Special mention is made of the Alexandrian school, as it was located in an Egyptian city to which flocked many noted pagan scholars. Sad as it may be to do so, it is yet necessary to see how these schools, and especially this one at Alexandria, lost their simplicity as they came in contact with pagan scholars, and attempted to meet them on their own grounds.
Alexandria adopts philosophy of Plato
Mosheim says: “This philosophy [of Plato] was adopted by such of the learned at Alexandria as wished to be accounted Christians, and yet to retain the name, garb, and the rank of philosophers. In particular, all those who in this century presided in the schools of the Christians at Alexandria ... are said to have approved of it. These men were persuaded that true philosophy, the great and most salutary gift of God, lay in scattered fragments among all the sects of philosophers; and therefore that it was the duty of every wise man, and especially of a Christian teacher, to collect those fragments from all quarters, and to use them for the defense of religion and the confutation of impiety.”[63]
Result of adopting worldly methods
The lesson so dear to Paul—that the gospel of Christ is the “power of God unto salvation”—was lost sight of when these Christian teachers assumed the philosopher’s garb, and used the philosopher’s vocabulary to confute impiety. “I have somewhat against thee,” writes the divine historian of this age, “because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place.”[64] The heaven-lit taper of Christian education in its purity was beginning to grow dim. Its flame must have a constant supply of truth, or, like the candle without oxygen, it burns low, and finally goes out. Paul, writing to the Corinthians who were placed in circumstances similar to those of the school at Alexandria, that is, pressed upon all sides by pagan philosophy, said: “I came toward you with weakness and fear and great timidity. And my thought and my statement was not clothed in captivating philosophical reasons; but in demonstrated spirit and power, so that your trust might not be in human philosophy, but in divine power.... What we speak is not in an artificial discussion of a human philosophy, but by spiritual teachings, comparing spiritualities with the spiritual.”[65]
Dialectics versus the Scriptures
Again, “Dialectic,” or logic, was that science of which Aristotle, the disciple of Plato, boasted as being the father. Says a writer of the church after the decline was well begun, it “is the queen of arts and sciences. In it reason dwells, and is manifested and developed. It is dialectic alone that can give knowledge and wisdom; it alone shows what and whence we are, and teaches us our destiny [human philosophy and evolution]; through it we learn to know good and evil. And how necessary is it to a clergyman, in order that he may be able to meet and vanquish heretics!” Men have more than once reverted to logic to vanquish heretics, but it was only when the Spirit of truth was lacking.
The educational question caused a division
Error was rapidly creeping into the church, and it came principally through these schools, as has already been seen. However, truth was not abandoned for error without a struggle. Mosheim says: “The estimation in which human learning should be held was a question on which the Christians were about equally divided. For while many thought that the literature and writings of the Greeks ought to receive attention, there were others who contended that true piety and religion were endangered by such studies.”[66] People then, as now, looked to the leaders in the church for guidance; and it was hard, when these studies were popular, for the conscientious to withdraw entirely to what the others called a narrow, limited education. It often led to contention among members of the same church, and often even parents and children failed to agree on the subject.
Wrong methods retained