Part 22

II. The numerous =Apocryphal Histories and Legends of the Apostles= were partly of heretical, and partly of Catholic, origin. While the former have in view the establishing of their heretical doctrines and peculiar forms of worship, constitution and life by representing them as Apostolic institutions, the latter arose mostly out of a local patriotic intention to secure to particular churches the glory of being founded by an Apostle. Those inspired by Gnostic influences far exceed in importance and number not only the Ebionitic but also the genuinely Catholic. The Manichæans especially produced many and succeeded in circulating them widely. The more their historico-romantic contents pandered to the taste of that age for fantastic tales of miracles and visions the surer were they to find access among Catholic circles.--A collection of such histories under the title of Περίοδοι τῶν ἀποστόλων was received as canonical by Gnostics and Manichæans, and even by many of the Church Fathers. Augustine first named as its supposed author one Leucius. We find this name some decades later in Epiphanius as that of a pupil of John and opponent of the Ebionite Christology, and also in Pacianus of Barcelona as that of one falsely claimed as an authority by the Montanists. According to Photius this collection embraced the Acts of Peter, John, Andrew, Thomas and Paul, and the author’s full name was Leucius Carinus, who also appears in the second part of the _Acta Pilati_, but in quite other circumstances and surroundings. That all the five books were composed by one author is not probable; perhaps originally only the Acts of John bore the name of Leucius, which was subsequently transferred to the whole. Zahn’s view, on the other hand, is, that the Περίοδοι τῶν ἀποστόλων, especially the _Acts of John_, was written under the falsely assumed name of John’s pupil Leucius, about A.D. 130, at a time when the Gnostics had not yet been separated from the Church as a heretical sect, was even at a later period accepted as genuine by the Catholic church teachers notwithstanding the objectionable character of much of its contents, its modal docetic Christology and encratite Ethics with contempt of marriage, rejection of animal food and the use of wine and the demand of voluntary poverty, and held in high esteem as a source of the second rank for the Apostolic history. Lipsius considers that it was composed in the interests of the vulgar Gnosticism (§ 27) in the second half of the 2nd, or first half of the 3rd cent., and proves that from Eusebius down to Photius, who brands it as πασῆς αἱρέσεως πηγὴν καὶ μητέρα, the Catholic church teachers without exception speak of it as heretical and godless, and that the frequent patristic references to the _Historiæ ecclesiasticiæ_ do not apply to it but to Catholic modifications of it, which were regarded as the genuine and generally credible original writing of Leucius which were wickedly falsified by the Manichæans.--Catholic modifications of particular Gnostic Περίοδοι, as well as independent Catholic writings of this sort in Greek are still preserved in MS. in great numbers and have for the most part been printed. The _Hist. certaminis apostolici_ in ten books, which the supposed pupil of the Apostles Abdias, first bishop of Babylon, wrote in Hebrew, was translated by his pupil Eutropius into Greek and by Julius Africanus into Latin.[87]--They are all useless for determining the history of the Apostolic Age, although abundantly so used in the Catholic church tradition. For the history of doctrines and sects, the history of the canon, worship, ecclesiastical customs and modes of thought during the 2nd-4th cents., they are of the utmost importance.

§ 32.6.

From the many apocryphal monographs still preserved on the life, works and martyrdom of the biblical Apostles and their coadjutors, in addition to the Pseudo-Clementines already discussed in § 28, 3, the following are the most important.

