CHRISTIANITY, regarded historically as one of the great religions of the world, owes its rise to Jesus of Nazareth, in an cient Galilee (see JESUS CHRIST). By reverent disciples His ancestry was traced to the royal family of David and His birth is ascribed by the church to the miraculous act of God. At 3o years of age Jesus Christ appeared in public, and after a short period (we cannot determine how long, but possibly 18 months) he was crucified, upon the accusation of His countrymen, by the Roman authorities.
Relation to Judaism.—His career is understood only in the light of His relation to Judaism (see HEBREW RELIGION). This faith, in a peculiarly vivid fashion, illustrates the growth and development of religion, for its great teachers in the highest degree possessed what the Germans call God-consciousness. When the national independence of Israel was destroyed, the prophetic teaching held the people together in the hope of a re-establishment of the Kingdom when all nations should be subject to it and blessed in its everlasting reign of righteousness and peace (Isa. xlix., lx.) .
Some of the prophets associated the restoration of the Kingdom with the coming of the Messiah, the anointed one, who should re-establish the line of David (Isa. ix. 6 f., xi. 1 f.; Micah v. 2 ; Ezek. xxxiv. 23, xxxvii. 24; Zech. ix. 9; Ps. ii. 72). Others said nothing of such a one, but seemed to expect the regeneration of Israel through the labours, sufferings and triumphs of the righteous remnant (Isa. Ezek. xxxvi.–xxxvii.). By the strong emphasis upon righteousness, the tribal Lord of Israel was revealed as the universal God, of one relationship to all men. This monotheism was not primarily cosmological nor metaphysical, but ethical. The Jews showed little capacity for abstract reasoning and never pur sued their inquiries to the discovery of ultimate principles. Thus they did not develop a systematic cosmology, nor formulate a system of metaphysics. Their religion was pre-eminently "theo cratic" ; God was thought of as King, enthroned in heaven and supreme.
But the prophetic teaching was obscured in part by the nation alism of the prophets themselves, who exalted Israel as at once God's instrument and the peculiar object of His love. Inevitably the freedom, spirituality and universality of the prophetic teach ing were obscured. In the 1st century A.D. the national and priestly elements were supreme. The triumph of Israel was to be ac complished by the miraculous power of a Messiah who should descend out of heaven. His coming was delayed, in part by the opposition of demons, in part by the failure of the people to obey the law, which embraced both moral and ceremonial elements derived from varied sources, but by the people was all alike regarded as of divine origin. It was to be obeyed without question and without inquiry as to its meaning, because established by God; it was contained in the Sacred Scriptures (see BIBLE : Old Testa ment), which had been revealed by God supernaturally, and its meaning was set forth by schools of learned men whose interpre tations were authoritative. The priesthood held still the ancient ideas. Salvation was for the nation, and the individual was not necessarily participant in it ; life after death was disbelieved or held as the existence of shades ; there could be no resurrection of the body and no immortality (in the Greek sense) ; and with these beliefs were associated a certain worldliness and want of fervour. The more actively and aggressively religious party, on the other hand, adopted the belief in the resurrection of the body, and in the individual's participation in. the Messiah's kingdom; all the pious would have their share in it, while the wicked would be outcast. But these doctrines were variously conceived. By some the Messianic kingdom was thought of as permanent, by others as intermediary, the external kingdom being transcendent.
So too some thought of a literal resurrection of the body of flesh and blood, while others thought that it would be transformed. The rudiments of some of these ideas can be found in the prophets, but their development took place after the exile, and indeed for the most part after the conclusion of the writings accounted canonical. Thus too the belief in a kingdom of demons held a large place in the mind of the people, though the references to such evil beings are almost absent from the sacred writings of the Old Testament. Again it is to the East that we must look for the origin of these ideas.
The Teaching of Jesus.—Jesus completed the prophetic teach ings. He employed the old phraseology and imagery, but He was conscious that He used them in a new sense, and that He preached a new gospel of great joy. Jesus was not a historian, a critic or a theologian. He used the words of common men in the sense in which common men understood them ; He did not employ the Old Testament as now reconstructed by scholarship or judged by criticism, but in its simple and obvious and traditional sense, and His background is the intellectual and religious thinking of His time. The ideas of demons and of the future, of the Bible and many other traditional conceptions, are taken over without criticism. So the idea of God which He sets forth is not that of a theologian or a metaphysician, but that of the unlearned man which even the child could understand. Yet though thus speaking in untechnical language, He revolutionized His terms and filled them with new meaning. His emphasis is His own, and the traditional material affords merely the setting for His thought. He was not concerned with speculative questions about God, nor with abstract theories of His relationship to the soul and to the world. God's continual presence, His fatherly love, His tran scendent righteousness, His mercy, His goodness, were the facts of immediate experience ; not in proofs by formal logic but in the reality of consciousness was the certainty of God. Thus religion was freed from all particular and national elements in the simplest way : for Jesus did not denounce these elements, nor argue against them, nor did He seek converts outside Israel, but He set forth communion with God as the most certain fact of man's experience and as simple reality made it accessible to everyone. Thus His teaching contains the note of universality— not in terms and proclamations but as plain matter of fact. His way for others to this reality is likewise plain and level to the comprehension of the unlearned and of children.
