Chapter VI (1)

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL TRADITION INTO A PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION, OR THE ORIGIN OF THE SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY AND DOGMATIC OF THE CHURCH.

Clement and Origen.

The Alexandrian school of catechists was of inestimable importance for the transformation of the heathen empire into a Christian one, and of Greek philosophy into ecclesiastical philosophy. In the third century this school overthrew polytheism by scientific means whilst at the same time preserving everything of any value in Greek science and culture. These Alexandrians wrote for the educated people of the whole earth; they made Christianity a part of the civilisation of the world. The saying that the Christian missionary to the Greeks must be a Greek was first completely verified within the Catholic Church in the person of Origen, who at the same time produced the only system of Christian dogma possessed by the Greek Church before John Damascenus.

1. _The Alexandrian Catechetical School. Clement of Alexandria._[656]

"The work of Irenæus still leaves it undecided whether the form of the world's literature, as found in the Christian Church, is destined only to remain a weapon to combat its enemies, or is to become an instrument of peaceful labour within its own territory." With these words Overbeck has introduced his examination of Clement of Alexandria's great masterpiece from the standpoint of the historian of literature. They may be also applied to the history of theology. As we have shown, Irenæus, Tertullian (and Hippolytus) made use of philosophical theology to expel heretical elements; but all the theological expositions that this interest suggested to them as necessary, were in their view part of the faith itself. At least we find in their works absolutely no clear expression of the fact that faith is one thing and theology another, though rudimentary indications of such distinctions are found. Moreover, their adherence to the early-Christian eschatology in its entirety, as well as their rejection of a qualitative distinction between simple believers and "Gnostics," proved that they themselves were deceived as to the scope of their theological speculations, and that moreover their Christian interest was virtually satisfied with subjection to the authority of tradition, with the early-Christian hopes, and with the rules for a holy life. But since about the time of Commodus, and in some cases even earlier, we can observe, even in ecclesiastical circles, the growing independence and might of the aspiration for a scientific knowledge and treatment of the Christian religion, that is of Christian tradition.[657] There is a wish to maintain this tradition in its entirety and hence the Gnostic theses are rejected. The selection from tradition, made in opposition to Gnosticism--though indeed in accordance with its methods--and declared to be apostolic, is accepted. But there is a desire to treat the given material in a strictly scientific manner, just as the Gnostics had formerly done, that is, on the one hand to establish it by a critical and historical exegesis, and on the other to give it a philosophical form and bring it into harmony with the spirit of the times. Along with this we also find the wish to incorporate the thoughts of Paul which now possessed divine authority.[658] Accordingly schools and scholastic unions now make their appearance afresh, the old schools having been expelled from the Church.[659] In Asia Minor such efforts had already begun shortly before the time when the canon of holy apostolic tradition was fixed by the ecclesiastical authorities (Alogi). From the history of Clement of Alexandria, the life of bishop Alexander, afterwards bishop of Jerusalem, and subsequently from the history of Origen (we may also mention Firmilian of Cæsarea), we learn that there was in Cappadocia about the year 200 a circle of ecclesiastics who zealously applied themselves to scientific pursuits. Bardesanes, a man of high repute, laboured in the Christian kingdom of Edessa about the same time. He wrote treatises on philosophical theology, which indeed, judged by a Western standard, could not be accounted orthodox, and directed a theological school which maintained its ground in the third century and attained great importance.[660] In Palestine, during the time of Heliogabalus and Alexander (Severus), Julius Africanus composed a series of books on scientific theology, which were specifically different from the writings of Irenæus and Tertullian; but which on the other hand show the closest relationship in point of form to the treatises of the so-called Gnostics. His inquiries into the relationship of the genealogies of Jesus and into certain parts of the Greek Apocalypse of Daniel showed that the Church's attention had been drawn to problems of historical criticism. In his chronography the apologetic interest is subordinate to the historical, and in his [Greek: Kestoi], dedicated to Alexander Severus (Hippolytus had already dedicated a treatise on the resurrection to the wife of Heliogabalus), we see fewer traces of the Christian than of the Greek scholar. Alexander of Ælia and Theoktistus of Cæsarea, the occupants of the two most important sees in Palestine, were, contemporaneously with him, zealous patrons of an independent science of theology. Even at that early time the former founded an important theological library; and the fragments of his letters preserved to us prove that he had caught not only the language, but also the scientific spirit of the age. In Rome, at the beginning of the third century, there was a scientific school where textual criticism of the Bible was pursued and where the works of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Euclid, and Galen were zealously read and utilised. Finally, the works of Tertullian show us that, even among the Christians of Carthage, there was no lack of such as wished to naturalise the pursuit of science within the Church; and Eusebius (H. E. V. 27) has transmitted to us the titles of a series of scientific works dating as far back as the year 200 and ascribed to ecclesiastics of that period.

