DEC 1924
QUESTS FOR SALVATION IN
NEW TESTAMENT TIMES
A DISSERTATION
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY
OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND LITERATURE
IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
DEPARTMENT OF NEW TESTAMENT IN THE
GRADUATE DIVINITY SCHOOL
BY
CHARLES JAMES RITCHEY
Private Edition, Distributed By
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LIBRARIES
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
1922
EXCHANGE
QUESTS FOR SALVATION IN
NEW TESTAMENT TIMES
QUESTS FOR SALVATION IN
TESTAMENT TIMES
A DISSERTATION
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY
OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND LITERATURE
IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
DEPARTMENT OF NEW TESTAMENT IN THE
GRADUATE DIVINITY SCHOOL
BY
CHARLES JAMES RITCHEY
Private Edition, Distributed By
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LIBRARIES
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
1922
INTRODUCTION
Many attempts have been made to present the salvation
beliefs of the New Testament or of its individual writers
through the medium of New Testjapnent theologies or treatises
dealing with the teachings of selected -authors. The prevailing
tendency, sometimes contrary to the expectations and desires
of tihe investigators, has been to isolate the material under con-
sideration or at least to relate it to its total environment only
under stress of necessity. The assumption seems to hjave been
that sufficient data were available to enable one to reconstruct
in terms of modern thought, or at least in terms intelligible
to the present day, the doctrine used by the individual in ques-
tion, on the basis of its being a more or less closed system
evolved as such chiefly in the mind and experience of the one
leader. Hence it was natural to seek to show thiait the teach-
ings were logically consistent. Starting with such assumptions
as these and actuated by a desire to use or test the results as
normative, as correct, as authoritatve, theologians (have not
'found it impossible to discover consistent, well-wrought sys-
tems of doctrine. But unfortunately there is a likelihood of
gaps being bridged by the introduction of subjective data, in
proportion as there is present an apologetic interest or a de-
sire to establish a norm to which the ancient author corre-
sponds, if indeed the norm is not found within his authorita-
tive utterances.
The method adopted in this study is intended to obviate
some of the difficulties which repeatedly arise in the practice of
starting with the material to be investigated as in any way self-
explanatory. That is, the subject of New Testament soteriology
can not be studied adequately by starting with the New Testa-
ment records as containing $ closed system capable of being in-
terpreted in the light of their own statements. What is seen is
563M84
a quest for salvation that was socially conditioned, and it be-
comes necessary to determine what those conditions were and
the use made of them in furthering the quest. That solutions of
the problem of salvation in the form o'f systems of thought were
often offered by early Christians, is ia.t once obvious. They are,
however, most intelligible as the creation, generally temporary
and immediate, of earnest seekers after salvation, creations made
in response to social stimuli, out of such religious interpretations
as were at hand. Thus Paul, who hjas very frequently been cred-
ited with having given a doctrine of salvation more or less con-
sistent, must be studied ias the leading representative of a group
of Christians who came out of primitive Christianity into contact
with the new stimuli in the Gentile world, and sought to inter-
pret the religious thought which they already possessed
in such a w/aiy as to satisfy those new needs of their Hellenistic
experience. To accomplish this task of interpreting early Chris-
tian " Theologies " it is also necessary to study the faiths of the
Graeco-Roman world in the same light, as quests for salvation.
These considerations at once suggest the main 'outline of this
study as it appears in the chapter headings. The first task is to
show the intimate relation existing between the religious belie'fs
of a people and the social conditions which limit their life, in
this case, with particular reference to -all those experiences which
are capable of being interpreted in terms of salvation. Hebrew
\and> Jewish beliefs, as the source from wihich Christianity drew
its first strength, /are, vtery properly, the next subject of enquiry.
The Graeco-Roman quests for salvation should be investigated
with no presuppositions as to the degree, if any, to which they
affected Christianity. The fact that such ia tfesult was possible
is sufficient warrant for studying them. Christianity itself, as a
quest, or a series of quests, after salvation, ought to be inter-
preted as disinterestedly as the other movements with which it
was at least geographically and chronologically associated. The
further question remains of determining the nature of the rela-
tionship, if any, which existed between Christianity and the other
religions, as quests for salvation. Certain possibilities must be
kept in mind in this connection. (1) Genetic relationship may
be established as having existed at a givten time between Chris-
tianity and other religious cults, as for instance between Chris-
tianity and Judaism or the mystery religions. (2) Also there
may hiave been a functional similarity which gave rise to a cer-
tain outward correspondence between the different religious
movements, but without genetic relationships. As an illustration
attention may be called to the fact that separate attempts to
solve the problem of the future life were made by groups which
were not dependent upon each other for stimulus, and yet the
solutions outwardly suggest common origin. And (3) as a final
alternative, there arises the probability that neither one nor the
other of the above named interpretations can be posited as having
been present to the exclusion of the other for any considerable
period of time.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction 7
CHAPTER
I. The Basis of Salvation Beliefs 11
II. Hebrew and Jewish Quests for Salvation 23
III. Graeco-Roman Quests for Salvation 42
IV. The Primitive Christian Quest for Salvation 81
V. The Jewish Christian Quest in a Hellenistic World . . . 103
VI. The Transformed Quest of Hellenistic Christianity 136
Conclusion 153
Notes 157
10
QUESTS FOR SALVATION IN
NEW TESTAMENT TIMES
CHAPTER I.
THE BASTS OF SALVATION BELIEFS.
Salvation, as a definite doctrine and as a general idea, has
many forms. The wide use of the word " salvation ", or its equi-
valents in the various languages, shows to some extent the
universality of the idea therein expressed. But the use of fixed
terms, however important it ariay seem, is quite inadequate to
interpret the real thought of & people. An understanding of the
social forces which mold the thought-forms and of the responses
which men make to them, is essential to an appreciation of the
content and bearing of the salvation belief, as in the case of any
other.
Salvation, as the commonly accepted doctrine of institu-
tionalized Christianity, marks the narrower application of the
term "salvation" as well as of the idea. Dogmatic interests
tend to give it an exclusiveness which is hostile to a scientific
understanding of its growth and function. This doctrine of
salvation is indeed accompanied by Christological speculations
and does not in any case receive primary recognition in compar-
ison with the metaphysical treatment of the person of Christ.
Thle history of Christian belief as recorded in personal statements
of faith and in the creeds of different periods and communities,
not to mention the theologies of modern writers, reveals the
characteristic tendency to center interest in the person of the
savior rather than in the process of salvation. Yet salvation, as
ia function of the metaphysical Christ, is always necessary to a
complete picture. The reason for such prominence of a savior
must be carefully considered, and its 'antecedents psychologically
reconstructed, in view of the possibility that the motivating
impulse is after all, an interest in salvation rather than in iaj savior.
11
12 'QUESTS FOE SALVATION
If one Should study even casually the outstanding Christian
theories of salvation, he would discover a close connection be-
tween them and the social theories which lie behind all the major
institutions. For instance, the system of Anselm, which does not
claim dependence upon Scriptural authority, is clearly a reflec-
tion of current feudalism in the midst of a theologian's specu-
lation. Man is simply a religicized vassal, and God a tnans-
cendentalized liegelord. 1 Even in the case of those systems which
assume conformity to revealed patterns a similar correspondence
is easily detected.
Recognition of the interrelation of doctrine and social inter-
est is of supreme importance in the analysis of any religious
phenomenon. Religion has .already been subjected to the dis-
cipline of social psychology, though for the most part outside
the field of historical religion. The correspondence of a deity
to certain values which hjave been socially determined by the
group which worships the deity, or by a different group which
has transmitted its god, has become an established and undis-
puted conclusion in the study of the history of religion.
Similarly the rites and practices of a group are expressions of
a social interest which at some time was strong enough to pro-
duce a permanent crystallization of its moods and emotions. 2
The unconscious impulses winch result in the building up of a
god-idea are dependent upon the values which have not yet
been fully attained by the group. Thus antecedent to the final
picture of the god, there is found the germ of the salvation-idea
which later receives further elaboration in connection with the
developed theogony. 3 The interest -of the group in connection
with the values socially discovered, is the beginning of the sal-
vation-ide/ai ; while the God, functioning as savior, is its consum-
mation.
The inference to be drawn from the foregoing paragraphs is
simply that the traditional doctrine of salvation has an historic
taind psychological genesis in primitive man's realization of his
own inability to secure for himself the objects o : f his interest
and need. The salvation idea in some form is for this reason
present in religion at all times, barring, possibly, a few individual
exceptions.
The recognition of salvation fas a widely prevalent social
interest tends to introduce clarity into the apparently disparate
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 13
elements of religion. There is 'one constant factor which runs
throughout the range of forms, namely, the desire and effort
for betterment of condition. The systems which are evolved
in response to the promptings of the social interests answer
three fundamental questions : Prom what are men to be saVed ?
to what? and how? There are two opposite poles which mark
the boundaries of the conception, the whence 'and the whither;
between these stretch the paths of progress, some one of which
each person or group tries to follow, according to the selection
of his own will, or that of his group. Only so long as there is
movement from the worse to the better, is there salvation.
Viewed in this light, salvation hopes stand somewhere between
abject pessimism on the one hand, and uncritical optimism on
the other, if such extremes be actually possible in human experi-
ence. And, being a type of thought which has as one of its
indispensable elements a belief in progress, it is capable of being
applied to a wide range of situations. It is by very nature pos-
sessed of flexibility.
Primarily the different types of salvation hopes are con-
cerned with a present solution of present ills ; but as the mystery
of the immediate '.future becomes more uncertain by reason of
despair, the eventful day of salvation is set far ahead in time
and entrusted to divine guidance apart from tany significant
human effort. Though salvation, thus broadly interpeted, always
possesses the basic principle of progress from worse to better,
*he forms in which it meets our attention in actual religious
employment are by no means few or simple. No attempt is here
made to give an exhaustive or even scientifically accurate classi-
fication of the variant types of salvation beliefs. But it is be-
lieved that the following suggestions may, at the outset, indicate
the certainty that each group's hope 'for salvation is always
in the mind of the believers a practical and urgent affair. 4
One of the crises which primitive man confronted was some
disruption of nature which threatened his physical existance.
Thus certain groups whose agricultural products depended upon
seasonable rains, feared the drought of the growing season. Or
another group sought to keep away the flood by appealing to
the sun to show himself. Certain habits of nature became bound
up w T ith human welfare, ialnd hence man sought immunity from
such dangers as famine, flood and pestilence, by appealing to
14 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
those forces which, in his mind, were more benign. The process
by which he sought to effect this end w\as in his life part of a
kind of nature salvation. 5 The interest in nature salvation was
greatly diversified. It was easily turned into crude materialism,
in which poverty a.nd prosperity stood in opposition. Religious
meaning was not necessarily absent however. 6 Sickness, as a
result of nature's breakdown was also a thing from which men
wished to be saved. 7
An isoljalted group would be likely for a mingling of re-
ligions, philosophies, economic theories and practices, as well
as other features of group life. During the period of instability
a great deal of dissatisfaction arose. Juvenal and Martial, among
Roman writers, reflect the logical pessimism resulting from the
free and uncontrolled inter-mingling of all the ethics and indi-
vidual elements within the boundaries of the known world.
But it is not a trait of human nature to acquiesce in sucih
a condition of life. Hence, it occasions no surprise to meet with
an intense longing everywhere for release from chaotic limitations
of life. As !a result of this longing, men turned in every direction
for relief, turning sometimes to the methods of earlier peoples, and
again taxing their ingenuity in an effort to construct new plans.
Thus as a correlative to this impatience with uncertainty
and chaos, there was present a tendency to organize all unrelated
elements into a unified whole. This is the natural reaction which
would be looked for under such circumstances. The creation
and development of the Roman Empire was the first outstanding
adjustment in the midst of disorder. Its establishment was the
expression of one of its most acute stages
during the Maccabaean period. The bitter persecutions of Anti-
ochus Epiphanes and the intrigues of his successsors provoked
the faithful M)attathias and his sons to open revolt. There was
at first, at least, no conscious feeling on their part that they were
especially prominent in the redemptive program. Judas, as re-
ported in I Maccabees 3 :18-22, trusted that strength for the few
would come from Heaven to save them from the insolent enemy.
At one time, the subordinates Joseph and Azarias attempted to
gjain reknown by overcoming the enemy in an independent attack,
but were badly defeated. The author of I Maccabees comments
thus (5:63) : "But they were not of the seed of those men, by
whose hand deliverance was given unto Israel", i. e., they were
not of the Hasmonaean line as were the Maccabaean brothers.
The author of I Enoch, (90:9 ff) uses imagery which certainly
refers to Judia-s Maccabaeus and his brethren as the deliverers of
Israel from her enemies. For some years the struggle continued,
giving more or less prominence to the ideals o ; f ! religious and
national freedom, but finally shifting to a different contest, ' ' with
the question whether the friends of the Greeks or the national
party within the Jewish nation itself should have the suprem-
acy." 37
In the writings of Josephus we find evidence that the hope
of a particularistic salvation for the Jews had not been aban-
doned in his day. At first a hike-warm nationalist, he had him-
self been won over to the side of the Romans, and, opportunist
that he was, pictured Vespiasian as the Messianic savior of the
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 33
Jewish people. 38 More reliable, however, as indications of the
views of his less wavering kinsmen, are his reports (somewhat
garbled, it is true) of the activities of certain parties and sects
within Judaism. Festus was 'obliged to suppress "a certain im-
postor, who promised deliverance and freedom '.from . . . mis-
eries". 39 An Egyptian Mse prophet attempted to get an army
that he might wrest Jerusalem from the Romans. 40 Josephus
speaks with considerable disdain, for politic reasons, of the Zeal-
ots, calling them Robbers. But it is clear, in any case, that they
were a group of fanaticial patriots who longed to complete what
the Maccabees had begun. 41 In addition to the Robbers or Zeal-
ots, there was a more fanatical band who had similar but exag-
gerated ideas of expediency, the Sicarii, who sought to rid them-
selves of their Romjan overlords by cleverly executed assassina-
tions. 42 It was this insistent longing for release from Western
domination which made the Roman officials so suspicious of any
show of leadership among the Jews. One of the potent factors
leading to the death of Jesus was the fear on the part of the
Romans that he would assume the leadership of a Zealot party
eager for the redemption of the nation's honor, as had occurred
some time before (4 B.C.) when Judas and Mattathias stirred up
the people to tear down the Roman eagle from the temple gate.
The history of the War of A.D. 66-70 and the revolt of Bar Cochba
in A.D. 132-5 is a repetition of the same thing, and in these cases
the suspicion was well founded. 43
The futility of this physical struggle caused others, less auda-
cious but equally earnest, to postpone in their expectations, the
coming of the Kingdom until the power of Jehovah should be
cast more forcefully into the fray. Some believed that this Mes-
sianic kingdom would sometime be established 'forever on the
earth. 44 It is difficult to differentiate carefully between Jewish
beliefs which deal with future salvation. Certain elements are
occasionally omitted to the confusion of the later reader; and
sometimes essentially different schemes have marked points of
identity. In Charles' estimation there are at least two docu-
ments which were written in the expectation of a Messianic king-
dom being established permanently upon the earth, through the
intervention of Jehovah, I Enoch 1-36 (probably before 170 B.C.)
and II Maccabees (60 B.C. A.D. 1). This sort of solution of world
problems is the result of a compromise between the idea of a
34 QUESTS FOR SALVATION
strictly earthly kingdom and thlat of a state of resurrection bliss
for the individual. As attention was turned more and more
toward the future, the individual became more prominent until
finally the group and its 'future was lost sight of.
The author of I Enoch 1-36 started on the basis of ethical
conduct as the key to a man's salvation. Sin is in the world, not
because of Adam's transgression, but because of the activities of
the fallen angels in teaching men the secrets of heaven. 45 The
judgment of the flood had partially atoned for this sin, but evil
was carried on nevertheless through the agency of demons. 46
This sin was to be punished at the last judgment, at which time
the souls which have been in Sheol rise, some to everlasting pun-
ishment in Gehenna, some to the eternal Messianic kingdom on
earth, 47 whose capital is Jerusalem. 48 There is no Messiah. Na-
ture was expected to surpass herself in prodigality. 49 It would
seem as if the idea of punishment had received considerable
elaboration, probably because of the actual experiences through
which the Jews were passing. Penalties were ex&cted from those
who offended the king. Hence salvation from future punishment
and a promise of life to those who were continually threatened
with death became the greatest hope. It is to the credit of their
faith that at least some ethical considerations of high quality
were incorporated. 50 The presence of /a hope for unlimited pos-
terity and an abundance of wine and food is the recrudescence of
a phase of nature salvation, transferred to the future.
II Maccabees has not a great deal to connect it directly with
the conception of a Messianic kingdom eternal on the earth.
There is some allusion however to a favored nation and the return
of the scattered tribes. 51 Also the Jews had been established for
all eternity. 52 . The ideas concerning the resurrection furnish
most of the data necessary for the reconstruction of the picture.
The faithful were to be raised to an eternal life, 53 of the physical
body, 54 in /a group of brethren. 55 This desire for a group salva-
tion in which the body and eternal life are prominent accords well
with stories of the physical suffering and death to which Jewish
communities were subjected. The author speaking in 6:12-17
would interpret their torture as punishment, but for the sake of
its redemptive value, while with the Gentiles it was the opposite.
The allusions to a temporary Messianic kingdom on the earth
became more frequent, paralleling a growing emphasis on indi-
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 35
vidualism and the future, and, as a consequence, a growing pessi-
mism with regard to the present world order; and this in turn
gave greater prominence to a Messiah for the reason that human
power was being less highly regarded. The idea of ja kingdom as
a guarantee of the fulfillment of human desires was fast receding,
and with it many of the physical elements.
The Book of Jubilees gives a very early reference to a Mes-
siah in a temporary Messianic kingdom. 56 The Messiah hereto-
fore hjas belonged to the earthly kingdom in which his function
as savior by the sword is easily explained. 57 In IV Ezra 58 he is
pictured as coming out of the sea for his reign of four hundred
years after which he and his followers shall die, 59 and after this
will come the judgment and the final determination of destiny.
The kingdom is no longer the means of salvation nor the residence
of the saved. It is simply held over ias a vestige of sacred associa-
tion but, aside from that, of little value. II Enoch has a kingdom
of one thousand years duration, 60 but no Messiah, as is also the
case in the Assumption of Moses. 61 The kindness of mature, al-
luded to before, is again seen in IT Baruch, 62 and in II Enoch.
The expectation of an eternal kingdom in a new earth and a
new heaven marks the final step in the transition from the desire
and trust to be saved in the midst of present surroundings to the
triumphant despondency of a pure apocalypticism in which the
group still figures somewhat prominently. The tendency to look
to the future itself tended to break down the 'hope for national
salvation and to substitute the claim of the individual. The only
Ijate Jewish document which pointed forward to a wholly apoca-
lyptic kingdom and consistently avoided pure individualism is
I Enoch 37-70. The Messiah is a being of supernatural order. 63
No concern is paid to the ordinary desires for physical resur-
rection. The author's interest is Wholly for man's spiritual wel-
fare. Sin was started by Satans, 64 and transmitted to mjan
through the spirit powers let loose in the world. The Messiah,
as champion of man's spiritual salvation, sweeps away all that
will hinder him. 65 Heaven and eatrth are changed into fit abodes
for the righteous. 66 Although in one place, 67 it appears that both
righteous and sinners are to be raised, it is clear that only the
righteous are raised "that they should be saved". The pessimism
of IV Ezra is even deeper. He feels that only a few will be saved,
36 QUESTS FOR SALVATION
and "God will not grieve over the multitude of men that
perish ' '. 68
The main lines of Jewish thought about the religious task of
salvation have been suggested with more or less clearness. It
has been seen that there has been a somewhat steady progression
from a belief that by God 's help Israel might make herself worthy
of eternal domination of the world, to 'a thorough-going pes-
simism which turned from this earth to the new one, tand from the
nation to the individual. The retention of a temporary kingdom
of one kind or another was merely a concession to views long
entertained. The dissolution of national hopes was registered
in this fact, in spite of the Maccabaejan and other revolts.
But our study of Judaism w T ould 'hardly be complete without
some treatment of the by-products of the development of national
toward individual interests. The belief in the resurrection was
greatly amplified in this process. Apparently in the first stages
of thought the resurrection was not necessary as )a part of the
national program ; it was enough that the nation should continue
to live on earth. Later it became essential, for since present hope
had been abandoned, how else could the harried children of
Israel have faith in a saving God? The righteous must needs
rise in order to carry on the aims of the nation in the new world.
Another aspect of the resurrection idea arose out of the abandon-
ment of group ideals and reached its culmination in the greatly
elaborated theory of individual resurrection. The variations of
the doctrine are many depending somewhat upon the inclusion
of diversified elements : bodily, spiritual, of righteous and of sin-
ners, or of the righteous alone. 69
Doing the will of God was the means of winning his saving
help ; and ethics and legalism were the two forms which this ac-
tion took. Both were assiduously cultivated by the most pious
in complete confidence thiat the outcome would be favorable. 70
As has already been observed, the early ideas about the meaning of
ethics were conceived with a purely temporal situation. The
current Jewish ideas were simply that Jehovah would bless with
earthly peace and prosperity those who observed his will. The
dead went to Sheol, where good and bad alike experienced iatn
uncertain immortality. But late Judaism thought of the future
as a time of judgment, rewards and penalties, based on the con-
duct on earth. Again the institutions of the time serve as the
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 37;
models after which the future was fiaishioned. Social control,
in so far as it was effected by the government in its various forms,
was made through the establishment of codes of law regulating
conduct, of courts of justice, where guilt or innocence was de-
termined, and of penal agencies which carried the judgment
to completion. So it was in the divine guidance of the whole
world. In the belief of future retribution, the motivation is
to be traced back to several factors, prominent among which is
the observation that the righteous were not all prosperous and
the wicked were not all abased. This confusing realization is
the chief problem of Job. If justice is not reckoned here, how
does God show his saving power? The only solution which sat-
isfied the Jews who asked the question was the theory of post-
poned justice. They saved the theory of divinely given salvation
by deferring the date of its appearance. Legalism, while not
entirely disassociated from ethics, nevertheless grows out of a
different conception. It is not necessarily concerned with justice,
but with debt and obligation. Jehovah will remit the penalty
if he is ple/ased with the faithful presentation of respect and
honor, such as an Oriental monarch might expect. Regular
offerings, punctilious visitations, decorous behavior, and im-
maculate garb, all are calculated to mitigate the unfavorable
judgment which otherwise would be brought upon the undeserv-
ing subjects. A further elaboration mjade the will of; God
accessible through Wisdom. In many instances, at least, if not
in all, the prominence given to wisdom was due to contact with
non-Jewish culture. For instance, IV Maccabees is an exposition
of Stoicism as seen by Jewish eyes. The passions are to be
checked by Reason, 71 not excised as the Greeks thought. In the
Wisdom of Solomon, 72 wisdom is mentioned as if it wias the sine
qua non of salvation. Considerable deviation from the conven-
tional Jewish beliefs is present and as a consequence, the striking
dramatic features of the more characteristic salvation teaching
is missing.
The growing dualism, which accompanied Israel's declining
nationalism and her growing apocalypticism, found part of its
expression in an elaborated demonology. These evil spirits were
in some way associated with the sin and transciency of the earth.
They harassed mankind and were themselves held in check by
the good spirits representing the other side of the dualism. Little
38 QUESTS FOR SALVATION
trace of this belief is to be seen in the classic literature of the
Jewish people, as is the case in the corresponding literature of
Greek life. There tare, it is clear, miany references to angels
who are the auxiliary forces of Heaven. Furthermore, there are
urnnistakjable evidences of belief in troubling demons in the Old
Testament, as, for instance, in Job. 73 Even the Eden-temptation
seems to point toward demonolgy. It must be noted, also, that
monotheism would rather in many cases credit Jehovah with
being the sponsor of evil spirits, than lessen the rigidity of its
position. 74 There can be no disputing that even in the Old
Testament there is shown a concern for freedom from evil influ-
ence of spirit powers.
