Church and State as Seen in the Formation of Christendom

Still more distinguished was Clemens, the pupil as well as the successor of Pantænus. Born about the middle of the second century at Alexandria or Athens, and endowed with great ability, he searched all the systems of Greek philosophy. He was full of learning when grace made him a Christian, and from that time he devoted all his powers to deepen his knowledge of the Christian faith, and to convey that knowledge to others, by drawing out a true Gnosis against the false, a main seat of which was at Alexandria, over the school of which he presided.

I have taken the seven great converts, Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Tertullian, Pantænus, Clemens, who all became apologists of the Church after their conversion, as specimens of the power which she exercised in the second century of drawing the higher spirits among the heathen into her fold. That power did not diminish but increase in the third century. It exerted itself with great effect through the establishment in the course of the second century of a system of learned instruction in the great catechetical schools. The chief of these was at Alexandria; for where the munificence of the Ptolemies had planted and richly endowed a seat of Greek learning, science, and philosophy, which had been enlarged by Tiberius, so that youth thronged to it from all parts of the Roman Empire, now the Christian Church, which probably from its beginning had there the usual school for instruction of catechumens, by degrees enlarged the instruction given in that school, and introduced learned lectures upon the Christian faith. Before long a complete learned education, all that we mean by an university, was set up. The object was not only to instruct Christian youths, but likewise to attract cultured heathen, especially the young, to prepare them gradually, and gain them to the Christian faith. Explanation of the Sacred Scriptures formed the chief point, but likewise grammar, rhetoric, geometry, and philosophy were studied. The exact point of time when all this took effect cannot be assigned; it is probable that it took time to perfect the system. Athenagoras is the first named president, who was followed from the year 170 to 312 by Pantænus, Clemens, Origen, Heraclas, Dionysius, Pierius, Theognostus, Serapion, Peter the Martyr. Each of these had fellow-workers under him, who increased in number as time went on. A crowd of learned men, bishops, saints, and martyrs, came out of this school. The envy and hatred of the heathens were so incited by it, that they often surrounded the house with soldiers, seized upon students, and led them away to execution. The renown of the school was so great in the middle of the third century, that Anatolius, a pupil of it, was sought by the heathen themselves to succeed Aristoteles in the headship of the Alexandrian university.

Another school of the like kind was set up by Origen at Cæsarea in Palestine, and became famous. Rome also possessed a learned school, founded by Justin, concerning which, however, we know very little.174 Edessa and Antioch possessed the like. It is apparent how important such schools must have been for the formation of a learned clergy. The more the Christian Church increased, and spread to all ranks of society, the more need there became for learning in its defenders.

But great as was the renown won by these schools, and important as were the services rendered by them to the Christian Church in the advance of learning, in building up that progress from faith to knowledge – that growth of knowledge founded upon faith which marks the whole ante-nicene period – nevertheless the development of the sacred science was connected not so much with a regular course of teaching in the schools as with the vehement struggle for life which the Church was then waging on the one hand against Judaism and heathendom, on the other hand against the great heresies which successively attacked all the main truths of religion and the chief mysteries of Christianity.175 Also, it must ever be remembered that the gift of infallible teaching, derived from the assistance of the Holy Spirit, is lodged, not in science, even not in theological science, but in the magisterium of the Church.176 The most accomplished defence during all this period of the Church against the attacks of heathenism is, by common consent, allotted to the work of Origen in reply to Celsus. There is also a like consent that the same author’s work upon Principles is the first attempt at systematic theology; but with all its ability, learning, and acuteness, it is not free from great errors. The one is a pure success, the other shows that the contact with Platonic philosophy had led the author in certain points astray. Again, all his genius and all his zeal did not save Tertullian from falling into Montanism, nor from discharging upon the chief ruler of the Church the sarcasm which he had so often employed against its enemies. In inquiring closely into the belief of some of those whose conversion from heathenism I have above instanced, an illustrious writer says: “It must be considered that the authors whom I have above cited whatever be the authority of some of them, cannot be said to speak ex cathedra, even if they had the right to do so, and do not speak as a Council may speak. When a certain number of men meet together, one of them corrects another, and what is personal and peculiar in each, what is local or belongs to schools, is eliminated.”177

