Chapter 13

The question now arises, not so much from whom, but when, did he receive this view of Christ and His system. I do not mean, of course, the more minute features, but the substance. To what period must his reminiscences as a Christian extend? What time must his experiences cover? Irenaeus, in the place I have quoted, speaks of him as the companion of Apostles, Clement of Alexandria as an Apostle, Eusebius and Origen as the fellow-labourer of St. Paul. Now, I will not at present insist upon the more than likelihood that such was the fact. I will, for argument's sake, assume that he was some other Clement; but, whoever he was, one thing respecting him is certain--that the knowledge of Christianity was not poured into him at the moment when he wrote his Epistle, nor did he receive it ten--twenty--thirty years before. St. Peter and St. Paul were martyred in A.D. 68; the rest of the Apostolic College were dispersed long before. This Epistle shows little or no trace of the peculiar Johannean teaching or tradition of the Apostle who survived all the others; so, unless he had received his Christian teaching some years before the Martyrdom of the two Apostles Peter and Paul, that is, some time before A.D. 68, probably many years, I do not see that there can have been the smallest ground even for the tradition of the very next generation after his own that he knew the Apostles. Such a tradition could not possibly have been connected with the name of a man who became a Christian late in the century.

Now, supposing that he was sixty-five years old when he wrote his Epistle, he was born about the time of our Lord's Death: he was consequently a contemporary of the generation that had witnessed the Death and Resurrection of Christ and the founding of the Church. If he had ever been in Jerusalem before its destruction, he must have fallen in with multitudes of surviving Christians of the 5,000 who were converted on and just after the day of Pentecost.

His Christian reminiscences, then, must have extended far into the age of the contemporaries of Christ. A man who was twenty-five years old at the time of the Resurrection of Christ would scarcely be reckoned an old man at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. Clement consequently might have spent twenty of the best years of his life in the company of persons who were old enough to have seen the Lord in the Flesh. [193:1]

So that his knowledge of the Death and Resurrection of Christ, and the founding of the Church, even if he had never seen St. Paul or any other Apostle, must have been derived from a generation of men, all the older members of which wore Christians of the Pentecostal period.

Now when we come to compare the Epistle of Clement with the only remaining Christian literature of the earliest period, _i.e._ the earlier Epistles of St. Paul, we find both the account of Christ and the Theology built upon that account, to be the same in the one and in the other.

The supernatural fact respecting Christ to which the earliest Epistles of St. Paul most prominently refer, was His Resurrection as the pledge of ours, and this is the fact respecting Christ which is put most prominently forward by Clement, and for the same purpose. The First Epistle to the Corinthians is referred to by Clement in the words:--

"Take up the Epistle of the Blessed Apostle Paul. What did he write to you at the time when the Gospel first began to be preached? Truly, under the inspiration of the Spirit ([Greek: pneumatikôs]) he wrote to you concerning himself and Cephas and Apollos, because even then parties had been formed among you." (Ch. xlvii.)

The other reproductions of the language of St. Paul's Epistles are numerous, and I give them in a note. [194:1] The reader will see at a glance that the Theology or Christology of Clement was that of the earliest writings of the Church of which we have any remains, and to these he himself frequently and unmistakably refers.

The earlier Epistles of St. Paul, as those to the Thessalonians, Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans, are acknowledged on all hands, even by advanced German Rationalists, to be the genuine works of the Apostle Paul; indeed one might as well deny that such a man ever existed as question their authenticity. The First Epistle to the Corinthians, which is the longest and most dogmatic of the earlier ones, cannot have been written after the year 58. In a considerable number of chronological tables to which I have referred, the earliest date is the year 52, and the latest 58.

To the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, which is undoubtedly the earliest of all, the earliest date assigned is 47, and the latest 53.

Now it is ever to be remembered that in each of these--the First to the Thessalonians and the First to the Corinthians--we have enunciations of the great crowning supernatural event of Scripture--the Resurrection of Christ and our Resurrection as depending upon it, which are unsurpassed in the rest of Scripture.