As one turns to the later literature, in which are freely ex-
pressed the common opinions of the iaverage Jew, there are
abundant out-croppings of the popular belief in demons and an
accompanying desire to be released from their oppression. The
story of Tobit gains much of its interest from the account of
the overcoming of the evil-spirit or demon, 75 which had killed
the seven husbands of Sarah and threatened Tobias. The angel
Raphael, on the other hand, plays the role o'f a helper of devout
men. I Enoch provides a great deal of material relating to de-
monology and angelology. The offspring of the fallen watchers
of heaven and the "daughters of men" are, in the mind of the
author of the first section of the book, 76 evil spirits and the
cause of evil among men. The author of the second section
pushed back the cause of man's distress to the Satians, whose
functions as tormentors were: 1) to tempt men to do evil, 77 2)
to accuse men before God, 78 3) to punish the condemned. 79 The
plain implication is that part of man's individual salvation
must be from the demons. The Testaments of the XII contain
such statements as this : " If you do well, even the unclean spirits
will flee from you". 80 Josephus reflects a type of Judaism of
the first century of the Christian era, which is significant, chief-
ly because of his position in the ranks of culture. His imagi-
nation was apparently not fevered by apocalyptic hopes. Yet
he reveals a profound belief in the actuality of spirit powers.
In Antiquities 8. 2. 5 he says that God taught Solomon "the
art of opposing the demons for the succor and healing of men.
So that he (Solomon) composed incantations, by which sickness
o(f all sorts is assuaged; and left to posterity methods of exorcis-
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 39
ing And this system still prevails among us". While
Philo does not commit himself to a belief in demons like thlat
popularly held, he indicates that there is a widespread belief
in them. 81
The query may now be raised as to the effect the Dispersion
had on the typical beliefs of the Jews. It has been noted that
some of the literature of the Exile reflects a broadened concep-
tion of universal salvation. Under the stress of local and tem-
porary persecutions, such as the Palestinian and Alexandrian
Jews experienced, this was narnowed down to a picturesque
national salvation on earth or in the new earth and new heaven,
or an individualistic salvation effected by litenal resurrection.
On the whole, the wide dissemination of Jews over the world
did not of itself greatly alter the regular views regarding their
religious hopes. Jerusalem was the center toward which all
eyes looked and the beliefs which had gone out from the Mother
City were sustained by the common 'faith of all Judaism. It
is true that in some localities pagan ideas gained a secure place
in the minds of earnest Jews. 82 Philo was greatly influenced
by the Greek thought of 'his day, but he by no means gave up
his love for the Jewish life and institutions, as his mission to
Caius at Borne indicates. In those localities in which the Jews
lived unmolested in a life of comparative prosperity, it can hard-
ly be expected that the more radical beliefs which had originated
in times of great stress should continue to be emphasized. Not
only so, but the fundamental theory of salvation, for instance,
might theoretically be modified. If, as Bousset and others
maintain, Paul was actually influenced by Graeco-Roman the-
ology, the /alteration iof Jewish soteriology would have at least
one clear example, though Paul's break with regular Judaism,
might partially destroy its significance. 83
There is not enough uniformity in the Jewish conceptions
of salvation to justify the conclusion that there was anything
inherently peculiar to that religion which determined the forms
that it took relative to certain great problems of life. There
was no secularity as opposed to religion. Both were merged in
the common life of the people. The government was associated
with the worship; and the distresses as a beneficient Egyptian
king, 4 who suffered a violent death at the hands of Typhon. Isis,'
his sister-wife, sought his membra ctisiecta. When these were
restored to life, Isis and Osiris were elevated to the rank of im-
mortal gods. 5 Every one who longed for assurance of the after
life, observed the rites of the cult, inspired by the promise: "As
truly as Osiris lives, he also shall live; as truly as Osiris is not
dead, sh(all he not die ; las truly as Osiris is not annihilated, shall
he not be annihilated." 6
The Phrygian cult of Cybele-Attis was well known at Rome
from 204-5 B. C. onwards, when the sacred stone of the Magna
Mater was placed on the Palatine. The hope that her presence
might give victory to Rome against Hannibal wias fulfilled, and
46 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
due honor was given to the goddess, though not until after the
time of the republic was her worship given free reign.
The Phrygians, who came from Thrace, blended their religion
with that of their new home. Thus the nature god Dionysus was
transformed into Attis, and he in turn was associated with the
nature goddess Cybele. Further identifications were msade, as
diffeernt cults were assimilated, but without effecting any con-
siderable change. In accordance with the general development
of nature religions, the main interest ceased to be desire for the
return of vegetation, and became the promise df immortal life.
The myth of Cybele and Attis tells of the death of Attis
through a wound inflicted by an enemy or else by self -mutilation,
the mourning of the mother-goddess, and finally the resurrection
of Attis to the position of deity. By imitation of the life of the
god, the devotee believed that he would be born anew to the life
of the future. "Take courage, oh mystics, because the god is
saved ; and we shall have salvation from our trials. ' ' 7
The religions which came from Syria do not have the same dis-
tinctness that some of the other cults have. The influence of the
Babylonian Ishtar and Tammuz 011 them is unmistakable. The
names may be changed to Ashtart and Eshmun, or Aphrodite and
Adonis, without essentially altering the nature of the cult. Also
the worship of Atargatis and Hadad had the same general char-
acter. In all cases we may see a form of religion in which the
reverence 'for life has been transferred from its manifestations in
nature to its perpetuation as the life of the soul. Commercial
enterprises contributed largely to the dissemination of these
phases of religion, and they carried with them into the Occi-
dent a considerable amount of astrology by means of which the
characteristic pessimism of Semitic thought was lightened, not
without meeting other handicaps, however. The typical Semitic
beliefs regarding the future are by no means cheerful or reassur-
ing. The life to come is a litfe of the * ' shades ' \ only a reflection
of whiat had been experienced. Under the influence of Oriental
astrology, however, there was a promise held out that the soul
might escape its ceaseless rounds under the spell of the stars, and
obtain a life like that of the stars themselves. Determinism, the
logical outcome of the system, would have destroyed all possi-
bility of salvation, if the desire for redemption had not been
strong enough in \actual practice to check its full development.
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 47
Mithraism, however, was more fully saturated with astrology
than were the other cults. It possessed the usual dualism of
Persian thought due probably to sharp geographical, climatic and
social contrasts ; and it wias this feature which functioned as an
effective medium in presenting a positive hope in the ultimate
victory of light and virtue over darkness and evil. The two
extremes were pictured in vigorous opposition both in the pres-
ent and in the future. Mithra was the leader of the host olf good,
and hence savior of men. The erstwhile god of light became the
god of moral vigor and purity. The conflict suggested by the
duialism of the system tended to introduce a quality of austerity
not attained by other cults. The development of the character
of Mithra followed also the other lines suggested by the dualistic
system. Mithra was the enemy of all evil demons, the leader of
the good. Man 's task was to throw himself on the side of Mithra,
but even in this act he was not self-sufficient; Mithra must help
him. "M'ayest thou keep us in both worlds, Mithra, lord of
wide pastures ! both in this material world in the world of spirit,
from the fiend of Death, from the fiend of Aeshma, from the
fiendish hordes that lift up the spear of havoc, and from the
onsets of Aeshma." 8 Mithra 's function as a leader seems early
to have ^assumed equal or even greater prominence than that of
a dying and rising god though the art and ritual carried along
by the cult preserved the record of ia genuine interest in this phase
of the god's meaning to his worshippers.
These religions of the Graeco-Roman world were not preserved
in unvarying forms, for they did not develop an authority and
infallibility dependent upon an original model. As suggested
above, they assimilated kindred cults without losing any of their
individual force. But 'aside from the admixture of similar faiths,
there went on after the Alex-
andrian conquest, the stars, known to all peoples, came to be the
universally accepted vehicle of imperialistic ideals. 15 Hence there
were present, at all times suggestions, at least, of lan earlier
longing for salvation from an inhospitable nature. Indeed at a
relatively late date, the worship of Osiris, inspired its devotees
to implore the god to give them the promise of fresh water, which
earlier had been the source of relief from the heat of the burning
Egpytian sun, and later the symbol of a fountain of living water.
Even at Rome, far removed from the drought of Egypt, the faith-
50 QUESTS FOB SALVATION
ful inscribed upon their tombs these words, "May Osiris give
you fresh, water." 16
It would seem that there was nothing inherent in the early
mystery religions which called tfor an ethical salvation, inasmuch
as their goal was a changed nature or a future heaven. Men
sought for release from guilt as if it were a stain fastened upon
them and removable through the operation of some magical or
sacramental rite. 17 It is in this sense that conduct is chiefly of
concern to the early mystery religions. Ethioal salvation reaches
its higher forms under the influence of ideals of personal behavior
in society, as seen particularly in the Jewish system, or the
"brotherhood of man" advocated by the philosophic movements.
Yet it would not be just to infer that the mysteries did not come
to recognize the value of ethical conduct. Under the pressure of
moral standards evolved in the total complex of social experience
if not through the direct influence of the philosophies, these cults
rapidly lassimilated an appreciation of the worth olf purity of
heart as contrasted with ceremonial cleanliness. The Isis cult,
with which looseness of morals was at first associated, responded
to the popular demand for 'morality 'and was transformed into a
religion of inner righteousness. 18 Nero absented himeslf from
the final ceremonies of the Eleusinian mysteries when it was made
known by the herald that immoral persons were forbidden to
attend. 19 Still later, Celsus twitted his Christian antagonists by
comparing the high moral standards of admission into the pagan
mysteries with Christian practices which admitted sinners. 20
Similarly, there is little trace of the ideals of group salvation
in the restricted sense. It may 'be that the Isis cult was promul-
gated for the purpose of advancing political and social solidarity
in Egypt, but this feature was soon lost sight of, and the cult was
carried abroad on the basis of other pleas. The Cybele cult was
officially established in Rome in 204 B.C., (though known there be-
fore), in recognition of the (fact that she had become the savior
of Eome upon the defeat of Hannibal. 21 But again the idea of
national salvation died out in the life of the cult, if, indeed, it
ever existed there. In A.D. 307 Diocletian recognized Mithra as the
protector of the empire (fautori imperil sui] by the official dedi-
cation of a sanctuary to him. 22 In spite of official recognition,
these cults did not become advocates of national salvation as did
emperor worship and the conservative restorations of the older
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 51
religion by Augustus and Julian. No doubt the multiplicity of
mystery religions prevented lany one of them from becoming pre-
dominant in this capacity. It is true, however, that these cults,
by reason of their dualism, (fostered the aristocratic ideals and
tendencies of their time, and promised salvation only to those
who became members of the initiated group. In this respect they
possessed a heightened diorm of group (esoteric) salvation, though
they still retained the individualism which was characteristic of
the time.
Among other distinctions within the ,general idea of salvation
are thoise of time. The question then is this : does salvation ben-
efit now or in the future wiorld? As far as historical forms of
mystery religion are concerned, a single answer was not given.
The nature cults sought a present salvation, but when they were
transformed into "mysteries" they gave up this feature 'almost
altogether. In so far as an interest in a present solution of pres-
ent problem's was retained, a present salvation was of course an
integral part of religious thought. Thus demons as an explana-
tion df tany inconvenience or distress necessitated some corres-
ponding release from them. 23 The magioal formulae which be-
came so widespread in use just before and after the opening of
the Christian era testify to the prevailing desire to secure a really
vital kind of present salvation. The development of astrology
and its incorporation in the current religious systems assisted in
transferring the interest of men to the future where salvaton was
to be from death and from evil powers. Under the stimulus
of the imagination, the coming world was pictured in terms of
the desirable things which had not been obtained here. There
was to be a Golden Age in which there would be peace and plenty,
an epoch in this world 's if uture history or a period after the de-
struction of this world, during which men would be assimilated
to the eternal and glorious life of the heavenly beings, free from
the antagonism of all the lesser and evil beings who were eager
to trouble human souls. Yet Mithra was savior both in this world
and in the world to come.
Immortality was the key-word of all the mystery religions,
and particularly of those whose myth told of a dying and rising
god witfti Whom the devotee might be identified. No plea or prom-
ise had such an appeal as an assurance of individual deliverance
from the uncertainties of life. Thus at one stroke they solved the
52 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
problems of sickness, persecution, poverty and disgrace, and the
mystery of death.
In the main, the problems which the mystery religions attempt-
ed to solve were those connected with the individual. It is a
commonplace to state that with the conquest of Alexander and
the downfall of nationalism, individualism came to the front.
That it was the case in matters of religion, is easily demonstrated,
as far as the Graeco-Roman civilisation was concerned. Such
being the case, it was but natural that the technique of salvation
methods should follow the lines suggested by the theory of man's
and of god's nature. The source of saving power wias not char-
acteristi dally dependent upon the value of man's activity, but
in the use made of the strength and life of the cult god. This,
however, was not done in one simple way. At least three processes
were adopted in securing this end; 1) there was effected an iden-
tification of the devotee with the god, who had had the experience
of having been raised to eternal life ; 2) the leadership of a fight-
ing, conquering god was accepted, land his prowess guaranteed a
favorable outcome; or 3) some control was secured over deter-
ministic forces, on the illogical but practical basis that all-power-
ful spiritual beings might be compelled to yield to the wish of
their inferiors under certain conditions.
Identification with the god was particularly prevalent in the
typical mystery cult. It had its origin in the most primitive forms
of religion. The desired qualty of strength, swiftness, fruitful-
ness, or life was thought to reside in the nature god. In some
mysterious way these qualities were thought of as transferred
to the worshipper through partaking of the gods, through contact
with them, or through imitation (a variety of sympathetic miagic).
This "transubstantiation" of deity and the benefits accruing
therefrom, were at first parts of an immediate salvation process
of a rather simple character. Divine strength wias imparted for
an impending conquest, or the god was in some way apprehended
by the devotee. In a quite natural way the theory was made
workable when the desire was for eternal life. The god, so the
myth ran, had (attained immortality. By a process of identifica-
tion with the god, the initiate was assured off the same blessing.
Thus the worshipper of the Cybele-Attis cult was in aeternum
renatus, 24 and reverenced as a god, following the baptismal cere-
mony, during which the blood of the victim-god was the agent
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 53
of regeneration, and other symbolic acts, e. g., the burial and
resurrection scene. The self-mutilation of the Phrygian priests,
suggesting the death of Attis, also served to identify the devotee
with the rising god. 25 The Egyptian mysteries gave the same
promise and virtually in the same form. "The old belief that
immortality could be secured by means of an identification of
the deceased with Osiris, or Sertapis, never died out." 26
The introduction of astrological beliefs did not destroy the
theory of identification, though it tended to support the idea
of a powerful god under whose leadership desired ends might
be secured. But it is evident that the soul of a believer was
thought to share in the immortality of the heavenly beings, the
star-gods, who did not die, but who were born again when they
began to sink and alwiays remained invincible. 27 The theory
oif salvation by means of identification with the god, remained
intact throughout the period during which these cults flourished.
Another means, however, by which similar results were ob-
tained was pictured under the form of a religious
alongside a civil character, and urges that as the cult advanced,
it did so at the expense of its religious quality. It should be
said, however, that the Romans saw no such distinction. The
religious and civil phases were blended into a consistent whole.
To explain its shortcomings, it is not adequate to depend upon
judgments which were not present to the Romans. One must go
back to the ideas and impulses in the midst of which it moved,
and there its shortened range of religious power is more easily
understood.
Though the cult of the emperor lacked the power o changing
nature or essence, it possessed the other element of a successful
soteriology and one which functioned prominently in Mithraism,
Judaism and Christianity, viz., the acceptance of the leadership
of a powerful being. And yet, as has been shown above, it was
for no great cause. There was no idealization of the struggle
between good and evil which was particularly prominent in the
Persian religion. The leadership of Mithra guaranteed salvation
now and in the future life, a salvation from every kind of ill from
which men sought release, and challenged the believer to a
heroic conflict. Christianity, also employing the idea of leader-
64 QUESTS FOR SALVATION
ship, satisfied a wide range of demands. The cult of the eimperor,
though genuinely religious and actually promising the salvation
of peace and plenty, did not cover some of the most important
needs of man, and, as a quest for salvation, yielded in religious
supremacy, to those richer faiths of the Gnaeco-Roman world.
The Aim of the Graeco-Roman Philosophers.
The philosophic legacy which came down to the thinkers who
lived at the beginning of the Christian era and immediately be-
fore, was one of pure thought, of cosmic speculation. The earliest
attempts of Greek philosophers, for the most part, grew out of
the dissatisfaction which the lonians experienced when they be-
gan to criticize the explanations of the cosmic enigma offered by
the mythologists. That the gods had made the universe was to
say that men had made it, and such a conclusion was impossible.
They boldly turned. to other solutions of their difficulty, and even
went to the extent of denying outright the basis of all previous
belief, the existence and power of the gods. No adequate solu-
tion was reached, and the problems which had been raised were
never answered in the terms of the original discussion.
The philosophy of Plato and of Aristotle was quite vitally re-
lated to the political ambitions of the times. The practical aspects
of their teachings were colored by the ethical considerations of
public duty. Plato's Republic was somewhat of the nature of
a model plan, which, if followed, would tend to solve the difficul-
ties of social and governmental life with which the Greeks as a
nation were contending. There is more than a fancied connection
between the Greek TroAts and its problems, and the ideal which
the philosophers were attempting to express. This is indicated by
the fact that the classic philosophy declined with the state, and
gave way to other phases of speculation more consonant with
the new governmental and social experiments. The unity of the
world was being impressed upon the minds of the thinkers
through the ascendence of the ideal of a world-wide empire.
Parallel to this was the Stoic insistence on the absolute unity of
the universe, viewed from the philosophic standpoint, and vitally
expressed in the doctrine of the brotherhood of man. A similar
broadening of thought occurred in the experiences of the Jews
after the dissolution of their national life. With this line of
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 65
development there went, almost of logical necessity, an emphasis
upon the affairs of the individual.
The late Grecian philosophy has been severely criticised
because it lacks the noble qualities which Plato and Aristotle
bestowed upon their systems. 53 It is quite true that "they gave
themselves up to the petty interests of private life and personal
affairs". But this estimation is in itself a vindication. The
poignancy of the social struggle was as keen in the heart of the
philosopher as in the heart of the religious enthusiast. They
both sought to solve the same problem though they used different
and opposing means. The philosophies themselves were by no
means unified. Epicurean, Stoic, Sceptic, and others, vied with one
another in gaining public favor. The differences between the
systems were greatly exaggerated in the interests of propagan-
dism, and often the ideal of service was for a time obscured.
During the period in which flourished those philosophies
which to some extent came into contact with early Christianity,
there were some systems which possessed unusual vigor. All
were inclined to be syncretistic, and because of this fact they
were not always to be sharply differentiated. Of the many phases
of thought which were widely disseminated throughout the
Mediterranean world, three representative philosophies may be
taken to illustrate the intellectual attempts made in the effort
to solve the problem of the universe and thus serve men by help-
ing them gain a safe or at least tolerable place in the system.
Epicureanism, Stoicism, and later, Neo-Platonism, were very
influential among the thinking people, and even attained a
remarkable degree of popularity through their efforts in the
direction of practical service. 54
Epicurean Philosophy.
Epicureanism, by the bitterness of its polemic, was isolated
from the other philosophies of the day, in spite of the kinship
it had with them through the common problem of marking out
a safe course of life by which the miseries of life might be avoided.
The hostility which resulted in this wide breach, did not spring
out of an impassable gulf of disagreement, but rather out of the
desire of Epicurus' followers, to make him, with his system, the
only siavior of men.
66 QUESTS FOB SALVATION
Epicurus set out to define the problem of life and to offer
his solution. Being practical he was quite likely to be indifferent
to exact analysis and hostile to pure reason. His system is
peculiar in that it arose as a protest against religion, and almost
made the declaration, by so doing, that it sought to save men
from the gods. Reduced to his simplest terms, the task of
Epicureanism was, first, to save men from the fear of gods and of
death; and second, to save them from incompleteness of life,
(which it expressed in terms of the simplest known emotions,
pleasure and pain). The solution in each case was an intellectual
one. To abolish fear of the gods and of death, an atomistic
explanation of the universe was urged. The science of physics
was appealed to, the only science that Epicurus recognized.
To -save men from narrowness and incompleteness of life, Epi-
curus told them to understand what pleasure truly was and to
follow it. The solution of the problem of the universe which Epi-
curus employed was not his own. He borrowed it from the past,
from Democritus. The world resulted from the action of atoms.
No clause outside the atoms could be assigned; no God moved
the atoms in their course. While the theory does not close the
circle entirely, as we view his system, it was designed to do so.
By this bold stroke, he lopped off the whole problem of the vital
relation of man to the gods. The value of the atomic theory is
not primarily as an explanation of the universe, but as a soothing
draught for distracted men, who after once accepting the dogma,
need no longer seek to placate the anger of the gods. Similarly,
if the soul does not exist after death, there can be no unknown
future, fraught with terrors -and torment. 55 Of course, there is
no fear, and physical science is the medium of salvation. If some
other scheme had lent itself as readily to the desired result, it
would have been adopted. However, there was nothing quite
as effective at this point.
The elaborated theory of the atoms served in some degree to
take the place of the old theology, though the Epicureans did not
ever deny the existance of the real gods. They vigorously opposed
belief in the gods of popular thought, on the ground that the true
gods could not be apprehended by the senses ias the older belief
set forth. 56 Epicureanism taught that the gods, made of: superfine
atoms, lived somewhere between the various worlds in a state
of blessed immortality (contrary to the logic of his atomic theory
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 67
of constant change). Their function is somewhat difficult to
see. If, as has been conjectured by Lachelier, 57 W. Scott, 58 and
Giussani, 59 man according to this scheme receives his idea of God
through the fact that the atoms are continually passing from the
form of the god, which is replenished from other sources, (after
the analogy of streams flowing into a lake and passing away
in 'mist at the same time), then man obtains in this way a direct
revelation of the life of supreme happiness which he should live.
In fact it is more than a revelation, it is a direct incorporation
of the divine substance by which this is made possible. But one
can not go so 'far in the interpretation and elaboration of obscure
passages. 00 One must be content with saying "that the gods,
though material, are not fiflm. and solid like the gross bodies of
men and visible things, but are of a far finer texture, and that
they have no numerical or material, but only formal identity." 81
Not even Epicurus would have held that the chief perplexity
of life had been solved by the adoption of the atomic theory of
the universe. Forbidding as the unknown future was, and
capricious >as the will of the gods might be, there was the im-
mediate and pressing question of conduct. We are aware of the
social conditions and the changes of fortune that awaited man
at every turn. One moment rich, poor the next; one moment
free, la slave the next ; the ruler's favorite or 'an exile. The theory
of atoms could offer no solution for these difficulties.
The crowning ifeature of Epicurus' system was revealed at
this point. The simplest and .most universal emotions of life
offered the best criterion by which the course of action might be
determined. Men shrank naturally from that which gave pain
and responded gladly to that which. gave pleasure. Then pleasure
was good, and pain was evil. This simple formula was the basis
of the suggested theory of life. All men, Epicurus believed,
could grasp the meaning of the terms. But- this idea, like that
of the origin of the universe, was borrowed from Democritus, in
that he described his object of life to be a state of permanent
bodily and mental tranquility and oblivion to the possible dis-
turbances which threaten day by day. 62
"The end of all our action is to be free from pain and
apprehension. When once this happens to us, the tempest in the
soul becomes a calm, and the organism no longer needs to make
progress to anything which it lacks, or to seek anything 'further
68 QUESTS FOR SALVATION
to complete the good for soul and body. For we only need
pleasure so long as the absence of it causes pain. As soon as we
cease to be in pain we have no need of further pleasure. This
is why we call pleasure the beginning and end of the happy life.
It is recognized by us :as our primal and con-natural good, and
is the original source of all choice and avoidance, and we revert
to it when we make feeling the universal standard of good. Now
it is because this is our primal and con-natural good that we do
please to have every pleasure, but sometimes pass by many
pleasures when a greater inconvenience follows from them, and
prefer many pains to pleasures when a greater pleasure follows
endurance of the pain. Every pleasure then is a good, as it has
the specific character -of the good (i.e., to attract us for its own
sake), but not every pleasure is to be chosen; so also every pain
is an evil, but not every pain should be always avoided. ' ' 63
In these words we have a full statement of Epicurus' theory
of conduct, not too concretely stated. There is no question that
he here sets up a standard of high ethical value, and in all proba-
bility it wias so interpreted by himself and his followers. Else-
where in the Letter to Menoeceus he is much more explicit.
