3. A wealth of mythologies and poetic ideas was naturalised and legitimised[100] in the Christian communities, chiefly by the reception of the Apocalyptic literature, but also by the reception of artificial exegesis and Haggada. Most important for the following period were the speculations about Messiah, which were partly borrowed from expositions of the Old Testament and from the Apocalypses, partly formed independently, according to methods the justice of which no one contested, and the application of which seemed to give a firm basis to religious faith.
Some of the Jewish Apocalyptists had already attributed pre-existence to the expected Messiah, as to other precious things in the Old Testament history and worship, and, without any thought of denying his human nature, placed him as already existing before his appearing in a series of angelic beings.[101] This took place in accordance with an established method of speculation, so far as an attempt was made thereby to express the special value of an empiric object, by distinguishing between the essence and the inadequate form of appearance, hypostatising the essence, and exalting it above time and space. But when a later appearance was conceived as the aim of a series of preparations, it was frequently hypostatised and placed above these preparations even in time. The supposed aim was, in a kind of real existence, placed, as first cause, before the means which were destined to realise it on earth.[102]
Some of the first confessors of the Gospel, though not all the writers of the New Testament, in accordance with the same method, went beyond the declarations which Jesus himself had made about his person, and endeavoured to conceive its value and absolute significance abstractly and speculatively. The religious convictions (see § 3. 2): (1) That the founding of the Kingdom of God on earth, and the mission of Jesus as the perfect mediator, were from eternity based on God's plan of Salvation, as his main purpose; (2) that the exalted Christ was called into a position of Godlike Sovereignty belonging to him of right; (3) that God himself was manifested in Jesus, and that he therefore surpasses all mediators of the Old Testament, nay, even all angelic powers,--these convictions with some took the form that Jesus pre-existed, and that in him has appeared and taken flesh a heavenly being fashioned like God, who is older than the world, nay, its creative principle.[103] The conceptions of the old Teachers, Paul, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Apocalypse, the author of the first Epistle of Peter, the fourth Evangelist, differ in many ways when they attempt to define these convictions more closely. The latter is the only one who has recognised with perfect clearness that the premundane Christ must be assumed to be [Greek: theos hôn en archê pros ton theon], so as not to endanger by this speculation the contents and significance of the revelation of God which was given in Christ. This, in the earliest period, was essentially a religious problem, that is, it was not introduced for the explanation of cosmological problems, (see, especially, Epistle to the Ephesians, I Peter; but also the Gospel of John), and there stood peacefully beside it, such conceptions as recognised the equipment of the man Jesus for his office in a communication of the Spirit at his baptism,[104] or in virtue of Isaiah VII., found the germ of his unique nature in his miraculous origin.[105] But as soon as that speculation was detached from its original foundation, it necessarily withdrew the minds of believers from the consideration of the work of Christ, and from the contemplation of the revelation of God which was given in the ministry of the historical person Jesus. The mystery of the person of Jesus in itself, would then necessarily appear as the true revelation.[106]