the idea of the forgiveness of sins. God was a Sovereign who had issued
commands: He was a Householder who had entrusted His servants with powers
to be used in His service. As Sovereign, He could, at His pleasure,
forgive a breach of His orders: as Householder, He could remit a debt
which was due to Him from His servants. The special message of the Gospel
was, that God was willing to forgive men their transgressions, and to
remit their debts, for the sake of Jesus Christ. The corresponding Greek
conception had come to be dominated by the idea of order. The order was
rational and beneficent, but it was universal. It could not be violated
with impunity. The punishment of its violation came by a self-acting law.
There was a possibility of amendment, but there was none of remission.
Each of these conceptions is consistent with itself: each by itself
furnishes the basis of a rational theology. But the two conceptions
are apparently irreconcilable with each other; and the history of a
large part of early Christian theology is the history of endeavours to
reconcile them. The one conception belonged to a moral world, controlled
by a Personality who set forces in motion; the other to a physical world,
controlled by a force which was also conceived as a Personality. Stated
in Christian terms, the one resolved itself into the proposition, God is
good; the other into the proposition, God is just. The two propositions
seemed at first to be inconsistent with each other: on the one hand, the
infinite love of God excluding the idea of punishment; on the other hand,
His immutable righteousness excluding the idea of forgiveness.[421] The
difficulty seemed insoluble, except upon the hypothesis of the existence
of two Gods. The ditheism was sometimes veiled by the conception that the
second God had been created by the first, and was ultimately subordinate
to Him. In the theology of Marcion, which filled a large place in the
Christianity of both the second and the third centuries, ditheism was
presented as the only solution of this and all the other contrasts of
which the world is full, and of which that of Law and Grace is the most
typical example.[422] The New Testament was the revelation of the good
God, the God of love; the Old Testament was that of the just God, the God
of wrath. Redemption was the victory of forgiveness over punishment, of
the God who was revealed by Jesus Christ over the God who was manifested
in the Law.
The ditheistic hypothesis was itself more difficult than the difficulties
which it explained. The writers who opposed it were helped, not only by
the whole current of evangelical tradition, but also by the dominant
tendencies of both philosophy and popular religion. They insisted that
justice and goodness were not only compatible but necessarily co-existent
in the Divine nature. Goodness meant not indiscriminating beneficence;
justice meant not inexorable wrath: goodness and justice were combined
in the power of God to deal with every man according to his deserts,
including in the idea of deserts that of repentance.
The solution is found in Irenæus, who argues that in the absence of
either of the two attributes, God would cease to be God:
“If the God who judges be not also good, so as to bestow
favours on those on whom He ought, and to reprove those whom
He should, He will be as a Judge neither wise nor just. On the
other hand, if the good God be only good, and not also able to
test those on whom He shall bestow His goodness, He will be
outside goodness as well as outside justice, and His goodness
will seem imperfect, inasmuch as it does not save all, as it
should do if it be not accompanied with judgment. Marcion,
therefore, by dividing God into two, the one a God who judges,
and the other a God who is good, on both sides puts an end to
God.”[423]
It is found in Tertullian, who, after arguing on _à priori_ grounds that
the one attribute implies the other, passes by an almost unconscious
transition from physical to moral law: just as the “justice” of God
in its physical operation controlled His goodness in the making of
an orderly world, so in its moral operation it has, since the Fall,
regulated His dealings with mankind.
“Nothing is good which is unjust; all that is just is good....