"When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and 'aim, we do
not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of
sensuality, as we are understood to do by some, through igno-
rance, prejudice, or wilful misinterpretation. By pleasure we
mean the absence of pain in the body and trouble in the soul.
It is not an unbroken succession of drinking feasts and of
revelry, not sexual love, not in the enjoyment of the fish and
other delicacies of a luxurious table which produce a pleasant
life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every
choice and 'avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which
greatest tumults take possession of the soul." 64
The most crucial point in Epicurus' system, pleasure, evoked
the bitterest antagonism in its day. Stoic virtue and Epicurean
pleasure seemed irreconcilable. But the final explanation of the
terms lessens the distance between them, which in the first place
was caused more by the rivalry of the schools than by the actual
divergence of the ideas themselves. Indeed, Epicurus hijmself,
though theoretically holding to the supremacy of pleasure over
virtue, (which is a weak point in his scheme), cannot divorce
the two in practice. 65
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 69
In advocating pleasure versus pain, the Epicurean did not,
as we saw above, seek the pleasures of the moment, nor those otf
the body. Yet by the very nature of the case, he was impelled
to yield to them in some measure. The whole fabric of his
philosophy rested on the basis of emotional feeling. Here lay
the difficulty. Experience revealed the fact that the man was be-
trayed by emotions into bad conduct. Stoicism and Christianity
called for a vigorous repression of bad emotions and Stoicism
went even farther and demanded that all emotions be eradicated.
But Epicureanism treated man as if he were a moral dyspeptic,
whose flagging appetites should be wheedled and coaxed, but
not overtaxed. Doubtless the success of the Epicurean philosophy
was limited by this defect more than by any other. It was
designed to save men from the fear of the gods and of death;
but its chief object was to help men wend their way through the
maze of perplexing questions of conduct, to save them ifrom
mistakes in judgment, and to turn their minds from dwarfing
thoughts to enobling ones. In this it was least successful, for
it was not really vigorous for a real conflict in life.
Stoic Philosophy.
Among the systems of philosophy prevalent in that day there
is none more worthy of special consideration than that of the
Stoa. The schools of Epicurus, of the Septics, and the natural
descendants o'f the older systems (Aristotelian, Platonic, Pytha-
gorean) carried on their propaganda with more or less success
and with more or less tenacity of purpose. The Stoics, however,
in the period immediately before and after the opening of the
Christian era, assumed 'an importance which was not held by
any other type of thought. The secret of Stoicism's success can
hardly be attributed to the perfection of its structure. Other
philosophies perhaps surpassed it on the purely intellectual
side, incorporated fewer inherent contradictions, land revealed
to the eye of the critic fewer gaps in logical development. The
outward appearance of the Stoic scheme may reveal to us many
imperfections ; but its ability to penetrate to the heart o'f human ,
distress, and to calm all fears and to heal all wounds, can leave
no doubt in our minds that it won its popularity by merit.
The change from conventional philosophy to religious phfc
losophy is nowhere more evident than in Stoicism. The mythology
70 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
and the physical philosophies had attacked one human problem,
and had offered their explanations of the universe, its creation
and government. But no final conclusion had been reached and
human wonder was unsatisfied. No social or individual crisis
depended on a correct answer, however. The Stoics were par-
ticularly interested in extricating themselves from the tangle
of opposing circumstances in which they found themselves en-
meshed. Their kinship with the thinkers oif the preceding age
naturally impelled them to use reason, the highest faculty which
they possessed, and not to resort openly to any specially God-
given power, that they actually might have some short-cut to
the end.
The concrete forms of life from which they wished release
were manifold, but most of them were revealed in the unevenness
of social life, in slavery, poverty, ignorance, blood-shed, of power
contrasted with weakness. Men were uncertain, fearful ; turning
hither and thither in the search for rest. Epictetus, for instance,
wished to make it clear that one should live far above the trials
which faced the average citizen of the Roman Empire in his day.
Exile, slavery, death might come, but they could be evils only to
those who made them such. 66
What made exile or death evils? This was the question that
the thinking Stoics sought to answer. All matter was divine in
origin, and only removed by a few stages from its source. There
wias no ultimate evil destiny awaiting it. Death might even
hasten the return oif man's portion of pure Logos (the soul) to
the great and powerful Logos. It was not death which was evil,
but the fear of it, and fear was a mistaken judgment. The Stoic
reasoned that one of the hindrances to his attianment of Happi-
ness and Security was fear of the uncertainties which confronted
him.
Again, the ideal world of the Stoic was ruled by Reason,
the highest force which his experience knew. !If Reason had
had the final decision regarding humian action, no mistaken
judgment would have been made, and no fear would have been
present to distract men. But the fact of life was this : men were
not ruled by Reason, but by Desire or the result of failing to
use Reason. Their emotions drove them back and forth, and
across the whole arena o;f life, with no uniform direction and no
hope of a goal, because of these mistaken judgments.
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 71
Although Fear and Desire seem to be the ultimate forms
of evil emotions which delude humanity in its search for happi-
ness, the practical bent of Stoic philosophy early divided them
into the common emotions of experience.
The Stoics were not too exact froim the standpoint of psychol-
ogy in the subdivision of these emotions. They ran through
the whole list of minor and major emotions which were expressed
by their language even if the terms were not well understood. The
object was to obtain a workable list of faults and vices, that the
more significant part of their work might be carried out with at
least a semblance of scientific exactness.
The problem of salvation from these emotions was one which
lay within the limits of man's earthly existence. All false judg-
ments resulting from Desire and resulting in Fear affected this
life. The fear of death was not a cause of disturbance because
of the possible outcome of the soul after the disintegration o!f
the body, but because of the disquietude called forth by anticipa-
tion of the event. Thus any salvation from these fears must be a
present salvation.
Again Epictetus offers enlightenment, this time with regard
to the state to which men wished to be saved. "No one then
who is in a state of fear or sorrow or perturbation is free; but
whoever is delivered from sorrows and ifears and perturbations,
he is at the same time delivered from servitude." 67
To sum up the discussion of the form of the problem of
salvation in Stoicism, the following suggestions are offered for
consideration. The political and social breakdown involved the
noble minded thinking man in a complexity of difficulties from
which he had no outward means of escape. Exile or death might
be ordered by a capricious despot ; poverty might come from the
same source ; friendship was not strong enough or secure enough
to guarantee any degree of continuing satisfaction. Against
all this the great souls of some philosophers rebelled. But to
what avail? A reformation of society in its outward form was
impossible, and indeed unthought of. Hence safety Was sought
in the life of the soul itself. The evils of life were not denied;
they were surmounted and ignored. The Stoic believer was
thus saved 'from them, as if they no longer existed for him.
Such was the form of the problem of salvation in that a,ge
and thought. We now turn to the solution which the Stoa offered.
72 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
Zeno .and his followers thought of salvation as an object to
be striven for, as a goal of attainment. The dignity of the think-
ing man precluded any thought of a salvation by redemption.
In other words man must be his own savior, 'the Master of his
fate, the Captain oif his soul 7 . The peace and quiet of salvation
came only at the end of a long struggle ; vivere miltare est. But
when peace came the soul of man was instantaneously released
from all the limitations of oppressing evil. There was no inter-
mediate state in which a man was neither good nor bad, or partly
good and partly bad, since the corresponding moral states were
at opposite poles. It is true that progress was involved in passing
from good to evil, 68 but progress in the direction of virtue was
not virtue itself. That was only attained at the completion of
the journey. "Virtue admits of neither increase nor diminution,"
"and there is no mean between virtue and vice". 69
But the Stoics were faced by the problem of making clear
by what process a man was to "work out his salvation", and
by means of what power. They resorted to the primary tenet
of their faith ; that all existing things were of the nature of Gk)d ;
and man, since he alone of all creatures, had in his soul la part
of the Primal Logos, was able to rise in the scale of life by
exercising the powers within himself. 70
The Stoics viewed this divine quantum from various
angles; sometimes it was AoytKT/ /a>x>i, sometimes vow, or Stavota,
(reasoning aspect, reason, intellect). In any event it was that
part which acted as Reason in the narrower sense of the word,
and on the other hand, that which chose as Will, from the results
of reasoning, and gave assent to any course of taction.
This God-within functioned in Stoic thought in a fashion
not essentially different from that of revelation in Judaism and
Christianity; or more exactly, like the sacramental and trtans-
foitming power of which man availed himself in the mystery
cults. The Stoic philosopher realized that man was not
of himself able to lift himself to a higher level, but he would
not employ the idea of special revelation las other 'faiths did.
He sought to preserve for man the dignity of self-compulsion and
self-achievement. The disdain with which he would ordinarily
look upon an out and out redemption religion may well be
imagined. Yet even proud Stoicism in the midst o'f its great
task, could not maintain its system intact. The utter helplessness
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 73
of iman and the crying need of his soul, however divine it might
be, tended to lead the Stoic dogma in the direction of the humbler
faiths. Even as early as Cleanthes (321-232 B.C.) there seem to
be some traces of this feeling. The warmth of his hymn to
Zeus, is made more fervid by the urgent appeal for help with
which the hymn closes.
"But, Zeus all-bountiful! the thunder-flame
And the dark cloud thy majesty proclaim :
From ignorance deliver us, that leads
The sons of men to sorrow and to shame.
Wherefore dispel it, Father, from the soul
And grant that Wisdom may our life control,
Wisdom that teaches thee to guide the world
Upon the path of justice to its goal." 71
Yet in spite of this intrusion of more or less hostile ideas the
Stoic plan of salvation remained essentially as it was lat first.
The God-within, functioning as Reason, 'assisted man in reaching
correct judgments, the first step in attaining individual security;
when Reason was not followed, a mistaken judgment resulted;
On the other hand, the God-within, functioning as Will, helped
one to "make the right use of appearances", or in other words,
the right use of the experiences of life that come to us through
the senses, to follow up a correct judgment. 72
The exercise of the will is directed against the emotions which
by nature are opposed to divine Reason. It is the emotions from
which Stoics wish to be saved ; from Fear iand Desire, primarily,
and also from all the forms of these monstrous evils. It has al
ready been pointed out that there is no half-way point of safety
between Virtue and Evil. Just so, there is no regulation of the
desires ; only total suppression is adequate. Plato, Aristotle, >and
later the Epicureans held that the emotions should not be eradi-
cated, but should rather be subdued. But the Stoic held no doe-
trine of the mean. He sought ideal freedoim from the appeal of
emotion, though of course he never secured it. One of the most
marvelous features about the whole history of the Stoa is that it
adhered so loyally to an ideal, which it urged as practicable in
one breath, and in another, acknowledged never to have been
attained, unless by some one whose sacred memory had obscured
74 QUESTS FOB SALVATION
the facts. Thus the ideal Wise Man is one in whom there is not
the slightest trace of anything which is opposed to Reason. 73
The practical difficulty which arose at this point, i. e., in ex-
plaining the actual suppression of emotion as other than regula-
tion, was met in a very ingenious way. An emotion, when once
subordinated to reason was no longer an emotion, having lost its
violent character; therefore it was entirely suppressed, uproot-
ed. 74 By this process of reasoning, Virtue is set forth in its nega-
tive aspects ; it is apathy. 75 But as an object of effort it assumed
a more positive character. It is the negative side of virtue
which impels some to charge Stoicism with being virtuous but
not moral. In fact, Virtue as Apathy, and Evil as Fear, do lack
moral qualifications. Stoicism, charted and mapped in terms of
philosophy and psychology by critics of (another generation, is
one thing; lived out amidst the tests of life, it is another. It
need hardly be suggested that the school of Zeno carried out an
ethical program of commendable worth, and by so doing, made
known its saving power.
What were the limits of Stoic salvation? Logically there
could be no limits beyond this present life, for there was no
Hell awaiting man beyond the gates of Death. The Stoic's Hell
was on this earth, or in other words, this world became Hell, as
man was forced to stay here. When the Fire of one's soul was
made free at death it sped away to join that Fire from which
it came. 76
Since every soul was eager to be absorbed into the original
Fire, there could be no hope of a personal immortality. Such a
belief on the lips of such individuals as Zeno and his followers
seems strange; it ctan only be explained by the universal gloom
and pessimism which governed each man's thought in that age.
But stranger still, is the Stoic doctrine of conflagrations. A
compromise seems to have been struck between the Oriental teach-
ing of rest in the divine and of transmigrations of souls, and the
more typicial Occidental craving for individual expression, the lat-
ter being secured for good and bad alike through an infinite num-
ber of cycles of absorptions, conflagrations, and emanations.
This, however, is only one of several changes which came into
Stoic thought, and chief among these was the rise of the concep^
tion of evil as inherent in matter. The logical position of
Stoicism was that all existence originally was a part of the
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 75
divine Logos. Body and soul were of the same substance. Thus
Stoicism was monistic. But Posidonius (and he seems to have
been the first), set himself in direct opposition to this view, being
influenced, in all probability, by Platonic and Pythagorean dual-
ism. He speaks explicitly thus: "The ctause of passions, the
cause, i. e., of disharmony and of unhappy life, is that men do
not follow absolutely the daimon that is in them, which is akin to,
and has a like nature with, the Power governing the whole kos-
mos, but turn aside after the lower principle and let it run taway
with them. Those who fail to see this ... do not perceive
that the first point in happiness is to be led in nothing by the
irrational, unhappy, godless element in the soul." 71 It is not clear
that Posidonius went to the same extent that the Neo-Pythagore-
ans did in ascribing an evil nature to matter. But at least, he
was steeped in the thought that was current at the beginning of
the Christian era, which taught that physical life was subjected
to temptation, because of some evil tendency that was inherent
in it. Something of this knd was implicit in the original Stoicism
which postulated a gradation of logos matter. It was only neces-
sary to draw a sharp line somewhere between the extremes and
produce a dualism. Salvation then became openly a metaphysical
affair. It was necessary for the pure Logos to drive out the
evil and hostile nature before a man could be saved. Formerly it
was only necessary for pure Logos to revitalize what had once
been pure Logos, and was still Logos, though lacking in primal
force. Other more or less fantastic ideas came in to supplement
this divergence from the original teaching, yet the Stoic plan of
salvation received no essential change. The God-within helped
mian in his judgments ; and whatever was the view of the future
life, it was the pure Logos which helped man. Though Stoicism
always exalted human efforts to a dignified position, it could not
trust man's ability alone. The powerful god-stuff must in some
way regenerate man's nature.
It remains to consider the adequacy of Stoicism in meeting the
craving of its day for salvation. Crossley 78 speaks of Stoicism
as "the system that stood to Pagan Home more nearly than
anything else in the place of a religion,'' while Kendall 79 remarks
that "its history resembles that of a religion rather than a
speculative system." Since every system of thought, whether
philosophic or religious, is the creation of a social group for its
76 QUESTS FOB SALVATION
own needs, we can form some estimate of the adequacy of Stoi-
cism, by considering its geopraphical distribution, the universal-
ity of its acceptance wherever it went, the permanency of its
appeal, and the quality of life which it inspired. The first three
points are fairly clear in every exposition of history. Wherever
the typical Graeco-Roman culture went, Stoicism went; it was
adopted by men in all ranks, Epictetus was a slave, Marcus Aure-
lius was an emperor; it endured just so long as the needs which
produced it, endured, and so long as it was able to chtange as
needs changed. As for the quality of the Stoic life, our growing
historical sense is creating an increasing appreciation o'f the
heroism of its advocates, and the genuineness of their belief.
Neo-Platonism.
The Stoics and Epicureans were materialists. In common with
the thought of the time, they saw the world as "one". Instead
of employing the dualism of Plato and Aristotle, they elimin-
ated what troubled them most, the "spiritual" element, and sub-
sumed all under a material category, among the Epicureans, the
atomic theory, and among the Stoics, the Logos doctrine. But
the metaphysical treatment was not more prominent than the
practical phases of their thought, :as had been the case with their
great predecessors.
The last greiat effort of the Greek mind to solve the riddle of
the uinverse was Neo-Platonism. As its name suggests it was an
attempt to revive the thought of Plato. It was characterized by
a great reverence for the past and its teaching. And though it
did consciously attempt to gain sanction for its own premises
by an appeal to traditional authority, there was present a con-
siderable amount that had not been taught by Plato or his con-
temporaries. It is somewhat difficult to arrive at many of the
actual antecedents of the Neo-Platonism o;f Plotinus, the greatest
and most representative exponent of the system. The records of
his lectures tare preserved in the account o'f Porphyry, his pupil
(the Enneads), but they are there tinged to a considerable de-
gree by Neo-Pythagorean sentiments not held by the great
teacher himself. Other Neo-Platonists also incorporated elements
of Neo-Pythagoreanism, which was essentially dualistic in con-
trast with real Neo-Platonism. On the whole, the system is diffi-
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 77
cult to trace out in details, though the main lines are fairly
distinct.
Ammonius Saccas, who lived in the latter part of the second
century A. D. and the first part of the third, is known tas the
founder of this system of philosophy. The most prominent of
his pupils was Plotinus, whose teaching is .almost synonymous with
Neo-Platoriism. He was born in A.D. 204 at Lycopolis in Egypt.
Porphyry and lamblichus are other outstanding members of the
school which had its chief 'center at Alexandria. At times the
contact between Neo-PMtonism and Christianity has been rather
close. Ammonius Saccas is said to have been a Christian at one
time. Augustine was an adherent of the school before he became
a Christian, and, if one may judge by some phases of his thought,
he was always a Neo-Platonist. Finally, however, the movement
broke down, having made its last great effort in the revival of
paganism under the Emperor Julian. Its teaching was perpetu-
ated in many of the orthodox doctrines oif the Christian church
where the name of Plato was long reverenced.
Neo-Platonism was essentially a metaphysical system, and as
such was a product of Greek thought, not Oriental, though it
yielded in times to many of the ideas of the East. Plotinus was
anxious to serve humanity by opposing materialism, scepticism,
and dualism, and to this end his metaphysics was shaped. In
briefest form, his analysis of the universe is as follows : spirit and
matter are distinguished, and Reason is separated from the lower
functions of conscious life, by means of his theory of gradations.
This begins with the One, which is also designated by other titles ;
then follow Reason, Soul, the sensible world, and unformed mat-
ter. Plotinus opposed the theory o;f emanations of Gnostic specu-
lation, on the ground that it implies ia diminishing Absolute. He
believed the the One did not create by separation into parts, but
by overflowing out o ( f its superabundance. Thus the lower grada-
tions were not really emanations from the One, though derived
from it. His monism ventured into dangerous ground at this
point, and subsequent development of the system resulted in a
dualism similar to that effected by the later Stoics. Plotinus de-
rived matter from the One as far as existence is concerned, but
did not make the One responsible for the value of matter. But
the distinction between the source and the derived matter came
to be made primarily on the ground of value. Where-as Plotinus
78 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
made the opposition relative, on the ground that the One was true
Being and the Good, and a thing was evil in proportion as it was
removed from its source, his followers made the distinction abso-
lute, not relative, on the basis of quality.
Thus Plotinus may be said to deny a metaphysical evil by say-
ing that every gradation is good in itself, i. e., relatively. He
opposed the Gnostics because they slighted the body and the
senses. 80 The body was good as a body, just as a house was good
as a house, though one might move into a palace later. On the
other hand, he affirmed evil implicitly at least, by postulating a
gradation of perfection. Later Neo-Platonists, as has already
been noted, seized upon this phase of thought, and then had an
evil from which man was to be saved. The metaphysical system
of Neo-Platonism is of interest to us because of this problem.
Originally salvation was realization of perfection by all parts
of the universe. The reversal of the process by which all things
were derived was the means by which man was saved. The good
was superabundant; it overflowed until all the relative goods
were perfected. 81 That is, human beings existed as souls in the
One Soul, and at birth flowed out into quasi-independent souls.
This situation in itself was not bad, but became so when each
sub-soul forgot its source and final resting place. "She (the soul)
must free herself from all outer beings, and turn to what is al-
together w r ithin; she must have no inclination towards, may not
know of, outer things. Rather must she pass beyond conscious-
ness of them all first with respect to her own condition and then
with respect to the intelligible existences. She must lose conscious-
ness, too, of herself, and attain to the vision of God, and become
one with him." 82 The method by which one became idenitfied
with God was contemplation. Theory was above practice. 83 If
the soul was not fascinated by its own creative work, and turned
back in reflection to her own source, she would be in no danger.
Her duty was to exercise her better nature in contemplation. 8 *
Apparently Plotinus believed that there was a divine quality in
man which was pure and unassailable, and which, if followed,
would lead him back to the One Soul. In this Neo-Platonism fol-
lows the main outline o!f Stoicism. Each believed in a divine
insert. The Stoics thought of it as substance, Logos, with the
properties of fire. The Neo-Platonists, though they were opposed
to giving attributes, called it Soul, Reason, or the One, and de-
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 79
scribed its activity, not in terms of material fire, but of contem-
plative thought. Just as the Stoic was to be fused into the great
Logds out of which he came, so the Neo-Platonist was to be blend-
ed again wih the One. This mystic experience was rare. Mian
might live an ordinary life, following natural instincts; or he
might live on the plane of discursive reason. Occasionally one
might attain to the ecstatic life of God. Plotinus, so Porpyhry
tells us, had this experience four times in the six years during
which they were associated, and Porphyry himself attained to
it once, at the advanced age of sixty-eight.
In all this there is a great deal which reminds us of Indian
thought. There is the same desire to strip off all attributes in
an effort to reach the unalloyed purity of the All One. All physi-
cal elements are foreign to pure being, and all descriptive terms
tend to limit and entangle in materialism. Hence god is inde-
scribable, simply the One. And the state of divine bliss to which
all wish to rise, is a sort of Nirvana (which is not oblivion, as
popularly believed), in which all distinctions between the sub-
ject and object are lost in the complete identity which results. 85
It is not necessary to examine here the developments which
took place under the influence of Neo-Pythagorean dualism. It
is sat once obvious that many of the points already alluded to
would only be more sharply accentuated. The Good, as pure
spirit, would be set over against the Evil, or Matter. And salva-
tion from Evil would be more picturesque by reason of the oppo-
sition. The ecstatic state occasionally reached in this life in
which one transcended all material surroundings, would be con-
tinued in the future life, by an awakening free from the thralldom
of the body, as Plotinus himself said. 86 87
It is diffcult to evaluate the philosophies of the Graeco-Eoman
world in relation to the problem of salvation, by means of a
simple summary. On the whole, it may be said that there lies
behind them all a practical dualism, whether the system be theo-
retically dualistic or not. One phase o;f the universe is evil, incom-
plete, or otherwise undesirable; the other phase is pure, "one".
Man seeks to relate himself to the latter, but can only do so
by virtue of his original connection with the divine or pure es-
sence which guarantees the present incorporation of a sufficient
amount of divinity to make his salvation possible. It is when
man's real being, freed from all dross, comes into contact with
80 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
God or is identified with him that he is saved. Ethics follows in
the theory as a secondary matter, however important it may be.
Good conduct is evidence of the exercise of the divinity within
one. Man's part comes in the volitional use of that divine essence
which is already in him, but after all he is not the sole creator
of his own salvation, or even the first. The philosophies are
chiefly to be differentiated from Judaism by the absence of the
picturesque beliefs in a personal savior who performs certain acts
designed to effect ia reconciliation between God and Man. The
philosophers taught that each man was saved through a quality,
an essence, which was within, and which was capable of trans-
forming human nature. Among the Jews, however, there was
the belief that men dealt with God as a person. It was an act
which pleased him, not a substance which merged with him, that
effected salvation. The same is true of the emperor cult, in so
far as it had religious significance. The mysteries had the same
underlying principle that characterized the philosophies, that oif
a divine substance blending with and purifying humanity by a
sort of semi-magical, semi-scientific manipulation of forces.
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 81
CHAPTER IV
THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN QUEST FOR SALVATION
In the preceding pages the attempt has been made to evaluate
the historic phases of Jewish and Graeco-Roman religious life as
quests for salvation. There can be no doubt that the litenature
which has been left to us out of these movements indicates the
keen desire for betterment of position which sent those ancient
peoples farther out into the field 'of faith and speculation in an
attempt to fathom the uncertainties of their experience. The
stimuli which raised the questions were not innate in the mental
make-up of the people. There was nothing there which pre-de-
termined the form and quality of the solution offered. Much less
was there a divinely revealed finality either to question or answer.
