Catechetical Schools in the Early

Christian Centuries
Frank Bateman Stanger

Introduction

In previous article we discovered that the attitude of Early

a

Christianity toward education in general was most favorable.^ At

the very beginning of the Christian era the Christians had no schools
of their own, and so they sent their children to the secular schools
for their education. Soon, however, schools for definite rehgious
instruction and for detailed theological training were established.
These schools were known as catechumenal and catechetical
schools.
Some writers distinguish between the catechumenal schools
and the catechetical schools. This distinction, even though it may

appear superficial to some, is worthy of notice.

In the Church there grew up, as a matter of necessity, a
Early
process of instruction for those who desired to become members of
the Christian community (catechumens) but who lacked the requi
site knowledge of doctrine and the requisite moral stability. In
general these were divided into two groups those who had merely
�

expressed the desire to become members of the Church, and those

who were thought by the Church to be worthy of fuU admission.
Only after candidates had undergone some instruction and dis
cipline were they received into full communion through the sacra
ment of baptism.
The tendency in this early period was to postpone this rite of
baptism for a longer and longer time until eventuaUy the custom
gave origin to great evhs. These catechumens included children of
believers, Jewish converts, and the adult converts of the heathen

population. Though to a certain extent the discipline entailed was

intellectual, in that it had to do with doctrines, it was for the most

part a moral discipline and a moral oversight. In one other respect,
in music, this instruction possessed significance. The psalmody of
the Early Church, especiaUy in the East, was of conspicuous im
portance. In regard to moral training, this use of music was prob-
1
Page 25.
 Catechetical Schools in the Early Christian Centuries 43

ably of an importance comparable with the function of music in

Greek education.
At stated
periods in the week, in some places every day, the
catechumens met in the porch or in some other specific portion of
the Church for instruction and moral training. The custom of cate
chumenal instruction was universal and through it,
supplemented
by the oversight of the home which was far more rigid than that of
the contemporary Roman or Grecian home, the children of the
Christian population received their rehgious instruction.
From their method, and from their use of the catechism as

the basis of their instruction in subject-matter, the catechumenal

schools were also caUed catechetical schools. But by way of dis
tinction this term is better applied to adevelopment of these schools
in a few locahties into institutions carrying on a higher grade of
work.
The main of this paper which foUows is devoted to a
portion
discussion of three of the outstanding catechetical schools in the
early Christian centuries �
at Alexandria, at Antioch, and at Jeru
salem.

I. The School at Alexandria

study of the Alexandrian School and of the Alexandrian

A

theology Jewish and Christian Platonism centers around three

� �

representative names: Philo, Clement, and Origen.

Philo was bom in 20 B.C. and was a member of a well-known
Alexandrian family. He became a Jewish apologist who wished to
defend Judaism against atheism, polytheism, and scepticism. He was
concemed to prove that the highest forms of revelation and of
human wisdom contained within the compass of the Old
were

Testament. He adopted the old Greek method of allegorism in his

interpretation of the Scriptures.
Philo developed a system of Divine Powers through which God
reveals Himself. In the hierarchy of Powers, the "logos" of God is
second to God Himself. The "logos" of Philo coincides with the
Platonic "nous," and the intelhgible world is the mode which "he"
assumes in creating. In the "logos" are inscribed and engraved the

constitutions of aU other things.

According to PhUo, the "logos" is the constitutive principle of
human individuahty, but "he" is not himself an individual. There
fore, Dean Inge concludes:
44 The Asbury Seminarian

The logos doctrine of Philo is nearer Christianity became

to what in
Monarchianism than to the Arianism with which it has been compared, or
to Athanasian orthodoxy. As the logos of God is the archetype of human

reason, the mind of man is nearer to God than any other created thing. The
great helper of mankind in the ascent to God is the logos: and here Philo
tries to unite his Jewish reverence for the written 'Word' of God with his
Platonic idealism.2

Until the age of Clement, the Christian Church at Alexandria

lay in obscurity. Our information is so scanty that it is difficult to
say whether the ideas of Philo and his school were a factor in the
Alexandrian Christianity during the greater part of the second cen
tury A.D.
In the later half of the second century there grew into im
portance the remarkable Catechetical School at Alexandria ^the �

earhest school of its kind in the Christian Church. (The schools of

the apologists Justin, Tatian, etc. were private ventures and not
� �

attached definitely to the Church.) The oldest Gnostic schools for

the study of rehgious philosophy were in Egypt, and the Christian
Catechetical School may have been modeled partly upon these and
partly upon the Jewish high schools.
The school at Alexandria emerges from darkness under Pan-
taenus; but we know very httle about its management either under
him or under Clement. There were no class-rooms or coUegiate
buildings. The head of the school gave informal instruction in his
own house, sometimes by lectures, sometimes by conversation
classes. The usual course was for three years. No fees were charged.
The lecturer was supported by free gifts from rich students.
Education was on much the same lines as that advocated
by
Philo. The aim of education was the acquisition of the "gnosis."

