_CHRISTIANITY AND UNCHRISTIAN LITERATURE._
"One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always
liars, evil beasts, idle gluttons. This testimony is true. For which
cause reprove them sharply, that they may be sound in the
faith."--TITUS i. 12, 13.
The hexameter verse which St. Paul here cites from the Cretan poet
Epimenides is one of three quotations from profane literature which are
made by St. Paul. Of the other two, one occurs in 1 Cor. xv. 33, "Evil
communications corrupt good manners"; and the other in the Apostle's
speech on the Areopagus at Athens, as recorded in the Acts (xvii. 28):
"For we are also his offspring." They cannot be relied upon as
sufficient to prove that St. Paul was well read in classical literature,
any more than the quoting of a hackneyed line from Shakespeare, from
Byron, and from Tennyson, would prove that an English writer was well
acquainted with English literature. It may have been the case that St.
Paul knew a great deal of Greek classical literature, but these three
quotations, from Epimenides, from some Greek tragedian, and from
Cleanthes or Aratus, do not at all prove the point. In all three cases
the source of the quotation is not certain. In the one before us the
Apostle no doubt tells us that he is quoting a Cretan "prophet," and
therefore quotes the line as coming from Epimenides. But a man may know
that "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears" is Shakespeare,
without having read a single play. And we are quite uncertain whether
St. Paul had even seen the poem of Epimenides on Oracles in which the
line which he here quotes occurs. The iambic which he quotes in the
letter to the Corinthians, although originally in some Greek play
(perhaps of Euripides or Menander), had passed into a proverb, and
proves even less than the line from Epimenides that St. Paul knew the
work in which it occurred. The half-line which is given in his speech at
Athens, stating the Divine parentage of mankind, may have come from a
variety of sources: but it is not improbable that the Apostle had read
it in the _Phaenomena_ of Aratus, in which it occurs in the form in which
it is reproduced in the Acts. This astronomical poem was popular in St.
Paul's day, and he was the more likely to have come across it, as Aratus
is said to have been a native of Tarsus, or at any rate of Cilicia. But
even when we have admitted that the Apostle had read the _Phaenomena_ of
Aratus or Cleanthes' Hymn to Zeus, we have not made much way towards
proving that he was well read in Greek literature. Indeed the contrary
has been argued from the fact that, according to the reading of the best
authorities, the iambic line in the Corinthians is quoted in such a way
as to spoil the scanning; which would seem to show that St. Paul was not
familiar with the iambic metre.[73] If that was the case, he can
scarcely have read even a single Greek play.
But the question is not one of great importance, although doubtless of
some interest. We do not need this evidence to prove that the Apostle
was a person, not only of great energy and ability, but of culture.
There are passages in his writings, such as chapters xiii. and xv. in 1
Corinthians, which are equal for beauty and eloquence to anything in
literature. Even among inspired writers few have known better than St.
Paul how to clothe lofty thoughts in noble language. And of his general
acquaintance with the moral philosophy of his age, especially of the
Stoic school, which was very influential in the neighbourhood of Tarsus,
there can be no doubt. Just as St. John laid the thoughts and language
of Alexandrian philosophy under contribution, and gave them fuller force
and meaning to express the dogmatic truths of the Gospel, so St. Paul
laid the thoughts and language of Stoicism under contribution, and
transfigured them to express the moral teaching of the Gospel. Cleanthes
or Aratus, from one or both of whom one of the three quotations comes
(and St. Paul seems to know both sources, for he says "as _certain_ even
of your own _poets_ have said"), were both of them Stoics: and the
speech in which the quotation occurs, short as it is in the Acts,
abounds in parallels to the teaching of St. Paul's Stoic contemporary
Seneca. If St. Paul tells us that "the God that made the world and all
things therein ... dwelleth not in temples made with hands," Seneca
teaches that "temples must not be built to God of stones piled on high:
He must be consecrated in the heart of man." While St. Paul reminds us
that God "is not far from each one of us," Seneca says "God is near
thee: He is with thee; He is within." Again, St. Paul warns his hearers
that "we ought not to think that the God-head is like unto gold, or
silver, or stone, graven by art and device of man"; and Seneca declares
"Thou shalt not form Him of silver and gold: a true likeness of God
cannot be moulded of this material."[74]
But the quotations are of other interest than their bearing upon the
question as to the Greek elements in the education and teaching of St.
Paul. They have a bearing also on the question of Christian use of
profane authors, and on the duty of self-culture in general.
