CHRISTIANITY


Philosophic Ideas which Christianity Welcomed, Adopted, or Created
How it must Give a Fresh Aspect to All Philosophy,
even that Foreign to Itself.


CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY AND MORALITY.--Christianity spread through the
Empire by the propaganda of the Apostles, and more especially St. Paul,
from about the year 40. Its success was extremely rapid, especially among
the populace, and little by little it won over the upper classes. As a
general philosophy, primitive Christianity did not absolutely bring more
than the Hebrew dogmas: the unity of God, a providential Deity, that is,
one directly interfering in human affairs; immortality of the soul with
rewards and penalties beyond the grave (a recent theory among the Jews, yet
one anterior to Christianity). As a moral system, Christianity brought
something so novel and so beautiful that it is not very probable that
humanity will ever surpass it, which may be imperfectly and incompletely
summed up thus: love of God; He must not only be feared as He was by the
pagans and the ancient Jews; He must be loved passionately as a son loves
his father, and all things must be done for this love and in consideration
of this love; all men are brethren as sons of God, and they should love one
another as brothers; love your neighbour as yourself, love him who does not
love you; love your enemies; be not greedy for the goods of this world, nor
ambitious, nor proud; for God loves the lowly, the humble, the suffering,
and the miserable, and He will exalt the lowly and put down the mighty from
their seats.

Nothing like this had been said in all antiquity, and it needs
extraordinary ingenuity (of a highly interesting character, by the way), to
find in ancient wisdom even a few traces of this doctrine.

Finally, into politics, so to speak, Christianity brought this novelty:
there are two empires, the empire of God and the empire of man; you do not
owe everything to the earthly empire; you are bound to give it faithfully
only what is needed for it to be strong and to preserve society; apart from
that, and that done, you are the subject of God and have only to answer to
God for your thoughts, your belief, your conscience; and over that portion
of yourself the State has neither right nor authority unless it be usurped
and tyrannical. And therein lay the charter of individual liberty like the
charter of the rights of man.

As appeal to the feelings, Christianity brought the story of a young God,
infinitely good and gentle, who had never cursed, who had been infinitely
loved, who had been persecuted and betrayed, who had forgiven his
executioners, and who died in great sufferings and who was to be imitated
(whence came the thirst for martyrdom). This story in itself is not more
affecting than that of Socrates, but it is that of a young martyr and not
of an old one, and therein lies a marked difference for the imagination and
emotions of the multitude.

THE SUCCESS OF CHRISTIANITY.--The prodigious rapidity of the success
of Christianity is easily explicable. Polytheism had no longer a great hold
on the masses, and no philosophic doctrine had found or had even sought the
path to the crowd; Christianity, essentially democratic, loved the weak and
humble, had a tendency to prefer them to the great ones of this world, and
to regard them as being more the children of God, and was therefore
received by the masses as the only doctrine which could replace the
worm-eaten polytheism. And in Christianity they saw the religion for which
they were waiting, and in the heads of Christianity their own protectors
and defenders.

ITS EVOLUTION.--The evolution of Christianity was very rapid, and
from a great moral doctrine with a minimum of rudimentary metaphysics it
became, perchance mistakenly, a philosophy giving account, or desirous of
giving account of everything; it so to speak incorporated a metaphysic,
borrowed in great part from Greek philosophy, in great part from the Hebrew
traditions. It possessed ideas on the origin of matter, and whilst
maintaining that God was eternal, denied that matter was, and asserted that
God created it out of nothing. It had theories on the essence of God, and
saw Him in three Persons, or hypostases, one aspect of God as power,
another as love, and the other as intelligence. It presented theories on
the incarnation and humanisation of God, God being made man in Jesus Christ
without ceasing to be God. It conceived new relationships of man to God,
man having in himself powers of purgation and perfection, but always
needing divine help for self-perfection (theory of grace). And this he
must believe; if not he would feel insolent pride in his freedom. It had
ideas about the existence of evil, declaring in "justification of God" for
having permitted evil on earth, that the world was a place of trial, and
that evil was only a way of putting man to the test and discovering what
were his merits. It had its notions on the rewards and penalties beyond the
grave, hell for the wicked and heaven for the good, as had been known to
antiquity, but added purgatory, a place for both punishment and
purification by punishment, an entirely Platonic theory, which Plato may
have inspired but did not himself entertain. Finally, it was a complete
philosophy answering, and that in a manner often admirable, all the
questions that mankind put or could ever put.

And, as so often happens, that has proved a weakness and a strength to it:
a weakness because embarrassed with subtle, complicated, insoluble
questions wherein mankind will always be involved, it was forced to engage
in endless discussions wherein the bad or feeble reasons advanced by this
or that votary compromised the whole work; a strength because whoever
brings a rule of life is practically compelled to support it by general
ideas bearing on the relations of things and to give it a place in a
general survey of the world; otherwise he appears impotent, weak,
disqualified to give that very rule of life, incapable of replying to the
interrogations raised by that rule of life; and finally, lacking in
authority.

