Beyond this thinking, which is always present, there is the development of methodological thought, thought which goes on according to logical rules and methods of dealing with experiences. This methodological thought, if expressed in speaking or writing and communicated to other people, produces theological doctrines. This is, of course, more than the thought element which is implied in every life. This is a development beyond the more primitive use of thought. And ideally such development leads to a theological system, not because systems are especially nice to dwell in – everybody who dwells within a system feels after a certain time that it is a prison, and even if you produce a systematic theology, as I did, you always try to go beyond it and not to be imprisoned by it. Nevertheless the system is necessary because the system is the form of consistency. And I repeat here what I repeated in my answer to my critics in the book on my theology *, that those of my Union Theological Seminary students who have the greatest misgivings about the production were most impatient with me when they discovered that two of my statements disagreed with each other; that means, they were unhappy in finding one point in which the hidden system had a gap. But when this system was developed, then they felt it was a mean attempt on my side to imprison them! This is a very interesting double reaction, but understandable because if the prison is taken as a final answer, then it is of course even worse than a prison. If it is understood as an attempt to bring theological concepts into consistent expression, where none contradicts the other, then you cannot escape a system. And even if you think in fragments -- as some philosophers and theologians (and some great ones) have done -- then every fragment contains implicitly a system. When you read Nietzsche's fragments – I think he is the greatest fragmentist in philosophy – then you can find in each of his fragments a whole system of life and world implied. So you cannot escape a system except if you want to make verbal statements which are nonsense and completely contradict each other. And that is, of course, sometimes done.

But, of course, a system has a danger of becoming a prison, and also the danger, when it is built, of moving within itself, of separating itself from reality, of becoming something which is, so to speak, above the reality which it is supposed to describe. Therefore I am not so much interested in the systems as such – with a few exceptions, for instance with relationship to Origen – but I am interested in the power of these systems to express the reality of the Church and its life.

The Church doctrines have been called dogmas, and in former less noble periods of Christian instruction -- for instance when I myself was young – the whole thing was called "the history of dogma." This cannot be done any more. One calls it "history of Christian thought." But this is only a change in name, because nobody would dare to present a history of Christian thought in the sense of what every theologian in the Christian Church had thought. That would be an ocean of contradictory thoughts. But this series of lectures has a quite different intent: to show you those thoughts which have be come accepted expressions of the life of the Church. And this is what the word "dogma" originally meant.

The concept of dogma is one of the things which lie between the Church and the secular world. Most secular people are afraid of the dogmas of the Church, and not only secular people but also members of the churches themselves. "Dogma" is a red cloth waved before the bull in a bull fight: it produces anger, aggressiveness, or in some cases flight, and I think the latter is mostly the case with the "seculars" with respect to the Church.

 Why is this so? Because the word has a very interesting history, which you must know. The first step in this history is the use of "dogma" derived from the Greek doxein, "having an opinion", in the Greek schools of philosophy preceding Christianity. Dogmata are the differentiating doctrines of the different late Greek schools of philosophy, the Academics (from Plato), the Peripatetics (from Aristotle), the Stoics, the Skeptics, the Pythagoreans. Each of these schools had special fundamental doctrines in which they were distinguished from each other, and if somebody wanted to become a member of one of these schools, he had to accept at least the basic presuppositions which distinguish this school from another school. Of course he could discuss these foundations, he could find out that another school was better for him than this school. But even the philosophical schools were not without dogmata.

In the same way the Christian doctrines were understood as doctrines distinguishing the Christian school from the philosophical school, and this was natural and nobody was angry by this. It was no red pieced cloth for anybody at that time. This is seen in the characteristics of the Christian dogma in the early period. First of all it is an expression of the Christian conformity, of that which all Christians who, with the risk of their lives and with a tremendous transformation of their lives, entered, the Christian congregations, accepted when they did so. So a dogma is never an individual statement or a theoretical statement: it is an expression of a reality, the reality of the Church.

