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Title: The influence of Greek ideas and usages upon the Christian church
Author: Edwin Hatch
Editor: A. M. Fairbairn
Release date: November 29, 2023 [eBook #72255]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Williams and Norgate, 1914
Credits: Wouter Franssen and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INFLUENCE OF GREEK IDEAS AND USAGES UPON THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH ***
THE HIBBERT LECTURES
1888
The Hibbert Trustees cannot add this volume to their series without a few
lines of grateful acknowledgment. It is impossible to forget either the
courteous readiness with which the accomplished author undertook the task
originally, or the admirable qualities he brought to it. When he died
without completing the MS. for the press, the anxiety of the Trustees
was at once relieved by the kind effort of his family to obtain adequate
assistance. The public will learn from the Preface how much had to be
done, and will join the Trustees in grateful appreciation of the services
of the gentlemen who responded to the occasion. That Dr. Hatch’s friend,
Dr. Fairbairn, consented to edit the volume, with the valuable aid of Mr.
Bartlet and Professor Sanday, was an ample pledge that the want would
be most efficiently met. To those gentlemen the Trustees are greatly
indebted for the learned and earnest care with which the laborious
revision was made.
_THE HIBBERT LECTURES, 1888._
THE
INFLUENCE OF GREEK IDEAS
AND USAGES
UPON THE
CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
BY THE LATE
EDWIN HATCH, D.D.
READER IN ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
EDITED BY
A. M. FAIRBAIRN, D.D.
LATE PRINCIPAL OF MANSFIELD COLLEGE, OXFORD.
[Illustration]
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE,
14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON.
1914.
RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,
BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E.,
AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
PREFACE.
The fittest introduction to these Lectures will be a few words of
explanation.
Before his death, Dr. Hatch had written out and sent to press the first
eight Lectures. Of these he had corrected six, while the proofs of the
seventh and eighth, with some corrections in his own hand, were found
among his papers. As regards these two, the duties of the editor were
simple: he had only to correct them for the press. But as regards the
remaining four Lectures, the work was much more arduous and responsible.
A continuous MS., or even a connected outline of any one of the Lectures,
could not be said to exist. The Lectures had indeed been delivered a
year and a half before, but the delivery had been as it were of selected
passages, with the connections orally supplied, while the Lecturer
did not always follow the order of his notes, or, as we know from the
Lectures he himself prepared for the press, the one into which he meant
to work his finished material. What came into the editor’s hands was
a series of note-books, which seemed at first sight but an amorphous
mass or collection of hurried and disconnected jottings, now in ink,
now in pencil; with a multitude of cross references made by symbols and
abbreviations whose very significance had to be laboriously learned; with
abrupt beginnings and still more abrupt endings; with pages crowded with
successive strata, as it were, of reflections and references, followed by
pages almost or entirely blank, speaking of sections or fields meant to
be further explored; with an equal multitude of erasures, now complete,
now incomplete, now cancelled; with passages marked as transposed or as
to be transposed, or with a sign of interrogation which indicated, now
a suspicion as to the validity or accuracy of a statement, now a simple
suspense of judgment, now a doubt as to position or relevance, now a
simple query as of one asking, Have I not said this, or something like
this, before? In a word, what we had were the note-books of the scholar
and the literary workman, well ordered, perhaps, as a garden to him who
made it and had the clue to it, but at once a wilderness and a labyrinth
to him who had no hand in its making, and who had to discover the way
through it and out of it by research and experiment. But patient, and,
I will add, loving and sympathetic work, rewarded the editor and his
kind helpers. The clue was found, the work proved more connected and
continuous than under the conditions could have been thought to be
possible, and the result is now presented to the world.
A considerable proportion of the material for the ninth Lecture had been
carefully elaborated; but some of it, and the whole of the material for
the other three, was in the state just described. This of course added
even more to the responsibilities than to the labours of the editor. In
the body of the Lectures most scrupulous care has been taken to preserve
the author’s _ipsissima verba_, and, wherever possible, the structure and
form of his sentences. But from the very necessities of the case, the
hand had now and then to be allowed a little more freedom; connecting
words, headings, and even here and there a transitional sentence or
explanatory clause, had to be added; but in no single instance has a
word, phrase or sentence been inserted in the text without warrant
from some one part or another of these crowded note-books. With the
foot-notes it has been different. One of our earliest and most serious
difficulties was to find whence many of the quotations, especially in the
ninth Lecture, came. The author’s name was given, but often no clue to
the book or chapter. We have been, I think, in every case successful in
tracing the quotation to its source. Another difficulty was to connect
the various references with the paragraph, sentence or statement, each
was meant to prove. This involved a new labour; the sources had to be
consulted alike for the purposes of verification and determination of
relevance and place. The references, too, in the note-books were often of
the briefest, given, as it were, in algebraics, and they had frequently
to be expanded and corrected; while the search into the originals led now
to the making of excerpts, and now to the discovery of new authorities
which it seemed a pity not to use. As a result, the notes to Lecture IX.
are mainly the author’s, though all as verified by other hands; but the
notes to Lecture X., and in part also XI., are largely the editor’s. This
is stated in order that all responsibility for errors and inaccuracies
may be laid at the proper door. It seemed to the editor that, while he
could do little to make the text what the author would have made it if
it had been by his own hand prepared for the press, he was bound, in the
region where the state of the MSS. made a discreet use of freedom not
only possible but compulsory, to make the book as little unworthy of the
scholarship and scrupulous accuracy of the author as it was in his power
to do.
The pleasant duty remains of thanking two friends who have greatly
lightened my labours. The first is Vernon Bartlet, M.A.; the second,
Professor Sanday. Mr. Bartlet’s part has been the heaviest; without him
the work could never have been done. He laboured at the MSS. till the
broken sentences became whole, and the disconnected paragraphs wove
themselves together; and then he transcribed the black and bewildering
pages into clear and legible copy for the printer. He had heard the
Lectures, and had happily taken a few notes, which, supplemented
from other sources, proved most helpful, especially in the way of
determining the order to be followed. He has indeed been in every way a
most unwearied and diligent co-worker. To him we also owe the Synopsis
of Contents and the Index. Professor Sanday has kindly read over all
the Lectures that have passed under the hands of the editor, and has
furnished him with most helpful criticisms, suggestions, and emendations.
The work is sent out with a sad gratitude. I am grateful that it has been
possible so far to fulfil the author’s design, but sad because he no
longer lives to serve the cause he loved so well. This is not the place
to say a word either in criticism or in praise of him or his work. Those
of us who knew him know how little a book like this expresses his whole
mind, or represents all that in this field he had it in him to do.
The book is an admirable illustration of his method; in order to be
judged aright, it ought to be judged within the limits he himself has
drawn. It is a study in historical development, an analysis of some of
the formal factors that conditioned a given process and determined a
given result; but it deals throughout solely with these formal factors
and the historical conditions under which they operated. He never
intended to discover or discuss the transcendental causes of the process
on the one hand, or to pronounce on the value or validity of the result
on the other. His purpose, like his method, was scientific; and as an
attempt at the scientific treatment of the growth and formulation of
ideas, of the evolution and establishment of usages within the Christian
Church, it ought to be studied and criticised. Behind and beneath
his analytical method was a constructive intellect, and beyond his
conclusions was a positive and co-ordinating conception of the largest
and noblest order. To his mind every species of mechanical Deism was
alien; and if his method bears hardly upon the traditions and assumptions
by which such a Deism still lives in the region of early ecclesiastical
history, it was only that he might prepare the way for the coming of a
faith and a society that should be worthier of the Master he loved and
the Church he served.
A. M. FAIRBAIRN.
OXFORD, _July, 1890_.
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTORY.
The Problem:
How the Church passed from the Sermon on the Mount to the Nicene
Creed; the change in spirit coincident with a change in soil 1, 2
The need of caution: two preliminary considerations 2
1. A religion relative to the whole mental attitude of an age:
hence need to estimate the general attitude of the Greek
mind during the first three centuries A.D. 3, 4
2. Every permanent change in religious belief and usage rooted
in historical conditions: roots of the Gospel in Judaism,
but of fourth century Christianity—the key to historical—in
Hellenism 4, 5
The Method:
Evidence as to _process_ of change scanty, but ample and
representative as to ante-Nicene Greek thought and
post-Nicene Christian thought. Respects in which evidence
defective 5-10
Two resulting tendencies:
1. To overrate the value of the surviving evidence.
2. To under-estimate opinions no longer accessible or known
only through opponents 10
Hence method, the correlation of antecedents and consequents 11-13
Antecedents: sketch of the phenomena of Hellenism 13, 14
Consequents: changes in original Christian ideas and usages 14
Attitude of mind required 15
1. Demand upon attention and imagination 15, 16
2. Personal prepossessions to be allowed for 17, 18
3. Need to observe under-currents, e.g.
(_a_) The dualistic hypothesis, its bearing on baptism and
exorcism 19, 20
(_b_) The nature of religion, e.g. its relation to conscience 21
History as a scientific study: the true apologia in religion 21-24
LECTURE II.
GREEK EDUCATION.
The first step a study of environment, particularly as literary.
The contemporary Greek world an educated world in a special
literary sense 25-27
I. Its _forms_ varied, but all literary:
Grammar 28-30
Rhetoric 30-32
A “lecture-room” Philosophy 32-35
II. Its _influence_ shown by:
1. Direct literary evidence 35-37
2. Recognized and lucrative position of the teaching
profession 37-40
3. Social position of its professors 40-42
4. Its persistent survival up to to-day in general education,
in special terms and usages 42-48
Into such an artificial habit of mind Christianity came 48, 49
LECTURE III.
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS.
To the Greek the mystery of writing, the reverence for antiquity,
the belief in inspiration, gave the ancient poets a unique
value 50, 51
Homer, his place in moral education; used by the Sophists in
ethics, physics, metaphysics, &c. 52-57
Apologies for this use culminate in allegory, especially among
the Stoics 57-64
The Allegoric temper widespread, particularly in things religious.
Adopted by Hellenistic Jews, especially at Alexandria; Philo 65-69
Continued by early Christian exegesis in varied schools,
chiefly as regards the Prophets, in harmony with Greek
thought, and as a main line of apologetic 69-74
Application to the New Testament writings by the Gnostics and
the Alexandrines 75, 76
Its aid as solution of the Old Testament problem, especially in
Origen 77-79
Reactions both Hellenic and Christian: viz. in
1. The Apologists’ polemic against Greek mythology 79, 80
2. The Philosophers’ polemic against Christianity 80
3. Certain Christian Schools, especially the Antiochene 81, 82
Here hampered by dogmatic complications 82
Use and abuse of allegory—the poetry of life 82, 83
Alien to certain drifts of the modern spirit, viz.
1. Historic handling of literature 84
2. Recognition of the living voice of God 84, 85
LECTURE IV.
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC.
The period one of widely diffused literary culture.
The Rhetorical Schools, old and new 86-88
Sophistic largely pursued the old lines of Rhetoric, but also
philosophized and preached professionally 88-94
Its manner of discourse; its rewards 94-99
Objections of earnest men; reaction led by Stoics like Epictetus 99-105
Significance for Christianity 105
Primitive Christian “prophesying” _v._ later “preaching.”
Preaching of composite origin: its essence and form, e.g.
in fourth century, A.D.: preachers sometimes itinerant 105-113
Summary and conclusions 113-115
LECTURE V.
CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
Abstract ideas among the Greeks, who were hardly aware of the
different degrees of precision possible in mathematics and
philosophy 116-118
Tendency to define strong with them, apart from any criterion;
hence _dogmas_ 118-120
Dogmatism, amid decay of originality: reaction towards doubt;
yet Dogmatism regnant 120-123
“Palestinian Philosophy,” a complete contrast 123, 124
Fusion of these in the Old Catholic Church achieved through
an underlying kinship of ideas 125, 126
Explanations of this from both sides 126-128
Philosophical Judaism as a bridge, e.g., in allegorism and
cosmology 128, 129
Christian philosophy partly apologetic, partly speculative.
Alarm of Conservatives: the second century one of transition
and conflict 130-133
The issue, compromise, and a certain habit of mind 133, 134
Summary answer to the main question 134
The Greek mind seen in:
1. The tendency to define 135
2. The tendency to speculate 136
3. The point of emphasis, i.e. Orthodoxy 137
Further development in the West. But Greece the source of the
true _damnosa hereditas_ 137, 138
LECTURE VI.
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
The average morality of the age: its moral philosophy 139, 140
An age of moral reformation 140-142
1. Relation of ethics to philosophy and life 142
Revived practical bent of Stoicism; Epictetus 143-147
A moral gymnastic cultivated 147
(1) _Askesis_ (ἄσκησις): Philo, Epictetus, Dio
Chrysostom 148-150
(2) The “philosopher” or moral reformer 150-152
2. The contents of ethical teaching, marked by a religious
reference. Epictetus’ two maxims, “Follow Nature,”
“Follow God” 152-155
Christian ethics show agreement amid difference; based upon
the Divine command; idea of sin: agreement most emphasized
at first, i.e. the importance of conduct 158, 159
1. Tone of earliest Christian writings: the “Two Ways:”
Apostolical Constitutions, Bk. i. 159-162
2. Place of discipline in Christian life: Puritan ideal
_v._ later _corpus permixtum_ 162-164
Further developments due to Greece:
1. A Church within the Church: _askesis_, Monasticism 164-168
2. Resulting deterioration of average ethics: Ambrose of
Milan 168, 169
Complete victory of Greek ethics seen in the basis of modern
society 169, 170
LECTURE VII.
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
I. THE CREATOR.
The idea of One God, begotten of the unity and order of the
world, and connected with the ideas of personality and mind.
Three elements in the idea—Creator, Moral Governor, Absolute
Being 171-174
Growth of idea of a beginning: Monism and Dualism 174, 175
1. Monism of the Stoics: _natura naturata_ and _naturans_:
a beginning not necessarily involved 175-177
2. Dualism, Platonic: creation recognized 177-180
Syncretistic blending of these as to process: _Logos_ idea
common. Hence Philo’s significance: God as Creator:
Monistic and Dualistic aspects; his terms for the
Forces in their plurality and unity: after all, God
is Creator, even Father, of the world 180-188
Early Christian idea of a single supreme Artificer took permanent
root; but questions as to mode emerged, and the first answers
were tentative 188-190
1. Evolutional type; supplemented by idea of a lapse 190-194
2. Creational type accepted 194
There remained:
(i.) The ultimate relation of matter to God: Dualistic
solutions: Basilides’ Platonic theory the basis
of the later doctrine, though not at once
recognized 194-198
(ii.) The Creator’s contact with matter: Mediation
hypothesis: the _Logos_ solution 198-200
(iii.) Imperfection and evil: Monistic and Dualistic
answers, especially Marcion’s 200, 201
But the Divine Unity overcomes all: position of Irenæus, &c.,
widely accepted: Origen’s cosmogony a theodicy. Prevalence
of the simpler view seen in Monarchianism 202-207
Results 207, 208
LECTURE VIII.
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
II. THE MORAL GOVERNOR.
A.—_The Greek Idea._
1. Unity of God and Unity of the world: will and order 209
Order, number, necessity and destiny: intelligent force
and law 209-211
The Cosmos as a city-state (πόλις) 211, 212
2. New conceptions of the Divine Nature: _Justice_ and
_Goodness_ in connection with Providence 213-215
Thus about the Christian era we find Destiny and Providence,
and a tendency to synthesis—through two stages—in the use
of the term God 215-217
3. The problem of evil emerges: attempts at solution.
(_a_) Universality of Providence denied (Platonic and Oriental) 217
(_b_) Reality of apparent evils denied (Stoic) 217-220
This not pertinent to moral evil, hence:
(_c_) Theory of human freedom 220, 221
Its relation to Universality of Providence: the Stoical
theodicy exemplified in Epictetus 221-223
B.—_The Christian Idea._
Primitive Christianity a contrast: two main conceptions.
1. Wages for work done 224
2. Positive Law—God a Lawgiver and Judge 225
Difficulties in fusing the two types.
(i.) Forgiveness and Law 226
Marcion’s ditheism 227, 228
Solution in Irenæus, Tertullian, &c.: result 228-230
(ii.) The Moral Governor and Free-will.
Marcion’s dualistic view of moral evil 230, 231
Justin Martyr, Tatian, Irenæus 231, 232
Tertullian and the Alexandrines 232
Origen’s comprehensive theodicy by aid of Stoicism
and Neo-Platonism 233-237
LECTURE IX.
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
III. GOD AS THE SUPREME BEING.
Christian Theology shaped by Greece, though on a Jewish basis 238, 239
A.—_The Idea and its Development in Greek Philosophy._
Parallel to Christian speculation in three stages.
1. Transcendence of God.
History of the idea before and after Plato 240-243
Its two forms, transcendent proper and supra-cosmic 244
Blending with religious feeling, e.g. in Philo 244, 245
2. Revelation of the Transcendent.
Through intermediaries:
(i.) Mythological 246
(ii.) Philosophical, e.g. in Philo 246, 247
3. Distinctions in the nature of God.
Philo’s Logos 247, 248
Conceived both monistically and dualistically in
relation to God 249
But especially under metaphor of generation 250
B.—_The Idea and its Development in Christian Theology._
1. Here the idea of Transcendence is at first absent 250-252
Present in the Apologists 252, 253
But God as transcendent (_v._ supra-cosmic) first
emphasized by Basilides and the Alexandrines 254-256
2. Mediation (= Revelation) of the Transcendent, a vital
problem 256, 257
Theories of modal _manifestation_ 257, 258
Dominant idea that of modal _existence_:
(i.) As manifold: so among certain Gnostics 258
(ii.) As constituting a unity 259
Its Gnostic forms 259, 260
Relation of the _logoi_ to the _Logos_, especially in
Justin 260-262
The issue is the Logos doctrine of Irenæus 262, 263
3. Distinctions in the nature of God based on the Logos.
(i.) Theories as to the _genesis_ of the Logos,
analogous to those as to the world 263, 264
Theories guarding the “sole monarchy,” thus endangered,
culminate in Origen’s idea of eternal generation 265-267
(ii.) Theories of the _nature_ of the Logos determined
by either the supra-cosmic or transcendental
idea of God 267, 268
Origen marks a stage—and but a stage—in the controversies 268, 269
Greek elements in the subsequent developments.
_Ousia_; its history 269-272
Difficulty felt in applying it to God 273, 274
As also with _homoousios_: need of another term 274, 275
_Hypostasis_: its history 275-277
Comes to need definition by a third term (πρόσωπον) 277, 278
Resumé of the use of these terms; the reign of dogmatism 278-280
Three underlying assumptions—a legacy of the Greek spirit 280, 281
1. The importance of metaphysical distinctions.
2. Their absolute truth.
3. The nature of God’s perfection.
Conclusion 282
LECTURE X.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES UPON CHRISTIAN USAGES.
A.—_The Greek Mysteries and Related Cults._
Mysteries and religious associations side by side with ordinary
Greek religion.
1. The Mysteries, e.g. at Eleusis 283, 284
(i.) Initial Purification, through confession and
lustration (baptism) 285-287
(ii.) Sacrifices, with procession, &c. 287, 288
(iii.) Mystic Drama, of nature and human life 288-290
2. Other religious associations: condition of entrance,
sacrifice and common meal 290, 291
Wide extent of the above 291, 292
B.—_The Mysteries and the Church._
Transition to the Christian Sacraments; influence, general and
special 292-294
1. Baptism:
Its primitive simplicity 294, 295
Later period marked by:
(i.) Change of _name_ 295, 296
(ii.) Change of _time_ and conception 296, 297
Minor confirmations of the parallelism 298-300
2. The Lord’s Supper:
Stages of extra-biblical development, e.g. in Didaché,
Apost. Const., the “altar,” its offerings as “mysteries” 300-303
Culmination of tendency in fifth century in Dionysius 303-305
The tendency strongest in the most Hellenic circles, viz.
Gnostics 305, 306
Secrecy and long catechumenate 306, 307
Anointing 307, 308
Realistic change of conception 308, 309
Conclusion 309
LECTURE XI.
THE INCORPORATION OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS, AS MODIFIED BY GREEK,
INTO A BODY OF DOCTRINE.
“Faith” in Old Testament = trust—trust in a person.
In Greek philosophy = intellectual conviction 310, 311
In Philo, these blend into trust in God—in His
veracity, i.e. in the Holy Writings 311, 312
Contemporary longing for certainty based on fact 312
Here we have the germs of (1) the Creed, (2) the New Testament
Canon 313
1. At first emphasis on its ethical purpose and revealed basis;
then the latent intellectual element emerges, though not
uniformly 315
The baptismal formula becomes a test.
Expansion by “apostolic teaching” 316, 317
The “Apostles’ Creed” and the Bishops 317-319
2. Related question as to sources of the Creed and the
materials for its interpretation.
Value of _written_ tradition: influence of Old Testament
and common idea of prophecy: apostolicity as limit 319, 320
Marcion and the idea of a Canon 320, 321
“Faith” assumes the sense it had in Philo 321
3. But the speculative temper remained active upon the “rule
of faith:” γνῶσις alongside πίστις, especially at
Alexandria: Origen 321-323
Hence tendency to:
(1) Identify a fact with speculations upon it 323, 324
(2) Check individual speculations in favour of those of the
majority 324-326
Results:
(i.) Such speculations formulated and inserted in the Creed,
formally as interpretations: belief changed, but not
the importance attached to it 327, 328
(ii.) Distinction between “majority” and “minority” views at
a meeting, on points of metaphysical speculation 329
Resumé of the stages of belief 329, 330
Underlying conceptions to be noted 330, 331
(1) Philosophic regard for exact definition.
(2) Political belief in a majority.
(3) Belief in the finality of the views of an age so ascertained.
Development, if admitted, cannot be arrested 332
Place of speculation in Christianity 332, 333
LECTURE XII.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION:
DOCTRINE IN THE PLACE OF CONDUCT.
Association at first voluntary, according to the genius of
Christianity 334, 335
Its basis primarily moral and spiritual: Holiness its
characteristic: the “Two Ways,” Apost. Const. (Bk. i.),
the Elchasaites 335-337
Also a common Hope: its changing form 337, 338
Coincident relaxation of bonds of discipline and change in
idea of the Church 338, 339
Growing stress also upon the intellectual element 339, 340
Causes for this, primary and collateral 340, 341
(1) Importance given to Baptism realistically conceived:
its relation to the ministrant 341, 342
(2) Intercommunion: the necessary test at first moral
(e.g. Didaché), subsequently a doctrinal formula 343-345
This elevation of doctrine due to causes internal to the
Christian communities: but an external factor enters with
case of Paul of Samosata: its results 345-347
Lines of reaction against this transformation:
(1) Puritan or conservative tendency: Novatianism 347, 348
(2) Formation of esoteric class with higher moral ideal:
Monachism 348, 349
Conclusion:
The Greek spirit still lives in Christian Churches: the
vital question is its relation to Christianity 349, 350
Two theories—permanence of the primitive, assimilative
development: no logical third 350, 351
On either theory, the Greek element may largely go 351
The problem pressing: our study a necessary preliminary and
truly conservative 352
New ground here broken: a pioneer’s forecast: the Christianity
of the future 352, 353
LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTORY.
It is impossible for any one, whether he be a student of history or no,
to fail to notice a difference of both form and content between the
Sermon on the Mount and the Nicene Creed. The Sermon on the Mount is the
promulgation of a new law of conduct; it assumes beliefs rather than
formulates them; the theological conceptions which underlie it belong to
the ethical rather than the speculative side of theology; metaphysics
are wholly absent. The Nicene Creed is a statement partly of historical
facts and partly of dogmatic inferences; the metaphysical terms which it
contains would probably have been unintelligible to the first disciples;
ethics have no place in it. The one belongs to a world of Syrian
peasants, the other to a world of Greek philosophers.
The contrast is patent. If any one thinks that it is sufficiently
explained by saying that the one is a sermon and the other a creed,
it must be pointed out in reply that the question why an ethical
sermon stood in the forefront of the teaching of Jesus Christ, and a
metaphysical creed in the forefront of the Christianity of the fourth
century, is a problem which claims investigation.
It claims investigation, but it has not yet been investigated. There
have been inquiries, which in some cases have arrived at positive
results, as to the causes of particular changes or developments in
Christianity—the development, for example, of the doctrine of the
Trinity, or of the theory of a Catholic Church. But the main question to
which I invite your attention is antecedent to all such inquiries. It
asks, not how did the Christian societies come to believe one proposition
rather than another, but how did they come to the frame of mind which
attached importance to either the one or the other, and made the assent
to the one rather than the other a condition of membership.
In investigating this problem, the first point that is obvious to an
inquirer is, that the change in the centre of gravity from conduct
to belief is coincident with the transference of Christianity from a
Semitic to a Greek soil. The presumption is that it was the result of
Greek influence. It will appear from the Lectures which follow that
this presumption is true. Their general subject is, consequently, The
Influence of Greece upon Christianity.
* * * * *
The difficulty, the interest, and the importance of the subject make it
incumbent upon us to approach it with caution. It is necessary to bear
many points in mind as we enter upon it; and I will begin by asking your
attention to two considerations, which, being true of all analogous
phenomena of religious development and change, may be presumed to be true
of the particular phenomena before us.
1. The first is, that the religion of a given race at a given time is
relative to the whole mental attitude of that time. It is impossible to
separate the religious phenomena from the other phenomena, in the same
way that you can separate a vein of silver from the rock in which it is
embedded. They are as much determined by the general characteristics of
the race as the fauna and flora of a geographical area are determined
by its soil, its climate, and its cultivation; and they vary with the
changing characteristics of the race as the fauna and flora of the
tertiary system differ from those of the chalk. They are separable
from the whole mass of phenomena, not in fact, but only in thought.
We may concentrate our attention chiefly upon them, but they still
remain part of the whole complex life of the time, and they cannot be
understood except in relation to that life. If any one hesitates to
accept this historical induction, I will ask him to take the instance
that lies nearest to him, and to consider how he could understand the
religious phenomena of our own country in our own time—its doubts, its
hopes, its varied enterprises, its shifting enthusiasms, its noise, its
learning, its estheticism, and its philanthropies—unless he took account
of the growth of the inductive sciences and the mechanical arts, of
the expansion of literature, of the social stress, of the commercial
activity, of the general drift of society towards its own improvement.
In dealing, therefore, with the problem before us, we must endeavour to
realize to ourselves the whole mental attitude of the Greek world in the
first three centuries of our era. We must take account of the breadth
and depth of its education, of the many currents of its philosophy, of
its love of literature, of its scepticism and its mysticism. We must
gather together whatever evidence we can find, not determining the
existence or measuring the extent of drifts of thought by their literary
expression, but taking note also of the testimony of the monuments of art
and history, of paintings and sculptures, of inscriptions and laws. In
doing so, we must be content, at any rate for the present and until the
problem has been more fully elaborated, with the broader features both
of the Greek world and of the early centuries. The distinctions which
the precise study of history requires us to draw between the state of
thought of Greece proper and that of Asia Minor, and between the age of
the Antonines and that of the Severi, are not necessary for our immediate
purpose, and may be left to the minuter research which has hardly yet
begun.
2. The second consideration is, that no permanent change takes place in
the religious beliefs or usages of a race which is not rooted in the
existing beliefs and usages of that race. The truth which Aristotle
enunciated, that all intellectual teaching is based upon what is
previously known to the person taught,[1] is applicable to a race as
well as to an individual, and to beliefs even more than to knowledge.
A religious change is, like a physiological change, of the nature of
assimilation by, and absorption into, existing elements. The religion
which our Lord preached was rooted in Judaism. It came “not to destroy,
but to fulfil.” It took the Jewish conception of a Father in heaven,
and gave it a new meaning. It took existing moral precepts, and gave
them a new application. The meaning and the application had already been
anticipated in some degree by the Jewish prophets. There were Jewish
minds which had been ripening for them; and so far as they were ripe for
them, they received them. In a similar way we shall find that the Greek
Christianity of the fourth century was rooted in Hellenism. The Greek
minds which had been ripening for Christianity had absorbed new ideas and
new motives; but there was a continuity between their present and their
past; the new ideas and new motives mingled with the waters of existing
currents; and it is only by examining the sources and the volume of the
previous flow that we shall understand how it is that the Nicene Creed
rather than the Sermon on the Mount has formed the dominant element in
Aryan Christianity.
* * * * *
The method of the investigation, like that of all investigations, must
be determined by the nature of the evidence. The special feature of the
evidence which affects the method is, that it is ample in regard to the
causes, and ample also in regard to the effects, but scanty in regard to
the process of change.
We have ample evidence in regard to the state of Greek thought during
the ante-Nicene period. The writers shine with a dim and pallid light
when put side by side with the master-spirits of the Attic age; but their
lesser importance in the scale of genius rather adds to than diminishes
from their importance as representatives. They were more the children of
their time. They are consequently better evidence as to the currents of
its thought than men who supremely transcended it. I will mention those
from whom we shall derive most information, in the hope that you will
in course of time become familiar, not only with their names, but also
with their works. Dio of Prusa, commonly known as Dio Chrysostom, “Dio of
the golden mouth,” who was raised above the class of travelling orators
to which he belonged, not only by his singular literary skill, but also
by the nobility of his character and the vigour of his protests against
political unrighteousness. Epictetus, the lame slave, the Socrates of his
time, in whom the morality and the religion of the Greek world find their
sublimest expression, and whose conversations and lectures at Nicopolis,
taken down, probably in short-hand, by a faithful pupil, reflect
exactly, as in a photograph, the interior life of a great moralist’s
school. Plutarch, the prolific essayist and diligent encyclopædist,
whose materials are far more valuable to us than the edifices which he
erects with them. Maximus of Tyre, the eloquent preacher, in whom the
cold metaphysics of the Academy are transmuted into a glowing mysticism.
Marcus Aurelius, the imperial philosopher, in whose mind the fragments
of many philosophies are lit by hope or darkened by despair, as the
clouds float and drift in uncertain sunlight or in gathered gloom before
the clearing rain. Lucian, the satirist and wit, the prose Aristophanes
of later Greece. Sextus Empiricus, whose writings—or the collection
of writings gathered under his name—are the richest of all mines for
the investigation of later Greek philosophy. Philostratus, the author
of a great religious romance, and of many sketches of the lives of
contemporary teachers. It will hardly be an anachronism if we add to
these the great syncretist philosopher, Philo of Alexandria; for, on
the one hand, he was more Greek than Jew, and, on the other, several of
the works which are gathered together under his name seem to belong to
a generation subsequent to his own, and to be the only survivors of the
Judæo-Greek schools which lasted on in the great cities of the empire
until the verge of Christian times.
We have ample evidence also as to the state of Christian thought in the
post-Nicene period. The Fathers Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus,
Gregory of Nyssa, and Cyril of Jerusalem, the decrees of general and
local Councils, the apocryphal and pseudonymous literature, enable us to
form a clear conception of the change which Greek influences had wrought.
But the evidence as to the mode in which the causes operated within the
Christian sphere before the final effects were produced is singularly
imperfect. If we look at the literature of the schools of thought which
ultimately became dominant, we find that it consists for the most part
of some accidental survivals.[2] It tells us about some parts of the
Christian world, but not about others. It represents a few phases of
thought with adequate fulness, and of others it presents only a few
fossils. In regard to Palestine, which in the third and fourth centuries
was a great centre of culture, we have only the evidence of Justin
Martyr. In regard to Asia Minor, which seems to have been the chief
crucible for the alchemy of transmutation, we have but such scanty
fragments as those of Melito and Gregory of Neocæsarea. The largest and
most important monuments are those of Alexandria, the works of Clement
and Origen, which represent a stage of singular interest in the process
of philosophical development. Of the Italian writers, we have little
that is genuine besides Hippolytus. Of Gallican writers, we have chiefly
Irenæus, whose results are important as being the earliest formulating
of the opinions which ultimately became dominant, but whose method is
mainly interesting as an example of the dreary polemics of the rhetorical
schools. Of African writers, we have Tertullian, a skilled lawyer,
who would in modern times have taken high rank as a pleader at the
bar or as a leader of Parliamentary debate; and Cyprian, who survives
chiefly as a champion of the sacerdotal hypothesis, and whose vigorous
personality gave him a moral influence which was far beyond the measure
of his intellectual powers. The evidence is not only imperfect, but also
insufficient in relation to the effects that were produced. Writers of
the stamp of Justin and Irenæus are wholly inadequate to account for
either the conversion of the educated world to Christianity, or for the
forms which Christianity assumed when the educated world had moulded it.
And if we look for the literature of the schools of thought which were
ultimately branded as heretical, we look almost wholly in vain. What the
earliest Christian philosophers thought, we know, with comparatively
insignificant exceptions, only from the writings of their opponents. They
were subject to a double hate—that of the heathen schools which they
had left, and that of the Christians who were saying “Non possumus” to
philosophy.[3] The little trust that we can place in the accounts which
their opponents give of them is shown by the wide differences in those
accounts. Each opponent, with the dialectical skill which was common at
the time, selected, paraphrased, distorted, and re-combined the points
which seemed to him to be weakest. The result is, naturally, that the
accounts which the several opponents give are so different in form and
feature as to be irreconcilable with one another.[4] It was so also with
the heathen opponents of Christianity.[5] With one important exception,
we cannot tell how the new religion struck a dispassionate outside
observer, or why it was that it left so many philosophers outside its
fold. Then, as now, the forces of human nature were at work. The tendency
to disparage and suppress an opponent is not peculiar to the early ages
of Christianity. When the associated Christian communities won at length
their hard-fought battle, they burned the enemy’s camp.
This fact of the scantiness and inadequacy of the evidence as to the
process of transformation has led to two results which constitute
difficulties and dangers in our path.
1. The one is the tendency to overrate the value of the evidence that has
survived. When only two or three monuments of a great movement remain,
it is difficult to appreciate the degree in which those monuments are
representative. We tend at almost all times to attach an exaggerated
importance to individual writers; the writers who have moulded the
thoughts of their contemporaries, instead of being moulded by them, are
always few in number and exceptional. We tend also to attach an undue
importance to phrases which occur in such writers; few, if any, writers
write with the precision of a legal document, and the inverted pyramids
which have been built upon chance phrases of Clement or Justin are
monuments of caution which we shall do well to keep before our eyes.
2. The other is the tendency to under-estimate the importance of the
opinions that have disappeared from sight, or which we know only in the
form and to the extent of their quotation by their opponents. If we were
to trust the histories that are commonly current, we should believe that
there was from the first a body of doctrine of which certain writers were
the recognized exponents; and that outside this body of doctrine there
was only the play of more or less insignificant opinions, like a fitful
guerilla warfare on the flanks of a great army. Whereas what we really
find on examining the evidence is, that out of a mass of opinions which
for a long time fought as equals upon equal ground, there was formed a
vast alliance which was strong enough to shake off the extremes at once
of conservatism and of speculation, but in which the speculation whose
monuments have perished had no less a share than the conservatism of
which some monuments have survived.
* * * * *
This survey of the nature of the evidence enables us to determine the
method which we should follow. We can trace the causes and we can see
the effects; but we have only scanty information as to the intermediate
processes. If the evidence as to those processes existed in greater mass,
if the writings of those who made the first tentative efforts to give
to Christianity a Greek form had been preserved to us, it might have
been possible to follow in order of time and country the influence of
the several groups of ideas upon the several groups of Christians. This
method has been attempted, with questionable success, by some of those
who have investigated the history of particular doctrines. But it is
impossible to deprecate too strongly the habit of erecting theories upon
historical quicksands; and I propose to pursue the surer path to which
the nature of the evidence points, by stating the causes, by viewing
them in relation to the effects, and by considering how far they were
adequate in respect of both mass and complexity to produce those effects.
There is a consideration in favour of this method which is in entire
harmony with that which arises from the nature of the evidence. It
is, that the changes that took place were gradual and at first hardly
perceptible. It would probably be impossible, even if we were in
possession of ampler evidence, to assign a definite cause and a definite
date for the introduction of each separate idea. For the early years of
Christianity were in some respects like the early years of our lives. It
has sometimes been thought that those early years are the most important
years in the education of all of us. We learn then, we hardly know how,
through effort and struggle and innocent mistakes, to use our eyes and
our ears, to measure distance and direction, by a process which ascends
by unconscious steps to the certainty which we feel in our maturity. We
are helped in doing go, to an incalculable degree, by the accumulated
experience of mankind which is stored up in language; but the growth is
our own, the unconscious development of our own powers. It was in some
such unconscious way that the Christian thought of the earlier centuries
gradually acquired the form which we find when it emerges, as it were,
into the developed manhood of the fourth century. Greek philosophy helped
its development, as language helps a child; but the assimilation of it
can no more be traced from year to year than the growth of the body can
be traced from day to day.
We shall begin, therefore, by looking at the several groups of facts of
the age in which Christianity grew, and endeavour, when we have looked at
them, to estimate their influence upon it.
We shall look at the facts which indicate the state of education: we
shall find that it was an age that was penetrated with culture, and that
necessarily gave to all ideas which it absorbed a cultured and, so to
speak, scholastic form.
We shall look at the facts which indicate the state of literature: we
shall find that it was an age of great literary activity, which was proud
of its ancient monuments, and which spent a large part of its industry in
endeavouring to interpret and to imitate them.
We shall look at the facts which indicate the state of philosophy: we
shall find that it was an age in which metaphysical conceptions had come
to occupy relatively the same place which the conceptions of natural
science occupy among ourselves; and that just as we tend to look upon
external things in their chemical and physical relations, so there was
then, as it were, a chemistry and physics of ideas.
We shall look at the facts which indicate the state of moral ideas:
we shall find that it was an age in which the ethical forces of human
nature were struggling with an altogether unprecedented force against
the degradation of contemporary society and contemporary religion, and
in which the ethical instincts were creating the new ideal of “following
God,” and were solving the old question whether there was or was not an
art of life by practising self-discipline.
We shall look at the facts which indicate the state of theological
ideas: we shall find that it was an age in which men were feeling after
God and not feeling in vain, and that from the domains of ethics,
physics, metaphysics alike, from the depths of the moral consciousness,
and from the cloud-lands of poets’ dreams, the ideas of men were trooping
in one vast host to proclaim with a united voice that there are not many
gods, but only One, one First Cause by whom all things were made, one
Moral Governor whose providence was over all His works, one Supreme Being
“of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness.”
We shall look at the facts which indicate the state of religion: we shall
find that it was an age in which the beliefs that had for centuries
been evolving themselves from the old religions were showing themselves
in new forms of worship and new conceptions of what God needed in the
worshipper; in which also the older animalism was passing into mysticism,
and mysticism was the preparation of the soul for the spiritual religion
of the time to come.
We shall then, in the case of each great group of ideas, endeavour to
ascertain from the earliest Christian documents the original Christian
ideas upon which they acted; and then compare the later with the earlier
form of those Christian ideas; and finally examine the combined result
of all the influences that were at work upon the mental attitude of the
Christian world and upon the basis of Christian association.
* * * * *
I should be glad if I could at once proceed to examine some of these
groups of facts. But since the object which I have in view is not so
much to lead you to any conclusions of my own, as to invite you to walk
with me in comparatively untrodden paths, and to urge those of you who
have leisure for historical investigations to explore them for yourselves
more fully than I have been able to do—and since the main difficulties of
the investigation lie less in the facts themselves than in the attitude
of mind in which they are approached—I feel that I should fail of my
purpose if I did not linger still upon the threshold to say something of
the “personal equation” that we must make before we can become either
accurate observers or impartial judges. There is the more reason for
doing so, because the study of Christian history is no doubt discredited
by the dissonance in the voices of its exponents. An ill-informed writer
may state almost any propositions he pleases, with the certainty of
finding listeners; a well-informed writer may state propositions which
are as demonstrably true as any historical proposition can be, with the
certainty of being contradicted. There is no court of appeal, nor will
there be until more than one generation has been engaged upon the task to
which I am inviting you.
1. In the first place, it is necessary to take account of the demand
which the study makes upon the attention and the imagination of the
student. The scientific, that is the accurate, study of history is
comparatively new. The minute care which is required in the examination
of the evidence for the facts, and the painful caution which is required
in the forming of inferences, are but inadequately appreciated. The study
requires not only attention, but also imagination. A student must have
something analogous to the power of a dramatist before he can realize the
scenery of a vanished age, or watch, as in a moving panorama, the series
and sequence of its events. He must have that power in a still greater
degree before he can so throw himself into a bygone time as to be able to
enter into the motives of the actors, and to imagine how, having such and
such a character, and surrounded by such and such circumstances, he would
himself have thought and felt and acted. But the greatest demand that
can be made upon either the attention or the imagination of a student is
that which is made by such a problem as the present, which requires us
to realize the attitude of mind, not of one man, but of a generation of
men, to move with their movements, to float upon the current of their
thoughts, and to pass with them from one attitude of mind into another.
2. In the second place, it is necessary to take account of our own
personal prepossessions. Most of us come to the study of the subject
already knowing something about it. It is a comparatively easy task for a
lecturer to present, and for a hearer to realize, an accurate picture of,
for example, the religion of Mexico or of Peru, because the mind of the
student when he begins the study is a comparatively blank sheet. But most
of us bring to the study of Christian history a number of conclusions
already formed. We tend to beg the question before we examine it.
We have before us, on the one hand, the ideas and usages of early
Christianity; on the other hand, the ideas and usages of imperial Greece.
We bring to the former the thoughts, the associations, the sacred
memories, the happy dreams, which have been rising up round us, one by
one, since our childhood. Even if there be some among us who in the
maturity of their years have broken away from their earlier moorings,
these associations still tend to remain. They are not confined to those
of us who not only consciously retain them, but also hold their basis to
be true. They linger unconsciously in the minds of those who seem most
resolutely to have abandoned them.
We bring to the latter, most of us, a similar wealth of associations
which have come to us through our education. The ideas with which we
have to deal are mostly expressed in terms which are common to the early
centuries of Christianity, and to the Greek literature of five centuries
before. The terms are the same, but their meaning is different. Those
of us who have studied Greek literature tend to attach to them the
connotation which they had at Athens when Greek literature was in its
most perfect flower. We ignore the long interval of time, and the new
connotation which, by an inevitable law of language, had in the course of
centuries clustered round the old nucleus of meaning. The terms have in
some cases come down by direct transmission into our own language. They
have in such cases gathered to themselves wholly new meanings, which,
until we consciously hold them up to the light, seem to us to form part
of the original meaning, and are with difficulty disentangled.
We bring to both the Christian and the Greek world the inductions
respecting them which have been already made by ourselves and by
others. We have in those inductions so many moulds, so to speak, into
which we press the plastic statements of early writers. We assume the
primitiveness of distinctions which for the most part represent only
the provisional conclusions of earlier generations of scholars, and
stages in our own historical education; and we arrange facts in the
categories which we find ready to hand, as Jewish or Gentile, orthodox
or heretical, Catholic or Gnostic, while the question of the reality of
such distinctions and such categories is one of the main points which our
inquiries have to solve.
3. In the third place, it is necessary to take account of the
under-currents, not only of our own age, but of the past ages with which
we have to deal. Every age has such under-currents, and every age tends
to be unconscious of them. We ourselves have succeeded to a splendid
heritage. Behind us are the thoughts, the beliefs, the habits of mind,
which have been in process of formation since the first beginning of
our race. They are inwrought, for the most part, into the texture of
our nature. We cannot transcend them. To them the mass of our thoughts
are relative, and by them the thoughts of other generations tend to be
judged. The importance of recognizing them as an element in our judgments
of other generations increases in proportion as those generations recede
from our own. In dealing with a country or a period not very remote, we
may not go far wrong in assuming that its inheritance of ideas is cognate
to our own. But in dealing with a remote country, or a remote period of
time, it becomes of extreme importance to allow for the difference, so
to speak, of mental longitude. The men of earlier days had other mental
scenery round them. Fewer streams of thought had converged upon them.
Consequently, many ideas which were in entire harmony with the mental
fabric of their time, are unintelligible when referred to the standard of
our own; nor can we understand them until we have been at the pains to
find out the underlying ideas to which they were actually relative.
I will briefly illustrate this point by two instances:
(_a_) We tend to take with us, as we travel into bygone times, the
dualistic hypothesis—which to most of us is no hypothesis, but an
axiomatic truth—of the existence of an unbridged chasm between body and
soul, matter and spirit. The relation in our minds of the idea of matter
to the idea of spirit is such, that though we readily conceive matter
to act upon matter, and spirit upon spirit, we find it difficult or
impossible to conceive a direct action either of matter upon spirit or
of spirit upon matter. When, therefore, in studying, for example, the
ancient rites of baptism, we find expressions which seem to attribute a
virtue to the material element, we measure such expressions by a modern
standard, and regard them as containing only an analogy or a symbol. They
belong, in reality, to another phase of thought than our own. They are an
outflow of the earlier conception of matter and spirit as varying forms
of a single substance.[6] “Whatever acts, is body,” it was said. Mind is
the subtlest form of body, but it is body nevertheless. The conception
of a direct action of the one upon the other presented no difficulty. It
was imagined, for instance, that demons might be the direct causes of
diseases, because the extreme tenuity of their substance enabled them to
enter, and to exercise a malignant influence upon, the bodies of men. So
water, when exorcized from all the evil influences which might reside
in it, actually cleansed the soul.[7] The conception of the process
as symbolical came with the growth of later ideas of the relation of
matter to spirit. It is, so to speak, a rationalizing explanation of a
conception which the world was tending to outgrow.
(_b_) We take with us in our travels into the past the underlying
conception of religion as a personal bond between God and the individual
soul. We cannot believe that there is any virtue in an act of worship in
which the conscience has no place. We can understand, however much we may
deplore, such persecutions as those of the sixteenth century, because
they ultimately rest upon the same conception: men were so profoundly
convinced of the truth of their own personal beliefs as to deem it of
supreme importance that other men should hold those beliefs also. But we
find it difficult to understand why, in the second century of our era, a
great emperor who was also a great philosopher should have deliberately
persecuted Christianity. The difficulty arises from our overlooking the
entirely different aspect under which religion presented itself to a
Roman mind. It was a matter which lay, not between the soul and God, but
between the individual and the State. Conscience had no place in it.
Worship was an ancestral usage which the State sanctioned and enforced.
It was one of the ordinary duties of life.[8] The neglect of it, and
still more the disavowal of it, was a crime. An emperor might pity the
offender for his obstinacy, but he must necessarily either compel him to
obey or punish him for disobedience.
* * * * *
It is not until we have thus realized the fact that the study of history
requires as diligent and as constant an exercise of the mental powers as
any of the physical sciences, and until we have made what may be called
the “personal equation,” disentangling ourselves as far as we can from
the theories which we have inherited or formed, and recognizing the
existence of under-currents of thought in past ages widely different
from those which flow in our own, that we shall be likely to investigate
with success the great problem that lies before us. I lay stress upon
these points, because the interest of the subject tends to obscure its
difficulties. Literature is full of fancy sketches of early Christianity;
they are written, for the most part, by enthusiasts whose imagination
soars by an easy flight to the mountain-tops which the historian can
only reach by a long and rugged road; they are read, for the most part,
by those who give them only the attention which they would give to a
shilling hand-book or to an article in a review. I have no desire, and I
am sure that you have no desire, to add one more to such fancy sketches.
The time has come for a precise study. The materials for such a study
are available. The method of such a study is determined by canons which
have been established in analogous fields of research. The difficulties
of such a study come almost entirely from ourselves, and it is a duty to
begin by recognizing them.
For the study is one not only of living interest, but also of supreme
importance. Other history may be more or less antiquarian. Its ultimate
result may be only to gratify our curiosity and to add to the stores
of our knowledge. But Christianity claims to be a present guide of our
lives. It has been so large a factor in the moral development of our
race, that we cannot set aside its claim unheard. Neither can we admit it
until we know what Christianity is. A thousand dissonant voices are each
of them professing to speak in its name. The appeal lies from them to its
documents and to its history. In order to know what it is, we must first
know both what it professed to be and what it has been. The study of the
one is the complement of the other; but it is with the latter only that
we have at present to do. We may enter upon the study with confidence,
because it is a scientific inquiry. We may hear, if we will, the solemn
tramp of the science of history marching slowly, but marching always to
conquest. It is marching in our day, almost for the first time, into
the domain of Christian history. Upon its flanks, as upon the flanks of
the physical sciences, there are scouts and skirmishers, who venture
sometimes into morasses where there is no foothold, and into ravines from
which there is no issue. But the science is marching on. “Vestigia nulla
retrorsum.” It marches, as the physical sciences have marched, with the
firm tread of certainty. It meets, as the physical sciences have met,
with opposition, and even with contumely. In front of it, as in front of
the physical sciences, is chaos; behind it is order. We may march in its
progress, not only with the confidence of scientific certainty, but also
with the confidence of Christian faith. It may show some things to be
derived which we thought to be original; and some things to be compound
which we thought to be incapable of analysis; and some things to be
phantoms which we thought to be realities. But it will add a new chapter
to Christian apologetics; it will confirm the divinity of Christianity by
showing it to be in harmony with all else that we believe to be divine;
its results will take their place among those truths which burn in the
souls of men with a fire that cannot be quenched, and light up the
darkness of this stormy sea with a light that is never dim.
LECTURE II.
GREEK EDUCATION.
The general result of the considerations to which I have already invited
your attention is, that a study of the growth and modifications of the
early forms of Christianity must begin with a study of their environment.
For a complete study, it would be necessary to examine that environment
as a whole. In some respects all life hangs together, and no single
element of it is in absolute isolation. The political and economical
features of a given time affect more or less remotely its literary and
philosophical features, and a complete investigation would take them all
into account. But since life is short, and human powers are limited,
it is necessary in this, as in many other studies, to be content with
something less than ideal completeness. It will be found sufficient in
practice to deal only with the proximate causes of the phenomena into
which we inquire; and in dealing, as we shall mainly do, with literary
effects, to deal also mainly with those features of the age which were
literary also.
The most general summary of those features is, that the Greek world of
the second and third centuries was, in a sense which, though not without
some just demur, has tended to prevail ever since, an educated world. It
was reaping the harvest which many generations had sown. Five centuries
before, the new elements of knowledge and cultured speech had begun to
enter largely into the simpler elements of early Greek life. It had
become no longer enough for men to till the ground, or to pursue their
several handicrafts, or to be practised in the use of arms. The word
σοφός, which in earlier times had been applied to one who was skilled
in any of the arts of life, who could string a bow or tune a lyre or
even trim a hedge, had come to be applied, if not exclusively, yet at
least chiefly, to one who was shrewd with practical wisdom, or who knew
the thoughts and sayings of the ancients. The original reasons, which
lay deep in the Greek character, for the element of knowledge assuming
this special form, had been accentuated by the circumstances of later
Greek history. There seems to be little reason in the nature of things
why Greece should not have anticipated modern Europe in the study of
nature, and why knowledge should not have had for its chief meaning in
earlier times that which it is tending to mean now, the knowledge of
the phenomena and laws of the physical world. The tendency to collect
and colligate and compare the facts of nature appears to be no less
instinctive than the tendency to become acquainted with the thoughts
of those who have gone before us. But Greece on the one hand had lost
political power, and on the other hand possessed in her splendid
literature an inalienable heritage. She could acquiesce with the greater
equanimity in political subjection, because in the domain of letters she
was still supreme with an indisputable supremacy. It was natural that she
should turn to letters. It was natural also that the study of letters
should be reflected upon speech. For the love of speech had become to
a large proportion of Greeks a second nature. They were a nation of
talkers. They were almost the slaves of cultivated expression. Though the
public life out of which orators had grown had passed away with political
freedom, it had left behind it a habit which in the second century of
our era was blossoming into a new spring. Like children playing at
“make-believe,” when real speeches in real assemblies became impossible,
the Greeks revived the old practice of public speaking by addressing
fictitious assemblies and arguing in fictitious courts. In the absence
of the distractions of either keen political struggles at home or wars
abroad, these tendencies had spread themselves over the large surface of
general Greek society. A kind of literary instinct had come to exist. The
mass of men in the Greek world tended to lay stress on that acquaintance
with the literature of bygone generations, and that habit of cultivated
speech, which has ever since been commonly spoken of as education.
Two points have to be considered in regard to that education before it
can be regarded as a cause in relation to the main subject which we are
examining: we must look first at its forms, and secondly at its mass.
It is not enough that it should have corresponded in kind to certain
effects; it must be shown to have been adequate in amount to account for
them.
I. The education was almost as complex as our own. If we except only the
inductive physical sciences, it covered the same field. It was, indeed,
not so much analogous to our own as the cause of it. Our own comes by
direct tradition from it. It set a fashion which until recently has
uniformly prevailed over the whole civilized world. We study literature
rather than nature because the Greeks did so, and because when the Romans
and the Roman provincials resolved to educate their sons, they employed
Greek teachers and followed in Greek paths.
The two main elements were those which have been already indicated,
Grammar and Rhetoric.[9]
1. By Grammar was meant the study of literature.[10] In its original
sense of the art of reading and writing, it began as early as that art
begins among ourselves. “We are given over to Grammar,” says Sextus
Empiricus,[11] “from childhood, and almost from our baby-clothes.” But
this elementary part of it was usually designated by another name,[12]
and Grammar itself had come to include all that in later times has
been designated Belles Lettres. This comprehensive view of it was of
slow growth; consequently, the art is variously defined and divided.
The division which Sextus Empiricus[13] speaks of as most free from
objection, and which will sufficiently indicate the general limits of
the subject, is into the technical, the historical, and the exegetical
elements. The first of these was the study of diction, the laying down of
canons of correctness, the distinction between Hellenisms and Barbarisms.
Upon this as much stress was laid as was laid upon academic French in the
age of Boileau. “I owe to Alexander,” says Marcus Aurelius,[14] “my habit
of not finding fault, and of not using abusive language to those who
utter a barbarous or awkward or unmusical phrase.” “I must apologize for
the style of this letter,” says the Christian Father Basil two centuries
afterwards, in writing to his old teacher Libanius; “the truth is, I
have been in the company of Moses and Elias, and men of that kind, who
tell us no doubt what is true, but in a barbarous dialect, so that your
instructions have quite gone out of my head.”[15] The second element of
Grammar was the study of the antiquities of an author: the explanation
of the names of the gods and heroes, the legends and histories, which
were mentioned. It is continued to this day in most notes upon classical
authors. The third element was partly critical, the distinguishing
between true and spurious treatises, or between true and false readings;
but chiefly exegetical, the explanation of an author’s meaning. It is
spoken of as the prophetess of the poets,[16] standing to them in the
same relation as the Delphian priestess to her inspiring god.
The main subject-matter of this literary education was the poets.
They were read, not only for their literary, but also for their moral
value.[17] They were read as we read the Bible. They were committed to
memory. The minds of men were saturated with them. A quotation from Homer
or from a tragic poet was apposite on all occasions and in every kind of
society. Dio Chrysostom, in an account of his travels, tells how he came
to the Greek colony of the Borysthenitæ, on the farthest borders of the
empire, and found that even in those remote settlements almost all the
inhabitants knew the Iliad by heart, and that they did not care to hear
about anything else.[18]
2. Grammar was succeeded by Rhetoric—the study of literature by the study
of literary expression and quasi-forensic argument. The two were not
sharply distinguished in practice, and had some elements in common. The
conception of the one no less than of the other had widened with time,
and Rhetoric, like Grammar, was variously defined and divided. It was
taught partly by precept, partly by example, and partly by practice. The
professor either dictated rules and gave lists of selected passages of
ancient authors, or he read such passages with comments upon the style,
or he delivered model speeches of his own. The first of these methods
has its literary monument in the hand-books which remain.[19] The second
survives as an institution in modern times, and on a large scale, in the
University “lecture,” and it has also left important literary monuments
in the _Scholia_ upon Homer and other great writers. The third method
gave birth to an institution which also survives in modern times. Each
of these methods was followed by the student. He began by committing
to memory both the professor’s rules and also selected passages of
good authors: the latter he recited, with appropriate modulations and
gestures, in the presence of the professor. In the next stage, he made
his comments upon them. Here is a short example which is embedded in
Epictetus:[20] the student reads the first sentence of Xenophon’s
_Memorabilia_, and makes his criticism upon it:
“‘I have often wondered what in the world were the grounds on
which....’
Rather ... ‘the ground on which....’ It is neater.”
From this, or concurrently with this, the student proceeded to
compositions of his own. Beginning with mere imitation of style, he was
gradually led to invent the structure as well as the style of what he
wrote, and to vary both the style and the subject-matter. Sometimes he
had the use of the professor’s library;[21] and though writing in his
native language, he had to construct his periods according to rules of
art, and to avoid all words for which an authority could not be quoted,
just as if he were an English undergraduate writing his Greek prose.
The crown of all was the acquisition of the art of speaking extempore.
A student’s education in Rhetoric was finished when he had the power
to talk off-hand on any subject that might be proposed. But whether he
recited a prepared speech or spoke off-hand, he was expected to show the
same artificiality of structure and the same pedantry of diction. “You
must strip off all that boundless length of sentences that is wrapped
round you,” says Charon to the rhetorician who is just stepping into his
boat, “and those antitheses of yours, and balancings of clauses, and
strange expressions, and all the other heavy weights of speech (or you
will make my boat too heavy).”[22]
To a considerable extent there prevailed, in addition to Belles Lettres
and Rhetoric, a teaching of Philosophy. It was the highest element in
the education of the average Greek of the period. Logic, in the form
of Dialectic, was common to Philosophy and Rhetoric. Every one learnt
to argue: a large number learnt, in addition, the technical terms of
Philosophy and the outlines of its history. Lucian[23] tells a tale of a
country gentleman of the old school, whose nephew went home from lecture
night after night, and regaled his mother and himself with fallacies
and dilemmas, talking about “relations” and “comprehensions” and “mental
presentations,” and jargon of that sort; nay, worse than that, saying,
“that God does not live in heaven, but goes about among stocks and stones
and such-like.” As far as Logic was concerned, it was almost natural
to a Greek mind: Dialectic was but the conversation of a sharp-witted
people conducted under recognized rules. But it was a comparatively new
phase of Philosophy that it should have a literary side. It had shared
in the common degeneracy. It had come to take wisdom at second-hand.
It was not the evolution of a man’s own thoughts, but an acquaintance
with the recorded thoughts of others. It was divorced from practice. It
was degraded to a system of lectures and disputations. It was taught
in the same general way as the studies which preceded it. But lectures
had a more important place. Sometimes the professor read a passage from
a philosopher, and gave his interpretation of it; sometimes he gave a
discourse of his own. Sometimes a student read an essay of his own, or
interpreted a passage of a philosopher, in the presence of the professor,
and the professor afterwards pronounced his opinion upon the correctness
of the reasoning or the interpretation.[24] The Discourses of Epictetus
have a singular interest in this respect, apart from their contents; for
they are in great measure notes of such lectures, and form, as it were,
a photograph of a philosopher’s lecture-room.
Against this degradation of Philosophy, not only the Cynics, but almost
all the more serious philosophers protested. Though Epictetus himself was
a professor, and though he followed the current usages of professorial
teaching, his life and teaching alike were in rebellion against it. “If
I study Philosophy,” he says, “with a view only to its literature, I am
not a philosopher, but a _littérateur_; the only difference is, that I
interpret Chrysippus instead of Homer.”[25] They sometimes protested not
only against the degradation of Philosophy, but also against the whole
conception of literary education. “There are two kinds of education,”
says Dio Chrysostom,[26] “the one divine, the other human; the divine is
great and powerful and easy; the human is mean and weak, and has many
dangers and no small deceitfulness. The mass of people call it education
(παιδείαν), as being, I suppose, an amusement (παιδίαν), and think
that a man who knows most literature—Persian and Greek and Syrian and
Phœenician—is the wisest and best-educated man; and then, on the other
hand, when they find a man of this sort to be vicious and cowardly and
fond of money, they think the education to be as worthless as the man
himself. The other kind they call sometimes education, and sometimes
manliness and high-mindedness. It was thus that the men of old used to
call those who had this good kind of education—men with manly souls, and
educated as Herakles was—sons of God.” And not less significant as an
indication not only of the reaction against this kind of education but
also of its prevalence, is the deprecation of it by Marcus Aurelius: “I
owe it to Rusticus,” he says,[27] “that I formed the idea of the need
of moral reformation, and that I was not diverted to literary ambition,
or to write treatises on philosophical subjects, or to make rhetorical
exhortations ... and that I kept away from rhetoric and poetry and
foppery of speech.”
II. I pass from the forms of education to its extent. The general
diffusion of it, and the hold which it had upon the mass of men, are
shown by many kinds of evidence.
1. They are shown by the large amount of literary evidence as to scholars
and the modes of obtaining education. The exclusiveness of the old
aristocracy had broken down. Education was no longer in the hands of
“private tutors” in the houses of the great families. It entered public
life, and in doing so left a record behind it. It may be inferred from
the extant evidence that there were grammar-schools in almost every town.
At these all youths received the first part of their education. But it
became a common practice for youths to supplement this by attending the
lectures of an eminent professor elsewhere. They went, as we might say,
from school to a University.[28] The students who so went away from
home were drawn from all classes of the community. Some of them were
very poor, and, like the “bettelstudenten” of the mediæval Universities,
had sometimes to beg their bread.[29] “You are a miserable race,” says
Epictetus[30] to some students of this kind; “when you have eaten your
fill to-day, you sit down whining about to-morrow, where to-morrow’s
dinner will come from.” Some of them went because it was the fashion.
The young sybarites of Rome or Athens complained bitterly that at
Nicopolis, where they had gone to listen to Epictetus, lodgings were bad,
and the baths were bad, and the gymnasium was bad, and “society” hardly
existed.[31] Then, as now, there were home-sick students, and mothers
weeping over their absence, and letters that were looked for but never
came, and letters that brought bad news; and young men of promise who
were expected to return home as living encyclopædias, but who only raised
doubts when they did return home whether their education had done them
any good.[32] Then, as now, they went from the lecture-room to athletic
sports or the theatre; “and the consequence is,” says Epictetus,[33]
“that you don’t get out of your old habits or make moral progress.” Then,
as now, some students went, not for the sake of learning, but in order to
be able to show off. Epictetus draws a picture of one who looked forward
to airing his logic at a city dinner, astonishing the “alderman” who sat
next to him with the puzzles of hypothetical syllogisms.[34] And then,
as now, those who had followed the fashion by attending lectures showed
by their manner that they were there against their will. “You should sit
upright,” says Plutarch,[35] in his advice to hearers in general, “not
lolling, or whispering, or smiling, or yawning as if you were asleep, or
fixing your eyes on the ground instead of on the speaker.” In a similar
way Philo,[36] also speaking of hearers in general, says: “Many persons
who come to a lecture do not bring their minds inside with them, but go
wandering about outside, thinking ten thousand things about ten thousand
different subjects—family affairs, other people’s affairs, private
affairs, ... and the professor talks to an audience, as it were, not of
men but of statues, which have ears but hear not.”
2. A second indication of the hold which education had upon the age
is the fact that teaching had come to be a recognized and lucrative
profession. This is shown not so much by the instances of individual
teachers,[37] who might be regarded as exceptional, as by the fact of
the recognition of teachers by the State and by municipalities.
The recognition by the State took the double form of endowment and of
immunities from public burdens.
(_a_) Endowments probably began with Vespasian, who endowed teachers
of Rhetoric at Rome with an annual grant of 100,000 sesterces from the
imperial treasury. Hadrian founded an Athenæum or University at Rome,
like the Museum or University at Alexandria, with an adequate income,
and with a building of sufficient importance to be sometimes used as a
Senate-house. He also gave large sums to the professors at Athens: in
this he was followed by Antoninus Pius: but the first permanent endowment
at Athens seems to have been that of Marcus Aurelius, who founded two
chairs in each of the four great philosophical schools of Athens, the
Academic, the Peripatetic, the Epicurean, and the Stoic, and added
one of the new or literary Rhetoric, and one of the old or forensic
Rhetoric.[38]
(_b_) The immunities of the teaching classes began with Julius Cæsar,
and appear to have been so amply recognized in the early empire that
Antoninus Pius placed them upon a footing which at once established and
limited them. He enacted that small cities might place upon the free list
five physicians, three teachers of rhetoric, and three of literature;
that assize towns might so place seven physicians, three teachers of
rhetoric, and three of literature; and that metropolitan cities might so
place ten physicians, five teachers of rhetoric, and five of literature;
but that these numbers should not be exceeded. These immunities were a
form of indirect endowment.[39] They exempted those whom they affected
from all the burdens which tended in the later empire to impoverish the
middle and upper classes. They were consequently equivalent to the gift
from the municipality of a considerable annual income.
3. A third indication of the hold of education upon contemporary society
is the place which its professors held in social intercourse. They were
not only a recognized class; they also mingled largely, by virtue of
their profession, with ordinary life. If a dinner of any pretensions
were given, the professor of Belles Lettres must be there to recite
and expound passages of poetry, the professor of Rhetoric to speak
upon any theme which might be proposed to him, and the professor of
Philosophy to read a discourse upon morals. A “sermonette” from one of
these professional philosophers after dinner was as much in fashion
as a piece of vocal or instrumental music is with us.[40] All three
kinds of professors were sometimes part of the permanent retinue of a
great household. But the philosophers were even more in fashion than
their brother professors. They were petted by great ladies. They became
“domestic chaplains.”[41] They were sometimes, indeed, singularly like
the chaplains of whom we read in novels of the last century. Lucian, in
his essay “On Persons who give their Society for Pay,” has some amusing
vignettes of their life. One is of a philosopher who has to accompany
his patroness on a tour: he is put into a waggon with the cook and the
lady’s-maid, and there is but a scanty allowance of leaves thrown in
to ease his limbs against the jolting.[42] Another is of a philosopher
who is summoned by his lady and complimented, and asked as an especial
favour, “You are so very kind and careful: will you take my lapdog
into the waggon with you, and see that the poor creature does not want
for anything?”[43] Another is of a philosopher who has to discourse on
temperance while his lady is having her hair braided: her maid comes in
with a _billet-doux_, and the discourse on temperance is suspended until
she has written an answer to her lover.[44] Another is of a philosopher
who only gets his pay in doles of two or three pence at a time, and
is thought a bore if he asks for it, and whose tailor or shoemaker is
meanwhile waiting to be paid, so that even when the money comes it seems
to do him no good.[45] It is natural to find that Philosophy, which had
thus become a profession, had also become degenerate. It afforded an easy
means of livelihood. It was natural that some of those who adopted it
should be a disgrace to their profession. And although it would be unsafe
to take every description of the great satirist literally, yet it is
difficult to believe that there is not a substantial foundation of truth
in his frequent caricatures. The fact of their frequency, and also the
fact that such men as he describes could exist, strengthen the inference
which other facts enable us to draw, as to the large place which the
professional philosophers occupied in contemporary society. The following
is his picture of Thrasycles:[46]
“He comes along with his beard spread out and his eyebrows
raised, talking solemnly to himself, with a Titan-like look in
his eyes, with his hair thrown back from his forehead, the very
picture of Boreas or Triton, as Zeuxis painted them. This is
the man who in the morning dresses himself simply, and walks
sedately, and wears a sober gown, and preaches long sermons
about virtue, and inveighs against the votaries of pleasure:
then he has his bath and goes to dinner, and the butler offers
him a large goblet of wine, and he drinks it down with as much
gusto as if it were the water of Lethe: and he behaves in
exactly the opposite way to his sermons of the morning, for he
snatches all the tit-bits like a hawk, and elbows his neighbour
out of the way, and he peers into the dishes with as keen an
eye as if he were likely to find Virtue herself in them; and he
goes on preaching all the time about temperance and moderation,
until he is so dead-drunk that the servants have to carry him
out. Nay, besides this, there is not a man to beat him in the
way of lying and braggadocio and avarice: he is the first of
flatterers and the readiest of perjurers: chicanery leads the
way, and impudence follows after: in fact, he is clever all
round, doing to perfection whatever he touches.”
4. But nothing could more conclusively prove the great hold which these
forms of education had upon their time than the fact of their persistent
survival. It might be maintained that the prominence which is given to
them in literature, their endowment by the State, and their social
influence, represented only a superficial and passing phase. But when
the product of one generation spreads its branches far and wide into
the generations that succeed, its roots must be deep and firm in the
generation from which it springs. No lasting element of civilization
grows upon the surface. Greek education has been almost as permanent as
Christianity itself, and for similar reasons. It passed from Greece into
Africa and the West. It had an especial hold first on the Roman and then
upon the Celtic and Teutonic populations of Gaul; and from the Gallican
schools it has come, probably by direct descent, to our own country and
our own time.
Two things especially have come:
(i.) The place which literature holds in general education. We educate
our sons in grammar, and in doing so we feed them upon ancient rather
than upon English literature, by simple continuation of the first branch
of the mediæval _trivium_, which was itself a continuation of the Greek
habit which has been described above.
(ii.) The other point, though less important in itself, is even more
important as indicating the strength of the Greek educational system. It
is that we retain still its technical terms and many of its scholastic
usages, either in their original Greek form or as translated into Latin
and modified by Latin habits, in the schools of the West.
The designation “professor” comes to us from the Greek sophists, who drew
their pupils by promises: to “profess” was to “promise,” and to promise
was the characteristic of the class of teachers with whom in the fourth
century B.C. Greek education began. The title lost its original force,
and became the general designation of a public teacher, superseding the
special titles, “philosopher,” “sophist,” “rhetorician,” “grammarian,”
and ending by being the synonym of “doctor.”[47]
The practice of lecturing, that is of giving instruction by reading
an ancient author, with longer or shorter comments upon his meaning,
comes to us from the schools in which a passage of Homer or Plato or
Chrysippus was read and explained. The “lecture” was probably in the
first instance a student’s exercise: the function of the teacher was to
make remarks or to give his judgment upon the explanation that was given:
it was not so much _legere_ as _prælegere_, whence the existing title of
“prælector.”[48]
The use of the word “chair” to designate the teacher’s office, and of the
word “faculty” to denote the branch of knowledge which he teaches, are
similar survivals of Greek terms.[49]
The use of academical designations as titles is also Greek: it was
written upon a man’s tombstone that he was “philosopher” or “sophist,”
“grammarian” or “rhetorician,” as in later times he would be designated
M.A. or D.D.[50] The most interesting of these designations is that of
“sophist.” The long academical history of the word only ceased at Oxford
a few years ago, when the clauses relating to “sophistæ generales” were
erased as obsolete from the statute-book.
The restriction of the right to teach, and the mode of testing a man’s
qualifications to teach, have come to us from the same source. The former
is probably a result of the fact which has been mentioned above, that
the teachers of liberal arts were privileged and endowed. The State
guarded against the abuse of the privilege, as in subsequent times for
similar reasons it put limitations upon the appointment of the Christian
clergy. In the case of some of the professors at Athens who were endowed
from the imperial chest, the Emperors seem to have exercised a certain
right of nomination, as in our own country the Crown nominates a “Regius
Professor;”[51] but in the case of others of those professors, the
nomination was in the hands of “the best and oldest and wisest in the
city,” that is, either the Areopagus, or the City Council, or, as some
have thought, a special Board.[52] Elsewhere, and apparently without
exception in later times, the right of approval of a teacher was in the
hands of the City Council, the ordinary body for the administration of
municipal affairs.[53] The authority which conferred the right might also
take it away: a teacher who proved incompetent might have his licence
withdrawn.[54] The testing of qualifications preceded the admission to
office. It was sometimes superseded by a sort of _congé d’élire_ from the
Emperor;[55] but in ordinary cases it consisted in the candidate’s giving
a lecture or taking part in a discussion before either the Emperor’s
representative or the City Council.[56] It was the small beginning of
that system of “examination” which in our own country and time has grown
to enormous proportions. The successful candidate was sometimes escorted
to his house, as a mark of honour, by the proconsul and the “examiners,”
just as in Oxford, until the present generation, a “grand compounder”
might claim to be escorted home by the Vice-chancellor and Proctors.[57]
In the fourth century appear to have come restrictions not only upon
teaching, but also upon studying: a student might probably go to a
lecture, but he might not formally announce his devotion to learning by
putting on the student’s gown without the leave of the professors, as in
a modern University a student must be formally enrolled before he can
assume the academical dress.[58]
The survival of these terms and usages, as indicating the strength
of the system to which they originally belonged, is emphasized by the
fact that for a long interval of time there are few, if any, traces of
them.[59] They are found in full force in Gaul in the fifth and sixth
centuries: they are found again when education began to revive on a large
scale in the tenth century; they then appear, not as new creations, but
as terms and usages which had lasted all through what has been called
“the Benedictine era,”[60] without special nurture and without literary
expression, by the sheer persistency of their original roots.
* * * * *
This is the feature of the Greek life into which Christianity came to
which I first invite your attention. There was a complex system of
education, the main elements in which were the knowledge of literature,
the cultivation of literary expression, and a general acquaintance with
the rules of argument. This education was widely diffused, and had a
great hold upon society. It had been at work in its main outlines for
several centuries. Its effect in the second century of our era had been
to create a certain habit of mind. When Christianity came into contact
with the society in which that habit of mind existed, it modified, it
reformed, it elevated, the ideas which it contained and the motives
which stimulated it to action; but in its turn it was itself profoundly
modified by the habit of mind of those who accepted it. It was impossible
for Greeks, educated as they were with an education which penetrated
their whole nature, to receive or to retain Christianity in its primitive
simplicity. Their own life had become complex and artificial: it had
its fixed ideas and its permanent categories: it necessarily gave to
Christianity something of its own form. The world of the time was a
world, I will not say like our own world, which has already burst its
bonds, but like the world from which we are beginning to be emancipated—a
world which had created an artificial type of life, and which was
too artificial to be able to recognize its own artificiality—a world
whose schools, instead of being the laboratories of the knowledge
of the future, were forges in which the chains of the present were
fashioned from the knowledge of the past. And if, on the one hand, it
incorporated Christianity with the larger humanity from which it had at
first been isolated, yet, on the other hand, by crushing uncultivated
earnestness, and by laying more stress on the expression of ideas than
upon ideas themselves, it tended to stem the very forces which had given
Christianity its place, and to change the rushing torrent of the river of
God into a broad but feeble stream.
