An Introduction to Christian Philosophy

by William G. Most
Copyright (c) 1994 William G. Most

Chapter I - Prehistoric Origins of Rational Thought


I- Introduction

1. Possibility of Christian Philosophy: The problem arises from this: 
Philosophy and Theology both deal with much the same questions, the basic 
questions about God, life, existence. But the methods they use are 
radically different. 

Philosophy uses solely reason. Authority should not be used. It is 
important for methodological reasons to keep the lines clear and sharp. 
Historically, one great root of the impasse on the question of human 
interaction with grace comes from an abuse of method, i. e, trying to use 
metaphysics to solve a problem which involves God's free decisions. 
Metaphysics cannot find an answer where freedom is a factor. It finds only 
what is necessarily true. 

Theology, in contrast, starts with the sources of revelation. For a 
Catholic, these are Scripture and Tradition. There was much confusion and 
debate at Vatican II over saying one or two sources of revelation. A desire 
to help ecumenism is probably the reason for straining. Vatican II, DV 9 
said: "Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture are closely connected and 
related. For both, flowing from the same divine source, as it were coalesce 
into one, and tend to the same goal." But it admits: "The Church gets its 
certitude on all revealed things not by Scripture alone. Hence both are to 
be venerated and received with equal affection, devotion and reverence." 
And again in § 10: "The task of authoritatively interpreting the word of 
God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the 
living Magisterium of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name 
of Jesus Christ."

But not all things in Scripture are obvious in meaning. Many Protestants 
try to claim that, but are refuted by the Yellow Pages of the phone book, 
listing numerous churches all claiming to know how to understand Scripture. 
When we meet something that is not obvious, the Protestant method is 
private judgment. The Catholic method is to follow the teaching of the 
Church, if there are some teachings on the point in question. Even if there 
is nothing direct, often there will be help from the analogy of faith, i.e. 
, the whole body of our teachings. Cf. DV § 12. Sadly, many today who call 
themselves Catholics are following the Protestant method. Some have even 
been taught to do that by so-called Catholic schools. (Lutherans may 
object: "But we must follow our creeds, such as the Augsburg Confession". 
But the reply is: If a Lutheran went to his pastor and said, "I do not 
believe this and this" in the Augsburg Confession, he would not be told: 
"You have a divinely imposed obligation to follow our church." No, the 
Pastor would say; "I guess you belong with some other denomination". 

We return to our starting question: Can there be a Christian or Catholic 
philosophy? Many say no, because of the difference in method, which is very 
distinct and sharp. If one wants to say yes, he would compare the case to 
that of a mathematics textbook. In the body of the book we find 
explanations and problems to work. We should work them on our own, with 
normal mathematical method. But after that, many books in the back have the 
answers to the problems. So we look, and see if our answer is right. If 
not, we recheck our process, and see where we went off. 

Similarly, the teachings of the Church are the back of the book for a 
philosopher. 

2. The value of philosophy in deeper penetration into theology:

To seek a deeper penetration into the truths that theology gives us, we can 
get much help from philosophy. The Fathers knew this, and tried to use it. 
They usually relied on Plato, for he had so many things in common with 
Christianity, as we will see later in detail. 

The precise way in which philosophy can be helpful can be seen from 
considering correct theological method. 

1)We begin by picking up the things that are explicit in the sources of 
revelation, with the help of the Church, where the Church has given some 
help at least indirectly. It is of great importance to completely exhaust 
the resources of this step before moving onto the next step, for whatever 
problem we are studying. 

2)We then pick up the things that are implicit in the sources of 
revelation. There are several steps in this process: 

a)First we pick up the implications that are easily seen, without the need 
of as it were, any tool to dig them out. Again, we exhaust the resources of 
this step before moving on.  

b) We then use a process that is equivalent to a syllogism, even if we may 
not really put things into syllogistic form. (In a syllogism we have three 
lines: two premises, and a conclusion, for example: All men are mortal - 
but John is a man - therefore John is mortal. In this phase our syllogism 
will take both premises from the sources of revelation. By comparing them, 
we reach a third truth. - Even if we do not formally put our reasoning in 
the pattern of a syllogism, we have the equivalent, that is, we use an 
enthymeme , a compressed pattern in which we leave out one of the three 
lines of a syllogism, and expect the listener to understand the omitted 
part, e.g., "John is a man, so he must be mortal". We leave out the line: 
"All men are mortal", but it is understood. It is easier for error - or 
deception -to creep in in this loose form. 

c) We use a form in which one premise is from the sources of revelation, 
but the other is from some other source. That other source often will be 
philosophy. This is what is strictly called theological speculation. 
Vatican II in Optatam totius, the Decree on the formation of priests in 
seminaries, explicitly said that in theological speculation the thought of 
St. Thomas Aquinas should be used: §§ 15, 16. Sadly this is not always 
done. 

d) Finally we use equivalents to syllogisms in which neither premise is 
from the sources of revelation. At this point, if the conclusion is 
supported by or fits in with the conclusions we have from revelation, we 
are still in theology - otherwise, we have crossed the line into pure 
philosophical speculation. 

3. A good philosophy can also help to protect the deposit of faith, that 
is, the whole body of truths given to us from the beginning. And since it 
gives deeper penetration, it can be helpful spiritually, e. g, 
philosophical development shows how powerfully true are the words of St. 
Paul in Phil 2. 13 and 2 Cor 3. 5 about our total dependence on God, even 
for a good thought, even that we cannot make a free act of will without His 
movement. 

4. The widespread atheism today needs the help of philosophy to show the 
existence of God by reason alone. However some who say they do not believe, 
really do believe, without realizing it, as we shall see in our treatment 
of St. Justin the Martyr. 

5. Apologetics: Before we can have faith, logically we must show by reason 
and research that faith is reasonable. This is the work of apologetics. In 
it we begin with the Gospels, but do not look upon them as sacred or 
inspired - that is still to be proved. We look on them only as ancient 
documents. We put them through various tests that are usually given other 
ancient works, and reach the conclusion that we can get from them a few 
simple facts about Jesus, that is facts, not entwined with an ancient 
culture, and also of such a nature that they can be directly perceived by 
an onlooker without room for bias, e.g. , if a leper stands before Jesus 
and asks to be cured and Jesus says: "I will it. Be healed:. -- There is no 
room for bias in that report. Someone could make up out of nothing such an 
account - but there is no room for distortion, and the concern of the first 
Christians for their own eternity, which depended on facts, would preclude 
that possibility. then we look for an find six such simple facts: There was 
a man called Jesus - He claimed He was sent from God as a sort of messenger 
- He did enough to prove this by miracles worked in contexts in which there 
is a tie between the miracle and the claim - He had an inner circle to whom 
He spoke more and told them to continue His work, His teaching. He promised 
God would protect that teaching: "He who hears you hears me." Then we have 
before us a group or church commissioned to teach by a messenger from God, 
promised God's protection on their teaching. Then we not only 
intellectually may but should believe that teaching, independently of the 
quality of those who hold the commission. Then that group or church can 
tell us many things: the messenger is divine, there is a Pope and what he 
can do, the ancient documents are inspired. There is no other way to 
determine which documents are inspired, are part of Scripture. Protestants 
lack this, and so, logically should not use Scripture. 

This process also amounts to a bypass around the worries of critics, who 
question the credibility of various items in the Gospels. We need only the 
six very simple things, and then the Church can assure us of whatever else 
we need to know. 

6. Seeming clashes of truths: If we follow this method well, we will at 
times encounter two conclusions that seem to clash, to contradict each 
other. At this point we must imitate the Fathers of the Church. We should 
of course begin by rechecking our work, but if we still have the seeming 
clash, then we must not force either conclusion to fit with the other. 
Rather, we hold to both, hoping that sometime someone may find how to 
reconcile them. 	

For example, the Fathers wrestled long and hard with two Scriptural texts: 
Luke 2. 52 which says Jesus returned to Nazareth and advanced in wisdom and 
age. This could imply that previously He was deficient or less full in 
wisdom. We find here that many Fathers give us two sets of statements: in 
the one set, they seem to affirm ignorance, in the other, to deny it. They 
knew both kinds of statements must be true, did not know how to reconcile 
them, until St. Athanasius discovered a distinction - the usual refuge in 
difficult matters. He saw that we distinguish between actual growth in 
wisdom, and growth in manifestation of what was always there. For example, 
if Jesus at age 3 had shown His marvelous wisdom, coming from the fact that 
His human soul saw the vision of God, it would have seemed very strange. 
Therefore, He let His wisdom appear gradually, in accordance with His 
earthly age. For details, see Wm. G. Most, The Consciousness of Christ, 
chapter 6. The Fathers had a similar experience with Mark 13. 32, in which 
Jesus Himself seems to say He did not know the day of the end. Pope Gregory 
the Great and Eulogius solved this problem. Gregory said that He knew the 
day in His humanity, but not from His humanity. 

There is another case of this procedure in the way the Fathers handled the 
teaching that there is no salvation outside the Church. Cf. Wm. G. Most, 
Our Father's Plan, appendix. 

7. Divine Brinkmanship. God has made two commitments: first, He gave us 
free will; second, He promised to protect the teaching of the Church. At 
times, these go in opposite directions, and so He needs to draw a tight 
line, giving each its due, but no more than that. As a result , at times we 
may at least suspect that the author of an official text had more in his 
mind than what he set down on paper. In such a case, only what is written 
down is protected,  with each word being taken in the sense in which it was 
used in the day of composition. For example, it is likely that Pope Pius 
IX, and probably also Gregory XVI and perhaps Leo XIII, had more stringent 
ideas in mind than what they set down on the obligation of the state to 
suppress false doctrines. Yet only what they really wrote is protected. 

8. Catechetical approach: It is good to present everything in the framework 
of God's dealings with our race, that is, salvation history. This is a 
catechetical approach. 


II -The Thought and Religion of Earliest Mankind

Anthropology studies both the primitive people who are still alive today, 
or for whom we have records made by explorers and missionaries, and the 
while race when it was at a primitive state. 

