This is an excerpt from "Mormonism and Early Christianity" by Hugh Nibley, originally given as a speech back in the 60's. Please buy or borrow this book if you would like a better look at this (this one didn't transfer perfectly). I recommend you print this article out and read it since it is about 20 pages in length. Also, I am not adding the notes in an effort to save webspace (as I only get 15 free megabytes). I will gladly send the notes to anyone who requests them (I have them ready to go). Any errors in punctuation, grammar or misspellings are probably due to the coversion of the text.

A Somber Theme: Ever since Eusebius sought with ded- icated zeal to prove the survival of the church by blazing a trail back to the apostles, the program of church history has been the same: To give a clear and comprehensive, scientif- ically established view of the development of the visible insti- tution of salvation founded by Christ.1 To describe it not to question it. By its very definition church history requires unquestioning acceptance of the basic proposition that the church did survive. One may write endlessly about The Infant Church, l’Eglise naissante, die Pflanzung der Kirche, etc., but one may not ask why the early Christians themselves described their church not as a lusty infant but as an old and failing woman; one may trace the triumphant spread of The Unquenchable Light through storm and shadow, but one may not ask why Jesus himself insisted that the Light was to be taken away.2 Church history seems to be resolved never to raise the fundamental question of survival as the only way of avoiding a disastrous answer, and the normal reaction to the question did the church remain on earth? has not been serious inquiry in a richly documented field, but shocked

The Passing of the Church: Forty Variations on an Unpopular Theme first appeared in Church History, 20 (June 1961): 131-154. It was reprinted under the title "The Passing of the Primitive Church" in When the Lights Went Out (Salt Lake City: Deseret 1970): 1-32. This article also appeared in BYU Studies 16 (1975): 139-64.

recoil from the edge of an abyss into which few can look without a shudder.3 Yet today that question is being asked again, as it has been in other times of stress and crisis, not with the journal- istic flourish of Soltau’s Sind wir noch Christen? but with the cautious historical appraisal of an H. J. Schoeps, con- templating the age-old tension between eschatology and church with their conflicting ideas about the church’s future. Can it be that the repugnance of churchmen to eschatology and their coolness toward the authentic writings of the early Fathers are due in no small part to the dim view which the primitive Christians took of the prospects of the church?4 The purpose of this paper is to list briefly the principal arguments sup- porting the thesis that the church founded by Jesus and the apostles did not survive and was not expected to. We shall consider the fate of the church under three heads: (1) the declarations of the early Christians concerning what was to befall it; (2) their strange behavior in the light of those dec- larations; (3) the affirmations and denials, doubts and mis- givings of the church leaders of a later day. Our theme is the Passing of the Church, our variations, designated below by Roman numerals, are a number of striking and often neglected facets of church history.

The Early Christian View: Christian apologists had a ready answer to those shallow-minded critics who made merry over Christ’s failure to convert the world and God’s failure to protect his saints from persecution and death: God does not work that way, it was explained, his rewards are on the other side, and his overwhelming intervention is reserved for the eschaton, until which all sorts of reverses can be expected nihil enim est nobis prom issum ad hanc vitam; the prospect of failure and defeat in the world, far from being incompatible with the gospel message, is an integral part of it. ~

(I) Jesus announced in no uncertain terms that his mes- sage would be rejected by all men, as the message of the prophets had been bet ore,6 and that he would soon leave the world to die in its sins and seek alter him in vain.7 The Light was soon to depart, leaving a great darkness in which no man can work while the prince of this world would remain, as usual, in possession of the field.8 (II) In their turn the dis- ciples were to succeed no better than their Lord: If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household?9 Like him they were to be hated of all men, going forth as sheep among wolves, sent last as it were appointed unto death,10 with the promise that as soon as they completed their mission the end would come.11 (III) But what of the church? Those who accepted the teaching were to suffer exactly the same fate as the Lord and the apostles; they were advised to take the prophets for an example of suffering affliction and patience, and to think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try them, but rejoice rather to suffer as Christ did in the flesh that we may also be glorified together.12 After them too the prince of this world was waiting to take over; they too were to be lambs among wolves, rejected as were the Master and the disciples: The world knoweth us not because it knew him not.13 Knowing that whosoever will save his life must lose it, they openly disavowed any expectation of success, individual or collective, in this world. ‘4 (IV) As for the doc- trine, it was to receive the same rough treatment, soon fall- ing into the hands of worldly men who would pervert the gospel of Christ from a thing the world found highly obnox- ious to something it was willing to embrace, for such has always been the fate of God’s revelations to men.15

(V) All this bodes ill for the -interval- between the Ascension and the Parousia; the Zwischenzeit was to be a bad time and a long one. 16 What is more, it begins almost immediately, the apostles themselves calling attention to all the fatal signs, and marveling only that it has come so soon.’7 As soon as the Lord departs there comes the lord of this world, and hath nothing in me; in the very act of Cast- ing out the Lord of the vineyard the usurpers seize it for themselves, to remain in possession until his return; 18 no sooner does he sow his wheat than the adversary sows tares, and only when the Lord returns again can the grain be gath- ered together, i.e., into a church, the ruined field itself being not the church but specifically the world.’9 After the sheep come the wolves, not sparing the flock, which enjoys no immunity (Acts 20:29); after sound doctrine come fables;20 after the charismatic gifts only human virtues (1 Corinthians 13:8, 13). The list is a grim one, but it is no more impressive than (VI) the repeated insistence that there is to be an end, not the end of the world, but the consummation of the age.2’ It is to come with the completion of the missionary activities of the apostles, and there is no more firmly rooted tradition in Christendom than the teaching that the apostles completed the assigned preaching to the nations in their own persons and in their own time, so that the end could come in their generation.22

