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| Chapter VI.—Opinions of the Philosophers as to the One God.
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Chapter VI.—Opinions of the Philosophers as to the One God.
Philolaus, too, when he says that all things are
included in God as in a stronghold, teaches that He is one, and that
He is superior to matter. Lysis and Opsimus713
| 713 Common text has ὂψει; we follow the text
of Otto. [Gesner notes this corruption, and conjectures that it should
be the name of some philosopher.] | thus define God: the one
says that He is an ineffable number, the other that He is the excess
of the greatest number beyond that which comes nearest to it. So that
since ten is the greatest number according to the Pythagoreans, being
the Tetractys,714
| 714 One, two, three,
and four together forming ten. | and containing all
the arithmetic and harmonic principles, and the Nine stands next to it,
God is a unit—that is, one. For the greatest number exceeds the
next least by one. Then there are Plato and Aristotle—not that I
am about to go through all that the philosophers have said about God,
as if I wished to exhibit a complete summary of their opinions; for
I know that, as you excel all men in intelligence and in the power of
your rule, in the same proportion do you surpass them all in an accurate
acquaintance with all learning, cultivating as you do each several branch
with more success than even those who have devoted themselves exclusively
to any one. But, inasmuch as it is impossible to demonstrate without the
citation of names that we are not alone in confining the notion of God to
unity, I have ventured on an enumeration of opinions. Plato, then, says,
“To find out the Maker and Father of this universe is difficult;
and, when found, it is impossible to declare Him to all,”715
conceiving of one uncreated and
eternal God. And if he recognises others
as well, such as the sun, moon, and stars, yet he recognises them as
created: “gods, offspring of gods, of whom I am the Maker, and the
Father of works which are indissoluble apart from my will; but whatever is
compounded can be dissolved.”716
If, therefore, Plato is not an
atheist for conceiving of one uncreated God, the Framer of the universe,
neither are we atheists who acknowledge and firmly hold that He is God who
has framed all things by the Logos, and holds them in being by His Spirit.
Aristotle, again, and his followers, recognising the existence of one
whom they regard as a sort of compound living creature (ζῶον), speak of
God as consisting of soul and body, thinking His body to be the etherial
space and the planetary stars and the sphere of the fixed stars, moving in
circles; but His soul, the reason which presides over the motion of the
body, itself not subject to motion, but becoming the cause of motion to
the other. The Stoics also, although by the appellations they employ to
suit the changes of matter, which they say is permeated by the Spirit of
God, they multiply the Deity in name, yet in reality they consider God to
be one.717
| 717 [We must not wonder at the
scant praise accorded by the Apologists to the truths embedded everywhere
in Plato and other heathen writers. They felt intensely, that “the
world, by wisdom, knew not God; and that it was their own mission to lead
men to the only source of true philosophy.] | For, if God is an
artistic fire advancing methodically to the production of the several
things in the world, embracing in Himself all the seminal principles
by which each thing is produced in accordance with fate, and if His
Spirit pervades the whole world, then God is one according to them, being
named Zeus in respect of the fervid part (τὄ ζέον) of
matter, and Hera in respect of the air (ὁ ἀήρ), and
called by other names in respect of that particular part of matter which
He pervades.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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