IV

The Growth and Establishment of Christianity

1. IGNATIUS AND DOCETISM

For we can have no life apart from Jesus Christ; and as He represents the mind of the Father, so our bishops, even those who are stationed in the remotest parts of the world, represent the mind of Jesus Christ.

                                                                                             Ignatius of Antioch

                                                                                             Epistle to the Ephesians 3.

             In the century following St. Paul’s letters the Christian movement inevitably matured. The improvident enthusiasm of youth gave way to a more settled resolve as the postponement of the end of things became evident, and permanent arrangements grew up for the ongoing life of the Church. As the need to distinguish the true Church both from heretical sects within and competitive groups without became clear, belief was more and more closely defined. Toward the end of the first century a canon of Sacred literature began to grow, necessary to insure unity and stability in doctrine. In the usual course of events, the majority of a congregation remained unified while splinter groups forced the core to find the political leadership to formulate and enforce its views. As a result, though no larger political authority formed within the church for some time, in each town the elected bishop grew nearly absolute in his power. The formation of a hierarchy was necessary for the Church’s survival, but its authority could not yet be maintained by force, hence the support of the larger and more influential part of the community had to be maintained through open election of the Bishop. It was generally recognized by that larger and more influential part that only the Bishop’s absolute authority once elected could preserve unity and discipline. In practice, this led to a considerable degree of local autonomy, and naturally one community, or even the wider community at large, would often find itself suspicious of the behavior and beliefs of another, but differences were tolerated in the absence of any effective means to enforce a wider unity. Still, a continual exchange of visits and letters, with occasional meetings of the bishops in councils, maintained the larger community in rough doctrinal unity through discussion and persuasion, even when isolated groups, and sometimes whole regions, splintered off into sectarianism.

             Though the initial stress on morality continued, the rigorous expectation that the baptized would be utterly sinless in the Spirit faded, and provision was made for forgiveness even of serious sins in the faithful. With the passing of the expectation that every true Christian be possessed of the Spirit, the test of conversion became orthodoxy in belief and commitment to the organization.

             We get our first glimpse of the situation after St. Paul in the seven surviving letters of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, written between 69 and his martyrdom in Rome, some fifty years after Paul’s death, in 107. Polycarp’s account of Ignatius’s death helped make martyrdom popular in the Church, at least as a literary theme. Ignatius not only accepted martyrdom, but sought it out, writing to Rome to ask that there be no intervention on his behalf, for such a death in imitation of Christ was a sure way to heaven.

             Ignatius’s letters reveal that there was still a group of Jewish Christians in Antioch, as well as a sect that has come to be called “Docetists.” The latter thought that Jesus was not a man, but a Spirit that had taken on flesh for a time to communicate with human beings. Ignatius takes this to amount to the unacceptable view that the man Jesus was merely an appearance taken on by God. These people seem to have been more democratic than the orthodox, holding their own meetings outside the bishop’s authority, and allowing laymen to give the sacraments. Ignatius emphasized the authority of the bishop against them, asserting that the sacraments are valid only if the bishop presides. His emphasis on the authority of the hierarchy goes back some time in the Church, and seems to have been based on Apostolic succession from the beginning, but it is to be noted that Bishops were not around 60 years earlier, when Paul wrote his letters, for he calls on the Church as a whole to resolve its problems, and there seems to be no one in charge he can address.

             Ignatius’s Letter to the Ephesians states the Church’s position against the Docetists.

The Physician is one, flesh yet spirit, unborn yet born, God existing in the flesh, true life in death, both from God and from Mary, first passible and then impassible, Jesus Christ our Lord.

This is the earliest surviving assertion that Jesus is God, the God in question being the god of Middle Platonism, which the Greeks had recognized in the Old Testament Yahweh. So in his letter to Polycarp, Ignatius describes God as outside of time, impassible, and inaccessible to the senses. This bears on the rationale for the Docetists’ position, for they saw a contradiction, one Ignatius revels in, in the notion that a man could be such a God, or even the Logos, and of course, no one who had known Jesus personally remained alive. Ignatius certainly makes no appeal to a personal acquaintance with Jesus in answering the heretics, but argues that if Jesus was not genuinely man, did not genuinely die, or rise again in the body, then our hope of resurrection is vain. It was the necessity of the real humanity and death of Christ to confirm the orthodox account of his sacrifice for our sins that made Docetism impossible.

