hese monotheistic, pantheistic
doctrines were taught in the schools, the people were left to a debased
polytheism and to new superstitions imported from the Orient; the
philosophers themselves were by no means unaffected by the popular
beliefs. Mingled with all these were the ancient legends of gods and
heroes, accepted as inspired scripture by the people, and by
philosophers in part explained away by an allegorical exegesis and in
part felt increasingly as a burden to the intelligence. In this period
of degeneracy there were none the less an awakening to religious needs
and a profound longing for a new revelation of truth, which should
satisfy at once the intellect and the religious emotions.

Christianity came as supplying a new power; it freed philosophy from
scepticism by giving a definite object to its efforts and a renewed
confidence in its mission. Monotheism henceforth was to be the belief
not of philosophers only but even of the ignorant, and in Jesus Christ
the union of the divine and the human was effected. The Old Testament,
allegorically explained, became the substitute for the outgrown
mythology; intellectual activity revived; the new facts gained
predominant influence in philosophy, and in turn were shaped according
to its canons. In theology the fundamental problems of ontological
philosophy were faced; the relationship of unity to multiplicity, of
noumenon to phenomena, of God to man. The new element is the historical
Jesus, at once the representative of humanity and of God. As in
philosophy, so now in theology, the easiest solution of the problem was
the denial of one of its factors: and successively these efforts were
made, until a solution was found in the doctrine of the Trinity, which
satisfied both terms of the equation and became the fundamental creed of
the church. Its moulds of thought are those of Greek philosophy, and
into these were run the Jewish teachings. We have thus a peculiar
combination--the religious doctrines of the Bible, as culminating in the
person of Jesus, run through the forms of an alien philosophy.

The doctrine of the Trinity.

The Jewish sources furnished the terms Father, Messiah, Son and Spirit.
Jesus seldom employed the last term and St Paul's use of it is not
altogether clear. Already in Jewish literature it had been all but
personified (cf. the Wisdom of Solomon). Thus the material is Jewish,
though already modified doubtless by Greek influence. But the problem