It was the contemplative Oriental mind, with its tendency towards the supernatural and miraculous, with its mysticism and religion, and Greece with her subtle scrutinising and investigating spirit, which gave rise to the peculiar phase of thought prevalent in Alexandria during the first centuries of our era. It was tinctured with idealistic, mystic, and yet speculative and scientific colours. Hence the religious spirit in philosophy and the philosophic tendency in the religious system that are the characteristic features. “East and West,” says Baldwin,* “met at Alexandria.” The co-operative ideas of civilisations, cultures, and religions of Rome, Greece, Palestine, and the farther East found themselves in juxtaposition. Hence arose a new problem, developed partly by Occidental thought, partly by Oriental aspiration. Religion and philosophy became inextricably mixed, and the resultant doctrines consequently belong to neither sphere proper, but are rather witnesses of an attempt at combining both.
* Baldwin: Dictionary of Philosophy.
These efforts naturally came from two sides. On the one hand, the Jews tried to accommodate their faith to the results of Western culture, in which Greek culture predominated. On the other hand, thinkers whose main impulse came from Greek philosophy attempted to accommodate their doctrines to the distinctively religious problems which the Eastern nations had brought with them. From whichever side the consequences be viewed, they are to be characterised as theosophical rather than purely philosophical, purely religious, or purely theological.
The reign of Constantine the Great, who became sole ruler of the East and West in 323, after ten years’ joint government with Licinius, is remarkable for the change which was then wrought in the religion and philosophy of the empire by the emperor’s embracing the Christian faith. His conversion occurred in 312, and on his coming to the united sovereignty the Christians were at once released from every punishment and disability on account of their religion, which was then more than tolerated; they were put upon a nearly equal footing with the pagans, and every minister of the Church was released from the burden of civil and military duties. Whether the emperor’s conversion arose from education, from conviction, or from state policy, we have no means of knowing; but Christianity did not reach the throne before it was the religion of a most important class of his subjects, and the Egyptian Christians soon found themselves numerous enough to call the Greek Christians heretics, as the Greek Christians had already begun to designate the Jewish.
The Greeks of Alexandria had formed rather a school of philosophy than a religious sect. Before Alexander’s conquest the Greek settlers at Naucratis had thought it necessary to have their own temples and sacrifices; but since the building of Alexandria they had been smitten with the love of Eastern mysticism, and content to worship in the temples of Serapis and Mithra, and to receive instruction from the Egyptian priests. They had supported the religion of the conquered Egyptians without wholly believing it; and had shaken by their ridicule the respect for the very ceremonies which they upheld by law. Polytheism among the Greeks had been further shaken by the platonists; and Christianity spread in about equal proportions among the Greeks and the Egyptians. Before the conversion of Constantine the Egyptian church had already spread into every city of the province, and had a regular episcopal government. Till the time of Heraclas and Dionysius, the bishops had been always chosen by the votes of the presbyters, as the archdeacons were by the deacons. Dionysius in his public epistles joins with himself his fellow-presbyters as if he were only the first among equals; but after that time some irregularities had crept into the elections, and latterly the Church had become more monarchical. There was a patriarch in Alexandria, with a bishop in every other large city, each assisted by a body of priests and deacons. They had been clad in faith, holiness, humility, and charity; but Constantine robed them in honour, wealth, and power; and to this many of them soon added pride, avarice, and ambition.
This reign is no less remarkable for the religious quarrel which then divided the Christians, which set church against church and bishop against bishop, as soon as they lost that great bond of union, the fear of the pagans. Jesus of Nazareth was acknowledged by Constantine as a divine person; and, in the attempt then made by the Alexandrians to arrive at a more exact definition of his nature, while the emperor was willing to be guided by the bishops in his theological opinions, he was able to instruct them all in the more valuable lessons of mutual toleration and forbearance. The followers of early religions held different opinions, but distinguished themselves apart only by outward modes of worship, such as by sacrifices among the Greeks and Romans, and among the Jews and Egyptians by circumcision, and abstinence from certain meats. When Jesus of Nazareth introduced his spiritual religion of repentance and amendment of life, he taught that the test by which his disciples wrere to be known was their love to one another. After his death, however, the Christians gave more importance to opinions in religion, and towards the end of the third century they proposed to distinguish their fellow-worshippers in a mode hitherto unknown to the world, namely, by the profession of belief in certain opinions; for as yet there was no difference in their belief of historic facts. This gave rise to numerous metaphysical discussions, particularly among the more speculative and mystical.