The good is where the just is. From the beginning of the world
the Creator has been at once good and just. The two qualities
came forth together. His goodness formed the world, His justice
harmonized it. It is the work of justice that there is a
separation between light and darkness, between day and night,
between heaven and earth, between the greater and the lesser
lights.... As goodness brought all things into being, so did
justice distinguish them. The whole universe has been disposed
and ordered by the decision of His justice. Every position and
mode of the elements, the movement and the rest, the rising and
the setting of each one of them, are judicial decisions of the
Creator.... When evil broke out, and the goodness of God came
henceforward to have an opponent to contend with, the justice
also of God acquired another function, that of regulating the
operation of His goodness according to the opposition to it:
the result is that His goodness, instead of being absolutely
free, is dispensed according to men’s deserts; it is offered to
the worthy, it is denied to the unworthy, it is taken away from
the unthankful, it is avenged on all its adversaries. In this
way this whole function of justice is an agency for goodness:
in condemning, in punishing, in raging with wrath, as you
Marcionites express it, it does good and not evil.”[424]
It is found in the Clementines,[425] the “Recognitions” going so far as
to make the acceptance of it an element in “saving knowledge:” “it is
not enough for salvation to know that God is good; we must know also that
He is just.”[426] It is elaborated by both Clement of Alexandria[427] and
Origen; but in the latter it is linked closely with other problems, and
his view will be best considered in relation to them.[428] The Christian
world in his time was settling down into a general acceptance of the
belief that goodness and justice co-existed, each limiting the other in
the mind of God: the general effect of the controversy was to emphasize
in Christianity the conception of God as a Moral Governor, administering
the world by laws which were at once beneficent and just.
(ii.) But this problem of the relation of goodness to justice passed, as
the corresponding problem in Greek philosophy passed, into the problem of
the relation of a good God to moral evil. The difficulties of the problem
were increased in its Christian form by the conception of moral evil as
guilt rather than as misery, and by the emphasis which was laid on the
idea of the Divine foreknowledge.
The problem was stated in its plainest form by Marcion:
“If God is good, and prescient of the future, and able to avert
evil, why did He allow man, that is to say His own image and
likeness, nay more, His own substance, to be tricked by the
devil and fall from obedience to the law into death? For if
He had been good, and thereby unwilling that such an event
should happen, and prescient, and thereby not ignorant that
it would happen, and powerful, and thereby able to prevent
its happening, it would certainly not have happened, being
impossible under these three conditions of divine greatness.
But since it did happen, the inference is certain that
God must be believed to be neither good nor prescient nor
powerful.”[429]
The hypothesis of the existence of two Gods, by which Marcion solved this
and other problems of theology, was consistently opposed by the great
mass of the Christian communities. The solution which they found was
almost uniformly that of the Stoics: evil is necessary for the production
of moral virtue: there is no virtue where there is no choice: and man
was created free to choose. It was found, in short, in the doctrine of
free-will.
This solution is found in Justin Martyr:
“The nature of every created being is to be capable of vice and
virtue: for no one of them would be an object of praise if it
had not also the power of turning in the one direction or the
other.”[430]
It is found in Tatian:
“Each of the two classes of created things (men and angels) is
born with a power of self-determination, not absolutely good by
nature, for that is an attribute of God alone, but brought to
perfection through freedom of voluntary choice, in order that
the bad man may be justly punished, being himself the cause of
his being wicked, and that the righteous man may be worthily
praised for his good actions, not having in his exercise of
moral freedom transgressed the will of God.”[431]
It is found in Irenæus:
“In man as in angels, for angels also are rational beings, God
has placed the power of choosing, so that those who have obeyed
might justly be in possession of what is good; and that those
who have not obeyed may justly not be in possession of what is
good, and may receive the punishment which they deserve.... But
if it had been by nature that some were bad and others good,
neither would the latter be deserving of praise for being good,
inasmuch as they were so constituted; nor the others of blame
for being bad, inasmuch as they were born so. But since in fact
all men are of the same nature, able on the one hand to hold
fast and to do what is good, and again on the other hand to
reject it and not do it, it is right for them to be in the one
case praised for their choice of the good and their adherence
to it, and in the other case blamed and punished for their
rejection of it, both among well-governed men and much more in
the sight of God.”[432]
It is found in Theophilus[433] and Athenagoras,[434] and, as a more
elaborate theory, in Tertullian and the philosophers of Alexandria.
