form withhim, from its close connection with his doctrine of an eternal creation. He canno more think of the Father without the Son, than of an almighty God withoutcreation, or of light without radiance.1001 Hence he describes this generation not as a single, instantaneousact, but, like creation, ever going on.1002 But on the other hand he distinguishes the essence of the Son fromthat of the Father; speaks of a difference of substance;1003and makes the Son decidedlyinferior to the Father, calling him, with reference to John 1:1, merely qeov' without the article, that is, God in a relative orsecondary sense (Deusde Deo) also deuvtero' qeov', but the Father God in theabsolute sense, oJ qeov' (Deus per se), or aujtovqeo' , also the fountain and root of the divinity.1004 Hence, he also taught, that the Son should not be directlyaddressed in prayer, but the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.1005 This must be limited, no doubt, to absolute worship, for heelsewhere recognizes prayer to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.1006 Yet this subordination of the Son formed a stepping-stone toArianism, and some disciples of Origen, particularly Dionysius of Alexandria,decidedly approached that heresy. Against this, however, the deeper Christiansentiment, even before the Arian controversy, put forth firm protest,especially in the person of the Roman Dionysius, to whom his Alexandriannamesake and colleague magnanimously yielded.

In a simpler way the westernfathers, including here Irenaeus and Hippolytus, who labored in the West,though they were of Greek training, reached the position, that Christ must beone with the Father, yet personally distinct from him. It is commonly supposedthat they came nearer the homo-ousion than the Greeks. This can be said of Irenaeus, but not of Tertullian. Andas to Cyprian, whose sphere was exclusively that of church government anddiscipline, he had nothing peculiar in his speculative doctrines.

Irenaeusafter Polycarp, themost faithful representative of the Johannean school, keeps more within thelimits of the simple biblical statements, and ventures no such boldspeculations as the Alexandrians, but is more sound and much nearer the Nicenestandard. He likewise uses the terms 'Logos'and 'Son ofGod' interchangeably, and concedes the distinction, made also by theValentinians, between the inward and the uttered word,1007in reference to man, butcontests the application of it to God, who is above all antitheses, absolutelysimple and unchangeable, and in whom before and after, thinking and speaking,coincide. He repudiates also every speculative or a priori attempt to explain thederivation of the Son from the Father; this be holds to be an incomprehensiblemystery.1008 He iscontent to define the actual distinction between Father and Son, by saying thatthe former is God revealing himself, the latter, God revealed; the one is theground of revelation, the other is the actual, appearing revelation itself.Hence he calls the Father the invisible of the Son, and the Son the visible ofthe Father. He discriminates most rigidly the conceptions of generation and ofcreation. The Son, though begotten of the Father, is still like him,distinguished from the created world, as increate, without beginning, andeternal. All this plainly shows that Irenaeus is much nearer the Nicene dogmaof the substantial identity of the Son with the Father, than Justin and theAlexandrians. If, as he does in several passages, he still subordinates the Sonto the Father, be is certainly inconsistent; and that for want of an accuratedistinction between the eternal Logos and the actual Christ.1009 Expressions like 'my Father is greater than I,' whichapply only to the Christ of history, he refers also, like Justin and Origen, tothe eternal Word. On the other hand, he has been charged with leaning in theopposite direction towards the Sabellian and Patripassian views, but unjustly.1010 Apart from his frequent want of precision in expression, he steersin general, with sure biblical and churchly tact, equally clear of bothextremes, and asserts alike the essential unity and the eternal personaldistinction of the Father and the Son.

The incarnation of the LogosIrenaeus represents both as a restoration and redemption from sin and death,and as the completion of the revelation of God and of the creation of man. Inthe latter view, as finisher, Christ is the perfect Son of Man, in whom thelikeness of man to God, the similitudo Dei, regarded as moral duty, in distinction from the imago Dei, as an essential property,becomes for the first time fully real. According to this the incarnation wouldbe grounded in the original plan of God for the education of mankind, andindependent of the fall; it would have taken place even without the fall, thoughin some other form. Yet Irenaeus does not expressly say this; speculation onabstract possibilities was foreign to his realistic cast of mind.

Tertulliancannot escape thecharge of subordinationism. He bluntly calls the Father the whole divine substance,and the Son a part of it;1011illustrating their relation by the figures of thefountain and the stream, the sun and the beam. He would not have two suns, hesays, but he might call Christ God, as Paul does in Rom 9:5. The sunbeam, too,in itself considered, may be called sun, but not the sun a beam. Sun and beamare two distinct things (species)in one essence (substantia), as God and the Word, as theFather and the Son. But we should not take figurative language too strictly,and must remember that Tertullian was specially interested to distinguish theSon from the Father in opposition to the Patripassian Praxeas. In otherrespects he did the church Christology material service. He propounds athreefold hypostatical existence of the Son (filiatio): (1) The pre-existent, eternal immanence of the Son inthe Father; they being as inseparable as reason and word in man, who wascreated in the image of God, and hence in a measure reflects his being;1012(2) the coming forth of the Sonwith the Father for the purpose of the creation; (3) the manifestation of theSon in the world by the incarnation.1013

With equal energy Hippolytus combated Patripassianism,and insisted on the recognition of different hypostases with equal claim todivine worship. Yet he, too, is somewhat trammelled with the subordinationview.1014

On the other hand, according to his representation inthe Philosophumena, the Roman bishops Zephyrinusand especially Callistus favored Patripassianism. The later popes, however,were firm defenders of hypostasianism. One of them, Dionysius, a.d. 262, as we shall see more fullywhen speaking of the trinity, maintained at once the homo-ousion and eternal generation againstDionysius of Alexandria, and the hypostatical distinction against Sabellianism,and sketched in bold and clear outlines the Nicene standard view.

§ 146. The Humanity of Christ.

Passing now to the doctrine ofthe Saviour’s Humanity, we findthis asserted by IGNATIUS as clearly and forcibly as his divinity. Of theGnostic Docetists of his day, who made Christ a spectre, he says, they are bodilessspectres themselves, whom we should fear as wild beasts in human shape, becausethey tear away the foundation of our hope.1015 He attaches great importance to the flesh, that is, the fullreality of the human nature of Christ, his true birth from the virgin, and hiscrucifixion under Pontius Pilate; he calls him God incarnate;1016therefore is his death thefountain of life.

Irenaeus refutes Docetism atlength. Christ, he contends against the Gnostics, must be a man, like us, if hewould redeem us from corruption and make us perfect. As sin and death came intothe world by a man, so they could be blotted out legitimately and to ouradvantage only by a man; though of course not by one who should be a meredescendant of Adam, and thus himself in need of redemption, but by a secondAdam, supernaturally begotten, a new progenitor of our race, as divine as he ishuman. A new birth unto life must take the place of the old birth unto death.As the completer, also, Christ must enter into fellowship with us, to be ourteacher and pattern. He made himself equal with man, that man, by his likenessto the Son, might become precious in the Father’s sight. Irenaeus conceived thehumanity of Christ not as a mere corporeality, though he often contends forthis alone against the Gnostics, but as true humanity, embracing body, soul,and spirit. He places Christ in the same relation to the regenerate race, whichAdam bears to the natural, and regards him as the absolute, universal man, theprototype and summing up1017of the whole race. Connected with this is hisbeautiful thought, found also in Hippolytus in the tenth book of thePhilosophumena, that Christ made the circuit of all the stages of human life,to redeem and sanctify all. To apply this to advanced age, he singularlyextended the life of Jesus to fifty years, and endeavored to prove this viewfrom the Gospels, against the Valentinians.1018 The full communion of Christ with men involved his participationin all their evils and sufferings, his death, and his descent into the abode ofthe dead.

Tertullianadvocates theentire yet sinless humanity of Christ against both the Docetistic Gnostics1019and the Patripassians.1020 He accuses the former of making Christ who is all truth, a halflie, and by the denial of his flesh resolving all his work in the flesh, hissufferings and his death, into an empty show, and subverting the whole schemeof redemption. Against the Patripassians be argues, that God the Father isincapable of suffering, and is beyond the sphere of finiteness and change. Inthe humanity, he expressly includes the soul; and this, in his view, comprises thereason also; for he adopts not the trichotomic, but the dychotomic division.The body of Christ, before the exaltation, he conceived to have been evenhomely, on a misapprehension of Isa. 53:2, where the suffering Messiah isfiguratively said to have 'no form nor comeliness.' This unnaturalview agreed with his aversion to art and earthly splendor, but was not commonlyheld by the Christian people if we are to judge from the oldest representationsof Christ under the figure of a beautiful Shepherd carrying the lamb in hisarms or on his shoulders.

Clementof Alexandrialikewise adopted the notion of the uncomely personal appearance of Jesus, butcompensated it with the thought of the moral beauty of his soul. In his effort,however, to idealize the body of the Lord, and raise it above all sensualdesires and wants, he almost reaches Gnostic Docetism.

The Christology of Origen is more fully developed in thispart, as well as in the article of the divine nature, and peculiarly modifiedby his Platonizing view of the pre-existence and pre-Adamic fall of souls andtheir confinement in the prison of corporeity; but he is likewise tooidealistic, and inclined to substitute the superhuman for the purely human. Heconceives the incarnation as a gradual process, and distinguishes two stages init—the assumption of the soul, and the assumption of the body. The Logos,before the creation of the world, nay, from the beginning, took to himself ahuman soul, which had no part in the ante-mundane apostasy, but clave to the Logosin perfect love, and was warmed through by him, as iron by fire. Then this fairsoul, married to the Logos, took from the Virgin Mary a true body, yet withoutsin; not by way of punishment, like the fallen souls, but from love to men, toeffect their redemption. Again, Origen distinguishes various forms of themanifestation of this human nature, in which the Lord became all things to allmen, to gain all. To the great mass he appeared in the form of a servant; tohis confidential disciples and persons of culture, in a radiance of the highestbeauty and glory, such as, even before the resurrection, broke forth from hismiracles and in the transfiguration on the Mount. In connection with this comesOrigen’s view of a gradual spiritualization and deification of the body ofChrist, even to the ubiquity which he ascribes to it in its exalted state.1021

On this insufficient ground hisopponents charged him with teaching a double Christ (answering to the lowerJesus and the higher Soter of the Gnostics), and a merely temporary validity inthe corporeity of the Redeemer.

Origen is the first to apply toChrist the term God-man,1022which leads to the true view of the relation ofthe two natures.

§ 147. The Relation of the Divine and the Human in Christ.

The doctrine of the Mutual Relation of the divine and thehuman in Christ did not come into special discussion nor reach a definitesettlement until the Christological (Nestorian and Eutychian) controversies ofthe fifth century.

Yet Irenaeus, in several passages, throws out important hints. Heteaches unequivocally a true and indissoluble union of divinity and humanity inChrist, and repels the Gnostic idea of a mere external and transient connectionof the divine Soter with the human Jesus. The foundation for that union heperceives in the creation of the world by the Logos, and in man’s originallikeness to God and destination for permanent fellowship with Him. In the actof union, that is, in the supernatural generation and birth, the divine is theactive principle, and the seat of personality; the human, the passive orreceptive; as, in general, man is absolutely dependent on God, and is thevessel to receive the revelations of his wisdom and love. The medium and bondof the union is the Holy Spirit, who took the place of the masculine agent inthe generation, and overshadowed the virgin womb of Mary with the power of thehighest. In this connection he calls Mary the counterpart of Eve the 'motherof all living' in a higher sense; who, by her believing obedience, becamethe cause of salvation both to herself and the whole human race,1023as Eve by her disobedienceinduced the apostasy and death of mankind;—a fruitful but questionableparallel, suggested but not warranted by Paul’s parallel between Adam andChrist, afterwards frequently pushed too far, and turned, no doubt, contrary toits original sense, to favor the idolatrous worship of the blessed Virgin.Irenaeus seems1024to conceive the incarnation as progressive, thetwo factors reaching absolute communion (but neither absorbing the other) inthe ascension; though before this, at every stage of life, Christ was a perfectman, presenting the model of every age.

Origen, the author of the term'God-man,' was also the first to employ the figure, since become soclassical, of an iron warmed through by fire, to illustrate the pervasion ofthe human nature (primarily the soul) by the divine in the presence of Christ.

§ 148. The Holy Spirit.

Ed. Burton: Testimoniesof the Ante-Nicene Fathers to the Divinity of the Holy Ghost. Oxf. 1831(Works, vol. II).

K. F. A. Kahnis. Die Lehrevom heil. Geiste.Halle, 1847. (Pt. I. p. 149–356. Incomplete).

Neander: Dogmengeschichte, ed. by Jacobi, I. 181–186.

The doctrine ofJustin Mart. is treated with exhaustive thoroughness by Semisch in his monograph (Breslau, 1840), II. 305–332. Comp.also Al. v. Engelhardt: DasChristenthum Justins (Erlangen, 1878), P. 143–147.

The doctrine of the Holy Spiritwas far less developed, and until the middle of the fourth century was never asubject of special controversy. So in the Apostles; Creed, only one article1025is devoted to the third person ofthe holy Trinity, while the confession of the Son of God, in six or sevenarticles, forms the body of the symbol. Even the original Nicene Creed breaksoff abruptly with the words: 'And in the Holy Spirit;' the otherclauses being later additions. Logical knowledge appears to be here stillfurther removed than in Christology from the living substance of faith. Thisperiod was still in immediate contact with the fresh spiritual life of theapostolic, still witnessed the lingering operations of the extraordinary gifts,and experienced in full measure the regenerating, sanctifying, and comfortinginfluences of the divine Spirit in life, suffering, and death; but, as to thetheological definition of the nature and work of the Spirit, it remained inmany respects confused and wavering down to the Nicene age.

Yet rationalistic historians goquite too far when, among other accusations, they charge the early church withmaking the Holy Spirit identical with the Logos. To confound the functions, asin attributing the inspiration of the prophets, for example, now to the HolySpirit, now to the Logos, is by no means to confound the persons. On thecontrary, the thorough investigations of recent times show plainly that theante-Nicene fathers, with the exception of the Monarchians and perhapsLactantius, agreed in the two fundamental points, that the Holy Spirit, thesole agent in the application of redemption, is a supernatural divine being,and that he is an independent person; thus closely allied to the Father and theSon yet hypostatically different from them both. This was the practicalconception, as demanded even by the formula of baptism. But instead of makingthe Holy Spirit strictly coordinate with the other divine persons, as theNicene doctrine does, it commonly left him subordinate to the Father and theSon.

So in Justin, the pioneer of scientific discovery in Pneumatologyas well as in Christology. He refutes the heathen charge of atheism with theexplanation, that the Christians worship the Creator of the universe, in thesecond place the Son,1026in the third rank1027the prophetic Spirit; placingthe three divine hypostases in a descending gradation as objects of worship. Inanother passage, quite similar, he interposes the host of good angels betweenthe Son and the Spirit, and thus favors the inference that he regarded the HolyGhost himself as akin to the angels and therefore a created being.1028 But aside from the obscurity and ambiguity of the words relatingto the angelic host, the coordination of the Holy Ghost with the angels isutterly precluded by many other expressions of Justin, in which he exalts theSpirit far above the sphere of all created being, and challenges for themembers of the divine trinity a worship forbidden to angels. The leadingfunction of the Holy Spirit, with him, as with other apologists, is theinspiration of the Old Testament prophets.1029 In general the Spirit conducted the Jewish theocracy, andqualified the theocratic officers. All his gifts concentrated themselvesfinally in Christ; and thence they pass to the faithful in the church. It is astriking fact, however, that Justin in only two passages refers the new morallife of the Christian to the Spirit, he commonly represents the Logos as itsfountain. He lacks all insight into the distinction of the Old Testament Spiritand the New, and urges their identity in opposition to the Gnostics.

In Clement of Alexandria we find very little progress beyondthis point. Yet he calls the Holy Spirit the third member of the sacred triad,and requires thanksgiving to be addressed to him as to the Son and the Father.1030

Origen vacillates in his Pneumatologystill more than in his Christology between orthodox and heterodox views. Heascribes to the Holy Spirit eternal existence, exalts him, as he does the Son,far above all creatures and considers him the source of all charisms,1031especially as the principle ofall the illumination and holiness of believers under the Old Covenant and theNew. But he places the Spirit in essence, dignity, and efficiency below theSon, as far as he places the Son below the Father; and though he grants in onepassage1032that the Bible nowhere calls the Holy Spirit acreature, yet, according to another somewhat obscure sentence, he himselfinclines towards the view, which, however he does not avow that the Holy Spirithad a beginning (though, according to his system, not in time but frometernity), and is the first and most excellent of all the beings produced bythe Logos.1033 In thesame connection he adduces three opinions concerning the Holy Spirit; oneregarding him as not having an origin; another, ascribing to him no separatepersonality; and a third, making him a being originated by the Logos. The firstof these opinions he rejects because the Father alone is without origin (ajgevnnhto'); the second he rejects because in Matt. 12:32 theSpirit is plainly distinguished from the Father and the Son; the third he takesfor the true and scriptural view, because everything was made by the Logos.1034 Indeed, according to Matt. 12:32, the Holy Spirit would seem tostand above the Son; but the sin against the Holy Ghost is more heinous thanthat against the Son of Man, only because he who has received the Holy Spiritstands higher than he who has merely the reason from the Logos.

Here again Irenaeus comes nearer than theAlexandrians to the dogma of the perfect substantial identity of the Spiritwith the Father and the Son; though his repeated figurative (but for thisreason not so definite) designation of the Son and Spirit as the'hands' of the Father, by which he made all things, implies a certainsubordination. He differs from most of the Fathers in referring the Wisdom ofthe book of Proverbs not to the Logos but to the Spirit; and hence must regardhim as eternal. Yet he was far from conceiving the Spirit a mere power orattribute; he considered him an independent personality, like the Logos.'With God' says he,1035'are ever the Word and theWisdom, the Son and the Spirit, through whom and in whom he freely made allthings, to whom he said, ’Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’' But he speaks more of theoperations than of the nature of the Holy Ghost. The Spirit predicted in theprophets the coming of Christ; has been near to man in all divine ordinances;communicates the knowledge of the Father and the Son; gives believers theconsciousness of sonship; is fellowship with Christ, the pledge of imperishablelife, and the ladder on which we ascend to God.

In the Montanistic system theParaclete occupies a peculiarly important place. He appears there as theprinciple of the highest stage of revelation, or of the church of theconsummation. Tertullian made theHoly Spirit the proper essence of the church, but subordinated him to the Son,as he did the Son to the Father, though elsewhere he asserts the 'unitas substantiae.' In his view the Spiritproceeds 'aPatre per Filium,'as the fruit from the root through the stem. The view of the Trinity presentedby Sabellius contributed to the suppression of these subordinatian ideas.

§ 149. The Holy Trinity.

Comp. the worksquoted in §144, especially Petravius,Bull, Baur, and Dorner.

Here now we have the elements ofthe dogma of the Trinity, that is, the doctrine of the living, only true God,Father, Son, and Spirit, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things.This dogma has a peculiar, comprehensive, and definitive import in theChristian system, as a brief summary of all the truths and blessings ofrevealed religion. Hence the baptismal formula (Matt. 28:19), which forms thebasis of all the ancient creeds, is trinitarian; as is the apostolicbenediction also (2 Cor. 13:14). This doctrine meets us in the Scriptures,however, not so much in direct statements and single expressions, of which thetwo just mentioned are the clearest, as in great living facts; in the historyof a threefold revelation of the living God in the creation and government, thereconciliation and redemption, and the sanctification and consummation of theworld—a history continued in the experience of Christendom. In the article ofthe Trinity the Christian conception of God completely defines itself, indistinction alike from the abstract monotheism of the Jewish religion, and fromthe polytheism and dualism of the heathen. It has accordingly been looked uponin all ages as the sacred symbol and the fundamental doctrine of the Christianchurch, with the denial of which the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, andthe divine character of the work of redemption and sanctification, fall to theground.

On this scriptural basis and theChristian consciousness of a threefold relation we sustain to God as our Maker,Redeemer, and Sanctifier, the church dogma of the Trinity arose; and itdirectly or indirectly ruled even the ante-Nicene theology though it did notattain its fixed definition till in the Nicene age. It is primarily of apractical religious nature, and speculative only in a secondary sense. It arosenot from the field of metaphysics, but from that of experience and worship; andnot as an abstract, isolated dogma, but in inseparable connection with thestudy of Christ and of the Holy Spirit; especially in connection withChristology, since all theology proceeds from 'God in Christ reconcilingthe world unto himself.' Under the condition of monotheism, this doctrinefollowed of necessity from the doctrine of the divinity of Christ and of theHoly Spirit. The unity of God was already immovably fixed by the Old Testamentas a fundamental article of revealed religion in opposition to all forms ofidolatry. But the New Testament and the Christian consciousness as firmlydemanded faith in the divinity of the Son, who effected redemption, and of theHoly Spirit, who founded the church and dwells in believers; and theseapparently contradictory interests could be reconciled only in the form of theTrinity;1036that is, by distinguishing in the one andindivisible essence of God1037three hypostases or persons;1038at the same time allowing forthe insufficiency of all human conceptions and words to describe such anunfathomable mystery.

The Socinian and rationalisticopinion, that the church doctrine of the Trinity sprang from Platonism1039and Neo-Platonism1040is therefore radically false.The Indian Trimurti, altogether pantheistic in spirit, is still further fromthe Christian Trinity. Only thus much is true, that the Hellenic philosophyoperated from without, as a stimulating force, upon the form of the wholepatristic theology, the doctrines of the Logos and the Trinity among the rest;and that the deeper minds of heathen antiquity showed a presentiment of athreefold distinction in the divine essence: but only a remote and vaguepresentiment which, like all the deeper instincts of the heathen mind, servesto strengthen the Christian truth. Far clearer and more fruitful suggestionspresented themselves in the Old Testament, particularly in the doctrines of theMessiah, of the Spirit, of the Word, and of the Wisdom of God, and even in thesystem of symbolical numbers, which rests on the sacredness of the numbersthree (God), four (the world), seven and twelve (the union of God and theworld, hence the covenant numbers. But the mystery of the Trinity could befully revealed only in the New Testament after the completion of the work of redemptionand the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The historical manifestation of theTrinity is the condition of the knowledge of the Trinity.

Again, it was primarily theœconomic or transitive trinity, which the church had in mind; that is, thetrinity of the revelation of God in the threefold work of creation, redemption,and sanctification; the trinity presented in the apostolic writings as a livingfact. But from this, in agreement with both reason and Scripture, the immanentor ontologic trinity was inferred; that is, an eternal distinction in theessence of God itself, which reflects itself in his revelation, and can beunderstood only so far as it manifests itself in his works and words. Thedivine nature thus came to be conceived, not as an abstract, blank unity, butas an infinite fulness of life; and the Christian idea of God (as John ofDamascus has remarked) in this respect combined Jewish monotheism with thetruth which lay at the bottom of even the heathen polytheism, though distortedand defaced there beyond recognition.

Then for the more definiteillustration of this trinity of essence, speculative church teachers ofsubsequent times appealed to all sorts of analogies in nature, particularly inthe sphere of the finite mind, which was made after the image of the divine,and thus to a certain extent authorizes such a parallel. They found a sort oftriad in the universal law of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis; in theelements of the syllogism; in the three persons of grammar; in the combinationof body, soul, and spirit in man; in the three leading faculties of the soul;in the nature of intelligence and knowledge as involving a union of thethinking subject and the thought object; and in the nature of love, as likewisea union between the loving and the loved.1041 These speculations began with Origen and Tertullian; they werepursued by Athanasius and Augustin; by the scholastics and mystics of theMiddle Ages; by Melanchthon, and the speculative Protestant divines down toSchleiermacher, Rothe and Dorner, as well as by philosophers from Böhme toHegel; and they are not yet exhausted, nor will be till we reach the beatificvision. For the holy Trinity, though the most evident, is yet the deepest ofmysteries, and can be adequately explained by no analogies from finite andearthly things.

