The contention of the so-called Higher Critics, and of Rationalists generally, that for the divine sonship of Christ there is no warrant in Holy Scripture can evidently not be sustained. That, I think, is sufficiently Clear from what has been said in the preceding chapters; although only a part of the evidence against them has been produced. Now we must consider their other contention, namely, that the Early Church did not know her own mind in regard to Christ's divine personality. They will have it that during the first three centuries of her existence, the Church allowed her children to look upon Christ as a sort of inferior deity, who was indeed above all created things, yet was not strictly and absolutely divine, as they believed the Father to be. It was, they say, only at the Council of Nice, held in the year 325, that belief in Christ's absolute divinity was required of all who wished to become members of the Church. Until then the Church had advanced no definite view concerning the matter, and the faithful were left more or less to their own speculations.
If this view were founded on undeniable facts, it would present one of the greatest riddles in the world's history. The Apostles and the first disciples, as we have seen, considered and adored Christ as their God, and yet, according to this view, they did not communicate that faith to their converts nor establish that worship in the various communities which they founded. This is a riddle that admits of no solution. Hence nothing remains but to examine into the supposed facts, and thus determine whether they have existence in the objective order of things, or only in the Higher Critics' fertile imagination.
As is readily admitted on all hands, and as is quite evident from the nature of the case, the faith of the Church, at any given time, can be ascertained from her teaching, from her worship, and from the persecutions which her children are made to endure on account of their religious belief. Any one of these three sources of information is of itself sufficient to remove all doubt as regards the most essential and fundamental points, and if they are all taken together, the entire doctrinal system must needs be revealed in all its fullness. It is therefore along these lines that we shall make our inquiries in the present instance.
In regard to the first source it may be remarked, that the teaching of the Early Church appears mainly in her symbols, or professions of faith, in the writings of her representative men, and in the manner in which she dealt with heretics. From the very first it was the custom to require of converts a profession of faith, which was to be made before they received baptism. To facilitate this profession, and to secure uniformity, a set formula was adopted which contained the most fundamental truths then taught by the, church. The formula which was used in the first three centuries has been preserved for us, at least in part, by St. Justin,{1} by Tertullian,{2} and by St. Irenaeus{3} all of whom lived and wrote in the second century. It is now commonly. acknowledged by critics that this formula dates from a period not later than the end of the first century, and although it seems to have had its origin in Rome, in substance at least it was common to all churches both in the East and in the West. Now, in this formula, we read: "I believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was born by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary."{4} Hence every one who wished to be admitted into the Church, had to make an explicit declaration of faith in the divine sonship of Christ. He must believe that Christ is the Only Son of God; not therefore a son in the sense that all just men are the children of God, but in a very special sense, which made Him one in nature with the Father. The term, "His only Son," as here employed, is identical with the expression used by St. Paul, when he wrote to the Romans that Christ was God's "own Son," and with the statement found in St. John's Gospel, that Christ is "the Only Begotten of the Father." It is identical with the corresponding article of faith in our own Creed, for we say to-day as did the Christians of the first three centuries: "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary." Eighteen hundred years separate us from these early converts to the faith, but the faith in Christ's divinity and its outward expression have remained unaltered. As we believe that Christ is True God, consubstantial with the Father, so did they, and so did the Church that brought them forth to Christ in baptism. They were baptized, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,"{5} and they publicly professed their faith in the three divine persons of the One Triune God. Modern theorizers may attempt to deny this, but the testimony of history is unquestionably against them, and, as they themselves never tire of telling us, the testimony of history must be accepted by all reasonable men.
