THE PREFACE HE attention of scholars has lately been directed afresh to the subject of the Agapé by the translation of the Canons of Hippolytus, and of The Testament of our Lord, and quite recently, by the publication by Dr Hauler, from the Verona palimpsest, of the Latin Didascalia, and the Egyptian Church Order (Canonum Reliquia), of which the one lies behind, and the other is also-but less closely-related to the Apostolic Constitutions. The present investigation does not claim to have added largely to what was already known on the subject. The Agapé has long been regarded as, if not, like Mary Queen of Scots, "the eternal enigma of history," at least one of the obscurest of problems, and I do not profess to have solved it. Indeed it is very doubtful if we have the materials for its complete solution even now after these fresh discoveries. All that has been attempted is to bring together such illustrative sources as are available in heathen and Jewish literature, to pass under review the various references or allusions to the Agapé in the New Testament, and the Fathers, and to compare the extant "Ordinances" on the subject with each other. This has never, so far as I am aware, been at all fully done before. Bingham's, Binterim's, Drescher's, and T. Harnack's contributions to the subject are all valuable, but none of them have been brought up to date. Even what is here attempted leaves room for a more thoroughly critical account of the matter; and it is certain to be objected to by some, as following traditional lines of interpretation too closely; but even so independent a critic of early Christian literature as Dr Rendel Harris has remarked with reason that "catholic traditions have a remarkable way of vindicating themselves." One of the most important questions in this investigation seems to be what was the determining factor in the apparent variety of early Christian practice with regard to the Agapé. We have to account, e.g., for the silence as to this rite of second-century writers in Rome and Gaul, and the emphasis of second-century or later writers in North Africa, Antioch, and Alexandria. Some take this to support their theory of the original identity as distinct from mere co-existence-of the Eucharist with the common meals, or the development of the Eucharist out of the common meal. It seems to me that, as I have stated at more length later on, it would not be easy to prove that such silence implies non-existence in the case of a custom, which was so obviously consonant both with Christian teaching, and with Jewish and heathen practice as the Agapé, and in the face of the statements of Tertullian, e.g., as to this and other Christian usages-statements which have an obviously representative ring about them, and which must stand or fall together. To my mind it is clear that it was the Roman law which to a very large extent regulated Christian practice in this respect, and that this law was administered with varying strictness in different parts of the Empire. But when this has been said, we are still face to face with a very difficult question, viz., the whole relation of early Christianity to the Roman Government. On this subject I have only to add here to what I have said elsewhere (Appendix II.), that such unworthy researches as I have been able to make have tended to confirm the interesting discoveries of Professor W. M. Ramsay. "When Christianity," he1 says, "established itself amidst an alien society, it did not immediately remake the whole life and manners of its converts. They continued to live in many respects as before; they were characterised by most of the habits, and some of the faults of their old life and of the society in which they lived. . . . Christians were the dominant class in most Phrygian cities after 200. They registered themselves as collegia tenuiorum, and accommodated themselves in all possible ways to the Roman law. Ideas and objects strictly Christian were indicated by terms of ordinary pagan use, or terms unknown to the vulgar. . . . And so we are forced to look for hidden meanings in early Christian epigraphy." Here we have a clue by which it may be hoped that, as time goes on, more will be discovered as to early Christian social organisation, including the Agapé. In the meantime, as regards the earlier use of the Agapé, I venture to hold rather with Bishop Lightfoot than with those who think that all is quite dark with regard to the relation of the Eucharist to the Agapé up to the middle or 1 Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, i. 119 ff. |