Wilhelm Schmidt (1868-1954), in his Der Ursprung der Gottesidee, 12 
volumes, Münster, 1912-54, presented evidence from a study of various 
primitives, at the lowest level of material culture, such as those of 
Tierra del Fuego in South America, the Negrillos of Rwanda in Africa, and 
the Andaman Islanders in the Indian Ocean. The 1990 printing of 
Encyclopedia Britannica, 26, p. 554 says Schmidt and his collaborators, 
"saw in the high gods, for whose cultural existence they produced ample 
evidence from a wide variety of unconnected societies, a sign of a 
primordial monotheistic revelation that later became overlaid with other 
elements... . Their interpretation is controversial, but at least [Andrew] 
Lang [1844-1912] and Schmidt produced grounds for rejecting the earlier 
rather naive theory of evolutionism. Modern scholars do not, on the whole, 
accept Schmidt's scheme.... it is a very long jump from the premise that 
primitive tribes have high gods to the conclusion that the earliest men 
were monotheists."

What seems to be rejected is the extrapolation from finding that many low 
level primitives (hunting and fishing stage) are monotheists to the 
conclusion that the same was true of the whole human race at a similarly 
low level of culture. 

However, the evidence for many such tribes in historical times still 
stands. The case seems similar with the Greeks and Romans, both of whom 
came from the Indoeuropeans. In those days when people traveled, they often 
tried to see if some of the gods they found in other lands were really the 
same as their own gods. Herodotus did much of this (in 2. 50 he says that 
almost all the divine figures came to Greece from Egypt). Many of these 
attempts were strained, and without real foundation. But when the Greeks 
and Romans got to know each other, they found they had some myths and 
divinities in common, even though with different names. We know that the 
names for the chief God, Jupiter and Zeus (possessive case: Dios) are 
linguistically the same, both going back to Indoeuropean dyaus-p[schwa]ter. 
(The computer does not have a character for schwa, which is an obscure 
vowel, like the a on the end of sofa ). The IE word means "Sky Father".  

Really if one does not suppose that it is highly likely that conditions for 
the whole race at the same level of material culture as known primitives 
(hunter-gatherers) would be quite similar, there is no solid way to 
establish what the race was like. It is far better than the mere armchair 
imaginings, of an evolutionistic type that others have used. So the 
extrapolation proposed by Schmidt was and is quite reasonable. Actually 
some scholars today in archaeology do make precisely such an extrapolation. 
In a recent work, The Adventure of Archaeology, by Brian M. Fagan, 
published by the National Geographic Society in 1989, on pp. 344-46 we 
find: "Experimentation in archaeology is not limited to state-of-the-art 
technology. 'New archaeologists' seek innovative ways to study living 
societies in order to construct models that describe the behavior of past 
ones. Jeremy Sabloff of the University of New Mexico said, ' We've gone 
beyond filling up museums with art objects. The objects are not an end in 
themselves but a means to inform us about the social and economic behavior 
of ancient people. ' In the 1970s Lewis R. Binford of the University of New 
Mexico observed Alaska's Nunamiut Eskimos, a modern hunter-gatherer 
society. Binford watched the Eskimos set up hunting camps and saw how they 
hunted, killed, butchered, and ate animals. His insights gave him a fuller 
understanding of how ancient hunter-gatherers chose their campsites, and 
helped him analyze the animal bones found at such sites."

Further, as the Britannica says, at least Schmidt blocked the silly 
evolutionistic view that primitive man must have been stupid, that one day 
he came out of his cave, saw lightning and heard thunder, thought they were 
gods. There never was a shred of evidence for such a view. It was just 
imagination built on the assumption that everything has evolved. 

That evolutionistic notion was a further projection from belief in the 
evolution of the human body from primates. Science News, Research Reports 
of November 21, 1980, pp. 883-87 reports on a meeting of 160 of the world's 
top paleontologists, anatomists, evolutionary geneticists, and 
developmental biologists held at the Field Museum in Chicago. The majority 
of those scientists concluded that Darwin was wrong - not in those words, 
but they rejected Darwin's idea that there were many intermediate forms 
between, for example, fish and birds. They recognized that the fossil 
record does not provide even one clear case of such forms. This did not 
lead them to reject evolution itself. No, they opted for what they called 
"punctuated equilibria", the idea that a species might stay the same for 
millions of years, and then by a fluke, leap up to something much higher, 
in the same line. If any evidence for the view was offered at the meeting, 
Science does not mention it. Nor does the report in Newsweek, of November 
3, 190, pp. 95-96. They might perhaps point to the high vertical columns 
exposed in the Grand Canyon, in which low forms, such as Trilobites, appear 
at the bottom, and higher and higher forms as one goes up. But there is no 
evidence that the higher came from the lower by a fluke or leap. Further it 
is admitted that the Grand Canyon was once a sea bottom: naturally the 
lower things would be found farther down. 

The related theory of polygenism has had an inconclusive but impressive 
blow recently. Allan Wilson of the University of California at Berkeley 
(Science News, August 13, 1983, p. 101) from a study of mitochondria 
worldwide, concluded that all existing humans came from one mother who 
lived 350,000 years ago. At first Wilson received little acceptance, but 
now, as Newsweek of Jan 21, 1988 reports, his view is getting widespread 
acceptance, except that the age of the mother is now put at 200,000 years 
ago. As we said, this does not conclusively disprove polygenism - for there 
could have been, for example, 6 original pairs,  but the lines from all but 
one died out. 

Also, history does show in many instances that when a people has high 
material affluence, religion tends to suffer. The U. S and Japan are 
examples today.

Is sacrifice universal among primitives? Very widespread, but not entirely 
universal. Further, the ideas behind sacrifice vary widely. For example, in 
Mesopotamia sacrifice was food for the gods. Thus in the Epic of Gilgamesh, 
after the Babylonian Noah, Utnapishtim, came out of his ark and offered 
sacrifice, the gods - who had been cowering in fear of the flood on the 
battlements of heaven - came down and swarmed "like flies" about the 
sacrifice. They had not had anything to eat for some time. Again, 
Aristophanes the Greek comic poet, in his The Birds, pictures the birds 
threatening to cut of the supply of sacrifices if the gods would not do 
what the birds wanted. 

Is belief in a Supreme Being universal? At least nearly so, but there are a 
few cases where it seems lacking, e.g. , among the Navahoes in the 
Southwest of the U. S. A.  Even in such cases, we must wonder if perhaps 
extensive alcoholism has blinded the people. St. Paul in Romans 1. 18-32 
describes the gradual descent into blindness, and says that atheists are 
inexcusable, for the existence of God is so obvious from creation. (More on 
seeming atheists in our section on St. Justin the Martyr). 

2. Human rationality and the beginning of human thought

Aristotle said, in Metaphysics 2. 1, that people began to work for wisdom 
when they began to wonder, first about obvious things, then on deeper 
things, and when they got enough leisure to do it. He is, of course, 
indulging in armchair method. Yet the thought is at least very plausible. 

However, at least most of the most primitive peoples - cf. remarks on 
Navahoes above - do seem to know a Supreme Being. The fact is so evident, 
that no one, without some kind of mental block, could fail to see it. 

Some primitive peoples have even held an idea of creation. One Egyptian 
creation myth says that Atum (meaning: totality) stood on the mud hillock 
that emerged from the primeval waters and named the parts of his body, and 
thus the gods came into being. This reflects a belief held long after the 
time of the most primitive cultures, that a word spoken by a person in 
authority produces what it says. 

Egyptian creation stories seldom mention the origin of man. Some say that 
Atum wept, and thus mankind came. This is a play on words: ramet means 
mankind, remiet means tears. 

3. Pantheism: Since there is so much deep disagreement among scholars about 
ancient pantheism, we will consider it separately with each of the major 
thinkers. 



Chapter II -The Greeks


I - The Presocratics

Preliminary Note: There were even some libraries found in ancient times. 
There was one in the Temple of Nabu at Nineveh at least since the time of 
Sargon II (721-05 BC). But the greatest was that of King Assurbanipal (668-
626? B. C. ), the last great king of Assyria, who sent scribes out to copy 
tablets, including works from the Sumerians and Akkadians. Nearly 30,000 
texts have been excavated. The King wrote: "I read the beautiful clay 
tablets from Sumer and the obscure Akkadian writing which is hard to 
master. I had my joy in the reading of inscriptions on stone from the time 
before the flood." (Cited from Jack Finegan, Light From the Ancient Past, 
Princeton, 1974, pp. 216-17). (There is a king list from Sumer, which gives 
8 kings before the flood, with a total reign of 241, 200 years: cf. 
Finegan, pp. 29-30, 36. To speak of the flood in Mesopotamia is remarkable, 
for they had annual floods). 

For long, no one could read cuneiform writing. But in 1835 military duties 
took Henry Rawlinson to the area near the rock of Bisotun (Behistun) in 
Kurdistan, a remote region of Persia. At 400 feet up there was an 
inscription by King Darius of Persia in Old Persian, Elamite, and 
Babylonian. With crude scaffolding he clambered all over the steep wall in 
visits over the next 12 years and copied nearly the entire inscription, 
which was about 1200 square feet. He began by deciphering the kings' names 
in the Old Persian text. Then he was able to construct an alphabet and 
translate sentences and paragraphs. But the Elamite and Babylonian Scripts 
seemed syllabic rather than alphabetic. He had to find more texts, and did 
so, and eventually learned to read cuneiform. 

Knowledge of Egyptian hieroglyphics was lost for 1400 years, until 
Champollion on Sept 14, 1822 read the name of Rameses II. The language 
itself had survived in Coptic, which was still spoken in the 19th century. 
Before that point, in August 1799 an artillery captain with the army of 
Napoleon found a stone at Rosetta, with text in 3 forms: Greek, Demotic, 
and Hieroglyphic. (Demotic was a cursive form of hieroglyphic, done first 
with brush on papyrus). It was a decree of Ptolemy V from 196 BC. In 1802 
Sylvestre de Sacy located the names of Ptolemy and Arisinoe in the demotic 
part, but could do not more. In 1814 Young, an English physicist worked on 
the hieroglyphic, and read Ptolmis. Champollion decided that the work of 
others before him showed the royal names had alphabetic character. By 
counting the signs compared with the Greek words, he found the signs were 
more numerous. Therefore not all were word signs. Champollion like Young 
had read one cartouche as Ptolmis. Now he got two more, which should be 
Ptolmis and Kliopatra. The names had 5 letters in common PTLOI. Five 
similar signs were found in the expected positions on the two cartouches. 

