on the other, held it as a matter of common faith that in Jesus the revelation of God had appeared, would find it quite unavoidable to recognize in Jesus that preëxistent principle of revelation, and consequently to conceive Jesus as existing in eternity, and to make him the medium of the crea tion of the world. . . . This is the permanent value of this speculative christology of the apostolic period, that it refers the temporal appearance of Jesus Christ to an eternal ground, recognizes Jesus as the self-revelation of God in the absolute sense, and emphasizes the idea of God in creation. and redemption. But we may not deceive ourselves! We have to do here with a piece of apostolic theology, . which, with all its profundity and religious truth, is-like all theology-under human and temporal limitations, and so remains imperfect. This imperfection consists in the fact that . . . the distinction is overlooked between an idea and a person as such, and that, in consequence, the idea is itself conceived as a person, and so an eternally existing person is supposed before the natal beginning of the real historical person." We have here, again, the frankness of Schultz, with the rejection of apostolic auhority which belongs to all the members of the Ritschlian school.

It will not be necessary to follow Beyschlag further in his discussion of Paul, since we now have all his important ideas. His Scripture proof, which is minutely carried out, would be found to suffer under all the errors of method and to display all the perverseness of result which we have already sufficiently noted in the discussion of the Gospels. Nor is anything substantial added by the treatment of the Epistle to the Hebrews and later portions of the New Testament. The method of the Ritschlian hermeneutics is now clear. First, the Chalcedon christology, with its doctrine of the two natures, is "impossible." Then, what is said of the human nature, consciousness, and limitations of the Saviour is sharply sundered from what pertains to his preëxistent divinity, and made the determinative element of the christology,

which is thus made a christology of pure humanity. Then, what remains is partly explained away as not meaning what it seems to mean to the unsophisticated reader, and partly exposed as an unfortunate attempt to make a theoretical explanation of the person of Christ. This is the application of the Napoleonic tactics to exegesis, to divide the enemy and beat him in detail. At bottom it rests upon the idea that the christology of the church is unthinkable, and hence it is a fundamental petitio principii; and it evades the force of what it is compelled to confess is Paul's true meaning, by ascribing to him an incapacity to distinguish between the real and the ideal which the splendid intellectual qualities of his great epistles render inconceivable. One is almost inclined to wonder if this is seriously meant. The apostle is reduced to a mental rank below that of Athanasius and Leo, who certainly distinctly held the doctrine which Paul is said not to have held, and yet was so unfortunate as to be constantly uttering!

The sum total of this excursion into Beyschlag's lucubrations will be to convince the reader that when one accepts the authority of Paul and other New Testament teachers in the sense in which evangelical theology accepts it, and when one seeks objectively and with simplicity to arrive at the precise meaning of these writers for the purpose of receiving it and then of endeavoring to understand it, the preëxistence of Christ, the two natures, and the peculiar character of the consciousness of Jesus, neither altogether human nor altogether superhuman, are the necessary facts with which he will come out, and which he must seek to embrace in any satisfactory and permanent christology.

We judge, therefore, that the modern attack upon the result of biblical study as set forth above, both in the exegetical and dogmatical aspect of that attack, is a failure; and we return, next, to the consideration of our theme at the point where this excursus began.

VOL. LIII. NO. 211. 5

ARTICLE IV.

ORIGEN AND THE RETURN TO GREEK THEOLOGY.

BY THE REV. JAMES. W. FALCONER.

A FAVORITE advice given of late to younger students has been that they should consult the wise theologians of the East before completing their system. The Western authors have been worked out, it is said, and new treasures must be sought for in the works of Alexandria and Cæsarea. The age of Nicæa is recommended as a fit period for study, while the Greek exegetes are extolled as the best interpreters of the New Testament language.

This cry, "Back to Greek theology," renders timely a study of Origen, who may be regarded as the most interesting figure in the Eastern section of the early church.

Such a study may well be prefaced by a glance at the state of contemporary spiritual and intellectual life. The spiritual tendency of the time was well marked, and manifested itself in the highest circles of society. Emperors were the patrons of religion. New faiths were admitted into the state on equal terms with the old worship. There were almost as many gods as men, and the feasts of the nation were far up in the hundreds. Deification became a frequent, although in some cases a doubtful, honor; as when Caracalla murdered his brother and then deified him, adding the words, "He may be a god as long as he is dead."

If the existence of so many gods militated against the growing belief in monotheism, it was met by some such explanation as that of Neoplatonic allegory, by which these

various religions, with their absurd traditions and immoralities, were compacted into a conglomerate. The age was also gradually coming to a consciousness of sin. A desire for purity was being evolved. The most coveted of appellations were pius and sanctus. "Between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius the world had passed from credulity to devotion." All this found expression in the Mysteries, which about this time begin to absorb a great share of attention. The old philosophy had failed; and since men could not find God by means of the reason, they turned for help to the wildest forms of Eastern worship. They sought light from initiation. Thus we find Septimius Severus, as soon as his great victory is over, hastening to be admitted into the mysteries of Serapis. The most enlightened spirits of the age freely patronized these rites. In these mysteries the secrets of the world were said to be revealed. Future life, sin, expiation, redemption, spiritualism, were matters for instruction. Réville calls it, "Theology in action." Ment could see and take part in it. But, in spite of all its zeal, the age was shallow and without conviction. It was too tolerant to have much faith. It was weak in effort. Of Alexander Severus it is said, "He could think, he could love, but he could not will." In his tolerance he admitted Christ among the catalogue of saints, while his mother sent for Origen to receive instruction on Christianity; yet it was a reign that would never sacrifice the pleasures of sense for the truth of the soul. Thus the religious activity was strongly marked; but religion was a fad rather than a conviction.1

The other characteristic of the time was its scientific zeal. There was a greed for gain; only it was the gain of mental culture. No subject was foreign to its schools. Plato was being revived in the form of Neoplatonism, and Stoicism had its full share of followers. The contemporary world in

1Cf. Réville, La Religion à Rome sous les Sévères.

intellectual things was eclectic. All systems were laid under obligation. The account given by Clement of Alexandria of his teachers is very suggestive as an example of this. He mentions as his instructors, The Ionian, one from CœloSyria, another from Palestine, one from Assyria, another from Egypt, and Pantænus in Alexandria.

Each of these tendencies reappears in the church. The religious syncretism knocked at the door of Christianity, and in many places gained admission. In Gnosticism we see the fusion of Eastern mystery and Christian teaching. Spiritualism, theosophy, magic, crop up again. Faith is merest speculation or gnosis. The wave of intellectualism also surged into the church; but it came as the false philosophy of the Gnostics, and threatened to sweep away the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The result of this brief survey may be thus stated: the contemporary world was expecting a message from God which should also be in accord with the best results of scholarship and thought. Gnosticism had attempted this task, but had failed. It failed because it lacked the essential element of faith. Therefore it was left to the Christian church to work out this problem. By its faith in the personal Saviour it was able to unite these divergent elements. The church was the only school that had not been worked out. Christianity was vigorous, and active with the pulsations of a new life. It was just becoming conscious of its own expansiveness. It was as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiced as a strong man to run a race. In no place does this activity of churchmen in dealing with the problems of thought and religion appear more conspicuously than in the catechetical school of Alexandria. Not that the Egyptian capital had a monopoly of such work, for we find evidences of a kindred energy in many other parts of the church; e. g., Cappadocia, with its Bishop Al1 Cf. Harnack, Dogmengeschichte i. 549.