CHAPTER I. ADVANTAGES OF THE STUDY OF EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE. THIS work professes to be a Critical History of Christian Literature and Theology from the death of the Apostles till the period of the Nicene Council. It is an attempt to investigate the authorship of the various works which have come down to us from that era, and to ascertain the influences which led to their production and determined their character. It also makes an effort to state exactly what were the theological opinions of each writer. The work is therefore an introduction to the study of the Christian writers, and prepares the way for a full consideration of the mode in which Christian theology was developed. Such studies as these ought not to require any defence in the present day. Men have generally come to recognise the fact that every period of history contains a message from God to man, and that it is of vast importance to find out what that message is. Moreover it is ever a valuable exercise of the mind, to throw oneself into modes of thought and feeling widely different from our own. If we conduct our study in an honest spirit, we come forth from it more conscious of our own ignorance and weakness, and consequently much more charitable towards the failings of others. At the same time our whole range of thought is widened. These advantages flow in an especial manner from the unprejudiced study of early Christian literature. The point from which we start is the most momentous in the world's history. The fact which we have to consider is the greatest. Even to the most callous mind Christianity must appear a movement of gigantic importance. The student of early Christian literature traces this great moral movement in the words of those who were influenced by it. He as it were speaks with those who felt the first waves of the Spirit's influence; and he examines their modes of thought that he may see how Christ's Gospel changed their whole being, and how in consequence they worked in and on the world. At the same time he has to rid himself of most of his modern associations. He has to transport himself into a time when the very modes of conception and expression were widely different from those of this age, and he has to realize a thousand influences which acted most powerfully on them, but which have now vanished for ever. If he really feels that he is of one spirit with those old workers for Christ, if he is ready to stretch forth the right hand of fellowship to them, his sympathies will flow largely with most divisions of the present Christian Church, however diverse on some points their beliefs. A work like the present, as however being merely an introduction to this profitable study, is necessarily defective in several aspects. It is defective in that it has to deal with the lives of those earnest men in a purely critical manner. It has to examine carefully every statement made in regard to them-it has to weigh the credibility of it; and thus it sifts the true from the false. It cannot therefore in many instances attempt a portraiture of the men as they lived and moved. Besides this, the actual life of those men cannot be properly realized unless we realize the heathenism in the midst of which they lived and worked. A man's history is not merely an account of his religious life, but must embrace the whole of his relations, his political and intellectual aims and struggles. Still more so is this the case with the history of an age. And so in truth the history of the Church fails to be a true history, if we cannot bring up before our minds the physical, intellectual, and political features of the ages in which the Church is depicted as living and actinga. Yet no satisfactory History of the Church, either by itself or as working amidst heathenism, is possible without such preliminary works as the present. Literary criticism is the foundation on which ecclesiastical histories must rest. In a work like this we deal with the sources from which these histories derive their materials. We try to ascertain how far they are trustworthy. Unless this introductory work is carefully done, the history will rest on an insecure foundation. In no department of study has the character of the authorities been less sifted, and most histories of the Church abound in baseless statements and serious misrepresentations. Even those writers who have made careful investigations, as Mosheim and Neander, have often omitted to state the reasons of their conclusions, and the reader is left at the mercy of the historian. Still more necessary is it that we should have exact information as to the opinions of the early Christian writers. Here nothing but the utmost care and impartiality will enable us to reach the truth. And here the misconceptions and mistakes that prevail are innumerable, and act on the present Christian life with injurious effect. My main effort has been simply to record the theological doctrines of the early Christian writers with an anxious desire to state accurately, without exaggeration or distortion, what they thought. I have occasionally attempted to throw light on the mode in which doctrines were developed. Let not the reader however be misled by this word "developed." A statement of the New Testament is often said to be the germ of a doctrine. The image used here is misleading. A doctrine is not a living thing, like a germ. And moreover, even if it were, it has to be remembered that even a germ is developed by attracting and assimilating to itself many foreign elements which are around it. It is by additions from without, and different from itself, that it grows. So in the case of a doctrine. The first statement a See Stanley's Introductory Lectures, first published separately, and now prefixed to his History of the Eastern Church. |