THE ANTE-NICENE PERIOD.

It forms a natural transition from the Biblical revelation to the enquiry how the Christian consciousness has interpreted the Biblical data.

' No Christian doctrine, as it is now expressed, can be rightly understood without some knowledge of the history of Christian thought. The Christianity of the present day has not been evolved directly out of the New Testament, but is the product of the gradual assimilation of the original deposit by a long succession of Christian generations.'1

Opinions on the relation of the Spirit to the Church are so different, that it becomes essential to study with care the course and development of Christian thought and life. It is significant that so many movements in Christian history, which may be said to have developed into ' heresies,' have arisen in connection with the Holy Spirit. This fact alone makes it imperative to enquire as to the relation of Christian doctrine and history to the outstanding teaching of the Bible.

It is impossible, and in some respects unnecessary, to go into detail. For the purpose of arriving at true ideas on the subject, it seems better to concentrate on the chief eras of Church History. The progress of Christian thought through the centuries seems to be characterised by the six landmarks indicated in these chapters.

Sub-Apostolic Christianity was characterised by a real Christian experience without much reflection on what was involved in that experience. The remarkable difference between the leading ideas of the New Testament and the thought of the sub-Apostolic age is observed by all writers. As Swete says, ' The spiritual giants of the Apostolic age are succeeded by men of lower stature and poorer capacity.'2

' From such literature of the next age within the Church as has been preserved to us, we find results that are sufficiently remarkable; results which go to shew that the deepest and most ethical teaching, that which we cherish most now, that contained in Pauline and Johannine writings, is just that which is the least prominent.'3

In Clement of Rome and Ignatius the teaching seems to be solely personal and experimental, and only indirectly doctrinal, and the Shepherd of Hernias has the fullest of references to the Spirit of God.4 But the fact that the threefold name of Father, Son, and Spirit was used in worship shows that implicitly and in practice the Deity and Personality of the Spirit were acknowledged. The experience of the Spirit was sufficient for the present.

' There was as yet no formal theology of the Spirit and no effort to create it; nor was there any conscious heresy. But the presence of the Spirit in the Body of Christ was recognised on all hands as an acknowledged fact of the Christian life.'5

When we turn to the Apologists, we become conscious of the fact that the Logos doctrine occupies the first place, and that which the New Testament attributes to the Holy Spirit is usually connected with the Logos.

' The Greek apologists of the second century were so fully occupied with the endeavour to shew that the philosophical conception of a θεὸς λόγος was realised in the Person of the historical Christ, that they paid comparatively little attention to the doctrine of the Holy Ghost, and even ascribed to the Son operations and offices which the later thought of the Church referred to the Spirit of God.'6

' The Holy Spirit falls into the background in the theology, because it had not yet allied itself with any of the ruling ideas of the philosophy of the times; and that factor of Christian experience which assumed the form of the Logos doctrine takes the supreme place.'7

' Those of the Apologists who were philosophers found it easier to develop the doctrine of the Logos than that of the Holy Spirit.'8

But it is quite clear that this immaturity of thought on the question of the Holy Spirit does not show any indication of error in experience, for,

' immature as the doctrinal language of the Church still was, no apologetic writer of the second century spoke of the Spirit of God as one of the creatures.'9

As in other cases, so here, it was heresy that compelled the Church to pay closer attention to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Gnosticism played some part in this process. Bishop Moule considers that the Gnostic systems bear a curious testimony to belief in the Personality of the Holy Spirit, since their ' Holy Spirit ' is as personal as their ' Christ,' though ' their theory is indeed wholly distorted from the Scripture view.'10 Swete, however, remarks that, while the Gnostics who accepted the Gospels could not ignore the subject,

' it was not easy for Gnosticism to find a place in any of its systems for such a conception of the Holy Spirit as the Gospels present; the attempt was made in various ways, but never satisfactorily. And though most of the Gnostic systems attached importance to the work of the Spirit, both in Baptism and in life, their view of the spiritual life led them to seek the sphere of His operations in the intellect rather than in the moral nature of man. For this reason the whole tone of Gnostic teaching on the Spirit differs widely from that of Catholic Christians in the second and third centuries.'11

It was in Montanism that the subject came more prominently into notice, and there seems no doubt that the original impetus of this movement was a reaction in favour of the recognition of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in a Church that was already tending to become too rigid in its intellectual conceptions and ecclesiastical organisation.

