(3) According to the apostles, ignorance could never be AvhoUy eliminated from Christian life, Avhile the circle of knoAvledge must be constantly enlarged. The apostles Avere never content to leave even the humblest Christians in a state of ignorance, and one indication of this desire may be found in the phrase that recurs so often in the Epistles of St. Paul : ' I Avould not have you to be ignorant, brethren' (Ro V^ ll-^, 1 Co 10^ 12\ 2 Co 1**, 1 Th 4^^). But the apostles acknoAvledged that ignorance AA'as found even in the most mature Chris- tian experience. Thus they taught that there had been revealed to all Christians the great end of their life, viz. the perfecting of salvation, but they indicated that there Avas constantly shoAvn a real ignorance of Avhat was needed at any particular crisis in life. Hence Christians kneAv not Avhat to pray for as they should at particular moments (Ro 8-'^), but in this ignorance the Holy Spirit helped Avithin the heart by unutterable groanings. Still further, Christian experience Avas limited by its OAvn capacity in face of the boundlessness of the Divine attributes. The apostles proclaimed that the love of God Avas made knoAvn pre-eminently in the life and death of Christ, but there Avere depths in God's love that could never be fathomed by human knoAvledge. Christians kncAV that love, but even at the end they had to confess their ignorance, for it passed knowledge (Eph 3^^). The apostles had no hesitancy in believing in a real knowledge of God, but they declared that a com- plete or exhaustive knowledge lay beyond even the most mature Christian experience. The only thorough Agnosticism spoken of by the apostles was such as certain Corinthians Avere in danger of, according to St. Paul, and Avas associated Avith their low ethics, their heathen intimacies, and their disbelief in the Resurrection. These character- istics AA'ere liable to produce a persistent ignorance of God (dyvioa-ia deov, 1 Co IS^-") which Avas shared with the Avorst of the heathen and from Avhich they could be saved only by being aroused from the stupor of pride and sensualism.
D. Macrae Tod. ILLUMINATED.— See Enlightenmext.
ILLTRICUM ('IXXv/ji/coj').— This Avas the name of a Roman province bounded on the W. by the Adriatic, and extending from Pannonia on the N.
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to Macedonia on the S. Though so near to Italy, it was for long comparatively unknown. Strabo writing about A.D. 20 says : ' Illyria was formerly neglected, through ignorance perhaps of its fertility ; but it was principally avoided on account of the savage manners of the inhabitants, and their piratical habits' (VII. v. 11). It was subjugated bv Tiberius in A.D. 9. When St. Paul contem- plated a journey by Rome to Spain, he justilied his desire for fresh fields by saying that from Jerusalem and round unto Illyricum {Kai kvkXu fi.^XP'' '■o'^ 'IXKvpiKov) he had fully preached the gospel of Christ (Ro 15'9).
Meyer, Gifford, and others (in toco) explain KvicAuas the region round Jerusalem, i.e. Judaea, Syria and Arabia. 'But in order to bear this sense the word would require the article. The meaning is rather that all the countries between Jerusalem and Illyricum — Syria, Cilicia, Galatia, Asia, Macedonia, Achaia — forming a rough arc of a circle, have been evangelized by the Apostle.
The words * unto Illyricum ' do not necessarily imply that he had preached within this province. He may be indicating the exterior rather than the interior limit. In his third journey he revisited Macedonia, and ' having made a missionary pro- gress through those parts ' (dieXOihv 5^ to. fj-ep-q iKeiva) he came to Greece (Ac 20^). 'Those parts' might include the south of Illyricum, but probably meant no more than the west of Macedonia. Strabo (VII. vii. 4), describing the Via Egnatia, which began at Dyrrachium ( the modern Durazzo), notes that it traverses a part of Illyria before it enters Macedonia, and that ' on the left are the lUyrian mountains.'
' St. Paul would have followed this road as far as Thessalonica, and if pointing Westward he had asked the names of the moun- tain region and of the peoples inhabiting it, he would have been told that it was " Illyria." The term therefore is the one which would naturally occur to him as fitted to express the limits of his journey to the West ' (Sanday-Headlam, in loco).
Writing as a Roman citizen to Christians in Rome, St. Paul avoids the ordinary Greek 'IWvpls or 'IWvpia, and merely transliterates the Latin provincial term Illyricum. In the second half of the 1st cent, the name Dalmatia {q.v.), Avhich had formerly meant the S. part of the province of Illyricum, began to be e.-ctended to the whole. For a time Illyricum and Dalmatia were con- vertible terms. Pliny has both ; Suetonius marks the change from the one to the other ; and from the Flavian period onward the term regularly used is Dalmatia. St. Paul, keeping pace with Roman usages, employs the new provincial name in a part of 2 Tim. which is generally accepted as genuine
St. Jerome and Diocletian were Illyrians. The region now comprises Bosnia, Herzegovina, Monte- negro, and N. Albania, and is as wild and un- settled as ever.
•The eastern coast of the Adriatic is one of those ill-fated portions of the earth which, though placed in immediate contact with civilization, have remained perpetually barbarian' (T. Arnold, Hist, of Rome, 183S-43, i. 492).