Whilst all these phenomena, which collectively belong to the close of the second and beginning of the third century, show that it was indeed possible to suppress heresy in the Church, but not the impulse from which it sprang, the most striking proof of this conclusion is the existence of the so-called school of catechists in Alexandria. We cannot now trace the origin of this school, which first comes under our notice in the year 190,[661] but we know that the struggle of the Church with heresy was concluded in Alexandria at a later period than in the West. We know further that the school of catechists extended its labours to Palestine and Cappadocia as early as the year 200, and, to all appearance, originated or encouraged scientific pursuits there.[662] Finally, we know that the existence of this school was threatened in the fourth decade of the third century; but Heraclas was shrewd enough to reconcile the ecclesiastical and scientific interests.[663] In the Alexandrian school of catechists the whole of Greek science was taught and made to serve the purpose of Christian apologetics. Its first teacher, who is well known to us from the writings he has left, is _Clement of Alexandria_.[664] His main work is epoch-making. "Clement's intention is nothing less than an introduction to Christianity, or, speaking more correctly and in accordance with the spirit of his work, an initiation into it. The task that Clement sets himself is an introduction to what is inmost and highest in Christianity itself. He aims, so to speak, at first making Christians perfect Christians by means of a work of literature. By means of such a work he wished not merely to repeat to the Christian what life has already done for him as it is, but to elevate him to something still higher than what has been revealed to him by the forms of initiation that the Church has created for herself in the course of a history already dating back a century and a half." To Clement therefore Gnosis, that is, the (Greek) philosophy of religion, is not only a means of refuting heathenism and heresy, but at the same time of ascertaining and setting forth what is highest and inmost in Christianity. He views it as such, however, because, apart from evangelical sayings, the Church tradition, both collectively and in its details, is something foreign to him; he has subjected himself to its authority, but he can only make it intellectually his own after subjecting it to a scientific and philosophical treatment.[665] His great work, which has rightly been called the boldest literary undertaking in the history of the Church,[666] is consequently the first attempt to use Holy Scripture and the Church tradition together with the assumption that Christ as the Reason of the world is the source of all truth, as the basis of a presentation of Christianity which at once addresses itself to the cultured by satisfying the scientific demand for a philosophical ethic and theory of the world, and at the same time reveals to the believer the rich content of his faith. Here then is found, in form and content, the scientific Christian doctrine of religion which, while not contradicting the faith, does not merely support or explain it in a few places, but raises it to another and higher intellectual sphere, namely, out of the province of authority and obedience into that of clear knowledge and inward, intellectual assent emanating from love to God.[667] Clement cannot imagine that the Christian faith, as found in tradition, can of itself produce the union of intellectual independence and devotion to God which he regards as moral perfection. He is too much of a Greek philosopher for that, and believes that this aim is only reached through knowledge. But in so far as this is only the deciphering of the secrets revealed in the Holy Scriptures through the Logos, secrets which the believer also gains possession of by subjecting himself to them, all knowledge is a reflection of the divine revelation. The lofty ethical and religious ideal of the man made perfect in fellowship with God, which Greek philosophy had developed since the time of Plato and to which it had subordinated the whole scientific knowledge of the world, was adopted and heightened by Clement, and associated not only with Jesus Christ but also with ecclesiastical Christianity. But, whilst connecting it with the Church tradition, he did not shrink from the boldest remodelling of the latter, because the preservation of its wording was to him a sufficient guarantee of the Christian character of the speculation.[668] In Clement, then, ecclesiastical Christianity reached the stage that Judaism had attained in Philo, and no doubt the latter exercised great influence over him.[669] Moreover, Clement stands on the ground that Justin had already trodden, but he has advanced far beyond this Apologist. His superiority to Justin not only consists in the fact that he changed the apologetic task that the latter had in his mind into a systematic and positive one; but above all in the circumstance that he transformed the tradition of the Christian Church, which in his days was far more extensive and more firmly established than in Justin's time, into a real scientific dogmatic; whereas Justin neutralised the greater part of this tradition by including it in the scheme of the proof from prophecy. By elevating the idea of the Logos who is Christ into the highest principle in the religious explanation of the world and in the exposition of Christianity, Clement gave to this idea a much more concrete and copious content than Justin did. Christianity is the doctrine of the creation, training, and redemption of mankind by the Logos, whose work culminates in the perfect Gnostics. The philosophy of the Greeks, in so far as it possessed the Logos, is declared to be a counterpart of the Old Testament law;[670] and the facts contained in the Church tradition are either subordinated to the philosophical dogmatic or receive a new interpretation expressly suited to it. The idea of the Logos has a content which is on the one hand so wide that he is found wherever man rises above the level of nature, and on the other so concrete that an authentic knowledge of him can only be obtained from historical revelation. The Logos is essentially the rational law of the world and the teacher; but in Christ he is at the same time officiating priest, and the blessings he bestows are a series of holy initiations which alone contain the possibility of man's raising himself to the divine life.[671] While this is already clear evidence of Clement's affinity to Gnostic teachers, especially the Valentinians, the same similarity may also be traced in the whole conception of the task (Christianity as theology), in the determination of the formal principle (inclusive of the recourse to esoteric tradition; see above, p. 35 f.),[672] and in the solution of the problems. But Clement's great superiority to Valentinus is shown not only in his contriving to preserve in all points his connection with the faith of the main body of Christendom, but still more in his power of mastering so many problems by the aid of a single principle, that is, in the art of giving the most comprehensive presentation with the most insignificant means. Both facts are indeed most closely connected. The rejection of all conceptions that could not be verified from Holy Scripture, or at least easily reconciled with it, as well as his optimism, opposed as this was to Gnostic pessimism, proved perhaps the most effective means of persuading the Church to recognise the Christian character of a dogmatic that was at least half inimical to ecclesiastical Christianity. Through Clement theology became the crowning stage of piety, the highest philosophy of the Greeks was placed under the protection and guarantee of the Church, and the whole Hellenic civilisation was thus at the same time legitimised within Christianity. The Logos is Christ, but the Logos is at the same time the moral and rational in all stages of development. The Logos is the teacher, not only in cases where an intelligent self-restraint, as understood by the ancients, bridles the passions and instincts and wards off excesses of all sorts; but also, and here of course the revelation is of a higher kind, wherever love to God alone determines the whole life and exalts man above everything sensuous and finite.[673] What Gnostic moralists merely regarded as contrasts Clement, the Christian and Greek, was able to view as stages; and thus he succeeded in conceiving the motley society that already represented the Church of his time as a unity, as the humanity trained by one and the same Logos, the Pedagogue. His speculation did not drive him out of the Church; it rather enabled him to understand the multiplicity of forms she contained and to estimate their relative justification; nay, it finally led him to include the history of pre-Christian humanity in the system he regarded as a unity, and to form a theory of universal history satisfactory to his mind.[674] If we compare this theory with the rudimentary ideas of a similar kind in Irenæus, we see clearly the meagreness and want of freedom, the uncertainty and narrowness, in the case of the latter. In the Christian faith as he understood it and as amalgamated by him with Greek culture, Clement found intellectual freedom and independence, deliverance from all external authority. We need not here directly discuss what apparatus he used for this end. Irenæus again remained entangled in his apparatus, and much as he speaks of the _novum testamentum libertatis_, his great work little conveys the impression that its author has really attained intellectual freedom. Clement was the first to grasp the task of future theology. According to him this task consists in utilising the historical traditions, through which we have become what we are, and the Christian communion, which is imperative upon us as being the only moral and religious one, in order to attain freedom and independence of our own life by the aid of the Gospel; and in showing this Gospel to be the highest revelation by the Logos, who has given evidence of himself whenever man rises above the level of nature and who is consequently to be traced throughout the whole history of humanity.

