1
Knowledge
of the Supreme Being is unity of life with him, — immediate contact.
Windelband - History of Philosophy
Already in this inno vation in the theory of knowledge, we find expressed the heightened value which this period put upon personality, and on personality as evincing itself in the feelings.
The longing of this time desired that the truth might be found by experience, as an inner commun ion of man with the Supreme Being.
1. The appeal to authority often makes its appearance in Greek and Hellenistic philosophy in the sense of a confirmation and strengthening of an author's own views, but not as a decisive and conclusive argument. The jurare in verba magistri might be usual enough among the subordinate members of the schools,' but the heads of schools, and in general the men who engaged in indepen dent research, maintained an attitude toward the teachings of the former time that was much more one of criticism than of uncondi-
subjection ; ' and though in the schools, chiefly the Academic
>Though even the well-known atrr&i tpa [ipte dixit] of the Pythagoreans U " only through later writers (Cicero).
* Even the admiration of Socrates, in which all the following schools were at e, dkd nut in Itself lead to hi* being regarded as the valid authority for defi le philosophical doctrine*.
220 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Religious Period. [Pabt 1L
and Peripatetic, the inclination to preserve and maintain the teaching of the founder as an unassailable treasure was fostered by the custom of commenting upon his works, yet in all the conflict as to the criteria of truth the principle had never been brought forward that something must be believed because this or that great man had said it.
How strongly the need for authority had come to be felt in the later time, we may recognise even from the countless interpolations which were the order of the day in the whole Alexandrian litera ture. Their authors, who, perhaps, for the most part acted in good faith, since they themselves regarded their thoughts as only devel opments and continuations of the old doctrines, evidently believed that they could get a hearing for their works in no better way than by assigning to them the name of one of the heroes of wisdom, of an Aristotle, a Plato, or a Pythagoras. This phenomenon appeared most extensively among the Neo- Pythagoreans, whose chief con cern it was to invest their new doctrine with the halo of ancient wisdom. But the more the convictions that were to be established in this manner bore a religious character, the more lively became the need to conceive of these authorities themselves as the bearers of a religious revelation, and therefore all the traits that might stamp them as such were sought for within them or even read into them. Not contented, however, with this, the later Greeks believed that they could give a higher sanction to their philosophy, as well as to their entire civilisation, by deriving it from the Oriental religions : thus Numenius* did not hesitate to maintain that Pythagoras and Plato had presented only the old wisdom of the Brahmans, Magi, Egyptians, and Jews. As a result of this, the extent of literary authorities increased extraordinarily; the later Neo-Platonists, a Jamblichus and Proclus, commented not only on Greek philosophers, but also upon the entire Hellenic and barbarian theology,2 and credulously adopted myths and miraculous tales from these sources.
In quite a similar manner Oriental literature testified also to its esteem for Hellenism. Among the predecessors of Philo, Aristo- bulus especially appealed to verses which were interpolated in Orpheus and Linus, in Homer and Hesiod ; and with Philo himself, the great Jewish theologian, the great men of Greek philosophy appear side by side with the Old Testament, as bearers of wisdom.
The felt need of authority naturally asserts itself most strongly in the unconditional faith in religious records. Here the Old Testa-
• In Eus. Proep. Ec. IX. 7. a Marinus, Prod. Vit. 22.
Chaf. 2, J 18. ] Authority and Revelation : Philo. 221
ment was from the beginning the firm foundation for the science and philosophy of Judaism and also for that of (orthodox) Christian ity. But in the Christian Church the need of establishing a collec tion of writings in which the system of faith should be defined with certainty, first developed with Marcion, and then was gradually satisfied in the completion and conclusion of the New Testament: with Irenseus and Tertullian both Testaments already appear with
the full value and validity of churchly authority.
2. If now in this way even scientific thought, which in conse
quence of sceptical disintegration no longer gave itself credit for the power of truth, subjected itself voluntarily to the authorities of antiquity and to religious institution, it was yet in nowise bound thereby to the extent that we might suppose. This relation rather took the form, along all lines, of extracting from the authoritative sources, and also of reading into them, the scientific doctrines which arose from the new religious movements. 1
Where in so doing they did not resort expressly to those inter polations which are found more or less in the entire literature of the period as well as in Neo-Pythagoreanism, they employed as their instrument the method of allegorical interpretation.
This meets us first in Jewish theology. It had its prototype indeed in the allegorical interpretation of myths, which made its appearance early in Grecian literature, was employed by the Sophists, and extensively prosecuted by the Stoics. It was applied to relig ious documents by Aristobulus, but it was Philo1 who carried it through methodically, proceeding from the conviction that a dis tinction must be made in Scripture between the literal and the spiritual meaning, between its body and its soul. In order to teach his commands to the great mass of men, who in their sensuous nature are unable to apprehend the divine purely, God gave to revelation the anthropomorphic form, behind which only the spirit ually mature man penetrates to the true sense. This sense is to be vmght in the philosophical conceptions which lie hidden in the historical husks. Accordingly, since Philo the task of theology has been directed toward interpreting religious documents into a sys tem of scientific doctrines ; and if he uses Greek philosophy for this
and finds in it the higher meaning of the Scripture, he
1 Kren a man like Plutarch of Cbssronea, who follow* the writing of Plato M be would the revelation* of a religious document, does not scruple to ii'tro- incr rata the teaching of his master Aristotelian and Stoic doctrines as well as ha'own religious view.
CL Siegfried, Philon e. Alexandria als Amleger de* alien Testament! ■Jena. 1876).
purpose,
222 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Religious Period. [Part IL
explains this relation on the ground that the thinkers of Greece have drawn from Mosaic documents. 1
Following his example, the Gnostics then attempted to transform Oriental myths into Greek conceptions by allegorical interpretation, and thought thus to develop a secret doctrine of the Apostolic tradition, — the Apologists maintained the harmony of Christian doctrine with the dogmas of Greek philosophy, — even men like Irenaeus and Tertullian worked upon the New Testament, —and finally Origen knew how to bring the philosophy of Christianity into accord with its documents. The great Alexandrian theologian, like the Gnostics who first attempted to create a Christian theology, distinguished between the carnal (somatic), psychical, and spiritual
(pneumatic) conceptions of the religious records, — corresponding to the metaphysico-anthropological ideas of the time"(cf. § 19 f. ). For him the literal historical tradition yields only a Christianity according to the flesh " (xpurrumcr/iof <tw^oti»co«), and it is the task of theology to lead out of this, through the moral significance at which the " psychical " readers stop, to the ideal content of the Scripture, which must then illumine the reader as self-evident truth. Only he who grasps this last belongs to the pneumatic or spiritual readers, to whom the eternal gospel thus disclosed reveals itself.
This extraction of philosophical meaning from religious tradition is found in fullest extent among the Xeo-Platonists. Jamblichus practises in accordance with the Stoic model, on all forms of Oriental and Occidental mythology, and Proclus, too, declares ex pressly that myths veil the truth from sensuous men who are not worthy of it. s
But in all such doctrines, the interest of science (in the Chris tian teachings, yvwo-i? ) ultimately predominates over that of faith; they are accommodations of philosophy to the need of religious authority, felt at this time. The essential identity of authority and ofrational knowledge obtains, therefore, as the fundamental presuppo sition obtains in such degree, that just where seems threat ened, all artifices of allegorical interpretation are attempted in order to rescue it. This confidence, nevertheless, with which science pro ceeded to develop its own content as that of the religious documents, rested ultimately upon the conviction that both historical authority and scientific doctrine are but different revelations of the same divine Power.
We have seen that the belief in authority in this period grew out of the felt need of salvation and help. Another psychological root of
Phil. Vit. Mot. 657 a. (137 m. ). Procl. In Hemp. 369.
