Part 24
These defenders were all educated converts; indeed some of them, like Aristides and Athenagoras, called themselves philosophers. Naturally they did not give up their philosophic custom when they went over to Christianity, but rather applied their intellectual habit to their new faith. We should be wrong, however, in thinking that they wished to reconcile Greek philosophy and Christianity; on the contrary they wished to show that Christianity was the only true philosophy. Still all, with the exception of Tatian, treated Greek philosophy and civilization with respect and were ready to recognize God’s revelations among the Greeks as well as the Jews. They labored, however, with the fundamental antagonism between revelation and reason, and were often obliged somewhat illogically to blame Greek thinkers while praising them. Yet the sway of Hellenic philosophy was so complete and the means of defense which it furnished so powerful, that the Christians readily disregarded logical difficulties and gladly used the weapons which pagan thought had forged.
It is impossible here to distinguish in full detail the contributions of the several Apologists; we must therefore be content with a summarized statement of their positions.
First of all they accepted the historic tradition of the person, work, and teachings of Christ as authentic, and made no attempt to enlarge or diminish that tradition. They endeavored rather to present Christianity as a rational religion in such a way as to win the approval of the intellectual world. As Harnack says: “These Christian philosophers formulated the content of the Gospel in a manner which appealed to the common sense of all the serious thinkers and intelligent men of the age. Moreover, they contrived to use the positive material of tradition, including the life and worship of Christ, in such a way as to furnish this reasonable religion with a confirmation and proof that had hitherto been eagerly sought, but sought in vain.”[336]
They all set forth Christianity as a revelation from God, given in the Old Testament through the inspired prophets, who had foretold the supreme revelation in Jesus Christ. Christianity therefore was something which had existed from the beginning of the world; it was a thing which revelation had continuously attested, and which consequently was ultimate truth.[337] According to Justin not only the prophets of the Old Testament but also the Greek philosophers had borne witness to the truth and had been in a measure Christians. This power of insight and of prophecy he would ascribe in the latter case as in the former to the operation of the reason of God, a seed of which was granted to every man by nature; all therefore that was reasonable in Greek thought was due to divine inspiration. He found the cause of the Greeks’ failure to expound the whole truth in the view that man’s natural endowment was insufficient to enable him to resist the evil demons which beset him.[338] Although Athenagoras did not say that every man had within him a germ of the divine wisdom, he no less than Justin granted that the pagan poets and philosophers had known the truth in part;[339] their errors had been due to their dependence on themselves. The full truth then was to be found in revelation, which gave the Apologists the sole and sufficient warrant of their faith and the complete rule of life.
But, as I have said, the Apologists represented Christianity as the one valid philosophy. We must now examine briefly its principles.
First as to the nature of God. In dealing with this subject the Apologists used a method of thought and of expression very much like that employed by Philo and the later Platonists. They contrasted God and the world: the latter they said was created, temporal, and conditioned; the former, unconditioned, eternal, and self-existent; the material world was apprehended by the senses, God by the mind and reason alone.[340] God, therefore, to them was the One, pure spirit, unchanging, requiring nothing. It followed from this idea of God that he must be regarded as supramundane, if not transcendent. As a matter of fact, these writers were perhaps unconsciously trying to reconcile the personal attributes of God the Father, which the common Christian faith ascribed to the Godhead, and the current concept of God as a transcendent and ineffable being. A variety of expressions, too numerous to be quoted here, was employed to suggest God’s exalted and perfect nature. Furthermore God was not regarded as a passive, but as a living and active spirit, who must express himself in creations; he was therefore the First Cause, the Lord, Father, and Creator of all. The perfection of his nature made him also the source of moral good.
The complete contrast between the perfect, supramundane God and the imperfect, transient world required the Apologists, like the later pagan philosophers, to postulate some agent connecting the two, and they, like Philo and others, found this in the Logos, which to them was the operative reason of God, regarded as a person. But there is this significant fact to be noted, that the Apologists reached their views with regard to God and the Logos from a contemplation of the world itself in which they saw reason and order, and detected spiritual forces working toward good ends. Therefore they believed that the world was created and directed by God’s reason. Reflection on the chain of rational causation had led them to their conclusions. But Philo and the later Platonists we might say conceived of the Logos as a remedial being, for through his mediation they saved the perfection of God from contamination with evil matter. To the Apologists, however, matter was only an indifferent finite substance.
