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[Transcriber's Notes: Many printing errors, particularly in the French
and Greek, have been corrected. The inconsistent hyphenation of the
word stand-point has been retained. Greek has been transliterated and
placed inside {}.]
THE BASIS OF EARLY CHRISTIAN THEISM
BY
LAWRENCE THOMAS COLE, A. M., S. T. B.,
_Post-graduate Scholar of the Church University Board of Regents_
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE
FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
NEW YORK
May, 1898
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I: Introduction 9
CHAPTER II: Greek and Roman Theistic Arguments 14
CHAPTER III: The Patristic Point of View 26
CHAPTER IV: Patristic Use of the Theistic Arguments 38
CHAPTER V: Eclectic Theism 55
"Les preuves de Dieu métaphysiques sont si éloignées du
raisonnement des hommes, et si impliquées, qu'elles frappent peu;
et quand cela serviroit à quelques-uns, ce ne seroit que pendant
l'instant qu'ils voient cette démonstration; mais, une heure après,
ils craignent de s'être trompés. _Quod curiositate cognoverint,
superbiâ amiserunt._"
--_Pensées de Pascal_, II, xv. 2.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A question which every author ought to ask of himself before he sends
forth his work, and one which must occur to every thoughtful reader, is
the inquiry, _Cui bono?_--what justification has one for treating the
subject at all, and why in the particular way which he has chosen? To
the pertinency of this question to the present treatise the author has
been deeply sensible, and therefore cannot forbear a few prefatory words
of explanation of his object and method.
In accounts of the theistic argument, as in the history of philosophy in
general, it has been customary to pass over a space of well-nigh ten
centuries of the Christian era in silence, or with such scanty and
unsympathetic notice as to make silence the better alternative. Largely
through the influence of such treatment as this, we moderns have almost
forgotten at times that during this period there lived men inferior to
none in history in endowments of mind and influence on succeeding
generations, and that there then took place some of the most significant
and far-reaching intellectual conflicts in the history of thought. "With
Cicero," says Professor Stirling, "we reached in our course a most
important and critical halting-place.... We have still ... to wait those
thousand years yet before Anselm shall arrive with what is to be named
the new proof, the proof ontological, and during the entire interval it
is the Fathers of the Church and their immediate followers who, in
repetition of the old, or suggestion of the new, connect thinker with
thinker, philosopher with philosopher, pagan with Christian."[1] To
attempt to account for even one of the details of thought during this
period cannot be without its advantages.
For Christianity gave a new and unique turn to thought. It brought with
it a new set of data, and a new subject-matter. The Christian doctrine
of God, the distinctions in the Trinity, the great doctrines centering
around the person of Jesus Christ, though, perhaps, faintly foreshadowed
in some of the earlier speculations, are, in their fulness and
completeness, first given to the world by the Founder of Christianity.
The claims made for these doctrines, too, gave them a unique character.
In contrast with the half-hearted, faltering conclusions of the
prevalent philosophical schools, Christianity asserted that its
teachings were absolute truth; it claimed to be nothing less than a
revelation from the Creator of the world. It will be readily seen that
the introduction of such a system as this into the Greek world would be
attended with important results, not only in its effects upon the
intellectual life of the times, but also in the influence of the current
philosophical conceptions on the statement of its doctrine. The
significance of this early period lies in the fact that, in the
positive, definite system of Christianity, systematic thought, which was
fast becoming disorganized and sceptical, found a center about which it
might rally and focus itself, and the scattered fragments of philosophy
were all collected together, by either friends or foes, about the new
religion. The new point of view and the new relations would be most
significant, too, in that department of thought with which the contact
of this new central system had most to do, and thus the treatment of the
theistic problem exhibits in a special degree the alteration in the
standpoint and method of philosophy. It threw into bold relief the old
basis of belief in the divine, and aroused a comparison and discussion
of the validity of the various arguments hitherto used by speculative
thought, and set them over in sharp contrast to the claims of the new
revelation. In the early period when this contrast was most clearly
felt, and time had not yet permitted a complete fusion and blending of
the two points of view, we find a simplicity of situation which will aid
analysis and facilitate the study of the relation of the old arguments
for the existence of a God to the Christian doctrine, and which will
help in determining the elements due to each and in interpreting the
reasons for the direction of thought on this subject, which
characterized the whole of the Mediæval period.
In the representations of early Christian thought, however, we find
great differences in the emphasis laid upon the speculative side of the
theistic problem. Christian philosophy is no exception to the rule that
the thought of the race develops through the needs, temperaments and
tendencies with which it comes into contact, and unfolds itself
naturally in response to internal or external stimuli--the doubts,
intellectual needs and growing consciousness and experience of the
believer, and the cavils, objections and attacks of his opponent. The
first Christian teachers had to meet simple problems, and the mission of
the Apostolic and sub-Apostolic Church was to "the people." Its first
task, determined by the conditions in which the Christians found
themselves, as well as by the command of their Master, was to convert
the Jews, who, by their long training as a "peculiar people," were
especially adapted for receiving this new revelation, based, as it was,
on that monotheistic idea to the preservation of which their national
life had been devoted. Upon them the primitive Christians, most of whom,
like St. Paul, were "Hebrews of the Hebrews," brought to bear the
instrument most adapted to their conversion, namely, the argument
deduced from the sacred Scriptures of their race.
And when the Church finally turned towards the Gentile world, it was
still the popular religion, the religion of the poets, rather than the
philosophy of the schools, with which its apologists first came into
contact, and it is very evident from such writings as the recently
recovered _Apology_ of Aristides, "philosopher of Athens," and many
other works extending over the whole Ante-Nicene period, that much of
the energy of the early exponents of Christianity was directed towards
the conversion of the populace who still adhered, at least formally, to
the religion of their own poets.
The function of the primitive Christians, so far as the content of their
belief was concerned, was to preserve and transmit to their successors
an _implicit_ faith. The value of this faith they attempted to show
chiefly by practical, ethical demonstration. Thus they preached chiefly
by example, and it is on the ground of _life_ rather than that of
_thought_ that they made their plea to the Gentiles. In their struggle
for existence, threatened on every side by official persecution and
popular fury, they had no opportunity for speculation on
fundamentals--they pleaded merely to be allowed to live the life to
which they were pledged. With the Eastern training, which most of them
had had, so foreign to the ideals of Greek philosophy, and so tenacious
of the idea of God, and with the person of Christ so near to them as to
blind their eyes to the possibility of any other standard of truth than
His words, they naturally afford us no material for the question under
discussion.
Thus we must wait for the rise of Christian philosophy, and take as our
_terminus a quo_ the middle of the second century, when first there
appears that literature which bears evidence to the conversion of
philosophers to the Christian Church, and affords us examples of their
attempts to present the new doctrines to the schools which they had
abandoned.
Our _terminus ad quem_ will be the Council of Nicea. The reason for this
is in part the demands of time and space, and in part the fact that it
will avoid needless and tedious repetition. The use of the theistic
argument for some time after the Nicene period is fairly homogeneous,
and presents no important new considerations. The apologetic work of the
patristic writers was chiefly done in the ante-Nicene age; after that
discussion turned more upon questions within the scope of the Christian
Faith. The function of the age of the Councils was the formulation and
definition of Christian dogma upon the admitted basis of the revelation
of Jesus Christ.
This inquiry, therefore, will have to do with that interesting period
when the doctrines of the Christian Church were finding their connection
with and relation to the speculations of Greek philosophy, and when the
Christian philosophers and apologists were determining the attitude
which, for many centuries, revealed religion assumed toward the
demonstrations of natural theology.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Philosophy and Theology_, p. 176.