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CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE
REFORMATION

CHRISTIAN THOUGHT
TO THE REFORMATION

BY

HERBERT B. WORKMAN, M.A., D.Litt.
PRINCIPAL OF THE WESTMINSTER TRAINING COLLEGE
AUTHOR OF
'PERSECUTION IN THE EARLY CHURCH ' J ' THE DAWN
OF THE REFORMATION'; 'THE LETTERS
OF JOHN HUS,' ETC.

LONDON: DUCKWORTH & CO.
3 HENRIETTA ST, COVENT GARDEN
191 1

AD MAJOREM DEI GLORIAM
ET
IN MEMORIAM
A. M. W.
QUAE
IN SUA GENERATIONS CUM ADMINISTRASSET
VOLUNTATE DEI
DORMIVIT 18 FEB. 1911

PREFACE
The limits of the present volume have been fixed in
accordance with the general plan of the series. The
writer therefore is not responsible for the effort to com
press so vast a field into so small a compass. The diffi
culties of the task have proved almost insuperable. On
the one side was the danger of so emphasising detail as
to make the book a pocket dictionary of names and
opinions ; on the other hand, generalisation without
considerable foundation of fact is valueless when not
dangerous. The writer has sought the mean — with what
success it must be for his critics to judge. Passing by
much that is of the highest importance, he has attempted
to point out the main movements of Christian Thought
from the close of the Apostolic Age to the dawn of the
Reformation. For the detailed contents of such thought
search must be made in the many familiar handbooks of
theology or philosophy ; here the writer's object has been
to draw attention to the changes and developments due
to the action and reaction upon theology, not only of the
current philosophy and science, but also to some extent
of the general environment, the influence of which is
oftentimes unduly neglected.
The writer believes firmly in the evolutionary stand-

viii CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION
point as alone explanatory of the history of the Christian
Church as the expression of the will of the Holy Spirit.
He admits, therefore, the principle of development as not
only an historic fact, but as part of the work of God.
True Christianity is not to be found by going back to
some ill-defined period of antiquity, the beliefs and
practices of which it is now almost impossible to recon
struct, but by the incorporation into itself of the ever-
enlarging knowledge, the ever-expanding horizons of life.
It is the glory of Christianity that this can be done. She
shows her universality and her eternal truth by her
ability to interpret in terms of her faith the thought and
knowledge not only of the first, but of the twelfth and
of the twentieth centuries ; only when the Church of any
generation is tempted to regard her interpretation of her
Lord as final and complete does that Church demonstrate
her limitations of outlook, her weakness of faith. No
generation, not even in the first century, is sufficiently
big to be able to take in all the facets of the one Divine
Life. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for
ever, is for us, as for the author of the Epistle to the
Hebrews, not the claim for a stereotyped creed unable to
assimilate or advance, but the proclamation that in the
conception of Christ as the eternal Logos, and in the ever-
repeated return to the historic Jesus, will be found the
one solution by every generation of the problems that
confront, of the troubles that harass.
Such a view of development or evolution may well be
called biological. It is evolution exhibited in a living
organism, affected by and sensitive to the changes in the

PREFACE ix
environment in which its life is placed. As such it is to
be distinguished from logical development in which the
premises and deductive processes are exclusively studied.
Unfortunately in theology the logical methods have too
often been allowed to monopolise attention, with the
result that theology has been divorced from history and
actual life. Logical development is a simple process;
the tracing of biological evolution needs the accurate
measurement of many complex factors; above all, the
perpetual insistence on hfe itself as the key to the whole.
Limits of space have driven the writer, much against
his will and usual practice, to exclude all references to
the original sources. Nor has it been possible, in a work
covering so vast a period in so small a compass, to
acknowledge the full measure of indebtedness, or to
indicate the authority or reasons upon which certain
opinions have been formed. To the same cause must
be attributed a necessary, though unwelcome, positiveness
of expression as regards some matters that in a larger
work would demand discussion and Justification. The
bibliography at the close, which it would have been easy
to make as large as the text itself, has been constructed
with a view to the requirements of the busy pastor or
general reader.
Manuals of theology and philosophy abound. Surveys
of the development of Christian Thought — apart from the
great works of Harnack, Loofs, and Seeberg — are some
what rare. The best known, probably, is Dr. Allen's
excellent Continuity of Christian Thought, the scale of
which, however, is even more restricted than in the
b

x CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION
present work. A niche, therefore, may be found for the
following attempt, in spite of many imperfections of
knowledge and execution of which no critic can be more
conscious than the author himself.
It may be well to point out that quotations from
sources reasonably contemporary with the writer or event
in question are enclosed within '....'; quotations from
modern writers in the usual " . . . . ".
Westminster, March 1911.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
PAGK3
THE JEWISH FACTORS,  1-19
(For Argument see page 1.)

CHAPTER II
THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS,  20-60
(For Argument see page 20.)
CHAPTER III
THE PERSON OF CHRIST,  61-89
(For Argument see page 61.)
CHAPTER IV
THE GENIUS OF ROME,  90-109
(For Argument see page 90. )
CHAPTER V
ST. AUGUSTINE,  110-127
(For Argument see page 110.)

zii CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION

CHAPTER VI PAOES
THE DARK AGES,  128-159

(For Argument see page 128.)
CHAPTER VII
THE RENAISSANCE OF THE ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH
CENTURIES,  160-187
(For Argument see page 160.)
CHAPTER VIII
THE MEDIEVAL MYSTICS,  188-211
(For Argument see page 188. )
CHAPTER IX
THE SCHOOLMEN, . .  212-243
(For Argument see page 212.)
bibliography, .  245-252
index,  .... 253-256

CHAPTER I
THE JEWISH FACTORS
Argument
§ I. The composite character of Christianity — Later Jewish
influence but slight — St. James and the Nazarenes —
Ebionism — Our limited knowledge of sub-apostolic
times  pp. 2-5
§ II. The hostility to Judaism— Epistle of Barnabas— Marcion
— The Old Testament — Results of the reaction against
Marcion — The allegorical method of interpretation
— Its origin and influence — After history of the
method  pp. 5-11
§ III. Apocalyptic literature in early Christianity — Eschato-
logical concepts — The ' prophets ' of the Early Church
• — The services of Chiliasm — Antagonism to Rome —
Angelology and demons — Growth of superstition pp. 11-17
§ IV. The doctrine of the Logos — Philo — Christian develop
ment of the Logo3  pp. 17-19

2 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.

Over the Cross of the Saviour the inscription was written
in three languages, Hebrew, Greek, Latin ; a threefold
appeal to the great races, which by their organisation
and thought influenced and moulded the infant Church.
Christ was born amid the clash of East and West ; his
torical Christianity is the product of many movements
with intense differences, local and racial. From the Jew,
the Greek, and the Roman the new faith received elements,
differing according to the genius of the different races, yet
all of value in building up the City of God. For the Jew,
the Greek, and the Roman on entering the Church did not
lose their racial idiosyncrasies or abandon their distinctive
tempers and modes of thought. The Jew came to the
New Testament through the Old ; the Greek, even if he
entered the Church through the synagogue, yet brought
with him his philosophy ; while the Roman construed all
in terms of his polity.
For our present purpose the direct contribution of the
Jew is relatively slight, even if we understand by the Jew
the larger Eastern world of which he formed, especiaUy
in Alexandria, the mediator and interpreter to the West.
The Apostles, it is true, were Jews. The monotheism of
Christianity was Jewish and not Greek ; its doctrine of
the Messiah wholly Jewish. The superstructure of Chris
tian doctrine was built upon Jewish foundations, and can
only be construed through the Judaism of Palestine or of
the Dispersion. The root ideas of the Gospel were planted
deep in Old Testament soil. For the Gentile Christian as
for the Jew the older Scriptures were canonical, authentic,

i.] THE JEWISH FACTORS 3
and inspired ; at one time, in fact, his only Bible. But
with the accomphshment of this their historic purpose, the
further direct influence of the Jew upon Christian thought
after the Apostolic Age became comparatively insignificant.
The new conceptions of religion could receive little but
hostility from Jewish conservatism. Even in Jewish
Christian circles (the so-called Nazarenes) little was added
with growing years to their first crude ideas of the Messiah.
What is absent is more noteworthy than what is present.
Nothing is more remarkable than the poverty of the
Christology of such a representative Jewish writer as St.
James. Sublime as are his ethics, his Christian teaching,
as distinct from what Micah would have written, is but
shght. In the Jewish writers who came after St. James,
with their stunted Christianity, e.g. the Christian inter
polations in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, we miss
altogether the great Pauline or Johannine conceptions. We
find instead the anticipation of the teaching of Arius, that
Christ is no more than a creature of God. The difficulty
which the Jewish mind seems always to have discerned
in the doctrine of a crucified Messiah found its expression
in the docetism of Cerinthus (a.d. 90), who taught that the
Christ who descended upon Jesus at His baptism forsook
Him before His passion. But the Jewish consciousness,
even when nominally Christian, was generally unable to
interpret Christ.
Another and more rigid section of the Jewish Christians,
known as Ebionites, has left us an extensive but obscure
literature. The chief of these, known as the pseudo-
Clementine Becognitions and Homilies (both probably in
dependent abridgments of a lost work called the Circuits
of St. Peter) display at times a remarkable animosity to
St. Paul, and absolutely ignore any idea of Atonement.1
Christ, however, as the eternal interpreter of the Law by
i It is difficult to understand Harnack's (H.D. i. 311 ff.) contention that the
Clementine literature is ' Catholic,' or at most synoretistic (i. 314 ».).

4 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
His successive incarnations in perfect men, culminating
in His incarnation in Jesus, delivers men from the attrac
tion of the earth-spirit. Whether the Jewish Christians
would ever have advanced beyond these crude and un
disciplined notions it is now impossible to say. For the
Jewish Christian Church, the earliest form of Christianity,
almost ceased to exist with the close of the second century.
Jewish Christians lingered on, it is true, here and there,
especially in Pella and Kochaba, and still survive, it would
appear, in Mesopotamia in a hopelessly corrupt condition.1
Their history, for the most part a blank, is that of a rudi
mentary organ in the Church, a perpetual warning of the
atrophy which awaits blindness to the signs of a new
age. We have spoken of the comparatively shght influence, as
it seems to us, of the Jew upon Christian thought after
the Apostohc Age. Probably if we knew more we should
see that. this influence was greater than we think. Later
Judaism, the Judaism of the Apocalypses and of Alexan
dria, and early Christianity, especially in its non-Pauline
types, were so closely connected and were differentiated
so gradually that they must have exercised considerable
influence one upon the other. Unfortunately the century
which followed the death of St. Paul is a silent century that
has left us but " fragments of fragments " of its history.
Annalists had slight place in a community that lived in
expectation of the sudden coming of the Lord. Of such
hterature as existed we have now only a few torn leaves.
Only here and there is the curtain lifted upon those memor
able days. Only very imperfectly do we yet understand
the process by which a young, proscribed creed, trans
planted from the land of its birth to the abodes of men
of alien thought and of alien institutions, in the teeth of
relentless edicts, without as yet settled doctrines, a settled
canon — apart from the Old Testament — or settled organi-
1 Encyc. Brit.s, s.v. Mandaeans.

i.] THE JEWISH FACTORS 6
sation, became a homogeneous force which the Roman
Empire could not overthrow, and with wliich the culture
of the world was bound to come to terms. But in the
process Christianity and Judaism drifted fatally apart ;
not unnaturaUy when we remember that Pauline doctrine
really negatives all that is most characteristic in Mosaism.
n
[in three directions the Jew.mfluenQe_dJ though chiefly
in a negative way, the development of Christian thought,
especiaUy in the second century. An intense hostility to
everything Jewish, combined with the acceptance of the
Jewish Scriptures as canonical and inspired, is one of the
marks of much early Christian literature, most strongly
emphasised, perhaps, in orthodox writings, in the Epistle
of Barnabas. In this work, probably written in the second
century, and long regarded as of apostolic authority, the
writer claims that all Jewish ceremonies are of the devil.
Confronted with the difficulty what to make in this case
of the Old Testament, he and his school boldly twisted
it into an|aUegorical(or spiritual narrative. Others went
further, and maintained that the Old Testament from cover
to cover had nothing to do with the Jews, who were but ' a
synagogue of Satan.'
Another sect of extremists, under the lead of Marcion
(c. 150)=-r-an " old-world Count Tolstoy " 1 — pushed to an
extreme the doctrines of Barnabas, and repudiated both
Judaism and the Old Testament, though careful to acknow
ledge its historicity. The drift of Marcion's thought is
shown by the title of his chief work, Antitheses, or ' Con
trasts.' To such lengths did Marcion carry his hostility
that he makes Christ descend into hell and release the
heathen, even Sodomites and Egyptians, while passing
by the great Jewish saints. A man of deep and genuine
i T. M. Lindsay, Church and Ministry, p. 219.

6 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
piety, he believed that he had discovered the secret of
St. Paul, that the Gospel was essentially a revelation of
grace, love, and redemption which had nothing in common
with the external restraints and legal conditions of the
Old Testament. He forgot that St. Paul had sought to
deduce his special doctrines from the Old Testament itself.
In Marcion we find the exact opposite of the Ebionite and
pseudo-Clementine writings of the Jewish Christian Church.
These last had discerned in Christianity httle else than a
continuation of Judaism, a Mosaism purified and enlarged.
Marcion refused to allow any association or link whatever.
He will have nothing to do with progressive manifestation
and disciplinary delays. As usual, the extremes met.
The one denied the possibility of development in rehgious
thought ; the other so exaggerated the new elements at the
expense of the old as to leave no room for development at
all. The Church was founded upon a cataclysm, and left
unrelated to history.
From this heresy, organised by Marcion into a regular
system which lasted untU the sixth century, the Church
was saved, not so much by the logic of its leaders — for
many of the positions into which they were driven seem
more than questionable — as by its sense of historic spiritual
continuity, that ' rock ' upon which so much that is more
valuable than logic is founded. Men realised that it was
better to throw a bridge between the Church and the past
than, with Marcion of Pontus, to leave Christianity with
out historic {i.e. Jewish) foundations and supports. The
Apologists especially, in their attempt to win the cultured
Gentiles, felt the necessity of dating back the Christian
religion to the beginning of the human race ; while the
average Christian clung firmly to the Jewish foundations
as the one effective barrier against that complete Helleni-
sation of Christianity the results of which he fancied he
had already seen in Gnosticism. Even Tertullian, much
as he detested Judaism, dreaded even more ' the Pontic

i.] THE JEWISH FACTORS 1
mouse who nibbled away the Gospels,' with whom ' all
things happened on the sudden.'
One result of this reaction against Marcion was to fasten
upon the Church a heritage of Old Testament legalism,
which in many directions cramped the larger spirit of the
Church. The new wine, in spite of the warning of Jesus,
was poured into old bottles. Another result was the
triumph of the aUegorical method. The Church hence
forth frankly accepted the Old Testament, but the diffi
culty of its interpretation stiU remained ; nor was this
lessened by the rigid view of inspiration which the early
Christians inherited from Judaism. There was much in
the Old Testament that was unintelligible to Greek con
verts, much that seemed contradictory to their new faith,
some things that jarred upon their moral consciousness.
¦ The modern explanation by historical and ethical develop-
| ment was unknown ; yet some solution must be discovered.
Refuge from these difficulties was found in the adoption
of aUegory as the true key for the unlocking of the Bible
treasures, a method nowhere more firmly carried out than
by the unknown author of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
For the origin of the allegorical method many different
sources may be claimed with equal truth. In reality the
method completely met diverse different needs of the age.
We have seen its adoption by the writer of Barnabas
because of the intense hatred of sections of the Early
Church to everything Jewish. Strange to say, the method
was itself Jewish, or rather rabbinic ; though Philo, the
leader of the Jewish allegorical school of Alexandria, speaks
of it as the method of the Greek mysteries. Philo was
right. For centuries the Greek philosophers had used the
method as a means of protecting their sacred poems and
myths from the critics, and the system had been com
pleted by the Stoics, especially Heraclitus and Cornutus.
By the writers of this school the varying theories of ethics,
physics, and metaphysics alike are made to find their

8 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
support and proof in Homer, whose verses were the Bible
of the Greek race. By this means also reconciliation was
found between the new world of ideas and the old Homeric
world from which men were shpping away. When, there
fore, in the third century of the Christian Church, the
influence of Philo was aided by that of Hellenic culture,
by the need for overthrowing Marcionism, and by the
fashionable syncretism, the result was inevitable. By
orthodox and unorthodox, Gnostics and Apologists, the
simplest words and incidents both of the Old and New
Testament received most daring interpretations. The
one hundred and fifty-three fishes caught in the Sea of
Galilee were resolved, to give an example, into the square
of the Apostles and the square of the Trinity. The books of
the prophets especiaUy suffered ; their every sentence was
wrested into a prediction ; their moral ' forthtelling ' was
lost in the emphasis of ' foreknowledge.' The method be
came universal. In dealing with the heathen myths the
Apologists will have none of it, though they fall back upon
it for the defence of Christianity. Gnostics fled to it for
the advancement of their own views, and turned the Nunc
dimittis of Simeon into a thanksgiving of theDemiurge to the
Infinite Depth. Even Celsus and Porphyry, in spite of their
bitter attacks upon the Christian exegesis, in the interpre
tation of their own rehgion became allegorists themselves.
When the work of the Gnostics, Apologists, and Alexan
drians had resulted in the expression of Christianity in terms
of Hellenic thought, the allegorical method became even
more supreme. In part this was due to the curious fact
that the Greeks, who of all others have done most by their
literature for the intellectual advancement of the race,
always looked on the written word with some suspicion.1
Writing, said Socrates in the Phaedrus, can do no more
than remind the reader of something which he knows
1 See Butcher, "Tbe Written and the Spoken Word," in Some Aspects of
the Greek Genius.

i.] THE JEWISH FACTORS 9
already. Knowledge is not the outcome of books, but of
iUumination ; into the mystery of learning few can pene
trate. We may note in passing, as a matter of some
importance, that this iUumination, or power of aUegorical
interpretation, was regarded as having been handed down
from the Apostles through a succession not of bishops but
of teachers.1
By many modern writers the allegorical method is re
garded as the peculiar mark of mysticism and orthodoxy.
This is one of the curious reversals of opinion of which
history contains so many. In reality, as we have seen, the
aUegorical method grew out of a tendency to rationalism ;
it was primarily an attempt to explain away for Greek
readers the difficulties of the Scriptures (e.g. the story of
the Fall), by getting rid of their literal or historical signifi
cance. As rationalistic the method received condemnation
at the hands of certain early writers, whose zeal was
scarcely in proportion to their knowledge.
In spite of all its radical unsoundness, when viewed from
the standpoint of a more scientific age, this much may be
said for the allegorical method, that it attained a true goal.
The allegorist rightly felt that the Bible was a treasure
held in trust for the human race. The value of the Bible
does not lie in its historical or scientific detaU, but in its
spiritual, universal content; all else is immaterial, local,
and temporal. But spiritual content cannot exist unless
there is the capacity of eternal self-adjustment. That this
cannot be attained by slavish homage to the letter was the
constant testimony of the allegorical method. Though the
road by which allegorism travelled was one that we should
not care to tread to-day, the conclusion reached was really
one with that of modern criticism. The spiritual was made
all in all, and the letter, in many cases, a veil that hid it ; to
day we regard the letter not as a veil, but as the vehicle of
the spiritual, of little value in itself save in so far as it bears
1 Bigg, Christian Platonists, i. 57.

10 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
witness to eternal truth. The allegorical method in its
search for the spiritual did not take sufficiently wide sweeps ;
it laboured under the delusion that every separate verse of
Scripture, nay, every separate word, was profitable, instead
of discerning the spiritual in the sum-total of the messages
or the movement.
The after history of this aUegorical method may here be
; summarised.1 Made into a system byjQriggn, of whom we
are expressly told that he had studied the works of the
Stoic Cornutus, it was the chief but least valuable part of
his teaching which survived the condemnation of his posi-
| tions. Henceforthjt i jlojnjnated. the Church, though not
i without opposition from the school of Antioch, especially
from Theodore of Mopsuestia (f429). WhUe pleading for
greater fidelity to the grammatical, literal, and historical
sense, for the allegorical significance Theodore attempted
to substitute the ' typical,' ofttimes, it is true, falling into
the very ' allegory ' from which escape was sought. By
means of the Instituta Begularia of JunUius Africanus
(c. 550), the 'typical' school obtained an entrance into
the West, and is not extinct in certain quarters even to
day. But, compared with the aUegorists, the ' typical '
school had little influence ; partly because of the critical
freedom with which Theodore had dealt with the doubtful
books both of the Old and New Testament ; to a greater
degree because of the association of the school with Nestor-
ianism. Further developed by Jerome and Augustine, the
' allegorical ' method became the one acknowledged prin
ciple of exegesis of the Middle Ages, reaching its most
interesting expression in Bernard of Clairvaux's Sermons
on the Canticles. By most medieval writers Scripture was
given a fourfold interpretation, literal or historical, tropo-
logical, allegorical, and analogical. Thomas Aquinas care
fully distinguished the historical signification from ' the
1 For allegory, see Geffcken in Hastings' Dictionary of Religion and
Ethics, vol. i. ; Hatch, Influence of Greek Ideas, chap. iii.

i.] THE JEWISH FACTORS 11
spiritual sense founded upon it.' This distinction pre-
vaUed until long after the Reformation began a more
critical exegesis.
A second direction in which we may trace the impulse
of Judaism was in the influence of its eschatological or
apocalyptic literature. Christianity had its historical :
origin at the very centre of what we may describe as the j
apocalyptic period (300 b.c-200 a.d.). Among the Jews i
apocalypses of all sorts had flourished exceedingly since
the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, and were regarded as
possessing almost canonical authority. They were, in
reality, the continuation under a grosser form of the yearn
ing for that mysterious new order which Hebrew prophets
had first dimly seen, and then changed into a national
expectation, and which Jesus had proclaimed as fulfilled
in the ' Kingdom of Heaven.' These writings were naturally
received by the Christians as part of their heritage from
Judaism, and, where necessary (as in the case of the chaotic
wUderness of the Sibylline Oracles), adapted to Christian
needs by means of Christian alterations or additions.
Among the elements of this apocalyptic literature we may
discern, as in the second part of the Apocalypse of St. John,
an intense hatred of the Roman Empire, and a tendency to
bury the simple eschatological teaching of Jesus beneath a
mass of allegory. Nevertheless, in spite of millenarian
exaggeration or sensuous imagery, we may recognise the
service done to Christian thought by this apocalyptic
literature in the sustained emphasis laid upon eschato
logical hope, the ' athanasia ' through Jesus Christ.1 In
times of persecution, as we see from the Acts of Perpetua,
the Acts of Marianus and James, and other similar human
documents, it was to these delineations of the blessedness
1 Didache, ix. 10.

12 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
of the triumphant that the tortured turned.1 As an in
tegral part of this eschatological hope, we find at a very
early date the identification of Jesus with the Son of Man
who was to appear in judgment, though apocalyptic litera
ture never rose to the great conception that ' the Father
hath given authority to the Son to execute judgment,
because He is the Son of Man.' The human sympathy of
the judgment was generally lost in the fiery details with
wliich the apocalypses abounded, which became part of
the stock of Christian thinking.
Of this current literature another outcome was the
strength of chiliastic conceptions ; a transfiguration of
the ancient hopes of Israel, begun by the Jews, taken
over by the Church, and then enlarged and refined by being
linked on with the Lord. A belief in the immediate
coming of Christ was common in the Early Church, and
soon passed into the idea that this would begin the reign
of the Saviour and His saints for a thousand years at
Jerusalem. The Church, in the second century especially,
was largely influenced by parousian conceptions. The
Christian watchword was still, as in apostolic days, Maran
Atha, " the Lord is at hand." The wandering ' prophets '
(an order in the Church which died out with Montanism)
made this theme in special, as Celsus complains, the basis
of their sermons, and gloried — at least that was the im
pression produced upon the heathen — in the retribution
so speedily to come upon the world. By many writers,
e.g. in the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas,
as well as by Papias and Justin, we find the millenarian
idea strongly developed, while Tertullian and Irenaeus
give evidence of the same belief. To these conceptions,
the basis of which was the literal interpretation of certain
passages in the Apocalypse and other similar writings, a
blow was given by the introduction of the aUegorical
method in Alexandrian theology. In the third century,
1 Workman, Persecution in the Early Church, p. 321 ff.

i.] THE JEWISH FACTORS 13
partly through the influence of the treatise of Dionysius
of Alexandria, On the Promises, partly through the more
friendly relations between the Church and the Empire,
partly through the discredit of the prophets and the failure
of Montanism, partly through the greater influence of
Greek thought, chiliastic conceptions became generally
discounted, especiaUy in the East. A century later they
were regarded as heretical.
But the importance of these chUiastic conceptions,
especially in the second century, must not be forgotten
because of their later discredit. By these behefs men were
supported through a great crisis in the world's history.
In a society rapidly hastening to dissolution the Church
was enabled to hold fast to the conviction that God was
leading all things to an issue in which righteousness and
love should be fuUy vindicated. " Because Christianity
was thus," as Professor Burkitt aptly puts it, " organised
for a time of catastrophe," 1 when the crash came Chris
tianity alone of the institutions of the world survived the
catastrophe. In chUiastic conceptions we recognise also a fundamental
truth ; though in the issue of events it took a different
form from men's first expectations. Chiliasm proclaims
that for the Christian, as for the Jew of old, there is a
divine interpretation of human history. History is not
limited to any one ' aeon.' The optimism of this view,
both for the individual and for society, though concealed
by much allegorical verbiage, is apparent when contrasted
with the pessimism of the great Stoic thinker, Marcus
Aurelius. Chiliasm, whatever its faults, has no despair
of the spiritual possibilities of human nature. With its
proclamation of ' aeons of aeons,' it refuses to narrow its
vision by circles premature. With Marcus Aurelius re
nunciation becomes a hopeless concentration upon present
duty, for whose sake all else must be put aside. It is
1 Prof. Burkitt, in Cambridge Biblical Essays, p. 207.

14 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
magnificent, in some respects the most magnificent flight
of the unaided human soul. None the less, it is not so much
spiritual vision as despair. The City of God, or reahsed
Kingdom of Heaven, that organised ideal in which lay
the strongest appeal of the new religion, by its very nature
utterly subversive of the established order as it then
existed, had little meaning for the absoluteness of Stoic
individualism. The ultimate value of this chUiastic hope
as a factor in thought and progress is too often overlooked,
because in the first enthusiasm of this larger vision the
early Christians, as Schweitzer claims, may perhaps have
had a tendency to forget the common duties of this life.
The claims of the old ' world ' that was ' passing away with
the fashion thereof,' and of the new world that men ' greeted
from afar,' were not always easy to adjust, and in their
adjustment (Interimsethik) both in thought and life, the
Christians of the second century were not always successful.
But the apocalyptic literature did more than hold out
to the Church a new world to redress the balance of the old.
This voluminous literature has rightly been caUed " tracts
for hard times." It was a literature produced by a sense
of antagonism to the world-power ; it bears on its pages
the marks of the blood and fire with which the world-
power sought to crush out the infant Church. When in the
third and fourth centuries the Church conquered the State,
apocalyptic literature lost its main motive. The parousia
was pushed into the dim distance ; the world-power was
beneath the foot of the saint. Apocalyptic literature
became discredited and, as far as possible, forgotten. The
fragments that survive, like some fossU remains, bear
witness to a state of life and feeling long since extinct.
Yet in one particular the motives of apocalyptic litera
ture survived its discredit. For the antagonism of the
Church to the world-force rested on a conviction that the
Church was also an empire that lay parallel to, outside
of, possibly in antagonism to, the Roman dominion. In

i.] THE JEWISH FACTORS 15
their writings Christians professed that ' nothing was more
alien to them than pohtics ' ; in reality, from the stand
point of a Roman governor, they were intense pohticians
of a most dangerous type. In then constant persecutions
the basis of condemnation by the magistrates was not the
theological views of the Christians — for these the Roman
magistrates cared httle or nothing — but their supreme
loyalty to a law and to a throne outside the Roman law and
throne. The Christians were not anxious to run counter
to the law and customs of the Empire ; they were, in fact,
almost unanimous in upholding them. But if at any time
such law and customs came into conflict with the will of
God, as interpreted by themselves and by their standards,
they must obey God rather than man. By the Roman
executive such a doctrine could not be regarded as other
wise than revolutionary, for their whole pohtical theory,
civU and religious, was buUt up on the absolutism of Caesar,
and demanded complete submission of hfe and will from
all subjects. Even the great poUtician maxim of Jesus :
" Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto
God the things that are God's," became treasonable in a
State that made httle difference between Caesar and God.
The results of such antagonism were seen in the three
centuries of persecution through which the Church was
called to pass, in reahty three centuries of struggle between
the incompatible claims of Caesar and Christ.1 And when
the era of persecution had passed away, the consciousness
of the Church as an empire in possible antagonism and
opposition to the world-state still survived. Of this we
shall see the fuU fruition in the rise of the medieval papacy
and the growth of Canon Law.
In another direction also we note the influence of this
apocalyptic literature, and of the spirit which gave rise to
it. The tendency to develop angelology, and the con
tinuance in the Christian Church of the popular belief
1 On all this see Workman, op. cit. chaps, ii. and iv.

16 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
in demons, powerfully influenced Christian thought for
centuries after the apocalyptic literature to which it owed
its strength had been forgotten. But for the apocalyptic
literature, or rather but for the outlook on life of which
it was the expression, it is possible that the Church might
have been delivered from the current naturalistic rehgion.
As it was, the Church renamed the old fears and super
stitions to mark adoption, and put these back in then old
place sealed with her sign, consecrated to her service. For
a thousand years we find the effects not only in Christian
life, but also in Christian thought.
The strength of the popular belief cannot be exaggerated.
From the Emperor on the throne to the meanest slave men
trembled at the awful powers of the unknown, and trembled
the more because of then loss of rehgious faith. They
peopled the heaven and earth with a host of demons —
' daemons ' the philosophers vainly called them — and
believed with all then hearts in the alhance of magicians
and sorcerers with the hordes of the black one. Dreams
and omens haunted high and low alike.
In then belief in demons and other supernatural agencies
the Christians, as the Jews before them, were not before
their age, save in their grasp of the supremacy of one benign
Father of good, their conviction that they had been met
and overcome by the Saviour. Between the Christian
doctrine of angels and devUs and the heathen doctrine of
demons there are so many coincidences that we must assume
their close historical connection. For the Church when it
laid its hold on the soul of the common man left him his
ghosts. Behind every idol statue, however beautiful, the
followers of Jesus discerned the grinning face of a fiend.
Not only were the demons the source of idolatry,' through
them also the natural light which would have led the
philosophers to the truth had been turned into darkness.
The devU and his angels were thus terrible realities, whose
evil machinations, as Origen tells us, were only thwarted

i.] THE JEWISH FACTORS 17
by the ceaseless vigUance of the attendant spirits of good.
As in the romance of Enoch, archangels and demons
struggled for the soul and body, nor was the struggle
one-sided. For the demons, in the words of Cassian of
MarseUles, ' fill the atmosphere which extends between earth
and heaven.' In the demons, on the contrary, Plutarch
finds the chain which unites the world to the throne of
God ; they are the mediators between God and man, the
representatives of Providence. Owing to their speed they
are almost omniscient, and thus ' attain credit for causing
that which they announce.' They give oracles, prophecies,
and revelations ; they cause or cure diseases ; they work
miracles. The result of aU this was the production of a
state of thought, once universal, now so discredited that
we find it difficult to understand its former hold. Magical
and semi-magical beliefs invaded the Church. For the
Christian, as for the pagan, the miraculous was so common,
so natural, that it ceased to be miraculous ; it formed part
of the ordinary machinery of the universe. Cyprian in his
De Lapsis teUs us stories of the supernatural power of the
consecrated elements worthy of a place in that storehouse
of medieval marvels Caesarius of Heisterbach's Dialogus
Miraculorum. St. Augustine solemnly asserts that in his
own diocese of Hippo there had occurred in the space of
two years no less than seventy-two miracles, among them
five cases of restoration to life. But Ulustrations of this
belief in the miraculous are almost co-extensive with the
literature of the early and medieval Church.

rv ¦ ••- /
Of the positive ideas in Christian thought which may be
traced to Jewish phUosophical sources, the most important
is the doctrine of the Logos, or Reason of God immanent in
the creation which He fosters and sustains. The name and
the thought, it is true, are fully developed in the Stoic and

18 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
Platonic philosophies, possibly also in the pre-Philonic
Jewish literature. Nevertheless, it is probable that their
entrance into Christianity should be attributed to the
influence of the Alexandrian Jew, Philo 1 (b. B.C. 20). The
object of Philo was to reconcile religion, i.e. Mosaism, with
philosophy, i.e. Platonism. In so doing he contributed
to the schools of Alexandria a general stock of hazy
and unsystematised ideas, which by different channels
passed into current Christian and Hellenic thought. His
most lasting contribution was the change of the half-
personified ' Wisdom ' of early Jewish Alexandrian writers,
e.g. the author of Proverbs vhi., into the Logos. The result
was remarkable. " Philo's Logos reflects hght from count
less facets. It is one of those creative phrases which mark
an epoch in the development of thought." " God holds
a place in all systems subsequent to Philo such as He had
never held in those prior to Him." 2 From Philo the idea
passed to the author of the Fourth Gospel, though worked
out in a very different way ; while Justin, Clement, and
Origen all show their indebtedness to the Jewish thinker,
whose system anticipates much that is found in later
Neoplatonism. According to Philo the Logos is the ' Idea of ideas ' ; the
' ideas ' or content of the mind of God being identified, in
a characteristic Jewish manner, with the angels. From
this the transition is easy to the conception of the Logos
as the wisdom of God expressing itself in act, and as there
fore the agent in creation. Philo goes so far as to caU this
Logos ' a second God,' a ' divine Angel.' " He is the
eternal image of the Father, and we, who are not yet fit to
be called sons of God, may call ourselves His sons." 3
The Christian doctrine of the Logos of necessity differed
from that of Philo, if only because it had reference to a
realised Incarnation. Philo, on the contrary, had left no
1 Bigg, op. cit. p. 15. 2 Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Theology, p. 65.
8 Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 85.

i.] THE JEWISH FACTORS 19
room for an Incarnation. With the Christians, moreover,
the conception of the Logos was developed so as to meet
Gnostic heresy, especially its docetism. Hence causation
is a mark rather of exaltation than of inferiority ; the
revealed Creator is the ' glory ' of God. With the Gnostic
the divine Energy is degraded as it approaches the sphere
of material existence. Yet " In one remarkable point
the ideal of Christianity was in danger of falling below
that of PhUo. For there was a tendency in less philoso
phical minds to distinguish between the unspoken and the
spoken Word, to conceive of the Divine Reason or Logos
as at first immanent in the mind of the Father, then
assuming hypostasis for the purpose of Creation." 1 The
effect of this was seen later in the doctrine that the Son
is the ' thought ' of the Father, who is Himself trans
cendental and absolute, who cannot be known, but only
approached by Vision or Ecstasy.2
1 Bigg, op. cit. pp. 60-65. Bigg points out, op. cit. pp. 203-4, that the
doctrine of the Logos in the Stoics, though earlier than Philo, must be passed
by, as with the Stoics the Logos is really the First Cause.
2 Infra, pp. 52, 200 f. There is an excellent chapter on the theology of
Philo in E. Caird's Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, vol. ii.
c. 21.

20 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.

CHAPTER II
THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS
Argument
§ I. The meaning of Hellenisation — Its slower growth —
The spiritual revival in the pagan world — Syncretism
— Apollonius of Tyana  pp. 21-25
§ II. Defects of Greek thought — Its services — Eclectic
character of— Stoicism — Cynicism — The Platonic
trinity — Henotheism — ' Deification ' in Christian
thought — The touchstone of faith . . -pp. 25-31
§ III. Gnosticism — Its problems and sects — Meaning of
— Witness of Gnosticism to Christ — Later history
of — Manichaeism — The Cathari — Their twofold
morality  pp. 31-39
§ IV. The Apologists — Their appeal — Differences with the
Gnostics — Their doctrine of the Logos — Their
Doctrine of Atonement  pp. 39-44
§ V. Clement and Origen — Their work and influence —
Attitude to Gnosticism — Alexandria — The Stro-
mateis — Their teaching — Origenism — Place of the
•will — Universalism — Defects of the Alexandrians —
Doctrine of Atonement — Ransom paid to Satan —
History of this doctrine — Their doctrine of the In
carnation — Condemnation of Origenism . . pp. 44-56
§ VI. Neoplatonism — Value and meaning of — Plotinus — Influ
ence of Neoplatonism on Christianity . . pp. 56-60

ii.] THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS 21

From the Jewish influences which moulded Christian
thought we pass to the Hellenic. As forces " Hebraism
and HeUenism stand out distinct, the one in all the intensity
of its religious hfe, the other in the wealth and diversity of
its secular gifts and graces, and in the depth of its philo
sophic insight.
" Thus the sharp contrasts of the sculptor's plan
Showed the two primal paths our race has trod ; —
Hellas the nurse of man complete as man,
Judaea pregnant with 'the living God.'"1
HeUas was necessary to Judaea, if Christianity was to
receive its fulness of meaning, if the Messiah of Nazareth
was ever to become the Christ of the world instead of the
possession of a single people. There is a school of theo
logians the chief representatives of which, though from
different reasons, are Harnack and Ritschl, wliich con
stantly deplores what it calls the " Hellenising of the
primitive faith." The developments which Christianity
received from its contact with the Greek world are treated
as if they were doubtful growths, oftentimes of a fungus
order, from which the Church would be well to free itself
by a " return to Jesus." Such a conception seems to us
to be wrong. Greek philosophy had a divine function in
the world as well as Mosaic law. The story of the Church,
in its truest sense, is the record of the education of the
human race in all things that belong to the spirit. It is
essentially, therefore, the story of a development of the
1 S. H. Butcher, Harvard Lectures, p. 42.

22 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
whole " in Jesus Christ " — the full import of this Pauline
phrase can never be exhausted. As we turn its pages we
see the unfolding of the relation of every age to the one
Centre of all ages, the assimilation by the one Life of all
true thought and life. To us, therefore, ' Hellenisation '
was a necessary factor in the growth of the Church, and
part of the work of the Holy Spirit. " The construction of
Christianity through the media of the older phUosophies
and religions was a necessary prelude to its construction
by a spirit and through a consciousness of its own creation.
The absolute ideal had, in order to be intelligible, to use
constituted and familiar vehicles, but only that it might
win the opportunity of fashioning vehicles worthier of its
nature and fitter for its end." x The story of Hellenisation
is not the story of degeneration, but the study of the con
ditions under which the Spirit worked, and of the con
tinuity of the life of which He has ever been, under different
forms and in diverse manners, the Lord and Giver. " The
partial Hellenising and Latinising of Christian thought and
terminology, which began soon after the end of the Apos
tolic Age, may not have been without danger to the Faith,
but few will now doubt that valuable results have followed.
If we owe to these processes certain accretions which do
not harmonise with primitive simplicity, on the other hand
they enriched the Christian society with much that ap
pealed to the thought and imagination of the centuries
through which it had to pass ; nor would any thoughtful
believer at the present day willingly abandon the best
heirlooms that the Church has received from the Greek
East or the Latin West." 2
The Hellenic spirit, though of greater importance than
the Jewish in the development as opposed to the birth of
Christian thought, was later in producing any real influence.
The preparatory work of the Hebrew religion had first to
1 Fairbairn, Christ in Modem Theology, p. 62.
2 II. B, Swete in Cambridge Theological Essays, p, 10.

n.] THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS 23
be consolidated. In the New Testament, though written
in Greek, specifically Hellenic ideas, as distinct from
Jewish ideas in Hellenic dress, have little place, even in
the teaching of St. Paul, or in the prologue to the Fourth
Gospel. The consciousness of universalism, upon the
Greek character of which stress has often been laid, might
with equal right claim to have been Roman, the opposition
of the two empires of Christ and of Caesar. As such it was
recognised by Roman governors as the political ground of
persecution. But with the gradual submergence of the
Jewish Christians, and the weakening authority of their
apocalyptic literature, Greece came to her own. Justin
Martyr tells us that only in his own day had the Gentiles
in the Church begun to outnumber the Jews. Itjs not
surprising, therefore, that with Justin Martyr we begin the
triumph of Hehenic culture, and the modification of the
primitive simplicity of Christianity. The word " theo
logy " itself, first found in Justin, seems to have been
borrowed by him from the Stoics. Slowly, unconsciously,
but surely, Greek moral ideas and ideals penetrated Chris
tian thought, in the same way as the Judaism of the
Dispersion had been altered, even before the coming of the
Messiah, by the Hellenism with which it was surrounded.
The influence of Hellenic thought upon Christianity was
increased by the growing religious seriousness of the Graeco-
Roman world. The advent of Christianity coincided with a
great spiritual fermentation in the heathen world,1 which
showed itself not merely in the rapid spread of the newer
cults, the worship of Isis, of Mithra, and the like, but in the
revival of belief in the older faiths and forms ; in a renewed
study of the Platonic philosophy ; in the rush of smiths
and carpenters to Join the ranks of the Cynic friars ; above
all in the growth throughout Europe of a social conscience.
We see this awakened conscience in the guilds and charities,
1 On this see Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, bk. iii.
chap, iii, and bk. iv,

24 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
the constant efforts to extend and endow education, to
found orphanages and hospitals, to emancipate women, and
to rescue the slave from the unlimited power of his lord,
which form the nobler features of the legislation of the
Antonines. At the root of this larger ethical ideal there
lay an increase of spirituality. Repentance, expiation,
immortality, the belief that man can enter into union with
God, became potent factors in the better life of the times.
That this upward movement of thought and creed, of
which on the one side Mithraism, on the other the teachings
of Epictetus, were the best expressions, undoubtedly helped
the ultimate triumph of Christianity seems to us a cer
tainty ; nay, who shall say that this upward movement
was not the work of the Spirit fulfiUin'g Himself in diverse
ways ? But the first effects were curiously mixed. Chris
tianity and the revived paganism both repelled and
attracted each other ; then mutual influence is as certain
as is the fierceness of the conflict into which they plunged.
One result of this spiritual uplifting of paganism thus
coinciding with the rise of the Church was syncretism,
both phUosophic and practical, or that tendency to find
unity and identity amidst the multitudinous detaUs of
polytheism, the most famUiar example of which is the
identification of the gods of Greece and Rome. In the
second and third centuries syncretism especially mani
fested itself in the popular faiths, e.g. the worship of the
Great Mother, of Isis, or of Mithra, in a willingness to
assimilate the best elements in any cult, Christianity
included. It was this that gave to these religions then
strength. Their aim was the union of all gods and aU
myths in a vast synthesis. They were willing not only to
live and let live, but to take up and make part of themselves
whatever features of religion seemed especially popular or
serviceable. Equally remarkable was the tendency to syncretism on
the part of the philosophic sects. Of this syncretism the

ii.] THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS 25
noblest expression was Neoplatonism, the most curious the
Life of Apollonius, a third-century phUosophico-religious
romance, founded on a certain substratum of fact, com
posed by the sophist PhUostratus at the command of
Julia Domna (f217), the wife of Septimius Severus. In
this apotheosis of the dying paganism the story of Jesus
is re-edited, and improved so as to suit heathen notions.1
The effect of this syncretism was undoubtedly in the long
run the bringing Christianity and current thought into
closer touch. Christianity, it is true, especially in its
earher and purer days, refused any compromise with other
faiths. ' Et ipse pUeatus, Christianus est ' — ' That man
with the Mithraic cap is a Christian,' said a priest of Mithra
to St. Augustine, who started back in horror from this
attempt to identify his faith with this ' devils' imitation.'
But all men were not so uncompromising in their convic
tions as St. Augustine. The most potent approximations
between rival faiths and opinions are generally sub
conscious, and marked with open professions of hostility.
So with Christianity and the revived paganism, with its
ally in Greek thought. The two influenced each other
more profoundly than we should gather from the opposing
arguments between the Fathers and Celsus and Porphyry.

n
At the outset of our treatment it were well to remember
the capital defects of Greek thought, for these, as we shall
see, constantly appear in the influence of Hellenism upon
Christianity. One source of error was the general in
capacity to distinguish illustration from argument. Ana
logy unverified by experiment, daring leaps from the known
to the unknown, and then back again from the guesses thus
1 It is right to point out that many modern critics attach more indepen
dence and historicity to the narrative, See Hastings, E.R.E. i. 610-611.

26 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
deemed to be knowledge to the known, were construed as if
equivalent to reasoned demonstration. Another danger
was the tendency to mere abstractions ; ~ philosophers
seemed to think the greater the abstraction, the greater
the truth. In the abstractions of geometry the Greeks
had made remarkable progress, and reached definite,
certain conclusions. They supposed that the abstractions
of metaphysics could be traced in the same way. In
consequence they identified abstractions with realities, and
names with things. Too often, as Jowett puts it, " they
were mastered by their ideas, and not masters of them."
For the most part also the ancients were " helpless against
the influence of any word which had an equivocal or double
sense " -,1 while they suffered much from the tyranny' of
numbers, in which they were disposed to find the secret of
the universe. Add a rude science, totally unacquainted
with the slower but surer path of the modern inductive
philosophy. The result is seen in such extraordinary
phantasies as the aeons of the Gnostics, or the speculations
of Origen on the sun, moon, and stars ; are they animated
and rational ; shall they finally be brought into the great
unity where God shall be all in all ?
One characteristic of Greek thought which had a remark
able influence upon Christianity— though whether for good
or bad may be deemed a moot point — is its_ tendency to
insist^ jupon_definition, even of the undefinable. Hence
the inclination to over-subtlety, always one of the vices to
which the Greek intellect was prone, most disastrous of all
when applied to spiritual phenomena. We shall see the
effects in the controversies with respect to the Person of
Christ. Approved definitions came to be regarded as
synonymous with the faith ; slight differences as legi
timate ground for excommunication. Inferences from
definitions were treated as if they were the realities of
experience. 1 Jowett, Dialogues of Plato, iii. 559-567.

n.] THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS 27
A more important defect of Greek thought has been
well set forth by Dr. Fairbairn : " The philosophies that
had owed their being to the Greek genius were made in the
image of Greek man, but even he had too narrow a humanity
behind and around as well as within him to be just to man
universal, and so his systems had feeling enough for the
Hellenic individual and state, but not for mankind collective
and historical. They were too appreciative of the philo
sophers who ought to govern to be just to the manhood
which needed government. They started outside religion,
and became religious only by force of reason, and in its
terms. Their theistic conception was metaphysical rather
than ethical, never even in its ethics transcending metaf-
physics, ever remaining an object of contemplation or
thought, never becoming an object of worship and con
science." x The effect of this upon the development of
Christian theology will be abundantly illustrated in these

But the defects of Greek thought were small in com
parison with the services Hellas rendered, both to civili
sation and ChnsTJian theology? To the Greeks we owe the
discovery of the sovereign efficacy of reason. In the words
of Euripides, they deemed him alone ' happy who has
learned to search into causes.' Hence the conception of
law, both in the physical and moral worlds, became firmly
fixed in the Greek mind. From this it further resulted
that the Greek philosopher was always Jfchjnking.. of .the
world a^ a. rajjftnal whole, and he compelled the theologian
to do the same. In spite of the premature generalisations
into which his crude science led him, this conception of
unity was of inestimable value in the training of mankind.
Without this conception of unity Theology as a science
would have had little chance of development. In Ethics,
also, for man to feel habitually that he is part of the order
of the universe is one of the highest motives of which he
1 Fairbairn, op, cit, p. 64.

28 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
is capable. When the Greek set before himself as the
paramount end the perfection of his whole nature —
' nothing human alien to him ' — he introduced into the
Church a conception which, in the long run, was destined
to be destructive of many early ideas. Monasticism, to
give but one example, was not able to survive the renais
sance in the fifteenth century of the Greek spirit.
When Greek thought first came into touch with Chris
tianity it had assumed a form that might lead to sympathy
and understanding. The ancient schools had worked
themselves out. In their despair of truth from any one
school, men were now less inclined to form dogmatic
systems than to select and combine. Moreover, the
craving was not so much for bold speculations, such as we
find in the prime of Greek thought, as for some basis of
moral life, some inner law which should bring order into the
chaos of desires. Ancient philosophy had in a sense died
away into theology. The Stoic proclaimed, though in
different words, that " the kingdom of heaven is within " ;
while Epictetus insisted that logic must be subordinated
to moral reformation. The Stoic's religion of " ethical
Calvinism," as we may describe it, had no yearning, it is
true, either for prayer, or for all that to the Christian is
contained in the idea of a future hfe — that opportunity
for completing the incomplete, for making life's crooked
straight. In this, as in its intense individualism, Stoicism
is a religion of despair. The Stoics " made solitude in the
heart and called it peace." 2 But the Stoic proclaimed
that man was free to break away from his cruel servitude
to passion, through the strength of the rational or divine
element in his soul, and that obedience to this law of reason
and of nature, ' living harmoniously,' wUl infallibly lead to
the highest good, the freedom which makes him a fellow-
citizen of the gods. Moreover, this law of conduct is only
part of natural religion, the movement of the world as one
1 T. R. Glover, The Conflict of Religions in early Roman Empire, p. 67.

n.] THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS 29
polity under the ' Spermaticos Logos ' or governing intelli
gence. So the good man wUl realise that he is of neces
sity a citizen in the universal commonwealth, and cannot,
therefore, ' live to himself.' In Stoicism also, to mention
another point of contact, the conception of God as cold,
impersonal Law is always giving way to the thought of a
God of providence, ' who is not far from any one of us.'
We must not overlook the influence of what has been
caUed the Platonic Trinity. In the Timaeus of Plato we
have the three conceptions of God : the Ideas or permanent
reahties which remain unchanged amid all changes, and the
World-Spirit, this last being formed according to the pattern
of the Ideas, which again are subordinate to God, though
possessing an independent eternal existence. Though
Plato himself never attempted to harmonise this triad,
the unknown author or authors of the so-called Epistles of
Plato speaks of them as Three Gods. Shortly before the
time of Clement of Alexandria, the Platonist phUosopher,
Numenius, a Syrian of Apamea, conceived of these Ideas,
which possessed, a substantive existence outside the Divine
Mind, as gathered into one, the divine Arch-Idea. Of his
trinity the first is thus Mind, simple, changeless, good, and
wise ; the second is the Creator ; the third is the World-
Spirit. But how much of this conception of a trinity was
derived from Jewish or Christian sources, to what extent
this phUosophic conception made more easy the adoption
of Christian dogma, it is impossible to say.
On the other hand, there was an approach to Christian
monotheism. In a recent work Dr. E. Caird has shown
the stages by which Greek thought advanced from the
belief in many deities to the acknowledgment of a divine
unity.1 Pure monotheism was reached by few ; the
majority took refuge in henotheism, or the belief in the sub
stantial identity of all the deities worshipped by the vulgar
under distinct names ; really an intermediate stage between
1 E. Caird, Evolution of Theology in Greek Philosophers.