SCHISMS AND HERESIES.--Right or wrong, and it is difficult and
highly hazardous to decide the question, Christianity was a complete
philosophy, which was why it had its schisms and heresies, a certain number
of sincere Christians not resolving the metaphysical questions in the way
of the majority. Heresies were innumerable; only the two shall be cited
which are deeply interesting in the history of philosophy. Manes, an Arab
(and Arabia was then a Persian province), revived the old Zoroastrian
doctrine of two principles of good and evil, and saw in the world two
contending gods, the God of perfection and the god of sin, and laid upon
man the duty of assisting the God of goodness so that His kingdom should
come and cause the destruction of evil in the world. From him proceeded the
Manicheans, who exerted great influence and were condemned by many Councils
until their sect died out, only to reappear or seem to reappear fairly
often in the Middle Ages and in modern times.

Arius denied the Trinity, believing only in one God, not only unique, but
in one Person, and in consequence denied the divinity of Jesus Christ. He
was perpetually involved in controversies and polemics, supported by some
Bishops, opposed by the majority. After his death his doctrine spread
strangely. It was stifled in the East by Theodosius, but was widely
adopted by the "barbarians" of the West (Goths, Vandals, Burgundians,
Lombards). It was revived, more or less exactly, after the Reformation,
among the Socinians.

ROME AND CHRISTIANITY.--The relations of Christianity with the Roman
government were in the highest degree tragic, as is common knowledge. There
were ten sanguinary persecutions, some being atrocious. It has often been
asked what was the cause of this animosity against the Christians on the
part of a government which tolerated all religions and all
philosophies. Persecutions were natural at Athens where a democracy,
obstinately attached to the local deities, treated as enemies of the
country those who did not take these gods into consideration; persecutions
were natural on the part of a Calvin or a Louis XIV who combined in
themselves the two authorities and would not admit that anyone in the State
had the right to think differently from its head; but it has been argued
that they were incomprehensible on the part of a government which admitted
all cults and all doctrines. The explanation perhaps primarily lies in the
fact that Christianity was essentially popular, and that the government saw
in it not only plebeianism, which was disquieting, but an organisation of
plebeianism, which was still more so. The administration of religion had
always been in the hands of the aristocracy; the Roman pontiffs were
patricians, the Emperor was the sovereign pontiff; to yield obedience, even
were it only spiritually, to private men as priests was to be disobedient
to the Roman aristocracy, to the Emperor himself, and was properly speaking
a revolt.

A further explanation, perhaps, is that each new religion that was
introduced at Rome did not oppose and did not contradict polytheism, the
principle of polytheism being precisely that there are many gods; whereas
Christianity denying all those gods and affirming that there is only one,
and that all others must be despised as non-existent, inveighed against,
denied, and ruined or threatened to destroy the very essence of
polytheism. It was not a variation, it was a heresy; it was more than
heretical, it was anarchical; it did not only condemn this or that
religion, but even the very tolerance with which the Roman government
accepted all religions. Hence it is natural enough that it should have been
combated to the utmost by practically all the Emperors, from the most
execrable, such as Nero, to the best, such as Marcus Aurelius.

CHRISTIANITY AND THE PHILOSOPHERS.--The relations of Christianity
with philosophy were confused. The immense majority of philosophers
rejected it, considering their own views superior to it, and moreover,
feeling it to be formidable, made use against it of all that could be found
beautiful, specious, or expedient in ancient philosophy; and the ardour of
Neoplatonism, which we have considered, in part arose from precisely this
instinct of rivalry and of struggle. At that epoch there was a throng of
men like Ernest Havet presenting Hellenism in opposition to Christianity,
and Ernest Havet is only a Neoplatonist of the nineteenth century.

A certain number of philosophers, nevertheless, either on the
Jewish-Christian side or on the Hellenic, tried some reconciliation either
as Jews making advances to Hellenism or as Greeks admitting there was
something acceptable on the part of Sion. Aristobulus, a Jew (prior to
Jesus Christ), seems to have endeavoured to bring Moses into agreement with
Plato; Philo (a Jew contemporary with and surviving Jesus Christ and a
non-Christian), about whom there is more information, throughout his life
pursued the plan of demonstrating all the resemblances he could discover
between Plato and the Old Testament, much in the same way as in our time
some have striven to point out the surprising agreement of the Darwinian
theory with Genesis. He was called the Jewish Plato, and at Alexandria it
was said: "Philo imitates Plato or Plato imitates Philo."

On their side, later on, certain eclectic Greeks already cited, Moderatus,
Nicomachus, Nemesius, extended goodwill so far as to take into account, if
not Jesus, at least Moses, and to admit Israelitish thought into the
history of philosophy and of human wisdom. But, in general it was by the
schools of philosophy and by the ever dwindling section of society priding
itself upon its philosophy that Christianity was most decisively repulsed,
thrust on one side and misunderstood.

CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHERS.--Without dealing with many others who belong
more especially to the history of the Church rather than to that of
philosophy, the Christians did not lack two very illustrious philosophers
who must receive attention--Origen and St. Augustine.

ORIGEN.--Origen was a native of Alexandria at the close of the
second century, and a pupil of St. Clement of Alexandria. A Christian and a
Platonist, in order to give himself permission and excuse for reconciling
the two doctrines, he alleged that the Apostles had given only so much of
the Christian teaching as the multitude could comprehend, and that the
learned could interpret it in a manner more subtle, more profound, and more
complete. Having observed this precaution, he revealed his system, which
was this: God is a pure spirit. He already has descended one step in
_spirits_ which are emanations from Him. These spirits are capable of
good and evil. When addicted to evil, they clothe themselves with matter
and become souls in bodies;--which is what we are. There are others lower
than ourselves. There are impure spirits which have clothed themselves
with unclean bodies; these are demons. Now, as the fallen brethren of
angels, we are free, less free than they, but still free. Through this
freedom we can in our present existence either raise or lower
ourselves. But this freedom does not suffice us; a little help is
essential. This help comes to us from the spirits which have remained
pure. The help they afford us is opposed by the efforts of the utterly
fallen spirits who are lower in the scale than ourselves. To combat these
fallen spirits, to help the pure spirits who help us, and to help them to
help us, such is our duty in this life, which is a medicine, the medicine
of Plato, namely a punishment; sterile when it is not accepted by us,
salutary when gratefully accepted by us, it then becomes expiation and in
consequence purification. The part of the Redeemer in all this is the same
as that of the spirits, but on a grander and more decisive plane. King of
spirits, Spirit of spirits, by revelation He illumines our confused
intelligence and fortifies our weak will against temptation.

ST. AUGUSTINE.--St. Augustine of Tagaste (in Africa), long a pagan
exercising the profession of professor of rhetoric, became a Christian and
was Bishop of Hippo. It is he who "fixed" the Christian doctrine in the way
most suitable to and most acceptable to Western intelligence. Instead of
confusing it, more or less intentionally, more or less inadvertently, with
philosophy, he exerted all his great talents to make the most precise
distinction from it. Philosophers (he says) have always regarded the world
as an emanation from God. Then all is God. Such is not the way to
reason. There is no emanation, but creation; God created the world and has
remained distinct from it. He lives in it in such a way that we live in
Him; in Him we live and move and have our being; He dwells throughout the
world, but He is not the world; He is everywhere but He is not all. God
created the world. Then, can it be said that before the world was created
God remained doing nothing during an immense space of time? Certainly not,
because time only began at the creation of the world. God is outside
time. The eternal is the absence of time. God, therefore, was not an
instant before He created the world. Or, if it be preferred, there was an
eternity before the birth of the world. But it is the same thing; for
eternity is the non-existence of time.

Some understand God in three Persons as three Gods. This polytheism, this
paganism must be rejected. But how to understand? How? You feel in
yourself several souls? No. And yet there are several faculties of the
soul. The three Persons of God are the three divine faculties. Man has body
and soul. No one ought to have doubts about the soul, for to have doubts
presupposes thought, and to think is to be; above all things we are
thinking beings. But what is the soul? Something immaterial, assuredly,
since it can conceive immaterial things, such as a line, a point, surface,
space. It is as necessary for the soul to be immaterial in order to be able
to grasp the immaterial, as it is necessary for the hand to be material in
order that it can grasp a stone.

Whence comes the soul? From the souls of ancestors by transmission? This is
not probable, for this would be to regard it as material. From God by
emanation? This is inadmissible; it is the same error as believing that the
world emanates from God. Here, too, there is no emanation, but creation.
God creates the souls in destination for bodies themselves born from
heredity. Once the body is destroyed, what becomes of the soul? It cannot
perish; for thought not being dependent upon the senses, there is no reason
for its disappearance on the disappearance of the senses.

Human liberty is an assured fact; we are free to do good or evil. But then
God has not been able to know in advance what I shall do to-day, and in
consequence God, at least in His knowledge, has limitations, is not
omnipotent. St. Augustine replies confusedly (for the question is
undoubtedly insoluble) that we have an illusion of liberty, an illusion
that we are free, which suffices for us to acquire merit if we do right and
demerit if we do wrong, and that this illusion of liberty is a relative
liberty, which leaves the prescience of God, and therefore His omnipotence,
absolute. Man is also extremely weak, debilitated, and incapable of good on
account of original sin, the sin of our first parents, which is transmitted
to us through heredity and paralyses us. But God helps us, and this is what
is termed grace. He helps us gratuitously, as is indicated by the word
"grace"--if He wishes and when He wishes and in the measure that He wishes.
From this arises the doctrine of "predestination," by which it is
preordained whether a man is to be saved or lost.