Kirsopp Lake

“ Whether one believes in the existence of an angel of repentance or not, the view that life with all its happenings is an education, which gradually teaches men, if they are willing to accept it, how to cease to be sinful, was a great lesson for the second century, and I do not doubt that it had much to do with producing in the next century a Church which, in spite of persecution, ultimately won the assent of the best part of the Roman world. Though the form in which Hermas presented his teaching was mythological and crude it contained truths which cannot be neglected. ”

“ The general argument of Christians was not that Jesus was historic, and the other Lords were not, but that he fulfilled a true offer of salvation, made in a more remote antiquity than any pagan religion could claim, while the heathen Lords were demons, misunderstanding the prophecies of the Old Testament, clumsily simulating their fulfilment, and arrogating to themselves the title of God. ”

“ The Church conquered the world by offering salvation through a redeeming Lord. Jesus made no such offer: to him {79} the Kingdom of God, the pearl of great price, was the natural inheritance of men, if they would only take it. No supernatural change of nature, but to turn round, abandon all that hindered, and go in the right direction—go home—was the repentance which he required. Probably it was not unique teaching: it is very hard to obey, and it makes no spectacular demands. Its only claim to acceptance is its truth. ”

“ So far Knowledge takes us on the hypothesis that Life is material, for Energy is not outside of the world of matter. But still within the field of Knowledge is the old problem of Immaterial Reality and its relation to Life. To those who are convinced, as I am myself, by the old arguments in favour of Immaterial Reality, conceivable but not imaginable, it is certain that intellectual and moral life belongs to it and shares its attributes of eternity. Metaphysics are more convincing than psychology. ”

“ For man is not only an effect, he is a cause. When he acts, he brings into existence a new cause of which the results will follow in accordance with the established laws of reality. But there is a moment of choice, when he has it within his power to decide whether he will act or not. If he choose right, his actions will be taken up into the great web of existence, consistently with the great purpose. If he choose wrongly, the results will in the end be destroyed, not without suffering to himself and others. ”

“ I have often felt in talking with younger men of the present day how closely they have approached to the position of Origen and how tar they are from him in method. If I may put into my own words the form of thought which seems to animate them, it is something of this kind. They feel that the world in which we live is the expression of some great plan or purpose or pattern which is not yet complete, which shows no sign of finality, but is ever growing in complexity ”

“ The doctrine of the Logos is on a different plane. In the form in which it is presented by Justin Martyr it is probably as unacceptable as Adoptionism, but in the form presented by Origen the modern mind constantly feels that the writer is struggling to express its own thoughts, and is attracted to Origen not only by the recognition of a common purpose, but by a consciousness of a common failure, for, at the end, reality transcends thought and language, and the philosophy of Alexandria was no more completely successful than is that of our world. ”

“ Though in the Old Testament God is frequently referred to as a king whose rule is universal even now, the dominion of a king is not complete or perfect unless he be recognised by his subjects, and the dominion of God is not yet thus recognised or submitted to throughout the world. The Jewish view seems to have been that men had fallen away from the rule of God in the days before Abraham, and that when Abraham recognised the Lord as his God, then for him—but not for others—the sovereignty of God was complete. ”

“ But more important than the Greek mythology was the Greek philosophy, which was indeed in many ways its antidote. If the mythology of Greece appeared to sanction an infinite number of gods and goddesses, her philosophers taught with equal persuasiveness that the divine reality is one, though its forms be many. A remarkable synthesis was thus gradually accomplished, though it will always be a question whether the stronger tendency was to philosophise mythology or to mythologise philosophy. ”

“ After old age comes death: that too is loss. Is it also gain? If Life continue, and that at least seems probable, Knowledge teaches us that it will change its form and that here, too, gain will come through loss. ”

“ The most remarkable thing about the revelation which it makes of the Christianity at Rome is that the problems which seem to have interested or distracted the Church are so much more Jewish than Hellenic. The questions of the Law and of the ultimate fate of Israel are so extensively dealt with as to suggest a strongly Jewish element in the Church. Jesus is, as in Corinth, a Redeemer, but the problems of life for those who accepted him suggest Jewish rather than Greek antecedents. ”

“ Thus it seems probable that one part of the teaching of Jesus was the announcement that this age is coming to its end and that the Age to Come is rapidly approaching, when the Kingdom of God will be universally realised. Those who wish to pass on into the life of the New Age must prepare themselves by accepting already the sovereignty of God at whatever cost it may be. Nothing physical or social must be allowed to stand in the way ”

“ Hermas solved the problem by having recourse to another element in Jewish thought. He appealed to the possibility of repentance, and put his solution of the problem into the form of a revelation made to him by an angel—the Shepherd of the book. The revelation which Hermas announces is that there is one repentance, but only one, for those who sin after baptism. If repentance is taken merely as an act of contrition this obviously does little to solve the problem: it is not really sufficient to cover the facts of human nature. But for Hermas repentance is much more than contrition. ”

“ All men are of mixed nature; some elements seem to deserve to be eliminated, and others to survive. Thus the moral indictment against the old expectation of judgement is that no one deserves either of its extremes.
A just judgement would be not between man and man, saving one and condemning the other, but between different parts of each of us. For in man good and evil are always present: what we ask for is not complete survival, but the ultimate elimination of some parts and the constant growth of others; we desire change, not permanence. ”