Thus he found PTOLMIS = 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. KLIOPADRAT (plus a determinative) had 
 signs = 8 4 6 3 1 9 10 11 9 2.

Champollion soon read 79 names, and drew up an alphabet. But all texts were 
from the Greek and Roman period. 

He then tried the more ancient Pharaonic names. He picked a cartouche (a 
frame, indicating a royalty) with three signs. The top sign was like a disk 
with a dot in the middle. He guessed it stood for Ra, the sun god. The 
second sign was something like a three pronged pitchfork with no handle, but 
some short spikes sticking out the top, almost as if continuing the lines of 
the tines. The third sign looked like two shepherd's crooks. He recalled 
that he had seen those signs before, standing for SS. He had seen the second 
sign at Rosetta in a position corresponding to Greek genethlia (birthday). 
So he guessed that second sign was not alphabetic, but was equivalent to 
Coptic MS, meaning "to be born." 

So, combining all three he read: ra -- ms -- ss  which meant Ra begets him, 
that is Ramses II. 

Now the system became clear. Some signs, like the first one, were for words 
(Ra), some like the second sign, were for syllables; others, like the third 
were for alphabetic single letters. 

The idea of writing was probably borrowed from Mesopotamia. Pictorial signs 
are found late in the predynastic period, that is, something recognizable 
as a symbol, but nothing like a connected sentence. Connected sense with a 
grammar is not found until 3rd or 4th dynasty. 

Greek Education: It was called Paideia, raising children. It included 
intellectual and cultural things, especially the seven liberal arts. There 
were few schools in Greece during the classic fifth century B. C. There 
were some traveling teachers called Sophists, who offered to teach anything 
for a price. Many of them claimed to be able to argue well on both sides of 
any question -hence the name Sophists, related to sophistry, dishonest 
argumentation. The root was sophia, wisdom. The art of oratory was highly 
prized, especially since one gave his own speeches in court in a lawsuit, 
which the Greeks seem to have enjoyed. 

Especially important is this fact: the sophists rejected the authority of 
existing institutions of teaching, and substituted the right of private 
judgment. So they based ethics on relativism. Protagoras said man is the 
measure of all things. This tended too to skepticism. Plato objected to the 
fact that they took pay for their teaching - he refused to do that. 

The relation of the Greek culture to religion is very different from ours. 
The whole culture was permeated with religion. One could not be a citizen 
without being part of the state religion, and in addition, born into it.  
They would say that an individual needs the help of the gods for his own 
requirements; but the state as state also needs their help. Hence the state 
as state must worship. So they would find incomprehensible the American 
notion of separation of Church and state. Vatican II rejected that, in its 
Declaration on Religious Liberty §1 :"It leaves untouched traditional 
Catholic teaching on the obligations of people and societies towards the 
one true Church."

The religion of Greece was of course polytheistic and largely formalism and 
externalism. There was an extensive disconnection of religion and morality. 
The gods were thought to enforce few things, chiefly, worship for 
themselves, doing one's duty to the state, to a guest in the house, to a 
suppliant who would come with proper ritual in the name of Zeus. Other 
matters the gods did not enforce, and in their own conduct acted as if no 
morality existed. So Zeus was believed to commit adultery often, would have 
done more had not his wife Hera been trailing him. She had no moral ideas 
either, was just a jealous wife. 

Yet in this second area of morals, which the gods did not enforce, the 
Greeks were not completely lawless. Athens in the 5th century B. C. even 
had a law against homosexual acts. Plato in his Republic taught that one 
should observe justice even if no man or god would catch him in violation. 

The Presocratic Philosophers themselves: They were all concerned with the 
world-stuff, that out of which everything is made. They are sometimes 
called physicists, but the name is misleading, for they did no experimental 
work - not having the means. 

There was a strong tendency to consider them atheists in their own day, 
e.g. , in the Apology of Plato we find that Anaximander was charged with 
atheism for thinking the sun was a red hot stone. 

There was science before the Greeks, e.g., in Babylonia there was 
astronomy; in Egypt, medicine and even a little surgery. But the other 
peoples tended to explain all by divine causality; the Greek "scientists" 
tended to seek purely natural explanations, leaving out the gods. That is 
why many thought them atheistic. Really, they should have said not either 
the gods or natural causes, but both God and the natural laws He has 
established. 

The Greek world picture had five chief components:

1)The sun goes around the earth: geocentrism. 

2)Many thought the world was flat. But Anaximander thought the earth was a 
cylinder suspended in space. And there are three stories, with the sky the 
upper, the earth the second, the netherworld below. 

3)This form of the universe always has been and always will be. Aristotle 
thought there were about 50 spheres in the sky, on which the various 
celestial bodies are fastened. These spheres always have been in motion, 
and always will be: Physics 8. 1. In Politics 2. 5 Aristotle said that 
almost everything has been found out, and in Politics 7. 9 he added that 
most things had been invented several times over in the course of ages, or 
rather, times without number. But they were lost in great disasters. Plato 
in Laws 3. 677 has a tradition of deluges and cataclysms recurring. 
Herodotus in 2. 142 says the Egyptian priests told him that in about 11, 
000 years the place of the rising of the sun had changed four times. 

4)The idea of recording history has ben relatively recent in the history of 
mankind. The use of writing to make records goes back no farther than about 
4000 B. C. 

5)The above really imply the eternity of matter. They did not stop to ask 
what caused its existence, and so on the whole did not reach a notion of 
creation, even though the principles of Aristotle really require creation. 

The Milesians: 

a)Thales: From Miletus, early 6th century. Miletus was a great sea power, 
captains were adventurous. Much intellectual ferment on the west coast of 
Asia Minor, more than in the western section of Greece. Aristotle in 
Metaphysics 1. 3. 5 said Thales held the world stuff is water. Probably 
meant that water could take many forms. We have no fragments left of his 
writing, if indeed he did any. 

b)Anaximander: Also of Miletus, born about 610 B. C. An associate of 
Thales. Said the first element is to apeiron, the boundless, which is 
eternal and ageless and encompasses all worlds. All things come form it and 
pass into it again. There is eternal motion, which brought about the world. 
There are innumerable worlds since to apeiron is boundless. The sun is a 
wheel 28 times the size of the earth, full of fire. The earth is a 
cylinder, suspended in space. 

By to apeiron he seems to have meant "having no precise characteristics" 
e.g. not wet or dry, not hot or cold, liquid or solid) so as to be able to 
take on any forms. He seems to have lacked the notion of privation (the 
lack of something that should be there). So cold is not just a privation of 
heat, but the opposite of heat. 

c)Anaximenes: A somewhat younger contemporary of Anaximander, also from 
Miletus. Our information on him comes from later sources (cf. Aristotle, 
Metaphysics 1. 3 and Plutarch, Stromata. 3). He said the basic stuff is 
air. It is always in motion, else it would not change so much as it does. 
When it is dilated it becomes fire, when it is condensed, it becomes winds, 
when felted, becomes cloud, when further condensed, become water, when 
still further condensed, it is earth, at maximum condensation, stones. He 
went back to the flat earth theory. 

Philosophical and Religious Society:

a)Pythagoras: No fragments. Most important account is by Aristotle, 
especially, Metaphysics 1. 5. 2: "Since it seemed clear that all other 
things have their whole nature modeled upon numbers, and that numbers are 
the ultimate things in the whole physical universe,  they [the 
Pythagoreans] assumed the elements of numbers to be the elements of 
everything, and the whole universe to be a proportion [harmony] or number." 
Founded a religious society, affected Plato. Held reincarnation. 

Philosophers of Change:

a)Heraclitus: Flourished c 500 B. C. Did not publish his work, but 
deposited it in the temple of Artemis. Thinks he has found something that 
eluded all others. Was called ho skoteinos "the dark [obscure] one". 

He makes process the fundamental instead of a stuff. All is fire. Without 
motion or strife nothing would exist at all. The universe subsists by an 
attunement of opposite tensions. He seems to have held that hot turns into 
cold and vice versa - so opposite qualities are really the same. 

However there is a Logos, which is God, that regulates this constant 
change. 

He said you cannot step twice into the same river - for they are always 
flowing. Also: to God all things are right, but people think some things 
are wrong, some right. - This leads to amorality. 

Strong resemblance to process philosophy/theology of today. 

b)Parmenides: The opposite of Heraclitus. Said there is no change, 
everything is one being. He argued thus: the difference between this being 
and that being is being - but being will not distinguish one being from 
another being - it is like white lines on a white surface. So there is only 
one being. In what seems to be a change, before a change it is being - 
afterwards it is still being: so, no change. 

Greeks took this seriously, could not answer until Aristotle showed 
differences within being, by his potency/act teaching. 

Melissus of Samos was a disciple of Parmenides, but made a change: being 
cannot be spatially finite as Parmenides said, for then beyond being would 
be nothing, and being would be bounded by nothing. That which is limited by 
nothing is not limited, but is infinite. 

Zeno also defended Parmenides, constructed some paradoxes to prove him 
right, e. g, , if Achilles races a hare, but gives the hare a head start of 
perhaps 10 feet, by the time Achilles reaches the ten feet line, the hare 
has gone farther, and so on: so he will never catch it. For the answer see 
Aristotle, Physics 7.5 and 6.9. 

c)Xenophanes of Colophon: Some say he was the founder of the school of 
Elea, to which Parmenides belonged. Not too likely. Probably born around 
580 BC. He is often charged with being a pantheist, i.e. , sum total of all 
things equals God. He said the following things about God: The whole of God 
sees, the whole perceives, the whole hears, but with no effort he sets all 
things in motion by mind and thought. He always stays in the same place, 
and does not move at all, nor it is suitable that he should move from one 
place to another. - But this need not mean pantheism at all. The charge of 
pantheism rests on a statement of Aristotle in Metaphysics 1. 5. 12: 
"Looking at the whole material universe, he said that the one was god."

He also said that the poets attributed many immoral things to the gods. He 
was concerned with this. If one believes in the old gods, and then becomes 
a teenager, he may think: I think I will go and imitate Zeus. (Plato and 
others too had similar fears). 

Mediators between Heraclitus and Parmenides: They tried to find a middle 
position between saying no change, and all is change. 

a)Empedocles: Of Acragas in Sicily, c 493-433. It is debated, but it seems 
he tried to reconcile ideas of Parmenides with facts of change and motion. 
He abandons the notion of a single world-stuff and says there are four 
elements: earth, air, fire, water. Previous philosophers had proposed air, 
water, or fire. He kept these, added earth. 

