August 23, 2022

38.THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINAL CHRISTIANITY | A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD | H. G. WELLS

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.