But does the Christianity of Clement correspond to the Gospel? We can only give a qualified affirmation to this question. For the danger of secularisation is evident, since apostasy from the Gospel would be completely accomplished as soon as the ideal of the self-sufficient Greek sage came to supplant the feeling that man lives by the grace of God. But the danger of secularisation lies in the cramped conception of Irenæus, who sets up authorities which have nothing to do with the Gospel, and creates facts of salvation which have a no less deadening effect though in a different way. If the Gospel is meant to give freedom and peace in God, and to accustom us to an eternal life in union with Christ Clement understood this meaning. He could justly say to his opponents: "If the things we say appear to some people diverse from the Scriptures of the Lord, let them know that they draw inspiration and life therefrom and, making these their starting-point give their meaning only, not their letter" ([Greek: kan heteroia tisi tôn pollôn kataphainêtai ta hyph' hêmôn legomena tôn kyriakôn graphôn, isteon hoti ekeithen anapnei te kai zê kai tas aphormas ap' autôn echonta ton noun monon, ou tên lexin, paristan epangelletai]).[675] No doubt Clement conceives the aim of the whole traditionary material to be that of Greek philosophy, but we cannot fail to perceive that this aim is blended with the object which the Gospel puts before us, namely, to be rich in God and to receive strength and life from him. The goodness of God and the responsibility of man are the central ideas of Clement and the Alexandrians; they also occupy the foremost place in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If this is certain we must avoid that searching of the heart which undertakes to fix how far he was influenced by the Gospel and how far by philosophy.

