hon men to proton pneuma kai pases ktiseos arche, egeneto sarx
kai houtos hemas ekalesen]. _That is the fundamental theological and
philosophical creed on which the whole Trinitarian and Christological
speculations of the Church of the succeeding centuries are built, and it
is thus the root of the orthodox system of dogmatics_; for the notion
that Christ was the [Greek: arche pases ktiseos] necessarily led in some
measure to the conception of Christ as the Logos. For the Logos had long
been regarded by cultured men as the beginning and principle of the
creation.[452]

With this transition the theories concerning Christ are removed from
Jewish and Old Testament soil, and also that of religion (in the strict
sense of the word), and transplanted to the Greek one. Even in his
pre-existent state Christ is an independent power existing side by side
with God. The pre-existence does not refer to his whole appearance, but
only to a part of his essence; it does not primarily serve to glorify
the wisdom and power of the God who guides history, but only glorifies
Christ, and thereby threatens the monarchy of God.[453] The appearance
of Christ is now an "assumption of flesh", and immediately the intricate
questions about the connection of the heavenly and spiritual being with
the flesh simultaneously arise and are at first settled by the theories
of a naive docetism. But the flesh, that is the human nature created by
God, appears depreciated, because it was reckoned as something
unsuitable for Christ, and foreign to him as a spiritual being. Thus the
Christian religion was mixed up with the refined asceticism of a
perishing civilization, and a foreign substructure given to its system
of morality, so earnest in its simplicity.[454] But the most
questionable result was the following. Since the predicate "Logos",
which at first, and for a long time, coincided with the idea of the
reason ruling in the cosmos, was considered as the highest that could be
given to Christ, the holy and divine element, namely, the power of a new
life, a power to be viewed and laid hold of in Christ, was transformed
into a cosmic force and thereby secularised.

In the present work I have endeavoured to explain fully how the doctrine
of the Church developed from these premises into the doctrine of the
Trinity and of the two natures. I have also shewn that the imperfect
beginnings of Church doctrine, especially as they appear in the Logos
theory derived from c