Friedrich von Harnack

“ The Christianity of men like Justin, Athenagoras, and Minucius is not a whit less Hellenistic than that of Origen. But yet an important distinction obtains here. It is twofold. In the first place, those Apologists did not yet find themselves face to face with a fixed collection of writings having a title to be reverenced as Christian; they have to do with the Old Testament and the "Teachings of Christ" (διδαγματα Χριστου) . In the second place, they do not yet regard the scientific presentation of Christianity as the main task and as one which this religion itself demands. ”

“ What is called the ever-increasing legal feature of Gentile Christianity and the Catholic Church is conditioned by its origin, in so far as its theory is rooted in that of Judaism spiritualised and influenced by Hellenism. As the Pauline conception of the law never took effect and a criticism of the Old Testament religion which is just law neither understood nor ventured upon in the larger Christendom—the forms were not criticised, but the contents spiritualised—so the theory that Christianity is promise and spiritual law is to be regarded as the primitive one. ”

“ In the first place, it is important whether the first or second half is emphasised, and secondly, whether that which is "universally intelligible" is to be reckoned as philosophy at all, or is to be separated from it as that which comes by "nature." Finally, the attitude to be taken up towards the Greek philosophers is left an open question, so that the thesis, taking up this attitude as a starting-point, may again assume various forms. But was the contradiction which it contains not felt? The content of revelation is to be [pg 179] rational ”

“ For the Deity, who embraces all true being, and a knowledge of whom alone makes salvation possible, is only known in proportion as he reveals himself. True wisdom is therefore exclusively based on revelation. Hence it is opposed to every human philosophy, [pg 188] because revelation was only given in the prophets and in Christ.368 The Christian is the philosopher,369 because the followers of Plato and the Stoics are virtually no philosophers. In applying the title "philosophy" to Christianity he therefore does not mean to bring Christians and philosophers more closely together. ”

“ However, not only does a certain relationship in point of form exist between these speculations, but the Jewish conception is also found in a shape which seems to approximate still more to the Greek one.
Earthly occurrences and objects are not only regarded as "foreknown" by God before being seen in this world, but the latter manifestation is frequently considered as the copy of the existence and nature which they possess in heaven, and which remains unalterably the same, whether they appear upon earth or not. That which is before God experiences no change. ”

“ The eschatological series of ideas with its thesis that death evil and sin entered into humanity at a definite historical moment when the demons took possession of the world drew a limit which was indeed overstepped at particular points but was in the end respected. We have therefore the remarkable fact that, on the one hand, early Christian (Jewish) eschatology called forth and maintained a disposition in which the Kingdom of God, and that of the world, (Kingdom of the devil) were felt to be absolutely opposed (practical dualism) , while, on the other hand, it rejected theoretic dualism. ”

“ It is sufficient for the multitude to know that that which is bad springs from the freedom of the creature, and that matter which is inseparable from things mortal is not the source and cause of sin (IV. 66, see also III, 42: το κυριως μιαρον απο κακιας τοιουτον εστι. Φυσις δε σωματος ου μιαρα ου γαρ 'η φυσις σωματος εστι, το γεννητικον της μιαροτητος εχει την κακιαν) ; but a closer examination shows that there can be no man without sin (III. 6l) because error is inseparable from growth and because the constitution of man in the flesh makes evil unavoidable (VII. 50) . ”

“ God and the world, needed a mediator who was, and yet was not God, as well as world. From this contrast, however, it further followed that we can only think of a world-formation by the Logos, not of a world-creation.113 Within this world man is regarded as a microcosm, that is, as a being of Divine nature according to his spirit, who belongs to the heavenly world, while the adhering body is a prison which holds men captive in the fetters of sense, that is, of sin. ”

“ Every individual was, or at least should have been conscious, as a Christian, of having received the πνευμα θεου, though that does not exclude spiritual grades. A special peculiarity of the enthusiastic nature of the religious temper is that it does not allow reflection as to the authenticity of the faith in which a man lives. ”

“ But in one very essential point he agrees with Justin; and he has even expressed himself still more plainly than the latter, inasmuch as he does not introduce the assumption of a "seed of the Logos implanted by nature" σπερμα λογου εμφυτον. The philosophers, he says, were incapable of knowing the full truth, since it was not from God, but rather from themselves, that they wished to learn about God. True wisdom, however, can only be learned from God, that is, from his prophets ”

“ The doctrines, that God is also the absolute Lord of matter; that evil cannot be a quality of matter, but rather arose in time and from the free decision of the spirits or angels; and finally that the world will have an end, but God can call the destroyed material into existence, just as he once created it out of nothing, appear in principle to reconcile the dualism in the cosmology. We have the less occasion to give the details here, because they are known from the philosophical systems of the period, especially Philo's, and vary in manifold ways. ”

“ This conception appears to fall short of the Christian ideal and perhaps really does so; but as soon as we measure it not by the Gospel but by the aims of Greek philosophy, we see very clearly the progress that has been attained through this same Gospel. What Origen has in his eye is mankind, and he is anxious for the amendment not merely of a few, but of all. The actual state of things in the Church no longer allowed him to repeat the exclamations of the Apologists that all Christians were philosophers and that all were filled with the same wisdom and virtue. ”

“ The Christ who has already overcome law, sin and death, lives as Spirit, and through his Spirit lives in believers, who for that very reason know him not after the flesh. He is a creative power of life to those who receive him in faith in his redeeming death upon the cross, that is to say, to those who are justified. The life in the Spirit, which results from union with Christ, will at last reveal itself also in the body (not in the flesh) . (5) Looking backwards, theology was to Paul a doctrine of the law and of its abrogation ”