As the doctrines of the divinityof Christ and of the Holy Spirit were but imperfectly developed in logicalprecision in the ante-Nicene period, the doctrine of the Trinity, founded onthem, cannot be expected to be more clear. We find it first in the most simplebiblical and practical shape in all the creeds of the first three centuries:which, like the Apostles’ and the Nicene, are based on the baptismal formula,and hence arranged in trinitarian order. Then it appears in the trinitariandoxologies used in the church from the first; such as occur even in the epistleof the church at Smyrna on the martyrdom of Polycarp.1042 Clement of Rome calls 'God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and theHoly Spirit' the object of 'the faith and hope of the elect.'1043 The sentiment, that we rise through the Holy Spirit to the Son,through the Son to the Father, belongs likewise to the age of the immediatedisciples of the apostles.1044

Justin Martyrrepeatedly placesFather, Son, and Spirit together as objects of divine worship among theChristians (though not as being altogether equal in dignity), and imputes toPlato a presentiment of the doctrine of the Trinity. Athenagoras confesses hisfaith in Father, Son, and Spirit, who are one as to power (kata; duvnamin), but whom he distinguishes as to order or dignity (tavxi') in subordinatian style. Theophilus of Antioch (180) isthe first to denote the relation of the three divine persons1045by the term Triad.

Origen conceives the Trinity as threeconcentric circles, of which each succeeding one circumscribes a smaller area.God the Father acts upon all created being; the Logos only upon the rationalcreation; the Holy Ghost only upon the saints in the church. But thesanctifying work of the Spirit leads back to the Son, and the Son to theFather, who is consequently the ground and end of all being, and stands highestin dignity as the compass of his operation is the largest.

Irenaeusgoes no furtherthan the baptismal formula and the trinity of revelation; proceeding on thehypothesis of three successive stages in the development of the kingdom of Godon earth, and of a progressive communication of God to the world. He alsorepresents the relation of the persons according to Eph. 4:6; the Father asabove all, and the head of Christ; the Son as through all, and the head of thechurch; the Spirit as in all, and the fountain of the water of life.1046 Of a supramundane trinity of essence he betrays but faintindications.

Tertullianadvances a step. Hesupposes a distinction in God himself; and on the principle that the createdimage affords a key to the uncreated original, he illustrates the distinctionin the divine nature by the analogy of human thought; the necessity of aself-projection, or of making one’s self objective in word, for which heborrows from the Valentinians the term probolhv, or prolatio rei alterius exaltera,1047but without connecting with it the sensuousemanation theory of the Gnostics. Otherwise he stands, as already observed, onsubordinatian ground, if his comparisons of the trinitarian relation to that ofroot, stem, and fruit; or fountain, flow, and brook; or sun, ray, and raypoint,be dogmatically pressed.1048 Yet hedirectly asserts also the essential unity of the three persons..1049

Tertullian was followed by theschismatic but orthodox Novatian,the author of a special treatise De Trinitate, drawn from the Creed, and fortified with Scriptureproofs against the two classes of Monarchians.

The Roman bishop Dionysius (A. D. 262), a Greek bybirth,1050stood nearest the Nicene doctrine. He maintaineddistinctly, in the controversy with Dionysius of Alexandria, at once the unityof essence and the real personal distinction of the three members of the divinetriad, and avoided tritheism, Sabellianism, and subordinatianism with theinstinct of orthodoxy, and also with the art of anathematizing already familiarto the popes. His view has come down to us in a fragment in Athanasius, whereit is said: 'Then I must declare against those who annihilate the mostsacred doctrine of the church by dividing and dissolving the unity of God intothree powers, separate hypostases, and three deities. This notion [sometritheistic view, not further known to us] is just the opposite of the opinionof Sabellius. For while the latter would introduce the impious doctrine, thatthe Son is the same as the Father, and the converse, the former teach in somesense three Gods, by dividing the sacred unity into three fully separatehypostases. But the divine Logos must be inseparably united with the God ofall, and in God also the Holy Ghost must dwell so that the divine triad must becomprehended in one, viz. the all-ruling God, as in a head.'1051 Then Dionysius condemns the doctrine, that the Son is a creature,as 'the height of blasphemy,' and concludes: 'The divineadorable unity must not be thus cut up into three deities; no more may thetranscendant dignity and greatness of the Lord be lowered by saying, the Son iscreated; but we must believe in God the almighty Father, and in Jesus Christhis Son, and in the Holy Ghost, and must consider the Logos inseparably unitedwith the God of all; for he says, ’I and my Father are one’; and ’I am in theFather and the Father in me.’ In this way are both the divine triad and thesacred doctrine of the unity of the Godhead preserved inviolate.'

§ 150. Antitrinitarians. First Class: The Alogi, Theodotus,Artemon, Paul of Samosata.

The works cited at §144, p. 543.

Schleiermacher: Ueber denGegensatz der sabellianischen u. athanasianischen Vorstellung von der Trinitaet(Werkezur Theol. Vol.II.). A rare specimen of constructive criticism (in the interest ofSabellianism).

Lobeg. Lange:Geschichte u. Lehrbegriff der Unitarier vor dernicaenischen Synode. Leipz. 1831.

Jos. Schwane (R.C.): Dogmengesch.der vornicaen. Zeit(Münster, 1862), pp. 142–156; 199–203. Comp. his art. Antitrinitarierin 'Wetzerund Welte, ' new ed. I. 971–976.

Friedr. Nitzsch: Dogmengeschichte, Part I. (Berlin, 1870), 194–210.

Ad. Harnack: Monarchianismus. InHerzog², vol. X. (1882), 178–213. A very elaborate article. Abridgedin Schaff’s Herzog, II. 1548 sqq.

Ad. Hilgenfeld: Ketzergeschichte desUrchristenthums (1884) p. 608-(628.

That this goal was at lasthappily reached, was in great part due again to those controversies with theopponents of the church doctrine of the Trinity, which filled the whole thirdcentury. These Antitrinitarians are commonly called Monarchians from (monarciva)1052or Unitarians, on account of the stressthey laid upon the numerical. personal unity of the Godhead.

But we must carefullydistinguish among them two opposite classes: the rationalistic or dynamicMonarchians, who denied the divinity of Christ, or explained it as a mere'power' (duvnami') and the patripassian ormodalistic Monarchians, who identified the Son with the Father, and admitted atmost only a modal trinity, that is a threefold mode of revelation, but not atripersonality.

The first form of this heresy,involved in the abstract Jewish monotheism, deistically sundered the divine andthe human, and rose little above Ebionism. After being defeated in the churchthis heresy arose outside of it on a grander scale, as a pretended revelation,and with marvellous success, in Mohammedanism which may be called thepseudo-Jewish and pseudo-Christian Unitarianism of the East.

The second form proceeded fromthe highest conception of the deity of Christ, but in part also frompantheistic notions which approached the ground of Gnostic docetism.

The one prejudiced the dignityof the Son, the other the dignity of the Father; yet the latter was by far themore profound and Christian, and accordingly met with the greater acceptance.

The Monarchians of the firstclass saw in Christ a mere man, filled with divine power; but conceived thisdivine power as operative in him, not from the baptism only, according to theEbionite view, but from the beginning; and admitted his supernatural generationby the Holy Spirit. To this class belong:

1. The Alogians or Alogi,1053a heretical sect in Asia Minorabout a.d. 170, of which verylittle is known. Epiphanius gave them this name because they rejected the Logosdoctrine and the Logos Gospel, together with the Apocalypse. 'Whatgood,' they said, 'is the Apocalypse to me, with its seven angels andseven seals? What have I to do with thefour angels at Euphrates, whom another angel must loose, and the host ofhorsemen with breastplates of fire and brimstone?' They seem to have been jejune rationalistsopposed to chiliasm and all mysterious doctrines. They absurdly attributed thewritings of John to the Gnostic, Cerinthus, whom the aged apostle opposed.1054 This is the first specimen of negative biblical criticism, next toMarcion’s mutilation of the canon.10552. The Theodotians; so called from their founder, the tanner Theodotus. He sprang from Byzantium;denied Christ in a persecution, with the apology that he denied only a man; butstill held him to be the supernaturally begotten Messiah. He gained followersin Rome, but was excommunicated by the bishop Victor (192–202). After his deathhis sect chose the confessor Natalis bishop, who is said to have afterwardspenitently returned into the bosom of the Catholic church. A younger Theodotus,the 'money-changer,' put Melchizedek as mediator between God and the angels,above Christ, the mediator between God and men; and his followers were calledMelchizedekians.1056

3. The Artemonites, or adherents of Artemon or Artemos,who came out somewhat later at Rome with a similar opinion, declared thedoctrine of the divinity of Christ an innovation and a relapse to heathenpolytheism; and was excommunicated by Zephyrinus (202–217) or afterwards. TheArtemonites were charged with placing Euclid and Aristotle above Christ, andesteeming mathematics and dialectics higher than the gospel. This indicates acritical intellectual turn, averse to mystery, and shows that Aristotle wasemployed by some against the divinity of Christ, as Plato was engaged for it.

Their assertion, that the true doctrinewas obscured in the Roman church only from the time of Zephyrinus,1057is explained by the fact broughtto light recently through the Philosophumena of Hippolytus, that Zephyrinus (and perhaps hispredecessor Victor), against the vehement opposition of a portion of the Romanchurch, favored Patripassianism, and probably in behalf of this doctrinecondemned the Artemonites.1058

4. Paul Of Samosata, from 260 bishop of Antioch, and at the sametime a high civil officer,1059is the most famous of these rationalisticUnitarians, and contaminated one of the first apostolic churches with hisheresy. He denied the personality of the Logos and of the Holy Spirit, andconsidered them merely powers of God, like reason and mind in man; but grantedthat the Logos dwelt in Christ in larger measure than in any former messengerof God, and taught, like the Socinians in later times, a gradual elevation ofChrist, determined by his own moral development, to divine dignity.1060 He admitted that Christ remained free from sin, conquered the sinof our forefathers, and then became the Saviour of the race. To introduce hisChristology into the mind of the people, he undertook to alter the churchhymns, but was shrewd enough to accommodate himself to the orthodox formulas,calling Christ, for example, 'God from the Virgin,'1061and ascribing to him even homo-ousia with the Father, but of coursein his own sense.1062

The bishops under him in Syriaaccused him not only of heresy but also of extreme vanity, arrogance,pompousness, avarice, and undue concern with secular business; and at a thirdsynod held in Antioch a.d. 269 or268, they pronounced his deposition. The number of bishops present is variouslyreported (70, 80, 180). Dominus was appointed successor. The result wascommunicated to the bishops of Rome, Alexandria, and to all the churches. Butas Paul was favored by the queen Zenobia of Palmyra, the deposition could notbe executed till after her subjection by the emperor Aurelian in 272, and afterconsultation with the Italian bishops.1063

His overthrow decided the fallof the Monarchians; though they still appear at the end of the fourth centuryas condemned heretics, under the name of Samosatians, Paulianists, andSabellians.

§ 151. Second Class of Antitrinitarians: Praxeas, Noëtus,Callistus, Berryllus.

The second class of Monarchians,called by Tertullian 'Patripassians' (as afterwards a branch of theMonophysites was called 'Theopaschites'),1064together with their unitarianzeal felt the deeper Christian impulse to hold fast the divinity of Christ; butthey sacrificed to it his independent personality, which they merged in theessence of the Father. They taught that the one supreme God by his own freewill, and by an act of self-limitation became man, so that the Son is theFather veiled in the flesh. They knew no other God but the one manifested inChrist, and charged their opponents with ditheism. They were more dangerousthan the rationalistic Unitarians, and for a number of years had even thesympathy and support of the papal chair. They had a succession of teachers inRome, and were numerous there even at the time of Epiphanius towards the closeof the fourth century.

1. The first prominent advocateof the Patripassian heresy was Praxeas ofAsia Minor. He came to Rome under Marcus Aurelius with the renown of aconfessor; procured there the condemnation of Montanism; and propounded hisPatripassianism, to which he gained even the bishop Victor.1065 But Tertullian met him in vindication at once of Montanism and ofhypostasianism with crushing logic, and sarcastically charged him with havingexecuted at Rome two commissions of the devil: having driven away the HolyGhost, and having crucified the Father. Praxeas, constantly appealing to Is.45:5; Jno. 10:30 ('I and my Father are one'), and 14:9 ('He thathath seen me hath seen the Father '), as if the whole Bible consisted ofthese three passages, taught that the Father himself became man, hungered,thirsted, suffered, and died in Christ. True, he would not be understood as speakingdirectly of a suffering (pati) ofthe Father, but only of a sympathy (copati) of the Father with the Son; but in any case he lostthe independent personality of the Son. He conceived the relation of the Fatherto the Son as like that of the spirit to the flesh. The same subject, asspirit, is the Father; as flesh, the Son. He thought the Catholic doctrinetritheistic.1066

2. Noëtus of Smyrna published the same view about a.d. 200, appealing also to Rom. 9:5,where Christ is called 'the one God over all.' When censured by acouncil he argued in vindication of himself, that his doctrine enhanced theglory of Christ.1067 Theauthor of the Philosophumenaplaces him inconnection with the pantheistic philosophy of Heraclitus, who, as we here forthe first time learn, viewed nature as the harmony of all antitheses, andcalled the universe at once dissoluble and indissoluble, originated and unoriginated,mortal and immortal; and thus Noëtus supposed that the same divine subject mustbe able to combine opposite attributes in itself.1068

Two of his disciples, Epigonusand Cleomenes,1069propagated this doctrine in Rome under favor ofPope Zephyrinus.

3. Callistus (pope Calixtus I.) adopted and advocated thedoctrine of Noëtus. He declared the Son merely the manifestation of the Fatherin human form; the Father animating the Son, as the spirit animates the body,1070and suffering with him on the cross.'The Father,' said he, 'who was in the Son, took flesh and madeit God, uniting it with himself and made it one. Father and Son were thereforethe name of the one God, and this one person1071cannot be two; thus the Fathersuffered with the Son.' He considered his opponents 'ditheists,'1072and they in return called hisfollowers 'Callistians.'

These and other disclosures respectingthe church at Rome during the first quarter of the third century, we owe, asalready observed, to the ninth book of the Philosophumena of Hippolytus, who was, however, it must beremembered, the leading opponent and rival of Callistus, and in his owndoctrine of the Trinity inclined to the opposite subordinatian extreme. Hecalls Callistus, evidently with passion, an 'unreasonable and treacherousman, who brought together blasphemies from above and below only to speakagainst the truth, and was not ashamed to fall now into the error of Sabellius,now into that of Theodotius' (of which latter, however, he shows no trace,but the very opposite).1073 Callistusdiffered from the ditheistic separation of the Logos from God, but also fromthe Sabellian confusion of the Father and the Son, and insisted on the mutualindwelling (pericwvrhsi') of the divine Persons; inother words, he sought the way from modalistic unitarianism to the Nicenetrinitarianism; but he was not explicit and consistent in his statements. Heexcommunicated both Sabellius and Hippolytus; the Roman church sided with him,and made his name one of the most prominent among the ancient popes.1074

After the death of Callistus,who occupied the papal chair between 218 and 223 or 224, Patripassianismdisappeared from the Roman church.

4. Beryllus ofBostra (now Bosra and Bosseret), in Arabia Petraea. From him we have only asomewhat obscure and very variously interpreted passage preserved in Eusebius.1075 He denied the personal pre-existence1076and in general the independentdivinity1077of Christ, but at the same time asserted theindwelling of the divinity of the Father1078in him during his earthly life.He forms, in some sense, the stepping-stone from simple Patripassianism toSabellian modalism. At an Arabian synod in 244, where the presbyter Origen,then himself accused of heresy, was called into consultation, Beryllus wasconvinced of his error by that great teacher, and was persuaded particularly ofthe existence of a human soul in Christ, in place of which he had probably puthis patrikh; qeovto', as Apollinaris in a later period put the lovgo'. He is said tohave thanked Origen afterwards for his instruction. Here we have one of thevery few theological disputations which have resulted in unity instead ofgreater division.1079

§ 152. Sabellianism.

Sources: Hippolytyus: Philos. IX. 11 (D.and Schn. p. 450, 456, 458). Rather meagre, but important. Epiphan.: Haer: 62. The fragmentsof letters of Dionysius of Alex.in Athanasius, De Sentent. Dion., and later writers, collected in Routh,Reliqu. sacr. Novatian: DeTrinit. Euseb.: ContraMarcellum. The references in the writiings of Athanasius (De Syn.; De Decr. Nic. Syn.; Contra Arian.).Basil M.: Ep. 207, 210,214, 235. Gregory of Naz.: lovgo' kata; jAreivou k. Sabellivou.

Comp. Schleiermacher, Neander, Baur, Dorner,Harnack, l. c., and Zahn,Marcellus von. Ancyra (Gotha, 1867); Nitzsch,Dogmengesch. I. 206–209, 223–225.

5. Sabellius is by far the most original, profound, andingenious of the ante-Nicene Unitarians, and his system the most plausiblerival of orthodox trinitarianism. It revives from time to time in variousmodifications.1080 We knowvery little of his life. He was probably a Lybian from the Pentapolis. He spentsome time in Rome in the beginning of the third century, and was first gainedby Callistus to Patripassianism, but when the latter became bishop be wasexcommunicated.1081 Theformer fact is doubtful. His doctrine spread in Rome, and especially also inthe Pentapolis in Egypt. Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, excommunicated him in260 or 2611082at a council in that city, and, in vehementopposition to him declared in almost Arian terms for the hypostaticalindependence and subordination of the Son in relation to the Father. This ledthe Sabellians to complain of that bishop to Dionysius of Rome, who held acouncil in 262, and in a special treatise controverted Sabellianism, as well assubordinatianism and tritheism, with nice orthodox tact.1083 The bishop of Alexandria very cheerfully yielded, and retractedhis assertion of the creaturely inferiority of the Son in favor of the orthodoxhomo-ousios. Thus the strife was for a whileallayed, to be renewed with still greater violence by Arius half a centurylater.

The system of Sabellius is knownto us only from a few fragments, and some of these not altogether consistent,in Athanasius and other fathers.

While the other Monarchiansconfine their inquiry to the relation of Father and Son, Sabellius embraces theHoly Spirit in his speculation, and reaches a trinity, not a simultaneoustrinity of essence, however, but only a successive trinity of revelation. Hestarts from a distinction of the monad and the triad in the divine nature. Hisfundamental thought is, that the unity of God, without distinction in itself,unfolds or extends itself1084in the course of the world’s development in threedifferent forms and periods of revelation1085and, after the completion ofredemption, returns into unity. The Father reveals himself in the giving of thelaw or the Old Testament economy (not in the creation also, which in his viewprecedes the trinitarian revelation); the Son, in the incarnation; the HolyGhost, in inspiration. The revelation of the Son ends with the ascension; therevelation of the Spirit goes on in regeneration and sanctification. Heillustrates the trinitarian relation by comparing the Father to the disc of thesun, the Son to its enlightening power, the Spirit to its warming influence. Heis said also to have likened the Father to the body, the Son to the soul, theHoly Ghost to the spirit of man; but this is unworthy of his evidentspeculative discrimination. His view of the Logos,1086too, is peculiar. The, Logos isnot identical with the Son, but is the monad itself in its transition to triad;that is, God conceived as vital motion and creating principle, the speakingGod,1087in distinction from the silent God.1088 Each provswpon is another dialevgesqai andthe three provswpa together are only successiveevolutions of the Logos or the worldward aspect of the divine nature. As theLogos proceeded from God, so he returns at last into him, and the process oftrinitarian development1089closes.

Athanasius traced the doctrineof Sabellius to the Stoic philosophy. The common element is the pantheisticleading view of an expansion and contraction1090of the divine nature immanent inthe world. In the Pythagorean system also, in the Gospel of the Egyptians, andin the pseudo-Clementine Homilies, there are kindred ideas. But the originalityof Sabellius cannot be brought into question by these. His theory broke the wayfor the Nicene church doctrine, by its full coordination of the three persons.He differs from the orthodox standard mainly in denying the trinity of essenceand the permanence of the trinity of manifestation; making Father, Son, andHoly Ghost only temporary phenomena, which fulfil their mission and return intothe abstract monad.

§ 153. Redemption.

Cotta: Histor. doctrinae deredemptione sanguine J. Chr. facta, in Gerhard: Loci theol., vol.IV. p. 105–134.

Ziegler: Hist. dogmatis de redemptione.Gott. 1791. Rationalistic.

K. Baehr.: Die Lehreder Kirche vom Tode Jesu in den drei ersten Jahrh., Sulz b. 1832. Against the orthodox doctrine of the satisfactio vicaria.

F. C. Baur: Diechristl. Lehre von der Versöhnung in ihrer geschichtl. Entw. von der aeltestenZeit bis auf die neueste. Tüb. 1838. 764 pages, (See pp. 23–67). Very learned, critical, andphilosophical, but resulting in Hegelian pantheism.

L. Duncker: Des heil.Irenaeus Christologie. Gött. 1843 (p. 217 sqq.; purely objective).

Baumgarten Crusius: Compendium der christl. Dogmengeschichte. Leipz. 2d Part 1846, § 95 sqq.(p. 257 sqq.)

Albrecht Ritschl (Prof. in Göttingen): Die christl. Lehre von derRechtfertigung und Versöhnung, Bonn, 1870, second revised ed. 1882, sqq., 3 vols. Thefirst vol. (pages 656) contains the history the doctrine, but devotes only afew introductory pages to our period (p. 4), being occupied chiefly with theAnselmic, the orthodox Lutheran and Calvinistic, and the modern German theoriesof redemption. Ritschl belonged originally to the Tübingen school, but pursuesnow an independent path, and lays greater stress on the ethical forces inhistory.

The work of the triune God, inhis self-revelation, is the salvation, or redemption and reconciliation of theworld: negatively, the emancipation of humanity from the guilt and power of sinand death; positively, the communication of the righteousness and life offellowship with God. First, the discord between the Creator and the creaturemust be adjusted; and then man can be carried onward to his destinedperfection. Reconciliation with God is the ultimate aim of every religion. Inheathenism it was only darkly guessed and felt after, or anticipated inperverted, fleshly forms. In Judaism it was divinely promised, typicallyforeshadowed, and historically prepared. In Christianity it is revealed inobjective reality, according to the eternal counsel of the love and wisdom ofGod, through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and is beingcontinually applied subjectively to individuals in the church by the HolySpirit, through the means of grace, on condition of repentance and faith.Christ is, exclusively and absolutely, the Saviour of the world, and theMediator between God and man.

The apostolic scriptures, in thefulness of their inspiration, everywhere bear witness of this salvation wroughtthrough Christ, as a living fact of experience. But it required time for theprofound ideas of a Paul and a John to come up clearly to the view of thechurch; indeed, to this day they remain unfathomed. Here again experienceanticipated theology. The church lived from the first on the atoning sacrificeof Christ. The cross ruled all Christian thought and conduct, and fed thespirit of martyrdom. But the primitive church teachers lived more in thethankful enjoyment of redemption than in logical reflection upon it. Weperceive in their exhibitions of this blessed mystery the language rather ofenthusiastic feeling than of careful definition and acute analysis. Moreover,this doctrine was never, like Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity, asubject of special controversy within the ancient church. The oecumenicalsymbols touch it only in general terms. The Apostles’ Creed presents it in thearticle on the forgiveness of sins on the ground of the divine-human life,death, and resurrection of Christ. The Nicene Creed says, a little moredefinitely, that Christ became man for our salvation,1091and died for us, and rose again.

