Adolf Harnack · 6 of 21

Expulsion of Modalistic Monarchianism · Part 3

The letter of the Roman Bishop produced only a passing impression in Alexandria. Its would have meant the repudiation of science. A few years afterwards the great Synod of Antioch expressly rejected the term ὁμοούσιος (consubstantial) as being liable to misconstruction. The followers of Origen in his training school continued their master's work, and they were not molested in Alexandria itself, as it seems, up till about the close of the third century. If we review the great literary labours of Dionysius, of which we, unfortunately, only possess fragments, and observe his attitude in the questions debated in the Church in his time, we see how faithfully he followed in the track of Origen. The only difference lay in greater laxity in matters of discipline. He proved, in his work “On Promises” (περὶ ἐπαγγελιῶν) that he possessed the zeal against all Chiliasm and the dexterity in critical exegesis which characterised the school of Origen; and in his work “On Nature” (περὶ φύσεως) he introduced, and endeavoured to carry out, a new task in the science of Christian theology, viz., the systematic refutation of Materialism, i.e., of the Atomic theory. Of the later heads of the training school we know very little; but that little is enough to let us see that they faithfully preserved the theology of Origen. Pierius, who also led a life of strict asceticism, wrote learned commentaries and treatises. Photius testifies that he taught piously concerning the Father and Son, “except that he speaks of two “beings” and two natures; using the words being and nature, as is plain from the context, in place of Hypostasis, and not as those who adhere to Arius” (πλὴν ὅτι οὐσίας δύο καὶ φύσεις δύο λέγει· τῷ τῆς οὐσίας καὶ φύσεως ὀνόματι, ὡς δῆλον, ἔκ τε τῶν ἑπομένων καὶ προηγουμένων τοῦ χωρίου ἀντὶ τῆς ὑποστάσεως καὶ οὐχ ὡς οἱ Ἀρείῳ προσανακείμενοι χρώμενος). This explanation is hardly trustworthy; Photius himself is compelled to add that Pierius held impious doctrines as to the , and ranked him far below the Father and Son. Now since he further expressly testifies that Pierius, like Origen, held the pre-existence of souls, and explained some passages in the O. T. “economically”, i.e., contested their literal meaning, it becomes obvious that Pierius had not parted company with Origen; indeed, he was even called “Origen Junior”. He was the teacher of Pamphilus, and the latter inherited from him his unconditional devotion to Origen's theology. Pierius was followed, in Diocletian's time, by Theognostus at the Alexandrian school. This scholar composed a great dogmatic work in seven books called “Hypotyposes”. It has been described for us by Photius, whose account shows that it was planned on a strict system, and was distinguished from Origen's great work, in that the whole was not discussed in each part under reference to one main thought, but the system of doctrine was presented in a continuous and consecutive exposition. Thus Theognostus invented that form of scientific, Church dogmatic which was to set a standard to posterity — though it was indeed long before the Church took courage to erect a doctrinal structure of its own. Athanasius had nothing but praise for the work of Theognostus, and has quoted a passage from the second book which undoubtedly proves that Theognostus did full justice to the Homoousian side of Origen’s Christology. But even the Cappadocians remarked certain affinities between Arius and Theognostus, and Photius informs us that he called the Son a “creature” (κτίσμα), and said such mean things about him that one might perhaps suppose that he was simply quoting, in order to refute, the opinions of other men. He also, like Origen, taught heterodox views as to the Holy Spirit, and the grounds on which he based the possibility of the were empty and worthless. As a matter of fact, Theognostus’ exposition of the sin against the Holy Ghost shows that he attached himself most closely to Origen. For it is based on the well-known idea of the master that the Father embraced the largest, the Son, the medium, and the Holy Spirit the smallest sphere; that the sphere of the Son included all rational beings, inclusive of the imperfect, while that of the Spirit comprehended only the perfect (τελειούμενοι), and that therefore the sin against the Holy Ghost, as the sin of the “perfect”, could not be forgiven. The only novelty is that Theognostus saw occasion expressly to attack the view “that the teaching of the Spirit was superior to that of the Son” (τὴν τοῦ πνεύματος διδασκαλίαν ὑπερβάλλειν τῆς τοῦ υἱοῦ διδαχῆς). Perhaps he did this to oppose another disciple of Origen, Hieracas, who applied himself to speculations concerning Melchizedek, as being the Holy Spirit, and emphasised the worship of the Spirit. This Copt, who lived at the close of the third and in the first half of the fourth century, cannot be passed over, because, a scholar like Origen, he on the one hand modified and refined on certain doctrines of his master, and on the other hand, emphasised his practical principles, requiring celibacy as a Christian law. Hieracas is for us the connecting link between Origen and the Coptic monks; the union of ascetics founded by him may mark the transition from the learned schools of theologians to the society of monks. But in his proposition that, as regards practice, the suppression of the sexual impulse was the decisive, and original, demand of the Logos Christ, Hieracas set up the great theme of the Church of the fourth and following century.