30 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
polytheism, or the assertion of the absolute existence of
the diverse deities, and monotheism, or the proclamation
that God is one. Henotheism, through lack of any real
repugnance to the current forms of idolatry, preserved in
a confused way the personahty of the different deities,
and so, in spite of its leanings to monotheism, in its prac
tical outcome sided with paganism. The moral value of
henotheism was thus slight. Nevertheless, when Celsus
insists that all men really worship the same God, whether
called ' Jehovah, Jah, or Lord,' we see forces at work which
rendered more easy the triumph of a monotheistic faith.
There was one curious influence of the Greek world upon
the theology, or rather the language of theology, of the
Church, the effect of which was felt until modern times.
We refer to the free use of the idea of ' deification ' by the
Fathers of both East and West to express the highest
state of spiritual experience, when man " is lost in God."
The term seems first to have arisen in the Mysteries ; ' dei
fication ' was the idea of salvation that they taught. From
the Mysteries the idea passed into Christian thought, with,
however, a significance of its own. " If we try to analyse
the concept of 6e6s thus loosely and widely used we find
that the predominant idea was that exemption from the
doom of death was the prerogative of a Divine Being, and
that therefore the gift of immortality is itself a deifica
tion." x The idea of the deification of man was more than
the corollary of the belief in the incarnation of God. It
was the expression of the eschatological hope in which
Christianity was nurtured, the correspondence in the mind
and soul of the individual to the vision of the City of God
as an estabhshed pohty among men.
Before we enter upon our more detailed examination
the reader would do well to note that the great touch
stone of the Christian Faith, as distinct from philosophical
1 See Inge, Christian Mysticism, App. C, for detailed investigation, or
Harnack, M.D., Index, s.v. 'deification.'

ii.] THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS 31
speculations, will always be found in a real theory of the
Atonement, and a piercing and profound sense of sin which
cannot be explained away into a shallow, feeble, and vague
abstraction or negation. The optimism of Greek philo
sophy never really grappled with the problem of evil or
understood its dhe significance. In consequence, to the
Greek the Cross was ever ' foolishness,' and Greek thought
is constantly making desperate efforts to explain it away.
To Celsus the Cross was one of the gravest objections to
Christianity. In the Life of Apollonius the details of the
Crucifixion are changed into a mysterious translation to
heaven. But, whatever other compromise might be made
with current speculation, the Cross was too vital to be
surrendered. In the phUosophic syncretisms of the second
and third centuries the Cross — and its consequent doctrine
of the reahty of sin — remains the one great dividing line
between faith and unbelief, between a reformed heathenism
and Christianity. To many Greeks the conception of an
Incarnation was not difficult, though Celsus will have none
of it. But the great idea of the Kenosis involved in the
Incarnation, the root idea which links the life of the
Redeemer to His death and which constitutes His life the
profoundest revelation of Divine Love, was altogether alien.
It is by its fidelity to these great principles that we must
discern between Greek and Christian thought, and also
determine the consistency of Christian thinkers with their
basic ideas. Modernisation or assimilation, whether in the
second or twentieth century, if faithful to these, is not to be
dreaded ; but, if faithless, the ship is at sea, far from the
shore she has left, far from the shore for which she is making.

m
The first effect of the contact of Christianity with
Hellenism was somewhat disastrous for the Church. The
meeting of the two streams led to a welter, in the whirl-

32 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
pools of which many were lost. For two centuries the
history of the Church is the history of its struggle with
heretical beliefs. The student of these heresies, as he
turns over the pages of their ' refutations ' by Irenaeus or
Hippolytus, is bewildered by their number, amazed by
their extravagance. A classification or enumeration lies
outside our purpose ; it must suffice that we point out
their main drifts. We may observe that such heresies
were inevitable ; they were the necessary result of the
growing thought of the age as to the meaning and content
of the Christian idea. Only slowly and by sad experience
could the Church discover what were the real limits of
thought in its application to faith, or what opinions were
incompatible with the primitive deposit. Many of these
heresies were the results of a praiseworthy but premature
attempt to set up the Christian faith in complete and
systematic form in all its relations to the world around.
By the subtle discussions issuing in clearer views to which
these heresies gave rise they really rendered no small
service to theological science.
Of these heresies the most conspicuous group was
Gnosticism, the basis of which was an eclectic phUosophy
of religion chiefly Hellenic in character, though in union
with many Oriental elements, cosmical speculations, and
mystic theosophy similar to what we find in Hinduism.
Gnosticism, unfortunately, is almost wholly known to us
from its opponents, who have made the most of its fan
tastic speculations, obscuring thereby its real significance.
Gnosticism, on its theoretical side — for its ascetic prin
ciples and its ritual system do not here concern us — was
an attempt to transform Christianity into a phUosophy of
history, and a revealed system of ethical cosmology. The
second century, the flourishing period of Gnostic sects,
was pre-eminently noted for its syncretism, the desire to
fuse together the diverse myths, phnosophies, religions,
and mysteries of the civilised world. In Gnosticism this

n.] THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS 33
tendency tried to find lodgment in the Church itself. It
is typical of Gnosticism, and of its lack of any true idea
of the historical development of the faith, that in one of
its schools the image of Jesus was placed side by side
with those of Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle.
If the earlier Gnostic developments were Judaic in
character, they soon became secondary to the Hellenic.
Through Greece, also, the rehgions of Persia and India,
with their systems of incarnations and emanations, made
their contributions. The problems of Gnosticism were, in
the main, two : the first phUosophical — the nature of the
Absolute, and the method whereby the Absolute can be
the creator of matter ; the second ethical — the origin of
evil. The first of these was predominantly Hellenic ; " the
ideas of Plato seen through the fog of an Egyptian or
Syrian mind." 1 In the second we trace the Oriental ele
ments, for the religious thought of the East was always
deeply imbued with the sense of evil. Gnosticism, which
Dorner has happUy called " the Pelagianism of the intel
lect," sought an answer to these questions by its claim to
a deeper insight or knowledge (-yiwis) than the Pistis or
faith of the ordinary Christian. It was essentially an
esoteric Christianity, which differed widely in its tenets
according to its local habitation — Alexandria, Syria, Asia
Minor, or Rome — and the degree of admixture of East and
West. Of the Syrian Gnosis, the leader was Saturninus,
who flourished in the reign of Hadrian. Allied with him
were the Ophites, Naassenes, Peratae, and others, who
seem to have mixed their Christianity with snake- worship.
In Alexandria the Gnostics looked up to BasUides and
Valentinus (fl. 140), whose eclectic system is the best known
of all, as, in fact, it was the most widely diffused. With
Basilides the leading thought is the continuity of the
religious development of the world ; between Christianity
and the other religions he recognises little or no break or
1 Bigg, Christian Platonists, p. 27.

34 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
distinction. In Roman Gnosticism the leader was Marcion,
with whose tenets in their antagonism to Judaism we have
already dealt. But the Gnostic elements in Marcion's
teaching — chief of which were the opposition between the
good God of love, first revealed in Jesus, and the creator
of the world, and the docetism which such a view logically
demanded as to the humanity of Jesus — were not, on the
whole, of great importance for Marcion's system.
Amid all the diversities of Gnostic creed we may discern
certain fundamental agreements. The treatise which more
than any other powerfully affected the religious thought of
the second century was the Timaeus of Plato. In this we
find the Deity, in spite of His essential goodness, with
drawn from the world into a distant heaven, aloof alto
gether from creation, because of the evU which matter
necessarily brings.1 In a similar manner the Gnostic, in
common with the majority of .Greek thinkers, in his
dualistic opposition between matter and spirit, identified
matter with evil. Hence he refused to recognise in the
supreme God the creator of the world. To explain creation
he was driven to take refuge either in a lower being called
the Demiurge, or, with Valentinus, in a bewildering phan
tasy of ' aeons,' the lists of which, with their ' orders '
and ' pairs,' their uncouth Jargon and fantastic progenies,
are for most people the great difficulty in taking Gnosticism
seriously. Their endless successions of emanations span
the gulf between the absolute and the universe. Of neces
sity, therefore, the body of Christ was not real flesh and
blood ; the Incarnation and the death on the Cross were
conceived of as ' docetic' The ' tabernacling ' of the
Word as ' flesh ' was one of the illusions of hfe, certainly
not ' the glory ' of God. For the Gnostic, also, redemption
is a wider and therefore less personal problem than the
sin of the individual. Human sin becomes one feature
only of ' the sin of the world,' the mystery of pain, death,
» See Jowett, Plato, iii. pp. 596, 613 ; Timaeus, p. 30 ff.

Ii.] THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS 35
and decay in all their forms. As the responsibility for the
world is thrown back upon the Demiurge, the tendency
of Gnosticism was towards the denial of free will. In this
we see the beginnings in Christian thought of an endless
debate. Gnosticism stands hopelessly condemned by its folhes —
for by no other name can we dignify these metaphysics of
wonderland — as well as by its attempt to introduce into
Christianity what Dorner rightly calls " the intolerable
distinction of an esoteric and exoteric truth." It is too
late to seek to reverse the verdict of the Church. Never
theless certain points should be pleaded in mitigation of
sentence. Deeply as they misunderstood St. Paul, the
Gnostics, especially if Marcion be included, stand out
almost alone in the first two centuries in their effort to
understand the great Apostle at all. In Gnosticism, also,
we have the beginnings of the critical spirit, premature and
imperfect, as aU such beginnings must necessarily be, but of
value as pointing the Church to the need of a more reasoned
theology. For instance, it is to the Gnostics we owe the
importation of such words as oio-la, viroo-raais,1 and
opoovo-ios; while the need of meeting then wild conceptions
led to the development of the doctrine of the Logos. In
Gnosticism we find the first attempts to answer many of
the questions which stiU occupy the attention of Christian
thinkers, e.g. the real meaning of the sufferings of Christ,
when we consider His Deity rather than His humanity.
Again, in Gnosticism we have the first crude representations
of the ideas of transubstantiation, of purgatory, and of
prayers for the dead. Disastrous as we may deem the
development of these ideas to have been, the historian
cannot do otherwise than recognise their importance.
Gnosticism, in fact, sprang from the very same source
as medieval Scholasticism, the desire to reduce to logical
unity all the phenomena of religion and Ufe. But the
1 Its use in Hebrews i. 3 is of uncertain date.

36 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
sense of authority which saved Scholasticism was alto
gether absent from the more restless inquirers of the second
century. Yet by the dangers to which they bore witness
the Gnostics contributed to the growth of that authority,
the outcome of which was the Catholic Church. Moreover,
Gnosticism, in spite of its docetism, in spite also of its
tendency to look upon history as " only the fluctuating
outward expression of intellectual and moral ideas," x
bore a witness of its own to the fact of Christ. The evidence
of these early heretics to the hold of Jesus upon cultivated
minds in the early years of the second century has not
always, we think, been sufficiently appreciated by Christian
Apologists. The very fecundity of their systems shows
how profound an impression Jesus Christ had made on the
world. Even their Christology, as Dorner has pointed
out, bore witness to a great truth.2 The Ebionites and
other Jewish Christians had allowed to Christ httle more
than a glorified humanity ; Valentinus laid stress upon
His pre-existence. For the Gnostics " Christ's coming was
the epoch of a great extrication. The sparks of divine
nature in all susceptible souls were to be gathered to
Christ as their true centre, and to the upper world as their
true home." s " In their wildest flights we see how the
Gnostics realised, as the earlier followers of the Messiah
had failed to do, that not merely mankind, but the whole
cosmos, seen and unseen, had been affected by the In
carnation." 4
Gnosticism, when defeated in the Church, took refuge
underground. For a thousand years we find it living a
subterranean existence, ever and anon coming to the sur
face in some new heresy, the roots of which he deep in the
older Gnosticism, or rather in the religions older even than
Gnosticism to which Gnosticism was so largely indebted.
1 Ottley, Incarnation, i. p. 178.
2 Dorner, op. cit. bk. i. p. 252.
» Rainy, Ancient Catholic Church, p. 105, and Harnack, H.D. i. p. 253 (1).
* Foakes-Jackson in Cambridge Theological Essays, p. 484.

n] THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS 37
In the third century it appears in the formidable movement
known as Manichaeism, so called from Mani (b. 215), the
founder of the sect. As might be expected from its head
quarters being in Babylon, the doctrines of the sect were
in the main akin to the old Babylonian nature-religion,
modified by Persian Dualism, with some admixture,
especially in the West, of the Gnostic Christianity of
Basilides and Marcion. Owing partly to their minute and
strict asceticism and their rigid morality, partly also to
the great number " of the cultured who sought for a
rational and yet to some extent Christian religion, and
who had exalted free inquiry, especially as regards the
Old Testament, into a battle-flag," 1 Manichaeism obtained
considerable influence in Christian circles, especially in
North Africa, and at one time succeeded even in capturing
Augustine. Manichaeism in African Christianity was finally crushed
out by the persecution of the Vandals. Elsewhere the
Gnostic-Manichaean movement still survived. Of few
heresies can the continuity of existence under different
names be more clearly traced. In the Eastern Church
we find these heretics reappearing as Paulicians from one
of their two leaders, Paul and John of Samosata. After
repeated persecutions the Paulicians were driven to the
mountains of Armenia, whence they carried on their
struggle with the orthodox Empire. Efforts to exterminate
them were fruitless, while if left in the East they would
prove dangerous aUies of the Saracens. So in 973 John
Zimisces tried the experiment of toleration, and trans
ported a great colony to Thrace, thus introducing their
doctrine into Europe. Judged by its results, no step was
more disastrous. They multiplied rapidly, and by means
of the Crusades, more also through their restless propa
ganda, in the twelfth century they spread everywhere in the
West. Under the various names of Bogomils, Bulgarians,
i Harnack, H.D. iii. p. 334.

38 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
or Bougres — a name innocent and national in origin,
odious in application — Patarins, Albigensians, and Cathari,
we may discern a heresy almost as united and widespread
as the Catholic faith.
The Cathari or ' Puritans ' owed then name to then high
morality. There was, in fact, nothing in the Joyless
Manichaean creed to attract the sensual. Their tenets
were the familiar positions of Gnosticism. As their ideal
of spiritual growth lay in the destruction of the flesh, the
propagation of life in any form was the work of the devil.
So they refused to eat meat, eggs, mUk — everything, in fact,
which resulted from the sexual passion, with the exception
of fish, for which their rude science suggested a different
origin. Their fasts were endless : three days in each week,
three periods of forty days in each year. Their strict
vegetarianism had, however, other roots than then hatred
of generation. We have records of Cathari who chose
death rather than kill a fowl ; to them it was the spirit
of a fallen brother passing through another probation.
But their tenderness was confined to animals. They tor
tured themselves by swallowing pounded glass or poisonous
potions, while suicide was held up as the crowning virtue
of the ' perfected.'
We are not writing the history of heresy, but of Christian
thought. We need not, therefore, inquire into the causes
chiefly to be found in the corruption of the Church, which
led this extravagant hybrid of purity and falsehood to
threaten for a while the very existence of Christianity.
Nor need we detail the steps by wliich this age-long heresy
was finally crushed in the thirteenth century by the crusade
of Innocent ni. against the Albigensians, most of aU by
St. Francis pointing out the more excellent way of sun
shine and love. But one reflection upon this remarkable
heresy is very pertinent to our purpose.
We notice the Manichaean doctrine, emphasised by the
Cathari, of a twofold morality, a higher standard for the

n.] THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS 39
small body of the ' Elect ' or ' perfected,' a lower for the
general mass. Orthodox Christianity reproduced, almost
unchallenged, the same distinction ; it formed, in fact, the
fundamental feature of its ethical systems, the chief factor
in its organisation. It is not without significance that
Monasticism and Manichaeism — including in this title
the long heresy from the Gnostics to the Cathari — rose
and perished together. Both recognised and understood
" the imperious desire for immolation which lies in the
depth of every soul." 1 Both took as their foundation the
conception of a double ideal — the higher reserved for the
' spiritual ' or ' religious ' — instead of a single ideal of life,
attainable by aU. For a thousand years the effect of this
distinction was apparent in forms of thought and ideals of
hfe too obvious to need enumeration.

IV
In the long struggle between Gnosticism and the faith
of Jesus the theological student will discern more than
the manifestation of difference. He will detect the growth
of points of contact between a regenerated Hellenism and
Christianity. It was inevitable, therefore, that attempts
should be made to bring about a closer understanding.
The Church no longer boasted that * not many wise men
after the flesh ' were called ; nor could Celsus complain
with justice that Christianity was confined to the ' ignorant,
unintelligent, and uneducated.' Hence, as Origen tells us,
' When men, not only the labouring and serving classes,
but also many from the cultured classes of Greece, came
to see something honourable in Christianity . . . scholars
endeavoured to penetrate deeper into the truth of Chris
tianity.' To this we owe the rise of " Apologies," or
philosophic defences of Christianity for the sake of out
siders. i Sabatier, St. Francis (Eng. Tr.), p. 73.

40 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
The Apologists, generaUy speaking, are chiefly concerned
with a defence of Christianity against the oharges brought
against it by political opponents. They appeal against the
prevailing intolerance, misunderstanding, and persecution.
But in seeking to change the attitude of the government
they are driven to present Christianity in terms that could
be understood — on the lines, that is, of natural theology
and of the older schools of thought. Hence the emphasis
by the Apologists of the doctrine of the Logos and its
relations to the cosmos, and the attempt in diverse ways
to date back Christianity as an actual fact in the world to
the time before the beginning of history. To Justin Martyr,
for instance, in his Apology, written about 150, the Incarna
tion is but the final and complete manifestation of the
Logos, the presence of which in the world he recognises
wherever there has been goodness or wisdom. Christianity
is no break in continuity, no light that comes per saltum,
but the fulfilment in Christ Jesus of aU reason, rehgion,
and prediction. Justin identifies Christ with the Divine
Wisdom manifested, though sporadicaUy, in all ages and
among aU peoples. He is the teacher of Socrates as weU
as of Abraham ; of Orpheus and of Moses. ' We have
been taught,' he writes, ' that Christ is the first-born of
God, and we have declared that He is the Word of whom
every race of men were partakers. Those who have lived
with reason (perb. Xoyov) are Christians, even though they
have been thought Atheists, as among the Greeks Socrates
and Heraclitus, and men hke them.' But the ' teacher
whom the Christians followed ' was ' reason itself ; it was
visible and appeared bodily in Him.'
For Gentile idolatry the Apologists have nothing but
scorn ; though at the same time they point to the eternal
elements in Gentile philosophy and Gentile religion. Pre-
Christian philosophies, save the Epicurean, though sadly
marred by the rule of ' demons,' could thus claim kinship
with Christianity by reason of ' the seed of the Logos '

n.] THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS 41
implanted in them. No doubt this acknowledgment of
identity of content is purchased sometimes by a lack of
the due emphasis on the special and significant doctrines
of Christianity, the doctrines of the Trinity, of sin, of the
Atonement, of natural immortality, and the hke. Justin,
for instance, at times seems to echo Plato rather than Paul.
But " Apologies " never reveal the deeper man ; the author
is always thinking of his opponent. Yet the ultimate
effect of the Apologist was to lift Christianity from being
the religion of a sect founded upon enthusiasm into a
world-religion that appealed to the universal conscience
and reason. Minucius Felix, the last of the group, reminds
us of our own Bishop Butler, when he claims that every
man who possesses reason and speech wUl find Christian
truth in his own constitution, and in the rational order of
the world.
The close approach of Christianity and Greek philosophy
is nowhere better seen than in two writers who at first sight
appear to demonstrate the opposite. The Apologist Tatian's
Oratio ad Graecos is a violent polemic against aU Greek
phUosophers ; Celsus, on the contrary, is equaUy violent
against Christianity. But whUe Tatian, and Clement after
him, maintained that the philosophers have borrowed from
and distorted the teaching of Moses and the prophets,
Celsus simUarly derives the teachings of Jesus from the
philosophers. Both alike, though with different stress,
would approve the memorable sentence ascribed by
Clement to the Neoplatonist Numenius : ' What is Plato
but Moses speaking in the language of Athens ? ' Such
charges of plagiarism were common, and witness to grow
ing sympathy.
Or, again, we may note the similarity in certain points
of all the schools of thought of the second and third cen
turies, whether called Gnostic, Christian, or Neoplatonic.
All alike faU back upon an abstract notion of God as the
transcendent Absolute. All need a mediator between this

42 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
Absolute and the world, and, according to their outlook,
find the bridge over the chasm, in the Logos, a system of
'aeons,' of 'powers' (Philo), or of 'demons.' Further, as
all of them, not excepting the orthodox, tend to find the
secret of evU in matter — some make the two one — all lay
emphasis upon self-discipline and renunciation as the secret
of the higher vision.
In their belief in the relation of Christianity to reason
Apologists and Gnostics are one. But while the Gnostics
sought to transform Christianity into a rehgion after their
own heart, the Apologists were loyal to the traditional
Christianity, except in so far as their silence on certain
matters may be deemed disloyalty. The Apologists were
conservative ; they accepted the historical elements of
Christianity, and tried to make them intelligible. To
TheophUus, for instance, the first chapters of Genesis con
tain the sum of all Christian knowledge; while aU the
Apologists look upon the Old Testament as the full revela
tion of truth, completely identical with the teaching of
Jesus. The Gnostics, on the contrary, dealt with the
materials so as best to fit them in with certain a priori
philosophical speculations. To the one Christianity was a
complete revelation which brought assurance in proportion
as it was pondered ; to the other it was part of a process
which led by diverse ways to the Absolute.
One difference between the Apologists and the Greek
philosophers is conspicuous and vital. When Celsus
sneered at Christianity as fit only for fullers and bakers,
he expressed the exclusiveness of all Hellenism. Stoicism,
for instance, for all its ideals of moral freedom, left the
mass of mankind hopelessly grovelling in filth and dark
ness. The steep upward road is only for the few. But
the Apologists share the universalism of the Gospel in their
claim that Christianity can be grasped by all, and can lift
even women and uneducated men into saints and sages.
If we turn to the positive contents of the Apologists we

n.] THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS 43
note the development, especiaUy in Justin, of a Platonic
rather than a Johannine conception of the Logos as the
organ of divine revelation. Many of the activities in
human history which a more developed theology attributed
to the agency of the Holy Spirit, Justin attributes to the
Logos, who is not only the creative reason of God, but
His revealing Word ever hovering between God and the
world. Thus both in the Apologists and Alexandrians
there is httle real place for the Holy Spirit, in spite of their
orthodox tribute to His claims.1 In one aspect the Logos
is the thought of the world within the mind of the ' increate '
God, which the act of creation — a voluntary energy, not,
as with the Gnostics, a physical necessity — projects from
God, thus giving to the Logos a separate hypostasis. From
this begetting arises the subordination of the Logos, and
the realisation in creation of the idea of the world. The
exaggerated emphasis which all the Apologists lay upon
the monotheistic explanation of the world as the chief part
of Christian doctrine was as much due to the pressure of
Greek thought as to the conflict with surrounding poly
theism. In aU early Christian writers, as in the official
creeds, the doctrine of God as creator is the first and most
important article of the Christian faith.
As regards the Atonement, the Apologists say little or
nothing, whatever may have been their personal views.
Here again we see the influence of Hellenism. In the
teaching of the schools it is always ' gnosis ' as such that leads
to salvation.. So with the Apologists. It is as the divine
teacher that Christ brings ' salvation,' and faith is the con
viction of the truth of His teaching. ' Salvation ' is the
consequent gift of eternal life ; for most of the Apologists
— in this departing from Plato — argue against the con
ception of the natural immortality of the soul. The
neglect by the Apologists of the essential factor of sin
i Bigg, O.P.A. p. 171, thinks differently. But I am not convinced by bis
argument.

44 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
is due to their looking upon sin as the result of bondage to
the ' demons ' ; from which bondage man can be delivered
by the exercise of his own will. In this last the Apologists
wUl have no parley with Stoic fatalism, as represented, for
instance, by Marcus Aurelius.

Clement of Alexandria and Origen have often been classi-
fied with the Apologists. But this is scarcely to do Justice
to these great scholars and true saints. The Apologists
were on the defensive ; Clement and Origen had a far
larger design. They were the first of a succession of writers,
learned majl^thej^dom_ of Greece, and enthusiastic for
its philosophy, but yet loyal to the teachhigji^Christj^jwho
tried £o_incorporate into the newfaith all that was best in
the culture of the Hellenic world, especially in the Platonic
and Stoic philosophers. . . ' The way of_ truth,' Clement said,
' is.one. But into it as into a perennial river streams flow
from all sides.'
The permanent value of their work wUl be differently
Judged according to the student's bias towards the Platonic
or Aristotelian philosophy, or his belief in the greater value
of an institutional Church. But of the greatness of their
attempt there can be no question. To give an historical
parallel : Clement and Origen attempted, with a wonderful
measure of success, to do for the Christianity of the third
century what Thomas Aquinas and the great Schoolmen
accomplished for the medieval Church, what Erasmus and
the Humanists of the Renaissance failed to do for the
Church of the Reformation, what many of the deepest
thinkers and most loyal Christians of to-day see must be
done for the Church of the twentieth century. Owing to
the success of the reactionaries at Trent and elsewhere,
the modern world of thought lies outside the Church rather
than within ; at best on parallel lines ; rarely under its

ii.] THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS 45
influence ; never under its control. The success of
Clement and Aquinas thus seems the greater by contrast
with the disastrous failure at the Reformation, and by
the ever-growing necessity, in the world of thought to-day,
for a new reconciliation of Christianity and culture. In
many respects, especiaUy if we remember the times in
which it was done, the work of Clement is the boldest
undertaking of the sort in the history of the Church.
" There is no one whose vision of what the faith of Jesus
Christ was intended to do for mankind was so full or so
true." »
The boldness of Clement is seen in his refusal to sur
render the title ' Gnostic ' to the heretics. He claims that
the perfect Christian must be a ' Gnostic,' for ' gnosis '
is the purification of the ruling faculty of the soul. The
' achievements of the Gnostic faculty ' are ' to know what
is right, to do what is right, and to help others to do it.'
But the difference between the school of Clement and
Origen and the Gnostics must not be overlooked. Their
aims were simhar, almost identical — to bring Christianity
into touch with the thought of the times ; to combine
in one creed the immanence and transcendence of God,
definite Christian conditions, and a free outlook upon the
experience of the world. But their methods were opposite.
The attempt of the Gnostics was premature. Christianity
and Greek phUosophy were not yet in sufficient sympathy.
In consequence the Gnostics dealt with the materials of the
Christian faith with a destructive freedom which witnessed
to the uncertain nature of Christian tradition and dogma.
But between their effort and that of Clement, largely in
consequence of the Gnostic heresies themselves, Christian
tradition had become sacred, Christian Scriptures and
dogma more definite. To this tradition and dogma
Clement and his school were thoroughly loyal, though
anxious to present both in philosophic form. The Gnostics
1 Hort, Ante-Nicene Fathers, p. 93.

46 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
had allowed their philosophy to overmaster their faith ;
Clement and Origen made it subservient. With the latter,
as with Anselm of Aosta, faith is the foundation, know
ledge the superstructure. Faith is the summary knowledge
of urgent truths, knowledge a sure demonstration of
what has been received through faith. Knowledge not
based on faith is neither stable nor effective ; though, on
the other hand, 'nothing is to be believed which is un
worthy of God,' that is, which is contrary to reason.
Though Clement 1 may have been by birth as weU as
by training an Athenian, it is his connection with the
Christian catechetical school at Alexandria, founded a
few years previously by Pantaenus, that gives him his
special claim. No place could have been for Clement a
more suitable sphere of work. Alexandria, the second
city in the world, was the meeting-place of East and West.
It was the home of three great tendencies, which then,
as now, were potent in shaping the thoughts of men :
Egyptian symbolism with its esoteric beliefs and ancient
priesthood, Jewish monotheism, and Greek science, philo
sophy and culture. Among its restless crowds, and in its
famous university, all that was plausible in speculation,
and much that was foolish, found disciples and expositors.
In a city of so many religions thought was free. No
dominant creed or ritual hindered the most critical inquiry ;
while the spectacle of the many altars led the thoughtful
to inquire as to the one ' unknown God ' whom all alike
' ignorantly worshipped.' The value, amid such surround
ings, of the Christian school was incalculable. Its method
was determined by the varied needs of the people — cate
chumens or candidates for orders, — to whom it appealed,
as well as by the non-ecclesiastical character of its organi
sation. In the higher classes, after the discipline of
mathematics and sciences, the Greek systems of philosophy,
save only the ' godless Epicureans,' and the Old Testament
1 Born about 150. He was still living in 211, but not in 216.

n.] THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS 47
Scriptures were studied side by side as propaedeutic to
higher knowledge. The final destruction of this school in
the fourth century, in the struggle between Theophilus of
Alexandria and the Egyptian monks, was one of the
many disasters which led to the ruin of the Egyptian
Church. In his pre-Christian days Clement had investigated not
only Judaism, but the creeds of paganism. To the in
fluence of the ' mysteries ' we may trace his manifest
tendency to treat Christianity as itself a ' mystery,' 1 the
initiation into a higher ' gnosis.' His learning, diffuse
and uncritical, was as vague and unsystematic as his
phUosophy ; altogether in keeping in its ' studied dis
order ' with the title which he gave to one of his most
important works, Stromateis, or Clothes-bags of Gnostic
Notes on the True Philosophy. But his sympathies are
wide and generous. He refuses to speak harshly even of
those ' orthodoxasts ' who would reduce Christianity to
' faith only, bare faith,' who claim ' that philosophy comes
of evU, and was introduced into life for the ruin of men.'
But whUe he thus fights the battle of education within the
Church, he differs from many Christian thinkers, both in
ancient and modern times, by his insistence, especiaUy
in his practical work called the Pedagogue or ' Tutor,'
upon Christian life and experience in all their fulness as
the great corrective of all theories, and the outcome of all
true 'gnosis.' He maintains that purity is the condition
of insight : ' conduct follows knowledge as surelv_as the
shadow the body.' With Origen, too, conduct is all im-
porfant ; with all his abstract thinking he is ever showing
us the effect of action. In fact, with both Origen and*.
Clement, ' Faith means Belief determining Action and//
leading up through Obedience to Love.' 2
1 See on this Inge, Christian Mysticism, App. B.
2 Bigg, C.P.A. p. 209 n. As an illustration we note that Pantaenus, their
master, in his old age had set off as a missionary to India.

48 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
Clement boldly asserts the unity of all knowledge in
Christ. ' Just as every fanuly goes back to the creator,
so does the teaching of all good things go back to the Lord ' ;
in whom alone we find the ' sovereign unassailable Faith,1
and from whom comes the inevitable impulse of the human
mind to phUosophy. But all such phUosophy is only
' the preliminary training towards the perfection that
-comes by Christ.' For the Greeks who hved ' before the
. advent of the Lord, philosophy was necessary for righteous
ness ' ; ' Philosophy was the " schoolmaster " for the
Greek world, as the Law was for the Hebrews, " to bring
them to Christ" ' ; for the Greeks ' it was a sort of Covenant
of their own,' communicated to them possibly by angehc
mediation ; though necessary no longer, ' it is still pro
fitable for piety.' Thus the whole story of the world —
cosmology, psychology, and ethics ahke^is_j3enteeji_ hi
the J>eneyolent_ action. .of__the Logos, whqse_ Incarnation
is the _final_^anUestation_of jbruth and goodness ; for
whose. Advent the world Jias been prepared by trial and
discipline. Clement's pupil and successor, Origen (Origenes Adaman-
tius), who died at Tyre in 253, broken with his sufferings
in the Decian persecution, completed — so far, that is, as
such a movement can ever be said to be completed — the
work that Clement had begun. There is no need to go
over the theories of Origen in detail, for the chief features
of his teaching are identical with those of Clement. But,
as is natural with a successor, the theories are more com
pletely thought out, there is greater reserve over doubtful
points, whUe the outlines of the whole are more clearly,
sometimes more narrowly, presented, always, too, without
signs of haste or heat. With more discrimination than
Clement, he introduced everything worth knowing into the
sphere of theology, completely welding together Christianity
and the culture and science of the age. That in this respect
" orthodox theology of all creeds has never advanced beyond

n.] THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS 49
the circle mapped out by his mind " x is a wonderful
testimony to his success.
With greater clearness and more exegetical skill than
Clement, Origen sets out the assumption that there is an
esoteric form of Christianity, ' mystical economies made
known by Holy Scripture,' which, however, must be
handled with due ' reserve.' The deciphering of this
' pneumatic ' or ' spiritual Christianity * is the task of
theology, necessary indeed if the Bible is to be commended
to the Greek mind. All Sjcripturejias in_ reality a three-
fold sense, a pneumatic, psychic, and ' somatic.,' .correspond- ¦
ing to the elements of body ,_ soul, and spirit, which we find
in the cosmos. The simple man is edified by means of the
'flesh ' of the Bible, the more advanced by means of its
' soul,' whUe for the perfected there is its pneumatic inter
pretation. The somatic or historical sense, the lowest.
rungs in the ladder, must first be ascertained before we can
climb to the higher. In some passages, it is true, the literal
sense is absurd and impossible, as in the story of the FaU.
Such " stumbling-blocks ' have been deliberately introduced
that we may not be drawn away from the spiritual ' by the
obvious.' By stripping off ' the covering ' of history we
pass to the psychic or moral sense. In Joshua, for instance,
the kings are really the ' names of vices.' The final stage
in this " Bibhcal Alchemy," as Dr. Bigg caUs it, is the
pneumatic sense. He who has attained this has become
inwardly united with God's Logos, and from this union
obtains all that he requires.
In this connection one matter of historical importance
must not be overlooked. J]ortJhjB_' spiritual Church 'there
is an 'eternal Gospel,' relatedjbo _tiiejrrittgn_gne as the
letter is to the law, as the shadow to the substance. This
eternal Gospel is the full revelation of God's highest inten-
1 Harnack, H.D. ii. p. 334. Cf. Westcott, History of Religious Thought
in the West, pp. 243, 252 ; Pfleiderer, Philosophy and Development of Re
ligion, ii. p. 280

50 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
tions, and is hidden in the Holy Scripture, waiting for
interpretation by the 'mystic jsense.' The later develop
ment of this doctrine in the Middle Ages by Joachim di
Fiori and the Spiritual Franciscans can thus be traced back
to Origen.
As regards the will, Clement is definite and clear. He
refuses to have anything to do with the fatalistic tendencies
of Gnosticism and Pantheism. With him wiU is an essential
feature in human nature, and as such is always free. The
wiU can reject the hght ; hence the value of the discipline
by means of which the unbelieving wUl is led to surrender
to the light. The decision from moment to moment rests
with us, but not the end. But Origen, while he claims
that freedom is the mark of the created spirit, in reality
denies freedom, or rather makes it to be but temporal.
For in its ultimate analysis evil is ' unreal,' ' non-existent,'
certainly not ' eternal ' — in the assertion of this lies Origen's
optimism or heresy — inasmuch as it is the work of ourselves
and not of God. In the end, therefore, the spirit must
return to that which is good ; freedom is merely the appear
ance under which we see the necessity of the created spirit
developing itself in time on the lines of its indestructible
spirituahty. For souls not purified before death Origen
and Clement provide the cleansing flames of purgatory.
' Even Peter and Paul must come into that fire,' and pass
from sphere to sphere, ever gaining increase of illumination
and strength. But the gross conceptions of a later age are
altogether lacking, for the purifying fire consists in the
torments of conscience, and is kindled by the sinner him
self. ' The soul, when it has collected unto itself an
abundance of sins, glows into punishment and bursts into
penal fire.' For some spirits, as compared with their pre-
existent condition, the present life is a prison-house of
correction, though for others it may be a place of relief.
But the eschatology of the Alexandrians, in spite of con
stant appeals to texts of Scripture, is largely Platonic,

n.] THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS 51
one chief source being the Gorgias.1 Nevertheless, in
Origen's doctrine of purgatory the churches of the East
and West find the germs of much later teaching, in the
main identical, though the Greeks, it is true, have no word
for purgatory.2 The refusal of both the Greek and Latin
Churches to admit Origen's contention, that purgatory
admits of repentance or probation, would appear to be
their chief difference from the Alexandrian Father.
As regards the Eucharist, the Alexandrians held a spiri
tual real Presence of Christ, of which the bread and the wine
were symbols. The theory now called Transubstantiation
was alien to their genius ; necessarily so, for, as Dr. Bigg
rightly points out, " Transubstantiation rests upon Aristo
telian or Stoic Realism, and is diametrically opposed to
Platonism." 3
The chief defect of the Alexandrian position is the defi
ciency, so characteristically Greek, in. the idea of the divine
hphness. From this f ollows Jkhe absence,.©! any adequate
doctrine of sin. There is no sufficient explanation of the
moral and spiritual condition in which the mass of man
kind, as distinct from the few enlightened philosophers,
find themselves. Origen compares evil to the ' chips and
similar rubbish which a carpenter leaves in executing the
plan of a building,' while his optimistic doctrine of its
' unreality ' lands him in universalism. For any further
explanation of evil he falls back upon his conception of
pre-existence. Creation is eternal ; the ' spirits ' that
sinned in a higher world have become ' souls ' in this lower
scene of discipline. He fails to see that this explanation
but pushes the problem one step farther back. In conse
quence, he only deals slightly with the Atonement, while
redemption is presented in terms of illumination or escape
rather than grace. The way of light is not the way of the
i Bigg, G.P.A. pp. 112, 113 n. 4, 229-230; Jowett, Plato, ii. p. 297 ff.
2 Bigg, C.P.A. pp. 295 n., 298 m.
» Ibid. p. 219 n. Cf. infra, p. 236 f.

52 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
Cross — ' to know Christ crucified,' writes Origen, ' is the
knowledge of babes ' — but ' the turning inwardly to one
self, restoring one's own nature, and thus practising righ
teousness.' Owing to then fundamental premise of the
unchangeableness of the Absolute, forgiveness is always a
difficult notion for the Alexandrians, and is by them, as a
rule, associated with the ' washing ' of Baptism. We ascend
to God through contemplation rather than by reconciliation;
in fact, we might say that to the illuminated, ' pneumatic,'
or ' Gnostic ' Christian the Saviour is of httle importance
save as a teacher. He is ' the hght that hghteth every
man that cometh into the world.'
Origen's doctrine of Atonement is further limited by the
prevalent notion of the tyranny of the demons. WhUe he
acknowledges that all sins require expiation, and even
attributes to the death of Christ a vicarious significance,
he yet fatally warped Soteriology for a thousand years by
his conception of the Atonement as a ransom paid to the
devil, who was, however, cheated of his price by the
Resurrection, this last a detaU first found among the
Gnostic Basilidians.
This doctrine of Origen — with whom, however, it is not
original, for it is found in Irenaeus — was taken up and
developed by Gregory of Nyssa (332-395). Gregory's
emphasis on the ' deceit,' ' fraud, and surprise ' with which
the devil was thus cheated of his prey accentuates the
worst features in Origen's theory, and is a curious com
mentary on the ethical conceptions of his age. Gregory
Nazianzen (330-389), it is true, indignantly asks : ' To whom
wag this ransom paid, and for what cause ? If to the devU,
fie upon the shameful thought.' But closer examination
shows that he substitutes for the deception of the devil by
God self-deception in the Evil One, ' inasmuch as he was
taken in by God's assumption of our nature.' Even
Augustine, in spite of his lifting the doctrine of the Atone
ment to a higher plane by the stress that he laid upon sin,

n.] THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS 53
and by his noble conception of reconciliation by a mediator,
in spite also of his manifest desire to avoid any antagonism
in the relations of Father and Son, commits himself to this
repulsive theory, and calls the Cross a ' mouse-trap." The
claims of the devil to an equivalent he regards as most
Just, though forfeited by his inflicting death upon One
who was sinless. Finally, Gregory the Great completed
this vulgarisation by speaking of the devil as captured on
the hook of the Incarnation by the ' bait ' of the body of
Christ. That a theory with such huckstering conceptions of
God could be accepted by the Church for nearly a thousand
years as the explanation, if only in part, of the Cross, must
always seem extraordinary to the modern mind. Never
theless, with but few protests it endured until overthrown
by Anselm. Neither Irenaeus, nor Origen, nor any of the
Fathers seem to have been conscious of the " residuary
dualism," a legacy of Gnosticism, which underlay the belief.1
In Athanasius's profound De Incarnatione, Satan, it is true,
retires into the background. The keynote is the goodness
of God. The Apologists had insisted on the teaching of
Christ as the real revelation of the Godhead. Athanasius,
with truer insight, lays the stress upon His Person. His
main thesis is the thought of redemption. The ' coming
of the Logos in the" flesh ' is ' the ransom and salvation of
all creation,' the destruction of the principle of corruption
which held man captive. The Incarnation, whereby the
creative Logos became our perfect representative before
God, thus becomes the Atonement, for the Cross is but
part of the Incarnation, the complete purpose of which
is to ' deify ' human nature. As such its ' achievements
are of such purpose and kind that if one should wish to
enumerate them he may be compared to men who gaze at
the expanse of the sea and wish to count its waves.' But
the theory of Athanasius, with its superficial resemblance
l Fairbairn, op. cit. p. 67 n.

54 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
to the question and the answer propounded by Anselm,
never appealed to the Western Church untU it was restated
by Thomas Aquinas.1
Origen's doctrine of the Incarnation is remarkable for
his cleajLjeaching.jof,.ti^e_ eternal, generation of the J§on.
This relation is supra-temporal ; it is an eternal process
within the Divine Being. " In one point he agrees with
Tertullian, while in another he advances beyond him. On
the one hand he freely interchanges, as Tertullian does,
the terms Logos and Son — the abstract term and that which
connotes moral relationship ; on the other hand, while
Tertullian conceived the Trinity as economic — God as it
were in movement, opposed to God in statu — Origen, by his
doctrine of the eternal generation, replaces the thought
of movement by that of an eternal process, ever complete
in itself, yet ever continued." 2 But of this movement of
Being the Father is the supreme cause and source, and
therefore must be regarded as greater than the Son. Thus
side by side with his doctrine of the eternal Sonship Origen
formulated the notion of the subordination of the Son.
This he pushed to extremes which undoubtedly tended to
the later Arianism. Thus he refused to aUow to the Son
essential goodness, or that the highest kind of prayer or
adoration may be addressed to Him. Yet, in spite of its
limitations, the advance in scientific Christology due to
Origen is very great ; how great is unrecognised by an
age that can no longer compare him with the Valentinus
or Basilides from whose crudities he dehvered the Church.
The immediate influence of Origen upon the theology
and thought of the Eastern world cannot be exaggerated.
In part this was due to the fact that many diverse schools,
orthodox and unorthodox, could find in Origen their
different arguments, or, failing that, something to arouse
their antagonism. Of greater importance was his destruc
tion of the current Gnosticism, and the establishment of
1 Of, Ottley, Incarnation, ii. p. 30. 5 Ottley, op. cit. i. p. 243.

Ii.] THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS 55
a philosophy of religion which appealed powerfully to
the cultured thought of the age. He was the first of the
great theologians of the Church. But, in spite of the
influence which at first he exerted, Origen was unable to
retain his standing in the Church even in the East. The
gradual hardening of theological thought in the fourth
century under the growing power of tradition, the change
in thought which afterwards set in from Platonic ideahsm
to Aristotelian reahsm, and the consequent weakened hold
of the doctrine of the Logos, after Athanasius, were the
causes of this decline. Add the unrest produced by the
Arian and other heresies, aU of wliich could appeal to some
expression or other of Origen in then favour. At the in
stigation of Jerome, who in his earlier days had called
Origen ' a teacher second only to the great Apostle,' Origen
ism was condemned in the West. In 496 Origen was
branded by Pope Gelasius as a schismatic and the use of
his works forbidden, except those sanctioned by Jerome's
translation into Latin. This was followed in the East by
fresh condemnations by the Emperor Justinian (543), who
not only closed the schools of the phUosophers at Athens,
but the Christian schools at Alexandria and Antioch.
Henceforth his name was a byword and reproach in the
East. The Orthodox Church no longer aUowed even the
recoUection that once there had been room within it for
variety of opinion. But in the West there was respect for
his learning, and passages from his works were inserted
by Leo m. in the Breviary. At the Reformation Luther's
antagonism was followed, though in more seemly language,
by Melanchthon. But in the revival of much of his teach
ing by the Cambridge Platonists of the seventeenth century,
as weU as by Maurice and Westcott in our own day, we see
Origen once more obtaining his own. Under the influence
of a truer conception of development Theology recognises
in both Clement and Origen two of her great master-
buUders, though much of their work has not stood the test

56 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
of time and experience. Yet in many respects {e.g. their
teaching on the Resurrection) modern thought, in its de
liverance from what Bishop Westeott rightly called " the
heavy burden of African theology," is now going back to
positions first indicated by Origen. " Greek Christian
thought has not yet done its work in the West." 1

VI
The prevailing syncretism with which Christianity had
to contend as a religious force manifested its strength in
the philosophic world in the system of Neoplatonism,
" that splendid vision of incomparable cloudland, in which
the sun of Greek philosophy set." 2 This religion or phUo
sophy — both terms are applicable, for Neoplatonism was
really a philosophy seeking to transform itself into a re
ligion — embodied in itself the elements of most previous
systems, both in the East and West, including not a few
ideas and phrases borrowed from Christianity. Two of its
leaders, Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus, are stated to have
been lapsed Christians, and another, Amelius, made use of
the prologue of St. John. Numenius seems to have been
acquainted with the Gospels, and possibly with the Epistles
of St. Paul. Neoplatonism claimed to be " not only the
absolute philosophy completing all systems, but at the
same time the absolute religion, confirming and explaining
all earlier religions." 3 As a philosophy its perfect fruition
marked inevitable decay ; as a religion it merits atten
tion by its ethical spirit, as well as the emphasis it placed
on the experience of the eternal. In its challenge to Chris
tianity we see the last organised rally of the Hellenic world,
with whom the subordination of religion to phUosophy
was almost an axiom. Neoplatonism, while wUling to hve
and let live, dreaded and detested the absolutist claims of
i Westeott, op. cit. pp. 243, 246. 2 Harnack, H.D. i. p. 341.
» Hatch, op. cit. p. 133.

ii.] THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS 57
Christ, and the conquering might of His Church. Its
hatred was increased by its consciousness that it had no
message save for ' the wise and prudent,' whereas Chris
tianity claimed that none were beyond her reach. Here
again we see the mark of an exclusive Hellenism.
The details of the Neoplatonic philosophy as begun in
Alexandria in a Jewish setting by Philo, and as set forth
in more strictly Hellenic or philosophic form by Numenius,
by .Ammonius Saccas (f245), in the Enneads of Plotinus, in
Porphyry (233-305), or by the later teachers at Athens,
Plutarch (f433) or Proclus, belong rather to the history of
phUosophy than of Christian thought. More pertinent is
it to note the special chaUenge made by Neoplatonism,
and the effect of the challenge upon Christian thinkers.
Neoplatonism supphed for the select few to whom it _ap-
pealed a religious experience by_ contemplation of_the
eternal ideas.  Such contemplation involved a with
drawal from the world, the turning of the eye of the soul
inwardT and presupposed as its._conditio.n_ an ascitic dis-
righne^ From_this jnwar^_contempJatio^n_^e_sojil rose
by. mystic intuition or sestij£tic feeling into union with the
Absolute. In Neoplatonism, therefore, we have the con
necting link between the mystics of the Christian Church
and the old Hellenic world of philosophy. And just as the
idea of a crucified Saviour is contrary to the whole genius
of Neoplatonism, so in Christian mysticism, as we shall see
later, the danger ever lies in an inadequate doctrine of
the Atonement.
The master-architect of Neoplatonism was Plotinus, one
of the prpfpundest and most rehgiau^_tjnnkexs..thfi. world
has known. Though himself outside the Christian Church,
no one, except St. Augustine, has had a more lasting in
fluence upon the thought of the Church. Plotinus, a
fellow-student of Origen, was born at Lycopohs in Egypt
about 205 a.d. In 244 he settled in Rome, where his
influence was remarkable. His writings were voluminous,

58 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
and were collected by his biographer Porphyry into six
books called Enneads. As he died (269) he said to his
companion : ' Now the divine in me is struggling to reunite
with the divine in the All.'
His last words are an exposition of his whole system.
The universe is one, a vast chain in which every being is
a link. The centre of all is the Absolute, who transcends
all thought, even being itself. The Absolute, in fact, is Just
nothing except sheer pure oneness. From this Absolute
we have the emanation of Mind (Nous), the second name
in the Trinity of Plotinus — speedUy identified by the
Christians with the Logos — which radiates from God as
light from a luminous body, producing thereby the world
of Ideas, the patterns after which our phenomenal world —
i.e. the world as we see it, not as God sees it — is framed.
A second overflow of Mind is Soul — the third name in the
Trinity — the Oversoul which is diffused everywhere, in
animals, vegetables, and the earth itself, wliich enfolds
within itself all individual souls, being, as it were, the
higher soul within every individual soul. Matter by itself
is No-thing, i.e. pure indetermination. This limit or barrier
as it were to which soul comes breaks into endless multi
plicity that which in its origin was one. Space and Time
are forms only of thought. All progress lies in the attain
ment of the Absolute, the first step to which is the dis
covery by the lowest soul, i.e. the soul bound up with the
body, of its union with the Oversoul ; the second the grasp
ing that which is ' even more divine, the soul's neighbour
above (i.e. Mind), after whom and from whom the soul is.'
The method of such attainment is by ' contemplation '
in the realm of pure thought. The last stage in the quest
of the Absolute is the most difficult, and is reserved
for the initiated. Its method is by vision or ecstasy,
when self-consciousness is transcended. But of this,
therefore, no description can ever be given : ' For how
can a man tell of that as other than himself which

n.] THE INFLUENCE OF HELLAS 59
when he discerned it seemed not other but one with
himself ? '
With the intensely scholastic Proclus (f485) Neopla
tonism reached its zenith. Forty years after his decease
the schools of Athens were closed by the order of Justinian
(529), and the httle band of seven philosophers, all that
were left, were driven into Persia. Orthodoxy, blind to
the facts of its own history, and with eyes from which the
future was sealed, would brook no rival in the teaching of
truth. This defeat and suppression were really for Neo
platonism the beginning of a more lasting triumph. The
schools in which for eight hundred years pagan philosophers
had taught might be closed, but before Justinian was in his
grave the great ideas of the Neoplatonists had begun their
long rule in Christian thought. Through Victorinus, the
converted philosopher, in whose writings Christian ter
minology only thinly veils his old Neoplatonic ideas;
through Boethius ; above all things through the pseudo-
Dionysius and his interpreter Erigena ; through Eckhart
and the long line of Christian mystics, Neoplatonism, driven
out of Athens by intolerance, found in the Church for a
thousand years a congenial home.
The influence of Neoplatonism upon Christianity was as
many-sided as it was profound. Neoplatonism was always
attracted by certain aspects in the teaching of St. Paul.
Neoplatonism had prepared Victorinus for the doctrine of
Justification by faith in opposition to moralism, and from
Victorinus it passed to St. Augustine. On the other hand,
the emphasis by Neoplatonism of ' contemplation ' and
ecstasy as rungs in the ladder whereby we climb to per
fection ; that in comparison with ecstasy action is but
' coarsened thought ' ; its identification, especially in
Proclus, of perfection or the Absolute with that which is
emptied of all distinctions, above all of the human ; its
teaching that the phenomenal world is a shadow only of
the timeless Intelligible World of the divine Ideas, tended,

60 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
among other causes, to the growth of Monasticism, especi
ally in its eremitical or solitary form as exemplified in the
Thebaid. Monasticism, it is true, detested Neoplatonism
with a hatred which mistook difference of method for
fundamental difference of aim. Nevertheless, it is not
an accident that the sway of Neoplatonism in Christian
thought, and the domination of the monastery in the
Church, perished together. Of equal importance for
Christian thought was the Neoplatonist conception of evil
as in itself nothing, not merely unreal but unreality itself,
the negation or privation of pure being. For this conception,
as for much else, St. Augustine is profoundly indebted to
Neoplatonic ideas, though no one saw more clearly where
Christianity and Neoplatonism must inevitably part
company.1 Through St. Augustine and Dionysius2 the idea
became part of Christian thought, or rather of Christian
theology, for Christianity can have httle sympathy with
an unreal optimism whose note of triumph comes from
explaining away instead of overcoming the sin and sorrow
which surround us.
1 Infra, p. 116. s Infra, c. vi. § v.

in.] THE PERSON OF CHRIST 61

CHAPTER III
THE PERSON OF CHRIST
Argument
§ I. Difficulty of the problem — Controversy inevitable — In
justice of divorcing the controversy from history —
Earlier stages of the problem — Growth of controversy
— Failure to understand St. Paul — Two tendencies
at work — Problem of the Trinity — Inadequacy of
language — The dynamic of a living faith — The
penalties of the controversy . . . . pp. 62-72
§ II. Gnostic solutions — Doctrine of the Logos — Monarch-
ianism — Sabellius — Modalism — The school of
Antioch  pp. 72-79
§ III. Arianism and its meaning — Danger of — The appeal to
experience — The strength of Arianism — East and
West— The Barbarians  pp. 79-83
§ IV. The humanity of Christ — Apollinaris — The Athanasian
Creed — Nestorius — Monophysitism — The Mono-
thelite controversy — The exhaustion of the Eastern
Church  pp. 83-89

62 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.

