A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Mirrors

179Chapter II. The Internal Development Of The ChurchIn Doctrine, Custom, And ConstitutionThe characteristic Eastern and Western conceptions of Christianitybegan to be clearly differentiated in the early years of thethird century. A juristic conception of the Church as a body at thehead of which, and clothed with authority, appeared the bishopof Rome, had, indeed, become current at Rome in the last decadeof the second century on the occasion of the Easter controversy,which had ended in an estrangement between the previouslyclosely affiliated churches of Asia Minor and the West, especiallyRome (§ 38). Western theology soon became centred in NorthAfrica under the legally trained Tertullian, by whom its leadingprinciples were laid down in harmony with the bent of the Latingenius (§ 39). In this period numerous attempts were made tosolve the problem arising from the unity of God and the divinityof Christ, without recourse to a Logos christology. Some of themore unsuccessful of these attempts have since been groupedunder the heads of Dynamistic and of Modalistic Monarchianism(§ 40). At the same time Montanism was excluded fromthe Church (§ 41), as subversive of the distinction between theclergy and laity and the established organs of the Church's [160]government, which in the recent rise of a theory of the necessityof the episcopate (see above, § 27) had become important. Inthe administration of the penitential discipline (§ 42) the positionof the clergy and the realization of a hierarchically organizedChurch was still further advanced, preparatory for the position ofCyprian. At the same time as these constitutional developmentswere taking place in the West, and especially in North Africa,there occurred in Egypt and Palestine a remarkable advance indoctrinal discussion, whereby the theology of the apologists wasdeveloped in the Catechetical School of Alexandria, especiallyunder the leadership of Clement of Alexandria and Origen (§ 43).In this new speculation a vast mass of most fruitful theological