In Alexandria the system of faith and the theology of Origen were fused more and more completely together, and it cannot be proved that the immediate disciples of Origen, the heads of the training-school, corrected their master. The first to do this in Alexandria was Peter, Bishop and Martyr. In his writings “Concerning divinity” (περὶ θεότητος), “Concerning the sojourn of our Saviour” (περὶ τῆς σωτῆρος ἡμῶν ἐπιδημίας), and especially in his books “Concerning (the fact) that the soul does not preexist, nor has entered this body after having sinned” (περὶ τοῦ μηδὲ προϋπάρχειν τὴν ψυχὴν μηδὲ ἀμαρτήσασαν τοῦτο εἰς σῶμα βληθῆναι), he maintains against Origen the complete humanity of the Redeemer, the creation of our souls along with our bodies, and the historical character of the events narrated in Gen. III., and he characterises the doctrine of a pre-mundane fall as a “precept of Greek philosophy which is foreign and alien to those who desire to live piously in Christ” (μάθημα τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς φιλοσοφίας, ξένης καὶ ἀλλοτρίας οὔσης τῶν ἐν Χριστῷ εὐσεβῶς θελόντων ζῇν). This utterance proves that Peter had taken up a position definitely opposed to Origen; but his own expositions show, on the other hand, that he only deprived Origen’s doctrines of their extreme conclusions, while otherwise he maintained them, in so far as they did not come into direct conflict with the rule of faith. The corrections on Origen’s system were therefore not undertaken silently even in Alexandria. A compromise took place between scientific theology, and the ancient antignostically determined Creed of the Church, or the letter of Holy Scripture, to which all the doctrines of Origen were sacrificed that contradicted the tenor of the sacred tradition. But above all, the distinction made by him between the Christian science of the perfect and the faith of the simple was to be abolished. The former must be curtailed, the latter added to, and thus a product arrived at in a uniform faith which should be at the same time ecclesiastical and scientific. After theology had enjoyed a period of liberty, the four last decades of the third century, a reaction seems to have set in at the beginning of the fourth, or even at the end of the third century, in Alexandria. But the man had not yet risen who was to preserve theology from stagnation, or from being resolved into the ideas of the time. All the categories employed by the theologians of the fourth and fifth centuries were already current in theology, but they had not yet received their definite impress and fixed value. Even the Biblical texts which in those centuries were especially exploited pro and contra, had already been collected in the third. Dionysius of Alexandria had already given warning that the word ὁμοούσιος did not occur in Holy Scripture, and this point of view seems, as a rule, to have been thoroughly decisive even in the third century.