Nevertheless, all the essentialelements of the later church doctrine of redemption may be found, eitherexpressed or implied, before the close of the second century. The negative partof the doctrine, the subjection of the devil, the prince of the kingdom of sinand death, was naturally most dwelt on in the patristic period, on account ofthe existing conflict of Christianity with heathenism, which was regarded aswholly ruled by Satan and demons. Even in the New Testament, particularly inCol. 2:15, Heb. 2:14, and 1 John 3:8, the victory over the devil is made anintegral part of the work of Christ. But this view was carried out in the earlychurch in a very peculiar and, to some extent, mythical way; and in this formcontinued current, until the satisfaction theory of Anselm gave a new turn tothe development of the dogma. Satan is supposed to have acquired, by thedisobedience of our first parents, a legal claim (whether just or unjust) uponmankind, and held them bound in the chains of sin and death (Comp. Hebr. 2:14,15). Christ came to our release. The victory over Satan was conceived now as alegal ransom by the payment of a stipulated price, to wit, the death of Christ;now as a cheat upon him,1092either intentional and deserved, or due to hisown infatuation.1093

The theological development ofthe doctrine of the work of Christ began with the struggle against Jewish andheathen influences, and at the same time with the development of the doctrineof the person of Christ, which is inseparable from that of his work, and indeedfundamental to it. Ebionism, with its deistic and legal spirit, could not raiseits view above the prophetic office of Christ to the priestly and the kingly,but saw in him only a new teacher and legislator. Gnosticism, from the naturalisticand pantheistic position of heathendom, looked upon redemption as a physicaland intellectual process, liberating the spirit from the bonds of matter, thesupposed principle of evil; reduced the human life and passion of Christ to avain show; and could ascribe at best only a symbolical virtue to his death. Forthis reason even Ignatius, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, in their opposition todocetism, insist most earnestly on the reality of the humanity and death ofJesus, as the source of our reconciliation with God.1094

In Justin Martyr appear traces of the doctrine of satisfaction,though in very indefinite terms. He often refers to the Messianic fifty-thirdchapter of Isaiah..1095

The anonymous author of theEpistle to an unknown heathen, Diognetus, which has sometimes been ascribed toJustin, but is probably of much earlier date, has a beautiful and forciblepassage on the mystery of redemption, which shows that the root of the matter wasapprehended by faith long before a logical analysis was attempted. 'Whenour wickedness' he says,1096'had reached its height,and it had been clearly shown that its reward—punishment and death—wasimpending over us .... God himself took on Him the burden of our iniquities. Hegave His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for transgressors, theblameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous, theincorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for them that aremortal. For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than Hisrighteousness? By what other one was itpossible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified, than by the onlySon of God? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable operation! O benefits surpassing all expectation! that the wickedness of many should be hid ina single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors!'

Irenaeusis the first of allthe church teachers to give a careful analysis of the work of redemption, andhis view is by far the deepest and soundest we find in the first threecenturies. Christ, he teaches, as the second Adam, repeated in himself theentire life of man, from childhood to manhood, from birth to death and hades,and as it were summed up that life and brought it under one head,1097with the double purpose ofrestoring humanity from its fall and carrying it to perfection. Redemptioncomprises the taking away of sin by the perfect obedience of Christ; thedestruction of death by victory over the devil; and the communication of a newdivine life to man. To accomplish this work, the Redeemer must unite in himselfthe divine and human natures; for only as God could he do what man could not,and only as man could he do in a legitimate way, what man should. By thevoluntary disobedience of Adam the devil gained a power over man, but in anunfair way, by fraud.1098 By thevoluntary obedience of Christ that power was wrested from him by lawful means.1099 This took place first in the temptation, in which Christ renewedor recapitulated the struggle of Adam with Satan, but defeated the seducer, andthereby liberated man from his thraldom. But then the whole life of Christ wasa continuous victorious conflict with Satan, and a constant obedience to God.This obedience completed itself in the suffering and death on the tree of thecross, and thus blotted out the disobedience which the first Adam had committedon the tree of knowledge. This, however, is only the negative side. To this isadded, as already remarked, the communication of a new divine principle oflife, and the perfecting of the idea of humanity first effected by Christ.

Origen differs from Irenaeus inconsidering man, in consequence of sin, the lawful property of Satan, and inrepresenting the victory over Satan as an outwitting of the enemy, who had noclaim to the sinless soul of Jesus, and therefore could not keep it in death.The ransom was paid, not to God, but to Satan, who thereby lost his right toman. Here Origen touches on mythical Gnosticism. He contemplates the death ofChrist, however, from other points of view also, as an atoning sacrifice oflove offered to God for the sins of the world; as the highest proof of perfectobedience to God; and as an example of patience. He singularly extends thevirtue of this redemption to the whole spirit world, to fallen angels as wellas men, in connection with his hypothesis of a final restoration. The only oneof the fathers who accompanies him in this is Gregory of Nyssa.

Athanasius, in his early youth,at the beginning of the next period, wrote the first systematic treatise onredemption and answer to the question 'Cur Deus homo?'1100 But it was left for the Latin church, after the epoch-makingtreatise of Anselm, to develop this important doctrine in its various aspects.

§ 154. Other Doctrines.

The doctrine of the subjectiveappropriation of salvation, including faith, justification, andsanctification, was as yet far less perfectly formed than the objective dogmas;and in the nature of the case, must follow the latter. If any one expects tofind in this period, or in any of the church fathers, Augustin himself notexcepted, the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone, asthe 'articulusstantis aut cadentis ecclesiae' be will be greatly disappointed. The incarnation of theLogos, his true divinity and true humanity, stand almost unmistakably in theforeground, as the fundamental truths. Paul’s doctrine of justification, exceptperhaps in Clement of Rome, who joins it with the doctrine of James, is leftvery much out of view, and awaits the age of the Reformation to be morethoroughly established and understood. The fathers lay chief stress onsanctification and good works, and show the already existing germs of the RomanCatholic doctrine of the meritoriousness and even the supererogatorymeritoriousness of Christian virtue. It was left to modern evangelical theologyto develop more fully the doctrines of soteriology and subjective Christianity.

The doctrine of the church, asthe communion of grace , we have already considered in the chapter on theconstitution of the church,1101and the doctrine of thesacraments, as the objective means of appropriating grace, in the chapter onworship.1102

§ 155. Eschatology. Immortality and Resurrection.

I. General Eschatology:

Chr. W Flugge:Geschichte des Glaubens an Unsterblichkeit,Auferstchung, Gericht und Vergeltung. 3 Theile, Leipz. 1794–1800. Part III. in 2 vols. gives ahistory of the Christian doctriNe. Not completed.

William Rounseville Alger (Unitarian): A Critical History of the Doctrine of aFuture Life. With a Complete Literature on the Subject. Philad. 1864, tenthed. with six new chs. Boston, 1878. He treats of the patristic doctrine in PartFourth, ch. 1. p. 394–407. The Bibliographical Index by Prof. Ezra Abbot, of Cambridge, contains aclassified list of over 5000 books on the subject, and is unequalled inbibliographical literature for completeness and accuracy.

Edm. Spiess: Entwicklungsgeschichteder Vorstellungen vom Zustand nach dem Tode. Jena, 1877. This book of 616 pages omits theChristian eschatology.

II. Greek and Roman Eschatology:

C. Fr. Nägelsbach: Diehomerische Theologie in ihrem Zusammenhang dargestellt. Nürnberg, 1840.

The same: Dienachhomerische Theologie des griechischen Volksglaubens bis auf Alexander. Nürnberg, 1857.

Aug Arndt: DieAnsichten der Alten über Leben, Tod und Unsterblichkeit. Frankfurt a. M. 1874.

Lehrs: Vorstellungender Griechen über das Fortleben nach dem Tode. Second ed. 1875.

Ludwig Friedlaender: Sittengeschichte Roms, fifth ed. Leipz. 1881, vol. III.p. 681–717 (Der Unsterblichkeitsglaube).

III. Jewish Eschatology;

A. Kahle: BiblischeEschatologie des Alten Testaments. Gotha, 1870.

A. Wahl: Unsterblichkeits-undVergeltungslehre des alttestamentlichen Hebraismus. Jena, 1871.

Dr. Ferdinand Weber(d. 1879): System der Altsynagogalen Palaestinischen Theologieaus Targum, Midrasch und Talmud. Ed. by Franz Delitzsch and Georg Schnedermann. Leipzig,1880. See chs. XXI. 322–332; XXIV. 371–386.

Aug Wünsche: DieVorstellungen vom Zustande nach dem Tode nach apokryphen, Talmud, undKirchenvätern In the 'Jahrbücher für Prot.Theol.' Leipz. 1880

Bissel: The Eschatology of theApocrypha. In the ' Bibliotheca Sacra,' 1879.

IV. Christian Eschatology:

See the relevantchapters in Flügge, and Alger, as above.

Dr. Edward Beecher: History of Opinionson the Scriptural Doctrine of Retribution. New York, 1878 (334 pages).

The relevantsections in the Doctrine Histories of Münscher,Neander, Gieseler, Baur,Hagenbach (H. B. Smith’s ed. vol. I. 213 sqq. and 368 sqq.), Shedd, Friedrich Nitzsch (I. 397 sqq.)

A large number ofmonographs on Death, Hades, Purgatory, Resurrection, Future Punishment. See thenext sections.

Christianity—and human lifeitself, with its countless problems and mysteries—has no meaning without thecertainty of a future world of rewards and punishments, for which the presentlife serves as a preparatory school. Christ represents himself as 'theResurrection and the Life,' and promises 'eternal life' to allwho believe in Him. On his resurrection the church is built, and without it thechurch could never have come into existence. The resurrection of the body andthe life everlasting are among the fundamental articles of the early baptismalcreeds. The doctrine of the future life, though last in the logical order ofsystematic theology, was among the first in the consciousness of theChristians, and an unfailing source of comfort and strength in times of trialand persecution. It stood in close connection with the expectation of theLord’s glorious reappearance. It is the subject of Paul’s first Epistles, thoseto the Thessalonians, and is prominently discussed in the fifteenth chapter ofFirst Corinthians. He declares the Christians 'the most pitiable,'because the most deluded and uselessly self-sacrificing, 'of allmen,' if their hope in Christ were confined to this life.

The ante-Nicene church was astranger in the midst of a hostile world, and longed for the unfading crownwhich awaited the faithful confessor and martyr beyond the grave. Such a mightyrevolution as the conversion of the heathen emperor was not dreamed of even asa remote possibility, except perhaps by the far-sighted Origen. Among the fivecauses to which Gibbon traces the rapid progress of the Christian religion heassigns the second place to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Weknow nothing whatever of a future world which lies beyond the boundaries of ourobservation and experience, except what God has chosen to reveal to us. Left tothe instincts and aspirations of nature, which strongly crave after immortalityand glory, we can reach at best only probabilities; while the gospel gives usabsolute certainty, sealed by the resurrection of Christ.

1. The heathen notions of the future life were vague and confused.The Hindoos, Babylonians, and Egyptians had a lively sense of immortality, butmixed with the idea of endless migrations and transformations. The Buddhists,starting from the idea that existence is want, and want is suffering, make itthe chief end of man to escape such migrations, and by various mortificationsto prepare for final absorption in Nirwana. The popular belief among theancient Greeks and Romans was that man passes after death into the Underworld,the Greek Hades, the Roman Orcus. According to Homer, Hades is adark abode in the interior of the earth, with an entrance at the Westernextremity of the Ocean, where the rays of the sun do not penetrate. Charoncarries the dead over the stream Acheron, and the three-headed dog Cerberuswatches the entrance and allows none to pass out. There the spirits exist in adisembodied state and lead a shadowy dream-life. A vague distinction was madebetween two regions in Hades, an Elysium (also 'the Islands of theBlessed') for the good, and Tartarus for the bad. 'Poets andpainters,' says Gibbon, peopled the infernal regions with so many phantomsand monsters, who dispensed their rewards and punishments with so littleequity, that a solemn truth, the most congenial to the human heart, wasoppressed and disgraced by the absurd mixture of the wildest fictions. Theeleventh book of the Odyssey gives a very dreary and incoherent account of theinfernal shades. Pindar and Virgil have embellished the picture; but even thosepoets, though more correct than their great model, are guilty of very strangeinconsistencies.'1103

Socrates, Plato, Cicero, Seneca,and Plutarch rose highest among the ancient philosophers in their views of thefuture life, but they reached only to belief in its probability—not in itscertainty. Socrates, after be was condemned to death, said to his judges:'Death is either an eternal sleep, or the transition to a new life; but inneither case is it an evil;'1104and he drank with playful ironythe fatal hemlock. Plato, viewing the human soul as a portion of the eternal,infinite, all-pervading deity, believed in its pre-existence before thispresent life, and thus had a strong ground of hope for its continuance afterdeath. All the souls (according to his Phaedon and Gorgias, passinto the spirit-world, the righteous into the abodes of bliss, where they liveforever in a disembodied state, the wicked into Tartarus for punishment andpurification (which notion prepared the way for purgatory). Plutarch, thepurest and noblest among the Platonists, thought that immortality wasinseparably connected with belief in an all-ruling Providence, and looked withPlato to the life beyond as promising a higher knowledge of, and closerconformity to God, but only for those few who are here purified by virtue andpiety. In such rare cases, departure might be called an ascent to the stars, toheaven, to the gods, rather than a descent to Hades. He also, at the death ofhis daughter, expresses his faith in the blissful state of infants who die ininfancy. Cicero, in his Tusculan Questions and treatise De Senectute, reflects in classical language'the ignorance, the errors, and the uncertainty of the ancientphilosophers with regard to the immortality of the soul.' Though stronglyleaning to a positive view, he yet found it no superfluous task to quiet thefear of death in case the soul should perish with the body. The Stoics believedonly in a limited immortality, or denied it altogether, and justified suicidewhen life became unendurable. The great men of Greece and Rome were notinfluenced by the idea of a future world as a motive of action. During thedebate on the punishment of Catiline and his fellow-conspirators, Julius Caesaropenly declared in the Roman Senate that death dissolves all the ills ofmortality, and is the boundary of existence beyond which there is no more carenor joy, no more punishment for sin, nor any reward for virtue. The youngerCato, the model Stoic, agreed with Caesar; yet before he made an end to hislife at Utica, he read Plato’s Phaedon. Seneca once dreamed ofimmortality, and almost approached the Christian hope of the birth-day ofeternity, if we are to trust his rhetoric, but afterwards he awoke from thebeautiful dream and committed suicide. The elder Pliny, who found a tragicdeath under the lava of Vesuvius, speaks of the future life as an invention ofman’s vanity and selfishness, and thinks that body and soul have no moresensation after death than before birth; death becomes doubly painful if it isonly the beginning of another indefinite existence. Tacitus speaks but once ofimmortality, and then conditionally; and he believed only in the immortality offame. Marcus Aurelius, in sad resignation, bids nature, 'Give what thouwilt, and take back again what and when thou wilt.'

These were noble and earnest,Romans. What can be expected from the crown of frivolous men of the world whomoved within the limits of matter and sense and made present pleasure andenjoyment the chief end of life? Thesurviving wife of an Epicurean philosopher erected a monument to him, with theinscription 'to the eternal sleep.'1105 Not a few heathen epitaphs openly profess the doctrine that deathends all; while, in striking contrast with them, the humble Christianinscriptions in the catacombs express the confident hope of future bliss andglory in the uninterrupted communion of the believer with Christ and God.

Yet the scepticism of theeducated and half-educated could not extinguish the popular belief in theimperial age. The number of cheerless and hopeless materialistic epitaphs is,after all, very small as compared with the many thousands which reveal no suchdoubt, or express a belief in some kind of existence beyond the grave.1106

Of a resurrection of the bodythe Greeks and Romans had no conception, except in the form of shades andspectral outlines, which were supposed to surround the disembodied spirits, andto make them to some degree recognizable. Heathen philosophers, like Celsus,ridiculed the resurrection of the body as useless, absurd, and impossible.

2. The Jewish doctrine is far in advance of heathen notions andconjectures, but presents different phases of development.

(a) The Mosaic writingsare remarkably silent about the future life, and emphasize the present ratherthan future consequences of the observance or non-observance of the law(because it had a civil or political as well as spiritual import); and hencethe Sadducees accepted them, although they denied the resurrection (perhapsalso the immortality of the soul). The Pentateuch contains, however, someremote and significant hints of immortality, as in the tree of life with itssymbolic import;1107in the mysterious translation of Enoch as areward for his piety;1108in the prohibition of necromancy;1109in the patriarchal phrase fordying: 'to be gathered to his fathers,' or 'to his people;'1110and last, though not least, inthe self-designation of Jehovah as 'the God of Abraham, Isaac, andJacob,' which implies their immortality, since 'God is not the God ofthe dead, but of the living.'1111 What has an eternal meaning for God must itself be eternal.

(b) In the later writingsof the Old Testament, especially during and after the exile, the doctrine ofimmortality and resurrection comes out plainly.1112 Daniel’s vision reaches out even to the final resurrection of'many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth to everlastinglife,' and of 'some to shame and everlasting contempt,' andprophesies that 'they that are wise shall shine as the brightness of thefirmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever andever.'1113

But before Christ, who firstrevealed true life, the Hebrew Sheol, the general receptacle of departingsouls, remained, like the Greek Hades, a dark and dreary abode, and is sodescribed in the Old Testament.1114 Cases like Enoch’s translation and Elijah’s ascent are altogetherunique and exceptional, and imply the meaning that death is contrary to man’soriginal destination, and may be overcome by the power of holiness.

(c) The Jewish Apocrypha(the Book of Wisdom, and the Second Book of Maccabees), and later Jewishwritings (the Book of Enoch, the Apocalypse of Ezra) show some progress: theydistinguish between two regions in Sheol—Paradise or Abraham’s Bosom for therighteous, and Gehinnom or Gehenna for the wicked; they emphasize theresurrection of the body, and the future rewards and punishments.

(d) The Talmud addsvarious fanciful embellishments. It puts Paradise and Gehenna in closeproximity, measures their extent, and distinguishes different departments inboth corresponding to the degrees of merit and guilt. Paradise is sixty timesas large as the world, and Hell sixty times as large as Paradise, for the badpreponderate here and hereafter. According to other rabbinical testimonies,both are well nigh boundless. The Talmudic descriptions of Paradise (as thoseof the Koran) mix sensual and spiritual delights. The righteous enjoy thevision of the Shechina and feast with the patriarchs, and with Moses and Davidof the flesh of leviathan, and drink wine from the cup of salvation. Eachinhabitant has a house according to his merit. Among the punishments of hellthe chief place is assigned to fire, which is renewed every week after theSabbath. The wicked are boiled like the flesh in the pot, but the badIsraelites are not touched by fire, and are otherwise tormented. The severestpunishment is reserved for idolaters, hypocrites, traitors, and apostates. Asto the duration of future punishment the school of Shammai held that it waseverlasting; while the school of Hillel inclined to the milder view of apossible redemption after repentance and purification. Some Rabbis taught thathell will cease, and that the sun will burn up and annihilate the wicked.1115

3. The Christian doctrine of the future life differs from the heathen,and to a less extent also from the Jewish, in the following important points:

(a) It gives to thebelief in a future state the absolute certainty of divine revelation, sealed bythe fact of Christ’s resurrection, and thereby imparts to the present life animmeasurable importance, involving endless issues.

(b) It connects theresurrection of the body with the immortality of the soul, and thus givesconcrete completion to the latter, and saves the whole individuality of manfrom destruction.

(c) It views death as thepunishment of sin, and therefore as something terrible, from which natureshrinks. But its terror has been broken, and its sting extracted by Christ.

(d) It qualifies the ideaof a future state by the doctrine of sin and redemption, and thus makes it tothe believer a state of absolute holiness and happiness, to the impenitentsinner a state of absolute misery. Death and immortality are a blessing to theone, but a terror to the other; the former can hail them with joy; the latterhas reason to tremble.

(e) It gives greatprominence to the general judgment, after the resurrection, which determinesthe ultimate fate of all men according to their works done in this earthlylife.

But we must distinguish, in thismysterious article, what is of faith, and what is private opinion andspeculation.

The return of Christ to judgmentwith its eternal rewards and punishment is the centre of the eschatologicalfaith of the church. The judgment is preceded by the general resurrection, andfollowed by life everlasting.

This faith is expressed in theoecumenical creeds.

The Apostles’ Creed:

'He shall come to judge thequick and the dead,' and 'I believe in the resurrection of the bodyand life everlasting.'

The Nicene Creed:

'He shall come again, withglory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.'And we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the worldto come.'

The Athanasian Creed, so called,adds to these simple statements a damnatory clause at the beginning, middle,and end, and makes salvation depend on belief in the orthodox catholic doctrineof the Trinity and the Incarnation, as therein stated. But that document is ofmuch later origin, and cannot be traced beyond the sixth century.

The liturgies which claimapostolic or post-apostolic origin, give devotional expression to the sameessential points in the eucharistic sacrifice.

The Clementine liturgy:

'Being mindful, therefore,of His passion and death, and resurrection from the dead, and return into theheavens, and His future second appearing, wherein He is to come with glory andpower to judge the quick and the dead, and to recompense to every one accordingto his works.'

The liturgy of James:

'His second glorious andawful appearing, when He shall come with glory to judge the quick and the dead,and render to every one according to his works.'

The liturgy of Mark:

'His second terrible anddreadful coming, in which He will come to judge righteously the quick and thedead, and to render to each man according to his works.'

All that is beyond theserevealed and generally received articles must be left free. The time of theSecond Advent, the preceding revelation of Antichrist, the millennium before orafter the general judgment, the nature of the disembodied state between deathand resurrection, the mode and degree of future punishment, the proportion ofthe saved and lost, the fate of the heathen and all who die ignorant ofChristianity, the locality of heaven and hell, are open questions ineschatology about which wise and good men in the church have always differed,and will differ to the end. The Bible speaks indeed of ascending toheaven and descending to hell, but this is simply the unavoidablepopular language, as when it speaks of the rising and setting sun. We do thesame, although we know that in the universe of God there is neither above norbelow, and that the sun does not move around the earth. The supernatural worldmay be very far from us, beyond the stars and beyond the boundaries of thevisible created world (if it has any boundaries), or very near and round aboutus. At all events there is an abundance of room for all God’s children.'In my Father’s house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place foryou' (John 14:2). This suffices for faith.

§ 156. Between Death and Resurrection.

Dav. Blondel:Traité de la créance des Pères touchnt l’état des amesaprès cette vie.Charenton, 1651.

J. A. Baumgarten: Historia doctrinae de StatuAnimarum separatarum. Hal. 1754.

Höpfner: De Origine dogm. de Purgatorio. Hal. 1792.

J. A. Ernesti: De veterum Patrum opinione deStatu Animarum a corpore sejunctar. LiPs. 1794.

Herbert Mortimer Luckock (Canon of Ely, high-Anglican): After Death. An Examination of theTestimony of Primitive Times respecting the State of the Faithful Dead, andtheir Relationship to the Living. London, third ed. 1881. Defends prayersfor the dead.

