Syncretism

SYNCRETISM. - A universal phenomenon, connected with the most serious religious problems, especially with regard to Judaism and Christianity.

I. PRELIMINARY NOTIONS

1. History of the word

a) Originally "s." meant the temporary union of the Cretans for the purpose of resisting a common enemy (Plutarch, Moralia, ed. Bernardakis, III, 271). b) In the early days of the "Reformation" the term was sometimes used to express the union of the humanists and the "reformed": "You see with what hatred some conspire against belles-lettres — Erasmus wrote to Melanchthon —; it is right that we too should syncretize: aequum est nos quoque συγχρῆξαυ" (Melanchthon, in Corpus Reformatorum, I, 78). c) In the 17th century, the term, as if it derived from κεράννυμι, denotes the union proclaimed by the Protestant theologian G. Calixt (1586-1656) and his followers, who maintained that Lutherans, Calvinists and Catholics ought to reach an understanding on certain fundamental articles. Hence long controversies, which led to no result. d) At present, a philosophy that derives suggestions and theses from authors other than its founders is often called "syncretist": neo-Stoicism, neo-Platonism, etc. e) More commonly the term "s." denotes a religious system made up of elements drawn from different cults or different philosophies. Here the term is used in this last sense.

2. Necessary distinctions

To clarify the question it is important to observe that the absorption of foreign elements is, in many respects, the very law not only of physical life, given the task of nourishment, but also of psychic life, given the task of education, study, and the exchange of ideas: the most heated discussions are not for that reason the least useful, at least for minds capable of reflecting with no passion other than the passion for truth. Some absorptions result only in amalgams (συγχράσεις) that are at least temporary, often deleterious, because the organism refuses to assimilate them; others result in syntheses (συνθήσεις); in this case, they not only repair the wear of body or spirit, but also give the vital principle the means to develop its latent energies, its potentialities. Therefore, in judging "plagiarisms" and "derivations" whether between philosophies or between religions, it is inadmissible to limit oneself to noting vague and superficial analogies on one side and the other; inadmissible also to stop at the observation that a religion, for example, did not initially possess this or that rite or dogma, of which the equivalent is noted in another, because the latter may simply have actualized its own potentialities, or in an autonomous manner (explicitation, and not innovation), whence often resemblances that derive from parallel evolutions (pure chance encounters), or under the action of external stimuli (sometimes reciprocal maturation). In short, it is appropriate to distinguish "borrowings" of pure terminology (indispensable for the exchange of ideas in a given epoch); pure and simple "borrowings," or those that involve more or less profound adaptations; borrowings made out of condescension to the taste of the age and concerning capital or accessory points, such as the decorative arts; borrowings made out of competition, with or without modifications, for the purpose of ensuring one's own success, etc. (cf. H. Pinard de la Boullaye, L'étude comparée des religions, II, 3rd ed., Paris 1929, pp. 119-34).

II. S IN PAGAN RELIGIONS

With regard to the pagan religions, critics are unanimous in admitting that, however far back one goes in the course of the centuries, they have exchanged, in a variable manner, beliefs and rites.

This syncretism presents itself under two forms: the one automatic, almost spontaneous and popular, because philosophical reflection plays no appreciable part in it; the other systematic, or reflected, for the opposite reason.

1. Spontaneous syncretism

It is determined by circumstances; contact between religions imposes comparisons and gives rise to contaminations: this happens above all in centers of commercial exchange, in the great markets, in the ports. And it often derives from "mixed marriages"; King Solomon offers us a typical example of this (III Kings 11:1-18). Within the ambit of a single religion, rivalry between independent sanctuaries drives them to appropriate from one another conceptions and practices that meet with the favor of their clients. Wars, and great invasions above all, awaken considerable repercussions. The vanquished are inclined to regard the gods of the victors as superior, or at least as powers with which to reckon, and the latter are induced by political prudence to exercise tolerance and even to capture for the benefit of the ruling class the most splendid functions of the subjugated cults (cf. A. Barth, Les religions de l'Inde, in Oeuvr. compl., I, Paris 1914, p. 142; cf. p. 164; F. Cumont, Les relig. orient., 4th ed., ibid. 1929, pp. 189, 298). Therefore an exact history of syncretism cannot be written without knowledge of the contacts, and often also of the successive crossings, that every ethnic group has undergone.

An example: Islam penetrates into India ca. 1000 A.D.; the Aryans between 1200-1000 B.C.; now, the excavations of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa have demonstrated that they found in the Indus valley a civilization dating back at least to the 3rd millennium, contemporary with that of the Assyro-Babylonians and no less evolved. In the immense peninsula there lived, besides the Dravidians and the Munda (Austro-Asiatic), the archaic populations of the Chenchu, the Reddi, the Baiga, the Bhil, etc., among whom, mixed with a jumble of beliefs and rites that bring them close to polytheism, there is still found the faith in a Supreme Being, creator and moral legislator. The Brahmans, whose religion tended toward formalism and magic, preserved their supremacy by instituting the caste system; they did not, however, forbid participation in the cults of the lower castes, going so far as to make themselves their ministers. Whence the strange amalgam that is Hinduism.

2. Reflected syncretism

The longer the list of gods grew, the more compromises between their cults multiplied and the more the necessity was felt of putting a little order into that chaos. To arrive at this it sufficed to group the gods into families: father, mother, children, etc. This is, in large part, the origin of the triads, ogdoads, and enneads, which are attested to us in a great number of religions. Once the various susceptibilities in play were established, it was nevertheless inevitable that many groups of devotees would organize these families according to their preferences (cf. the general indexes of A. Bertholet [Chantepie de la Saussaye], Lehrbuch, II, Tübingen 1925, p. 722; Enc. of Rel. and Ethics, XIII [1926], p. 612 [index]; P. Tacchi Venturi, Storia delle rel., 3rd ed., II, Turin 1949, p. 837 [index to the entries triads, ogdoads, enneads]).

Another solution made it possible to respect the traditional hierarchies and consisted in assimilating from people to people the gods that had more or less equivalent dignity or attribution (theocrasia) and in explaining allegorically the myths that concerned them (Egyptian, Greek, Roman interpretation; cf. P. Wissowa, Interpretatio romana, in Archiv für Religionswiss., 19 [1916-19], pp. 1-49; K. Prümmer, Religionsgeschichte, Handbuch, Freiburg im Br. 1943 [index VI and VIII, Interpretatio, pp. 885, 901]).

One could, finally, conceive the gods, at least the most notable ones, as different manifestations of a single divinity, adored under different aspects and names (divine polynomy); whence the name of "Pantheus" given to some of them, according to the preferences of the groups, and the creation of symbols expressing this belief (cf. Pantheion, Pantheus, Pantheus, in W. H. Roscher, Ausführlich. Lex., III [1884-86], coll. 1555-57; J. Toutain, Les cultes païens, II, Paris 1920, p. 8 ff., 241 ff.; F. Cumont, Panthea signa, in Daremberg and Saglio, Dict. des antiquités, IV, pp. 314-15). In their turn, numerous thinkers of the Hellenistic age: Plutarch, Celsus, Apuleius of Madaura, Maximus of Tyre, Numenius of Apamea, Porphyry, Iamblichus,

Julian the Apostate, Themistius, Symmachus, Macrobius, etc. concluded on their own account: there can be no single way that leads to the divinity; each person is therefore free to choose his own, and equally free to participate in the different cults, while interpreting them according to his own ideas (cf. the text of the prefect Symmachus concerning the altar of Victory [384 A.D.] in PL 16, 966-71; the reply of St. Ambrose, Ep., 18: ibid., 974-82; the letter of Maximus of Tyre and the reply of St. Augustine, Ep., 16 and 17: ibid. 33, 81-85; the refutation of Porphyry in De civitate Dei, 10, 32: ibid. 41, 312-16).

