The Basis of Early Christian Theism Part 3

And each of the Greek schools, they would say, by resting their case on some one of the various arguments, and emphasizing some one of the attributes of the Deity at the expense of the others, had attained only a partial and inadequate view, though true so far as it went. "Since, therefore," says St. Clement of Alexandria,[87] "truth is one (for falsehood has ten thousand by-paths); just as the Bacchantes tore asunder the limbs of Pentheus, so the sects both of barbarian and h.e.l.lenic philosophy have done with truth, and each vaunts as the whole truth the portion which has fallen to its lot. But all, in my opinion, are illuminated by the dawn of Light." These men were deeply appreciative of the work of Greek philosophy so far as it went--even a.s.signing to it a place a.n.a.logous to the Hebrew Scriptures[88]--but they always attribute to it a distinctly propaedeutic office, and are careful to emphasize its failure to lead to any firm and positive conviction of the existence of G.o.d. That this was the position of the early Christian philosophers might be shown by many pa.s.sages, but we will content ourselves with one example from the pages of St. Clement of Alexandria, who a.s.signed to Greek philosophy a higher place than any of the patristic writers--so much so that his orthodoxy has frequently been questioned because of it. He is fond of designating the knowledge of G.o.d to which the Greeks had attained by the term "pe??f?as??." Thus he concludes[89] an argument from common consent, already quoted, in these words: "Much more did the philosophers among the Greeks, devoted to investigation, starting from the Barbarian philosophy, attribute providence to the 'invisible, and sole and most powerful, and most skilful and supreme cause of all things, most beautiful;'--not knowing the influences from these truths, unless instructed by us, and not even how G.o.d is to be known naturally, but only, as we have already often said, by a true periphrasis." "The men of highest repute among the Greeks knew G.o.d, not by positive knowledge, but by indirect expression (pe??f?as??)."[90] The indefinite and merely "probable" character of the results which the Fathers think were reached by the theistic argument in Greek thought explains to us the few examples of these proofs which we find in their writings, and the certainty which they thought they had found, and their consequent att.i.tude toward all arguments of this nature, which we have tried to depict, is the key to the explanation of a new phase in the history of thought which was to last for several centuries.

In our examination of these examples of the theistic argument in the Fathers, it cannot escape our notice that they occur much more frequently, and in more developed and conventional form in the West than in the East--under the influence of Rome than under that of Alexandria and the Orient. The reason for this is not far to seek, and is one that throws light also on the motive with which the patristic writers made use of these arguments.

In Alexandria and the East there was no incentive for the Christians to try to prove the existence of G.o.d, for the philosophy of that portion of the world was essentially religious in its character, and based its speculation on the existence of G.o.d as a fundamental postulate of revelation and of reason as well. In the combination of Judaism and h.e.l.lenic philosophy made by the "h.e.l.lenizing Jews" and by the "Judaizing h.e.l.lenes," the existence of G.o.d was admitted quite as freely, and maintained quite as zealously, as by the Christians themselves, and even the incipient Neo-Platonists made no quarrel with them on this ground.

So we find that the reference in the Alexandrian and other Eastern Fathers are mainly of the character of examples and ill.u.s.trations as to principles that are well understood and admitted, and are employed chiefly for the purpose of refuting idolatry by a distinction between G.o.d and matter, or of proving the unity of G.o.d in opposition to the still latent polytheism.

Under the influence of Rome, however, other tendencies came in to give a rather different significance to the theistic argument. For Rome had become the chief center of the later schools of Greek philosophy, and under the shadow of the seven hills rather than in the Athenian groves and porticoes were found the disciples of Pyrrho, of Zeno and of Epicurus. Thus, very naturally, wherever Roman civilization was dominant the teacher of Christian doctrine was obliged to present his subject with reference to the forces already at work in the minds of those whom he addressed. In accordance with this, we find, first, a _negative_ influence in the hostile att.i.tude a.s.sumed by the Sceptics and members of other schools who tended toward their position, toward any religious knowledge. That this influence is not an imaginary one may be seen especially in the instance already quoted from Lactantius, whose use of the theistic argument is called forth by the cavils of Sceptics and atheistic atomists.