The Logos, as the reason of God, was identical with God in essence; but as a projection by God from himself, made for the purpose of creation and revelation, the Logos had a being distinct from God, not in essence but in number, so that he was a second God; yet at the same time the Logos, being a mode of God, God’s operative reason, was included in God; therefore no polytheistic ideas were admitted here.[341]
The Logos then was regarded as a creature and a servant of God, but he was held to be above all other creatures, being one in essence with the Divine. Moreover being created and therefore finite from the point of view of time, the Logos could enter into the finite and thus do the work of creation and revelation; by the Logos the world was made out of finite matter, and man was endowed with reason and freedom of the will. It is a striking fact, however, that with the exception of Justin, the Apologists betray comparatively little interest in the incarnation of the Logos in Jesus Christ. Their efforts were directed rather to establishing against the pagan world their claim that God is One and that the Logos is the operative reason of God which exercises his powers. Furthermore they had little or nothing to say about the Holy Spirit as a separate person, but for the most part they identified the Logos and the Spirit.[342]
The problem of evil the Apologists solved by connecting it with a belief in the freedom of choice given spirits or angels who chose to depart from righteousness, and, thus becoming evil demons, have from the first beset man and still do beset him with temptations which cause him to sin. They regarded man, by virtue of his endowments of reason and of freedom of the will, as capable of immortal life or of complete death. The conditions of immortality were first, the maintenance of the knowledge of God and of his relation through the Logos to the created world, and secondly, persistence in a life aimed at moral perfection, a life which followed after the Spirit and did not yield to the bodily passions. In Tatian especially there is a distinct ascetic strain.[343]
The best exposition of man’s moral obligations the Apologists believed to be found in the words of Jesus, but at the same time they agreed in holding that the essential element in a life of virtue was a clear knowledge of divine things through which man was at once raised above the things of this world into a pure and noble existence. Thus man was assured now of salvation, and in the future life was destined to enjoy immortality and the perfection of knowledge which would come with the direct vision of God.[344]
But such a doctrine presupposes a revelation of God. This, as I have already pointed out, the Apologists said had been made in the beginning by the Logos who disclosed himself in the created universe and in man as a part thereof. Man, however, by yielding to sin, had lost that divine knowledge which had been his through the original revelation, with the result that repeated revelations had been necessary. The agents of these had been the inspired prophets of the Old Testament and to a slight degree the philosophers of Greece. The revelation of the Logos in Jesus Christ was simply an attestation and guarantee of the truths and predictions of the prophets, the highest stage in the history of revelation, confirming that revelation without changing its content in any way.
But all this is something very different from the teachings of Jesus, or of Paul, or of the Fourth Gospel; indeed the relations of the Apologists to Stoicism, to Philo and the later Platonists, seem fully as close as to the New Testament. Of the writers in question Justin alone—and he somewhat unsuccessfully—tried to set forth Jesus as the redeemer in the strict sense of the word and to see in him a unique revelation of the Logos.[345] Side by side with the tendency to seek religious satisfaction in mysticism there existed even more strongly in intellectual circles a desire to find the principles of right conduct in a correct theory of the world. Such was, for example, the aim of the Stoic. In attempting to satisfy this desire the Apologists probably represented the views of the majority of educated Christians of their day who felt that the noble morality of Christianity was its most edifying characteristic; at any rate they knew that it was the strongest argument for the validity of their religion.
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We have already seen many times that the idea that supreme knowledge was conferred by direct revelation and that such knowledge led to perfection was widespread not only among later Greek thinkers and Hellenized Jews like Philo, but also among the devotees of the oriental mysteries. Lucius, the hero of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, believed that through the rites of initiation into the mysteries of Isis he had been allowed to see the gods face to face and to acquire a knowledge which only such revelation could convey.[346] Magical papyri describe their contents as knowledge (γνῶσις), meaning thereby the supernatural knowledge which they impart. From the other extreme we can cite the case of the Apostle Paul, who claimed that his knowledge and the gospel which he preached had come to him not from man, but “by the revelation of Jesus Christ.”[347] It was then a common belief of the day that through direct revelation one might obtain a secret knowledge (γνῶσις) of divine things which no teaching could give. Such a revelation, however gained, was recognized as an act of grace toward men, whereby they attained salvation.
It was this idea of a secret revealed knowledge which gave the name of Gnostic to a series of movements in the early Christian centuries to which we must now turn.