He explains process by two things which he calls Strife and Love. They are 
forces, but material. Love is the unifier, Strife the divider. There are 
four periods in history: 1)Love is supreme, Strife is outside. All elements 
are mixed, nothing distinguishable from anything else. 2)Strife invades, 
the elements are separated but come together in various combinations, 
3)Strife is supreme. The four elements are not distinct and separate. Love 
is out. 4)Love begins to invade, the elements again begin to mingle. - Our 
world could exist only in periods 2 and 4. We note a resemblance here to 
the idea of Heraclitus that the state of the universe subsists on an 
attunement of opposite tensions. 

b)Anaxagoras: Of Clazomenae. He came to Athens in 480 , perhaps with the 
invasion of Xerxes of Persia, was probably about 20 then. He was the first 
philosopher to settle in Athens, stayed perhaps 30 years. Became a friend 
and teacher of Pericles. Was accused by the political opponents of Pericles 
about 450 on charges of being pro-Persian, irreligious.  He had taught the 
sun was a red-hot stone, and the moon was made of earth. So we see that he 
suffered from the problem we spoke of above in saying we explain things 
either by the gods or by natural causes. We should say both. He escaped, 
went back to Ionia, west coast of Asia Minor, settled at Lampsacus, lived 
about 25 years. 

What he taught is not too clear. One fragment says that nothing comes into 
being or passes away, but there is a mingling and a separation of the 
things that are. He rejected the four element idea of Empedocles, saying 
the four elements were mixtures of many qualitatively different parts. He 
said that in the beginning all kinds were mingled together , were infinite 
both in number and in smallness. In everything there is a portion of 
everything. 

His special attempt at a contribution was the principle of nous, mind. Only 
nous would be completely separate from anything else. All nous is alike. 
Nous is the finest and purest of all things, and has all knowledge about 
everything and the greatest power. 

Not clear if he meant a spiritual reality - the distinction of matter vs 
spirit was not generally clear then. 

The function of nous seems to be to start the rotatory movement or vortex 
going. Aristotle, in Metaphysics A. 4. 985 a. 18-21 said he used nous like 
a deus ex machina, and drags it in whenever he is at a loss to explain why 
something necessarily is. Elsewhere he makes anything rather than nous the 
cause. Plato in Phaedo 97 b 8 has Socrates saying he at first had high 
hopes when he heard of nous, but was disappointed on following through. 

The Atomists:

a)Leucippus and Democritus: We are not able to know which of these two 
contributed which part. But together they developed the atomic theory. 
Leucippus was a contemporary of Melissos. Democritus was born later, about 
450 BC. 

We can explain the world by supposing two things, atoms and the void. By 
atoms they meant the "uncuttable", i. e, we slice a bit of matter down and 
down finer until we cannot get it finer. This has nothing whatsoever to do 
with the modern concept of an atom, except the word. So they are in no 
sense forerunners of our atomic physics. 

We will number steps to facilitate comment: 1)There were always atoms 
falling in the void. 2) As they fell they sometimes swerved, and so some 
could fall on others. 3)Our world is just a chance combination of atoms, 
which just fell together and will fall apart. Since atoms have been falling 
for infinite ages, there has been time for many combinations to fall 
together and then fall apart. Our world just fell together, and will fall 
apart, and there will be nothing left: annihilation. 

1)The assumption is childish. Matter needed a cause. Further, in a vacuum 
the uncuttable bits would not fall -there would be no up or down. That 
comes about only by gravity in which every large body in the universe 
attracts every other large body with a force proportioned to their masses 
and in inverse proportion to the distance. 2)They offer no reason for the 
swerve - it is just that they need it to "explain".  3)This leads to no 
survival, and no need of the gods. So the Epicureans gladly took on this 
idea. They made pleasure the goal of life. But to fear a possible 
accounting to gods could hinder that. So they welcomed annihilation. It was 
popularized in Rome by Lucretius, in first century B. C. in his On the 
Nature of Things . In book 3 he gives more than a dozen "proofs" for no 
survival. At the end he says life is like a banquet. When you have eaten, 
that is all - go - and be nothing. 


II. Socrates and Plato:

Socrates wrote nothing, and claimed he did not teach - though he really 
did, in the sense that by his questioning he tried to lead people to see 
things. . Our knowledge of him depends on two sources, the works of Plato, 
and the Memorabilia by Xenophon. Xenophon pictures Socrates as almost 
cocksure of the answers to all sorts of things - Plato pictures Socrates as 
groping at times, at other times, pretending to grope, so as to draw 
answers out of his listeners. Still further, there is debate on whether 
Plato in all dialogues was faithful to what Socrates really held, or was he 
faithful only in the earlier dialogues, in which often no answer is 
reached. The later view seems much more likely to be the true one. 

Life of Socrates: Socrates was born in 469 BC, ten years after the battle 
of Platea, in which the Greeks finally repulsed the second Persian 
invasion, which had come in 480 (first invasion had been in 490). Socrates 
fought at Potidea around 432, just before the start of the Peloponnesian 
War, and at Amphipolis about ten years later. At Potidea he saved the life 
of Alcibiades, an arrogant young noble. Alcibiades later said that the 
prize for bravery which he himself got should have gone to Socrates. 

The wife of Socrates was Xantippe, famed for her tongue. He had three sons, 
Lamprocles, Sophroniscus and Menexenus.  Lamprocles, according to 
Xenophon's Memorabilia 2. 2 could not stand his mother's temper, but 
Socrates rebuked him, reminding him of all she had done for him. Xenophon 
also said (2. 10) that she had the worst temper of any woman in the world. 
She was much younger than Socrates, and not in sympathy with what he called 
his "vocation " (more on it presently). She thought him a lazy loafer. He 
gave up his work as a statue maker, and went about questioning people in 
Athens, making them look like fools much of the time. It seems he held no 
political office until 406, when he was in the Senate of 500. He was for a 
time a member of a Prytany, a committee that managed the day to day 
business for a portion of each year, with the Prytanies in rotation. At the 
trial of the six generals who at the Battle of Arginusae chose to pursue 
the enemy rather than to rescue sailors who had fallen into the sea, he 
refused to put the question to a vote. The trial was illegal. He also 
refused to obey the order of the thirty to arrest Leon of Salamis. The 
Thirty had been imposed on Athens by Sparta for about 8 months in 405-04 
BC. Sending him to arrest Leon was an attempt to compromise Socrates. 

Trial: An orator, Lycon, and a poet, Meletus, charged him with atheism and 
corrupting the youth. He was condemned and died in 399. Xenophon and Plato 
both say Socrates was punctilious in offering sacrifice in public, and even 
at home. At times he sounds like a monotheist, but he often speaks like the 
others of many gods. He did reject the usual myths about Zeus, Chronos and 
other Olympians. Many educated people then also rejected them. He seems to 
have had a simple unfailing confidence in the gods: the good man is always 
under their special care. He thought he had some sort of spirit with him, a 
daimonion, since boyhood. It often checked him from doing things. So 
Socrates was not an atheist in our sense. He seems not even to have been an 
atheist in the Athenian sense: one who will not join in the public worship 
of the gods. He seems to have joined, perhaps merely out of a sort of 
compulsion. Perhaps he did not believe in Zeus. 

The charge of corrupting the youth was not for homosexuality - though there 
was a law in Athens against it, probably not enforced. 

The Life of Plato: Before going further, a sketch of the life of Plato. He 
was born at Athens in 429 or 428. When about twenty he became a follower of 
Socrates. After the death of Socrates in 399, Plato withdrew to Megara on 
the isthmus, and later visited Egypt, Sicily, and the Greek cities in lower 
Italy. In Sicily he got to know the Dionysius I, Tyrant of Syracuse, but 
later had a falling out. One story says Dionysius sold Plato as a slave, 
but Plato was set free by Anniceris of Cyrene. When Plato got back to 
Athens he began to teach in a grove owned by Academus.  After a time he 
went again to Sicily, invited by Dion, brother in law of Dionysius I, and 
tried to win over the younger Tyrant Dionysius II to philosophy - Plato had 
the idea that a philosopher-king would be the ideal. But jealousy arose 
between Dionysius II and his uncle Dion, so Plato, with some difficulty, 
returned to Athens. He tried to continue to instruct Dionysius by letter. 
Dion went to Athens, associated with Plato there. In 361 Plato was recalled 
to Syracuse for a third visit by Dionysius. In 360 he returned to Athens, 
continued to teach until his death in 348/47. 

Plato's academy had the goal of investigating knowledge in many fields. 
Besides philosophy they studied also mathematics, astronomy and the 
physical sciences, and worshipped the Muses. Students came not only from 
Athens but from abroad. There was probably also some study of botany. 

The "vocation" of Socrates: In Plato's Apology, the speech of Socrates in 
the Athenian court, he says some friend asked the Oracle of Delphi who was 
wisest of all men. The reply: Socrates. Since oracles often were 
deliberately obscure and riddling, Socrates thought he had to explore to 
see what it meant. So he went about questioning various groups of men who 
were thought to be wise. He found none of them were. He concluded that the 
oracle meant: He is wisest who like Socrates knows he has no wisdom. But 
then he continued what he claimed was his "mission" from Apollo, by 
continuing to question people, and to urge them to take most thought to 
making their soul good. Young men watched him do it, then they went and did 
likewise. This is what was meant by corrupting the youth. It was not a 
charge of homosexuality. 

As to homosexuality: In the Symposium Alcibiades says one night he slept 
under the same cloak with S, trying to induced him to homosexual acts. But 
Socrates did not do it.  This is in line with other things we know about 
Socrates. Over and over again, in several dialogues, Plato reports Socrates 
stressed that the real philosopher, the seeker for truth, must have as 
little as possible to do with the things of the body. In the Phaedo 65: "Is 
it not obvious that... the philosopher as much as is possible frees the 
soul from communion with the body?" Ibid 82-83: "Those who really seek 
wisdom with determination abstain from all bodily desires and will not give 
themselves over to them... . each pleasure and pain seems to have a nail, 
and it nails the soul to the body... and makes it bodily." There are more 
such statements in the Phaedo 66, and 114. He speaks similarly in the 
Republic 485-86, 517, 519, 543. Xenophon, though he differs from Plato in 
many things, agrees on this in Memorabilia 1, 3, 5 and 1, 3, 8. In the 
latter passage he urges avoiding familiarity with beautiful persons, saying 
it was hard to do that and retain continence. He gives the same advice in 
1. 3. 13. 

