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1. Active class participation: Assigned  readings,. [20% of the grade] Students are required to read assigned readings.

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Creeds of Christendom Vol 1

Creeds of Christendom Vol 2

Mission of the Church in the first 3 Centuries

Lecture two: The readines of the ancient world to recieve Christianity

Tillich contrasts "kairos" with "chronos; the "right" time with "measured" time. By examining the philosophical schools of the day (the Greek Schools, Epicureans, Stoics, Academics, Peripatetics, Neopythagoreans), he demonstrates a universal revelatory power going through all history and preparing that which is considered by Christianity to be the ultimate revelation

Yesterday we discussed the meaning and development of the doctrinal expression of Christianity, and described especially the concept of dogma. I tried to remove some of the fears and resentments every modern man has when he hears the word "dogma." I hope I succeeded. Now I come to the "preparation"of Christianity in the ancient world.

According to Paul, there is not always the possibility that that can happen which, for instance, happened in the appearance of Jesus as the Christ. This happened in one special moment of history, and in this special moment everything was ready for it. I will talk now about this "readiness." Paul speaks of kairos to describe the feeling that the time was ripe, mature, prepared. It is a Greek word which, again, witnesses to the richness of the Greek language and the poverty of modern languages in comparison with it. We have only the one word "time." The Greeks had two words: chronos (still used in "chronology," "chronometer," etc.): it is clock time, time which is measured. Then there is the word kairos , which is not the quantitative time of the watch, but is the qualitative time of the occasion: the "right" time. "It is not yet kairos ," the hour; the hour has not yet come. (Cf.. in the Gospel stories. . ..) There are things in which the right time, the kairos, has not yet come. Kairos is the time which indicates that something has happened which makes an action possible or impossible. We all have in our lives moments in which we feel that now is the right time for something: now I am mature enough for this, now everything around me is prepared for this, now I can make the decision, etc: this is kairos. In this sense Paul and the early Church spoke of the "right time," for the coming of the Christ. The early Church, and Paul to a certain extent, tried to show why this time in which the Christ appeared was the right time, why it is the providential constellation of factors which makes His appearance possible.

What we therefore must do now is to show the preparation of Christian theology in the world situation into which Jesus came. From this point of view - which is only one point of view: the theological - the understanding of the possibilities of a Christian theology is provided. It is not, as some theologians want to believe - contrary to Paul - -that the revelation from Christ fell like a stone from heaven: here it is, and now you must take it or leave it - But there is a universal revelatory power going through all history and preparing that which is considered by Christianity to be the ultimate revelation.

The genuine situation into which the New Testament event came was the universalism of the Roman Empire. This meant something negative and something positive, (as do all these things I will now mention) at the same time. Negatively it meant the breakdown of national religions and cultures. Positively it meant that the idea of mankind as a whole could be conceived at that time. The Roman Empire produced a definite consciousness of world history, in contrast to accidental national histories. World history is now not only, in the sense of the prophets, a purpose which will be actualized in history, but now it has become an empirical reality. This is the positive meaning of Rome. Rome represents the universal monarchy in which the whole known world is united. This idea has been taken over by the Roman church, but applied to the Pope, and is still actual within the Roman church, and still means that Rome claims the monarchic power over all the world - following the Roman Empire in this. It is perhaps an important remark generally that we should never forget that the Roman church is Roman, that the development of this church is not only influenced by Christianity but also by the Empire which was Rome, by the greatness that was Rome, by the idea of law that was Rome. All this is embodied also in the Roman church, after it took over the heritage of the Roman Empire. We should never forget this situation; and we should ask ourselves; if we are tempted to evaluate the Roman church more highly than we should: how much Roman elements are there in it, and how much are they valid for us in our culture? - as we should do the same with Greek philosophical concepts which created the Christian dogma, and we should also ask: to what degree are they valid? It is not necessary to reject something because it is Roman or Greek, but it is not necessary, either, even if sanctioned by a dogmatic decision, to accept something because the church has accepted it, from Rome or Greece.

Within this realm of one world, a world history and monarchy created by Rome, we have Greek thought. This is the Hellenistic period of Greek thought. We distinguish :... the classical Greek period, which goes up to the death of Aristotle, from the Hellenistic period which starts after him, ~ - which the Stoics, Epicureans, Neo-Pythagoreans, Skeptics, and Neo-Platonists begin. This Hellenistic period is the immediate source of much Christian thought. It is not so much classical Greek thinking. It became this later in the 4th century. But it is more Hellenistic thinking, which influenced early Christianity. Here again I want to distinguish the negative and the positive elements in Greek thought in the period of the kairos, the period of the ancient world coming to an end. The negative side is what we would call Skepticism. Skepticism, not only in the Skeptic school but also in the other schools of Greek philosophy, is the end of the tremendous and admirable attempt of Greek philosophy to build a world of meaning on the basis of an interpretation of reality in objective or rational terms. Greek philosophy had undercut the ancient mythological and ritual traditions. In the period of the Sophists and Socrates, it became obvious that these traditions were not valid any more. Sophism is the revolution of the subjective mind against the old traditions. But now life must go on. The meaning of life in all realms - politics, law, art, social relations, knowledge, religion - has not been probed, This the Greek philosophers tried to do. They were not people who were sitting behind their desks writing philosophical books. If they were nothing but philosophers of philosophy, we would have forgotten their names long ago. But they were people who took upon themselves the task of creating a spiritual world by objectively observing reality as it was given to them, interpreting it in terms of analytic and synthetic reason.

This attempt broke down at the end of the ancient world. This breaking down of the great- attempt of the Greek philosophers to create a world of meaning through philosophy, produced what I call" the skeptical end of the ancient development. Skepsis means, originally,.observing things. But it has received the negative sense of looking at every dogma, thereby undercutting it, even the dogmata of the Greek schools of philosophy. Therefore the Skeptics are those who doubt the statements of all schools of philosophy. And what is perhaps even more important, these schools of philosophy, e. g. , the Platonic Academy, took a lot of these Skeptical elements into itself. Skepticism did not go beyond probabilism, and the other schools became pragmatic. So a skeptical mood entered all schools and permeated the whole life of the later ancient world. This Skepticism, especially in the school called the School of the Skeptics, was a very serious matter of life. Again it was not a matter of sitting behind one's desk and finding out that everything can be doubt - which is comparatively easy. But it was an inner breakdown of all convictions, and the consequence was - very characteristic of the Greek mind - that if they were not able to give theoretical judgments any more, they believed that they were not able to act practically, either. Therefore they introduced the doctrine of epoch', - restraining, keeping down, not giving judgment nor acting, deciding neither theoretically nor practically. This doctrine of epoch' meant the resignation of judgment in every respect. Therefore these people went into the desert, with a suit or gown very similar to the later Christian monks who followed them in this respect, because they also were in despair about the possibility of living in this world. Some of the skeptics of the ancient Church were very serious people and drew the consequences which our snobbistic skeptics do not usually do, who have a very good time while at the same doubting everything! That was not what the Greek Skeptics did; so they retired from life in order to become consistent.

