and became Jesus' true interpreter. As a result Christianity was
rejected by the Jews and became the conquering religion of the Roman
empire. In this it underwent another modification of far-reaching
consequence.

Christianity and Greek thought.

In our earliest sources--the epistles of St Paul--Christ is the
pre-existent man from heaven, who had there existed in the form of God,
and had come to earth by a voluntary act of self-humiliation. He is
before and above all things. By him all things exist. In the Johannine
writings he is the Son of God--the Logos who in the beginning was with
God--of whom are all things--who lightens every man--and who was
incarnate in Jesus. Here the cosmological element is again made
prominent though not yet supreme, and the metaphysical problems are so
close at hand that their discussion is imperative. Even in Paul the term
Messiah thus had lost its definite meaning and became almost a proper
name. Among the Greek Christians this process was complete. Jesus is the
"Son of God"; and the great problem of theology becomes explicit.
Religion is in our emotions of reverence and dependence, and theology is
the intellectual attempt to describe the object of worship. Doubtless
the two do not exactly coincide, not only because accuracy is difficult
or even impossible, but also because elements are admitted into the
definition of God which are derived from various sources quite distinct
from the religious experience. Like all concepts the meaning of
religious terms is changed with a changing experience and a changing
world-view. Transplanted into the Greek world-view, inevitably the
Christian teaching was modified--indeed transformed. Questions which had
never been asked came into the foreground, and the Jewish
presuppositions tended to disappear. Especially were the Messianic hopes
forgotten or transferred to a transcendent sphere beyond death. When the
empire became Christian in the 4th century, the notion of a kingdom of
Christ on earth to be introduced by a great struggle all but
disappeared, remaining only as the faith of obscure groups.
Immortality--the philosophical conception--took the place of the
resurrection of the body. Nevertheless the latter continues because of
its presence in the primary sources, but it is no longer a determining
factor, since its presupposition--the Messianic kingdom on earth--has
been obscured. As thus the background is changed from Jewish to Greek,
so are th