of God in His relation to the material universe, by saying that it
found a reasoned basis for Hebrew monotheism. It helped the Christian
communities to believe as an intellectual conviction that which they
had first accepted as a spiritual revelation. The moral difficulties
of human life, and the Oriental influences which were flowing in large
mass over some parts of the Christian world, tended towards ditheism.
But the average opinion of thinking men, which is the ultimate solvent
of all philosophical theories, had for centuries past been settling down
into the belief in the unity of God. With a conviction which has been as
permanent as it was of slow growth, it believed that the difficulties
in the hypothesis of the existence of a Power limited by the existence
of a rival Power, are greater even than the great difficulties in the
belief in a God who allows evil to be. The dominant Theistic philosophy
of Greece became the dominant philosophy of Christianity. It prevailed
in form as well as in substance. It laid emphasis on the conception
of God as the Artificer and Architect of the universe rather than as
its immanent Cause. But though the substance will remain, the form may
change. Platonism is not the only theory that is consistent with the
fundamental thesis that “of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all
things:” and it is not impossible that, even after this long lapse of
centuries, the Christian world may come back to that conception of Him
which was shadowed in the far-off ages, and which has never been wholly
without a witness, that He is “not far off but very nigh;” that “He is in
us and we in Him;” that He is changeless and yet changing in and with His
creatures; and that He who “rested from His creation,” yet so “worketh
hitherto” that the moving universe itself is the eternal and unfolding
manifestation of Him.
LECTURE VIII.
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
II. THE MORAL GOVERNOR.
A. THE GREEK IDEA.
1. The idea of the unity of God had grown, as we have already seen,
in a common growth with the idea of the unity of the world. But it
did not absorb that idea. The dominant element in the idea of God was
personality: in the idea of the world it was order. But personality
implied will, and will seemed to imply the capacity to change; whereas in
the world, wherever order could be traced, it was fixed and unvarying.
The order was most conspicuous in the movements of the heavenly bodies.
It could be expressed by numbers. The philosopher of numbers was the
first to give to the world the name _Cosmos_, the “order” as of a
marshalled army.[381] The order being capable of being expressed by
numbers, partook of the nature of numerical relations. Those relations
are not only fixed, but absolutely unalterable. That a certain ratio
should be otherwise than what it is, is inconceivable. Hence the same
philosopher of numbers who had first conceived of the _Cosmos_,
conceived of it also as being “invested with necessity,” and the
metaphysicians who followed him framed the formula, “All things are by
necessity.”[382]
This conception linked itself with an older idea of Greek religion. The
length of a man’s life and his measure of endowments had been spoken of
as his “share” or “portion.” Sometimes the assigning of this portion to
a man was conceived as the work of Zeus or the other gods: sometimes
the gods themselves had their portions like men; and very commonly the
portion itself was viewed actively, as though it were the activity of a
special being. It was sometimes personal, sometimes impersonal: it was,
in any case, inevitable.[383] Through its character of inevitableness, it
fused with the conception of the unalterableness of physical order. Hence
the proposition, “All things are by necessity,” soon came to be otherwise
expressed, “All things are by destiny.”[384]
Over against the personal might of Zeus there thus came to stand the
dark and formless fixity of an impersonal Destiny.[385] The conception
was especially elaborated by the Stoics. In the older mythology from
which it had sprung, its personifications had been spoken of sometimes
as the daughters of Zeus and Themis, and sometimes as the daughters
of Night.[386] The former expressed its certainty and perfect order;
the other, the darkness of its working. The former element became more
prominent. It was an “eternal, continuous and ordered movement.”[387]
It was “the linked chain of causes.”[388] The idea of necessity passed
into that of intelligent and inherent force: the idea of destiny was
transmuted into that of law.
