The Church now won to its support some of the finest minds in the Empire. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, began the powerful dynasty of the post-apostolic “Fathers,” who gave a philosophy to Christianity, and overwhelmed its enemies with argument. Condemned to be thrown to the beasts for refusing to abjure his faith (108), Justin composed on his way to Rome several letters whose hot devotion reveals the spirit in which Christians could go to their death:
I give injunctions to all men that I am dying willingly for God’s sake, if you do not hinder it. I beseech you, be not an unseasonable kindness to me. Suffer me to be eaten by the beasts, through whom I can attain to God. . . . Rather entice the wild beasts that they may become my tomb, and leave no trace of my body, that when I fall asleep I be not burdensome to any. … I long for the beasts that are prepared for me. . . . Let there come upon me fire and cross [crucifixion], struggles with wild beasts, cutting and tearing asunder, rackings of bones, mangling of limbs, crushing of my whole body, and cruel tortures of the devil, if so I may attain to Jesus Christ! 53
Quadratus, Athenagoras, and many others wrote “Apologies” for Christianity, usually addressed to the emperor. Minucius Felix, in an almost Ciceronian dialogue, allowed his Caecilius to defend paganism ably, but made his Octavius answer him so courteously that Caecilius was almost persuaded to be a Christian. Justin of Samaria, coming to Rome in the reign of Antoninus, opened there a school of Christian philosophy, and, in two eloquent “Apologies,” sought to convince the Emperor, and “Verissimus the Philosopher,” that Christians were loyal citizens, paid their taxes promptly, and might, under friendly treatment, become a valuable support to the state. For some years he taught unmolested; but the sharpness of his tongue made him enemies, and in 166 a rival philosopher prodded the authorities to arrest him and six of his followers, and put them all to death. Twenty years later Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, struck a powerful blow for the unity of the Church in his Adversus Haereses, a blast at all heretics. The only way of preventing Christianity from disintegrating into a thousand sects, said Irenaeus, was for all Christians to accept humbly one doctrinal authority—the decrees of the episcopal councils of the Church.
The doughtiest fighter for Christianity in this period was Quintus Septimius Tertullianus of Carthage. Born there about 160, the son of a Roman centurion, he studied rhetoric in the same school that trained Apuleius; then for years he practiced law at Rome. Midway in life he was converted to Christianity, married a Christian, renounced all pagan pleasures, and (says Jerome) was ordained a priest. All the arts and tricks that he had learned from rhetoric and law were now put at the service of Christian apologetics, enhanced by a convert’s ardor. Greek Christianity was theological, metaphysical, mystical; Tertullian made Latin Christianity ethical, juristic, practical. He had the vigor and virulence of Cicero, the satirical scurrility of Juvenal, and sometimes he could rival Tacitus in concentrating acid in a phrase. Irenaeus had written in Greek; with Minucius and Tertullian Christian literature in the West became Latin, and Latin literature became Christian.
In the year 197, while Roman magistrates in Carthage were trying Christians on charges of disloyalty, Tertullian addressed to an imaginary court the most eloquent of his works—the Apologeticus. He assured the Romans that Christians “are always praying for all emperors, for . . . a safe dynasty, brave armies, a faithful Senate, and a quiet world.”54 He extolled the grandeur of monotheism, and found premonitions of it in pre-Christian writers. O testimonium animae naturaliter Christianae! he cried in a happy phrase—“Behold the witness of the soul, by its very nature Christian!”55 A year later, passing with strange celerity from persuasive defense to ferocious attack, he issued De Spectaculis, a scornful description of the Roman theaters as citadels of obscenity, and of the amphitheaters as the acme of man’s inhumanity to man. And he concluded with a bitter threat:
Other spectacles will come—that last eternal Day of Judgment . . . when all this old world and its generations shall be consumed in one fire. How vast the spectacle will be on that day! How I shall marvel, laugh, rejoice, and exult, seeing so many kings—supposedly received into heaven—groaning in the depths of darkness!—and the magistrates who persecuted the name of Jesus melting in fiercer flames than they ever kindled . . . against the Christians!—sages and philosophers blushing before their disciples as they blaze together! . . . and tragic actors now more than ever vocal in their own tragedy, and players lither of limb by far in the fire, and charioteers burning red on the wheel of flame! 56
Such unhealthy intensity of imagination does not make for orthodoxy. As Tertullian aged, the same energy that in his youth had courted pleasure now turned into a fierce denunciation of every consolation but those of faith and hope. He addressed woman in the coarsest terms as “the gate by which the demon enters,” and told her that “it is on your account that Jesus Christ died.”57 Once he loved philosophy, and had written works like De Anima, applying Stoic metaphysics to Christianity; now he renounced all reasoning independent of revelation, and rejoiced in the incredibility of his creed. “God’s son died: it is believable precisely because it is absurd [ineptum]. He was buried and rose again: it is certain because it is impossible.”58 Sinking into a morose puritanism, Tertullian in his fifty-eighth year rejected the orthodox Church as too sullied with worldly ways, and embraced Montanism as a more outright application of the teachings of Christ. He condemned all Christians who became soldiers, artists, or state officials; all parents who did not veil their daughters; all bishops who restored repentant sinners to communion; finally he called the pope pastor moechorum—“shepherd of adulterers.”59
Despite him the Church prospered in Africa. Able and devoted bishops like Cyprian made the diocese of Carthage almost as rich and influential as Rome’s. In Egypt the growth of the Church was slower, and its early stages are lost to history; suddenly, late in the second century, we hear of a “Catechetical School” in Alexandria, which wedded Christianity to Greek philosophy, and produced two major fathers of the Church. Both Clement and Origen were well versed in pagan literature, and loved it after their own fashion; if their spirit had prevailed there would have been a less destructive break between classical culture and Christianity.
