The Early Christian Apologists and Greek Philosophy

The Early Christian Apologists and Greek Philosophy

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IME BARLY CHRISTEAN APOLOGISTS

AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY

SSEX

INSTITUTE

*EBUGATION

LIBRARY Te

EFRLY CHRISTIAN g

APOLOGASTS

PHILOSOPHICAL TEXTS AND STUDIES

WIJSGERIGE TEKSTEN EN STUDIES

edited by / onder redactie van

PROF, DR. C. J. DE VOGEL, PROF.

DR. L. M. DE RIJK,

PROE,

DR. A. TH. PEPERZAK,, PROM. DR.

J. PF: M. GEURIS

Uitgaven van het Filosofisch Instituut der Rijksuniversitert te Utrecht L. M. de Rijk, Ph.D., Petvus Abaelardus, Dialectica. First complete edition

of the Parisian manuscript.

B. L. Hiymans Jr., Ph.D., 'AX KH2ZIX. Notes on Epictetus' educational system.

L. M. de Rik, Ph.D., Gavlandus Compotista, Dialectica, First edition of the manuscripts.

Prof. R. H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Evasmus to Descartes. Part I.

Leo Elders S.V.D., Ph.D., Avistotle's Theory of the One.

A commentary on book X of the Metaphysics.

L. M. de Rijk, Ph.D., Logica Modernorum, vol. 1. A contribution to the history of early terminist logic.

W. N. A. Klever,

Ph.D., ANAMNHXIX

en ANATOVH.

Gesprek met Plato en Aristoteles over het menselijk kennen.

A. C. van Geytenbeek, Ph.D., Musonius Rufus and Greek Diatribe.

J. Mansfeld, Ph. D., Die Offenbarung des Parmenides und die menschliche Welt.

W. van Dooren, Ph.D., Het totaliteitsbegrip bij Hegel en zijn voorgangers.

Dr. J. Louet-Feisser, De wijsbegeerte en het wetenschappelijk beroep op de feiten.

C. J.de Vogel, Ph.D., Pythagoras and early Pythagoreanism. An interpretation of neglected evidence on the philosopher Pythagoras.

Leo Elders S.V.D., Ph.D., Avistotle's Cosmology.

A commentary on the De caelo.

Dr. Th. de Boer, De ontwikkelingsgang in het denken van Husserl.

C. de Deugd M.A., Ph.D., D.Litt., The significance of Spinoza's first kind of knowledge.

>» L. M. de Rik, Ph.D., Logica modernorum, vol. IT.

Part I. The origin and early development of the theory of supposition.

Part II. The origin and early development of the theory of supposition.

Texts and indices.

Theo Gerard Sinnige, Ph.D., Matter and Infinity in the Presocratic Schools and Plato.

Kk. Kuypers, Ph.D., Verspreide geschriften. Deel I. Mens en geschiedenis; Deel II. Wetenschap en kunde.

C. J. de Vogel, Philosophia, Part 1, Studies in Greek Philosophy.

J. Mansfeld, The Pseudo-Hippocratic Tyvact IIEPI 'EBAOMAAQN Ch. 1-11 and Greek Philosophy.

H. B. Timothy, The Early Christian A pologists and Greek Philosophy.

DIRS By EMO asEL Y:

TE radi

CHRISTIAN APOLOGISTS

POS EAI.

PHILOSOPHY

exemplified by Irenaeus, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria |

W, SUSSEX INSTITUTE |

OF |

WIGHER EDUGATION

| LIBRARY _ VAIN GOR CUM eC ONE WB Vree As Es Nido 73

© 1972 by Koninklijke Van Gorcum & Comp. B.V., Assen, The Netherlands No parts of this book may be reproduced in any form by print, photoprint, microfilm or any other means without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 90 232 09796 Printed in The Netherlands by Van Gorcum, Assen

PREFACE The pages which follow represent the abridgment and revision of a thesis presented for the Ph. D. degree of the University of Edinburgh.

I wish at this time to take the opportunity of expressing my thanks to Dr. J. H. S. Burleigh who as Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical

History in the University of Edinburgh was mainly responsible for supervising the original research, and more recently for guidance received in particular from Professor C. J. de Vogel in the University of Utrecht and for profitable contacts with Professor J. H. Waszink of the University of Leiden and Professor G. Quispel of the University of Utrecht who read the chapter on Irenaeus and made some helpful suggestions with regard to Gnosticism.

It would be discourteous to omit mention of the university librarians and their staffs who have proved so helpful and of those members of the Filosofisch Instituut whose support and co-operation

I greatly appreciate.

The book in its final form, however, would probably never have shape but for the interest and active participation of Professor C. J. de Vogel. I am grateful for the privelege entirely due to her, of having spent four rewarding months of study at this ancient city and seat of learning.

Note: For the citations from the writings of Irenaeus, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria the following editions have been used:

SANCTI IRENAEI EPISCOPI LUGDUNENSIS LIBROS QUINQUE ADVERSUS

HAERESES edidit W. Wigan Harvey, S.T.B., Cantabrigiae M.DCCC.LVII, 2 vols.

CORPUS CHRISTIANORUM, SERIES LATINA, I - I], TERTULLIANI OPERA,

PARS I, PARS IJ, Turnholti McMLIv.

DIE GRIECHISCHEN CHRISTLICHEN SCHRIFTSTELLER DER ERSTEN DREI

JAHRHUNDERTE, CLEMENS ALEXANDRINUS.

ERSTER BAND. PROTREP-

TICUS UND PAEDAGOGUS,

LEIPZIG,

1905. ZWEITER BAND. STROMATA

BUCH

I-VI, LEIPZIG,

1906. DRITTER BAND. STROMATA BUCH

VII-VIII,

ETC., LEIPZIG, 1909, ed. OTTO STAHLIN.

Utrecht, jan; th,, L972

CONTENTS PREFACE CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER II

IRENAEUS OF LYONS

CHAPTER III

TERTULLIAN OF CARTHAGE

CHAPTER IV

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA

EPILOGUE .

CHAPTER V

INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS

ORAL BERET

INTRODUCTION

The period with which this investigation will be concerned, the special circumstances that gave rise to or arose within that period, as well as the personalities who played a leading part in it might, at first glance, seem matters of slight relevance or importance to the man of the modern age, immersed, as he is, in its technological complexities, under increasing pressure from the demands it makes upon his time and energy and less and less disposed as a consequence to reflect on who he is or what he is living for; yet we shall find, as we proceed, that within the period referred to, far removed though it be in time and place from the contemporary scene, in many respects so alien to our present mood and our way of looking at the world, questions arise which have abiding significance and certain problems come to light which challenged the mind of man to grapple with them then and still challenge us to grapple with them today.

"Nothing is harder to disentangle", as Emile Bréhier points out, "than the history of intellectual thought", during the first two Christian centuries "which witnessed the brief but brilhant resurgence — under Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius — and subsequent disappearance of the great post-Aristotelian systems.

The two centuries also witnessed the rebirth of Athenian idealism as it had existed during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. in the systems of Plato and Aristotle.

Philo of Alexandria at the beginning of the first century A.D., Plutarch of Chaeronea (49-120), then the commentators on Plato... and... on Aristotle were its new exponents.

At the same time a Pythagorean literature, impregnated with Platonism, came into existence.

But alongside the great philosophical schools, how many new trends of thought took shape and penetrated the main-stream of civilization!

The interpenetration of Hellenism and the Near East was continuous.

The Alexandrian Jews, including Philo, were the first to make their influence felt. Then came Christianity, which produced simultaneously

the great Gnostic systems and the apologists. ... Less conspicuous but no less active were the Eastern religions, particularly Mithraism, which had not only their forms of worship and mysteries but also comprehensive views of the world and of human destiny." !

In order to appreciate the situation fully we must see it not only in terms of the bold, objective features thus singled out by Bréhier, but also from the vantage-point of such insight as is afforded into its subtler aspects, and in particular what might be called the psychological background of those first two centuries?.

"The age of which we are speaking had detached men from their old moorings in small communities where the performance of accustomed duties left little room for the question 'What must I do to be saved?' It had launched them on the ocean of a world ringing with contending voices none of which spoke with an authority that inspired unquestioning confidence. If, from one point of view, it was an age marked... by 'failure of nerve', this was the other side of a new sensitiveness to the war of good and evil in the world, which, as the greatest of the Greek philosophers, Plato, had shown, is as it were focused in the human soul, of a keener consciousness of the individual personality, which comes to itself only in and through the struggle to maintain itself against disruption in this intestine conflict." 3

The nature of the question that apparently preoccupied so many people in that age is perhaps, in the way Webb expresses it, shghtly over-suggestive of how the situation would appear, then as now, from the Christian point of view. "How to live? How to be happy in a world so beset with uncertainty?" was the form in which the question rather posed itself to the pagan mentality, and for which the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Sceptics came forward with different answers.

This is not, of course, to deny that "salvation" was much sought after and that numerous cults existed to provide what so many were looking for, whether kings or common men, people surfeited with luxury or submerged in poverty, philosophers or "fools".

Whatever else he might be concerned about, securitas for the Stoic was in the end the chief concern.

1 The History of Philosophy: The Hellenistic and Roman Age. trans. by W.

Baskin. Chicago and London 1965, p. 148.

2 See E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety, Cambridge, 1965.

3 C.C. J. Webb, A History of Philosophy, London, 1915, p. 85.

4 See C. J. de Vogel, Greek Philosophy, Leiden 1964, III, The Hellenistic-Roman Period, nrs. 808 and 809. bo

The immediate success or failure of any of the philosophies then in vogue would understandably in view of the circumstances be measured and determined sooner or later by its capacity to give some sort of meaningful or adequate response.

Amid the "contending voices" three can eventually be heard, louder and more insistent, more sustained and challenging, the voices of Gnosticism, of Greek Philosophy, and of Christianity, beginning to be recognized and already probably conscious of themselves as chief contenders in the struggle that ensues.

In the earliest Christian literature, as has long been known and widely recognized, there are traces here and there of an incipient Gnosticism. That Christianity gave rise to the great Gnostic systems, as Bréhier observes, is true in the sense that Gnosticism from its impact with Christianity proliferated into various forms of "partially Christianized theosophy or religious speculation" which at first attempted from within Christianity to transmute faith and its authoritative content into conceptual knowledge (yv@ouc).

The Gnostics in making the attempt, however, deviated so far from the simple rule of faith as to find themselves ranged against orthodox opinion and set aside as heretics. Thereby one problem at least was solved for early Christianity. The rule of faith was consolidated and secured; but there remained a further problem which the heretics set out to deal with originally and in all probability would have dealt with successfully, had they shown themselves less prone to the devagations that condemned them in the eyes of the orthodox: how a fundamentally scientific expression could be given to the rule of faith itself. The better educated or more cultured class of people as time went on had more and more to be catered for. One of the attractions of Gnosticism for such people was, as W. H. C. Frend points out, that adherence to the Gnostic way of life "did not oblige the believer to put away pagan philosophy and to study only the Bible."! The Gnostics to suit their purpose had to some extent, then, made effective use of the resources of Greek thought, and Christianity might have to abandon any hope of attracting the serious attention and enlisting the allegiance of the educated world unless, as far as the orthodox standpoint permitted, it were prepared somehow to follow suit.

When we come to consider the contest involving Gnosticism, 1 Art., The Gnostic Sects and the Roman Empire, in the Journal of Ecclesiastical

History, vol. V, 1954, p. 30.

Greek philosophy, and Christianity, we can easily discern where the apologists we shall have to deal with stood. Who they were and what the Christian position, as they conceived it, was, presents no great difficulty. The situation is not so simple nor are the lines so clearly drawn where Gnosticism and Greek philosophy are concerned.

The former, according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary,' is a modern term applied to a group of sects and theosophical writers, most if not all of whom broke with Christianity to set up eclectic systems which rivalled Catholicism, not in points of detail, but in their total outlook on life.

Disseminated through the Roman Empire, at the time of their greatest success, in the second and third centuries A.D., they had a tendency to rise in and return to the Orient.

Their imagery and religious temper were oriental in character, but in keeping with "the Hellenistic cultural tradition of which they were the last and most decadent religious product", their philosophy was Greek.

The importance attached to knowledge in the religion of the Hellenistic age took a prominent place in the Gnostic systems. Astral speculation, magic and an "underlying zest for revelation" have been detected in surviving Gnostic books which provide an explanation of the origin of the universe and of the life and death of the god who offers salvation to his followers, and prescribe for the latter the rites whereby they may enter imaginatively and emotionally into the heroic events of the god's career, participate in certain supernatural benefits such as protection against the assaults of Fate and of demoniacal as well as human agencies and receive assurance of a blessed after-life.

On the other hand, from the first century B.C. onward philosophy develops along lines that lead to an affinity with Gnosticism. There is an inclination to dogmatic syncretism.

In Antiochus of Ascalon we find a Stoicized Platonism; the revived Pythagoreanism of the first centuries is thoroughly Platonized, now and then with a good amount of Aristotelian elements added.

In an author such as Moderatus of Gades the later Neoplatonic hierarchy of being is already clearly prefigured. The same tendencies are found in Middle Platonism: the transcendency of God or the First Principle is almost over-emphasized, intermediate degrees — "powers" and "beings" — are introduced. This is true both of Plutarch and of other Middle Platonists, e.g. Apuleius.

1 First ed., p. 390, largely drawn on for this section, but much abridged and partly paraphrased.

The whole view bears a striking similarity to that of the Gnostics.

To the educated adherents of these cults of salvation through knowledge the mystical revelations symbolized an abstract philosophy ; to the uneducated they became vehicles of superstition and undisciplined living.

As regards the less socially and educationally privileged adherents of such cults, another writer says:

Injustice and corruption in public life, grinding taxation, the extremes of wealth and poverty, so that for the mass of the people the conditions in which they lived and worked from day to day were at best uncertain, at worst engendered in them an all but hopeless despair — these were the material hardships that turned men to beliefs and cults which offered hope of an afterlife and of rewards and compensation for earthly suffering.'"'!

The following have been singled out as distinctive features of Gnosticism as referred to in the works of Irenaeus, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria.

God who is spoken of as &yvwortoc ded¢ is, except in Marcion, placed beyond reason and separated from the visible world by a hierarchy of spiritual or semi-spiritual beings. There is a marked dualism of spirit and of matter — regarded as evil, though not in all the Gnostic systems, for according to Valentinus, evil springs from the pleroma or the spiritual world. The latter is populated, as he pictures it, with a whole series of spiritual entities. Sophia, the last of these, leaves the spiritual world and in the middle sphere gives birth to the Demiurge who in ignorance of the realm of spirit creates the visible world and the earthy part of man, he as the offspring of the Demiurge being normally uoyixd¢.

Part of mankind, however, the so-called mvevuatixot, endowed with spirit by some special gift from above, are by nature akin to the higher realm and are for that reason imperishable.

Others again who because of their entanglement in matter are beyond salvation are classed as bAtxot; and there is an intermediate group, the adteEovatot whose salvation depends on whether they wish to be saved or not.

Salvation is represented as the return of the spiritual part of man to the spiritual realm, and Christ, in the system of Valentinus, is sent forth from the pleroma to effect this by redemption. Having healed

1M. L. W. Laistner, Christianity and Pagan Culture in the Later Roman Empire, New York 1951, p. 4.

Sophia of her passions (whence was born the Demiurge) Christ brings gnosis to those on earth — the zvevyuatixot and the Yuytxot who by nature or by choice respectively are turned to the spiritual world.

In the teaching of other Gnostics the return is thought of as the result of inner illumination ("coming back to oneself") or as the soul's journey through the astral spheres for which is required possession of a magic formula,! as described by Irenaeus.

When on its upward journey the soul encounters the companions of the Demiurge it says

— and so passes unscathed on its way — :

"Tamason from the Father who had a pre-existence, and a son in him who was pre-existent; I know myself... for my being was derived from him who was pre-existent and I have come again to my own place whence I went forth.'

On more general lines it may be said of Gnosticism that it is the manifestation of a phenomenon known as Natural Mysticism, based on the belief that behind the external, visible aspects of existence lies the secret of the cosmos, the relatedness of which to man's mundane environment is a downgraded sequence of emanations (such as the aeons spoken of by our apologists), originating in the Absolute (the Pleroma) and terminating in the merely physical or material (the Kenoma).

In a wider sense the phenomenon is not confined to any special age or locality.

In the Western European tradition it has its more modern representatives, under a variety of designations or descriptions, as, life struggling out of the primordial depths to reach its full flowering in man, and, beyond man, in deity (Schelling) ; or natural revelation, conceived as religious enlightenment, based on subjectivism

(Schleiermacher), where the only real difference between God and man is the difference between wisdom and ignorance; or reason which furnishes the right form justifying faith, and the dialectical necessity of evil to divine being (Hegel); or natural endowment with man as the measure of things (Feuerbach); or the syncretism of all the higher ethical religions, in short, Kultur-Protestantismus, with which we find linked the names of Abélard and Leibniz, Eucken and Rickert,

Kant and Windelband.

Working on the content of early Christianity some forms of mG. Jade Vogel, Greek Phil. IM, ar. 1332p.

2 See Adv. haer., I. xiv. 4, 9-13.

Gnosticism or Gnosis, as it is sometimes called, replaced the Jesus of history with the discarnate Christ of docetic mysticism.

F. L. Cross has said with reference to these docetic tendencies that however much the familiar gospels of the New Testament differ from each other in matters of detail, "they all agree in attempting to give historical accounts about Jesus Christ, to describe His life in a definite development which proceeds from His Baptism by John down to His Crucifixion and Resurrection, and in presenting the words and deeds of Jesus in a sometimes very loose sequence but with very concrete data.

Of such a plan, Cross observes, nothing at all is to be found in the Gospel of Truth.

Here no narratives are given, the Crucifixion is announced already at the outset..., while particular facts are not to be found... We are given no 'Logia Iesou' nor do we find the life and works of Jesus set in their connection with the Old Testament revelation as is the case in the New Testament." !

The "Gospel of Truth" here referred to is the second section of the Jung Codex which was originally part of the remains of a Gnostic library discovered at Nag Hammadi, Upper Egypt, in 1945, and in which, to quote Van Unnik, we can "see a Gnostic at work" and "observe the formation of his 'jargon'.""?

The indications are that the Gnostics aimed to have the Gospel of Truth incorporated in the New Testament canon of scripture as a fifth and final gospel, with emphasis not so much on the word "Gospel" setting it over against the gospels already included in the canon, as on the words "of Truth", in order to make a distinction between &-Aydern, knowledge and Ano», forgetfulness of the Father, which is for Gnosticism the origin of sin. Not words and thoughts, it seems, concern the writer but the method whereby God has abolished the &yvor« in which human sinfulness consists.?

Irenaeus makes explicit mention of the Gospel of Truth in the Adversus haereses.4

He has been discussing at some length the quadriform principle, as seen in living creatures; in the four gospels; in the manner of God's

1H. C. Puech, G. Quispel, W. C. van Unnik, The Jung Codex; a newly recovered gnostic papyrus, transl. and ed. by F. L. Cross, London, 1955, p. 95.

25 bid: p. U2Z5.

Sibid p: 104105; 4 TIT. xi. 12, 20-26.

Veritatis Evangelium, he entitles it, describing it as non olim conscriptum.

redemptive activity in Christ; and in the covenants given by God to man in the course of history. He then goes on to speak of those who would destroy the fourfold aspect of the Gospel in the sense of representing that there are more or fewer gospels than those usually recognized, the Valentinians in particular who boast possession of a greater number of gospels than those which actually exist. The Gospel of Truth which is one of these Valentinian inventions, he informs us,

"agrees in nothing with the gospels of the apostles", the Valentinians having in fact no gospel which is not full of blasphemy.

In view of the recovery in our time of further original Gnostic documents research on which has added greatly to the little that was known, comparatively speaking, in this field till recent years, one sometimes hears it said that the early Christian apologist, like Irenaeus, was deficient in appreciation of what Gnosticism was or what the Gnostics were getting at.

This is a wide-ranging topic with which, 1t would be well to inform the reader, what this book sets out to deal with, is not vitally or more than incidentally concerned. The coincidence will, nevertheless, have been noted between what Irenaeus says of the Gospel of Truth and what modern scholarship has brought to light concerning it. In the concluding part of the Preface to Book II of the Adversus haereses he announces his intention of giving the entire Gnostic system extended treatment under separate heads.

He will provide a demonstration, never before made available, of the Gnostic mélange of ideas, thereby exposing and overthrowing it. Then at II.xx1.2,1-8 of the Adversus haereses he states that having dealt with the Pleroma and the part in particular that relates to the Ogdoad he will proceed to deal with the rest of the Gnostic system, in doing which, he remarks, perhaps by way of apology to the reader, he will, because of the incoherence of the Gnostics, be enquiring about things which have no actual existence; but he has no other choice because, he says, the task has been entrusted to him and the reader wishes a full and completely detailed statement of the position taken by the Gnostics so as to be able to oppose and defeat their arguments. This sounds very much like a man who knew what he was about and went about it in a businesslike and thorough1 For contemporary discussion of this question, pro and contra, see N. Brox,

Offenbarung, Gnosis und gnostischer Mythos ber Ivenaeus von Lyon, Salzburg 1966, and F. M. M. Sagnard, La Gnose valentinienne et le témoignage de Saint

Tvénée, Paris 1947.

going fashion.

It surely justifies our saying that, if the early Christian apologists, Irenaeus in particular, had not been capable of understanding the true nature and intention of the Gnostic forces ranged against them in their time and of dealing with them accordingly, it is extremely doubtful whether more than the merest shreds of Christianity in its original character and form would have survived.

As for Gnosticism, so for Greek philosophy in the early Christian apologists.

Here again the outlines are anything but clear-cut and definite. For this the polemical nature of the apologetic writings may be in part responsible.

The issue, however, has also tended to be obscured by certain pronouncements on the subject of Greek Philosophy or certain constructions placed on it by writers in comparatively recent years.

It may, therefore, serve a useful purpose if, before proceeding further, we attempt to deal with some of these.

In the section of the Oxford Classical Dictionary already quoted from, there is, to begin with, a reference to "the intuitional and mystical direction given to philosophy",! in the Hellenistic-Roman period, "through the synthesis of Platonism and Stoicism brought about by Posidonius."

I am afraid that such a statement gives ample grounds for misunderstanding. Certainly the terms of intuitionism and mysticism are too vague and in this case unjustified.

What can be said with a sufficient degree of certainty is the following. First Posidonius taught a theory — and, it seems, a theory peculiar to himself — of the vital force of the elements, and conceived of the whole creation as a unified harmonious organism.

His was a "kind of spiritualizing Stoicism".

A "marked spiritualism" of a sort may be detected in his thinking, while he can give expression to a "strongly 'dualistic' or spiritualistic"

1 W. Windelband, early in the present century, was among the first to represent ancient Greek philosophy in this light. After some discussion of the sources of mysticism in Philo he writes as follows:

"In ahnlicher Weise haben endlich die Platoniker des ersten und zweiten Jahrhunderts n. Chr. unter dem EinfluB der neupythagoreischen Lehre einen

Mystizismus ausgebildet, der das glaubige Vertrauen in die géttliche Offenbarung an die Stelle der ethischen Lebensweisheit der fritheren Philosophie setzte. Als ihr Hauptvertreter ist Plutarchos von Chaeronea, neben ihm etwa noch Apuleius von Madaura zu nennen." Geschichte der Antiken Philosophie, Dritte Auflage bearbeitet von Prof. Dr. Adolf Bonhéffer, Munchen 1912, p. 310.

2 It was Professor De Vogel who sharpened my sense of criticism with regard to this whole picture and the possible role of Posidonius in it. In the following pages a great deal is due to her inspiration.

conception of man. His theory ot "natural mantic" (on the basis of his "view of soul and its immortality") and "technical mantic" essentially based on sympatheia, i.e. the connection of everything with everything in nature is essentially Stoic and can be traced back to Chrysippus.

It is his view of "celestialimmortality", foundin the Somnium Scrpionts, which was, no doubt, most particularly his.

On the ground of the texts referred to Posidonius has frequently been represented by modern writers as a mystic.

It is better to confine ourselves to the statement that he was one of the founders of that philosophy of synthesis which prevailed during the first centuries A.D. and a possible "forerunner of Neoplatonism".

Most certainly he was a reputed scientist in his day, a man of vast erudition and a wide field of scholarly interest.1 In his case the term mysticism should rather be avoided.

To speak of Greek philosophy at any time in terms of mysticism seems to me rather a parody of its true nature and a travesty of facts.

It was at heart essentially and consistently rational, in the efforts of its earliest representatives to frame a rational interpretation of the cosmos and in connection with every problem to which their successors addressed themselves.

Professor C. J. de Vogel, in a paper on "What Philosophy meant to the Greeks", first published in Internat. Phil. Quart. 1961,? gives a survey from which I take the following:

The community at Croton founded and inspired by Pythagoras fostered "a form of ethico-religious education" or "a spiritualand moral elevation of the human personality" which was "cultivated by means of the intellect". Explaining on one occasion what he understood the philosophic attitude to be Pythagoras declared that utter disinterestedness seeking only after truth and knowledge is the mark of the philosopher. A spiritual or moral aim is there without a doubt, but reason is its base or starting-point.

The same is true of Socrates for whom philosophy was "pure theory ruling practical life" or "a rational and methodical reflection, aiming at a clear view of the concepts which we continually use in the field of morals".

But the method meant to him "a rendering an account of oneself", leading people to a true grasp of moral principles, the latter being for him "rooted in a 1 See C. J. de Vogel, Greek Phil. III, nrs. 1181-1199 incl., passim.

2 The revised text is now available in the volume Philosophia, part I, by C. J. de Vogel, ch. I (Series: Philosophical Texts and Studies edited by the Fil.

Institute of Utrecht University, nr. 19), Assen 1970.

transcendent order".

The "vision of transcendent truth, ...was the goal of intellectual investigation", although always with a practical aim in view. The rational method involved was not, however, means in relation to end or something subordinate to the object striven for.

The rational "was philosophy, properly speaking", for Socrates.

So, for Plato, a philosophical view of moral principles, i.e. a strictly noetic grasp of a transcendent Reality, is a powerful force, capable of transforming and of elevating human personality, as well as political and social communities, to a superior state.