No problem of the early Christians was more difficult than
the reconcihation of their doctrine of the Trinity with
Monotheism in such a way that they could Justify their
faith, and live by it. The ascription of deity to Jesus was
not difficult, at any rate for the GentUe who had been
brought up in an atmosphere in which there is no conscious
ness of the sharp gulf between man and God which Chris
tianity has taught us to realise. But as the Jewish converts,
among whom Christianity arose, would be the first to point
out, such ascription of deity must not be purchased at the
expense of their monotheistic faith. Another problem,
the solution of wliich was equaUy difficult, and equaUy
necessary, was the giving an accurate definition of the
Person of Jesus. This second problem was really historic
ally first, if we view the matter in the order of thought,
and gave rise to the other. The Early Church started with
the unity of God, at the same time clinging tenaciously
to the deity of the historic Saviour. Only slowly was the
Church driven to see that the solution of the problem in
volved must be found in a distinction within the Divine
Unity and in a careful definition of His Person. From the
earliest days these problems were acutely felt ; in the third
and fourth centuries they became burning questions in the
Church, round which centred its hfe and thought. Contro
versy on both matters was endless. The battle when quiet
on the main field was renewed in many side conflicts.
Nothing would be more profitless than to go through the
details of the struggle, to fiU our pages with the names of
the antagonists, with the detaUs of their arguments. We

in.] THE PERSON OF CHRIST 63
shall content ourselves with pointing out the movement
of thought wliich may be discerned in the controversies
viewed as a whole.
Discussion on the nature of the Person of Christ was
inevitable, the "direct outcome of the genius of Christianity
itself. For the rehgion of Jesus differs from every other
rehgion in the relation it bears to its Founder. Christianity
is something far more than the belief in, or the acceptance
of, any principles or doctrines, though these, no doubt,
form no smaU part of its content. It is essentially adher
ence to the Person of Jesus Christ. " Who do men say
that I am ? " is stiU the question that must be answered
by every would-be believer. The avowal of St. Thomas,
" My Lord and my God," is stiU the one answer to all doubt
that wins the benediction of the Master. The institution
of the Eucharist as the central sacrament of the Church,
with its ever repeated memory of His death, its constant
realisation of His living and real presence, shows that from
the first the Church recognised that this personal relation
ship was the fundamental fact in its existence. In Chris
tianity, as Dr. Fairbairn well puts it, " the pre-eminence
belongs to His Person, not to His words : His people live
by faith, not in what He said, but in what He is ; they are
governed not by statutes He framed, but by the ideal He
embodied." Thus the supreme end of Christian theology
must be the giving full intellectual expression to the truth
as manifested to men once for all in the person and hfe
of Jesus Christ. But this is so unspeakably rich that it
needs for its explication the varying study and experiences
of all individuals, races, and civUisations to the end of time.
The study of theology is so often divorced from the
study of history, even the history of the Church, that in
justice has long been done to the controversies in question.
Abstraction from reality, fatal in any science, is never
so disastrous as when dogma is separated from hfe and
experience. Nicaea taken by itself is, perhaps, unintelli-

64 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
gible ; Nicaea studied in connection with the three cen
turies of struggle that preceded it becomes no longer the
arena of contending syUogisms, but a crown laid at the
feet of the triumphant Christ. At Nicaea many of the
bishops of the dominant party still bore in their persons
the marks of the sufferings they had endured for their
Lord. Only a few years severed the councU from the three
centuries of blood and fire through which the Church had
been caUed to pass. If in the noble army of martyrs we
salute the conquerors of the world, we must not forget the
cause of their victory. They did not lay down their fives
for vague generalities, wider visions, or larger hopes.
They knew in whom they believed. Through a confidence
in His divine claims, so absolute that they scorned the
most awful torments rather than subtract one jot or tittle
from His honours, the martyrs had accomplished the most
stupendous revolution wliich the world has ever known,
had sapped and dissolved gigantic polytheisms, and had
overthrown the Roman Empire itself. Vicisti, Galilaee is not
merely the self-conscious cry of a dying paganism ; it is
the testimony wrung from the reluctant lips of Julian to
the personality of the conqueror. That the Church in its
hour of triumph should consent to abate in the smallest
iota the full measure of the rights of Christ was impossible.
Veterans do not so easily forget their chief. For the Church
thus to deny the Lord and Master for whom she had
suffered all things, by whom she had conquered all, would
have been an ingratitude so complete that it would leave
the victory she had won more marvellous still, because
totaUy unexplained.
This position wUl shed light on another matter which
has sometimes puzzled the unwary. In the earlier days
of the Church the Christological problem was less pressing
than in later centuries. Jesus was Himself all the philo
sophy the Christians needed ; He made them wise unto
salvation. They had, it is true, no confident phrases in

in.] THE PERSON OF CHRIST 65
which to sum up His meaning. They might, in fact,
stumble into aU sorts of confusions when they expressed
themselves about Him, as we see Hermas doing in his
Shepherd. But, after all, this, at any rate at first, was
immaterial. It was enough that they called Him Lord,
that, as Pliny found, they sang their hymns to Him as God.
From the first His deity was viewed as a simple historic
fact, which scarcely called for explanation. With the
Ebionite, who claimed that a suffering Christ could not be
divine ; with the Docetist, who added that if He was divine
His sufferings were unreal ; with Marcion, who maintained
that He had not passed through human birth or develop
ment, the early Church refused to argue save by the
reaffirmation of the truths denied. " Without knowing
how or why, they beheved that in Him they had seen the
Father, and in His name found power to walk as sons.
Their experience carried its own vindication to that dis
tracted later Empire, for joy and strength justify them
selves, and men joined their company that they might
pass out of weakness and fear." 1 But with the joining of
the heathen recruits trouble began ; the early fervour gave
place to a spirit of criticism. There was a surprising one
ness in their experience of Christ, but when attempts were
made to give the interpretation or scientific explanation,
unity ceased. His very pre-existence, which all allowed,
assumed a new meaning when the term passed from the
Jewish to the Hellenic world. With the Jew pre-existence
is an attribute of all that is real, even of the furniture of the
Mosaic tent of meeting, much more of the Messiah (1 Peter
i. 20). But with the Greek pre-existence is the mark only
of the spirit. Thus we are plunged at once into the whole
controversy of the nature of the Person of Christ. For a
whUe the widest freedom of thought was allowed regarding
the Lord whom all adored. But the pressure of heathen
ism without, and of heresy within, forced the Church to
1 Professor Armitage in Hibbert Journal, July 1910, p. 841.
E

66 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
attempt to find some formula of faith which would unite
all, satisfy most fully the needful conditions, and interpret
Christ to the world.
Nothing would be more interesting than to follow out
the development of the consciousness in the Apostles them
selves that the Saviour of the world must be far more than
the historic Jesus of the Gospels ; but this lies outside
our scope. By the end of the first century the Church
reahsed that any adequate definition of the Person of
Christ could not be simple. In any solution " three things
were demanded : a Man who actuaUy lived, worked, and
suffered ; a Divine Word whose presence has always been
in the world, but has been manifested with a special power
since the Incarnation ; and One, Human and yet Divine,
who is constantly revealing Himself with increasing clear
ness to the conscience of man. We want a Christ of the
past, of the present, and of the future — of yesterday, to-day,
and for ever." x But an adequate synthesis of these needs
was not reached all at once. The Church needed a long
education before she was fitted to expound the complete
Catholic doctrine. Nor must we forget that her difficulty
was increased by the lack in ancient thought of the modern
idea of personality.2 Only slowly, by bitter experience,
was the end attained. As iron sharpeneth iron, so the
conflicts of a faith struggling to be articulate wrought
out first the terminology of our creeds, and then then precise
expression. At the same time we must aver that the Christological
struggle of the second and third centuries was part of the
penalty paid by the Early Church for its failure, so marked
in more ways than one, to understand St. Paul. The great
spiritual conceptions of the Apostle soar clear out of the
ken of the early fathers. When they think they under
stand him they too often degrade him. We have illus-
1 Foakes-Jackson in Cambridge Theological Essays, p. 524.
2 Dorner, op. cit. A. ii. p. 510.

in.] THE PERSON OF CHRIST 67
trations of this in the hard legal notions which Tertullian
and Augustine imported into St. Paul's great contrast
between Adam and Christ, and in the alteration in the
Roman symbol of St. Paul's .explicit denial that the flesh
rises again into the materiahstic clause of a belief in the
carnis resurrectionem. So also with regard to the doctrine
of Christ. " In the Apostohc Fathers and in the earlier
Apologists we find indeed for the most part a practical
apphcation of the Person of Christ which leaves nothing
to be desired ; but as soon as they venture upon any
directly dogmatic statement we miss at once the firmness
of grasp and clearness of conception which mark the writ
ings of the Apostles. If they desire to emphasise the
majesty of His Person, they not unfrequently fall into
language which savours of Patripassianism. If, on the
other hand, they wish to present Him in His mediatorial
capacity, they use words which seem to imply some divine
being who is God and yet not quite God, neither Creator
nor creature. . . . The true successors of the Apostles in
this respect are not the fathers of the second century, but
the fathers of the third and fourth centuries. In the ex
positors of the Nicene age we find indeed technical terms
and systematic definitions wliich we do not find in the
Apostles themselves, . . . but the main idea of Christ's
Person with which St. Paul confronts Gnostic Judaism is
essentially the same as that which the fathers of these later
centuries opposed to the Sabelhanism and the Arianism of
their own age." J
In this prolonged struggle, whatever fault lay as its root,
we find two tendencies at work " each rooted deep in
human nature, each working inside and outside the Church,
and each traversing the whole field of Christian doctrine.
The first tendency was distinctly rationalistic. Its crude
form of Ebionism had denied the Lord's divinity outright.
And now that this was accepted, it was viewed as a mere
1 Lightfoot, Colossians, pp. 124-125.

68 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
influence or power, or, at any rate, as not divine in the
highest sense. Thus the reahty of the Incarnation was
sacrificed, and the result was a clear reaction to the demi
gods of polytheism. The other tendency, already roughly
shadowed out in the docetic evasion of the Lord's humanity,
was mystic in its character. Accepting the full deity that
was in Christ, they reduced it to a mere appearance or
modification of the One. Thus the reality of the Incar
nation was undermined on the other side, and the result
was a clear step back to pantheism. The first of these
tendencies endangered the Lord's divinity, the second His
distinction from the Father. The difficulty was to find
some means of asserting both. In the fourth century it
became clear that the problem required a distinction to
be made inside the divine unity ; and as the Lord's bap
tismal formula associated the Holy Spirit as well as the
Son with the Father, it followed that the God of Christianity
is not personal but tri-personal. Arianism laid down a
merely external, Sabellianism a merely economic Trinity ;
but neither the one nor the other satisfied the conditions
of the problem. It, therefore, became necessary to re
verse the idea of a personality, and acknowledge not three
individuals but three eternal aspects (woo-rao-eis) of the
divine, facing inward on each other as weU as outward
on the world." 1
We see the same problems when we look at the develop
ment of the doctrine of the Trinity, and ask what were the
conditions which must be satisfied. First and foremost,
the unity or Oneness of the Godhead must be preserved at
all costs. The pressure of heathenism, let alone its Jewish
ancestry, prevented the Church from forgetting this.
But, on the other hand, Christianity was not Judaism,
however enlarged or reformed. It was through ignoring
this that the Jewish Christian Church wrote its doom. In
the meagre Christology of the chief epistle of that Church,
1 Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism, p. 8.

in] THE PERSON OF CHRIST 69
St. James, we see the secret of its decay. For Christianity,
as we have already emphasised, centred in Jesus Christ.1
But experience was to show that no such position was
possible which did not grant to Jesus Christ full deity.
The relation of such deity to the essential unity must,
however, be so stated that heathenism should not claim
a ditheistic Christianity as akin to itself. The difficulties
were further increased by the need, which the Church soon
felt, arising out of its early baptismal formula, of guarding
the real personahty of the Holy Spirit, and of explaining
His relation in the Tri-unity.
The difficulty under which the Church laboured in putting
into exact words and definitions its concepts of God, of
Christ, and of the Holy Spirit is only natural. Language
is never an adequate vehicle for the expression of the deeper
facts of the soul ; logic is impotent in the presence of the
vivid intuitions of experience. Necessarily, therefore,
language and logic, even the subtle language of Greece,
proved altogether unequal to the task of wrapping up
in cold phrases all that the Christians had experienced
as truth in Jesus Christ. The scientific terminology of
dogma had yet to be created ; only by slow sifting was the
orthodox connotation determined. " The history of the
terms used in Greek theology has still to be written, and
only when it has been wUl the continuance within the theo
logy of old phUosophical questions be made apparent." 2
Unbelief has never ceased to laugh at the difficulties into
which, in consequence, the theologians fell ; the records of
their fierce conflicts over differences of an iota, the in
adequacy, possibly the unintelligibility, of their resultant
definitions. But unbelief has generally failed to see that
the questions that puzzled the theologians were the same
that were baffling the philosophers, and that philosopher
and theologian were seeking a solution upon parallel lines.
1 Cf. Fairbairn, Philosophy of Religion, pp. 532-533.
J Fairbairn, Christ im Modem Theology, p. 89 ».

70 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
Yet it would be a fatal mistake to suppose that the subtle
discussions of the third and fourth centuries were the result
of a phUosophical spirit alien to Christianity, intruding with
its noisy Jargon into what would otherwise have been a
holy of holies. The mistake is not without some Justifica
tion. No doubt the controversies of the fourth century,
when looked at from a distance, often hide the real hfe of the
Church. But this is due to an exaggerated emphasis upon
the details of the controversies themselves, instead of
grasping the root from which they sprang. For, in spite
of the metaphysical terms in which the struggle abounds,
the cause of contention and its issue were not metaphysical
at all. The controversies on the Person of Christ were not
the outcome of an attempted transformation of the faith
into a system of speculative theology, but were due to the
richness and breadth of the spiritual experiences which
men felt owed their aU to Him. This it was that led the
Fathers, in the spirit of St. Paul, to become Greek, if only
they might win some ; it was their loyalty to Christ, not
their love of metaphysics. The test of any definition,
whether in physics or theology, is its power of fitting in with
the facts of hfe. Judged by this test, the theologians may
be indifferent to criticism. Poor at best as the definitions
must be in which they sought to express all that Christ
thus meant, yet their definitions have survived the wear
and tear of centuries Just because in a real way they em
bodied vital experiences, and made salvation through
Christ the central point of theological thought. The
twentieth century may not approve of fourth-century
metaphysics, may be bewildered by terms some of which
have lost their meaning. Nevertheless, the creeds remain
because there was in them the dynamic of a living faith.
The dogmas of Nicaea and Chalcedon, if they had been
but a bold, splendid piece of constructive metaphysics, the
completion of the Greek quest after a scientific expression of
God would have perished. They have lived because they are

in.] THE PERSON OF CHRIST 71
among the affirmatives and imperatives which from time
to time surge up in consciousness, and which carry a larger
authority than belongs to any dialectic. Then value does
not he in their accordance with objective reality ; for of
that in the nature of things we are unable to judge — ' no man
hath seen God at any time ' — but in the complete explana
tion they give of the deepest facts of experience and history.
In this imperfect world there are few issues that are
simple. We may, therefore, own that the Christological
struggles of the fourth century, inevitable as we believe
them to have been, valuable as we hold their issues, exacted
their price. Some writers think that, as a result of the
struggle, Christianity suffered. The resultant theology, it
is said, represents the triumph of " scholastic terms and
moral realities." * This view, though often exaggerated,
contains some truth. In many quarters there was an un
fortunate shifting of the centre of gravity. God was not
sufficiently interpreted in terms of the consciousness of
Christ. For a faith in the living Christ we find the sub
stitution of behef in a complicated theory about His Person.
This is seen in its worst form in certain clauses of the
symbol known to-day as the Athanasian Creed, which the
Eastern Church has always refused to recognise. The
clauses in question appear to be of medieval Frankish
origin. Instead of fellowship and trust in the Redeemer
as the condition of salvation, the acceptance is demanded
of certain verbal subtleties. Apart altogether from the
injury done by thus turning the Gospel into a legal statute
hedged round with sanctions, we have here a fatal inversion
of the true order of life, in which experience must always
come first, theories about experience duly follow. More
over, the invariable tendency of all such descriptions of
God " in terms neuter and abstract, rather than personal
and moral," is " the de-ethicisation of Deity," 2 and the
1 Fairbairn, op. cit. p. 91. Cf. Harnack, H.D. iii. p. 8 ; iv. p. 49 n,
2 Fairbairn, op. cit. p. 405.

72 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
divorce of the concept of God from relation to man. But
this was the characteristic of much else that was medieval
besides the clauses of this symbol,.

n v'
One of the earliest attempts to grapple with the Christo
logical^ problem was that of Gnosticism. Wejhavejs_eea
its failure. By their insistence that matter was the handi
work of Satan the Gnostics reduced the Incarnation to
an illusion. The Divine Man who could be touched with
a feeling for human infirmity became a contradiction in
ideas. His mission had not been to raise our human nature,
but to annihilate it. His Gospel was not the glad tidings of
redemption, but the call to warfare with all forms of the
seen. Gnosticism thus struck at the root of Christian faith.
But when we ask wherein lay the strength and attraction
of this Gnostic idea for many Christians in the second cen
tury, it is not difficult to see the answer. The conscious
ness of the value of man as man is one of the results of
Christianity itself, the chief factor in which was the realisa
tion of the humanity of Jesus. Priceless as the doctrine
of the real humanity of Jesus may seem to the twentieth
century, we are guilty of false historical perspective if we
imagine that it would appear of such value to the second.
The Church was driven to fight for it, if it would be true to
its deposit, above all if it was to retain its Gospels and its
historical foundations. But the difficulty in fighting, which
the Church itself felt, is seen in the fact that for the majority
of the theologians, both in the Early and Medieval Church,
the real humanity of Christ may have been a dogma of
faith, it certainly did not bulk largely either in their
experience or their creeds. Harnack, in spite of some
exaggeration, is not far wrong when he points out that
in the Christology of Athanasius, the one man who more
than any other " saved Christianity as the religion of living

in.] THE PERSON OF CHRIST 73
feUowship with God," every trait which recalls the historical
Jesus of Nazareth is erased.1 Only in the school of Antioch
do we find adequate insistence on the fact of Jesus. The
consequences of this will appear later in the growth of
Monophysitism and other heresies.
The answer of the Church to Gnosticism was twofold.
In Rome it would seem to have led to the formation of the
symbol known in its later development as the Apostles'
Creed. On the other hand, in opposition or contrast to
the aeons and emanations of Gnosticism, Justin and Origen
had laid stress on the pre-existence of Christ as the Logos.
With the Alexandrians this was the central point of their
theology. Before thejrise _af^nosifcicis^ j^terni ' Logos,'
as Dorner. „has_ pointed out, _was .but_" a little used.
'?SalSEe'" 2 W.e^J[§JL.1';o„SS51$i?ismJ^a* i£s significance
was expanded and reahsed botb__hi the East and West.
Nevertheless, the doctrine of the Logos, despite its clear
statement and application to Jesus by the author of the
Fourth Gospel, as we see from its later history and from
our creeds and symbols, never became firmly established
in the Cathohc Church. Though dear to the Apologist
and theologian, it does not seem to have become part of
the living faith of the common people ; on the contrary, to
them it seemed rather to threaten the simplicity of faith.
Possibly, as at Nicaea, the common people and not the
phUosophers were right. The term Logos is too abstract ;
its tendency is "to obscure the personal elements in the
Divine relation." 3 Hence it is difficult to state the doctrine
of the Logos in terms which do not issue in its reduction
to a cosmic or dynamic force, with too exaggerated refer
ence to the universe rather than to salvation, a weakness
common to all the Apologists.
The failure of the doctrine of the Logos to. maintain, its
hold in the_Church gave rise to a set of opinions classed
1 Harnack, H.D. iv. p. 45. 2 Dorner, Person of Christ, A. i. p. 257.
• Ottley, op. cit. i. pp. 262, 296,

74 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
under the general title of Monarchianism. Though in time
Monarchianism degenerated into heresy, it began in a
reaction of orthodoxy. The insistence upon the Lord's
divinity, without adequate explanation of the relation of
that divinity to the Father, was leading back to a refined
ditheism. So in opposition both to Gnosticism and to
exaggerated and involved statements of the doctrine of the
Logos, certain thinkers laid emphasis on the ' monarchy,'
the sole absolute being and rule of God the Father.
' Monarchy,' as apphed to God, was a familiar term with
the Greeks, but in a sense fundamentally different from
its use in Christianity. To the Greek thinkers of the second
century polytheism in the sense of a number of Gods of
equal power was a discarded theory. As Plutarch and
Maximus of Tyre are ever insisting, there must be one
god supreme over all others. But this did not prevent
behef in the existence of lesser deities, " mediatised gods "
as Dr. Bigg happUy calls them, borrowing a figure from
the relation in the German Empire of the lesser kings
to the Emperor. All this hierarchy, with the underlying
conception of the ' monarchy ' of one God, Christianity
swept away. ' Simple, unskilled people,' writes Tertullian,
' hurl in our teeth that we preach two gods or three gods.
. . . We, say they, maintain the monarchy.' Tertullian
was speaking of Christian laymen ; but the reference
might have been extended to the heathen, some of whom,
as we have seen, maintained the monarchy by means of
a theology of ' daemons,' partly human and partly divine.
Others, for instance Porphyry, reasoned more boldly still
against the Christian conception : " Let us proceed to
inquire about the monarchy of the one God, and the Joint
rule of these deities who are worshipped. ... A monarch
is not one who is alone, but one who rules alone over
subjects of kindred nature with himself ; as the Emperor
Hadrian, for instance, who was a monarch not because he
stood alone, or because he ruled cattle or sheep, but because

m.] THE PERSON OF CHRIST 75
he was king over human beings of like nature with his
own." 1 In the same strain Caecilius complained that the
Christians made the heavens a wilderness and a solitude
with their ' one god, lonely and forsaken,' the unutterable
isolation and aloofness of whose position in heaven seemed
to the Greek mind an " atheistic " impossibility. But
Caecilius overlooked that this ' lonely God ' had given place
in Christian thought to a doctrine of the Trinity.
While Monarchianism thus failed to appeal to the Greek
mind, as in fact the Monotheism of the Jews had failed
in previous centuries, it led within the Church to serious
difficulties. Those who exaggerated the ' monarchy ' were
faced with the problem of the deity of the Redeemer.
To those who held the doctrine of the Logos, which Mon
archianism tended to displace, this had presented no real
difficulty. But any abandonment of this solution drove
men to attempt another conception, the recognition, for
instance, that the divine nature of Christ was a creation
or manifestation of God in time. One class, the "_dvnamic
Monarchians " as they have been called, saved the ' moh:
archy ' by resolving the deity of Christ into the gift of
God bestowed upon the man Jesus, a view practically
identical with that which in later times was known as
Adoptionism.2 The beginnings of this doctrine may be
traced back to the Shepherd of Hermas, always a favourite
work in the Roman Church, of which Hermas had been a
member, and of which, according to a somewhat doubtful
statement, his brother Pius was the bishop.3 In this
school the most important name was Paul of Samosataj
bishop of Antioch (c. 260), a high political officer of Queen
Zenobia of Palmyra. With Paul the main thought is
the ' divine ascent ' (avudev) of the man Jesus to Godlike
honour by the indweUing of the Logos as His ' inner man,'
1 Macarius Magnes, Apocritica, iv. 20, 2 Infra, pp. 76, 86, 145.
» a.d. 140-155. The chronology and Christology of Hennas is, however,
very doubtful. On Hermas, see Bigg, Origins of Christianity, chap. yiii.
f4e "'"•¦•- i - ¦ e}C .*^-t-r".. *-. e: -*.

76 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
a view in fatal antagonism to the doctrine of the Kenosis.
The founder of the school was apparently a ' learned '
currier called Theodotus, who about the year 190 preached
at Rome that superhuman power — Theodotus refuses to
own that this was ' deity ' — was conferred upon Jesus at
His baptism. It is worth note that the followers of Theo
dotus, according to Eusebius, were much given to higher
criticism and mathematics, and eschewed all allegorical
methods of interpretation. They favoured Aristotle rather
than Plato. But at that time the standpoint of aU edu
cated Christians save the Antiochenes was Platonism.
The danger of dynamic Monarchianism is plain ; it in
evitably lowers the claims of Jesus. Between it and the
current heathen conceptions of theophanies and apotheosis
there was little difference save one of degree. But differ
ences which depend on degree are always unstable. In
time the result must have been the degeneration of Christ
into a subordinate God, a superior Hercules or Prometheus :
redemption would have become a temporary cleansing of
the Augean stables, not an eternal fact in the heart of God.
Over against all such forms of Adoptionism the Church was
bound to assert the eternal Sonship of the pre-existent
Christ as the only safeguard of its truths. After the close
of the third century no other Christology was possible in
the Church, and in the fourth century it found scientific
expression in the formula of Athanasius : Aoyos 6poovo-ios.
One practical result of Adoptionism was the omission in
all the symbols of the Church of reference to the baptism
of Christ. Experience had shown that it was almost
impossible to safeguard it from docetic interpretation.
" Dynamic Monarchianism " was so manifestly on a plane
with the old heathenism that it can hardly have been a
serious difficulty, at any rate until in the fourth century
it reappeared in the more subtle form of Arianism. An
other class of Monarchians was more dangerous. These
saved the ' monarchy ' by resolving the deity of Jesus into

ni.] THE PERSON OF CHRIST 77
°J&e._n39de_or_ incorporation .of : the Father, who Himself
was born and died. Of these Patripassians or Modalistic
J^narchians_ _the_ .most noted_Jeader ^was SaheUius, the
earliest Noetus (fl. 220), and Praxeas (fl. 210) — unless indeed
these two are one, masquerading under different names—
the latter a stout opponent of Montanism, who, in the
caustic phrase of Tertullian, ' did two Jobs for the devil
at Rome. He drove out prophecy and introduced heresy.
He put to flight the Paraclete and crucified the Father.'
In the conception of the Atonement set forth by the Patri
passians there is none of the poverty of the Dynamic
Monarchians. But to maintain, as did Noetus, that such
a doctrine ' glorified Christ ' by upholding His com
plete deity, shows a curious blindness to its ultimate effect.
What this was became manifest when the logic of Sabellius
(c. 198-217) resolved the Trinity into three different phases
or functions under which the one divine essence manifests
itself — three energies in one hypostasis. Such a view is,
of course, fatal to the reahty of the Incarnation, or to the
existence in Christ of a human soul. It is consequently
destructive of the conception brought out in the Hebrews
of the indissoluble union of deity and humanity in the
ascended Christ. SabeUianism by thus refusing to recog
nise the Trinity, save as a mere category or form in ex
perience, in reahty robs experience of all its sources of
consolation. This deeper note the Church rescued when,
as the result of the whole controversy, it insisted that Christ
must be both true God and true man.
The history of SabeUianism is confused and fragmentary.
But it does not appear that it ever obtained a hold in the
Church. As an organised heresy it seems rapidly to have
perished. Nevertheless, owing to a curious chapter in
ecclesiastical history, it has left permanent marks upon
Christian thought, as well as upon the text of the New
Testament.1 For a whole generation, in spite of the oppo-
1 e.g. fiovoyevfy vlbs for 0e6s in John i. 18.

78 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
sition of Tertullian and Hippolytus, Modahsm in a moder
ate form was the favourite doctrine at Rome, possibly
because of the sympathies between Stoicism, the fashion
able creed of Rome, and Modahsm, both of which posited
a nominalist logic.1 When Origen (about 215) Journeyed to
Rome, he seems to have sided with Hippolytus. To the great
Alexandrian, with his doctrine of the subordination of the
Son, modalistic Monarchianism was intolerable. After the
defeat of Hippolytus by Callistus, Rome retorted (231-232)
by the condemnation of Origen's writings, and decided that
his doctrine of subordination led to Tritheism. Another
result of SabeUianism was even more noteworthy. Hitherto,
as in the doctrine of the Logos, the tendency had been to
emphasise the pre-eminence of the Father. For this cause
theologians in the East had looked with suspicion on the
use of the homoousios formula. According to the common
opinion, they had secured its condemnation at the council
of Antioch (268), possibly because of its too realistic use
by Paul of Samosata. By placing the Three Persons on
a parallel line, if we may so speak, instead of on one of
economy or subordination, Sabelhus prepared the way
both for the Athanasian and the Augustinian Christology,
including the definite adoption into the creed of the West
of the homoousian formula.
Theological opinion rarely develops by moving in straight
lines. It progresses rather in a series of actions and re
actions, by the strife of which another step forward is taken.
Of this we have an example in the reaction of Dionysius of
Alexandria (247-251) against SabeUianism. In his anxiety
to guard the distinct personality of the Son, among other
incautious statements he used a phrase that later became
a watchword of Arianism — ' the Son did not exist before
He was begotten ' — and denied the homoousios. For this
i See Harnack, H. D. iii. p. 55 n. That ' Father * and ' Son ' are relative or
accidental attributes is really Nominalism. According to Tertullian, the
Monarchians contended that the ' word ' is ' only voice and sound.'

m.] THE PERSON OF CHRIST 79
reason he was condemned by his namesake the bishop of
Rome (259-268), who once more laid stress on the unity of
God. But the one spoke Greek and the other Latin, and,
in consequence, neither seems to have understood the other's
use of technical terms. It was necessary to determine more
accurately the connotation of the current terms of theology.
The opportunity for this was given at Nicaea.
Nor must we overlook the importance in this connection
of the " Arius before Arius," Lucian of Antioch (f311), and
the Antiochene school. In its desire for formal and logical
consistency this school was " impelled to simplify the
Catholic doctrine by dropping one element in Origen's
teaching (the eternal generation of the Son), and pressing
the other (subordinationism) to its logical consequences." *¦
In thus historicaUy linking itself on with the controversies
which closed the third century, the unity of God and the
distinctness of the Son's personality, lay one secret of the
strength of Arianism. in
The greatest of all the Christological controversies was
that raised by Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria and pupil
of Lucian of Antioch. The details of this struggle, pro
longed for over a century, with its bewUdering variations
and cross-currents and its miserable scandals, are accessible
in every text-book. The imposing council of Nicaea
(325), with the great figures of Constantine, of Ossius2 of
Cordova (b. 256), of Eusebius of Caesarea (260-340), above
aU of the heroic young presbyter of Alexandria, Athanasius,
are set forth at large in all histories, as are also the Arian
reactions, especiaUy in court circles, which followed the first
triumph of the faith. It must suffice that we note the
inner meaning of the whole controversy, the results of
which we possess summed up in a symbol known as the
i Ottley, op. cit. i. p. 307 ; Gwatkin, op. cit. pp. 15, 16 ; Harnack, H.D. iv.
p. 3 ff. 2 For name, see infra, p. 98 n.

80 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
Nicene (Niceno-ConstantinopoUtan) Creed. This famous
symbol would appear, however, to be more strictly an
edition of the yet older Baptismal Creed of Jerusalem,
enlarged by Cyril of Jerusalem somewhere about the year
362, with Nicene corrections, and ultimately attributed to
the Constantinopolitan councU of 381. x
When looked at carefully the meaning of the councU of
Nicaea is plain. As Carlyle, certainly no prejudiced ob
server, puts it : " If Arianism had won, Christianity. would.
have dwindled into a legend." The question at issue was
whether two created and subordinate gods, holding their
existence precariously, durante beneplacito of the Father,
very little different from the philosophical triad or duad of
PhUo, Plotinus, and the Neoplatonists, should be interposed
between the deity and mankind. For in plain English
that is really the meaning of the Arian formula as regards
Christ — >2^£][£ ovk ?jv, ' there was when He was not ' — with
its necessary consequences as to the Holy Spirit, in spite
of all refinements about leaving out the concept of time
and the rest. The philosophers, with their rationalistic
arguments from the human to the divine, and their con
ception of a Logos centred in creation, were in favour of the
affirmative ; the great mass of earnest believers in favour
of the negative. The issue was the defeat of the phUo
sophers, much to the surprise of Arius. For Arius was no
deliberate unbeliever. He could rightly claim that many
passages of Scripture were capable of interpretation such
as to prove his argument ; and that, moreover, the Fathers
of Alexandria were on his side. He could adduce, with
some Justice, the support of the Alexandrian Dionysius.
He could maintain that Origen's doctrine of subordina
tion must logically issue in the placing of Christ among
the creations of the One God, the ' first-born,' it is
true, of all creation, but none the less a creature. He
i See Hort, Two Dissertations, pp. 54, 138, 139 ; Harnack, H. D. iv. p. 98 n.
It displaced the original Nicene Creed about the year 530.

in-] THE PERSON OF CHRIST 81
could point to the danger that the doctrine of the
Lord's deity, unless further guarded, would lead back to
polytheism. But, in spite of plausible defence of his doctrine as a
fight for Monotheism, the common consciousness of be
lievers saw clearly that which was hidden from Arius and
the phUosophers, because of what Harnack rightly calls
" their childish satisfaction in the working out of empty
syUogisms," that such a doctrine in the long run would be
fatal to Christianity, and was really an accommodation to
heathen concepti^is. Arius did not see that his doctrine
issued in hopeless contradictions. Thus Arius maintained
the unity of God, upon which in his cosmology he laid such
stress, by opening the door in his theology to the very
polytheism he detested.1 He did away with the Rock of
Ages when he affirmed that, hke all rational creatures, the
Son is by nature capable of change — a view that strikes at
every basis of ethics. By making a chasm between Christ
and the Divine essence, he denied that Christ was the full
revelation of the Father. Thus he destroyed the con
viction of the Christian world that in Christ man had
attained to unity with God Himself. " Those men make
merry in vain who think there was but an iota of difference
between the contending parties at Nicaea, or that it was
a strife about terms. The deepest things of the Christian
life were at stake. For Athanasius belonged to that
smaU class of men in the Church who have ever sent new
life coursing through its veins. He was of the company of
Paul and Augustine, of Luther and Bunyan. He stood
forth at Nicaea as the exponent of the deeper soul in every
man's soul, for in him was seen a man whose deep spiritual
needs had made him cry aloud for the living God, and who
then declared that in Christ this need had been met. His
whole intense spiritual experience stood to affirm that it
was no delegate of the Most High, no matter how august,
i Harnack, H.D. iv. p. 40 ff.

82 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
that had met him in Jesus Christ, and pardoned his
sins, and fiUed him with new life, but very God of very God ;
and it was with a view to this central experience that he
accepted a term that passed beyond Scripture, and affirmed
of the Son that He was of one substance with the Father.
Terms were of little moment, and probably Athanasius
cared little about them ; the fact was everything, and the
terms only had a value if they did Justice to the facts of a
profound experience." l
The confident appeal wliich the Nicene symbol thus
makes to the facts of spiritual experience is further verified
if we turn to that larger experience which we call history.
At first Arianism with its easy reduction of Christ to a
demi-god, with its popular methods of appeal, including
much use of songs (daXela), found a quick response among
the heathen, as well as among the thousands of nominal
converts to Christianity. For the barbarians it was a half
way halting-place in their conversion from paganism. As
such, Arianism had its mission. When that was accom
plished, it vanished. For Just as the Church was driven,
one might almost say in spite of herself, to eradicate the
Arian taint, so " sooner or later every Arian nation had to
purge itself of heresy or vanish from the earth. Even the
distant Visigoths were forced to see that Arians could not
hold Spain. ... Of continental Teutons the Franks alone
escaped the plague of Arianism. It was in the strength of
orthodoxy that they drove the conquerors of Rome before
them on the field of Vougle, and brought the green stan
dard of the Prophet to a halt upon the Loire." 2 As in
secular history, so also in sacred. Arianism has again and
again in diverse forms laid its speU on the thoughtful. But
since its capture of the barbarians it has never succeeded in
obtaining the allegiance of the many, whUe the congrega-
1 Professor Armitage, op. cit. p. 848.
* Gwatkin, op. cit. p. 264. Cf. Foakes-Jackson in Hastings' E.R.E. i.
p. 784.

m.] THE PERSON OF CHRIST 83
tions which have embraced it have for the most part
withered away.
Some explanation is necessary of the profound hold of
Arianism upon the East. In the West, Arianism never
made headway in the Church itself. The Western bishops
at the council of Sardica (Sophia in Bulgaria, 343-344)
would have nothing to do with the efforts of the Eastern
bishops to amend the Nicene symbol. In the split which
followed in the councU itself we see the beginning of the
final separation. In part this refusal was due to the lesser
interest of the West in subtle refinement. The West with
its tendency, so characteristic of the Roman, to view dogma
from the standpoint of administration rather than intel-
lectualism, worked outward from life and experience to
theory. The East, constructing its a priori schemes, de
stroyed the very experiences which the scheme was called
in to explain. But the victory of orthodoxy in the West
must be traced, in a special degree, to the clear, simple
teaching of TertuUian. For Tertullian had definitely
turned the thought of the West from the splendid but
shadowy doctrine of the Logos, so dear to the more philo
sophical East, to the clear, definite conception of the Son
of God, with its emphasis of distinct personality. When,
therefore, Athanasius, as the real fruit of his speculation,
dweUs on the Christ centred in salvation, instead of, as
Origen and the Apologists, on the Logos working in creation,
the West was prepared. But in the Eastern Church, with
its strong attachment to the phUosophy of the Logos,
Nicaea was rather a surprise victory won by the clear
thinking of the minority than the deliberate expression of
general conviction. TV
In the Nicene Creed we find two remarkable expres
sions as to our Lord's human nature, aU the more remark
able because of then repetition : ' Who was incarnate,' and

V

84 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
' be°anie man.' But the council was so absorbed in
protecting the true deity of Christ that it failed to
guard against the possible errors that might creep in
as regards the Incarnation and manhood. As a matter
of fact, the Arian heresy was Just as harmful with
reference to these truths as to the true * deity.' Its
tendency was to render a human soul in Jesus unnecessary,
to view the Incarnation as merely the ' taking flesh '
by an indefinitely great though not infinite Logos. The
Church soon found that it was as necessary for it to
assert the homoousios with reference to humanity, as
it had been necessary to assert it with reference to
deity. The latter was needful, because no true revelation
of love could come from a God who, if Arius was right,
stood aloof for ever from the world. The former was
equally necessary ; if mankind was not to lose its
sense of the dignity of humanity by a theory of the In
carnation which refused to allow that the Son of Man
possessed a human soul.
Controversy on this matter was begun by a zealous
defender of the Nicene symbol. Apollinaris, bishop of
Laodicea (f390), in his defence of Christ's deity, and in his
desire to represent Christ's human nature as impersonal,
sacrificed the integrity of His manhood. His intention was
to safeguard the character of the Redeemer from the possi
bility of change or fall. The Incarnation, viewed i.e. as the
union of God and man, had been eternal in the Logos.
' The Lord Irom heaven, f _who bore mtEnJHimself , sojbo
speak, the potency of the Incarnation, brought with Him
His heavenly humanity, the Incarnation beings mgrely. as
with the Arians, the taking flesh and an animal soul. In
the psychology of Apollinaris, who foUowed the threefold
classification to which Plato had given currency, Jesus
<~ Christ thus lacked a human soul ("0%). This further in
volved the lack of any real human wUl. Now, whatever
views may be held as to the psychology of both Apollinaris

in.] THE PERSON OF CHRIST 85
and his opponents, this much is certain. By the ' soul ' of
man both sides ahke intended the noblest part, the essential
fact in humanity itself. If this were lacking, then, as the
Catholic writers, Gregory Nazianzen and others, com
plained, the Incarnation was incomplete. And lacking,
according to ApoUinaris, it certainly was, in spite of his
subtle argument that aU human souls were in a way
adumbrations of the Logos, that man's nature pre-existed
in God. To this extent therefore — for there is much in
his teaching that is stUl obscure — we may join with the
second councUof Constantinople (381) m its condemnation
of _ ApoIUnarian doctrines. One outcome of the contro
versy would appear to have been the formulation of the
symbol known as the Athanasian Creed. This seems, in
part, to have had its origin in the opposition of southern
Gaul to Apollinarian doctrine.
Half a century after Apollinaris the battle was reopened.
The new controversy was an attempt to answer the pro
blem Apollinaris had. raised, but which neither he nor his
opponents, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory Nazianzen, had
answered, of the unity of Christ's Person. The author of
this new heresy was Theodore of Mopsuestia ; its foremost
advocate Nestorius (fl. 431), the patriarch of Constan
tinople. Theodore (350-428) was one of the leaders of the
school of Antioch. The logical method of this school was
Aristotelian ; its chief interest in anthropology. The
tendency, therefore, of its somewhat critical and literal
theology was to fix attention on the human element in
Christ, as set forth in the simple Gospel narratives. The
service which in this matter the Antiochenes rendered to
the Church, by insistence on the historical Christ, was un
fortunately neutrahsed by their making the bond between
the human and divine merely external, an exaggeration
of the moral disciphne whereby our High Priest was ' made
perfect,' instead of vital and permanent. Vexed with the
popular custom, defended by Gregory Nazianzen, of calling

86 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
the Virgin Mary 0£otokos,x Nestorius, following Theodore,
contended that ' she only gave birth to a man in whom the
union with the Logos had its beginning, but was incomplete
until His baptism.' Christ was thus not ' God ' but ' God-
bearer ' (deofpopos), another form of Adoptionism. The con
demnation of Nestorius in his absence, by the synod of
Ephesus (431) under the lead of the passionate Cyril,
metropohtan of Alexandria (412-444), was not the end of the
heresy. An energetic Nestorian Church, in its missionary
zeal, carried the condemned tenets first to Edessa, and then,
on the suppression of that school in 489, to the ends of the
earth. Persia, India, China — as the tablets at Si-ngan-fu
(636-781) bear evidence2 — alike witnessed their activity.
From the eleventh century, until almost blotted out by
Tamerlane, the Nestorian Church was the largest Christian
body in the world, whose patriarch at Bagdad was acknow
ledged by twenty-five metropohtans. On the conquest of
Persia and the East by the Muslim, Nestorianism was
thrown into an alliance, by no means unfriendly, with the
new faith. To this we trace the rise in Mohammedan
Spain in medieval times of a new form of this Nestorian
doctrine to which the title of Adoptionism is more strictly
applied.3 More deadly than Nestorianism was the Monophysite
peril, a heresy as dangerous to Christianity as Arianism
itself. Its author, Eutyches, an old unknown monk, was
its nominal founder because of a few plain sentences in
which, exaggerating the tendencies and formulae of Cyrus,
he maintained that after the Incarnation there was but one
nature in Christ, the fusion of the two natures into one
humanised Logos or ' deified ' man. With Eutyches the
deity completely overshadowed the manhood. The con-
i The English translation, Mother of God,' puts the emphasis in the wrong
place. It would be better 'who gives birth to God.' Glover, Conflict of
Religions, p. 21, points out that "the land which introduced the Mother of
the Gods to the Roman world gave the name of $cot6kos to the Church. "
2 See Bury's Gibbon, vol, v. App. 7. * Infra, p. 145

m.] THE PERSON OF CHRIST 87
demnation of Eutyches at Constantinople (448), his Justi
fication at the violent ' Robber ' CouncU at Ephesus (449),
was foUowed by further condemnation at the fourth
Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon (October 451), as also in
the ' Tome ' in which Leo i., the ruling spirit of the age,
condemned Nestorius and Eutyches, and at the same time
advanced the claims of the Roman primacy. In his de
finition, which was adopted at Chalcedon, Leo pointed out
with great clearness that the true faith is always of the
nature of a via media between conflicting errors.1
By the adoption of this definition the Christological
controversy reached its logical conclusion. The perman
ence of Christ's manhood was definitely asserted, though
the councU " failed to recognise the ethical aspects of
Christ's humanity as the unique archetype of manhood —
a point which had held such a prominent place in the
thought of earher writers hke Irenaeus." 2 But not with
out long, dreary years of debate could the Eastern Church
be induced to accept the Western Christology. Mono-
physitism, though formally banished, was not driven out.
Certain sects in the East to this day still make Monophy-
sitism their main tenet, with, at first, Antioch, then after
wards Baghdad as their patriarchate — the Jacobites 3 of
Syria, the Copts and Abyssinians, the Armenians and
Maronites. Even in orthodox circles, both in East and West,
the real humanity of Jesus was for long ages a conviction
of the study, not a working belief. In Cyril of Alexandria
and Gregory of Nyssa, for instance, " the Redeemer's man
hood ceases to have independent existence : it is trans
formed and ' deified ' to a point which makes it only
nominaUy 'consubstantiaF with ours." 4 The consequences
of this practical Monophysitism were most disastrous.
1 The keywords of the Chalcedonian formula were : as to the two natures,
iurvyx^rus without commixture, drpeVros without conversion ; as to the
One Person, aStatpfrm undividedly, axwplcrws inseparably.
2 Ottley, op. ait. ii. p. 109. s So called from the monk Jacob Baradai.
« Ibid. p. 88.

88 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
" To its secret prevalence in the Church is due much of the
degradation of Christian worship in the Middle Ages. The
cultus of the Madonna, of the Bambino, and of wonder
working images, is traceable to the feeling that Christ's
divinity had absorbed His humanity altogether." x
To the same lack of any sense of the real humanity we
must trace the Monothehte controversy formally con
demned at Rome in 649, and at Constantinople in 680.
To claim that in Jesus Christ there is but one wiU is to
take from Him the very essence of humanity. Poor and
inadequate as the language in which John of Damascus
attempted to sum up the Catholic position may be, yet,
after all, he attained the right end. His definition of the
relation of the human to the divine nature in the unity of
the Person as enhypostatic or anhypostatic — in other
words, the doctrine of an impersonal human nature in
Christ — is not more satisfactory as an explanation than
most definitions of ultimate facts. But it has this merit
at least, perhaps a negative merit, that it does not lead us
away from the fact itself.
With the settlement of the Christological controversy
the contribution of the Eastern Church to Christian doctrine
became practically exhausted. The Eastern Church had
lost its thinkers. In 383, according to Socrates, the Em
peror Theodosius feU back upon tradition for the settle
ment of aU disputes. In John of Damascus (f754), the
last of the great names, we find aU the worst faults of the
Western schoolmen. Antioch and Alexandria, for so many
centuries the seats of progressive Christian schools, were
captured by the Arabs. The life of the Byzantine Church,
even when spared by the Muslim, was stifled by pohtical
and spiritual despotism, ruined by corruption and super
stition. In place of the soaring thoughts of Origen, Basil,
the Gregories, Athanasius, and Chrysostom we have the long
and bitter Iconoclastic controversy (726 ff.). The great
1 Foakes- Jackson in Cambridge Theological Essays, p. 490.

in.] THE PERSON OF CHRIST 89
Emperor Leo the Syrian,1 stung by the Muslim taunt that
the Christians worshipped idols, and desirous of infusing
new hfe into the Empire by correcting the effete sentimen-
talism of Oriental Christianity, demanded that images
should only be used as architectural ornaments. The
common people, goaded by persecution and superstition,
rose in defence of these relics of paganism or religious child
hood. Such thought as survived in the Eastern Church
was confined to the monasteries, and there, under the in
fluence of ' Dionysius the Areopagite,' 2 assumed the form of
mystic quietism. With the conversion of Russia (988)
the Eastern Church awoke to a wider life. But Russia,
alone of the countries of Europe, owed its Christianity to
the arbitrary command of its Tsar Vladimir rather than
to the usual missionary agencies. Hence the distinctive
feature of this new Slav church was not its thought, or even
its orthodoxy, but its constant emphasis of an unbending
nationahsm. In the East religion and nationality are
identical ; hence unity of religion is the basal principle of
the state, and its easiest definition. But though the conse
quent political importance of the Eastern Church cannot
be exaggerated, its contributions to Christian thought after
John of Damascus must be dismissed as almost valueless.
Like the Rhine, the river, once deep, clear, and life-giving,
had ended in the mud-swamps.
1 Commonly but mistakenly called 'the Isaurian.'
2 Infra, p. 153 f.

90 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.

CHAPTER IV
THE GENIUS OF ROME
Argument
§ I. The Latin influence — Contrast of East and West —
Emphasis of law — Legal views of the Atonement —
Concrete ideas of the Church — The defects of the
Latin language .... . pp. 91-95
§ II. The place and importance of tradition — The Apostles'
Creed — Its importance as a Roman symbol — Epistle
of Clement — Rome and the apostolic tradition —
Western administrators and Eastern thinkers . pp. 95-98
• III. The protest of Montanism — Effect of its suppression —
The rise of the canon  pp. 99-101
i IV. Irenaeus and Tertullian — Their importance — Doctrine
of tradition — The Becapitulatio — Tertullian's legal
terminology — His doctrine of the Son of God —
Cyprian — Importance of — Causes which led to the
growth of his theories — The rise of intolerance . pp. 102-109

iv.] THE GENIUS OF ROME 91

The influence of the Roman world upon the organisation
of the Christian Church, especiaUy in the development of
the papacy and of a territorial episcopacy, has been so
profound that there is danger lest we overlook its import
ance for Christian thought. For vast as was the influence
of the HeUenic spirit, Roman thought for more than a
thousand years was the aU-important factor in the de
velopment of Christian phUosophy and theology, at least
in the Western world. To say this is but to state, in differ
ent words, the permanent influence upon the Western
Church of the teaching of St. Augustine, in whom Roman
thought finds its highest expression. We propose, there
fore, to consider, first, the formative factors in Roman
thought prior to St. Augustine, then to review the work
and influence of St. Augustine himself. From St. Augus
tine we pass by a natural transition to the further develop
ment of thought in the Middle Ages.
We do weU at the outset to define the special bent which
the Latin genius gave to Christianity. To state roughly
that it gave it organisation would scarcely be sufficient.
For organisation in itself can hardly be regarded as
" thought." Yet the organisation which the Church re
ceived, so largely under the influence of its Roman environ
ment, and as part of its adaptation to the pohty, public
and private, of the Empire, is the hall-mark, so to speak,
of definite tendencies in Latin thinking, which as much
claim recognition as the more abstract methods of Hellen
ism. By a process of thought, gradual but inevitable, the
Church came to be construed in terms of the State.

92 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
The Latin genius corresponds, in fact, to a certain clearly
marked movement of the intellect. " There wUl ever
exist," writes Neander, " two tendencies of the theological
mind, of which while the one will seek to understand the
supernatural element of Christianity in its opposition to
the natural, the other will endeavour to point out its con
nection with it. The one will seek to apprehend the super
natural and super-rational element as such ; the other will
strive to apprehend it in its harmony with reason and
nature — to portray to the mind the supernatural and
super-rational as being nevertheless conformable to nature
and to reason." These two tendencies characterised
respectively the Greek and Latin genius.1 The construc
tive ideas of the Greek are metaphysical ; of the Latin,
political. The Latin sought above all else to fit facts into
then ethical or social bearings. Hence his desire to test
opinion by a rule of faith, fixed and secured by a definite
organisation. For speculation he had an instinctive mis
trust. The phUosophy of the West, not even excepting
Lucretius, is wholly derivative. The Greek, on the con
trary, was ever insisting on the continuity of the reve
lation, Judging opinion from within by its harmony with
its premises, or its additions to gnosis. Hence the love of
subtle doctrinal disputation, at times becoming a malady.
' Every corner of the city,' writes Gregory of Nyssa in a
striking picture of Constantinople during the Arian contro
versy, ' is full of men who discuss incomprehensible sub
jects ; the streets, the markets, old clothes dealers, money
changers, provision merchants all alike.' The Latin has
given us the Roman Church ; the Greek the Apologists
and Alexandrians. The creed of the West — the so-called
Apostles' Creed — is the terse recital of historical facts. The
creed of the East — the so-called Nicene — is full of subtle
intellectuahsm. The West is Catholic, the stress is laid
upon extension ; the East is Orthodox, with the emphasis
1 Neander, Church History (ed. Torrey), ii. p. 197.

iv.] THE GENIUS OF ROME 93
upon opinion. With the East faith becomes spiritual
vision ; with the West it is primarily assent to external
authority. In consequence of this, in the Roman genius two matters
stand out prominently, its emphasis of law and its rever
ence for tradition. To the Roman conception of law, and
its basal principle that the ordered is the good, we owe
really the Roman power of organisation. The Greek ideal
of highly developed social atoms seemed lawless to the
Roman. Law and order demanded that the atoms should
be bound together into a unity. Thus the Greek tto'Ais
became the Roman State ; the ecclesia of earlier days, the
' Cathohc ' Church of the third century. ' Roman ' and
' Catholic ' had, in fact, a special relation to each other
from the earliest days. Both alike connote ' universahty,'
' organisation,' and ' unity,' and such lines of thought as
are necessary to produce these fundamental marks.
One of the chief results of the Roman genius for law
was the influence exerted upon Western conceptions of
truth. In the words of an eminent writer : " Theology
became permeated with forensic ideas and couched in
forensic language. . . . The Western Church threw itself
into a new order of disputes, the same which from those
days to this have never lost their interest for any family
of mankind at any time included in the Latin communion.
The nature of sin and its transmission by inheritance,
the debt owed by man and its vicarious satisfaction, the
necessity and sufficiency of the Atonement, above all the
apparent antagonism between Free WUl and the Divine
Providence, these were the points which the West began to
debate. . . . Almost everybody who has knowledge enough
of Roman Law to appreciate the Roman penal system ;
the Roman theory of obligations established by contract
and debit ; the Roman view of debts, and of the modes
of incurring, extinguishing, and transmitting them ; the
Roman notion of the continuance of individual existence

94 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
by universal succession — may be trusted to say whence
arose the frame of mind to which the problems of Western
theology proved so congenial, whence came the phraseology
in which these problems were stated, and whence the
description of reasoning employed in their solution." *
As regards the Atonement, the Eastern Church looked
to the Divine Immanence as the answer to its questions.
Hence its emphasis of the Incarnation. But one result
of the legal attitude in the Latin Church was that the whole
stress of its thought was thrown upon the death of Christ,
and not upon His Incarnation. The Atonement was
looked upon as almost accidental, certainly no necessary
part of the Divine Nature, as distinct from the duty of a
Divine Law-giver. Regarded thus under the category
chiefly of ' satisfaction,' it was almost hmited to the Cross,
to which the Incarnation was but ancUlary. This narrowed
conception was further assisted by the Juridical attitude
whereby the whole race was treated as guilty of one sin
because of one descent — a system of ideas that borrowed
its terms from St. Paul, but its working principles from
the law and pohty of Rome.
After the adoption of Christianity by Constantine as the
religion of the State, the Roman genius further demanded
that the unity of the Church be concrete, a visible society
with visible location, headship, and terms of citizenship.
To imagine otherwise was to fall back upon the despised
Greek abstractions, with their futile ' bird-cities ' in cloud-
land and their unrealisable Platonic repubhcs. Thus the
abstract definition which the Greeks loved, the fruits of
which in the development of theology we have already
studied, became with the Romans concrete determination
of the relations of the society or church — its boundaries,
government, practice, the terms of admission or exclusion,
the nature and power of its officers, and the like. The out-
i Maine, Ancient Law, p. 356. Cf. Fairbairn, op. cit. pp. 108-109, and cf.
infra, c. vii. § I.

iv.] THE GENIUS OF ROME 95
come of all this in the growth of the conception of the
Catholic Church, with its territorial episcopate, its fixed
ritual, its graded hierarchy, its head centre at Rome, and
its ordered Monasticism, is a familiar story.
At the outset of our inquiry it is well to notice one result
of the use of the Latin tongue. The abstract ideas so
dear to the Greek were abhorred by the practical Roman.
As a rule, he had no terms whereby he could express them.
When, therefore, attempts were made to translate for the
West the subtle terms in which the fathers of the East
had expressed their creed, difficulty and serious mistakes
arose. The term owi'o, for instance, should have been
rendered by essentia, an abstract word that the Romans
disliked. So substantia, a concrete term that has an under
tone of materialism, unfortunately took its place. But as
substantia was really the translation of the Greek vrroo-rao-vs
(hypostasis), a further difficulty was introduced, which was
only met by the use of a legal term, persona. Little wonder
that the theologians of East and West misunderstood each
other ; they too often used words, which they supposed to
be equivalent, in contradictory senses. With the severance
of East and West the Latin terms alone became recognised
in the West, with results that have been disastrous for
exact thinking. n
The struggle with Gnosticism forced the Alexandrian
Church to attempt clearer exposition ; it drove the Western
Church back upon a more definite statement of apostolic
tradition as opposed to speculation. In this matter, so
momentous, as after events showed, for the history of the
whole Church, many circumstances predisposed the Roman
congregation to take the lead. Its accepted double founda
tion by St. Peter and St. Paul of itself gave it pre-eminence,
to say nothing of its importance as the capital of the world.
By an early date also the Roman Church had given to the

96 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
primitive baptismal formula and to apostohc tradition
the definiteness of a creed and a canon, touchstones to
which it was able to bring all heresies and difficulties.
It is at Rome that the existence of a canon of the New
Testament can first be definitely traced, as we see in the
Muratorian fragment. The Roman symbol also, in the
main substantially the same as that now known as the
Apostles' Creed, was in existence in the second century,
possibly before 150, certainly before Irenaeus.
The Apostles' Creed has been called, not without justi
fication, " the simple but emphatic protest of the Church
against Gnostic heresies." 1 If by the Church we mean the
Western Church — for this creed is unknown in the East —
and if with the Gnostics we include Marcion, the statement
is correct. Its first clause is the negation of Gnostic dual
ism ; while the simple phrase, ' His only Son our Lord,'
sweeps aside all aeons and emanations. Its affirmation
of ' the resurrection of the flesh ' is in opposition to
Marcion's denial. Finally, docetism is absolutely excluded
by the simple recital of the facts of His hfe, and by the
emphasis of the completeness of His death in the addi
tion (" Descended into Hades ") made at Aquileia to
wards the close of the fourth century.
The advantage for the Roman Church of the possession
of this symbol cannot be over-estimated. Rome was
not only, as Juvenal tells us, the cesspool of the world ;
to its Church all heresies turned, if only in the hope of
capturing the metropohs of the Empire. Of this we have
Ulustrations in the coming to Rome of Marcion of Sinope
in Pontus, and the Gnostic Valentinus of Egypt. But
against the rock of a definite confession and a fixed canon
they could not prevail. Alexandria, the heart of the
Eastern Church, in the great struggles of the second century
neither possessed a formulated creed, nor was its foun
dation by St. Mark or St. Barnabas either historically
1 Allen, Continuity of Christian Thought, p. 111.