Therefore when in the Symposium Plato pictures Socrates as describing an 
ascent to the Idea of Beauty (more on the Ideas presently) starting with 
loving a beautiful young male body - this is Plato expressing his own 
tendencies, not those of Socrates. Similarly in book V of the Republic, 
Plato makes him say that if a man is brave in battle he should have the 
right to kiss and be kissed by every man in the army. 

Socrates' Spirituality: His proposal to have as little as possible to do 
with the things of the body is really the high Christian ideal of 
detachment, of which St. Paul speaks in 1 Cor. 7. 29-32.  So it is not 
strange to see St. Justin the Martyr, in First Apology 46, saying that in 
the past some who were thought to be atheists, such as Socrates and 
Heraclitus, were really Christians, because they followed the Logos, the 
Divine Word. (More on how this might work out later in our treatment of St. 
Justin). 

The world of Ideas: Socrates and Plato as we said used to go about 
questioning men in Athens. Socrates would ask philosophical questions. The 
man would say he did not know the answer, might add he had not had any 
schooling. But Socrates would not give up. He would keep at him with many 
questions, and then sometimes, not always, the man would come out with some 
sort of answer to a philosophical question. This seems to have led Socrates 
and P to ask how it could be. Their reasoning could be expressed in a 
disjunctive argument: The man learned the answer either in this life or in 
a previous life. He did not learn it in this life, he admits that. 
Therefore he learned it in a previous life. 

What was that world like? We notice what sort things he knows, things about 
justice, beauty, goodness in themselves. These things of course do not have 
bodies. So in the previous world he must have seen justice, goodness etc. 
as they are in themselves. These are Ideas or Forms (Greek eidos or idea). 
Why would anyone leave that world, for it is so much better than our world? 
He must have committed some fault, which resulted in his being cast out. He 
then took a body - so the body is not part of us, but more like a prison. 
Why would he not remember being in the world of Ideas? He must have taken a 
drink from a river in the underworld - mythology is brought in here - which 
causes one to forget everything. But when Socrates questioned him, that 
stirred up his memory, and so he recalled things. So all learning is really 
recollection, anamnesis. We do not really teach anyone anything, we merely 
get him to remember. At the end of this life one dies, but will return. 
Plato had visited the Pythagoreans who believed in reincarnation. If a man 
lived several lifetimes as a noble philosopher, he would come back each 
time as a human being. But if not, he might come back as some sort of 
animal. However if he lived several lives as a noble philosopher, he would 
get permission to omit any more reincarnations, his soul w would get wings 
and fly away, and never have a body again. - We can see why St. Paul had a 
poor reception in Athens preaching the resurrection. 

What was wrong about the argument that seemed to prove a previous 
existence? It was a disjunctive argument. In that type we should make a 
complete list of all possibilities, then eliminate all but one. That will 
be the right answer. But if the list would b e incomplete, or some item was 
not properly eliminated, the answer would be wrong. Socrates failed in this 
way: He did not see that we must subdivide learning in this life. The man 
questioned admitted he had not learned it previously. But he learned it on 
the spot while Socrates questioned him. Socrates did not realize what he 
was doing, but he was, by making many distinctions, breaking up the problem 
into smaller parts, which were easier to manage. Then the man could see. So 
the theory of the world of Ides was without foundation. 

The Fathers of the Church liked Plato. They did not on the whole believe in 
the world of Ideas, although Origen seems to have had something much like 
it - he said before this life we were all in a world of spirits. According 
to the varied merits of the spirits, some became angels, some devils, some 
human beings, some stars in the sky (they thought they were alive!). Origen 
did not add reincarnation. But he did think hell was not permanent. Christ 
had to reign, according to 1 Cor 15. 25-28 (cf. also Psalm 109. 1) until 
all His enemies would be subjected to Him. But a soul in hell would not be 
subject. Therefore hell had to release all humans, perhaps also all devils. 
St. Augustine seems to have believed in the world of Ideas around the time 
of his conversion, but soon discarded it. Yet he, as it were, "baptized" 
the notion, turned the Ideas into exemplary cause in the mind of God - 
before God can say let light be, for example, logically, He has an idea in 
His mind of what light is (cf. De diversis quaestionibus 83 q. 46. 1-2). 

This theory of the world of Ideas was useful in pointing out the fact that 
this present world is of scant account compared to heaven.  The Fathers of 
course liked the insistence of Socrates that the wise man will have as 
little as possible to do with the things of the body. This was the same as 
the detachment St. Paul urged, as we saw above. Similarly in Republic 517 
Socrates says, "One should not wonder that those who reach this blessed 
vision [of the Good] are not willing to go down to human affairs, for their 
souls are always hastening into the upper world where they desire to live."

In book 7 of the Republic he gives a long simile or comparison to explain 
why those who once have seen the true realities would not like to descend 
again. He imagines a large cave, in which prisoners are bound, ever since 
birth, in such a way that they can see only the wall in front of them. They 
see shadows on the wall from objects passing between them and a fire 
farther back. Since they were there from birth, and have never seen the 
true realities, only shadows, they think shadows are the only realities. 
Suppose then that one of them got loose and went out of the cave and saw 
the real world, and then came back to tell his friends they had mistaken 
shadows for reality. They would think him crazy, and want to kill him. This 
of course is parallel to the case of a philosopher who has contemplated the 
Ideas, the true realities, and tries to tell others about them. 

Similarly in the Apology he insists that no matter what people say, h e 
must keep on urging them to take more thought for their souls than for 
things of this life. 

Further, Socrates held that the ideal is to be come as much like to God as 
possible. In Theatetus 176 he says: "We should fly away from earth to 
heaven as fast as possible; to fly away means to become like God, so far as 
this can be done; and to become like Him , is to become holy, just and 
wise... God is... perfect righteousness, and the man who is most righteous 
is most like Him."

The Good = God?: Socrates and Plato are not clear on the point, but seem to 
think that the Good, or the Idea of Good is the same as God. In Republic 7. 
517: "The Idea of Good appears last of all, and we can see it only with 
effort; when it is seen, we also conclude it is the universal author of all 
things beautiful and right, the parent of light and of the lord of light in 
this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the 
intellect." In Republic 6. 509 B he is uncertain whether he should even 
speak of the Good as an Idea - may be beyond the Ideas: "The sun provides 
not only the power of being seen for things seen, but... also their 
generation and growth and nurture, although it is not itself generation... 
. Similarly with things known... the Good is not only the cause of their 
becoming known, but the cause that they have being... the Good is not 
being, but beyond being in dignity and power."

In saying the Good is beyond being he has in mind the analogy of being. 
When a man addressed Jesus as "Good Master" He decided to teach 
dramatically, and He said (Lk 18. 18-19): "Why do you call me good? One is 
good. God." He means that if we use the word good to apply to creatures and 
to God, the two senses have something in common, but far more that is 
different. So when Plato says the Good is beyond being, it means that the 
word good as applied to creatures and as applied to the Good has something 
in common, but far more difference. Plotinus, who claimed to follow Plato, 
wrote in Enneads 6. 8. 9: "The One is other compared to all things," and in 
5. 4. 1: "He is said to be beyond being." In a similar vein St. Augustine 
wrote (On Christian Doctrine 1. 6. 6): "He must not even be called 
inexpressible, for when we say that word, we say something."

Socrates/Plato also spoke of the transcendence of God when in Symposium 
203: "No god associates with man." We need to recall here that Plato 
believed not only the great God, who was all good, and even beyond being, 
but also that there were lesser gods, composed of body and soul, but the 
bodies were of matter finer than clouds. In Timaeus 41 Plato represents the 
great God as telling the inferior gods that being made of two parts, they 
could die, but he will not allow that to happen. But Plato believed that 
not even the second level gods would associate with us. To even send up a 
prayer to them, we needed the mediation of the daimones, beings composed 
also of body and soul, whose bodies were flesh, of much higher quality than 
ours. Since the daimones were thought to be immoral or amoral, St. 
Augustine (City of God 8. 14-18) ridicules this notion - that decent men 
could not speak to the gods, but the impure daimones could!

Very obviously, he is far from pantheism at this point. 

Socrates shows deep confidence in the gods. In Phaedo 62: "It is correct to 
say that the gods take care of us, and that we humans are one of the 
possessions of the gods... so a man must not kill himself before God sends 
him some necessity like that which I now have." (S is under death sentence, 
must drink the hemlock in prison).  Again, in the Republic 613 he says, 
"The gods... never neglect a person who earnestly desires to be just, and 
desires to become as like to God as is possible for man to be by practicing 
virtue." Cf. also Apology 41 :"We must be of good hope in regard to death, 
and think this one thing to be true, namely, that there is no evil for a 
good man, dead or alive, and that the gods do not neglect his affairs."

Of course the Fathers of the Church would like this attitude, as also the 
realization Socrates shows of the brevity of life, in Republic 608, saying 
that "All the time from boyhood to old age is little indeed compared with 
all time... do you think an immortal thing [the soul is immortal] should be 
serious about such a little time, and not rather about all time?"

The main idea of the dialogue called Gorgias is that it is much worse to 
commit something unrighteous than to suffer it. This of course is the 
spirit of the Sermon on the Mount. In line with this Socrates is pictured 
as saying in Theatetus 176-77: "They [evil-doers] do not know that the 
penalty of wrong doing... .  is not stripes and death... evil-doers often 
escape these, but a penalty that cannot be escaped... that they lead a life 
like the pattern into which they are going." He speaks of the automatic 
penalties that are part of the very nature of things, e.g. , a hangover 
after a drunk, or a high risk of a loveless marriage after much premarital 
sex.  The Roman Historian Tacitus in Annals 6. 6 quotes part of a letter of 
Emperor Tiberius to the senate near the end of his life, when he was holed 
up in the island of Capri, and was indulging himself in orgies of sex: "May 
the gods cause me to perish, senators, even more than I feel myself 
perishing now, if I know what to write to you or how to write it." Then the 
pagan Tacitus comments: "His crimes and wickedness had turned into 
punishment for him. Rightly did the wisest of men [he means Socrates in 
saying things such as we have just quoted] say that if the souls of tyrants 
could be laid bare, one could see wounds and mutilations - swellings left 
on the spirit like lash marks on a body, by cruelty, lust and ill-will. 
Neither the autocracy of Tiberius nor his isolation could save him from 
admitting the inner torments that were his retribution." 

