The aim of this paper is to show that the Alexandrian Fathers, Clement and Origen, helped shape subsequent philosophy and theology in the West by following a selective line from the tradition at their disposal. I shall try to give evidence that the tradition was richer, more ambivalent, than they recognized, and that by their failure to honor the whole tradition they narrowed the vision of Christian theology and therefore of Western philosophy as well. Whether one could support such a large thesis by tracing the story further, examining the rival philosophical schools of our own day, for instance linguistic analysis and existential phenomenology, as examples of similar selections within the tradition, is another question. Meanwhile, it may be helpful to approach the Alexandrians, about whom so much has been written of polemical and apologetic nature, with this larger theme in mind.

Few historical figures have earned a remembrance of so fixed and angular features as the fourth century Roman Emperor, Flavius Claudius Julianus. Yet, it is doubtful that except for one event in his short reign of less than two years, he would have aroused more than a fraction of the commentary since devoted to his rule. Having announced his defection from Christianity upon succeeding to the throne of Constantius, it was probably expected that religious terrors, like those of the third century, would immediately be loosed upon the followers of Jesus. Not until some seven months had passed, however, did anything like the expected blow descend. And this, oddly, was a nonsanguine policy intended to do no more than purge the public schools of their Christian faculties.

It seems paradoxical that the event which has divided our reckoning of time into years B.C. and A.D. should itself seem largely undatable. The birth of Christ is variously assigned to the years ranging from 7 to 2 B.C. The terminus ad quem must certainly be the death of Herod the Great, since the king was very much alive during the visit of the Magi in the Christmas story. According to Josephus, Herod died soon after an eclipse of the moon and not long before a Passover. Emil Schürer's chronology of Herod's reign from the accounts of Josephus, which has long been standard, identifies this as the lunar eclipse which took place on the night of March 12/13, 4 B.C., and which would have been visible in Judea. It also occurred one month before the Passover that year. On this basis, the birth of Jesus could not have been later than the spring of 4 B.C., and most likely took place in the winter of 5/4 B.C.

The relationship among Clement of Alexandria's three major works, Protreptikos, Paidagōgos and Stromateis, has vexed scholars for almost a century. Present state of the question reflects the condition of Clement studies as a whole: a welter of promising insights, ingenious theories, many contradictions and frustrating confusion. Recent attempts to approach the Alexandrine through historical-exegetical procedures have reopened Clement studies and have suggested that re-examination and re-evaluation of his theology are in order.

Liturgical questions have never aroused wider public interest and more intense emotions in the history of Sweden and Finland than they did during the last quarter of the sixteenth century. The Reformation movement was fully seventy years old in Sweden before that nation became definitely and officially committed to the Confessional Standard of Lutheranism. The Augsburg Confession was accepted by the Church and State in Sweden and Finland in 1593 as a binding religious symbol. The developments which led to this final settlement in Sweden need a brief presentation since they are in many ways related to liturgical matters.

To consider the Ruthenian Uniate Church in its historical perspective, and to encompass its complex phenomenon in a few pages is difficult for the historian who must treat this matter as an exception to the rule rather than an isolated historical event. It stands in sharp contrast to the historical precedent of the Kievan state whose inception and development, always represented politically, culturally, and ecclesiastically, the unity of all Russia. The division of Kievan Russia into principalities governed by members of the Rurik dynasty did not inhibit the cultural evolution, nor did it cut Russia off from contact with Western Europe. Rather, the cultural evolution developed in the general direction it had been given by Kiev, and contact with the West was further intensified in the principalities of Galicia-Volhynia and Novgorod. In addition to Kiev, several new centers of Russian political life developed in proportion to the number of principalities which increased as fathers divided their appanages among their children.