Among the darkest points ineschatology is the middle state, or the condition of the soul between death andresurrection. It is difficult to conceive of a disembodied state of happinessor woe without physical organs for enjoyment and suffering. Justin Martyr heldthat the souls retain their sensibility after death, otherwise the bad wouldhave the advantage over the good. Origen seems to have assumed some refined,spiritual corporeity which accompanies the soul on its lonely journey, and isthe germ of the resurrection body; but the speculative opinions of thatprofound thinker were looked upon with suspicion, and some of them wereultimately condemned. The idea of the sleep of the soul (psychopannychia) hadsome advocates, but was expressly rejected by Tertullian.1116 Others held that the soul died with the body, and was created anewat the resurrection.1117 Theprevailing view was that the soul continued in a conscious, though disembodiedstate, by virtue either of inherent or of communicated immortality. The natureof that state depends upon the moral character formed in this life either forweal or woe, without the possibility of a change except in the same direction.

The catholic doctrine of the status intermedius was chiefly derived from theJewish tradition of the Sheol, from the parable of Dives and Lazarus (Luke16:19 sqq.), and from the passages of Christ’s descent into Hades.1118 The utterances of the ante-Nicene fathers are somewhat vague andconfused, but receive light from the more mature statements of the Nicene andpost-Nicene fathers, and may be reduced to the following points:1119

1. The pious who died beforeChrist from Abel or Adam down to John the Baptist (with rare exceptions, asEnoch, Moses, and Elijah) were detained in a part of Sheol,1120waiting for the first Advent,and were released by Christ after the crucifixion and transferred to Paradise.This was the chief aim and result of the descensus ad inferos, as understood in the church long before it becamean article of the Apostles’ Creed, first in Aquileja (where, however, Rufinusexplained it wrongly, as being equivalent to burial), and then in Rome. Hermasof Rome and Clement of Alexandria supposed that the patriarchs and OldTestament saints, before their translation, were baptized by Christ and theapostles. Irenaeus repeatedly refers to the descent of Christ to the spirit-worldas the only means by which the benefits of the redemption could be made knownand applied to the pious dead of former ages.1121

2. Christian martyrs andconfessors, to whom were afterwards added other eminent saints, passimmediately after death into heaven to the blessed vision of God.1122

3. The majority of Christianbelievers, being imperfect, enter for an indefinite period into a preparatorystate of rest and happiness, usually called Paradise (comp. Luke 23:41) orAbraham’s Bosom (Luke 16:23). There they are gradually purged of remaininginfirmities until they are ripe for heaven, into which nothing is admitted butabsolute purity. Origen assumed a constant progression to higher and higherregions of knowledge and bliss. (After the fifth or sixth century, certainlysince Pope Gregory I., Purgatory was substituted for Paradise).

4. The locality of Paradise isuncertain: some imagined it to be a higher region of Hades beneath the earth,yet 'afar off' from Gehenna, and separated from it by 'a greatgulf' (comp. Luke 16:23, 26);1123others transferred it to thelower regions of heaven above the earth, yet clearly distinct from the finalhome of the blessed.1124

5. Impenitent Christians andunbelievers go down to the lower regions of Hades (Gehenna, Tartarus, Hell)into a preparatory state of misery and dreadful expectation of the finaljudgment. From the fourth century Hades came to be identified with Hell, andthis confusion passed into many versions of the Bible, including that of KingJames.

6. The future fate of theheathen and of unbaptized children was left in hopeless darkness, except byJustin and the Alexandrian fathers, who extended the operations of divine gracebeyond the limits of the visible church. Justin Martyr must have believed, fromhis premises, in the salvation of all those heathen who had in this lifefollowed the light of the Divine Logos and died in a state of unconsciousChristianity, or preparedness for Christianity. For, he says, 'those wholived with the Logos were Christians, although they were esteemed atheists, asSocrates and Heraclitus, and others like them.'1125

7. There are, in the otherworld, different degrees of happiness and misery according to the degrees ofmerit and guilt. This is reasonable in itself, and supported by scripture.

8. With the idea of theimperfection of the middle state and the possibility of progressiveamelioration, is connected the commemoration of the departed, and prayer intheir behalf. No trace of the custom is found in the New Testament nor in thecanonical books of the Old, but an isolated example, which seems to implyhabit, occurs in the age of the Maccabees, when Judas Maccabaeus and hiscompany offered prayer and sacrifice for those slain in battle,' that theymight be delivered from sin.'1126 In old Jewish service-books there are prayers for the blessednessof the dead.1127 Thestrong sense of the communion of saints unbroken by death easily accounts forthe rise of a similar custom among the early Christians. Tertullian bears cleartestimony to its existence at his time. 'We offer,' he says'oblations for the dead on the anniversary of their birth,' i.e. theircelestial birthday.1128 He givesit as a mark of a Christian widow, that she prays for the soul of her husband,and requests for him refreshment and fellowship in the first resurrection; andthat she offers sacrifice on the anniversaries of his falling asleep.1129 Eusebius narrates that at the tomb of Constantine a vast crowd ofpeople, in company with the priests of God, with tears and great lamentationoffered their prayers to God for the emperor’s soul.1130 Augustin calls prayer for the pious dead in the eucharisticsacrifice an observance of the universal church, handed down from the fathers.1131 He himself remembered in prayer his godly mother at her dyingrequest.

This is confirmed by the ancientliturgies, which express in substance the devotions of the ante-Nicene age,although they were not committed to writing before the fourth century. Thecommemoration of the pious dead is an important part in the eucharisticprayers. Take the following from the Liturgy of St. James: 'Remember, OLord God, the spirits of whom we have made mention, and of whom we have notmade mention, who are of the true faith,1132from righteous Abel unto thisday; do Thou Thyself give them rest there in the land of the living, in Thykingdom, in the delight of Paradise,1133in the Bosom of Abraham and ofIsaac and of Jacob, our holy fathers; whence pain and grief and lamentationhave fled away: there the light of Thy countenance looks upon them, and givesthem light for evermore.' The Clementine Liturgy in the eighth book of the'Apostolical Constitutions' has likewise a prayer 'for those whorest in faith,' in these words: 'We make an offering to Thee for allThy saints who have pleased Thee from the beginning of the world, patriarchs,prophets, just men, apostles, martyrs, confessors, bishops, elders, deacons,subdeacons, singers, virgins, widows, laymen, and all whose names Thou Thyselfknowest.'

9. These views of the middlestate in connection with prayers for the dead show a strong tendency to theRoman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, which afterwards came to prevail in theWest through the great weight of St. Augustin and Pope Gregory I. But there is,after all, a considerable difference. The ante-Nicene idea of the middle stateof the pious excludes, or at all events ignores, the idea of penal suffering,which is an essential part of the Catholic conception of purgatory. Itrepresents the condition of the pious as one of comparative happiness, inferioronly to the perfect happiness after the resurrection. Whatever and whereverParadise may be, it belongs to the heavenly world; while purgatory is supposedto be a middle region between heaven and hell, and to border rather on thelatter. The sepulchral inscriptions in the catacombs have a prevailinglycheerful tone, and represent the departed souls as being 'in peace'and 'living in Christ,' or 'in God.'1134 The same view is substantially preserved in the Oriental church,which holds that the souls of the departed believers may be aided by theprayers of the living, but are nevertheless 'in light and rest, with aforetaste of eternal happiness.'1135

Yet alongside with thisprevailing belief, there are traces of the purgatorial idea of suffering thetemporal consequences of sin, and a painful struggle after holiness. Origen,following in the path of Plato, used the term 'purgatorial fire,'1136by which the remaining stains ofthe soul shall be burned away; but he understood it figuratively, and connectedit with the consuming fire at the final judgment, while Augustin and Gregory I.transferred it to the middle state. The common people and most of the fathersunderstood it of a material fire; but this is not a matter of faith, and thereare Roman divines1137who confine the purgatorial sufferings to themind and the conscience. A material fire would be very harmless without amaterial body. A still nearer approach to the Roman purgatory was made byTertullian and Cyprian, who taught that a special satisfaction and penance wasrequired for sins committed after baptism, and that the last farthing must bepaid (Matt. 5:20) before the soul can be released from prison and enter intoheaven.

§ 157. After Judgment. Future Punishment.

The doctrine of theFathers on future punishment is discussed by Dr. Edward Beecher, l.c.,and in the controversial works called forth by Canon Farrar’s Eternal Hope(Five Sermons preached in Westminster Abbey, Nov. 1877. Lond., 1879.) Seeespecially

Dr. Pusey: 'What is of Faith as toEverlasting Punishment?' AReply to Dr. Farrar’s Challenge. Oxf. and Lond., second ed. 1880 (284pages).

Canon F. W. Farrar: Mercy and Judgment: A fewlast words on Christian Eschatology with reference to Dr. Pusey’s 'Whatis of Faith?' London and N. York, 1881 (485 pages). See chs. II.,III., IX.-XII. Farrar opposes with much fervor 'the current opinions aboutHell,' and reduces it to the smallest possible dimensions of time andspace, but expressly rejects Universalism. He accepts with Pusey the Romanizingview of 'future purification' (instead of 'probation'), andthus increases the number of the saved by withdrawing vast multitudes ofimperfect Christians from the awful doom.

After the general judgment wehave nothing revealed but the boundless prospect of aeonian life and aeoniandeath. This is the ultimate boundary of our knowledge.

There never was in the Christianchurch any difference of opinion concerning the righteous, who shall inheriteternal life and enjoy the blessed communion of God forever and ever. But thefinal fate of the impenitent who reject the offer of salvation admits of threeanswers to the reasoning mind: everlasting punishment, annihilation,restoration (after remedial punishment and repentance).

I. Everlasting Punishment of the wicked always was, and alwayswill be the orthodox theory. It was held by the Jews at the time of Christ,with the exception of the Sadducces, who denied the resurrection.1138 It is endorsed by the highest authority of the most mercifulBeing, who sacrificed his own life for the salvation of sinners.1139

Consequently the majority of thefathers who speak plainly on this terrible subject, favor this view.

Ignatius speaks of 'theunquenchable fire;'1140Hermas, of some 'who will not besaved,' but 'shall utterly perish,' because they will notrepent.1141

Justin Martyr teaches that thewicked or hopelessly impenitent will be raised at the judgment to receiveeternal punishment. He speaks of it in twelve passages. 'Briefly,' hesays, 'what we look for, and have learned from Christ, and what we teach,is as follows. Plato said to the same effect, that Rhadamanthus and Minos wouldpunish the wicked when they came to them; we say that the same thing will takeplace; but that the judge will be Christ, and that their souls will be unitedto the same bodies, and will undergo an eternal punishment (aivwnivan kovlasin) and not, as Plato said, a period of only athousand years (ciliontaeth' perivodon)'1142 In another place: 'We believe that all who live wickedly anddo not repent, will be punished in eternal fire' (ejn aijwnivw/ puriv).1143Such language is inconsistent with theannihilation theory for which Justin M. has been claimed.1144 He does, indeed, reject with several other ante-Nicene writers,the Platonic idea that the soul is in itself and independently immortal1145and hints at the possibility ofthe final destruction of the wicked,1146but he puts that possibilitycountless ages beyond the final judgment, certainly beyond the Platonicmillennium of punishment, so that it loses all practical significance andceases to give relief.

Irenaeus has been represented asholding inconsistently all three theories, or at least as hesitating betweenthe orthodox view and the annihilation scheme. He denies, like Justin Martyr,the necessary and intrinsic immortality of the soul, and makes it dependent onGod for the continuance in life as well as for life itself.1147 But in paraphrasing the apostolic rule of faith he mentionseternal punishment, and in another place he accepts as certain truth that'eternal fire is prepared for sinners,' because 'the Lord openlyaffirms, and the other Scriptures prove' it.1148 Hippolytus approves the eschatology of the Pharisees as regardsthe resurrection, the immortality of the soul, the judgment and conflagration,everlasting life and 'everlasting punishment;' and in another placebe speaks of 'the rayless scenery of gloomy Tartarus, where never shines abeam from the radiating voice of the Word.'1149 According to Tertullian the future punishment 'will continue,not for a long time, but forever.'1150 It does credit to his feelings when he says that no innocent mancan rejoice in the punishment of the guilty, however just, but will grieverather. Cyprian thinks that the fear of hell is the only ground of the fear ofdeath to any one, and that we should have before our eyes the fear of God andeternal punishment much more than the fear of men and brief suffering.1151 The generality of this belief among Christians is testified byCelsus, who tells them that the heathen priests threaten the same 'eternalpunishment' as they, and that the only question was which was right, sinceboth claimed the truth with equal confidence.1152

II. The final Annihilation of the wicked removes alldiscord from the universe of God at the expense of the natural immortality ofthe soul, and on the ground that sin will ultimately destroy the sinner, andthus destroy itself.

This theory is attributed toJustin Martyr, Irenaeus, and others, who believed only in a conditionalimmortality which may be forfeited; but, as we have just seen, their utterancesin favor of eternal punishment are too clear and strong to justify theinference which they might have drawn from their psychology.

Arnobius, however, seems to havebelieved in actual annihilation; for he speaks of certain souls that 'areengulfed and burned up,' or 'hurled down and having been reduced tonothing, vanish in the frustration of a perpetual destruction.'1153

III. The Apokatastasis or final restoration of all rational beings toholiness and happiness. This seems to be the most satisfactory speculativesolution of the problem of sin, and secures perfect harmony in the creation,but does violence to freedom with its power to perpetuate resistance, andIgnores the hardening nature of sin and the ever increasing difficulty ofrepentance. If conversion and salvation are an ultimate necessity, they losetheir moral character, and moral aim.

Origen was the first ChristianUniversalist. He taught a final restoration, but with modesty as a speculationrather than a dogma, in his youthful work De Principiis (written before 231), which was made known in theWest by the loose version of Rufinus (398).1154 In his later writings there are only faint traces of it; he seemsat least to have modified it, and exempted Satan from final repentance andsalvation, but this defeats the end of the theory.1155 He also obscured it by his other theory of the necessarymutability of free will, and the constant succession of fall and redemption.1156

Universal salvation (includingSatan) was clearly taught by Gregory of Nyssa, a profound thinker of the schoolof Origen (d. 395), and, from an exegetical standpoint, by the eminentAntiochian divines Diodorus of Tarsus (d. 394) and Theodore of Mopsuestia (d.429), and many Nestorian bishops.1157 In the West also at the time of Augustin (d. 430) there were, ashe says, 'multitudes who did not believe in eternal punishment.' Butthe view of Origen was rejected by Epiphanius, Jerome, and Augustin, and atlast condemned as one of the Origenistic errors under the Emperor Justinian(543).1158

Since that time universalism was regarded as a heresy,but is tolerated in Protestant churches as a private speculative opinion orcharitable hope.1159

§ 158. Chiliasm.

Corrodi: KritischeGeschichte des Chiliasmus. 1781. Second ed. Zürich, 1794. 4 vols. Very unsatisfactory.

Münscher.: Lehrevom tausendjährigen Reich in den 3 ersten Jahrh. (in Henke’s 'Magazin.'VI. 2, p. 233 sqq.)

D. T. Taylor: The Voice of the Church onthe Coming and Kingdom of the Redeemer; a History of the Doctrine of the Reignof Christ on Earth. Revised by Hastings. Second ed. Peace Dale, R. I. 1855.Pre-millennial.

W. Volck: DerChiliasmus. Eine historisch exeget. Studie. Dorpat, 1869 Millennarian.

A. Koch: Dastausendjährige Reich. Basel, 1872. Millennarian against Hengstenberg.

C. A. Briggs: Origin and History ofPremillennarianism. In the 'Lutheran Quarterly Review.'Gettysburg, Pa., for April, 1879. 38 pages. Anti-millennial, occasioned by the'Prophetic Conference' of Pre-millennarians, held in New York, Nov.1878. Discusses the ante-Nicene doctrine.

Geo. N. H. Peters: The Theocratic Kingdom ofour Lord Jesus, the Christ. N. York, announced for publ. in 3 vols. 1884.Pre-millennarian.

A complete criticalhistory is wanting, but the controversial and devotional literatureon the subject is very large, especially in the English language. We mention 1)on the millennial side (embracing widely different shades of opinion). (a)English and American divines: Jos. Mede (1627), Twisse, Abbadie, Beverly T.Burnet, Bishop Newton, Edward Irving, Birks, Bickersteth, Horatio and AndrewBonar (two brothers), E. B. Elliott (Horae Apoc.), John Cumming, DeanAlford, Nathan Lord, John Lillie, James H. Brooks, E. R. Craven, Nath. West, J.A. Seiss, S. H. Kellogg, Peters, and the writings of the Second Adventists, theIrvingites, and the Plymouth Brethren. (b) German divines: Spener (Hoffnungbesserer Zeiten),Peterson, Bengel (Erklärte Offenbarung Johannis, 1740), Oetinger,Stilling, Lavater, Auberlen (on Dan. and Revel.), Martensen, Rothe, vonHofmann, Löhe, Delitzsch, Volck, Luthardt. 2) On the anti-millennial side—(a)English and American: Bishop Hall, R. Baxter, David Brown (Christ’s SecondAdvent), Fairbairn, Urwick, G. Bush, Mos. Stuart (on Revel.), Cowles(on Dan. ind Revel.), Briggs, etc. (b) German: Gerhard, Maresius,Hengstenberg, Keil, Kliefoth, Philippi, and many others. See the articles'Millennarianism' by Semisch, and 'Pre-Millennarianism' byKellog, in Schaff-Herzog, vols. II. and III., and the literature there given.

The most striking point in theeschatology of the ante-Nicene age is the prominent chiliasm, ormillennarianism, that is the belief of a visible reign of Christ in glory onearth with the risen saints for a thousand years, before the generalresurrection and judgment.1160 It wasindeed not the doctrine of the church embodied in any creed or form ofdevotion, but a widely current opinion of distinguished teachers, such asBarnabas, Papias, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Methodius, andLactantius; while Caius, Origen, Dionysius the Great, Eusebius (as afterwardsJerome and Augustin) opposed it.

The Jewish chiliasm rested on acarnal misapprehension of the Messianic kingdom, a literal interpretation ofprophetic figures, and an overestimate of the importance of the Jewish peopleand the holy city as the centre of that kingdom. It was developed shortlybefore and after Christ in the apocalyptic literature, as the Book of Enoch,the Apocalypse of Baruch, 4^th Esdras, the Testaments of the TwelvePatriarchs, and the Sibylline Books. It was adopted by the heretical sect ofthe Ebionites, and the Gnostic Cerinthus.1161

The Christian chiliasm is theJewish chiliasm spiritualized and fixed upon the second, instead of the first,coming of Christ. It distinguishes, moreover, two resurrections, one before andanother after the millennium, and makes the millennial reign of Christ only aprelude to his eternal reign in heaven, from which it is separated by a shortinterregnum of Satan. The millennium is expected to come not as the legitimateresult of a historical process but as a sudden supernatural revelation.

The advocates of this theoryappeal to the certain promises of the Lord,1162but particularly to thehieroglyphic passage of the Apocalypse, which teaches a millennial reign ofChrist upon this earth after the first resurrection and before the creation ofthe new heavens and the new earth.1163

In connection with this thegeneral expectation prevailed that the return of the Lord was near, thoughuncertain and unascertainable as to its day and hour, so that believers may bealways ready for it.1164 Thishope, through the whole age of persecution, was a copious fountain ofencouragement and comfort under the pains of that martyrdom which sowed inblood the seed of a bountiful harvest for the church.

Among the Apostolic Fathers Barnabas is the first and the only onewho expressly teaches a pre-millennial reign of Christ on earth. He considersthe Mosaic history of the creation a type of six ages of labor for the world,each lasting a thousand years, and of a millennium of rest; since with God'one day is as a thousand years.' The millennial Sabbath on earthwill be followed by an eighth and eternal day in a new world, of which theLord’s Day (called by Barnabas 'the eighth day') is the type.1165

Papias of Hierapolis, a pious butcredulous contemporary of Polycarp, entertained quaint and extravagant notionsof the happiness of the millennial reign, for which he appealed to apostolictradition. He put into the mouth of Christ himself a highly figurativedescription of the more than tropical fertility of that period, which ispreserved and approved by Irenaeus, but sounds very apocryphal.1166

JustinMartyr representsthe transition from the Jewish Christian to the Gentile Christian chiliasm. Hespeaks repeatedly of the second parousia of Christ in the clouds of heaven,surrounded by the holy angels. It will be preceded by the near manifestation ofthe man of sin (a[nqrwpo' th'ajnomiva') whospeaks blasphemies against the most high God, and will rule three and a halfyears. He is preceded by heresies and false prophets.1167 Christ will then raise the patriarchs, prophets, and pious Jews,establish the millennium, restore Jerusalem, and reign there in the midst ofhis saints; after which the second and general resurrection and judgment of theworld will take place. He regarded this expectation of the earthly perfectionof Christ’s kingdom as the key-stone of pure doctrine, but adds that many pureand devout Christians of his day did not share this opinion.1168 After the millennium the world will be annihilated, ortransformed.1169 In histwo Apologies, Justin teaches the usual view of the general resurrectionand judgment, and makes no mention of the millennium, but does not exclude it.1170 The other Greek Apologists are silent on the subject, and cannotbe quoted either for or against chiliasm.

Irenaeus, on the strength of traditionfrom St. John and his disciples, taught that after the destruction of the Romanempire, and the brief raging of antichrist (lasting three and a half years or1260 days), Christ will visibly appear, will bind Satan, will reign at therebuilt city of Jerusalem with the little band of faithful confessors and thehost of risen martyrs over the nations of the earth, and will celebrate themillennial sabbath of preparation for the eternal glory of heaven; then, aftera temporary liberation of Satan, follows the final victory, the generalresurrection, the judgment of the world, and the consummation in the newheavens and the new earth.1171

Tertullianwas an enthusiasticChiliast, and pointed not only to the Apocalypse, but also to the predictionsof the Montanist prophets.1172 But theMontanists substituted Pepuza in Phrygia for Jerusalem, as the centre ofChrist’s reign, and ran into fanatical excesses, which brought chiliasm intodiscredit, and resulted in its condemnation by several synods in Asia Minor.1173

After Tertullian, andindependently of Montanism, chiliasm was taught by Commodian towards the close of the third century,1174Lactantius,1175and Victorinus of Petau,1176at the beginning of the fourth.Its last distinguished advocates in the East were Methodius (d., a martyr, 311), the opponent of Origen,1177and Apollinaris of Laodicea in Syria.

We now turn to theanti-Chiliasts. The opposition began during the Montanist movement in AsiaMinor. Caius of Rome attacked both Chiliasm and Montanism, and traced theformer to the hated heretic Cerinthus.1178 The Roman church seems never to have sympathized with either, andprepared itself for a comfortable settlement and normal development in thisworld. In Alexandria, Origen opposed chiliasm as a Jewish dream, andspiritualized the symbolical language of the prophets.1179 His distinguished pupil, Dionysius the Great (d. about 264),checked the chiliastic movement when it was revived by Nepos in Egypt, andwrote an elaborate work against it, which is lost. He denied the Apocalypse tothe apostle John, and ascribed it to a presbyter of that name.1180 Eusebius inclined to the same view.

But the crushing blow came fromthe great change in the social condition and prospects of the church in theNicene age. After Christianity, contrary to all expectation, triumphed in theRoman empire, and was embraced by the Caesars themselves, the millennial reign,instead of being anxiously waited and prayed for, began to be dated either fromthe first appearance of Christ, or from the conversion of Constantine and thedownfall of paganism, and to be regarded as realized in the glory of thedominant imperial state-church. Augustin, who himself had formerly entertainedchiliastic hopes, framed the new theory which reflected the social change, andwas generally accepted. The apocalyptic millennium he understood to be thepresent reign of Christ in the Catholic church, and the first resurrection, thetranslation of the martyrs and saints to heaven, where they participate inChrist’s reign.1181 It wasconsistent with this theory that towards the close of the first millennium ofthe Christian era there was a wide-spread expectation in Western Europe thatthe final judgment was at hand.

