Adolf Harnack · 10 of 19

Chapter II. The Element Common to All Christians and the Breach with Judaism

ON account of the great differences among those who, in the first century, reckoned themselves in the Church of God, and called themselves by the name of Christ, it seems at first sight scarcely possible to set up marks which would hold good for all, or even for nearly all, the groups. Yet the great majority had one thing in common, as is proved, among other things, by the gradual expulsion of Gnosticism. The that they knew the supreme God, the consciousness of being responsible to him (Heaven and Hell), reliance on Jesus Christ, the hope of an eternal life, the vigorous elevation above the world—these are the elements that formed the fundamental mood. The author of the Acts of Thecla expresses the general view when he (c. 5.7) co-ordinates τὸν τοῦ χριστοῦ λόγον, with λόγος θεοῦ περὶ ἐγκατείας, καὶ ἀναστάσεως. The following particulars may here be specified.

I. The Gospel, because it rests on revelation, is the sure manifestation of the supreme God, and its believing acceptance guarantees salvation (σωτερία).

II. The essential content of this manifestation (besides the revelation and the verification of the oneness and spirituality of God), is, first of all, the message of the resurrection and eternal life (ἀνάστασις, ζωὴ ἀιώνιος), then the preaching of moral purity and continence (ἐγκράτεια), on the basis of toward God (μετάνοια), and of an expiation once assured by baptism, with eye ever fixed on the requital of good and evil.

III. This manifestation is mediated by Jesus Christ, who is the Saviour (σωτήρ) sent by God “in these last days,” and who stands with God himself in a union special and unique, (cf. the ambiguous παῖς θεοῦ, which was much used in the earliest period). He has brought the true and full knowledge of God, as well as the gift of immortality (γνώσις καὶ ζωἡ, or γνώσις τῆς ζωῆς, as an expression for the sum of the Gospel. See the supper prayer in the Didache, c. IX. and X.; εὐχαριστοῦμέν σοι, πάτερ ἡμῶν ὑπερ τῆς ζωῆς καὶ γνώσεως ἧς ἐγνώρισας ἡμῖν διὰ Ἰησοῦ τοῦ παιδός σου), and is for that very reason the redeemer (σώτηρ and victor over the demons) on whom we are to place believing trust. But he is, further, in word and walk the highest example of all moral virtue, and therefore in his own person the law for the perfect life, and at the same time the God-appointed lawgiver and judge.

IV. Virtue, as continence, embraces as its highest task, renunciation of temporal goods and separation from the common world; for the Christian is not a citizen, but a stranger on the earth, and expects its approaching destruction.

V. Christ has committed to chosen men, the Apostles (or to one Apostle), the proclamation of the message he received from God; consequently, their preaching represents that of Christ himself. But, besides, the Spirit of God rules in Christians, “the .” He bestows upon them special gifts, and, above all, continually raises up among them Prophets and spiritual Teachers who receive revelations and communications for the edification of others, and whose injunctions are to be obeyed.

VI. Christian Worship is a service of God in spirit and in truth (a spiritual sacrifice), and therefore has no legal ceremonial and statutory rules. The value of the sacred acts and consecrations which are connected with the cultus, consists in the communication of spiritual blessings. (Didache X., ἡμιν δὲ ἐχαρίσω, δέσποτα, πνευματικὴν τροφήν καὶ ποτὸν καὶ ζωὴν αἰώνιον διὰ τοῦ παιδός σου).

VII. Everything that Jesus Christ brought with him, may be summed up in γνώσις καὶ ζωή, or in the knowledge of immortal life. To possess the perfect knowledge was, in wide circles, an expression for the sum total of the Gospel.

VIII. Christians, as such, no longer take into account the distinctions of race, age, rank, nationality and culture, but the Christian community must be conceived as a communion resting on a divine . Opinions were divided about the ground of that election.

IX. As Christianity is the only true religion, and as it is no national religion, but somehow concerns the whole of humanity, or its best part, it follows that it can have nothing in common with the Jewish nation and its contemporary cultus. The Jewish nation in which Jesus Christ appeared, has, for the time at least, no special relation to the God whom Jesus revealed. Whether it had such a relation at an earlier period is doubtful (cf. here, e.g., the attitude of Marcion, Ptolemæus the disciple of Valentinus, the author of the Epistle of Barnabas, Aristides and Justin); but certain it is that God has now cast it off, and that all revelations of God, so far as they took place at all before Christ, (the majority assumed that there had been such revelations and considered the Old Testament as a holy record), must have aimed solely at the call of the “new people”, and in some way prepared for the revelation of God through his Son.