The Everlasting Covenant

Pagan Philosophy in the Church

Let it be remembered that the only philosophy was pagan philosophy, and it will be very easy to imagine the inevitable results of such devotion to it on the part of those who were the teachers in the Christian church. Mosheim tells us that “by the Christian disciples of Ammonius, and more particularly by Origen, who in the succeeding century (the third) attained to a degree of eminence scarcely credible, the doctrines which they had derived from their master were sedulously instilled into the minds of the youth with whose education they were entrusted, and by the efforts of these again, who were subsequently for the most part called to the ministry, the love of philosophy became pretty generally diffused throughout a considerable portion of the church.” EVCO 155.1