Philosophy for him was "pure theory"; but always implying a certain way of life... "a life conducted according to the promptings of the spirit".

This dominant strain runs on through Aristotle, through the Stoics and Epicureans to Plotinus whose philosophy, "though it ends in mysticism, was thoroughly a way of Greek dialectic, as intellectual as any Greek philosophy ever was". With him "we find Greek spiritualism in its most refined and mature form". ... This, however, does not in the least detract from the fact that the method is an intellectual one: for Plotinus "the life of the spirit" is a life of thinking... purely speculative and abstract... "that finds its object within itself".

During the course of the first two centuries A.D., Greek philosophy had in some respects undergone a transformation which appeared, on the surface, at any rate, to hold out a prospect of its ability to cope with and to satisfy the soul-searchings of the age. In the opinion of the French scholar, P. de Labriolle, the agonizing uncertainty which, in the reign of Nero, weighed on the lives of so many people had engendered in them a demoralizing pessimism. There were many, says

De Labriolle, who confronted with the inner confusion which they felt besought a little light and comfort from philosophy, above all from Stoicism.

Their plea, in his opinion, did not go unheard, Seneca and Tacitus being full of examples which demonstrate the actively beneficial role of Stoicism and the undeniable effectiveness of the guidance that it gave. Philosophy, it is alleged, in this way, narrowed the gap which had tended to separate or isolate it from the common ways of men; "...elle alla jetant a tous, sur les carrefours et dans les basiliques, les préceptes naguere réservés a une élite", so that sceptics like Lucian of Samosata refused to take them seriously.!

This is a useful enough generalization, but like all generalizations it is apt to convey the wrong impression or have unwarranted ideas

1 La Réaction paienne, Paris 1934, p. 59-60.

read into it.

It certainly tends to suggest that philosophy at large abandoned, as De Labriolle has stated, its "tradition séculaire"! and went into the highways and byways of the Graeco-Roman world, preaching what had hitherto been regarded as the special preserve of the wise and prudent and imparting wholesale to the masses the cherished tenets of the schools.

The first comment such a suggestion must call forth by way of criticism is that the masses received scant attention and that the problems they had to face were unaffected, far less alleviated by the moralizing of a Seneca whose ethical direction catered for the upper class of his day, for individuals in fact of his own class who, like himself, had begun to feel the severe strain of existence under the Neronian régime, and who having long ceased to look for strength or comfort from the official state reigion turned to a man like Seneca who was in a position to offer them the consolations of philosophy and who performed for them a function somewhat analogous to that of the present-day psychiatrist. De Labriolle is correct in his diagnosis of the moral and spiritual condition of the age, but wrong in his estimate where certain other things are concerned.

The following comment by C. J. de Vogel, which is very much to the point, will help to restore the perspective somewhat:

"During the Hellenistic-Roman period philosophy remains a school-discipline, and as such preserves a technical character.

E.g. the letters of Epicurus, especially those to Herodotus and to Pythocles, and the discussions between Stoics and Sceptics. Even a man like Epictetus shows himself to be interested in purely theoretical questions (Diss. III 9,21).

Therefore, one would be mistaken in thinking that after Aristotle Greek philosophy was made popular and preached for everyman.

It was, but during the last three centuries B.C. only occasionally, by some few individuals, (first of all Bion of Borysthenes) ; more generally during the Koman Empire, but even then not so as to take the place

of the school-philosophy, in its more technical sense.''?

This brings sharply into focus the frontier along which the Christian and the non-Christian thinker faced each other and enables us better to appreciate the pagan attitude to Christianity.

A brillant, versatile and practically-minded man like the younger Pliny, for example, as typical a product as anyone could find of Greek

1 ibid., ad loc.

2C. J. de Vogel, Greek Phil. III, nrs. 806, 1249 f.

intellectualism in his day, has to confess that he is at something of a loss when for the first time Christianity confronts him at close quarters in his management of provincial affairs.

Here is something which, apparently, he does not understand, which he had not thought it worth the trouble to investigate till then, notwithstanding that inquisitive mentality of his that pries into so many other things.

A similar inability on the part of the philosophers to grasp what the new religion was, to get beneath the surface and penetrate to the inner significance or the secret of Christianity is singled out by De Labriolle in the Introduction to his La Réaction paienne, previously referred to, as one of the reasons for their failure to cope at the intellectual level with their Christian adversaries.

The latter occasionally are no less baffled to penetrate what might be called the hard core of the habit of mind ingrained in their opponents from so far back in their intellectual past. Paul's approach to the Epicurean and the Stoic philosophers at Athens, as we read, is met with amused derision, in spite of the pains he takes to communicate with them in their own language and to present his message in the garb of Greek philosophical literature.

His talk of things which he expected them to believe without — as they naturally would have expected — some sort of scientific proof of their validity or reasoned demonstration of their truth, seemed simple foolishness to men the touchstone of whose judgment in all such things was the rational principle which then, as from the beginning, ruled not only in the Stoic and the Epicurean but in all Greek philosophy.

In view of this we can, even at this stage, anticipate what success would be likely to attend the efforts of the later Christian apologists — the rapport with Greek intellectualism striven for by Clement of Alexandria, the at times almost fiercely intransigent reaction of Tertullian, and the relatively neutral position taken up by Irenaeus.

Now and then it is suggested that Greek philosophy failed or succumbed to Christianity.

W. H. V. Reade, a writer in the older Anglo-Saxon tradition says:

"Neither through a general misconception of its business nor for lack of men capable of handing on the torch did Greek philosophy languish and fade away, but because, with all its noble achievements, it had failed in the end to reveal the Good.

... Beyond question it was the failure of Greek philosophy to reach the common folk, its inability to permeate and transform the pagan cults, that most clearly exposed its impotence to compete with the Christian Gospel for the mastery of human life.

... No one had perceived more clearly than

Plato, or confessed more openly, that between the philosophers and the general public was set a most formidable gulf, but neither he nor any of his successors had found a way to bridge it that did not involve the sacrifice of truth."

Greek philosophy, in fact, did not "languish and fadeaway".

It lived on to preserve much if not all of its original character and exert its far from negligible influence on Western European thought, down to the present day. This is well illustrated in the case of Boethius, author of the famous Consolatio philosophiae, written during his imprisonment.

He is one of the most important channels through which the philosophy of the ancient world flowed on into the thought of the Middle Ages which owe so much both to Plato and to Aristotelianism.

The influence of the latter is partly due to the fact that he translated into Latin Aristotle's Organon, thus transmitting a knowledge of Aristotelian logic to the early Mediaeval philosophers, but, first of all,

"Philosophy" reveals to him, when in prison, the Good as the First Principle and basis of all things, identified with the Creator of the world in that famous Neoplatonic hymn of Cons. III, m. 9.

Platonism suffered a set-back after 529 A.D., when the university of Athens was closed down by Justinian and in some quarters this is seen as the eclipse of what promised to be of the greatest value to Christian thought, in that it marked "...the official termination of that long effort made by some of the greatest of early Christian thinkers" — amongst whom Clement of Alexandria is mentioned as typical — "to absorb the philosophy of ancient Greece, especially as expressed in its most metaphysical form in the works of Plato, into the Christian tradition."

Reade is not quite correct in saying that Greek philosophy had failed to reveal the Good. Few people who can and do read Plato ina sincere and sustained effort to understand him can really fail to realize what he envisaged the Good to be or in what he believed it to consist.

The Idea of the Good in a Stoic like Seneca, not to mention other representatives of the Greek philosophic schools, comes up for statement and discussion, not once only, but time and again. It is not that Plato, as he saw it, did not know what the Good was — in a sense he did — but that he was "unable to communicate to the masses the truth which he knew himself."? Augustine in the De vera relig. 3 invites us

1 The Christian Challenge to Philosophy, London 1951, p. 10-11.

2 P. Sherrard, The Greek East and the Latin West, London 1959, p. 111.

8 C. J. de Vogel, Philosophia, Part I, p. 21.

to suppose that in Plato's lifetime one of his disciples has asked him about the religion that really leads to truth and happiness.

Plato's explanation is that the truth is seen only by the spirit, not as we see things with our eyes, that every soul cleaving to this truth finds there its happiness and perfection, that nothing so much hinders us from perceiving the truth as a life of pleasure and the deceptive images of sensible objects, impressed on us, through the body, by this world; that one must fix the soul's attention upon the changeless form of things and upon beauty which is not subject to spatial and temporal influence, which always remains constant, which maintains its unity and its identity intact, and the existence of which men do not recognize.

Suppose now, says Augustine, that while the Master was holding forth in this strain, the disciple asked him whether he considered worthy of divine honours a great and godly man who should persuade the multitude that, if they could not perceive such things, they should at least believe them, he, I imagine, would reply that this is not possible by human agency unless someone whom the very power and wisdom of God perhaps absolved from the nature of things itself, enlightened not by the teaching of men but by illumination privy to him from birth, endowed with grace, fortified with strength, in short sustained with dignity of a high order, by despising everything that sinful men desire, persisting in everything they recoil from, and doing everything that evokes their wonder, should by the height of his devotion and authority convert mankind to such a salutary belief.

What Plato thought impossible, says Augustine further on (op.cit., 6), has actually happened in our time, for, if those who lived in Plato's day were now to come back to life and find the churches full, the temples deserted and mankind summoned from desire for goods that are temporal and fleeting to the hope of eternal life and goods that pertain to the spirit and the mind, they (if the sort of men they are reported to have been) would perchance say: "This is what we failed to convince the masses of. Instead of bringing them over to our belief and our desire, we gave in to accustomed ways."

The clearest expression of the nature of this problem is found in Sherrard's The Greek East and the Latin West. The revelation of the Truth in Christ, he writes, "is intimately linked to a method of its realization, as is signified in Christ's own words that He is the Truth and the Way. Doctrine and Mysteries are one." Such "an alliance of doctrine and method is indispensable... because the realization in

question is not a matter of abstract and theoretical learning, but requires an initiation through which the individual is gradually purified and hence put in a position to receive the interior illumination on which it depends.

In other words, to divorce doctrine from method, Gospel from the Mysteries, is to put the former beyond the reach of realization, and to render it more or less ineffective in terms of its actual influence on, and direction of, the lives of individual men and women and human affairs in general.

Now, in the case of Greek philosophy, precisely such a fatal sundering of doctrine and method had taken place.

Thus, Greek philosophy, although it might be a more or less adequate and authentic expression of the Truth, was in itself, divorced from the means through which it could be realized in an effective sense, incapable of being a dynamic, living force, and of providing the spiritual form of society as a whole."?

In this sense and to this extent it can be said that Greek philosophy failed; in the immediate situation, that is to say, in which it found itself situated vis-a-vis its active competitors in the early centuries A.D.

Its greatest strength, no doubt, was its unswerving rationalism, but in the immediate situation that also proved its greatest weakness, for the spiritual condition of the age could not be met and dealt with solely by recourse to pure reason or intellect. Ordinary men and women — and not they exclusively, for the soul-sickness of the times manifested itself in all classes of society — were not so much concerned, if they were concerned at all, with the questions which occupied the attention of the schools, as with the question that kept thrusting itself upon them in all its existential urgency, the question to which someone in our own time has so aptly given expression in these words:

"What can we do, o'er whom the unbeholden Hangs in a night with which we cannot cope?"

Clement of Alexandria realized, for all his bookishness, how his contemporaries felt and well knew how to give expression to the feeling when he wrote:

"Sick, we truly need a saviour; astray, of one to guide us; blind, of one to lead us to the light; thirsty, 'of the fountain of life of which, if any man partake, he will no longer thirst'; dead, we need life; sheep we need a shepherd; we who are children need a tutor; and men everywhere need Jesus...'?

TrOpACits) pe WZ ais Se 4" Paedag.; 1, LX. 83;-3. 1-6.

The overall advantage lay with Christianity, especially where the masses were concerned.

Paul's "not many wise men, ...not many leading men, not many of good birth, have been called!"! sounds like the total inventory up till then so far as the upper classes of GraecoRoman society are concerned; but the account was not yet closed.

The final balance could not be struck till Christianity was in a more favourable position to make a further, concerted effort to impress the wise and noble and bring them under its influence.

Its eventual transcendence of the best contemporary human categories is proof of the uniqueness of its subject-matter in the total situation, according to H. E. W. Turner's conservative estimate.

Something must now be said, to bring this Introduction to a close, as regards the Logos-concept, without some prior understanding of which the reader may find it difficult in the chapters that follow to keep track of the apologetic argument.

We find in Philo of Alexandria, to begin with, certain distinctively Hebrew ingredients which enter into his conception of the Logos.

There are the angels (the Judaic version of the Gnostic aeons) which are ruled over by two archangels embodying respectively the goodness and justice of God. The former has superiority or seniority and stands for the Memrah or Word of God in Scripture, while the latter signifies the Word of God as personified and is used for the unutterable name.

For Philo, however, and his co-religionists the duality of principles involved in this arrangement posed a problem which he proceeded to solve by throwing in the Platonic Ideas and identifying them with the angels, at the same time incorporating further Hebrew ingredients (the Ten Words of Creation, Hokmah, the Shekinah, the Great High Priest etc.). The resultant synthesis is the Philonic Logos, linking the temporal and eternal, the viceregent of God, the mediator or the powers that mediate between God, man and the world.

In relation to God the Logos is Wisdom, as conceived in the Wisdom of Solomon, the Idea of Ideas; the sum of all God's thoughts, his mind moving outward and beyond him to carry out his will; his glory, his assessor, the Monad, the first-born son.

In relation to the Powers the Logos is Architect; in relation to the world, the great

Archetypal Seal or the Instrumental Cause.

The Logos images the Creator and man images the Logos.

1 [Cor., 1, 26 (from A New Translation of the Bible by James Moffat, London 1935).

2 See The Pattern of Christian Truth, London 1954, p. 461-462.

C. H. Dodd has explained what Adyog suggests in the fourth gospel.1

It is used, he explains, of the Word of God, his self-revelation to men, with regard to which a definite distinction is maintained between the voice (gwvy) of God and the Word (Aéyoc) of God, as communicated to men.

"No man hath seen God at any time", yet, according to Hebrew tradition, His reality is unimpeachable and the Aéyo¢ expresses this reality, recognizable in the Scriptures and in those who have received the Adyoco into themselves, but manifested in fullest measure, at its profoundest and most ultimate in Christ.

It is prima facie the utterance of Jesus and the content of his teaching, but is at root, says

Dodd, "a rational content of thought corresponding to the ultimate reality of the universe." God's spoken Word, the Adyoc meopoe1K6¢ was given utterance through Christ, but in that utterance the Word, as creating, sustaining and informing the whole universe, the Adyog¢ évdtadeto¢ was also dynamically involved or the Adyoc that goes forth in Christ prophetically as it went forth formerly in the prophets of Israel is, tpso facto, the Aéyog that upholds all things from the foundation of the world. This, the Wisdom which "in all ages entering into holy souls makes them friends of God and prophets" has two main aspects, viz., the spirit (expressive of God's omnipotence) which fills the world and inspires men; and the Word that created the world and that executes God's judgments.!

The term, AOTO2, according to Evans,? comes into Christian theology from John I,I, to which there is always a reference either explicitly or by implication...

Christian writers do sometimes, Evans continues, when addressing a pagan audience, make some small apologetic capital out of the fact that the term was in use among the philosophers...

But they can hardly have been unaware that Adyoc in the philosophers is neither speech nor reason... but is little more than mathematical ratio... "Ratio in matter" and "spermatic ratio of the world" are as far as can be from the real sentiments of the Christian apologists, and their references to Stoic theories can have amounted to no more than a plea that the Christian doctrine of the Logos, the Creator of the world, who was incarnate and is Jesus Christ, must not be summarily dismissed as unreasonable. When Tertullian says, A pol. 23, Christus

' The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, Cambridge 1953, p. 263 f.

* E. Evans, Q. Septimii Florentis Tertulliani Adversus Praxean Liber, London 1948, p. 31-33 passim.

...der virtus et det spivitus et sermo et sapientia et ratio, he is saying things which (in their own peculiar sense of the word "god") the Stoics must have understood; but when he adds, e¢ dei filius, he speaks of what to them is inconceivable.

The same can be said, in Evans' view of the use of the term by Philo Judaeus... it has little in common with Christian theology... is either the ratio which reconciles God's goodness and his power, or else something superior to and transcending them both, but inferior to God: in either case it is a mathematical mean and has evidently no connection with Christian usage.

...when substantified or even personified in Philo, the Aéyoc... is again a mathematical mean... and although some of the words have an almost Christian sound their sense is not that taken up by Christian theology.

So we are brought back to the opening words of the Fourth Gospel, Evans says, where we have a recollection of Old Testament texts ..

.1 and, he concludes, "one can only wonder at the perverse ingenuity of those who look for Greek sources of the Johannine terminology."

One indeed can only wonder and take issue with Evans on certain points in his argument which are rather too wide of the mark to be let pass without comment.

First, with regard to his remark that Christian writers "can hardly have been unaware that Adéyog in the philosophers is neither speech nor reason", one cannot but say, "What an astounding statement!", and a statement flatly refuted out of the mouth of Tertullian himself who writes in the Apology:

"Tam ediximus Deum universitatem hanc mundi Verbo et Ratione et Virtute molitum.

Apud vestros quoque sapientes id est Sermonem atque Rationem constat artificem videri universitatis. Hunc enim Zeno determinat factitatorem, qui cuncta in dispositione formaverit, eundem et fatum vocari, et Deum et animum lIovis, et necessitatem omnium rerum.

Haec Cleanthes in spiritum congerit, quem permeatorem universitatis affirmat.

Et nos etiam Sermoni atque Rationi itemque Virtuti, per quae omnia molitum Deum ediximus, propriam substantiam spiritum inscribimus, cui et Sermo insit pronuntianti, et

Ratio adsit disponenti, et virtus praesit perficienti... cum ille (Iesus) verbo daemonia de hominibus excuteret, caecos illuminaret, leprosos purgaret, paralyticos restringeret, mortuos denique verbo redderet vitae, elementa ipsa 1cf. G. Quispel, De bronnen van Tertullianus' Adversus Marcionem, Leiden

14 Shp aatD a8

famularet, compescens procellas et freta ingrediens, ostendens se esse AOTON Dei, id est Verbum illud primordiale primogenitum, virtute et ratione comitatum, et spiritu fultum, eundem qui verbo omnia, et faceret et fecisset."?

Second, with reference to what Evans says of Philo's use of the term Aoyos to the effect that the latter "has little in common with Christian theology", that it "has evidently? no connection with Christian usage" and other words to the same effect, we may cite per contra Sherrard who quotes a passage from the Stromatets of Clement of Alexandria

(I. 19. 94) in which fuller expression is given to Clement's conviction that the barbarian and Greek philosophy have been severed from but can be gathered up again and reunited with the Logos, which is the Truth (Sér., 1. 57. 4 and 6), then adds this comment:

"It is fundamentally the same view as that already expressed by Philo, and it was later to be expressed again by such as Origen, with his vision of the eternal

Logos manifesting Himself in time under various forms: ...'3

Third, on the opening words of the fourth gospel which Evans regards as "a recollection of Old Testament texts", his thinking somewhat resembles the sort of attitude to the fourth gospel adopted by certain modern scholars in the light of their work on the Dead Sea Scrolls.*

Be that as it may, it seems reasonable to point out that any intelligent reader of the Bible even in a good English translation can hardly fail to note the parallelism between the opening words of the first chapter of the Book of Genesis and the Prologue to the fourth gospel. The latter is undeniably a recollection of the former.

How could it be otherwise?

The Prologue is quite obviously a deliberate parallel on the part of the evangelist; but was his purpose in introducing the term

Aéyos solely and simply to recall to the mind of the reader, whoever he might be, the Old Testament parallels?

Surely he had at his disposal more direct and effective means for doing only that. Why did the writer make such a highly specialized Greek term the keynote of the overture to his gospel?

1 Apol., XXI, 64-69 and 109-117.

* my italics.

3 op.cit., p. 111-112. H. A. Wolfson demolishes Evans' argument on this point.

See his treatment of Philonic influence on the Prologue to the fourth Gospel in The Philosophy of the Church Fathers, vol. 1, Cambridge, Mass. 1956, p. 177-181.

'With stress on "the Jewishness of the Fourth Gospel, so that instead of dismissing it as late and influenced by Greek thought, we must now allow that it is genuinely Jewish in origin." H. H. Rowley, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament, London 1960, p. 28.

"The thoughtful Christian", writes Maurice Wiles!, "might find himself in substantial agreement with the cultured pagan in his definition of God's changeless nature and eternal being. But that was not all the Christian apologist wanted to convey to the pagan world.

He wanted to convey the heart of his faith, the meaning of Christ and of his work. And he wanted to do so in a way that was consistent with those underlying convictions about the nature of God which he and many of his pagan hearers held in common.

How without simply abandoning the idea of God's eternal changelessness could he describe the divine action in creation and history?... The problem... impinged with particular intensity upon those who read their Bibles in the light of the Greek philosophic tradition.

It was appropriate therefore that the first attempt by Christian thinkers to give a reasoned answer to the problem should have been one which made use of a concept drawn from that same source... "Logos" was a term with a long and respectable philosophical ancestry, and at the same time it was one which seemed well suited to give careful expression to the ideas implicit in the Christian account of divine revelation" ..

. "The fourth evangelist", with the Greek background in mind, "together with that of the 'word of God' which came to the prophets of the Old Testament, had already taken the step of using..." the term Logos, "to introduce the record of the life and work of Jesus. No term could have seemed better suited to the task which lay to the hand of the second-century Christian writer = Behind Plato, of course, and the early Christian writers are the meanings derivable from and the associations clinging to the word

AGvosg as employed and understood in the classical Greek period. For this aspect of the matter we cannot do better than quote what H. D. F.

Kitto, brilliant scholar and exponent of ancient Greek classical literature has to say, where he is discussing Plato's indebtedness to Socrates for the latter's dialectical method or "the search through logical enquiry for the 'logos', the all-embracing definition of the virtues", and his belief that virtue is knowledge:

"Knowledge is not what a man has been told, shown or taught; it can be only what he has found out for himself by long and arduous search.

Moreover, ...only the permanent, not the transient, can be the material of such knowl1 The Christian Fathers, London 1966, p. 24-25.

ES ropeles JO 8)

edge; only what 'is', not the objects of sense which are always 'becoming something' else. Plato in fact reaches a position not very far from that of the Psalmist who says 'The knowledge of God is the beginning of wisdom' — though he reaches this position by a very different road.

The knowledge of 'what is' comes only through a life given to intellectual striving. The unchangeable Kealities we can apprehend by the mind only. Of these the highest is the Good, and although

Plato does not formally identify the Good with God, he speaks of its divine nature in such a way that formal identification would make little difference.

Such is the knowledge having which a man cannot do wrong.

It is something much richer and wider than our current, purely intellectual 'knowledge', for a moral as well as an intellectual passion is its driving-force, and its object is the truth that embraces everything; it belongs in fact to the same order of things, however different it may be in kind, as the Christian State of Grace.

Here is the culmination of the search made by the Greek thinkers for the inner reality of the 'logos'; the Word was God"'.!

Finally, a propos of Evans' declaration on how little Tertullian's et dez jilius was likely to convey to the Stoic philosophers and presumably to philosophers in general, all we need say is that it must have meant something to some of those nurtured in Greek ways of thinking who went over to Christianity — to Origen and to Clement of Alexandria.

In them, indeed in almost all of the early Christian apologists, the wonder of the Logos that was made flesh, the "dawnlight" Clement speaks of is still new.

The way leads, lighted, as Clement fervently believes, by Greek philosophy, by the Logos, in fact, to the cradle of Bethlehem.?

1 The Greeks, Edinburgh 1951, p. 193-194.

2'See ofr, ll, SV. 71, 33 a2

GAP Baki

IRENAEUS OF LYONS

In the manner of a surgeon performing a major operation, though not quite so methodically, Irenaeus, in the first book of the Adversus haereses, begins to lay bare the nerves and sinews and so take us to the very heart of the Gnostic heresy which he knew from all too close acquaintance with it in the valley of the Rhone and had, it seems probable, encountered before then when he was passing from youth to manhood in the province of Asia.

He describes it as "the many-headed Lernaean hydra" sprung from the Valentinian school! and likens it in respect of the rapidity of its self-proliferation to mushrooms growing from the ground,? alluding to the fact that its craftily constructed plausibilities draw away the minds of the inexperienced so as to take them captive? and have deluded many women. * He gives us an insight into the Gnostic anthropology according to which there are three given types of men, the spiritual, the material, and the "psychical", represented by Cain, Abel and Seth® in the Old

Testament.

The good are those capable of receiving a seed of the divine nature into themselves.

The bad, on the other hand, are by nature utterly and eternally devoid of this capacity. The former are guaranteed salvation solely in virtue of their inherent spirituality,' and everything for them is considered lawful or permissible since they hold that it is incumbent on them to experience all things, however

1 Adv. haer., 1. xxviii. 8, 1-3.

2ibid., I. xxvi. 1, 2-3.

3 ibid., I. Praefatio, 4-6. anibids, Le vii. 6; 223:

6 ibid., I. i. 14, 1-2 Hominum autem tria genera dicunt; spiritalem, psychicum, choicum,...

Ouiloyyals., WN Sia tee ali Sy DIG lente aly 2-27 ae

abdominable, so as to attain complete self-fulfilment in this hfe and thus evade reincarnation.!

The Gnostics boast of possessing a secret tradition revealed mystically to them in parables by Christ, because, on their submission, they alone are qualified to understand it.?, They construe chapter NI, verses 25-27 of the first gospel as signifying that, whereas the creator of the world has always been known universally, the words uttered by Jesus in this passage refer to the Father of truth who has been unknown hitherto and whom they now consider themselves in a special position to proclaim.® Knowledge of what they call the "unspeakable greatness",* they say, in and by itself constitutes perfect redemption,® and to know what they make out the truth to be is equivalent to the resurrection of the dead.® Whoever acquires the knowledge thus possessed by them has the power conferred on him of becoming invisible and incomprehensible to the angels and the powers,'? so as to meet and pass through them with impunity when his soul, liberated from the evil environment that confines it in this world, takes its flight to the Beyond.

