THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
equivalent; if the works of the Law were dropped, works were still required; Israel's primacy vanished, but a general aristocratic tendency could be maintained in the episcopate; Paul could not be cast out, but he could be subordinated to Peter. Schwegler then watches this development and compromise in two places, Rome and Asia Minor. In Rome he traces the succession of writings of Judaistic origin thus: first the Shepherd of Hermas and Hegesippus; then Justin, the Clementine Homilies, and the Apostolic Constitutions; then James, the Second Epistle of Clement, Mark, the Clementine Recognitions, and II Peter. On the Pauline side he finds the conciliatory writings to begin under Trajan with I Peter; then follow Luke and Acts; then the Pastoral Epistles and the letters of Ignatius. Montanism being in his view only an offshoot of Judaism, the Pauline victory falls in the pontificate of Victor (1S9-199), under whom Montanism was condemned at Rome. The Pauline party, indeed, had already made no slight concessions, in order to ward off Gnosticism — though the Gnostics and especially the Marcionites ultimately were of great service to Paulinism in securing the universality of Christianity.
He sees the process as somewhat different in Asia Minor, where the opponents of Paul rallied, not as in Rome around Peter, but around John; here the solution was the formation of a body of Christian dogma, while in Rome it had been a unity of organization with a Roman primacy. While at Rome the supposed Ebionite works are more numerous than the Pauline, it is the contrary in Asia Minor; the Apocalypse is here the single Ebionite memorial, while on the other side Galatians, Colossians, Ephesians, and the Johannine Gospel form an imposing series of steps in the development. Bold, however, and fascinating as .are the combinations set forth in this work, and brilliant as is its execution, it may be pointed out (though space does not permit of illustration) that there is scarcely a theologian to-day who is disposed to accept this train of reasoning as even an approximately satisfactory solution of the problems suggested. And even in those days, the starting-point of the whole process of development still remained to be discussed. It was already obvious that without tracing it back to the person and teaching of Christ, the question of how the primitive catholic Church came into existence was insoluble. Attempts in the direction of establishing the entire critical position by showing a genetic development of the earliest organization and dogma out of the gospel of Christ himself marked a third period in the history of the Tubingen School.
III. The Period of Church History : The political upheaval of 1848 had its influence on the future of the school. The attempts made here and there to introduce its conclusions, under cover of the political movements of the time, into the general life of the Church could not fail to bring up the question whether ecclesiastical activity was possible for adherents of the school. It was answered in the negative not only by opponents; some of Baur's own disciples felt that they must either modify the scientific conclusions they had learned from
him, or seek a secular calling, as Marklin, whose life was written by Strauss, had done in 1840. It was not surprising, then, that the i. Political German governments thought twice be- Complica- fore appointing to academic positions tions. men whose influence was so disturbing, and that the younger generation hesitated to follow Baur further, after his most important disciple, Zeller, was obliged in 1849 to exchange a theological chair for that of philosophy at Marburg. Baur felt the isolation in which he thus began to find himself; but his temperament allowed him to hold fast longer than others to the illusion of the identity of church teaching and Hegelian speculation. He relaxed nothing of his zeal for the solution of the important problem which still remained, the establishment on a critical foundation of a positive story of the development of Christianity from its origin down through the centuries.
In 1852 Baur published a book (Leipsic) on the epochs of church history as a preliminary, containing brilliant and frequently sharp criticism of earlier historians. His own efforts in this direction began with the work Das Christenthum und die christliche Kirche der drei ersten 2. Baur's Jahrhunderte (Leipsic, 1853), and was Works on continued in Die christliche Kirche Church vom Anjang des 4- bis Ausgang des 6. History. Jahrhunderts (Leipsic, 1859). After his death appeared (Leipsic, 1861) the third part, completed by himself, Die christliche Kirche des Mittelalters in den Hauptmomenten ihrer Entwicklung ; and two further volumes were published from his carefully prepared lecturenotes — Kirchengeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts, edited by Zeller (Leipsic, 1862), and Kirchengeschichte der neueren Zeit von der Reformation bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts, edited by his son Ferdinand (Leipsic, 1863), thus completing the entire survey.
If there is sought in these books an answer to the question as to the real primitive Christianity which lay back of Paul and back of Ebionitism, as to the person of Christ himself, it may be put, once more substantially in Baur's own words (from the important controversial pamphlet against Uhlhorn, Die Tubinger Schule und ihre Stellung zur Gegenwart, Leipsic, 1859), as follows: The real inwardness of Christianity, its essential center point, may be found in what belongs to the strictly ethical content of the teaching of Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, the parables, and similar utterances; in his doctrine of the Kingdom of God and the conditions of membership in it, designed to place men in the right ethical relation to 3. His Theo- God. This is the really divine, the riesand universally human element in it, the Conclusions, part of its content which is eternal and absolute. What raises Christianity above all other religions is nothing but the purely ethical character of its acts, teachings, and requirements. If this is the essential content of the consciousness of Jesus, it is one of the two factors which compose his personality; it must have a corresponding form, in order to enter, in the way of