To reflected or systematic syncretism are to be attributed certain fictitious cults, of brief duration, organized by heads of state; especially the following: the cult of Serapis, established, it seems, by Ptolemy I Soter (323-283 B.C.), cf. G. Lafave, Sérapis, in Daremberg and Saglio, Dict. des antiquités, IV, s. d., 1248-51; Roeder, in Pauly-Wissowa, 2nd series, I (1914), 2394-2426; the cult of "Sol invictus," founded by Aurelian (v.), cf. J. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer, 2nd ed., Munich 1912, pp. 365-68; Groag, Demetrius Aurelianus, in Pauly-Wissowa, V (1905), coll. 1399-1400; Marbach, Sol, ibid., 2nd series, III (1927), coll. 907-13; the synthesis attempted in India by the Muslim monarch Akbar (d. 1605), cf. I. Goldziher, Le dogme et la loi de l'Islam, French trans., Paris 1920, pp. 242-243 (v. AKBAR).

Also manifestly derived from syncretism are: Gnosticism (v. GNOSI) in its many forms, some earlier, others later than Christianity: Hermetism (v.), Manichaeism (v.) and its successors, a multitude of ancient or modern sects, and the fantasies adorned with the name of anthroposophy or theosophy (v.).

III. SYNCRETISM IN ISLAM

Because of its monotheism, this great religion must be classified separately. Its syncretistic character appears from its very origin.

The Bedouins of Arabia still preserve the belief in a supreme Being, Allah Ta'ālā, the god who has always been; (cf. A. Palmieri, Coran, in DThC, III [1908], col. 1732; C. Snouck-Hurgronje, in A. Bertholet, Lehrbuch, I [1925], p. 652). Muhammad's great merit is that he proscribed, in opposition to his own, every idolatrous cult. And that he was led to this by his knowledge of the other two "religions of the book," as he called them, is clearly proved by the analysis of the Qur'an.

"Muhammad knew Judaism and Christianity as well as was possible in the Mecca of his time and shows himself so dependent on these two religions that in fact one hardly encounters in the Qur'an a religious idea that is not derived from them" (Fr. Schwally, Gesch. des Qorāns, 2nd ed., part 2, Leipzig 1919, p. 121); cf. A. Palmieri, art. cit., in DThC, III, coll. 1786-91 (with bibl., col. 1833); D. I. Margoliouth, Muhamedans, in Enc. of Rel. and Eth., IX (1917), pp. 480-83; H. Lammens, Une adaptation arabe du monothéisme sémitique, in Rech. de sc. relig., 7 (1917), pp. 161-86; W. Rudolf, Die Abhängigkeit des Qorāns von Jud. und Christent., Stuttgart 1922 (bibl. pp. vi-viii); T. Andrae, Der Ursprung des I. und des Christent., Uppsala 1926.

After the prophet's disappearance, the difficulties provoked by the interpretation of the Qur'an, the divergent traditions invoked especially by the two great parties of the Sunnis and the Shiites, political rivalries, and the religions and philosophies so different from one another with which, in the course of its expansion, it came into contact (namely: Neoplatonism, and later: Aristotelianism [v. AVERROISMO], the yoga of India, Christian monasticism [v. SŪRISMO]), the inveterate superstitions of Hinduism and those of black Africa, could not fail to provoke the strangest compromises. Some more recent ones are due to the general crisis of "modernism."

IV. THE PROBLEM OF SYNCRETISM WITH REGARD TO THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL AND TO CHRISTIANITY

1. Progressive extension of the debates

From the earliest centuries of the Christian era, certain pagans, for example Celsus and the emperor Julian, claimed to assert that Christianity had drawn extensively on earlier religions. In the 16th century the accusation was renewed by the "Reformation."

And indeed, to justify the abandonment of "papist" beliefs and practices it was enough to present them as so many pagan infiltrations, corrupting the "pure Gospel." Hence a multitude of publications, most of them without any value, all the more so since the ancient religions were, at that time, poorly known. Since the weapon was easy to wield, it was used constantly to authorize ever more serious abandonments, going so far as the dogmas of the divinity of Jesus Christ and of the Trinity. "All works that relate to the history of religions," wrote the rationalist E. Havet, "necessarily arrive at this point" (Le christianisme et ses origines, I, 3rd ed., Paris 1880, p. XXXII). In fact, just as every materialist monism must declare itself for the eternity of the world and for spontaneous generation, so every rationalism, excluding a priori miracles and supernatural revelations, in the biblical sense of the word, must strive to explain by syncretism both what it rejects and what it approves in the religions to which it acknowledges some superiority, or even, in certain respects, a definitive or absolute value.

2. Some principles of solution

a) Clearly a distinction should be made between official religion and popular religion or practices. Let the purest religion be supposed, Newman judiciously observed, but as long as men are men, it is unthinkable that the less educated would not lower it in part to their own level (Letter to Pusey, in Difficulties felt by Anglicans in catholic teaching, II, 2nd ed., London 1910, p. 81); but what right have they to be considered as representatives of it, when it condemns them and seeks to correct them? (cf. St. Augustine, De moribus Ecclesiae, chap. 34, nos. 75-76; PL 32, 1342; Contra Faustum, book 20, chap. 23; ibid. 42, 388).

b) Whether apparent or real, the derivations are far from having the same value: one must after all speak the language of the people one addresses (as we shall see, identical terms can also express notably different realities); one must after all adopt those forms of art that they appreciate, the gestures that in their view express adoration, even some of their rites, if they are expressive and in themselves irreproachable; it is the dogmas that determine their meaning.

c) From their very appearance on the scene, the Christian apologists also pointed out that the Most High, while modifying them somewhat and giving them a new meaning, could have sanctioned certain practices analogous to those of the pagans, indeed inherited from them, because the "chosen people" was not capable of tolerating more perfect ones. This thesis, called that of "condescension" (συγγακτάβασις), has the merit of resting on a very just idea of infinite prudence and goodness and on certain very clear facts (institution of kingship [1 Sam. 8 and 10, 18-28]; provisional tolerance of polygamy, and of divorce suppressed later [Mt. 19, 3-9] "nisi ob fornicationem," outside the case of invalid marriage [J. Bonsirven, Le divorce dans l'A. T., Paris 1948], etc.). Nevertheless the applications of divine condescension are not to be multiplied without sound judgment.

V. FROM ABRAHAM TO MOSES

1. The patriarchs

Abraham's ancestors certainly practiced, like all "primitives," the sacrifices of first-fruits, animal sacrifices, probably with an offering of flour and oil, like their neighbors. God's intervention in favor of Isaac was meant to make it understood that he condemned the sacrifices of newborns (Gen. 22, 1-18). Circumcision did not exist among the Semites, and Abraham perhaps derived it from the Egyptians, from the time of his first stay in their country (Gen. 12); but it became the sign of their covenant with the one true God (Gen. 17, 9-14 [v. CIRCONCISIONE]). For neither the one nor the other is there any reason to speak of totemism (v.). Called by Joseph, the Hebrews, according to their traditions, remained in the lands of the Delta for 430 years. Nomads as they were, they found there a sedentary civilization. Nevertheless its refined arts and its polytheism, not to mention its magic, could not fail to seduce them. Nor is the episode of the golden calf proof of this (Ex. 32).

2. From the Exodus to the Exile

Yahweh's covenant with Israel was renewed on Sinai, and Moses proclaimed its conditions. His code of laws, in many points, coincides with that of the Assyrian monarch Hammurabi, certainly earlier and a witness to a civilization in some respects more advanced; it forbids, for example, avenging by oneself the killing of a relative (Num. 35, 16-21). Such indications authorize the thought that the points of agreement must rather be explained by the fact of common traditions than by derivations (v. ARCA DELL'ALLEANZA; HAMMURABI; NEOMENIA; SABRATO; TEMPIO). The Hebrew code fully recovers its superiority in the field of religion and morality: rigorous monotheism, prohibition of images because they favored idolatry, strict observance of the Decalogue. At the express request of his people, Yahweh institutes prophetism (Deut. 15, 22; v. A. Clamer, in h. l., in L. Pirot, La ste Bible, II [1946], pp. 633-35). Again out of condescension, to remove them from the temptation to turn to soothsayers and mediums (I Sam. 28, 5-20; II Reg. 1, 1-14, etc.), he authorizes them to consult him himself by means of the ephod (I Sam. 23, 6-13; 30, 6-8) and of the úrim and tumulm (Num. 27, 21, etc.; v. A. Clamer, loc. cit., p. 422).