From the time of Constantine andAugustin chiliasm took its place among the heresies, and was rejectedsubsequently even by the Protestant reformers as a Jewish dream.1182 But it was revived from time to time as an article of faith andhope by pious individuals and whole sects, often in connection with historicpessimism, with distrust in mission work, as carried on by human agencies, withliteral interpretations of prophecy, and with peculiar notions aboutAntichrist, the conversion and restoration of the Jews, their return to theHoly Land, and also with abortive attempts to calculate 'the times andseasons' of the Second Advent, which 'the Father hath put in his ownpower' (Acts 1:7), and did not choose to reveal to his own Son in the daysof his flesh. In a free spiritual sense, however, millennarianism will alwayssurvive as the hope of a golden age of the church on earth, and of a greatsabbath of history after its many centuries of labor and strife. The churchmilitant ever longs after the church triumphant, and looks 'for newheavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness' (2 Pet. 3:13).'There remaineth a sabbath rest for the people of God.' (Heb. 4:9).

The New Testament (Ancient Greek: Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl.Hē Kainḕ Diathḗkē; Latin: Novum Testamentum) is the second part of the Christian biblical canon, the first being the Old Testament. The New Testament discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christianity. Christians regard both the Old and New Testaments together as sacred scripture.

The New Testament is a collection of Christian texts originally written in the Koine Greek language, at different times by various different authors. While the Old Testament canon varies somewhat between different Christian denominations, the 27-book canon of the New Testament has been almost universally recognized within Christianity since at least Late Antiquity. Thus, in almost all Christian traditions today, the New Testament consists of 27 books: the four canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), the Acts of the Apostles, the fourteen epistles of Paul, the seven catholic epistles, and the Book of Revelation.

The earliest known complete list of the 27 books of the New Testament is found in a letter written by Athanasius, a 4th-century bishop of Alexandria, dated to 367 AD.^[1] The 27-book New Testament was first formally canonized during the councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) in North Africa. PopeInnocent I ratified the same canon in 405, but it is probable that a Council in Rome in 382 under pope Damasus gave the same list first. These councils also provided the canon of the Old Testament, which included the apocryphal books.^[2]

There is no scholarly consensus on the date of composition of the latest New Testament texts. Conservative scholars John A. T. Robinson, Dan Wallace, and William F. Albright dated all the books of the New Testament before 70 AD.^[3] But most scholars date some New Testament texts much later than this. For example, Richard Pervo dates Luke-Acts to c. AD 115,^[4] and David Trobisch places Acts in the mid- to late second century, contemporaneous with the publication of the first New Testament canon.^{[5][note 1]}

• 2Books
  • 2.3Epistles
• 5Authors
• 6Dating the New Testament
• 8Development of the New Testament canon
• 10Textual variation
• 12Early versions
• 14Theological interpretation in Christian churches
  • 14.3Protestantism
• 21External links

Etymology[edit]

The use of the phrase New Testament (Koine Greek: Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, Hē Kainḕ Diathḗkē) to describe a collection of first and second-century Christian Greek scriptures can be traced back to Tertullian in his work Against Praxeas.^[6][7][8] Irenaeus uses the phrase 'New Testament' several times, but does not use it in reference to any written text.^[7] In Against Marcion, written c. 208 AD, Tertullian writes of:^[9]

the Divine Word, who is doubly edged with the two testaments of the law and the gospel.

And Tertullian continues later in the book, writing:^{[10][note 2]}

it is certain that the whole aim at which he [Marcion] has strenuously laboured, even in the drawing up of his Antitheses, centres in this, that he may establish a diversity between the Old and the New Testaments, so that his own Christ may be separate from the Creator, as belonging to this rival god, and as alien from the law and the prophets.

By the 4th century, the existence—even if not the exact contents—of both an Old and New Testament had been established. Lactantius, a 3rd–4th century Christian author wrote in his early-4th-century Latin Institutiones Divinae (Divine Institutes):^[11]

But all scripture is divided into two Testaments. That which preceded the advent and passion of Christ—that is, the law and the prophets—is called the Old; but those things which were written after His resurrection are named the New Testament. The Jews make use of the Old, we of the New: but yet they are not discordant, for the New is the fulfilling of the Old, and in both there is the same testator, even Christ, who, having suffered death for us, made us heirs of His everlasting kingdom, the people of the Jews being deprived and disinherited. As the prophet Jeremiah testifies when he speaks such things: 'Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new testament to the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not according to the testament which I made to their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; for they continued not in my testament, and I disregarded them, saith the Lord.'^{[Jer 31:31–32]} ... For that which He said above, that He would make a new testament to the house of Judah, shows that the old testament which was given by Moses was not perfect; but that which was to be given by Christ would be complete.

Books[edit]

The Gospels[edit]

Each of the four gospels in the New Testament narrates the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The word 'gospel' derives from the Old Englishgōd-spell^[12] (rarely godspel), meaning 'good news' or 'glad tidings'. The gospel was considered the 'good news' of the coming Kingdom of Messiah, and the redemption through the life and death of Jesus, the central Christian message.^[13] Gospel is a calque (word-for-word translation) of the Greek word εὐαγγέλιον, euangelion (eu- 'good', -angelion 'message').

Starting in the late second century, the four narrative accounts of the life and work of Jesus Christ have been referred to as 'The Gospel of ...' or 'The Gospel according to ...' followed by the name of the supposed author. The first author to explicitly name the canonical gospels is Irenaeus of Lyon,^[7][14] who promoted the four canonical gospels in his book Against Heresies, written around 180.^[15] Whatever these admittedly early ascriptions may imply about the sources behind or the perception of these gospels, they are anonymous compositions.

• The Gospel of Matthew, ascribed to the Apostle Matthew. This gospel begins with a genealogy of Jesus and a story of his birth that includes a visit from magi and a flight into Egypt, and it ends with the commissioning of the disciples by the resurrected Jesus.
• The Gospel of Mark, ascribed to Mark the Evangelist. This gospel begins with the preaching of John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus. Two different secondary endings were affixed to this gospel in the 2nd century.
• The Gospel of Luke, ascribed to Luke the Evangelist, who was not one of the Twelve Apostles, but was mentioned as a companion of the Apostle Paul and as a physician.^[16] This gospel begins with parallel stories of the birth and childhood of John the Baptist and Jesus and ends with appearances of the resurrected Jesus and his ascension into heaven.
• The Gospel of John, ascribed to John the Evangelist. This gospel begins with a philosophical prologue and ends with appearances of the resurrected Jesus. It is about Jesus's miracles.

The first three gospels listed above are classified as the Synoptic Gospels. They contain similar accounts of the events in Jesus's life and his teaching, due to their literary interdependence. The Gospel of John is structured differently and includes stories of several miracles of Jesus and sayings not found in the other three.

These four gospels that were eventually included in the New Testament were only a few among many other early Christian gospels. The existence of such texts is even mentioned at the beginning of the Gospel of Luke.^{[Luke 1:1–4]} Other early Christian gospels such as the so-called 'Jewish-Christian Gospels' or the Gospel of Thomas, also offer both a window into the context of early Christianity and may provide some assistance in the reconstruction of the historical Jesus.

Acts of the Apostles[edit]

The Acts of the Apostles is a narrative of the apostles' ministry and activity after Christ's death and resurrection, from which point it resumes and functions as a sequel to the Gospel of Luke. Examining style, phraseology, and other evidence, modern scholarship generally concludes that Acts and the Gospel of Luke share the same author, referred to as Luke–Acts. Luke-Acts does not name its author.^[17] Church tradition identified him as Luke the Evangelist, the companion of Paul, but the majority of scholars reject this due to the many contradictions between Acts and the authentic Pauline letters.^[18] The most probable date of composition is around 80–100 AD, although some scholars date it significantly later,^[4][5] and there is evidence that it was still being substantially revised well into the 2nd century.^[19]

Epistles[edit]

The epistles of the New Testament are considered by Christians to be divinely inspired and holy letters, written by the apostles and disciples of Christ, to either local congregations with specific needs, or to New Covenant Christians in general, scattered about; or 'catholic epistles.'

Pauline letters to churches[edit]

The Pauline epistles are the thirteen New Testament books that present Paul the Apostle as their author.^{[note 3]} Six of the letters are disputed. Four are thought by most modern scholars to be pseudepigraphic, i.e., not actually written by Paul even if attributed to him within the letters themselves. Opinion is more divided on the other two disputed letters (2 Thessalonians and Colossians).^[21] These letters were written to Christian communities in specific cities or geographical regions, often to address issues faced by that particular community. Prominent themes include the relationship both to broader 'pagan' society, to Judaism, and to other Christians.^[22]

• Epistle to the Ephesians^*
• Epistle to the Colossians^*
• Second Epistle to the Thessalonians^*

[Disputed letters are marked with an asterisk (*).]

Pauline Letters to Persons[edit]

The last four Pauline letters in the New Testament are addressed to individual persons. They include the following:

• First Epistle to Timothy^*
• Second Epistle to Timothy^*
• Epistle to Titus^*

[Disputed letters are marked with an asterisk (*).]

All of the above except for Philemon are known as the Pastoral epistles. They are addressed to individuals charged with pastoral oversight of churches and discuss issues of Christian living, doctrine and leadership. They often address different concerns to those of the preceding epistles. These letters are believed by many to be pseudepigraphic. Some scholars (e.g., Bill Mounce, Ben Witherington) will argue that the letters are genuinely Pauline, or at least written under Paul's supervision.

Hebrews[edit]

The Epistle to the Hebrews addresses a Jewish audience who had come to believe that Jesus was the anointed one (Hebrew: מָשִׁיחַ—transliterated in English as 'Moshiach', or 'Messiah'; Greek: Χριστός—transliterated in English as 'Christos', for 'Christ') who was predicted in the writings of the Hebrew Scriptures. The author discusses the superiority of the new covenant and the ministry of Jesus, to the Mosaic covenant^{[Heb. 1:1–10:18]} and urges the readers in the practical implications of this conviction through the end of the epistle.^{[Heb. 10:19–13:25]}

The book has been widely accepted by the Christian church as inspired by God and thus authoritative, despite the acknowledgment of uncertainties about who its human author was. Regarding authorship, although the Epistle to the Hebrews does not internally claim to have been written by the Apostle Paul, some similarities in wordings to some of the Pauline Epistles have been noted and inferred. In antiquity, some began to ascribe it to Paul in an attempt to provide the anonymous work an explicit apostolic pedigree.^[23]

In the 4th century, Jerome and Augustine of Hippo supported Paul's authorship. The Church largely agreed to include Hebrews as the fourteenth letter of Paul, and affirmed this authorship until the Reformation. The letter to the Hebrews had difficulty in being accepted as part of the Christian canon because of its anonymity.^[24] As early as the 3rd century, Origen wrote of the letter, 'Men of old have handed it down as Paul's, but who wrote the Epistle God only knows.'^[25]

Contemporary scholars often reject Pauline authorship for the epistle to the Hebrews,^[26] based on its distinctive style and theology, which are considered to set it apart from Paul's writings.^[27]

Catholic epistles[edit]

The Catholic epistles (or 'general epistles') consist of both letters and treatises in the form of letters written to the church at large. The term 'catholic' (Greek: καθολική, katholikē), used to describe these letters in the oldest manuscripts containing them, here simply means 'general' or 'universal'. The authorship of a number of these is disputed.

• Epistle of James, written by an author named 'James', often identified with James, the brother of Jesus.
• First Epistle of Peter, ascribed to the Apostle Peter.
• Second Epistle of Peter, ascribed to the Apostle Peter, though widely considered not to have been written by him.^[28]
• First Epistle of John, ascribed to John the Apostle.
• Second Epistle of John, ascribed to John the Apostle.
• Third Epistle of John, ascribed to John the Apostle.
• Epistle of Jude, written under the name of Jude, the brother of Jesus and James.

Book of Revelation[edit]

The final book of the New Testament is the Book of Revelation, also known as the Apocalypse of John. In the New Testament canon, it is considered prophetical or apocalyptic literature. Its authorship has been attributed either to John the Apostle (in which case it is often thought that John the Apostle is John the Evangelist, i.e. author of the Gospel of John) or to another John designated 'John of Patmos' after the island where the text says the revelation was received (1:9). Some ascribe the writership date as circa 81–96 AD, and others at around 68 AD.^[29] The work opens with letters to seven local congregations of Asia Minor and thereafter takes the form of an apocalypse, a 'revealing' of divine prophecy and mysteries, a literary genre popular in ancient Judaism and Christianity.^[30]

New Testament canons[edit]

Table notes

1. ^The growth and development of the Armenian biblical canon is complex; extra-canonical New Testament books appear in historical canon lists and recensions that are either distinct to this tradition, or where they do exist elsewhere, never achieved the same status.^{[citation needed]} Some of the books are not listed in this table; these include the Prayer of Euthalius, the Repose of St. John the Evangelist, the Doctrine of Addai, a reading from the Gospel of James, the Second Apostolic Canons, the Words of Justus, Dionysius Aeropagite, the Preaching of Peter, and a Poem by Ghazar.^{[citation needed]} (Various sources^{[citation needed]} also mention undefined Armenian canonical additions to the Gospels of Mark and John, however, these may refer to the general additions—Mark 16:9–20 and John 7:53–8:11—discussed elsewhere in these notes.) A possible exception here to canonical exclusivity is the Second Apostolic Canons, which share a common source—the Apostolic Constitutions—with certain parts of the Orthodox Tewahedo New Testament broader canon.^{[citation needed]} The Acts of Thaddeus was included in the biblical canon of Gregory of Tatev.^[31] There is some uncertainty about whether Armenian canon lists include the Doctrine of Addai or the related Acts of Thaddeus.^{[citation needed]} Moreover, the correspondence between King Agbar and Jesus Christ, which is found in various forms—including within both the Doctrine of Addai and the Acts of Thaddeus—sometimes appears separately (see list^{[full citation needed]}). The Prayer of Euthalius and the Repose of St. John the Evangelist appear in the appendix of the 1805 Armenian Zohrab Bible;^{[citation needed]} however, some of the aforementioned books, though they are found within canon lists, have nonetheless never been discovered to be part of any Armenian biblical manuscript.^[31]
2. ^Though widely regarded as non-canonical,^{[citation needed]} the Gospel of James obtained early liturgical acceptance among some Eastern churches and remains a major source for many of Christendom's traditions related to Mary, the mother of Jesus.^{[citation needed]}
3. ^ ^abcdThe Diatessaron, Tatian's gospel harmony, became a standard text in some Syriac-speaking churches down to the 5th century, when it gave-way to the four separate gospels found in the Peshitta.^{[citation needed]}
4. ^ ^abcdParts of these four books are not found in the most reliable ancient sources; in some cases, are thought to be later additions, and have therefore not appeared historically in every biblical tradition.^{[citation needed]} They are as follows: Mark 16:9–20, John 7:53–8:11, the Comma Johanneum, and portions of the Western version of Acts. To varying degrees, arguments for the authenticity of these passages—especially for the one from the Gospel of John—have occasionally been made.^{[citation needed]}
5. ^Skeireins, a commentary on the Gospel of John in the Gothic language, was included in the Wulfila Bible.^{[citation needed]} It exists today only in fragments.^{[citation needed]}
6. ^ ^abThe Acts of Paul and Thecla, the Epistle of the Corinthians to Paul, and the Third Epistle to the Corinthians are all portions of the greater Acts of Paul narrative, which is part of a stichometric catalogue of New Testament canon found in the Codex Claromontanus, but has survived only in fragments.^{[citation needed]} Some of the content within these individual sections may have developed separately.^{[citation needed]}
7. ^ ^abcdThese four works were questioned or 'spoken against' by Martin Luther, and he changed the order of his New Testament to reflect this, but he did not leave them out, nor has any Lutheran body since.^{[citation needed]} Traditional German Luther Bibles are still printed with the New Testament in this changed 'Lutheran' order.^{[citation needed]} The vast majority of Protestants embrace these four works as fully canonical.^{[citation needed]}
8. ^ ^abcdeThe Peshitta excludes 2 John, 3 John, 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation, but certain Bibles of the modern Syriac traditions include later translations of those books.^{[citation needed]} Still today, the official lectionary followed by the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Assyrian Church of the East presents lessons from only the twenty-two books of Peshitta, the version to which appeal is made for the settlement of doctrinal questions.^{[citation needed]}
9. ^The Third Epistle to the Corinthians often appears with and is framed as a response to the Epistle of the Corinthians to Paul.^{[citation needed]}
10. ^The Epistle to the Laodiceans is present in some western non-Roman Catholic translations and traditions.^{[citation needed]} Especially of note is John Wycliffe's inclusion of the epistle in his English translation,^{[citation needed]} and the Quakers' use of it to the point where they produced a translation and made pleas for its canonicity, see Poole's Annotations, on Col. 4:16. The epistle is nonetheless widely rejected by the vast majority of Protestants.^{[citation needed]}
11. ^The Apocalypse of Peter, though not listed in this table, is mentioned in the Muratorian fragment and is part of a stichometric catalogue of New Testament canon found in the Codex Claromontanus.^{[citation needed]} It was also held in high regard by Clement of Alexandria.^{[citation needed]}
12. ^Other known writings of the Apostolic Fathers not listed in this table are as follows: the seven Epistles of Ignatius, the Epistle of Polycarp, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, the Epistle to Diognetus, the fragment of Quadratus of Athens, the fragments of Papias of Hierapolis, the Reliques of the Elders Preserved in Irenaeus, and the Apostles' Creed.^{[citation needed]}
13. ^Though they are not listed in this table, the Apostolic Constitutions were considered canonical by some including Alexius Aristenus, John of Salisbury, and to a lesser extent, Grigor Tat`evatsi.^{[citation needed]} They are even classified as part of the New Testament canon within the body of the Constitutions itself; moreover, they are the source for a great deal of the content in the Orthodox Tewahedo broader canon.^{[citation needed]}
14. ^ ^abcdeThese five writings attributed to the Apostolic Fathers are not currently considered canonical in any biblical tradition, though they are more highly regarded by some more than others.^{[citation needed]} Nonetheless, their early authorship and inclusion in ancient biblical codices, as well as their acceptance to varying degrees by various early authorities, requires them to be treated as foundational literature for Christianity as a whole.^{[according to whom?][citation needed]}
15. ^ ^abEthiopic Clement and the Ethiopic Didascalia are distinct from and should not be confused with other ecclesiastical documents known in the west by similar names.^{[citation needed]}

Book order[edit]

The order in which the books of the New Testament appear differs between some collections and ecclesiastical traditions. In the Latin West, prior to the Vulgate (an early 5th-century Latin version of the Bible), the four Gospels were arranged in the following order: Matthew, John, Luke, and Mark.^{[note 4]} The Syriac Peshitta places the major Catholic epistles (James, 1 Peter, and 1 John) immediately after Acts and before the Pauline epistles.

The order of an early edition of the letters of Paul is based on the size of the letters: longest to shortest, though keeping 1 and 2 Corinthians and 1 and 2 Thessalonians together. The Pastoral epistles were apparently not part of the Corpus Paulinum in which this order originated and were later inserted after 2 Thessalonians and before Philemon. Hebrews was variously incorporated into the Corpus Paulinum either after 2 Thessalonians, after Philemon (i.e. at the very end), or after Romans.

The New Testament of the 16th-century Luther Bible continues, to this day, to place Hebrews, James, Jude, and the Apocalypse last. This reflects the thoughts of the Reformer Martin Luther on the canonicity of these books.^{[35][note 5][citation needed]}

Apocrypha[edit]

The books that eventually found a permanent place in the New Testament were not the only works of Christian literature produced in the earliest Christian centuries. The long process of canonization began early, sometimes with tacit reception of traditional texts, sometimes with explicit selection or rejection of particular texts as either acceptable or unacceptable for use in a given context (e.g., not all texts that were acceptable for private use were considered appropriate for use in the liturgy).

Over the course of history, those works of early Christian literature that survived but that did not become part of the New Testament have been variously grouped by theologians and scholars. Drawing upon, though redefining, an older term used in early Christianity and among Protestants when referring to those books found in the Christian Old Testament although not in the Jewish Bible, modern scholars began to refer to these works of early Christian literature not included in the New Testament as 'apocryphal', by which was meant non-canonical.

Collected editions of these works were then referred to as the 'New Testament apocrypha'. Typically excluded from such published collections are the following groups of works: The Apostolic Fathers, the 2nd-century Christian apologists, the Alexandrians, Tertullian, Methodius of Olympus, Novatian, Cyprian, martyrdoms, and the Desert Fathers. Almost all other Christian literature from the period, and sometimes including works composed well into Late Antiquity, are relegated to the so-called New Testament apocrypha.

Although not considered to be inspired by God, these 'apocryphal' works were produced in the same ancient context and often using the same language as those books that would eventually form the New Testament. Some of these later works are dependent (either directly or indirectly) upon books that would later come to be in the New Testament or upon the ideas expressed in them. There is even an example of a pseudepigraphical letter composed under the guise of a presumably lost letter of the Apostle Paul, the Epistle to the Laodiceans.

Authors[edit]

The books of the New Testament were all or nearly all written by Jewish Christians—that is, Jewish disciples of Christ, who lived in the Roman Empire, and under Roman occupation.^[36] Luke, who wrote the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, is frequently thought of as an exception; scholars are divided as to whether Luke was a Gentile or a Hellenistic Jew.^[37] A few scholars identify the author of the Gospel of Mark as probably a Gentile, and similarly for the Gospel of Matthew, though most assert Jewish-Christian authorship.^{[38][39][40][verification needed]}

Gospels[edit]

According to the large majority of critical scholars, none of the authors of the Gospels were eyewitnesses or even explicitly claimed to be eyewitnesses.^[41][42][43]Bart D. Ehrman of the University of North Carolina has argued for a scholarly consensus that many New Testament books were not written by the individuals whose names are attached to them.^[43][44] He further argues that names were not ascribed to the gospels until around 185 AD.^[45][46] Other scholars concur.^[47][48][49] Many scholars believe that that none of the gospels were written in the region of Palestine.^[50]

Christian tradition identifies John the Apostle with John the Evangelist, the supposed author of the Gospel of John. Traditionalists tend to support the idea that the writer of the Gospel of John himself claimed to be an eyewitness in their commentaries of John 21:24 and therefore the gospel was written by an eyewitness;^[51][52] however, this idea is rejected by the majority of modern scholars.^[53]

Most scholars hold to the two-source hypothesis, which posits that the Gospel of Mark was the first gospel to be written. On this view, the authors of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke used as sources the Gospel of Mark and a hypothetical Q document to write their individual gospel accounts.^{[54][55][56][57][58]} These three gospels are called the Synoptic Gospels, because they include many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and sometimes in exactly the same wording. Scholars agree that the Gospel of John was written last, by using a different tradition and body of testimony. In addition, most scholars agree that the author of Luke also wrote the Acts of the Apostles. Scholars hold that these books constituted two halves of a single work, Luke-Acts.^{[citation needed]}

All four gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are anonymous works.^[59] The Gospel of John claims to be based on eyewitness testimony from the Disciple whom Jesus loved, but never names this character.^[60]

Acts[edit]

The Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles were both written by the same author, and are thus referred to as the Lucan texts.^[61][62] The most direct evidence comes from the prefaces of each book; both were addressed to Theophilus, and the preface to the Acts of the Apostles references 'my former book' about the ministry of Jesus.^{[citation needed]} Furthermore, there are linguistic and theological similarities between the two works, suggesting that they have a common author.^[63][64][65]

Pauline epistles[edit]

The Pauline epistles are the thirteen books in the New Testament traditionally attributed to Paul of Tarsus. The anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews is, despite unlikely Pauline authorship, often functionally grouped with these thirteen to form a corpus of fourteen 'Pauline' epistles.^{[note 6]}

Seven letters are generally classified as 'undisputed', expressing contemporary scholarly near consensus that they are the work of Paul: Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon. Six additional letters bearing Paul's name do not currently enjoy the same academic consensus: Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus.^{[note 7]}

While many scholars uphold the traditional view, some question whether the first three, called the 'Deutero-Pauline Epistles', are authentic letters of Paul. As for the latter three, the 'Pastoral epistles', some scholars uphold the traditional view of these as the genuine writings of the Apostle Paul;^{[note 7]} most, however, regard them as pseudepigrapha.^[68]

One might refer to the Epistle to the Laodiceans and the Third Epistle to the Corinthians as examples of works identified as pseudonymous. Since the early centuries of the church, there has been debate concerning the authorship of the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews, and contemporary scholars generally reject Pauline authorship.^[26]

The epistles all share common themes, emphasis, vocabulary and style; they exhibit a uniformity of doctrine concerning the Mosaic Law, Jesus, faith, and various other issues. All of these letters easily fit into the chronology of Paul's journeys depicted in Acts of the Apostles.