The leading teachers of the early Church differed widely in their
estimate of the value of heathen literature, and especially of heathen
philosophy. On the whole, with some considerable exceptions, the Greek
Fathers valued it highly, as containing precious elements of truth,
which were partly the result of direct inspiration, partly echoes of the
Old Testament. The Latin Fathers, on the other hand, for the most part
treated all pagan teaching with suspicion and contempt. It was in no
sense useful. It was utterly false, and simply stood in the way of the
truth. It was rubbish, which must be swept on one side in order to make
room for the Gospel. Tertullian thinks that heathen philosophers are
"blockheads when they knock at the doors of truth," and that "they have
contributed nothing whatever that a Christian can accept." Arnobius and
Lactantius write in a similar strain of contemptuous disapproval.
Tertullian thinks it out of the question that a right-minded Christian
should teach in pagan schools. But even he shrinks from telling
Christian parents that they must allow their children to remain
uneducated rather than send them to such schools. The policy of
permitting Christian children to attend heathen schools, while
forbidding Christian adults from teaching in them, appears singularly
unreasonable. Every Christian teacher in a school rendered that school
less objectionable for Christian children. But Tertullian urges that one
who teaches pagan literature seems to give his sanction to it: one who
merely learns it does nothing of the kind. The young must be educated:
adults need not become school-masters. One can plead necessity in the
one case; not in the other (_De Idol._, x). But the necessity of sending
a child to a pagan school, because otherwise it could not be properly
educated, did not settle the question whether it was prudent, or even
right, for a Christian in afterlife to study pagan literature; and it
required the thought and experience of several centuries to arrive at
anything like a consensus of opinion and practice on the subject. But
during the first four or five centuries the more liberal view, even in
the West, on the whole prevailed. From Irenaeus, Tatian, and Hermias,
among Greek writers, and from various Latin Fathers, disapproving
opinions proceeded. But the influence of Clement of Alexandria and
Origen in the East, and of Augustine and Jerome in the West, was too
strong for such opinions. Clement puts it on the broad ground that all
wisdom is a Divine gift; and maintains that the philosophy of the
Greeks, limited and particular as it is, contains the rudiments of that
really perfect knowledge, which is beyond this world." Origen, in
rebutting the reproach of Celsus, that the Gospel repelled the educated
and gave a welcome only to the ignorant, quotes the Epistle to Titus,
pointing out that "Paul, in describing what kind of man the bishop ought
to be, lays down as a qualification that he must be a teacher, saying
that he ought to be able to convince the gainsayers, that by the wisdom
which is in him he may stop the mouths of foolish talkers and
deceivers." The Gospel gives a welcome to the learned and unlearned
alike: to the learned, that they may become teachers; to the unlearned,
not because it prefers such, but because it wishes to instruct them. And
he points out that in enumerating the gifts of the Spirit St. Paul
places wisdom and knowledge before faith, gifts of healing, and miracles
(1 Cor. xii. 8-10). But Origen does not point out that St. Paul himself
makes use of heathen literature; although immediately before dealing
with the accusation of Celsus, that Christians hate culture and promote
ignorance, he quotes from Callimachus half of the saying of Epimenides,
"Cretans are alway liars" (_Con. Cels._, III. xliii). What Origen's own
practice was we learn from the _Panegyric_ of his enthusiastic pupil,
Gregory Thaumaturgus (xiii.).
With the exception of atheistic philosophy, which was not worth the
risk, Origen encouraged his scholars to study everything; and he gave
them a regular course of dialectics, physics, and moral philosophy, as a
preparation for theology. Augustine, who ascribes his first conversion
from a vicious life to the _Hortensius_ of Cicero (_Conf., III._ iv. I),
was not likely to take an extreme line in condemning classical
literature, from which he himself frequently quotes. Of Cicero's
_Hortensius_ he says, "This book in truth changed my affections, and
turned my prayers to Thyself, O Lord, and made me have other hopes and
desires." He quotes, among other classical authors, not only Virgil,
Livy, Lucan, Sallust, Horace, Pliny and Quintillian, but Terence,
Persius, and Juvenal, and of the last from those Satires which are
sometimes omitted by editors on account of their grossness. In his
treatise _On Christian Doctrine_ (_II._ xl.), he contends that we must
not shrink from making use of all that is good and true in heathen
writings and institutions. We must "spoil the Egyptians." The writings
of his instructor Ambrose show that he also was well acquainted with the
best Latin classics. In Jerome we have what may be called an essay on
the subject. Ruffinus had suggested to Magnus, a Roman rhetorician, that
he should ask Jerome why he filled his writings with so many allusions
and quotations taken from pagan literature, and Jerome in reply, after
quoting the opening verses of the Book of Proverbs, refers him to the
example of St. Paul in the Epistles to Titus and the Corinthians, and in
the speech in the Acts. Then he points to Cyprian, Origen, Eusebius, and
Apollinaris: "read them, and you will find that in comparison with them
we have little skill (in quotation)." Besides these he appeals to the
examples, among Greek writers, of Quadratus, Justin Martyr, Dionysius,
Clement of Alexandria, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, etc.; and among Latins,
Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Arnobius, Hilary, and Juvencus. And he
points out that quotations from profane authors occur in nearly all the
works of these writers, and not merely in those which are addressed to
heathen. But while Jerome defends the study of classical authors as a
necessary part of education, he severely condemns those clergy who
amused themselves with such writers as Plautus (of whom he himself had
been very fond), Terence, and Catullus, when they ought to have been
studying the Scriptures. Later in life his views appear to have become
more rigid; and we find him rejoicing that the works of Plato and
Aristotle are becoming neglected.
