The Christian Tradition

By Leighton Pullan

These chapters are intended to illustrate the continuity and the value of Christian tradition in conduct, belief, and worship. They are necessarily only illustrations, and omit many subjects of very great importance. But they will have served their purpose if they render any help towards determining what is and what is not ‘the faith once delivered to the saints.’ The last few years have been very fruitful in discussions and discoveries connected with early Christian history, and certain results have begun to emerge with great distinctness. One is the fact that the peculiar features of Protestantism rest on traditions which are as unhistorical as those which underlie some modern features of Roman Catholicism. Another result is the fact that the critics of orthodox Christianity are now destroying one another’s theories much more than they are destroying the Catholic faith. The extreme Dutch critics are perfectly right when they tell their more moderate German rivals that it takes time for a non-supernatural religion to grow into one which is supernatural. They cannot logically believe that Jesus Christ was only an excellent Jewish preacher, and at the same time admit the genuineness of half of the earliest Christian literature. And the German critics aforesaid are perfectly justified in hurling the name of ‘pseudo-criticism’ at a school which, in the case of Christian literature, rejects evidence of genuineness which would be regarded as more than sufficient in the case of non-Christian literature.

It has been necessary to limit the number of references printed in this book. But in the chapter on ‘Penitence in the Early Church’ it has seemed best to give as full references as possible, in view of the recent discussion in England concerning the subject of sacramental confession.

CrossReach Publicationss

• Language: English
• Publisher: CrossReach Publications
• Release date: May 12, 2019

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EDITORS’ PREFACE

The object of the Oxford Library of Practical Theology is to supply some carefully considered teaching on matters of Religion to that large body of devout laymen, who desire instruction, but are not attracted by the learned treatises which appeal to the theologian. One of the needs of the time would seem to be, to translate the solid theological learning, of which there is no lack, into the vernacular of everyday practical religion; and while steering a course between what is called plain teaching on the one hand and erudition on the other, to supply some sound and readable instruction to those who require it, on the subjects included under the common title ‘The Christian Religion,’ that they may be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh them a reason of the hope that is in them, with meekness and fear.

The Editors, while not holding themselves precluded from suggesting criticisms, have regarded their proper task as that of editing, and accordingly they have not interfered with the responsibility of each writer for his treatment of his own subject.

W. C. E. N.

D. S.

PREFACE

These chapters are intended to illustrate the continuity and the value of Christian tradition in conduct, belief, and worship. They are necessarily only illustrations, and omit many subjects of very great importance. But they will have served their purpose if they render any help towards determining what is and what is not ‘the faith once delivered to the saints.’ The last few years have been very fruitful in discussions and discoveries connected with early Christian history, and certain results have begun to emerge with great distinctness. One is the fact that the peculiar features of Protestantism rest on traditions which are as unhistorical as those which underlie some modern features of Roman Catholicism. Another result is the fact that the critics of orthodox Christianity are now destroying one another’s theories much more than they are destroying the Catholic faith. The extreme Dutch critics are perfectly right when they tell their more moderate German rivals that it takes time for a non-supernatural religion to grow into one which is supernatural. They cannot logically believe that Jesus Christ was only an excellent Jewish preacher, and at the same time admit the genuineness of half of the earliest Christian literature. And the German critics aforesaid are perfectly justified in hurling the name of ‘pseudo-criticism’ at a school which, in the case of Christian literature, rejects evidence of genuineness which would be regarded as more than sufficient in the case of non-Christian literature.

It has been necessary to limit the number of references printed in this book. But in the chapter on ‘Penitence in the Early Church’ it has seemed best to give as full references as possible, in view of the recent discussion in England concerning the subject of sacramental confession.

THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION

CHAPTER I

THE NEW TESTAMENT OF JESUS CHRIST

Love, with Greece and Rome in ken,

Bade her scribes abhor the trick

Of poetry and rhetoric,

And exult, with hearts set free,

In blessed imbecility

Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet

Leaving Sallust incomplete.

