From the German, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten (1902, revised 1906, 1915, and finally 1924)
[[being updated (also consulting the 4th German edition) and adapted by RAK for use in 2004 America; Greek needs to be inserted, etc.]
[Harnack bk3 ch1, 319-343 scanned by Moises Bassan, March 2004]
[CHAPTER I, 344-368 needs
to be completed ]
BOOK III
THE
MISSIONARIES : THE METHODS OF THE
THE
CHRISTIAN
MISSIONARIES (APOSTLES, EVANGELISTS, AND PROPHETS OR TEACHERS:
THE INFORMAL MISSIONARIES)
I
BEFORE entering upon the subject proper, let
us briefly survey
the usage of the term "apostle," in its wider and narrower senses,
throughout the primitive Christian writings.\1/
1. In Matthew, Mark, and
John, "apostle" is not a special and distinctive name for the inner
circle of the disciples of Jesus. These are almost invariably described
as
"the twelve," s or the
\1/ Though it is only apostles of
Christ who are to be considered, it may be observed that Paul spoke (2
Cor.
Viii, 23) of
dado-roxoé &001lT wV,
and applied the title
"apostle of the Philippians" to Epaphroditus, who had conveyed to him
a donation from that church (Philip. ii. 25). In Heb. iii. i
Jesus is
called "the apostle and high-priest of our confession." But in John
xiii. 16 "apostle" is merely used as an illustration: o,rc vT& SouuXos µfiCWV
TOU Icuptou aurov, OV64 &irduroXol l
e(Cwp ToV a€(4avTos abrdv. For the literature on this subject,
see my
edition of the Didache (Texte u. Untersuchungen, vol. ii., 1884) and
my Dogmen:
geòchichte 1.3 (1894), PP. 153 f. [
\2/ Matt.
x. 5, xx. 17, xxvi. 14, 47 ; Mark (iii. 14), iv. 10, vi.
7, ix. 35, x. 32, xi.
11, xiv. 10,
17, 20, 43 ; John vi. 67,
70, 71, xx. 24.
330 MISSION AND EXPANSION OF CHRISTIANITY
[[331]] themselves the central
body of Christendom, and also the representatives of the true Israel. rJ iat was the reason why
the apostles whom they recognized were entrusted with a duty similar to
that
imposed on Jewish "apostles," viz., the task of collecting the
tribute of the Diaspora. Paul himself would view it, one imagines, in a
somewhat different light, but it is quite probable that this was how
the matter
was viewed by the primitive apostles. In this way the connection
between the
Jewish and the Christian apostles, which on other grounds is hardly to
be
denied in spite of all their differences, becomes quite
These
statements about the Jewish apostles have been contested by Monnier (op. cit., pp. 16 f.) : " To
prop up his theory, Harnack 'takes a text of Justin and fortifies it
with
another
(2) Prophets.=1'he common
idea is that
prophets had died ut in Judaism long before the age of Jesus and the
apostles, t the New Testament itself
protests against this erroneous ea. Reference may be made especially to
John
the Baptist, who
332 MISSION AND EXPANSION OF CHRISTIANITY
in the retinue of the pro-consul at Cyprus (Acts xiii. 7), and to the warnings against false prophets (Matt. vii. 15, xxiv. 11, 25 = Mark xiii. 22, 1 John iv. 1, 2 Pet. ii. 1). Besides, we are told that the Essenes possessed the gift of prophecy; \1/ of Theudas, as of the Egyptian,\2/ it is said, orpo/tjTgs i;'Xeyev ("he alleged himself to be a prophet," Joseph., Antiq., xx. i. 1) ; Josephus the historian played the prophet openly and successfully before Vespasian;\3/ Philo called himself a prophet, and in the Diaspora we hear of Jewish interpreters of dreams, and of prophetic magicians.¢ What is still more significant, the ""'ealth of contemporary Jewish apocalypses, oracular utterances, 'tild so forth shows that, so far from being extinct, prophecy `` as in luxuriant bloom, and also that prophets were numerous, and secured both adherents and readers. There were very wide circles of Judaism who cannot have felt any surprise "'hen a prophet appeared: John the Baptist and Jesus were IZ~iled without further ado as prophets, and the imminent jam'-turn of ancient prophets was an article of faith.' From its "kkrliest awakening, then, Christian prophecy was no novelty, "hen formally considered, but a phenomenon which readily coordinated itself with similar contemporary phenomena in Judaism. In both cases, too, the high value attached to the prophets follows as a matter of course, since they are the voice of God; recognized as genuine prophets, they possess an absolute authority in their preaching and counsels. They were not
\1/Cp. Josephus' War, i. 3. 5, ii. 7. 3, 8. 12 ; Antiq., xiii. 11. 2, xv. 10. 5, 3. 3.
