*See, eg., the account given of early Tarsian history and topography by Athenodorus, the greatest philosopher and politician whom the city produced, quoted by Stephanus Byz. s.v. “Anchiale’; also pseudo-Plutarch, de Fluviis, ete. (Ex. positor, Dec. 1901, p. 412),
In the second place, the fibre in the popular philosophic speculation of the later Greek time (which alone was presented to the members of the Pauline Churches) was poor and its results dis- appointing. There came from the study no real advance in knowledge, but only frivolous argu- mentation and ‘questionings’ (1 Ti 1*). ‘
In the third place, the Greek Sophia was entirely devoid of power over the will and heart of man- kind. It remained purely theoretical and abstract : it could do nothing for men; it was the property of a few, and had no effect, or a miserably inade- quate effect, on the life and character even of those few. Where it did to some degree touch the heart and affect the life of some rare individual, it pro- duced a philosophic and affected prig rather than a true man; and in the case of some of its most eloquent exponents, such as Seneca, there was a woeful contrast in spirit between their words and their life. But the essential feature in St. Paul’s teaching was that he propounded a doctrine of power, not of theory. That is what he lays special stress upon ; and of that he found not a trace in the Sophia of the time. The Greek philosophers had sometimes observed that the unwritten laws which rested on religion had more influence on the will and conduct of men than the written laws of the State (see above, B, § II); but they had not carried out this observation to a practical result.
In this last observation lies the essence of the whole matter. The best and the most character- istic Hellenic thought was bound inevitably to regard the higher life, at which the good man must aim, not as the striving after an ideal above and beyond human nature, but as the proper and natural development of his human nature. There was in Hellenic thought no real conception of sin. There could not be such a conception, for it is of the essence of Hellenism to be perfectly content with the human nature, to rejoice in it, to find in it the Divine perfection. ‘The counsel which Hellenic philosophy gave to man, which it must give so long as it continued true to the Hellenic spirit, was, ‘Be yourself: do not fall short of your true and perfect development.’ Such an idea as rising above oneself, trampling one’s nature under foot as sinful, striving after the Divine nature, is essentially anti-Hellenic, and it is only rarely that any faint traces of it can be found even in those Hellenic philosophers who have been most affected by foreign thought. But it was in this revolt from the yoke of sin, in this intense eager- ness after the Divine, that St. Paul found the motive power to drive men on.
But, though St. Paul saw so clearly and resented so strongly the faults of the Greek Sophia, it would be wrong to infer (as has been too often done) that he was either ignorant of or uninfluenced byit. It is a general fact that the great creative minds in philosophy have been more alive to the faults of their predecessors than to their excellences, and have given larger space and more emphasis in their writings to criticism of preceding philosophers than to expression of indebtedness to them. They were ee not fully conscious of their obligation,
ut it was very real. So it has been with St. Paul. He owed much to the Greek philosophy and thought, gained partly in formal education at Tarsus, partly by assimilation of the knowledge which floated on the surface of a more or less educated society and became insensibly the property of all its members. On this see the excellent papers by E. Curtius on ‘Paulus in Athen,’ and Canon E. Hicks, ‘St. Paul and Hellenism,’ in Stwdia Biblica, iv. ; and on his probable debt (in common with Seneca) to the philosophy of Athenodorus, which must have been the staple of education and educated conversation at Tarsus in St. Paul’s childhood, the present
RELIGION OF GREECE
RELIGION OF GREECE 151
See
writer’s remarks in S¢. Paul the Traveller, p. 300 ff., may be consulted.
Further, while St. Paul often harshly criticises the current Sophia in his letters to ‘his young Churches, he was conscious that he was a debtor both to the educated Hellenes and to the un- educated non-Hellenes, both to the philosophically trained and to those who had no such training (Ro 14). And he would not have his Churches lose anything of the excellences of the Greek spirit. His extreme fondness for the word charis can hardly be quite separated in his mind, and could not possibly be separated in the minds of his numerous Hellenic hearers, from the Greek charis, the grace and charm which is of the essence of Hellenism. And he sums up in three Greek words his counsel to the Colossians and the Asians generally, when he urged them to ‘make their market to the full of the opportunity which their situation offered them’ (Col 4°, Eph weet. Pht):
III. DEGRADATION OF THE HELLENIC RELIGION. —(1) Foreign influence.—In Greece as in Anatolia (see A, § VII (4), above), the history of religion after a certain period of progress and elevation was a continuous process of deterioration. The changes in religion were for the most part forced on by external causes, viz. by the pressure of foreign worships ; and their influence was almost wholly bad. This character resulted partly from the way in which the influence reached the Greek races and cities (see (3), below), and partly from deeper causes which cannot be described in this short sketch (though they have been briefly indicated in A, § VIII (9), above): those deeper causes combined to destroy that sensitiveness to the Divine nature, and that desire to hear and readiness to obey the Divine voice, which make for progress and eleva- tion in religious thought.