Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Philosophers Had Not Succeeded in Discovering God. The Uncertainty and Confusion of Their Speculations. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
II.—Philosophers Had Not Succeeded in Discovering God. The
Uncertainty and Confusion of Their Speculations.
But the authority of the physical philosophers is
maintained among you798 as the special
property799 of wisdom. You
mean of course, that pure and simple wisdom of the philosophers
which attests its own weakness mainly by that variety of opinion which
proceeds from an ignorance of the truth. Now what wise man is so devoid
of truth, as not to know that God is the Father and Lord of wisdom
itself and truth? Besides, there is that divine oracle uttered by
Solomon: “The fear of the Lord,” says he, “is
the beginning of wisdom.”800
800 Prov. ix. 10; Ps. cxi. 10. | But801
fear has its origin in knowledge; for how will a man fear that of which
he knows nothing? Therefore he who shall have the fear of God, even if
he be ignorant of all things else, if he has attained to the knowledge
and truth of God,802
802 Deum omnium notititam et
veritatem adsecutus, i.e., “following the God of all as knowledge
and truth.” | will possess full and
perfect wisdom. This, however, is what philosophy has not clearly
realized. For although, in their inquisitive disposition to search into
all kinds of learning, the philosophers may seem to have
investigated the sacred Scriptures themselves for their antiquity, and
to have derived thence some of their opinions; yet because they have
interpolated these deductions they prove that they have either
despised them wholly or have not fully believed them, for in other
cases also the simplicity of truth is shaken803 by
the over-scrupulousness of an irregular belief,804 and
that they therefore changed them, as their desire of glory grew, into
products of their own mind. The consequence of this is, that even that
which they had discovered degenerated into uncertainty, and there arose
from one or two drops of truth a perfect flood of argumentation. For
after they had simply805 found God, they did
not expound Him as they found Him, but rather disputed about His
quality, and His nature, and even about His abode. The Platonists,
indeed, (held) Him to care about worldly things, both as the disposer
and judge thereof. The Epicureans regarded Him as
apathetic806 and inert, and (so to
say) a non-entity.807 The Stoics believed
Him to be outside of the world; the Platonists, within the world.
The God whom they had so imperfectly admitted, they could neither know
nor fear; and therefore they could not be wise, since they wandered
away indeed from the beginning of wisdom,” that is, “the
fear of God.” Proofs are not wanting that among the philosophers
there was not only an ignorance, but actual doubt, about the divinity.
Diogenes, when asked what was taking place in heaven, answered by
saying, “I have never been up there.” Again, whether there
were any gods, he replied, “I do not know; only there ought to be
gods.”808
808 Nisi ut sint
expedire. | When Crœsus
inquired of Thales of Miletus what he thought of the gods, the latter
having taken some time809 to consider, answered
by the word “Nothing.” Even Socrates denied with an
air of certainty810 those gods of
yours.811 Yet he with a like certainty requested that a
cock should be sacrificed to Æsculapius. And therefore when
philosophy, in its practice of defining about God, is detected in such
uncertainty and inconsistency, what “fear” could it possibly
have had of Him whom it was not competent812
clearly to determine? We have been taught to believe of the world that
it is god.813
813 De mundo deo
didicimus. | For such the physical
class of theologizers conclude it to be, since they have handed down
such views about the gods that Dionysius the Stoic divides them into
three kinds. The first, he supposes, includes those gods which are most
obvious, as the Sun, Moon, and Stars; the next, those which are
not apparent, as Neptune; the remaining one, those which are said to
have passed from the human state to the divine, as Hercules and
Amphiaraus. In like manner, Arcesilaus makes a threefold form of the
divinity—the Olympian, the Astral, the Titanian—sprung from
Cœlus and Terra; from which through Saturn and Ops came Neptune,
Jupiter, and Orcus, and their entire progeny. Xenocrates, of the
Academy, makes a twofold division—the Olympian and the Titanian,
which descend from Cœlus and Terra. Most of the Egyptians believe
that there are four gods—the Sun and the Moon, the Heaven and the
Earth. Along with all the supernal fire Democritus conjectures that the
gods arose. Zeno, too, will have it that their nature resembles it.
Whence Varro also makes fire to be the soul of the world, that in the
world fire governs all things, just as the soul does in ourselves. But
all this is most absurd. For he says, Whilst it is in us, we have
existence; but as soon as it has left us, we die. Therefore, when fire
quits the world in lightning, the world comes to its
end.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|