“ He then is a Christian, who receives and follows these prophetic teachings, that have ever been proclaimed afresh from the beginning of the world down to the present time, and are summed up in the Old Testament. Such a one [pg 218] is enabled even now to rescue his soul from the rule of the demons, and may confidently expect the gift of immortality.
With the majority of the Apologists "Christianity" seems to be exhausted in these doctrines; in fact, they do not even consider it necessary to mention ex professo the appearance of the Logos in Christ (see above, p. 189 ff.) ”

“ It lies in the nature of the case that only some men are able to appropriate the Christianity that is comprehended in these ideas, viz., just as many as are capable of entering into this kind of Christianity, those who are spiritual. The others must be considered as non-partakers of the Spirit from the beginning, and therefore excluded from knowledge as the profanum vulgus. Yet some, the Valentinians, for example, made a distinction in this vulgus, which can only be discussed later on, because it is connected with the position of the Gnostics towards Jewish Christian tradition. ”

“ The religious ethic of Philo, a combination of Stoic, Platonic, Neopythagorean and Old Testament gnomic wisdom, already bears the marks which we recognise in Neoplatonism. The acknowledgment that God was exalted above all thought, was a sort of tribute which Greek philosophy was compelled to pay to the national religion of Israel, in return for the supremacy which was here granted to the former. The claim of positive religion to be something more than an intellectual conception of the universal reason, was thereby justified. Even religious syncretism is already found in Philo ”

“ He inveighs in the beginning of his treatise against all rationalism, and on the one hand professes a sort of materialistic theory of knowledge, whilst on the other, for that very reason, he believes in inspiration and the authority of revelation; for all truth originates with revelation, since God himself and God alone is the truth. Christ revealed this truth and is for us των ολων πιστις και αποδειξις. But it is far from probable that the author would really have carried this proposition to its logical conclusion (Justin, Dial. 3 ff. made a similar start) . ”

“ Hence it was possible for him to produce a doctrine of the attributes of God. Here he did not even shrink from applying his relative view to the Deity, because, as will be seen, he never thinks of God without revelation, and because all revelation must be something limited. The omnipresence of God indeed suffers from no limitation. God is potentially everywhere ”

“ Their clear system of morality is in keeping with their relatively simple cosmology. In giving man reason and freedom as an inalienable possession God destined him for incorruptibility (αθανασια, αφθαρσια) , by the attainment of which he was to become a being similar to God.440 To the gift of imperishability God, however, attached the condition of man's preserving τα της αθανασιας ("the things of immortality") , i.e., preserving the knowledge of God and maintaining a holy walk in imitation of the divine perfection. This demand is as natural as it is just ”

“ So far, then, as both ecclesiastical dogmatic and Neoplatonism start from the feeling of the need of redemption, so far as both desire to free the soul from the sensuous, so far as they recognise the inability of man to attain to blessedness and a certain knowledge of the truth without divine help and without a revelation, they are fundamentally related. It must no doubt be admitted that Christianity itself was already profoundly affected by the influence of Hellenism when it began to outline a theology ”

“ According to this conception the central point of history was no longer the Logos as such, but Christ as the incarnate God, while at the same time the moralistic interest was balanced by a really religious one. An approach was thus made to the Pauline [pg 241] theology, though indeed in a very peculiar way and to some extent only in appearance. A more exact representation of salvation through Christ has, however, been given by Irenæus as follows: Incorruptibility is a habitus which is the opposite of our present one and indeed of man's natural condition. ”

“ From the earliest times the Logos (the Spirit) has descended on such men as preserved their souls pure, and bestowed on them, through inspiration, knowledge of the truth (with reference to God, freedom, virtue, the demons, the origin of polytheism, the judgment) to be imparted by them to others. These are his "prophets." Such men are rare among the Greeks (and according to some not found at all) , but numerous among the barbarians, i.e., among the Jewish people. ”

“ But even before his day the shrewder Neoplatonists had seen that their lofty religious philosophy could not stoop to an alliance with the despotic world-empire, because it could not come in contact with the world at all. To Neoplatonism political affairs are at bottom as indifferent as all other earthly things. The idealism of the new philosophy was too heavenly to be naturalized in the Byzantine empire, which stood more in need of police officials than of philosophers. ”

“ This revelation cannot do less than give the necessary assurance of the truth, and it cannot do more than impart the power that develops and matures the inalienable natural endowment of man and frees him from the dominion of the demons.
Accordingly the teaching of the prophets and Christ is related even to the very highest human philosophy as the whole is to the part,364 or as the certain is to the uncertain; and hence also [pg 186] as the permanent is to the transient. For the final stage has now arrived and Christianity is destined to put an end to natural human philosophy. ”

“ No positive religion can do more for its followers than faith in the revelation through Christ and the prophets did for the Apologists. Although it chiefly proved to them the truth of that which we call natural theology and which was the idealistic philosophy of the age, so that the Church appears as the great insurance society for the ideas of Plato and Zeno, we ought not at the same time to forget that their idea of a divine spirit working upon earth was a far more lively and worthy one than in the case of the Greek philosophers. ”

“ They had in their hands the means of culture afforded by the age, and this was all the more a guarantee of victory because the laity no longer took any part in deciding the form of religion. Wherever the Logos Christology had been adopted the future of Christian Hellenism was certain. At the beginning of the fourth century there was no community in Christendom which, apart from the Logos doctrine, possessed a purely philosophical theory that was regarded as an ecclesiastical dogma, to say nothing of an official scientific theology. But the system of Origen was a prophecy of the future. ”