(VII) It was no imaginary end. When the saints were asked to endure to the end, that meant just one thing, as Tertullian observes to suffer death. ~ When the sorely pressed Christians need a strong comfort, the only comfort forth- coming is the promise of the resurrection and the assurance of salvation whether we live or die.24 Never is there any mention of relief on the way, of happy times ahead, of final victory for the cause, or of the consoling thought that gener- ations yet unborn will call one blessed. Such assurances belong to a later age; the only encouragement the first Christians ever got is that given to soldiers making a last-ditch stand: they are ordered not to attack but to have long patience, grimly hanging on to the end, because only by so doing can they show their worthiness to inherit eternal life.25

But we are told not only of one but explicitly of two ways in which the ancient church was to make its exit. (VIII) For far more numerous than those true saints who were to give their lives as witnesses were those who were to succumb to the blandishments of false teachers. The fate of the vast majority of Christians was not to be overcome by a frontal attack true martyrs were relatively few but to be led astray by perverters.26 The spoilers do not destroy the vineyard, but seize the inheritance for themselves; we read of betrayal, disobedience, corruptions; of deceivers, perverters, tra i tars; of wresting the scriptures, denying the gifts, quenching the Spirit, turning love into hate, truth to fables, sheep to wolves; of embracing another gospel,and so forth. The offenders are not pagans but loudly professing Christians. 2? As, once the prophets are dead, everyone paints their tombs with pro- testations of devotion, so when the master of the house has risen up and shut the door, shall the eager host apply for admission to his companytoo late.28 The apostasy described in the New Testament is not desertion of the cause, but per- version of it, a process by which the righteous are removed, and none perceives it.29 The Christian masses do not realize what is happening to them; they are bewitched by a thing that comes as softly and insidiously as the slinging of a noose. 30 It is an old familiar story, as Bultmann notes: The preaching of Jesus does not hold out any prospect for the future of the people. . . . The present people does not behave otherwise than its predecessors who had persecuted and killed the prophets. . . . The message of Jesus does not contain any promise of the splendid future of Israel.3’ (IX) As is well known, the early Christians viewed the future with a mix- ture of fear and longing, of longing for the triumphant return of the Lord, but of deadly fear of the long and terrible rule of the Casino planes that had to come first. So great is the dread of what they know lies ahead, that devout fathers of the church pray for the indefinite postponement of the Day of the Lord itself as the price of delaying the rule of dark- ness. 32

(X) The Apostolic Fathers denounce with feeling the all too popular doctrine that God’s church simply cannot fail. All past triumphs, tribulations, and promises, they insist, will count for nothing unless the people now repent and stand firm in a final test that lies just ahead; God’s past blessings and covenants, far from being a guarantee of immu- nity (as many fondly believe) are the very opposite, for the greater the knowledge we have received, the greater rather is the danger in which we lie.33 The case of the Jews, to say nothing of the fallen angels, should prove that we are never safe24 God will surely allow his people to perish if they con- tinue in the way they are going he will hasten their disso- lution: Since I called and ye hearkened not . . . therefore I in my turn will laugh at your destruction. . . . For there will come a time when you will call upon me and I shall not hear you.’5 The Apostolic Fathers compare the church to fallen Israel, and confirm their solemn warnings by citing the most lurid and uncompromising passages of scripture.’6 (XI) They see the church running full speed in the wrong direction, and in great distress of mind plead with it to do an about-face before it is too late, as it soon will be.’7 For their whole concern is not to make new converts, but rather to save from perishing a soul that has already known Christ, seeing to it that as many as possible pass the fiery test ahead, keep the faith that most are losing, and so reach the goal of glory beyond.’8 They know that the names of Christ and Christian carry on, but find no comfort in that, since those names are being freely used by impostors and corrupters, whom the many are gladly following.40

(XII) The call to repentance of the Apostolic Fathers is a last call; they labor the doctrine of the Two Ways as offering to Christian society a last chance to choose between saving its soul by dying in the faith or saving its skin by coming to terms with the world.4’ They have no illusions as to the way things are going: the church has lost the gains it once made, the people are being led by false teachers, ~‘ there is little to hinder the fulfillment of the dread (and oft-quoted) proph- ecy, the Lord shall deliver the sheep of his pasture and their fold and their tower to destructions.43 The original tower with its perfectly cut and well-fitted stones is soon to be taken from the earth, and in its place will remain only a second-class tower of defective stones which could not pass the test. In the Visions of the Pastor of Hermas the church is represented as an old and failing lady because your spirit is old and already fading away who is carried out of the world; only in the world beyond does she appear as a blooming and ageless maiden. The Apostolic Fathers take their leave of a church not busily engaged in realizing the kingdom, but fast falling asleep; the lights are going out, the Master has departed on his long journey, and until he returns all shall sleep. What lies ahead is the Wintertime of the Just, the time of mourning for the Bridegroom, when men shall seek the Lord and not find him, and seek to do good, but no longer be able to.46

Strange Behavior: What the strangely negative behavior of the first Christians suggests is less the expectation of an immediate Parousia than the shutting up of the shop until a distant reopening. (XIII) It has often been noted that their public relations were the world’s worst, that they could not and did not court publicity outside the movement.47 In sharp contrast to the later church, they were convinced, as Hilary observes, that the church could not be Christ’s unless the world hated it. The disciples, following the example and precept of their Master, made no effort to win public sym- pathy and support.49 This hard and uncompromising atti- tude has puzzled observers in every age, and indeed it makes little sense in an institution seeking either to convert the world or to survive in it.50 None knew better than the Chris- tians themselves that their intransigence had no survival value, and yet they went right on turning the world upside down and mortally offending respectable people.

