7/6/20
Schaff, Philip. History of the Christian Church (The Complete Eight Volumes in One). Amazon Kindle Edition, 2014.
Volume 2, Ante-Nicene Christianity A.D. 100-325, “Chapter 13. Ecclesiastical Literature of the Ante-Nicene Age, and Biographical Sketches of the Church Fathers.” sec. 159-204.
§ 185. The Alexandrian School of Theology.
After a fairly extensive bibliography, Schaff briefly notes the importance of Alexandria to commerce and education, which contributed to its becoming an important center of Christianity (Schaff 2014, loc. 22384). The church in Alexandria is generally considered to have been founded by Mark the Evangelist and early featured a catechetical school. Due to the culture of philosophical study in Alexandria the school there took on features of a theological seminary modeled on the philosophical schools of the time (Schaff 2014, loc. 22389). The school remained active until the late 4th century. Schaff notes that Alexandria itself declined to a village and was replaced in importance by Cairo until the 19th century (Schaff 2014, loc. 22398).
Schaff finds that the center of Alexandrian theology is the “Divine Logos, viewed as the sum of all reason and all truth, before and after the incarnation” (Schaff 2014, loc. 22403). Yet the movement did bring Greek culture and philosophy into Christianity. Ideas were imported, says Schaff, as a way of taking what is right and worthy from other religions (Schaff 2014, loc. 22413). As a result, “The Alexandrian theology is intellectual, profound, stirring and full of fruitful germs of thought, but rather unduly idealistic and spiritualistic, and, in exegesis, loses itself in arbitrary allegorical fancies” (Schaff 2014, loc. 22422).