The Church might be excused for condemning Origen: his principle of allegorical interpretation not only made it possible to prove anything, but at one blow it did away with the narratives of Scripture and the earthly life of Christ; and it restored individual judgment precisely while proposing to defend the faith. Faced with the hostility of a powerful government, the Church felt the need of unity; it could not safely allow itself to be divided into a hundred feeble parts by every wind of intellect, by disloyal heretics, ecstatic prophets, or brilliant sons. Celsus himself had sarcastically observed that Christians were “split up into ever so many factions, each individual desiring to have his own party.”68 About 187 Irenaeus listed twenty varieties of Christianity; about 384 Epiphanius counted eighty. At every point foreign ideas were creeping into Christian belief, and Christian believers were deserting to novel sects. The Church felt that its experimental youth was ending, its maturity was near; it must now define its terms and proclaim the conditions of its membership. Three difficult steps were necessary: the formation of a scriptural canon, the determination of doctrine, and the organization of authority.
The literature of Christianity in the second century abounded in gospels, epistles, apocalypses, and “acts.” Christians differed widely in accepting or rejecting these as authoritative expressions of the Christian creed. The Western churches accepted the Book of Revelation, the Eastern churches generally rejected it; these accepted the Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Epistles of James, the Western churches discarded them. Clement of Alexandria quotes as sacred scripture a late first-century treatise, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. Marcion’s publication of a New Testament forced the hand of the Church. We do not know when the books of our present New Testament were determined as canonical—i.e., as authentic and inspired; we can only say that a Latin fragment discovered by Muratori in 1740, named after him, and generally assigned to ca. 180, assumes that the canon had by that time been fixed.
Ecclesiastical councils or synods met with increasing frequency in the second century. In the third they were limited to bishops; and by the close of that century they were recognized as the final arbiters of “Catholic”—i.e., universal—Christian belief. Orthodoxy survived heresy because it satisfied the need for a definite creed that could moderate dispute and quiet doubt, and because it was supported by the power of the Church.
The problem of organization lay in determining the center of that power. After the weakening of the mother church at Jerusalem, the individual congregations, unless established or protected by other communities, appear to have exercised an independent authority. The church of Rome, however, claimed to have been founded by Peter, and quoted Jesus as saying: “Thou art Peter” (Heb. Cephas, Gk. Petros), “and upon this rock” (Heb. Cephas, Gk. petra) “I will build my church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”69 The passage has been challenged as an interpolation, and as a pun to which only Shakespeare would stoop; but the likelihood remains that Peter, if he did not establish the Christian colony in Rome, preached to it, and appointed its bishop.70 Irenaeus (187) wrote that Peter “committed to the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate”; Tertullian (200) confirmed this tradition; and Cyprian (252), bishop of Rome’s great rival, Carthage, urged all Christians to accept the primacy of the Roman see.71
The earliest occupants of “Peter’s throne” left no mark upon history. The third, Pope VI Clement, stands out as the author of an extant letter written about 96 to the church of Corinth, appealing to its members to maintain harmony and order;72 here, only a generation after Peter’s death, the bishop of Rome speaks with authority to the Christians of a distant congregation. The other bishops, while acknowledging the “primacy” Of the Roman bishop as the lineal successor of Peter, repeatedly challenged his power to overrule their own decisions. The Eastern churches celebrated Easter on the fourteenth day of the Jewish month of Nisan, whatever day of the week this might be; the Western churches postponed the feast to the following Sunday. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, visiting Rome about 156, tried and failed to persuade Anicetus, Bishop of Rome, to have the Eastern date observed in the West; and on his return he rejected the Pope’s suggestion that the Eastern churches should accept the Western date. Pope Victor (190) rephrased Anicetus’ request as a command; the bishops of Palestine obeyed, those of Asia Minor refused. Victor sent out letters to the Christian congregations, excommunicating the recalcitrant churches; many bishops, even in the West, protested against so severe a measure, and apparently Victor did not insist.
His successor Zephyrinus (202-18) was “a simple and unlettered man.”73 To aid him in administering the spreading episcopate of Rome, Zephyrinus raised to the archdeaconate a man whose intelligence was less questioned than his morals. Callistus, said his enemies, had begun his career as a slave, had become a banker, had embezzled the funds deposited with him, had been sentenced to hard labor, had been released, had started a riot in a synagogue, had been condemned to the mines of Sardinia, had escaped by having his name surreptitiously inserted into a list of pardoned prisoners, and had then lived for ten years at Antium in painful peace. When Zephyrinus placed him in charge of the papal cemetery he transferred it to the Via Appia, in the catacomb that bears his name. When Zephyrinus died, and Callistus was chosen pope, Hippolytus and some other priests denounced him as unfit, and set up a rival church and papacy (218). Doctrinal differences accentuated the schism: Callistus believed in readmitting to the Church those who, after baptism, had committed a mortal sin (adultery, murder, apostasy), and who professed their penitence. Hippolytus considered such lenience ruinous, and wrote a Refutation of All Heresies, with special attention to this one. Callistus excommunicated him, gave the Church a competent administration, and vigorously asserted the supreme authority of the Roman see over all Christendom.
