54. F. Engels. Bruno Bauer and Early Christianity
On April 13 in Berlin a man died who once played a role as a philosopher and a theologian but was hardly heard of for years, only attracting the attention of the public from time to time as a "literary eccentric". Official theologians, including Renan, plagia-rised him and therefore maintained a silence of death about him. And yet he was worth more than them all and achieved more than any of them on an issue which interests us socialists too: on the issue of the historical origin of Christianity.
Let us take his death as an occasion to give a brief account of the present position on this question and Bauer's contribution to its solution.
The view that dominated from the free-thinkers of the Middle Ages to the Enlighteners of the eighteenth century, the latter included, that all religions, and therefore Christianity too, were the work of deceivers, was no longer sufficient once Hegel had set philosophy the task of showing a rational development in world history.[3]
It is obvious that if naturally arising religions, like the fetish worship of the Negroes or the common primitive religion of the Aryans,[484] come into being without deception playing any part, deceit by the priests very soon becomes inevitable in their further development. But in spite of all the sincere fanaticism, artificial religions cannot even at their foundation do without deception and the falsification of history. Christianity, too, has pretty achievements to boast of in this respect from the very beginning, as Bauer showed in his criticism of the New Testament.[3] But that only affirms a general phenomenon and does not explain the particular case in question.
A religion that brought the Roman world empire into subjection and dominated by far the larger part of civilised humanity for 1,800 years cannot be disposed of merely by declaring it to be nonsense gleaned together by deceivers. One cannot dispose of it before one succeeds in explaining its origin and its development from the historical conditions under which it arose and reached its dominating position. This applies especially to Christianity. The question to be solved, then, is how it came about that the masses in the Roman Empire preferred this nonsense — which was preached, into the bargain, by slaves and oppressed — to all other religions so that the ambitious Constantine finally saw in the adoption of this religion of nonsense the best means of exalting himself to the position of autocrat of the Roman world.[485]
Bruno Bauer contributed far more to answering this question than anybody else. No matter how much even the half-believing theologians of the period of reaction may have resisted it since 1849, he irrefutably proved the chronological order of the Gospels and their mutual interdependence, shown by Wilke from the purely linguistic standpoint,(1) by the very contents of the Gospels themselves. He exposed the utter lack of scientific spirit of Strauss' vague myth theory(2) according to which anybody can consider historical as much as he likes in the Gospel narrations. And if almost nothing from the whole content of the Gospels turns out to be historically provable — so that even the historical existence of a Jesus Christ can be questioned — Bauer has thereby only cleared the ground for the solution of the question: what is the origin of the ideas and thoughts that have been woven together into a sort of system in Christianity, and how did they come to dominate the world?
Bauer studied this question until his death. His research reached its culminating point in the conclusion that the Alexandrian Jew Philo, who was still living about A.D. 40 but was already very old, was the real father of Christianity, and that the Roman stoic Seneca was, so to speak, its uncle.[3] The numerous writings attributed to Philo(3) which have been passed down to us do indeed originate in a fusion of allegorically and rationalistically conceived Jewish traditions with Greek, particularly stoic, philosophy.[486] This conciliation of Occidental and Oriental outlooks already contains all the essentially Christian ideas: the innate sinfulness of man, the Logos, the Word, which is with God and is God and which becomes the mediator between God and Man; atonement, not by sacrifices of animals, but by bringing one's own heart to God, and finally the essential feature that the new religious philosophy reverses the previous world order, seeks its disciples among the poor, the miserable, the slaves and the rejected and despises the rich, the powerful and the privileged, whence the precept to despise all worldly pleasures and to mortify the flesh.
On the other hand, Augustus saw to it in his time that not only the God-man, but also the so-called immaculate conception became formulas imposed by the empire. He not only had Caesar and himself worshipped as gods, he also had it spread that he, Augustus Caesar Divus, the Divine, was not the son of a human father but that his mother had conceived him of the god Apollo. But was not that god Apollo perhaps a relation of the one sung by Heinrich Heine?[487]
As we see, we need only the keystone and we have the whole of Christianity in its basic features: the incarnation of the Logos become man in a definite person and his sacrifice on the cross for the redemption of sinful mankind.