For Him repentance (change of mind, Aeravoia) is placed first. The intricacies of ritual and theology are ignored, and ancient laws which contradict the fundamental beliefs are un hesitatingly abrogated or denied. He seizes upon the most spiritual passages of the prophets, and revives and deepens them ; He sums up His teaching in supreme love to God and a love for fellow-man like that we hold for ourselves (Mark xii. 29-31). This supreme love to God is a complete oneness with Him in will, a will which is expressed in service to our fellow-men in the simplest and most natural relationship (Luke x. 25-37). Thus religion is ethical through and through, as God's inner nature, expressed in forgiveness, mercy, righteousness and truth, is not something transcendental, but belongs to the realm of daily life. We become children of God and He our Father in virtue of a moral likeness (Matt. v. 43-48), while of any metaphysical or (so to speak) physical relationship to God, Jesus says nothing. With this clearly understood, man is to live in implicit trust in the divine love, power, knowledge and forgiveness. Hence he attains salvation, being delivered from sin and fear and death, for the divine attributes are not ontological entities to be dis cussed and defined in the schools, but they are realities, entering into the practical daily life. Indeed they are to be repeated in us also, so that we are to forgive our brethren as we ask to be forgiven (Matt. vi. 12 ; Luke xi. 4).
As religion thus becomes thoroughly ethical, so is the notion of the Messianic kingdom transformed. Its essential character istic is the doing of the Father's will on earth as in heaven. Jesus uses parable after parable to establish its meaning. It is a seed cast into the ground which grows and prospers (Matt. xiii. 31-32); it is a seed sown in good ground and bringing forth fruit, or in bad ground and fruitless (Luke viii. 5-8 ; Mark iv. 1-32) ; it is a pearl of great price for which a man should sell all that he possesses (Matt. xiii. ; it is not come "with observation," so that men shall say "lo here and to there" (Luke xvii. 20-21) ; it is not of this world, and does not possess the characteristics or the glory of the kingdom of the earth (Luke xxii. 24-26; Mark x. 13-16) ; it is already present among men (Luke xvii. 21). Together with these statements in our sources are still mingled fragments of the more ordinary cataclysmic, apocalyptic conceptions, which in spite of much ingenious exe gesis, cannot be brought into harmony with Christ's predominant teaching, but remain as foreign elements in the words of the Master, possibly brought back through His disciples, or, more probably, used by Jesus uncritically—a part of the current religious imagery in which He shared.
Originality.—It is often declared that in these teachings there is nothing new, and indeed analogies can be found for many sayings; yet nowhere else do we gain so strong an impression of originality. The net result is not only new but revolutionary; so was it understood by the Pharisees. They and Jesus spoke indeed the same words and appealed to the same authorities, but they rightly saw in Him a revolutionist who threatened the existence of their most cherished hopes. The Messianic kingdom which they sought was opposed point by point to the kingdom of which He spoke, and their God and His Father—though called by the same sacred name—were different. Hence almost from the beginning of His public ministry they constantly opposed Him, the conflict deepening into complete antagonism.
Jesus Christ has been termed unique, one of the common people yet separated from them, and this description applies to the breadth, depth and reality of His sympathy. In the meagre records of His life there is evidence that He deemed no form of suffering humanity foreign to Himself. This was not a mere sentiment, nor was His sympathy superficial, for it constituted the essential characteristic of His personality—"He went about doing good." In Him the will of the Father for the redemption of the race was incarnate. This led Him into the society of those outcasts who were condemned and rejected by the respectable and righteous classes. In contemptuous condemnation He was called the friend of the outcasts (Matt. xi. 19; Mark ii. 16-17), and on His part He proclaimed that these sinners would enter into the Kingdom of Heaven before the self-righteous saints (Matt. xxi. 31) ; even the most repulsive forms of disease and sin drew from Him only loving aid, while he recognized in all other men who laboured for the welfare of their fellows the most intimate relationship to Himself ; these constituted His family, and these were they whom His Father will bless.
Jesus recognized His unique position; He could not be ignorant of His powers. Even the prophets had spoken in the name of God ; they accepted neither hook nor priesthood as authoritative, but uttered their truth as they were inspired to speak, and com manded men to listen and obey. As in Jesus the whole prophetic line culminates, so does its consciousness ; reverent toward the Holy Scriptures, He spoke not as their expositor but with a power which invests His words with immediate and full authority. The prophets used the formula, "Thus saith the Lord," but He goes beyond them and speaks in His own name. He believed Him self to be the Messiah of whom the prophets spoke, and only through this self-consciousness can we explain His mission and the career of His disciples. The prophets up to John foretold the coming of the kingdom (Matt. xi. 11-13 ; Luke xvi. 16), but Jesus opened its doors and made possible entrance into it. Where He is there it is, and hence those who follow Him are God's children, and those who refuse His message are left outside in darkness. He is to sit as enthroned, judge and king, and by Him is men's future to be determined (Matt. xxv. 31 f.; Mark xiii. 26) ; indeed it was His presence more than His teaching which created His Church. Great as were His words, greater was His per sonality. His disciples misunderstood what He said, but they trusted and followed Him. By Him they felt themselves freed from sin and fear—and under the influence of a divine power.
Messianic Claims.—Tbough His claims to authoritative pre eminence thus took Him out of the class of prophets and put Him even above Elijah and Moses (Mark ix. 2-7; Luke vii. 28; Luke x. 23-24), and though naturally this self-assertion seemed blasphemous to those who did not accept Him, yet as He had transformed the traditional notion of the kingdom, so did He the current thought of the Messiah. The pre-eminence was not to be of rank and glory but of service and self-sacrifice. In His kingdom there can be no strife for precedence, since its King comes not to be ministered unto but to minister and to give His life in the service of others (Mark ix. 33 f., x. 42-45). The formal ac knowledgment of the Messiah's worth and position matters little, for to call Him Lord does not ensure entrance into His Kingdom (Matt. vii. 21-23). It is those who fail to recognize the spirit of sympathy and self-sacrificing service as divine and blaspheme re deeming love who are in danger of eternal sin (Mark iii. 28-29). All who do the will of the Father, i.e., who serve their fellows, are the brethren of Christ, even though they do not call Him Lord (Mark iii. 31-3 5 ; Matt. vii. 21) : and those are blessed who minister to the needy even though ignorant of any relation to Himself (Matt. xxv. 37-4o). Finally, membership in His own selected company, or a place in the chosen people, is not of prime importance (Mark ix. 38-4o; Luke xiii. 24-3o).
