History of Dogma, Volume 2 | Page 7

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.
The setting up of a scientific system of Christian dogmatics, which was
still something different from the rule of faith, interpreted in an

Antignostic sense, philosophically wrought out, and in some parts
proved from the Bible, was a private undertaking of Origen, and at first
only approved in limited circles. As yet, not only were certain bold
changes of interpretation disputed in the Church, but the undertaking
itself, as a whole, was disapproved.[11] The circumstances of the
several provincial churches in the first half of the third century were
still very diverse. Many communities had yet to adopt the basis that
made them into Catholic ones; and in most, if not in all, the education
of the clergy--not to speak of the laity--was not high enough to enable
them to appreciate systematic theology. But the schools in which
Origen taught carried on his work, similar ones were established, and
these produced a number of the bishops and presbyters of the East in
the last half of the third century. They had in their hands the means of
culture afforded by the age, and this was all the more a guarantee of
victory because the laity no longer took any part in deciding the form
of religion. Wherever the Logos Christology had been adopted the
future of Christian Hellenism was certain. At the beginning of the
fourth century there was no community in Christendom which, apart
from the Logos doctrine, possessed a purely philosophical theory that
was regarded as an ecclesiastical dogma, to say nothing of an official
scientific theology. But the system of Origen was a prophecy of the
future. The Logos doctrine started the crystallising process which
resulted in further deposits. Symbols of faith were already drawn up
which contained a peculiar mixture of Origen's theology with the
inflexible Antignostic regula fidei. One celebrated theologian,
Methodius, endeavoured to unite the theology of Irenæus and Origen,
ecclesiastical realism and philosophic spiritualism, under the badge of
monastic mysticism. The developments of the following period
therefore no longer appear surprising in any respect.
As Catholicism, from every point of view, is the result of the blending
of Christianity with the ideas of antiquity,[12] so the Catholic dogmatic,
as it was developed after the second or third century on the basis of the
Logos doctrine, is Christianity conceived and formulated from the
standpoint of the Greek philosophy of religion.[13] This Christianity
conquered the old world, and became the foundation of a new phase of
history in the Middle Ages. The union of the Christian religion with a

definite historical phase of human knowledge and culture may be
lamented in the interest of the Christian religion, which was thereby
secularised, and in the interest of the development of culture which was
thereby retarded(?). But lamentations become here ill-founded
assumptions, as absolutely everything that we have and value