Just as Epictetus and the later Stoics had made freedom of will to be
the specially divine part of human nature, so Tertullian[435] answers
Marcion’s objection, that if God foreknew that Adam would fall He should
not have made him free, by the argument that the goodness of God in
making man necessarily gave him the highest form of existence, that such
highest form was “the image and likeness of God,” and that such image and
likeness was freedom of will. And just as Epictetus and the later Stoics
had conceived of life as a moral discipline, and of its apparent evils as
necessary means of testing character, so the Christian philosophers of
Alexandria conceive of God as the Teacher and Trainer and Physician of
men, of the pains of life as being disciplinary, and of the punishments
of sin as being not vindictive but remedial.[436]
There was still a large margin of unsolved difficulties. The hypothesis
of the freedom of the will, as it had hitherto been stated, assumed that
all beings who possessed it were equal in both their circumstances and
their natural aptitudes. It took no account of the enormous difference
between one man and another in respect of either the external advantages
or disadvantages of their lives, or the strength and weakness of their
characters. The difficulty was strongly felt by more than one school of
Christian philosophers, the more so because it applied, not only to the
diversities among mankind, but also to the larger differences between
mankind as a whole and the celestial beings who rose in their sublime
gradations above it.
“Very many persons, especially those who come from the school
of Marcion and Valentinus and Basilides, object to us that it
is inconsistent with the justice of God in making the world
to assign to some creatures an abode in the heavens, and not
merely a better abode, but also a loftier and more honourable
position; to grant to some principality, to others powers,
to others dominations; to confer upon some the noblest seats
of the heavenly tribunals, to cause others to shine out with
brighter rays, and to flash forth the brilliance of a star; to
give to some the glory of the sun, and to others the glory of
the moon, and to others the glory of the stars; to make one
star differ from another star in glory.... In the second place,
they object to us about terrestrial beings that a happier lot
of birth has come to some men than to others; one man, for
example, is begotten by Abraham and born according to promise;
another is the son of Isaac and Rebekah, and, supplanting his
brother even in the womb, is said even before he is born to
be beloved of God. One man is born among the Hebrews, among
whom he finds the learning of the divine law; another among
the Greeks, themselves also wise and men of no small learning;
another among the Ethiopians, who are cannibals; another among
the Scythians, with whom parricide is legal; another among the
Taurians, who offer their guests in sacrifice.
“They consequently argue thus: If this great diversity of
circumstances, this varied and different condition of birth—a
matter in which free-will has no place—is not caused by a
diversity in the nature of the souls themselves, a soul of an
evil nature being destined for an evil nation, and a soul of a
good nature for a good one, what other conclusion can be drawn
than that all this is the result of chance and accident? And
if that conclusion be admitted, it will no longer be credible
either that the world was made by God or that it is governed by
His providence: and consequently neither will the judgment of
God upon every man’s doings seem a thing to be looked for.”[437]
It is to this phase of the controversy that the ethical theology of
Origen is relative. In that theology, Stoicism and Neo-Platonism are
blended into a complete theodicy: nor has a more logical superstructure
ever been reared on the basis of philosophical theism.
It is necessary to show the coherence of his view as a whole, and it is
advisable, in doing so, to use chiefly his own words:[438]
“There was but one beginning of all things, as there will be
but a single end. The diversities of existence which have
sprung from a single beginning will be absorbed in a single
end.[439] The causes of those diversities lie in the diverse
things themselves.[440] They were created absolutely equal;
for, on the one hand, God had no reason in Himself for causing
inequalities;[441] and, on the other hand, being absolutely
impartial, He could not give to one being an advantage which
He did not give to another.[442] They were also, by a similar
necessity, created with the capacity of being diverse; for
spotless purity is of the essence of none save God; in all
created beings it must be accidental, and consequently liable
to lapse.[443] The lapse, when it takes place, is voluntary;
for every being endowed with reason has the power of exercising
it, and this power is free;[444] it is excited by external
causes, but not coerced by them.[445] For to lay the fault on
external causes and put it away from ourselves by declaring
that we are like logs or stones, dragged by forces that act
upon them from without, is neither true nor reasonable. Every
created rational being is thus capable of both good and
evil; consequently of praise and blame; consequently also of
happiness and misery; of the former if it chooses holiness
and clings to it, of the latter if by sloth and negligence it
swerves into wickedness and ruin.[446] The lapse, when it has
taken place, is not only voluntary but also various in degree.