So that in the first Christian writing which has come down to us, we have the great fact of Supernatural Religion, which carries with it all the rest.

The fullest enunciation of the evidences of the Resurrection is in a writing whose date cannot be later than 58, and runs thus:--

"Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the Gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. And that He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve. After that [196:1] He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain unto this present [twenty-five years after the event] but some are fallen asleep. After that He was seen of James, then of all the Apostles, and last of all He was seen of me also." (1 Cor. xv. 1.)

If the reader compares this with the accounts in any one of the Four, he will find that it gives the fullest list of our Lord's appearances which has come down to us, and this, be it remembered, forming part of the most categorical declaration of what the Gospel is, to be found in the New Testament. [196:1]

A man, then, writes in A.D. 57 or earlier, that another, Who had died in A.D. 32 had been seen by a number of persons, and among these, by 500 persons at once, of whom the greater part were alive when he wrote, and implying that the story had been believed ever since, and received by him (the writer) from those who had seen this Jesus, and that the fact was so essential to the religion that it was itself called "the Gospel," a name continually given to the whole system of Christianity, and moreover that he himself, when in company with others, had seen this Jesus at noon-day, and, the history asserts, had been blinded by the sight. Now let the reader recall to his mind any public man who died twenty-five years ago, that is, in 1850, and imagine this man appearing, not as a disembodied spirit, but in his resuscitated body to first one of his friends, then to eleven or twelve, then to another, then to five hundred persons at one time, and a flourishing and aggressive institution founded upon this his appearance, and numbers of persons giving up their property, and breaking with all their friends, and adopting a new religion, and a new course of life of great self-denial, and even encountering bitter persecution and death, simply because they believed this man to be alive from the dead, and moreover some professing to do miracles, and to confer the power of doing miracles in the name and by the power of this risen man.

Let the reader, I say, try to imagine all this, and then he will be able to judge of the credulity with which the author credits his readers when he writes:--

"All history shows how rapidly pious memory exaggerates and idealizes the traditions of the past, and simple actions might readily be transformed into miracles as the narrative circulated, in a period so prone to superstition, and so characterized by love of the marvellous." (Vol. ii. p. 209.)

"All history," the author says; but why does he not give us a few instances out of "all history," that we might compare them with this Gospel account, and see if there was anything like it?

Such a story, if false, is not a myth. A myth is the slow growth of falsehood through long ages, and this story of the Resurrection was written circumstantially within twenty years of its promulgation, by one who had been an unbeliever, and who had conferred with those who must have been the original promoters of the falsehood, if it be one.

To call such a story a myth, is simply to shirk the odium of calling it by its right name, or more probably to avoid having to meet the astounding historical difficulty of supposing that men endured what the Apostles endured for what they must have known to have been a falsehood, and the still more astounding difficulty that One Whom the author of "Supernatural Religion" allows to have been a Teacher Who "carried morality to the sublimest point attained or even attainable by humanity," and Whose "life, as far as we can estimate it, was uniformly noble and consistent with his lofty principles," should have impressed a character of such deep-rooted fraud and falsehood on His most intimate friends.

The author of "Supernatural Religion" has, however, added another to the many proofs of the truth of the Gospel. In his elaborate book of 1,000 pages of attack on the authenticity of the Evangelists he has shown, with a clearness which, I think, has never been before realized, the great fact that from the first there has been but one account of Jesus Christ. In the writings of heathens, of Jews, of heretics, [199:1] in lost gospels, in contemporary accounts, in the earliest traditions of the Church, there appears but one account, the account called by its first proclaimers the Gospel; and the only explanation of the existence of this Gospel is its truth.

THE END.

[FOOTNOTES]

[3:1] Papias, for instance, actually mentions St. Mark by name as writing a gospel under the influence of St. Peter. The author of "Supernatural Religion" devotes ten pages to an attempt to prove that this St. Mark's Gospel could not be ours. (Vol. i. pp. 448-459.)