This sublime conception, which has become a permanent possession of the
human race, was further elaborated into the picture of the world as a
great city. The Greek πόλις, the state, whose equivalent in modern times
is not civil but ecclesiastical, was an ideal society, the embodied type
of a perfect constitution or organization (σύστημα).[389] Its parts were
all interdependent and relative to the whole, the whole was flawless
and supreme, working out without friction the divine conception which
was expressed in its laws. The world was such an ideal society.[390]
It consisted of gods and men: the former were its rulers; the latter,
its citizens. The moral law was a reason inherent in human nature,
prescribing what men should do, and forbidding what they should not
do: human laws were but appendages of it.[391] In this sense man was a
“citizen of the world.”[392] To each individual man, as to every other
created being, the administrators had assigned a special task. “_Thou_ be
Sun: thou hast the power to go on thy circuit and make the year and the
seasons, to make fruits grow and ripen, to stir and lull the winds, to
warm the bodies of men: go thy way, make thy circuit, and so fulfil thy
ministry alike in small things and in great.... _Thou_ hast the power to
lead the army to Ilium: be Agamemnon. _Thou_ hast the power to fight in
combat with Hector: be Achilles.” To this function of administration the
gods were limited. The constitution of the great city was unchangeable.
The gods, like men, were, in the Stoical conception, bound by the
conditions of things.
“That which is best of all things and supreme,” says Epictetus,
“have the gods placed in our power—the faculty of rightly
dealing with ideas: all other things are out of our power. Is
it that they would not? I for my part think that if they had
been able they would have placed the other things also in our
power; but they absolutely could not.... For what says Zeus?
‘Epictetus, if it had been possible, I would have made thy
body and thy possessions free and unhindered. But as it is,
forget not that thy body is not thine, but only clay deftly
kneaded. And since I could not do this, I gave thee a part of
myself, the power of making or not making effort, the power
of indulging or not indulging desire; in short, the power of
dealing with all the ideas of thy mind.’”[393]
2. Side by side with this conception of destiny were growing up new
conceptions of the nature of the gods. The gods of wrath were passing
away. The awe of the forces of nature, of night and thunder, of the
whirlwind and the earthquake, which had underlain the primitive
religions, was fading into mist. The meaner conceptions which had
resulted from a vividly realized anthropomorphism, the malice and spite
and intrigue which make some parts of the earlier mythology read like
the _chronique scandaleuse_ of a European court, were passing into the
region of ridicule and finding their expression only in burlesque. Two
great conceptions, the elements of which had existed in the earliest
religion, gradually asserted their supremacy. The gods were just, and
they were also good. They punished wicked deeds, not by an arbitrary
vengeance, but by the operation of unfailing laws. The laws were the
expression of the highest conceivable morality. Their penalties were
personal to the offender, and the sinner who did not pay them in this
life paid them after death. The gods were also good. The idea of their
kindness, which in the earlier religion had been a kindness only for
favoured individuals, widened out to a conception of their general
benevolence.[394] The conception of their forethought, which at first had
only been that of wise provision in particular cases, linked itself with
the Stoical teleology.[395] The God who was the Reason of the world, and
immanent in it, was working to an end. That end was the perfection of the
whole, which was also the perfection of each member of the whole. In the
sphere of human life, happiness and perfection, misery and imperfection,
are linked together. The forethought or “Providence” of God was thus
beneficent in regard both to the universe itself and to the individual.
It worked by self-acting laws. “There are,” says Epictetus,[396]
“punishments appointed as it were by law to those who disobey the divine
administration. Whoever thinks anything to be good that is outside the
range of his will, let that man feel envy and unsatisfied longing; let
him be flattered, let him be unquiet; whoever thinks anything to be evil
that is outside the range of his will, let him feel pain and sorrow, let
him bemoan himself and be unhappy.” And again: “This is the law—divine
and strong and beyond escape—which exacts the greatest punishments from
those who have sinned the greatest sins. For what says it? The man who
lays claim to the things that do not concern him, let him be a braggart,
let him be vainglorious: the man who disobeys the divine administration,
let him be mean-spirited, let him be a slave, let him feel grief, and
jealousy, and pity; in short, let him bemoan himself and be unhappy.”[397]
* * * * *
There were thus at the beginning of the Christian era two concurrent
conceptions of the nature of the superhuman forces which determine the
existence and control the activity of all created things, the conceptions
of Destiny and of Providence. The two conceptions, though apparently
antagonistic, had tended, like all conceptions which have a strong hold
upon masses of men, to approach each other. The meeting-point had been
found in the conception of the fixed order of the world as being at once
rational and beneficent. It was rational because it was the embodiment of
the highest reason; and it was beneficent because happiness is incident
to perfection, and the highest reason, which is the law of the perfection
of the whole, is also the law of the perfection of the parts. There
were two stages in this blending of the two conceptions into one: the
identification, first of Destiny with Reason;[398] and, secondly, of
Destiny or Reason with Providence.[399] The former of these is found in
Heraclitus, but is absent from Plato, who distinguishes what comes into
being by necessity, from what is wrought by mind: the elaboration of
both the former and the latter is due to the Stoics, growing logically
out of their conception of the universe as a single substance moved
by an inherent law. It was probably in many cases a change rather of
language than of idea when Destiny or Reason or Providence was spoken
of as God;[400] and yet sometimes, whether by the lingering of an
ancient belief or by an intuition which transcended logic, the sense of
personality mingles with the idea of physical sequence, and all things
that happen in the infinite chain of immutable causation are conceived
as happening by the will of God.
