. with true and abiding intimacy, open not to a few accomplished spirits, but to who come to God through Christ.
With this the Christian solution is complete. The problem, constituted by antagonism of the human will to the divine, is solved at length.
2. CHRISTIANITY AND THE GREEK DUALISM. — Greek Philosophy, as we have seen in the foregoing sketch, was haunted by a dualism which it sought in vain to overcome. The secret of the failure Tay in not conceiving the dualism profoundly enough. Christianity penetrates beneath the dualism of elements to antagonism of wills. The Greek
roblem lies within the Christian problem. The
hristian solution is at the same time also the solution of the Greek problem. This does not mean that Christianity is a philosophy, or has its truth bound up with any special metaphysical system. It is a Religion. But it is a religion which provides the unity sought for by Philo- sophy.* It contains, therefore, implicitly the answer to the question raised by Philosophy.
(i.) The speculative problem. The Greek mind presupposed the irreconcilability of form and
matter. The utmost effort in the direction of reconciliation was that made by Neoplatonism, the filling up of the gulf by a series of emanations. The Christian teachers, surveying the long toil of the Greeks after wisdom, said in effect, ‘The ultimate dualism is not that of form and matter; it is that of the divine and human wills. What hinders man from reaching God is not his material environment, but his sin. Christ has taken away the sin of man. The Incarnate Christ may be reached by any human soul, immediately, at a step, a touch, a look. And when Christ is reached, God is reached,’ They found, however, that the Greek mind was hag-ridden by phrases and formule, Pleroma, Logos, and what not, all implying the impossibility of getting to God except by a clumsy machinery of emanations. They therefore boldly adopted this nomenclature and baptized it into Christ.
What was supposed to be done by emanations, etc., and never really was done, has been done by Christ. He that hath seen Him hath seen the Father. Do they speak of the Pleroma? He isthe Pleroma (so in Colossians). Do they speak of the Logos? Heis the Logos(so in the Fourth Gospel). These Greek philosophic terms do not indicate that the Christian leaders who use them are sitting at the feet of Greek metaphysicians. The NT con- veys a thought which had another origin than the speculations of a Philo; but, entering the Greek world at the time it did, it uses the terms which expressed the endeavour of the Greek mind,
* The reference in Col 28 is not to be regarded as a con- demnation by the apostle of Philosophy in itself. It has in view a definite form of teaching, easily recognizable by the first readers of the Epistle, though affording matter of inquiry and discussion in later times. This teaching was probably of a theosophic Jewish Christian character, not without relation, as Lightfoot and others have shown, to the Gnostic Judaism of the Essenes (see art. Conosstans). Bengel’s remark is appo- site. ‘ Philosophia in se est medium quiddam : sed tamen facilior abusus ad fraudem, in ea presertim philosophia Judaica,
quam tum jactabant et puritati fidei attemverare conabantur’ (Gnomon N.T. in loc.).
PHILOSOPHY
to carry the truth which the Greek mind despaired of reaching. In other words, Christianity, not by emanations or by hypostatized abstractions, but by the living Christ, lifts men to a central stand- point, and enables them to look out on experience as a unity, and to see even in its most material elements no remote antithesis to God, but the manifestation of His mind, the instrument of His purpose. God is self-revealing Spirit. The uni- verse is spiritual to its core. Christ has abolished dualism. Christianity, it cannot be too much insisted on, is not a phuosop hy but it is the inspiration and the goal of all philosophy.
(li.) The practical problem. The Greek dualism haunts Greek ethic, and sets Reason and Sense in eternal opposition. The senses, seated in man’s material frame, form the great hindrance to virtue. Greek ethic, accordingly, resolves itself very much into various plans for the disposal of the sensual ele- ment in man’s nature. Neoplatonism preaches the elimination of sense by an ascetic discipline, which shall gradually set the spiritual nature of man free from all perturbation y the senses. Stoicism
roclaims the dominion of reason over the passions,
an is to be a despot in the domain of his nature, crushing every uprising of sense with the proud might of reason. Aristotelianism, breathing the classic spirit of Hellenism, teaches that reason is to use sense as an artist uses the material with which he works, and by means of which he elabor- ates an artistic product.
Tracing evil to the senses as a given element in man’s constitution, Greek ethie never deepens toward conviction of sin, has no need or room for redemption, and remains always proud and self- sufficient. Christianity by a deeper analysis traces evil, not to sense as an element in man’s constitu- tion, but to will, z.e. to the man himself in revolt. from God. It therefore accumulates upon man responsibility for moral evil, and deeply humbles him before God. Christian morality, accordingly has the note of humility and contrition which is absent from Greek ethic. It also exalts man, and holds out to him hope of an attainment far higher than was possible under Greek ethic. Let his will be yielded to God and made one with the divine will. He is then at once placed in a position which is central and supreme. His whole nature, includ- ing his material frame, is now a domain wherein the will of God is being progressively realized. The painful and precarious treatment of sense as an alien element is replaced by a process ie which every element in man’s complex nature is brought into harmony. This process has its human side, requiring strength of will and strenuousness of purpose. It is conducted, however, in the might of a divine energy, and its product, the Christian character, is not a manufactured article in which man may pride himself, but a creation, the work of the Divine Spirit operating immediately upon the surrendered spirit of man.