apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

THE GENUINENESS. 415
The word therefore, as used in the Ignatian Epistle to the Smyrnseans,
is not indicative of a later date. But we are entitled to go a step further
than this. The engine of the assailant recoils on himself After the
word ' Catholic ' had acquired
its later ecclesiastical sense of ' orthodox
and apostolic no writer could have
', employed it in its earlier meaning
without considerable risk of confusion. When 'Catholic' was applied
alike to the universal Church and the particular Church, it could no
longer be used safely to designate the universal Church as contrasted
with the particular Church. The archaic sense therefore suggests an
early date for this Ignatian Epistle.
One other alleged anachronism deserves notice, if only on account
of the important issues which depend upon Not it. only does the name
'
Christian ' occur several times in these epistles, but the derived word
'Christianity' {xpi-o-riaviafxa) is also found in them (Magn. 10, J^om. 3,
Philad. 6). Supposing them to be genuine, this is the earliest occurrence
of the latter word, which next appears (about a.d. 156)
in the
Martyrdom of Polycarp (§ 10). It has been contended however', that
the name Christian only came into common use during the last decades
of the first
century ;
that a long time elapsed after its general usage
among the heathen before the Christians themselves adopted it; and
that the derivative yfiia-Tio.vitrii.o'i
therefore must be placed later still.
To maintain these positions, it is
necessary to reject the convergent
evidence of various independent witnesses.
(i)
The Latin historians are explicit in their language. Tacitus
{Ann. XV. 44), describing the outbreak of the Neronian persecution (a.d.
64), speaks
of the sufferers as those whom 'the common-folk called
Christians ' (quos...vulgus Christianos appellabat). These words imply
'
that this was already a habitual designation. The tense, appellabat ',
^
Lipsius Ueher den Ursprung u. den literature during the first seventy years of
aeltcsten Gcbraiuh des Christennamens the second century ;
and if the Ignatian
1873. He contends that it may possibly Epistles and the Martyrdom of Polycarp
have been invented at the end of Nero's are to be discredited and their testimony
reign, though probably it arose after the rejected, because they represent believers
destruction of Jerusalem (p. 19); and he as using the term familiarly among themseems
to regard the middle of the second selves, what a slender foundation remains
century (to which date he assigns Justin for any induction after these are with-
Martyr's Apology) as the turning point, dra\vn.
when it
began to be adopted by the The view of Lipsius is opposed by
Christians themselves, though even then Keim Aus dem UrchristentJuttti p. 174
chiefly in relation to heathen charges and sq (1878), who however makes concesin
apologetic writings (p. 8 sq). But, sions not warranted by the facts. See
setting aside the Apologists, how scanty also Wieseler Christenverfclg. p. 8 sq.
is the whole amount of extant Christian