Not less convincing than the testimony of this early symbol is the unanimous teaching of the Church's most representative men as preserved to us in their writings. Thus at the end of the first century St. Clement of Rome reminds the Corinthians that Jesus Christ is True God as had been foretold in the Second Psalm, where Jehovah is represented as saying to the Messiah: "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee."{6} A few years later, St. Ignatius of Antioch calls Jesus Christ "my God," "our God;" "Jesus Christ our God," he writes to the Ephesians, "was carried in the womb of Mary." St. Justin Martyr, who wrote about forty years later, maintains that the Word is the First born of God, and as such True God; that He appeared in the Old Testament as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob{7a}; and that the reality of His sonship is of itself sufficient evidence of His true divinity{7b}. Towards the end of the second century St. Athanagoras of Athens writes in his Apology to the Roman Emperor, "Not only is the Father God, but also the Son and the Holy Spirit. In these three divine persons there is unity of Godhead, and in this unity of Godhead there is distinction of persons.{8} About the same time St. Irenaeus of Lyons argues, "If Christ forgives sins, if Christ is Mediator between God and man, this is because He is really a divine person."{9} Similar language is used by Tertullian of Carthage, by St. Hippolyte of Rome, by Origen and Clement of Alexandria, by Melito of Sardis, by St. Methodius of Tyre, and in fact by every writer of that period who had occasion to refer to this matter, and whose writings have been preserved. Among those who made profession of being members of the Church of Christ, there is not a dissentient voice as regards the Saviour's divine personality. They one and all confess and teach that He is the Son of God, one with the Father in nature and distinct from Him as a person.
Now think for a moment what this means. Taken together, these writers represent every rank and station in the Church as it then existed: -- some were bishops, others priests, others simple laymen. Some were engaged in the education of the young; others carried on the work of evangelization; others again followed the ordinary pursuits of life. Some were highly educated, whilst others had but little more information than the common people. Furthermore, they represent practically all the different countries and nations that had in any way received the Gospel. Europe, Asia and Africa, which made up the then known world, supplied each their quota of witnesses to the faith, as it was then taught by the Church and held by the people. Hence their teaching is necessarily a true index of the teaching of the Church herself, and their faith must needs have been identical with the faith of the Church.
That this was really the case, appears moreover to evidence from the manner in which the Church dealt with heretics, or persons who presumed to call in question Christ's true and absolute divinity. Thus when toward the end of the first century, a certain Cerinthus asserted that Jesus of Nazareth was not the Son of God, but only of Mary and Joseph, and that therefore He was not True God, the whole Church rose up in arms against him, and he was shunned by the faithful as a blasphemer and an apostate.{10} It was the same when the Gnostics, and later on the Arians assigned to Christ a middle place between the highest angels and the Supreme God, and thus made of Him a sort of inferior deity. The entire Church branded them forthwith as renegades, who had apostatized from the faith preached by the Apostles. So fundamental did the Early Church consider the belief in Christ's absolute divinity, that a denial of it ipso facto separated a man from her communion. It was then even as it is now, the mark of a true Christian was instinctively looked for in a man's unhesitating belief that Christ was true God. As a modern writer, who is not a Catholic, well puts it, "the truth of Christ's absolute Godhead was beyond doubt the very central feature of the teaching of the anteNicene Church, even when Church teachers had not yet recognized all that it necessarily involved, and had not yet elaborated the accurate statement of its relationship to other truths around it."{11} To say that the Church had not made up her mind on this fundamental point of doctrine, argues either a colossal ignorance of history, or a state of intellectual blindness that finds its explanation only in the most unreasonable prejudice. In those early days, men might use, as in fact they did, many vague and misleading expressions in their efforts to explain the mutual relations of God the Father and God the Son, but that the central fact of the Son's true and absolute divinity was ever called in question by a sincere church member, or that it was a matter of doubt to the Church herself, is historically false and cannot be truthfully maintained by any one who has carefully read the records of the ante-Nicene Church. The very fact that the faithful instinctively regarded every denial of Christ's divinity as an apostasy from God, puts this beyond all doubt.