\2/ Acts xxi. 38 ; Joseph., Antiq.,xx. 8. 6 ; War, ii. 13. 5.
\3/ War, iii. 8. 9 ; cp. Suet., Vespaò.,
v.,
and Die Cass., lxvi. 1.
\4/ Cp. Hadrian, EA.
ad
Servian. (Vopisc., Saturn., viii.). -One cannot, of
course,
\5/Only it is quite true that
the Sadducees would have nothing to do with
THE CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES
333
merely deemed capable of
miracles, but even expected to perform them. • It even seemed credible
that a prophet could rise front the dead by the power of God ; Herod
and a
section of the people were quite of opinion that Jesus was John the
Baptist redivivns (see also Rev. xi. 11).\1/
[[333b]] book of Daniel
was no longer placed among the prophets, and the later apocalypses were
no
longer admitted at all into the canon. Josephus is undoubtedly echoing
a widely
spread opinion when he maintains that the "succession of the
prophets"
is at an end (Apion., i.
8 ; cp. also Euseb,, HE., iii. 10. 4 : "From the time of Artaxerxes to our own
day
all the events have been recorded, but they do not merit the same
confidence as
we repose in the events that preceded them, since there has not been
during
this time an exact succession of prophets "-arrb aE 'Aprá{o'p~ou
'pEXpt To"u Ká9' i;µaò
Xpovou yy~ypai rát /Ay EKRQTá, irßorews a'
ï6X
6,U0ßás
*tß(Vrá{ TOTS 9rpï áõTMí, ala Tï µ•I yep"'Oai
T1/Y
TOIY s-pï959gTWv aKpr$it
siasoX$v). Julian, c. Christ.,
198 C : Tb aap' 'E6páßois
[apour;Tucbv FíEVpAa]
dur Aoaev ("the prophetic spirit
failed among the Hebrews"). But although the line of the
"canonical" prophets had been broken off before the appearance of
Jesus, prophecy need not therefore have been extinguished.
\1/ The saying of
Jesus, that all the prophets and the law prophesied until John (Matt.
xi. 13),
is very remarkable (see below) ; he appears to have been thinking of
the
cessation of prophecy, probably owing to the nearness of the end. But
the word
also admits of an interpretation which does not contemplate the
cessation of
prophecy.
Qyáai)oetò ws K6pr)v
Tov" n¢OáA,
ou" oov at(íTa T6í AáAoih',cL oot Tav A6yov Kup(oï, +vnoOJOT
,,4'pav Kp(o'Ews YVKTas Kal
i)µlpas: (" Thou shalt love
as the apple of
w=hine eye everyone who
speaks to thee the word of the Lord ; night and day shalt -hou remember
the day
of judgment ").
\4/ The author of Hebrews also depicts the hyocµevot more closely, thus : ofTtves
--~_ 'AuAgvav 5 sIv Tl,v A6yov TOO Oeoi (xiii. 7). The expression ityovµevot or ,rponyo6
~EVOt (see also IIeb. xiii. 17),
which had a special vogue in the Roman church,
[[335b]] although
it is not unexampled elsewhere, did not become a technical expression
in the
primitive age ; consequently it is often impossible to ascertain in any
given
se who are meant by it, whether bishops or teachers.
\1/ According to
chap. xv.,
bishops and deacons belong to the second class, in so far as they take
the
place of prophets and teachers in the work of edifying the church by
means of
oral instruction.