(XIV) The first Christians maintained a strange and stubborn reticence on certain matters (including their beliefs about the Second Coming), even when their silence led to serious misunderstanding and persecution.51 Even among the members the teaching was carefully rationed, for it was not the trivia but the high and holy mysteries, the most prized things of the kingdom, that were carefully kept out of circu- lation,52 so that Origen can report no clear official teaching in his day not only regarding minor matters, but on the very first principles of the gospel.53 Critics and scholars since Celsus have been puzzled by this early Christian reti- cence on matters which, if the church was to carry on, should have been highly publicized.54 And while Christians since Irenaeus have categorically denied that any teachings of the apostolic church were withheld, they have done so only to avoid the alarming implications of the primitive Christian reticence.53

(XV) Consistent with the policy of reticence is the strict limitation placed on the missionary activities of Jesus and his disciples, both in time and place, and their firm rejection of the highly successful proselytizing methods of the Jews. In his recent study of this anomaly, Joachim Jeremias has con- cludèd that while Jesus did indeed envisage a universal call to the nations, he thought of it as coming only at the eschaton and not at the time of his mortal mission, which clearly did not have world conversion as its objective. 56

(XVI) No less striking is the conspicuous absence of any missionary organization in the apostolic church, and the com- plete indifference of the Apostolic Fathers to the great busi- ness of converting the world.57 Their prayer for the church is to be gathered out of the world, not spread abroad in it, and to be caught up into the kingdom, not to build it here. 58

(XVII) Instead of settling down as the later Christians sensibly did to long-term projects of conversion, the early Christians were driven by the keen sense of urgency and stress that fills their writings. The time is short was the refrain, and the missionaries had only time to give a hasty warning message and be on their way. It seems, according to K. Holl, that the apostles went about their business ohne für die Zukunft zu sorgen without a thought for the future.59 What strange missionaries! They never speak of the bright future ahead nor glory in its prospects, but seem quite pre- pared to accept the assurance that they would preach to a generation that would not hear them and that, as in the days of Noah, the end would follow hard upon their preaching. ~

(XVIII) But if the early saints mention no glorious future for the church, when that should be their strongest comfort, they do shed abundant tears when they look ahead. If the fall of Jerusalem and the temple was to be the great oppor- tunity for the church that later theologians insist it was, Christ and the early saints were not aware of it, for they give no indication of regarding the event as anything but tragic.6’ Paul viewed the future of the church with tears as, accord- ing to early accounts, did other leaders. 62 Apocryphal writ- ings describe the apostles as weeping inconsolably when Jesus leaves them to their fates, and in turn the church shedding bitter tears for the loss of the apostles, that leaves it without guidance and counsel.63 Whatever their historical value, such accounts convincingly convey a mood, and Kirsopp Lake recommended Browning’s terrible Death in the Desert as the best background reading for understanding the state of mind of the church at the passing of the apostles all is lost.64 (XIX) The failure of the apostles to leave behind them written instructions for the future guidance of the church has often been noted and sadly regretted. It is hard to conceive of such a colossal oversight if the founders had actually envis- aged a long future for the church. The awkwardness of the situation is apparent from R. M. Grant’s explanation of it, namely, that the apostles did not live to see the Church fully organized and at work.65 As if they should wait until the work was completed before giving instructions for com- pleting it! Actually the most tragic disorganization and con- fusion followed hard upon the passing of the apostles, according to Hegesippus, and as a direct result of it.~ Plainly the early leaders made no careful provision for the future, even as they failed to compose anything that could properly be described as ‘church-history’ in spite of their great interest in times, seasons arid dispensations, and the imperative need and accepted use of sacred history in the economy of religious organizations. 67

(XX) Then there is the total neglect of education in the early church, which C. Bardy would justify with desperate logic, arguing that education for the young was neglected because the church got its membership from converts among the adult population fiunt, non nascuntur Christian i.68 And were all those converts childless, and were there no children in the church for those three long centuries during which it was without schools? In view of the great emphasis placed on education by the church in the fourth century, its total neglect in the preceding centuries can only have been delib- erate. Well might E. de Faye find it strange that Jesus ne songe nullement a former une école de jeunes hommes qui . seraient les hérétiers de sa doctrine (does not think to form a school of young men who would be the heirs of his teach- ing), for if there were to be heirs of the teaching such a provision was indispensable. 69 Why no education, then? Actu- ally the Apostolic Fathers were greatly concerned about edu- cation, warning their people against the bad education of the world, and chiding them for their neglect of the only educa- tion that counted that which prepared the young for the next life. 70

