[130] 1. THE IMPERIAL AND THE CHRISTIAN POLICY When Paul passed out of Pamphylia into Galatia, he went out of a small province, which was cut off from the main line of historical and political development, into a great province that lay on that line. The history of Asia Minor at that time had its central motive in the transforming and educative process which the Roman imperial policy was trying to carry out in the country. In Pamphylia that process was languidly carried out by a governor of humble rank; but Galatia was the frontier province, and the immense social and educational changes involved in the process of romanising an oriental land were going on actively in it. We proceed to inquire in what relation the new Pauline influence stood to the questions that were agitating the province.

What, then, was the character of Roman policy and the line of educational advance in the districts of Galatic Phrygia and Galatic Lycaonia; and what were the forces opposing the Roman policy?

The aim of Roman policy may be defined as the unification and education in Roman ideas of the province; and its general effect may be summed up under four heads, which we shall discuss in detail, comparing in each case the effect produced or aimed at by the [131] Church. We enumerate the heads, not in order of importance, but in the order that best brings out the relation between Imperial influence and Church influence: (1) relation to Greek civilisation and language: (2) development of an educated middle class: (3)growth of unity over the Empire: (4) social facts.

(1) The Roman influence would be better defined as "Gręco-Roman ". Previous to Roman domination, the Greek civilisation, though fostered in the country by the Greek kings of Syria and Pergamos, who had successively ruled the country, had failed to affect the people as a body; it had been confined to the coast valleys of the Hermus, Cayster, Męander and Lycus, and to the garrison cities rounded on the great central plateau by the kings to strengthen their hold on the country. These cities were at the same time centres of Greek manners and education; their language was Greek; and, in the midst of alien tribes, their interests naturally coincided with those of the kings who had rounded them.

The Roman Government, far from being opposed to Greek influence, acted in steady alliance with it. It adopted the manners of Greece, and even recognised the Greek language for general use in the Eastern provinces. Rome was so successful, because she almost always yielded to the logic of facts. The Greek influence was, on the whole, European and Western in character; and opposed to the oriental stagnation which resisted Roman educative efforts. Rome accepted the Greek language as her ally. Little attempt was made to naturalise the Latin language in the East; and even the Roman colonies in the province of Galatia soon ceased to use Latin except on state occasions and in a few [132] formal documents. A Gręco-Roman civilisation using the Greek language was the type which Rome aimed at establishing in the East.

The efforts of Rome to naturalise Western culture in Asia Minor were more successful than those of the Greek kings had been; but still they worked at best very slowly. The evidence of inscriptions tends to show that the Phrygian language was used in rural parts of the country during the second and even the third century. In some remote and rustic districts it persisted even until the fourth century, as Celtic did in parts of North Galatia.

The Christian influence was entirely in favour of the Greek language. The rustics clung longest to Paganism, while the Greek-speaking population of the cities adopted Christianity. It is not probable that any attempt was made to translate the Christian sacred books into Phrygian or Lycaonian; there is not even any evidence that evangelisation in these languages was ever attempted. The Christians seem to have been all expected to read the Scriptures in Greek. That fact was sufficient to put the Church, as regards its practical effect on society, on the same side as the romanising influence; and the effect was quite independent of any intentional policy. The most zealous enemy of the imperial Antichrist was none the less effective in aiding the imperial policy by spreading the official language. In fact, Christianity did far more thoroughly what the emperors tried to do. It was really their best ally, if they had recognised the facts of the case; and the Christian Apologists of the second century are justified in claiming that their religion was essentially a loyal religion.

(z) The Empire had succeeded in imposing its languages [133] on the central districts of Asia only so far as education spread. Every one who wrote or read, wrote and read Greek; but those who could do neither used the native language. Hence inscriptions were almost universally expressed in Greek, for even the most illiterate, if they aspired to put an epitaph on a grave, did so in barbarous (sometimes unintelligible) Greek; the desire for an epitaph was the first sign of desire for education and for Greek.

In education lay the most serious deficiency of the imperial policy. Rome cannot be said to have seriously attempted to found an educational system either in the provinces or in the metropolis. "The education imparted on a definite plan by the State did not go beyond instituting a regular series of amusements, some of a rather brutalising tendency"(Church in R.E., p. 360). And precisely in this point, Christianity came in to help the Imperial Government, recognising the duty of educating, as well as feeding and amusing, the mass of the population. The theory of universal education for the people has never been more boldly and thoroughly stated than by Tatian (ibid. p. 345). "The weak side of the Empire-the cause of the ruin of the first Empire was the moral deterioration of the lower classes: Christianity, if adopted in time, might have prevented this result."