The Seven Liberal Arts: In book 7 of the Republic he speaks at length of 
the seven arts. We begin with mathematics or arithmetic. But the important 
thing, Socrates. insists, is not just knowledge of counting, but the senses 
must invite the intelligence to probe further, to thinking, to intellectual 
knowledge. Similarly for plane geometry, solid geometry, astronomy and 
harmonics all should be aimed at developing the seventh study, which is not 
rhetoric as it was for the Sophists, but dialectics, philosophy, aimed at 
coming to see the Idea of Good. 

Socrates/Plato on the immortality of the soul: It is really pathetic to see 
Socrates and other fine minds of antiquity struggling bravely to prove to 
themselves that there is some survival. At the end of his Apology , when he 
has been condemned to death by the Athenian court, Socrates reasons thus: 
Death is either becoming nothing, or going to a better place. As to 
becoming nothing, think of a night in which you slept so well you did not 
even dream. Why even the Great King of Persia would think that fine. So if 
death ends all, it is like that. (Poor man, in sleep we are not nothing, we 
have some awareness, we enjoy the refreshment when we wake up). 

In the Krito Socrates is in prison waiting for death. His friend Krito 
comes, offers to bribe the jailor to let him go. He could go to Thessaly, 
and would be appreciated there. But Socrates thinks it wrong. He imagines 
the Laws, personified, telling him he is trying to destroy them if he 
escapes. Then when he finally has to meet the Laws in the next world, they 
will not be pleased with him. So he must stay. - His argument is invalid, 
for he personifies the Laws. They are not a person, and he would not be 
really destroying them by preventing them from working injustice. 

In the Phaedo, which probably comes from Plato's mature period, Socrates is 
in prison, soon to die. He holds a discussion with several friends. 
Socrates shows no fear in the face of death. He thinks he is still obeying 
a divine command because he had that in a dream (we notice that in the 
Apology his daimonion gives only negative orders, i.e. , to turn him away 
from something, never positive commands, to do something). But he will 
heroically obey. The gods are the best overseers, and he thinks the god has 
put him into this fix, so he must accept. 

He appeals to belief from time immemorial that there is survival. That 
seems to be true all right. A. E. Taylor (p. 179) says that Socrates like 
all great religous teachers rests his hope in the last resort on the 
goodness of God, rather than on a natural imperishability of the human 
soul. 

Further, Socrates says, he has long been "practicing dying"  melete 
thanatou, by having as little as possible to do with the things of the 
world, even with the pleasure of food, drink, love and clothes. So now it 
is not hard to die. 

After a bit more general discussion, he goes into his proofs for the 
immortality of the soul in the Phaedo:

First argument ( 70c - 77d): a)The world is made up out of opposites, so 
that hot comes from cold etc. Therefore life must come from death. COMMENT: 
This is sad, that notion of the opposites being both equally positive goes 
back to Anaximander of Miletus, whom we have already seen. So many Greeks 
accepted it. But heat and cold are not both positive: cold is the privation 
of heat. Further, hot does not really come from cold, but follows after it, 
if there is a source of heat to provide the means to speed up the molecular 
motion (without motion of the whole body -this is what physics now holds 
about heat, it is molecular motion without the motion of the whole). So, 
sadly, this first part of the first argument is worthless. 

b)Learning in this life is really just recalling what we once knew in the 
previous life, anamnesis. Since we had a previous life, we will have 
another life. COMMENT: In the Meno he saw that a man can be made to give 
true answers by asking the right questions in matters of geometry. So he 
must have had the knowledge from a previous life. This is confirmed by the 
phenomenon of association: when we see an article belonging to a friend, we 
think of the friend. Still further, in mathematics we speak of equality. 
But two objects we see are never perfectly equal. Yet we have a concept of 
equality as such. We did not acquire this knowledge at the moment of birth 
- for we need to recall it later. So we would ask: When did we lose it so 
as to need to remember it later? So we were somewhere before birth, in 
which we saw the Ideas or Forms. So we survive death. -- Really, this 
argument if at all valid - it is not - would prove only a previous life, 
not also a future life. As Cebes in the Phaedo observes at this point,  
having had a previous life does not prove there will be a future life. - 
Behind this seems to be the Orphic belief in rebirth. At the end of the 
Phaedo Socrates will seem to give up this sort of argument, and to go back 
to the belief that the final destiny of the righteous is to be with the 
gods. This perhaps reflects a pre-philosophical tradition that the soul is 
a fallen divinity, destined to regain its former place among the gods if it 
lives rightly. 

Second argument ( 78b - 84b): The soul is most like the divine and immortal 
and the simple and indissoluble and unchangeable. Therefore the soul should 
be indissoluble or very nearly so. To enter the family of the gods, the 
soul must depart entirely pure. So it is for the sake of such purity that 
lovers of wisdom abstain from all bodily desires. Pleasure and pain as it 
were nail the soul to the body and make it bodily. COMMENTS: We notice that 
Socrates is vague, he says the soul is most like the divine and the simple, 
and so is indissoluble, o r nearly so. He adds that the more a soul avoids 
bodily pleasures, the more pure it will be and like the gods. But even with 
this, he gives no firm proof. 

Some commentators do think he here makes the soul simple, without parts, 
and so incapable of coming apart. But the trouble is, as we have said, that 
he is not firm in saying this. Nor does he at all prove the soul is simple. 
He merely says it is "most like" what is simple. He could have proved it 
very easily thus: I have a dog who is neither high nor low, long nor short, 
pointed nosed or snubnosed, black or white or brown or mixture. I get this 
concept by taking away from every live dog all that is individual. Then I 
have left a concept of just plain dog. Suppose I offered the best artist in 
the world any sum to make an image of my dog, using any medium whatsoever. 
He could not do anything, for no material can hold this concept. Therefore, 
that in me which does hold it is not material but spiritual. This is even 
more true with the concepts of justice, beauty, goodness etc. 

Interlude: ( 84c - 85b): Simmias wishes some god would reveal the truth to 
them. He is not convinced by the arguments thus far. Nor should he be 
convinced, for they prove nothing. Here we recall our comments on the 
relation of theology to philosophy as the answers in the back of the book. 
Simmias also wonders: Could the soul be just like an attunement or harmony 
on the harp - when the harp is gone, so is the tuning. This is called 
"epiphenomenalism", which says consciousness is a byproduct of the 
activities of the bodily organism, a sort of whistle of the steam escaping 
from the engine. 

Cebes thinks Socrates has only proved preexistence - really, he has not 
even proved that. But as to later survival, Cebes wonders: could it be like 
the case of a weaver who makes his own cloak. He wears out many of them 
(bodies) and eventually wears out himself. 

So they now wonder: the arguments seemed so good, yet now they do not. Can 
we really trust arguments at all?

Socrates' answer to Simmias and Cebes ( 88e - 102a): Socrates opens by 
warning against scepticism. 

Then he answers Simmias: Simmias has agreed on reminiscence and 
preexistence. But if the soul were a harmony, it could not exist before the 
body of which it is a harmony - but the soul in the previous existence did 
exist without the body. 

Socrates. adds that we see the soul opposing the body in many ways -it 
would not do it if it were a harmony of the body. COMMENT: Fails to 
distinguish moral and physical orders. Simmias meant a physical harmony. 
The soul opposes the body in the moral sphere, not the physical sphere. 

Next Socrates tries to answer Cebes: 1)He recalls his own experiences. He 
once studied the natural sciences, with the presocratics. He came to doubt 
all the explanations. 2)He also had trouble with mathematics, could not 
agree with himself even when one is added to one whether either the one has 
become two, or the one which was added became two [this is based on the 
notion of the Form of one]. 3) Then he came upon Anaxagoras, with his ideas 
of nous . At first Socrates was delighted, then found Anaxagoras himself 
hardly used nous. So he gave that up. 4) Then he turned to reasoning, and 
tried to lay down in each case the reasoning which seemed strongest. So he 
considered as true what ever seemed to harmonize with that. For example, he 
postulated that there are Ideas of Forms. He said he will shortly show that 
this proves immortality. He says for example a thing is beautiful not from 
shape or color but from participating in the Idea of Beauty. COMMENT: 
Notice he is only postulating, not proving things, even the existence of 
the Ideas or Forms. He began with what seemed most likely to be true, 
judged all else by its agreement or lack of agreement with that. But the 
base itself was not proved. 

Third argument (102 - 107b): When we say that Simmias is taller than 
Socrates, but shorter than Phaedo, we do not mean Simmias is both tall and 
short, or that two opposed Forms are in him. (He only happens to be taller 
or shorter, accidentally, not inasmuch as he is Simmias). 

So we see that a form excludes its opposite.  No form will accept its 
opposite. But, death and life are opposites, incompatible. The soul brings 
life. So if death approaches the soul, it does not receive death and it is 
immortal and imperishable. Nothing could escape destruction if the 
immortal, which is everlasting, could be destroyed. All admit that God 
Himself cannot suffer destruction. So the soul if it is immortal it is 
imperishable too. 

COMMENTS: the argument rests on that of the Forms or Ideas. But that is not 
at all proved. Further, we could reason: When death approaches life, death 
is either destroyed or retreats. But also: when life approaches death, life 
is destroyed or retreats. Socrates does not consider this last possibility. 

At the end, Cebes accepts, but Simmias says that in this momentous matter, 
he distrusts human weakness and is forced to have a little incredulity. 
Socrates replies: That is true, and you should still examine our first 
suppositions to see if you can trust them. 

It is sad: Socrates has failed in the Phaedo to prove immortality. 

In the Phaedrus Socrates adds this argument: The soul is immortal since 
that which is ever in motion is immortal. But that which moves another and 
is moved by another ceases to live when it ceases to move. Only the self-
moving never ceases to move... . . Now the beginning is unbegotten, for 
that which is begotten has a beginning. But the beginning is begotten of 
nothing, for if it were begotten of something, then the begotten would not 
come from a beginning. But if it is unbegotten, then it is also 
indestructible. We comment: he has not proved that the soul is self-moving. 