a. The Greek =Acta Petri et Pauli=. These describe the journeys of Paul to Rome, the disputation of the two Apostles at Rome with Simon Magus, and the Roman martyrdom of both, and constitute the source of the traditions regarding Peter and Paul which are at the present day regarded in the Roman Catholic Church as historical. These Acts, however, as Lipsius has shown, are not an original work, but date from about A.D. 160, and consist of a Catholic reproduction of Ebionite or Anti-Pauline, _Acts of Peter_, with additions from Gentile-Christian traditions of Paul. The _Acts of Peter_ take up the story where the Pseudo-Clementines end, as may be seen even from their Catholic reproduction, for they make Simon Magus, followed everywhere and overcome by the Apostle Peter, at last seek refuge in Rome, where, again unmasked by Peter, he met a miserable end (§ 25, 2). As the Κηρύγματα Πέτρου which formed the basis of the Pseudo-Clementine writings combats the specifically Pauline doctrines as derived from Simon Magus (§ 28, 4), so the Acts of Peter identify him even personally with Paul, for they maliciously and spitefully assign well-known facts from the Apostle’s life to Simon Magus, which are _bona fide_ in the Catholic reproduction assumed to be genuine works of Simon.--The Gnostic _Acts of Peter_ and _Acts of Paul_ had wrought up the current Ebionite and Catholic traditions about the doings and martyr deaths of the two Apostles with fanciful adornments and embellishments after the style and in the interests of Gnosticism. A considerable fragment of these, purified indeed by Catholic hands, is preserved to us in the _Passio Petri et Pauli_, to which is attached the name of Linus, the pretended successor of Peter. The fortunes of the two Apostles are related quite independently of one another: Paul makes his appearance at Rome only after the death of Peter. Of the _non-heretical Acts of Paul_ which according to Eusebius were in earlier times received in many churches as holy scripture (§ 36, 8), no trace has as yet been discovered.

b. Among the Greek =Acts of John=, the remnants of the Leucian Περίοδοι Ἰωάννου preserved in their original form deserve to be first mentioned. According to Zahn, they are one of the earliest witnesses for the genuineness of the Gospel of John, and give the deathblow to the theory that with and after the Apostle John, there was in Ephesus another John the Presbyter distinct from him (§ 16, 2). Lipsius, on the other hand, places their composition in the second half of the 2nd cent., and deprives them of that significance for the life of the Apostle, but admits their great value for a knowledge of doctrines, principles and forms of worship of the vulgar Gnosticism then widely spread. The Πράξεις Ἰωάννου, greatly esteemed in the Greek church, and often translated into other languages, written in the 5th cent. by a Catholic hand and ascribed to Prochoros [Prochorus] the deacon of Jerusalem (Acts vi. 5), is a poetic romance with numerous raisings from the dead, exorcisms, etc., almost wholly the creation of the writer’s own imagination, without a trace of any encratite tendency like the Leucian Περίοδοι and without any particular doctrinal significance.

c. To the same age and the same Gnostic party as the Leucian Acts of John, belong the =Acts of Andrew= preserved in many fragments and circulated in various Catholic reproductions. Of these latter the most esteemed were the _Acts of Andrew and Matthew_ in the city of the cannibals.

d. The Catholic reproductions in Greek and Syriac that have come down to us of the Leucian =Acts of Thomas= are of special value because of the many Gnostic elements which, particularly in the Greek, have been allowed to remain unchanged in the very imperfectly purified text. The scene of the Apostle’s activity is said to be India. The central point in his preaching to sinners is the doctrine that only by complete abstinence from marriage and concubinage can we become at last the partner of the heavenly bridegroom (§ 27, 4). A highly poetical hymn on the marriage of Sophia (Achamoth) is left in the Greek text unaltered, while the Syriac text puts the church in place of Sophia. Then we have two poetical consecration prayers for baptism and the eucharist, in which the Syriac substituted Christ for Achamoth. But besides, even in the Syriac text, a grandly swelling hymn, which is wanting in the Greek text, romances about the fortunes of the soul, which, sent from heaven to earth to fetch a pearl watched by the serpent forgets its heavenly origin and calling, and only remembers this after repeated reminders from heaven, etc. Gutschmied has shown it to be probable that the history groundwork of the Acts of Thomas is borrowed from older Buddhist legends (§ 68, 6).

e. =The Acta Pauli et Thecla=, according to Tertullian and Jerome, were composed by a presbyter of Asia Minor who, carried away by the mania for literary forging, excused himself by saying that he had written _Pauli amore_, but was for this nevertheless deprived of his office. According to these Acts Thecla, the betrothed bride of a young man of importance at Iconium, was won to Christianity by a sermon of Paul on continence as a condition of a future glorious resurrection, forsook her bridegroom, devoted herself to perpetual virginity, and attached herself forthwith to the Apostle whose bodily presence is described as contemptible,--little, bald-headed, large nose, and bandy legs,--but lighted up with heavenly grace. Led twice to martyrdom she was saved by miraculous divine interposition, first from the flames of the pile, then, after having baptized herself in the name of Christ by plunging into a pit full of water, from the rage of devouring animals; whereupon Paul, recognising that sort of baptism in an emergency as valid, sent her forth with the commission: Go hence and teach the word of God! After converting and instructing many, she died in peace in Seleucia. Although Jerome treats our book as apocryphal, the legends of Thecla as given in it were regarded in the West as genuine, and St. Thecla was honoured throughout the whole of the Latin middle ages next to the mother of Jesus as the most perfect pattern of virginity. In the Greek church where we meet with the name first in the Symposium of Methodius, the book remained unsuspected and its heroine, as ἡ ἀπόστολος and ἡ πρωτομάρτυς, was honoured still more enthusiastically than in the West.

