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[German Version] (pope Sep 29, 440 – Nov 10, 461). Born to a Tuscan family, Leo early on played an influential role among the clergy in Rome, where he came forward with important initiatives and measures ¶ to protect the purity of the faith. From his pontificate there survives a substantial literary corpus: 173 letters (30 addressed to him) and 97 sermons. In combination with some other material, this corpus documents his pontificate in considerable detail. The fact that he and Gregory the Great are the only popes honored with the epithet the Great reflects his towering historical impor…

[German Version] I. Definition – II. Historical Expansion…

[German Version] Awareness of the hellenization of Christianity as a historical phenomenon in the Early Church first arose in the period of Humanism and the Reformation and was already subject to contrary evaluations then, as is evident from the comments of Erasmus (exemplary importance of cultural blending for the revival of Christian piety), of G. Budé (emphasis on the differences for fear of a relapse into paganism) and Melanchthon (a demand to preserve the purity of the gospel in view of the infiltration of philosophy immediately after the beginnings of the church). The theme of the hellenization of Christianity, which henceforth circulated in all confessional camps, developed its full explosive force when first turned against existing church dogma, namely by Antitrinitarians and especially in the first, now methodologically untenable, monographic treatment of the question, authored by the Anglican convert J. Souverain and published anonymously and posthumously. The thesis, however, could be associated not only with the idea of decline, but also with that of progress and so was ultimately incorporated into the newly developing history of dogma. The form in which the thesis continues to define the discussion traces back to A. v. Harnack, who, with the strict means of historical-critical research, demonstrated the formal and material changes in dogma to be a work of the Greek spirit on the foundation of the gospel. The fact that Christianity was hellenized can hardly be denied (cf. the research field Antiquity and Christianity). The concept of the hellenization of Christianity here implies that genuine thinking about faith and philosophical reason belong to different worlds from the outset. However, current attempts by Catholic scholars to interpret the conciliar decisions of 325 and 381 as an opposing process of de-hellenization miss the point. Equally problematic is Harnack's negative assessment of the hellenization of Christianity aimed at the destruction of the Early Church's dogma, an assessment based on philosophical premises mediated by A. Ritschl's school with the objective of overcoming metaphysics. The determinative viewpoint must be how the old world was changed by the Christian message and brought to a new historical course so that a creative synthesis between biblical faith and Greek ontology became possible and the God of the philosophers as envisioned in Greek thought …

[German Version] (c. 135 – c. 200). Irenaeus, who compiled the products of the Early Chu…