But there was also a _positive_ influence at work to facilitate the use of the theistic argument by the Western Fathers in the prevalence at Rome of Stoic and Epicurean doctrine. From the former of these schools would result a familiarity, and, in many cases, an agreement with the forms of the argument drawn from order and design; from the latter, for the demonstration from common consent. Both of these influences, no doubt, had some influence on the shape in which Tertullian of Carthage, Minucius Felix, Novatian and Lactantius presented their doctrine, and, together with the more material and less religious character of the West, accounts in large degree for the comparative frequency of their appeal to the theistic argument.

But when we consider the frequency with which we meet with the theistic argument, and with reference to its use in other writers, in the pages of Cicero, for example, these scanty instances afforded us by the writings of the ante-Nicene Fathers, whose works occupy, say, 4,500 large, closely-printed pages in the translation, and who were, let us remember, dealing exclusively with religious thought, indicate plainly a fundamental change in position, the influence of which was operative for centuries in this department of thought, and which, even to-day, governs the att.i.tude of the greater part of the Western world. The absolute failure of the Greeks to arrive at any certainty of G.o.d's existence by demonstration, the introduction of the Christian doctrine of G.o.d, before which the deductions of Greek philosophy seem empty and unsatisfactory, even to many who cannot accept that doctrine as truth, and the subst.i.tution of faith in a Person for purely rational proof, render it impossible, so long as that faith continues, that any one should think it worth while to devote more than a pa.s.sing notice to any such argument, unless for the purposes of an _argumentum ad hominem_. And so it is not until faith begins to grow cold and men become mere speculators and debaters about religion, rather than believers in Christ, that the revival of these arguments under the t.i.tle of "proofs"

is possible. Even the famous Ontological Argument of St. Anselm was, I am convinced, no serious attempt to formulate an _a priori_ proof of the existence of G.o.d, but was addressed to a particular case[91]--the "fool"

who "said in his heart, 'There is no G.o.d,'" and who _also_ maintained that G.o.d was "that than which no greater can be thought."

From this survey it will be seen that, in the view of the Ante-Nicene Christian authors, the theistic argument was valuable merely as a propaedeutic to Christianity, but was superfluous for the believer in Jesus Christ; the use of it cannot, as it had not in Greek thought, bring proof, but only probability; even this uncertain result is only vague and fragmentary in character, and was never unified and made significant by the Greeks; its office in Christian evidences was merely of an _ad hominem_ sort, and this only in its simpler and more practical forms, in which the senses as well as reason had their testimony to bear; and, lastly, the argument was used much more frequently by the Western than by the Alexandrian and other Eastern Fathers.

FOOTNOTES:

[60] _Stromata_, V, 12.

[61] _De Spectaculis_, II.

[62] _Against Marcion_, I, 17.

[63] _Ibid._, V, 16. This is to justify his doctrine of the punishment of the heathen.

[64] _Scapula_, II.

[65] _Against Celsus_, I, 23.

[66] _Plea for the Christians_, XV, XVI.

[67] I, 5 and 6.

[68] _Exhortation to the Heathen_, X.

[69] _Divine Inst.i.tutes_, III, 20.

[70] Chap. II.

[71] _Treatise on the Anger of G.o.d_, X.

[72] E.g., Stirling: _Philosophy and Theology_, p. 179.

[73] _Trypho_, III, IV.

[74] _Stromata_, V, 14.

[75] _The Soul's Testimony_, I.

[76] _Of the Resurrection of the Flesh_, III.

[77] _Octavius_, XVIII.

[78] _Against Celsus_, II, 40.

[79] _De Trinitate_, VIII.

[80] _Divine Inst.i.tutes_, I, 2.

[81] E.g., Irenaeus: _Against Heresy_, II, 9, 1; Tertullian: _Against Marcion_, I, 10; Origen: _De Principiis_, I, 3, 1; Tertullian: _Apology_, XVII; Lactantius: _Divine Inst.i.tutes_, I, 2.

[82] E.g., Minucius Felix: _Octavius_, XVII, XVIII; Novatian: _De Trinitate_ VIII; Dionysius the Great: _Fragments_, II, 1.

[83] E.g., "Justin, in Philosopher's garb, preached the word of G.o.d."

Eusebius, IV, 11.

