Life of St Athanasius the Great and Account of Arianism

St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print

Icon of the Christ and New Testament Reader

128 Pages (Part I)

Page 38

We cannot demonstrate the existence of a continuous theological school in Asia; but Methodius (270-300) certainly speaks with the voice of Ignatius and Irenaeus. He deals with Origen much as Irenaeus dealt with the Gnostics, defending against him the current sense of the regula fidei, and especially the literal meaning of Scripture, the origination of the soul along with the body, the resurrection of the body in the material sense, and generally opposing realism to the spiritualism of Origen. But in thus opposing Origen, Methodius is not uninfluenced by him (see Socr. vi. 13). He, too, is a student of Plato (with 'little of his style or spirit'); his 'realism' is 'speculative.' He no longer defends the Asiatic Chiliasm, his doctrine of the Logos is coloured by Origen as that of Irenaeus was by the Apologists. The legacy of Methodius and of his Origenist contemporaries to the Eastern Church was a modified Origenism, that is a theology systematised on the intellectual basis of the Platonic philosophy, but expurgated by the standard of the regula fidei. This result was a compromise, and was at first attended with great confusion. Origen's immediate following seized some one side, some another of his system; some were more, some less influenced by the 'orthodox' reaction against his teaching. We may distinguish an Origenist 'right' and an Origenist 'left.' If the Origenist view of the Universe was given up, the coeternity of the Son and Spirit with the Father was less firmly grasped. Origen had, if we may use the expression, 'levelled up.' The Son was mediator between the Ingenerate God and the created, but eternal Universe. If the latter was not eternal, and if at the same time the Word stood in some essential correlation to the creative energy of God, Origen's system no longer implied the strict coeternity of the Word. Accordingly we find Dionysius (see below, p. 173 sqq.) uncertain on this point, and on the essential relation of the Son to the Father. More cautious in this respect, but tenacious of other startling features of Origen, were Pierius and Theognostus, who presided over the Catechetical School at the end of the century [22] .

[22] The position of Eusebius of Caesarea is at the 'extreme left' of the Origenist body. ('A reflex of the unsolved problems of the Church of that time,' Dorner.) It is as though Dionysius instead of withdrawing and modifying his incriminated statements, had involved them in a haze of explanations and biblical phrases which left them where they were. But this is not so much Arianism as confusion. 'All is hollow and empty, precarious and ambiguous. With a vast apparatus of biblical expressions and the use of every possible formula, Monotheism is indeed maintained, but practically a created subordinate God is inserted between God and mankind' (Harnack, p. 648). See also Dorner, Lehre der Pers. Chr. Pt. 1, pp. 793-798. The language quoted by Ath. below, p. 459, was doubtless meant by Eusebius in an Origenist sense.

Previous Page / First / Next Page of the Life of Athanasius

St Athanasius the Great Home Page St Athanasius the Great in Print

Learned Freeware