The schism of Hippolytus ended in 235; but under Pope Cornelius (251-53) his heresy was revived by two priests—Novatus at Carthage and Novatian at Rome—who set up schismatic churches dedicated to the unrelenting exclusion of postbaptismal sinners. The Council of Carthage under Cyprian, and the Council of Rome under Cornelius, excommunicated both groups. Cyprian’s appeal for Cornelius’ support strengthened the papacy; but when Pope Stephen I (254-57) ruled that converts from heretical sects need not be rebaptized, Cyprian led a synod of African bishops in rejecting the decree. Stephen, like another Cato, excommunicated them in an ecclesiastical Punic War; his providentially early death allowed the quarrel to lapse, and averted the secession of the powerful African Church.
Despite overreachings and setbacks, the Roman see increased its power with almost every decade. Its wealth and ecumenical charities exalted its prestige; it was consulted by the Christian world on every issue of gravity; it took the initiative in repudiating and combating heresies, and in defining the canon of the Scriptures. It was deficient in scholars, and could not boast a Tertullian, an Origen, or a Cyprian; it gave its attention to organization rather than to theory; it built and governed and let others write and talk. Cyprian rebelled; but it was he who, in his De Catholicae Ecclesiae Unitate, acclaimed the see or seat of Peter (cathedra Petri) as the center and summit of Christendom, and proclaimed to the world those principles of solidarity, unanimity, and persistency which have been the essence and mainstay of the Catholic Church.74 By the middle of the third century the position and resources of the papacy were so strong that Decius vowed he would rather have a rival emperor at Rome than a pope.75 The capital of the Empire naturally became the capital of the Church.
As Judea had given Christianity ethics, and Greece had given it theology, so now Rome gave it organization; all these, with a dozen absorbed and rival faiths, entered into the Christian synthesis. It was not merely that the Church took over some religious customs and forms common in pre-Christian Rome—the stole and other vestments of pagan priests, the use of incense and holy water in purifications, the burning of candles and an everlasting light before the altar, the worship of the saints, the architecture of the basilica, the law of Rome as a basis for canon law, the title of Pontifex Maximus for the Supreme Pontiff, and, in the fourth century, the Latin language as the noble and enduring vehicle of Catholic ritual. The Roman gift was above all a vast framework of government, which, as secular authority failed, became the structure of ecclesiastical rule. Soon the bishops, rather than the Roman prefects, would be the source of order and the seat of power in the cities; the metropolitans, or archbishops, would support, if not supplant, the provincial governors; and the synod of bishops would succeed the provincial assembly. The Roman Church followed in the footsteps of the Roman state; it conquered the provinces, beautified the capital, and established discipline and unity from frontier to frontier. Rome died in giving birth to the Church; the Church matured by inheriting and accepting the responsibilities of Rome.
I In the mysteries of Mithras the worshipers were offered consecrated bread and water.26 The conquistadores were shocked to find similar rites among the Indians of Mexico and Peru.27
II Thousands of Christians, including many who actually practice Christianity, interpret the disturbances of our time as the predicted portents of Christ’s early return. Millions of Christians, non-Christians, and atheists still believe in an imminent earthly paradise where war and wickedness will cease. Historically the belief in heaven and the belief in utopia are like compensatory buckets in a well: when one goes down the other comes up. When the classic religions decayed, communistic agitation rose in Athens (430 B.C.), and revolution began in Rome (133 B.C..); when these movements failed, resurrection faiths succeeded, culminating in Christianity; when, in our eighteenth century, Christian belief weakened, communism reappeared. In this perspective the future of religion is secure.
III Porphyry arranged the fifty-four treatises into groups of nine (ennea) on the ground that in Pythagoras’ theory nine is the perfect number, since it is the square of three, which is the trinity of complete harmony.45
IV “As it was Origen´s general practice to allegorize Scripture,” says Gibbon, “it seems unfortunate that, in this instance only, he should have adopted the literal sense.”61
V Of this Hexapla (sixfold) only fragments remain. Lost, too, is the Tetrapla, containing the four Greek translations.
VI The term papa, “father,” which became in English pope, was applied in the first three centuries to any Christian bishop.