It is with this attitude in mind, I am convinced, that we must interpret the doctrine, so often enunciated by the early Christian writers, but especially by St. Justin Martyr and St. Clement of Alexandria, of the "partial," "fragmentary" character of the theological truth arrived at by Greek philosophy. They have sometimes been charged with inconsistency in thus characterizing the work of men from whom they borrowed so much, but they seem, in fact, to have been remarkably appreciative of their old masters when we consider the position in which they stood. In fact, they seem to grant to Greek philosophy all that its adherents would claim for it, namely, that, by means of the arguments adduced by its different schools, the Greeks had attained to the opinion that there was something behind the phenomena of nature, but this might as well be a transcendent force or a pantheistic world-soul as an immanent God. With the Apostle on Mars' Hill they would say that the best theology of the Greeks simply put them in a position "that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him."

And each of the Greek schools, they would say, by resting their case on some one of the various arguments, and emphasizing some one of the attributes of the Deity at the expense of the others, had attained only a partial and inadequate view, though true so far as it went. "Since, therefore," says St. Clement of Alexandria,[87] "truth is one (for falsehood has ten thousand by-paths); just as the Bacchantes tore asunder the limbs of Pentheus, so the sects both of barbarian and Hellenic philosophy have done with truth, and each vaunts as the whole truth the portion which has fallen to its lot. But all, in my opinion, are illuminated by the dawn of Light." These men were deeply appreciative of the work of Greek philosophy so far as it went—even assigning to it a place analogous to the Hebrew Scriptures[88]—but they always attribute to it a distinctly propædeutic office, and are careful to emphasize its failure to lead to any firm and positive conviction of the existence of God. That this was the position of the early Christian philosophers might be shown by many passages, but we will content ourselves with one example from the pages of St. Clement of Alexandria, who assigned to Greek philosophy a higher place than any of the patristic writers—so much so that his orthodoxy has frequently been questioned because of it. He is fond of designating the knowledge of God to which the Greeks had attained by the term "περίφρασις." Thus he concludes[89] an argument from common consent, already quoted, in these words: "Much more did the philosophers among the Greeks, devoted to investigation, starting from the Barbarian philosophy, attribute providence to the 'invisible, and sole and most powerful, and most skilful and supreme cause of all things, most beautiful;'—not knowing the influences from these truths, unless instructed by us, and not even how God is to be known naturally, but only, as we have already often said, by a true periphrasis." "The men of highest repute among the Greeks knew God, not by positive knowledge, but by indirect expression (περίφρασις)."[90] The indefinite and merely "probable" character of the results which the Fathers think were reached by the theistic argument in Greek thought explains to us the few examples of these proofs which we find in their writings, and the certainty which they thought they had found, and their consequent attitude toward all arguments of this nature, which we have tried to depict, is the key to the explanation of a new phase in the history of thought which was to last for several centuries.

In our examination of these examples of the theistic argument in the Fathers, it cannot escape our notice that they occur much more frequently, and in more developed and conventional form in the West than in the East—under the influence of Rome than under that of Alexandria and the Orient. The reason for this is not far to seek, and is one that throws light also on the motive with which the patristic writers made use of these arguments.

In Alexandria and the East there was no incentive for the Christians to try to prove the existence of God, for the philosophy of that portion of the world was essentially religious in its character, and based its speculation on the existence of God as a fundamental postulate of revelation and of reason as well. In the combination of Judaism and Hellenic philosophy made by the "Hellenizing Jews" and by the "Judaizing Hellenes," the existence of God was admitted quite as freely, and maintained quite as zealously, as by the Christians themselves, and even the incipient Neo-Platonists made no quarrel with them on this ground. So we find that the reference in the Alexandrian and other Eastern Fathers are mainly of the character of examples and illustrations as to principles that are well understood and admitted, and are employed chiefly for the purpose of refuting idolatry by a distinction between God and matter, or of proving the unity of God in opposition to the still latent polytheism.

Under the influence of Rome, however, other tendencies came in to give a rather different significance to the theistic argument. For Rome had become the chief center of the later schools of Greek philosophy, and under the shadow of the seven hills rather than in the Athenian groves and porticoes were found the disciples of Pyrrho, of Zeno and of Epicurus. Thus, very naturally, wherever Roman civilization was dominant the teacher of Christian doctrine was obliged to present his subject with reference to the forces already at work in the minds of those whom he addressed. In accordance with this, we find, first, a negative influence in the hostile attitude assumed by the Sceptics and members of other schools who tended toward their position, toward any religious knowledge. That this influence is not an imaginary one may be seen especially in the instance already quoted from Lactantius, whose use of the theistic argument is called forth by the cavils of Sceptics and atheistic atomists.

But there was also a positive influence at work to facilitate the use of the theistic argument by the Western Fathers in the prevalence at Rome of Stoic and Epicurean doctrine. From the former of these schools would result a familiarity, and, in many cases, an agreement with the forms of the argument drawn from order and design; from the latter, for the demonstration from common consent. Both of these influences, no doubt, had some influence on the shape in which Tertullian of Carthage, Minucius Felix, Novatian and Lactantius presented their doctrine, and, together with the more material and less religious character of the West, accounts in large degree for the comparative frequency of their appeal to the theistic argument.

But when we consider the frequency with which we meet with the theistic argument, and with reference to its use in other writers, in the pages of Cicero, for example, these scanty instances afforded us by the writings of the ante-Nicene Fathers, whose works occupy, say, 4,500 large, closely-printed pages in the translation, and who were, let us remember, dealing exclusively with religious thought, indicate plainly a fundamental change in position, the influence of which was operative for centuries in this department of thought, and which, even to-day, governs the attitude of the greater part of the Western world. The absolute failure of the Greeks to arrive at any certainty of God's existence by demonstration, the introduction of the Christian doctrine of God, before which the deductions of Greek philosophy seem empty and unsatisfactory, even to many who cannot accept that doctrine as truth, and the substitution of faith in a Person for purely rational proof, render it impossible, so long as that faith continues, that any one should think it worth while to devote more than a passing notice to any such argument, unless for the purposes of an argumentum ad hominem. And so it is not until faith begins to grow cold and men become mere speculators and debaters about religion, rather than believers in Christ, that the revival of these arguments under the title of "proofs" is possible. Even the famous Ontological Argument of St. Anselm was, I am convinced, no serious attempt to formulate an a priori proof of the existence of God, but was addressed to a particular case[91]—the "fool" who "said in his heart, 'There is no God,'" and who also maintained that God was "that than which no greater can be thought."

From this survey it will be seen that, in the view of the Ante-Nicene Christian authors, the theistic argument was valuable merely as a propædeutic to Christianity, but was superfluous for the believer in Jesus Christ; the use of it cannot, as it had not in Greek thought, bring proof, but only probability; even this uncertain result is only vague and fragmentary in character, and was never unified and made significant by the Greeks; its office in Christian evidences was merely of an ad hominem sort, and this only in its simpler and more practical forms, in which the senses as well as reason had their testimony to bear; and, lastly, the argument was used much more frequently by the Western than by the Alexandrian and other Eastern Fathers.

FOOTNOTES:

[60] Stromata, V, 12.