They also claim that the consummation of all things will come about when the spiritual or the elect attain finally to the perfect knowledge of God and have been initiated into the mysteries of their so-called soul-mother, Achamoth.® According to the tenets of docetic Gnosticism, Jesus was simply

Joseph's son and, as such, nowise different from other men, except for having kept his soul steadfast and pure and perfectly remembering the things seen by him within the sphere of the unbegotten God;® he is, in other words, simply the last of the Gnostic aeons or intermediaries between this world and the high spiritual realm, the pre-eminent revealer sent to lead men to the knowledge of the truth.

Pribidewl; shyt, 39 scx. 2, isi:

2npidl, lL. 1, 5, 8-10:

Sibi le xl 2) 25-35) 4 ipsam agnitionem inenarrabilis magnitudinis.

Ady. haer., WU. xiv. 3, 9-11.

Sybid.y Us xvi 2, 138-19) THibidelesxctxs, 3) alo, 8 ibid., 1.1.11, 17-20 cf. Adv. haey., I. xxviii. 7, 34-36, consumationem autem futuram, quando tota humectatio spiritus luminis colligatur, et abripiatur in Aeonem incorruptibilitatis. bids I. xx. I, 3-7.

Jesus, in the drama of redemption, some of the Docetists make out, had a purely dispensational role.

The Logos and the saviour, according to their views, never became incarnate, but descended on the dispensational Jesus at his baptism by John at the river Jordan, like a dove.t Jesus, so portrayed, was merely a receptacle for Christ who having declared the unnameable Father reascended into the Pleroma incomprehensibly and invisibly.2, The baptism, moreover, which the visible Jesus instituted was for the remission of sins, whereas the redemption initiated by the Spirit that descended on him, as described, was for perfection.

The spirit of Christ, because of his being incomprehensible and invisible and, therefore, immune to suffering, was taken away from Jesus when he was delivered to Pontius Pilate,* while Simon of Cyrene was transformed by Jesus so as to pass for him and at the Crucifixion took his place.® The same applies to the postresurrection appearances, since, as asserted by the heretics, it was the Gnostic Christ, not Jesus, who survived death on the cross. ®

Those who know these things have, according to the teaching of Basilides been set free from the powers that formed the world and anyone confessing to belief in a crucified redeemer is to be looked on as a slave.'

Such is allegedly the basis of the position taken by the Gnostics and these are some of the arguments adduced by those who claim to speak for it. By way of stating the case for orthodoxy as plainly as possible.

Irenaeus now proposes and proceeds to rebut these arguments.

Life in God being, on the Gnostic thesis, conditioned by the predetermined state or natural condition of the soul, producing this or that fixed type, faith is rendered meaningless.

If nature or substance are the determinants of salvation and, on this principle, some are saved and some are not, righteousness will appear either impotent or unjust

;® but, insists Irenaeus, it was for all mankind from the beginning that Christ came, not merely for the sake of those who believed in him

Wibid., Wi, xi. 35 7-10:

27abid., WM, scvay 1-4.

Salpidis Mciy lh a= 1.8). fabid:, 1, 1, U3) o-19:

Oilloniclys Wiese 25 Isley Sibid) Wy xvi, 7; Va16:

7 Hipidle ale scixe 220-29) 8 ibid., II. xliv. 1, 20-25.

Je)

in the days of Tiberius Caesar, nor was it for those only who are presently alive that the Father exercised his providence.

There is — and this is the main thrust of Irenaeus' case against the heretics — the question of tradition of which they make so much, but, he reminds them, the tradition which is the only true, life-giving faith, received from the apostles by the Church and imparted to her sons,? and this the Church, though scattered throughout the world, as if occupying one house, carefully preserves.

The world's languages are all different, yet what is contained in and conveyed by the tradition is identical for them all. The churches in Germany do not believe or pass on anything different from those in Spain or Gaul or anywhere else on earth. Like God's own sun the light of which is the same wherever it shines on men, the proclamation of the truth handed down from the beginning of the Christian dispensation sheds its radiance on all those who are willing to come to a knowledge of the truth. The faith is always one and the same.

Irrespective of how much or how little anyone has to say concerning it, no one can increase or diminish it.® The Gnostics presuming, however, to improve on the apostles read into the scriptures their own interpretation and when challenged, or refuted from the scriptures, will retort that the latter cannot rightly be interpreted by anyone who is ignorant of the genuine tradition handed down, not in writing, but vzva voce as a secret revelation to themselves, they having discovered the unadulterated truth.

They will, besides, to justify themselves, assert that the apostles confused the Gospel and the Law drawing their inspiration from different sources, at one time from the Demiurge, at another from the middle sphere, at yet another from the Pleroma, and that the Lord occasionally even did the same himself.4

The apostles, Irenaeus answers, did not teach one set of doctrines privately and another publicly.

Their testimony is open and stands sure. The reason why God caused so many testimonies to the Gospel to be pointed out by Luke may be that everyone, considering it essential to use all of them, might have access to the truly unadulterated rule of truth and so be saved.® The case made out by the oid, UN Ssexvi.e, d-3.

2 ibid., IIT. Praefatio, 20-21.

EE Monae, lle vives tote, INI Deena Least /es leo te TONG AST shit ssi Os cone >ibid. Mi sem 1) s=2 bh

Gnostics can be upheld by the authority of neither the prophets, nor the Lord, nor the apostles.

This, then, is what they boast of having perfect knowledge of, surpassing anything that anyone else knows!

They gather their views from sources other than the scriptures and adapt them, regardless of the order and connection of the scriptures, to the teaching of the prophets, the Lord and the apostles, so as to make their systems seem soundly Christian in character.!

The mere fact that the heretics differ so much among themselves affords a priori (ex extensione) proof of the falsity of the tales they fabricate and of the immovability of the truth the Church proclaims.?

A sound mind which is pious and truth-loving will be ready to give thought to the things God has placed within our power, the things, that is to say, which are open to our view and have been set forth unambiguously in the scriptures, so that, if we progress therein by daily study, knowledge of them will be made easy.

If, however, scripture is to be interpreted according to individual taste and elaborated by the application of expressions which are not clear or evident, nobody will possess the rule of truth. Tot homines quot sententiae will rather be the rule, and the outcome will be antagonistic doctrines, like the questions investigated by the pagan philosophers.?

Let right reason, Irenaeus pleads, be given its rightful place.

Where in the bizarre mythologizing of the Gnostics is there any evidence of rationality?* God himself is Reason in one aspect of his being; therefore, it stands to reason that he has made all things rational and that those who live contrary to reason with which God endowed man at his creation and which the Logos and the Spirit have united to restore to men in Christ, live in effect opposed to God.§

Irrational constructions placed upon a rationally constituted universe are faced with the charge even of repudiating reality.

In their denial of the God who made all things the Gnostics, by being irrational in fact, deny themselves.

There is, emphasizes Irenaeus, pressing the point home, one and the same God and Father as announced in both the prophets and the Gospel.

Was it only in appearance that the Lord performed his Poilloicles, IE, Us Hliay aye (8) Amici, Lt 20, 00-62, Sribids sul eal de elo:

Sallertale, MNS Fo-ahh, Sy sie Side Vies o, Ws-245 Siig, Lily sa G, Zi-Z3;, pei

wondrous works?

The prophets foretold them and as part of God's unfolding history their predictions have come true.!

The birth of Christ is reported plainly enough in scripture. The Lord came in reality, not despising or evading any condition of human life,2 nor dispensing in his own case with the law decreed by him for mankind, observing the law even of the dead, that he might become the first-begotten from the dead.* The Gnostics aver that Jesus was born of Mary but that Christ descended from above.

Matthew, however, in the first gospel? begins his narrative: "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham", and also, "The birth of Jesus Christ was as follows".® For the received text® he might have written: "Now the birth of Jesus was as follows", but anticipating those who were to come as the corrupters of the truth the Holy Ghost declared through ima: perchance think he is only man or suppose Jesus to be one and Christ another, but should know they are one and the same.'

. the birth of Christ was as follows", that we should not Because, says Irenaeus, elaborating on this point, our Lord Jesus

Christ, one and the same, the Logos and Son of God, who always existed with the Father, by whom all things were made and who always was present with mankind,' who has power over all things from the Father... and is in rational communication

(participans rationabiliter) with things invisible, while at the same time ruling over things visible and the affairs of men® — because this Lord Jesus

Christ has for man's sake become incarnate, all the doctrines concocted concerning him by the heretics are proved false — their theories as to subdivisions in his personality, for imstance.!®

He is in fact as God fashioned him, human in all respects and in order to provide man with ibid, We sli. 3, 13.

2sipicls Wik sce. 216217

Sibide, Vio sme 2 1-2) 4ibid., IIT. xi. 11, 29-30 Matthaeus vero eam quae est secundum hominem genevationem ejus enarvat. This gospel, explains Irenaeus, is humanae formae, which the Greek version renders avdemndwoe gov.

Pibidy Culex whl S032.

6 Matt., I, 1-18.

" Adv. haer., I11. xvii. 1, 26-29; 32-33.

Siibide sessed 7s 26 eS) eu:

9 ibid., V. xviii. 2, 30-34.

10 ibid., LIL. xvii. 3, 1-9,

a model and example passed through every stage of human life.1

Administering all things for the Father he discharges them from the beginning to the end, and no man apart from him can attain to the knowledge of God.? He is the Son of the Creator of the world who, as Mind and Logos in their fulness, both speaks that which he thinks and thinks that which he speaks, for the Logos is his thought and the Logos is his mind, and the Father himself is Mind embracing everything, through whom the wood fructifies and the fountains well forth and the earth gives "first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in iieseai ls Since the Son is the Logos vested with power, and truly man, he redeemed men in a manner consonant with reason,® thus redeeming his own property, for, though he was not received by his own to whom he came, he came to what belonged to him,® the incarnation of the Logos being the union of himself with his own handiwork.'

The things of time have been divinely made for man that he might come to maturity in them and thus bring forth the fruit of immortality,® he is, as Irenaeus puts it, ripening for immortality that he may attain to the freedom that enables man to put himself in subjection to God.® All through the ages God kept drawing on his people by means of successive covenants, while they kept progressing by faith to complete salvation, the human race being in a variety of ways adjusted to agreement with the goal that God had set for it, and the whole process reaching its culmination through the Gospel which renews man and recapitulates all things in itself, raising up and winging men to the heavenly kingdom.!° SRiloTerwVsple La O17, 8 ibid., III. xi. 7, 35-36 in sua propria venit.

Teioide, MINE ectxcy 3-5):

Sibids, LV. vaul,-2-3; 9 ibid., V. xxix. 1, 4-6.

VO" bid. [VG xix, 2, l-7,.ct. LV, seal 15 Salo and Ih. sai 47-52) The recapitulation idea occurs repeatedly. The Gospel, as here, recapitulates all things.

Christ is the means of recapitulation; and God recapitulates (the creation of man) in humanity that by destroying death he may deprive it of its power and restore man to life. oy)

Jesus poured out the spirit of the Father for the union and communion of God and man, whereby he imparted God to men.

By his incarnation he attaches God to, and bestows immortality on, man.!

He took up man into himself, the invisible being made visible, the incomprehensible being made comprehensible, the impassible being made capable of suffering, and the Logos becoming man, thus for all time summing up all things in himself, so that he might have the headship in things visible and invisible ;? and bringing to its fulfilment the divine plan of salvation,*? that by God's renewing knowledge man might repossess the divine image and lkeness* and be promoted to receive a greater glory, namely, the expectation of being made like

God Himself.° Jesus became the Son of Man that man might become a son of God.® This is how Irenaeus sums it up.

"Wherefore", he wrote, "I do also call upon thee, Lord God of Abraham, and God of Isaac, and God of Jacob and Israel, who art the Father of our Lord

Jesus Christ, the God who through the abundance of thy mercy hast had a favour toward us, that we should know thee, who hast made heaven and earth, who rulest over all, who art the only true God, above whom no other God exists, grant by our Lord Jesus Christ the governing power of the Holy Spirit. Give to every reader of this book to know thee, that thou art God alone, to be strengthened in thee, and to avoid every doctrine that is heretical and Godless and impious."'?

He has been aptly styled "the great opponent of Gnosticism".8

He had, it is evident, taken full stock of the situation and saw clearly where the vital issues lay. In the ensuing struggle there could be no compromise, for Gnosticism "in the second century, while it was yet living and agressive ... constituted a danger greater ... than any peril that has ever menaced the existence of the faith".® It attempted to overthrow "belief in the almighty God of creation and redemption"

.19 t Adv. haer., V.%. 2, V=7.

2bid., MU xvai.6,.20-26.

S oud; WuMie scise. 72) O= 7.

2 bids Vio xa 4) 15-118.

Sqbidi; LMM sam. 2, 23-24.

Ssibids, UNLy xigds 38-39) Calids; UL y vate 3:

* F. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, London 1952, vol. II, p. 20.

°C. Bigg, The Christian Platonists of Alexandria, Oxford 1886, p. 62.

10 Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. II, Boston 1903, p. 3. The essential character of the threat to orthodox Christianity is well brought out by E. F. Osborn, The Philosophy of Clement of Alexandria, Cambridge 1957, p. 176-177.

It is, then, as the champion of that faith that Irenaeus steps forth into the arena to draw the teeth of the agressor and to take the manyheaded hydra, as he calls it, by the tail.

The contest is fought out at two levels with weapons appropriate to each. First, with the weapons of an informed polemic for the most part within the confines of the Christian community; then with the weapons of a persuasive apologetic in a somewhat broader context where we find Irenaeus making effective use of certain concepts drawn from Greek philosophy.

The grounds of contention, already dealt with in some detail, may for convenience be more briefly presented here in terms of the following three chief areas of dispute:

First and perhaps foremost is the Gnostic doctrine of election and going along with it, the claim by the Gnostics to possession of an esoteric or exclusive type of knowledge in virtue of which, on the basis of their peculiar psychological or anthropological ideas, the heretics have created a sort of pre-determined class distinction in the spiritual life, with themselves as an élite minority at the upper end of the scale.

They speak of the unknown Father whom they profess to have brought to light, unknown, not in the sense that he should not have been known at all, but unknown as he really is, because, from having lost or forgotten it, the majory of men are blind to the knowledge of his true nature and existence.!

Faith is, in consequence, bypassed in favour of knowledge, as the Gnostics think of it, and coming to that knowledge is substituted for salvation, with pragmatic subjectivism set up as the norm in the sphere of moral conduct, as we should say.

Secondly, there is the tampering with tradition by the Gnostics in their allegorizing of the scriptures, wrested usually from the accepted reading or interpretation to accommodate their views and with the object of explaining away the content of the Christian revelation.

Faith in the process becomes fiction and myth takes the place of history, the culprits having, as Irenaeus accuses them, substituted belief in unrealities for belief in what is real.

Thirdly, there is the Gnostic aeonology in which Jesus is represented as but one among the many cosmic intermediaries between God and the world.

The Logos, consequently, on the Gnostic thesis, did not become flesh because he could not become flesh.

It follows that the divinity of Jesus is not questioned but his humanity is denied.

In1 The Jung Codex, p. 105-106.

volved in this are the extravagances. of Docetism which amounts to polytheism in a new and dangerous disguise.

The questions raised by such bold speculations would, at first glance, appear to pose more than one serious problem for the Church of the second century, but there is for Irenaeus, at least to begin with, a quite obvious solution and a perfectly straightforward, unequivocal reply.

On the claim to possession of a special gnosis and the doctrine of election which the Gnostics entertain, the Church makes no secret,

Irenaeus points out, of the divine plan of salvation, because, handed down from the beginning and committed to the care and keeping of those rightfully regarded as successors of Christ's apostles, it is publicly proclaimed.

It would not have been entrusted in the first place to those who transmitted it, had they not had requisite knowledge of what was entrusted to them to transmit.

This is the only gnosis that exists or that ever has existed so far as true and truly informed

Christians are concerned.

Neither is the plan of salvation in any way restrictive or limited.

Its range in keeping with the faith obtaining everywhere from the first is universal in its scope. The Church has been entrusted with the light of God whose wisdom is the means whereby she saves all men.

One and the same way of salvation is shown forth by the Church in all the world: she is the sevenbranched candlestick (émté&yvyocg lucerna) that bears the light of Christ.' God's chosen or elect are those, and only those, who revere and love him, who give proof of their profession by the honesty of their dealings and their Godly attitude toward their fellow-men, and whose desire has been "to see Christ, and hear his

Voice' 7

As to the counter-charge of inconsistency brought forward by the Gnostics when thrown back on the apostolic origin and nature of the teaching of the Church,® there is, retorts Irenaeus, in what has been given by God no inconsistency.

It is per contra through the agency of the Gnostics that inconsistency has arisen.

The Church's witness stands immovable and indisputable. There is but one testimony and the God by whom that testimony was given and to whom it testifies is the Creator of the world, the rule of truth being, so far as the 1 Adv. haer., V. xx. 2, 1-4; 7.

CEnos ala, IME orca A ic 3 See page 26, supra.

Christian community is concerned, that there is one, almighty God who by his Logos established everything, who fashioned and formed from what had no existence all things that exist.

As for manipulation of the scriptures by the Gnostics, nothing can take the place of the traditional interpretation that the Church has inherited on apostolic authority.

Private interpretation in any shape or form accordingly is condemned and prohibited, the scriptures being appointed to be read in the churches in the presence of the presbyters with whom the apostolic doctrine has been duly deposited.

With respect to Gnostic aeonology, the crucial point is the Incarnation reported and recorded as one of the great, incontestably fundamental facts of Christian history.

Invoking the sacramental principle in support of this basic fact, Irenaeus says of Jesus that "he took bread, that created thing (ewm qui ex creatura est pants), and gave thanks and said: "This is my body". The cup which is "part of that creation to which we belong", Irenaeus comments, "he confessed to be his blood".? Because Jesus is the Logos of God almighty who pervades the whole creation in his invisible form, and because by God's Logos all things are disposed and administered, the Son of God was also crucified in these things, imprinted in the form of a cross on the universe,® his crucifixion consequently having cosmic significance.

Such is the sum and substance of the matter, as Irenaeus sees and expresses it, from the orthodox point of view.

This is the true fides credenda whereby the churches live and they who believe or teach otherwise must regard themselves as extva fidem and, therefore, extra ecclesiam. That is the whole position in a nutshell and no more need be said, so far as concerns, at any rate, the Church's rule of faith and life.

The better, however, to dissuade any who may feel inclined to throw in their lot with the heretics, and, if possible, to save the latter from the error of their ways, Irenaeus shows his readiness to pass beyond the strictly orthodox position (on which, it must always be remembered, basically he refused to compromise) and to set the dialogue in a larger universe of discourse by invoking philosophic principles and arguing philosophically.

With reference to the apologies that abound in the early Christian 1 Adv. haer., I. xv, 1-4.

2Hbid., 1 Veexxix, 5, 12215, 8 EB pid., 34.

20)

centuries, Daniélou has drawn attention to the place occupied in them by affirmations concerning truths of a general nature where certain aspects of the content of the Christian message are concerned, and with regard to which he says:

"Elles tendent a montrer que le christianisme est conforme a ce qu'il y a de valable dans l'Ame humaine... leur but est surtout de montrer l'accord du message chrétien et de la raison humaine.

C'est la ce qui constitue leur ressort principal et qui établit en méme temps le contact entre le message chrétien et

VPhellénisme."

Irenaeus is no exception. He readily allows that reason complements or reinforces revelation and corroborates the faith.

He "did not merely confine himself to describing the fact of redemption, its content and its consequences, but he also attempted to explain the peculiar nature of this redemption from the essence of God and the incapacity of man, thus solving the question cur deus homo in the highest sense," as Harnack says.?

Discussing the wholly otherness of God's thoughts as compared with the thoughts of men, Irenaeus states that God is both simple and uncompounded and that in his being there is no distinction between the whole and the parts of which it is composed — the evident meaning of the word, semilimembrius which Irenaeus employs here — that... he is wholly mind or understanding, and wholly spirit, and wholly thought, and wholly intelligence, and wholly reason, and wholly hearing, and all eye and all light, and the sole source of everything that is good... .".3 Irenaeus is quoting Is. LV,8 as his proof text, but the idea itself recalls Xenophanes, fr. 24 Diels-Kranz (De Vogel, Greek

Priel, ar. 72D).

He says again: "What God had conceived in his mind was also brought about as soon as he mentally conceived it", and, with reference to the creation of the world that, if it was made such as it is, he himself also made it so who had as such indeed mentally conceived! it; which, if of Biblical origin, is rather the rationalization of the original than the original itself. The following which is only one among many

1 J. Daniélou, Message FEvangélique et Culture Hellénistique aux Ile et IIle Siecles, Tournai 1961, p. 34 cf. p. 39.

"OP Clt., D259:

2A, haer., lle xvi 3, 15-19) ibid pai, WU 8e 23-24 oh il aii. 22amd WL v.72) 12-26: teto,

similarly worded passages in the Adversus haereses, will serve to illustrate how philosophically-minded he can be:

"Et utrum eiusdem substantiae exsistebant his qui se emiserunt, an ex altera quadam substantia, substantiam habentes?

Et utrum in eodem emissi sunt, ut eiusdem temporis essent sibi; an secundum ordinem quendam, ita ut antiquiores quidam ipsorum, alii vero iuveniores essent?

Et utrum simplices quidam et uniformes, et undique sibi aequales et similes, quemadmodum spiritus et lumina emissa sunt; an compositi et differentes, dissimiles membris suis?"'1

The Logos-concept which features so conspicuously in the early Christian apologists is given due prominence and employed by Irenaeus to full effect. Other concepts current in the philosophic circles of his day which he draws on to advantage for apologetic purposes are the notion of natural law, the doctrine of innate ideas? and the consensus gentium associated with the argument from design.

Certain of the Gentiles, he writes, less voluptuous and less misguided by idolatrous superstition were convinced, if only slightly, that the designation "father" should be attributed to the creator of the universe who providentially rules over all things and arranges this world's affairs. Though "no one knows the Father, save the Son, nor the Son, save the Father and those to whom the Son will reveal him",4 yet because reason is implanted in their minds, because it moves them and reveals the truth to them, all men know this one fact at least, that there is one God, the Lord of all,® acknowledged as the creator of the world even by those who speak in many ways against him.® All men in fact give assent to this persuasion which was preserved among the ancients as a legacy from the first-created man.

Others coming after learned it from the prophets, and the heathen from creation.

It is also part of the tradition passed down from the apostles to the universal church, for the established order of things reveals him who established it... and the world gives evidence of him who ordered it."

Unove)., Wt ext 2), 42 2 See E. Bréhier, Chrysippe et L' Ancien Stoicisme, Paris 1951, p. 65-67.

3 Adv. haer., ILI. xxxix, 6-11.

Matis, 2c 27.

5 Adv. haer., Il. iv. 5, 11-15.

Syotds) Wil. vais, 526:

Milica, We varia eo);

God at first warned the Jews by means of natural precepts which he had implanted from the beginning in mankind.!

Those righteous men who lived before Abraham were justified without the Mosaic Law because they had the meaning of the Decalogue inscribed in their hearts and souls and had within themselves the righteousness of the Law. God moreover has increased and widened those laws which are natural and noble and common to all."

More pointedly, a propos of the determinism for which he takes the heretics to task, Irenaeus reiterates that man is a being imbued with reason which makes him godlike and endows him with free-will, compared with other forms of creation, such as /rumentum... et paleae, inanimalia et irvationabilia exsistentia, naturaliter talia facta...

This accounts for man's causing himself to become "sometimes wheat and sometimes chaff".

He is responsible for his fall and deserving of judgment, since, despite his creation as a rational being, he lost the true rationality and lived irrationally in opposition to the righteousness of God.

There appears, then, in the case of Irenaeus, one feels entitled to conclude, no great problem as regards the relation of the visible world to God or of the natural to the supernatural, and no insuperable obstacle to admitting reason or philosophy as footnotes to revelation, so to speak, or as means of enlightening faith. The latter must "to some extent include a knowledge of the reason and the aim of God's ways of salvation.

Faith and theological knowledge are, therefore, after all, closely intertwined",* always provided, Irenaeus would have insisted that they do not become intertwined to the extent that as a consequence faith becomes obscured.

He asserts that the apostles "had nothing in common with the teaching of the Gentiles",® accusing the heretics of plagiarizing the libid., LV. xxv. 3, 21-22. The manna provided for the Hebrews in the wilderness is referred to by Irenaeus as vationalem escam (Adv. haer., 1V. xxvii. 3, 13).

2 ibid., IV. xxviii. 29-30.

The Logos used to converse with the ante-Mosaic patriarchs (Adv. haey., III. xi. 11, 39-41).

3ibid., LV. vu. 7-13 homo vero rationabilis, et secundum hoc similis Deo, liber in arbitrvio factus et suae potestatis, ipse sibi causa est ut aliquando quidem frumentum aliquando autem palea fiat. Quapropter et iuste condemnabitur, quoniam vationabilis factus amisit veram vationem, et ivvationabiliter vivens, adversatus est tustitiae Det.

4 Harnack., op cit., p. 246, footnote 1.

5 Adv. haerv., IV. lvii. 2, 3-4.

comic poets, of bringing together the things that have been said by all those who are ignorant of God and who are called philosophers, and of sewing the rags and tatters they have picked up from such sources into a patchwork garment which they use as a cloak to cover their deceit.1

He charges Basilides and his like with bringing into conformity with their own teaching matters "that lie outside the truth"? by which he means, in contrast to the Christian revelation the speculations of the contemporary pagan world. He seeks, however, on the other hand to vindicate whatever the latter can be made to yield up as a means for facilitating the propagation of the faith.

His attitude to such things, from this rather different point of view, is summed up forcefully and quite frankly in the following passage from the Adversus haereses.

With reference to the spoiling of the Egyptians by the children of Israel on the eve of their departure from the land of bondage, he first of all explains that God intended to provide this prototype in the history of the chosen people of what was one day to be the experience of the Church.