[6:1] I need hardly say that I myself hold the genuineness of the Greek recension. The reader who desires to see the false reasonings and groundless assumptions of the author of "Supernatural Religion" respecting the Ignatian epistles thoroughly exposed should read Professor Lightfoot's article in the "Contemporary Review" of February, 1875. In pages 341-345 of this article there is an examination of the nature and trustworthiness of the learning displayed in the footnotes of this pretentious book, which is particularly valuable. I am glad to see that the professor has modified, in this article, the expression of his former opinion that the excerpta called the Curetonian recension is to be regarded as the only genuine one. "Elsewhere," the professor writes (referring to an essay in his commentary on the Philippians), "I had acquiesced in the earlier opinion of Lipsius, who ascribed them (_i.e._, the Greek or Vossian recension) to an interpolator writing about A.D. 140. Now, however, I am obliged to confess that I have grave and increasing doubts whether, after all, they are not the genuine utterances of Ignatius himself."

[10:1] [Greek: Ou gar monon en Hellêsi dia Sôkratous hypo logou êlenchthê tauta, alla kai en Barbarois hyp' autou tou Logou morphôthentos kai anthrôpou genomenou kai Iêsou Christou klêthentous.]

[10:2] Such is a perfectly allowable translation of [Greek: kai ton par' autou hyion elthonta kai didaxanta hêmas tauta, kai ton tôn allôn hepomenôn kai exomoioumenôn agathôn angelôn straton, pneuma te to prophêtikon sebometha kai proskynoumen.] As there is nothing approaching to angel worship in Justin, such a rendering seems absolutely necessary.

[15:1] "For the law promulgated in Horeb is now old, and belongs to you alone; but this is for all universally. Now law placed against law has abrogated that which is before it, and a covenant which comes after in like manner has put an end to the previous one; and an eternal and final law--namely, Christ--has been given to us." (Heb. viii. 6-13; Dial. ch. xi.)

[15:2] "For the true spiritual Israel and descendants of Judah, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham (who in uncircumcision was approved of and blessed by God on account of his faith, and called the father of many nations) are we who have been led to God through this crucified Christ, as shall be demonstrated while we proceed." (Phil. iii. 3, compared with Romans, iv. 12-18; Dial. ch. xi.)

[17:1] This, of course, was a Jewish adversary's view of the Christian doctrine of the Godhead of Christ, which Justin elsewhere modifies by showing the subordination of the Son to the Father in all things.

[19:1] [Greek: En gar tois apomnêmoneumasi, ha phêmi hypo tôn apostolôn autou kai tôn ekeinois parakolouthêsantôn syntetachthai, hoti hidrôs hôsei thromboi katecheito autou euchomenou.] (Dial. ch. ciii.)

[20:1] [Greek: Kai to eipein metônomakenai auton Petron hena tôn apostolôn, kai gegraphthai en tois apomnêmoneumasin autou gegenêmenon kai touto, k.t.l.]

On this question the author of "Supernatural Religion" remarks, "According to the usual language of Justin, and upon strictly critical grounds, the [Greek: autou] in this passage must be ascribed to Peter; and Justin therefore seems to ascribe the Memoirs to that Apostle, and to speak consequently of a Gospel of Peter." (Vol. i. p. 417.)

[28:1] That of our Lord being born in a cave.

[29:1] [Greek: Iôannou gar kathezomenou.]

[34:1] Justin has [Greek: hidrôs hôsei thromboi]; St. Luke, [Greek: ho hidrôs autou hôsei thromboi haimatos]. The author of "Supernatural Religion" lays great stress upon the omission of [Greek: haimatos], as indicating that Justin did not know anything about St. Luke; but we have to remember, first, that St. Luke alone mentions _any_ sweat of our Lord in His agony; secondly, that the account in Justin is said to be taken from "Memoirs drawn up by Apostles and _those who followed them_," _St. Luke being only one of those who followed_; thirdly, Justin and St. Luke both use a very scarce word, [Greek: thromboi]; fourthly, Justin and St. Luke both qualify this word by [Greek: hôsei]. If we add to this the fact that [Greek: thromboi] seems naturally associated with blood in several authors, the probability seems almost to reach certainty, that Justin had St. Luke's account in his mind. The single omission is far more easy to be accounted for than the four coincidences.