Despite these provisions, the judges and prophets of Israel had to struggle ceaselessly against the invasion of foreign gods, the sometimes abominable practices of their cults, and the many forms of superstition. In popular religion, then, s. is evident.

VI. UNDER THE DOMINION OF THE ASSYRIANS AND THE PERSIANS

1. For about fifty years, the Israelites groan under the dominion of the kings of Babylon; many of them were deported; their prophets, especially Ezekiel, among the exiles, and Jeremiah in Judea, represent these misfortunes to them as the just punishment of their infidelities. The guilty recover themselves and harden against the seduction of their conquerors. Scholars such as, among many others, Ed. Stucken, H. Winckler, H. Zimmern, A. Jeremias, have maintained the contrary. As "Babylonists" they even extended the influence of the great Empire to the whole world; but authoritative refutations on the part of non-Catholics and Catholics have by now done justice to their theses.

2. Master of Babylon (538 B.C.), Cyrus, king of the Persians, authorizes the exiles to return to their homeland. Between the two peoples relations remain cordial. In their turn, some specialists in Iranian studies appeal to syncretism, to the point of claiming, like Ed. Meyer, that "Judaism is a creation of the Persian Empire," an amateurish exaggeration, "dilettantische übertreibung," replied with good reason R. Smend, in Theol. Literaturzeit., 37 (1912), col. 486.

In reality, the definitive redaction of the sacred books, the two Avesta (v.), the ancient and the recent, took place under Shapur I (241-71 A.D.). Only the Gathas of the ancient one can go back to Zoroaster; but with regard to his monotheistic reform the recent Avesta marks a manifest deviation.

Now, the more this reform is traced back toward the 6th and 7th centuries B.C., the less plausible it remains that Israel found in it anything that had not already been guaranteed to it with quite another authority by its prophets. The same should be said of the religious and moral ideas, gathered together (one does not know according to what criterion) and consecrated by the recent Avesta: antagonism of the two principles of good and evil, Ahura-Mazda and Ahriman (dualism exploited later by Manichaeism [v.], final victory of good, survival and reward of the just, angelology. At most the analogy of certain doctrines may have favored, on both sides, a certain maturing of ideas. Only, it seems, the concordance between the Amesha Spenta, very indecisive personifications of the divine attributes, and the seven Archangels of the Bible, makes a dependence very plausible; which, as can be seen, amounts to very little. In short, concludes one of the most competent judges, W. F. Albright: "The conceptions of Iran do not begin to act on Judaism before the last two pre-Christian centuries. And even so, they exercised their influence only in the case that the ground was fully prepared" (From the stone age to christianity, 2nd ed., Baltimore 1946, pp. 276-80).

VII. THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD

The conquests of Alexander the Great threw the ancient world into turmoil. After the fall of Jerusalem (334 B.C.), Judea was soon subjugated. The prestige of Greek civilization, the persecutions carried out to establish its polytheism and its customs, the intrigues of the High Priests, and their assiduous flattery of the civil power, would certainly have brought about the ruin of the ancient faith, had it not been for the revolts of the Maccabees, the tenacity of their troops and the fierce rigidity of the Pharisees. Neo-Pythagorean and Platonic ideas undoubtedly influenced the Essenes (v.); but these on the whole proved more opposed to Hellenism than the "separated" themselves, that is, the Pharisees.

For the sake of brevity, let us add to the most recent wisdom books, such as Wisdom, written in Greek, the more ancient ones. That among their maxims of good sense (quite pedestrian in Ecclesiasticus), their rules of conduct, their moral speculations, numerous analogies with those of pagan authors are to be noted, is no cause for wonder, since it is a question of the same literary genre. The resemblances may be the effect of pure coincidence and not of plagiarism. Where the resemblance seems almost certain, that is, between the Wisdom of Amen-em-ope and the Book of Proverbs attributed to Solomon, it concerns rather the manner of presentation, the form, than the substance: one may say that there was a filtration (cf. A. Mallon, in Biblica 8 [1927], pp. 3-30).

To exalt the author of the world (creator from nothing, god of pantheism, subordinate demiurge or principle of good, in a dualist system), it was necessary to renounce anthropomorphic images (Gen. 2, 7) and to insist instead on his wisdom and on the power of his will or of his word ("Dixit... et facta sunt"; Gen. 1). Hence, from religion to religion, there derive, on these various subjects, spirit (intelligence, source of inspiration, etc.), wisdom and word (both imperative and efficacious in themselves, etc.), πνεῦμα, σοφία, λόγος, inevitable and therefore multiple analogies; but there also derive nuances, which range from the simple abstract concept to a personification now purely literary, or poetic, now more distinct with or without divinization. Now, the thought of the authors of the Old Testament preserves its distinctive characteristics, derived from the unique character of Yahweh himself. If one examines the progressive teachings of the Bible concerning the Spirit, Wisdom, and the Word of God, one is entitled to conclude: the parallel speculations of the pagan world could, and indeed probably had to, stimulate their own reflections; but as regards beliefs or dogmas they had nothing to take from them, much rather to oppose to them. They eliminated, in fact, with firmness polytheism, its incoherent mythology and its corruption. Consequently, one of the most Hellenized judges, after Philo (v.), namely Josephus (v.), believed he had to justify the intransigence of his compatriots (Against Apion, II, 36 end; cf. 17-22). The exclusivism of these drew upon their leader the same hatred that was imputed to them: "apud ipsos fides obstinata," wrote Tacitus, "sed adversus alios omnes hostile odium" (Historiae, V, ch. 5). Similar expressions in Diodorus Siculus, I. XL, ch. 3.

VIII. EARLY CHRISTIANITY

Rationalists and liberal Protestants of the extreme left are currently striving to prove that, from the earliest times, pagan ideas profoundly altered "the religion of Jesus." Hence a meticulous revision of Christian origins becomes indispensable.

1. The career of the apostle Paul

Let us suppose that one can contest the miraculous character of the event that occurred at Damascus around 34 A.D. (Acts 9:1-22; 22:4-16; 26:9-20; Gal. 1:13-17) and that of the revelations that the convert claims for himself (Acts 22:17-21; II Cor. 12:1-4, etc.). Let us grant that he certainly knew, and to a very large extent, the ideas and customs of the Hellenistic world. What matters is to know whether Hellenism dragged him, even if unconsciously, away from the teaching transmitted by Christ to his very first disciples concerning his own person, his mission, his "commandments." Now two sets of facts make it impossible to admit this: his constant conduct up to martyrdom (in 66 or 67), and the conduct of the "great apostles" (II Cor. 11:5) and of all the most ancient Churches with regard to him.

a) This zealot for the traditions of the fathers (Gal. 1:13-14; Phil. 3:4-6), this persecutor of Christians was in no way prepared to admit a suffering Messiah, the divinity of a mortal man, the evangelical morality, the general vocation of the Gentiles, etc. To modify his convictions to this extent, decisive proofs were required: without any doubt those that had caused an analogous change in the Twelve. Indeed, he affirms and does not cease to affirm that his teaching does not differ from theirs: "Sive ego, sive illi, sic praedicamus" (I Cor. 15:11). He proves it, rejoicing with the Romans for their exemplary faith: "(quae) annuntiatur in universo mundo"; a faith that is also his own: "fidem vestram atque meam" (Rom. 1:5-12). Although it was not he who evangelized them, he nonetheless supposes in them the same essential convictions as among his own disciples and in all the Churches founded by his brothers: "in verbo veritatis evangelii quod pervenit ad vos sicut in universo mundo" (Col. 1:4-7; I Thess. 1:7-8). Free as he was to choose his field of apostolate, he forbids himself to preach the Gospel where others have already preached it (Rom. 15:20-21; 16:13-18). This passionate man, who boasts of having "resisted to his face" Peter himself, regarding the application of a point of discipline already regulated by common agreement (Gal. 2:11-21), would he have adapted to this division of labor, if he had believed it necessary to re-establish what his speculations or alleged visions manifested to him as truth, or had he believed that his rivals in the apostolate were altering the type of catechesis (τύπων διδαχῆς; Rom. 6:17), accepted by all? How would he have imposed on everyone, in so energetic a manner, never to do so? (Rom. 16:17; Col. 2:6-9; II Thess. 3:6; Eph. 4:13-14).

