This passage is interesting, as showing already the twofold argument for belief which is characteristic of Christian philosophy. On the one hand, pure reason, rightly exercised, suffices to establish the essentials of the Christian faith, more especially God, immortality, and free will. But on the other hand the Scriptures prove not only these bare essentials, but much more; and the divine inspiration of the Scriptures is proved by the fact that the prophets foretold the coming of the Messiah, by the miracles, and by the beneficent effects of belief on the lives of the faithful. Some of these arguments are now considered out of date, but the last of them was still employed by William James. All of them, until the Renaissance, were accepted by every Christian philosopher.
Some of Origen’s arguments are curious. He says that magicians invoke the “God of Abraham,” often without knowing who He is; but apparently this invocation is specially potent. Names are essential in magic; it is not indifferent whether God is called by His Jewish, Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, or Brahman name. Magic formulæ lose their efficacy when translated. One is led to suppose that the magicians of the time used formulæ from all known religions, but if Origen is right, those derived from Hebrew sources were the most effective. The argument is the more curious as he points out that Moses forbade sorcery.*
Christians, we are told, should not take part in the government of the State, but only of the “divine nation,” i.e., the Church.† This doctrine, of course, was somewhat modified after the time of Constantine, but something of it survived. It is implicit in Saint Augustine’s City of God. It led churchmen, at the time of the fall of the Western Empire, to look on passively at secular disasters, while they exercised their very great talents in Church discipline, theological controversy, and the spread of monasticism. Some trace of it still exists: most people regard politics as “worldly” and unworthy of any really holy man.
Church government developed slowly during the first three centuries, and rapidly after the conversion of Constantine. Bishops were popularly elected; gradually they acquired considerable power over Christians in their own dioceses, but before Constantine there was hardly any form of central government over the whole Church. The power of bishops in great cities was enhanced by the practice of almsgiving: the offerings of the faithful were administered by the bishop, who could give or withhold charity to the poor. There came thus to be a mob of the destitute, ready to do the bishop’s will. When the State became Christian, the bishops were given judicial and administrative functions. There came also to be a central government, at least in matters of doctrine. Constantine was annoyed by the quarrel between Catholics and Arians; having thrown in his lot with the Christians, he wanted them to be a united party. For the purpose of healing dissensions, he caused the convening of the oecumenical Council of Nicæa, which drew up the Nicene Creed,‡ and, so far as the Arian controversy was concerned, determined for all time the standard of orthodoxy. Other later controversies were similarly decided by oecumenical councils, until the division between East and West and the Eastern refusal to admit the authority of the Pope made them impossible.
The Pope, though officially the most important individual in the Church, had no authority over the Church as a whole until a much later period. The gradual growth of the papal power is a very interesting subject, which I shall deal with in later chapters.
The growth of Christianity before Constantine, as well as the motives of his conversion, have been variously explained by various authors. Gibbon* assigns five causes:
“1. The inflexible, and, if we may use the expression, the intolerant zeal of the Christians, derived, it is true, from the Jewish religion, but purified from the narrow and unsocial spirit which, instead of inviting, had deterred the Gentiles from embracing the law of Moses.
“2. The doctrine of a future life, improved by every additional circumstance which could give weight and efficacy to that important truth.
“3. The miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive Church.
“4. The pure and austere morals of the Christians.
“5. The union and discipline of the Christian republic, which gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman empire.”
Broadly speaking, this analysis may be accepted, but with some comments. The first cause—the inflexibility and intolerance derived from the Jews—may be wholly accepted. We have seen in our own day the advantages of intolerance in propaganda. The Christians, for the most part, believed that they alone would go to heaven, and that the most awful punishments would, in the next world, fall upon the heathen. The other religions which competed for favour during the third century had not this threatening character. The worshippers of the Great Mother, for example, while they had a ceremony—the Taurobolium—which was analogous to baptism, did not teach that those who omitted it would go to hell. It may be remarked, incidentally, that the Taurobolium was expensive: a bull had to be killed, and its blood allowed to trickle over the convert. A rite of this sort is aristocratic, and cannot be the basis of a religion which is to embrace the great bulk of the population, rich and poor, free and slave. In such respects, Christianity had an advantage over all its rivals.
As regards the doctrine of a future life, in the West it was first taught by the Orphics and thence adopted by Greek philosophers. The Hebrew prophets, some of them, taught the resurrection of the body, but it seems to have been from the Greeks that the Jews learnt to believe in the resurrection of the spirit.* The doctrine of immortality, in Greece, had a popular form in Orphism and a learned form in Platonism. The latter, being based upon difficult arguments, could not become widely popular; the Orphic form, however, probably had a great influence on the general opinions of later antiquity, not only among pagans, but also among Jews and Christians. Elements of mystery religions, both Orphic and Asiatic, enter largely into Christian theology; in all of them, the central myth is that of the dying god who rises again.† I think, therefore, that the doctrine of immortality must have had less to do with the spread of Christianity than Gibbon thought.