rv.] THE GENIUS OF ROME 97
certain, nor, if proven, such as entitled its traditions to
pre-eminence and obedience.
We see the consequences of these Roman advantages in
the tendency of the churches of East and West to refer
their difficulties or disputes to Rome for settlement or
advice. Of this we have the earhest example in the so-
called Epistle of Clement, in reality a reply from * the church
that sojourns at Rome to the church that sojourns at
Corinth' to an invitation to heal a somewhat obscure
dispute. This letter, written about the year 96, bears
unmistakably the marks of the Roman genius. In place
of speculation we have a wide sweep of practical Christian
exhortation, whUe the question uppermost in the writer's
mind is that of obedience to the properly constituted
officers of the Church. Such claims to counsel as the
Roman Church possesses the writer bases on her superior
knowledge of ' the ordinances and commandments of God,'
and on her adherence to ' the canon of tradition.' We see
this tendency further developed in the visits to Rome
during the second century of such prominent Eastern
Christians as Hegesippus (c. 151), Polycarp (c. 154), and
Origen (c. 215), as weU as in the efforts of the Montanists
to obtain recognition from Pope Eleutherus. In the case
of the condemnation of Origen the decision of Rome seems
to have been of special importance. All these events bear
witness to a widespread anxiety to know the devotional
standpoint of what Origen calls ' the very old Church,' of
the metropolis. This culminated in the statement of
Irenaeus and Tertullian, in his pre-Montanist days, that
agreement with the Church at Rome with its detailed suc
cession of bishops was the best safeguard for the trans
mission of the apostolic faith.1 By the end of the second
century Victor (fl97), the first bishop of Rome of Latin
1 Tertullian, De Praes. 32, 36 ; Adv. Marc. 4, 5 ; Irenaeus, iii. 3, 1-2.
On the difficult interpretation of this last (ad hanc enim ecclesiam propter
potentiorem principalitatem necesse est omnem convenire ecclesiam) see
Harnack, H.D. ii. p. 157 n. G

98 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
race, definitely advanced claims to universal headship.
In the Quartodeciman controversy he maintained that
every congregation which faUed to fall in with the Roman
paschal arrangement was thereby excommunicated. The
action of Victor was imitated by his successors, especially
Callistus (f223). By the year 250 the Roman Church
possessed an acknowledged primacy, though whether it
was not the primacy of the city and church — ' a presidency
of love ' as Ignatius had called it — rather than of its bishop,
may well be questioned. This brief sketch of a movement,
the historic consequences of which are as certain as its
validity may be disputed, will show the forces at work in
the West wliich produced the type of thought associated
with the Catholic Church.
As the type of thought, so the type of man. The typical
fathers of the East are to be found in its great theologians,
Clement, Origen, the two Gregories, Athanasius, Dionysius,
Theodore of Mopsuestia — to name the leaders in a long line
of great theologians. The typical fathers of the West wiU
be found among its lawyers and administrators, TertuUian ;
Cyprian, the great prince-bishop, as we may well call him, of
Carthage ; Ossius1 of Cordova, the friend and minister of
Constantine ; Ambrose of Milan, whose splendid prelacy,
especially his humiliation of the Emperor Theodosius, set
the ideal of true ecclesiastical imperium ; HUary of Aries ;
Leo the Great and Gregory the Great, two popes whose lofty
deeds raised the see of Rome to undisputed pre-eminence ;
and Bernard of Clairvaux, for so many years the dictator
of Europe. The one exception at first sight is Augustine,
who had httle or nothing to do with practical affairs.
Yet, as we shall see later, no one so powerfully con
tributed to the organisation both of the Church and the
world upon a definite ecclesiastical and political basis as
St. Augustine.
1 For Ossius, instead of the Greek form Hosius (="0<rios), see C. H. Turner
in Journal of Theol. Studies, Jan. 1911, p. 276.

iv.] THE GENIUS OF ROME 99
in
The hardening process whereby the liberty of the spirit
was slowly changed into a rigid Church was not allowed to
proceed without protest. Of such protests the chief was
Montanism, a movement first appearing in Phrygia, a
country parts of which were only nominally incorporated in
the Roman system, about the year 156. After years
of struggle and persecution the sect was finaUy crushed out
by Justinian, the last members of it, in their despair, burn
ing themselves in one of then chapels. With the doctrines
of Montanus and his followers we are not now concerned,
much less with their ascetic practices and puritanic strict
ness. Some of their tenets were retrograde — a reversion
to principles (for instance, chUiastic expectations of Christ's
return), the readoption of which would have been a hin
drance to Christianity. Others again, e.g. the excessive
value attached to celibacy and virginity, tended to the
development of Christianity upon lines ahen to its primitive
spirit. But the stress of Montanism was its protest — ex
aggerated, it is true, as most protests are, but in the main
a conservative reaction — against the elimination from the
Church of the free hfe of the Holy Spirit. The Montanists
stood for the liberty of prophesying, regardless of tradition
— or even, if need be, of primitive regulation, as in their
refusal to be bound by St. Paul's views as to the place of
women in the Church. They appealed to prophetic rather
than apostolic succession, and attached an extreme value
to dreams and ecstasies. Montanism, at any rate in its
Western form, had no quarrel with the doctrine of the
Cathohc, or ' great ' Church as it was then called, nor, in
the main, with Cathohc ritual ; only it wanted to force
both back into what it deemed to be apostolic simplicity
freed from episcopal innovations. Its work was not to
bring forward new doctrine, but to emphasise the primitive
gift of the Paraclete, and that, as Tertullian puts it, all

100 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [oh.
' advancement to better things ' must be ' by that Vicar
of the Lord, the Holy Ghost.1 Its ideal was not organi
sation — this was the note of the ' great ' Church — but
spirituahty, or rather what eighteenth-century divines
would have called ' enthusiasm.' To secure this the
Montanist would shut out the world from the Church by
rigorous discipline, and work upon the world not so much
by intercession as by challenge. By one of the familiar
paradoxes of history a movement which began in the claim
of freedom ended in extreme rigidity — the substitution
for the laws of the Cathohc Church of the inspired oracles
of the ' prophets.'
The antagonism of Montanism to culture and thought,
especiaUy Hellenism, was inevitable ; nor was this antagon
ism confined to such distorted forms as Gnosticism. We
see this antagonism in the self-satisfaction which led the
Montanists to caU themselves ' spirituals,' as against the
ordinary Christians, who were but ' psychical ' or ' carnal.'
The ' prophets ' through whom, in Montanist Judgment,
the Spirit always worked, were the least cultured of all
the orders in the Early Church. Their roving hves, then
ecstasies, their reliance on vague, incoherent oracles, their
tendency to dwell in their sermons on the retribution that
would shortly overwhelm the world — points aU noted by
Celsus — did not predispose to thought. In the highest
spiritual state Montanus claimed that the man himself is
passive : ' Behold the man is as a lyre, and I (the Spirit)
sweep over him as a plectrum. The man sleeps, and
I wake.' Such passivity, an early form of Quietism, is
destructive in the long run of both intellectual and moral
effort. But in the Montanist Passion of St. Perpetua we
have one of the gems of sacred literature, and in the
Montanist Tertulhan, Latin literature, both secular and
ecclesiastical, must always recognise one of its great masters.
The effects of the suppression of Montanism must not be
overlooked. As a result, or rather as a condition of the

iv.] THE GENIUS OF ROME 101
Catholic victory, the Church was led to see the necessity
of emphasising historical Christianity. In the effort to
crush out the ' prophets ' and their " enthusiasms " the
bishops feU back upon the two conceptions of the canon
as the complete oracles of God, and the hmitation of the
Spirit's special gifts to the twelve Apostles. In this last
we note a narrowing down of the significance of the early
order of ' Apostles,' which has misled the Church ever since.
To the epoch of revelation given to the Twelve all authority
belonged. Between the Apostles and the living Church, the
channel of communication and, therefore, of authoritative
interpretation, was the ' apostohc ' office of the bishops.
Thus the discredit of Montanism riveted upon the Church
the very fetters of traditionalism and authority against
which the Montanists had made their protest. Tertulhan
already defines the position of his adversaries in the saying,
' ecclesia est numerus episcoporum.' To this episcopate
it was given to preserve both the unity and holiness of the
Church by the use of the keys.
We have referred to the issue of Montanism in the settle
ment of the canon. To this the Church was driven if it
were to oppose an effective barrier to prophetism. But
it was not the Montanists only who forced this issue. A
section within the Church itself, to which was given the
name of the Alogi, in their hatred of Montanism refused
to recognise the Johannine writings ; the Apocalypse
because of its prophetism, the Gospel because of its stress
upon the Paraclete. Curiously enough, the Alogi ascribed
both to the heretic Cerinthus. Against Montanists without,
and the Alogi within, the Church asserted a completed and
defined canon of the sacred writings. That the churches
of the East and West have never yet fully agreed on the
limits of the canon, and that the twentieth century is in
clined to question altogether their arbitrary rulings, should
not prevent us from seeing the vast consequences for Chris
tian thought of the step thus taken.

102 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.

iv
The strength of the Empire lay in its power of assimUat-
ing diverse races and civilisations. Latin theology was
similarly comprehensive and international. Its founders
were Irenaeus and Tertullian, the former a native of Asia
Minor, the latter of Carthage. That in his latter days
Tertullian (f223) became a Montanist does not lessen the
force of his earlier works in the development of Western
thought. In some respects, as indeed we might expect
from his origin, Irenaeus (f202) is in sympathy with Greek
theology, especiaUy in his conception of the Incarnation.
Irenaeus had no confidence in the reason as an organ of
truth, while his view of the episcopate as possessing the
charisma veritatis, the prominence he gives to the insti
tutional as distinguished from the fiduciary element in
Christianity, is Latin rather than Greek. So also is the
practical cast of his mind. He will have nothing to do
with subtle speculations ; ' such things we ought to leave
to God.' In opposition to the Gnostic phUosophy, he
founds his theology on ' Cathohc ' use of Scripture, with
the help of allegory. His great contribution to Western
thought was his clear formulation of the idea of tradition.
Irenaeus will admit nothing, but obedient and acquiescent
faith in the words of Scripture. Theology is, therefore,
interpreted faith, and the canon of interpretation is authori
tative tradition. The tradition of every church must be
regulated by its agreement with the tradition of the
churches of apostolic foundation, especially the tradition
maintained in its purity at Rome. For this he finds his
reasons in Rome's ' influential pre-eminence,' whose Church
was founded by the two apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, and
in the ease with which, owing to the constant intercourse
of the capital of the Empire with the provinces, any de
parture from the Roman tradition could be detected.
Tertullian expressed the same view in his De Praescriptione

rv.] THE GENIUS OF ROME 103
Hereticorum, the title of which (praescriptio — a legal technical
term for the limitation of a suit) signifies his argument ;
the ruling out of court of all heretics, inasmuch as the true
meaning of Scripture could only be decided by the orthodox.
The reader wUl recognise the immense importance of the
doctrine of tradition thus clearly laid down by Irenaeus
and Tertulhan. To the ambiguous words of Irenaeus
Rome has ever appealed for confirmation of her claims ;
while the general argument of Tertulhan issued in the
position expressed by St. Augustine that ' he would not
beheve the Gospel were it not for the authority of the
Cathohc Church.' In the fifth century the relation of
tradition to interpretation was further denned by Vincent
of Lerins (f c. 450) in the famous phrase, Quod semper, quod
ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est, which made the an
tiquity of tradition the decisive criterion of truth. Vincent,
it is true, is careful to guard his doctrine from too rigid
apphcation. Progress he allows is a real fact, but it is
always organic, never by innovation ; it is a deeper or
wider growth rather than a change ; it is the unfolding
of the implicit ; a clearer explanation of views already
held ; the growth from infancy into manhood. Through
out the Middle Ages the dogma thus clearly expressed by
Vincent was the unchaUenged opinion of the Church.1
In his view of the Atonement Irenaeus tried to develop
a dropped line of thought. In opposition to the doctrines
of Origen, with its emphasis on the Logos, he restated the
Pauline ideas, though with an inadequate appreciation of
the meaning of grace.2 He is mainly concerned with the
historical significance and results of the Incarnation. His
central thought is the substitution of the obedience of
Christ for the disobedience of Adam. He reminds us of
Anselm in his insistence that as man has fallen man must
conquer. Though the Atonement is thus vicarious and
objective, there is httle emphasis of the idea of penal
1 See infra, p. 130. 2 Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Theology, p. 67 n

104 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
satisfaction. It is rather the recovery of the lost image
of God, the restoration of humanity to his original state,
the taking up anew the conflict in which man has been
worsted, the reunion of things unnaturaUy separated —
dvaKKfiaXattoo-fs (or recapitulatio) as Irenaeus calls it, phrase
ology which he appears to have borrowed from Justin. The
mystic Pauline contrast of Adam and Christ, Irenaeus
worked out into a definite Christology that, in spite of its
tendency so to exaggerate the accidents as to lose the
essence, has many affinities with modern thought. Jesus
Christ, God and man, becomes the centre of faith and
history, who ' Joins the end to the beginning,' through
whom mankind reaches his consummation and fulfils his
true destiny. With Irenaeus " Christianity is real redemp
tion, i.e. the highest blessing bestowed in Christianity is
the ' deification ' of human nature through the gift of
immortahty, and this ' deification ' includes the fuU know
ledge and enjoyment of God." x This further suggested
to Irenaeus the question as to the cause of the Incarnation.
With the Apologists the answer had been given by refer
ence to prophecy ; and the humanity was but shadowy.
Irenaeus made the Incarnation the pivot. The Deity, he
claimed, ' must become what we are in order that we may
become what He is.' This answer, worked out by means
of a few simple Biblical ideas into a coherent view of re
demption, has become part of the permanent thought of
the Church. Not the least significant feature in the doc
trine is its optimism, so contrary to the Gnostic idea of the
divine descent as a fall or degradation.2
To Tertullian, the great lawyer and heroic defender of
the faith, the Latin Church owes a larger debt than she has
always acknowledged. Next to St. Augustine he is the
greatest name in Latin Christianity, in spite of what
Neander calls the " massive one-sidedness of his nature."
His method, rhetorical rather than scientific, leads him into
i Harnack, H.D. ii. p. 240. 2 Ottley, op. cit. i. p. 219.

iv.] THE GENIUS OF ROME 105
many inconsistencies ; his interest, in fact, in systematic
theology is but slight. He disparages reason ; he tells us
frankly : ' credibUe est, quia ineptum est ; certum est, quia
impossibile est.' Though saturated with Stoic thought,
he speaks scornfuUy of phUosophy, and yet is one of the
ablest of those who philosophised on a Christian basis. He
sought to be a disciple of the prophets, and yet at the same
time a zealous defender of the established rules of faith.
But owing to what Harnack calls " his masterly power of
framing formulae," Tertullian founded the terminology
of much later Christian thinking. ' Satisfaction,' ' faith,'
' merit,' ' sacrament,' ' original sin,' and many other
technical or legal terms, especially those that bear upon the
doctrine of sin, are all from his mint. Hence in Tertullian
we find the development of the hard legal ideas of God in
His relations to sin. In TertuUian also we first find the
juristic idea of Adam's sin as envolving the race, and the
realistic idea of the physical taint of sin propagated through
procreation of souls (Traducianism), the beginnings of the
later doctrine of original sin formulated by St. Augustine.
As we might expect in a Roman lawyer, Tertullian's con
ceptions in his treatment of Christology are Juridical. The
terms he uses are those of a Jurist ; ' substance " being
' property,' ' person ' an individual with legal rights, and
the hke, though the terms, it is true, are always hovering
between their legal and Stoic senses. Hence he approaches
the problem of the ' Monarchy ' of God 1 not from the
standpoint of first cause, but from that of the ' sole
and single lordship.' This unity is not imperilled by the
administration through ' Persons ' of the Divine lordship.
Thus with Tertullian the Trinity, an economic not im
manent necessity, " is our name for God in movement or
self- manifestation." 2 As part of this movement or forth
coming the Word or Reason of God becomes the Son of
God, an event which had thus its origin in time — fuit tempus
i Supra, p. 74 f. ' Ottley, op. cit. i. p. 255 ff.

106 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch-
cum Filius non fuit ; language which reminds us, though
with different connotation, of the later watchword of Arius.1
In reality Tertullian was traveUing along the same line
of thought as " those who at a later period tried to show
that the Trinity is the eternal process of the Divine self-
consciousness confronting itself with itself " 2 ; though
the concrete, not to say materialistic, images in which he
expresses his thought lead him into difficulties. As part
of his tendency to change " an absolute process into a
concrete relationship," s the title Logos with Tertullian
gives place to that of Son. The expansion of this term is
his special contribution to Christian thought. This term,
with its greater sharpness of definition, its harmony with
human analogies and experience, and its greater simplicity,
henceforth became predominant, at any rate in the Western
world, driving out the more abstract Logos with its mystic
lights and shadows, beauties and obscurities. The subor
dination of the Son, a doctrine characteristic of all the
Alexandrians and Apologists, is treated in his usual juristic
method, as the free exercise of a delegated power ; while
the ' monarchy ' is saved by his emphasis that this delegated
power must hereafter be delivered up to the Father again.4
With docetism in any form he wUl have nothing to do.
Hence he insists, as no writer had done so fuUy before him,
on the reality of our Lord's human soul, and on the dignity
of the flesh 6 He assumed. To the Christology of TertuUian
Novatian (fl. 250) added httle save increased emphasis on
the subordination of the Son, in which, in fact, he finds a
proof of the unity of God.
Owing to his lapse into Montanism the influence of Ter
tullian on the Church was indirect and unacknowledged.
His leading conceptions were appropriated by Cyprian
(f258), whose importance lies in his establishment of the
1 Supra, p. 80. 8 Dorner, A., vol. ii. p. 63.
3 Fairbairn, op. cit. p. 394. i Ottley, op. cit. i. p. 259 ff.
6 With this should be compared the clause aapicbs av6.aro.aai in the old
Roman symbol, contemporary with Tertullian.

iv.] THE GENIUS OF ROME 107
rule of the hierarchy and, in consequence, the identification
of the Church with its priesthood, the episcopate of which
constituted its essential unity. From this unity it is im
possible that good men should separate. That which is
blown away from the wheat is self -convicted as chaff. With
Cyprian the separatist is worse than the apostate ; the
latter sins once, the former daily. Though the opposite of
his intention — the emphasis of the ecclesiastical parity of
aU bishops — no one so effectively assisted as this metro
politan of Carthage in the building up of the Roman
primacy, with all its vast consequences for history and
society. The supremacy of the bishop in the local church
passed insensibly into the doctrine of the supremacy of
the episcopus episcoporum, who could be none other than
the bishop of the capital city. The foundation of the
Church on this institutional basis, begun by Ignatius,
strengthened by the quarrel between Callistus and Hippo
lytus, formulated in a definite theory by Cyprian, was
completed, as we shall see later, by St. Augustine and the
Donatist controversy. Unlike the Reformation, the theory
of Cyprian reigned almost unchallenged.
No step more momentous for good or ill has ever been
taken by the Christian Church than its adoption of the
sacerdotal and hierarchical idea. Unfortunately the matter
is one round which there still rages the fiercest controversy.
The time has not yet come for the dispassionate historian
to lay down, with general approval, the genesis of the idea,
its relation to the original concepts of the Apostles and the
Master, and the stages of its growth. Into this thorny
subject it is no part of our purpose to enter. But even
those who claim for the theories of Cyprian the primitive
authority of Christ would not deny the factors and forces
which made its acceptance, the easier. The earliest Chris
tians were Jews. They naturaUy interpreted the New
Testament through the law and priesthood of the old cove
nant. For Gentile converts also a priestless religion was

108 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
an anomaly ; the old habits of a lifetime would predispose
them to a church of sacerdotal form. Of equal importance
was the whole drift of Roman political life. In the old
Greek irdAis the centre of life was the IkkAijo-io. of its free
citizens ; but in the civitas of the Romans the imperium
was exercised by an imperator. Cyprian's theory thus
accorded perfectly with the whole atmosphere of imperialist
rule, and, on the adoption by the Empire of the Christian
religion, would naturally form the basis in the new State
Church. How completely it was helped by its environ
ment is shown by the researches of ecclesiastical archae
ologists. M. Desjardins, for instance, has given cogent
reasons for believing that in Gaul every city which had a
flamen to superintend the old State rehgion, the worship of
' Rome and Augustus,' became the seat of a Christian bishop
in the new State Church ; while metropohtan archbishops
are to be found wherever there was a provincial priest of
the imperial cult.1 Thus " the conquering Roman Church
took its hierarchic weapons from the arsenal of the enemy." a
In the play of these three forces — whatever may have
been the original intentions of the Master and His Apostles
— we see the causes which led to the triumph of the ideas of
Cyprian. Believing as we do that the development of the
sacerdotal idea was invaluable for the taming of the bar
barians, and that in no other way could the chaos of the
dark ages have been reduced to order,3 we may allow that
in its triumph we have the work of the Spirit. At the
Reformation new forces and ideas came into play. But
the consideration of their sanction and place in the up
building of the kingdom of God falls outside our scope.
One effect of the triumph of the theory of Cyprian and
Augustine outlived the Reformation, and, alas ! stUl
survives. We allude to the spirit of intolerance and perse-
1 M. Desjardins, Giog. hist, et administrative de la Gavle Romamt, iii.
pp. 417, 418; cf. Hatch, D.C.A., s.v. Primate, Orders, Ordinations, etc.
2 Mommsen, Provinces of Roman Empiretlst ed.), i. p. 349.
• See my chapter on this in Dr. Garvie's Christ ana Civilisation (1909).

iv] THE GENIUS OF ROME 109
cution, so alien to the teaching of the Master, so character
istic, alas ! of Christian thought in all ages. We must
remember, in partial mitigation of sentence, that toleration,
even as a speculative idea, is essentially modern, and that
intolerance, especially in the Early Church, was oftentimes
the only effective opposition to indifference. Nevertheless,
there is nothing more sad in history than to trace the steps
whereby Christianity, in the growing bitterness of theo
logical strife, especially over Arius, forgot the incongruity
between persecution and the Gospel. The first result of
Christianity becoming the rehgion of the Empire was the
attempt by Constantino to enforce uniformity. In an
Imperial Church there can be no right of the sects to separ
ate existence, Just as there can be no right of the nations
to be independent kingdoms. The world-power secular
(Imperial) or spiritual (Cathohc) must crush aU revolt. In
dividualism of thought or rehgion was regarded as a thing
impossible ; for thought and rehgion had become questions
of society. In their unity men found the basis and bond
of continued existence. Whatever, therefore, tended to
destroy this unity was held to be as much a hurt to the
State as the work of thief or coiner. So in the fourth and
fifth centuries the State, aided by the Church, tried to
destroy all Christianity that lay outside the Imperial or
Catholic Church. The State, openly encouraged by so
great a man as Ambrose, in its persecution of Montanists,
Donatists, Priscillianists, and others, confiscated their
churches, prohibited their meetings, banished their clergy,
and sometimes even butchered their members. The worst
outcome of this Latin spirit was the story, written in fire
and blood, of the medieval inquisition. But the growth
of intolerance, and the disasters it has inflicted upon
civUisation, would require a volume to itself. Nevertheless,
in a history of Christian thought it was impossible not to
mention the rise of a spirit so destructive of thought, and
to mark out the underlying causes.

110 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.

CHAPTER V
ST. AUGUSTINE
Argument
§ I. Importance of St. Augustine — Appeals to aU schools
of thought — St. Augustine and the Holy Roman
Empire — St. Augustine and the Reformers — His
synthesis of opposite tendencies — This synthesis in
part due to his age, in part to his experiences —
His emphasis of psychology — His contact with
Manichaeism and Neoplatonism — Their influence
upon him  pp. 111-117
§ II. St. Augustine and the Donatists — Augustine's con
ception of the Church — Its contradictions . pp. 117-118
§ III. Importance of his doctrine of sin and grace — The re
lation to this doctrine of East and West — Sin and
the will — The punishment of sin — His idea of
' merit ' — His idea of the ' harmonious whole ' pp. 118-121
§ IV. Pelagianism — Its origins — Relation to Nestorianism
and Stoicism—' Grace ' and ' nature ' — Augustine's
errors — Augustine and 'free will' — 'Irresistible
grace ' — The origin of the soul — Tradueianism —
The greatness of Augustine's method , . pp. 121-127

v.] ST. AUGUSTINE 111

Aurelius Augustine x requires a chapter to himself.
Since St. Paul no equal name has arisen in the Christian
Church. From his conversion until the present day his
teaching has swayed the opinions of men and moulded
their most potent beliefs. His direct influence upon the
East was not great, with the exception of the Antiochenes.
Nevertheless, indirectly, through Leo, he gave to the
Eastern Church at Chalcedon the final form of its Christo
logical definitions. But no one did more by his life work
to give to the Western Church the specific character of
its theological thought, one outcome of which was the
widening of the gulf already existing between East and
West. The most remarkable thing about St. Augustine is that
men of every variety of school look back to him for their
inspiration, and trace their most sacred convictions to his
writings. Romanist and Anglican, Mystic or Covenanter,
Lutheran and Methodist, to say nothing of other schools,
aU alike revere his memory, and are eager to quote his
authority. As early as 431 Pope Celestine sharply rebuked
certain bishops of Gaul who had allowed his writings to be
questioned. For centuries he has been the one Father
of the Church recognised by all, to whom many have
assigned ' irrefragable authority.' To St. Augustine we
owe the formation of scholastic terminology. From the
doctrines he taught have sprung the greatest movements
and their most violent reactions. Though the result of her
1 Born 13th November 354 at Tagaste ; baptised by Ambrose at Milan,
Easter 387 ; died at Hippo, 28th August 430.

112 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATIO^ [ch.
teaching was the slow but effectual elimination of Augus-
tinianism, Rome still looks back to him as her chief doctor.
Gottschalk, Wyclif, Luther, Jansen are only a few names
in a long line of leaders of revolt who owed their inspiration
to his writings. An order of canons, and an order of friars
— Luther himself was at one time an Austin friar — alike
claimed him as their founder, with disregard of historical
accuracy, but with true insight into his importance in the
development of monachism. Upon the ideas which under
lie his De Civitate Dei of the kingdom of God as an actual
organised visible polity, as old as the world, identified
with the Church yet closely connected with earthly rule, was
founded the theory of the Holy Roman Empire, which for
a thousand years dominated the pohtical development of
the Middle Ages. The opposition which Augustine con
stantly posits between the civitas Dei and the civitas
terrena or civil society was reproduced in the edicts of
Hildebrand, Innocent, and Boniface. Augustine was the
first of the leaders of the Church to give full expression to
the truths called evangelical, that rehgion is a personal
relationship between the soul and God. At the same time,
he gave powerful support to the conception of grace as
objective, as something imparted by sacraments or Church.
" The Biblicism of later times is to be traced back to
St. Augustine ; and the resolute deletion of Scriptural
thoughts by an appeal to the authority of the Church's
doctrine may equally refer to him." 1 Though the state
ment is exaggerated, there is yet truth in Harnack's claim
" that the whole of the Middle Ages presents itself in the
sphere of dogmatic history as the period when the Church
was fixing its relationship to Augustine and the numerous
impulses originated by him." 2 In certain of its aspects
the Reformation was but the triumph of Augustine's doc
trine of grace over his doctrine of the Church. That with
the twentieth century his influence seems on the wane is
i Harnack, H.D. v. p. 99. 2 Ibid. p. 8.

v.] ST. AUGUSTINE 113
only to state in other words the transitional character of
the age in which we are living.
The greatness of St. Augustine lies in his synthesis
of opposing tendencies. His rich, many-sided nature
appropriated from aU sorts of sources, but gave a new
significance to aU. No one before or after has so success-
fuUy fused into one doctrines that are reaUy contradictory.
Attempts to harmonise them are worthless, and lead only
to what Harnack rightly calls " theological chatter." J
They are united, however, in the rich inner life of their
originator. This it is, rather than the possession of any
clear, logical system, which has led Eucken to call him
" the single great philosopher, on the basis of Christianity
proper, the world has had." 2 For the success of his syn
thesis is due to his deep sense of the continuous evolution
of the divine purpose in all things, and of the unity and
reahty of the spiritual hfe. With Augustine everything
is dominated by the deepest wants of mind and heart, of
love and hope. His own desire is ' to know God and the
soul : nothing more.' Hence his abihty to grasp all his
problems with his whole being, and not with his heart alone,
or with his mind alone.
This astonishing synthesis can only be explained when
we remember the age in which St. Augustine hved, and
above aU his own spiritual experiences. " He stood on
the watershed of two worlds. The old world was passing
away ; the new world was entering upon its heritage, and
it feU to him to mediate the transfer of the culture of the
one to the other." 3 The result, as might be expected, was
too often an impossible fusion. So also in the more
spiritual sphere. Throughout his hfe he was intent on
reducing to a consistent unity the various elements of
history, nature, and revelation as they presented themselves
i Harnack, H.D. v. p. 167.
2 Quoted by Warfleld in Hastings' E.R.E. ii. p. 222.
a Warfield in E.R.E. ii. p. 220.
H

ii4 Christian thought to the reformation [ch.
in the consciousness of the behever. As during a long life
his views expanded and changed, it is often possible to
appeal — as we shall do more than once in this chapter —
from the later to the earlier Augustine. The synthesis he
attempted is imperfect even within the hmits of his own
experience. But this should not surprise us. His theo
logical treatises are not a priori architectonic systems.
They grew up without definite sequence, out of the needs
of his life and ministry. His theories are but his inter
preted experiences. In his Confessions we have the key
to his doctrine of grace, the love of God seeking him and
prevailing within him in spite of himself. In the troubles
of his age, above all in the fall of Rome before Alaric, we
have the explanation of his City of God. He was driven by
the crash of the old order to find an apology for Christianity
in the phUosophy of history, of which science he was really
the creator. To understand the dogmas of St. Augustine
apart from the age and the man is an impossible task. But
in these pages, through limitations of space, such know
ledge must be assumed in the reader.
As we might expect from this emphasis of experience,
Augustine lays unusual stress upon psychology. With
St. Augustine self-knowledge becomes one of the roads to
knowledge of God. The acuteness of his psychological
observations is remarkable, and is one of the many features
in which we may claim that he is essentially modern. No
where is this more clearly brought out than in his answer
to the philosophical scepticism of the Academies. There is,
he pleads, one matter over which there can be no mistake :
' Even though I err, still I am ' (' Si enim fallor, sum ') — a
curious anticipation of the ' cogito, ergo sum ' of Descartes
a thousand years later : My very doubt is a proof of the
existence of myself. Again and again he returns to this
argument in new forms and with new illustrations.
Throughout his system he makes the inner life the starting-
point of reflection upon the outer world. As a rule, his

v.] ST. AUGUSTINE 115
philosophical position is that of Plato, but in his explanation
of the origin of knowledge he rejects the Platonic theory
of reminiscence for that of the divine truth borne in
directly upon the human soul. " The ideals we cherish,
the intelhgible relations we aU recognise, are the thought
of the Eternal Creator — His Eternal Being manifested in
space and time among things of men, through which we
may see Him as in a glass darkly." x Both these thoughts
were afterwards worked out into Christian Mysticism, as
was also St. Augustine's statement that there was a
stage in spiritual experience in which men passed beyond
Scripture. St. Augustine did not draw merely from Catholic or philo
sophic sources. He began his spiritual history as a Mani
chaean. For nine years he was one of their ' auditors '
or catechumens. But his acute inteUect and unsatisfied
spiritual nature finally escaped, through the help of Am
brose, from this pessimistic fatalism, with its doctrine, so
uncompromising in its duahsm, that nature, man's body, and
half man's soul are the work of an evil being. ' There is no
health,' he discovered, ' in those who find fault with any
part of Thy creation, as there was no health in me when
I found fault with many of Thy works.' Nevertheless,
Manichaeism or Gnosticism left its scars. His view of life,
on the whole, is pessimistic ; life here is but a preparation
for the hereafter. Moreover, " His confidence in the
rationahty of Christian faith had been shaken to the very
depths, and it was never restored." 2 Hence the contra
dictions in his teaching, which certainly did not distress
him, inasmuch as, unlike the Apologists, he did not expect
that everything in his creed would be clear, consistent, and
demonstrable. Hence, also, the tendency in St. Augustine
to fall back upon the Church for the guarantee of faith —
a doctrine that was to develop in later ages into that of
infaUibility. Moreover, Augustine was never able to shake
i Cunningham, St. Austin, p. 84. a Harnack, H.D. v. p. 78.

116 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
himself free from the Manichaean doctrine of a twofold
morality, one for the smaU body of the elect or perfect, the
other for the general mass. In the monks of his new faith
and in their higher service Augustine found the old distinc
tion, though in a more reasonable form.
Another stage in his spiritual history was his relation
to Neoplatonism. Through Neoplatonism he was first
snatched from Manichaean darkness. Before his con
version, or rather as one stage in it, Augustine seems to
have studied the Enneads of Plotinus as translated into
Latin by Victorinus.1 From Neoplatonism he learned
that God is a spirit, immaterial, eternal, incorruptible,
unchangeable, the supreme Unity that is the Soul of souls,
' the Life which never dies,' ' Who governs the whole world
down to the leaves that flutter on the trees.' At one time
even he seems to have attained the adept's goal of the
mystic vision, the ecstasy in which ' with the flash of one
trembling glance he arrived at That which Is.' But the
Neoplatonic idea that moral evU can be got rid of by moral
disciphne did not satisfy his craving for deliverance or
meet the demands of his conscience.2 He accepted, it is
true, as did his teacher Ambrose, the contention that all
evil is ' a privation,' that apart from good there is no real
existence. EvU, therefore, was not, as the Manichaeans
taught, an eternal power in opposition to God. But this
' privation,' he held, was a taint, the mark of God's just
judgment, ' a perversity of will which turns aside from
Thee, 0 God, flinging away its inner treasure.' The one
remedy for this he found to he, subjectively in deep humility,
objectively in the Cross of Christ. ' The books of the
Platonists teU nothing of this. Those pages give me not
the lineaments of this rehgion, the tears of confession, the
troubled spirit, the broken and contrite heart. ... No
1 For Victorinus, see infra, p. 198.
2 St. Augustine's account of his release from Neoplatonism is found in the
seventh book of his Confessions.

v.] ST. AUGUSTINE 117
one there hearkens to Him that calleth : Come unto Me all
ye that labour. They think it scorn to learn from Him
because He is meek and lowly of heart.'

n
The detaUs of the Donatist controversy — a continuation,
as it were, under a new form of the issues at strife in Mon
tanism — belong to ecclesiastical history. But the real
question in dispute was far wider and deeper than the re-
baptism of those who had received the rite at the hands of
heretics or of the lapsed. The result of the controversy was
to fasten upon the West the conception which dominated
the Middle Ages, that the Church in its sacraments and
ministry possessed virtues that were objective and inalien
able, whatever the character of its members. Logically, of
course, St. Augustine was right. It is impossible to put
the reality of the means of grace and the existence of the
Church at the hazard of the worthiness of its ministers.
This would be to found it not on the rock but on the quick
sands. But the victory of his logic had its perUs. The
revolts of Wyclif and Hus in the fourteenth century against
this dogma were followed by the later revolts of Luther
and Wesley. It is no small testimony to the greatness of
St. Augustine that the inspiration in their revolt against
this Augustinian doctrine was their grasp of another, the
Augustinian doctrine of grace.
Though to St. Augustine the Church is the congregatio
sanctorum, he yet unconsciously transfers to the institu
tional Church the predicates which rightly belong only to
the ideal. To St. Augustine, be it remembered, the ideal
is the only real, and that which is not good and eternal has
no real existence. Hence he identifies the ideal Church
with the visible Church. When pressed with the difficulty
of the presence of the wicked in the Church he falls back
upon the number of the elect, without seeing that he had

118 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
thus reduced the visible Church to an empirical Church,
the bounds of which lie outside human cognisance. The
result was complete confusion. In one direction the in
fluence of St. Augustine was thrown upon the side of the
belief in the Church as the sphere of salvation and authority,
the sole agent in grace. Through St. Augustine, working
in alliance with other forces, and building on the foun
dations of Cyprian, this Roman conception — to which
really his fundamental doctrine of grace was opposed —
became the dominant thought of the world. At the same
time, his conception of the Church as the elect who never
obtained their election through the Church but dhectly
by grace, who might even lie outside the visible society,
undoubtedly tended to overthrow the idea he had other
wise buUt up. Another fruitful idea, in practical, though
not necessarily logical, opposition to the arguments whereby
he had overthrown Donatism, was Augustine's insistence
upon love as the note of the Church, without which the
sacraments themselves were deprived of their efficiency.

m
The central fact with St. Augustine, the starting-point
of his thoughts, is his realisation of Sin and Grace.- Through
these, more than any other, he has won his supreme place.
By their revival he first gave to St. Paul, their real author,
his right place in Christian thought. Hitherto these great
Pauline truths had been so little recognised that their em
phasis by St. Augustine came upon the Church with all the
surprise of a new discovery. To this discovery he was
guided by his own spiritual experience. Between the
Confessions and the spiritual history of St. Paul before his
conversion, as given in Romans vii., there was probably
much similarity. The consciousness of the radical, sinful
condition had been driven in upon him by Ambrose. In
his revolt from Manichaeism Augustine had discovered

v.] ST. AUGUSTINE 119
that evil was no physical power. His own faUures refuted
the ruling Stoic conception that virtue was the supreme
good, that in the concentration of the will upon its attain
ment lay the essence of redemption. It is characteristic
of the man and of the whole drift of his experience that
in his closing days at Hippo the penitential psalms, written
in large letters, were hung where he could see them.
In our estimation of every movement associated with
some great thinker there is a danger lest we overlook the
influence of the age. Not by accident was it that the
question of the relation of sin and grace was raised in the
West and not in the East. The doctrine of sin can never
be properly treated except by a society in which the in
dividual is strongly conscious of himself. To a corporation,
whether state or trading company, the sense of sin is always
difficult to bring home. In the Eastern world, where the
new Empire laid its paralysing grip upon all, individualism
could only find expression in the eremite hfe. Moreover,
Greek philosophy, which was in the ascendant in the
Eastern Church, owing to its imperfect sense of personality,
had never troubled itself much over the question of Free
WUl. In the West the fall of the Empire had thrown back
the individual upon himself. One result was the adoption
by the West, under the lead of Martin of Tours and others,
of Eastern Monasticism in a form more suitable to itself ;
another, the development, through the teaching of St.
Augustine, of the doctrine of sin and grace. For the
constant burden of the thought of Augustine is the relation
of God and the soul, of the soul and its God, and such an
inquiry necessarily leads to the doctrine of sin and grace.
Moreover, in the East there was always a reluctance to
assume the corruption or depravity of the race ; in the West,
since the teaching of Tertullian, there was full recognition
of a bias towards evU. As in the West there was a readiness
to accept the freedom of the wUl, the doctrine of the pre
valence and potency of evil brought in as a corollary the

120 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
doctrine of the potency and prevalence of the grace which
could thus redeem and restore.
With St. Augustine the origin of evil is through the
defect of will, the negligence of a changeful wiU. ' For as
a snake does not creep on with open steps but by the very
minutest efforts of its several scales, so the slippery motion
of falling away from good takes possession of the negligent
only gradually, and beginning from a perverted straining
after the likeness of God, arrives in the end at the likeness
of beasts.' Unfortunately St. Augustine did not stop
there, but added other elements of more than doubtful
character. In an acute criticism of the first chapter of
Genesis Augustine had pointed out that the narrative of
creation was not a history of actual facts, but was alle
gorical, for the coming into being of Time could not take
place in periods of time. But when he came to the third
chapter he dropped his criticism, and treated it as actual
history instead of as the unfolding of truth under alle
gorical language. This, possibly, was because of his desire
to be able to give to the Manichaeans, with their insistence
on the eternal character of evil, an account of how, as a
matter of fact, evil had arisen in time.1
As to the punishment of sin, St. Augustine would not
agree with the ' Platonists who hold that all punishments
tend only to the purgation of sin.' Punishment is the
assertion of the moral order which crime has disturbed.
If punishment were in itself fully remedial the Incarnation
and Redemption of Christ would be superfluous. The
punishment of sin is not necessarily physical, it consists
rather ' in the ignorance and incapacity that befall every
soul that sins ' ; these in their turn lead to deeper aliena
tion from God. Unfortunately Augustine is again led by
a literalism that is out of harmony with his usual principles
of Scriptural interpretation into insistence that the punish
ment after death is material as well as spiritual ; nor does
1 Cf. Cunningham, op. cit. p. 56 ff.

v.] ST. AUGUSTINE 121
he notice the intellectual difficulties involved in his giving
an everlasting significance to certain physical conditions,
i.e. to phenomena in space and time. Rightly or wrongly,
Augustine's doctrine henceforth dominated the Church,
to the exclusion of Origen's larger hope of the final sal
vation of all.
In his treatment of reward Augustine accepted the idea
of ' merit ' with which the Church had been familiarised
by Tertulhan and Cyprian. In the final decision of char
acter merit alone would be considered. St. Augustine
reconcUed this with his doctrine of grace by teaching that
aU our merits are, after aU, only the gifts of God. 'When
God crowns our merits He is only crowning His own gifts.' x
Faith, Love, and Merit are the successive stages in the
road of salvation, faith being the preliminary, and love the
active agent in the new life.
We must note, moreover, a further deduction of immense
consequence. With St. Augustine evil was not, as the
Manichaeans held, " a real substantial existence opposing
God. It was a defect in things otherwise good, and which,
despite their defects, still made a harmonious whole. In
so far as a being persists it is because it has elements of
goodness." 2 In this idea of the " harmonious whole " we
see the source of Austin's dogma, destined to grip so terribly
a later age, of hell itself witnessing to the glory of God, as
part of the ordered fitness of creation.

rv
We pass next to the consideration of Augustine's conflict
with Pelagius, a pious British or Irish monk whose secluded
cloister life had never wrestled with the deeper sins of the
soul. Pelagius had been roused to anger by the flabby
Christianity of the day, that excused its degeneracy by
1 See Harnack, H.D. v. p. 87.
* Cunningham, op. cit. p. 71, and Harnack, H.D. v. p. 114.

122 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
pleading inability to fulfil the commands of God. In
Augustine's conflict with the Manichaeans the question at
issue was metaphysical ; in his conflict with Pelagius, and
his abler allies, Caelestius and Julian of Eclanum, the
question was more psychological. There are few errors
or opinions which have not some root in the past. So with
Pelagianism. The historical connections of this heresy
with the current Nestorianism seem fairly certain ; its
theological links are more evident, and were first traced out
by Cassian of Marseilles. The doctrine that Jesus was a
sinless man promoted to the dignity of being assumed by
God is not far removed from the Pelagian idea that all
men can become by their own efforts what Christ became,
or, at least, may avoid sin and earn eternal blessedness.
In neither doctrine is there the essential exaltation of the
Saviour. Both doctrines are extreme forms of individual
ism. In neither is there any sense of solidarity religious
or social, and this, after all, is a note of no smaU import
ance in the doctrine of original sin. The ultimate effect
of both Nestorianism and Pelagianism, as well as of its
modern counterpart Deism, is to deny the need and power
of the Atonement, or, at least, to reduce it to a mere
question of God and the individual. This is only to state
in other words that Pelagianism fails to grasp the reahty of
evil, which it regards as a momentary self-determination
of the will instead of as the result of a deeper cause. For
the doctrine of original sin teaches the great truth of
experience, that behind all separate sins there lies sin itself,
expressing itself in a want of rest, Joy, harmony, and
love. Moreover, in their exaltation of the nature of man
Nestorianism and Pelagianism alike overlook the cardinal
factor in religion as distinct from morals, the ' grace ' or
condescension of God, and, consequently, both undervalue
the means of grace.
Nor is it only with Nestorianism that Pelagianism has
contact. The Stoic doctrine, as prevalent in the time of

v.] ST. AUGUSTINE 123
Augustine as in new forms it is prevalent in the twentieth
century,1 of a life according to nature, of virtue, and of the
spiritual as only natural forces — nature itself being re
garded as independent of the notion of God — is practicaUy
only another, if more philosophical, expression of the same
error. For the crucial question in the whole controversy
was whether ' grace ' should be reduced to ' nature,' man's
' glorious constitution,' and the hke, upon whose primitive
innocence Julian, the acutest of all the Pelagians, insisted.
Pelagianism, in fact, is only another aspect of the age-long
conflict of " morals as against rehgion, free will as against
grace, reason as against revelation," 2 and, we may add,
of culture against conversion. Not without cause does
Julian appeal to Aristotle, without whose categories he
regards theology as valueless.3 For Aristotle was ever the
prophet of the natural man.4
In the broad outlines St. Augustine was undoubtedly
right. His victory over Pelagius was a victory for wliich
aU subsequent generations may be thankful. But the same
high praise cannot be given to aU the details of the contro
versy. His great adversary Julian riddled much of his
doctrine, and showed how untenable it becomes. His whole
doctrine of grace in the Adamic state, apart altogether
from what modern science would say about it, is itself
an Ulogical Pelagianism, in complete conflict also with
his doctrine of irresistible grace. In his doctrine of
original sin he argues, as his adversary Julian pointed
out, as if all would be well, could children be born by
being shaken from trees.
The student should be careful not to confuse with the
teaching of Augustine opinions which later writers, especi
aUy Calvin, read into him. Thus in our Judgment; — the
question, it is true, might fairly be debated — St. Augustine
i In the eighteenth century we find it best in the teaching of Rousseau.
2 Rainy, Ancient Catholic Church, p. 468.
s See Harnack's elaborate note, H.D. v. p. 191 f.
* See infra, p. 228.

124 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
did not always hold the doctrine of total depravity in the
form commonly imputed to him, that through the Fall man
both wills and does nothing but evil,1 with the added rider
of inherited sin in itself sufficient for damnation. For
Augustine at times clearly teaches that, in spite of its de
pravity, the power of the will is still a noble power, in the
possession of which lies the kernel of our nature.2 But
Augustine did not see that in admitting that sin springs
from the will he reduced his theory of original sin to a con
tradiction. Moreover, Augustine had written in defence
of Free Will against the Manichaeans, and distinguished,
though in an uncertain fashion, divine prescience from
divine foreordination. God predestines because God fore
sees what man will do. Augustine held, it is true, that unre-
generate man is so bound by sin that he is not ' free ' to
do right. But this denial of ' freedom ' is really a denial
of capricious choice ; the assertion of self-determination
on the lines of one's real character.3 In the same way
God Himself is not ' free ' to do wrong ; for St. Augustine
in his earlier days refused to separate the Will of God from
the character of God, and so saved himself from the divine
arbitrariness which is the great blot in Calvinism. But
Calvin was only following the repulsive teaching of St.
Augustine's later days, as set out in his letter to Sixtus
(417 or 418).
Another doctrine of Augustine destined to bear much
fruit in later centuries was that the election of grace is
irresistible — as indeed with his premises it is bound to be —
though no one can be certain that he possesses this grace.
1 In his final survey of his teaching in the Retract. , St. Augustine, however,
adopts the extreme form. The modern revolt against his doctrine can, how
ever, appeal from the later to the earlier Augustine. Unfortunately the later
Augustine, and the crude interpretations of Augustine, usually held the day
in the Church.
2 On this see Harnack, H.D. v. p. 123 n.
3 It would be interesting to compare this with the teaching of T. H.
Green, Prolegomena to Ethics. The gap between the two does not seem to
be very great, except in the greater precision and consistency of the Oxford
scholar.

?•] ST. AUGUSTINE

126

As Hamack rightly remarks : ' With aU his horror of sin
Augustine had not experienced the horror of uncertainty
of salvation.' x Augustine never saw that his doctrine of
predestination must issue in the destruction of the con
ception of the Church and its sacraments, upon which he
had enlarged in the Donatist controversy. Where grace is
irresistible aU else becomes needless, and man himself can
scarcely be said to be a moral creature at all. The doctrine
of predestination is also, as Dr. Bigg points out, only a
form of Gnosticism, for " it makes no real difference
whether our doom is stamped upon the nature given
by our Creator (Gnosticism) or fixed by an arbitrary
decree." 2
It is impossible to pass away from Pelagianism without
glancing at another alhed controversy. The question of
original sin is strictly bound up with the question of the
origin of the sinning soul. To this question three different
answers were given in the Early Church. Origen, foUowing
out his Platonic phUosophy, taught the pre-existence of
the soul. Human life is only a disciplinary process for
the spirits that sinned. Such a theory, while it secures
responsibility and accounts for original sin, becomes really
an extreme form of individuahsm. Solidarity may have
existed in previous worlds ; there is none among mankind.
By this theory the body becomes, as in the great poem of
Wordsworth, merely a prison-house. A second theory,
current in the East, as also with Jerome and HUary, was
Creationism, or the new creation by God at the time of birth
of every individual soul ; the body in wliich it tabernacled
being, however, derived by natural processes of generation.
Such a theory is bound logicaUy to issue in the belief that
the body is the source of sin, a view akin to the old Gnos
ticism. A third theory was Traducianism. This was the
theory of the West, forcibly expounded by Tertullian, and
i Harnack, H.D. v. p. 210 n.
1 Bigg, Christian Platonists, pp, 284-86.

126 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
made a part of the Cathohc faith by Leo. In this concep
tion body and soul are alike formed by natural generation.
The indhect adoption by St. Augustine of this theory, above
all the logical issues of his conflict with Pelagianism, led
to Traducianism becoming the recognised creed of the
Church. Whatever its truth — and modern biology, as well
as the facts of experience and psychology, have much to
say for it 1 — it gives to the doctrine of original sin, even
in its crudest forms, a certain logical unity. But this
unity was purchased at too great a cost, since it tended
to lay the whole stress of sin upon the sexual desire. We
see the outcome of this doctrine in the stress which for a
thousand years was laid upon celibacy as the supreme grace
of the would-be saint.
We have spoken of St. Augustine as the greatest of
Christian philosophers. His greatness consists as much
in his method as in his teaching. His teaching we may
reject ; at any rate we cannot on his ipse dixit accept it
as a ready-made solution of the difficulties of modern
thought. His doctrine of predestination was a novelty
in the Church, and as such was regarded with strong sus
picion. Even in his own days John Cassian of Marseilles,
and Faustus, bishop of Riez in Provence, set aside the ex
treme teaching of St. Augustine in favour of a more rational
account of the relation of Grace and Free Will to Original
Sin. Their semi- Pelagianism, though formally rejected by
the council of Orange (529), was, however, the doctrine
which prevailed long before Trent, and which, through the
discredit of Calvinism, is now dominant. But neither this
nor other departures from his dogmas touch his real great
ness. " It is easy to show that in every single objectionable
theory formulated by Augustine there lives a true phase
of Christian self-criticism." 2 " Old controversies return,
1 To the present writer Traducianism seems logically to lead to the
Deistic notion of God starting a series to which He was once related, but
which now runs on by its own laws or caprice.
2 Harnack, H.D. v. p. 221.

v.] ST. AUGUSTINE 127
but in new forms ; yet the way which he pursued in his
search for truth is open to us too ; it is still the path of
faith that leads to knowledge." J With Augustine, as
with every true thinker, ' the fear of the Lord was the
beginning of wisdom.'
1 Cunningham, op. cit. p. 9 ; Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis was Austin's
motto. Cf. infra, p. 186.

128 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.

