Note (return) — Chapter I

But meanwhile the huge gulf which existed between both Testaments and the rule of faith on the one hand, and the current ideas of the time on the other, had been recognized in Alexandria. It was not indeed felt as a gulf, for then either the one or the other would have had to be given up, but as a problem. If the Church tradition contained the assurance, not to be obtained elsewhere, of all that Greek culture knew, hoped for, and prized, and if for that very reason it was regarded as in every respect inviolable, then the absolutely indissoluble union of Christian tradition with the Greek philosophy of religion was placed beyond all doubt. But an immense number of problems were at the same time raised, especially when, as in the case of the Alexandrians, heathen syncretism in the entire breadth of its development was united with the doctrine of the Church. The task, which had been begun by Philo and carried on by Valentinus and his school, was now undertaken in the Church. Clement led the way in attempting a solution of the problem, but the huge task proved too much for him. Origen took it up under more difficult circumstances, and in a certain fashion brought it to a conclusion. He, the rival of the Neoplatonic philosophers, the Christian Philo, wrote the first Christian dogmatic, which competed with the philosophic systems of the time, and which, founded on the Scriptures of both Testaments, presents a peculiar union of the apologetic theology of a Justin and the Gnostic theology of a Valentinus, while keeping steadily in view a simple and highly practical aim. In this dogmatic the rule of faith is recast and that quite consciously. Origen did not conceal his conviction that Christianity finds its correct expression only in scientific knowledge, and that every form of Christianity that lacks theology is but a meagre kind with no clear consciousness of its own content. This conviction plainly shows that Origen was dealing with a different kind of Christianity, though his view that a mere relative distinction existed here may have its justification in the fact, that the untheological Christianity of the age with which he compared his own was already permeated by Hellenic elements and in a very great measure secularised.10 But Origen, as well as Clement before him, had really a right to the conviction that the true essence of Christianity, or, in other words, the Gospel, is only arrived at by the aid of critical speculation; for was not the Gospel veiled and hidden in the canon of both Testaments, was it not displaced by the rule of faith, was it not crushed down, depotentiated, and disfigured in the Church which identified itself with the people of Christ? Clement and Origen found freedom and independence in what they recognized to be the essence of the matter and what they contrived with masterly skill to determine as its proper aim, after an examination of the huge apparatus of tradition. But was not that the ideal of Greek sages and philosophers? This question can by no means be flatly answered in the negative, and still less decidedly in the affirmative, for a new significance was here given to the ideal by representing it as assured beyond all doubt, already realised in the person of Christ and incompatible with polytheism. If, as is manifestly the case, they found joy and peace in their faith and in the theory of the universe connected with it, if they prepared themselves for an eternal life and expected it with certainty, if they felt themselves to be perfect only through dependence on God, then, in spite of their Hellenism, they unquestionably came nearer to the Gospel than Irenæus with his slavish dependence on authority.