Note (return) — Chapter II

The Alexandrian and non-Palestinian Judaism is still Judaism. As the Gospel seized and moved the whole of Judaism, it must also have been operative in the non Palestinian Judaism. But that already foreshadowed the transition of the Gospel to the non-Jewish Greek region, and the fate which it was to experience there. For that non-Palestinian Judaism formed the bridge between the Jewish Church and the Roman Empire, together with its culture.55 The Gospel passed into the world chiefly by this bridge. Paul indeed had a large share in this, but his own Churches did not understand the way he led them, and were not able on looking back to find it.56 He indeed became a Greek to the Greeks, and even began the undertaking of placing the treasures of Greek knowledge at the service of the Gospel. But the knowledge of Christ crucified, to which he subordinated all other knowledge as only of preparatory value, had nothing in common with Greek philosophy, while the idea of justification and the doctrine of the Spirit (Rom. VIII), which together formed the peculiar contents of his Christianity, were irreconcilable with the moralism and the religious ideals of Hellenism. But the great mass of the earliest Gentile Christians became Christians because they perceived in the Gospel the sure tidings of the benefits and obligations which they had already sought in the fusion of Jewish and Greek elements. It is only by discerning this that we can grasp the preparation and genesis of the Catholic Church and its dogma.