The Acts of the Apostles

EXCURSUS IV 289
more superficial than St. Paul—one who, with aU his
universalism, could yet feel a respect for the Jewish Law
as well as for the Jewish religion, and more especially
could regard devout Jewish Christians with an esteem
and reverence such as the Apostle, who had recognised
that Christ was the end of the Law, could no longer
bring himself to feel. All that remained to St. Paul
for his own nation he casts into the future (ay^pi^ ov
TO ifKripcoixa twv iOvwv etVeX^?;), while St. Luke, who
had never experienced the terror of the Law, stands
full of reverence before the antiqua religio.
Gentile Christendom advanced in self-consciousness
far beyond the standpoint of St. Luke, indeed even
of " St. John." ^ In the interests of its own self-
preservation it allegorised the Law, declaring that the
verbal sense was a deception of the devil, or was a
penal and disciplinary ordinance devoid of blessing
and promise ; it delivered the Jewish nation to Satan
and the daemons, and claimed the Old Testament
with all the promises and with all the patriarchs,
men of God, and prophets exclusively for itself.^ But
this attitude did not remain final in the Church
rather since the end of the second century it experi-
enced forcible modification. The great conflict with
Gnosticism and Marcionitism compelled the Church
to attend to the verbal sense of the Old Testament,
^ For " St. John " the statement : 17 cwTrjpia iK t(2v 'Iov8aiwv
iariy still held good.
* This development was assisted by the enduring and increasing
enmity of the Jews, by the numerical weakness of the Jewish
Christians, and by the destruction of the Temple, the capital city,
and the Jewish people as a nation.
T
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