apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

LETTER OF THE SMYRN/EANS. 621
6. Lastly ; great stress is laid by
Keim on the occurrence of the
expression ' Catholic Church,' which meets us more than once in the
document, as betraying a much later date than a.d. 155. This is
indeed his main argument'. I have already discussed this question,
so far as relates to the Ignatian Epistles (p. 413 sq) ; but a few words
are necessary to explain its use in this Letter of the Smyrnceans.
It has been pointed out in this previous discussion that the epithet,
used in this connexion, may have either of two senses: (i) It may signify
merely ' universal,' ' world-wide,' as opposed to a particular Church ;
or (2) It may connote the ideas of sound doctrine and apostolic
Polycarp's martyrdom is A.D. 166,
it is
difficult to see on what ground he could
maintain that the idea, which certainly
existed at the end of this short period
of 14 years, was an anachronism at the
beginning. It is found likewise in
Clement of Alexandria (Strom, iv. 9, p.
597), a passage to which he himself refers
but which fails nevertheless to influence
his opinion. But we have the
germ, and something
more than the
germ, of the idea as early as Phil. ii. 17
dXXd et Koi airivSofiai eirl rrj Ovcrig. Kal
XeiTovpyiq. ttJs niareus vfjLwv, 2 Tim. iv.
6 €70) yap TJSrj aTrivSofiai, Rom. xii. i
irapaaTrjaaL rd ffco.uaTO vfiuv Ovalav ^uiaav,
aylau, evdpearov Tip 6ea). If a Christian
life be a sacrifice, then a fortiori a Christian
death. If the shedding of one's
blood be 'a libation', then the giving of
one's body to be burned may well be regarded
as a 'holocaust'. Was a whole
century insufficient to develope this idea
from the Apostle's image Is it not so
natural in itself that it
might have sprung
up spontaneously at any moment, even if
there had not been this precedent to suggest
it
(2)
He complains (p. 109 sq) that only
a 'compendium of the martyrs' is given,
whereas 'the custom of the time' required,
that the causes, occasions, and
length of the persecution, the names, conflicts,
victories, of the several martyrs,
should be properly tabulated (see esp. p.
III). Is not this the despair of a drowning
criticism, which grasps at any straw
what induction has he learnt 'the
By
custom of the time' Have we not
accounts of persecutions in the early ages
varying as widely in character as (i)
Pliny's letter to Trajan; (2) Justin Martyr's
account {Apol. ii. 2) of Ptolemceus,
Lucius, and others A.D. 155
— 160; (3) The
Martyrdoms of Justin and his companions
(c. A.D. 163) or of the Scillitan sufferers
(a.d. 180); (4) TheLetterof the Churches
of Vienne and Lyons relating to the
persecution of A.D. 177; (5) The Acts of
Perpetua and Felicitas A.D. 202 These
represent five wholly different types of
narrative. On what grounds of reason or
experience the Letter of the Smyrnoeans
should be required to conform to one
rather than another of these, or indeed to
any one of them, it is difficult to say. As
a matter of fact it more closely resembles
(4), than (4) resembles any of the rest. It
must be remembered also that this Letter
disclaims being a full
account of all that
had happened and represents itself as a
first instalment {Kara, to wapbv) of the information
which the Philomelians had
desired to have (§ 20; see also above,
P- 455)-
^
When Keim (p. 115) refers contemptuously
to Zahn's remarks on this subject,
which he does not attempt to answer, I
can only infer that he has not taken the
pains to understand Zahn's meaning (see
below, II. p. 310).