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Chap. 2, § 18. ] Authority and Revelation : Origen, Justin. 229
this belief was the enhanced importance of personality. This shows itself in the lively expression of admiration for the great men of the past, as we find it in Philo and in all lines of Platonism, and not less in the unconditional trust of the disciples in their masters, which, especially in later Neo-Platonism, degenerated to exaggerated veneration of the heads of schools. 1 This same motive appears in grandest form as a power in the world's history, in the stupendous, overpowering impression of the personality of Jesus. Faith in him was the uniting bond which held together victoriously the various and manifold tendencies of early Christianity.
But this psychological motive justified itself to theory by the consideration that the admired personality was regarded, in teach ing and life, as a revelation of the divine World-reason. The meta physical and epistemological bases for this were given in Platonism and especially in Stoicism. Attachment to the Platonic doctrine that knowledge is recollection, with the turn already expressed in Cicero that right knowledge is implanted by God in the soul, is innate within it, the carrying out of the Stoic logos doctrine, and of the idea contained in it that the rational part of the soul is a consub- stantial emanation from the divine World-reason, — all this led to regarding every form of right knowledge as a kind of divine revela tion in man. ' All knowledge as Numenius said,9 the kindling of the small light from the great light which illumines the world.
It was from this point of view that Justin, especially, conceived of the relationship maintained by him between the old philosophy and Christianity, and at the same time conceived the superiority of the latter. God has indeed revealed himself internally through the rational nature (<nripfta \6yov (fi<f>vrov) of man who created in his image, as he has revealed himself externally through the perfec tion of his creation; but the development of this universal, more potential than actual revelation, retarded by evil demons and man's sensuous impulses. God has, therefore, for man's help, em ployed the special revelation, which has appeared not only in Moses and the prophets, but also in the men of Greek science. ' Justin calls the revelation which extended to the entire human race, the
From the point of view of the history of civilisation we may notice the parallel in the boundless deification of the Roman Rmperors.
So also by the Stoics of the time of the Empire, philosophy, which among them likewise aimed to be cure for sick souls (Epictetus, Dissert. III. 23, 30), set forth as sermon of the deity himself, through the mouth of the wise
ian (ib. 36).
In Euaeb. Prcep. Ev. XI. 18, 8.
Apol. II. cf. Min Fel. Oct. 16, 6.
On the other hand, to be sure, Justin as well as Philo derives the Greek
ophy from the Jewish religion, as borrowing.
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224 Hellenistic-Roman ThougJit : Religious Period. [Pa«t JQ.
But that which has appeared in former time, so dispersed and often obscured, is not the full truth : the entire, pure
logos has been revealed in Christ, Son of God, and second God.
In this teaching there prevails, on the one hand, with the Apolo gists, the effort to set forth Christianity as the true and highest phil osophy, and to show that it unites in itself all teachings ' of abiding
worth that can be discovered in the earlier philosophy. Christ is called the teacher (SiSao-KuAos), and this teacher is Reason itself. While Christianity was by this means brought as near as possible to rational philosophy, and philosophy's principle of knowledge made essentially equivalent to that of religion, this had yet at the same time the consequence, that the conception of the religious content itself became strongly rationalistic with Justin and similar Apolo gists, such as Minucius Felix: the specifically religious element » appear more repressed, and Christianity takes on the character of a
moralising deism, in which it acquires the greatest similarity to religious Stoicism. 2 »
On the other liand, in this relation the self-consciousness of Christianity speaks out, for with its perfect revelation it regarded all other kinds of revelation, universal as well as particular, as super fluous ; and at this point the Apologetic doctrine became of itself polemic, as is shown especially in Athenagoras. Revelation here, too, is still regarded as the truly reasonable, but just on this account the reasonable is not to be demonstrated, but only believed. Phil osophers have not found the full truth, because they have not been willing or able to learn God from God himself.
4. Thus, although in the Apologetic doctrine the rational is re garded as supernaturally revealed, there is gradually preparing an opposition between revelation and knowledge by the reason. The more the Gnostics, in developing their theological metaphysics, separated themselves from the simple content of Christian faith, the more Irenmus * warned against the speculations of worldly wisdom, and the more violently Tatian, with Oriental contempt of the Greeks, rejected every delusion of the Hellenic philosophy which was always at variance with itself, and of whose teachers each would exalt only his own opinions to the rank of law, while the Christians uniformly subjected themselves to the divine revelation.
This opposition becomes still sharper with TertuUian and Arvo- bius. The former, as Tatian had already done in part, adopted the
' Apol. II. 13, Sffo Tapi riai xaXuf ttprrrai rinCir Xpwriavwr Arrir.
1 Cf. Miii. Fel. Oct. 31 ff. , where the Christian fellowship of lore appeal* pre cisely as the Stoic world-state of philosophers.
Xoyos o-Trcp/wiTotos.
» Sef. II. 26 ff.
Cnar. 2, S 18. ] Authority and Revelation : Tertullian, Plutarch. 225
Stoic materialism in its metaphysical aspect, but drew from it only the logical consequence of a purely sensualistic theory of knowledge. This was carried out in an interesting way by Arnobius, when, to combat the Platonic and Platonising theory of knowledge, he showed that a man left in complete isolation from his birth on would re main mentally empty, and not gain higher knowledge. 1 Since the human soul is by nature limited solely to the impressions of the senses, it is therefore of its own power absolutely incapable of acquiring knowledge of the deity, or of any vocation or destiny of its own that transcends this life. Just for this reason it needs rev elation, and finds its salvation only in faith in this. So sensualism here shows itself for the first time as basis for orthodoxy. The lower the natural knowing faculty of man, and the more it is limited to the senses, the more necessary does revelation appear.
Accordingly, with Tertullian, the content of revelation is not only above reason, but also in a certain sense contrary to reason, in so far as by reason man's natural knowing activity is to be understood. The gospel is not only incomprehensible, but is also in necessary contradiction with worldly discernment: credibUe est quia inep- turn est; certum, est, quia impossibile est — credo quia absurd urn. Hence Christianity, according to his view, has nothing to do with philoso phy, Jerusalem nothing to do with Athens. ' Philosophy as natural knowledge is unbelief ; there is therefore no Christian philosophy.
5. But rationalistic theory also found occasions enough for such a defining of boundaries between revelation and natural knowledge.
For by their identification the criterion of truth threatened to become lost. The quantity of that which presented itself as reve lation, in this time of such agitation in religion, made it indispen sable to decide on the right revelation, and the criterion for this could not be sought in turn in the individual's rational knowledge, because the principle of revelation would be thereby injured. This difficulty made itself very noticeable, especially in the Hellenistic line of thought Plutarch, for example, who regards all knowledge as revelation, follows the Stoic division of theology into three kinds, — viz. of the poets, of the law-givers, and of philosophers, — and would concede to science or philosophy the supreme decision as to religious truth,' declaring himself vigorously against superstition4
> Am. Ads. Gent. II. 20 ft.
*Tertull. De Came Chr. 6 ; De Prcencr. 7. In the latter passage he directs Us polemic also expressly against those who present a Stoic or Platonic Chris- tlanKy. He is the extreme opponent of the HellenislnR of dogma ; he knows no compromise, and with his hot-blooded nature demands unconditional surren der to revelation. In a still more popular manner Arnobius sets forth the help lessness of natural knowledge {Adv. Gent. II. 74 ft. ).
• De ItiJ. 08. « De Snpent. 14.
226 Hellenistic-Roman Thought: Religious Period. [Part II
(ItuTt&axfuovva. ) ; but he shows himself to be ultimately as naive and credulous as his time, since he takes up into his writings all kinds of tales of prophecies and miracles ; and the incredible absence of criticism with which the later Neo-Platonists, a Jamblichus and Proclus proceeded in this respect, shows itself as the consistent result of the renunciation of the thinker's own discernment, — a renunciation which the need of revelation brought with it from the beginning.
Here the development of the Church, which was then in process of organisation, set in with its principle of tradition and historically accredited authority. It regards the religious documents of the Old and New Testaments as entirely, and also as alone, inspired. It assumes that the authors, in recording this highest truth, were always in a state of pure receptivity in their relation to the divine spirit,1 and finds the verification of this divine origin, not in the agreement of this truth with the knowledge derived from human reason, but essentially in the fulfilment of the prophecies which are therein contained, and in the purposeful connection of their succession in time.
