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]