(d) Origen, Contra Celsum, III, 9. (MSG, 11:951.)
With the following should be compared the statements of Pliny, more than a hundred years earlier, relative to Bithynia. See above, § 7.
Celsus says that “if all men wished to become Christians, the latter would not desire it.” That this is false, is evident from this, that Christians do not neglect, as far as they are able, to take care to spread their doctrines throughout the [pg 159] whole world. Some, accordingly, have made it their business to go round about not only through cities, but even villages and country houses, that they may persuade others to become pious worshippers of God.… At present, indeed, when because of the multitude of those who have embraced the teaching, not only rich men, but also some persons of rank and delicate and high-born ladies, receive the teachers of the Word, there will be some who dare to say that it is for the sake of a little glory that certain assume the office of Christian teachers. In the beginning, when there was much danger, especially to its teachers, this suspicion could have had no place.
Chapter II. The Internal Development Of The Church In Doctrine, Custom, And Constitution
The characteristic Eastern and Western conceptions of Christianity began to be clearly differentiated in the early years of the third century. A juristic conception of the Church as a body at the head of which, and clothed with authority, appeared the bishop of Rome, had, indeed, become current at Rome in the last decade of the second century on the occasion of the Easter controversy, which had ended in an estrangement between the previously closely affiliated churches of Asia Minor and the West, especially Rome ([§ 38]). Western theology soon became centred in North Africa under the legally trained Tertullian, by whom its leading principles were laid down in harmony with the bent of the Latin genius ([§ 39]). In this period numerous attempts were made to solve the problem arising from the unity of God and the divinity of Christ, without recourse to a Logos christology. Some of the more unsuccessful of these attempts have since been grouped under the heads of Dynamistic and of Modalistic Monarchianism ([§ 40]). At the same time Montanism was excluded from the Church ([§ 41]), as subversive of the distinction between the clergy and laity [pg 160] and the established organs of the Church's government, which in the recent rise of a theory of the necessity of the episcopate (see above, [§ 27]) had become important. In the administration of the penitential discipline ([§ 42]) the position of the clergy and the realization of a hierarchically organized Church was still further advanced, preparatory for the position of Cyprian. At the same time as these constitutional developments were taking place in the West, and especially in North Africa, there occurred in Egypt and Palestine a remarkable advance in doctrinal discussion, whereby the theology of the apologists was developed in the Catechetical School of Alexandria, especially under the leadership of Clement of Alexandria and Origen ([§ 43]). In this new speculation a vast mass of most fruitful theological ideas was built up, from which subsequent ages drew for the defence of the traditional faith, but some of which served as the basis of new and startling heresies. Corresponding to the intellectual development within the Church was the last phase of Hellenic philosophy, known as Neo-Platonism ([§ 44]), which subsequently came into bitter conflict with the Church.
§ 38. The Easter Controversy and the Separation of the Churches of Asia Minor from the Western Churches
The Church grew up with only a loose form of organization. Each local congregation was for a while autonomous, and it was the local constitution that first took a definite and fixed form. In the first centuries local customs naturally varied, and conflicts were sure to arise when various hitherto isolated churches came into closer contact and the sense of solidarity deepened. The first clash of opposing customs occurred over the date of Easter, as to which marked differences existed between the churches of Asia Minor, at that time the most flourishing part of the Church, and the churches of the West, especially with the church of Rome, the strongest local church of all. The course of the controversy is sufficiently stated in the following selection from Eusebius. The outcome was the practical isolation of the churches of Asia Minor for many years. The controversy was not settled, and the churches of Asia Minor did not again play a prominent part in the Church until the time of Constantine and the Council of Nicæa, 325 (see [§ 62, b]), although a provisional adjustment of the difficulty, so far as the West was concerned, took place shortly before, at the Council of Arles (see [§ 62, a], 2).