Note 200 — Chapter III

Footnote 200:

(return)

The so-called Chiliasm—the designation is unsuitable and misleading—is found wherever the Gospel is not yet Hellenised (see, for example, Barn. 4. 15; Hermas; 2 Clem.; Papias [Euseb. III. 39]; διδαχη, 10. 16; Apoc. Petri; Justin. Dial. 32, 51, 80, 82, 110, 139; Cerinthus), and must be regarded as a main element of the Christian preaching (see my article "Millenium" in the Encycl. Brit.) In it lay not the least of the power of Christianity in the first century, and the means whereby it entered the Jewish propaganda in the Empire and surpassed it. The hopes springing out of Judaism were at first but little modified, that is, only so far as the substitution of the Christian communities for the nation of Israel made modification necessary. In all else even the details of the Jewish hopes of the future were retained, and the extra-canonical Jewish Apocalypses (Esra, Enoch, Baruch, Moses, etc.) were diligently read alongside of Daniel. Their contents were in part joined on to sayings of Jesus and they served as models for similar productions (here therefore an enduring connection with the Jewish religion is very plain). In the Christian hopes of the future as in the Jewish eschatology may be distinguished essential and accidental fixed and fluid elements. To the former belong: (1) the notion of a final fearful conflict with the powers of the world which is just about to break out το τελειον σκανδαλον εγγικεν, (2) belief in the speedy return of Christ, (3) the conviction that after conquering the secular power (this was variously conceived as God's Ministers as that which restrains—2 Thess. II. 6, as a pure kingdom of Satan see the various estimates in Justin, Melito, Irenæus and Hippolytus) Christ will establish a glorious kingdom on the earth and will raise the saints to share in that kingdom, and (4) that he will finally judge all men. To the fluid elements belong the notions of the Antichrist or of the secular power culminating in the Antichrist as well as notions about the place, the extent, and the duration of Christ's glorious kingdom. But it is worthy of special note that Justin regarded the belief that Christ will set up his kingdom in Jerusalem, and that it will endure for 1000 years, as a necessary element of orthodoxy, though he confesses he knew Christians who did not share this belief, while they did not like the pseudo Christians reject also the resurrection of the body (the promise of Montanus that Christ's kingdom would be let down at Pepuza and Tymion is a thing by itself and answers to the other promises and pretensions of Montanus). The resurrection of the body is expressed in the Roman Symbol while very notably the hope of Christ's earthly kingdom is not there mentioned (see above p. 157). The great inheritance which the Gentile Christian communities received from Judaism is the eschatological hopes along with the Monotheism assured by revelation and belief in providence. The law as a national law was abolished. The Old Testament became a new book in the hands of the Gentile Christians. On the contrary the eschatological hopes in all their details and with all the deep shadows which they threw on the state and public life were at first received and maintained themselves in wide circles pretty much unchanged and only succumbed in some of their details—just as in Judaism—to the changes which resulted from the constant change of the political situation. But these hopes were also destined in great measure to pass away after the settlement of Christianity on Græco-Roman soil. We may set aside the fact that they did not occupy the foreground in Paul, for we do not know whether this was of importance for the period that followed. But that Christ would set up the kingdom in Jerusalem, and that it would be an earthly kingdom with sensuous enjoyments—these and other notions contend on the one hand with the vigorous antijudaism of the communities, and on the other with the moralistic spiritualism, in the pure carrying out of which the Gentile Christians in the East at least increasingly recognised the essence of Christianity. Only the vigorous world renouncing enthusiasm which did not permit the rise of moralistic spiritualism and mysticism, and the longing for a time of joy and dominion that was born of it, protected for a long time a series of ideas which corresponded to the spiritual disposition of the great multitude of converts only at times of special oppression. Moreover the Christians in opposition to Judaism were, as a rule, instructed to obey magistrates whose establishment directly contradicted the judgment of the state contained in the Apocalypses. In such a conflict however that judgment necessarily conquers at last which makes as little change as possible in the existing forms of life. A history of the gradual attenuation and subsidence of eschatologlcal hopes in the II.-IV. centuries can only be written in fragments. They have rarely—at best by fits and starts—marked out the course. On the contrary if I may say so they only gave the smoke, for the course was pointed out by the abiding elements of the Gospel, trust in God and the Lord Christ, the resolution to a holy life, and a firm bond of brotherhood. The quiet gradual change, in which the eschatologlcal hopes passed away fell into the background or lost important parts, was on the other hand a result of deep reaching changes in the faith and life of Christendom. Chiliasm as a power was broken up by speculative mysticism and on that account very much later in the West than in the East. But speculative mysticism has its centre in christology. In the earliest period this as a theory belonged more to the defence of religion than to religion itself. Ignatius alone was able to reflect on that transference of power from Christ which Paul had experienced. The disguises in which the apocalyptic eschatologlcal prophecies were set forth belonged in part to the form of this literature (in so far as one could easily be given the lie if he became too plain or in so far as the prophet really saw the future only in large outline) partly it had to be chosen in order not to give political offence. See Hippol. comm. in Daniel (Georgiades, p. 49, 51. νοειν οφειλομεν τα κατα καιρον συμβαινοντα και ειδοτας σιωπαν), but above all Constantine orat. ad s. coetum 19, on some verses of Virgil which are interpreted in a Christian sense but that none of the rulers in the capital might be able to accuse their author of violating the laws of the state with his poetry or of destroying the traditional ideas of the procedure about the gods he concealed the truth under a veil. That holds good also of the Apocalyptists and the poets of the Christian Sibylline sayings.