The Beginnings of Christianity, Vol. 2 by Paul Wernle

Author:Paul Wernle
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Classic Literature
Publisher: Forgotten Books
Published: 2012-05-22T22:00:00+00:00

1. The debate as to the first capital point, the principle of authority, was the most unfortunate The Gnostics proclaimed the supremacy of the Spirit This implied the right of license and the victory of the non-Christian element over the Gospel. Had Christianity developed along the lines indicated by this theory, it would have disappeared altogether in the chaos of peoples. The Church’s teachers, however, declared that the Spirit of Christ alone—i.e., the Christian tradition—was decisive. Nothing could be more sensible. Unfortunately ecclesiastical law was exclusively substituted for the Spirit in the process of the determination and limitation of the tradition. We shall have occasion to recur to this point when we discuss the forcible measures employed by the Church. But this is the place to mention another matter. The divinity of the Old Testament, even of the law, is maintained against the criticism of the Gnostics. It was the Old Testament to which the Gnostic spirit could least of all adapt itself.

It was held in very low esteem, made out to be the work of a lower order of spirits, of the demiurge or even of Satan himself; and to establish their position they made use of apocryphal writings both old and new. It was felt, however, by the Church that the destruction of the Old Testament cut the ground from under the feet of the Christians and exposed them to every storm. There were additional weighty motives of a practical character. The proof from prophecy was needed for apologetic purposes, and for this the Old Testament writings were indispensable. And the defence of Christianity as of the old and lawful religion, was invalidated by the abandonment of the Old Testament. It was a difficult matter to defend the Old Testament as a Christian book at once against the Gnostics and the Jews. But this position was maintained. The author of the Pastoral epistles warns the bishops not to suffer the Old Testament to escape them through the perversions of the Gnostics. “Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for doctrine, for instruction, for reproof, for correction, for discipline which is in righteousness.” He presupposes the Jewish doctrine of the inspiration of the Old Testament, and merely fights for the ecclesiastical utility of the book. But what is to be counted as belonging to the Old Testament? No very clear decision was reached as to this point. On the one hand, we find a disposition to submit to the judgment of the Jewish Rabbis at Jabne, whose canon of the Hebrew Old Testament exactly corresponds with our own. Hence certain Christian teachers began to reject the Apocrypha at a very early date. The author of the Second Epistle of St Peter, who copies the whole of the letter of St Jude, carefully omits or obliterates the quotations from the book of Enoch and the Ascension of Moses. Jerome’s later statement, that many Christians rejected the letter of St Jude because of its quotations from the book of Enoch, agrees with this.

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