“ What part can either Adoptionism or the Logos Christology play in any modern form of thought? Adoptionism seems to me to have no part or lot in any intelligent modern theology, though it is unfortunately often promulgated, especially in pulpits which are regarded as liberal. We cannot believe that at any time a human being, in consequence of his virtue, became God, which he was not before, or that any human being ever will do so. No doctrine of Christology and no doctrine of salvation which is {132} Adoptionist in essence can come to terms with modern thought. ”

“ For what profit is it unto us, if there be promised us an immortal time, whereas we have done the works that bring death? And that there is promised us an everlasting hope, whereas ourselves being most wicked are made vain? ”

“ Neither reason nor conscience is infallible: the tribunal of history condemns many actions which were undoubtedly dictated by conscience. Nevertheless we have no better guides in action, and both reason and conscience have the peculiarity that the more they are used the better do they become, and conversely that if they be neglected they cease to be available in time of need. ”

“ II JERUSALEM
For the history of the disciples after the death of Jesus we are dependent upon a single source, the Acts of the Apostles, which can, however, be controlled, and to some extent corrected, by the gospels and by the epistles of Paul.
It is now generally recognised that if any one wishes to write a life of Christ he ought to base his work not on the gospels as we have them now, but rather on the information provided by the critical analysis of the gospels as to their sources. ”

“ He believed that immortality was the natural lot of all the chosen people who kept the Law, and would be reached, not through sacraments or secret knowledge, but through the resurrection at the last day. Thus it is possible that the first Jewish Christians may have practised baptism by an extension of the ordinary ritual of proselyte-making, or as a means of securing remission of sins, in the spirit of John the Baptist, but it is extremely improbable that it was for them the sacrament of regeneration to eternal life which it was held to be by Greek Christians. ”

“ If he heard Jesus say, "Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you ... as ye would that men should do to you do ye to them likewise; for if ye love them that love you what thank have you ... love ye your enemies," what would such a man have thought? In the light of the experiences of our own time there is no reason for wonder that Jesus in the end found it impossible to live in Galilee. ”

“ Moreover, even in the short space of life which we can observe, elimination and selection are clearly present. The child and the old man are one, not by identity but by continuity of life. The main object of education is to further and confirm this beneficent change. Once more, this, or something like it, is often put forward as the meaning of the doctrine of "judgement." But when the creed states that Jesus will "come again in glory to judge both the quick and dead," it means the Jewish eschatological expectation, and to use its language to express modern thought is unfair to both. ”

“ What the heathen and the wicked do is their concern and God's, but the sins of Israel are Israel's own; against them the righteous in Israel may execute judgement.
It would be an affectation to suggest that this subject does not raise questions of the greatest practical importance for the present age; no one is justified in evading the issues presented. The teaching of Jesus represents a non-resistant attitude which has come to be described as "pacifist," and the world has just passed through a crisis which has proved that "pacifism" and "non-resistance" are impossible policies. ”

“ Owing to the fact that generations of Christians have seen the early history of the Scribes and Pharisees almost wholly through glasses coloured by early controversy, it is hard to be fair to the Pharisees. Taken at their best they probably represent the highest form of a religion based on codified ethics which the world has ever seen. ”

“ The young man asked what was necessary to inherit eternal life, and when Jesus told him that he should observe the commandments, sell all that he had and give to the poor, he was grieved. Jesus then said, "How hardly will those that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God." Obviously eternal life and the Kingdom of God are here identical, and there is no doubt that the Jews expected eternal life in the Age to Come, not in the Days of the Messiah. ”

“ The only alternative to large concessions to the position of the Dutch radicals is to admit that in the Diaspora the Hellenising of Jews had proceeded more rapidly and far deeper than has as a rule been supposed.
The result is clear, however obscure the process may be; Christianity became a Graeco-Oriental cult, offering salvation, just as did the other mystery religions. It competed with them for the right of succession to the official religion of Rome, and ultimately it triumphed. ”

“ The figure of the Son of Man destined to be God's representative at the day of judgement which will divide this age from the Age to Come is prominent in the undoubted teaching of Jesus, but forms one of the most difficult problems in New Testament criticism. There seems but little doubt that "Son of Man," which in Greek is an unintelligible phrase rather than a title, was quite as obscure to the generation of Greek Christians which produced the present gospels as it is to ourselves. ”

“ In modern times we no longer attribute disease, misfortune, or madness to devils, not because these phenomena have ceased, but because we have a different theory of their origin, which, on the whole, produces more satisfactory therapeutic results than the theory of possession. Similarly the phenomena of prophecy, which the Jews ascribed to the Spirit of God, remain. There has never been a generation lacking in men who believe that their action and speech are being governed by a compelling force, separate from the ordinary process of volition. ”

“ It is not surprising that it was the school of these men who saved the Jewish Church from extinction when the nation was destroyed; neither is it surprising, though it is sad, that there was deep hatred between them and the Christians; for in religion, as in other things, a really lively hatred requires some degree of relationship.
It was into this world of Jewish thought and practice that Jesus came preaching in Galilee. The content of his preaching is given by Mark as "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." ”

“ Henceforward the official Jewish religion remained a foreign element in the life of the western world. It could not die, for in spite of rabbinical extravagances it possessed more ethical truth than heathenism, and was more sincere in its protest against superstition. But neither could it form a synthesis with the better elements of the Roman world; the process of accommodation to Greek philosophy was stopped for many centuries, and the Jew had neither part nor lot in the life of the empire in which necessity compelled him to live. ”

“ The modern man does not believe in any form of salvation known to ancient Christianity. He does believe that so long as life lasts, and he does not know of any limit to its duration, good and evil are realities, and those who do good, and are good, achieve life of increasingly higher and higher potentiality. ”