Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XIII.—The Knowledge of God a Divine Gift, According to the Philosophers.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Everything, then, which falls under a name,
is originated, whether they will or not. Whether, then, the Father
Himself draws to Himself everyone who has led a pure life, and has
reached the conception of the blessed and incorruptible nature; or
whether the free-will which is in us, by reaching the knowledge of
the good, leaps and bounds over the barriers, as the gymnasts say;
yet it is not without eminent grace that the soul is winged, and soars,
and is raised above the higher spheres, laying aside all that is heavy,
and surrendering itself to its kindred element.
Plato, too, in Meno, says that virtue is
God-given, as the following expressions show: “From this argument
then, O Meno, virtue is shown to come to those, in whom it is found,
by divine providence.” Does it not then appear that “the
gnostic disposition” which has come to all is enigmatically
called “divine providence?” And he adds more explicitly:
“If, then, in this whole treatise we have investigated well,
it results that virtue is neither by nature, nor is it taught, but is
produced by divine providence, not without intelligence, in those in
whom it is found.” Wisdom which is God-given, as being the power
of the Father, rouses indeed our free-will, and admits faith, and repays
the application of the elect with its crowning fellowship.
And now I will adduce Plato himself, who clearly
deems it fit to believe the children of God. For, discoursing on gods that
are visible and born, in Timæus, he says: “But to speak
of the other demons, and to know their birth, is too much for us. But we
must credit those who have formerly spoken, they being the offspring of
the gods, as they said, and knowing well their progenitors, although they
speak without probable and necessary proofs.” I do not think it
possible that clearer testimony could be borne by the Greeks, that our
Saviour, and those anointed to prophesy (the latter being called the
sons of God, and the Lord being His own Son), are the true witnesses
respecting divine things. Wherefore also they ought to be believed,
being inspired, he added. And were one to say in a more tragic vein,
that we ought not to believe,
“For it was not Zeus that told me these things,”
yet let him know that it was
God Himself that promulgated the Scriptures by His Son. And he, who
announces what is his own, is to be believed. “No one,”
says the Lord, “hath known the Father but the Son, and he to
whom the Son shall reveal Him.”3098
This,
then, is to be believed, according to Plato, though it is
announced and spoken “without probable and necessary
proofs,” but in the Old and New Testament. “For
except ye believe,” says the Lord, “ye shall die in
your sins.”3099
And again: “He that believeth hath
everlasting life.”3100
“Blessed are all they
that put their trust in Him.”3101
For trusting is more
than faith. For when one has believed3102
| 3102 The text ἐπίστηται,
but the sense seems to require ἐπίστευσε. |
that the Son of God is our teacher, he trusts3103
that his teaching is true. And as
“instruction,” according to Empedocles, “makes the
mind grow,” so trust in the Lord makes faith grow.
We say, then, that it is characteristic of
the same persons to vilify philosophy, and run down faith, and to
praise iniquity and felicitate a libidinous life. But now faith,
if it is the voluntary assent of the soul, is still the doer of
good things, the foundation of right conduct; and if Aristotle
defines strictly when he teaches that ποιεῖν is
applied to the irrational creatures and to inanimate
things, while πράττειν
is applicable to men only, let him correct those who
say that God is the maker (ποιητής)
of the universe. And what is done (πρακτόν),
he says, is as good or as necessary. To do wrong, then, is not good,
for no one does wrong except for some other thing; and nothing that
is necessary is voluntary. To do wrong, then, is voluntary, so that
it is not necessary. But the good differ especially from the bad in
inclinations and good desires. For all depravity of soul is accompanied
with want of restraint; and he who acts from passion, acts from want of
restraint and from depravity.
I cannot help admiring in every particular that
divine utterance: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth
not in by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the
same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the
shepherd of the sheep. To him the porter openeth.” Then the Lord
says in explanation, “I am the door of the sheep.”3104
Men must then be saved by learning the truth through
Christ, even if they attain philosophy. For now that is clearly shown
“which was not made known to other ages, which is now revealed to
the sons of men.”3105
For there was always a natural manifestation of
the one Almighty God, among all right-thinking men; and the most, who
had not quite divested themselves of shame with respect to the truth,
apprehended the eternal beneficence in divine providence. In fine, then,
Xenocrates the Chalcedonian was not quite without hope that the notion of
the Divinity existed even in the irrational creatures. And Democritus,
though against his will, will make this avowal by the consequences of
his dogmas; for he represents the same images as issuing, from the divine
essence, on men and on the irrational animals.3106
Far from destitute of a divine idea is man, who, it is written in Genesis,
partook of inspiration, being endowed with a purer essence than the other
animate creatures. Hence the Pythagoreans say that mind comes to man by
divine providence, as Plato and Aristotle avow; but we assert that the
Holy Spirit inspires him who has believed. The Platonists hold that mind
is an effluence of divine dispensation in the soul, and they place the
soul in the body. For it is expressly said by Joel, one of the twelve
prophets, “And it shall come to pass after these things, I will
pour out of My Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters
shall prophesy.”3107
But it is not as a portion of God that the
Spirit is in each of us. But how this dispensation takes place, and
what the Holy Spirit is, shall be shown by us in the books on prophecy,
and in those on the soul. But “incredulity is good at concealing
the depths of knowledge,” according to Heraclitus; “for
incredulity escapes from ignorance.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