CHAPTER VI
THE DARK AGES
Argument
§ I. Gregory the Great — His importance — The character
of medieval theology — Its unity — Individual judg
ment rarely effective — The divisions of medieval
thought  pp. 129-133
§ II. The Dark Ages and the barbarians — Intellectual
equipment of — Boethius — The Trivium and Quad-
riviwn — Gregory on the teaching of grammar — The
disasters for theology of this loss of culture — The
rise of thepenitential system — Its evils — Medieval
developments — Gregory's doctrine of penance and
Atonement  pp. 133-139
§ III. Irish culture — Charles the Great — Intellectual
activity of his court — Charles's independence —
Claudius of Turin — Agobard of Lyons — The addi
tion of the Filioque to the Creed — Origin and history
of the clause — The schism of East and West —
The arguments of Anselm .... pp. 139-144
§ IV. Adoptionism — Materialised theories of the Eucharist
— Paschasius Radbert — Ratram — Gottschalk and
predestination  pp. 145-150
§ V. John the Scot — His opposition to Gottschalk — His
Be Divisions Naturae — His translation of Dio
nysius the Areopagite— The importance of this
work — Analysis of its contents . . -pp. 150-159

vi.] THE DARK AGES 129

Medieval thought begins with pope St. Gregory the Great
(590-604). He is the connecting link between the ancient
and the medieval period, the last of the Fathers and the
first of the Schoolmen. Various events tended to bestow
upon Gregory this mediating position. He marks in more
ways than one the beginning of a new era. In the year
before he ascended the papal throne Spain renounced her
Arianism at the councU of Toledo, and proclaimed her
return to the Roman unity. In the West the old Roman
Emphe had passed away, whUe the onset of the barbarians
had for the moment ceased. The first monk to become a
pope, Gregory was also the first of the popes to turn to the
new races in the West to restore to Rome her lost emphe.
By his writings, his zeal, his fame for sanctity, his quick
ness to grasp opportunity, and his administrative wisdom,
Gregory succeeded in making effective in the West the
primacy of his see. Through the bloodless weapons of his
missionaries lawless countries bowed before the supremacy
of the new Caesars. IUyricum, Gaul, Spain, and Africa
acknowledged his metropohtan claims ; whUe Italy, swept
by the Lombards, recognised in Rome her head in temporal
as well as spiritual matters. On the firm foundations thus
laid by Gregory the life of Western Europe was established
anew. The Innocents and HUdebrands of later centuries
but carried out with greater detail the principles which we
find in germ in Gregory.
In Gregory's administrative reconstructions the ruling
idea is not new. It was the reversion in a new form to
the old conception of the Roman Empire. The formal
I

130 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
inauguration of the Holy Roman Emphe, by the coronation
of Charles the Great on Christmas Day 800, was but the
consummation of Gregory's efforts to secure continuity
with the past. Equally lacking in aU claims to originality
was his theology. What Gregory did was not to develop
new ideas so much as to introduce the old creeds and faiths
to the barbarian races conquered by the Church, in a form
adapted to their crude intelligence. In all his writings, how
ever naive, we discern the practical administrator, more
anxious for the accommodation of thought to immediate
need than for its purity and truth. As his Dialogues
show, no superstition is too gross if only its acceptance
served in the taming of barbarian tempers. His theo
logy and thought are a debased Augustinianism, but as
such it was so perfectly adapted to its environment that
for centuries Gregory was looked up to by the Western
world as the wisest of the fathers, more read even than
St. Augustine himself. If to-day we are tempted to wonder
at this success, it is because we forget his practical work.
Gregory's doctrine fitted his practice of Church government
as perfectly as hand and glove ; the two became one.
| This administrative character of medieval theology was
[in reahty the effect of a change in thought itself, or rather
was due to the complete development of the ideas of the
Latin world. The restless intellectual activity, both
within and without the Church, which led the great fathers
to formulate the doctrines of the Church, had been suc
ceeded by a period of stagnation. The investigation
of doctrine, the attempt to reconcile dogma with mental
needs, was no longer the predominant question. Doctrine
was a sacred deposit, handed down from the fathers, to
be transmitted unimpaired to the new nations. Of this
inheritance the guardians were the Roman hierarchy, the
Church alone its recognised interpreter. As, moreover,
the content of dogma was fixed and complete, the field of
inquiry was limited to the giving precision and harmony

vi.] THE DARK AGES 131
to the accepted doctrines. The attempt, as we shall see,
was not always successful. Interpretation of the old often
passed, by unconscious gradations, into the promulgation
of the new. Nevertheless, for nearly a thousand years
the attempt at restriction was made. There were, no
doubt, certain intrusive elements, the influence of the
Saracens, and the like. But these chiefly manifested
themselves in the formation of diverse heresies of limited
extent and influence.
Thus, speaking broadly, the first characteristic of medieval
thought is its essential unity. Differences rarely touched
the deeper centres ; for at bottom the diverse schools,
however apparently opposed, were fundamentally one.
Viewed from the standpoint of a more divided age, the
matters which separated Gerson from Hus, to take a noted
illustration of antagonism, were as nothing compared with
the doctrines in which they were agreed. Here and there
the unity of the Middle Ages was broken, but such breach
was generally pohtical rather than theological or philo
sophical. This unity of medieval thought must not be misunder
stood or exaggerated. There never was a time in the Middle
Ages when men were so cramped by dogmatic system that
there was no room left for individual opinion. On the con
trary, the student of medieval thought is often surprised at
its freedom. But, as a rule — for the exceptions rarely
exerted any wide or lasting influence — this liberty of in
dividual judgment always adjusted itself in the last resort
to certain fundamental positions of the Church ; though
the method of adjustment is often violent, involving
contradiction between the actual and the assumed premises.
But for our present purpose it is of importance to notice
that the attempt at reconciliation is always there ; the
contradictions so famUiar to-day did not exist ; or rather,
where they existed, they speedily disappeared, logically
or otherwise, in the all-pervading consciousness of ultimate

132 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
unity. Friction between theology and science could not
be permanent, for theology, as in the story of the conflict
between the rods of Moses and those of the Egyptian
magicians, swallowed up the rest.
But though medieval thought was thus a unity in itself,
to a degree utterly unknown either in the Roman world
or in the world since the Reformation, it nevertheless
possessed well-defined periods. These were determined, as
is natural where the chief question is one of authoritative
interpretation, by the discovery or promulgation of certain
recognised text-books. The importance of text-books for
the medieval mind cannot be exaggerated. The influence
of Gratian's Decretum, or of Peter Lombard's Sentences,
may be instanced. For centuries law and divinity centred
itself round their study. But the authoritative text
books, par excellence, were to be found in the works of
Aristotle. It is by its relation to these that the periods of
medieval thought may best be defined. In the first period,
which closes with St. Bernard, the works of Aristotle were
known only in misleading and partial Latin versions. In
the second period fuller and more accurate translations
were introduced from the East to the Western world, and
were made the basis of a vast superstructure of Christian
theology. In the third period, which begins in the four
teenth century, the growing knowledge of letters made it
impossible that men should remain satisfied with the con
fined outlook of the past, or with the narrow philosophical
foundations upon which the current thought rested.
As is usually the case, the transition from the one period
to the other was by no means abrupt, though each was
marked by certain well-defined characteristics. In the
first period, in spite of its general barrenness, we find in
unexpected quarters considerable originality of thought,
and the emphasis of the value of individual opinion. In
the second period the appeal to an authoritative text
book was often attended with intellectual disaster, and the

vi.] THE DARK AGES 133
restriction of hberty. The third period, at any rate in its
fruition, scarcely falls within our scope, though the reader
should always remember that the revival of Greek letters
and the rise of the new intellectual spirit considerably ante
dated the Reformation, and only in the early years of the
sixteenth century became part of a great religious move
ment. n
The first period, often known as the Dark Ages, covers
the centuries from the fall of the Western Empire to the
discovery of Aristotle. Outwardly it was a period of stress
and strain, the upheaval of a world already broken in
pieces. Successive flights of barbarians — Saxons, Huns,
Northmen, and the like, each one no sooner settled and
comparatively civilised than overwhelmed in its turn by
some new invasion — led to the destruction of such little
culture as had survived the fall of the Emphe. Viewed
from within, the period was marked by superstition and
terror. Amid the chaos of society men found in these the
groundwork of authority, and the main element of order.
Without and within alike the Church was fighting a des
perate battle. At times she nearly succumbed, and it
is undeniable that she degenerated in the contest and
absorbed some of the surrounding barbarism.
The student would do well to realise the intellectual
equipment with which Western theologians in the Dark
Ages advanced to their task. Of the great inheritance of
classical culture little had survived ; of the thoughts of
Hellas almost none. Such secular knowledge as remained
was represented by the well-known division of the seven
arts into the elementary Trivium (Grammar, Rhetoric,
Dialectics), and the more advanced Quadrivium (Music,
Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy). The text-books in
use were two in number, Boethius and Cassiodorus — for the
Satyricon of Martianus Capella, often mentioned as the

134 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
third, was really a grotesque allegory. Of the two the
most valuable was that of Boethius, a writer in the early
years of the sixth century, probably the author of a much-
suspected treatise, De sancta Trinitate. But his importance
for later generations did not spring from his theological
beliefs, but from his being the chief means whereby such
scanty knowledge of Aristotle as modified his Platonism
had been preserved to the Western world. In his famous
De Consolatione Philosophiae we have the source to which,
for the most part, the scholars of the Dark Ages turned for
their knowledge of classical culture.
Little, however, of real value had been saved. The gold
of past culture as distinct from strictly dogmatic or exe
getical science had sunk ; it was only the lighter rubbish
that had floated down the stream of time. Even in
Boethius there is of the Quadrivium but the scantiest
outline ; the real secular education of the period was con
fined to the Trivium. Under grammar were included not
only the technical rules of Priscian and Donatus, but also
the few survivals from the wreck of pagan culture, though
the study of these was hindered by a lurking uneasiness
of conscience in the teacher. Vergil and Cicero were
pagans ; Vergil, in fact, a great magician who had fled from
Rome to Naples, and enriched that city with his black art.
The study of such writers was often regarded as like unto
the sin of Achan. Even so enlightened a statesman as
Gregory the Great had written to Desiderius of Vienne to
condemn his teaching of grammar and the reading of the
poets : ' A report has reached us wliich we cannot mention
without a blush, that thou expoundest grammar to certain
friends ; whereat we are so offended and filled with scorn
that our former opinion of thee is turned to mourning and
sorrow. The same mouth singeth not the praises of Jove
and Christ. ... If, hereafter, it be clearly established
that the rumour which we have heard of thee is false, and
that thou art not applying thyself to the idle vanities of

vi.] THE DARK AGES 135
secular learning, we shall render thanks to God, who hath
not dehvered over thy heart to be defiled by the blas
phemous praises of secular men.'
The loss of classical culture was most disastrous for
medieval theology. There was nothing to save it from
itself, or to keep it in touch with the human. The result
was of necessity a pretentious dogmatism. The hardening
of aU thought into formulae was also assisted by another
influence. The knowledge of Roman law did not die with
classical culture. In the towns, especially of northern
Italy, as the history of the great law university of Bologna
shows us, a knowledge of Roman law survived the conquests
of the barbarians ; like Roman roads, aqueducts, and
bridges, it had been built too sohdly to be easily swept
away. The effect of this survival cannot be over-estimated.
We see it in the Church in two directions. The one was the
rise of Canon law, confessedly moulded upon the Roman
model. The other, more germane to our present inquiry,
was the permeation of medieval theology with forensic
ideas and their expression in forensic language. To the
effect of this survival of the Latin spirit we have already
alluded. As regards its content, so far as theology was concerned,
the inheritance transmitted to the Middle Ages by Gregory
the Great was httle better than a confused Augustinianism.
Of the great thinkers of the Greek Church, and of their
broad, comprehensive outlook upon life, the Western
Church became almost completely ignorant, save for a few
elements assimilated from Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome, and
Augustine, or from ' Dionysius the Areopagite.' Here and
there writers like Alcuin or Paschasius Radbert show their
indebtedness to Greek Christology ; but they were voices
crying in the wilderness. The scientific study of the Bible,
begun by Origen, was a lost art. Of Augustine the most
valuable element, his doctrine of grace, was practically
suppressed until the Reformation. The consequences of

136 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
this suppression manifested themselves in different forms,
the most disastrous being the system of the penitentials.
This great instrument for Christianising barbarian tempers,
the doctrinal basis of which may be found in the acts and
teaching of Ambrose, was probably in its origin the creation
of the Irish Church in its most flourishing days, and in
especial of Columban. Thence, through the English Arch
bishop Theodore of Tarsus (668-690) , the penitentials passed
into the general Church of the West. An attempt at
codification of the different systems in vogue formed part
of the reforms of Charles the Great ; this was one of the
forces upon which he relied for reducing his empire to order.
In time the older penitentials gave place to the scholastic
sacrament of penance, though many of the earlier pre
scriptions were embodied in the text-books of Gratian and
Gregory ix.
In condemnation of the principles and methods of the
whole system of the penitentials, historians and theo
logians are now substantially agreed. Nevertheless, the
student should remember the law, illustrated on every
page of ecclesiastical history, " that those beliefs or insti
tutions which seem irrational, or absurd, or unworthy of
the Christian spirit, have come into vogue in order to kill
some deeper evil, not otherwise to have been destroyed." x
The penitentials were, perhaps, necessary if the Church
was to bring the masses that had nominally passed into
the kingdom of Christ, yet remained in many respects
heathen at heart, into a working acquaintance with the
elementary laws of decency and hygiene, let alone any real
experience of religion. In the early medieval Church
baptism came first — ofttimes the baptism of whole races
received as they were into the Church of the Empire which
they had conquered ; training and discipline must needs
follow. Penance, to adopt for this system of discipline the
familiar title nowadays somewhat restricted in its appli-
1 Allen, Christian Institutions, p. 408.

vi.] THE DARK AGES 137
cation, was thus no mere creation of sacerdotalism, but to
some extent a response to popular needs, the outcome of
the barbarian invasions. In the decaying Roman world
no state, save the Church, was strong enough, or civilised
enough, to enforce obedience to moral law, or hold down
the usages and reminiscences of heathenism.
The punishments of the Church were at first limited to
those sanctioned by the pains and fears of the wounded
conscience, and the humUiation which public confession
involved. Unfortunately the Latin Church, in which the
feeling of the legal relationship of the individual to the
Church was always prominent, soon yielded to the Teutonic
custom of commuting misdeeds by a money payment, or
by means of substitutes, combining with the custom Roman
systematic legal codification. Hence the opening of the
door to the abuses of indulgences, not the least of which
was its mercantile scale. Thus the deepening of the con
ception of sin, which the system at first effected, degener
ated later into the stupefying readiness with which men
acknowledged themselves to be sinners.
The other evils of the system have often been expounded,
and are sufficiently familiar. The student of ethics will
point out the tendency — always natural to the Roman spirit
— to stiffen all morality into legal restrictions, and to con
found the inner law with the regulations of the Church.
The theologian will dweU on the result in making sin some
thing arbitrary and external to the soul, and the Atonement,
in consequence, arbitrary also, a matter to be effected by
constant haggling and bargaining over the degree of sin,
or its classification, and the value of merit. This last idea,
the origins of which we find in Tertullian and Ambrose,
developed into the doctrine of the common treasury of
merit, out of whose inexhaustible store the Pope, as the
vicar of God, could dispense to the spiritually destitute.
This doctrine, first suggested by the English doctor,
Alexander of Hales (fl245), and perfected by Thomas

138 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
Aquinas, was really the logical development of the idea,
incorporated by Gallic influence into the Roman symbol in
the fifth century, of the ' communion of saints ' ! The
Church triumphant was one ' family ' or ' clan ' with the
Church on earth, and therefore, in accordance with the
common Teutonic idea, could equally discharge the debt
of any member of the clan. The result was inevitable.
The priest who could release from the punishment of sin
on earth (for to this, officially speaking, the system alone
had reference), or whose prayers had power with God in
the mysterious other world of retribution, took the place
of the Christ who could purify the heart. The Pope and
not the Holy Spirit became the administrator of mercy
and pardon. The human race became afraid of dealing
directly with God, and sacerdotalism won its long triumph.
When AbaUard laid down the principle that the essence
of sin lay in the motive, he was condemned ; such teaching
was a blow at the dominion of the Church. When Dante
proclaimed in his Divine Comedy that hell, purgatory, and
heaven correspond to an inward condition of the soul,
men heeded not, the mystics apart, the voice crying in the
wilderness. Religious consciousness had handed over to
the successors of St. Peter not only supremacy on earth,
but an actual dominion over vast circles of the unseen
world. The doctrine of penance underlying the penitential
system was supplied by Gregory. In penance four points
were included : perception of sin, and ' contrition ' — these
two may be considered as one — ' conversion,' ' confession,'
and ' satisfaction ' ; and the greatest of these was ' satis
faction.* The consequences of this exaggeration of ' satis
faction ' were writ large in more ways than in a theory of
the Atonement. The historical Jesus became almost wholly
identified with the suffering Saviour ; the Gospel of the
Incarnation was lost in the suggestion of the physical
agonies of Calvary ; the Fatherhood of God became an

vi.] THE DARK AGES 139
almost unknown idea, hidden especially by the universal
belief in the need for the intercession of Virgin and saints.
To Gregory's theory of the Atonement as a deception of
the devU we have already referred. In all his expositions
of the work of the Redeemer, " Christ's death and penance
appear side by side as two factors of equal value." x Sins
of a lower grade may be atoned for, and the soul purified
in the fires of purgatory. The rites and sacraments of the
Church are the channel of salvation. The Atonement, in
fact, becomes so completely external in character that
Gregory frankly owns that the death of Christ was not
absolutely necessary. An arbitrary fiat would have done
as weU, more especially as Gregory Umits down the elect
to the number needed to supply the place of the fallen
angels. One other matter demands attention because of
later conflicts. As regards images of saints, Gregory
favoured the popular custom : ' The picture is used in
churches that those who are ignorant of letters may, at
least, read by seeing upon the walls what they cannot read
in books.' m
The two centuries from Gregory to Charles the Great,
though of great importance for the historian, were almost
sterile in their contributions to thought. Such authorship
as existed took the form rather of abridgments from the
Fathers, e.g. the Sentences of Isidore of Seville (f636) . Only
among the Irish — or rather, to give them their proper name,
the Scots — whether in Ireland or in their numerous mission
centres in every part of the Continent, was there any true
inteUectual activity. Before the inroad of the Danes,
Ireland was the university both of northern England and
of the kingdom of the Franks. The monasteries founded
by its missionaries from the Atlantic to the Apennines —
lona, Melrose, LuxeuU, Fulda, St. Gallen, Reichenau and
» Harnack, H.D. i. p. 265.

140 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
Bobbio, may be cited as Ulustrations — were the libraries
and schools of whole kingdoms.
From Ireland the literary life passed to England. Aid-
helm at Malmesbury, Benedict Biscop at Wearmouth, Bede
at Jarrow, Alcuin at York, carried on the work of the Scots,
combining the current which flowed eastward from Ireland
with that which came westward through Theodore of
Tarsus, Benedict Biscop, and others from Rome and even
Greece. For a few years the surviving culture of East and
West converged to the court of Charles the Great, so that,
in the words of his biographer, ' the dark expanse of the
kingdom entrusted to him by God was filled with the new
radiance of all science.' The old temper which regarded
religion and culture as irreconcilable enemies, an instance
of which we have seen in Gregory, passed into an anxiety,
to which in 826 the Church gave official sanction, ' to search
out masters and doctors who should teach the study of
letters and learned arts.' The Carlovingian reforms,
especially of the monastic institutions, for instance the
canons established by Chrodegang of Metz (760), all bear
witness to the anxiety of Charles to promote education and
to establish schools. In collegiate churches the first duty
of the chancellor or dean was either to be himself a school
master or else provide a substitute.
The educational work of Charles did not last ; it was
submerged in the general deluge which followed his death,
and finally swept away by the new invasion of the North
men. But the impulse given by the intellectual activity
of Charles's reign manifested itself in the ninth century in
a remarkable outburst of criticism, both philosophical and
theological. To this freedom of thought, no doubt, the
welter of the age contributed. The intellectual ferment
was no longer checked by the watchfulness of Charles the
Great, the vigilant organiser of social and political order
whether in Church or State.
But Charles had himself contributed to the ferment of the

vi.] THE DARK AGES 141
day by his own independence. In the Caroline Books,
written at his instigation and sanctioned by him, we find
the author — whether Alcuin or not is uncertain — quoting
certain wrongs as ' aUowed rather by the ambition of Rome
than sanctioned by apostolic tradition.' At the councU
of Frankfurt (794), in spite of the opposition of Pope
Hadrian I., Charles succeeded in procuring the rejection of
the decrees passed by the Eastern Church at the council of
Nicaea (787), that images of the Saviour, of the Virgin, and
of angels and saints should be set up in the churches and
given their due worship {n-poo-Kvvgo-is, not Xarpeia). A synod
at Paris under Lewis the Pius (825) was even more em
phatic in its condemnation of superstition.
The controversy thus begun by Charles was carried on
after his death by a Spaniard, Claudius, bishop of Turin
(f839). In his warfare with the gross materialised Chris
tianity of the age, Claudius condemned in unsparing terms
the belief in the mediation of saints, the efficacy of pil
grimages, the authority of Rome. He forbade throughout
his diocese the observance of saints' days, and called,
though in vain, for the destruction of all images and
pictures. The worship of the images of saints seemed to
him but a new form of the old worship of demons. ' Why
dost thou humble thyself and bow down to false images ?
Why bend thy body, a slave before vain likenesses ? God
made thee erect, thy face is raised towards Him. Thither
look, therefore ; seek God above.' He quotes with -ap
proval the argument of the Apostle : ' Though we have
known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we
Him no more ' ; and carried it on to revolutionary con
clusions of his own. ' You worship,' he writes, ' all wood
formed after the manner of a cross because for six hours
Christ hung on a Cross. Worship then all virgins, because
a virgin bore Him ; old rags, for He was swaddled in
them ; asses, for He rode thereon.' As for the papacy,
the authority of St. Peter ceased with his death, and is

142 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
possessed by his successors only in so far as they imitate
his hfe.
Claudius, protected by the Emperor Lewis, died in peace,
in spite of his condemnation by an assembly of clerics — ' a
councU of asses,' as he called them. Too much importance
must not be attached to his outspoken utterances. In his
extremer opinions, especially as regards the invocation of
saints, he stood almost alone. But in his fight against cur
rent superstition he was supported by another Spaniard,
Agobard, archbishop of Lyons (f840). Agobard was
an abler man, of more statesmanlike spirit, and of more
commanding influence, who not only attacked images
and the like, but popular customs, such as the ordeal by
fire or water, and the wager of battle, to which even theo
logians like Hincmar had assigned a sacramental value.
How modern is his spirit is seen in his rebuke of Fredigis,
abbot of Tours, for the ' absurdity ' of holding that the
words of Scripture are inspired ; its sense is no doubt
divine, but its form is human.
Another of the Caroline controversies — the addition of
the Filioque to the Nicene Creed, in spite of the opposition
of the East — has produced more lasting results. The
clause came to the Frankish theologians from Spain, whose
Church had been involved in a struggle with the Gnosticism
of PrisciUian, and with the militant Arianism of its Visi-
gothic invaders. The struggle resulted, as is so often the
case, in the hardening of dogma by the conquerors. The
opposition to Arianism expressed itself in the claim — an
implicit but logical consequence, as Augustine pointed out,
of the unity of the Godhead — that the Holy Spirit held
to the Son a relation in no whit diverse from that which He
held to the Father. In 447 Bishop Turibius of Astorga
received from Pope Leo the Great the sanction of this
doctrine, which is also mentioned in a confession of faith
given that same year by a synod at Toledo. When in 589
King Reccared and his subjects abjured Arianism, the

vi.] THE DARK AGES 143
Spanish bishops presented to him a creed with the words
' et Filio ' added, in spite of the prohibition of the council
of Chalcedon against any innovation. From Spain the
addition made its way to southern Gaul, and was there
incorporated into the symbol now known as the Athanasian
Creed. This symbol, probably composite in character
and Frankish in origin, took its present shape certainly not
earher than the sixth century, possibly a little later.1 In
680 the clause was accepted in England by Theodore of
Tarsus at the synod of Hatfield. In 781 the seventh
Ecumenical Council (the second of Nicaea), under the lead
of the patriarch Tarasius, approved of the Greek formula,
the procession from the Father through the Son (I* rov
Uarpbs Siot rovYtov), and Pope Hadrian i. had not challenged
the decision. But in 809 the theologians of the court of
Charles formally requested that the Western formula
Filioque should be incorporated in the Creed. With his
usual independence, Charles had already introduced the
clause into the symbol as chanted in the imperial chapel
at Aachen. But in spite of the pressure of the Franks,
Hadrian's successor, Leo m., though assenting to the doc
trine, was too cautious to estrange the Eastern Church by
any official pronouncement. Even as late as 880 the papal
legate at Constantinople still subscribed to the older form
of the Nicene symbol, nor is it known how or when the
clause was formally admitted by Rome.
The date and manner are of little consequence; the effects
were the same, though the final catastrophe arose from the
personal ambition and violence of one man. In 857 the
supple Photius supplanted the austere Ignatius as patri
arch of Constantinople, and appealed to Pope Nicholas I,
for recognition. On hearing of the enormities by which
Photius had procured his elevation, Nicholas excommuni
cated him (865). Photius met the anathema with arraign
ing the Roman Church for heresy and schism, especiaUy by
1 Harnack, H.D. iv. p. 134 ff. See also supra, p. 71.

144 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
the insertion of the Filioque in the Nicene symbol. In
879 a synod of Constantinople, under the presidency of
Photius, launched anathemas against all who should coun
tenance this addition. The revolt of the Eastern Church
culminated in the definite schism in 1054 under the patri
arch Michael Caerularius. As one result of the Crusades,
attempts were made to bring East and West together once
more, and at a council at Bari (1098) the Greek bishops
tried to reopen the question. On behalf of the Western
Church, the dispute was taken up by Anselm in his De
Processione Spiritus Sancti. The unity of the Godhead,
Anselm maintained, demands that whatever is predicable
of God, as such, must also be predicable of the Three
Persons, save so far as their individual characteristics may
prevent. Either then the Son, if begotten of the Father, is
also begotten of the Holy Spirit, or else in proceeding from
the Father the Spirit proceeds also from the Son. As the
first assumption must be dismissed, we are driven back
upon the second, and thus secure the procession from
the unity of the Godhead. The procession is not from
the Father and Son as distinct persons, as in the
Greek doctrine, but from one God who is both Father
and Son.
The logic of Anselm, though formally correct, was of no
avail. Deeper forces than theology kept East and West
apart. Twice did the Eastern Church acknowledge, or
appear to acknowledge, the validity of the Western ad
dition ; once on its definition by Clement rv. at the second
council of Lyons (1274) ; again in 1439 at Florence.
Nevertheless, the two churches are still apart, and, so far as
can be foreseen, there is no likelihood of their being brought
together except indeed by the operations of that same
Holy Spirit over the technical definition of whose ' proces
sion ' they have split asunder.

vi.] THE DARK AGES 145
IV
From this survey of the great controversy begun or
accentuated by the action of Charles the Great we must
return to another, to which the title of Adoptionism has
been given from its chief position, ' the Son adoptive in His
humanity but not in His divinity.' This heresy was by no
means new. We have already pointed out its existence
in the Shepherd of Hermas, in Ebionite writings, in Theodore
of Mopsuestia, and in Nestorius.1 Latin translations of
the works of Theodore in all probability were carried to
Spain. In the eighth century these gave rise to Adoption
ism, strictly so-called, assisted, possibly, by the tendency
of the Mohammedan rulers of Spain and of the East to
patronise Nestorian rather than orthodox Christians, in
this foUowing the example of Mohammed himself.
The heresy in its Spanish form arose with Elipandus,
archbishop of Toledo (c. 780), but was more clearly taught
by his younger aUy, Felix, bishop of Urgel, the charm of
whose character was acknowledged by his opponent,
Alcuin of York. In his teaching we find the emphasis of
the reahty of the human nature of Jesus, with all its limi
tations, including the defilement of the FaU. The raising
of this human nature (assumptio hominis) to the divine,
EUpandus and Felix caUed ' adoption,' from a word in
common use in the Mozarabic liturgy. The Son of Man,
urged Felix, has two births : a natural birth of the Virgin ;
a spiritual birth by ' adoption,' begun in His Baptism,
completed by the Resurrection. Thus the Son of Man
became the Son of God not by nature but by grace. The
unity of the Son of God and the Son of Man was preserved
by the ego of the Son of God being the true ego of the Son
of Man. Nevertheless, Adoptionism " ultimately imphes
the independence and Juxtaposition of two personal beings
moving in parallel lines, but never really united." 2 When
i See supra, pp. 75, 76. ' Ottley, op. cit. ii. p. 160,
K

146 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
Felix was summoned before the councU of Regensburg
(792), Charles the Great deemed his defence unsuccessful,
and sent him to Rome. There he signed a recantation ;
but this, on his return to Urgel, he recanted, and fled to
Toledo to the Saracens. On the appeal of Elipandus that
Felix should be reinstated, Charles summoned a council
at Frankfurt (794). After much discussion, in which
Alcuin took part, Felix made a fresh recantation. He
was received back into the Church at Aachen (799), but
detained at Lyons for the rest of his days. After his death
Agobard published certain of his papers, which showed that
his recantation had been far from complete. Adoptionism
itself speedily perished. This was inevitable, for its main
idea of the natural body of Jesus was in vital conflict with
the prevailing Eucharistic conceptions, in which the body of
Christ was regarded as the mystic omnipresent Host, the
principle of eternal hfe. Even if the conception had been
more logical and orthodox, even if it had won greater
approval from theologians, popular sentiment would have
decreed its doom. In passing we may note that, since the
suppression of Adoptionism, Spain has contributed nothing
to Christian thought, unless we count the transformation
by the Jesuits of religion into military obedience.
The Caroline age is speciaUy notable for the hardening
of the doctrine of the Eucharist. The belief in the real
presence of the King of Kings in the consecrated wafer, and
in the power mysteriously given by the imposition of hands
to the lowest priest to work this stupendous miracle, had
overawed and tamed the rudest barbarians. Whatever
be its theological truth, it must be confessed that the
medieval doctrine of the Sacrament had accomplished
wonders for civilisation where a more spiritual conception
might have failed. Now the Middle Ages were powerless
to realise an idea without turning it into the concrete. Of
Christ and the saints they must have visible images. By
a sort of logical inversion they went one step further.

vi.J THE DARK AGES 147
Where the image was, there was the spirit ; thus the image
became the vehicle of grace, possessing not only sanctity
but hfe, while the spiritual, on the contrary, was constantly
assuming form and colour. To the most subtle spiritual
influences the medieval mind would have applied literally
the words of St. John : ' That which we have seen with our
eyes and our hands have handled.' Equally real, on the
other hand, was the conviction that the material was but
the veU or covering of the spiritual. That the spiritual
could be apprehended by the senses was an axiom of faith,
as also the belief that the senses alone could never exhaust
or even understand the spiritual meanings of the material.
As yet men had not attempted to compress into defi
nitions and syUogisms the supreme mystery of their faith.
But in 844 Paschasius Radbert, a monk of New Corvey,
brought out a monograph on the Sacrament of the Body and
Blood of Christ, which marks an era in the development of
doctrine. Radbert, a learned and constructive theologian,
familiar with Greek theology and Augustinianism, at
tempted to put the current faith upon a more philosophical
basis. He starts with claiming that faith is always related
to the invisible ; the believer must ever withdraw into the
invisible world. For the unbeliever the virtus sacramenti
does not exist ; Christ's flesh cannot be eaten except
through faith. But for the believer Christ's flesh is the
nourishment of both soul and body for immortality, our
flesh being renewed by it into corruption. Up to this
point there is nothing in the views of Radbert to distin
guish his teaching from that of St. Augustine or John
of Damascus. His importance lies in his introduction of
the idea, though not the name, of transubstantianism.1
Though the sensuous appearances remain unchanged, the
bread becomes the veritable Body of Christ. The sensuous
i The word transubstantiation seems to have been first casually used by
Hildebert of Tours at the beginning of the twelfth century. See Migne,
P. L. clxxi. p. 776.

148 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
appearances thus become the symbols of a spiritual essence
or reahty, to the apprehension of which faith alone can
rise. Thus Radbert unites the Augustinian emphasis of
faith with the Greek conception of the reahty prior to all
faith. Radbert owns that his theory involves the constant
repetition by God of a stupendous miracle. But to the men
of his age the miraculous was the commonest occurrence
of daily life, a necessary result from their conception of
God's will as absolutely arbitrary and without law — the
miraculous and the arbitrary are always connected.
Radbert was opposed by Ratram and Rabanus Maurus.
To the question of Charles the Bald whether the Body
and Blood of Christ were actually received in the mouth
of communicants, Ratram replied in a work that was
at an early date ascribed to John the Scot. He main
tained that the wafer was the memorial of the spiritual
body existing under the veil of the material ; that which
lies on the altar was not the historical body of Christ, but
only the mystery of the body, an interpretation that is even
more strikingly expressed by John the Scot in his exposition
of ' Dionysius.' But on inquiry as to what then the behever
actually receives, we find that the question is left un
answered, or rather is wrapped up in undefined, even contra
dictory, statements that at times remind us of Zwingli, at
other times come close to Radbert. One thing alone is
clear, the emphasis that Ratram, and even more strikingly
John the Scot, would lay upon faith. If in this Ratram
coincides with Radbert, he differed from him in his refusal
to look upon the Eucharist as a constant mhacle against
nature, instead of being in harmony with the spiritual
world behind the phenomenal.
The fact that Radbert left most questions unsolved, or
even untouched, in nowise lessened his influence. He had
opened up, or rather expressed dogmatically, views which
coincided with popular belief and desire, while his unsolved
difficulties allured the thought of generations of students.

vi.] THE DARK AGES 149
By the doctrine of transubstantiation the medieval doc
trine of the Mass became firmly established, both as a
popular institution and as a fundamental theory of the
schools. To the developments that the doctrine assumed
later we shall return.
The ferment of the times is also seen in Gottschalk's
revival of an unconditional doctrine of predestination.
Gottschalk, a monk of Orbais in the province of Rheims,
condemned, against his desire, to the monasticism into which
he had been forced as a child, taught the doctrine, which he
claimed to have found in St. Augustine, of the predestina
tion of both the wicked and the good. But the growth of
the sacerdotal system in the medieval Church made this
extreme form of the doctrine of predestination an impossi
bility. For if saint and sinner were already predestinated,
of what use were the intercessions of saints, or even the
Eucharistic sacrifice ? For if all is immutable decree, there
is neither need nor logic in prayer, penance, or worship.
These things are but the idle beatings of the wings against
the prison bars. The Eucharist itself becomes powerless,
as Gottschalk owned, ' for those who perish.'
Such a doctrine, as its later developments in Geneva
show, inevitably struck at the power of the priest. The
extremer Augustinian doctrine thus revived by Gottschalk
was therefore rejected by the Latin Church, not because of
the inhumanity which such a doctrine appears to the present
age to possess — squeamishness on that head was still far
distant — nor even because its ultimate issue was to make
the hfe and atonement of Jesus, at best, a work of super
erogation, but in the interests of its priestly orders. Con
sciously or unconsciously medieval theologians were driven
to the limitation of election to the good ; in the case of the
wicked election became foreknowledge only. But when
his opponents, chief of whom were Rabanus Maurus and
Hincmar of Rheims, founded their doctrine of the election
of the saved on the divine prescience of their ' right use of

150 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
grace,' they overlooked the fact that in his extreme anti-
Pelagianism Augustine had really cut away any logical
basis for ' right use of grace.' LogicaUy or not, semi-
Pelagianism was necessary for a sacerdotal sacramental
church, as, in fact, Gregory the Great had already seen.
So, first at the councU of Mainz (848), then at the synod
of Quierzy (849), Gottschalk was condemned, cruelly
scourged, and imprisoned until his death (869) in the
monastery of HautvUhers. But the controversy which he
had revived touched issues too vital for the life and thought
of the Church, to be thus easily quashed.

Among the opponents of Gottschalk was one of the most
remarkable thinkers of the Middle Ages, or for that matter
of any age, John Scotus Erigena,1 the last representative
of the Greek spirit in the West, and one of the earliest torch-
bearers in the long hne of Christian mystics. In the final
words of his chief work John the Scot tells us all that we
really know of his life : ' Nothing else is to be desired except
the joy that comes from truth ; nothing is to be shunned
except its absence.' Somewhere about the year 847 John
the Scot drifted from Ireland, and settled at the court of
that patron of scholars, Charles the Bald. His opposition
to Gottschalk's predestination sprang from a bold develop
ment of his Neoplatonic ontology. In his tract, De Pre-
destinatione (851), written at the instance of Hincmar,
John claimed that true religion and true phUosophy are
identical. True phUosophy rests on the basis of the unity
of God, ' who is the totality of all things which are and
which are not, which can and which cannot be.' To con
ceive of predestination to evil is thus to conceive a duality
1 I have kept the common, but less accurate, name of Erigena instead of
Eriugena, ' the Erinborn.' As Dr. Poole has pointed out, Erinn, less
accurately Erin, is the dative case of Eriu, the old name for Ireland. The
dative has supplanted the nominative.

vi.] THE DARK AGES 151
in the divine nature, or of some power above God deter
mining His will. But the will of God is absolutely free ;
and man, as created in His image, must possess the same
freedom. Sin is simply the negation of good, i.e. of ' being,'
for Erigena claims that there can be no ' being ' without
' goodness.' Its punishment is not imposed from without,
but is the inner necessity or nemesis of sin itself, the con
sciousness of lacking good. ' The loss of Christ is the
torment of the whole creation, nor do I think that there is
any other.' But as all things proceed from good, so in
good must they all be reabsorbed. Sin exists merely in
time, and can have no material punishment in the eternal.
The views of John the Scot, when they depart from the
teaching of Augustine, were naturally too daring for an age
that cared httle or nothing for phUosophy. At the synod
of Valence (855) they were condemned as ' Scot's porridge,'
and the abjuration of his ' barbarous barking ' was repeated
at the synodof Langres (859). Both synods also showed their
sympathy with Gottschalk by reaffirming the double predes
tination, though careful to avoid the question whether or
not God wiUed to save all men. That they were conscious of
the contradiction thus involved between the creed and life
of the Church is seen in their further contention that in the
Sacraments of the Church * nothing is futile or delusive.'
Erigena's activity was by no means limited to this
controversy. In his important work, originally written
in Greek, but translated into Latin under the title De
Divisione Naturae, John the Scot unfolds a system of Neo-
platonic mysticism, in which we mark his indebtedness
to his study of 'Dionysius.' The supreme nature, he holds,
is absolute, and cannot be described by any categories.
In this sense God is 'nihUum,' and can only be expressed by
alternate affirmation and negation — this method is, in fact,
the keynote of all John's phUosophy, and the solution of
many of his difficulties — and manifests itself in a series
of ' theophanies,' of which the number is as many as the

152 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
number of saintly souls. From this it foUows that the
universe is an eternal divine procession, the reality of which
is found in the Divine Ideas. Creation is the necessary
self-reahsation of God, the passage from the eternal ideas to
their appearances under the mental conditions of time and
space. As such it finds its meeting-place in the twofold
nature of Christ, whose incarnation is the expression of the
eternal connection of the ideal and the real, of the immanent
relation of God and the world, ' the visible and the in
visible.' 1 By this supreme ' theophany ' the whole ani
mated creation ' is restored and recalled to unspeakable.
unity, now in hope, hereafter in fact.' ' Everything shall
return into God as air into light.' Such ' restoration ' is
not difficult, for matter, as such, has no existence, save in
our thoughts, as the ' concourse of the accidents of being.'
Scot holds further that the notion of being existing in the
human mind is the substance of being itself — a remarkable
anticipation, foUowing St. Augustine, of the famous argu
ment of Descartes. EvU is but the accident of material
existence ; it marks the transition from the world of
thought to that of matter ; it is the ' shadow of some virtue,'
and will cease when man returns to the primal unity.
In his statement of the relation of reason and authority
John is not less daring. Authority is secondary to Reason,
to which it is related as species to genus. Reason is not
only the dweUing-place of the ' word ' of God ; it is itself
a ' theophany,' the revelation of God to man, and a sure
guide to the interpretation of the Bible. Not less emphatic
is his protest against the current conception of total de
pravity ; even in the wicked the ' natural goods,' in which
they were created, cannot be taken away. The universa
tendency is upward, ' for the divine goodness, which ever
worketh not only in the good but also in the wicked is
eternal and infinite. . . . Our nature is not fixed in evU.
It is ever moving, and serves naught else but the highest
1 Cf. John i. 3, 8 yiyovev, in airrui fwr) ty, to adopt the older punctuation.

vi.] THE DARK AGES 153
good, which is both its source and end.' The pantheistic
bias of much of Erigena's writings is perhaps exaggerated
by not paying due regard to his method of reasoning by
successive antinomies. His doctrine of the immortality of
the individual, the permanence of the spiritual self 'without
any confusion or destruction of essence,' is fatal to any
pantheistic disappearance in a ' general soul.' But in the
thirteenth century, in connection with the controversy
raised by Amalric of Bena, stress was laid on this danger
of parts of Scot's work, and the book, after being con
demned by the councU of Paris in 1209, was suppressed by
Honorius m. (1225) because of its ' abominable heresy.'
To his own generation, and to the three centuries that
followed, John the Scot was unintelligible, when not un
known. He was too much of a Greek to have any hold
upon a barbarian age. His influence, such as it was, was
due almost whoUy to his translation of the writings cur
rently attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite.
Few writers have exercised greater influence upon the
life and thought of the centuries than ' Dionysius the Areo
pagite ' ; few stories of literary pseudonym have obtained
larger acceptance. In the general desire of the various
countries to date back the foundation of their Christianity
to apostohc times, France created the myth of Dionysius,
or rather procured the acceptance of a myth already
created. Though with more plausibUity Gaul might have
claimed Mary Magdalene or Trophimus as the first to intro
duce Christianity into the Arelate, it preferred, possibly
by the confusion of some actual but obscure hero of the
faith, to find its apostle in the Areopagite, who was buried,
according to popular tradition, in the abbey (St. Denis) to
which he had given his name. The actual date is unknown
of the writing of the bold forgery — if by this harsh modern
name and idea such common literary form of seeking
greater authority should be called — but cannot have been
earlier than the fifth century. The earliest mention of

154 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
the writings of Dionysius occurs, it would appear, in the
records of a conference held at Constantinople in 533, when
their genuineness was challenged by the Severians, a sect
of the Monophysites. ' These so-called works of the Areo
pagite,' they said, ' were unknown to CyrU and Athanasius,
and if no one of the ancients quoted them, how can you
estabhsh their truth ? ' Early in the sixth century they
were turned into Syriac by the Aristotelian physician
Sergius. In the next century they found a zealous editor
and defender in the ' confessor ' Maximus (580-662). By
the close of the ninth century, in spite of attacks, the works
of Dionysius were generally accepted as genuine by the
Greek Church.
In the Western Church, though casually referred to by
Gregory the Great, and quoted in the acts of the Lateran
Synod of 660, the writings of Dionysius were long unknown.
Occasional copies were found ; for instance, in 757 Pope
Paul I. sent the works of Dionysius to Pippin. Their in
fluence, however, was slight until in 827 the Greek Emperor,
Michael the Stammerer, sent a copy as a present to Lewis,
the son of Charles the Great. The arrival of these books
at the royal abbey of St. Denis, on the feast-day of its
sainted founder, was marked by nineteen miracles. The
translation of the Greek into Latin by John the Scot, at
the command of Charles the Bald (f860), introduced to the
Western world the teaching of Dionysius, and the sub
limity of the ' heavenly mysteries ' with which he dealt.
Erigena's translation, it is true, did not escape suspicion,
owing, probably, to the estranged relations between the
Churches of East and West, and the daring verses affixed
to the work extolling the glories of Greece at the expense
of Rome. Scot's translation was followed by two other
versions, one in the twelfth and the other in the fifteenth
century, as also by numerous commentaries, some of these
by the leading scholars of the times. Such was his influence
over Aquinas that four folio pages are needed to tabulate

vi.] THE DARK AGES 155
the references to Dionysius in his Summa. Alone of the
Schoolmen, Abailard, who identified Dionysius with the
historical bishop of Corinth, hesitated as to the genuineness
of this manifest pseudonym, the exposure of which by
Laurentius Valla was amongst the earliest results of the
Renaissance, though the printing of Grosseteste's commen
tary (1235) at Strassburg in 1503 showed the tenacity of
the old belief. But with the overthrow of the myth, that
they were the writings of an inspired apostle, the work was
forgotten. Its rediscovery is one of the results of recent
historical theology.
The student who to-day turns over the pages of Dionysius
is in danger of being misled by their wordy froth. But
beneath their wUd symbolism, concealed by their meta
physical Jargon, there is a basis of truth and the throb of
a living experience. The Dionysian writings were prob
ably composed by the Edessene school. They bear marks
of the Monophysitism that characterised so much Syrian
speculation. They also acknowledge indebtedness to
' Hierotheus,' the assumed name of a mystic monk of
Edessa, Stephen bar Sudaili, who wrote towards the close
of the fifth century, giving himself out as a convert of
St. Paul and instructor of the real Dionysius. Dionysius
gives us a phUosophy of Being, the nature of which is
indicated by his title, The Heavenly Hierarchy. Step by
step we pass by measured stages and successive manifes
tations from the Absolute to the Absolute. What we see
is but a part of a vast scheme, the visible and invisible parts
of which are strictly connected, a ' Jacob's ladder ' — the
idea is taken from Hierotheus — linking earth with heaven.
In this ascent to the One, participation in whom is a
universal condition of Being, sense-perceptions have a
sacramental value, inasmuch as even ' things inanimate '
partake of ' fellowship with the super-essential and all-
efficient Godhead.' But, above all, this communion is
shared by, this illumination bestowed on the angels — under

156 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
this Christian title, and their different orders and degrees,
the details of which are borrowed from Hierotheus, we
recognise the old system of emanations — whose nine ranks,
or stages in the ' progression ' of divine revelation, exercise
upon men a beneficent influence, which, however, may be
fatally resisted. ' To be made divine, as far as may be,
and to be made one with God, is the common end of any
hierarchy,' one means for the attaining thereof being the
Holy Eucharist, or ' the feast of the Beatific Vision.'
In the most important of his treatises, On the Divine
Names, Dionysius deals with the mystery of the One and
the Many ; with the relation of partial being to the
Absolute, of God to time and eternity, and with the pro
blem of the nature of evU. The details of his reasoning
would exceed our limits. Here and there we meet with an
answer with a strangely modern ring, as in his distinction
between time and eternity : ' Things that are are expressed
by eternity ; things which become by time.' For the most
part, however, though the Bible is the professed starting-
point, they are adaptations of Neoplatonism " slightly
sprinkled with baptismal water from a Christian font." 1
EvU, for instance, Dionysius tells us, does not exist ; ' all
things so far as they are deprived of the good are neither
good nor existent,' a necessary outcome of his Neoplatonist
position that the ' ideal ' is the only real. As Browning
puts it in his Abt Vogler :
" There shall never be one lost good ! What was shall live as
before.
The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound ;
What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good
more;
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven the perfect
round. "
Even the devils 'are called bad because of weakness in
I R. Jones, Mystical Religion, p. 110

vi.] THE DARK AGES 167
respect of their natural energy.' Every creature is good
up to the limits of its capacity. Whatever is, is only by
the inherence of His presence ; whatever becomes, becomes
by the communication of His presence. In every form of
life there is this participation in the one life. The end of
all knowledge is to rise above the conditioned, in other
words the definite, into the unconditioned and absolute.
As the ' hidden and nameless ' Absolute cannot be known,
it is only by ' love ' that this can be accomplished. As
Colet paraphrases it : ' Whoso loveth God is known of
Him. Ignorant love has a thousand times more power
than cold wisdom ' ; but the ' love ' of which Dionysius
wrote has no idea of projection out of itself — it would never
have founded a school for boys. The Atonement, as is
so customary with Neoplatonic speculations, is reduced
to the deliverance of being from the negative influences of
disorder and faUure. The conception of reconcUiation is
thus altogether absent, our Lord becomes our example
rather than a ' sacrifice for sin.' In consequence, we search
the pages of Dionysius in vain for any doctrine of grace.
The writings of Dionysius are essentially Eastern and
Greek. There is httle in them — if we leave out the one
conception of a celestial hierarchy with its antitype on
earth — that is in sympathy with the ruling Latin ideas.
With Dionysius, as with the Eastern Church of aU ages,
the highest conception of life is the solitary eremite ; its
monasticism looks to the Thebaid and not to Monte Cassino
for inspiration. Hence doctrine and the organised life of
the Church are regarded as on a lower level than mystical
experience. They only give relative knowledge. But by
experience we are brought into contact with things that
transcend mind, when by * a resistless and absolute ecstasy
from ourselves we are carried up to the super-essential
ray of the ' Divine Dark ' by casting away all, and becoming
free from aU.' Even Dionysius' treatment of the Sacra
ments, though detailed, is mystical ; there is little that

158 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
leant itself to the materialistic conceptions of the later
Latin Church. Their significance is considered to be en
tirely subjective, personal experience the primary fact in
religious life. In his doctrine of the Atonement, moreover,
there was no place for the priest. The power of binding
and loosing is dependent upon the spiritual communion of
the ministry on earth with the Spirit of God, so that what
is already bound or loosed in heaven is only disclosed on
earth. In this last we may discern the influence of the
Eastern idea of pre-existence.1
To this Greek origin and colour we must attribute no
small importance. At a time when the treasures of Greek
thought were lost to the Western world, Dionysius brought
the Latin Church into touch with a set of ideas, so foreign
to its spirit that they would, probably, have received no
lodgment, had it not been that they were protected by an
apostolic name. Their place in medieval thought may,
therefore, be likened to the faults and flaws in some geo
logical contour ; they are evidences of forces long since
extinct, the visible memorials of which are now intruded
into alien strata. In Dionysius we have the link that con
nects the medieval world with Proclus, Plotinus, and other
Greek thinkers, whom the medieval Church, if only it had
known them, would have excommunicated or burnt. To
this Greek atmosphere we must attribute the attraction of
Dionysius for John Colet, the English scholar of the New
Learning, as well as for Ficino and the Neoplatonists of
the Italian Renaissance.2 In art we find that the Celestial
Hierarchy is "on all points relative to the representation
of angels, the inexhaustible mine which was worked,
directly or indirectly, throughout the whole of the Middle
Ages, and from which the ideas are derived which are even
1 Supra, p. 65.
2 Colet's abstract or translation of Dionysius (Two Treatises on the
Hierarchies of Dionysius, edited by J. H. Lupton, 1869) was published in
1497 (?)— Ficino's in 1492 and 1496. Three other of Colet's writings show
the profound influence of Dionysius (see Seebohm, Oxford Reformers,
p. 60 ff.).

vi.] THE DARK AGES 159
to this day current." 1 But the profoundest influence of
Dionysius was over the medieval mystics, all of whom came
under the speU of his thought. His celestial ladder was one
of their commonplaces ; his One Reahty above all know
ledge the object of their search. Above all, they adopted
his method of ' contemplation ' passing into ' ecstasy.'
But to this we shall return.2
1 J. Fowler, Works of Dionysius in Relation to Christian Art (Sacristy,
February 1872). Probably the words in the Communion Office, '' Therefore
with angels, etc. ," should be traced to the Celestial Hierarchy, vii. 2 (I.e. p. 10).
2 Infra, p. 192.

160 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.

CHAPTER VII
THE RENAISSANCE OF THE ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH
CENTURIES

§ I. Close of the Dark Ages— Sylvester n. — Hildebrand
— Development of Canon Law — Gratian's Decre-
tum — Effect of Canon Law upon thought — Berengar
and Lanfranc — Transubstantiation . . pp. 161-167
§ II. Scholasticism — Greatness of the Schoolmen — Defects
of Scholasticism — Piety and Knowledge — Nomi
nalism and Realism  pp 167-172
§ III. Anselm — His a priori argument — Gaunilio's reply
— Anselm on Free Will — His Cur Deus Homo
— Its argument — After history of the argument —
Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus . . pp. 172-178
§ IV. St. Bernard — Gilbert de la Porree — Bernard's Mysti
cism  pp, 178-181
§ V. Abailard — His grea tnessand importance — His views
of inspiration, sin, and the Atonement — His Con-
ceptualism — Comparison of Anselm, Bernard, and
Abailard  pp. 181-187

vii.] RENAISSANCE OF 11th AND 12th CENTURIES 161

The two centuries that followed the fall of the emphe of
Charles the Great are among the darkest in history. The
Holy See sank to the lowest depths of impotence ; popes,
wretched when not wicked or the tools of infamous women,
rapidly pass across the stage — in eight years eight popes
were elected and overthrown ; shadowy emperors struggle
for the rent mantle of Charles ; over all a deluge of barbar
ism, Saracens, Huns, Normans, and a darkness that could
be felt. Dean Church has weU pointed out that by the
end of the tenth century " Christian teaching can hardly
be said to have leavened society at aU. Its influence on
individuals, so vast and astonishing, was no measure of its
influence on society at large. It acted upon it doubtless
with enormous force, but it was an extraneous and foreign
force, which destroys and stifles, but does not mingle or
renew." The traditions of society at large were stUl un
diluted heathenism. In its conflict with the barbarians
who had overwhelmed the degraded Latin civilisation
Christianity had conquered, yet at times it might seem as
if the chief result had been to make barbarism more super
stitious, and cruelty more ingenious.
But in the latter part of the tenth century a great change
passed over Europe, culminating in the intellectual and
religious awakening of the next generation. Everywhere
men aroused themselves from despair to hope and enthu
siasm. In this new birth of the human spirit the religion
of superstition, which had hitherto formed the ground
work of authority and the main element of order in the
L

162 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
chaos of society, began to shed from it some of its grosser
elements. It was fitting that the new era should open
with a pope who would have been remarkable in any age,
but shines out like a solitary torch in the darkness of
that night. Gerbert of Aurillac, Pqpe Sylvester n. (999-
1003), was the stout opponent and the stout asserter of
the rights of Rome. But his pohtical actions, though
sufficiently original, were the least part of his claim upon
posterity. This austere monk was the most learned man
of the day, and its foremost teacher. Mathematician,
scientist, mechanician, he spent his nights in watching the
stars from a tower of the Vatican. Naturally, he suffered
the fate of all men who are before then times. But, except
in the dominion of science, Gerbert added little or nothing,
save a larger outlook, to Christian thought. The one theo
logical work commonly ascribed to his pen, De Corpore et
Sanguine Domini, is, probably, the production of Heriger
of Lobbes.
Nevertheless, Gerbert witnesses to the new life already
stirring the dry bones of piety and thought. The centre of
that new life was found in the great monastery of Clugny.
The idea which underlay the work of a series of able
Clugniac reformers, among whom we must reckon the
greatest of the popes, the iUustrious Hildebrand (Gre
gory vii., 1073-1086), was the government of the world by a
Church purified by being brought under monastic discipline
and infused with the monastic spirit. The effect of HUde-
brand's policy upon the fortunes of the Church belongs
more strictly to history. It must suffice that we note that
in the intellectual world, as welj as in the world of action,
for over a century after the rise of Hildebrand, the
monastic ideal prevaUed. But towards the close of
the twelfth century the intellectual vitality of monasti
cism became exhausted, while the revival of the ideals
overthrown by Hildebrand led to the transfer of
thought and education from the cloister to the secular

vii.] RENAISSANCE OF 11th AND 12th CENTURIES 163
universities. The leader in this momentous revolution
was AbaUard.
There was another direction in which the triumph of
Hildebrand's policy influenced Christian thought. We
aUude to the development of the law systems of the Church.
From the first the Church had stood outside the Teutonic
law system. " In the early days of the Frank dominions
the churches hved under Roman law. For one thing, the
Christian emperors had legislated pretty freely on ecclesi
astical matters long before the Teutons were converted to
Christianity ; and the Merovingians could hardly venture
to meddle with the organisation of that mighty power
which had destroyed their ancient gods, and done so much
to give them the victory over their enemies. For another,
the churches were corporations ; and it took the Teutonic
mind a long time to grasp the highly complex notion of a
corporation." x So from the fall of the Emphe onward
we have the Church with a law of her own, and necessarily,
therefore, courts and punishments of her own, living in the
midst of Celtic or Teutonic tribes in which law was a
matter of the clan or fief. In aU Western Europe the only
law that was not local or territorial was the ' common law,'.
as it was caUed everywhere except in England, i.e. the
universal law of the Roman Church.
The law of the Church was at first the Roman code
modified by such enactments of councils as had received
imperial sanction. But when the popes stepped into the
place of emperors, the Church of the West quietly re
pudiated the system which had been her foster-mother,
and substituted in its place the canons of councils and the
case-law of the popes. Charles the Great, it is true, in his
general revival of older traditions reduced the Church once
more under the control of the State, but in this, as in much
else, he was both before and behind his age. The wide
recognition within a few years of his death of the authority
1 E. Jenks, Law and Politics m the Middle Ages, p. 27.