This skeptical element was an important preparation for Christianity, not only in the later Christian theology but also already in the philosophical schools. The Greek schools, the Epicureans, Stoics, Academics, Peripatetics, NeoPythagorean, were not only schools in the sense in which we today speak of philosophical schools, namely that there is a great teacher, e. g , at Columbia University, or Boston, etc; or the "school" of Dewey or Whitehead, etc; and the "schools" at Chicago, etc A Greek philosophical school was a cult community, a community of a half-ritual, half-philosophical character. These people wanted to live according to the doctrines of their masters. In this period, in which this skeptical mood permeated the ancient world, they wanted certainty above all: we must have it in order to live, they demanded. The answer was: our great teachers, Plato and Aristotle, Zeno the Stoic, and Epicurus, and, later, Plotinus, were not simply thinkers, professors, but they were inspired men. And long before, Christianity, the doctrine of inspiration developed in these Greek schools, namely the inspiration of the founders of these schools. Later, when these schools discussed with the Christians, they did not say Moses was inspired, but they said, e. g., Heraclitus was inspired. This doctrine of inspiration gave Christianity also a chance to enter into the world. . . ; pure reason alone is not able to build up a reality in which one can live.

The character of the founders of these philosophical schools was also very similar to what the Christians said about the founder of their Church. A man like Epicurus - this is very interesting - who later was so much attacked by the Christians, that we have only fragments about him, was called soter by his pupils, the Greek word used in the New Testament which we translate by "savior.." Epicurus the philosopher was called a savior. What does this mean? We regard him as a man who had a good life all the time in his beautiful gardens, and had a very bad anti-Christian hedonistic philosophy - and other name-calling words. The ancient world thought quite differently about Epicurus. They called him soter because he did something for them which was the greatest thing he could do for them, a thing which also is praised by Paul when he speaks of the transformation of the pagans into Christians, namely, liberation from anxiety. Epicurus, with his system of atoms - we call it a materialistic system - liberated them from the fear of demons which permeated the whole life of the ancient world and especially of the later ancient world. Men like Epicurus were called soters, saviors, because they liberated people from fear by their philosophy. All this shows what a serious thing philosophy was at that time. . .

Other consequences also of great seriousness, was what the Stoics called apatheia, namely, without feelings towards the vital drives of life, not feeling desires, joys, pains, but being beyond all this in the state of wisdom. They knew that only a few people were able to reach this state, but those who as Skeptics went into the desert, showed that they were able to do so to a certain extent. Behind all this, of course, stands the early criticism of the mythological gods and the traditional rites for these gods. The criticism of mythology was made in Greece almost at the, same time in which the Second Isaiah did it in Judea. It was a very similar kind of criticism, and has undercut the belief in the gods of polytheism.

This was the negative side in Greek thought of that time. But there were also positive elements in the same tradition. First, the PLATONIC TRADITION: Here Christian theology had as its preparation the idea of transcendence,..that there is something that trespasses empirical reality. Plato speaks of "essential" reality, the reality of ousia's, or "ideas", I. e., the true essences of things. At the same time we find in Plato, and even stronger in Neo-Platonism and in the Platonic school leading to Neo-Platonism, the development of a devaluation of existence. It was called matter, and as a material world it has no ultimate value compared with the essential world. Further, in Plato the inner aim in human existence is described - in the Philebus somewhere, but also practically everywhere in Plato - as becoming similar to God as much as possible. God is the Spiritual sphere. Participation in the Spiritual divine sphere as much as possible is the inner telos of human existence. This is the Platonic tradition and has been used, especially by the great Cappodocian fathers of the Church, to describe the ultimate aim of human existence.

A third doctrine is a doctrine of the soul falling down from an eternal participation in the essential or Spiritual world, being on earth in a body, trying to get rid of the bondage to the body, coming to an elevation above the material world, in steps and degrees. This again was an element which was used not only by all Christian mystics, but also by the official Church Fathers to a large extent.

The fourth point in which the Platonic tradition was important was the idea of PROVIDENCE. This again seems to you to be a Christian idea, but it was formulated already in the later period of Plato's writings, and was a tremendous attempt of the ancient world to overcome the anxiety of fate and death. And in the later ancient world the anxiety of 'Tuch' and Heimarmen' (the goddesses) of accident and necessity - of fate, as we would call it today - was the most important thing. And in the greatest hymn of triump in the New Testament, in Romans 8, we hear " that it is the function of the Christ to overcome the demonic forces of fate. . . That Plato anticipated this situation is one of his greatest contributions; that providence, coming from the highest God, gives us the courage to escape the vicissitudes of fate, is something we should never forget when we speak of the "bad pagans." They produced this concept by their own philosophizing, by their own philosophizing in terms of an ultimate concern.

Fifthly, in Aristotle another element is added to the Platonic tradition: the Divine is a form without matter, perfect in itself and - what is the profoundest idea in Aristotle - this highest form, called God, is moving the world, not causally, not by pushing it from outside, but by driving everything finite towards Him in terms of love. Aristotle developed, in spite of his seeming merely scientific attitude towards reality, one of the greatest systems of love, where he says that God, the highest form - or pure actuality, as he calls it--moves everything by being loved by everything. Everything has a desire to unite itself with the highest form, to get rid of the lower forms in which it lives, where it is in the bondage of matter. In this way the Aristotelian God, as the highest form, came into Christian theology and played a tremendous role there.

