meetings and casual debates with the middle and left wings, must have exercised an enormous influence. In the council itself there was Eustathius of Antioch, a great and notable man. There was Alexander of Alexandria who was no mean antagonist, but a clear, strong thinker. There was Marcellus of Ancyra, who was a man of iron will and immense power of resistance, whose presence among the Athanasians meant a great deal. There was Hosius of Cordova, an intimate friend of the emperor, who possessed power in conciliation and persuasion, and who well supplemented the theological work of his colleagues with his diplomatic and skilful mediations and explanations.3 A doctrine that could train and inspire men like these deserves to win. 4. The Athanasian party were not only convinced, but they were united, and this, with the additional fact that they possessed the apostolic seats-Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria (traditionally St. Mark's), Rome, etc.—must have at length made an impression on the majority and on the emperor. 5. This leads me to say that another reason for the Athanasian victory was the convincing of the assembly that the older and sounder tradition was on that side. Eusebius says that he "did well to assent" to the idea that Christ was one in essence with the Father because "we were aware that even among the ancients some learned and illustrious bishops and writers have used the term 'one in essence' in their theological teachings concerning the Father and the Son."4 Harnack agrees with this, and says (III, 141, 142) that “there was nothing new in the common sense of the word" in Athanasius' views; "he had really on his side the best part of the tradition of the church. New alone was the fact, the energy and exclusiveness of his view and action at a time when everything threatened to undoing and dissolution." 6. The emperor. We cannot eliminate him from the victory at Nicaea. He was not mainly responsible, but he was in part respons3 The Arians are later represented as ascribing immense influence to Hosius in this See Athan., Hist. Arian., §42. "He put forth the faith in Nicaea," they are supposed to say, though as remarked by Loofs, D. G., 4 Aufl., 241, not rightly. matter. 4 See his epistle to his church in Caesarea in appendix to Athanasius, De Decretis, and compare Athanasius' own statements as to "testimony from their fathers, ancient bishops," etc., in Ad Afros, 6. ible. "He advised all present to agree to" the Caesarean creed, says Eusebius, and in his Life of Constantine (III, 13) he-doubtless with a courtier's exaggeration-makes him alone responsible for the final unanimity, "urging all to unity of sentiment, until at last he succeeded in bringing them to one mind and judgment respecting every disputed question." But why did the emperor come over to the right wing, when with his paganism and his court influences at Nicomedia he would naturally have been borne toward Arius? His conversion is to be explained. Was it his homage to strength, his feeling that the men on the right had the deepest convictions, and that finally these convictions thus strongly held by the strongest men must eventually prevail? Was it a dim perception that, after all, the arguments of Alexander's party were the more convincing, and that Christianity to be a winning religion over against paganism must have an absolutely divine Savior and Lord? His own letter to the Alexandrians after the Council (Socr., i, 9) shows that the almost unanimous decision of so many impressed him deeply ("for that which has commended itself to the judgment of 300 bishops cannot be other than the judgment of God," he says; "seeing that the Holy Spirit dwelling in the minds of so many dignified persons has effectually enlightened them respecting the divine will”). Bernoulli (Herzog-Hauck, 3 Aufl., XIV [1904], 15) says that for their victory the Athanasians must thank their own energy. But he also says that that victory was due in part to a successful intrigue. When we come, however, to specification as to what the intrigue was, we are left in the dark. He accuses the Athanasians of two things: (1) of cutting out the biblical formulas from the Caesarean symbol, and in their place setting in theological statements which guaranteed the exclusion of Arianism in the sharpest way. But if these biblical expressions were used unbiblically to teach unbiblical doctrines, and if the Athanasians must preserve at all hazards the actual deity of Jesus, were they to blame for insisting on their own formulae ? (2) of using their influence on the emperor for the victory of their side. This, he says, was their intrigue. But nothing further is alleged. He does not say they used their influence badly or unfairly. The emperor had to decide for some side. The fact that he did not decide for the side he would naturally have favored speaks for stronger reasons on the side that prevailed. "It was not necessity which drove the judges to their decision," says Athanasius (Ep. Aegypt., 13), "but all vindicated the truth from deliberate purpose.' It is the custom long since to decry the historic creeds and to depreciate the men who made them. Certainly all will admit that the appealing and binding power of the creed is its truth alone, which truth must not be burdened with the methods of its advocates. At the same time this must be said: speaking after the manner of men, the Nicene Council and Creed saved the Christian religion. At that council two conceptions of Christianity were in a death struggle, one that a created mediator was