The Transformation of Early Christianity from an Eschatological to a Socialized Movement

So too Phrygian Chiliasm is remarkable for the prominence and importance of the position of women in the movement. The women, Prisca and the others, seem to have been fully as prominent in the movement as Montanus himself and they exercised a degree of influence to which it would be difficult to find a parallel in contemporary Christian movements in other countries.

Similarly, visions, revelations, inspirations, extraordinary conditions of religious excitation are a marked feature of Phrygian Chiliasm. They are of course the old 'Phrygian Frenzy' in Christian guise.

Not to pursue this phase of the subject in more detail, it is evident that Phrygian Chiliasm bore in a marked degree the impress of the national, religious psychology. Those bishops of Pontus and Syria who persuaded their people to settle all their worldly affairs and go out into neighboring deserts to await the coming of Christ in glory, exhibit in a more naïve form the power of local group habits of thought to transform concepts intruded from outside the group.

In the case of Egypt it is gratuitous labor to dwell upon the fact that the native population at the advent of Christianity had developed a nationalistic like-mindedness. This nation even in the year 1 A.D. had an historical antiquity greater than any other nation can show today – with the doubtful exception of China. In no other nation in the world has there been such an opportunity for climatic and geographic influences to work their full effect in producing psychological homogeneity among a population on the whole remarkably little disturbed in demotic composition. It is to be remarked also that the climatic and geographic environments are themselves remarkably homogeneous throughout the whole extent of the nation. The deterministic school of historians have a model made to hand in the history of Egypt – a model of which it must be confessed they have made very skillful use.¹⁰⁵ This is not the place, even if the writer had the requisite knowledge, to enter into any extended discussion of the national psychology of the Egyptian populace. It is sufficient to mention one predominating feature of that psychology, a feature so persistent and ubiquitous that the study of it alone, enables the investigator to obtain a true insight into much that is otherwise obscure in almost every variety of social expression among the Egyptians; law, politics, government, art, science, literature, and religion. This predominating feature can perhaps be best defined as a certain low estimate of the value of individuality in the common man, a cheap appraisal of the worthwhileness of the life of the ordinary person. It seems to have a relatively slight ethnic element – if indeed it can be truthfully said to have any. It makes its appearance substantially unchanged in all subtropical countries situated in the same general physical environment as Egypt; e.g., Southern China, India, Mesopotamia, Mexico and Yucatan; in all countries that is, where the natural conditions for sustaining and propagating human life are relatively easy and where the economic surplus of productive physical, as opposed to intellectual, labor is unusually great. Nevertheless the fact that Egypt is in this category is due to a highly special geographic phenomenon, the overflow of the river Nile. So that by comparison with the nations immediately contiguous to Egypt, this psychology may be truly said to be distinctively national in spite of its similarity to that of other peoples more remote geographically.

It is perhaps unnecessary to do more than mention a very few of the ways in which this characteristic of Egyptian psychology has affected the national life. It has rendered the population largely passive under the successive yolks of Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks, and Englishmen, to mention only some of the more prominent exploiters. It has made possible the erection of those vast pyramids of stone, devoid alike of necessity or use, which remain to this day one of the wonders of the world. It has enabled religions at once superstitious and debasing to flourish in the midst of a high degree of material civilization.

For our purpose it is sufficient to call attention to the fact that this mental bias makes any change, even in the acquired concepts of the people, especially difficult of accomplishment. This is very well illustrated, in the study of Egyptian Chiliasm. In no other country were the efforts necessary to overthrow Chiliastic concepts so long drawn out, so persistent, so futile of immediate success. Indeed they did not finally succeed till long after the period embraced in this study. When the good bishop Dionysius of Alexandria 247-264 A.D., held his conference with the village Chiliasts of the Arsinoite nome, some of them were indeed won over, but we are told that 'others expressed their gratification at the conference'. It is evident that they were 'of the same opinion still', Dionysius himself¹⁰⁶ was not the first of the Alexandrians to oppose Chiliasm. There was much effort, both by him and others, to eradicate the concept before and after this Arsinoite conference. Yet we know that later on, villagers from this region became monks in the Thebiad, and manuscripts still surviving from the Thebiad, show that apocalyptic and Chiliastic literature was popular with the monks, generations, and even centuries, after the death of Dionysius. It is a notable example of the national character of the Egyptians. They let their aggressive and dominating superiors have their own way in appearance – but in appearance only. The underlying currents of thought remained essentially unchanged among the commonality. The resistance was passive – perhaps almost imperceptible – but it was real and persistent. In the case of Roman Africa – the country north of the Sahara Desert and west of Egypt – the problem is more complicated. In Roman times down to the Vandal invasion, the population of this region, leaving out of account certain small and relatively negligible numbers of Greeks, Egyptians and others found mainly in the larger cities, the population was composed of three distinct strata. At the top were the dominant Romans, insignificant in point of numbers but having the monopoly of government, law, and administration. They were practically undisguised exploiters; government officials whose main business was to forward corn and oil to Rome and incidentally enrich themselves; agents of the great Roman landlords intent on transmitting rents to their patrician employers – already in the time of Nero the Senatorial Province of Africa was owned by as few as nine landlords – absentee landlords living in Rome, – and finally, the numerous body of inferior agents; lawyers, money lenders, and estate managers whose services were indispensable to the carrying on of the vast system of economic exploitation.