f. The Syriac =Doctrina Addæi Apost.= was according to its own statement deposited in the library of Edessa, but allusions to later persons and circumstances show that it could not have been written before A.D. 280 (according to Zahn about A.D. 270-290; acc. to Lipsius not before A.D. 360). It assigns the founding of the church of Edessa, which is proved to have been not earlier than A.D. 170, according to local tradition to the Apostle Addai [Addæi] (in Euseb. and elsewhere, Thaddeus: comp. Matt. x. 3; Mark iii. 18), whom it represents as one of the seventy disciples and as having been sent by Thomas to Abgar Uchomo in accordance with Christ’s promise (§ 13, 2).[88]

§ 32.7.

III. =Apostolic Epistles.= The apocryphal _Epistle of Paul to the Laodiceans_ (Col. iv. 16), and that to the _Corinthians_ suggested by the statement in 1 Cor. v. 9, are spiritless compilations from the canonical Epistles. From the _Correspondence of Paul with Seneca_, quotations are made by Jerome and Augustine. It embraces fourteen short epistles. The idea of friendly relations between these two men suggested by Acts xviii. 12, Gallio being Seneca’s brother, forms the motive for the fiction.

IV. =The apocryphal Apocalypses= that have been preserved are of little value. An _Apocalypsis Petri_ was known to Clement of Alexandria. The _Apoc. Pauli_ is based on 2 Cor. xii. 2.

V. =Apostolical Constitutions=, comp. § 43, 4, 5.[89]

§ 32.8. =The Acts of the Martyrs.=--Of the numerous professedly contemporary accounts of celebrated martyrs of the 2nd and 3rd cents., those adopted by Eusebius in his Church History may be accepted as genuine; especially the _Epistle of the Church of Smyrna to the Church at Philomelium_ about the persecution which it suffered (§ 22, 3); also the _Report of the Church at Lyons and Vienne_ to the Christians in Asia and Phrygia about the persecution under Marcus Aurelius in A.D. 177 (§ 22, 3); and an _Epistle of Dionysius Bishop of Alexandria_ to Fabian of Antioch about the Alexandrian martyrs and confessors during the Decian persecution. The Acts of the Martyrs of Scillita are also genuine (§ 22, 3); so too the Montanistic History of the sufferings of Perpetua, Felicitas, and their companions (§§ 22, 4; 40, 3); as well as the _Acta s. Cypriani_. The main part of the _Martyrdom of Justin Martyr_ by Simeon Metaphr. (§ 68, 4) belongs probably to the 2nd cent. The _Martyrdom of Ignatius_ (§ 30, 5) professedly by his companions in his last journey to Rome, and the _Martyrdom of Sympherosa_ in the Tiber, who was put to death with her seven sons under Hadrian, as well as all other Acts of the Martyrs professedly belonging to the first four centuries, are of more than doubtful authenticity.

§ 33. THE DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES OF THE OLD CATHOLIC AGE.[90]

The development of the system of Christian doctrine must become a necessity when Christianity meeting with pagan culture in the form of science is called upon to defend her claim to be the universal religion. In the first three centuries, however, there was as yet no official construction and establishment of ecclesiastical doctrine. There must first be a certain measure of free subjective development and wrestling with antagonistic views. A universally acknowledged organ is wanting, such as that subsequently found in the Œcumenical Councils. The persecutions allowed no time and peace for this; and the church had enough to do in maintaining what is specifically Christian in opposition to the intrusion of such anti-Christian, Jewish and Pagan elements as sought to gain a footing in Ebionism and Gnosticism. On the other hand, friction and controversy within the church had already begun as a preparation for the construction of the ecclesiastical system of doctrine. The _Trinitarian_ controversy was by far the most important, while the _Chiliastic_ discussions were of significance for Eschatology.