             There is more going on here, though. The hope of resurrection was a serious concern, but underlying it is the issue of the preservation of a central authority, the authority of the bishop, so necessary to avoid anarchy and, with it, the eventual destruction of the true faith. On the view of the orthodox, the Apostles, including Paul, had been privy to Jesus’s thoughts, and no one else since the ascension of Christ into Heaven has enjoyed contact with him. So an issue of faith had to be decided, always, from the testimony of the Apostles. The current leaders of the Church, successors of the Apostles, were charged with preserving the faith established by Christ. Heresy was always presented by the Orthodox as innovation, and whenever a new doctrine or a more refined definition of an old doctrine was introduced among them it was considered necessary to show that it was implicit in the Scriptures all along. One way to challenge such authority would be to insist that Christ appears even now to certain people, and imparts to them new doctrines or reinterpretations of old doctrines. This is impossible, though, if Ignatius is right, for Christ appeared only in the flesh, even after his resurrection, and after that he ascended to Heaven and will not return until the last days. So, given the withdrawal of the fleshly Christ, we must rely on the tradition preserved by the successors of his Apostles, and on the scriptures they interpret, for all our knowledge of holy things. If it is claimed, taking another tack, that the Holy Spirit could provide new doctrine, it will be objected that the Spirit is perhaps a Comforter, sent in Christ’s place, perhaps a healer of the soul restoring us and curing the effects of sin, but not a source of doctrine.

             The Apostle Paul presents a difficulty for this position, since his conversion experience involved a vision of Christ disembodied (a clear indication that such appearances of Christ were not initially disallowed), and the Gnostic Valentinus, a few decades later, would claim that his new revelation came from Theudas, a disciple of Paul. Valentinus was the most dangerous of the Gnostic teachers, for he tried hard to adapt to orthodox views and remain associated with the mass of believers, and here we see him, in his conciliatory way, avoiding any claim to a personal revelation from Jesus. But the orthodox not only conceived Paul’s experience as quite exceptional and unrepeatable, they also argued that no new doctrines had been imparted to Paul by Jesus out of the body. Nonetheless Paul did claim to be on the same level of authority as the Apostles who had seen Christ in the flesh, due to his experience of Christ out of the flesh, so one might be tempted to hold, like Valentinus, that the new doctrines he had learned were kept secret, and preserved for the more spiritual, or like Marcion, that Paul’s new teachings were hidden by corruptions and additions in the text of his letters, or one might even regard Paul as a model and expect new revelations from Jesus oneself. The accounts of mystical encounters with Jesus in Gnostic works often seem to imitate Paul’s experience, reporting, for instance, the vision of a bright light.

             Quite probably the Docetists of Ignatius’s time, like the Gnostics later, insisted that Christ, being a mere manifestation of God, and not flesh, could appear even now to the Elect, and impart new revelations unauthorized by the tradition protected by the Bishops. Indeed, Jesus might need to do so to explain the real meaning of the events of his life, which eye witnesses, enmired in love of the flesh, had not appreciated. After all, even in the canonic Gospels the Apostles are often represented as ignorant of what Jesus is up to, enough for some to justify a challenge to conservative ecclesiastic authority. In the Gnostic Gospel of Mary, Mary Magdalene receives in a vision certain astonishing revelations from the Lord about the career of the soul after death, and, asking how one sees such a vision, is answered that it is through the mind. When Andrew and Peter doubt Mary’s report of Jesus’s words to her, they are answered by Levi, who defends her, claiming the Lord has made her worthy to hear him. She lacks credentials, but her vision, and perhaps the coherence and spiritual sense of the words she attributes to Jesus, authorize her to establish new doctrines. In fact, Levi even charges Peter not to introduce any rule or law beyond what Jesus has said, perhaps implying that Jesus, when in the flesh, never gave such authority to Peter as would be needed to put down Mary, and certainly suggesting that accepting what Jesus says in a vision is not to go beyond what he says. Ignatius would have seen a threat here that had to be dealt with. The revelation had to be closed off, and put in charge of the bishops, and so neither the Docetist doctrine, nor any other view allowing that Christ might appear to people spiritually after his death, could be tolerated.

             How might the Docetists have responded to Ignatius’s charge that our own hope of resurrection fails if Christ is not resurrected in the flesh? Again, we can get some clue from later Gnostic documents. The author of the Treatise on Resurrection says,

Do not suppose that resurrection is an apparition. It is not an apparition; rather, it is something real. Instead, one ought to maintain that the world is an apparition, rather than resurrection.

