st
period. The attempts at deducing the genesis of the Church's doctrinal
system from the theology of Paul, or from compromises between Apostolic
doctrinal ideas, will always miscarry; for they fail to note that to the
most important premises of the Catholic doctrine of faith belongs an
element which we cannot recognise as dominant in the New Testament,[48]
viz., the Hellenic spirit.[49] As far backwards as we can trace the
history of the propagation of the Church's doctrine of faith, from the
middle of the third century to the end of the first, we nowhere perceive
a leap, or the sudden influx of an entirely new element. What we
perceive is rather the gradual disappearance of an original element, the
Enthusiastic and Apocalyptic, that is, of the sure consciousness of an
immediate possession of the Divine Spirit, and the hope of the future
conquering the present; individual piety conscious of itself and
sovereign, living in the future world, recognising no external authority
and no external barriers. This piety became ever weaker and passed away:
the utilising of the Codex of Revelation, the Old Testament,
proportionally increased with the Hellenic influences which controlled
the process, for the two went always hand in hand. At an earlier period
the Churches made very little use of either, because they had in
individual religious inspiration on the basis of Christ's preaching and
the sure hope of his Kingdom which was near at hand, much more than
either could bestow. The factors whose co-operation we observe in the
second and third centuries, were already operative among the earliest
Gentile Christians. We nowhere find a yawning gulf in the great
development which lies between the first Epistle of Clement and the work
of Origen, [Greek: Peri archon]. Even the importance which the
"Apostolic" was to obtain, was already foreshadowed by the end of the
first century, and enthusiasm always had its limits.[50] The most
decisive division, therefore, falls before the end of the first century;
or more correctly, the relatively new element, the Greek, which is of
importance for the forming of the Church as a commonwealth, and
consequently for the formation of its doctrine, is clearly present in
the churches even in the Apostolic age. Two hundred years, however,
passed before it made itself completely at home in the Gospel, although
there were points of connection inherent in the Gospel.

7. The cause of the great historical fact