§ 135. THE ALEXANDRIAN AND ANTIOCHIAN SCHCK/L8. 705
fifteen propositions of Origen at a council in 544/ Since tlien no one lias ventured until recent times to raise his voice for Origen, and many of his works have perished.
With Cyril of Alexandria the theological productivity of the Greek church, and with Theodoret the exegetical, became almost extinct. The Greeks thenceforth contented themselves for the most part with revisions and collections of the older treasures. A church which no longer advances, goes backwards, or falls in stagnation.
III. The Christological Controversies.
Among the works on the whole field of the Christological controversies should be compared especially the already cited works of Petavius (tom. iv. De incarnatione Yerbi), Walch (Ketzerhistorie, vol. v.-ix.), Baue, and Dornkr. The special literature will be given at the heads of the several sections.
§ 135. Oeneral Yiew. The Alexandrian and Antiochian
Schools.
The Trinity and Christology, the two hardest problems and most comprehensive dogmas of theology, are intimately connected. Hence the settlement of the one was immediately followed by the agitation and study of tlie other, Tlie specu- '^ations on the Trinity had their very origin in the study of the person of Christ, and led back to it again. The point of union is the idea of the incarnation of God. But in the Arian controversy the Son of God was viewed mainly in his essential, pre-mundane relation to the Father ; while in the Christological contest the incarnate historical Christ and the constitution of his divine-lmman person was the subject of dispute.
The notion of redemption, which forms the centre of Chris-
' It was only a (tvvoIo% h'^nfj-ova-a, i. «., a council of the bishops just then in Constantinople, and is not to be confounied with the fifth ecumenical counoU at Constantinople in 553, which decided only the controversy of the Three Chapters, Comp. Mansi, Cone. tom. ix. fol. 395-399 (where the fifteen canons are given); Walch, Ketzerhistorie, vii. 660; and Gieseler, K. Gesch. i. ii. p. 368.
706 THIRD TEEIOr. A. I) 311-590.
tian tliinlving, demands a Rcdecniei who unites in his person the nature of God and the nature of man, yet without confucion. In order to be a true Redeemer, tlie person must possess all divine attributes, and at tlie same time enter into all relations and conditions of mankind, to raise them to God. Four elements thus enter into the orthodox doctrine concerning Christ : He is true God ; he is true man ; he is one person ; and the divine and. human in him, with all the personal union and harmony, remain distinct.
The result of the Arian controversies was the general acknowledgment of the essential and eternal deitj of Christ. Before the close of that controversy the true humanity of Christ at the same time came in again for treatment; the church having indeed always maintained it against the Gnostic Docetism, but now, against a partial denial bj Apollinarianism, having to express it still more distinctly and lay stress on the reasonable soul. And now came into question, further, the relation between the divine and the liuman natures in Christ. Origen, who gave the impulse to tlie Arian controversy, had been also the first to provoke deeper speculation on the mystery of the person of Christ. But great obscurity and uncertainty had long prevailed in opinions on this great matter. The orthodox Christology is the result of powerful and passionate conflicts. It is remarkable that the notorious rahies theologorum has never in any doctrinal controversy so long and violently raged as in the controversies on the person of the Reconciler, and in later times on the love-feast of reconciliation.
The Alexandrian school of theology, with its characteristic speculative and mystical turn, favored a connection of the divine and human in the act of the incarnation so close, that it was in danger of losing the human in the divine, or at least of mixing it with the divine ; ' while, conversely, the Antio-
• Even Athanasius is not wholly free from tbis leaning to the monophysite view, and speaks of an eVoiris (pvcriK-h of the Logos with his flesh, and of one incarnate natnre of the divine Logos, /ti'o (pvan rod &eov Koyov crtaapKwfxfi'rj, which with hia Be-h is to be worshipped ; see his little tract De incarnatione De Verbi (irepl t?";? tafiKwdiwi Tov 0eoD \6yov) in the 3d torn, of the Boned, ed. p. 1. But in the firel