Sririt. 'A¢op(aáre 3,7 µo4 ,- s'
Bápvafav Kul UvAov els Tï itpyov b wpooKJKAnµát
Jro6s,
Says the
Spirit. The envoys thus act simply as executive organs of the Spirit.
apayyfAßav aápáT(OEµa(
&rot, TiKYOV Tt/t6OEe, Kard Télt apoáyotfoUs &l o•tt wpotp'!/TEßas
and in iv. 14, the following:
pa) $µJAet
ToiU 8Y vol XepßvµáToò, 9 ES68,1 Tot Sttl r)re(ar [ftET&
k'x,8icrswt TWY Xetpiov TOO 9rpev,BOTep(oul.
336
The prophets were
authenticated by what they delivered in the form of messages from the
holy
Spirit, in so far as these addresses proved spiritually effective. But
it is
impossible to determine exactly how people were recognized as teachers.
One
clue seems visible, however, in Jas. iii. 1, where we read:.
/zq vrOAAo*é & as-KaAOL yivea-9e,CWOOTes o"Tt ,tcei~ov Kpiµa ArfµtPoµe8a.
From this it follows that to become a
teacher was
a matter of personal choice-based, of course, upon the individual's
consciousness
of possessing a charisma. The teacher also ranked as one who had
received the
holy Spirit r for his calling;, whether lie was a genuine teacher (Did.,
xiii.
2) or not, was a matter which, like the genuineness of the prophets (Did.,
xi. 11, xiii. 1), had to be decided by the churches. Yet they
merely
verified the existence of a divine commission ; they did not in the
slightest
degree confer any office by their action. As a rule, the special and
onerous
duties which apostles and prophets had to discharge (see below) formed
a
natural barrier against the intrusion of a crowd of interlopers into
the office
of the preacher or the missionary.
(2) The distinction
of "apostles,
prophets, and
teachers" is ver/ old, and was common in the earliest period of the
church. The author of the Didache presupposes that apostles,
prophets, and
teachers were known to all the churches. In xi. 7 he specially mentions
prophets; in xii. 3 f. he names apostles and prophets, conjoining in
xiii. 1-Q
and xvi. 1-2 prophets and teachers (never apostles and teachers :
unlike
Hermas). The inference is that although this order-" apostles,
prophets,
and teachers "-was before his mind, the prophets and apostles formed in
certain aspects a category by themselves, while in other aspects the
prophets
had to be ranked with the teachers (see below). This order is identical
with
that of Paul (1 Cor. xii. 28), so that its origin is to be pushed back
to the
sixth decade of the first century ; in fact, it goes back to a still
earlier
apostles and teachers :
" They taught the word of God soberly and purely .... even as also they had received the holy Spirit
" (S,Sdlávres asµviò Ká)
&yviò Tïv
Ad7ov roi 8 *6 . . . . KáOWr Kál rapEAáPOV Tï ,rvEi,µá Tb Syloy).
[[337]] period, for in saying ous 1A66 €OETO o Oeoc ev 7-1- sKKArlO'L(L 7rpWrov
alrocrTaAour, K.T.A., Paul is thinking
without
doubt of some arrangement in the church which held good among Jewish
Christian
communities founded apart from his co-operation, no less than among.
the
communities of
A century may have
elapsed between the event recorded in Acts xiii. I f. and the final editing of the
Didache. But intermediate
stages are not lacking. First, we have the evidence of l Cor: (xii.;
28),3
with two witnesseses besides in Ephesians (whose
\1/On a temporary visit. One of them, Agabus,
was
permanently resident in v about fifteen years later,
but journeyed to meet Paul at C.Tsarea in order to bring him
a piece of prophetic-information (Acts xxi. ro f.).
\2/ From the particles employed
in the passage, it is probable that Barnabas, S'meon, and Lucius were
the
prophets, while Manien and Saul were the teachers. One prophet and one
teacher
were thus despatched as apostles. As the older man, Barnabas at first
took the
lead (his prophetic gift' may be gathered from the name
gned
to him, "Barnabas"=uéïò ,rapaKxfjoewò [Acts iv. 36); for in i Cor.
iv. 3 we read, 6 apovpfTevwv av8p(6ro,ò Xáxei ,rápdxxgacv).
the apostles,
prophets, and
teachers are enumerated in order with ,rp&Tov,
rrepoe, and rptrov.