3. But over against the conception of a perfect Reason or Providence
administering the world, was the fact of the existence of physical pain
and social inequality and moral failure. The problems which the fact
suggested filled a large place in later Greek philosophy, and were solved
in many ways.
The solution was sometimes found in the denial of the universality
of Providence. God is the Author only of good: evil is due to other
causes.[401] This view, which found its first philosophical expression
in the _Timæus_ of Plato, was transmitted, through some of the Platonic
schools, to the later syncretist writers who incorporated Platonic
elements. In its Platonic form it assumed the existence of inferior
agents who ultimately owed their existence to God, but whose existence as
authors of evil He permitted or overlooked. In some later forms the view
linked itself with Oriental conceptions of matter as inherently evil.
The solution was more commonly found in a denial of the reality of
apparent evils. They were all either forms of good, or incidental to its
operation or essential to its production. This was the common solution of
the Stoics. It had many phases. One view was based upon the teleological
conception of nature. The world is marching on to its end: it realizes
its purpose not directly but by degrees: there are necessary sequences
of its march which seem to us to be evil.[402] Another view, akin to the
preceding, was based upon the conception of the world as a whole. In its
vast economy there are subordinations and individual inconveniences. Such
subordinations and inconveniences are necessary parts of the plan. The
pain of the individual is not an evil, but his contribution to the good
of the whole. “What about my leg being lamed, then?” says Epictetus,[403]
addressing himself in the character of an imaginary objector. “Slave!
do you really find fault with the world on account of one bit of a leg?
will you not give that up to the universe? will you not let it go? will
you not gladly surrender it to the Giver?” The world, in other words, was
regarded as an _economy_ (οἰκονομία), like that of a city, in which there
are apparent inequalities of condition, but in which such inequalities
are necessary to the constitution of the whole.[404]
“What is meant, then,” asks Epictetus, “by distinguishing the
things that happen to us as ‘according to nature’ and ‘contrary
to nature’? The phrases are used as if we were isolated. For
example, to a foot to be ‘according to nature’ is to be clean;
but if you consider it as a _foot_, a member of the body, and
not as isolated, it will be its duty both to walk in mud, and
to tread on thorns—nay, sometimes even to be cut off for the
benefit of the whole body; if it refuse, it is no longer a
foot. We have to form a similar conception about ourselves.