Rather were the statements regarding salvation simply the regis-
tration of attempts made to anticipate what would or should take
place for the good o;f the distressed.
It is important to note at the outset that each characteristic
statement may not be an entirely new solution or even partially
so, but that it registers the beliefs evolved in certain rather
definite social situations. Thus the soteriology of Jewish faith,
varying widely as we have seen, was conditioned always by the
experiences within the group, land particularly by the opposition
of that group to all others with which it came into contact. So
rigid were the ideas of nationality that the idea of a saved king-
dom was never given up, though it was somewhat dissipated by
the rise of individualism after the defeat of earthly ambitions
and by the erection of apocalyptic hopes. In the absence of a
unified social life in the Graeco-Roman world, the wide diversity
of interests tended to foster a great deal of variation and incon-
sistency of religious belief. In all oases people sought salvation
in terms of what they had experienced and were still experienc-
ing. Changes in experiences were marked by changes in the
hopes of salvation.
These altogether obvious conclusions are of considerable value
to us in taking up the study of Christian salvation beliefs. There
is no reason to suppose that ia different process operated here. On
the other hand, the actual task now before us is to determine what
were the influences which caused Christians to adopt such inter-
pretations of their religious life as they did, and in what way they
82 QUESTS FOR SALVATION
operated. If there was (anything in the formative period of Chris-
tian thought which was distinct from, the factors operating in
other religions, it will (manifest itself in an adequate study and
make possible an evaluation of the worth and meaning it had
for those who possessed it.
In taking up the consideration of early Christian interpreta-
tions of the quest for salvation, care must be exercised in giving
the Christian movement its proper setting in the midst of its sur-
roundings. With regard to the earliest stage of its development
this is by no means >an easy task, for the simple reason that no
Christian documents have been preserved from this period. The
epistles of Paul, the earliest Christian records- which we possess,
bear the stamp of the second stage of the movement's history,
during which influnces not common to the 'most primitive form of
Christianity miay have produced some changes. The same is true
of the Synoptic Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. As for the
Fourth Gospel, it belongs still farther along in the time when
non-Jewish thought was coiming into the foreground. The re-
maining literature of the New Testament is at least post-Pauline
and cannot be the product of the first years of the Christian
group. The Apocalypse of John, while revealing some ifmtures
which must have been present from the very first in that type
of Christianity which most closely approached the eager Jewish
apocalypticism, is nevertheless a relatively late product.
Although it is the purpose of the present study to ascertain as
far las possible what the soteriology of the earliest Christians was,
it is not our task to discover what were the teachings of Jesus
upon the subject. At best the teachings of Jesus, if discoverable,
would not of themselves constitute a quest for salvation. How-
ever distinctive they may have been in the midst of a formal re-
ligion, they were only a variation of the Jewish quest which has
.already been considered. Aside from a limited number of pas-
sages the Synoptic Gospels do not indicate that Jesus repudiated
the traditional religion of his people or preached a message of
universalism. Slight traces of universalism do occur in the res-
urrection accounts, in the Matthean -and Lucan introductions, and
rarely in the body of the gospels. The teachings of Jesus, even
in these documents which received their final form after the time
of primitive Christianity, are everywhere to be identified with the
Jewish quest for salvation. 1 Even as sources for later beliefs,
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 83
their value to us would be rendered somewhat uncertain by the
indisputable fact that beliefs which Jesus did not possess, were
introduced into the Christian message and oblitenated its primi-
tive form, and can hardly be differentiated now from the original
statements. It is just this fact which complicates the task of dis-
covering what the earliest group of Jesus' followers actually
thought and taught. It would be easier to build up the main
message of the early Christians from contemporary Jewish re-
ligion than from the best possible reconstruction of Jesus' mes-
sage from the data now at hand. The points generally empha-
sized as characteristic of Jesus' teaching are those variations
from the traditional Jewish thought which it is assumed that he
m'ade. The issue of the matter is that the determination of what
the earliest preachers of Christianity set forth is not greatly
hindered by the uncertainty of what Jesus himself taught. Our
immediate problem is to discover the nature and the form, if
possible, of the salvation beliefs which were built up about the
person of the risen Christ by those unknown Christian preachers
who served to perpetuate their sect in the midst of Jewish re-
ligious life until such time when necessity drove them out into
Gentile surroundings in which certain adaptations became ob-
ligatory. The fact thiat Jesus was made prominent in the Chris-
tian message, constitutes a new quest, in this particular radically
different from the traditional Jewish belief.
It follows then that any attempt to discover the ideals which
Christians held prior to about A. D. 50 must be based upon a
carefully and skillfully wrought reconstruction of the religious
belief and hope of that period in the midst of which the new
faith lived. The connection existing between early Christianity
land Judjaism is the foundation upon which all conclusions must
rest. If Christianity were to be thought of as independent of
Jewish religion, there could be no wiay of conjecturing with any
degree of probability what were the outstanding features of the
faith prior to the date of the surviving documents, which them-
selves bear no internal evidence of being unchanged records from
an earlier generation. On the other hand, it is at once patent that
Christianity, in its earliest discernible stage was not identical
with Judaism, even though it existed for a time merely as a
Jewish sect. However strenuously one may emphasize the Hellen-
istic character of Christianity at a later time, even to the extent
84 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
of claiming that the cult abandoned (all Jewish connections in
order to save itself from oblivion, it can not be urged that there
was an original Christian movement 'at an early date which knew
nothing of the religion of the Jewish people, lit seems proper,
therefore, to insist that the primitive Christian community can
not be understood apart from its Jewish connections. It follows,
also, that our enquiry into the nature of the earliest Christian
quest for salvation must be entered upon through the medium
of the relationship sustained between the mother faith and its
schismatic descendant. 2 But this task cannot be an easy one
in view of the absence of direct testimony to the message of the
earliest Christians. There are two sources from which this mes-
sage may be reconstructed, and both of these are indirect. They
are 1) contemporary Jewish thought, with which it may be shown
that Christianity once had connections, land 2) later Christian
thought, such as the Pauline correspondence, the Synoptic Gos-
pels, and the Acts of the Apostles, in which are incorporated
beliefs which can only have arisen out of an association of Jews
and Christians as just suggested. The miaterial in these documents
which is not primitive and Jewish must be either a contribution
from the Graeco-Roman world or a creation of the Christian
community itself. The procedure to be followed in our enquiry
must be that of determining as far as possible the relationship
which existed between distinctly Jewish religion and that of
the earliest Christians, and the kind of soteriology held by the
Christians as suggested by the Jewish faith most consonant with
such expressions of religion as may be seen in the earliest
literature now preserved in the New Testament.
In disposing of the question as to the relationship which
existed between the Jews and the Christians in the early years
of the history of the latter, there are certain considerations of a
very simple but primary character which must be taken into
account. Thus the earliest Christians, by whatever distinguishing
name they may have been called, were Jews, and, so far as known,
Palestinians. On the geographical side, Christianity could be of
Jewish origin only, unless by some chance Gentile culture had
become well enough established in Palestine to offer its support
to, or even create, a new religious movement. The extent to
which Greek ideas had by this time penetrated Jewish life and
thought is little more than a matter of conjecture at present,
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 85
although it is known that as eiarly as the Maccabees violent
opposition to Graecizing propaganda had arisen, iand had been
continued during the Roman period in the occasional outbursts
o'f frenzy which the populace, incited by priests or other fanatics,
participated in. 3 But even if foreign influences had become
prominent in Palestine, by the first half of the first Christian
century, there is nothing in subsequent developments within the
new religious movement to indicate that they had operated
perceptibly in its formation. The Church at Jerusalem was long
considered the mother church, even after there had arisen a
decided conflict in belief and practice. 4 This hostility between
Jews land Christians does not presuppose the development of a
Christian movement unrelated to the Jewish religion. If the
Christian movement had developed unrelated, there would proba-
bly have been only temporary friction. In fact the antagonism
between Jews and Christians points definitely to the origin and
growth (for a time) o;f Christianity in Jewish soil.
Aside from such inferential judgments as the one just stated,
there is some corroborative testimony of a somewhat positive
character in the same direction. The Hellenistic Jewish Christian
Stephen justified himself before the high priest by an appeal to
the history of the Jews. 5 Though he opposed the Jews and was
opposed by them, his chief defence was an unmistakable identi-
fication of his own faith with that which his accusers professed
to believe. He even speaks of "our race" and "our fiathers",
as if by so doing he might rob his opponents of any opportunity
to accuse him of being false to the s'acred ideals of Jewish
tradition. 6 The Apostle Paul seems to have taken a similar course
in his defences before Jewish audiences. 7 Throughout he main-
tained that he was a loyal Jew "after the straightest sect of our
religion", and "had done nothing against the people, or the
customs of our fathers. ' '
The vision o'f Peter and its interpretation, 8 also indicate how
closely bound up with strictly Jewish life were the eiarly Chris-
tians. This dream seems to have arisen to justify the hitherto
unheard-of practice of admitting within the circle those who
had not been rigid observers of the law of the Jews. Nothing
less than the sanction of God's revelation could give this proced-
ure a right to exist according to the estimation of probably a
very large proportion of the leaders. Even with the validation of
86 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
the dream, the willingness of the more progressive met with
decided opposition for some time, because of the fear that the
faith o'f the Christian sect might itself become un-Jewish. It
would seem that the Jews in their hostility to the still undif-
ferentiated {movement called it a sect, thus recognizing it as
Jewish. 9 On the other hand, the advocates of the new message
themselves saw no necessary cleavage, for some Jews who had
identified themselves with the Way were still distinguished
within the group by pre-Christian designations. 10
Frequently in Acts and the Pauline correspondence there
occur passages which show the jealousy of the rigid legalists
at the admission of Gentiles who had in no way taken upon
themselves the responsibility of keeping the law. 11 The conference
at Jerusalem, the compromise, the preaching of Paul to the
Gentiles, the success of that venture, 12 and his finial decision
to preach among the Jews no more, point unmistakably to a
time just previous to his Gentile mission during which Christian-
ity could have differed from conventional Judaism in but few
points. Apparently the difference was summed up in one issue :
Jesus was the Christ, to which the regular Jews could not assent.
The Gospels, apart from any question as to their accuracy
in representing the thought and practice of the period with which
they deal, may be called upon to testify to (this same point. The
instructions given to the apostles that they "go not into any
way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any city of the Samaritans :
but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel ' ', 13 are rettnin-
iscent of the early particularism shared by the Christian Jews and
the regular Jews alike, or f ; the Jews, it follows that the hope of salvation which
they entertained was very like that which was held within con-
temporary Judaism. But since the Jews themselves were not
agreed as to the way in which salvation could be secured, the
problem of determining how the Christians first sought for a
solution ciannot be dismissed by the mere recognition of early
Christianity's Jewish connections. There rettriains the further
task of ascertaining with what phase of Jewish thought Chris-
tianity had closest affinities and in what particulars differences
arose.
There were in Jewish religion, two extreme types of salvation
belief. These were, on the one hand, the hope of ta more or less
militaristic and nationalistic conquest, and on the other, the
hope of an apocalyptic salvation which was to find complete
expression in the Heavenly Kingdom of God. Between these two
extremes there were the various modifications which Jewish
life produced. 17
The first hope was the perpetuation of the ambitions and
designs of that line a difference in the kingdom
idea. Even beyond the period which covers the history of the
most primitive phase o:f Christian development, the typical ideas
of the apocalyptic message were unrestrained, and they probably
had been all the while. If, as some would insist, Jesus himself
taught differently, his interpretations must have soon been over-
balanced by a return to the characteristically Jewish imagery.
However it seems improbable that Jesus, living in the midst of
apocalyptic beliefs and shrinking from nationalistic and milita-
ristic lambitions, would have had occasion to evolve such a theory
of progressive evolution as that which is prevalent today. 41 But
whatever was the message of Jesus himself on this point, it must
be insisted that the glorious kingdom of Heaven was the general
expectation of the Christian community for no short period of
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 95
time, and through it men were to be saved from the distress of
the present world. 452 The affinity during this period of Christian-
ity for Judaism iand the certain presence of this belief in later
Christianity, admit o'f no doubt ion this point, though we lack
quotable evidence and proof aside from Paul, the Synoptic Gospels
and Acts, which, though written later than the time in question,
contain traditions which grew up then.
The only change which it was necessary for the Christians to
make in their beliefs concerning salvation was that the Messiah
of God who was to usher in the kingdoim, was not the vague,
indefinite figure pictured by the apocalyptists, but one who had
been among men, Jesus, now risen from the death of crucifixion,
and fully recognized by God as his Chosen One. This was indeed
a change; it constituted an issue among the Jews about which
there was much discussion 'and dispute. The activity of Jesus as
he quitely taught the necessity of heart righteousness had been
opposed by practically all his contemporaries. None of the promi-
nent Jews could assent very heartily to his message, even though
impressed by it. 43 Moreover the majority of those same Jews
were filled with bitter opposition and connived together and by
suggesting to the Roman authorities that Jesus was a menace to
the government, assisted in bringing an end to his career. Now
to bring forward the claim that this same Jesus was none other
than the Messiah who was soon to comic with the kingdoim, could
produce only denial from those who had previously opposed
Jesus. In any event, it was a hard thing for a Jew to acknowledge
that the mild-mannered Jesus was the conquering Mlessiah.
On the other hand, those who had participated in the res-
urrection experiences had a perfect vindication of their faith.
Had not they seen Jesus raised froim the dead and possessed of
a personality such as only the Messiah could have? It is true
that they believed that other persons had been raised from the
dead, but these had not been exalted to the right hand of God.
In the case of Jesus there could be no mistake in their minds.
He bad been seen by many, 44 and his conduct had been such as
to demonstrate his unusual position. With such a conviction
as this in their hearts, it was impossible for the early members
of the Christian community to acquiesce in the uncertain and
incomplete theories of their Jewish comrads in religion. The
definiteness of the Messiah of armies, such as the Maccabaean
96 QUESTS FOB SALVATION
revolt furnished, was made possible to those who longed for the
manifestation of God's kingdom in glory. Jesus was a known
individual, as contrasted with the usual (apocalyptic Messiah.
Thus he gradually became, as the controversy over his identi-
fication with the coming Savior grew sharper, the center of a
new cult within the circle of typically Jewish religious thought.
The confession of Peter at Caesarea Philippi 45 marks a primitive
identification of Jesus with the Messiah. The only alternatives
suggested are such as might arise in a strictly Jewish circle;
some said that Jesus might have been the reincarnation of some
ancient prophet (or of John the Baptist), but the words of Peter
indicate that the fact of Jesus' Messiahship was essential in
the belief of his followers. The account, whether accepted as
a record of a definite event in Jesus' experience, or more proba-
bly, as a subsequent evaluation placed upon Jesus by traditional
interpretation, leaves little doubt that the one test point by which
a true disciple might be determined by the early church, was his
acceptance of Peter's statement. The preaching of John the
Baptist was \a message of the kingdom, more than of the Messiah.
He urged men to repentance because the kingdom was at hand. 46
The Mightier One who was to follow him was not an independent
individual, but the one through whom the kingdom was to be
made effective. 47 Jesus also preached the same message, saying,
"Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." 48 One can
hardly resist the conclusion that practically all the statements
recorded in the Gospels which deal with the importance of Jesus'
Messiahship, are the result of a heightening of judgments about
him under the influence of the Christian propaganda which start-
ed when the early disciples 'and apostles began the process of
interpretation which finally eventuated in the elaborate Christ-
ology of later centuries. Salvation was the primary interest.
When Jesus began to be the person through whom this could
be brought about better than through any other, his importance
rapidly increased.
The preaching of the apostles about Jesus must have been
at first essentially the same as the preaching of John the Baptist
and Jesus, (if we except the harsher elements of John's message
which seem to have been characteristic of him). Part of Peter's
speech to his fellow Jews in Solomon's porch, is given as follows
in Acts, 49 "Repent ye therefore, and turn again, that your sins
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 97
mlay be blotted out, that so there may come seasons of refreshing
from the presence of the Lord ; and that he may send the Christ
who hath been appointed for you, even Jesus : whom the heavens
must receive until the times of restoration of all things, whereof
God spake by the mouth of his holy prophets that have been
from of old." These words might well have been spoken by any
earnest Jew of that or of preceding times, with the omission of
the name of Jesus, and the possible reference to his having been
received up into heaven. This differentiation was the starting
point of the Christian message of salvation as distinct from that
current in Judaism. Prom it grew up other allied distinctions
and finally a complete separation. The Christians seem to have
had one great plea which they made, that Jesus> was the
Messiah. 50 Continual insistence on this phase of their belief
tended toward emphasis on belief as a test of fellowship within
the group, and consequently as an important element in the
saving process. This looked forward to later Christological
definition, but in the e'arly years was only a mere statement oif
trust in Jesus, the Messiah, as the one who, by virtue of his God-
given office, would be able on the day of judgment save those who
acknowledged him, from the consequences oif their sin and the
punishment of God's wrath. 51 By such a statement of trust,
new members were, after proper initiatory rites, admitted among
the number of those whose allegiance to Jesus was a guarantee
of final salvation. Variance of opinion was as likely as among
the Jews. Some may have believed in a final judgment of both
sinners and righteous after which the sinners were either pun-
ished eternally or annihilated. Differences of opinion about
the nature and universality of the resurrection may well have
been tolerated. But Christians were identified by one thing,
whatever may have been their tendency to entertain divergent
beliefs; and that one thing was common acknowledgment that
Jesus was the Messiah and had power to save. His power was yet
to be manifested. Paul's idea of a pre-existant being who emptied
himself of heavenly glory was apparently not a part o;f the primi-
tive message, though even Paul seemed to have attached little
saving significance to the earthly life of Jesus except that through
obedience he merited promotion to the office o!f the exalted
Messiah. 52
While these features were characteristic of primitive Chris-
98 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
tianity it must not be supposed that they faded out and were lost
immediately upon the spread of the faith in non-Jewish fields.
Paul, and he was by no means the first to respond to Hellenistic
stimuli, retained the imagery of the apocalyptic kingdom, and
designated Jesus as the Christ or Messiah. It must be acknowl-
edged, however, that * ' Christ ' ' was used more and more as a title
title or name, and less as a term descriptive of the function
played by thee Messiah in the redemptive scheme.
Besides Paul and his Hellenistic associates, there were those
wlio insisted on a Jewish type of salvation. They were the
Judaizers, those who sought to preserve the earlier and more typ-
ically Jewish faith. Paul's resistance to them marks the first
known deviation of any consequence from the standard faith of
the early period. But the fact of their existence indicates the
certainty of a Messianic Christianity, which was at the same time
essentially Jewish, prior to the easily recognized Christianity of
the Hellenistic world. This primitive type was also perpetuated
for no inconsiderable length of time. The Ebionite sects of the
second century may have been the reappearance of the earlier
Messianic faith. But the destruction of records of this faith, in
a time when it was discredited by the Hellenistic adaptation, and
the reworking of the older sources to make them express the
newer conceptions, tended to reduce distinctly primitive Chris-
tian religion to little more than a memory.
There are certain evidences of a continuation of the early ideas
in Jewish form. Thus the book of Revelation, however much it
may reflect contact with Graeco-Roman civilization, conveys a
message which is very much like that of the apocalyptic of late
Jewish religion. The one characteristically Christian feature, af-
fecting the soteriology of the book, is the identification of Jesus
with the glorious figure which was soon to come out of the clouds
in a demonstration of God's supreme power and authority. The
Epistle of James which does not deal specifically with the salva-
tion interest, is reminiscent of the Jewish teaching about the
keeping of the law and the doing of good works, and finally refers
definitely to the final judgment of the Lord. 53 The content of the
epistle would not have been inharmonious in the earliest period
of Christianity. Indeed it was not in conflict with the Christian-
ity of its time, yet it does not express those elements which serve
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 99
to mark the development of the faith into a more comprehensive
message of salvation. 54
Just as the ideas about salvation which arose in the midst of
Jewish national experience were perpetuated alongside newer
and more necessary ideas of the Graeco-Roman world, so there
was continued an even earlier kind of salvation interest. As
suggested in the opening chapter of this study, the stimuli which
prompted primitive man to seek salvation determined also the
form which was given to his theory. Thus when man's chief
interest lay in the simple but important tasks connected with
the maintenance of physical life, those incidents in the course of
nature which thwarted his existence were the very things, the
repetition of which he sought to prevent through some action of
his own or of his god whose favor might be secured in some
way. His conduct in the case was determined by his taking one
of two possible courses. If he conceived of power being ta prop-
erty of the god and mechanically available, he sought salvation
by getting into contact with that power. Or if, as in the case of
the Jews and early Christians, God was a person, who saved his
devotee only because of a personal relationship existing between
the two, then salvation was sought through conduct.
By the time of the Christian era, the cruder forms of social life
had been refined through development and diversification oif the
methods of maintenance and perpetuation, both of the individual
and of the group. Human lif# was apparently, though not actual-
ly, farther removed from the basic instincts and necessities which
underlie ( all existence. Hence there was at this time no place for
a pure nature religion with its technique for securing the bless-
ings of a bountiful harvest through the aversion of drought, flood,
and plagues. God was the giver of all perfect gifts, but he was
not nature personified.
Salvation was not primarily from the physical manifestations
of evil power as seen in flood and famine, except in the simpler
forms oif religious society. There demons were popularly the
cause of all evil, disaster, and suffering. 55 This was a common
feature in all religions of this time, and was not consistently
opposed by the most intelligent religious leaders, but was accept-
ed without question by practically all. This unchallenged theory
of demonology went along with a widespread practice of healing
by means of exorcism or the exercise of magical power by virtue
100 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
of the authority residing in a person or invoked in his name.
In the New Testament there is no indication that the interest
in primitive racial salvation was ever placed in the forefront.
There were numerous occasions when suggestions and remin-
iscences were employed to enrich the salvation which was sought.
The healing of sickness by exorcism or other means was no doubt
a more or less common practice. The increasing interest in Jesus 7
earthly life and the demonstration of his Miessiahship from the
beginning, prompted the embellishment of the story of his career
by references to healings and exorcisms without number. Acts 56
relates the story of Paul 's miraculous power and contrasts it with
the works of strolling Jewish exorcists some of whose magical
books were finally yielded up to destruction, not because the
practice was objectionable in itself, but because the name and
power of Jesus should only be used by chosen believers in him.
It is unnecessary to mention specifically the healings, exorcisms,
and resurrections attributed to Jesus, and less frequently to the
apostles of the new faith. These practices and beliefs were the
product of the common experiences of Jews and Gentiles. They
were joined to more characteristic beliefs of the time to form
cumulative evidence of the certainty of salvation from God. Put-
ting taside the question as to whether or not Jesus prompted confi-
dence in God's willingness to save by the performance of wonder-
ful deeds, it is easy enough to see that in proportion as his ffol-
lowers interpreted his earthly life as Messianically significant,
they would be inclined to attribute to him many acts of power
in order to demonstrate that he had while on earth been divinely
accredited tas the agent of salvation. It is not possible to indicate
the progress of this interpretation, but there can be little doubt
that, if in the first years after Jesus ' death, his followers thought
of him as yet to manifest his Messianic power, there would be
little reason for picturing his earthly experience so prominently
in terms of miracles of healing, etc. While healing was a very
commonplace feature of the time, and should be recognized as
one of the phases of the salvation interest, its attachment to Jesus
as Messiah and to the whole scheme of redemption, (officially
recognized in both Judaism and Christianity), remains somewhat
indefinite. 57
If the conclusions regarding the kind of salvation sought by
primitive Christianity, which have been brought forth, possess
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMEX
any merit of exactness or suggestiveness, a characterization of it
may now be offered. In as much as the earliest Christians were
also Jews entertaining beliefs not radically different from ortho-
dox Judaism aside from the identification of Jesus with the Heav-
enly Messiah and Savior, their conceptions of the process by
which salvation would be brought about was essentially that of
their closest kin among the Jews. Since Jesus had died without
setting up an earthly kingdom, it was of course impossible for his
followers to 'advocate what has been designated the nationalistic
type of salvation. There remained for them but one alternative,
apocalyptic salvation.
What has been said about the Jewish quests may also be said
about that quest in which these Christians were engaged. It was
one in which the outcome was determined by the personal rela-
tions sustained by the members of the society to their God and
his special representative, the Messiah, but particularly to God.
