Note (return) — Chapter II

From the disquisitions of Clement of Alexandria we see how vigorous the old conception of the Church, as the heavenly communion of the elect and believing, still continued to be about the year 200. This will not appear strange after what we have already said as to Clement's views about the rule of faith, the New Testament, and the episcopate. It is evident that his philosophy of religion led him to give a new interpretation to the original ideas. Yet the old form of these notions can be more easily made out from his works than from those of Irenæus.155 Up to the 15th Chapter of the 7th Book of his great work, the Stromateis, and in the Pædagogus, Clement simply speaks of the Church in the sense of the Epistle to the Ephesians and the Shepherd of Hermas. She is a heavenly formation, continued in that which appears on earth as her image. Instead of distinguishing two Churches Clement sees one, the product of God's will aiming at the salvation of man—a Church which is to be on earth as it is in heaven, and of which faith forms the subjective and the Logos the objective bond of union. But, beginning with Strom. VII. 15 (see especially 17), where he is influenced by opposition to the heretics, he suddenly identifies this Church with the single old Catholic one, that is, with the visible "Church" in opposition to the heretic sects. Thus the empirical interpretation of the Church, which makes her the institution in possession of the true doctrine, was also completely adopted by Clement; but as yet he employed it simply in polemics and not in positive teachings. He neither reconciled nor seemingly felt the contradiction in the statement that the Church is to be at one and the same time the assembly of the elect and the empiric universal Church. At any rate he made as yet no unconditional acknowledgment of the Catholic Church, because he was still able to attribute independent value to Gnosis, that is, to independent piety as he understood it.156 Consequently, as regards the conception of the Church, the mystic Gnosis exercised the same effect as the old religious enthusiasm from which in other respects it differs so much.157 The hierarchy has still no significance as far as Clement's idea of the Church is concerned.158 At first Origen entirely agrees with Clement in regard to this conception. He also starts with the theory that the Church is essentially a heavenly communion and a holy communion of believers, and keeps this idea constantly before him.159 When opposing heretics, he also, like Clement, cannot help identifying her with the Catholic Church, because the latter contains the true doctrine, though he likewise refrains from acknowledging any hierarchy.160 But Origen is influenced by two further considerations, which are scarcely hinted at in Clement, but which were called forth by the actual course of events and signified a further development in the idea of the Church. For, in the first place, Origen saw himself already compelled to examine closely the distinction between the essence and the outward appearance of the Church, and, in this process, reached results which again called in question the identification of the Holy Church with the empiric Catholic one (see on this point the following chapter). Secondly, in consequence of the extraordinary extension and powerful position attained by the Catholic Church by the time of Philip the Arabian, Origen, giving a new interpretation to a very old Christian notion and making use of a Platonic conception,161 arrived at the idea that she was the earthly Kingdom of God, destined to enter the world, to absorb the Roman Empire and indeed all mankind, and to unite and take the place of the various secular states.162 This magnificent idea, which regards the Church as κοσμος του κοσμου163, denoted indeed a complete departure from the original theory of the subject, determined by eschatological considerations; though we must not forget that Origen still demanded a really holy Church and a new polity. Hence, as he also distinguishes the various degrees of connection with the Church,164 we already find in his theory a combination of all the features that became essential parts of the conception of the Church in subsequent times, with the exception of the clerical element.165