But if, as seems to be fully admitted, theology was not treated as an organic body of doctrine up to the Nicene Council, and even much beyond it, and yet, if in this period the Church maintained, as she did maintain, her faith against three great foes, the Jews, the many-sided influence of the Gentile world arrayed with all its powers against her, and the manifold attacks of false doctrines rising from within in the shape of heresies, or in the shape of antichristian systems which simulated Christianity, how was her work accomplished?

I proceed to give as definite an answer as I can to this question.

I have traced above the transmission of spiritual power from the Person of Christ to the College of Apostles presided over by St. Peter, and the planting of bishops throughout the world by the Apostles as a further transmission of that power. The episcopate so appointed formed, instructed, taught, and governed the Christian people, one and identical in itself. This people, with the hierarchy which governed it, the sacraments which contained and dispensed its inward life, most of all the sacrifice wherein was the Lord Himself, made a polity; and the Christian doctrine was, so to say, to that polity what blood is to the body. From the beginning, then, the office of teaching was lodged in those who governed; they conserved, handed down from age to age, all that which constituted the polity, of which doctrine was the life-blood.

Now, I will take as an exponent of this whole belief one who came forth into active life just at the time of the Nicene Council, and whose name has been ever since identified with the defence of that especial doctrine upon which the whole fabric of the Christian faith rested, namely, the Godhead of Christ. St. Athanasius may well stand as the representative of those principles in virtue of which the Church maintained her faith when she could not meet freely in council, when her theology was contained in the form of simple faith rather than drawn out as an organic structure, when her bishops everywhere had to meet the brunt of persecution, when the action of her central and presiding Bishop was hampered by the perpetual jealousy of a hostile government; when, for all these reasons, the unity and impact of the whole body, as one people, were exposed to a severer strain than at any other period.

I take this account of the mind of St. Athanasius from one who has studied his writings with peculiar care, not to say with the affection of a kindred spirit: —

“This renowned Father is in ecclesiastical history the special doctor of the sacred truth which Arius denied, bringing it out into shape and system so fully and luminously, that he may be said to have exhausted his subject, as far as it lies open to the human intellect. But, besides this, writing as a controversialist, not primarily as a priest and teacher, he accompanies his exposition of doctrine with manifestations of character which are of great interest and value.

“The fundamental idea with which he starts in the controversy is a deep sense of the authority of tradition, which he considers to have a definitive jurisdiction even in the interpretation of Scripture, though at the same time he seems to consider that Scripture, thus interpreted, is a document of final appeal in inquiry and in disputation. Hence, in his view of religion, is the magnitude of the evil which he is combating, and which exists prior to that extreme aggravation of it (about which no Catholic can doubt) involved in the characteristic tenet of Arianism itself. According to him, opposition to the witness of the Church, separation from its communion, private judgment overbearing the authorised catechetical teaching, the fact of a denomination, as men now speak, – this is a self-condemnation; and the heretical tenet, whatever it may happen to be, which is its formal life, is a spiritual poison and nothing else, the sowing of the evil one upon the good seed, in whatever age and place it is found; and he applies to all separatists the Apostle’s words, ‘They went out from us, for they were not of us,’ Accordingly, speaking of one Rhetorius, an Egyptian, who, as St. Austin tells us, taught that ‘all heresies were in the right path and spoke truth,’ he says that the impiety of such doctrine is frightful to mention.

“This is the explanation of the fierceness of his language when speaking of the Arians; they were simply, as Elymas, ‘full of all guile and of all deceit, children of the devil, enemies of all justice,’ θεομάχοι – by court influence, by violent persecution, by sophistry, seducing, unsettling, perverting the people of God.