What are you? A man. If you regard yourself as isolated, it is
‘according to nature’ to live until old age, to be rich, to be
in good health; but if you regard yourself as a _man_, a part
of a certain whole, it is your duty, on account of that whole,
sometimes to be ill, sometimes to take a voyage, sometimes to
run into danger, sometimes to be in want, and, it may be, to
die before your time. Why then are you discontented? Do you not
know that, as in the example a discontented foot is no longer a
foot, so neither are you a man. For what is a man? A member of
a city, first the city which consists of gods and men, and next
of the city which is so called in the more proximate sense, the
earthly city, which is a small model of the whole. ‘Am I, then,
now,’ you say, ‘to be brought before a court: is so-and-so to
fall into a fever: so-and-so to go on a voyage: so-and-so to
die: so-and-so to be condemned?’ Yes; for it is impossible,
considering the sort of body we have, with this atmosphere
round us, and with these companions of our life, that different
things of this kind should not befall different men.[405]
“It is on this account that the philosophers rightly tell us
that if a perfectly good man had foreknown what was going
to happen to him, he would co-operate with nature in both
falling sick and dying and being maimed, being conscious that
this is the particular portion that is assigned to him in the
arrangement of the universe, and that the whole is supreme over
the part, and the city over the citizen.”[406]
This Stoical solution, if the teleological conception which underlies it
be assumed, may have been adequate as an explanation both of physical
pain and of social inequality. But it was clearly inadequate as an
explanation of misery and moral evil. And the sense of misery and moral
evil was growing. The increased complexity of social life revealed the
distress which it helped to create, and the intensified consciousness
of individual life quickened also the sense of disappointment and moral
shortcoming. The solution of the difficulties which these facts of life
presented, was found in a belief which was correlative to the growing
belief in the goodness of God, though logically inconsistent with the
belief in the universality of His Providence. It was, that men were the
authors of their own misery. Their sorrows, so far as they were not
punitive or remedial, came from their own folly or perversity. They
belonged to a margin of life which was outside the will of the gods or
the ordinances of fate. The belief was repeatedly expressed by Homer,
but does not appear in philosophy until the time of the Stoics: it is
found in both Cleanthes and Chrysippus, and the latter also quotes it
as a belief of the Pythagoreans.[407] Out of it came the solution of a
problem not less important than that from which it had itself sprung. The
conception that men were free to bring ruin upon themselves, led to the
wider conception that they were altogether free. There emerged for the
first time into prominence the idea which has filled a large place in all
later theology and ethics, that of the freedom of the will. The freedom
which was denied to external nature was asserted of human nature. It was
within a man’s own power to do right or wrong, to be happy or miserable.
“Of all things that are,” says Epictetus,[408] “one part is in
our control, the other out of it; in our control are opinion,
impulse to do, effort to obtain, effort to avoid—in a word,
our own proper activities; out of our control are our bodies,
property, reputation, office—in a word, all things except our
proper activities. Things in our control are in their nature
free, not liable to hindrance in the doing or to frustration of
the attainment; things out of our control are weak, dependent,
liable to hindrance, belonging to others. Bear in mind, then,
that if you mistake what is dependent for what is free, and
what belongs to others for what is your own, you will meet with
obstacles in your way, you will be regretful and disquieted,
you will find fault with both gods and men. If, on the
contrary, you think that only to be your own which is really
your own, and that which is another’s to be, as it really is,
another’s, no one will thwart you, you will find fault with
no one, you will reproach no one, you will do no single thing
against your will, no one will harm you, you will not have an
enemy.”
The incompatibility of this doctrine with that of the universality
of Destiny or Reason or Providence—the “antinomy of the practical
understanding”—was not always observed.[409] The two doctrines marched on
parallel lines, and each of them was sometimes stated as though it had no
limitations. The harmony of them, which is indicated by both Cleanthes
and Chrysippus, and which underlies a large part of both the theology and
the ethics of Epictetus, is in effect this: The world marches on to its
end, realizing its own perfection, with absolute certainty. The majority
of its parts move in that march unconsciously, with no sense of pleasure
or pain, no idea of good or evil. To man is given the consciousness of
action, the sense of pleasure and pain, the idea of good and evil, and
freedom of choice between them. If he chooses that which is against the
movement of nature, he chooses for himself misery; if he chooses that
which is in accordance with that movement, he finds happiness. In either
case the movement of nature goes on, and the man fulfils his destiny:
“_Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt._”[410] It is a man’s true
function and high privilege so to educate his mind and discipline his
will, as to think that to be best which is really best, and that to be
avoided which nature has not willed: in other words, to acquiesce in the
will of God, not as submitting in passive resignation to the power of one
who is stronger, but as having made that will his own.[411]
If a man realizes this, instead of bemoaning the difficulties of life,
he will not only ask God to send them, but thank Him for them. This is
the Stoical theodicy. The life and teaching of Epictetus are for the most
part a commentary upon it.
“Look at the powers you have; and when you have looked at
them, say, ‘Bring me, O God, what difficulty Thou wilt; for
I have the equipment which Thou hast given me, and the means
for making all things that happen contribute to my adornment.’