Truly reliable sources leave us uncertain as to how this keystone was historically introduced into the Stoic-Philonic doctrines. But this much is certain: it was not introduced by philosophers, either Philo's disciples or stoics. Religions are founded by people who feel a need for religion themselves and have a feeling for the religious needs of the masses, and as a rule this is not the case with philosophical schools. On the contrary we find that in times of general decay — now, for instance — philosophy and religious dogmatism are shallowly and universally spread in a vulgarised form. While classical Greek philosophy in its last forms— particularly in the Epicurean school[488]—led to atheistic materialism, Greek vulgar philosophy led to the doctrine of a one and only God and of the immortality of the human soul. Likewise Judaism, rationally vulgarised in mixture and intercourse with aliens and half-Jews, came to neglect the ritual and transform the formerly exclusively Jewish national god, Jahveh,(4) into the one true God, the creator of heaven and earth, and adopt the idea of the immortality of the soul which was alien to early Judaism. Thus monotheistic vulgar philosophy came into contact with vulgar religion, which presented it with the ready-made one and only God. And so the ground was prepared on which the elaboration among the Jews of the likewise vulgarised Philonic notions could produce Christianity which, once produced, could find acceptance among the Greeks and Romans. The fact that it was popularised Philonic notions and not Philo's own works that gave birth to Christianity is proved by the New Testament's almost complete disregard of most of these works, particularly the allegorical and philosophical interpretation of the narrations of the Old Testament. This is an aspect to which Bauer did not devote enough attention.
One can get an idea of what Christianity looked like in its early form by reading the so-called Revelation of John. Wild, confused fanaticism, only the beginnings of dogmas, of the so-called Christian morals, only the mortification of the flesh, but on the other hand a multitude of visions and prophecies. The emergence of the dogmas and moral doctrine belongs to a later period in which the Gospels and the so-called Epistles of the Apostles were written. In this — at least as regards morality — unceremonious use was made of the philosophy of the stoics, of Seneca in particular. Bauer proved that the Epistles often copy the latter word: for word (5), in fact, even the faithful noticed this, but they maintained that Seneca had copied from the New Testament, though it had not yet been written in his time. Dogma developed, on the one hand, in connection with the evangelical legend of Jesus which was then taking shape and, on the other hand, in the struggle between Jewish Christians and those of pagan origin.
Bauer also gives very valuable data on the causes which helped Christianity to triumph and attain world domination.(6) But here the German philosopher is prevented by his idealism from seeing clearly and formulating precisely. Phrases often replace substance at decisive points. Instead, therefore, of going into details on Bauer's views, we shall better give our own conception of this point, based on Bauer's works and also on our personal study.
The Roman conquest first directly dissolved in all subjugated countries the previous political systems and then indirectly also the old social conditions of life. Firstly, by substituting the simple distinction between Roman citizens and non-citizens or subjects of the state for the former organisation according to social estates (slavery apart). Secondly, and mainly, by exacting tribute in the name of the Roman state. If under the empire a limit was set as far as possible in the interest of the State to the governors' thirst for wealth, that thirst was replaced by ever more effective and oppressive taxation for the benefit of the state treasury, an exaction which was terribly destructive. Thirdly, and finally, Roman law was administered everywhere by Roman judges while the native social systems were declared invalid insofar as they did not tally with the provisions of Roman law. These three levers were bound to develop a tremendous levelling power, particularly when they were applied for a century or two to populations the most vigorous part of which had been either suppressed or taken away into slavery in the battles preceding, accompanying and often even following the conquest. Social relations in the provinces came nearer and nearer to those obtaining in the capital and in Italy. The population became more and more sharply divided into three classes thrown together out of the most varied elements and nationalities: rich people, including not a few emancipated slaves (cf. Petronius(7)), big landowners or usurers or both at once, like Seneca, the uncle of Christianity; propertyless free people, who in Rome were fed and amused by the state — in the provinces they got on as they could by themselves— and finally the great mass, the slaves. In relation to the state, i.e., the emperor, the first two classes had almost as few rights as the slaves in relation to their masters. From the time of Tiberius to that of Nero in particular, it was a practice to sentence rich Romans to death in order to confiscate their property. The support of the government was, materially, the army, which was more like an army of hired mercenaries than the old Roman peasant army, and morally, the general view that there was no way out of this situation; that not, indeed, this or that emperor, but an empire based on military domination was an inevitable necessity. Here is not the place to examine what eminently material facts this view was based on.
