Читать книгу Church History (Vol.1-3) - J. H. Kurtz - Страница 59
Оглавление§ 47. The Theological Schools and their most celebrated Representatives.
The Ancient Church reached its highest glory during the 4th and 5th centuries. The number of theological schools properly so-called (§ 45, 1) was indeed small, and so the most celebrated theologians were self-taught in theology. But all the greater must the intellectual resources of this age have been and all the more powerful the general striving after culture, when the outward means, helps and opportunities for obtaining scientific training were so few. The middle of the 5th century, marked by the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451, may be regarded as the turning point where the greatest height in theological science and in other ecclesiastical developments was reached, and from this point we may date the beginnings of decline. After this the spirit of independent research gradually disappeared from the Eastern as well as from the Western Church. Political oppression, hierarchical exclusiveness, narrowing monasticism and encroaching barbarism choked all free scientific effort, and the industry of compilers took the place of fresh youthful intellectual production. The authority of the older church teachers stood so high and was regarded as binding in so eminent a degree that at the Councils argument was carried on almost solely by means of quotations from the writings of those fathers who had been recognised as orthodox.
§ 47.1. The Theological Schools and Tendencies:—
1 In the 4th and 5th centuries.—Since the time of the two Dionysiuses (§ 33, 7) the Alexandrian theology had been divided into two different directions which we may distinguish as the old and the new Alexandrian. The Old Alexandrian School held by the subordinationist view of Origen and strove to keep open to scientific research as wide a field as possible. Its representatives showed deep reverence for Origen but avoided his more eccentric speculations. Its latest offshoot was the Semiarianism with which it came to an end in the middle of the 4th century. This same free scientific tendency in theology was yet more decidedly shown in the Antiochean School. Although at first animated by the spirit which Origen had introduced into theology, its further development was a thoroughly independent one, departing from its original in many particulars. To the allegorical method of interpretation of the Origenist school it opposed the natural grammatico-historical interpretation, to its mystical speculation, clear positive thinking. Inquiry into the simple literal sense of holy scripture and the founding of a purely biblical theology were its tasks. Averse to all mysteries, it strove after a positive, rational conception of Christianity and after a construction of dogma by means of clear logical thought. Hence its dogmatic aim was pre-eminently the careful distinguishing of the divine and human in Christ and in Christianity, forming a conception of each by itself and securing especially in both due recognition of the human. The theology of the national East-Syrian Church, far more than that of the Antiochean or Græco-Syrian, was essentially bound down by tradition. It had its seminaries in the theological schools of Nisibis and Edessa. The oriental spirit was here displayed in an unrestricted manner; also a tendency to theosophy, mysticism and asceticism, a special productiveness in developing forms of worship and constitution, and withal doctrinal stability. In their exegesis the members of this school co-operated with the Antiocheans, though not so decidedly, in opposing the arbitrary allegorizing of the Origenist school, but their exegetical activity was not, as with the Antiocheans, scientific and critical but rather practical and homiletical. The New Alexandrian School was the prevailing one for the 4th century so far as Alexandrian culture was concerned. Its older representatives, at least, continued devotedly attached to Origen and favourable to the speculative treatment of Christian doctrine introduced by him. But they avoided his unscriptural extravagances and carried out consistently the ecclesiastical elements of his doctrine. By a firm acceptance of the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son they overcame the subordinationism of their master, and in this broke away from the old Alexandrian school and came into closer relations to the theology of the Western church. To the Antiochean school, however, they were directly opposed in respect of the delight they took in the mysteries of Christianity, and their disinclination to allow the reason to rule in theology. The union of the divine and human in Christ and in Christianity seemed to them a sublime, incomprehensible mystery, any attempt to resolve it being regarded as alike useless and profane. But in this way the human element became more and more lost to view and became absorbed in the divine. They energetically affirmed the inseparable union of the two, but thereby lost the consciousness of their distinctness and fell into the contrary error of Antiochean onesidedness. With Cyril of Alexandria the New Alexandrian school properly began to assume the form of a sect and to show symptoms of decay, although he himself retained the reputation of an orthodox teacher. The Western Theology of this period, as well as its North-African precursor (§ 31, 10, 11), energetically insisted upon the application of Christianity to the life, the development of the doctrines affecting this matter and the maintenance of the church system of doctrine as a strong protection against all wilfulness in doctrine. In it therefore the traditional theology finds its chief home. Still the points of contact with the East were so many and so vital that however much inclined to stability the West might be, it could not altogether remain unmoved and without enrichment from the theological movements of the age. Thus we distinguish in the West four different but variously inter-connected tendencies. First of all there is the genuinely Western, which is separated on the one hand in Tertullian and Cyprian, but on the other hand is variously influenced by the talented teachers of the New Alexandrian School, which continued to mould and dominate the cultured theology of the West. Its chief representatives are Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose, and above all, Augustine, who completely freed the Latin theology from its hitherto prevailing dependence on the Greek, placing it now upon its own feet. The representatives of this tendency were at first in complete accord with the members of the New Alexandrian school in their opposition to the semi-Arian Origenists and the Nestorianizing Antiocheans, but then as that school itself drifted into the position of a heretical sect, they also decidedly contended for the other side of the truth which the Antiochean school maintained. A second group of Western theologians were inspired by the writings of Origen, without, however, abandoning the characteristics of the Western spirit. To this class belongs Jerome, who afterwards repudiated his master and joined the previously named school, and Rufinus. The third group of Pelagians represent the practical but cool rationalistic tendency of the West. The fourth is that of the semi-Pelagians who in the Western theology intermingle synergistic elements of an Antiochean complexion.
2 Of the 6th and 7th Centuries.—The brilliant period of theological literature had now closed. There still were scholars who wrought laboriously upon the original contributions of the fathers, and reproduced the thoughts of their predecessors in a new shape suited to the needs of the time, but spirit and life, creative power and original productivity had well nigh disappeared. After the monophysite Johannes Philoponus of Alexandria had commented on the works of Aristotle and applied their categories to theology, the Platonic philosophy, hitherto on account of its ideal contents the favourite of all philosophizing church fathers, was more and more set aside by the philosophy of the Stagirite so richly developed on the formal side. The theology of the Greeks even at so early a date assumed to some extent the character of Scholasticism. Alongside of it, however, we have a theosophic mysticism which reverting from the tendency that had lately come into vogue to Neoplatonic ideas, drew its chief inspiration from the Pseudo-Dionysian writings. In the West, in addition to the general causes of decay, we have also the sufferings of the times amid the tumult of the migration of the nations. In Italy Boëthius and Cassiodorus won for themselves imperishable renown as the fosterers of classical and patristic studies in an age when these were in danger of being utterly forgotten. The series of Latin church fathers in the strict sense ends with Gregory the Great; that of Greek church fathers with Johannes Damascenus.