LECTURE III.
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS.
Two thousand years ago, the Greek world was nearer than we are now to
the first wonder of the invention of writing. The mystery of it still
seemed divine. The fact that certain signs, of little or no meaning in
themselves, could communicate what a man felt or thought, not only to
the generation of his fellows, but also to the generations that came
afterwards, threw a kind of glamour over written words. It gave them
an importance and an impressiveness which did not attach to any spoken
words. They came in time to have, as it were, an existence of their own.
Their precise relation to the person who first uttered them, and their
literal meaning at the time of their utterance, tended to be overlooked
or obscured.
In the case of the ancient poets, especially Homer, this glamour of
written words was accompanied, and perhaps had been preceded, by two
other feelings.
The one was the reverence for antiquity. The voice of the past sounded
with a fuller note than that of the present. It came from the age of the
heroes who had become divinities. It expressed the national legends and
the current mythology, the primitive types of noble life and the simple
maxims of awakening reflection, the “wisdom of the ancients,” which has
sometimes itself taken the place of religion. The other was the belief
in inspiration. With the glamour of writing was blended the glamour of
rhythm and melody. When the gods spoke, they spoke in verse.[61] The
poets sang under the impulse of a divine enthusiasm. It was a god who
gave the words: the poet was but the interpreter.[62] The belief was not
merely popular, but was found in the best minds of the imperial age.
“Whatever wise and true words were spoken in the world about God and the
universe, came into the souls of men not without the Divine will and
intervention through the agency of divine and prophetic men.”[63] “To
the poets sometimes, I mean the very ancient poets, there came a brief
utterance from the Muses, a kind of inspiration of the divine nature and
truth, like a flash of light from an unseen fire.”[64]
The combination of these three feelings, the mystery of writing, the
reverence for antiquity, the belief in inspiration, tended to give the
writings of the ancient poets a unique value. It lifted them above
the common limitations of place and time and circumstance. The verses
of Homer were not simply the utterances of a particular person with a
particular meaning for a particular time. They had a universal validity.
They were the voice of an undying wisdom. They were the Bible of the
Greek races.[65]
When the unconscious imitation of heroic ideals passed into a conscious
philosophy of life, it was necessary that that philosophy should be
shown to be consonant with current beliefs, by being formulated, so to
speak, in terms of the current standards; and when, soon afterwards, the
conception of education, in the sense in which the term has ever since
been understood, arose, it was inevitable that the ancient poets should
be the basis of that education. Literature consisted, in effect, of the
ancient poets. Literary education necessarily meant the understanding of
them. “I consider,” says Protagoras, in the Platonic dialogue which bears
his name,[66] “that the chief part of a man’s education is to be skilled
in epic poetry; and this means that he should be able to understand what
the poets have said, and whether they have said it rightly or not, and
to know how to draw distinctions, and to give an answer when a question
is put to him.” The educators recognized in Homer one of themselves: he,
too, was a “sophist,” and had aimed at educating men.[67] Homer was the
common text-book of the grammar-schools as long as Greek continued to
be taught, far on into imperial times. The study of him branched out in
more than one direction. It was the beginning of that study of literature
for its own sake which still holds its ground. It was continued until
far on in the Christian era, partly by the schools of textual critics,
and partly by the successors of the first sophists, who sharpened their
wits by disputations as to Homer’s meaning, posing difficulties and
solving them: of these disputations some relics survive in the _Scholia_,
especially such as are based upon the _Questions_ of Porphyry.[68]
But in the first conception, literary and moral education had been
inseparable. It was impossible to regard Homer simply as literature.
Literary education was not an end in itself, but a means. The end was
moral training. It was imagined that virtue, no less than literature,
could be taught, and Homer was the basis of the one kind of education
no less than of the other. Nor was it difficult for him to become so.
For though the thoughts of men had changed, and the new education was
bringing in new conceptions of morals, Homer was a force which could
easily be turned in new directions. All imaginative literature is plastic
when it is used to enforce a moral; and the sophists could easily preach
sermons of their own upon Homeric texts. There was no fixed traditional
interpretation; and they were but following a current fashion in drawing
their own meanings from him. He thus became a support, and not a rival.
The _Hippias Minor_ of Plato furnishes as pertinent instances as could be
mentioned of this educational use of Homer.
The method lasted as long as Greek literature. It is found in full
operation in the first centuries of our era. It was explicitly
recognized, and most of the prominent writers of the time supply
instances of its application. “In the childhood of the world,” says
Strabo,[69] “men, like children, had to be taught by tales;” and Homer
told tales with a moral purpose. “It has been contended,” he says
again,[70] “that poetry was meant only to please:” on the contrary, the
ancients looked upon poetry as a form of philosophy, introducing us early
to the facts of life, and teaching us in a pleasant way the characters
and feelings and actions of men. It was from Homer that moralists drew
their ideals: it was his verses that were quoted, like verses of the
Bible with us, to enforce moral truths. There is in Dio Chrysostom[71] a
charming “imaginary conversation” between Philip and Alexander. “How is
it,” said the father, “that Homer is the only poet you care for: there
are others who ought not to be neglected?” “Because,” said the son, “it
is not every kind of poetry, just as it is not every kind of dress, that
is fitting for a king; and the poetry of Homer is the only poetry that I
see to be truly noble and splendid and regal, and fit for one who will
some day rule over men.” And Dio himself reads into Homer many a moral
meaning. When, for example,[72] the poet speaks of the son of Kronos
having given the staff and rights of a chief that he might take counsel
for the people, he meant to imply that not all kings, but only those who
have a special gift of God, had that staff and those rights, and that
they had them, moreover, not for their own gratification, but for the
general good; he meant, in fact, that no bad man can be a true master
either of himself or of others—no, not if all the Greeks and all the
barbarians join in calling him king.
It was not only the developing forms of ethics that were thus made to
find a support in Homer, but all the varying theories of physics and
metaphysics, one by one. The Heracliteans held, for example, that when
Homer spoke of
“Ocean, the birth of gods, and Tethys their mother,”
he meant to say that all things are the offspring of flow and
movement.[73] The Platonists held that when Zeus reminded Hera of the
time when he had hung her trembling by a golden chain in the vast concave
of heaven, it was God speaking to matter which he had taken and bound by
the chains of laws.[74] The Stoics read into the poets so much Stoicism,
that Cicero says, in good-humoured banter, that you would think the old
poets, who had really no suspicion of such things, to have been Stoical
philosophers.[75] Sometimes Homer was treated as a kind of encyclopædia.
Xenophon, in his _Banquet_,[76] makes one of the speakers, who could
repeat Homer by heart, say that “the wisest of mankind had written about
almost all human things;” and there is a treatise by an unknown author of
imperial times which endeavours to show in detail that he contains the
beginning of every one of the later sciences, historical, philosophical,
and political.[77] When he calls men deep-voiced and women high-voiced,
he shows his knowledge of the distinctions of music. When he gives to
each character its appropriate style of speech, he shows his knowledge
of rhetoric. He is the father of political science, in having given
examples of each of the three forms of government—monarchy, aristocracy,
democracy. He is the father of military science, in the information which
he gives about tactics and siege-works. He knew and taught astronomy and
medicine, gymnastics and surgery; “nor would a man be wrong if he were to
say that he was a teacher of painting also.”
This indifference to the actual meaning of a writer, and the habit
of reading him by the light of the reader’s own fancies, have a
certain analogy in our own day in the feeling with which we sometimes
regard other works of art. We stand before some great masterpiece of
painting—the St. Cecilia or the Sistine Madonna—and are, as it were,
carried off our feet by the wonder of it. We must be cold critics if
we simply ask ourselves what Raffaelle meant by it. We interpret it
by our own emotions. The picture speaks to us with a personal and
individual voice. It links itself with a thousand memories of the past
and a thousand dreams of the future. It translates us into another
world—the world of a lost and impossible love, the dreamland of achieved
aspirations, the tender and half-tearful heaven of forgiven sins: we
are ready to believe, if only for a moment, that Raffaelle meant by it
all that it means to us; and for what he did actually mean, we have but
little care.
* * * * *
But these tendencies to draw a moral from all that Homer wrote, and to
read philosophy into it, though common and permanent, were not universal.
There was an instinct in the Greek mind, as there is in modern times,
which rebelled against them. There were literalists who insisted that
the words should be taken as they stood, and that some of the words as
they stood were clearly immoral.[78] There were, on the other hand,
apologists who said sometimes that Homer reflected faithfully the
chequered lights and shadows of human life, and sometimes that the
existence of immorality in Homer must clearly be allowed, but that if
a balance were struck between the good and the evil, the good would
be found largely to predominate.[79] There were other apologists who
made a distinction between the divine and the human elements: the poets
sometimes spoke, it was said, on their own account: some of their poetry
was inspired, and some was not: the Muses sometimes left them: “and they
may very properly be forgiven if, being men, they made mistakes when the
divinity which spoke through their mouths had gone away from them.”[80]
But all these apologies were insufficient. The chasm between the older
religion which was embodied in the poets, and the new ideas which were
marching in steady progress away from the Homeric world, was widening
day by day. A reconciliation had to be found which had deeper roots. It
was found in a process of interpretation whose strength must be measured
by its permanence. The process was based upon a natural tendency. The
unseen working of the will which lies behind all voluntary actions, and
the unseen working of thought which by an instinctive process causes some
of those actions to be symbolical, led men in comparatively early times
to find a meaning beneath the surface of a record or representation of
actions. A narrative of actions, no less than the actions themselves,
might be symbolical. It might contain a hidden meaning. Men who retained
their reverence for Homer, or who at least were not prepared to break
with the current belief in him, began to search for such meanings.
They were assisted in doing so by the concomitant development of the
“mysteries.” The mysteries were representations of passages in the
history of the gods which, whatever their origin, had become symbolical.
It is possible that no words of explanation were spoken in them; but they
were, notwithstanding, habituating the Greek mind both to symbolical
expression in general, and to the finding of physical or religious
or moral truths in the representation of fantastic or even immoral
actions.[81]
It is uncertain when this method of interpretation began to be applied
to ancient literature. It was part of the general intellectual movement
of the fifth century B.C. It is found in one of its forms in Hecatæus,
who explained the story of Cerberus by the existence of a poisonous snake
in a cavern on the headland of Tænaron.[82] It was elaborated by the
sophists. It was deprecated by Plato. “If I disbelieved it,” he makes
Socrates say,[83] in reference to the story of Boreas and Oreithyia, “as
the philosophers do, I should not be unreasonable: then I might say,
talking like a philosopher, that Oreithyia was a girl who was caught by
a strong wind and carried off while playing on the cliffs yonder; ...
but it would take a long and laborious and not very happy lifetime to
deal with all such questions: and for my own part I cannot investigate
them until, as the Delphian precept bids me, I first Know myself.” Nor
will he admit allegorical interpretation as a sufficient vindication of
Homer:[84] “The chaining of Hera, and the flinging forth of Hephæstus
by his father, and all the fightings of gods which Homer has described,
we shall not admit into our state, whether with allegories or without
them.” But the direct line of historical tradition of the method seems
to begin with Anaxagoras and his school.[85] In Anaxagoras himself the
allegory was probably ethical: he found in Homer a symbolical account of
the movements of mental powers and moral virtues: Zeus was mind, Athené
was art. But the method which, though it is found in germ among earlier
or contemporary writers, seems to have been first formulated by his
disciple Metrodorus, was not ethical but physical.[86] By a remarkable
anticipation of a modern science, possibly by a survival of memories of
an earlier religion, the Homeric stories were treated as a symbolical
representation of physical phenomena. The gods were the powers of nature:
their gatherings, their movements, their loves, and their battles, were
the play and interaction and apparent strife of natural forces. The
method had for many centuries an enormous hold upon the Greek mind; it
lay beneath the whole theology of the Stoical schools; it was largely
current among the scholars and critics of the early empire.[87]
Its most detailed exposition is contained in two writers, of both of whom
so little is personally known that there is a division of opinion whether
the name of the one was Heraclitus or Heraclides,[88] and of the other
Cornutus or Phornutus;[89] but both were Stoics, both are most probably
assigned to the early part of the first century of our era, and in both
of them the physical is blended with an ethical interpretation.
1. Heraclitus begins by the definite avowal of his apologetic purpose.
His work is a vindication of Homer from the charge of impiety. “He would
unquestionably be impious if he were not allegorical;”[90] but as it is,
“there is no stain of unholy fables in his words: they are pure and free
from impiety.”[91] Apollo is the sun; the “far-darter” is the sun sending
forth his rays: when it is said that Apollo slew men with his arrows,
it is meant that there was a pestilence in the heat of summer-time.[92]
Athené is thought: when it is said that Athené came to Telemachus, it
is meant only that the young man then first began to reflect upon the
waste and profligacy of the suitors: a thought, shaped like a wise old
man, came, as it were, and sat by his side.[93] The story of Proteus
and Eidothea is an allegory of the original formless matter taking many
shapes:[94] the story of Ares and Aphrodite and Hephæstus is a picture of
iron subdued by fire, and restored to its original hardness by Poseidon,
that is by water.[95]
2. Cornutus writes in vindication not so much of the piety of the
ancients as of their knowledge: they knew as much as men of later times,
but they expressed it at greater length and by means of symbols. He rests
his interpretation of those symbols to a large extent upon etymology.
The science of religion was to him, as it has been to some persons in
modern days, an extension of the science of philology. The following
are examples: Hermes (from ἐρεῖν, “to speak”) is the power of speech
which the gods sent from heaven as their peculiar and distinguishing
gift to men. He is called the “conductor,” because speech conducts one
man’s thought into his neighbour’s soul. He is the “bright-shiner,”
because speech makes dark things clear. His winged feet are the symbols
of “winged words.” He is the “leader of souls,” because words soothe
the soul to rest; and the “awakener from sleep,” because words rouse
men to action. The serpents twined round his staff are a symbol of the
savage natures that are calmed by words, and their discords gathered into
harmony.[96] The story of Prometheus (“forethought”), who made a man from
clay, is an allegory of the providence and forethought of the universe:
he is said to have stolen fire, because it was the forethought of men
found out its use: he is said to have stolen it from heaven, because
it came down in a lightning-flash: and his being chained to a rock is
a picture of the quick inventiveness of human thought chained to the
painful necessities of physical life, its liver gnawed at unceasingly by
petty cares.[97]
Two other examples of the method may be given from later writers, to show
the variety of its application.
The one is from Sallust, a writer of the fourth century of our era. He
thus explains the story of the judgment of Paris. The banquet of the gods
is a picture of the vast supra-mundane Powers, who are always in each
other’s society. The apple is the world, which is thrown from the banquet
by Discord, because the world itself is the play of opposing forces; and
different qualities are given to the world by different Powers, each
trying to win the world for itself; and Paris is the soul in its sensuous
life, which sees not the other Powers in the world, but only Beauty, and
says that the world is the property of Love.[98]
The other is from a writer of a late but uncertain age. He deals only
with the Odyssey. Its hero is the picture of a man who is tossed upon
the sea of life, drifted this way and that by adverse winds of fortune
and of passion: the companions who were lost among the Lotophagi are
pictures of men who are caught by the baits of pleasure and do not return
to reason as their guide: the Sirens are the pleasures that tempt and
allure all men who pass over the sea of life, and against which the only
counter-charm is to fill one’s senses and powers of mind full of divine
words and actions, as Odysseus filled his ears with wax, that, no part of
them being left empty, pleasure may knock at their doors in vain.[99]
The method survived as a literary habit long after its original purpose
failed. The mythology which it had been designed to vindicate passed from
the sphere of religion into that of literature; but in so passing, it
took with it the method to which it had given rise. The habit of trying
to find an _arrière pensée_ beneath a man’s actual words had become so
inveterate, that all great writers without distinction were treated as
writers of riddles. The literary class insisted that their functions were
needed as interpreters, and that a plain man could not know what a great
writer meant. “The use of symbolical speech,” said Didymus, the great
grammarian of the Augustan age, “is characteristic of the wise man, and
the explanation of its meaning.”[100] Even Thucydides is said by his
biographer to have purposely made his style obscure that he might not be
accessible except to the truly wise.[101] It tended to become a fixed
idea in the minds of many men that religious truth especially must be
wrapped up in symbol, and that symbol must contain religious truth. The
idea has so far descended to the present day, that there are, even now,
persons who think that a truth which is obscurely stated is more worthy
of respect, and more likely to be divine, than a truth which “he that
runs may read.”
* * * * *
The same kind of difficulty which had been felt on a large scale in the
Greek world in regard to Homer, was felt in no less a degree by those
Jews who had become students of Greek philosophy in regard to their
own sacred books. The Pentateuch, in a higher sense than Homer, was
regarded as having been written under the inspiration of God. It, no
less than Homer, was so inwrought into the minds of men that it could
not be set aside. It, no less than Homer, contained some things which,
at least on the surface, seemed inconsistent with morality. To it, no
less than to Homer, was applicable the theory that the words were the
veils of a hidden meaning. The application fulfilled a double purpose: it
enabled educated Jews, on the one hand, to reconcile their own adoption
of Greek philosophy with their continued adhesion to their ancestral
religion, and, on the other hand, to show to the educated Greeks with
whom they associated, and whom they frequently tried to convert, that
their literature was neither barbarous, nor unmeaning, nor immoral. It
may be conjectured that, just as in Greece proper the adoption of the
allegorical method had been helped by the existence of the mysteries, so
in Egypt it was helped by the large use in earlier times of hieroglyphic
writing, the monuments of which were all around them, though the writing
itself had ceased.[102]
The earliest Jewish writer of this school of whom any remains have come
down to us, is reputed to be Aristobulus (about B.C. 170-150).[103] In
an exposition of the Pentateuch which he is said to have addressed
to Ptolemy Philometor, he boldly claimed that, so far from the Mosaic
writings being outside the sphere of philosophy, the Greek philosophers
had taken their philosophy from them. “Moses,” he said, “using the
figures of visible things, tells us the arrangements of nature and the
constitutions of important matters.” The anthropomorphisms of the Old
Testament were explained on this principle. The “hand” of God, for
example, meant His power, His “feet,” the stability of the world.
But by far the most considerable monument of this mode of interpretation
consists of the works of Philo. They are based throughout on the
supposition of a hidden meaning. But they carry us into a new world. The
hidden meaning is not physical, but metaphysical and spiritual. The seen
is the veil of the unseen, a robe thrown over it which marks its contour,
“and half conceals and half reveals the form within.”
It would be easy to interest you, perhaps even to amuse you, by quoting
some of the strange meanings which Philo gives to the narratives of
familiar incidents. But I deprecate the injustice which has sometimes
been done to him by taking such meanings apart from the historical
circumstances out of which allegorical interpretation grew, and
the purpose which it was designed to serve. I will give only one
passage, which I have chosen because it shows as well as any other the
contemporary existence of both the methods of interpretation of which
I have spoken—that of finding a moral in every narrative, and that of
interpreting the narrative symbolically: the former of these Philo calls
the literal, the latter the deeper meaning. The text is Gen. xxviii. 11,
“He took the stones of that place and put them beneath his head;” the
commentary is:[104]
“The words are wonderful, not only because of their allegorical
and physical meaning, but also because of their literal
teaching of trouble and endurance. The writer does not think
that a student of virtue should have a delicate and luxurious
life, imitating those who are called fortunate, but who are in
reality full of misfortunes, eager anxieties and rivalries,
whose whole life the Divine Lawgiver describes as a sleep
and a dream. These are men who, after spending their days in
doing injuries to others, return to their homes and upset
them—I mean, not the houses they live in, but the body which
is the home of the soul—by immoderate eating and drinking,
and at night lie down in soft and costly beds. Such men are
not the disciples of the sacred word. Its disciples are real
men, lovers of temperance and sobriety and modesty, who make
self-restraint and contentment and endurance the corner-stones,
as it were, of their lives: who rise superior to money and
pleasure and fame: who are ready, for the sake of acquiring
virtue, to endure hunger and thirst, heat and cold: whose
costly couch is a soft turf, whose bedding is grass and leaves,
whose pillow is a heap of stones or a hillock rising a little
above the ground. Of such men, Jacob is an example: he put a
stone for his pillow: a little while afterwards (v. 20), we
find him asking only for nature’s wealth of food and raiment:
he is the archetype of a soul that disciplines itself, one who
is at war with every kind of effeminacy.
“But the passage has a further meaning, which is conveyed in
symbol. You must know that the divine place and the holy
ground is full of incorporeal Intelligences, who are immortal
souls. It is one of these that Jacob takes and puts close
to his mind, which is, as it were, the head of the combined
person, body and soul. He does so under the pretext of going to
sleep, but in reality to find repose in the Intelligence which
he has chosen, and to place all the burden of his life upon it.”
In all this, Philo was following not a Hebrew but a Greek method.
He expressly speaks of it as the method of the Greek mysteries. He
addresses his hearers by the name which was given to those who were being
initiated. He bids them be purified before they listen. And in this way
it was possible for him to be a Greek philosopher without ceasing to be a
Jew.
* * * * *
The earliest methods of Christian exegesis were continuations of the
methods which were common at the time to both Greek and Græco-Judæan
writers. They were employed on the same subject-matter. Just as the
Greek philosophers had found their philosophy in Homer, so Christian
writers found in him Christian theology. When he represents Odysseus as
saying,[105] “The rule of many is not good: let there be one ruler,” he
means to indicate that there should be but one God; and his whole poem
is designed to show the mischief that comes of having many gods.[106]
When he tells us that Hephæstus represented on the shield of Achilles
“the earth, the heaven, the sea, the sun that rests not, and the moon
full-orbed,”[107] he is teaching us the divine order of creation
which he learned in Egypt from the books of Moses.[108] So Clement of
Alexandria interprets the withdrawal of Oceanus and Tethys from each
other to mean the separation of land and sea;[109] and he holds that
Homer, when he makes Apollo ask Achilles, “Why fruitlessly pursue him, a
god,” meant to show that the divinity cannot be apprehended by the bodily
powers.[110] Some of the philosophical schools which hung upon the skirts
of Christianity mingled such interpretations of Greek mythology with
similar interpretations of the Old Testament. For example, the writer
to whom the name Simon Magus is given, is said to have “interpreted in
whatever way he wished both the writings of Moses and also those of the
(Greek) poets;”[111] and the Ophite writer, Justin, evolves an elaborate
cosmogony from a story of Herakles narrated in Herodotus,[112] combined
with the story of the garden of Eden.[113] But the main application was
to the Old Testament exclusively. The reasons given for believing that
the Old Testament had an allegorical meaning were precisely analogous
to those which had been given in respect to Homer. There were many
things in the Old Testament which jarred upon the nascent Christian
consciousness. “Far be it from us to believe,” says the writer of the
Clementine Homilies,[114] “that the Master of the universe, the Maker of
heaven and earth, ‘tempts’ men as though He did not know—for who then
does foreknow? and if He ‘repents,’ who is perfect in thought and firm
in judgment? and if He ‘hardens’ men’s hearts, who makes them wise?
and if He ‘blinds’ them, who makes them to see? and if He desires ‘a
fruitful hill,’ whose then are all things? and if He wants the savour of
sacrifices, who is it that needeth nothing? and if He delights in lamps,
who is it that set the stars in heaven?”
One early answer to all such difficulties was, like a similar answer
to difficulties about the Homeric mythology, that there was a human as
well as a divine element in the Old Testament: some things in it were
true, and some were false: and “this was indeed the very reason why the
Master said, ‘Be genuine money-changers,’[115] testing the Scriptures
like coins, and separating the good from the bad.” But the answer did
not generally prevail. The more common solution, as also in the case of
Homer, was that Moses had written in symbols in order to conceal his
meaning from the unwise; and Clement of Alexandria, in an elaborate
justification of this method, mentions as analogies not only the older
Greek poetry, but also the hieroglyphic writing of the Egyptians.[116]
The Old Testament thus came to be treated allegorically. A large part
of such interpretation was inherited. The coincidences of mystical
interpretation between Philo and the Epistle of Barnabas show that
such interpretations were becoming the common property of Jews and
Judæo-Christians.[117] But the method was soon applied to new data.
Exegesis became apologetic. Whereas Philo and his school had dealt mainly
with the Pentateuch, the early Christian writers came to deal mainly with
the prophets and poetical books; and whereas Philo was mainly concerned
to show that the writings of Moses contained Greek philosophy, the
Christian writers endeavoured to show that the writings of the Hebrew
preachers and poets contained Christianity; and whereas Philo had been
content to speak of the writers of the Old Testament, as Dio Chrysostom
spoke of the Greek poets, as having been stirred by a divine enthusiasm,
the Christian writers soon came to construct an elaborate theory that the
poets and preachers were but as the flutes through which the Breath of
God flowed in divine music into the souls of men.[118]
The prophets, even more than the poets, lent themselves easily to this
allegorical method of interpretation. The _nabi_ was in an especial sense
the messenger of God and an interpreter of His will. But his message
was often a parable. He saw visions and dreamed dreams. He wrote, not
in plain words, but in pictures. The meaning of the pictures was often
purposely obscure. The Greek word “prophet” sometimes properly belonged,
not to the _nabi_ himself, but to those who, in his own time or in after
time, explained the riddle of his message. When the message passed into
literature, the interpretation of it became linked with the growing
conception of the foreknowledge and providence of God: it was believed
that He not only knew all things that should come to pass, but also
communicated His knowledge to men. The _nabi_, through whom He revealed
His will as to the present, was also the channel through whom He revealed
His intention as to the future. The prophetic writings came to be read
in the light of this conception. The interpreters wandered, as it were,
along vast corridors whose walls were covered with hieroglyphs and
paintings. They found in them symbols which might be interpreted of their
own times. They went on to infer the divine ordering of the present from
the coincidence of its features with features that could be traced in the
hieroglyphs of the past. A similar conception prevailed in the heathen
world. It lay beneath the many forms of divination. Hence Tertullian[119]
speaks of Hebrew prophecy as a special form of divination, “divinatio
prophetica.” So far from being strange to the Greek world, it
was accepted. Those who read the Old Testament without accepting
Christianity, found in its symbols prefigurings, not of Christianity, but
of events recorded in the heathen mythologies. The Shiloh of Jacob’s song
was a foretelling of Dionysus: the virgin’s son of Isaiah was a picture
of Perseus: the Psalmist’s “strong as a giant to run his course” was a
prophecy of Herakles.[120]
The fact that this was an accepted method of interpretation enabled
the Apologists to use it with great effect. It became one of the chief
evidences of Christianity. Explanations of the meaning of historical
events and poetical figures which sound strange or impossible to modern
ears, so far from sounding strange or impossible in the second century,
carried conviction with them. When it was said, “The government shall be
upon his shoulder,” it was meant that Christ should be extended on the
cross;[121] when it was said, “He shall dip his garment in the blood of
the grape,” it was meant that his blood should be, not of human origin,
but, like the red juice of the grape, from God;[122] when it was said
that “He shall receive the power of Damascus,” it was meant that the
power of the evil demon who dwelt at Damascus should be overcome, and the
prophecy was fulfilled when the Magi came to worship Christ.[123] The
convergence of a large number of such interpretations upon the Gospel
history was a powerful argument against both Jews and Greeks. I need
not enlarge upon them. They have formed part of the general stock of
Christian teaching ever since. But I will draw your attention to the fact
that the basis of this use of the Old Testament was not so much the idea
of prediction as the prevalent practice of treating ancient literature as
symbolical or allegorical.
* * * * *
The method came to be applied to the books which were being formed
into a new volume of sacred writings, side by side with the old. It was
so applied, in the first instance, not by the Apologists, but by the
Gnostics. It was detached from the idea of prediction. It was linked
with the idea of knowledge as a secret. This extension of the method was
inevitable. The earthly life of Christ presented as many difficulties
to the first Christian philosophers as the Old Testament had done.
The conception of Christ as the Wisdom and the Power of God seemed
inconsistent with the meanness of a common human life; and that life
resolved itself into a series of symbolic representations of superhuman
movements, and the record of it was written in hieroglyphs. When Symeon
took the young child in his arms and said the _Nunc dimittis_, he was a
picture of the Demiurge who had learned his own change of place on the
coming of the Saviour, and who gave thanks to the Infinite Depth.[124]
The raising of Jairus’ daughter was a type of Achamoth, the Eternal
Wisdom, the mother of the Demiurge, whom the Saviour led anew to the
perception of the light which had forsaken her. Even the passion on the
Cross was a setting forth of the anguish and fear and perplexity of the
Eternal Wisdom.[125]
The method was at first rejected with contumely. Irenæus and Tertullian
bring to bear upon it their batteries of irony and denunciation. It was
a blasphemous invention. It was one of the arts of spiritual wickedness
against which a Christian must wrestle. But it was deep-seated in the
habits of the time; and even while Tertullian was writing, it was
establishing a lodgment inside the Christian communities which it has
never ceased to hold. It did so first of all in the great school of
Alexandria, in which it had grown up as the reconciliation of Greek
philosophy and Hebrew theology. The methods of the school of Philo were
applied to the New Testament even more than to the Old. When Christ
said, “The foxes have holes, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay
his head,” he meant that on the believer alone, who is separated from
the rest, that is from the wild beasts of the world, rests the Head of
the universe, the kind and gentle Word.[126] When he is said to have fed
the multitude on five barley-loaves and two fishes, it is meant that
he gave mankind the preparatory training of the Law, for barley, like
the Law, ripens sooner than wheat, and of philosophy, which had grown,
like fishes, in the waves of the Gentile world.[127] When we read of the
anointing of Christ’s feet, we read of both his teaching and his passion;
for the feet are a symbol of divine instruction travelling to the ends
of the earth, or, it may be, of the Apostles who so travelled, having
received the fragrant unction of the Holy Ghost; and the ointment, which
is adulterated oil, is a symbol of the traitor Judas, “by whom the Lord
was anointed on the feet, being released from his sojourn in the world:
for the dead are anointed.”[128]
But it may reasonably be doubted whether the allegorical method would
have obtained the place which it did in the Christian Church if it had
not served an other than exegetical purpose. It is clear that after the
first conflicts with Judaism had subsided, the Old Testament formed a
great stumbling-block in the way of those who approached Christianity on
its ideal side, and viewed it by the light of philosophical conceptions.
Its anthropomorphisms, its improbabilities, the sanction which it seemed
to give to immoralities, the dark picture which it sometimes presented of
both God and the servants of God, seemed to many men to be irreconcilable
with both the theology and the ethics of the Gospel. An important section
of the Christian world rejected its authority altogether: it was the
work, not of God, but of His rival, the god of this world: the contrast
between the Old Testament and the New was part of the larger contrast
between matter and spirit, darkness and light, evil and good.[129] Those
who did not thus reject it were still conscious of its difficulties.
There were many solutions of those difficulties. Among them was that
which had been the Greek solution of analogous difficulties in Homer.
It was adopted and elaborated by Origen expressly with an apologetic
purpose. He had been trained in current methods of Greek interpretation.
He is expressly said to have studied the books of Cornutus.[130] He
found in the hypothesis of a spiritual meaning as complete a vindication
of the Old Testament as Cornutus had found of the Greek mythology. The
difficulties which men find, he tells us, arise from their lack of the
spiritual sense. Without it he himself would have been a sceptic.
“What man of sense,” he asks,[131] “will suppose that the
first and the second and the third day, and the evening and
the morning, existed without a sun and moon and stars? Who
is so foolish as to believe that God, like a husbandman,
planted a garden in Eden, and placed in it a tree of life,
that might be seen and touched, so that one who tasted of the
fruit by his bodily lips obtained life? or, again, that one
was partaker of good and evil by eating that which was taken
from a tree? And if God is said to have walked in a garden in
the evening, and Adam to have hidden under a tree, I do not
suppose that any one doubts that these things figuratively
indicate certain mysteries, the history being apparently but
not literally true.... Nay, the Gospels themselves are filled
with the same kind of narratives. Take, for example, the story
of the devil taking Jesus up into a high mountain to show him
from thence the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them:
what thoughtful reader would not condemn those who teach that
it was with the eye of the body—which needs a lofty height
that even the near neighbourhood may be seen—that Jesus beheld
the kingdoms of the Persians, and Scythians, and Indians, and
Parthians, and the manner in which their rulers were glorified
among men?”
The spirit intended, in all such narratives, on the one hand to reveal
mysteries to the wise, on the other hand to conceal them from the
multitude. The whole series of narratives is constructed with a purpose,
and subordinated to the exposition of mysteries. Difficulties and
impossibilities were introduced in order to prevent men from being drawn
into adherence to the literal meaning. Sometimes the truth was told by
means of a true narrative which yielded a mystical sense: sometimes, when
no such narrative of a true history existed, one was invented for the
purpose.[132]
In this way, as a rationalizing expedient for solving the difficulties
of Old Testament exegesis, the allegorical method established for itself
a place in the Christian Church: it largely helped to prevent the Old
Testament from being discarded: and the conservation of the Old Testament
was the conservation of allegory, not only for the Old Testament, but
also for the New.
* * * * *
Against the whole tendency of symbolical interpretation there was more
than one form of reaction in both the Greek and the Christian world.
1. It was attacked by the Apologists in its application to Greek
mythology. With an inconsequence which is remarkable, though not
singular, they found in it a weapon of both defence and offence. They
used it in defence of Christianity, not only because it gave them
the evidence of prediction, but also because it solved some of the
difficulties which the Old Testament presented to philosophical minds.
They used it, on the other hand, in their attack upon Greek religion.
Allegories are an after-thought, they said sometimes, a mere pious
gloss over unseemly fables.[133] Even if they were true, they said
again, and the basis of Greek belief were as good as its interpreters
alleged it to be, it was a work of wicked demons to wrap round it a veil
of dishonourable fictions.[134] The myth and the god who is supposed
to be behind it vanish together, says Tatian: if the myth be true,
the gods are worthless demons; if the myth be not true, but only a
symbol of the powers of nature, the godhead is gone, for the powers of
nature are not gods since they constrain no worship.[135] In a similar
way, in the fourth century, Eusebius treats it as a vain attempt of a
younger generation to explain away (θεραπεῦσαι) the mistakes of their
fathers.[136]
2. It was attacked by the Greek philosophers in its application to
Christianity. There are some persons, says Porphyry,[137] who being
anxious to find, not a way of being rid of the immorality of the Old
Testament, but an explanation of it, have recourse to interpretations
which do not hold together nor fit the words which they interpret,
which serve not so much as a defence of Jewish doctrines as to bring
approbation and credit for their own. It is a delusive evasion of your
difficulties, said in effect Celsus;[138] you find in your sacred books
narratives which shock your moral sense; you think that you get rid of
the difficulty by having recourse to allegory; but you do not: in the
first place, your scriptures do not admit of being so interpreted; in the
second place, the explanation is often more difficult than the narrative
which it explains. The answer of Origen is weak: it is partly a _Tu
quoque_: Homer is worse than Genesis, and if allegory will not explain
the latter, neither will it the former: it is partly that, if there had
been no secret, the Psalmist would not have said, “Open thou mine eyes,
that I may see the wondrous things of thy law.”
3. The method had opponents even in Alexandria itself. Origen[139] more
than once speaks of those who objected to his “digging wells below the
surface;” and Eusebius mentions a lost work of the learned Nepos of
Arsinoê, entitled “A Refutation of the Allegorists.”[140] But it found
its chief antagonist in the school of interpretation which arose at
the end of the fourth century at Antioch. The dominant philosophy of
Alexandria had been a fusion of Platonism with some elements of both
Stoicism and revived Pythagoreanism: that of Antioch was coming to be
Aristotelianism. The one was idealistic, the other realistic: the one was
a philosophy of dreams and mystery, the other of logic and system: to
the one, Revelation was but the earthy foothold from which speculation
might soar into infinite space; to the other, it was “a positive fact
given in the light of history.”[141] Allegorical interpretation was the
outcome of the one; literal interpretation of the other. The precursor
of the Antiochene school, Julius Africanus, of Emmaus, has left behind
a letter which has been said “to contain in its two short pages more
true exegesis than all the commentaries and homilies of Origen.”[142]
The chief founder of the school was Lucian, a scholar who shares with
Origen the honour of being the founder of Biblical philology, and whose
lifetime, which was cut short by martyrdom in 311, just preceded the
great Trinitarian controversies of the Nicene period. His disciples came
to be leaders on the Arian side: among them were Eusebius of Nicomedia
and Arius himself. The question of exegesis became entangled with the
question of orthodoxy. The greatest of Greek interpreters, Theodore of
Mopsuestia, followed, a hundred years afterwards, in the same path; but
in his day also questions of canons of interpretation were so entangled
with questions of Christology, and the Christology of the Antiochene
school was so completely outvoted at the great ecclesiastical assemblies
by the Christology of the Alexandrian school, that his reputation for
scholarship has been almost wholly obscured by the ill-fame of his
leanings towards Nestorianism. It has been one of the many results of the
controversies into which the metaphysical tendencies of the Greeks led
the churches of the fourth and fifth centuries, to postpone almost to
modern times the acceptance of “the literal grammatical and historical
sense” as the true sense of Scripture.
* * * * *
The allegorical method of interpretation has survived the circumstances
of its birth and the gathered forces of its opponents. It has filled
a large place in the literature of Christianity. But by the irony of
history, though it grew out of a tendency towards rationalism, it has
come in later times to be vested like a saint, and to wear an aureole
round its head. It has been the chief instrument by which the dominant
beliefs of every age have constructed their strongholds.[143] It was
harmless so long as it was free. It was the play of innocent imagination
on the surface of great truths. But when it became authoritative, when
the idea prevailed that only that poetical sense was true of which the
majority approved, and when moreover it became traditional, so that one
generation was bound to accept the symbolical interpretations of its
predecessors, it became at once the slave of dogmatism and the tyrant of
souls. Outside its relation to dogmatism, it has a history and a value
which rather grow than diminish with time. It has given to literature
books which, though of little value for the immediate purpose of
interpretation, are yet monuments of noble and inspiring thoughts. It has
contributed even more to art than to literature. The poetry of life would
have been infinitely less rich without it. For though without it Dante
might have been stirred to write, he would not have written the _Divine
Comedy_; and though without it Raffaelle would have painted, he would not
have painted the St. Cecilia; and though without it we should have had
Gothic cathedrals, we should not have had that sublime symbolism of their
structure which is of itself a religious education. It survives because
it is based upon an element in human nature which is not likely to pass
away: whatever be its value in relation to the literature of the past, it
is at least the expression in relation to the present that our lives are
hedged round by the unknown, that there is a haze about both our birth
and our departure, and that even the meaner facts of life are linked to
infinity.
But two modern beliefs militate against it.
1. The one belief affects all literature, religious and secular alike. It
is that the thoughts of the past are relative to the past, and must be
interpreted by it. The glamour of writing has passed away. A written word
is no more than a spoken word; and a spoken word is taken in the sense in
which the speaker used it, at the time at which he used it. There have
been writers of enigmas and painters of emblems, but they have formed
an infinitesimal minority. There have been those who, as Cicero says
of himself in writing to Atticus, have written allegorically lest open
speech should betray them; but such cryptograms have only a temporary and
transient use. The idea that ancient literature consists of riddles which
it is the business of modern literature to solve, has passed for ever
away.
2. The other belief affects specially religious literature. It is that
the Spirit of God has not yet ceased to speak to men, and that it is
important for us to know, not only what He told the men of other days,
but also what He tells us now. Interpretation is of the present as well
as of the past. We can believe that there is a Divine voice, but we find
it hard to believe that it has died away to an echo from the Judean
hills. We can believe in religious as in other progress, but we find it
hard to believe that that progress was suddenly arrested fifteen hundred
years ago. The study of nature and the study of history have given us
another maxim for religious conduct and another axiom of religious
belief. They apply to that which is divine within us the inmost secret of
our knowledge and mastery of that which is divine without us: _man, the
servant and interpreter of nature, is also, and is thereby, the servant
and interpreter of the living God_.
LECTURE IV.
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN RHETORIC.
It is customary to measure the literature of an age by its highest
products, and to measure the literary excellence of one age as compared
with that of another by the highest products of each of them. We look,
for example, upon the Periclean age at Athens, or the Augustan age at
Rome, or the Elizabethan age in our own country, as higher than the
ages respectively of the Ptolemies, the Cæsars, or the early Georges.
The former are “golden;” the latter, “silver.” Nor can it be doubted
that from the point of view of literature in itself, as distinguished
from literature in its relation to history or to social life, such a
standard of measurement is correct. But the result of its application
has been the doing of a certain kind of injustice to periods of history
in which, though the high-water mark has been lower, there has been a
wide diffusion of literary culture. This is the case with the period with
which we are dealing. It produced no writer of the first rank. It was
artificial rather than spontaneous. It was imitative more than original.
It was appreciative rather than constructive. Its literature was born,
not of the enthusiasm of free activity, but rather of the passivity
which comes when there is no hope. But as to a student of science the
after-glow is an object of study no less than the noon-day, so to a
student of the historical development of the world the silver age of a
nation’s literature is an object of study no less than its golden age.
Its most characteristic feature was one for which it is difficult to find
any more exact description than the paradoxical phrase, “a _viva-voce_
literature.” It had its birth and chief development in that part of the
Empire in which Christianity and Greek life came into closest and most
frequent contact. It was the product of the rhetorical schools which
have been already described. In those schools the professor had been
in the habit of illustrating his rules and instructing his students by
model compositions of his own.[144] Such compositions were in the first
instance exercises in the pleading of actual causes, and accusations or
defences of real persons. The cases were necessarily supposed rather
than actual, but they had a practical object in view, and came as close
as possible to real life. The large growth of the habit of studying
Rhetoric as a part of the education of a gentleman, and the increased
devotion to the literature of the past, which came partly from the felt
loss of spontaneity and partly from national pride,[145] caused these
compositions in the rhetorical schools to take a wider range.[146] They
began on the one hand to be divorced from even a fictitious connection
with the law-courts, and on the other to be directly imitative of the
styles of ancient authors. From the older Rhetoric, the study of forensic
logic and speech with a view to the actual practice in the law-courts,
which necessarily still went on, there branched out the new Rhetoric,
which was sometimes specially known as Sophistic.
* * * * *
Sophistic proceeded for the most part upon the old lines. Its literary
compositions preserved the old name, “exercises” (μελέται), as though
they were still the rehearsals of actual pleadings. They were divided
into two kinds, _Theses_ and _Hypotheses_, according as a subject was
argued in general terms or names were introduced.[147] The latter were
the more common. Their subjects were sometimes fictitious, sometimes
taken from real history. Of the first of these there is a good example
in Lucian’s _Tyrannicide_: the situation is, that a man goes into the
citadel of a town for the purpose of killing a tyrant: not finding the
tyrant, the man kills the tyrant’s son: the tyrant coming in and seeing
his son with the sword in his body, stabs himself: the man claims the
reward as a tyrannicide. Of the second kind of subjects, there are such
instances as “Demosthenes defending himself against the charge of having
taken the bribe which Demades brought,”[148] and “The Athenians wounded
at Syracuse beg their comrades who are returning to Athens to put them
to death.”[149] The Homeric cycle was an unfailing mine of subjects: the
Persian wars hardly less so. “Would you like to hear a sensible speech
about Agamemnon, or are you sick of hearing speeches about Agamemnon,
Atreus’ son?” asks Dio Chrysostom in one of his Dialogues.[150] “I
should not take amiss even a speech about Adrastus or Tantalus or
Pelops, if I were likely to get good from it,” is the polite reply. In
the treatment of both kinds of subjects, stress was laid on dramatic
consistency. The character, whether real or supposed, was required to
speak in an appropriate style.[151] The “exercise” had to be recited
with an appropriate intonation.[152] Sometimes the dramatic effect was
heightened by the introduction of two or more characters: for example,
one of the surviving _pièces_ of Dio Chrysostom[153] consists of a
wrangle in tragic style, and with tragic diction, between Odysseus and
Philoctetes.
This kind of Sophistic has an interest in two respects, apart from its
relation to contemporary life. It gave birth to the Greek romance, which
is the progenitor of the mediæval romance and of the modern novel:[154]
a notable example of such a sophistical romance in Christian literature
is the Clementine Homilies and Recognitions; in non-Christian literature,
Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius of Tyana. It gave birth also to the
writings in the style of ancient authors which, though commonly included
in the collected works of those authors, betray their later origin
by either the poverty of their thought or inadvertent neologisms of
expression: for example, the Eryxias of Plato.[155]
But though Sophistic grew mainly out of Rhetoric, it had its roots also
in Philosophy. It was sometimes defined as Rhetoric philosophizing.[156]
It threw off altogether the fiction of a law-court or an assembly, and
discussed in continuous speech the larger themes of morality or theology.
Its utterances were not “exercises” but “discourses” (διαλέξεις).[157]
It preached sermons. It created not only a new literature, but also a
new profession. The class of men against whom Plato had inveighed had
become merged in the general class of educators: they were specialized
partly as grammarians, partly as rhetoricians: the word “sophist,” to
which the invectives had failed to attach a permanent stigma, remained
partly as a generic name, and partly as a special name for the new class
of public talkers. They differed from philosophers in that they did
not mark themselves off from the rest of the world, and profess their
devotion to a higher standard of living, by wearing a special dress.[158]
They were a notable feature of their time. Some of them had a fixed
residence and gave discourses regularly, like the “stated minister” of
a modern congregation: some of them travelled from place to place. The
audience was usually gathered by invitation. There were no newspaper
advertisements in those days, and no bells; consequently the invitations
were personal. They were made sometimes by a “card” or “programme,”
sometimes by word of mouth: “Come and hear me lecture to-day.”[159]
Sometimes a messenger was sent round; sometimes the sophist would go
round himself and knock at people’s doors and promise them a fine
discourse.[160]
The audience of a travelling sophist was what might be expected among a
people who lived very much out of doors. When a stranger appeared who
was known by his professional dress, and whose reputation had preceded
him, the people clustered round him—like iron filings sticking to a
magnet, says Themistius.[161] If there was a resident sophist, the two
were pitted together; just as if, in modern times, a famous violinist
from Paris or Vienna might be asked to play at the next concert with the
leading violinist in London. It was a matter not only of professional
honour, but also of obligation. A man could not refuse. There is a story
in Plutarch[162] about a sophist named Niger who found himself in a town
in Galatia which had a resident professor. The resident made a discourse.
Niger had, unfortunately, a fish-bone in his throat and could not easily
speak; but he had either to speak or to lose his reputation: he spoke,
and an inflammation set in which killed him. There is a much longer story
in Philostratus[163] of Alexander Peloplato going to Athens to discourse
in a friendly contest with Herodes Atticus. The audience gathered
together in a theatre in the Ceramicus, and waited a long time for
Herodes to appear: when he did not come, they grew angry and thought that
it was a trick, and insisted on Alexander coming forward to discourse
before Herodes arrived. And when Herodes did arrive, Alexander suddenly
changed his style—sang tenor, so to speak, instead of bass—and Herodes
followed him, and there was a charming interchange of compliments: “We
sophists,” said Alexander, “are all of us only slices of you, Herodes.”
Sometimes they went to show their skill at one of the great festivals,
such as that of Olympia. Lucian[164] tells a story of one who had
plucked feathers from many orators to make a wonderful discourse
about Pythagoras. His object was to gain the glory of delivering it
as an extempore oration, and he arranged with a confederate that its
subject should be the subject selected for him by the audience. But
the imposture was too barefaced: some of the hearers amused themselves
by assigning the different passages to their several authors; and the
sophist himself at last joined in the universal laughter. And Dio
Chrysostom[165] draws a picture of a public place at Corinth during the
Isthmian games, which he alleges to be as true of the time of Diogenes as
of his own: “You might hear many poor wretches of sophists shouting and
abusing one another, and their disciples, as they call them, squabbling,
and many writers of books reading their stupid compositions, and many
poets singing their poems, and many jugglers exhibiting their marvels,
and many soothsayers giving the meaning of prodigies, and ten thousand
rhetoricians twisting law-suits, and no small number of traders driving
their several trades.”
Of the manner of the ordinary discourse there are many indications. It
was given sometimes in a private house, sometimes in a theatre, sometimes
in a regular lecture-room. The professor sometimes entered already robed
in his “pulpit-gown,” and sometimes put it on in the presence of his
audience. He mounted the steps to his professorial chair, and took his
seat upon its ample cushion.[166] He sometimes began with a preface,
sometimes he proceeded at once to his discourse. He often gave the
choice of a subject to his audience.[167] He was ready to discourse
on any theme; and it was part of his art either to force the choice of
a subject, or so to turn the subject as to bring in something which he
had already prepared. “His memory is incredible,” says Pliny of Isæus;
“he repeats by heart what he appears to say extempore; but he does not
falter even in a single word.”[168] “When your audience have chosen a
subject for you,” says Lucian,[169] in effect, in his satirical advice
to rhetoricians, “go straight at it and say without hesitation whatever
words come to your tongue, never minding about the first point coming
first and the second second: the great thing is to go right on and not
have any pauses. If you have to talk at Athens about adultery, bring in
the customs of the Hindoos and Persians: above all, have passages about
Marathon and Cynægirus—that is indispensable. And Athos must always be
turned into sea, and the Hellespont into dry land, and the sun must be
darkened by the clouds of Median arrows ... and Salamis and Artemisium
and Platæa, and so forth, must come in pretty frequently; and, above
all, those little Attic words I told you about must blossom on the
surface of your speech—ἅττα (_atta_) and δήπουθεν (_depouthen_)—must be
sprinkled about freely, whether they are wanted or not: for they are
pretty words, even when they do not mean anything.”
It was a disappointment if he was not interrupted by applause. “A
sophist is put out in an extempore speech,” says Philostratus,[170] “by
a serious-looking audience and tardy praise and no clapping.” “They are
all agape,” says Dio Chrysostom,[171] “for the murmur of the crowd ...
like men walking in the dark, they move always in the direction of the
clapping and the shouting.” “I want your praise,” said one of them to
Epictetus.[172] “What do you mean by my praise?” asked the philosopher.
“Oh, I want you to say Bravo! and Wonderful!” replied the sophist.
These were the common cries; others were not infrequent—“Divine!”
“Inspired!” “Unapproachable!”[173] They were accompanied by clapping
of the hands and stamping of the feet and waving of the arms. “If your
friends see you breaking down,” says Lucian in his satirical advice to
a rhetorician,[174] “let them pay the price of the suppers you give
them by stretching out their arms and giving you a chance of thinking
of something to say in the interval between the rounds of applause.”
Sometimes, of course, there were signs of disapproval. “It is the mark of
a good hearer,” says Plutarch,[175] “that he does not howl out like a dog
at everything of which he disapproves, but at any rate waits until the
end of the discourse.”
After the discourse, the professor would go round: “‘What did you think
of me to-day?’” says one in Epictetus.[176] “‘Upon my life, sir, I
thought you were admirable.’ ‘What did you think of my best passage?’
‘Which was that?’ ‘Where I described Pan and the Nymphs.’ ‘Oh, it
was excessively well done.’” Again, to quote another anecdote from
Epictetus:[177] “‘A much larger audience to-day, I think,’ says the
professor. ‘Yes: much larger.’ ‘Five hundred, I should guess.’ ‘Oh,
nonsense; it could not have been less than a thousand.’ ‘Why that is more
than Dio ever had: I wonder why it was: they appreciated what I said,
too.’ ‘Beauty, sir, can move even a stone.’”
They made both money and reputation. The more eminent of them were among
the most distinguished men of the time. They were the pets of society,
and sometimes its masters.[178] They were employed on affairs of state
at home and on embassies abroad.[179] They were sometimes placed on
the free list of their city, and lived at the public expense. They
were sometimes made senators—raised, as we might say, to the House of
Lords—and sometimes governors of provinces.[180] When they died, and
sometimes before their death, public statues were erected in their
honour.[181] The inscriptions of some of them are recorded by historians,
and some remain: “The Queen of Cities to the King of Eloquence,” was
inscribed on the statue of Prohæresius at Rome.[182] “One of the Seven
Wise Men, though he had not fulfilled twenty-five years,” is inscribed
on an existing base of a statue at Attaleia;[183] and, beneath a
representation of crowning, the words, “He subjects all things to
eloquence,” are found on a similar base at Parion.[184]
They naturally sometimes gave themselves great airs. There are many
stories about them. Philostratus tells one of the Emperor Antoninus Pius
on arriving at Smyrna going, in accordance with imperial custom, to spend
the night at the house which was at once the best house in the city and
the house of the most distinguished man. It was that of the sophist
Polemo, who happened on the Emperor’s arrival to be away from home;
but he returned from his journey at night, and with loud exclamations
against being kept out of his own, turned the Emperor out of doors.[185]
The common epithet for them is ἀλαζών—a word with no precise English
equivalent, denoting a cross between a braggart and a mountebank.
But the real grounds on which the more earnest men objected to them were
those upon which Plato had objected to their predecessors: their making a
trade of knowledge, and their unreality.
1. The making of discourses, whether literary or moral, was a thriving
trade.[186] The fees given to a leading sophist were on the scale of
those given to a _prima donna_ in our own day.[187] But the objection
to it was not so much the fact of its thriving, as the fact of its being
a trade at all. “If they do what they do,” says Dio Chrysostom,[188]
“as poets and rhetoricians, there is no harm perhaps; but if they do it
as philosophers, for the sake of their own personal gain and glory, and
not for the sake of benefiting you, there is harm.” The defence which
Themistius[189] makes for himself is more candid than effective: “I do
make money,” he says; “people give me sometimes one _mina_, sometimes
two, sometimes as much as a talent: but, since I must speak about myself,
let me ask you this—Did any one ever come away the worse for having heard
me? Mark, I charge nothing: it is a voluntary contribution.”
2. The stronger ground of objection to them was their unreality. They
had lost touch with life. They had made philosophy itself seem unreal.
“They are not philosophers, but fiddlers,” said the sturdy old Stoic
Musonius.[190] It is not necessary to suppose that they were all
charlatans. There was then, as now, the irrepressible young man of good
morals who wished to air his opinions. But the tendency to moralize had
become divorced from practice. They preached, not because they were in
grim earnest about the reformation of the world, but because preaching
was a respectable profession, and the listening to sermons a fashionable
diversion. “The mass of men,” says Plutarch,[191] “enjoy and admire a
philosopher when he is discoursing about their neighbours; but if the
philosopher, leaving their neighbours alone, speaks his mind about things
that are of importance to the men themselves, they take offence and vote
him a bore; for they think that they ought to listen to a philosopher in
his lecture-room in the same bland way that they listen to tragedians
in the theatre. This, as might be expected, is what happens to them in
regard to the sophists; for when a sophist gets down from his pulpit and
puts aside his MSS., in the real business of life he seems but a small
man, and under the thumb of the majority. They do not understand about
real philosophers that both seriousness and play, grim looks and smiles,
and above all the direct personal application of what they say to each
individual, have a useful result for those who are in the habit of giving
a patient attention to them.”
* * * * *
Against this whole system of veneering rhetoric with philosophy, there
was a strong reaction. Apart from the early Christian writers, with whom
“sophist” is always a word of scorn, there were men, especially among
the new school of Stoics, who were at open war with its unreality.[192]
I will ask you to listen to the expostulation which the great moral
reformer Epictetus addresses to a rhetorician who came to him:
“First of all, tell yourself what you want to be and then act
accordingly. For this is what we see done in almost all other
cases. Men who are practising for the games first of all decide
what they mean to be, and then proceed to do the things that
follow from their decision.... So then when you say, Come
and listen to my lecture, first of all consider whether your
action be not thrown away for want of an end, and then consider
whether it be not a mistake, on account of your real end being
a wrong one. Suppose I ask a man, ‘Do you wish to do good by
your expounding, or to gain applause?’ Thereupon straightway
you hear him saying, ‘What do I care for the applause of the
multitude?’ And his sentiment is right: for in the same way,
applause is nothing to the musician _quâ_ musician, or to the
geometrician _quâ_ geometrician.
“You wish to do good, then,” I continue; “in what particular
respect? tell me, that I too may hasten to your lecture-room.
But can a man impart good to others without having previously
received good himself?
“No: just as a man is of no use to us in the way of
carpentering unless he is himself a carpenter.
“Would you like to know, then, whether you have received good
yourself? Bring me your convictions, philosopher. (Let us take
an example.) Did you not the other day praise so-and-so more
than you really thought he deserved? Did you not flatter that
senator’s son?—and yet you would not like your own sons to be
like him, would you?
“God forbid!
“Then why did you flatter him and toady to him?
“He is a clever young fellow, and a good student.
“How do you know that?
“He admires my lectures.
“Yes; that is the real reason. But don’t you think that
these very people despise you in their secret hearts? I mean
that when a man who is conscious that he has neither done
nor thought any single good thing, finds a philosopher who
tells him that he is a man of great ability, sincerity, and
genuineness, of course he says to himself, ‘This man wants to
get something out of me!’ Or (if this is not the case with
you), tell me what proof he has given of great ability. No
doubt he has attended you for a considerable time: he has heard
you discoursing and expounding: but has he become more modest
in his estimate of himself—or is he still looking for some one
to teach him?
“Yes, he is looking for some one to teach him.
“To teach him how to live? No, fool; not how to live, but how
to talk: which also is the reason why he admires you....
“[The truth is, you like applause: you care more for that than
for doing good, and so you invite people to come and hear you.]
“But does a _philosopher_ invite people to come and hear him?
Is it not that as the sun, or as food, is its own sufficient
attraction, so the philosopher also is his own sufficient
attraction to those who are to be benefited by him? Does a
physician invite people to come and let him heal them?...
(Imagine what a genuine philosopher’s invitation would be)—‘I
invite you to come and be told that you are in a bad way—that
you care for everything except what you should care for—that
you do not know what things are good and what evil—and that
you are unhappy and unfortunate.’ A nice invitation! and yet
if that is not the result of what a philosopher says, he and
his words alike are dead. (Musonius) Rufus used to say, ‘If
you have leisure to praise me, my teaching has been in vain.’
Accordingly he used to talk in such a way that each individual
one of us who sat there thought that some one had been telling
Rufus about him: he so put his finger upon what we had done, he
so set the individual faults of each one of us clearly before
our eyes.
“The philosopher’s lecture-room, gentlemen, is a surgery: when
you go away you ought to have felt not pleasure but pain. For
when you come in, something is wrong with you: one man has put
his shoulder out, another has an abscess, another a headache.
Am I—the surgeon—then, to sit down and give you a string of
fine sentences, that you may praise me—and then go away—the man
with the dislocated arm, the man with the abscess, the man with
the headache—just as you came? Is it for this that young men
come away from home, and leave their parents and their kinsmen
and their property, to say ‘Bravo!’ to you for your fine moral
conclusions? Is this what Socrates did—or Zeno—or Cleanthes?
“Well, but is there no such class of speeches as exhortations?
“Who denies it? But in what do exhortations consist? In
being able to show, whether to one man or to many men, the
contradiction in which they are involved, and that their
thoughts are given to anything but what they really mean.
For they mean to give them to the things that really tend
to happiness, but they look for those things elsewhere than
where they really are. (That is the true aim of exhortation):
but to show this, is it necessary to place a thousand chairs,
and invite people to come and listen, and dress yourself up
in a fine gown, and ascend the pulpit—and describe the death
of Achilles? Cease, I implore you, from bringing dishonour,
as far as you can, upon noble words and deeds. There can
be no stronger exhortation to duty, I suppose, than for a
speaker to make it clear to his audience that he wants to get
something out of them! Tell me who, after hearing you lecture
or discourse, became anxious about or reflected upon himself?
or who, as he went out of the room, said, ‘The philosopher put
his finger upon my faults: I must not behave in that way again’?
“You cannot: the utmost praise you get is when a man says to
another, ‘That was a beautiful passage about Xerxes,’ and
the other says, ‘No, I liked best that about the battle of
Thermopylæ.’
“This is a philosopher’s sermon!”[193]
I have dwelt on this feature of the Greek life of the early Christian
centuries, not with the view of giving a complete picture of it, which
would be impossible within the compass of a lecture, but rather with the
view of establishing a presumption, which you will find amply justified
by further researches, that it was sufficient, not only in its quality
and complexity, but also in its mass, to account for certain features of
early Christianity.
In passing from Greek life to Christianity, I will ask you, in the
first instance, to note the broad distinction which exists between what
in the primitive churches was known as “prophesying,” and that which
in subsequent times came to be known as “preaching.” I lay the more
stress upon the distinction for the accidental reason that, in the first
reaction against the idea that “prophecy” necessarily meant “prediction,”
it was maintained—and with a certain reservation the contention was
true—that a “prophet” meant a “preacher.” The reservation is, that
the prophet was not merely a preacher but a spontaneous preacher. He
preached because he could not help it, because there was a divine breath
breathing within him which must needs find an utterance. It is in this
sense that the prophets of the early churches were preachers. They were
not church officers appointed to discharge certain functions. They were
the possessors of a _charisma_, a divine gift which was not official but
personal. “No prophecy ever came by the will of man; but men spake from
God, being moved by the Holy Ghost.” They did not practise beforehand how
or what they should say; for “the Holy Ghost taught them in that very
hour what they should say.” Their language was often, from the point of
view of the rhetorical schools, a barbarous patois. They were ignorant
of the rules both of style and of dialectic. They paid no heed to
refinements of expression. The greatest preacher of them all claimed to
have come among his converts, in a city in which Rhetoric flourished, not
with the persuasiveness of human logic, but with the demonstration which
was afforded by spiritual power.
Of that “prophesying” of the primitive churches it is not certain that
we possess any monument. The Second Epistle of Peter and the Epistle of
Jude are perhaps representatives of it among the canonical books of the
New Testament. The work known as the Second Epistle of Clement is perhaps
a representative of the form which it took in the middle of the second
century; but though it is inspired by a genuine enthusiasm, it is rather
more artistic in its form than a purely prophetic utterance is likely to
have been.
In the course of the second century, this original spontaneity of
utterance died almost entirely away. It may almost be said to have died a
violent death. The dominant parties in the Church set their faces against
it. The survivals of it in Asia Minor were formally condemned. The
Montanists, as they were called, who tried to fan the lingering sparks of
it into a flame, are ranked among heretics. And Tertullian is not even
now admitted into the calendar of the Saints, because he believed the
Montanists to be in the right.
It was inevitable that it should be so. The growth of a confederation
of Christian communities necessitated the definition of a basis of
confederation. Such a definition, and the further necessity of guarding
it, were inconsistent with that free utterance of the Spirit which
had existed before the confederation began. Prophesying died when the
Catholic Church was formed.
In place of prophesying came preaching. And preaching is the result
of the gradual combination of different elements. In the formation of
a great institution it is inevitable that, as time goes on, different
elements should tend to unite. To the original functions of a bishop,
for example, were added by degrees the functions—which had originally
been separate—of teacher.[194] In a similar way were fused together, on
the one hand, teaching—that is, the tradition and exposition of the
sacred books and of the received doctrine; and, on the other hand,
exhortation—that is, the endeavour to raise men to a higher level of
moral and spiritual life. Each of these was a function which, assuming
a certain natural aptitude, could be learned by practice. Each of them
was consequently a function which might be discharged by the permanent
officers of the community, and discharged habitually at regular intervals
without waiting for the fitful flashes of the prophetic fire. We
consequently find that with the growth of organization there grew up
also, not only a fusion of teaching and exhortation, but also the gradual
restriction of the liberty of addressing the community to the official
class.
It was this fusion of teaching and exhortation that constituted the
essence of the homily: its form came from the sophists. For it was
natural that when addresses, whether expository or hortatory, came to
prevail in the Christian communities, they should be affected by the
similar addresses which filled a large place in contemporary Greek life.
It was not only natural but inevitable that when men who had been trained
in rhetorical methods came to make such addresses, they should follow
the methods to which they were accustomed. It is probable that Origen
is not only the earliest example whose writings have come down to us,
but also one of the earliest who took into the Christian communities
these methods of the schools. He lectured, as the contemporary teachers
seem to have lectured, every day: his subject-matter was the text of the
Scriptures, as that of the rhetoricians and sophists by his side was
Homer or Chrysippus: his addresses, like those of the best professors,
were carefully prepared: he was sixty years of age, we are told, before
he preached an extempore sermon.[195]
When the Christian communities emerge into the clearer light of the
fourth century, the influence of the rhetorical schools upon them begins
to be visible on a large scale and with permanent effects. The voice of
the prophet had ceased, and the voice of the preacher had begun. The
greatest Christian preachers of the fourth century had been trained to
rhetorical methods, and had themselves taught rhetoric. Basil and Gregory
Nazianzen studied at Athens under the famous professors Himerius and
Prohæresius: Chrysostom studied under the still more famous Libanius,
who on his death-bed said of him that he would have been his worthiest
successor “if the Christians had not stolen him.”[196] The discourses
came to be called by the same names as those of the Greek professors.
They had originally been called _homilies_—a word which was unknown
in this sense in pre-Christian times, and which denoted the familiar
intercourse and direct personal addresses of common life. They came to be
called by the technical terms of the schools—discourses, disputations,
or speeches.[197] The distinction between the two kinds of terms is
clearly shown by a later writer, who, speaking of a particular volume
of Chrysostom’s addresses, says, “They are called ‘speeches’ (λόγοι),
but they are more like homilies, for this reason, above others, that he
again and again addresses his hearers as actually present before his
eyes.”[198] The form of the discourses tended to be the same: if you
examine side by side a discourse of Himerius or Themistius or Libanius,
and one of Basil or Chrysostom or Ambrose, you will find a similar
artificiality of structure, and a similar elaboration of phraseology.
They were delivered under analogous circumstances. The preacher sat in
his official chair: it was an exceptional thing for him to ascend the
reader’s _ambo_, the modern “pulpit:”[199] the audience crowded in front
of him, and frequently interrupted him with shouts of acclamation. The
greater preachers tried to stem the tide of applause which surged round
them: again and again Chrysostom begs his hearers to be silent: what
he wants is, not their acclamations, but the fruits of his preaching
in their lives.[200] There is one passage which not only illustrates
this point, but also affords a singular analogy to the remonstrance of
Epictetus which was quoted just now:
“There are many preachers who make long sermons: if they are
well applauded, they are as glad as if they had obtained a
kingdom: if they bring their sermon to an end in silence,
their despondency is worse, I may almost say, than hell. It is
this that ruins churches, that you do not seek to hear sermons
that touch the heart, but sermons that will delight your ears
with their intonation and the structure of their phrases, just
as if you were listening to singers and lute-players. And we
preachers humour your fancies, instead of trying to crush them.
We act like a father who gives a sick child a cake or an ice,
or something else that is merely nice to eat—just because he
asks for it; and takes no pains to give him what is good for
him; and then when the doctors blame him says, ‘I could not
bear to hear my child cry.’.... That is what we do when we
elaborate beautiful sentences, fine combinations and harmonies,
to please and not to profit, to be admired and not to instruct,
to delight and not to touch you, to go away with your applause
in our ears, and not to better your conduct. Believe me, I
am not speaking at random: when you applaud me as I speak, I
feel at the moment as it is natural for a man to feel. I will
make a clean breast of it. Why should I not? I am delighted
and overjoyed. And then when I go home and reflect that the
people who have been applauding me have received no benefit,
and indeed that whatever benefit they might have had has been
killed by the applause and praises, I am sore at heart, and I
lament and fall to tears, and I feel as though I had spoken
altogether in vain, and I say to myself, What is the good of
all your labours, seeing that your hearers don’t want to reap
any fruit out of all that you say? And I have often thought of
laying down a rule absolutely prohibiting all applause, and
urging you to listen in silence.”[201]
And there is a passage near the end of Gregory Nazianzen’s greatest
sermon, in which the human nature of which Chrysostom speaks bursts forth
with striking force: after the famous peroration in which after bidding
farewell one by one to the church and congregation which he loved, to the
several companies of his fellow-workers, and to the multitudes who had
thronged to hear him preach, he turns to the court and his opponents the
Arian courtiers—
“Farewell, princes and palaces, the royal court and
household—whether ye be faithful to the king I know not, ye
are nearly all of you unfaithful to God.” (There was evidently
a burst of applause, and he interrupts his peroration with an
impromptu address.) “Yes—clap your hands, shout aloud, exalt
your orator to heaven: your malicious and chattering tongue has
ceased: it will not cease for long: it will fight (though I am
absent) with writing and ink: but just for the moment we are
silent.” (Then the peroration is resumed.) “Farewell, O great
and Christian city....”[202]
I will add only one more instance of the way in which the habits of
the sophists flowed into the Christian churches. Christian preachers,
like the sophists, were sometimes peripatetic; they went from place to
place, delivering their orations and making money by delivering them.
The historians Socrates and Sozomen[203] tell an instructive story of
two Syrian bishops, Severianus of Gabala and Antiochus of Ptolemais
(St. Jean d’Acre). They were both famous for their rhetoric, though
Severianus could not quite get rid of his Syrian accent. Antiochus went
to Constantinople, and stayed there a long time, preaching frequently
in the churches, and making a good deal of money thereby. On his return
to Syria, Severianus, hearing about the money, resolved to follow his
example: he waited for some time, exercised his rhetoric, got together a
large stock of sermons, and then went to Constantinople. He was kindly
received by the bishop, and soon became both a great popular preacher and
a favourite at court. The fate of many preachers and court favourites
overtook him: he excited great jealousy, was accused of heresy and
banished from the city; and only by the personal intercession of the
Empress Eudoxia was he received back again into ecclesiastical favour.
* * * * *
Such are some of the indications of the influence of Greek Rhetoric
upon the early churches. It created the Christian sermon. It added to
the functions of church officers a function which is neither that of
the exercise of discipline, nor of administration of the funds, nor
of taking the lead in public worship, nor of the simple tradition of
received truths, but that of either such an exegesis of the sacred books
as the Sophists gave of Homer, or such elaborated discourses as they
also gave upon the speculative and ethical aspects of religion. The
result was more far-reaching than the creation of either an institution
or a function. If you look more closely into history, you will find that
Rhetoric killed Philosophy. Philosophy died, because for all but a small
minority it ceased to be real. It passed from the sphere of thought and
conduct to that of exposition and literature. Its preachers preached,
not because they were bursting with truths which could not help finding
expression, but because they were masters of fine phrases and lived in
an age in which fine phrases had a value. It died, in short, because it
had become sophistry. But sophistry is of no special age or country. It
is indigenous to all soils upon which literature grows. No sooner is
any special form of literature created by the genius of a great writer
than there arises a class of men who cultivate the style of it for the
style’s sake. No sooner is any new impulse given either to philosophy or
to religion than there arises a class of men who copy the form without
the substance, and try to make the echo of the past sound like the voice
of the present. So it has been with Christianity. It came into the
educated world in the simple dress of a Prophet of Righteousness. It won
that world by the stern reality of its life, by the subtle bonds of its
brotherhood, by its divine message of consolation and of hope. Around
it thronged the race of eloquent talkers who persuaded it to change its
dress and to assimilate its language to their own. It seemed thereby
to win a speedier and completer victory. But it purchased conquest at
the price of reality. With that its progress stopped. There has been an
element of sophistry in it ever since; and so far as in any age that
element has been dominant, so far has the progress of Christianity been
arrested. Its progress is arrested now, because many of its preachers
live in an unreal world. The truths they set forth are truths of
utterance rather than truths of their lives. But if Christianity is to
be again the power that it was in its earliest ages, it must renounce
its costly purchase. A class of rhetorical chemists would be thought of
only to be ridiculed: a class of rhetorical religionists is only less
anomalous because we are accustomed to it. The hope of Christianity is,
that the class which was artificially created may ultimately disappear;
and that the sophistical element in Christian preaching will melt, as a
transient mist, before the preaching of the prophets of the ages to come,
who, like the prophets of the ages that are long gone by, will speak only
“as the Spirit gives them utterance.”
LECTURE V.
CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
The power of generalizing and of forming abstract ideas exists, or at
least is exercised, in varying degrees among different races and at
different times. The peculiar feature of the intellectual history of
the Greeks is the rapidity with which the power was developed, and the
strength of the grasp which it had upon them.
The elaboration of one class of such ideas, those of form and quantity,
led to the formation of a group of sciences, the mathematical sciences,
which hold a permanent place. The earliest and most typical of these
sciences is geometry. In it, the attention is drawn away from all the
other characteristics of material things, and fixed upon the single
characteristic of their form. The forms are regarded in themselves. The
process of abstraction or analysis reaches its limit in the point, and
from that limit the mind, making a new departure, begins the process of
construction or synthesis. Complex ideas are formed by the addition of
one simple idea to another, and having been so formed can be precisely
defined. Their constituent elements can be distinctly stated, and a clear
boundary drawn round the whole. They can be so marked off from other
ideas that the idea which one man has formed can be communicated to and
represented in another man’s mind. The inferences which, assuming certain
“axioms” to be true and certain “postulates” to be granted, are made by
one man, are accepted by another man or at once disproved. There is no
question of mere probability, nor any halting between two opinions. The
inferences are not only true but certain.
