and prophets, who were holy men, and had foretold the coming of Christ; but when Christ
came, the Jews failed to recognize Him, and were thenceforth to be accounted wicked.
Moreover Christ had abrogated the Mosaic Law, substituting the two commandments to love
God and our neighbour; this, also, the Jews perversely failed to recognize. As soon as the State
became Christian, anti-Semitism, in its medieval form, began, nominally as a manifestation of
Christian zeal. How far the economic motives, by which it was inflamed in later times, operated
in the Christian Empire, it seems impossible to ascertain.
In proportion as Christianity became hellenized, it became theological. Jewish theology was
always simple. Yahweh developed from a tribal deity into the sole omnipotent God who created
heaven and earth; divine justice, when it was seen not to confer earthly prosperity upon the
virtuous, was transferred to heaven, which entailed belief in immortality. But throughout its
evolution the Jewish creed involved nothing complicated and metaphysical; it had no mysteries,
and every Jew could understand it.
This Jewish simplicity, on the whole, still characterizes the synoptic Gospels ( Matthew, Mark,
and Luke), but has already disappeared in Saint John, where Christ is identified with the
Platonic-Stoic Logos. It is less Christ the Man than Christ the theological figure that interests
the fourth evangelist. This is still more true of the Fathers; you will find, in their writings, many
more allusions to Saint John than to the other three gospels put together. The Pauline epistles
also contain much theology, especially as regards salvation; at the same time they show a
considerable acquaintance with Greek culture--a quotation from Menander, an allusion to
Epimenides the Cretan who said that all Cretans are liars, and so on. Nevertheless Saint Paul *
says: "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit."
The synthesis of Greek philosophy and Hebrew scriptures remained more or less haphazard and
fragmentary until the time of Origen ( A.D. 185-254). Origen, like Philo, lived in Alexandria,
which, owing to commerce and the university, was, from its foundation to its fall, the chief
centre of learned syncretism. Like his contemporary Plotinus, he was a pupil of Ammonius
Saccas, whom many regard as
* Or rather the author of an Epistle attributed to Saint Paul--ColossiansII, 8.-326-the founder of Neoplatonism. His doctrines, as set forth in his work De Principiis, have much
affinity to those of Plotinus--more, in fact, than is compatible with orthodoxy.There is, Origen
says, nothing wholly incorporeal except God-Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The stars are living
rational beings, to whom God has given souls that were already in existence. The sun, he thinks,
can sin. The souls of men, as Plato taught, come to them at birth from elsewhere, having existed
ever since the Creation. Nous and soul are distinguished more or less as in Plotinus. When Nous
falls away, it becomes soul; soul, when virtuous, becomes Nous. Ultimately all spirits will become
wholly submissive to Christ, and will then be bodiless. Even the devil will be saved at the
last.Origen, in spite of being recognized as one of the Fathers, was, in later times, condemned as
having maintained four heresies:
- The pre-existence of souls, as taught by Plato;
- That the human nature of Christ, and not only His divine nature, existed before the
Incarnation. - That, at the resurrection, our bodies shall be transformed into absolutely ethereal bodies.