The third decade of the fourteenth century might well be considered a pivotal period for William of Ockham. In the first place, it witnessed his metamorphosis from theologian into political theorist. More ominously, it was during these years that he changed from a faithful son of the church into a rebel against papal authority. Both of these transformations came about largely because of his trip to Avignon to defend himself against the charges first leveled by Johannes Lutterell and then investigated by a papal commission. Having been summoned to defend his theological orthodoxy, Ockham found himself drawn into the quarrel between John XXII and Michael of Cesena. Ockham sided with Michael and eventually escaped with him in 1328, fleeing into the arms of Ludwig the Bavarian. Thus, from the papal viewpoint, the Ockham who departed in 1328 was a man with appreciably more sins to his credit than the one who had arrived approximately four years earlier.

It would be difficult to find an aspect of eighth-century papal history that has been more thoroughly studied than the early pontificate of Hadrian I (772–795). A host of scholars—among them Duchesne, Caspar, Kleinclausz, Kehr, Halphen and Hodgkin—have scrutinized each of the highly significant developments which unfolded between Hadrian's election on February 1, 772, and Charles the Great's assumption of the Lombard crown in June, 774: Hadrian's vigorous measures against the Roman supporters of the Lombard king, Desiderius (757–774); his appeal to Charles for Frankish military assistance to counter Desiderius' offensive in the papal duchy of Rome; and Hadrian's conference with Charles in Rome in April, 774, which resulted in Charles' donation of 774 and his subsequent deposition of Desiderius and installation of himself as rex Langobardorum.

Two recent essays dealing with Deism and the religious environment from which it emerged in England have done something to correct accounts which emphasize the philosophic, scientific, or latitudinarian background of English Deism. I refer to Gerald C. Brauer's “Puritan Mysticism and the Development of Liberalism,” Church History, Vol. XIX (September, 1950), and to George L. Mosse's “Puritan Radicalism and the Enlightenment,” Church History, Vol. XXIX (December, 1960). Both articles argue that there were current in 17th century Puritanism elements which could lead to Deism and which “helped to prepare the English scene for the arrival and triumph of liberalism” and Deism.

Any one looking at Schwenckfeld through the spectacles of a historian who approaches the age of the sixteenth century Reformation with a neatly devised system will find his thought rather confusing. The strange Silesian nobleman wrote voluminous pamphlets on theology without ever aspiring to be a theologian; he preached widely and served as pastor to his adherents without ever claiming to be a clergyman (Predikant).He insisted that his expositions were in keeping with the best and most catholic of Christian thought, yet one finds it next to impossible to delineate his theology within a “system.” He was involved in too many arguments and pursued too many theological interests to allow every one of his utterances a fitting place within a well-structured theological system.

The French Reformed Church merged from the period of the French Revolution and Napoleon stengthened by government recognition and support but weakened by the ideological offensive of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Although it enjoyed a secure official and financial position, it had yet to reconcile itself intellectually with the contrasting currents of eighteenth-century rationalism and nineteenth-century romanticism. This process of assimilation and reconciliation took place after 1815 and culminated, during the July Monarchy and the Second Republic, in a theological awakening and renewal.

In searching for the sources and origins of the liberal theology which toward the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century came to occupy an increasingly important position in English religious thought, historians invariably have turned their attention toward the Continent. Indeed, the impact of this approach suggested by the very label—“Arminianism”—which historically has attached itself to the new theological tendency. But in the preoccupation with continental influences some significant indigenous sources and precedents have been overlooked. The purpose of this article is to call attention to one such precedent—the activities and opinions of an obscure though important religious group which flourished during the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I and which were known to their contemporaries as the “Freewillers.”

When South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd was assassinated on September 6, 1966, a writer in the Cape Town Afrikaans newspaper, Die Burger, included an instructive comment. He said, “May the God in whom we believe make clear to us in His own good time what this terrible event is to signify to our country and her people.” This statement reminds us of a dimension in South African nationalism which goes beyond the normal interests of a nation. A theological motif is introduced which remains dominant in the South African mind. In the eyes of Afrikaners this theological concern lifts their problems out of the area of purely political and economic discussion for their whole cultural effort involves fulfilling a divine mission.2 Therefore, the death of Hendrik Verwoerd was more than a tragedy for the nation—it was a tragedy with divine implications.