Some beings, though possessed of free-will, never lapsed: they
form the order of angels. Some lapsed but slightly, and form
in their varying degrees the orders of ‘thrones, dominations,
princedoms, virtues, powers.’ Some lapsed lower, but not
irrecoverably, and form the race of men.[447] Some lapsed to
such a depth of unworthiness and wickedness as to be opposing
powers; they are the devil and his angels.[448] In the temporal
world which is seen, as well as in the eternal worlds which
are unseen, all beings are arranged according to their merits;
their place has been determined by their own conduct.[449]
“The present inequalities of circumstance and character are
thus not wholly explicable within the sphere of the present
life. But this world is not the only world. Every soul has
existed from the beginning; it has therefore passed through
some worlds already, and will pass through others before it
reaches the final consummation. It comes into this world
strengthened by the victories or weakened by the defeats of its
previous life. Its place in this world as a vessel appointed to
honour or to dishonour is determined by its previous merits or
demerits. Its work in this world determines its place in the
world which is to follow this.[450]
“All this takes place with the knowledge and under the
oversight of God. It is an indication of His ineffable wisdom
that the diversities of natures for which created beings are
themselves responsible are wrought together into the harmony
of the world.[451] It is an indication not only of His wisdom
but of His goodness that, while no creature is coerced into
acting rightly, yet when it lapses it meets with evils and
punishments. All punishments are remedial. God calls what are
termed evils into existence to convert and purify those whom
reason and admonition fail to change. He is thus the great
Physician of souls.[452] The process of cure, acting as it
does simply through free-will, takes in some cases an almost
illimitable time. For God is long-suffering, and to some souls,
as to some bodies, a rapid cure is not beneficial. But in the
end all souls will be thoroughly purged.[453] All that any
reasonable soul, cleansed of the dregs of all vices, and with
every cloud of wickedness completely wiped away, can either
feel or understand or think, will be wholly God: it will no
longer either see or contain anything else but God: God will
be the mode and measure of its every movement: and so God will
be ‘all.’ Nor will there be any longer any distinction between
good and evil, because evil will nowhere exist; for God is all
things, and in Him no evil inheres. So, then, when the end has
been brought back to the beginning, that state of things will
be restored which the rational creation had when it had no need
to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; all sense
of wickedness will have been taken away; He who alone is the
one good God becomes to the soul ‘all,’ and that not in some
souls but ‘in all.’ There will be no longer death, nor the
sting of death, nor any evil anywhere, but God will be ‘all in
all.’”[454]
Of this great theodicy, only part has been generally accepted. The Greek
conceptions which underlie it, and which preceded it, have survived, but
in other forms. Free-will, final causes, probation, have had a later
history in which Greece has had no share. The doctrine of free-will
has remained in name, but it has been so mingled on the one hand with
theories of human depravity, and on the other with theories of divine
grace, that the original current of thought is lost in the marshes into
which it has descended. The doctrine of final causes has been pressed to
an almost excessive degree as proving the existence and the providence of
God; but His government of the human race has been often viewed rather as
the blundering towards an ultimate failure than as a complete vindication
of His purpose of creation. The Christian world has acquiesced in the
conception of life as a probation; but while some of its sections have
conceived of this life as the only probation, and others have admitted a
probation in a life to come, none have admitted into the recognized body
of their teaching Origen’s sublime conception of an infinite stairway of
worlds, with its perpetual ascent and descent of souls, ending at last in
the union of all souls with God.