The proof from prophecy, which became so extraordinarily impor tant for the further development of theology, arose accordingly from the need of finding a criterion for distinguishing true and false revelation. Since man is denied knowledge of the future through natural processes of cognition, the fulfilled predictions of the proph ets serve as marks of the inspiration, by means of which they have propounded their doctrines.
To this argument a second is now added. According to the doc trine of the Church, which on this point was supported chiefly by Irenaeus,1 Old and New Testaments stand in the following connec tion : the same one God has revealed himself in the course of time to man in a constantly higher and purer manner, corresponding to the degree of man's receptive capacity : to the entire race he reveals himself in the rational nature, which, to be sure, may be mis used ; to the people of Israel, in the strict law of Moses ; to entire humanity again, in the law of love and freedom which Jesus an nounced. ' In this connected succession of prophets there is thus developed the divine plan of education, according to which the reve lations of the Old Testament are to be regarded as preparations for
> Just. Apol. I. 31.
• Be/. III. 12 ; IV. 11 ff.
■ * The Alexandrian theology added, as fourth phase of revelation, the " eter nal gospel," which is to be sought in the pneumatic interpretation of the New Testament. Cf. the carrying out of these thoughts in Lessing's Education of the Human Race.
Caxr. 2, $ 18. ] Authority and Revelation : Neo-Plat<mi»m, Philo. 221
the New, which in turn confirms them. Here, too, in patristic literature, the fulfilment of prophecies is regarded as the connect ing link between the different phases of revelation.
These are the forms of thought in which the divine revelation became fixed for the Christian Church as historical authority. But the fundamental psychological power which was active in this pro cess remained, nevertheless, devotion in faith to the person of Jesus, who, as the sum total of divine revelation, formed the centre of Christian life.
6. The development of the doctrine of revelation in the Hellenistic philosophy took an entirely different direction. Here the scientific movement lacked the living connection with the Church community, and therefore the support of a historical authority ; here, therefore, revelation, which was demanded as a supplement for the natural
faculties of knowledge, must be sought in an immediate illumination of the individual by the deity. On this account revelation is here held to be a supra-rational apprehension of divine truth, an appre hension which the individual man comes to possess in immediate con tact (a^i;) with the deity itself: and though it must be admitted that there are but few who attain to this, and that even these attain only in rare moments, a definite, historically authenticated, special revelation, authoritative for all, is nevertheless here put aside. This conception of revelation was later called the mystic conception, and to this extent Neo-Platonism is the source of all later mysticism.
The origins of this conception again are to be sought with Philo. For he had already taught that all man's virtue can arise and con tinue only through the working of the divine Logos within us, and that the knowledge of God consists only in the renunciation of self, — in giving up individuality, and in becoming merged in the divine Primordial Being.
1 Knowledge of the Supreme Being is unity of life with him, — immediate contact. The mind that wishes to behold God must itself become God* In this state the soul's relation is entirely passive and receptive;5 it has to renounce all self-activity, all its own thought, and all reflection upon itself. Even the vow, the reason, must be silent in order that the blessedness of the per-
<"*ption
of God may come upon man. In this state of ecstasy
the divine spirit, according to Philo, dwells in man. Hence, in this state, he is a prophet of divine wisdom, a foreteller sad miracle-worker. As the Stoa had already traced mautic arts
1Phil. Leg All. 48 e. ; 66 d. ; 57 b. (63-62 M. )■
''KwtttHirmt U found also in the Hermetic writing*; Potmand. 10. 6 ft The Imv#Au (driJUalio) is later a general term of Mysticism.
(uoram)
•Cf. Plot. De PytA. Orac. 21 fl. (404 ff. ).
228 ' Hellenistic- Roman Thought: Religious Period. [Part II.
to the consubstantiality of human and divine spirits (irvev/iaTo), so too the Alexandrians conceive of this "deification" of man from the standpoint of his oneness in essence with the ground of the world. All thought, Plotinus teaches, is inferior to this state of ecstasy ; for thought is motion, — a desiring to know. Ecstasy, however, is certainty of God, blessed rest in him ; ' man has share in the divine Oaopia, or contemplation (Aristotle) only when he has raised himself entirely to the deity.
Ecstasy is then a state which transcends the self-consciousness of the individual, as its object transcends all particular determinate- ness (cf. § 20, 2). It is a sinking into the divine essence with an entire loss of self-consciousness : it is a possession of the deity, a unity of life with him, which mocks at all description, all percep tion, and all that abstract thought can frame. 2
How is this state to be attained ? It is, in all cases, a gift of the deity, a boon of the Infinite, which takes up the finite into itself. But man, with his free will, has to make himself worthy of this deification. He is to put off all his sensuous nature and all will of his own ; he is to turn back from the multitude of individual relations to his pure, simple, essential nature (an-Xoxris) ;3 the ways to this are, according to'Proclus, love, truth, and faith; but it is only in the last, which transcends. all reason, that the soul finds its complete unification with God, and the peace of blessed rapture. ' As the most effective aid in the preparation for this operation of divine grace, prayer8 and all acts6 of religious worship are commended. And if these do not always lead to the highest revelations of the deity, they yet secure at least, as Apuleius ' had before this sup posed, the comforting and helpful revelations of lower gods and demons, of saints and guardian spirits. So, also, in later Neo- Platonism, the raptures of prophecy which the Stoics had taught appear as lower and preparatory forms for the supreme ecstasy of deification. For, ultimately, all forms of worship are to the Neo- Platonist but exercises symbolic of that immediate union of the individual with God.
Thus the theory of inspiration diverged, in Christianity and Neo- Platonism, into two wholly different forms. In the former, divine
1 Plot. Ennead. VI. 7.
* lb. V. 8.
* An expression which is found even with Marcus Aurelius (Upis iavr. TV.
26), and which Plotinus also employs (Enn. VI. 7, 35). * Procl. Thtol. Plat. I. 24 f.
6 Jambl. in Procl. Tim. 64 C.
« De Mytt. jEg. II. 11 (96).
7 Apul. De Socr. 6 fl.
C'HAr. 2, § 19. ] Spirit and Matter: Stoics, Neo-Pythagoreans. 229
rerelation is fixed as historical authority ; jn thelatter. it is the process in which the individual man, freed from aUeternal relation^ sinks into the divine original Ground! The former is for the Middle Ages the source of Scholasticism ; the latter, that of Mysticism.
§ 19. Spirit ■ and Matter.
Among the arguments in which the felt need of revelation devel ops in the Alexandrian philosophy, none is so incisive as that which proceeds from the premise that man, ensnared in the world of sense, can attain to knowledge of the higher spiritual world only by super natural help: in this is shown the religious dualism which forms the fundamental mode of view of the period. Its roots are partly anthropological, partly metaphysical : the Stoic antithesis of reason and what is contrary to reason is united with the Platonic distinction between the supersensuous world, which remains ever the same, and the sensuous world which is always changing.
The identification of the spiritual and the immaterial, which was in nowise made complete with Plato although he prepared the way for it, had been limited by Aristotle to the divine self-consciousness. All the spiritual and mental activities of man, on the contrary, were regarded, even by Plato, as belonging to the world of phenomena
(yirurts ), and remained thus excluded from the world of incorporeal Being (ouo-ta), however much the rational might be opposed to the sensuous in the interest of ethics and of the theory of knowledge ; and while, in the antagonistic motives which crossed in the Aristo telian doctrine of the vmt, the attempt had been made to regard Reason as an immaterial principle, entering the animal soul from without, the development of the Peripatetic School (cf. § 15, 1) at once set this thought aside again. It was, however, in the doctrines of Epicurus and the Stoa that the conscious materialising of the psychical nature and activities attained its strongest expression.