And what we thus learn from the teaching of the Early Church, as expressed in her symbols, in the writings of her most representative men, and in her firm opposition to heretics, stands out with even greater clearness in the worship which she paid to Christ and which she demanded from all the faithful. As in her baptismal rite she consecrated her children to the One Triune God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, so did she gather these same children around her altars, bidding them to unite with her in the solemn act of adoration which had for its direct object, not only the Father and the Holy Spirit, but also the Son, Christ Jesus, who in His human nature had suffered and died for the sins of the world. A document written toward the end of the first century, and known to students as the Didache, clearly states that the Christians came together every Sunday morning for the purpose of offering sacrifice to the Godhead by the oblation of Christ's body and blood, as the Saviour had taught and commanded His disciples at the Last Supper. {12} The same practice is stated, and to some extent described, by St. Justin in his First Apology,"{13} and by Pliny the Younger in his report to the Emperor Trajan, who moreover adds that on these occasions the Christians were in the habit of offering prayers and singing hymns to Christ as their God.{14} It was in fact the celebration of Mass, in all essentials the same as observed to-day in the Catholic Church all the world over. What were the different prayers used on these occasions, cannot now be determined in detail; yet two of them have come down to us almost unchanged, and both pay divine honors to Christ. The first of these is the "Tersanctus," or "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth," part of which prayer every Catholic priest recites to-day at the end of the Preface in the celebration of Mass. The other one is that beautiful hymn known as the "Gloria in Excelsis," which is said at the beginning of the Mass on all feast days of the year. This, moreover, as we learn from contemporary records, formed the ordinary morning prayer of the primitive Christians; and what a beautiful prayer it is! "How wonderfully does it blend the appeal to our Lord's human sympathies with the confession of his divine prerogatives: 'O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, That takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. How thrilling is the burst of praise, which at last drowns the plaintive notes of entreaty that have preceded it, and hails Jesus glorified on His throne in the heights of heaven! 'For Thou only art holy; Thou only art the Lord; Thou only, 0 Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the glory of God the Father.' "{15} It is an explicit profession of faith in Christ the Redeemer, not only as man, but also as God -- as a God Incarnate.
Closely related to this beautiful hymn, which is technically known as the Major Doxology, or the greater hymn of praise, is another prayer, which is usually designated as the Minor Doxology, or the shorter hymn of praise. This, too, was in common use from the very beginning of Christianity, even as it is used to-day by every devout Christian. Its wording is: "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost." In this one and the same glory is given to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, and therefore all three are equally worshiped as divine persons. It is an implicit profession of faith in the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, and as such the formula itself is necessarily expressive of the belief of those who piously use it. Hence as it was used from the very earliest times, both by the learned and the unlearned, it is a standing witness to the faith of the primitive Christians. As they were baptized in the name of the Triune God, so did they publicly profess their faith in the equal Godhead of all three divine persons.
As one would naturally suppose, this worship of Christ, as well as the common practice of addressing prayers to Him, finds frequent mention in the writing of the Early Fathers. Thus St. Ignatius of Antioch, at the beginning of the second century, bids the Roman Christians "put up supplications to Christ on his behalf that he might attain the distinction of martyrdom."{16} St. Polycarp, a few years later, whilst bound to the stake to be consumed by fire, uttered this short but beautiful prayer preserved by the early Christians: "For all things, 0 God, do I praise and bless Thee, together with the Eternal and Heavenly Jesus Christ, Thy well-beloved Son, with Whom, to Thee and the Holy Ghost, be glory, both now and forever. Amen."{17} After his death, some Jews spread the rumor that the Church at Smyrna of which he had been bishop, would abandon the worship of Christ and henceforth worship Polycarp in His stead. The Church authorities answered this charge in a circular letter, in which among other statements we read: "They know not that neither shall we ever be able to desert Christ, who suffered for the salvation of all who are saved in the whole world, nor yet to worship any other. For Him indeed, as being the Son of God, we do adore; but the martyrs, as disciples and imitators of the Lord, we worthily love by reason of their unsurpassed devotion to Him, their own King and Teacher. God grant that we too may be fellow-partakers and fellow-disciples with them."{18} This almost reads as if it had been written by some Catholic of the sixteenth or seventeenth century, who had set himself the task of refuting the Protestant charge of creature worship, so often urged against the Catholic practice of venerating the Saints. The letter draws a sharp line of demarcation between the tribute of honor accorded to the martyrs and the worship paid to the Redeemer; the one is simply an act of veneration perfectly compatible with created excellence, the other is an act of adoration which is due to God alone.
