JUSTIN, THEOPHILUS, AND CLEMENT.

99

the doctrine of one God against polytheism, they were engaged in frequent discussions respecting the proof of the idea of God. Their writings are all pervaded by it; only they vary in the method of their proof, according to the various stages of their culture, some of them being prepared by Platonism, and others were not philosophic. JUSTIN MARTYR calls faith in God the conviction implanted in human nature of something ineffable.* THEOPHILUS of Antioch answers the heathen who asks, "Show me thy God, that I may believe in him," by rejoining, "Show me first thy man; then I will show thee my God. The impure man cannot understand God. It is his fault that the consciousness of God lying in his breast is undeveloped. Give thyself to the Physician, that he may heal the eyes of thy soul."+ CLEMENT of Alexandria denies that the being of God can be proved; for all demonstration is from something already known; but the idea of the Supreme Being precedes all others, and can be apprehended only by faith, by grace, by God's self-revelation. Clement evidently refers to the doctrine of the Philosophic Schools, on the absolute to the conditioned, of the Immediate to the Mediate. Probably a passage in Aristotle was floating before his mind.§ He evidently confounds two ideas which belong to different departments, namely, the idea of the logical absolute, which, according to the doctrine of the ancients, could not be reached by scientific inquiry; and the idea of a living God, which belongs to the religious consciousness. He connects with the idea of an unconditioned rational principle, an element which had been formed in his mind from Christianity. He also points to the undeniable existence of a consciousness of God, when he says that there is in all men an efflux from God, by virtue of which, even against their own will, they must acpertineat ad nos. Et legimus omnem scripturam ædificationi habilem divinitus inspirari. (2 Tim. iii. 16.)

* Apol. ii. § 6 τὸ θεὸς προσαγόρευμα οὐκ ὄνομά ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ πράγματος δυσεξηγήτου ἔμφυτος τῇ φύσει τῶν ἀνθρώπων δόξα.

Ad Autolyc. i. init.

† Strom. ii. p. 364.—εἰ δέ τις λεγοι τὴν ἐπιστήμην ἀποδεικτικὴν εἶναι μετὰ λόγου, ἀκουσάτω, ὅτι καὶ αἱ ἀρχαὶ αναπόδεικτοι.—Πίστει οὖν ἐφικέσθαι μόνῃ οἷοντε τῆς τῶν ὅλων ἀρχῆς. Ib. v. p. 588.—λείπεται δὴ θεια χάριτι καὶ μόνῳ τῷ παρ' αὐτοῦ λόγῳ τὸ ἀγνωστὸν νοεῖν.

§ Aristot. Ethic. Magn. i. p. 1197. ed. Bekker.-'H μèv yap έπIOTÝμN τῶν μετ' ἀποδείξεων ὄντων ἐστίν, αἱ δὲ ἀρχαὶ ἀναπόδεικτοι, ὥστ ̓ οὐκ ἂν εἴη περὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς ἐπιστήμη, ἀλλ' ὁ νοῦς.

knowledge the one eternal God.* ORIGEN reckons the idea of one God among the ideas that are common to the consciousness of all mankind. He regards the traces of a consciousness of God in man, as a proof of the affinity of his nature to God.

TERTULLIAN was a foe to Philosophy, but he also from the fulness of the religious consciousness expresses himself strongly respecting the undeniableness of the Divine Existence. The Being and essence of God, he thinks, can as little be denied as they can be comprehended. Other Fathers often collected from ancient Literature references to the Unity of God, that they might defeat the heathen on their own standpoint, and in so doing have often quoted by mistake apocryphal passages, which had been interpolated by the Jews. One attempt of this kind is Justin's work, entitled Tegi μovagxías. Tertullian took quite a different method. He was disposed to look on Science and Art as a falsification of the original truth in mankind, and rather appealed to the involuntary witnesses in the common life of men which testified against polytheism. These he calls the eruptiones animæ naturaliter Christiana, the sensus publicus, the original dowry of the Soul, which, though enthralled by lusts, fettered by erroneous training, and serving false gods, yet, when roused from its slumbers, invokes God and looks up not to the Capitol, but to Heaven.‡ He composed a short treatise on this subject, entitled, De testimonio anima naturaliter Christiana.