(XXI) Neglect of standard education was matched by an equally disturbing indifference to the social and political prob- lems which would necessarily be of vital concern to any enduring social institution. For years liberal scholars sought to discover a social gospel where none was to be found, and it is indeed hard to believe that a religion of brotherly love could so persistently ignore the crying social ills of the day.7’ But the Christians excused themselves with the expla- nation that more urgent business had priority they had no time for such things.72 Why not, if the church was to con- tinue? (XXII) And why should a permanent and growing church refuse to invest in lands and buildings? For a long time eminent churchmen endorsed the old Christian preju- dice against the construction of sorely needed church build- ings.73 But what could have been the original objection to anything as innocent and salutary as the building of a church? The early Christians tell us: the church cannot own real estate (they explain) because it is only here temporarily, and must never be allowed to forget that fact.74 (XXIII) Hans Lietzmann has shown that when “the Church sojourning at Rome” or elsewhere writes to “the Church sojourning at Corinth” or elsewhere it means that both churches are thought of only as temporary visitors in their cities; collectively and individually the church was here only on a brief pilgrimage. They were das wandernde Gottesvolk, strangers and pilgrims all, destined for but a short time upon the earth. ‘~ Planned Martyrdom: The strongest argument for the sur- vival of the church is the natural reluctance of men to accept defeat—even temporary defeat—for the work of God: “tot den ique mart yria in vacuum coronata?” cries Tertullian, ignor- ing Polycarp’s assurance that “all of these ran not in vain, because they are with the Lord in the place which is their due, with whom they also suffered. For they did not love this present world.”76 (XXIV) The loudly proclaimed objectives of the first martyrs do not include the future prosperity of the church. In bidding farewell to Jews and Gentiles Paul announces that his missions to them have been successful, not in terms of converts, but of clearing himself of a terrible responsibility: henceforth their blood is on their own heads; he has fulfilled his assignment successfully, for a crown awaits him—on the other side.77 “Thus it appears,” writes 0. Cullmann, “that the coming of the Kingdom does not depend upon the success of this ‘preaching’ but only on the fact of the proclamation itself.”78 What does depend on the preach- ing is (1) the salvation of the preacher, who is under con- demnation unless he bears witness and frees himself of “the blood of this generation,” and (2) the convicting of a wicked world which must be “without excuse” in the day of judg- ment.79 The preaching is not to convert the world but “for a witness”—martyria occurs more than six times as frequently as kerygma in the New Testament—and it has long been rec- ognized that the primary qualification and calling of an apostle was to be an eye witness. 80 The calling of a witness is to preach to an unbelieving generation ripe for destruction, with the usual expectation (as the name “martyr” indicates) of being rejected and put to death.

(XXV) The strange indifference of the early martyrs to future of a church for which later ages fondly believed they gave their lives has not received the comment it deserves. In a world in which a noble altruism was constantly on the lips of orators, in a society whose model citizen was that Pius Aeneas who promised his afflicted followers that grate- ful generations to come would call them blessed, and in a sect which placed brotherly love before all else, the Christian martyrs, unlike the pagan martyrs or Christian heroes of later times, never take comfort in the thought that others will profit by their sufferings, or that their deeds will be remem- bered and their names revered in ages to come. Ignatius, Andrew, and Perpetua will neither live nor die for the church, but talk of nothing but their personal glory with Christ here- after, “for while he suffered for us, we suffer for ourselves.”81 This concept of martyrdom is the opposite of that which later prevailed, as Dionysius of Alexandria points out in a letter to Novatus, noting that whereas the early martyr was concerned “for his own soul alone . . . today the martyr thinks in terms of the whole Church.”82 Since the latter is the more humane and natural view, there must have been a very good reason for ignoring it. It could not have been that primitive Christians enjoyed suffering, for they did not;83 nor were they as self-centered even as the later Christians, who found in martyrdom the solace of matchless public acclaim and undying earthly renown.84 The very tears of the early leaders show plainly enough (as Chrysostom often observes) that they were genuinely concerned about the future. If, then, the martyrs refuse to think and speak in terms of a continuing church, it is not because they are peculiarly self-centered people, but simply because they see no future for the church.

(XXVI) So firmly fixed in the Christian mind is the conviction that every true Christian, every saint, is by very definition a martyr, that when persecutions ceased devout souls felt themselves cheated, and new ways and means of achieving martyrdom had to be devised, though they were never more than substitutes for the real thing.85 A telling argument for any sect seeking to prove its authenticity has ever been the claim to have more martyrs than the others, ~ while the largest church of all at the peak of its power must needs describe itself in pathetic terms as a persecuted little band of saints for tradition will not allow any other kind of church to be the true one. 87 From the beginning the church is a community of martyrs, whose proper business is noth- ing else than to study how to die;~ and though the final note is of the victory of God, as C. T. Craig observes, before that happy culmination John seems to have antici- pated a universal martyrdom for the Church.89