Beneath this thin, dominant, Roman upper crust was a vast population of artisans, tradesmen, agricultural and other laborers, serfs, and slaves. This great body of the commonality was to a remarkable degree still very purely Punic even in late Roman times. They differed ethnically, linguistically, religiously, and otherwise from their rulers.¹⁰⁷ We find St. Augustine, centuries after the Roman conquest, writing a letter in Latin to one of his clergy, but requesting him to translate it into Punic and communicate it to his congregation. It is useful to remind ourselves of the fact that the population of north Africa in the first centuries of the Christian era was much greater than it is now. Centuries of Mohammedan mis-government account for this in part but the chief cause is to be found in those profound climatic changes, the origins of which are still obscure, that have reduced to desolate and barren wilderness whole regions which in Roman times abounded in populous cities and in rich and fertile agricultural lands. This large population had the cohesion which results from centuries of similar and essentially unchanged social habits and it had also that sense of strength which comes from large numbers, and that pride which results from the inheritance of a proud history. They never wholly lost that spirit which had made their ancestors great. They never forgot that in former ages they had competed as the equals of Rome for the lordship of the world.

To the South toward the Desert and the Atlas Mountains dwelt a third section of the population. They were nomads or semi-nomads, troglodytes, and mountain peoples. Their manner of life remains essentially the same today as it was in Roman times and as it was for centuries before Rome set foot in Africa. The Romans never succeeded in subduing this population except temporarily and for short periods. The imperial government did what it could, and by means of military posts and patrols kept a kind of order, but its success was only moderate.

Christianity in Roman Africa reflects this threefold division of the population, as is to be expected. Cyprian, in spite of the sincere religious faith and high moral character which elevates him so high above the social class to which he belonged, is still the most typical hierarch of his age. In his writings we find the whole philosophy of the governing class translated into ecclesiastical language. It is highly significant that in all the numerous and voluminous writings of this Father there is not a line about Chiliasm. Ideas of such a nature found little reception in the minds of men daily engaged in the practical duties of making as much as possible out of the management and control of a vast population economically and politically subordinated to them.

It would seem that Chiliasm was in fact very largely confined to the Punic commonality. Tertullian is the great representative of this class. The very considerable success of his views can only be ascribed to their being acceptable to the general body of his local, Christian contemporaries. It is at least imaginable this success was due to the fact that the personal characteristics of this great African; his impetuosity, his boldness, his sternness, his pride, his vengeful spirit were truly representative of the psychology of the people whose spokesman he was. It is notable that he was perhaps the greatest of the Chiliasts.

The reader who has followed the argument thus far may be saying to himself at this point: "If it be granted that the national characters of the peoples of Phrygia, Egypt, North Africa or elsewhere, conditioned their acceptance of Chiliastic beliefs and the ways in which these beliefs found expression, what has that to do with the subject of this chapter which is Chiliasm and Patriotism?" It is to that point we shall now direct our attention, but what has been said above is necessary to the proper consideration of the matter. We have endeavored to show that in Phrygia, Egypt, and North Africa there existed nationalistic psychologies in the commonality. It will be recalled that we have shown in an earlier chapter the curious fact that Chiliasm, though originally a perfectly orthodox doctrine – indeed one of the most important portions of the true faith, nevertheless in the course of its historical development, became mixed up with heresies to a degree beyond any rational explanation by the law of chance or the rule of average. It would seem almost as though there was some natural affinity between this particular orthodox doctrine and almost any heresy; which finally resulted in its being itself condemned as heretical.