On the other hand, the ethical dualism, which marked off as ttrongly as possible, man's inner nature, withdrawn into itself, as over against the sensuous outer world, became more and more
accentuated, and the more it took on religious form, the more it pressed, also, toward a theory of the world that made this opposition its metaphysical principle.
> [The German •' Oeitt," corresponding to both "mind" and "spirit," u aard in this period leans sometimes to one, sometimes to the oilier meaning. la view at the prevailingly religious character of the ideas of the period I have •anally rendered it in this section by " spirit," sometimes by the alternative ** mind or spirit. "]
sharply
230 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Religiout Period. [Part II
1. This relation appears in clearest form, perhaps, in the expres sions of the later Stoics, who emphasise anthropological dualism so strongly that it comes into palpable contradiction with the meta physics of the school. The idea of the oneness of man's nature, which the Stoics had taught hitherto, had indeed been already questioned by Posidonius, when he expressed the Platonising opinion, that the passions could not arise from the yyipoviKov, but must come from other irrational parts of the soul. 1 Now, however, we find in Seneca 2 a bald opposition between soul and "flesh " ; the body is only a husk, it is a fetter, a prison for the mind. So, too, Epictetus calls reason and body the two constituent elements of man,3 and though Marcus Aurelius makes a distinction in man's sensuous nature between the coarse material and the psychical breath or pueuma which animates it, it is yet his intention to sep arate all the more sharply from the latter the soul proper, the
rational spirit or intelligence (fovs and b\avoux), as an incorporeal being. 4 In correspondence with this, we find in all these men an idej of the deity, that retains only the intellectual marks from the Stoit conception, and looks upon matter as a principle opposed to the deity, hostile to reason. *
These changes in the Stoa are due, perhaps, to the rising influence of Neo-Pythagoreanism, which at first made the Platonic dualism, with its motives of ethical and religious values, the centre of its system. By the adherents of this doctrine the essential difference of soul and body is emphasised in the strongest manner,' and with this are most intimately connected,7 on the one hand, the doctrine which will have God worshipped only spiritually, as a purely spiritual being,8 by prayer and virtuous intention, not by outward acts, — and on the other hand, the completely ascetic morals which aims to free the soul from its ensnarement in matter, and lead it back to its spiritual prime source by washings and purifications, by avoiding certain foods, especially flesh, by sexual continence, and by mortifying all sensuous impulses. Over against the deity, which is the principle of good, matter (tkr)) is regarded as the ground of all evil, propensity toward it as the peculiar sin of man.
1 Cf. Galen, De Hipp, et Plat. IV. 3 ff.
a Senec. Epist. 65, 22 ; 92, 13 ; Ad Marc. 24, 5.
» Epict. Dissert. I. 3, 3.
• Marc. Aur. Med. II. 2 ; XII. 3.
6 Senec. Ep. 66. 24 ; Epict. Diss. II. 8, 2 ; Marc. Aur. Med. XII. 2.
6 Claud. Mam. De Stratu Anim. II. 7.
' In so far as here, too, man is regarded as a microcosm. Ps. -Pythag. in
Phot. Cod. 249, p. 440 a.
* Apollonius of Tyana (rcpl (/wii. i in Eus. Prcep. Ev. IV. 13.
Caar. 2, $ 19. ] Spirit and Matter: Philo, Plutarch. 231
We meet this same conception ethically, among the Essenes, and theoretically, everywhere in the teaching of Philo. He, too, dis tinguishes between the soul, which as vital force of the bodily organism has its seat in the blood, and the pneuma, which as ema nation of the purely spiritual deity, constitutes the true essential nature of man. 1 He, too, finds that this latter is imprisoned in the body, and retarded in its unfolding by the body's sensuous nature
(aurtWif), so that since man's universal sinfulness* is rooted in this, salvation from this sinfulness must be sought only in the extirpa tion of all sensuous desires ; for him, too, matter is therefore the
substratum, which has indeed been arranged by the deity ■o as to form the purposive, good world, but which, at the same t:me, has remained the ground of evil and of imperfection.
2. The Christian Apologists' idea is related to this and yet differ ent. With them the Aristotelian conception of God as pure intel lect or spirit (nvt rcXoo? ) is united with the doctrine that God has created the world out of shapeless matter : yet here matter is not regarded immediately as an independent principle, but the ground of evil is sought rather in the perverted use of freedom on the part of man and of the demons who seduce him. Here the ethical and religious character of the dualism of the time appears in its com
plete purity : matter itself is regarded as something of an indiffer ent nature, which becomes good or evil only through its use by spiritual powers. In the same manner Hellenistic Platonists like Plutarch, proceeding from the conception of matter as formless Not- being, sought the principle of evil not in but rather in force or power, standing in opposition to the good deity,* — force which, to certain degree, contends with the deity about the formation of matter. Plutarch found this thought in the myths of different religions, but he might also have referred to passage where Plato had spoken of the evil world-soul in opposition to the good. 4
Meanwhile, the tendency to identify the antithesis of good and evil with that of mind (or spirit) and matter asserts itself here too, in the fact that the essence of evil sought again in a propensity
In this connection Philo calls xwtvua that which among the Stoics, Aristo telians, and Platoniats of the time called rovt cf. Teller V. »8»6, 3. Vet there nrrur with him again other expressions in which, <|uite in the Stoic fashion, the pnmmi appears as air, in the sense of most refined physical reality. Cf. H. Steheck, (inch. d. Ptyrh. 302 ff.
is also characteristic that the sinfulness of all men, doctrine which ■ completely at variance with the old Stoic faith in the realisation of the ideal of the wise man, generally acknowledged by the Stoics of the time of the Easpire. and regarded as motive for the necessity of supernatural help. Cf. Seneca. Bene/. 10 VII. 27 Bpict Di$*ert. II. 11,
Plut. Dt hid. 44 ff. Hat. Lwn, 896 E.
corporeal
••'■ It
a
I. ;
is
;
1.
it, a
a
a
a
I. b
is
a
is
;
232 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Religious Period. [1'art II
toward the sensuous and fleshly, — toward matter ; while the good, on the contrary, is sought in love to the purely spiritual deity. This is not only a fundamental feature of the early Christian morals, but it is found also, in the same form, among the Platonists above mentioned. For Plutarch, too, liberation from the body is the necessary preparation for that reception of the working of divine grace which forms the goal of human life, and when Numenius carried out his theory further, by teaching that, as in the universe, so also in man, two souls, one good and one evil, contend with each other,1 he yet also seeks the seat of the evil soul in the body and its desires.
In these doctrines, also, we find everywhere emphasised, not only the pure spirituality and incorporeality of God, but likewise the incorporeality of the individual spirit or mind. With Plutarch this is shown once more in the form that he would separate the vovs, the rational spirit, from the ^uxVi which possesses the sensuous nature and the passions together with the power to move the body. So, too, Irenceus* distinguishes the psychical breath of life
which is of a temporal nature and bound to the body, from the ani mating spirit (nviv/xa [uxnroiovv) , which is in its nature eternal.
These views of course appear everywhere in connection with the doctrines of immortality or of the pre-existence and transmigration of souls, of the Fall through which or as a punishment for which man has been placed in matter, and of the purification through which he is to free himself from it again ; and just in this, too, the synthe sis in question is completed more and more effectively, inasmuch as the immutable Eternal which remains ever the same (the Platonic owri'a) is recognised in spirit; the perishable and changeable in matter.
3. In these connections we find developing gradually a separa tion of the two characteristics which had been originally united in the conception of the soul, — the physiological and the psycholog ical, the characteristic of vital force and that of the activity of con sciousness. As in the scheme that had already been employed by Aristotle, so now, side by side with the " soul " which moves the body, appears the "spirit " as self-subsisting and independent principle, and in this spirit is found no longer merely a general rational activ ity, but the proper essence of the individual (as also of the divine)
personality. The triple division of man into body, soul, and spirit is introduced in all lines, in the most various modes of expression,5
iJamfc. . in Stob. Eel. I. 894.