We get an insight into the state of religious doctrine about the middle of the third century and afterwards from the works of Gregory, the miracle-worker, who was one of the most eminent of Origen’s disciples, and whose influence in the provinces of Asia Minor extended far into the fourth century. This scholar and Bishop who delivered the first Christian panegyric — one on Origen — and has in it given his autobiography, remained throughout his life an enthusiastic follower of Origen, and adhered, in what was essential, to his doctrine of the . But Gregory felt compelled, in opposition to Christians whose conception of the Trinity was absolutely polytheistic, to emphasise the unity of the Godhead. He did this in his “Confession of faith”, and in a still greater degree, according to the testimony of Basilius, in his lost work διάλεξις πρὸς Ἀλιανόν (Debate with Ailianus), which contained a proposition, afterwards appealed to by Sabellians, and somewhat to the following effect, viz., Father and Son are two in thought, but one in substance (πατὴρ καὶ υἱὸς ἐπινοίᾳ μέν εἰσι δύο, ὑποστάσει δὲ ἕν). Gregory, on the other hand, described the Logos as creature (κτίσμα) and created (ποίημα) — so Basilius tells us, — and this form of expression can probably be explained by the fact that he thought it necessary, in this way and aggressively (ἀγωνιστικῶς), to emphasise, on the basis of Origen’s idea of the Homoousia of the Son, the substantial unity of the deity, in opposition to a view of the divine Hypostases which approximated to polytheism. On the whole, however, we cannot avoid supposing, that at the time when theology was introduced into the faith — a work in which Gregory especially took part, — and in consequence the worst confusions set in, the tendency to Tritheism had grown, and theologians found themselves compelled to maintain the “preaching of the monarchy” (κήρυγμα τῆς μοναρχίας) to an increasing extent. This is proved by the correspondence of the Dionysii, the theology of Hieracas, and the attitude of Bishop Alexander of Alexandria; but we have also the evidence of Gregory. True, the genuineness of the writing ascribed to him, on the “essential identity” (of the three Persons), is not yet decided, but it belongs, at all events, to the period before Athanasius. In this treatise the author seeks to establish the indivisibility and uniqueness of God, subject to the hypothesis of a certain hypostatic difference. In this he obviously approaches Monarchian ideas, yet without falling into them. Further, the very remarkable tractate, addressed to Theopompus, on the incapability and capability of suffering, treats this very subject, without even hinting at a division between Father and Son in this connection; on the other hand, the author certainly does not call it in question. We can study in the works of Gregory, and in the two treatises just mentioned, which bear his name, the state of theological stagnation, connected with the indeterminateness of all dogmatic ideas, and the danger, then imminent, of passing wholly over to the domain of abstract philosophy, and of relaxing the union of speculation with the exegesis of Holy Scripture. The problems are strictly confined to the sphere of Origen’s theology; but that theology was so elastic that they threatened to run wild and become thoroughly secular. If, e.g., we review the Christological tenets of Eusebius of Cæsarea, one of Origen’s most enthusiastic followers, we are struck by their universal hollowness and emptiness, uncertainty and instability. While Monotheism is maintained with an immense stock of Bible texts and a display of all possible formulas, a created and subordinate God is, in fact, interposed between the deity and mankind.