Miracles certainly played a very large part in Christian propaganda. But miracles, in later antiquity, were very common, and were not the prerogative of any one religion. It is not altogether easy to see why, in this competition, the Christian miracles came to be more widely believed than those of other sects. I think Gibbon omits one very important matter, namely the possession of a Sacred Book. The miracles to which Christians appealed had begun in a remote antiquity, among a nation which the ancients felt to be mysterious; there was a consistent history, from the Creation onwards, according to which Providence had always worked wonders, first for the Jews, then for the Christians. To a modern historical student it is obvious that the early history of the Israelites is in the main legendary, but not so to the ancients. They believed in the Homeric account of the siege of Troy, in Romulus and Remus, and so on; why, asks Origen, should you accept these traditions and reject those of the Jews? To this argument there was no logical answer. It was therefore natural to accept Old Testament miracles, and, when they had been admitted, those of more recent date became credible, especially in view of the Christian interpretation of the prophets.
The morals of the Christians, before Constantine, were undoubtedly very superior to those of average pagans. The Christians were persecuted at times, and were almost always at a disadvantage in competition with pagans. They believed firmly that virtue would be rewarded in heaven and sin punished in hell. Their sexual ethics had a strictness that was rare in antiquity. Pliny, whose official duty it was to persecute them, testifies to their high moral character. After the conversion of Constantine, there were, of course, time-servers among Christians; but prominent ecclesiastics, with some exceptions, continued to be men of inflexible moral principles. I think Gibbon is right in attributing great importance to this high moral level as one of the causes of the spread of Christianity.
Gibbon puts last “the union and discipline of the Christian republic.” I think, f
rom a political point of view, this was the most important of his five causes. In the modern world, we are accustomed to political organization; every politician has to reckon with the Catholic vote, but it is balanced by the vote of other organized groups. A Catholic candidate for the Presidency is at a disadvantage, because of Protestant prejudice. But, if there were no such thing as Protestant prejudice, a Catholic candidate would stand a better chance than any other. This seems to have been Constantine’s calculation. The support of the Christians, as a single organized bloc, was to be obtained by favouring them. Whatever dislike of the Christians existed was unorganized and politically ineffective. Probably Rostovtseff is right in holding that a large part of the army was Christian, and that this was what most influenced Constantine. However that may be, the Christians, while still a minority, had a kind of organization which was then new, though now common, and which gave them all the political influence of a pressure group to which no other pressure groups are opposed. This was the natural consequence of their virtual monopoly of zeal, and their zeal was an inheritance from the Jews.
Unfortunately, as soon as the Christians acquired political power, they turned their zeal against each other. There had been heresies, not a few, before Constantine, but the orthodox had had no means of punishing them. When the State became Christian, great prizes, in the shape of power and wealth, became open to ecclesiastics; there were disputed elections, and theological quarrels were also quarrels for worldly advantages. Constantine himself preserved a certain degree of neutrality in the disputes of theologians, but after his death (337) his successors (except for Julian the Apostate) were, in a greater or less degree, favourable to the Arians, until the accession of Theodosius in 379.
The hero of this period is Athanasius (ca. 297-373), who was throughout his long life the most intrepid champion of Nicene orthodoxy.
The period from Constantine to the Council of Chalcedon (451) is peculiar owing to the political importance of theology. Two questions successively agitated the Christian world: first, the nature of the Trinity, and then the doctrine of the Incarnation. Only the first of these was to the fore in the time of Athanasius. Arius, a cultivated Alexandrian priest, maintained that the Son is not the equal of the Father, but was created by Him. At an earlier period, this view might not have aroused much antagonism, but in the fourth century most theologians rejected it. The view which finally prevailed was that the Father and the Son were equal, and of the same substance; they were, however, distinct Persons. The view that they were not distinct, but only different aspects of one Being, was the Sabellian heresy, called after its founder Sabellius. Orthodoxy thus had to tread a narrow line: those who unduly emphasized the distinctness of the Father and the Son were in danger of Arianism, and those who unduly emphasized their oneness were in danger of Sabellianism.
The doctrines of Arius were condemned by the Council of Nicæa (325) by an overwhelming majority. But various modifications were suggested by various theologians, and favoured by Emperors. Athanasius, who was Bishop of Alexandria from 328 till his death, was constantly in exile because of his zeal for Nicene orthodoxy. He had immense popularity in Egypt, which, throughout the controversy, followed him unwaveringly. It is curious that, in the course of theological controversy, national (or at least regional) feeling, which had seemed extinct since the Roman conquest, revived. Constantinople and Asia inclined to Arianism; Egypt was fanatically Athanasian; the West steadfastly adhered to the decrees of the Council of Nicæa. After the Arian controversy was ended, new controversies, of a more or less kindred sort, arose, in which Egypt became heretical in one direction and Syria in another. These heresies, which were persecuted by the orthodox, impaired the unity of the Eastern Empire, and facilitated the Mohammedan conquest. The separatist movements, in themselves, are not surprising, but it is curious that they should have been associated with very subtle and abstruse theological questions.