b) Despite his background as a persecutor and his successes, so suited to arousing jealousies, etc., Paul has (since he defends himself only against them) no other adversaries than the Judeo-Christians, obstinate in maintaining Mosaic practices. Peter covers him with his authority, saying: "Believe that the long-suffering of Our Lord is for your salvation, as also Paul our most dear brother has written to you, according to the wisdom given to him. And this he does in all the letters, in which he speaks of these things. In them are found passages difficult to understand (διονόητα), which the ignorant and the unstable twist from their meaning, as they do also for all the other Scriptures, to their own destruction" (II Pt. 3:15-16). The force of such terms and of this fact must be well weighed: all of Paul's letters, except for partial hesitations regarding the Letter to the Hebrews, were received as Scriptures by each of the Churches. His preaching, even if more sublime and less indulgent regarding the rudiments of doctrine, "the milk of children" (Hebr. 5:11-14), was therefore in full accord with the τύπος διδαχῆς, the catechesis of the Twelve.

2. The testimony of the Synoptics

Between the death of Christ and the first apostolate of Paul twenty years elapsed. In this span of time could the early Church not have evolved in such a way as to find itself prepared to accept the personal viewpoints of the convert? To prove this, the partisans of the "Religionsgeschichtliche Schule" (v. BOUEST, WILHELM) and those of the "Formgeschichtliche Methode" (v. FORMA) accumulate parallels; according to them, every enlightened person, every believer gives himself what he needs to justify his own faith. Indeed, examples of this kind are very numerous: but to pass from the frequency of certain acts to their universality, without taking into account manifest contrasts, is to transform the comparative method into an arbitrary method of assimilation or leveling.

First of all: the early Church, that of Jerusalem, is in no way an amorphous society of devotees or enlightened persons; it has instead its uncontested leaders, the Twelve, and a supreme head, who takes initiatives (Acts 1:15-26) and claims the right to regulate disputes (Acts 15:7 etc.). His brothers and he have an identical concept of the apostolate: according to the order received from Jesus (Lk. 24:48; Acts 1:8), they present themselves as the "witnesses" of facts that did not occur in angulo, in secret (Acts 26:26; 1:21-22; 2:32; 3:15; 4:19-20; 5:32; 10:39), not as purveyors of ingeniously invented fables, doctas fabulas secuti (II Pt. 1:16; I Pt. 5:1-4; I Io. 1:1-3, etc.). For them, as for Paul, faith, the condition of salvation, is therefore not a sentiment or a generic conception of things, but an "obedience" to the law of thought and action imposed on them and on all by the divine Risen One, ὑπακοὴ πίστεως (Rom. 1:5; 16:17-19, 26, etc.). These witnesses came to confirm their faith with blood. Here is a point that distinguishes them from the enthusiasts who appeal either to esoteric, timeless traditions, like the Gnostics (v. GNOSI) and the Hermetists (v.), or to individual revelations, like the Montanists (v.) and numerous sects.

Other contrasts: absence in the Synoptics of any speculation; the words and actions of Christ are reported without any gloss that would allow one to suspect the influence of Paul, without apparent dependence on his terminology: words and actions, however, the most suited to justify his theology; sobriety in the realm of the marvelous: miracles are reported, it is true, but how different, in the ensemble of their characteristics both physical and moral, from the prodigies attributed to Buddha, to the gods of Hinduism, to Muhammad, etc.; a morality manifestly superior to that of contemporary Judaism; and finally the character of Jesus, to whose charm so few souls escape.

J.-J. Rousseau concludes with reason: "It is not thus that one invents... The Gospel presents characteristics of truth so grand, so surprising, so inimitable, that the inventor would be more astonishing than the hero" (Emile, IV, in Oeuvres, VII, Paris 1822, pp. 246-49); v. CRISTIANESIMO, in Enc. catt., IV, coll. 895-99; GESÙ CRISTO, ibid., VI, coll. 247-61.

The Synoptics therefore did not give free rein to their imagination; on the other hand, their mentality as Jews appears happily transformed. Under what influence, if not that of the incomparable Master, in whom they ended by recognizing the beloved Son of the Father (Mt. 3:17; Mk. 1:11; Lk. 3:22; Mt. 17:5; Mk. 9:6; Lk. 9:35), his equal (Mt. 11:27), the Judge of the last day (Mt. 16:27; Mk. 8:38; Lk. 9:26; Mt. 11:21; Mk. 10:37), the teacher who imposed on them the strictest fidelity to his teaching (Mt. 28:19-20; Mk. 15:16, etc.)?

3. The testimony of John

The fourth Gospel, being later, is distinguished from the other three by characteristics easy to explain. As its own conclusion declares, it is a supplementary inquiry into a hotly contested point: the divinity of Jesus (Jn. 20:31). New facts are therefore reported, and in part explained: because of the adversaries to whom they are frequently addressed, the discourses take on a different turn and tone. The prologue, then (1:1-18), stands out even more sharply from the manner of the Synoptics; but, all things considered, it presents, under the personal responsibility of the Apostle, the synthesis of their doctrine concerning the supreme dignity of the "Son of Man" and concerning his mission. Perhaps John uses the term Logos, as Paul does those of gnosis and epignosis, because of the speculations then in vogue; but not in order to conform to them, rather to correct them.

This is not the place to sketch even the history of the terms γνῶσις, λόγος, πληρέωσις, πνεύμα, of the antithesis πνευματικὸς, ψυχικὸς, in St. Paul, etc.; cf. the authors cited here, § 3 and further on, § 4. It need only be remembered that the clearest dependencies of vocabulary by no means prove the identity of the concepts. The meaning of words must be determined from the context, and the context can reveal notable divergences and in certain cases an intention of opposition.

John refrains from repeating what his predecessors have already reported, except to add here and there certain clarifications to their writings. A sign that he holds their account to be true. Moreover, his charge to the faithful coincides with theirs: he refers back to the teaching of the first years: quod fuit ab initio (1 Jn. 1:1-4; 2:7; 2 Jn. 5); he recommends that they not believe in purported promptings or revelations of the Holy Spirit: Nolite omni spiritui credere, sed probate spiritus si ex Deo sint. It is a spirit of falsehood, he explains, like Paul, an antichrist, whoever alters the doctrine about Jesus: qui soluit Christum (1 Jn. 4:1-6; 2:22-25; 1 Cor. 12:3). "If anyone does not bring you the word of Christ, do not receive him into your house, do not greet him" (2 Jn. 7, 11).

One further trait is recalled that disposes him even less than his brothers toward it. More than they, he insists on this principle: "to love Christ is first of all to remain faithful to his teaching" (Jn. 14:15, 21-24, 31; 15:10, 14); "in him who keeps his word, in him truly (therefore in him alone) the love of God is perfect" (1 Jn. 2:3-6; 2 Jn. 6; cf. Mt. 5:19; 7:21-23; 12:46-50; Lk. 11:27-28). Such recommendations, proportionate to the attraction exercised over them, prevented those whom Christ had constituted his "witnesses" from permitting themselves, especially on capital points, borrowings from Hellenism, from Gnosticism, etc.