2 Iren. Adv. Hair. V.
1. The appeal to authority often makes its appearance in Greek and Hellenistic philosophy in the sense of a confirmation and strengthening of an author's own views, but not as a decisive and conclusive argument. The jurare in verba magistri might be usual enough among the subordinate members of the schools,' but the heads of schools, and in general the men who engaged in indepen dent research, maintained an attitude toward the teachings of the former time that was much more one of criticism than of uncondi-
subjection ; ' and though in the schools, chiefly the Academic
>Though even the well-known atrr&i tpa [ipte dixit] of the Pythagoreans U " only through later writers (Cicero).
* Even the admiration of Socrates, in which all the following schools were at e, dkd nut in Itself lead to hi* being regarded as the valid authority for defi le philosophical doctrine*.
220 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Religious Period. [Pabt 1L
and Peripatetic, the inclination to preserve and maintain the teaching of the founder as an unassailable treasure was fostered by the custom of commenting upon his works, yet in all the conflict as to the criteria of truth the principle had never been brought forward that something must be believed because this or that great man had said it.
How strongly the need for authority had come to be felt in the later time, we may recognise even from the countless interpolations which were the order of the day in the whole Alexandrian litera ture. Their authors, who, perhaps, for the most part acted in good faith, since they themselves regarded their thoughts as only devel opments and continuations of the old doctrines, evidently believed that they could get a hearing for their works in no better way than by assigning to them the name of one of the heroes of wisdom, of an Aristotle, a Plato, or a Pythagoras. This phenomenon appeared most extensively among the Neo- Pythagoreans, whose chief con cern it was to invest their new doctrine with the halo of ancient wisdom. But the more the convictions that were to be established in this manner bore a religious character, the more lively became the need to conceive of these authorities themselves as the bearers of a religious revelation, and therefore all the traits that might stamp them as such were sought for within them or even read into them. Not contented, however, with this, the later Greeks believed that they could give a higher sanction to their philosophy, as well as to their entire civilisation, by deriving it from the Oriental religions : thus Numenius* did not hesitate to maintain that Pythagoras and Plato had presented only the old wisdom of the Brahmans, Magi, Egyptians, and Jews. As a result of this, the extent of literary authorities increased extraordinarily; the later Neo-Platonists, a Jamblichus and Proclus, commented not only on Greek philosophers, but also upon the entire Hellenic and barbarian theology,2 and credulously adopted myths and miraculous tales from these sources.
In quite a similar manner Oriental literature testified also to its esteem for Hellenism. Among the predecessors of Philo, Aristo- bulus especially appealed to verses which were interpolated in Orpheus and Linus, in Homer and Hesiod ; and with Philo himself, the great Jewish theologian, the great men of Greek philosophy appear side by side with the Old Testament, as bearers of wisdom.
The felt need of authority naturally asserts itself most strongly in the unconditional faith in religious records. Here the Old Testa-
• In Eus. Proep. Ec. IX. 7. a Marinus, Prod. Vit. 22.
Chaf. 2, J 18. ] Authority and Revelation : Philo. 221
ment was from the beginning the firm foundation for the science and philosophy of Judaism and also for that of (orthodox) Christian ity. But in the Christian Church the need of establishing a collec tion of writings in which the system of faith should be defined with certainty, first developed with Marcion, and then was gradually satisfied in the completion and conclusion of the New Testament: with Irenseus and Tertullian both Testaments already appear with
the full value and validity of churchly authority.
2. If now in this way even scientific thought, which in conse
quence of sceptical disintegration no longer gave itself credit for the power of truth, subjected itself voluntarily to the authorities of antiquity and to religious institution, it was yet in nowise bound thereby to the extent that we might suppose. This relation rather took the form, along all lines, of extracting from the authoritative sources, and also of reading into them, the scientific doctrines which arose from the new religious movements. 1
Where in so doing they did not resort expressly to those inter polations which are found more or less in the entire literature of the period as well as in Neo-Pythagoreanism, they employed as their instrument the method of allegorical interpretation.
This meets us first in Jewish theology. It had its prototype indeed in the allegorical interpretation of myths, which made its appearance early in Grecian literature, was employed by the Sophists, and extensively prosecuted by the Stoics. It was applied to relig ious documents by Aristobulus, but it was Philo1 who carried it through methodically, proceeding from the conviction that a dis tinction must be made in Scripture between the literal and the spiritual meaning, between its body and its soul. In order to teach his commands to the great mass of men, who in their sensuous nature are unable to apprehend the divine purely, God gave to revelation the anthropomorphic form, behind which only the spirit ually mature man penetrates to the true sense. This sense is to be vmght in the philosophical conceptions which lie hidden in the historical husks. Accordingly, since Philo the task of theology has been directed toward interpreting religious documents into a sys tem of scientific doctrines ; and if he uses Greek philosophy for this
and finds in it the higher meaning of the Scripture, he
1 Kren a man like Plutarch of Cbssronea, who follow* the writing of Plato M be would the revelation* of a religious document, does not scruple to ii'tro- incr rata the teaching of his master Aristotelian and Stoic doctrines as well as ha'own religious view.
CL Siegfried, Philon e. Alexandria als Amleger de* alien Testament! ■Jena. 1876).
purpose,
222 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Religious Period. [Part IL
explains this relation on the ground that the thinkers of Greece have drawn from Mosaic documents. 1
Following his example, the Gnostics then attempted to transform Oriental myths into Greek conceptions by allegorical interpretation, and thought thus to develop a secret doctrine of the Apostolic tradition, — the Apologists maintained the harmony of Christian doctrine with the dogmas of Greek philosophy, — even men like Irenaeus and Tertullian worked upon the New Testament, —and finally Origen knew how to bring the philosophy of Christianity into accord with its documents. The great Alexandrian theologian, like the Gnostics who first attempted to create a Christian theology, distinguished between the carnal (somatic), psychical, and spiritual
(pneumatic) conceptions of the religious records, — corresponding to the metaphysico-anthropological ideas of the time"(cf. § 19 f. ). For him the literal historical tradition yields only a Christianity according to the flesh " (xpurrumcr/iof <tw^oti»co«), and it is the task of theology to lead out of this, through the moral significance at which the " psychical " readers stop, to the ideal content of the Scripture, which must then illumine the reader as self-evident truth. Only he who grasps this last belongs to the pneumatic or spiritual readers, to whom the eternal gospel thus disclosed reveals itself.
This extraction of philosophical meaning from religious tradition is found in fullest extent among the Xeo-Platonists. Jamblichus practises in accordance with the Stoic model, on all forms of Oriental and Occidental mythology, and Proclus, too, declares ex pressly that myths veil the truth from sensuous men who are not worthy of it. s
But in all such doctrines, the interest of science (in the Chris tian teachings, yvwo-i? ) ultimately predominates over that of faith; they are accommodations of philosophy to the need of religious authority, felt at this time. The essential identity of authority and ofrational knowledge obtains, therefore, as the fundamental presuppo sition obtains in such degree, that just where seems threat ened, all artifices of allegorical interpretation are attempted in order to rescue it. This confidence, nevertheless, with which science pro ceeded to develop its own content as that of the religious documents, rested ultimately upon the conviction that both historical authority and scientific doctrine are but different revelations of the same divine Power.
We have seen that the belief in authority in this period grew out of the felt need of salvation and help. Another psychological root of
Phil. Vit. Mot. 657 a. (137 m. ). Procl. In Hemp. 369.
»
; it
*
a
it
3.
it,
Chap. 2, § 18. ] Authority and Revelation : Origen, Justin. 229
this belief was the enhanced importance of personality. This shows itself in the lively expression of admiration for the great men of the past, as we find it in Philo and in all lines of Platonism, and not less in the unconditional trust of the disciples in their masters, which, especially in later Neo-Platonism, degenerated to exaggerated veneration of the heads of schools. 1 This same motive appears in grandest form as a power in the world's history, in the stupendous, overpowering impression of the personality of Jesus. Faith in him was the uniting bond which held together victoriously the various and manifold tendencies of early Christianity.
