We now turn to the Apostles. Here a few brief remarks must suffice. (A suggestive summary in Sanday, What the first Christians thought about Christ,' Oxford House Papers, First Series.) That S. Paul's summary of the Gospel (1 Cor. xv. 3 sqq.) is given by him as common ground between himself and the older Apostles follows strictly from the fact that the verb used (parelabon) links the facts of Redemption (v. 3, 4) with the personal experiences of the original disciples (5 sqq.). In fact it is not in dispute that the original Jewish nucleus of the Apostolic Church preached Jesus as the Messiah, and His death as the ground of forgiveness of sins (Pfleiderer, Urchrist. p. 20; Acts ii. 36, 38; iii. 26; iv. 12, &c.; the Hebraic colouring' of these early chapters is very characteristic and important). The question is, however, how much this implied as to the Divine Personality of the Saviour; how far the belief of the Apostles and their contemporaries was uniform and explicit on this point. Important light is thrown on this question by the controversy which divided S. Paul from the mass of Jewish Christians with respect to the observance of the Law. Our primary source of knowledge here is Galatians, ch. ii. We there learn that while S. Paul regarded this question as involving the whole essence of the Gospel, and resisted every attempt to impose circumcision on Gentile Christians, the older Apostles conceded the one point regarded as central, and, while reserving the obligation of the Law on those born under it (which S. Paul never directly assailed, 1 Cor. vii. 18) recognised the Gospel of the uncircumcision as legitimate. This concession, as the event proved, conceded everything; if the gospel of the uncircumcision' was sufficient for salvation, circumcision became a national, not a religious principle. Now this whole question was fundamentally a question about Christ. Men who believed, or were willing to grant, that the Law uttered from Sinai by the awful voice of the Most High Himself was no longer the supreme revelation of God, the one divinely ordained covenant of righteousness, certainly believed that some revelation of God different in kind (for no revelation of God to man could surpass the degree of Ex. xxxiii. 11) had taken place, an unique revelation of God in man. The revelation of God in Christ, not the revelation of God to Moses, was the one fact in the world's history; Sinai was dwarfed in comparison of Calvary. But it must be observed that while the older Apostles, by the very recognition of the gospel of the uncircumcision, went thus far with S. Paul, S. Paul realised as a central principle what to others lay at the circumference. What to the one was a result of their belief in Christ was to him the starting-point, from which logical conclusions were seen to follow, practical applications made in every direction. At the same time S. Paul taught nothing about Christ that was not implied in the belief of the older Apostles, or that they would not have felt impelled by their own religious position to accept. In fact it was their fundamental union in the implicit belief of the divinity of the Lord that made possible any agreement between S. Paul and the Jewish Apostles as to the gospel of the uncircumcision.
The apostles of the circumcision, however, stood between S. Paul and the zealot mass of Jewish Christians (Acts xxi. 20), many of whom were far from acquiescing in the recognition of S. Paul's Gospel. On the same principle that we have used to determine the belief of the Stuloi with regard to Christ, we must needs recognise that where the gospel of the uncircumcision was still assailed or disparaged, the Divinity of Christ was apprehended faintly, or not at all.
The name of the Ebionite' sect testifies to its continuity with a section of the Jerusalem Church (see Lightfoot's Galatians, S. Paul and the Three). It should be observed, however, firstly that between the clear-sighted Apostle of the Gentiles and the straitest of the zealots, there lay every conceivable gradation of intermediate positions (Loofs, Leitf. §11. 2, 3); secondly, that while emancipation from legalism in the Apostolic Church implied what has been said above, a belief in the divinity of Jesus was in itself compatible with strict Jewish observance.
The divinity of Christ then was firmly held by S. Paul (the most remarkable passage is Rom. x. 9, 11, 13, where Kurion 'Iesoun = auton = Kurion = hvhy Joel ii. 32), and his belief was held by him in common with the Jewish Apostles, although with a clearer illumination as to its consequences. That this belief was absolutely universal in the Church is not to be maintained, the elimination of Ebionism was only gradual (Justin, Dial. xlviii. ad fin.); but that it, and not Ebionism, represented the common belief of the Apostles and New Testament writers is not to be doubted.