There was present no theory of nature or essence such as may be
seen in the characteristic Graeco-Roman religions. One could not
appropriate God-stuff as in the mysteries, nor was his salvation
guaranteed by his possession by nature of an irreducible minimum
of divinity in his soul, the cultivation of which would lift one
above the petty things of this world and finally literally unite him
with God. The Jews were not sacramentalists, at least not the
typical Jews of Palestine ; neither were the primitive Christians.
Their ideas of salvation had much closer affinties to the motive
of emperor worship and some phases of Mithraism in which the
cult member is represented as being benefited by the personal in-
terest of the deity. This kind of salvation possesses a sort of in-
herent "trinity", a person to be saved, an objective salvation,
and a person through whom this end may be accomplished. The
other type of salvation process involves a blending of the objec-
tive salvation and the saving agency in an impersonal power in
which the seeker after salvation may find his rest by a subjective
identification.
Christianity in its earliest stage, whether interpreted from its
relation to contemporary Judaism, or from the later literary evi-
dence which continued the primitive beliefs, was a quest for
salvation by means of personal relations to God. "Ye cannot
serve God and mammon" ; 58 "If ye then, being evil, know how to
give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your
,j<$. '.*.': ' QUESTS FOE SALVATION
Father who is in Heaven give good things to them that ask
him'' ; 69 "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself,
and take up his cross, and follow me. ' ' 60 These are characteristic
statements in the Christian message. As the Christ of Christian-
ity was more prominent, more personalized than the Messiah of
Judaism, the Christian believer stood in a very close relationship
to his Savior, who had done so much to merit the allegiance of
his follower. Although the Christian was really unable to effect
his own salvation, for only God could do that, he might by a life
of devoted service and proper conduct, gain assurance that he
was already saved by anticipation. According to the strict inter-
pretation of the Messianic scheme, no definite guarantee of sal-
vation could be given short of the final judgment, though legalism
assumed to give a certain degree of finality. The Christian iden-
tification of the risen Jesus with the Messiah furnished the same
kind o ! f assurance that Judaism offered, but the growing ten-
dency to identify the earthly Jesus with the Messiah gave a
much more definite assurance. His promises, his teaching, as
well as his deeds, gave every reason for believing that the 'age
would soon be consummated and all who would cleave to the
Master, would enjoy the blessings of the kingdom of the saved.
In such a quest the primitive Christians engaged, starting from
an essentially Jewish conception of salvation, and gradually ac-
quiring elements by which they as a group were to be differen-
tiated from all others. Their growing contact with the Hellenistic
world and the increasing cleavage between Christians and Jews,
tended to modify the formal side of their religion until they
found themselves participating in & quest for salvation in many
particluars quite different from the first in which they took part.
The earlier quest was conditioned by Jewish life with its religious
formalism and c'asuistry, and high ethical zeal, and by Roman
provincialism and group particularism. The later quest was
worked out in the midst of universalism syncretism, philosophy,
and mysticism, such as were not prevalent in the traditional
Judaism of Palestine.
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 103
CHAPTER V.
THE JEWISH CHRISTIAN QUEST IN A HELLENISTIC
WORLD.
The Christian movement did not long continue in a tolerant
relationship with Judaism. Much bitter feeling (arose between
the two groups and gradually widened the breach between them
until they are later found in open and merciless opposition. 1 In
the first stage o'f the separation which can be distinguished, the
spirit of opposition seems to have been expressed by the Jews
rather than by the Christians. This state of 'affairs is everywhere
apparent in the New Testament and must have originally been
occasioned largely by the prominence given to Jesus as Messiah.
The Jews did not necessarily hold to beliefs which were not
acceptable to Christians. Christians could easily find congenial
minds among the Jews as far as Jewish religious thought was
concerned, particularly among the Pharisees. But the Jews could
not accept the distinguishing feature of the Christians, the Mes-
siahship of Jesus. The Messianic kingdom was common property,
but in proportion as the person of the Messiah was brought into
the foreground the breach between the two parties was widened
and made permanent. This eventuated in the departure of the
Christian mission from the Jewish field and its entrance into the
Gentile. Hence the significant term, the Gentile Mission, by
which the early evangelistic enthusiasm is designated.
Christianity, as it moved out into its new field of activity, did
so, not with a series of questions which it propounded to its hear-
ers, but with an answer to the question so frequently asked:
''What must I do to be saved?" The Christians believed that
they had reached the end of their quest when they made the dis-
covery that Jesus was the Miessiah. And when that was done,
they were content to address their Jewish associates in order to
convince them of the same saving fact. If there had been no oc-
casion to go farther into the world, their quest would indeed have
been ended, and there would have been nothing left to occupy
their attention except propaganda. They would have been
searching for nothing except new recruits for the Kingdom of
Heaven among a people who understood their message and only
asked for assurance that they might be saved in the faith of
their fathers.
104 QUESTS FOB SALVATION
But there were people in the audiences of the Christian mis-
sionaries who had many questions in their minds, and in addition
they had convictions which grew -out of their own religious experi-
ences for which Judaism and Christianity had no adequate ex-
planations. To those who had a keen appreciation of the meaning
of personal allegiance to a ruler, the conventional answer of
Jewish Christianity to questions about salvation was clear : Be-
come a member of the group which is doing now the will of God
land believe that when his good time comes, he will bring you to
himself in safety, with a miraculous manifestation of his power.
But to those who wished to escape from the crude flesh and its
limitations and be transformed by a miraculous infusion of deity,
this ready made answer gave no satisfaction. Thus by raising
questions which had hitherto been unasked in Christian circles,
the new members compelled the movement to retain its character
as a quest.
There were other factors which tended to lead Christianity into
a broader field of activity, factors which indeed marked the com-
patibility of Judaism and Christianity rather than the opposite.
There was the nature and character of Judaism with which the
new faith was so closely associated and from which it gained so
much of its strength. Judaism furnished the radiating lines
along which Christianity was spread as it was transmitted
through the medium of the synagogue meetings. Judaislm was
by no means confined to Palestine. There were Jews in Egypt,
Syria, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Media, Asia Minor, and Rome.
In all there were between four and five millions of Jews, less than
one million of whom lived in Palestine. 2 The great numbers and
wide distribution of Jews can hardly be explained on the basis
of natural increase of population. There must have been an in-
sistent propaganda among certain classes who were by race and
social status similar to the Jews of the Dispersion, or who were
attracted by the high ethics and rigid monotheism which the
Scriptures set forth. It has been customary to think of the Jews
as very particularistic, so much so that it was impossible for an
extensive missionary enterprise to be carried out. This no doubt,
was true of the narrower Palestinian faith, but there were broad-
er and more universal tendencies at work in Judaism as a whole,
looking to a less nationalistic and more cosmopolitan religion. 3
This propaganda was not accompanied, however, by a willingness
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 105
to syncretise with the various faiths which lay in its on-going
path. There was a continual insistence on ethical conduct of the
individual 'and Jehovah as the only God, whose laws must be
obeyed, in view of the coming judgment. It was this which gave
the Jewish people solidarity and unified interests. Even the dis-
continuance of sacrificial observances in the Dispersion did not
destroy the sanctity of the law and the worship of God. This was
merely an incident in the modification of the less essential features
oif the faith, a modification flanked by the two extremes of com-
promising tolerance and fanatical exclusiveness. 4
In this process of modification, the worship of the synagogue
played a prominent part. The Jews had certain privileges of
citizenship which seemed more or less attractive to less favored
ones, as for instance, in Alexandria. 5 But more significant was
the sympathetic adherence of the non-Jew to the worship of the
synagogue, where the asserted antiquity of the sacred Scriptures
established the rightfulness of the faith. The result was that
a great number of "God-fearers" 6 attended the services of the
Sabbath >and thereby gave the religion a certain degree of re-
spectability in Graeco-Roman eyes. Josephus informs us that at
Antioch "the Jews continued to attract a large number of the
Greeks to their services, making them in a sense part of them-
selves." 7 What was true at Antioch was equally true in other
places. Those who wished a closer affiliation with Judaism might
secure it by becoming proselytes and assuming the same respon-
sibilty to the law that a born Jew did. But this stage of member-
ship was m'ade somewhat unpopular by the necessity of submit-
ting to certain initiatory rites which were more or less repulsive
to the Gentile, and by the fact that limited privileges were grant-
ed to the newcomers.
One can easily imagine the effect this fact may well have had
in promoting the Gentile Mission of Christianity in connection
with other influences less divisive in tendency. Christianity and
Judaism may have worked side by side appealing to the same
people by much the same argument. After the development of
friction between Jews and Christians in Palestine, there may have
continued a fairly harmonious relationship in the Dispersion. In
any event, whenever the God-fearer had an opportunity to listen
to the messengers of the similar faiths, Christianity land Judaism,
he would be attracted to the one which required of him the least
106 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
in the way of repelling rites and ceremonies and offered at the same
time the fullest privileges of membership. Furthermore, the
Christian mission, being somewhat elastic because of its newness,
and centering its emphasis on Jesus as the Messiah instead of on
the law. and ceremony, could make concessions that the older
faith could not yield. Thus the pagan sympathizer and admirer
of the Jehovah religion probably served as one of the entering
wedges between Judaism and Christianity, by virtue of the fact
that he was desired as a member and supporter of each religion.
As a prize of contest, he may have been the passive agent of many
modifications of the primitive message of Christian faith. The
God-fearer was a seeker after salvation, and Christianity no less
than Judaism, was seeking to give him assurance of salvation.
The apostles of the Gentile Mission did not condescend to let the
pagan enquirer dictate the terms of the exchange, but the history
of the early years shows that many who were not Jews believed, 8
and the success of the preaching would hardly permit the suppo-
sition that all concessions were made by those em/braced Chris-
tianity. Only a conquest of the sword can maintain its message
unchanged, and Christianity was not that. Its dealings with the
Gentiles were on a basis acceptable to both.
On the whole Judaism furnished Christianity with a great deal
of content in its early years and even during the period of its
gradual separation. The preceding chapter indicates in part the
message which Judaism gave to primitive Christianity. Its syn-
cretistic tendency and its propaganda also contributed to the en-
dowment of the new faith with a certain degree of adaptability
and vitality, while on the side of more external features it was no
less the cause of Christianity's success, since it had acquainted
the Gentile world with the religious forms and ideas with which
the Christian mission operated. 9
There were, however other influences which offered Christian-
ity, as a new phase of religion, an opportunity to undertake its
own work separately from that of Judaism. These were the char-
acteristically Hellenistic features of the Gentile civilization work-
ing in conjunction with the Koman political policy. Only by an al-
most absolute withdrawal from intercourse with the rest of the
world would Christianity have been able to keep herself free from
these influences, and when once she came into contact with them,
they offered remarkable inducements to undertake a task less cir-
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 107
cumscribed by narrowness titan that which Judaism adhered to,
even when least particularistic. There may be mentioned in this
connection 1) the cultural tendencies of the age as seen in the pro-
motion of Hellenistic thought among >all peoples for the purpose
of cementing- them together; 2) the break-down of social distinc-
tions hitherto accepted without comment and the opportunity of
self -elevation made comparatively easy for all; 3) the religious
situation as seen in a tolerant attitude toward all cults, and the
recognition of religious interests previously considered trivial and
inconsequential, or ever despicable, jby the typical influential citi-
zen, and 4) the changing political method, which now sought to
establish a world empire on the basis of a monarchy which guar-
anteed material prosperity and relative freedom in local organi-
zations in exchange for absolute allegiance to the one ruler. This
latter characteristic of the first Christian century, since it fostered
the idea of centralized authority, had a great deal to do, on its
non-political side, with the propagation of the monotheistic ideal,
both within and without Christianity. 10 On the concrete side,
these phases of Graeco-Roman life were really potent forces in
the shaping of all movements which operated within the range o ! f
their influence. In large measure they were different from the
characteristic qualities of the Jewish and primitive Christian life,
and in some instances entirely opposite. Quite logically, there-
fore, as soon as the Chrstian movement was brought into touch
with the Gentile world, through the leading of Judaism itself or
because of its own inherent genius, it met forces which tended to
advance it still farther in the direction of an independent mission,
in which Jewish influences had diminishing prominence.
It must be borne in mind that there was a potential cleavage
between the Christians and the Jews in the identification of Jesus
with the coming Messiah. Emphasis was thereby shifted from the
importance of the law and tradition, and in proportion as the Mes-
siahship of Jesus was insisted upon, the adherents of the law ac-
cused the Christians of infidelity to the most sacred things of
G-od. But this whole dispute was within the range of Jewish
thought and experience. Therefore it cannot be said that the
contact with the Gentile world was the primary cause of the
divergence of the Christian mission from its Jewish ancestry.
Antecedent to that was the difference of belief on a matter which
was purely Jewish. When once the question was raised and dis-
108 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
agreement registered, further variation was stimulated by con-
tact with the non-Jewish world, from which reinforcements were
drawn in the form of greater numerical .adherents and more
effective thought-processes.
The course which Christianity followed in making its way
from its Jewish environment out into the Gentile world cannot
be followed in detail. The author of the book of Acts is very
conscious of the development of the Gentile mission and the
final repudiation of Judaism. 11 His selection and use of materials
in the first half of the book give ample testimony to this point.
His zeal in presenting this cleavage between Christianity and
Judaism may well have obscured some of the actual stages by
which it took place, though it is still clear that the author recog-
nized that the gospel was first preached to the Jews and only
offered to the Gentiles because of the refusal of Jews to listen
to the good tidings. 12
The first center of Christian activity was Jerusalem. The
early gospel tradition referred to the appearances of the risen
Jesus in Galilee, 13 but under the influence of a rival Jerusalem tra-
dition, Luke's rendering of the reference to Galilee was altered
ingeniously to permit the introduction of another account of
Jesus' appearance. 14 The Lucan interest in the Jerusalem tra-
dition is continued in the opening verses of Acts. 15 A church was
there established which apparently was the center from which
other churches were started in the outlying districts of Judaea, 16
and also in Galilee and Samaria, 17 at Damascus, 18 and subsequent-
ly to the West on the sea-coast. 19 While these churches were ap-
parently started by members of the Jerusalem church who had
been forced to leave because of persecution, 20 it is not clear that
any rigid oversight was maintained by the mother church. In all
probability the preaching was mostly confined to Jewish audi-
ences. At an early time the Grecian Jews became quite promi-
nent and secured a change in administration for the advantage of
their own members. 21 Also Philip's successful preaching to the
Ethiopian eunuch 22 would indicate an early attention to pros-
pective proselytes. No doubt the conditions under which non-
Jews were admitted to the group were at first similar to those
demanded by the Jews themselves, and no severe hostility was
universally expressed toward the Christians. But persecutions
did come as may be seen from both Acts and Paul. 23 One is in-
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 100
clined to believe that the rupture between Christians and Jews
was made likely by the admission of a considerable number of
Hellenistic Jews as well as by the message which was preached. 24
To those who listened attentively to the Christians because
they were eager to hear a satisfying message of salvation, the
preaching was no doubt very like that of the earliest preaching
to the Jews: "The kingdom of heaven is at hand", 25
supplemented by the call to repentance ias preparation
for its coming, 26 and by the assertion that Jesus was the
Messiah who was soon to come and set up the kingdom. 27 Appar-
ently the only crucial question which could have iarisen at this
time was concerned with the problem of admitting non-Jews into
the community. Stephen, a Hellenistic Jew and Christian,
aroused the Jews by preaching Jesus, the Messiah, as the one who
would set aside the law and the temple. 28 Philip, another of the
Hellenists, did not hesitate to welcome into the fellowship of the
Christians the Ethiopian eunuch, 29 and probably iniany others of
the "God-fearers". The baptism of the Gentile Cornelius by Peter
has the same significance for this early movement. This practice
of admitting to full fellowship those who had not met the prelim-
inary conditions of the law contained within it the latent force of
a (further development in the direction of 'an independent move-
ment, of a separate quest for salvation. 30
The second center of the Christian mission was at Antioch, 31
where the activities of the scattered disciples were centered.
Prominent in the work of the Antioch church were Hellenistic
leaders as a partial list indicates, 32 B'arnabas, Simeon Niger,
Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen, and Saul. Their preaching was at
least partly to Greeks, 33 in continuation of the practice suggested
by the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch and of Peter and
Cornelius. Later it was from Antioch that an authorized mission
was made to the Gentiles. 34 The Christian movement had become
so widely differentiated from Judaism that it received a distin-
guishing title. 35 The points of actual difference increased about
this time and caused a more crucial controversy with the original
movement than had previously existed. The (account of the dif-
ferences given in Acts 15 bear the stamp of being confused and
somewhat lacking in decisiveness. Paul's statement, 36 though
lacking in detail, is more illuminating. The first problem, which
arose early in the career of the Christians, was, as suggested
110 QUESTS FOR SALVATION
above, one which dealt with the admission of non-Jews without
the necessity of observing Mosaic requirements. It was settled
in favor of the liberal side. 37 Later another discussion arose, this
time at Antioch, and dealing not with the admission of members
but with relations within the group between the Jewish Christians
and the Grecian Christians, whose entrance into the community
had been conditioned differently 'according to the agreement
made. This problem also was settled in favor of the liberals. 38
By this time certainly, Christian preaching was yielding some
of its positions, formerly so strenuously held. It did so, not be-
cause of an independent judgment based on logical analysis, but
because of the success of the venture among the Gentiles. The
message of salvation mjust have lacked much of the formalism
which it had when it left Jerusalem, and advocated more strenu-
ously faith in Jesus as superior to any requirements of
the law. 39 As a quest for salvation in which Jews and Gentiles
alike might take part it threatened the very existence of the
Jewish phase of the work, because of the departure into Gentile
lands land the recognition of the inapplicability of the law to their
needs. By the same token, there would be. every reason to postu-
late as complementary to the negative attitude toward the law,
a positive evaluation of some elements within Gentile religious
experience.
The spread of the Gentile mission from this point was domi-
nated for a considerable period by the work and personality of
Paul. His missionary tours led him farther and 'farther from
Jerusalem and Antioch, though he always had a sentimental at-
tachment to these places. Even when he wished to go to Rome
to complete the world-wide mission, he was constrained to turn
aside rather reluctantly that he might carry back in person the
"collection for the saints" and thus pledge anew his loyalty to
the Jerusalem church. 49 A sense of responsibility did not im-
press itself upon his mind -at once, even though he afterward in-
terpreted his commission as dating from his conversion, 41 as also
the author of Acts did. 42 Paul's first activities were in Arabia
and about Damascus. 43 Gradually his sense of a mission increased
until he left the field of the Jews and entered upon his wider
work. His first tour was not the fruit of a fully developed con-
sciousness of the Gentile mission. His second tour seems to have
been the result of a greater missionary 'aim, as was his third jour-
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 111
ney also. Ephesus, 44 and other cities of that part of the Mediter-
ranean world assumed primary importance in the Christian mis-
sion to the Gentiles, and remained prominent for many years.
The churches in this section received many letters from Paul
during his life time, and played no inconsiderable part in the
collection and standardization of Christian literature other than
Paul's.
Paul's ambition to visit the capital city of the world was the
beginning of the final stage of the Gentile mission which made its
chief aim that of preaching the gospel to all the world then
known. The belief that the coming of Jesus and the kingdom
would thus be hastened was the motive of this plan of universal
evangelization. Others than Paul had this conviction. 45 As the
task of carrying the gospel to the whole world was carried on and
as the keenness of the apocalyptic message was lost in the midst
of other world views, the universal character of the Christian
preaching and the necessity of proclaiming it, were established
on other grounds than the sudden coming of the kingdom.
The labors of the Apostle Paul do not mark either the begin-
ning* or the end or the process of transference by which Christian-
ity was inducted from its exclusively Jewish environment into
the Gentile world. He had not participated in the earliest years
of the movement, and he was not for a number of years the most
prominent exponent of Christianity. Little is known of the
activities of the individual apostles, though the names of Peter,
James, and John, occur somewhat frequently in the annals of the
early years. Tradition kept alive for some time the names of
others. But of the rather large number of those who assisted in
the dissemination of Christian beliefs, we have no informing
records. Paul calme in on -the crest of the wave, as far as the
Gentile mission is concerned, and left a body of letters which
gives us a better understanding of the work that he undertook
than in the case of any other evangelist of his time. The presence
of his writings has caused 'some to overestimate the reconstruction
of belief which he is supposed to have effected. Without in the
least depreciating Paul's significance in the development of early
Christianity in the Graeco-Eoman world, it may be said that he
registered the tendencies of the time and of the task, rather than
that he was responsible for a salvaging and reconstruction of
the gospel.
112 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
It is indeed unfortunate for our fuller understanding of
the period that more and better records of the transition stage
between Jewish and Gentile Christianity are not available from
which might be reconstructed the message of salvation by which
the quest was furthered among those who turned sympathetically
to the Gospel. However positive the first preachers may have
been as they turned from Jerusalem to Antioch and later to Asia
Minor and Italy, and however unchanged their gospel miay have
been, those who were drawn to them had sought elsewhere before
they had heard of Jesus, and they had found partial salvation
in different places. Whether they would or not, they colored
the faith which they last accepted with the experiences of their
previous life. On the formal side of the shift of Christianity
from Palestine to the Gentile world there is no disputing the
influx of pagans into the memlbership of the church. The problem
which arises next is whether or not the unquestioned fact of con-
tact with a new environment modified in any particular the quest
for salvation which was taken up by those who became identified
with the new faith either as seekers after personal salvation or
as propagandists for the good of others. The only possible sources
for new elements are, on the one hand, the Jewish-Christian life
of the primitive Christian quest with its combination of Jewish
beliefs and Christian creations, and on the other, the new world
in which the movement was operating. 46
The social situations with which the church was conditioned,
were now no longer those of Palestine, but those of a different
civilization. Salvation was not sought in the midst of Jewish
nationalism, though the structure of the theory of salvation still
contained many of the old-time elements. If there were new
elements, in what way were they blended with the old heritage
and in what proportion were they present?
The Jewish soteriology was as prominent in Paul as in any
other evangelist in the progressive wing of the Christian church.
The ultra Jewish faction did not last long, unless it be that it
continued for 'a time in Palestine, and then was pushed eastward
to Pella at the time of the war of A.D. 66-70, 47 from which region it
influenced subsequent Christianity through the Ebionite heresies
of the second century. But even so, this conservative group
did not have any determinative influence upon the history o ! f the
church and its final success in the Roman Empire.
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 113
In the experimental work in which Christianity engaged,
there could hardly have been uniformity. In fact the history
of the early church bears ample testimony to variation and fre-
quent disagreement. There were no means by which harmony
could be effected except such voluntary agreements as might be
set up tjy friendly associations. The so-called apostolic council
was of this nature, yet the degree of uniformity which this secured
was very limited. At best it was a decree of toleration observed
by groups working by different methods and in different fields.
But in as much as the Christian movement at this stage of its
development embraced all those divergent groups which were
trying to present their offer of salvation to an enquiring world,
(not to mention the strictly Jewish party), all the various ele-
ments which go to make up the composite message must be taken
into .account.
To those Gentile enquirers who approached the advocates
of Christianity, it is obvious that a fairly uniform answer was
given, as far as the initiative of the missionaries was concerned.
It embraced the idea of the kingdom of God, whose prospective
members, having prepared themselves by the observance of speci-
fied conditions, awaited its full establishment through the work
of Jesus the Messiah. The blessings of salvation were pictured
in terms of joyful homage paid to God, entire separation from
hated enemies, and an everlasting life of transcendentalized
earthly and social experiences. The elements of the soteriology
were presented with considerable sharpness, possessing such dis-
tinctly Jewish features that any other identification would be
impossible. If modifications of this message are to be noted in
the utterances of the Christians, it is to be explained by the de-
mands of the new converts which could not be satisfied on the
basis of typically Jewish-Christian beliefs.
The correspondence of Paul offers the best illustration of
the answer given to enquirers whether Jewish or Gentile. No
other individual who participated in the early stages of the mi-
gratory movement out into a Gentile world has left such a wealth
of informing literature, and in no one does the question of sal-
vation reach such acuteness. One may judge from his epistles
what the predominating message of Christianity imust have been.
Some adhered more closely to the Jewish ideal, and others were
not sensitive to the sharp clash which existed between the two
114 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
religious attitudes involved. But Paul attempted to bring them
into a working harmony, and for this reason better reveals the
characteristic side of Christian activity than any other. There
.is little probability that he was in any way the inventor of new
principles of religious thought; indeed his application of princi-
ples miay have, in many cases, followed the lead of his teachers
and associates within the church, though he boldly asserts that
he received his gospel, not from men, but through the revelation
of Christ, 48 a statement which he supports by the account of
his conversion.