Jesus also refuses to conform to the current ideas as to the establishment of the kingdom. The tradition of the people im plied a sudden appearance of the Messiah, but Jesus made no claims to a supernatural origin and was content to be known as the son of Joseph and Mary (Mark vi. 3-4). His kingdom is not to be set up by wonders and miraculous powers, nor is it to be established by force (Matt. xxvi. 52); such means would contradict its fundamental character, for as the kingdom of lov ing service it can be established only by loving service. Even the disciples of Jesus could not grasp the simplicity and profundity of His message; still less could His opponents. He was accused of blasphemy to the ecclesiastical authorities and of insurrection to the civil rulers. He was condemned and crucified. His fol lowers were scattered. Of His work nothing remained, not a written word, nor more than the rudiments of an organization. The decisive event, which turned defeat into victory and re established courage and faith, was the belief in the reappearance to His disciples. Our sources will not permit the precise de termination of the order or the nature of these appearances, but in any case from them arose the faith which was the basis of the Christian Church and the starting-point of its theology.
The death of Jesus as a criminal, and His resurrection, pro foundly aroused the belief and hopes of the little group of Jews who were His followers. It is not His word but His person which assumes first place, and faith is acceptance of Him—crucified and risen—as Messiah. Hence His followers early acquire the name Christian from the Greek form of the word. With this emphasis upon the Messiah the Jewish element would seem to be predominant, but as a matter of fact it was not so. The earlier group of disciples, it is true, did not appreciate the uni versality of the teaching of Jesus, and they continued zealous for the older forms ; but Paul through his prophetic consciousness grasped the fundamental fact and in this respect became Jesus' true interpreter. As a result Christianity was rejected by the Jews and became the conquering religion of the Roman empire. In this it underwent another modification of far-reaching con sequence.
In our earliest sources—the epistles of St. Paul—Christ is the pre-existent divine man from heaven, He is before and above all things, and had come to earth by a voluntary act of self-humilia tion. In the Johannine writings He is the Son of God—the Logos who in the beginning was with God—of Whom are all things— Who lightens every man—and Who was incarnate in Jesus. Here the cosmological element is again made prominent though not yet supreme, and the metaphysical problems are so close at hand that their discussion is imperative. Even in Paul the term Messiah thus had lost its definite meaning and became almost a proper name. Among the Greek Christians this process was complete. Jesus is the "Son of God"; and the great problem of theology becomes explicit. Religion is in our emotions of reverence and dependence, and theology is the intellectual attempt to de scribe the object of worship. Doubtless the two do not exactly coincide, not only because accuracy is difficult or even impossible, but also because elements are admitted into the definition of God which are derived from various sources quite distinct from re ligious experience. Like all concepts the meaning of religious terms is changed with a changing experience and a changing world view. Transplanted into' the world where Greek ideas were preva lent, inevitably the Christian teaching was modified—indeed transformed. Questions which had never been asked came into the foreground, and the Jewish presuppositions tended to dis appear, and the Messianic hopes were forgotten or transferred to a transcendent sphere beyond death. When the empire became Christian in the 4th century, the notion of a kingdom of Christ on earth to be introduced by a great struggle all but disappeared, remaining only as the faith of obscure groups. As thus the back ground is changed from Jewish to Greek, so are the fundamental religious conceptions.
The Semitic peoples were essentially theocratic ; they used the forms of the sensuous imagination in setting forth the realities of the unseen world. They were not given to metaphysical spec ulation, nor long insistent in their inquiries as to the meaning and origin of things. With the Greeks it was far otherwise : for them ideas and not images set forth fundamental reality, and their restless intellectual activity would be content with nothing but the ultimate truth. Their speculation as to the nature of God had led them gradually to separate Him by an infinite distance from all creation, and to feel keenly the opposition of the finite and the infinite, the perfect and the imperfect, the eternal and the temporal. To them, therefore, Christianity presented itself not primarily as the religion of a redemption through the indwell ing power of a risen Saviour, as with Paul, nor even as the solu tion of the problem how the sins of men could be forgiven, but as the reconciliation of the antinomy of the intellect, indicated above. The incarnation became the great truth : God is no longer separated by a measureless distance from the human race, but by His entering into humanity He redeems it and makes possible its ultimate unity with Himself. Such lines of thought provoke discussion as to the relationship of Jesus to God the Father, and, at a later period, of the nature of the Holy Spirit who enters into and transforms believers.
Greek philosophy in the and century A.D. had sunk for the most part into scepticism and impotence; its original impulse had been lost, and no new intellectual power took its place; only in Alexandria was there a genuine effort made to solve the funda mental problems of God and the world ; and mingled with the speculations of the Greek philosophers were the ancient legends of gods and heroes, accepted as inspired scripture by the people, and by the philosophers in part explained away by an allegorical exegesis and in part felt increasingly as a burden to the intelli gence. In this period of degeneracy there were none the less an awakening to religious needs and a profound longing for a new revelation of truth, which should satisfy at once the intellect and the religious emotions.
Christianity came as supplying a new power ; it freed philos ophy from scepticism by giving a definite object to its efforts and a renewed confidence in its mission. Monotheism henceforth was to be the belief not of philosophers only but even of the ignorant, and in Jesus Christ the union of the divine and the human was effected. The Old Testament, allegorically explained, became the substitute for the outgrown mythology; intellectual activity revived ; the new facts gained predominant influence in philosophy, and in turn were shaped according to its canons. In theology the fundamental problems of ontological philosophy were faced ; the relationship of unity to multiplicity, of noumenon to phenomena, of God to man. The new element is the historical Jesus, at once the representative of humanity and of God. As in philosophy, so now in theology, the easiest solution of the prob lem was the denial of one of its factors : and successively these efforts were made, until a solution was believed to be found which satisfied both terms of the equation and became the fun damental creed of the Church. Its moulds of thought are those of Greek philosophy, and into these were run the Jewish teach ings. We have thus a peculiar combination—the religious doc trines of the Bible, as culminating in the person of Jesus, run through the forms of an alien philosophy.
