V. The Anti-Gnostic Fathers
as the Logos rather than on Christ as the Redeemer; on His teaching rather than on His death? Did they succeed in harmonizing the work of Christ as Logos with His work as Redeemer? How does their moralism compare with that of the Apostolic Fathers? What do you think of the idea that Christianity is a nova lex? What was the prominent element in faith as understood by the Apologists? How did they conceive of the forgiveness of sins after baptism? What do you think of their conviction that such Gentiles as Socrates and Plato were saved? Was their Logos doctrine that of the Greeks and therefore a perversion of Christianity?
Literature: Scott, The Nicene Theology, pp. 160–178, 208–210, 219– 229, 271–275; Moody, The Mind of the Early Converts, pp. 102–147;
McGiffert, A History of Christian Thought I, pp. 96–131; Harnack, History of Dogma II, pp. 169–229; Cunningham, Historical Theology
I, pp. 134–139; Seeberg, History of Doctrine I, pp. 109–118; Loofs, Dogmengeschiedenis, pp. 72–81; Otten, Manual of the History of Dogmas I, pp. 110–137; Fisher, History of Christian Doctrine, pp.
61–69.
V. The Anti-Gnostic Fathers From the Apologists we naturally pass on to the anti-gnostic Fathers who succeeded them. Three of these stand out with great prominence.
1. THE ANTI-GNOSTIC FATHERS. The first one that comes into consideration here is Irenaeus. He was born in the East, where he became a disciple of Polycarp, but spent the main part of his life in the West. At first a presbyter, he afterwards became bishop of Lyons.
He evinces a practical Christian spirit in his writings, and represents a Johannine type of Christian doctrine, though not without some traces of a more sensuous conception. In his chief work, Against Heresies, he takes issue particularly with Gnosticism. It is a work
marked by ability, moderation, and purity in its representation of Christianity.
The second of these Fathers is Hippolytus, who is said to lave been a disciple of Irenaeus and greatly resembled his teacher in mental make-up, being simple, moderate, and practical. Less gifted than
Irenaeus, he gave evidence of a greater fondness for philosophical ideas. After laboring in the neighborhood of Rome, he seems to have suffered martyrdom in that city. His principal work is entitled The Refutation of All Heresies. He finds the root of all the perversions of doctrine in the speculations of the philosophers.
The third and greatest of the famous trio was Tertullian, a man of profound intellect and deep feeling, of a vivid imagination, and distinguished by acuteness and great learning. As presbyter of Carthage he represents the North African type of theology. Due to his violent temper he was naturally passionate in his representation of Christianity and somewhat given to extreme statements. As a lawyer he was familiar with Roman law and introduced legal conceptions and legal phraseology into theological discussions. Like Hippolytus he, too, was inclined to deduce all heresy from the philosophy of the Greeks, and therefore became a zealous opponent of philosophy. His native fervor reacted strongly against the lax spirit of the age, and even induced him to embrace Montanism in later life. Convinced of the futility of arguing with heretics, he said it was best to meet them with a simple demurrer. He influenced Western theology more than any of the others.
2. THEIR DOCTRINE OF GOD, MAN, AND THE HISTORY
OF REDEMPTION. They regarded the separation of the true God and the Creator as the fundamental error of the Gnostics, as a blasphemous conception suggested by the devil, and stressed the fact that there is but one God, who is both Creator and Redeemer. He gave the law and also revealed the Gospel. This God is triune, a single essence subsisting in three persons. Tertullian was the first to assert the tri-personality of God and to use the word "Trinity". In
opposition to the Monarchians he emphasized the fact that the three Persons are of one substance, susceptible of number without division. Yet he did not reach the proper trinitarian statement, since he conceived of one Person as subordinate to the other.
In the doctrine of man they also opposed the Gnostics by stressing the fact that good and evil in man do not find their explanation in different natural endowments. If evil is inherent in matter, and therefore in man as such, he can no more be regarded as a free moral being. Man was created in the image of God, without immortality indeed (i. e. without perfection), but with the possibility of receiving this in the way of obedience. Sin is disobedience and brings death, just as obedience brings immortality. In Adam the whole race became subject to death. The connection of our sin with that of Adam is not yet clearly apprehended, though Tertullian makes some suggestive statements on the subject. He says that evil became, as it were, a natural element in man, present from birth, and that this condition passes over through generation upon the whole human race. This is the first trace of the doctrine of original sin.