Secondly, all dogmas are formulated negatively, namely as a reaction against misinterpretations from inside the Church. This is even true of the Apostolic Creed. We will come to the first article, "I believe in God the Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth." This is not simply a statement which says something in itself, but it is the rejection of dualism, of Manichaeism, after a life and death struggle of a hundred years. And so also with all the other dogmas. The later they are, the more they show clearly this negative character. They are PROTECTIVE DOCTRINES, protecting the substance of the Biblical message. This substance was fluid. It had, of course, a core which was fixed, the confession that Jesus was the Christ, but beyond this everything was in motion. But now doctrines came up which seemed to undercut this fundamental statement, and the protective doctrines were added to it. In this way the dogma arose. Luther still knew this, that dogmas are not results of a theoretical interest, but of the need for protection of the Christian substance.

Now these statements again could be misinterpreted, and if this was done, then a sharper theoretical formulation was necessary. In order to do this, it. was necessary to use philosophical terms. In this way the many philosophical concepts came into the Christian dogma, not because people were interested them – again Luther is very frank about it: he openly declared he disliked terms like "Trinity," "homoousios," or similar words, but he said they must be used, unfortunately, because we have no better terms. This is the theoretical formulation which comes if other theoretical people formulate the doctrine in such a way that the substance seems to be endangered by a leading group in the Church.

But this was not the last step. The next step was that this dogma was accepted as canonic law, by the Church. Canonic law is law according to the canon, which is the rule of thought or rule of behavior. Canonic law is the ecclesiastical law to which everybody must subject himself who belongs to the Church. In this way the dogma receives a legal sanction, and in the Roman church the dogma is a part of the canonic law, and its authority comes from the legal realm, not from the dogmatic realm, according to the general development of the Roman church, which is especially Roman, that means, always legalistic development. .

Now even this perhaps would not have created the tremendous reaction against the dogma in the last 400 years if another step had not been taken: the ecclesiastical law was accepted as state law by the medieval society. This meant that he who breaks the canonic law of doctrines is not only a heretic against the Church: he disagrees with fundamentals which were accepted by the Church as a whole; but he is also a criminal against the state. And this last point was one which produced the radical reaction in modern times against the dogma, and the impossibility of using the concept of dogma even for the title of these lectures.

Don't forget all these steps:

FIRST, the natural thought, which is in every religion.

SECOND, the methodological development of doctrines.

THIRD, the acceptance of some doctrines as protective doctrines against distortions.

FOURTH, the legalization of these doctrines as parts of the canonic law.

FIFTH, the acceptance of these doctrines as the foundation not only of the Church but also of the state, because the state has no other content than the content the Church gives it., so that he who is supposed to undermine this content not only undermines the Church but also the state. He is not only a heretic who must be excommunicated; he is also a criminal who must be delivered into the hands of the civil authorities to punish him as a criminal. Now this was the state of the dogma, against which the Enlightenment was fighting – not so much the Reformation, which was still in the same line, but certainly the Enlightenment; and ever since, all liberal thinking has been characterized by trying to avoid dogma, and this also was supported by the development of science and the necessity to leave science and philosophy complete freedom in order to give them the possibility of their creative growth.

In his famous History of Dogma, Harnack asked the question whether, with the dissolution of the dogma in the early period of the Enlightenment, the dogma has not come to an end. He agrees that there is still dogma in orthodox Protestantism, but he believes that the Enlightened dissolution of the Protestant dogma is the last step of the history of the dogma: there is no dogma any more in Protestantism, since the Enlightenment. This means a very narrow concept of dogma, and Harnack agrees that he uses a very narrow concept, namely the Christological-Trinitarian doctrine of the early Church. Against this, Seeberg emphasized that the dogmatic development has not finished with the coming of the Enlightenment, but that it is still going on.

