a) The sole aim the first epistle of Saint Clement sets for itself is torestore peace to the Corinthian Church. Its character is therefore purely practical. It insists upon the relation that exists between the leader of the Church and the Apostles, and then upon the relation between the latter and Jesus Christ, whose Incarnation saves us.44Wishing to subjugate the Corinthians to their spiritual leaders, he shows them that the cause of discord resides in envy, and he finds some pretext for speaking of humility and the virtue of obedience, which leads him to the praise of charity.45 It is through humility that we obtain the forgiveness of our sins. Here can be found a second, specifically evangelical, point of view: those who are chosen are not chosen for their works but for their faith in God.46 However, a little further on, Clement speaks of the need for works and of the inefficacy of faith without them.47
b) The letters of Saint Ignatius48are only topical writings, devoid of any methodological speculation. But Saint Ignatius is the one among the apostolic Fathers who had been most keenly aware of the Christ made flesh. He fights bitterly the docetic tendency in the bosom of Christianity. Jesus is “Son of God by the will and power of God; was really born of a virgin.”49 [He was the one] who “in the flesh was of the line of David, the Son of Man and the Son of God.”50 He affirms the real motherhood of Mary:
- XXX, 6, in Tixeront, [Histoire des dogmes,] III, 2.
[The primary text to which this note refers is Saint Clement of Rome, The Epistle to the Corinthians.—Trans.] - Ibid., chap. XLIV.
- Ibid., chap. XXXII, 3, 4.
- Ibid., chap. XXXIII, 1.
- For all that follows, cf. Tixeront, [Histoire des Dogmes,] ch. III, 5.
- Aux habitants de Smyrne,I, 1: “Fils de Dieu suivant la volonté et la puissance de Dieu, fait vraiment d’une Vierge.”
[Saint Ignatius, The Epistle to the Smyrnaens, 1.1, in Ancient Christian Writers, vol. 1, ed.
J. Quasten and J. Plumpe, trans. J. A. Kleist (New York: Newman Press, 1946), 90. Trans.] - Ephesiens, XX, 2 [sic]: “De la race de David selon la chair il est fils de l’homme et fils de Dieu.”
[Saint Ignatius, The Epistle to the Ephesians 20.1, ibid., 68.—Trans.]
“truly born of a virgin.”51“He had been truly pierced by a nail for us under Pontius Pilate and Herod the Tetrarch.”52 “And He suffered really, as He also really raised Himself from the dead. It is not as some unbelievers say, who maintain that His suffering was a make-believe.”53 Ignatius emphasizes still more, if it is possible, the humanity Christ has assumed. He maintains that it is in the flesh that Christ has risen. “I know and believe that He was in the flesh even after the Resurrection. And when He came to Peter and Peter’s companions, He said to them: ‘Here; feel me and see that I am not a bodiless ghost.’ Immediately they touched Him and, through this contact with His Flesh and Spirit, believed . . . Again, after the Resurrection, He ate and drank with them like a being of flesh and blood, though spiritually one with the Father.”54
Upon this communion of Christ with us, Ignatius establishes the unity of the Church and the rules of religious life. For him, nothing is as valuable as Faith and Love. “Faith and love are paramount—the greatest blessings in the world.”55 And even carrying to the extreme one of the themes already indicated in primitive Christianity, he maintains that the one who has faith does not sin: “The carnal cannot live a spiritual life, nor can the spiritual live a carnal life, any more than faith can act the part of infidelity, or infidelity the part of faith. But even the things you do in the flesh are spiritual, for you do all things in union with Jesus Christ.”56 We have already defined this exalted type of Christianity,
- Eph. VII, 2 [sic]: “Vraiment né d’une vierge.”
[Saint Ignatius, The Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, 1.1, in Ancient Christian Writers, 90.— Trans.] - Smyrne I, 1, 2 [sic]: “Il a vraiment été percé de clous pour nous sous Ponce Pilate et Hérode le Tétrarque.”
[Saint Ignatius, The Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, 1.2, ibid.—Trans.] 53. Smyrne II.
[Ibid., 90–91.—Trans.] - Smyrne III: “Je sais qu’après sa résurrection, Jesus a été en chair et je crois qu’il l’est encore. Et quand il vint à ceux qui étaient avec Pierre, il leur dit: ‘Prenez, palpez-moi, et voyez que je ne suis pas un génie sans corps.’ Et aussitôt ils le touchèrent et ils crurent, s’étant mêlés à sa chair et à son esprit . . . Et après la résurrection, il mangea et il but avec eux, comme étant corporel bien qu’étant uni spirituellement à son Père.”