The instruction consisted partly of moral disciphne and partly of

the study of philosophy, to which was added the art of expounding,
in accordance with the principles of aUegorism, the books which
contained the special revelation. The Christian teachers placed
Greek phUosophy and the Old Testament Scriptures side by side as
necessary to the higher knowledge; and among the phUosophers,
though the Platonists and Stoics were most studied, none were ex
cluded except the "godless" Epicureans. The commentaries of
Origen show that Bibhcal study held a very important place m the
course.

2
Inge, W. R., "Alexandrian Theology," Encyclopaedia of Religion and
Ethics, I, 311.
 Catechetical Schools in the Early Christian Centuries 45

Pantaenus became the first head of the School at Alexandria

around 185 A.D. He was learned in Greek philosophy, and he led
the way in the allegorical interpretation of Scripture. His work was
more catechetical than
hterary, and he employed the question and
answer method.
Clement was bom about 150
A.D., perhaps at Athens. After
many years of leisurely traveling in Italy, Greece, and the East, he
came to Alexandria, where, about 200 A.D., he succeeded Pan

taenus as head of the Catechetical School. In 202 or 203 A.D. he

was compeUed by persecution to leave Alexandria, probably for
Palestine and Syria. He died around 215 A.D.
Dean Inge writes thus about Clement as a thinker:
As thinker, Clement is most important as the author of a syncretistic
a

philosophy of religion, fusing Platonism and Stoicism in a Christian mould.

In Stoicism he found a natural religion, rationalism, moralism, and a pre
dominant interest in psychology and apologetics; in Platonism a cosmology,
doctrines of revelation, redemption and salvation, and contemplation as the
highest state.3
We come next to the name of Origen in connection with the
school at Alexandria. He was bom around 185 A.D. and was care-

fuUy brought up as a Christian. He became a pupil of Pantaenus

and Clement, and aheady in his eighteenth year occupied informaUy
the position of head of the Catechetical School, the older teachers
having been scatteredby persecution. For many years he was oc
cupied in laborious study and teaching, mainly on the Bible. Later
he was driven from Egypt, and he labored at Caesarea for the last
twenty years of his life. He died at Tyre in 253 A.D.
Origen beheved that that the logos enUghtened ah men accord
ing to their capacities. The double achievement of Origen (carrying
on what Clement began) was to destroy Gnosticism, and to give

philosophy a recognized place in the creeds of the Church. The

second was the price which conservatives had to pay for the first.
Henceforth the Church possessed a theology and a philosophy of
rehgion which were far more attractive to the educated mind than
the barbaric Platonism of the Gnostics.
The hst of the heads of the Alexandrian School after Origen
is as foUows: Heraclas, Dionysius, Pierius, Theognostus, Serapion,
Petius, Macarius, Didymus, and Rhodon.
The Catechetical School at Alexandria lost its importance be-

3
Inge, W. R., op. cit., p. 315.
46 The Asbury Seminarian

cause foUowing facts: (1) After Athanasius the logos doc

of the
trine began to decay in importance; (2) Methodius, the School at
Antioch, and the CouncU of Constantinople in 533 A.D. attacked
Origen's orthodoxy; (3) The growing power of tradition began to
kiU religious phUosophy; (4) Christianity graduaUy degraded into
a reUgion of cultus; (5) The school was finaUy destroyed in the

unhappy struggle between TheophUus of Alexandria and the Bar

barous orthodoxy of the Egyptian monks.
Inge summarizes the contribution of the Alexandrian School
in the foUowing paragraphs:
The Alexandrians satisfied the need of their age by providing
legitimate
a scientific doctrine of religion which, while not contradicting the faith, does