The result is, that there are not two sciences of geometry, but one: all
who study it are agreed as to both its definitions and its inferences.
The elaboration of another class of abstract ideas, those of quality,
marched at first by a parallel road. To a limited extent such a parallel
march is possible. The words which are used to express sensible
qualities suggest the same ideas to different minds. They are applied by
different minds to the same objects. But the limits of such an agreement
are narrow. When we pass from the abstract ideas of qualities, or
generalizations as to substances, which can be tested by the senses, to
such ideas as those, for example, of courage or justice, law or duty,
though the words suggest, on the whole, the same ideas to one man as to
another, not all men would uniformly apply the same words to the same
actions. The phenomena which suggest such ideas assume a different form
and colour as they are regarded from different points of view. They enter
into different combinations. They are not sharply marked out by lines
which would be universally recognized. The attention of different men
is arrested by different features. There is consequently no universally
recognized definition of them. Nor is such a definition possible. The
ideas themselves tend to shade off into their contraries. There is a
fringe of haze round each of them. The result is that assertions about
them vary. There is not one system of philosophy only; there are many.
* * * * *
Between these two classes of generalizations and abstractions, those
of quantity and those of quality or substance, many Greek thinkers do
not appear to have made any clear distinction. Ideas of each class
were regarded as equally capable of being defined; the canons of
inference which were applicable to the one were conceived to be equally
applicable to the other: and the certainty of inference and exactness
of demonstration which were possible in regard to the ideal forms of
geometry, were supposed to be also possible in regard to the conceptions
of metaphysics and ethics.[204]
The habit of making definitions, and of drawing deductions from them,
was fostered by the habit of discussion. Discussion under the name of
dialectic, which implies that it was but a regulated conversation, had
a large place, not only in the rhetorical and philosophical schools, but
also in ordinary Greek life. It was like a game of cards. The game, so
to speak, was conducted under strict and recognized rules; but it could
not proceed unless each card had a determined and admitted value. The
definition of terms was its necessary preliminary; and dialectic helped
to spread the habit of requiring definitions over a wider area and to
give it a deeper root.
There was less divergence in the definitions themselves than there was
in the propositions that were deduced from them. That is to say, there
was a verbal agreement as to definitions which was not a real agreement
of ideas: the same words were found on examination to cover different
areas of thought. But whether the difference lay in the definitions
themselves or in the deductions made from them, there was nothing to
determine which of two contrary or contradictory propositions was true.
There was no universally recognized standard of appeal, or _criterion_,
as it was termed. Indeed, the question of the nature of the criterion
was one of the chief questions at issue. Consequently, assertions about
abstract ideas and wide generalizations could only be regarded as the
affirmations of a personal conviction. The making of such an affirmation
was expressed by the same phrase which was used for a resolution of
the will—“It seems to me,” or “It seems (good) to me” (δοκεῖ μοι): the
affirmation itself, by the corresponding substantive, _dogma_ (δόγμα).
But just as the resolutions of the will of a monarch were obeyed by his
subjects, that is, were adopted as resolutions of the will of other
persons, so the affirmations of a thinker might be assented to by those
who listened to him, that is, might become affirmations of other persons.
In the one case as in the other, the same word _dogma_ was employed.[205]
It thus came to express (1) a decree, (2) a doctrine. The latter use
tended to predominate. The word came ordinarily to express an affirmation
made by a philosopher which was accepted as true by those who, from the
fact of so accepting it, became his followers and formed his school.
The acquiescence of a large number of men in the same affirmation gave
to such an affirmation a high degree of probability; but it did not
cause it to lose its original character of a personal conviction, nor
did it afford any guarantee that the coincidence of expression was also
a coincidence of ideas either between the original thinker and his
disciples, or between the disciples themselves.[206]
Within these limits of its original and proper use, and as expressing a
fact of mind, the word has an indisputable value. But the fact of the
personal character of a _dogma_ soon became lost to sight. Two tendencies
which grew with a parallel growth dominated the world in place of the
recognition of it. It came to be assumed that certain convictions of
certain philosophers were not simply true in relation to the philosophers
themselves, and to the state of knowledge in their time, but had a
universal validity: subjective and temporary convictions were thus
elevated to the rank of objective and eternal truths. It came also to
be assumed that the processes of reason so closely followed the order
of nature, that a system of ideas constructed in strict accordance with
the laws of reasoning corresponded exactly with the realities of things.
The unity of such a system reflected, it was thought, the unity of the
world of objective fact. It followed that the truth or untruth of a given
proposition was thought to be determined by its logical consistency or
inconsistency with the sum of previous inferences.
These tendencies were strongly accentuated by the decay of original
thinking. Philosophy in later Greece was less thought than literature.
It was the exegesis of received doctrines. Philosophers had become
professors. The question of what was in itself true had become entangled
with the question of what the Master had said. The moral duty of
adherence to the traditions of a school was stronger than the moral
duty of finding the truth at all hazards. The literary expression
of a doctrine came to be more important than the doctrine itself.
The differences of expression between one thinker and another were
exaggerated. Words became fetishes. Outside the schools were those who
were littérateurs rather than philosophers, and who fused different
elements together into systems which had a greater unity of literary
form than of logical coherence. But these very facts of the literary
character of philosophy, and of the contradictions in the expositions of
it, served to spread it over a wider area. They tended on the one hand to
bring a literary acquaintance with philosophy into the sphere of general
education, and on the other hand to produce a propaganda. Sect rivalled
sect in trying to win scholars for its school. The result was that the
ordinary life of later Greece was saturated with philosophical ideas, and
that the discordant theories of rival schools were blended together in
the average mind into a syncretistic dogmatism.
Against this whole group of tendencies there was more than one reaction.
The tendency to dogmatize was met by the tendency to doubt; and the
tendency to doubt flowed in many streams, which can with difficulty
be traced in minute detail, but whose general course is sufficiently
described for the ordinary student in the _Academics_ of Cicero. In the
second and third centuries of our era there had come to be three main
groups of schools. “Some men,” writes Sextus Empiricus,[207] “say that
they have found the truth; some say that it is impossible for truth to
be apprehended; some still search for it. The first class consists of
those who are specially designated Dogmatics, the followers of Aristotle
and Epicurus, the Stoics, and some others: the second class consists of
the followers of Clitomachus and Carneades, and other Academics: the
third class consists of the Sceptics.” They may be distinguished as the
philosophy of assertion, the philosophy of denial, and the philosophy of
research.[208] But the first of these was in an overwhelming majority.
The Dogmatics, especially in the form either of pure Stoicism or of
Stoicism largely infused with Platonism, were in possession of the field
of educated thought. It is a convincing proof of the completeness with
which that thought was saturated with their methods and their fundamental
conceptions, that those methods and conceptions are found even among
the philosophers of research who claimed to have wholly disentangled
themselves from them.[209]
* * * * *
The philosophy of assertion, the philosophy of denial, and the philosophy
of research, were all alike outside the earliest forms of Christianity.
In those forms the moral and spiritual elements were not only supreme
but exclusive. They reflected the philosophy, not of Greece, but of
Palestine. That philosophy was almost entirely ethical. It dealt with
the problems, not of being in the abstract, but of human life. It was
stated for the most part in short antithetical sentences, with a symbol
or parable to enforce them. It was a philosophy of proverbs. It had no
eye for the minute anatomy of thought. It had no system, for the sense of
system was not yet awakened. It had no taste for verbal distinctions. It
was content with the symmetry of balanced sentences, without attempting
to construct a perfect whole. It reflected as in a mirror, and not
unconsciously, the difficulties, the contradictions, the unsolved enigmas
of the world of fact.
When this Palestinian philosophy became more self-conscious than it had
been, it remained still within its own sphere, the enigmas of the moral
world were still its subject-matter, and it became in the Fathers of the
Talmud on the one hand fatalism, and on the other casuistry.
The earliest forms of Christianity were not only outside the sphere of
Greek philosophy, but they also appealed, on the one hand, mainly to
the classes which philosophy did not reach, and, on the other hand, to
a standard which philosophy did not recognize. “Not many wise men after
the flesh” were called in St. Paul’s time: and more than a century
afterwards, Celsus sarcastically declared the law of admission to the
Christian communities to be—“Let no educated man enter, no wise man,
no prudent man, for such things we deem evil; but whoever is ignorant,
whoever is unintelligent, whoever is uneducated, whoever is simple,
let him come and be welcome.”[210] It proclaimed, moreover, that “the
philosophy of the world was foolishness with God.” It appealed to
prophecy and to testimony. “Instead of logical demonstration, it produced
living witnesses of the words and wonderful doings of Jesus Christ.” The
philosophers from the point of view of “worldly education” made sport of
it: Celsus[211] declared that the Christian teachers were no better than
the priests of Mithra or of Hekaté, leading men wherever they willed with
the maxims of a blind belief.
* * * * *
It is therefore the more remarkable that within a century and a half
after Christianity and philosophy first came into close contact,
the ideas and methods of philosophy had flowed in such mass into
Christianity, and filled so large a place in it, as to have made it no
less a philosophy than a religion.
The question which arises, and which should properly be discussed before
the influences of particular ideas are traced in particular doctrines,
is, how this result is to be accounted for as a whole. The answer must
explain both how Christianity and philosophy came into contact, and how
when in contact the one exercised upon the other the influence of a
moulding force.
The explanation is to be found in the fact that, in spite of the apparent
and superficial antagonism, between certain leading ideas of current
philosophy and the leading ideas of Christianity there was a special and
real kinship. Christianity gave to the problems of philosophy a new
solution which was cognate to the old, and to its doubts the certainty
of a revelation. The kinship of ideas is admitted, and explanations of
it are offered by both Christian writers and their opponents. “We teach
the same as the Greeks,” says Justin Martyr,[212] “though we alone are
hated for what we teach.” “Some of our number,” says Tertullian,[213]
“who are versed in ancient literature, have composed books by means
of which it may be clearly seen that we have embraced nothing new or
monstrous, nothing in which we have not the support of common and public
literature.” Elsewhere[214] the same writer founds an argument for the
toleration of Christianity on the fact that its opponents maintained it
to be but a kind of philosophy, teaching the very same doctrines as the
philosophers—innocence, justice, endurance, soberness, and chastity: he
claims on that ground the same liberty for Christians which was enjoyed
by philosophers.
The general recognition of this kinship of ideas is even more
conclusively shown by the fact that explanations of it were offered on
both the one side and the other.
(_a_) It was argued by some Christian apologists that the best doctrines
of philosophy were due to the inworking in the world of the same Divine
Word who had become incarnate in Jesus Christ. “The teachings of Plato,”
says Justin Martyr,[215] “are not alien to those of Christ, though not in
all respects similar.... For all the writers (of antiquity) were able
to have a dim vision of realities by means of the indwelling seed of the
implanted Word.” It was argued by others that philosophers had borrowed
or “stolen” their doctrines from the Scriptures. “From the divine
preachings of the prophets,” says Minucius Felix,[216] “they imitated the
shadow of half-truths.” “What poet or sophist,” says Tertullian,[217]
“has not drunk at the fountain of the prophets? From thence it is,
therefore, that philosophers have quenched the thirst of their minds, so
that it is the very things which they have of ours which bring us into
comparison with them.” “They have borrowed from our books,” says Clement
of Alexandria,[218] “the chief doctrines they hold, both on faith and
knowledge and science, on hope and love, on repentance and temperance
and the fear of God:” and he goes in detail through many doctrines,
speculative as well as ethical, either to show that they were borrowed
from revelation, or to uphold the truer thesis that philosophy was no
less the schoolmaster of the Greeks than the Law was of the Jews to bring
them to Christ.
(_b_) It was argued, on the other hand, by the opponents of Christianity
that it was a mere mimicry of philosophy or a blurred copy of it. “They
weave a web of misunderstandings of the old doctrine,” says Celsus,[219]
“and sound them forth with a loud trumpet before men, like hierophants
booming round those who are being initiated in mysteries.” Christianity
was but a misunderstood Platonism. Whatever in it was true had been
better expressed before.[220] Even the striking and distinctive saying
of the Sermon on the Mount, “Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right
cheek, turn to him the other also,” was but a coarser and more homely way
of saying what had been extremely well said by Plato’s Socrates.[221]
* * * * *
It was through this kinship of ideas that Christianity was readily
absorbed by some of the higher natures in the Greek world. The two
classes of ideas probably came into contact in philosophical Judaism.
For it is clear on the one hand that the Jews of the dispersion had a
literature, and on the other hand that that literature was clothing
itself in Greek forms and attracting the attention of the Greek world.
Some of that literature was philosophical. In the Sibylline verses, the
poem of Phocylides, and the letters of Heraclitus, there is a blending of
theology and ethics: in some of the writings which are ascribed to Philo,
but which in reality bridge the interval between Philo and the Christian
Fathers, there is a blending of theology and metaphysics. None of them
are “very far from the kingdom of God.” The hypothesis that they paved
the way for Christian philosophy is confirmed by the fact that in the
first articulate expressions of that philosophy precisely those elements
are dominant which were dominant in Jewish philosophy. Two such elements
may specially be mentioned: (1) the allegorical method of interpretation
which was common to both Jews and Greeks, and by means of which both the
Gnostics who were without, and the Alexandrians who were within, the pale
of the associated communities, were able to find their philosophy in the
Old Testament as well as in the New; (2) the cosmological speculations,
which occupied only a small space in the thoughts of earlier Greek
thinkers, but which were already widening to a larger circle on the
surface of Greek philosophy, and which became so prominent in the first
Christian philosophies as to have thrust aside almost all other elements
in the current representations of them.
* * * * *
The Christian philosophy which thus rose out of philosophical Judaism
was partly apologetic and partly speculative. The apologetic part of
it arose from the necessity of defence. The educated world tended to
scout Christianity when it was first presented to them, as an immoral
and barbarous atheism. It was necessary to show that it was neither the
one nor the other. The defence naturally fell into the hands of those
Christians who were versed in Greek methods; and they not less naturally
sought for points of agreement rather than of difference, and presented
Christian truths in a Greek form. The speculative part of it arose from
some of its elements having found an especial affinity with some of the
new developments of Pythagoreanism and Platonism. Inside the original
communities were men who began to build great edifices of speculation
upon the narrow basis of one or other of the pinnacles of the Christian
temple; and outside those communities were men who began to coalesce into
communities which had the same moral aims as the original communities,
and which appealed in the main to the same authorities, but in which
the simpler forms of worship were elaborated into a thaumaturgic ritual,
and the solid facts of Scripture history evaporated into mist. They were
linked on the one hand with the cults of the Greek mysteries, and on the
other with philosophical idealism. The tendency to conceive of abstract
ideas as substances, with form and real existence, received in them its
extreme development. Wisdom and vice, silence and desire, were real
beings: they were not, as they had been to earlier thinkers, mere thin
vapours which had floated upwards from the world of sensible existences,
and hung like clouds in an uncertain twilight. The real world was indeed
not the world of sensible existences, of thoughts and utterances about
sensible things, but a world in which sensible existences were the
shadows and not the substance, the waves and not the sea.[222]
* * * * *
It was natural that those who held to the earlier forms of Christianity
should take alarm. “I am not unaware,” says Clement of Alexandria, in
setting forth the design of his _Stromateis_,[223] “of what is dinned
in our ears by the ignorant timidity of those who tell us that we
ought to occupy ourselves with the most necessary matters, those in
which the Faith consists: and that we should pass by the superfluous
matters that lie outside them, which vex and detain us in vain over
points that contribute nothing to the end in view. There are others
who think that philosophy will prove to have been introduced into life
from an evil source, at the hands of a mischievous inventor, for the
ruin of men.” “The simpler-minded,” says Tertullian,[224] “not to say
ignorant and unlearned men, who always form the majority of believers,
are frightened at the Economy” [the philosophical explanation of the
doctrine of the Trinity]. “These men,” says a contemporary writer,[225]
of some of the early philosophical schools at Rome, “have fearlessly
perverted the divine Scriptures, and set aside the rule of the ancient
faith, and have not known Christ, seeking as they do, not what the divine
Scriptures say, but what form of syllogism may be found to support their
godlessness; and if one advances any express statement of the divine
Scripture, they try to find out whether it can form a conjunctive or a
disjunctive hypothetical. And having deserted the holy Scriptures of God,
they study geometry, being of the earth and speaking of the earth, and
ignoring Him who comes from above. Some of them, at any rate, give their
minds to Euclid: some of them are admiring disciples of Aristotle and
Theophrastus: as for Galen, some of them go so far as actually to worship
him.”
The history of the second century is the history of the clash and
conflict between these new mystical and philosophical elements of
Christianity and its earlier forms. On the one hand were the majority
of the original communities, holding in the main the conception of
Christianity which probably finds its best contemporary exposition in the
first two books of the Apostolical Constitutions, a religion of stern
moral practice and of strict moral discipline, of the simple love of
God and the unelaborated faith in Jesus Christ. On the other hand were
the new communities, and the new members of the older communities, with
their conception of knowledge side by side with faith, and with their
tendency to speculate side by side with their acceptance of tradition.
The conflict was inevitable. In the current state of educated opinion it
would have been as impossible for the original communities to ignore the
existence of philosophical elements either in their own body, or in the
new communities which were growing up around them, as it would be for the
Christian churches of our own day to ignore physical science. The result
of the conflict was, that the extreme wing of each of the contending
parties dropped off from the main body. The old-fashioned Christians, who
would admit of no compromise, and maintained the old usages unchanged,
were gradually detached as Ebionites, or Nazaræans. The old orthodoxy
became a new heresy. In the lists of the early hand-books they are ranked
as the first heretics. The more philosophical Gnostics also passed one
by one outside the Christian lines. Their ideas gradually lost their
Christian colour. They lived in another, but non-Christian, form. The
true Gnostic, though he repudiates the name, is Plotinus. The logical
development of the thoughts of Basilides and Justin, of Valentinus and
the Naassenes, is to be found in Neo-Platonism—that splendid vision
of incomparable and irrecoverable cloudland in which the sun of Greek
philosophy set.
* * * * *
The struggle really ended, as almost all great conflicts end, in a
compromise. There was apparently so complete a victory of the original
communities and of the principles which they embodied, that their
opponents seem to vanish from Christian literature and Christian history.
It was in reality a victory in which the victors were the vanquished.
There was so large an absorption by the original communities of the
principles of their opponents as to destroy the main reason for a
separate existence. The absorption was less of speculations than of the
tendency to speculate. The residuum of permanent effect was mainly a
certain habit of mind. This is at once a consequence and a proof of the
general argument which has been advanced above, that certain elements of
education in philosophy had been so widely diffused, and in the course of
centuries had become so strongly rooted, as to have caused an instinctive
tendency to throw ideas into a philosophical form, and to test assertions
by philosophical canons. The existence of such a tendency is shown in
the first instance by the mode in which the earliest “defenders of the
faith” met their opponents; and the supposition that it was instinctive
is a legitimate inference from the fact that it was unconscious. For
Tatian,[226] though he ridicules Greek philosophy and professes to have
abandoned it, yet builds up theories of the Logos, of free-will, and
of the nature of spirit, out of the elements of current philosophical
conceptions. Tertullian, though he asks,[227] “What resemblance is there
between a philosopher and a Christian, between a disciple of Greece
and a disciple of heaven?” expresses Christian truths in philosophical
terms, and argues against his opponents—for example, against Marcion—by
methods which might serve as typical examples of the current methods of
controversy between philosophical schools. And Hippolytus,[228] though
he reproves another Christian writer for listening to Gentile teaching,
and so disobeying the injunction, “Go not into the way of the Gentiles,”
is himself saturated with philosophical conceptions and philosophical
literature.
* * * * *
The answer, in short, to the main question which has been before us is
that Christianity came into a ground which was already prepared for
it. Education was widely diffused over the Greek world, and among all
classes of the community. It had not merely aroused the habit of inquiry
which is the foundation of philosophy, but had also taught certain
philosophical methods. Certain elements of the philosophical temper had
come into existence on a large scale, penetrating all classes of society
and inwrought into the general intellectual fibre of the time. They had
produced a certain habit of mind. When, through the kinship of ideas,
Christianity had been absorbed by the educated classes, the habit of
mind which had preceded it remained and dominated. It showed itself
mainly in three ways:
1. The first of these was the tendency to define. The earliest Christians
had been content to believe in God and to worship Him, without
endeavouring to define precisely the conception of Him which lay beneath
their faith and their worship. They looked up to Him as their Father in
heaven. They thought of Him as one, as beneficent, and as supreme. But
they drew no fence of words round their idea of Him, and still less did
they attempt to demonstrate by processes of reason that their idea of Him
was true. But there is an anecdote quoted with approval by Eusebius[229]
from Rhodon, a controversialist of the latter part of the second century,
which furnishes a striking proof of the growing strength at that time
of the philosophical temper. It relates the main points of a short
controversy between Rhodon and Apelles. Apelles was in some respects in
sympathy with Marcion, and in some respects followed the older Christian
tradition. He refused to be drawn into the new philosophizing current;
and Rhodon attacked him for his conservatism. “He was often refuted for
his errors, which indeed made him say that we ought not to inquire too
closely into doctrine; but that as every one had believed, so he should
remain. For he declared that those who set their hopes on the Crucified
One would be saved, if only they were found in good works. But the most
uncertain thing of all that he said was what he said about God. He held
no doubt that there is One Principle, just as we hold too: but when I
said to him, ‘Tell us how you demonstrate that, or on what grounds you
are able to assert that there is One Principle,’ ... he said that he did
not know, but that that was his conviction. When I thereupon adjured him
to tell the truth, he swore that he was telling the truth, that he did
not know _how_ there is one unbegotten God, but that nevertheless so
he believed. Then I laughed at him and denounced him, for that, giving
himself out to be a teacher, he did not know how to prove what he taught.”
2. The second manifestation of the philosophical habit of mind was the
tendency to speculate, that is, to draw inferences from definitions,
to weave the inferences into systems, and to test assertions by their
logical consistency or inconsistency with those systems. The earliest
Christians had but little conception of a system. The inconsistency of
one apparently true statement with another did not vex their souls. Their
beliefs reflected the variety of the world and of men’s thoughts about
the world. It was one of the secrets of the first great successes of
Christianity. There were different and apparently irreconcilable elements
in it. It appealed to men of various mould. It furnished a basis for
the construction of strangely diverse edifices. But the result of the
ascendency of philosophy was, that in the fourth and fifth centuries
the majority of churches insisted not only upon a unity of belief in
the fundamental facts of Christianity, but also upon a uniformity of
speculations in regard to those facts. The premises of those speculations
were assumed; the conclusions logically followed: the propositions which
were contrary or contradictory to them were measured, not by the greater
or less probability of the premises, but by the logical certainty of the
conclusions; and symmetry became a test of truth.
3. The new habit of mind manifested itself not less in the importance
which came to be attached to it. The holding of approved opinions was
elevated to a position at first co-ordinate with, and at last superior
to, trust in God and the effort to live a holy life. There had been
indeed from the first an element of knowledge in the conception of the
means of salvation. The knowledge of the facts of the life of Jesus
Christ necessarily precedes faith in him. But under the touch of Greek
philosophy, knowledge had become speculation: whatever obligation
attached to faith in its original sense was conceived to attach to it
in its new sense: the new form of knowledge was held to be not less
necessary than the old.
* * * * *
The Western communities not only took over the greater part of the
inheritance, but also proceeded to assume in a still greater degree the
correspondence of ideas with realities, and of inferences about ideas
with truths about realities. It added such large groups to the sum of
them, that in the dogmatic theology of Latin and Teutonic Christendom
the content is more Western than Eastern. But the conception of such
a theology and its underlying assumptions are Greek. They come from
the Greek tendency to attach the same certainty to metaphysical as to
physical ideas. They are in reality built upon a quicksand. There is no
more reason to suppose that God has revealed metaphysics than that He has
revealed chemistry. The Christian revelation is, at least primarily, a
setting forth of certain facts. It does not in itself afford a guarantee
of the certainty of the speculations which are built upon those facts.
All such speculations are _dogmas_ in the original sense of the word.
They are simply personal convictions. To the statement of one man’s
convictions other men may assent: but they can never be quite sure that
they understand its terms in the precise sense in which the original
framer of the statement understood them.
* * * * *
The belief that metaphysical theology is more than this, is the chief
bequest of Greece to religious thought, and it has been a _damnosa
hereditas_. It has given to later Christianity that part of it which is
doomed to perish, and which yet, while it lives, holds the key of the
prison-house of many souls.
LECTURE VI.
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
It has been common to construct pictures of the state of morals in the
first centuries of the Christian era from the statements of satirists
who, like all satirists, had a large element of caricature, and from the
denunciations of the Christian apologists, which, like all denunciations,
have a large element of exaggeration. The pictures so constructed are
mosaics of singular vices, and they have led to the not unnatural
impression that those centuries constituted an era of exceptional
wickedness. It is no doubt difficult to gauge the average morality of
any age. It is questionable whether the average morality of civilized
ages has largely varied: it is possible that if the satirists of our own
time were equally outspoken, the vices of ancient Rome might be found to
have a parallel in modern London; and it is probable, not on merely _à
priori_ grounds, but from the nature of the evidence which remains, that
there was in ancient Rome, as there is in modern London, a preponderating
mass of those who loved their children and their homes, who were good
neighbours and faithful friends, who conscientiously discharged their
civil duties, and were in all the current senses of the word “moral”
men.[230]
It has also been common to frame statements of the moral philosophy
which dominated in those centuries, entirely from the data afforded by
earlier writers, and to account for the existence of nobler elements
in contemporary writers by the hypothesis that Seneca, Epictetus, and
Marcus Aurelius, had come into contact with Christian teachers. In the
case of Seneca, the belief in such contact went so far as to induce a
writer in an imitative age to produce a series of letters which are
still commonly printed at the end of his works, and which purport to be
a correspondence between him and St. Paul. It is difficult, no doubt,
to prove the negative proposition that such writers did not come into
contact with Christianity; but a strong presumption against the idea that
such contact, if it existed, influenced to any considerable extent their
ethical principles, is established by the demonstrable fact that those
principles form an integral part of their whole philosophical system, and
that their system is in close logical and historical connection with that
of their philosophical predecessors.[231]
* * * * *
It will be found on a closer examination that the age in which
Christianity grew was in reality an age of moral reformation. There
was the growth of a higher religious morality, which believed that God
was pleased by moral action rather than by sacrifice.[232] There was
the growth of a belief that life requires amendment.[233] There was a
reaction in the popular mind against the vices of the great centres
of population. This is especially seen in the large multiplication of
religious guilds, in which purity of life was a condition of membership:
it prepared the minds of men to receive Christian teaching, and forms not
the least important among the causes which led to the rapid dissemination
of that teaching: it affected the development of Christianity in
that the members of the religious guilds who did so accept Christian
teaching, brought over with them into the Christian communities many of
the practices of their guilds and of the conceptions which lay beneath
them. The philosophical phase of the reformation began on the confines
of Stoicism and Cynicism. For Cynicism had revived. It had almost faded
into insignificance after Zeno and Chrysippus had formed its nobler
elements into a new system, and left only its “dog-bark”[234] and its
squalor. But when the philosophical descendants of Zeno and Chrysippus
had become fashionable _littérateurs_, and had sunk independence of
thought and practice in a respectability and “worldly conformity” which
the more earnest men felt to be intolerable, Cynicism revived, or rather
the earlier and better Stoicism revived, to re-assert the paramount
importance of moral conduct, and to protest against the unnatural
alliance between philosophy and the fashionable world.
It is to this moral reformation within the philosophical sphere that
I wish especially to draw your attention. Its chief preacher was
Epictetus. He was ranked among the Stoics; but his portrait of an ideal
philosopher is the portrait of a Cynic.[235] In him, whether he be
called Stoic or Cynic, the ethics of the ancient world find at once
their loftiest expression and their most complete realization: and it
will be an advantage, instead of endeavouring to construct a composite
and comprehensive picture from all the available materials, to limit our
view mainly to what Epictetus says, and, as far as possible, to let his
sermons speak for themselves.
The reformation affected chiefly two points: (1) the place of ethics in
relation to philosophy and life; (2) the contents of ethical teaching.
1. The Stoics of the later Republic and of the age of the Cæsars had
come to give their chief attention to logic and literature. The study of
ethics was no longer supreme; and it had changed its character. Logic,
which in the systems of Zeno and Chrysippus had been only its servant,
was becoming its master: it was both usurping its place and turning it
into casuistry. The study of literature, of what the great masters of
philosophy had taught, was superseding the moral practice which such
study was intended to help and foster. The Stoics of the time could
construct ingenious fallacies and compose elegant moral discourses; but
they were ceasing to regard the actual “living according to nature”
as the main object of their lives. The revival of Cynicism was a
re-assertion of the supremacy of ethics over logic, and of conduct over
literary knowledge. It was at first crude and repulsive. If the Stoics
were “the preachers of the _salon_,” the Cynics were “the preachers of
the street.”[236] They were the mendicant friars of imperial times. They
were earnest, but they were squalid. The earnestness was of the essence,
the squalor was accidental. The former was absorbed by Stoicism and gave
it a new impulse: the latter dropped off as an excrescence when Cynicism
was tested by time. Epictetus was not carried as far as the Cynics
were in the reaction against Logic. The Cynics would have postponed
the study of it indefinitely. Moral reformation is more pressing, they
said.[237] Epictetus holds to the necessity of the study of Logic as a
prophylactic against the deceitfulness of arguments and the plausibility
of language. But he deprecates the exaggerated importance which had come
to be attached to it. The students of his day were giving an altogether
disproportionate attention to the weaving of fallacious arguments and
the mere setting of traps to catch men in their speech. He would restore
Logic to its original subordination. Neither it nor the whole dogmatic
philosophy of which it was the instrument was of value in itself. And
moreover, whatever might be the place of such knowledge in an abstract
system and in an ideal world, it was impossible to disregard the actual
conditions of the world as it is. The state of human nature is such, that
to linger upon the threshold of philosophy is to induce a moral torpor.
The student who aims at shaping his reason into harmony with nature has
to begin, not with unformed and plastic material, which he can fashion to
his will by systematic rules of art, but with his nature as it is shaped
already, almost beyond possibility of unshaping, by pernicious habits,
and beguiling associations of ideas, and false opinions about good and
evil. While you are teaching him logic and physics, the very evils which
it is his object to remedy will be gathering fresh strength. The old
familiar names of “good” and “evil,” with all the false ideas which they
suggest, will be giving birth at every moment to mistaken judgments and
wrong actions, to all the false pleasures and false pains which it is the
very purpose of philosophy to destroy. He must begin, as he must end,
with practice. He must accept precepts and act upon them before he learns
the theory of them. His progress in philosophy must be measured by his
progress, not in knowledge, but in moral conduct.
This view, which Epictetus preaches again and again with passionate
fervour, will be best stated in his own words:[238]
“A man who is making progress, having learnt from the
philosophers that desire has good things for its object and
undesire evil things,—having learnt moreover that in no
other way can contentment and dispassionateness come to a man
than by his never failing of the object of his desire and
never encountering the object of undesire,—banishes the one
altogether, or at least postpones it, while he allows the
other to act only in regard to those things which are within
the province of the will. For he knows that if he strives not
to have things that are without the province of the will, he
will some time or other encounter some such things and so be
unhappy. But if what moral perfection professes is to cause
happiness and dispassionateness and peace of mind, then of
course progress towards moral perfection is progress towards
each one of the things which moral perfection professes to
secure. For in all cases progress is the approaching to that to
which perfection finally brings us.
“How is it, then, that while we admit this to be the definition
of moral perfection, we seek and show off progress in other
things? What is the effect of moral perfection?
“‘Peace of mind?’
“Who then is making progress towards it? He who has read many
treatises of Chrysippus? Surely moral perfection does not
consist in this—in understanding Chrysippus: if it does, then
confessedly progress towards moral perfection is nothing else
than understanding a good deal of Chrysippus. But as it is,
while we admit that moral perfection effects one thing, we make
progress—the approximation to perfection—effect another.
“‘This man,’ some one tells us, ‘can now read Chrysippus even
by himself.’
“‘You are most assuredly making splendid progress, my friend,’
he tells him.
“Progress indeed! why do you make game of him? Why do you lead
him astray from the consciousness of his misfortunes? Will you
not show him what the effect of moral perfection is, that he
may learn where to look for progress towards it?
“Look for progress, my poor friend, in the direction of the
effect which you have to produce. And what is the effect which
you have to produce? Never to be disappointed of the object
of your desire, and never to encounter the object of your
undesire: never to miss the mark in your endeavours to do and
not to do: never to be deceived in your assent and suspension
of assent. The first of these is the primary and most necessary
point: for if it is with trembling and reluctance that you seek
to avoid falling into evil, how can you be said to be making
progress?
“It is in these respects, then, that I ask you to show me
your progress. If I were to say to an athlete, ‘Show me your
muscles,’ and he were to say, ‘See here are my dumb-bells,’ I
should reply, ‘Begone with your dumb-bells! What I want to see
is, not them, but their effect.’ (And yet that is just what you
do:) ‘Take the treatise _On Effort_’ (you say), ‘and examine me
in it.’ Slave! that is not what I want to know; but rather how
you endeavour to do or not to do—how you desire to have and not
to have—how you form your plans and purposes and preparations
for action—whether you do all this in harmony with nature or
not. If you do so in accordance with nature, show me that you
do so, and I will say that you are making progress; but if not,
begone, and do not merely interpret books, but write similar
ones yourself besides. And what will you gain by it? Don’t you
know that the whole book costs five shillings, and do you think
the man who interprets the book is worth more than the book
itself costs?
“Never, then, look for the effect (of philosophy) in one place,
and progress towards that effect in another.
“Where, then, is progress to be looked for? If any one of you,
giving up his allegiance to things outside him, has devoted
himself entirely to his will—to cultivating and elaborating
it so as to make it at last in harmony with nature, lofty,
free, unthwarted, unhindered, conscientious, self-respectful:
if he has learned that one who longs for or shuns what is not
in his power can neither be conscientious nor free, but must
be carried along with the changes and gusts of things—must be
at the mercy of those who can produce or prevent them: if,
moreover, from the moment when he rises in the morning he keeps
watch and guard over these qualities of his soul—bathes like
a man of honour, eats like a man who respects himself—through
all the varying incidents of each successive hour working out
his one great purpose, as a runner makes all things help his
running, and a singing-master his teaching:—this man is making
progress in very truth—this man is one who has not left home in
vain.
“But if, on the other hand, he is wholly bent upon and labours
at what is found in books, and has left home with a view to
acquiring that, I tell him to go home again at once, and not
neglect whatever business he may have there: for the object
which has brought him away from home is a worthless one. This
only (is worth anything), to study to banish from one’s life
sorrows and lamentations and ‘Alas!’ and ‘Wretched me!’ and
misfortune and failure—and to learn what death really is, and
exile and imprisonment and the hemlock-draught, so as to be
able to say in the prison, ‘My dear Crito, if so it please the
gods, so let it be.’”
This new or revived conception of philosophy as the science of human
conduct, as having for its purpose the actual reformation of mankind,
had already led to the view that in the present state of human nature
the study and practice of it required special kinds of effort. It was
not only the science but also the art of life.[239] It formed, as such,
no exception to the rule that all arts require systematic and habitual
training. Just as the training of the muscles which is necessary to
perfect bodily development is effected by giving them one by one an
artificial and for the time an exaggerated exercise, so the training of
the moral powers was effected, not by reading the rules and committing
them to memory, but by giving them a similarly artificial and exaggerated
exercise. A kind of moral gymnastic was necessary. The aim of it was to
bring the passions under the control of reason, and to bring the will
into harmony with the will of God.
(1) This special discipline of life was designated by the term which
was in use for bodily training, _askesis_ (ἄσκησις).[240] It is
frequently used in this relation in Philo. He distinguishes three
elements in the process of attaining goodness—nature, learning,
discipline.[241] He distinguishes those who discipline themselves in
wisdom by means of actual works, from those who have only a literary
and intellectual knowledge of it.[242] He holds that the greatest and
most numerous blessings that a man can have come from the gymnastic of
moral efforts.[243] Its elements are “reading, meditation, reformation,
the memory of noble ideals, self-restraint, the active practice of
duties:”[244] in another passage he adds to these _prayer_, and the
recognition of the indifference of things that are indifferent.[245]
In the second century, when the idea of moral reformation had taken a
stronger hold, this moral discipline was evidently carried out under
systematic rules. It was not left to a student’s option. He must undergo
hardships, drinking water rather than wine, sleeping on the ground rather
than on a bed; and sometimes even subjecting himself to austerities,
being scourged and bound with chains. There was sometimes no ostentation
of endurance. Marcus Aurelius says that he owed it to Rusticus that he
did not show off with a striking display either his acts of benevolence
or his moral exercises.[246] “If you drink water,” says Epictetus in his
Student’s Manual,[247] “don’t take every opportunity of saying, I drink
water.... And if you resolve to exercise yourself in toil and hardship,
do it for yourself alone, and not for the world outside. Don’t embrace
statues (in public, to cool yourself); but if ever your thirst become
extreme, fill your mouth with cold water and put it out again—_and tell
no one_.” Epictetus himself preferred that men should be disciplined, not
by bodily hardships, but by the voluntary repression of desire. The true
“ascetic” is he who disciplines himself against all the suggestions of
evil desire:[248] “an object of desire comes into sight: wait, poor soul;
do not straightway be carried off your feet by it: consider, the contest
is great, the task is divine; it is for kingship, for freedom, for calm,
for undisturbedness. Think of God: call Him to be your helper and to
stand by your side, as sailors call upon Castor and Pollux in a storm:
for yours is a storm, the greatest of all storms, the storm of strong
suggestions that sweep reason away.” In a similar way Lucian’s friend
Nigrinus condemns those who endeavour to fashion young men to virtue by
great bodily hardships rather than by a mingled discipline of body and
mind: and Lucian himself says that he knew of some who had died under the
excessive strain.[249]
This moral gymnastic, it was thought, was often best practised away from
a man’s old associations. Consequently some philosophers advised their
students to leave home and study elsewhere. They went into “retreat,”
either in another city or in solitude. Against this also there was a
reaction. In a forcible oration on the subject, Dio Chrysostom argues, as
a modern Protestant might argue, against the monastic system.[250] “Cœlum
non animum mutant,” he says, in effect, when they go from city to city.
Everywhere a man will find the same hindrances both within and without:
he will be only like a sick man changing from one bed to another. The
true discipline is to live in a crowd and not heed its noise, to train
the soul to follow reason without swerving, and not to “retreat” from
that which seems to be the immediate duty before us.
The extent to which moral discipline and the system of “retreats” went
on is uncertain, because they soon blended, as we shall see, with
Christianity, and flowed with it in a single stream.
(2) But out of the ideas which they expressed, and the ideals which they
held forth, there grew up a class of men which has never since died
out, who devoted themselves “both by their preaching and living” to the
moral reformation of mankind. Individual philosophers had had imitators,
and Pythagoras had founded an ascetic school, but neither the one nor
the other had filled a large place in contemporary society. With the
revived conception of philosophy as necessarily involving practice, it
was necessary that those who professed philosophy should be marked out
from the perverted and degenerate world around them, in their outer as
well as in their inner life. “The life of one who practises philosophy,”
says Dio Chrysostom, “is different from that of the mass of men: the very
dress of such a one is different from that of ordinary men, and his bed
and exercise and baths and all the rest of his living. A man who in none
of these respects differs from the rest must be put down as one of them,
though he declare and profess that he is a philosopher before all Athens
or Megara or in the presence of the Lacedæmonian kings.”[251]
The distinction was marked in two chief ways:
(1) A philosopher let his beard grow, like the old Spartans. It was a
protest against the elaborate attention to the person which marked the
fashionable society of the time.
(2) A philosopher wore a coarse blanket, usually as his only dress. It
was at once a protest against the prevalent luxury in dress and the badge
of his profession. “Whenever,” says Dio Chrysostom, “people see one in
a philosopher’s dress, they consider that he is thus equipped not as a
sailor or a shepherd, but with a view to men, to warn them and rebuke
them, and to give not one of them any whit of flattery nor to spare any
one of them, but, on the contrary, to reform them as far as he possibly
can by talking to them and to show them who they are.”[252]
The frequency with which this new class of moral reformers is mentioned
in the literature of the time shows the large place which it filled.
2. The moral reformation affected the contents of ethical teaching
chiefly by raising them from the sphere of moral philosophy to that of
religion. In Epictetus there are two planes of ethical teaching. The one
is that of orthodox and traditional Stoicism: in the other, Stoicism is
transformed by the help of religious conceptions, and the forces which
led to the practice of it receive the enormous impulse which comes from
the religious emotions. The one is summed up in the maxim, Follow Nature;
the other in the maxim, Follow God.
On the lower plane the purpose of philosophy is stated in various
ways, each of which expresses the same fact. It is the bringing of the
will into harmony with nature. It consists in making the “dealing with
ideas” what it should be, that is, in dealing with them according to
nature.[253] It is the thorough study of the conceptions of good and
evil, and the right application of them to particular objects.[254] It
is the endeavour to make the will unthwarted in its action,[255] to
take sorrow and disappointment out of a man’s life,[256] and to change
its disturbed torrent into a calm and steady stream. The result of the
practice of philosophy is happiness.[257] The means of attaining that
result are marked out by the constitution of human nature itself and the
circumstances which surround it. That nature manifests itself in two
forms, desires to have or not to have, efforts to do or not to do.[258]
The one is stimulated by the presentation to the mind of an object which
is judged to be “good,” the other by that of one which is judged to be
“fitting.” The one mainly concerns the individual man in himself, the
other concerns him in his relations with other men. The “state according
to nature” of desire is that in which it never fails of gratification,
the corresponding state of effort is that in which it never fails of its
mark. Both the one and the other are determined by landmarks which nature
itself has set in the circumstances that surround us. The natural limits
of desire are those things that are in our power: the direction of
effort is determined by our natural relations.
For example:[259]
“Bear in mind that you are a son. What is involved in being a
son? To consider all that he has to be his father’s property,
to obey him in all things, never to disparage him to any one,
never to say or do anything to harm him, to stand out of his
way and give place to him in all things, to help him by all
means in his power.
“Next remember that you are also a brother: the doing of
what is fitting in this capacity involves giving way to him,
yielding to his persuasion, speaking well of him, never setting
up a rival claim to him in those things that are beyond the
control of the will, but gladly letting them go that you may
have the advantage in those things which the will controls.
“Next, if you are a senator of any city, remember that you are
a senator: if a youth, that you are a youth: if an old man,
that you are an old man: if a father, that you are a father.
For in each of these cases the consideration of the name you
bear will suggest to you what is fitting to be done in relation
to it.”
This view of right moral conduct as being determined by the natural
relations in which one man stands to another, and as constituting what is
Fitting in regard to those relations, had overspread the Roman world. But
in that world the philosophical theory which lay behind the conception
of the Fitting was less prominent than the conception itself, and two
other terms, both of which were natural and familiar to the Roman mind,
came into use to express it. The one was borrowed from the idea of the
functions which men have to discharge in the organization of civil
government, the other from the idea of a debt. The former of these,
“_officium_,” has not passed in this sense outside the Latin language:
the latter, “_debitum_,” is familiar to us under its English form “duty.”
On the higher plane of his teaching Epictetus expresses moral philosophy
in terms of theology. Human life begins and ends in God. Moral conduct
is a sublime religion. I will ask you to listen to a short _cento_ of
passages, strung loosely together, in which his teaching is expressed:—
“‘We also are His offspring.’ Every one of us may call himself
a son of God.[260] Just as our bodies are linked to the
material universe,[261] subject while we live to the same
forces, resolved when we die into the same elements,[262] so by
virtue of reason our souls are linked to and continuous with
Him, being in reality parts and offshoots of Him.[263] There is
no movement of which He is not conscious, because we and He are
part of one birth and growth;[264] to Him ‘all hearts are open,
all desires known;’[265] as we walk or talk or eat, He Himself
is within us, so that we are His shrines, living temples and
incarnations of Him.[266] By virtue of this communion with Him
we are in the first rank of created things:[267] we and He
together form the greatest and chiefest and most comprehensive
of all organizations.[268]
“If we once realize this kinship, no mean or unworthy thought
of ourselves can enter our souls.[269] The sense of it forms
a rule and standard for our lives. If God be faithful, we
also must be faithful: if God be beneficent, we also must be
beneficent. If God be highminded, we also must be highminded,
doing and saying whatever we do and say in imitation of and
union with Him.[270]
“Why did He make us?
“He made us, first of all, to complete His conception of the
universe: He had need for such completion of some beings who
should be intelligent.[271] He made us, secondly, to behold and
understand and interpret His administration of the universe:
to be His witnesses and ministers.[272] He made us, thirdly,
to be happy in ourselves: like a true Father and Guardian, he
has placed good and evil in those things which are within our
own power.[273] What He says to each one of us is, ‘If thou
wilt have any good, take it from within thyself.’[274] To this
end He has given us freedom of will; there is no power in
heaven or earth that can bar our freedom.[275] We cry out in
our sorrow, ‘O Lord God, grant that I may not feel sorrow;’
and all the time He has given us the means of not feeling
it.[276] He has given us the power of bearing and turning to
account whatever happens, the spirit of manliness and fortitude
and high-mindedness, so that the greater the difficulty, the
greater the opportunity of adorning our character by meeting
it. If, for example, fever comes, it brings from Him this
message, ‘Give me a proof that your moral training has been
real.’ There is a time for learning, and a time for practising
what we have learnt: in the lecture-room we learn: and then
God brings us to the difficulties of real life and says to us,
‘It is time now for the real contest.’ Life is in reality an
Olympic festival: we are God’s athletes, to whom He has given
an opportunity of showing of what stuff we are made.[277]
“What is our duty to Him?
“It is simply to follow Him:[278] to be of one mind with
Him:[279] to acquiesce in His administration:[280] to accept
what His bounty gives, to resign ourselves to the absence of
what He withholds.[281] The only thought of a good man is,
remembering who he is, and whence he came, and to Whom he
owes his being, to fill the place which God has assigned to
him,[282] to will things to be as they are, and to say what
Socrates used to say, ‘If this be God’s will, so be it.’[283]
Submission must be thy law: thou must dare to lift up your eyes
to God and say, ‘Employ me henceforth for what service Thou
wilt: I am of one mind with Thee: I am Thine: I ask not that
Thou shouldest keep from me one thing of all that Thou hast
decreed for me.’[284]
‘Lead Thou me, God, and Thou, O Fate,
Thy appointment I await:
Only lead me, I shall go
With no flagging steps nor slow:
Even though I degenerate be,
And consent reluctantly,
None the less I follow Thee.’[285]
“We can only do this when we keep our eyes fixed on Him,
joined in close communion with Him, absolutely consecrated to
His commandments. If we will not do it, we suffer loss. There
are penalties imposed, not by a vindictive tyranny, but by
a self-acting law. If we will not take what He gives under
the conditions under which He gives it, we reap the fruit of
wretchedness and sorrow, of jealousy and fear, of thwarted
effort and unsatisfied desire.[286]
“Above all, we must bide His time. He has given to every one
of us a post to keep in the battle of life, and we must not
leave it until He bids us.[287] His bidding is indicated
by circumstances. When He does not give us what our bodies
need, when He sends us where life according to nature is
impossible, He, the Supreme Captain, is sounding the bugle for
retreat,[288] He, the Master of the Great Household, is opening
the door and saying to us, ‘Come.’[289] And when He does so,
instead of bewailing your misfortunes, obey and follow: come
forth, not murmuring, but as God’s servant who has finished
His work, conscious that He has no more present need of
you.[290]
“This, therefore, should take the place of every other
pleasure, the consciousness of obeying God. Think what it is to
be able to say, ‘What others preach, I am doing: their praise
of virtue is a praise of me: God has sent me into the world to
be His soldier and witness, to tell men that their sorrows and
fears are vain, that to a good man no evil can happen whether
he live or die. He sends me at one time here, at another time
there: He disciplines me by poverty and by prison, that I
may be the better witness to mankind. With such a ministry
committed to me, can I any longer care in what place I am, or
who my companions are, or what they say about me: nay, rather,
does not my whole nature strain after God, His laws and His
commandments?’”[291]
Between the current ethics of the Greek world and the ethics of the
earliest forms of Christianity were many points both of difference and of
contact.
The main point of difference was that Christianity rested morality
on a divine command. It took over the fundamental idea of the Jewish
theocracy.[292] Its ultimate appeal was not to the reasonableness of
the moral law in itself, but to the fact that God had enacted it. Greek
morality, on the contrary, was “independent.” The idea that the moral
laws are laws of God is, no doubt, found in the Stoics; but they are so
in another than either the Jewish or the Christian sense: they are laws
of God, not as being expressions of His personal will, but as being laws
of nature, part of the whole constitution of the world.
Consequent upon the conception of the moral law as a positive enactment
of God, the breach of moral law was conceived as sin. Into the early
Christian conception of sin several elements entered. It was probably not
in the popular mind what it was in the mind of St. Paul, still less what
it became in the mind of St. Augustine. But one element was constant. It
was a trespass against God. As such, it was on the one hand something
for which God must be appeased, and on the other hand something which
He could forgive. To the Stoics it was shortcoming, failure, and loss:
the chief sufferer was the man himself: amendment was possible for the
future, but there was no forgiveness for the past.
Beyond these and other points of difference there was a wide area of
agreement. The former became accentuated as time went on: it was by
virtue of the latter that in the earliest ages the minds of many persons
had been predisposed to accept Christianity, and that, having accepted
it, they tended to fuse some elements of the new teaching with some
elements of the old. The agreement is most conspicuous in those respects
which were the chief aims of the contemporary moral reformation; and
above all in the importance which was attached to moral conduct. This
importance was overshadowed in the later Christian communities by the
importance which came to be attached to doctrine: its existence in the
earliest communities is shown by two classes of proofs.
1. The first of these proofs is the place which moral conduct holds
in the earliest Christian writers. The documents which deal with the
Christian life are almost wholly moral. They enforce the ancient code of
the Ten Words. They raise those Ten Words from being the lowest and most
necessary level of a legal code, to being the expression of the highest
moral ideal, expanding and amplifying them so as to make them embrace
thoughts and desires as well as words and actions. The most interesting
of such documents is that which is known as the “Two Ways.”[293] It has
recently acquired a fresh significance by having been found as part of
the Teaching of the Apostles. It is there prefixed to the regulations
for ceremonial and discipline which constitute the new part of that
work. It proves to be a manual of instruction to be taught to those who
were to be admitted as members of a Christian community. It may thus be
considered to express the current ideal of Christian practice. In the
“Way of Life” which it sets forth, doctrine has no place. It is summed
up in the two commandments: “First, thou shalt love God who made thee;
secondly, thy neighbour as thyself: whatsoever things thou wouldest not
have done to thyself, do not thou to another.”[294] These commandments
are amplified in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount. “Thou shalt not
forswear thyself: thou shalt not bear false witness: thou shalt not
speak evil: thou shalt not bear malice: thou shalt not be double-minded
nor double-tongued, for double-tonguedness is a snare of death. Thy
speech shall not be false or hollow, but filled to the full with deed.
Thou shalt not be covetous, nor rapacious, nor a hypocrite, nor evilly
disposed, nor haughty: thou shalt not take mischievous counsel against
thy neighbour. Thou shalt not hate any man, but some thou shalt rebuke,
and for some thou shalt pray, and some thou shalt love more than thine
own soul.[295]... My child, be not a murmurer, for murmuring is on
the path to blasphemy: nor self-willed nor evil-minded, for from all
these things blasphemies are born. But be thou meek, for the meek shall
inherit the earth: be long-suffering, and pitiful, and guileless, and
quiet, and kind, and trembling continually at the words which thou hast
heard.[296]... Thou shalt not hesitate to give, nor in giving shalt thou
murmur; for thou shalt know who is the good paymaster of what thou hast
earned. Thou shalt not turn away him that needeth, but thou shalt share
all things with thy brother and shalt not say that they are thine own;
for if ye be fellow-sharers in that which is immortal, how much more in
mortal things.”[297]
Another such document is the first book of the collection known as the
Apostolical Constitutions: it begins at once with an exhortation to
morality.
“Listen to holy teaching, ye who lay hold on His promise, in accordance
with the command of the Saviour, in harmony with his glorious utterances.
Take heed, ye sons of God, to do all things so as to be obedient to God
and to be well-pleasing in all things to the Lord our God. For if any one
follow after wickedness and do things contrary to the will of God, such a
one will be counted as a nation that transgresses against God. Abstain
then from all covetousness and unrighteousness.”[298]
2. The second proof is afforded by the place which discipline held in
contemporary Christian life. The Christians were drawn together into
communities. Isolation was discouraged and soon passed away. To be a
Christian was to be a member of a community. The basis of the community
was not only a common belief, but also a common practice. It was the task
of the community as an organization to keep itself pure. The offences
against which it had to guard were not only the open crimes which fell
within the cognizance of public law, but also and more especially sins
of moral conduct and of the inner life. The qualifications which in
later times were the ideal standard for church officers, were also in
the earliest times the ideal standard for ordinary members. “If any man
who has sinned sees the bishop and the deacons free from fault, and the
flock abiding pure, first of all he will not venture to enter into the
assembly of God, being smitten by his own conscience: but if, secondly,
setting lightly by his sin he should venture to enter, he will forthwith
be taken to task ... and either be punished, or being admonished by the
pastor will be drawn to repentance. For looking round upon the assembly
one by one, and finding no blemish either in the bishop or in the ranks
of the people under him, with shame and many tears he will go out in
peace, pricked in heart, and the flock will have been cleansed, and
he will cry with tears to God and will repent of his sin, and will
have hope: and the whole flock beholding his tears will be admonished
that he who has sinned and repented is not lost.”[299] In other cases
expulsion was a solemn and formal act: the sinful member was cast into
outer darkness: re-admission was accompanied with the same rites as the
original admission. In other words, the earliest communities endeavoured,
both in the theory which they embodied in their manuals of Christian
life, and in the practice which they enforced by discipline, to realize
what has since been known as the Puritan ideal. Each one of them was a
community of saints. “Passing their days upon earth, they were in reality
citizens of heaven.”[300] The earthly community reflected in all but
its glory and its everlastingness the life of the “new Jerusalem.” Its
bishop was the visible representative of Jesus Christ himself sitting
on the throne of heaven, with the white-robed elders round him: its
members were the “elect,” the “holy ones,” the “saved.” “Without were
the dogs, and the sorcerers, and the murderers, and the idolators, and
every one that loveth and maketh a lie:” within were “they which were
written in the Lamb’s book of life.” To be a member of the community was
to be in reality, and not merely in conception, a child of God and heir
of everlasting salvation: to be excluded from the community was to pass
again into the outer darkness, the realm of Satan and eternal death.
Over these earliest communities and the theory which they embodied there
passed, in the last half of the second century and the first half of the
third, an enormous change. The processes of the change and its immediate
causes are obscure. The interests of contemporary writers are so absorbed
with the struggles for soundness of doctrine, as to leave but little room
for a record of the struggles for purity of life. In the last stages of
those struggles, the party which endeavoured to preserve the ancient
ideal was treated as schismatical. The aggregate of visible communities
was no longer identical with the number of those who should be saved. The
dominant party framed a new theory of the Church as a _corpus permixtum_,
and found support for it in the Gospels themselves. Morality became
subordinated to belief in Christianity by the same inevitable drift by
which practice had been superseded by theory in Stoicism.
In both the production of this change and its further developments Greece
played an important part. The net result of the active forces which it
brought to bear upon Christianity was, that the attention of a majority
of Christian men was turned to the intellectual as distinguished from
the moral element in Christian life. And when the change was effected,
it operated in two further ways, which have survived in large and varied
forms to the present day.
1. The idea of moral reformation had from the first seized different
men with a varying tenacity of grasp.[301] There were some men who had
a higher moral ideal than others: there were some whose natures were
stronger: there were some to whom moral life was not the perfection of
human citizenship, but the struggle of the spirit to disentangle itself
from its material environment, and to rise by contemplation to fellowship
with God. There are proofs of the existence in the very earliest
Christian communities of those who endeavoured to live on a higher plane
than their fellows. Abstinence from marriage and from animal food were
urged and practised as “counsels of perfection.” In some communities
there was an attempt to make such counsels of perfection obligatory. In
the majority of communities, though they were part of “the whole yoke
of the Lord,”[302] and were specially enjoined at certain times upon
all church members, they were not of universal or constant obligation.
Those who habitually practised them were recognized as a church within
the Church. The practice of them was known by a name which we have seen
to be common in the Greek philosophical schools. It was relative to the
conception of life as an athletic contest. It was that of bodily training
or gymnastic exercise (ἄσκησις).[303]
The secession of the Puritan party left much of this element still
within the great body of confederated communities. At the end of the
third century it became important both within them and without. It was
increased, partly by the growing influence of the ideas which found
their highest expression outside Christianity in Neo-Platonism; partly
by the growing complexity of society itself, the strain and the despair
of an age of decadence; partly also by the necessity of finding a new
outlet, when Christianity became a legal religion, for the passionate
love of God which had led men to a sometimes ecstatic martyrdom. It was
joined by the parallel tendency among professors of philosophy. It soon
took a new form. Hitherto those who followed counsels of perfection
lived in ordinary society, undistinguished except by their conduct from
their fellow-men. The ideal “Gnostic” of Clement of Alexandria takes
his part in ordinary human affairs, “acting the drama of life which God
has given him to play, knowing both what is to be done and what is to
be endured.”[304] But early in the fourth century the practice of the
ascetic life in Christianity came to be shown in the same outward way,
but with a more marked emphasis, as the similar practice in philosophy.
It was indeed known as philosophy.[305] It was most akin to Cynicism,
with which it had sometimes already been confused, and its badges were
the badges of Cynicism, the rough blanket and the unshorn hair. To wear
the blanket and to let the hair grow was to profess divine philosophy,
the higher life of self-discipline and sanctity. It was to claim to
stand on a higher level and to be working out a nobler ideal than
average Christians. The practice soon received a further development.
Just as ordinary philosophers had sometimes found life in society to be
intolerable and had gone into “retreat,” so the Christian philosophers
began to withdraw altogether from the world, and to live their lives
of self-discipline and contemplation in solitude. The retention of
the old names shows the continuity of the practice. They were still
practising discipline, ἄσκησις, or philosophy, φιλοσοφία. So far as
they retired from society, they were still said “to go into retreat,”
ἀναχωρεῖν, whence the current appellation of ἀναχωρηταί, “anchorets.”
The place of their retreat was a “school of discipline,” ἀσκητήριον, or
a “place for reflection,” φροντιστήριον.[306] To these were soon added
the new names which were relative to the fact that moral discipline was
usually practised in solitude. Those who retired from the world were
“solitaries,” μοναχοί, and the place of their retirement was a “place
for solitude,” μοναστήριον. When the practice was once firmly rooted in
Christian soil, it was largely developed in independent ways for which
Greece was not primarily responsible, and which therefore cannot properly
be described here; but the independence and enormous overgrowth of these
later forms cannot wipe away the memory of the fact that to Greece, more
than to any other factor, was due the place and earliest conception of
that sublime individualism which centred all a man’s efforts on the
development of his spiritual life, and withdrew him from his fellow-men
in order to bring him near to God.
2. It was inevitable that when the Puritan party had left the main body,
and when the most spiritually-minded of those who remained detached
themselves from the common life of their brethren, there should be a
deterioration in the average moral conceptions of the Christian Churches.
It was also inevitable that those conceptions should be largely shaped by
Greek influences. The Pauline ethics vanished from the Christian world.
For the average members of the churches were now the average citizens
of the empire, educated by Greek methods, impregnated with the dominant
ethical ideas. They accepted Christian ideas, but without the enthusiasm
which made them a transforming force. As in regard to metaphysics, so
also in regard to ethics, the frame of mind which had been formed by
education was stronger than the new ideas which it absorbed. The current
ideals remained, slightly raised: the current rules of conduct continued,
with modifications. Instead of the conceptions of righteousness and
holiness, there was the old conception of virtue: instead of the code of
morals which was “briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself,” there was the old enumeration of duties.
At the end of the fourth century the new state of things was formally
recognized by ecclesiastical writers. Love was no more “the hand-book of
divine philosophy:”[307] the chief contemporary theologian of the West,
Ambrose of Milan, formulated the current theory in a book which is the
more important because it not merely expresses the ideas of his time
and seals the proof of their prevalence, but also became the basis of
the moral philosophy of the Middle Ages. But the book is less Christian
than Stoical.[308] It is a _rechauffée_ of the book which Cicero had
compiled more than three centuries before, chiefly from Panætius. It is
Stoical, not only in conception, but also in detail. It makes virtue the
highest good. It makes the hope of the life to come a subsidiary and not
a primary motive. Its ideal of life is happiness: it holds that a happy
life is a life according to nature, that it is realized by virtue, and
that it is capable of being realized here on earth. Its virtues are the
ancient virtues of wisdom and justice, courage and temperance. It tinges
each of them with a Christian, or at least with a Theistic colouring;
but the conception of each of them remains what it had been to the Greek
moralists. Wisdom, for example, is Greek wisdom, with the addition that
no man can be wise who is ignorant of God: justice is Greek justice, with
the addition that its subsidiary form of beneficence is helped by the
Christian society.
The victory of Greek ethics was complete. While Christianity was being
transformed into a system of doctrines, the Stoical jurists at the
imperial court were slowly elaborating a system of personal rights.
The ethics of the Sermon on the Mount, which the earliest Christian
communities endeavoured to carry into practice, have been transmuted by
the slow alchemy of history into the ethics of Roman law. The basis of
Christian society is not Christian, but Roman and Stoical. A fusion of
the Roman conception of rights with the Stoical conception of relations
involving reciprocal actions, is in possession of practically the whole
field of civilized society. The transmutation is so complete that the
modern question is not so much whether the ethics of the Sermon on
the Mount are practicable, as whether, if practicable, they would be
desirable. The socialistic theories which formulate in modern language
and justify by modern conceptions such an exhortation as “Sell that
thou hast and give to the poor,” meet with no less opposition within
than without the Christian societies. The conversion of the Church to
Christian theory must precede the conversion of the world to Christian
practice. But meanwhile there is working in Christianity the same higher
morality which worked in the ancient world, and the maxim, Follow God,
belongs to a plane on which Epictetus and Thomas à Kempis meet.
LECTURE VII.
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
I. THE CREATOR.
Slowly there loomed through the mists of earlier Greek thought the
consciousness of one God.
It came with the sense of the unity of the world. That sense had not
always been awakened. The varied phenomena of earth and sea and sky had
not always been brought under a single expression. The groups into which
the mind tended to arrange them were conceived as separate, belonging
to different kingdoms and controlled by independent divinities. It
was by the unconscious alchemy of thought, working through successive
generations, that the separate groups came to be combined into a whole
and conceived as forming a universe.
It came also with the sense of the order of the world. The sun which day
by day rose and set, the moon which month by month waxed and waned, the
stars which year by year came back to the same stations in the sky, were
like a marshalled army moving in obedience to a fixed command. There
was order, not only above but also beneath. The sea, which for all its
storms and murmurings, could not pass its bounds, the earth upon which
seed-time and harvest never failed, but spring after spring the buds
burst into blossom, and summer after summer the blossom ripened into
fruit, were part of the same great system. The conception was that not
merely of a universe, but of a universe moving in obedience to a law. The
earliest form of the conception is probably that of Anaxagoras, which was
formulated by a later writer in the expression, “The origins of matter
are infinite, the origin of movement and birth is one.”[309]
This conception of an ordered whole was intertwined, as it slowly
elaborated itself, with one or other of two kindred conceptions, of which
one had preceded it and the other grew with it.
The one was the sense of personality. By a transference of ideas which
has been so universal that it may be called natural, all things that move
have been invested with personality. The stars and rivers were persons.
Movement meant life, and life meant everywhere something analogous to
human life. It was by an inevitable application of the conception that
when the sum of movements was conceived as a whole, it should be also
conceived that behind the totality of the phenomena and the unity of
their movements there was a single Person.
The other was the conception of mind. It was a conception which had but
slowly disentangled itself from that of bodily powers. It was like the
preaching of a revelation, and almost as fruitful, when Epicharmus
proclaimed:[310] “It is not the eye that sees, but the mind: it is not
the ear that hears, but the mind: all things except mind are blind and
deaf.” It was the mind that not only saw but thought, and that not only
thought but willed. It alone was the real self: and the Person who is
behind nature or within it was like the personality which is behind the
bodily activities of each one of us: His essence was mind.
There was one God. The gods of the old mythology were passing away, like
a splendid pageantry of clouds moving across the horizon to be absorbed
in the clear and infinite heaven. “But though God is one,” it was
said,[311] “He has many names, deriving a name from each of the spheres
of His government.... He is called the Son of Kronos, that is of Time,
because He continues from eternity to eternity; and Lightning-God, and
Thunder-God, and Rain-God, from the lightnings and thunders and rains;
and Fruit-God, from the fruits (which he sends); and City-God, from the
cities (which he protects); and the God of births, and homesteads, and
kinsmen, and families, of companions, and friends, and armies.... God, in
short, of heaven and earth, named after all forms of nature and events
as being Himself the cause of all.” “There are not different gods among
different peoples,” says Plutarch,[312] “nor foreign gods and Greek gods,
nor gods of the south and gods of the north; but just as sun and moon
and sky and earth and sea are common to all mankind, but have different
names among different races, so, though there be one Reason who orders
these things and one Providence who administers them ... there are
different honours and appellations among different races; and men use
consecrated symbols, some of them obscure and some more clear, so leading
their thoughts on the path to the Divine: but it is not without risk; for
some men, wholly missing their foothold, have slipped into superstition,
and others, avoiding the slough of superstition, have in their turn
fallen over the precipice of atheism.”
In the conception of God as it thus uncoiled itself in Greek history,
three strands of thought are constantly intertwined—the thought of a
Creator, the thought of a Moral Governor, and the thought of a Supreme
or Absolute Being. It is desirable to trace the history of each of these
thoughts, as far as possible, separately, and to consider their separate
effects upon the development of Christian theology. The present Lecture
will deal mainly with the first: the two following Lectures with the
other two.
* * * * *
It was at a comparatively late stage in its history that Greek thought
came to the conception of a beginning of all things. The conception was
first formulated by Anaximander, in the sixth century B.C.[313] The
earlier conception was that of a chaos, out of which gods and all things
alike proceeded. The first remove from that earlier conception was
hylozoism, the belief that life and matter were the same. The conception
of mind was not yet evolved. When it was evolved, two lines of thought
began to diverge. The one, following the conception of human personality
as absolutely single, conceived of both reason and force as inherent in
matter: it is the theory which is known as _Monism_. The other, following
the conception of human personality as a separable compound, body and
soul, conceived of reason and force as external to matter: it is the
theory which is known as _Dualism_. These two theories run through all
subsequent Greek philosophy.
1. The chief philosophical expression of Monism was Stoicism. The Stoics
followed the Ionians in believing that the world consists of a single
substance. They followed Heraclitus in believing that the movements
and modifications of that substance are due neither to a blind impulse
from within nor to an arbitrary impact from without. It moved, he had
thought, with a kind of rhythmic motion, a fire that was kindling and
being quenched with regulated limits of degree and time.[314] The
substance is one, but immanent and inherent in it is a force that acts
with intelligence. The antithesis between the two was expressed by the
Stoics in various forms. It was sometimes the bare and neutral contrast
of the Active and the Passive. For the Passive was sometimes substituted
Matter, a term which, signifying, as it originally does, the timber which
a carpenter uses for the purposes of his craft, properly belongs to
another order of ideas; and for the Active was frequently substituted
the term _Logos_, which, signifying as it does, on the one hand, partly
thought and partly will, and, on the other hand, also the expression of
thought in a sentence and the expression of will in a law, has no single
equivalent in modern language. But the majority of Stoics used neither
the colourless term the Active, nor the impersonal term the _Logos_. The
_Logos_ was vested with personality: the antithesis was between matter
and God. This latter term was used to cover a wide range of conceptions.
The two terms of the antithesis being regarded as expressing modes of
a single substance, separable in thought and name but not in reality,
there was a natural drift of some minds towards regarding God as a mode
of matter, and of others towards regarding matter as a mode of God. The
former conceived of Him as the _natura naturata_: “Jupiter est quodcunque
vides quodcunque moveris.”[315] The latter conceived of Him as the
_natura naturans_. This became the governing conception. He is the sum of
an infinite number of rational forces which are continually striving to
express themselves through the matter with which they are in union. He
is through them and in them working to realize an end. The teleological
idea controls the whole conception. He is always moving with purpose and
system, and always thereby producing the world. The products are all
divine, but not all equally divine. In His purest essence, He is the
highest form of mind in union with the most attenuated form of matter.
In the lowest form of His essence, He is the cohesive force which holds
together the atoms of a stone. Between these two poles are infinite
gradations of being. Nearest of all to the purest essence of God is the
human soul. It is in an especial sense His offspring: it is described by
the metaphors of an emanation or outflow from Him, of a sapling which is
separate from and yet continues the life of its parent tree, of a colony
in which some members of the mother state have settled.[316]
If all this were expressed in modern terms, and by the help of later
conceptions, it would probably be most suitably gathered into the
proposition that the world is the self-evolution of God. Into such a
conception the idea of a beginning does not necessarily enter: it is
consistent with the idea of an eternal process of differentiation: that
which is, always has been, under changed and changing forms: the theory
is cosmological rather than cosmogonical: it rather explains the world as
it is than gives an account of its origin.
2. The chief philosophical expression of Dualism was Platonism. Plato
followed Anaxagoras in believing that mind is separate from matter and
acts upon it: he went beyond him in founding upon this separation a
universal distinction between the real and the phenomenal, and between
God and the world. God was regarded as being outside the world. The world
was in its origin only potential being (τὸ μὴ ὄν). The action of God upon
it was that of a craftsman upon his material, shaping it as a carpenter
shapes wood, or moulding it as a statuary moulds clay. In so acting, He
acted with reason, following out thoughts in His mind. Sometimes His
reason, or His mind, is spoken of as being itself the fashioner of the
world.[317] Each thought shows itself in a group of material objects.
Such objects, so far as they admit of being grouped, may be viewed as
imitations or embodiments of a form or pattern, existing either as a
thought in the mind of the Divine Workman, or as a force proceeding from
His mind and acting outside it. As the conception of these forms was
developed more and more, they tended to be regarded in the latter light
rather than in the former. They were cosmic forces which had the power
of impressing themselves upon matter. They were less types than causes.
They came midway between God and the rude material of the universe, so
that its changing phenomena were united with an unchanging element. They
were themselves grouped in a vast gradation, reaching its highest point
in the Form of Perfection, which was higher than the Form of Being. The
highest and most perfect of types is conceived as the most powerful and
most active of forces. In the elaborate cosmology of the _Timæus_, it
is further conceived as a person. The creative energy of God is spoken
of as the _Demiurgus_, who himself made an ideal world, and employed
subordinate agents in the construction of the actual world. The matter
upon which the Demiurgus or his agents work is sometimes conceived as
potential being,[318] the bare capacity of receiving qualities and forms,
and sometimes as chaotic substance which was reduced to order.[319] The
agents were gods who, having been themselves created, were bidden to
create living beings, capable of growth and decay.[320] The distinction
between the two spheres of creation, that of a world in which nothing was
imperfect since it was the work of a Perfect Being, and that of a world
which was full of imperfections as being the work of created beings,
came, as we shall see, to be of importance in some phases of Christian
thought.
* * * * *
It was inevitable, in the syncretism which results when an age of
philosophical reflection succeeds an age of philosophical origination,
that these two great drifts of thought should tend in some points to
approach each other. The elements in them which were most readily fused
together were the theories of the processes by which the actual world
came into being, and of the nature of the forces which lay behind those
processes. In Stoicism, there was the theory of the one Law or _Logos_
expressing itself in an infinite variety of material forms: in Platonism,
there was the theory of the one God, shaping matter according to an
infinite variety of patterns. In the one, the processes of nature were
the operations of active forces, containing in themselves the law of
the forms in which they exhibit themselves, self-developing seeds, each
of them a portion of the one _Logos_ which runs through the whole.[321]
In the other, they were the operations of the infinitely various and
eternally active energy of God, moving always in the direction of His
thoughts, so that those thoughts might themselves be conceived as the
causes of the operations.[322] In both the one theory and the other,
the processes were sometimes regarded in their apparent multiplicity,
and sometimes in their underlying unity: and in both also the unity was
expressed sometimes by the impersonal term _Logos_, and sometimes by the
personal term God.
But while the monism of the Stoics, by laying stress upon the antithesis
between the two phases of the one substance, was tending to dualism,
the dualism of the Platonists, by laying stress upon the distinction
between the creative energy of God and the form in the mind of God which
His energy embodied in the material universe, was tending to introduce
a third factor into the conception of creation. It became common to
speak, not of two principles, but of three—God, Matter, and the Form,
or Pattern.[323] Hence came a new fusion of conceptions. The Platonic
Forms in the mind of God, conceived, as they sometimes were, as causes
operating outside Him, were more or less identified with the Stoical
_Logoi_, and, being viewed as the manifold expressions of a single
_Logos_, were expressed by a singular rather than a plural term, the
_Logos_ rather than the _Logoi_ of God.