Religion and Morality: In many ancient culture there was a partial 
disconnection of religion and morality. That is, the moral code for them 
could be divided into two areas, one small, the other large. The small area 
included the things the gods would enforce with sanctions, reward or 
punishment. In Greece there were few things in this area, chiefly: respect 
for the gods, duty to country and family, duty to a suppliant who comes 
with a bough of a tree having wool garlands on it and says he comes in the 
name of Zeus, duty to a guest in the house. But on other things, the gods 
were thought not to enforce. Zeus did not mind if someone committed 
adultery - the person would be imitating Zeus himself!. Nor would Zeus mind 
if someone committed murder. But there were lesser beings, the Furies, who 
liked to drive a person mad for committing murder. 

The word for this second large area was ta ethe, customs. In Latin it was 
parallel: mores. Did this mean that people considered most points of 
morality as being merely custom, what society approves? Not likely. St. 
Paul in Romans 2. 14-16 says that the gentiles who do not have the law, 
revealed religion, do by nature the things of the law. They show the work 
of the law written on their hearts. Accordingly , conscience will accuse or 
defend them at the judgment. Anthropology agrees, for primitives do have a 
rather good knowledge of the basic moral code - how well they live up to it 
is a separate question. Aristotle in Nichomachean Ethics 3. 1 asks about 
the effect of ignorance on culpability. He says that ignorance of 
particulars may excuse in varied degrees. But he says that ignorance of 
basic moral principles does not excuse - everyone knows them.  However, St. 
Paul in Romans 1 pictures the gradual blinding of persons who do not live 
as they should, down to the point where, in 1. 32, he mentions those who 
once knew that certain things deserve death, but now not only do them, but 
approve of doing them. They have lost their moral vision by repeated 
sinning. 

Socrates/Plato tried to improve this perception. The Republic by seeking to 
find what is the nature of justice. Here he uses the Greek dikaiosyne 
broadly - Aristotle admits the word can be used that way. 

In book I, the speakers try in vain to find out what justice is, and wind 
up nowhere.  One of them Thrasymachus, says might is right. Socrates 
refutes that view. After further consideration of the same things in book 
II, Socrates suggests they look at justice on large scale, i.e. , in a 
state, instead of in an individual. Then it should be easier to see. He 
begins to go into the details of an imaginary ideal state. An essential 
point, he says, is for each man to have one job only, so as to do it very 
well. There will be three classes: guardians (rulers and soldiers) and 
craftsmen. They must carefully regulate the literature people read: for the 
stories about the misdeeds of Zeus and others are scandalous. They must 
also control the types of music: for certain types of music resonate with 
and tend to promote certain interior attitudes. Socrates also makes a start 
at speaking on physical training. Mentions chiefly simple wholesome food, 
avoiding excesses. The guardians (rulers and soldier class) must live and 
eat together, have few private possessions, just the bare essentials, no 
money at all, to avoid jealousy. Should avoid protracted doctoring: if 
someone cannot be cured in reasonable time, just give up and let nature 
take its course. 

In book IV, there should not be many laws - people will do well through 
education. (Socrates thinks that virtue is knowledge, i.e. , if someone 
knows what is right he will do it. Vice is ignorance). He thinks the state 
must have prudence, justice, discipline (temperance) and fortitude. Wisdom 
is especially in the rulers, courage in the soldiers, all classes must have 
discipline. Now he thinks he is finally finding what justice is: No one can 
be prudent, disciplined, courageous, without justice. So, justice in the 
state is founded on the principle of one man one job. But, what is justice 
in an individual? He works out three parts in a man: First, nothing can 
have two opposite properties at the same time, e.g. , cannot be moving and 
at rest. But, at times we want to do something, yet do not want to do it - 
so there are two parts, reason and desire. But we also at times see a 
conflict in ourselves between desire and disgust - if we see a dead animal 
we have desire to look at it, yet disgusts. So he exults: we have found 
three parts in man: 1) the reasonable part - special in the rulers, 2) the 
spirited part - strong in the soldiers, for courage, 3)the desiring part - 
common in the craftsman class. But in the individual there are the same 
three parts: if all play their proper parts and do not interfere with each 
other, THIS IS JUSTICE. We note the parallel to the state. (COMMENT: 
Socrates is wrong here. He has justice concerned within the man himself, 
whereas it really concerns his relations to others. Temperance and 
fortitude regulate his own attitudes, in facing pleasure, in facing danger. 
Prudence finds the right means. Justice gives to others what is coming to 
them, no more, no less). 

In book V, Socrates was about to go into the kinds of injustice in detail, 
but the others interrupt: they notice he said the guardians have all in 
common: so, what about women and children? Socrates reluctantly admits he 
does mean that. The family must be abolished! No child should know its 
parents. There should be marriage festivals, which the rulers craftily 
manipulate, like stock-breeders, to mate the best with the best. He begins 
to ask: Is such a state really possible? He puts off the question, speaks 
first of war. In war, take the children along as servants, give them horses 
to escape if danger becomes great. But no solider will desert, if he does, 
he is downgraded to the lowest class. If a man is brave in battle, he can 
kiss and be kissed by all other men, and can have more weddings. But again 
it is asked: Is such a state possible? Socrates says we do not have to 
prove it, we used the state merely to get to know what is justice. But we 
might possibly take an existing state and make it ideal, if the 
philosophers could be kings, or kings become philosophers. A real 
philosopher is one who seeks and appreciates truth everywhere, but there 
some who seem to be philosophers, but are not, just as there are people who 
like beauty in visible things, but do not seek the Idea of Beauty. Real 
philosophers seek the Idea of Truth. Opinion (doxa) is neither knowledge 
nor ignorance, it is in between, if it just happens to be right. Those who 
welcome opinion instead of truth are philodoxers, not philosophers. 

In book VI Socrates says that since the philosopher loves truth he will 
always be honest, give little time to the body. Will not be cowardly: will 
have all four cardinal virtues. Adeimantus objects: Good philosophers are 
useless to society, false ones are villains. Socrates admits it is true, 
but the fault is in society, for society corrupts the good, favors false 
things. A ruler ought to have discipline and also be quick to learn - these 
two things are not often found together. So we might try to get the 
multitude to accept a philosopher as a king. Possible if we paint an ideal 
picture of what a philosopher should be. Greatest task is to get the 
candidate to learn the Good. For there is something even higher than the 
Ideas: Goodness itself, for it is beyond being. We cannot even say what 
goodness itself is. But just as sight needs light, so truth needs Goodness 
itself. He distinguishes between episteme, real knowledge which comes only 
by deduction, and doxa, opinion, which may just happen to be right. 

In book VII comes the cave simile, which we saw above. One who has once 
seen the true reality would not want to come back to the cave - so Socrates 
did not want to be involved in Athens. We must get the weights off the soul 
to see well - again, have little to do with the body. To produce good men 
we need more than gymnastic (bodily training) and music (the fine arts). 
But we start with the five branches of mathematics, but not just to learn 
physical things, but to lead to thinking: they are arithmetic, plane 
geometry, solid geometry, astronomy, harmonics. But these are to lead to 
dialectics, philosophy. (There are seven if we put gymnastics first). Women 
can be put through this training too if they are apt. 

Book VIII opens with a reemphasis on communism of wives and children, but 
then goes to the chief topic: there are four bad kinds of constitutions of 
the state. The ideal is the aristocracy, ruled by the best men. The four 
bad kinds are: timocracy (honor is highest value), oligarchy (wealth is 
highest), democracy (love of money), tyranny (insatiate desire for 
liberty). With each one he sketches the corresponding types of men: the 
timocratic, the oligarchic, the democratic, the tyrannical. He imagines how 
one kind changes to the other, both in states and in men. (The picture of 
the tyrannical man is saved for book IX). 

In book IX: the tyrannical man is one who is ruled by disorderly desires. 
When the democratic man becomes a father, his son is led into complete 
lawlessness by total liberty. His evil friends implant in him some 
"protector" some dissolute passion. It runs wild, he becomes the tyrannical 
man, ruled by his passions. This man is unhappy: a)he is not free, is ruled 
by passions b) just as there are three parts of the soul, each with its 
special kind of pleasure, each group thinks its kind of pleasure is the 
best. But only the wise man has had experience of all three, and so only he 
can judge what is best. He says the pleasures of knowledge are best. c)only 
the pleasures of the just are real, pleasures of the body only seem to be 
pleasures. And the objects of the pleasures of knowledge are real, the 
Ideas. Those that are objects of desire are only images. Therefore only the 
just man is happy. So one should pursue justice even if he could get away 
with injustice.  In fact, he should pursue justice even if he came off 
worse in this life. COMMENT: Socrates gives pleasure as reason for pursuing 
justice, not intrinsic morality. Nor do we say this world is not real - 
Socrates thinks only the world of Ideas is fully real. 

This last thought leads to book X, which opens with a long attack on 
mimesis (creative imitation). It is the ruin of hearer's minds, unless they 
know what things really are. In the world of Ideas there is the Idea of 
bed, in this world, a poor copy, but mimesis makes a poor imitation of the 
poor copy. Mimesis makes a rebellion within us, of contrary opinions, for 
things appear different from different angles. also, decent people try to 
restrain grief, which is contrary to reason. But the poets promote it in 
tragedy and get us to like it. It leads to perversity, makes people rejoice 
in ruin of heroes. So when we hear Homer is the teacher of Greece, it is 
not true. 

The greatest reward of virtue of justice is in the next life, for the gods 
love and care for the just. Even in this life the just are eventually 
honored. But that is nothing to what they get from the gods. Virtue makes 
one as like to God as one can be!. (COMMENT: Socrates here disagrees with 
the usual Greek notion that the gods are amoral). 

Each things has its own natural evil, which destroys it. Injustice is the 
evil of the soul. But injustice does not destroy the soul, so the soul is 
immortal. COMMENT: Mixes categories. Injustice is in the moral category,  
the existence of soul is in the order of being. 