But this psychological motive justified itself to theory by the consideration that the admired personality was regarded, in teach ing and life, as a revelation of the divine World-reason. The meta physical and epistemological bases for this were given in Platonism and especially in Stoicism. Attachment to the Platonic doctrine that knowledge is recollection, with the turn already expressed in Cicero that right knowledge is implanted by God in the soul, is innate within it, the carrying out of the Stoic logos doctrine, and of the idea contained in it that the rational part of the soul is a consub- stantial emanation from the divine World-reason, — all this led to regarding every form of right knowledge as a kind of divine revela tion in man. ' All knowledge as Numenius said,9 the kindling of the small light from the great light which illumines the world.
It was from this point of view that Justin, especially, conceived of the relationship maintained by him between the old philosophy and Christianity, and at the same time conceived the superiority of the latter. God has indeed revealed himself internally through the rational nature (<nripfta \6yov (fi<f>vrov) of man who created in his image, as he has revealed himself externally through the perfec tion of his creation; but the development of this universal, more potential than actual revelation, retarded by evil demons and man's sensuous impulses. God has, therefore, for man's help, em ployed the special revelation, which has appeared not only in Moses and the prophets, but also in the men of Greek science. ' Justin calls the revelation which extended to the entire human race, the
From the point of view of the history of civilisation we may notice the parallel in the boundless deification of the Roman Rmperors.
So also by the Stoics of the time of the Empire, philosophy, which among them likewise aimed to be cure for sick souls (Epictetus, Dissert. III. 23, 30), set forth as sermon of the deity himself, through the mouth of the wise
ian (ib. 36).
In Euaeb. Prcep. Ev. XI. 18, 8.
Apol. II. cf. Min Fel. Oct. 16, 6.
On the other hand, to be sure, Justin as well as Philo derives the Greek
ophy from the Jewish religion, as borrowing.
a
is
is *«»*1
8 ;
a
I.
a
is
is
*
is,
224 Hellenistic-Roman ThougJit : Religious Period. [Pa«t JQ.
But that which has appeared in former time, so dispersed and often obscured, is not the full truth : the entire, pure
logos has been revealed in Christ, Son of God, and second God.
In this teaching there prevails, on the one hand, with the Apolo gists, the effort to set forth Christianity as the true and highest phil osophy, and to show that it unites in itself all teachings ' of abiding
worth that can be discovered in the earlier philosophy. Christ is called the teacher (SiSao-KuAos), and this teacher is Reason itself. While Christianity was by this means brought as near as possible to rational philosophy, and philosophy's principle of knowledge made essentially equivalent to that of religion, this had yet at the same time the consequence, that the conception of the religious content itself became strongly rationalistic with Justin and similar Apolo gists, such as Minucius Felix: the specifically religious element » appear more repressed, and Christianity takes on the character of a
moralising deism, in which it acquires the greatest similarity to religious Stoicism. 2 »
On the other liand, in this relation the self-consciousness of Christianity speaks out, for with its perfect revelation it regarded all other kinds of revelation, universal as well as particular, as super fluous ; and at this point the Apologetic doctrine became of itself polemic, as is shown especially in Athenagoras. Revelation here, too, is still regarded as the truly reasonable, but just on this account the reasonable is not to be demonstrated, but only believed. Phil osophers have not found the full truth, because they have not been willing or able to learn God from God himself.
4. Thus, although in the Apologetic doctrine the rational is re garded as supernaturally revealed, there is gradually preparing an opposition between revelation and knowledge by the reason. The more the Gnostics, in developing their theological metaphysics, separated themselves from the simple content of Christian faith, the more Irenmus * warned against the speculations of worldly wisdom, and the more violently Tatian, with Oriental contempt of the Greeks, rejected every delusion of the Hellenic philosophy which was always at variance with itself, and of whose teachers each would exalt only his own opinions to the rank of law, while the Christians uniformly subjected themselves to the divine revelation.
This opposition becomes still sharper with TertuUian and Arvo- bius. The former, as Tatian had already done in part, adopted the
' Apol. II. 13, Sffo Tapi riai xaXuf ttprrrai rinCir Xpwriavwr Arrir.
1 Cf. Miii. Fel. Oct. 31 ff. , where the Christian fellowship of lore appeal* pre cisely as the Stoic world-state of philosophers.
Xoyos o-Trcp/wiTotos.
» Sef. II. 26 ff.
Cnar. 2, S 18. ] Authority and Revelation : Tertullian, Plutarch. 225
Stoic materialism in its metaphysical aspect, but drew from it only the logical consequence of a purely sensualistic theory of knowledge. This was carried out in an interesting way by Arnobius, when, to combat the Platonic and Platonising theory of knowledge, he showed that a man left in complete isolation from his birth on would re main mentally empty, and not gain higher knowledge. 1 Since the human soul is by nature limited solely to the impressions of the senses, it is therefore of its own power absolutely incapable of acquiring knowledge of the deity, or of any vocation or destiny of its own that transcends this life. Just for this reason it needs rev elation, and finds its salvation only in faith in this. So sensualism here shows itself for the first time as basis for orthodoxy. The lower the natural knowing faculty of man, and the more it is limited to the senses, the more necessary does revelation appear.
Accordingly, with Tertullian, the content of revelation is not only above reason, but also in a certain sense contrary to reason, in so far as by reason man's natural knowing activity is to be understood. The gospel is not only incomprehensible, but is also in necessary contradiction with worldly discernment: credibUe est quia inep- turn est; certum, est, quia impossibile est — credo quia absurd urn. Hence Christianity, according to his view, has nothing to do with philoso phy, Jerusalem nothing to do with Athens. ' Philosophy as natural knowledge is unbelief ; there is therefore no Christian philosophy.
5. But rationalistic theory also found occasions enough for such a defining of boundaries between revelation and natural knowledge.
For by their identification the criterion of truth threatened to become lost. The quantity of that which presented itself as reve lation, in this time of such agitation in religion, made it indispen sable to decide on the right revelation, and the criterion for this could not be sought in turn in the individual's rational knowledge, because the principle of revelation would be thereby injured. This difficulty made itself very noticeable, especially in the Hellenistic line of thought Plutarch, for example, who regards all knowledge as revelation, follows the Stoic division of theology into three kinds, — viz. of the poets, of the law-givers, and of philosophers, — and would concede to science or philosophy the supreme decision as to religious truth,' declaring himself vigorously against superstition4
> Am. Ads. Gent. II. 20 ft.
*Tertull. De Came Chr. 6 ; De Prcencr. 7. In the latter passage he directs Us polemic also expressly against those who present a Stoic or Platonic Chris- tlanKy. He is the extreme opponent of the HellenislnR of dogma ; he knows no compromise, and with his hot-blooded nature demands unconditional surren der to revelation. In a still more popular manner Arnobius sets forth the help lessness of natural knowledge {Adv. Gent. II. 74 ft. ).
• De ItiJ. 08. « De Snpent. 14.
226 Hellenistic-Roman Thought: Religious Period. [Part II
(ItuTt&axfuovva. ) ; but he shows himself to be ultimately as naive and credulous as his time, since he takes up into his writings all kinds of tales of prophecies and miracles ; and the incredible absence of criticism with which the later Neo-Platonists, a Jamblichus and Proclus proceeded in this respect, shows itself as the consistent result of the renunciation of the thinker's own discernment, — a renunciation which the need of revelation brought with it from the beginning.
Here the development of the Church, which was then in process of organisation, set in with its principle of tradition and historically accredited authority. It regards the religious documents of the Old and New Testaments as entirely, and also as alone, inspired. It assumes that the authors, in recording this highest truth, were always in a state of pure receptivity in their relation to the divine spirit,1 and finds the verification of this divine origin, not in the agreement of this truth with the knowledge derived from human reason, but essentially in the fulfilment of the prophecies which are therein contained, and in the purposeful connection of their succession in time.