It is at this point that the writings of Philo become of special
importance. They gather together, without fusing into a symmetrical
system, the two dominant theories of the past, and they contain the
seeds of nearly all that afterwards grew up on Christian soil. It is
possible that those writings cover a much larger period of time than is
commonly supposed, and that if we could find a key to their chronological
arrangement, we should find in them a perfect bridge from philosophical
Judaism to Christian theology. And even without such a key we are able to
see in them a large representation of the processes of thought that were
going on, and can better understand by the analogies which they offer
both the tentative theories and those that ultimately became dominant in
the sphere of Christianity. It is consequently desirable to give a brief
account of the view which they present.
The ultimate cause of the world is to be found in the nature of God. As
in Plato, though perhaps in a different sense, God is regarded as good.
By His goodness He was impelled to make the world: He was able to make it
by virtue of His power. “If any one wished to search out the reason why
the universe was made, I think that he would not be far from the mark if
he were to say, what, in fact, one of the ancients said, that the Father
and Maker is good, and that being good He did not grudge the best kind of
nature to matter (οὔσίᾳ) which of itself had nothing excellent, though
it was capable of becoming all things.”[324] And again: “My soul once
told me a more serious story (than that of the Greek mythology), when
seized, as it often was, with a divine ecstasy.... It told me that in
the one really existing God there are two chief and primary faculties,
Goodness and Power, and that by Goodness He begat the universe, and
by Power He governs it.”[325] God is thus the Creator, the Fashioner
and Maker of the world, its Builder and Artificer.[326] But when the
conception of His relation to the world is more precisely examined, it
is found to be based upon a recognition of a sharp distinction between
the world of thought and that of sense; and to be monistic in regard to
the one, dualistic in regard to the other. God is mind. From Him, as
from a fountain, proceed all forms of mind and reason. Reason, whether
unconscious in the form of natural law, or conscious in the form of
human thought, is like a river that flows forth from Him and fills the
universe.[327] In man the two worlds meet. The body is fashioned by the
Artificer from the dust of the earth: “The soul came from nothing that
is created, but from the Father and Leader of all things. For what He
breathed into Adam was nothing else than a divine breath, a colony from
that blissful and happy nature, placed here below for the benefit of
our race; so that granting man to be mortal in respect of his visible
part, yet in respect of that which is invisible he is the heir of
immortality.”[328] And again: “The mind is an offshoot from the divine
and happy soul (of God), an offshoot not separated from Him, for nothing
divine is cut off and disjoined, but only extended.”[329] And again,
in expounding the words, “They have forsaken me, the fountain of life”
(Jeremiah ii. 13), he says: “Only God is the cause of soul and life,
especially of rational soul and reasonable life; but He Himself is more
than life, being the ever-flowing fountain of life.”[330]
This is monistic. But the theory of the origin of the sensible world is
dualistic. The matter upon which He acted was outside Him. “It was in
itself without order, without quality, without soul, full of difference,
disproportion, and discord: it received a change and transformation
into what was opposite and best, order, quality, animation, identity,
proportion, harmony, all that is characteristic of a better form.”[331]
He himself did not touch it. “Out of it God begat all things, Himself
not touching it: for it was not right that the all-knowing and blessed
One should touch unlimited and confused matter: but He used the unbodied
Forces whose true name is the Forms (ἰδέαι), that each class of things
should receive its fitting shape.”[332] These unbodied Forces, which are
here called by the Platonic name of Forms, are elsewhere spoken of in
Stoical language as Reasons (λόγοι), sometimes in Pythagorean language
as Numbers or Limits, sometimes in the language of the Old Testament
as Angels, and sometimes in the language of popular mythology as
Dæmons.[333] The use of the two names Force and Form, with the synonyms
which are interchanged with each of them, expresses the two sides of the
conception of them. They are at once the agents or instruments by means
of which God fashioned the world, and also the types or patterns after
which He fashioned it.[334]
In both respects they are frequently viewed, not in the plurality of
their manifestations, but in the unity of their essence. On the one
hand, they collectively form the world which the Divine Architect of
the great City of the Universe fashioned in His mind before His thought
went outside Him to stamp with its impress the chaotic and unformed
mass. The place of this world is the _Logos_, the Reason or Will or
Word of God: more precisely, it constitutes that _Logos_ in a special
form of its activity:[335] for in the building of an ordinary city the
ideal which precedes it “is no other than the mind of the architect,
planning to realize in a visible city the city of his thought.... The
archetypal seal, which we call the ideal world, is itself the archetypal
pattern, the Form of Forms, the Reason of God.”[336] On the other hand,
the Reason of God is sometimes viewed not as a Form but as a Force. It
is His creative energy.[337] It is the instrument by which He made all
things.[338] It is the “river of God” that is “full of waters,” and that
flows forth to “make glad the city of God,” the universe.[339] From it,
as from a fountain, all lower Forms and Forces flow. By another and even
sublimer figure, it, the eldest born of the “I am,” robes itself with the
world as with a vesture, the high-priest’s robe, embroidered by all the
Forces of the seen and unseen worlds.[340]
But in all this, Philo never loses sight of the primary truth that the
world was made not by inferior or opposing beings, but by God. It is the
expression of His Thought. His Thought went forth from Him, impressing
itself in infinite Forms and by means of infinite Forces: but though His
Thought was the charioteer, it is God Himself who gives the orders.[341]
By a different conception of the genesis of the world, and one that is
of singular interest in view of the similar conceptions which we shall
find in some Gnostic schools, God is the Father of the world:[342] and
the metaphor of Fatherhood is expanded into that of a marriage: God is
conceived as the Father, His Wisdom as the Mother: “and she, receiving
the seed of God, with fruitful birth-pangs brought forth this world, His
visible son, only and well-beloved.”[343]
* * * * *
We have now the main elements of the current conceptions out of which the
philosophers of early Christianity constructed new fabrics.
Christianity had no need to borrow from Greek philosophy either the idea
of the unity of God, or the belief that He made the world. Its ultimate
basis was the belief in one God. It rode in upon the wave of the reaction
against polytheism. The Scriptures to which it appealed began with the
sublime declaration, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth.” It accepted that declaration as being both final and complete. It
saw therein the picture of a single supreme Artificer: and it elaborated
the picture by the aid of anthropomorphic conceptions: “By His almighty
power He fixed firm the heavens, and by His incomprehensible wisdom He
set them in order: He separated the earth from the water that encompassed
it ... and last of all He formed man with His sacred and spotless hands,
the impress of His own image.”[344]
The belief that the one God was the Creator of heaven and earth came,
though not without a struggle, to be a foremost and permanent element
in the Christian creed. The various forms of ditheism which grew up
with it and around it, finding their roots in its unsolved problems and
their nutriment in the very love of God which it fostered, gradually
withered away. But in proportion as the belief spread widely over the
Greek world, the simple Semitic cosmogony became insufficient. The
questions of the mode of creation, and of the precise relation of God
to the material world, which had grown with the growth of monotheism as
a philosophical doctrine, were asked not less instinctively, and with
an even keener-sighted enthusiasm, when monotheism became a religious
conviction. They came not from curiosity, but as the necessary outgrowth
among an educated people of that which, not less now than then, is the
crucial question of all theistic philosophy: How, if a good and almighty
God made the world, can we account for imperfection and failure and pain?
These questions of the mode of creation and of the relation of God to
the material world, and the underlying question which any answer to
them must at the same time solve, fill a large place in the history of
the first three centuries. The compromise which ultimately resulted has
formed the basis of Christian theology to the present day.
* * * * *
The first answers were necessarily tentative. Thinkers of all schools,
within the original communities and outside them, introduced conceptions
which were afterwards discarded. One group of philosophers, treating the
facts of Christianity as symbols, like the tableaux of the mysteries,
framed cosmogonies which were symbolical also, and fantastic in
proportion as they were symbolical. Another group of philosophers,
dealing rather with the ideal than with the actual, framed cosmogonies in
which abstract ideas were invested with substance and personality. The
philosophers of all schools were met, not only by the common sense of the
Christian communities, but also by caricature. Their opponents, after the
manner of controversialists, accentuated their weak points, and handed on
to later times only those parts of the theories which were most exposed
to attack, and which were also least intelligible except in relation
to the whole system. But so far as the underlying conceptions can be
disentangled from the details, they may be clearly seen to have drifted
in the direction of the main drifts of Greek philosophy.
1. There was a large tendency to account for the world by the hypothesis
of evolution. In some way it had come forth from God. The belief
expressed itself in many forms. It was in all cases syncretist. The
same writers frequently made use of different metaphors; but all the
metaphors assumed vast grades and distances between God in Himself and
the sensible world. One metaphor was that of an outflow, as of a stream
from its source.[345] Other metaphors were taken from the phenomena of
vegetable growth, the evolution of a plant from a seed, or the putting
forth of leaves by a tree.[346] The metaphors of other writers were taken
from the phenomena of human generation:[347] they were an elaboration of
the conception of God as the Father of the world. They were sometimes
pressed: there was not only a Father, but also a Mother of the world,
Wisdom or Silence or some other abstraction. In one elaborate system it
was held that, though God Himself was unwedded, all the powers that came
forth from Him came forth in pairs, and all existing things were the
offspring of their union.[348] That which came forth was also conceived
in various ways. The common expression in one group of philosophers is
_æon_ (αἰών), a term which is of uncertain origin in this application. In
other groups of philosophers the expressions are relative to the metaphor
of growth and development, and repeat the Stoical term _seed_. In the
syncretism of Marcus the several expressions are gathered together,
and made more intelligible by the use of the synonym _logoi_;[349] the
thoughts of God were conceived as active forces, embodying themselves
in material forms. In the conception of one school of thinkers, the
invisible forces of the world acted in the same way that the art of a
craftsman acts upon his materials.[350] In the conception of another
school, the distinction between intellectual and material existence
tended to vanish. The powers which flowed forth from God were at once
intellectual and material, corresponding to the monistic conception
of God Himself. They were subtler and more active forms of matter
acting upon its grosser but plastic forms. In the conception of another
school, God is the unbegotten seed of which the Tree of Being is the
leaves and fruit,[351] and the fruit again contains in itself infinite
possibilities of renewing the original seed.[352]
The obvious difficulty which the actual world, with its failures and
imperfections, presents to all theories of evolution which assume the
existence of a good and perfect God, was bridged over by the hypothesis
of a lapse. The “fall from original righteousness” was carried back
from the earthly Paradise to the sphere of divinity itself. The theory
was shaped in various ways, some of which are expressed by almost
unintelligible symbols. That of the widely-spread school of Valentinus
was, that the Divine Wisdom herself had become subject to passion, and
that, having both ambition and desire, she had produced from herself a
shapeless mass, in ignorance that the Unbegotten One alone can, without
the aid of another, produce what is perfect. Out of this shapeless mass,
and the passions that came forth from her, arose the material world and
the Demiurgus who fashioned it.[353] Another theory was that of revolt
and insurrection among the supernal powers.[354] Both theories simply
pushed the difficulty farther back: they gave no solution of it: they
were opposed as strongly by philosophers outside Christianity as they
were by polemical theologians within it:[355] they helped to pave the way
for the Augustinian theology of succeeding centuries, but they did not
themselves win permanent acceptance either in philosophy or in theology,
in either the Eastern or the Western world.
2. Side by side with these hypotheses of evolution was a tendency, which
ultimately became supreme, to account for the world by the hypothesis of
creation. It was the result of the action of God upon already existing
matter. It was not evolved, but ordered or shaped. God was the Builder or
Framer: the universe was a work of art.[356]
But this, no less than the monistic hypothesis, contained grave
difficulties, arising partly from the metaphysical conception of God,
and partly from the conception of moral evil. Three main questions were
discussed in connection with it: (i.) What was the ultimate relation of
matter to God? (ii.) How did God come into contact with it so as to shape
it? (iii.) How did a God who was almighty as well as beneficent come to
create what is imperfect and evil?
(i.) The dualistic hypothesis assumed a co-existence of matter and God.
The assumption was more frequently tacit than explicit. The difficulty
of the assumption varied according to the degree to which matter was
regarded as having positive qualities. There was a universal belief
that beneath the qualities of all existing things lay a substratum or
substance on which they were grafted, and which gave to each thing
its unity. But the conception of the nature of this substance varied
from that of gross and tangible material to that of empty and formless
space. The metaphysical conception of substance tended to be confused
with the physical conception of matter. Matter was sometimes conceived
as a mass of atoms not coalescing according to any principle or order
of arrangement:[357] the action of the Creator upon them was that of
a general changing a rabble of individuals into an organized army. It
was sometimes conceived as a vast shapeless but plastic mass, to which
the Creator gave form, partly by moulding it as a potter moulds clay,
partly by combining various elements as a builder combines his materials
in the construction of a house.[358] Both these conceptions of matter
tended to regard it as more or less gross. It was plastic in the hands
of the Divine Workman, but still possessed the quality of resistance.
With Basilides, the conception of matter was raised to a higher plane.
The distinction of subject and object was preserved, so that the action
of the Transcendent God was still that of creation and not of evolution;
but it was “out of that which was not” that He made things to be. That
which He made was expressed by the metaphor of a seed which contained
in itself possibilities, not only of growth, but of different kinds of
growth. Three worlds were involved in it: the world of spirit, and the
world of matter, and between the two the world of life. The metaphor
is sometimes explained by the help of the Aristotelian conception of
_genera_ and _species_.[359] The original seed which God made is the
ultimate _summum genus_. The process by which all things came into being
followed in inverse order the process of our knowledge. The steps by
which our ideas ascend, by an almost infinite stairway of subordinated
groups, from the visible objects of sense to the highest of all
abstractions, the Absolute Being and the Absolute Unity, are the steps
by which that Absolute Being and Absolute Unity, who is God, evolved
or made the world from that which was not. The basis of the theory was
Platonic, though some of the terms were borrowed from both Aristotle and
the Stoics. It became itself the basis of the theory which ultimately
prevailed in the Church. The transition appears in Tatian. In him, God is
the author, not only of the form or qualities, but also of the substance
or underlying ground of all things.[360] “The Lord of the universe
being Himself the substance of the whole, not yet having brought any
creature into being, was alone: and since all power over both visible and
invisible things was with Him, He Himself by the power of His word gave
substance to all things with Himself.” This theory is found in another
form in Athenagoras:[361] he makes a point in defence of Christianity
that, so far from denying the existence of God, it made Him the Author
of all existence, He alone being unborn and imperishable. It is found
also in Theophilus,[362] who, however, does not lay stress upon it. But
its importance was soon seen. It had probably been for a long time the
unreasoned belief of Hebrew monotheism: the development of the Platonic
conception within the Christian sphere gave it a philosophical form: and
early in the third century it had become the prevailing theory in the
Christian Church. God had created matter. He was not merely the Architect
of the universe, but its Source.[363]
But the theory did not immediately win its way to acceptance. It rather
set aside the moral difficulties than solved them. It was attacked by
those who felt those difficulties strongly. There are two chief literary
records of the controversy: one is the treatise of Tertullian against
Hermogenes, the other is a dialogue of about the same date which is
ascribed to an otherwise unknown Maximus.[364] Both treatises are
interesting as examples not only of contemporary polemics, but of the
insoluble difficulties which beset any attempt to explain the origin
of moral evil on metaphysical grounds. The attempt was soon afterwards
practically abandoned. The solution of the moral difficulties was
found in the doctrine of Free-will: the solution of the metaphysical
difficulties was found in the general acceptance of the belief that God
created all things out of nothing.
(ii.) How, under any conception of matter, short of its having been
created by God, did God come into contact with it so as to give it
qualities and form? The difficulty of the question became greater as the
tide of thought receded from anthropomorphism. The dominant idea was
that of mediation. Sometimes, as in Philo, the mediation was regarded
from the point of view of the plurality and variety of the effects, and
the agents were conceived as being more than one in number. They were
the angels of the Hebrews, the dæmons of the Greeks. Those who appealed
to Scripture saw an indication of this in the use of the plural in the
first chapter of Genesis, “Let _us_ make man.”[365] Another current of
speculation flowed in the channel, which had been first formed by the
_Timæus_ of Plato, of supposing a single Creator and Ruler of the world
who, in subordination to the transcendent God, fashioned the things that
exist. In some schools of thought this theory was combined with the
theory of creation by the Son.[366] The uncontrolled play of imagination
in the region of the unknown constructed more than one strange
speculation which it is not necessary to revive.
The view into which the Christian consciousness ultimately settled
down had meanwhile been building itself up out of elements which were
partly Jewish and partly Greek. On the one hand, there had long been
among the Jews a belief in the power of the _word_ of God: and the
belief in His wisdom had shaped itself into a conception of that wisdom
as a substantive force. On the other hand, the original conception of
Greek philosophy that Mind or Reason had marshalled into order the
confused and warring elements of the primæval chaos, had passed into the
conception of the _Logos_ as a mode of the activity of God. These several
elements, which had a natural affinity for each other, had already been
combined by Philo, as we have seen, into a comprehensive system: and in
the second century they were entering into new combinations both outside
and inside the Christian communities.[367] The vagueness of conception
which we have found in Philo is found also in the earliest expressions
of these combinations. It is not always clear whether the _Logos_
is regarded as a mode of God’s activity, or as having a substantive
existence. In either view, God was regarded as the Creator; His supremacy
was as absolute as His unity: there was no rival, because in either view
the Logos was God.
(iii.) How could a God who was at once beneficent and almighty create
a world which contained imperfection and moral evil? The question was
answered, as we have seen, on the monistic theory of creation by the
hypothesis of a lapse. It was answered on the dualistic theory, sometimes
by the hypothesis of evil inherent in matter, and sometimes by the
hypothesis of creation by subordinate and imperfect agents.
The former of these hypotheses came rather from the East than from
Greece; but it harmonized with and was supported by the Greek conception
of matter as the seat of formlessness and disorder.
The latter hypothesis is an extension of the Platonic distinction between
the perfect world which God created directly through the operation of His
own powers, and the world of mortal and imperfect existences the creation
of which He entrusted to inferior agents. In the Platonic conception, God
Himself, in a certain mode of His activity, was the Creator (Demiurgus),
and the inferior agents were beings whom He had created.[368] In the
conception which grew up early in the second century, and which was first
formulated by Marcion, the Creator was detached from the Supreme God, and
conceived as doing the work of the inferior agents. He was subordinate
to the Supreme God and ultimately derived from Him:[369] but looming
large in the horizon of finite thought, He seemed to be a rival and an
adversary. The contradictions, the imperfections, the inequalities of
both condition and ability, which meet us in both the material and the
moral world, were solved by the hypothesis of two worlds in conflict,
each of them moving under the impulse of a separate Power. The same
solution applied also to the contrast of the Old and New Testaments. It
had been already thought that the God of the Jews was different from the
Father of Jesus Christ; but, with an exaggerated Paulinism, Marcion made
so deep a chasm between the Law and the Gospel, the Flesh and the Spirit,
that the two were regarded as inherently hostile, and the work of the
Saviour was regarded as bringing back into the world from which he had
been shut out the God of love and grace.[370]
The objection to all this was that, in spite of its reservations and
safeguards, it tended to ditheism. The philosophical difficulties
of monotheism were enormous, but the knot was not to be cut by the
hypothesis of either a co-existent and resisting matter or an independent
and rival God. The enormous wave of belief in the Divine Unity, which
had gathered its strength from the whole sea of contemporary thought,
swept away the barriers in its path. The moral difficulty was solved, as
we shall see in the next Lecture, by the conception of free-will: the
metaphysical difficulties of the contact of God with matter were solved,
partly by the conception that God created matter, and partly by the
conception that He moulded it into form by His Logos, who is also His
Son, eternally co-existent with Him.
The first patristic statement of this view is in Irenæus; it stands in
the forefront of his theology: and it seems to have been so generally
accepted in the communities of which he was cognizant, that he states it
as part of the recognized “rule of truth:” the following is only one of
several passages in which he so states it:[371]
“There is one Almighty God who created all things by His Word
and fashioned them, and caused that out of what was not all
things should be: as saith the Scripture, By the Word of
the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by
the Breath of His mouth: and again, All things were made by
Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.
There is no exception: the Father made _all_ things by Him,
whether visible or invisible, objects of sense or objects of
intelligence, things temporal or things eternal. He made them
not by angels or by any powers separated from His Thought: for
God needs none of all these beings: but it is by His Word and
His Spirit that He makes and disposes and governs and presides
over all things. This God who made the world, this God who
fashioned man, this God of Abraham, and God of Isaac, and God
of Jacob, above whom there is no other God, nor Beginning nor
Power nor Fulness: this God, as we shall show, is the Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The same view is expressed with equal prominence and emphasis by
a disciple of Irenæus, who shows an even stronger impress of the
philosophical speculations of his time:[372]
“The one God, the first and sole and universal Maker and
Lord, had nothing coeval with him, not infinite chaos, not
measureless water, or solid earth, or dense air, or warm fire,
or subtle breath, nor the azure cope of the vast heaven: but He
was one, alone by Himself, and by His will He made the things
that are, that before were not, except so far as they existed
in His foreknowledge.... This supreme and only God begets
Reason first, having formed the thought of him, not reason as a
spoken word, but as an internal mental process of the universe.
Him alone did He beget from existing things: for the Father
himself constituted existence, and from it came that which was
begotten. The cause of the things that came into being was the
Reason, bearing in himself the active will of Him who begat
him, and not being without knowledge of the Father’s thought
... so that when the Father bade the world come into being,
the Reason brought each thing to perfection one by one, thus
pleasing God.”
This creed of Irenæus and his school became the basis of the theology
of later Christendom. It appealed, as time went on, to a widening
sphere, and summed up the judgment of average Christians on the main
philosophical questions of the second century. The questions were not
seriously re-opened. The idealists of Alexandria, no less than the
rhetoricians of Gaul, accepted, with all its difficulties, the belief
that there was one God who revealed Himself to mankind by the Word by
whom He had created them, and that this Word was manifested in Jesus
Christ. But the Alexandrians were concerned less with the metaphysical
than with the moral difficulties; and their view of those difficulties
modified also their view of creation. The cosmogony of Origen was a
theodicy. His aim was less to show in detail how the world came into
existence, than to “justify the ways of God to man.” He proceeded
strictly on the lines of the older philosophies, justifying in this
part of his theology even more than in other respects the criticism of
Porphyry,[373] that though in his manner of life he was a Christian,
in his opinions about God he was a Greek. He followed the school of
Philo in believing that the original creation was of a world of ideal
or “intelligible” existences, and that the cause of creation was the
goodness of God.[374] He differed from, or expanded, the teaching of
that school in believing that the Word or Wisdom of God, by whom He
made the world, was not impersonal, but His Son, and that both the
existence of the Son and the creation of the ideal world had been from
all eternity.[375] For it is impious to think that God ever existed
without His Wisdom, possessing the power to create but not the will; and
it is inconceivable either that Wisdom should ever have been without
the conception of the world that was to be, or that there should ever
have been a time at which God was not omnipotent from having no world
to govern.[376] The relation of each to the world is stated in varying
ways: one mode of statement is, that from the Father and the Son, thus
eternally co-existent, came the actual world; the Father caused it to
be, the Son caused it to be rational:[377] another is, that the whole
world, visible and invisible, was made by the agency of the only begotten
Son, who conveyed a share in himself to certain parts of the things so
created and caused them thereby to become rational creatures.[378] This
visible world, which, as also Philo and the Platonists had taught, is a
copy of the ideal world, took its beginning in time: but it is not the
first, nor will it be the last, of such worlds.[379] The matter of it
as well as the form was created by God.[380] It was made by Him, and to
Him it will return. The Stoical theory had conceived of the universe
as analogous to a seed which expands to flower and fruit and withers
away, but leaves behind it a similar seed which has a similar life and a
similar succession: so did one universal order spring from its beginning
and pass through its appointed period to the end which was like the
beginning in that after it all things began anew. Origen’s theory was a
modification of this: it recognized an absolute beginning and an absolute
end: both the beginning and the end were God: poised as it were between
these two divine eternities were the worlds of which we are part. In
them, all rational creatures were originally equal and free: they are
equal no longer because they have variously used their freedom: and the
hypothesis of more worlds than one is a complement, on the one hand of
the hypothesis of human freedom, on the other hand of the hypothesis of
the divine justice, because it accounts for the infinite diversities of
condition, and gives scope for the discipline of reformation.
Large elements of this theory dominated in the theology of the Eastern
Churches during the fourth century. But ultimately those parts of it
which distinguished it from the theory of Irenæus faded away. The mass
of Christians were content with a simpler creed. More than one question
remained unsolved; and the hypothesis of creation by a rival God was
part of the creed of a Church which flourished for several centuries
before it faded away, and it also left its traces in many inconsistent
usages within the circle of the communities which rejected it. But the
belief in the unity of God, and in the identity of the one God with the
Creator of the world, was never again seriously disturbed. The close of
the controversy was marked by its transference to a different, though
allied, area. It was no longer Theological but Christological. The
expression “Monarchy,” which had been used of the sole government of
the one God, in distinction from the divided government of many gods,
came to be applied to the sole government of the Father, in distinction
from the “economy” of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In this
new area of controversy the old conceptions re-appear. The monistic and
dualistic theories of the origin of the world lie beneath the two schools
of Monarchianism, in one of which Christ was conceived as a mode of God,
and in the other as His exalted creature. In the determination of these
Christological controversies Greek philosophy had a no less important
influence than it had upon the controversies which preceded them: and
with some elements of that determination we shall be concerned in a
future Lecture.
* * * * *
We may sum up the result of the influence of Greece on the conception
of God in His relation to the material universe, by saying that it
found a reasoned basis for Hebrew monotheism. It helped the Christian
communities to believe as an intellectual conviction that which they
had first accepted as a spiritual revelation. The moral difficulties
of human life, and the Oriental influences which were flowing in large
mass over some parts of the Christian world, tended towards ditheism.
But the average opinion of thinking men, which is the ultimate solvent
of all philosophical theories, had for centuries past been settling down
into the belief in the unity of God. With a conviction which has been as
permanent as it was of slow growth, it believed that the difficulties
in the hypothesis of the existence of a Power limited by the existence
of a rival Power, are greater even than the great difficulties in the
belief in a God who allows evil to be. The dominant Theistic philosophy
of Greece became the dominant philosophy of Christianity. It prevailed
in form as well as in substance. It laid emphasis on the conception
of God as the Artificer and Architect of the universe rather than as
its immanent Cause. But though the substance will remain, the form may
change. Platonism is not the only theory that is consistent with the
fundamental thesis that “of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all
things:” and it is not impossible that, even after this long lapse of
centuries, the Christian world may come back to that conception of Him
which was shadowed in the far-off ages, and which has never been wholly
without a witness, that He is “not far off but very nigh;” that “He is in
us and we in Him;” that He is changeless and yet changing in and with His
creatures; and that He who “rested from His creation,” yet so “worketh
hitherto” that the moving universe itself is the eternal and unfolding
manifestation of Him.
LECTURE VIII.
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
II. THE MORAL GOVERNOR.
A. THE GREEK IDEA.
1. The idea of the unity of God had grown, as we have already seen,
in a common growth with the idea of the unity of the world. But it
did not absorb that idea. The dominant element in the idea of God was
personality: in the idea of the world it was order. But personality
implied will, and will seemed to imply the capacity to change; whereas in
the world, wherever order could be traced, it was fixed and unvarying.
The order was most conspicuous in the movements of the heavenly bodies.
It could be expressed by numbers. The philosopher of numbers was the
first to give to the world the name _Cosmos_, the “order” as of a
marshalled army.[381] The order being capable of being expressed by
numbers, partook of the nature of numerical relations. Those relations
are not only fixed, but absolutely unalterable. That a certain ratio
should be otherwise than what it is, is inconceivable. Hence the same
philosopher of numbers who had first conceived of the _Cosmos_,
conceived of it also as being “invested with necessity,” and the
metaphysicians who followed him framed the formula, “All things are by
necessity.”[382]
This conception linked itself with an older idea of Greek religion. The
length of a man’s life and his measure of endowments had been spoken of
as his “share” or “portion.” Sometimes the assigning of this portion to
a man was conceived as the work of Zeus or the other gods: sometimes
the gods themselves had their portions like men; and very commonly the
portion itself was viewed actively, as though it were the activity of a
special being. It was sometimes personal, sometimes impersonal: it was,
in any case, inevitable.[383] Through its character of inevitableness, it
fused with the conception of the unalterableness of physical order. Hence
the proposition, “All things are by necessity,” soon came to be otherwise
expressed, “All things are by destiny.”[384]
Over against the personal might of Zeus there thus came to stand the
dark and formless fixity of an impersonal Destiny.[385] The conception
was especially elaborated by the Stoics. In the older mythology from
which it had sprung, its personifications had been spoken of sometimes
as the daughters of Zeus and Themis, and sometimes as the daughters
of Night.[386] The former expressed its certainty and perfect order;
the other, the darkness of its working. The former element became more
prominent. It was an “eternal, continuous and ordered movement.”[387]
It was “the linked chain of causes.”[388] The idea of necessity passed
into that of intelligent and inherent force: the idea of destiny was
transmuted into that of law.
This sublime conception, which has become a permanent possession of the
human race, was further elaborated into the picture of the world as a
great city. The Greek πόλις, the state, whose equivalent in modern times
is not civil but ecclesiastical, was an ideal society, the embodied type
of a perfect constitution or organization (σύστημα).[389] Its parts were
all interdependent and relative to the whole, the whole was flawless
and supreme, working out without friction the divine conception which
was expressed in its laws. The world was such an ideal society.[390]
It consisted of gods and men: the former were its rulers; the latter,
its citizens. The moral law was a reason inherent in human nature,
prescribing what men should do, and forbidding what they should not
do: human laws were but appendages of it.[391] In this sense man was a
“citizen of the world.”[392] To each individual man, as to every other
created being, the administrators had assigned a special task. “_Thou_ be
Sun: thou hast the power to go on thy circuit and make the year and the
seasons, to make fruits grow and ripen, to stir and lull the winds, to
warm the bodies of men: go thy way, make thy circuit, and so fulfil thy
ministry alike in small things and in great.... _Thou_ hast the power to
lead the army to Ilium: be Agamemnon. _Thou_ hast the power to fight in
combat with Hector: be Achilles.” To this function of administration the
gods were limited. The constitution of the great city was unchangeable.
The gods, like men, were, in the Stoical conception, bound by the
conditions of things.
“That which is best of all things and supreme,” says Epictetus,
“have the gods placed in our power—the faculty of rightly
dealing with ideas: all other things are out of our power. Is
it that they would not? I for my part think that if they had
been able they would have placed the other things also in our
power; but they absolutely could not.... For what says Zeus?
‘Epictetus, if it had been possible, I would have made thy
body and thy possessions free and unhindered. But as it is,
forget not that thy body is not thine, but only clay deftly
kneaded. And since I could not do this, I gave thee a part of
myself, the power of making or not making effort, the power
of indulging or not indulging desire; in short, the power of
dealing with all the ideas of thy mind.’”[393]
2. Side by side with this conception of destiny were growing up new
conceptions of the nature of the gods. The gods of wrath were passing
away. The awe of the forces of nature, of night and thunder, of the
whirlwind and the earthquake, which had underlain the primitive
religions, was fading into mist. The meaner conceptions which had
resulted from a vividly realized anthropomorphism, the malice and spite
and intrigue which make some parts of the earlier mythology read like
the _chronique scandaleuse_ of a European court, were passing into the
region of ridicule and finding their expression only in burlesque. Two
great conceptions, the elements of which had existed in the earliest
religion, gradually asserted their supremacy. The gods were just, and
they were also good. They punished wicked deeds, not by an arbitrary
vengeance, but by the operation of unfailing laws. The laws were the
expression of the highest conceivable morality. Their penalties were
personal to the offender, and the sinner who did not pay them in this
life paid them after death. The gods were also good. The idea of their
kindness, which in the earlier religion had been a kindness only for
favoured individuals, widened out to a conception of their general
benevolence.[394] The conception of their forethought, which at first had
only been that of wise provision in particular cases, linked itself with
the Stoical teleology.[395] The God who was the Reason of the world, and
immanent in it, was working to an end. That end was the perfection of the
whole, which was also the perfection of each member of the whole. In the
sphere of human life, happiness and perfection, misery and imperfection,
are linked together. The forethought or “Providence” of God was thus
beneficent in regard both to the universe itself and to the individual.
It worked by self-acting laws. “There are,” says Epictetus,[396]
“punishments appointed as it were by law to those who disobey the divine
administration. Whoever thinks anything to be good that is outside the
range of his will, let that man feel envy and unsatisfied longing; let
him be flattered, let him be unquiet; whoever thinks anything to be evil
that is outside the range of his will, let him feel pain and sorrow, let
him bemoan himself and be unhappy.” And again: “This is the law—divine
and strong and beyond escape—which exacts the greatest punishments from
those who have sinned the greatest sins. For what says it? The man who
lays claim to the things that do not concern him, let him be a braggart,
let him be vainglorious: the man who disobeys the divine administration,
let him be mean-spirited, let him be a slave, let him feel grief, and
jealousy, and pity; in short, let him bemoan himself and be unhappy.”[397]
* * * * *
There were thus at the beginning of the Christian era two concurrent
conceptions of the nature of the superhuman forces which determine the
existence and control the activity of all created things, the conceptions
of Destiny and of Providence. The two conceptions, though apparently
antagonistic, had tended, like all conceptions which have a strong hold
upon masses of men, to approach each other. The meeting-point had been
found in the conception of the fixed order of the world as being at once
rational and beneficent. It was rational because it was the embodiment of
the highest reason; and it was beneficent because happiness is incident
to perfection, and the highest reason, which is the law of the perfection
of the whole, is also the law of the perfection of the parts. There
were two stages in this blending of the two conceptions into one: the
identification, first of Destiny with Reason;[398] and, secondly, of
Destiny or Reason with Providence.[399] The former of these is found in
Heraclitus, but is absent from Plato, who distinguishes what comes into
being by necessity, from what is wrought by mind: the elaboration of
both the former and the latter is due to the Stoics, growing logically
out of their conception of the universe as a single substance moved
by an inherent law. It was probably in many cases a change rather of
language than of idea when Destiny or Reason or Providence was spoken
of as God;[400] and yet sometimes, whether by the lingering of an
ancient belief or by an intuition which transcended logic, the sense of
personality mingles with the idea of physical sequence, and all things
that happen in the infinite chain of immutable causation are conceived
as happening by the will of God.
3. But over against the conception of a perfect Reason or Providence
administering the world, was the fact of the existence of physical pain
and social inequality and moral failure. The problems which the fact
suggested filled a large place in later Greek philosophy, and were solved
in many ways.
The solution was sometimes found in the denial of the universality
of Providence. God is the Author only of good: evil is due to other
causes.[401] This view, which found its first philosophical expression
in the _Timæus_ of Plato, was transmitted, through some of the Platonic
schools, to the later syncretist writers who incorporated Platonic
elements. In its Platonic form it assumed the existence of inferior
agents who ultimately owed their existence to God, but whose existence as
authors of evil He permitted or overlooked. In some later forms the view
linked itself with Oriental conceptions of matter as inherently evil.
The solution was more commonly found in a denial of the reality of
apparent evils. They were all either forms of good, or incidental to its
operation or essential to its production. This was the common solution of
the Stoics. It had many phases. One view was based upon the teleological
conception of nature. The world is marching on to its end: it realizes
its purpose not directly but by degrees: there are necessary sequences
of its march which seem to us to be evil.[402] Another view, akin to the
preceding, was based upon the conception of the world as a whole. In its
vast economy there are subordinations and individual inconveniences. Such
subordinations and inconveniences are necessary parts of the plan. The
pain of the individual is not an evil, but his contribution to the good
of the whole. “What about my leg being lamed, then?” says Epictetus,[403]
addressing himself in the character of an imaginary objector. “Slave!
do you really find fault with the world on account of one bit of a leg?
will you not give that up to the universe? will you not let it go? will
you not gladly surrender it to the Giver?” The world, in other words, was
regarded as an _economy_ (οἰκονομία), like that of a city, in which there
are apparent inequalities of condition, but in which such inequalities
are necessary to the constitution of the whole.[404]
“What is meant, then,” asks Epictetus, “by distinguishing the
things that happen to us as ‘according to nature’ and ‘contrary
to nature’? The phrases are used as if we were isolated. For
example, to a foot to be ‘according to nature’ is to be clean;
but if you consider it as a _foot_, a member of the body, and
not as isolated, it will be its duty both to walk in mud, and
to tread on thorns—nay, sometimes even to be cut off for the
benefit of the whole body; if it refuse, it is no longer a
foot. We have to form a similar conception about ourselves.
What are you? A man. If you regard yourself as isolated, it is
‘according to nature’ to live until old age, to be rich, to be
in good health; but if you regard yourself as a _man_, a part
of a certain whole, it is your duty, on account of that whole,
sometimes to be ill, sometimes to take a voyage, sometimes to
run into danger, sometimes to be in want, and, it may be, to
die before your time. Why then are you discontented? Do you not
know that, as in the example a discontented foot is no longer a
foot, so neither are you a man. For what is a man? A member of
a city, first the city which consists of gods and men, and next
of the city which is so called in the more proximate sense, the
earthly city, which is a small model of the whole. ‘Am I, then,
now,’ you say, ‘to be brought before a court: is so-and-so to
fall into a fever: so-and-so to go on a voyage: so-and-so to
die: so-and-so to be condemned?’ Yes; for it is impossible,
considering the sort of body we have, with this atmosphere
round us, and with these companions of our life, that different
things of this kind should not befall different men.[405]
“It is on this account that the philosophers rightly tell us
that if a perfectly good man had foreknown what was going
to happen to him, he would co-operate with nature in both
falling sick and dying and being maimed, being conscious that
this is the particular portion that is assigned to him in the
arrangement of the universe, and that the whole is supreme over
the part, and the city over the citizen.”[406]
This Stoical solution, if the teleological conception which underlies it
be assumed, may have been adequate as an explanation both of physical
pain and of social inequality. But it was clearly inadequate as an
explanation of misery and moral evil. And the sense of misery and moral
evil was growing. The increased complexity of social life revealed the
distress which it helped to create, and the intensified consciousness
of individual life quickened also the sense of disappointment and moral
shortcoming. The solution of the difficulties which these facts of life
presented, was found in a belief which was correlative to the growing
belief in the goodness of God, though logically inconsistent with the
belief in the universality of His Providence. It was, that men were the
authors of their own misery. Their sorrows, so far as they were not
punitive or remedial, came from their own folly or perversity. They
belonged to a margin of life which was outside the will of the gods or
the ordinances of fate. The belief was repeatedly expressed by Homer,
but does not appear in philosophy until the time of the Stoics: it is
found in both Cleanthes and Chrysippus, and the latter also quotes it
as a belief of the Pythagoreans.[407] Out of it came the solution of a
problem not less important than that from which it had itself sprung. The
conception that men were free to bring ruin upon themselves, led to the
wider conception that they were altogether free. There emerged for the
first time into prominence the idea which has filled a large place in all
later theology and ethics, that of the freedom of the will. The freedom
which was denied to external nature was asserted of human nature. It was
within a man’s own power to do right or wrong, to be happy or miserable.
“Of all things that are,” says Epictetus,[408] “one part is in
our control, the other out of it; in our control are opinion,
impulse to do, effort to obtain, effort to avoid—in a word,
our own proper activities; out of our control are our bodies,
property, reputation, office—in a word, all things except our
proper activities. Things in our control are in their nature
free, not liable to hindrance in the doing or to frustration of
the attainment; things out of our control are weak, dependent,
liable to hindrance, belonging to others. Bear in mind, then,
that if you mistake what is dependent for what is free, and
what belongs to others for what is your own, you will meet with
obstacles in your way, you will be regretful and disquieted,
you will find fault with both gods and men. If, on the
contrary, you think that only to be your own which is really
your own, and that which is another’s to be, as it really is,
another’s, no one will thwart you, you will find fault with
no one, you will reproach no one, you will do no single thing
against your will, no one will harm you, you will not have an
enemy.”
The incompatibility of this doctrine with that of the universality
of Destiny or Reason or Providence—the “antinomy of the practical
understanding”—was not always observed.[409] The two doctrines marched on
parallel lines, and each of them was sometimes stated as though it had no
limitations. The harmony of them, which is indicated by both Cleanthes
and Chrysippus, and which underlies a large part of both the theology and
the ethics of Epictetus, is in effect this: The world marches on to its
end, realizing its own perfection, with absolute certainty. The majority
of its parts move in that march unconsciously, with no sense of pleasure
or pain, no idea of good or evil. To man is given the consciousness of
action, the sense of pleasure and pain, the idea of good and evil, and
freedom of choice between them. If he chooses that which is against the
movement of nature, he chooses for himself misery; if he chooses that
which is in accordance with that movement, he finds happiness. In either
case the movement of nature goes on, and the man fulfils his destiny:
“_Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt._”[410] It is a man’s true
function and high privilege so to educate his mind and discipline his
will, as to think that to be best which is really best, and that to be
avoided which nature has not willed: in other words, to acquiesce in the
will of God, not as submitting in passive resignation to the power of one
who is stronger, but as having made that will his own.[411]
If a man realizes this, instead of bemoaning the difficulties of life,
he will not only ask God to send them, but thank Him for them. This is
the Stoical theodicy. The life and teaching of Epictetus are for the most
part a commentary upon it.
“Look at the powers you have; and when you have looked at
them, say, ‘Bring me, O God, what difficulty Thou wilt; for
I have the equipment which Thou hast given me, and the means
for making all things that happen contribute to my adornment.’
Nay, but that is not what you do: you sit sometimes shuddering
at the thought of what may happen, sometimes bewailing and
grieving and groaning over what does happen. Then you find
fault with the gods! For what but impiety is the consequence
of such degeneracy? And yet God has not merely given you these
powers by which we may bear whatever happens without being
lowered or crushed by it, but also, like the good King and true
Father that He is, has given to this part of you the capacity
of not being thwarted, or forced, or hindered, and has made it
absolutely your own, not even reserving to Himself the power of
thwarting or hindering it.”[412]
“What words are sufficient to praise or worthily describe the
gifts of Providence to us? If we were really wise, what should
we have been doing in public or in private but sing hymns to
God, and bless Him and recount His gifts (τὰς χάριτας)? Digging
or ploughing or eating, ought we not to be singing this hymn to
God, ‘Great is God for having given us these tools for tilling
the ground; great is God for having given us hands to work with
and throat to swallow with, for that we grow unconsciously
and breathe while we sleep’? This ought to be our hymn for
everything: but the chiefest and divinest hymn should be for
His having given us the power of understanding and of dealing
rationally with ideas. Nay—since most of you are utterly blind
to this—ought there not to be some one to make this his special
function, and to sing the hymn to God for all the rest? What
else can a lame old man like me do but sing hymns to God? If I
were a nightingale, I should do the work of a nightingale; if a
swan, the work of a swan; but being as I am a rational being,
I must sing hymns to God. This is my work: this I do: this
rank—as far as I can—I will not leave; and I invite you to join
with me in this same song.”[413]
B. THE CHRISTIAN IDEA.
In primitive Christianity we find ourselves in another sphere of ideas:
we seem to be breathing the air of Syria, with Syrian forms moving round
us, and speaking a language which is not familiar to us. For the Greek
city, with its orderly government, we have to substitute the picture
of an Eastern sheyk, at once the paymaster of his dependents and their
judge. Two conceptions are dominant, that of wages for work done, and
that of positive law.
1. The idea of moral conduct as work done for a master who will in due
time pay wages for it, was a natural growth on Semitic soil. It grew up
among the _fellahin_, to whom the day’s work brought the day’s wages,
and whose work was scrutinized before the wages were paid. It is found
in many passages of the New Testament, and not least of all in the
discourses of our Lord. The ethical problems which had vexed the souls
of the writers of Job and the Psalms, are solved by the teaching that
the wages are not all paid now, but that some of them are in the keeping
of the Father in heaven. The persecuted are consoled by the thought,
“Great are your wages in heaven.”[414] Those who do their alms before men
receive their wages in present reputation, and have no wages stored up
for them in heaven.[415] The smallest act of casual charity, the giving
of a cup of cold water, will not go without its wages.[416] The payment
will be made at the return of the Son of Man, whose “wages are with
him to give to every man according as his work is.”[417] So fundamental
is the conception that “he that cometh to God must believe,” not only
“that He is,” but also that He “pays their due to them that seek after
Him.”[418] So also in the early Christian literature which moved still
within the sphere of Syrian ideas. In the “Two Ways,” what is given in
charity should be given without murmuring, for God will repay it:[419]
in the Epistle of Barnabas, the conception of the paymaster is blended
with that of the judge.[420] “The Lord judges without respect of persons:
every one shall receive according as he has done: if he be good, his
righteousness shall go before him: if he be wicked, the wages of his
wickedness are before his face.”
2. God is at once the Lawgiver and the Judge. The underlying conception
is that of an Oriental sovereign who issues definite commands, who is
gratified by obedience and made angry by disobedience, who gives presents
to those who please him and punishes those with whom he is angry. The
punishments which he inflicts are vindictive and not remedial. They are
the manifestation of his vengeance against unrighteousness. They are
external to the offender. They follow on the offence by the sentence of
the judge, and not by a self-acting law. He sends men _into_ punishment.
The introduction into this primitive Christianity of the ethical
conceptions of Greek philosophy, raised difficulties which were long in
being solved, if indeed they can be said to have been solved even now.
The chief of these difficulties were, (i.) the relation of the idea of
forgiveness to that of law; (ii.) the relation of the conception of a
Moral Governor to that of free-will.
(i.) The Christian conception of God on its ethical side was dominated by
the idea of the forgiveness of sins. God was a Sovereign who had issued
commands: He was a Householder who had entrusted His servants with powers
to be used in His service. As Sovereign, He could, at His pleasure,
forgive a breach of His orders: as Householder, He could remit a debt
which was due to Him from His servants. The special message of the Gospel
was, that God was willing to forgive men their transgressions, and to
remit their debts, for the sake of Jesus Christ. The corresponding Greek
conception had come to be dominated by the idea of order. The order was
rational and beneficent, but it was universal. It could not be violated
with impunity. The punishment of its violation came by a self-acting law.
There was a possibility of amendment, but there was none of remission.
Each of these conceptions is consistent with itself: each by itself
furnishes the basis of a rational theology. But the two conceptions
are apparently irreconcilable with each other; and the history of a
large part of early Christian theology is the history of endeavours to
reconcile them. The one conception belonged to a moral world, controlled
by a Personality who set forces in motion; the other to a physical world,
controlled by a force which was also conceived as a Personality. Stated
in Christian terms, the one resolved itself into the proposition, God is
good; the other into the proposition, God is just. The two propositions
seemed at first to be inconsistent with each other: on the one hand, the
infinite love of God excluding the idea of punishment; on the other hand,
His immutable righteousness excluding the idea of forgiveness.[421] The
difficulty seemed insoluble, except upon the hypothesis of the existence
of two Gods. The ditheism was sometimes veiled by the conception that the
second God had been created by the first, and was ultimately subordinate
to Him. In the theology of Marcion, which filled a large place in the
Christianity of both the second and the third centuries, ditheism was
presented as the only solution of this and all the other contrasts of
which the world is full, and of which that of Law and Grace is the most
typical example.[422] The New Testament was the revelation of the good
God, the God of love; the Old Testament was that of the just God, the God
of wrath. Redemption was the victory of forgiveness over punishment, of
the God who was revealed by Jesus Christ over the God who was manifested
in the Law.
The ditheistic hypothesis was itself more difficult than the difficulties
which it explained. The writers who opposed it were helped, not only by
the whole current of evangelical tradition, but also by the dominant
tendencies of both philosophy and popular religion. They insisted that
justice and goodness were not only compatible but necessarily co-existent
in the Divine nature. Goodness meant not indiscriminating beneficence;
justice meant not inexorable wrath: goodness and justice were combined
in the power of God to deal with every man according to his deserts,
including in the idea of deserts that of repentance.
The solution is found in Irenæus, who argues that in the absence of
either of the two attributes, God would cease to be God:
“If the God who judges be not also good, so as to bestow
favours on those on whom He ought, and to reprove those whom
He should, He will be as a Judge neither wise nor just. On the
other hand, if the good God be only good, and not also able to
test those on whom He shall bestow His goodness, He will be
outside goodness as well as outside justice, and His goodness
will seem imperfect, inasmuch as it does not save all, as it
should do if it be not accompanied with judgment. Marcion,
therefore, by dividing God into two, the one a God who judges,
and the other a God who is good, on both sides puts an end to
God.”[423]
It is found in Tertullian, who, after arguing on _à priori_ grounds that
the one attribute implies the other, passes by an almost unconscious
transition from physical to moral law: just as the “justice” of God
in its physical operation controlled His goodness in the making of
an orderly world, so in its moral operation it has, since the Fall,
regulated His dealings with mankind.
“Nothing is good which is unjust; all that is just is good....
The good is where the just is. From the beginning of the world
the Creator has been at once good and just. The two qualities
came forth together. His goodness formed the world, His justice
harmonized it. It is the work of justice that there is a
separation between light and darkness, between day and night,
between heaven and earth, between the greater and the lesser
lights.... As goodness brought all things into being, so did
justice distinguish them. The whole universe has been disposed
and ordered by the decision of His justice. Every position and
mode of the elements, the movement and the rest, the rising and
the setting of each one of them, are judicial decisions of the
Creator.... When evil broke out, and the goodness of God came
henceforward to have an opponent to contend with, the justice
also of God acquired another function, that of regulating the
operation of His goodness according to the opposition to it:
the result is that His goodness, instead of being absolutely
free, is dispensed according to men’s deserts; it is offered to
the worthy, it is denied to the unworthy, it is taken away from
the unthankful, it is avenged on all its adversaries. In this
way this whole function of justice is an agency for goodness:
in condemning, in punishing, in raging with wrath, as you
Marcionites express it, it does good and not evil.”[424]
It is found in the Clementines,[425] the “Recognitions” going so far as
to make the acceptance of it an element in “saving knowledge:” “it is
not enough for salvation to know that God is good; we must know also that
He is just.”[426] It is elaborated by both Clement of Alexandria[427] and
Origen; but in the latter it is linked closely with other problems, and
his view will be best considered in relation to them.[428] The Christian
world in his time was settling down into a general acceptance of the
belief that goodness and justice co-existed, each limiting the other in
the mind of God: the general effect of the controversy was to emphasize
in Christianity the conception of God as a Moral Governor, administering
the world by laws which were at once beneficent and just.
(ii.) But this problem of the relation of goodness to justice passed, as
the corresponding problem in Greek philosophy passed, into the problem of
the relation of a good God to moral evil. The difficulties of the problem
were increased in its Christian form by the conception of moral evil as
guilt rather than as misery, and by the emphasis which was laid on the
idea of the Divine foreknowledge.
The problem was stated in its plainest form by Marcion:
“If God is good, and prescient of the future, and able to avert
evil, why did He allow man, that is to say His own image and
likeness, nay more, His own substance, to be tricked by the
devil and fall from obedience to the law into death? For if
He had been good, and thereby unwilling that such an event
should happen, and prescient, and thereby not ignorant that
it would happen, and powerful, and thereby able to prevent
its happening, it would certainly not have happened, being
impossible under these three conditions of divine greatness.
But since it did happen, the inference is certain that
God must be believed to be neither good nor prescient nor
powerful.”[429]
The hypothesis of the existence of two Gods, by which Marcion solved this
and other problems of theology, was consistently opposed by the great
mass of the Christian communities. The solution which they found was
almost uniformly that of the Stoics: evil is necessary for the production
of moral virtue: there is no virtue where there is no choice: and man
was created free to choose. It was found, in short, in the doctrine of
free-will.
This solution is found in Justin Martyr:
“The nature of every created being is to be capable of vice and
virtue: for no one of them would be an object of praise if it
had not also the power of turning in the one direction or the
other.”[430]
It is found in Tatian:
“Each of the two classes of created things (men and angels) is
born with a power of self-determination, not absolutely good by
nature, for that is an attribute of God alone, but brought to
perfection through freedom of voluntary choice, in order that
the bad man may be justly punished, being himself the cause of
his being wicked, and that the righteous man may be worthily
praised for his good actions, not having in his exercise of
moral freedom transgressed the will of God.”[431]
It is found in Irenæus:
“In man as in angels, for angels also are rational beings, God
has placed the power of choosing, so that those who have obeyed
might justly be in possession of what is good; and that those
who have not obeyed may justly not be in possession of what is
good, and may receive the punishment which they deserve.... But
if it had been by nature that some were bad and others good,
neither would the latter be deserving of praise for being good,
inasmuch as they were so constituted; nor the others of blame
for being bad, inasmuch as they were born so. But since in fact
all men are of the same nature, able on the one hand to hold
fast and to do what is good, and again on the other hand to
reject it and not do it, it is right for them to be in the one
case praised for their choice of the good and their adherence
to it, and in the other case blamed and punished for their
rejection of it, both among well-governed men and much more in
the sight of God.”[432]
It is found in Theophilus[433] and Athenagoras,[434] and, as a more
elaborate theory, in Tertullian and the philosophers of Alexandria.
Just as Epictetus and the later Stoics had made freedom of will to be
the specially divine part of human nature, so Tertullian[435] answers
Marcion’s objection, that if God foreknew that Adam would fall He should
not have made him free, by the argument that the goodness of God in
making man necessarily gave him the highest form of existence, that such
highest form was “the image and likeness of God,” and that such image and
likeness was freedom of will. And just as Epictetus and the later Stoics
had conceived of life as a moral discipline, and of its apparent evils as
necessary means of testing character, so the Christian philosophers of
Alexandria conceive of God as the Teacher and Trainer and Physician of
men, of the pains of life as being disciplinary, and of the punishments
of sin as being not vindictive but remedial.[436]
There was still a large margin of unsolved difficulties. The hypothesis
of the freedom of the will, as it had hitherto been stated, assumed that
all beings who possessed it were equal in both their circumstances and
their natural aptitudes. It took no account of the enormous difference
between one man and another in respect of either the external advantages
or disadvantages of their lives, or the strength and weakness of their
characters. The difficulty was strongly felt by more than one school of
Christian philosophers, the more so because it applied, not only to the
diversities among mankind, but also to the larger differences between
mankind as a whole and the celestial beings who rose in their sublime
gradations above it.
“Very many persons, especially those who come from the school
of Marcion and Valentinus and Basilides, object to us that it
is inconsistent with the justice of God in making the world
to assign to some creatures an abode in the heavens, and not
merely a better abode, but also a loftier and more honourable
position; to grant to some principality, to others powers,
to others dominations; to confer upon some the noblest seats
of the heavenly tribunals, to cause others to shine out with
brighter rays, and to flash forth the brilliance of a star; to
give to some the glory of the sun, and to others the glory of
the moon, and to others the glory of the stars; to make one
star differ from another star in glory.... In the second place,
they object to us about terrestrial beings that a happier lot
of birth has come to some men than to others; one man, for
example, is begotten by Abraham and born according to promise;
another is the son of Isaac and Rebekah, and, supplanting his
brother even in the womb, is said even before he is born to
be beloved of God. One man is born among the Hebrews, among
whom he finds the learning of the divine law; another among
the Greeks, themselves also wise and men of no small learning;
another among the Ethiopians, who are cannibals; another among
the Scythians, with whom parricide is legal; another among the
Taurians, who offer their guests in sacrifice.
“They consequently argue thus: If this great diversity of
circumstances, this varied and different condition of birth—a
matter in which free-will has no place—is not caused by a
diversity in the nature of the souls themselves, a soul of an
evil nature being destined for an evil nation, and a soul of a
good nature for a good one, what other conclusion can be drawn
than that all this is the result of chance and accident? And
if that conclusion be admitted, it will no longer be credible
either that the world was made by God or that it is governed by
His providence: and consequently neither will the judgment of
God upon every man’s doings seem a thing to be looked for.”[437]
It is to this phase of the controversy that the ethical theology of
Origen is relative. In that theology, Stoicism and Neo-Platonism are
blended into a complete theodicy: nor has a more logical superstructure
ever been reared on the basis of philosophical theism.
It is necessary to show the coherence of his view as a whole, and it is
advisable, in doing so, to use chiefly his own words:[438]
“There was but one beginning of all things, as there will be
but a single end. The diversities of existence which have
sprung from a single beginning will be absorbed in a single
end.[439] The causes of those diversities lie in the diverse
things themselves.[440] They were created absolutely equal;
for, on the one hand, God had no reason in Himself for causing
inequalities;[441] and, on the other hand, being absolutely
impartial, He could not give to one being an advantage which
He did not give to another.[442] They were also, by a similar
necessity, created with the capacity of being diverse; for
spotless purity is of the essence of none save God; in all
created beings it must be accidental, and consequently liable
to lapse.[443] The lapse, when it takes place, is voluntary;
for every being endowed with reason has the power of exercising
it, and this power is free;[444] it is excited by external
causes, but not coerced by them.[445] For to lay the fault on
external causes and put it away from ourselves by declaring
that we are like logs or stones, dragged by forces that act
upon them from without, is neither true nor reasonable. Every
created rational being is thus capable of both good and
evil; consequently of praise and blame; consequently also of
happiness and misery; of the former if it chooses holiness
and clings to it, of the latter if by sloth and negligence it
swerves into wickedness and ruin.[446] The lapse, when it has
taken place, is not only voluntary but also various in degree.
Some beings, though possessed of free-will, never lapsed: they
form the order of angels. Some lapsed but slightly, and form
in their varying degrees the orders of ‘thrones, dominations,
princedoms, virtues, powers.’ Some lapsed lower, but not
irrecoverably, and form the race of men.[447] Some lapsed to
such a depth of unworthiness and wickedness as to be opposing
powers; they are the devil and his angels.[448] In the temporal
world which is seen, as well as in the eternal worlds which
are unseen, all beings are arranged according to their merits;
their place has been determined by their own conduct.[449]
“The present inequalities of circumstance and character are
thus not wholly explicable within the sphere of the present
life. But this world is not the only world. Every soul has
existed from the beginning; it has therefore passed through
some worlds already, and will pass through others before it
reaches the final consummation. It comes into this world
strengthened by the victories or weakened by the defeats of its
previous life. Its place in this world as a vessel appointed to
honour or to dishonour is determined by its previous merits or
demerits. Its work in this world determines its place in the
world which is to follow this.[450]
“All this takes place with the knowledge and under the
oversight of God. It is an indication of His ineffable wisdom
that the diversities of natures for which created beings are
themselves responsible are wrought together into the harmony
of the world.[451] It is an indication not only of His wisdom
but of His goodness that, while no creature is coerced into
acting rightly, yet when it lapses it meets with evils and
punishments. All punishments are remedial. God calls what are
termed evils into existence to convert and purify those whom
reason and admonition fail to change. He is thus the great
Physician of souls.[452] The process of cure, acting as it
does simply through free-will, takes in some cases an almost
illimitable time. For God is long-suffering, and to some souls,
as to some bodies, a rapid cure is not beneficial. But in the
end all souls will be thoroughly purged.[453] All that any
reasonable soul, cleansed of the dregs of all vices, and with
every cloud of wickedness completely wiped away, can either
feel or understand or think, will be wholly God: it will no
longer either see or contain anything else but God: God will
be the mode and measure of its every movement: and so God will
be ‘all.’ Nor will there be any longer any distinction between
good and evil, because evil will nowhere exist; for God is all
things, and in Him no evil inheres. So, then, when the end has
been brought back to the beginning, that state of things will
be restored which the rational creation had when it had no need
to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; all sense
of wickedness will have been taken away; He who alone is the
one good God becomes to the soul ‘all,’ and that not in some
souls but ‘in all.’ There will be no longer death, nor the
sting of death, nor any evil anywhere, but God will be ‘all in
all.’”[454]
Of this great theodicy, only part has been generally accepted. The Greek
conceptions which underlie it, and which preceded it, have survived, but
in other forms. Free-will, final causes, probation, have had a later
history in which Greece has had no share. The doctrine of free-will
has remained in name, but it has been so mingled on the one hand with
theories of human depravity, and on the other with theories of divine
grace, that the original current of thought is lost in the marshes into
which it has descended. The doctrine of final causes has been pressed to
an almost excessive degree as proving the existence and the providence of
God; but His government of the human race has been often viewed rather as
the blundering towards an ultimate failure than as a complete vindication
of His purpose of creation. The Christian world has acquiesced in the
conception of life as a probation; but while some of its sections have
conceived of this life as the only probation, and others have admitted a
probation in a life to come, none have admitted into the recognized body
of their teaching Origen’s sublime conception of an infinite stairway of
worlds, with its perpetual ascent and descent of souls, ending at last in
the union of all souls with God.
LECTURE IX.
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
III. GOD AS THE SUPREME BEING.
It was in the Gentile rather than in the Jewish world that the theology
of Christianity was shaped. It was built upon a Jewish basis. The Jewish
communities of the great cities and along the commercial routes of the
empire had paved the way for Christianity by their active propaganda of
monotheism. Christianity won its way among the educated classes by virtue
of its satisfying not only their moral ideals, but also their highest
intellectual conceptions. On its ethical side it had, as we have seen,
large elements in common with reformed Stoicism; on its theological
side it moved in harmony with the new movements of Platonism.[455] And
those movements reacted upon it. They gave a philosophical form to the
simpler Jewish faith, and especially to those elements of it in which the
teaching of St. Paul had already given a foothold for speculation. The
earlier conceptions remained; but blending readily with the philosophical
conceptions that were akin to them, they were expanded into large
theories in which metaphysics and dialectics had an ample field. The
conception, for example, of the one God whose kingdom was a universal
kingdom and endured throughout all ages, blended with, and passed into,
the philosophical conception of a Being who was beyond time and space.
The conception that “clouds and darkness were round about Him,” blended
with, and passed into, the philosophical conception of a Being who was
beyond not only human sight but human thought. The conception of His
transcendence obtained the stronger hold because it confirmed the prior
conception of His unity; and that of His incommunicability, and of the
consequent need of a mediator, gave a philosophical explanation of the
truth that Jesus Christ was His Son.
A. THE IDEA AND ITS DEVELOPMENT IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
But the theories which in the fourth century came to prevail, and which
have formed the main part of speculative theology ever since, were the
result of at least two centuries of conflict. At every stage of the
conflict the conceptions of one or other of the forms of Greek philosophy
played a decisive part; and the changing phases of the conflict find a
remarkable parallel in some of the philosophical schools.
The conflict may be said to have had three leading stages, which are
marked respectively by the dominance of speculations as to (1) the
transcendence of God, (2) His revelation of Himself, (3) the distinctions
in His nature.
(1) _The Transcendence of God._—Nearly seven hundred years before
the time when Christianity first came into large contact with Greek
philosophy, the mind of a Greek thinker, outstripping the slow inferences
of popular thought, had leapt to the conception of God as the Absolute
Unity. He was the ultimate generalization of all things, expressed as the
ultimate abstraction of number:[456] He was not limited by parts or by
bodily form: “all of Him is sight, all of Him is understanding, all of
Him is hearing.” But it is probable that the conception in its first form
was rather of a material than of an ideal unity:[457] the basis of later
metaphysics was first securely laid by a second form of the conception
which succeeded the first half-a-century afterwards. The conception was
that of Absolute Being. Only the One really _is_: it was not nor will
be: it _is_ now, and is everywhere entire, a continuous unity, a perfect
sphere which fills all space, undying and immovable. Over against it
are the Many, the innumerable objects of sense: they are not, but only
seem to be: the knowledge that we seem to have of them is not truth,
but illusion. But the conception, even in this second form, was more
consistent with Pantheism than with Theism. It was lifted to the higher
plane on which it has ever since rested by the Platonic distinction
between the world of sense and the world of thought. God belonged to the
latter, and not to the former. Absolute Unity, Absolute Being, and all
the other terms which expressed His unique supremacy, were gathered up in
the conception of Mind; for mind in the highest phase of its existence
is self-contemplative: the modes of its expression are numerous, and
perhaps infinite: but it can itself go behind its modes, and so retire,
as it were, a step farther back from the material objects about which its
modes employ themselves. In this sense God is transcendent (ἐπέκεινα τῆς
οὐσίας), beyond the world of sense and matter. “God therefore is Mind, a
form separate from all matter, that is to say, out of contact with it,
and not involved with anything that is capable of being acted on.”[458]
This great conception of the transcendence of God filled a large place
in later Greek philosophy, even outside the Platonic schools.[459]
The history of it is beyond our present purpose; but we shall better
understand the relation of Christian theology to current thought if we
take three expressions of the conception at the time when that theology
was being formed—in Plutarch, in Maximus of Tyre, and in Plotinus.
Plutarch says:
“What, then, is that which really exists? It is the Eternal,
the Uncreated, the Undying, to whom time brings no change. For
time is always flowing and never stays: it is a vessel charged
with birth and death: it has a before and after, a ‘will be’
and a ‘has been:’ it belongs to the ‘is not’ rather than to
the ‘is.’ But God is: and that not in time but in eternity,
motionless, timeless, changeless eternity, that has no before
or after: and being One, He fills eternity with one Now, and so
really ‘is,’ not ‘has been,’ or ‘will be’, without beginning
and without ceasing.”[460]
Maximus of Tyre says:
“God, the Father and Fashioner of all things that are, He who
is older than the sun, older than the sky, greater than time
and lapse of time and the whole stream of nature, is unnamed by
legislators, and unspoken by the voice and unseen by the eyes:
and since we cannot apprehend His essence, we lean upon words
and names and animals, and forms of gold and ivory and silver,
and plants and rivers and mountain-peaks and springs of waters,
longing for an intuition of Him, and in our inability naming
by His name all things that are beautiful in this world of
ours.”[461]
And again:
“It is of this Father and Begetter of the universe that Plato
tells us: His name he does not tell us, for he knew it not: nor
does he tell us His colour, for he saw Him not; nor His size,
for he touched Him not. Colour and size are felt by the touch
and seen by the sight: but the Deity Himself is unseen by
the sight, unspoken by the voice, untouched by fleshly touch,
unheard by the hearing, seen only—through its likeness to Him,
and heard only—through its kinship with Him, by the noblest and
purest and clearest-sighted and swiftest and oldest element of
the soul.”[462]
Plotinus similarly, in answer to the old problem, “how from the One,
being such as we have described Him, anything whatever has substance,
instead of the One abiding by Himself,” replies:
“Let us call upon God Himself before we thus answer—not with
uttered words, but stretching forth our souls in prayer to
Him, for this is the only way in which we can pray, alone to
Him who is alone. We must, then, gaze upon Him in the inner
part of us, as in a temple, being as He is by Himself, abiding
still and beyond all things (ἐπέκεινα ἁπάντων). Everything that
moves must have an object towards which it moves. But the One
has no such object; consequently we must not assert movement
of Him.... Let us not think of production in time, when we
speak of things eternal.... What then was produced was produced
without His moving: ... it had its being without His assenting
or willing or being moved in anywise. It was like the light
that surrounds the sun and shines forth from it, though the sun
is itself at rest: it is reflected like an image. So with what
is greatest. That which is next greatest comes forth from Him,
and the next greatest is νοῦς; for νοῦς sees Him and needs Him
alone.”[463]
But the conception of transcendence is capable of taking two forms.
It may be that of a God who passes beyond all the classes into which
sensible phenomena are divisible, by virtue of His being pure Mind,
cognizable only by mind; or it may be that of a God who exists _extra
flammantia moenia mundi_, filling the infinite space which surrounds
and contains all the spheres of material existence. The one God is
transcendent in the proper sense of the term; the other is supra-cosmic.
In either case He is said to be unborn, undying, uncontained; and since
the same terms are thus used to express the elements of both forms of the
conception, it is natural that these forms should readily pass into each
other, and that the distinction between them should not always be present
to a writer’s mind or perceptible in his writings. But the conception in
one or other of its forms fills a large place in later Greek philosophy.
It blended in a common stream with the new currents of religious feeling.
[The process is well illustrated by Philo.]
The words “I am _thy_ God” are used not in a proper but in a
secondary sense. For Being, _quâ_ Being, is out of relation:
itself is full of itself and sufficient for itself, both
before the birth of the world and equally so after it.[464]
He transcends all quality, being better than virtue, better
than knowledge, and better even than the good itself and the
beautiful itself.[465] He is not in space, but beyond it; for
He contains it. He is not in time, for He is the Father of the
universe, which is itself the father of time, since from its
movement time proceeds.[466] He is “without body, parts or
passions”: without feet, for whither should He walk who fills
all things: without hands, for from whom should He receive
anything who possesses all things: without eyes, for how should
He need eyes who made the light.[467] He is invisible, for
how can eyes that are too weak to gaze upon the sun be strong
enough to gaze upon its Maker.[468] He is incomprehensible: not
even the whole universe, much less the human mind, can contain
the conception of Him:[469] we know _that_ He is, we cannot
know _what_ He is:[470] we may see the manifestations of Him
in His works, but it were monstrous folly to go behind His
works and inquire into His essence.[471] He is hence unnamed:
for names are the symbols of created things, whereas His only
attribute is to _be_.[472]
(2) _The Revelation of the Transcendent._—Side by side with this
conception of the transcendence of God, and intimately connected with
it, was the idea of beings or forces coming between God and men. A
transcendent God was in Himself incommunicable: the more the conception
of His transcendence was developed, the stronger was the necessity for
conceiving of the existence of intermediate links.[473]
i. A basis for such a conception was afforded in the popular mythology
by the belief in demons—spirits inferior to the gods, but superior to
men. The belief was probably “a survival of the primitive psychism which
peopled the whole universe with life and animation.”[474] There was an
enormous contemporary development of the idea of demons or genii. They
are found in Epictetus, Dio Chrysostom, Maximus, and Celsus. In the
latter some are good, some bad, most of them of mixed nature; to them is
due the creation of all things except the human soul; they are the rulers
of day and night, of the sunlight and the cold.[475]
ii. A philosophical basis for the theory was afforded by the Platonic
_Ideai_ or Forms, and the Stoical _Logoi_ or Reasons. We have already
seen the place which those Forms, viewed also as Forces, and those
Reasons, viewed also as productive Seeds, filled in the later Greek
cosmologies and cosmogonies. They were not less important in relation
to the theory of the transcendence of God. The Forms according to which
He shaped the world, the Forces by which He made and sustains it, the
Reasons which inhere in it and, like laws, control its movements, are
outflows from and reflexions of His nature, and communicate a knowledge
of it to His intelligent creatures. In the philosophy of Philo, these
philosophical conceptions are combined with both the Greek conception
of Dæmons and the Hebrew conception of Angels. The four conceptions,
Forms, _Logoi_, Dæmons, and Angels, pass into one another, and the
expressions which are relative to them are interchangeable. The most
common expression for them is _Logoi_, and it is more commonly found in
the singular, _Logos_.
(3) _The Distinctions in the Nature of God._—The _Logos_ is able to
reveal the nature of God because it is itself the reflexion of that
nature. It is able to reveal that nature to intelligent creatures because
the human intelligence is itself an offshoot of the Divine. As the eye of
sense sees the sensible world, which also is a revelation of God,[476]
since it is His thought impressed upon matter, so the reason sees the
intelligible world, the world of His thoughts conceived as intelligible
realities, existing separate from Him.
“The wise man, longing to apprehend God, and travelling along
the path of wisdom and knowledge, first of all meets with the
divine Reasons, and with them abides as a guest; but when
he resolves to pursue the further journey, he is compelled
to abstain, for the eyes of his understanding being opened,
he sees that the object of his quest is afar off and always
receding, an infinite distance in advance of him.”[477] “Wisdom
leads him first into the antechamber of the Divine Reason, and
when he is there he does not at once enter into the Divine
Presence; but sees Him afar off, or rather not even afar off
can he behold Him, but only he sees that the place where he
stands is still infinitely far from the unnamed, unspeakable,
and incomprehensible God.”[478]
What he sees is not God Himself but the likeness of Him, “just as those
who cannot gaze upon the sun may yet gaze upon a reflexion of it.”[479]
The _Logos_, reflecting not only the Divine nature, but also the Divine
will and the Divine goodness, becomes to men a messenger of help; like
the angel to Hagar, it brings advice and encouragement;[480] like the
angel who redeemed Jacob (Gen. xlviii. 16), it rescues men from all kinds
of evil;[481] like the angel who delivered Lot from Sodom, it succours
the kinsmen of virtue and provides for them a refuge.[482]
“Like a king, it announces by decree what men ought to do; like
a teacher, it instructs its disciples in what will benefit
them; like a counsellor, it suggests the wisest plans, and so
greatly benefits those who do not of themselves know what is
best; like a friend, it tells many secrets which it is not
lawful for the uninitiated to hear.”[483]
And standing midway between God and man, it not only reflects God
downwards to man, but also reflects man upwards to God.
“It stands on the border-line between the Creator and the
creation, not unbegotten like God, not begotten like ourselves,
and so becomes not only an ambassador from the Ruler to His
subjects, but also a suppliant from mortal man yearning after
the immortal.”[484]
The relation of the _Logos_ to God, as distinguished from its functions,
is expressed by several metaphors, all of which are important in view of
later theology. They may be gathered into two classes, corresponding to
the two great conceptions of the relation of the universe to God which
were held respectively by the two great sources of Philo’s philosophy,
the Stoics and the Platonists. The one class of metaphors belongs to
the monistic, the other to the dualistic, conception of the universe.