Jesus was the central fact of faith, because he had led the disciples to God. After the resurrection He was the object of praise, and soon prayers were offered in His name and to Him. Already to the apostle Paul He dominates the world and is above all created things, visible and invisible, so that He has the religious value of God. Metaphysics and speculative theories were valueless for Paul; he was conscious of a mighty power transforming his own life and filling him with joy, and that this power was identical with Jesus of Nazareth he knew. In all this Paul is the representative of that which is highest and best in early Christianity. Speculation and hyperspiritualization were ever tending to obscure this fundamental religious fact : in the interest of a higher doctrine of God His true presence in Jesus was denied, and by exaggeration of Paul's doctrine of "Christ in us" the significance of the historic Jesus was given up. The Johannine writings, which presupposed the Pauline movement, are a protest against the hyperspiritualizing tendency. They insist that the Son of God has been incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, and that our hands have handled and our eyes have seen the word of life. This same purpose, namely, to hold fast to the historic Jesus, triumphed in the Nicene formula ; Jesus was not to be resolved into an aeon or into some mysterious tertium quid, neither God nor man, but to be recognized as very God who redeemed the soul. Through Him men were to understand the Father and to understand themselves as God's children.
It is apparent that such a doctrine as the Trinity is itself susceptible of many explanations, particularly as to the distinction and relation between God the Eternal Son and God the Holy Spirit ; and minds differently constituted lay emphasis upon its different elements. Especially is this true as its Greek terminology was translated into Latin, and from Latin came into modern languages—the original meaning being obscured or disguised, and the original issues forgotten. For some the first thought of God, the infinite and ultimate reality lying beyond and behind all phenomena, predominates. With these the historic manifesta tion of Jesus becomes only a guide to lead us to that immediate apprehension of God which is the end of theology, and to that immediate union with God which is the end of religion. Such an end is accomplished either by means of pure thought or by a oneness of pure feeling, giving as results the theological or philosophical construction of the idea of God, or a mystical ecstasy which is itself at once immediate, inexplicable and in describable. On the other hand, minds of a different and more concrete character so emphasize the distinctions God, Son and Holy Spirit, that a tritheistic construction appears—three indi viduals in the one Godhead : these individuals appearing, as for example, in the Father and the Son, even in opposition to each other. In general we may say then that the Trinity takes on three differing aspects in the Christian Church : in its more common and easily apprehended form as three Gods ; in its ec clesiastical form as a mystery which is above reason to be accepted by faith ; in its philosophic form as a metaphysical inter pretation of the finite, the infinite and the relation between them.
To some Christians the doctrine of the Trinity appeared in consistent with the unity of God which is emphasized in the Scriptures. They therefore denied it, and accepted Jesus Christ, not as incarnate God, but as God's highest creature by Whom all else was created, or as the perfect man who taught the true doctrine of God. The first view in the early Church long con tended with the orthodox doctrine, but finally disappeared, and the second doctrine in the modern Church was set forth as easily intelligible, but has remained as a form of "heresy." The Cross and the Atonement.—Allied with the doctrine of God which seeks the solution of the ultimate problem of all philosophy, the doctrine of salvation has taken the most promi nent place in the Christian faith : so prominent, indeed, that to a large portion of believers it has been the supreme doctrine, and the doctrine of the deity of Jesus has been valued only because of its necessity on the effect of the atonement. Jesus alone of the great founders of religion suffered an early and violent death, even the death of a criminal. It became therefore the immediate task of His followers to explain this fact. This explanation was the more urgent because under the influence of Jewish monotheism the rule of God was accepted as an undoubted presupposition, so that the death of Jesus must be in accordance with His will. The early Church naturally used the term and phrases of the prophets. He died the death of a criminal, not for His sins, but for ours. Isaiah liii. was suggested at once and became the central ex planation: Christ is the suffering servant Who is numbered with the transgressors and Who bears the sins of many.
It is remarkable that in the earliest centuries of Christian thought there is only the most slender support for theories of the Atonement which became widely current at a later time. The early Fathers did not regard the sufferings of Christ as a vicarious satisfaction of God's wrath, where He underwent punishment due to us and His obedience is imputed to us. Whenever they use language which seems to convey such ideas, they as it were instinctively safeguard it by the idea of our union with Christ, where we share in His obedience and His passion, and only so far as we make them our own do we actually appropriate the redemption He won for us. Their main thought is that man is reconciled to God by the Atonement, and not God to man ; the change which it effects is a change in man rather than a change in God. Many centuries later the familiar outlines of the theory of vicarious atonement were drawn, and carved into a rigid scheme by the Reformers. They were deeply convinced that human sin is the violation of an eternal law which has its basis in the very being of God and is the expression of God's justice, which must be satisfied. This is the conviction embodied in the Protestant creeds, and worked out by means of metaphors so legal and even mechanical in character that modern theology has been marked by a widespread revolt against every form of it.
A large part of the history of Christian doctrine deals with controversies arising from theories of the Atonement (q.v.) ; but excepting in relatively narrow circles these theories have been seriously studied only by professed theologians. That Christ died for us, and that we are saved by Him, is indeed the living truth of the Church in all ages, and a false impression of the fact is given by dwelling upon theories as if they were central. At best they bear only the relationship of philosophy to life.
