Читать книгу A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Joseph Cullen Ayer - Страница 129

Table of Contents

The theology of the Church, as distinguished from the current traditional theology, was the statement of the beliefs commonly held by Christians but expressed in the more [pg 130] precise and scientific language of current philosophy, the co-ordination of those beliefs as so stated together with their necessary consequences, and their proof by reference to Holy Scripture and reason. In this attempt to build up a body of reasoned religious ideas there were two lines of thought or interpretation of the common Christianity already distinguished by the middle of the second century, and destined to hold a permanent place in the Church. These were the apologetic conception of Christianity as primarily a revealed philosophy (§ 32), and the so-called Asia Minor school of theology, with its conception of Christianity as primarily salvation from sin and corruptibility (§ 33). In both lines of interpretation the Incarnation played an essential part: in the apologetic as insuring the truth of the revealed philosophy, in the Asia Minor theology as imparting to corruptible man the divine incorruptibility.