In the former, the _Logos_ is evolved from God; in the other, created
by Him.[485] The chief metaphors of the former class are those of a
phantom, or image, or outflow: the _Logos_ is projected by God as a man’s
shadow or phantom was sometimes conceived as thrown off by his body,[486]
expressing its every feature, and abiding as a separate existence after
the body was dead; it is a reflexion cast by God upon the space which He
contains, as a parhelion is cast by the sun;[487] it is an outflow as
from a spring.[488] The chief metaphor of the second class is that of a
son; the _Logos_ is the first-begotten of God;[489] and by an elaboration
of the metaphor which reappears in later theology, God is in one passage
spoken of as its Father, Wisdom as its Mother.[490] It hence tends
sometimes to be viewed as separate from God, neither God nor man, but
“inferior to God though greater than man.”[491] The earlier conception
had already passed through several forms: it had begun with that which
was itself the greatest leap that any one thinker had yet made, the
conception that Reason made the world: the conception of Reason led to
the conception of God as Personal Reason: out of that grew the thought of
God as greater than Reason and using it as His instrument: and at last
had come the conception of the Reason of God as in some way detached
from Him, working in the world as a subordinate but self-acting law. It
was natural that this should lead to the further conception of Reason
as the offspring of God and Wisdom, the metaphor of a human birth being
transferred to the highest sphere of heaven.
B. THE IDEA AND ITS DEVELOPMENT IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
(1) _The Transcendence of God._—All the conceptions which we have seen
to exist in the sphere of philosophy were reproduced in the sphere
of Christianity. They are sometimes relative to God, in contrast to
the world of sensible phenomena: phenomena come into being, God is
unbegotten and without beginning: phenomena are visible and tangible,
God is unseen and untouched. They are sometimes relative to the idea
of perfection: God is unchangeable, indivisible, unending. He has no
name: for a name implies the existence of something prior to that
to which a name is given, whereas He is prior to all things. These
conceptions are all negative: the positive conceptions are that He is
the infinite depth (βύθος) which contains and embosoms all things, that
He is self-existent, and that He is light. “The Father of all,” said one
school of philosophers,[492] “is a primal light, blessed, incorruptible,
and infinite.” “The essence of the unbegotten Father of the universe is
incorruptibility and self-existing light, simple and uniform.”[493]
From the earliest Christian teaching, indeed, the conception of the
transcendence of God is absent. God is near to men and speaks to them: He
is angry with them and punishes them: He is merciful to them and pardons
them. He does all this through His angels and prophets, and last of all
through His Son. But he needs such mediators rather because a heavenly
Being is invisible, than because He is transcendent. The conception which
underlies the earliest expression of the belief of a Christian community
is the simple conception of children.
“We give Thee thanks, Holy Father, for Thy holy name which Thou
hast caused to dwell in our hearts, and for the knowledge and
faith and immortality which Thou hast made known to us through
Jesus Christ, Thy servant. To Thee be glory for ever. Thou,
Almighty Master, hast created all things for Thy name’s sake,
hast given food and drink to men for their enjoyment, that
they may give thanks to Thee: and upon us hast Thou bestowed
spiritual food and drink and eternal life through Thy servant.
Before all things we give Thee thanks for that Thou art mighty:
to Thee be glory for ever.”[494]
In the original sphere of Christianity there does not appear to have been
any great advance upon these simple conceptions. The doctrine upon which
stress was laid was, that God is, that He is one, that He is almighty
and everlasting, that He made the world, that His mercy is over all
His works.[495] There was no taste for metaphysical discussion: there
was possibly no appreciation of metaphysical conceptions. It is quite
possible that some Christians laid themselves open to the accusation
which Celsus brings, of believing that God is only cognizable through
the senses.[496] They were influenced by Stoicism, which denied all
intellectual existences, and regarded spirit itself as material.[497]
This tendency resulted in Adoptian Christology.[498]
But most of the philosophical conceptions above described were adopted
by the Apologists, and through such adoption found acceptance in the
associated Christian communities. They are for the most part stated,
not as in a dogmatic system, but incidentally. For example, Justin
thus protests against a literal interpretation of the anthropomorphic
expressions of the Old Testament:
“You are not to think that the unbegotten God ‘came down’ from
anywhere or ‘went up.’ For the unutterable Father and Lord of
all things neither comes to any place nor walks nor sleeps nor
rises, but abides in His own place wherever that place may be,
seeing keenly and hearing keenly, not with eyes or ears, but
with His unspeakable power, so that He sees all things and
knows all things, nor is any one of us hid from Him: nor does
He move, He who is uncontained by space and by the whole world,
seeing that He was before the world was born.”[499]
And Athenagoras thus sums up his defence of Christianity against the
charge of atheism:
“I have sufficiently demonstrated that they are not atheists
who believe in One who is unbegotten, eternal, unseen,
impassible, incomprehensible and uncontained: comprehended by
mind and reason only, invested with ineffable light and beauty
and spirit and power, by whom the universe is brought into
being and set in order and held firm, through the agency of his
own _Logos_.”[500]
Theophilus replies thus to his heathen interlocutor who asked him to
describe the form of the Christian God:
“Listen, my friend: the form of God is unutterable and
indescribable, nor can it be seen with fleshly eyes: for
His glory is uncontained, His size is incomprehensible, His
loftiness is inconceivable, His strength is incomparable,
His wisdom is unrivalled, His goodness beyond imitation, His
beneficence beyond description. If I speak of Him as light, I
mention His handiwork: if I speak of Him as reason, I mention
His government: if I speak of Him as spirit, I mention His
breath: if I speak of Him as wisdom, I mention His offspring:
if I speak of Him as strength, I mention His might: if I speak
of Him as providence, I mention His goodness: if I speak of
His kingdom, I mention His glory.”[501]
It is not easy to determine in regard to many of these expressions
whether they are relative in the writer’s mind to a supra-cosmic or to a
transcendental conception of God. The case of Tertullian clearly shows
that they are compatible with the former conception no less than with
the latter; for though he speaks of God as “the great Supreme, existing
in eternity, unborn, unmade, without beginning, and without end,”[502]
yet he argues that He is material; for “how could one who is empty have
made things that are solid, and one who is void have made things that are
full, and one who is incorporeal have made things that have body?”[503]
But there were some schools of philosophers in which the transcendental
character of the conception is clearly apparent. The earliest of such
schools, and the most remarkable, is that of Basilides. It anticipated,
and perhaps helped to form, the later developments of Neo-Platonism.
It conceived of God as transcending being. He was absolutely beyond
all predication. Not even negative predicates are predicable of Him.
The language of the school becomes paradoxical and almost unmeaning in
the extremity of its effort to express the transcendence of God, and
at the same time to reconcile the belief in His transcendence with the
belief that He is the Creator of the world. “When there was nothing,
neither material, nor essential, nor non-essential, nor simple, nor
compound, nor unthought, nor unperceived, nor man, nor angel, nor god,
nor absolutely any of the things that are named or perceived or thought,
... God who was not (οὐκ ὢν θεός), without thought, without perception,
without will, without purpose, without passion, without desire, willed
to make a world. In saying ‘willed,’ I use the word only because some
word is necessary, but I mean without volition, without thought, and
without perception; and in saying ‘world,’ I do not mean the extended and
divisible world which afterwards came into being, with its capacity of
division, but the seed of the world.”[504] This was said more briefly,
but probably with the same meaning, by Marcus: There is no conception and
no essence of God.[505]
These exalted ideas of His transcendence, which had especially thriven
on Alexandrian soil, were further elaborated at the end of the second
century by the Christian philosophers of the Alexandrian schools, who
inherited the wealth at once of regenerated Platonism, of Gnosticism, and
of theosophic Judaism. Clement anticipated Plotinus in conceiving of God
as being “beyond the One and higher than the Monad itself,”[506] which
was the highest abstraction of current philosophy.[507] There is no name
that can properly be named of Him: “neither the One, nor the Good, nor
Mind, nor Absolute Being, nor Father, nor Creator, nor Lord.” No science
can attain unto Him; “for all science depends on antecedent principles;
but there is nothing antecedent to the Unbegotten.”[508] Origen
expressly protests against the conceptions of God which regarded Him as
supra-cosmic rather than transcendent,[509] and as having a material
substance though not a human form.[510] His own conception is that of a
nature which is absolutely simple and intelligent, or which transcends
both intelligence and existence. Being absolutely simple, He has no more
or less, no before or after, and consequently has no need of either space
or time. Being absolutely intelligent, His only attribute is to know and
to be known. But only “like knows like.” He is to be apprehended through
the intelligence which is made in His image: the human mind is capable
of knowing the Divine by virtue of its participation in it. But in the
strict sense of the word He is beyond our knowledge: our knowledge is
like the vision of a spark as compared with the splendour of the sun.[511]
(2) _Revelation or Mediation of the Transcendent._—But as in Greek
philosophy, so also in Christian theology, the doctrine whether of a
supra-cosmic or of a transcendent God necessitated the further question,
How could He pass into the sphere of the phenomenal? The rougher sort
of objectors ridiculed a God who was “solitary and destitute” in his
unapproachable uniqueness:[512] the more serious heathen philosophers
asked, If like knows like, how can your God know the world? and the mass
of Christian philosophers,[513] both within and without the associated
communities, felt this question, or one of the questions that are cognate
to it, to be the cardinal point of their theology.[514]
The tentative answers were innumerable. One early group of them
maintained the existence of a capacity in the Supreme Being to manifest
Himself in different forms. The conception had some elements of Stoical
and some of popular Greek theology, in both of which anthropomorphism
had been possible.[515] It came to an especial prominence in the
earlier stages of the Christological controversies, as an explanation
of the nature of Jesus Christ. It lay beneath what is known as Modal
Monarchianism, the theory that Christ was a temporary mode of the
existence of the one God. It was simply His will to exist in one mode
rather than in another.[516]
“One and the same God,” said Noetus, “is the Creator and Father
of all things, and, because it was His good pleasure, He
appeared to righteous men of old. For when He is not seen He is
invisible, and when He is seen He is visible: He is uncontained
when He wills not to be contained, and contained when He is
contained.... When the Father had not been born, He was rightly
styled Father: when it was His good pleasure to undergo birth,
He became on being born His own son, not another’s.”[517]
But the dominant conception was in a line with that of both Greek
philosophy and Greek religion. From the Supreme God came forth, or in Him
existed, special forms and modifications by which He both made the world
and revealed Himself to it.
(i.) The speculations as to the nature of these forms varied partly with
the large underlying variations in the conception of God as supra-cosmic
or as transcendental, and partly with the greater or less development of
the tendency to give a concrete shape to abstract ideas. They varied also
according as the forms were viewed in relation to the universe, as its
types and formative forces; or in relation to the Supreme Being and His
rational creatures, as manifestations of the one and means of knowledge
to the other. The variations are found to exist, not only between one
school of philosophers and another, but also in the same school. For
example, Tertullian distinguishes between two schools of Valentinians,
that of Valentinus himself and that of his great, though independent,
follower Ptolemy.[518] The former regarded the Æons as simply modes
of God’s existence, abiding within His essence: the latter, in common
with the great majority of the school, looked upon them as “personal
substances” which had come forth from God and remained outside Him. And
again, most philosophers of the same school made a genealogy of Æons, and
furnished their opponents thereby with one of their chief handles for
ridicule: but Colorbasus regarded the production of the Æons as a single
momentary act.[519] Sometimes, however, the expressions, which came from
different sources, were blended.
Almost all these conceptions of the means by which God communicated
Himself to the world were relative to the conception of Him as Mind. It
is as inherent a necessity for thought to reveal itself as it is for
light to shine. Following the tendency of current psychology to regard
the different manifestations of mind as relative to different elements
in mind itself, some schools of philosophers gave a separate personality
to each supposed element in the mind of God. There came forth thought
and reflexion, voice and name, reasoning and intention:[520] or from
the original Will and Thought came forth Mind and Truth (Reality) as
visible forms and images of the invisible qualities (διαθέσεων) of the
Father.[521]
(ii.) But side by side with this tendency to individualize and
hypostatize the separate elements or modes of the Divine Mind, there
was a tendency to regard the mind of God as a unity existing either as
a distinct element in His essence or objective to Him. On one theory,
mind is the only-begotten of God.[522] He alone knows God and wishes to
reveal Him. On another theory, mind is born from the unborn Father, and
from Mind are born _Logos_ and Prudence, Wisdom and Force, and thence
in their order all the long series of Powers by whom the universe was
formed.[523] Another theory, that of Marcus, probably contains the key
to some of the others; the meaning of the conception of Mind as the
only-begotten of God, is that Mind is the revelation of God to Himself:
His self-consciousness is, so to speak, projected out of Him. It is at
once a revelation and a creation—the only immediate revelation and the
only immediate creation. The Father, “resolving to bring forth that which
is ineffable in Him, and to endow with form that which is invisible,
opened His mouth and sent forth the _Logos_” which is the image of Him,
and revealed Him to Himself.[524] The _Logos_, or Word, which was so sent
forth was made up of distinct utterances: each utterance was an _æon_, a
_logos_, a root and seed of being: in other words, each was a part and
phase of God’s nature which expressed and reflected itself in a part and
phase of the world, so that collectively the _logoi_ are equivalent to
the _Logos_, who is the image and reflection of God.
The theory is not far distant from that which is found in the earlier
Apologists, and which passed through more than one phase before it won
its way to general acceptance. The leading point in both is the relation
of the individual _logoi_ to the _Logos_. We have already become
acquainted with the syncretism which had blended the Platonic _ideas_
with the Stoical _logoi_, the former being regarded as forces as well
as forms, and the latter being not only productive forces, but also the
laws of those forces; and which had viewed them both in their unity,
rather than in their plurality, as expressions of a single _Logos_. We
have also seen that the solution of the problem, How could God create?
was found in the doctrine that He created by means of His _Logos_,
who impressed himself in the innumerable forms of created things. The
solution of the metaphysical difficulty, How can a transcendent God know
and be known? was found to lie in the solution which had already been
given to the cosmogonical difficulty, How could God come into contact
with matter?[525] The Forces were also Reasons: they were activities and
also thoughts: in men they woke to consciousness: and the mind of man
knew the mind of God, as like knows like, by virtue of containing within
it “a seed of the _Logos_,” a particle of the divine _Logos_ itself. That
divine _Logos_ “of which the whole human race is partaker,” “which had
at one time appeared in the form of fire, and at another in the form of
angels, now by the will of God, on behalf of the human race, had become
a man, and endured to suffer all that the dæmons effected that he should
suffer at the hands of the foolish Jews.”[526] The difference between
Christ and other men was thought to be, that other men have only a “seed
of the _Logos_,” whereas in him the whole _Logos_ was manifest: and the
difference between Christians and philosophers was, that the latter lived
by the light of a part only of the divine _Logos_, whereas the former
lived by the knowledge and contemplation of the whole _Logos_.[527]
Within half a century after these tentative efforts,[528] and largely
helped by the dissemination of the Fourth Gospel, which had probably at
first only a local influence, the mass of Christians were tending to
acquiesce not only in the belief of the transcendental nature of God, but
also in the belief that, in some way which was not yet closely defined,
Jesus Christ was the _Logos_ by whom the world had been made, and who
revealed the unknown Father to men.
The form in which the belief is stated by Irenæus is the following:
“No one can know the Father except by the Word of God, that is
by the Son revealing Him: nor can any one know the Son except
by the good pleasure of the Father. But the Son performs the
good pleasure of the Father: for the Father sends, and the Son
is sent and comes. And His Word knows that the Father is, as
far as concerns us, invisible and unlimited: and since He is
ineffable, He himself declares Him to us: and, on the other
hand, it is the Father alone who knows His own Word: both these
truths has the Lord made known to us. Wherefore the Son reveals
the knowledge of the Father by manifesting Himself: for the
manifestation of the Son is the knowledge of the Father: for
all things are manifested by the Word.... The Father therefore
has revealed Himself to all by making His Word visible to all:
and conversely the Word showed to all the Father and the Son,
since He was seen by all. And therefore the righteous judgment
of God comes upon all who, though they have seen as others,
have not believed as others. For by means of the creation
itself the Word reveals God the Creator; by means of the world,
the Lord who is the Fashioner of the world; and by means of His
handiwork (man), the Workman who formed it; and by the Son,
that Father who begat the Son.”[529]
(3) _The Distinctions in the Nature of God, or the Mediation and
Mediator._—It was by a natural process of development that Christian
philosophers, while acquiescing in the general proposition that Jesus
Christ was the _Logos_ in human form, should go on to frame large
theories as to the nature of the _Logos_. It was an age of definition and
dialectic. It was no more possible for the mass of educated men to leave
a metaphysical problem untouched, than it is possible in our own days
for chemists to leave a natural product unanalyzed. Two main questions
engaged attention: (i.) what was the genesis, (ii.) what was the nature,
of the _Logos_. In the speculations which rose out of each of these
questions, the influence of Greek thought is even more conspicuous than
before.
(i.) The question of the genesis of the _Logos_ was mainly answered by
theories which were separated from one another by the same broad line of
distinction which separated theories as to the genesis of the world.
The philosophers of the school of Basilides, who, as we have seen, had
been the first to formulate the doctrine of an absolute creation, that
is, of a creation of all things out of nothing, conceived that whatever
in their theory corresponded to the _Logos_ was equally included with all
other things in the original seed. Hence came the definite proposition,
which played a large part in the controversies of the fourth century,
that the _Logos_ was made “out of the things that were not.”[530]
But the majority of theories expressed under various metaphors the idea,
which was relative to the other theory of creation, that in some way the
_Logos_ had come forth from God. The rival hypotheses as to the nature
of creation were reconciled by the hypothesis that, though the world
was created out of nothing, it was so created by the _Logos_, who was
not created by God, but came forth from Him. The metaphors were chiefly
those of the “putting forth” (προβολή, _prolatio_), as of the leaves or
fruit of a plant, and of the begetting of a son. They were in use before
the doctrine of the _Logos_ had established itself, and some of them
were originally relative, not to the _Logos_, but to other conceptions
of mediation between God and the world. They were supplemented by the
metaphors, which also were in earlier use, of the flowing of water from a
spring, and of the radiation of light.[531] That there was not originally
any important distinction between them, is shown both by the express
disclaimer of Irenæus and by the fact of their use in combination in the
same passages of the same writers. The combination was important. The
metaphors supplemented each other. Each of them contained an element
in the theory which ultimately expressed the settled judgment of the
Christian world.
The main difficulty which they presented was that of an apparent
inconsistency with the belief in the unity of God. The doctrine of the
“sole monarchy” of God, which had been strongly maintained against those
who explained the difficulties of the world by the hypothesis of two Gods
in conflict, seemed to be running another kind of danger in the very
ranks of its defenders. The _Logos_ who reflected God and revealed Him
to rational creatures, who also contained in himself the form and forces
of the material world, must be in some sense God. In Athenagoras there
is a pure monism: “God is Himself all things to Himself, unapproachable
light, a perfect universe, spirit, force, _logos_.”[532] But in other
writers the idea of development or generation, however lightly the
metaphor might be pressed, seemed to involve an existence of the _Logos_
both outside God and posterior to Him.[533] He was the “first-born,”
the “first offspring of God,” the “first force after the Father of all
and the Lord God;” for “as the beginning, before all created things,
God begat from Himself a kind of rational Force, which is called by the
Holy Spirit (i.e. the Old Testament) sometimes ‘the Glory of the Lord,’
sometimes ‘Son,’ sometimes ‘Wisdom,’ sometimes ‘Angel,’ sometimes ‘God,’
sometimes ‘Lord and _Logos_,’ sometimes he speaks of himself as ‘Captain
of the Lord’s host:’ for he has all these appellations, both from his
ministering to the Father’s purpose and from his having been begotten by
the Father’s pleasure.”[534] It follows that “there is, and is spoken of,
another God and Lord beneath the Maker of the universe.”[535] The theory
thus formulated tended to ditheism and was openly accused of it.[536] It
was saved from the charge by the gradual formulating of two distinctions,
both of which came from external philosophy, one of them being an
inheritance from Stoicism, the other from Neo-Platonism.[537] The one
was that the generation or development had taken place within the sphere
of Deity itself: the generation had not taken place by the severing
of a part from the whole, as though the Divine nature admitted of a
division,[538] but by distinction of function or by multiplication, as
many torches may be lit from one without diminishing the light of that
one.[539] The other was that the generation had been eternal. In an early
statement of the theory it was held that it had taken place in time: it
was argued that “God could not have been a Father before there was a Son,
but there was a time when there was not a Son.”[540] But the influence of
the other metaphors in which the relation was expressed overpowered the
influences which came from pressing the conception of paternity. Light,
it was argued, could never have been without its capacity to shine.[541]
The Supreme Mind could never have been without His Thought. The Father
Eternal was always a Father, the Son was always a Son.[542]
(ii.) The question of the nature of the eternally-begotten _Logos_ was
answered variously, according as the supra-cosmic or the transcendental
idea of God was dominant in a writer’s mind.[543] To Justin Martyr,
God is conceived as supra-cosmic. He abides “in the places that are
above the heavens:” the “first-begotten,” the _Logos_, is the “first
force after the Father:” he is “a second God, second numerically but
not in will,” doing only the Father’s pleasure.[544] It is uncertain
how far the idea of personality entered into this view. There is a
similar uncertainty in the view of Theophilus, who introduced the
Stoical distinction between the two aspects of the _Logos_, thought
and speech—“ratio” and “oratio;”[545] while Tertullian still speaks of
“virtus” side by side with these.
It was only gradually that the subject was raised to the higher plane,
from which it never afterwards descended, by the spread and dominance
of the transcendental as distinguished from the supra-cosmic conception
of God. It came, as we have already seen, mainly from the schools of
Alexandria. It is in Basilides, in whom thought advanced to the belief
that God transcended not merely phenomena but being, that the conception
of a quasi-physical influence emanating from Him is seen to be first
expressly abandoned.[546] But the place of the later doctrine in the
Christian Church is mainly due to Origen. He uses many of the same
expressions as Tertullian, but with another meaning. The Saviour is God,
not by partaking, but by essence.[547] He is begotten of the very essence
of the Father. The generation is an outflow as of light from light.
But the controversies did not so much end with Origen as begin with him.
From that time they were mostly internal to Christianity. But their
elements were Greek in origin. The conceptions which were introduced into
the sphere of Christian thought were the current ones of philosophy. In
Christian theology that philosophy has survived.
But although it would be beyond our present purpose to describe the
Christological controversies which followed the final dominance in the
Church of the transcendental idea of God, it is within that purpose to
point out the Greek elements, confining ourselves as far as possible to
the later Greek uses of the terms.
_Ousia_ (οὐσία) is used in at least three distinct senses: the
distinction is clearly phrased by Aristotle.[548]
(_a_) It is used as a synonym of _hylê_, to designate the material part
of a thing. The use is most common among the Stoics. In their monistic
conception of the universe, the visible world was regarded as the
_ousia_ of God.[549] In the same way Philo speaks of the blood as the
material vehicle, τὸ οὐσιῶδες, of the vital force.[550] Hence in both
philosophical and Christian cosmologies, _ousia_ was sometimes used as
interchangeable with _hylê_, to denote the matter out of which the world
was made.
(_b_) It is used of matter embodied in a certain form: this has since
been distinguished as the _substantia concreta_. In Aristotle, a sensible
material thing, a particular man or a particular horse, which in a
predication must always be the subject and cannot be a predicate, is an
_ousia_ in the strictest sense.[551]
(_c_) It is used of the common element in the classes into which sensible
material things may be grouped: this has since been distinguished as the
_substantia abstracta_: in the language of Aristotle, it was the form
(εἶδος), or ideal essence (τὸ τί ἦv εἶναι).[552] This sense branched
out into other senses, according as the term was used by a realist or a
nominalist: to the former it was the common essence which exists in the
individual members of a class (τὸ εἶδος τὸ ἐνόν),[553] and not outside
them (since ἀδύνατον χωρὶς εἶναι τὴν οὐσίαν καὶ οὗ ἡ οὐσία);[554] or
which exists outside them, and by participation in which they are what
they are: this latter is Plato’s conception of εἶδος,[555] and of its
equivalent οὐσία.
To a nominalist, on the other hand, _ousia_ is only the common name
which is predicable in the same sense to a number of individual
existences.[556]
The Platonic form of realism grew out of a distinction between the real
and the phenomenal, which in its turn it tended to accentuate. The
visible world of concrete individuals was regarded as phenomenal and
transitory: the invisible world of intelligible essences was real and
permanent: the one was _genesis_, or “becoming;” the other, _ousia_, or
“being.”[557] The distinction played a large part in the later history
of Platonism:[558] and whereas in the view of Aristotle the species, or
smaller class, as being nearer to the concrete individuals, was more
_ousia_ than the genus, or wider class, in the later philosophy, on the
contrary, that was _ousia_ in its highest sense which was at the farthest
remove from the concrete, and filled the widest sphere, and contained
the largest number of other classes in itself: it was the _summum
genus_.[559] Hence Plotinus says that in respect of the body we are
farthest from _ousia_, but that we partake of it in respect of our soul;
and our soul is itself a compound, not pure _ousia_, but _ousia_ with an
added difference, and hence not absolutely under our control.[560]
Of these two meanings of _ousia_, namely “species” and “genus,” the
former expressing the whole essence of a class-name or concept, the
latter part of the essence, the former tended to prevail in earlier,
the latter in later Greek philosophy. In the one, the knowledge of the
_ousia_ was completely unfolded in the definition, so that a definition
was itself defined as “a proposition which expresses the _ousia_:”[561]
in the latter, it was only in part so unfolded, so that it is necessary
for us to know not only the _ousia_ of objects of thought, for example,
whether they fall within or without the class “body,” but also the
species (εἴδη).[562]
But in the one meaning as in the other, the members of the same class, or
the sub-classes of the same wider class, were spoken of as _homoousioi_:
for example, there was an argument that animals should not be killed for
food, on the ground that they belong to the same class as men, their
souls being _homoousioi_ with our own:[563] so men are _homoousioi_ with
one another, and Abraham washed the feet of the three strangers who came
to him, thinking them to be men “of like substance” with himself.[564]
The difficulty of the whole conception in its application to God was
felt and expressed. Some philosophers, as we have already seen, denied
that such an application was possible. The tide of which Neo-Platonism
was the most prominent wave placed God beyond _ousia_. Origen meets
Celsus’s statement of that view by a recognition of the uncertainty which
flowed from the uncertain meaning of the term.[565] The Christological
controversies of the fourth century were complicated to no small extent
from the existence of a neutral and conservative party, who met the
dogmatists on both sides with the assertion that neither _ousia_ nor
_hypostasis_ was predicable of God.[566] And, in spite of the acceptance
of the Nicene formula, the great Christian mystic who most fully
represents Neo-Platonism within the Christian Church, ventured more than
a century later on to recur to the position that God has no _ousia_, but
is _hyperousios_.[567] Even those who maintained the applicability of the
term to God, denied the possibility of defining it when so applied to
Him. In this they followed Philo: “Those who do not know the _ousia_ of
their own soul, how shall they give an accurate account of the soul of
the universe?”[568] But in spite of these difficulties, the conservative
feeling against the introduction of metaphysical terms into theology,
and the philosophical doctrine of absolute transcendence, were overborne
by the practical necessity of declaring that He _is_, and by the
corollary that since He is, there must be an _ousia_ of Him.
But when the conception of the one God as transcending numerical
unity became dominant in the Christian Church, the term _homoousios_
(ὁμοούσιος) was not unnaturally adopted to express the relation of God
the Father to God the Son. It accentuated the doctrine that the Son
was not a creature (κτίσμα); and so of the term as applied to the Holy
Spirit. Those who maintained that the Holy Spirit was a creature, thereby
maintained that He was severed from the essence of the Father.[569] The
term occurs first in the sphere of Gnosticism, and expresses part of one
of the two great conceptions as to the origin of the world.[570] It was
rejected in its application to the world, but accepted within the sphere
of Deity as an account of the origin of His plurality. But _homoousios_,
though true, was insufficient. It expressed the unity, but did not give
sufficient definition to the conception of the plurality. It was capable
of being used by those who held the plurality to be merely modal or
phenomenal.[571] It thus led to the use of another term, of which it is
necessary to trace the history.
The term _ousia_ in most of its senses had come to be convertible with
two other terms, _hypostasis_ (ὑπόστασις) and _hyparxis_ (ὕπαρξις). The
latter of these played but a small part in Christian theology, and may be
disregarded here.[572] The term _hypostasis_ is the conjugate of the verb
ὑφιστάναι, which had come into use as a more emphatic form than εἶναι. It
followed almost all the senses of _ousia_. Thus it was contrasted with
phenomenal existence not merely in the Platonic but in the conventional
sense; e.g. of things that take place in the sky, some are appearances,
some have a substantial existence, καθ’ ὑπόστασιν.[573] It also,
like _ousia_, is used of that which has an actual as compared with a
potential existence;[574] also of that which has an objective existence
in the world, and not merely exists in the thinking subject.[575] Hence
when things came into being, οὐσία was said ὑφιστάναι.[576] Moreover,
in one of its chief uses, namely that in which it designated the
permanent element in objects of thought, the term ὀυσία had sometimes
been replaced by the term ὑπόστασις.[577] When, therefore, the use of
_ousia_ in its Neo-Platonic sense prevailed, there arose a tendency to
differentiate the two terms, and to designate that which in Aristotle had
been πρώτη οὐσία by the term ὑπόστασις. This is expressed by Athanasius
when he says: “Ousia signifies community,” while “hypostasis has property
which is not common to the hypostases of the same ousia;”[578] and even
more clearly by Basil.[579]
There was the more reason for the growth of the distinction, because the
term _homoousios_ lent itself more readily to a Sabellian Christology.
This was anticipated by Irenæus in his polemic against the Valentinian
heresy of the emission of Æons. _Ousiai_, in the sense of genera and
species, might be merely conceptions in the mind: the alternative
was that of their having an existence of their own.[580] So that
_hypostasis_ came in certain schools of thought to be the term for the
_substantia concreta_, the individual, the οὐσία ἄτομος of Galen.[581]
The distinction, however, was far from being universally recognized. The
clearest and most elaborate exposition of it is contained in a letter
of Basil to his brother Gregory, who was evidently not quite clear upon
the point.[582] The result was, that just as ὑπόστασις had been used
to express one of the senses of οὐσία, so a new term came into use to
define more precisely the sense of ὑπόστασις. Its origin is probably to
be traced to the interchange of documents between East and West, which
leading to a difficulty in regard to this use of ὑπόστασις, ended in the
introduction of a third term.
So long as οὐσία and ὑπόστασις had been convertible terms, the one
Latin word _substantia_, the etymological equivalent of ὑπόστασις, had
sufficed for both. When the two words became differentiated in Greek, it
became advisable to mark the difference. However, the word _essentia_,
the natural equivalent for οὐσία, jarred upon a Latin ear.[583]
Consequently _substantia_ was claimed for οὐσία, while for ὑπόστασις a
fresh equivalent had to be sought. This was found in _persona_, whose
antecedents may be those of “a character in a play,” or of “person”
in the juristic sense, a possible party to a contract, in which case
Tertullian may have originated this usage.[584] Such Western practice
would tend to stimulate the employment of the corresponding Greek term
πρόσωπον, whose use hitherto seems to have been subordinate to that of
ὑπόστασις.[585] And, finally, the philosophic terms φύσις and _natura_
came into use. In the second century φύσις had been distinct from οὐσία
and identical with Reason.[586] But in the fourth century it came to be
identified with οὐσία,[587] and afterwards again distinguished from it,
whereas the Monophysites identified it with ὑπόστασις.
To sum up, then. We have in Greek four terms, οὐσία, ὑπόστασις, πρόσωπον,
φύσις, and in Latin three, _substantia_, _persona_, _natura_, the two
series not being actually parallel even to the extent to which they
are so in appearance. Times have changed since Tertullian’s[588] loose
and vague usage caused no remark; when Jerome, thinking as a Latin,
hesitates to speak of τρεῖς ὑποστάσεις, by which he understood _tres
substantias_, and complains that he is looked upon as a heretic in the
East in consequence. There is a remarkable saying of Athanasius which is
capable of a wider application than he gave it: it runs as follows:[589]
“They seemed to be ignorant of the fact that when we deal with words
that require some training to understand them, different people may
take them in senses not only differing but absolutely opposed to each
other.”[590] Thus there was an indisposition to accept οὐσία. The phrase
was not understanded of the people.[591] A reaction took place against
the multiplicity of terms; but the simple and unstudied language of the
childhood of Christianity, with its awe-struck sense of the ineffable
nature of God, was but a fading memory, and on the other hand the
tendency to trust in and insist upon the results of speculation was
strong. Once indeed the Catholic doctrine was formulated, then, though
not till then, the majority began to deprecate investigations as to the
nature of God.
But I do not propose to dwell upon the sad and weary history of the way
in which for more than a century these metaphysical distinctions formed
the watchwords of political as well as of ecclesiastical parties—of the
strife and murder, the devastation of fair fields, the flame and sword,
therewith connected. For all this, Greek philosophy was not responsible.
These evils mostly came from that which has been a permanently disastrous
fact in Christian history, the interference of the State, which gave the
decrees of Councils that sanction which elevated the resolutions of the
majority upon the deepest subjects of human speculation to the factitious
rank of laws which must be accepted on pain of forfeiture, banishment or
death.
Philosophy branched off from theology. It became its handmaid and its
rival. It postulated doctrines instead of investigating them. It had
to show their reasonableness or to find reasons for them. And for ages
afterwards philosophy was dead. I feel as strongly as you can feel
the weariness of the discussions to which I have tried to direct your
attention. But it is only by seeing how minute and how purely speculative
they are, that we can properly estimate their place in Christian
theology. Whether we do or do not accept the conclusions in which the
greater part of the Christian world ultimately acquiesced, we must at
least recognize that they rest upon large assumptions. Three may be
indicated which are all due to the influence of Greek philosophy.[592]
(1) It is assumed that metaphysical distinctions are important.
I am far from saying that they are not: but it is not less important
to recognize that much of what we believe rests upon this assumption
that they are. There is otherwise no justification whatever for drawing
men’s thoughts away from the positive knowledge which we may gain both
of ourselves and of the world around us, to contemplate, even at far
distance, the conception of Essence.
(2) The second is the assumption that these metaphysical distinctions
which we make in our minds correspond to realities in the world around
us, or in God who is beyond the world and within it.
Again, I am far from saying that they do not; but it is at least
important for us to recognize the fact that, in speaking of the essence
of either the world or God, we are assuming the existence of something
corresponding to our conception of essence in the one or the other.[593]
(3) The third assumption is that the idea of perfection which we transfer
from ourselves to God, really corresponds to the nature of His being.
It is assumed that rest is better than motion, that passionlessness is
better than feeling, that changelessness is better than change. We know
these things of ourselves: we cannot know them of One who is unlike
ourselves, who has no body that can be tired, who has no imperfection
that can miss its aim, with whom unhindered movement may conceivably be
perfect life.
I have spoken of these assumptions because, although it would be
difficult to over-estimate the importance of the conceptions by which
Greek thought lifted men from the conception of God as a Being with
human form and human passions, to the lofty height on which they can
feel around them an awful and infinite Presence, the time may have come
when—in face of the large knowledge of His ways which has come to us
through both thought and research—we may be destined to transcend the
assumptions of Greek speculation by new assumptions, which will lead us
at once to a diviner knowledge and the sense of a diviner life.[594]
LECTURE X.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES UPON CHRISTIAN USAGES.
A. THE GREEK MYSTERIES AND RELATED CULTS.
Side by side in Greece with the religion which was openly professed
and with the religious rites which were practised in the temples, not
in antagonism to them, but intensifying their better elements and
elaborating their ritual, were the splendid rites which were known as the
Mysteries. Side by side also with the great political communities, and
sheltered within them by the common law and drawn together by a stronger
than political brotherhood, were innumerable associations for the
practice of the new forms of worship which came in with foreign commerce,
and for the expression in a common worship of the religious feelings
which the public religion did not satisfy. These associations were known
as θίασοι, ἔρανοι or ὀργεῶνες.
I will speak first of the mysteries, and then of the associations for the
practice of other cults.
1. The mysteries were probably the survival of the oldest religions of
the Greek races and of the races which preceded them. They were the
worship not of the gods of the sky, Zeus and Apollo and Athené, but of
the gods of the earth and the under-world, the gods of the productive
forces of nature and of death.[595]
The most important of them were celebrated at Eleusis, near Athens, and
the scattered information which exists about them has been made more
impressive and more intelligible to us by excavations, which have brought
to light large remains of the great temple—the largest in Greece—in
which they were celebrated. It had been a cult common to the Ionian
tribes, probably borrowed from the earlier races among whom they had
settled. It was originally the cult of the powers which produce the
harvest, conceived as a triad of divinities—a god and two goddesses,
Pluto, Demeter and Koré, of whom the latter became so dominant in the
worship, that the god almost disappeared from view, and was replaced
by a divinity, Iacchus, who had no place in the original myth.[596]
Its chief elements were the initiation, the sacrifice, and the scenic
representation of the great facts of natural life and human life, of
which the histories of the gods were themselves symbols.[597]
(i.) The main underlying conception of initiation was, that there were
elements in human life from which the candidate must purify himself
before he could be fit to approach God. There was a distinction
between those who were not purified, and those who, in consequence of
being purified, were admitted to a diviner life and to the hope of a
resurrection. The creation of this distinction is itself remarkable.
The race of mankind was lifted on to a higher plane when it came to be
taught that only the pure in heart can see God. The rites of Eleusis were
originally confined to the inhabitants of Attica: but they came in time
to be open to all Greeks, later to all Romans, and were open to women as
well as to men.[598] The bar at the entrance came to be only a moral bar.
The whole ceremonial began with a solemn proclamation: “Let no one enter
whose hands are not clean and whose tongue is not prudent.” In other
mysteries it was: “He only may enter who is pure from all defilement,
and whose soul is conscious of no wrong, and who has lived well and
justly.”[599]
The proclamation was probably accompanied by some words or sights
of terror. When Nero went to Eleusis and thought at first of being
initiated, he was deterred by it. Here is another instance of exclusion,
which is not less important in its bearing upon Christian rites.
Apollonius of Tyana was excluded because he was a magician (γόης)
and not pure in respect of τὰ δαιμόνια—he had intercourse with other
divinities than those of the mysteries, and practised magical rites.[600]
We learn something from the parody of the mysteries in Lucian’s romance
of the pseudo-prophet Alexander. In it Alexander institutes a celebration
of mysteries and torchlights and sacred shows, which go on for three
successive days. On the first there is a proclamation of a similar
kind to that at Athens. “If any Atheist or Christian or Epicurean has
come as a spy upon the festival, let him flee; let the initiation of
those who believe in the god go on successfully.” Then forthwith at the
very beginning a chasing away takes place. The prophet himself sets
the example, saying, “Christians, away!” and the whole crowd responds,
“Epicureans, away!” Then the show begins—the birth of Apollo, the
marriage of Coronis, the coming of Æsculapius, are represented; the
ceremonies proceed through several days in imitation of the mysteries and
in glorification of Alexander.[601]
The proclamation was thus intended to exclude notorious sinners from the
first or initial ceremonial.[602] The rest was thrown upon a man’s own
conscience. He was asked to confess his sins, or at least to confess the
greatest crime that he had ever committed. “To whom am I to confess it?”
said Lysander to the mystagogoi who were conducting him. “To the gods.”
“Then if you will go away,” said he, “I will tell them.”
Confession was followed by a kind of baptism.[603] The candidates for
initiation bathed in the pure waters of the sea. The manner of bathing
and the number of immersions varied with the degree of guilt which they
had confessed. They came from the bath new men. It was a κάθαρσις, a
λουτρὸν, a laver of regeneration. They had to practise certain forms of
abstinence: they had to fast; and when they ate they had to abstain from
certain kinds of food.[604]
(ii.) The purification was followed by a sacrifice—which was known
as σωτήρια—a sacrifice of salvation: and in addition to the great
public sacrifice, each of the candidates for initiation sacrificed a
pig for himself.[605] Then there was an interval of two days before
the more solemn sacrifices and shows began. They began with a great
procession—each of those who were to be initiated carrying a long lighted
torch, and singing loud pæans in honour of the god.[606] It set out from
Athens at sunrise and reached Eleusis at night. The next day there was
another great sacrifice. Then followed three days and nights in which
the initiated shared the mourning of Demeter for her daughter, and broke
their fast only by drinking the mystic κυκεὼν—a drink of flour and water
and pounded mint, and by eating the sacred cakes.[607]
(iii.) And at night there were the mystic plays: the scenic
representation, the drama in symbol and for sight. Their torches were
extinguished: they stood outside the temple in the silence and the
darkness. The doors opened—there was a blaze of light—and before them
was acted the drama of Demeter and Koré—the loss of the daughter, the
wanderings of the mother, the birth of the child. It was a symbol of the
earth passing through its yearly periods. It was the poetry of Nature.
It was the drama which is acted every year, of summer and winter and
spring. Winter by winter the fruits and flowers and grain die down into
the darkness, and spring after spring they come forth again to new life.
Winter after winter the sorrowing earth is seeking for her lost child;
the hopes of men look forward to the new blossoming of spring.
It was a drama also of human life. It was the poetry of the hope of a
world to come. Death gave place to life. It was a _purgatio animæ_, by
which the soul might be fit for the presence of God. Those who had been
baptized and initiated were lifted into a new life. Death had no terrors
for them. The blaze of light after darkness, the symbolic scenery of the
life of the gods, were a foreshadowing of the life to come.[608]
There is a passage in Plutarch which so clearly shows this, that I will
quote it.[609]
“When a man dies, he is like those who are being initiated
into the mysteries. The one expression, τελευτᾶν—the other,
τελεῖσθαι, correspond.... Our whole life is but a succession of
wanderings, of painful courses, of long journeys by tortuous
ways without outlet. At the moment of quitting it, fears,
terrors, quiverings, mortal sweats, and a lethargic stupor,
come over us and overwhelm us; but as soon as we are out of
it, pure spots and meadows receive us, with voices and dances
and the solemnities of sacred words and holy sights. It is
there that man, having become perfect and initiated—restored
to liberty, really master of himself—celebrates, crowned with
myrtle, the most august mysteries, holds converse with just
and pure souls, looking down upon the impure multitude of the
profane or uninitiated, sinking in the mire and mist beneath
him—through fear of death and through disbelief in the life to
come, abiding in its miseries.”
There was probably no dogmatic teaching—there were possibly no words
spoken—it was all an acted parable.[610] But it was all kept in silence.
There was an awful individuality about it. They saw the sight in common,
but they saw it each man for himself. It was his personal communion with
the divine life. The glamour and the glory of it were gone when it was
published to all the world.[611] The effect of it was conceived to be a
change both of character and of relation to the gods. The initiated were
by virtue of their initiation made partakers of a life to come. “Thrice
happy they who go to the world below having seen these mysteries: to them
alone is life there, to all others is misery.”[612]
2. In time, however, new myths and new forms of worship were added. It
is not easy to draw a definite line between the mysteries, strictly so
called, and the forms of worship which went on side by side with them.
Not only are they sometimes spoken of in common as mysteries, but there
is a remarkable syncretist painting in a non-Christian catacomb at Rome,
in which the elements of the Greek mysteries of Demeter are blended with
those of Sabazius and Mithra, in a way which shows that the worship was
blended also.[613] These forms of worship also had an initiation: they
also aimed at a pure religion. The condition of entrance was: “Let no
one enter the most venerable assembly of the association unless he be
pure and pious and good.” Nor was it left to the individual conscience:
a man had to be tested and examined by the officers.[614] But the
main element in the association was not so much the initiation as the
sacrifice and the common meal which followed it. The offerings were
brought by individuals and offered in common: they were offered upon
what is sometimes spoken of as the “holy table.” They were distributed
by the servants (the deacons), and the offerer shared with the rest in
the distribution. In one association, at Xanthos in Lycia, of which the
rules remain on an inscription, the offerer had the right to half of
what he had brought. The feast which followed was an effort after real
fellowship.[615] There was in it, as there is in Christian times, a sense
of communion with one another in a communion with God.
During the earliest centuries of Christianity, the mysteries, and the
religious societies which were akin to the mysteries,[616] existed on
an enormous scale throughout the eastern part of the Empire. There
were elements in some of them from which Christianity recoiled, and
against which the Christian Apologists use the language of strong
invective.[617] But, on the other hand, the majority of them had the
same aims as Christianity itself—the aim of worshipping a pure God,
the aim of living a pure life, and the aim of cultivating the spirit
of brotherhood.[618] They were part of a great religious revival which
distinguishes the age.[619]
B. THE MYSTERIES AND THE CHURCH.
It was inevitable when a new group of associations came to exist side
by side with a large existing body of associations, from which it was
continually detaching members, introducing them into its own midst with
the practices of their original societies impressed upon their minds,
that this new group should tend to assimilate, with the assimilation
of their members, some of the elements of these existing groups.[620]
This is what we find to have been in fact the case. It is possible that
they made the Christian associations more secret than before. Up to a
certain time there is no evidence that Christianity had any secrets.
It was preached openly to the world. It guarded worship by imposing
a moral bar to admission. But its rites were simple and its teaching
was public. After a certain time all is changed: mysteries have arisen
in the once open and easily accessible faith, and there are doctrines
which must not be declared in the hearing of the uninitiated.[621]
But the influence of the mysteries, and of the religious cults which
were analogous to the mysteries, was not simply general; they modified
in some important respects the Christian sacraments of Baptism and
the Eucharist—the practice, that is, of admission to the society by a
symbolical purification, and the practice of expressing membership of the
society by a common meal. I will ask you to consider first Baptism, and
secondly the Lord’s Supper, each in its simplest form, and then I will
attempt to show how the elements which are found in the later and not in
the earlier form, are elements which are found outside Christianity in
the institutions of which I have spoken.
1. Baptism. In the earliest times, (1) baptism followed at once upon
conversion; (2) the ritual was of the simplest kind, nor does it appear
that it needed any special minister.
The first point is shown by the Acts of the Apostles; the men who
repented at Pentecost, those who believed when Philip preached in
Samaria, the Ethiopian eunuch, Cornelius, Lydia, the jailor at Philippi,
the converts at Corinth and Ephesus, were baptized as soon as they were
known to recognize Jesus Christ as the Messiah.[622] The second point is
also shown by the Acts. It was a baptism of water.
A later, though still very early stage, with significant modifications,
is seen in the “Teaching of the Apostles:”[623] (1) no special minister
of baptism is specified, the vague “he that baptizeth” (ὁ βαπτίζων)
seeming to exclude a limitation of it to an officer; (2) the only
element that is specified is water; (3) previous instruction is implied,
but there is no period of catechumenate defined; (4) a fast is enjoined
before baptism.
These were the simple elements of early Christian baptism. When it
emerges after a period of obscurity—like a river which flows under the
sand—the enormous changes of later times have already begun.
(i.) The first point of change is the change of _name_.
(_a_) So early as the time of Justin Martyr we find a name given
to baptism which comes straight from the Greek mysteries—the name
“enlightenment” (φωτισμός, φωτίζεσθαι).[624] It came to be the constant
technical term.[625]
(_b_) The name “seal” (σφραγίς), which also came both from the
mysteries[626] and from some forms of foreign cult, was used partly of
those who had passed the tests and who were “consignati,” as Tertullian
calls them,[627] partly of those who were actually sealed upon the
forehead in sign of a new ownership.[628]
(_c_) The term μυστήριον is applied to baptism,[629] and with it comes
a whole series of technical terms unknown to the Apostolic Church, but
well known to the mysteries, and explicable only through ideas and usages
peculiar to them. Thus we have words expressive either of the rite
or act of initiation, like μύησις,[630] τελετή,[631] τελείωσις,[632]
μυσταγωγία;[633] of the agent or minister, like μυσταγωγός;[634] of
the subject, like μυσταγωγούμενος,[635] μεμυημένος, μυηθείς, or, with
reference to the unbaptized, ἀμύητος.[636] In this terminology we
can more easily trace the influence of the mysteries than of the New
Testament.[637]
(ii.) The second point is the change of _time_, which involves a change
of _conception_. (_a_) Instead of baptism being given immediately upon
conversion, it came to be in all cases postponed by a long period of
preparation, and in some cases deferred until the end of life.[638]
(_b_) The Christians were separated into two classes, those who had
and those who had not been baptized. Tertullian regards it as a mark
of heretics that they have not this distinction: who among them is a
catechumen, who a believer, is uncertain: they are no sooner hearers than
they “join in the prayers;” and “their catechumens are perfect before
they are fully instructed (_edocti_).”[639] And Basil gives the custom
of the mysteries as a reason for the absence of the catechumens from the
service.[640] (_c_) As if to show conclusively that the change was due to
the influence of the mysteries, baptized persons were, as we have seen,
distinguished from unbaptized by the very term which was in use for the
similar distinction in regard to the mysteries—initiated and uninitiated,
and the minister is μυσταγωγός, and the persons being baptized are
μυσταγωγούμενοι. I dwell upon these broad features, and especially on
the transference of names, because it is necessary to show that the
relation of the mysteries to the sacrament was not merely a curious
coincidence; and what I have said as to the change of name and the change
of conception, might be largely supplemented by evidence of parallelism
in the benefits which were conceived to attach to the one and the other.
There are many slighter indications serving to supplement what has been
already adduced.
(α) As those who were admitted to the inner sights of the mysteries had
a formula or pass-word (σύμβολον or σύνθημα), so the catechumens had
a formula which was only entrusted to them in the last days of their
catechumenate—the baptismal formula itself and the Lord’s Prayer.[641]
In the Western rites the _traditio symboli_ occupies an important place
in the whole ceremony. There was a special rite for it. It took place
a week or ten days before the great office of Baptism on Easter-eve.
Otherwise the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed were kept secret and kept so
as mysteries; and to the present day the technical name for a creed is
σύμβολον or pass-word.
(β) Sometimes the baptized received the communion at once after baptism,
just as those who had been initiated at Eleusis proceeded at once—after a
day’s fast—to drink of the mystic κυκεὼν and to eat of the sacred cakes.
(γ) The baptized were sometimes crowned with a garland, as the initiated
wore a mystic crown at Eleusis. The usage was local, but lasted at
Alexandria until modern times. It is mentioned by Vansleb.[642]
(δ) Just as the divinities watched the initiation from out of the
blaze of light, so Chrysostom pictures Christian baptism in the blaze
of Easter-eve;[643] and Cyril describes the white-robed band of the
baptized approaching the doors of the church where the lights turned
darkness into day.
(ε) Baptism was administered, not at any place or time, but only in the
great churches, and only as a rule once a year—on Easter-eve, though
Pentecost was also a recognized season. The primitive “See here is water,
what doth hinder me to be baptized?” passed into a ritual which at every
turn recalls the ritual of the mysteries. I will abridge the account
which is given of the practice at Rome so late as the ninth century.[644]
Preparation went on through the greater part of Lent. The candidates were
examined and tested: they fasted: they received the secret symbols, the
Creed and the Lord’s Prayer. On Easter-eve, as the day declined towards
afternoon, they assembled in the church of St. John Lateran. The rites
of exorcism and renunciation were gone through in solemn form, and the
rituals survive. The Pope and his priests come forth in their sacred
vestments, with lights carried in front of them, which the Pope then
blesses: there is a reading of lessons and a singing of psalms. And
then, while they chant a litany, there is a procession to the great bath
of baptism, and the water is blessed. The baptized come forth from the
water, are signed with the cross, and are presented to the Pope one by
one, who vests them in a white robe and signs their foreheads again with
the cross. They are arranged in a great circle, and each of them carries
a light. Then a vast array of lights is kindled; the blaze of them, says
a Greek Father, makes night continuous with dawn. It is the beginning of
a new life. The mass is celebrated—the mystic offering on the Cross is
represented in figure; but for the newly baptized the chalice is filled,
not with wine, but with milk and honey, that they may understand, says
an old writer, that they have entered already upon the promised land.
And there was one more symbolical rite in that early Easter sacrament,
the mention of which is often suppressed—a lamb was offered on the
altar—afterwards cakes in the shape of a lamb.[645] It was simply the
ritual which we have seen already in the mysteries. The purified crowd at
Eleusis saw a blaze of light, and in the light were represented in symbol
life and death and resurrection.
2. Baptism had felt the spell of the Greek ritual: not less so had
the Lord’s Supper. Its elements in the earliest times may be gathered
altogether apart from the passages of the New Testament, upon which,
however clearly we may feel, no sensible man will found an argument, and
which, taken by themselves, possibly admit of more than one meaning.
The extra-biblical accounts are:
(1) “The Teaching of the Apostles;”[646] which implies:
(_a_) Thanksgiving for the wine. “We thank Thee, our Father, for the holy
vine of David Thy servant, which Thou hast made known to us through Jesus
Christ Thy Servant. To Thee be glory for ever.”
(_b_) Thanksgiving for the broken bread. “We thank Thee, our Father, for
the life which Thou hast made known to us through Jesus Thy Servant. To
Thee be glory for ever.”
After the thanksgiving they ate and drank: none could eat or drink until
he had been baptized into the name of the Lord. After the partaking there
was another thanksgiving and a prayer of supplication.
(2) There is a fragmentary account which has been singularly overlooked,
in the Apostolical Constitutions,[647] which carries us one stage
further. After the reading and the teaching, the deacon made a
proclamation which vividly recalls the proclamation at the beginning of
the Mysteries. “Is there any one who has a quarrel with any? Is there any
one with bad feeling” (ἐν ὑποκρίσει)?
(3) The next stage is found in the same book of the Apostolical
Constitutions.[648] The advance consists in the fact that the catechumens
and penitents go out, just as those who were not yet initiated and those
who were impure were excluded from the Greek Mysteries.
This marked separation of the catechumens and the baptized, which
was possibly strengthened by the philosophic distinction between οἱ
προκόπτοντες and οἱ τέλειοι, lasted until, under influences which it
would be beyond our present purpose to discuss, the prevalence of infant
baptism caused the distinction no longer to exist.[649]
(4) In a later stage there is a mention of the holy table as an altar,
and of the offerings placed upon the table of which the faithful partook,
as mysteries.[650]
(_a_) The conception of the table as an altar is later than the middle
of the second century.[651] It is used in the Apostolic Fathers of
the Jewish altar. It is used by Ignatius in a Christian sense, but
always metaphorically.[652] It may be noted that though the Apostolic
Constitutions (Bk. ii.) speak of a θυσία, they do not speak of a
θυσιαστήριον.[653] This use of θυσιαστήριον is probably not earlier than
Eusebius.[654]
(_b_) The conception of the elements as μυστήρια is even later;[655] but
once established, it became permanent, like the Latin term “sacramentum.”
(5) The conception of a priest—into which I will not now enter—was
certainly strengthened by the mysteries and associations.
The full development or translation of the idea is found in the great
mystical writer of the end of the fifth century, in whom every Christian
ordinance is expressed in terms which are applicable only to the
mysteries. The extreme tendency which he shows is perhaps personal to
him; but he was in sympathy with his time, and his influence on the
Church of the after-time must count for a large factor in the history
of Christian thought. There are few Catholic treatises on the Eucharist
and few Catholic manuals of devotion into which his conceptions do not
enter.[656]
I will here quote his description of the Communion itself: “All the other
initiations are incomplete without this. The consummation and crown
of all the rest is the participation of him who is initiated in the
thearchic mysteries. For though it be the common characteristic of all
the hierarchic acts to make the initiated partakers of the divine light,
yet this alone imparted to me the vision through whose mystic light, as
it were, I am guided to the contemplation (ἐποψίαν) of the other sacred
things.” The ritual is then described. The sacred bread and the cup of
blessing are placed upon the altar. “Then the sacred hierarch (ἱεράρχης)
initiates the sacred prayer and announces to all the holy peace: and
after all have saluted each other, the mystic recital of the sacred lists
is completed. The hierarch and the priests wash their hands in water;
he stands in the midst of the divine altar, and around him stand the
priests and the chosen ministers. The hierarch sings the praises of the
divine working and consecrates the most divine mysteries, (ἱερουργεῖ τὰ
θειότατα), and by means of the symbols which are sacredly set forth,
he brings into open vision the things of which he sings the praises.
And when he has shown the gifts of the divine working, he himself comes
into a sacred communion with them, and then invites the rest. And
having both partaken and given to the others a share in the thearchic
communion, he ends with a sacred thanksgiving; and while the people bend
over what are divine symbols only, he himself, always by the thearchic
spirit, is led in a priestly manner, in purity of his godlike frame of
mind (ἐν καθαρότητι τῆς θεοειδοῦς ἕξεως), through blessed and spiritual
contemplation, to the holy realities of the mysteries.”[657]
Once again I must point out that the elements—the conceptions which
he has added to the primitive practices—are identical with those in
the mysteries. The tendency which he represented grew: the Eucharistic
sacrifice came in the East to be celebrated behind closed doors: the
breaking of bread from house to house was changed into so awful a mystery
that none but the hierophant himself might see it. The idea of prayer and
thought as offerings was preserved by the Neo-Platonists.
There are two minor points which, though interesting, are less
certain and also less important. (_a_) It seems likely that the use
of δίπτυχα—tablets commemorating benefactors or departed saints—was a
continuation of a similar usage of the religious associations.[658] (_b_)
The blaze of lights at mysteries may have suggested the use of lights at
the Lord’s Supper.[659]
It seems fair to infer that, since there were great changes in the
ritual of the sacraments, and since the new elements of these changes
were identical with elements that already existed in cognate and largely
diffused forms of worship, the one should be due to the other.
This inference is strengthened when we find that the Christian
communities which were nearest in form and spirit to the Hellenic
culture, were the first in which these elements appear, and also those
in which they assumed the strongest form. Such were the Valentinians,
of whom Tertullian expressly speaks in this connection.[660] We read of
Simon Magus that he taught that baptism had so supreme an efficacy as to
give by itself eternal life to all who were baptized. The λουτρὸν ζωῆς
was expanded to its full extent, and it was even thought that to the
water of baptism was added a fire which came from heaven upon all who
entered into it. Some even introduced a second baptism.[661]
So also the Marcosians and some Valentinian schools believed in a baptism
that was an absolute sundering of the baptized from the corruptible world
and an emancipation into a perfect and eternal life. Similarly, some
other schools added to the simple initiation rites of a less noble and
more sensuous order.[662]
It was but the old belief in the effect of the mysteries thrown into a
Christian form. So also another Gnostic school is said to have not only
treated the truths of Christianity as sacred, but also to have felt about
them what the initiated were supposed to feel about the mysteries—“I
swear by Him who is above all, by the Good One, to keep these mysteries
and to reveal them to no one;” and after that oath each seemed to feel
the power of God to be upon him, as it were the pass-word of entrance
into the highest mysteries.[663] As soon as the oath had been taken, he
sees what no eye has seen, and hears what no ear has heard, and drinks of
the living water—which is their baptism, as they think, a spring of water
springing up within them to everlasting life.
Again, it is probably through the Gnostics that the period of preparation
for baptism was prolonged. Tertullian says of the Valentinians that their
period of probation is longer than their period of baptized life, which
is precisely what happened in the Greek practice of the fourth century.
The general inference of the large influence of the Gnostics on baptism,
is confirmed by the fact that another element, which certainly came
through them, though its source is not certain and is more likely to
have been Oriental than Greek, has maintained a permanent place in most
rituals—the element of anointing. There were two customs in this matter,
one more characteristic of the East, the other of the West—the anointing
with (1) the oil of exorcism before baptism and after the renunciation of
the devil, and (2) the oil of thanksgiving, which was used immediately
after baptism, first by the presbyter and then by the bishop, who then
sealed the candidate on the forehead. The very variety of the custom
shows how deep and yet natural the action of the Gnostic systems, with
the mystic and magic customs of the Gnostic societies or associations,
had been on the practices and ceremonies of the Church.[664]
But beyond matters of practice, it is among the Gnostics that there
appears for the first time an attempt to realize the change of the
elements to the material body and blood of Christ. The fact that they
were so regarded is found in Justin Martyr.[665] But at the same time,
that the change was not vividly realized, is proved by the fact that,
instead of being regarded as too awful for men to touch, the elements
were taken by the communicants to their homes and carried about with them
on their travels. But we read of Marcus that in his realistic conception
of the Eucharistic service the white wine actually turned to the colour
of blood before the eyes of the communicants.[666]
Thus the whole conception of Christian worship was changed.[667] But it
was changed by the influence upon Christian worship of the contemporary
worship of the mysteries and the concurrent cults. The tendency to
an elaborate ceremonial which had produced the magnificence of those
mysteries and cults, and which had combined with the love of a purer
faith and the tendency towards fellowship, was based upon a tendency of
human nature which was not crushed by Christianity. It rose to a new
life, and though it lives only by a survival, it lives that new life
still. In the splendid ceremonial of Eastern and Western worship, in the
blaze of lights, in the separation of the central point of the rite from
common view, in the procession of torch-bearers chanting their sacred
hymns—there is the survival, and in some cases the galvanized survival,
of what I cannot find it in my heart to call a _pagan_ ceremonial;
because though it was the expression of a less enlightened faith, yet it
was offered to God from a heart that was not less earnest in its search
for God and in its effort after holiness than our own.
LECTURE XI.
THE INCORPORATION OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS, AS MODIFIED BY GREEK, INTO A BODY
OF DOCTRINE.
The object which I have in view in this Lecture is to show the transition
by which, under the influence of contemporary Greek thought, the
word Faith came to be transferred from simple trust in God to mean
the acceptance of a series of propositions, and these propositions,
propositions in abstract metaphysics.
* * * * *
The Greek words which designate belief or faith are used in the Old
Testament chiefly in the sense of trust, and primarily trust in a person.
They expressed confidence in his goodness, his veracity, his uprightness.
They are as much moral as intellectual. They implied an estimate of
character. Their use in application to God was not different from their
use in application to men. Abraham trusted God. The Israelites also
trusted God when they saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore. In the
first instance there was just so much of intellectual assent involved
in belief, that to believe God involved an assent to the proposition
that God exists. But this element was latent and implied rather than
conscious and expressed. It is not difficult to see how, when this
proposition came to be conscious and expressed, it should lead to other
propositions. The analysis of belief led to the construction of other
propositions besides the bare original proposition that God is. Why do
I trust God? The answer was: Because He is wise, or good, or just. The
propositions followed: I believe that God is wise, that He is good, that
He is just. Belief in God came to mean the assent to certain propositions
about God.[668]
In Greek philosophy the words were used rather of intellectual conviction
than of moral trust, and of the higher rather than of the lower forms
of conviction. Aristotle distinguishes faith from impression—for a man,
he says, may have an impression and not be sure of it. He uses it both
of the convictions that come through the senses and of those that come
through reason.
There is in Philo a special application of this philosophical use, which
led to even more important results. He blends the sense in which it is
found in the Old Testament with that which is found in Greek philosophy.
The mass of men, he says, trust their senses or their reason. The good
man trusts God. Just as the mass of men believe that their senses and
their reason do not deceive them, so the latter believes that God
does not deceive him. To trust God was to trust His veracity. But the
occasions on which God spoke directly to a man were rare, and what He
said when He so spoke commanded an unquestioning acceptance. He more
commonly spoke to men through the agency of messengers. His angels
spoke to men, sometimes in visions of the night, sometimes in open
manifestation by day. His prophets spoke to men. To believe God, implied
a belief in what He said indirectly as well as directly. It implied the
acceptance of what His prophets said, that is to say, of what they were
recorded to have said in the Holy Writings. Belief in this sense is not
a vague and mystical sentiment, the hazy state of mind which precedes
knowledge, but the highest form of conviction. It transcends reason in
certainty. It is the full assurance that certain things are so, because
God has said that they are so.[669]
In this connection we may note the way in which the Christian communities
were helped by the current reaction against pure speculation—the longing
for certainty. The mass of men were sick of theories. They wanted
certainty. The current teaching of the Christian teachers gave them
certainty. It appealed to definite facts of which their predecessors
were eye-witnesses. Its simple tradition of the life and death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ was a necessary basis for the satisfaction
of men’s needs. Philosophy and poetry might be built upon that tradition;
but if the tradition were shown to be only cloudland, Christian
philosophy was no more than Stoicism.
We have thus to see how, under the new conditions, faith passed beyond
the moral stage, or simple trust in a person, to the metaphysical
stage, or belief in certain propositions or technical definitions
concerning Him, His nature, relations and actions. In this latter we may
distinguish two correlated and interdependent phases or forms of belief,
the one more intellectual and logical, the other more historical and
concrete, namely, (1) the conviction that God being of a certain nature
has certain attributes; (2) the conviction that, God being true, the
statements which He makes through His prophets and ministers are also
true.[670] The one of these forms of belief was elaborated into what we
know as the Creed; the other, into the Canon of the New Testament.
* * * * *
We shall first deal with these phases or forms of belief, and then with
the process by which the metaphysical definitions became authoritative.
1. In the first instance the intellectual element of belief was
subordinated to the ethical purpose of the religion. Belief was not
insisted upon in itself and for itself, but as the ground of moral
reformation. The main content of the belief was “that men are punished
for their sins and honoured for their good deeds:”[671] the ground of
this conviction was the underlying belief that God is, and that He
rewards and punishes. The feature which differentiated Christianity
from philosophy was, that this belief as to the nature of God had
been made certain by a revelation. The purpose of the revelation was
salvation—regeneration and amendment of life. By degrees stress came to
be laid on this underlying element. The revelation had not only made
some propositions certain which hitherto had been only speculative,
it had also added new propositions, assertions of its distinctive or
differentiating belief. But it is uncertain, except within the narrowest
limits, what those assertions were. There are several phrases in the
New Testament and in sub-apostolic writings which read like references
to some elementary statements or rule.[672] But none of them contain or
express a recognized standard. Yet the standard may be gathered partly
from the formula of admission into the Christian community, partly from
the formulæ in which praise was ascribed to God. The most important
of these, in view of its subsequent history, is the former. But the
formula is itself uncertain; it existed at least in two main forms.
There is evidence to show that the injunction to baptize in the name of
the three Persons of the Trinity, which is found in the last chapter of
St. Matthew, was observed.[673] It is the formula in the Teaching of
the Apostles.[674] But there is also evidence, side by side with this
evidence as to the use of the Trinitarian formula, of baptism into the
name of Christ, or into the death of Christ.[675]
The next element in the uncertainty which exists is as to how far the
formula, either in the one case or the other, was conceived to involve
the assent to any other propositions except those of the existence of
the divine Persons or Person mentioned in the formula. Even this assent
was implied rather than explicit. It is in the Apologists that the
transition from the implicit was made. The teaching of Jesus Christ
became to them important, especially in Justin Martyr.[676] The step by
which it became explicit is of great importance, but we have no means
of knowing when or how it was made.[677] It is conceivable that it was
first made homiletically, in the course of exhortation to Christian
duty.[678] When the intellectual contents of the formula did become
explicit, the formula became a test. Concurrently with its use as a
standard or test of belief, was probably the incorporation in it of so
much of Christian teaching as referred to the facts of the life of Jesus
Christ. But the facts were capable of different interpretations, and
different propositions might be based upon them. In the first instance,
speculation was free. Different facts had a different significance. The
same facts of the life were interpreted in different ways. There was an
agreement as to the main principle that the Christian societies were
societies for the amendment of life. It is an almost ideal picture which
the heathen Celsus draws of the Christians differing widely as to their
speculations, and yet all agreeing to say, “The world is crucified to
me, and I unto the world.”[679] The influence of Greek thought, partly
by the allegorizing of history, partly by the construction of great
superstructures of speculation upon slender bases, made the original
standard too elastic to serve as the basis and bond of Christian society.
When theories were added to fact, different theories were added. It is at
this point that the fact became of special importance that the Gospel had
been preached by certain persons, and that its content was the content
of that preaching. It was not a philosophy which successive generations
might modify. It went back to the definite teaching of a historical
person. It was of importance to be sure what that teaching was. It was
agreed to recognize apostolic teaching as the authoritative vehicle and
interpretation of Christ’s. All parties appealed to it.[680] But there
had been more than one apostle. The teaching was consequently that, not
of one person, but of many.
Here was the main point of dispute. All parties within the Church agreed
as to the need of a tribunal, but each party had its own. Each made its
appeal to a different apostle. But since, though many in number, they
were teachers, not of their own opinions, but of the doctrine which they
had received from Jesus Christ, the more orthodox or Catholic tendency
found it necessary to lay stress upon their unity. They were spoken of
in the plural, οἱ ἀπόστολοι.[681] While the Gnostics built upon one
apostle or another,[682] the Catholics built upon an apostolic consensus.
Their tradition was not that of Peter or of James, but of the twelve
apostles. The πίστις was ἀποστολική, an attribute which implies a uniform
tradition.[683]
It was at this point that organization and confederation became
important: the bishops of the several churches were regarded as the
conservators of the tradition:[684] while the bishops of the apostolic
churches settled down to a general agreement as to the terms of the
apostolic tradition.[685] In distinction from the Gnostic standards,
there came to be a standard which the majority of the churches—the middle
party in the Church—accepted. It is quite uncertain when the rule came
to be generally accepted, or in what form it was accepted. But it is
in the main preserved for us—with undoubtedly later accretions—in the
Apostles’ Creed. Tertullian’s contention is that this rule is not only
apostolic and binding, but also adequate—a complete representation of
apostolic teaching—that there were no necessary truths outside it.[686]
The additions were made by the gradual working of the common sense,
the common consciousness, of the Christian world. They were approved
by the majority; they were accepted by the sees which claimed to have
been founded by the apostles. The earliest form is that which may be
gathered from several writers as having been generally accepted in Rome
and the West: it is a bare statement. “I believe in God Almighty, and in
Jesus Christ His Son our Lord, who was born of a virgin, crucified under
Pontius Pilate, the third day rose again from the dead, sitteth on the
right hand of the Father, from whence he is coming to judge the living
and dead; and in the Holy Spirit.” The term Son came to be qualified in
very early times by “only begotten;” and after “the Holy Spirit,” “the
Holy Church, the remission of sins, and the resurrection of the flesh,”
were added.
* * * * *
2. Side by side with this question of the standard or authentic minimum
of traditional teaching, and growing necessarily with it and out of
it, was the question of the sources from which that teaching could be
drawn, and of the materials by which the standard might be interpreted.
The greater part of apostolic teaching had been oral. The tradition
was mostly oral. But as the generations of men receded farther from
the apostolic age, and as the oral tradition which was delivered came
necessarily to vary, it became more and more uncertain what was the true
form and content of the tradition. Written records came to be of more
importance than oral tradition. They had at first only the authority
which attached to tradition. Their elevation to an independent rank
was due to the influence of the Old Testament. There had been already
a series of revelations of God to men, which having once been oral had
become written. The revelation consisted of what was then known as the
Scriptures, and what we now know as the Old Testament. The proofs of
Christianity consisted to a large extent in its consonance with those
Scriptures. But the term Holy Scriptures was less strictly used than
is sometimes supposed. The hedge round them had gaps, and there were
patches lying outside what has since come to be its line. It was partly
the indefiniteness of the Old Testament canon which caused the term
Scripture to be applied to some writings of the apostolic age. But the
question, Which writings? was only answered gradually. The spirit of
prophecy had only gradually passed away. It was the common ground for
the reception of the Old Testament and the New Testament; as the spirit
of prophecy was common to both, it was but natural that both should have
the same attributes. But prophecy was not in the first instance conceived
as having suddenly ceased in the Church. The term Scripture (ἡ γραφή)
is applied to the Shepherd of Hermas by Irenæus.[687] The delimitation
of the body of writings that could be so denoted was connected with
the necessity of being sure about the _apostolical_ teaching—the
παράδοσις.[688] The term Scripture was applied to the recorded sayings
of Jesus Christ (the λόγια) without demur.[689] It came to be applied
also to the records which the apostles had left of the facts of the life
of Christ. Then, finally, it tended more gradually to be applied to the
writings of the apostles and of apostolic men.
But questions arose in regard to all these classes, which were not
immediately answered. There were several recensions current both of the
sayings of Jesus Christ and of the memoirs of the apostles. There were
many writings attributed to apostles and apostolic men which were of
doubtful authority. But the determination was slow, and the date when a
general settlement was made is uncertain.[690] There is no distinction
between canonical and uncanonical books either in Justin Martyr or in
Irenæus. The first Biblical critic was Marcion: the controversy with his
followers, which reaches its height in Tertullian, forced on the Church
the first serious consideration of the question,—Which recensions of the
words and memoirs of Christ, and which of the letters and other writings
of the apostles and apostolic men, should be accepted? There came to be
a recognized list of the writings of the new revelations, as there came
to be—though it is doubtful whether there had yet come to be—a list of
the writings of the earlier revelations to the Jews. Writings on the
recognized list came in as the voices of the Holy Ghost.[691] They were,
as the writings of the prophets had been, the revelation of the Father
to His children. Hence faith or belief came to take in the Christian
world the sense that it had in Philo—of assent not only to the great
conceptions which were contained in the notion of God, but also to the
divine revelation which was recorded in the two Testaments.