Now this is a very important systematic question: Are there dogmata in present-day Protestantism, or are there not? Those of you who go into the ministry have to undergo a kind of church examination, which is not an examination for knowledge but for faith. The churches want to know whether you agree with their fundamental dogmatic tenets. And they often do it in a very narrow way, without much understanding of the development of theology in the last 400 years, since the period of old Orthodoxy On the other hand if you have an inner revolt – :and I know that most Union Seminary students have such an inner revolt against this faith-examination – don't forget that you go into a definite group, which is distinguished from other groups.. It is first of all a Christian and not a pagan group; it is a Protestant and not a Catholic group; and within Protestantism it may be an Episcopalian, or a Baptist -- or between these extremes! Now this means there is a justified interest in the Church that those who represent it at least show some acceptance of their foundations. Every baseball group demands of you that you accept the rules and the moral standards of a baseball team, and why should the Church leave it completely to the arbitrary feelings of the individual? That cannot be done. Usually the problem today is of somebody who is too heretic, too radical, too much on the side of Bultmann in the demythologization of the New Testament, or Tillich in using the term IT Being" for God – or other bad people! This is the problem today. And on this basis many churches are suspicious.

But now think for a moment that this was not the problem, but that the young ministers all suddenly became enthusiasts for the veneration and perhaps even adoration of the Holy Virgin, and wanted to introduce this into the Baptist and Methodist churches! Now here you see immediately that there is a real and serious problem in it. And of course, if we come to the political dogmas – which are more dogmatic than any church whatsoever is – then you find that the problem becomes even more acute for the present situation. So it is one of the tasks of systematic theology to help the churches to solve this problem in a way which is not narrow-minded and not dependent on the 16th and 17^th century theologians which are identified with the pure word of God – although they are dependent on their time as we are dependent on our time – but on the other hand there is some fundamental point which is accepted if somebody accepts the Church. Now I will give you here – because this is so important -- something which anticipates my systematic theology, which you can read in the first volume already published: I believe that it is not the matter of accepting a series of dogmas, which the Church must demand of their ministers; how can they honestly say that they don't doubt about any of these dogmas? They would be not very good Christians if they did not, because our intellectual life is as ambiguous as our moral life. And who would call himself morally perfect, and how then can someone call himself intellectually perfect? The element of doubt is an element in faith itself. And what the church should do is to accept somebody who says to them that this faith for which this church stands is a matter of my ultimate concern, which I want to serve with all my strength. But if you are asked to say what you believe about this or that doctrine, then you are driven into a kind of dishonesty even if in this moment you can say "I believe," e. g., concerning the Virgin Birth – or whatever that may mean. If you say you will agree, then you are dishonest.. . .; you may subject yourselves to this whole set of doctrines as long as you are ministers, and you can say you cannot promise because you cannot cease to think, and if you think you must doubt. And that is the problem. I think the only solution on Protestant soil is to say that this set of doctrines represents your own ultimate concern, and that you desire to serve in this group which has made this the basis of its ultimate concern, but that you can never promise not to doubt anyone of these special doctrines.

Now this was a deviation from history into not only systematic but even practical theology. . . This shows you that what we do in terms of historical description is not so far away from the practical problems of your own life as ministers. This means that without dogmatic expression, without doctrinal formulations, no human life can live at all, neither a non-ecclesiastical group nor an ecclesiastical one. The problem is not to abolish the dogma but to interpret the dogma in such a way that it is not the horror and the suppressive power which necessarily produces dishonesty, or flight from it, but that it is a wonderful profound expression of the actual life of the Church. And in this sense I will direct the entire lectures, namely to show how in even the abstract doctrinal formulations, with difficult Greek concepts, etc., it is not a matter of discussing concepts as such, but it is a matter of discussing those things of which the Church believed that they are their most adequate expression for life, devotion, and life and death struggle: outside, against the pagan and Jewish worlds; and inside, against all the disintegrating tendencies which belong to every group.

So my conclusion would be: estimate the dogma very highly. There is a great thing about the dogma. But don't dissolve it into a set of special doctrines to which you must subscribe as it stands. This is against the spirit of the dogma, and is against the spirit of Christianity.

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 triumph 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.

We spoke yesterday about the preparation of Christianity in Hellenistic philosophy. Today we come first to the Hellenistic period of the Jewish religion. Of course, the Old Testament is the soil on which Christianity grew, but there is a long period between the end of the Old Testament and the appearance of the Christ. This period developed in Judaism ideas and attitudes which deeply influenced the Apostolic Age, i. e, Jesus, the apostles, and the writers of the New Testament, etc.

