visiting this world and acting in this world.

Materialism and spiritualism excluded each other, but both held the
Church in contempt as a "rough philosophy for the people." Yet the
Church included the true parts for both, not by asserting anything about
the atoms but by recognising two different worlds, the world of bodies
and the world of spirits, in a dramatic union in this transitory
Universe.

In the same way the Church cut off the extremities and one-sidedness in
empiricism and supernaturalism, in rationalism and mysticism, in
optimism and pessimism. All these systems represented the human effort
to solve the riddle of our life without taking any notice of the Church
and her wisdom. And all failed to become the universally accepted truth,
but all of them helped the Church unconsciously to her own orientation
and strength. The Church collided with any extreme philosophy. Her
wisdom was broad as life, simple as life on the one hand, and manifold
as life on the other; mystical as the starry night and pragmatic as a
weekday.

2. The Struggle for an Ethical Ideal.--The primitive Church was "of one
heart and of one soul," or, in the words of a very early document, it
was among the Christians: "A life in the flesh but not according to the
flesh" (Epist. ad Diognet.). But the restless human spirit soon dug out
difficult questions and conflicts concerning the ethical life of the
Church members. Of course the Lord Himself was the supreme moral ideal,
but men felt themselves to be too small and too narrow to grasp this
ideal both in its purity and its broadness and inclusiveness. Therefore
we see not only in the primitive Church but throughout Church history
extreme and exclusive propositions to solve the problem. For instance,
asceticism with celibacy and flight from the world was regarded by some
people in the primitive Church as the highest ideal of morality. The
deserts were populated with the ascetics. The same ideal has been
strongly accentuated in Russia even in the nineteenth century. On the
other hand, chastity has been preferred as an ideal by many others.

Another problem was: what were more salvatory, faith or works? Or
another: whether we are saved or condemned by God's predestination or by
our free will (libertarian, arbitrarian, Augustinianism, and
Pelagianism; Jansenism and Ultramontanism)? Or another: in our moral
perfection how much is God's grace operating and how much our human
collaboration? Or anoth