The Gnostics never formed any single community or school, but they comprised groups which exhibited the greatest diversity and range of beliefs and of morals; the most famous and influential individuals were Basilides, who taught at Alexandria in the time of Hadrian, and Valentinus, who was active at Rome in the middle of the second century (c. 140-c. 165). Gnosticism did not originate within Christianity, but rather antedated it. All its forms arose from some combination of oriental religions and mythologies with Greek modes of philosophic thought, which in many ways remind one of later Neoplatonism. When Christianity was taken into the Gnostic systems, it was inevitable that it should be modified, reshaped, and stated in forms which might contain gross error. Yet it would be a mistake to regard the Gnostics as fundamentally foes of Christianity. Even if we cannot go so far as Harnack and call them “the theologians of the first century,” and attribute to them the first place in the early formation of a Christian theology,[348] we must recognize that they did a great, and in some ways a permanent, service to the new faith. They were seekers after a philosophy of history; they interpreted Christianity as the religion which replaced both paganism and Judaism, and they held that the appearance of the redeemer had completed the development of the human race and had consummated the history of the universe. Such a view, which in itself was quite in accord with the views of Christians generally, led the Gnostics to reject the Old Testament because it was supplanted by the new revelation; the Apostolic writings they believed to contain first of all the rule of faith when taken at their face value, and secondly to hold a secret and deeper meaning, which could be obtained only by allegorical, that is, by esoteric interpretation. But thus far the Gnostics and the mass of Christians were still in essential agreement, although the latter held to faith (πίστις) as the basic element in their religion, while the former exalted knowledge (γνῶσις) above it.
The Christians, however, commonly believed the world to be the creation of God and wholly subject to him, as we just now saw when examining the position of the Apologists. The Gnostics on the other hand almost universally adopted some form of dualism which set off God and matter against each other as more or less independent entities. In matter they saw the basis of evil; at the other pole was the perfect supreme Being who was wholly transcendent, above all thought; from this Being, according to Basilides, proceeded a series of emanations, no less than three hundred and sixty-five in number, the lowest of which were the angels who occupy the visible heaven; they were the creators and rulers of all things on earth. The chief of these angels was the God of the Jews, as he was made known in the Old Testament.[349] Valentinus, too, described a series of thirty Eons, descended from the perfect, pre-existent Eon and his feminine counterpart, Ennoea, in which appear fantastic combinations of abstract ideas, mathematical concepts, and conjugal relations, betraying the manifold origin of this bizarre system.[350] Yet such doctrines represent only extravagant efforts to bridge the gap between a transcendent God and the world, a task which Philo and the later Platonists accomplished in a more restrained manner.
The common Gnostic explanation of the origin of the universe was that the cosmos arose from the descent into matter of some sparks of the divine. The Creator of the cosmos, the Demiurge, was regarded as an intermediate creature, sometimes as an evil one; but he is never identical with the supreme Being.[351]
Man, also, in their views, was a dual creature, made up of corruptible flesh and divine spirit. Some Gnostics also divided mankind into two classes: the spiritual who were capable of salvation, and the material who were doomed to perish. The Valentinians, however, conceived of three kinds, corresponding to the three forms of existence found throughout the world: the spiritual, the animal, and the material. Of these the material men were predestined to destruction; the animal by right choice might find rest in an “intermediate space”; but the spiritual were to attain perfection and become “as brides to the angels of the Saviour.”[352] The Gnostics of course were spiritual and destined for the supreme bliss.
As regards their views concerning the person of Christ we may not now go into detail. We can simply state the views of the two chief Gnostics. Basilides identified Christ with the first-born of the Father, the emanation Mind (Νοῦς), who came to destroy the God of the Jews and all evil men, but to save those who believed on him.[353] Valentinus made Christ one of the Eons, forming a conjugal pair of Christ and the Holy Spirit; but Jesus who appeared on earth was another, the perfect product of the whole pleroma of Eons.[354] We may say that generally Christ was regarded by the Gnostics as one of the emanations of the supreme Being, by which the divine principle entered the visible world and made God known, whereas he had been hidden hitherto. Christ, therefore, was a power, a heavenly Eon, which was to be distinguished from his earthly appearance as the man Jesus. This view was in accord with other beliefs that Christ had not actually appeared and suffered in the flesh, to which is given the name docetism.
The Gnostic ethics were based on the dual concept of man, with the natural result that in many groups a marked asceticism was practised. On the other hand the belief that the revelation brought by Christ had freed men from law—an exaggeration of Paul’s position, unchecked by Paul’s good-sense—led to the extremes of libertinism.
The Gnostics laid much stress also on the magic value of the sacraments of baptism, the Lord’s supper, and anointing with oil. They treated them as the means of initiation into the holy mysteries of Christianity, whereby the initiate obtained, as in pagan mysteries, the higher knowledge (γνῶσις), which was salvation. Beyond this they resorted to the crassest magic, playing with names and numbers, employing images, incantations, invocations, and many kinds of curious arts.[355] But in this respect they were hardly in disaccord with their contemporaries.
