uct fully the
Ephesian Christianity of which the Fourth Gospel is the product. After
the Prologue the Logos does not seem to be mentioned again; Jesus
appears as the supernatural Lord (though this word is not
characteristic of the Gospel) who reveals the Father to men. He offers
them salvation by regeneration in baptism, and by eating his flesh and
blood in the Eucharist. They become supernaturally the children of
God. This is the teaching of the Hellenised Church, not of the
historic Jesus. But running through the Gospel there is also another
line of thought which regards salvation as due to knowledge rather than
sacraments. What is the relation to each other of {125} these two ways
of regarding salvation? The problem has scarcely been formulated by
the students of the Fourth Gospel, much less adequately discussed.

Obviously the tendency of Ephesian Christianity was to minimise the
human characteristics of the historic Jesus, and to merge into
Docetism. This can be seen in the Fourth Gospel, and in the allied
Johannine Epistles. The writer is fully aware of the danger, and
protests against Docetism, but his own writings with very small changes
would have been admirably adapted for Docetic purposes.[17]

If Ephesian Christianity had never come to Rome, and met its complement
in the Adoptionists, it might, in spite of the Fourth Gospel, have
degenerated into thorough-going Docetism, or have been represented only
by Gnostics. It is hard either to prove or to refute the suggestion
that Alexandrian Gnosticism of the Valentinian type came from Ephesus
along the Syrian coast, and that the ultimately successful Catholicism
of Pantaenus and Clement came from the other stream which passed first
northwards and then through Italy to Alexandria. Each of these streams
accumulated new ideas on the way: the stream passing through Syria
found the Eastern Gnostics of whom Simon Magus is alleged to have been
the first. The other stream passed through Rome and found Adoptionism.
The combination with this strengthened the belief in the true humanity
of Jesus, and in his {126} real divinity, thus providing the groundwork
for the Christological development of Irenaeus and his successors in
the fourth century.[18]

The man who seems to have brought Ephesian Christianity to Rome was
Justin Martyr, sometimes called the Philosopher. This title is
somewhat unfair to philosophers, for the only claim which Justin could
make to the