conscious antagonism to the new religion which had spread from
Judea, and was already threatening the conquest of the Graeco-Roman
world, and also to the Gnostic systems (see Gnosticism);
nor, finally, that it furnished the chief theoretical support in the
last desperate struggle that was made under Julian to retain
the old polytheistic worship.
B. Christianity and Medieval Ethics.—In the present article we are not concerned with the origin of the Christian religion, nor with its outward history. Nor have we to consider the special doctrines that have formed the bond of union of the Christian communities except in their ethical aspect, their bearing on the systematization of human aims and activities. This aspect, however, must necessarily be prominent in discussing Christianity, which cannot be adequately treated merely as a system of theological beliefs divinely revealed, and special observances divinely sanctioned; for it claims to regulate the whole man, in all departments of his existence. It was not till the 4th century A.D. that the first attempt was made to offer a systematic exposition of Christian morality; and nine centuries more had passed away before a genuinely philosophic intellect, trained by a full study of Aristotle, undertook to give complete scientific form to the ethical doctrine of the Catholic church. Before, however, we take a brief survey of the progress of systematic ethics from Ambrose to Thomas Aquinas, it may be well to examine the chief features of the new moral consciousness that had spread through Graeco-Roman civilization, and was awaiting philosophic synthesis. It will be convenient to consider first the new form or universal characteristics of Christian morality, and afterwards to note the chief points in the matter or particulars of duty and virtue which received development or emphasis from the new religion.
The first point to be noticed is the new conception of morality as the positive law of a theocratic community possessing a written code imposed by divine revelation, and sanctioned by divine promises and threatenings. It is true that we find in ancient thought, from Socrates Christian and Jewish “law of God.” downwards, the notion of a law of God, eternal and immutable, partly expressed and partly obscured by the shifting codes and customs of actual human societies. But the sanctions of this law were vaguely and, for the most part, feebly imagined; its principles were essentially unwritten, and thus referred not to the external will of an Almighty Being who claimed unquestioning submission, but rather to the reason that gods and men shared, by the exercise of which alone they could be adequately known and defined. Hence, even if the notion of law had been more prominent than it was in ancient ethical thought, it could never have led to a juridical, as distinct from a philosophical, treatment of morality. In Christianity, on the other hand, we early find that the method of moralists determining right conduct is to a great extent analogous to that of jurisconsults interpreting a code. It is assumed that divine commands have been implicitly given for all occasions of life, and that they are to be ascertained in particular cases by interpretation of the general rules obtained from texts of scripture, and by inference from scriptural examples. This juridical method descended naturally from the Jewish theocracy, of which Christendom was a universalization. Moral insight, in the view of the most thoughtful Jews of the age immediately preceding Christianity, was conceived as knowledge of a divine code, emanating from an authority external to human reason which had only the function of interpreting and applying its rules. This law was derived partly from Moses, partly from the utterances of the later prophets, partly from oral tradition and from the commentaries and supplementary maxims of generations of students. Christianity inherited the notion of a written divine code acknowledged as such by the “true Israel”—now potentially including the whole of mankind, or at least the chosen of all nations,—on the sincere acceptance of which the Christian’s share of the divine promises to Israel depended. And though the ceremonial part of the old Hebrew code was altogether rejected, and with it all the supplementary jurisprudence resting on tradition and erudite commentary, still God’s law was believed to be contained in the sacred books of the Jews, supplemented by the teaching of Christ and his apostles. By the recognition of this law the church was constituted as an ordered community, essentially distinct from the State; the distinction between the two was emphasized by the withdrawal of the early Christians from civic life, to avoid the performance of idolatrous ceremonies imposed as official expressions of loyalty, and by the persecutions which they had to endure, when the spread of an association apparently so hostile to the framework of ancient society had at length alarmed the imperial government. Nor was the distinction obliterated by the recognition of Christianity as the state religion under Constantine.
Thus the jural form in which morality was conceived only emphasized the fundamental difference between it and the laws of the state. The ultimate sanctions of the moral code were the infinite rewards and punishments awaiting the immortal soul hereafter; but the church early felt the necessity of withdrawing the privileges of membership from apostates and allowing them to be gradually regained only by a solemn ceremonial expressive of repentance, protracted through several years. This formal and regulated “penitence” was extended from apostasy to other grave—or, as they were subsequently called, “deadly”—sins; while for minor offences all Christians were called upon to express contrition by fasting and abstinence from ordinarily permitted pleasures, as well as verbally in public and private devotions. “Excommunication” and “penance” thus came to be temporal ecclesiastical sanctions of the moral law. As the graduation of these sanctions naturally became more minute, a correspondingly detailed classification of offences was rendered necessary, and thus a system of ecclesiastical jurisprudence was gradually produced, somewhat analogous to that of Judaism. At the same time this tendency to make prominent a scheme of external duties has always been counteracted in Christianity by the remembrance of its original antithesis to Jewish legalism. We find that this antithesis, as exaggerated by some of the Gnostic sects of the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D., led, not merely to theoretical antinomianism, but even (if the charges of their orthodox opponents are not entirely to be discredited) to gross immorality of conduct. A similar tendency has shown itself at other periods of church history. And though such antinomianism has always been sternly repudiated by the moral consciousness of Christendom, it has never been forgotten that “inwardness,” rightness of heart or spirit, is the pre-eminent characteristic of Christian goodness. It must not, of course, be supposed that the need of something more than mere fulfilment of external duty was ignored even by the later Judaism. Rabbinic erudition could not forget the repression of vicious desires in the tenth commandment, the stress laid in Deuteronomy on the necessity of service to God, or the inculcation by later prophets of humility and faith. “The real and only Pharisee,” says the Talmud, “is he who does the will of his Father because he loves Him.” But it remains true that the contrast with the “righteousness of the scribes and pharisees” has always served to mark the requirement of “inwardness” as a distinctive feature of the Christian code—an inwardness not merely negative, tending to the repression of vicious desires as well as vicious acts, but also involving a positive rectitude of the inner state of the soul.
In this aspect Christianity invites comparison with Stoicism, and indeed with pagan ethical philosophy generally, if we except the hedonistic schools. Rightness of purpose, preference of virtue for its own sake, suppression of vicious desires, were made essential points by the Christian and Pagan inwardness. Aristotelians, who attached the most importance to outward circumstances in their view of virtue, no less than by the Stoics, to whom all outward things were indifferent. The fundamental differences between pagan and Christian ethics depend not on any difference in the value set on rightness of heart, but on different views of the essential form or conditions of this inward rightness. In neither case is it presented purely and simply as moral rectitude. By the pagan philosophers it was always conceived under the form of Knowledge or Wisdom,