In the first verses of the fifth chapter of Romans, Paul gives
a succinct statement of what it means to be saved, a statement
that is elaborated and supplemented by many ;other passages.
(1) There is an assertion of a peaceful relation with God, or a
kind of anticipatory justification, which is made possible through
faith in Jesus Christ. (2) Hope of the final approval of God emerges
from this peace and assurance. (3) But Paul returns to urge that
the tribulations of this life test man and serve as a basis of this
hope. (4) The love of God is shown by the death of Jesus in
behalf of unrighteous mankind with which the operation of the
Holy Spirit was in some way linked up. (5) Assurance of final
sialvation is seen in the fact that sinners who believe are justified.
This is more difficult to believe than the final salvation from the
wrath of God, but when once accepted removes all difficulties
attending the manifestation of apocalyptic power and its attend-
ing judgment of salvation. If Paul had added here his conviction
that salvation is for all who believe, he would have touched upon
all the main points of this theme, in the compass of a few sen-
tences. The points mentioned for the most part fit in with the
more pictorial representations of apocalypticism in its less radical
forms.
The prominence of faith in the place often given to the works
of the law is not incompatible with the Judaism of the day.
The demands of propaganda and of competition introduced faith
as a criterion by which one gave evidence of his allegiance to
this or that religion. Its importance was naturally increased
more in the Dispersion than in Palestine where the problem was
conservation and not expansion. However it was greatly em-
phasized in the Christian movement from the very beginning
because of the fact that the one point of differentiation between
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 115
the two faiths, Judaism and Christianity, was one which could
only be apprehended ,by belief. The only way by which the
Messiahship oif Jesus could be preached w.as on the basis of faith.
Those who came into Christianity did so because they believed
in Jesus. 49 The rivalry of cults in the Graeco-Romiain world and
the corresponding prominence given to faith is attested by the
Fourth Gospel. Here faith, somewhat intellectualized it is true,
is indispensable in the redemptive scheme. 50 But the difference
between emotional faith and intellectual faith is not sufficient
to break down the general opposition between faith and works.
In the field covered by faith and legal works, the great ideas
of Paul's correspondence are developed. While he gave a per-
sonal stamp to his arguments and may have greatly influenced
contemporary opinion, it is impossible to insist that he alone was
seeking to find an adjustment of the Christian message to its
new environment. The position of the opponents of Paul, un>-
known to us except through the medium of his letters, while
differing radically from his view as a member of the Disper-
sion, followed fairly familiar lines of thought, and only developed
his polemic against legalism when under pressure from the
Judaizers. So bitter became his opposition to the law as a means
of salvation that he propounded the belief ttoat God must redeem
man from the law itself.
The steps by which Paul 's position was reached are not clear
and open, and it is a task of great intricacy to outline what seems
most probably to have been the factors which Lay behind his
formulation. In the case of the conventional Jewish exposition
of the divine redemptive plan, the explanation seems quite defi-
nite. By a course of conduct on the part of man, God is made
willing to restore him to a position of favor, and this will be
consummated on the day of final judgment. The terms of the
transaction always were in God's control. He could make them
as hard or as easy as he would. He could always forgive man
when he so desired. The prominence which Christians gave to
Jesus as Messiah had no real effect on this view, beyond the fact
that the Messiah now did the forgiving, with the sanction of
God. 55 This variation was due simply to the position of the
exalted Jesus as God's official representative. But there was
also a desire for forgiveness of sins prior to the day of judgment,
In response to this we see Jesus' power of forgiveness brought
into operation immediately. Acts 2 :38 and Luke 24 :47 tare proba-
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 117
bly to be understood in this way, though they are not out of
keeping with the apocalyptic scheme. Moreover there are inci-
dents in the gospel narrative of Jesus' life which show that Jesus
was while on earth able, by virtue of the authority which he
possessed, to forgive sins without delay. 56
In all this, however, there is no word of anything beyond
Jesus' power to forgive sins, comparable to God's undisputed
power. There is in these passages no hint that Jesus need die
for the removal of human sin. But the idea of vicarious death
was not unknown among Jews of that period .and earlier. 57 It
was based primarily on the conviction of social solidarity 'and the
identification of the group with its authorized representative.
This was a view which Paul accepted himself in reference to the
death of Jesus, 58 and which was also used to explain how sin
could be present in all people through the transgression of
Adam. 59 The belief finds its origin in the experiences of primitive
life and is continued into modern society wherever the sense of
social responsibility is at all keenly felt. On this ground, one
might suffer and die for the sins of his people, and such a belief
was present in the primitive Christian message which Paul re-
ceived: "that Christ died for our sins according to the scrip-
tures". 60 The fact of Jesus' death, a stumbling block in the early
days of the Christian community, was thus brought under the
sanction of a divine plan in which the cross became necessary.
When this vindication of the death of Jesus was secured
there was no need of further elaboration of the vicarious ele-
ment. Christians were content to see the saving significance of
Jesus in the authority of his exalted Messiahship and in the
vicarious death for our sins. There was no need of an elaboration
of these points into a scheme other than the one taken over from
the Jews. Paul, however, in view of his controversies with the
Judaizers, was forced to define his position more in detail. The
death of Jesus was necessary for man's salvation, because on
other grounds he could not maintain the dignity and justice of
his dealings with man. 61 The law made requirements, and God
himself had made the law, faulty and temporary though it was.
Therefore the atoning death took place, and the law which had
made it necessary was then set aside, and a new one put in its
place. This phase of the discussion is not for the purpose of
assuring men that sin will be forgiven, but to explain the setting
118 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
aside of the law, which Paul (acknowledged as of divine origin,
end of divine authority for a time at least. The forgiveness of
sins is still confidently based on the authority of Jesus Christ
which will be shown at the proper time, 62 and salvation from the
law, while very important in Paul's thought, is after all, inci-
dental to the great salvation of the final judgment.
Besides the explanation of Jesus' death in terms of juridi-
cal relationship, as would be natural when dealing with the law,
there are a number of passages in which Paul unmistakably uses
the language of sacrifice. 63 The Jews of the Dispersion had lost
their original feeling for the sacrificial system, but it had a great
deal of symbolic value on account of their history and traditions.
Paul probably puts this meaning into his imagery of the sacrifice.
It is not a basic argument, but it can not be explained except as
baving been drawn from the institution which had such great
power at an earlier time.
Starting with the faith in Jesus as Messiah, the central fea-
ture in the Christian propaganda, the problem of salvation was
interpreted by the leaders in the traditional way as far as pos-
sible. It would seem that Paul and doubtless others of his type,
were driven to greater reliance on faith and less reliance on law
than was ordinarily the case. This was brought about, not by Hel-
lenistic sympathies at the outset, but by the ultra-Jewish among
the Christians themselves who created an opposition. This em-
phasis on faith as contrasted with the law, resulted in a further
amplification, the abrogation of the law and man's redemption
from it, by the death of Jesus who thus removed the danger from
sin which the law was, by theory, supposed to dispell. While en-
gaged in the process of evolving and defending these contra-
legal beliefs, the Christians were engaged in a new and important
quest. They discovered how they were to be saved from the law
and its curse. Apparently no one had attempted to do so radi-
cal a thing before. Jesus, whom the Christians preached so
earnestly, is not quoted as having taught so revolutionary a doc-
trine. He, and others, a few of whose words have come down to
us in tradition, set about to give the law a new content and a
new quality, but no word wlas spoken against it as law. Prob-
ably others who had less sentimental attachment to the peculiar
traditions of the faith, gave up the law far easier than did Paul.
But even in that case, they were engaged in a similar quest. Their
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 119
objectives were more easily attained, though perhaps less passion-
ately held.
The traditional features of the -apocalyptic hope are to be
found everywhere in the records of this period. The beliefs
incorporated in this exposition of God's dealings with man do
not properly constitute ia quest for salvation. They had been
long held in a fairly unchanged form. They were doctrines,
dogmas of Jewish faith. To perhaps a considerable number of
non-Jewish converts, apocalypticism held out a measure of hope
which could not be otherwise obtained. The theory, it must be
remembered, grew up in a period of national depression. The
institutions of the people had so impressed themselves upon
their life that their pictures of the future followed the lines
suggested. To those of the Graeeo-Roman world who had suf-
fered because of the disorganization of the social order but who
still retained a love for the 'forms which it ideally possessed, the
promise of a new kingdom in the future heaven in which there
could be nothing imperfect offered a satisfying salvation. While
the Jews, more than any others, held stubbornly to their
national institutions, the ideals of social organization were not
/absent from Graeco-Roman life ; and though impossible of estab-
lishment in this world, were fondly held in hope for the future.
The continuance of apocalypticism in the church amply justifies
this conclusion.
Local iand temporary disturbances of the peace of Christians
even in Paul's day were sufficient to keep alive the expectation
of the sudden coming of the Lord. The Jews longed particularly
for a kingdom ; the Christians 'for the Lord, the head of the king-
dom. Paul believed that the coming of the Lord was at hand as
did most, if not all, of his fellow-Christians. He did not profess
to know the exact hour of his appearance. 64 The same idea is
presented in the gospels, and certainly was widely held by Chris-
tians, as the corresponding belief was held by Jews, and by some
Graeco-Romans also. Paul finally became convinced that the
great day could not or would not come until the "falling away"
had taken place. The arch-enemy of God's work was yet to make
one supreme effort to overcome the forces of good. But the
Messiah in battle army would descend and by his heavenly power
overcome aH resistance. Then the saints who had died would
be summoned to his side and the living transformed into heavenly
120 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
beings. Paul does not deal with the reign of Christ on earth, the
resurrection of the evil, and their final annihilation or eternal
torture, in the explicit way followed by the traditional Jewish
apocalypticists. But he does picture a final judgment at which
the vindication of the righteous will be made complete and the
eternal kingdom of blessedness will be inaugurated. 65 The omis-
sions which are to be noted in his statements about the apocalyptic
events do not indicate any noteworthy variation from the ideas
he had inherited. Similar lacunae are to be noted in some of the
Conventional Jewish Messianic programs. While holding tena-
ciously to the final judgment and all the God-directed events of
that time, he seems to have lost interest in some phases of it for
one reason or another. 'It is not that he substituted a Hellenistic
belief in the place of one of Jewish origin, but it may very well
be that Christian adaptations of Hellenistic interests or purely
Christian creations may have lessened the stress put upon certain
points of the apocalyptic scheme, which as a whole he was not
conscious of abandoning.
The same characterization of these elements of the Pauline
soteriology may be given as in the case of the Jewish faith. In
the case of Paul they may have been somewhat more formal than
in Judaism during the years of bitter persecution and struggle.
Yet Paul, as a non-Palestinian, was a Jew of the Jews and placed
a high estimate on national solidarity, 66 and retained part of his
heritage tenaciously, in spite of his rejection of legalism and
ceremonialism. Except for setting ;aside the law and its formal
requirements, and the substitution of faith, there is no reason to
suppose that he altered to any considerable degree the whole
apocalyptic scheme. But as already suggested, this was less a
quest for salvation than a stereotyped theory growing out of the
experiences of the Jews, in which the hope of salvation was
shifted from an earlier confidence in the final righting of this
world's wrongs by God's assistance, to an expectation of G-od's
miraculous intervention and the setting up of a new world order.
In accepting the conclusion that Paul retained his Jewish
thought about the way in which man was to be saved, one is not
barred from asserting that he appropriated non-Jewish beliefs
not as substitutions but as supplements. And, in point of fact,
it is here that he pursued his real quest, for he stood on new
ground land in the midst of new requirements. The kind of sal-
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 121
vation which Paul, as a Jew, expected was based on conduct,
personal relations toward God, doing his will, etc. It was con-
structed on the foundation of social institutions, which alone
served as the means of control. The will and power of the ruler
which alone could solve the difficulties of that age, were trans-
cendentalized and made the basis of assurance that God the great
ruler of the universe, would finally. solve all difficulties and give
his subjects salvation.
But in the Graeco-Roman world, the category of personal
relations did not dominate the methods by which salvation was
sought. It is true that the emperor cult was based on the re-
lationship sustained toward the ruler, and on its religious side,
offered a limited parallel to the Jewish type of thought. In a
measure, the same may be said with regard to certain phases of
Mithra worship. Its apocalyptic interest, its expectation of a
coming Savior, its imagery of conflict between two opposing
armies, (are very much like the Jewish and early Christian rep-
resentations, and indeed may have been somewhat influential in
the formation of the Jewish apocalyptic. This thought, however,
was not characteristic of Graeco-Roman life and times as ex-
pressed in their religious thought. The continual state of flux
in social institutions from the time of Alexander the Great until
after the time of Augustus, formed no basis for the establishment
of a theodicy such as was possible under the earlier national
organizations. The gloom and depression of the age stimulated
a search to discover the source of evil and of good in qualities
inhering in the substance and nature of Imen and beings. This
method was adopted by quite divergent groups. The mystery
cults rested upon such a foundation, but no less so the ontological
philosophies of the day. All the variant forms of cults and
philosophies were earnestly seeking to find salvation for man by
changing in some way his ''essence". There was present, it must
be admitted, a considerable consciousness of the necessity of
doing the will of God or Gods in order to gain favor in their sight.
This was carried over from the mythologies of early times, and
probably registered social situations to a degree comparable to
that actually existing among the people. While this point of view
was particularly characteristic of the Graeco-Roman society dur-
ing the period which concerns us here, it registered itself slightly,
at least, among the Jews themselves. 67 Thus in Hebrew literature,
122 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
spirit is conceived of as personalized, and therefore responsive to
relationships with m>an, and also as substance, and as such having
a magic effect upon whatever it touches. 68 The latter view was
sublimated under pressure exerted by the highly specialized social
structure existing among the Jews. But with the Greeks par-
ticularly, there was no unified system of control, and as a result
of the attending pessimism, men turned individually to a solution
of their problems in terms of magical control variously
expressed. 69
There are in Paul, and other Christian writers of approxi-
mately the some period, statements that can not be related to the
typical Jewish thought, but which are entirely in accord with
the Griaeco-Boman. It is possible that the source is really the
occasional and half-hidden Jewish statement which deals with
substance-power, but it is far more likely that the Jews of the
Dispersion caught the idea from their environment rather than
from their own sacred literature which was so largely given over
to a different point of view. In so far as these beliefs had great
meaning to the Christians, it is probable that they were secured
from their associates to whom also they had great meaning, rather
than from the literary remains of the Jews among whom the ideas
were incidental and not characteristic.
The Christian utterances to which allusion has been made,
deal with a very important part of the Christian theory of
salvation. They concern themselves with the problem of salvation
as it presented itself to them in the Graeco-Romian world.
Everywhere the Hellenists were concerned with their evil nature
afnd the necessity of changing it in order to, be saved. Some
said that the trusting initiate could be merged with Dionysus,
Osiris, or some other divine being and thus made into a new
creature, a very god himself. Others scorned such crude thoughts,
and expounded a theory of divine essence in every human soul
which fanned into a flame by man's good conduct, would trans-
form him into pure deity. Christians did not ignore this demand.
Believing as they did that their religion was able to satisfy all
demands and to redeem all men, they sought to explain how
their questioners could be saved as Christians, even better than
by the other religions. There are not ,a few expressions in New
Testament literature which seem to have no affinities with any
type of first century thought except that of the characteristic
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 123
Graeco-Roman life, as far as its soteriological aspects are con-
cerned.
On the more formial side there are passages which at once
suggest a relation between the thought involved and some of the
recognized expressions of Christianity's new environment. Most
noticeable of all, perhaps, is the not uncom!mon use of the word
mystery (/U,VOT^/OIOV), which may be read with no queries
by the modern man acquainted with its present broadened use.
In most cases the mystery of the ancient world was a quite spe-
cific thing. It referred to the numerous cults which prevailed all
through the civilization of that time. These cults professed to
hold in their control the means of availing oneself of the potency
of the deity. In the conflict of group, the secret of the technique
by which the god was brought into human experience, became a
treasure to be guarded zealously. This was itself a revelation
from on high and not in any sense a man made scheme, as one
may see amply illustrated in the eleventh book of the Metamor-
phoses of Apuleius. Similarly Christianity possessed a revealed
power which had not previously been known, for Paul refers to
the gospel as if he thought it was "the revelation of the mystery
which hiath been kept in silence through times eternal, but now
is manifested". 70 Paul thought of himself and his fellow- minis-
ters as "stewards of the mysteries of God". 71 There are other
references to mystery or mysteries which further strengthen the
likelihood that an attempt was being made to make Christianity
as appealing as were the popular cults of Graeco-Roman life. 72
This could only be done by the new faith through answers to
the common questions of the time. While the mere use of the
word "mystery" seems to have no adequate explanation aside
from an allusion to the religious life of the Hellenistic world, it
is in the field o'f soteriology that the greatest suggestiveness is
to be seen.
Frequent allusion hias been made in this discussion to the
kind of salvation which the typical Hellenist sought and the
means by which he attempted to secure it. Mystery and phi-
losophy alike promised men redemption from the evil nature which
enthralled them, through the action of divine essence or being
of which the individual availed himself. Man was what he was,
not because of his own action, but because of something that had
happened at the beginning of time or at erection, and had con-
124 QUESTS FOB SALVATION
taminated all mankind. Sin or evil was not in a man's heart,
but in the phylon of the race. Salvation meant the renovating
of man's whole being by the magical transforming power of an
uncontaminated divine being with which man became in some way
identified. Apart from the conscious or unconscious use of the
word "mystery", did the early Christian preachers to the Gen-
tiles make use of this teaching about salvation?
The first thing to be considered is the estimate placed upon
man's nature and his ability to promote his own redemption.
In the Jewish religion the chief concern was to know God's will
and then to do it. In the apocalyptic scheme to which most
Christians adhered, man's part was not as great as that of God,
but at the same time no great stress was placed upon his inherent
helplessness. Problems of original sin and a corrupt nature were
negligible as compared with the greater concern of doing the
will of God as a prerequisite to the coming of the kingdom. But
in Paul there is to be seen the introduction of the Greek interest.
Mian possesses an evil nature which prevents him from doing
God's will. This decision of Paul gives point to his denial of
the law.
In the Roman letter, particularly chapters six, seven, and
eight, sin is frequently referred to as the outcropping of an evil
nature which is hostile to the good nature which results from the
indwelling of Christ. "The mind of the flesh is enmity against
God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can
be." 73 "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit
against the flesh; for these are contrary the one to the other;
that ye may not do the things that ye would." 74 Whether these
chapters be taken as autobiographical or not, they can only be
understood as implying a practical dualism in human nature.
Sin was a force working in human experience to bring man
low. 75 Sin was not limited in its operation to any part of the
human race ; it was universal. 76 This point of view, so explicitly
stated by Paul, can not be paralleled in typical Jewish thought.
Even the passage quoted by Paul himself to show the universality
of sin, does not reflect the idea oif sinful nature as he describes it :
' ' There is none righteous, no not one ;
There is none that understandeth,
There is none that seeketh after God;
They have all turned aside, they are together become
unprofitable ;
There is none that doeth good, no not so much as one." 77
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 125
It is clearly said here that all men have turned from God, as if
by their own will they had decided to seek their own ways of sin.
But Paul introduces a new element. He saw in man's nature a
compulsion to do wrong which was not dependent upon man's
will to do wrong. In fact the very opposite is the case. "For
I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing:
for to will is present with me, but to do that which is good is not.
For the good which I would I do not ; but the evil which I would
not, that I practice. But if what I would not, that I do, it is no
more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me." 78 Tangible
sins and evil are simply expressions of the inner quality of man 's
evil nature, in other words, of his flesh; while good deeds are
the expression of the Spirit which is within him. 79
Such tan interpretation of Paul's statements about the flesh
is unwelcome to many on the ground that he has often used the
term in other senses less derogatory. It is true that Paul uses
as not greatly stressed by traditional
Jewish thought. It marked the ecstatic outburst of the prophet,
or consecrated the agent of Jehovah in the establishment of the
kingdom. 90 The particular phase of the activity of the Spirit
which is developed by Paul deals with the permanence and quick-
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 127
ening power with which it operates in one's life. The presence
of the Spirit puts an end to the life of evil and darkness which the
man of flesh lived. "But ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit,
if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. But if any man
hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." 91 "If we live
by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk. ' ' 92 It has often been
observed that Paul does not distinguish between his use of Spirit,
Spirit of God, and Spirit of Christ. 93 And furthermore he iden-
tifies the Lord and the Spirit, 9 * thus making clear his conviction
that the potent factor in the reclaiming of men was the introduc-
tion of spirit-force into them. It was this which had turned him
from his persecutions to the support of the Christian movement, 95
and had given him new life "in Christ". 96 On the side of histori-
cal identity, Paul would probably have made careful distinctions,
but on the side of mystical experience he emphasized the trans-
forming power of the new force within one by connecting it with
God, God's Spirit, or his Son. The significant thing is that the
new life which one lived "in Christ" was divinely validated. One
was made a new man, having put aside the old man. ' ' Wherefore
if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature : the old things are
passed away ; behold they are become new. ' ' 97 The new man was
not adjudged so because he had a new determination to do what
God would have him do, but because he was mystically united
with deity. "For ye died and your life is hid with Christ in
God." 98
The nature of the spiritual life is to a certain extent explained
by Paul's view of the resurrection. The Christian in this life
enjoys nuany of the benefits of the better life which is to come.
The life of the resurrection is the continuation of the present
spiritual life and the farther removal from the things that are
evil. IVLan's hope lies in the .fact that after the death of this
earthly body, the eternal spiritual life, already begun, will con-
tinue. Perfect salvation is not possible until then. 99 The new
body of the resurrection will not 'be a fleshly body, but spiritual,
not corruptible but incorruptible, 100 for "flesh and blood can not
inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit in-
corruption". Conceptions such as this are not unheard of in
Jewish literature, although the usual association of the future life
within a kingdom tended to retain the cruder elements of the
earthly hopes. The Apocalypse of Baruch, 101 approximates the
128 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
views of Paul as to the resurrection body. The dualism between
"flesh and spirit" is, however, characteristic of Hellenistic
thought, for the body and its limitations were the burden of men
in their attempt to free themselves and escape to an untrammelled
life.
The life of the flesh and the life of the Spirit become clear
when viewed in the light of the redemptive process. Freedom,
from the entanglements associated with flesh was found in the life
in Christ.. By its magic touch the old nature, the old man, w.as
transformed into the likeness of Christ. 102 One power counter-
acted another and the victory of one or the other made man
live or die. This idea was not native to Jewish thought, where,
as we have seen, all imen were exhorted to do the will of God and
thus win his favor and salvation. However it is entirely con-
sonant with the Hellenistic thought of salvation which had as its
basic principle the transformation of evil or impure nature by one
of opposite character and the merging of the two in the process.
Paul did not necessarily appropriate all the elements of Graeco-
Boman thought in the subject when he adopted the belief in mys-
tical union. He did not concern himself with the philosophic dis-
cussions about materiality, or the order and source of creation.
The Greeks entered into endless discussions and took widely dif-
ferent and inconsistent positions. It was not more necessary for
the Hellenistic philosopher to affirm an impure source for the
flesh than for Paul. 103 Paul however was not essentially a
philosopher. For this reason he did not take up many of the fun-
damental questions with which less practical but more exacting
thinkers concerned themselves in his day. He dealt with a prac-
tical dualism with which he was continually coming into contact
in the propagation of the Gospel among the Graeco-Romans.
Whatever may have been the state of affairs in the philosophic
discussions about the ultimate source of evil and the connection
between it and the flesh, there was in the mystery religion an
unquestioned raising of a certain phase of the problem. A solu-
tion was reached in a way not greatly different from that followed
by Paul and his associates, namely, the merging of the believer
in the God or as Paul says, in Christ, or in the Spirit. This union
was not a transient experience like that advocated by some mys-
tics. This was no doubt due to the incorporation of ethical quali-
ties as an indication of the presence of the Spirit. "The works
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 129
of the flesh" and ''the fruit of the Spirit" were not temporal
qualities but an abiding character. 104 Neo-Platonism taught a
spiritual union with God which was unattested by any thing per-
manent. It was supersensuous, and occasional. Paul seems to
have had such an experience in that he was caught up into heaven,
but he did not set great store by this. 105
Before considering farther Paul's estimate of the life in
Christ and its apparent conformity to the type of salvation which
was characteristic of Hellenistic religious thought, it will be well
to determine what were the chief methods by which the end could
be secured. By so doing the interpretation of his ideas miay be
made clearer. 106
Most prominent was faith. In the primitive Christian com-
munity faith nleant little more than an identification of the risen
Jesus with the apocalyptic Messiah and confidence in his coming
redemptive work in the establishment of the heavenly kingdom.