not merely support or explain it in a few places, but raises it to another and

higher intellectual sphere, namely, out of the province of authority and

obedience into that of clear knowledge and inward intellectual assent ema
nating from love to God. Clement and Origen sought to incorporate the best
of Platonism and Stoicism in Christianity.
The permanent value of their syncretistic schemes will always be dif
ferently judged while men continue to be 'born either Platonists or Aris
totelians'; those who would oust metaphysics from theology can have but
scanty sympathy with the Alexandrians. But if speculation on Divine truths
is permissible or even necessary, no Christian theologians deserve a higher
place than Clement and Origen, who made a serious and not unsuccessful
attempt to combine in their creed the immanence and transcendence of God,
universal law and human freedom, the imiversal and the particular in reve
lation, a lofty standard of practical ethics and world-forgetting contem-
plation.*

II. The School at Antioch

The Church of Antioch had played an important part in the

early spread of Christianity, and from early times had been the
center of important movements in the realm of thought. The ear
hest reference to anything like an organized Christian school of in
struction occurs in connection with the condemnation of the heresy
of Paul of Samosata in 269 A.D. At a CouncU of Bishops which
met at Antioch in that year and which condemned Paul, the latter's
teaching was exposed by Malchion, a presbyter, who was the head
of a school of Greek learning at Antioch.
However, it is in the time of Lucian (died 311 or 312 A.D.),
the presbyter and martyr, that the School of Antioch first comes
clearly to hght. He is said to have studied in the schools of Edessa

4
Inge, W. R., op. cit., p. 319.
 Catechetical Schools in the Early Christian Centuries 47

and at Caesarea. The mfluence of Paul of Samosata's teaching upon

Lucian is unmistakable,and between 270 and 299 A.D. he appears
to have been outside of the communion of the Church. His teaching

represented a compromise between the Adoptionism of Paul and

the Logos Christology of Origen. At the same time he taught the
idea of a created logos, and in this respect he handed on to his

disciples a tradition which found its most logical expression in

Arianism. The School of Lucian was the nursery of the Arian doc
trine. The Arian leaders, Arius and Eusebius of Nicodedia, were

pupils of Lucian.
Two unmistakable characteristics of the School of Antioch
were: (1) the use of the dialectical philosophy of Aristotle; (2) the
grammatical and hteral exegesis of Scripture.
Thehistory of the later reaUy begins with
School of Antioch
Diodorus, bishop of Tarsus from 378-394 A.D. He upheld the
Nicene cause at Antioch. His friendship with Basil is important as
marking the union between Cappadocian and Antiochene ortho
doxy. In his opposition to Apollinarism he was led to conceptions
of the person of Christ which in later times caused him to be re
garded as a precursor of Nestorianism. He was the inspirer and
teacher of the two most famous representatives of the School of
Antioch Theodore and Chrysostom.
�

Theodore, bishop of Mopsuestia (died 429 A.D.), developed

the teaching of his master Diodorus. He has points of contact with
the Pelagians in his teaching on sin and the faU, free-will and
grace; and in his Christology, he was the immediate precursor of
Nestorius.
JohnChrysostom, bishop of Constantinople (died 407 A.D.),
was another representative of this School. He was the popular

teacher and preacher rather than the exact theologian, and his com
mentaries on Scripture, which are marked by profound insight into
human nature, are the work of a homihst rather than a critical
student.
The condemnation of Nestorianism by the Church in 43 1 A.D.
was fatal to the development of the School of Antioch and to the
reputation of its great representatives. But, while the proscription
of Nestorianism was fatal to the School of Antioch and led to its
dechne, its teaching was carried on under Nestorian influence in
the schools of Edessa and Nisibis.
48 The Asbury Seminarian

Strawley presents the foUowmg summary of the significance of

the School at Antioch:

The permanent service of the Antiochene school lies in its effort to

correct aone-sided view of the factors and methods of revelation. To the
emotional, mystical religion, which tended to lose the human element in the
Divine, whether in inspiration, or the person of Christ, or the relations of
grace and free-will, it opposed conceptions which endeavoured to do justice
to the dignity and worth of human nature. While the Alexandrian theology
started from the Divine side, and deduced all its conclusions from that as its
source, the Antiochenes followed the inductive and rationalistic method,
which consisted in a careful examination of the facts of human nature and
experience. Thephilosophical basis of the one was Platonist, whUe that of
the other was Aristotelian. In Christology the school of Antioch centered
attention upon the historical Christ: in its doctrine of inspiration it affirmed
the immediate and historical reference of Scripture: in
anthropology it in
sisted upon the reality of human freedom. It regarded the purpose of the
Incarnation as the accomplishment of man's destiny rather than as the deliv
erance of him from the consequences of sin. The struggle and conflict pro

voked by the commandment became a means of educating man to realize his

freedom of choice and his weakness, and so of raising him out of the stage
of subjection to the passions and mortality into the higher life of immortality
and sinlessness which has been won for him by Christ. The two standpoints,
the Alexandrian and the Antiochene, represent complementary aspects of
Christian theology.^

