Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/276

 society now and no earlier." To (i) the writer replies in cc. i.- vii., first bidding the Greek look at his manufactured gods (c. ii.), and convicting the Jews of vain oblations (c. iii.) and ungrateful service (c. iv.) to the Giver of all to all, then (c. v.) portraying the wondrous life of Christians, at home yet strangers everywhere, like the soul in the body of the world (c. vi.), and so (c. vii.) passing from the earthly things to the heavenly to tell how it was God Who implanted the Word by the mission of the Maker of all, sent as an imperial Son, in love, to be sent again as Judge. So the inquirer is answered that the reasons for non-compliance with Hellenism and Judaism are obvious, but the Christians' God is the one God of the Jews, and their religion consists of purity and charity, and was founded by the mission of the Son, Whom God will send again. At this point something has dropped out. The argument may be surmised to have continued after this fashion: "An end of all things is the doctrine of your Greek sages; but the Jews looked for a perpetual earthly kingdom, and when Christ proclaimed a kingdom not of this world, they slew Him, and yet He is not dead, and Christian worship is not to deny Him." For as resumed (c. vii.) after a break in the middle of a sentence, the discourse points to martyrdoms as "signs," not of the return but "of the presence" of the Lord, as though saying, "You see, He is still with us." Then proceeding (c. viii.) to contrast the follies of philosophy with the assurance wrought by the Father's revelation of Himself to faith, he explains (c. ix.) how God waited to shew forth what He had prepared till unrighteousness had been made manifest, and then, when the time came, Himself took our sins and gave His own Son for us and would have us trust Him. So (c. x.) he passes from expounding "on what God Christians rely" to expound "what the love is that they bear one to another," the outcome of their love to Him Who first loved them.

The first two questions of the inquirer are thus answered, and in answering them completely the third question, "What the new institution might be," would be answered along with them; but that answer seems not to be completed before the second break. It could not be complete till it had been carried further than merely saying that "it was God Who implanted the Word," and that He did so "when the time came." "The Word that appeared new" must have been "found old"; and this is the answer that we find in the final fragment (cc. xi. xii.) after the second break. The style has become different. We find ourselves listening to the peroration of a homily, before the withdrawal of the catechumens and the celebration of the mysteries. It does not follow that the final fragment does not belong to the preceding discourse. If Diognetus had shewn his desire for instruction by coming into a Christian assembly, the whole discourse may have been delivered before such an audience as is addressed in the peroration at the close. We are brought into a new region. The satirist of superstition and evangelist of atoning, justifying mercy is succeeded by a mystical believer in a Christ born anew in hearts of saints. The new thing is portrayed as "that which was from the beginning," yet ever new. "This is He that is ever reckoned a Son today." But what it is can be known only by taking up the cross and so coming to be with Christ in Paradise, "Whose tree if thou bearest fruit and if thou choosest thou shalt eat those things that with God are desired."

The loss of intervening matter makes the transition to the new region abrupt and the contrast patent. "The Lord's Passover cometh forth, and, teaching saints, the Word is gladdened." But the course is still straightforward and the guide is not diverse. The style is different only so far as is necessitated by the difference of subject. It exhibits the same anarthrous use of nouns, the same accumulation of clause on clause, not pursued too far; the same unexpected turns at the close of the sentences; the same union of dignity with sweetness, the same blending of Pauline with Johannine teaching; the same persistent subordination of doctrine to life. On these grounds we may venture to differ from the wide consent of critics in imagining a second nameless author.

It is worth noting that an Ambrose, of the consecration of Antioch, is said in a Syriac tradition to have been the third primate of Edessa and the East (Burkitt, Early Eastern Christianity, p. 29). The writer To Greeks and To Diognetus may have been this bringer of Greek Pauline Christianity to the regions beyond Euphrates conquered by Trajan and abandoned by Hadrian, and have been ancestor of the friend of Origen and of the great Milanese archbp. and of the legendary father of King Arthur.

Probably an old copy exhibited three works of Ambrosius—an avowal of Christianity, and answers To Greeks and To Diognetus, each a brave act as well as a solid work, the first now lost, the second a fine sample of a class of controversial works of which samples are numerous, the third, To Diognetus, preserved in fragments only, but unique, not apologetic merely, but catechetical, a portraiture of early Christianity not in its manifestation only, but in its springs, bringing us to the gates of the Paradise of God.

In free allied states like Antioch and Athens avowal of Christianity may have been tolerated when not suffered in Roman or subject regions. In the 2nd cent. the world was not yet all Roman.

The date of the writings may be determined with great probability, not with absolute certainty, except that, if genuine, they cannot be post-Nicene. The picture of the church presented to Diognetus pretty plainly belongs to a date earlier than the accession of Commodus. The chief school of Christian thought would seem still to be at Athens, though on the eve of its transference to Alexandria by Athenagoras. It is among the writings of Tatian, Melito, and Theophilus and the fragments of Apollinaris, Abercius, etc., that these pieces seem most at home. The writer seems to appear in his freshness beside Justin in his ripeness, and to be the meeting-point of the teachings of Justin and Marcion, as he is at the point of departure of Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Origen on the one hand, and Praxeas, Noetus, and Sabellius on the other.