“Athanasius considers Scripture sufficient for the proof of such fundamental doctrines as came into controversy during the Arian troubles; but while in consequence he ever appeals to Scripture (and, indeed, has scarcely any other authoritative document to quote), he ever speaks against interpreting it by a private rule instead of adhering to ecclesiastical tradition. Tradition is with him of supreme authority, including therein catechetical instruction, the teaching of the schola, ecumenical belief, the φρόνημα of Catholics, the ecclesiastical scope, the analogy of faith, &c.

“In interpreting Scripture, Athanasius always assumes that the Catholic teaching is true, and the Scripture must be explained by it. The great and essential difference between Catholics and non-Catholics was, that Catholics interpreted Scripture by tradition, and non-Catholics by their own private judgment. That not only Arians, but heretics generally, professed to be guided by Scripture, we know from many witnesses.

“What is strange to ears accustomed to Protestant modes of arguing, St. Athanasius does not simply expound Scripture, rather he vindicates it from the imputation of its teaching any but true doctrine. It is ever ὀρθός, he says, that is, orthodox; I mean, he takes it for granted that a tradition exists as a standard, with which Scripture must, and with which it doubtless does agree, and of which it is the written confirmation and record.

“The recognition of this rule of faith is the basis of St. Athanasius’s method of arguing against Arianism. It is not his aim ordinarily to prove doctrine by Scripture, nor does he appeal to the private judgment of the individual Christian in order to determine what Scripture means; but he assumes that there is a tradition substantive, independent, and authoritative, such as to supply for us the true sense of Scripture in doctrinal matters – a tradition carried on from generation to generation by the practice of catechising, and by the other ministrations of Holy Church. He does not care to contend that no other meaning of certain passages of Scripture besides this traditional Catholic sense is possible or is plausible, whether true or not, but simply that any sense inconsistent with the Catholic is untrue – untrue because the traditional sense is apostolic and decisive. What he was instructed in at school and in church, the voice of the Christian people, the analogy of faith, the ecclesiastical φρόνημα, the writings of saints, – these are enough for him. He is in no sense an inquirer, nor a mere disputant; he has received and he transmits. Such is his position, though the expressions and turn of sentences which indicate it are so delicate and indirect, and so scattered about his pages, that it is difficult to collect them and to analyse what they imply.

“The two phrases by which Athanasius denotes private judgment on religious matters, and his estimate of it, are ‘their own views’ and ‘what they preferred;’ as, for instance, ‘laying down their private impiety as some sort of rule, they wrest all the divine oracles into accordance with it,’ and ‘they make the language of Scripture their pretence, but instead of the true sense, sowing upon it the private poison of their heresy,’ and ‘he who speaketh of his own speaketh a lie.’ This is a common phrase with Athanasius, ‘as he chose,’ ‘what they chose,’ ‘when they choose,’ ‘whom they chose;’ the proceedings of the heretics being self-willed from first to last.

“Revealed truth, to be what it professes, must have an uninterrupted descent from the Apostles; its teachers must be unanimous, and persistent in their unanimity; and it must bear no human master’s name as its designation. On the other hand, first novelty, next discordance, vacillation, change, thirdly, sectarianism, are consequences and tokens of religious error. These tests stand to reason, for what is over and above nature must come from divine revelation; and if so, it must descend from the very date when it was revealed, else it is but matter of opinion, and opinions vary, and have no warrant of permanence, but depend upon the relative ability and success of individual teachers, one with another, from whom they take their names. The Fathers abound in passages which illustrate these three tests.

