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THE

BIBLIOTHECA SACRA,

No. LIX.

AND

BIBLICAL REPOSITORY.

No. XCI.

JULY, 1858.

ARTICLE I.

THE GREEK CHURCH.

BY REV. J. M. MANNING, BOSTON, MASS.

In the year of our Lord 324, if we may follow the authorities quoted by Gibbon, it chanced on a certain night "that Constantine slept within the walls of Byzantium." Amid the dreams of that night he beheld "the tutelar genius of the city, a venerable matron, sinking under the weight of years and infirmities, suddenly transformed into a blooming maid, whom his own hands adorned with all the symbols of imperial greatness." The purpose of the monarch, as the chronicle relates, was formed before he left his couch; and but little more than a decade of years had elapsed, after that nocturnal vision, when the new capital, with its ample walls and blazing palace, its hippodrome, porticos, church of St. Sophia, triumphal arches, royal baths, and works of art gathered out of all the cities in the known world, stood complete on the right bank of the Bosphorus.

It is from the dedication of Constantinople that the history of the Greek church properly starts. Not that it had

1 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Harper's edition), Vol. II. p. 95. VOL. XV. No. 59.

43

become a distinct body at that time; for the final separation between it and the church of Rome did not take place till after the middle of the eleventh century. Nor are we to infer that the elements which gradually became embodied in the Greek church, had no existence before the founding of the Eastern empire. Those elements can be traced back to the first ages of Christianity. Indeed we find them more abundant, and more active, as we approach the time and place of the advent of our Saviour. Not more than one, or possibly two, of the sacred writers were born as far West as the city of Constantine; and from thence it was more than a thousand miles on to the schools of Roman learning. The native genius of those writers, and the training which they received, were purely Oriental. Considering the isolation of nations in that day, we see that they could have been influenced only in a slight degree by Western mind. Their cast of intellect was thoroughly Eastern; and so also were their modes of thinking, and of expressing thought. The type of Christianity which they give us is the Greek, rather than the Latin. Nor is this a point which needs to be established by argument, but simply a fact of history. God chose to reveal himself to man through Oriental symbols, and beneath the Oriental heavens. He gave us the divine word in an Asiatic rather than a European mould. It was no Western star, but "the star of the East," that shone upon the birthplace of the Redeemer.

It is true that Christianity, so thoroughly Grecian in its earliest form, was modified somewhat by coming in contact with Roman civilization. Palestine lay in the highway of nations; and they often disputed with each other for its possession. As commerce increased, it became, owing to its central position, a meeting-place for travellers from all parts of the world. It was no unusual thing, in apostolic times, for "Parthians, and Medes, and the dwellers in Mesopota

1 Throughout this Article the word "Oriental" is used in its ecclesiastical sense; and is applied to all those Christians, whether Asiatic or European, who lived amid the influences of Greek rather than Latin culture. The Greeks had become Oriental in the time of Constantine.

mia and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Cretes and Arabians," to be residing at Jerusalem. The missionary labors of the first Christians also, brought them where the Occidental spirit predominated; and that spirit appears, to a certain extent, in some of the writings of Paul. Especially his letter to the Romans has the straight-forward, logical method of the Western mind. Yet even in that the mystical element, so characteristic of Oriental thought, is not wanting; and almost hides the argument, at times, with its gorgeous veil. The writings of John, from first to last, are Eastern. They Ichime in with the strains of the old Hebrew bards and prophets they are rapt, musical, and pensive; showing too much of the lofty seer, and too little of close-linked reasoning, for the Italian intellect of that age. We may trace the same peculiarity in nearly all the teachings of our Saviour. They are not a carefully compacted philosophical system, but living germs of truth. The sayings which fell from the lips of the Son of God, do not suffer, like those of most teachers, when taken out of their first connections. Each one of them had a life of its own; was complete and rounded in itself. The intellectual form which his thoughts took, is associated in our mind with the church of Constantinople, more naturally than with the church of Rome.

The Greek type of Christianity appears in the theological works of the second and third centuries. But few such treatises comparatively were composed in the Latin tongue before the time of Constantine. The great authors of that period

1 We are speaking, in this connection, of intellectual peculiarities simply, which cannot be regarded as affecting the quality of the inspiration at all. According to the dynamical theory of inspiration, so finely stated by Mr. Lee in his recent work, the human element in the Scriptures loses none of its characteristics, in conjunction with the divine element which guides it. It is an evidence of divine wisdom that the writers of the Bible represent so many different classes of mind. Revelation is thus adapted not only to the religious wants, but in a great measure to the mental habits, of all men in all ages of the world. For some wise reason, however, more prominence has been given to Eastern than to Western methods of expressing thought.

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