§ 33.1. =The Trinitarian Questions.=--The discussion was mainly about the relation of the divine μοναρχία (the unity of God) to the οἰκονομία (the Trinitarian being and movement of God). Then the relation of the Son or Logos to the Father came decidedly to the front. From the time when the more exact determination of this relationship came to be discussed, toward the end of the 2nd cent., the most eminent teachers of the Catholic church maintained stoutly the personal independence of the Logos--=Hypostasianism=. But the necessity for keeping this view in harmony with the monotheistic doctrine of Christianity led to many errors and vacillations. Adopting Philo’s distinction of λόγος ἐνδιάθετος and λόγος προφορικός (§ 10, 1), they for the most part regarded the hypostasizing as conditioned first by the creating of the world and as coming forth not as a necessary and eternal element in the very life of God but as a free and temporal act of the divine will. The proper essence of the Godhead was identified rather with the Father, and all attributes of the Godhead were ascribed to the Son not in a wholly equal measure as to the Father, for the word of Christ: “the Father is greater than I” (John xiv. 28), was applied even to the pre-existent state of Christ. Still greater was the uncertainty regarding the Holy Spirit. The idea of His personality and independence was far less securely established; He was much more decidedly subordinated, and the functions of inspiration and sanctification proper to Him were ascribed to Christ, or He was simply identified with the Son of God. The result, however, of such _subordinationist hypostasianism_ was that, on the one hand, many church teachers laid undue stress on the fundamental anti-pagan doctrine of the unity of God, just as on the other hand, many had indulged in exaggerated statements about the divinity of Christ. It seemed therefore desirable to set aside altogether the question of the personal distinction of the Son and Spirit from the Father. This happened either in the way clearly favoured by the Ebionites who regarded Christ as a mere man, who, like the prophets, though in a much higher measure, had been endued with divine wisdom and power (_dynamic_ =Monarchianism=), or in a way more accordant with the Christian mode of thought, admitting that the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in Christ, and either identifying the Logos with the Father (_Patripassianism_), or seeing in Him only a mode of the activity of the Father (_modal Monarchianism_). Monarchianism in all these forms was pronounced heretical by all the most illustrious fathers of the 3rd cent., and hypostasianism was declared orthodox. But even under hypostasianism an element of error crept in at a later period in the form of subordinationism, and modal Monarchianism approached nearer to the church doctrine by adopting the doctrine of sameness of essence (ὁμοουσία) in Son and Father. The orthodox combination of the two opposites was reached in the 3rd cent, in _homoousian hypostasianism_, but only in the 4th cent. attained universal acceptance (§ 50).

§ 33.2. =The Alogians.=--Soon after A.D. 170 in Asia Minor we meet with the Alogians as the first decided opponents from within the church of Logos doctrine laid down in the Gospel by John and the writings of the Apologists. They started in diametrical opposition to the chiliasm of the Montanists and their claims to prophetic gifts, and were thus led not only to repudiate the Apocalypse but also the Gospel of John; the former on account of its chiliast-prophetic contents which embraced so much that was unintelligible, yea absurd and untrue; the latter, first of all on account of the use the Montanists made of its doctrine of the Paraclete in support of their prophetic claims (§ 40, 1), but also on account of its seeming contradictions of and departures from the narratives of the Synoptists, and finally, on account of its Logos doctrine in which the immediate transition from the incarnation of the Logos to the active life of Christ probably seemed to them too closely resembling docetic Gnosticism. They therefore attributed to the Gnosticizing Judaist, Cerinthus, the authorship both of the Fourth Gospel and of the Apocalypse. Of their own Christological theories we have no exact information. Irenæus and Hippolytus deal mildly with them and recognise them as members of the Catholic church. It is Epiphanius who first gives them the equivocal designation of Alogians (which may either be “deniers of the Logos” or “the irrational”), denouncing them as heretical rejecters of the Logos doctrine and the Logos-Gospel. This is the first instance which we have of historical criticism being exercised in the Church with reference to the biblical books.