He had to develope these ideas in his controversy with MARCION.§ Marcion resembled Tertullian in his rude, fiery temperament and the predominance of feeling, in an aversion to

* Protrep. p. 45.—Πᾶσιν γὰρ ἁπαξαπλῶς ἀνθρώποις, μάλιστα δὲ τοῖς περὶ λόγους ἐνδιατρίβουσιν ἐνέστακταί τις ἀπόῤῥοια θεϊκή. Οὗ δὴ χάριν καὶ ἄκοντες μὲν ὁμολογοῦσιν ἕνα τε εἶναι θεόν, ἀνώλεθρον καὶ ἀγέννητον.

Contra Cels. i. 4.-The xoivai evvolat. He then says, dióπɛp ovdiv Θαυμαστὸν, τὸν αὐτὸν θεὸν, ἅπερ ἐδίδαξε διὰ τῶν προφητῶν καὶ τοῦ σωτῆρος ἐγκατεσπαρκεναὶ ταῖς ἁπάντων ἀνθρώπων ψυχαῖς.

Apol. c. 17. Compare Neander's das Eine u. das Mannigfaltige im Christtenthum, p. 9.

§ Tertullian Adv. Marcion, lib. v. Irenæi Adv. Hæres. i. 27. (Pseudo.) Origenes De Recta in Deum Fide, ed. J. R. Wetstein: Bas. 1674. Hyppolyti λeуxos καтà πao. aiρɛσ. vii. 29. Epiphanii Hæres. Marcion's Confession of Faith, from the Armenian of Archbishop Esnig (fifth century), in Illgen's Zeitschr. f. Hist. Theol. 1834. A. Hahn, De Gnosi Marcionis. Regiom. 1820, 21, 4. (Progr.)

MARCION AND TERTULLIAN.

101

what preceded Christianity, in antagonism to Nature, and in striving to form an entirely new World by means of Christianity. But Tertullian had received the spirit of the Gospel in greater purity, and under its ameliorating influence. acknowledged God in Nature, and the original revelation of Him in the universal consciousness, But Marcion was led further against Nature by his Dualism; neither it nor History appeared to him to present anything similar to the glory of Christianity; hence Christianity seemed to enter suddenly into the World without any preparation, by means of the Old Testament. The severe just God of the Old Testament was quite different from that of the New, the perfect and holy one who is the God of Love. He failed to discern there, as in Nature, the God that was partially hidden, because he would admit no Revelation of him but such as was whole and complete. Nature, he says, points to a rigid, imperfect Spirit, who is destitute of omnipotence since he cannot overcome the opposition of matter, the blind destructive force of Nature. Thus, then, was nothing previously in the human spirit that was analogous to the God of Christianity. A creation of the Demiurgos, the Soul had no idea of holiness and love; an entirely new life issued from Christianity, Marcion, accordingly, was a denier of all original consciousness of God, and of all Natural Religion. There was for him only a Christian consciousness, that appeared suddenly, and developed itself at once. Tertullian, on the contrary, says, when vindicating the original endowment of the consciousness of God-" God cannot be concealed he must always be perceived and reveal himself. All we are, and in which we are, testify of Him, A God whose existence must first be proved, would not be the true God.”*

Those Gnostics who did not, like Marcion, regard the Demiurgos as a being hostile to the Supreme God, but only as a limited and subordinate God, were able to affirm that the idea of one God always lay at the basis of the consciousness of higher natures. Thus Valentine appeals to the laws written on the heart in his Homily περὶ φίλων.

* Contra Marc i.9,10.-Nunquam Deus latebit, nunquam Deus deerit; semper intelligitur, semper audietur, etiam videbitur quomodo volet. Habet Deus testimonia, totum hoc, quod sumus et in quo sumus. Sic probatur et Deus et unus dum non ignoratur alio adhuc probari laborante. + Clem. Strom. vi. p. 641.

2. THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD.

We now proceed to the fuller development and more exact descrimination of the idea of God. Christianity has here to combat with two opposite tendencies; There is the sensuous anthropomorphism, which does not conceive of God as pure Spirit, but transfers its sensuous conceptions to God. This mode of contemplation was the common one in Pagan Antiquity, as the religious consciousness was generally drawn down to sensuousness through the religion of Nature. Even the Stoics were not able to rise to the idea of a pure Spirit. We learn from the remarks of Origen, how very much, even in his time, thinking was fettered by the tendency that was the result of these earlier views.*

In Judaism, indeed, the theistical standpoint, the elevation above the mere contemplation of Nature, and the teachings of the Old Testament respecting the Divine attributes, might have led to a purer style of contemplation: but the sensuous tendency was promoted by cleaving to the letter; and understanding the figurative representations of the Old Testament in accordance with that, men thought of God as a being extended in space, in human form. Another tendency aimed at putting down this rude, sensuous anthropomorphism, but fell into a one-sided abstraction and Spiritualism; for the idea of the living God it substituted the doctrine of a logical Absolute. This holds good of the v of the Neoplatonists; and even Philo, while combating the sensuous tendency, erred in a similar subtilization of the religious consciousness.

Placed between these two extremes, it was the office of Christianity on the one hand, to establish the idea of God as a Spirit, and on the other, to introduce a religious realism into human life. It effected the Spiritualization not by imparting particular ready-made notions of the Nature of God; this would have been of no service; for such ideas, in order to be intelligible, demand as a prerequisite, a new sense, a higher stage of spiritual development. Even the clear announcement-" God is a Spirit," was not understood, since men accustomed to sensuous represensations would think of a Spirit, as Origen says, only as a higher and more refined kind of Body. Christianity had to give an impulse to the Spirit to

* In Ev. Johan. c. iv. v. 24.—πvɛõμa ò Ɖɛós, etc. t. xiii. § 21, ff.

develope and cherish from within itself the spiritual idea of God. This was effected by the new tendency of the religious Spirit proceeding from Redemption, by withdrawing from the exclusive contemplation of Nature, by the Revelation of God. in the life of Christ, by spiritualising and giving a new impulse to the whole thinking faculty. Hence during this period to a gradual process of purification, where we find sensuous representations of God, we must not attribute them entirely to a sensuous standpoint, but shall often see them combined with great depth and fulness of the consciousness of God. The sensuous conception might have a relative correctness in opposition to the subtilisation of the idea of God, as far as it contained a religious Realism which could not yet release itself from sensuous forms. Thus the Clementine Homilies condemn those who think of God as formless, under the pretence of glorifying him. They even maintain that man could not rely on such a God, or pray to him.*

The crudest form of anthropomorphism, proceeding from a misapprehension of the expression" Image of God" in Genesis, represented God as Man per eminentiam. It was held by Melito, bishop of Sardis in the second century, who wrote a book entitled Tegi évowμárov Jeou,† which treated not, as some suppose, of the Incarnation, but of the corporeity of God in a sensuous human figure, as Origen testifies. Somewhat more refined is another form according to which God was conceived of as an ethereal being of light. This view is maintained in

* Homil. xvii. 11.—τινὲς δὲ τῆς ἀληθείας αλλότριοι ὄντες,προφάσει δοξολογίας ἀσχημάτιστον αὐτὸν λέγουσιν, ἵνα ἄμορφος καὶ ἀνείδεος ὢν μηδενὶ ὁρατὸς ᾖ, ὅπως μὴ περιπόθητος γένηται· νοῦς γὰρ εἶδος οὐχ ὁρῶν Θεοῦ κενός ἐστιν αὐτοῦ· πῶς δὲ καὶ εὔχεται τις οὐκ ἔχων ἐς κενόν ἐκβαθρεύεται.

+ In Euseb. Hist. Eccles. iv. 26. Orig. in Gen. Opp. t. ii. p. 25.

Under the name of Melito of Sardis, an Apology in the Syriac language has been published by Cureton in his Spicilegium Syriacum: London, 1855, and ascribed to that author. It is not identical with that of which there is a fragment in Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. iv. 23; it also contains no anthropomorphical representations of God, but indicates a more spiritual mode of thinking on the part of the author, who, at all events, is not Melito, but, according to several indications, was a writer in Syria or its vicinity, and the Emperor Antoninus addressed by him is probably Caracalla, so that the date of the composition must be at the beginning of the third century. See Jacobi, Deutsche Zeitschrift f. chr. Wissenschaft, &c. 1856. No. 14. On Melito in general, see Piper, Stud. u. Krit. 1838. Part I. [JACOBI.]