A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD BY H. G. WELLS
38.THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINAL CHRISTIANITY
In the four gospels we find the personality and teachings of Jesus but very little of the dogmas of the Christian church. It is in the epistles, a series of writings by the immediate followers of Jesus, that the broad lines of Christian belief are laid down. Chief among the makers of Christian doctrine was St. Paul. He had never seen Jesus nor heard him preach. Paul’s name was originally Saul, and he was conspicuous at first as an active persecutor of the little band of disciples after the crucifixion. Then he was suddenly converted to Christianity, and he changed his name to Paul. He was a man of great intellectual vigour and deeply and passionately interested in the religious movements of the time. He was well versed in Judaism and in the Mithraism and Alexandrian religion of the day. He carried over many of their ideas and terms of expression into Christianity. He did very little to enlarge or develop the original teaching of Jesus, the teaching of the Kingdom of Heaven. But he taught that Jesus was not only the promised Christ, the promised leader of the Jews, but also that his death was a sacrifice, like the deaths of the ancient sacrificial victims of the primordial civilizations, for the redemption of mankind.
When religions flourish side by side they tend to pick up each other’s
ceremonial and other outward peculiarities. Buddhism, for example, in
China has now almost the same sort of temples and priests and uses as
Taoism, which follows in the teachings of Lao Tse. Yet the original
teachings of Buddhism and Taoism were almost flatly opposed. And it
reflects no doubt or discredit upon the essentials of Christian
teaching that it took over not merely such formal things as the shaven
priest, the votive offering, the altars, candles, chanting and images
of the Alexandrian and Mithraic faiths, but adopted even their
devotional phrases and their theological ideas. All these religions
were flourishing side by side with many less prominent cults. Each was
seeking adherents, and there must have been a constant going and coming
of converts between them. Sometimes one or other would be in favour
with the government. But Christianity was regarded with more suspicion
than its rivals because, like the Jews, its adherents would not perform
acts of worship to the God Cæsar. This made it a seditious religion,
quite apart from the revolutionary spirit of the teachings of Jesus
himself.
MOSAIC OF SS. PETER AND PAUL POINTING TO A THRONE, ON GOLD BACKGROUND
MOSAIC OF SS. PETER AND PAUL POINTING TO A THRONE, ON GOLD BACKGROUND
From the Ninth Century original, in the Church of Sta. Prassede, Rome
_(In the Victoria and Albert Museum)_
St. Paul familiarized his disciples with the idea that Jesus, like
Osiris, was a god who died to rise again and give men immortality. And
presently the spreading Christian community was greatly torn by
complicated theological disputes about the relationship of this God
Jesus to God the Father of Mankind. The Arians taught that Jesus was
divine, but distant from and inferior to the Father. The Sabellians
taught that Jesus was merely an aspect of the Father, and that God was
Jesus and Father at the same time just as a man may be a father and an
artificer at the same time; and the Trinitarians taught a more subtle
doctrine that God was both one and three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
For a time it seemed that Arianism would prevail over its rivals, and
then after disputes, violence and wars, the Trinitarian formula became
the accepted formula of all Christendom. It may be found in its
completest expression in the Athanasian Creed.
We offer no comment on these controversies here. They do not sway
history as the personal teaching of Jesus sways history. The personal
teaching of Jesus does seem to mark a new phase in the moral and
spiritual life of our race. Its insistence upon the universal
Fatherhood of God and the implicit brotherhood of all men, its
insistence upon the sacredness of every human personality as a living
temple of God, was to have the profoundest effect upon all the
subsequent social and political life of mankind. With Christianity,
with the spreading teachings of Jesus, a new respect appears in the
world for man as man. It may be true, as hostile critics of
Christianity have urged, that St.. Paul preached obedience to slaves,
but it is equally true that the whole spirit of the teachings of Jesus
preserved in the gospels was against the subjugation of man by man.
And still more distinctly was Christianity opposed to such outrages
upon human dignity as the gladiatorial combats in the arena.
THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST
THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST
_(Sixth Century Ivory Panel in the British Museum)_
Throughout the first two centuries after Christ, the Christian religion
spread throughout the Roman Empire, weaving together an ever-growing
multitude of converts into a new community of ideas and will. The
attitude of the emperors varied between hostility and toleration.
There were attempts to suppress this new faith in both the second and
third centuries; and finally in 303 and the following years a great
persecution under the Emperor Diocletian. The considerable
accumulations of Church property were seized, all bibles and religious
writings were confiscated and destroyed, Christians were put out of the
protection of the law and many executed. The destruction of the books
is particularly notable. It shows how the power of the written word in
holding together the new faith was appreciated by the authorities.
These “book religions,” Christianity and Judaism, were religions that
educated. Their continued existence depended very largely on people
being able to read and understand their doctrinal ideas. The older
religions had made no such appeal to the personal intelligence. In the
ages of barbaric confusion that were now at hand in western Europe it
was the Christian church that was mainly instrumental in preserving the
tradition of learning.
The persecution of Diocletian failed completely to suppress the growing
Christian community. In many provinces it was ineffective because the
bulk of the population and many of the officials were Christian. In
317 an edict of toleration was issued by the associated Emperor
Galerius, and in 324 Constantine the Great, a friend and on his
deathbed a baptized convert to Christianity, became sole ruler of the
Roman world. He abandoned all divine pretensions and put Christian
symbols on the shields and banners of his troops.
In a few years Christianity was securely established as the official
religion of the empire. The competing religions disappeared or were
absorbed with extraordinary celerity, and in 300 Theodosius the Great
caused the great statue of Jupiter Serapis at Alexandria to be
destroyed. From the outset of the fifth century onward the only
priests or temples in the Roman Empire were Christian priests and
temples.