Now I come to another tradition: THE STOIC TRADITION, which is the second one of great importance for the understanding of Christian theology. The Stoics were, more than Plato and Aristotle together, important for the life of the later ancient world. The life of the educated ancient man in the world of rulers, coming from Alexander the Great in the Macedonian Empire, or coming from Rome and taking away the independence of all nations - the life of the educated man in these periods was shaped mostly by Stoic tradition. Therefore it is even more important than the Platonic tradition, for the life of the people. I have dealt with this from the point of view of life, of the courage to take fate and death upon oneself, in my book The Courage to Be. There I show that Christianity and the Stoics are the great competitors in all the Western world. But now I show in this lecture something else: Christianity has taken from this great and always present competitor - present even today a lot of fundamental ideas. The first is the doctrine which will bring you into despair when we come to the history of Trinitarian and Christological thought, namely the doctrine of the Logos. but we must deal with it, otherwise no part of the Christian dogmatic development can be understood.

Logos means word, and means also the meaning in a word, the reasonable structure which is indicated by a word. Therefore logos also can mean the universal logos or law of reality. This is the way in which the first one who used this word philosophically - Heraclitus - -used it. The logos is the law which determines the movements of all reality.

Now this logos was used by the Stoic as the Divine power which is present in everything that is, and which has three sides to it, all of which have become extremely important in the later development. The first is the law of nature. The logos is the principle according to which all natural things move. It is the Divine seed, the Divine creative power in everything, which makes it what it is. And it is the creative power of the movement of everything.

Secondly, logos means the moral and legal law, what we could call today, with Immanuel Kant, "practical reason," the law which is innate in every human being when he accepts himself as a personality, with the dignity and greatness of a person. It is the moral or legal law. This is equally important and even precedes the other. When you see in classical books the word "natural law, " we should not think usually of physical laws, but of moral and legal laws. For instance, when we speak of the "rights of man," as embodied in the American Constitution, that would be called by the Stoics and all their followers in all of Western philosophy, natural law. The rights of man are the natural law, which is identical with man's rational nature. But it is also identical with man's ability to recognize reality. It is not only practical reason; it is also theoretical reason, It is man's ability of reasoning, because he has the logos in himself and can discover the logos in nature and history, From this follows, in Stoicism, the man who is determined by the natural law, by the logos; he is the logikos , corresponding to, determined by, the logos: the wise man, But the Stoics were not optimists. They did not believe everybody was a wise man. Perhaps only a dozen, and no more, reached this ideal. All the others were either fools, or between the wise and foolish .. the majority of human beings, those who are in the process of improvement, those who are - -as we would say in America - under the power of education. All this was a fundamental pessimism about most human beings. The Stoics were originally Greeks, but they also became Romans, and some of the Roman emperors were some of the most famous Stoics. When Stoicism came in the hands of the Roman emperors - e. g , Marcus Aurelius - they applied it to the political situation, for which they were responsible. The natural law, in the sense of practical reason, had the consequence that every man participates in reason by the very fact that he is man. And out of this they derived laws which were far superior to many things which we find in the Christian Middle Ages. They gave universal citizenship to every human being, because he potentially participates in reason. Of course, the Stoics - and certainly not the Stoic emperors, who knew people - were optimistic.about man and believed he was actually reasonable. But what they meant was that man potentially participates in reason and that through education they might become actually reasonable, at least some of them. That was their presupposition, from which presupposition they did the great and tremendous thing: they gave Roman citizenship to all citizens of the conquered nations. Everybody could become a Roman citizen or, finally, was declared to be such by birth. This citizenship was a tremendous equalizing step.

Further, the women, slaves and children, who in the old Roman law were the least regarded and developed human beings, became equalized by the laws of the Roman emperors.

This was done, moreover, not by Christianity, but by the Stoics, who derived the idea from the belief in the universal logos in which everyone participates. (Of course, Christianity has another foundation for the same idea: human beings are the children of God who is their Father.)

Thus the Stoics conceived of the idea of a world state embracing the whole world, based on the common rationality of everybody.

Now this certainly was something in which Christianity could enter and develop. The difference was that the Stoics did not know the concept of sin. They knew the concept of foolishness, but not of sin. . Therefore, STOIC SALVATION is salvation through reaching wisdom. CHRISTIAN SALVATION was a salvation through reaching Divine grace. And these two things still fight with each other in our days.

There was another reality which was taken over by the Christian Church, and for which pure philosophers coming from Europe have often a great contempt, while I think Americans should not have contempt at all, because in this as in so many respects, they are basically ancient Romans - namely, what is called eclecticism, from a Greek word meaning: choosing some possibilities out of many. The eclectics were philosophers but they were not originally creative philosophers, as the Greeks were, who created their system on which basis the schools worked. The Roman thinkers, politicians, and statesmen were often the same persons, as in England: in this I think England is superior to America; I hope we will soon have in this country philosophers who are statesmen, as we had it in England, and in ancient Rome. -- These people were eclectics; they did not create new systems. What they did, e.g., Cicero, was to choose the most important concepts from the classical Greek systems which were pragmatically useful for a Roman citizen. That which gave the best way of living pragmatically as a Roman citizen, as a citizen of the world state, was taken from the different philosophies. For this reason the following ideas, which you can recognize very much in popular political speeches in this country today, are those chosen from a pragmatic point of view: the idea of PROVIDENCE, which gives some kind of feeling of safety to the life of the people; the idea of GOD as an innate idea in everybody, which induces fear of God, and discipline; the idea of MORAL FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY, which makes it possible to educate and to uphold responsibility for moral failures; and finally the idea of IMMORTALITY, which threatens with another world those who escape punishment in this world.

These ideas, which we also find in the 18th century Enlightenment and which, from this source, are still very much prevalent in this country, were the ideas chosen by the Roman eclectics for the making of a good Roman citizen. They all were in some way a preparation for the Christian mission.

Now this was the philosophical world into which Christianity came when the kairos had arrived.

Ideas and attitudes formed during the Hellenistic period of the Jewish religion and their influence on Jesus, the apostles, and the writers of the New Testament. Angels, Messiah, Demons, Stoicism, Mystery religions and Mysticism. How the development from a tribal to a universal God gave rise to mediating beings (angels, Messiah, son of man, and wisdom). The origin and meaning of logos and why both good and bad angels do not imply a dualism. How the reader might reply to someone who asks, "Do you believe Jesus was the Son of God?"

The name "Tillich" brings two phrases to mind: "The ground of all being" and "The Courage to be." The reader will find the seeds of these phrases in this lecture as he describes the ways in which apostolic Christianity separated itself from Judaism and Paganism.