At about this time the chief controversy was as to whether Christ was of the same, or of similar substance with God the Father, this being the dispute which divided Christendom for centuries. This dispute and others not quite so metaphysical were brought to the ears of the emperor by Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, and Arius, the presbyter. The bishop had been enquiring into the belief of the presbyter, and the latter had argued against his superior and against the doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son. The emperor’s letter to the theologians, in this first ecclesiastical quarrel that was ever brought before a Christian monarch, is addressed to Alexander and Arius, and he therein tells them that they are raising useless questions, which it is not necessary to settle, and which, though a good exercise for the understanding, only breed ill-will, and should be kept by each man in his own breast. He regrets the religious madness which has seized all Egypt; and lastly he orders the bishop not to question the priest as to his belief, and orders the priest, if questioned, not to return an answer. But this wise letter had no weight with the Alexandrian divines. The quarrel gained in importance from being noticed by the emperor; the civil government of the country was clogged; and Constantine, after having once interfered, was persuaded to call a council of bishops to settle the Christian faith for the future. Nicæa in Bithynia was chosen as the spot most convenient for Eastern Christendom to meet in; and two hundred and fifty bishops, followed by crowds of priests, there met in council from Greece, Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, and Libya, with one or two from Western Europe.
At this synod, held in the year 325, Athanasius, a young deacon in the Alexandrian church, came for the first time into notice as the champion of Alexander against Arius, who was then placed upon his trial. All the authority, eloquence, and charity of the emperor were needed to quell the tumultuous passions of the assembly. It ended its stormy labours by voting what was called the Homoousian doctrine, that Jesus was of one substance with God. They put forth to the world the celebrated creed, named, from the city in which they met, the Nicene creed, and they excommunicated Arius and his followers, who were then all banished by the emperor. The meeting had afterwards less difficulty in coming to an agreement about the true time of Easter, and in excommunicating the Jews; and all except the Egyptians returned home with a wish that the quarrel should be forgotten and forgiven.
This first attempt among the Christians at settling the true faith by putting fetters on the mind, by drawing up a creed and punishing those that disbelieved it, was but the beginning of theological difficulties. These in Egypt arose as much from the difference of blood and language of the races that inhabited the country as from their religious belief; and Constantine must soon have seen that if as a theologian he had decided right, yet as a statesman he had been helping the Egyptians against the friends of his own Greek government in Alexandria.
After a reasonable delay, Arius addressed to the emperor a letter either of explanation or apology, asserting his full belief in Christianity, explaining his faith by using the words of the Apostles’ Creed, and begging to be re-admitted into the Church. The emperor, either from a readiness to forgive, or from a change of policy, or from an ignorance of the theological controversy, was satisfied with the apology, and thereupon wrote a mild conciliatory letter to Athanasius, who had in the meantime been made Bishop of Alexandria, expressing his wish that forgiveness should at all times be offered to the repentant, and ordering him to re-admit Arius to his rank in the Church. But the young Athanasius, who had gained his favour with the Egyptian clergy, and had been raised to his high seat by his zeal shown against Arius, refused to obey the commands of the emperor, alleging that it was unlawful to re-admit into the Church anybody who had once been excommunicated. Constantine could hardly be expected to listen to this excuse, or to overlook this direct refusal to obey his orders. The rebellious Athanasius was ordered into the emperor’s presence at Constantinople, and soon afterwards, in 335, called before a council of bishops at Tyre, where he was deposed and banished. At the same council, in the thirtieth year of this reign, Arius was re-admitted into communion with the Church, and after a few months he was allowed to return to Alexandria, to the indignation of the popular party in that city, while Athanasius remained in banishment during the rest of the reign, as a punishment for his disobedience.