Irenaeus has something special on the history of redemption. He says that God expelled man from paradise and suffered him to die, in order that the injury sustained might not remain forever. From the start God was deeply concerned for the salvation of the race, and sought to win it by three covenants. The law written in the heart of man represented the first covenant. The patriarchs were righteous before God because they met its requirements. When the knowledge of this law faded away, the decalogue was given, representing the second covenant. On account of Israel's sinful disposition the law of ceremonies was added, to prepare the people for following Christ and for friendship with God. The Pharisees made it of non-effect by robbing it of its chief content, namely, love. In the third covenant
Christ restored the original law, the law of love. This covenant is related to the preceding as freedom to bondage, and requires faith, not only in the Father, but also in the Son, who has now appeared. It is not, like the preceding, limited to Israel, but is universal in its
scope Christians received a stricter law than the Jews and have more to believe, but they also receive a greater measure of grace. To these three periods Tertullian, while an adherent of Montanism, still added the era of the Spirit.
3. THEIR DOCTRINE OF THE PERSON AND WORK OF
CHRIST. Irenaeus and Tertullian differ considerably in their doctrine of the Person of Christ, and therefore it may be well to consider them separately. a. Irenaeus. The Christology of Irenaeus is superior to that of Tertullian and Hippolytus and influenced the latter to a great extent.
He is averse to speculations about the Logos, because these lead at most to probable guesses. He merely asserts that the Logos existed from all eternity and was instrumental in revealing the Father; and then takes his real startingpoint in the historically revealed Son of God. Through the incarnation the Logos became the historical Jesus, and thereafter was at once true God and true man. He rejects the heresy of the Gnostics that in His suffering and death the passible
Jesus was separated from the impassible Christ, and attaches the greatest significance to the union of God with human nature. In Christ as the second Adam the human race is once more united to God. There is in Him a recapitulation of mankind, which reaches backward as well as forward, and in which mankind reverses the course on which it entered at the fall. This is the very core of the Christological teaching of Irenaeus. The death of Christ as our substitute is mentioned but not stressed. The central element in the work of Christ is His obedience, whereby the disobedience of Adam is cancelled. b. Tertullian. Tertullian takes his startingpoint in the doctrine of the Logos, but develops it in a way that became historically significant.
He stresses the fact that the Logos of the Christians is a real subsistence, an independent Person, who was begotten by God and thus proceeded from Him, not by emanation, but by self-projection, just as a root projects a tree. There was a time when He was not. He
emphasizes the fact that the Logos is of the same substance with the Father, and yet differs from Him in mode of existence as a distinct
Person. He did not come into existence by partitioning but by selfunfolding. The Father is the whole substance, but the Son is only a part of it, because He is derived. Tertullian did not entirely get away from the idea of subordination. His work is of lasting significance in connection with the introduction of the conceptions of substance and person into theology, ideas that were utilized in the construction of the Nicene Creed. It may be said that he enlarged the doctrine of the Logos into a doctrine of the Trinity. In opposition to the Monarchian theory he stressed the fact that the three persons in the Godhead are of one substance, susceptible of number without division. Yet he did not succeed reaching the full trinitarian statement. He too conceived of the Logos as originally impersonal reason in God, become personal at the time of creation. And subordination of the one person to the other is presented in the crude form of a greater and lesser participation of the first and second persons in the divine substance.
Relative to the God-man and His two natures Tertullian expressed himself very much as the School of Asia Minor did. He surpasses all the other Fathers, except Melito, in doing justice to the full humanity of Christ, and in his clear distinction of the two natures, each one retaining its own attributes. According to him there is no fusion, but a conjunction of the human and the divine in Christ. He is very emphatic on the importance of the death of Christ, but is not entirely clear on this point, since he does not stress the necessity of penal satisfaction, but only that of penitence on the part of the sinner.
While he does recognize a punitive element in justice, he exalts the mercy of God. At the same time a certain legalism pervades his teaching. He speaks of satisfaction made for sins committed after baptism by repentance or confession. By fasting and other forms of mortification the sinner is able to escape eternal punishment.
Of the Antignostic Fathers Irenaeus gives the fullest description, of the work of redemption, but his representation is not altogether consistent. While he is regarded as one of the most orthodox of the
early Church Fathers, there are two lines of thought present in his writings which are hardly Scriptural, the one moralistic and the other somewhat mystical. According to the former man regains his destiny, when he voluntarily chooses the good which he is still able to do. The real significance of Christ's work lies in the fact that He brought the sure knowledge of God and thus strengthened the freedom of man.
