History as past ethics; an introduction to the history of morals

by P. V. N. Myers

[632] On this subject consult Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church (1888), lect. xii, “The Transformation of the Basis of Christian Union: Doctrine in the Place of Conduct.”

[633] “After the middle of the third century, ... Christianity may be just as truly called a Hellenic religion as an Oriental.”—Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity (1904), vol. i, pp. 393 f.

[634] The change of emphasis from moral life to correct doctrine took place during the last half of the second and the first half of the third century. “Under the influence of contemporary Greek thought, the word faith came to be transferred from simple trust in God to mean the acceptance of a series of propositions, and these propositions, propositions in abstract metaphysics” (Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church (1888), p. 310).

[635] The Athanasian Creed, which by the end of the ninth century was in use in the churches of the West as an authoritative symbol and exposition of the Roman Catholic faith, says, “Whosoever will be saved, before all things, it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith, which faith, except every one who do keep entire and unviolated, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly” (Philip Schaff, Bibliotheca Symbolica Ecclesiae Universalis, vol. ii, p. 66).

[636] Lecky, History of European Morals, 3d ed., vol. ii, p. 68.

[637] “The virtues of the intellect, freedom and boldness of thought and the power to doubt, the vital principle of scientific research, are, in the eyes of primitive Christianity, worthless and dangerous.”—Paulsen, A System of Ethics, tr. Thilly (1906), p. 68.

[638] Cf. Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity (1904), vol. i, chap. v, “The Religion of Authority and Reason.”

[639] See Paulsen, System of Ethics, tr. Thilly (1906), bk. i, chap. iii.

[640] The ascetic movement was a reaction not only against the moral dissoluteness of pagan society, but also against the moral degeneracy which, before the end of the third century, had set in within the Christian community itself. The Church had become to a lamentable degree conformed unto the world, and had lost much of that moral fervor which characterized it during the first two centuries.

[641] Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints (the Fathers, Martyrs, and other Principal Saints, compiled from monuments and other authentic sources), 12 vols. (1854). Orig. ed. pub. 1754–1760.