But there was also in the East a theology which, while it sought to make use of philosophy, at the same time tried to preserve in their realistic form the religious truths established in the fight with Gnosticism. There were theologians who, following in the footsteps of Irenæus and Hippolytus, by no means despised science, yet found the highest truth expressed in the tenets handed down by the Church; and who therefore, refusing the claim of philosophical Gnosis to re-edit the principles of faith, only permitted it to support, connect, and interpret them. These theologians were necessarily hostile to the science of religion cultivated in Alexandria, and enemies of its founder Origen. We do not know whether, during his life-time, Origen came into conflict in the East with opponents who met him in the spirit of an Irenæus. From his own statements we must suppose that he only had to deal with untrained disputants. But in the second half of the third century, and at the beginning of the fourth, there were on the side of the Church antagonists of Origen’s theology who were well versed in philosophical knowledge, and who not merely trumped his doctrine with their ψιλὴ πίστις (bare faith), but protected the principles transmitted by the Church from spiritualising and artificial interpretations, with all the weapons of science. The most important among them, indeed really the only one of whom we have any very precise knowledge, besides Peter of Alexandria (see above), is Methodius. But of the great number of treatises by this original and prolific author only one has been till now preserved complete in the original — Conviv. decem virg., while we have the greater part of a second — De resurr. The rest has been preserved in the Slavic language, and only very lately been rendered accessible. The personality of Methodius himself, with his position in history, is obscure. But what we do know is enough to show that he was able to combine the defence of the Rule of Faith as understood by Irenæus, Hippolytus, and Tertullian, with the most thorough study of Plato’s writings and the reverent appropriation of Plato’s ideas. Indeed he lived in these. Accordingly, he defended “the popular conception of the common faith of the Church” in an energetic counterblast to Origen, and rejected all his doctrines which contained an artificial version of traditional principles. But on the other hand, he did not repudiate the basis on which Origen’s speculation rested. He rather attempted with its presuppositions and method to arrive at a result in harmony with the common faith. There seems to be no doubt that he took the great work of Irenæus as his model; for the manner in which Methodius has endeavoured to overcome dualism and spiritualism, and to establish a speculative realism, recalls strikingly the undertaking of Irenæus. Like the latter, Methodius sought to demonstrate the eternal importance of the natural constitution in spirit and body of the creatures made by God; and he conceived salvation not as a disembodying, not in any sense as a division and separation, but as a transfiguration of the corporeal, and a union of what had been unnaturally divided. He rejected the pessimism with which Origen had, like the Gnostics, viewed the world as it is, the σύστασις τοῦ κόσμου, making it, if a well-ordered and necessary prison, yet a prison after all. This he confronted with the optimistic , that everything which God has created, and as he has created it, is capable of permanence and transfiguration. Accordingly, he opposed Origen’s doctrines of the pre-existence of souls, the nature and object of the world and of corporeality, the eternal duration of the world, a premundane Fall, the resurrection as a destruction of the body, etc. At the same time he certainly misrepresented them, as, e.g., Origen’s doctrine of sin, p. 68 sq. Like Irenæus, Methodius introduced curious speculations as to Adam for the purpose of establishing realism, i.e., the maintenance of the literal truth of sacred history. Adam was to him the whole of natural humanity, and he assumed, going beyond Irenæus, that the Logos combined the first man created (protoplast) with himself. This union was conceived as a complete incorporation: “God embraced and comprehended in man;” and, starting from this incorporation, the attempt was made to explain in terms of a mystical realism. Salvation was not consummated in knowledge (Gnosis), but it came to light, already achieved for mankind, in the constitution of the God-man. But for this very reason Methodius borders, just like Irenæus, on a mode of thought which sees in the incarnation the necessary completion of creation, and conceives the imperfection of the first Adam to have been natural. Adam, i.e., mankind, was before Christ still in a plastic condition, capable of receiving any impression and liable to dissolution. Sin, which had exclusively an external source, had therefore an easy task; humanity was first consolidated in Christ. In this way freedom is retained, but we easily see that Origen’s idea of sin was more profound than that of Methodius. The fantastic realism of the latter’s view is carried out in his speculations on the transference of salvation from Christ to individuals. The deep sleep of the Protoplast is paralleled in the second Adam by the sleep of death. Now as Eve was formed from, and was part of the being of sleeping Adam, so the Holy Spirit issued from Christ lying in the sleep of death, and was part of his being; and from him the Church was fashioned.