[Ibid., 91.—Trans.] - Smyrne VI, 1: “Le tout c’est la foi et la charité: il n’y a rien de plus précieux.” [Ibid., 92.—Trans.]
- Eph., 8, 2: “Les charnels ne peuvent faire les oeuvres spirituelles ni les spirituels les oeuvres de l’infidélité, ni l’infidélité celles de la foi. Les choses que vous faites selon la chair sont spirituelles, car vous faites tout en Jésus-Christ.”
[Saint Ignatius, The Epistle to the Ephesians, 8.2, ibid., 63.—Trans.]
extreme in its faith and in the consequences that it presupposes: we will not be surprised, moreover, to find in Saint Ignatius the most passionate strains of mysticism. “My Love has been crucified, and I am not on fire with the love of earthly things. But there is in me a Living Water, which is eloquent and within me says: ‘Come to the Father.’”57
c) The Epistle attributed to Saint Barnabas58 is above all a polemical work directed against Judaism. It scarcely contains any doctrinal elements and moreover is of only mediocre interest. The author, with a great deal of realism, insists solely—and this is what should be noted— on Redemption. This Redemption derives from the fact that Jesus delivered up his flesh to destruction and sprinkled us with his blood.59 Baptism is what allows us to participate in this Redemption. “We descend into the water, laden with sins and filth, and then emerge from it bearing fruit, with the fear (of God) in the heart and the hope of Jesus in the soul.”60
d) “Two ways there are, one of life and one of death, and there is a greatdifference between the Two ways.”61The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles is itself linked only to the teaching of what constitutes the path of life and of what must be done to avoid the path of death. It is a catechism, a liturgical formula, that does not contradict what we advanced about the exclusively practical character of all this literature.
e) The Shepherd of Hermas and the second epistle of Clement are above all works of edification.62The theme common to these two works is penance. Hermas accords penance solely to the faults committed at
- Rom.VII, 2: “Mon amour est crucifié, et il n’y a point en moi de feu pour la matière; mais il y a une eau vive et parlante qui me dit intérieurement: ‘Viens au Père’.” [Saint Ignatius, The Epistle to the Romans, 7.2, ibid., 83.—Trans.] 58. Tixeront, [Histoire des Dogmes,] ch. III, 8.
- V, 1; VII, 3, 5.
[These are references to passages from the Epistle of Barnabas, as cited by Tixeront.— Trans.] - XI, XI, 1–8 [sic]: “Nous descendons dans l’eau, remplis de péchés et de souillures, et nous en sortons, portant des fruits, possédant dans le coeur et dans l’esprit, l’espérance en Jésus.”
[The Epistle of Barnabas, 11.11, in Ancient Christian Writers, vol. 6, ed. J. Quasten and J. C. Plumpe, trans. J. A. Kleist (New York: Paulist Press, 1948), 54.—Trans.] - I, 1, in Tixeront, [Histoire des Dogmes,] ch. III, 8: “Il existe deux voies, l’une de la vie, l’autre de la mort, mais il y a une grande différence entre les deux.” [The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, 1.1, ibid., 15.—Trans.]
- Tixeront, [Histoire des Dogmes,] ch. III, 3 and 4.
the moment when he was writing. And from this moment the penitential doctrine is imbued with the particular rigor of pessimistic doctrines. To the Christians of his time, he grants this penance only a single time.63 He establishes a rate according to which an hour of impious pleasure is expiated by thirty days of penance, and a day by one year. According to him, the wicked are doomed to flames, and whoever, knowing God, nevertheless committed evil, will atone for that sin eternally.64
The second epistle of Clement is a homily offering frequent analogies with the Shepherd of Hermas. Here again the aim is completely practical: to exhort the faithful to Charity and Penitence. Chapters 1 through 9 demonstrate the real and tangible Incarnation of Jesus. The following chapter is added to describe the punishments and rewards that will be inflicted or accorded after the resurrection.
f) Polycarp’s epistle, the relation to us which is made of his martyrdom, the fragments of Papias, finally, teach us nothing appreciably new.65 Dedicated to practical goals, these works join in an anti-docetic Christology, a classical theory of sin, and the exaltation of Faith. They actually summarize faithfully what we already know about this apostolic literature and its contempt for all speculation. Let us now inquire into the milieu in which this preaching developed.
B. The Men
We can say that the apostolic Fathers’ thought reflects the true face of the period in which they lived. The first evangelical communities shared these concerns and were withdrawn from all intellectual ambition. Nothing better clarifies this state of mind than the efforts