4. The "fifth Gospel." — Before being committed to writing, the message of Jesus was preached: an oral gospel, suited to checking the others, at least as regards the essentials of his earthly life and his teaching. Now, a remarkable fact, the other four Gospels, despite the contributions and nuances that distinguish them, were received, without contestation, by all the Churches of the early days. And this, while the so-called "apocryphal" Gospels (v.), far more seductive for their legends, obtained only a very low authority and a restricted diffusion; this, moreover, without any official revision or any intervention of the supreme authority, as instead happened for the Buddhist Scriptures under King Aśoka, for the Avesta of the Persians under Shapur I, for the Sibylline Books under Augustus, for the Koran under the caliph 'Uthman, etc. A truly remarkable fact, a consecration more decisive from the critical point of view than a decree issued by Peter or by any archaic council. The very earliest Christian communities, in fact, had each been founded by an apostle, an evangelist, or some qualified "witness," and took pride in it (1 Cor. 1:12; 3:1-7). According to the laws that the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule delights in invoking, each should have had, within a short time, its own customs, its own speculations, its own myths, and should have striven to maintain them. Now, they received as the expression of the true faith only the writings of Paul, of the four Evangelists, the few letters of Peter, James, John and Jude; the Apocalypse and of another kind. Whence can this exclusivism come if not from the agreement of the Twelve and of the first disciples among themselves, from the beginning to the end of their career, and from the uniform charges received: "Let there be no schisms (σχίσματα) among you" (1 Cor. 1:10-13). "O Timothy, guard the deposit; avoid the impious discussions of the false gnosis, τῆς ψευδωνύμου γνώσεως; some, who have adhered to it, have gone far from the faith" (1 Tim. 6:20-21; 1:3-4; 4:7; 2 Tim. 1:13-14; 4:2-4). "From anyone who fosters divisions, separate after a first and second warning" (Tit. 3:10-11). "If anyone does not bring you the doctrine of Christ, do not receive him into your house; do not greet him!" (2 Jn. 7, 11). Peter denounces the sects or heresies of perdition (2 Pt. 2:1) and declares that it would have been better for their supporters never to have known the truth, than to abandon the holy law received from tradition (ibid. 2:21-22; cf. Jude 3, 4; 17, 23). Other directives equally firm in the Didaché (4:13; 6:1; 11:1-2); around 95, in the first letter of Clement (7:1-2; cf. 42); around 100 in that of pseudo-Barnabas (19:11); between 107-17 in those of the martyr St. Ignatius (Eph. 6:2; 9:1; Trall. 9:1); at about the same date, in those of the martyr St. Polycarp (Phil. 7:2).

That the control exercised by the "fifth Gospel," the living tradition, was not without efficacy, here is the final proof: some extra-canonical sources have handed down purported sayings and words of Jesus; now, scarcely any does criticism dare to regard as authentic (J. Jeremias, Unbekannte Jesusworte, Zurich 1948; v. AGRAPHON; LOGIA).

5. Conclusion

It remains beyond all doubt that none of the canonical gospels can be qualified as a "historical account" in the strict sense of modern criticism. In Matthew and Mark especially the chronological order is not rigorously respected. Counsels regarding the same class of duties are artificially placed side by side, with a view to catechesis. Moreover, each Evangelist summarizes the facts in his own way, except that he adds this or that particular, or this or that miracle that he owes to his personal information. Such liberties, far from invalidating the value of their testimony, only render it more effective as regards the essential: they manifest not their total independence with regard to the common sources, but the revision to which the sources have been subjected (cf. Ch. Langlois, Introd. aux études histor., 2nd ed., Paris 1899, p. 173; E. Bernheim, Lehrbuch der histor. Methode, 6th ed. Leipzig 1908, pp. 80 ff., 195 ff., 524 ff.).

Since the publication of his Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (3 vols., Tübingen 1886-90), Harnack acknowledged that the distinctive features of Catholicism had to be traced much further back than Protestant historians commonly admitted, and he recalls this in his review of the important work by Msgr. Batiffol cited above, L'Eglise naissante; nevertheless he persists in maintaining that the religion of Jesus, as presented by Catholicism, has become "essentially another." He reproaches Catholicism in particular for having eliminated an element of the greatest importance: submission to God without any intermediary: das der unmittelbaren göttlichen Gebundenheit, and the personal freedom that it consecrates: und der durch sie gesetzten individuellen Freiheit (Theol. Literaturzeit., 34 [1909], coll. 51-53). The same accusation frequently returns under other pens. But it is easy to reply that so many divisions among the Christian Churches, divisions which they themselves increasingly deplore, derive from this appeal to an individual freedom entirely removed from the control of the hierarchy instituted to prevent illusions or at least their consequences, in a complete fidelity to the type of catechesis fixed from the very origins, τύπος διδάχης (Rom. 6:17), ἐν τῇ διδάχῃ τοῦ Χριστοῦ (II Io. 9); tradition (cf. E. Pinard de la Boullaye, conferences given in 1935, Italian trans., L'eredità di Gesù, Turin 1937, pp. 185-264; bibl., p. 253).

IX. FROM THE FIRST APOLOGISTS TO THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS

1. The dogmas

From the time when the Church extended its conquests and its writers inaugurated their controversies with the intellectuals, the influence of Hellenism became more perceptible: abundant citations of pagan authors, a display even in Clement of Alexandria, especially in his Stromata (or "Carpets"), in Eusebius of Caesarea in his Preparation for the Gospel, etc.; a manifest dependence of thought in Clement with respect to Musonius, in the Paedagogus; in St. Ambrose with regard to Cicero's De officiis; in Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine with respect to Neoplatonism, etc. Dionysius, the Pseudo-Areopagite, goes so far as to insert entire passages of Proclus into his text. Facts of this kind, of which it would be easy to multiply the examples, do not prove at all an alteration of the primitive faith; to be convinced of this it suffices to consider: a) the motives that guided these writers; b) the limits of their concessions; c) the norm that directs their choice and the end at which they aimed.

a) In fact, whatever the reason for it, it cannot be a reprehensible thing to profit from what is true, beautiful and morally good. Virgil is praised because he knew how to "extract pearls from the dunghill of Ennius." Likewise Seneca claimed, when necessary, the right to cite Epicurus: "Quod verum est, meum est... Sciant (omnes) quae optima sunt, esse communis" (Ad Lucil., Epist., XII, 10; XVI, 6). St. Justin declares the same: "Whatever good has been said, no matter by whom, is ours as Christians." And he goes so far as to claim that the pagans derived these sound ideas of theirs from the Holy Books (the thesis of "plagiarism," derived from Judaism and unfortunately taken up again by others). Better inspired and distorting the Stoic theory of the λόγοι σπερματικοί, he presents them as "seeds of the Word" (II Apol., nn. 8, 10, 13: PG 6, 380, 457, 460 ff.); analogous conceptions in Clement of Alexandria (Protrept., 6, 7: ibid. 8, 173, 184); in Augustine (De doctrina christ., II, 18, 25 ff., 40 ff.: PL 34, 49 ff., 54 ff., 63).

