Page:Early Christianity outside the Roman empire.djvu/13

Rh Not that the Church, the main body of Christians, was in any hurry to engage in these difficult studies. They were forced on her from outside, from the borderland between Christianity and Heathendom, where thinkers such as Valentinus and Basilides attempted to unite the science and philosophy of the then civilised world with the life and doctrines of the new religion. The instinct of the Church, rather than her logical power, rejected the early Gnostics and their Ogdoads, but it was not possible to go on for ever with mere refutation. After three centuries a system was elaborated which the Church was able to recognise, and the Christian Faith was enshrined in a fixed symbol, which remains to this day as the accepted Christian account of the nature of God in Himself and of the relations between God and man. The Creeds mark the final Concordat between Christianity and Philosophy.

We all know that this is not the whole truth. The Church may have grown up on Greek soil, but Christianity itself is not Greek in origin.