“From the first the Church had the power, by its divinely appointed representatives, to declare the truth upon such matters in the revealed message or gospel tidings as from time to time came into controversy; for unless it had this power, how could it be ‘the pillar and ground of the truth;’ and these representatives, of course, were the rulers of the Christian people, who received as a legacy the depositum of doctrine from the Apostles, and by means of it, as need arose, exercised their office of teaching. Each bishop was in his own place the Doctor Ecclesiæ for his people; there was an appeal, of course, from his decision to higher courts, to the bishops of a province, of a nation, of a patriarchate, to the Roman Church, to the Holy See, as the case might be; and thus at length a final determination was arrived at, which in consequence was the formal teaching of the Church, and, as far as it was direct and categorical, was from the reason of the case the word of God. And being such, was certain, irreversible, obligatory on the inward belief and reception of all subjects of the Church, or what is called de fide.

“All this could not be otherwise if Christianity was to teach divine truth in contrast to the vague opinions and unstable conjectures of human philosophers and moralists, and if as a plain consequence it must have authoritative organs of teaching, and if true doctrines never can be false, but what is once true is always true. What the Church proclaims as true never can be put aside or altered, and therefore such truths are called definitions, as being boundaries or landmarks.”

From all the above “it would appear that the two main sources of revelation are Scripture and Tradition, that these constitute one Rule of Faith, and that sometimes as a composite rule, sometimes as a double and co-ordinate, sometimes as an alternative, under the magisterium, of course, of the Church, and without an appeal to the private judgment of individuals.”178

Now I conceive that the picture thus drawn from the writings and the practice of Athanasius gives us, in fact, a palpable embodiment of that spiritual power by which the Church defended and carried on her faith from the Day of Pentecost to the Nicene Council; for the principles and practice of Athanasius were the principles and practice of the whole Church, and nothing short of the continuous action of the Holy Spirit could have created and maintained a polity whose subjects were instinct with such a loyalty of mind, heart, and action. It was not a gift of learning; it was not philosophic power of thought; it was not the scientific labour of theology, as in after medieval times, arranging in a luminous system the results of the Church’s doctrine through ages of spiritual warfare and trials of every kind. It is true that in all this period, as well as in the succeeding four hundred years, the armour of theology was wrought out bit by bit through the blows of heresy, and not before St. John of Damascus did any one work the separate pieces into a panoply. The great mind and nobler heart of Origen even failed in the attempt. But from the beginning the Church moved on, filled with a divine consciousness that it was the Body of Christ, carrying the truth in its bosom. Each bishop, each father, each writer, and in a far higher degree the Councils, were conscious of this; but most of all in the Apostolic See, the centre of the whole body, was such a conviction living and active, and exhibited in all the various functions of spiritual rule.

It is not possible from existing documents to form a continuous and detailed history of the ante-nicene Church. Thus, if any will not accept the Church at the Nicene Council as an evidence of what the Church was in preceding times as to its constitution, principles of action, and faith, it is possible, through the mere absence of written proof, to make denials of those very things without which the Nicene Council could never have come together. The spirit of negation luxuriates in that absence of documents which more than anything else the state of persecution caused. On the other hand, to the eyes of faith the grain of mustard seed planted by our Lord on Calvary is become, at the end of three hundred years, a tree which covers the Roman world, and gives its fruits for the healing of the nations.

The writer just quoted says elsewhere, in treating the point how far an accurate presentation of the doctrine respecting the Holy Trinity is found in the apologists of those times, that “it is a great misfortune to us that we have not had preserved to us the dogmatic utterances of the ante-nicene Popes.”179 But I would draw attention to a remarkable proof actually existing of the completeness with which the hierarchic principle had worked itself out in the days of persecution. This testimony is the more valuable because it belongs to the very first year of the Church’s freedom, the year 314. In that year, at the instance of the Emperor Constantine, the Council of Arles was convoked as a representative Council of all the West. Up to this time the Council of Antioch, which deposed Paul of Samosata, had been the most important and general. That of Arles was in a much greater degree a Council in which the bishops who sat represented their respective provinces, as, for instance, from the remote Britain the bishops of York and London and another British See were present.

