2. DuaUsm in the Christian J^.— This Oriental Du- alism, carried out into the various departments of na- ture and mind, and embellished by innumerable beau- tiful fancies, had a great charm for the imagination of even the prhnitive Christian mind ; and it seemed also to form a certain khid of natural and easy alliance with the doctrines of good and evil, God and Satan, spirit and matter, in the human constitution, as these are unfolded in the Christian revelation, so that this dualistic mode of thinking failed not to insinuate it- self largely into the thinking of many in the primitive Church. It has also revealed itself, more or less, in various sects and systems in every period of Chris- tian history, and its false- theories have often toonb- led the mind of the Church in the development and statement of its dogmas. Thus in Gnosticism, and especially in the Docetic phase of it, Dualism en- ters as a ruling element. The Gnostics found it diffi- cult to explain the existence of the sensible world, and especially the existence of evil, on the direct as- sumption of one absolutely good Being. Hence they mixed into their theory some elements of the Oriental philosophy. " They thought themselves compelled to combine with the doctrine of emanation that of Dual- ism, in order, by the commixture of two hostile realms, by the products of two opposite principles, to explain the origin of a world not answering to the divine idea, with all the defects cleaving to it, all the evils it con- tains*' (Neander, Hist, of the Chr. Churchy Bohn's ed. ii, 14). For the Manich«an Dualism, see Manichb- ISM ; and for that of the Catbari, see Cathari.
That the ascetic tendencies of the early Christian age were strongly stimulated, if not unconsciously caused by a leaven of Dualism, can hardly be doubted. ** A dark instinct of a state of abnormal and dangerous antipathy to God leads the devotee to take vengeance in time upon that part of himself which is outside, and which may be hardly treated, and even tortured, at for less cost than the renewal of the spirit of his mind, and the bringing of his whole inner man back to grav-
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hate towards God instead of turning npon itself. Manes endeavored to unite Christianity and the no- blest form ci Oriental paganism in his brilliant and elaborately - constructed speculative system. The Church repulsed the heresiarch because of his person- al pretensions, his rival Merarchy, and liis too open importations from the religion of Persia ; but it vras not the less profoundly modified by the tendencies which it nominally rejected. Monasticism in Syria and Egypt was the direct result of the contact of de- generating Christianity with pagan habits of thought. The idea that abstinence firom food was meritorious in itself, the notion of impurity attached to the sexual re- lation, the growing tendency to look upon marriage as a state less holy than celibacy — tliese were so many triumphs of the invading pagan conception. The errors ahd extravagancies of the ascetic Ufe were es- pecially prevalent in the Eastern Church. Schmid quotes authorities to show tliat remembrances of Man- ichieism were long kept up in Oriental convents, and also that sundry Greek monks, in their solitude, imag- ined they had constantly to struggle with the devil, whose power they magnified until they put him almost on a rank with God" {London Remew^ April, 1855, p. 10 ; see also Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy^ Phila. 1867, p. 42 sq.).
The progress of philosophy and theology in all Christian ages has been a continuous struggle to over- come Dualism, to bring God and the world, the infi- nite and the finite, heaven and earth, spirit and mat- ter together, and to do this without violence to the essential nature of either, by, on the one hand, con- ftising them, or, on the other, annihilating one or the other by identification of them. Pantlieism, as it has sprung up on the arena of modem theological investi- gation, has been an earnest, though mistaken efiTort to overcome Dualism. Much as Pantheism is to be ab- horred and dreaded, yet ought its service to be ac- knowledged in helping philosophy and theology to master Dualism. It lias both suggested and stimula- ted the movement that aims at the creation of a chris- tological theology, and we may also say philosophy, which professes, not without hope of success, to over- come that mischievous Dualism which knows only to negate, and which, in a cowardly manner, has only given up the great fundamental problems. It holds that the great gulf can be, and can only be, bridged by the God-man in whose mysterious person all dual- ism is overcome — the centre and perennial source of all life and thought, the principle of all unities and the unity of all principles, the whole of all that is di- vided, the harmony of all manifoldness and diversity, the centre of all science, and the imperial, incarnate Word of all authority and truth, the final rest of all minds, as he is also of all hearts. — Hardwick, Chritt and other ^fosters (Loud. 1868, 2 vols. 12mo) ; Domer, Doctrine of the Person of Chriet (see Index) ; Hagen- bach, ffist. of Doctrines, Smith's ed., § 61, 127 ; THeol. Stud. tt. KriOken (1887), p. 867 ; Lange, Life of Christ (Edinb. 1864, 6 vols. 8vo), i, 186 sq. ; H. Schmid, in Herzog, ReaUEncyhl, xix, 482.