Browning, Christmas Eve.

The Christian Church started on its career with ‘Scripture’ in its hand. But this Scripture was not what we call the New Testament, nor was it exactly what we call the Old Testament. At the beginning of the Second Book of the Maccabees, in a letter written in b.c. 124 by some Jews of Judaea to their kinsmen in Egypt, we find mention of a collection of sacred books. It says that Nehemiah, b.c. 444, made a library of the records of the kings and the prophets, of the writings of David, and finally of the letters of the kings touching holy gifts; that in the Syrian wars this collection was scattered, and that it was restored by the great national hero Judas Maccabaeus and was now in the actual possession of the Jews of Jerusalem. Other evidence exists to show that when the Second Book of the Maccabees was written certain of these records of kings and prophets were regarded as more valuable and sacred than the rest. First and foremost came the five books of the Law, which contained the laws of God and the history of His covenant that He made with the founders of the Hebrew people. About b.c. 200 ‘the prophets’ were added to ‘the Law.’ That is to say, the utterances made by the prophets of Judah and Israel before the time of their captivity and until the full restoration of Jerusalem, and certain historical books written in a prophetical spirit, were placed on the same level as the books of Moses. Besides these there were the Hagiographa, numerous books of a more or less sacred character which the Jews had not yet definitely included in Scripture—eleven of them, including the Psalms, Ruth, Esther, Proverbs, and Job, were finally added to the Law and the Prophets by the decision of learned Pharisees not long after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in a.d. 70. But at the beginning of the Christian era it had not yet been decided finally what books ought to be included in this third section of the Old Testament. So in the New Testament we find more than one allusion to Jewish legends which were afterwards regarded as apocryphal by Jews and Christians alike. The simplest and best-known instance is the reference made by S. Jude to the Book of Enoch, a book which still exists, but which was not given any place in the Old Testament. On the other hand, the Psalms, although they fall under the third section of the Old Testament, were already regarded as on the same level as the first two sections. Thus, in S. John 10:34, our Lord refers to a verse in Psalm 82 as part of what the Jews called their ‘Law.’ The deeply spiritual tone of most of the Psalms, their frequent use in Jewish worship, and their fertility in references to the Messiah, immediately secured for them a place in the first rank among the books valued by the disciples of the Messiah.

Besides these Scriptures of the Old Testament, the Christians relied on what is called in Acts ‘the teaching of the apostles,’ much of which, as the same book witnesses, was intended to prove that the history of the Lord Jesus corresponded with the Messianic prophecies. At first the Christians were probably by no means eager to write books of their own. The Jews disliked writing down the sayings of a rabbi, lest such a writing should encroach upon the already existing Scriptures. And some of the leading apostles evidently expected that their Lord would visibly return within their own lifetime, and they would consequently feel that a written record of His sayings was unnecessary. But though these facts may have acted as a check on literary effort, the check was of short duration. For in the hearts of all believers, Jesus Christ occupied a perfectly unique position. Intense as was their reverence for the Scriptures, they regarded Him as above the Scriptures, as ‘greater than the temple.’ They believed that they were in possession of the key to Scripture, and that a present inspiration or ‘unction from the Holy One’ was at work among them. So if they ever were reluctant to write about their Lord, their reluctance was caused by the feeling that such a step would be novel rather than by the feeling that it would be wrong. And as they were eager to win converts, and those who had been personally acquainted with the life of Christ could not do all the work of converting, the necessity for writing some account of Christ became a pressing one. The most important facts for preaching were those that fell between the baptism of our Lord and His ascension. It is this period of which a special knowledge was required in the case of the apostle who was elected to fill the place of Judas. The death and resurrection of Christ were naturally regarded as the most important facts of all, and the immense stress which is laid upon them by S. Paul is in agreement with what we find in the earlier chapters of Acts. From the very first the Christians rested all their hopes upon the knowledge that the same Jesus was both crucified and raised from the dead, and that He had become their Saviour by bearing their griefs and sins and by raising them to newness of life. If then a Gospel had to be written, the scope of it would be indicated by the most striking points in the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The story of the ‘good news’ would cover, not the whole life of the Redeemer, but a space of two years and a-half.