We come now to the so-called Apostolic Fathers, the earliest post-biblical writers, partly earlier than some of the later books of the New Testament. These so-called Apostolic Fathers (Ignatius, Clement, the Shepherd of Hermas, and others) are more dependent on a Christian conformism which slowly had developed, than on the outspoken position of Paul in his Letters. Insofar as Paul still was effective in this period, it was mostly not directly but more through John and Ignatius. The reason for this was, partly at least, that the fight with the Jews was a matter of the past, that the conflict with the Jewish Christians did not have to be continued and repeated. Instead of that, the positive elements became important which gave an understandable content for the pagans. One can say that in the generation of the Apostolic Fathers, the great visions of the first ecstatic breakthrough had disappeared, and that instead of that, a given set of ideas was left, a set of ideas which produced a kind of ecclesiastical conformity and made the missionary work possible. Some people have complained about this development, complained that so early after the second generation the power of the Spirit was on the wane. But this is an unavoidable thing in all creative periods. After the breakthrough – one only needs to think of the Reformation – and after the first generation which received the breakthrough (i. e., the second generation), a fixation or concentration on some special points begins; the need to preserve what was given, the educational needs – all this working together to a Christianity which, compared with the Christianity of the Apostolic age, had considerably lost its Spiritual power.

Nevertheless, this period is extremely important since it was what was preserved and what was needed for the life of the early congregations. The first question to be asked was: Where could one find the expression of the common spirit of the congregation? Originally the real mediators of the message were those who were the bearers of the Spirit, the "pneumatics" who had the pneuma (the spirit). But, as you know from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, especially the 12th chapter, he already had difficulties with the bearers of the Spirit because they produced disorder. Therefore he already emphasizes the order besides the Spirit. In the supposedly Pauline letters of the New Testament, this emphasis on ecclesiastical order becomes increasingly important. In the generation of the Apostolic Fathers, the ecstatic Spirit almost had disappeared. It was considered to be dangerous, and why, one asked, do we need it?: everything the Spirit has to say has already been classically expressed in Bible and tradition; therefore, instead of the prophets, who travelled from place to place, following the Apostles we now have definite norms and authorities in the early Christian congregations, and the first thing we must do is to find out about these norms and authorities.

The first and basic authority is the Old Testament, and the older parts of the New Testament, as they already had appeared and were collected. But the New Testament at that time had a very vague edge: there were many books which were not yet decisively received into the canon of the Bible. It took more than 200 more years before the Church finally decided about all those books which we now consider as the New Testament. But in any case, the Church possessed the whole Old Testament and a central basic amount of New Testament books.

But this was not all. Besides these writings, there was a traditional life, a complex of dogmatic and ethical doctrines, called by I Clement "the canon of our tradition." The names of this tradition were: truth, Gospel, doctrine, commandments, tradition. All these words were used; theology points to the same thing: the living tradition beside the Old Testament, and the beginnings of the New Testament. But this was a large amount of material and it was necessary to narrow it down. First of all, for those who were baptised, it was necessary that they received and confessed a creed which made them members of the Church. So a confessional creed was created, which bore similarity to our present-day Apostles' Creed, and which was, in its center, Christological, because this was what distinguished the Christian communities from Judaism as well as from paganism.

Baptism was the sacrament of entrance, and in this sacrament the one baptized – who at that time, of course, was an adult, coming from paganism – had to confess that he wanted to accept the implications of his baptism. He was then baptised in the name of Christ. Later on, the names of God and the Spirit were added But nothing was explained. All this was faith and liturgy, but not yet theology.

All these things are going on in the Church. Therefore the doctrine is the doctrine not of a philosopher of religion, but is the doctrine of the Church, expressing its conformity, its traditional doctrines, its baptism creed. This "Church" – derived from the Greek ekklesia, an assembly, i. e., an assembly of God or Christ: the original meaning is being "called out" of the houses, gathering together the Greek citizens to the city... etc.; similarly those who were called out of all houses and nations to form the Church Universal. Those people who are called out of the nations into the universal Church are the true people of God. They are called out of the barbarians, out of the Greeks, out of the Jews, – although the Jews anticipated it and had a kind of ekklesia themselves, namely as the people of God of the Old Testament. But they are not the true people of God, because the true people of God are universally called out of all nations.

If this is the case, it is necessary that those who are called together to the conformity of the ecclesiastical creed distinguish themselves from those outside and from those who are inside but wrongly: the heretics. But how can this be done? How can you find out whether a doctrine may or may not be an introduction of barbarian, Greek or Jewish doctrines which do not fit into the conformity of the Church? The answer was: this can be done only by the bishop who is the "overseer" of the congregation, and who represents the Spirit, who is supposed to be in the whole congregation. In the fight against pagans, Jews, barbarians and heretics, the bishops become more and more important. Ignatius writes, in his letter to the Smyrnians: "Where the bishop is, there the congregation should be. Even if assumed prophets appear, they may be wrong or right. But the bishop is right." The bishops are the r:epresentatives of the true doctrine. The bishops themselves were not originally distinguished from the presbyters (the elders). Then slowly the bishop became a monarch among the elders and a monarchic episcopate developed. This is of course a consistent development. If the authority which guarantees truth is embodied in human beings, then the tendency towards one human being who has the final decision is almost unavoidable.

In Clement of Rome – one of the Apostolic Fathers, to be distinguished from Clement of Alexandria, a few hundred years later..–..we already find the first traces of apostolic succession: the bishop represents the apostles. So this is the first thing we must say: the doctrine of the authorities. And this is fundamental, showing how early the problem of authority was decisive in the early Church; how early what came to full development in the Roman Church developed already in early Christianity.

We now come to special doctrines. The pagan world in which these few Christians lived demanded first of all an emphasis on a monotheistic idea of God. Therefore the Shepherd of Hermas says: "First of all, believe that God is one, who has made all things, bringing them out of nothing into being." Here we have the doctrine of creation out of nothing, which we cannot find in the Old Testament but which is implicit in it and was expressed already before Christianity by Jewish theologians in the period between the Testaments. It is the doctrine which was decisive for the separation of the early Church from paganism.

