question which any answer to them must at the same time solve, fill a large place in the history of the first three centuries. The compromise which ultimately resulted has formed the basis of Christian theology to the present day.

The first answers were necessarily tentative. Thinkers of all schools, within the original communities and outside them, introduced conceptions which were afterwards discarded. One group of philosophers, treating the facts of Christianity as symbols, like the tableaux of the mysteries, framed cosmogonies which were symbolical also, and fantastic in proportion as they were symbolical. Another group of philosophers, dealing rather with the ideal than with the actual, framed cosmogonies in which abstract ideas were invested with substance and personality. The philosophers of all schools were met, not only by the common sense of the Christian communities, but also by caricature. Their opponents, after the manner of controversialists, accentuated their weak points, and handed on to later times only those parts of the theories which were most exposed to attack, and which were also least intelligible except in relation to the whole system. But so far as the underlying conceptions can be disentangled from the details, they may be clearly seen to have drifted in the direction of the main drifts of Greek philosophy.

1. There was a large tendency to account for the world by the hypothesis of evolution. In some way it had come forth from God. The belief expressed itself in many forms. It was in all cases syncretist. The

same writers frequently made use of different metaphors; but all the metaphors assumed vast grades and distances between God in Himself and the sensible world. One metaphor was that of an outflow, as of a stream from its source.1 Other metaphors were taken from the phenomena of vegetable growth, the evolution of a plant from a seed, or the putting forth of leaves by a tree.2 The metaphors of other writers were taken from the phenomena of human generation: they were an elaboration of the conception of God as the Father of the world. They were sometimes pressed: there was not only a Father, but also a Mother of the world, Wisdom or Silence or some other abstraction. In one elaborate system it was held that, though God Himself was unwedded, all the powers that came forth from Him came forth in pairs, and all existing things were the offspring of their union. That which came forth was also conceived in

1 Derivatio: Iren. 1. 24. 3, of Basilides (or rather one of the schools of Basilidians).

2 This is probably the metaphor involved in the common word πроßoλń, e.g. Hippol. 6. 38, of Epiphanes.

3 The conception of the double nature of God, male and female, is found as early as Xenocrates, Aetius ap. Stob. Ecl. 1. 2. 29 (Diels, p. 304); and commonly among the Stoics, e.g. in the verses of Valerius Soranus, which are quoted by Varro, and after him by S. Augustine, de civit. Dei, 7. 9:

Jupiter omnipotens regum rex ipse deusque

Progenitor genitrixque deum, deus unus et omnis.

So Philodemus, de piet. 16, ed. Gomp. p. 83 (Diels, p. 549), quotes Zevs appηv, Zeus Onλvs; and Eusebius, præp. Evang. 3. 9, p. 100 b, quotes the Orphic verse:

Ζεὺς ἄρσην γένετο, Ζεὺς ἄμβροτος ἔπλετο νύμφη.

4 The Valentinians in, e.g., Hippol. 6. 29; 10. 13: so of Simon Magus, ib. 6. 12, γεγονέναι δὲ τὰς ῥίζας φησὶ κατὰ συζυγίας ἀπὸ τοῦ πυρὸς.

various ways. The common expression in one group of philosophers is con (aiúv), a term which is of uncertain origin in this application. In other groups of philosophers the expressions are relative to the metaphor of growth and development, and repeat the Stoical term seed. In the syncretism of Marcus the several expressions are gathered together, and made more intelligible by the use of the synonym logoi;1 the thoughts of God were conceived as active forces, embodying themselves in material forms. In the conception of one school of thinkers, the invisible forces of the world acted in the same way that the art of a craftsman acts upon his materials.2 In the conception of another school, the distinction between intellectual and material existence tended to vanish. The powers which flowed forth from God were at once intellectual and material, corresponding to the monistic conception of God Himself. They were subtler and more active forms of matter acting upon its grosser but plastic forms. In the conception of another school, God is the unbegotten seed of which the Tree of Being is the leaves and fruit, and the fruit again contains

1 Hippol. 6. 43 (of Marcus), rà de óvóμaтa тŵv σTOIXEίWV Tà KOLVà καὶ ῥητὰ αἰῶνας καὶ λόγους καὶ ῥίζας καὶ σπέρματα καὶ πλη ρώματα καὶ καρποὺς ὠνόμασε.