“The Apostle has excellently applied the history of Adam to Christ. So we will require to say with him that the Church is of the bone and flesh of Christ, since for her sake the Logos left the Heavenly Father, and came down that he might cleave to his spouse; and he fell asleep unconscious of suffering, dying voluntarily for her, that he might present the Church to himself glorious and faultless, after he had purified her by the bath; so that she might receive the spiritual and blessed seed, which he himself, instilling and implanting, scatters into the depths of the Spirit, whom the Church receives and, fashioning, develops like a spouse, that she may bear and rear virtue. For in this way the word is also excellently fulfilled ‘Grow and increase’; since the Church increases daily in greatness, beauty, and extent; because the Logos dwells with her, and holds communion with her, and he even now descends to us, and in remembrance (Anamnesis) of his suffering (continually) dies to himself. For not otherwise could the Church continually conceive believers in her womb, and bear them anew through the bath of , unless Christ were repeatedly to die, emptying himself for the sake of each individual, in order to find acceptance by means of his sufferings continuing and completing themselves; unless, descending from heaven, and united with his spouse, the Church, he imparted from his own side a certain power, that all who are edified in him should attain growth, those, namely, who, born again through baptism, have received flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone, i.e., of his and glory. He, however, who calls bone and flesh wisdom and virtue, speaks truly; but the side is the Spirit of truth, the Paraclete, from whom the enlightened receiving their portion are born again, in a worthy manner, to immortality. But no one can participate in the Holy Spirit, and be accounted a member of Christ, unless the Logos has first descended upon him, and, falling asleep, has ‘emptied’ himself, that he, rising again and rejuvenated, along with him who fell asleep for his sake, and re-fashioned in his own person, may participate in the Holy Spirit. For the side (πλευρά) of the Logos is really the spirit of truth, the seven-formed of the prophet, from whom God, in accordance with the self-sacrifice of Christ, that is, the incarnation and suffering of Christ, takes away something, and fashions for him his spouse, in other words, souls fit for him and prepared like a bride.”

Methodius accordingly, starts in his speculations from Adam and Eve as the real types of Christ and the Church; but he then varies this, holding that the individual soul rather must become the bride of Christ, and that for each the descent of the Logos from heaven and his death must be repeated — mysteriously and in the heart of the believer.

This variation became, and precisely through the instrumentality of Methodius, of eminent importance in the history of dogma. We would not have had in the third century all the premises from which Catholic Christianity was developed in the following centuries, unless this speculation had been brought forward, or, been given a central place, by a Christian theologian of the earlier period. It marks nothing less than the tapering of the realistic doctrinal system of the Church into the subjectivity of monkish mysticism. For to Methodius, the history of the Logos-Christ, as maintained by faith, was only the general background of an inner history, which required to repeat itself in each believer: the Logos had to descend from heaven, suffer, die, and rise again for him. Nay, Methodius already formulated his view to the effect that every believer must, through participation in Christ, be born as a Christ. The background was, however, not a matter of indifference, seeing that what took place in the individual must have first taken place in the Church. The Church, accordingly, was to be revered as mother, by the individual soul which was to become the bride of Christ. In a word: here we have the theological speculation of the future monachism of the Church, and we see why it could not but pair with the loftiest obedience, and greatest devotion to the Church.

But the evidence that we have really here the fundamental features of the monkish mysticism of the Church, is contained in the correct perception of the final object of the work from which the above details are taken. The whole writing seeks to represent the state of virginity as the condition of Christlikeness (I. 5, p. 13). Everything is directed to this end; yet marriage is not forbidden, but is admitted to possess a mystery of its own. Unstained virginity is ranked high above the married state; towards it all Christians must strive; it is the perfectly Christian life itself. Yet Methodius succeeds in maintaining, beside it, marriage and sin-stained birth from the flesh (II. 1 sq.). He had already arrived at the position of Catholic monasticism; the body belonging to the soul that would be the bride of Christ must remain virgin. The proper result of the work of Christ is represented in the state of virginity of the believers who still walk upon earth, and it is the bloom of imperishableness:

“Exceedingly great and wonderful and glorious is virginity, and to speak plainly, following Holy Scripture, this most noble and fair practice is alone the ripe result, the flower and first fruits of incorruption, and therefore the Lord promises to admit “those who have preserved their virginity into the kingdom of heaven . . . for we must understand that virginity, while walking “upon the earth, reaches the heavens”:

μεγάλη τίς ἐστιν ὑπερφυῶς καὶ θαυμαστὴ καὶ ἔνδοξος ἡ παρθενία, καὶ εἰ χρὴ φανερῶς εἰπεῖν ἐπομένην ταῖς ἁγίαις γραφαῖς, τὸ οὖθαρ τῆς ἀφθαρσίας καὶ τὸ ἄνθος καὶ ἡ ἀπαρχὴ αὐτῆς τοῦτο τὸ ἄριστον καὶ κάλλιστον ἐπιτήδευμα μόνον τυγχάνει, καὶ δία ταῦτα καὶ ὁ κύριος εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν εἰσελάσαι τῶν οὐρανῶν τοὺς ἀποπαρθενεύσαντας σφᾶς αὐτοὺς ἐπαγγελλεται . . . , παρθενίαν γὰρ βαίνειν μέν ἐπὶ γῆς, ἐπιψαύειν δὲ τῶν οὐρανῶν ἡγητέον (Conv. I. 1, p. 11).

Methodius started from other premises than the school of Origen, and bitterly opposed the latter, but in the end he came to the same practical result — witness the followers of Hieracas. Their speculations also led to the depreciation of the objective redemption, and to monachism. But the concrete forms were very different. In Origen himself and his earliest disciples the Church was by no means really the mother, or, if it were, it was in a wholly different sense from that of Methodius. Asceticism and in particular virginity were not in themselves valuable, an end in themselves, but means to the end. Finally, Gnosis (knowledge) was different from Pistis (faith), and the ideal was the perfect Gnostic, who is freed from all that is alien and fleeting, and lives in the eternal and . Methodius’ teaching was different. Pistis and Gnosis were related to each other as theme and exposition: there is only one truth, which is the same for all; but on the soil of the Church there is room for the state of virginity, which is the goal of the incarnation, though all may not yet reach it. The important and momentous achievement of Methodius consisted in subordinating a realistic Church theology, which yet was not destitute of a speculative phase, and even made a moderate use of the allegorical method, to the practical object of securing virginity, a life in which God and Christ were imitated, (Conv. I. 5, p. 13: to imitate God is to escape from corruption [ὁμοίωσις Θεῷ φθορᾶς ἀποφυγή]; Christ is not only arch-shepherd and arch-prophet [ἀρχιποιμήν-ἀρχιποροφήτης], but also archetypal virgin [ἀρχιπαρθνος]). This doctrine, as well as the practical attitude of Hieracas, and many other features, as, e.g., the considerably earlier Pseudo-Clementine epistles “De virginitate,” prove that the great aspiration of the time in the East was towards monachism, and Methodius succeeded in uniting this with a Church theology. In spite of his polemic against Origen he did not despise those phases of the latter’s theology, which were at all compatible with the traditional comprehension of religious doctrine. Thus he accepted the doctrine of the Logos implicitly in the form given to it by Origen’s school, without, of course, entangling himself in the disputed terminology (see, e.g., De creat. 11, p. 102); so far as I know, he made no express defence of Chiliasm, in spite of the high value he put on the Apocalypse. He is even said by Socrates (H. E. VI. 13) to have admired Origen, in one of his latest writings, “a sort of recantation” (ὡς ἐκ παλινῳδίας). However that may be, the future belonged not to Origen, nor to the scientific religion that soared above faith, but to compromises, such as those, stamped with monachism, which Methodius concluded, to the combination of realistic and speculative elements, of the objectivity of the Church and the mysticism of the monks. The great fight in the next decades was undoubtedly to be fought out between two forms of the doctrine of the Logos; the one, that of Lucian the martyr and his school, which had adopted elements distinctive of Adoptianism, and the other, professed by Alexander of Alexandria and the Western theologians, which with Sabellianism held fast the unity of the divine nature. But, in the case of the majority of Eastern Christians in the 4th century, the background or basis of these opposite views was formed, not by a theology purely Origenist, but by one of compromise, which had resulted from a combination of the former with the popular idea of the rules of faith, and which sought its goal, not in an absolute knowledge and the calm confidence of the pious sage, but in virginity, ecclesiasticism, and a mystical deification. Men like Methodius became of the highest consequence in the development of this theological genus, which, indeed, could not but gain the upper hand more and more, from the elemental force of factors existent in the Church.