1. At the back of any writing lay the testimony of eye-witnesses. And the Gospel according to S. Mark, which is now universally acknowledged to be the oldest of our existing Gospels, seems to be quite unmistakably based on the testimony of an eye-witness from Galilee. Statements of early writers which are too strong to be set aside say that S. Mark wrote down what he had heard S. Peter say. The Gospel itself goes to prove this. The story is written as it might be told in a vivid conversation. The sea of Galilee is called ‘the sea,’ for such it had been to the Galilean fisherman, and our Lord’s actions and feelings are described with an artless minuteness which is as significant as the uncouth Greek in which the Gospel is written. The perplexity, amazement, fear, anger, hardness of heart, and drowsiness of the apostles, and especially of S. Peter himself, are recorded with the voice of one who has not learned to see a halo around his own person. The same writers who say that S. Mark wrote what S. Peter told him, indicate that the date of this Gospel is after a.d. 60. But the style and theology are so thoroughly archaic and simple that we cannot believe that the Gospel as taught thirty years before in Jerusalem was very different.

The Gospel according to S. Matthew, and that according to S. Luke, show us a second stage. They were probably written a very few years later than the work of S. Mark, and they represent a conscious adaptation to certain definite needs of the Church. We do not mean that this adaptation was made at the expense of truthfulness, but that the material which was at the disposal of the evangelists was carefully selected to suit the spiritual state of certain classes of readers, such as the Theophilus for whom S. Luke wrote his Gospel. Older documents are used by both writers, and it will scarcely be denied that among these documents was the work of S. Mark. Almost everything in S. Mark reappears in S. Matthew and S. Luke, and the coincidence includes parentheses and rare Greek words. Faithful memories might have preserved the actual words spoken by our Lord, but it is highly improbable that the framework in which these words were set would have remained so similar in the minds of three different writers. But both S. Matthew and S. Luke used other sources besides S. Mark. The more men reflected on the character of Christ, the more they became convinced that it was necessary to trace His history further back than His baptism. The need of some account of His genealogy and birth and of His early days was felt. It was felt too that S. Mark had said much about the action, but not enough about the teaching of the Master. More might be advantageously added about the doings of the Lord in Jerusalem, which S. Luke had visited in a.d. 56 in S. Paul’s company, and in which he took a special interest. It was probably while he was at Jerusalem that he procured information about the passion and resurrection, to the story of which he adds particulars of the highest worth and interest, such as Herod’s mockery of our Lord and the conversion of the penitent thief. We are left to mourn over the fact that he seems to have clipped away much that we should regard as priceless. He apparently planned a work in three volumes, each of convenient and portable size, and something was sacrificed to this practical convenience. Similar motives apparently weighed with S. Matthew. He possessed a rich store of material about the discourses of Christ, and some features about the passion and resurrection not mentioned by S. Mark. He alone records Pilate washing his hands, and the opening of the graves on Easter Day. And he too cut down his narrative to the length of a manuscript of portable size. It can hardly be a mere coincidence that the three longest books in the New Testament, S. Matthew, S. Luke, and Acts, which was S. Luke’s ‘second treatise,’ are of almost exactly the same length.