The Council of Arles then addresses in these terms Pope Sylvester: – “We who, by the desire of the most religious Emperor, have been assembled in the city of Arles, bound together by the common bond of charity and the unity of the Church our Mother, salute you, most glorious Pope, with the befitting reverence. We have endured here men grievous and pernicious to our law and tradition, men of unbridled mind. Both the present authority of our God, and the tradition and rule of the truth have rejected them, for there was in them no reasonable ground for pleading, no limit or proof for their accusations. Therefore, by the judgment of God and our Mother the Church, who knows and approves her own, they have either been condemned or repudiated; and would, most beloved brother, that you could have been present at so great a spectacle; we believe, indeed, that our sentence would then have been more severe, and had your judgment been united with ours, our assembly would have rejoiced with a greater joy. But you were not able to leave that place in which the Apostles daily sit, and their blood without intermission testifies the glory of God.” Then sending to him the subjects of their decrees, they preface them with the words, “It was our pleasure that knowledge of this should be communicated to all by you who hold the greater dioceses. What we have decreed by common counsel we signify to your charity, that all may know what in future they are bound to observe. And, first, as to the observation of the Lord’s Pasch, that it may be kept on one day and at one time through the whole world, and that according to custom you direct letters to all to this effect.”

But the Emperor, neither a Christian nor a catechumen for many long years to come, writes to the Fathers of the Council: “They (the Donatists) ask for my judgment, who am myself awaiting the judgment of Christ. For I say, as the truth is, the judgment of bishops ought to be considered as if the Lord Himself were present and judging. For these may have no other mind and no other judgment but what they have been taught by the teaching of Christ.180 What, then, do those malignant men want, instruments, us I truly call them, of the devil? They desert heavenly in their search for earthly things. Oh, the rabid audacity of maniacs! they interpose an appeal, as is customary in secular matters.”181

The Council recognised the authority of the Apostles Peter and Paul ruling for ever in the See of Rome, as the Pope at the present day attests in solemn documents that same rule when he uses the words, “By the authority of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul,” adding to them, “and by our own;” and the Emperor clearly understands the distinction between secular and ecclesiastical judgments. In the former he knows himself to be the judge of ultimate appeal. In the latter he recognises the bishops as holding the magisterium of Christ Himself, and that their judgments are His, as if He were present among them. What stronger attestation of the Church’s freedom in her ecclesiastical and dogmatic judgments from the State’s control could be given than this spontaneous declaration by the head of the Roman empire? And it is to be noted that he places the ground of that freedom and the force of its authority in the magisterium of Christ transmitted to the rulers of the Church.

How did the successor of Nero, Domitian, Trajan, and Decius come to this knowledge? That is a subject which requires special consideration.

CHAPTER VIII

THE ACTUAL RELATION BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE FROM THE DAY OF PENTECOST TO CONSTANTINEThe Church’s Battle for Independence over against the Roman Empire

In the period before Christ, the two Powers, as well in every polity over the earth as in the vast conglomerate called the Roman Empire, beginning together, grew up in fast alliance. Such a thing as the Civil Power in any particular polity putting under ban and persecuting the religion of its people was unknown. In the Roman city, as originally constituted, the union with religion, as an everyday work of life, was especially intimate and strong. It subsisted no less when Rome ruled from Newcastle to Babylon; for under the supremacy of the Emperor as Pontifex Maximus all the various nations were allowed the free exercise of their ancestral rites. Such was the state of the relation between the two Powers at the Day of Pentecost; such it had been from the first creation of human society. A foreign conqueror might, it is true, persecute the gods and the priests of a nation which he conquered, as Cambyses, when, with the zeal of a Persian worshipper of the single Sun-god, he burst upon the gods of Egypt; but this state of things usually passed away, when conquest became settled into possession; and in the Roman Peace each country and city was in stable possession of its gods, its rites, its temples, and among the rest the Jew might everywhere have his synagogue for his own people and worship God.