The intellectual or spiritual world is more real than the physical to this thinker, and so the resurrected Christ, for all his lack of physicality, is more real than one’s own body. He seems to think that our real, living, immaterial self, as opposed to the body, which is dead already, does not die at all. (He speaks as though this living self were spatially extended, but it might still be non-physical, and he may well mean this only metaphorically, especially since much of what he says is ironic.) By the end of the second century the orthodox opinion would insist that it is this earthly body that is resurrected, though it is changed in the process, and that it does suffer death, both views this author rejects. The Gnostic Gospel of Philip tells us, “Those who say the Lord died first and then rose up are in error.” And so the Docetists no doubt responded to such as Ignatius. It is simply a crudity to imagine that eternal life hangs on the survival of the body, for the true self is a Spirit or mind. It is not through some sort of sympathetic magic that Christ brought it about that what was no more would be restored, rather Christ awoke us to our true selves, so that, no longer trapped in illusion, we could lay claim to our heritage of life. Indeed, for the Gnostic, and presumably the Docetist, we are not fundamentally natural beings of this world at all, but supernatural, divine beings, and it is our recognition that we are not, and never were, of this world, but rather divine beings summoned to reunite ourselves to the Godhead, that is the key to our salvation. In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus presents the arrival of the Kingdom as a matter of discovering who one really is:

The Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father.

Speaking to Thomas, Jesus says:

I am not your Master, for you have drunk, and become drunk from the bubbling stream I have measured out. . . Whoever drinks from my mouth will become as I am, and myself will become that person, and things that are hidden will be revealed to him.

Particularly revealing is the Gnostic use of the story of Eden. Orthodox Christians viewed the story as one of Adam and Eve’s illicit sin, which gets them in trouble with God, the legitimate authority, and take the serpent to be an evil demon, Satan himself, who is in rebellion against the legitimate God, and draws our first parents into rebellion with him, condemning them to just punishment. The Gnostic reading of the story is hostile to the notion of legitimate authority on several levels. For one thing, the serpent is taken to be our Instructor, who informs Adam and Even how to come to recognize good and evil (which is surely a good thing) by eating the fruit of the tree. Moreover, the God who commands them not to eat of the tree is a false authority, who attempt to imprison human beings by keeping them from realizing who they really are, that is, people quite capable of choosing the right way for themselves without guidance from the rulers of this world. In one text the Spirit of Wisdom who speaks through the serpent takes on a double aspect, for it is one thing in reality, and another thing in the view of the rulers of this world in which human beings are imprisoned:

I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin. I am the bride and the bridegroom, and it is my husband who begot me. I am knowledge and ignorance. . . I am the one they have called life and you have called death. . .

As for Eve’s temptation of Adam, this can be taken as the female wisdom, our instructor, calling out to the soul to awaken to what it is. What orthodox Christians take as a Fall from grace, requiring punishment and atonement, the Gnostic Docetists take as an initiation into wisdom, giving no hint of any sense of sin that would give authority a grip on their being. What Orthodox Christians take as rebellion from just authority the Gnostic Docetists take as legitimate awakening to one’s true self, and the assumption of mature autonomy.

             Now, setting aside all consideration of the authority of bishops, this is a very different spiritual vision from that of the orthodox. That such anarchic visionaries, given to withdrawal from the world and its authoritarian power structures, never gained control of the power structure within the Church should not surprise us, nor can we be surprised that they were attacked, not only as a threat to that power structure, but also as a threat to the spiritual vision of the mass of the faithful. The Docetists and the orthodox could not, in the end, live together in the same organization.