' For Tertullian, however, the interest of Montanism lay chiefly in the assurance which the New Prophecy seemed to give that the Holy Spirit was still teaching the Church. He is careful to insist that though the movement was a new one, the Spirit was none other than the Paraclete Who had been promised and already sent; and that His teaching through the Montanist prophets was not essentially new.'12

' For Tertullian, and probably for many of its adherents both in East and West, Montanism stood for a recognition of the active presence of the Paraclete in the Body of Christ, and for a more spiritual and a more ascetic type of Church life than the official churches seemed to offer.'13

Unfortunately the movement developed along extravagant lines; its original beneficent purpose became wholly lost, and it ' exerted no lasting influence over the thought of the Church.'14 But notwithstanding the extremes into which Montanism went, it is also true that

' the obscure prophet of Phrygia had raised the eternal question of the ages. On the one hand, administration and order, the wellbeing of the Church in its collective capacity, the sacred book, the oral voice of the Master, the touch of the vanished hand, the perpetuation as of a bodily presence, some physical chain, as it were, which should bind the generations together, so that they should continue visibly and tangibly to hand on the truth and the life from man to man; and, on the other hand, the freedom of the Spirit and the open heaven of revelation,... the vision by which each soul may see Christ for himself through direct and immediate communion with the Spirit of God — that Spirit Whose testimony within the soul is the supreme authority and ground of certitude. Who takes of the things of Christ and reveals them to men with fresh power and new conviction, Who can at any moment authorize initiations of change and progress which yet do not and cannot break the succession of a continuous life of the Spirit in the Churches, — such were the terms of real issue between Catholicism and Montanism, which still wait, after eighteen centuries, for some larger or final adjustment.'15

Monarchianism also had a very definite bearing on the ante-Nicene doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It was impossible for Christian thought to ignore the relation of the Spirit to the Son in the face of the Christological teaching of the various schools of Monarchianism represented by Paul of Samosata, Praxeas, Noetus, and especially Sabellius, and it is to TertuUian, influenced by Montanism, that we owe the fullest ante-Nicene statement of the Holy Spirit's relation to the Father and the Son.16

The main ante-Nicene writers on this subject are Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen. Of Irenaeus, Swete writes as follows:

' The pneumatology of Irenaeus is a great advance on all earlier Christian teaching outside the canon. He does not use the term " Trinity," but the Father, Son, and Spirit form in his theology a triad which is anterior and external to the creation.... On the mission of the Holy Spirit or the Paraclete he is particularly full and clear.... Irenaeus has on this point caught the inspiration of St. Paul more nearly than any of his predecessors or contemporaries.'17

We have already seen Tertullian's testimony in connection with Montanism and Monarchianism. It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the importance of this writer, who ' lays the foundation of the Catholic doctrine of Divine processions,'18 and who is described as far in advance of Western Christian thought.19 It should be noted in passing that both in the Apologists and in Tertullian the doctrine does not seem to be as yet fully Nicene. The Spirit is Divine, but not eternal.20 While it is true that the tendencies of Alexandria were speculative rather than dogmatic and practical,21 yet it is ' in the writings of Origen we find the first attempt, after Tertullian, at a scientific treatment of the doctrine of the Holy Ghost ';22 and although Origen's daring mind led him into speculations,

' the Church and School of Alexandria in the third century contributed not a little to the clearing and quickening of Christian thought upon the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. If the results are less definite than those which come to us from North Africa, they go deeper, and their scope is less limited. It was by Origen rather than by Tertullian that the way was opened to the fuller discussion of the theology of the Spirit upon which the fourth century entered.'23

But the strongest confirmation of the true doctrine of the Holy Spirit in this non-reflective period is found in connection with the devotional life of the Church. Experience has often proved the best witness to what is in reality doctrinally implicit in the Christian community, and all the evidences we possess of the life of the Church of these days bear unquestioned testimony to the reality of the Holy Spirit of God.