Both these two evangelists write with great artistic skill and with a clear purpose. S. Matthew writes for Jewish converts, and wishes to represent Jesus as the Messiah and the Old Testament as a volume of anticipations. He tries to make his readers feel thoroughly at home in the ‘Church,’ a word which he alone employs among the four evangelists. He is not guilty of reconstructing Christianity, but he is like a wise steward who fills the new house with old family portraits and armour. First one prophet and then another is quoted, so that the Jewish Christian can feel that he has not said goodbye to his race but realised its true destiny. The Gospel was either intended to be used as a catechism, or was composed of passages used for that purpose. The genealogy, speeches, and actions of our Lord are arranged in groups in which the number seven is prominent, and this was plainly done to aid the memory of teachers and learners. The author seems to show an acquaintance with Hebrew, but wrote for the benefit of a community where the Jews spoke Greek. Antioch was perhaps the town where he published his work. And the stress that he lays upon the Messiahship of Jesus, and upon His warning against false prophets and the love that waxes cold, points to a time when the Hebrew Christians must have been strongly tempted to throw in their lot with their unbelieving kinsmen. And no time seems quite so appropriate as the time of that wild revival of Jewish patriotism which came before a.d. 70.

S. Luke’s work is later, though not sufficiently late for the author to have become acquainted with the Gospel according to S. Matthew. The book does not show the slightest hostility to Judaism, but the author seems to be sailing on the open sea, and to have cut the cable which bound Christianity to Jewish forms. He had travelled much and had read a good deal, and he sometimes corrects the rough colloquial Greek which S. Mark talked among the poor of Rome. He was a companion of S. Paul, and he loves to describe Jesus as ‘the Lord’ of a new society to which the Gentile and the outcast are as welcome as the Hebrew and the saint. The prominence given to women, and the insertion of hymns such as the Magnificat, enhance the beauty of his work. It is a Gospel where the sun shines and the forget-me-nots are blooming. And yet the writer was a physician. Where he wrote it, it is hard to say. A very good old tradition says that he died an old man in Bithynia. And he seems to have written the book when he was already growing old. Jerusalem is a ruin, the times of the Gentiles have begun. There is a lull in the persecution. Nero is gone, but Christians need to be encouraged to appear if necessary ‘before kings and rulers’ for Christ’s name sake. Some of the apostles have passed away, and their little jealousies and failings are dealt with tenderly by S. Luke. The old grow gentle as they find some spark of good in almost every man, and learn how hard it is to throw off the yoke of circumstance. And so the poor, the stricken, and the erring find a shelter for themselves in this idyllic book.

For the report of our Lord’s longer sayings it is almost certain that S. Luke and S. Matthew used written collections of such sayings. One such collection was made by S. Matthew in the Hebrew language. This we are told by Papias, who was bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor about a.d. 130. This document, which has long been lost, is ordinarily called by modern writers the Logia or ‘Oracles,’ from the expression used by Papias. It is now impossible to determine whether our first Gospel was written in its present form by S. Matthew himself, or by an unknown writer, who used as his principal material this Hebrew writing by S. Matthew. In favour of the former view it is urged that a personal follower of Christ would not have found it necessary to borrow material from S. Mark, who was not a personal follower of Christ. In favour of the latter view we may urge the numerous marks of an early date which our first Gospel contains, and also the undoubted practice of early Christian writers to borrow freely from one another. Whichever answer be the true one, the Gospel can fitly be called that ‘according to S. Matthew.’

So useful and so popular were the Gospels of S. Matthew and S. Luke, that the Gospel of S. Mark must for a few years have been regarded as antiquated. It is well-known that the present ending of that book, beginning at chapter 16:9, is not by S. Mark, but is a very ancient substitute for the original conclusion. And every copy that we possess lacks the original conclusion, and therefore is ultimately descended from one single copy which had lost the page or column containing it. On that one precious copy, hidden about a.d. 100 in some Christian library, and welcomed by some prudent seeker after history, depends our best knowledge of Christ’s ministry in Galilee.