The first is the development of the idea of God in this period between the Testaments, (the inter-testamental period, as it is usually called.) It is a development towards a radical transcendence: God becomes more and more transcendent, and for this very reason He becomes more and more universal. But a God who is absolutely transcendent and absolutely universal has lost many of the concrete traits which the God of a nation has. Therefore names are introduced which try to preserve some of the concreteness of the divinity, names like "the heaven": therefore we often find in the New Testament not "the kingdom of God" but "the kingdom of heaven"; or "the height," coming down from the height, etc.; or "the glory." All these words indicate the establishment of a more concrete God. At the same time, the abstraction goes on under two influences: 1) The prohibition against using the name of God; 2) In the fight against anthropomorphisms of the past seeing God in the morph , the image, of man (anthropos) the passions of the God of the Old Testament disappear. The abstract oneness is emphasized. This made it possible for the Greek philosophers (who had introduced the same radical abstraction with respect to God), and the Jewish universalists ,with respect to God, to unite. It was especially Philo of Alexandria who carried through this union, in the idea of God.

But if God has become abstract, then it is not sufficient to hypostasize some of His qualities, such as heaven, height, glory: more is needed. Mediating beings appear between God and man who become more and more important for practical piety. There are three main concepts of this mediating character. First, the angels: they are deteriorized gods and goddesses from the surrounding paganism. In the period of the prophets, when the fight with polytheism still was going on, they couldn't play any role. But when the danger of polytheism was completely overcome as it was in later Judaism then the angels could reappear without too great danger of a relapse into polytheism. But even so, the New Testament is aware of this danger and again and again warns against the cult of the angels. These are the first figures which mediate.

The second is the Messiah: the Messiah has become a transcendent being, the king of Paradise. He is also called, in the Danielic literature, which is dependent on Persian religion, the "son of man" who will judge the world. In Daniel it is probably used for Israel, but it became more and more the figure of the "man from above," as Paul describes him in I Corinthians 15. And when Jesus calls himself the "son of man" or when the very earliest tradition called him in this way, this also means "the man from above," the original man, who is with God and comes down when the kairos is fulfilled.

Thirdly, these names of God are increased and become almost living figures. The most important figure is the figure of God's wisdom, which already appears in the Old Testament: the wisdom which has created the world, which has appeared in the world, and which returned to heaven since it did not find a place among men an idea very close to the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel.

Another of these powers between God and man is the shekinah, the dwelling of God on earth. Again, another is the memra, the speaking of God, the word of God, which became so important later through the Fourth Gospel. Another is the "spirit of God," which in the Old Testament is God in action, but now becomes a partly independent figure between the most high God, and man: the ruah Yahweh, or Adonai. Most important became the Greek meaning of the term logos. .. This unites the Jewish memra with the Greek philosophical logos. Logos in Philo is the protogˆnes huios theou, the first-born son of God. All these are developments which are pre-Christian, and prepared the Christian thinking of the logos, the word, who is the first-born son of God (Philo). These mediating beings between the most high God, and man, partly replace the immediacy of the relationship to God, as in Christianity especially in Roman Catholic Christianity the, ever more transcendent idea of God was made acceptable to the popular mind by the introduction of the saints into the practical piety. But as in Christianity the official doctrine always remained monotheistic, and the saints never were supposed to receive adoration but only veneration, so the same thing (and even more radically) was the case in late Judaism, Judaism which has one fundamental anxiety: the anxiety of relapsing into polytheism, because that was its whole history: to fight polytheism within and outside of itself.