These hopes and theories of salvation do not indeed wholly explain the power of Christianity. Jesus wearied Himself with the healing of man's physical ailments, and He was remembered as the great physician. Early Christian literature is filled with medical terms, applied (it is true) for the greater part to the cure of souls. The records of the Church are also filled with the efforts of Jesus's followers to heal the diseases and satisfy the wants of men. A vast activity animated the early Church : to heal the sick, to feed the hungry, to succour the diseased, to rescue the fallen, to visit the prisoners, to forgive the erring, to teach the ignorant, were ministries of salvation. A mighty power impelled men to deny themselves in the service of others, and to find in this service their own true life. None the less the first place is given to the salvation of the soul, since, created for an unending existence, it is of transcendent importance. While man is fallen and by nature vile, nevertheless his possibilities are so vast that in com parison the affairs of earth are insignificant. The word, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" comes to mean that the individual soul outvalues the whole world. With emphasis upon God as creator and ruler, and upon man as made in God's image, endowed with an unending existence, and subject to eternal torture if not redeemed, the concept of personality has been exalted at the expense of that of nature, and the future has been magnified at the expense of the present. Thus a future heaven is man's true home, and theology instead of philosophy or natural science is his proper study.
Indeed, intellectual interest centred in religion. Natural science was forsaken, except in so far as it ministered to theology. Be cause the Old Testament contained references to the origin and the objects of the universe, a certain amount of natural science was necessary, but it was only in this connection that it had any value. By Augustine's time this process is complete. His writ ings contain most of the knowledge of his age, but it is strictly subordinate to his theological purpose. Hence, when the bar barians submerged southern Europe, theology alone survived. The Church entered upon a new task. In the beginning Chris tianity had been the teacher of religion to highly civilized peoples —now it became the civilizing agent to the barbarians, the teacher of better customs, the upholder of law and the source of knowl edge. The learned men were monks and priests, and the uni versities were Church institutions.
The Sacraments and Salvation.—Belief in mysterious pow ers attached to food, feasts, ceremonial rites and sacred things is all but universal. Primitive man seldom connects sacrifice with notions of propitiation, indeed only in highly ethicized religions is the consciousness of sin or of guilt pre-eminent. Sacrifice was be lieved to exert an influence on the deity which is quasi-physical, and in sacrificial feasts God and worshipper are in mysterious union.
So universal are such ideas that the problem in particular religions is not their origin but their form. In the Old Testament repeatedly they are found in conflict with the prophetic ideals. Sometimes the prophets denounce them, sometimes ignore them, sometimes attempt to reform and control them. Jesus ignores them, His emphasis being so strong upon the ethical and spiritual that the rest is passed by. In the early Church, still Jewish, the belief was in the coming of a mysterious power from God which produced ecstasy and worked wonders. Paul also believes in this, but insists that it is subordinate to the peaceable fruits of right eousness. With the naturalization of the Church in the Gentile world ethical ideas became less prominent, and the sacramental system prevailed. By baptism and the Lord's Supper grace is given (ex opere operato), so that man is renewed and made cap able of salvation. Already in the and century baptism was de scribed as a bath in which the health of the soul is restored, and the Lord's Supper as the potion of immortality. Similar notions present in the ethnic faiths take the Christian facts into their service, the belief of the multitude without essential change re maining vague and undefined. While the theologians discussed doctrine the people longed for mystery, as it satisfied their re ligious natures; by sacraments they felt themselves brought into the presence of God, and to sacraments they looked for aid. Many sacraments were adopted by portions of the Church, until at last the sacred number seven was agreed upon.
In the earliest period the services were characterized by extreme freedom, and by manifestations of ecstasy which were believed to indicate the presence of the spirit of God ; but as time went on the original enthusiasm faded away, the cult became more and more controlled, until ultimately it was completely subject to the priesthood, and through the priesthood to the Church. The power of the priesthood had its centre in the sacrament of the Eucharist (q.v.), and in the Roman communion the structure of the sacred edifice, the positions and attitudes of the priest and the congregation, the order of service, emphasize the mystery and the divine efficacy of the sacrament. The worshipper feels him self in the immediate presence of God, and enters into physical relations with him ; participation in the mass also releases from guilt, as the Lamb of God offered up atones for sin and intercedes with the Father in our behalf. Thus in this single act of devotion both objects of all cults are attained.
Organization.—As the teaching and person of Jesus were fitted into the framework of Greek philosophy, and the sacra ments into the deeper and broader forms of popular belief, so was the organization shaped by the polity of the Roman empire. Jesus gathered His group of followers and committed to it His mission, and after His resurrection the necessities of the situation brought about the choice of quasi-officials. Later the familiar polity of the synagogue was loosely followed. A completer organi zation was retarded by two factors, the presence of the apostles and the inspiration of the prophets. But when the apostles died and the early enthusiasm disappeared, a stricter order arose. Prac tical difficulties called for the enforcement of discipline, and differences of opinion for authority in doctrine; and, finally, the sacramentarian system required a priesthood. In the and century the conception of a Catholic Church was widely held and a loose embodiment was given it ; after the conversion of the empire the organization took on the official forms of the empire. Later it was modified by the rise of the feudal system and the re-establish ment of the modern European nationalities.
The polity of the Church was more than a formal organization; it touched the life of each believer. Very early, Christianity was conceived to be a new system of law, and faith was interpreted as obedience. Legalism was joined with sacramentarianism, doubling the power of the priest. Through him Church discipline was ad ministered, a complete system of ecclesiastical penalties, i.e., penance, growing up. It culminated in the doctrine of purgatory, a place of discipline, of purifying suffering after death. The Roman genius for law strengthened and systematized this tendency.