The Emperors, from 335 to 378, favoured more or less Arian opinions as far as they dared, except for Julian the Apostate (361-363), who, as a pagan, was neutral as regards the internal disputes of the Christians. At last, in 379, the Emperor Theodosius gave his full support to the Catholics, and their victory throughout the Empire was complete. Saint Ambrose, Saint Jerome, and Saint Augustine, whom we shall consider in the next chapter, lived most of their lives during this period of Catholic triumph. It was succeeded, however, in the West, by another Arian domination, that of the Goths and Vandals, who, between them, conquered most of the Western Empire. Their power lasted for about a century, at the end of which it was destroyed by Justinian, the Lombards, and the Franks, of whom Justinian and the Franks, and ultimately the Lombards also, were orthodox. Thus at last the Catholic faith achieved definitive success.
CHAPTER III
Three Doctors of the Church
FOUR men are called the Doctors of the Western Church: Saint Ambrose, Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine, and Pope Gregory the Great. Of these the first three were contemporaries, while the fourth belonged to a later date. I shall, in this chapter, give some account of the life and times of the first three, reserving for a later chapter an account of the doctrines of Saint Augustine, who is, for us, the most important of the three.
Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine all flourished during the brief period between the victory of the Catholic Church in the Roman Empire and the barbarian invasion. All three were young during the reign of Julian the Apostate; Jerome lived ten years after the sack of Rome by the Goths under Alaric; Augustine lived till the irruption of the Vandals into Africa, and died while they were besieging Hippo, of which he was bishop. Immediately after their time, the masters of Italy, Spain, and Africa were not only barbarians, but Arian heretics. Civilization declined for centuries, and it was not until nearly a thousand years later that Christendom again produced men who were their equals in learning and culture. Throughout the dark ages and the medieval period, their authority was revered; they, more than any other men, fixed the mould into which the Church was shaped. Speaking broadly, Saint Ambrose determined the ecclesiastical conception of the relation of Church and State; Saint Jerome gave the Western Church its Latin Bible and a great part of the impetus to monasticism; while Saint Augustine fixed the theology of the Church until the Reformation, and, later, a great part of the doctrines of Luther and Calvin. Few men have surpassed these three in influence on the course of history. The independence of the Church in relation to the secular State, as successfully maintained by Saint Ambrose, was a new and revolutionary doctrine, which prevailed until the Reformation; when Hobbes combated it in the seventeenth century, it was against Saint Ambrose that he chiefly argued. Saint Augustine was in the forefront of theological controversy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Protestants and Jansenists being for him, and orthodox Catholics against him.
The capital of the Western Empire, at the end of the fourth century, was Milan, of which Ambrose was bishop. His duties brought him constantly into relations with the emperors, to whom he spoke habitually as an equal, sometimes as a superior. His dealings with the imperial court illustrate a general contrast characteristic of the times: while the State was feeble, incompetent, governed by unprincipled self-seekers, and totally without any policy beyond that of momentary expedients, the Church was vigorous, able, guided by men prepared to sacrifice everything personal in its interests, and with a policy so far-sighted that it brought victory for the next thousand years. It is true that these merits were offset by fanaticism and superstition, but without these no reforming movement could, at that time, have succeeded.
Saint Ambrose had every opportunity to seek success in the service of the State. His father, also named Ambrose, was a high official—prefect of the Gauls. The Saint was born, probably, at Augusta Treverorum (Trèves), a frontier garrison town, where the Roman legions were stationed to keep the Germans at bay. At the age of thirteen he was taken to Rome, where he had a good education, including a thorough grounding in Greek. When he grew up he took to t
he law, in which he was very successful; and at the age of thirty he was made governor of Liguria and Æmilia. Nevertheless, four years later he turned his back on secular government, and by popular acclaim became bishop of Milan, in opposition to an Arian candidate. He gave all his worldly goods to the poor, and devoted the whole of the rest of his life to the service of the Church, sometimes at great personal risk. This choice was certainly not dictated by worldly motives, but, if it had been, it would have been wise. In the State, even if he had become Emperor, he could at that time have found no such scope for his administrative statesmanship as he found in the discharge of his episcopal duties.
During the first nine years of Ambrose’s episcopate, the Emperor of the West was Gratian, who was Catholic, virtuous, and careless. He was so devoted to the chase that he neglected the government, and in the end was assassinated. He was succeeded, throughout most of the Western Empire, by a usurper named Maximus; but in Italy the succession passed to Gratian’s younger brother Valentinian II, who was still a boy. At first, the imperial power was exercised by his mother, Justina, widow of the Emperor Valentinian I; but as she was an Arian, conflicts between her and Saint Ambrose were inevitable.
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