This point stands out with special clearness in the works of Christian Apologists, who replied to the heathen charge of Atheism. When the Christians refused to worship the false gods of the pagans, they were denounced as Atheists, who did not believe in the existence of higher beings. The Christian writers took up this charge and pointed to the fact that they worshiped the one true God, whose divine nature was common to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Thus St. Justin, toward the middle of the second century, protests to the Emperor that the Christians worship God alone, and in this worship the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost have an equal share.{19} Some fifty years later Tertullian grapples with the taunt that the Christians worshiped a man, who had been condemned by the Jewish tribunals. He does not deny or palliate the charge, but justifies the Christian practice. Whatever Christ might be in the opinion of the pagan world, Christians knew Him to be of one substance with the Father.{20} In another place he argues against mixed marriages, and the one reason which he advances against them is, that there could be no joint worship of the Redeemer.{21} It was at that time that Origen, the greatest of early Christian writers, defended the worship of Christ against Celsus, a scoffing pagan philosopher. Celsus contended that "the Christians had no right to denounce the polytheism of the pagan world, since their own worship of Christ was essentially polytheistic. It was absurd in the Christians, he urged, to point at the heathen gods as idols, whilst they worshiped one who was in a much more wretched condition than the idols, and indeed was not even an idol at all, since he was a mere corpse.{22} The Christians," he continued, "worshiped no God, no, not even a demon, but only a dead man."{23} "If they did not wish to worship the pagan gods, why should they not rather pay their devotions to some of their own prophets than to a man who had been Crucified by the Jews?"{24} In his reply, Origen freely admits the fact that the Christians worshiped the crucified Christ. Nay, he not only admits that prayer to Christ was the universal practice of the Church, but he proceeds forthwith to justify it on the ground that Christ was God. "The gods of the pagans," he tells Celsus, "were unworthy of worship; the Jewish prophets had no claim to it; on the other hand, Christ was worshiped not as a mere man, but as the Son of God, as God Himself." "If Celsus," he continues, "had understood the meaning of this, 'I and the Father are One,' or what the Son of God says in His prayer, 'As I and Thou are One,' he would never have imagined that we worship any but the God who is over all; for Christ says, 'The Father is in Me and I in Him.' "{25}
A similar position is taken by other Apologists, who in the first three centuries wrote against the pagan calumniators of Christian worship. They one and all, not only admit that it was the universal practice of the Church to worship Christ as God, but they justify this practice on the score that Christ had proved His right and title to divine worship, inasmuch as He had demonstrated to evidence that He was God's own Son, equal to the Father and consubstantial with Him in nature. Hence to say that in the first ages of the Church Christ's divine personality was not a matter of faith is so directly opposed to the most certain testimony of history, that it is altogether unintelligible how any sincere and well read person can find the courage to make such a statement. And yet this statement is made over and over again, and that by men who, at least in their own estimation, constitute the court of final appeal in all matters historical. It is, of course, not for me to judge whether or not they are sincere in maintaining the position which they have so rashly assumed, but if they are, their reputation as historians rests upon a very insecure foundation.
As a last witness to the faith of the Early Church in the divinity of Christ, we may consider that army of Christian martyrs, who preferred to be torn limb from limb rather than surrender the faith which the Church had bestowed upon them as their most precious heritage. Their testimony is of exceptional value, because at the moment of death, when eternity with its everlasting weal or woe steps into the foreground, man does not indulge in idle fancies, or stubbornly maintain a position which he knows to be insecure. Add to this that in the case of these martyrs, denial of faith in Christ would have given them life and liberty and all sorts of earthly preferments whilst fidelity to that same faith not only meant death, but death under a form so terrible, that it almost freezes the blood in our veins simply to read of it in the records that describe their sufferings. Just imagine yourselves, if you can, in their place: stretched upon a rack, bedded upon a couch of fire, or nailed to the cross, with the alternative before you either to denounce your faith in Christ's divinity, or to endure the torture for hours and hours, until amid the jeers and jibes of a scoffing mob an ignominious death snatched you from the insatiable fury of your persecutors. Would you persevere in the confession of your faith, if that faith had not become your very life for time and for eternity? Yet vast multitudes of Christians gladly submitted to this bloody ordeal for no other reason than to remain faithful to Christ in death, whom they had learned to adore as their God during life. Men and women and children, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, bore this testimony to Christ without ever a thought of purchasing their life and liberty at the cost of their faith in His Godhead. The Church had taught them that Christ was True God; they believed this teaching with their whole soul, and to keep their faith intact, they gave up their bodies to tortures that beggar description. Theirs is a testimony that will live till the end of time; "their voices reach us across the chasm of intervening centuries; but time cannot impair the moral majesty, or weaken the accents of their strong and simple conviction."