It was the short reign of Julian, commonly called "the Apostate" (A.D.
361-363), which had brought the question very much to the front. His
policy and legislation probably influenced Augustine and Jerome in
taking a more liberal line in the matter, in spite of Latin dislike of
Greek philosophy and their own ascetic tendencies. Julian, jealous of
the growing influence of Christian teachers, tried to prevent them from
lecturing on classical authors. From this he hoped to gain two
advantages. (1) Secular education would to a large extent be taken out
of Christian hands. (2) The Christian teachers themselves would become
less well educated, and less able to contend with heathen
controversialists. He sarcastically pointed out the inconvenience of a
teacher expounding Homer and denouncing Homer's gods: Christians had
better confine themselves to "expounding Matthew and Luke in the
Churches of the Galileans," and leave the interpretation of the
masterpieces of antiquity to others. And he seems not to have contented
himself with cynical advice, but to have passed a law that no Christian
was to teach in the public schools. This law was at once cancelled by
his successor Valentinian; but it provoked a strong feeling of
resentment, and stirred up Christians to recognize and hold fast the
advantages of a classical education.
But while the influence of the first three of the four great Latin
Fathers was in favour of a wise use of the products of pagan genius, the
influence of the last of the four was disastrously in the opposite
direction.
In the period between Jerome and Gregory the Great two facts had had a
calamitous effect upon the cause of liberal education. (1) The inroads
of the barbarians almost destroyed the imperial schools in Gaul and
Italy. (2) The miserable controversies about Origen produced an uneasy
suspicion that secular study was prejudical to orthodoxy. It is perhaps
to this latter influence that we may attribute two ecclesiastical canons
of unknown date and origin. In the _Apostolical Constitutions_ (I. vi.)
we read, "Abstain from all heathen books. For what hast thou to do with
such foreign discourses, or laws, or false prophets, which subvert the
faith of the unstable? For what defect dost thou find in the law of God,
that thou shouldest have recourse to those heathenish fables?" etc.,
etc. Again in a collection of canons, which is sometimes assigned to a
synod at Carthage A.D. 398, the 16th canon in the collection runs thus:
"A bishop shall read no heathen books, and heretical books only when
necessary." The Carthaginian synod of 398 is a fiction, and some of the
canons in the collection deal with controversies of a much later date:
but we need not doubt that all the canons were enacted in some Church or
other in the course of the first six centuries. The spirit of this one
is very much in harmony with the known tendencies of the sixth century;
and we find Gregory the Great (A.D. 544-604) making precisely the same
regulation. He forbad bishops to study heathen literature, and in one of
his letters (_Epp._, ix. 48) he rebukes Desiderius, Bishop of Vienne,
for giving his clergy instruction in grammar, which involved the reading
of the heathen poets. "The praises of Christ do not admit of being
joined in the same mouth with the praises of Jupiter; and it is a grave
and execrable thing for bishops to sing what even for a religious layman
is unbecoming." The story that he purposely burnt the Palatine library
is not traced earlier than the twelfth century, and is probably untrue;
but it indicates the traditional belief respecting his attitude towards
classical literature. And it is certainly true that he was twice in
Constantinople, and on the second occasion remained there three years
(A.D. 579-582), and yet never learnt Greek. In his time, as we learn
both from himself and his contemporary, Gregory of Tours, the belief was
very prevalent that the end of the world was at hand; and it was argued
that mankind had more serious things to attend to than the study of
pagan literature--or indeed any literature that was not connected with
the Scriptures or the Church. Henceforward, in the words of Gregory of
Tours, "the study of literature perished": and, although there were some
bright spots at Jarrow and elsewhere, yet on the whole the chief
services which Christianity rendered to classical learning during the
next few centuries, were the preservation of classical authors in the
libraries of monasteries and the preservation of the classical languages
in the liturgies of the Church.
