Alexander Schmemann

1. The Beginning of the Church (28 pages)

Page 23

Beginnings of Theology.

The mind of the Church was forged and the Church strengthened by persecution and temptations. The best intimation of coming victory was the first flourishing of Christian thought and the beginning of Christian culture that distinguished the third century. We have barely noted Tertullian in passing. Special mention must be made of the Christian school of Alexandria and its famous teacher, Origen.

Until the third century Christian literature had either been apologetic in character, opposing heresies and paganism, or had consisted of a simple statement of the basic principles of Church dogma. The significance of the Alexandrian school was that it was the first to attempt to reason out these dogmas as an integrated system and to reveal the truths contained in them as sources of thought and knowledge.

We know little of the origins of the Alexandrian school; in all probability it grew out of the teaching of new converts. The city was the intellectual capital of the Hellenistic world, and every sort of preaching there acquired academic overtones. It was natural, therefore, that the foundations for a scientific theology should be laid there, and theology recognized as the highest calling for a Christian.

For the first of the famous Alexandrian theologians, Clement, Christianity was already a higher knowledge — gnosis in the full and absolute meaning of the word. “If the Gnostic were offered a choice between the salvation of the soul and knowledge of God, supposing that these two things were distinct (although they are identical), he would choose knowledge of God.” Gnosis is the vision of God face to face, the mystical illumination of His truth; the Christian prefers this knowledge of God to all else and sees the purpose of his whole life in it. But a joyous acceptance of the world, a “justification” of it, is also characteristic of Clement. This was a new transforming experience, for the sake of which Christianity was already firmly rooted in the world and triumphing there. How Is the Rich Man Saved? — the title of one of Clement’s works — is typical of his general outlook. He did not reject the world, but on the contrary tried to make everything Christian. We find considerations concerning laughter and even domestic arrangements in his writings. Everything is permissible if it is taken in moderation, but particularly if it is subordinated to the knowledge of God and the truth in Him. This was the optimism of the first union, not yet profound and often dubious, between Christianity and Hellenism.

In Origen, the successor of Clement, we see both the features of the heroic period of primitive Christianity and a new spirit, which was becoming more and more evident in the Church. A Christian by birth, son of a martyred father, he was inspired by the ideal of martyrdom and his Exhortation to Martyrdom, written during the persecutions of Maximinus (235-38), is still one of the best documents of early Christianity. For Origen martyrdom meant more than confession of Christ in the presence of one’s persecutors. It was the whole life of a Christian, which in this world can only be the “narrow way” if he is to strive for evangelical perfection. Origen was one of the founders of the theory of asceticism and his influence was immense when, in the next century, monasticism arose within the Church. His desire to follow the teachings of the Gospel to the letter led him, as is known, even to emasculation. He has often been regarded as a pure intellectual, remote from the life of the Church, immersed only in books; but in fact he was first of all a Churchman, deeply rooted in the life and prayer of the Church, and his intellectual contribution can be understood only if we remember that for him everything was subordinated to “the one thing necessary.”

 

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