History of Dogma, Volume 2 | Page 5

purified from any connection
with Greek mythology and gross polytheism.[4] A motley multitude of
primitive Christian ideas and hopes, derived from both Testaments, and
too brittle to be completely recast, as yet enclosed the kernel. But the
majority of these were successfully manipulated by theological art, and
the traditional rule of faith was transformed into a system of doctrine,
in which, to some extent, the old articles found only a nominal
place.[5]
This hellenising of ecclesiastical Christianity, by which we do not
mean the Gospel, was not a gradual process; for the truth rather is that
it was already accomplished the moment that the reflective Greek
confronted the new religion which he had accepted. The Christianity of
men like Justin, Athenagoras, and Minucius is not a whit less
Hellenistic than that of Origen. But yet an important distinction obtains
here. It is twofold. In the first place, those Apologists did not yet find
themselves face to face with a fixed collection of writings having a title
to be reverenced as Christian; they have to do with the Old Testament
and the "Teachings of Christ" ([Greek: didagmata Christou]). In the
second place, they do not yet regard the scientific presentation of
Christianity as the main task and as one which this religion itself
demands. As they really never enquired what was meant by
"Christian," or at least never put the question clearly to themselves,
they never claimed that their scientific presentation of Christianity was
the first proper expression of it that had been given. Justin and his
contemporaries make it perfectly clear that they consider the traditional
faith existing in the churches to be complete and pure and in itself
requiring no scientific revision. In a word, the gulf which existed
between the religious thought of philosophers and the sum of Christian
tradition is still altogether unperceived, because that tradition was not

yet fixed in rigid forms, because no religious utterance testifying to
monotheism, virtue, and reward was as yet threatened by any control,
and finally, because the speech of philosophy was only understood by a
small minority in the Church, though its interests and aims were not
unknown to most. Christian thinkers were therefore still free to divest
of their direct religious value all realistic and historical elements of the
tradition, while still retaining them as parts of a huge apparatus of proof,
which accomplished what was really the only thing that many sought in
Christianity, viz., the assurance that the theory of the world obtained
from other sources was the truth. The danger which here threatened
Christianity as a religion was scarcely less serious than that which had
been caused to it by the Gnostics. These remodelled tradition, the
Apologists made it to some extent inoperative without attacking it. The
latter were not disowned, but rather laid the foundation of Church
theology, and determined the circle of interests within which it was to
move in the future.[6]
But the problem which the Apologists solved almost offhand, namely,
the task of showing that Christianity was the perfect and certain
philosophy, because it rested on revelation, and that it was the highest
scientific knowledge of God and the world, was to be rendered more
difficult. To these difficulties all that primitive Christianity has up to
the present transmitted to the Church of succeeding times contributes
its share. The conflict with Gnosticism made it necessary to find some
sort of solution to the question, "What is Christian?" and to fix this
answer. But indeed the Fathers were not able to answer the question
confidently and definitely. They therefore made a selection from
tradition and contented themselves with making it binding on
Christians. Whatever was to lay claim to authority in the Church had
henceforth to be in harmony with the rule of faith and the canon of
New Testament Scriptures. That created an entirely new situation for
Christian thinkers, that is, for those trying to solve the problem of
subordinating Christianity to the Hellenic spirit. That spirit never
became quite master of the situation; it was obliged to accommodate
itself to it.[7] The work first began with the scientific treatment of
individual articles contained in the rule of faith, partly with the view of
disproving Gnostic conceptions, partly for the purpose of satisfying the

Church's own needs. The framework in which these articles were
placed virtually continued to be the apologetic theology, for this
maintained a doctrine of God and the world, which seemed to
correspond to the earliest tradition as much as it ran counter to the
Gnostic theses. (Melito), Irenæus, Tertullian and Hippolytus, aided
more or less by tradition on the one hand and by philosophy on the
other, opposed to the Gnostic dogmas about Christianity the articles of
the baptismal confession interpreted as a rule of faith, these articles
being developed