they everywhere appear as familiar Christian phrases, wnich suggest how surely the transition had been accomplished in the early Church from the legal and pre))aratory conception of sacrifice to the permanent Christian view which was ethical and spiritual.
(e) Sub-apostolic. — In this period the sacrificial ideas met with in the Apostolic Age continued with but little change ; the tendency, judging from post-apostolic development, was, if anything, to- wards more ceremonial and material views of sacri- fice as applied to illustrate or interpret the death of Christ. The Epistle ascribed to Barnabas deals with the subject in its relation to the sacrifices of the Jewish Temple, which are considered to have been abolished in order that ' the new law of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is without the yoke of necessity, might have a human oblation' (ii.).
i. Conclusions. — Sacrifice was taken over by the Apostolic Church as a living institution in Judaism ; the value of it as a fundamental principle of re- ligious worship was recognized ; the retrospect of its history given by the apostolic writers is reverent and appreciative ; it was educative. For a time there appears to have been hesitation as to how far its practice should continue in the Christian en- vironment ; the primitive Jewish Christians made use of it by worshipping in the Temple at Jeru- salem, and in the observance of ritual associated with the sacrificial system elsewhere within the Christian communities. Others with a quicker spiritual instinct reached the conviction that as Christ was the only perfect sacrifice, the material and historical sacrifices were of relative value only, and transient. Vehement controversy arose when the Judaizing party in the Church sought to lay upon Gentile believers the burden of the ceremonial law of Israel. The sharp con ten tions of the Petrine and Pauline schools (Ac 15^"), the Council at Jeru- salem (Ac 15), the teaching of the Pauline Epistles, particularly Galatians, and ultimately the masterly argument of the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews are witnesses to hesitations and tendencies of thought in apostolic times. Sympathy with the ancient ritual of sacrifice and sanction for its practice appear to have accompanied the emergence of Christianity as a separate institution from the Judaism in which it had its rise. Whilst the great principle that in Christ all preparatory sacrificial institutions were fulfilled found early acceptance, it was only slowly that its many-sided implications were fully acknowledged.
(a) Retention of the Jewish sacrificial system as symbolic. — Even when the sacrificial system as a living institution had passed into a condition of obsolescence in the Apostolic Church, it remained permanently influential as an organized system of illustrations for interpreting the spiritual realities of the work of Christ ; it became a system of types and symbols which were of service for the teacher and jireacher. Whilst the apostles deliberately set aside the belief in the efficacy of Jewish sacri- fices, it is evident not only that they could express the work of C'lirist in no better terms than those associated with sacrificial ritual, but that they found in these terms some real meaning when applied to the shedding of His blood for the re- mission of sins. Consequentlj' sacrificial termino- logy came into easy and common usage, and became in fact the most comprehensible and almost neces- sary medium for tlie thought-forms which set forth the inward and abiding realities of the Christian redemption. The evidence for this abounds, as we have seen, in the apostolic literature. How close the symbol moved towards the reality in the apos- tolic teaching respecting the significance of the death of Christ, how far, that is. His death was truly a sacrifice, involves questions that run up
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into the problems of the grounds on which the ettii'iicy of His death was ultimately based (see Atonement). So far, however, as its etlicacy is based on the meanin;; of sacrilice in the OT, the diver};ent positions held as satisfying the terms of apostolic teaching may be broadly represented on the one hand bj' writers who hold that sacrilice in the OT was substitutionary in the sense of pro- viding satisfaction for sin, and, on the otlier hand, by w ritors who maintain that such a view ' rests upon profound misunderstandings of the nature of the OT sacrifices, and entirely ignores Jewish con- ceptions of the ell'ect and operation of sacrilice' (EBi iv. 4232). The kindred question arising from the apostolic use of sacrificial symbols, as to how far Christ's death was truly a sacrilice, or merely illustrated by sacrificial language, also leads to opposing replies. On the one hand, it is held that ' Old Testament conceptions will always be sugges- tive and historically instructive for the study of Christian teaching, but a direct source of such teaching they cannot be. Christianity rises high above that national and ritualistic religion on whose soil it took its rise' (Stevens, Christian Doctrine of Salvation, p. 2; cf. W. R. Smitli, Prophets of Israel, Edinburgh, 1S82, p. 6). On the other hand, W. P. Paterson writes : ' Nor for the apostolic age was the description of Christ's death as a sacrifice of the nature of a mere illustration. The apostles held it to be a sacrifice in the most literal sense of the word ' (HDB iv. 343 f . ). One fact stands clearly out. The thought-forms of the Apostolic Church have survived, and are living and apparently neces- sary thought forms for modern Christian thinkers. The whole problem of symbolism or typology in Christian teaching will probably receive greater attention in the near future. This will be necessary in order to show how far the detailed correspond- ences between the precise elements of Jewisli ritual and Christian ideas of sacrifice so freely set forth in the apostolic writings afford justification or otherwise for the exegetical methods subsequently adopted by Christian expositors. It is in ett'ect the question whether the minutise of sacrificial ritual in the ancient economy should be elaborated by them with increasing ingenuity as providentially supplied for literal application as a means of legiti- mately interpreting the sacrificial work of Christ, or whether the whole Levitical system should be broadly expounded as preparatory because illus- trating the sacrificial principle, itself eternal in all true religion, as generally predictive of its final and highest expression in Christ. The latter alter- native would have the advantage of co-ordinating the predictive element in sacrificial typology with the same element in prophecy, and applying to it the methods of interpretation which modern critical scholarship has used with success in exhibiting the prepnratio evangelica in Messianic prophecies as Christ fulfils them. (These positions are discussed in Cave, Scriptural Doctrine of Sacrifice, pp. 131- 173 ; HDB iv. 348 ; Stevens, Christian Doctrine of Salvation, p. 2ff. ; A. S. Peake, The Bible, London, 1913, pp. 347-361.) Another feature of the reten- tion by the apostolic writers of the sacrificial symbols is their elective application to the beautiful ethical ritual that was to become characteristic of the worship and service of the Christian life. Everything in Christianity, in both its Godward and its manw ard activities, is regarded as essentially sacrificial in spirit. Christ's sacrifice of Himself was not only the fulfilment of all preceding types ; it was itself a type ; it was typical of the presenta- tion to God as an ottering well pleasing to llim, 'an odour of a sweet smell,' of the whole body, soul, and spirit of Christian manhood (lio 1')'", Jude^'). The heart of apostolic teaching was that every Christian was crucified with Christ ; he died