Other epistles[edit]

The author of the Epistle of James identifies himself in the opening verse as 'James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ'. From the middle of the 3rd century, patristic authors cited the Epistle as written by James the Just.^[69] Ancient and modern scholars have always been divided on the issue of authorship. Many consider the epistle to be written in the late 1st or early 2nd centuries.^[70]

The author of the First Epistle of Peter identifies himself in the opening verse as 'Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ', and the view that the epistle was written by St. Peter is attested to by a number of Church Fathers: Irenaeus (140–203), Tertullian (150–222), Clement of Alexandria (155–215) and Origen of Alexandria (185–253). Unlike The Second Epistle of Peter, the authorship of which was debated in antiquity, there was little debate about Peter's authorship of this first epistle until the 18th century. Although 2 Peter internally purports to be a work of the apostle, many biblical scholars have concluded that Peter is not the author.^[71] For an early date and (usually) for a defense of the Apostle Peter's authorship see Kruger,^[72] Zahn,^[73] Spitta,^[74] Bigg,^[75] and Green.^[76]

The Epistle of Jude title is written as follows: 'Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James' (NRSV). The debate has continued over the author's identity as the apostle, the brother of Jesus, both, or neither.^[77]

Johannine works[edit]

The First Epistle of John is traditionally held to have been composed by John the Apostle (the author of the Gospel of John) when the writer was in advanced age. The epistle's content, language and conceptual style indicate that it may have had the same author as the Gospel of John, 2 John and 3 John.^[78]Eusebius claimed that the author of 2nd and 3rd John was not John the Apostle, but an 'elder John' which refers either to the apostle at an advanced age or a hypothetical second individual ('John the Elder').^[79] Scholars today are divided on the issue.

Revelation[edit]

The author of the Book of Revelation identifies himself several times as 'John'.^{[Rev. 1:1, 4, 9; 22:8]} and states that he was on Patmos when he received his first vision.^{[Rev. 1:9; 4:1–2]} As a result, the author is sometimes referred to as John of Patmos. The author has traditionally been identified with John the Apostle to whom the Gospel and the epistles of John were attributed. It was believed that he was exiled to the island of Patmos during the reign of the Roman emperorDomitian, and there wrote Revelation. Justin Martyr (c. 100–165 AD) who was acquainted with Polycarp, who had been mentored by John, makes a possible allusion to this book, and credits John as the source.^[80]Irenaeus (c. 115–202) assumes it as a conceded point. According to the Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, modern scholars are divided between the apostolic view and several alternative hypotheses put forth in the last hundred years or so.^[81]Ben Witherington points out that linguistic evidence makes it unlikely that the books were written by the same person.^[82]

Dating the New Testament[edit]

External evidence[edit]

The earliest manuscripts of New Testament books date from the late second to early third centuries (although see Papyrus 52 for a possible exception).^[26]:479-480 These manuscripts place a clear upper limit on the dating of New Testament texts. Explicit references to NT books in extra-biblical documents can push this upper limit down a bit further. Irenaeus of Lyon names and quotes from most of the books in the New Testament in his book Against Heresies, written around 180 AD. The Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, written some time between 110 and Polycarp's death in 155-167 AD, quotes or alludes to most New Testament texts. Biblical scholar David Trobisch concludes in his survey of the evidence that no book of the New Testament could have been written later than 167 AD, the latest date for the martyrdom of Polycarp.^[5]

Internal evidence[edit]

Literary analysis of the New Testament texts themselves can be used to date many of the books of the New Testament to the mid- to late first century. The earliest works of the New Testament are the letters of the Apostle Paul. It can be determined that 1 Thessalonians is likely the earliest of these letters, written around 52 AD.^[83]

Language[edit]

The major languages spoken by both Jews and Greeks in the Holy Land at the time of Jesus were Aramaic and Koine Greek, and also a colloquial dialect of Mishnaic Hebrew. It is generally agreed by most scholars that the historical Jesus primarily spoke Aramaic,^[84] perhaps also some Hebrew and Koine Greek. The majority view is that all of the books that would eventually form the New Testament were written in the Koine Greek language.^[85][86]

As Christianity spread, these books were later translated into other languages, most notably, Latin, Syriac, and Egyptian Coptic. However, some of the Church Fathers^[87] imply or claim that Matthew was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, and then soon after was written in Koine Greek. Nevertheless, the Gospel of Matthew known today was composed in Greek and is neither directly dependent upon nor a translation of a text in a Semitic language.^[88]

Development of the New Testament canon[edit]

The process of canonization of the New Testament was complex and lengthy. In the initial centuries of early Christianity, there were many books widely considered by the church to be inspired, but there was no single formally recognized New Testament canon.^[89] The process was characterized by a compilation of books that apostolic tradition considered authoritative in worship and teaching, relevant to the historical situations in which they lived, and consonant with the Old Testament.^[90] Writings attributed to the apostles circulated among the earliest Christian communities and the Pauline epistles were circulating, perhaps in collected forms, by the end of the 1st century AD.^[91]

One of the earliest attempts at solidifying a canon was made by Marcion, circa 140 AD, who accepted only a modified version of Luke (the Gospel of Marcion) and ten of Paul's letters, while rejecting the Old Testament entirely. His canon was largely rejected by other groups of Christians, notably the proto-orthodox Christians, as was his theology, Marcionism. Adolf von Harnack,^[92] John Knox,^[93] and David Trobisch,^[5] among other scholars, have argued that the church formulated its New Testament canon partially in response to the challenge posed by Marcion.

Polycarp,^[94]Irenaeus^[95] and Tertullian^[96] held the epistles of Paul to be divinely inspired 'scripture.' Other books were held in high esteem but were gradually relegated to the status of New Testament apocrypha. Justin Martyr, in the mid 2nd century, mentions 'memoirs of the apostles' as being read on Sunday alongside the 'writings of the prophets'.^[97]

The Muratorian fragment, dated at between 170 and as late as the end of the 4th century (according to the Anchor Bible Dictionary), may be the earliest known New Testament canon attributed to mainstream Christianity. It is similar, but not identical, to the modern New Testament canon.

The oldest clear endorsement of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John being the only legitimate gospels was written circa 180 AD. A four gospel canon (the Tetramorph) was asserted by Irenaeus, who refers to it directly^[98][99] in his polemicAgainst Heresies:

'It is not possible that the gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the church is scattered throughout all the world, and the 'pillar and ground' of the church is the gospel and the spirit of life; it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side, and vivifying men afresh.' (emphasis added)^[99]

The books considered to be authoritative by Irenaeus included the four gospels and many of the letters of Paul, although, based on the arguments Irenaeus made in support of only four authentic gospels, some interpreters deduce that the fourfold Gospel must have still been a novelty in Irenaeus's time.^[100]

Origen (3rd century)[edit]

By the early 200s, Origen may have been using the same twenty-seven books as in the Catholic New Testament canon, though there were still disputes over the canonicity of the Letter to the Hebrews, Epistle of James, II Peter, II John and III John and the Book of Revelation,^[101] known as the Antilegomena. Likewise, the Muratorian fragment is evidence that, perhaps as early as 200, there existed a set of Christian writings somewhat similar to the twenty-seven book NT canon, which included four gospels and argued against objections to them.^[102] Thus, while there was a good measure of debate in the Early Church over the New Testament canon, the major writings are claimed to have been accepted by almost all Christians by the middle of the 3rd century.^[103]

Origen was largely responsible for the collection of usage information regarding the texts that became the New Testament. The information used to create the late-4th-century Easter Letter, which declared accepted Christian writings, was probably based on the Ecclesiastical History [HE] of Eusebius of Caesarea, wherein he uses the information passed on to him by Origen to create both his list at HE 3:25 and Origen's list at HE 6:25. Eusebius got his information about what texts were then accepted and what were then disputed, by the third-century churches throughout the known world, a great deal of which Origen knew of firsthand from his extensive travels, from the library and writings of Origen.^[104]

In fact, Origen would have possibly included in his list of 'inspired writings' other texts kept out by the likes of Eusebius—including the Epistle of Barnabas, Shepherd of Hermas, and 1 Clement. Notwithstanding these facts, 'Origen is not the originator of the idea of biblical canon, but he certainly gives the philosophical and literary-interpretative underpinnings for the whole notion.'^[105]

Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History[edit]

Eusebius, circa 300, gave a detailed list of New Testament writings in his Ecclesiastical HistoryBook 3, Chapter XXV:

'1... First then must be put the holy quaternion of the gospels; following them the Acts of the Apostles... the epistles of Paul... the epistle of John... the epistle of Peter... After them is to be placed, if it really seem proper, the Book of Revelation, concerning which we shall give the different opinions at the proper time. These then belong among the accepted writings.'

'3 Among the disputed writings, which are nevertheless recognized by many, are extant the so-called epistle of James and that of Jude, also the second epistle of Peter, and those that are called the second and third of John, whether they belong to the evangelist or to another person of the same name. Among the rejected [Kirsopp Lake translation: 'not genuine'] writings must be reckoned also the Acts of Paul, and the so-called Shepherd, and the Apocalypse of Peter, and in addition to these the extant epistle of Barnabas, and the so-called Teachings of the Apostles; and besides, as I said, the Apocalypse of John, if it seem proper, which some, as I said, reject, but which others class with the accepted books. And among these some have placed also the Gospel according to the Hebrews... And all these may be reckoned among the disputed books.'

'6... such books as the Gospels of Peter, of Thomas, of Matthias, or of any others besides them, and the Acts of Andrew and John and the other apostles... they clearly show themselves to be the fictions of heretics. Wherefore they are not to be placed even among the rejected writings, but are all of them to be cast aside as absurd and impious.'

The Book of Revelation is counted as both accepted (Kirsopp Lake translation: 'Recognized') and disputed, which has caused some confusion over what exactly Eusebius meant by doing so. From other writings of the church fathers, it was disputed with several canon lists rejecting its canonicity. EH 3.3.5 adds further detail on Paul: 'Paul's fourteen epistles are well known and undisputed. It is not indeed right to overlook the fact that some have rejected the Epistle to the Hebrews, saying that it is disputed by the church of Rome, on the ground that it was not written by Paul.' EH 4.29.6 mentions the Diatessaron: 'But their original founder, Tatian, formed a certain combination and collection of the gospels, I know not how, to which he gave the title Diatessaron, and which is still in the hands of some. But they say that he ventured to paraphrase certain words of the apostle Paul, in order to improve their style.'

4th century and later[edit]

In his Easter letter of 367, Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, gave a list of the books that would become the twenty-seven-book NT canon,^[1] and he used the word 'canonized' (kanonizomena) in regards to them.^[106] The first council that accepted the present canon of the New Testament may have been the Synod of Hippo Regius in North Africa (393 AD); the acts of this council, however, are lost. A brief summary of the acts was read at and accepted by the Council of Carthage (397) and the Council of Carthage (419).^[107] These councils were under the authority of St. Augustine, who regarded the canon as already closed.^{[108][109][110]}

Pope Damasus I's Council of Rome in 382, if the Decretum Gelasianum is correctly associated with it, issued a biblical canon identical to that mentioned above,^[1] or, if not, the list is at least a 6th-century compilation.^[111] Likewise, Damasus' commissioning of the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible, c. 383, was instrumental in the fixation of the canon in the West.^[112] In c. 405, Pope Innocent I sent a list of the sacred books to a Gallic bishop, Exsuperius of Toulouse. Christian scholars assert that, when these bishops and councils spoke on the matter, however, they were not defining something new but instead 'were ratifying what had already become the mind of the Church.'^{[108][113][114]}

The New Testament canon as it is now was first listed by St. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, in 367, in a letter written to his churches in Egypt, Festal Letter 39. Also cited is the Council of Rome, but not without controversy. That canon gained wider and wider recognition until it was accepted at the Third Council of Carthage in 397 and 419.^{[note 8]}

Even this council did not settle the matter, however. Certain books, referred to as Antilegomena, continued to be questioned, especially James and Revelation. Even as late as the 16th century, the Reformer Martin Luther questioned (but in the end did not reject) the Epistle of James, the Epistle of Jude, the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Book of Revelation. To this day, German-language Luther Bibles are printed with these four books at the end of the canon, rather than in their traditional order as in other editions of the Bible.

In light of this questioning of the canon of Scripture by Protestants in the 16th century, the (Roman Catholic) Council of Trent reaffirmed the traditional western canon (i.e., the canon accepted at the 4th-century Council of Rome and Council of Carthage), thus making the Canon of Trent and the Vulgate Bible dogma in the Catholic Church. Later, Pope Pius XI on 2 June 1927 decreed the Comma Johanneum was open to dispute and Pope Pius XII on 3 September 1943 issued the encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu, which allowed translations based on other versions than just the Latin Vulgate, notably in English the New American Bible.

Thus, some claim that, from the 4th century, there existed unanimity in the West concerning the New Testament canon (as it is today),^[115] and that, by the 5th century, the Eastern Church, with a few exceptions, had come to accept the Book of Revelation and thus had come into harmony on the matter of the canon.^[116] Nonetheless, full dogmatic articulations of the canon were not made until the Canon of Trent of 1546 for Roman Catholicism, the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563 for the Church of England, the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647 for Calvinism, and the Synod of Jerusalem of 1672 for the Greek Orthodox.

On the question of NT Canon formation generally, New Testament scholar Lee Martin McDonald has written that:^[117]

Although a number of Christians have thought that church councils determined what books were to be included in the biblical canons, a more accurate reflection of the matter is that the councils recognized or acknowledged those books that had already obtained prominence from usage among the various early Christian communities.

Christian scholars assert that when these bishops and councils spoke on the matter, they were not defining something new, but instead 'were ratifying what had already become the mind of the Church'.^[113][114]

Some synods of the 4th century published lists of canonical books (e.g. Hippo and Carthage). The existing 27-book canon of the New Testament was reconfirmed (for Roman Catholicism) in the 16th century with the Council of Trent (also called the Tridentine Council) of 1546,^[118] the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563 for the Church of England, the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647 for Calvinism, and the Synod of Jerusalem of 1672 for Eastern Orthodoxy. Although these councils did include statements about the canon, when it came to the New Testament they were only reaffirming the existing canon, including the Antilegomena.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia article on the Canon of the New Testament: 'The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council.'^[119]

In 331, Constantine I commissioned Eusebius to deliver fifty Bibles for the Church of Constantinople. Athanasius (Apol. Const. 4) recorded Alexandrian scribes around 340 preparing Bibles for Constans. Little else is known, though there is plenty of speculation. For example, it is speculated that this may have provided motivation for canon lists, and that Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus may be examples of these Bibles. Together with the Peshitta and Codex Alexandrinus, these are the earliest extant Christian Bibles.^[120] There is no evidence among the canons of the First Council of Nicaea of any determination on the canon.

Early manuscripts[edit]

Like other literature from antiquity, the text of the New Testament was (prior to the advent of the printing press) preserved and transmitted in manuscripts. Manuscripts containing at least a part of the New Testament number in the thousands. The earliest of these (like manuscripts containing other literature) are often very fragmentarily preserved. Some of these fragments have even been thought to date as early as the 2nd century (i.e., Papyrus 90, Papyrus 98, Papyrus 104, and famously Rylands Library Papyrus P52, though the early date of the latter has recently been called into question).^[121]

For each subsequent century, more and more manuscripts survive that contain a portion or all of the books that were held to be part of the New Testament at that time (for example, the New Testament of the 4th-century Codex Sinaiticus, once a complete Bible, contains the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas), though occasionally these manuscripts contain other works as well (e.g., Papyrus 72 and the Crosby-Schøyen Codex). The date when a manuscript was written, however, does not necessarily reflect the date of the form of text it contains. That is, later manuscripts can, and occasionally do, contain older forms of text or older readings.

Some of the more important manuscripts containing an early text of books of the New Testament are:

• The Chester Beatty Papyri (Greek; the New Testament portions of which were copied in the 3rd century)
• The Bodmer Papyri (Greek and Coptic; the New Testament portions of which were copied in the 3rd and 4th centuries)
• Codex Bobiensis (Latin; copied in the 4th century, but containing at least a 3rd-century form of text)
• Uncial 0171 (Greek; copied in the late-third or early 4th century)
• Syriac Sinaiticus (Syriac; copied in the 4th century)
• Schøyen Manuscript 2560 (Coptic; copied in the 4th century)
• Codex Vaticanus (Greek; copied in the 4th century)
• Codex Sinaiticus (Greek; copied in the 4th century)
• Codex Vercellensis (Latin; copied in the 4th century)
• Curetonian Gospels (Syriac; copied in the 5th century)
• Garima Gospels ( Ge'ez language, produced in the 5th through 6th century)

Textual variation[edit]

Textual criticism deals with the identification and removal of transcription errors in the texts of manuscripts. Ancient scribes made errors or alterations (such as including non-authentic additions).^[122] The New Testament has been preserved in more than 5,800 Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic, Ethiopic and Armenian. Even if the original Greek versions were lost, the entire New Testament could still be assembled from the translations.^[123]

In addition, there are so many quotes from the New Testament in early church documents and commentaries that the entire New Testament could also be assembled from these alone.^[123] Not all biblical manuscripts come from orthodox Christian writers. For example, the Gnostic writings of Valentinus come from the 2nd century AD, and these Christians were regarded as heretics by the mainstream church.^[124] The sheer number of witnesses presents unique difficulties, but it also gives scholars a better idea of how close modern Bibles are to the original versions.^[124]

On noting the large number of surviving ancient manuscripts, Bruce Metzger sums up the view on the issue by saying 'The more often you have copies that agree with each other, especially if they emerge from different geographical areas, the more you can cross-check them to figure out what the original document was like. The only way they'd agree would be where they went back genealogically in a family tree that represents the descent of the manuscripts.^[123]

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Interpolations[edit]

In attempting to determine the original text of the New Testament books, some modern textual critics have identified sections as additions of material, centuries after the gospel was written. These are called interpolations. In modern translations of the Bible, the results of textual criticism have led to certain verses, words and phrases being left out or marked as not original. According to Bart D. Ehrman, 'These scribal additions are often found in late medieval manuscripts of the New Testament, but not in the manuscripts of the earlier centuries.'^[125]

Most modern Bibles have footnotes to indicate passages that have disputed source documents. Bible Commentaries also discuss these, sometimes in great detail. While many variations have been discovered between early copies of biblical texts, almost all have no importance, as they are variations in spelling, punctuation, or grammar. Also, many of these variants are so particular to the Greek language that they would not appear in translations into other languages. For example, order of words (i.e. 'man bites dog' versus 'dog bites man') often does not matter in Greek, so textual variants that flip the order of words often have no consequences.^[123]

Outside of these unimportant variants, there are a couple variants of some importance. The two most commonly cited examples are the last verses of the Gospel of Mark^{[126][127][128]} and the story of the adulterous woman in the Gospel of John.^{[129][130][131]} Many scholars and critics also believe that the Comma Johanneum reference supporting the Trinity doctrine in 1 John to have been a later addition.^[132][133] According to Norman Geisler and William Nix, 'The New Testament, then, has not only survived in more manuscripts than any other book from antiquity, but it has survived in a purer form than any other great book—a form that is 99.5% pure'^[134]

The often referred to Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, a book written to prove the validity of the New Testament, says: ' A study of 150 Greek [manuscripts] of the Gospel of Luke has revealed more than 30,000 different readings... It is safe to say that there is not one sentence in the New Testament in which the [manuscript] is wholly uniform.'^[135] Most of the variation took place within the first three Christian centuries.

Text-types[edit]

By the 4th century, textual 'families' or types of text become discernible among New Testament manuscripts. A 'text-type' is the name given to a family of texts with similar readings due to common ancestors and mutual correction. Many early manuscripts, however, contain individual readings from several different earlier forms of text. Modern texual critics have identified the following text-types among textual witnesses to the New Testament: The Alexandrian text-type is usually considered to generally preserve many early readings. It is represented, e.g., by Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus and the Bodmer Papyri.

The Western text-type is generally longer and can be paraphrastic, but can also preserve early readings. The Western version of the Acts of the Apostles is, notably, 8.5% longer than the Alexandrian form of the text. Examples of the Western text are found in Codex Bezae, Codex Claromontanus, Codex Washingtonianus, the Old Latin (i.e., Latin translations made prior to the Vulgate), as well as in quotations by Marcion, Tatian, Irenaeus, Tertullian and Cyprian.

A text-type referred to as the 'Caesarean text-type' and thought to have included witnesses such as Codex Koridethi and minuscule 565, can today be described neither as 'Caesarean' nor as a text-type as was previously thought. However, the Gospel of Mark in Papyrus 45, Codex Washingtonianus and in Family 13 does indeed reflect a distinct type of text.

Increasing standardization of distinct (and once local) text-types eventually gave rise to the Byzantine text-type. Since most manuscripts of the New Testament do not derive from the first several centuries, that is, they were copied after the rise of the Byzantine text-type, this form of text is found the majority of extant manuscripts and is therefore often called the 'Majority Text.' As with all of the other (earlier) text-types, the Byzantine can also occasionally preserve early readings.

Biblical criticism[edit]

Biblical criticism is the scholarly 'study and investigation of biblical writings that seeks to make discerning judgments about these writings.' Viewing biblical texts as having human rather than supernatural origins, it asks when and where a particular text originated; how, why, by whom, for whom, and in what circumstances it was produced; what influences were at work in its production; what sources were used in its composition; and what message it was intended to convey.

It will vary slightly depending on whether the focus is on the Old Testament, the letters of the New Testament, or the Canonical Gospels. It also plays an important role in the quest for the historical Jesus. It also addresses the physical text, including the meaning of the words and the way in which they are used, its preservation, history, and integrity. Biblical criticism draws upon a wide range of scholarly disciplines including archaeology, anthropology, folklore, linguistics, Oral Tradition studies, history, and religious studies.

