The Catholic World, Vol. 27, April 1878 to September 1878

by Various

He also held the doctrine of future rewards and punishments, and he gave it as his opinion that the rewards and punishments of this life are as nothing compared to those “that await both the just and the unjust after death.” He encouraged the just to be patient in all their trials and afflictions in life, assuring them that everything would work together unto their good, for the gods would have a care over them and see to it that no enduring misfortune should happen to them, and the only great and irreparable evil, after all, was “to go to the world below having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice and impiety.”

The lofty speculations of Plato in the domain of religious truth have led many to suppose that he was acquainted with the Jewish Scriptures and drew some of his inspiration from them. And this is by no means improbable. The Jews were wanderers and exiles as early as Plato’s time; and if he did not himself read their law, he certainly, in his extensive travels, must have met and conversed with those who were acquainted with the teachings of the Hebrew Bible. At all events he must have known something of the primitive traditions of mankind; and we are not forbidden to think that, though a pagan, such a pure and lofty soul may have had some light from on high to enlighten him.

It is well known what a harmony Philo Judæus and the Alexandrian school established between the teachings of Plato and the principal doctrines of the Jewish dispensation; and what a near approach Neo-Platonism made to Christian philosophy in the first centuries of the Christian era.

Next to Socrates and Plato the man who did most to create Greek philosophy, and change the current of thought of the ancient world in the direction of Christianity, was undoubtedly Aristotle. Though a disciple of Plato, he did not follow in the wake of his great master, but struck out a new course for himself. The genius of Aristotle was neither so lofty nor so speculative as that of Plato, but his intellect was, if possible, more acute and his mind far more systematic. He made a complete analysis of the human understanding, and laid down those rules of logic and principles of certainty which are to guide men in the search after truth. He reduced all knowledge to a system, and made the grasp of the principles of all science possible to the human mind. His grand argument for the existence of a Supreme Being from the necessity of a prime mover—Primus motor—has never been surpassed, and has done good service in every age for the cause of theism.

The moral doctrines of Aristotle, though not so much in harmony with Christianity as those of Plato, were on the whole not adverse to it, and they exerted at least a negative influence, in preparing the minds of men to receive the morality of the Gospel.

Greek philosophy reached its acme in the schools of Plato and Aristotle; after them there were no more great creative minds. The philosophers who succeeded them did but borrow from them; they were the sources whence all future philosophic wisdom was drawn; they were the recognized masters of human thought, not alone to the Greeks but to the Romans, to the civilized and intellectual world; and the influence they exerted in giving direction to the current of thought of the ancient world can scarcely be over-estimated.

Here, then, four hundred and fifty years before St. Paul set foot in Athens, were three great pioneers of truth who prepared the way for him. They were raised up by the providence of God, in the midst of the darkness and superstition and sensuality of the pagan world, to remind man of his destiny, to teach him that he was made for wisdom and truth. They were set up as the partial teachers of truth to the gentile world until the divine Teacher should come who would teach them all truth.

During four centuries their doctrines of the existence of a Supreme Being, of the providence of God over men, of the immortality of the soul, of moral responsibility and fidelity to the law of conscience, filtered through the generations, until in the fulness of time Paul of Tarsus came to engraft their wisdom on the divine philosophy of Jesus Christ. That we should not hesitate to recognize the special providence of God in the development of Greek philosophy, that we should not refuse to Socrates, to Plato, to Aristotle a providential mission in the ancient world, are opinions for which some of the greatest doctors of the church have contended. Their philosophy certainly tended to do away with polytheism and to establish the unity of the Godhead. It led the human intellect in the pursuit of wisdom and the search after truth. It created a lofty ideal of intellectual wisdom and morality, and by elevating the moral above the material, the future above the present, it prepared the way for the spiritual reign of Christianity.

“Plato and Aristotle,” says a Protestant author, “have had a great work appointed them, not only as the heathen pioneers of truth but as the educators of the Christian mind in every age. The former enriched human thought with appropriate ideas for the reception of the highest truth in the highest form. The latter mapped out all the provinces of human knowledge, that Christianity might visit them and bless them” (Conybeare, Life of St. Paul).

And here we skip over four hundred years of the reign of Greek philosophy, and come at once to the actual meeting of Christianity and Greek philosophy in Athens.