Another motive for citing pagan authors: charity, which commands us to become all things to all men, "omnibus omnis factus sum, ut omnes facerem salvos" (I Cor. 9, 19-23), and therefore to begin to do them justice and to point out the points of agreement (Clement of Alexandria, Strom., I, 1, 19; V, 3: PG 8, 705, 805 ff.; 9, 37; Origen, Contra Celsum, VII, 46: ibid. 11, 1588; St. John Chrysostom, In ep. ad Timot., homilia 3: ibid. 62, 677 etc.).

b) On the other hand, the approvals and the praises are accompanied, when necessary, by express reservations and by vigorous confutations. All these apologists, even those who on this or that point have laid themselves open, like Origen, to criticism, declare: the rule that they intend to follow is Holy Scripture, and Scripture as it was understood by the primitive Church (Tertullian, De praescript., chaps. 6, 14, 21: PL 2, 18, 27, 33; Clement of Alexandria, Strom., I, 19: PG 8, 808-13; Origen, De principiis, I, nn. 1-4: PG 11, 115-18; Ep. ad Gregor., ibid., 88-92). "As for the philosophers," writes St. Augustine, "if it happens that they have said something true, in agreement with our faith, especially among the (Neo-)Platonists, there is no cause for alarm, but rather for taking those truths from them, as from unjust possessors, and turning them to our use" (De docte. christ., II, 40: PL 34, 63; cf. St. Jerome, Ep., 119, n. 11: ibid. 22, 978 ff.; Ep., 62: ibid., 606; Ep., 70: ibid., 664-68; Theodoret, Graec. affect. curatio, I: PG 83, 821-25, etc.). Moreover the Church intervened to halt the contagion of Hellenism, τὰ ἐλληνικὰ νοσοῦντες (St. Basil, De Spir. Sancto, 17, 43: PG 32, 148) V. ADOPTIONISM; ARIANISM; DOCETISM; GNOSIS; ORIGEN AND ORIGENISM; PELAGIUS AND PELAGIANISM.

c) The common aim of the apologists is to exploit the points of agreement in order to lead the adversaries to the "true gnosis," to the "true philosophy," the only one susceptible of a rigorous demonstration (μόνοι μετὰ ἀποδείξεως; Justin, I Apol., 1, 20: PG 6, 357), an eclecticism, if you will (Clement of Alexandria, Strom., I, 7: ibid. 7, 732), but an eclecticism practicable only in the light of faith (Origen, Contra Celsum, III, 81: ibid. 11, 1025; Lactantius, Divin. instit., VII, 7: PL 6, 759).

It would nevertheless be an extraordinary thing if these first attempts at theology and religious philosophy had been invariably successful. In fact, one can, for example, point out in the ante-Nicene writers expressions and explanations that seem to attribute to the Logos, in the Trinity, a secondary place (subordinationism; cf. J. Tixeront, Hist. des dogmes, 11th ed., Paris 1930, pp. 244-57, 290-403). Nevertheless it remains always clear, even if one does not wish to interpret them indulgently, that they intended to defend the traditional doctrine, especially the divinity of Christ. It remains always true, as Justin (I Apol., n. 60: PG 6, 420) and Irenaeus (Adv. haer., I, 10, 2: ibid., 7, 553) already expressed it, that the simple professed this dogma, as did the learned, and therefore they prove that the latter had not received it from Hellenism (J. Lebreton, Le désaccord entre la foi et la théol. savante au XIIIe siècle, in Rev. d'hist. eccl., 19 [1923], pp. 481-506; 20 [1924], pp. 5-37; id., more briefly in Fliche-Martin-Frutz, II, chap. 14, § 2, pp. 353-65).

In this way, while the pagan doxographers limited themselves to drawing up catalogues of opinions (δόξαι; H. Diels, Doxographi Graeci, Berlin 1879), suited properly to lending credit to eclecticism, to indifferentism and through these to syncretism, the representatives of the Church created several new literary genres: apologetic treatises, ordered to the demonstration of a religion supported by a recent and verifiable revelation and therefore exclusive in its claims; catalogues of heresies, denouncing sometimes with some excess the influence of profane speculation (Justin, Hegesippus, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Eusebius, Epiphanius, Theodoret, etc.); dogmatic treatises of Athanasius, Hilary, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril, Ambrose, a series that comes to crown, so to speak, the De Trinitate and the De civitate Dei of St. Augustine.

Furthermore, one must consider the creation of a new language. The terms that its doctors derived from the Greek language translate nuances of thought that are their own, exactly as the Christian terms preserved by the Churches separated from Rome no longer express exactly, for a good number of them, what they expressed for them.

2. Catholic liturgy

a) Little by little the Church likewise developed its rites. Given the constancy with which its apologists fought all the Gnostic sects, it should seem impossible that, even only in this aspect of rites, the Church copied them. Nevertheless Renan maintained this, against the formal warning of the scholar whose research he exploited, J. Matter. W. Bousset (v.) took up the same thesis, without however making it acceptable; Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, Göttingen 1907 (severe review by A. Harnack, in Theol. Literaturzeitung, 33 [1908], pp. 10-13).

Many scholars turned to the Oriental cults of Isis and Osiris, of Cybele and Attis, of Mithras, etc. "Even if we had no evidence at all to make this hypothesis acceptable," declared Salomon Reinach, the author of Orpheus, "we would have to have recourse to it in order to establish, apart from any transcendent intervention, the continuity of religious evolution" (Rev. archéol., 5th series, 11-12 [1920], p. 150). Clear words! In fact, every serious indication is lacking. Those "mysteries" commemorated myths outside of time and beyond verification, whereas the liturgy of the Church commemorated recent events: Christus, Tiberio imperitante, per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio affectus (Tacitus, Annales, XV, 44). Their rites could seem "a return to the savage state" (Fr. Cumont, Religions orient., 4th ed., Paris 1929, p. 191); they therefore had nothing that could attract and seduce the disciples of Jesus (id., Lux perpetua, ibid. 1949, p. 428); therefore have sharply criticized them. And note above all this: none of the Oriental gods had died to expiate sin, none for love of humanity, none with such moral splendor, none to prove afterward by his resurrection his equality with the one God, infinite holiness. One is therefore perhaps led to ask whether this recourse to the Oriental mysteries did not have as its cause, at least among certain scholars, their inability to understand or their repugnance to admit the mystery of Calvary, apparently folly, juspila, in reality the work of a transcendent wisdom (1 Cor. 1:18-25; 2:12-16, etc.), considering its capacity to reveal the malice of every revolt against God, the rigor of the punishments it calls down, the Creator's love for his creatures (Rom. 5:8-11; 8:32-39), the fitness of accepting, as a just recompense, the harassment and persecutions from which his most faithful servants cannot escape (John 15:18-21; Rom. 8:35-39; 1 Pet. 4:12-19, etc.).

b) Catholic scholars, on the other hand, agree on this point: the Church fixed certain Christian feasts on the same day as pagan feasts in order to turn its faithful away from them; thus, in place of the Ludi Apollinares, from July 5 to 13, it substituted the feast of the Rogation Days (cf. St. Leo the Great: PL 54, 158-68); in place of the Cara cognatio of February 22, it substituted the feast Natale Petri de cathedra; and it would have chosen December 25 in order to oppose Christmas to the feast of the Sol invictus. These are questions of fact; as a matter of principle, reacting in this way is quite a different thing from capitulating; will it perhaps be said that the Nazis and the godless Russians have drawn closer to the Christian faith because they have substituted their own feasts for those of the Church?

c) Ma almeno il culto dei santi non sarebbe la continuazione del culto delle divinità subalterne? Lo hanno preteso nei primi secoli alcuni polemisti pagani, un gran numero di protestanti nel sec. XVI, e ai nostri giorni molti altri con più erudizione che critica, specialmente E. Lucius, Die Anfänge des Heiligenkults, ed. G. Anrich, Tushinga 1904. In realtà il culto dei santi cominciò con quello dei martiri (v.); il culto dei confessori sorse più tardi. La glorificazione degli uni e degli altri aveva lo scopo di attirare i fedeli ad imitare il rifiuto, opposto da essi, alla partecipazione ai riti e ai costumi del paganesimo. Ma questo non è affatto s., né cesaropapismo. Nonostante le proteste della Chiesa, si ebbero eccessi, superstizioni e molte leggende; il Newmann ne ha esposta la ragione.

3. Sullo sfruttamento dell'arte pagana, che è questione accessoria, v. ARCHITETTURA ECCLESIASTICA; CHIESA, B) La C. come edificio. III. Arte.