164 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
of the pseudo-Decretals — the boldest and most successful
forgery that the world has ever seen 1 — shows the real drift
of the times. From Pope Nicholas I. (858-867) onwards
the law of the Church is neither the old Roman Juris
prudence nor the Capitularies of Charles the Great — codes,
in fact, which in the general anarchy sank almost into
oblivion — but the papal system of decretals and canons.
With the triumph of Hildebrand's ideals it became
necessary to codify the law of the Church, for if the Church
was to govern the world the law of the Church must be
clear and distinct. Hitherto this law had been gathered
from a chaos of papal rescripts, conciliar canons, and civil
enactments. But the renaissance of culture in Italy
early in the twelfth century took expression in a renewed
study of Roman law. Bologna, long noted as a school of
liberal arts, became under the teaching of Irnerius (1100-
1130) the great university for the study of the Code and
Pandects of Justinian. The advantages which the Empire
of the Hohenstaufen derived from this possession of a
definite, venerable system, in which the Emperor was re
cognised as the fountain of all authority, impressed upon
the papal Jurists their want of a similar code. In the
Concordia Discordantium Canonum (1142) of Gratian, a
monk of Bologna, the Church found the exact instrument
she needed. In this work Gratian applied to the materials
collected by a succession of canonists the scientific method
of Abailard. Influenced by the success of AbaUard's
Sic et Non, Gratian presents his reader with the authorities
on both sides of every question. The Decretum of Gratian,
to give the book its more familiar title, at once supplanted
all rivals, and became the recognised text-book of the
schools. The importance of the work cannot be exagger
ated. The Decretum is one of those books, not necessarily
great in themselves, which sweep aside all rivals because
i This forgery has recently been shown to have been the work of priests in
Touraine.

vn.] RENAISSANCE OF 11th AND 12th CENTURIES 165
they first clearly embody certain latent tendencies of the
age. The success of Gratian led Raymond de Penaforte
in 1234 to publish for Gregory rx. five books of recent De
cretals. These were foUowed by further editions, known
as Extravagants and Clementines (1318). With these the
golden age of papal legislation came to an end.
The effects of the development and partial triumph of
Canon Law upon the history, both ecclesiastical and secular,
of Europe cannot be exaggerated. But the disaster for
Christian thought has sometimes been overlooked. All
questions, ecclesiastical and theological, became subor
dinated to legal conceptions, at all times the bane of the
Latin Church. Faith and grace became secondary to or
dinance. The spirit of the Jurist governed all theology.
Dogma was recast under the categories of judge, accused,
satisfaction, and penalties. With his usual insight, Luther
saw that the overthrow of the ecclesiastical jurisprudence
of the Middle Ages was a prime necessity if the Augustinian
doctrine of grace was ever to receive its old place in the
life of the Church, and the claims of the papacy to be over
thrown. When he cast the Decretals into the flames before
the doctors and populace of Wittenberg (10th December
1520), Luther claimed more than his civU freedom ; he
asserted the need for a spiritual theology emancipated
from the categories of the law. In his faUure to see this
great blot upon medieval theology we find the chief weak
ness of Calvin, as also the evidence of the continuity of his
position in general with that of the Middle Ages.
The quickened thought of the age of Hildebrand mani
fested itself also in the reopening of the Eucharist contro
versy by Berengar of Tours (fl088). Led on by pride of
intellect, or by keener spirituahty, Berengar, the head of
the cathedral school in Tours, protested against the current
materiahstic conceptions of the Real Presence. These left
out aU the refinements in the doctrine of Paschasius Rad
bert, and declared that the consecrated wafer was a physical

166 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
portion of the body of Christ ' as bom of the Virgin Mary '
' broken by the hands of priests and chewed by the teeth of
the faithful.' The watchword of orthodoxy was ' vere et
sensualiter.' Berengar, adopting the standpoint of Ratram,1
though with much greater precision, declared that the
Real Presence was but spiritually conceived and received.
The popular doctrine he held to be contrary to reason or
' the image of God wherein we were created.'
Berengar's chief opponent was Lanfranc.2 Lanfranc
repeated in a hardened form the arguments of Paschasius
Radbert. But Paschasius would not have approved of his
elimination of all faith by his affirmation that even sinners
eat the true body of Christ in spite of themselves, a
development which did more than anything else to materi
alise the Eucharist. In spite of the attacks of Lanfranc,
Berengar succeeded in mamtaining his position until the
second Lateran Council (1059) gave him the choice of death
or recantation. " Logic," says Milman sententiously,
" makes no martyrs " ; and for a time Berengar yielded.
Twenty years later Berengar once more retracted, but
through the clemency or personal sympathy of Hilde
brand, after abjuration, was dismissed without further
penalty. In spite of his vacillations Berengar is entitled
to this praise : he had set the whole world thinking,
questioning, and disputing. One result of this dialectic
tournament must not be overlooked. When Guitmund of
Aversa maintained that the whole Christ was in every
particle, the foundation was laid for the practice, developed
later by Aquinas into a dogma, that the blood was
contained in the consecrated wafer, and that therefore
the cup could be withheld from the laity. The issue of
the controversy was seen in the passing by the fourth
Lateran Council (1215) of the dogma of transubstantiation :
1 Supra, p. 148. As was usual at the time, Berengar thought Ratram's
work was by Erigena.
3 Born about 1005 at Pavia ; 1070 archbishop of Canterbury ; died 1089.

vii.] RENAISSANCE OF 11th AND 12th CENTURIES 167
' The body and blood (of Christ) are truly contained in the
sacrifice of the altar under the appearance of bread and
wine, the bread being transubstantiated into the body,
and the wine into the blood by divine power.'

n
Whether in monastery or university, whether dealing
with law or theology, medieval thought is known to-day
as Scholasticism. The reader misled by current tradition
or frightened by the unattractive tomes in which scholars
buried their thoughts, wUl enter upon the study of Scho
lasticism with hesitation, if not aversion. He has probably
thought of the Schoolmen as idle babblers, making
bricks without straw, erecting stupendous syllogisms
upon foundations of sand. We must beware of despising
the ladder whereby we have climbed. No age, how
ever emancipated, can afford to disdain the thoughts
and struggles of the ages that preceded it. Ignorance
may scorn, but a more humble wisdom will ever realise
that the Schoolmen were no ordinary men. " In the chilly
squalor of uncarpeted and unwarmed chambers, by the
light of narrow and unglazed casements or the gleam of
flickering oil-lamps, poring over dusky manuscripts hardly
to be deciphered by modern eyesight, undisturbed by the
boisterous din of revelry and riot without, men of humble
birth and dependent on charity for bare subsistence, but
with a noble self-confidence transcending that of Bacon
or Newton, thought out and copied out those subtle master
pieces of medieval lore, purporting to unveil the hidden
laws of Nature, as weU as the dark counsels of Providence
and the secrets of human destiny, which, frivolous and
baseless as they may appear under the scrutiny of a later
criticism, must still be ranked among the greatest achieve
ments of speculative reason." %
1 Brodrick, Memorials of Merton, p. 35.

168 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
A definition of Scholasticism is almost impossible. But
certain features may be pointed out which mark off Scholas
ticism from modern thought. In the first place, we must
beware of supposing that Scholasticism was neither
scientific nor critical ; for it was both, at any rate in its
intention. Scholasticism, by its insistence on reason,
marks the distance that the Latin Church has travelled since
Tertullian's ' Credibile est, quia ineptum est,' — ' I believe
because it is absurd.' x Scholasticism was, in fact, the
effort of the thought of the age to arrange itself under such
scientific conditions and forms as it possessed. Its weak
ness did not he in its contempt for the scientific spirit, but
rather in its daring assumption of the all-sufficiency of its
method, its refusal to step outside the charmed circle of its
system. By means of his logic, with its intricate formalism,
the schoolman constructed a complete scientific system,
which, however, knew neither the limitations of observation
nor the fetters of induction. The analytical power of lan
guage was mistaken for the interpretation or discovery of
facts. The consequent want of correction of deductive
dialectics led to a dogmatism in the end disastrous both
for faith and knowledge. The schoolman was, if possible,
even more certain of the truth than the materiahstic dis
believer of a more scientific generation. To the one to
doubt was as certain to be lost, as to the other to believe
is^to be intellectually damned.
(Another result of the absence of any adequate obser-
1 vaxion of the external world was the absorption of all forms
of thought and knowledge within Theology. To the
schoolman Theology was even more than the queen of
sciences ; it was really the science of science, inasmuch as
it dealt with the relation of all things to God. Uhfortun-
ately, as this view was not sufficiently guarded, the results
were disastrous. AU_science became ecclesiastical in out
look and origin. Even Geography resolved itself into an
1 See supra, p. 105.

vn.] RENAISSANCE OF 11th AND 12th CENTURIES 169
a priori study, the basis of which was not the mariner's
compass, but the Bible. Men found the maps of the times
in the tabernacle of Moses, for this formed the only possible
model of the globe. To imagine, said one writer, that the
world is round would be ' to abolish the kingdom of heaven,
the future state, and to make of none effect the resurrection
of Christ.' x In the same spirit St. Augustine had started
the controversy as to the effect of the Fall upon stars and
vegetables, and on the atmospheric changes due to angels.
Modern science cannot sufficiently express its contempt
for the vast- superstructure which the schoolmen raised
on their narrow and flimsy foundations. Modern hermen-
eutics cannot sufficiently condemn a method of inter
pretation of the Scriptures which took no account of time,
circumstance, development, or history. Nevertheless, that
strange system which repels us to-day was in a true sense
preparing the way for better things.
A third feature of Scholasticism is summed up in the
phrase pectus facit theologum ; theology is the affair of the
soul. Hence it foUows that if theology is the basis of all
knowledge, personal piety must be one of the presup
positions of science. In theology proper this expressed it
self in the position of St. Augustine, reasserted by Anselm's
credo ut intelligam, that faith must ever be the foundation of
dogma. The extensions of this idea are of considerable
importance. For there was no way in which medieval
piety could better express itself than in ascetic contem-
plationy'tflence the development, under the help, no
doubt, oPother factors, of Scholasticism, or the attempt
to view things as a whole in their relation to God, into
Mysticism, or.tfee knowledge through ' contemplation ' of
such relation.//
Scholasticism thus possessed certain features which gave
it unity. Nevertheless, the divisions and developments of
Scholasticism proper must not be overlooked. In the first
1 See details in Beazley's interesting Dawn of Modern Geography, vol. i.

170 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
period, as in the Dark Ages before Scholasticism, though
portions of Aristotle were known, we note the prevalence
of the so-called Platonic Realism, chiefly derived from
St. Augustine. " The relation of philosophy to theology
in the initial period of Scholasticism was essentially different
from what it was at its maturity. In the earlier periods
a proper philosophic system, a view of the world developed
on different sides, had as yet no existence. Only logic was
known with some completeness. As a distinct discipline
metaphysics did not exist for the philosophers of that
period. What they had of it consisted in single pro
positions, partly Platonic, partly Aristotelian." 1 In the
second period Scholasticism obtained full possession of the
writings of Aristotle, both of his logical and physical
treatises. In consequence theologians attempted the con
struction of systems of thought passing beyond formal
logic into metaphysics, and a complete view or summa of
the world. But the treatment of this second period must
bej;eserved for another chapter.
^<The changing outlook of Scholasticism as it passed from
the predominance of Realistic Platonism to Aristotehanism
corresponded inevitably with the varying fortunes of the
great battle over Universals, which in popular thought it
identifies with Scholasticism itself. In the earlier period
Realism was predominant ; in the later, Nominalism waged
a more equal warfare. In the days of its triumph Reahsm
condemned Nominalism as a heresy, and was in its turn
condemned by it. The never-ending controversy formed for
centuries the central question of education and theology ;
its ceaseless tournaments drew crowds of eager students to
the lecture halls of the mastery/ The precise problem in
volved cannot be better put than m the famous words from
the Isagoge of Porphyry, which have played a greater part
in the history of thought than any outside the Bible :
' Next concerning genera and species, the question indeed
1 Deutsch, Abalard, p. 96.

vii.] RENAISSANCE OF Uth AND 12th CENTURIES 171
whether they have a substantial existence, or whether they
exist in bare intellectual concepts only, or whether if they
have a substantial existence they are corporeal or incor
poreal, and whether they are separated from the insensible
properties of the things, or are only in those properties and
subsisting about them, I shall forbear to determine. For a
question of this kind is very deep, and needs fuller in
vestigation.' For the various stages and opinions in this long contro
versy the student should refer to the histories of medieval
logic. But there are certain matters of general moment
connected with it that should not be overlooked. The
reader should above all beware lest he undervalue this
dispute. There are few matters of philosophical discus
sion which do not in their ultimate analysis involve some
aspect of the controversy. The medieval doctrine of
transubstantiation, as we shaU see later,1 is inseparably
wrapped up in it : " Indeed the solution of the most
momentous questions to which the human intellect can
address itself is inextricably bound up with the solution
of a question wliich ' common-sense ' will undertake to
clear up in five minutes, or which it will indignantly pro
nounce too trifling to be asked or answered. Yet he who
has given his answer to it has implicitly constructed his
theory of the universe." 2 Those who imagine that there
is here nothing but the dust of the past should remember
that of Nominalism " the sensationalist scepticism of
Hume, or the crude materialism of Haeckel, is but an
Ulogical attenuation." 3 The danger of Realism, on the
contrary, was an undeveloped Pantheism. God is regarded
as the ultimate substance, the entity common to all species,
and identical in each. Such a view must ultimately resolve
aU existing things, and all individual differences, into acci
dents of the summum genua.
1 Infra, p. 236. 2 Rashdall, Univs. in Middle Ages, i. p. 39.
" Ibid. i. p. 45.

172 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
Nor must we forget that in spite of all the objections that
may rightly be urged against the logical positions of the
thirteen different schools of Realism which Prantl, in his
great history of medieval logic, has discriminated, this
much may be said, at any rate about the more moderate
Realists, that their Realism was a protest against any
doctrine of Ulusion. They held that mental ideas are,
in some sense of the word — in the explanation of this lay
their difficulty — strict realities. Realism was their protest
against the question, so dear to a diseased subjectivism : —
Is all that we think or seem,
But a dream within a dream 1
Thus their Realism was, as Carlyle would have phrased
it, the affirmation of the Everlasting Yea ; the emphasis
of a doctrine of assurance. The medieval thinkers char
acteristically sought this assurance in reason and the
objective world ; religious minds to-day sometimes seek
it in their subjective experiences. Both have grasped the
half only of the complete truth.

rn
Though Lanfranc and Berengar must be regarded as the
first-fruits of the new Scholasticism, Anselm 1 more than any
other is entitled to be called its father. As the great Arch
bishop of Canterbury, to whom England owes the subjec
tion of its Church to the ideas of HUdebrand, the life of An
selm belongs to general history. His place in the history of
Christian philosophy is of equal importance. To the general
tendencies of his thought it wiU be more convenient to re
turn after dealing with Bernard and AbaUard. Meanwhile
it is important to note certain special details of his writings.
In his Monologion de Divinitatis Essentia, Anselm gives
1 Born at Aosta 1033, died 1109. For Anselm, Abailard, and Bernard
I may refer for further detail to my articles in Hastings'
of Religion and Ethics, vols. i. and ii.

vii.] RENAISSANCE OF 11th AND 12th CENTURIES 173
us the famous so-called a priori proof of the existence of
God, which has thence found its way into most theological
treatises, ancient or modern. This argument is really a
Reahst apphcation of the Platonic doctrine of Ideas to the
demonstration of Christian doctrine by a logical ascent
from the particular to the universal. In the world of ex
perience we are confronted by transitory, imperfect pheno
mena which invariably lead the mind upwards toward an
eternal, necessary, perfect Being. Our recognition of
goodness, for instance, in phenomena drives us to believe
in a supreme nature that is good per se, and which must be
the final causa causans, the supreme objective reality in
whom our ' ideas ' inhere. Thus the existence of God is
implicit in ordinary experience.
This argument was further developed by Anselm in his
Proslogion, so called because it is in the form of an address
to God. In this work Anselm attempts to prove the exist
ence of God by a single deductive argument, instead of as
in the Monologion by a long inductive chain. The fool's
very denial of God, so Anselm argues, involves the idea of
God, and of this idea existence is a necessary part. In
other words, thought leads by an inherent necessity to the
postulate of the Absolute. When Count GaunUio (f c. 1083),
a monk of Marmoutier, pointed out in his Apology for a
Fool that the idea of the fabled Isles of the Blessed does
not prove their existence, Anselm rephed that there is all
the difference between the Summum cogitabile or eternal
necessary idea and any particular empirical idea of things
which had a beginning and will have an end. Contingent
existence as such contradicts the idea of the Summum
cogitabile, which cannot be conceived save as existing.
The after history of these ontological arguments, in part
buUt up by Anselm upon Augustine's De Trinitate, belongs
to the history of phUosophy.1 But we may point out that
1 For a judicious criticism, see John Caird, PhM. of Religion (1880),
p. 153 ff.

174 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
they were too Platonic to be accepted by the Aristotelian
Schoolmen, with the exception of Duns Scotus. They
have found their way in various forms into the systems of
Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Hegel, but have been re
jected by Kant. We see the same Platonic outlook in
Anselm' s De Veritate, in which he maintained that truth
is the accurate perception of the archetypal ideas in the
mind of God.
In his De libero Arbitrio, Anselm deals with the problem
of free will. Freedom, he claims, is not the power of
choosing between alternatives, but of persevering in righ
teousness for its own sake — a doctrine afterwards more
fully developed in Kant's Metaphysic of Ethics. Anselm
pointed out that original sin need not involve total de
pravity. Man is stiU left in possession of a real, if impaired,
natural freedom, the power of the wUl to govern motives.
But the most important of Anselm's works is the Cur
Deus Homo, finished at Schiavi in the Alban Mountains in
1098. This little book marks an epoch in the history of
the doctrines of the Atonement. Anselm destroyed once
for all the old conception that the Atonement was a ransom
paid to the devil. In place of this disastrous dualistic
doctrine which had dominated the Church since the days
of Origen — with the possible exception of Faustus of Riez
(fl. 500) — Anselm put forth a theory of the Atonement as
the satisfaction rendered to the honour and Justice of God.
Anselm shows by deductive reasoning that man could not
have been saved without Christ. All the actions of man
are due to God for the promotion of His honour. But sin
has defrauded God of that honour, and thereby has created
a debt due to God. As the lost honour must be restored,
the sinner cannot be exonerated of his debt by the mercy
or fiat of God ; for this were to let sin go without being
brought into relation with the righteousness of God. But
God's honour cannot be restored by further obedience ;
for this is due in any case, and cannot, therefore, be a dis-

vii.] RENAISSANCE OF 11th AND 12th CENTURIES 175
charge for the past debt. The honour, it is true, may be
vindicated by punishment which exhibits God's supremacy,
or by ' satisfaction,' i.e. the giving back to God more than
has been taken away by the sinner. Such satisfaction
must be made by man according to the measure of his sin ;
yet for man this is impossible. Hence God became man
in Christ Jesus, and the infinite superabundant merits —
a doctrine very congruent, as we have seen, to medieval
developments of thought and practice — of His voluntary
death outweigh the number and greatness of all sins.
This treatise may be described in brief as the inter
pretation of the relationship between God and man in the
terms of the Roman law famUiar to Anselm. Of Teutonic
law it is probable in our Judgment that this Italian would
know little or nothing. Anselm's argument has produced
a lasting effect upon subsequent theology. In the substi
tutionary form stamped upon it at the Reformation, it has
remained the doctrine of much evangelical orthodoxy to
this day. " The Cur Deus Homo," writes Dr. Denney,
" is the greatest and truest book on the Atonement that
has ever been written." x To many students this verdict,
we think, wiU seem conventional and exaggerated. The
chief service Anselm rendered was in sweeping away the
old patristic idea of the debt due to Satan, and in this
Anselm seems scarcely aware how great was the work he
accomplished. In spite of his emphasis of the moral
necessity of the Atonement as distinct from the arbitrary
fiat of the Divine WUl, the fulfilment of prophecy, or the
inversion of the FaU ; in spite of the stress Anselm places
upon ' satisfaction ' rather than punishment, upon the
person and work of Christ rather than upon an ecclesiastical
and penitential system, to many the work will seem
mechanical and unreal,2 and its theory to be limited,
dangerous, and full of Scholastic abstractions. Anselm's
1 J. Denney, The Atonement and the Modern Mmd, p. 116.
2 Cf. Moberly, Atonement and Personality, pp. 367-371.

176 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
worst fault is his tendency to destroy the essential ethical
unity of the Godhead by his revival of the old Gnostic x
Dualism within the Divine Nature itself between Justice
and law, and his emphasis of the antagonism between the
Son and the Father as representatives of different attri
butes, the One who pays and the One who exacts. The
theory also posits an opposition between God and the ex
ternal world which ends in the idea of arbitrariness on the
part of God, and on the part of man in the Absence of the
consciousness of his own personality as an essential factor
in the Atonement ; this last, we may remark, a common
defect of Scholastic Realism. With Anselm salvation is
almost wholly external and institutional, corporate rather
than experimental. Thus sin becomes " high treason, not
moral corruption. ... It remains outside the human
conscience ; it is indeed a great fault, but it is hardly a
moral fault." 2
The complete absence in the book of any assurance of
salvation is, of course, thoroughly medieval. All that
Anselm does is to show that salvation is possible — the rest
was always left to the Church. Moreover, the theory
absolutely disregards the whole life and teaching of Jesus,
and abstracts the Atonement as a matter of Calvary alone.
" This God-man need not have preached and founded a
kingdom, no disciples need have been gathered : He only
required to die." 3 That Anselm so completely ignores
the immanence of God and St. Paul's mystical conception
of union with the Risen Christ is remarkable, for the Pauline
ideas would have appealed strongly to Anselm's cast of
thought if he could have freed himself from his feudal,
forensic fetters. But instead of the mysticism of St. Paul
we have the superabundant payment by Christ of a debt
due from man to the Justice of God, which debt, by reason
1 Bigg, Christian Platonists of Alexandria, p. 290.
2 Stevens, The Christian Doctrine of Salvation, p. 242.
» Harnack, H.D. vi. p. 76.

vn.] RENAISSANCE OF 11th AND 12th CENTURIES 177
of his original sin, man cannot discharge. The keynote ol
the treatise is thus the paradox, ' man must, man cannot.'
Moreover, Anselm's theory of the Incarnation is far from
satisfactory. In his desire to avoid conceptions now known
as kenotic he limits the sufferings of Christ to His human
nature : ' The Divine Nature, we assert, is impassible.'
Such opposition can only end in Nestorianism ; it is fatal
to any true conception of the Person of Christ as the unity
of the God-man.
The influence of Anselm upon the Scholastic doctrine
of the Atonement is of great importance for the student of
theology. As regards the old patristic doctrine of ransom
paid to the devil, Anselm's refutation was decisive, though
shadowy survivals hngered on, sometimes in unexpected
places. His idea of ' satisfaction ' was widely embraced,
though with both additions and subtractions, as for in
stance by Alexander of Hales, who made much of the added
idea of ' equivalence,' developing thence the idea of a
' treasury of merit,' the basis of all medieval doctrines of
indulgence. At the Reformation Anselm's idea of ' satis
faction ' became predominant, almost banishing the Scrip
tural idea of ' sacrifice.' Even Luther, who detested the
idea as belonging ' to the schools of the jurists,' was forced
to retain it ; whUe in the Anglican liturgy ' sacrifice ' and
' satisfaction ' were indissolubly linked together in the
familiar phrase, 'A full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice,
oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.'
In Thomas Aquinas we have the fullest acceptance by
any schoolman of Anselm's doctrine. Nevertheless, there
are differences. Aquinas dwells at some length on the
superabundant * satisfaction ' of Christ's death. But in
so doing he is not prepared wholly to accept Anselm's
attempt to Justify the crude dogma of Augustine that sin
against an infinite God is necessarily infinite in character.
' The acts of the creature as such,' he aUows, even when
sins, ' cannot be infinite,' though he owns that they have a
M

178 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
' sort of infinitude.' His conception of the obedience of
Christ which gave ' satisfaction ' is also wider, for it
extends not merely to the death but to the whole life and
suffering of Jesus. Aquinas owns, what Anselm always
denied, that God could have pardoned sin without any
satisfaction. To Aquinas the position of Anselm seems
a limitation of the absolute freedom of divine omnipotence
as to choice of means. But the greatest difference is in
the approach by Aquinas to a substitutionary theory of the
Atonement, the transference of the merit of the atoning
work to the sinner, not as in Reformation theology by
imputation, but by his mystical union with the Redeemer.
The chief opponent of Anselm among the Schoolmen
was Duns Scotus. His contribution to soteriology is his
repudiation of Anselm's position that the Atonement was
the motive of the Incarnation. Christ, he claims, would
have come even if man had not sinned, for only by His
Incarnation could He be the head of the Mystical Body.
As with much else in Duns' theology, the ' merit ' of Christ's
death depends almost wholly upon the arbitrary fiat of
God ; for the merit of the sufferings of Christ could only
be finite, inasmuch as Christ suffered in His human not in
His divine nature. Nevertheless, this nominal satisfaction
is accounted by God as infinite. Thus a good angel, or
even a sinless man, could equaUy well have secured the
plan of redemption. Duns Scotus calls this theory of thus
accepting something as the imaginary equivalent of a
contract acceptilatio, a familiar term in Scots civU law
to this day. The acceptUatian theory of Duns has had
considerable influence on later theology, especiaUy on
Grotius.1 rv
The importance of St. Bernard (1090-1153) in the history
of the Church cannot be exaggerated. For a few years the
1 D. W. Simon, The Redemption of Man, pp. 20-23, 413-415.

vii.] RENAISSANCE OF 11th AND 12th CENTURIES 179
centre of Christendom was virtually transferred from Rome
to Clairvaux. As a theologian, the influence of Bernard
was always thrown against all change or progress. In his
antagonism to aU that AbaUard represented, in his belief
that the apphcation of dialectic to theology was both
dangerous and impious, Bernard was the refuge of a re
actionary school destined to be swept away by the rise of
Scholasticism. In later years his hatred of heresy became
almost a monomania. As his contemporary, Otto of
Freising, tells us, ' Bernard was, from the fervour of his
Christian rehgion, as jealous as from his habitual meekness
he was in some measure credulous ; so that he held in
abhorrence those who trusted in the wisdom of this world,
and were too much attached to human reasonings ; and
if anything ahen to the Christian faith were said to him
in reference to them he readily gave ear to it.' Hence a
want of fairness in dealing not only with Abailard but with
Gilbert de la Porree. Gilbert (fll54) who, according to his
learned contemporary, John of Salisbury, * was a monk of
the clearest inteUect and of the widest reading, in culture
surpassed by none,' had published a commentary on the
De Trinitate, a collection of treatises currently assigned to
Boethius. In this work GUbert, by distinguishing " God "
from " Deity " (in which last he found the universal that
his Realism demanded), had laid such stress on the absolute
unity of the Trinity as almost to exclude the existence of
the Three Persons. At the council of Rheims (March 1148)
Gilbert was put on his defence before Bernard's pupU,
Pope Eugenius m. Bernard's attack ended in complete
failure, or rather in a measure of victory for freedom of
thought. When Eugenius proposed that Gilbert's com
mentary should be handed over to him that he might erase
whatever was needful, Gilbert claimed that it was his own
duty to erase what was amiss, a declaration received with
loud applause by the cardinals. The councU ended with the
Pope's mysterious ruling, ' that the essence of God should

180 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
not be predicated in the sense of the ablative case only,
but also of the nominative ' ! and Gilbert returned * with
his honour unabated to his own diocese.'
The most lasting contribution of Bernard to the thought
of the age hes in his mysticism. The most important of
Bernard's mystical writings is his Homilies on the Song of
Solomon. They were actually preached to the monks of
Clairvaux, and stiU bear signs of interruptions and other
local circumstances. The mysticism of Bernard is really
not systematic, but the outcome of his persuasion that
faith receives aU truth ' wrapped up ' (involutum). All
that reason can do is to add clearness by a certain limited
measure of unwrapping ; for the highest knowledge is that
whjch cornea nnr,hyJntelWf.Sr7r^^ ; of which

iernard
iriTheTnstory of Mysticism does not lie in the speculative
side of his teaching, in which he depends almost entirely
upon Augustine. His great achievement was to recall
devout and loving contemplation to the image of the
crucified Christ, and to Jound^tha^worshnDoXour^gayjpjir
as <ke,3gdegroom of our^uL^whjchuin^jjB^MS11-
turies inspired so much fervid devotion and lyrical sacred
poetryjj^ In this connection we must not overlook the
influence of the Crusades, in whose development Bernard's
preaching had proved so potent a factor. In the nobler
crusaders, e.g. in Godfrey of BouUlon, we see the moral
power that sprang from the reahsation of the suffering
Saviour. " Salve caput cruentatum " (" 0 Sacred Head once
wounded ! ") was for the crusader more than a hymn. In
medieval piety the image of the historical though dying
Jesus was thus formed side by side with that of the sacra
mental eternal Christ. But with fl"™"™1 +y fyfifor^l
was secondary to the mystical and ^r,^T\rpemU] By his
1 W. R. Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 140, also Appendix D. p. 369:
Harnack, H.D. vi. p. 9 ff.

vn.] RENAISSANCE OF 11th AND 12th CENTURIES 181
treatment of the fact of Christ he gave to the_rpmantic,
erotic sideof mysticism "a" great 1 'stim^^rit is true tnat
he always speaTS^of'Tne'Church and not the individual as
the bride of Christ, but the enforced celibacy of monasticism
soon led to the transference to the individual of the luscious
language of the Canticles. Of this sensuous presentation,
so akin to the method of allegory, the beginnings appear
to be found in Origen's commentary on the Canticles.
From Origen it passed to the Greek fathers, in few of whom
the figure does not occur. Its most extreme form was found
in the tendency current in the thirteenth century to give
veneration to the specific limbs of the Virgin — 'uterum
quo Christum portavit, ubera quibus eum lactavit,' etc.
We see the sa/ne mystical principles in Bernard's De
Diligendo Deo. %£lod is the ground and cause of a love in
which there are four stages. The first stage is carnal love,
in which the manjpjgs^hjmself. ThTsecolad'Ifs^XIove of
God whicn' is selfish, inasmuch as it is due to suffering and
experience. In the third stage he loves God for Gpd^own
sake. In the fourth stage the spirit, Tntoxicated by the
Divine love, wholly forge^^tg^i
and ^n"^TVjBi«iliC1?gli.°rtirJti.iWl'tihl .ffiffi1- ' To be thus affected
is to be ' deified.' the annihilation of self " in the immense
sea of a luminous eternity." Whether this fourth stage is
possible in this life seems to Bernard more than doubtful :
' Let them assert it who have experienced it : to me, I con
fess, it seems impossible.

lay7

With Abailard's lifelong conflicts with authority,
whether at Paris in his early attacks upon the crude
Realism of his master, William of Champeaux, or at Laon
in his struggle with Anselm of Laon, or at St. Denys in his
dispute with the monks over " Dionysius," or in the more
prolonged duel with St. Bernard, we are not here concerned,
save to point out that they were the outcome of his system.

182 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
For the real cause of Abailard's offending was his constant
appeal from authority to reason, and in this he was neces
sarily misjudged by an age which cared little for reason
and everything for authority. In reality AbaUard was
no heretic. He always maintained that he was the obedient
son of the Church. In the verdict of Peter the Venerable,
in whose monastery at Clugny he passed away (1142), he
was ' ever to be named with honour as the servant of Christ,
and verily Christ's phUosopher.' In his last letter to the
famous Heloise, Abailard had pleaded : ' I would not be
an Aristotle if this should keep me away from Christ,' he
owes his importance to his demand for reverent though
thorough inquiry in matters of religion. Modern Roman
scholars have no hesitation in saying that both the synods
at which he was condemned, Soissons and Sens, were con
spicuous for zeal rather than knowledge. It is well known
also that the work of his disciple, the famous Sentences of
Peter Lombard, is largely the Sic et Non of AbaUard in a
more reverent form. Yet the Sentences became the accre
dited text-book in theology, the very canon of orthodoxy of
the later Middle Ages, though many of its views were those
for which Abailard had been condemned. But we need not
marvel at the misfortunes of Abailard. In part they were the
results of an ill-balanced Judgment, always in extremes ; in
part the retribution of a pride intolerant of aU obscurant
ism ; in part the necessary outcome of his real greatness.
For Abailard was so great intellectually, so completely in
advance of his age, both in the extent of his knowledge and
the width of his outlook, that his positions were bound to
seem heterodox to a generation that leaned wholly on the
past. Abailard, in fact, belonged to the future. We
salute the herald of the Renaissance " in his joyful recog
nition of a world of divine teaching of old outside the
borders of Judaism." 1 The very spirit of Protestantism
is contained in his declaration that the * doctors of the
1 Poole, Medieval Thought, p. 175.

vn.] RENAISSANCE OF 11th AND 12th CENTURIES 183
Church should be read not with the necessity to believe,
but with liberty to judge.' We seem transported to the
twentieth century when AbaUard claims that the inter
pretation of Scripture may err or the text be faulty. In
the preface to his Sic et Non he lays down a defence of all
criticism : ' By doubting we are led to inquire, by inquiry
we perceive the truth.' In the very form of his Sic et Non
— a collection of contradictory opinions from the fathers
on aU the leading disputes of theology — AbaUard shows
his belief that error or contradiction may be but stages in
the discovery of truth. Of those who argue that we must
not reason on matters of faith, Abailard asks : ' How, then,
is the faith of any people, however false, to be refuted,
though it may have arrived at such a pitch of blindness
as to confess some idol to be the creator both of heaven
and earth ? As according to your own admission you
cannot reason upon matters of faith, you have no right to
attack others upon a matter with regard to which you argue
that you ought yourself to be unassailed.' The dilemma
of unreasoning pietism has never been better expressed.
Of particular doctrines which illustrate AbaUard's drift,
we select the foUowing as of especial theological interest.
In his doctrine of inspiration AbaUard is very bold. This he
limits down to matters concerning ' faith, hope, charity,
and the sacraments.' The rest is largely ' for the adorn
ment or enlargement of the Church.' Even ' prophets and
apostles may err,' while a place must be found for the
revelation given to the heathen phUosophers, especially
Plato. As regards the humanity of Christ, AbaUard is in
striking contrast to his age. The common theory of the
times was a sort of transubstantiation theory of Christ's
person ; that in the assumption of flesh the human person
though not the nature had perished. In opposition to
this Abailard claimed that the humanity was essentially
real. He goes so far even as to urge that it includes
' humanae infirmitatis veros defectus,'

184 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
AbaUard's doctrine of sin may be best gathered from
his work Scito te ipsum. Its very title shows the emphasis
he places on self-knowledge or intention. In this Abailard
is in complete opposition to the formal practice of his age.
Virtue, he maintains, cannot be attained except by con
flict. Ignorance in the case of the unenhghtened does not
constitute sin, and the Jews who ignorantly crucified Jesus
must be Judged accordingly. Original sin is thus the penal
consequence of sin and not sin itself. ' It is inconceivable
that God should damn a man for the sin of his parents.'
He thus emphasises the ethical determination of the divine
action. From this doctrine of sin it is an easy transition
to AbaUard's moral theory of the Atonement, the creating
within us by His passion or service of love of a love which
itself is the deliverance from sin. He rejects totally any
theory that makes the Atonement a redemption from the
right of the devU, but, except for this agreement, he may
be said to have ignored the work of Anselm, as did also his
disciple, Peter Lombard. The merit of AbaUard's theory
is that he emphasises reconciliation through personal
fellowship with Christ 1 ; its defect that he lays so httle
stress upon the work of Christ in its relation to guUt. The
emphasis is " not so much really upon the love of God
manifested to us, as upon the love of God, generated
within us. He dwells upon the Cross very finely, as an
incentive to love ; but hardly conceives of it more pro
foundly than as an incentive. He has lost the emphasis
upon the thought of humanity as a corporate unity,
summed up and represented in Christ, which was so strong
and clear in the earliest Christian theologians." 2 We owe
also to Abailard the renewed emphasis of the doctrine of
the Epistle to the Hebrews of Christ's unceasing intercession
as part of His atoning work.
AbaUard's teaching of Logic amounted almost to a re-
i Deutsch, AbtUard, p. 382.
8 Moberly, Atonement and Personality, p. 381.

vn.] RENAISSANCE OF 11th AND 12th CENTURIES 185
volution. Though not the first to discern, he was the first
to popularise a theory that to-day we should call concep-
tuahsm, midway between the extreme nominalism of his
former master, Roscelin, and the crude realism of William
of Champeaux, whose lectures Abailard had also attended.
WUliam seems to have asserted the full immanence of the
universal idea in every individual, " a view which must
necessarily have led to the doctrine of the one latent sub
stance, and of the negating of aU that is individual as mere
semblance or mere contingency." J AbaUard set himself
to combat the logical position of both ; by conceding to
each the truth of their affirmative positions, while denying
the correctness of their negations. He held that we arrive
at the general from the particular by an effort of thought.
Thus he aUowed to the Nominalist the reality of the in
dividual, and to the Realist the reahty also of the universals,
in so far, that is, as they were the necessary creations of the
intellect. AbaUard thus returned to the position of Aris
totle, probably without any direct knowledge of Aristotle's
arguments. Hence the reputation of AbaUard in dialectics
when Aristotle became dominant.
We have aUuded to the theological struggle between
St. Bernard and AbaUard. The differences of the two
men were fundamental, of the kind that no argument or
personal intercourse can remove. That Bernard was a
reahst goes without saying. Reahsm in the early part of
the twelfth century was almost identical with orthodoxy.
But this was not the chief difference. The two were re
presentatives of opposing forces. Abailard summed up in
himself the spirit of a premature revolt against unreasoning
authority. Bernard was the embodiment of all that was
best in the old faith ; a reformer in morals and life, a rigid
conservative in creed and ritual. AbaUard, profoundly
religious in his way, was the representative of a creed full
of dry light and clear of cant, but which had shown, both
1 Harnack, H.D. vi. p. 35 n.

186 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
at St. Denys and St. Gildas — two monasteries in which
he had passed some years of stormy life — little power in
turning men from their sins to the higher vision. With
aU his narrowness of intellectual outlook compared with
Abailard, put St. Bernard down at St. Gildas, and that
abode of loose livers who flouted Abailard would have felt
at once the purifying power of Bernard's zeal. Bernard's
was that baptism with fire which not only cleanses but
warms ; but of this the cold, intellectual religion of Abailard
knew little or nothing. To Bernard ' Faith is not an
opinion, but a certitude. " The substance of things hoped
for," says the Apostle, not the phantasies of empty con
jecture. You hear ; " the substance " : you may not dispute
on the faith as you please; you may not wander here
and there through the wastes of opinion, the byways of
error. By the name " substance " something certain and
fixed is placed before you ; you are enclosed within boun
daries, you are restrained within unchanging limits.'
Abailard, on the contrary, proclaimed that reason was of
God, and had, as philosophy showed, found God. He
argued, quoting from the Wisdom of Sirach, that " he that
is hasty to trust is light-minded." Conflict between the
two men was inevitable.
The circumstances of the times flung Abailard into
controversy with Bernard. Intellectually the only foeman
worthy of his steel would have been Anselm of Canterbury.
At first sight there seems to be between these two phUo
sophers an impassable abyss, unconsciously summed up
by Anselm in the preface to his Cur Deus Homo. ' Some
men seek for reasons because they do not believe ; we seek
for them because we do believe. This is my belief, that if
I believe not, neither shaU I understand ' (credo ut intelli-
gam). It is the same teaching as we find in St. Augustine
and in all mystics. ' He who would know,' writes the
author of Theologia Germanica, ' before he believeth cometh
never to true knowledge.' The rule of Abailard is the

vn.] RENAISSANCE OF 11th AND 12th CENTURIES 187
exact opposite. He argues that men believe not because
of authority but because of conviction. Doubt is his
starting-point, reason his guide to certitude. But a
deeper study reveals that the conflict between the two
may be exaggerated. AbaUard owns that the highest
truths of theology stand above the proof of our under
standing ; they can only be hinted at by analogies. But
through knowledge faith is made perfect. Anselm was no
less anxious to satisfy reason than Abailard, only he
wanted to make sure of its limits before he began. Thus
the difference between the two great thinkers was one
rather of order of thought than real divergence. If the
chronological order be regarded, Anselm is right ; if the
logical, Abailard. In the order of experience, faith precedes
reason ; in the maturer life, reason leads up to faith.1 It
is in the clear perception of this last that the true greatness
of AbaUard hes. But, as Bacon, he had to leave his name
and memory to the next age, that age which he had done
more than any man to usher in. His spirit lived, though
unrecognised, in the victories and movements of later
thought. In more ways than one he prepared the way for
the conservative constructions of the great Schoolmen.
The school of Paris in which he taught developed within
a generation into the greatest university of Europe largely
through his influence. With AbaUard also closes the first
period of Scholasticism. The thoughts which he had
worked out for himself the next age assimUated directly
from authority ; the ideas which the Church had con
demned were henceforth accepted. For in 1128 James of
Venice translated into Latin the works of Aristotle hitherto
for the most part unknown. Within a century the ' New
Logic,' as it was called, dominated Europe. In the place
of St. Bernard we have Aristotle as the canonised leader
of the Church.
1 Cf. Fairbairn, Christ in Modem Theology, p. 120 ff.; Deutsch, AbaXard,
p. 172.

188 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.

CHAPTER VIII
THE MEDIEVAL MYSTICS
Argument
§ I. The importance of Mysticism — Analysis of its charac
teristics — The effect of Passivity — The immortality
of Mystic thoughts — The dangers of Mysticism —
Pantheism — Definition of Pantheism — Amalrich of
Bena— Brethren of the Free Spirit . . pp. 189-197
§ II. Eastern Mysticism — Victorinus Afer — St. Augustine
— Medieval Mystics — Classification of — The Schol
astic Mystics  pp. 197-200
§ III. Eckhart — His importance — Analysis of his Mysti
cism  pp. 200-205
§ IV. Tauler, Ruysbroek, and Suso— The Friends of God-
Medieval prophetesses — Book of the Nine Bocks —
Theologia Germanica — Thomas a Kempis — Mysti
cism and the Reformation . „ . .pp. 205-211

viii.] THE MEDIEVAL MYSTICS 189

As the importance of Mysticism in Christian thought
cannot be exaggerated, it were well to understand clearly
to what that importance is due. In his remarkable
examination of Mysticism the late Professor James x tells
us that there are two necessary marks or qualities of the
mystical. The first he calls IneffabUity, by which he
means " that no adequate report thereof can be given in
words." He goes on to add : " It foUows from this that
its quahty must be directly experienced ; it cannot be
imparted or transferred to others. No one can make clear
to another who has never had a certain feeling in what the
quality or worth of it consists." The second quality of
Mysticism, Professor James tells us, is the Noetic quality :
" Although simUar to states of feeling, mystical states seem
to those who experience them to be also states of know
ledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth
implanted by the discursive intellect. ... As a rule they
carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time."
Professor James adds " two other quahties, less strongly
marked." The first he caUs Transiency, the second Pas
sivity. "Transiency" seems to us to be rather a matter
for the psychologist ; it is the mark of certain psychic or
pathological states which are by no means an essential of
Mysticism. But of the truth of the other three qualities of
Mysticism indicated in this analysis by Dr. James there
can be little doubt.
To these quahties Mysticism owes its importance in
Christian thought. Take, for instance, the Noetic quality.
1 William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, lectures 16 and 17.

190 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
Medieval mysticism arose at a time when all theological
knowledge was being reduced by logical rules to various
'summas,' when Aristotle was becoming the dominant factor
in the thought of the Church. Mysticism proclaims that
the soul has faculties, that there are states of its own for
the discernment of spiritual truth, knowledge none the less
true because they are reached by direct intuition, and escape
clean beyond all syllogism or systems. The more, in fact,
that theology became the sport of the schools, the greater
the need that there should be voices, if only in the wilder- V
ness, proclaiming that the kingdom of heaven was within. /
As regards IneffabUity, or the appeal of Mysticism to an
experience of which " no adequate report can be given in
words," we note in Mysticism the revolt of the spiritual
against a religion which gave httle place to experience in
comparison with formal or sacramental religion. In the
medieval Church the individual, qua individual, had little
or no place. His salvation was conditioned from first to
last by his belonging to a corporation, in whose privUeges
and functions he shared ; through whose sacraments his
life was nourished ; by whose graduated hierarchy, though
but the meanest servant of the Church, he was linked to
the supreme Head ; whose saints shielded him by their
' merits,' or helped him by their intercessions. Through
this corporation alone was he brought into touch with
his Saviour ; outside the corporation his soul was lost.
The grandeur of this idea few will dispute ; its extra
ordinary hold for centuries upon the conscience of men
testifies to its appeal. Its dangers, however, in the sup
pression of the individual, are equally clear. Against this
danger medieval mysticism raised its constant protest.
Mysticism never wearied in its insistence that spiritual
results can only be attained by inward, spiritual processes :
" God is not dumb, that He should speak no more.
If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness,
And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor."

viii.] THE MEDIEVAL MYSTICS 191
But such experience in its ultimate analysis is always
" ineffable," and this in several ways. It is ineffable as
contrasted with the disputations and syUogisms of the
schools. The mystic maintains that such knowledge or
experience is not obtained by reason, but by a faculty that
works in a sphere above reason. As such it cannot be
otherwise than ineffable. As Eckhart puts it : ' All the
truth which any master ever taught with his own reason
and understanding, or even can teach to the last day, wUl
not in the least explain this knowledge.' In the words of
Tauler : ' The dwelling in the Inner Kingdom of God where
pure truth and the sweetness of God are found ' is not some
thing that can be learned from 'the masters of Paris.'
' What it is, and how it comes to pass, is easier to experience
than to describe. AU that I have said of it is as poor
and unlike it as a point of a needle is to the heavens above
us.' The soul-stuff that rises to the surface of conscious
ness only when the depths of the heart are stirred is nearly
always inarticulate. Or, to change the metaphor, the
human soul is hke some great iceberg ; its foundations are
submerged in hidden depths.
There is a coroUary to this emphasis of experience, the
understanding of which is of great importance. We cannot
do better than expound it in the oft- quoted words of the
Neoplatonist Plotinus : ' Even as the eye could not behold
the sun unless it were itself sun-like, so neither could
the soul behold God if it were not God-like.' For the
vision of God there must be hkeness to God. Hence the
emphasis laid by the mystics on the ' Spark ' or ' Ground,'
or ' inward man ' or ' eye ' in the soul — the names vary,
the thought is one — that is of the same nature as the
' Ground ' in God. Whether this ' Spark ' or ' Ground '
was uncreated, immanent, and basal, or a remnant of the
sinless state before the FaU — with the corollary that sal
vation consists in realising our true nature — or was some
thing infused, imparted, or added, was a matter over which

192 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
mystics were never united. Some, with the Theologia
Germanica, declined to decide at all : ' The true light is that
eternal light which is God ; or else it is a created light, but
yet Divine, which is caUed grace.' If this ' ground ' was
uncreated, the further question arises of its relation to the
Divine Essence or Ground. If it was ' imparted,' we open
the door to the doctrine, upon which so many of the later
mystics loved to dwell, of ' the birth of Christ ' within the
soul, an idea materialised by certain highly wrought nuns
into the actual travailing in birth with Christ.
' Passivity,' the behef that the soul simply is and receives,
is no accidental note of medieval mysticism. To say that
' passivity ' is, strictly, a Neoplatonist term is not sufficient
explanation : " Passivity goes on figuring in Christian
Mystics (in spite of its demonstrably dangerous suggestions
and frequently scandalous history), because the Christian
consciousness requires a term for the expression of one
element of all its deepest experiences, that character of
' giveness ' and of grace which marks all such states in
exact proportion to their depth." x Moreover, in the
Church for a thousand years the chief note of the ' re
ligious ' was the ascetic or monastic. In early monasticism
or eremitism, the solitary recluse of the Nitria, or the monk
plunging into the dense forests to escape his fellows, asceti
cism was necessarily ' passive.' This is seen most clearly in
the records of the early hermits, especially in the Historia
Lausiaca of Palladius. But as monasticism ceased to be
the refuge of the individual soul, and became instead an
organised-community life, * passive ' asceticism was bound
to find its refuge elsewhere. This is found in mystic ' con
templation,' the note of which was the same passivity as is
so striking a feature in the oldest records of the monastic
life. The result of such ' contemplation ' was the ' dark
ness ' or ' nothingness ' of soul — the human correspondence
to the ' quiet Desert of the Godhead,' ' the Divine Darkness,'
1 F. von Hiigel, The Mystical Element of Religion, ii. p. 132.

viii.] THE MEDIEVAL MYSTICS 193
negative definitions common to mystics of aU ages from
Valentinus and BasUides to Eckhart. In some of the
mystics this ' nothingness ' became a morbid quietism
which mistook for spiritual perfection a pathological in
difference, where all consciousness both of self and of the
world is reduced to zero, after the manner of the Eastern
fakir. The root of such quietism is the false conception,
so common in all medieval speculation, that God, as the
transcendent, Perfect Being, must necessarily be without
attributes. As the author of the Theologia Germanica
puts it : 'To God as Godhead appertains neither will,
nor knowledge, nor manifestation, nor anything that we
can name, or say, or conceive.' But this is to confuse the
Infinite with the Indefinite, or rather with zero raised to
the infinite — if we may adopt a mathematical expression.
The historic source of this teaching would appear to be
found in the works of the Neoplatonist Proclus.
To the above characteristics of Mysticism we would add
another of great importance for our present investigation.
We refer to what, for want of a better word, we must call
its immortality. " To-day," says Maeterlinck finely, " you
may pass through the infirmaries of the human soul, where
all thoughts come day by day to die, and you wiU not find
there a single mystic thought." * There is nothing more
remarkable in the wide range of the visible Church than
the persistence across the centuries of the mystic sense, and
of the spacious Joy and expansive freedom which it brings.
Mysticism, though at times it may sleep, is never dead. A
corollary of this is also true. There is in Mysticism a
certain timelessness, which is the despair of the historian,
especially if he be possessed with the thought of progress.
This timelessness manifests itself in the absence of local
marks, whether national or ecclesiastical. Mystics of
every age are akin. There is no speech or language where
their voice is not heard. When, therefore, Harnack 2
1 Maeterlinck, Ruysbrotc, p. 23. z H.D. vi. p. 101 n.
N

194 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
refuses to discuss the German medieval mystics because
he would " like to avoid even seeming to countenance the
error that they expressed anything one cannot read in
Origen, Plotinus, the Areopagite, Augustine, Erigena,
Bernard, and Thomas," he points in a perverse sort of way
to a great truth. The mystics are in reality a timeless
brotherhood, who repeat with but slight variations of form
or language certain eternal principles. Nevertheless, in
the very repetition there is progress.
In certain of its aspects it was inevitable that in un
balanced minds Mysticism should pass into unorthodoxy.
One of the dangers of Mysticism is Antinomianism. This
it was that in the eighteenth century gave Wesley his dislike,
more fancied, however, than real, to aU forms of Mysticism.1
How great was the danger in the Middle Ages we see in the
protests of the mystic John of Ruysbroek against those
who ' hke to call themselves " theopaths." They take
every impulse to be divine, and repudiate all responsibility.'
That Mysticism was also ofttimes semi-Pelagian in char
acter was the outcome of certain fundamental positions.
When Juliana of Norwich (fl. 1373) says that ' in every soul
that shall be saved there is a goodly will that never assented
to sin, nor ever shall,' she but puts into clear English the
basis of the condemnation of Eckhart that he had main
tained, that there is in the soul ' something uncreated '
of a divine, and, therefore, of an untainted character :
— the spark
He gave us from His fire of fires, and bade
Remember whence it sprang, nor be afraid
While that burns on, though all the rest grow dark.
The doctrine of the ' uncreated ground ' was fatal to the
strict Augustinian conception of total depravity. But not
less fatal was the general position of Mysticism, that God
may be found, not by deliverance from without, but by
i See my remarks in New History of Methodism, i. p. 58 ff.

viii.] THE MEDIEVAL MYSTICS 195
sinking into the depths of our own consciousness : ' If
thou desirest,' says Richard of St. Victor, ' to search out
the deep things of God, search out the depths of thine
own spirit.' On its phUosophical side such a view sprang
from the conception of man as a microcosm.
Another danger of Mysticism was pantheism. The
source of the danger was twofold. The doctrine of the
' uncreated ground ' in the soul could easUy be pushed into
the heretical conclusion that man was opoovo-ios with God,
in the same sense as Christ. At the other end was the
danger wliich came from looking upon absorption with the
Deity as the aim of the soul's experiences. But pantheism
is a loose charge, and, on that account, a favourite missUe.
Strictly speaking, pantheism is the identification of every
thing with God. But a faith which looks upon everything
as equaUy real, good, and divine is incompatible with any
belief in personahty, wUl, purpose, or morality. Now,
however much the Christian mystics might play with
pantheistic phrases, there are few of them — certainly not
Eckhart — who do not seek to conserve personality. For
the mystics were conscious that the originality of Chris
tianity consists in its revelation through the person of
Christ of the depth and inexhaustibleness of human person
ahty. Accordingly, in the Christian mystics, dangerous
as their language with reference to absorption may be
at times, there is always an emphasis of purpose ; in the
later mystics, for instance, much is made of the will — and
this in itself is fatal to pantheism.
In his subtle survey of Christian Mysticism, Professor
Inge has pointed out certain tendencies, loosely labelled
pantheistic, which should be carefully distinguished. The
first he caUs Acosmism, the denial of reality to the visible
world, the only existence being the ' intelligible world of
ideas ' in the mind of God. Of this system the most
thorough modern representative is Spinoza ; of the older
phUosophers we may take the Neoplatonists or Eckhart.