Now, the classes where education and work go hand in hand were the first to come under the influence of the new religion. On the one hand the uneducated and grossly superstitious rustics were unaffected by it. On the other hand, there were "not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble"in the Churches of the first century, i.e., not many professional teachers of wisdom and philosophy, not many of the official and governing class, not many of [134] the hereditarily privileged class. But the working and thinking classes, with the students, if not the Professors, at the Universities, were attracted to the new teaching; and it spread among them with a rapidity that seemed to many modern critics incredible and fabulous, till it was justified by recent discoveries. The enthusiasm of the period was on the side of the Christians; its dilettantism, officialism, contentment and self-satisfaction were against them.

In respect of education Christianity appears as filling a gap in the imperial policy, supplementing, not opposing it-a position which, though it earns no gratitude and often provokes hatred, implies no feeling of opposition in the giver.

(3) Again, the main. effort of Roman policy was directed towards encouraging a sense of unity and patriotism in the Empire. It discouraged the old tribal and national divisions, which kept the subject population in their pre-Roman associations, and substituted new divisions. Patriotism in ancient time was inseparable from religious feeling, and Roman policy fostered a new imperial religion in which all its subjects should unite, viz., the worship of the divine majesty of Rome incarnate in human form in the series of the emperors and especially in the reigning emperor. Each province was united in a formal association for this worship: the association built temples in the great cities of the province, held festivals and games, and had a set of officials, who were in a religious point of view priests and in a political point of view, officers of the imperial service. Everything that the imperial policy did in the provinces during the first century was so arranged as to encourage the unity of the entire Roman province; [135] and the priests of the imperial religion became by insensible degrees a higher priesthood, exercising a certain influence over the priests of the other religions of the province. In this way a sort of hierarchy was created for the province and the empire as a whole; the reigning emperor being the religious head, the Supreme Pontiff of the State, and a kind of sacerdotal organisation being grouped under him according to the political provinces.

As time passed, gradually the Christian Church grouped itself according to the same forms as the imperial religion, -not indeed through conscious imitation, but because the Church naturally arranged its external form according to the existing facts of communication and interrelation. In Pisidian Antioch a preacher had unique opportunities for affecting the entire territory whose population resorted to that great centre (p. 105). So Perga was a centre for Pamphylia, Ephesus for Asia. But the direct influence of these centres was confined to the Roman district or province. In this way necessarily and inevitably the Christian Church was organised around the Roman provincial metropolis and according to the Roman provincial divisions.

The question then is, when did this organisation of the Church begin? I can see no reason to doubt that it began with Paul's mission to the West. It grew out of the circumstances of the country, and there was more absolute necessity in the first century than later, that, if the Church was organised at all, it must adapt itself to the political facts of the time, for these were much stronger in the first century. The classification adopted in Paul's own letters of the Churches which he rounded is according to provinces, Achaia, Macedonia, Asia, and [136] Galatia. The same fact is clearly visible in the narrative of Act,: it guides and inspires the expression from the time when the Apostles landed at Perga. At every step any one who knows the country recognises that the Roman division is implied. There is only one way of avoiding this conclusion, and that is to make up your mind beforehand that the thing is impossible, and therefore to refuse to admit any evidence for it.

The issue of events showed that the Empire had made a mistake in disregarding so completely the existing lines of demarcation between tribes and races in making its new political provinces. For a time it succeeded in establishing them, while the energy of the Empire was still fresh, and its forward movement continuous and steady. But the differences of tribal and national character were too great to be completely set aside; they revived while the energy of the Empire decayed during the second century. Hence every change in the bounds of the provinces of Asia Minor from 138 onwards was in the direction of assimilating them to the old tribal frontiers; and at last in 295 even the great complex province Asia was broken up after 428 years of existence, and resolved into the old native districts, Lydia, Caria, Phrygia, etc.; and the moment that the political unity was dissolved there remained nothing of the Roman Asia. But the ultimate failure of the Roman policy must not blind us to the vigour and energy with which that policy was carried out during the first century. "Asia"and "Galatia"were only ideas, but they were ideas which the whole efforts of Roman government aimed at making into realities.

(4) There was another reason why the power of the [137] new religion was necessarily thrown on the side of the Roman policy. Greek civilisation was strongly opposed to the social system that was inseparably connected with the native religion in all its slightly varying forms in different localities. The opposition is. as old as the landing of the earliest Greek emigrants on the Asian coasts: the colonists were the force of education, and progress and freedom, the priests arrayed against them the elements that made for stagnation and priest-ridden ignorance and slavery. Throughout Greek history the same opposition constantly appears. The Phrygian religion was always reckoned as the antithesis of Hellenism. That is all a matter of history, one might say a commonplace of history. But the same opposition was necessarily developed in the Romanisation of the provinces of Asia Minor. The priests of the great religious centres were inevitably opposed to the Roman policy; but their power was gone, their vast estates had become imperial property, and their influence with the population was weakened by the growth of the Greek spirit. This subject might be discussed at great length; but I must here content myself with referring to the full account of the districts in my Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia.