* * * * *
3. It might have been well if the Christian Church had been content to
rest with this first stage in the transformation of the idea of belief,
and to take as its intellectual basis only the simple statements of
the primitive creed interpreted by the New Testament. But the conflict
of speculations which had compelled the middle party in the Christian
churches to adopt a standard of belief and a limitation of the sources
from which the belief might be interpreted, had also had the effect of
bringing into the Church the philosophical temper.[692] In the creed of
the end of the second century, the age of Tertullian, there are already
philosophical ideas—the creation of the world out of nothing, the Word,
the relation of the Creator to the world, of the Word or Son to the
Father, and of both to men. The Creed, as given in the treatise against
Praxeas, is equally elaborate.[693] With that Creed—traditional as he
believed it to be—Tertullian himself was satisfied. He deprecates the
“curiositas” of the brethren no less than the “scrupulositas” of the
heretics. He denies the applicability of the text, “Seek and ye shall
find,” to research into the content of Christian doctrine: it relates
only to the traditional teaching: when a man has found that, he has all
that he needs: further “seeking” is incompatible with having found. In
other words, as among modern Ultramontanes, faith must rest not on search
but on tradition (authority).[694] The absolute freedom of speculation
was checked, but the tendency to speculate remained, and it had in the
“rule of faith” a vantage-ground within the Church. There grew up
within the lines that had been marked out a tendency which, accepting
the rule of faith, and accepting also, with possibly slight variations,
the canonical Scriptures, tried to build theories out of them: γνῶσις
took its place side by side with πίστις.[695] It grew up in several parts
of Christendom. In Cappadocia, in Asia, in Edessa, in Palestine, in
Alexandria, were different small groups of men who within the recognized
lines were working out philosophical theories of Christianity.[696] We
know most about Alexandria. There was a recognized school—on the type
of the existing philosophical schools—for the study of philosophical
Christianity. Its first great teacher was Clement. He was the first to
construct a large philosophy of Christian doctrine, with a recognition
of the conventional limits, but by the help and in the domain of Greek
thought. But he is of less importance than his great disciple Origen. In
the _De Principiis_ of the latter we have the first complete system of
dogma; and I recommend the study of it, of its omissions as well as of
its assertions, of the strange fact that the features of it which are in
strongest contrast to later dogmatics are in fact its most archaic and
conservative elements.
* * * * *
It is not to my present purpose to state the results of these
speculations. The two points to which I wish to draw your attention in
reference to this tendency to philosophize, are these:
(1) The distinction between what was either an original and ground
belief or a historical fact of which a trustworthy tradition had come
down, and speculations in regard to such primary beliefs and historical
facts, tended to disappear in the strong philosophical current of the
time. It did not disappear without a struggle. Tertullian, among others,
gives indications of it. The doctrine of the Divine Word had begun in his
time to make its way into the Creed: it was known as the “dispensation”
(_œconomia_). “The simpler-minded men,” he remarks, “not to say ignorant
and uneducated, who always constitute the majority of believers—since
the rule of faith itself transfers us from the belief in polytheism to
the belief in one only true God—not understanding that though God be
one, yet His oneness is to be understood as involving a dispensation,
are frightened at this idea of dispensation.”[697] But the ancient
conservatism was crushed. It came to be considered as important to have
the right belief in the speculation as it confessedly was to have it in
the fact.
(2) The result of the fading away of this distinction, and of the
consequent growth in importance of the speculative element, was a
tendency to check individual speculations, and to fuse all speculation
in the average speculations of the majority. The battle of the second
century had been a battle between those who asserted that there was a
single and final tradition of truth, and those who claimed that the Holy
Spirit spoke to them as truly as He had spoken to men in the days of
the apostles. The victorious opinion had been that the revelation was
final, and that what was contained in the records of the apostles was
the sufficient sum of Christian teaching: hence the stress laid upon
_apostolic_ doctrine.
The battle of the third century was between those who claimed, as
Marcion claimed, that inspired documents were to be taken in their
literal sense, and those who claimed that they needed a philosophical
interpretation,[698]—that while these monuments of the apostolic age
required interpretation,[699] yet they were of no private interpretation,
and that theories based upon them must be the theories of the apostolical
churches. In other words, the contention that Christianity rested upon
the basis of a traditional doctrine and a traditional standard, was
necessarily supplemented by the contention that the doctrine and standard
must have a traditional interpretation. A rule of faith and a canon were
comparatively useless, and were felt to be so, without a traditionally
authoritative interpretation. The Gnostics were prepared to accept all
but this. They also appealed to tradition and to the Scriptures.[700] So
far it was an even battle: each side in such a controversy might retort
upon the other, and did so.[701] If it were allowed to each side to
argue on the same bases and by the same methods, each side might claim
a victory. A new principle had to be introduced—the denial of the right
of private interpretation. In regard both to the primary articles of
belief and to the majority of apostolic writings, no serious difference
of opinion had existed among the apostolical churches. It was otherwise
with the speculations that were based upon the rule of faith and the
canon. They required discussion. The Christological ideas that were
growing up on all sides had much in common with the Gnostic opinions.
They needed a limitation and a check. The check was conterminous with the
sources of the tradition itself; the meaning of the canon, as well as the
canon itself, was deposited with the bishops of apostolical churches;
and their method of enforcing the check was the holding of meetings and
the framing of resolutions. Such meetings had long been held to ensure
unity on points of discipline. They came now to be held to ensure unity
on that which had come to be no less important—the interpretation of the
recognized standard of belief. They were meetings of bishops. Bishops had
added to their original functions the function of teachers (διδάσκαλοι)
and interpreters of the will of God (προφῆται).[702] Accordingly meetings
of bishops were held, and through the operation of political rather than
of religious causes their decisions were held to be final. Two important
results followed.
(i.) The first result was the formulating of the speculations in definite
propositions, and the insertion of such propositions in the Creed. The
theory was that such insertions were of the nature of definitions and
interpretations of the original belief. The mass of communities have
never wandered from the belief that they rest upon an original revelation
preserved by a continuous tradition. But a definition of what has
hitherto been undefined is necessarily of the nature of an addition.
Perhaps the earliest instance which has come down to us of such an
expansion of the Creed, is in the letter sent by Hymenæus, Bishop of
Jerusalem, and his colleagues to Paul of Samosata.[703] The faith which
had been handed down from the beginning is “that God is unbegotten, one,
without beginning, unseen, unchangeable, whom no man hath seen nor can
see, whose glory and greatness it is impossible for human nature to trace
out adequately; but we must be content to have a moderate conception of
Him: His Son reveals Him ... as he himself says, ‘No man knoweth the
Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son revealeth Him.’ We
confess and proclaim His begotten Son, the only begotten, the image of
the invisible God, the first-born of every creature, the wisdom and word
and power of God, being before the worlds, God not by foreknowledge but
by essence and substance.”
They had passed into the realm of metaphysics. The historical facts of
the earlier creed were altogether obscured. Belief was belief in certain
speculations. The conception of the nature of belief had travelled round
a wide circuit. It will be noted that there had been a change in the
meaning of the word which has lasted until our own day. The belief in the
veracity of a witness, or in facts of which we are cognizant through our
senses, or the primary convictions of our minds—in which I may include
the belief in God—admit of a degree of certainty which cannot attach to
the belief in deductions from metaphysical premises.[704] Belief came
to mean, not the highest form of conviction, but something lower than
conviction, and it tends to have that meaning still. But with this change
in the nature of belief, there had been no change in the importance which
was attached to it. The acceptance of these philosophical speculations
was as important as the belief in God and in Jesus Christ, the Son of
God. The tendency developed, and we find it developing all through the
fourth century. In the Nicene Council the tendency was politically more
important, but it was not theologically different from what had gone
before. The habit of defining and of making inferences from definitions,
grew the more as the philosophers passed over into the Christian lines,
and logicians and metaphysicians presided over Christian churches.
The speculations which were then agreed upon became stamped as a body
of truth, and with the still deeper speculations of the Councils of
Constantinople and Chalcedon, the resolutions of the Nicene Fathers have
come to be looked upon as almost a new revelation, and the rejection of
them as a greater bar to Christian fellowship than the rejection of the
New Testament itself.
(ii.) The second result was the creation of a distinction between what
was accepted by the majority at a meeting and what was accepted only
by a minority. The distinction had long been growing. There had been
parties in the Christian communities from the first. And the existence
of such parties was admissible.[705] They broke the concord of the
brethren, but they did not break the unity of the faith. Now heretics
and schismatics were identified; difference in speculative belief was
followed by political penalty. The original contention, still preserved
in Tertullian,[706] that every man should worship God according to his
own conviction, that one man’s religion neither harms nor helps another
man, was exchanged for the contention that the officers of Christian
communities were the guardians of the faith. Controversy on these lines,
and with these assumptions, soon began to breed its offspring of venom
and abuse. But I will not pain your ears by quoting, though I have them
at hand, the torrents of abuse which one saint poured upon another,
because the one assented to the speculations of a majority, and the other
had speculations of his own.[707]
* * * * *
It was by these stages, which passed one into the other by a slow
evolution, that the idea of trust in God, which is the basis of all
religion, changed into the idea of a creed, blending theory with fact,
and metaphysical speculation with spiritual truth.
It began by being (1) a simple trust in God; then followed (2) a simple
expansion of that trust into the assent to the proposition that God
is good, and (3) a simple acceptance of the proposition that Jesus
Christ was His Son; then (4) came in the definition of terms, and each
definition of terms involved a new theory; finally, (5) the theories were
gathered together into systems, and the martyrs and witnesses of Christ
died for their faith, not outside but inside the Christian sphere; and
instead of a world of religious belief, which resembled the world of
actual fact in the sublime unsymmetry of its foliage and the deep harmony
of its discords, there prevailed the most fatal assumption of all, that
the symmetry of a system is the test of its truth and a proof thereof.
I am far from saying that those theories are not true. The point to which
I would draw attention is, first, that they are speculations; secondly,
that their place in Christian thought arises from the fact that they are
the speculations of a majority at certain meetings. The importance which
attaches to the whole subject with which we are dealing, lies less in the
history of the formation of a body of doctrine, than in the growth and
permanence of the conceptions which underlie that formation.
(1) The first conception comes from the antecedent belief which was
rooted in the Greek mind, that, given certain primary beliefs which are
admitted on all sides to be necessary, it is requisite that a man should
define those beliefs[708]—that it is as necessary that a man should be
able to say with minute exactness what he means by God, as that he should
say, I believe in God. It is purely philosophical. A philosopher cannot
be satisfied with unanalyzed ideas.
(2) The second conception comes rather from politics than from
philosophy. It is the belief in a majority of a meeting. It is the
conception that the definitions and interpretations of primary beliefs
which are made by the majority of church officers assembled under certain
conditions, are in all cases and so certainly true, that the duty of the
individual is, not to endeavour, by whatever light of nature or whatever
illumination of the Holy Spirit may be given to him, to understand them,
but to acquiesce in the verdict of the majority. The theory assumes that
God never speaks to men except through the voice of the majority. It is
a large assumption. It is a transference to the transcendental sphere in
which the highest conceptions of the Divine Nature move, of what is a
convenient practical rule for conducting the business of human society:
“Let the majority decide.” I do not say that it is untrue, or that it has
not some arguments in its favour; but I do venture to point out that the
fact of its being an assumption must at least be recognized.
(3) The third conception is, that the definitions and interpretations of
primary beliefs which were made by the majority, or even by the unanimous
voice of a church assembly, in a particular age, and which were both
relative to the dominant mental tendencies of that age and adequately
expressed them, are not only true but final. It is a conceivable view
that once, and once only, did God speak to men, and that the revelation
of Himself in the Gospels is a unique fact in the history of the
universe. It is also a conceivable view that God is continually speaking
to men, and that now, no less than in the early ages of Christianity,
there is a divine Voice that whispers in men’s souls, and a divine
interpretation of the meaning of the Gospel history. The difficulty is
in the assumption which is sometimes made, that the interpretation of
the divine Voice was developed gradually through three centuries, and
that it was then suddenly arrested. The difficulty has sometimes been
evaded by the further assumption that there was no development of the
truth, and that the Nicene theology was part of the original revelation—a
theology divinely communicated to the apostles by Jesus Christ himself.
The point of most importance in the line of study which we have been
following together, is the demonstration which it affords that this
latter assumption is wholly untenable. We have been able to see, not
only that the several elements of what is distinctive in the Nicene
theology were gradually formed, but also that the whole temper and frame
of mind which led to the formation of those elements were extraneous to
the first form of Christianity, and were added to it by the operation of
causes which can be traced. If this be so, the assumption of the finality
of the Nicene theology is the hypothesis of a development which went
on for three centuries, and was then suddenly and for ever arrested.
Such a hypothesis, even if it be _à priori_ conceivable, would require
an overwhelming amount of positive testimony. Of such testimony there
is absolutely none. But it may be that the time has come in which,
instead of travelling once more along the beaten tracks of these ancient
controversies as to particular speculations, we should rather consider
the prior question of the place which speculation as such should occupy
in the economy of religion and of the criterion by which speculations
are to be judged. We have to learn also that although for the needs of
this life, for the solace of its sorrow, for the development of its
possibilities, we must combine into societies and frame our rules of
conduct, and possibly our articles of belief, by striking an average, yet
for the highest knowledge we must go alone upon the mountain-top; and
that though the moral law is thundered forth so that even the deaf may
hear, the deepest secrets of God’s nature and of our own are whispered
still in the silence of the night to the individual soul.
It may be that too much time has been spent upon speculations about
Christianity, whether true or false, and that that which is essential
consists not of speculations but of facts, and not in technical accuracy
on questions of metaphysics, but in the attitude of mind in which we
regard them. It would be a cold world in which no sun shone until the
inhabitants thereof had arrived at a true chemical analysis of sunlight.
And it may be that the knowledge and thought of our time, which is
drawing us away from the speculative elements in religion to that
conception of it which builds it upon the character and not only upon the
intellect, is drawing us thereby to that conception of it which the life
of Christ was intended to set forth, and which will yet regenerate the
world.
LECTURE XII.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION: DOCTRINE IN THE PLACE
OF CONDUCT.
I spoke in the last Lecture of the gradual formation under Greek
influence of a body of doctrine. I propose to speak in the present
Lecture of that enormous change in the Christian communities by which
an assent to that body of doctrine became the basis of union. I shall
have to speak less of the direct influence of Greece than in previous
Lectures: but it is necessary to show not only the separate causes and
the separate effects, but also their general sum in the changed basis of
Christian communion.
* * * * *
There is no adequate evidence that, in the first age of Christianity,
association was other than voluntary. It was profoundly individual.
It assumed for the first time in human history the infinite worth of
the individual soul. The ground of that individual worth was a divine
sonship. And the sons of God were brethren. They were drawn together by
the constraining force of love. But the clustering together under that
constraining force was not necessarily the formation of an association.
There was not necessarily any organization.[709] The tendency to
organization came partly from the tendency of the Jewish colonies in the
great cities of the empire to combine, and to a far greater extent from
the large tendency of the Greek and Roman world to form societies for
both religious and social purposes.
But though there is no evidence that associations were in the first
instance universal, there is ample evidence that, when once they began
to be formed, they were formed on a basis which was less intellectual
than moral and spiritual. An intellectual element existed: but it
existed as an element, not by itself but as an essential ingredient
in the whole spiritual life. It was not separable from the spiritual
element. Of the same spiritual element, “faith” and “works” were two
sides. The associations, like the primitive clusters which were not
yet crystallized into associations, were held together by faith and
love and hope, and fused, as it were, by a common enthusiasm. They were
baptized, not only into one body, but also by one spirit, by the common
belief in Jesus Christ as their Saviour, by the overpowering sense of
brotherhood, by the common hope of immortality. Their individual members
were the saints, that is, the holy ones. The collective unity which they
formed—the Church of God—was holy. It was regarded as holy before it
was regarded as catholic. The order of the attributes in the creed is
historically correct—the holy Catholic Church. The pictures which remain
of the earliest Christian communities show that there was a real effort
to justify their name. The earliest complete picture of a Christian
community is that of the “Two Ways.” There are fragments elsewhere.
From the Acts of the Apostles and the canonical Epistles, and the
extra-canonical writings of the sub-apostolic age, it is possible to put
together a mosaic.
But in the “Two Ways” we have a primitive manual of Christian teaching,
and the teaching is wholly moral. It professes to be a short exposition
(διδαχὴ) of the two commandments of love to God and love to one’s
neighbour. The exposition is partly a quotation from and partly an
expansion of the Sermon on the Mount. “Bless those that curse you, and
pray for your enemies.” “If any one give thee a blow on the one cheek,
turn to him the other also.” “Give to every one that asketh thee, and
ask not back.” “Thou shalt not be double-minded nor double-tongued.”
“Thou shalt not be covetous nor grasping.” “Thou shalt not be angry nor
envious.” “Thou shalt not be lustful nor filthy-tongued.” “But thou shalt
be meek and long-suffering and quiet and guileless and considerate.”[710]
The ideal was not merely moral, but it was also that of an internal
morality, of a new heart, of a change of character.
The book which is probably nearest in date, and which is certainly
most alike in character to this simple manual, is the first book of
the collection of documents known as the Apostolical Constitutions. It
pictures the aim of the Christian life as being to please God by obeying
His will and keeping His commandments. “Take heed, O sons of God, to
do everything in obedience to God, and to become well-pleasing in all
things to the Lord our God.”[711] “If thou wilt please God, abstain from
all that He hates, and do none of those things that are displeasing to
Him.”[712] Individual Christians are spoken of as servants and sons of
God, as fellow-heirs and fellow-partakers with His Son, as believers,
i.e., as the phrase is expanded, “those who have believed on His unerring
religion.”[713] The rule of life is the Ten Commandments, expanded as
Christ expanded them, so as to comprehend sins of thought as well as of
deed. It was a fellowship of a common ideal and a common enthusiasm of
goodness, of neighbourliness and of mutual service, of abstinence from
all that would rouse the evil passions of human nature, of the effort to
crush the lower part of us in the endeavour to reach after God.[714]
It is even possible that the baptismal formula may have consisted, not in
an assertion of belief, but in a promise of amendment; for a conservative
sect made the candidate promise—“I call these seven witnesses to witness
that I will sin no more, I will commit adultery no more, I will not
steal, I will not act unjustly, I will not covet, I will not hate, I will
not despise, nor will I have pleasure in any evil.”[715]
The Christian communities were based not only on the fellowship of a
common ideal, but also on the fellowship of a common hope. In baptism
they were born again, and born to immortality. There was the sublime
conception that the ideal society which they were endeavouring to
realize would be actually realized on earth. The Son of Man would come
again, and the regenerated would die no more. The kingdoms of this world
would become the kingdom of the Messiah. The lust and hate, the strife
and conflict, the iniquity and vice, which dominated in current society,
would be cast out for ever; and over the new earth there would be the
arching spheres of a new heaven, into which the saints, like the angels,
might ascend. But as the generations passed, and all things continued as
they had been, and the sign of the Son of Man sent no premonitory ray
from the far-off heaven, this hope of a new earth, without changing its
force, began to change its form. It was no longer conceived as sudden,
but as gradual. The nations of the world were to be brought one by one
into the vast communion. There grew up the magnificent conception of a
universal assembly, a καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία.[716] There would be a universal
religion and a universal society, and not until then would the end come:
it would be a transformed and holy world.
* * * * *
The first point which I will ask you to note is, that this very
transformation of the idea of a particular religion into that of a
universal religion—this conception of an all-embracing human society,
naturally, if unconsciously, carried with it a relaxation of the
bonds of discipline. The very earnestness which led men to preach the
Gospel and to hasten the Kingdom, led them also to gather into the
net fish of every kind. There was always a test, but the rigour of the
test was softened. The old Adam asserted itself. There were social
influences, and weakness of character in the officers, and a condonation
by the community. It became less and less practicable to eject every
offender against the Christian code. It was against this whole tendency
that Montanism was a rebellion—not only against the officialism of
Christianity, but also against its worldliness.[717] The earlier
conception of that code, in which it embraced sins of thought, came to
be narrowed. The first narrowing was the limitation to open sins. The
Christian societies fell under the common law which governs all human
organizations, that no cognizance can be taken of the secret thoughts of
the heart. The second limitation was, that even when a man had committed
an open sin, and had been therefore excluded from the community, he might
be re-admitted. The limitation was not accepted without a controversy
which lasted over a great part of two centuries, and which at one time
threatened to rend the whole Christian communities into fragments. The
Church was gradually transformed from being a community of saints—of men
who were bound together by the bond of a holy life, separated from the
mass of society, and in antagonism to it—to a community of men whose
moral ideal and moral practice differed in but few respects from those of
their Gentile neighbours. The Church of Christ, which floated upon the
waves of this troublesome world was a Noah’s ark, in which there were
unclean as well as clean.
Side by side with this diminution in the strictness of the moral tests
of admission and of continued membership, was a growth in the importance
of the intellectual elements, of which I spoke in a previous Lecture.
The idea of holiness and purity came to include in early times the
idea of sound doctrine. Hegesippus,[718] in speaking of a church as a
virgin, gives as his reason, not its moral purity, but the fact that
it was not corrupted by foolish doctrines. The growth, both within the
Church and on its outskirts, of opinions which were not the opinions of
the majority—the tendency of all majorities to assert their power—the
flocking into the Christian fold of the educated Greeks and Romans, who
brought with them the intellectual habits of mind which dominated in
the age—gave to the intellectual element an importance which it had not
previously possessed. Knowledge, which had always been in some sort an
element in Christianity, though not as a basis of association, came to
assert its place side by side with love. Agreement in opinion, which
had been the basis of union in the Greek philosophical schools, and
later in the Gnostic societies, now came to form a new element in the
bond of union within and between the Churches.[719] But the practical
necessity, when once an intellectual element was admitted, of giving
some limitations to that element by establishing a rule of faith and
a standard list of apostolic documents, caused stress to be laid at
once upon the intellect and the region within which it moved. It was,
that is to say, necessary to ensure that the intellectual element was
of the right kind, and this of itself gave emphasis to the new temper
and tendency. The profession of belief in Christ which had been in the
first instance subordinate to love and hope, and which had consisted in
a simple recognition of him as the Son of God, became enucleated and
elaborated into an explicit creed; and assent to that creed became the
condition, or, so to speak, the contract of membership. The profession of
faith must be in the words of the Christian rule.[720] The teaching of
the catechumens was no longer that which we find in the “Two Ways”—the
inculcation of the higher morality; it was the _traditio symboli_, the
teaching of the pass-word and of its meaning. The creed and teaching were
the creed and teaching of the average members of the communities. In
religion, as in society, it is the average that rules. The law of life is
compromise.
There were two collateral causes which contributed to the change and gave
emphasis to it.
(1) The one arose from the importance which was attached to baptism.
There is no doubt that baptism was conceived to have in itself an
efficacy which in later times has been rarely attached to it. The
expressions which the more literary ages have tended to construe
metaphorically were taken literally. It was a real washing away of sins;
it was a real birth into a new life; it was a real adoption into a divine
sonship. The _renunciatio diaboli_—the abjuring of false gods and their
wicked worship—was also an important element.[721] These elements were
indeed even more strongly emphasized by certain Gnostic societies than
by the more orthodox writers; but they directly suggested a question
which soon became vital, viz. whether all baptism had this efficacy. Was
the mere act or ceremonial enough, or did it depend on the place where,
the person by whom, and the ritual with which it was administered? In
particular, the question of the minister of baptism became important.
It came to be doubted whether baptism had its awful efficacy, if the
baptizer were cut off from the general society of Christians on the
ground of either his teaching or his practice. It became important to
ensure that those who baptized held the right faith, lest the baptism
they administered should be invalid, and should carry with it all the
evil consequences of a vitiated baptism. The rules which were laid down
were minute. There were grave controversies as to the precise amount of
difference of opinion which vitiated baptism, and the very fact of the
controversies about opinion accentuated the stress which was laid upon
such opinion. It drew away attention from a man’s character to his mental
attitude towards the general average of beliefs.
(2) There was another feature of early Christian life which probably
contributed more than anything else to strengthen this tendency. It was
the habit of intercourse and intercommunion. Christians, like Jews,
travelled widely—more for trade and commerce than for pleasure. The new
brotherhood of Christians, like the ancient brotherhood of the Jews,
gave to all the travelling brethren a welcome and hospitality. A test
had been necessary in the earliest times in regard to the prophets and
teachers. It is mentioned in the Teaching of the Apostles. But the
test was of moral rather than of intellectual teaching. “Whoever comes
to you and teaches you all these things” (i.e. the moral precepts of
the “Two Ways”), “receive him. But in case he who teaches, himself
turns and teaches you another teaching[722] so as to destroy (this
teaching), listen not to him: but if he teaches you so as to add to your
righteousness and knowledge of the Lord, receive him as the Lord.”[723]
So of the prophets: “Not every one who speaks in the spirit is a prophet,
but only he who has the moral ways of the Lord (τοὺς τρόπους Κυρίου):
by these ways shall be known the false prophet and the true prophet....
Every prophet who teaches the truth, if he does not what he teaches, is a
false prophet.”[724] So also of the travelling brethren: “Let every one
who comes in the name of the Lord be received; afterwards ye shall test
him and find out.... If he wish to settle among you and is a craftsman,
let him work and so eat. If he be not a craftsman, provide some way
of his living among you as a Christian, but not being idle. If he be
unwilling so to do, he is χριστέμπορος—making a gain of godliness.”[725]
The test here also is a test of character and not of belief. But when
the intellectual elements had asserted a prominence in Christianity,
and when the acceptance of the baptismal formula had been made a test
of admission to a Christian community, it gradually became a custom to
make the acceptance of that formula also a condition of admission to
hospitality.[726] It was, so to speak, a _tessera_ or pass-word. By being
a pass-word to hospitality, it became also a form which a man might
easily strain his conscience to accept, and in religion no less than in
politics there are no such strenuous upholders of current opinion as
those who are hypocrites. The importance of the formula as a passport
attached not only to individuals, but also to whole communities.[727]
The fact that the Teaching of the Apostles makes the test personal and
individual, shows that in the country and at the time when that book was
written the later system had not yet begun to prevail. This later system
was for a community to furnish its travelling members with a circular
letter of recommendation. Such a letter served as a passport. The
travelling Christian who brought it received an immediate and ungrudging
hospitality. But when churches had wide points of difference, they would
not receive each other’s letters. The points of difference which thus
led to the renunciation of fellowship, related in the first instance
to discipline or practice. They came to relate to belief. Points of
doctrine, no less than points of discipline, came to be discussed at the
meetings of the representatives of the churches in a district, concerning
which I spoke in the last Lecture. Doctrine came to be thus co-ordinate
with character as the basis on which the churches joined together in
local or general confederations, and accepted each other’s certificates.
The hierarchical tendency grew with it and out of it. The position of
the bishops, which had grown out of the assumed desirability of guarding
the tradition of truth, tended to emphasize that tradition. It gave to
tradition not only a new importance, but also a new sanction. It rested
belief upon living authority. Men were no longer free to interpret for
themselves.
* * * * *
This elevation of doctrine to a co-ordinate position with life in
the Christian communities was the effect of causes internal to those
communities. Those causes were in themselves the effects of other causes,
the influence of which I have traced in previous Lectures: but in their
direct operation within the churches they were altogether internal. But
that which gave importance to their operation was not internal, but
external. It was the interposition of the State. The first instance of
that interposition was in the days of Aurelian, in the case of Paul of
Samosata. The principle which was then established has been of enormous
importance to the Christian communities ever since. It is clear that
confederation of churches was so far established in Syria in the middle
of the third century, that the bishops of a district claimed a right to
interfere in the affairs of a neighbouring church. There was not yet
the complete confederation, on the basis of the organization of the
Empire, which we find after the Nicene Council; it was a question only
of neighbourhood. The Bishop of Antioch, Paul of Samosata, who was a
statesman as well as a theologian, had a difference of opinion with the
leading bishops of Syria on one of the new questions of the metaphysical
theology, which was forcing its way into the Christian churches.
Meetings were held, at the first of which there appears to have been a
compromise. At the second, Paul was condemned. He was formally deposed
from his see. He refused to recognize the authority of the meeting, and
probably with the support of his people, remained in possession of the
church-buildings. An appeal as of “civil right” was made by his opponents
to the Emperor. The answer of the Emperor determined the principle
already referred to. The tenant of the buildings held them on condition
of being a Christian. The Emperor did not determine what Christianity
was. But he determined that whatever was taught by the bishops of Italy
might be properly taken as the standard. This determined Roman policy,
and it went far to determine Christian doctrine for the future.
When Christianity came to be recognized by the State, Constantine
adopted the plan of assembling the bishops on his own authority, and
of giving whatever sanction the State could give to their resolutions.
He said in effect, “I, as Emperor, cannot determine what Christian
doctrine is, but I will take the opinion of the majority, and I will
so far recognize that opinion that no one shall have the privileges of
Christians, a right to hold property and an exemption from civil burdens,
who does not assent to that opinion.” The succeeding Christian Emperors
followed in his track. The test of being a Christian was conformity
to the resolutions of the Councils. One who accepted them received
immunity and privileges. One who did not was liable to confiscation, to
banishment, to death. I need hardly draw out for you, who know what human
nature is, the importance which those resolutions of the Councils assumed.
* * * * *
Against this whole transformation of the basis of union there were two
great lines of reaction.
1. The one was the reaction of the Puritan party in the Church—the
conservative party, which was always smouldering, and sometimes burst
forth into flame. The most important of such reactionary outbursts were
those of the Novatians in the third century, and of the Donatists in the
fourth. I will speak now only of the former. Its first cause was the
action of the Roman bishop, Callistus, who allowed the return to the
Church of those who had been excluded on account of sins of the flesh,
and of return to idolatry. The policy was continued. In 250, a determined
stand was made against it. The election of a bishop who belonged to the
lax party forced on a schism. The schism was strong. It had sympathizers
all over the Christian world—in Egypt, in Armenia, in Asia Minor, in
Italy and Spain. It involved the whole theory of the Church—the power
of the Keys. It lasted long. It was so strong that the State had to
recognize it. It did not die out until at least five centuries after its
birth. It lingered on in detached communities, but it ceased to be a
power. The majority, with the support not only of the State, but also of
human nature, dominated the Christian world.
2. The other reaction was stronger and even more permanent. It consisted
of the formation within the Christian community of an inner class, who
framed for themselves and endeavoured to realize a higher than the
common ideal. They stood to the rest of the community as the community
itself stood to the rest of the world. The tendency itself came, as I
have tried to point out in a previous Lecture,[728] mainly from the
Greek philosophical schools, and was fostered to a large extent by the
influence on the main body of Christians of the philosophic parties upon
its borders. But it asserted its place as a permanent element in the
Christian world mainly as a reaction against the change of the basis of
the Christian communities, and the lowering of the current standard of
their morality. Henceforward there was, side by side with the τάγμα τῶν
κληρικῶν and the τάγμα τῶν λαϊκῶν, a third rank, τάγμα τῶν ἀσκητῶν. The
ideal has been obscured by its history: but that ideal was sublime. It
was impracticable and undesirable; and yet sometimes in human life room
must be found for impossible ideals. And the blurred and blotted picture
of it which has survived to our own times, cannot take the place of the
historical fact that it began as a reaction against Christianity as it
was and as it is—an effort to regenerate human society. But Monachism,
by the very fact of its separation, did not leaven the Church and raise
the current morality. The Church became, not an assembly of devout men,
grimly earnest about living a holy life—its bishops were statesmen;
its officers were men of the world; its members were of the world,
basing their conduct on the current maxims of society, held together
by the loose bond of a common name, and of a creed which they did not
understand. In such a society, an intellectual basis is the only possible
basis. In such a society also, in which officialism must necessarily
have an important place, the insistence on that intellectual basis comes
from the instinct of self-preservation. But it checked the progress of
Christianity. Christianity has won no great victories since its basis
was changed. The victories that it has won, it has won by preaching, not
Greek metaphysics, but the love of God and the love of man. Its darkest
pages are those which record the story of its endeavouring to force its
transformed Greek metaphysics upon men or upon races to whom they were
alien. The only ground of despair in those who accept Christianity now,
is the fear—which I for one cannot entertain—that the dominance of the
metaphysical element in it will be perpetual.
* * * * *
I have now brought these Lectures to a close. The net result is the
introduction into Christianity of the three chief products of the Greek
mind—Rhetoric, Logic, and Metaphysics. I venture to claim to have shown
that a large part of what are sometimes called Christian doctrines,
and many usages which have prevailed and continue to prevail in the
Christian Church, are in reality Greek theories and Greek usages changed
in form and colour by the influence of primitive Christianity, but in
their essence Greek still. Greece lives; not only its dying life in the
lecture-rooms of Universities, but also with a more vigorous growth in
the Christian Churches. It lives there, not by virtue of the survival
within them of this or that fragment of ancient teaching, and this or
that fragment of an ancient usage, but by the continuance in them of
great modes and phases of thought, of great drifts and tendencies, of
large assumptions. Its ethics of right and duty, rather than of love
and self-sacrifice; its theology, whose God is more metaphysical than
spiritual—whose essence it is important to define; its creation of a
class of men whose main duty in life is that of moral exhortation, and
whose utterances are not the spontaneous outflow of a prophet’s soul, but
the artistic periods of a rhetorician; its religious ceremonial, with
the darkness and the light, the initiation and the solemn enactment of
a symbolic drama; its conception of intellectual assent rather than of
moral earnestness as the basis of religious society—in all these, and the
ideas that underlie them, Greece lives.
It is an argument for the divine life of Christianity that it has been
able to assimilate so much that was at first alien to it. It is an
argument for the truth of much of that which has been assimilated, that
it has been strong enough to oust many of the earlier elements. But
the question which forces itself upon our attention as the phenomena
pass before us in review, is the question of the relation of these
Greek elements in Christianity to the nature of Christianity itself.
The question is vital. Its importance can hardly be over-estimated. It
claims a foremost place in the consideration of earnest men. The theories
which rise out of it are two in number. It is possible to urge, on the
one hand, that Christianity, which began without them—which grew on a
soil whereon metaphysics never throve—which won its first victories over
the world by the simple moral force of the Sermon on the Mount, and by
the sublime influence of the life and death of Jesus Christ, may throw
off Hellenism and be none the loser, but rather stand out again before
the world in the uncoloured majesty of the Gospels. It is possible to
urge that what was absent from the early form cannot be essential, and
that the Sermon on the Mount is not an outlying part of the Gospel,
but its sum. It is possible to urge, on the other hand, that the tree
of life, which was planted by the hand of God Himself in the soil of
human society, was intended from the first to grow by assimilating to
itself whatever elements it found there. It is possible to maintain that
Christianity was intended to be a development, and that its successive
growths are for the time at which they exist integral and essential. It
is possible to hold that it is the duty of each succeeding age at once to
accept the developments of the past, and to do its part in bringing on
the developments of the future.
Between these two main views it does not seem possible to find a logical
basis for a third. The one or the other must be accepted, with the
consequences which it involves. But whether we accept the one or the
other, it seems clear that much of the Greek element may be abandoned.
On the former hypothesis, it is not essential; on the latter, it is an
incomplete development and has no claim to permanence. I believe the
consideration of this question, and practical action on the determination
of it, to be the work that lies before the theologians of our generation.
I claim for the subject which we have been considering an exceptional
importance, because it will enable us, if on the one hand we accept
the theory that the primitive should be permanent, to disentangle the
primitive from the later elements, and to trace the assumptions on
which these later elements are based; and if on the other hand we adopt
the theory of development, it will enable us, by tracing the lines
of development, to weld the new thoughts of our time with the old by
that historical continuity which in human societies is the condition
of permanence. I am not unaware that there are many who deprecate the
analysis of Christian history, and are content to accept the deposit.
There has been a similar timidity in regard to the Bible. It seemed a
generation ago as though the whole fabric of belief depended on the
acceptance of the belief that Genesis is the work of a single author. The
timidity has virtually ceased. The recognition of the fact that the Book
of Genesis was not made, but grew, so far from having been a danger to
religion, has become a new support of the faith. So it will be with the
analysis of Christian doctrine and of Christian history; and therefore I
am earnest in urging its study. For though the Lectures are ended, the
study of the subject has only begun. I have ventured as a pioneer into
comparatively unexplored ground: I feel that I shall no doubt be found
to have made the mistakes of a pioneer; but I feel also the certainty of
a pioneer—who after wandering by devious paths through the forest and
the morass, looks out from the height which he has reached upon the fair
landscape—and speaking as one who has so stood and so looked, I am sure
that you will find the country to be in the main what I have described
it to be, and that you will find also that it is but the entrance to a
still fairer landscape beyond. For though you may believe that I am but
a dreamer of dreams, I seem to see, though it be on the far horizon—the
horizon beyond the fields which either we or our children will tread—a
Christianity which is not new but old, which is not old but new, a
Christianity in which the moral and spiritual elements will again hold
their place, in which men will be bound together by the bond of mutual
service, which is the bond of the sons of God, a Christianity which
will actually realize the brotherhood of men, the ideal of its first
communities.
FOOTNOTES
[1] πᾶσα διδασκαλία καὶ πᾶσα μάθησις διανοητικὴ ἐκ προϋπαρχούσης γένεται
γνώσεως (Arist. _Anal. post._ i. 1, P. 71). John Philoponus, in his
note on the passage, points out that emphasis is laid upon the word
διανοητική, in antithesis to sensible knowledge, ἡ γὰρ αἰσθητικὴ γνῶσις
οὐκ ἔχει προϋποκειμένην γνῶσιν (_Schol._ ed. Brandis, p. 196 _b_).
[2] Tertullian (_adv. Valentin._ c. 5) singles out four writers of the
previous generation whom he regards as standing on an equal footing:
Justin, Miltiades, Irenæus, Proculus. Of these, Proculus has entirely
perished; of Miltiades, only a few fragments remain; Justin survives
in only a single MS. (see A. Harnack, _Texte und Untersuchungen_, Bd.
i. 1, _die Ueberlieferung der griechischen Apologeten des zweiten
Jahrhunderts_); and the greater part of Irenæus remains only in a Latin
translation.
[3] Marcion, in the sad tone of one who bitterly felt that every man’s
hand was against him, addresses one of his disciples as “my partner in
hate and wretchedness” (συμμισούμενον καὶ συνταλαίπωρον, Tert. _adv.
Marc._ 4. 9).
[4] Examples are the accounts of Basilides in Clement of Alexandria
and Hippolytus, compared with those in Irenæus and Epiphanius; and the
accounts of the Ophites in Hippolytus, compared with those of Irenæus and
Epiphanius. The literature of the subject is considerable: see especially
A. Hilgenfeld, _die Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthums_ (e.g. p. 202);
R. A. Lipsius, _zur Quellenkritik des Epiphanios_; and A. Harnack, _zur
Quellenkritik der Geschichte des Gnosticismus_.
[5] The very names of most of the heathen opponents are lost: Lactantius
(5. 4) speaks of “plurimos et multis in locis et non modo Græcis sed
etiam Latinis litteris.” But for the ordinary student, Keim’s remarkable
restoration of the work of Celsus from the quotations of Origen, with
its wealth of illustrative notes, compensates for many losses (Th. Keim,
_Celsus’ Wahres Wort_, Zürich, 1873).
[6] This was the common view of the Stoics, probably following Anaxagoras
or his school; cf. Plutarch [Aetius], _de Plac. Philos._ 4. 3 (Diels,
_Doxographi Græci_, p. 387). It was stated by Chrysippus, οὐδὲν ἀσώματον
συμπάσχει σώματι οὐδὲ ἀσωμάτῳ σῶμα ἀλλὰ σῶμα σώματι· συμπάσχει δὲ ἡ ψυχὴ
τῷ σώματι ... σῶμα ἄρα ἡ ψυχή (Chrysipp. _Fragm. ap. Nemes. de Nat. Hom._
33); by Zeno, in _Cic. Academ._ 1. 11. 39; by their followers, Plutarch
[Aetius], _de Plac. Philos._ 1. 11. 4 (Diels, p. 310), οἱ Στωικοὶ πάντα
τὰ αἴτια σωματικά· πνεύματα γάρ; so by Seneca, _Epist._ 117. 2, “quicquid
facit corpus est;” so among some Christian writers, e.g. Tertullian, _de
Anima_, 5.
[7] The conception underlies the whole of Tertullian’s treatise, _de
Baptismo_: it accounts for the rites of exorcism and benediction of both
the oil and the water which are found in the older Latin service-books,
e.g. in what is known as the Gelasian Sacramentary, i. 73 (in Muratori,
_Liturgia Romana vetus_, vol. i. p. 594), “exaudi nos omnipotens Deus
et _in hujus aquæ substantiam immitte virtutem_ ut abluendus per eam et
sanitatem simul et vitam mereatur æternam.” This prayer is immediately
followed by an address to the water, “exorcizo te creatura aquæ per Deum
vivum ... adjuro te per Jesum Christum filium ejus unicum dominum nostrum
ut efficiaris in eo qui in te baptizandus erit fons aquæ salientis in
vitam æternam, regenerans eum Deo Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto....”
So in the Gallican Sacramentary published by Mabillon (_de Liturgia
Gallicana libri tres_, p. 362), “exorcizo te fons aquæ perennis per
Deum sanctum et Deum verum qui te in principio ab arida separavit et
in quatuor fluminibus terram rigore præcepit: sis aqua sancta, aqua
benedicta, _abluens sordes et dimittens peccata_....”
[8] These conceptions are found in Xenophon’s account of Socrates, who
quotes more than once the Delphic oracle, ἥ τε γὰρ Πυθία νόμῳ πόλεως
ἀναιρεῖ ποιοῦντας εὐσεβῶς ἂν ποιεῖν, Xen. _Mem._ 1. 3. 1, and again 4. 3.
16: in Epictet. _Ench._ 31, σπένδειν δὲ καὶ θύειν καὶ ἀπάρχεσθαι κατὰ τὰ
πάτρια ἑκάστοις προσήκει: repeatedly in Plutarch, e.g. _de Defect. Orac._
12, p. 416, _de Comm. Notit._ 31. 1, p. 1074: in the _Aureum Carmen_ of
the later Pythagoreans, ἀθανάτους μὲν πρῶτα θεούς νόμῳ ὡς διάκεινται,
τίμα (_Frag. Philos. Græc._ i. p. 193): and in the Neoplatonist Porphyry
(_ad Marcell._ 18, p. 286, ed. Nauck), οὗτος γὰρ μέγιστος καρπὸς
εὐσεβείας τιμᾶν τὸ θεῖον κατὰ τὰ πάτρια. The intellectual opponents of
Christianity laid stress upon its desertion of the ancestral religion;
e.g. Cæcilius in Minucius Felix, _Octav._ 5, “quanto venerabilius ac
melius....majorum excipere disciplinam, religiones traditas colere;” and
Celsus in Origen, _c. Cels._ 5. 25, 35; 8. 57.
[9] The following is designed to be a short account, not of all the
elements of later Greek education, but only of its more prominent and
important features: nothing has been said of those elements of the
ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία which constituted the mediæval _quadrivium_. The
works bearing on the subject will be found enumerated in K. F. Hermann,
_Lehrbuch der griechischen Antiquitäten_, Bd. iv. p. 302, 3te aufl.
ed. Blumner: the most important of them is Grasberger, _Erziehung und
Unterricht im classischen Alterthum_, Bd. i. and ii. Würzburg, 1864: the
shortest and most useful for an ordinary reader is Ussing, _Erziehung und
Jugendunterricht bei den Griechen und Römern_, Berlin, 1885.
[10] _Litteratura_ is the Latin for γραμματική: Quintil. 2. 1. 4.
[11] _Adv. Gramm._ 1. 44.
[12] γραμματιστική, which was taught by the γραμματιστής, whereas
γραμματικὴ was taught by the γραμματικός. The relation between the two
arts is indicated by the fact that in the Edict of Diocletian the fee of
the former is limited to fifty denarii, while that of the latter rises to
two hundred; _Edict. Dioclet._ ap. Haenel, _Corpus Legum_, No. 1054, p.
178.
[13] _Adv. Gramm._ 1. 91 sqq., cf. _ib._ 250. This is quoted as being
most representative of the period with which these Lectures have mainly
to do. With it may be compared the elaborate account given by Quintilian,
1. 4 sqq.
[14] 1. 10.
[15] The substance of Basil’s letter, _Ep._ 339 (146), tom. iii. p. 455.
There is a charming irony in Libanius’s answer, _Ep._ 340 (147), _ibid._
[16] προφῆτις, Sext. Emp. _adv. Gramm._ 1. 279.
[17] Strabo, 1. 2. 3, οὐ ψυχαγωγίας χάριν δήπουθεν ψιλῆς ἀλλὰ σωφρονισμοῦ.
[18] Dio Chrys. _Orat._ xxxvi. vol. ii p. 51, ed. Dind.
[19] These are printed in Walz, _Rhetores Græci_, vol. i.: the account
here followed is mainly that of the _Progymnasmata_ of Theo of Smyrna
(circ. A.D. 130). There is a letter of Dio Chrysostom, printed among his
speeches, _Orat._ xvii. περὶ λόγον ἀσκήσεως, ed. Dind. i, 279, consisting
of advice to a man who was beginning the study of Rhetoric late in life,
which, without being a formal treatise, gives as good a view as could be
found of the general course of training.
[20] _Diss._ 3. 23. 20.
[21] Philostr. _V. S._ 2. 21. 3, of Proclus.
[22] Lucian, _Dial. Mort._ 10. 10.
[23] _Hermotim._ 81.
[24] There is a good example of the former of these methods in Maximus
of Tyre, _Dissert._ 33, where § 1 is part of a student’s essay, and
the following sections are the professor’s comments; and of the latter
in Epictetus, _Diss._ 1. 10. 8, where the student is said ἀναγνῶναι,
_legere_, the professor ἐπαναγνῶναι, _prælegere_.
[25] _Enchir._ 49: see also _Diss._ 3. 21, quoted below, p. 102.
[26] _Orat._ iv. vol. i. p. 69, ed. Dind.
[27] i. 7.
[28] This higher education was not confined to Rome or Athens, but was
found in many parts of the empire: Marseilles in the time of Strabo was
even more frequented than Athens. There were other great schools at
Antioch and Alexandria, at Rhodes and Smyrna, at Ephesus and Byzantium,
at Naples and Nicopolis, at Bordeaux and Autun. The practice of resorting
to such schools lasted long. In the fourth century and among the
Christian Fathers, Basil and Gregory Nazianzen, Augustine and Jerome, are
recorded to have followed it: the general recognition of Christianity did
not seriously affect the current educational system: “Through the whole
world,” says Augustine (_de utilitate credendi_, 7, vol. viii. 76, ed.
Migne), “the schools of the rhetoricians are alive with the din of crowds
of students.”
[29] There is an interesting instance, at a rather later time, of
the poverty of two students, one of whom afterwards became famous,
Prohæresius and Hephæstion: they had only one ragged gown between them,
so that while one went to lecture, the other had to stay at home in bed
(Eunap. _Prohæres._ p. 78).
[30] _Diss._ 1. 9. 19.
[31] _Ib._ 2, 21. 12; 3. 24. 54.
[32] _Ib._ 2. 21. 12, 13, 15; 3. 24. 22, 24.
[33] _Ib._ 3. 16. 14, 15.
[34] _Ib._ 1. 26. 9.
[35] _De audiendo_, 13, vol. ii. p. 45. The passage is abridged above.
[36] _Quis rer. div. heres._ 3, vol. i. p. 474.
[37] For example, Verrius Flaccus, the father of the system of “prize
essays,” who received an annual salary of 100,000 sesterces from Augustus
(Suet. _de illustr. Gramm._ 17). The inscriptions of Asia Minor furnish
several instances of teachers who had left their homes to teach in other
provinces of the Empire, and had returned rich enough to make presents to
their native cities.
[38] The evidence for the above paragraph, with ample accounts of
additional facts relative to the same subject, but unnecessary for
the present purpose, will be found in F. H. L. Ahrens, _de Athenarum
statu politico et literario inde ab Achaici fœderis interitu usque
ad Antoninorum tempora_, Göttingen, 1829; K. O. Müller, _Quam curam
respublica apud Græcos et Romanos literis doctrinisque colendis et
promovendis impenderit_, Göttingen (Programm zur Säcularfeier), 1837;
P. Seidel, _de scholarum quæ florente Romanorum imperio Athenis
exstiterunt conditione_, Glogau, 1838; C. G. Zumpt, _Ueber den Bestand
der philosophischen Schulen in Athen und die Succession der Scholarchen_,
Berlin (Abhandl. der Akademie der Wissenschaften), 1843; L. Weber,
_Commentatio de academia literaria Atheniensium_, Marburg, 1858. There is
an interesting Roman inscription of the end of the second century A.D.
which almost seems to show that the endowments were sometimes diverted
for the benefit of others besides philosophers: it is to an _athlete_,
who was at once “canon of Serapis,” and entitled to free commons at
the museum, νεωκόρον τοῦ μεγά[λου Σαράπιδ]ος καὶ τῶν ἐν τῷ Μουσείῳ
[σειτου]μένων ἀτελῶν φιλοσόφων, _Corpus Inscr. Græc._ 5914.
[39] The edict of Antoninus Pius is contained in L. 6, § 2, D. _de
excusat._ 27. l: the number of philosophers is not prescribed, “quia
rari sunt qui philosophantur:” and if they make stipulations about
pay, “inde iam manifesti fient non philosophantes.” The nature of the
immunities is described, _ibid._ § 8: “a ludorum publicorum regimine, ab
ædilitate, a sacerdotio, a receptione militum, ab emtione frumenti, olei,
et neque judicare neque legatos esse neque in militia numerari nolentes
neque ad alium famulatum cogi.” The immunities were sometimes further
extended to the lower classes of teachers, e.g. the _ludi magistri_
at Vipascum in Portugal: cf. Hübner and Mommsen in the _Ephemeris
Epigraphica_, vol. iii. pp. 185, 188. For the regulations of the later
empire, see _Cod. Theodos._ 14. 9, _de studiis liberalibus urbis Romæ
et Constantinopolitanæ_; and for a good popular account of the whole
subject, see G. Boissier, _L’instruction publique dans l’empire Romain_,
in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, mars 15, 1884.
[40] Lucian’s _Convivium_ is a humorous and satirical description
of such a dinner. The philosopher reads his discourse from a small,
finely-written manuscript, c. 17. The _Deipnosophistæ_ of Athenæus,
and the _Quæstiones Conviviales_ of Plutarch, are important literary
monuments of the practice.
[41] An interesting corroboration of the literary references is afforded
by the mosaic pavement of a large villa at Hammâm Grous, near Milev,
in North Africa, where “the philosopher’s apartment,” or “chaplain’s
room” (_filosophi locus_), is specially marked, and near it is a lady
(the mistress of the house?) sitting under a palm-tree. (The inscription
is given in the _Corpus Inscr. Lat._ vol. viii. No. 10890, where
reference is made to a drawing of the pavement in Rousset, _Les Bains de
Pompeianus_, Constantine, 1879).
[42] Lucian, _de merc. cond._ 32.
[43] _Ib._ 34.
[44] _Ib._ 36.
[45] _Ib._ 38.
[46] _Timon_, 50, 51.
[47] _Profiteri_, _professio_, are the Latin translations of
ἐπαγγέλλεσθαι, ἐπαγγελία: the latter words are found as early as
Aristotle in connection with the idea of teaching, τὰ δὲ πολιτικὰ
ἐπαγγέλλονται μὲν διδάσκειν οἱ σοφισταὶ πράττει δ’ αὐτῶν οὐδείς, Arist.
_Eth. N._ 10. 10, p. 1180 _b_, and apparently τοὺς ἐπαγγελλομέvους is
used absolutely for “professors” in _Soph. Elench._ 13, p. 172 _a_.
The first use of _profiteri_ in an absolute sense in Latin is probably
in Pliny, e.g. _Ep._ 4. 11. 1, “audistine V. Licinianum in Sicilia
profiteri,” “is teaching rhetoric.”
[48] See note on p. 33: an early use of _prælegere_ in this sense is
Quintil. 1. 8. 13.
[49] _Facultas_ is the translation of δύναμις in its meaning of an art or
a branch of knowledge, which is found in Epictetus and elsewhere, e.g.
_Diss._ 1. 8. tit., 8, 15, chiefly of logic or rhetoric: a writer of the
end of the third century draws a distinction between δυνάμεις and τέχναι,
and classes rhetoric under the former: Menander, Περὶ ἐπιδεικτικῶν, in
Walz, _Rhett. Gr._ vol. ix. 196.
[50] Instances of this practice are: (1) _grammaticus_, in Hispania
Tarraconensis, _Corpus Inscr. Lat._ ii. 2892, 5079; _magister artis
grammaticæ_, at Saguntum, _ibid._ 3872; _magister grammaticus Græcus_,
at Cordova, _ibid._ 2236; _grammaticus Græcus_, at Trier, _Corpus Inscr.
Rhenan._ 801: (2) _philosophus_, in Greece, _Corpus Inscr. Græc._ 1253;
in Asia Minor, _ibid._ 3163 (dated A.D. 211), 3198, 3865, _add._ 4366 _t_
2; in Egypt, _ibid._ 4817; sometimes with the name of the school added,
e.g. at Chæronea, φιλόσοφον Πλατωνικόν, _ibid._ 1628; at Brundisium,
_philosophus Epicureus_, _ibid._ 5783.
[51] Marcus Aurelius himself nominated Theodotus to be “Regius Professor
of Rhetoric,” but he entrusted the nomination of the Professors of
Philosophy to Herodes Atticus, Philostrat. _V. S._ 2. 3, p. 245; and
Commodus nominated Polydeuces, _ibid._ 2. 12, p. 258.
[52] Lucian, _Eunuchus_, 3, after mentioning the endowment of the chairs,
says, ἔδει δὲ ἀποθανόντος ἀυτῶν τινος ἄλλον ἀντικαθίστασθαι δοκιμασθέντα
_ψήφῳ τῶν ἀρίστων_, which last words have been variously understood: see
the treatises mentioned above, note 1, p. 38, especially Ahrens, p. 74,
Zumpt, p. 28. In the case of Libanius, there was a ψήφισμα (Liban. _de
fort. sua_, vol. i. p. 59), which points to an assimilation of Athenian
usage in his time to that which is mentioned in the following note.
[53] This was fixed by a law of Julian in 362, which, however, states it
as a concession on the part of the Emperor: “quia singulis civitatibus
adesse ipse non possum, jubeo quisquis docere vult non repente nec
temere prosiliat ad hoc munus sed judicio ordinis probatus decretum
curialium mereatur, optimorum conspirante consilio,” _Cod. Theodos._
13. 3. 5; but the nomination was still sometimes left to the Emperor
or his chief officer, the prefect of the city. This has an especial
interest in connection with the history of St. Augustine: a request was
sent from Milan to the prefect of the city at Rome for the nomination of
a _magister rhetoricæ_: St. Augustine was sent, and so came under the
influence of St. Ambrose, S. Aug. _Confess._ 5. 13.
[54] This is mentioned in a law of Gordian: “grammaticos seu oratores
decreto ordinis probatos, si non se utiles studentibus præbeant, denuo
ab eodem ordine reprobari posse incognitum non est,” _Cod. Justin._
10. 52. 2. A professor was sometimes removed for other reasons besides
incompetency, e.g. Prohæresius was removed by Julian for being a
Christian, Eunap. _Prohæres._ p. 92.
[55] Alexander of Aphrodisias, _de Fato_, 1, says that he obtained his
professorship on the _testimony_, ὑπὸ τῆς μαρτυρίας, of Severus and
Caracalla.
[56] The existence of a competition appears in Lucian, _Eunuchus_, 3, 5:
the fullest account is that of Eunapius, _Prohæres._ pp. 79 sqq.
[57] Eunapius, _ibid._ p. 84.
[58] Olympiodorus, ap. Phot. _Biblioth._ 80; S. Greg. Naz. _Orat._ 43
(20). 15, vol. i. p. 782; Liban. _de fort. sua_, vol. i. p. 14. The
admission was probably the occasion of some academical sport: the novice
was marched in mock procession to the baths, whence he came out with
his gown on. It was something like initiation into a religious guild or
order. There was a law against any one who assumed the philosopher’s
dress without authority, “indebite et insolenter,” _Cod. Theodos._ 13. 3.
7.
[59] The last traces are in the Christian poets: for example, in Sidonius
Apollinaris († 482), _Carm._ xxiii. 211, ed. Luetjohann, “quicquid
rhetoricæ institutionis, quicquid grammaticalis aut palæstræ est;” in
Ennodius († 521), _Carm._ ccxxxiv. p. 182, ed. Vogel, and in _Ep._ 94,
which is a letter of thanks to a grammarian for having successfully
instructed the writer’s nephew; in Venantius Fortunatus († 603), who
speaks of himself as “Parvula grammaticæ lambens refluamina guttæ,
Rhetorici exiguum prælibans gurgitis haustum,” _V. Martini_, i. 29,
30, ed. Leo; but there are traces in the same poets of the antagonism
between classical and Christian learning which ultimately led to the
disappearance of the former, e.g. Fortunatus speaks of Martin as “doctor
apostolicus vacuans ratione sophistas,” _V. Martini_, i. 139.
[60] “La période bénédictine,” Leon Maitre, _Les écoles épiscopales et
monastiques de l’Occident_, p. 173.
[61] “Dictæ per carmina sortes,” Hor. _A. P._ 403. But it may be inferred
from the title of Plutarch’s treatise, Περὶ τοῦ μὴ χρᾶν ἔμμετρα νῦν τὴν
Πυθίαν, that the practice had ceased in the second century.
[62] Cf. e.g.. Pindar, _Frag._ 127 (118), μαντεύεο μοῖσα προφατεύσω δ’
ἐγώ; and, in later times, Ælius Aristides, vol. iii. p. 22, ed. Cant.
[63] Dio Chrysostom, _Orat._ i. vol. i. p. 12, ed. Dind.
[64] Id. _Orat._ xxxvi. vol. ii. p. 59: καί πού τις ἐπίπνοια θείας φύσεώς
τε καὶ ἀληθείας καθάπερ αὐγὴ πυρὸς ἐξ ἀφανοῦς λάμψαντος.
[65] It was a natural result of the estimation in which he was held
that he should sometimes have been regarded as being not only inspired,
but divine: the passages which refer to this are collected in G.
Cuper, _Apotheosis vel consecratio Homeri_ (in vol. ii. of Polenus’s
Supplement to Gronovius’s Thesaurus), which is primarily a commentary
on the bas-relief by Archelaus of Priene, now in the British Museum
(figured, e.g. in Overbeck, _Geschichte der griechischen Plastik_, ii.
333). The idea has existed in much more recent times, not indeed that
he was divine, but that so much truth and wisdom could not have existed
outside Judæa. There is, for example, a treatise by G. Croesus, entitled,
ομηρος εβραιος _sive historia Hebræorum ab Homero Hebraicis nominibus
ac sententiis conscripta in Odyssea et Iliade_, Dordraci, 1704, which
endeavours to prove both that the name Homer is a Hebrew word, that the
Iliad is an account of the conquest of Canaan, and that the Odyssey is a
narrative of the wanderings of the children of Israel up to the death of
Moses.
[66] Plat. _Protag._ 72, p. 339 _a_.
[67] _Ibid._ 22, p. 317 _b_: ὁμολογῶ τε σοφιστὴς εἶναι καὶ παιδεύειν
ἀνθρώπους. For detailed information as to the relation between the
early sophists and Homer, reference may be made to a dissertation by
W. O. Friedel, _de sophistarum studiis Homericis_, printed in the
_Dissertationes philologicæ Halenses_, Halis, 1873.
[68] Cf. H. Schrader, _über die porphyrianischen Ilias Scholien_,
Hamburg, 1872.
[69] Strab, 1. 2. 8.
[70] Id. 1. 2. 3.
[71] Dio Chrys. _Orat._ 2, vol. i. pp. 19, 20.
[72] Dio Chrys. _Orat._ 1, vol. i. p. 3.
[73] Plat. _Theæt._ 9, p. 152 _d_, quoting Hom. _Il._ 14. 201-302. In
later times, the same verse was quoted as having suggested and supported
the theory of Thales, Irenæus, 2.14; Theodoret, _Græc. Affect. Cur._ 2. 9.
[74] Celsus in Origen, _c. Cels._ 6. 42, referring to Hom. _Il._ 15. 18
sqq.
[75] Cic. _N. D._ 1. 15: “ut etiam veterrimi pœtæ, qui hæc ne quidem
suspicati sint, Stoici fuisse videantur.”
[76] Xen. _Sympos._ 4. 6; 3. 5.
[77] Ps-Plutarch, _de vita et poesi Homeri_, vol. v. pp. 1056 sqq.,
chapters 148, 164, 182, 192, 216.
[78] The earliest expression of this feeling is that of Xenophanes, which
is twice quoted by Sextus Empiricus, _adv. Gramm._ 1. 288, _adv. Phys._
9. 193:
πάντα θεοῖς ἀνέθηκαν Ὅμηρος θ’ Ἡσίοδός τε
ὅσσα παρ’ ἀνθρώποισιν ὀνείδεα καὶ ψόγος ἐστί.
[79] Plutarch, _de aud. poet._ c. 4, pp. 24, 25.
[80] Lucian, _Jupit. confut._ 2.
[81] The connection of allegory with the mysteries was recognized:
Heraclitus Ponticus, c. 6, justifies his interpretation of Apollo as
the sun, ἐk τῶν μυστικῶν λόγων οὓς αἱ ἀπόρρητοι τελετὰι θεολογοῦσι:
ps-Demetrius Phalereus, _de interpret._ c. 99, 101, _ap._ Walz,
_Rhett. Gr._ ix. p. 47, μεγαλεῖόν τί ἐστι καὶ ἡ ἀλληγορία ... πᾶν γὰρ
τὸ ὑπονοούμενον φοβερώτατον καὶ ἄλλος εἰκάζει ἄλλο τι ... διὸ καὶ τὰ
μυστήρια ἐν ἀλληγορίαις λέγεται πρὸς ἔκπληξιν καὶ φρίκην: so Macrobius,
in _Somn. Scip._ 1. 2, after an account of the way in which the poets
veiled truths in symbols, “sic ipsa mysteria figurarum cuniculis
operiuntur ne vel hæc adeptis nuda rerum talium se natura præbeat.” That
a physical explanation lay behind the scenery of the mysteries is stated
elsewhere, e.g. by Theodoret, _Græc. Affect. Cur._ i. vol. iv. p. 721,
without being connected with the allegorical explanation of the poets.
[82] Pausan. 3. 25. 4-6.
[83] Plat. _Phædr._ p. 229 _c_.
[84] Plat. _Resp._ p. 378 _d_.
[85] Diogenes Laertius, 2. 11, quotes Favorinus as saying that
Anaxagoras was the first who showed that the poems of Homer had virtue
and righteousness for their subject. If the later traditions (Georg.
Syncellus, _Chronogr._ p. 149 _c_) could be trusted, the disciples of
Anaxagoras were the authors of the explanations which Plato attributes
to οἱ νῦν περὶ Ὅμηρον δεινοί, and which tried by a fanciful etymology to
prove that Athené was voῦv τε καὶ διάνοιαν (Plat. _Cratyl._ 407 _b_).
[86] Diog. Laert. 2. 11: Tatian, _Orat. ad Græcos_, c. 21, Μητρόδωρος
δὲ ὁ Λαμψακηνὸς ἐν τῷ περὶ Ὁμήρου λίαν εὐήθως διείλεκται πάντα εἰς
ἀλληγορίαν μετάγων. A later tradition used the name of Pherecydes:
Isidore, sun of Basilides, in Clem. Alex. _Strom._ 6, p. 767.
[87] On the general subject of allegorical interpretation, especially
in regard to Homer, reference may be made to N. Schow in the edition
of Heraclitus Ponticus mentioned below; L. H. Jacob, _Dissertatio
philosophica de allegoria Homerica_, Halæ, 1785; C. A. Lobeck,
_Aglaophamus_, pp. 155, 844, 987; Gräfenhan, _Geschichte der klassischen
Philologie_, Bd. i. p. 211. It has been unnecessary for the present
purpose to make the distinction which has sometimes (e.g. Lauer,
_Litterarischer Nachlass_, ed. Wichmann, Bd. ii. p, 105) been drawn
between allegory and symbol.
[88] The most recent edition is Heracliti _Allegoriæ Homericæ_, ed. E.
Mehler, Leyden, 1851: that of N. Schow, Göttingen, 1782, contains a Latin
translation, a good essay on Homeric allegory, and a critical letter
by Heyne. It seems probable that the treatise is really anonymous, and
that the name Heraclitus was intended to be that of the philosopher of
Ephesus: see Diels, _Doxoyraphi Græci_, p. 95 _n_.
[89] The most recent, and best critical, edition is by C. Lang, ed. 1881,
in Teubner’s series. More help is afforded to an ordinary student by that
which was edited from the notes of de Villoison by Osann, Göttingen, 1844.
[90] c. 1, πάντως γὰρ ἠσέβησεν εἰ μηδὲν ἀλληγόρησεν: he defines allegory,
c. 5, ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἄλλα μὲν ἀγορεύων τρόπος ἕτερα δὲ ὧν λέγει σημαίνων
ἐπωνύμως ἀλληγορία καλεῖται.
[91] c. 2.
[92] c. 8.
[93] c. 61.
[94] c. 66.
[95] c. 69.
[96] c. 16.
[97] c. 18.
[98] Sallust, _de diis et mundo_, c. 4, in Mullach, _Fragmenta
Philosophorum Græcorum_, vol. iii. p. 32.
[99] _Incerti Scriptoris Græci Fabulæ aliquot Homericæ de Ulixis
erroribus ethice explicatæ_, ed. J. Columbus, Leiden, 1745.
[100] Clem. Alex. _Strom._ 5. 8, p. 673.
[101] Marcellinus, _Vita Thucydidis_, c. 35, ἀσαφῶς δὲ λέγων ἀνὴρ
ἐπιτηδὲς ἵνα μὴ πᾶσιν εἴη βατὸς μηδὲ εὐτελὴς φαίνηται παντὶ τῷ βουλομένῳ
νοούμενος εὐχερῶς ἀλλὰ τοῖς λίαν σοφοῖς δοκιμαζόμενος παρὰ τούτοις
θαυμάζηται.
[102] The analogy is drawn by Clem. Alex. _Strom._ 5, chapters 4 and 7.
[103] It is impossible not to mention Aristobulus: he is quoted by
Clement of Alexandria (_Strom._ 1. 15, 22; 5. 14; 6. 3), and extracts
from him are given by Eusebius (_Præp. Evang._ 8. 10; 13. 12); but
the genuineness of the information that we possess about him is much
controverted and has given rise to much literature, of which an account
will be found in Schürer, _Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes_, 2er Th. p.
760; Drummond, _Philo-Judæus_, i. 242.
[104] Philo, _de somniis_, i. 20, vol. i. p. 639.
[105] Hom. _Il._ 2. 204.
[106] Ps-Justin (probably Apollonius, see Dräseke, in the _Jahrb. f.
protestant. Theologie_, 1885, p. 144), c. 17.
[107] Hom. _Il._ 18. 483.
[108] Ps-Justin, c. 28.
[109] Hom. _Il._ 14. 206; Clem. Al. _Strom._ 5. 14, p. 708.
[110] _Il._ 22. 8; Clem. Al. _Strom._ 5. 14, p. 719; but it sometimes
required a keen eye to see the Gospel in Homer. For example, in _Odyss._
9. 410, the Cyclopes say to Polyphemus:
εἰ μὲν δὴ μή τίς σε βιάζεται οἶον ἐόντα,
νοῦσόν γ’ οὔ πως ἔστι Διὸς μεγάλου ἀλέασθαι.
Clement (_Strom._ 5. 14) makes this to be an evident “divination” of
the Father and the Son. His argument is, apparently, μήτις = μῆτις; but
μῆτις = λόγος: therefore the νόσος Διός, which = μῆτις = (by a μαντείας
εὐστόχου) the Son of God.
[111] Hippol. _Philosophumena_, 6. 14.
[112] Herod. 4. 8-10.
[113] Hippol. 5. 21.
[114] _Clementin. Hom._ 2. 43, 44.
[115] _Ib._ 2. 51.
[116] Clem. Alex. _Strom._ 5. 4, p. 237.
[117] These are given by J. G. Rosenmüller, _Historia Interpretationis
librorum sacrorum in ecclesia Christiana_, vol. i. p. 63.
[118] Athenag. _Legat._ c. 19: ps-Justin (Apollonius), _Cohort. ad.
Græc._ c. 8, uses the analogous metaphor of a harp of which the Divine
Spirit is the _plectrum_.
[119] Tertull. _adv. Marc._ 3. 5.
[120] Justin M. _Apol._ i. 54.
[121] _Ib._ i. 35.
[122] _Ib._ i. 32.
[123] _Ib._ _Tryph._ 78.
[124] Iren. 1. 8. 4, of the Valentinians.
[125] _Ib._ 1. 8. 2.
[126] Clem. Al. _Strom._ 1. 3, p. 329.
[127] _Ib._ 6. 11, p. 787.
[128] Id. _Pædag._ 2. 8, p. 76.
[129] This was the contention of Marcion, whose influence upon the
Christian world was far larger than is commonly supposed. By far the best
account of him, in both this and other respects, is that of Harnack,
_Dogmengeschichte_, 1er Th. B. i. c. 5.
[130] Euseb. _H. E._ 6. 19. 8.
[131] Origen, _de princip._ 1. 16.
[132] _Ib._ c. 15.
[133] Clement. _Recogn._ 10. 36.
[134] Clement. _Hom._ 6. 18.
[135] Tatian, _Orat. ad. Græc._ 21.
[136] Euseb. _Præp. Evang._ 2. 6, vol. iii. p 74: θεραπεία became a
technical term in this sense; cf. Gräfenhan, _Geschichte des klass.
Philologie im Alterthum_, vol. i. p. 215.
[137] Porphyr. ap. Euseb. _H. E._ 6. 19. 5.
[138] Origen, _c. Cels._ 4. 48-50.
[139] Origen, _in Gen. Hom._ 13. 3, vol. ii. p. 94; _in Joann. Hom._ 10.
13, vol. iv. p. 178.
[140] Euseb. _H. E._ 7. 24.
[141] Kihn, _Theodor von Mopsuestia und Junilius Africanus als Exegeten_,
Freib. im Breisg. 1880, p. 7.
[142] J. G. Rosenmüller, _Hist. Interpret._ iii. p. 161. The letter is
printed, with the other remains of Julius Africanus, in Routh, _Reliquiæ
Sacræ_, vol. ii.
[143] See the chapter on “Scripture and its Mystical Interpretation” in
Newman’s “Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine,” especially p.
324 (2nd ed.), “It may almost be laid down as an historical fact that the
mystical interpretation and orthodoxy will stand or fall together.”
[144] I have endeavoured to confine the above account to what is true
of _Greek_ Rhetoric: the accounts which are found in Roman writers,
especially in Quintilian, though in the main agreeing with it, differ in
some details. The best modern summary of Greek usages is that of Kayser’s
Preface to his editions of Philostratus (Zürich, 1844; Leipzig, 1871,
vol. ii.).
[145] E. Rohde, _der griechische Roman und seine Vorläufer_, Leipzig,
1876, p. 297.
[146] There is a distinction between τὰ δικανικὰ and τὰ ἀμφὶ μελέτην, and
both are distinguished from τὰ πολιτικὰ in Philostratus, _V. S._ 2. 20,
p. 103. Elsewhere Philostratus speaks of a sophist as being δικανικοῦ μὲν
σοφιστικώτερος σοφιστοῦ δὲ δικανικώτερος, “too much of a _litterateur_ to
be a good lawyer, and too much of a lawyer to be a good _litterateur_,”
2. 23. 4, p. 108.
[147] θέσις is defined by Hermogenes as ἀμφισβητημένου πράγματος ζήτησις,
_Progymn._ 11, Walz, i. p. 50: ὑπόθεσις as τῶν ἐπὶ μέρους ζήτησις, Sext.
Emp. _adv. Geom._ 3. 4: so τὰς εἰς ὄvομα ὑποθέσεις, Philostr. _V.S._
proœm. The distinction is best formulated by Quintilian, 3. 5. 5, who
gives the equivalent Latin terms, “infinitæ (quæstiones) sunt quæ remotis
personis et temporibus et locis cæterisque similibus in utramque partem
tractantur quod Græci θέσιν dicunt, Cicero propositum ... finitæ autem
sunt ex complexu rerum personarum temporum cæterorumque: hæ ὑποθέσεις a
Græcis dicuntur, caussæ a nostris, in his omnis quæstio videtur circa res
personasque consistere.”
[148] Philostr. _V.S._ 1. 25. 7, 16.
[149] _Ib._ 2. 5. 3.
[150] Dio Chrysost. lvi. vol. ii. p. 176.
[151] προσωποποιΐα, for which see Theon. _Progymnasmata_, c. 10, ed.
Spengel, vol. ii. 115: Quintil. 3. 8. 49; 9. 2. 29. The word ὑποκρίνεσθαι
was sometimes applied, e.g. Philostr. _V.S._ 1. 21. 5, of Scopelianus,
whose action in subjects taken from the Persian wars was so vehement that
a partizan of one of his rivals accused him of beating a tambourine,
“Yes, I do,” he said; “but my tambourine is the shield of Ajax.”
[152] “They made their voice sweet with musical cadences, and modulations
of tone, and echoed resonances:” Plut. _de aud._ 7, p. 41. So at Rome
Favorinus is said to have “charmed even those who did not know Greek by
the sound of his voice, and the significance of his look, and the cadence
of his sentences:” Philostr. _V. S._ 1. 7, p. 208.
[153] _Orat._ lix.
[154] Rohde, pp. 336 sqq.
[155] This trained habit of composing in different styles is of
importance in relation to Christian as well as to non-Christian
literature. A good study of the latter is afforded by Arrian, whose
“chameleon-like style” (Kaibel, _Dionysios von Halikarnass und die
Sophistik_, Hermes, Bd. xx. 1875, p. 508) imitates Thucydides, Herodotus,
and Xenophon, by turns.
