Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/357

339 DOGMATIC 339 understood, as its starting point. From that point onward it may be regarded as passing through six pretty well defined periods or stages. I. The first may be called the apologetic age, extending from the apostolic time to the death of Origen (254 A.D.), in whom it may be said to have culminated. During this period the intellect of the church was gradually awakening and coming into activity ; but it was only by degrees, and in the course of several generations, that its efforts led to any properly doctrinal results. The very earliest Christian literature is simply practical and hortatory, chiefly in the form of epistles (Apostolic Fathers). From the middle of the 2d century, however, the need was felt of defending the church s faith against argumentative attacks, whether popular, literary, or philosophic. Hence the chief mental power of the Christian community was turned in the direc tion of &quot; apologies,&quot; by which these attacks were repelled, and attention was directed mainly to the evidences of the truth and divinity of Christianity. This, however, in directly led to the articulate statement of some of the most essential doctrines of Christianity, and to the beginnings of a dogmatic system. The great apologetic question was generally and rightly conceived in the form of a search for some true and reliable teaching about God and divine things : and the Johannine idea of Christ as the light of the world, the Logos or Word of God, naturally occurred to the apologists as that which most exactly met the want. Thus the doctrine of the Logos, in some at least of its aspects, was brought out. Then in the conflicts with Gnosticism, which may be said to be as really apologetic as those with Judaism and heathenism, certain aspects of Christianity were very distinctly brought into conscious ness, such as the creation of all things by God, the reality of the human nature, death, and resurrection of Christ, the universality of the gospel, and the responsibility of man. The apostolic creed probably shows us how the original baptismal formula became the basis of more definite articles of faith, shaped in the light of the apologetic necessities of the age. But while there was thus an inevitable tendency towards dogmatic development and definition, there was not for long any direct interest in doctrine as such, still less in the ordering of doctrines into a system. Origen was the first in whom this impulse was strong and active, and his work De Principiis (Tif.pl Ap^wv) may be said to be the earliest attempt in the field of dog matic. II. The second great period in the history of dogmatic, extending from Origen (who died 254) to John of Damascus (who died 754), is distinguished from the first by its being occupied mainly with controversies within the church, and thus may be called the polemic age. As the gospel spread more and more throughout the world, and gained the victory over paganism in the minds and hearts of the most enlightened of the day, the defence of Christianity against external assaults gradually ceased to be the one all-engrossing duty of the church s theologians ; and at the same time heresies so thoroughly and manifestly antichristian as those of the Gnostics ceased to have any prevalence among Christians, and other divergent views, of a less openly hostile nature, began to appear. As the doc trine of the Logos had been one of the first that the church was led to think out in the apologetic period, it not unnaturally became the point at which varying conceptions first came into conflict. On this, as on many other sub jects, the Christian redemption is so full and many-sided that it is no wonder that its entire contents could not be grasped at once and by all minds, or that some were led to accept some aspects of it more readily than others, and to give these an exaggerated predominance. Hence the progress of Christian thought to the right understanding of divine truth has been through a series of controversies and oscillations from one extreme to another. This process may be said to have begun about the middle of the 3d century, from which time to the end of the 7th there stretches a continuous series of controversies on questions relating to God and the Trinity, the incarnation and person of Christ, original sin, and regenerating grace. In the course of these, successive forms of opinion on these sub jects were discussed, condemned, and stamped as heresies the Sabellian, Arian, Apollinarian, Macedonian, Nestorian, Pelagian, Monophysite, Semi-pelagian, Monothelite doc trines. In sharp contrast with these opposing heresies, and sometimes in a narrow strait between them, the doctrine of the church was defined more and more precisely. As authoritative expressions of this doctrine we have the first six oecumenical councils, with the provincial ones in the West that condemned Pelagianism and Semi-pelagianism, and the creed of Nicoea (325) as enlarged and altered at Constantinople (381), with the decisions of Chalcedon (451) against Monophysitism, Orange and Valentia (529) against Semi-pelagianism, and Constantinople (1st Trullan, 680) against M on oth elitism. This long series of keen and varied controversies on the loftiest doctrines represents a vast amount of intellectual activity in the field of dogmatic, and some of the greatest names in the church s history belong to this period. Athanasius, Basil, the two Gregories, the two Cyrils, and Chrysostom in the East, and Ambrose, Augustine, and Hilary in the West, are but a few of the more outstanding and best known of the church s teachers during these con troversies. On the whole it may be said that they have done their work satisfactorily and well, in establishing the true Christian view on the special doctrines they had to discuss ; and the decisions of the church on these points have been very generally accepted in after times. The Reformers adopted either tacitly or expressly the whole body of them as in accordance with Scripture ; and even in the immense upturning of opinions on all theological doctrines that has been going on in modern times, the faith oflSicasahas been maintained by the majority of theolo gians. Even the more detailed creed of Chalcedon is questioned by comparatively few, though the still more minute discussions and definitions after that have ceased to command the respect and interest of the modern church. But while the theologians of this polemic period were thus successful in establishing and defining some of the more important doctrines of Christianity, and by so doing contributed very valuable materials for dogmatic, they did little or nothing towards the construction of the system as an organic unity. Very few of their works even attempt such a task. The Catecheses of Cyril of Jerusalem contain an exposition of the various articles of the creed, and so may be said to exhibit a body of divinity such as was then generally held ; but they do so not in a scientifically theological manner, but rather in that of simple popular teaching. Augustine s Enchiridion, de Fide, Spe, ft Caritate, is a more properly theological attempt to lay the basis of a connected and organic system ; but it is very brief and summary, and holds a very subordinate position among the writings of that great father in comparison with his argumentative and controversial treatises on the parti cular doctrines that he did so much to elucidate and defend. Perhaps a more real evidence of a sense of the organic connection of all the doctrines of Christianity is to be found in the recognition of the affinity between the apparently unconnected heresies of Nestorianism and Pelagianism, which were both alike condemned by the council of Ephesus in 431. The results of the polemic discussions of nearly five centuries were gathered by John of Damascus into a series