Trevor A. Hart on the Two Soteriological Traditions of Alexandria

The following article is now on-line in PDF:

Trevor A. Hart, "The Two Soteriological Traditions of Alexandria," The Evangelical Quarterly 61.3 (1989): 239-259.

This article deals with Clement of Alexandria and Athanasius. It concludes:

What distinguished Athanasius from the Alexandrian catechetical and apologetic tradition which formed his inheritance was a profound recognition of the bankruptcy of hellenic thought as a framework within which to proclaim and expound the becoming of God in the incarnation. This was a message which could only meet with resistance from hellenism, and which as such had to be proclaimed over against it. To seek to accommodate the Greek philosophical framework would have been to concede in advance the ground upon which one stood as a Christian theologian. If we can learn anything from comparing these two traditions in Alexandrian theology, therefore, it is the ever-present danger inherent in any attempt to commend Christianity to its cultured despisers. What we must never forget is that it is precisely insofar as the gospel is a scandal to human wisdom that it confronts men and women in all its relevance. To the extent that we seek to lessen that scandal, therefore, we hinder rather than aid its cause. There can be no question as to the responsibility of Christian theology to address unbelief in every age. The real question remains, however, as to the most appropriate form of that address. It may well prove to be the case that far more is to be lost in seeking to deal with unbelief on its own terms than is ever to be gained.