Note (return) — Chapter XIV

This function of ancient philosophy is distinctly recognized by many of the greatest of the Fathers, as Justin, Clement, Origen, Augustine, and Theodoret. Justin Martyr believed that a ray of the Divine Logos shone on the mind of the heathen, and that the human soul instinctively turned towards God as the plant turns towards the sun. "Every race of men participated in the Word. And they who lived with the Word were Christians, even if they were held to be godless; as, for example, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and those like them." 861 Clement taught that "philosophy, before the coming of the Lord, was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness; and now it proved useful for godliness, being a sort of preliminary discipline for those who reap the fruits of faith through demonstration.... Perhaps we may say that it was given to the Greeks with this special object, for it brought the Greek nation to Christ as the Law brought the Hebrews." 862 "Philosophy was given as a peculiar testament to the Greeks, as forming the basis of the Christian philosophy." 863 Referring to the words of Paul, Origen says, the truths which philosophers taught were from God, for "God manifested these to them, and all things that have been nobly said." 864 And Augustine, whilst deprecating the extravagant claims made for the great Gentile teachers, allows "that some of them made great discoveries, so far as they received help from heaven; whilst they erred as far as they were hindered by human frailty." 865 They had, as he elsewhere observes, "a distant vision of the truth, and learnt, from the teaching of nature, what prophets learnt from the spirit." 866 In addressing the Greeks, Theodoret says, "Obey your own philosophers; let them be your initiators; for they announced beforehand our doctrines." He held that "in the depths of human nature there are characters inscribed by the hand of God." And that "if the race of Abraham received the divine law, and the gift of prophecy, the God of the universe led other nations to piety by natural revelation, and the spectacle of nature." 867