But, while so judging, we cannot deny that the Church tradition was here completely transformed into a Greek philosophy of religion on a historical basis, nor do we certify the Christian character of Clement's "dogmas" in acknowledging the evangelical spirit of his practical position. What would be left of Christianity, if the practical aim, given by Clement to this religious philosophy, were lost? A depotentiated system which could absolutely no longer be called Christian. On the other hand there were many valuable features in the ecclesiastical _regula_ literally interpreted; and the attempts of Irenæus to extract an authoritative religious meaning from the literal sense of Church tradition and of New Testament passages must be regarded as conservative efforts of the most valuable kind. No doubt Irenæus and his theological _confrères_ did not themselves find in Christianity that freedom which is its highest aim; but on the other hand they preserved and rescued valuable material for succeeding times. If some day trust in the methods of religious philosophy vanishes, men will revert to history, which will still be recognisable in the preserved tradition, as prized by Irenæus and the rest, whereas it will have almost perished in the artificial interpretations due to the speculations of religious philosophers.

The importance that the Alexandrian school was to attain in the history of dogma is not associated with Clement, but with his disciple Origen.[676] This was not because Clement was more heterodox than Origen, for that is not the case, so far as the Stromateis is concerned at least;[677] but because the latter exerted an incomparably greater influence than the former; and, with an energy perhaps unexampled in the history of the Church, already mapped out all the provinces of theology by his own unaided efforts. Another reason is that Clement did not possess the Church tradition in its fixed Catholic forms as Origen did (see above, chapter 2), and, as his Stromateis shows, he was as yet incapable of forming a theological system. What he offers is portions of a theological Christian dogmatic and speculative ethic. These indeed are no fragments in so far as they are all produced according to a definite method and have the same object in view, but they still want unity. On the other hand Origen succeeded in forming a complete system inasmuch as he not only had a Catholic tradition of fixed limits and definite type to fall back upon as a basis; but was also enabled by the previous efforts of Clement to furnish a methodical treatment of this tradition.[678] Now a sharp eye indeed perceives that Origen personally no longer possessed such a complete and bold religious theory of the world as Clement did, for he was already more tightly fettered by the Church tradition, some details of which here and there led him into compromises that remind us of Irenæus; but it was in connection with his work that the development of the following period took place. It is therefore sufficient, within the framework of the history of dogma, to refer to Clement as the bold forerunner of Origen, and, in setting forth the theology of the latter, to compare it in important points with the doctrines of Clement.

2. _The system of Origen._[679]

Among the theologians of ecclesiastical antiquity Origen was the most important and influential alongside of Augustine. He proved the father of ecclesiastical science in the widest sense of the word, and at the same time became the founder of that theology which reached its complete development in the fourth and fifth centuries, and which in the sixth definitely denied its author, without, however, losing the form he had impressed on it. Origen created the ecclesiastical dogmatic and made the sources of the Jewish and Christian religion the foundation of that science. The Apologists, in their day, had found everything clear in Christianity; the antignostic Fathers had confused the Church's faith and the science that treats of it. Origen recognised the problem and the problems, and elevated the pursuit of Christian theology to the rank of an independent task by freeing it from its polemical aim. He could not have become what he did, if two generations had not preceded him in paving the way to form a mental conception of Christianity and give it a philosophical foundation. Like all epoch-making personalities, he was also favoured by the conditions in which he lived, though he had to endure violent attacks. Born of a Christian family which was faithfully attached to the Church, he lived at a time when the Christian communities enjoyed almost uninterrupted peace and were being naturalised in the world; he was a member of a Christian Church where the right of scientific study was already recognised and where this had attained a fixed position in an organised school.[680] He proclaimed the reconciliation of science with the Christian faith and the compatibility of the highest culture with the Gospel within the bosom of the Church, thus contributing more than any other to convert the ancient world to Christianity. But he made no compromises from shrewd calculation: it was his inmost and holiest conviction that the sacred documents of Christianity contained all the ideals of antiquity, and that the speculative conception of ecclesiastical Christianity was the only true and right one. His character was pure, his life blameless; in his work he was not only unwearied, but also unselfish. There have been few Fathers of the Church whose life-story leaves such an impression of purity behind it as that of Origen. The atmosphere which he breathed as a Christian and as a philosopher was dangerous; but his mind remained sound, and even his feeling for truth scarcely ever forsook him.[681] To us his theory of the world, surveyed in its details, presents various changing hues, like that of Philo, and at the present day we can scarcely any longer understand how he was able to unite the different materials; but, considering the solidity of his character and the confidence of his decisions, we cannot doubt that he himself felt the agreement of all essential parts of his system. No doubt he spoke in one way to the perfect and in another to the mass of Christian people. The narrow-minded or the immature will at all times necessarily consider such proceedings hypocrisy, but the outcome of his religious and scientific conception of the world required the twofold language. Orthodox theology of all creeds has never yet advanced beyond the circle first mapped out by his mind. She has suspected and corrected her founder, she has thought she could lop off his heterodox opinions as if they were accidental excrescences, she has incorporated with the simple faith itself the measure of speculation she was obliged to admit, and continued to give the rule of faith a more philosophic form, fragment by fragment, in order that she might thus be able to remove the gap between Faith and Gnosis and to banish free theology through the formula of ecclesiastical dogma. But it may reasonably be questioned whether all this is progress, and it is well worth investigating whether the gap between half theological, clerical Christianity and a lay Christianity held in tutelage is more endurable than that between Gnosis and Pistis, which Origen preserved and bridged over.