Nay, but that is not what you do: you sit sometimes shuddering
at the thought of what may happen, sometimes bewailing and
grieving and groaning over what does happen. Then you find
fault with the gods! For what but impiety is the consequence
of such degeneracy? And yet God has not merely given you these
powers by which we may bear whatever happens without being
lowered or crushed by it, but also, like the good King and true
Father that He is, has given to this part of you the capacity
of not being thwarted, or forced, or hindered, and has made it
absolutely your own, not even reserving to Himself the power of
thwarting or hindering it.”[412]
“What words are sufficient to praise or worthily describe the
gifts of Providence to us? If we were really wise, what should
we have been doing in public or in private but sing hymns to
God, and bless Him and recount His gifts (τὰς χάριτας)? Digging
or ploughing or eating, ought we not to be singing this hymn to
God, ‘Great is God for having given us these tools for tilling
the ground; great is God for having given us hands to work with
and throat to swallow with, for that we grow unconsciously
and breathe while we sleep’? This ought to be our hymn for
everything: but the chiefest and divinest hymn should be for
His having given us the power of understanding and of dealing
rationally with ideas. Nay—since most of you are utterly blind
to this—ought there not to be some one to make this his special
function, and to sing the hymn to God for all the rest? What
else can a lame old man like me do but sing hymns to God? If I
were a nightingale, I should do the work of a nightingale; if a
swan, the work of a swan; but being as I am a rational being,
I must sing hymns to God. This is my work: this I do: this
rank—as far as I can—I will not leave; and I invite you to join
with me in this same song.”[413]
B. THE CHRISTIAN IDEA.
In primitive Christianity we find ourselves in another sphere of ideas:
we seem to be breathing the air of Syria, with Syrian forms moving round
us, and speaking a language which is not familiar to us. For the Greek
city, with its orderly government, we have to substitute the picture
of an Eastern sheyk, at once the paymaster of his dependents and their
judge. Two conceptions are dominant, that of wages for work done, and
that of positive law.
1. The idea of moral conduct as work done for a master who will in due
time pay wages for it, was a natural growth on Semitic soil. It grew up
among the _fellahin_, to whom the day’s work brought the day’s wages,
and whose work was scrutinized before the wages were paid. It is found
in many passages of the New Testament, and not least of all in the
discourses of our Lord. The ethical problems which had vexed the souls
of the writers of Job and the Psalms, are solved by the teaching that
the wages are not all paid now, but that some of them are in the keeping
of the Father in heaven. The persecuted are consoled by the thought,
“Great are your wages in heaven.”[414] Those who do their alms before men
receive their wages in present reputation, and have no wages stored up
for them in heaven.[415] The smallest act of casual charity, the giving
of a cup of cold water, will not go without its wages.[416] The payment
will be made at the return of the Son of Man, whose “wages are with
him to give to every man according as his work is.”[417] So fundamental
is the conception that “he that cometh to God must believe,” not only
“that He is,” but also that He “pays their due to them that seek after
Him.”[418] So also in the early Christian literature which moved still
within the sphere of Syrian ideas. In the “Two Ways,” what is given in
charity should be given without murmuring, for God will repay it:[419]
in the Epistle of Barnabas, the conception of the paymaster is blended
with that of the judge.[420] “The Lord judges without respect of persons:
every one shall receive according as he has done: if he be good, his
righteousness shall go before him: if he be wicked, the wages of his
wickedness are before his face.”
2. God is at once the Lawgiver and the Judge. The underlying conception
is that of an Oriental sovereign who issues definite commands, who is
gratified by obedience and made angry by disobedience, who gives presents
to those who please him and punishes those with whom he is angry. The
punishments which he inflicts are vindictive and not remedial. They are
the manifestation of his vengeance against unrighteousness. They are
external to the offender. They follow on the offence by the sentence of
the judge, and not by a self-acting law. He sends men _into_ punishment.
The introduction into this primitive Christianity of the ethical
conceptions of Greek philosophy, raised difficulties which were long in
being solved, if indeed they can be said to have been solved even now.
The chief of these difficulties were, (i.) the relation of the idea of
forgiveness to that of law; (ii.) the relation of the conception of a
Moral Governor to that of free-will.