[84] The mere list of Greek authors _quoted_ by St. Clement of Alexandria occupies over fourteen quarto pages in Fabricius'

_Bibliotheka Graeca_.

[85] _Divine Inst.i.tutes_, V. 4.

[86] _Acts_, XVII, 23.

[87] _Stromata_, I, 13.

[88] E.g., _Stromata_, VI, 5: "The one and only G.o.d was known by the Greeks in a Gentile way, by the Jews Judaically, and in a new and spiritual way by us." In I, 5, he says: "For this (philosophy) was a schoolmaster to bring "the h.e.l.lenic mind," as the law the Hebrews, to Christ."

[89] _Stromata_, V, 14.

[90] _Ibid._, VI, 5. See also, e.g., I, 19; V, 13.

[91] See Stirling: _Philosophy and Theology_, p. 35.

CHAPTER V

ECLECTIC THEISM

The early Christian writers, so far as they a.s.sumed any philosophical position, were invariably Eclectics. In this, as we have seen, they were the true children of their age, whose most striking characteristic was that it had deserted the older systems, while attempting to preserve out of their ruins the particular truth for which each of the schools had contended. But with the Christian philosophers it was not merely the negative influence of scepticism which drove them to Eclecticism. Their conviction of a sure knowledge of things divine--the final question for all philosophy--exerted a positive influence as well, which led them to formulate more or less explicitly a view of the function of philosophy as an organon of the truth, not merely with reference to the past history of Greek thought, as their contemporaries outside of the Christian Church were accustomed to do, but with a view to all possible speculation on the Deity. For this deposit of revealed truth, to which they gave a.s.sent as the most certain of all knowledge, they regarded as the _whole_ truth, of which the various speculations of philosophy on the existence and attributes of G.o.d, were but "portions" and "fragments"--true and trustworthy so far as they went, and from their own particular standpoint, but, nevertheless, essentially and necessarily partial, and hence productive, not of certainty, but of mere opinion.

And this estimate of the function of philosophy with respect to theological truth, which the Fathers worked out on the basis of the concrete example of the course of Greek thought, though with a view to a much wider application, has its justification in the very nature and conditions of thought itself. For philosophy is essentially a _process_--its very life depends on its being in motion, in process of change and development. Each system is evolved out of its predecessors, and contains within itself the germs of its successors--it is the link which connects the past with the future. It expresses the "common-sense," the unconscious convictions and instinctive tendencies of the time, and the man who first gives voice to this unspoken message is the philosopher. He utters the truth which the times demand--that which satisfies the conditions. Thus with Professor Erdmann[92] the patristic writers would say that each statement of philosophical truth is "the final truth only for that time." It is the phase or aspect or particular statement of the truth which the times demand, which the situation calls forth, and which appeals most strongly to the minds that make up part of that situation. Changed conditions demand a different statement of the truth to satisfy them, and furnish the data upon which such a statement is based. Philosophy, like science, "does not really acc.u.mulate, but is entirely transformed by each fresh hypothesis. It is only the data that acc.u.mulate; and when we say that a new hypothesis is 'truer' than that which preceded it, we mean merely that it enables us to co-ordinate a larger number of these data."[93] And this transformation takes place, in reality, not only by addition, but by subtraction of data. For it is a phenomenon common to the thought of all ages, that each school not only calls attention to new data, ignored by its predecessor, but also shuts its eyes to more or less of the valid data set forth by the earlier system. In no period of the history of thought were men more commonly led into abstractions by being dazzled by the brilliancy and novelty of the latest idea than in the pioneer age represented by Greek philosophy, when men had not yet attained to a clear perspective, and the foot-hills often hid the lofty mountain peak.

It is this trait, so evident in the nave thought of the Greeks, that makes it possible for the early Christian thinkers to take the att.i.tude, at once appreciative and critical with regard to the h.e.l.lenic theology.

They borrowed much, not only from the form, but also from the results of the speculations of the philosophers, but always with a deep sense of the limitations which the conditions imposed upon them. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the rest had spoken the truth, but each only from one point of view, and on the basis of only one method of approach. The conclusions of each were the result of a process of more or less complete abstraction, and in abstractions the Fathers, true to the genius of Christian thought, could never rest content, but could only accord to them the appreciation which belongs to a temporary and preliminary stage in the search for the final unity.