The Christian system of Origen[682] is worked out in opposition to the systems of the Greek philosophers and of the Christian Gnostics. It is moreover opposed to the ecclesiastical enemies of science, the Christian Unitarians, and the Jews.[683] But the science of the faith, as developed by Origen, being built up with the appliances of Philo's science, bears unmistakable marks of Neoplatonism and Gnosticism. Origen speculated not only in the manner of Justin, but also in that of Valentinus and therefore likewise after the fashion of Plotinus; in fact he is characterised by the adoption of the methods and, in a certain sense, of the axioms current in the schools of Valentinus and traceable in Neoplatonism. But, as this method implied the acknowledgment of a sacred literature, Origen was an exegete who believed in the Holy Scriptures and indeed, at bottom, he viewed all theology as a methodical exegesis of Holy Writ. Finally, however, since Origen, as an ecclesiastical Christian, was convinced that the Church (by which he means only the perfect and pure Church) is the sole possessor of God's holy revelations with whose authority the faith may be justly satisfied, nothing but the two Testaments, as preserved by her, was regarded by him as the absolutely reliable divine revelation.[684] But, in addition to these, every possession of the Church, and, above all, the rule of faith, was authoritative and holy.[685] By acknowledging not only the relative correctness of the beliefs held by the great mass of simple Christians, as the Valentinians did, but also the indispensableness of their faith as the foundation of speculation, Origen like Clement avoided the dilemma of becoming a heterodox Gnostic or an ecclesiastical traditionalist. He was able to maintain this standpoint, because in the first place his Gnosis required a guaranteed sacred literature which he only found in the Church, and because in the second place this same Gnosis had extended its horizon far enough to see that what the heretical Gnosis had regarded as contrasts were different aspects of the same thing. The relative way of looking at things, an inheritance from the best time of antiquity, is familiar to Origen, as it was to Clement; and he contrived never to lose sight of it, in spite of the absolute attitude he had arrived at through the Christian Gnosis and the Holy Scriptures. This relative view taught him and Clement toleration and discretion (Strom. IV. 22. 139: [Greek: hê gnôsis agapa kai tous agnoountas didaskei te kai paideuei tên pasan ktisin tou pantokratoros Theou timan], "Gnosis loves and instructs the ignorant and teaches us to honour the whole creation of God Almighty"); and enabled them everywhere to discover, hold fast, and further the good in that which was meagre and narrow, in that which was undeveloped and as yet intrinsically obscure.[686] As an orthodox traditionalist and decided opponent of all heresy Origen acknowledged that Christianity embraces a salvation which is offered to all men and attained by faith, that it is the doctrine of historical facts to which we must adhere, that the content of Christianity has been appropriately summarised by the Church in her rule of faith,[687] and that belief is of itself sufficient for the renewal and salvation of man. But, as an idealistic philosopher, Origen transformed the whole content of ecclesiastical faith into ideas. Here he adhered to no fixed philosophical system, but, like Philo, Clement, and the Neoplatonists, adopted and adapted all that had been effected by the labours of idealistic Greek moralists since the time of Socrates. These, however, had long before transformed the Socratic saying "know thyself" into manifold rules for the right conduct of life, and associated with it a theosophy, in which man was first to attain to his true self.[688] These rules made the true "sage" abstain from occupying himself in the service of daily life and "from burdensome appearance in public". They asserted that the mind "can have no more peculiar duty than caring for itself." This is accomplished by its not looking without nor occupying itself with foreign things, but, turning inwardly to itself, restoring its own nature to itself and thus practising righteousness.[689] Here it was taught that the wise man who no longer requires anything is nearest the Deity, because he is a partaker of the highest good through possession of his rich Ego and through his calm contemplation of the world; here moreover it was proclaimed that the mind that has freed itself from the sensuous[690] and lives in constant contemplation of the eternal is also in the end vouchsafed a view of the invisible and is itself deified. No one can deny that this sort of flight from the world and possession of God involves a specific secularisation of Christianity, and that the isolated and self-sufficient sage is pretty much the opposite of the poor soul that hungers after righteousness.[691] Nor, on the other hand, can any one deny that concrete examples of both types are found in infinite multiplicity and might shade off into each other in this multiplicity. This was the case with Clement and Origen. To them the ethical and religious ideal is the state without sorrow, the state of insensibility to all evils, of order and peace--but peace in God. Reconciled to the course of the world, trusting in the divine Logos,[692] rich in disinterested love to God and the brethren, reproducing the divine thoughts, looking up with longing to heaven its native city,[693] the created spirit attains its likeness to God and eternal bliss. It reaches this by the victory over sensuousness, by constantly occupying itself with the divine--"Go ye believing thoughts into the wide field of eternity"--by self-knowledge and contemplative isolation, which, however, does not exclude work in the kingdom of God, that is in the Church. This is the divine wisdom: "The soul practises viewing herself as in a mirror: she displays the divine Spirit in herself as in a mirror, if she is to be found worthy of this fellowship; and she thus discovers the traces of a mysterious way to deification."[694] Origen employed the Stoic and Platonic systems of ethics as an instrument for the gradual realisation of this ideal.[695] With him the mystic and ecstatic as well as the magic and sacramental element is still in the background, though it is not wanting. To Origen's mind, however, the inadequacy of philosophical injunctions was constantly made plain by the following considerations. (1) The philosophers, in spite of their noble thoughts of God, tolerated the existence of polytheism; and this was really the only fault he had to find with Plato. (2) The truth did not become universally accessible through them.[696] (3) As the result of these facts they did not possess sufficient power.[697] In contrast to this the divine revelation had already mastered a whole people through Moses--"Would to God the Jews had not transgressed the law, and had not slain the prophets and Jesus; we would then have had a model of that heavenly commonwealth which Plato has sought to describe"[698]--and the Logos shows his universal power in the Church (1) by putting an end to all polytheism, and (2) by improving everyone to the extent that his knowledge and capacity admit, and in proportion as his will is inclined to, and susceptible of, that which is good.[699]