He then goes on to say that, as the tabernacle in the wilderness was constructed out of the appropriated things, so Christians have every right to appropriate whatever will serve their purpose from the "mammon of unrighteousness", for he asks:

"From what source do we derive the houses in which we dwell, the garments in which we are clothed, the vessels that we use and all else ministering to our everyday existence, unless it be from those things which, when we were Gentiles, we acquired by avarice or received from our heathen parents, relations or friends who unrighteously obtained them, not to mention that even now we acquire such things?

In what way are the heathen debtors to us from whom we receive both gain and profit? Whatever they amass with labour we make use of without labour, though we are in the faith."

Thus in using the goods bestowed on him by a society which is not Christian, the Christian redeems his own from the hand of the stranger.

How can he say "stranger", as if the world did not belong to God?

Whatever Christians, therefore, when they were heathen, acquired from unrighteousness, they, having become Christians, are proved righteous by applying it to the advantage of the Lord. iG), WL excvating 2, a5:

2Tibid., Ue sclyaie lh, 28229) 3 ibid., IV. xlvi, abridged.

Nothwithstanding his vigorous critique of Gnostic irrationalism, Irenaeus might at times impress us as being himself irrational or at least anti-rationalist. He speaks, for example, of the Church as a garden planted in a world in which one may eat of every fruit except that which is forbidden, namely, the ubiquitous (universam) discord introduced by the heretics! There are, he declares, certain matters about which we should not ask. Many things lying at our feet, such as the rising of the Nile, remain a mystery. How much more, then, of a mystery must be those things which are in heaven.? We know only in part and accordingly should leave all difficult questions in the hands of God who bestows in some measure grace on us whereby we are enabled to explain some things, though there are others we must simply leave to him. Christians have the truth itself and the witness of God set clearly before them to go by in such things and, therefore, have no need to depart from the steadfast and true knowledge of God, by casting around for the various answers given to certain questions; and if Christians cannot find in scripture the explanation of the things with which human curiosity or investigation is concerned, the difficulty will not be lessened by their search for a divine being other than the God who really exists and to whom they owe their creation. Man is inferior to and lower in the scale of being than the Logos and spirit of God. To that extent the mysteries of God are beyond the limits of human knowledge and must be made known by revelation. That God should excel in knowledge is appropriate to his nature. Much may be said as to the causes of certain natural phenomena, but only God, their creator, can get at the truth regarding them.

There are, then, certain questions which we must leave in his hands.

The Christian, indeed, must leave them there, if he is to protect himself from danger and his faith from injury. The scriptures, given by God, can be relied on to be perfectly consistent. They speak with many voices but they all blend together into one harmony in praise of the Creator. Who but he can answer such questions as: "What was God doing before he made the world?"

Irenaeus quotes the scriptures testifying to the fact that evil exists but makes no effort to reflect on or account for its existence. God has, he notes, prepared eternal fire from the beginning for transgressors,

Dib dee cx. 2, LO=23, EVillaytolis SU as diye, devi 3 ibid., II. xliii passim, cf. II. xlii. 4.

but as regards the cause or origin of the latter, "neither has any scripture informed us, nor any apostle told us, nor the Lord instructed us".!

It is sufficient to say of things the source of which we are unable to explain that God prearranged them so to be.2

Such thornier problems would appear to fall into their proper, one might almost say, their appointed place, in what for Irenaeus is the harmonious perfection of the Creator's handiwork.

He lingers on the thought that it is "better and more profitable to belong to the unlettered class, better that one should have no knowledge whatsoever of why a single thing in creation has been made, but should believe in God and continue in his love, than that, puffed up through such knowledge, one should fall away from the love which is the life of man", but recollecting that he is writing with what the apostle Paul had said in mind, he hastens to add, "not that he meant to inveigh against a true knowledge of God, for in that case, he would have accused himself, but because he knew that some, puffed up by pretence of knowledge, fall away from the love of God...'

Harnack said of Irenaeus that he "replaced the vanishing trust in the possibility of attaining the highest knowledge by the aid of reason with the sure hope of a supernatural transformation of human nature, enabling it to appropriate what is above reason"

,4 which in the overall estimate holds substantially true.

Wpide, Wnexdii2 =7.

2ipiday lke nl, 3), LOSES:

3 ibid., II. xxxix. I, passim.

4 Harnack, Dogmen., vol. II, pag. 240. oS)

CHAPTER III

TERTULLIAN OF CARTHAGE

Tertullian is a man clearly with a quarrel on his hands.

Dispensing with prelimenaries he throws down the challenge to his opponents with these words:

"Our contest lies against these things, the institutions of our ancestors, the authority of tradition" — by which he means, as the context shows, the tradition of paganism — "the laws of our governors and the reasonings of the wise."

The last-named come in particularly for the full brunt of his attack, for out of their own conjectures they have ingeniously composed their physical philosophy.!

Their systems which existed in a crude form in the apostolic times, though found of late in a somewhat polished form, are still essentially the same.?

If there is any bais for comparison between them and the Christians, it consists in what they have borrowed from Christianity and not Christianity from them, for "which of the poets or the sophists", asks Tertullian, "has not drunk at the fountain of the prophets?"

They have perverted what they found in scripture by altering what pleased them to suit their own designs, because being still in obscurity they lacked the means required for proper understanding of the scriptures. Some of them likewise have altered and corrupted the "newly given revelation" into a philosophic system, striking off from the one way many inexplicable ways.

They have transformed the simplicity of the truth which they were too proud to believe and what was certain they, with their fastidious admixtures, have infected with uncertainty.

Whatever in their own systems corresponds with prophetic wisdom they either ascribe to some other source or apply in PPA ater Ul kek 7p ally.

*SDESPV AES. NOV 6:

® Apol., XLVII. 2-4, 9.

some other sense.

Thus truth is jeopardized, for they pretend either that truth is aided by falsehood or that falsehood derives support from truth! which has wellnigh been excluded by the poisons with which they have contaminated it.

Having in some detail explained the techniques employed by the philosophers to this end Tertullian proceeds to lay down what he considers to be the effective remedy.

There must be a separation of the sentiments entertained by Christians in common with philosophy from the arguments the philosophers employ by recalling all questions to the inspired standard of God. Whatever noxious vapours exhaled by philosophy obscure the clear and wholesome atmosphere of truth require to be cleared away by shattering the arguments drawn from the principles of things and by setting over against them the maxims of heavenly wisdom, that the pitfalls whereby philosophy ensnares the heathen may be removed and the methods repressed that heresy makes use of to shake the faith of Christians."

The philosophers in general are comparable to Thales of Miletus who, while star-gazing, fell into a well.

They are stupidly curious about natural phenomena while ever oblivious of the creator and ruler of all;? they cannot be counted really wise since, where their discovery began, they wandered away from the beginning of wisdom which is the fear of God.4What passes with them for investigation of the scriptures ends up as the metamorphosis of the latter into what their own minds have produced.

The very variety of the philosophic schools is further evidence of their service to untruth, more diversity than unanimity being discoverable among them:® even in their agreement can be discovered diversity. Where, then, does truth come in when by the variety of its mutually antagonistic sects philosophy is itself divided into manifold heresies?®& These mockers and corrupters of the truth which they merely affect to hold care for nothing but vainglory:' they philos1 De an., II. 5.

2bid., LE. 3) 3 Ad nat., II. IV. 18.

Sbide Ue Os 5 De an., II. 4.

S De pracs., Vals:

"Apo. XLVI. 7.

ophize in purple! and, while holding to the name and honour that go with wisdom, forsake their principles. Their curious researches may have unearthed some elements of truth but these they changed into the products of their own minds as their vain desires increased, so that the truth they found has degenerated, and from one or two drops of the same they produce a perfect flood of argument.?

Speaking of his experience of the loquacious city of Athens,? of the straining of philosophy after that facility of language which, rather than teaching, is mere talk, the apostle Paul sounded a warning against "subtle words and philosophy'? signifying worldly learning which, he saw, would prove injurious to the truth.

By this same token, Tertullian continues, all heresies stand condemned because they consist of the resources of subtle speech and the rules of philosophy'? which is the material of this world's wisdom, the rash interpreter of the nature and dispensation of God, the origin of the aeons and who can tell what infinite forms, and the trinity of man in the system of Basilides, and Marcion's better god with all his tranquillity. Down with the teaching of Zeno which has contributed to equating matter with God and that of Heraclitus with his doctrine involving a god of fire. The unpardonable offence of the philosophers is the part that they have played in aiding and abetting the heretics who associate with them as well as with magicians, mountebanks and astrologers:® they are the patriarchs of heresy? and along with other representatives of cultured paganism transmitters of heathen superstition.

The same subject-matter is discussed repeatedly by heretics and philosophers alike, the same arguments are involved:

"What is the source of evil? Why is it allowed? What is the origin of man: how does he come into existence?

— and the question raised recently by Valentinus, "How did God originate?" and the answer that he gives, "From invention® and abortion."

"O unhappy LTD Allen Le oie 2 Ad nat., Il. II. 5, 6.

Devan... Lill.

"Sian Wile PARK Grell e IU e Ss 5 Adv. Marc., V. XIX. 7.

SU Der Dy Ges. axel ie.

? Adv. Herm., VIL. 3, haereticorum patriarchae.

Ad mat. We UX. 2:

® de enthymest.

10 ectvomate.

Aristotle", cries Tertullian, "who invented for these men the dialectic art of building up and pulling down... embarrassing even to itself, detracting everything and treating actually of nothing, whence are derived those "fables and endless genealogies",! those "unprofitable questions",? and "words that spread like a cancer." The apostle

Paul, placing a restriction on all such things, expressly names philosophy.* Because of their desire for knowledge the heretics misinterpret

Pauls' advice to "prove all ee and the dominical text likewise, ee eee for the a xe apostles. er Ree Wir Serotec eer uct them, but even less less ; so for us who have received the testimony-of both- 'the 1e apostles and the Spiritand who, therefore have no need ofadditional research.' One must seek doubtless till he find and believe when he has found.

All that remains thereafter is to hold fast what one has believed, provided one also believes this, that there is no more to be believed, so nothing further to be sought after having found and believed what was taught by Christ who commands us to seek no further.8

Once one has believed his seeking is at an end for he has through believing found what he was looking for.

If one must go on seeking so long as the possibility exists of finding anything, either he does not yet believe, because so far he has not found what he seeks, or having found it he has lost it or ceased to believe in it. Such seeking indicates the absence of fixed tenets, therefore, the absence of belief.

Once anyone has laid hold of Jesus Christ, in short, and entered into enjoyment of the Gospel, he has no use for curious investigation or disputation: faith in Christ is all that he requires.

The answer to the question whether God required any material for the creation of the world is forthcoming not from the philosophers but from the prophets, from Wisdom itself, God's counsellor.t° The 1] Tim., I, 4.

2 Titus, III, 9.

Soins alle A Dewprags., VUl0,7, with reference to Col., II,

5 ibid., IV. 7, quoting I Thess., V, 21.

S Matt., VIL, 7; luke XL, 9:

7 De praes., VIII. 15.

8 ibid., IX. 4.; X and XI passim.

Nipid ye VO; 10 Adv. Herm., XVIII. 1.

school of heaven is the school for Christians.!

Let the latter restrict themselves to what lies in their own field: let their seeking be confined to what can be investigated without impairing the rule of faith, to know nothing opposed to which is to know everything? and with regard to which the rule of reason is applicable, under the three heads:

Matter, Time, and Limit, with the questions, What?, When? and How long? related thereto respectively.2

There must be no interpretation which ignores this principle.t Where after all is the need for such intellectual curiosity when the most ordinary person has direct access to the essential knowledge of God?

"There is not a Christian workman", Tertullian confidently asserts, "but discovers

God and manifests him and hence assigns to him all those attributes which go to make up a divine being, though as Plato affirms it is far from easy to find out the maker of the universe and hard, when he is found, to make him known to all.® It is better to remain in ignorance lest one should arrive at knowledge of what one ought not to know. las to what Christians ought to know, that has been provided for.®

Whoever has the fear of God, provided he has attained to the knowledge and truth of God will, even though ignorant of all else, possess complete and perfect wisdom.'

If it is a question of revelation, it is better to be in ignorance of something because God has not revealed it than to know it according to human wisdom because man has been so bold as to assume it.

"I praise the faith that has believed", Tertullian confesses, "in the duty of complying with the rule before learning the reason for it"® and with one of his not infrequent rhetorical flourishes, he says, apostrophizing the soul, "I summon thee not as when, formed in schools, trained up in libraries, nurtured in the academies and porticos of Attica, thou pourest forth thy wisdom.

I address thee, simple and unpolished, and uncultured and untaught, 1 De an., 1. 4, 6.

2 De praes., X1V.4, 5. Adversus regulam nihil scire omnia scire est.

Sole, Ole Slop telay 1B ep 5 Apol., XLVI. 9. Deum quilibet opifex Christianus et invenit et ostendit et exinde totum, quod in Deo quaeritur, ve quoque assignat.

8 De praes., XIV. 2-4.

"Ad nat., 11. I. 2-4.

Su/De0as., Lao:

2 Dercor., Wl 3:

such as they have who have thee only, that very thing of the road, the street and the workshop, unsullied and entire.

I want thine inexperience since in thy meagre experience no one feels any confidence.

I ask of thee what thou bringest into man, which thou knowest from thyself or from thine author, whoever he may be." !

Next to be dealt with are the crimes laid by Tertullian at the door of the philosophers with reference to God, creation, and the destiny of the soul, in connection with which we learn that the authority of the physical philosophers is alleged as the mancipium? or special property of wisdom, in particular where the mystery of matter is concerned, though "the renowned Mercurius Trismegistus", we are told, who was master of all physical philosophy was unable to arrive at a solution,? but then, neither the prophets nor the apostles nor even Christ had any knowledge concerning it.* The aim of the Stoics is to demonstrate, points out Tertullian, that matter, the material from which everything was created by the Lord, was unborn and unmade, having neither beginning nor end, and to establish the divine nature of the material elements.

In this, of course, they are not alone, for the professors of wisdom in general from whose genius the spirit of every heresy derives have called the world's unworthy elements divine, according to their various schools of thought. Thales assumed the basic world-stuff to be water: Heraclitus, fire: Anaximenes, air: Anaximander, all the heavenly bodies: Plato, the stars and Zeno, air and ether.°® This is the error censured by Paul in his letter to the Galatians where he speaks of that "physical and natural speculation which holds the elements to be God."® The fault, I suppose, of the divine doctrine, Tertullian says ironically, lies in its springing from Judaea rather than from Greece: it is evident that Christ erred in that, instead of sophists he sent out fishermen to preach.? The ordinary man may be in error but is better off for erring simply than the physical philosophers who err speculatively.®

LDe test. an4 lO. 7.

2 Ad nat., II. 11. 1.

3 Adv. Val., XN. I, 4 Adv. Herm., VIII. 3.

5 Adv. Marc., I. XIII. 3.

6 ibid., V. IV. 5, with reference to Gal., IV. i Devan, Lil, 3:

8 Ad nat., Il. VI. 7.

God had offenders in the wise and prudent who would not seek after him, though he was discoverable in his many mighty works, or who philosophized about him rashly and thereby furnished the heretics with their arts,' not expounding God as they found him, but preferring to dispute about his quality, his nature, and even his abode.

The worst of their aberrations is the trouble to which they go to prove the divine indifference or impassibility.

It was from Epicurus that Marcion derived the foremost term of his philosophy?, and the Gnostics would have men contemplate the "lonely goodness" of God.* How,

Tertullian demands, could a previously uncommunicative deity begin suddenly to communicate himself?

How is salvation, an activity of goodness, to be reconciled with celestial neutrality?

Nothing is so suited as salvation to the character of God® whose nature would negate itself, if he should cease to act,* as we are taught by God, not by the philosophers. ?

In addition, through assailing the veracity of the senses which are the stamp of man's rationality, God's dispensation has been impeached by the heretics.

Valentinus draws a distinction between the bodily sense-organs and the intellectual faculties, a dualism responsible for the Gnostic aeons and genealogies.

If, counters Tertullian, a dualism is involved, it has to do solely with the objects of senseperception, not with the locus of soul and mind or sense and intellect.

But why, he expostulates, adopt such methods in any case for torturing simple knowledge and for crucifying truth. You overthrow the whole condition of human life, he protests, railing at the Academy: you turn the order of nature in its entirety upside down: you veil the good providence of God himself by calling in question the trustworthiness of human sense-perception.® The philosophers have sought also to repudiate the resurrection of the body and for this the Stoics and the Epicureans are to be held responsible, though their teaching on the subject is not subscribed to 1 Adv. Marc., 1V. XXV. 3.

2 Ad nat., II. II. 7.

8 Adv. Marc., V. XIX. 7, principalem suae fidei terminum de Epicuri schola agnoscat, Deum inferens hebetem.

Spice Paws 1 PallosGly, LEP SEVGN Iy Usiloytal ay dle OSU Greys Xe:

Pulloyielee, MIDS DVN eke 8 De an., XVIII passim, XVII, IL.

by all the philosophic schools, since Pythagoras, Emepdocles and Plato uphold the opposite point of view.

That the latter, though not entering, at least knocked at the door of truth, Tertullian is willing to allow, but that is as far by way of compromise or conciliation as he is prepared to go.

His mantle, he tells us, has been adopted into a new and nobler philosophy, yet its original material has a tendency in many places to shine through. He sings avowedly a new song but the strains of the old song he was trained to can not infrequently be heard.

"I must needs use a name", he says, "to express the essence of which that being consists who is called God and who is accounted the Great Supreme, not from his name but owing to his essence."! God is one, he reasons, otherwise he does not exist, "because we more properly believe that what is not as it ought to be has no existence."*

He acknowledges that Christianity has unambiguously declared the principle of the uniqueness and the unity of God, but he bases the principle on a philosophical assumption and it is by logical deduction that he arrives at the proof of it. Reason forbids, he argues, belief in more gods than one, for God must by definition be a being to whom there is no equal, since he is the Great-Supreme. That being to whom nothing is equal must moreover be unique.

It therefore folows that God is one.? He debates the relationship of substance to attribute? and speaks of reasoning from species to genus and vice versa.°

It is, however, with regard to certain tenets of the Stoic philosophy, in which as a Roman lawyer he was trained, that the persisting influence of his intellectual heritage, the forces that had stamped themselves, in a sense, ineradicably on his mind and outlook, may be most clearly seen.

He considers sin in every form irrational® and the world a prison house, a thought with which he would console the imprisoned martyrs and reconcile them to their fate.?

He says, with a touch of Stoic self-sufficiency, "My only business is with myself" and adds with 1 Adv. Marc., I. VII. 4.

Si syialon, JO, ULI ale STIG le Wie ae 4 Adv. Prax., X XVI. 6. (and context).

5 De spect., 111. 8.

OER Ch an DNS Ae 7 Adv. Mare., I.

something of the Stoic's proud indifference, "I have, apart from that, no other care save not to care."! With reference to Peter's experience recorded in Acts X,9f., he sees in the "vessel coming down, like a huge sheet Jowered by the four corners to the earth" and containing

"all quadrupeds and creeping things of the earth and wild birds", a vision of universal community.? He has also reminiscences of Stoic fatalism.

It was, in Tertullian's opinion, necessary that there should have been heresies. The scriptures themselves were fashioned by the will of God to furnish material for heretics.

It was no less necessary that evil should exist and that the Lord should be betrayed.4

Recurrence for Tertullian, as for the Stoics, lies at the heart of all creation. "Whatever", he writes, "you chance on has been already in existence and whatever you have lost returns unfailingly...

All things after passing out of sight revert to their former state... they come to an end for the very purpose of coming into existence once again.'

On the subject of man's mortality he echoes the familiar Stoic attitude.

"There is one thing only that much concerns us in this life and that is getting quickly out of it:® there is nothing to be feared after death, if there is nothing to be felt.""

In several respects he is not far removed from Stoic pantheism.

He gives expression to the sentiment in several places throughout his works that all things are full of their maker and occupied by him.

Rather than think of the natural elements as not worthy of God, he prefers to regard them as divine,® in spite of his having on this very point severely criticised the pagan philosophers, and likens the Son, the Logos, to a ray emitted by the Creator® by whose active agency all things, he says, consist,!° though here the aim may be to safeguard the idea of God's transcendence and unity."

1 De pall., V. 4.

2 De ovat., XXV. 3.

* De pracs., XXXLX. 7.

4ibid., XXX. 4.

5 De ves. mort., XII. 6.

8 Apol., XL. 5.

" Westest ane. UV. 6.

BAdu. Mare., I. <Il1. 5.

SAPO, Slo 2 13) 10 4dv. Herm., XLV. 4.

11 Apbol., XXI. 14, 15.

His anthropology has also an unmistakably Stoic ring. There are, quite literally, an outer and inner man. The latter is the soul which is born of the divine atflatus, but, as regards its form is an exact replica of the body: both are in fact bodies, for example, the soul has eyes and ears wherewith to see God and hear His voice.!

Calling in question the distinction drawn by the dialecticians between the natural and the supernatural, he insists that everything without exception falls into the former category, for nature, he argues, if it is anything, is a reasonable work of God.? "We are worshippers", he declares, "of one God of whose existence and character nature teaches all mankind,? who will never be concealed, will never be absent, will always be known and heard..., who has for his witness all this that we are and wherein we exist, whereby proof is afforded of his being and unity".4 Even in matters of faith it is pointless to expect men to arrive at knowledge of the deity by the unaided light of reason, because those even who believe depend on some token of the latter in works worthy of God.® There is, accordingly, for faith a basic unity of reason and of natural revelation.

God must first be known from nature and thereafter authenticated by instruction, from nature through His works and by instruction through the revelation he has given in the scriptures, with the aid of discipline.

Scripture, nature and discipline combine to reinforce awareness of God, each in its own way ministering to His purpose.

Scripture establishes God's law, nature attests it, while discipline exacts it, and whatever is out of harmony with these three can have no claim to be of God.

If scripture is uncertain, nature is manifest, and with regard to nature's witness scripture can be in no uncertainty.

If as regards the latter there is any dubiety, discipline indicates what has been ratified by God.°®

The resurrection of the dead is testified to by "the whole revolving order of things", and affords an illustration of the divine energies displayed as much in nature as in God's spoken word.' God wrote it in His mighty works before He wrote it in the scriptures, with the 1 De an., |X. 8. eds, Sees 72 sAd scap., Wii.

4 Adv. Mare., I. X. 4.

Fienols, Wh aU Sy 8 De virg. vel., XVI. 1, 2.

7 De ves. mort. XIV. 1.

intention of sending prophecy (or scripture) as a supplementary instructor.

The Greeks used the term, Adyo¢g which is correctly understood as signifying "word", but the older meaning, "reason" signifies the thought or consciousness of God?

A statement already made is recalled to the effect that God made the cosmos and everything it contains by his Word and Reason and Power.

The wise men of the Greeks agree that the Logos or Word and Reason are responsible for the creation of the world. Zeno lays it down that he who fashioned all things should be called creator, though he also designates him Fate,

God, the soul of Jupiter and the necessity of things. Cleanthes gathers up all these various designations under the name of spirit. To the Word and Reason and Power by means of which, as we proclaim, says

Tertullian, God created everything, we also ascribe spirit, as their appropriate substance, the Word dwelling in the latter when it speaks forth, Reason being present when it commands and Power presiding when it carries things into effect.2.

By his exorcising, healing and life-restoring miracles, by his stilling of the storm and his walking on the sea, Christ is proved to be God's Logos, the same who was doing and who had done all things, the primal, first-begotten Word.4

The Son's authority was not restricted to things that pertained to the world's creation, for at all times he held converse with men, from Adam to the patriarchs and the prophets, in visions, dreams, dark sayings and the like, laying from the beginning the foundation of what he intended to follow out to the end. For the sake of those who later in history were to witness the Incarnation he rehearsed his destined role so as to smooth the path of faith, or to make belief in the Incarnation easier for them when it eventually took place.®

God's overall perfection springs from his eternity and his rationality. Everything in him is bound to be rational as it is natural, and since nothing can be accounted good but what is rationally good,' reason will be a necessary attribute of his goodness. He has provided, disposed and arranged everything by reason, and according to reason

Abide elle 7 8:

2 Adv. Prax., V. 3.

STA Pole ole TOF dale Ail Ne liele7), 5 Adu. Prax., XV1. 1-3.

6 Adv. Mavrc., 1. XXIV. 1.

'jHpidy, le Nee: Te

everything he has willed should be handled and understood.!

Reason will thus be found to lend support to tradition, custom and faith.?

It is the rudder without which those who are ignorant of God steer their whole course through life, knowing not how to avoid the tempest which is threatening the world.3

Before the world was made, and prior to the generation of the Son, God existed... in and for himself, since nothing else extrinsic to himself was in existence. Even then, however, God was not alone, for he had his Reason with him...4 Reason was first in him.®

God is the source also of the generalized primordial law that rules the universe and from which al! other manifestations of the law of God derive.

Within the latter like the leaves and branches present (potentially) at the embryonic stage of a tree's development, were comprised all the precepts of the posterior law which in due time germinated when disclosed. There existed before Moses an unwritten law which in a natural way was understood habitually and habitually observed and was not given primarily at Horeb or at Sinai in the desert but first existed in Paradise and at given periods passed through successive stages of reformation or improvement (for the patriarchs, for the Jews, and later for the Gentiles), in keeping with the circumstances of the times, with a view to man's salvation.®

The role delegated to the Paraclete in the Christian economy is the direction of discipline, the unfolding of the scriptures, the reformation of intellect and making progress toward better things; for nothing is without its progressive stages of development. The creation, little by little, advances to fruition.

First, there is the grain; then, from the grain, the shoot; and, from the shoot, the shrub.

Branches i De paen., L.

2 De cor., IV.

SeDerpaenen Lt:

Oo Fb 4 Adv. Pyax., V. 2, expressing exactly the same thought as ibid., V. 7 following, except that Tertullian in the second case, after vationem, adds et in vatione sermonem.

At V. 3 he uses the Greek Aéyov corresponding to serymonem., emailoy tales Wig 6 6 Adv. Iud., Il. 4-10.

Engraved on the natural tables of the human: heart and suggesting both natural law and a law-revealing nature God's common ordinance prevails universally. Why should it be believed, asks Tertullian, that God, the founder of the universe, the ruler of the whole world, the maker of mankind... gave a law through Moses to one people without giving it to all men? On the contrary in keeping with his goodness and his justice he gave it to all nations, when and through whom and as he willed. Adv. Iud., 11.1, 2. ell

and leaves follow.