X. THE AGE OF THE BARBARIANS

a) The successive invasions of the barbarians threatened to ruin forever Greco-Roman civilization, already improved by Christianity. The Church had to commit herself to converting those rough natures. To this end, faithful to St. Paul's tactic of "becoming all things to all men" (1 Cor. 9:19-23; cf. St. Thomas, in h. l., Works, ed. of Parma, XIII, 222-23), she accepted the new political forms and only forbade customs incompatible with her faith and her morality. Characteristic, above all, in this regard is the compliance suggested by Gregory the Great to the apostle of the English, Augustine: to change the purpose of the temples rather than destroy them; proscrivere i sacrifici ai falsi dèi, ma tollerare festini e divertimenti in uso in alcune feste, ut dum aliqua exterius gaudia reservantur, ad interiora gaudia consentire facilius valeant (Ep. 76; PL 77, 1215-16; Ep. 64; ibid., 1187; cf. R. Aigrain, in Fliche-Martin-Fruta, V [1938], cap. 10, § 1, pp. 286-89). La Congregazione di Propaganda, richiamando un decreto del 1659, dava recentemente analoghe consegne ai missionari (AAS, 28 [1936], pp. 406-409; cf. 31 [1939], p. 269; J. Schmidlin, Kath. Missionlehre, 2ª ed., Münster 1923, pp. 216-38, 352-59, 378-80; P. Charles, Tactique missionnaire, in Nouv. rev. théol., 67 [1940], pp. 385-96).

A report presented in 1908 at the Lambeth Conference acknowledged that Christianization had in the past brought with it a certain proportion of denationalization and that Anglican missionaries had been too inclined to discourage or suppress indigenous customs that in themselves had no necessary connection with idolatry and superstition. Therefore the Missions Committee recalled resolution 19 of the 1897 Conference: to adapt to local circumstances, to encourage people to do things in their own ways, even though it may not be ideally the best way (Conference of Bishops of the Anglican Communion, London 1908, pp. 114-115; cf. the whole text in H. Pinard de la Boullaye, op. cit., II, pp. 131-32 and bibl.; cf. also Report of the Commiss. on Christian higher education in India, London 1931, p. 240; French trans. in Etudes, 215 [1933], p. 476). Are confessions of this kind not perhaps, at least in large part, the implicit condemnation of the accusations leveled against pagan-papism? To demonstrate all their injustice, it would suffice to recall the decrees of the general and regional councils against all survivals of paganism. The mere list is too long to be cited here (v. AMULETO; DIVINAZIONE; MAGIA; SUPERSTIZIONI).

b) Regarding beliefs and theological speculations, we shall limit ourselves to a few remarks. In the 8th century the Trinitarian, Christological and Pelagian controversies had noticeably died down. The Christian schools, far from remaining inactive, applied themselves to justifying and deepening the data of the faith. To do so with full success, they would have needed a strictly rational and complete philosophy; as it was, they had almost nothing but that of St. Augustine, permeated with Neoplatonism. The copyists of the monasteries managed to save precious texts from oblivion, but not the capital works of Plato and Aristotle. Indeed Aristotle, very poorly known, is ordinarily judged with extreme severity (A.-J. Festugière, L'idéal religieux des Grecs et l'Évangile, Paris 1932, Excursus C, pp. 221-263). These philosophers, by the breadth of their inquiry and their profound conceptions, would have stimulated thought; certain of their theses, evidently inadmissible, would have obliged a fresh scrutiny of many problems. But the situation was about to change.

XI. THE MIDDLE AGES

The Arabs, in the East, especially al-Fārābī (v.) and Avicenna (v.), and in the West Avempace (v.) and Averroes (v.), and on the other hand the Jews of Spain, Avicebron (v.) and Maimonides (v.), turned to philosophy late. The syncretism at which both groups arrived provoked, especially in Islam and in the Christian West, one of the gravest crises: Averroism (v.).

From Aristotle's principles Averroes clearly deduced the following consequences: no Providence (hence no Revelation either), eternity of the world, a necessary character to its evolution, a single agent intellect shared by all humanity; no personal immortality, nor reward, nor punishment in the afterlife. These theses were popularized in Parisian circles by Siger of Brabant (v.) and Boethius of Dacia (v.). A refutation was therefore necessary; to undertake it and carry it through to a successful end was the work of Albert the Great and above all of Thomas Aquinas (v.). The latter's philosophy is a corrected and deepened Aristotelianism, consequently a syncretism, but in full accord with Scripture and Tradition. Its intellectualism, its syllogistic method, its dryness, leads certain modern minds, for whom faith is feeling, an impulse of the heart, intimate experience, to regard it as an alteration of primitive Christianity. But the tone of preaching is one thing, the tone of pure science another. Philosophical systems and reasons of the same order, on which the conciliar definitions rest, are not one and the same thing as faith: they add nothing to the "dogmas"; but they dispose one to accept them and to defend them better. On the other hand, convictions solidly grounded and not sentimental effusions are the only ones that prepare energies that can stand every test.

That finally the most ratiocinative theology does not hinder mystical ardor at all is proved by Thomas Aquinas and numerous doctors formed in his school.

XII. RENAISSANCE AND "REFORMATION"

a) The masterpieces of Greek antiquity revealed to Italy from the 13th century and even more abundantly after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks (1453), their diffusion favored by the recent invention of printing, led to the conception of a new ideal of elegance and beauty: humanism. The enthusiasm was general; popes and princes of the Church shared it. But rather quickly, several men of letters passed from admiration of artistic forms to admiration of ideas. Allegorizing exegesis, renewed by the Stoics, allowed them to attribute profound, indeed sublime, speculations to pagan mythology. And thus, in a more or less veiled manner, some declared themselves in favor of the equivalence, in the last analysis, of religions. Is this perhaps anything different from returning to the solutions of Hellenistic syncretism?

Erasmus, for example, who was later to recover himself, wrote: "If one wishes to await this peace and this concord which are the ideal of our religion, one must, as far as possible, speak little of dogmatic definitions and allow each person, on many points, a free and personal judgment." He even gave to understand that the ignorant crowd cannot be kept in duty unless it is deceived with pious lies. Conrad Mudt, canon of Gotha, declared that "the wisdom of the Father (1 Cor. 1:24) had not been assigned exclusively to the Jews, but had shone among the Greeks, the Italians, the Germans, although they had quite different religious customs" (texts cited with many others by J. Janssen, Gesch. des deut. Volkes, 13th ed., II, Freiburg im Br. 1886, pp. 1-36; more briefly in H. Pinard de la Boullaye, Etude comparée des religions, 3rd ed., I, Paris 1929, pp. 143-55; cf. Überweg, part 3, 12th ed., §§ 1-22, pp. 1-215, bibl. pp. 621-53; A. Fliche-V. Martin, Hist. de l'Eglise, XV, Paris 1951, pp. 211-74.

b) The Reformation does not derive from humanism, but took advantage of its cult of the original texts, of its disdain for the Middle Ages, for the aridity and subtleties of a scholastic theology in fact in decline, as well as of the abuses introduced into the Church and the scandals given by a part of the clergy. Luther and Calvin claim to return to the "pure Gospel." To justify the abandonment of Christian dogmas - of which they still preserve a good number (Trinity, Divinity of Jesus Christ, etc.) - they appeal to free examination, to the "testimony of the Holy Spirit," says Calvin, and present the Church of Rome as the great transgressor. J. Gerhard (v.) denounces its crimes: "hagiolatry, iconolatry, artolatry, angelolatry, staurolatry, skeletolatry, papolatry" (Loci theolog., ed. Preuss, Berlin 1867, De Ecclesia, n. 251, p. 153 ff.). "Between pagan idolatry and the invocation of the saints," affirms M. Chemnitz (v.), "there is only a difference of words" (Examen Conc. Trid., Berlin 1861, p. 711). This kind of accusation was within the reach of the most modest talents and served to discredit even the dogmas previously esteemed "essential" or "fundamental." Every attempt at concord was moreover beforehand doomed to certain failure, since each dissident, in interpreting Scripture, could appeal with equal right to supernatural lights. Hence a progressive reduction of Christian beliefs and the return, more or less rapid according to the regions, to the opinion that all confessions and all religions are equivalent. It is known how the Roman Church reacted in the Council of Trent, Cardinal R. Bellarmine in his Controversiae, Father Canisius in his De corruptelis verbi divini, etc.