Not only, however, did Origen employ the Greek ethic in its varied types, but the Greek cosmological speculation also formed the complicated substructure of his religious system of morals. The Gnosis is formally a philosophy of revelation, that is a Scripture theology,[700] and materially a cosmological speculation. On the basis of a detailed theory of inspiration, which itself, moreover, originates with the philosophers, the Holy Scriptures are so treated that all facts appear as the vehicles of ideas and only attain their highest value in this aspect. Systematic theology, in undertaking its task, always starts, as Clement and Origen also did, with the conscious or unconscious thought of emancipating itself from the outward revelation and community of cultus that are the characteristic marks of positive religion. The place of these is taken by the results of speculative cosmology, which, though themselves practically conditioned, do not seem to be of this character. This also applies to Origen's Christian Gnosis or scientific dogmatic, which is simply the metaphysics of the age. However, as he was the equal of the foremost minds of his time, this dogmatic was no schoolboy imitation on his part, but was to some extent independently developed and was worked out both in opposition to pantheistic Stoicism and to theoretical dualism. That we are not mistaken in this opinion is shown by a document ranking among the most valuable things preserved to us from the third century; we mean the judgment passed on Origen by Porphyry in Euseb., H. E. VI. 19. Every sentence is instructive,[701] but the culminating point is the judgment contained in § 7: [Greek: kata men ton Bion Christianôs zôn kai paranomôs, kata de tas peri tôn pragmatôn kai tou theou doxas Hellênizôn kai ta Hellênôn tois othneiois hupoballomenos mythois.] ("His outward life was that of a Christian and opposed to the law, but in regard to his views of things and of the Deity, he thought like the Greeks, inasmuch as he introduced their ideas into the myths of other peoples.") We can everywhere verify this observation from Origen's works and particularly from the books written against Celsus, where he is continually obliged to mask his essential agreement in principles and method with the enemy of the Christians.[702] The Gnosis is in fact the Hellenic one and results in that wonderful picture of the world which, though apparently a drama, is in reality immovable, and only assumes such a complicated form here from its relation to the Holy Scriptures and the history of Christ.[703] The Gnosis neutralises everything connected with empiric history; and if this does not everywhere hold good with regard to the actual occurrence of facts, it is at least invariably the case in respect to their significance. The clearest proof of this is (1) that Origen raised the thought of the unchangeability of God to be the norm of his system and (2) that he denied the historical, incarnate Logos any significance for "Gnostics." To these Christ merely appears as the Logos who has been from eternity with the Father and has always acted from the beginning. He alone is the object of the knowledge of the wise man, who merely requires a perfect or, in other words, a divine teacher.[704] The Gospel too only teaches the "shadow of the secrets of Christ;" but the eternal Gospel, which is also the pneumatic one, "clearly places before men's minds all things concerning the Son of God himself, both the mysteries shown by his words, and the things of which his acts were the riddles" ([Greek: saphôs paristêsi tois noousi ta panta enôpion peri autou tou huiou tou Theou, kai ta paristamena mustêria hupo tôn logôn autou, ta te pragmata, ôn ainigmata êsan hai praxeis autou]).[705] No doubt the true theology based on revelation makes pantheism appear overthrown as well as dualism, and here the influence of the two Testaments cannot be mistaken; but a subtle form of the latter recurs in Origen's system, whilst the manner in which he rejected both made the Greek philosophy of the age feel that there was something akin to it here. In the final utterances of religious metaphysics ecclesiastical Christianity, with the exception of a few compromises, is thrown off as a husk. The objects of religious knowledge have no history or rather, and this is a genuinely Gnostic and Neoplatonic idea, they have only a supramundane one.