The question will perhaps never cease to be argued, although it is
hardly probable that so extreme a view as that of Gregory the Great will
ever again become prevalent. Let us take a statement of the question
from the utterances of one who will not be suspected of want of capacity
or of experience in the matter, or of want of sympathy with stern and
serious views respecting education and life.
"Some one will say to me perhaps," wrote John Henry Newman in 1859, "our
youth shall not be corrupted. We will dispense with all general or
national literature whatever, if it be so exceptional; we will have a
Christian Literature of our own, as pure, as true as the Jewish." "You
cannot have it.... From the nature of the case, if Literature is to be
made a study of human nature, you cannot have a Christian Literature. It
is a contradiction in terms to attempt a sinless Literature of sinful
man. You may gather together something very great and high, something
higher than any literature ever was; and when you have done so, you will
find that it is not Literature at all. You will simply have left the
delineation of man, as such, and have substituted for it, as far as you
have had anything to substitute, that of man, as he is or might be,
under certain special advantages. Give up the study of man, as such, if
so it must be; but say you do so. Do not say you are studying him, his
history, his mind and his heart, when you are studying something else.
Man is a being of genius, passion, intellect, conscience, power. He
exercises his great gifts in various ways, in great deeds, in great
thoughts, in heroic acts, in hateful crimes.... Literature records them
all to the life....
"We should be shrinking from a plain duty, did we leave out Literature
from Education. For why do we educate except to prepare for the world?
Why do we cultivate the intellect of the many beyond the first elements
of knowledge, except ... to fit men of the world for the world? We
cannot possibly keep them from plunging into the world, with all its
ways and principles and maxims, when their time comes; but we can
prepare them against what is inevitable; and it is not the way to learn
to swim in troubled waters, never to have gone into them. Proscribe (I
do not say particular authors, particular works, particular passages)
but Secular Literature as such: cut out from your class books all broad
manifestations of the natural man; and those manifestations are waiting,
for your pupil's benefit, at the very doors of your lecture room in
living and breathing substance. They will meet him there in all the
charm of novelty, and all the fascination of genius or of amiableness.
To-day a pupil, to-morrow a member of the great world: to-day confined
to the Lives of the Saints, to-morrow thrown upon Babel;--thrown on
Babel, without the honest indulgence of wit and humour and imagination
ever permitted to him, without any fastidiousness of taste wrought into
him, without any rule given him for discriminating 'the precious from
the vile,' beauty from sin, the truth from the sophistry of nature, what
is innocent from what is poison."[75]
Many Christians are apt to forget that all truth is of God; and that
every one who in an earnest spirit endeavours to ascertain and to teach
what is true in any department of human knowledge, is doing God's work.
The Spirit, we are promised by Christ Himself, "shall lead you _into all
the Truth_," and "the Truth shall make you free." Our business is to see
that nothing claims the name of truth unlawfully. It is not our business
to prohibit anything that can make good its claim to be accounted true.
Those who enjoy large opportunities of study, and especially those who
have the responsibility not only of learning but of teaching, must
beware of setting their own narrow limits to the domain of what is
useful and true. It has a far wider range than the wants which we feel
in ourselves or which we can trace in others. Even the whole experience
of mankind would not suffice to give the measure of it. We dishonour
rather than reverence the Bible, when we attempt to confine ourselves
and others to the study of it. Much of its secret and inexhaustible
store of treasure will remain undiscovered by us, until our hearts are
warmed, our intellects quickened, and our experience enlarged, by the
masterpieces of human genius. "To the pure all things are pure." In the
first century, in which the perils of heathenism to Christianity were
tenfold what they are at present, St. Paul in plain terms told his
converts that if they liked to accept the invitations of their heathen
friends and acquaintances, they need not scruple to do so (1 Cor. x.
27); and by his own example, he shows them that they may enjoy and use
what is beautiful and true in heathen literature. Let us beware of
narrowing the liberty wisely allowed by him. Each one of us can readily
find out what is dangerous for _himself_. There is plenty that is not
dangerous: let him freely enjoy that. But the limits that are wise for
ourselves are not to bind others. Their liberty is not to be
circumscribed by our conscience. "The earth is the Lord's and the
fulness thereof."
FOOTNOTES:
[73] =chrêsta homiliai= instead of =chrêsth' homiliai=.
[74] Lightfoot on "Seneca and St. Paul," in _Philippians_, pp. 288, 300.
[75] J. H. Newman, _The Scope and Nature of University Education_, pp.
336-342. The whole discourse, "The Church and Liberal Education," is an
eloquent and noble vindication of the claims of literature.