             Another issue made it even more difficult for the Docetists to maintain their position against the orthodox, their rejection of the growing enthusiasm for martyrdom revealed in Ignatius’s own life. Again we have to depend on later Gnostic texts to see what was probably going on. Many, though not all, Gnostics denied that Jesus in fact suffered and died on the cross. So the Apocalypse of Peter has it that Peter saw the true Jesus glad and laughing above the cross as the “fleshly part” of him suffered in substitution for him. The Acts of John has Jesus appearing to John in a cave at Gethsemane, while he is apparently dying on the cross, to explain to him that he is suffering none of the things that it will be said he suffered. The late Valentinian Treatise on Resurrection holds, in a conciliatory fashion typical of Valentinians, that considered as human, Jesus died, but the divine spirit within him did not die or suffer. Now if Jesus did not himself lead the way by suffering and dying on the cross, one might wonder what sense it makes to allow oneself to be martyred, and that question precisely is on the mind of those Gnostics who held that Jesus never really suffered on the cross. So the Testimony of Truth argues that those who hasten toward martyrdom actually fall into the clutches of the Powers of this world, because of their manifest ignorance who Jesus really was, and who they themselves really are, taking what is spirit for body. In particular, the treatise considers it absurd that a martyr’s death, rather than insight into one’s true self, should lead to forgiveness of sins, or gain resurrection. We ought not to seek out such suffering, or praise those who seek it out. The real meaning of Jesus’s apparent suffering on the cross was not that he died, and then was resurrected, but that he never really suffered at all, for the true Jesus was not the body. Nor are we our bodies. The views presented by Gnostic works often allow that Jesus did share our suffering, but they always insist that he never abandoned his spiritual nature and his awareness of himself, emptying himself to become wholly man, as the orthodox would have it, and that he shared our sufferings in order to be able to speak to us and show us our real natures, not for any other purpose. The Gnostics allowed that one who had to face martyrdom might draw help from Christ’s suffering, for it shows them who they really are, and assures them that they shall not really suffer death, and they do not appear to have deliberately avoided martyrdom by giving in to the authorities, sacrificing to the Roman Gods, or denouncing Christianity. But neither did they seek it, being willing to keep quiet and live a Christian life if they were allowed to do so. Nor did they take it that a martyr is necessarily more holy than one who never sought martyrdom, but led a holy life. These sensible views gave the defenders of orthodoxy their chance. The Gnostics were accused of showing contempt for the martyrs, and undermining the solidarity of the faithful with those held under arrest by Rome, and however hysterical and overdrawn the accusation may have been, it no doubt stuck, and turned many Christians against the Gnostics in times of persecution.

2. THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. . . The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. . . And from his fulness have we all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of his Father, he has made him known.

                                                                                             John 1:1–5, 9–14, 16–18.

             The Gospel of John, written between 110 and 125, gives us a picture of things just a little after Ignatius. It is a most interesting as a counterpoise to the message of Paul and the other Gospels, and for the novel and idiosyncratic solution to the problem of the lateness of the second coming that it evolves from its spiritual vision. The suggestion is that Christ will not come again, but sends the Comforter or “Paraclete,” though only the faithful can experience his presence. No other coming of Christ is to be expected.

If you love me, keep my commandments, and I will ask the Father to give you another Paraclete [Comforter, Advocate] to dwell with you forever, the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you shall know him, for he will dwell with you, and be in you. I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world no longer sees me, but you see me, for I live and you shall live . . . He who loves me will be loved by my father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.

Those who have faith in Christ were promised eternal life, and would leave this world when they died to be with him, but no apocalyptic vision for the world itself was entertained. Christ rescues the children of light from the darkness, and the children of darkness are left to their own miserable devices afterward. John has Jesus speak of the presence of his body and blood in the Eucharist, and the mystical union of the members of the Church in himself is maintained by the Eucharist, and it clearly intends Jesus’s death to be some kind of sacrifice, for he dies just as the lambs are being slaughtered for Passover. But it is unclear that the sacrifice is for the forgiveness of sins, for Jesus is simply assigned the authority to forgive sins by his Father, and it is never suggested in the Gospel that he gains this authority through serving as a sacrifice of atonement. Indeed, Jesus claims that he judges no one, and to escape judgment it is only necessary to have faith in him. It is likely that the reading Irenaeus will later give the sacrifice of Jesus and the Eucharist, that our participation in it provides us with immortality through our magical identification with God, is what John intends. The power of this world expels Jesus from this world when he can, but Christ has already delivered his message by this time, and provided his faithful with the medicine of immortality through his very death. His resurrection demonstrated that Satan has no power over him, and will have no power over those who trust in him. Moreover, after Jesus departs to be with the Father, he sends the Paraclete in secret, a messenger to his faithful who cannot be detected by the powers of this world, when he returns to the Father. Since no atonement is envisioned, it is not surprising that Christ in John shows very little humanity, and certainly never suffers in any human way. It is not his suffering for our sins, but simply his dying, and then his resurrection, in which we may share through the Eucharist, that is needful. He is God’s messenger, the Word made flesh. It was necessary that the Word be made flesh in order that he could communicate with the children of the light in this world, and so that he could set up the magical merging of himself and his faithful, so that those who have received and accepted the message can join him after this life in heaven.

             The Gospel tends to psychologize Satan and his demons. The temptations of Christ are conducted by the Devil in person elsewhere, but in John the same temptations are presented by people dominated by demonic impulses—the crowd that would make him King, demands that he provide them with miraculous bread, and Jesus’s own brothers challenge him to display his powers to the world. John’s Salvation is a psychological drama, not an externalized apocalypse.