According to the second Christ recapitulates the whole human race in Himself, and thus establishes a new relation between God and man and becomes the leaven of a new life in humanity. The Logos identifies Himself with humanity in His sufferings and death, and becoming instrumental in raising it to a higher level by sanctifying and immortalizing it. He recapitulates in Himself the whole human race and reverses the course which derives its impetus from the fall of the first Adam. He communicates to it the leaven of a new and immortal life. This may easily be, and has frequently been interpreted as teaching atonement by a mystical process begun in the incarnation and resulting in the deification of man. The emphasis on this idea in the writings of Irenaeus may be due to the fact that he was influenced by the Johannine writings more than by the Pauline
Epistles. It is quite evident, however, that Irenaeus did not mean to teach a purely mystical or hyper-physical redemption. While he strongly emphasizes the necessity of a living union of Christ with the subjects of his redemption—something which Anselm failed to do— he associates this with other ideas, such as that He rendered for us the obedience required by God, that He suffered in our stead, paying our debt and propitiating the Father, and that He redeemed us from the power of satan.
4. THEIR DOCTRINE OF SALVATION, OF THE CHURCH,
AND OF THE LAST THINGS. Irenaeus is not altogether clear in his soteriology. He emphasizes the necessity of faith as a prerequisite for baptism. This faith is not only an intellectual acceptance of the truth, but also includes a self-surrender of the soul which issues in a holy life. By baptism man is regenerated; his sins are washed away and a new life is born within him. He evidently has no clear conception of the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith, for his
representation of the relation between faith and justification is different. Faith necessarily leads on to the observance of the commandments of Christ, and is therefore sufficient to make a man righteous before God. The Spirit of God endows the Christian with new life, and the fundamental characteristic of the new life is that it brings forth the fruits of righteousness in good works
The work of Tertullian marks no particular advance in the doctrine of the application of the work of Christ. Moralism again appears in the view that the sinner by repentance earns for himself salvation in baptism. His representation of the doctrine of penance is of special interest, however, since he introduces legal terms here which were in later theology applied to the redemptive work of Christ. He regards
God as a Lawgiver and Judge, who looks upon sin as transgression and guilt, and therefore demands satisfaction, and in lieu of satisfaction inflicts punishment. Sins committed after baptism require satisfaction by penance. If this is rendered, the punishment is warded off. In this representation we find the foundation for the Roman Catholic sacrament of penance. The legal terms employed, such as "Judge", "guilt", "punishment", and "satisfaction", were transferred to the work of Christ in the theology of the Church.
In their teachings respecting the Church these Fathers reveal a tendency to yield to Judaism in substituting the idea of an external community for that of a spiritual fellowship. They sowed seeds which bore fruit in the Cyprianic or Roman Catholic conception of the Church. They do indeed still retain the idea that the Church is a spiritual community of believers, but represent this as coinciding with an external fellowship. In fact, they represent the visible organization as the channel of divine grace, and make participation in the blessings of salvation dependent on membership in the visible
Church. They who separated themselves From the external communion of the Church, which was of Apostolic origin and had as its head the sedes apostolicae, thereby also renounced Christ. Due to the influence of the Old Testament the idea of a special mediating priesthood also came to the foreground.
The Antignostic Fathers in general championed the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh, and based it on the resurrection of Christ and on the indwelling of the Spirit. The end will come when the devil has succeeded in giving the entire apostate throng a new head in Antichrist. Then Christ will appear, and the six thousand years of the world will be followed by the first resurrection and the sabbatic rest of the millennium. In Palestine believers will enjoy the riches of the land. After the millennium there will be a new heavens and a new earth, and the blessed will live in graded order in the mansions prepared for them.
Questions for Further Study: Do the Antignostic Fathers mark any advance in the doctrine of God? How must the recapitulation idea in Irenaeus Christology be understood?
Does it agree with Schleiermacher's mystical theory of the atonement? What other conceptions of the work of Christ are found in his writings? Does his recapitulation theory reckon with sin as individual guilt, and provide for individual redemption? Did he believe in a deification of man?
How are divine grace and human merit related in his soteriology? At what point did he change the current conception of the Church?
What was his conception of the last things? In what respect was Tertullian's doctrine of the Trinity defective? What was characteristic of his Logos doctrine? What effect did Montanism have on his views?
What legal terms did he introduce into theology? Were they applied to the work of Christ. Does the legal element constitute a deterioration of the pure Gospel?
Literature: Scott, Nicene Theology, pp. 95–102, 178–184, 210–212, 230–236, 281–286; Moody, The Mind of the Early Converts, pp.
204–237; Cunningham, Historical Theology I, pp. 139–146, 158– 163; Morgan, The Importance of Tertullion in the Development of Christian Dogma; Harnack, History of Dogma II, pp. 230–318;
Seeberg, History of Doctrines I, pp.
118–140; Loofs, Dogmengeschiedenis, pp. 87–101; McGiffert, History of Christian Thought I, pp. 132–148; Otten, Manual of the History of Dogmas I,