The reason for this was that Chiliasm, like the heresies, was a psychic equivalent for patriotism. No stranger or more unwarranted delusion is to be found in the whole range of church history than the one still unfortunately common, to the effect that for several centuries at the beginning of the Christian era the populace of whole religions were obsessed with incredible zeal over the most abstruse, metaphysical speculations. It is indeed true that the ostensible objects of the conflict were philosophical ideas but the realities behind these symbols were tangibles of a very genuinely mundane order; economic exploitation, social inequality, and suppressed national patriotism. This is evident enough in cases like the Donatists in Africa, but a little consideration of the evidence in the light of the developments of the Freudian psychology, will make it clear in almost all of the heresies, and in the case of orthodoxy also, when the imperial government chanced to be itself heretical. So far as the writer is aware no study of any great length has been made of this matter, which would richly repay investigation; but our concern is more directly with Chiliasm and the larger problem must be left to others for solution.

Freud has shown beyond reasonable hope of successful refutation, that experiences which the mind has completely forgotten leave emotional 'tones' which remain active and are the determining cause of physical and mental conditions. A thought 'complex' is a system of ideas or associations with an especially strong emotional tone. A complex may be of extreme interest to an individual by reason of his social education and hereditary mentality and yet be out of harmony with e.g., security of life and property: so a conflict arises in the mind. This conflicting complex is gotten rid of in various ways; rationalization, repression, disassociation, or what not, but the energy or interest which initiated the complex remains none the less and something must become of its force. This undirected emotional force is the cause of dreams, neuroses, and psychic trauma.¹⁰⁸ Such in the most sketchy outline is Freud's idea. The application to the case under consideration is obvious. Patriotism was a repressed 'complex' to the peoples of Phrygia, Egypt, and Roman Africa. The mental conflict brought on by the repression was rationalized easily enough, no doubt, so far as the conscious mind of the populace was concerned, but the disassociated emotional energy was let loose on other concepts with which it had no proper connection originally, i.e., problems of philosophical speculation. Chiliasm was a speculative concept of a sort to make an especial appeal under the circumstances. So far as his conscious mind was concerned the Phrygian might be perfectly reconciled to Roman political supremacy. He might rationally prove to his own satisfaction that such political supremacy was really to his own advantage in the long run. Any idea of resistance was sure to be repressed by the certainty of losing his property and life. Yet the emotional energy of his patriotism remained and it naturally associated itself with any idea that lay at hand. Chiliasm happened to be at hand. The glorified, divine kingdom of the Saints of God on earth was the psychic equivalent of that Phrygian kingdom whose national existence had been forever extinguished by Rome. Similarly that national patriotism which under other historical circumstances might have found satisfaction in the glory of an independent Egypt now found expression in the borrowed phraseology of Jewish and Christian apocalyptical literature. The same is true of course of the Punic and Nomadic strata of the population of Roman Africa. To the new Jerusalem which was to come down out of heaven from God, these peoples transferred their now useless and hopeless longing for the Carthage of the days of Hannibal and for Jugurthan Numidia.

If, as we have endeavored to show, Chiliasm represented the strivings of repressed, national patriotisms, we can readily understand the increasing opposition it encountered on the part of the great dignitaries of the Church. As the Christian hierarchy became increasingly perfected, the desire of the prelates for unity and cohesion in the Church became correspondingly greater. But national patriotism is essentially a disrupting and disintegrating force to any imperialistic organization, civil or ecclesiastical. Chiliasm being associated with this separatist tendency, naturally came to be regarded as heretical, and as such, was suppressed.

CHAPTER V
CHILIASM AND SOCIAL THEORY

We have seen that in the first generations of the Church's existence the rapidly approaching end of the world was a doctrine firmly held by almost all Christians. We have seen how by the fifth century this doctrine, though doubtless still believed by small numbers of individuals and isolated groups, was practically dead. We have endeavored to show some of the more important political, economic, social, and religious effects of this belief and of its declension. The changes which took place almost imperceptibly during the course of more than three centuries in the status of this doctrine make any evaluation of its influence very difficult. It is, however, probably well within the truth to say that the transformation of early Christianity from an eschatological to a socialized movement is, in some respects, one of the most important changes in its history. The change was actual and objective rather than formal and theoretical. It profoundly influenced the practical lives of Christians, but it produced no alteration whatever in the creeds of the Church. As has been shown in the preceding chapters it is for these reasons at once more difficult to investigate and more troublesome to evaluate.

