ing
the world in the hope of a life beyond was regarded as the practical
side of the faith, and the unity in temper and disposition resting on
faith in the saving revelation of God in Christ, permitted the highest
degree of freedom in knowledge, the results of which were absolutely
without control as soon as the preacher or the writer was recognised as
a true teacher, that is, inspired by the Spirit of God.[199] There was
also in wide circles a conviction that the Christian faith, after the
night of error, included the full knowledge of everything worth knowing,
that precisely in its most important articles it is accessible to men of
every degree of culture, and that in it, in the now attained truth, is
contained one of the most essential blessings of Christianity. When it
is said in the Epistle of Barnabas (II. 2. 3); [Greek: tes pisteos hemon
eisin boethoi phobos kai hupomone, ta de summachounta hemin makrothumia
kai enkrateia; touton menonton ta pros kurion hagnos, suneuphrainontai
autois sophia, sunesis, episteme, gnosis], knowledge appears in this
classic formula to be an essential element in Christianity, conditioned
by faith and the practical virtues, and dependent on them. Faith takes
the lead, knowledge follows it: but of course in concrete cases it could
not always be decided what was [Greek: logos tes pisteos], which
implicitly contained the highest knowledge, and what the special [Greek:
gnosis]; for in the last resort the nature of the two was regarded as
identical, both being represented as produced by the Spirit of God.

2. The conceptions of Christian salvation, or of redemption, were
grouped around two ideas, which were themselves but loosely connected
with each other, and of which the one influenced more the temper and the
imagination, the other the intellectual faculty. On the one hand,
salvation, in accordance with the earliest preaching, was regarded as
the glorious kingdom which was soon to appear on earth with the visible
return of Christ, which will bring the present course of the world to an
end, and introduce for a definite series of centuries, before the final
judgment, a new order of all things to the joy and blessedness of the
saints.[200] In connection with this the hope of the resurrection of the
body occupied the foreground[201]. On the other hand, salvation appeared
to be given in the truth, that is, in the complete and certain knowledge
of God, as contrasted with the error of heathendom