Presently the full-grown tree expands to view and finally emerge the flourish and the mellow fruit from it. So it is with goodness, for the God of creation and the God of goodness are the same.

The latter was to begin with in an elementary state, motivated by the natural fear of God. From there, through the Law and the prophets, it advanced to infancy; thence, through the Gospel, to the fervour of its youth; and now, through the Paraclete, it is coming to a settled state of maturity.!

The argument for Christian practices is strengthened when they are upheld by nature, "the first ruler of all",? the authority of which, on the ground of the consensus gentium is one of the chief factors setting the standard for Christians. Any practice, per contra, that is opposed to nature sets those indulging in it at variance with the rest of their fellow-men, or with humanity at large.

As for the soul, rationality impressed on it from the first moment of its creation by its author who is himself essentially rational is its natural condition.? The soul has knowledge of itself without which it would have been incapable of fulfilling its true function.

It is in keeping with the fitness of things in a special way that man should have been equipped with such a soul as to be in a unique sense the rational animal.® "O testimony of the soul by nature Christian", exclaims Tertullian. Though in bondage to the body, led astray by depravities, weakened by lusts and by passions, and in slavery to false gods, the soul, notwithstanding, whenever it comes to itself, as when roused from sleep or illness or the like, and whenever it acquires something of its natural soundness, speaks of God.* Every soul by its own right proclaims what Christians may not utter above their breath."

The testimonies of the soul are one with those of nature and of reason; they are simple as they are true, and commonplace as they are simple; universal as they are commonplace, natural as they are universal, and divine as they are natural. One has only to reflect upon the majesty of nature from which the soul derives its authority.

1 De virg. vel., 1. 5-7.

2) Decor., Va V.

Silay Glys WAI edie 4 De an., XVI. 1.

5 De Gar. Chr.» Ll. 3, 4, CRA Dol VL) <6:

7 De test. an., VI. 5.

Nature is the mistress, her disciple is the soul, but all that is taught and all that is learned comes from Him who teaches the mistress, that is to say, from God.!

The soul was before prophecy and its endowment from the beginning was the inborn knowledge of God which amongst the Egyptians, the Assyrians, and the inhabitants of Pontus, is the same, seeing that their souls call the God of the Jews their God.? Goodness, originally divine, inborn and natural resides in the soul of man and makes the soul akin to God whose image or form in man, received originally from the divine afflatus has been lost as a result of human sin. The likeness of God in man persists, however, as the earnest of his eternal destiny, for what comes from God cannot be so much extinguished as obscured.

Obscured it can be, because it is not God; extinguished it cannot be, because its being derives from Him.?

It continues to manifest itself, being indestructible, in that native attribute of goodness, man's freedom and power of will.4

At Christ's coming the Creator who is law, reason and world-soul initiated a process of recapitulation whereby the human race is renewed and illuminated and in which Jesus figures as the enlightener and trainer of mankind,® the master teaching them how to escape to safety,® and preparing by degrees the means of healing for the inflamed condition induced by Adam's sin.'

Men cannot plead ignorance of God or Providence, for the world is itself inscribed with the signature of its maker and in each man's conscience the inscription may be read.

Because it is good originally and remembers its origin, God is assented to from within the soul of man, by such expressions as "Good

God", "God knows" etc.

It is thus that in prophetic forecasts the soul's divinity bursts forth.§ Every land has its own language but the subjects that speech deals with are common to them all, and man is the one name belonging to every nation upon earth. God is everyibid... Vis

2 Adv. Mare., I. X. 3. a Devan. Stile, 2: a Adu Vlare. UL. Vie 72 OE Vlog, DOM Te Se pat, UUs 3:.

7 Scorp., V.12 Sed dominus sustentata fervura delicti, donec tempore medicina temperaretur, paulatim vemedia composuit.

Sevan. ole 3c. Detestvan,, Ul, 4.16,

where, goodness is everywhere, the soul's witness is world-wide."

Nature is a source in many of the knowledge of the immortality of the soul, and of the knowledge of God in all, as is the conscience of a nation when it attests the one, supreme divinity, and other intelligent or rational beings like ourselves? when they acknowledge God as judge.2 What commends common-sense is its simplicity, its sharing the same sentiments and opinions and the fact that its pronouncements are open and accessible to each and everyone.

It may not like the divine reason which can often be at variance with superficial appearances lie at the very heart of things,4 but, for all that, it is divine.

Some of Tertullian's statements quoted at the beginning of this chapter have already afforded some indication as to how he felt about Greek culture in general.

His reaction is on the whole denunciatory and at times abusive in the extreme. He seems to take special pleasure in the prospect of deified emperors and governors of provinces who persecuted the Christians, philosophers who scouted the idea of a hereafter, not to mention other, more colourful representatives of the pagan way of life, enveloped in fires more fierce than those wherewith, in the days of their power and pride of life, their wrath waxed hot against the followers of Christ, or tossing in the fiery billows of the judgment after death;> yet even in his castigation of institutions embodying that pagan way of life he cannot refrain here and there from being philosophical.

Believe your books, if you must, he counsels his pagan audience, but so much more believe those that are divine and which agree with the ight of nature in the witness of the soul. Choose which you find to be, he tells them, the more faithful friend of truth. Your books may be distrusted but neither God nor nature le;® or consider the result, he says of what goes on at the racecourse — disfiguration, among other things, of the human countenance which is no different from the disfiguration of the image of God himself.7 Such excesses accompanying participation in the public sports, games, shows, etc. are totally 1 De test.an., V1.3, 4.

2 reliquis communibus sensibus.

3 De ves. mort., III. 1, 2.

4ibid., ILL. 6.

® De spect., XXX, 2-5.

6 De test. an., VI. 1.

* De spect., KVL. i.

opposed to nature, to reason and to God, and all that is so opposed deserves to be branded as monstrous among men.!

With the object of upholding the integrity of human senseexperience, and in proof of its wholesome influence he points with approbation to the cultural and civilizing accomplishments of which the sense-impressions are the source — "tot artes, tol ingenia, tot studia, negotia, officia, commercia, remedia, consilia, solatia, victus, cultus ornatusque omnia".

The body or man's physical constitution is the medium, he contends, for the procreation of the arts, the mind's pursuits and powers, and the soul's activities. There is thus no reason to exclude the physical from the eternal life of heaven.

It therefore follows that the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is acceptable as a reasonable belief."

This conclusion is reinforced by a brief excursus into physiological psychology. Thinking is physically conditioned.

The faculty, which rules? in the sensory perceptual field of human experience is situated in the brain or in the space between the eyebrows or wherever else the philosophers see fit to locate it. The physical is, therefore, the locus in which the thought processes occur.

The soul, so long as it is embodied, is never separate from the flesh, while the flesh does nothing without the soul.?

Even the virtues which the Christian extols are not produced on soil foreign to the cultivated life.

Modesty, the pre-condition of all good dispositions, is, like every worthy human quality, the outcome of breeding and educational influences.

The flower of manners, it is a rare thing, not perfected easily, yet tenuous if life, if nature, training, and self-discipline play their part. Neglect of study on the other hand leads to lapse in discipline, which is regrettable.® The soul's substance is not benefitted by education but its conduct and discipline are; such nurture does nothing to increase the soul, but adds to its grace and embellishment. °® Tertullian deplores the fact that many Christians are uneducated, that still more falter in their faith, that some again are lacking in intellectual stability and in need of instruction, direction and strength1 De cor., V. 4.

2 De ves. mort., VII 11-13.

3 AYeLoviKoy.

4 De ves. mort., XV. 5.

See pugs wad 2.

6 De an., VI. 7. aS

ening.! There are those also of a somewhat perverse inclination — the uneducated mostly — who take wrong meanings out of words, while the majority are startled at the slightest mention of the Trinitarian formula or any allusion to common-sence.?

Certain people are well satisfied with simply having believed carrying in their minds through ignorance a faith which they have never put to the test and the foundation of which is mere probability,® so unlike those "who have agonized into the same light of truth from the same womb of a common ignorance".

Yet we see something of the other side of Tertullian, when, in a self-revealing moment, he confesses openly that, new disciple that he is, and a follower of the apostle Paul, he believes nothing in the meantime but that nothing should rashly be believed and that whatever is believed without enquiry into its source is believed rashly;> but to continue the former strain, the heretics, he says, with the philosophers and others laugh and jeer at the things

Christians believe® and this should be enough to challenge the latter to avail themselves of their rhetoric as well as their philosophy.'

It is not that the adjuncts to civilized existence are unconditionally bad, for nature teaches, as is known universally, that God is the creator of the universe, that the universe is good, and that it belongs to man by the free gift of his maker' who has blessed the whole of his creation for wholesome and good uses. Not cultured living in itself but the excesses attending it, is what is being condemned.®

Christ came in the flesh not to enlighten feardriven boors and savages... but men already civilized, yet under illusions from their culture, so that they might arrive through him at the knowledge of the truth.!°

The whole creation fashioned with a rivalry among its several parts demonstrates the regulation of the universe by an over-ruling reason, "Will a single floweret from the hedgerow", asks Tertullian,

"..,a single little shellfish from any sea, ...a single stray feather of a 1 De ves. mort., I1. 11.

2ibid., V.1, Adv. Prax., III. I. te apt, Wd:

4 Apol., XXXIX. 9.

SVAdv, WVlare., Vi. le 1.

Sibid., V. XIX. 8.

7 De ves. mort., V.1.

S De spect, LN. 4. ch. De spect., XV entire.

NORA OM x 30)

moorfowl, to say nothing of a peacock, inform you that the creator was a poor craftsman?"! "Imitate, if you can", he says elsewhere,

"the bee's cells, the ant's hills, the spider's webbs, the silkworm's threads. Endure, if you know how, the creatures that take possession of your bed and house, the blister beetle's poisonous injections, the fly's spikes, the gnat's sheath and sting. Take a turn finally round yourself; survey man inside out.

Even this handiwork of our God will please you, inasmuch as your own Lord, that better God, loved it so well."? Nothing in fact occurs without the will of God, whether it be for the shielding or for the shaking of faith.

This somewhat rhapsodic train of thought is apparently no answer to the question which breaks in upon it at this point: "What of evil things?"* God made these things, but not of his own will and pleasure, is Tertullian's reply; that would have been unworthy and unseemly of him as well as being at variance with the universal fitness of things. The fault really hes in matter which, admittedly, may be evil and yet good things are created out of it.

But the questioner is not satisfied insisting, "What about the text: 'It is I who create evil.'?"® and Tertullian replies by explaining that two kinds of evil are involved — mala culpae, evils of sin of which the devil is the cause; and mala poenae, penal evils the author of which is God. The former are morally bad, whereas the latter resulting from the operation of divine justice on human sin which is the consequence of the schism that arose initially from the first anti-rational action on man's part in an otherwise good world, may seem to be evil in the eyes of those who suffer them, but are not actually so, since they are providentially and remedially arranged.

"Then, what of evil in the larger, cosmic sense?", reiterates the questioner.

The two kinds of evil, answers Tertullian, come into it again.

There is that which, owing to the evil spirit's intervention, supervenes upon the soul, and a natural, antecedent evil which arises of itself — we might prefer to say "primordially" or "non-derivatively" — our nature being corrupted by another nature owning a god and father of its own.® 1 Adv. Marc., 1. XIII. 5.

Zibids, 1. XUV. 1-2.

8 De fuga, II, 5.

4 See Adv. Marc., Il. XII-XIVf.

Dae el Vin aiie 8 De an., XLI. 1. oF

Tertullian thus asserts the basic unity of all being and in support of his assertion invokes the sacramental principle.

What, in your estimate, he says, addressing the heretics, is the utter disgrace of my God, in fact is the sacrament of man's salvation.

The Son has been seen and heard and met in the Incarnation... uniting God and man in himself, God in mighty deeds, in weak ones man, so that he might give to man as much as he takes from God.

God held converse with man that man might learn to act like God; God dealt on equal terms with man that man might learn to deal on equal terms with him; God was made little that man might be made great.!

Take it all in all, whatever happens happens for Tertullian in the best of all possible worlds — except for the philosophers for some of whom he shows a degree of preference by the labels he attaches to each of them — "...the nobility of Plato, the force of Zeno, the levelheadedness of Aristotle, the stupidity of Epicurus, the sadness of Heraclitus, and the madness of Empedocles",? but for all of them, apparently, without exception he has this final parting shot:

"What has Athens to do with Jerusalem; what concord is there between the Academy and the Church?

The Christian's instruction comes from the porch of Solomon who taught that the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart.

Away with all efforts to produce a mottled Stoic-Platonic-dialectic Christianity !

Where is there any likeness between the Christian and the philosopher; between the disciple of Greece and the disciple of heaven; between the man whose object is fame and the man whose object is life; between the talker and the doer; between him who builds up and him who pulls down; between the friend and the foe of error; between one who corrupts the truth and one who restores and teaches it?''s 1 Adv. Marc., Il.

X XVII. 6.

2 De an., III. 2.

3 De praes., VII. 9-11, Apol., XLVI. 18.

CHAP PER IV

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA

The song of salvation is not new, writes Clement, in the sense that an implement or a house is new, for it was before the morning star,! and he quotes the fourth gospel:

"In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God."

Inasmuch, then, Clement continues, as the Logos existed from the first, he was and is the divine origin of all things, but because Christ has of late assumed the name, hallowed of old and worthy of power,

I have called him the New Song. This Logos who is the cause both of our being long ago, because he was in God, and of our well-being, who is alone both God and man and the promotor of all that is good for us, has thus in his own person appeared recently to men; and learning from him how to live rightly upon earth we are conducted on our way to eternal life.'

Having given the Law temporarily as grace in the olden time through Moses, the Logos speaks in the Old Testament as well as in the New,' there being a testament of God which in both Testaments is one.

In all culture, indeed, there is a covenant relationship, for ...the husbandman of the soil... is one who sowed nutritious seeds from the beginning, from the foundation of the world, the times and places being responsible for the differences that exist.®° Thus, in Greek thought and literature the Logos may be heard uttering his voice.®

1 Pyoty., 1. 6, 3. 2-4 with reference to Ps. CIX, 3.

2 ifojawaly de Ue 8 Prov, 1. 6,5: 7, W125.

£ Paed., 1. Vil. 60, 1..3-7. a Si I Vi 37, 2, 2-44 on Ue 6 ibid., V. IV. passim. oo

Many treasures are dispensed by the one God through varied means, but in and through them all the Instructor is the same.

There exists an identity, arising from their common origin in God, between the law of nature or the law which is "connate and natural" and the law of instruction which was given afterwards,? Plato having shown that the Logos and God are unitary entities.

Wisdom which pervades the entire world and the affairs of men is manifold.

Applied to first causes it is defined as understanding rd | (véqouc). When it confirms understanding by demonstrative reasoning

Oger. it is designated knowledge and science.

In the world of sense it is right opinion whereby the truthfulness of things is ascertained on erounds of probability.

In handicrafts it is art.

In scientific investigation (the observation of similarities, transposition and combination, without regard to primary causes) it is called experiment; and when engaged with what pertains to piety, receiving Christ, the primeval Logos, without speculation, it is spoken of as faith. Essential to and occupying in it a supreme place is the Holy Spirit which the man who by divine guidance has believed receives when his faith is strong.

Philosophy which has a rather discriminative power of perception also participates in wisdom ;? it does not arise from what is evil, since it makes men virtuous, but from God whose work is solely to do good.

The practice of philosophy was bestowed upon the best among the Greeks which clearly indicates that its source of origin is the providence of God, and from that philosophy and the Old Testament, by a universal calling, have been gathered into one the peculiarly righteous people, brought together by one Lord, the only God of both Greeks and barbarians, through the teaching that flows from faith.

The way of truth is one, which from every side, like a perennial river, receives tributary streams.® Falsehood has innumerable bypaths by comparison, the Greek philosophical and other sects having disrupted this unity, each boasting as the truth the portion of truth that has fallen to its lot.

The dawnlght, nevertheless, illuminates them all, since there is an element of truth which each of them contains, a fragment torn from, but still a part of, eternal truth, for many of the Dy eaed., Wee Si7.

4:88, L. 1.

Ae CL SY /icery ORD:

SO SUD ara SP eeilloytdl py WAIL PQWAVU be LSI STS raja cane Wate aly Oh ah ll 2 bids, Vile Vi 15 9)6-9"

Dsilentaley Mls Wig yA) Ms oe I

dogmas of the sects, although pitched on different keynotes, compose one harmony, and he who reassembles the separate fragments and restores their unity "will without peril... contemplate the perfect

Logos, who is truth".4

Clement now proceeds to work out the implications of the zmago det concept or the concept of the image of God in man, the "divine and royal Logos" in his way of phrasing it. The image of the image is, he says, the mind of man.? From an impressive marshalling of evidence brought to bear on this he leads up to the conclusion that the knowledge of God exists in all men everywhere. When Thales was asked on one occasion whether a man could exclude that knowledge while engaged on any activity, he is reported as having answered that to do so is impossible, since the very act of thinking is itself the knowledge of God.?

There always was, affirms Clement, a natural revelation of the one almighty God amongst all right-thinking men, most of whom retaining some respect for truth, apprehended the eternal goodness in the providence of God,* to whom man as God's workmanship is dear.

The other works of creation were made by God's command alone, but with His own hand God made man and breathed into him what is peculiar to Himself, fashioning him after His own likeness. This is the inspiration, the breath of God in every man or, as Clement, in his frequently felicitous way expresses it, "the love-charm within"? containing the archetype which along with the knowledge of God that remains in men is indestructible. ® Those who assert that philosophy does not derive from God are in danger of saying that he is ignorant of each thing in particular and is not the cause of everything that is good; but, declares Clement, nothing that exists would have had a beginning without the will of God, and philosophy, if God so willed it, owes its origin to Him.'

God has made all things by His Logos,® not in the sense, however, signifying the spoken word (Adyog 6 mpogogixdc) but in that which Wibide i) lino 75 eos oS, 1.

2 ibid., V. XIV. 94, 5; 6.1 elxav deixdvocg avdeamuvos vod 3 ibid., V. XIV. 96, 4. 4-6.

ATDIGey View NO ler Si/mecorilie 5 Paed., I. III. 7, 1. 3-5; 2. 1-6 +d platpov evdov

8Siv., LL Vill 38; 5. 3-4: tibid., Viz XVI. 156; 354. LZ.

Sibid. VL OVEl. 136,35. 3-4:

signifies His power, His benevolence and His wisdom! in which philosophy participates and which, as a power of God, activates freewillin man, makes way for faith, and crowns with its highest fellowship the perseverence of the elect.?

Now, Christ is wisdom, as is claimed by those professing faith in him and as is evident from his influence in the prophets whereby the gnostic tradition may be learned.?

He is the Son of God, placed nearest to Him who alone is the Almighty, whose nature is most perfect and most holy and most potent and most princely and most kingly and most beneficient.

This is the highest pre-eminence which orders all things in accord with the Father's will, and steers the universe right well, performing all his activities with unflagging and untiring energy, ...ever present everywhere and contained nowhere; all mind and all light of the Father, ...seeing all things, hearing all things, knowing all things, the divine administrator on behalf of Him who has placed everything beneath his authority.

All men are, therefore, his, some through knowledge, others not yet so.

Hence his providence in private, in public and everywhere.

He it is who also, by inferior angels, gave philosophy to the Greeks, dispensing his benefit to both Greeks and barbarians.

He is the Wisdom in which the almighty God rejoiced, the Father's firstbegotten Logos, the power of God and his fellow-counsellor before the foundation of the world, never neglecting his own handiwork, the teacher of those who have been formed by him.4

It is not to be assumed, however, from anything said in the foregoing to the credit of Greek philosophy that everything aspiring to that title is admissible.

It is not a question, cautions Clement, of "the Stoic, or the Platonic, or the Epicurean, or the Aristotelian philosophy, but of whatever has been well said by each of those sects which teach righteousness, along with a science pervaded by piety."

It is this eclectic whole, he says, that I call philosophy,® excluding the disparate and falsified conclusions of human reasoning which I would never call divine® and the word-juggling associated with the "traibid, V.l..6,,3;. 3-5.

2 ibids, V. SIT. 83, 5.1-3, Sipid., VI. VII. 61, 1. 1-3.

Pg 'ibid, VIL. TL, 7, 4-6, yt"

§ ibid., I. VII. 37, 6. 1-4.

6 ibid., I. VII. 37, 6. 4-6.

dition of men"! and in particular the fantastic sophistry of the Greeks which by means of words makes false opinions look like true.?

The apostle Paul is quoted in support of this position where he says that one's faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God? which alone, without proof, is able to save by means of simple faitht and where he warns his readers to beware lest any man spoil them of faith in Christ with philosophy and vain deceit which has no place for providence,® branding not all, but the Epicurean philosophy which deifies pleasure and rules out providence, and any other philosophy which honours the elements but neither sets over them the efficient cause nor apprehends the Creator.®

Philosophy has, says Clement, been brought into disrepute by the vain conceits of some of its representatives, as knowledge has been by those who make it out to be other than it is, but that is no argument against philosophy and knowledge at their best.7 There is good and bad in everything and Greek philosophy is like nuts, part of which is nourishing, while the rest is inedible. There are, moreover, souls which have nutriment peculiar to themselves, some who increase according to knowledge and understanding, some who draw on philosophy.§

The latter will consist, in Clement's final estimate, of such dogmas in each sect as cannot be impugned, gathered up into one selection, on condition that these dogmas and the way of life of the sect in question correspond.® "Let a man", as he puts it, "milk the sheep's milk, if he need sustenance; let him shear the sheep's wool if he need clothing, and let me likewise produce the fruit of Greek erudition."!°

The main concern is not, he emphasizes, with sectarian ideas, but with real philosophy, defined as strictly systematic wisdom relating to certain knowledge of practical life or sure and logically irrefragible apprehension of things divine and human, past, present, and future, as inculcated by the prophets and the advent of the Lord, in distinction from or in opposition to the teaching of this or that philosophic sect.

Uapid., leo, oi 2. l=2. abid., Le Vim. 39) Ws 1-2:

SeCon. lleeop a Siv., V. U9, 237 3. 1.

5 with reference to Col., II. 4, 8. iim lle SII EXO ein ye ibe Ny Ale a Sie Ul 252.5. 13:

CTilloviG ln allg dla iambic ele pide Wal Vall 555 Si Ale LO bide, Tal, 17, 4255 2. Lez:

The real philosophy, as intended by God and communicated through the Son, is eternal truth, yet applicable and of service to man's temporal existence.

It is "one and many... partly perfect and partly incomplete"'.1

God in His providential ordering of things foresaw that the heathen would not believe, yet so that they might receive their own perfection he gave them philosophy, but previous to faith.2

The philosophy of the Greeks is characterized, in consequence, by its fragmentary and elementary character? being simply a portion of divine truth assigned to them by Providence on the principle of according to each thing what best accords with its deserts.*

It was, as mentioned, given through the medium of lower angels to the Greeks,® its lesser status being manifested by the fact that those who were righteous by means of philosophy needed not only to have faith in Christ for repentance to salvation,but had also to forsake idolatry. ®

The philosopher is a child, comparatively speaking, who can reach manhood only in Christ. The grafting process in the case of the olive tree affords a good analogy. The philosopher resembles the wild olive in that he acquires divine power through faith by being transplanted into the knowledge of Christ and grafted on to the Logos, so that by assimilating the nutriment thus made available he becomes a fair, good olive tree, he who was barren becoming fruitful "by the art of culture and gnostic skill',? for men, even if they happen to have practiced philosophy, must be saved, by learning the truth in Christ in whom what was hidden in past ages has now been made fully known.§

No one will gainsay the fact that the Greeks had some knowledge of God, neither will anyone disagree with Paul's opinion that their teaching is elementary compared with the perfect teaching of Christ® and, as he found out, indirect.'® Philosophy is not the sole prelibid., VI. VII. 54, 1-3

Mibid.» VL. XLV. 1105 3:,.2-5.

Side, Vi. VLIEOSs al: 2

Snide: Vac VE SOF 83297 I.

Paibide Ville Wl sGy 45 i= §ibid., VI. VI. 44, 4. 3UOC WAT) ONE alesse Sabid., Vi. SIE. 87, 1: ibid. WA is ilies 1.

10 ibid., VI. V. 39, 1. 2-4 and I. XIX. 91, 1-4; 92, 1 where, says Clement, Paul suggests that the &yvwatoc Seéd¢ whose altar he found at Athens is really God, the Creator, worshipped in a roundabout fashion (xat& meptpeaotv) by the Greeks.

occupation of the enlightened Christian, but something to turn to asa pleasant relaxation when life's main concerns have been duly attended to; it is a kind of after-dinner dessert! which one is entitled to enjoy.

The prophets and apostles were not versed in the arts of philosophy yet they were possessed of an insight into truth that others lacked, for their mentor was the spirit whose instruction is infallible; they knew by faith what others were incapable of knowing readily,? which is, as in the parabolic style of scripture, another of the Holy Spirit's ways of showing that the philosophers among the Greeks and the wise men among the barbarians were ignorant of the mystic teaching to be imparted by the Lord.

Philosophy, nevertheless, co-operates in the search for and in the discovery of truth.

It does not always observe accuracy in matters of detail and falls short in that it does not know and worship the true

God.

Still, it proclaims a providence, the reward of a happy life and the punishment of wrongdoing, and generally speaking teaches in a comprehensive way, while certain specific services of an unquestionably valuable nature may be named whereby concurrently and cooperatively it contributes to the unity of truth, although it does not seek to, nor is it able to add to the truth itself.

Real science (émotquy) by sure comprehension (x«téAnyic) leads up through true and certain reasons to apprehension (yvéo1c) of the cause of anything.

He who knows what is true knows also what is false.4.

By thus elucidating our awareness of the truth philosophy, which science in this sense really is, protects against falsehood and those who assail by fraud.® In this it resembles the Lydian touchstone which is believed to possess the power of distinguishing between false and genuine gold.® It is a poor money-changer, comments Clement, who cannot detect false coin."