196 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
A second behef is Panentheism, the behef in the immanence
of a God who is also transcendent. " In its true form it is
an integral part of Christian phUosophy, and indeed of all
rational theology. But in proportion as the indweUing of
God, or of Christ, or of the Holy Spirit in the heart of man,
is regarded as an opus operatum or as a complete substi
tution of the Divine for the human, we are in danger of
a self-deception which resembles the maddest phase of
Pantheism." 1 An example may be found in Catherine
of Genoa's claim : ' I find no more me ; there is no longer
any other I but God.'
Of these dangers of Mysticism we give an Ulustration.
At the commencement of the thirteenth century we note
the rediscovery of John Scotus Erigena. The result was
seen in the rise at Paris of a school of mystics who ex
aggerated the inward experience of God into a pantheistic
independence of all external means of grace, and thus
" launched, without sufficient store of charts and compasses,
on the dangerous sea of Spiritual Freedom." a The leader
of these, Amalrich or Amaury of Bena, taught that ' every
one ought to believe as an article of faith that each one of
us is a member of Christ ' ; words of innocent evangelical
ring, which, however, were used by Amalrich in the sense
that anything in the universe in the last analysis is God,
and that the purified soul becomes God Himself. In 1205
Amalrich's doctrines were condemned; but the seed he
had sown bore fruit in the formation of a vigorous society,
whose central tenet was the Antinomian doctrine that one
who finds himself ' free in God ' is thereby raised above
rules and forms and rites, which are merely of use for those
on a lower spiritual level. The members of this society
(according to the contemporary account of Caesarius of
Heisterbach) taught ' that there is neither heaven nor hell,
as places, but he who knows God possesses heaven, and he
who commits mortal sin carries hell within himself.' They
i Inge, op. cit. p. 121. 2 R. Jones, Mystical Religion, p. 195.

vm.] THE MEDIEVAL MYSTICS 197
claimed (and in this we detect the influence of the teaching
of Joachim di Fiori) that they lived in the third age. The
age of the Father had been succeeded by that of the Son ;
this again was followed by the dispensation of the Spirit,
Who had become incarnate in them, and Whose direct work
brings salvation without any exterior act, whether baptism
or eucharist. The society was broken up, and its more
important members burnt at the stake at Paris in 1209 ;
but the doctrines took refuge among the Albigensians, and
were only extirpated by a deluge of blood and the counter-
reaction of the friars. Ih Rhineland the teaching issued
in the formation of a widespread Antinomian sect known
as Brethren of the Free Spirit. In Strassburg in 1215 we
read of the burning of eighty heretics, whose leader Ortlieb
had taught that ' a man ought to give up all externals and
foUow the promptings of the Spirit within himself,' inas
much as every man is really of the same substance as God,
and, if he put forth the wUl, can become divine. For the
man in such a state sin is impossible, for all that he does
is the act of God. n
On its historical or genealogical side Mysticism in the
Church was of Eastern or Platonic origin. With the
mystical elements in the Early Church, especially in the
Alexandrian school, we have already dealt. But Eastern
Mysticism, in which the stress was laid upon emanation,
had little attraction for the ruder West. Such Eastern
Mysticism as entered into Western theology came in chiefly
under false pretences. Dionysius the Areopagite was in
but not of the Western Church. His work, whUe widely
reverenced, was really alien in spirit to the genius of Latin
Christianity, while the Mysticism of his interpreter, Erigena,
had been without abiding influence either on his own or
later generations. Nevertheless, if only because of the
Platonic Realism underlying Latin theology up to the rise

198 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
of Scholasticism, there was never a time when a certain
element of Mysticism was not to be found in some of
its writers, apart altogether from the quotations from
Dionysius with which aU medieval commonplace books
were filled. Two Latin writers, in especial, had introduced
Mysticism into theology : Victorinus, the first Christian
Neoplatonist who wrote in Latin,1 who was converted to
Christianity in his old age (about 360) ; and a greater than
Victorinus, though he owed much to him — St. Augustine.
In Victorinus, who had received as a tutor the rare honour
of a statue in the Roman Forum, there is one original
conception which afterwards, through Augustine, became
common in the Church. In his treatment of the doctrine
of the Trinity he speaks of the Holy Ghost as the bond
{copula) who Joins in perfect love the Father and the Son.
The mystical elements in St. Augustine are of supreme
importance. It is true that Mysticism only touched him
on one side of his nature ; it formed one only of the many
contradictory forces the synthesis of which in one system
gave to St. Augustine his unique position. St. Augustine's
hold upon the Western world was, however, too profound
for such Mysticism as he had incorporated not to be far-
reaching. But perhaps his chief influence as a mystic was
that in the doctrines of Austin we find the great offset to
the rationalism into which the predominant Aristotelianism
was ever tending to degenerate. At the same time, in his
orthodoxy we find the preservative against mystic pan
theism. /JThe mystic elements in St. Augustine became most con
spicuous when thrown against the background of the current
Scholasticism. When Aristotle conquered the schools,
and logic became supreme in theology, Mysticism was
forced to become articulate, if only because otherwise
Mysticism would have been lost. Such attempts at sys-
1 For Victorinus and his importance, see Bishop Gore in D.O.B. iv. s.v.,
or Harnack, H.D. v. p. 35 ff.

viii.] THE MEDIEVAL MYSTICS 199
tematisation were twofold. Some of the writers, anxious
above all for the conservation of authority, attempted to
combine Scholasticism and Mysticism ; others, on the
contrary, were indifferent to, and independent of, the
schools. The gulf between the two classes is not slight,
and grew with the increasing formalism of the schools.
St. Bernard, who lived before the schoolman had become
supreme, is naturally less sharply marked off as a mystic
than Eckhart or Tauler or others, who were driven into
independence or even revolt, {on the first class, Mysticism,
following Augustine, is more psychological : the emphasis
of self-knowledge is the key to divine knowledge. Union
with_God is achieved through the fannltififl nf th° s"nl In
the second class it is ontological : the capacity for union
with God is inherent in the essence of the soul. In the
mystics of the second school there is a tendency to dis
parage reason in comparison with ' ecstasy.' By the
writers of the first school ' contemplation,' ' intuition,' or
' ecstasy ' is regarded as an additional faculty, which
supplements but not invalidates reason ; reason deals with
the natural, ' contemplation ' with the supematuraL^Phis
distinction was soon pushed into an " intractable dualism,"1
and has led to the identification, in the modern Roman
Church, of Mysticism with " the science which treats of
supernatural phenomena," including witchcraft and the
like. On the other hand, the alliance of Scholasticism with
Mysticism issued in Gerson's attempted reduction of
Mysticism to an exact science, in which all mystical
experiences are carefuUy tabulated and classified. In such
an atmosphere Mysticism was inevitably asphyxiated.
In the consequent reaction, orthodox mysticism, after
Gerson, took refuge in devotion without troubling itself
much about its logical basis. Mysticism became a mode
of piety and life, a substitute for reasoning rather than a
form ol the schools! 1 Inge, op. cit. i. p. 43,

200 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
Of the scholastic mystics — leaving out Bernard, who was
scarcely a schoolman — the chief were Hugo and Richard of
St. Victor. Bonaventura, Albert the Great, and Gerson. Of
these Hugo of St. Victor (fll41) is the most important,
if only because of his development of the sharp opposi
tion between the natural and the supernatural. ¦ In the
scholastic mystics, as we might expect from the influence
of Aristotle, with whom God is the transcendent One
beyond the All, the method of reaching Him is either the
via negativa, the rising above aU the marks which give
definition and reality to our world of experience, or else
it is a supernatural communication from the transcendent
which we gain by esctasy. Of this ' negative way,' so
beloved by medieval orthodoxy, the language is always
that of the cloister. Thus in the De adhaerendo Deo of
Albert the Great (1193-1280), and in Bonaventura (1221-
1274), aU the emphasis is on the nakedness and passivity of
soul which is necessary if we would enter into the ' Divine
Darkness.' Only by the ' darkness of the mind,' i.e. a mind
in which ' the doors of the senses are kept barred and bolted
aganist all phantasms and images,' ' as if the soul were
already separated from the body,' can the soul arise to
the vision of God and ' view the world from afar off.' In
this respect the language of these orthodox mystics does
not differ from that of Tauler or Ruysbroek. But in
Bonaventura we find a departure from the Dionysian
tradition in the teaching that God is both immanent and
transcendent.^/ m
Of the mystics in whom we find independence of the
scholastic tradition, the greatest is Meister Heinrich
Eckhart, ' from whom,' as one of his pupils proudly
proclaims, ' God kept nothing hid.' Eckhart was born,
probably, at Hockheim in Thuringia, shortly before 1260.
In his fifteenth year he entered the Dominican convent of

viii.] THE MEDIEVAL MYSTICS 201
Erfurt, and thence passed to Cologne, where Albert the
Great's teaching, with its emphasis on scholastic or ortho
dox mysticism, was stiU reverenced, though slowly giving
place to that of his greater pupU, Thomas Aquinas. In
addition to Albert and Aquinas, and, of course, Dionysius,
Eckhart seems to have known Erigena and, possibly,
Averroes also. Eckhart's election as prior of Erfurt was
followed by a course of study at Paris (about 1302), which
he finally left in 1312 for Strassburg, at that time the fore
most rehgious centre in Germany. About 1320 he returned
to Cologne, where he preached, with astonishing results,
Mysticism in German to the common people, and in Latin
to the theologians. For some time he seems to have been
sheltered from attack by his eminently practical and
saintly hfe. In the year before he died (1327) complaint
of heterodoxy was for the first time brought against him,
the chief charge being that he had maintained ' that there
is something uncreated in the soul.' In answer to his
appeal to Rome, Eckhart was condemned two years after
his death : ' He had wished to know more than he should.'
Seventeen propositions were classed as ' heretical,' and
eleven as having an ' Ul-sound,' and ' very rash.' While
Rome thus condemned, Henry Suso had a. vision of the
' blessed master, in exceeding glory, bis soul quite trans
formed and deified in God.'
In comparing^ the Mysticism of Eckhart with that of
his predecessors from Dionysius downwards, and of the
scholastics down to Gerson, we find an obvious change
in the disappearance of the long ladders of ascent, the
graduated scales of virtues, faculties, and states of mind,
which fill so large a place in those systems. These lists
are the natural product of the imagination when it plays
upon the theory of emanation. But with Eckhart the
fundamental truth is the immanence of God Himself, not
in the faculties, but in the ground of the soul.1
1 Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 162.

202 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
In the teaching of Eckhart we find constant insistence
upon ' the Divine Spirit ' within the soul whereby we may
rise into union with the Godhead in an ' Eternal Now,'
and become ' transformed totally into God, even as in the
sacrament the bread is converted into the body of Christ.'
It is, however, of importance that we should remember
that Eckhart always distinguishes between ' God ' and the
' Godhead.' Behind ' God,' i.e. ' natured Nature,' or the
Divine revealed in Personal Form, there is the Godhead who
is the Revealer or * non-natured Nature,' i.e. unoriginated
Reality, the ' Ground ' of the revelation, just as behind the
me and its conscious processes of thought there is a deeper
ego which is ever unknown, but none the less real. This
Godhead or Ground ever transcends knowledge, and there
fore is a ' nameless,' ' naked ' ' Nothing,' for nothing can
ever be predicated of ' the impenetrable Darkness of the
eternal Godhead.' Such Ground is an ' Eternal Now,' the
self-consciousness of which is the differentiation within
Himself of subject and object, i.e. of Father and Son.
This self-consciousness is not temporal, but eternal ; the
Son, therefore, is eternally begotten. ' God ' or the re
velation of the ' Godhead ' must therefore of necessity be
the Father and the Son. The Trinity — for the Holy Spirit
is regarded as the personalisation of this bond of love — is
thus the eternal process of the Divine Self-consciousness,
and no mere emanation or appearance of the Absolute.
" The reader who finds himself somewhat dazed in this
height of speculation would run up into the same difficulty
himself if he should undertake strenuously to think out
what is involved in the word Infinite, which he, without
giving it much thought, applies to God. Few of us, like
Eckhart, have either the desire or the intellectual power
to think our thoughts through to the bottom." 1 We may
take, as an instance of " thinking our thoughts through to
the bottom," the origin of our belief in the eternal genera-
1 R. Jones, Mystical Religion, p. 226.

viii.] THE MEDIEVAL MYSTICS 203
tion of the Son, one of the phrases found in aU theological
text-books. In its ultimate philosophic analysis this is
but the logical consequence of saying that God is Love.
But love must have some object, and if the Love is eternal
the object must be eternal. Nor can that object be outside
the ' Godhead,' for, as Eckhart would have phrased it, that
would involve that ' something ' could be eternally pre
dicated of the * nameless Nothing.' The ' other,' whose
existence is essential if the Godhead is conscious Love, must
therefore be within the Deity.
Eckhart, following the Neoplatonists, regards creation
as an eternal process also, the self-consciousness of God
beholding within Himself the Ideas of the universe, the
projection of which into space and time becomes the world
of creatures. Creation is thus the eternal thought of
' God,' i.e. of * natured Nature,' Just as the Son is the ex
pression of the Eternal Love of the Godhead or ' unnatured
Nature.' Of such creation the only reality consists in the
Divine Ideas, which necessarily exist in an ' eternal Now.'
The Neoplatonists were fond of making a distinction
between the higher and lower self, of which the former was
untainted by the sins of the latter. In Eckhart the dis
tinction is drawn with great sharpness. Just as in God
there is a Ground or Essence, so also in man ' there is some
thing which is above the soul, divine, simple, nameless
rather than named.' This ' something ' Eckhart calls ' the
Spark,' ' the Ground of the Soul,' or ' the Soul's Eye.' The
soul deals with phenomena in time, it gives us the em
pirical self — our phraseology is modern, but would seem
to express Eckhart's meaning. The ego or ground is the
super-temporal presupposition of experience, and can
escape beyond the particular and finite, and dwell in
' the ever-present Now.' 1 In such escape hes * the blessed-
1 The non-philosophic reader may find this easier to understand if he
compares the current conception of Conscience as something distinct from,
and independent of, the empirical moral contents of his life.

204 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
ness of the poor in spirit,' when the soul has withdrawn
from all sense experience, and ' wUls nothing, knows
nothing, desires nothing.' Whether this Ground or Spark
of the soul is in God, the point in common between the soul
and the Divine Ground, or whether it is, as Aquinas had
taught, a created faculty, supplementary to the other
faculties, and transcending reason, Eckhart is not always
decided. In his earlier days he taught the latter, in his
later the former doctrine. A sinhlar indecision is seen in
another matter. If in one place he teaches that ' the eye
with which I see God is the same eye with wliich He sees
me,' elsewhere he maintains the separate individuality of
the human and Divine Grounds. The soul is a mirror
which when placed in the sunlight sends back a reflection ;
only in this sense are ' sun and reflection the same thing.'
But whatever the nature of the ' Ground,' it is by rising
into this ' Ground ' that the soul becomes one with the
Godhead in an Eternal Now. As a rule, Eckhart's lan
guage in describing this union becomes little less than
pantheistic. ' Where I am,' he tells us, * there God is ;
and where God is, there am I.' Nevertheless, it may be
urged that he Just saves himself, more by bis balanced
Christian instinct than by his logic. He insists that how
ever much the soul ' may sink and sink in the eternity of
the Divine essence,' yet it never loses its identity. Per
sonality, in fact, belongs to the very nature of the soul ;
for Eckhart it is the eternal ground-form of all true being.
Eckhart does not find it easy to fit into his scheme
the historical Atonement. With Eckhart, as with most
mystics, the Incarnation, rather than the Cross, is the central
fact of Christianity. Christ is the Ideal Man, in whom all
men have their unity and reality, inasmuch as in the
' Ground ' of this ideal they rise to their own ' Ground.'
The Incarnation, or self-revelation of God, was thus a real
necessity, and would have been even if Adam had never
sinned. This view of the Incarnation, which fits in so well

viii.] THE MEDD3VAL MYSTICS 205
with the modern teleological view of the universe and the
familiar idea of the ascent of man, was a favourite with
medieval writers of many different schools. It would
appear to be first found in Rupert of Deutz (fllSS).1
In his doctrine of sin Eckhart makes everything turn on
the wUl. In this, perhaps, we may detect the influence of
Duns Scotus, whom he may have met at Cologne. In his
view sin is self-wUl. Love itself ' resides in the wUl ; the
more wUl, the more love.' But he does not reconcUe his
doctrine with his behef that it is the nature of all phenomenal
things to return to God, from whom they proceeded. The
effect of his teaching is often the identification of perfection
with airdOeia, and this in spite of his strong insistence upon
the value of the hfe of service — ' better to feed the hungry
than to see the visions of St. Paul.' But such insistence
was rather due to his heart than his logic, for, since the
right wUl is everything — ' if your wUl is right, you cannot
go wrong '^-Eckhart, in opposition to all medieval thought,
necessarily attaches no value to good works.

rv
The influence of Eckhart was not exhausted with bis life.
A succession of German mystics carried on his teaching.
If on the speculative side they added nothing of value to
' the Master,' the spiritual beauty of their lives, their con
stant pursuit ' of the eternal, uncreated truth,' and the
intense earnestness with which they emphasised the fact
of experience, and the necessity of spiritual communion
with God, give to these mystics of the Rhine an important
place in Christian thought. It is because of the want of this
personal experience that in a well-known incident (1346),
in the Book of the Master, the ' Friend of God from the
Oberland ' is reported as rebuking ' a great doctor, a master
i On this doctrine see Westeott, Gospel of Creation, in his Ep. John. Cf.
Ottley, op. cit. ii. p. 202 ff.

206 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
of the Holy Scripture,' who, on somewhat slender his
torical grounds, has been identified with Tauler. The
primary teaching of all those writers may be expressed
in the words of John Ruysbroek (1293-1381) : ' The soul
finds God in its own depths.' In the history of their inner
lives we mark the revolt of the individual, especially of the
layman — this point is of great importance — against a
Church life which tended to his suppression. Their Mys
ticism has for the reader much the same interest as St.
Augustine's Confessions. He finds himself transplanted,
especially in the Theologia Germanica and in the Imitatio
Christi, into the inner sanctuary of the soul. A study of
their writings belongs rather to the history of Christian
piety than to that of Christian thought. Their story is
conditioned so much by struggle and suffering as to belong
more to the psychology than the phUosophy of Mysticism.
There are, however, a few matters in connection with these
mystics that demand attention.
In the first place, these mystics, whether under the name
of Friends of God, Beghards, Beguins, or Brethren of the
Common Life, warft all part, nf t,r>« gQ/mA gATiPral rftTT^H-.
agah^tamateriahsedchuj^asjmducedJ^jcJiLand^us. But where Wyclif was. aefee^they.. were,, paggjye. With
politicaland ecclesiastical naoyemenj.fi tiiey bad no concern.
Nor_wer e Jjhey anxioiis_to.iecjQnstru.ct „ei^hejL.i_g_CJiurch
or its theology. But on the side of spiritual life and ex-
perience theirs was a sUent, nnnrgfl.pjgaH prnt.Agt. n.gain,°t
an age of ^wjuch^thechief, e.v.ett&jQE4ihfi. Chijxqh, ja3a.the.di3-
"(1309J1377). The student, anxious to understand the con
trast, cannot do better than take up any treatise of Wyclif,
whether in English or Latin, and compare it with Rulman
Merswin's remarkable literary creation of ' the Friend of
God from the Oberland,' that strange being whose mythical
existence has misled centuries, but who was really " the
' Christian ' of a fourteenth-century Pilgrim's Progress,

viii.] THE MEDIEVAL MYSTICS 207
illustrating how God does His work for the world and for
the Church through a divinely trained and spiritually
Uluminated layman." ^ ~?
We have referred to the psychological or psychic rather
than the philosophical character of their Mysticism. We
see this, in one direction, in their excessive expectation of
ecstasy or supernatural incorporation, and their extreme
asceticism — Suso gives us a dreadful picture of his self-
scourgings — in all ages the fruitful cause of such halluci
nations. We see it also in the apocalyptic strain of their
utterances, though in this they were at one with the con
temporary canonised prophetesses, St. Bridget, St. Hilde-
gard, and St. Elizabeth of Schoenau. It is also apparent
in their writings. The Book of the Nine Rocks (1.351), the
chief work of the Friends of (iod, is in reahty a series of

visions. Apart frOnT'etisflasy,'' pefsSaaTlife is made the
constant subject of observation and delineatiou. Merswin
(fl382) and his friend Nicholas von Lowen have left us
some twenty treatises, the historical elements in which, if
real at all, are altogether secondary to their value as
' tendency-literature,' or the analysis of the ideals and
inspirations of the Friends of God. Henry Suso (b. 1285)
of Swabia, with extraordinary minuteness and much liter
ary skUl, in a remarkable autobiography exposes to us his
inmost soul, as he unfolds his struggles ' to divest him
self of himself, pass into God, and become wholly one with
Him, as a drop of water mingled with a cask of wine.'.
The psychological character of this human document is
heightened by being written throughout in the third person,
as if Suso had attained his heart's desire and stood apart
from himself.
As with mystics of all ages, so with these medieval
Germans ; they especially served the Church by the em
phasis they laid upon the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and
that at a time when His work and place were almost totally
1 R. Jones, op. cit. p. 251.

208 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
ignored. In their insistence upon the reality of present
inspiration for all who receive ' the luminous grace of the
Holy Spirit,' and have entered into His 'upper school,'
they remind us of George Fox and the later Friends. ' The
Holy Spirit,' says ' the Friend of God from the Oberland '
in the Book of the Master, ' has the same power to-day as
ever.' In the Book of the Nine Rocks this becomes the
claim that ' God can still write a book ' ; the Bible is not
the exhaustion of His thoughts. In publishing his wonder
ful autobiography, Suso believed that the Divine Wisdom
was making use of his pen. Says Thomas a Kempis :
' Some place their religion in books, some in images, some
in the pomp and splendour of external worship. But some,
with Uluminated understandings, hear what the Holy
Spirit speaketh in their hearts.' The practical bearing
of the doctrine is best seen in the oft-quoted passage in
which Tauler claims this gift as the basis of a consecrated
life : ' One man can spin, another can make shoes, and aU
these are gifts of the Holy Spirit. I teU you if I were not
a priest I should esteem it a great gift that I was able to
make shoes, and I would try to make them so well as to be
a pattern to all.'
Of the Friends of God^he^atJaiiownja Jolna -Tauter of
Strassburg (1300-1361). He was the preacher of the move
ment, and the great theme of his sermons is the need of the
inner light and of the indwelling of God in the soul. In
most points his doctrine is the same as Eckhart's, but " his
sense of sin is too deep for him to bejsatisfied with the Neo-
platonic doctrine of its negativityj^1 nor does he look
upon creation as necessary to the nature of God, though he
owns that the ' ideas ' of the world exist in the Son ' from
all eternity.' In the Theologia Germanica " a golden little
treatise," the influence of which upon Luther was so pro
found, we find a constant cry against self- will. LJJ__LX_f
thy own will and there will be no hell. If there were any
1 Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 181.

viii.] THE MEDIEVAL MYSTICS 209
person in hell who should get quit of his gejf-will a.nrl .call
nothing "fals" own, he would nnma ont flf.bflll int,o..tLA_a:ggn '
The resTnTaf such loss of self-will will be the fulfilment
of the author's great prayer : ' I would fain be to the
Eternal Goodness what His own hand is to a man.' In one
matter the Theologia Germanica breaks away from the
traditional standpoint, especially from the hard legalism of
Anselm. In his doctrine of the Atonement he dwells upon
the anguish of God because of sin, in a manner that reminds
us of much modern thought. Sin is so hateful to God
that He would wUlingly suffer agony and death to purge
away one man's sin. Wherever there is grief for sin there
we find the presence of God. For the accusation sometimes
brought against the Theologia Germanica of pantheism
there seems httle Justification.1 The * dreaming oneself
into God ' is one of the extravagances of the ' false light '
against which he warns his readers.
In the fifteenth century Mysticism TMW*1 iT1to ppmmnn
]jfe. knr, it, wag no InnojA.r t.ViA Myat.ip.igm of Dionysius and
Erigena, or of the Schoolmen, or even of Eckhart and
Tauler. It^was a mysticism which abandoned speculation
for practice? Its keynote was the pnsjtivB 'imit,al^n '
of Christ, and the reality of ftiwnffl ffliffio" In Catherine
of Siena, Walter Hilton, and the nun Juliana of Norwich ;
in the great mystical brotherhood of HoUand, the Brethren
of the Common Life, with Gerard Groote (b. 1340), the
Wesley of the fourteenth century, at their head, we mark
the rise of this new Mysticism in every country in Europe.
The outcome of the whole movement on its intellectual side
is seen in the most influential mystic writing Jbhe world has
ever known, the Imitation of Christ. .
The life of Thomas Haemerlein of Kempen covers nearly
a century, but it is characteristic that his work belongs to
no age, and scarcely reflects at all the long days through
which he lived. After resuming his education at the
1 See Inge, op. cit. p. 184, also p. 365.
O

210 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
schools of the Brethren of the Common Life at Deventer,
Thomas entered in 1400 the community at Mount St. Agnes,
and there in 1471 he died. But in this " silent, motionless
centre of a whirling and incomprehensible world," x neither
sound of trumpet nor voice of words disturbed those whose
only thought was of Christ and of His imitation. There,
somewhere between 1400 and 1425, Thomas wrote his book.
" It was written down by a hand that waited for the heart's
prompting ; it is the chronicle of a solitary, hidden anguish,
struggle, trust, and triumph — not written on velvet cushions
to teach endurance to those who are treading with bleeding
feet on the stones. And so it remains to aU time a lasting
record of human needs and human consolations, the voice of
a brother : who, ages ago, felt and suffered and renounced." 2
From the standpoint of Christian thought the value or
Thomas's work is twofold, ^historically it is the last.
as it is the best, expressioiiiaii3defence ¦_ of Mfihe ideals
of a monastic. ""world"'; "it "is ~*the swan-like song of a
systemwhose effective work in the world was in reality
finished, and whose da^~Tjl^
more importance is it to note its abandonment of the
mere negative side of self-renunciation. The negative
side, it is true, is there; for that matter, there can be
no spiritual life where it is not found. At times also
this negative side appears in a mischievous form,
illustrations of which will readily occur to every reader of
the Imitation. But in the very title of the work we find
a protegtiaga^n^ n.fiffltion. The insistence on the negative
road had so often ended with medieval mystics in the futile
quest of the Absolute, ' the Divine Darkness,' and the hke.
For this dangerous tendency Thomas substitutes the
imitation of Christ ; in place of the ' immeasurable ' he
holds before us, imperfectly perhaps, but with marveUous
power, the measure of the stature of Christ. Hence the
1 de Montmorency, Thomas a Kempis p. 89.
2 George Eliot, Mill on the Floss, book iv. chap. iii.

viii.] THE MEDIEVAL MYSTICS 211
core of the, message, ^LThnmaiH.ifl, tihali no jp^hajidpn-
ment, self-mortification, self-crucifiYioT^ ffitfmuj^ «, holy
passion oTlov^can^rim^jjfl to. .flBJOT1 ' Without con
tending,' fie'telTs us, there can be no conquest.' Such a
belief is fatal to aU quietism, its logical issue is the advice
Of Thomas: ' Never be jdlft or vapant, "Rp. always reading;
or writing or praying or meditative; or employed in some
useful labour for the common good/_J^
°The*e^ect of this positive side of Thomas is seen in his
disciple, John Wesel Gansfoort (1419-1481), who worked
unceasingly for the spiritual reformation of the Church.
But with John Wesel we begin the Reformation. ' If I
had read Wesel sooner,' said Luther, ' my adversaries
would have said that I had borrowed my whole doctrine
from him. Our minds are so consonant.' Unfortunately
Luther, in spite of the mysticism that underlies his cardinal
doctrine of justification by faith, never really understood
the mystics. Owing to this and other causes, the work
which the speculative mystics performed for medieval
thought has since the Reformation been taken over by
phuosopny^ tnougn, alas ! without the association with
religion invariable in the Middle Ages.

212 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.

CHAPTER IX
THE SCHOOLMEN
Argument
§ I. The new forces — The Friars — Their place in science
and theology — The Spiritual Franciscans and the
revival of 'prophecy' — William of Ockham and
Marsiglio — The Defensor Pads — Importance of the
work — Roger Bacon  pp. 213-221
§ II. Aristotle — His rapid conquest of the Schools — The
new translations — An outburst of Scepticism —
Averroes and Avicenna — Danger of their philos
ophy — Monopsychism  pp. 221-227
§ III. Plato and Aristotle — Early predominance of Plato —
Causes of the later influence of Aristotle — The
dialectics of the natural man — Importance of
Thomas Aquinas — His new synthesis — The future
of Thomism — Duns Scotus — His unfortunate fate
— The effect of his scepticism . . .pp. 227-234
§ IV. Realism and Nominalism — Roscelin — Ockham — The
triumph of Nominalism — Realism, Nominalism,
and Transubstantiation — Lanfranc and Berengar
— The 'quantity' of Aquinas — Duns Scotus and
substance — Nominalism and the new dogma — The
consequences for Wyclif and Hus — Duns and the
will  pp. 234-240
§ V. The return to Augustine — Wyclif— The failure of
Scholasticism — Its later unreality — The New
Learning  pp. 240-243

ix.] THE SCHOOLMEN 213

The student would do well to understand the new forces
in hfe and thought wliich differentiate the early from the
later Schoolmen. In the main they were three in number :
the rise of the secular universities as the centres of learning
and thought, in place of the monasteries or cathedral
schools ; the coining of the friars ; and the adoption by
the Church of Aristotle as her pilot in the search for truth.
Judged by permanent effect, the greatest of these three
was the growth of the new universities. But for our
present purpose this was secondary in importance to the
influence of the ' new logic' For the new universities,
though destined to become the homes of culture and science,
were at first completely dominated by the prevailing passion
for dialectics. The few who, like Roger Bacon, pleaded for
a larger outlook were ' unheard, forgotten, buried ' — to
quote Bacon's own sad verdict on his life.
The later Scholasticism was powerfully assisted by the
revival of religion in the thirteenth century, under the
lead of Francis of Assisi (fl226) and Dominic (fl221). On
the side of practical piety the coming of the friars was,
perhaps, the greatest popular movement recorded in history.
But the influence of the revival upon religious thought
should not be overlooked. Francis himself had dreaded
the effects of learning. He was not willing even that the
friars should become men of one book ; his ideal rather
was men of one life. 'When you have a psalter,' he
said to one of the novices, ' you will want a breviary,
and when you have a breviary you will seat yourself in a
pulpit like a great prelate.' Then taking up some ashes,

214 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
Francis scattered them over the head of the novice, saying :
' There is your breviary, there is your breviary.' Francis
was right in so far as he saw that logic and canon law
monopohsed the thought of the secular clergy. But Francis
faded to see that, by laying the foundations of hfe in
love, knowledge would become a true handmaid to work.
Nevertheless, to Francis Europe owes, indirectly, the rise
of science. He taught men, though he knew it not, to
turn from verbal quibblings to the study of nature ; for
instance, the care of the friars for men's bodies soon de
veloped the physical studies for which the Order became
celebrated. But, owing to the dominance of dialectics,
the return to nature found its chief field in the rise of a
new art, under the lead of Giotto, Fra Angelico, and other
Italians. From art the transition was easUy made in
Italy to the rediscovery of the humanities and the com
mencement of the Renaissance. Once more HeUas claimed
her own.
Within a few years of the death of St. Francis the friars
became the intellectual leaders of Europe. They learned
the great truth repeated in every revival, that no Church
can be built upon mere experience, or by descending to
the social condition of the outcast. They set out to win
the towns for Christ ; they found the towns in a ferment
of unbehef. To maintain a hold they must enter into the
intellectual as well as the moral difficulties of their flocks.
The Dominicans perceived this from the first, and eagerly
sought out the centres of learning. Their headquarters
were at Paris and Bologna ; in England their first convent
was at Oxford. The Franciscans were not slow to follow.
Their first English provincial ' buUt a school in the fratry
of Oxford and persuaded Master Robert Grosseteste, of holy
memory, to read lectures there to the brethren.' The six
great doctors of later Scholasticism all belonged to the
Mendicants. Alexander of Hales, Albert the Great, and
Thomas Aquinas were followers of Dominic ; Bonaventura,

ix.] THE SCHOOLMEN 215
Duns Scotus, and WUUam of Ockham, of Francis. To
these we must add Adam Marsh, Raymond Lull, Roger
Bacon, and a long list of distinguished names.
The effect upon thought of the great revival was many-
sided. It infused new energy into every form of hfe,
religious, ecclesiastical, political, and heretical. In the
schools the movement happened to coincide with the dis
covery of Aristotle. From the first the friars, especially
the Dominicans, flung themselves into the adaptation of
the Greek philosopher to the needs of orthodoxy. Not
less important was the part that two Dominicans, Eckhart
and Tauler, played in the setting forth of the phUosophic
grounds of Mysticism. On the ecclesiastical-political side
we have in WUliam of Ockham and Michael of Cesena two
of the leaders of revolt. They were Franciscans, for it
was ever among the Brothers Minor that we find an in
tellectual and moral ferment that drove them either into
new dogmas of orthodoxy, or into the most daring heresies
of religion and phUosophy.
In the Eastern Church the great struggle of the fourth
and fifth centuries had raged over the definitions of the
nature of Christ. It is equally characteristic of the Western
world that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there
should be passionate controversy concerning the meaning
and obligations of ' poverty,' the extent to which the
' poverty ' of Jesus and the apostles was absolute, and
so forth. The controversy, though in its developments
associated with the Franciscans, by no means began with
them. The dispute was " in the air " ; it formed the
motive of the movements before St. Francis associated
with Waldo, the Poor Men of Lyons, and the Catholic Poor
of Durand of Huesca ; it was part of the general revolt
against a Church which had forgotten the precepts of its
Founder. Far be it from us to enter into the dreary con
flicts of the Spiritual Franciscans. The quarrels between
the ' Zealots ' and ' Moderates ' have long since burnt them-

216 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
selves out into ashes which we would not lightly disturb.
Suffice that we note the part played by the Spiritual
Franciscans in the revival of apocalyptic prophecy. For
in their indignation against the attempts of Rome to whittle
away the obligation of absolute poverty, the Spiritual
Franciscans began to circulate writings ascribed to Joachim
di Fiori (1145-1202). In these Rome was described as the
great whore and the barren fig-tree ; the Emphe as the in
strument of God which should overthrow a corrupt Church.
Joachim had prophesied that in 1260 the dominion of
the Holy Ghost, the third age of the Church, would suc
ceed the exhausted dispensations of the Father and the
Son. A terrible persecution would separate the wheat
from the chaff, and the elect would enter into peace, with
the incoming of the reign of love or ' age of lilies.'
For sixty years these speculations of Joachim had been
prized by the Church. Popes and theologians had failed
to discern their dangerous tendencies. But in 1254 the
' Spirituals ' — who had, in fact, appropriated this name
to themselves from Joachim's prophecy — forced them
into fatal prominence by their publication at Paris of the
famous treatise, The Introduction to the Eternal Gospel, the
work of the learned enthusiast Gherardo da Borgo San
Donnino. This book, now lost, met among aU classes with
unbounded success ; yet nothing more revolutionary of
the whole order of the Church had ever been penned.
Gherardo sweeps away the whole sacerdotal system ; love
would replace all the sacraments of the Church ; con
templation take the place of active life.
The great part played by these apocalyptic visions and
ideals in the thought of the fourteenth and fifteenth cen
turies has hardly been sufficiently appreciated as yet by
scholars, possibly because they have kept too much to the
highways of thought instead of diverging into its by-paths.
Many of the Lollard writings, some of the works attributed
to Wyclif, many of those attributed to Hus, are saturated

ix.] THE SCHOOLMEN 217
with these ideas. By diverse subterranean channels we
find the prophetic spirit influencing life far and wide, ever
and anon rising to the surface in open revolt or dangerous
heresy. We should do well to note that when the Spiritual Fran
ciscans launched on Europe the question of the ' poverty of
Christ,' the thoughtful reahsed that beneath this academic
issue there were involved two principles of importance.
The first struck at the worldhness of the representatives of
the apostles, and at the existence of vast Church endow
ments. As a political issue we see how large a part this
played in the life and writings of Wyclif , and even of some
who would have had httle sympathy with his advanced
ideas. The second was a direct challenge to the papal
claim to be the dictator of right and wrong, with powers of
binding and loosing at will, and of dispensing from the
obligations of vow or rule. The leaders in this crusade
were Michael of Cesena and William of Ockham. In his
Contra Errores Papae Michael denounced the utterances of
Pope John xxn. as heresies, and appealed ' to the universal
Church and to a General CouncU which in faith and morals
is superior to the pope. For a pope can err in faith and
morals, as many human popes have faUen from the faith.
But the universal Church cannot err, and a council re
presenting the universal Church is also free from error.'
In a flood of scholastic subtleties WUliam of Ockham
pursued the same theme to further conclusions. The pope
may err, a general council may err, the doctors of the
Church may err ; only Holy Scripture and the beliefs of the
Church are of universal validity, and with these to guide
him the meanest peasant may know the truth. The drift
of such arguments needs no explanation. The thoughtful
realised that Europe had awakened to the criticism of an
institution whose claims had been accepted for generations
as divine. Henceforth the more conservative looked for
reformation to a general councU, the upshot of which was

218 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
Constance ; the more revolutionary to the working out
of the plans of Marsiglio and Ockham. In the next
generation the work of these two was taken up by an even
greater iconoclast. In many respects John Wyclif (f 1384)
sums up in himself the movements and forces, many of
them contradictory, which in the previous century had
gathered for the overthrow of then common foe.
We have referred to Marsiglio of Padua, one of the most
interesting if impracticable of medieval thinkers. In 1324,
with the help of his friend, John of Jandun — ' the two
beasts,' as the Pope called them, ' from the abyss of Satan '
— he wrote his great work, Defensor Pads, the most original
pohtical treatise of the Middle Ages. In the second book
of this work Marsiglio examines the nature of the priest
hood and its relation to the State. He begins by defining
the Church as the entire body of Christian men. The sole
business of the priest is to preach the faith and administer
the sacraments. To this duty his rights and claims should
be limited. Excommunication, for instance, can only be
decreed by the congregation to wliich the believer belongs ;
while the clergy, in all but their strictly spiritual functions,
must be treated exactly the same as all other members of
the civU society, save only that their crimes should be
punished with greater strictness, because they cannot
plead the same excuse of ignorance. Marsiglio follows
Jerome in maintaining that bishop and priest are conver
tible terms. More original is his claim that heresy must
be unpunished except in so far as it may prove dangerous
.to society. Even in this case the penalty should only be
inflicted by the civil courts. Errors of opinion, ' howsoever
great they may be,' must on no account be punished.' Of
these Jesus alone is the judge in the world to come.
Marsiglio reduced Church government to a question of
expediency. Though in theory aU priests are equal, the
papacy, he held, is convenient as a symbol of the unity
of the Church, and as providing a needed president for its

ix.] THE SCHOOLMEN 219
councUs. None the less, Marsiglio sweeps aside all the
fictions, ancient and modern, of papal historians. He even
doubts whether Peter was ever bishop of Rome at aU ; he
disbelieves in his superiority over the other apostles, and
questions his power to hand on his gift to his successors.
The Decretals he brushes aside as not necessary to salvation.
With rare historical insight Marsiglio traces the origin of
the papacy to the influence of the Roman Empire, and to
the donation of Constantino, the genuineness of which he
does not dispute. The power of the keys, he holds, is but
of limited extent. The keys open and close the door of
forgiveness, but the turnkey is not the Judge. Without
the penitence of the sinner priestly absolution is of no
avaU, for it is God alone who cleanses the man inwardly.
The argument of the " two swords " he sweeps aside by
the text, " My kingdom is not of this world." Thus the
papacy can have no temporal sovereignty or Jurisdiction —
' what have priests to do with meddling of secular co-
active Judgments ? ' With Marsigho the State is absolutely
supreme ; ' neither bishop nor pope have any co-active
Jurisdiction in this world, neither upon any priest, neither
upon any other person being no priest, unless such Juris
diction be granted to them by the human power, in whose
power it is always to remove and call again the same
authority from them for any reasonable cause.' Ecclesi
astics, even the Pope himself, must be subject to the
tribunals of the State ; their number is limited by its
pleasure. To the State also belongs all patronage, which
should, as a rule, be exercised by the free election of the
parish itself. With the parish also should rest the power
of dismissal. Ecclesiastical property must be vested in
the State, which can at any time secularise superfluities to
other uses.
Perhaps the most fruitful of Marsiglio's contentions was
his defence of a general council, formed of clergy and laity
alike, as the supreme power in the Church. Such a council

220 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
would voice the Church Universal, and be a parliament of
the nations, both in matters temporal and spiritual. The
Catholic creed is determined by its interpretations, though
these must in all cases be based on Scripture alone, for the
Bible is the foundation of faith and of the authority of
the Church. To the decisions of the council the Pope
would of necessity be subject, and it alone could pronounce
excommunication upon peoples and their rulers.
Of necessity Marsiglio was before his age. The Church
preferred to listen to such champions of papal infallibility
as Augustine Triompho and Alvaro Pelayo. But no seer
had a clearer vision of the new order towards wliich the
world was moving ; no prophet ever glanced deeper into
the future. The works of Marsiglio give us in clear out
line the ideals which now regulate the progress of Europe.
In his emphasis of Scripture we have the voice of Luther ;
in his call to the laity he foreshadowed Wesley ; in his
view as to the rights of separate congregations he was
the forerunner of the Independents. But " in the clear
definition of the limits of ecclesiastical authority, and
in his assertion of the dignity of the individual -believer,
Marsiglio's ideas still remain unrealised." In these specu
lations he remains alone among medieval writers so far
above his age in the breadth of his outlook " that the
truths which he brought to light had to be rediscovered,
without even the knowledge that he had found them
out beforehand, by the political philosophers of modern
times." 1
Before we pass away from the dreamers and seers of the
thirteenth century a word should be added with reference
to a revolutionist of another kind, though the seed that he
sowed was not destined to bring forth immediate fruit : we
refer to Roger Bacon (d. 1292 ?). Bacon's influence was
twofold. As a man of science his achievements have,
perhaps, been exaggerated ; certainly his antagonism to
1 Poole, Illustrations of Medieval Thought, p. 277.

ix.] THE SCHOOLMEN 221
speculative thought. But it is impossible to exaggerate
the zeal with which this martyr of science pursued his
way amid difficulties that would have baffled or crushed
others. Both in science and philosophy his principle was
one, that truth cannot be attained by syUogisms built up
on a priori premises, to the neglect of experiment and obser
vation. He did not despise authority, but the authority, if
we may so put it, must not rest, hke the world in the
Hindoo cosmogony, on the back of a tortoise. The effort
he made to obtain texts of Aristotle and Seneca shows the
value he attached to those great writers ; it shows also his
anxiety to get behind the ipse dixit of Schoolmen to the
actual thoughts of their authorities. We see the same
spirit in his insistence that the study of Greek was the key
to the real meaning of Aristotle. With equal daring he
carried this principle into theology. He insisted that a
knowledge of the Bible in the original was the one foun
dation upon which the Queen of Sciences could rest. As
a Schoolman, Bacon was the predecessor of Scotus and
Ockham. Though he founded no school he powerfully
assisted the revolt, whose head-centre was in Oxford, against
Aquinas and the great Dominican doctors.

^£The great object of the later Schoolmen was the adjust
ing* nf tiie t.V>P.nlnp|y 0f t,hp, Chinch — a determined quantity
assumed to be absolutely true — to human consciousness,
no longer, as AT^eJrn, by a. prirwi sppp.nl atipjig or, as the
mystics, by 'contemplation/ but by a, scientific, logical
system ('summa') in which aU the forces of the mind
should do homage to the Church.. For centuries she had
been slowly departing from the most valuable doctrines of
Augustine, while his philosophy could contribute nothing
to the scholastic disputes. A change was necessary.. With
her customary intuition the Latin Church discerned in

222 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
Aristotle the instrument she now needed. She felt that, if
reason and authority are to be made one, there must be a
pope in phUosophy as well as in theology. Of the monastic
principles on the basis of which Hildebrand had reorganised
the Church, " poverty " was played out or troublesome,
but " obedience " still remained, and had become almost
synonymous with religion, vital for theology .>
For this end Rome went contrary to her former Judg
ments. In 1210 the use of Aristotle had been officially
condemned by the synod of Paris. In 1228 Gregory ix.
warned the masters regent of theology in Paris against
mundane science, and the adulteration of the word of God
with the figments of the phUosophers. ' Theologians,' he
said, ' ought to expound theology according to the approved
traditions of the saints,' and refuse the aid of ' carnal
weapons.' But the current was too strong even for
Gregory ix. The condemnation, renewed in 1231, against
students using the Aristotelian natural philosophy was
coupled with the significant addition, ' until it shaU have
been examined and purged from all suspicion of error.' A
commission of three was appointed by Gregory for this
purpose. They were bidden to cut out * doctrines either
erroneous or productive of scandal or error,' so that ' with
the removal of the suspicious matters the rest might be
studied harmlessly.' The commission was not long in
bringing in its report, the result of which was the setting
aside of the restriction, and the issue of a decree for the
absolution of the masters and students who had been read
ing the condemned books. Rome could not do otherwise ;
for AristotleJiifljab^gjjaljEQj^^ bad benome the
text-book of the Church, his authority ftH in a,)rripst, every
branch of knqwjfidge. On 19th March 1255 the books
of the ' new logic ' were formally adopted by Paris as the
text-books of the university. Oxford, the second univer
sity of Europe, foUowed suit in_126!7-; the new universities,
as they were established, copied the example. Kings and

ix.] THE SCHOOLMEN 223
potentates may boast of their conquests, but Aristotle
from his tomb ruled for centuries over the intellect of
almost universal man, Christian and Muslim alike. Even
to-day " the legend " of his dialectics " though worn is not
effaced from the current coin of our philosophy and our
theology." *¦
There is nothing in the history of thought more remark
able than the rapidity with which in the thirteenth century
Aristotle captured the Church. One Ulustration must
suffice. The name of Aristotle, it would appear, only
occurs in one incidental reference in the great medieval
text-book of theology, Peter Lombard's Sentences. A
century later the name of the Stagirite is more familiar
than that of St. Augustine. At the beginning of the
thirteenth century the whole of Aristotle's works, previously
only known in fragments, and held secondary to Plato, were
graduaUy making their way into the Western world, in
part through the orthodox channel of the translation of
the Organon made about 1128 by James of Venice, in part
through intercourse with the Moors in Spain, in part
through the Crusades, especially through the Latin con
quest of Constantinople (1204). Of these channels the
most important was the Arabian-£jji. the middle of the
twelfth century portions of A™a+^t]o yoro fronciofA^ i-nf^
Latin from the AH-bjo, corn™g"f°-ripg r.f ^Y\vfV'n?- by a
band of workers in the employ of Archbishop Raymund
of SevUle. Shortly before 1230 the physical books of
Aristotle, translated from the Arabic of Averroes in part
by the famous Michael Scot of Toledo, made their appear
ance in Northern Europe. But the Aristotle thus trans
lated was overlaid with Averroistic glosses. With the
new rendering from the Greek made in 1273 by the Do
minican friar William of Brabant, the Arabic glosses ceased
to be so prominent. The need of a new translation wUl
be evident, if it be true that, as Renan teUs us, some of
1 Hampden, Scholastic Philosophy, p. 76.

224 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
the current translations were really " Latin translations
from a Hebrew translation of a commentary of Averroes
made on an Arabic translation of a Syriac translation of a
Greek text." 1
</The new Aristotle, especiaUy in his Eastern dress, was
at first regarded by the Church with suspicion and dread.
His mtroductioh'TecTTo ah1 outburst ot scepticism ; his
Arab interpreters threatened to sweep men away from
their moorings into yastv deeps of pantheism. The anti-
Christian elements in Aristotle, or rather in Averroes, were
emphasised to the full. In 1210, for instance, David of
Dinant was condemned at Paris for teaching that ' God.
intelligence, and matter axe a single thing, one and the
same.' The intellects of men seemed intoxicated with
the new powers which the method of Aristotle had revealed.
Reality became secondary to syllogistic smartness. We
read of a certain Parisian master, Simon of Tournai, who
defended the doctrine of the Trinity ' so eloquently, so
lucidly, so catholicly' that thunders of applause greeted
his performance. At once he announced that he could
demolish with equal plausibUity the faith that he had that
day maintained. Matthew of Paris tells us of the stroke
of paralysis which punished his blasphemies, and how
' with difficulty the famous doctor relearned from his own
chUd the Credo and Paternoster.' Nevertheless, in spite of
all dangers Aristotle conquered. UntU the Reformation
his,sway over the Church was almost undisputed.
4^As a result of this adoption of Aristotle by the Church,
the great Arabic and Jewish commentators of the master
were no longer treated as atheists and heretics. Their
theories were examined, their arguments discussed, often
times with a strange sympathy. The celebrated Jewish
theologian, Moses Maimonides (fl204), ascribed to Aris
totle unconditioned authority in sublunary science; and
the influence of Maimonides on Aquinas was considerable^
1 Kenan, Averroes, p. 52.

ix.] THE SCHOOLMEN 225
At Paris in 1347 every Master of Arts was required to
swear that he would teach no doctrine inconsistent ' with
that of Aristotle, and his commentator Averroes.' Dante,
the faithful exponent of Aquinas, even places Averroes
and Avicenna in the circle of those who only needed
baptism in order to be saved.
The influence of these two Arabs upon Christian thought
forms one of the most astonishing chapters in the history
of the Church. 4if the two men Avicenna (a Latinised
form of the Arabic Abu Tbn Sina) was the more purely
Eastern. The greater part of his life (980-1036) was spent
at the court of Bokhara, where his skill as a physician
procured him great favour. He was one of the leaders
in a ' school of phUosophers ' — al falasifa, as the Arabs
transliterated it — who made a special study of the Greek
works introduced to the Arabs by Syrian Monophysites
and Nestorians. Though not the founder of Arabic
Scholasticism, he first gave it clear, systematic expression.
His knowledge of Aristotle's logical works was sound,
but of bis other philosophical treatises more superficial.
Averroes (a corruption of the Arabic name Abu 'Ibn
Rashd) was born at Cordova, of which city his grandfather
had been kadi, in 1126. He died at Marrakesh in 1198,
a few years before the great battle of Las Navas de Tolosa
(1212) broke for ever the dominion of the Moors in Spain,
Many of his extensive and careful commentaries upon Aris
totle, whom he regarded with the highest reverence, were
translated into Latin and Hebrew, though it is by no means
certain that these Latin translations give us a true idea of
his doctrine. But, whether faulty or not, it is to these
Latin translations that Averroes owes his influence upon
Christian thought.
There was much in the phUosophy of Averroes, as pre
sented by his Latin interpreters, that naturally gave rise
to suspicion. &isjioctrine_hn° Q "+.mwgly marked pypjn-
tionarv character, in whinh the eternalnesa pf matter, the
P

226 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
evolution of the germ by its own latent power, the im-
personalitylff'foteUigenc^^^ the
reabsorption of the" individual, constitute essential points."
It is possible that on some points his views have been
exaggerated and misrepresented by opponents. For in
stance Averroes, though claiming that the world is eternal,
carefully distinguishes between an eternity without agent
or cause, which can be ascribed to God alone, and the
eternity with cause of a continuous and incessant creation^
But whUe the student of the original phUosophy of Averroes
may see reasons for suspension of Judgment, for the student
of Christian thought the charges in the main are true. The
Averroes known to the West was interpreted almost univer
sally to hold these doctrines.
For Averroes, as indeed for the whole Arabic school, with
its constant insistence that God is one, the great difficulty
is to explain the origin of individuality. In his efforts to
account for the individual he seems at times to claim that
God is ignorant of His own creation. To the same cause we
can traoc his insistence that there is but one amilr or active
rAq.gnn, in t.Vip nnim»raa_aa_£hfirB js but one light, a, oon-
clusion that led to the accusation of his opponents that he
denied immortality, or rather denied that the soul could
remain individualised after the death of the body. This
dogma of Averroes was the consequence of his interpre
tations of Aristotle's doctrine of the vovs 7to^tikos, or
Creative Reason immanent both in mind and in the ex
ternal world, whereby it is possible for the mind to know
things. Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. 200 a.d.) explained
this Creative Reason as no faculty or part of the soul itself,
but something working from without upon the passive
intellect (i/ous iraOrjriKos) ; thus- identifying it with the
Spirit of God working in us. As death was the cessation
of the passive intellect, this involved the denial of im
mortality. From an Arabic translation of Alexander the
idea had been taken up by Averroes.

ix] THE SCHOOLMEN 227
In spite of the services of Averroes in the introduction
of Aristotle to the West, it was impossible that his teaching
should go unchallenged in the Church. Monopsychism,
the behef that there is only one active intellect in the world,
or naturahstic pantheism in any form are fatal to Chris
tianity. The triumph of Averroes would have been the
reintroduction of Gnosticism. But the excitement of
the new ideas soon passed away ; the vigilance of the
authorities repressed dangerous heresy. Above all, the
Church itself developed a body of orthodox Aristotelian
doctrine under the lead of its great scholastic doctors.

m
In her exaltation of Aristotle into the new dictator of
reason the Latin Church not only went back on her own
decisions, but cut herself off from the philosophic drift of
the Early Church. To the early fathers Aristotle, with
bis dualistic outlook, with his insistence upon clear think
ing as the one cure for all the evils of the individual or of
society, seemed " a profane intruder, bringing the noisy
Jargon of the world into a sanctuary where every thought
and feeling should be hushed in holy contemplation." J
Aristotle, therefore, was neglected by all the orthodox,
with the exception of the school of Antioch, until Augus
tine gave to the theology of the West that bent which, to
some degree, it stUl retains. The thought of the Church
— especiaUy in the East, where the influence of Clement
and Origen was supreme — had been moulded, broadly
considered, on the ideahsm or monism of Plato, with a
leaven of Stoic influence. Augustine too, considered
phUosophicaUy, was a disciple of Plato, and that, too,
in spite of the fact that the tendency of Plato was to
modify, if not supersede, Christian dogma. But with the
1 Hampden, Scholastic Philosophy, p. 62.