Establishing a critical text[edit]

The textual variation among manuscript copies of books in the New Testament prompted attempts to discern the earliest form of text already in antiquity (e.g., by the 3rd-century Christian author Origen). The efforts began in earnest again during the Renaissance, which saw a revival of the study of ancient Greek texts. During this period, modern textual criticism was born. In this context, Christian humanists such as Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus promoted a return to the original Greek of the New Testament. This was the beginning of modern New Testament textual criticism, which over subsequent centuries would increasingly incorporate more and more manuscripts, in more languages (i.e., versions of the New Testament), as well as citations of the New Testament by ancient authors and the New Testament text in lectionaries in order to reconstruct the earliest recoverable form of the New Testament text and the history of changes to it.^[136]

Relationship to earlier and contemporaneous literature[edit]

Books that later formed the New Testament, like other Christian literature of the period, originated in a literary context that reveals relationships not only to other Christian writings, but also to Graeco-Roman and Jewish works. Of singular importance is the extensive use of and interaction with the Jewish Bible and what would become the Christian Old Testament. Both implicit and explicit citations, as well as countless allusions, appear throughout the books of the New Testament, from the Gospels and Acts, to the Epistles, to the Apocalypse.^[137]

Early versions[edit]

The first translations (usually called 'versions') of the New Testament were made beginning already at the end of 2nd century. The earliest versions of the New Testament are the translations into the Syriac, Latin, and Coptic languages.^[138] These three versions were made directly from the Greek, and are frequently cited in the apparatuses of modern critical editions.

Syriac[edit]

Syriac was spoken in Syria, and Mesopotamia, and with dialect in Roman and Byzantine Palestine where it was known as Jewish Palestinian Aramaic. Several Syriac translations were made and have come to us. Most of the Old Syriac, however, as well as the Philoxonian version have been lost.

Tatian, the Assyrian, created the Diatessaron, a gospel harmony written in Syriac around 170 AD and the earliest form of the gospel not only in Syriac but probably also in Armenian.

In the 19th century, manuscript evidence was discovered for an 'Old Syriac' version of the four distinct (i.e., not harmonized) gospels. These 'separated' (Syriac: da-Mepharreshe) gospels, though old, have been shown to be later than the Diatessaron. The Old Syriac gospels are fragmentarily preserved in two manuscripts: the 5th-century Curetonian Syriac and the Sinaitic Syriac from the 4th or 5th century.

No Old Syriac manuscripts of other portions of the New Testament survive, though Old Syriac readings, e.g. from the Pauline Epistles, can be discerned in citations made by Eastern fathers and in later Syriac versions. The Old Syriac version is a representative of the Western text-type. The Peshitta version was prepared in the beginning of the 5th century. It contains only 22 books (neither the Minor Catholic Epistles of 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude, nor the Book of Revelation were part of this translation).

The Philoxenian probably was produced in 508 for Philoxenus, Bishop of Mabung.^[139]

Latin[edit]

The Gospels were likely translated into Latin as early as the last quarter of the 2nd century in North Africa (Afra). Not much later, there were also European Latin translations (Itala). There are about 80 Old Latin mansucripts. The Vetus Latina ('Old Latin') versions often contain readings with a Western type of text. (For the avoidance of confusion, these texts were written in Late Latin, not the early version of the Latin language known as Old Latin, pre 75 BC.)

The bewildering diversity of the Old Latin versions prompted Jerome to prepare another translation into Latin—the Vulgate. In many respects it was merely a revision of the Old Latin. There are currently around 8,000 manuscripts of the Vulgate.

Coptic[edit]

There are several dialects of the Coptic language: Bohairic (northern dialect), Fayyumic, Sahidic (southern dialect), Akhmimic, and others. The first translation was made by at least the 3rd century into the Sahidic dialect (cop^sa). This translation represents a mixed text, mostly Alexandrian, though also with Western readings.^[140]

A Bohairic translation was made later, but existed already in the 4th century. Though the translation makes less use of Greek words than the Sahidic, it does employ some Greek grammar (e.g., in word-order and the use of particles such as the syntactic construction μεν—δε). For this reason, the Bohairic translation can be helpful in the reconstruction of the early Greek text of the New Testament.^[141]

Other ancient translations[edit]

The continued spread of Christianity, and the foundation of national churches, led to the translation of the Bible—often beginning with books from the New Testament—into a variety of other languages at a relatively early date: Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, Persian, Sogdian, and eventually Gothic, Old Church Slavonic, Arabic, and Nubian.^[142]

Modern translations[edit]

Historically, throughout the Christian world and in the context of Christian missionary activity, the New Testament (or portions thereof) has been that part of the Christian Bible first translated into the vernacular. The production of such translations grew out of the insertion of vernacularglosses in biblical texts, as well as out of the production of biblical paraphrases and poetic renditions of stories from the life of Christ (e.g., the Heliand).

The 16th century saw the rise of Protestantism and an explosion of translations of the New (and Old) Testament into the vernacular. Notable are those of Martin Luther (1522), Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (1523), the Froschau Bible (1525–1529, revised in 1574), William Tyndale (1526, revised in 1534, 1535 and 1536), the Brest Bible (1563), and the Authorized Version (also called the 'King James Version') (1611).

Most of these translations relied (though not always exclusively) upon one of the printed editions of the Greek New Testament edited by Erasmus, a form of this Greek text emerged as the standard and is known as the Textus Receptus. This text, based on the majority of manuscripts is also used in the majority of translations that were made in the years 100 to 400 AD.

Translations of the New Testament made since the appearance of critical editions of the Greek text (notably those of Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort, and von Soden) have largely used them as their base text. Unlike the Textus Receptus, these have a pronounced Alexandrian character. Standard critical editions are those of Souter, Vogels, Bover, Merk, and Nestlé-Aland (the text, though not the full critical apparatus of which is reproduced in the United Bible Societies' 'Greek New Testament').

Notable translations of the New Testament based on these most recent critical editions include the Revised Standard Version (1946, revised in 1971), La Bible de Jérusalem (1961, revised in 1973 and 2000), the Einheitsübersetzung (1970, final edition 1979), the New American Bible (1970, revised in 1986), the Traduction Oecuménique de la Bible (1988, revised in 2004), and the New Revised Standard Version (1989).

Theological interpretation in Christian churches[edit]

Though all Christian churches accept the New Testament as scripture, they differ in their understanding of the nature, extent, and relevance of its authority. Views of the authoritativeness of the New Testament often depend on the concept of inspiration, which relates to the role of God in the formation of the New Testament. Generally, the greater the role of God in one's doctrine of inspiration, the more one accepts the doctrine of biblical inerrancy or authoritativeness of the Bible. One possible source of confusion is that these terms are difficult to define, because many people use them interchangeably or with very different meanings. This article will use the terms in the following manner:

• Infallibility relates to the absolute correctness of the Bible in matters of doctrine.
• Inerrancy relates to the absolute correctness of the Bible in factual assertions (including historical and scientific assertions).
• Authoritativeness relates to the correctness of the Bible in questions of practice in morality.

The self-witness of the Bible to its inspiration demands a commitment to its unity. The ultimate basis for unity is contained in the claim of divine inspiration in 2 Timothy 3:16 that 'all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness' (KJV). The term 'inspiration' renders the Greek word theopneustos. This term only occurs here in the New Testament and literally means 'God-breathed' (the chosen translation of the NIV).^[143]

All of these concepts depend for their meaning on the supposition that the text of Bible has been properly interpreted, with consideration for the intention of the text, whether literal history, allegory or poetry, etc. Especially the doctrine of inerrancy is variously understood according to the weight given by the interpreter to scientific investigations of the world.

Unity in diversity[edit]

The notion of unity in diversity of Scripture claims that the Bible presents a noncontradictory and consistent message concerning God and redemptive history. The fact of diversity is observed in comparing the diversity of time, culture, authors' perspectives, literary genre, and the theological themes.^[143]

Studies from many theologians considering the 'unity in diversity' to be found in the New Testament (and the Bible as a whole) have been collected and summarized by New Testament theologian Frank Stagg. He describes them as some basic presuppositions, tenets, and concerns common among the New Testament writers, giving to the New Testament its 'unity in diversity':

1. The reality of God is never argued but is always assumed and affirmed
2. Jesus Christ is absolutely central: he is Lord and Savior, the foretold Prophet, the Messianic King, the Chosen, the way, the truth, and the light, the One through whom God the Father not only acted but through whom He came
3. The Holy Spirit came anew with Jesus Christ.
4. The Christian faith and life are a calling, rooted in divine election.
5. The plight of everyone as sinner means that each person is completely dependent upon the mercy and grace of God
6. Salvation is both God's gift and his demand through Jesus Christ, to be received by faith
7. The death and resurrection of Jesus are at the heart of the total event of which he was the center
8. God creates a people of his own, designated and described by varied terminology and analogies
9. History must be understood eschatologically, being brought along toward its ultimate goal when the kingdom of God, already present in Christ, is brought to its complete triumph
10. In Christ, all of God's work of creation, revelation, and redemption is brought to fulfillment^[144]

Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Classical Anglicanism[edit]

For the Roman Catholic Church, there are two modes of Revelation: Scripture and Tradition. Both of them are interpreted by the teachings of the Church. The Roman Catholic view is expressed clearly in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1997):

§ 82: As a result the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honoured with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.
§ 107: The inspired books teach the truth. Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures.

In Catholic terminology the teaching office is called the Magisterium. The Catholic view should not be confused with the two-source theory. As the Catechism states in §§ 80 and 81, Revelation has 'one common source ... two distinct modes of transmission.'^[145]

While many Eastern Orthodox writers distinguish between Scripture and Tradition, Bishop Kallistos Ware says that for the Orthodox there is only one source of the Christian faith, Holy Tradition, within which Scripture exists.^[146]

Traditional Anglicans believe that 'Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation', (Article VI), but also that the Catholic Creeds 'ought thoroughly to be received and believed' (Article VIII), and that the Church 'hath authority in Controversies of Faith' and is 'a witness and keeper of Holy Writ' (Article XX).^[147] Classical Anglicanism, therefore, like Orthodoxy, holds that Holy Tradition is the only safe guardian against perversion and innovation in the interpretation of Scripture.

In the famous words of Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells: 'As for my religion, I dye in the holy catholic and apostolic faith professed by the whole Church before the disunion of East and West, more particularly in the communion of the Church of England, as it stands distinguished from all Papal and Puritan innovations, and as it adheres to the doctrine of the Cross.'

Protestantism[edit]

Following the doctrine of sola scriptura, Protestants believe that their traditions of faith, practice and interpretations carry forward what the scriptures teach, and so tradition is not a source of authority in itself. Their traditions derive authority from the Bible, and are therefore always open to reëvaluation. This openness to doctrinal revision has extended in Liberal Protestant traditions even to the reevaluation of the doctrine of Scripture upon which the Reformation was founded, and members of these traditions may even question whether the Bible is infallible in doctrine, inerrant in historical and other factual statements, and whether it has uniquely divine authority. However, the adjustments made by modern Protestants to their doctrine of scripture vary widely.

American evangelical and fundamentalist Protestantism[edit]

Within the US, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1978) is a statement, articulating evangelical views on this issue. Paragraph four of its summary states: 'Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God's acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God's saving grace in individual lives.'^[148]

American mainline and liberal Protestantism[edit]

Mainline American Protestant denominations, including the United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church USA, The Episcopal Church, and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, do not teach the doctrine of inerrancy as set forth in the Chicago Statement. All of these churches have more ancient doctrinal statements asserting the authority of scripture, but may interpret these statements in such a way as to allow for a very broad range of teaching—from evangelicalism to skepticism. It is not an impediment to ordination in these denominations to teach that the scriptures contain errors, or that the authors follow a more or less unenlightened ethics that, however appropriate it may have seemed in the authors' time, moderns would be very wrong to follow blindly.

For example, ordination of women is universally accepted in the mainline churches, abortion is condemned as a grievous social tragedy but not always a personal sin or a crime against an unborn person, and homosexuality is sometimes recognized as a genetic propensity or morally neutral preference that should be neither encouraged nor condemned. In North America, the most contentious of these issues among these churches at the present time is how far the ordination of gay men and lesbians should be accepted.

Officials of the Presbyterian Church USA report: 'We acknowledge the role of scriptural authority in the Presbyterian Church, but Presbyterians generally do not believe in biblical inerrancy. Presbyterians do not insist that every detail of chronology or sequence or prescientific description in scripture be true in literal form. Our confessions do teach biblical infallibility. Infallibility affirms the entire truthfulness of scripture without depending on every exact detail.'^[149]

Those who hold a more liberal view of the Bible as a human witness to the glory of God, the work of fallible humans who wrote from a limited experience unusual only for the insight they have gained through their inspired struggle to know God in the midst of a troubled world. Therefore, they tend not to accept such doctrines as inerrancy. These churches also tend to retain the social activism of their evangelical forebears of the 19th century, placing particular emphasis on those teachings of scripture that teach compassion for the poor and concern for social justice.

The message of personal salvation is, generally speaking, of the good that comes to oneself and the world through following the New Testament's Golden Rule admonition to love others without hypocrisy or prejudice. Toward these ends, the 'spirit' of the New Testament, more than the letter, is infallible and authoritative.

There are some movements that believe the Bible contains the teachings of Jesus but who reject the churches that were formed following its publication. These people believe all individuals can communicate directly with God and therefore do not need guidance or doctrines from a church. These people are known as Christian anarchists.

Messianic Judaism[edit]

Messianic Judaism generally holds the same view of New Testament authority as evangelical Protestants.^[150] According to the view of some Messianic Jewish congregations, Jesus did not annul the Torah, but that its interpretation is revised and ultimately explained through the Apostolic Scriptures.^[151]

Jehovah's Witnesses[edit]

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Jehovah's Witnesses accept the New Testament as divinely inspired Scripture, and as infallible in every detail, with equal authority as the Hebrew Scriptures. They view it as the written revelation and good news of the Messiah, the ransom sacrifice of Jesus, and the Kingdom of God, explaining and expounding the Hebrew Bible, not replacing but vitally supplementing it. They also view the New Testament as the primary instruction guide for Christian living, and church discipline. They generally call the New Testament the 'Christian Greek Scriptures', and see only the 'covenants' as 'old' or 'new', but not any part of the actual Scriptures themselves.^[152]

United Pentecostals[edit]

Oneness Pentecostalism subscribes to the common Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura. They view the Bible as the inspired Word of God, and as absolutely inerrant in its contents (though not necessarily in every translation).^[153][154] They regard the New Testament as perfect and inerrant in every way, revealing the Lord Jesus Christ in the Flesh, and his Atonement, and which also explains and illuminates the Old Testament perfectly, and is part of the Bible canon, not because church councils or decrees claimed it so, but by witness of the Holy Spirit.^[155][156]

Seventh-day Adventists[edit]

The Seventh-day Adventist Church holds the New Testament as the inspired Word of God, with God influencing the 'thoughts' of the Apostles in the writing, not necessarily every word though. The first fundamental belief of the Seventh-Day Adventist church stated that 'The Holy Scriptures are the infallible revelation of [God's] will.' Adventist theologians generally reject the 'verbal inspiration' position on Scripture held by many conservative evangelical Christians. They believe instead that God inspired the thoughts of the biblical authors and apostles, and that the writers then expressed these thoughts in their own words.^[157] This view is popularly known as 'thought inspiration', and most Adventist members hold to that view. According to Ed Christian, former JATS editor, 'few if any ATS members believe in verbal inerrancy'.^[158]

Regarding the teachings of the New Testament compared to the Old, and the application in the New Covenant, Adventists have traditionally taught that the Decalogue is part of the moral law of God, which was not abrogated by the ministry and death of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the fourth commandment concerning the Sabbath is as applicable to Christian believers as the other nine. Adventists have often taught a distinction between 'moral law' and 'ceremonial law'. According to Adventist beliefs, the moral law continues into the 'New Testament era', but the ceremonial law was done away with by Jesus.

How the Mosaic law should be applied came up at Adventist conferences in the past, and Adventist theologians such as A. T. Jones and E. J. Waggoner looked at the problem addressed by Paul in Galatians as not the ceremonial law, but rather the wrong use of the law (legalism). They were opposed by Uriah Smith and George Butler at the 1888 Conference. Smith in particular thought the Galatians issue had been settled by Ellen White already, yet in 1890 she claimed justification by faith is 'the third angel's message in verity.'^{[citation needed]}

Ellen White interpreted Colossians 2:14 as saying that the ceremonial law was nailed to the cross.^[159]

Latter-day Saints[edit]

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) believe that the New Testament, as part of the Christian biblical canon, is accurate 'as far as it is translated correctly'.^[160] They believe the Bible as originally revealed is the word of God, but that the processes of transcription and translation have introduced errors into the texts as currently available, and therefore they cannot be regarded as completely inerrant.^[161][162] In addition to the Old and New Testaments, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price are considered part of their scriptural canon.^[163][164]

In the liturgy[edit]

Despite the wide variety among Christian liturgies, texts from the New Testament play a role in almost all forms of Christian worship. In addition to some language derived from the New Testament in the liturgy itself (e.g., the Trisagion may be based on Apocalypse 4:8, and the beginning of the 'Hymn of Praise' draws upon Luke 2:14), the reading of extended passages from the New Testament is a practice common to almost all Christian worship, liturgical or not.

These readings are most often part of an established lectionary (i.e., selected texts to be read at church services on specific days), and (together with an Old Testament reading and a Psalm) include a non-gospel reading from the New Testament and culminate with a Gospel reading. No readings from the Book of Revelation, however, are included in the standard lectionary of the Eastern Orthodox churches.

Central to the Christian liturgy is the celebration of the Eucharist or 'Holy Communion'. The Words of Institution that begin this rite are drawn directly from 1 Corinthians 11:23–26. In addition, the communal recitation of the Lord's Prayer (in the form found in the Gospel of Matthew 6:9–13) is also a standard feature of Christian worship.

In the arts[edit]

Grammatik Deutsch Pdf

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Most of the influence of the New Testament upon the arts has come from the Gospels and the Book of Revelation.^{[citation needed]} Literary expansion of the Nativity of Jesus found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke began already in the 2nd century, and the portrayal of the Nativity has continued in various art forms to this day. The earliest Christian art would often depict scenes from the New Testament such as the raising of Lazarus, the baptism of Jesus or the motif of the Good Shepherd.

Biblical paraphrases and poetic renditions of stories from the life of Christ (e.g., the Heliand) became popular in the Middle Ages, as did the portrayal of the arrest, trial and execution of Jesus in Passion plays. Indeed, the Passion became a central theme in Christian art and music. The ministry and Passion of Jesus, as portrayed in one or more of the New Testament Gospels, has also been a theme in film, almost since the inception of the medium (e.g., 'La Passion', France, 1903).

See also[edit]

• Earlier Epistle to the Ephesians Non-canonical books referenced in the New Testament

Notes[edit]

1. ^'...Acts provides information that makes it possible to identify Luke, the author of the Gospel, as the doctor who travels with Paul and to identify Mark as someone close to Peter and Paul. This 'canon consciousness' suggests that the book of Acts was composed at a later date than is typically thought; this theory is supported by the first attestation of the book around 180 CE.' - Trobisch 2007
2. ^See also Tertullian, Against Marcion, Book IV, chapters I, II, XIV. However, his meaning in chapter XX is less clear, and in chapters IX and XL he uses the term to mean 'new covenant'.
3. ^Joseph Barber Lightfoot in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians writes: 'At this point [Gal 6:11] the apostle takes the pen from his amanuensis, and the concluding paragraph is written with his own hand. From the time when letters began to be forged in his name (2 Thess. 3:17; 3:17) it seems to have been his practice to close with a few words in his own handwriting, as a precaution against such forgeries.... In the present case he writes a whole paragraph, summing up the main lessons of the epistle in terse, eager, disjointed sentences. He writes it, too, in large, bold characters (Gr. pelikois grammasin), that his handwriting may reflect the energy and determination of his soul.'^[20]
4. ^The Gospels are in this order in many Old Latin manuscripts, as well as in the Greek manuscripts Codex Bezae and Codex Washingtonianus.
5. ^See also the article on the Antilegomena.
6. ^Although Hebrews was almost certainly not written by Paul, it has been a part of the Pauline corpus 'from the beginning of extant MS production'.^[66]
7. ^ ^abGuthrie lists: ohlenberg, Lock, Meinertz, Thornell, Schlatter, Spicq, Jeremias, Simpson, Kelly, and Fee'^[67]
8. ^The Book of Revelation wasn't added till the Council of Carthage (419).^[107]

References[edit]