Another of the services that may be rendered by philosophy is that it acts as "the fence and wall of the vineyard" and thus affords a safeguard against sophistry, the activities of which are treacherous

1 ibid., VI. XVIII. 162, 1. 1-4 tpwyaArév tt ext tH Selmvm, cf. Sivy., I. XX. 100,

2. 3-4. aribidy, Wlxe45, Lee2a-4BetloiGley Valea oelici in OSes alte 4 ibid., VI. XVIII. 162, 4; 5. 1. by llowGla, We Wits Sisk, 7G i Me 6 ibid.) 1 Ux) 4472. 325. abides Vile Sine 3=4 ole

plots, in Clements' opinion, laid against the truth; or philosophy may be thought of as the coping-stone to strengthen wisdom! against similar assaults,? even though wisdom's true strength is in itself.

Philosophy, again, is indispensable in combatting heresies which are "the tares among the wheat"? and on account of which the labour of research has to be undertaken and carried out.

Artificial fruits do not reveal their true nature of themselves and would not be abstained from solely on the evidence of one's eyes.

The difference between what is real and what is artificial can be detected only by observation and reasoning.

In argument and discussion there are certain things admitted and certain things in dispute.

It is here that reason comes into play. Working from the former it establishes the latter, for it is the governor which acts as the pilot of the soul, while it remains itself unmoved.

It does not directly declare the Logos but in many instances it attempts and persuasively teaches probable arguments.

It forges the weapons for dialectical debate and because it embraces a wider range of things within its circumference it demonstrates one's faith.

It also exercises an important cathartic influence on the soul which must be purged from corrupt doctrines by right reason? and thereby prepared to receive faith.

— There are those finally in every generation who cannot justbelieve, coming to faith only by way of demonstration, and to them philosophy can render the same service that it rendered to the Greeks, to whom it was given as a covenant akin to them by God in order to serve as a stepping-stone to the Christian philosophy® or, as Clement phrases it, the truly royalteaching. Outright rejection of Greek thought as an ally to faith in Christ carries with it the responsibility of denying the philosopher the opportunity or the possibility of arriving at full spiritual maturity, whereas recognition of Hellenic wisdom on the part of Christians may enable him to discover the teacher of teachers and attain to the true object of his quest. eNO TC ep Ne Oils 325522

2 1bid., I. V. 28, 4. 3; 29, 1. 1-3.

It is the same in medicine, says Clement, as it is in husbandry.

He has learned to some purpose who has practiced his various lessons so that he can cultivate and heal...

I call really learned the man who brings everything to bear upon the truth, so that from geometry and music and grammar and philosophy itself, pruning what is useful, he secures the faith's immunity from attack.

Sty. 1. IX. 43, 3, 4.

Br Say Ville XOVEN OO) 4, EZ: ccaullenyali, WOME MW Ar) ese aids, VilE WLS ov, 1. 2-48

Clement, however, has to reckon with the opposition, not to mention the revulsion which the mere mention of philosophy is liable to evoke in the minds of simple, unsophisticated people who shut their ears against anything that savours of Hellenism, an indication, Clement hints, that it really holds a certain attraction for them, in spite of their protests.

At any rate, the rank and file of Church members are scared at Greek philosophy, as children are by the masks that actors wear, for fear of its leading them astray.

If the faith of such people is the sort of faith, Clement says, that can be dissolved by plausible speech, let it by all means be dissolved,! for, as someone has said, false opinion may be demolished but the truth is immoveable.

Since the question: Should Christians philosophize?, however, has been raised, it is, in Clement's judgment, a fit subject for discussion.

His first point is that we have no choice in the matter.

Even to condemn something one must beforehand be informed regarding it, and this involves philosophy."

But, retort his critics, we do not all philosophize.

Do we not all, Clement puts it to them, follow after life?

You say that you believe, but how have you believed?

You claim that you love God and your neighbour, but how can you without reflecting on what is implied by such a claim, and how, if you so reflect, can you possibly avoid philosophy?? One may be a believer without learning, but without learning it is impossible to comprehend the things faith requires one to believe.

It is not by faith alone, but by faith combined with knowledge that we choose "what is well said".

There is practically nothing in life's daily round that does not involve philosophy.

Let those, accordingly, in the market-place and in the shop philosophize.* itibids, Vil Xx. 80) oa. Lez Sly eal=4 2 ibid., VI XVIII. 162, 5. The argument stems from Aristotle, Pyrotr. fr. 2, p. 28 f.

Ross. Cf. amongst Stoic diatribe-writers e.g. Musonius Rufus, the diatribes III and VIII.

De Vogel, Greek Phil. III, nr. 1227. [Editor's note].

S°Paed., Llls X78, L. 2-6:

4 Paed., III. XI. 79, 1. 2-3: "what is well said" (t& xard&e etenuéva), referred to, here and elsewhere in Clement, will have more meaning for the reader in the light of T. R. Glover's statement in his The World of the New Testament, Cambridge, 1931, p. 168, where comparing the new education with the old, he maintains that the latter's strength was "its constant reference to the master minds of antiquity, the historians, the great poets, and the great philosophers, and its intimate knowledge of their masterpieces". The basis of this education, he points out, was literary and philosophical and it represented an ideal of culture, in the words of Matthew Arnold, as being "familiar with the best that has been said".

The opposition's arguments. are not, however, yet exhausted.

Others maintain that philosophy and all its works are the contrivance of an evil influence. To that way of looking at it, Clement tells them, there is a self-evident reply. How can the author of disorder and wickedness be invoked as the source of what is virtuous?

Greek philosophy certainly qualifies as such a source.

Furthermore, if the devil were in point of fact the bestower of philosophy, he would, because of his concern for enlightening the Greeks, be proved more beneficent than God.

If, again, anyone should say that philosophy is the creation of some angel or some power that knew the truth but did not abide in it, he would require to have it pointed out to him that, if God had thought this seriously harmful, He would have intervened, whereas actually he did not.

Philosophy is, therefore, in a sense a work of divine providence; what is more, Clement promises, I shall show throughout the whole course of these Stromateis that evil has an evil nature and can never produce anything that is good.1

There remains to be dealt with the more popular argument that Greek philosophy stumbled accidentally on the truth which is claimed to inhere init. To that Clement is ready with an apposite reply: Greek philosophy may have stumbled on the truth accidentally, but, if it did, it was in consequence of an accident contrived by Providence, for chance cannot be deified.

Philosophy is no different from natural religion, is the next objection to be brought forward by Clement's critics.

That may be so, he answers, but it has to be borne in mind that Christians have to do with a God who created nature, human and otherwise, a God who desired men to live rationally and rightly and who in communicating being and life to them also communicated reason? which is the essence of man's nature and his basic kinship with God. Wise souls, pure as the virgins in the gospel parable,? he reminds the opposition,

! Sty., 1.1.18, 3;4. The problem of evil was of particular importance in Clement's day, because Basilides c.s. attributed a substantial existence to evil. Clement seeks a way round the difficulty by saying that sin is an activity, not an existence and, therefore, not a work of God.

Siy., IV. XIII. 93, 3. 5; 94, 1.1. There is no region anywhere existing apart from the goodness of God. See Str., IV. IVf. passim. It is interesting to see how, a century later, Plotinus solved the problem: he taught that evil is essentially negative.

It is otépyjouc, which means: the total absence of Good (Enn. I 8, 11; De Vogel, Greek Phil. 111, nr. 1410 e). Augustine welcomed this theory as a liberation from the Manichaean doctrine of evil as a substantial form of being.

[Partly editor's note].

2 Si, V. lO, Se -3:

B Miatte, xexeV Vet 35

understanding themselves to be situated amid the ignorance of the world, kindle the light, and rouse the mind, illumine the darkness, and dispel ignorance, seek truth, and wait for the appearance of the teacher.!

God gave the Jews the Law and the Greeks philosophy, both peoples taken together comprehending the human race.

Thus unbelief was shut up or contained until Christ's advent.? It was possible for those among the Greeks who philosophized, by reflection and direct vision, accurately to see God.

"The earth", as the scriptures teach, "is God's and the fulness thereof ..."4 They also teach that "prudence is the love of instruction and love the keeping of its laws" and that "the desire of wisdom leads ... to the Kingdom".® Knowledge should, therefore, be sought out till it is found. "Search", Clement quotes, "and thou shalt find'. The Logos does not desire him who has believed to be in idleness.

Seeking ends in finding; it drives out vain trifling and approves the contemplation that strengthens faith,' which ought not to be inert and solitary but combined with investigation.2

To search, indeed, is a first claim upon faith, and ".. seek first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness"® may be understood as an exhortation to follow the gnostic life and to seek truth in word and deed. !° Wisdom, "the knowledge of things human and divine and their causes" is queen of philosophy and the latter, the study of wisdom, is queen of preparatory culture.'! The whole propaedeutic system of the Greeks, including philosophy, is amongst the benefits which, like '7 showers falling on the earth, have come down from God to men.

¥ What is useful in all culture we should select and make our own.'8

Greek philosophy cannot claim to comprehend all truth and is powerless where the performance of God's commandments are conDSi Vos deve See Ie

21Siv.. Vil. eV LL, 159) 9:

3 Sty. I. XIX. 94, 7. 1-3.

4 Str., VI. XVII. 160, 3. 1-2 with reference to Ps. XXIV, 1.

5 Sty., VI. XV. 121, 2. 5-8 alluding to Wisdom VI, 17-20.

OMatt., VL 7 luke Tl, 9) OS hy IL Sylby ey SiGe Salle BRS en lol = 9 Matt., Vl, 32-33; Luke XII, 30-31.

LOS iy Vin Wil. 34, Oe 2-94 035; 1), 1-3.

BEES al Vin Onl S-Or L2eibids, de Vil Siz, Leis.

ISG pide hie Ul. 4.0

Ae gale

cerned.

It nevertheless prepares the way for the truly royal teaching, since it is a kind of training which moulds human character and fits the man who believes in providence for the reception of the truth.1

It was essential to the Greeks for righteousness and (as noted hitherto) in its preparatory role is valuable for those who come to faith by demonstration or by reasoned explanation in which the attempt is made to show that whatever is good is providentially derived.

Philosophy was given by God as a tutor to bring the Greeks to Christ, as for the same purpose the Law was given to the Jews."

The ways that lead aright to wisdom are various. There is natural science which, as Clement referring to the Book of Wisdom says, is embraced by the barbarian (i.e. the Jewish) philosophy, and which takes within its provenance all the phenomena of sense and objects of intellect, the learning of which, when pursued with a right course, leads to the Ruler of all, by way of Wisdom, the artificer of all things.?

Another way is dialectic which classifies and distinguishes between forms of existence while reducing them to their basic elements, and with the aid of which truth is established and doubt dispelled.*

The true dialectic is philosophy mixed with truth (i.e. the truth as revealed in Christ) which by degrees ascends from the earthly level to the science of things divine and heavenly,® for, although philosophy was stolen, like the fire by Prometheus, a merest spark exists in it, a trace of wisdom, and an impulse derived from God which may be fanned into flame. What is used for evil purposes by those labouring in heresies the gnostic Christian will use rightly.6 The light of truth shows all things up in their true colours and thereby what is right is manifested and at the same time all sophistry-inspired plausibility is exposed.

As learning is needed to make pilots and physicians, so it is needed to make men noble and virtuous. Those ill-disposed by nature may with training become good; those well-disposed by nature can grow bad from neglect.?

Enrichment of life and faith from the resources of Greek culture is like irrigation prior to the cultivation of the soil. Thus, Clement says, with the liquid stream of Greek learning

Libid:, L. XVI. 80; 6.

2 ibid., I. V. 28, 3. 2-3, with reference to Gal. III, 24.

Sidi ols 2203. lias:

Sl iChe Nile Ohta On line Vly oy ile 562 Se Dic, ecw Vie 77) le Ge SDI. Vile ee Oo, Lett=De as oy 1, W toils Wh, S401. 52 ea 25:

we water what is earthy so that it may receive the spiritual seed cast into it and with ease may be able to nourish it.!

Those furthermore who search out the connection of the divine teaching have to do so with sharpened logical ability.2, The Greeks must be shown that the Christian as gnostic and he alone is truly pious and to that end clearer arguments require to be used with them, that from the vantagepoint of their own training they may be able to understand the power of faith, in view of the fact especially that what they lay claim to belongs to the Christians, since all things belong to God. Let us, accordingly, urges Clement, handle those things in such a way that they can hear them;? let us, he suggests as an example, imagine Plato giving his assent to the doctrines of the universal kingship and the divine sonship of Christ. This is how the gnostic by his skill is able to reap the best harvest of souls.

Did Paul not adopt a similar procedure in addressing the Athenians on the Areopagus,® when by making use of practical examples from the Phaenomena of Aratus he gives his approval to what was well said by the Greeks, while pointing out that, under the guise of their

"anknown god", they really worshipped God, the Creator, proclaimed by the Christians, but that for their thorough grasp of this they needed both to receive it and to learn it from the Son.* The Greeks, in spite of their not knowing how to acquaint themselves with it, deify the gnostic life.?_ To those, then, who ask the wisdom that is with us,® is Clement's line of argument, we hold out things suitable, that through the medium of their own ideas they may be able with the greatest facility to achieve faith in the truth® which goes under the headings of "Names" and "Things". The Greek philosophers, he says, are most taken up with the names, but, he declares triumphantly, we Christians have the things.!° Up to this point emphasis upon faith has not been lacking. That Syiovcolgnei ts ats Th7/cs 2 ibid., I. XXVIII. 179, 4. 3-5.

3 ibid., V. IV. 19, 1. 3-4. eT rlayalin, NILA Mipeole toh, cro).

SRN Gis) eV it Or Sie owl Oa OZ eal Wibids, Wie pel 69.16.

8 alluding to I Cor., IX, 22.

PESt7 VL. Siva NET oy Calan: NY) Coup AVAL Ee spl 2 5) ak

the latter is of first importance in the gnostic life, as understood in the Christian context, Clement has made and continues to make abundantly clear.

Learning, he stresses, without faith, is impossible.'

Instruction leads to faith? which is the one, universal salvation for mankind who are all equal in the sight of a righteous, loving God and all of whom share the same fellowship with Him.

It is the same Logos to whom they stand, each and all of them, in this relationship, so that they cannot be divided into the illuminated (yvworttKot) on the one hand and natural men (vy:xot) on the other.

All who have risen above fleshly things are equal and spiritual (tvevuatixot) before God.

Faith is as essential for the gnostic spiritually as the air he breathes to sustain himself physically.

Faith in itself is complete and perfect or, as one might say, self-authenticating.®

It is the wisdom concerned with piety which receives Christ, as has been said, without need of speculation for it reposes on God's power whereby salvation is possible without the necessity of proof.

It is a comprehensive grasp of essentials, acquaintance with heavenly things, the knowledge of which is the scientific demonstration of what is delivered according to the true philosophy;? and, unlike sophistry, is unteachable.

Intelligent faith of this sort is tantamount to demonstration,® though the highest demonstration produces intelligent faith and leads to knowledge by the opening up of the scriptures to those who desire to learn; it rests on Christ, the Logos and the revelation of the univeral reason and of reality itself, who gave himself for our eternal well-being and would never withhold anything that is really for our good or suppress any item of knowledge needed for our instruction including reasonable assurance of the things embraced. by faith.

The sort of faith, described by Clement here, when found in any man along with regeneration yields, he says, the perfect life.

Nard oyCaleya dl Wl EUV ky/Re Shae a SA dedas lee V le SOLE ae ae Sribideyis Vie. oiy 2. tet.

ASU le Vile Sly 3s 2-4: cePaeds, La Nik 29,2. 3-4.

Oey eg NUE 7 ibid., II. X1. 48, 1. 3-4 émotnuowxy amdderkuc tv xata thy ddAnOH prdocoglay

Tapaddouevay.

S°Sivs, Vly Ville 20; 3:

9 ibid., II. XI. 49, 3; 4. 1.

Indeed, if any of the Greeks omits the training provided by Hellenic philosophy and forthwith proceeds to the true teaching, he gains a lead on his fellows, though an ordinary man, by taking the short-cut to salvation.!

Faith on the one hand anticipates the activity of reason and of knowledge or science in general, and on the other passes beyond what human discovery by itself can ever reach.

One may hear say that knowledge is founded on demonstration by a process of reasoning; but,

Clement says, following Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics, I, ch. 2 and 3 and I, ch. 10-11%, first principles are incapable of demonstration or, as we should express it in twentieth century idiom, science rests ultimately on certain postulates which no one to begin with undertakes to prove for the simple reason that they are unproveable.

Only by faith. to resume Clement's argument, is it thought possible to apprehend the first cause of the universe, which was not known to the Greeks, certainly not to Thales who arrived at the conclusion that the first cause was water, nor to any of the other natural philosophers among the Greeks who came after him. Anaxagoras was the first to give mind ascendancy as efficient cause over material things but he failed to grasp its status or its authentic character.'

Knowledge is capable of being taught and as such rests on prior knowledge; it isa state of mind that results from demonstration, whereas faith is a matter of grace, proceeding from what is not demonstrable to what is simple, universal and in no respect identifiable with matter.*

It is affirmed by both the Platonists and the Stoics that acts of assent lie in our power.

Every opinion, every judgment, and every supposition, all the knowledge in fact we live by and by means of which we maintain constant communication with our fellow-human beings is an assent amounting to nothing else but faith.®

Truth has four pillars or supports — sensation, understanding, knowledge and opinion.® Sensation, the first step in our cognitive

UF Novia WILE alla 5h 2 De Vogel, Greek Phil. II, nrs. 458 b, sub 2, and 459-401.

3 Here again, we perceive an echo of Greek philosophy: it is Socrates' voice in the Phaedo, 96e-98c, and also Aristotle's, in Metaph, A 4, 985 a 18.

(De Vogel, Greek Phil. 1, nrs. 216 and 119). [Editor's note].

ZSilentdlyy IISA Mes), Peale LS lhe Ne BD ioyidls, WW Io are os), We eae 6 The terms used are aloSynotc, vod, émothun, drdAnvic. Clement's approach to the problem of knowledge is rather Aristotelian than Stoic. [Ed.'s note]. iS

experience, provides the perceptual data by reflection upon which we arrive at understanding; and it is from sensation combined with understanding that we gather evidence.!

These three, sensation, reflection, understanding are, as it were, rungs on the ladder

— though Clement also calls sensation by itself the ladder — leading to knowledge which is intellectual apprehension of the natural order and the function of which is to demonstrate what is given by faith which advancing by way of the objects of sense-perception outdistances opinion, hastens to things free of deception and reposes in the truth.*

Faith, then, is all that.

Its importance as a factor in man's spiritual progress 1s unquestionable but it is not the only factor, for along with fear and hope it leads up to repentance and proceeds, through temperance and patience, toward perfection till 1t arrives at knowledge and aspires at last to love.'

Faith is unquestionably the foundation of the spiritual life, but the edifice of knowledge must be raised on it by truth and the "gnostic superstructure'? built.®

Those who advance beyond the elementary level in their spiritual experience partake of "gnostic food".® The mere believer may occasionally evince the gnostic character, but not in all respects nor with the highest knowledge lke the true gnostic who is conversant with c ' wisdom of every kind,* in ethics, physics and logic occupies himself with God whose power and truth and wisdom in all their fulness have been brought to ight in Christ, and fully unfolds the scriptures from the scriptures, compared with the simplices who are merely scripture-tasters.

He, like them, starts out from faith, but persuades by demonstration,® making use of all the facilities afforded by the preparatory training of the gnostic discipline.® According to the husbandry which the Lord enjoins he perseveres to promote the maturation of the seeds deposited in him,! striving for true manhood in conformity with God's will.

His education never ends, his ultimate goal being perfect and total enlightenment.

The Epistle to the , Evidence" (to évapyéc), according to Clement, is common to yod¢ and atodyotc. rT} ove 581 WER EWE bis joa ease leo Sibid.. Vy Lue us

YVWOTLNHA ETOLKOSOUN LATA.

BS WL 20s 4 Se.

Sin allusion to 1 Cor, Ll, 9, 10:

Si) ly ONllL, OSa ey bes 8 ibid., VIL. AVI. 95, 9. 2-4.

®yyMotinyc koxnosws mooyuuvacuata Sty., LV. NXI. 132, 1.1.

IO Siv., Vil SL. 80:2. u-2.

Hebrews really foreshadows his true role.

All who inherited the promises through faith prior to Christ were novices. The gnostic has appeared more recently as the fulfilment of God's plan, "that they should not", quotes Clement, "without us be made perfect"'.!

A man's most responsible concern is the schooling of his soul, that discipline by which, as a first priority, he comes to know himself, for "if one knows himself, he will know God, and knowing God will become like God..."

By avoidance of excesses and cultivation of what is good, through the knowledge that is in Christ he acquires healthymindedness and purity of heart in pursuance of the great aim and the supreme end of his life, initiation into the "beatific vision face to tace".8

Restraint, self-sufficiency and impassibility are the three principal ingredients of the discipline or probationship that the aspirant to the truly gnostic life is required to undergo, one might even call them the three levels of ascent or the three stages on the way.

"We are enjoined", Clement writes, "to cast off the old, carnal corruption as well as the old nutriment receiving in exchange for them another, new regimen... that, enshrining the Saviour in our souls, we may apply correction to the affections of the flesh..."',4 the body being such that we are "bound to it Jike an oyster to its shell" ;° or like the Trojan horse to which man is likened by Basilides, where so many, different spirits are found inhabiting one frame,® the passions being the impressions or the signatures on the soul of the spiritual powers with which man must contend by the exercise of restraint.?.

The Lord summons us to strip ourselves of the pleasures of the world and to aim only at salvation.§® Those who observe this rule think less of living and more of living well. This is life according to nature which, as Clement understands it, is evincing the image of God in man as prefigured in the Old

Testament.

All overstepping of the limit laid down by the rational soul in man is an offence committed against nature and encouragement

Lipids, LV OVA OSs, Zireterine to Heb..1l, S61.

23 Pacd) Willen ks eS; 3 Sty. VI. XII. 102, 2 modcwmov med¢ Tedommov thy Laxapiav deav wond7

1a aihe, the NU aro tl ean Ne Si, VaoslVnd3 853. 8-9:

6 ibid., II. XX. 113, 2. 2-5. Clement also compares the soul of the unregenerate human being to a caravanserai peopled with disreputable guests. dS a peo Ke ta) alae Ale 8 Paed., III. III passim.

to sin.) The Instructor, the. soul's charioteer, curbs the latter's irrational part, wildly bent as it is on pleasures and on vicious appetites, leading and driving it to salvation,? and prescribing that all-important due proportion which is temperance, the fruit of obedience to right reason in all things. There is no better wealth than poverty of desires.2

Standing between a mortal and an immortal nature the good man lives sparingly, avoiding superfluities and having need of little beyond what is useful and essential for human fellowship and his sojourn in this life.4

Self-restraint, however, is not wholly adequate, since it presumes the presence in the human personality or the soul of passions and excesses needing to be restrained, which ill becomes the man who has desired to be "enrolled among the friends of God".® The further step called for is self-sufficiency enabling its possessor to disclaim dependence on mundane things which are false forms of reality, creative of false values, and to dispense with courage, desire and all the other

"appendages", those impurities that at birth attach themselves to the soul setting out upon its journey from the realm of higher being to this world or those passions which are essentially spirits and through some original confusion or disturbance are attached to the rational soul, according to the school of Basilides.® It is intended that we should be saved, declares Clement, by ourselves,?

This does not mean, however, that we can realize salvation by ourselves, for it is only through knowledge and through grace divinely given that any man can possess true self-sufficiency.® The final step remains now to be taken and the further virtue cultivated, namely, impassibility, freedom from perturbation, unassailable tranquility or detached indifference, displayed in exemplary fashion by those "trained to manifest their piety with their blood", who burned, impaled, beheaded... rise superior to the passions and are greater than the world, who pass on the world's good things to Sivs LiLo 2a 2 Paced. Wl, XI. 53, 2. 255373. 1.

3 Sty., VII. III. fibide Viole 79) 23 So bid., Vil. IX 76, 2, 2-3-3. 1.

6 ibid., II. XX. 112, 1. 1-3. Basilidesc.s. called the na9y meoocaxnpthuata.

They are considered to be nvevyatk tia meoonetnuéva tH Aoyiny oy}, since they effectuate a certain confusion in that soul.

7 ibid., VI. XII. 96, 2. 4-5.

Sibids, Villa Vuln 4s 42s

such as have need of them and trample its bad things underfoot.!

The gnostic in whom the intellect is the image of the Logos will never expose his soul under any circumstances whatsoever to enslavement by pleasure or pain. As the Logos was impassible, so should he also be. This is the fruit of his endurance which through patience forces its way to the divine likeness.

In this knowledge plays a part for it produces practice? which in turn induces habit or disposition — a much different thing from moderation of the passions? where the true endeavour after the gnostic ideal is concerned.

When a man devotes himself to the contemplation of God, communing in purity with him he approximates to a condition or a state of impassible identity so as no longer to possess science and knowledge but to be science and knowledge himself.4 He presses on by upward striving of the mind to attain to the fulness of Christ, assured of God's co-operation with his endeavours to the end.

The Paedagogus brings him by his teaching to the adoption and friendship, and to the likeness of God, if he has according to the Gospel on his part achieved perfection.®> Having risen above sin and attained to continence, he dwells with those like himself; he prays, asit were, in the fellowship of angels, with the choirs of saints standing by ;° he is a dwelling-place of God' to whom he has become assimilated by participation in moral excellence, and is already pressing on toward immortality.

The gnostic soul, joint product of nature, nurture and reason® and as such the image of the divine power here on earth, thus prepared and purified waits for the great day which is the end of life and the beginning of eternity.

It may be that the Father draws the gnostic soul to Himself or that freewill in the individual who attains knowledge of the Good clears the intervening barriers, though it is not without surpassing grace that the soul wings its way above the higher spheres

;® Sir. Ville XO. (80,785 14.

Zriipide li. Nox, HOS) IF 12.

3 ibid., VI. 1X. 74, 1. 2-4. Clement opts explicitly for the Stoic ideal of &mcdeve, opposing the Peripatetic doctrine of moderation.

For the Stoic doctrine, see De Vogel, Greek Phil. III, nrs. 1059, 1062.

