RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Athanasius Athenagoras
systems— Mohammedanism, Judaism, Christianity
itself been able to eliminate " practical atheism "
from among their adherents. It is The Possi- equally idle to deny the possibility of bility of positive Atheism in its wider sense, in Atheism, the face of the great part which has been played in the world by the various forms of Pantheism, which not only underlies whole systems of religion but is continually invading with its leaven the most austere and complete systems of Theism. It is only in its narrowest sense, in which it is the denial of all that is called God or that is worshiped, that the possibility of Atheism can be brought into question, and then only when we regard it, not in its outward expression, but in the most intimate convictions of the heart. No one can doubt that portentous systems of reasoned Atheism have nourished in the bosom of the most advanced culture. As little can it be denied that, among the backward races, a very low order of religious conception may sometimes be discovered. It may well be contended, however, that even the most thoroughly compacted system of atheistic thought only overlies and conceals an instinctive and indestructible " sense of the divine," just as the most elaborated system of subjective idealism only insecurely covers up an ineradicable realism; and that it is this innate " sense of the divine " which we see struggling in the conceptions of low savages to express itself in the inadequate forms which alone a low stage of culture can provide for it. If this is all that is meant, Atheism is, no doubt, a condition impossible to man. Man differs from the lower creations, not in being less dependent than they, but in being conscious of his dependence and responsibility; and this consciousness involves in it a sense of somewhat, or better, some one, to which he is thus related. The explication of this instinctive perception into an adequate conception is a different matter; and in this explication is wrapped up the whole development of the idea of God. But escape from the apprehension of a being on whom we are dependent and to whom we are responsible is no more possible than escape from the world in which we live. God is part of our environment.
The history of reasoned Atheism is as old as the history of thought. There can be no right thinking unless there be thinking, and it is incident to thinking among such creatures as men History of that some may think awry. In all Atheism, ages, accordingly, the declaration has found its verification that those who have not liked to retain God in their knowledge he has given over to a reprobate mind. India and China both early gave birth to gigantic atheistic systems. The materialism of classical antiquity found its expression especially in the Atomists — Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius. The unbelief of the eighteenth century ran to seed in the French Encyclopedists— De la Mettrie, D'Holbach, Diderot, Lalande — and embodied itself in that Systeme de la Nature which Voltaire called the Bible of Atheism. In the nineteenth century the older materialism strengthened itself by alliance, on the one hand, with advancing scientific theory, and, on the
other, with the increasing social unrest; and Atheism found expression through a series of great systems— Positivism, Secularism, Pessimism, Socialism. The doctrine of Evolution (q.v.), which was given scientific standing by Darwin's Origin of Species (1859), became almost at once the prime support and stay of the atheistic propaganda. In every department of thought " evolution " is supposed to account for everything, while itself needing no accounting for. Men as widely unlike in everything else as Feuerbach, Strauss, Flourens, Czolbe, Duehring, Vogt, Buechner, Moleschott, Mailander, Haeckel, Nietzsche, have united in a common proclamation of dogmatic Atheism; and probably in no period since the advent of Christianity has positive Atheism been proclaimed with more confidence or accepted more widely.
Benjamin B. Warfield.
Bibliography: R. Flint, Antitheistic Theories, Edinburgh, 1880 (gives literature in Appendix 4); J. Beattie, Evidences of the Christian Religion, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1786 (contains a bibliography); J. Buchanan, Faith in God and Modern Atheism Compared, Edinburgh, 1855; Modern Atheism under its Forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism; Development and 1\ atural Laws, Boston, 1856; Paul Janet, Le Materialisme contemporain, Paris, 1864; Fe"lix Dupanloup, L'Atheisme et le peril social, Paris, 1866; E. Meric, Morale et atheisme contemporaine, Paris, 1875; J. S. Blackie, Natural History of Atheism, London, 1877 (keen and discriminating); J. Cairns, Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, London, 1881; E. Naville, Le Pere Celeste, Geneva, 1865, Eng. transl., Modern Atheism or the Heavenly Father, London, 1882 (philosophical); F. W. Hedge, Atheism in Philosophy, Boston, 1884; W. H. Mailock, Atheism and the Value of Life, London, 1884; H. H. Moore, Anatomy of Atheism in the Light of the Laws of Nature, Boston, 1890; A. Egger, Der Atheismus, Einsiedeln, 1901 (evangelical); F. le Dantec, L' Atheisme, Paris, 1906.
ATHENAGORAS, ath"e-nag'o-ras: Reputed author of two Greek treatises of the time of the Antonines, one on the resurrection, the other an apology for the Christians. He is entirely unknown to the tradition of the Church. Eusebius, Jerome, and their successors are silent, and, as the survey which Eusebius gives of the apologetic literature of the second century is very complete, his silence could not fail to attract attention. Very early the existence of an apologist of the name was doubted and the work was ascribed to Justin (cf. Baronius, Annates, ii, ad an. 179, chap, xxxix). This supposition, however, is from internal reasons untenable. The first testimony, and the only one from the third century, to the existence of the apology and the name of its author, is a quotation by Methodius, found (1) in the ancient Bulgarian translation (ed. Bonwetsch, i, 293); (2) in Epiphanius, Hcer., lxiv, 20, 21; (3) in Photius, Bibl. cod. 234 (cf. Athenagoras, Supplicatio, xxiv, p. 27 B). Certain notices by an unknown scribe (Cod. Barocc. 142, fol. 216) quoting from the " Christian History " of Philippus Sidetes (early in the fifth century) state that Athenagoras was an Athenian by birth, and first director of the catechetical school of Alexandria; he lived in the time of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius; like Celsus, he was occupied with searching the Scriptures for arguments against Christianity, when he was suddenly converted. Most of these notices however, are palpably erroneous. Yet, in spite ot the entire absence of tradition and the close resem-
Athens Atonement