Another world of beings between God and man arose and became powerful: the realm of the DEMONS. There are not only good angels, but also evil ones. These evil angels are not only organs of temptation and punishment under the direction of God, but they are also a realm of power against God. We can see this very well out of the conversation between Jesus and the Pharisees concerning the Divine or demonic power, where he exorcizes the demons. This belief in demons permeated the daily life of that time, and filled the highest speculation of the time. It was a dualistic element, but it never became ontological dualism. Here again Judaism was able to introduce a good many ideas from Persia, among them the demonology of the Persian religion, where the demons have the same standing as the gods, where the evil god has the same ontological standing as the good god. It introduced these ideas and the New Testament is full of them but it never fell back into an ontological dualism. All these demonic powers have power only through the one God; they have no standing of their own in an ultimate sense. This comes out in the mythology of the fallen angels. The evil angels are, as is everything created, good which is the first anti-pagan dogma; but as fallen angels they are now evil angels. . . . and therefore responsible and punishable, and are not simply creations of an anti-divine being.

Another influence on the New Testament here is the elevation of the future into a coming aeon. In the late apostolic period of Jewish history, world history was divided into an aion houtos (this aeon in which we are living) and an aeon mellon, (the coming aeon which they expected.) This aeon is valued very pessimistically, while the coming great aeon is valued ecstatically. This is not only a political idea: this goes beyond the hope of the Maccabean period, in which the Maccabees defended the Jewish people against tyranny. Also it was not a statement of the prophetic message: the prophetic message was much more historical and this-worldly, while these ideas are cosmological: the whole cosmos participates in these two aeons. The characteristic of this aeon is that it is controlled by the demonic forces, and that it has come of age. The world, even nature, is aging and fading away. One of the reasons is that man has subjected himself to the demonic forces and is disobedient against the law. In connection with these ideas, the concept of Adam's fall, producing the universal destiny of death, is developed out of the short story of Genesis, into a system as we find it in Paul; and this fall is confirmed by every individual by his actual sin. This aeon is under a tragic fate, but in spite of the tragic fate of this aeon the individual is responsible for it.

Now here you have many ideas which you have not in the Old Testament but in the New Testament, which developed in the period between the Testaments. The piety of the law becomes more and more important, partly replacing the piety of the cult. Of course there is still the temple, but beside the temple the synagogue, the religious school, developed. The synagogue becomes the form in which the decisive religious life develops. The law is not valuated as negatively as we are accustomed to doing so, but for the Jews it was a gift and a joy. The law is eternal; it was always in God; it is pre-existent, as later in Christian theology Jesus was interpreted as pre-existent. The content of the law is the organization of the whole life, in its smallest functions: every moment of life is under God: this is the profound idea in the legalism of the Pharisees, which is so heavily attacked by Jesus.

But of course this produces an intolerable burden, and if in religion you receive an intolerable burden, either in thinking or in acting, two alternatives are always possible: the way of the majority, which is one of compromise: you reduce the burden to a point where you can stand it; or the other way, the way of despair, and this was the way of people like Paul, Augustine and Luther, In IV Esdras, written in the period of Paul, we read: "We who have received the law shall be lost because of our sins, but the law never will be lost. Here you have a mood which is reflected in many Pauline sayings. This is the development of late Judaism, the period between the Testaments, and we see how many theological ideas came to the foreground beyond the Old Testament in this period, and were developed in the New Testament community.

Now I come to a third group of influential movements for Christian theology: mystery religions and mysticism. They are not the same. Let us begin with Philo, who developed a doctrine of ek-stasis, (standing outside of oneself which for him is the highest form of piety, lying beyond faith, uniting the prophetic ecstasy with the en-theos-mania (whence our word "enthusiasm"): possessing the Divine, in the Greek mysteries. Out of this comes finally the fully developed mystical system, the ecstasy which leads to the union of the one, namely the individual man, with the One, namely the Absolute, God. which is the fully developed mysticism of the Neo-Platonists such as Dionysius the Areopagite.