The doctrine is criticized by Cicero, Pro Murena 30, 63 (De Vogel, Greek Phil. III, nr. 1050 b, at the end). [Ed.'s note]. tnbic., LV. Vil. 40) 2-5:

Sabid., VI. XIV. 114, 6.

Osoyrals, NAUIE DSIMLS yey. (oe ? ibid., II. XX. 104, 3. 3-4.

Sabid., VIL, XE 9 ibid., V. XIII. 83, 1. 4-7. wy)

but leaving behind all hindrances and ignoring all material distractions the gnostic "by knowledge cleaves the heavens and passing through the spiritual Essences and all rule and authority touches the highest thrones,' hastening to that alone for the sake of which alone he knew.

Clement is brought back from his vision of the transcendental world by his concern for the simple-minded people whom he hastens to reassure that such high soaring things need occasion them no alarm.

He had reminded them that, if virtue is divine, the knowledge of virtue is no less so.2 Now he reminds them that their faith, standing fast upon the scriptures, is foremost first and last, though it is not everything.

Knowledge, he also tells the gnostics, is, indeed, a splendid thing, but knowledge is not all, yet neither need they feel undue concern over talk of faith alone. No one is insisting that they turn their back on the world of enlightenment or throw their culture overboard.

They, on the contrary, may take comfort in the fact that heaven is inhabited by "the philosophers of God... Israelites indeed, the pure in heart, in| whom there is no guile".® Where the earthly journey ends in Clement's vision of the perfect gnostic life, the goal is bathed in the glory of the light ineffable but the end as a fait accompli is still in fact a great way off. In the meantime gnostics and simple believers alike have their lives to live out in this world, devoting themselves to active virtue by the practice of their moral principles. The beatific vision is a promise held out to those who succeed in the unceasing effort to achieve perfection and for whom initiation into the final mystery is the completion and the culmination of a life-long discipline ;* faith is the "attempt generated in time" but is eventually of the transcendent order since its outcome is "the attainment of the promise made good for eternity"'.®

Philosophy, as Clement thinks of it, holds fast to three things: speculation, performance of precepts, and the making of good men.

Greatest of all speculation is the knowledge of wisdom which reason cannot assail and from which right conduct is never separate.? Action libid., VII. XIII. 82, 5; 6.1 ta&¢ mvevpatixac odctacg xal mioav coyny xal d2ovatay

AMTETAL TAY DOdvoy THY &xowv.

2 bids Wil, ove, OS) 5. 1-2 Spids, Vly wl Va OSs 224: pin Vile NOZ A S108. di. de Se Paede ln Vil gee 5. les:

BS ie, Ul Xe 46. i, 13) Vibid., II. X. 47, 4. 5-7.

begins with rational choice at the root of which lies faith. The latter is the spur of action and the first principle of understanding is to follow what is useful according to one's free-will. !

He who presses up the heavenly way must carry with him the fair staff of beneficence.

It is by communicating to the distressed that he comes to the true rest,? which is worshipping God by deeds and by knowledge of true righteousness.

These are the energetic mysteries.

He who does as God commands receives according to his inspiration a divine power from the Logos.

Let the wise man show his wisdom in good deeds as well as words, for piety of the noble-minded, righteous sort is conduct suitable and conformable to God.? Even the image of God in man has practical significance, since the person who imitates

God, as far as in him lies, most of all resembles God. The true gnostic is good and does good continually, the greatest in the Kingdom being he who shall do and teach.4_ He makes up for the absence of the apostles by the accuracy of his knowledge and the rectitude of his lite, by benefitting his fellows and by clearing away the obstacles from the path of his neighbour's soul, while being his own vineyard and his own labourer therein.®

The form of action is most conspicuous both in the testaments of the Lord, the laws in force among the Greeks and the precepts of philosophy.* God works continually, since a God who rested from his labours never really could be God.* The Instructor is primarily practical, his aim and purpose being to improve the soul, to train it up to a virtuous, not an intellectual life.*

The Logos, moreover, who became flesh was practical as well as contemplative.® So, says Clement

1ibid., II. 11. 9, 3. 1-2. Clement's terminology is interesting.

He says: peyaany yoov elg yyGow porny ameplonuctos mapéyer meoutpectc. Ilpouteectc is an Aristotelian concept, while &xeptamaotos was a technical term in the Sceptical theory of knowledge (Sextus Emp., P. I, 227-229; De Vogel, Greek Phil. ITI, nr. 1116 b).

[Editor's note].

2 Pad; Li VIL. 39) 2) led.

Coys Wile eee aos 7 ao 4 ibid., II. XIX. 97, 2 with reference to Matt., V. 19.

Siloyalies SYD, OAs Ie Ee re Me Piiloy tile Mille o,YMilly Ten: Paya tohy Nhe 7 ibid., VI. XVI. 141, 7. 3-4; 142, 1. 1. Probably Clement replies here to a then current objection. We find it expressed in Origen, Contra Celsum VI 61: "After this, indeed, God, exactly like a bad workman, was worn out and needed a holiday to have a rest."

[Editor's note].

8 Paed., le le 2; le 2-4.

PDI, ULE O) 4nec=or

— and with these words we must take leave of him for the present; "let us, children of the good Father, nurselings of the good Instructor, fulfil the Father's will; let us listen to the Logos and take on the impress of our Saviour's truly saving life; and meditating on the heavenly mode of existence according to which we have been deified, let us annoint ourselves with the perennial, immortal bloom of gladness, that ointment of sweet fragrance, having a clear example of immortality in the walk and conversation of the Lord...''+

Pibid., ll. XIN. 98, 33-0:

CILVA

PR WBS Vi

BPILOGUE An attempt has been made to allow the apologists selected for the purpose of this study to speak, as far as possible, for themselves. The tendency is always present in a study of this kind to impose upon the statements or ideas of writers, remote from us in time, constructions or interpretations drawn from our own conceptual standpoint rather than from theirs.

In the foregoing chapters this has been resisted, I hope, consistently.

All that remains is to review the situation and to draw such conclusions as seem reasonably warranted by the facts that have come to light. The debate on reason and revelation, knowledge and faith, culture and Christianity which has continued unabated through the centuries is not yet at an end, and each new participant in it finds himself sooner or later obliged to take a stand. The present writer, it should be stated, has no hesitation in declaring himself for the attitude adopted to the problem by Clement of Alexandria and for the path followed by the latter with a view to resolving it.

The burden of Hellenism, as has been said, lay heavily on the Church of the first two centuries A.D. We are made aware constantly of its presence in the works of the apologists on whom our attention has been focused in this work and of the ponderous issues with which it confronted them, issues already discernible in the Apostle Paul's

"struggle with the Judaizers and the Hellenizers of the Gospel, but also in his effort to translate it into the forms of Greek language and thought."!

The rendering of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, as pointed out by H. Lietzmann, by the time of the apologists had already opened the door to Hellenism, with Greek concepts inevitably entering in along with the Greek vocabulary.

It was in his opinion an unplanned but inevitable consequence of translation from one language

1H. R. Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, New York 1951, p. 10.

into another.!

Even if Christianity had not severed the tie which bound it to Judaism, it would have been inevitably influenced by the spirit and civilization of the Graeco-Roman world which felt the impact of the merger of Hellenism and Hebraism in Philo of Alexandria."

It was in this merger that the speculations of the Gnostics and the theories of the apologists were foreshadowed; and when, under the pressure of circumstances, the question arose for Christianity, "What is to take the place of an inadequate apocalyptic?", the answer was immediately forthcoming, "The philosophical interpretation of Alexandria."

The fourth gospel illustrates the latter's influence at work already on the orthodox Christian tradition, with the Logosconcept occupying a vitally stragetic place.

The Gospel entered to that extent into the heritage of later Judaism. The roots of both the ancient and the modern problem are found here. We today "may regard the Hellenistic Jews of two thousand years ago as bearing the first brunt ina conflict in which we too are engaged." ... How much must you admit of Hellenism, what should you retain of Hebrew traditionalism?

The Christian Church inherited the great problem of the Hellenistic Jew... how to find the right relation between Hebraic religion and Greek philosophy and culture.'

Lortz has attempted to establish that Christianity tended to be a rationalistic philosophy during the period within which this investigation falls. A great effort in that direction was within that period undoubtedly imposed upon the thinkers of the Church.

The aim of the debate in which they found themselves involved placed them on philosophic ground and they were under the strong necessity of fighting with the weapons of their philosophic adversaries.® Clement of Alexandria emerges from among them as the man "who developed at once a positive view of philosophy and a negative critique of Gnosticism.'"® Irenaeus and Tertullian are not regarded as quite 1 The Beginnings of the Christian Church, London 1949, p. 89.

2 See E. F. Scott, The Gospel and Its Tributaries, Edinburgh 1928, pe lol:

3 See Essay "Hellenistic Judaism", in The Legacy of Israel, ed. by Bevan and singer, Oxsiord 1927, pu42:

4See Das Christentum als Monotheismus in den Apologien des Zweiten Jahvhunderts, Bonn-Leipzig 1922, p. 300f.

5M. Spanneut, Le Stoicisme des Péves de L'Eglise, Paris 1957, peZor ° The Cambridge History of Later Greek & Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. by A. H. Armstrong, Cambridge 1967, Part II, ch. 10 by H. Chadwick.

in the same category, though they are more or less as rationalistically inclined. All three employ somewhat the same weapons, and often the same material, in their encounter with the Gnostics and the Greek philosophers, the difference between them being largely a matter of degree.

Irenaeus is not, admits Spanneut, as strictly Biblical and religious as he is habitually said to be, since he talks constantly about truth.!

He is, as H. E. W. Turner would seem to suggest, concerned with truth per se," particularly with the nature of the truth claimed for Christianity. Harnack and others are in no doubt as to Irenaeus' traffic with Greek thought.?

His ideas, for instance, for a salvation theory of history, compared with the theory as worked out by Clement of Alexandria, are without any doubt rudimentary but similar in kind.4

Loofs thinks that Irenaeus' idea that God has only to be seen to ensure complete salvation rests more on the philosophy of the time than on the traditional Christian revelation of God.® Here, however, the Greek influence "helped the Christian communities to believe as an intellectual conviction that which they had first accepted as a spiritual revelatiom,"**

As for Tertullian, while he is avowedly a sworn enemy of the official pagan philosophy, he is none the less a zealous supporter and an active partizan where knowledge is concerned.?

The xowal évvora, were in Roman jurisprudence the basis of Natural Law and Tertullian has resort to this as a convenient device for explaining the natural attraction of noble souls to Christianity and the common ground between Christians and educated pagans.

One has only to turn to J. H. Waszink's study of Tertullian's De anima® to realize lop. cit., p. 429.

"His five books against heresies are not so remote from philosophy or science as is often supposed...", says R. M. Grant.

Miracle and Natural Law in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Thought, Amsterdam 1952, p. 102.

2 The Pattern of Christian Truth, London 1954, p. 330.

3 See Harnack, op cit., vol II, Ch. V, passim.

47 bid., Pp. 328.

5 See his Leitfaden zum Studium der Dogmengeschichte, Halle 1906, p. 48.

6 EB. Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, London 1907, p. 207.

451 Spanneut, op.cit., ad loc., supra.

8 Jan Hendrik Waszink, Tertullianus, Quintus Sepltimius Florens de Anima.

Ed. with introd. and commentary, Amsterdam 1947.

the extent of the latter's indebtedness to the Stoic philosophy. With reference to Tertullian's una substantia in tribus personis, Evans comments as follows:

"Professor Bethune-Baker (Early History of Christian Doctrine, p. 138) writing in 1903, said: 'Tertullian was perhaps less of a philosopher than a jurist, and we are helped to understand his theory... by the legal use of the terms he employs'

...but apparently Bethune-Baker had his doubts, for in a footnote (after a reference to Harnack, DG. (Eng.Tr.) vol. iv. pp. 122-3) he remarks: "The conceptions and expressions of Tertullian were by no means entirely controlled by legal usage, and the philosophical sense of the terms must also be borne in mind." "In fact, as the following examination will show", concludes Evans,

"the philosophical (that is, the logical) sense is the only one worth considering."'!

There is much to support the argument that Tertullian's terminology, at any rate, in such matters came to him not from the lawyer but from the philosopher." We have already noted, in the course of our third chapter, Tertullian's conviction that Christian truth contains the completion of philosophic knowledge. He was not only, according to Shortt, the creator of Latin literature, but the architect of orthodox anthropology ... the teacher of Cyprian and forerunner of Augustine.

"Can we really suppose that it would have been better... if thought and learning had been permanently excluded from the Christian

Community; if there had been no Paul, no Clement, no Origen, no Tertullian, no Augustine ...?"4 Tertullian in such company is anything but the rabid anti-Hellenist or the arch-foe of Greek philosophy that he has been made out and, it seems, makes himself out to be.

In order to survive in the first two centuries of our era Christianity had, in a manner of speaking, to present its credentials at the bar of Greek philosophy. The apostle Paul has to plunge into the stream of the speculative modes of thinking which were fairly common knowledge in the educated circles of his day to get himself listened to.®

How important the latter was is shown with a great wealth of detail MEVals, Op.clt., Pao:

2 See C. de L. Shortt, The Influence of Philosophy on the Mind of Tertullian, London, undated (c. 1933?). sibids, p. LO:

4B. J. A. Hort and J. B. Mayor, Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies Book VII, London 1902, p. xxx-xxx1i.

Nets Pak Scott, op.cit., (Ci vil, passim:

and learning in a recent study of the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria, in which we are given an insight into early Christian apologetic strategy.1 The Greeks have the ideas, as Clement himself says ,but we Christians have the things, the former being from his standpoint ready-made containers for and conveyors of Christian ideology.

Establishing the functional relationship between these two was a delicate and, some have thought, a disastrous undertaking for the future of Christianity, conceived as existing until then in a state of pristine purity. The procedure can be parallelled, however, and is felt to be justified in the area of encounter between different ideologies or cultures in our day, regarding which it is maintained that, in the absorption and adoption by one culture of extraneous elements from another there is "no attempt towards syncretistic equalizing, but the incorporation and use of these elements as the means for its own dynamism. This has nothing to do with syncretism, for it issues from conscious reflection and effort.

It is the inevitable result of occasional or rather long-term encounters between different spiritual worlds" .?

Spanneut has gone to great, one feels needlessly excessive lengths to show that in the course of the encounter between Greek philosophy and early Christian thought the teaching of the Stoics was the source from which Christianity drew exclusively for the sort of "extraneous elements" to which reference has been made.?

Some of his own statements tend, however, to weaken the force of his argument.

It is asserted, for example, that Stoic influence on Clement of Alexandria is manifest in "his intellectual tendency'? and that the clearest evidence of the alliance between Stoicism and early Christianity is the use made of reason by the apologists to prove the existence of God.® What thinker, ancient or modern, one may ask, is not Stoic on this reckoning? Spanneut takes due note of the fact that Stoicism begins by impressing its elements on all the (philosophical) systems (of late

Antiquity) and ends up by blending with them all, so that perhaps, strictly speaking, there are no distinctively detached Stoic ideas after all; a "Stoic" idea may be something quite Biblical, qualified by ?

1 A. Méhat, Etude sur Les 'Stromates' de Clément d' Alexandrie, Paris 1966.

2H. Kraemer, Syncretism as a Religious and a Missionary Problem, in The International Review of Missions, vol. XLIII, 1954, p. 261.

3 op.cit. passim.

4ibid., p. 425.

5 ibid., p. 294.

Stoicism, on the assumption of the existence of a certain relationship between Stoicism and Semitic modes of thought.1 Certain elements, he mentions, designated Stoic, would not have survived at all, apart from syncretism through which they were known,? and he comes, somewhat lamely, one cannot but think, to the conclusion that Stoicism left on all the ecclesiastical writers of the period as clear traces as did any of the other philosophic schools.*

The thought-world with which early Christianity came into contact cannot, of course, be purely and simply equated or reduced to Stoicism, whatever be the extent to which the latter entered into the cross-traffic between Stoic and Christian ideas.

Irenaeus draws on Philonism, Tertullian on Stoicism, and Clement of Alexandria on eclectic Platonism, strongly mixed with Stoic elements.

Philo is probably the source of the regulative principle for Clement's attitude to Greek philosophy as expressed in the Stromateis.

It is thought that he may have plagiarized Philo's allegorization of the Old Testament story of Hagar and Sarah, in which the former is made to represent the lesser status of philosophy or its merely preparatory role in relation to Christianity.

The Jewish Wisdom literature was also of great importance, it has been claimed, in enabling Clement to bridge the gulf between the Biblicalism of the orthodox tradition and the rational enquiry of the philosophers.4

Elements of truth in the non-Jewish religions were also dynamically assimilated by Christianity from the Jews of the Diaspora.

In any event, "It mattered comparatively little, and has never greatly mattered, in what intellectual forms the Christian ideas were embodied. The essential thing has always been that the ideas themselves should be Christian."®

Professor Joachim Jeremias once gave it as his opinion in conversation with the writer that the terms em1 See M. Pohlenz, Stoa und Semitismus in Neue Jahrbiicher fiir Wissenschaft und

Jugendbildung, 2, 1926, p. 256-270, and Die Stoa, I, p. 69.

2 Spaniel, Opel... Pp. /d.

3 ibid., p. 425.

4 The Library of Christian Classics, Vol. 11, Alexandrian Christianity, ed. by H. Chadwick and J. E. L. Oulton, London 1954, p. 21, incl. footnote 23. The influence of Philo on Clement is well attested, cf. H. Chadwick, Early Christian

Thought and the Classical Tradition, Oxford 1969, p..44-47 passim and H. A.

Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Church Fathers, vol. 1, Cambridge, Mass. 1956, p. 120. Stvomateis, Il. XXIII owes a good deal to Philo's teaching on the virtues.

PB SCOLE Op. Cit ap. Zi.

ployed for such a purpose were, indeed, of little consequence, so long as the "scandalon" of the Gospel was not thereby minimized.

Paul, the first Christian apologist, employs Greek thoughtforms without logsing sight of their inner significance, and the three apologists who have featured in this study often quote the example and appeal to the authority of Paul. A propos of this whole question it has been appositely said that "it is only a partial aspect of God which is revealed to any individual, to any race, or to any age" and that "the Jewish conception of God and of man needed to be supplemented by the Greek conception, just as in later ages the ecclesiastical conception of God is continually widened and modified by the scientific conception.'

The crucial test must be the judgment of history or the judgment of informed and competent scholars on the outcome of events in history.

The heart and core of the Christian religion lives on irrespective of what the bark or the outside covering may be (the idea that Clement of Alexandria has in mind when he speaks of the husk of Hellenism and the kernel of Christianity).

However we interpret Christianity, Professor John Macmurray says, its substance remains embodied in the life of Europe, and Christianity itself remains "as the intention to realize the universal community which is the reality of human life".

That intention, he thinks, which comes from the Hebrew culture, is embedded like leaven in the races of Europe, and works as a ferment in them.?

In order to preserve and communicate this leaven and to transmit this intention Christianity, however, had to outgrow the "evanescent categories" of its Palestinian environment and enlist new media for furthering the achievement of the "universal community".

It was, as Bultmann puts it, an historical necessity that Christianity should be translated into a terminology with which society was conversant in the Hellenistic world, to express Jesus' "eschatological meaning" and the whole eschatological message involved in it "convincingly to Hellenistic ears".?

It was just as necessary that it should "come to terms with the massive intellectual construction of Greek philosophy"?

1, J. A. Hort and J. B. Mayor, op.cit., p. xxxil.

2 J. Macmurray, The Clue to History, London 1938, p. 122.

3 R. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, 2 vols., New York 1951 and 1955, vol. L, p. 164:

4H. E. W. Turner, The Patristic Doctrine of Redemption, London 1952, p. 15.

which represented then what "Science" signifies for us today.

"The problem of 'communication' needed to be honestly faced if Christianity were not to become simply a 'warm' emotional cult, similar in effect, if not in structure and material, to the Eastern Mystery Religions, competing for the satisfaction of the religious needs of the world, and the Church... a home of like-minded pietists without any fruitful means of impingement upon the intellectual as well as the emotional thought-climate of contemporary society... The principal problems... were... those which offered the most important bridgeheads into paganism or which gave the greatest difficulty to pagans who wished to make contact with Christianity."!

The truth of this is particularly well exemplified in the case of Clement of Alexandria.

It was only after subjecting the Gospel to a scientific and philosophical treatment that he was able to make it intellectually his own.

People of bis cultural and intellectual background were not content with mere acceptance of the message of Christianity; they "sought to combine it with the truth they had already won and so to enhance its significance.'

The burden of Hellenism which, as already said, lay heavily on the Church of the first two centuries A.D. was, up to and inclusive of his time, imposed on Clement most of all. He, therefore, provides us with an excellent test case for the problem of the relationship between early Christianity and Greek philosophy.

Of the issues he was called on to contend with in the situation as he found it at Alexandria, some were polemical in character or of the usual apologetic type. There were, however, some in regard to which his thought moves on a higher plane where matters more essentially philosophical come to view, belonging to that region in which, as previously observed, Christianity made a contribution to "the stock problems demanding philosophical discussion, and of conceptions capable of use in philosophical enquiry."

What were these issues, we may ask? They were the problems which from its beginnings had challenged Greek philosophy and have been challenging philosophers ever since, reducible in the end to "the perennial problem" of all philosophy, the problem of Grace and Works, or divine Providence and human Freedom, of cosmic direction and individual destiny, the problem of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility, and, deeper than them all, the problem of Dualism, the 1 ibid., ad loc. and p. 17.

2a wl eS COtn cOpiClts epi 205.

One and the Many, Being and Becoming, the eternal unmoved Mover and the endless flux of life, the problem to which every previous philosophy had tried to find an answer — Plato for the transcendentalists, on the one hand, and the Stoics, on the other, with their popularized idea of an immanent world-soul, reaction to all of which took the form of a retreat to the Absolute, beyond Knowledge and Revelation, with a great gulf set between it and the mundane life of man, every subsequent interpretation of the universe

— Plutarch's daemons, Neo-Platonism's golden chain of being, the Gnostic aeons or Jewish wisdom and angelology — attempting in vain to bridge the gap.!

By Clement's time, says Tollinton, such commonly accepted ideas as the one God, Providence and Human Freedom were ready to be purified and reset in any fresh embodiment which could present them with a new appeal and guarantee.? Any resetting of these ideas in a "fresh embodiment" could not be other than philosophical in an age when every new opinion had to prove itself on rationalistic grounds.

It is, therefore, of some significance that when Clement applied himself in good earnest to his task which was that of restating the Christian position in philosophic terms, of showing that Christianity was the reaffirmation and the sublimation of the best in the philosophic schools, the revelation of the ultimate reality, in short the final philosophy, a similar set of problems to those mentioned by Tollinton

— the freedom of the will, dualism, and the Valentinian speculative cosmology — occupied a foremost place in the. situation confronting him.

In attacking these problems he adopted the principles and procedures of the accepted philosophic method, which is, at any rate, some evidence of the seriousness of his philosophical intent.

It is noteworthy in this connection that the social environment as well as the prevailing climate of thought reflected, rather objectified the problems waiting to be solved. The school with which Clement was associated at Alexandria is clear proof of the fact, it has been said, that "it was... possible... to suppress heresy... but not the impulse from which it sprang," the urge to get behind things to their underlying unity, an urge strongly engendered by the conditions of the time, when existence presented the appearance of an uneasy state of flux, when human thought tended to be in solution everywhere, with the 1 R. H. Niebuhr, op. cit., passim.

2 R. B. Tollinton, Clement of Alexandria, 2 vols, London 1914, Vol. I, p. 83-84.

best minds of the age entertaining the possibility of a new creative synthesis arising from that flux, and when, paradoxically, the forces of syncretism, with its blending of religions and the resultant medley of deities, had led to the idea of one supreme divinity.

Here above all we can see the relevance and importance of Clement's search for the unification of beliefs under one central, all-inclusive, governing idea which he found in the identification of Philo's Logos with the incarnate Christ or the Jesus of history, and in the union of Platonic transcendentalism with the Stoic immanent world-soul. This was his clue to a problem which is not the preserve by any means of "sacred philosophy" or even of philosophers in the present-day professional sense as distinct from ordinary men.

It is the problem of the dualistic framework which the human mind imposes on the human personality and on external reality with sometimes surprisingly disastrous consequences.

Clement C. J. Webb has described the French Revolution, for example, as the direct outcome in the sphere of politics of the dualistic forces emanating from the mind and life, in particular the emotional life of man. The French Revolution, as he sees it, was the explosion of the combined forces of Rationalism and Sentimentalism which opposed Rationalism and in due time subjected it.

Where Rationalism had undermined religious and political belief, Sentimentalism operating in the traditionally religious and social sphere which Rationalism had ignored, reacted with devastating consequences on the structure of French society at the time and afterwards.

A brand new dualism has emerged, according to Dillistone, from the modern organic outlook — man's life in dependence upon nature, on the one hand, and the technological outlook — man's conscious control over natural forces, on the other.2

The nature of ultimate reality, it has also been suggested, may have eluded much of modern speculation for the simple reason that it is not amenable to the methods of pure science or the laws of formal logic, since it is not idea, but spirit and, therefore, personal.

The discursive reason, in the opinion of E. Hermann, requires itself to be redeemed,

1C.C. J. Webb, A Century of Anglican Theology, Oxford 1923, p. 18-19.

2B. W. Dillistone, Christianity and Communication, London 1956, p. 15.

a spiritual gnosis being indicated as the way out of the impasse.!

According to Clement of Alexandria's reading of history, all the light that had lighted every man from the beginning was gathered up in Christ. There was for Clement even in apparently opposing forces a manifestation of God's purpose;? he had a genius, Bigg says, for conciliating opposites ;* Faith's assent to God's claim upon man leads up to welcome and compelling certainty, so that man thus seeking and thus finding realizes the unity of his experience, and finds rest.

His was "...the first attempt to use Holy Scripture and the Church tradition together with the assumption that Christ as the Reason of the world is the source of all truth, as the basis of a presentation of Christianity which at once addresses itself to the cultured by satisfying the scientific demand for a philosophical ethic and theory of the world, and at the same time reveals to the believer the rich content of his faith."® He represents in a peculiarly fascinating manner the conception of philosophy in the later Greek period as "an all-embracing activity concerned with everything relevant to the realization of the ultimate purpose of human life."® Harnack asks what would be left of Christianity if the practical aim of Clement's religious philosophy

1 See E. Hermann, Eucken and Bergson; Theiy Significance for Christian Thought, 2nd. ed., London, 1912, p. 211f.

To each of the three philosophic questions, What is real? What is good? What is true? says E. F. Osborn, Clement gives the same answer.