The difficulties of the subject itself, considerable as they are; lack of adequate source material, doubt as to the authenticity and reliability of such sources as we have; and ever present theological prepossession, these difficulties after all do not offer such hindrances to fruitful investigation as another factor, the present condition of sociological methodology. The writer is not learned in the various forms of scientific method, but he doubts whether any other science is, in this respect, in such a chaotic condition as sociology. It is reasonable to expect of any science that it will have some general rules for the investigation of the data in its field, and some general principles for the interpretation of the results of investigation. Sociology is no exception in this respect. In fact the number of sociological 'principles,' so called, is almost incredibly great. A mere descriptive enumeration of them, and a by no means exhaustive one, fills a considerable volume.¹⁰⁹ But so far as the writer is aware, no effort has been made to apply these principles or any considerable number of them, systematically, to the elucidation of any movement, contemporary or historical. In general each principle has had its own advocates who have applied it to varying ranges of historical phenomena – generally to the total or at least considerable, exclusion of other principles.

These sociological principles are not only very numerous – they are of very various value. No successful classification of them has thus far been made. It is very possible that in the present state of the science no successful classification can be made. Yet no study of an historical movement can, without loss, dispense with the aid given by these general sociological principles. The writer will, therefore, in the briefest possible manner, try to show some of the aspects of early Chiliasm as they appear in the light of a few of these principles.

The list of principles employed is not an exhaustive one. It can not even claim to be comprehensive of all the principles which might fairly be said to be important. On the other hand it perhaps includes some principles which some sociologists would probably consider of minor importance. There is as yet, unfortunately, no considerable agreement on this matter among sociologists of different nationalities and schools. The reason of course, is that the social reality which these principles endeavor to explain contains facts which are intellectually incompatible but which nevertheless, do actually exist together.

One of the most important and one of the most convenient methods of investigating social phenomena is the statistical method. In all cases of social pathology this method is so valuable as to be almost indispensable. In other cases its use needs to be more carefully guarded. In the problem we have considered the use of the statistical method has been evidently impossible except in the most incidental manner. We do not know how many Christians expected any particular kind of Second Advent to take place within any given length of time. If we had information for each decade to the time of Augustine, of the number of 'convinced' Chiliasts and the number of 'adherents' who were inclined toward that belief, together with information as to the number of years within which each of these groups expected the Second Advent, it is needless to say that such facts would enable us to judge the movement with a considerable approach to historical certainty. Even such incidental and fragmentary information as has come down to us in regard to the number of Chiliastic believers is most valuable and such use has been made of it as may be. If the use of the statistical method has not been more extensive, it is because of lack of data.

Perhaps the most widely known of all sociological principles is that called Economic Determinism, or the Economic Interpretation of History, or Historical Materialism. More and more, of recent years, this principle has been employed by historians. The classic statement of the doctrine is found in the Communist Manifesto. The Introduction to the second edition states: "In every historical epoch the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class, struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes."¹¹⁰

In the application of this principle to our subject we are lead to expect a genuine, though not necessarily direct, connection between the declension of eschatological expectations, the increase of socialization in early Christianity and such broad economic movements as resulted from the soil exhaustion of Western Europe and the decreased productivity of compulsory associated labor. In the substitution of serfdom for slavery and in the growth of monasticism we certainly have two movements which profoundly affected the Church, and had a considerable part in altering the attitude of mind which made Chiliastic expectations tenable. It is probably true that what we have here is considerably more than a mere coincidence of time, i.e., that Chiliasm declined as serfdom developed and was dead by the time the patronage system was established on the great estates. Indeed, in the West at least, Chiliasm was dead before the country regions were to any measurable degree Christian at all.

It is not too much to say that the apologetic used by St. Augustine to extirpate primitive, Chiliastic belief was only made plausable, or even possible, by profound changes, of an economic nature, in the early Church. The central point of Augustine's apologetic is that the Church, as actually existing at the time, was the promised kingdom of Christ and the reign of the Saints on earth. Such an explanation would have been absurd in the days when the Christian Church consisted only of a few, small companies of sectaries, lost among the lower strata of the population of the cities on the Mediterranean litoral. But by Augustine's time the Church was something quite different. It was enormously wealthy; owning farms, orchards, vineyards, olive yards, mines, quarries, timberlands, horses, cattle, sheep, goats, slaves and serfs, to say nothing of the purely ecclesiastical properties like Churches, schools, bishops' residences and similar structures, and the land they occupied.

