Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/40

 the Logos for ever eternally issuing forth from the Father as source. The actual merits of the controversy do not at present concern us: we simply notice the fact that the current Greek philosophy entirely dominated the theology of the Church and it was imperative for that theology to be expressed in terms which fitted in with the philosophy. The result of the Arian struggle was that the Eastern church came to recognise the Alexandrian philosophy as the exponent of orthodoxy, and in this it was followed by the greater part of the Western Church, though the West Goths still remained attached to the Arian views which they had learned from their first teachers.

By the fifth century Arian doctrine had been completely eliminated from the state church and Alexandrian philosophy which had been the chief means of bringing about this result, was dominant, although there are indications that it was viewed with suspicion in some quarters. Amongst the controversies which took place in the post-Nicene age the most prominent are those which concerned the person of the incarnate Christ, and these are largely questions of psychology. It was generally admitted that man has a psyche or animal soul which he shares with the rest of the sentient creatures, and in addition to this a spirit or rational soul which, under the influence of the neo-Platonists or of Alexander of Aphrodisias, was regarded as an emanation from the creative spirit, the Logos or "Agent Intellect," a belief which Christian theologians supported by the statement in