reveals himself in Christ, but the Logos, the depotentiated God,
who _as God_ is subordinate to the supreme Deity."]

CHAPTER V.

THE BEGINNINGS OF AN ECCLESIASTICO-THEOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION AND
REVISION OF THE RULE OF FAITH IN OPPOSITION TO GNOSTICISM ON THE BASIS
OF THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF THE APOLOGISTS:
MELITO, IRENAEUS, TERTULLIAN, HIPPOLYTUS, NOVATIAN.[460]

1. _The theological position of Irenaeus and the later contemporary
Church teachers_.

Gnosticism and the Marcionite Church had compelled orthodox Christianity
to make a selection from tradition and to make this binding on
Christians as an apostolical law. Everything that laid claim to validity
had henceforth to be legitimised by the faith, i.e., the baptismal
confession and the New Testament canon of Scripture (see above, chap. 2,
under A and B). However, mere "prescriptions" could no longer suffice
here. But the baptismal confession was no "doctrine;" if it was to be
transformed into such it required an interpretation. We have shown above
that the _interpreted_ baptismal confession was instituted as the guide
for the faith. This interpretation took its _matter_ from the sacred
books of _both_ Testaments. It owed its guiding lines, however, on the
one hand to philosophical theology, as set forth by the Apologists, and
on the other to the earnest endeavour to maintain and defend against all
attacks the traditional convictions and hopes of believers, as professed
in the past generation by the enthusiastic forefathers of the Church. In
addition to this, certain interests, which had found expression in the
speculations of the so-called Gnostics, were adopted in an increasing
degree among all thinking Christians, and also could not but influence
the ecclesiastical teachers.[461] The theological labours, thus
initiated, accordingly bear the impress of great uniqueness and
complexity. In the first place, the old Catholic Fathers, Melito,[462]
Rhodon,[463] Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Tertullian were in every case
convinced that all their expositions contained the universal Church
faith itself and nothing else. Though the faith is identical with the
baptismal confession, yet every interpretation of it derived from the
New Testament is no less certain than the shortest formula.[464] The
creation of the New Testament furnished all at once a quite unlimited
multitude of conceptions, the whole of which appeared as "doctrines" and
offe