The proof from prophecy, which became so extraordinarily impor tant for the further development of theology, arose accordingly from the need of finding a criterion for distinguishing true and false revelation. Since man is denied knowledge of the future through natural processes of cognition, the fulfilled predictions of the proph ets serve as marks of the inspiration, by means of which they have propounded their doctrines.
To this argument a second is now added. According to the doc trine of the Church, which on this point was supported chiefly by Irenaeus,1 Old and New Testaments stand in the following connec tion : the same one God has revealed himself in the course of time to man in a constantly higher and purer manner, corresponding to the degree of man's receptive capacity : to the entire race he reveals himself in the rational nature, which, to be sure, may be mis used ; to the people of Israel, in the strict law of Moses ; to entire humanity again, in the law of love and freedom which Jesus an nounced. ' In this connected succession of prophets there is thus developed the divine plan of education, according to which the reve lations of the Old Testament are to be regarded as preparations for
> Just. Apol. I. 31.
• Be/. III. 12 ; IV. 11 ff.
■ * The Alexandrian theology added, as fourth phase of revelation, the " eter nal gospel," which is to be sought in the pneumatic interpretation of the New Testament. Cf. the carrying out of these thoughts in Lessing's Education of the Human Race.
Caxr. 2, $ 18. ] Authority and Revelation : Neo-Plat<mi»m, Philo. 221
the New, which in turn confirms them. Here, too, in patristic literature, the fulfilment of prophecies is regarded as the connect ing link between the different phases of revelation.
These are the forms of thought in which the divine revelation became fixed for the Christian Church as historical authority. But the fundamental psychological power which was active in this pro cess remained, nevertheless, devotion in faith to the person of Jesus, who, as the sum total of divine revelation, formed the centre of Christian life.
6. The development of the doctrine of revelation in the Hellenistic philosophy took an entirely different direction. Here the scientific movement lacked the living connection with the Church community, and therefore the support of a historical authority ; here, therefore, revelation, which was demanded as a supplement for the natural
faculties of knowledge, must be sought in an immediate illumination of the individual by the deity. On this account revelation is here held to be a supra-rational apprehension of divine truth, an appre hension which the individual man comes to possess in immediate con tact (a^i;) with the deity itself: and though it must be admitted that there are but few who attain to this, and that even these attain only in rare moments, a definite, historically authenticated, special revelation, authoritative for all, is nevertheless here put aside. This conception of revelation was later called the mystic conception, and to this extent Neo-Platonism is the source of all later mysticism.
The origins of this conception again are to be sought with Philo. For he had already taught that all man's virtue can arise and con tinue only through the working of the divine Logos within us, and that the knowledge of God consists only in the renunciation of self, — in giving up individuality, and in becoming merged in the divine Primordial Being.
1 Knowledge of the Supreme Being is unity of life with him, — immediate contact. The mind that wishes to behold God must itself become God* In this state the soul's relation is entirely passive and receptive;5 it has to renounce all self-activity, all its own thought, and all reflection upon itself. Even the vow, the reason, must be silent in order that the blessedness of the per-
<"*ption
of God may come upon man. In this state of ecstasy
the divine spirit, according to Philo, dwells in man. Hence, in this state, he is a prophet of divine wisdom, a foreteller sad miracle-worker. As the Stoa had already traced mautic arts
1Phil. Leg All. 48 e. ; 66 d. ; 57 b. (63-62 M. )■
''KwtttHirmt U found also in the Hermetic writing*; Potmand. 10. 6 ft The Imv#Au (driJUalio) is later a general term of Mysticism.
(uoram)
•Cf. Plot. De PytA. Orac. 21 fl. (404 ff. ).
228 ' Hellenistic- Roman Thought: Religious Period. [Part II.
to the consubstantiality of human and divine spirits (irvev/iaTo), so too the Alexandrians conceive of this "deification" of man from the standpoint of his oneness in essence with the ground of the world. All thought, Plotinus teaches, is inferior to this state of ecstasy ; for thought is motion, — a desiring to know. Ecstasy, however, is certainty of God, blessed rest in him ; ' man has share in the divine Oaopia, or contemplation (Aristotle) only when he has raised himself entirely to the deity.
Ecstasy is then a state which transcends the self-consciousness of the individual, as its object transcends all particular determinate- ness (cf. § 20, 2). It is a sinking into the divine essence with an entire loss of self-consciousness : it is a possession of the deity, a unity of life with him, which mocks at all description, all percep tion, and all that abstract thought can frame. 2
How is this state to be attained ? It is, in all cases, a gift of the deity, a boon of the Infinite, which takes up the finite into itself. But man, with his free will, has to make himself worthy of this deification. He is to put off all his sensuous nature and all will of his own ; he is to turn back from the multitude of individual relations to his pure, simple, essential nature (an-Xoxris) ;3 the ways to this are, according to'Proclus, love, truth, and faith; but it is only in the last, which transcends. all reason, that the soul finds its complete unification with God, and the peace of blessed rapture. ' As the most effective aid in the preparation for this operation of divine grace, prayer8 and all acts6 of religious worship are commended. And if these do not always lead to the highest revelations of the deity, they yet secure at least, as Apuleius ' had before this sup posed, the comforting and helpful revelations of lower gods and demons, of saints and guardian spirits. So, also, in later Neo- Platonism, the raptures of prophecy which the Stoics had taught appear as lower and preparatory forms for the supreme ecstasy of deification. For, ultimately, all forms of worship are to the Neo- Platonist but exercises symbolic of that immediate union of the individual with God.
Thus the theory of inspiration diverged, in Christianity and Neo- Platonism, into two wholly different forms. In the former, divine
1 Plot. Ennead. VI. 7.
* lb. V. 8.
* An expression which is found even with Marcus Aurelius (Upis iavr. TV.
26), and which Plotinus also employs (Enn. VI. 7, 35). * Procl. Thtol. Plat. I. 24 f.
6 Jambl. in Procl. Tim. 64 C.
« De Mytt. jEg. II. 11 (96).
7 Apul. De Socr. 6 fl.
C'HAr. 2, § 19. ] Spirit and Matter: Stoics, Neo-Pythagoreans. 229
rerelation is fixed as historical authority ; jn thelatter. it is the process in which the individual man, freed from aUeternal relation^ sinks into the divine original Ground! The former is for the Middle Ages the source of Scholasticism ; the latter, that of Mysticism.
§ 19. Spirit ■ and Matter.
Among the arguments in which the felt need of revelation devel ops in the Alexandrian philosophy, none is so incisive as that which proceeds from the premise that man, ensnared in the world of sense, can attain to knowledge of the higher spiritual world only by super natural help: in this is shown the religious dualism which forms the fundamental mode of view of the period. Its roots are partly anthropological, partly metaphysical : the Stoic antithesis of reason and what is contrary to reason is united with the Platonic distinction between the supersensuous world, which remains ever the same, and the sensuous world which is always changing.
The identification of the spiritual and the immaterial, which was in nowise made complete with Plato although he prepared the way for it, had been limited by Aristotle to the divine self-consciousness. All the spiritual and mental activities of man, on the contrary, were regarded, even by Plato, as belonging to the world of phenomena
(yirurts ), and remained thus excluded from the world of incorporeal Being (ouo-ta), however much the rational might be opposed to the sensuous in the interest of ethics and of the theory of knowledge ; and while, in the antagonistic motives which crossed in the Aristo telian doctrine of the vmt, the attempt had been made to regard Reason as an immaterial principle, entering the animal soul from without, the development of the Peripatetic School (cf. § 15, 1) at once set this thought aside again. It was, however, in the doctrines of Epicurus and the Stoa that the conscious materialising of the psychical nature and activities attained its strongest expression.
On the other hand, the ethical dualism, which marked off as ttrongly as possible, man's inner nature, withdrawn into itself, as over against the sensuous outer world, became more and more
accentuated, and the more it took on religious form, the more it pressed, also, toward a theory of the world that made this opposition its metaphysical principle.
