von Harnack on logos theories and mystery

Here’s one reason why some theologians love to appeal to “mystery.” Regarding the second half of the second Christian century, the great church history von Harnack observes,

…an urgent impulse necessarily made itself felt to define the contents and value of the Redeemer’s life and work, not, primarily, from the point of view of the proclamation of the Gospel, and the hopes of a future state, but from that of the cosmic significance attaching to his divine nature concealed in the flesh. Insomuch, however, as such a view could only really reach and be intelligible to those who had been trained in philosophical speculations, the establishing of the Logos Christology within the rule of faith was equivalent for the great mass of Christians to the setting up of a mystery, which in the first place could only make an impression through its high-pitched formulas and the glamour of the incomprehensible. But as soon as a religion expresses the loftiest contents of its creed in formulas which must remain mysterious and unintelligible to the great mass of its adherents, those adherents come under guardians. In other words, the multitude must believe in the creed; at the same time they no longer derive from it directly the motives of their religious and moral life; and they are dependent on the theologians, who, as professors of the mysterious, alone understand and are capable of interpreting and practically applying the creed. The necessary consequence of this development was that the mysterious creed, being no longer in a position practically to control life, was superseded by the authority of the Church, the cultus, and prescribed duties, in determining the religious life of the laity; while the theologians, or the priests, appeared alone as the possessors of an independent faith and knowledge.

…The Christian religion was only in a position to gain the cultured, to conquer Gnosticism, and to thrust aside Polytheism in the Roman empire, because it had concluded an alliance with that intellectual potentate which already swayed the minds and hearts of the best men, the philosophic-religious ethics of the age. This alliance found expression in the formula: Christ is word and law… The philosophic Christology arose, so to speak, at the circumference of the Church, and thence moved gradually to the center of the Christian faith. The same is true of theology generally; its most concise description is philosophic Christology. A complete fusion of the old faith and theology, one that tranquilized the minds of the devout, was not consummated till the fourth, strictly speaking, indeed, till the fifth century (Cyril of Alexandria). Valentinus, Origen, the Cappadocians mark the stages of the process. Valentinus was very speedily ejected as a heretic. Origen, in spite of the immense influence which he exerted, was in the end unable to retain his footing in the Church. The Cappadocians almost perfected the complete fusion of the traditional faith of the Church conceived as mystery and philosophy, by removing Origen’s distinction between those who knew and those who believed (Gnostics and Pistics); meanwhile they retained much that was comparatively free and looked on with suspicion by the traditionalists. Cyril’s theology first marked the complete agreement between faith and philosophy, authority and speculation, an agreement which finally, in the sixth century, suppressed every independent theology. (Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930), History of Dogma Volume III)