[37:1] And He said unto them, "These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms concerning me." (Luke xxiii. 44.)

[48:1] It is the reading of Codices B and C of the Codex Sinaiticus of the Syriac, and of a number of Fathers and Versions.

[51:1] [Greek: Hekastos gar tis apo merous tou spermatikou theiou logou to syngenes horôn kalôs ephthenxato.]

[63:1] For instance, in vol. ii. p. 42, &c., he speaks of one of Tischendorf's assertions as "a conclusion the audacity of which can scarcely be exceeded."--Then, "This is, however, almost surpassed by the treatment of Canon Westcott."--Then, "The unwarranted inference of Tischendorf."--"There is no ground for Tischendorf's assumption."--"Tischendorf, the self-constituted modern Defensor Fidei, asserts with an assurance which can scarcely be characterized otherwise than as an unpardonable calculation upon the ignorance of his readers."--"Canon Westcott says, with an assurance which, considering the nature of the evidence, is singular."--"Even Dr. Westcott states," &c.--For Tertullian his contempt seems unbounded: indeed we way say the same of all the Fathers. Numberless times does he speak of their "uncritical spirit." The only person for whom he seems to have a respect is the heretic Marcion. Even rationalists, such as Credner and Ewald, are handled severely when they differ from him. The above are culled from a few pages.

[69:1] [Greek: Hoti Theos hypemeine gennêthênai kai anthrôpos genesthai.]

[69:2] [Greek: Ex hôn diarrhêdên outous autos ho staurotheis hoti Theos kai anthrôpos, kai stauroumenos kai apothnêskôn kekêrygmenos apodeiknytai.]

[70:1] The reader must remember that Justin puts this expression, which seems to imply a duality of Godhead, into the mouth of an adversary. In other places, as I shall show, he very distinctly guards against such a notion, by asserting the true and proper Sonship of the Word and his perfect subordination to His Father. There is a passage precisely similar in ch. lv.

[71:1] "I continued: Moreover, I consider it necessary to repeat to you the words which narrate how He is both Angel and God and Lord, and Who appeared as a Man to Abraham." (Dial. ch. lviii.)

"Permit me, further, to show you from the Book of Exodus, how this same One, Who is both Angel, and God, and Lord, and Man." (Dial. ch. lix.)

"God begat before all creatures, a Beginning, a certain rational Power from Himself, Who is called by the Holy Spirit, now the Glory of the Lord, now the Son, again Wisdom, again an Angel, then God, and then Lord and Logos." (Dial. ch. lxi.)

"The Word of Wisdom, Who is Himself this God, begotten of the Father of all things, and Word, and Wisdom, and Power, and the Glory of the Begetter, will bear evidence to me," &c. (Dial. lxi.)

"Therefore these words testify explicitly that He is witnessed to by Him Who established these things [_i.e._ the Father] as deserving to be worshipped, as God and as Christ." (Dial. lxiii.)

The reader will find other declarations, most of which are equally explicit, in Dial. ch. lvi. (at the end), ch. lvii. (at the end), lxii. (middle), lxviii. (at middle and end), lxxiv. (middle), lxxv., lxxvi. (made Him known, being Christ, as God strong and to be worshipped), lxxxv. (twice called the Lord of Hosts), lxxxvii. (where Christ is declared to be pre-existent God), cxiii. (he [Joshua] was neither Christ, Who is God, nor the Son of God), cxv. (our Priest, Who is God, and Christ, the Son of God, the Father of all), cxxiv. (Now I have proved at length that Christ is called God), cxxv. (He ministered to the will of the Father, yet nevertheless is God), cxxvi. (thrice in this chapter), cxxvii., cxxviii., cxxix.