In the same line was the emphasis on the almighty God, the despotes as he is called, the ruling powerful lord. Clement says: "0 great demiurge", (i. e., master of all work and lord of everything: he is the great builder of the universe and the lord of everything he has built. Now here are three very important concepts. I already mentioned creation out of nothing; then the demiurge; and then the almighty, the despotes who rules the world. Why are these concepts, which seem so natural to us, so important? Because they are concepts of protection used against paganism. Creation out of nothing means that God did not find matter when He started creating, a matter which always resists the form, and which therefore should be transcended – as it was in neo-Platonic paganism. Such a matter does not exist. The material world is an object of Divine creation and therefore good and must not be disparaged for the sake of salvation. The word "demiurge" was used in Plato and Gnosticism, in the religious mixture of these centuries, for something which is lower than God, which is below the highest God, who does not deal with such low things as creating the world, but leaves it to a demiurge. This means that creation is something in which the Divine reality is less present, that it is a falling away from full Divinity. Against this, these words of Clement speak: the great demiurge is God himself; there is no duality between the highest God and the maker of the world. Creation is absolute act, out of nothing. This means almightiness. Almightiness does not mean a God who sits on His throne and can do anything he wants to do, like an arbitrary tyrant; rather, almightiness means God is the ground and the o n l y ground of everything created, and that there is no resisting matter against Him. This is the meaning of the first article of the Apostles' Creed, which you should read with great awe again and again, because here Christianity separated itself from the dualistic interpretation of reality which we find in all paganism – dualistic in the sense that there is a good principle and an evil principle, and that both of them are of equal originality, that matter is as eternal as form, that chaos.. . resists God. All these ideas disappeared in the moment the Christians created the first words of the Apostles' Creed: "I believe in God the almighty creator of heaven and earth." This is the great wall of Christianity against paganism. And Christology, without this wall, inescapably deteriorizes into Gnosticism, where Christ becomes one of the cosmic powers besides others, even if he is the highest. Therefore don't underestimate the first article. Only in the light of this first article is the second article meaningful. Don't reduce God to the Second Person. of the Trinity. This was very well understood by these earliest post-biblical theologians, these Apostolic Fathers. They knew that they needed a God who is creator, almighty, and not in any way dependent on a resisting matter.

As ruler of everything, God has a plan of salvation. This idea of a plan of salvation is especially developed by Ignatius. In his letter to the Ephesians, he speaks of the "economy towards the new man." This is a. wonderful summary of the Christian message: economy towards the new man. Economy means "building a house." But this word is used in our culture for what we call economic production. It is used in the Greek period for the structure of God and world, in their relationships. There is an economy of the Trinitarian thinking: Father, Son, and Spirit. They only together are God. There is an economy of salvation, the building of the different periods which finally led to the new man. This idea of the new man, or new creature, or new being, as the aim of the history of salvation, is an important contribution of these theologians.

This economy, this periodic preparation, is already present in the Old Testament. So Ignatius says: "Judaism has believed towards Christianity." Here again we have the relationship towards fulfillment. The Christ, the new man, has appeared. He is perfect. The disruptedness of the old man is overcome and death is dissolved. This leads to Christology.

Now you will find that here already, some of the defects arise which will become overwhelming when we come to the Trinitarian and Christological discussions. So I ask you to follow very carefully each mentioning of the Christological problem in the earlier periods, otherwise it is impossible to understand anything of the dogma of the early Church, which has two parts: Christ in heaven (the Trinitarian dogma) and Christ on earth (the Christological dogma).

Generally speaking, one can say that Jesus as the Christ was considered to be a Spiritual being who is pre-existent, and who had transformed the historical Jesus into a tool for His saving activity. The Spirit is an hypostasis in God, an independent power – which of course is completely united with God – but it has the character of a certain independence or hypostasis. The Son came into the realm of flesh; He accepted flesh, which had developed independently; the flesh cooperated with the Spirit in Him; the Holy Spirit dwelled in the flesh which He chose; He became the Son of God by His service. (" Flesh" here always means historical reality),

But there is another idea – and now things become serious. One could say that the first Spirit, the proton pneuma, became flesh. For instance Ignatius says: "Christ is God and perfect man at the same time. He comes from the Spirit, and the seed of David." This means that He is not only some Spiritual power which has accepted flesh, but He, as the Spiritual power, has become flesh. One also uses other words. One says: "There is one physician." Salvation is still understood as meaning healing. This hiatros , this physician, heals fleshly and spiritually; He has genesis and has not genesis; He has come into flesh, He has come into death, and has eternal life in death; and He is God who came into flesh. He is from Mary and from God; able to suffer and then not able to suffer, because of His elevation to God.

Now these are still very mixed ideas, They all want to emphasize that here something paradoxical has happened. that a Divine Spiritual power has appeared under the conditions of humanity and existence.

From the point of view of God, Ignatius says: "For there is one God who made himself manifest through Jesus Christ, His Son, who is His logos, proceeding from His silence . II Clement: "Being the first Spirit, the head of the angels, He became flesh. Being He who appears in human form, Christ is the Word proceeding out of the silence." (aposiges ) . The Christ breaks the eternal silence of the Divine ground. As such He is both God and complete man. The same historical reality is the one as well as the other, as one person. One can speak of a double message (a dipton kerygma), the message that this same being is God and man.

Now here we have the main religious interest of this whole period. The interest is, as Clement says, theologein ton Christon, i. e., speaking theologically of Christ as of God. "Brothers, so we must think about Jesus Christ as about God, for if we think small things about Him, we can hope to receive small things only. The absoluteness of salvation demands an absolute Divine Saviour. " Now all of this is quite germinal for our development, but it had to evolve through centuries of struggle. Otherwise, they could not grow. But here we have the problem of the two possible categories: Has Christ come into flesh, accepting it?; or has He come as the logos, being transformed into it? Both ideas already appear.