§ 33.3. =The Theodotians and Artemonites.=--Epiphanius describes the sect of the Theodotians at Rome as an ἀπόσπασμα τῆς ἀλόγου αἱρέσεως. The main source of information about them is the Little Labyrinth (§ 31, 3), and next to it Hippolytus in his Syntagma, quoted by the Pseudo-Tertullian and Epiphanius, and in his Elenchus. The founder of this sect, =Theodotus= ὁ σκυτεύς, _the Tanner_, a man well trained in Greek culture, came A.D. 190 to Byzantium where, during the persecution, he denied Christ, and on this account changed his residence to Rome and devoted himself here to the spread of his dynamic Monarchianism. He maintained ψιλὸν ἄνθρωπον εἶναι τὸν Χριστόν,--_Spiritu quidem sancto natum ex virgine, sed hominem nudum nulla alia præ cæteris nisi sola justitæ auctoritate_. He sought to justify his views by a one-sided interpretation of scripture passages referring to the human nature of Christ.[91] But since he acknowledged the supernatural birth of Christ as well as the genuineness of the Gospel of John, and in other respects agreed with his opponents, he could still represent himself as standing on the basis of the Old Catholic _Regula fidei_ (§ 35, 2). Nevertheless the Roman bishop Victor (A.D. 189-199) excommunicated him and his followers. The most distinguished among his disciples was a _second_ =Theodotus= ὁ τραπεζίτης, the _Money-changer_. By an exegesis of Heb. v. 6, 10; vi. 20; vii. 3, 17, he sought to prove that Melchisedec was δύναμις τίς μεγίστη and more glorious than Christ; the former was the original type, the latter only the copy; the former was intercessor before God for the angels, the latter only for men; the origin of the former is secret, because truly heavenly, that of Christ open, because born of Mary. The later heresiologists therefore designate his followers Melchisedecians. Laying hold upon the theory φύσει τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν ἰδέᾳ ἀνθρώπου τότε τῷ Ἀβραὰμ πεφηνέναι which, according to Epiphanius, was held even by Catholics, and also, like the Shepherd of Hermas, identifying the Son of God with the Holy Spirit that descended in baptism on the man Jesus, Theodotus seems from those two points of view to have proceeded to teach, that the historical Christ, because operated upon only dynamically by the Holy Spirit or the Son of God, was inferior to the purely heavenly Melchisedec who was himself the very eternal Son of God. The reproaches directed against the Theodotians by their opponents were mainly these: that instead of the usual allegorical exegesis they used only a literal and grammatical, that they practised an arbitrary system of Textual criticism, and that instead of holding to the philosophy of the divine Plato, they took their wisdom from the empiricists (Aristotle, Euclid, Galen, etc.), and sought by such objectionable means to support their heretical views. We have thus probably to see in them a group of Roman theologians, who, towards the close of the 2nd cent. and the beginning of the 3rd cent. maintained exegetical and critical principles essentially the same as those which the Antiochean school with greater clearness and definiteness set forth toward the end of the 3rd cent. (§§ 31, 1; 47, 1). The attempt, however, which they made to found an independent sect in Rome about A.D. 210 was an utter failure. According to the report of the Little Labyrinth, they succeeded in getting for their bishop a weak-minded confessor called Natalius. Haunted by visions of judgment and beaten sore one night by good angels till in a miserable plight, he hasted on the following morning to cast himself at the feet of bishop Zephyrinus (A.D. 199-217), successor of Victor, and showing his stripes he begged for mercy and restoration.--The last of the representatives of the Theodotians in Rome, and that too under this same Zephyrinus, was a certain =Artemon= or Artemas. He and his followers maintained that their own doctrine (which cannot be very exactly determined but was also of the dynamic order) had been recognised in Rome as orthodox from the time of the Apostles down to that of bishop Victor, and was first condemned by his successor Zephyrinus. This assertion cannot be said to be altogether without foundation in view, on the one hand, of the agreement above referred to between Theodotus the younger and the Roman Hermas, and on the other hand, of the fact that the Roman bishops Zephyrinus and Callistus had passed over to Noëtian _Modalism_. Artemon must have lived at least until A.D. 260, when Paul of Samosata (§ 33, 8), who also maintained fellowship with the excommunicated Artemonites in Rome, conducted a correspondence with him.