The Great Gap:That ominous gap in the records which comes just at the moment of transition from a world-hostile to a world-conditioned Christianity has recently received grow- ing attention and a number of interesting labels, such as the lacuna, the eclipse, the void, the great vacuum, the narrows, the period of oblivion, etc.~ Brandon compares it to a tun- nel from which we emerge to find a situation which is unex- pected in terms of the situation which went before.9’ (XX VII) The church, that is, which comes out of the tunnel is not the church that went into it. The great gap is more than a mere absence of documents; it is an abrupt break in the continuity of the church, so complete as to prove to Theodore Brandt that the living faith cannot be transmitted from past ages, which is at least an admission that it has not been.92 The early Christians knew they were approaching a tunnel; they were acutely aware of the terrible possibility of apostasy for the church not merely of apostasy from it,93 and never doubted the general apostasy which would precede the com- ing of the Messiah.94 And the church of the next age is just as aware of having passed through the tunnel, and losing its more precious possessions in the process. (XXVIII) For after the passing of the apostles le vide est immense (The void is immense), since it was the presence of living witnesses that had made the original church what it was. ~ Henceforth the Elders of old are referred to as a fabulous race of beings endowed with gifts, powers, and knowledge far exceed- ing anything found on earth any more, and mere proximity to the apostles and the elders becomes a special mark of sanctity and authority. 96 As the great lights went out the most devoted Christians engaged in a wistful Operation Salvage to rescue what might still be saved of those things which came by the living voices that yet remained.97 What more eloquent commentary on the passing of the church? (XXIX) At the same time a horde of deceivers who up until then had been lurking in dark corners, as soon as they saw that there were no more apostles left to call them to account, came boldly forth, each claiming that he alone had the gnosis which the Lord had secretly imparted to the apostles after the resurrection.98 Strangely, they met with no official opposition: the Fathers who oppose them emphatically dis- claim any apostolic authority and, what is more, know of no one else who might have it.~ Nous sommes incapable, writes D. Busy, d’expliquer comment, la terre entière se trouvant evangelisee. les prédicateurs de l’Evangile ont lair de disparaitre et laissent le champ libre aux faux méssies et aux faux prophètes; comme . . . la bête de la mer ne rencontre plus la moindre résistance.’~ (We are unable to explain how, while the whole was being evangelized, the preachers of the gospel seem to disappear and leave the field free for false messiahs and false prophets; how . . . the beast of the sea does not meet the least resistance.) The prophecy (2 Thessalonians 2:22) is no more puzzling than the event; for the second century, the great moment of transition, is no age of faith but par excellence the age of Heresy.’0’

It was not a case of reformers or schismatics attacking the main church the problem was, since the Christians had always rejected with contempt the argument of mere numbers, to find the true church among a great number of sects, each claiming to be the one true original article and displaying facsimiles of ancient spiritual gifts, rites, and officers to prove it.’0’ Justin knows of no certain norm for distinguishing true Christians from false, and Irenaeus struggles manfully but vainly to discover one. 103 While the perplexed masses asked embarrassing questions and flocked to the banner of any quack who gave promise of possessing the gifts and powers, especially prophecy, which it was commonly felt the church should have inherited, ‘~ even the greatest churchmen hesi- tated and wavered, unable to resist the appeal of the old charismatic Christianity or to decide just where it was to be found. 103 In the end, in Harnack’s words, Gnosticism won half a victory, for if the Gnostics-so-called had to default on electrifying promises which they could not fulfill, neither was any found to match their false claims with the genuine article, and the great surge of hope and enthusiasm that had carried the Gnostics on its crest subsided in disillusionment and compromise.

(XXX) Still, the constant revival through the centuries of the old stock Gnostic claim that the one true apostolic church has by some miracle of survival come down to the posses- sion of this or that group, is a perpetual reminder of the fail- ure of subsequent Christianity to come up to the expectations of the first church.’~ (XXXI) For the chronic discontent which haunts the Christian churches is by no means limited to the lunatic fringe. The vigorous beginnings of monasticism and pilgrimage were frankly attempts to return to the first order of the church, with its unworldly austerities and its spiritual manifestations, and as such were viewed by official Christi- anity as a clear vote of no-confidence a rebuke and repudi- ation of the system.’08

(XXXII) Modern students have agreed in describing the second generation of the church as a time of spiritual decline and low vitality, of torpor and exhaustion, a dull period of feeble originality and a dearth of great personalities.’09 Enfin, writes C. Bardy, c’est le tiedeur que domjne.’10 Doctrinally it was a definite Abf all vom Evangelium, with the basic teachings altered and denatured beyond recogni- tion.’ As the understanding of the Spirit . . . became lost . . . and the Christian had to rely on his own powers, that Christian became calculating, complacent, and respect- able, in a word, all that the first Christian was not.2 The overall impression, Goguel reports, is definitely one of decadence.3

Yet the same voices that bring these charges against the second generation unanimously approve the new mentality as a necessary coming down out of the clouds, a new-found sobriety and maturity, a sensible acceptance of the facts of life, as uplifted eyes . . . (turned back] to earth . . . to find their assurance in hard facts.4 At last, we are told, the Christian could enjoy what he had been missing so long, the consideration and respect of the outside world.5 Only by scrapping the old evangelical eschatology, according to one Catholic authority, could Christian morality and the Church itself . . . take on larger dimensions, this being (according to another) a necessary step towards wider hori- zons than those to which the Galilean nucleus had chosen to confine itself.6 One may well ask how wider horizons and larger dimensions could be achieved by a Christianity admit- tedly more hard and fast, less spontaneous, and in a sense, more cramped than what had gone before; J. de Zwaan, who describes it thus, marvels that the main stream of Gospel- tradition could pass through these narrows.7 But the larger dimensions were the intellectual splendors of Hellenism, toward which the Gnostic agitation had hurried the feet of the church, the new Christian culture substituting erudition for inspira- tion, the rhetoric of the schools for the gift of tongues, a numerus episcoporum for the Spiritus per spiritalem hominem,8 and the orderly mechanics of ritual for the unpredictable operation of the spiritual gifts as eschatologi- cal consciousness changed into sacramental piety.9 Christianity, wrote Wilhelm Christ, was squeezed into a system congenial to pagan-Greek-rationalist thought, and in that safe protective suit of armor was able to face up to the world; but in the process it had to sacrifice its noblest moral and spiritual forces.’20 In paying the stipulated price for survival, the church of the second century proved what the early church knew so well, that whosoever would save his life must lose it.