This necessarily gave rise to the assumption of an esoteric and exoteric form of the Christian religion, for it is only behind the statutory, positive religion of the Church that religion itself is found. Origen gave the clearest expression to this assumption, which must have been already familiar in the Alexandrian school of catechists, and convinced himself that it was correct, because he saw that the mass of Christians were unable to grasp the deeper sense of Scripture, and because he realised the difficulties of the exegesis. On the other hand, in solving the problem of adapting the different points of his heterodox system of thought to the _regula fidei_, he displayed the most masterly skill. He succeeded in finding an external connection, because, though the construction of his theory proceeded from the top downwards, he could find support for it on the steps of the _regula fidei_, already developed by Irenæus into the history of salvation.[706] The system itself is to be, in principle and in every respect, monistic, but, as the material world, though created by God out of nothing, merely appears as a place of punishment and purification for souls, a strong element of dualism is inherent in the system, as far as its practical application is concerned.[707] The prevailing contrast is that between the one transcendent essence and the multiplicity of all created things. The pervading ambiguity lies in the twofold view of the spiritual in so far as, on the one hand, it belongs to God as the unfolding of his essence, and, on the other, as being created, is contrasted with God. This ambiguity, which recurs in all the Neoplatonic systems and has continued to characterise all mysticism down to the present day, originates in the attempt to repel Stoic pantheism and yet to preserve the transcendental nature of the human spirit, and to maintain the absolute causality of God without allowing his goodness to be called in question. The assumption that created spirits can freely determine their own course is therefore a necessity of the system; in fact this assumption is one of its main presuppositions[708] and is so boldly developed as to limit the omnipotence and omniscience of God. But, as from the empirical point of view the knot is tied for every man at the very moment he appears on earth, and since the problem is not created by each human being as the result of his own independent will, but lies in his organisation, speculation must retreat behind history. So the system, in accordance with certain hints of Plato, is constructed on the same plan as that of Valentinus, for example, to which it has an extraordinary affinity. It contains three parts: (1) The doctrine of God and his unfoldings or creations, (2) the doctrine of the Fall and its consequences, (3) the doctrine of redemption and restoration.[709] Like Denis, however, we may also, in accordance with a premised theory of method, set forth the system in four sections, viz., Theology, Cosmology, Anthropology, Teleology. Origen's fundamental idea is "the original indestructible unity of God and all spiritual essence." From this it necessarily follows that the created spirit after fall, error, and sin must ever return to its origin, to being in God. In this idea we have the key to the religious philosophy of Origen.

The only sources for obtaining a knowledge of the truth are the Holy Scriptures of both Testaments. No doubt the speculations of Greek philosophers also contain truths, but these have only a propædeutic value and, moreover, have no certainty to offer, as have the Holy Scriptures, which are a witness to themselves in the fulfilment of prophecy.[710] On the other hand Origen assumes that there was an esoteric deeper knowledge in addition to the Holy Scriptures, and that Jesus in particular imparted this deeper wisdom to a few;[711] but, as a correct Church theologian, he scarcely made use of this assumption. The first methodical principle of his exegesis is that the faith, as professed in the Church in contradistinction to heresy, must not be tampered with.[712] But it is the carrying out of this rule that really forms the task of the theologian. For the faith itself is fixed and requires no particular presentation; it never occurred to Origen to assume that the fixing of the faith itself could present problems. It is complete, clear, easily teachable, and really leads to victory over sensuality and sin (see c. Cels. VII. 48 and cf. other passages), as well as to fellowship with God, since it rests on the revelation of the Logos. But, as it remains determined by fear and hope of reward so, as "uninformed and irrational faith" ([Greek: pistis idiôtikê] and [Greek: alogos]), it only leads to a "somatic Christianity" ([Greek: Christianismos sômatikos]). It is the task of theology, however, to decipher "spiritual Christianity" ([Greek: Christianismos pneumatikos]) from the Holy Scriptures, and to elevate faith to knowledge and clear vision. This is effected by the method of Scripture exegesis which ascertains the highest revelations of God.[713] The Scripture has a threefold sense because, like the cosmos, alongside of which it stands like a second revelation, as it were, it must contain a pneumatic, psychic, and somatic element. The somatic or historical sense is in every case the first that must be ascertained. It corresponds to the stage of mere faith and has consequently the same dignity as the latter. But there are instances where it is to be given up and designated as a Jewish and fleshly sense. This is to be assumed in all cases where it leads to ideas opposed to the nature of God, morality, the law of nature, or reason.[714] Here one must judge (see above) that such objectionable passages were meant to incite the searcher to a deeper investigation. The psychic sense is of a moral nature: in the Old Testament more especially most narratives have a moral content, which one can easily find by stripping off the history as a covering; and in certain passages one may content oneself with this meaning. The pneumatic sense, which is the only meaning borne by many passages, an assertion which neither Philo nor Clement ventured to make in plain terms, has with Origen a negatively apologetic and a positively didactic aim. It leads to the ultimate ideas which, once attained, are self-evident, and, so to speak, pass completely over into the mind of the theologian, because they finally obtain for him clear vision and independent possession.[715] When the Gnostic has attained this stage, he may throw away the ladders by which he has reached this height.[716] He is then inwardly united with God's Logos, and from this union obtains all that he requires. In most passages Origen presupposed the similarity and equal value of all parts of the Holy Scriptures; but in some he showed that even inspiration has its stages and grades, according to the receptivity and worthiness of each prophet, thus applying his relative view of all matters of fact in such cases also. In Christ the full revelation of the Logos was first expressed; his Apostles did not possess the same inspiration as he,[717] and among the Apostles and apostolic men differences in the degrees of inspiration are again to be assumed. Here Origen set the example of making a definite distinction between a heroic age of the Apostles and the succeeding period. This laid the foundation for an assumption through which the later Church down to our time has appeased her conscience and freed herself from demands that she could not satisfy.[718]

