: If I am not mistaken, the production or adaptation of
Apocalypses did indeed abate in the third century, but acquired fresh
vigour in the 4th, though at the same time allowing greater scope to the
influence of heathen literature (including romances as well as
hagiographical literature).]

[Footnote 655: I did not care to appeal more frequently to the Sibylline
oracles either in this or the preceding chapter, because the literary
and historical investigation of these writings has not yet made such
progress as to justify one in using it for the history of dogma. It is
well known that the oracles contain rich materials in regard to the
doctrine of God, Christology, conceptions of the history of Jesus, and
eschatology; but, apart from the old Jewish oracles, this material
belongs to several centuries and has not yet been reliably sifted.]

CHAPTER VI.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL TRADITION INTO A PHILOSOPHY OF
RELIGION, OR THE ORIGIN OF THE SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY AND DOGMATIC OF THE
CHURCH.

Clement and Origen.

The Alexandrian school of catechists was of inestimable importance for
the transformation of the heathen empire into a Christian one, and of
Greek philosophy into ecclesiastical philosophy. In the third century
this school overthrew polytheism by scientific means whilst at the same
time preserving everything of any value in Greek science and culture.
These Alexandrians wrote for the educated people of the whole earth;
they made Christianity a part of the civilisation of the world. The
saying that the Christian missionary to the Greeks must be a Greek was
first completely verified within the Catholic Church in the person of
Origen, who at the same time produced the only system of Christian dogma
possessed by the Greek Church before John Damascenus.

1. _The Alexandrian Catechetical School. Clement of Alexandria._[656]

"The work of Irenaeus still leaves it undecided whether the form of the
world's literature, as found in the Christian Church, is destined only
to remain a weapon to combat its enemies, or is to become an instrument
of peaceful labour within its own territory." With these words Overbeck
has introduced his examination of Clement of Alexandria's great
masterpiece from the standpoint of the historian of literature. They may
be also applied to the history of theology. As we have shown, Irenaeus,
Tertullian (and Hippolytus) made use of philosophical theology to expel
heretical ele