[156] Philostratus, V. S. 1. P. 202, τὴν ἀρχαίαν σοφιστικὴν _ῥητορικὴν_
ἡγεῖσθαι χρὴ _φιλοσοφοῦσαν_. διαλέγεται μὲν γὰρ ὑπὲρ ὧν οἱ φιλοσοφοῦντες
ἃ δὲ ἐκεῖνοι τὰς ἐρωτήσεις ὑποκαθήμενοι καὶ τὰ σμικρὰ τῶν ζητουμένων
προβιβάζοντες οὔπω φασὶ γιγνώσκειν ταῦτα ὁ παλαιὸς σοφιστὴς ὡς εἰδὼς
λέγει: _ib._ p. 4, σοφιστὰς δὲ οἱ παλαιοὶ ἐπωνόμαζον οὐ μόνον τῶν ῥητόρων
τοὺς ὑπερφωνοῦντάς τε καὶ λαμπρούς, ἀλλὰ καὶ _τῶν φιλοσόφων τοὺς ξὺν
εὐροίᾳ ἑρμηνεύοντας_.
[157] On the distinction, see Kayser’s preface to his editions of
Philostratus, p. vii.
[158] Philostratus, _V. S._ 2. 3, p. 245, says that the famous sophist
Aristocles lived the earlier part of his life as a Peripatetic
philosopher, “squalid and unkempt and ill-clothed,” but that when he
passed into the ranks of the sophists he brushed off his squalor,
and brought luxury and the pleasures of music into his life. On the
philosopher’s dress, see below, Lecture VI. p. 151.
[159] Epictetus, _Diss._ 3. 21. 6; 3. 23. 6, 23, 28: so Pliny, _Epist._
3. 18 (of invitations to recitations), “non per codicillos (cards of
invitation), non per libellos (programmes, probably containing extracts),
sed ‘si commodum esset,’ et ‘si valde vacaret’ admoniti.” Cf. Lucian,
_Hermotimus_, 11, where a sophist is represented as hanging up a
notice-board over his gateway, “No lecture to-day.”
[160] Philostratus, _V.S._ 2. 10. 5, says that the enthusiasm at Rome
about the sophist Adrian was such that when his messenger (τοῦ τῆς
ἀκροάσεως ἀγγέλου) appeared on the scene with a notice of lecture, the
people rose up, whether from the senate or the circus, and flocked to the
Athenæum to hear him. Synesius, _Dio_ (in Dio Chrys. ed. Dind, vol. ii.
342), speaks of θυροκοπήσαντα καὶ ἐπαγγείλαντα τοῖς ἐv ἄστες μειρακίοις
ἀκρόαμα ἐπιδέξιον.
[161] _Orat._ 23, p. 360, ed. Dind.
[162] _De sanit. præc._ 16, p. 131.
[163] _V. S._ 2. 5. 3.
[164] _Pseudolog._ 5 sqq.
[165] _Orat._ viii. vol. i. 145.
[166] Epict. _Diss._ 3. 23. 35, ἐν κομψῷ στολίῳ ἢ τριβωνίῳ ἀναβάντα
ἐπὶ πούλβινον: but Pliny, _Epist._ 2. 3. 2, says of Isæus, “surgit,
_amicitur_, incipit,” as though he robed himself in the presence of the
audience.
[167] Pliny, _Epist._ 2. 3, says of Isæus: “præfationes tersæ, graciles,
dulces: graves interdum et erectæ. Poscit controversias plures,
electionem auditoribus permittit, sæpe etiam partes.” Philostratus,
_V.S._ 1. 24. 4, tells a story of Mark of Byzantium going into Polemo’s
lecture-room and sitting down among the audience: some one recognized
him, and the whisper went round who he was, so that, when Polemo asked
for a subject, all eyes were turned to Mark. “What is the use of looking
at a rustic like that?” said Polemo, referring to Mark’s shaggy beard;
“_he_ will not give you a subject.” “I will both give you a subject,”
said Mark, “and will discourse myself.” Plutarch, _de audiendo_, 7, p.
42, advises those who go to a “feast of words” to propose a subject
that will be useful, and not to ask for a discourse on the bisection of
unlimited lines.
[168] Plin. _Epist._ 2. 3. 4; cf. Philostr. _V.S._ 1. 20. 2. His disciple
Dionysius of Miletus had so wonderful a memory, and so taught his pupils
to remember, as to be suspected of sorcery: Philostr. _V.S._ 1. 22. 3.
[169] _Rhet. præc._ 18.
[170] _V.S._ 2. 26. 3.
[171] _Orat._ xxxiii. vol. i. p. 422.
[172] Epict. _Diss._ 3. 23. 24.
[173] Plut. _de audiendo_, 15, p. 46, speaks of the strange and
extravagant words which had thus come into use, ‘θείως’ καὶ ‘θεοφορήτως’
καὶ ‘ἀπροσίτως,’ the old words, τοῦ ‘καλῶς’ καὶ τοῦ ‘σοφῶς’ καὶ τοῦ
‘ἀληθῶς,’ being no longer strong enough.
[174] _Rhet. præc._ 21.
[175] _De audiendo_, 4, p. 39.
[176] _Diss._ 3. 23. 11.
[177] _Diss._ 3. 23. 19.
[178] ἐτυράννει γε τῶν Ἀθηνῶν, says Eunapius of the sophist Julian, _Vit.
Julian_, p. 68.
[179] Philostr. _V. S._ 1. 21. 6, of Scopelianus, βασίλειοι δὲ
αὐτοῦ πρεσβεῖαι πολλαὶ μέν, καὶ γάρ τις καὶ ἀγαθὴ τύχη ξυνηκολούθει
πρεσβεύοντι: _ib._ 1. 24, 2, of Mark of Byzantium: 1. 25. 1, 5, of
Polemo: 2. 5. 2, of Alexander Peloplaton.
[180] Philostr. _V. S._ 1. 22, of Dionysius of Miletus, Ἀδριανὸς σατράπην
μὲν αὐτὸν ἀπέφηνεν οὐκ ἀφανῶν ἐθνῶν ἐγκατέλεξε δὲ τοῖς δημοσίᾳ ἱππεύουσι
καὶ τοῖς ἐν τῷ Μουσείῳ σιτουμένοις: so of Polemo, _ib._ 1. 25. 3.
[181] The inscription of one of the statues which are mentioned by
Philostratus, _V. S._ 1. 23, 2, as having been erected to Lollianus at
Athens, was found a few years ago near the Propylæa: Dittenberger, C. I.
A. vol. iii. No. 625: see also Welcker, _Rhein. Mus._ N. F. i. 210, and a
monograph by Kayser, _P. Hordeonius Lollianus_, Heidelberg, 1841. It is
followed by the epigram:
ἀμφότερον ῥητῆρα δικῶν μελέτησί τ’ ἄριστον
Λολλιανὸν πληθὺς εὐγενέων ἑτάρων.
εἰ δ’ ἐθέλεις τίνες εἰσὶ δαήμεναι οὔνομα πατρὸς
καὶ πάτρης, αὐτῶν τ’ οὔνομα δίσκος ἔχει.
Philostratus, _V. S._ 1. 25. 26, discredits the story that Polemo died
at Smyrna, because there was no monument to him there; whereas if he had
died there, “not one of the wonderful temples of that city would have
been thought too great for his burial.”
[182] ἡ βασιλεύουσα Ῥωμὴ τὸν βασιλεύοντα τῶν λόγων, Eunap. _Vit.
Prohæres._ p. 90.
[183] Μόδεστος σοφιστὴς εἷς μετὰ τῶν ἑπτὰ σοφῶν μὴ γεμίσας εἰκοσι πέντε
ἔτη, _Bulletin de correspondence Hellénique_, 1886. p. 157.
[184] ὅσ πάντα λόγοις ὑποτάσσει, _Mittheilungen des deutsches archæol.
Institut_, 1884, p. 61.
[185] Philostratus, _V. S._ 1. 25. 3, p. 228, narrates the incident with
graphic humour, and adds two anecdotes which show that the Emperor was
rather amused than annoyed by it. It was said of the same sophist that
“he used to talk to cities as a superior, to kings as not inferior, and
to gods as an equal,” _ibid._ 4.
[186] Dio Cassius, 71. 35. 2, παμπληθεῖς φιλοσοφεῖν ἐπλάττοντο ἵν’ ὑπ’
αὐτοῦ πλουτίζωνται.
[187] For example, the father of Herodes Atticus gave Scopelianus a
fee of twenty-five talents, to which Atticus himself added another
twenty-five: Philostr. _V. S._ 1. 21. 7, p. 222.
[188] Dio Chrysost. _Orat._ xxxii. p. 403: so Seneca, _Epist._ 29, says
of them, “philosophiam honestius neglexissent quam vendunt:” Maximus of
Tyre, _Diss._ 33. 8, ἀγορὰ πρόκειται ἀρετῆς, ὤνιον τὸ πρᾶγμα.
[189] _Orat._ xxiii. p. 351. The whole speech is a plea against the
disrepute into which the profession had fallen.
[190] _ap._ Aul. Gell. 5. 1. 1.
[191] _De audiendo_, 12, p. 43.
[192] It is clear that the word “sophist” had under the Early Empire, as
in both earlier and later times, two separate streams of meaning. It was
used as a title of honour, e.g. Lucian, _Rhet. Præc._ 1, τὸ σεμνότατον
τοῦτο καὶ πάντιμον ὄνομα σοφιστής; Philostr. _V. S._ 2. 31. 1, when
Ælian was addressed as σοφιστής, he was not elated ὑπὸ τοῦ ὀνόματος
οὕτω μεγάλου ὄντος; Eunap. _Vit. Liban._ p. 100, when emperors offered
Libanius great titles and dignities, he refused them, φήσας τὸν σοφιστὴν
εἶναι μείζονα. But the disparagement of the class to whom the word was
applied runs through a large number of writers, e.g. Dio Chrys. _Orat._
iv. vol. i. 70, ἀγνοοῦντι καὶ ἀλαζόνι σοφιστῇ; _ib._ viii. vol. i 151,
they croak like frogs in a marsh; _ib._ x. vol. i. 166, they are the
wretchedest of men, because, though ignorant, they think themselves
wise; _ib._ xii. vol. i. 214, they are like peacocks, showing off their
reputation and the number of their disciples as peacocks do their tails.
Epict. _Diss._ 2. 20. 23; M. Aurel. 1. 16; 6. 30. Lucian, _Fugitiv._ 10,
compares them to hippocentaurs, σύνθετόν τι καὶ μικτὸν ἐν μέσῳ ἀλαζονείας
καὶ φιλοσοφίας πλαζόμενον. Maximus Tyr. _Diss._ 33. 8, τὸ τῶν σοφιστῶν
γένος, τὸ πολυμαθὲς τοῦτο καὶ πολυλόγον καὶ πολλῶν μεστὸν μαθημάτων,
καπηλεῦον ταῦτα καὶ ἀπεμπολοῦν τοῖς δεομένοις. Among the Christian
Fathers, especial reference may be made to Clem. Alex. _Strom._ 1,
chapters 3 and 8, pp. 328, 343.
[193] Epict. _Diss._ 3. 23.
[194] The functions are clearly separable in the _Teaching of the
Apostles_, 15, αὐτοὶ [sc. ἐπίσκοποι καὶ διάκονοι] γάρ εἰσιν οἱ
τετιμημένοι ὑμῶν μετὰ τῶν προφητῶν καὶ διδασκάλων; but they are combined
in the second book of the _Apostolical Constitutions_, pp. 16, 49, 51,
58, 84, ed. Lagarde.
[195] Euseb. _H. E._ 6. 36. 1.
[196] Sozom. _H. E._ 8. 2.
[197] Eusebius, _H. E._ 6. 36. 1, speaks of Origen’s sermons as
διαλέξεις, whereas the original designation was ὁμιλίαι. So in Latin,
Augustine uses the term _disputationes_ of Ambrose’s sermons, _Confess._
5. 13, vol. i, 118, and of his own _Tract._ lxxxix. _in Johann. Evang._
c. 5, vol. iii, pars 2, p. 719.
[198] Phot. _Biblioth._ 172.
[199] Sozomen. _H. E._ 8. 5. Augustine makes a fine point of the analogy
between the church and the lecture-room (_schola_): “tanquam vobis
pastores sumus, sed sub illo Pastore vobiscum oves sumus. Tanquam vobis
ex hoc loco doctores sumus sed sub illo Magistro in hac schola vobiscum
condiscipuli sumus:” _Enarrat. in Psalm._ cxxvi. vol. iv. 1429, ed. Ben.
[200] _Adv. Jud._ 7. 6, vol. i. 671; _Conc._ vii. _adv. eos qui ad lud.
circ. prof._ vol. i. 790; _Hom._ ii. _ad pop. Antioch._ c. 4, vol. ii.
25; _adv. eos qui ad Collect. non occur._ vol. iii. 157; _Hom._ liv. _in
cap._ xxvii. _Genes._ vol. iv. 523; _Hom._ lvi. _in cap._ xxix. _Genes._
vol. iv. 541.
[201] S. Chrys. _Hom._ xxx. _in Act. Apost._ c. 3, vol. ix. 238.
[202] Greg. Naz. _Orat._ xlii.
[203] Socrates, _H. E._ 6. 11; Sozomen, _H. E._ 8. 10.
[204] An indication of this may be seen in the fact that words which
have come down to modern times as technical terms of geometry were
used indifferently in the physical and moral sciences, e.g. _theorem_
(θεώρημα), Philo, _Leg. alleg._ 3. 27 (i. 104), θεωρήμασι τοῖς περὶ
κόσμου καὶ τῶν μερῶν αὐτοῦ: Epict. _Diss._ 2. 17. 3; 3. 9. 2; 4. 8. 12,
&c., of the doctrines of moral philosophy: sometimes co-ordinated or
interchanged with δόγμα, e.g. Philo, _de fort._ 3 (ii. 877), διὰ λογικῶν
καὶ ἠθικῶν καὶ φυσικῶν δογμάτων καὶ θεωρημάτων: Epictet. _Diss._ 4. 1.
137, 139, and as a variant _Ench._ 52. 1. So _definition_ (ὁρισμός)
is itself properly applicable to the marking out of the boundaries of
enclosed land. So also ἀπόδειξις was not limited to ideal or “necessary”
matter, but was used of all explanations of the less by the more evident;
e.g. Musonius, _Frag. ap. excerpt. e Joann. Damasc._, in Stob. _Ecl._
ii. 751, ed. Gaisf., after defining it, gives as an example a proof that
pleasure is not a good.
[205] ὁ δὲ νόμος βασιλέως δόγμα, Dio Chrys. vol. i. p. 46, ed. Dind.
[206] The use of the word in Epictetus is especially instructive: δόγματα
fill a large place in his philosophy. They are the inner judgments of the
mind (κρίματα ψυχῆς, _Diss._ 4. 11. 7) in regard to both intellectual
and moral phenomena. They are especially relative to the latter. They
are the convictions upon which men act, the moral maxims which form the
ultimate motives of action and the resolution to act or not act in a
particular case. They are the most personal and inalienable part of us.
See especially, _Diss._ 1. 11. 33, 35, 38; 17. 26; 29. 11, 12; 2. 1. 21,
32; 3. 2. 12; 9. 2; _Ench._ 45. Hence ἀπὸ δογμάτων λαλεῖν, “to speak from
conviction,” is opposed to ἀπὸ τῶν χειλῶν λαλεῖν, “to speak with the lip
only,” _Diss._ 3. 16. 7. If a man adopts the δόγμα of another person,
e.g. of a philosopher, so as to make it his own, he is said, δόγματι
συμπαθῆσαι, “to feel in unison with the conviction,” _Diss._ 1. 3. 1.
Sextus Empiricus, _Pyrrh. Hypot._ 1. 13, distinguishes two philosophical
senses of δόγμα, (1) assent to facts of sensation, τὸ εὐδοκεῖν τινι
πράγματι, (2) assent to the inferences of the several sciences: in
either sense it is (_a_) a strictly personal feeling, and (_b_) a firm
conviction, not a mere vague impression: it was in the latter of the two
senses that the philosophers of research laid it down as their maxim, μὴ
δογματίζειν: they did away, not with τὰ φαινόμενα, but with assertions
about them, _ibid._ 1. 19, 22: their attitude in reference to τὰ ἄδηλα
was simply οὐχ ὁρίζω, “I abstain from giving a definition of them,”
_ibid._ 1. 197, 198.
[207] Sext. Empir. _Pyrrh. Hypot._ 1. 3.
[208] _Ibid._ 4, δογματική, ἀκαδημαϊκή, σκεπτική.
[209] For example, Sextus Empiricus, in spite of his constant formula,
οὐχ ὁρίζω, maintains the necessity of having definable conceptions, τῶν
ἐννοουμένων ἡμῖν πραγμάτων τὰς οὐσίας ἐπινοεῖν ὀφείλομεν, and he argues
that it is impossible for a man to have an ἔννοια of God because He has
no admitted οὐσία, _Pyrrh. Hypot._ 3. 2, 3.
[210] Origen, _c. Cels._ 3. 44: see also the references given in Keim,
_Celsus’ wahres Wort_, pp. 11, 40.
[211] Origen, _c. Cels._ 1. 9.
[212] _Apol._ i. 20.
[213] _De testim. animæ_, 1.
[214] _Apol._ 46.
[215] _Apol._ 2. 13.
[216] _Octav._ 34.
[217] _Apol._ 47.
[218] _Strom._ 2. 1.
[219] Origen, _c. Cels._ 3. 16.
[220] Origen, _c. Cels._ 5. 65; 6. 1, 7, 15, 19: see also the references
in Keim, p. 77.
[221] _Ibid._ 7. 58. So Minucius Felix, in Keim, p. 157.
[222] The above slight sketch of some of the leading tendencies which
have been loosely grouped together under the name of Gnosticism has
been left unelaborated, because a fuller account, with the distinctions
which must necessarily be noted, would lead us too far from the main
track of the Lecture: some of the tendencies will re-appear in detail in
subsequent Lectures, and students will no doubt refer to the brilliant
exposition of Gnosticism in Harnack, _Dogmengeschichte_, i. pp. 186-226,
ed. 2.
[223] _Strom._ 1. 1: almost the whole of the first book is valuable as a
vindication of the place of culture in Christianity.
[224] _Adv. Prax._ 3.
[225] Quoted by Euseb. _H. E._ 5. 28. 13.
[226] _Orat. ad Græc._ 2.
[227] _Apol._ 46.
[228] _Refut. omn. hæres._ 5. 18.
[229] _H. E._ 5. 13.
[230] The evidence for the above statements has not yet been fully
gathered together, and is too long to be given even in outline here: the
statements are in full harmony with the view of the chief modern writer
on the subject, Friedländer, _Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte
Roms_, see especially Bd. iii. p. 676, 5te aufl.
[231] This is sufficiently shown by the fact, which is in other respects
to be regretted, that in most accounts of Stoicism the earlier and later
elements are viewed as constituting a homogeneous whole.
[232] “How am I to eat?” said a man to Epictetus: “So as to please God,”
was the reply (_Diss._ 1. 13). The idea is further developed in Porphyry,
who says: “God wants nothing” (281. 15): the God who is ἐπὶ πᾶσιν is
ἄϋλος; hence all ἔνυλον is to Him ἀκάθαρτον, and should therefore not be
offered to Him, not even the spoken word (163. 15).
[233] M. Aurelius owed to Rusticus the idea that life required διόρθωσις
and θεραπεία (i. 7 and ii. 13).
[234] τὸ ὑλακτεῖν, Philostr. 587.
[235] The title of _Diss._ 3. 22, in which the ideal philosopher is
described, is περὶ Κυνισμοῦ.
[236] H. Schiller, _Geschichte der römischen Kaiserzeit_, Bd. i. 452.
[237] _Diss._ 1. 17. 4, ἐπείγει μᾶλλον θεραπεύειν, the interpolated
remark of a student when Epictetus has begun a lecture upon Logic: the
addition, καὶ τὰ ὅμοια, seems to show that the phrase was a customary one.
[238] _Diss._ 1. 4.
[239] Sext. Emp. iii. 239.
[240] The Stoics defined wisdom as θείων τε καὶ ἀνθρωπίνων ἐπιστήμην, and
philosophy as ἄσκησιν ἐπιτηδείου τέχνης, Plutarch (Aetius), _plac. phil._
1. 2; Galen, _Hist. Phil._ 5; Diels, _Doxogr. Gr._ pp. 273, 602.
[241] _De Abraham._ 11 (ii. 9); _de Joseph._ 1 (ii. 41); _de prœm. et
pœn._ 8, 11 (ii. 416, 418). Philo is quoted because his writings are in
some respects as faithful a photograph of current scholastic methods as
those of Epictetus. It is also possible that some of the writings that
stand under Philo’s name belong to the same period.
[242] _Quod det. potior._ 12 (i. 198, 199): so _de congr. erud. caus._ 13
(i. 529); _de mut. nom._ 13 (i. 591).
[243] _De congr. erud. caus._ 28 (i. 542).
[244] _Leg. alleg._ 3. 6 (i. 91).
[245] _Quis rer. div. heres._ 51 (i. 509).
[246] M. Aurel. 1. 7.
[247] _Enchir._ 47: cf. _Diss._ 3. 14. 4. In _Diss._ 3. 12. 17, part of
the above is given as a quotation from Apollonius of Tyana.
[248] _Diss._ 2. 18. 27; cf. 3. 2. 1; 3. 12. 1; 4. 1. 81.
[249] _Nigrin._ 27.
[250] _Orat._ xx. vol. i. pp. 288 sqq. (Dind.), περὶ Ἀναχωρήσεως.
[251] Vol. ii. p 240.
[252] Vol. ii. p. 246.
[253] _Ench._ 4, 13, 30.
[254] The χρῆσις φαντασιῶν is an important element in the philosophy
of Epictetus. Every object that is presented to the mind by either the
senses or imagination tends to range itself in the ranks of either good
or evil, and thereby to call forth desire or undesire: in most men this
association of particular objects with the ideas of good or evil, and
the consequent stirring of desire, is unconscious, being the result of
education and habit: it is the task of the philosopher to learn to attach
the idea of good to what is really good, so that desire shall never go
forth to what is either undesirable or unattainable: this is the “right
dealing with ideas.” _Diss._ 1. 28. 11; 1. 30. 4; 2. 1. 4; 2. 8. 4; 2.
19. 32; 3. 21. 23; 3. 22. 20, 103.
[255] ἐφαρμογὴ τῶν προλήψεων τοῖς ἐπὶ μέρους, _Diss._ 1. 2. 6; 1. 22. 2,
7; 2. 11. 4, 7; 3. 17. 9, 12, 16; 4. 1. 41, 44: προλήψεις are the ideas
formed in the mind by association and blending.
[256] _Diss._ 1. 1. 31; 1. 4. 18; 1. 17. 21; and elsewhere.
[257] _Diss._ 1. 4. 23.
[258] The distinction between (1) ὄρεξις, ἔκκλισις, the desire to have or
not to have, and (2) ὁρμή, ἀφορμή, the effort to do or not to do, is of
some importance in the history of psychology. It probably runs back to
the Platonic distinction between τὸ ἐπιθυμητικὸν μέρος and τὸ θυμοειδὲς
μέρος.
[259] _Diss._ 2. 10.
[260] 1. 9. 6, 13.
[261] 1. 14. 6.
[262] 3. 13. 15.
[263] 1. 14. 6; 1. 17. 27; 2. 8. 11.
[264] 1. 14. 6.
[265] 2. 14. 11.
[266] 2. 8. 12-14.
[267] 1. 9. 5; 2. 8. 11.
[268] 1. 9. 4.
[269] 1. 3. 1.
[270] 2. 14. 13.
[271] 1. 6. 13: cf. 1. 29. 29.
[272] 1. 9. 4; 1. 17. 15; 1. 29. 46, 56; 2. 16. 33; 4. 7. 7.
[273] 3. 24. 2, 3.
[274] 3. 24. 3.
[275] 4. 1. 82, 90, 100.
[276] 2. 16. 13.
[277] 1. 24. 1, 2; 1. 29. 33, 36, 46; 3. 10. 7; 4. 4. 32.
[278] 1. 12. 5, 8; 1. 20. 15.
[279] ἕγογνωμονεῖν τῶ θεῷ, 2. 16. 42; 2. 19. 26.
[280] εὐαρεστεῖν τῇ θείᾳ διοικήσει, 1. 12. 8; 2. 23. 29, 42.
[281] 4. 1. 90, 98.
[282] 3. 24. 95.
[283] 1. 29. 18; 4. 4. 21.
[284] 2. 16. 42.
[285] _Enchir._ 52: _Diss._ 4. 1. 131; 4. 4. 34: a quotation from
Cleanthes.
[286] 2. 16. 46; 3. 11. 1; 3. 24. 42; 4. 4. 32.
[287] 1. 9. 16.
[288] 1. 29. 29.
[289] 2. 13. 14.
[290] 3. 24. 97; cf. 3. 5. 8-10, 4. 10. 14 sqq.
[291] 3. 24. 110-114.
[292] Καινὸς νόμος, _Barn._ 2. 6, and note, in Gebhardt and Harnack’s
edition.
[293] See especially Harnack, _die Apostellehre und die Jüdischen Beiden
Wege_, Leipzig, 1886.
[294] _Teaching of the Apostles_, 1. 4.
[295] _Teaching of the Apostles_, 2. 2-7.
[296] _Ibid._ 3. 6-8.
[297] _Ibid._ 4. 7, 8.
[298] _Const. Apost._ 1. 1, p. 1, ed. Lagarde. This may be supplemented
by the conception of Christianity as a new law in Barnabas ii. 6,
Justin _passim_, Clem. Alex. _E. T._ i 97, 120, 470: see Thomasius,
_Dogmengesch_, i. 110 sqq.
[299] _Const. Apost._ 2. 11, p. 22.
[300] _Ep. ad Diogn._ 5.
[301] Side by side with the average ethics were the Pauline ethics, which
had found a certain lodgment in some.
[302] _Teaching of the Apostles_, 6. 2.
[303] Of a type of Gnosticism, Harnack, _Dogmengesch_. 202.
[304] _Strom._ 7. 11.
[305] e.g. Euseb. _Dem. Ev._ 3. 6: “Not only old men under Jesus Christ
practise this mode of _philosophy_, but it would be hard to say how many
thousands of women throughout the whole world, priestesses, as it were,
of the God of the universe, having embraced the highest wisdom, rapt with
a passion for heavenly knowledge, have renounced the desire of children
according to the flesh, and giving their whole care to their soul, have
given themselves up wholly to the Supreme King and God of the universe,
to practise (ἀσκήσασθαι) perfect purity and virginity.” So also id. _de
Vit. Constant._ 4. 26, 29; Sozom. 6. 33, of the Syrian monks.
[306] ἀσκητήριον, Socrat. i. 11; distinguished from μοναστήριον, _ibid._
4. 23, as the smaller from the larger: φροντιστήριον, Evagr. i. 21.
[307] Clem. Alex. _Pædag._ 3. 11.
[308] P. Ewald, _der Einfluss der stoisch-ciceronianischen Moral auf ...
Ambrosius_, Leipzig, 1881; Dräseke in the _Rivista di filologia_, Ann. v.
1875-6.
[309] Theophrastus ap. Simplic. _in phys._ f. 6 (Diels, _Doxographi
Græci_, P. 479).
[310] νόος ὁρῇ καὶ νόος ἀκούει· τἄλλα κωφὰ καὶ τυφλά, quoted in Plut. _de
fort._ 3, p. 98, _de Alex. magn. fort._ 3, p. 336, and elsewhere: cf.
Lucret. 3. 36; Cic. _Tusc. Disp._ 1. 20.
[311] Pseudo-Arist. _de mundo_, 7, p. 401 _a_.
[312] _De Isid. et Osir._ 67, p. 378.
[313] Theophrast. ap. Simplic. _in phys._ f. 6 (Diels, p. 476), πρῶτος
τοῦτο τοὔνομα κομίσας τῆς ἀρχῆς: so Hippol. _Philosoph._ 1. 6.
[314] Heraclit. ap. Clem. Alex. _Strom._ 5. 14, κόσμον τὸν αὐτὸν ἁπάντων
οὔτε τις θεῶν οὔτε ἀνθρώπων ἐποίησεν· ἀλλ’ ἦν ἀεὶ καὶ ἔσται πῦρ ἀείζωον,
ἁπτόμενον μέτρα καὶ ἀποσβεννύμενον μέτρα.
[315] Lucan, _Phars._ 9. 579.
[316] ἀπόῤῥοια, M. Anton. 2. 4: ἀπόσπασμα, Epict. _Diss._ 1. 14. 6; 2.
8. 11; M. Anton. 5. 27: ἀποικία, Philo, _de mund. opif._ 46 (i. 32).
The co-ordination of these and cognate terms in Philo is especially
important in view of their use in Christian theology: _de mund. opif._
51 (i. 35), πᾶς ἄνθρωπος κατὰ μὲν τὴν διάνοιαν ᾠκείωται θείῳ λόγῳ, τῆς
μακαρίας φύσεως ἐκμαγεῖον ἢ ἀπόσπασμα ἢ ἀπαύγασμα γεγονώς: he considers
the term ἐκμαγεῖον to be more appropriate to theology, τῆς τοῦ παντὸς
ψυχῆς ἀπόσπασμα ἢ ὅπερ ὁσιώτερον εἰπεῖν τοῖς κατὰ Μωυσῆν φιλοσοφοῦσιν,
εἰκόνος θείας ἐκμαγεῖον ἐμφερές, _de mutat. nom._ 39 (i. 612): and he is
careful to guard against an inference that ἀπόσπασμα implies a breach
of continuity between the divine and the human soul, ἀπόσπασμα ἦν οὐ
διαιρετόν· τέμνεται γὰρ οὐδὲν τοῦ θείου κατ’ ἀπάρτησιν, ἀλλὰ μόνον
ἐκτείνεται, _quod det. pot. insid._ 24 (i. 209).
[317] _Phileb._ 16, p. 28 _e_, νοῦν καὶ φρόνησίν τινα θαυμαστήν: in the
post-Platonic _Epinomis_, p. 986 _c_, λόγος ὁ πάντων θειότατος.
[318] The best account of Plato’s complex, because progressive, theory
of matter is that of Siebeck, _Plato’s Lehre von der Materie_, in his
_Untersuchungen der Philosophie der Griechen_, Freiburg im Breisg. 1888.
The conception of it which was current in the Platonist schools, and
which is therefore important in relation to Christian philosophy, is
given in the _Placita_ of Aetius, ap. Stob. _Ecl._ 1. 11 (Diels, p. 308),
and Hippol. _Philosoph._ 1. 19.
[319] Plat. _Tim._ p. 30, πᾶν ὅσον ἦν ὁρατὸν παραλαβὼν οὐκ ἡσυχίαν ἄγον
ἀλλὰ κινούμενον πλημμελῶς καὶ ἀτάκτως εἰς τάξιν αὐτὸ ἤγαγεν ἐκ τῆς
ἀταξίας.
[320] In _Tim._ P. 41, the θεοὶ θεῶν are addressed at length by ὁ τόδε
τὸ πᾶν γεννήσας (= ὁ δημιουργός): the most pertinent words are, ἵν’ οὖν
θνητά τε ᾖ τό τε πᾶν ὄντως ἅπαν ᾖ, τρέπεσθε κατὰ φύσιν ὑμεῖς ἐπὶ τὴν τῶν
ζώων δημιουργίαν, μιμούμενοι τὴν ἐμὴν δύναμιν περὶ τὴν ὑμῶν γένεσιν. The
whole theory is summed up by Professor Jowett in the Introduction to his
translation of the _Timæus_ (Plato, vol. ii. p. 470): “The Creator is
like a human artist who frames in his mind a plan which he executes by
means of his servants. Thus the language of philosophy, which speaks of
first and second causes, is crossed by another sort of phraseology, ‘God
made the world because he was good, and the demons ministered to him.’”
[321] λόγοι σπερματικοί, frequently in Stoical writings, e.g. in the
definition of the πῦρ τεχνικὸν, which is the base of all things, as
given in the _Placita_ of Aetius, reproduced by Plutarch, Eusebius, and
Stobæus, Diels, p. 306, ἐμπεριειληφὸς πάντας τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους
καθ’ οὕς ἕκαστα καθ’ εἱμαρμένην γίνεται. The best account of this
important element in later Stoicism is in Heinze, _die Lehre vom Logos in
der griechischen Philosophie_, 1872, pp. 110 sqq.
[322] Hence the definition which Aetius gives: ἰδέα ἐστὶν οὐσία ἀσώματος,
αὐτὴ μὲν ὑφεστῶσα καθ’ αὑτὴν _εἰκονίζουσα δὲ τὰς ἀμόρφους ὕλας_ καὶ αἰτία
γινομένη τῆς τούτων δείξεως, ap. Plut. _de plac. philos._ 1. 10; Euseb.
_præp. evang._ 15. 45; with additions and differences in Stob. _Ecl._ 1.
12 (Diels, p. 308).
[323] The three ἀρχαί are expressed by varying but identical terms: God,
Matter, and the Form (ἰδέα), or the By Whom, From What, In view of What
(ὑφ’ οὗ, ἐξ οὗ, πρὸς ὅ), in the _Placita_ of Aetius, 1. 3. 21, ap. Plut.
_de placit. phil._ 1. 3, Stob. _Ecl._ 1. 10 (Diels, p. 288), and in
Timæus Locrus, _de an. mundi_ 2 (Mullach F P G 2. 38): God, Matter, and
the Pattern (παράδειγμα), Hippol. _Philosoph._ 1. 19, Herm. _Irris. Gent.
Phil._ 11: the Active (τὸ ποιοῦν), Matter, and the Pattern, Alexand.
Aphrod. ap. Simplic. _in phys._ f. 6 (Diels, p. 485), where Simplicius
contrasts this with Plato’s own strict dualism.
[324] _De mundi opif._ 5 (i. 5): cf. Plat. _Tim._ p. 30 (of God), ἀγαθὸς
ἦν ἀγαθῷ δὲ οὐδεὶς περὶ οὐδενὸς οὐδέποτε ἐγγίγνεται φθόνος· τούτου δ’
ἐκτὸς ὤν πάντα ὁτιμάλιστα ἐβουλήθη γενέσθαι παραπλήσια αὑτῷ.
[325] _De cherub._ 9 (i. 144): cf. _ib._ 35 (i. 162).
[326] The most frequent word is δημιουργός, but several others are
used, e.g. πλάστης, _de confus. ling._ 38 (i. 434); τεχνίτης, _ibid._;
κοσμοπλάστης, _de plant Noe_, 1 (i. 329); κοσμοποιός, _ibid._ 31 (i.
348), οὐ τεχνίτης μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ πατὴρ τῶν γιγνομένων, _Leg. alleg._ 1. 8
(i. 47). The distinctions which became important in later controversies
do not appear in the writings which are probably Philo’s own, but are
found in those which probably belong to his school: the most explicit
recognition of them is _de somn._ 1. 13 (i. 632), ὁ θεὸς τὰ πάντα
γεννήσας οὐ μόνον εἰς τὸ ἐμφανὲς ἤγαγεν ἀλλὰ καὶ ἃ πρότερον οὐκ ἦν
ἐποίησεν, οὐ δημιουργὸς μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ κτίστης αὐτὸς ὤν: cf. also _de
monarch._ 3 (ii. 216), θεὸς εἷς ἐστι καὶ κτίστης καὶ ποιητὴς τῶν ὅλων.
[327] _De somn._ 2. 37 (i. 691).
[328] _De mundi opif._ 46 (i. 32): cf. _ib._ 51 (i. 35): _quod deus
immut._ 10 (i. 279), and elsewhere.
[329] _Quod det. pot. ins._ 24 (i. 208, 209).
[330] _De profug._ 36 (i. 575).
[331] _De mundi opif._ 5 (i. 5): this is the most explicit expression of
his theory of the nature of matter. It may be supplemented by _de plant
Noe_, 1 (i. 329), τὴν οὐσίαν ἄτακτον καὶ συγκεχυμένην οὖσαν ἐξ αὑτῆς
εἰς τάξιν ἐξ ἀταξίας καὶ ἐκ συγχύσεως εἰς διάκρισιν ἄγων ὁ κοσμοπλάστης
μορφοῦν ἤρξατο: _quis rer. div. her._ 27 (i. 492): _de somn._ 2. 6 (i.
665): οὐσία is the more usual word, but ὕλη is sometimes found, e.g.
_de plant Noe_, 2 (i. 330): the conception underlying either word is
more Stoical than Platonic, i.e. it is rather that of matter having
the property of resistance than that of potential matter or empty
space: hence in _de profug._ 2 (i. 547), τὴν ἄποιον καὶ ἀνείδεον καὶ
ἀσχημάτιστον οὐσίαν is contrasted, in strictly Stoical phraseology, with
τὸ κινοῦν αἴτιον.
[332] _De sacrif._ 13 (ii. 261).
[333] The terms λόγοι and ἰδέαι are common. Instances of the other terms
are the following: angels, _de confus. ling._ 8 (1. 408), τῶν θείων
ἔργων καὶ λόγων οὓς καλεῖν ἔθος ἀγγέλους: _de somn._ i. 19 (i. 638),
ἀθανάτοις λόγοις οὓς καλεῖν ἔθος ἀγγέλους: _Leg. alleg._ 3. 62 (i. 122),
τοὺς ἀγγέλους καὶ λόγους αὐτοῦ: δαίμονες, _de gigant._ 2. 2 (i. 263),
οὓς ἄλλοι φιλόσοφοι δαίμονας, ἀγγέλους Μωϋσῆς εἴωθεν ὀνομάζειν: so, in
identical words, _de somn._ 1. 22 (i. 642): ἀριθμοὶ and μέτρα, _quis rer.
div. heres._ 31 (i. 495), πᾶσιν ἀριθμοῖς καὶ πάσαις ταῖς πρὸς τελειότητα
ἰδέαις καταχρησαμένου τοῦ πεποιηκότος: _de mund. opif._ 9 (i. 7), ἰδέαι
καὶ μέτρα καὶ τύποι καὶ σφραγῖδες: cf. _de monarch._ 6 (ii. 219), τὰ
ἄπειρα καὶ ἀόριστα καὶ ἀσχημάτιστα περατοῦσαι καὶ περιορίζουσαι καὶ
σχηματίζουσαι.
[334] The clearest instance of the identification is probably in _de
monarch._ 6 (ii. 218, 219), where God tells Moses that so far from
Himself being cognizable, not even the powers that minister to Him are
cognizable in their essence; but that as seals are known from their
impressions, τοιαύτας ὑποληπτέον καὶ τὰς περὶ ἐμὲ δυνάμεις ἀποίοις
ποιότητας καὶ μορφὰς ἀμόρφοις καὶ μηδὲν τῆς ἀϊδίου φύσεως μεταλλομένας
μήτι μειουμένας.
[335] _De mund. opif._ 6 (i. 5), οὐδὲν ἂν ἕτερον εἴποι τὸν νοητὸν εἶναι
κόσμον ἢ θεοῦ λόγον ἤδη κοσμοποιοῦντος: _vit. Mos._ 3. 13 (ii. 154),
τῶν ἀσωμάτων καὶ παραδειγματικῶν ἰδεῶν ἐξ ὧν ὁ νοητὸς ἐπάγη κόσμος: so
_de confus. ling._ 34 (i. 431): cf. the Stoical definition of λόγος in
Epictet. _Diss._ 1. 20. 5, as σύστημα ἐκ ποιῶν φαντασιῶν.
[336] _De mund. opif._ 4 (i. 4): the same conception is expressed in less
figurative language in _Leg. alleg._ 1. 9 (i. 47), πρὶν ἀνατεῖλαι κατὰ
μέρος αἰσθητὰ ἦν τὸ γενικὸν αἰσθητὸν προμηθείᾳ τοῦ πεποιηκότος.
[337] δύναμις κοσμοποιητική, _de mund. οpif._ 5 (i. 5); δύναμις ποιητική
_de profug._ 18 (i. 560).
[338] _Leg. alleg._ 1. 9 (i. 47), τῷ γὰρ περιφανεστάτῳ καὶ τηλαυγεστάτῳ
λόγῳ, ῥήματι, ὁ θεὸς ἀμφότερα (i.e. both heaven and earth) ποιεῖ: _quod
deus immut._ 12 (i. 281), λόγῳ χρώμενος ὑπηρέτῃ δωρεῶν ᾧ καὶ τὸν κόσμον
εἰργάζετο: more expressly, it is the instrument, ὄργανον, _Leg. alleg._
3. 31 (i. 106), _de cherub_. 35 (i. 162).
[339] _De somn._ 2. 37 (i. 691).
[340] _De profug._ 20 (i. 562), _de migrat. Abr._ 18 (i. 452): cf.
Wisdom, 18. 24.
[341] _De profug._ 19 (i. 561).
[342] ὁ τῶν ὅλων πατήρ, _de migrat. Abrah._ 9 (i. 443); ὁ θεὸς τὰ πάντα
γεννήσας, _de somn._ 1. 13 (i. 632), and elsewhere.
[343] _De ebriet._ 8 (i. 361).
[344] 1 Clem. Rom. 33. 3, 4: but it is a noteworthy instance of the
contrast between this simple early belief and the developed theology
which had grown up in less than a century later, that Irenæus, _lib._ 4,
_præf._ _c._ 4, explains the ‘hands’ to mean the Son and Spirit: “homo
... per manus ejus plasmatus est, hoc est per Filium et Spiritum quibus
et dixit Faciamus hominem.”
[345] Derivatio: Iren. 1. 24. 3, of Basilides (or rather one of the
schools of Basilidians).
[346] This is probably the metaphor involved in the common word προβολή,
e.g. Hippol. 6. 38, of Epiphanes.
[347] The conception of the double nature of God, male and female, is
found as early as Xenocrates, Aetius ap. Stob. _Ecl._ 1. 2. 29 (Diels,
p. 304); and commonly among the Stoics, e.g. in the verses of Valerius
Soranus, which are quoted by Varro, and after him by S. Augustine, _de
civit. Dei_, 7. 9:
Jupiter omnipotens regum rex ipse deusque
Progenitor genitrixque deum, deus unus et omnia.
So Philodemus, _de piet._ 16, ed. Gomp. p. 83 (Diels, p. 549), quotes
Ζεὺς ἄρρην, Ζεὺς θῆλυς; and Eusebius, _præp. Evang._ 3. 9, p. 100_b_,
quotes the Orphic verse:
Ζεὺς ἄρσην γένετο, Ζεὺς ἄμβροτος ἔπλετο νύμφη.
[348] The Valentinians in, e.g., Hippol. 6. 29; 10. 13: so of Simon
Magus, _ib._ 6. 12, γεγονέναι δὲ τὰς ῥίζας φησὶ _κατὰ συζυγίας_ ἀπὸ τοῦ
πυρὸς.
[349] Hippol. 6. 43 (of Marcus), τὰ δὲ ὀνόματα τῶν στοιχείων τὰ κοινὰ καὶ
ῥητὰ _αἰῶνας_ καὶ _λόγους_ καὶ _ῥίζας_ καὶ _σπέρματα_ καὶ _πληρώματα_ καὶ
_καρποὺς_ ὠνόμασε.
[350] Hippol. 5. 19 (of the Sethiani), πᾶν ὅ τι νοήσει ἐπινοεῖς ἢ καὶ
παραλείπεις μὴ νοηθέν, τοῦτο ἑκάστη τῶν ἀρχῶν πέφυκε γενέσθαι ὡς ἐν
ἀνθρωπίνῃ ψυχῇ πᾶσα ἡτισοῦν διδασκομένη τέχνη.
[351] Hippol. 8. 8 (of the Docetæ), θεὸν εἶναι τὸν πρῶτον οἱονεὶ σπέρμα
συκῆς μεγέθει μὲν ἐλάχιστον παντελῶς δυνάμει δὲ ἄπειρον: _ibid._ c. 9,
τὸ δὲ πρῶτον σπέρμα ἐκεῖνο, ὅθεν γέγονεν ἡ συκῆ, ἐστὶν ἀγέννητον. A
similar metaphor was used by the Simonians, Hippol. 6. 9 sqq., but it is
complicated with the metaphor of invisible and visible fire (heat and
flame). It is adopted by Peter in the Clementines, _Hom._ 2. 4, where God
is the ῥίζα, man the καρπός.
[352] _Ibid._ 8. 8, ... ὁ καρπὸς ἐν ᾧ τὸ ἄπειρον καὶ τὸ ἀνεξαρίθμητον
θησαυριζόμενον φυλάσσεται σπέρμα συκῆς.
[353] The chief authorities for this theory, which was expressed in
language that readily lent itself to caricature, are the first seven
chapters of the first book of Irenæus, and Hippolytus 6. 32 sqq.
[354] This was especially the view of the Peratæ, Hippol. 5. 13.
[355] Notably by Plotinus, _Enn._ ii. 9. 2-5.
[356] The conception appears in Justin Martyr, _Apol._ i 10, πάντα τὴν
ἀρχὴν ἀγαθὸν ὄντα _δημιουργῆσαι_ αὐτὸν ἐξ ἀμόρφου ὕλης: _ib._ c. 59, ὕλην
ἄμορφον οὖσαν στρέψαντα τὸν θεὸν κόσμον ποιῆσαι: but Justin, though he
avowedly adopts the conception from Plato, claims that Plato adopted it
from Moses.
[357] Plutarch, _de anim. procreat._ 5. 3, οὐ γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος ἡ
γένεσις ἀλλ’ ἐκ τοῦ μὴ καλῶς μηδ’ ἱκανῶς ἔχοντος: _ibid._ ἀκοσμία γὰρ ἦν
τὰ πρὸ τῆς τοῦ κόσμου γενέσεως: cf. Möller, _Kosmologie_, p. 39.
[358] Wisdom, 11. 18, κτίσασα τὸν κόσμον ἐξ ἀμόρφου ὕλης: Justin M.
_Apol._ 1. 10. 59 (quoted in note, p. 194): Athenag. _Legat_. 15, ὡς γὰρ
ὁ κεραμεὺς καὶ ὁ πηλός, ὕλη μὲν ὁ πηλός, τεχνίτης δὲ ὁ κεραμεύς, καὶ ὁ
θεὸς δημιουργός, ὑπακούουσα δὲ αὐτῷ ἡ ὕλη πρὸς τὴν τέχνην.
[359] Hippol. 7. 22 (of Basilides), τοῦτό ἐστι τὸ σπέρμα ὃ ἔχει ἐν ἑαυτῷ
πᾶσαν τὴν πανσπερμίαν ὃ φησιν Ἀριστοτέλης γένος εἶναι εἰς ἀπείρους
τεμνόμενον ἰδέας ὡς τέμνομεν ἀπὸ τοῦ ζῴου βοῦν, ἵππον, ἄνθρωπον ὅπερ
ἐστὶν οὐκ ὄν. Cf. _ib._ 10. 14.
[360] _Orat. ad Græc._ 5 (following the text of Schwartz).
[361] _Suppl. pro Christ._ 4.
[362] _Ad Autol._ 2. 5 and 10; but in the former of these passages he
adds, τί δὲ μέγα εἰ ὁ θεὸς ἐξ ὑποκειμένης ὕλης ἐποίει τὸν κόσμον.
[363] The most important passage is Hermas, _Mand._ 1, which is
expressed in strictly philosophical language, ὁ θεὸς ὁ τὰ πάντα κτίσας
καὶ καταρτίσας καὶ ποιήσας ἐκ _τοῦ μὴ ὄντος_ εἰς τὸ εἶναι τὰ πάντα (the
passage is quoted as Scripture by Irenæus, 4. 20. 2 = Eusebius, _H. E._
5. 8. 7: Origen, _de princip._ 1. 3. 3, vol. i. p. 61, 2. 1. 5, p. 79,
and elsewhere): this must be read by the light of the distinctions which
are clearly expressed by Athenagoras, _Legat._ 4 and 19, where τὸ ὂν =
τὸ νοητόν, which is ἀγένητον: τὸ οὐκ ὂν = τὸ αἰσθητόν, which is γενητόν,
ἀρχόμενον εἶναι καὶ παυόμενον: the meaning of τὸ μὴ ὂν appears from the
expression, τὸ ὂν οὐ γίνεται ἀλλὰ τὸ μὴ ὄν, whence it is clear that τὸ
μὴ ὂν = τὸ δυνάμει ὄν, or potential being (see Möller, _Kosmologie_,
p. 123). In some of the other passages in which similar phrases occur,
it is not clear whether the conception is more than that of an artist
who, by impressing form on matter, causes things to exist which did not
exist before: 2 Maccab. 7. 28, ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων ἐποίησεν αὐτὰ ὁ θεός: 2
Clem. i. 8, ἐκάλεσεν γὰρ ἡμᾶς οὐκ ὄντας καὶ ἠθέλησεν ἐκ μὴ ὄντος εἶναι
ἡμᾶς: Clementin. _Hom._ 3, 32, τῷ τὰ μὴ ὄντα εἰς τὸ εἶναι συστησαμένῳ,
οὐρανὸν δημιουργήσαντι, γῆν πιλώσαντι, θάλασσαν περιορίσαντι, τὰ ἐν ᾅδῃ
ταμιεύσαντι καὶ τὰ πάντα ἀέρι πληρώσαντι: Hippolyt. in _Genes._ 1, τῇ
μὲν πρώτῃ ἡμέρᾳ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς ὅσα ἐποίησεν ἐκ μὴ ὄντων ταῖς δὲ ἄλλαις
οὐκ ἐκ μὴ ὄντων. In Theophilus, these expressions are interchanged with
that of ἡ ὑποκειμένη ὕλη in such a way as to suggest their identity: 1.
4; 2. 10, ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων τὰ πάντα ἐποίησεν: 2. 4, τί δὲ μέγα εἰ ὁ θεὸς
ἐξ ὑποκειμένης ὕλης ἐποίει τὸν κόσμον ... ἵνα ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων τὰ πάντα
ἐποίησεν. In the later books of the Clementine Homilies, τὸ μὴ ὂν = void
space: the whole passage, 17. 8, gives a clear and interesting exposition.
[364] In Euseb. _Præp. Evang._ 7. 22, and elsewhere; reprinted in Routh,
_Reliquiæ Sacræ_, ii. 87.
[365] Justin M. _Tryph._ 62; Iren. 1. 24, 25; Hippol. 7. 16, 20: so
Philo. _de profug._ 13 (i. 556), where, after quoting the passage of
Genesis, he proceeds, following the Platonic theory, διαλέγεται μὲν οὖν ὁ
τῶν ὅλων πατὴρ ταῖς ἑαυτοῦ δυνάμεσιν αἷς τὸ θνητὸν ἡμῶν τῆς ψυχῆς μέρος
ἔδωκε διαπλάττειν, μιμουμέναις τὴν αὐτοῦ τέχνην.
[366] The Peratæ in Hippol. 5. 17.
[367] The Jew through whom Celsus sometimes speaks says, “If your _Logos_
is the Son of God, we also assent to the same.” Origen, _c. Cels._ 2. 31.
[368] Cf. Origen, _c. Cels._ 4. 54.
[369] Hippol. _c. Noet._ 11.
[370] It is not the least of the many contributions of Professor Harnack
to early Christian history that he has vindicated Marcion from the
excessive disparagement which has resulted from the blind adoption of the
vituperations of Tertullian: see especially his _Dogmengeschichte_. Bd.
i. pp. 226 sqq., 2te aufl.
[371] 1. 22: cf. 4. 20.
[372] Hippol. 10. 32, 33.
[373] ap. Euseb. _H. E._ 6. 19.
[374] _De princip._ 2. 9. 1, 6.
[375] _De princip._ 1. 2. 2.
[376] _Ibid._ 1. 2. 2, 10.
[377] _Ibid._ 1. 3. 5, 6, 8.
[378] _Ibid._ 2. 6. 3.
[379] _Ibid._ 3. 5. 3.
[380] _Ibid._ 2. 9. 4.
[381] Aetius ap. Plut. _de plac. phil._ 2. 1. 1 (Diels, p. 327),
Πυθαγόρας πρῶτος ὠνόμασε τὴν τῶν ὅλων περιοχὴν κόσμον ἐκ τῆς ἐν αὐτῷ
τάξεως.
[382] Aetius, _ibid._ 1. 25 (Diels, p. 321), Πυθαγόρας ἀνάγκην ἔφη
περικεῖσθαι τῷ κόσμῳ· Παρμενίδης καὶ Δημόκριτος πάντα κατὰ ἀνάγκην.
[383] For the numerous passages which prove these statements,
reference may be made to Nägelsbach, _Homerische Theologie_, 2. 2. 3;
_Nachhomerische Theologie_, 3. 2. 2.
[384] Aetius, _ut supra_, 1. 27 (Diels, p. 322), Ἡράκλειτος πάντα καθ’
εἱμαρμένην, τὴν δὲ αὐτὴν ὑπάρχειν καὶ ἀνάγκην: the identification of
ἀνάγκη and εἱμαρμένη is also made by Parmenides and Democritus in a
continuation of the passage quoted above. But in much later times a
distinction was sometimes drawn between the two words, ἀνάγκη being used
of the subjective necessity of a proposition of which the contradictory
is unthinkable: Alex. Aphrodis _Quæst. Nat._ 2. 5 (p. 96, ed. Spengel),
τέσσαρα γοῦν τὰ δὶς δύο ἐξ ἀνάγκης, οὐ μὴν καθ’ εἱμαρμένην εἴ γε ἐν τοῖς
γενομένοις τὸ καθ’ εἱμαρμένην; but, on the other hand, οἷς καθ’ εἱρμὸν
αἰτιῶν γινομένοις τὸ ἀντικείμενον ἀδύνατος, πάντα εἴη ἂν καθ’ εἱμαρμένην.
[385] Nägelsbach, _Nachhomerische Theologie_, p. 142.
[386] Hesiod, _Theog._ 218, 904.
[387] Chrysippus, ap. Theodoret. _Gr. affect. curat._ 6. 14, εἶναι δὲ τὴν
εἱμαρμένην κίνησιν ἁΐδιον συνεχῆ καὶ τεταγμένην: so, in other words, ap.
Aul. Gell. 6. 2. 3.
[388] Aetius ap. Plut. _de placit. philos._ 1. 28, οἱ Στωικοὶ εἱρμὸν
αἰτιῶν: Philo, _de mut. nom._ 23 (i. 598), ἀκολουθία καὶ ἀναλογία τῶν
συμπάντων, εἱρμὸν ἔχουσα ἀδιάλυτον: Cic. _de divin._ 1. 55, ‘ordinem
seriemque causarum cum causa causæ nexa rem ex se gignat.’
[389] The Stoical definition of a πόλις was σύστημα καὶ πλῆθος ἀνθρώπων
ὑπὸ νόμου διοικούμενον, Clem. Alex. _Strom._ 4. 26; cf. Arius Didymus,
ap. Diels, p. 464.
[390] The idea is found in almost all Stoical writers: Plutarch; _de
Alex. Magn. virt._ 6, speaks of ἡ πολὺ θαυμαζομένη πολιτεία τοῦ τὴν
Στωικῶν αἵρεσιν καταβαλομένου Ζήνωνος: Chrysippus ap. Phædr. Epicur. _de
nat. Deorum_, ed. Petersen, p. 19: Muson. _Frag._ 5, ed. Peerlk. p. 164
(from Stob. _Flor._ 40), τοῦ Διὸς πόλεως ἣ συνέστηκεν ἐξ ἀνθρώπων καὶ
θεῶν: Epict. _Diss._ 1. 9. 4; 2. 13. 6; 3. 22. 4; 3. 24. 10: most fully
in Arius Didymus ap. Euseb. _Præp. Evang._ 15. 15. 4, οὕτω καὶ ὁ κόσμος
οἱονεὶ πόλις ἐστὶν ἐκ θεῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων συνεστῶσα, τῶν μὲν θεῶν τὴν
ἡγεμονίαν ἐχόντων τῶν δ’ ἀνθρώπων ὑποτεταγμένων.
[391] Philo, _de Josepho_, 6 (ii. 46), λόγος δέ ἐστι φύσεως προστακτικὸς
μὲν ὧν πρακτέον ἀπαγορευτικὸς δὲ ὧν οὐ πρακτέον ... προσθῆκαι μὲν γὰρ οἱ
κατὰ πόλεις νόμοι τοῦ τῆς φύσεως ὀρθοῦ λόγου.
[392] Epict. _Diss._ 3. 22. 5.
[393] Epict. _Diss._ 1. 1. 10; cf. Seneca, _de Provid._ 5. 7, ‘non potest
artifex mutare materiam.’ But Epictetus sometimes makes it a question,
not of possibility, but of will, e.g. _Diss._ 4. 3. 10.
[394] The data for the long history of the moral conceptions of Greek
religion which are briefly indicated above are far too numerous to
be given in a note: the student is referred to Nägelsbach, _Die
Nachhomerische Theologie_, i. 17-58. One may note the list of titles
applied to God, e.g. in Dio Chrysostom, and the diminishing use of
ἱλάσκεσθαι.
[395] Epict. _Diss._ 1. 6.
[396] _Diss._ 3. 11. 1.
[397] _Diss._ 3. 24. 42, 43.
[398] Destiny is Reason: Heraclitus ap. Aet. _Placit._ in Plut. _de
placit. philos._ 1. 28. 1; Stob. _Ecl._ 1. 5. 15 (Diels, p. 323), οὐσίαν
εἱμαρμένης λόγον τὸν διὰ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ παντὸς διήκοντα: Chrysippus,
_ibid._ εἱμαρμένη ἐστὶν ὁ τοῦ κόσμου λόγος ἢ λόγος τῶν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ
προνοίᾳ διοικουμένων ἢ λόγος καθ’ ὃν τὰ μὲν γεγονότα γέγονε τὰ δὲ
γινόμενα γίνεται τὰ δὲ γενησόμενα γενήσεται: Zeno ap. Ar. Did. _Epit.
phys._ 20, in Stob. _Ecl._ 1. 11. 5 (Diels, p. 458), τὸν τοῦ παντὸς λόγον
ὃν ἔνιοι ἑιμαρμένην καλοῦσιν.
[399] Destiny, or Reason, is Providence: Chrysippus, in the quotation
given in the preceding note: Zeno ap. Aet. _Placit._ in Stob. _Ecl._ 1.
5. 15 (Diels, p. 322).
[400] Destiny, Reason, Providence, is God, or the Will of God: Chrysippus
in Plut. _de Stoic. repug._ 34. 5, ὅτι δ’ ἡ κοινὴ φύσις καὶ ὁ κοινὸς τῆς
φύσεως λόγος εἱμαρμένη καὶ πρόνοια καὶ Ζεύς ἐστιν οὐδὲ τοὺς ἀντίποδας
λέληθε· πανταχοῦ γὰρ ταῦτα θρυλεῖται ὑπ’ αὐτῶν· καὶ, Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο
βουλὴ’ τὸν Ὅμηρον εἰρηκέναι φησὶν [sc. ὁ Χρύσιππος] ὀρθῶς ἐπὶ τὴν
εἱμαρμένην ἀναφέροντα καὶ τὴν τῶν ὅλων φύσιν καθ’ ἣν πάντα διοικεῖται:
id. _de commun. not._ 34. 5, oὐδὲ τοὐλάχιστόν ἐστι τῶν μερῶν ἔχειν ἄλλως
ἀλλ’ ἢ κατὰ τὴν τοῦ Διὸς βούλησιν: Arius Didymus, _Epit._ ap. Euseb.
_Præp. Ev._ 15. 15 (Diels, p. 464): Philodemus, _de piet._ frag. ed.
Gompertz, p. 83 (Diels, p. 549). The more exact statement is in the
summary of Aetius ap. Plut. _de placit. philos._ 1. 7. 17, Stob. _Ecl._
1. 2. 29 (Diels, p. 306), where God is said to comprehend within Himself
τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους καθ’ οὓς ἅπαντα καθ’ εἱμαρμένην γίνεται. The
loftiest form of the conception is expressed by Lucan, _Pharsal._ 2.
10, ‘se quoque lege tenens:’ God is not the slave of Fate or Law, but
voluntarily binds Himself by it.
[401] Plat. _Rep._ 2, pp. 379, 380; _Tim._ p. 41. Philo, _de mund.
opif._ 24 (i. 17), _de confus. ling._ 35 (i. 432), θεῷ γὰρ τῷ πανηγεμόνι
ἐμπρεπὲς οὐκ ἔδοξεν εἶναι τὴν ἐπὶ κακίαν ὁδὸν ἐν ψυχῇ λογικῇ δι’ ἑαυτοῦ
δημιουργῆσαι· οὗ χάριν τοῖς μετ’ αὐτὸν ἐπέτρεψε τὴν τούτου τοῦ μέρους
κατασκευήν: _de profug._ 13 (i. 556), ἀναγκαῖον οὖν ἡγήσατο τὴν κακῶν
γένεσιν ἑτέροις ἀπονεῖμαι δημιουργοῖς τὴν δὲ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἑαυτῷ μόνῳ: so
also in the (probably) post-Philonean _de Abraham._ 28 (ii. 22). The
other phase of the conception is stated by Celsus, not as a philosophical
solution of the difficulty, but as one which might be taught to the
vulgar, ἐξαρκεῖ δὲ εἰς πλῆθος εἰρῆσθαι ὡς ἐκ θεοῦ μὲν οὐκ ἔστι κακὰ ὕλῃ
δὲ πρόσκειται.
[402] This is one of the solutions offered by Chrysippus: the concrete
form of the difficulty, with which he dealt, was εἰ αἱ τῶν ἀνθρώπων
νόσοι κατὰ φύσιν γίνονται, and his answer was that diseases come κατὰ
παρακολούθησιν, ‘non per naturam sed per sequellas quasdam necessarias,’
Aul. Gell. 7 (6). 1. 9. So also in the long fragment of Philo in Euseb.
_Præp. Ev._ 8. 13 (Philo, ii. 648, 644), θεὸς γὰρ οὐδενὸς αἴτιος κακοῦ τὸ
παράπαν ἀλλ’ αἱ τῶν στοιχείων μεταβολαὶ ταῦτα γεννῶσιν, οὐ προηγούμενα
ἔργα φύσεως ἀλλ’ ἑπόμενα τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις καὶ τοῖς προηγουμένοις
ἐπακολουθοῦντα.
[403] _Diss._ 1. 12. 24.
[404] Chrysippus, _de Diis_, 2, ap. Plut. _de Stoic. repug._ 35, ποτὲ μὲν
τὰ δύσχρηστα συμβαίνει τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς οὐχ ὥσπερ τοῖς φαύλοις κολάσεως χάριν
ἀλλὰ κατ’ ἄλλην οἰκονομίαν ὥσπερ ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν.
[405] _Diss._ 2. 5. 24.
[406] _Diss._ 2. 10. 5.
[407] Aul. Gell. 7 (6). 2. 12-15.
[408] _Ench._ 1.
[409] E.g. Sext. Empir. _Pyrr._ 3. 9.
[410] Seneca, _Ep._ 107. 11: a free Latin rendering of one of the verses
of Cleanthes quoted from Epictetus in Lecture VI. p. 157.
[411] Seneca, _Dial._ 1. 5. 8: quid est boni viri? præbere se fato.
grande solatium est cum universo rapi. quicquid est quod nos sic vivere,
sic mori jussit, eadem necessitate et deos adligat. inrevocabilis humana
pariter ac divina cursus vehit. ille ipse omnium conditor et rector
scripsit quidem fata, sed sequitur. semper paret, semel jussit.
[412] Epict. _Diss._ 1. 6. 37-40.
[413] _Ibid._ 1. 16. 15-21.
[414] S. Matthew, 5. 12; S. Luke, 6. 23.
[415] _Ibid._ 6. 1.
[416] _Ibid._ 10. 42; S. Mark, 9. 41.
[417] Revelation, 22. 12: so Barnab. 21. 3: ἐγγὺς ὁ κύριος καὶ ὁ μισθὸς
αὐτοῦ.
[418] Hebrews, 11. 6.
[419] _Didaché_, 4. 7, γνώσῃ γὰρ τίς ἐστιν ὁ τοῦ μισθοῦ καλὸς ἀνταποδότης.
[420] Barnab. 4. 12.
[421] These conceptions of the earliest Christian philosophers are
stated, in order to be modified, by Origen, _de princ._ 2. 5. 1:
existimant igitur bonitatem affectum talem quemdam esse quod bene fieri
omnibus debeat etiam si indignus sit is cui beneficium datur nec bene
consequi mereatur.... Justitiam vero putarunt affectum esse talem qui
unicuique prout meretur retribuat ... ut secundum sensum ipsorum justus
malis non videatur bene velle sed velut odio quodam ferri adversus eos.
[422] The title of Marcion’s chief work was Ἀντιθέσεις, ‘Contrasts’: the
extent to which his opinions prevailed is shown both by contemporary
testimony, e.g. Justin M. _Apol._ 1. 26, ὃς κατὰ πᾶν γένος ἀνθρώπων διὰ
τῆς τῶν δαιμόνων συλλήψεως πολλοὺς πεποίηκε βλασφημίας λέγειν, Iren. 3.
3. 4, and also by the fact that the Churches into which his adherents
were organized flourished side by side with the Catholic Churches for
many centuries (there is an inscription of one of them, dated A.D. 318,
in Le Bas et Waddington, vol. iii. No. 2558, and they had not died out
at the time of the Trullan Council in A.D. 692, _Conc. Quinisext._ c.
95): the importance which was attached to him is shown by the large place
which he occupies in early controversies, Justin Martyr, Irenæus, the
Clementines, Origen, Tertullian, being at pains to refute him.
[423] Iren. 3. 25. 2.
[424] Tert. c. _Marc._ 2. 11, 12.
[425] _Homil._ 4. 13; 9. 19; 18. 2, 3.
[426] _Recogn._ 3. 37.
[427] Especially _Pædag._ 1. 8, 9.
[428] See below, p. 233.
[429] ap. Tert. _c. Marc._ 2. 5.
[430] _Apol._ 2. 7.
[431] Tatian, _Orat. ad Græc._ 7.
[432] Iren. 4. 37.
[433] _Ad Autol._ 2. 27.
[434] _Legat._ 31.
[435] _c. Marc._ 2. 5.
[436] E.g. Clem. Alex. _Pædag._ 1. 1, Origen, _de princ._ 2. 10. 6; _c.
Cels._ 6. 56: so also Tert. _Scorp._ 5.
[437] Origen, _de princ._ 2. 9. 5.
[438] The passage which follows is, with the exception of one extract
from the _contra Celsum_, a catena of extracts from the _de principiis_.
[439] _De princ._ 1. 6. 2.
[440] 1. 8. 2; 2. 9. 7.
[441] 2. 9. 6.
[442] 1. 8. 4.
[443] 1. 5. 5; 1. 6. 2.
[444] 3. 1. 4.
[445] 3. 1. 5.
[446] 1. 5. 2, 5.
[447] 1. 6. 2.
[448] 1. 6. 3.
[449] 3. 3. 5; 3. 5. 3.
[450] 3. 1. 20, 21: but sometimes beings of higher merit are assigned to
a lower grade, that they may benefit those who properly belong to that
grade, and that they themselves may be partakers of the patience of the
Creator, 2. 9. 7.
[451] 1. 2. 1.
[452] _c. Cels._ 6. 56; _de princ._ 2. 10.
[453] _De princ._ 3. 1. 14, 17.
[454] 3. 6. 3.
[455] Cf. Justin, _Dial. c. Tryph._ 2.
[456] The more common conception of the earliest Greek philosophy was
that of τὰς ἐνδιηκούσας τοῖς στοιχείοις ἢ τοῖς σώμασι δυνάμεις, Aetius
ap. Stob. _Ecl. Phys._ 2. 29.
[457] The form in which it is given by Sextus Empiricus, in whose time
the distinction was clearly understood, implies this: ἓν εἶναι τὸ πάν καὶ
τὸν θεόν συμφιῆ πᾶσι, _Pyrrh. Hypotyp._ 225.
[458] This is a post-Platonic summary of Plato’s conception; into the
inner development, and consequently varying expressions, of it in Plato’s
own writings it is not necessary to enter here. It is more important
in relation to the history of later Greek thought to know what he was
supposed to mean than what he meant. The above is taken from the summary
of Aetius in Plut. _de plac. philos._ 1. 7, Euseb. _Præp. evang._ 14. 16
(Diels, _Doxographi Græci_, p. 304). The briefest and most expressive
statement of the transcendence of God (τὸ ἀγαθόν) in Plato’s own writings
is probably _Republic_, p. 509, οὐκ οὐσίας ὄντος τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ, ἀλλ’ ἔτι
ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας πρεσβείᾳ καὶ δυνάμει ὑπερέχοντος.
[459] It was a struggle between this and Stoicism.
[460] Plutarch, _de Ei ap. Delph._ 18; cf. Ocellus Lucanus in the
Augustan Age, ap. Diels, 187, Mullach, i. p. 383 sq. The universe has no
beginning and no end: it always was and always will be (1. 1. p. 388).
It comprises, however, τὸ ποιοῦν and τὸ πάσχον, the former above the
moon, the latter below, so that the course of the moon marks the limit
between the changing and changeless, the ἀεὶ θέοντος θείου and the ἀεὶ
μεταβάλλοντος γενητοῦ (2. 1, p. 394, 2. 23, p. 400).
[461] Max. Tyr. _Diss._ 8. 9.
[462] Max. Tyr. 17. 9.
[463] Plotinus, _Enneades_, 5. 1. 6; cf. 1. 1. 8, where νοῦς is
ἀμέριστος, distinguished from ἡ περὶ τὰ σώματα μεριστὴ (οὐσία). We
are between the two, having a share of both. The κάθαρσις of the soul
consists in ὁμοίωσις πρὸς θεόν, 1. 2. 3; the love of beauty should
ascend from that of the body to that of character and laws, of arts and
sciences, ἀπὸ δὲ τῶν ἀρετῶν ἤδη ἀναβαίνειν ἐπὶ νοῦν, ἐπὶ τὸ ὂν, κάκεῖ
βαδιστέον τὴν ἄνω πορείαν, 1. 2. 2.
[464] _De mut. nom._ 4; i. 582, ed. Mangey.
[465] _De mund. op._ 2; i. 2.
[466] _De post. Cain_, 5; i. 228, 229.
[467] _Quod deus immut._ 12; i. 281.
[468] _De Abrah._ 16; ii. 12.
[469] i. 224, 281, 566; ii. 12, 654; _Frag. ap Joan. Dam._ ii. 654.
[470] _De prœm. et pœn._ 7; ii. 415.
[471] _De post. Cain_, 48; i. 258.
[472] _De mut. nom._ 2; i. 580; cf. 630, 648, 655; ii. 8-9, 19, 92-93,
597. Cf. in general Heinze, _Die Lehre vom Logos in der griechischen
Philosophie_, Oldenburg, 1872, pp. 206, 207, n. 6.
[473] The necessity for such intermediate links is not affected by the
question how far, outside the Platonic schools, there was a belief in a
real transcendence of God, or only in His existence outside the solar
system. In this connection, note the allegory in the _Phædrus_. The
Epicureans coarsely expressed the transcendence of God by the expression,
διῄρηται ἡ οὐσία, Sext. Emp. _Pyrrh._ p. 114, § 5; cf. Ocellus Lucanus,
cited above, p. 242. Hippolytus describes Aristotle’s _Metaphysics_ as
dealing with things beyond the moon, 7. 19, p. 354; cf. Origen’s idea
of the heavens in _de princ._ ii. 3, 7, and Celsus’ objection that
Christians misunderstand Plato by confusing his heaven with the Jewish
heavens. Origen, _c. Cels._ vi. 19; cf. Keim, p. 84.
[474] Benn, _Greek Philosophers_, 2. 252.
[475] Cf. Hesiod in Sext. Emp. ix. 86. Similarly, Thales, τὸ πᾶν
ἔμψυχον ἅμα καὶ δαιμόνων πλῆρες (Diels, 301); Pythagoras, Empedocles
in Hippolytus, διοικοῦντες τὰ κατὰ τὴν γῆν (Diels, 558); Plato and the
Stoics (Diels, 307), e.g. Plutarch, Epictetus, 1. 14. 12; 3. 13. 15
(Diels, 1307); Athenagoras, 23; Philo, ii. 635; Frag. ap. Eus. _Præp.
Evan._ 8. 13; see references in Keim’s _Celsus_, p. 120; cf. Wachsmuth,
_Die Ansichten der Stoiker über Mantik u. Dämonen_, Berlin, 1860.
[476] Philo, _de confus. ling._ 20 (i. 419).
[477] _De post. Cain._ 6 (i. 229).
[478] _De somn._ 1. 11 (i. 630).
[479] _Ibid._ 1. 41 (i. 656).
[480] _De profug._ 1 (i. 547); so _de Cherub._ 1 (i. 139).
[481] _Leg. Alleg._ 3. 62 (i. 122).
[482] _De somn._ 1. 15 (i. 633).
[483] _Ibid._ 1. 33 (i. 649).
[484] _Quis rer. div. her._ 42 (i. 501).
