[Sidenote: Growth of opposition to the Græco-Roman culture.]
=Influence of Græco-Roman Culture upon Christianity.=--However, by the century after the foundation of the catechetical school at Alexandria, the Christians had begun to grow suspicious of Græco-Roman culture and the ‘worldly’ ideal in education. Even the Eastern or Greek Fathers of the Church appear to have cooled considerably in their attitude toward philosophy, and the Western or Latin Fathers were more pronounced in their opposition. Roman Christians could not forget the immorality of those who had been connected with this culture, nor the abuse and insults that these pagans had heaped upon them. They felt, too, that the one great mission of the Church was ethical, and that Christ’s second coming was at hand, and that all philosophy and learning were somewhat impertinent.
[Sidenote: But great influence of Greece and Rome upon Christian doctrine and Church organization.]
Nevertheless, despite this growth of opposition to pagan philosophy, primitive Christianity could not endure in its simplicity after it had been in contact with the advanced intellectual concepts of the Greeks, as modified by the organizing genius of the Romans. Both Greece and Rome left a permanent impress upon Christianity; and, though dead, they yet live in the Christian Church. The influence of Greek philosophy is seen in the formulation of a system of Christian doctrine. This appears in the development of the _Apostles’ Creed_ during the second century, in the selection of a canon of sacred writings or _New Testament_ during the third century, and still more in the _Nicene Creed_ (325), which was not formulated until Christianity had been largely Hellenized. Similarly, the Greek tendency to attribute universal validity to their sacred writings, and the pomp, ceremonies, and mysteries of the Hellenic worship, are more or less apparent in the various ecclesiastical tenets and usages. On the other hand, the Roman concepts of administration appear in the organization of the Church, which seems to have closely paralleled the Roman civil polity. By the third century priests and bishops had largely come to be similarly located, and to correspond in control, to the Roman district and city magistrates respectively. And in 445 the recognition of the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome established a visible head of the entire Church, corresponding to the position of the emperor on the civic side.