problem, but the huge task
proved too much for him. Origen took it up under more difficult
circumstances, and in a certain fashion brought it to a conclusion. He,
the rival of the Neoplatonic philosophers, the Christian Philo, wrote
the first Christian dogmatic, which competed with the philosophic
systems of the time, and which, founded on the Scriptures of both
Testaments, presents a peculiar union of the apologetic theology of a
Justin and the Gnostic theology of a Valentinus, while keeping steadily
in view a simple and highly practical aim. In this dogmatic the rule of
faith is recast and that quite consciously. Origen did not conceal his
conviction that Christianity finds its correct expression only in
scientific knowledge, and that every form of Christianity that lacks
theology is but a meagre kind with no clear consciousness of its own
content. This conviction plainly shows that Origen was dealing with a
different kind of Christianity, though his view that a mere relative
distinction existed here may have its justification in the fact, that
the untheological Christianity of the age with which he compared his own
was already permeated by Hellenic elements and in a very great measure
secularised.[10] But Origen, as well as Clement before him, had really a
right to the conviction that the true essence of Christianity, or, in
other words, the Gospel, is only arrived at by the aid of critical
speculation; for was not the Gospel veiled and hidden in the canon of
both Testaments, was it not displaced by the rule of faith, was it not
crushed down, depotentiated, and disfigured in the Church which
identified itself with the people of Christ? Clement and Origen found
freedom and independence in what they recognized to be the essence of
the matter and what they contrived with masterly skill to determine as
its proper aim, after an examination of the huge apparatus of tradition.
But was not that the ideal of Greek sages and philosophers? This
question can by no means be flatly answered in the negative, and still
less decidedly in the affirmative, for a new significance was here given
to the ideal by representing it _as assured beyond all doubt, already
realised_ in the person of Christ and incompatible with polytheism. If,
as is manifestly the case, they found joy and peace in their faith and
in the theory of the universe connected with it, if they prepared
themselves for an eternal life and expected it with certainty, if they