But taking this as proved, we do not find an equally clear answer to the question In what sense is Christ God? The synoptic record makes no explicit reference to the pre-existence of Christ: but the witness of John and descent of the Spirit (Mark i. 7-11) at His baptism, coupled with the Virginal Birth (Mt., Lk.), and with the traits of the synoptic portrait of Christ as collected above, if they do not compel us to assert, yet forbid us to deny the presence of this doctrine to the minds of the Evangelists. In the Pauline (including Hebrews) and Johannine writings the doctrine is strongly marked, and in the latter (Joh. i. 1, 14, 18, monogenes Theos) Jesus Christ is expressly identified with the creative Word (Palestinian Memra, rather than Alexandrian or from Philo; see also Rev. xix. 13), and the Word with God. Moreover such passages as Philipp. ii. 6 sqq., 2 Cor. xiii. 14 (the Apostolic benediction), &c., &c., are significant of the impression left upon the mind of the infant Churches as they started upon their history no longer under the personal guidance of the Apostles of the Lord.
Jesus Christ was God, was one with the Father and with the Spirit: that was enough for the faith, the love, the conduct of the primitive Church. The Church was nothing so little as a society of theologians; monotheists and worshippers of Christ by the same instinct, to analyse their faith as an intellectual problem was far from their thoughts: God Himself (and there is but one God) had suffered for them (Ign. Rom. vi.; Tat. Gr. 13; Melito Fr. 7), God's sufferings were before their eyes (Clem. R. I. ii. 1), they desired the drink of God, even His blood (Ign. Rom. vii., cf. Acts xx. 28); if enthusiastic devotion gave way for a moment to reflexion we must think of Jesus Christ as of God' (Clem. R.' II. 1).
The Apostolic fathers' are not theological in their aim or method. The earliest seat of theological reflexion in the primitive Church appears to have been Asia Minor, or rather Western Asia from Antioch to the Ægean. From this region proceed the Ignatian letters, which stand alone among the literature of their day in theological depth and reflexion. Their theology is wonderfully mature in spite of its immaturity, full of reflexions, and yet at the same time full of intuitive originality' (Loofs, p. 61). The central idea is that of the renovation of man (Eph. 20), now under the power of Satan and Death (ib. 3, 19), which are undone (katalusis) in Christ, the risen Saviour (Smyrn. 3), who is our true Life,' and endows us with immortality (Smyrn. 4, Magn. 6, Eph. 17). This is by virtue of His Divinity (Eph. 19, Smyrn. 4) in union with His perfect Manhood. He is the only utterance of God (logos apo siges proelthon, Magn. 8), the unlying mouth by which the Father spake' (Rom. 8.) God come (genomenos) in the flesh,' our God' (Eph. 7, 18). His flesh partaken mystically in the Eucharist unites our nature to His, is the medicine of incorruption' (Eph. 20, Smyrn. 7, cf. Trall. 1). Ignatius does not distinguish the relation of the divine to the human in Christ: he is content to insist on both: one Physician, of flesh and of spirit, begotten and unbegotten' (Eph. 7). Nor does he clearly conceive the relation of the Eternal Son to the Father. He is unbegotten (as God) and begotten (as man): from eternity with the Father (Magn. 6): through Him the One God manifested himself. The theological depth of Ignatius was perhaps in part called forth by the danger to the churches from the Docetic heretics, representative of a Judaic (Philad. 5, Magn. 8-10) syncretism which had long had a hold in Asia Minor (1 John and Lightfoot Coloss., p. 73, 81 sqq.). To this he opposes what is evidently a creed (Trall. 9), with emphasis on the reality (alethos) of all the facts of Redemption comprised in it.
It was in fact the controversies of the second century that produced a theology in the Catholic Church,--that in a sense produced the Catholic Church itself. The idea of the Church as distinct from and embracing the Churches is a New Testament idea (Eph. v. 25, cf. 1 Cor. xv. 9, &c.), and the name Catholic' occurs at the beginning of the second century (Lightfoot's note on Ign. Smyrn. 8); but the Gnostic and Montanist controversies compelled the Churches which held fast to the paradosis of the Apostles to close their ranks (episcopal federation) and to reflect upon their creed. The Baptismal Creed (Rom. x. 9, Acts viii. 37, Text. Rec., cf. 1 Cor. xv. 3-4) began to serve as a tessera or passport of right belief, and as a regulative standard, a rule of faith.' The limits of the Christian Church' began to be more clearly defined (Stanton, ubi supr. p. 167).
