The Historians' History of the World 06

(2) During the last decades of the third century Christian life underwent a virtual amalgamation with that of the world. The Christian who desired to live a life apart from the world became a member of a distinct class, the ascetics, or withdrew into the desert; the rest—i.e.

, the vast majority, had come to terms with the world. There was no class, from senators to artisans, in which Christians were not to be found, and in each class they fulfilled the obligations of their station. They were, indeed, bound to eschew certain callings (e.g.

, municipal appointments, which were all too closely bound up with “idolatry,” the theatrical profession, etc.), but the admonitions and penalties which were promulgated and denounced against the infringement of these prohibitions show that they were not always regarded. Certain facts, such as that, in the year 255, a Christian bishop in Spain was at the same time a member of a pagan society and had his children interred in the burying-ground of the said society; that a Syrian presbyter was director of the imperial purple-dye factory at Tyre; that a metropolitan bishop of Antioch was a ducenarius

; that not a few of the clergy engaged in trade and travelled to the annual fairs—give us a clear insight into the amalgamation of Christian life with the life of the world. And it is very significant that Origen, in his pamphlet against Celsus, draws a comparison between Christian and municipal communities in order to commend the moral advantage of the former, and merely demands an admission of their superiority. That is, he insists on a difference of degree only, and refrains from contrasting the Christian communities with the municipal communities, like light with darkness.

Thus Christianity was no longer separated from the “world” in practical life, as every persecution made abundantly plain, for at first the number of apostates always exceeded that of confessors. The Christians only gathered strength as the persecutions proceeded. They were practically “exclusive” no longer, except in matters of religion in the strict sense of the word. Why should not the state tolerate them? The malicious aspersions on their moral character had died away into silence. Was it not madness on the part of the government to continue to persecute people, who were more conscientious and peaceable citizens than many others, and did not disturb the organisation and functions of public life? If they would not give up their exclusive faith, then the government must give them leave to hold it—a way out of the difficulty so simple that it would have been adopted long before the time of Constantine if the Christians, on their part, had not stipulated for certain conditions. Their God was not to be merely tolerated, he was to reign alone in the sphere of belief. With the world they had already come to terms.

(3) With regard to doctrine, the astounding labours of Origen brought the preparatory work of earlier Christian theologians to a kind of conclusion in the East; in the West, doctrine and learning never played more than a subordinate part. Origen worked the doctrines of Christianity up into a religious system which was able to vie with the systems of the neo-Platonists and give them battle upon equal terms. His schools at Alexandria and Cæsarea were attended by even pagan young men, and continued to flourish after his death; his pupils and their pupils occupied the episcopal sees of the most important cities. It was no longer possible to esteem Christianity a religion for mechanics, slaves, and old women. The Christian “mythology” which gave so much offence was not actually altered, but it was spiritualised by the application of the allegoric method. In this form the majority of philosophers and men of culture found it endurable; for they were accustomed to employ the allegoric method in the interpretation of their own religious traditions, and to transmute base images and repulsive tales into sublime conceptions and the history of ideas. Even the solemn confession of Jesus Christ was so expressed by philosophical bishops that it sounded like a brief philosophical dissertation.

Strictly speaking, there were only three points on which Christian dogma differed essentially from the neo-Platonic which was then in the ascendant; the former taught the creation of the world in time, the incarnation of the Logos, and the resurrection of the flesh; the latter rejected all these three doctrines. Nevertheless the pupils of Origen conceived of these theological propositions in such wise that the assertion was very like a denial, and they made common cause with the neo-Platonists in their contest with the dualistic-pessimistic school of philosophy. Christian philosophy was in the mid-current of the intellectual movement, and it was therefore a singular anachronism that the state could not as yet bring itself to place those who professed it upon the same footing as other citizens.