(a) The earliest form of the Apostles' Creed is now acknowledged to date from the middle of the second century, and this is a record of facts rather than a theological interpretation.

(b) Doxologies and other hymns of praise bear the same testimony.

(c) In the ordinance of Baptism the Trinitarian form is found as early as the Didache, and whatever view we may hold as to the association of regeneration with the water, the testimony to the presence and power of the Spirit is unmistakable.

(d) In connection with the Lord's Supper, recent liturgical research goes to show that the earliest form of ' Invocation ' referred not to the elements, but to the communicant, thereby witnessing to an essential adherence to New Testament teaching, which never connects the Holy Spirit with the elements.24 But this ' Invocation ' is sufficient to indicate what the Church of that day thought of the Holy Spirit. On the whole subject there can be no doubt that the devotional life and experience of the Church was the best and most convincing proof of what Christians believed concerning the Holy Spirit.

' The devotional language of the early Church was in fact on the whole in advance of its doctrinal system. Men like Origen still had intellectual difficulties in reference to the relation of the Spirit to the other Persons of the Holy Trinity; but they could nevertheless associate His name in their prayers and praises with those of the Father and the Son. The worship of the Trinity was a fact in the religious life of Christians before it was a dogma of the Church. Dogmatic precision was forced upon the Church by heresy, but the confession and conglorification of the Three Persons arose out of the Christian consciousness, interpreting by its own experience the words of Christ and the Apostles and the primitive rule of faith.' 25

Literature. — Smeaton, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, p. 256; Denio, The Supreme Leader, p. 55; Moule, Outlines of Christian Doctrine, p. 119; Welldon, The Revelation of the Holy Spirit, ch. v.; Swete, Article ' Holy Ghost,' Dictionary of Christian Biography, Vol. III.; Orr, The Progress of Dogma, p. 124; Mansfield College Essays, p. 287; Warfield, Introduction to Kuyper's The Work of the Holy Spirit.

1 Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, p. 4.

2 Swete, op. cit. p. 3.

3 Winstanley, Spirit in the New Testament, p. 156.

4 Swete, Article ' Holy Ghost,' Dictionary of Christian Biography, Vol. III. p. 114.

5 Swete, op. cit. p. 31.

6 Swete, Article ' Holy Ghost,' Dictionary of Christian Biography, Vol. iii. p. 115.

7 T. Rees, ' The Holy Spirit as Wisdom,' Mansfield College Essays, p. 302.

8 Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, p. 48.

9 Swete, ut supra, p. 49.

10 Outlines of Christian Doctrine, p. 147.

11 The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, p. 66.

12 Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, p. 79.

13 Swete, ut supra, p. 83.

14 Swete, Article ' Holy Ghost,' Dictionary of Christian Biography, Vol. III. p. 116.

15 A. V. G. Allen, Christian Institutions, p. 103.

16 Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, p. 107.

17 Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, pp. 92, 93.

18 Swete, Article ' Holy Ghost,' Dictionary of Christian Biography, Vol. III. p. 118.

19 Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, p. 107.

20 Orr, Progress of Dogma, p. 125 f.

21 Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, p. 124.

22 Swete, Article ' Holy Ghost,' Dictionary of Christian Biography, Vol. III. p. 119.

23 Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, p. 143.

24 Maclean, Ancient Church Orders, p. 51; R. W. Woolley, The Liturgy of the Primitive Church; Upton, Outlines of Prayer Book History, pp. 16-19 and refs.

25 Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, p. 159.