[485] _De sacrif. Abel. et Cain._ 18 (i. 175), ὁ γὰρ θεὸς λέγων ἅμα
ἐποίει μηδὲν μεταξὺ ἀμφοῖν τιθείς· εἰ δὲ χρὴ δόγμα κινεῖν ἀληθέστερον,
ὁ λόγος ἔργον αὐτοῦ: _de decem orac._ 11 (ii. 188), commenting on the
expression of the LXX. in Exodus xx. 18, ὁ λαὸς ἑώρα τὴν φωνήν, he
justifies it on the ground ὅτι ὅσα ἂν λέγῃ ὁ θεὸς οὐ ῥήματά ἐστιν ἀλλ’
ἔργα, ἅπερ ὀφθαλμοὶ πρὸ ὤτων διορίζουσι: _de mund. opif._ 6 (i. 5), οὐδὲν
ἂν ἕτερον εἴποι τὸν νοητὸν εἶναι κόσμον ἢ θεοῦ λόγον ἤδη κοσμοποιοῦντος.
[486] The word σκία seems to be used, in relation to the _Logos_, not
of the shadow cast by a solid object in the sunlight, but rather, as
in Homer, _Odyss._ 10. 495, and frequently in classical writers, of a
ghost or phantom: hence God is the παράδειγμα, the substance of which
the _Logos_ is the unsubstantial form, _Leg. Alleg._ 3. 31 (i. 106):
hence also σκία is used as convertible with εἰκών (_ibid._), in its sense
of either a portrait-statue or a reflexion in a mirror: in _de confus.
ling._ 28 (i. 427), the _Logos_ is the _eternal_ εἰκών of God.
[487] _De somn._ 1. 41 (i. 656).
[488] _Quod det. pot. ins._ 23 (i. 207).
[489] _De agric._ 12 (i. 308): _de confus. ling._ 28 (i. 427): spoken of
as γεννηθείς, _ibid._ 14 (i. 414).
[490] _De profug._ 20 (i. 562): so God is spoken of as the husband of
σοφία in _de Cherub._ 14 (i. 148). But in _de ebriet._ 8 (i. 361), God is
the Father, Knowledge the Mother, not of the _Logos_ but of the universe.
[491] _Quod a Deo mit. somn._ i. 683.
[492] i.e. Sethiani ap. Iren. 1. 30. 1.
[493] Ptolemæus, _ad Flor._ 7.
[494] _Teaching of the Twelve Apostles_, 10. 2-4.
[495] Cf. the Ebionites, Alogi, and the _Clementines_.
[496] Origen, _c. Cels._ 7. 36; cf. _de princ._ 1. 1. 7.
[497] _Con. Cels._ 7. 37, καὶ δογματίζειν παραπλησίως τοῖς ἀναιροῦσι
νοητὰς οὐσίας Στωϊκοῖς; cf. Keim, p. 100. See also Orig. _in Gen._ vol.
ii, p. 25 (Delarue), and Eus. _H. E._ iv. 26, for a view ascribed to
Melito.
[498] Harnack, _Dogmengesch._ p. 160.
[499] _Dial. c. Tryph._ c. 127.
[500] _Legatio_, 10.
[501] _Ad Autolycum._ 1. 3; cf. Minuc. Felix, _Octavius_, 18, and
Novatian, _de Trin._ 1. 2.
[502] _Adv. Marc._ 1. 3.
[503] _Adv. Prax._ 7.
[504] ap. Hippol. 7. 21, p. 358.
[505] ἀνεννόητος καὶ ἀνούσιος, _ibid._ 6. 42, p. 302; cf. 12 ff., pp. 424
ff., for Monoïmus, and also Ptolemæus, _ad Floram_, 7.
[506] _Pædag._ 1. 8.
[507] Möller, _Kosmologie_, p. 26, cf. 124, 129, 130.
[508] _Strom._ 5. 12.
[509] _c. Cels._ 6. 19 sqq.
[510] _De princ._ 1. 1. 2, 5, 7.
[511] _Ibid._ 1. 1, _passim_; cf. 4. 1. 36.
[512] e.g. Min. Felix, c. 10; cf. Keim, _Celsus_, 158.
[513] The older sort, who clung to tradition pure and simple, were
dubious of the introduction of dialectic methods into Christianity: see
Eus. v. 28; cf. v. 13. “Expavescunt ad οἰκονομίαν,” Tert. _adv. Prax._ 3.
Cf. Weingarten, p. 25.
[514] Pantænus, when asked by outside philosophers, “How can God know
the world, if like knows like?” replied (Routh, _Rel. Sac._ i. p. 379):
μήτε αἰσθητῶς τὰ αἰσθητὰ μήτε νοερῶς τὰ νοητὰ· οὐ γὰρ εἶναι δυνατὸν τὸν
ὑπὲρ τὰ ὄντα κατὰ τὰ ὄντα τῶν ὄντων λαμβάνεσθαι, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἴδια θελήματα
γινώσκειν αὐτὸν τὰ ὄντα φαμέν ... for if he _made_ all things by His
will, no one can deny that He knows His own will, and hence knows what
His will has made. Cf. Julius Africanus (Routh, ii. 239), λέγεται γὰρ
ὁμωνύμως ὁ θεὸς πᾶσι τοῖς ἐξ αὐτοῦ, ἐπειδὴ ἐν πᾶσιν ἐστίν.
[515] γίνομαι ὃ Θέλω καὶ εἰμὶ ὃ εἰμί, as used by the Naassenes, ap. Hipp.
5. 7.
[516] Cf. Harnack, art. in _Encycl. Brit._ “Sabellius.”
[517] Hipp. 9. 10; Schmid, _Dogmeng._ 47, _n._
[518] Tert. _c. Valent._ 4; cf., διαθέσεις of Ptol. ap. Iren. 1. 12. 1.
[519] ap. Iren. 1. 12. 3.
[520] Hipp. 6. 12.
[521] Ptolemy ap. Iren. 1. 12. 1; cf. Hipp. _c. Noet._ 10, πολὺς ἦν.
[522] ap. Iren. 1. 2. 1, 5 (Valentinians).
[523] ap. Iren. 1. 24. 3 (Basilides): cf. Clem. Al. _Protrep._ 10, the
Logos is the Son of νοῦς.
[524] Iren. 1. 14. 1, προήκατο λόγον ὅμοιον αὑτῷ.
[525] As compared with Philo, who emphasizes the Logos in relation to the
work of creation, Justin lays stress on the Logos as Revealer, making
known to us the will of God: cf. ἀπόστολος, _Tryph._ 61.
[526] Justin, _Apol._ i. 63.
[527] _Apol._ ii. 8.
[528] It would be beyond our present purpose to go into Christology. It
will be sufficient to indicate three theories: (1) Modal Monarchianism;
(2) Dynamical Monarchianism; (3) Logos theory. Cf. Harnack, _Dogmeng._ i.
161, 220, for Gnostic Christology.
[529] Iren. 4. 6. 3, 5, 6; cf. Clem. Alex. _Strom._ 7. 2.
[530] Cf. Hipp. 7. 21, 22; Schmid, _Dogm._ 52.
[531] Tert. _Apol._ 51; Hipp. _c. Noet._ p. 62.
[532] _Leg._ 16; cf. Clem. Al. _Strom._ 5. 1; cf. Theophilus, 2, 22, for
distinction of λόγος προφορικός as well as ἐνδιάθετος, denied by Clement
(loc. cit.), but repeated in Tert. _adv. Prax._ 5; cf. Hipp. _c. Noet._
10. See Zahn’s note in Ign. _ad Magn._ 8. 2, on προελθὼν in relation to
eternal generation.
[533] Philo applied the phrase “Son of God” to the world: cf. Keim,
_Celsus_, 95.
[534] Justin, _Dial. c. Tryph._ 61 A, cf. 62 E, προβληθὲν γέννημα; and
Hipp. _c. Noet._ 8, 10, 16; Tatian, c. 5; Irenæus ap. Schmid, p. 31.
[535] Justin, _Dial. c Tryph._ 56 C, p. 180.
[536] Hipp. 9. 12; Callistus, while excommunicating the Sabellians (cf.
Schmid, 48; Weing. 31), also called Hippolytus and his party ditheists.
For Callistus’ own view, cf. _ibid._ 9. 11. See Schmid, p, 50; also p. 45
for Praxeas ap. Tert.
[537] The Gnostic controversies in regard to the relation to God of the
Powers who were intermediate between Him and the world, had helped to
forge such intellectual instruments.
[538] Justin, _c. Tryph._ 128: δυνάμει καὶ βουλῇ αὐτοῦ ἀλλ’ οὐ κατ’
ἀποτομὴν ὡς ἀπομεριζομένης τῆς τοῦ πατρὸς οὐσίας; cf. Plotinus ap. Harn.
_Dogm._ 493: κατὰ μερισμὸν οὐ κατ’ ἀποτομὴν in Tatian, 5, is different;
cf. Hipp. _c. Noet._ 10.
[539] Justin, _Dial. c. Tryph._ 61 C, where the metaphor of “speech” is
also employed.
[540] ap. Tert. _c. Hermog._ 3.
[541] For metaphor of light, cf. Monoïmus ap. Hipp. 8. 12; also Tatian,
c. 5.
[542] There is uncertainty as to eternal generation in Justin; see
Engelhardt, p. 118. It is not in Hippolytus, _c. Noet._ 10. Though
implied in Irenæus (Harn. p. 495), it is in Origen that this solution
attains clear expression, e.g. _de princ._ 1. 2 ff., though his view
is not throughout steady and uniform. Emanation seemed to him to imply
division into parts. But he hovers between the Logos as thought and as
substance. For Clement and Origen in this connection, see Harnack, pp.
579, 581.
[543] God unchangeable in Himself comes into contact with human affairs:
τῇ προνοίᾳ καὶ τῇ οἰκονομίᾳ, _c. Cels._ 4. 14. His Word changes according
to the nature of the individuals into whom he comes, _c. Cels._ 4. 18.
[544] Justin, _Apol._ i. 22. 23. 32, _c. Try._ 5.
[545] _ad Autolyc._ ii. 22.
[546] He held that side by side with God existed, not ἐξουσία, but οὐσία,
φύσις, ὑπόστασις: see Clem. Alex. _Strom._ 5. 1.
[547] Cf. Harnack, _Dogmeng._ p. 580.
[548] οὐσία ἥ τε ὕλη καὶ τὸ εἶδος καὶ τὸ ἐκ τούτων, _Metaph._ 6. 10, p.
1035 _a_, “_ousia_ is matter, form, and the compound of matter and form.”
[549] οὐσίαν δὲ θεοῦ Ζήνων μέν φησι τὸν ὅλον κόσμον καὶ τὸν οὐρανόν,
ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ Χρύσιππος ... καὶ Ποσειδώνιος, Diog. L. 7. 148: so in M.
Anton. e.g. 4, 40, ἕν ζῶον τὸν κόσμον μίαν οὐσίαν καὶ ψυχὴν μίαν ἐπέχον,
paraphrased in the well-known lines of Pope:
“All are but parts of one stupendous Whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.”
[550] τῆς ζωτικῆς δυνάμεως, _Quod det. pot. insid._ 25, i. 209.
[551] οὐσία δέ ἐστιν ἡ κυριώτατά τε καὶ πρώτως καὶ μάλιστα λεγομένη
ἣ μήτε καθ’ ὑποκειμένου τινὸς λέγεται μήτε ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ τινί ἐστιν·
οἷον ὁ τὶς ἄνθρωπος καὶ ὁ τὶς ἵππος, _Categ._ 5, p. 2 _a_: but in the
_Metaphysics_ a different point of view is taken, and the term πρώτη
οὐσία is used in the following sense, i.e. of the form, e.g. 6, 11, p.
1037.
[552] Frequently in the _Metaphysics_, e.g. 6. 7, p. 1032 _b_, 7. 1, p.
1042 _a_.
[553] Arist. _Metaph._ 6. 11, p. 1037 _a_.
[554] _Ibid._ 12. 5, p. 1079 _b_.
[555] e.g. _Parmen._ p. 132 _e_. οὗ δ’ ἂν τὰ ὅμοια μετέχοντα ὅμοια ᾖ, οὐκ
ἐκεῖνο ἔσται αὐτὸ τὸ εἶδος.
[556] οὐσία ἐστὶν ὄνομα κοινὸν καὶ ἀόριστον κατὰ πασῶν τῶν ὑπ’ αὐτὴν
ὑποστάσεων ὁμοτίμως φερόμενον, καὶ συνωνύμως κατηγορούμενον, Suidas, _s.
v._
[557] νοητὰ ἄττα καὶ ἀσώματα εἴδη ... τὴν ἀληθινὴν οὐσίαν εἷναι· τὰ δὲ
ἐκείνων σώματα ... γένεσιν ἀντ’ οὐσίας φερομένην τινὰ προσαγορεύουσι,
Plat. _Sophist._ p. 246.
[558] e.g. it is stated by Celsus and adopted by Origen: Origen, _c.
Cels._ 7. 45 sq.
[559] ἡ οὐσία ἀνωτάτω οὖσα, τῷ μηδὲν εἶναι πρὸ αὐτῆς, γένος ἦν τὸ
γενικώτατον, Porphyr. _Eisag._ 2. 24.
[560] ἕκαστος μὲν ἡμῶν κατὰ μὲν τὸ σῶμα πόρρω ἂν εἴη οὐσίας, κατὰ δὲ τὴν
ψυχὴν, καὶ ὃ μάλιστα ἐσμὲν, μετέχομεν οὐσίας, καὶ ἐσμέν τις οὐσία. τοῦτο
δέ ἐστιν οἷον σύνθετόν τι ἐκ διαφορᾶς καὶ οὐσίας, οὔκουν κυρίως οὐσία
οὐδ’ αὐτοουσία· διὸ οὐδὲ κύριοι τῆς αὐτῶν οὐσίας, Plotin. _Enn._ 6. 8. 12.
[561] Arist. _Anal. post._ 2. 3, p. 90 _b_; _Top._ 5. 2, p. 130 b;
_Metaph._ 6. 4, p. 1030 _b_.
[562] Sext. Empir. _Pyrrh. Hypotyp._ 3. 1. 2.
[563] εἴ γε ὁμοούσιοι αἱ τῶν ζῴων ψυχαὶ ταῖς ἡμετέραις, Porphyr. _de
Abstin._ 1. 19.
[564] τοὺς πόδας ὡς ὁμοουσίων ἀνθρώπων ἄνθρωποι ἔνιψαν, _Clement. Hom._
20. 7, p. 192.
[565] _c. Cels._ 6. 64.
[566] e.g. in S. Athanas. _ad Afr. episc._ 4, vol. i. 714.
[567] Dionys. Areop. _de div. nom._ 5.
[568] Philo, _Leg. Alleg._ 1. 30, vol. i. 62; cf. _de post. Cain._ 8,
vol. i. 229: there is a remarkable Christian application of this in a
dialogue between a Christian and a Jew who was curious as to the Trinity,
Hieronymi Theologi Græci, _Dialogus de sancta Trinitate_, in Gallandi,
_Vet. Patr. Bibl._ vol. vii., reprinted in Migne, _Patrol. Gr._ vol. xl.
845.
[569] διῃρημένον ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ πατρὸς, Athan. _ad Antioch._, 3, vol.
i. 616.
[570] Cf. Harnack, i. 191, 219, 476 sqq., 580. In the Valentinian
system, the spiritual existence which Achamoth brought forth was of
the same essence as herself, Iren. 1. 5. 1. In that of Basilides, the
three-fold sonship which was in the seed which God made, was κατὰ πάντα
τῷ οὐκ ὄντι θεῷ ὁμοούσιος, Hippolytus, 7. 22: so as regards τὸ ἓν in
Epiphanes (Valentinian?), ap. Iren. 1. 11. 3 (Hipp. 6. 38), it συνυπάρχει
τῇ μονότητι as δύναμις ὁμοούσιος αὐτῇ. Cf. _Clem. Hom._ 20.7; Iren.
ap. Harn. 481, “ejusdem substantiæ;” Tert. _Apol._ 21, “ex unitate
substantiæ;” Harn. 488, 491.
[571] It was expressly rejected at the Council of Antioch in connection
with Paul of Samosata; and Basil, _Ep._ 9, says that Dionysius of
Alexandria gave it up because of its use by the Sabellians: cf. _Ep._ 52
(300).
[572] It is found, e.g., in Athan. _ad Afr. episc._ 4, vol. i. 714, ἡ γὰρ
ὑπόστασις καὶ ἡ οὐσία ὕπαρξίς ἐστι. The distinction is found in Stoical
writers, e.g. Chrysippus says that the present time ὑπάρχει, the past and
future ὑφίστανται. Diels, _Doxogr. Græci._ 462. 1.
[573] Diels, _ibid._ 372; cf. 363, where it is contrasted with φαντασία.
[574] Sext. Empir. p. 192, § 226.
[575] Diels, 318.
[576] Ib. 469. 20: so κατὰ τὴν τῆς οὐσίας ὑπόστασιν, p. 469, 26.
[577] Epict. 1. 14. 2.
[578] Ath. _Dial. de Trin._ 2: ἡ οὐσία τὴν κοινότητα σημαίνει, while
ὑπόστασις ἰδιότητα ἔχει ἥτις οὔκ ἐστι κοινὴ τῶν τῆς αὐτῆς οὐσίας
ὑποστάσεων. He elsewhere identifies it with πρόσωπον in _Ath. et Cyril.
in Expos. orthod. fid._: ὑπόστασις ἐστιν οὐσία μετά τινων ἰδιωμάτων
ἀριθμῷ τῶν ὁμοειδῶν διαφέρουσα· τουτέστι πρόσωπον ὁμοούσιον. Still the
identity of the two terms was allowed even after they were tending
to be differentiated: cf. Athan. _ad Afr. Ep._ 4, vol. i. 714, ἡ δὲ
ὑπόστασις οὐσία ἐστι καὶ οὐδὲν ἄλλο σημαινόμενον ἔχει ἢ αὐτὸ τὸ ὄν. So
_ad Antioch._, 6. (i. 617), he tolerates the view that there was only one
ὑπόστασις in the Godhead, on the ground that ὑπόστασις might be regarded
as synonymous with οὐσία. Cf. objection at Council of Sardica, against
three ὑποστάσεις in the Godhead, instead of one ὑπόστασις, of Father, Son
and Spirit.
[579] Cf. Harn. _Dogm._ 693.
[580] ἰδίαν ὑπόστασιν, Sext. Empir. _de Pyrrh._ 2. 219.
[581] Ed. Kühn, 5. 662.
[582] _Ep._ 210; Harn. _Dogm._ 693.
[583] Cf. Quintilian, who ascribes it in turn to Plautus and to Sergius
Flavius, 2. 14. 2; 3. 6. 23; 8. 3. 33: Seneca, _Ep._ 58. 6, to Cicero,
and more recently Fabianus. For _substantia_, cf. Quint. 7. 2. 5, “nam et
substantia ejus sub oculos cadit.”
[584] Cf. Harnack, 489, 543; for its use by Sabellius, &c., ib. 679; also
Orig. _de princ._ 1. 2. 8.
[585] E.g. _Ath. et Cyr. in Expos. orth. fid._, ὑπόστασις = πρόσωπον
ὁμοούσιον. In Epictetus, 1. 2. 7, 14, 28, it denotes individuality of
character, that which distinguishes one man from another.
[586] In Ath. _ad. Ant._ 7. 25, ἡ τὰ ὅλα διοικοῦσα φύσις is distinguished
from οὐσία τῶν ὅλων: so 7. 75, ἡ τοῦ ὅλου φύσις ἐπὶ τὴν κοσμοποιΐαν
ώρμησεν. For φύσις in Philo, see _Leg. All._ 3. 30 (i. 105).
[587] Leontius of Byzantium says that both οὐσία and φύσις = εἶδος, _Pat.
Græc._ lxxxvi. 1193.
[588] E.g. _adv. Prax._ 2 (E. T. ii. 337), where he makes the
distinctions within the œconomia of the Godhead to be _gradu_, _forma_,
_specie_, with a unity of _substantia_, _status_, _potestas_; cf. Bp.
Kaye, in E. T. ii. p. 407.
[589] _De Sententia Dionys._ 18, quoted in _Dict. of Christ. Biog._ under
Homoousios.
[590] Thus the Roman Dionysius, in a fragment against the Sabellians
(Routh, _Reliq._ iii. pp. 373, 374), objects to the division of the
μοναρχία into τρεῖς δυνάμεις τινὰς καὶ μεμερισμένας _ὑποστάσεις_ καὶ
θειότητας τρεῖς.
[591] ἀγνοούμενον ὑπὸ τῶν λαῶν, Athan. _de Synod._ 8 (i. 577).
[592] [As this summing up never underwent the author’s final revision,
and the notes which follow stand in his MS. parallel with the
corresponding portion of the Lecture as originally delivered, it has been
thought well to place them here.—ED.]
(1) The tendency to abstract has combined with the tendency to regard
matter as evil or impure, in the production of a tendency to form rather
a negative than a positive conception of God. The majority of formularies
define God by negative terms, and yet they have claimed for conceptions
which are negative a positive value.
(2) We owe to Greek philosophy—to the hypothesis of the chasm between
spirit and matter—the tendency to interpose powers between the Creator
and His creation. It may be held that the attempt to solve the insoluble
problem, how God, who is pure spirit, made and sustains us, has darkened
the relations which it has attempted to explain by introducing abstract
metaphysical conceptions.
[593] It may be noted that even in the later Greek philosophy there was
a view, apparently identical with that of Bishop Berkeley, that matter
or substance merely represented the sum of the qualities. Origen, _de
Princ._ 4. 1. 34.
[594] These Lectures are the history of a genesis: it would otherwise
have been interesting to show in how many points theories which have
been thought out in modern times revive theories of the remote past of
Christian antiquity.
[595] For what follows, reference in general may be made to Keil,
_Attische Culte aus Inschriften, Philologus_, Bd. xxiii. 212-259,
592-622: and Weingarten, _Histor. Zeitschrift_, Bd. xlv. 1881, p. 441
sqq. as well as to the authorities cited in the notes.
[596] Foucart, _Le culte de Pluton dans la religion éleusinienne,
Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique_, 1883, pp. 401 sqq.
[597] The successive stages or acts of initiation are variously described
and enumerated, but there were at least four: κάθαρσις—the preparatory
purification; σύστασις—the initiatory rites and sacrifices; τελετὴ
or μύησις—the prior initiation; and ἐποπτεία, the higher or greater
initiation, which admitted to the παράδοσις τῶν ἱερῶν, or holiest act of
the ritual. Cf. Lobeck, _Aglaoph._ pp. 39 ff.
[598] An interesting inscription has recently come to light, which shows
that the public slaves of the city were initiated at the public expense.
Foucart, l.c. p. 394.
[599] Cf. Origen, _c. Cels._ 3. 59.
[600] Philostratus, _Vita Apoll._ 4. 18, p. 138.
[601] _Alex._ 38.
[602] Cf. Lobeck, _Aglaoph._ pp. 39 ff. and 89 ff.; Welcker, _Griech.
Götterl._ ii. 530-532. “The first and most important condition required
of those who would enter the temple at Lindus is that they be pure in
heart and not conscious of any crime.”—Professor W. M. Ramsay in _Ency.
Brit._ s. v. “Mysteries.” For purification before admission to the
worship of a temple, see, in _C.I.A._ iii. Pt. i. 73. 74, instances of
regulation prescribed at the temple of Mên Tyrannus at Laurium in Attica,
e.g. μηθένα ἀκάθαρτον προσάγειν, various periods of purification being
specified. Cf. Reinach, _Traité d’Épigr. Grecque_, p. 133, on the inscr.
of Andania in Messenia, B.C. 91; the mysteries of the Cabiri in Le Bas
and Foucart, _Inscr. du Peloponnèse_, ii. § 5, p. 161; and Sauppe, _die
Mysterieninschr. von Andania_.
[603] Tertullian, _de Baptismo_, 5, “Nam et sacris quibusdam per lavacrum
initiantur ... ipsos etiam deos suos lavationibus efferunt;” Clem. Alex.
_Strom._ Bk. 5. 4: “The mysteries are not exhibited incontinently to all,
but only after certain purifications and previous instructions.” _Ibid._
5. 11: “It is not without reason that in the mysteries that obtain among
the Greeks, _lustrations hold the first place_, as also the laver among
the Barbarians. After these are the minor mysteries, which have some
foundation of instruction and of preliminary preparation for what is
to come after; and the great mysteries, in which nothing remains to be
learned of the universe, but only to contemplate and comprehend nature
and things.” We have thus a sort of baptism and catechumenate.
[604] The fast lasted nine days, and during it certain kinds of food were
wholly forbidden. Cf. Lobeck, _Aglaoph._ pp. 189-197.
[605] There was a lesser and a greater initiation: “It is a regulation
of law that those who have been admitted to the lesser should again
be initiated into the greater mysteries.” Hippol. 5, 8: see the whole
chapter, as also cc. 9, 20.
[606] Cf. Clem. Alex. _Protrept._ 12: “O truly sacred mysteries! O
stainless light! My way is lighted with torches and I survey the
heavens and God: I am become holy whilst I am initiated. The Lord is
the hierophant, and seals while illuminating him who is initiated,” &c.
Ib. 2: “Their (Demeter’s and Proserpine’s) wanderings, and seizure, and
grief, Eleusis celebrates by torchlight processions;” and again p. 32. So
Ælius Aristid. i. p. 454 (ed. Canter), τὰς φωσφόρους νύκτας.
[607] “I have fasted, I have drunk the cup,” &c. Clem. Alex. _Protrept._
2.
[608] Cf. Ælius Aristid. i. 454, on the burning of the temple at Eleusis.
The gain of the festival was not for this life only, but that hereafter
they would not lie in darkness and mire like the uninitiated.
[609] Fragm. ap. Stob. _Florileg._ 120. Lenormant, _Cont. Rev._ Sept.
1880, p. 430.
[610] Synes. _Orat._ p. 48 (ed. Petav.), οὐ μαθεῖν τι δεῖν ἀλλὰ παθεῖν
καὶ διατεθῆναι γενομένους δηλονότι ἐπιτηδείους. But the μυσταγωγοὶ
possibly gave some private instruction to the groups of μύσται who were
committed to them.
[611] Cf. Lenormant, _Cont. Rev._ Sept. 1880, p. 414 sq.
[612] Soph. _frag._ 719, ed. Dind.: so in effect Pindar, _frag. thren._
8; Cic. _Legg._ 2. 14. 36; Plato, _Gorg._ p. 493 B, _Phædo._ 69 C (the
lot of the uninitiated). They were bound to make their life on earth
correspond to their initiation; see Lenormant, _ut sup._ p. 429 sqq. In
later times it was supposed actually to make them better; Sopatros in
Walz, _Rhet. Gr._ viii. 114.
[613] See Garrucci, _Les Mystères du Syncretisme Phrygien dans les
Catacombes Romaines de Prætextat_, Paris, 1854.
[614] There was a further and larger process before a man was τέλειος.
Tert. _adv. Valent._ c. 1, says that it took five years to become τέλειος.
[615] The most elaborate account is that of the Arval feast at Rome: cf.
Henzen, _Acta fratrum Arvalium_.
[616] μύσται is used of members of a religious association at Teos
(Inscr. in _Bullet. de Corresp. Hellénique_, 1880, p. 164), and of the
Roman Monarchians in Epiph. 55. 8; cf. Harnack, _Dogm._ 628.
[617] Clem. Alex. _Protrep._ 2; Hippol. 1, _proœm._ Cf. Philo, _de
sacrif._ 12 (ii. 260), τί γὰρ εἰ καλὰ ταῦτ’ ἐστὶν ὦ μύσται κ.τ.λ.
[618] They also had the same sanction—the fear of _future punishments_,
cf. Celsus in Orig. 8. 48. Origen does not controvert this statement,
but appeals to the greater moral effect of Christianity as an argument
for its truth. They possibly also communicated divine knowledge. There
is an inscription of Dionysiac artists at Nysa, of the time of the
Antonines, in honour of one who was θεολόγος of the temples at Pergamos,
as θαυμαστὸν θεολόγον and τῶν ἀπορρήτων μύστην. _Bull. de Corr. Hellén._
1885, p. 124, 1. 4; cf. Porphyry in Eusebius, _Præp. Ev._ 5. 14.
[619] This revival had many forms, cf. Harnack, _Dogm._ p. 101.
[620] Similar practices existed in the Church and in the new religions
which were growing up. Justin Martyr speaks of the way in which, under
the inspiration of demons, the supper had been imitated in the Mithraic
mysteries: ὅπερ καὶ ἐν τοῖς τοῦ Μίθρα μυστηρίοις παρέδωκαν γίνεσθαι
μιμησάμενοι οἱ πονηροὶ δαίμονες: _Apol._ 1. 66. Tertullian points to the
fact as an instance of the power of the devil (_de præsc. hær._ 40): “qui
ipsas quoque res sacramentorum divinorum idolorum mysteriis æmulatur.” He
specifies, inter alia, “expositionem delictorum de lavacro repromittit
... celebrat et panis oblationem.” Celsus, too, speaks of the μυστήρια
and the τελεταὶ of Mithras and others: Orig. _c. Cels._ 6. 22.
[621] The objection which Celsus makes (_c. Cels._ 1. 1; Keim, p. 3) to
the secrecy of the Christian associations would hardly have held good
in the apostolic age. Origen admits (_c. Cels._ 1. 7) that there are
exoteric and esoteric doctrines in Christianity, and justifies it by
(1) the philosophies, (2) the mysteries. On the rise of this conception
of Christian teaching as something to be hidden from the mass, cf. the
Valentinians in Tert. _c. Valent._ 1, where there is a direct parallel
drawn between them and the mysteries: also the distinction of men into
two classes—πνευματικοὶ and ψυχικοὶ or ὑλικοί—among the Gnostics: Harn.
_Dogm._ 222, cf. Hipp. 1, _proœm._, p. 4, who condemns τὰ ἀπόρρητα
μυστήρια of the heretics, adding, καὶ τότε δοκιμάσαντες δέσμιον εἶναι
τῆς ἁμαρτίας μυοῦσι τὸ τέλειον τῶν κακῶν παραδιδόντες, ὅρκοις δήσαντες
μήτε ἐξειπεῖν μήτε τῷ τυχόντι μεταδοῦναι κ.τ.λ. Yet this very secrecy
was naturalized in the Church. Cf. Cyril Hier. _Catech._ vi. 30;
Aug. in _Psalm_ ciii., _Hom._ xcvi. in _Joan._; Theodoret, _Quæst._
xv. _in Num._, and _Dial._ ii. (_Inconfusus_); Chry. _Hom._ xix. _in
Matt._ Sozomen’s (1. 20. 3) reason for not giving the Nicene Creed is
significant alike as regards motive and language: εὐσεβῶν δὲ φίλων καὶ
τὰ τοιαῦτα ἐπιστημόνων, οἷα δὲ μύσταις καὶ μυσταγωγοῖς μόνοις δέον τάδε
λέγειν καὶ ἀκούειν ὑφηγουμένων, ἐπῄνεσα τὴν βουλήν· οὐ γὰρ ἀπεικὸς καὶ
τῶν ἀμυήτων τινὰς τῇδε τῇ βίβλῳ ἐντυχεῖν.
[622] Acts ii, 38, 41; viii. 12, 13, 36, 38; x. 47, 48; xvi. 15, 33;
xviii. 8; xix. 5.
[623] c. 7.
[624] _Apol._ 1. 61; cf. Otto, vol. i. p. 146, n. 14; Engelhardt, p. 102.
[625] Clem. Alex. _Pædag._ 1. 6; Can. Laod. 47, Bruns, p. 78; Greg. Naz.
_Orat._ xl. pp. 638, 639. Hence οἱ φωτιζόμενοι = those being prepared for
baptism, οἱ φωτισθέντες = the baptized. Cf. Cyr. Hier. _Catech._ 13. 21,
p. 193 _et passim_.
[626] Lobeck, _Aglaoph._ p. 36, cf. 31 ff.
[627] _Apol._ 8: talia initiatus et consignatus = μεμυημένος καὶ
ἐσφραγίσμενος. See Otto, vol. i. p. 141; cf. _ad Valent._ 1.
[628] For the seal in baptism, cf. Clem. Al. _Strom._ 2. 3; _Quis
dives_, 42, ap. Euseb. _Hist._ 3. 23; Euseb. _Vita Const._ 1. 4.
62; Cyr. Hier. _Catech._ 5; Greg. Naz. _Orat._ 40, p. 639; Orig.
_c. Cels._ 6. 27. For the use of imagery and the terms relating to
sealing—illumination—initiation—from the mysteries, Clem. Al. _Protrep._
12. The effect of baptism is illumination, perfection, _Pædag._ 1. 6;
hence sins before and after baptism, i.e. enlightenment, are different,
_Strom._ 2. 13. Early instances of σφραγὶς are collected in Gebhardt on 2
Clem. pp. 168, 169; cf. also Cyr. Hier. _Catech._ 18. 33, p. 301.
[629] Greg. Naz. _Orat._ 39, p. 632; Chrys. _Hom._ 85 _in Joan._ xix. 34;
Sozomen, ii. 8, 6.
[630] Sozomen, i. 3. 5.
[631] Dion. Areop. _Eccles. Hierar._ 3, p. 242.
[632] Clem. Alex. _Pædag._ 1. 6, p. 93; Athan. _Cont. Ar._ 3, p. 413 C.;
Greg. Naz. _Orat._ 40, p. 648; Dion. Areop. _Eccles. Hier._ 3, 242.
[633] Chrys. _Hom._ 99, vol. v.; Theod. _in Cantic._ 1.
[634] Dion. Areop. _Eccles. Hier._ 1. 1; _Mys. Theol._ 1. 1.
[635] Chrys. _Hom._ 1 _in Act._ p. 615; _Hom._ 21 _ad popul. Antioch_;
Sozomen, ii. 17. 9.
[636] Sozomen, i. 3. 5; ii. 7. 8; iv. 20. 3; vi. 38. 15; vii 8. 7, _et
passim_. These examples do not by any means exhaust or even adequately
represent the obligations in the sphere of language, and of the ideas
it at once denotes and connotes, which the ecclesiastical theory and
practice of baptism lies under to the mysteries; but they may help to
indicate the degree and nature of the obligation.
[637] For the sphere of the influence of the mysteries on the language
and imagery of the New Testament, see 1 Cor. ii. 6 ff.; cf. Heb. vi. 4.
[638] _Apost. Const._ 8. 32. Cf. passages quoted from Clem. Alex. and
others, _supra_, p. 287, note 1; p. 295, notes 2 and 5. See Bingham, vol.
iii. pp. 443-446.
[639] _De præsc. hær._ 41. Cf. Epiphan. 41. 3; _Apost. Const._ 8. 12.
[640] ἃ οὐδὲ ἐποπτεύειν ἔξεστι τοῖς ἀμυήτοις, _de Spir. Sanct._ 27;
cf. Orig. _c. Cels._ 3. 59 _ad fin._ and 60, e.g. “then and not before
do we invite them to participation in our mysteries,” and “initiating
those already purified into the sacred mysteries.” Cf. _Dict. Christian
Antiquities_, s. v. _Disciplina Arcani_.
[641] See p. 293, note 1; also _Dict. Christian Antiquities_, s. vv.
_Baptism_, _Catechumens_, especially p. 318, and _Creed_.
[642] _Histoire de l’église d’Alexandrie_, p. 12: Paris, 1677.
[643] _De baptismo Christi_, 4. ii. 374, τοῦ Χριστοῦ παρόντος, τῶν
ἀγγέλων παρεστώτων, τῆς φρικτῆς ταύτης τραπέζης προκειμένης, τῶν ἀδελφῶν
σου μυσταγωγουμένων ἔτι. Cyril, _Præfatio ad Catech._ 15.
[644] Mabillon. _Com. præv. ad. ord. Rom._; _Museum Ital._ II. xcix.
[645] It was one of the points to which the Greeks objected in the
discussions of the ninth century.
[646] c. 9.
[647] Bk. ii. 57, p. 87; cf. viii. 5, p. 239, lines 18, 19.
[648] viii. 11. 12, p. 248.
[649] Origen, _c. Cels._ 3. 59. Persons who have partaken of the
Eucharist are οἱ τελεσθέντες (Chrys. _de compunct. ad Demet._ 1. 6. i. p.
132), and οἱ μεμυημένοι (id. _Hom._ vi. _de beat. Phil._ c. 3. i. p. 498,
and in _Ep. ad Hebr._ cap. x., _Hom._ xvii. 4, vol. xii. 169). Degrees
and distinctions came to be recognized within the circle of the very
initiated themselves, _Apost. Const._ vii. 44, viii. 13.
[650] The earlier offerings were those of Irenæus, 4. 17. 5, where he
speaks of Christ “suis discipulis dans consilium, primitias Deo offerre
ex suis creaturis;” and again the Church offers “primitias suorum munerum
in Novo Testamento ei qui alimenta nobis præstat.” The table in the
heathen temple was important; upon it were placed the offerings: Th.
Homolle in _Bulletin de Corresp. Hellén._ 1881, p. 118. For the Eucharist
itself as a mystery, cf. φρικωδεστάτη τελετὴ, Chrys. _de sacerdot._ 3. 4,
vol. i. 382. He argues for silence on the ground that they are mysteries,
_de bapt. Christ._ 4. ii. 375. Cf. Greg. Naz. _Orat._ 44, p. 713; Conc.
Laod. 7, Bruns, p. 74.
[651] Found in Chrys. e.g. _Hom. in Ep._ ii. _ad Corinth._ v. c. 3, vol.
x. 470: τοιαύτῃ τὸ θυσιαστήριον ἐκεῖνο φοινίσσεται σφαγῇ.
[652] _Ad Ephes._ 5; see Lightfoot’s note. Cf. _Trall._ 7; _Philad._ 4;
_Mag._ 7; _Rom._ 2.
[653] _Ap. Const._ ii. 57, p. 88. But see for θυσιαστήριον in a highly
figurative sense, iii. 6, iv. 3.
[654] _H. E._ x. 4, 44.
[655] Isid. Pelus. _Epist._ 3. 340, p. 390, προσῆλθε μὲν τῷ σεπτῷ
θυσιαστηρίῳ τῶν θείων μυστηρίων μεταληψόμενος; also 4. 181, p. 516, τὰ
θεῖα μῂ διδόσθαι μυστήρια. Cf. Chrys. _de comp. ad Demet._ 1. 6, vol. i.
p. 131; Theodoret, _dial._ 2, vol. iv. 125. There was a sacred formula.
Basil says that no saint has written down the formula of consecration:
_de Spir. Sancto_, 66, vol. iv. pp. 54, 55. After saying that some
doctrines and usages of the Church have come down in writing, τὰ δὲ ἐκ
τῆς τῶν ἀποστόλων παραδόσεως διαδοθέντα ἡμῖν ἐν μυστηρίῳ παρεδεξάμεθα, he
instances the words of the Eucharistic invocation as among the later; τὰ
τῆς ἐπικλήσεως ῥήματα ἐπὶ τῇ ἀναδείξει τοῦ ἄρτου τῆς ἐυχαριστίας καὶ τοῦ
ποτηρίου τῆς ἐυλογίας τίς τῶν ἁγίων ἐγγράφως ἡμῖν καταλέλοιπεν.
[656] In Dionysius Areop. (s. v. ἱεράρχης, ed. Corderius, i. 839),
the bishops are τελεσταί, ἱεροτελεσταί, τελεστάρχαι, μυσταγωγοί,
τελεστουργοί, τελεστικοί; the priests are φωτιστικοί; the deacons,
καθαρτικοί; the Eucharist is ἱεροτελεστικωτάτη (c. 4). The deacon,
ἀποκαθαίρει τοὺς ἀτελέστους (c. 5, § 3, p. 233), i.e. dips them in the
water; the priest, φωταγωγεῖ τοὺς καθαρθέντας, i.e. leads the baptized
by the hand into the church; the bishop, ἀποτελειοῖ τοὺς τῷ θείῳ φωτὶ
κεκοινωνηκότας.
[657] Dion. Areop. _Eccles. Hier._ c. 3, par. 1, §§ 1, 2, pp. 187, 188.
[658] For in the decree mentioned in a previous note (p. 292, n. 2),
among other honours to T. Ælius Alcibiades, he is to be πρῶτον τοῖς
διπτύχοις ἐνγραφόμενον.
[659] Cf. for the use of lights in worship, the money accounts, from a
Berlin papyrus, of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus at Arsinoê, A.D.
215, in Hermes, Bd. xx. p. 430.
[660] _Adv. Valent._ 1. Hippolytus (1, _proœm_; 5. 23, 24) says the
heretics had mysteries which they disclosed to the initiated only after
long preparation, and with an oath not to divulge them: so the Naassenes,
5. 8, and the Peratæ, 5. 17 (ad fin.), whose mysteries “are delivered
in silence.” The Justinians had an oath of secrecy before proceeding to
behold “what eye hath not seen” and “drinking from the living water,” 5.
27.
[661] E.g. Marcus, in connection with initiation into the higher
mysteries Hipp. 6. 41, and the Elkasaites as cleansing from gross sin, 9.
15.
[662] Eus. _H.E._ iv. 7.
[663] Hipp. 5. 27, of the Justinians. Cf. Hilgenfeld, _Ketzergesch._ p.
270.
[664] For the Eastern custom, see Cyril Hier. _Catech. Myst._ ii. 3,
4, p. 312: the candidate is anointed all over _before_ baptism with
exorcised oil, which, by invocation of God and prayer, purifies from the
burning traces of sin, but also puts to flight the invisible powers of
the evil one. Cf. _Apost. Const._ vii. 22, 41, iii. 15, 16; the _Coptic
Constitutions_, c. 46 (ed. Tattam), cf. Boetticher’s Gr. translation in
Bunsen’s _Anal. Ante-Nic._ ii 467; _Clem. Recog._ 3. 67; Chrys. _Hom._
6. 4, _in Ep. ad Col._ xi. 342, ἀλείφεται ὥσπερ οἱ ἀθληταὶ εἰς στάδιον
ἐμβησόμενοι, here also before baptism and all over; Dionys. Areop.
_Eccles. Hier._ 2. 7; Basil, _de Spir. Sanct._ 66, vol. iv. 55. For
earlier Western as distinct from Eastern thought on the subject, cf.
Tert. _de bapt._ 6 and 7; _de resurr. carnis._ 8; _adv. Marc._ i. 14;
Cyprian, _Ep._ 70. For the later Western usage, introduced from the East,
see _Conc. Rom._ 402, c. 8, ed. Bruns. pt. ii. 278; _Ordo_ 6, _ad fac.
Catech._ in Martène, _de ant. eccl. rit._ i. p. 17; Theodulfus Aurel. _de
ord. bapt._ 10; unction of the region of the heart before and behind,
symbolizing the Holy Spirit’s unction with a view to both prosperity and
adversity (Sirmond, vol. ii. 686); Isid. Hisp. _de off. eccl._ 2. 21;
Catechumens _exorcizantur, sales accipiunt et unguntur_, the salt being
made _ut eorum gustu condimentum sapientiæ percipiant, neque desipiant a
sapore Christi_ (Migne, lxxxiii. col. 814, 815); Cæs. Arelat. _serm._ 22.
[665] _Apol._ 1. 66.
[666] ap. Hipp. 6. 39.
[667] Tert. _ad Scap._ 2, holds that sacrifice may consist of simple
prayer.
[668] Cf. Celsus’ idea of faith: Orig. _c. Cels._ 3. 39; Keim, p. 39.
[669] Philo’s view of faith is well expressed in two striking passages,
_Quis rer. div. Heres_, 18, i. 485; and _de Abrah._ 46, ii. 39.
[670] Cf. “He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is
a rewarder of them that seek Him,” Heb. xi. 6; and “He that is of God
heareth God’s words,” John viii. 47.
[671] It was one of Celsus’ objections to Christianity that its preachers
laid more stress on belief than on the intellectual grounds of belief:
Orig. _c. Cels._ 1. 9. Origen’s answer, which is characteristic rather
of his own time than expressive of the belief of the apostolic age, is
that this was necessary for the mass of men, who have no leisure or
inclination for deep investigation (1. 10), and in order not to leave men
altogether without help (1. 12).
[672] E.g. Rom. vi. 17, εἰς ὃν παρεδόθητε τύπον διδαχῆς; 2 John, 9, ἐν
τῇ διδαχῇ τοῦ Χριστοῦ; 2 Tim. i. 13, ὑποτύπωσιν ἔχε ὑγιαινόντων λόγων ὧν
παρ’ ἐμοῦ ἤκουσας; 1 Tim. vi. 12, ὡμολόγησας τὴν καλὴν ὁμολογίαν; Jude 3,
ἡ ἅπαξ παραδοθεῖσα τοῖς ἁγίοις πίστις. Polycrates, ap. Eus. _H. E._ 5.
24, ὁ κανὼν τῆς πίστεως: see passages collected in Gebhardt and Harnack’s
_Patres Apost._ Bd. i. th. 2 (Barnabas), p. 133.
[673] Cf. Schmid, _Dogmeng._ p. 14, Das Taufsymbol.
[674] c. 7. 4.
[675] See Acts viii. 16, xix. 5, with which compare Rom. vi. 1-11, Acts
xxii. 16. _Didaché_, 9. 5, οἱ βαπτισθέντες εἰς ὄνομα Κυρίου; and _Apost.
Const._ Bk. ii. 7, p. 20, οἱ βαπτισθέντες εἰς τὸν θάνατον τοῦ Κυρίου
Ἰησοῦ οὐκ ὀφείλουσιν ἁμαρτάνειν οἱ τοιοῦτοι· ὡς γὰρ οἱ ἀποθανόντες
ἀνενέργητοι πρὸς ἁμαρτίαν ὑπάρχουσιν, οὕτως καὶ οἱ συναποθανόντες τῷ
Χριστῷ ἄπρακτοι πρὸς ἁμαρτίαν; cf. 148, 7, and elsewhere, in composite
form. Against this Cyprian wrote, in _Ep._ 73, _ad Jubaianum_, 16-18; cf.
Harnack, _Dogmeng._ 176.
[676] Cf. von Engelhardt, _Das Christenthum Justins_, p. 107.
[677] Cf. Harnack, _Dogmeng._ p. 130 ff.
[678] Cf. Clement’s account of Basilides’ conception of faith in contrast
to his own, _Strom._ 5. 1.
[679] Orig. _c. Cels._ 5. 65.
[680] Cf. Ptolemæus _ad Floram_, c. 7, ed. Pet.
[681] See instances in Harn. _Dogm._ p. 134.
[682] Thus Basilides, ap. Hippol. 7. 20, preferred to follow a tradition
from Matthias, who was said to have been specially instructed by the
Saviour. The Naassenes, ib. 10. 9, traced their doctrine to James, the
Brother of the Lord. Valentinus, Clem. Alex. _Strom._ 7. 17, was said
to be a hearer of Theudas, who was a pupil of Paul. Hippol. 1, _proœm_,
argued against all heretics that they had taken nothing from Holy
Scripture, and had not preserved the τινος ἁγίου διαδοχήν. Cf. Tert. _c.
Marc._ 1. 21. But see the very remarkable statement of Origen as to the
cause of heresies, _c. Cels._ 3. 12; cf. Clem. Al. _Strom._ 7. 17.
[683] Cf. Clem. Alex. _Strom._ 7. 17, μία ... παράδοσις, and the
contention of Tert. _de præsc. hær._ 32, Sicut apostoli non diversa inter
se docuissent, ita et apostolici non contraria apostolis edidissent;
Harnack, pp. 183 ff., especially note 2, pp. 134-136. Eusebius, _H. E._
4. 7, mentions that very many contemporary church writers had written
in behalf τῆς ἀποστολικῆς καὶ ἐκκλησιαστικῆς δόξης, against Basilides,
especially Agrippa Castor.
[684] Adamantius (Origen, ed. Delarue, i. 809) says that the Marcionites
had ἐπισκόπων, μᾶλλον δὲ ψευδεπισκόπων διαδοχαί.
[685] For the παράδοσις ἐκκλησιαστική, especially of “ecclesiæ
apostolicæ,” cf. Tert. _de præsc. hær._ cc. 21. 36; Iren. 3. 1-3; Orig.
_de princ._; _præf._ 2: for the κανὼν τῆς πίστεως, Iren. 1. 9. 4; Tert.
_adv. Marc._ 1. 21 (regula sacramenti); _de Virg. vel._ 1; _adv. Prax._
2; _de præsc. hær._ cc. 3. 12. 42; _de monog._ 2. In general, see
Weingarten, _Zeittafeln_, s. 17. 19.
[686] _De præsc. hær._ cc. 25. 26.
[687] 4. 20.
[688] See Overbeck, _die Anfänge der patrist. Literatur_, in the _Hist.
Zeitschrift_, N.F. Bd. xii. 417-472.
[689] Cf. Hegesippus, ap. Eus. _H.E._ 4. 22. 3, ἐν ἑκάστῃ πόλει οὕτως
ἔχει ὡς ὁ νόμος κηρύσσει καὶ οἱ προφῆται καὶ ὁ Κύριος, for this practical
co-ordination; see Gebhardt and Harnack on 2 Clement, p. 132, for
examples; also Harnack, _Dogm._ 131.
[690] Cf. Weingarten, _Zeittafeln_, p. 19, where he cites the Muratorian
fragment, Origen (ap. Eus. _H.E._ 6. 25), and Athanasius, in the last of
whom he traces the first use of the term “canon” in our sense. But we
must carefully distinguish the _idea_ of a canon and the _contents_ of
the canon. It is uncertain whence the idea of a canon of Scripture came,
whether from the ecclesiastical party or from the Gnostics; and if from
the latter, whether it was from Basilides, or Valentinus, or Marcion.
Most likely the last. Harnack, _Dogm._ 215 ff.; cf. 237-240 for Marcion
as the first Biblical critic.
[691] Harnack, pp. 317 f.
[692] Tertullian, though in his treatise _de præsc. hær._ he abandons
argument with the Gnostics, yet in his _adv. Marc._ 1. 22, relaxes that
line of argument, and enters into formal discussion.
[693] c. 2.
[694] Tert. _de præscr. hær._ cc. 8, 18.
[695] Theories were framed as to the relation of γνῶσις and πίστις; e.g.
the former was conceived to relate to the Spirit, the latter to the Son,
which Clem. Alex. denies (_Strom._ 5. 1).
[696] See Harnack, 549.
[697] _Adv. Prax._ 3.
[698] Which had been the contention of the heretics whom Tertullian
opposed: _de præsc. hær._ cc. 16, 17.
[699] Origen (_de princ._, _præf._ 3) follows in the line of those who
rested upon apostolic teaching, but gives a foothold for philosophy by
saying (1) that the Apostles left the grounds of their statements to be
investigated; (2) that they affirmed the existence of many things without
stating the manner and origin of their existence.
[700] Valentinus accepted the whole canon (integro instrumento), and the
most important work of Basilides was a commentary on the Gospel: Tert.
_de præsc. hær._ 38.
[701] Tert. _de præsc. hær._ 18. It is important to contrast the
arguments of Tertullian with those of Clement of Alexandria, and of both
with the practice which circumstances rendered necessary. In _Strom._ 7.
16 and 17, Clement makes Scripture the criterion between the Church and
the heretics, though he assumes that all orthodox teaching is apostolic
and uniform.
[702] The combination is first found in _Apost. Const._ Bk. ii. pp. 14,
10. 16, 25. 51. 17, 20. 58, 22.
[703] Routh, _Rel. Sacr._ iii. p. 290; Harnack, p. 644.
[704] Cf. the definitions of faith in Clem. Al. _Strom._ 2. cc. 2 and 3.
[705] αἵρεσις is used in Clem. Al. _Strom._ 7. 15, of the true system
of Christian doctrine: ἡ τῷ ὄντι ἀρίστη αἵρεσις: as in Sext. Empir.
(_Pyrrh._ p. 13, § 16) it meant only adherence to a system of dogmas (no
standard implied).
[706] _Ad Scap._ 2.
[707] Philosophers had abused each other. Theologians followed in
their track. The “cart-loads of abuse they emptied upon one another”
(ὅλας ἁμάξας βλασφημιῶν κατεσκέδασαν ἀλλήλων, Lucian, _Eunuch._ 2) are
paralleled in, e.g. Gregory of Nyssa.
[708] See Lecture V. p. 135.
[709] Socrates, _H. E._ p. 177, ἕνασις τοῦ σώματος, of the corporate
unity of a philosophical school.
[710] _Didaché_, cc. 1-3.
[711] _Apost. Const._ p. 1. 15-17.
[712] _Ib._ 5. 20-22.
[713] _Ib._ 1. 6.
[714] “We Christians are remarkable,” says Tertullian (_Ad Scap._
2), “only for the reformation of our former vices.” The plea of the
Apologists was based on the fact that the Christians led blameless lives:
_de causâ innocentiæ consistam_, Tert. _Apol._ c. 4.
[715] The Elchasaites, ap. _Hipp._ 9. 15.
[716] Weingarten, _Zeittafeln_, p. 12. See also Lightfoot, _Ignatius_,
vol. ii. pp. 310-312.
[717] Weingarten, p. 17.
[718] Eusebius, _H. E._ 4. 22, 4.
[719] The very terms heresy and heterodox bear witness to the action of
the Greek philosophical schools on the Christian Church: αἵρεσις is used
in Sext. Empir. _Pyrrh._ p. 13, of any system of dogmas, or the principle
which is distinctive of a philosophical school: cf. Diels, _Doxogr. Gr._
pp. 276, 573, 388. In Clem. Alex. _Strom._ 7. 15, it is used to denote
the orthodox system. Ἑτεροδόξους is used of the dogmatics from point of
view of a sceptic: Sext. Empir. _adv. Math._ p. 771, § 40. Josephus uses
it of the men of the other schools or parties as distinguished from the
Essenes, _de Bell. Jud._ 2. 8. 5. For the place of opinion in Gnostic
societies, with its curious counterpart in laxity of discipline, see
Tert. _de præsc._ 42-44. He speaks of the Valentinians, _adv. Val._, as
“frequentissimum plane collegium inter hæreticos.” Cf. Harnack, 190 ff.,
also 211. The very cultivation of the _Gnosis_ means the supremacy of the
intellect.
[720] Tertullian, _de Spectaculis_, c. 4. If γνῶσις was important as
an element in salvation side by side with πίστις—or if πίστις included
γνῶσις—then also the rejection of the right faith was a bar to salvation:
hence heresy was regarded as involving eternal death: Tert. _de præsc._ 2.
[721] Tert. _de Spect._ c. 4.
[722] διδαχή, here expressly used of the moral precepts in c. 2. 1.
[723] c. 11. 1, 2.
[724] c. 11. 8, 10; cf. Herm. _Mand._ 11. 7 and 16.
[725] c. 12. 1, 3-5.
[726] The _jura_, i.e. the _communicatio pacis et appellatio
fraternitatis et contesseratio hospitalitatis_, were controlled (_regit_)
by the tradition of the creed (_unius sacramenti traditio_), Tert. _de
præsc._ 20.
[727] _Communicamus cum ecclesiis apostolicis, quod nulla doctrina
diversa; hoc est testimonium veritatis_, Tert. _ibid._ 21.
[728] Lect. vi. p. 164 sq.
INDEX,
CONTAINING THE CHIEF TOPICS, PROPER NAMES, AND TECHNICAL TERMS, REFERRED
TO IN THE LECTURES.
_Italicized subdivisions of a title are elsewhere treated in more detail
as separate titles_
Abstract ideas, Greek tendency to, 116-118.
Æon, common Gnostic idea, 190;
two ways of viewing the Æons, 258 fin., 259.
Africanus, Julius, as an exegete, 81.
Alexandrine School, its philosophy, 81;
on moral probation, 232;
on God’s transcendence, 255.
See also _Philo_ and _Origen_.
Allegorism, 58 ff.;
connection with the “mysteries,” 59, cf. 66;
ethical, 60;
physical, 61;
the Stoics, 61-63;
later exponents, 64;
The temper widespread in religion, 65;
Hellenistic Jews, 65 ff., e.g. Aristobulus and Philo, 66-69, 72,
128;
early Christian exegesis, especially Gnostic, 69 ff.;
compared with Philo’s, 72;
prophecy its main subject, 72-74;
an O. T. Apologetic, 77-79;
Reactions, 79-82;
dogmatic complication, 82;
irony of its history, _ib._;
use and abuse, 83;
its place in modern life, 83-85.
Alogi, 252, n. ².
Ambrose of Milan, his ethics Stoic, 169.
Antiochene School, its exegesis, 81, 82.
Apologists mark transition, e.g. 126-131;
idea of creation, 196;
free-will, 231;
transcendence of God, 252, 253;
_Logos_ doctrine, 261-263, 267, 268.
Apostolic doctrine, idea of, 316, 317;
“Apostles’ Creed,” 317-319.
_Apostolical Constitutions_, Bk. i., its ethical type of teaching,
161, cf. 132, 336;
Bk. ii., on place of discipline, 162, 163;
Bks. ii. and viii., on Lord’s Supper, 301.
Aristobulus, his allegorism, 66 fin.
Aristotle, his use of _ousia_, 269, 270;
of _pistis_, 311.
_Askesis_ (ἄσκησις), Greek, 148 ff.;
in Philo, 148;
reduced to system, e.g. “retreats,” 148-150, Christian, 164 ff.;
its germ, 164, 165;
ran parallel to Greek, 166, 167;
Monachism, 167, 168.
Association at first voluntary, 334, 335.
Associations, Greek religious, 290 ff.
Syncretistic, akin to “mysteries,” 290, 291;
purity of life required, 141;
mixed elements, 291, 292;
effects on Christianity, 292-295, cf. 141.
Athenagoras on absolute creation, 196;
transcendence of God, 253;
his Monism, 265.
Baptism and dualism, 19.
Primitive simplicity, 294, 295;
its formula, 315;
its ethical character among the Elchasaites, 337;
later change in name, 295, 296;
in time, 296, 297;
minor features—“_symbolum_,” lights, &c., 298, 299;
late ritual, 299, 300;
Gnostic realism, 306;
and unction, 307.
Its importance, 341, 342.
Basilides characterized, 9, n. ²;
his view of creation, 195, 196;
of transcendence, 254, 255;
genesis of the _Logos_, 263.
Bishops, and the “rule of faith,” 317, 318;
speculative interpretation by consensus, 326, 327;
results, 327 ff.
Canon of N. T., development of the idea, 319-321.
Catholic Church, its genesis, 11, 132;
put an end to “prophesying,” 107;
a fusion of Christianity and Greek philosophy, 125;
unconsciously Hellenized, 132-135;
as a “_corpus permixtum_,” 164.
Celsus, his and Porphyry’s polemic against Christian allegorism, 80;
on relation of Christianity and philosophy, 127, 128, cf. 11 init.
Christianity, primitive:
the New Law, 158-162;
its ethical idea of God, 224, 225;
its theological basis, 238, 239, 251, 252.
Church, its early character, 335;
holiness, 335-337;
hope, 337, 338.
Clement of Alexandria, his allegorism, 70;
appeal to hieroglyphics, 71;
and N. T. allegories, 76;
on Christianity and philosophy, 127;
on the Conservatives, 130, 131.
_Clementines, the_: their Old Testament criticism, 71;
God just and good, 229, 230.
Consecration of the elements: the formula secret, 302, n. ⁶.
Conservatism: Clement and Tertullian on it, 130, 131;
in Ebionites and Elchasaites, 252, 337;
often not recognized as such (cf. Ebionites), e.g. in Origen, 323;
the simpler sort, 324;
Paul of Samosata, 327, cf. 345, 346;
in Puritanism, 347, 348;
Monachism, 348, 349.
Creed, the, 313 ff.;
its germs, 313, 314;
the baptismal formula, 314, 315;
becomes a test, 315;
expanded, 315, 316;
by “Apostolic teaching,” 316, 317;
the “Apostles’ Creed” of the Bishops (παράδοσις ἐκκλησιαστική),
317-319.
Cyprian characterized, 8.
Dæmons, 246, especially n. ³.
Definition among the Greeks, 118;
influence on Catholic Church, 135, 330, 331.
Development not arrested, 332, 351, 352.
Dialectic, Greek, 118 fin.
_Didaché, the_: the “Two Ways” emphasizes conduct, 160, 161, 335, 336;
and the idea of wages, 225;
its simple theology, 251, 252;
Baptism, 294, 295, cf. 315;
the Lord’s Supper, 300, 301;
intercommunion based on moral test, 343, 344.
Dio Chrysostom characterized, 6;
on “_askesis_,” 150.
Dionysius Areopagites sums up the influence of the “mysteries,” 303,
304.
Discipline, early Christian, 162 ff.;
in _Apost. Const._ Bk. ii., 162, 163;
its Puritan ideal, 163;
later “_corpus permixtum_” idea, 164.
Dogma (δόγμα), its original sense, 119, 120;
later Dogmatism, 121-123;
the age of Dogmatism, 280.
Dualism and Baptism, 19;
and Stoicism, _ib._;
its basis, 175;
Platonic, 177;
variously expressed, 178-180;
later modified, 181;
in Christian theories of creation, 194, 195;
transition in Tatian, 195.
Ebionites become “heretics,” 132;
as Conservatives, 252, n. ².
Education, Greek, 26 ff.;
its forms literary, 27;
mainly Grammar and Rhetoric, 28 ff.;
the poets its main study, 30;
also a _littérateur_ philosophy, 32 ff.;
spite of protest, 34;
its extent, 35 ff.
Epictetus characterized, 6;
as moral reformer, 142 ff.;
his attitude, 143, 144;
quoted, 144-147;
on “_askesis_,” 149;
his two planes of ethics, 152:
“follow Nature,” 152-155;
“follow God,” 155-158.
Essentia: its bad Latinity a source of disuse, 277, especially n. ³.
Ethics, Greek, 139 ff.
Average morality, 139;
philosophic ethics, 140;
moral reformation in first centuries A.D., 140, 141;
in religious guilds and philosophy, 141;
its relation to Logic and Literature, 142, 143;
in Epictetus, 143 ff.;
moral gymnastic, 147;
_askesis_, 148 ff.;
the “philosopher,” 150 ff.;
contents of ethical teaching, e.g. in Epictetus, 152 ff.
Ethics, Christian, 158-170.
Compared with Greek, 158;
its basis and characteristic idea (sin), 158, 159;
agreement upon value of conduct, 159;
the “Two Ways,” 160, 161;
_Apost. Const._ Bk. i., 161;
_discipline_, earlier and later, 162-164;
Christian _askesis_, 164-168;
deterioration of average ethics, 168, 169;
victory of Greek ethics in Roman Law of Rights, 169, 170.
Evolutionary ideas among the Gnostics, as regards creation, 177,
190-193;
revelation, 257 ff.;
genesis of the _Logos_, 263 ff.
Exorcism in relation to Monism, 20, especially n.;
in Baptism, 307, 308, n. ¹.
Faith (πίστις), history of its usage, 310 ff.;
in Old Testament, 310, 331;
Greek philosophy, 311;
Philo, 311, 312.
Christian form issuing in the _Creed_, 313 ff.;
relation to New Testament Canon, 319 ff.
Further speculative development, 321, 322;
“_gnosis_” by the side of “_pistis_,” 323 ff. and 339-341;
check found in consensus of Bishops, 326;
expansion of Creed, 327;
contrasted uses of term “belief,” 328;
majority and minority views, 229;
recapitulation, 330.
Fitting, the, as a Stoic category, 153, 154;
root of “_officium_” and “_debitum_,” 154, 155.
“Generation, eternal,” 267;
essential, 268;
Origen’s contributions, _ib._
_Gnosis_ (γνῶσις) as a tendency, 129, 130;
side by side with “_pistis_” in Catholicism, 130-134, cf. 323 ff.
and 339-341;
as well as in Neo-Platonism, 133.
Gnosticism between two fires, 9;
allegorizes the Old Testament, 70;
also the Gospel, 75.
Its cosmogonies, 190;
evolutional types, 190-198;
hypothesis of a lapse, 198;
opposition from without and within, 193 fin.;
Basilides on matter and God, 195, 196.
Idea of transcendence, 251:
e.g. Basilides and Marcus, 254.
Modalism, 257 ff.
Connecting link with the Mysteries, 305 ff.;
e.g. _unction_ and sacramental realism, 306, 308, 309.
Attitude to tradition and the Scriptures, 325.
Grammar in Greek education, 28 ff.
γραμματική, and γραμματιστική, 28 fin.;
its elements, 29, 30.
Guilds: see _Associations_.
Hellenism characterized, 13, 14.
Heresy, original use of term, 340, n. ³.
Hippolytus, 6;
his theory of creation, 203.
History, its difficulties and rewards, 22-24.
Homer in Greek thought, 51 ff.;
in Christian theology, 69, 70.
Homily, the, 109-113.
_Homoousios_ (ὁμοούσιος) shared senses of “_ousia_,” 272;
first used of God by the Gnostics, 274;
its ambiguity, 274-276.
_Hyparxis_ (ὕπαρξις) = “_hypostasis_,” 275, especially n. ².
_Hypostasis_ (ὑπόστασις), relation to “_ousia_,” 275;
gradually specialized = πρώτη οὐσία, 276 f.;
further defined by aid of “_prosôpon_” (πρόσωπον) through use of
“_persona_,” 277, 278;
usage often doubtful, 278.
ἱεράρχης and cognate terms for ministrants, 303, n. ¹.
Immortality in the Mysteries, 289, 290.
Initiation (τελετή): its stages, 284, n. ³;
its idea, 285.
Proclamation, 285, 286;
confession and baptism (κάθαρσις, λουτρόν), 287;
sacrifice, procession, &c., 287, 288;
mystic drama, its nature, 288-290.
Inspiration in Greece, connected with rhythm, 51.
Irenæus, 8:
his theory of creation, 202, 203;
on Justice and Goodness in God, 228;
on free-will, 231;
his _Logos_ doctrine, 262, 263, cf. 266, n. ¹, 267, n. ⁴;
view of the Eucharistic elements, 302, n. ¹.
Judaism as basis of Christian theology, 238, 239.
Justin Martyr, 8;
on Christianity and philosophy, 126;
on free-will, 231;
on God’s transcendence, 253;
_Logos_ doctrine, 261, 262;
genesis of the _Logos_, 266;
nature of the _Logos_, 267, 268.
_Logoi_ (λόγοι), Stoical (= laws), 180;
compared with Platonic “ideas,” 181, 182, cf. 180;
appear in Philo’s “forces,” 185;
their sum the _Logos_, 176, 180, 182.
_Logos_, the, in Philo, 247 ff.;
relation to God, 249, 250;
and “_logoi_,” 259-261;
growth of _Logos_ doctrine, 261-263;
genesis of the _Logos_, 263, 264;
προφορικὸς and ἐνδιάθετος, 265, n. ¹;
nature of the _Logos_, 267, 268.
Lucian and the Antiochene exegesis, 81, 82.
Marcion, his ditheistic tendency, 227, 230;
his idea of a Canon, 321;
his literal method, 325.
Marcus: syncretistic grouping of metaphors under term “_logoi_,” 190;
God’s transcendence, 255.
Maximus of Tyre, 6;
quoted for God’s transcendence, 242.
Mediation of God’s transcendence: see _Logos_.
Metaphysics and revelation, 137, 138.
Modalism, its two types, 257 ff.
Monachism: parallel of Greek and Christian, 167, 168;
a reaction, 348, 349.
Monarchianism a witness to older “Monarchia,” 206, 207.
Monism, in baptism and exorcism, 20;
its basis, 175;
Stoic, 175-177;
self-evolution of God, 177.
Montanism: a survival of “prophecy,” 107;
a reaction, 339.
Mysteries: their connection with allegory, 66;
Greek, 283;
_initiation_ at Eleusis, 284 ff.;
together with religious _guilds_ affect Christianity, 292 ff.;
generally, 293;
specially as to _Baptism_, 294 ff.;
and _Lord’s Supper_, 300 ff.;
culmination of influence, 303-305;
Gnostics a bridge, 305 ff.
General result, 309.
μύησις, μυσταγωγός, 296, 297.
Natura: see φύσις.
νόμος καινός, 158, cf. 159-162 (especially note).
Novatianism a Puritan reaction, 347, 348.
Ocellus Lucanus on idea of transcendence (supra-cosmic), 242, n. ¹.
Origen, 8:
his apologetic use of allegorism, 77, 78;
defence of it, 80;
his cosmogony a theodicy, 204-206;
its grand scale, 233-237;
shapes _Logos_ doctrine, 267 (especially n. ⁴), 268;
his _De principiis_ the first dogmatic system, 323.
_Ousia_ (οὐσία), three Aristotelian senses [(i.) = _hylê_; (ii.) =
_substantia concreta_; (iii.) = _subst. abstracta_], 269, 270.
Its later history in Platonic realism, 271, 272.
Difficulties in its application to God, 273 f.;
not popularly understood, 279.
Paul of Samosata, his case, 345, 346, cf. 326.
_Persona_ appropriated for _hypostasis_, 277, 278.
Philo and Philonian writings a valuable bridge, 7, 128, 182;
his allegorism, 67-69;
his “literal” _v._ “deeper” sense compared with Christian exegesis,
72;
God the ultimate cause, 182, 183;
monistic elements, 183, 184;
dualistic, 184, 185;
his “forces,” in plurality, 185, 186;
and unity, 186, 187;
but God is Creator or Father, 187, 188;
God’s transcendence, 244 ff.;
intermediaries, 247;
distinctions in God’s nature, 247 ff.
Philosophy in Greek education, 32 ff.;
as a profession, 40 ff.;
its “_damnosa hereditas_,” 138;
its decay amid dogma, and legacy to Christendom, 280, 281.
Philosopher, the, as moral reformer, 150;
outward marks, 151.
Platonism and Christianity, 81, 129;
its theological affinity, 238;
Plato author of transcendence proper, 240, 241, and n. ¹;
God’s transcendence, 241-243;
dæmons, 246.
Plotinus on transcendence, 243;
genesis of _Logos_, 266, n. ⁵.
Plutarch, 6;
quoted for transcendence, 242;
immortality through “initiation,” 289.
Poetry, its place in the Greek mind, 51 ff.
Political analogies in the Church, 331.
Preaching and “prophesying,” 105 ff.;
of composite origin, 107-109;
the “homily,” 109-113.
Prophecy and divination, 72, 73;
and apologetic, 74;
died with formation of Catholic Church, 107.
πρόσωπον, how used, 278, especially n. ¹;
see _hypostasis_.
Ptolemæus, on God’s transcendence, 251;
his idea of “Æons,” 258 fin., 259.
Puritanism in early Church, 347, 348.
Pythagoreanism and Christianity, 81, 129.
Religion, its political aspect to the Roman, 21;
connected with usage (νόμος), 21, n.
Revelation and metaphysics, 137, 138.
Rhetoric, Greek, 87, 88.
“Rule of Faith:” see _Faith_.
σοφός, its later usage, 26.
Sophistic, its genesis, 87, 88;
mainly on lines of the older Rhetoric, 88-90;
popularized in διαλέξεις, 91;
and itinerant, 92-94;
manner of discourse, 94-97;
its rewards, 97, 98;
and airs, 99.
Objections, 99-101;
reaction led by Stoics like Epictetus, 101-105.
Speculation, its true place in Christianity, 332, 333.
State, its interference with doctrine, 279 f., 345-347.
Stoicism: its view of substance, 19, n.;
and the moral reformation, 141 ff.;
its ethics in Ambrose, 169;
ethical affinities with Christianity, 238;
dæmons, 246.
_Substantia_ at first = _hypostasis_, then _ousia_, 277, cf. 278.
Supper, the Lord’s:
extra-biblical developments, 300 ff.;
in _Didaché_, 300, 301;
_Apost. Const._ Bks. ii. and viii, 301;
the “altar,” its “mysteries,” the sacred formula, 302 and n. ⁶;
“priest,” 303;
culmination in Dionysius, 303, 304;
realism first among Gnostics, 308, 309.
_Symboli traditio_, 298:
cf. _contesseratio_, 344.
σφραγίς, of baptism, 295.
Tatian:
his view of creation, 196;
free-will, 231;
on genesis of _Logos_, 266, n. ¹ and n. ⁵, 267, n. ³.
Teaching profession, 37 ff.;
endowed, 38;
excused public burdens, 39.
τελετή, τελεῖσθαι: see _initiation_, cf. 296.
Tertullian, 8;
his Stoic view of substance, 19, n., 20, n., cf. 254;
on Christianity and philosophy, 126, 127;
the Conservatives, 131, 257, n. ¹;
on creation, 197;
on God as just and good, 229;
on free-will, 232;
transcendence in him supra-cosmic, 254;
genesis of the _Logos_, 265, n. ¹;
nature of the _Logos_, 268;
on ecclesiastical tradition and speculation, 322.
Theodore of Mopsuestia as exegete, 82.
Theophilus on creation, 196;
God’s transcendence, 253;
on genesis of _Logos_, 265, n. ¹, cf. 268.
Transcendence, as of absolute Unity, Being, Mind, 240;
in Plutarch and Maximus, 242;
Plotinus, 243;
its two forms, 244;
Philo, 244, 245.
Absent from earliest Christian teaching, 251 f.;
appears in Apologists, 252, 253;
Gnostics, 254 f.;
Alexandrines, 255 f.;
mediation of, 256 ff., especially 257, n. ².
Unction of (1) exorcism, (2) thanksgiving, 307, 308, especially n. ¹.
φύσις (= _natura_), later use = _ousia_, 278;
sometimes = _hypostasis_, ib.
φωτισμός, of baptism, 295.
Writing as mysterious, 50.
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