> [The German •' Oeitt," corresponding to both "mind" and "spirit," u aard in this period leans sometimes to one, sometimes to the oilier meaning. la view at the prevailingly religious character of the ideas of the period I have •anally rendered it in this section by " spirit," sometimes by the alternative ** mind or spirit. "]
sharply
230 Hellenistic-Roman Thought : Religiout Period. [Part II
1. This relation appears in clearest form, perhaps, in the expres sions of the later Stoics, who emphasise anthropological dualism so strongly that it comes into palpable contradiction with the meta physics of the school. The idea of the oneness of man's nature, which the Stoics had taught hitherto, had indeed been already questioned by Posidonius, when he expressed the Platonising opinion, that the passions could not arise from the yyipoviKov, but must come from other irrational parts of the soul. 1 Now, however, we find in Seneca 2 a bald opposition between soul and "flesh " ; the body is only a husk, it is a fetter, a prison for the mind. So, too, Epictetus calls reason and body the two constituent elements of man,3 and though Marcus Aurelius makes a distinction in man's sensuous nature between the coarse material and the psychical breath or pueuma which animates it, it is yet his intention to sep arate all the more sharply from the latter the soul proper, the
rational spirit or intelligence (fovs and b\avoux), as an incorporeal being. 4 In correspondence with this, we find in all these men an idej of the deity, that retains only the intellectual marks from the Stoit conception, and looks upon matter as a principle opposed to the deity, hostile to reason. *
These changes in the Stoa are due, perhaps, to the rising influence of Neo-Pythagoreanism, which at first made the Platonic dualism, with its motives of ethical and religious values, the centre of its system. By the adherents of this doctrine the essential difference of soul and body is emphasised in the strongest manner,' and with this are most intimately connected,7 on the one hand, the doctrine which will have God worshipped only spiritually, as a purely spiritual being,8 by prayer and virtuous intention, not by outward acts, — and on the other hand, the completely ascetic morals which aims to free the soul from its ensnarement in matter, and lead it back to its spiritual prime source by washings and purifications, by avoiding certain foods, especially flesh, by sexual continence, and by mortifying all sensuous impulses. Over against the deity, which is the principle of good, matter (tkr)) is regarded as the ground of all evil, propensity toward it as the peculiar sin of man.
1 Cf. Galen, De Hipp, et Plat. IV. 3 ff.
a Senec. Epist. 65, 22 ; 92, 13 ; Ad Marc. 24, 5.
» Epict. Dissert. I. 3, 3.
• Marc. Aur. Med. II. 2 ; XII. 3.
6 Senec. Ep. 66. 24 ; Epict. Diss. II. 8, 2 ; Marc. Aur. Med. XII. 2.
6 Claud. Mam. De Stratu Anim. II. 7.
' In so far as here, too, man is regarded as a microcosm. Ps. -Pythag. in
Phot. Cod. 249, p. 440 a.
* Apollonius of Tyana (rcpl (/wii. i in Eus. Prcep. Ev. IV. 13.
Caar. 2, $ 19. ] Spirit and Matter: Philo, Plutarch. 231
We meet this same conception ethically, among the Essenes, and theoretically, everywhere in the teaching of Philo. He, too, dis tinguishes between the soul, which as vital force of the bodily organism has its seat in the blood, and the pneuma, which as ema nation of the purely spiritual deity, constitutes the true essential nature of man. 1 He, too, finds that this latter is imprisoned in the body, and retarded in its unfolding by the body's sensuous nature
(aurtWif), so that since man's universal sinfulness* is rooted in this, salvation from this sinfulness must be sought only in the extirpa tion of all sensuous desires ; for him, too, matter is therefore the
substratum, which has indeed been arranged by the deity ■o as to form the purposive, good world, but which, at the same t:me, has remained the ground of evil and of imperfection.
2. The Christian Apologists' idea is related to this and yet differ ent. With them the Aristotelian conception of God as pure intel lect or spirit (nvt rcXoo? ) is united with the doctrine that God has created the world out of shapeless matter : yet here matter is not regarded immediately as an independent principle, but the ground of evil is sought rather in the perverted use of freedom on the part of man and of the demons who seduce him. Here the ethical and religious character of the dualism of the time appears in its com
plete purity : matter itself is regarded as something of an indiffer ent nature, which becomes good or evil only through its use by spiritual powers. In the same manner Hellenistic Platonists like Plutarch, proceeding from the conception of matter as formless Not- being, sought the principle of evil not in but rather in force or power, standing in opposition to the good deity,* — force which, to certain degree, contends with the deity about the formation of matter. Plutarch found this thought in the myths of different religions, but he might also have referred to passage where Plato had spoken of the evil world-soul in opposition to the good. 4
Meanwhile, the tendency to identify the antithesis of good and evil with that of mind (or spirit) and matter asserts itself here too, in the fact that the essence of evil sought again in a propensity
In this connection Philo calls xwtvua that which among the Stoics, Aristo telians, and Platoniats of the time called rovt cf. Teller V. »8»6, 3. Vet there nrrur with him again other expressions in which, <|uite in the Stoic fashion, the pnmmi appears as air, in the sense of most refined physical reality. Cf. H. Steheck, (inch. d. Ptyrh. 302 ff.
is also characteristic that the sinfulness of all men, doctrine which ■ completely at variance with the old Stoic faith in the realisation of the ideal of the wise man, generally acknowledged by the Stoics of the time of the Easpire. and regarded as motive for the necessity of supernatural help. Cf. Seneca. Bene/. 10 VII. 27 Bpict Di$*ert. II. 11,
Plut. Dt hid. 44 ff. Hat. Lwn, 896 E.
corporeal
••'■ It
a
I. ;
is
;
1.
it, a
a
a
a
I. b
is
a
is
;
232 Hellenistic- Roman Thought : Religious Period. [1'art II
toward the sensuous and fleshly, — toward matter ; while the good, on the contrary, is sought in love to the purely spiritual deity. This is not only a fundamental feature of the early Christian morals, but it is found also, in the same form, among the Platonists above mentioned. For Plutarch, too, liberation from the body is the necessary preparation for that reception of the working of divine grace which forms the goal of human life, and when Numenius carried out his theory further, by teaching that, as in the universe, so also in man, two souls, one good and one evil, contend with each other,1 he yet also seeks the seat of the evil soul in the body and its desires.
In these doctrines, also, we find everywhere emphasised, not only the pure spirituality and incorporeality of God, but likewise the incorporeality of the individual spirit or mind. With Plutarch this is shown once more in the form that he would separate the vovs, the rational spirit, from the ^uxVi which possesses the sensuous nature and the passions together with the power to move the body. So, too, Irenceus* distinguishes the psychical breath of life
which is of a temporal nature and bound to the body, from the ani mating spirit (nviv/xa [uxnroiovv) , which is in its nature eternal.
These views of course appear everywhere in connection with the doctrines of immortality or of the pre-existence and transmigration of souls, of the Fall through which or as a punishment for which man has been placed in matter, and of the purification through which he is to free himself from it again ; and just in this, too, the synthe sis in question is completed more and more effectively, inasmuch as the immutable Eternal which remains ever the same (the Platonic owri'a) is recognised in spirit; the perishable and changeable in matter.
3. In these connections we find developing gradually a separa tion of the two characteristics which had been originally united in the conception of the soul, — the physiological and the psycholog ical, the characteristic of vital force and that of the activity of con sciousness. As in the scheme that had already been employed by Aristotle, so now, side by side with the " soul " which moves the body, appears the "spirit " as self-subsisting and independent principle, and in this spirit is found no longer merely a general rational activ ity, but the proper essence of the individual (as also of the divine)
personality. The triple division of man into body, soul, and spirit is introduced in all lines, in the most various modes of expression,5
iJamfc. . in Stob. Eel. I. 894.
2 Iren. Adv. Hair. V.