The Roman Church.—The hierarchy which centres in the pope constitutes the Church of which the sacramental system is the inner life and penance is the sanction. It is thus a divine-human organization. It teaches that the divine-human Son of God established it, and returning to heaven committed to the apos tles, especially to St. Peter, his authority, which has descended in an unbroken line through the popes. This is the charter of the Church, and its acceptance is the first requisite for salva tion ; for the Church determines doctrine, exercises discipline and administers sacraments. Its authority is accompanied by the spirit of God, who guides it into truth and gives it miraculous power. Outside the Church are only the "broken lights" of man's philosophy and the vain efforts of weak human nature after virtue.
Christianity in its complete Roman development is thus the coming of the supernatural into the natural. The universe falls into these orders, the second for the sake of the first, as nature is of and for God. Without Him nature at its highest is like a beau tiful statue, devoid of life ; it is of secondary moment compared even to men, for while it passes away he continues for ever. Man is dependent, therefore, not upon nature, but upon God's grace for salvation, and this comes through the Church. Thus the Church ever receives God and has a twofold nature ; its sacra ments through material and earthly elements impart a divine power; its teachings agree with the highest truths of philosophy and science, yet add to these the knowledge of mysteries which the unaided reason of man could never apprehend. Theology is the queen of the sciences, and nothing should be taught in school or university which contradicts its conclusions. Moreover, noth ing should be done by the State which interferes with the tran scendent interest committed to the Church. Thus the Church touches and controls all realms of life, and the cycle is complete.
The Reformation. The idea of the Roman Church was im perfectly embodied at the best; the divine gift was in earthen vessels. The world was never completely cast out ; indeed the Church became the scene for ambition and the home of l'txury and pleasure. It was entangled also in the political strife of the feudal ages and of the beginning of modern empires. Its control of the sciences embroiled it with its own philosophers and scholars, while saints and pure-minded ecclesiastics attempted, without success, its reform from within. Finally, through Luther, the ex plosion came, and western Christendom broke into two parts— Catholic and Protestant.
Protestantism in its primary principle is the return to primitive Christianity. The whole development which we have traced, culminating in the ecclesiastical-doctrinal system of the Roman Church, is regarded as a corruption, since foreign and even heathen elements have been brought in, so that the religion estab lished by Christ is obscured or lost. For Protestants the Bible only now becomes the infallible inspired authority in faith and morals. Interpretations by the Fathers or by the councils are to be taken only as aids to its understanding. But in Protestantism reason and the light of nature are in themselves as impotent as in the Roman Church. The Bible interpreted by man's unaided intelligence is as valueless as other writings, but it has a sacra mental value when the Holy Spirit accompanies its teaching, and the power of God uses it and makes the soul capable of holiness. In all this the supernatural is as vividly realized as in the Roman Church ; it is only its mediation which is different.
These principles are variously worked out in the different churches and variously expressed. In part because of historical circumstances, the divergence from the older systems is more marked in some Protestant churches than in others, yet on the whole these two principles determine cult and in part organiza tion. As in the Roman Church cult centres in the mass, so in the original Reformed Church it centred in the sermon. The ancient Jewish prophetic office was revived, yet with a difference : the ancient prophets acknowledged no external authority, but the Protestant preacher is strictly subordinate to the Scriptures of which he is the interpreter. Besides the sermon, the sacraments are observed as established by Christ—two in number, baptism and the Lord's Supper. But these do not exert a quasi-physical or magi cal influence, ex opere operato. Unless there be faith in the recipi ent, an understanding of the meaning of the sacrament and an ac ceptance of it, it is valueless or harmful. Prayer and praise also are effective only as the congregation intelligently joins in them.
The emphasis upon the believer and his freedom from all ex ternal authority do not result in a thoroughgoing individualism. Luther clearly held to the unity of all Christians, and Protestants are agreed in this. For them, as for the Roman Church, there is a belief in a catholic or all-embracing Church, but the unity is not that of an organization ; Christians are one through an indwelling spirit ; they undergo the same experience and follow the same purpose.
Historically these principles were only in part embodied, for the Reformation was involved in political strife. The Reformers turned to the Government for aid and protection, and throughout Europe turmoil and war ensued. In consequence, in the Protestant nations the State assumed the ultimate authority over the Church. Moreover, in the early days of the Reformation the Catholic Church charged it with a lawless individualism, a charge which was seemingly made good by an extreme divergence in theologi cal opinion and by riots in various part of the Protestant world. The age was indeed one of ferment, so that the foundations of society and of religion seemed threatened. The Reformers turned to the State for protection against the Roman Church, and ulti mately as a refuge from anarchy, and they also returned to the theology of the Fathers as their safeguard against heresy. Instead of the simplicity of Luther's earlier writings, a dogmatic theology was formed, and a Protestant ecclesiasticism established, in distinguishable from the Roman Church in principle. The main difference was in the attitude to the Roman allegiance and to the sacramentarian system. There was thus by no means a complete return to the Bible as the sole authority, but the Bible was taken as interpreted by the earlier creeds and as worked into a doctrinal system by the scholastic philosophy. Thus Protestantism also came to identify theology with the whole range of human knowledge, and in its official forms was as hostile to the progress of science as was the Roman Church itself.
Many Protestants rebelled against this radical departure from the principles of the Reformation and of biblical Christianity. To them it seems the substitution of the authority of the Church for the authority of a living experience, and of intellectual ad herence to theological propositions for faith. The freedom of the individual was denied. Protestantism divided into many sects and denominations, founded upon special types of religious ex perience or upon particular points in doctrine or in cult. Thus Protestantism presents a wide diversity in comparison with the regularity of the Roman Church (see REUNION, CHURCH).