(XXXIII) The sensational change from the first to the second generation of the church was not, as it is usually depicted, a normal and necessary step in a long steady pro- cess of evolution. It was radical and abrupt, giving the old Christianity when set beside the new tout l’aspect d’une anomalie, as Duchesne puts it an anomaly so extreme that many scholars have doubted that the primitive church ever existed.’22 Rapidity of evolution explains the difference between the gospels and the second century, we are assured.~ But rapidity is the sign not of evolution but of revolution, and the second-century upheaval was no part of a continuing trend at all, for after that one tremendous shift there are no more such changes of course in the way of the church: henceforward fundamental attitudes and concepts remain substantially unchanged.’24 Eduard Norden has noted that early Christian literature had no literary predecessors and no successors, but appears as a completely alien intru- sion into the classical tradition, an incongruous and unwel- come interruption, an indigestible lump which, however, dis- appears as suddenly as it came, leaving the schoolmen to resume operations as if nothing had happened.125 The march of civilization continued, but it was not the march of the church.

Arguments for Survival: The arguments put forth by those who would prove the survival of the church are enough in themselves to cast serious doubts upon it. (XXXIV) The first thing that strikes one is the failure of the ingenuity of scholarship to discover any serious scriptural support for the thesis. There are remarkably few passages in the Bible that yield encouragement even to the most determined exegesis, and it is not until centuries of discussion have passed that we meet with the now familiar interpretations of the mustard seed and gates-of-hell imagery, which some now hold to be eschatological teachings having no reference whatever to the success of the church on earth.’26

The most effective assertions of survival are the rhetorical ones. We have already referred to the subtle use of such loaded terms as the Infant Church, the Unquenchable Light, etc., which merely beg the question. Equally effective is the quand même (even though) argument, which frankly admits the exceedingly dim prospects of the early church and the scant possibility of survival and then, without fur- ther explanation, announces in awed and triumphant tones: But in spite of everything it did survive! (XXXV) Survival is admittedly a miracle and a paradox; its very incredibility is what makes it so wonderful.’27 Ecstatic assertion alone carries the day where any serious discussion of evidence would mark one a cavilling cynic. For this argument comes right out of the schools of rhetoric; its favorite image, that of the storm-tossed ship which somehow never sinks because it bears virtuous souls, is already a commonplace in the Roman schools of declamation. 128 The thrilling voices that assure us that all the powers of evil rage in vain are not those of the early Fathers, but of imperial panegyrists and spell-binding bish- ops of another day, with their comforting pronouncements that God has, as it were, invested so heavily in his church that he simply would not think of letting it fail at this late date. 129

The strongest support of this facile and dangerous optimism has always been the decisive fact of survival itself, as proven by the undiminished eminence of the Christian name; only, in fact, if one defines apostasy as a more or less express renunciation of that name can the survival of the church be taken for granted, as it generally is. 130 But what is the authority of the Christian label when early apologists can declare that it has become meaningless in their time, being as freely employed by false as by true Christians? 131 Or when the Apostolic Fathers protest that vast numbers bear the name deceitfully? Or when Jesus himself warns that many shall come in my name, and all of them falsely: Believe none of them.132

A favorite theme of fiction and drama has ever been the stirring victory of Christianity over all the powers and blan- dishments of paganism. But this was victory over a straw- man, a papier-mâché dragon brought onto the stage to prove to a confused and doubting world that the right had been victorious after all. 133 The early leaders worried constantly, and only, about the enemy within; paganism, long dead on its feet, the butt of the schoolmen for centuries, was not the real enemy at all. (XXXVI) There were, to be sure, areas of doctrine and ritual in which paganism did present a real threat, but precisely there the church chose to surrender to the heathen, the pious economy of whose splendid festivals and the proud preeminence of whose venerated schools became an integral part of the Christian heritage. 134

Christians have often taken comfort in the axiom that it is perfectly unthinkable that God should allow his church to suffer annihilation, that he would certainly draw the line somewhere. This is the very doctrine of ultimate immunity against which the Apostolic Fathers thunder, and later fathers remind us that we may not reject the appalling possibility simply because it is appalling.133 (XXXVII) If wicked men can kill the Prince of Peace, and Belial enjoy free reign as the prince of this world; where is one to draw the line at what is unthinkable? For Hilary the suggestion that Jesus actually wept is baffling, paradoxical, and unthinkable yet he wept!’36 If after the prophets came the false proph- ets, and after the Apostles the false apostles, and after the Christ the Antichrist, is it unthinkable that the church should likewise have a dubious successor?’37 After all, Christians like Jerome found it quite unthinkable that Rome could ever fall, and used identical arguments to affirm the ultimate impregnability of the church and the empire.’38 The hollow- ness of the rhetorical arguments for sure survival has become apparent in times of world-calamity, when the orators them- selves have, like Basil and Chrysostom, suddenly reverted to the all-but-forgotten idiom of apocalyptic and eschatology, and asked, Is it not possible that the Lord has already deserted us entirely?’39 The question is the more revealing for being uttered with heavy reluctance and in times of deepest soul- searching.