given to help men, the other that the eternal Son of God himself was incarnated to redeem men and to unite men and God. One gives an ethical religion, a finer Stoicism, a gnostic demiurge-theosophy, which would have been utterly helpless in the storms that were to come; the other is the religion of the Incarnation, of redemption, of salvation through faith, of eternal life in the Eternal Son. The parties in that struggle at the bottom were two only, the Arians and the Athanasians, and it was the great service of the latter that they stuck to their guns until they carried the middle party, whose deeper principles they saw logically led to their own views, made that party see that such was the case, and brought almost every man of them to their own Caesarean creed as now first logically expressed. But would it not have been better to have done that by argument, by the force of truth itself, without a council and creed? Doubtless. But that method was then historically impossible. To the fact that the believers in the deity of Christ fought their fight at that council as God gave them opportunity we owe it today that Christianity exists not alone on ancient records but as a regnant and regenerating force in humanity. CHRISTOLOGICAL PECULIARITIES IN THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER REV. JOHN COWPER GRANBERY, PH.D. The First Epistle of Peter presents, in the words of Wrede, "eine Reihe von Schwierigkeiten und Dunkelheiten." The difficulties are created by the address and the conclusion. Harnack solves the problem by removing the address and the conclusion altogether, understanding 5:1 (μάρτυς τῶν τοῦ Χριστοῦ παθημάτων) not in a literal sense. According to this view, the author was a prominent teacher and confessor of about 90 A. D., perhaps earlier, who did not pretend to be Peter. Another, probably the author of Second Peter, invented the beginning and the end of the epistle in order to give it apostolic authority. The view of McGiffert3 is similar, except that he holds to its true epistolary character (1:3, 4, 12; 2:13; 4:12; 5:1-5, 9). The epistle was, he thinks, originally anonymous, like Hebrews, Barnabas, and the Johannine epistles, and the name of Peter was attached in the second century, some scribe probably writing it on the margin of the manuscript, because he thought he saw reason for regarding it as the work of Peter. If we take the epistle as it stands, the more likely theory is that of pseudonymity, unless indeed we make Silvanus responsible for the epistle in the name of Peter. That was an age in which men could think it a virtue for a writer to withhold his own name in favor of some great master. It must be acknowledged that this straightforward epistle does not bear such palpable marks of pseudepigraphy as, for example, Second Peter. But in view of the pesudepigraphic customs of the time, it is conceivable that a Roman Christian, wishing to issue a letter of consolation to his persecuted fellow-Christians of Asia Minor under an apostolic title, chose the name of Peter. In "Bemerkungen zu Harnack's Hypothese über die Adresse des I. Petrusbriefs," Zeitschrift für die N. T. Wissenschaft, I, 1900, S. 75-85-an able reply to Harnack. Chronologie, S. 451-65. 3 Apostolic Age, p. 596. 2 fact we know six early Christian writings connected with the name of Peter-the two canonical letters, the Acts, the Gospel, the Preaching, and the Apocalypse of Peter. Great as are the difficulties in connection with the authorship of First Peter, the most difficult hypothesis is that Peter, the apostle of the circumcision, even with the help of Silvanus, wrote this letter in fairly good Greek, saturated as it is with characteristic Pauline thought and vocabulary, to gentile churches of Asia Minor founded chiefly by Paul. The conditions set forth in the epistle, reflecting a general persecution of Christians as such (4:15, 16; 5:9), are best satisfied by the reign of Domitian (81-96 A. D.), and the doctrinal affinities are mostly with the literature of this period. But we must leave open the possibility of a date within the reign of Trajan (98-117 A. D.), either about 100 (Jülicher) or about 112. The fact that one suffered ws Xploτiavós (4:15) reminds us of the famous letter of Pliny to Trajan regarding the treatment of Christians, about 112 A. D., and if we take the word aλλотpieπíσкоTOS in the same verse to refer to the judicial informer, the delator, which is not necessary, this late date is confirmed. But this would take the epistle far down toward the terminus ad quem, the letter of Polycarp (ca. 116 A. D.), which makes frequent quotation from First Peter. If the use of First Peter by Clement of Rome could be established, the year 95 A. D. would be the terminus ad quem, but the numerous striking resemblances (for example, ȧyátŋ kaλúttei tλĥlos ȧμaρtiŵv, I Pet. 4:8 and I Clem. 49:5) may be explained by proximity of date and place of composition. The epistle was written apparently from Rome (so far as we know, Babylon played small part in early Christian history)5 to Christians of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia (1:1)—five provinces that comprise the whole of Asia Minor north of Mount Taurus. Though παρεπίδημοι Διασπορᾶς, the readers were in general gentile believers (1:14, 18; 2:9, 10; 4:3, 4). The purpose of the epistle is to admonish and encourage (πapaкaλeîv, 5:12) its readers patiently to endure sufferings that have come upon them on account 45:13 (Apoc. 14:8). 5 See Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, 2d ed., 1908, II, pp. 142-52. |