In the broadest sense the underlying principle of the struggle is the reassertion of interest in the world. It is no longer merely the scene for the drama of the soul and God, nor is man inde pendent of it, but man and nature constitute an organism, hu manity being a part of the vaster whole. Man's place is not even central, as he appears a temporary inhabitant of a minor planet in one of the lesser stellar systems. As in the political world the States gained first the undisputed control of matters secular, re jecting even the proffered counsel of the Church, and then pro ceeded to establish their sovereignty over the Church itself, so was it in the empire of the mind. The rights gained for independ ent research were extended over the realm of religion also ; the two indeed cannot remain separate, and man must subordinate knowledge to the authority of religion—or make science supreme, submitting religion to its scrutiny and judging it like other phenomena. Under this investigation Christianity does not appear altogether exceptional. Its early logic, ontology, and cosmology, with many of its distinctive doctrines, are shown to be the natural offspring of the races and ages which gave them birth. Put into their historical environment they are found to be steps in the intellectual development of man's mind. But when put forward as absolute truths to-day, they are put aside as anachronisms not worthy of dispute. The Bible is studied like other works, its origins discovered and its place in comparative religion assigned. It does not appear as altogether unique, but it is put among the other sacred books. For the great religions of the world show similar cycles of development, similar appropriations of prevalent science and philosophy, similar conservative insistence upon ancient truth, and similar claims to an exclusive authority.
With this interest is involved an attitude of mind toward the supernatural. As already pointed out, nature and super-nature were taken as physically and spatially distinct. The latter could descend upon the former and be imparted to it, neither subject to nature nor intelligible by reason. In science the process has been reversed; nature ascends, so to speak, into the region of the supernatural and subdues it to itself ; the marvellous or miraculous is brought under the domain of natural law, the canons of physics extend over metaphysics, and religion takes its place as one ele ment in the natural relationship of man to his environment. Hence the new world-view threatens the foundations of the ecclesiastical edifice. This revolution in the world-view is no longer the posses sion of philosophers and scholars, but the multitude accepts it in part. Education in general has rendered many familiar with the teachings of science, and, moreover, its practical benefits have given authority to its maxims and theories.
The Roman Catholic Church uncompromisingly reasserts its ancient propositions, political and theological. The cause is lost indeed in the political realm, where the Church is obliged to submit, but it protests and does not waive or modify its claims (see the Syllabus of 1864, par. 19 seq., 27, S4 and 55). In the Greek and Protestant churches this situation cannot arise, as they make no claims to governmental sovereignty. In the intellectual domain the situation is more complex. Again the Roman Church unhesitatingly reaffirms the ancient principles in their extreme form (Syllabus, par. 8-9-13 ; Decrees of the Vatican Council, ch. 4, especially canon 4-2) ; the works of St. Thomas Aquinas are recommended as the standard authority in theology (Encyc. of Leo XIII., Aeterni Patris, Aug. 4, 1879). In details also the conclusions of modern science are rejected, as for example the origin of man from lower species, and, in a different sphere, the conclusions of experts as to the origins of the Bible. Faith is defined as "assent upon authority," and the authority is the Church, which maintains its right to supremacy over the whole domain of science and philosophy.
The Greek Church remains untouched by the modern spirit. With characteristic oriental conservatism it claims the title of "Orthodox" and retains the creed and organization of the early Church. The Protestant Churches also are bound officially to the scholastic philosophy of the I th century; their confessions of faith still assert the formation of the world in six days, and require assent to propositions which can be true only if the old cosmology be correct.
Compromises.—On the other hand there are individuals and even large bodies of Christians who are intent upon a reinter pretation. Even in the official circles of the Church, not excepting the Roman Church, there are many scholars who find no difficulty in maintaining communion while accepting the modern scientific view of the world. This is possible to some because the situation in its sharp antithesis is not present to their minds : by making certain compromises on the one side and on the other, and by framing private interpretations of important dogmas, they can retain their faith in both and yet preserve their mental integrity.
Thus the crisis is in fact not so acute as it might seem. No great institution lives or dies by logic. Christianity rests on great religious needs which it meets and gratifies, so that its life (like all other lives) is in unrationalized emotions. Reason seeks ever to rationalize these, an attempt which seems to destroy yet really fulfils. As thus the restless reason tests the emotions of the soul, criticizes the traditions to which they cling, rejects the ancient dogmas in which they have been defined, the Church slowly participates in the process; silently this position and that are forsaken, legends and beliefs once of prime importance are for gotten, or when forced into controversy many ways are found by which the old and the new are reconciled; the sharpness of distinctions can be rubbed off, expressions may be softened, definitions can be modified and half-way resting-places afforded, until the momentous transition has been made and the continuity of tradition is maintained. Finally, as the last step, even the official documents may be revised.
Philosophy and Ethical Redemption.—The intellectual crisis cannot be ignored in the interest of the practical life. Men must rationalize the universe. On the one hand there are church men who attempt to repeat the historical process which has natu ralized the Church in alien soils by appropriating the forces of the new environment, and who hold that the entire process is inspired and guided by the spirit of God. Hence Christianity is the abso lute religion, because it does not preclude development but neces sitates it, so that the Christianity that is to come shall not only retain all that is important in the Christianity of the past and present but shall assimilate new truth. On the other hand some seek the essential Christianity in a life beneath and separable from the historic forms. In part under the influence of the Hegelian philosophy, and in part because of the prevalent evolutionary scientific world-view, God is represented under the form of pure thought, and the world process as the unfolding of Himself. Such truth can be apprehended by the multitude only in symbols which guide the will through the imagination, and through historic facts which are embodiment of ideas. The Trinity is the essential Chris tian doctrine, the historic facts of the Christian religion being the embodiment of religious ideas. The chief critical difficulty felt by this school is in identifying any concrete historic fact with the un changing idea, that is, in making Jesus of Nazareth the incarnation of God. God is reinterpreted, and in place of an extra-mundane creator is an omnipresent life and power. The Christian attain ment is nothing else than the thorough intellectual grasp of the absolute idea and the identification of our essential selves with God. With a less thoroughgoing intellectualism other scholars re interpret Christianity in terms of current scientific phraseology. Christianity is dependent upon the understanding of the universe ; hence it is the duty of believers to put it into the new setting, so that it adopts and adapts astronomy, geology, biology and psy chology.