But while as regards Origen’s theology reservations may have gradually grown stronger and more numerous in the course of the next decades, theological speculation aimed in the East, from about 250-320, at a result than which nothing grander or more assured could be imagined. In the West the old, short, Creed was retained, and, except in one case, the Christological conflicts did not induce men to change it. But in the leading Churches of the East, and during the given period, the Creeds were expanded by theological additions, and thus exegetical and speculative theology was introduced into the Apostolic faith itself. Thus, in the Catholic Churches of the East, this theology was for ever fused with the faith itself. A striking example has been already quoted; those six Bishops who wrote against Paul of Samosata in the seventh decade of the third century, submitted a Rule of Faith, which had been elaborated philosophically and theologically, as the faith handed down in the holy Catholic Church from the Apostles But we possess numerous other proofs. Gregory of Nyssa tells us that from the days of Gregory Thaumaturgus till his own, the Creed of the latter formed the foundation of the instruction given to catechumens in Neo-Cæsarea. But this Creed was neither more nor less than a compendium of Origen’s theology, which, here, was thus introduced into the faith and instruction of the Church. Further, it is clear from the letter of Alexander of Alexandria to Alexander of Constantinople, that the Church of Alexandria possessed at that time a Creed which had been elaborated theologically. After the Bishop has quoted extensive portions of it, which he describes as “the whole pious Apostolic doctrine” (πᾶσα ἡ ἀποστολικὴ εὐσεβὴς δόξα), he closes with the words “these things we teach and preach, that is the Apostolic dogmas of the Church” (ταῦτα διδάσκομεν, ταῦτα κηρύττομεν, ταῦτα τῆς ἐκκλησίας τὰ ἀποστολικὰ δόγματα) But these dogmas belong to Origen’s theology. Finally, we perceive from the Nicene transactions, that many Churches then possessed Creeds, which contained the Biblical theological formulas of Origen. We may assert this decidedly of the Churches of Cæsarea, Jerusalem, and Antioch. The entire undertaking of the Fathers of the Nicene Council to set up a theological Creed to be observed by the whole Church, would have been impossible, had not the Churches, or at least the chief Churches, of the East already been accustomed to such Symbols. These Churches had thus passed, in the generations immediately preceding the Nicene, through a Creed-forming period, to which little attention has been paid. In its beginning and its course it is wholly obscure, but it laid the foundation for the development of theological dogmatics, peculiar to the Church, in the fourth and fifth centuries. It laid the foundation — for the following epoch was distinguished from this one by the fact that the precise definitions demanded by the doctrine of redemption, as contained within the frame-work of Origen’s theology, were fixed and made exclusive. Thus the dangers were guarded against, which rose out of the circumstance, that the philosophical theory of God, and the idea of the Logos which belonged to it, had been received into the system of religion, i.e., the Neo-platonic method and circle of ideas had been legitimised, without the traditional tenets of the faith having been sufficiently protected against them. In the new Creeds of the period 260-325 we find the conditions to hand for a system of religion based on the philosophical doctrine of God, a system specifically belonging to the Church, completely expressed in fixed and technical terms, and scientific. We find the conditions ready — but nothing more, or less. But it was also due to the Creeds that in after times every controversy of the schools necessarily became a conflict that moved and shook the Church to its very depths. The men, however, who in the fourth and fifth centuries made orthodox dogma, were undoubtedly influenced, to a greater degree than their predecessors of from A.D. 260-315, by specifically Church ideas; and their work, if we measure it by the mixture of ideas and methods which they received from tradition, was eminently a conservative reduction and securing of tradition, so far as that was still in their possession. It was really a new thing, a first step of immeasurable significance, when Athanasius staked his whole life on the recognition of a single attribute — the consubstantiality — of Christ, and rejected all others as being liable to pagan misinterpretation.