1. ^ ^abcLindberg, Carter (2006). A Brief History of Christianity. Blackwell Publishing. p. 15. ISBN1-4051-1078-3.
2. ^ Introduction to the New Testament. Werner Georg Kummel. Abingdon Press. Nashville. 1993.
3. ^Robinson, John Arthur Thomas (2000) [1976]. Redating the New Testament. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock. p. 352. ISBN978-1-57910-527-3.
4. ^ ^abPervo, Richard (2015). 'Acts in Ephesus (and Environs) c. 115'(PDF). Forum. 3 (Fall 2015): 125–151.
5. ^ ^abcdTrobisch, David. 'Who Published the New Testament?'(PDF). Free Inquiry. Amherst, NY: Council for Secular Humanism. 28 (Dec. 2007/Jan. 2008): 30–33.
6. ^Trobisch, David (2000). The First Edition of the New Testament. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 43–44. ISBN0-19-511240-7.
7. ^ ^abcTrobisch, David (2012). 'The New Testament in Light of Book Publishing in Antiquitiy'(PDF). In Kloppenberg, John S.; Newman, Judith H. (eds.). Editing the Bible: Assessing the Task Past and Present. Resources for Biblical Study. 69. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature. pp. 161–170. ISBN978-1-58983-648-8.
8. ^'If I fail in resolving this article (of our faith) by passages which may admit of dispute out of the Old Testament, I will take out of the New Testament a confirmation of our view, that you may not straightway attribute to the Father every possible (relation and condition) which I ascribe to the Son.' - Tertullian, Against Praxeas 15
9. ^Tertullian. 'Chapter XIV'. Against Marcion, Book III.
10. ^Tertullian. 'Chapter VI'. Against Marcion, Book IV.
11. ^Lactantius. 'Chapter XX'. 'The Divine Institutes, Book IV'.
12. ^'Gospel'. Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Retrieved 10 May 2016.
13. ^Cross, F. L., ed (2005). 'Gospel'. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. New York: Oxford University Press.
14. ^Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.11
15. ^Due to its reference to Eleutherus as the current bishop of Rome, the work is usually dated c. 180. Schaff, Philip (2001) [c. 1885] 'Introductory Note to Irenæus Against Heresies', Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume I, Against Heresies, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
16. ^Fitzmyer, Joseph A. (1985). The Gospel according to Luke, Vol. 1. Anchor Bible Commentary series. New York: Doubleday. pp. 35–53.
17. ^Burkett 2002, p. 196.
18. ^Ehrman 2005, p. 235.
19. ^Perkins 2009, pp. 250–53.
20. ^Lightfoot, Joseph Barber (1866). St Paul's Epistle to the Galatians (2nd ed.). MacMillan & Co. p. 217.
21. ^Bassler, Jouette M. (2010). 'Paul and his Letters'. In Aune, David E. The Blackwell Companion to the New Testament. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 388. ISBN978-1-4443-1894-4.
22. ^Roetzel, Calvin J. (2009). The Letters of Paul: Conversations in Context (5th ed.). Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox. ISBN978-0-664-23392-1.^{[page needed]}
23. ^Attridge, Harold W. (1989). Hebrews. Hermeneia. Philadelphia: Fortress. pp. 1–6.
24. ^Lane, William L. (1991). Hebrews 1–8. Word Biblical Commentary series, Vol. 47A. Dallas, Texas: Word Books. p. cliv.
25. ^Eusebius. 'Chapter 25'. Church History, Book VI.
26. ^ ^abcEhrman, Bart D. (2004). The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. Oxford University Press. p. 323. 'Scholars in the ancient world went about detecting forgeries in much the same way that modern scholars do. They looked to see whether the ideas and writing style of a piece conformed with those used by the author in other writings, and they examined the text for any blatant anachronisms, that is, statements about things that could not have existed at the time the alleged author was writing (like the letter reputedly from an early seventeenth-century American colonist that mentions 'the United States')- Arguments of this kind were used by some Christian scholars of the third century to show that Hebrews was not written by Paul or the Book of Revelation by John the son of Zebedee. Modern scholars, as we will see, concur with these judgments. To be sure, neither of these books can be considered a forgery. Hebrews does not claim to be written by Paul (it is anonymous), and the John who wrote Revelation does not claim to be the son of Zebedee (it is therefore homonymous). Are there other books in the New Testament, though, that can be considered forgeries?'
27. ^Powell, Mark A. (2009). Introducing the New Testament: A Historical, Literary, and Theological Survey. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic. pp. 431–32. ISBN978-0-8010-2868-7.
28. ^Fornberg, Tord (1977). An Early Church in a Pluralistic Society: A Study of 2 Peter. Coniectanea Biblica, New Testament Series 9. Lund: Gleerup.^{[page needed]}
29. ^Mounce, Robert (1998). The Book of Revelation (revised ed.). The New International Commentary on the New Testament Series. Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans. pp. 15–16. ISBN0-8028-2537-0.
30. ^For a detailed study of the Apocalypse of John, see Aune, David E. (1998). Revelation, 3 volumes. Word Biblical Commentary series. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson.
31. ^ ^abNersessian 2001, p. 29.
32. ^Burris, Catherine; Van Rompay, Lucas (2002). 'Thecla in Syriac Christianity: Preliminary Observations'. Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies5 (2): 225–36.
33. ^Carter, Nancy A. (2000). 'The Acts of Thecla: A Pauline Tradition Linked to Women'. Conflict and Community in the Corinthian Church. Archived from the original on 28 November 2014.
34. ^Poole, Matthew (1852). 'Annotations Upon the Holy Bible, Vol. III'. Robert Carter and Brothers. p. 729.
35. ^'Web Directory: German Bible Versions'. Bible Research. Retrieved 17 February 2016.
36. ^Powell (2009), p. 16
37. ^Strelan, Rick (2013). Luke the Priest: The Authority of the Author of the Third Gospel. Farnham, ENG: Routledege-Ashgate. pp. 102–105.
38. ^For discussion of Mark, see Schröter, Jens (2010). 'Gospel of Mark'. In Aune, David. The Blackwell Companion to the New Testament. New York: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 281f.
39. ^For discussion of Mark, see Hare, Douglas R. A. (1996). Mark. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press. pp. 3–5.
40. ^For discussion of Matthew, see Repschinski, Boris (1998). 'Forschungbericht: Matthew and Judaism'. The Controversy Stories in the Gospel of Matthew. Göttingen, GER: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. pp. 13–61.
41. ^Ehrman, Bart D. (2005). Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. Oxford University Press. p. 235. ISBN978-0-19-518249-1. The four Gospels that eventually made it into the New Testament, for example, are all anonymous, written in the third person about Jesus and his companions. None of them contains a first-person narrative ('One day, when Jesus and I went into Capernaum...'), or claims to be written by an eyewitness or companion of an eyewitness. ... Most scholars today have abandoned these identifications, and recognize that the books were written by otherwise unknown but relatively well-educated Greek-speaking (and writing) Christians during the second half of the first century.
42. ^Ehrman, Bart D. (2004). Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine. Oxford University Press, US. p. 110. ISBN978-0-19-534616-9. In fact, contrary to what you might think, these Gospels don't even claim to be written by eyewitnesses.
43. ^ ^abEhrman, Bart D. (2006). The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed. Oxford University Press. p. 143. ISBN978-0-19-971104-8. The Gospels of the New Testament are therefore our earliest accounts. These do not claim to be written by eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus, and historians have long recognized that they were produced by second- or third-generation Christians living in different countries than Jesus (and Judas) did, speaking a different language (Greek instead of Aramaic), experiencing different situations, and addressing different audiences.
44. ^Ehrman, Bart (2009). Jesus, Interrupted. New York: Harper Collins. pp. 102–104.
45. ^Ehrman, Bart (1999). Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 43f.
46. ^Ehrman, Bart D. (2000) The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to Early Christian Writings. Oxford University Press. p. 49.
47. ^Sanders, E. P. (1995). The Historical Figure of Jesus. Penguin. pp. 63–64.
48. ^Nickle, Keith Fullerton (2001). The Synoptic Gospels: An Introduction. Westminster John Knox Press. p. 43. ISBN978-0-664-22349-6 – via Google Books.
49. ^Witherington, Ben (2004). The Gospel Code: Novel Claims About Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Da Vinci. InterVarsity Press. p. 44. ISBN978-0-8308-3267-5.
50. ^Theissen, Gerd (2004). The Gospels in Context. London, ENG: Bloomsbury-Continuum. p. 290.
51. ^Barnes, Albert (1962) [1832]. Barnes' Notes on the New Testament. Kregel Publications. p. 360. ISBN9780825493713.
52. ^Henry, Matthew (1706). Matthew Henry Complete Commentary on the Whole Bible. StudyLight.org.
53. ^Lindars, Barnabas; Edwards, Ruth B.; Court, John M. (2000). The Johannine Literature. Sheffield Academic Press. pp. 41–43. ISBN9781841270814.
54. ^Kirby, Peter. 'Gospel of Mark'. Early Christian Writings. Retrieved 15 January 2008.
55. ^Achtemeier, Paul J. (1992). 'The Gospel of Mark'. The Anchor Bible Dictionary. 4. New York: Doubleday. p. 545. ISBN0-385-19362-9.
56. ^Easton, M. G. (1996) [ca. 1897] 'Luke, Gospel According To'. Easton's Bible Dictionary. Oak Harbor, Washington: Logos Research.
57. ^Meier, John P. (1991). A Marginal Jew. 2. New York: Doubleday. pp. 955–56. ISBN0-385-46993-4.
58. ^Helms, Randel (1997). Who Wrote the Gospels?. Altadena, California: Millennium Press. p. 8. ISBN0-9655047-2-7.
59. ^Harris, Stephen L. (1985). Understanding the Bible. Palo Alto, California: Mayfield.^{[page needed]}
60. ^Harris (1985), pp. 302–310
61. ^Horrell, D. G. (2006). An Introduction to the Study of Paul. 2nd ed. London, ENG: Bloomsbury-T&T Clark. p. 7.
62. ^Knox, W. L. (1948). The Acts of the Apostles. pp. 2–15, for detailed arguments.^{[full citation needed]}
63. ^Kenny, A. (1986). A Stylometric Study of the New Testament.^{[full citation needed]}
64. ^Schelle, Udo. The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings. p. 259.^{[full citation needed]}
65. ^Bruce, F. F. (1952). The Acts of the Apostles. p. 2.^{[full citation needed]}
66. ^Wallace, Daniel B. (28 June 2004). 'Hebrews: Introduction, Argument, and Outline'. Bible.org.
67. ^Guthrie (1990), p. 622
68. ^Ehrman (2004), p. 385.^{[full citation needed]}
69. ^'Epistle of St. James'. 1914 Catholic Encyclopedia.
70. ^'Epistle of James'. Early Christian Writings. Retrieved 19 November 2010.
71. ^Harner, Philip B. (2004). What Are They Saying About the Catholic Epistles?. Paulist Press. p. 49. ISBN978-0-8091-4188-3.
72. ^Kruger, M.J. (1999). 'The Authenticity of 2 Peter'. Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. 42 (4): 645–671.
73. ^e.g. Zahn, S. T. Introduction to the New Testament, Vol. II. p. 250.
74. ^Spitta, F. (1885). Der Zweite Brief des Petrus und der Brief des Judas.
75. ^Bigg, C. 'The Epistles of St Peter and St Jude'. International Critical Commentary.
76. ^e.g. Green, E. M. B. (1961). 2 Peter Reconsidered.
77. ^Bauckham, R. J. (1986). Word Biblical Commentary, Vol. 50. Word (UK) Ltd. pp. 14ff.
78. ^Harris (1985), pp. 355–356, '1 John'
79. ^Eusebius. 'Chapter 39'. The Church History, Book III.
80. ^Justin Martyr. Dialogue with Trypho. Chapter LXXXI.
81. ^Tenney, Merrill C., gen. ed. (2009). 'Revelation, Book of the'. Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, Vol. 5 (Q–Z). Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan.
82. ^Witherington, Ben (2003). Revelation. Cambridge University Press. p. 2.
83. ^Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, Anchor Bible, 1997. pp. 456–466.
84. ^Myers, Allen C., ed. (1987). 'Aramaic'. The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans. p. 72. ISBN0-8028-2402-1. It is generally agreed that Aramaic was the common language of Israel in the 1st century AD. Jesus and his disciples spoke the Galilean dialect, which was distinguished from that of Jerusalem (Matt. 26:73).
85. ^Metzger, Bruce M.; Ehrman, Bart D. (2005). The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. 4th ed. Oxford University Press.
86. ^Aland, K.; Aland, B. (1995). The Text of the New Testament. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN978-0-8028-4098-1.
87. ^Koester, Helmut (1982). Introduction to the New Testament, Volume 2. Philadelphia. p. 172.
88. ^Davies, W. D.; Allison, Dale C. (1988). A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Vol. 1. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. pp. 33–58.
89. ^Eusebius. 'Chapter 25'. Church History, Book III.
90. ^Gamble, Harry Y. (1985). The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning. Guides to Biblical Scholarship. Philadelphia: Fortress.
91. ^Three forms are postulated, from The Canon Debate, chapter 18, p. 300, note 21, attributed to Harry Y. Gamble: '(1) Marcion's collection that begins with Galatians and ends with Philemon; (2) Papyrus 46, dated about 200, that follows the order that became established except for reversing Ephesians and Galatians; and (3) the letters to seven churches, treating those to the same church as one letter and basing the order on length, so that Corinthians is first and Colossians (perhaps including Philemon) is last.'
92. ^Harnack, Adolf. 'Appendix VI'. Origin of the New Testament. Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
93. ^Knox, John (1942). Marcion and the New Testament: An Essay in the Early History of the Canon. Chicago: Chicago University Press. pp. 158ff. ISBN978-0404161835.
94. ^Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, Chapter 12
95. ^Against Heresies, inter alia, 3.12.12
96. ^Adversus Marcionem, inter alia, V.14
97. ^Justin Martyr. First Apology. Chapter 67.
98. ^Ferguson, Everett (2002). 'Factors leading to the Selection and Closure of the New Testament Canon'. In McDonald, L. M.; Sanders, J. A. (eds.). The Canon Debate. Hendrickson. pp. 301ff. ISBN978-1-4412-4163-4.
99. ^ ^abIrenaeus. 'Chapter XI'. Against Heresies, Book III. Section 8.
100. ^McDonald, L. M; Sanders, J. A., eds. (2002). The Canon Debate. Hendrickson. p. 277.
101. ^Noll, Mark A. (1997). Turning Points. Baker Academic. pp. 36–37.
102. ^de Jonge, H. J. (2003). 'The New Testament Canon'. In de Jonge, H. J.; Auwers, J. M (eds.). The Biblical Canons. Leuven University Press. p. 315.
103. ^Ackroyd, P. R.; Evans, C. F. (eds.) (1970). The Cambridge History of the Bible, Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press. p. 308.CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: Extra text: authors list (link)
104. ^Bateman, C. G. (2010). 'Origen’s Role in the Formation of the New Testament Canon'. Social Science Research Network.
105. ^McGuckin, John A. (2003). 'Origen as Literary Critic in the Alexandrian Tradition'. In Perrone, L. (ed.). Origeniana Octava: Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition, Vol. 1. Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 164. Leuven: Leuven University Press. pp. 121–37.
106. ^Brakke, David (Oct 1994). 'Canon Formation and Social Conflict in Fourth Century Egypt: Athanasius of Alexandria's Thirty Ninth Festal Letter'. Harvard Theological Review87 (4): 395–419.
107. ^ ^abMcDonald & Sanders (2002), Appendix D-2, note 19 'Revelation was added later in 419 at the subsequent synod of Carthage.'
108. ^ ^abFerguson (2002), p. 320
109. ^Bruce, F. F. (1988). The Canon of Scripture. Intervarsity Press. p. 230.
110. ^Augustine. De Civitate Dei. 22.8.
111. ^Bruce (1988), p. 234
112. ^Bruce (1988), p. 225
113. ^ ^abMetzger, Bruce (1987). The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origins, Development, and Significance. Oxford: Clarendon. pp. 237–238.
114. ^ ^abBruce (1988), p. 97
115. ^Bruce (1988), p. 215
116. ^Ackroyd & Evans (1970), p. 305
117. ^McDonald, Lee M. (1995). The Formation of the Christian Biblical Canon. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson. p. 116.
118. ^Metzger (1987), p. 246 'Finally on 8 April 1546, by a vote of 24 to 15, with 16 abstensions, the Council issued a decree (De Canonicis Scripturis) in which, for the first time in the history of the church, the question of the contents of the Bible was made an absolute article of faith and confirmed by an anathema.'
119. ^Reid, George (1908). 'Canon of the New Testament'. The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
120. ^McDonald & Sanders (2002), pp. 414–415
121. ^For the initial dating of P52, see Roberts, C. H. (ed.) (1935). An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library. Manchester: Manchester University Press; and Bell, H. Idris; Skeat, T. C. (1935). Fragments of an Unknown Gospel and Other Early Christian Papyri. London: Trustees of the British Museum. Though see now Nongbri, Brent (2005). 'The Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel'. Harvard Theological Review98: 23–52; and Martinez, David G. (2009). 'The Papyri and Early Christianity'. In Bagnall, Roger S. (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 590–623.
122. ^Ehrman (2005), p. 46
123. ^ ^abcdStrobel, Lee (1998). The Case for Christ. Chapter Three, when quoting biblical scholar Bruce Metzger.
124. ^ ^abBruce, F.F. (1981). The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?. InterVarsity Press. p. 14.
125. ^Ehrman, Bart D. (2005). Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. HarperCollins. p. 265. ISBN978-0-06-073817-4.
126. ^Nave, Guy D. The Role and Function of Repentance in Luke-Acts. p. 194.
127. ^Spong, John Shelby (26 September 1979). 'The Continuing Christian Need for Judaism'. Christian Century. p. 918. Archived from the original on 4 June 2011.
128. ^Levine, Amy-Jill; Blickenstaff, Marianne (2001). A Feminist Companion to John, Vol. II. Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings, Vol. 5. A&C Black. p. 175.
129. ^'NETBible: John 7'. Bible.org. Retrieved 17 October 2009. See note 139 on that page.
130. ^Keith, Chris (2008). 'Recent and Previous Research on the Pericope Adulterae (John 7.53—8.11)'. Currents in Biblical Research. 6 (3): 377–404. doi:10.1177/1476993X07084793.
131. ^'Pericope adulterae'. In Cross, F. L. (ed.) (2005). The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. New York: Oxford University Press.
132. ^Ehrman (2006), p. 166.^{[full citation needed]}
133. ^Metzger, Bruce (1994). A Textual Commentary on the New Testament (2nd ed.). German Bible Society.
134. ^Metzger (1994), p. 367
135. ^Parvis, M. M. Vol. 4. pp. 594–595.^{[full citation needed]}
136. ^Metzger, Bruce M.; Ehrman, Bart D. (2005). The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
137. ^See, e.g., Stendahl, Krister (1954). The School of St. Matthew and Its Use of the Old Testament. Uppsala and Lund; Marcus, Joel (1993). The Way of the Lord: Christological Exegesis of the Old Testament in the Gospel of Mark. Edinburgh; Smith, D. Moody (1972). 'The Use of the Old Testament in the New'. In The Use of the Old Testament in the New and Other Essays: Studies in Honor of William Franklin Stinespring. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. pp. 3–65; Juel, Donald (1988). Messianic Exegesis: Christological Interpretation of the Old Testament in Early Christianity. Philadelphia: Fortress; and Barr, James (1966). Old and New in Interpretation: A Study of the Two Testaments. London: SCM.
138. ^Võõbus, Arthur (1954). Early Versions of the New Testament. Stockholm. pp. 1–128, 211–240.
139. ^Metzger, Bruce M. (1977). The Early Versions of the New Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 3–98.
140. ^Vööbus, Arthur (1954). Early Versions of the New Testament. Stockholm. pp. 216–229.
141. ^Vööbus (1954), pp. 229–237; Metzger (1977), pp. 99–152
142. ^On the Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, Arabic, and Gothic, see Vööbus (1954), pp. 133–210, 243–309
143. ^ ^abMeadors, Gary T. (1997). 'Scripture, Unity and Diversity of'. In Elwell, Walter A. (ed.). Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Books.
144. ^Stagg, Frank (1962). New Testament Theology. Broadman. ISBN0-8054-1613-7.
145. ^'The Transmission of Divine Revelation'. Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd ed. 1997.
146. ^Ware, Kallistos (1993). 'Holy Tradition: The Source of the Orthodox Faith'.The Orthodox Church. Penguin UK.
147. ^'Articles of Religion'. Anglicans Online. Retrieved 19 November 2010.
148. ^'The Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy'. Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics. Retrieved 19 November 2010.
149. ^'Homosexual ordination vote widens gap between Presbyterian factions'. ReligionToday. 20 June 2001.
150. ^'Our Beliefs'. Beit Simcha. Retrieved 7 June 2012. To study the whole and authoritative Word of God, including the Tenach (Hebrew Scriptures) and the B'rit Chadasha (New Covenant) under the leading of the Holy Spirit.
151. ^'Essential Statement of Faith'. The Harvest: A Messianic Charismatic Congregation. Archived from the original on 27 November 2015. Retrieved 7 June 2012. We believe that the Torah (five books of Moses) is a comprehensive summary of God's foundational laws and ways, as found in both the Tanakh and Apostolic Scriptures. Additionally, the Bible teaches that without holiness no man can see God. We believe in the Doctrine of Sanctification as a definite, yet progressive work of grace, commencing at the time of regeneration and continuing until the consummation of salvation. Therefore we encourage all believers, both Jews and Gentiles, to affirm, embrace, and practice these foundational laws and ways as clarified through the teachings of Messiah Yeshua.
152. ^'Equipped For Every Good Work'. Brooklyn, New York: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Inc. International Bible Students Association. 1946. pp. 12–13.
153. ^See, for example, Raddatz, Tom. 'A Response to the Oneness-Trinity Debate'. 1Lord1Faith.org. Archived from the original on 20 March 2005.
154. ^Dulle, Jason. 'How We Get Our Bible'. Institute for Biblical Studies. Retrieved 15 April 2013.
155. ^Dulle, Jason. 'Defending the Inerrancy and Canon of Scripture'. Institute for Biblical Studies. Retrieved 15 April 2013.
156. ^Dulle, Jason. 'The Nature of Inspiration'. Institute for Biblical Studies. Retrieved 15 April 2013.
157. ^Ministerial Association, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists (2005). Seventh-day Adventists Believe (2nd ed.). Pacific Press Publishing Association. pp. 14–16.
158. ^McLarty, John (15 November 2001). 'The Adventist Theological Society'. Adventist Today. Archived from the original on 25 December 2007.
159. ^White, Ellen (2015). Patriarchs and Prophets. Start Publishing LLC. p. 365.
160. ^'Articles of Faith'. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Retrieved 17 February 2016.
161. ^Givens, Terry L. (2015). The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism. Oxford University Press. pp. 124–125. ISBN978-0-19-977836-2.
162. ^'Bible, Inerrancy of'. The Church of the Latter Day Saints. 2016. Retrieved 23 May 2016.
163. ^Encyclopedia of Mormonism, Macmillan 1992, pp. 106–107
164. ^David Lamont Paulsen; Donald W. Musser (2007). Mormonism in Dialogue with Contemporary Christian Theologies. Mercer University Press. p. 277. ISBN978-0-88146-083-4.

Further reading[edit]

• Brown, Raymond E. (1997). An Introduction to the New Testament. Anchor Bible Reference Library; New York: Doubleday.
• Bultmann, Rudolf (1951–1955). Theology of the New Testament, English translation, 2 volumes. New York: Scribner.
• Burkett, Delbert (2002). An Introduction to the New Testament and the Origins of Christianity. Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-0-521-00720-7.
• von Campenhausen, Hans (1972). The Formation of the Christian Bible, English translation. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
• Clark, Gordon (1990). 'Logical Criticisms of Textual Criticism', The Trinity Foundation: Jefferson, Maryland
• Conzelmann, Hans; Lindemann, Andreas (1999). Interpreting the New Testament: An Introduction to the Principles and Methods of New Testament Exegesis, English translation. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson.
• Dormeyer, Detlev (1998). The New Testament among the Writings of Antiquity, English translation. Sheffield.
• Duling, Dennis C.; Perrin, Norman (1993). The New Testament: Proclamation and Parenesis, Myth and History, 3rd edition. New York: Harcourt Brace.
• Ehrman, Bart D. (2011). The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 5th edition. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Ehrman, Bart D. (2005). Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-518249-1.
• Goodspeed, Edgar J. (1937). An Introduction to the New Testament. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Levine, Amy-Jill; Brettler, Marc Z. (2011). The Jewish Annotated New Testament. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Koester, Helmut (1995 and 2000). Introduction to the New Testament, 2nd edition, 2 volumes. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
• Kümmel, Werner Georg (1996). Introduction to the New Testament, revised and enlarged English translation. Nashville: Abingdon Press.
• Mack, Burton L. (1995). Who Wrote the New Testament?. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.
• Neill, Stephen; Wright, Tom (1988). The Interpretation of the New Testametnt, 1861–1986, new edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Nersessian, V. (2001). 'The Armenian Canon of the New Testament'. The Bible in the Armenian Tradition. Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum. ISBN978-0-89236-640-8.
• Perkins, Pheme (2009). Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels. Eerdmans. ISBN978-0-8028-6553-3.
• Schnelle, Udo (1998). The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings, English translation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
• Wills, Garry, 'A Wild and Indecent Book' (review of David Bentley Hart, The New Testament: A Translation, Yale University Press, 577 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXV, no. 2 (8 February 2018), pp. 34–35. Discusses some pitfalls in interpreting and translating the New Testament.
• Zahn, Theodor (1910). Introduction to the New Testament, English translation, 3 volumes. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.

External links[edit]

General references[edit]

• New Testament Gateway Annotated guide to academic New Testament Web resources including not only other Web sites, but articles and course materials
• Jewish Studies for Christians An Online Study Group exploring the Jewish setting of the early Jesus movement. (An Israeli blog led by Dr. Eliyahu Lizorkin-Eyzenberg).
• 'Introduction to New Testament History and Literature' course materials 'Open Yale course' taught at Yale University by Dale B. Martin
• New Testament Reading Room: Extensive on-line New Testament resources (including reference works, commentaries, translations, atlases, language tools, and works on New Testament theology), Tyndale Seminary
• Biblicalstudies.org.uk New Testament pages Bibliographies on the New Testament and its individual books
• Christianity.com Bible Study Tools For-profit, conservative religious site with links to translations, as well as to mostly out-dated and non-critical commentaries, concordances, and other reference works
• Pastoral articles on the New Testament for ministerial training Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary (WELS)
• Jewish reading of the New Testament Haaretz essay on reclaiming the New Testament as an integral part of Jewish literature

Development and authorship[edit]

• The Gospels in the official canon, and some that were not included in the Bible
• Dating the New Testament A compilation of the dates ascribed by various scholars to the composition of the New Testament documents, accompanied by an odd statistical average of the dates

Greek[edit]

• New Testament Koine Greek Original Side by side with the English (King James) and Russian (Synodal) translation Commentary by the Greek Fathers – Icons from Mount Athos
• New Testament, Greek Polytonic Text according to Ecumenical Patriarchate(Greek)