The conclusion is that the
apostolate, the prophetic office
speaking with tongues), and teaching were the only offices which made
their
occupants persons of rank in the church, whilst the Suvdµ.is, tdµara, avTéxit 4 is,
sc x., conferred
no special standing on those who were -gifted with such
charis-
338
[[339]] collocation) of the
former. The difference between the author of Ephesians and the author
of the
Didache on these points, however, ceases to have any significance when
one
observes two things : (a) first, that even the latter places the 7ðot,uevec (E7ðiawo7ðol) .
of the
individual church side by side with the teachers, and seeks to have
like honour
paid to them (xv. 1-2) ; and secondly (h), that he makes the permanent
domicile
of teachers in an individual church (xiii. 2) the rule, as opposed to
any
special appointment (whereas, with regard to prophets, domicile would
appear,
from xiii. 1, to have been the exception). I t is certainly obvious
that the
Didache's arrangement approaches more nearly than that of Ephesians to
the
arrangement given by Paul in Corinthians, but it would be more than
hasty to
conclude that the Didache must therefore be older than the former
epistle. We
have already seen that the juxtaposition of the' narrower conception of
the
apostolate with the broader is very early, and that the latter, instead
of
being simply dropped, kept pace for a time with the former.
Furthermore, it
must be borne in mind that passages like Acts xiii. 1, xi. 27, xxi. 10,
etc., prove
that although the prophets, and especially
the teachers, had to serve the whole church with their gifts, they
could
possess, even in the earliest age, a permanent residence and also
membership of a definite community, either
permanently or for a considerable length of time. Hence at an early
riod they could be viewed
in this particular light, without prejudice
to their
function as teachers who were assigned to the church in general.
\1/ In Sin'. ix. I5. 4a Old
Testament prophets are meant.
\2/ Cp.
Sins., ix. 15, 4b: of 8? µ' harso'TOAoi
Kál St&L rKaAot TOP KnpvypaToò Tov" tot Tog
èEOV
(" the forty are apbstles and teachers of the preaching of the Son of God ") ; 16. 5 :
Of a7r6óTOAO1
Kál Of
E18dO'KaXO1 Of Knpv{aYTES TT élVOpa TOO
uiou TOU esov
(" the
apostles and teachers who preached the name of the Son of God");
2:.aTJ0`ToXï1
Kál &,
4óKáXot of Knpt ayres Els 9AOY
T?!V K60-14ïí Kál Of
S:SCQaVTEò
µva"a: Kál ayV1Z9 Tov Adyoi Tog Kupßou ("apostles and teachers
who preached to
340
Hermas comes forward in
the role of prophet, as his book contains one large section (Mand.
xi.)
dealing expressly with false and genuine prophets, and finally as the
vocation
of the genuine prophet is more forcibly emphasized in I-Iermas than in any other
early Christian writing and presupposed to be universal, the absence of
any
mention of the prophet in the "hierarchy" of Herman must be held to
have been deliberate. In short, Herman passed over the prophets
because he
reckoned himself one of
them. If this inference be true' we are
justified in supplying
"prophets" wherever Herman names "apostles and teachers,"
so that he too becomes an indirect witness to the threefold group of
"apostles, prophets, teachers." a In that case the conception expounded
in the ninth
similitude of the "Shepherd" is exactly parallel to that of the man
who wrote the Didache. Apostles (prophets) and teachers are the
preachers
appointed by God to establish the spiritual life of the churches; next
to them
come (chapters xxv.-xxvii.) the bishops and deacons.3
On the
other hand, the author alters this order in Vis., III, v. 1, where
[[340b]] all the world, and taught
soberly and, purely the word of the Lord"). Vis., III. v. x. (see below) is
also relevant in this connection. Elsewhere the collocation of " drrro?u,ò, ä°&róêáXoò" occurs only in the Pastoral
epistles (i Tim. ii. ',' 2 'nor.
i. ii); but these passages prove nothing, as Paul either is or is meant
to be
the speaker.
