St. John in Asia Minor.
At the time of this visit—the first and last, we may suppose, which he paid to the valley of the Lycus—St. Paul’s direction of the Asiatic Churches is drawing to a close. With his death they pass into the hands of St. John[135], who takes up his abode in Asia Minor. Of Colossæ and Hierapolis we hear nothing more in the New Testament: but from his exile in|The message to Laodicea.| Patmos the beloved disciple delivers his Lord’s message to the Church of Laodicea[136]; a message doubtless intended to be communicated also to the two subordinate Churches, to which it would apply almost equally well.
Correspondences between the Apocalypse and St. Paul’s Epistles.
The message communicated by St. John to Laodicea prolongs the note which was struck by St. Paul in the letter to Colossæ. An interval of a very few years has not materially altered the character of these Churches. Obviously the same temper prevails, the same errors are rife, the same correction must be applied.
1. The doctrine of the Person of Christ,
1. Thus, while St. Paul finds it necessary to enforce the truth that Christ is the image of the invisible God, that in Him all the divine fulness dwells, that He existed before all things, that through Him all things were created and in Him all things are sustained, that He is the primary source (ἀρχή) and has the pre-eminence in all things[137]; so in almost identical language St. John, speaking in the person of our Lord, declares that He is the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the primary source (ἀρχή) of the creation of God[138]. Some lingering shreds of the old heresy, we may suppose, still hung about these Churches, and instead of ‘holding fast the Head’ they were even yet prone to substitute intermediate agencies, angelic mediators, as links in the chain which should bind man to God. They still failed to realise the majesty and significance, the completeness, of the Person of Christ.
and practical duties which follow upon it.
And the practical duty also, which follows from the recognition of the theological truth, is enforced by both Apostles in very similar language. If St. Paul entreats the Colossians to seek those things which are above, where Christ is seated on the right hand of God[139], and in the companion epistle, which also he directs them to read, reminds the Churches that God raised them with Christ and seated them with him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus[140]; in like manner St. John gives this promise to the Laodiceans in the name of his Lord: ‘He that overcometh, I will grant to him to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame and did sit with my Father in His throne[141]’.
2. Warning against lukewarmness.
2. But again; after a parting salutation to the Church of Laodicea St. Paul closes with a warning to Archippus, apparently its chief pastor, to take heed to his ministry[142]. Some signs of slackened zeal seem to have called forth this rebuke. It may be an accidental coincidence, but it is at least worthy of notice, that lukewarmness is the special sin denounced in the angel of the Laodiceans, and that the necessity of greater earnestness is the burden of the message to that Church[143]. As with the people, so is it with the priest. The community takes its colour from and communicates its colour to its spiritual rulers. The ‘be zealous’ of St. John is the counterpart to the ‘take heed’ of St. Paul.
3. The pride of wealth denounced.
3. Lastly; in the Apocalyptic message the pride of wealth is sternly condemned in the Laodicean Church: ‘For that thou sayest I am rich and have gotten me riches and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art utterly wretched and miserable and beggarly and blind and naked, I counsel thee to buy gold of me refined with fire, that thou mayest have riches[144].’ This proud vaunt receives its best illustration from a recent occurrence at Laodicea, to which allusion has already been made. Only a very few years before this date an earthquake had laid the city in ruins. Yet from this catastrophe she rose again with more than her former splendour. |The vaunt of Laodicea.|This however was not her chief title to respect. While other cities, prostrated by a like visitation, had sought relief from the concessions of the Roman senate or the liberality of the emperor’s purse, it was the glory of Laodicea that she alone neither courted nor obtained assistance, but recovered by her own resources. ‘Nullo a nobis remedio,’ says the Roman historian, ‘propriis opibus revaluit[145].’ Thus she had asserted a proud independence, to which neither far-famed metropolitan Ephesus, nor old imperial Sardis, nor her prosperous commercial neighbours, Apamea and Cibyra, could lay claim[146]. No one would dispute her boast that she ‘had gotten riches and had need of nothing.’
Pride of intellectual wealth.
But is there not a second and subsidiary idea underlying the Apocalyptic rebuke? The pride of intellectual wealth, we may well suspect, was a temptation at Laodicea hardly less strong than the pride of material resources. When St. Paul wrote, the theology of the Gospel and the comprehension of the Church were alike endangered by a spirit of intellectual exclusiveness[147] in these cities. He warned them against a vain philosophy, against a show of wisdom, against an intrusive mystic speculation, which vainly puffed up the fleshly mind[148]. He tacitly contrasted with this false intellectual wealth ‘the riches of the glory of God’s mystery revealed in Christ[149],’ the riches of the full assurance of understanding, the genuine treasures of wisdom and knowledge[150]. May not the same contrast be discerned in the language of St. John? The Laodiceans boast of their enlightenment, but they are blind, and to cure their blindness they must seek eye-salve from the hands of the great Physician. They vaunt their wealth of knowledge, but they are wretched paupers, and must beg the refined gold of the Gospel to relieve their wants[151].
This is the last notice in the Apostolic records relating to the Churches in the valley of the Lycus; but during the succeeding ages the Christian communities of this district play a conspicuous part in the struggles and the development of the Church. |The early disciples settle in proconsular Asia|When after the destruction of Jerusalem St. John fixed his abode at Ephesus, it would appear that not a few of the oldest surviving members of the Palestinian Church accompanied him into ‘Asia,’ which henceforward became the head-quarters of Apostolic authority. In this body of emigrants Andrew[152] and Philip among the Twelve, Aristion and John the presbyter[153] among other personal disciples of the Lord, are especially mentioned.
and especially at Hierapolis.
Among the chief settlements of this Christian dispersion was Hierapolis. This fact explains how these Phrygian Churches assumed a prominence in the ecclesiastical history of the second century, for which we are hardly prepared by their antecedents as they appear in connexion with St. Paul, and which they failed to maintain in the history of the later Church.
Here at all events was settled Philip of Bethsaida[154], the |Philip the Apostle with his daughters.| early friend and fellow-townsman of St. John, and the first Apostle who is recorded to have held communication with the Gentiles[155]. Here he died and was buried; and here after his decease lived his two virgin daughters, who survived to a very advanced age and thus handed down to the second century the traditions of the earliest days of the Church. A third daughter, who was married, had settled in Ephesus, where her body rested[156]. |Their traditions collected by Papias.|It was from the two daughters who resided at Hierapolis, that Papias heard several stories of the first preachers of the Gospel, which he transmitted to posterity in his work[157].
This Papias had conversed not only with the daughters of Philip, but also with at least two personal disciples of the Lord, Aristion and John the presbyter. He made it his business to gather traditions respecting the sayings of the Saviour and His Apostles; and