Christianity and Greek Philosophy / or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His Apostles

by B. F. Cocker

Auspicious in his birth, which puts an end

To the iron age, and from which shall arise

A golden age, most glorious to behold.

II. Finally, Greek philosophy prepared the way for Christianity by awakening and deepening the consciousness of guilt, and the desire for Redemption.

The consciousness of sin, and the consequent need of expiation for sin, were gradually unfolded in the Greek mind. The idea of sin was at first revealed in a confused and indefinite feeling of some external, supernatural, and bewildering influence which man can not successfully resist; but yet so in harmony with the sinner's inclination, that he can not divest himself of all responsibility. "Homer has no word answering in comprehensiveness or depth of meaning to the word sin, as it is used in the Bible..... The noun ἁµαρτία which is appropriated to express this idea in the Greek of the New Testament, does not occur in the Homeric poems..... The word which is most frequently employed to express wrong-doing of every kind is ἄτη, with its corresponding verb..... The radical signification of the word seems to be a befooling--a depriving one of his senses and his reason, as by unseasonable sleep, and excess of wine, joined with the influence of evil companions, and the power of destiny, or the deity. Hence, the Greek imagination, which impersonated every great power, very naturally conceived of Ἄτη as a person, a sort of omnipresent and universal cause of folly and sin, of mischief and misery, who, though the daughter of Jupiter, yet once fooled or misled Jupiter himself, and thenceforth, cast down from heaven to earth, walks with light feet over the heads of men, and makes all things go wrong. Hence, too, when men come to their senses, and see what folly and wrong they have perpetrated, they cast the blame on Ἄτη, and so, ultimately, on Jupiter and the gods." [⁹³³]

[Footnote 933: ][ (return) ] Tyler, "Theology of the Greek Poets," pp. 174, 175.

"Oft hath this matter been by Greeks discussed,

And I their frequent censure have incurred:

Yet was not I the cause; but Jove, and Fate,