A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Ancient and Mediæval Philosophy

by Herbert Ernest Cushman

The Early Situation of Christianity. The Orient was the source of the Gospel, as of the other religions of this time. The power of Christianity lay in the spontaneous force of its pure religious feeling, with which it entered the lists for the conquest of the world. Christianity was not a philosophy, but a religion. It appealed to a different class than did the Alexandrian schools. The lower class received it first, and so the questions of science and philosophy occupied the early Christians but little. They were neither the friends nor the foes of Hellenism, and they took no interest in political theories. The Christian society was a spiritual cosmopolitanism, which was inspired and united by belief in God, faith in Christ, and in immediate communion with Christ. Conviction of the Second Coming of the Lord determined the conduct of the early Christians. Indeed, that moral reformation and moral conduct were the dominating aims of the Christian communities is proved by the following facts: the documents dealing with Christian life of that time are almost wholly moral; the discipline upon the members was for moral and not doctrinal reasons. Still these early Christians had some simple doctrines, which were seemingly taken for granted; and the danger is, to conceive the early Christians as either (1) too simple or (2) too ignorant. They believed that there is one God, that man has personal relations to God, that history has a dramatic course, thatright was God’s command and absolutely different from wrong, that the Last Judgment would surely come.

But about the middle of the second century Christianity was obliged to change its attitude towards both science and the State. Between 150 and 250 a great change took place among the Christians. The documentary records are full of doctrinal struggles, so that little room was left for recording the struggles for moral purity. Morality became subordinated to belief, and the intellectual side of Christianity was emphasized at the expense of the ethical. The Second Coming of our Lord was less emphasized. This doctrine was either pushed into the background or its realization was looked upon as not immediate. Furthermore, the Christian sect had spread over the empire and had come into positive relations both with circles of culture and with political affairs. Various statistics of the numerical growth of the Christians are given; among them is the following statement: in 30 A. D. they numbered 500, in 100 A. D. 500,000, in 311 A. D. 30,000,000. In the second century the self-justification of Christianity could no longer be put upon the basis of the feelings and inner convictions. It must justify itself to the world without, and to its own cultured communicants as well. It was being attacked by philosophy, and, unless its own further growth were to be thwarted, it found that it must use the weapons of philosophy. Its increase of power antagonized both the Roman state and Hellenistic culture, and from 150 to 300 the fight between Christianity and the old world of things was to the death. Christianity eventually conquered Rome and Hellenism; but this would have been impossible if it had maintained its original attitude of indifference to culture. Its successwas due to the wisdom that it has since so often shown. It adapted itself to its new situation by taking over and making its own the culture of the old world, and by fighting the old world with that culture. Christianity thereby shaped its own constitution into such strength that it could obtain possession of the state with Constantine in 300. From this impregnable political position, it was able to deal with its rivals on an entirely different footing. When old Rome fell in 476, the church did not fall with it, but on the contrary it came into possession of the city.

But this political success was the result and not the cause of the growth of Christianity. It could never have conquered so intrenched a government as Rome, if it had not first been victorious over the more persistent civilization of Greece. It made itself inherently strong by Hellenizing itself—strong both for polemical and for constructive purposes. But it is obvious that little philosophical originality may be expected during this period. When the church fathers began to employ Hellenistic philosophy, they took it on the whole as they found it. They varied it only to suit their own legitimate purposes. Christianity entered the religious controversies of the time when victory would belong to the sect which could use Greek civilization most effectively in defending itself against the hostility of other religions, and in constantly renewing the confidence of its devotees.

But in the adoption of Hellenistic culture the church created a new danger to itself. It must guard its own conceptions lest they be smothered by this same Hellenism. It must keep its fundamental beliefs in their integrity. Greek philosophy must be a servant so constrainedas to bring out only the implicit meaning of the fundamental Christian doctrines. Philosophy must not corrupt these doctrines and transmute them into Hellenism. The simple faith of the first century and its doctrines must be so formulated by Hellenic wisdom that it would be stated for all time. The church needed a dogmatic system, a creed that could forestall any future innovations. The long series of œcumenical councils of the church, beginning with the Council of Nicæa in 325, were united efforts in this direction. After that first council, dogma became more gradually fixed and, from time to time, this and that group of men were separated from the church as heretical.

Patristics is this philosophical secularizing of the Gospel which accompanied the internal and external development of the church body during the two or three centuries after the year 150 A. D.

The Philosophies influencing Christian Thought. The Greek philosophies most influential upon the development of Christian doctrine were Stoicism and neo-Platonism. The philosophy of Philo was also influential, but it was really only a bridge from philosophical Judaism to Christian theology. It contained both Stoicism and Platonism in an unsymmetrical form,and Philo’s writings “contain the seeds of nearly all that afterwards grew up on Christian soil.”[44] Greek philosophical influence upon the early Christian world was felt in two ways: in ethical theory and practice; in the construction of theology. During the fourth century Stoic ethics of a Cynic type replaced the early Christian ethics. The basis of Christian society was no longer the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount, but rather thatof Roman Stoicism. This is shown by the character of that book on morals (De Officiis Ministrorum) by St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (340–397). In theology the Christian doctrine had no need to borrow from the Greeks the conception of the unity of God or that of the creation of the world by God. But the Greek influence is seen in the doctrines on subjects allied to these: mainly on the questions of the mode of creation and the relation of God to the material world. In the discussion of these questions the influence of the Stoic monism, tending toward dualism, and the influence of Platonic dualism, tending toward a threefold conception of God, Matter, and Form, will appear in the examples which subsequently follow.

The most formidable opponent of Christianity during this time was neo-Platonism, but neo-Platonism and Christianity were not, however, long separated. Although neo-Platonism met its fate at the hands of scholasticism, it influenced in a thousand ways both orthodox and heretical Christianity. The rivalry of these two bodies ended—and with it came the ending of the Hellenic-Roman period of philosophy—in a complete and original theology. This was the theology of St. Augustine, who marks the end of antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages.

The Periods of Early Christianity (30 A. D.–476 A. D.).

1. Introductory Period, 30–200.

(1) Period of Primitive Faith (during the 1st century A. D.). With great simplicity of doctrine and ceremonies the Christians were preparing through faith and the practice of virtue for the Second Coming of our Lord.