CHAPTER XVI

THE HERETICS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE

IN

N an age like our own, when tolerance is reckoned supreme among the virtues of a theologian, and dogma is at a discount, some of the say- Apostolic ings of the Apostles are apt to appear over- attitude emphatic, finding little or no response in to heresy. the modern conscience. But if the reason be in part because there is no "deep" in the average present-day convictions to "answer to" the deep of the inspired writers, something also must be conceded. Unpopular to the strangeness of an ancient and with the alien tongue, and to the difference of the modern times.

mind.

The fiery utterances of the Epistle of St. Jude and the second of St. Peter, like those of the Revelation, are couched in a form essentially Hebrew, and retain something of the colour of that Jewish apocalyptic literature in which their writers' minds were steeped.1 But the plain and forcible phrases in which St. Paul's and St. John's Epistles denounce the false teachers of their day, are essentially human in their straightforwardness; and, if we fail to appreciate the justice of such language, it is largely because we fail to realise the importance of the issues involved.

That a system of teaching which, despite the mani1 Cf. above, ch. xv., p. 275.

Justified

fold shortcomings of its exponents and professors, has brought so unique a blessing to the human race, should have been strangled at its birth, would have been apart from the consideration of its deepest aspects—a calamity unparalleled in the world's history.

by importance

of the issues.

Those

who, after the paradoxical fashon of these days, are wont to compassionate dead heresies as representing systems of thought which have never had a fair chance, might well pause to consider what would have been the effect of human progress if Cerinthus had supplanted St. John and Simon Magus St. Peter; if the fantastic speculations of some of the various Gnostic sects had prevailed over Catholic Christianity -substituting a creed which, apart from its grave moral defects and its appeal to a strictly limited intellectual circle, would most certainly have become obsolete in the course of a few generations. Such a consideration, if it fail to kindle a conviction of a divine guidance of the Church in the sense posited by the New Testament itself,1 may yet issue in the comforting inference that religious, like material, evolution is, on certain lines at any rate, subject to a law of the "survival of the fittest." Nor will such an attitude fail to place us in closer sympathy with St. John, when he speaks of the denial of the Incarnation as "the spirit of St. John's the Antichrist "2-of him who denies the denuncia Messiahship of Jesus as a liar,3 a deceiver and an Antichrist to whom hospitable patronage should be refused by the faithful—when he hotly

Religious survival of the fittest.

tion.

1 See especially the reiterated promise in John xiv.-xvi.

21 John iv. 3.

3 1 John ii. 22.

42 John 7-11.

6

denounces the conduct of Diotrephes1-when he reiterates the divine hatred of the Nicolaitans,2 and calls the false, blaspheming Jews at Smyrna and Philadelphia "the synagogue of Satan," and brands the heretical "prophetess" of Thyatira as an impure and idolatrous Jezebel. It will enable us to enter into the mind of St. Paul when he speaks of Satan transformed into an angel of light-of a gospel that is no gospel, by which the Galatians St. Paul's have been bewitched, suggesting that the denunciaApostles of enforced circumcision might tion. just as well go further and mutilate themselves like the priests of Cybele-when he warns Timothy against "seducing spirits," "doctrines of devils," hypocritical liars " branded in their conscience as with a hot iron "8 -or again, when he alludes more contemptuously to vain talkers, would-be expounders of the law who do not even understand what they profess to teach-to "science falsely so called," to "profane babblings," 10 to "foolish questionings and genealogies and strifes "or when, finally, coming to practice, he reiterates St. John's counsel to avoid intercourse with obdurate heretics.12 And we shall remember how the inspiring love-message of their gentle Paralleled Master and Pattern as recorded in the in the Gospels was not without its sterner side Gospels. of hot denunciation and terrible warning.13

But no perverse teaching, however fantastic in its

13 See, e.g., Matt. v. 20, 22, 29, 30, x. 34 37, xxii. 13, xxiii. 1-36; Mark ix. 42-8, etc.

3 Rev. ii. 9; iii. 9.

6 Gal. i. 6, 7; iii. 1. 9 1 Tim. i. 7.

12 Titus. iii. 10, 11. sqq., xi. 20-4, xii. 36,

mode of self-expression or ridiculous in its logical outcome, has ever been without some spark of reason and some intellectual point of contact with the serious thought of the age of its birth.

Germ of truth in heretical

teaching.

If we are to appreciate such movements in a scientific way, we must try at least to abstract them as far as possible from the atmosphere of controversy. St. Irenaeus' picture of Gnosticism is certainly not at all sympathetic nor of a kind to be incorporated, as it stands, in an impartial and balanced record of the history of speculation. If it were, it would fail of its purpose the writer was concerned, for the deepest moral and spiritual ends, to hold up to ridicule its radical defects. Similarly the inspired writers of the New Testament are not concerned to give a full and dispassionate account of the heresies which they denounce; even the cardinal doctrines of the faith only receive-in the Epistles, at any rate-incidental treatment. But with the help of their controversial allusions and those of later writers like Ignatius, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus, we may attempt to piece together, with some probability, among much that still remains vague, a sketch of the first heretical tendencies with which the Church had to contend.

Oral tradition.

In endeavouring to trace out the heresies of New Testament times, it is important to bear in mind the fact that, at the period when St. Paul's Epistles (and probably most of the other Epistles) were written, the canonical Gospels had not yet appeared. Christian converts were dependent for their knowledge of the Master's doctrine and life on the oral teaching of Apostles and Evan

gelists: a body of teaching which soon became more or less stereotyped, no doubt, and offered a "form" or "pattern of sound words " by which doubtful doctrines might be tested. Still, there was the absence of definite documents to which a ready appeal might be made.

Further, we must not forget that the teaching of Christ (as afterwards recorded in the Gospels) had itself been of an incidental and, so to Incidental speak, unsystematic character. His favourite character parabolic method lent itself to this; and, of Christ's indeed, His person and life, His acts, His teaching. sufferings and His triumph over death, were to teach far more than His actual words. It is true that His doctrine is focussed and, in a sense, summarised in the Sermon on the Mount, where He draws out against the background of the Mosaic law leading principles of character and conduct for the guidance of the citizens of His new Kingdom. But even here there is no attempt at a rounded system, although those chapters of St. Matthew do contain-as, for instance, in their implications of the utterer's Divine claims 2far more than many of its critics have been willing to allow. On some points-religious, social, and moralclear and unmistakable teaching had been given,3 even to the point of concrete precept: on others, especially in the regions of eschatology, the pregnant utterances of the Master had been swathed in mystery, so that their meaning only gradually unfolded itself in

1 2 Tim. i. 13, vπotúπwσis vyiαivóvtwv Nóywv; cf. Rom. vi. 17; Titus i. 9; ii. 1, 2.

2 Cf. the reiterated "It was said... but I say," Matt. v. 21, 27, 33, 38, 43; also v. 17 sqq. 3 Matt. v. 21 sqq.; vi. 3, 6, 9, 17, etc.