In concluding this brief account of our three oldest Gospels, it is worth saying that their substance undoubtedly belongs to the first or Jewish period of Christianity. No critic now denies this. Even in the fourth Gospel the short sentences, the Hebrew grammar, and the allusions to a state of affairs prevalent in Jerusalem early in the first century, show that the writer was a Jew and was one who lived in that palæontological age. But the other three Gospels state their facts in a way which marks them off from that of S. John, and still more completely marks them off from the Christian literature of the sub-apostolic age. Their artless yet sublime expression was not caught by the Christians of the Greek and Roman world. They are written in the language of that world, but the language lies upon them like the garments of an athletic runner. It scarcely conceals a force and beauty which are independent of the outward vesture and owe nothing to it. Almost every sentence could be translated into Hebrew or Aramaic and look quite natural, and often the words are put side by side in a manner which is less Greek than the Greek prose of many an English schoolboy.

The fixed character of this traditional Gospel story is proved by the Gospel of S. Luke. His preface to the Gospel and certain parts of Acts show that he was quite able to write Greek like a Greek of that period. But in the Gospel narrative he tells his story in the older Christian fashion. He uses the same style as S. Matthew and S. Mark, only correcting a few of the more plebeian phrases. He also assures us that ‘many had taken in hand to set forth a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us,’ and that he had ‘perfect understanding of all things from the very first.’ He claims to be a competent chronicler, and we can test the honesty of his claim by many details in Acts, upon which light has been thrown by recent discoveries. In his Gospel he has in the main depended upon that of S. Mark. This is a satisfactory guarantee that at the time when S. Luke wrote the Gospel of S. Mark was regarded as eminently accurate. No scientific criticism has ever succeeded in reversing this judgment of S. Luke, or in proving that any of the miracles related by S. Mark are stories which are either translations of parables into events, or stories invented to fulfil sayings contained in the Old Testament. All the history contained in S. Mark possesses a definite local colour. It possessed little or no attraction for Christians immediately after the apostolic age. When all the eye-witnesses of the ministry of Christ were dead, orthodox Christians wanted most of all something which helped them in preaching the Gospel. It did not particularly help them to know that our Lord’s relatives once thought Him mad, or that on two particular occasions He had no time for His meals, or that another time He walked alone in front of His disciples, or that a young man fled away naked when Christ was captured. These illustrate the characteristics of S. Mark’s Gospel, and orthodox Christians before the close of the first century were developing a marked preference for that of S. Matthew, simply because the latter was better fitted for teaching purposes. Then there were the unorthodox Christians, who wished for something more sensational than genuine Christianity. We may content ourselves with saying that such fragments of their sacred literature as survive show us about the same proportion of sympathetic understanding of the circumstances of the life of Christ as we find in the theology of Marie Corelli.

All this local colour in S. Mark, a colour which the second century could not reproduce, is precisely what makes that Gospel so rich in suggestion to the mind of a modern critic. And although S. Matthew and S. Luke do not preserve it all, they too contain archaic touches and phrases which must have been exceedingly puzzling to intelligent Gentile Christians about a.d. 80. And we therefore are compelled to believe that they give us a true picture of Jesus Christ, of His teaching and actions, of His character and claims, and of the impression which He made upon His immediate followers. They show to us a perfectly unique Personality, a Teacher brought up in a Jewish town who called men to a repentance of which He showed no trace and no need, who proclaimed the opposite of most of the distinctive doctrines of the Essenes, Pharisees, and Sadducees around them, who taught the erring to look upon His forgiveness as the forgiveness of God, and to find in the surrender of His life the ransom which is to release them from the power of guilt.

2. The Acts of the Apostles is closely linked to the Gospel according to S. Luke. It is scarcely less important than the Gospels themselves, as it professes to contain an account of the spread of the Church from Jerusalem to Samaria and to ‘the uttermost part of the earth.’ It is the earliest Church history, and therefore no Christian can fail to see that much depends upon its accuracy. Probably the most extreme critics would not deny that it contains some fragments of genuine history. But they declare it to be a composite work which did not take its present shape until after the beginning of the second century or even later. One recent theory is that the book is derived from four sources: a ‘History of the Greek-speaking Jews,’ or ‘Hellenists,’ a ‘History of Peter,’ a ‘History of Paul,’ and a ‘Journey of Paul.’ It is held that these were put together and the result revised by three successive editors, of whom the second was favourably disposed to the Jews, and the third the reverse. Such elaborate attempts to dissect the book have not proved very successful. The dissecting critics are at variance with one another, and there seems to be no likelihood of their coming to an agreement unless they grow willing to concede that Acts is less composite and more primitive in origin than they are now inclined to grant.