THE DOCTRINE OF GOD AND HIS SELF-UNFOLDINGS OR CREATIONS.[719] The world points back to an ultimate cause and the created spirit to an eternal, pure, absolutely simple, and unchangeable spirit, who is the original source of all existence and goodness, so that everything that exists only does so in virtue of being caused by that One, and is good in so far as it derives its essence from the One who is perfection and goodness. This fundamental idea is the source of all the conclusions drawn by Origen as to the essence, attributes, and knowableness of God. As the One, God is contrasted with the Manifold; but the order in the Manifold points back to the One. As the real Essence, God is opposed to the essences that appear and seem to vanish, and that therefore have no real existence, because they have not their principle in themselves, but testify: "We have not made ourselves." As the absolutely immaterial Spirit, God is contrasted with the spirit that is clogged with matter, but which strives to get back to him from whom it received its origin. The One is something different from the Manifold; but the order, the dependence, and the longing of that which is created point back to the One, who can therefore be known relatively from the Manifold. In sharpest contrast to the heretical Gnosis, Origen maintained the absolute causality of God, and, in spite of all abstractions in determining the essence of God, he attributed self-consciousness and will to this superessential Essence (in opposition to Valentinus, Basilides, and the later Neoplatonists).[720] The created is one thing and the Self-existent is another, but both are connected together; as the created can only be understood from something self-existent, so the self-existent is not without analogy to the created. The Self-existent is in itself a living thing; it is beyond dispute that Origen with all his abstractions represented the Deity, whom he primarily conceived as a constant substance, in a more living, and, so to speak, in a more personal way than the Greek philosophers. Hence it was possible for him to produce a doctrine of the attributes of God. Here he did not even shrink from applying his relative view to the Deity, because, as will be seen, he never thinks of God without revelation, and because all revelation must be something limited. The omnipresence of God indeed suffers from no limitation. God is potentially everywhere; but he is everywhere only potentially; that is, he neither encompasses nor is encompassed. Nor is he diffused through the universe, but, as he is removed from the limits of space, so also he is removed from space itself.[721] But the omniscience and omnipotence of God have a limit, which indeed, according to Origen, lies in the nature of the case itself. In the first place his omnipotence is limited through his essence, for he can only do what he wills;[722] secondly by logic, for omnipotence cannot produce things containing an inward contradiction: God can do nothing contrary to nature, all miracles being natural in the highest sense[723]--thirdly, by the impossibility of that which is in itself unlimited being comprehended, whence it follows that the extent of everything created must be limited[724]--fourthly, by the impossibility of realising an aim completely and without disturbing elements.[725] Omniscience has also its corresponding limits; this is specially proved from the freedom of spirits bestowed by God himself. God has indeed the capacity of foreknowledge, but he knows transactions beforehand because they happen; they do not happen because he knows them.[726] That the divine purpose should be realised in the end necessarily follows from the nature of the created spirit itself, apart from the supporting activity of God. Like Irenæus and Tertullian Origen very carefully discussed the attributes of goodness and justice in God in opposition to the Marcionites.[727] But his exposition is different. In his eyes goodness and justice are not two opposite attributes, which can and must exist in God side by side; but as virtues they are to him identical. God rewards in justice and punishes in kindness. That it should go well with all, no matter how they conduct themselves, would be no kindness; but it is kindness when God punishes to improve, deter, and prevent. Passions, anger, and the like do not exist in God, nor any plurality of virtues; but, as the Perfect One, he is all kindness. In other places, however, Origen did not content himself with this presentation. In opposition to the Marcionites, who declared Christ and the Father of Christ to be good, and the creator of the world to be just, he argued that, on the contrary, God (the foundation of the world) is good, but that the Logos-Christ, in so far as he is the pedagogus, is just.[728]