To Paul, faith in Christ meant all that it had meant to the early
church, and more. Through the exercise of faith, the divine
potency which was in Jesus Christ became available. 107 By be-
lieving on him, man might 'be transported into that kind of life
which was only possible ifor those who were no longer natural
men. 108
It is in this connection that Paul's umversalism gains its
convincing character. Paul might have argued for it on the
basis of monotheism as suggested by Romans 3:29, 30, but he
seems not to have placed great stress upon this side of the ques-
tion. The favor of God, from the standpoint of the law, was
logically restricted to those who had had the law given to them.
But faith had no national limitations. 109 All men might avail
themselves of the Spirit by becoming believing sons of God.
Of considerable prominence also were the rites adopted by the
Christians to increase the certainty of their salvation. It is an
easy thing to look upon these ceremonies as purely symbolic acts
intended to keep alive the memory of those sacred events which
marked the entrance of God's saving interference in human
affairs. But it is highly probable that the early Christians were
far more literalistic than such an interpretation would imply.
Among the Jews, washings and feasts were viewed as require-
ments of God set forth in his law. Sym-bolism may have been
present to some degree, reaching its height in the distorted alle-
130 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
gorism of the Dispersion. Among the Palestinians legalism was
predominant. The first Christians doubtless carried over some of
the ceremonies just as they carried over the law. But to a " law-
less" people like the Greeks, such a conception was valueless.
The rites which they observed were not connected so much with
the will of the deity as with the saeramentalism with which their
thought was filled. The immediate question arises as to the view
adopted by such Christians as Paul.
The Jews themselves were accustomed to ideas of power or
virtue residing in bodies and transmissible by contact. Their
tabu laws were based on such a conception. Sin and disease were
due to the presence of demonic powers, escape from which was
only possible through the entrance of a better and stronger power.
But even such ideas were subsidiary to the real heart of Jewish
religion, fellowship with God. In answer to the question sug-
gested above, it may be said that Paul may have found present
in Judaism all the necessary elements for his ideas about baptism
as ^an initiatory rite and the supper as an act of fellowship. But
the further and more important question remains: did he find
in Judaism or in the strictly Christian circle, sufficient stimulus
to prompt him to develop his heritage to the extent that he did,
or did he find it in his Graeco-Roman environment?
Paul does not speak of baptism as a commandment but he
does speak of it in terms of cleansing and purification. It was
a quickening experience, in which by ritual imitation the believer
was identified with the god and his experience of salvation. 110
The old man, one of sin, was made new by his assimilation to
deity. Christ, though not formally equated with the Savior Gods
o;f the mysteries, was nevertheless comparable from the stand-
point of function. Likewise the rite of baptism, though related
on its formal side to Jewish baptism, on its functional side seems
more like the Graeco-Roman ceremonies. Certainly at a later
time, the Hellenistic conception prevailed. It did so because
Christianity was operating in a non-Jewish world, the mem'bers of
which brought in demands for a qualitative salvation mediated
by contact of substances. The Christianity of Paul's day was
beginning even then to move out into this world, and apparently
was seeking to interpret the message of the Gospel in a way intel-
ligible to its hearers.
A similar history for the supper is probable. The psychology
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 131
of primitive religions has familiarized us with the idea of man
actually partaking of the god of the composition of the gospels,
at least, was interested in saving men from demonic power, and
Jesus, the Savior, was either thought of as personally leading
the forces of good in mortal combat with the demons, or as
possessing some fluid quality which flowed from his person and
filled the possessed or diseased one with its virtue. The latter
view is less prominent in the Synoptic Gospels, particularly Mark,
where Jesus is represented as discharging no small part of his
function as champion of 'mankind against the hosts of evil. An
142 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
amplification of this is seen in the belief in guardian angels who
were assigned to look after the welfare of some particular indi-
vidual. 17 This belief was carried on into Christianity, e. g., by
Hermas, 18 who says that each man is attended by two angels who
strive for mastery over him, and advises that only the angel
of righteousness be trusted. So far as one can judge from the
evidence, it does not appear that the desire for salvation from
demonic power was influenced by Greek or Hebrew thought
as such. It is characteristic, rather, of a primitive type of life,
and reflects those interests which persevere even through long
periods of culture. The influx of foreign people from the lower
social strata in the early years of the Roman Empire was no
doubt largely responsible for the prevalence of this kind of
salvation hope.
Another phase of the hope of salvation which had been
inherited from primitive Christianity and from Judaism, was
that involved in the establishment of the heavenly kingdom. The
Christians had never entertained the radical political hopes which
had allured some of the Jews into dangerous enterprises. They
looked for no sword-wrought redemption which would give them
the mastery of the world. However, they were not entirely freed
from earthly entanglements. The disquieting element in their
experience was, in large 'measure, the political ills with which
they were afflicted. The persecutions which the Christians have
been supposed to have suffered, were for the most part local and
entirely lacking in systematic organization. Yet on account of
religious prejudices they were sufficient to engender a great deal
of bitterness toward the Roman government. Paul, much of
whose work fell within the happier years of Nero 's reign, himself
had no polemic (against Rome. In fact he was proud of his citi-
zenship and appealed to Caesar, as his subject, when accused by
his countrymen. He advised obedience and submission to govern-
ment because it was ' ' ordained of God. ' ' 19 He did not advocate
the destruction of recognized social institutions, such as slavery,
except by saying in an intangible way, that in Christ there is
neither Greek nor Jew. 20 But both by the expectation of the
kingdom of God and by the leveling down of all social and racial
distinctions through the life in Christ, he placed a very secondary
importance upon the function of government in ultimately curing
the ills of mankind.
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 143
At a later time, local encounters with, authorities produced
a heightened feeling of distrust toward the political organization
of Rome. The Apocalypse of John is a veritable Christian hymn
of hate as far as the government is concerned. The great desire
of the author was that salvation from the tyranny of Rome might
be secured through the speedy coming of Christ and the estab-
lishment of a heaven sent kingdom. The outlook of the Apoca-
lypse is decidedly Jewish. Sensuous views of the kingdom are
to be found in such Christian literature of a later time as was
untouched by the milder Hellenistic spirit. 21
There was, however, a strong tendency to soften the harsh-
ness which Jewish particularism had created in the apoealyctic
hope. To do so meant the elimination of the genuine apocalyptic
qualities, though the symbolism of the kingdom was retained.
The contrast between the ordinary conception of the kingdom
and that which was entertained by non-Jewish religion is seen
in the Fourth Gospel. 22 The dialog between Pilate and Jesus was
intended to bring out the difference between the two kingdoms
which they represented. Jesus was king of truth; Pilate, of the
kingdom of force. The kingdom of truth was in the world but
not of the world. 23 The kingdom of force was of the world.
The Fourth Gospel was intended to bring out the inferior char-
acter of the earthly kingdom, but not by comparing it with an
apocalyptic kingdom such as the Jews and Jewish-Christians
were wont to expect. 24 The real comparison was between the
kingdom of force and the kingdom of quiet, pervasive truth. The
Messiah, whom the Jews awaited, was not the one who was to
usher in this kingdom of truth. Jesus was superior to him. 25
His realm was world wide in its scope. Yet Jesus did not go to
the Gentiles. Hence the Fourth Gospel tells of Greeks coming to
Jesus, who was acknowledged by God's voice as they stood by.
Jesus in effect stated that he could not in person go to all the
world, but that through his death all men would be drawn to
him. 26 He was not the shepherd of the Jews alone, but of all. 27
There is, in John, a persistent plea for universality which is
not so consistently presented in the other gospels and not more
so in Paul. Even the Baptist did not announce, according to the
Fourth Gospel, the Messianic kingdom of God, but ''the Lamb
of God, that taketh away the sin of the world." Nor did God
have any favorites in the scheme of redemption, for He "so loved
144 QUESTS FOR SALVATION
the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life." 28
On the formal side, there were, then, two tendencies of
thought: one, a development and refinement of the Messianic
kingdom for which there was keen anticipation, (members were
elected out of this world, and while here held "citizenship in
heaven," awaiting the coming of Christ 29 ) ; the other, more specu-
lative and more mystical, and not patterned after the material-
istic forms of earthly experience. The conflict between these two
ideals continued for no short period of time. The victory was
officially lost by apocalypticism through the repeated delays in
the coming of the kingdom and the necessity which intelligent
Christians faced of seeking salvation in the present.
Same of the changes which took place in minor phases of the
kingdom idea may well ;be noted in this connection.
The influence of Paul had been to remove law and substitute
faith >as the means by which man might avail himself of salvation,
But not all followed his lead. He acknowledged that formerly
the Jews had been under a covenant and were obliged to obey
the law, but the new relationship with God was different. It
was a life in the Spirit in which law did not operate. The author
of the Epistle to the Hebrews sees in the new program of Chris-
tianity, not an arrangement different from the old, but one that
was superior. Salvation is still the result of doing the will of
God according to a recognized and established relationship. 30
This new covenant was legally sealed by the death of Christ as
a sacrifice. 31 Jesus, moreover, was the pattern of right living
and thus the gateway to salvation. Indeed, He even intercedes
for those who are drawn by His example, and saves "to the
uttermost." 32 The author of Hebrews thinks of mankind as still
under legal relationship to God, but he devotes himself to the
practical task of inspiring men to a life like that of Christ, that
he, the high priest who is beside God, may intercede for the
salvation of all. He did not "build a hedge about the law."
The Epistle of James also interprets the Christian life in
tennis of law, though he calls it a law of liberty, a royal law. 33
"Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this,
to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep
oneself upspotted from the world." 34
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 145
It would seem that the idea of legal observances, which
Judaism had employed so strenuously in connection with the
expected appearance of the kingdom, was broadened and vitalized
by many Christians for whom the urgency of immediate other-
worldly salvation had been lost. Among the Jews, and appar-
ently among the earliest Christians, law and kingdom were
inseparable ; and the law was kept as such with a view to
hastening the day of the Lord. But after Christianity had
detached itself from strictly Jewish surroundings, it became
possible to develop an attitude toward the law which was different
from the older conception, while still holding to the hope of the
kingdom. The Lord would appear at his own pleasure, ''like a
thief in the night, ' ' and taking all men unaware. Christians were
conscious of a disparity between the old rejected law and the
new which they w^ere willing to obey. Apparently the new law
had a more ethical significance than many of the Jewish zealots
had seen in the old. In the Graeco-Rpman world, there was a
growing sense of ethical values and of obligation to duty. Dis-
courses on these subjects were heard in every market place, in
every public square, and in every school. Even the Gentiles saw
in the moral law, the law of God, the rewards and penalties of
which were surely to be meted out.
The picture of the kingdom was prominent among the Chris-
tians for a long time and yet it seems progressively to have lost
its distinctness through the introduction of practical problems.
In proportion as this world became attractive or workable, the
desire to escape was lessened, and the men settled down to the
life of duty, hoping still for a future salvation, but apart from
the violent realisim of apocalypticism, and the formal observance
of a fixed and artificial law.
In so far as the conception of law and kingdom was retained,
salvation was dependent upon personal relations and attitudes.
In the Graeco-Roman life, in which Christianity first labored,
there was little feeling for social control through the exercise
of legal authority on account of the instability of governments.
But all the while the Roman Empire was building up its power
and gradually amalgamating all the elements within it. Accom-
panying this there was an increasing respect for law and a grow-
ing allegiance to the state. Under such conditions, it is not
strange to see in the field of religion, (the mirror of all social
146 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
interests), a regard for law not based on the older Jewish feeling,
but upon the dignity of Roman citizenship, even among those
who expected the world order finally to be set aside.
Aside from the unquestioned phases of the Christian quest
for salvation which are to be traced back to Jewish and primitive
Christian sources, there are to be noted certain advances in the
adaptation of the message to the Gentile world beyond what Paul
made or even anticipated. That such a step should be taken
was entirely consistent with the previous history of the move-
ment. There was as yet no background of history to give sacred-
ness to forms. The gospel was eagerly seeking support and
recognition among the people with whom it was coming into
contact, while they were in turn seeking some solution for their
religious problems. We have seen how in its earliest years it
promised salvation on the basis of conduct within a group in
which the individual received his reward in return for allegiance
and proper service rendered to God ; also how later the demands
of new converts called forth the promise of salvation through a
transformed life. This latter development was destined to go
even farther in consequence of a more intimate contact with the
speculation of the Hellenistic world. 35
Paul was apparently less impressed by the speculative inter-
est than by the picturesque qualities of mystery religion. Yet
he was aw^are of the pressure brought to bear on Christianity by
the wisdom of this world. He confessed that he lacked "excel-
lency of speech or of wisdom," 36 but professed to have a revealed
wisdom, a wisdom in a mystery which was not of this world. The
wisdom which the Christian might have was the gift of the
Spirit, as was the gift of healing. 37
But it is in the Johannine literature that the earliest and
most pronounced reaction to speculative thought is to be clearly
seen. At the time of the writing of the Gospel of John, the
Gnostic heresies had not rent the church, though Gnosticism was
present in the world. The fantastic beliefs which the Gnostics
brought forth were created by an earnest desire to find salvation.
Apparently no very elaborate schemes were evolved until near
the time of the heresies within the church. Gnosticism being
syncretistic, readily appropriated such elements of the Christian
message as could be used to strengthen their position. Starting
with the desire for salvation, the Gnostics evolved a pictorial
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 147
dualism, as contrasted with the logical dualism, of Stoicism and
other philosophies. The problem on its speculative side was to
explain the origin of evil while maintaining the purity of God,
and on the practical side, to provide a means by which man
might be saved from evil. The first was achieved by the adoption
of a mythological representation of the process of creation, and
the second by the appropriation of divine aid through mystical
knowledge or wisdom.
The mythologies of Gnosticism generally represented a pure,
unapproachable being as the ultimate power in the universe. A
series of emanations resulted in a subordinate power who created
the world and all its evil. Thus while God is the ruler of the
universe, he is not himself the creator of evil. 38
The logos doctrine was one of the most popular theories
of the ancient world. Aside from its purely metaphysical value,
it was widely disseminated as a means of supporting various
practical religious enterprises. Stoicism employed it, and was
transformed into an effective religious mission, though a philos-
ophy in form. Philo and the author of IV Maccabees read the
logos theory into Jewish religion and thereby added to the
dignity and power of their faith. The author of the Fourth
Gospel, though not directly influenced by any known person or
school, successfully employed the logos in connection with other
theories to give convincing proof of the divine nature of the
Christian savior. The logos doctrine was not outwardly a soteri-
ology, but it was used more in connection with questions of
salvation, than with questions of pure metaphysics. Both ortho-
dox and heterodox gave it great prominence.
The soteriology of Gnosticism, like the mythology, made use
of picturesque features. A special emanation was sent out from
God and came to earth in the form of Jesus. While here he
imparted saving gnosis to man, who was entangled in the material
world, and waged a victorious battle against the demiurge,
though through the latter 's activity the Savior was apparently
put to death. But, so the mythology runs, the real Christ was
only dwelling temporarily in the flesh and before the crucifixion
departed, leaving in man's possession the mystical secret of
divine knowledge by which he might be saved. Just as Jesus
was "raised," so man without waiting for death might enter
148 QUESTS FOE SALVATION
into the life of the resurrection through the gateway of gnosis.
He would be illuminated by the revelation. 39
There were certain phases of the gnostic faith which Chris-
tians of the more orthodox type could not endure, and prominent
among these was the doeetic interpretation of Christ's death.
John places great stress upon the character ;T,n psalms 44, 74,
79, 83, etc.
There are instances iii which an individual secures immunity from ene-
mies through the help of Jehovah, but these are not to be differentiated from
the preservation of groups from their enemies, except, of course, on the mere
basis of numbers. Cf. Daniel 3:12-27 and 6:16-23.
The prevalence of hopes for national salvation is amply attested by the
constant recurrence in the Old Testament of the wo. ds " s'.iv: tion",
"save", or "savior", in passages which deal with or reflect threatened
disaster to the children of Israel.
24. The will of God was made known in different ways: through mani-
festations in nature, such as the rustling of leaves (II Samuel 5:24; Homer:
Odyssey 14:327), or the presence or absence of dew (Judges 6:3640), by
some procedure involving chance, as the use of the Urim and Thummin, or
of arrows (Ezekiel 21:21), also in many other ways but chiefly through
some spokesman sent by God, who through dreams or a direct revelation
was made acquainted with the way by which divine power would assist man
in his difficulty. There grew up a ministry of salvation in which angels
and prophets were the chief figures.
25. For a full discussion of Hebrew ethics see H. G. Mitchell: The
Ethics of the Old Testament.
26. II Samuel 12:1-15.
27. Psalm 24.
28. Isaiah 51.
29. Contrast chapter 47, where universal salvation is not indicated.
30. Isaiah 45:22-23; 56:1; 60:18; 66:23, etc.
31. It is interesting in connection with this, as well as with later liter-
ature, that there are frequent expressions of the idea that Jehovah would
subjugate all nations to Israel. This is an illuminating commentary on the
type of salvation which was sought. The power of Egypt, Babylonia, As-
syria, Persia, Macedonia, and Rome was felt from time to time in Palestine.
It was a common experience for the Jews to be in bondage. It is not strange,
therefore, that bitterness of oppression should produce such a resentful ex-
clusiveness as was sometimes expressed by the Jews.
32. Psalms of Solomon 12:2; 15:8 f. Eeferences to late Jewish liter-
ature are cited from R. H. Charles: Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the
Old Testament.
33. R. H. Charles in his Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future
Life (Hebrew, Jewish, and Christian Eschatology, Jowett Lectures 1898-99)
160. QUESTS FOE SALVATION
discusses this topic somewhat in detail: see pp. 177-179, 200-203, 242-244;
also index "Kingdom."
34. Psalms of Solomon 17:24, 41; I Baruch 4:25, 33; Sirach 36:1,76.
35. Psalms of Solomon 8:34, 17:28; I Baruch 5:5; Tobit 14:5: Bivach
36:11.
36. I Baruch 4:14-35; Tobit 13:10, 16; 14:5.
37. Schiirer: History of the Jewish People 1.1.225, English translation
of third German edition. See Wellhausen : Pharisiier mid badducaer, p. 84,
38. The Wars of the Jews 6.5.4.
39. Antiquities 20.8.10.
40. Antiquities 20.8.6. The Wars of the Jews 2.13.4 and 5.
41. Antiquities 18.1.6; 20.8.5 and 6.
42. Schiirer: History of the Jewish People, 1.2.178. Joseplms: The
Wars of the Jews 7.10.1.
43. Consult Schiirer.
44. The Messianic beliefs of the non-canonical literature are less fa-
miliar than those of the canonical Old Testament, and treatises on the sub-
ject are not as accessible, hence tMp incomplete discvia^ion v pv.t forward
tentatively. See the works of Charles on the literature and ideas of late
Judaism.
45. I Enoch 9:6, 9, 10; 10:7, 8.
46. I Enoch 16:1.
47. I Enoch 5:9; 10:7, 16, 20-22; 25:6.
48. I Enoch 28:5; Cf. 90:29.
49. I Enoch 10:17-19.
50. I Enoch 5:7-9.
51. II Maccabees 1:27; 2:18; 7:37.
52. II Maccabees 14:15.
53. II Maccabees 7:9, 36.
54. II Maccabees 7:11; 14:46.
55. II Maccabees 7:29.
56. See Charles: Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament,
vol. 1, note on Jubilees 31:18.
57. Cf. Psalms of Solomon 17:23-36; II Baruch 29:3.
58. IV Ezra 13:26-36.
59. IV Ezra 7:28-30.
60. II Enoch 32:2-33:2.
61. Assumption of Moses 10:7.
62. II Baruch 29:4-30:1; 73:1, 2, 7; 74:1.
63. Charles: Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life, p. 214
and note.
64. I Enoch 40:7.
65. I Enoch 62:2.
66. I Enoch 41:2; 45:4, 5.
67. I Enoch 50:1, 2.
68. IV Ezra 7: 61; cf. 7:47, 48; 8:1-3.
69. See Charles: Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life, in-
dex < ' Eesurrection. "
70. Value of morality: Psalms of Solomon 12, 13, 15, 16; I Enoch 22; of
keeping the law: Wisdom of Solomon 6:18, 19; IV Maccabees 11:7. Also
Weber: Jiid. Theologie, 3 Ann*, p. 349, where the Talmud is quoted as saying,
"If Israel for only two Sabbaths would keep the law, she would be re-
deemed." See also Schiirer: History of the Jewish People, 2.2.128.
71. IV Maccabees 1:6; 3:5.
72. Wisdom of Solomon 6:24; 8:17; 9:18; 10:4.
73. See also Deuteronomy 32:17; Leviticus 16:8 ff.; Judges 5-4 20-
I Kings 22:19; Psalms 106:37; Isaiah 24-26; 34:14.
74. Judges 9:23; I Samuel 14:15; 8:3.
75. Tobit 3:8, 17; 6:14-17; 8:3.
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 161
76. I Enoch chapters 1-36.
77. I Enoch 69:4, 6.
78. I Enoch 40: 7.
79. I Enoch 53:3; 56:1; 63:11.
80. Testaments of the XII: Benjamin 5:2; also Simeon 3:5. See The
Epistle of James 4:7, 8.
81. Philo: de Monarchia 2:226.15. For a .fuller discussion see Cony-
beare: " Christian Demonology", Jewish Quarterly Eeview, vol. 8, pp. 576-
608; vol. 9, pp. 59-114; 444-470; 581-603.
82. Note the reference above to the effect of Stoicism on IV Macca-
bees (1:6; 3:5).
83. M. Friedlander, in two articles ("Judaism in the pre-Christian
Greek World," Theol. Litteraturzeitung, 1897, no. 12; and "Pauline Eman-
cipation from the Law a Product of the pre-Christian Jewish Diaspora,"
Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. 14, pp. 265 ff.) has maintained that there was
a decided split in the Diaspora as a consequence of the loss of national con-
sciousness and the interest in G-entile philosophic thought. His view has
been attacked as too radical, particularly by Schiirer.
84. See Wm. Robertson Smith: Religion of the Semites (1894) pp. 356
ff.; also Ames: The Psychology of Religious Experience, chapter 7.
85 'See Ames: The Psychology of Religious Experience, chapters 4
and 5.
86. "According to a tradition, which is found in the Mishna (Pesachim
4.9) and in certain Byzantine writers (Suidas: Lex under 'Efe/cias, and
Glycas in Fabricius, Cod. pseudepigrapha 1.1042 f.) we learn that the pious
king Hezekiah ordered the suppression of Solomon's 'Book of Cures', be-
cause the people trusted it so much that they neglected to pray to God."
Quoted from Schiirer: History of the Jewish People 2.3.153-4. It would
seem that while the practice and belief in magic were officially opposed, it
did crop out from time to time.
CHAPTER III
GRAECO-ROMAN QUESTS FOR SALVATION
1. This may be seen with some degree of clearness in the development
of the Hebrew religion.
2. For discussion and bibliography see Case: Evolution of Early Chris-
tianity, Chapter 9; also Cumont: Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism.
3. See Cumont: Oriental Religions, p. 75.
Pluterch: On Isis and Osiris, 28.
4. Plutarch: On Isis and Osiris, 13.
5. Plutarch: On Isis and Osiris, 27.
6. See Erman: Die Aegyptische Religion. Berlin 1910.
7. Qappei re /a.vcrrai TOV Beov aeo'wo'/ui.evov er at yap ijfj.ii> e/c troixav (TWTtJpia.
Firmicus Maternus: de Errore profanarum Religionum, 22.
8. Citation from Case: Evolution of Early Christianity, p. 311.
9. On magic, astrology, and demonology, see Jane Harrison: Prolego-
mena to a Study of Greek Religion; Cumont: Oriental Religions, Chapter 7,
et passim; and Cumont: Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and
Romans.