In this conflict there can be no doubt on which side the Christian influence must tell. When we consider the social system which was inculcated as a part of the native religion, it is evident that every word spoken by Paul or Barnabas must tell directly against the prevalent religion, and consequently on the side of the Roman policy. It is true that in moral tone the Greek society and religion were low, and Christianity was necessarily an enemy to them. But Greek religion was not here [137] present as the enemy. The native religion was the active enemy; and its character was such that Greek education was pure in comparison, and the Greek moralists, philosophers, and politicians inveighed against the Phrygian religion as the worst enemy of the Greek ideals of life. Greek society and life were at least rounded on marriage; but the religion of Asia Minor maintained as a central principle that all organised and settled social life on the basis of marriage was an outrage on the free unfettered divine life of nature, the type of which was found in the favourites of the great goddesses, the wild animals of the field and the mountains. The Greek and Roman law which recognised as citizens only those born from the legitimate marriage of two citizens had no existence in Phrygian cities.

Thus in Galatia the Gręco-Roman education, on the side of freedom, civilisation and a higher social morality, was contending against the old native religious centres with their influential priestly colleges, on the side of ignorance, stagnation, social anarchy, and enslavement of the people to the priests. Christian influence told against the latter, and therefore in favour of the former.

In all these ways Christianity, as a force in the social life of the time, was necessarily arrayed on the side of the Roman imperial policy. "One of the most remarkable sides of the history of Rome is the growth of ideas which found their realisation and completion in the Christian Empire. Universal citizenship, universal equality of rights, universal religion, a universal Church, all were ideas which the Empire was slowly working out, but which it could not realise till it merged itself in Christianity." "The path of development for the Empire [139] lay in accepting the religion which offered it the possibility of completing its organisation."

With the instinctive perception of the real nature of the case that characterises the genius for organisation, Paul from the first directed his steps in the path which the Church had to tread. He made no false step, he needed no tentatives before he found the path, he had to retract nothing (except perhaps the unsuccessful compromise embodied in the Decree of the Apostolic Council, pp. 172, 182). It is not necessary to assert or to prove that he consciously anticipated all that was to take place; but he was beyond all doubt one of those great creative geniuses whose policy marks out the lines on which history is to move for generations and even for centuries afterwards.

It is apparent how far removed we are from a view, which has been widely entertained, "that there was an entire dislocation and discontinuity in the history of Christianity in Asia Minor at a certain epoch; that the Apostle of the Gentiles was ignored and his teaching repudiated, if not anathemarised"; and that this anti-Pauline tendency found in "Papias a typical representative". Like Lightfoot, whose summary we quote, we must reject that view. We find in the epitaph of the second-century Phrygian saint, Avircius Marcellus, a proof of the deep reverence retained in Asia Minor for St. Paul: when he travelled, he took Paul everywhere with him as his guide and companion.

These considerations show the extreme importance of the change of plan that led Paul across Taurus to Pisidian Antioch. So far as it is right to say that any single event is of outstanding importance, the step that took Paul away from an outlying corner and put him on the [140] main line of development at the outset of his work in Asia Minor, was the most critical step in his history. It is noteworthy that the historian, who certainly understood its importance, and whose sympathy was deeply engaged in it, does not attribute it to Divine suggestion, though he generally records the Divine guidance in the great crises of Paul's career; and it stands in perfect agreement with this view, that Paul himself, when he impresses on the Galatian Churches in the strongest terms his Divine commission to the Gentiles, does not say that the occasion of his going among them was the Divine guidance, but expressly mentions that an illness was the cause why he preached among them at first.

Now, every reader must be struck with the stress that is laid, alike by Paul and by Luke, throughout their writings, on the Divine guidance. They both find the justification of all Paul's innovations on missionary enterprise in the guiding hand of God. We demand that there should be a clear agreement in the occasions when they discerned that guidance; and in this case the South Galatian theory enables us to recognise a marked negative agreement.

Further, there is evidently a marked difference between the looser way of talking about "the hand of God"that is common in the present day, and the view entertained by Paul or Luke. Where a great advantage results from a serious illness, many of us would feel it right to recognise and acknowledge the "guiding hand of God"; but it is evident that, when Luke or Paul uses such language as "the Spirit suffered them not,"they refer to some definite and clear manifestation, and not to a guidance which became apparent only through the results. The superhuman [141] element is inextricably involved in Luke's history and in Paul's letters.

All that has just been said is, of course, mere empty verbiage, devoid of any relation to Paul's work and policy in Galatia, if the Churches of Galatia were not the active centres of Roman organising effort, such as the colonies Antioch and Lystra, or busy trading cities like Claud-Iconium and Claudio-Derbe, but Pessinus and some villages in the wilderness of the Axylon (as Professor Zōckler has quite recently maintained). Lightfoot saw the character of Paul's work, and supposed him to have gone to the great cities of North Galatia, and specially the metropolis Ancyra; but the most recent development of the North-Galatian theory denies that Paul ever saw the Roman central city.