(XXXVIII) How deeply rooted in Christian thinking was the belief that the church would pass away is seen in the remarkable insistence of the orators of the fourth century that the great victory of the church which at that time took everyone by surprise was actually a restoration of the church, which had passed away entirely: We of the church were not half-dead but wholly dead and buried in our graves, the apostasy and the age of darkness had actually come as pre- dicted, and were now being followed, as prophesied, by a new day of restoration.’40 Here was an explanation that fitted the traditional view of the future: the church, it was explained, is like the moon, a thing that disappears and reappears from time to time. 141 But if the fourth-century triumph was really that restitution of all things foretold by the apostle (Acts 3:21), it could only betoken the arrival of the eschaton, and so the orators duly proclaimed the dawn of the millennial day and the coming of the New Jerusalem. 142

(XXXIX) One of the most significant things about the glorious and unexpected triumph of the Church was pre- cisely that it was unexpected; everybody was surprised and puzzled by it.’43 It was not what people had been taught to expect, and the remedy for their perplexity was a bold revamp- ing of the story: The facts speak for themselves, is Chrysostom’s appeal,144 and Eusebius sets his hand to a new kind of church history, with success easy, inevitable suc- cess as his theme.145 Traditional concepts were quickly and radically overhauled. The familiar Two Ways were no longer the ways of light and darkness lying before Israel or the church, but the way of the church itself, Our church, versus the way of the opposition, whoever they might be.’46 To endure to the end no longer meant to suffer death but the opposite to outlive one’s persecutors and enjoy one’s revenge. ~ The old warnings and admonitions were given a new and optimistic twist: As it was in the days of Noah now meant that all was well, since the rains did not come until Noah was safely in the Ark;’48 No man knows the hour becomes a cura solicitudinis, a comforting assurance that there was plenty of time and rio need to worry;’49 this generation shall not pass away really meant that the gener- ations of the church would never pass away.’50 It did not disturb a generation bred on rhetoric to be told that Peter heard with amazement that one should forgive seventy times seven, that being an announcement of the future generations that should believe.15’ Nor did it seem overbold to explain the prediction that the apostles should be hated of all men as a rhetorical exaggeration;’5’ or to interpret the Lord’s predic- tion that men would seek him in vain as proof of his pres- ence in the church, which would render any searching a waste of time, i.e., vain; ~ for it is not the Lord but the devil who comes as a thief in the night.’54

One might fill a book with examples of such bold and clever rhetoric: the presence of wolves in the church simply fulfills the millennial promise that the wolf and the lamb shall graze together; ~ tares in the church are a sign of its divinity, since it must embrace all men, good and bad, to be God’s church. 156 What really happened was that the sheep promptly routed the wolves and the wheat overcame the tares not the other way around! ‘~‘ It was easy to show that all the bad predictions were duly fulfilled on the heads of the Jews while all the good promises made to them were properly meant for the Christians. The tears of the apostles were actually the happiest of omens for the church, exciting in all beholders, by a familiar rhetorical trick, those feelings of pity and devotion which would guarantee unflinching loy- alty to the cause forever. 158 It is fascinating to see how Chrysostom can turn even the most gloomy and depressing reference to the future of the church into a welcome promise of survival: the very fact that the ancient saints worried about things to come proves that there was to be a future, and so delightful paradox! they had nothing to worry about!’59 If it can be said of the orating bishops that the true size and color of every object is falsified by the exagger- ations of their corrupt eloquence,’~ it must also be noted that these were not wanton or irresponsible men, but devoted leaders desperately desirous of assuring themselves and their people of the unassailable integrity of the church: John Chrysostom repeatedly declares that the church is higher, holier, and (above all) more enduring than heaven itself. 161 He could do that (on the authority of Luke 21:33) without a blush because rhetoric had transferred the church into a glo- rious abstraction, a noble allegory, and as such an eternal, spiritual, indestructible entity.’62 On the other hand he had to do it to meet the importunities of those who beset him night and day unceasingly and everlastingly with search- ing and embarrassing questions as to whether the church still possessed those things which in the beginning certified its divinity.’63

(XL) Where no rhetorical cunning could bridge the gap between the views of the fourth century and those of the early church, the latter were frankly discounted as suitable to a state of immaturity beyond which the church had hap- pily progressed, emancipated from the childish tales and vaporings of old grandmothers.164 The learned fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries boast that the wise and noble who shunned the primitive church are now safe in a bosom of a Christian society which preaches and practices things that would have frightened off the rude converts of an earlier day,165 and invoke the eloquence of Demosthenes against the simplicitatem rusticam of the literal minded.’66 This has been the official line ever since, and modern churchmen duly shud- der at the thought of being at the mercy of the primitive Church, its teachings, its life, its understanding,’67 and con- gratulate themselves on having outgrown the fond imaginings of the Apostles.’68

