The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

III. Paralleling Christian Catechetical School

1. ALEXANDRIAN CENTER EXERTS POWERFUL INFLUENCE

And now, from the latter part of the second century onward, a Christian Catechetical (or theological) School flourished in Alexandria, addressing itself to the propagation of the Christian faith among the cultured classes. Its first known head, or teacher, was PANTAENUS ²⁶ But it was under Clement, and particularly under the presiding genius of Origen, that the Catechetical School rose to its greatest height, attracting not only Christians but large numbers of pagans and Gnostics ²⁷ as well. It was here in this school that the first attempt was made to reduce the individual doctrines of Christianity to a single unified system—and this distinctly under the influence of Neoplatonic principles. CFF1 715.3

As Alexandria had been the focal point of speculative philosophy, especially since the Christian apologists had earlier been pagan philosophers, it was but natural that Alexandrian Christianity should assume a definitely speculative form. And further, as the Alexandrian theologians had been Platonists (with admixtures of Pythagoreanism and Stoicism), it was not surprising that, though they rejected paganism as such, they should remain definitely Neoplatonist, seeking to explain Christianity according to the Platonic categories—much as Philo two centuries prior had attempted to explain Judaism—and likewise along allegorical lines, with conscious indebtedness to Philo, ²⁸ as well as directly back to Plato. CFF1 716.1

3. SHADOWS DEEPEN INTO MIDNIGHT OF MIDDLE AGES

Clement and Origen, the philosophical theologians, were thus the chief architects and builders in this reconstruction. It was their genius that framed the arguments that removed the irreconcilable disagreements between Scripture and pagan philosophy—by the simple device of allegorizing away the intent of Holy Scripture when conflict was inevitable if taken literally. Safely entrenched behind this effective contrivance, they could resist the assaults of Scripture against the devious postulates of Neoplatonism. CFF1 716.2

As time went on the entire contour of the faith of the church came to be altered. And when the empire collapsed the church began to assume first the guidance and eventually the control of the state, welding the far-flung Christian groups into a single Catholic body with a definitely formulated orthodox creed, with Innate Immortality as one of its central dogmas and all that sprang therefrom. And in it all, as the late A. K. Rogers, formerly of Butler College, significantly says: CFF1 716.3

“Personal immortality, which in Greek philosophy had either been rejected outright or held with much hesitation, becomes a fundamental article of the Christian creed.” ²⁹ CFF1 717.1

That is why we have traced it with such fullness through these crucial centuries. CFF1 717.2

So it was that Neoplatonism came to overshadow the light of the gospel hope of immortality through the resurrection, until the shadows deepened into the settled midnight of the Middle Ages. The Christian faith had been remodeled. And when the barbarian nations of Europe, into which Rome was divided, were converted in large numbers to the reconstructed Christian faith, it was a norm similar in many respects to their pre-Christian concepts. CFF1 717.3

Thus Platonism, having found its way into pagan Rome, in due course made its entry into the Roman Church. And as Doctor Salmond rightly observes: “The Platonic doctrine is first and last a doctrine of the persistence of the souls.” ³⁰ CFF1 717.4

That is its significance for us. CFF1 717.5