k place. It is
therefore sufficient, within the framework of the history of dogma, to
refer to Clement as the bold forerunner of Origen, and, in setting forth
the theology of the latter, to compare it in important points with the
doctrines of Clement.

2. _The system of Origen._[679]

Among the theologians of ecclesiastical antiquity Origen was the most
important and influential alongside of Augustine. He proved the father
of ecclesiastical science in the widest sense of the word, and at the
same time became the founder of that theology which reached its complete
development in the fourth and fifth centuries, and which in the sixth
definitely denied its author, without, however, losing the form he had
impressed on it. Origen created the ecclesiastical dogmatic and made the
sources of the Jewish and Christian religion the foundation of that
science. The Apologists, in their day, had found everything clear in
Christianity; the antignostic Fathers had confused the Church's faith
and the science that treats of it. Origen recognised the problem and the
problems, and elevated the pursuit of Christian theology to the rank of
an independent task by freeing it from its polemical aim. He could not
have become what he did, if two generations had not preceded him in
paving the way to form a mental conception of Christianity and give it a
philosophical foundation. Like all epoch-making personalities, he was
also favoured by the conditions in which he lived, though he had to
endure violent attacks. Born of a Christian family which was faithfully
attached to the Church, he lived at a time when the Christian
communities enjoyed almost uninterrupted peace and were being
naturalised in the world; he was a member of a Christian Church where
the right of scientific study was already recognised and where this had
attained a fixed position in an organised school.[680] He proclaimed the
reconciliation of science with the Christian faith and the compatibility
of the highest culture with the Gospel within the bosom of the Church,
thus contributing more than any other to convert the ancient world to
Christianity. But he made no compromises from shrewd calculation: it was
his inmost and holiest conviction that the sacred documents of
Christianity contained all the ideals of antiquity, and that the
speculative conception of ecclesiastical Christianity was the only true
and right one. His character was pure, his life blameless; in his work
he w