Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/237

Rh Institutes is for the Reformed Church, that is this work for the Greek Church—the most orderly and systematic exposition of the accepted theology. It is divided into four books: Book I. discusses the doctrine of God and the Trinity; Book II. is concerned with Creation and the Nature of Man; Book III. states the doctrine of Christ and the Incarnation, including the relation of the two natures and the two wills, Mary as the mother of God, the death of our Lord and His descent into Hades; Book IV. carries on the doctrine of Christ to His resurrection and reign; but it is chiefly occupied with a number of miscellaneous subjects—such as faith, worship, images, Scripture, sin, virginity, resurrection, etc. Like Augustine, who gave its character to Latin theology, especially in so far as he was followed by Gregory the Great—the last of the Western Fathers and the first mediæval theologian—John of Damascus, the last of the Eastern Fathers, sets before us the essence of Greek theology. It is interesting to see where these Fathers differ. The mysterious subject of the procession of the Holy Spirit, on which the two churches divided, really belongs to a later period, although John anticipates the Greek position. The following are his chief points of distinction from Augustine and Gregory:—His assertion of free will—a marked feature of Greek theology throughout in contradistinction from Latin; his silence as to original sin; his distinction between foreknowledge and predestination; his denial of the physical fire of hell—so prominent in the lurid horrors of the mediæval inferno from Gregory to Dante; and his moderate views of the sacraments, which he holds to be only two—Baptism and the Lord's Supper.

The other important theologian of the iconoclastic period is Theodore of Studium, who comes in the second and milder time of imperial attacks on image worship as the champion of the pictures. He may be said to have pronounced the final word of orthodoxy on the subject. Theodore was born in the year 759 in a family of high