I.
The Teaching of the Apostles.
1. " The teaching of the Apostles " was the necessary instru- mentality for bringing the new converts to full discipleship. Their rudimentary faith needed a careful and continuous instruc- tion, an instruction which replaced that which the scribes were in
1 W. Alexander. ACTS & ROM. — 4
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the habit of giving, so that in the most literal sense the Apostles might now be called scribes become disciples to the kingdom, bringing out of their treasure things new and old, the new tale of the ministry and glory of Jesus, the old promises and signs by which Law and Prophets had pointed onward to Him and His kingdom.
2. But, further, the teaching of the Apostles had a far wider range when their disciples were not converted Jews, but converted heathen. Then they had to create a new morality, to lay firmly that foundation which the Jews had received from their long tradition of legal righteousness, to adapt the principles to the novel conditions of Gentile life.
3. Can we tell what the teaching of the Apostles chiefly consisted of ?
(1) Even a superficial study of St. Paul's Epistles enables us to understand the magnitude of the task which rested on the Apostles as religious teachers. Take, for sufficient example, the First Epistle to the Corinthians. We find clearly indicated there a teaching extraordinary in depth, range, and variety. St. Paul brings to the Corinthians the knowledge of Christ's life and death, and the substance of His revelation. He interprets the Old Testament in the light of Christian belief ; he develops a detailed doctrine of the person and work of our Saviour. Consider how large a background of theological knowledge, built up in the Corinthians by systematic teaching, is implied in such a verse as this : " But of him (i.e. God) are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." Is it not suggestive that we should find the great keywords of the Pauline theology in the least theological of his Epistles ? In this same Epistle to the Corinthians we find a very definite and rich teaching about the Holy Spirit, an eschato- logical doctrine of great range and richness, the most careful moral teaching, and the delivery of practical rules, customs of the Christian society, which the Apostle does not hesitate to impose on the Corinthians. No doubt St. Paul stood out from the apostolic company as a great constructive theologian, and we cannot suppose that the other Apostles, with the exception of St. John, were able to bring to their converts so rich and varied
ACTS ii. 42 51
a volume of sacred science; but then we must remember that St. Paul, to use his own phrase, " laboured more abundantly than they all," and that, even in the apostolic age, his Epistles were widely disseminated. In the New Testament, then, alone we have abundant evidence of the active vitality of the teaching of the Apostles.
(2) But we can also bring evidence outside the New Testament. Two documents have come down to our own time with the claim to embody " the teaching of the Apostles," and though neither can vindicate an apostolic origin, yet both do certainly perpetuate aspects of the work of the Apostles as the teachers of the Christian society. The oldest of these documents is a curious moral treatise dating probably from the first half of the second century, though it may be much older, and actually entitled The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. It illustrates the work which, especially among the Gentile converts, fell on the Apostles as creators of a Christian morality, which should replace the depraved and perverted tradi- tions of heathen life. The other document, later in actual com- position, is not less apostolic in character. It is known through- out the world as " the Apostles' Creed." Of course we must be watchful against the anachronism which would credit the Apostles with precise dogmatic forms, such as were afterwards received in the Church on the authority of their names. But though the so-called Apostles' Creed did not exist in apostolic times, we must admit that the substance of its teaching was primitive. The Ignatian Epistles, which are the connecting link between the Pastoral Epistles and the Apologists of the second century, prove that instruction was given in Antioch on all the points character- istic of the teaching of the developed creed.
(3) But by the " teaching of the Apostles," in which the first Christians continued, we are not to understand a detailed moral code, or an elaborated creed, but rather a progressive instruction, which included both morals and doctrine, which addressed itself with rare versatility to the novel and ever-varying requirements of a quickly expanding society ; and always laid the emphasis on the things which were fundamental.
Tj I like the advice which Mr. Birrell gave at Whitefield's Institute : " Do not worry too much over the many things you are in doubt about ; hang on with all your weight to the things,
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however few, about which you are certain, and on the top of these certainties pile up work, work, work ! " May I take a little liberty with one of the great sayings of Shakespeare, a liberty which does no fundamental violence to the text, " The truths thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy heart with hoops of steel."1