LECTURE IX.
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
III. GOD AS THE SUPREME BEING.
It was in the Gentile rather than in the Jewish world that the theology
of Christianity was shaped. It was built upon a Jewish basis. The Jewish
communities of the great cities and along the commercial routes of the
empire had paved the way for Christianity by their active propaganda of
monotheism. Christianity won its way among the educated classes by virtue
of its satisfying not only their moral ideals, but also their highest
intellectual conceptions. On its ethical side it had, as we have seen,
large elements in common with reformed Stoicism; on its theological
side it moved in harmony with the new movements of Platonism.[455] And
those movements reacted upon it. They gave a philosophical form to the
simpler Jewish faith, and especially to those elements of it in which the
teaching of St. Paul had already given a foothold for speculation. The
earlier conceptions remained; but blending readily with the philosophical
conceptions that were akin to them, they were expanded into large
theories in which metaphysics and dialectics had an ample field. The
conception, for example, of the one God whose kingdom was a universal
kingdom and endured throughout all ages, blended with, and passed into,
the philosophical conception of a Being who was beyond time and space.
The conception that “clouds and darkness were round about Him,” blended
with, and passed into, the philosophical conception of a Being who was
beyond not only human sight but human thought. The conception of His
transcendence obtained the stronger hold because it confirmed the prior
conception of His unity; and that of His incommunicability, and of the
consequent need of a mediator, gave a philosophical explanation of the
truth that Jesus Christ was His Son.
A. THE IDEA AND ITS DEVELOPMENT IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
But the theories which in the fourth century came to prevail, and which
have formed the main part of speculative theology ever since, were the
result of at least two centuries of conflict. At every stage of the
conflict the conceptions of one or other of the forms of Greek philosophy
played a decisive part; and the changing phases of the conflict find a
remarkable parallel in some of the philosophical schools.
The conflict may be said to have had three leading stages, which are
marked respectively by the dominance of speculations as to (1) the
transcendence of God, (2) His revelation of Himself, (3) the distinctions
in His nature.
(1) _The Transcendence of God._—Nearly seven hundred years before
the time when Christianity first came into large contact with Greek
philosophy, the mind of a Greek thinker, outstripping the slow inferences
of popular thought, had leapt to the conception of God as the Absolute
Unity. He was the ultimate generalization of all things, expressed as the
ultimate abstraction of number:[456] He was not limited by parts or by
bodily form: “all of Him is sight, all of Him is understanding, all of
Him is hearing.” But it is probable that the conception in its first form
was rather of a material than of an ideal unity:[457] the basis of later
metaphysics was first securely laid by a second form of the conception
which succeeded the first half-a-century afterwards. The conception was
that of Absolute Being. Only the One really _is_: it was not nor will
be: it _is_ now, and is everywhere entire, a continuous unity, a perfect
sphere which fills all space, undying and immovable. Over against it
are the Many, the innumerable objects of sense: they are not, but only
seem to be: the knowledge that we seem to have of them is not truth,
but illusion. But the conception, even in this second form, was more
consistent with Pantheism than with Theism. It was lifted to the higher
plane on which it has ever since rested by the Platonic distinction
between the world of sense and the world of thought. God belonged to the
latter, and not to the former. Absolute Unity, Absolute Being, and all
the other terms which expressed His unique supremacy, were gathered up in
the conception of Mind; for mind in the highest phase of its existence
is self-contemplative: the modes of its expression are numerous, and
perhaps infinite: but it can itself go behind its modes, and so retire,
as it were, a step farther back from the material objects about which its
modes employ themselves. In this sense God is transcendent (ἐπέκεινα τῆς
οὐσίας), beyond the world of sense and matter. “God therefore is Mind, a
form separate from all matter, that is to say, out of contact with it,
and not involved with anything that is capable of being acted on.”[458]