But besides this development we have the more important development of the concrete mystery gods. These mystery gods, are monotheistic. He who is initiated into such a mystery has a concrete God who is at the same time the only God. But one can be initiated into more than one mystery, which means that the figures of the mystery gods are exchangeable. There is nothing of the Old Testament exclusiveness of Yahweh. These mystery gods had greatly influenced Christian cult and theology. If somebody is initiated into a mystery as later on the Christians initiated the congregations by steps then he participates in the mystery god and the experiences which the mystery god has. These experiences are described by Paul in Romans 6 with respect to Jesus, namely participation in the death and the resurrection of the mystery god. This is the ecstatic experience which is produced in the mystery activities. In the devotional services, in which those who belong to it are brought into a state of deep sorrow about the death of the god, about the tragic reality in which even the god is involved, and after a certain time experience the ecstatic experience of the god resurrected, in which the individual participates for resurrection himself. This presupposes that the idea of the suffering god is described in these mysteries. Since the Delphic Apollo, we have the idea of the participation of God in the suffering of man: Apollo at Delphi has to pay for the guilt of slaying the powers of the underworld, which have their own right, themselves. Then we have the methods of introduction through psychological means: intoxication; by a change of light and darkness; by ascetic fasting; by incense, sounds, music, etc. all similar to what we can experience every Sunday in a Catholic cathedral.

There is another element, namely the esoteric character of these mysteries. You must learn the words esoteric and exoteric: the former is derived from the Greek eso (inner, internal) , and the latter is from exo (outer, external, public). The mysteries were esoteric: you had to be initiated. You can enter them only after a harsh process of selection and preparation. In this way alone, the mystery of the mystery performances is protected against profanization, and later on, in the Christian congregations, against betrayal to the pagan persecutors.

So we have in these mysteries a lot of elements which the early Christian church accepted. But of course all this is preparation, is potential. The decisive preparation is the event which is documented in the New Testament. And therefore we must say that the decisive preparation of Christian theology is the New Testament. Now I cannot give you here a New Testament theology, but I can show, with a few examples, how early Christian theology used the New Testament. I can speak about the method: it is the reception of New Testament categories of interpretation, and their transformation in the light of the reality of Jesus as the Christ. This means Christian theology used the New Testament always in two steps: reception and transformation. It received the categories which developed in the surrounding religions, in the Old Testament, in the inter-testamental period, and used them in order to interpret the event Jesus. But in doing so they also transformed the meaning of these categories, or symbols, however you want to call them.

For example, with respect to Christology: Messiah is the old prophetic symbol. What happened was that this symbol was applied by the early disciples, perhaps in the very beginning of their encounter with Jesus, to the name "Jesus." This was a great paradox. It was, as we can say adequate because He brings the New Being , and it was inadequate because all the connotations of the word "Messiah" go beyond the actual appearance of Jesus. Therefore Jesus himself, according to the records, realized the difficulty of this double judgment. He himself had this double judgment. "Messiah" ("Christ" in Greek) is adequate; it brings out the new reality which appears in him; and it is inadequate: it brings it out in a way which necessarily produces misunderstanding. Therefore He prohibits his disciples to use this term at all. Now it might be that this is a later construction of the records, but however it may be, it mirrors the double judgment about this concept whether Jesus himself had it or the early congregations, which we never know, with certainty, in any case: namely, it mirrors the fact that such a category is, on the one hand, adequate, and on the other hand is inadequate.

The same is true of the concept Son of Man. It is adequate and therefore used, perhaps even by Jesus himself, because it points to the Divine power present in this man to bring the new aeon. On the other hand, it is inadequate because the "son of man" was supposed to appear in power and glory, on the clouds of heaven, (according to Daniel, in symbolic, poetic language.) And so since the inadequacy seems to be greater later on in the pagan world than the adequacy, this term disappeared.

Or the term man from above, used by Paul in I Corinthians 15. But Paul sees that this also is difficult. Therefore he says: Now the man from above is historical, and therefore he is the "second man" and not the first; the first is Adam, who fell, and the second is the "man from above," the Spiritual man, who is identical with Jesus as the Christ.

Or they used the term Son of David, which is adequate since he is supposed to be the fulfiller of all the prophecies. But it is inadequate, because David was a king, and "son of David" can indicate a political leader and king. Therefore the fight of Jesus against this misunderstanding, when He says that David himself calls the Messiah his lord.

