In the last respect, as also touching the nature of the primitive Eucharist, the Didache illumines and is illumined by Pliny’s report to Trajan about Christians in Pontus-Bithynia. Their early morn- ing worship on the ‘stated day ’ included a binding of themselves by solemn vow (sacramento is Pliny’s word) ‘not to any crime, but against the commis- sion of thefts, robberies, adulteries, the breach of faith, the repudiation of a deposit when called upon.’ This surely means that the moral vows taken at baptism were then renewed, and that such vows were more explicit than we had realized prior to the discovery of the Didache. Of course the usages in this matter may not have been exactly the same in Palestine and Bithynia. But the idea of an explicit moral covenant, as part of the new allegiance,} is common not only to these
* Compare the picture of conjoint discipline of this sort, as late as the 3rd and 4th cents., reflected in Apost. Const. ii. 47, and its basis in the Didascalia.
t Justin, Apol. i. 61, describes candidates for baptism as those
two, but also to many early Christian witnesses, such as Ignatius, Hermas, Justin, Tertullian, Origen ;* to the abrenuntiatio diaboli, as found in the ‘Canons of Hippolytus’ onwards; and to the whole series of addresses to candidates for baptism or to the newly baptized, which extends well into the Middle Ages. Thus the very Homiliariwm in which our Latin ‘ Doctrina Apostolorum’ is pre- served, comes next to an ‘Admonitio S. Petri sive preedicatio sancti Bonifatii ep. de abrenuntiatione in baptismate.’ Then, again, the Bithynian habit of meeting later on in the day ‘to take food, but ordinary and harmless food,’ confirms the Didache’s picture of the Eucharist as one aspect of a religious meal, which could also be termed a ‘ love-feast,’ as seemingly by Ignatius. +
There exists, indeed, a tendency in certain circles to discount the significance of our document in these and other respects—especially its ‘dogmatic poverty ’—on the plea that it is not representative of primitive Christianity, but only of some isolated and exceptional type of community, remote from the main stream of the Church’s life. This is both unproved and improbable as regards Palestinian Christianity, which is the one type really in ques- tion. On the contrary, the Didache is in full accord with the piety of the Epistle of James and of those who furnished the author of Acts with the materials for his picture of Judean Christianity ; while it helps us to conceive the form of faith in which the readers of the Epistle to the Hebrews had been reared, and from which they tended to fall back into mere Judaism. The question, then, arises: Are we to regard ordinary Palestinian Christianity, during the Apostolic and sub- Apostolic ages, as ‘representative’ or normal as far as it went? Or are we to discount it as Ebionite, Judaic, or non-Apostolic, because it does not show certain features familiar to us from the Epistles of Paul (which form the bulk of our evidence) and those which, whether influenced by him or not, are hardly typical of the Palestinian Church (the Petrine Epistles, the Epistle to the Hebrews, where it represents its author rather than its readers, and the Johannine Epistles)? This issue is seldom faced. Yet on its answer largely depends our estimate of the Didache.
(6) But the case against the ‘hole and corner’ theory of the Didache goes much further. One can appeal to the history of its reception by the Church at large. To use Dr. C. Taylor’s words once more, ‘If at an early date we find it quoted with profound respect beyond the pale of Judaism,’ we. must regard it ‘as a genuine fragment of the earliest tradition of the Church.’ If it be rejoined that this applies more to the Zwo Ways than to the full Didache, the lesson is the same, namely, that the estimate of the ante-Nicene Church, par- ticularly in the second century, was surprisingly appreciative of what some to-day fad nol Christian at all.t But when we consider the record
‘who are convinced . . . that these things which are taught by us . . . are true, and who promise that they are able thus to conduct their life.’
* Ignatius, ad Eph. xiv. 2 of trayyerroueve: Xprorod elvocs, du? By mpkoroosy spbicovres; Hermas, Mand. vi. 2, xaaAdv tom ca ayyidw ris Sixesortyys a&xoroubeiv, Ta 38 hyyikw Tis movnpins c&ro- rateobos; Justin, Apol. i. 65, rov rertionivoy xa) cuyxarece- Osiévov ; Tertullian, de Corona, 3, ‘contestamur nos renuntiare diabolo et pomp et angelis ejus’; 11, ‘Credimusne humanum sacramentum divino superduci licere et in alum Dominum re- spondere post Christum’? See also Origen, contra Celsum, iii. 51, 58; cf. the Elkesaite protestation of future holiness, in Hippolytus, Philosoph. ix. 15, which may well reflect something of normal baptismal usage. '
+ Ad Sinyrn. viii., obx e&év toriy ywpls rot émioxorov ovre Bocwriley ore &yearny soy ; On which see Lightfoot’s remarks.
} The justice of this complaint may well be doubted by those who recall the working faith of Francis of Assisi, and how much there is in common between its emphasis and that of the Didache. Of course the Passion of Christ forms a great point of contrast; but in the early Palestinian Church as a whole