Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XXVIII.—The Fourfold Division of the Mosaic Law.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XXVIII.—The Fourfold Division of the Mosaic Law.
The Mosaic philosophy is accordingly divided into four
parts,—into the historic, and that which is specially called the
legislative, which two properly belong to an ethical treatise; and the
third, that which relates to sacrifice, which belongs
to physical science; and the fourth, above all,
the department of theology, “vision,”2130
| 2130 ἐποπτεία,
the third and highest grade of initation into the mysteries. |
which Plato predicates of the truly great mysteries. And this species
Aristotle calls metaphysics. Dialectics, according to Plato, is, as
he says in The Statesman, a science devoted to the discovery of
the explanation of things. And it is to be acquired by the wise man,
not for the sake of saying or doing aught of what we find among men (as
the dialecticians, who occupy themselves in sophistry, do), but to be
able to say and do, as far as possible, what is pleasing to God. But the
true dialectic, being philosophy mixed with truth, by examining things,
and testing forces and powers, gradually ascends in relation to the
most excellent essence of all, and essays to go beyond to the God of
the universe, professing not the knowledge of mortal affairs, but the
science of things divine and heavenly; in accordance with which follows a
suitable course of practice with respect to words and deeds, even in human
affairs. Rightly, therefore, the Scripture, in its desire to make us such
dialecticians, exhorts us: “Be ye skilful money-changers”2131
| 2131 A saying not in Scripture; but
by several of the ancient Fathers attributed to Christ or an apostle.
[Jones, Canon, i. 438.] | rejecting some things, but
retaining what is good. For this true dialectic is the science which
analyses the objects of thought, and shows abstractly and by itself the
individual substratum of existences, or the power of dividing things into
genera, which descends to their most special properties, and presents
each individual object to be contemplated simply such as it is.
Wherefore it alone conducts to the true wisdom, which is
the divine power which deals with the knowledge of entities as
entities, which grasps what is perfect, and is freed from all passion;
not without the Saviour, who withdraws, by the divine word, the gloom
of ignorance
arising from evil training, which had overspread the eye
of the soul, and bestows the best of gifts,—
“That we might well know or God or man.”2132
| 2132 “That thou may’st well know whether he be a god or a man.”—Homer. |
It is He who truly shows how we are to know ourselves. It is He who
reveals the Father of the universe to whom He wills, and as far as
human nature can comprehend. “For no man knoweth the Son but the
Father, nor the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal
Him.”2133
Rightly, then, the apostle says that it was by
revelation that he knew the mystery: “As I wrote afore in few
words, according as ye are able to understand my knowledge in the
mystery of Christ.”2134
“According as ye
are able,” he said, since he knew that some had received milk
only, and had not yet received meat, nor even milk simply. The sense of
the law is to be taken in three ways,2135
| 2135 The text has τετραχῶς,
which is either a mistake for τριχῶς,
or belongs to a clause which is wanting. The author asserts the triple
sense of Scripture,—the mystic, the moral, and the prophetic.
[And thus lays the egg which his pupil Origen was to hatch, and to
nurse into a brood of mysticism.] | —either as
exhibiting a symbol, or laying down a precept for right conduct, or as
uttering a prophecy. But I well know that it belongs to men [of full
age] to distinguish and declare these things. For the whole Scripture
is not in its meaning a single Myconos, as the proverbial expression
has it; but those who hunt after the connection of the divine teaching,
must approach it with the utmost perfection of the logical faculty.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