The second point is: Here is logos aposiges, the Divine Logos who breaks the silence of God. This is a very profound idea. It means that the Divine Abyss in itself is without word, form, object, and voice. It is silence, the infinite silence of the eternal. But out of this Divine silence, the word, the logos, breaks and opens up what is hidden in this silence. He reveals the Divine Ground

Thirdly, Christology is not a theoretical problem, but the Christological problem is one side of the soteriological problem (from the Greek soteria, "salvation").We can see it here already, and can say that it is not a merely theoretical interest which drives to Christology and the fight about it, but it is the desire to have a safe salvation. It is the desire to get the courage which overcomes the anxiety of being lost. This is the situation, and these three points you should keep in mind. They appear as early as in the Apostolic Fathers:

The first point: The two Christologies: taking on flesh, or being transformed into flesh;

Second: The question of the Divine silence and the Logos revealing it;

Third: The question of soteriology, which is the basis for the question of Christology, and not vice versa. (Perhaps even those of you who don't know Greek should learn the word soter, "saviour"...) And now, what is this "salvation"? The work of Christ is a two-fold one, and remained so in the whole early Greek church, and is still so in the present Greek Orthodox church. It is first gnosis , (knowledge), and secondly, ~ (life). (It is always sad for me to see that there are many who don't know Greek, because the Bible--and also Plato! --was written in Greek.)

In any case, these are the things which the Christ brings: knowledge and life. Sometimes it is combined in the phrase athanatos gnosis : immortal knowledge, knowledge of that which is immortal and which makes immortal. Knowledge: the Christ called us from darkness into light; He made us serve the Father of Truth. Or: He called us who had no being and wanted that we have being, out of His new Being. This means knowledge brings being. Knowledge is knowledge of being. And he who has this knowledge has saving knowledge. Knowledge and being belong to each other. And so do lie and non-being. Truth is being; new truth is new being.

Now all this I mention in order to show one thing which is not often understood. Harnack and his followers have called the early Church as being infested by Greek intellectualism. I think this statement has two mistakes: first. Greek intellectualism is a wrong term because the Greeks were extremely interested in truth. but. with some exceptions, the truth they wanted to have was existential truth, truth concerning their existence, truth saving them out of the distorted existence and elevating them to the immovable One. And in the same way. the early congregations understood truth. Truth is not theoretical knowledge about objects, but truth is cognitive participation in a new reality. in the reality which has appeared in the Christ. Without this participation, no truth is possible. and knowledge is abstract and meaningless. This is what these people meant when they combined being and knowledge. Participating in the New Being is participating in truth. having the true knowledge.

This identity of truth and being mediates the other side. namely life. Christ gives immortal knowledge, the knowledge which gives immortality. He is the saviour and leader of immortality. He is in His being our imperishable life, He gives both the knowledge of immortality and the drug of immortality. which is the sacrament. Ignatius calls the Lord's Supper the antidotonto me apothanein . the remedy against our having to die, This idea that the sacramental materials of the Lord's Supper are, so to speak, drugs or remedies which produce immortality, has a very profound meaning. It shows. first of all, one thing: these Apostolic Fathers did not believe in the immortality of the soul, There is no natural immortality. otherwise it would be meaningless for them to speak about immortal life. appearing and given to us in Christ, But they believed that man is natural..–..mortal, exactly as the Old Testament believes; that in Paradise man was able to participate in the food of the gods, called the "tree of life", and to keep alive by participating in this Divine power. In the same way the Apostolic Fathers said that with the coming of Christ the situation of Paradise is reestablished. Now we again participate in the food of eternity, which is the body and the blood of Christ, and in doing so we build in ourselves the counter-balance against the natural having to die. Death is the wages of sin only insofar as sin is the separation from God, and therefore God's power to overcome our natural having to die – from dust to dust, as the Old Testament says,. – does hot work any more: and now it works again, in Christ. and it is seen in a sacramentally realistic way in the materials of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper.

Now if you see this, then you can at least say one thing -- that our traditional speaking of the immortality of the soul is not classically Christian tradition, but is a distortion of it, not in a genuine but in a pseudo-Platonic sense.

Today I want to start with something which can rightly be called the birthplace of a developed Christian theology, namely the apologetic movement. Christianity needed apologetics for different reasons. Apologeisthai means replying, answering, to the judge in the court, if somebody accuses you. You remember Socrates' apologia, his answer to those who accused him. In the same sense, Christianity expressed itself in terms of answers, of apologia. The people who did this systematically are called the apoligists.

The necessity to answer was brought about because of a double accusation against Christianity : 1) that Christianity is a danger to the Roman Empire. This was the political accusation, that it undermines the structure of this empire.

2) that, philosophically speaking, Christianity is nonsense, a superstition mixed with philosophical fragments.

These two attacks supported each other. The philosophical attack was taken over by the authorities and used in their accusations. In this way these philosophical attacks became dangerous even in terms of political consequences. And so Christianity had to defend itself against both. The most important representative of these attacks was the physician and philosopher CELSUS. It is very important to listen to him in order to see how Christianity looked at that time to an educated Greek philosopher and scientist. For Celsus, Christianity is a mixture of fanatic superstition and philosophical piecemeal. The historical reports, according to him, are contradictory and are uncertain in their evidence. Here we have, for the first time, something which has repeated itself again and again: historical criticism of the Old and New Testament – but we have it here with hate, by an enemy. Later we have, in the 18th century, the beginning of historical criticism with love, namely with a love towards the Reality which lies behind these reports. Even today many people confuse the original way in which historical criticism was done – with hate – and react with hate against. it, while Christian theologians for more than two centuries now, have worked - -mostly with the same arguments as the enemies – but with love, in order to understand what really is in the Old and New Testaments. So we should not confuse this. But it is interesting that the first criticism came from outside, from enemies, in terms of hate and not love.

Now a few of Celsus' arguments: One of the main points which is always discussed between critical historians and traditional theologians is the resurrection of 'Jesus. Celsus says that this event which is so important was observed only by adherents, and originally even only by a few ecstatic women. His deification is nothing else than processes of deification which occurred in many other cases which we know from history. Good old Euhemeros, the philosopher of religion, has given sufficient examples of the way in which a human being, a king or a hero, was deified. Then he says that the Christians do something which is especially disgusting, ,namely, when the stories become extremely incredible – as many of them in the Old Testament – then they are explained away,. allegorically. (All these things were actually done.) ln this criticism, especially of the Old Testament miracle stories, a slight element 'of anti-Judaism is visible, and this is understandable because some of Celsus' criticism hit, the Jews as much as the Christians. ... He says that the descent of God contradicts the unchangeable character of God which is also emphasized so strongly by the Christian writers. But if the Divine Being has descended to earth, why did this happen in a despised corner of the world, and why did it happen only once? Especially disgusting – and here again we have anti-Judaistic feeling – is the fight between the Jews and Christians as to whether the Messiah has or has not appeared. This is particularly disgusting to the educated pagan.