\1/Lietzmann
(Goitnzg. Gelehrte Anz., 1905,
vi. p. 486)
proposes another explanation: "Apostles and teachers belong to the
past
generationn for Hernias; he recognises a prophetic office also, but
only in the
Old Testament (Sinn., ix,
15. 4). lie does
occupy himself largely with the activities of the true
prophet, and feels he is one himself; but he conceives this 1rpo~f'wE°v as a private activity which
God's equipment renders possible, but which lacks any official
character. So
with his censor in the Muratorian Fragment." Perhaps this is the right
explanation of the difficulty. But can Herman have really estimated the
prophets like the Muratorian Fragmentist ?
\2/ Hermas, like
the author of the Didacls, knows nothing about "evangelists" as
distinguished from "apostles"; he, too, uses the term ''apostle"
in its wider sense (see above, p. 326).
\3/ In conformity with the
standpoint implied in the parable, the order is reversed in chapters
xxvi.-xxvii. ; for t}ie proper order, see Vie., III. v. s.
\4/ "The squared white
stones that fit together in their joints, are the apostles and bishops
and
teachers and deacons who walked after the holiness of God and acted as
bishops,
teachers, and deacons, purely and soberly for the elect of God. Some
have
already fallen asleep, and others are still living."
[[341]]
(add
vast wpoöÑçTae)
Kat e7rLcrKo'lroL vat & aoKaXoL
OCOU, of /Lw
KCKoL/L7J/J.w0L,
of äÑ~ ~Te wTes• According to the
author of the Didache also, the rio-Ico7ðot and &uvovo~ are to
be added to the re?ðo-ToXo1,, 7ðpo(,qTat,
and 818ao-KctXoL, but the
difference between the
two writers is that I-Iermas has put the bishops, just as the author of
Ephesians has put the rorueu€c,
before the teachers.
The reasons for this are
unknown to us ; all we can make out is that at this point also
the
actual organization of the individual communities had already modified
the
conception of the organization of the collective church which Hernias
shared
with the author of the Didache.'
Well then ;
one early source of Acts, Paul, 1-lernias, and the author of the
Didache all
attest the fact that in the earliest Christian churches "those who
spoke
the word of God" (the
XuXowres Toil AJyov ToU O€ov) occupied the highest
position,2 and that they were subdivided into
apostles, prophets, and
teachers. They also bear evidence to the fact that these apostles
prophets, and
teachers were not esteemed as officials of an mdividual community, but
were honoured
as preachers who had been appointed by God and assigned to the church as
a
whole. The
Fimmally, we have to consider more precisely the bearings of this conclusion, viz., that, to judge front the consistent testimony of the earliest records, the apostles, prophets, and teachers were allotted and belonged, not to any individual community, but to the church as a whole. By means of this feature Christendom
\1/ It
is to be observed,
moreover, that Sinn, ix. speaks of apostles and teachers as of
a bygone
generation, whilst Vie, iii,
declares that one section of the whole group have already fallen
asleep, while
the rest are still alive. We cannot, however, go into any further
detail upon
the important conceptions of licrinas.
\2/ So, too, the author of Hebrews. Compare also
x Pet,
iv. i i : of rnò
rò Xdyrá Or,? - €Y Ta Iráêse€?,
i,ò iaxioò +tò xop'rs'
4 èeds [a passage which illustrates
tire irarrative in Acts vi.].
342
possessed,
amid all its scattered fragments, a certain cohesion and a bond of
unity which
has often been underestimated. These apostles and prophets, wandering
from
place to place, and received by every community with the utmost
respect, serve
to explain how the development of the church in different provinces and
under
very different conditions could preserve, as it did, such a degree of
homogeneity. Nor have they left their traces merely in the scanty
records,
where little but their nanies are mentioned, and where witness is borne
to the
respect in which they were held. In a far higher degree their
self-expression
appears throughout a whole genre of early Christian
literature, namely, the
so-called catholic, epistles and writings. It is impossible to
understand
the origin, spread, and vogue of a literary genre so peculiar
and in
istasty respects so enigmatic, unless one correlates it with what is
known of
the early Christian" apostles, prophets, and teachers." When one
considers that these mete were set by God within the clrurcla-i.e.,
in
Christendom as a whole, and not in any individual community, their
calling
being meant for the church collective – it becomes obvious
that the
so-called catholic epistles and writings, addressed to the whole of
Christendom,
forum a genre in literature which corresponds to these
officials, and
which must have arisen at a comparatively early period. An epistle like
that of
James, addressed to the twelve tribes of the dispei,,ion," with its
prophetic passages (iv.-v.), its injunctions uttered even to presbyters
(v.