10. On magic as the basis of Gnosticism, see Legge: Forerunners and
Rivals of Christianity, volume 1, chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6; see also Hastings
Dictionary of Religion and Ethics, volume 6, "Gnosticism," E. F. Scott.
11. See Cumont: Oriental Religions, pp. VIII and IX.
162 QUESTS FOR SALVATION
12. The influence of social forms on religion may probably be seen
in the prominence of the goddess, though the husband may have a place in
the myth. This prominence is thought to date back to a period of matri-
archy. See Cumont: Oriental Eeligions p. 48.
13. See Case: Evolution of Early Christianity, pp. 285, 286.
14. Hastings Dictionary of Eeligion and Ethics, vol. 6, "Gnosticism,"
E. F. Scott.
15. Cumont: Astrology and Eeligion among the Greeks and Eomans,
pp. 36, 53-56.
16. Kaibel, Inscr. Gr. XIV, 1488, 1705, 1782, 1842.
17. Epimenides, a Cretan wizard, was summoned by Athens in 596
B. C. that he might purify the city from the guilt incurred by the murder
of Cylon's followers at the altars of the gods. Cf. Aristotle, Constitution of
Athens, Chapter 1.
18. Cumont: Oriental Eeligions, pp. 90-92.
19. Suetonius: Nero, 24.
20. Origen: Celsus III, 59 f.
21. Livy: Hist. XXIX, 10-14.
22. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum III, 4413.
23. See Jane Harrison: Prolegomena, especially Chapter 5.
24. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum VI, 510.
25. See Cumont: Oriental Eeligions, Chapter 3, and notes.
26. 'Cumont: Oriental Eeligions, p. 99.
27. See Cumont: Oriental Eeligions, pp. 126, 129, and notes.
28. Cumont: Mysteries of Mithra, pp. 142-143.
29. See Cumont: Oriental Eeligions, pp. 157-159.
30. Julian: Caesares, p. 336 C.
31. Suggested by Cumont: Astrology and Eeligion, pp. 28, 29.
32. Legge: Forerunners and Eivals of Christianity, volume I, p. 140.
33. Legge: Forerunners and Eivals of Christianity, volume I, pp.
104, 107.
34. See Case: The Evolution of Early Christianity, Chapter 7; W. O. E.
Oesterley: The Evolution of the Messianic Idea; and Petersen: Die wunder-
bare Geburt des Heilandes, pp. 32 ff.
35. Strabo: XIV, 1, 31. For further references to the deification of
Alexander, see Case: Evolution of Early Christianity, pp. 205-208.
36. For discussion and references see Paul Wendland: SftTHP, in
Zeitschrift fiir die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, volume V (1904), t pp.
335-353.
37. For details see Beurlier: Le Culte Imperial, son histoire et son or-
ganization depuis Auguste jusqu' a Justinien. Paris 1891.
38. Suetonius: Augustus, 52 f.
39. Cf. Bigg: The Origins of Christianity, p. 17; Citations: Pausanias
VIII, 2.5; 9.7; and Philostratus: Vita Apollonii, 1.15.
40. Cf. Beulier: Le Culte Imperial, p. 155.
41. See Paul Wendland. ZfiTHP, in Zeitschrift fiir die Neutestament-
liche Wissenschaft, volume V (1904), pp. 335-353.
42. For references on identification and association of emperors with
gods see Beurlier, Le Culte Imperial, pp. 155-156.
43. Harper: Assyrian and Babylonian Letters (Chicago, 1892), part I,
Number 2, p. 2 f.
44. "The best expression of this idea in words is pax deorum, the
right relation between man and the various manifestations of the Power,
and the machinery by which it was secured was the ius divinum. ' ' W. W.
Fowler: The Eeligious Experience of the Eoman People, p. 431.
45. See Paul Wendland: Die hellenistisch-romische Kultur (1912),
p. 143.
46. Vergil: Eclogue IV, Cited from Case: Evolution of Early Chris-
tianity, pp. 223-224.
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 163
47. Vergil: Aeneid, lines 791-794, Conington's Translation.
48. Collection of Ancient Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum,
Part IV, section I (Oxford, 1893), p. 63, number 894. Cited from Case: Evo
lution of Early Christianity, p. 226.
49. C'f. on Caligula, Josephus, Antiquities 18.7; and on Domitian, Sue-
tonius: Domitian, 13. See also Case: Evolution of Early Christianity,
pp. 216-217.
50. Beurlier gives a list of seventy-eight "divi" in Le Culte Imperial,
Appendice A.
51. Dion Cassius (63 1-5) quotes the greeting of Tiridates to Nero, "O
Lord, I am thy slave, I am come to thee, my God, worshipping
thee even as I worship Mithra. "
52. Boissier: Eeligion Eomaine, volume I, p. 182.
53. Zeller: Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, p. 17.
54. Other philosophies, of a more restricted range and less aggressive,
as well as less unique, cannot be reviewed here. Their treatment, either
direct or indirect, of the subject under discussion in this study, will, in all
probability, fit into the main outlines of the systems here presented.
55. "Accustom thyself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good
and evil imply sentience and death is the privation of all sentience; there-
fore, a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes enjoyable the
mortality of life, not by adding to life an illimitable time, but by taking
away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terrors for him who
has thoroughly apprehended that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to
live. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not be-
cause it will pain him when it comes, but because it pains him in the pros-
pect. " Letter to Menoecus. TJsener: Epicurea, p. 59 f. Cited from Hicks:
Stoic and Epicurean, p. 169.
56. "The fine substance of the gods far withdrawn from our senses is
hardly seen by the thought of the mind; and, since it has ever eluded the
touch and stroke of the hands, it must touch nothing that is tangible for us;
for that cannot touch which does not admit of being touched in return."
Lucretius V, 148.
57. Revue de Philologie, 1877, p. 264.
58. Journal of Philology, XII, p. 212 ff.
59. Giussani: Lucretius, Volume I, p. 227 ff.
60. Cicero: De Natura Deorum, I, 45, 105, 109.
61. Hicks: Stoic and Epicurean, p. 292.
62. Taylor: Epicurus, p. 84.
63. Usener: Epicurea 3, p. 62.
64. Usener: Epicurea, p. 59 f. Cited from Hicks: Stoic and Epi-
curean, p. 170.
65. Catechism 5. See Zeller: Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, p. 506.
66. Epictetus, Book 2, Chapters 1, 6.
67. Epictetus, Book 3, Chapter 1; Book 2, Chapter 8.
68. Plutarch: C. Not. 10.1.
Prof, in Virt. 12.82.
Seneca: Ep. 75.8.
69. iSeneca: Ep. 71.18.
Plutarch: C. Not. 9.1.
70. Epictetus: Book 2, Chapter 8.
71. Translation by W. H. Porter, cited from Arnold's Eoman Stoicism,
pp. 85-87.
72. Epictetus: Book 1, Chapters 1, 7, 12.
73. Cicero: Tuscan Disputations 3, 10, 22;
4, 17, 39;
4,, 18, 42;
74. Seneca: de Ira 1, 9, 2.
75. Pseudo-Plutarch V Horn. 134.
164 QUESTS FOB SALVATION
76. Posidonius: apud Sext. Emp. adv. math. IX, 71-4.
Also Cicero: Tuscan Disputations, 1, 40, 42, 43.
Plutarch: On the genius of Socrates, 22.
On the cessation of Oracles, 10.
Philo: de Somniis 1, 138 (p. 642).
77. Preserved by Galen from Trepl iradwv by Posidonius. See M.
Pohlenz, de Posidonii libris irepl -jraduv, p. 62-".
78. Crossley: Marcus Aurelius IV. p. XII.
79 Kendall: Marcus Aurelius, p. XV.
80. Plotiiius: Enneads II. 9. section 18 (217 B) Volkrnann Text
(Teubner).
81. Plotinus: Enneads IV. 8. section 6 (474).
V. 2. section 1 (494).
82. Plotinus: VI. 9. section 7 (785). Cited from Fii-'cr: Tl'e Problem
of Evil in Plotinus, p. 59. The language of Plotinus is based upon the
figure of the Good, the One, being the center about which are ranged con-
centric circles representing the different gradations of minor perfections.
83. Plotinus: Enneads III. 8. 4 and 8.
84. Plotinus: Enneads III. 4. 2.
85. Plotinus: Enneads IV. 9. 3.
86. Plotinus: Enneads III. 6. 6.
87. The philosophy of the Hermetic literature and of Philo is not
treated here. Philo was as an individual thinker, very influential, though
there was nothing that might be called a strictly Philonic sect or philo-
sophic movement. His thought, as well as that of the Hermetic literature,
was dualistic, and contributed nothing significant which was not also set
forth by the philosophic schools of greater prominence. Other prominent
individuals and phases of thought have been omitted from this discussion.
It is believed that the ones reviewed here are characteristic of the Graeco-
Roman life in the midst of which Christianity arose, and reveal the condi-
tions which were formative in the development of all movements both pagan
and Christian.
CHAPTER IV
THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN QUEST FOR SALVATION
1. Harnack: The Mission and Expansion of Christianity, I, pp. 36-43.
2. See Case: Evolution of Early Christianity, chapter IV.
3. Of. the tearing down of the Roman eagle in Jerusalem in 4 B. C. T
Josephus: Antiquities 17. 6. 2-4.
4. Cf. the collection taken by Paul to Jerusalem, Acts 24:17; I Corin-
thians 16:1-4.
5. Acts 7.
6. Objections to the validity of such an argument as this on the basis
of uncertain historicity are of no great weight when it is taken into con-
sideration that this narrative and speech are chiefly valuable as an indica-
tion that even as late as the composition of Acts, Christians considered
themselves one with the Jews except on certain crucial points. Evidently
this was a typical attitude of the Christians toward Jews.
7. Acts 22; 26; 28:17 ffi.
8. Acts 10 and 11.
9. Acts 24:14.
10. "But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees who oe-
lieved, saying, It is needful to circumcise them, and to charge them to keep
the law of Moses," Acts 15:5. This is almost equivalent to saying that
there were legalistic Christian Pharisees. If the term "Christian" is to be
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 165
used in describing this historical situation, it is rather as an adjective than
as a designating name. Cf. also Acts 21:20.
11. E. g. } Acts 15:1; 18:5 ff.; Romans; Galatians.
12. Acts 14:1; 19:10.
13. Matthew 10:5.
14. Matthew 15:21-28; Mark 7:24-30.
15. John 4:22.
16. Acts 18:5.
17. See above, Chapter II.
18. Matthew 1:1-17.
19. Luke 3:23-38.
20. Luke 1:30-35.
21. Matthew 2:1-2.
22. Luke 1:67-79.
23. Luke 2:38.
24. Matthew 21:1-11; Mark 11:1-11; Luke 19:29-44.
25. Matthew 27:37; Mark 15:26; Luke 23:38.
26. Acts 1:6.
27. 'See E. F. Scott: The Kingdom and the Messiah, pp 41, <2. "In-
deed it is in only two portions of apocalyptic literature the Similitudes of
Enoch and the concluding Psalms of Solomon that the Messiah appears as
a really central figure," p. 42.
28. Acts 2:22.
29. Acts 2:36.
30. Acts 3:20; cf. 5:31.
31. It is not impossible that some zealous admirer of Jesus during his
life may have believed that he was to be the Savior of Israel by means of
the sword, but of that we have no evidence. If his disciple, Simon the
Cananaean or Zealot (Mark 3:18, Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13), so thought of him,
he seems not to have secured a following. However, the uncertainty of the
exact meaning of the descriptive title " Zealot" is so great that one can-
not say what the relationship of Simon was to the Zealot party.
32. See E. F. Scott: The Kingdom and the Messiah, pp. 49 ff., and
references.
33. f. Philo: de Praemiis et Poenis, 16; and Josephus: The Wars of
the Jews 6.5.
34. The Fragments of a Zadokite Work, the date of which is pre-
Christian, contain references to the death of the Teacher, whose sudden
return was awaited. The Christian expectation was not wholly without
precedent.
35. Enoch 39; 45:4; 62:14; 71:16; see E. F. Scott: The Kingdom and
the Messiah, p. 52.
36. "If Israel for only two Sabbaths would keep the law, she would
be redeemed." Weber: Jiid. Theologie, 3 Aufl. p. 349, where the Talmud
(Sabbath 118 b) is quoted.
37. The gospel picture of Jesus as the great healer of sickness and
the powerful opponent of all the demonic powers is a similar extension or
elaboration of the Messiah's office.
38. Philippians 4:5; I Thessalonians 5:2.
39. Matthew 5:17-18; cf. Luke 16:17.
40. Matthew 15:1-20; Mark 7:1-23.
41. For a full discussion on this point, see Schweitzer: The Quest of
the Historical Jesus, chapters 15 and 16.
42. Universalism was probably no more an integral part of the early
Christian message than of Jewish teaching, where it came to expression
often. Contact with other peoples had a tendency to break down particu-
larism, just as later Hellenistic Christians introduced into practice what had
been only implicit in their message. We have already .seen that Judaism
at times yielded to pessimism and thereby limited the number who were to
166 QUESTS FOR SALVATION
be saved. (IV Ezra 7:61; cf. 7:47, 48; and 8:1-3). The same thing oc-
curred in early Christianity, though God was not called indifferent to the
loss of human souls, as in the Jewish literature. Only a few will be saved,
only a few will enter in through the narrow gate, according to Matthew
7:13 ff. (Luke 13:24).
43. Cf. the accounts regarding Nicodemus (John 3:1 ff.; 7: 50-52;
19:39), and of Joseph of Arimathea (Matthew 25:57 f.; Mark 15:43 f.;
Luke 23:50f.; John 19:38).
44. I Corinthians 15:4-8.
45. Matthew 16:13-16; Mark 8:27-29; Luke 9:18-20.
46. Matthew 3:2.
47. Matthew 3:11, 12; Mark 1:7, 8; Luke 3:16, 17.
48. Matthew 4:17; Mark 1:15.
49. Acts 3:19-21.
50. Acts 5:31, 42; 17:2, 3; 18:24-19:5; Matthew 28:18-20; etc.
51. Cf. Acts 3:19-21; 5:31; 16:30,31; Matthew 25:31-46.
52. Philippians 2:5-11.
53. James 5:3, 7-9.
54. The Epistle to the Hebrews, though purporting to deal with Jewish
(Old Testament) conceptions, does so by the use of Alexandrian allegory,
and thus can not be considered as an expression of the primitive Christian
thought which has been under consideration here.
55. See the Testament of the XII.
56. Acts 19:11-20.
57. Other incidents which echo the primitive ideas of salvation
may be suggested, such as the stilling of the tempest which threatened the
lives of the disciples (Matthew 8:23-27 and parallels); the feeding of the
multitudes (Matthew 14:13-21 and parallels, Matthew 15:32-39 and Mark
8:1-10); Peter's miraculous release from prison (Acts 12); Paul's escape
from a storm at sea (Acts 27) ; and the viper bite which was made harmless
(Acts 28:1-6).
58. Matthew 6:24.
59. Matthew 7:11.
60. Matthew 16:24, and parallels; cf. Matthew 10:37-39.
CHAPTER V
THE JEWISH CHRISTIAN QUEST IN A HELLENISTIC WORLD
1. In the preceding chapter we have seen that the two religions were
at first virtually one, and that then their adherents had no intention of
separating. The Christians meant to deal with their Jewish relatives and in
a typically Jewish way. But the same documents which incidentally show
the original connection, reveal even more closely the growing hostility be-
tween Jew and Christian. The story of Stephen's death, the persecutions
of Christians by Paul, both according to Acts and to Paul himself, the
trials which he met at the hands of his own countrymen, the bitter feeling
toward tho Jews revealed by the Fourth Gospel, all point to a final dissolu-
tion of the connection which formerly existed. The result was the com-
plete reversal of the former state of affairs. Judaism, once the persecutor
of Christianity, later found herself bitterly assailed by the growing power
of her Christian rival. (Barnabas 4.6-8; 16.1-4; Diognetus 3; Justin:
Apology I. 37; 39; 43-44; 47; 53; 60).
2. See Schiirer: History of the Jewish People 2.2.220 ff.; Harnaek: The
Mission and Expansion of Christianity I. 1 ff.
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 167
3. Bousset: Die Religion des Judentums in Neutest. Zeitalter, pp.
4. Josephus, though a Palestinian, was enough of an opportunist to
abandon the position of the fathers and to identify apologetically t?ie con
quest of the Romans with the prophecies of Ancient Israel. Saul, on the
other hand, was a Jew of the Dispersion, but bitter and fanatic to a degree
apparently unparalleled by any of his compatriots.
5. See Schurer: History of the Jewish People, 2. 2. 243 ff.
6. These are referred to with varying distinctness in Acts 10:2, 22,
35; 13:16, 26, 50; 16:14; 17:4; 18:7.
7. Josephus: The Wars of the Jews 7. 3. 3.
8. Acts 14:1; 15:1-5; 17:4, 12; 18:4; 19:10.
9. "To the Jewish mission which preceded it, the Christian mission
was indebted, in the first place, for a field tilled all over the empire; in the
second place, for religious communities already formed everywhere in the
towns; thirdly, for what Axenfeld calls 'the help of materials' furnished
by the preliminary knowledge of the Old Testament, in addition to cate-
chetical and liturgical materials which could be employed without much al-
teration; fourthly, for the habit of regular worship and a control of private
life; fifthly, for an impressive apologetic on behalf of monotheism, histori-
cal teleology, and ethics; and finally, for the feeling that self -diffusion was
a duty. The amount of this debt is so large, that one might venture to
claim the Christian mission as a continuation of the Jewish propaganda."
Harnack: The Mission and Expansion of Christianity, volume 1, p. 15.
10. For a summary of the external conditions which gave Christianity
an opportunity to undertake its non-Jewish mission and fostered its devel-
opment, see Harnack: The Mission and Expansion of Christianity, volume 1,
pp. 19-23.
11. Acts 28:23-28.
12. Cf. Peter's vision, Acts 10; Paul's decision to go to the Gentiles
alone, Acts 18:6.
13. Matthew 28:7, 16-20; cf. also Mark 16:7, and John 21.
14. Cf. Luke 24:6, 7.
15. Acts 1:4, 8, 12.
16. Galatians 1:22; I Thessalonians 2:14.
17. Acts 1:8; 8:1 ff.; 9:31; 15:3.
18. Acts 9:2, 10, 19.
19. Acts 9:32 ff.
20. Acts 8:1 ff.
21. Acts 6:1 ff.
22. Acts 8:27 ff.
23. Acts chapters 3 and 8; and I Thessalonians 2:14. ,
24. Cf. Acts 6. Fanatic and rigid legalists among the Hellenists or
Grecian Jews brought bitter charges against Hellenistic Christians.
25. Matthew 10:7.
26. Acts 2:38, etc.
27. Matthew 10:32; Acts 2:36; cf. II Thessalonians 2.
28. Acts 6:14.
29. Acts 8:26 ff.
30. Already there was quite a noticeable tendency in Judaism to deal
with the matter of admission of new members in a way like that adopted by
Christianity. The law and its attendant regulations were allegorized prac-
tically out of existence by some Jews. Naturally enough the requirements
for admission were lowered on the side of formalism, or even entirely
eliminated. The question of baptism and circumcision must have been
fairly acute in many Jewish circles. See Lake: The Earlier Epistles of St.
Paul, p. 25 f.
31. Acts 11:19 f.
32. Acts 13:1.
168 QUESTS FOR SALVATION
33. Acts 11:20, but see the marginal note in the Eevised Version.
34. Acts 13:1-3.
35. Acts 11:26.
36. Galatians 2.
37. Galatians 2:1-10.
38. Galatians 2:11-21.
39. Galatians 2:14-21.
40. Eomans 15:25 ff.
41. Galatians 1:15 ff.
42. Acts 9:15; 26:16-18.
43. Acts 9:23 f.; Galatians 1:17.
44. Acts 19.
45. Matthew 24:14; Mark 13:10 ff.
46. Paul constitutes the chief source, for this phase of the investiga-
tion though the Synoptic Gospels and Acts, as products to a considerable
degree of the first period of independence from the original Jewish life
with which Christianity was for a time connected, furnish a considerable
amount of data.
47. Eusebius, Church History 3. 5. 2 f.
48. Galatians 1:12 ff.
49. Acts 5:14; 17:4, 12; 18:4, 8, etc.
50. John 6:35; 11:26; 12:44 ff.; 20:29.
51. See above, Chapter II.
52. Galatians 2:16.
53. Galatians 3:10.
54. Eomans 5:20; 7:7 ff.
55. Acts '5:30,, 31.
56. Matthew 9:2-7 and parallels; Luke 7:47-50.
57. Cf. Isaiah 53: II Maccabees 7:32-38; IV Maccabees 6:27; 17:18-22.
See also B. W. Bacon: American Journal of Theology, "The Gospel Paul
Eeceived", January, 1917 (pp. 15-42); and Deissmann: Light from the An-
cient East, p. 339, for the Hellenistic view.
58. II Cor. 5:14.
59. Eomans 5:12 ff.
60. I Corinthians 15:3; cf. also Mark 10:45; Matthew 20:28; John
11:49 ff.
61. Eomans 3:25 ff.
62. Eomans 5:9, 10.
63. Eomans 3:25; 5:9; I Corinthians 5:7; 10:16; 11:25; Colossians 1:14,
20; cf. also Hebrews 9:14; I John 1:7; Eevelation 7:14.
64. Philippians 4:5; I Thessalonians 5:2.
65. The "great apostasy" or "falling away", II Thessalonians 2.
The coming of the Messiah, I Thessalonians 4:16.
The resurrection of the dead believers, I Corinthians 15:12-19,
35-57; I Thessalonians 4:13-16; Philippians 3:21.
The transformation of the living believers, I Thessalonians 4:15,
17; I Corinthians 15:51-57.
The victory of the Messiah, II Thessalonians 1:7, 8; I Thessa-
lonians 5:3; II Thessalonians 2:8.
The final judgment and the incidents attending it, Eomans 2: 3-16;
I Corinthians 3:13; 4:5; II Corinthians 5:10.
General statements about the future, I Corinthians 15:20-28; I
Thessalonians 4:16-17.
66. Acts 23:6; 26:4, 5; Eomans 11; II Corinthians 11:22; Galatians
1:13, 14.
67. The distinctions brought forward here are not based on national or
racial origin and continuance, but upon the character of the social function
which they performed. There is no a priori reason why Jewish and Gentile
religions should not have given equal prominence to salvation by personal
IN NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 169
relations and by contact of substances, beyond the fact that the social or-
ganizations of the two peoples fostered divergent types of soteriology. The
divergent social forms are " accidents of history" which form no part of
the present discussion.
68. Cf. Judges 9:23; I Samuel 16:15; I Kings 22:24, for personalized
spirit; and Numbers 11:17, 25; II Kings 2:9, for substance spirit. See
E. H. Zaugg: A Genetic Study of the Spirit-Phenomena in the New Testa-
ment", (Private edition, distributed by the University of Chicago Li-
braries, Chicago, 1917), pp. 22 ff.
69. See above, Chapter III.
70. Eomans 16:25; cf. also I Corinthians 2:1-10; Ephesians 1:9, 10;
Colossians 2:2.
71. I Corinthians 4:1.
72. I Corinthians 13:2; 14:2; 15:51; Ephesians 3:3-11; 5:32; Colossians
1:27; 4:3; I Timothy 3:9, 16; Matthew 13:11. I Timothy 3:16 contains, as
it were, an epitome of the Christian mystery drama. The Greek cults pre-
sented to their devotees the picturesque representation of the Gods' expe-
riences in order to bring home the saving power of the deity, and to con-
vince them of the value of following in the path of divine example. Chris-
tianity, more a spoken message and less a pictorial presentation of the
drama than the Graeco-Boman religions, is at least in its dramatic qualities
reminiscent of the mysteries of the Hellenistic world.
73. Eomans 8:7.
74. Galatians 5:17.
75. Eomans 7:5, 15-20, 23, 24.
76. Eomans 3:9 ff.; 5:12 ff.
77. Eomans 3:10-12; cf. also Psalms 14:1 f.; 53:1 f.
78. Eomans 7:18-20.
79. Galatians 5:16-25.
80. Eomans 12:1; I Corinthians 6:19, 20; I Thessalonians 4:3, 4; also
I Corinthians 15:39.
81. The idea of evil is not to be discovered primarily in the use of the
term UO
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