Very stupid, also, was the much used argument of that time from prophecy to fulfillment. He is historically educated enough to see that the prophet did not mean the fulfillment in the terms in which the fulfillment happened. And I would say this is an especially sore spot in all Church history, something where the idea of universal preparatory revelation – which is a sound idea – has been distorted in the mechanism of "foreseeing" events, and then they "happened". He sees this weakness with great clarity.

But the deepest point in his criticism of Christianity is not the scientific with respect to history, or the philosophy with respect to the idea of incarnation, but it is something else: it is a really religious feeling, namely when he says that the demonic powers which as Paul says have been conquered by Christ, actually rule the world..–..the argument which you can hear everywhere in our time, and the world has not changed, since the beginning of Christianity. But Celsus adds: There is no sense even to try to overcome these powers; they are the real rulers of the world. Therefore, one should be obedient to the Roman rulers on earth because they have at least reduced the power of the demons to some extent – which is also a Pauline idea. They have established a certain order in which the demonic forces are limited. Therefore the Roman emperors, however questionable they may be personally, must be obeyed and must receive veneration, for through the obedience to the orders of this world, to the necessities of law and nature, Rome has become great. What the Christians do is to undermine the greatness and the glory which is Rome, and in doing so they undercut the only power which is able to prevent the world from falling into chaos and a complete victory of the demons.

This was not an easy attack, but a very serious one, and one which has been heard again and again in all Church history. And you can understand that Christians arose who had the same philosophical education as Celsus had, and who tried to answer these attacks. This is the meaning of the apologetic movement, out of which theology has arisen.

Now these people didn't refute historical criticism very much, because in the moment in which you go into this, then whether you defend one position or not, you cannot defend all positions. When you accept the method, then all the difficulties arise which we have experienced in the history of Protestantism during the last 200 years, and which are alive today as they ever were. Think of the famous discussion about the demythologization of the New Testament, where we have exactly the same problem.

So these Apologists didn't go into this, but they tried to answer the philosophical criticism, and did it in a way which tried to show three things. This is the way every apologetic has to work. First of all, if you want to speak with somebody meaningfully, there must be a common basis, some mutually accepted ideas. This truth common to Christians and pagans must first be elaborated. If there is nothing in common between them, no conversation is possible and no meaningful addressing oneself to the pagans is possible. It always must be supposed – and this is a rule for all Christian missionary work – that the other one understands what you say, but understanding is partly participating. If he speaks an absolutely different language, then no understanding is possible. So the Apologists showed that there is something in common.

Secondly, they must show that in the actual ideas of paganism, there are defects. There are things which contradict the ideas even of the pagans themselves. There are things which have been criticized for centuries, even by the pagan philosophers. One shows the negativity in the other one, as the second step of apologetics.

Thirdly, one shows that one's own position is not to be accepted as something from outside, which is thrown at one's head – this is not good apologetics, throwing stones – but that Christianity is the fulfillment of what is, as longing and desire, in paganism. (This is) the way in which I work that out in all my systematic theology which I call, consciously, an apologetic form of theology: the relationship or the correlation between question and answer. Only if Christianity answers the existential question in the pagan mind can Christianity be accepted and understood.

Now these three steps – first a common ground without which no conversation is possible at all; second, the defects of the object of the apologetic; third, the belief that one's own position is the fulfillment of what, as longing and desire, is in the other one: this is good apologetics and this you must do whenever you work apologetically, and I cannot imagine any conversation or any sermon which you will ever give in which the apologetic element is not present, in which you do not answer questions, answer to accusations, to criticism, implicitly or explicitly.

Now there is one danger in apologetics: that the common ground is overemphasized over against the differences. And if this is done, then you certainly do not throw stones at the heads of the others; but you don't give him anything either: you accept him as he is. This is not the purpose either. So you must find a way between these two forms: the one, the wrong way of preaching and teaching Christianity, is: throwing undigestible objects at the other one, which he cannot receive, as the human being cannot receive stones or bullets; the other, that you don't tell him anything he didn't know already. And that is often the way in which liberal theology acted, while the other is the way fundamentalism and orthodoxy acted. Christian theology tried to find a way between these two wrong behaviors, and in doing so they became the founders of a definitively

Justin Martyr, perhaps the most important of the Apologists: "This is the only philosophy which I have found certain and adequate." This sentence needs a comment. Some anti-apologetic theologians – they are not only in continental Europe – would say: Now there you see: Christianity is dissolved into a philosophy; that is what the Apologists did and that is what every apologetic theology does -- even my own. I have heard this several, or even innumerable, times. The situation must be understood: what does this sentence mean, actually? Certainly it says Christianity is a philosophy. But if someone makes such a statement, one must know what philosophy means, in the mouth of this man, who was not a professor of philosophy, in America in the year 1953, in one of the colleges or universities. A Greek philosopher was something quite different. Philosophy at that time was the name for the spiritual, non-magical and non-superstitious character of a movement. Therefore! Justin says that Christianity is the only certain and adequate philosophy, he first of all says it is not magical, it is not superstitious; it is meaningful, adequate, to the logos, to the word, to reason; and this was the first thing he had to say against people like Celsus.

Secondly, for the later Greeks, philosophy was not only a theoretical but even more practical matter. It was a matter of existential interpretation of life, of an interpretation of life which was a matter of life and death for the existence of the people at that time.

Thirdly, to be a philosopher meant, ordinarily, to belong to a philosophical school. And philosophical schools at that time were not the same as what we mean by them, e. g., that there are pupils of Dewey and Whitehead in different colleges in this country; rather, "school" meant, then, a ritual community in which the founder of the school was supposed to have had a revelatory insight into the truth. Acceptance in such a school was not a matter of a doctor's degree, but of a whole personal initiation into the atmosphere of this school. So the word "philosophy" had a much larger sense than professors of "philosophy", or textbooks on "philosophy".

By the way, in English the word philosophy has still preserved some of this larger meaning. One speaks even of a philosophy of business management, and a philosophy of home cooking, etc. – very important things – and if the word philosophy is connected with them, then philosophy means a systematic understanding of a realm of reality which has something to do with real existence, and it is not only a matter of philosophical analysis in terms of logic, epistemology and metaphysics.

Now if, therefore, Justin called Christianity a philosophy, then he makes it a human existential enterprise which is neither superstitious nor magical, but follows the principles of sound reason.