When Origenes Adamantius was seventeen (202) his father was arrested as a Christian, and condemned to death. The boy wished to join him in prison and martyrdom; his mother, failing to deter him by other means, hid all his clothes. Origen sent his father letters of encouragement: “Take heed,” he bade him, “not to change your mind on our account.”60 The father was beheaded, and the youth was left to care for the mother and six young children. Inspired to greater piety by the many martyrdoms he saw, he adopted the ascetic life. He fasted much, slept little and on bare ground, wore no shoes, and subjected himself to cold and nakedness; finally, in rigorous interpretation of Matthew XIX, 12, he emasculated himself.IV In 203 he succeeded Clement as head of the Catechetical School. Though he was only eighteen, his learning and eloquence drew many students, pagan as well as Christian, and his fame spread throughout the Christian world.
Some ancients reckoned his “books” at 6000; many, of course, were brief brochures; even so Jerome asked, “Which of us can read all that he has written?”62 In love with the Bible, which through boyhood memorizing had become part of his mind, Origen spent twenty years, and employed a corps of stenographers and copyists, collating in parallel columns the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, a Greek transliteration of that text, and Greek translations of it by the Septuagint, Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion.V By comparing these diverse renderings, and using his knowledge of Hebrew, Origen offered to the Church a corrected Septuagint. Insatiate, he added commentaries, sometimes of great length, on every book in the Bible. In Peri archon, “First Principles,” he achieved the first orderly and philosophical exposition of Christian doctrine. In a “Miscellany” (Stromateis) he undertook to demonstrate all Christian dogmas from the writings of the pagan philosophers. To lighten his task he availed himself of that allegorical method by which pagan philosophers had made Homer accord with reason, and Philo had reconciled Judaism with Greek philosophy. The literal meaning of Scripture, argued Origen, overlay two deeper layers of meaning—the moral and the spiritual—to which only the esoteric and educated few could penetrate. He questioned the truth of Genesis as literally understood: he explained away as symbols the unpleasant aspects of Yahveh’s dealings with Israel; and he dismissed as legends such stories as that of Satan taking Jesus up to a high mountain and offering him the kingdoms of the world.63 Sometimes, he suggested, scriptural narratives were invented in order to convey some spiritual truth.64 “What man of sense,” he asked,
will suppose that the first and the second and the third day, and the evening and the morning, existed without a sun or moon or stars? Who is so foolish as to believe that God, like a husbandman, planted a garden in Eden, and placed in it a tree of life … so that one who tasted of the fruit obtained life? 65
As Origen proceeds it becomes apparent that he is a Stoic, a Neo-Pythagorean, a Platonist, and a Gnostic, who is nonetheless resolved to be a Christian. It would have been too much to ask of a man that he should abandon the faith for which he had edited a thousand volumes and flung away his manhood. Like Plotinus he had studied under Ammonius Saccas, and sometimes it is hard to distinguish his philosophy from theirs. God, in Origen, is not Yahveh, he is the First Principle of all things. Christ is not the human figure described in the New Testament, he is the Logos or Reason who organizes the world; as such he was created by God the Father, and is subordinate to him.66 In Origen, as in Plotinus, the soul passes through a succession of stages and embodiments before entering the body; and after death it will pass through a like succession before arriving at God. Even the purest souls will suffer for a while in Purgatory; but in the end all souls will be saved. After the “final conflagration” there will be another world with its long history, and then another, and another. . . . Each will improve on the preceding, and the whole vast sequence will slowly work out the design of God.67
We cannot wonder that Demetrius, Bishop of Alexandria, looked with some doubt upon the brilliant philosopher who adorned his diocese and corresponded with emperors. He refused to ordain Origen to the priesthood, on the ground that emasculation disqualified him. But while Origen was traveling in the Near East two Palestinian bishops ordained him. Demetrius protested that this infringed his rights; he convened a synod of his clergy; it annulled Origen’s ordination, and banished him from Alexandria. Origen removed to Caesarea, and continued his work as a teacher. There he wrote his famous defense of Christianity Contra Celsum (248). With magnanimous spirit he admitted the force of Celsus’ arguments; but he replied that for every difficulty and improbability in Christian doctrine there were worse incredibilities in paganism. He concluded not that both were absurd, but that the Christian faith offered a nobler way of life than could possibly come from a dying and idolatrous creed.
In 250 the Decian persecution reached Caesarea. Origen, now sixty-five, was arrested, stretched on the rack, loaded with chains and an iron collar, and kept in prison for many days. But death caught up with Decius first, and Origen was released. He lived only three years more; torture had fatally injured a body already weakened by unremitting asceticism. He died as poor as when he had begun to teach, and the most famous Christian of his time. As his heresies ceased to be the secret of a few scholars, the Church found it necessary to disown him; Pope Anastasius condemned his “blasphemous opinions” in 400, and in 553 the Council of Constantinople pronounced him anathema. Nevertheless, nearly every later Christian savant for centuries learned from him, and depended upon his work; and his defense of Christianity impressed pagan thinkers as no “apology” had done before him. With him Christianity ceased to be only a comforting faith; it became a full-fledged philosophy, buttressed with Scripture but proudly resting on reason.