LECTURE XI. THE INCORPORATION OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS, AS MODIFIED BY GREEK, INTO A BODY OF DOCTRINE. THE object which I have in view in this Lecture is to show the transition by which, under the influence of contemporary Greek thought, the word Faith came to be transferred from simple trust in God to mean the acceptance of a series of propositions, and these propositions, propositions in abstract metaphysics. The Greek words which designate belief or faith are used in the Old Testament chiefly in the sense of trust, and primarily trust in a person. They expressed confidence in his goodness, his veracity, his uprightness. They are as much moral as intellectual. They implied an estimate of character. Their use in application to God was not different from their use in application to men. Abraham trusted God. The Israelites also trusted God when they saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore. In the first instance there was just so much of intellectual assent involved in belief, that to believe God involved an assent to the proposition that God exists. XI. THE INCORPORATION OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS. 311 But this element was latent and implied rather than conscious and expressed. It is not difficult to see how, when this proposition came to be conscious and expressed, it should lead to other propositions. The analysis of belief led to the construction of other propositions besides the bare original proposition that God is. Why do I trust God? The answer was: Because He is wise, or good, or just. The propositions followed: I believe that God is wise, that He is good, that He is just. Belief in God came to mean the assent to certain propositions about God.1 In Greek philosophy the words were used rather of intellectual conviction than of moral trust, and of the higher rather than of the lower forms of conviction. Aristotle distinguishes faith from impression-for a man, he says, may have an impression and not be sure of it. He uses it both of the convictions that come through the senses and of those that come through reason. There is in Philo a special application of this philosophical use, which led to even more important results. He blends the sense in which it is found in the Old Testament with that which is found in Greek philosophy. The mass of men, he says, trust their senses or their reason. The good man trusts God. Just as the mass of men believe that their senses and their reason do not deceive them, so the latter believes that God does not deceive him. To trust God was to trust His veracity. But the occasions on which God spoke directly to a man were rare, and what He said when He so spoke commanded an unquestioning acceptance. He more commonly spoke 1 Cf. Celsus' idea of faith: Orig. c. Cels. 3. 39; Keim, p. 39. to men through the agency of messengers. His angels spoke to men, sometimes in visions of the night, sometimes in open manifestation by day. His prophets spoke to men. To believe God, implied a belief in what He said indirectly as well as directly. It implied the acceptance of what His prophets said, that is to say, of what they were recorded to have said in the Holy Writings. Belief in this sense is not a vague and mystical sentiment, the hazy state of mind which precedes knowledge, but the highest form of conviction. It transcends reason in certainty. It is the full assurance that certain things are so, because God has said that they are so.1 In this connection we may note the way in which the Christian communities were helped by the current reaction against pure speculation-the longing for certainty. The mass of men were sick of theories. They wanted certainty. The current teaching of the Christian teachers gave them certainty. It appealed to definite facts of which their predecessors were eye-witnesses. Its simple tradition of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ was a necessary basis for the satisfaction of men's needs. Philosophy and poetry might be built upon that tradition; but if the tradition were shown to be only cloudland, Christian philosophy was no more than Stoicism. We have thus to see how, under the new conditions, faith passed beyond the moral stage, or simple trust in a person, to the metaphysical stage, or belief in certain propositions or technical definitions concerning Him, His 1 Philo's view of faith is well expressed in two striking passages, Quis rer. div. Heres, 18, i. 485; and de Abrah. 46, ii. 39. nature, relations and actions. In this latter we may distinguish two correlated and interdependent phases or forms of belief, the one more intellectual and logical, the other more historical and concrete, namely, (1) the conviction that God being of a certain nature has certain attributes; (2) the conviction that, God being true, the statements which He makes through His prophets and ministers are also true.1 The one of these forms of belief was elaborated into what we know as the Creed; the other, into the Canon of the New Testament. We shall first deal with these phases or forms of belief, and then with the process by which the metaphysical definitions became authoritative. 1. In the first instance the intellectual element of belief was subordinated to the ethical purpose of the religion. Belief was not insisted upon in itself and for itself, but as the ground of moral reformation. The main content of the belief was "that men are punished for their sins and honoured for their good deeds: "2 the ground of this conviction was the underlying belief that God is, and that He rewards and punishes. The feature which differentiated Christianity from philosophy was, 1 Cf. "He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that seek Him," Heb. xi. 6; and "He that is of God heareth God's words," John viii. 47. 2 It was one of Celsus' objections to Christianity that its preachers laid more stress on belief than on the intellectual grounds of belief: Orig. c. Cels. 1. 9. Origen's answer, which is characteristic rather of his own time than expressive of the belief of the apostolic age, is that this was necessary for the mass of men, who have no leisure or inclination for deep investigation (1. 10), and in order not to leave men altogether without help (1. 12). There that this belief as to the nature of God had been made certain by a revelation. The purpose of the revelation was salvation-regeneration and amendment of life. By degrees stress came to be laid on this underlying element. The revelation had not only made some propositions certain which hitherto had been only speculative, it had also added new propositions, assertions of its distinctive or differentiating belief. But it is uncertain, except within the narrowest limits, what those assertions were. are several phrases in the New Testament and in subapostolic writings which read like references to some elementary statements or rule.1 But none of them contain or express a recognized standard. Yet the standard may be gathered partly from the formula of admission into the Christian community, partly from the formulæ in which praise was ascribed to God. The most important of these, in view of its subsequent history, is the former. But the formula is itself uncertain; it existed at least in two main forms. There is evidence to show that the injunction to baptize in the name of the three Persons of the Trinity, which is found in the last chapter of St. Matthew, was observed.2 It is the formula in the Teaching of the Apostles. But there is also evidence, side by side with this evidence as to the use of the 1 E.g. Rom. vi. 17, εἰς ὃν παρεδόθητε τύπον διδαχῆς; 2 John, 9, ἐν τῇ διδαχῇ τοῦ Χριστοῦ; 2 Tim. i. 13, ὑποτύπωσιν ἔχει ὑγιαινόντων λόγων ὧν παρ' ἐμοῦ ἤκουσας ; 1 Tim. vi. 12, ὡμολόγησας τὴν καλὴν ὁμολογίαν; Jude 3, ἡ ἅπαξ παραδοθεῖσα τοῖς ἁγίοις πίστις. Polycrates, ap. Eus. H. E. 5. 24, o kavov Tŷs TíσTEWS: see passages collected in Gebhardt and Harnack's Patres Apost. Bd. i. th. 2 (Barnabas), p. 133. 2 Cf. Schmid, Dogmeng. p. 14, Das Taufsymbol. |