From all these efforts to reconstruct systematic theology with its appropriations of philosophy and science, groups of Christians turn to the inner life and seek in its realities to find the confirma tion of their faith. They also claim oneness with a long line of Christians, for in every age there have been men who have ignored the dogma and the ritual of the Church, and in contemplation and retirement have sought to know God immediately in their own experience. To them at best theology with its cosmology and its logic is only a shadow of shadows, for God reveals himself to the pure in heart, and it matters not what science may say of the material and fleeting world. This spirit manifests itself in wide circles in our day. The Gordian knot is cut, for philosophy and religion no longer touch each other but abide in separate realms.
In quite a different way a still more influential school seeks essential Christianity in the sphere of the ethical life. It also would disentangle religion from cosmology and formal philosophy. It studies the historic development of the Church, noting how element after element has been introduced into the simplicity of the gospel, and from all these it would turn back to the Bible it self. In a thoroughgoing fashion it would accomplish what Luther and the Reformation attempted. It regards even the earliest creeds as only more or less satisfactory attempts to translate the Christian facts into the current language of the heathen world. But the process does not stop with this rejection of the ancient and the scholastic theology. It recognizes the scientific results attained in the study of the Bible itself, and therefore it does not seek the entire Bible as its rule of truth. To it Jesus Christ, and He alone, is supreme, but this supremacy does not carry with it infallibility in the realm of cosmology or of history. In these too Jesus participated in the views of His own time ; even His teaching of God and of the future life is not lacking in Jewish elements, yet none the less He is the essential element in Chris tianity, and to His life-purpose must all that claims to be Christianity be brought to be judged. To this school Christianity is the culmination of the ethical monotheism of the Old Testa ment, which finds its highest ideal in self-sacrificing love. Jesus Christ is the complete embodiment of this ideal, in life and in death. This ideal He sets before men under the traditional forms of the Kingdom of God as the object to be attained, a Kingdom which takes upon itself the forms of the family, and realizes itself in a new relationship of universal brotherhood. Such a religion appeals for its self-verification not to its agreement with cosmo logical conceptions, either ancient or modern, or with theories of philosophy, however true these may be, but to the moral sense of man. On the one hand, in its ethical development, it is nothing less than the outworking of that principle of Jesus Christ which led Him not only to self-sacrificing labour but to the death upon the cross. On the other hand, it finds its religious solution in the trust in a power not ourselves which makes for the same righteousness which was incarnate in Jesus Christ.
Thus Christianity, as religion, is on the one hand the adoration of God, that is, of the highest and noblest, and this highest and noblest as conceived not under forms of power or knowledge but in the form of ethical self-devotion as embodied in Jesus Christ, and on the other hand it meets the requirements of all religion in its dependence, not indeed upon some absolute idea or omnipotent power, but in the belief that that which appeals to the soul as worthy of supreme worship is also that in which the soul may trust, and which shall deliver it from sin and fear and death. Such a conception of Christianity can recognize many embodi ments in ritual, organization and dogma, but its test in all ages and in all lands is conformity to the purpose of the life of Christ. The Lord's Prayer in its oldest and simplest form is the expression of its faith, and Christ's separation of mankind on the right hand and on the left in accordance with their service or refusal of service to their fellow-men is its own judgment of the right of any age or Church to the name Christian.
Christianity has passed through too many changes, and it has found too many interpretations possible, to fear the time to come. Thoroughgoing reconstruction in every item of theology and in every detail of polity there may be, yet shall the Christian life go on—the life which finds its deepest utterance in the words of Christ, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbour as thyself"; the life which expresses its pro foundest faith in the words Christ taught it to pray, "Our Father"; the life which finds its highest rule of conduct in the words of its first and greatest interpreter, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus our Lord." The view that Jesus deliberately founded a Church (an ecclesi astical institution), appointed the Apostles its rulers, settled its rites, gave it its doctrine and guaranteed its fidelity, can only be maintained by discarding history altogether. In the 19th century this was transformed into the view that Jesus planted "in germ" what has grown to be the present Catholic doctrine and order. Among those who differ only in detail about what happened, there are, however, diametrically opposite judgments of the value of the change. (i.) Liberal Protestant scholars, on the whole, regard it as the kind of corruption to which religions are always subject as they absorb alien elements with their imperfectly instructed converts. They find the essential Christian element to be a power, shown by no other religion, first of elevating and spiritualizing these alien elements and then of eliminating them. This they ascribe to the higher idea of redemption inseparable from the faith in Christ (which, however much overlaid, has always wrought like leaven), and to what goes with it—the Revelation of the Father. Thus, for them, an essential quality of Christianity is its power to regenerate itself by a return to the Jesus of the Gospels. They would maintain that all other religions have their place, but it is as a preparation, or if their elements remain in Christianity, it is only as a temporary substitute for the true Christian redemp tion. (ii.) Liberal Catholic scholars on the other hand regard it as the highest perfection of Christianity that it can thus "syncre tize" (absorb and transform) what has appealed to human need in any religion. By this comprehensiveness, they maintain, Chris tianity, from being an enthusiastic but incoherent movement, grew into a permanent and effective institution, with its original puritan ism enriched in all kinds of religiously valuable ways.
The foregoing statement is a definition not of two positions but of two directions, and allows for various intermediate doctrines and interpretations. All these are naturally exemplified in the principal branches of organized Christianity, and reference must be made to the various articles on these subjects : ROMAN CATHO LIC CHURCH; ENGLAND, CHURCH OF PRESBYTERIANISM; Lu