228 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
suppression by Justinian in 529 of Neoplatonism, the
Aristotelian phUosophy gained in authority. The Aris
totle whom the East had neglected became in due course
the great doctor of the Latin Church. At the same time,
though for the theologian this is a minor matter, the
Church inverted the position which Plato and Aristotle
had held in the development of philosophy.
For this change from Plato to Aristotle there were other
reasons than the accident of his new discovery. In every
age the study of Plato has tended in a twofold direction.
His doctrine of the immanence of God is the basis of all
mysticism and of all pantheism, while his dreams of ideal
beauty and perfection lead to dissatisfaction with things
as they are. Aristotle, on the contrary, has been called
" the high priest of common-sense." " Even in its classical
form Aristotelianism is a morality without rehgion." 1 As
a justification of this stern verdict we may instance the
Aristotelian position that a complete provision of external
goods is an indispensable condition of well-living. The
last charge that could be brought against Aristotle is mys
ticism, for his " final appeal is always to man's natural
reason." 2 The deeper sources of dispeace, of pain of soul,
of unfulfilled wants of the heart, remain dark in his
investigation. He is only interested in the hfe of the soul
in so far as it turns outward to a great practical world.
Thus while Plato points the way to a world where things
correspond to the perfection of their original Divine Idea,
the tendency of Aristotle, with his doctrine of the mean,
is to concentrate thought on the exact definition of existing
species and institutions.
This it was that commended him to the busy spirit of
the Latin Churchmen. For the medieval Church was
profoundly satisfied that her institution was part of the
eternal order of the universe. She did not seek ideal
i Harnack, H.D. v. p. 109 n.
a Brewer, Monumenta Franciscana, i. p. liii.

ix.] THE SCHOOLMEN 229
reconstruction, but the reasoned defence of a set of dogmas
in the form in which they were already established. For
the speculations of the East she cared nothing ; the centre
of her theology was not so much God as man, his state,
relations, and duties. And in this theology of man the
central idea was the Civitas Dei, that spiritualised empire
and organisation which " named the name of Christ, but
whose form was the form of Caesar." Its continuous and
comprehensive existence was the first axiom of truth. By
this she demonstrated her correspondence with the Divine
Ideal ; nor was she disturbed in this self-complacency by
her own shortcomings, by the ideal yearning of the mystics,
or the angry outbursts of the discontented.
Of this clerical self-satisfaction, which demanded adjust
ment not progress, dialectics not metaphysics, Aristotle
was the natural prophet. His system provided means for
accomplishing the impossible, " of uniting immanence and
transcendence, history and miracle, the immutability of
God and mutability, Ideahsm and Realism, reason and
authority." x • In the development of the conception of the
Church as a monarchy his influence was invaluable. " If
churches always canonised their benefactors, he would
long ago have been at the head of the Roman calendar.
There were many schoolmen, but they all had one master,
and they buUt by his help, and to his honour, systems
that even he would have acknowledged to be encyclopaedic
and marvels of architectonic craft." 2 Their aim was to
exhibit the unity in thought of reason and authority, of
the papal Church and its sacerdotal theology. Thus the
Papacy and Scholasticism grew strong and decayed to
gether. The forces that dissolved the one disintegrated the
other, leaving behind the ponderous tomes in our libraries
which, hke the tombstones of our cemeteries, speak of
departed reputations. i Harnack, H.D. vi. p. 43.
» Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Theology, p. 119.

230 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
Yet one reputation can never die. For the student of
Church history it is all-important that he realise the vast
significance of the teaching of the greatest of all Schoolmen —
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), the glory of the Dominicans.
The work of Albert the Great we can pass by. All that
was valuable in it was given form and grace by his greatest
pupil, who buUt carefully upon the foundations he had laid.
The world-historical importance of Thomas Aquinas lies
in his synthesis of Aristotle, Augustine, and the pseudo-
Dionysius with the creed and practice of papal Rome. In
Augustine, Rome had ever recognised the champion of her
faith, though careful to crush those who, like Gottschalk,
should exaggerate his predestinarian errors. But the for
mulae of Augustine were full of contradictions, and in the
nine centuries since his death the Western Church had
drifted away from some of his main tenets. A new syn
thesis was needed if the reasonableness of the current
faith and practice should be maintained. In the pseudo-
Dionysius the Western Church recognised the chief source
of its mysticism, and in Thomas there is fuU emphasis of
the value of a sane mysticism based upon communion with
God. The extent of the mysticism of Thomas is seen in
the exaggerated attempt of Denifle to show that Meister
Eckhart owes everything to him. In Aristotle, as we have
seen, we have the opponent of mysticism, the exponent
of cold reason and formal logic. But the Aristotle of
Aquinas is probably coloured by the Neoplatonism that
had been introduced into it from the days of Alexander of
Aphrodisias. Nor must we in this connection entirely
overlook the influence of Maimonides and the Arabs.
In seventeen folio volumes Thomas undertook to elimin
ate difficulties and obtain a homogeneous creed. The
result is " one of the most magnificent monuments of the
human intellect, dwarfing all other bodies of theology into
insignificance. Apart from its importance as the authori
tative code of Latin Christianity, it is great as a work of

ix.] THE SCHOOLMEN 231
art." x Harnack puts his finger on the cause of the success.
" Just as the perfect Gothic cathedral, from its exhibiting
what is really an organic style, expresses a single archi
tectural thought, and subordinates all to this, so this
structure of thought, although all ecclesiastical doctrines
are faithfully taken account of, still proclaims the one
thought, that the soul has had its origin in God, and
returns to Him through Christ." a Yet from the nature of
the case the new Augustine was not able to create' a satis
factory unity ; the elements were too contradictory. But
one thing Aquinas did which needs no reversal. Hitherto
there had been no formal distinction between the domain
of phUosophy and that of theology. Thomas laid down
a clear line between theology and phUosophy, between
natural and revealed rehgion, and the province of reason
as regards both, which has remained in force among
thinkers of aU creeds ever since. Philosophy passes from
the consideration of the creatures to God ; theology from
God to the creature.
Thomism has become the standard theology of the
Roman Church. The question, therefore, whether as a
system it is stUl vahd brings in large considerations to
which we can here attempt no answer. But one thing is
clear : Thomism and Evolution are absolutely incom
patible. Aquinas' future reputation cannot therefore but
be regarded as uncertain. To own this is only to emphasise
the real nature of his task. " The work which Aquinas
did for the Church of his day — the fusion of the highest
speculative thought of the time with its profoundest
spiritual convictions, the reconcUiation of the new truths
of the present with the kernel of truth embodied in the
traditional creed — is a task which will have to be done again
and again so long as the human mind continues progressive,
and religion remains a vital force with it. It will have to
i Hastings, E.R.E. i. p. 657.
2 Harnack, H.D. vi. p. 160.

232 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
be done in a different spirit, by different methods, and with
very different results from those of the Summa. But in
one respect the work of Aquinas is built on the solid foun
dation upon which all such efforts must repose — the grand
conviction that religion is rational and that reason is
divine, and that all knowledge and all truth must be
capable of harmonious adjustment." 1 It is characteristic
both of the man and his work that when doubts and diffi
culties arose while he was writing, he laid all aside to seek
enlightenment in prayer.
The theology of Thomas marks the hour of Rome's
greatest triumph. After overcoming all other powers she
annexed the human reason itself. With the death of
Thomas we begin a new era in the history of thought.
Henceforth in every movement there lurks, or seems to
lurk, the struggle of reason and faith. The triumph of
Thomas had been the triumph of a moderate Realism.
Nominalism seemed silenced, but in the next generation it
recovered its strength. But more important than the
victory of a phUosophical creed was the powerful dissolvent
of all faith, or rather of the Thomist conceptions of faith,
which the leaders in this reaction introduced into the
schools. For Nominalism, by denying objective reality to
general notions, leads, directly or indirectly, to the intro
duction of the experience of the senses, i.e. of inductive
science, as the test of reality. But the full consequences
of this tendency were not felt untU after the discredit of
Scholasticism in general. A prior result was an outburst
of philosophic scepticism, the leader of which was the
opponent of Thomas, the famous Franciscan John Duns
Scotus.2 The fates have dealt hardly with the writings of this
marvellous Scot. His interminable length and spider-like
1 Rashdall, Uwivs. in Middle Ages, i. p. 367 ; cf. supra, p. 44.
2 Born (? 1274) probably at Duns in Berwick, died at Cologne 7th November
1308. In 1300 we find him at Oxford in a list of Franciscan friars presented
for ordination. That he was ever at Merton is an impossible legend.

ix.] THE SCHOOLMEN 233
logic concentrated upon him the wrath of the New
Learning. Luther, who was brought up at a German
university where Nominalism reigned supreme, arrayed
against him the hatred of the Reformers. Tyndale and
others used his name as the synonym for a stupid, a meaning
which still cleaves to it. Colet could not speak of him with
patience, and caused Erasmus, who had been nurtured
on his subtleties in Paris, to abhor him also.1 In 1535
Layton wrote to Thomas Cromwell : ' We have set Dunce
in Bocardo and have utterly banished him Oxford for ever.
He is now made a common servant to every man, fast nailed
upon posts in all houses of common easement.' The New
Learning had no sympathy with the fallen Schoolmen.
With the cry of Vae Victis it overwhelmed them all with
contempt, indifferent alike to their superhuman diligence,
their manifest desire to get at the bottom of things, their
high ideals — however inadequate the accomplishment —
of a science which should embrace aU in one grand whole
within the fold of the Church.
Of the influence of Duns and the acuteness of his intellect
there can be no doubt. Though not himself a Nominalist,
no one did more to secure for Nominalism the triumph
which it won in the fifteenth century. The drift of his
teaching is also clear. In twelve volumes this remarkable
Scot destroyed by bis criticism of Thomas the rational
grounds of faith, and therefore the validity of the whole
scholastic method. Reason, he held, relates solely to the
realm of the worldly and sensible ; Belief is a mere matter
of obedience to the unconditional will of God, or rather
of subjection to the authority of the Church. Thus he
shook confidence in the Augustinian conceptions of grace.
The Augustinian doctrine of sin was equally destroyed by
his reduction of morals to the arbitrary and unintelligent,
as we see in his statement that murder would be right if
commanded by God. The ease with which such arbitrary
1 Seebohm, Oxford Reformers, pp. 102-112.

234 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
ethics could be changed into the doctrine that the end
justifies the means, and that the Church's power of binding
and loosing is equivalent to ' the good,' has probably led to
the favour with which Duns has always been regarded by
the Jesuits. Nor did Duns see that such unreality in sin
could only result in the unreality of redemption, and of love.
Though himself an ardent champion of the Roman creed,
even in the extremer forms — Duns defended as a Franciscan
the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which Thomas
the Dominican had refused to recognise — his criticism of
the validity of the arguments put forward in defence of
faith prepared the way for the coming rupture of the alhance
between phUosophy and theology. We see this rupture also
in his emphasis of the independence of all secular sciences
— a necessary step, we may remark, for their true develop
ment — and the independence of the world as over against
God. He will not allow any place for reason in such a
doctrine as immortality. His appeal to the sacred and
inviolable authority of the Roman Church — he would not
believe, he said, even the Gospels save on the witness of
the Church — was a mere personal conviction, full use of
which, however, was made by his later disciples in the
development of papal autocracy. His destructive criticism
bore fruit after he had passed away. In some minds it led
to scepticism. With Duns we mark for Scholasticism the
beginning of the end. In others we see its results in " the
emotional prostration before authority, popularly called
faith." 1 It is this last that gives him his prominence in
the life and thought of the medieval world.
iv
As yet we have kept clear of the great struggle between
Nominalists and Realists. But the later theological bear
ings of the controversy, especially in their connection with
1 Rashdall, Unws. ii. p. 534 ; cf. Harnack, H.D. vi. p. 164.

ix.] THE SCHOOLMEN 235
the medieval doctrine of Transubstantiation, demand some
notice. For in the fourteenth century there came about
a curious inversion of the relations between Realism and
Orthodoxy. Hitherto Nominalism had been branded
by the Church as heretical. Its dangerous tendencies had
become manifest, first in Roscelin, who, starting with the
assumption that the individual alone is real, had driven
the theologians to choose between an absolute unitarianism
and a tritheistic explanation of the Trinity. This early
outcome rather than any prescient discernment that, if
the individual is the only real, Nominalism must end in
the sensationalistic scepticism of Hume, had alarmed, not
without reason, the fathers of the Church. For long
years Realism and Orthodoxy were looked upon as almost
synonymous. But when WilUam of Ockham refounded
Nominalism, its fortunes became curiously altered.
In many respects the Nominalism of Ockham is a philo
sophy of centuries later. Some of it might have come from
the pen of Hobbes. Realism, he argued, in whatever form
it may be expressed, was bound to lead to absurdities ;
the universal exists only in the thinking mind, and is thus
essentiaUy a relation. Even in the mind of God universals
do not exist, but are simply God's knowledge of singulars,
which alone have reality. This modern doctrine of Con-
ceptualism was followed up, as it is often followed up
to-day, by the relegation of all knowledge which transcends
mere experience to the sphere of faith. In this point,
especiaUy, we see the essential oneness, though for different
causes, of Duns and Ockham. Thus Ockham, as Duns
before him, heralds the dissolution of Scholasticism. The
Thomist doctrine of the unity of reason and faith is giving
place to a growing consciousness of their discrepancy.
The Nominalism of Ockham swept all before it. Four
times between 1339 and 1347 were his writings pro
scribed by the university of Paris, and his doctrines con
demned. At Avignon, as the catalogue of the papal library

236 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
shows, Nominalist writers were not admitted. But from
the first the condemnation was vain. By the time of the
councU of Constance, Nominalism was in the ascendant
in Germany, and, though to a lesser extent, in France also.
At Paris the great chancellor of the university, the cele
brated John Gerson, was its open advocate. The effect of
this revival of Nominalism was felt most disastrously,
strange to say, by the Reformers of the day. Nominalism
had become the ally of the extreme materialistic conceptions
of Transubstantiation which the fifteenth century did so
much to develop, and against which the Reformers protested.
To understand the growth of this alliance and its conse
quence we must glance at the later history of the doctrine
of Transubstantiation. In the dispute of Lanfranc and
Berengar, as in the previous discussion of the dogma, we
see the union of Realism and Orthodoxy. For Lanfranc
and others had tried to save the doctrine from its grosser
forms by falling back upon the distinction of Realism be
tween the substance — that impalpable but real universal
which was held to be present in every particular included
under it — and the accidents or sensible qualities which
come into existence when the pure universal clothes itself
with matter. The bread and wine, at the touch of that
glorious Substance which takes possession of them, pass
out of existence and are lost, leaving behind them, nothing
but shadowy appearances of themselves — accidents —
though the underlying reality is something totally different.
But this explanation, though at first it seems to have
satisfied the medieval Church, was soon discovered to be
itself a mystery requiring explanation ; for how can
appearances possibly exist without anything that appears,
how can the noumenon alone be changed while the
phenomena remain ? The subtle inteUect of Thomas
Aquinas answered the question by his conception of
' quantity,' or as we should now term it, subsistence, as
distinct from substance. ' Quantity ' remains in the

ix.] THE SCHOOLMEN 237
Eucharist " as the subject of form, colour, movement,
taste, and all other phenomena observed in the visible
and tangible Host. The reader wUl, of course, ask : ' Can
' quantity ' exist without anything that has quantity ? '
But the very question shows that he has not sufficiently
understood the hypothesis. ' Quantity ' is not a mere
abstraction, not a mere mode of being : it is quite different
from extension, for it is that which makes extension, and
may be defined as a force that extends material substance.
. . . Thus after the words of consecration the substance
of bread is no longer there, but quantity takes its place and
upholds the other accidents naturally." * When asked what
becomes of the bread after consecration, St. Thomas is in a
difficulty ; he admits that the bread is nowhere, but denies
that it is annihUated, since it is changed into Christ's body.
According to Wyclif, opinions differed considerably as to
what remained ; in the province of Canterbury the favourite
idea was weight ; in the diocese of Lincoln, which then in
cluded Oxford, ' quantity ' ; in Wales and Ireland, quality.
The theology of Aquinas is hard to understand, and is
not, we beheve, an article de fide. There are, in fact, three
other explanations of the dogma, all of which are aUowed
by the Roman Church, and between which a cautious in-
falhbUity takes care not to decide. The first of these is the
theory of the great rival of Aquinas, John Duns Scotus.2
Scotus takes refuge in his treatment of Transubstantiation,
as he had done in his doctrine of Creation, of Incarnation,
and of Atonement, in the omnipotence of God's arbitrary
wUl. The miracle which the acute scepticism of Duns
and Ockham destroyed must be accepted on the authority
of the Church, or on the fiat of a WUl above proof or reason.
Duns held, therefore, that though the substance of the
elements is absolutely annihilated, the accidents of the
i Dziewicke's Introduction to Wyclif s De Apostasia, p. xv.
2 The other two theories fall without our period ; they are the Cartesian
theory of the conservation of ' surface,' and the theory of purely subjective
accidents.

238 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
bread and wine remain, maintained as verities by the
unconditional will of God.
At this point we come across the alliance between
Nominalism and the Church. In defence of its great
central dogma of Transubstantiation the Church was pre
pared to abandon reason and fall back upon authority, the
arbitrary fiat of God or of His vicar. Now the Nominalists
who held that the universal was a mere flatus vocis found
it easy to believe in the annihilation of the substance of
the elements, a dogma that for the Realist was full of
difficulties ; in fact, for the Realist, inasmuch as material
essence is absolutely identical in aU things, the destruction
of the smallest substance implies the destruction of all the
substance. So a strong party in the Church abandoned
its ancient antagonism and embraced Nominalism. The
consequences were remarkable. Hence arose, in fact, the
strong opposition which Wyclif, the Realist, encountered
at Oxford from Nominalists and Scotists, chiefly of the
' Southern nation,' who had set aside the cautious Thomist
doctrine and substituted their arbitrary annihilations and
recreations. For Wyclif was a Realist who held that even
space and time had objective reality, to whom, also, the
Scotist idea of the annihilation of anything real was
absolutely inconceivable, ' the abomination of desola
tion,' a departure from early tradition and especially
from that of St. Augustine ' not known before Lanfranc,'
by means of which ' Antichrist subverts grammar, logic,
and natural science.' But Wyclif's moral nature was too
earnest to be content with these subtleties, and he soon
passed to larger issues and controversies, into which, how
ever, we cannot now follow him.1
From Oxford the struggle surged elsewhere, with conse
quences writ large in history. The modern man who looks
upon all philosophy as the harmless, if useless, occupation
For Wyclif I may be allowed to refer to my work, The Dawn of the
Reformation, vol. i., Wyclif.

ix.] THE SCHOOLMEN 239
or leisure of a few dreamers out of touch with a world of
facts, can form little conception of the fury with which the
rival schools attacked each other. In Prague the odium
philosophicum descended into the streets. In the confused
faction fights that raged there before the great migration
of five hundred Germans in 1409 to found a new university
at Leipzig, it would be difficult to say which hatred was
uppermost, that of Czech against Teuton, of heretic against
orthodox, or of Realist against Nominalist. The Germans
had embraced Nominalism ; of itself a sufficient reason for
the Czechs to become uncompromising Realists, and to
welcome the works of so thorough-going a Realist as Wyclif.
As a matter of fact, John Hus was condemned almost as
much for being a Realist in phUosophy, as his master Wyclif
before him, as for being a heretic in theology ; his most
bitter enemies were men who had at one time been Realists,
but who to his disgust became what he calls ' Terminists,'
i.e. Nominalists.1 At Constance his opponents were the
two leading Nominalists of Paris, both of them reformers
in their way, Peter d'AUli and John Gerson.
One result of the development of Nominalism must not
be overlooked. Nominalism, as we have seen, tends to
deny the rationality of the objects of faith, and so to lay the
stress on the will of God. For both reasons, in their doctrine
of salvation the Scotists laid stress upon the wiU of man :
it is by the wiU and by its union with the will of God that
man attains to eternal life. To the influence of this Scotist
doctrine of the primacy of the undetermined will, with its
distrust of reason, upon the Mysticism of the fifteenth cen
tury, we have already alluded. Insistence upon will is
incompatible with the old Areopagite pantheism which had
so long been the ban of Mysticism. A further development
was reached when the question was asked how the will can
i For Hus and the bearings of the struggle I may refer to my Dawn of the
Reformation, vol. ii., Age of Hus ; or to the Letters of Hus, ed. Workman and
Pope. (London, 1904.)

240 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
be so influenced as to lead us to God. Such a question found
its answer at the Reformation in the revival of the doctrine
of grace. Strange to say, the return to Augustinian
doctrine in the Middle Ages generally issued in the subor
dination of reason to the wUl, for Augustine had so pre
sented the relation of the two " that no inner state, and
no activity of thought, existed apart from the wUl." x The
Scotist conception of the absolute arbitrariness of the
Divine Will thus prepared the way for Calvin.

In many respects, both philosophical and theological,
Aquinas had departed from the teaching of St. Augustine,
in this following the Church of his day and the general drift
of Scholasticism. The recognition of this gives us the key
to later developments other than the scepticism of Duns.
Even in St. Thomas's life there was a conservative reac
tion to the undiluted Augustinian doctrine. Bradwardine,
Wyclif, Hus, followed by the Dutch thinkers Wesel, Wessel,
and Pupper of Goch, began that return to Augustine and
to the neglected Pauline side of his teaching which the Re
formers of the sixteenth century completed in then different
ways, not always, be it remarked, to the advantage of a
spiritual Christianity. With Bradwardine (fl349) and
Wyclif the behef in predestination is absolute. No man,
not even a pope, ' wots whether he be of the Church, or
whether he be a hmb of the fiend.' Of this predestination
the remorseless logic of Wyclif was not slow in drawing
the conclusion. The Church, as the mystical body of the
predestinated, is a unity that knows nothing of papal
primacies and hierarchies, or of the ' sects ' of monks,
friars, and priests ; nor can the salvation of the elect
be conditioned by masses, indulgences, penance, or other
devices of sacerdotalism. i Harnack, H.D. v. p. 123 n.

ix.] THE SCHOOLMEN 241
With Wyclif Scholasticism became played out. " The
Aristotelian form refused to fit a matter for wliich it was
never intended ; the matter of Christian theology refused
to be forced into an ahen form." 1 In its earher years this
great movement had brought a measure of dehverance
to the human mind. Her energies were now exhausted,
her vital force spent. If in common repute Scholasticism
stands damned for ever, the cause must be found in the
worse than uselessness of her latter days. Her services
have been forgotten in the abiding memory of her servile
follies and parrot repetitions. As an intellectual move
ment her work finished with Ockham, for Wyclif as a
Schoolman does httle more than gyrate on a well-beaten
path, oftentimes concealing his track with clouds of dust.
Great as is his importance as a pohtician and popular contro
versialist, his phUosophical works, as modern research has
shown, contain httle that can claim to be original, with the
partial exception of his pohtical doctrine of ' dominion.'
Theology, too, in the fourteenth century had become utterly
sterile. No manuscript of the fathers dates from the
century, with the exception of a few brief tracts. What
the age knew of the past it was content te obtain from well-
known Commonplace books, arranged alphabetically.
Scholasticism, in fact, with the work of Ockham became
unreal. We see this unreality in the favourite idea of the
later Schoolmen that there is a double truth. The result of
such teaching is seen in the list, condemned at Paris in
1277, of two hundred and nineteen propositions, which
Siger of Brabant and others maintained might be true in
phUosophy though false in theology. In these theses —
some of which were revivals of Averroism — we find denials
of the doctrines of the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the
immortality of the soul, and the resurrection of the dead,
besides assertions of the eternity of matter, the uselessness
of prayer, and the existence of fables in the Gospels. There
1 Prof. Seth, "Scholasticism," in Enc. Brit. (9), xxi. p. 418.
Q

242 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION [ch.
was, in fact, nothing which the later Schoolmen were not
prepared to fling into their syllogistic machine, as they mis
took an endless output of wind for reality and truth. They
held that it was open to debate whether continence was a
virtue, or voluntary fornication a sin. Wychf himself was
real, especially in the width of his social sympathies ; his
bitterest foes could not label him otherwise. Unfortun
ately in his philosophical outlook he was no prophet. He
did not see that the soil that he ploughed was exhausted,
and that neither his religious zeal nor his genius could
produce from it any further harvest.
Thus the labours of the later Schoolmen are mere mental
gymnastics without bearing on hfe ; researches which result
in no discovery ; the worship of logic for logic's own sake ;
elaboration of distinctions without difference ; endless
conflicts in which the foes lose sight of each other in a more
than Egyptian darkness and in labyrinths without issue.
Whether the Schoolmen debated, as is popularly supposed,
how many angels could dance on the point of a needle, we
know not. But other questions of equal absurdity were
common subjects of dispute. In 1614 Christopher Binder
published at Tubingen his Scholastica Theologia. Its
controversy with the Jesuits we may pass by. But the
collection in his second chapter of the absurdities which
formed the diet of the schools is stUl of value, provided
always that the student remember that such absurdities
were not the whole work of Scholasticism. We find
among other matters of debate such questions as these :
Whether the Angel of the Annunciation appeared as a
serpent, as a deer, or in human form ; whether the body of
Mary was exposed to the influence of the stars ; whether
if man had not fallen all would have been males ; whether
a dumb priest is able to consecrate ; or whether a baptism
would be valid ' if you inverted the syUables and read
Trispa, Liisfi, and Ctisan Tus Spiri,' or ' said Buff, Baff.'
We could pardon the failure of Scholasticism to discover

re] THE SCHOOLMEN 243
a primary law governing the whole realm of mind and
matter, for in the nature of things success was impossible.
We could pardon the self-assurance of her sons, for as yet
there was no consciousness of the infinite range of science
to impress humility on all but the ignorant. But the
flippancy and unreality of the later Schoolmen are sins unto
death, which brought the inevitable penalty in the over
throw of Scholasticism itself. We need not wonder at the
enthusiasm with which, when the opportunity arose, Europe
turned away from these barren puerilities to the New
Learning with its revelation of the forgotten treasures of
Hellas. With the incoming of a new intellectual method
and outlook there came also of necessity a complete
revolution in theological conceptions. But the considera
tion of these and of other later developments of Christian
Thought lies outside our limits.

SELECT BLBLIOGKAPHY
[To give an adequate Bibliography of a subject that covers fifteen
centuries of the history of PhUosophy, Theology, and of the Church
would demand a volume in itself. In the following pages a few
only of the more accessible works are indicated. In all cases where
good English authorities exist only slight reference is made to French
or German writers. But in many matters we are still dependent on
the guidance of foreign scholars.]
GENERAL AUTHORITIES
A. Harnack, Hist, of Dogma (Eng. Tr. from 3rd German ed.,
7 vols., 1905), a vast storehouse which can never be neglected.
Harnack's Outlines of the Hist, of Dogma (1 vol., 1893) may be
specially commended to the busy general reader.
The works of C. R. Hagenbach (Eng. Tr., 1846-47, 1850) ; J. A. W.
Neander (Eng. Tr., in 12 vols.) ; G. P. Fisher, Hist, of
Christian Doctrine (2nd ed., 1897) ; W. G. T. Shedd (2 vols.,
1865) ; F. Loofs, Leitfaden a Studium d. Dogmengeschichte
(Halle, 4th ed., 1906) ; A. V. G. Allen, Continuity of Christian
Thought (new ed., 1895) ; J. F. Bethune-Baker, Introd. to
Early Hist, of Christian Doctrine (1903, four centuries only),
all deserve study.
For the Middle Ages the following works should he added : —
R. L. Poole, Illustrations of the Hist, of Medieval Thought (1884).
J. B. Haureatj, Hist, de la Philosophie Scolastique (2 vols., Paris,
1872-80).
C. V. Prantl, Gesch. d. Logik im Abendlande (4 vols., Leipzig,
1855-70).
H. Rashdall, Universities of Europe m the Middle Ages (3 vols.,
1895).
R. D. Hampden, Scholastic Philosophy (1837, 1848).
A. H. Ritter, Christi. Philos. (2 vols., GSttingen, 1858-59).
W. J. Townsend, Great Schoolmm (1881). (A popular work.)
V. Cousin, Philosoph. Scolastique (Paris, 1840).
M. de "Wulf, Hist, de la Philos. MidUvale (2nd ed., Paris, 1905).
245

246 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION
H. F. Reuter, Gesch. d. rdig. AufkUi/rung vm Mittelalter (2 vols.,
Berlin, 1875-77).
C. Werner, Die Scholastik d. spdteren Mittelalters (4 vols., Vienna,
1881-87).
Reference should also be made to the many excellent articles in —
Smith- Wace, Dictionary of Christian Biography (4 vols.), and
H. Hastings, Encyc. of Religion and Ethics [3 vols, as yet (1911)
published].
Special features are also treated at length in the following : —
R. L. Ottley, The Doctrine of the Incarnation (2 vols., 1896).
C. E. Luthardt, Hist, of Christian Ethics (1888).
W. E. H. Leckt, Hist, of European Morals from Augustus to
Charlemagne (1869, many eds.).
J. A. Dorner, Person of Christ (Eng. Tr. by D. "W. Simon, in
5 vols., 1861).
A. Harnack, Chronologie der Altchrist. Litteratur (2 vols., Leipzig,
1897, 1904).
F. Ueberweg, Hist, of Philosophy (Eng. Tr. by G. S. Morris,
2 vols., 1872).
CHAPTER I
§ I. F. J. A. Hort, Clementine Recognitions (1901), and Judaistic
Christianity (1894).
H. Waitz, Die Pseudoklementinen (1904).
§ II. H. Kihn, Theodore von Mopsuestia und Junilius Africanus als
Exegeten (Freiburg, 1880).
F. W. Farrar, Hist, of Interpretation (1886).
L. Diestel, Gesch. des Alt. Test, m der Christi. Kirche (Jena,
1869).
§ III. On the difficult subject of Apocalyptic and Eschatological
Literature the student may be referred to the works of
R. H. Charles, Enoch (1893), Baruch (1896), Jubilees
(1895).
For the chaotic wilderness of the Sibylline Oracles, see the
editions of C. Alexandre (Paris, 1841-56 ; 2nd ed., 1869,
with excursuses omitted) ; or J. H. Friedlieb (1852) ; or,
best of all, the new edition by F. Geffcken (Leipzig, 1902).
See also E. Schurer, Jewish People in the Time of Christ
(Eng. Tr., Edin. 1890, 5 vols.), vol. iii. (2), 271-92 ; R. A,
Lipsius and M. Bonnet, Acta Apostol. Apocrypha (Leipzig,
1891, 3 vols.); W. Bousset, Jud. Apokalyptik (1903);
W. Wright, Apocryphal Acts of Apostles (2 vols., 1871).

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 247
The problem stated by A. Schweitzer, Von Reimarus %u
Wrede (1906, Eng. Tr., 'The Quest of the Historical
Jesus,' 1910), as to the Eschatological teaching of Christ,
cannot be neglected.
Reference may also be made to H. N. Oxenham, Catholic
Eschatology and Universalism (1876) ; R. H. Charles,
A Critical Hist, of the Doctrine of a Future Life in Israel
and Christianity (1879).
For the ' prophets ' of the Church, see T. M. Lindsay, Church
and Ministry, p. 90 ff. ; A. V. G. Allen, Christian In
stitutions (1898), p. 54 ff. ; E. C. Selwyn, Christian
Prophets (1900).
§ IV. A. F. Gfrorer, Philo u. d. Alexanctrmische Theosophie
(Stuttgart, 1831, 1835).
A. F. Dahne, Gesch. Darstellung d. jiidisch-alexand. Reli
gions-Philosophic (Halle, 1834).
E. Schurer, Jewish People in the Time of Christ, espec. v. 3.
J. Drummond, Philo Judaeus (2 vols., 1888).
T. Mozley, The Word (1889).
C. Siegfried, Philo v. Alexandria (Jena, 1875).
Also article s.v. in Jewish Encyc, vol. x.
CHAPTER II
§§ I. and II. Good general works are the following : —
E. Caird, Evolution of Theology in Greek Philosophers
(2 vols., 1904).
E. Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon
the Christian Church (1888).
E. Zeller, Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics (tr. 0. J. Reichel,
1880, 1892).
J. E. Erdmann, Hist, of Philosophy (Eng. Tr., S. F. Alleyne,
1883, 1890).
J. F. D. Maurice, Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy (1873).
T. R. Glover, The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman
Empire (3rd ed., 1909).
S. Dill, Roman Soc. from Nero to Marcus Aurelius (1904).
§ I. T. Whittaker, Apollonius of Tyana (1906).
G. R. S. Mead, Apollonius of Tyana (1901).
§ III. Of the older works on Gnosticism reference may be made to—
H. L. Mansel, Gnostic Heresies (1875, ed. Bishop Lightfoot).
R. A. Lipsius, Der Gnosticismus (Leipzig, 1860), and the
series of articles by Lipsius in D.C.B.

248 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION
A. Merx, Bardesanes v. Edessa (Halle, 1863).
F. C. Baur, Die Christi. Gnosis (Tubingen, 1835), and Das
Manichtiische Religionssystem (1831).
Of recent critical works — J. Kunze, de hist. Gnostic, fontibus
(1894).
A. Harnack, Altchrist. Lit. i. 171 ff. ; ii. 533 ff.
G. R. S. Mead, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten (1900).
"W. Boitsset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis (Gottingen, 1907).
The fragments of Gnostic writings have been edited in —
A. Hilgenfeld's Ketzerges. d. Urchristentums (Leipzig, 1884).
For the Pistis- Sophia, see Texte u. Untersuch. vii. 2, and viii.
1, 2 ; and the Eng. Tr. by G. R. S. Mead (1896).
§ IV. The most useful edition of the Apologists is that of J. C. Otto,
Corpus Apologetarum (2nd ed., Jena, 1876).
§ V. F. J. A. Hort, Six Lectures on the Ante-Nicene Fathers.
B. F. Westcott, s.v. in D.C.B., and in his Religious Thought
in the West (1891), c. 5.
C. Bigg, Christian Platonists of Alexandria.
E. de Faye, Glim. d'Alexandrie (Paris, 1898).
J. Patrick, The Apology of Origen in Reply to Celsus (1892).
The standard edition of Clement is by 0. Stahlin (Leipzig,
1905 f.) ; of Origen by C. H. Lommatzsch (Berlin, 1831-48) ;
Eng. Tr. by F. Crombie (1869-72).
§ VI. The works of Plotinus have been edited — Oxford, 1855 ;
Leipzig, 1856. There is an Eng. Tr. of select works by
T. Taylor (1794), edited, with Notes, by G. R. S. Mead
(1895). CHAPTER III
§ III. H. M. Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism (1882, 1900) ; Arian
Controversy (1896).
J. H. Newman, Arians of Fourth Century (1871), chiefly of
controversial interest.
W. Bright, The Age of the Fathers (2 vols., 1903).
A. Robertson, Selected Works of Athanasius translated into
English (Oxford, 1892).
E. 0. S. Gibson, Three Creeds (1908).
C. A. Swainson, Nicene and Apostles' Creed (1875).
F. J. A. Hort, Two Dissertations (1876).

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 249
§ IV. G. W. Ommanney, A Critical Dissertation on the Athanasian
Creed (1897).
A. E. Born, The Athanasian Creed (1896) ; Introduction to
the Creeds (1890).
J. A. Robinson, The Athanasian Greed (1905).
J. Draseke, Apollinarios von Laodicea (Leipzig, 1892), with
appendix of remains.
G. Voisin, L'Apollinarisme (Louvain, 1901).
J. F. Bethune-Baker, Nestorius and his Teachings (1908).
A. Thierry, Nestorius and Eutyches (Paris, 1878).
F. Loofs, Nestoriana, die Fragmente des Nestorius (Halle, 1905).
Nestorius, Le Livre d'Hiraclide de Da/mas, traduit en
Francais par F. Nau, etc. (Paris, 1910).
CHAPTER IV
§ II. C. P. Caspari, Quellen z. Gesch. des Taufsymbols (Christiania,
1866-9, 1879).
F. Kattenbusch, DasApostolische Symbol (2 vols., 1894, 1900).
A. C. McGiffert, The Apostles' Creed (1902).
H. B. Swete, The Apostles' Creed (1894, 1899).
T. Zahn, Das Apostolische Symbolum (1893).
§ III. G. N. Bonwetsch, Gesch. d. Montanismus (Erlangen, 1881 ;
with full sources).
A. Ritschl, Die Entstehung d. altkathol. Kirche (2nd ed.,
Bonn, 1857).
§ IV. For Tertullian, the most useful edition is that by F. Oehler
(3 vols., Leipzig, 1854) ; best text by Reifferscheid,
"Wissowa, and Kroymann in C.S.E.L. (Vienna, 1890, 1906).
J. A. Neander, Antignosticus or Spirit of Tertullian (tr.
by Ryland, London, 1851).
For Cyprian, best text by G. Hartel, C.S.E.L. (3 vols.,
Vienna, 1868-71).
E. "W. Benson, Life and Times of Cyprian (1898).
CHAPTER V
From the vast literature on St. Augustine we select : —
W. Cunningham, St. Austin and his Place in the Hist, of
Christian Thought (1886).
C. Bindemann, Der heil. Augustinus (Greifswald, 1844-61,
3 vols.).
P. Schaff, Life and Labours of St. Augustine (1851).
H. A. Naville, St. Augustin, hade sur le diveloppement de sa
pensee (Geneva, 1872).
G. von Hertlino, Augustin (Mainz, 1902).

250 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION
H. F. Reuter, Augustinische Studien (Gotha, 1887).
F. Ribbeck, Donatus and Augustmus (Elberfeld, 1858).
A. Hatzteld, St. Augustin (6th ed., Paris, 1902).
S. Angus, The Sources of the First Ten Books of Augustine's
de Civitate Dei (Princeton, 1906).
J. F. Nourrisson, Philos. de S. August. (2 vols., Paris, 1866).
A. Dorner, Augustinus (Berlin, 1873).
For St. Augustine's writings the best edition is the new critical
Vienna Corpus (C.S.E.L.), of which about 14 vols, have been
published. There is an extensive Eng. Tr. in the Select
Library of the Nicene Fathers. Of older editions, the best
is the Benedictine (Paris, 1679-1700), reprinted in Migne,
P.L. vols. xxxii.-xlvii., or by Gaume, 11 vols. (Paris, 1838).
The Anti-Pelagian treatises have been edited separately by
Dr. Bright (Oxford, 1880).
CHAPTER VI
§ I. F. H. Dudden, Gregory the Great: His Place in Hist, and
Thought (2 vols., 1905).
J. Barmby, Gregory the Great (1892).
§ IL H. C. Lea, Hist, of Auricular Confession and Indulgences
(3 vols., Philadelphia, 1896).
(See also "Canon Law" in Encyc. Brit, 11th ed.)
§ V. Alice Gardner, Studies in John the Scot (1900).
W. Kaulich, Entwicklung der scholastischen Philosophic von
J. Scotus Erigena bis Abdlard (Prag, 1863).
B. F. Westcott in Essays in Hist, of Christian Thought in
the West (1891).
J. Ha vet, Les Origines de S. Denis (Paris, 1896).
H 0. Taylor, Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages (1903),
for his later influence.
F. Seebohm, Oxford Reformers (3rd ed., 1896, pp. 60-78).
A. L. Frothingham, Stephen bar Sudaili (Leyden, 1886).
There is a complete edition of Erigena's works in Migne, P.L.
cxxii.; of Dionysius in P.G. iii.-iv. There is an English
version by J. Parker (London, 1894 and 1897).
CHAPTER VII
§ I. A. F. Vischer, Berengar. Turon. de sacra coena adv.
Lanfranc. (Berlin, 1834), and Lanfranc's works in Migne,
P.L. vol. ol.
D. Stone, Hist, of Doctrine of Holy Eucharist (1909).
C. Gore, Dissertations on Subjects connected with the Incarna
tion, pp. 248-64 (1895).

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 251
§ III. J. M. Rigg, Anselm of Canterbury (1896).
G. C. Foley, Anselm's Theory of the Atonement (1909).
Ch. de Remusat, St. Ansebne (2nd ed., Paris, 1868).
Anselm's works are in Migne, P.L. clviii. and clix.
§ IV. E. Vacandard, Vie de S. Bernard (2 vols., Paris, 1895).
J. C. Morison, St. Bernard (1868 ; many later editions).
Bernard's works are in Migne, P.L. clxxxii.-v.
§ V S. M. Deutsch, Peter Abdlard (Leipzig, 1883).
Ch. de Remus at, Abdard (2 vols., Paris, 1845).
E. Vacandard, Abelard, sa lutte avec S. Bernard (Paris,
1881).
AbaUard's works are in Migne, P.L. clxxviii. (1855), but
without the Tractatus de Unikate et Trinitate, first ed. by
R. Stolzle (Freiburg, 1891).
CHAPTER VIII
For the Mystics in general see : —
W. R Inge, Christian Mysticism (1899). <^
R. M. Jones, Mystical Religion (1909).
A. Jundt, Hist, du panthiisme populai/re au moyen Age (Paris,
1875).
W. Preger, Gesch. d. deutschen Mystik (3 vols., Leipzig,
1874-93). F. Pfeiffer, Deutsche Mystiker d. xiv. Jahrhund.
(New edition, 2 vols., Gottingen, 1906-7).
H. Joly, Psychology of Saints (Eng. Tr., 1898).
R. A. Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics (2 vols., 1856).
F. R. v. Hugel, Mystical Element of Religion (2 vols., 1909).
W. R. Inge, Life, Light, and Love (1904).
E. Gebhardt, L'ltalie Mystique (3rd ed., 1899).
§ III. A. Lasson, Meister Eckhart der Mystiker (Berlin, 1868).
H. Delacroix, Le Mysticisms spiculatif en Allemagne au
xiv" siecle (Paris, 1900).
K. Pearson in Mind (1886).
Josiah Royce, Studies of Good and Evil (New York, 1898).
A. Jundt, Essai sur le mysticisms spiculatif de Eckhart
(Strassburg, 1871).
For Eckhart's German writings, see F. Pfeiffer, Deutscher
Mystiker, vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1857), and for his Latin, H. Denifle
in Archiv. f. Litt. u. Kirchengesch. (1886 and 1889).
§ IV. H. Denifle, Der Gottesfreumd im Oberland u. Nikolaus v.
Basel (Munich, 1870).
Charles Schmidt, Nicolaus v. Basel (Strassburg, 1875).
K. Rieder, Der Gottesfreumd vom Oberland (Innsbruck, 1905).

252 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION
A. Jundt, Rulman Merswin et I'ami de Dieu de I'Oberland
(Paris, 1890).
H. Suso, Life of the Blessed Henry Suso (tr. by T. F. Knox,
1865).
S. Winkworth, John, Tauler (1857).
A. W. Hutton, The Inner Way, being Tauler's Sermons for
Festivals (n.d.).
J. P. Arthur, The Founders of the New Devotion (London,
1905) ; Chronicle of Mount St. Agnes (London, 1906).
S. Kettlewell, Thomas tt Kempis and the Brothers of the
Common Life (2 vols., 1882).
S. H. Gem, Hidden Saints (1907).
F. Cruise, Thomas a Kempis (1887).
M. Maeterlinck, Ruysbroeck and the Mystics (Eng. Tr.,
1894).
CHAPTER IX
§ I. S. Riezler, Die literarischen Widersacher der Pdpste %ur Zeit
Ludwig des Baiers (Leipzig, 1874).
The works of Marsiglio and Ockham are in Goldast, vol. 2
(Ed. Hanover, 1611 ; but vol. 3 in ed. 1621).
§ II. For Aristotle's conquest of the Schools the best source is —
H. Denifle, Chartularium Univ. Paris., espec. vols. 2 and 3.
For Averroism, etc. —
P. F. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et I'averroisme latin
(Fribourg, 1899).
J. Muller, Philos. and Theol. of Averroes (Munich, 1859).
E. Renan, Averroes et VAverroisme (3rd ed., Paris, 1869).
T. J. de Boer, The Hist, of Philos. in Islam (1903).
Carra de Vaux, Avicenne (Paris, 1900) ; " Arabian PhUo
sophy " in Encyc. Brit, 11th ed.
§ III. E. Zeller, Aristotle and the Earlier Peripatetics (Eng. Tr.,
2 vols., 1897).
C. Jourdain, Philos. de Thomas d'Aquin (2 vols., Paris, 1858).
J. Kleutgen, Die Philos. der Vorzeit vertheidigt (1878), and
Die Theol. der Vorzeit vertheidigt (6 vols., Minister, 1867) ;
La Philos. scolastique exposle et difendue (tr. C. Sierp,
4 vols., Paris, 1868-70).
0. Werner, Thomas v. Aquino (3 vols., 1858, 1889).
M. Liberatore, On Universals (tr. 1889).

INDEX

Abailard, 138, 155, 164, 179, c. vii.
§5.
Abstraction, danger of, 63.
Acceptilalio, 178.
Acosmism, 195.
Adoptionism, 75, 76, 86, 145.
Agobard, 142.
Albert the Great, 200, 201.
Alexander of Hales, 137, 177.
Alexandria, schools of, 46, 96.
Allegory, 7 f., 181.
Alogi, 101.
Amalric of Bena, 153, 196.
Ambrose, 98, 109, 115, 137.
Angelology, 16 f.
Anselm of Aosta, 46, 53, 103, 144,
169, c. vii. §3,186 f., 209.
Antioch, school of, 10, 76, 79, 85, 227.
Aphrodisias, Alexander of, 226, 230.
Apocalyptic literature, c. i. § 3, 216.
Apollinaris, 84 f.
Apollonius of Tyana, 25.
Apologists, u. ii. § 4.
Apostles' Creed, 73, 96.
Aquinas, Thomas, 10, 44, 53, 138, 166,
177, 178, 204, 224, 230 f., 236.
Atonement, doctrine of, 31, 43, 51,
52, 58, 94, 103, 137, 138, 174 f.,
184, 204, 209.
Athanasian Creed, 71, 85, 143.
Athanasius, 53, 55, 72, 79, 81.
Arianism, 64, 68, 76, c. iii. § 3,
129.
Aristotelian philosophy, 44, 65, 132,
170, 185, 187, 190, 198, 200, 215,
c. ix. §§ 2, 8.

Augustine, 60, 91, c. v., 136, 149, 169,
186, 194, 198, 221, 230, 233, 240.
Aurelius, Marcus, 13, 44.
Averroes, 201, 223 f.
Avicenna, 223 f.
Bacon, Roger, 213, 220 f.
Barnabas, Epistle of, 5, 12.
Basilides, 33, 193.
Berengar of Tours, 165, 236.
Bernard of Clairvaux, 10, 98, c. vii.
§ 4, 185 f., 199.
Boethius, 133, 134, 179.
Bonaventura, 200.

Brethren of Common Life, 206, 209.
 of Free Spirit, 197.
Caecilius, 76.
Callistus, 98.
Calvin, 123, 165.
Canon law, 135, 163 f.
Cassian of Marseilles, 126.
Cathari, 38.
Celsus, 42.
Cerinthus, 3.
Claudius of Turin, 141.
Clement, Epistle of, 97.
Clement of Alexandria, 44 f.
Clementine Recognitions, 3.
Chalcedon, council of, 87.
Charles the Great, 130, 140 f., 146,
163, 164.
Christ, Person of, c. iii.
Church, Augustine's doctrine of, 117.
Clugny, 162. 253

254 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION

Colet, John, 158, 233.
Columban, 136.
Conceptualism, 185, 235.
Creationism, 125.
Crusades, influence of, 180.
Cyprian, 17, 98, 106 f., 118.
Cyril of Alexandria, 86, 87.
 of Jerusalem, 80.
Decretals, the false, 164, 219.
Demonology, 16.
Descartes, 114, 174.
Desiderius of Vienne, 134.
Deutz, Rupert of, 205.
Dinant, David of, 224.
Dionysius the Areopagite, 59, 60, 89,
135, c. vi. § 5, 197, 230.
 of Alexandria, 78, 80.
Donatists, 117.
Duns Scotus, 174, 178, 205, 232 I.,
235, 237.
Eastern Church, separation of, 144.
Ebionites, 36, 67.
Eckhart, 59, 191, 195, c. viii. § 3.
' Ecstasy,' 199, 200, 207.
Elipandus, 145 f.
Enoch, Book of, 17.
Erigena, 59, 148, c. vi. § 5, 166, 196.
Eternal Gospel, Introduction to, 216.
Eucharist, doctrine of, 51, 146 f., 168,
165 i., c. ix. § 4.
Eugenius in., 179.
Eutyches, 86.
Paustus of Rdjz, 126, 174.
Felix of TJrgel, 145 f.
Filioque, addition of, 142 f.
Francis of Assisi. See Friars.
Free Will, 124.
Friars, influence of, 213 f.
Friends of God, 207.

Gaunilio, 173.
Gelasius, 55.
Gerbert of Aurillac. See Sylvester n. I Lanfrano, 166, 236.

Gerson, 189, 236, 239.
Gilbert de la Porree, 179.
Gnostics, 19, u. ii. § 3, 42, 43, 46, 72,
176.
Gottschalk, 149, 150.
Gratian, 164.
Gregory Nazianzen, 85.
 of Nyssa, 62, 85, 87, 92.
 the Great, 98, 129 f., 134, 138,
139.
 vn. See Hildebrand.
 ix., 222.
Groote, Gerard, 209.
'Ground,' 191, 203, 204.
Guitmund of Aversa, 166.
Hellenism, c. ii. §§ 1, 2.
Henotheism, 29.
Hermas, Shepherd of, 65, 75, 145.
' Hierotheus,' 165.
Hildebrand, 162, 172.
Hippolytus, 78.
Hus, 239.
Iconoolabtio controversy, 89.
Incarnation, doctrine of, 54, 77, 84,
94, 177, 178, 204.
Intolerance, growth of, 109.
Irenaeus, 53, 97, 102 f.
Irnerius, 164.
James, Prof., on Mysticism, 189.
James, Epistle of, 69.
James of Venice, 187.
Jerome, 218.
Joachim di Fiori, 50, 197, 216.
John of Damascus, 88.
Julian of Eclanum, 122, 123.
Juliana of Norwich, 194.
Junilius Africanus, 10.
Justin Martyr, 40.
Justinian, 55.
Kbmpis, Thomas A, 206, 208, 209 f.

INDEX

265

Latin, terms, 95.
Law, influence of, upon theology, 93,
135, 163, 165.
Leo i., 87, 111, 126.
Logos, doctrine of, c. i. § 4, 43, 53,
73, 83, 106.
Lucian of Antioch, 79.
Luther, 55, 112, 165, 177, 208, 211,
238.
Maimonides, 224, 230.
Manichaeism, 37, 115, 120.
Marcion, 5 f. , 35, 96.
Marsiglio, 218 f.
Martin of Tours, 119.
Medieval thought, characteristics of,
c. vi. § 1.
Merswin, Rulman, 206, 207.
Michael of Cesena, 217.
Mithraism, 24.
Monarchianism, 74 f.
Monasticism, 60, 119.
Monophysitism, 86 f., 225.
Monothelitism, 88.
Montanism, 97, 99 f.
Mysticism, c. vi. § 5, 180-1, c. viii.
Nazarenes, 3.
Neoplatonism, c. ii. § 6, 116, 156,
195, 203.
Nestorians, 85, 86, 122, 225.
Nicene Creed, 80.
Nine Rocks, Book of, 207, 208.
Nominalism, 170 f., 185, 244, c. ix.
§41.
Novatian, 106.
Numenius, 29, 41, 56.
Ockham, William of, 215, 217,
235 f., 242.
Orange, council of, 126.
Origen, 44 f., 78, 80, 125.
Ortlieb, 197.
Panentheism, 196.
Pantaenus, 46, 47.

Pantheism, 194, 196, 239.
Paris, University of, 187.
Parousian beliefs, 12 f.
Patriarchs, Testament of, 3.
Paul, St., 66, 118, 176.
Paul of Samosata, 37, 75, 78.
Paulicians, 37.
Pelagianism, 121 f.
Penance, 136 f.
Penitentials, 136, 137.
Peter Lombard, 182, 184, 223.
Peter the Venerable, 182.
Philo, 7, 18, 57.
Photius, 143.
Platonic Trinity, 29.
Platonism, 43, 55, 170, 174, 197,
227 f.
Plotinus, 56, 57 f., 191.
Porphyry, 74, 170.
'Poverty,' 215 f.
Pre-existence, doctrine of, 65.
Proclus, 57, 59, 193.
Purgatory, 50.
'Quantity,' 236 f.
Rabanus Maurus, 148.
Radbert, Paschasius, 147, 165, 166.
Ratram, 148.
Realism, 170 f, 185, 244, u. ix. §4.
RecapUulatio, 104.
Roman Empire, Christianity and, 16,
c. iv. § 1.
Roscelin, 185, 235.
Russian Church, 89.
Ruysbroeck, John of, 194, 206.
Sabellianism, 68, 77.
Sardica, council of, 83.
Scholasticism, meaning of, 167 f.,
c. ix. § 2.
Scots, work of the, 189.
Scotus, Duns. See Duns.
 John. See Erigena.
Siger of Brabant, 241.
Simon of Tournai, 224.

256 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION

'Spark,' 191,203.
Spinoza, 195.
Spirit, Holy, 43.
Spiritual Franciscans, 215, 216.
Stephen bar Sudaili, 155.
Stoicism, 28, 119, 122.
Superstition, 16.
Suso, Henry, 207, 208.
Sylvester n., 162.
Syncretism, 8, 24.
Tatian, 41.
Tauler, 191, 206, 208.
Tertullian, 74, 77, 83, 97, 100, 102 1.,
137, 168.
Testament of Twelve Patriarchs, 3.
Theodore of Mopsuestia, 10, 85.
 of Tarsus, 136, 140, 143.
Theodotus, 76.
Theologia Germanica, 192, 193, 206,
208, 209.

BeorbKos, 86.
Toledo, councils of, 129, 142.
Traducianism, 105, 126.
Transubstantiation. See Eucharist.
Trinity, doctrine of, 54, 62, 105.
Trivium and Quadrivium, 133, 134.
Turibius of Astorga, 142.
Vergil, Gregory and, 134.
Victor, Pope, 98.
 Hugh of St., 200.
 Richard of St., 195, 200.
Victorinus Afer, 59, 198.
Vincent of Lerins, 103.
Wesel, John of, 211, 240.
Wesley, 194.
Wyclif, 206, 217, 218, 238 f.
Zimisoes, John, 37.

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