14), and its emphatic assertions (v. 15 f.), this epistle, which cannot
have
come from the apostle James himself, becomes intelligible so soon as we
think
of the wandering prophets who, conscious of a divine calling which led
them to
all Christendom, felt themselves bound to serve the church as a whole.
We can
well understand how catholic epistles must have won great prestige,
evems
although they were not originally distinguished by the name of aimy of
the twelve
apostles.'
\1/This period, of
course, was past and gone, when one of the charges levelled at the
Montanist
Themison was that he had written a catholic epistle and thus invaded
the
prerogative of the original apostles : see Apollonius (in Euseb., H.
E., 13.
5)-p(owy *åôüAìçoe,
/upov,a€yoò TI,,! /1rdoTïAo,, êá8oXéê;í
Two
(TYPTá(á'J.iEyoò r',rorroidjí KOTSIXEw
T,obò /JEiYoV
áeon
rrE,rLoT€uêdTáò
("Thentison ventured, in imitation of the
apostles, to compose a catholic epistle for the instruction of people
whose
faith was better than his own ").
[[343]] Behind
these epistles stood the teachers called by God, who were to be
reverenced like
the Lord hinsself. It would lead us too afar afield to
follow up this view, but one may refer to the circulation and
importance of
certain "catholic" epistles throughout the churches, and to the fact
that they determined the development of Christianity in the primitive
period
hardly less than the l'auline epistles. During the closing decades of
the first
century, and at the opening of the second, the extraordinary activity
of these
apostles, prophets, or teachers left a lasting memorial of itself in
the
"catholic" writings ; to which we must add other productions like the
" Shepherd" of Hernmas, composed by an author of whortm we know nothing
except the fact that his revelations were to be communicated to all the churches. He is really not a Roman prophet
; being a prophet, he is a teacher for Christendom as a whole.
It has been remarked, not untruly, that
Christendom
came to have church officials distinct from
local officials of the coinimmunities-only after the episcopate had
been
explained as an organization intended to perpetuate the apostolate in
such a
way that every bishop was held, not simply to occupy an office iii the
particular community, but to rank as a bishop of the catholic church
(and, in
this sense, to be a follower of the apostles). This observation is
correct. But
it has to be supplemented by the following consideration, that in the
earliest
age special forms of organization did arise which in one aspect
afford
an analogy to ecclesiastical office in later Catholicism. For "those
who
spoke the word of God" (the XaXo~~vTes TOP Xo'yov To U e€o~) were
catholic teachers KaXot
icaOoXm#coi).' Yet
\1/ I shall at this point put together the sources which prove the
threefold group.
(i) The XáAovg,råò rh' Xo'7ov TO,! O~o~ (and they alone at
first,it would
appear; i.e., apostles, prophets, and teachers) are the *ç7OL woL or
i- rgo7/a€yot in the churches; this follows from (a) Did., iv.
I,
xi. 3 f., xiii., xv. J-2, when taken together ; also (b) from
Heb. xiii. 7, 17, 24, where
the *7oI Evot are expressly described as AáXoh'-r ò rh'
ëdyov TO, èåoi ;
probably (e) from Clem. Rom., i. 3, xxi. 6 ; (d) from Acts
xv. 22, 32, where the same
persons are called *çãoý rrvot and then Tpoö*çTáL
; and (e) from the " Shepherd" of Hermas.
(2) Apostles, prophets, and teachers : cp. Paul (1 Cor. xii. 28 f., where he tacks on pE,r, Xap(auárá is/L rwí, c íTtAi/EI1, su$€pvço eLò, ywç yAwo-s&'). When the fathers allude to this passage during later centuries, they do so as if the threefold group still held its own, oblivious often of the presence of the hierarchy. Novatian, after speaking of the apostles who had been comforted by the Paraclete,
[[continue with 344- ]]