Since the very beginnings of Mormon history, non-Mormon historians (and “anti-Mormon” polemicists) have traced the sources of the religion in one way or another to some conception of New England. The conceptions have been as varied as the writers themselves: New England has been the land of both enthusiasm and rational religion; of educated, enlightened Yankees and of credulous, antiintellectual Yankees; of a culture east of the Hudson and of a culture extending across the northern half of the United States; a region of people with great civic and religious virtue but also a people noted for deception, cunning, and hypocrisy. The problem of the New England Mind has never been settled, but all writers have assumed that at one time or another western New York, the supposed birthplace of Mormonism, was a “frontier” of New England.

Richard Hooker's work seems relevant to two of the major human projects of our time, the search for unity within the Church and the attempt by modern states to establish their rival ideologies in the world. Hooker's fraternal patience with his Puritan opponents has frequently been noted, as well as his courage in daring to suggest publicly in Elizabethan England that even Roman Catholics might be saved. It would seem likely on the face of it that so irenic a figure could contribute much to ecumenical discussion. With regard to the war for the minds and souls of men in which some statesmen regard their countries as now engaged, one would also expect to find material for reflection in Of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, a work in which ultimate convictions and values are treated in intimate relation to their possible social embodiment and political enforcement.

Across the landscape of liberal journalism which flourished between the two world wars, The Christian Century stands out as a salient eminence. Conveniently identified as a non-denominational magazine of religious thought, the Century also maintained a lively interest in the problems of civil liberties, political theory, constitutional change, the tactics of parties, the place of leadership in politics, and the problems of state and local administration. It was awake to many of the evils of American society since its thinking lay in the main stream of the muckraking-progressive tradition. Finally, it was interested, especially in the thirties, in policies and candidates. Indeed during the depression decade it became as much a political and social journal as a religious one.

Ernest R. Sandeen's article on fundamentalism in the March 1967, issue of Church History is a work of primary importance in the reinterpretation of a significant aspect of American religious history. Professor Sandeen corrects many of the misunderstandings contained in the hitherto “standard” treatments of Cole and Furniss. And he otherwise goes quite beyond earlier studies to provide fresh insights into the nature of fundamentalism as an especially religious phenomenon.

“Prayer was offered by Father A. D. Merrill.…Letters were read from Fathers Tucker, Crandall, and Cox.”

“I assisted Father Craig at a communion there in the spring of 1836.…”

The extremely favourable assessment by historians of the life and career of Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen (1691-c. 1748) as a forerunner of the Great Awakening is a puzzling one to those familiar with the Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York. Three works are mostly frequently quoted in making this favourable assessment: Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen by Peter H. B. Frelinghuysen (1938); The Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies, by C. H. Maxson (1920); and Eight Memorial Sermons and Historical Notes, by Abraham Messier (1873). Peter Frelinghuysen quotes Maxson and Messier extensively. Maxson quotes Messier extensively.

Papers on historiography, reviewing and assessing recent literature in a particular field, have become commonplace and no one questions their value or utility. A report of this sort would be useful today on the subject of American Catholicism for, in the ten years since Henry J. Browne last surveyed the field, a number of high quality monographs have appeared. Nevertheless there is a second type of historiographical analysis more relevant today. Historiography can be seen as a category of intellectual history which relates historical works to the periods in which they were written and attempts to uncover their basic assumptions, revealing more immediately the limitations of the historical discipline, suggesting new questions to be asked, new avenues to be explored, new techniques, new metaphors, new models to be utilized. Bernard Weisberger's well known article, “The Dark and Bloody Ground of Reconstruction Historiography,” for example, pointed out the influence of changing social conditions and intellectual fashions on historical views of the reconstruction period and suggested new questions and modes of interpretation arising quite self-consciously out of the needs and anxieties of the present.