There is no reason to doubt that the book is in a sense composite. It is extremely probable that chapters 1–12 are based on some early Jewish sources. But the book, as it stands, is a literary unity. It is marked by the same plan and the same language throughout. It is the work, not of a mere compiler, but of a genuine author. And the language gives us a clue to the author’s name. There are certain sections in the book in which we find that the author uses the pronoun ‘we.’ These sections occur in the account of S. Paul’s journeys, and indicate that the writer was a companion of that apostle. The only companion who will fit the circumstances is S. Luke, and these sections can be ascribed to S. Luke without hesitation. A serious question immediately arises: Did the writer of these sections write the remainder of the book? The style compels us to answer ‘yes.’ And the argument from style is so cogent that some of the foremost hostile critics find themselves obliged to suggest that the ‘we sections’ were originally of larger extent, and that the missing portions were utilised by the compiler even where the pronoun ‘we’ does not occur.

The book falls quite naturally into the place between the Synoptic Gospels and S. John’s Gospel. Its main purpose is religious. It is a fresh and most vigorous picture of typical events in the expansion of the Church. It describes the successive widenings in the classes of persons reached by the Gospel, and the writer stops when he has recorded how S. Paul, the chief agent in this expansion, began to teach in Rome, the capital of the civilised world. Besides this, the book is a quiet defence of the principles of Christianity. It is ‘a temperate and solemn record … of the real facts regarding the formation of the Church, its steady and unswerving loyalty in the past, its firm resolve to accept the facts of Imperial government, its friendly reception by many Romans.’ It depicts the Church as in embryo an ‘imperial Church,’ in the only Christian sense of that disputed name. The tone of it, with its quiet confidence, is in contrast with the tone of the Revelation of S. John. The persecution of the Christians by the State did not yet seem to be the policy of an ogre deliberately endeavouring to make himself ‘drunk with the blood of the martyrs.’ The geographical and historical details of the narrative agree with this attitude towards the Roman State. The author does not merely show sympathy with the age that he is describing. It is possible for sympathy to prove a very unsafe guide in the composition of a history, and the book manifests those qualities of accuracy and fairness which keep sympathy in the straight path. The two great heroes are S. Peter and S. Paul. But though they are set side by side, S. Paul is not represented as Petrine nor S. Peter as Pauline. The worst thing that the critics can say against it is that the book ‘catholicises.’ It contains throughout a conception of the Church and of the ministry which implies that it was the work of Jesus Christ and His apostles ‘to found and to legislate for a new theocratic society.’ Not until this fact has been disproved, can it be reasonably alleged that Acts is an attempt to find fictitious bases and guarantees for the Catholicism of the second century.

3. Out of the missionary journeys which are recorded in Acts grew the missionary epistles. Acts therefore gives us a key to S. Paul’s letters. It was not enough for an apostle to build scattered Churches in the great cities of the Roman Empire. Those Churches were composed of frail men in the midst of difficulties and it was necessary to build them up. This was the purpose of the Epistles. Like Acts, they show us that within a few years after Pentecost a momentous crisis had taken place in the Church. The conversion of S. Paul resulted in the Church being denationalised deliberately by its very leaders. Modern historians are in no danger of belittling the work of the Jew who succeeded in transplanting Christianity from Asia to Europe, and gave it a language and form adapted to the European mind. On the whole, they tend to exaggerate his importance. Agnostic and half-Christian writers now fully admit the genuineness