From the foregoing it will appear that the Gnostic movement represented in general exaggerations of the normal Christian tenets, produced by an attempt to combine Christianity with many Greek and oriental elements. The results varied from a doctrine which differed from that, for example, of the Johannine writings chiefly in denying the actual human existence of Christ, to the most extravagant perversions of Christian belief. Many Gnostics remained within the Church undisturbed, others were bitterly attacked.
The entire movement which we have been considering is instructive, for it illustrates in a striking way the danger which the growing Church ran of being swamped in the confused floods of Hellenic and oriental thought and mysticism. The conflict with such foes as the Gnostics was one of the chief causes which led to the formation of a body of accepted catholic doctrine, for in dogma lay in part the protection of Christianity. Although the Church was able to free itself of most Gnostic heresies, she could not wholly escape their influence, as we shall presently see.
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The heir of both the Gnostics and the Apologists was the catechetical school at Alexandria under the leadership of Clement and Origen (c. 200-231). The early history of this school is unknown, but it became important at the close of the second century. In it both the Greek sciences and the holy Scriptures were studied, so that it was a natural place for the fusion of secular learning and Christian theology.
Clement, who was first a pupil, then a teacher in this school, and at last its head for three years (200-203), was the first to attempt an exposition of Christianity with all the aid that heretical speculation and Greek learning alike could give. We possess from his hand three works of systematic edification. The Protrepticus is addressed to converts, and in it he employs arguments similar to those of the Apologists, Justin and Athenagoras; the Paedagogus gives practical directions for the Christian life; and the Stromateis, “Miscellanies,” is intended to present and establish Christianity as the true philosophy, and so to lead the reader to supreme knowledge (γνῶσις), as its full title announces.[356] From this it is at once evident that the Gnostic movements had had their influence on Clement; and indeed, after combatting Gnostic errors frequently, especially in the third book, he devotes a considerable part of his sixth book and the whole of his seventh to a presentation of the true Gnostic.[357] His view as to the service done mankind by the Greek intellect is summed up in the often-quoted words: “Philosophy was a tutor to bring the Greeks, as the law was to bring the Hebrews, to Christ.”[358]
But since it was Clement’s great pupil and successor, Origen, who actually founded Christian theology as a philosophy, and who established his views so firmly that although the Church has rejected much in detail, its dogmas still bear the stamp of his system, we shall pass at once to him and endeavor to set forth in summary the most important elements of his doctrine.
Origen held fast to the traditional teaching of the Apostles and to the Old Testament which he felt contained the sum of Christian truth,[359] and at the same time he worked freely as a speculative thinker. For the greater part of the period during which he was the head of the Alexandrian School, (c. 203-231) he was undisturbed by persecution and could work in the clear atmosphere of scientific study. His theology was built on the secular theology of his day.[360]
God he regarded as wholly transcendent, but potentially everywhere present, incomprehensible to man save in so far as man could behold the revelation of him in nature and in Christ. He predicated justice, goodness, and omnipotence of God, not simply as potentialities, but as attributes exercised fully and eternally in the universe. Still to leave man a free agent, Origen was obliged to hold that God limited his own omnipotence. The belief in the eternal exercise of God’s attributes required him to regard creation as eternal, so that he held that God and his creatures had eternally existed; God therefore, he said, had never existed apart from his creation, but the two were coëternal. This does not mean that Origen regarded the present world as existing in visible form from eternity, for he taught quite the contrary: this present world did begin and will end in time, but it is only one in an infinite series of worlds, a single expression of the eternal creative
## activity of God.[361]
The Logos in Origen’s system stands midway between God and the world. In opposition to those who claimed that the Logos had been begotten in time and was therefore a temporal creature, he insisted that the Logos was without beginning, but was eternally generated by God. In attempting to make his view clear he employed familiar figures, saying that the Logos, the eternal Son, was related to the Father, as the gleam to the source of light, or the will to the mind of man. He was the wisdom, the consciousness, and the activity of God; and he likewise was God’s perfect image, a second God. Yet in essence he was not independent, but rather one with the Father by whose will he was eternally created. Being created, however, he was one stage removed from God toward the multiple creation; being the medium of the Divine, he was the Creator of the world.[362]
It will be observed that in this philosophical system there is no necessity for the redeemer, and indeed Origen made somewhat less use of this concept of Christ than most other writers. On Christ’s incarnation he insisted, but the essential work of the human Christ was revelation.[363]