General slackening and demoralisation were consonant with the general lawlessness and despair as to the possibility of better conditions. The few surviving old Romans of the patrician type and views were either removed or died out; Tacitus was the last of them. The others were glad if they were able to keep away from public life; all they existed for was to collect and enjoy riches, and to indulge in private gossip and private intrigue. The propertyless free citizens were state pensioners in Rome, but in the provinces their condition was an unhappy one. They had to work, and to compete with slave labour into the bargain. But they were confined to the towns. Besides them, there were in the provinces peasants, free landowners (here and there probably still in communal ownership) and, as in Gaul, bondsmen for debts to big landowners. This class was the least affected by the social upheaval; it was also the one to resist the religious upheaval longest.* Finally, there were the slaves, deprived of rights and of their own will and the possibility to free themselves, as the defeat of Spartacus had already proved[489]; most of them, however, were former free citizens or sons of freed citizens. It must therefore have been among them that hatred of their condition of life was still generally vigorous, though externally powerless.
We shall find that the type of ideologists at the time corresponded to this state of affairs. The philosophers were either mere money-earning schoolmasters or buffoons in the pay of wealthy revellers. Some were even slaves. What became of them if they were fortunate is shown by Mr. Seneca. This stoic and preacher of virtue and abstinence was Nero's first court intriguer, which would not have been possible without servility; he secured
•According to Fallmerayer(8) the peasants in Maina, Peloponnesus, still offered sacrifices to Zeus in the ninth century.
from Nero presents in money, estates, gardens and palaces, and, while he preached the poor man Lazarus of the Gospel, he was in reality the rich man in the same parable. Not until Nero wanted to get at him did he request the Emperor to take back all his presents, his philosophy being enough for him. Only a very few isolated philosophers like Persius had the courage to brandish the lash of satire over their degenerated contemporaries. But as for the second type of ideologists, the jurists, they enthused at the new system because the abolition of all differences between social estates allowed them broad scope in elaborating their favourite private law, in return for which they prepared for the emperors the vilest system of state law that ever existed.
With the political and social peculiarities of the peoples, the Roman Empire also doomed to ruin their particular religions. All religions of antiquity were naturally arising tribal and later national religions which sprang from and grew together with the social and political conditions of the respective peoples. Once these, their foundations, were destroyed and their traditional forms of society, their inherited political institutions and their national independence shattered, the religion corresponding to these naturally also collapsed. The national gods could suffer other national gods, in other nations beside them, as was the general rule in antiquity, but not above them. The transplantation of Oriental divinities to Rome was harmful only to the Roman religion, but could not check the decay of the Oriental religions. As soon as the national gods are unable to protect the independence and sovereignty of their nation, they engineer their own destruction. This was the case everywhere (except with peasants, especially in the mountains). What vulgar philosophical enlightenment — I almost said Voltairianism — did in Rome and Greece, was done in the provinces by Roman subjugation and the replacement of men proud of their freedom by desperate subjects and self-seeking ragamuffins.
Such was the material and moral situation. The present was unbearable, the future perhaps still more menacing. There was no way out. Only despair or refuge in the commonest sensuous pleasure, for those at least who could afford it, and they were a tiny minority. Otherwise, nothing but languid surrender to the inevitable.
But in all classes there were necessarily a number of people who, despairing of material salvation, sought in its stead a spiritual salvation, a consolation in their consciousness to save them from utter despair. This consolation could not be provided by the stoics, any more than by the Epicurean school, for the very reason that they are philosophies and therefore not intended for the common consciousness and, secondly, because the conduct of their disciples brought the doctrines of the schools into disrepute. The consolation was to be a substitute not for the lost philosophy, but for the lost religion; it had to take on a religious form, just as anything which was to grip the masses then and even as late as the seventeenth century.
We hardly need to note that of those who were pining for such consolation of their consciousness, for this flight from the external world into the internal, the majority were among the slaves.
It was in the midst of this general economic, political, intellectual and moral decay that Christianity appeared. It was decisively at odds with all previous religions.