Then Son of God is adequate because of the special relations and intimate communion between God and Jesus. But it is also inadequate because "son of God" is a very familiar pagan concept. All pagan gods have sons. They propagate sons on earth. Therefore there was a danger in this term, and one added "only begotten, " and called Him "eternal. " But it was also difficult for the Jews: they could not stand the pagan connotations. They themselves used that term, but for Israel as the "son of God," and they couldn't use it for an individual.

There are many other terms, but I will now only mention two of these interpretative concepts: KURIOS, i. e., Lord. This is adequate because of its use in the Old Testament, where Divine power is expressed in terms of this word. At the same time it is inadequate because the kurioi the lords, were the mystery gods, and Jesus was pictured concretely in a finite being. It was adequate because the mystery gods were objects of mystical union; and Jesus, also -- especially for Paul was an object of being in Christ (en Christo), in the power and holiness and fear of his Being.

Finally the concept logos, which is the most important one for the development of theology. This term had been developed in Greek and Jewish thinking. It is adequate insofar as it expressed the universal self-manifestation of God in all forms of reality. It is in Greek philosophy and Jewish symbolism the cosmic principle of creation. But at the same time it is inadequate because the logos is the universal principle, while Jesus is a concrete reality. It is a concrete personal life, which is described in these terms. And this inadequacy is expressed in the great paradox of Christianity: the logos became flesh. In this expression you have a perfect example of everything I said to you today, namely a perfect example of using a term (logos) with all the connotations of the past, and at the same time transforming this meaning not denying it or removing it from its original character, and bringing in the Christian message that this universal logos became flesh, an idea which could never have been directly derived from Greek thinking. Therefore the Fathers again and again emphasized that the doctrine of the logos is universal the Greek philosophers have it, as do the Christians but one thing is not universal, and is peculiarly Christian: the logos became flesh in a personal life.

Now it is the greatness of the New Testament that it is able to use words, concepts, symbols, which have developed through the whole history of religion, insofar as it has influenced the Old and New Testaments, and that in using these terms the New Testament at the same time preserves the picture of him who is interpreted by these symbols, namely Jesus. The spiritual power of the New Testament was great enough to take all these concepts into Christianity, with all their pagan and Jewish connotations, without losing the basic reality, namely the event Jesus as the Christ, which these concepts were supposed to interpret. Now it is very important for all your preaching, for your whole theology, for your personal piety, always to distinguish these interpretative categories from the event itself. I always give here, as an example, something many of you might have experienced, e. g., suddenly somebody comes to you and asks: "Do you believe Jesus was the Son of God?" Now this question is an absolutely inescapable threat, if you accept it as a question. You cannot get out of it, because whether you say yes or no, it is absurd. But you can do something else. You can ask back: What do you mean by this term "Son of God"? -- And then the fear and trembling is on the other side of the fence. Then he looks at you and asks you to help him, and then you can help him and can say: "Son of God" is a very largely used symbol for a special intimate relationship between God and a human being. In paganism this relationship was mostly a relationship by propagation. In Judaism it was the relationship by election. But in any case it is a symbol which interprets such a relationship, and your question, my dear friend, can only mean: "Are we justified in using such a symbol for the event Jesus as the Christ?" And to this answer I answer fully affirmatively.

Then you have escaped the threat and have at the same time given a very important instruction. And I think those of you who deal with children in religious instruction should do the same thing, very consciously and very carefully.

Now we come to that group of people who are called the Apostolic Fathers. But since we have only two minutes, I don't want to go into this now, and we will have questions.

QUESTION: You said that mystery religions and mysticism were not the same thing, and out of the mystery religions came the mysticism. . .

REPLY: The word mysticism is very ambiguous and has many different meanings. One type of mysticism is what I would call abstract or absolute mysticism, as in Plotinus, where the soul disappears into the Ultimate. Then we have a kind of concrete mysticism. namely a concrete mystery god, who might even have the absolute concreteness of Jesus as the Christ, in whose Spiritual sphere we participate. This is what Paul means when he speaks of "being in Christ." This is concrete mysticism. This is the "baptism" of mysticism. It has been taken into Christianity by being concrete mysticism, and by being related to Jesus as the Christ.

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 representatives 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.