In order to realize what it meant to these martyrs thus to defend their faith in Christ, we must read the account of their sufferings as handed down by eye-witnesses, who recorded the terrible scenes at which they themselves had been present. Among the many accounts that have thus been preserved, the following, which critics admit to be genuine, may serve as a sample. Euplius, a deacon of the Church at Catena, had been brought before the Prefect Calvisianus on the charge of being a Christian. The Prefect endeavored to win him over to paganism, but when he saw that all his entreaties and promises were in vain, he ordered the prisoner to be stretched on the rack. "And while being racked, Euplius said: I thank Thee, O Christ. Guard Thou me, who for Thee am suffering thus. The Prefect interrupted him, saying: Cease, Euplius, from this folly. Adore the gods, and thou shalt be set at liberty. Euplius answered: I adore Christ; I utterly hate the demons. Do what thou wilt: I am a Christian. Add yet other tortures: I am a Christian. After he had been tortured a long while, the executioners were bidden hold their hands: Then the Prefect said: Unhappy man, adore the gods. Pay worship to Mars, Apollo, and AEsculapius. Euplius replied: I worship the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. I adore the Holy Trinity, beside Whom there is no God. Perish the gods who did not make heaven and earth, and all that is in them. I am a Christian. The Prefect again said: Offer sacrifice, if thou wouldest be set at liberty. But Euplius answered: I sacrifice myself only to Christ my God: more than this I cannot do. Thy efforts are to no purpose; I am a Christian. Then orders were given that he should be tortured again; and whilst every bone was wrenched from its socket, he cried out: Thanks to Thee, O Christ. Help me, O Christ. For Thee do I suffer thus, O Christ. When finally all his strength had left him and his voice was gone, he still repeated these same exclamations with his lips only."{26}
Thus died Euplius, confessing his faith in Christ's divinity with his last breath; and thus died not hundreds and thousands, but millions. They all died bearing witness to Christ the Son of God, as He Himself had foretold when He said to His disciples: "Behold I send you as sheep among wolves. . . . For they will deliver you up in councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues. And you will be brought before governors, and before kings for my sake, for a testimony to them and to the Gentiles."{27}
With this, I think we may safely close our inquiry into the faith of the Church during the first three centuries of her existence. That faith stands out as clearly and as well attested as any other fact of history. The open profession of belief in Christ's Godhead which the Church demanded from all who wished to join her communion; the worship which she required all her children to pay to Christ; the unhesitating decision with which she opposed heretics; the unanimous teaching of her most representative men; the dying confessions of her countless martyrs -- all without exception testify that she believed and taught that Christ was True God. If this testimony does not give us certainty, then there is no certainty in history; if this testimony is false, then all history is a lie.
{1} Apol. I, 61, i.
{2} De Prescript. c. 36.
{3} Adv. Haer. I, 10.
{4} Denz. I, 2.
{5} Didache, C. 7.
{6} C. 36. C. 18.
{7a} Apol. 63.
{7b} Ibid.
{8} C. 20.
{9} Adv. Haer. III, 9, 2.
{10} S. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. V.
{11} Liddon, p. 432.
{12} Cc. 9, 14.
{13} N. 67.
{14} Epist. 97.
{15} Liddon, p. 394.
{16} Rom. c. 4.
{17} Mart. Polyc. C. 14.
{18} Mart. Polyc. c. 17.
{19} Apol. I, cc. 6, 17.
{20} Apol. C. 21.
{21} Ad. Uxor, II, 6.
{22} Contr. Cels. VII. 40.
{23} Ibid. 68.
{24} Ibid. 53.
{25} Contr. Cels. VIII, 12.
{26} Ruinart, Acta Mart. p. 439.
{27} Matth. X, 16-18.