The possession of this great wealth inevitably brought with it social position, prestige, and political power. The psychical reaction produced by wealth, rank, and power was naturally unfavorable to the growth of any lively desire for the termination of the existing order of things. Indeed it was an active force in displacing and eliminating Chiliasm from the minds of the hierarchy. On the reverse side we have seen that the times of persecution, when the property of the Church was confiscated and the lives and liberty of Christians endangered or lost, coincided with the recrudescence of Messianic expectations. So that, whichever way the subject is approached, it would seem that the contentions of the advocates of the economic interpretation of history can make out a very good case in the instance of the early Christian Church and Chiliasm. Without raising economic determinism to the rank of a dogma and while admitting that it has very real limitations, it would nevertheless appear from the present study, that the following contention of one of its leading exponents contains an important degree of truth. "The relations of men to one another in the matter of making a living are the main, underlying causes of men's habits of thought and feeling, their notions of right, propriety, and legality, their institutions of society and government, their wars and revolutions."¹¹¹

A principle somewhat allied to the doctrine of Economic Determinism, is that of progress by 'Group Conflict.' Perhaps the most notable exponent of this principle is the Austrian sociologist, Ludwig Gumplowicz, who states: "When two distinct (heterogen) groups come together the natural tendency of each is to exploit the other to use the most general expression. This indeed is what gives the first impulse to the social process.¹¹²

According to this principle we should expect to find the cause of the transformation of early Christianity in the conflicts of various groups within the Christian community and in the conflicts between the Christians as a group, and various other groups in the world of that time. The truth of this is so obvious that it is a mere waste of words to point it out. That Christian theology evolved by a series of conflicts with various pagan theologies on the one side, and with various groups within the Church on the other side, which were successively branded as heretical, is the most patent fact in the theological history. What is true of the theology in general is true of Chiliasm in particular. It was very largely during the conflicts with a long series of heretical groups; Gnostics, Ebionites, Alogi, Montanists and Apolinarians that the blows were given which finally vanquished Chiliasm. Its elimination, or at least the rapidity of its elimination, was very measurably due to the fact that it was involved in these group conflicts, and as it was almost invariably associated with the losing group, it suffered the natural fate of the vanquished.

While the principle of which Gumplowicz was so able a supporter leads us to expect changes in the Chiliastic doctrine wherever it appears in connection with the phenomenon of group conflict, both within and without the Church, this principle does not, in itself, enable us to state anything definitely concerning the nature of these changes.

There is, however, another sociological principle which we can call to our aid – the principle of Imitation. According to M. Tarde: "The unvarying characteristic of every social fact whatever is that it is imitative and this characteristic belongs exclusively to social facts. This imitation however, is not absolute and the various degrees of exactness in imitation and the complexes resulting from the various combinations and oppositions of imitations form the dynamic of progress."¹¹³

By the help of this principle we can in a certain measure estimate the general nature of the changes which took place in early Christianity during the process of its socialization. The conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity is, according to this principle, merely half of the actual occurrence. The other half might be called the conversion of Christianity to the Roman Empire. The fact that this second conversion took place; that the Christian Church became a hierarchic, bureaucratic, legalistic, monarchical imperialism is evidence enough that the principle of Imitation operated powerfully in early Christian history.

What is true of the early Church as a whole is true of Chiliasm in particular. There was no very powerful Second Adventist or other Chiliastic influence in the heathen world with which the early Christians were in contact. Their beliefs were, therefore according to this theory, weakened by dilution; vice versa the pagans were gradually converted to an enfeebled eschatological belief by imitation of the Christians, but the net result was a compromise, i.e., a far off and indefinite eschatology.

The concrete evidence in support of this contention is not abundant being confined to a few lines in the Sibylline Oracles, Hippolytus, Lactantius and Augustine. Such as the evidence is, however, it is entirely on the side of the theory of imitation. It is moreover a very defensible position that if we were not dealing with such a stereotyped literary form, the evidence would be much stronger. One arresting feature of the Chiliastic passages that have come down to us, is their uniformity. They are repetitions, very often actual, verbal repetitions of one another. What is of real interest in this connection however, is not the form of words, used, but the varying degrees of earnestness, sincerity, and eagerness with which the beliefs, embodied in the form, were held. This is a thing difficult if not impossible of measurement. Practically our only means of arriving at the facts is to compare the relatively slight changes in the form of the Chiliastic tradition. This has already been done¹¹⁴ and favors the contention which the theory of Imitation seeks to maintain. The passage in the Oracles, while undoubtedly Chiliastic, is doubtfully orthodox and is found in a context showing the influence of paganism in almost every line. Similarly Hippolytus and still more Lactantius and Augustine being situated so as to be peculiarly susceptible to the pagan environment show a marked tendency to make the Second Advent a far off event. St. Augustine, whose contact with the contemporary pagan world was more complete at more points than that of any other Church father, puts the Second Advent out of all connection with his own generation.