Another influence which during the same period led to a gradual formation of theology was the necessity of defending the Church against heathenism. If the Gnostics were the first Christian theologians' (Harnack), the Apologists (120-200) are more directly important for our present enquiry. The usual title of Justin Philosopher and Martyr' is significant of his position and typical of the class of writers to which he belongs. On the one hand the Apologists are philosophers rather than theologians. Christianity is the only true philosophy' (Justin); its doctrines are found piecemeal among the philosophers (logos spermatikos), who are so far Christians, just as the Christians are the true philosophers (Justin and Minuc. Felix). But the Logos, who is imparted fragmentarily to the philosophers, is revealed in His entire divine Personality in Christ (so Justin beyond the others, Apol. ii. 8, 10). In the doctrine of God, their thought is coloured by the eclectic Platonism of the age before Plotinus. God, the Father of all things, is Creator, Lord, Master, and as such known to man, but in Himself Unoriginate (agenetos), ineffable, mysterious (arretos), without a name, One and alone, incapable of Incarnation (for references to Justin and to Plato, D.C.B. iii. 572). His goodness' is metaphysical perfection, or beneficence to man, His righteousness' that of Moral Governor of the Universe (contrast the deeper sense of St. Paul, Rom. iii. 21, &c.). But the abstractness of the conception of God gives way to personal vividness in the doctrine of the visible God' (Tert. Prax. 15 sq.), the Logos (the subject of the O.T. theophanies' according to the Apologists) who was with' the Father before all things (Just. Dial. 62), but was begotten' or projected (probletheis) by the will of the Father (ib. 128) as God from God, as a flame from fire. He is, like the Father, ineffable (Christos, Just. Apol. ii. 6), yet is the angelos, huperetes of the Father. In particular He is the Father's minister in Creation: to create He proceeded from the Father, a doctrine expressly deduced from Prov. viii. 22 (Dial. 61, 129). Before this He was the logos endiathetos, after it the logos prophorikos, the Word uttered (Ps. xlv. 1 LXX; this distinction is not in Justin, but is found Theophil. ad Autol. ii. 10, 22: it is the most marked trace of philosophic [Stoic] influence on the Apologists). The Apologists, then, conceive of Christian theology as philosophers. Especially the Person of the Saviour is regarded by them from the cosmological, not the soteriological view-point. From the latter, as we have seen, St. Paul starts; and his view gradually embraces the distant horizon of the former (1 Cor. viii. 6, Coloss. i. 15); from the soteriological side also (directly) he reaches the divinity of Christ (Rom. v. 1-8; 1 Cor. i. 30; Rom. x. 13, as above). Here, as we shall see, Athanasius meets the Arians substantially by St. Paul's method. But the Apologists, under the influence of their philosophy rather than of their religion, start from the cosmological aspect of the problem. They engraft upon an Apostolic (Johannine) title of the Saviour an Alexandrine group of associations: they go far towards transmuting the Word of St. John to the Logos of Philo and the Eclectics. Hence their view of His Divinity and of his relation to the Father is embarrassed. His eternity and His generation are felt to be hardly compatible: His distinct Personality is maintained at the expense of His true Divinity. He is God, and not the One God; He can manifest Himself (Theophanies) in a way the One God cannot; He is an intermediary between God and the world. The question has become philosophical rather than directly religious, and philosophy cannot solve it. But on the other hand, Justin was no Arian. If he was Philosopher, he was also Martyr. The Apologists are deeply saturated with Christian piety and personal enthusiastic devotion to Christ. Justin in particular introduces us, as no other so early writer, into the life, the worship, the simple faith of the Primitive Church, and we can trace in him influences of the deeper theology of Asia Minor (Loofs, p. 72 sq. but see more fully the noble article on Justin in D.C.B. vol. iii.). But our concern is with their influence on the analysis of the object of faith; and here we see that unconsciously they have severed the Incarnate Son from the Eternal Father: not God (ho ontos theos) but a subordinate divine being is revealed in Christ: the Logos, to adopt the words of Ignatius, is no longer a true breach of the Divine Silence.