III. Cyril and His Catechetical Lectures at Jerusalem

Cyril was bom in Jemsalem around 315 A.D. He received a

liberal
education, and was ordained deacon by Bishop Macarius in
335 A.D., and was ordained priest by Bishop Maxunus in 345 A.D.

Notwithstanding Cyril's youth he was entmsted with the responsible

duty of instmcting the catechumens in Jemsalem and preparing
them for baptism. In 348 A.D., in his ofiice as catechist, he dehv-
ered the Catechetical Lectures by which his name is chiefly known.
In 351 A.D. Cyril was made Bishop of Jemsalem, and a stormy
ecclesiastical career foUowed. Three times he was deposed, and
three times he resumed the occupation of his see. He died in 386
A.D.
CyrU's Catechetical Lectures were preached "without book"
on the evenings of the weeks of Lent in 348 A.D., in the basihca

of the Holy Cross erected on Calvary by St. Helena. These lectures

5
Strawley, J. H., "Antiochene Theology," Encyclopaedia of Religion
and Ethics, I, 593.
 Catechetical Schools in the Early Christian Centuries 49

are valuable because they are the first and

only complete example
of the course of mstruction
given in the early centuries to candi
dates seeking admission to the fuller privileges of the Christian
Church. Their value is also great because of the testimony they
bear to the canon of Scripture, the teaching of the Church on the
chief articles of the creed, and on the sacraments, and from the light
they throw on the ritual of the Church of the fourth century.
Cyril's catechetical lectures were eighteen in number. The list
of subjects treated in them is as foUows:
1. Hortatory
2. On sin and confidence in God's pardon
3. On baptism
4. Abridged account of the Faith
5. Nature of Faith
6. Monarchy of God
7. Father
8. Omnipotence
9. Creator
10. Lord Jesus Christ
11. Eternal sonship
12. Vkgm birth
13. Passion
14. Resurrection and ascension
15. Second coming
16, 17. Holy Ghost
1 8. Resurrection of body and the Cathohc Church

The styleCyrU's lectures is clear, dignified, and logical;

of
their tone is serious and pious. A brief survey of their lectures wiU
indicate clearly that his pupUs were caUed upon to thmk, to put
forth mteUectual effort, to discipUne the wiU, to arrive at sound
judgment.
Certam outstandmg characteristics of Cyril as a teacher de
serve notice:
1. He devoted himself to the purely rehgious side of Christian
education.
2. The spirit of his teaching was one of sternness and gentle
ness splendidly combined.
3. The titles of his lectures show a methodical progress of

thought.
50 The Asbury Seminarian

4. He always prepared the pupils' minds for the new teaching

that was to follow.
5. He employed much repetition.
6. He had great literary abhity.
7. He showed his powers of adaptabihty by packing a smgle
sentence full of instruction and meaning even for differing
types of minds.
8. He expressed graphically and succinctly the truths he
wanted to remain in the minds of his hearers.
9. He would solve a theological difl&culty by comparing it to
some fact within the hearers' knowledge.

We close our discussion with the foUowing comparison of

Clement of Alexandria with Cyril of Jerusalem which has been
made by Geraldine Hodgson:
It has seemed better to put S. Clement of Alexandria and S. Cyril of
Jerusalem more or less side by side, because they offer in rather a remark
able way examples of men who, being learned, used their learning uncon

sciously it were, for the furtherance of the Christian Faith. They concen
as

trate their attention more closely on the purely religious side of Christian
education. If S. Clement's Paedagogue seems to deal in the main with moral
training, S. Cyril's Catechetical Lectures show us the intellectual side of
Christian education, the care for the mind, the appeal to the understanding,
the stimulus to the will.^

6
Hodgson, G., Primitive Christian Education, pp. 180, 181.