[73:1] I adopt this phrase because, it is used by Justin. His words are [Greek: arithmô onta heteron]. (Dial. ch. lxii.)

[74:1] [Greek: Hoti archên pro pantôn tôn ktismatôn ho Theos gegennêke dynamin tina ex heautou logikên, k.t.l.]

[77:1] Dr. Pusey translates this passage thus:--"For all that the philosophers and legislators at any time declared or discovered aright, they accomplished according to their portion of discovery and contemplation of the Word; but as they did not know all the properties of the Word which is Christ," &c.

[77:2] Translated by Dr. Pusey, "Seminal Divine Word."

[78:1] A few pages further on I shall show that the mode of reasoning adopted by the author of "Supernatural Religion," in drawing inferences from the ways in which Justin expresses the idea of St. John's [Greek: ho logos sarx egeneto] would, if we adopted it, lead us to some very startling conclusions.

[84:1] The following are some instances:--"God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world." "He Whom God sent."--John iii. 17, 23. "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me." "Jesus Christ, Whom Thou hast sent." "As my Father sent me, so send I you," &c.

[85:1] This passage does not occur among the remarks upon Justin Martyr's quotations, but among those on the Clementine Homilies. However, it seems to be used to prove that the Gospel of St. John was published after the writing of the Clementines, which the author seems to think were themselves posterior to Justin.

[86:1] I say the "necessary" developments, because Holy Scripture is given to the Church to be expounded and applied, and in order to this its doctrine must be collected out of many scattered statements, and stated and guarded, and this is its being developed. The Persons, the attributes, and the works of the three Persons of the Godhead are so described in Holy Scripture as Divine, and They are so conjoined in the works of Creation, Providence, and Grace, that we cannot but contemplate Them as associated together, and cannot but draw an impassable gulf between Their existence and that of all creatures, and we cannot but adoringly contemplate Their relations one to another, and hence the necessary development of the Christian dogma as contained in the Creeds.

[91:1] [Greek: Ton di' hêmas tou anthrôpous kai dia tên hêmeteran sôtêrian katelthonta ek tôn ouranôn, kai sarkôthenta ek Pneumatos Hagiou kai Marias tês parthenou, kai enanthrôpêsanta, k.t.l.]

[94:1] Though of course not as regards _time_, for all Catholics hold the Eternal Generation, that there never was a time in which the Father was not a Father; nor as regards power or extension, for whatever the Father does that the Son does also, and wherever the Father is there is the Son also.

[100:1] Eusebius, B. ii. ch. v.

[106:1] Apol. i. 14.

[107:1] The spirit of this verse, and its form of expression, are quite those of the Gospel of St. John; and it serves to form a link of union between the three Synoptic Gospels and the Fourth, and to point to the vast and weighty mass of discourses of the Lord which are not related except by St. John. Alford in loco.

[117:1] If the reader desires to see Logos doctrine expressed in philosophic terminology, he can find it in some of the extracts from Philo given in the notes of "Supernatural Religion" vol. ii. pp. 272-298. Can there be a greater contrast than that between St. John's terse, concise, simple, enunciations and the following: [Greek: Kai ou monon phôs, alla kai pantos heterou phôtos archetypon mallon de archetypou presbyteron kai anôteron, Logon echon paradeigmatos to men gar paradeigma ho plêrestatos ên autou Logos, k.t.l.]--De Somniis, i. 15, Mang. i. 634. There is no particularly advanced philosophic terminology here, and yet there is a profound difference between both the thought and wording of this sentence of Philo and St. John's four enunciations of the Logos. Again, [Greek: Dêlon de hoti kai hê archetypos sphragis, hon phamen einai kosmon noêton, autos an eiê to archetypon paradeigma, idea tôn ideôn, ho Theou Logos.]--De Mundi Opificio Mang. vol. i. p. 8. "It is manifest also that the archetypal seal, which we call that world which is perceptible only to the intellect, must itself be the archetypal model, the idea of ideas, the word of God." (Yonge's Translation.)