             John presents the drama of Jesus’s career as a cosmic one, in which Jesus represents the light, and the Jews the darkness that desires to murder the light. It is far and away the most anti-Semitic of the Gospels, representing the Jews for the most part as children of the Devil about the Devil’s work. None of the Jews except the eleven faithful disciples seem to believe, though Samaritans and Gentiles accept him as counterpoint to the unbelief of his own people. Jesus’s speeches to the crowds in Galilee are not instruction, but condemnation. The crowds take him to be the Messiah when they see miracles, and wish to make him King, but he evades them. They will not accept him in his own terms, but only in worldly terms. Even when Jesus is supposedly speaking to those who have believed in him in the temple, it turns out that their belief is temporary and inadequate, and the address reverts to the usual hostility within a few verses, and informs these people, the Jews, that their father is the devil, not Abraham or God.

             John, like Ignatius, insists that Christ lived in the flesh, and that Jesus is God, and, like Paul, makes Jesus the pre-existent Word of God, the Logos, through which all things were made, and which became flesh. He shows some awareness of difficulties in the equation of the Son and the Father. The Father is the source of all power, so that the Son can do nothing without him, but he shows the Son all that he does, so that the Son, who agrees with the Father in all things, does it, too. Only the Son has seen, or apparently can see, the Father. The Father has given the Son his authority to judge men, and those the Father gives to the Son as his are saved, so that the Son consistently mediates between the Father and his creation, although the power resides in the Father, and the Son sees and agrees always with the Father’s intentions. The Comforter does not merely comfort, but also will teach all things, and bring to remembrance all that Jesus said. This seems to authorize theological speculation, at least on the meaning of Jesus’s sayings.

             The Logos doctrine, the view that Jesus Christ was the Word of the Father, had momentous consequences for Christian philosophy, for it authorized the use of Platonic metaphysics in the explanation of Scripture, and in the elucidation of doctrine, in particular the difficult doctrine of the .Trinity. The doctrine was apparently rejected by a conservative group of “alogoi,” who lived in Asia Minor, and were particularly hostile to Montanism and the claims of prophecy in general. They rejected John’s Gospel and Apocalypse, claiming that they contradicted the Synoptic Gospels, and were Docetist in orientation, so that, for instance, no account of Jesus’s birth is given in them. In particular, they rejected the Logos doctrine, and the pre-existence of Jesus. Their approach seems to have been hostile to Adoptionism, as well, the view, descended from the exaltation Christology of Acts, that Jesus was divine and the Son of God through adoption. They roundly asserted the divinity of the man Jesus, identifying Cerinthus (ca. 100), who held that the Christ descended on the man Jesus at his baptism, and left again before his crucifixion, as the heretical author of The Gospel of John. They saw the Logos doctrine as an ally of Adoptionism, then, and it is perhaps in response to such critics that the orthodox insisted on the identity of the Logos, Christ, and Jesus, setting themselves a difficult philosophical problem in doing so, for it is hard to see how such an identity could hold.

3. BAPTISM AND THE EUCHARIST

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin.

                                                                                             Paul, Romans 6:3–7.

For this is what I received from the Lord, and in turn passed on to you: that on the same night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took some bread, and thanked God for it, and broke it, and he said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this as a memorial of me.” In the same way he took the cup after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant of my blood. Whenever you drink it, do this as a memorial of me.”

                                                                                             Paul, I Corinthians 11:23–26.

             The chief rite of the new religion was originally Baptism. Hebrews (ca. 60) makes baptism the only sacrament for the forgiveness of sins, and claims it can only be carried out once. If one sins after baptism there is no help for it. Christ is represented in a Pauline fashion here, and said to have been tempted just as we are, but to have remained free from sin, showing that we can do this too, after Baptism. About the same time, The Shepherd of Hermas (ca. 65) suggests that there is a second remission of sins after baptism, probably at one’s death, if there is repentance, to resolve the problem.

             I John approaches the problem in the 2^nd century in another way, suggesting that it is mortal sins alone that cannot be forgiven after baptism. The letter expands at length on our duty to love our brethren, and the point appears at the end—we do not love them if, for sins that are merely venial, we expel them from the communion of the faithful. It is conceded that there are mortal sins, and that we should not even pray for those who commit such sins, but it is unclear how often, if ever, the author would confess to having encountered such a sin. Right at the beginning he tells us, “if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us,” an apparent reference to those who would stone the woman taken in adultery in the Gospel of John—“let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” The whole epistle is an appeal for mercy for one’s sinful brethren, mercy that we all need ourselves, in the end.

             The Eucharist gained importance quickly, in part because it provided a third solution to the problem of sin committed after Baptism. So long as one was admitted to the communal meal, and this not through any imposture or deceit, one remained within the community and so was presumably forgiven any sins one had committed. Thus one might attribute the power of remission of