In all previous religions ritual had been the main thing. Only by taking part in the sacrifices and processions, and in the Orient by observing the most cumbersome diet and cleanliness regulations, could one show to what religion one belonged. While Rome and Greece were tolerant in the latter respect, there was in the Orient an obsession with religious prohibitions that contributed no little to the final collapse. People of two different religions (Egyptians, Persians, Jews, Chaldeans) could not eat or drink together, perform any everyday act together, or hardly speak to each other. It was largely due to this segregation of man from man that the Orient met its demise. Christianity knows no distinctive rituals, not even the sacrifices and processions of the classical world. By thus rejecting all national religions and their common ritual and addressing itself to all peoples without distinction, it becomes the first potential world religion. Judaism, too, with its new universal god, had made a start towards becoming a world religion; but the children of Israel always remained an aristocracy among the believers and the circumcised, and Christianity itself had to get rid of the notion of the superiority of the Jewish Christians (still dominant in the so-called Revelation of John) before it could really become a world religion. Islam itself, on the other hand, by preserving its specifically Oriental ritual, limited the area of its propagation to the Orient and the North Africa conquered and populated anew by Arab Bedouins; here it could become the dominant religion, but not in the West.
Secondly, Christianity struck a chord that was bound to echo in countless hearts. To all complaints about the wickedness of the times and the general material and moral misery, Christian consciousness of sin answered: It is so and it cannot be otherwise;
thou art to blame, ye are all to blame for the corruption of the world, thine and your own internal corruption! And where was the man who could deny it? Mea culpa!* The admission of each one's share in the responsibility for the general misfortune was irrefutable and was made now the precondition for the spiritual salvation which Christianity at the same time announced. And this spiritual salvation was so instituted that it could be easily understood by members of every old religious community. The idea of atonement to placate the offended deity was current in all the old religions; how could the idea of the self-sacrifice of the mediator atoning once and for all for the sins of humanity not easily find ground there? Christianity, therefore, clearly expressed the universal feeling that men themselves are guilty of the general decay as the consciousness of sin of each one; at the same time it provided, in the sacrificial death of its founder, a form easily understood everywhere of the universally longed-for internal salvation from the decadent world, the consolation of consciousness; it thus again proved its capacity to become a world religion and, indeed, a religion which suited the world as it then was.
So it happened that among the thousands of prophets and preachers in the desert that filled that period with their countless religious renovations the founders of Christianity alone met with success. Not only Palestine, but the entire Orient, swarmed with such founders of religions, and between them there raged what can be called a Darwinist struggle for ideological existence.[490] Thanks mainly to the elements mentioned above, Christianity won the day. How it gradually developed its character of a world religion by natural selection in the struggle of sects amongst themselves and against the pagan world is taught in detail by the history of the Church in the first three centuries.
Signed: F. Engels
Endnotes
[484] Aryans—members of any of the prehistoric peoples who spoke Indo-Iranian.
[485] Under the Christian tradition, the name of the Roman Emperor Flavius Valerius Constantinus Magnus, who in 330 transferred the capital of the empire from Rome to Constantinople, is associated with the radical turn from persecution of Christianity to the protection of the new religion, although this process had begun under his predecessors.
[486] Stoic philosophy (3rd cent. B.C.-A.D. 2nd cent.) emerged in Greece; here the reference is to the late stoic philosophy (A.D. lst-2nd cent.), which produced Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. The stoic doctrine made a strong impact on the formation of Christianity.
[487] Engels is referring to a character in Heine's satirical poem Der Apollogott (from Romanzero), a young blade, cantor at the Amsterdam synagogue, who imitated Apollo.
[488] The Epicurean school of materialist philosophy was founded by Epicurus in the late 4th century B.C. and existed until the mid-4th century A.D. In their philosophical struggle against the Stoics, its members refused to recognise the gods' interference into mundane affairs and proceeded from the assumption that matter, which has an inner source of motion, is eternal.
[489] Engels is referring to the slave uprising of 73-71 B.C. in Rome (according to some historians, 74-71 B.C.) led by Spartacus.
[490] An ironical allusion to Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
[3] 3 A reference to the assassination attempt on the Russian Emperor Alexander II made by Antoni Berezowski in Paris in 1867. Berezowski was sentenced to twenty years of hard labour.