The Dilemma: Ever since the recent rediscovery of the importance of eschatology within the New Testament’~ schol- ars have been faced, we are told, with a choice between eschatology and history tertium non datur. (there is no third choice)’~ Actually there has always been a third choice, namely to accept the passing of the church as the fulfillment of prophecy in history. But that, of course, is exactly what church history will not allow: Modern New Testament critics, writes R. M. Grant, insist on the priority of the Church to its written records.’7’ The church must be res- cued at all price. For that reason it has been necessary to ignore Jeremias’ simple and obvious solution to the vollendeter Widerspruch (complete contradiction) between the conflicting missionary policies of the early church: the limited preaching belongs to one act of the play, the world preaching to another. 172 This is a thing that Christians will not concede, for if the church is to remain on the scene, the drama must be one act or none.’73

To preserve this hypothetical unity students have ascribed to the first Christians a fantastic one-package view of the future in which all the culminating events of prophecy are fulfilled at a single stupendous blow, gathering up into one great climax the many judgments the . . . prophets had foretold.’74 When the great event failed to transpire, the great delay turned the great expectation into the great fiasco (the terms are not ours!), the church passing through the great disappointment to the real fulfillment, the great trium- phal procession of the kingdom through the world. Such an unflattering view of the founders’ foresight is forced on the experts by a constitutional inability to think of the church as anything but a permanent and growing institution. 175 It was this very attitude, it will be recalled, toward his own church that made it impossible for Trypho the Jew to accept Justin’s complicated Messianic history.

But though the great misunderstanding theory has the merit of preserving the integrity of the church, it gravely jeopardizes the integrity of its founders while failing to give due consideration to certain peculiar and significant facts, viz., that the early Christians did not predict an immediate culmination of everything, but viewed the future down a long vista of prophetic events having more than one end;’76 that not a single verse of scripture calls for an immediate Parousia or end of the world;’77 that there is a notable lack of evidence for any early Christian disappoint- ment or surprise at the failure of the Parousia.’78 While the enemies of the church exploited every absurdity and incon- sistency in its position and made merry over Jesus the King who never ruled, they never played up what should have been the biggest joke of all the feverish, hourly expectation of the Lord who never came. For R. Eisler this strange silence is nothing less than the most astonishing of all historical paradoxes.179 But what makes it such is only the refusal of the evidence to match the conventional pattern of church history: if there are no signs whatever of blasted hopes and expectations, we can only conclude that there were no such expectations. There were indeed Christians who looked for an immediate coming of the Lord and asked, Where are the signs of his coming? but they are expressly branded by the early leaders as false Christians, just as the virgins who expected the quick return of the Master, who delayed his coming, were the foolish ~

Students of church history have long been taught that whereas the primitive saints, living in an atmosphere of fever- ish expectation, looked forward momentarily to the end of everything, the later Christians gradually sobered up and learned to be more realistic. Exactly the opposite was the case, for while there is no evidence that the sober first Chris- tians thought the end of the world was at hand, there is hardly a later theologian who does not think so: From the days of the early church, through the vicissitudes of the lengthening middle centuries, into the twilight of the medi- eval day, the conviction of the world’s end . . . was part and parcel of Christian thought.131 It had to be the end of the world, because the end of the church was inadmissible. Yet such was not the case with the first Christians, thoroughly at home with the idea that divine things, while they are preex- istent and eternal, are taken away from the earth and restored again from time to time.’82 If the church comes and goes like the moon, it is only with reference to this temporal world where all things are necessarily temporary.183 A great deal of attention has been given in recent years to early Christian and Jewish concepts of time and history. The present ten- dency is to treat the church as existing sub specie aeternitatis, et pourtant dans le temps (sub specie aeternitatis, and yet in time) as a supernatural and eschatological entity, eine Schopfung von oben her (a creation from above).’84 This releases it from earthly bonds, as does Ambrose’s declara- tion that the civ itas which lives forever, because it cannot die, desires only to leave the earth in all possible haste and be caught up, literally as Elijah was, into heaven.’85

To escape the dark interval between the apostles and the Parousia, scholars have bored two exits. The one recognizes a catastrophe ahead but postpones it to a vague and distant future, ~ while the other admits that it was near at hand but insists that the damage was not so bad after all. 187 Thus both convictions of the early church, that the end was near and that it was to be disastrous, receive reluctant confirmation for no one suggests that only a distant and partial disruption was expected. There is a third escape hatch, around which there has been much milling and crowding in recent years, but it seems to be only a false door, a semantic exercise in which the conflicting claims of eschatology and history are simply placed side by side and declared reconciled in various ingenious and symbolic ways. If this vast literature of double- talk, bewildering in its variety,’88 shows any perceptible trend, it is an inclination to have eschatology, since it can no longer be brushed aside, swallowed alive by the church: The Church is an ‘eschatological community,’ since she is the New Testament, the ultimate and final. . . . The doctrine of Christ finds its fulness and completion in the doctrine of the Church, i.e. of ‘the Whole Christ.’ 189 Such language actu- ally seeks to de-eschatologize eschatology by making myth- ical arid timeless what they [the early Christians] regarded to be real and temporal.’90

More to the point is the searching question of Schoep with which we began this survey, whether after all the real church may not have been left behind in the march of his- tory: Waren sie am Ende doch die wahren Erben, auch wenn sie untergingen? (at the end were they the real heirs, even if they perished?)’9’ We have indicated above some of the reasons for suggesting that the church, like its founder, his apostles, and the prophets before them, came into the world, did the works of the Father, and then went out of the world, albeit with a promise of return. Some aspects of the problem, at least, deserve closer attention than students have hitherto been willing to give them.