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The history of the Church in the second century is very largely the
history of its first contacts with the Pagan religions of the time. The
effect of that meeting is to bring out, ever more clearly, the new
religious thing's well defined form. The reaction by which it emerges
unchanged -- and alone unchanged -- from that syncretist century of a
hundred religious enthusiasms, is spontaneous. The Church does not find
it necessary to add either to its traditional faith, or to the already
recognised jurisdiction of its rulers, in order to stem the development
within its walls of theories alien to its nature. Sedet aeternumque
sedebit -- for such crises was it built. They have been no more than
the occasion for its essential nature to show itself in function. They
leave the Church no different, save, perhaps, for a clearer
consciousness of its own nature and powers. The stress of the century
which culminates in the Adversus Haereses of St. Irenaeus was due,
primarily, to the influence on the Church of forces bred elsewhere. It
was an attempt from outside to pull the Church into line with the day's
religious fashions. In the century which follows St. Irenaeus the
crisis is wholly different. Catholics are its authors; and the struggle
is one for mastery between the episcopate and individuals who, by
reason of their theological skill or of the sacrifices they have made
for the faith, claim for themselves and their opinions a deciding voice
-- as of right -- in matters of discipline that involve points of
belief.
It is one of the fortunate accidents of the story of the next eighty
years (190-270) that these disputes involve the Roman Church, whose
history over a continuous period of years is now, for the first time,
revealed. As the troubles of the second century are a means to inform
us what contemporary Catholics believed about the nature of
Catholicism, so those of the third century throw a flood of light for
us on the position, already traditional, of the Roman Church within the
great whole. They supply a commentary of fact to St. Irenaeus' theory,
and we are thereby enabled to see at work that superior authority which
he noted as the Roman See's peculiar privilege. There is a dispute
concerning the calendar, disputes on the explanations of the mysteries
of faith, disputes about changes in discipline, and disputes which
raise the fundamental question of the relations of the Roman Church to
the rest. We meet the first of the anti-popes, and the first schisms in
the Roman Church itself. At the same time, thanks to the genius of
Plotinus, a last attempt is made to infuse life into Paganism- an
attempt which is, also, bitterly anti-Christian. A last new religious
revival from the East threatens yet another delay to the Pagan's
realisation that Christianity or nothing is his choice. At Alexandria
one of the greatest geniuses of all time essays a vast synthesis of
philosophy and Christian learning, and founds a tradition of theology
which is to endure for centuries.
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