XIII. FROM THE 17TH CENTURY TO OUR DAYS

The rapid multiplication of Christian confessions and their common appeal to free examination opened the way to the rise of English Deism, the German Aufklärung, and French philosophism (v. DEISM; ENLIGHTENMENT; RATIONALISM). Since the arbitrariness and disagreement of their conclusions brought discredit upon reason itself, agnosticism (v.) appeared in their wake. To save at least some religious idea, other groups appealed either to the moral conscience and practical reason with Kant (v.), or to feeling with J. Fr. Fries, G. de Wette, A. Sabatier, or to the intimate experience of consolation with W. James (v.), etc. Having been naturally eliminated by the rationalists, the inspiration of the Scriptures, a dogma sacred in the eyes of Luther and Calvin, was likewise eliminated by liberal Protestants in the name of biblical criticism and the history of religions, both of which were increasingly in favor. E. Troeltsch took it upon himself to explain this with perfect lucidity: to recover "authentic Christianity," that is to say what one wishes to regard as such, it was necessary to strip it of all later accretions; Paul exercised a manifest influence on the early Church; it was therefore necessary to separate him from Jesus; there still remained the task of proving that Christ himself reflected in part contestable traditions and the ideas of his time (Protestant. Christentum und Kirche in der Neuzeit, in Hinneberg, Kultur der Gegenwart, part 1, sect. IV, Berlin-Leipzig 1906, p. 385 ff.). This task was undertaken especially by the representatives of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule (W. Bousset, H. Gunkel, etc.), and those of the Formgeschichtliche Methode (M. Dibelius, P. Wetter, G. Bertram, etc.; v. FORM); their aim is to free Christianity from its "myths" (Entmythologisierung). Very representative in this regard are the works of R. Bultmann, Theologie des Neuen Testaments, Tübingen 1948-51; Das Urchristentum im Rahmen der antiken Religionen, Zurich 1949. Once the purification was complete, nothing would remain of the religion of Jesus, apart from a more or less lively admiration for various traits of his character and a few terms derived from the vocabulary of his first companions - magni nominis umbra! - except roughly what, as religious and moral ideas, the philosophers of the Hellenistic age admitted. Some Protestant critics see this clearly themselves and are alarmed by it: the projected demythologization would lead to a Christianization.

Anyone who is aware of the variety of opinions in the separated Churches can judge for himself to what kind of syncretism suggestions like the following would likewise lead, should they find credence: "He who loyally, even if under a misunderstanding, employs (the terms of the Bible) as the sacred terminology of Christendom, which he could not exclude, even if it had for him a meaning different from that understood by many believers of past and present times, or even expressed for him something unheard of, something that no one has yet found, ... would deserve gratitude for his piety... There is cause for rejoicing in seeing all theologians gather around the same words" (F. Kattenbusch, Von Schleiermacher zu Ritschl, 3rd revised ed., Giessen 1903, p. 27). For his part, the pastor M. Beegner asserted: "The first condition of every fruitful ecumenism lies in the rejection of every equivocation, in a fidelity to revealed truth such that each Christian, in meeting Christians of other confessions, believes that his Church has received its deposit" (cf. Foi et vie, 49 [1951], p. 12).

To what kind of syncretism would the West too not come, if it allowed itself to be seduced by the propaganda of neo-Hinduism! (B. Allo, Plaies d'Europe et baumes du Gange, Juvisy 1931; P. Fallon, Spiritualité néo-hindouiste, in Vie spirit., suppl. for Nov. 1947, pp. 362-67).

As for the Roman Church, it is known with what firmness it has never ceased to condemn, from the earliest years of the 19th century to our own days, the excesses of rationalism (Denz-U, nos. 1655-56, 1701-14, 1798-1800; A. Günther, G. Hermes); religious indifferentism (ibid., nos. 1613-1614, 1617, 1646-48, 1715-18; v. SYLLABUS; VATICAN, COUNCIL); the intemperances of biblical criticism (ibid., nos. 1788, 1942-45; v. DIVINO AFFLANTE SPIRITU; PROVIDENTISSIMUS); the transposition of Christian dogmas (ibid., nos. 201-65, 2071-2109; v. LAMENTABILI; MODERNISM; PASCENDI) and all theses in disagreement with Tradition (v. HUMANI GENERIS).

XIV. CONCLUSIONS

Given the limits set for this entry, it was not possible to discuss in detail, as most of the cited works do, the analogies of expression or thought that so many scholars use to explain, by means of syncretism, the evolution of religions, especially the wholly human origin of the one that enjoys their preference and the illusion of Judaism and Christianity, which claim a supernatural origin. We have simply recalled principles of criticism and historical facts that are too often forgotten.

At bottom, syncretism is a universal phenomenon; but while the fusion of races and peoples has brought about an evident progress in the material order, it has, on the contrary, most often led pagan religions to an ever less severe morality, to a more or less hierarchized polytheism, or to a pantheism tolerant of the cults of subordinate gods; never, however, to a strict and exclusive monotheism. Only a good number of populations called "backward" or "primitive" have so far maintained their faith in a Supreme Being, distinct by his very nature from all genii, spirits or demons, creator and legislator of the moral order. Jews and Muslims too profess this capital dogma. Among the Christian Churches, that of Rome is the only one to hold, for twenty centuries, as an absolute and irrefutable rule in all that concerns dogma and morals, in the original sense of these texts, the Old and New Testaments and the decrees of all the ecumenical councils.

Without doubt Catholicism owes much, as regards the historical and exegetical sciences, to many scholars of other confessions; every truly critical work ends up turning to its advantage. It owes much also, one may say, to most of the movements of ideas that have arisen outside it and often against it. "The necessity of defending doctrines ardently attacked," explained St. Augustine, "leads one to study them more carefully, to form clearer ideas of them, to preach them with greater insistence: the debate that is stirred up becomes an occasion of progress" (De civitate Dei, XVI, 2: PL 41, 477; cf. St. Thomas, in I Cor. 11, 19 [works, ed. of Parma, XIII, 240 a]). Presumably for this reason, and to prevent a stagnation of the most dangerous kind, Providence has left some obscurity in its Revelation and has permitted heresies, ut vel sic excutiamus pigritiam et divinas Scripturas nosce cupinmus (St. Augustine, De Gen. contra Manichaeos, I, 1, 2: PL 34, 373); the struggle for life is never without profit.

For living beings there is no progress except on the condition of maintaining their specific type, of abstaining in particular from harmful foods. In accordance with the Apostle's warning: "Test everything! Omnia probate; quod bonum est tenete!" (I Thess. 5, 22), the Catholic Church has therefore made a choice. It was guided by external norms: Scripture and Tradition, and by its vital principle, which is the Holy Spirit. The Churches that claim this assistance of the Spirit for each individual (in an attenuated form: for each group) can then deny it precisely to the hierarchical Church "founded on Peter," which is the Church to which it was promised (Mt. 16, 18-19; Lk. 22, 32; Jn. 21, 15-17).

Wholesome foods taken every day are not, properly speaking, added to the organism, but transformed by it. From the earliest times to the painful hours of the great secessions and even afterward, the Church has transformed what it had accepted from profane speculations. Its power of assimilation is far from being exhausted, the expansion of its potentialities is not fully accomplished; therefore, while recalling, like Vincent of Lérins (v.) in the 5th century (Commonitorium, n. 22: PL 50, 668), the essential principle of true progress, in suo dumtaxat genere, in eodem scilicet dogmate, eodem sensu eademque sententia (Conc. Vatic., Denz-U, n. 1800), it takes care, when it must condemn errors or repress imprudences, to encourage the further researches of its children. Its docility to the suggestions of the Holy Spirit, so judiciously set forth in particular by J. A. Moehler ([v]. (Die Einheit der Kirche, Tübingen 1825) and by J. H. Newman (An Essay on the development of christian doctrine, London 1845), has allowed it to save, from the most disparate philosophies, what deserved to be saved. On these same conditions, however ardent and painful the attacks and foreseeable crises may be, it has the assurance of working usque ad consummationem saeculi (Mt. 28, 20; 16, 18) for the progress and salvation of humanity (v. DOGMA, II).

Enrico Pinard de la Boullaye