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LECTURE II.

THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO HELLENIC CULTURE

AND PHILOSOPHY.

EVERY advance of the kingdom of God, every victory of the Gospel, gave rise to new problems. When men of philosophic culture became adherents of the Christian faith, the Church had to decide what was to be its general attitude towards that new force with which it had hitherto for the most part been in conflict. All men of culture, Christian and non-Christian alike, found in philosophy a common ground. The immediate effect of the admission of the new ally was such as to create suspicion. It sought to be a master, not a servant, in the house of God, to assimilate Christianity to itself rather than to assimilate itself to Christianity, and thus created heresies that threatened to break up the unity of the Church. The natural consequence was that widely antagonistic views were adopted with regard to the relation of the Church to philosophic culture generally. The one view is represented by Tatian and Tertullian; the other by Justin Martyr and Clement. Tatian scoffs at Hellenic culture, recounts with almost savage glee the fables as to the life and death of the Greek philosophers, and abjures altogether any contact with the wisdom of the Greeks. "We have," he says, "bidden farewell to your wisdom."1 In like manner Tertullian

1 Orat. ad Græc., c. I.

branded philosophy generally as the fountain of all heresies, and maintained that the Church had nothing to do with it save to disown all intercourse with it.1 The influence which it had exercised on the Christian faith made this a natural attitude; and it required men of no ordinary courage and insight to rise above the temptation to attack or belittle a force with associations so sinister. Such were Justin and Clement. Justin, whose intellectual and spiritual life to a certain extent had proceeded on parallel lines to that of Clement, takes up substantially the same attitude as he did. In becoming a Christian, he did not cease to be a philosopher, for he regarded Christianity as the only true and useful philosophy. Like Clement, he supports the hypothesis of theft as a solution of the analogies between Christianity and the philosophy of the Greeks, reads Christian teaching into Plato, and claims all that was akin to Christianity in Greek philosophy as his own.2 At the same time that Tertullian in Carthage was abjuring all contact with philosophy, Clement in Alexandria was exhibiting and defending Greek philosophy as virtually on a level with Judaism as a preliminary discipline for Christianity. It was not to be regarded merely as an unconscious negative preparation for the Gospel, testifying by its very failure to the necessity of something higher than itself; it had played a positive part, a divinely appointed part, in the history of humanity. What the Law of Moses was to the Jew, philosophy was to the Greek. It was a tutor to the Greeks, just as the law was to the Hebrews. It was as a covenant peculiar to them, like a stepping-stone to the philosophy which is according to Christ. As God gave prophets to

1 Præsc. adv. Hæret., c. 7.

2 ii. Apol., 13. ὅσα οὖν παρὰ πᾶσι καλῶς εἴρηται ἡμῶν τῶν χριστιανῶν ἐστι. 3 Str., i. 528.

4 Ib. vi. 8. τήν δὲ φιλοσοφίαν καὶ μᾶλλον Ελλησιν, οἷον διαθήκην οἰκείαν αὐτοῖς.

the Jews, so He raised up men of the highest repute among the Greeks, their own prophets in their own tongue, so far as they were able to receive the beneficence of God, and thus marked them off from the great mass of men.1 The Mosaic Law and Greek philosophy alike had each its own place in the divine economy; each came like the Gospel in its own God-appointed time; each was designed to prepare men for the reception of the truth of Christ.2

Clement assigned this lofty function to philosophy on a variety of grounds. He based it on statements in Scripture, on the unity of truth, on the universality of inspiration, on the nature of philosophy itself, above all, on the nature of God, whose Providence was not to be regarded as local or national. According to the Scriptures, men among the Gentiles are sons in God's sight. The statement of the Psalmist that "God had not dealt so with any nation" as with Israel, implies that though God's relation to the Gentiles was not so intimate as that which He occupied to the Jews, He had a certain relation. The quaintness of the exegesis is at least convincing proof of the strength of his conviction on the matter. When David speaks of the Gentiles "forgetting God," he implies a former remembrance, and that there was a dim knowledge of God among the Gentiles. The five barley loaves in the miracle are a figure of the law; the two fishes are a figure of the Greek philosophy which was begotten and carried about in the Gentile waves. The quotation from Aratus by St Paul shows that he approved of what was well said among the Greeks. The way of truth is one, but into it as into an ever-flowing river various streams flow, some from this side, some from

that.1

The law of nature and the law of the divine education are from God, and one.2 Injunctions of righteousness pronounced by those who pursue the wisdom of the world. are not to be despised. Sayings such as that of Hesiod were spoken by the God of all, even though they were spoken by way of conjecture, not by way of apprehension.3 All apprehension of God is due to His inspiration. Clement starts with the assumption, based on his own experience, that philosophy in itself was a good thing. The source from which it drew its inspiration was sufficiently proved by its results; it made men virtuous, and was accorded only to the best among the Greeks. To suppose that so powerful a factor in thought and life had come into the world without a direct divine impulse was to put a limit and a dishonour on the omniscience, the beneficence, and the omnipotence of God. It is really a clear image of truth, a divine gift to the Greeks. By a different process of advancement, He led both Greek and barbarian to the perfection which is through faith." If the very hairs of our head are numbered, shall philosophy not be taken into account? If philosophy were discovered by the Greeks by the mere exercise of human understanding, yet, according to the Scriptures, understanding is from God." Many things the fruit of human reasoning derived from Him their primal spark.10 He is even the source of every artistic device.11 If, according to Solomon, it was wisdom as artificer that framed the ship, were it not irrational to regard philosophy as inferior to shipbuilding ? 12 To deny that philosophy came from God was to run the risk of saying that it was impossible for Him to know all things

individually, and that He is not the cause of all good things. To ascribe philosophy to the devil was to forget that evil had an evil nature, and never could be the source of anything good; nay, it was virtually to make the devil more beneficent than the Providence of God.2 If the devil be "transformed into an angel of light," that can only be when he prophesies that which is true. Even if the devil had stolen it, the gift was not an injurious one, and therefore not such as to call forth the intervention of God.* But what necessity, it might be objected, was there for assigning the introduction of philosophy to any divine intervention? Why not regard it simply as the fruit of human reasoning? Even so, it was from God, the source of reason. Nothing could have existed at all unless God had so willed. That philosophy did exist, shows that He willed it to exist, and that it existed for the sake of those who would not have abstained from evil save by its means. Did the thinkers of Greece utter some truth by accident? It was the accident due to the administration of God. Did they do so by mere coincidence? The coincidence had been divinely foreseen. Was it by a so-called natural conception? God, and not man, was the creator of that natural conception."

To what philosophy or philosopher did Clement specially assign this work of preparation for Christianity? What did he mean by the word itself? "By philosophy," he says, "I do not mean the Stoic, nor the Platonic, nor the Epicurean, nor the Aristotelian, but whatsoever things have been spoken in each of these sects well, 'giving thorough instruction in righteousness along with a knowledge inspired by piety, all this eclectic matter I call philosophy. But whatsoever things of human reasonings they have appropriated and put