Alexandrian School

Background

Alexandria was founded in Egypt by Alexander the Great in 331 BC. During the Hellenistic period (the era of Greek cultural dominance), it was a center of learning with a great library and was home to a large Jewish population. According to tradition, the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, was produced there.

In the first century, the Jewish philosopher Philo interpreted the Old Testament allegorically, drawing on Platonic philosophy. Allegorical interpretation is a method that seeks the moral and spiritual meanings hidden behind the literal sense of a text. Philo's method later exerted a strong influence on the city's Christian scholars. Tradition holds that the church in Alexandria was founded by Mark.

Development

• Late second century: Pantaenus is reported to have led the Catechetical School in Alexandria, which instructed candidates for baptism as well as believers.
• Late second to early third century: Clement (c. 150–c. 215) regarded Greek philosophy as a preparation that leads to the gospel. In response to Gnosticism, he set forth an account of true Christian knowledge.
• First half of the third century: Origen (c. 185–c. 254) led the school. He held that Scripture has three levels of meaning: body (the literal sense), soul (the moral sense), and spirit (the spiritual sense). He also produced the Hexapla, which set several versions of the Old Testament text side by side for comparison. After a conflict with the bishop of Alexandria in the 230s, he moved to Caesarea in Palestine.
• Fourth and fifth centuries: The tradition carried over into doctrinal controversies. Around the time of the Council of Nicaea (325), Athanasius defended the full divinity of the Son against Arianism. Cyril opposed Nestorianism at the Council of Ephesus (431). He emphasized that divinity and humanity are united as one in Christ and defended calling Mary the "Mother of God" (Theotokos).

The term "school" refers both to the Catechetical School as an institution and to the broader theological tradition. Scholars are divided over whether the school was a formal educational institution or a circle gathered around individual teachers.

Results and Influence

The Alexandrian School is frequently contrasted with the Antiochene School of Syria. The Antiochene School stressed the literal and historical meaning of the text, and in Christology (the doctrine of the person of Christ) it emphasized the distinction between Christ's divinity and humanity. The tension between the two traditions was resolved to some degree by the definition of the Council of Chalcedon (451), which confessed that the two natures are united in one person without confusion and without separation. However, the Coptic Church of Egypt and other churches rejected the Chalcedonian definition, appealing to Cyril's formulations.

Some of Origen's ideas became controversial after his death. Points of contention included his views that souls existed before bodies and that all beings will ultimately be restored, and these views were condemned as Origenism around the time of the Second Council of Constantinople in 553. Nevertheless, his approach of reading Scripture on multiple levels of meaning carried over into the medieval Western scheme of the "four senses of Scripture."

Assessment

The Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church honor Athanasius and Cyril as Church Fathers (authoritative teachers of the early church). Apart from his condemned ideas, Origen is regarded as a pioneer of biblical scholarship.

The Reformers, especially Martin Luther and John Calvin, criticized allegorical interpretation for arbitrarily obscuring the meaning of the text and gave priority to its grammatical and historical sense. Protestant hermeneutics today generally distinguishes between allegory and typology. Typology is an interpretive approach that holds that real persons and events in the Old Testament foreshadow Christ. Defenders of allegorical interpretation point to Paul's treatment of the story of Sarah and Hagar in Galatians 4:24: "Which things are an allegory."

Courses in biblical hermeneutics at Korean seminaries often begin with the contrast between the Alexandrian and Antiochene Schools. The Alexandrian School's allegorical interpretation is also frequently invoked in church settings to criticize so-called yeonghae ("spiritual interpretation") preaching, which skips over the historical meaning of a text and looks only for symbols.