The Rise of the Conception of Spirituality. We have seen that out of the widespread cry for spiritual help came the demand for spiritual authority. There is also another result,—the increased importance in history of the spiritual personality. The men of the past became heroes, the great men sanctified and surrounded with myths. Hero worship, ancestor worship, the worship of the genius of the emperor inaugurated by Augustus, were part of this movement. Disciples began to have unconditional trust in their masters, and in neo-Platonism this worship culminated in veneration for the leaders of the School. This movement appears in the grandest form in history in the impression of the wonderful personality of Jesus Christ.
The next step was to regard personality as the revelation of the divine Logos. Personality is the cosmic reason. Nature and history are kinds of general revelations, but special revelations require great personalities—Moses, the prophets, the Greek scientists, and especially Jesus who was the Messiah, the Son of God. The power that these personalities exhibit must be a revelation, and not the working of the human reason, for the human unaided reason deals only with sensations, and is incapable of gaining divine truth. The reason needs the divine to illuminate it. The great personalities are therefore the repositories of powers that make them different from ordinary men. Their revelations are above, and sometimes opposed to, the conclusions of ordinary reason. Thus personalities themselves are divided by religious dualism, and in them the human and divine are far apart. Moreover, the more great personalities were apotheosized, the more the common run of humanity was depreciated. Then distinction was made between great personalities. At first, when authority was sought everywhere, all great personalities were supposed to have divine revelation; later, when the lines were drawn between the Christian and other beliefs, only the Christian leaders were considered by the Christians to be instruments of the divine.
This spiritualizing of historical personalities laid the emphasis more than ever before upon the dualism in all human beings. All men are ensnared in the world of sense, and they can attain knowledge of the higher world only through the illumination of their higher natures. Aristotle alone among the Greeks had had a clear conception of spirituality, but he had conceived spirituality as applied solely to God. He had not conceivedGod to be a person. But the Stoic antithesis of reason and what is contrary to reason, and the Platonic antithesis of the supersensuous and the sensuous, had marked off in man the inner personal nature of man as withdrawn into itself and set over against his sensuous nature. The more this ethical dualism became a religious dualism, the more the conception of spiritual personality was extended to all human beings. Its most refined expression was in the Christian conception of the soul.
The Revival of Platonism. The Platonism of the Academy had had little influence in the Ethical Period and its tradition had been barely kept alive. The Middle Academy had been skeptical and the New Academy eclectic. The Religious Period, on the other hand, was thoroughly Platonic, and Plato from this time until the Crusades became the ruling philosophical power. For three hundred years his influence had been nothing; for the next twelve hundred he dominated men’s minds, so far as any philosopher could in religious times. When the Wise Man vanished from philosophy, and the expectation of spiritual blessedness took its place, when Skepticism drove men from ethics, first to eclecticism and then to theology, when philosophy passed to mysticism—then did Platonism, with its antithesis between the sensible and the supersensible, come to its own. Of all the historical philosophies it could best amalgamate all religions. Platonism (1) absorbed Oriental religions, (2) furnished a didactic form for Christianity, (3) recreated itself into the mystic neo-Platonism. The world-longing for the supernatural found its best medium in Platonism. When the Wise Man vanished, the mystic priest appeared.
The Divisions of the Religious Period. Out of the seething religious times at the beginning of this era, there emerged two distinct currents of thought that extended through the entire length of the Religious Period, and carried down into the Middle Ages all the culture that the mediæval possessed. The two movements were (1) the religious philosophies of the still persistent Hellenic civilization, and (2) the new-born Christian religion, which was destined to determine the future of the western people. If we scrutinize these two movements we shall find that each has its introductory and its development stages, and at the point of division in each stands a great leader who was instrumental in bringing about the transition. The great neo-Platonist, Plotinus (204–269), marks the division line in the Hellenic movement; the Christian, Origen (185–254), marks the division line in theological Christianity. While these men were contemporaries, we shall take, for various reasons, the year 200 as the date of division of the Christian movement, and the year 250 as the date of division of the Hellenic movement. The first stage of each movement we shall call its Introductory Period, and the second its Development Period.
During their Introductory Periods the two movements tried to draw together under the influence of the philosophical eclecticism which colors this time. In their Development Periods the two movements draw apart, become closed and mutually repellent. The historical developments of the two movements from beginning to end are very different. The tide of Hellenism floods with Plotinus, its greatest representative, and after him there is a gradual ebb. On the other hand, Christianity shows a continuous growth, both internally and externally, andthe mighty Origen only points to the mightier Augustine. Both movements finally merge in Augustine.
| I. Hellenic Religious Philosophy. | II. Christianity. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Introductory Period (100 B. C.–250 A. D.). | Introductory Period (31 A. D.–200 A. D.). | ||
| (1) | Greek-Jewish philosophy of Alexandria. Philo (25 B. C.–50 A. D.). | (1) | Period of simple faith (until the 2d century A. D.). | |
| (2) | Neo-Pythagoreanism (100 B. C.–150 A. D.). | (2) | Period of Earlier Formulation of Doctrine. Apologists (2d century). Gnostics (2d century). Old Catholic Theologians (2d and 3d centuries). | |
| 2. | Development Period (250–476). | Development Period (200–476). | ||
| Neo-Platonism. Plotinus (204–269). Jamblichus (d. 330 about). Proclus (410–485). | (1) | Period of Actual Formulation of Doctrine. The School of Catechists. Origen (185–254). | ||
| (2) | The Œcumenical Councils and the establishment of dogma. | |||
The Hellenic Religious Philosophies. Alexandria and not Athens was now the intellectual centre of Hellenism. The position and history of the city, as well as the character of its population, were most favorable for the mingling of religions and philosophies. In the “university” of this great commercial metropolis the treasures of Greek culture were concentrated and scholastic work was vigorously pursued. Here all philosophies met, and all religions and cults were tolerated. Exhausted Greek philosophy here came in contact with those fresh Oriental ideas which previously, at a distance, had excited the imagination of the Greeks as something mysterious. The result was a new phase of philosophy,—theosophy, comparative religion, or eclecticism of philosophy and religion.
In no instance were the authors of these religious philosophies Greeks. The philosophy of Philo was a Hellenism, but the Hellenism of a Jew. Neo-Pythagoreanism seems to have had representatives from every country except the motherland of Greece. The author of neo-Platonism was born in Egypt. Of the two introductory movements, the Greek-Jewish philosophy accorded more with Oriental life, neo-Pythagoreanism with Greek life. Both go back to the principles that were fundamental in the Pythagorean mysteries.
The Introductory Period of Hellenic Religious Philosophy (100 B. C.–250 A. D.). The Turning to the Past for Spiritual Authority.