only attain their highest value in
this aspect. Systematic theology, in undertaking its task, always
starts, as Clement and Origen also did, with the conscious or
unconscious thought of emancipating itself from the outward revelation
and community of cultus that are the characteristic marks of positive
religion. The place of these is taken by the results of speculative
cosmology, which, though themselves practically conditioned, do not seem
to be of this character. This also applies to Origen's Christian Gnosis
or scientific dogmatic, which is simply the metaphysics of the age.
However, as he was the equal of the foremost minds of his time, this
dogmatic was no schoolboy imitation on his part, but was to some extent
independently developed and was worked out both in opposition to
pantheistic Stoicism and to theoretical dualism. That we are not
mistaken in this opinion is shown by a document ranking among the most
valuable things preserved to us from the third century; we mean the
judgment passed on Origen by Porphyry in Euseb., H. E. VI. 19. Every
sentence is instructive,[701] but the culminating point is the judgment
contained in Sec. 7: [Greek: kata men ton Bion Christianos zon kai
paranomos, kata de tas peri ton pragmaton kai tou theou doxas Hellenizon
kai ta Hellenon tois othneiois hupoballomenos mythois.] ("His outward
life was that of a Christian and opposed to the law, but in regard to
his views of things and of the Deity, he thought like the Greeks,
inasmuch as he introduced their ideas into the myths of other peoples.")
We can everywhere verify this observation from Origen's works and
particularly from the books written against Celsus, where he is
continually obliged to mask his essential agreement in principles and
method with the enemy of the Christians.[702] The Gnosis is in fact the
Hellenic one and results in that wonderful picture of the world which,
though apparently a drama, is in reality immovable, and only assumes
such a complicated form here from its relation to the Holy Scriptures
and the history of Christ.[703] The Gnosis neutralises everything
connected with empiric history; and if this does not everywhere hold
good with regard to the actual occurrence of facts, it is at least
invariably the case in respect to their significance. The clearest proof
of this is (1) that Origen raised the thought of the unchangeability of
God to be the norm of his system and (2) that he denied the historical,
incarna