God is one, Goodness is one, Truth is one.

"There is a systematic ambiguity in his use of the word 'one'.

The two concepts of unity can be briefly described as analogous to the unity of a pin-point and the unity of a spider's web. When we say a thing is one we may mean that it is simple and indivisible, or we may mean that it is a complex unified whole. We reach the first kind of unity by analysis, abstracting from a simple thing like a point in space all qualities and relations until we are left with a unity which is one and nothing but one.

On the other hand, we reach a complex unity by taking a complex unity like a human being and adding to it qualities and relations until we have the whole universe itself. The limit cases of simple and complex unity or the limits of analysis and synthesis are equally outside our experience.

...

The notions of simple and complex unity provide a key to the structure of Clement's philosophy.

There is a reality, a goodness and a truth which is a simple unity, and a reality, a goodness and a truth which is a complex unity."

The Philosophy of Clement of Alexandria, Cambridge 1957, p. 12-13.

2a SCOtt Op. Clis, pp. 129!

21h, Tollinton, ep. cit, voln ih p.271, * Ops Clty os 1d:

5 Harnack, op.cit., p. 324.

6 The Cambridge History of Later Greek & Early Mediaevel Philosophy, Part V, ch, 21 ap. S44.

were lost?, and answers:

"A depotentiated system which could absolutely no longer be called Christian."?

The question of Clement's involvement with Gnosticism is not an issue of prime importance here, or is of importance only so far as it has any relevance to the question of his attitude or reaction to Greek philosophy. How far, in fact, were the Gnostic systems philosophical?

This question has been partly answered in the Introduction to this book, but it may not be amiss to advert to it further here. As regards the Christian form of it with which Clement as well as Irenaeus and Tertullian were obviously most concerned, two explanations are put forward. According to the first of these which alone concerns us here, the Christian form of Gnosticism was the product of Christianity's contamination by this or that school of Greek philosophy resulting in a Hellenized Christianity or at least a Christianity on the way to being hellenized.?

Copleston feels that Gnosticism in its Christianized form "can be looked on as a Christian heresy only in so far as the Gnostics borrowed certain specifically Christian themes, the Oriental and Hellenic elements being "far too conspicuous for it to be possible to call Gnosticism a Christian heresy in the ordinary sense,...".3

In Tollinton's opinion, "The Gnostics, whether of the Oriental or Hellenic type, were at their best religious people, with a sincere sense of the value of redemption,...

But they held, and it was the one principal element common to all phases of the Heresy, that ultimate spiritual values were to be discovered in the realm of ideas, knowledge, abstract being, eternal principles, and philosophic verity."4 Gnosticism in the form given it by Greek culture though always too mythological and fantastic to be considered a philosophy, according to C. J. de

Vogel, "shows an affinity with the Platonism of the first and second centuries."® The fundamental aspect of the Gnostic speculations, it has also been maintained, was the solution of the two grand problems of religious philosophy, viz., How to account for the existence of evil; and, How to reconcile the finite with the infinite.®

EOD Clb. Pesos 2See L. Laurand et A. Lauras, Manuel des Etudes Grecques et Latines, Tome I,

Paris, 1956, p. 416.

SOpreie., os 40:

SOO Clce, VOl, Wk p: 69-70.

5 Greek Philosophy, III, Nr. 1332a.

®§ The Ante-Nicene Christian Library: vol.

V. Irenaeus, vol.

I, Edinburgh MDCCCLXVIII, p. xvi. uy

The presence in Gnosticism of a philosophical element or influence is, it appears, undeniable and this would act as a vehicle or a solvent for questions of a speculative character. The freedom of the will, what is called dualism, and speculative cosmology are in any event perennial problems, not only for Greek but for all philosophy, if we are to accept the definition of the latter as "the branch of learning which investigates the ultimate nature of existence, of knowledge, and of the good."!

Clement perforce is involved philosophically where these problems are concerned, his object being, as regards the position adopted by the Gnostics, to vindicate the first and to refute the other two.

That virtue is knowledge was by his time a philosophic commonplace, which accounts for the prominence accorded gnosis in the Gnostic view and way of life. Clement also gives prominence to gnosis and has since Harnack's day in consequence been either suspected or accused of Gnosticizing or abstractionizing Christianity.

However, Van Unnik has suggested, in matters of this kind, the large place assigned to knowledge in the Old Testament has been almost quite forgotten in the course of the argument. What Clement did was to apply the gnosis-concept in a forcefully apologetic way, vanquishing the hostile 'heretical' gnosis in the process by constructing a system of Christian gnosis to take its place.? His gnostic differs greatly from the Gnostic in this way. Now this difference is decisive. The history of gnosis, in F. J. Foakes-Jackson's estimate, from Simon Magus up to the time when Clement of Alexandria conceived the idea of the true

Christian gnostic is a record of the way in which Christianity consecrated the efforts of mankind to find God and led them to the knowledge of the truth.4 Clement was a philosopher and a gnostic, as Lietzmann says, ,,a philosopher at the beginning anda gnostic at the 1 J. Drever, A Dictionary of Psychology (Penguin Reference

Books), London 1952, p. 206.

2 The Jung Codex, p. 104, footnote 1. Clement, according to Wolfson, 'reclaimed for his new Christian philosophy the old scriptural term 'gnosis'." op. cit., p. 14.

This seems to go slightly too far. Osborn's is the most balanced statement of the case, where he says that Clement "put forward a true 'gnosis' in opposition to" the "false 'gnosis'" of the heretics. "He called his perfect Christian 'the gnostic' and denied the heretics the right to use the name." op. cit., p. 14.

3 Lietzmann, The Eva of the Church Fathers, London 1951, p. 131.

4 The History of the Christian Church to A.D. 461, Cambridge and London 1924 p. 135. o3

end, but both as a Christian"; and he tried to prove to the world that in this very combination the solution of its problems could be found.!

Alexandria had its orthodoxists who spurned all aid from reason and professed to follow faith alone.

He by contrast "held it to be his bounden duty to seek for truth in every way ..."." Knowledge and thought, for him, are matters of great concern: so are the benevolent and active virtues the true roots of which are in the heart and will of man. The fact that the contemplative and the active are combined in Clement's thought as components of the Christian ideal is sufficient to show how little he is liable to the charge of transforming Christianity into a system of abstract doctrines or ideas.

The union of Christianity with a definite historic phase of human knowledge has been made out to be the cause of the secularization of Christianity and of the retardation of the development of culture in general.

Jaeger remarks on the subject of Greek culture that the latter's new colleges and schools set out to achieve a goal of their own choosing but that actually in the end the effect of their efforts turned out quite different, "for, after the collapse of the independent Greek

City-states, they created Western science and philosophy and paved the way for the universal religion, Christianity.

Philosophy, science and their constant enemy, the formal power of rhetoric — these are the vehicles through which the spiritual legacy of the Greeks was transmitted to their contemporaries and successors in the East and West, and to which, above all else, we owe its preservation. They handed on that inheritance in the form and with the principles which it got from the fourth century effort to determine the nature of paideia." It was,

Jaeger says, "the epitome of Greek culture and education" under which Greece made its spiritual conquest of the world. Then he adds the impressive words: "there falls on it the radiance of a providential wisdom."

1The Founding of the Church Universal, London 1953, p. 279. R. M. Grant says that Clement "seems to have been a gnostic before he became a more orthodox Christian".

Miracle and Natural Law in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Thought, Amsterdam 1952, p. 198.

There is nothing we know for certain regarding Clement to bear this out.

Grant's remark illustrates the confusion that can arise from failure to distinguish between 'gnostic' and 'Gnostic' in the context of early Christian thought.

4h. J, A. Hort and! J. B. Mayor). op.cit.; p. xlvii3 W. Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, New York 1943, vol. IT, p. 11-12.

Some of that radiance falls on our early Christian apologists who forced pagan society to "converse on speaking terms" with them, demanding "from the classical world a radical revision of first principles on the basis of Christ the Logos" and making "a fruitful and victorious communication possible" between Greek culture and Christianity.! There is, however, something more to it than that.

The progress of Christianity from its centre of origin resembles the ripples caused by the casting of a stone into a pool. The apostle

Paul's vision of the "man of Macedonia" marks the epoch-making point at which the Christian concept of things moved outward and onward from the confines of the culture and country that cradled it, while conserving and perpetuating what was valuable in that culture, into the mainstream of all subsequent history.

Nothing could have seemed more improbable to those in the early Christian centuries who opposed the new religion and with whom, it appeared, lay all the advantages for overpowering and completely suppressing it, than that it should so soon have gone "into all the world".

This remarkable expansion of the Christian faith has not ceased through the ensuing centuries. There have been times of greater and times of less marked advance, times even when it seemed that there was no advance at all or that the movement had spent its force, as many feel at the present day. Ona question of this kind much depends on one's perspective or point of view.

In the total range of history, so much of which lies for us in the unrecorded future, two thousand years since the birth of Christianity is no more than an episode.

Judged by the temporal dimension against which the astronomer or the palaeontologist reckons the span of man's existence so far on earth, we are relatively speaking only at the prelude to the final outcome of events.

The early centuries of our era something of which the preceding chapters of this book have possibly enabled us to see in a clearer light, contributed considerably to the shaping of these events.

The dialogue in which the early Christian apologists and their opponents are involved will, for the person who reads those chapters, tend no doubt to hold the centre of the stage; but there, as with the audience in the ancient Greek theatre, for whom the drama acted out before their eyes held intimations, perhaps only dimly felt, but felt

1H. Kraemer, Religion and the Christian Faith, London 1956, p. 156 and 152.

nevertheless, of more imponderable things, issues of deeper significance and more far-reaching consequence are at stake than the topic immediately under discussion or the progress of the debate itself.

Christianity's evolution in the first two centuries A.D., as Prunet shows,! falls into three clearly distinguishable phases in which, as time goes on, its attitude to pagan culture changes considerably and its policy as a potential world-wide movement changes correspondingly.

Here is how Prunet sees the situation and how he has depicted it:

Christianity's one concern in the apostolic period is to bring the pagan world by the preaching of the Gospel to acceptance of its faith. The pagan world at the same time launches its first persecutions against Christianity which reacts in a purely passive manner by opposing to the violence of the persecutors the ardour of its eschatological beliefs.

A wide gulf at this point separates the Church from the outside world, and any idea of an entente between Christianity and pagan culture would seem the last thing possible.

A change, however, is apparent when we come to the apologists who attempt by reasoned argument to absolve Christianity of the accusations levelled against it by its detractors and to demolish the idea that it is the enemy of culture and the foe of the human race.

By the end of the second century, a further change has taken place.

The aim, which had been in the preceding period to win the world's respect, has become that of annexing the world or embracing it within Christianity, with Christ presented as the goal so long sought by philosophy.

Alongside this radically changed outlook, the older attitude of resistance to the pagan environment tends, however, to persist.

Prunet associates with this lingering opposition, quite indiscriminately, it would seem, the names of Irenaeus and Tertullian. I find it very difficult, if not impossible, to agree with him where Irenaeus is concerned. The latter's unflinching opposition to Gnosticism is quite indubitable, but with regard to Hellenism he is definitely not just another Tertullian.

He rather stands between the apostolic period and the later apologists in that, while admitting rationalism wherever it strengthens or commends his argument in support of the traditional faith, his main concern is to entrench the latter behind the ramparts

10, Prunet, La Morale de Clément D'Alexandrie et le Nouveau Testament, Paris 1966, p. 9-10.

of orthodoxy and defend it against attack, whether from within or from without.

The Church is broken, broadly speaking, from its beginning into a left wing and a right, a more conservative group on the one hand and a group more open to liberal opinion on the other.

It is to the second group that Clement of Alexandria belongs, not only as one of the first but also as the most active of its representatives.

What Prunet says has been dwelt on at some length, not because he has anything particularly new to say, but because he presents what he has said in such a way as to suggest something not unlike the Aristotelian entelechy principle at work in the unfolding of Christianity's inner purpose as it moves onward toward its goal. Its earlier response to the appeal of the "man of Macedonia" marks, as already said, the epoch-making point at which it crosses a new frontier.

With Clement of Alexandria yet another epoch-making frontier has been crossed, with Christianity's retention, annexation and rethinking of the best in the Greek cultural heritage. With this is bound up Clement's perhaps greatest and most deeply cherished ambition for the world as he knew it in his day and for the sort of world which he dreamed might come after him.

The second century apologists, says Wiles, think of Christ primarily as the Logos whose function is that of instruction or of enlightening the mind, in which respect he is for them the bearer of the knowledge eagerly sought throughout the ages but sought in vain by men, Clement's appeal in the Protrepticus being couched and conceived in terms of this conception of Christ's role in history.!

Clement saw in his vision of the future, as he stood at the new frontier, a situation in which culture and Christianity should go hand in hand to create a new human society.

His desire to combine his religious and cultural ideals is, as has been pointed out, the reflex of the Greek as well as the Christian in him.

Enough has been said to leave us in no doubt of his concern to demonstrate the affinities between Christianity and the truth contained in the old philosophies; but just as strong as that was his concern to see man's life in its entirety Christianized, to formulate the principles of a culture penetrated by his faith and inspired by his ideal,? at the 1M. Wiles, op.cit., p. 87.

2C.

Mondésert, Clément d'Alexandrie:

Le Protveptique.

Deuxieme Edition.

Avec la collaboration de A. Plassart, Paris 1949, p. 18-19. oi)

centre of which is the concept of Christ as eternal divine reason, the Xerotds Adyos mardSaywyde or educator of mankind.}

If Western civilization in the past eighten centuries has felt and continues to feel the force or the attraction of this ideal, it owes it in part to Clement of Alexandria.

If it comes short of the ideal it may be because it has yet to catch something of the spirit of the great

Alexandrian who believed that solutions can be found to the basic problems of human existence if humanity is prepared to seek persistently and open-mindedly enough, and who wrote:

"He who seeks will not cease till he find; and having found he will wonder; and wondering he will reign; and reigning he will rest.''?

'Quoted by Mondésert-Plassart from A. Rademacher, Religion et Vie, trad. fr., Bruxelles 1934, p. 59.

2S) Vs SIV 96, 3.

INDICES

NAMES Abélard 6 Anaxagoras 73 Anaximander 45 Anaximenes 45 Antiochus of Ascalon + Apuleius 4, 9 Aratus 71 Aristotle 1, 11, 14, 43, 58, 67, 73 Armstrong, A. H. 82

Arnold, Matthew 67 Augustine, 14-15, 68, 84 Bethune-Baker 84 Basilides 25, 37, 42, 68, 75, 76 Bigg, C. 30, 84, 91 Bion of Borysthenes 12 Boethius 14 Daniélou, J. 3+ De Labriolle, P. 11, 12, 13 De Vogel, C. 2-2; 09710, 12, 145345 77, 92 Dillistone, F. W. 90

Dodd, 'C, A. ts Dodds, E. R. 2

Drever, J. 93

Empedocles 47, 58 Epictetus 1, 12 Epicurus 12, 46, 58 Eucken 6 Evans, E. 18, 22, 84 Teuerbach 6 Foakes-Jackson, F. J. 93

Frend, W. H. C. 3

Bonho6ffer, A. 9

Bréhier, Emile 1-2, 3, 35 Brox, N.S Bultmann, R. 87

Glover, T. R. 67

Grant, R. M. 83, 94 Harnack, 30, 34, 36, 39, 83, 84, 91-92,

Hatch, E. 83

Hegel 6 Heraclitus 42, 45, 58 Hermann, E. 90

Herodotus 12 Hort, F. J. A. and Mayor, J. B. 84, 87, Celsus, 79 Chadwick, H. 82, 86 Chrysippus 10 Cicero 14, 77 Cleanthes 50 Clement of Alexandria 5, 13, 14, 16, 20,

22, 81-98 Copleston, i. 30) 92 Irenaeus 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 82, 83, 86, 92, Grossi alles Cyprian 84

oe,

Jaeger, W. 94

Jeremias, Joachim 86 Justinian 14 Posidonius 9-10 Prunet, O. 96, 97 Puech, He: 7

Pythagoras 10, 47 Pythocles 12 Kant 6 Katto. i. Dee. 21

Kraemer, H. 85, 95 Quispel, G. 7, 19 Rademacher, A. 98

Reade, W. H. V. 13, 14 Rickert 6 Rowley, H. H. 20

Laistner, M. L. W. 5

Laurand, L. and Lauras, A. 92

Leibniz 6 Lietzmann, H. 81-82, 93, 94 Lortz 82 Sagnard, F. M. M. 8

Schelling 6 Schleiermacher 6 Eooits. F., 83 Lucian of Samosata 11 Scott, E. F. 82, 84, 86, 88, 91 senéca 1, U1, 12, 14 Sherrard, P. 14, 15;, 16, 20 Shortt, C. de L. 84

Simon Magus 93 Socrates 10-11, 21 Spanneut, M. 82, 83, 85, 86 Macmurraey, J. 87

Marcion 5, 42, 46 Marcus Aurelius 1 Méhat, A. 85

Mercurius Trismagistus 45 Moderatus of Gades 4 Moffat, J. 17

Mondésert, C. and Plassart, A. 97

Musonius Rufus, 67 Tacitus. 11

Tertullian-5; 13; 18220, 22°82) 88-84.

86, 92, 96 Thales of Miletus 41, 45, 61, 73 Niebuhr, Tal. Re 8h, 89 Tollinton, R. B. 89, 91, 92 Curner, Eh. EW. 17, 83), 87, 88 Origen 20, 22, 79; 83 Osborn, E. F. 30, 91, 93 Oulton; |. E. Le s6 Valentinus 5, 42, 46 Van Unnik, W. C. 7, 93 Paul, the Apostle 13, 17, 39, 42, 43; 45, 56, 63, 64, 71, 81, 84, 87, 95 Philo of Alexandria 1, 9,17, 19, 20, 82,

Waszink, J. H. 83

Webb; €. C, J. 2,90 Wiles, M. 21, 97 Windelband 6, 9 Wolfson, H. A. 20, 86, 93 86, 90 Plato 1, 2, 11, 14, 15, 21, 22, 44, 45, 47,

58, 60, 71, 89 Pliny, the Younger 12 Plotinus 11, 68 Plutarch of Chaeronea 1, 4, 9, 89 Pohlenz, M. 86

Porphyry 14 Xenophanes 34 Zeno 42, 45, 50, 58

2 SUBJECTS

argument from design 35 election, Gnostic, and Christian 31-32 Epicureans 2, 11, 13, 46 Bible 3, 20 evil 38-39, 48, 57, 68 The Old Testament — source of 42 — and Gnostic anthropology 23 — problem of 92 — and opening words of the fourth faith gospel 19,20 — and Greek philosophy 66, 67-69 — place given to knowledge in 93 = and knowledge 31, 36, 65, 67, 78,

— revelation 7 — the Logos speaking in 59 — and non-Christian culture 70-71,

— the 'word of God' in 21 The New Testament = and reason 34, 36, 51, 94 — and the unity of human experience 91 — Luke, the many testimonies to the Gospel 26 — the fourth gospel and the Alexan- — culminating in the beatific vision drian philosophy 82 —— Prologue to, and Genesis, Ch. I Thay Tks:

— basic for the gnostic Christian

71-74, 78 —,— Prologue to and Philonism 20 — progressive 29 —,— the Logos-concept in 18-20, 59 — rendered meaningless by Gnosticism 25 — Epistle to the Galatians 45 —,— Hebrews, as foreshadowing the free-will 53, 62, 77, 78, 89, 93 true gnostic 74 — and reason as ground of 36 gnosis 3, 6, 7 — Gnostic, and Christian 32, 93 Christianity 1, 35-4, 6,9) 12713; 17,47,

— regarded as old scriptural term 93 83, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, — spiritual 91 Gnosticism 2, 3, 4, 5,6, 75:8, 9, 26, 27,

95, 97 — and Judaism 82 30, 82, 92, 93 — and non-Christian culture 54-56, 69, 78, 81, 82, 95, 96, 97 = Achamoth, the soul-mother 24 — and pagan wisdom or philosophy aeons, aeonology 6, 17, 24, 31, 33, 42, 46, 89 40-56, 58, 88, 97 — kinship with human reason and with Hellenism 34 — anthropology 5, 23, 31, 72 — defined; distinctive features of, in — the final philosophy 89 Christian literature 3 Christian philosophy, the 66 consensus gentium 35, 52, 53-54 Irenaeus, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria 5 — docetic 24-25, 27-28, 32 — Essences 77 — God represented as &yvwotoc Dedc 5 Creator, 53 — heretical 23f.

= law, Reason, world-soul, the Logos — urrational manipulation and mythologizing of the Scriptures 26,

Dead Sea Scrolls 20 dualism 5, 9, 17, 46, 89, 90 27, 31, 33, 40-41 — problem of 88 — Kenoma 6 Knowledge, theory of -, 73f.

— so-called 93 — magical formula employed by 6 eclecticism 4

— Platonism 1, 9, 14, 62, 73, 90, 92 —— eclectic 86 —— Middle 4 —— Stoicized 4 library, Upper —Nag Hammadi Egypt 7 — Ogdoad 8 — philosophical element in 93 Post-Aristotelanism 1, 12, 13 = Pleroma 5, 6, 8, 25, 26 = Pythagoreanism, Platonized, with Aristotelian elements 4 — reincarnation 24 — secret tradition or claimed by 24, 26, 31 revelation =— Stoicism 9; 11, 47£., 62, 77, 86, 90 —— alleged origin of extraneous elements in Christianity 85

Sophia; Demiurge 5; 6, 26 — soul-appendages 76 —,— spiritualizing, in Posidonius 9, 11 iene vA 67. Sil. 82.687), (88 96 — viewed as Christian heresy 92 — &yvwotos Nedc In Gnosticism 5 innate ideas 35-36, 53, 61 — and Nature 49-50, 68 Jews, Alexandrian 1 Jews Hellenistic 82 Jews of the Diaspora 86 Jung Codex 7, 31, 93 — and the Logos 60 — as Reason 27 — First Principle, transcendent in Middle Platonism 4+ Kultur-Protestantismus 6 — image of 54 Isosos, the 17-222,°25 27, 28.29)30, 31 33 35; 36, 38, 48; 50, 51, 59, 60, —,— howevinced 75, 79 61-62, 64, 66, 69, 72, 77, 80, 82, —,— and likeness in man 53, 61 —— and likeness in man restored 30 90, 95, 97, 98 mantic, natural Posidonius 10 Mithraism 2 ee 90 — rationality of 50 and technical in — source of philosophy 60, 61 Gospel of Truth 7-8 Greek culture 94 — and Christianity 81, 95 docetic 7 — and Gnosticism 92 in Plotinus 11 — later Greek philosophy allegedly oriented to by Posidonius 9-10 — value of for Christian hfe and faith 70-71 Greek Philosophy 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 13, — natural 6 14) 16; 20; 225°21, 60-61, 62, 63, Nature, and God 49-50, 56, 68 -— as source of knowledge of immortality and of God 54 64, 67, 68, 84, 85, 87, 88, 91, 92 = alleged decline of 14, 16, 31 — and faith in Christ 63 — the soul's instructor 53 — and good works 79 — law-revealing 51 — asconceived by Clement of Alexandria 62-64, 70, 78

hfe according to 75 natural law 35-36, 51, 60, 83 — uses of 65-66, 69-70, 78 Paraclete, role of in the Christian economy 51-52 Philonism 86 Platonic Ideas 17 recapitulation theory 29-30, 53 = Aristotelianism 14, 62 —,— and the early Mediaeval philosophers 14 Epicureanism 62, 63 = Neo-Platonism 14, 89 religions, Eastern 2 —,— hierarchy of being in 4 — mystery 88 revelation 4, 44, 83, 89 ~,— Posidonius possible forerunner of

— and mysteries of God 38 Neo-Pythagoreanism 9 — and philosophy 36

and reason 34, 36, 49, 81 Christian 21, 37 tradition, in Gnosticism and Christianity 26 tradition gnostic, in the prophets 62 Valentinians, the 8 natural 6, 61 Old Testament 7 sacramental principle 33, 58 school of 23 Wisdom 17, 18, 41, 42, 43, 45, 60, 66, Scepules 2, 12 Somnium Scipionis 10 speculative cosmology 93 OOM OF ais Christ as, and as giver of philosophy to the Greeks 62

God's counsellor 62 Jewish and angelology 89 Wisdom literature 86 Wisdom of Solomon 17, 70 Valentinian 89 Stores; 2, ll WAS O22 45 40, 73s,

syncretism 4, 6, 85, 86, 90 theosophy, partially Christianized 3 et

The book begins with a general review of conditions in the Hellenistic world subsequent to the collapse and disappearance of the ancient Greek city-state, the psychological effects of the political and _ social changes brought about thereby, the lost sense of identity and the search on the part of the individual for security against the forces of disruption.

It describes the rise of various ideologies to meet the growing sense of human need, with Christianity, Gnosticism and Greek philosophy eventually emerging as the chief competitors and the first of these ranged against the other two.

The author studies the movement of Christian thought in its reaction to Gnosticism, and its uncompromising opposition along the entire apologetic front.

With regard to Greek philosophy follows a description of the defensive attitude of Irenaeus, the antagonistic attitude of Tertullian and the attitude of accommodation adopted by Clement of Alexandria. A special effort is made in this part of the book to marshall and systematize all the relevant textual evidence for the positions taken up by these apologists and above all to allow them to spear as far as possible for themselves, with a minimum of interpretation or interpolation or comment on the authors part.

The book concludes with a survey of the findings finally arrived at, including an assessment of the attitudes of the apologists referred to,gn terms of apologetic strategy and arriving at the conclusion that, in the light of all the known facts and circum- > stances, that of Clement of Alexandria was what in the end ensured the victory and further expansion of Early Christianity and not only its survival to the present day but also the undertermined possibilities of its continued influence and impact on the modern world.

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ISBN 90 232 0979 6

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