The Basis of Early Christian Theism Part 4

To this partial, temporary, "relatively final," and constantly changing content, the revealed doctrine of G.o.d, manifested in due relations, unity and completeness by the Incarnate Word, stands with the Fathers as the principle to the particular rule or application--as the whole to the part. As the revelation of G.o.d it came to them, not as the result of man's investigation and speculation, colored by every change of time, place and environment, a mere momentary phase of a process; but as eternal verity, viewed, so far as man's powers would allow, in its entirety and unity. Dorner expresses their position well when he says that in Christianity "as the organism of the truth, the elements of truth, elsewhere here and there to be met with in a scattered form or a disfigured guise, come together in unity--a unity which, as it personally appeared in the G.o.d-Man, so in the course of history ever more and more rises upon the consciousness of mankind." The Fathers think that in the Christian doctrine of G.o.d they find all the true elements contributed by previous thought, and besides these an infinite depth of truth unthought of by the Greeks, all unified and harmonized in a way that makes it a sharp contrast to the fragmentary and abstract character of the h.e.l.lenic theology. Christian doctrine represents to them the stable, absolute truth, so far as it was revealed by the Incarnate Word, the eternal verities in their completeness and unity, so far as man is able to comprehend them. Philosophy represents the phase or aspect of the truth which the conditions of thought at the time demands and emphasizes, which will co-ordinate the data at present in the foreground of consciousness. Thus they conceive of the facts of Christian Theology as the goal towards which philosophy is (often unconsciously) striving, but at which it can never arrive without the "leap of faith." Once this leap is taken, however, these theological verities become the major factors in the data to be co-ordinated, and philosophy and theology come into that union and harmony which, in the eyes of the Christian philosophers, is their normal relation.

This Eclectic att.i.tude of the Fathers, and their deprecation of any abstraction or partial statement usurping the place of the truth, explains to some extent their treatment of the theistic argument.

In the first place it led them to distrust and reject any argument for the existence of G.o.d which proceeded on the basis of reason alone, apart from any content furnished by sensibility. While the Fathers do not make any explicit and scientific distinction between Epistemology and Ontology, such as has in modern times been the bane of any attempted natural theology, yet they seem to have made a pretty constant _practical_ separation between the two. St. Clement of Alexandria, as we have seen, holds that by a method of abstraction of specific characteristics we can arrive only at an "Unknown," to which meaning can be given only by combining with this rational process some content furnished directly by the senses or, indirectly, by testimony, and he further states that G.o.d is not a subject for demonstration--_i.e._, the science that depends on primary and better known principles--for "first principles are incapable of demonstration."[94] This position seems to be tacitly a.s.sumed by the patristic writers throughout, and even where they speak of Plato with grat.i.tude and admiration they never seem to be at all inclined to make any use of his "Idealogical" argument or anything related thereto. They seem to take a common-sense stand for the testimony of the whole man, as well as for the whole truth, and to instinctively distrust any rational concept in the formation of which sensuous content had been ignored.

The Eclectic character of the patristic thought is seen also in the frequency with which they use the different forms of the theistic argument in conjunction, or present it in mixed forms. The Greek philosophers, as we have seen, each selected some one of the forms of the argument, and by means of it, attempted to establish the sort of an ????, to which such a course of reasoning would lead, ignoring, or attacking the forms in use by their rival school. Thus early, however, as in modern times, Christian theology, in contrast with the attempts of rational theology, began to emphasize the interdependence of these different forms of the theistic argument, and the c.u.mulative character of their evidence. Each one of itself could bring no conviction, nor even high degree of probability, and furthermore, even if all its claims be admitted, would lead to a result far short of theism--a mere indefinite first cause, an Architect of the universe, etc. Each one, however, adds its quota to a great _c.u.mulative_ argument, which, taken in its entirety, raises an exceedingly high presumption, which amounts to "_moral_" though possibly not intellectual proof. And, after all, "probability is the guide of _life_."

And this is all that the Fathers, or Christian apologists, generally, would claim for the theistic argument. It is a _practical_, not a theoretical proof, and it is in this way that the early Christian writers seem to regard it. They resort to it most frequently to show that the Christian doctrine of G.o.d is not contrary to reason nor inconsistent with the nature of things, and to demonstrate that such a conception is demanded by man's very nature. In a word, their use of the argument is confirmatory and explanatory rather than by way of absolute proof and demonstration.

This att.i.tude towards and use of the theistic argument, so radically different from that of the Greek philosophers, perpetuated itself in the post-Nicene literature of the Christian Church, and, in its main features, remained unaltered, until the time when men who had abandoned the faith in the Word which had been the main stay of the ante-Nicene writers, and who yet were unwilling to abandon the great theistic idea for which the world was indebted to Christianity alone, sought to justify this idea on the basis of reason. It took the scepticism of a Hume and the criticism of a Kant, and the re-adjustment of all their followers to bring us back at the close of this nineteenth century into substantial agreement with the common-sense estimate placed upon the theistic argument by the ante-Nicene Fathers.

FOOTNOTES:

[92] _History of Philosophy_, Vol. I, -- 4.

[93] Burnet: _Early Greek Philosophy_, p. 25.

[94] _Stromata_, II, iv.

VITA.

The writer was born April 24, 1869, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He attended the Ann Arbor Public Schools and the Ann Arbor High School. In 1892 he received the degree of A. B. from the University of Michigan. In 1895 he graduated from the General Theological Seminary, New York, and was awarded the degree of B. D., which was formally conferred in accordance with the rules of the Seminary one year later. In 1896, he received the degree of A. M. from the University of Michigan. He pursued studies in Philosophy at Harvard University during the first term of the year 1896-7, and at Columbia University from February, 1897, to February, 1898. He has been the post-graduate scholar of the Church University Board of Regents from July, 1895, to the present time.