Now with respect to this Christian philosophy, he says that it is universal – and this is very important – that it is not a corner truth of a sectarian character, but that it is all-embracing truth about the meaning of existence. And from this follows that wherever truth appears, it belongs to us, the Christians. Existential truth..–..truth not in the scientific sense, but in the sense of truth concerning existence, truth about life and death, truth about to-be-and-not-to-be--is, wherever it appears, Christian truth. "What anybody has said about truth belongs to us, the Christians." This is not arrogance. He doesn't mean that the Christians now have all truth, which they invented, etc. , but they said exactly what they said later in terms of the logos doctrine, namely that there cannot be any truth anywhere which is not included in principle in Christian truth. This is what already the Fourth Gospel says, namely that the logos appeared, full of truth and grace.

And vice versa, he says: "Those who live according to the logos are Christians." Now what happens here is very important. He includes, for instance, Socrates, Heraclitus, Elijah, and others. But there is a difference; he added, "the total logos," which appeared in Christ and has become "body, mind and soul." Therefore the philosophers, apart from Christianity, are partly in error and even partly subjected to demonic inspirations which come from the pagan gods. The gods of the heathens are not non-entities, but they are demonic forces, they are realities. But since they are on a limited basis (since) they are idols, they therefore have destructive power.

What does all this mean? It takes away the wrong impression..--..as though these Christians felt themselves as another religion. There is here actually the negation of the concept of religion, for Christianity: one religion beside others. All the others are wrong; ours is right: against this the Apologists would say: not.our religion is right, but the logos has appeared on which our religion is based, and is the full logos of God himself, appearing in the center of His being, appearing in His totality. This is more than religion. This is truth appearing in time and space. So here the word "Christianity" is still understood not as a religion but as the negation of religions, and for this reason as being able to embrace them all, in terms of universality. Justin has said what I think it is absolutely necessary to say: If there were anywhere in the world an existential truth which could not be received by Christianity as an element in its own thinking, then Jesus would not be the Christ. And this is exactly what he says, and what the whole logos doctrine says, because then He would be one teacher alongside other teachers, of which there are many and each is limited and in error. But that is not what the early Christians said. The early Christians said – and we say and should say – that if we call Jesus the Christ, or the Logos (as the Apologists called Him), this means there cannot be, by definition, so to speak, any truth – Let us say, China, India, Islam, Judaism, mysticism, whatever you want to know, and certainly all philosophy – which cannot be taken in principle into Christianity and is nevertheless truth. If this were possible, then the application of the term logos, as the Fourth Gospel applies it, to Jesus as the Christ would not be possible.. This does not mean that this Logos knew all truth; that is of course nonsense and would destroy His humanity, His human reality. But it does mean that the fundamental truth which has appeared in Him is essentially universal, and therefore can take in every other truth. For this reason the early theologians didn't hesitate to take in as much Greek philosophical truth as they could, and as much oriental mysticism as they could. They were not afraid of it, as some theologians today are.

There is, however, one difference in the appearance of the logos in Christ, namely that this appearance makes it possible that even the most uneducated human being can receive the full existential truth, while the philosophers may lose it in discussing it. Or in other terms: One of the main ideas of the Apologists is that Christianity is far superior to all philosophy – although there are Christians among the early philosophers – and it is superior because philosopher presupposes education. Only a: few human beings are educated; are the others excluded from truth? And the answer is: On the basis of a merely philosophical form of truth, they are excluded; on the basis of a manifestation of the Logos as a living person, they are not excluded, they can have it as fully as any philosopher. Now this remains a problem for all the following discussions , but it is something which is even today decisive, that we can believe that: the message of Jesus as the Christ is universal not only in embracing all mankind, but universal also in embracing all classes, groups, and social stratifications of mankind.

Beyond this an argument is brought up, which is practical: the reality of the Church. In this group of human beings, small as it was at that time, one finds a degree of moral power and acting which is found in no other group. Therefore the congregations of Christians are not dangerous to the world power. They do exactly what the Roman Empire tries to do, namely, to prevent the world from falling into chaos. They are, even more than the Roman Empire, the supporters of world order. So Justin could say: "The world lives from the prayers of the Christians and from the obedience of the Christians to the law of the state. The Christians preserve the world, and on the other hand, for their sake God preserves the world." Now this is the main argument against the Roman Empire, which of course could be supported by innumerable practical evidences which show that far from destroying the orders on which reality is built, the Christians support it."

The philosophical idea of God is inborn in every human being. 1t is the idea of Being eternally, without beginning, needing nothing beyond passions, indestructible, unchangeable, invisible – all these characteristics which Parmenides attributed to Being are here attributed to God. But there is a point of difference between classical Greek philosophy and Justin's doctrine of God. This difference comes in through the Old Testament and changes everything. It is the statement that God is the almighty creator.: The moment this statement is made, the personal element enters the abstract and mystical description of God's identity. God as creator is acting, and almightiness means that He is the acting power behind everything which moves.

It is interesting to observe that in these early statements about God, Christian monotheism oscillates between the trans-personal element of Being and the personal element of God as creator, and of course saviour, etc. This oscillation is necessary in the moment in which the idea of God is made the object of thought. You cannot escape some elements of the eternal, of the unconditional, the unchangeable, etc. On the other hand, the practical piety and the experience of creatureliness in which we find ourselves, presupposes a person-to-person relationship, and between these two elements Christianity always oscillates and must oscillate, because these are two elements in God himself.

Between God and man, there are angels and powers, some of them good and some evil. But their mediating power is insufficient. The real mediator is the Logos. Now what is this Logos? I remember that in former classes the question was always asked: Now after all this speaking about "Logos", I would like to know what the word really means! And I hope that after the next four weeks, when you hear much more about the Logos, you can ask this question. But I will try my best, although the best is very poor in comparison with the difficulty of the problems, especially for the difficulty in the minds of people of whom I say they all are nominalists by birth! This makes it so difficult because, of course, a concept such as "Logos" is not the description of an individual being, but the description of a universal principle. And if one is not used to thinking in terms of universals as powers of being, then such a concept " as Logos remains impossible to understand. So I should do the following: to convert you, at least hypothetically, to medieval realism – to Platonism, if you want to call it thus – and then to speak about the Logos. But since time is limited, I will do this implicitly if possible, and cannot do it explicitly.