2 Hippol. 5. 19 (of the Sethiani), πâv ỏ тɩ vońσeɩ étivoeîs kai παραλείπεις μὴ νοηθέν, τοῦτο ἑκάστη τῶν ἀρχῶν πέφυκε γενέσθαι ὡς ἐν ἀνθρωπίνῃ ψυχῇ πᾶσα ἡτισοῦν διδασκομένη τέχνη.

3 Hippol. 8. 8 (of the Doceta), eòv eivai тòv πрŵтov oioveì σtépμa συκῆς μεγέθει μὲν ἐλάχιστον παντελῶς δυνάμει δὲ ἄπειρον: ibid. c. 9, τὸ δὲ πρῶτον σπέρμα ἐκεῖνο, ὅθεν γέγονεν ἡ συκῆ, ἐστὶν ἀγέννητον. Α similar metaphor was used by the Simonians, Hippol. 6. 9 sqq., but it is complicated with the metaphor of invisible and visible fire (heat and flame). It is adopted by Peter in the Clementines, Hom. 2. 4, where God is the ῥίζα, man the καρπός.

in itself infinite possibilities of renewing the original seed.1

was

The obvious difficulty which the actual world, with its failures and imperfections, presents to all theories of evolution which assume the existence of a good and perfect God, was bridged over by the hypothesis of a lapse. The "fall from original righteousness' carried back from the earthly Paradise to the sphere of divinity itself. The theory was shaped in various ways, some of which are expressed by almost unintelligible symbols. That of the widely-spread school of Valentinus was, that the Divine Wisdom herself had become subject to passion, and that, having both ambition and desire, she had produced from herself a shapeless mass, in ignorance that the Unbegotten One alone can, without the aid of another, produce what is perfect. Out of this shapeless mass, and the passions that came forth from her, arose the material world and the Demiurgus who fashioned it.2 Another theory was that of revolt and insurrection among the supernal powers. Both theories simply pushed the difficulty farther back: they gave no solution of it: they were opposed as strongly by philosophers outside Christianity as they were by polemical theologians within it: they helped to pave the way for the Augustinian

1 Ibid. 8. 8, .... ὁ καρπὸς ἐν ᾧ τὸ ἄπειρον καὶ τὸ ἀνεξαρίθμητον θησαυριζόμενον φυλάσσεται σπέρμα συκῆς.

2 The chief authorities for this theory, which was expressed in language that readily lent itself to caricature, are the first seven chapters of the first book of Irenæus, and Hippolytus 6. 32 sqq.

3 This was especially the view of the Peratæ, Hippol. 5. 13. Notably by Plotinus, Enn. ii. 9. 2-5,

theology of succeeding centuries, but they did not themselves win permanent acceptance either in philosophy or in theology, in either the Eastern or the Western world.

2. Side by side with these hypotheses of evolution was a tendency, which ultimately became supreme, to account for the world by the hypothesis of creation. It was the result of the action of God upon already existing matter. It was not evolved, but ordered or shaped. God was the Builder or Framer: the universe was a work of art.1

But this, no less than the monistic hypothesis, contained grave difficulties, arising partly from the metaphysical conception of God, and partly from the conception of moral evil. Three main questions were discussed in connection with it: (i.) What was the ultimate relation of matter to God? (ii.) How did God come into contact with it so as to shape it? (iii.) How did a God who was almighty as well as beneficent come to create what is imperfect and evil?

(i.) The dualistic hypothesis assumed a co-existence of matter and God. The assumption was more frequently tacit than explicit. The difficulty of the assumption varied according to the degree to which matter was regarded as having positive qualities. qualities. There was a universal belief that beneath the qualities of all existing things lay a substratum or substance on which they

1 The conception appears in Justin Martyr, Apol. i. 10, núvтa тýv ἀρχὴν ἀγαθὸν ὄντα δημιουργῆσαι αὐτὸν ἐξ ἀμόρφου ὕλης : ib. c. 59, ὕλην ἄμορφον οὖσαν στρέψαντα τὸν θεὸν κόσμον ποιῆσαι : but Justin, though he avowedly adopts the conception from Plato, claims that Plato adopted it from Moses.