Finally the myth of Er who came back to life, and described what things are 
like on the other side. Souls come before three Fates, and get the lot for 
the next lives. Each chooses his own destiny, according to how much of 
virtue he has. So prepare now. At the judgment the interpreter urges souls 
to choose well. Some even so choose badly, e.g. , choose to be tyrants on 
earth. Then souls come to the river of Oblivion, Lethe , and drink from the 
River of Neglectfulness, Amelete Potamon, and so forget what happened in 
the other world. They go to sleep , wake up, born in this life again. Some 
men come back as beasts, some beasts as men. 

Does the Republic really reflect the thought of Socrates? Probably yes in 
the first book and part of the second, where Socrates is still groping, 
which seems to have been typical of him. But in the rest of the Republic he 
is usually almost cocksure, and promotes homosexuality, communism of wives 
and children.


III. Aristotle

1. Life: Aristotle was born at Stagira, a small town in the Chalcidice, in 
the northern Aegean. His father was Nicomachus, court physician to Amyntas, 
King of Macedonia. The fact that his father was a physician affected 
Aristotle. Probably he learned medicine and biology to some extent at an 
early age. 

In 367 B. C. at the age of 17 he went to Plato's Academy, and stayed for 
twenty years as a pupil of Plato. This is the first of the three main 
periods for Aristotle, his intellectual development. 

Plato died in 347. There were three candidates for the next head of the 
school: Aristotle, Xenocrates and Speusippus, Plato's nephew. We do not 
know who made the decision, but Speusippus was chosen. Both Aristotle and 
Xenocrates left Athens. Some suggest Aristotle was not chosen because he 
was not orthodox. He surely did reject the world of Ideas, which was 
central to Plato's thought. But unorthodoxy is not likely to be the reason. 
Speusippus also rejected the original form of the theory of Ideas. If the 
decisive thing were fidelity to Plato, Xenocrates should have been chosen. 
Perhaps the choice was determined by the desire to keep Plato's property in 
the family. For there were legal problems of making over the property of an 
Athenian citizen to a noncitizen of Athens, such as Aristotle. Yet, these 
difficulties did not prevent Xenocrates, another noncitizen, from becoming 
head later, the third head, after Speusippus. 

We do not know the motives of Aristotle for leaving. Some say relations 
were strained, but there is no proof. Perhaps an outbreak of antiMacedonian 
feeling in Athens after Philip of Macedonia sacked Olynthus in 348 was part 
of the reason. A circle of friends went with A, chief of them was his 
pupil, colleague and eventual successor, Theophrastus. 

Aristotle went first to Assos in Asia Minor, on the invitation of Hermeias, 
ruler of Atarneus. This begins his second period, the period of travels. He 
was in various centers in Asia Minor and Macedonia. It was a period 
specially important for the development of his interests in the natural 
sciences. He was on excellent terms with Hermeias. He eventually married 
Pythias, some say the niece of Hermeias, or his adopted daughter, or 
sister. After three years at Assos he moved to Lesbos. Two years later, in 
342, he was invited by Philip of Macedonia to be the tutor of his 14 year 
old son, Alexander. 

The influence of Aristotle on Alexander, as tutor and later, seems slight. 
It has been suggested that Alexander collected and sent to Aristotle, 
during his second Athenian period, specimens of rare animals from Persia 
and India. Aristotle's nephew Callisthenes went with Alexander to Persia as 
his historian, but was executed on a charge of "treason" in 327. This must 
have hurt relations of Aristotle and Alexander. Actually, Aristotle died 
within 6 years of Alexander's first entry into the valley of the Indus. 
Callisthenes had flattered Alexander, presented everything Alexander did as 
heroic. He wrote that when Alexander marched past Mt. Climax on the shore 
of Pamphylia, the waves withdrew, prostrating themselves before Alexander. 
He was executed for refusing to follow the Persian custom, which Alexander 
had adopted, of prostrating self before the king on state occasions. 

Aristotle stayed in Macedonia until 335 when Alexander became king. Then 
Aristotle returned to Athens . This was his third period: 335-323. 
Xenocrates was head of the Academy by that time. Aristotle taught on his 
own in the Lyceum, a grove just outside Athens, used also by other 
teachers. Plato says Socrates used to go to that grove. The school may have 
been informal under Aristotle. Probably only after his death did it get 
extensive property and have legal status as a religious association. 

Aristotle did coordinate the work of many philosophers and scientists in an 
unprecedently ambitious program of research in many fields. 

When in 323 news reached Athens of the death of Alexander, there was an 
antiMacedonian revolution. Aristotle was charged with impiety.  He did not 
wait for a trial, but fled to Chalcis in Euboea, and is reported to have 
said he did it, "to save the Athenians from sinning twice against 
philosophy." He died there the next year at age 62. 

2. Reference System in His works: In 1831 Immanuel Bekker in Berlin brought 
out an edition of Aristotle with pages numbered continuously throughout all 
volumes. These numbers are usually used for reference today, that is, after 
the book and chapter numbers, these marginal number will be given - a help 
against typos. He wrote broadly, on physics, chemistry of the four 
elements, meteorology, astronomy, zoology, psychology, logic, ethics, 
metaphysics, statecraft, the art of poetry, the art of rhetoric, and other 
things. These works are on the whole extant. We know he wrote some works we 
do not have now, his literary or exoteric works . Many of them were 
dialogues. Cicero and Quintilian speak of them as a "golden stream."

3. Ancient Editions: Our existing texts may have been A's notes for his own 
lectures - the more common opinion. Some think they were the work of a 
careful student who attended his courses. It is certain they were not 
composed for publication as they stand. Scant literary polish. Many 
digressions and repetitions. 

In the second half of the first century B. C. Andronicus of Rhodes edited 
and published Aristole's works. We do not know for certain what was their 
fate before this - some reports that his library went to Theophrastus, then 
to Neleus of Scepsis. But the heirs of Neleus seemed not interested, but 
hid them in a cellar to keep the Kings of Pergamum from getting them for 
their library. They were recovered in damaged condition by a bibliophile 
named Apellicon, who took them to Athens. When Sulla conquered Athens in 88 
BC he sent the books to Rome. There they were poorly treated until 
Andronicus was put in charge. This seems not a very credible story. 

4. Nichomachean Ethics: 

1. 3. He says Ethics is not an exact science since it is not speculative, 
but practical, and so does not use necessary deductions, but depends much 
on finding the (golden) mean between two extremes. That mean is relative 
also, i.e. , courage should be greater for a soldier than for an ordinary 
man. And even some good things can be harmful. Yet he did hold to absolute 
principles, e.g. , adultery, theft, and murder are not in the middle - they 
are always evil. 

1. 1. He stresses that all people aim at a goal when they act. Nature does 
it automatically, we do it consciously. We may seek a goal as a means to 
something further, or for its own sake. But there cannot be an endless 
string of things sought for something else: there must be a highest good. 
Good is what everyone aims at. 

1. 2. The highest goal should be self sufficient, making life lacking in 
nothing. The goal of the state is higher, more inclusive than that of 
individuals. So statecraft is higher than ethics. COMMENT: this could lead 
to totalitarianism. We, not he, can escape it by noting that every one has 
a goal still higher than that of the state, union with God. He also admired 
Sparta, a totalitarian state. And he thought the state should do more than 
just provide for what individuals cannot get by themselves: this could lead 
in the direction of totalitarianism, but might not. 

1. 6. Plato thought the highest good is the idea of Good. Aristotle tries 
to refute that with some very subtle reasons, that are not conclusive. 

1. 5. & 10. 7. The highest good is really happiness, and actually, the 
happiness of intellectual contemplation of the truth. 

1. 7. Happiness is an activity of the highest virtue, intellectual virtue. 
This makes us most like the gods, for they have it constantly. But moral 
activity is not the highest, the gods do no practice it. 

1. 7 & 1. 10. Happiness is not an habitual disposition, if it were, it 
could be found in one asleep. But in addition, we need sufficient material 
goods to make this contemplation possible and a full life-span. 

1. 4-5. Both philosophers and common people agree happiness is the goal, 
but disagree on what is happiness.  Some say pleasure is it: but to follow 
pleasure, the whim of the moment, is a life fit for cattle. 

10. 4. He does poorly on analyzing pleasure, says it accompanies and in a 
way completes the activity of the healthy sense faculty exercised on a good 
object - compares it to the bloom of health in the young. But he should 
have said pleasure is a means to the goal of working better afterwards. He 
does say this of recreation in 10.6, does not broaden it enough. 

1. 13. There are two kinds of virtue, intellectual and moral.  

2. 1. We get intellectual virtue chiefly from teaching. Moral virtue comes 
from habit, from often acting in accord with it. 

10. 9. Theoretical reasoning moves some, but in general people need good 
rearing under good laws, such as those of Sparta! (A totalitarian state).  
The best test of moral virtue is whether we get pleasure or pain from 
carrying out virtue. Plato says we should be trained from the start of life 
to find pleasure and pain in the right things. There are three things that 
move us to act: real good, pleasure, expediency. 

2. 6. Moral virtue is marked by the relative mean, the right amount, not 
too much, not too little. Thus courage is between rashness and cowardice; 
temperance in pleasure is between profligacy and insensibility; gentleness 
in anger is between irascibility and apathy; generosity in giving money is 
between prodigality and stinginess; proper pride is between vanity and 
pettiness. But, as he said above, there are some things in which there is 
no golden mean, e.g. , theft, murder, adultery. COMMENT: These exceptions 
show that the golden mean is not the real standard. Aristotle did not find 
it. Nor did he really see that our goal is union with God - he could not 
have reasoned to the possibility of the Beatific Vision, revelation is 
needed for that, but he could have seen a natural union with God. Plato did 
see a likeness to God as possible, and a welcome by the gods in the next 
life. Aristotle might have used his potency-act theory (cf his Metaphysics 
9. 1) to say that moral good in action is the harmonious actualization of 
all the potencies in such a way that each gets its due, and no one potency 
gets so much as to hinder the fulfillment of the other potencies in the 
same person or in different persons. 

3. 1. Actions are: willing, non-willing, or unwilling. Willing or voluntary 
acts are those with the principle of action within the agent - so even 
animals can do willing acts, according to Aristotle. In non-willing acts, 
the principle is also from within, but the act is done through ignorance 
and later when information comes is NOT regretted. This type is neither 
fully voluntary nor fully involuntary. Unwilling acts are done either 
through ignorance which is later regretted, or are done under physical 
compulsion. 

Ignorance of particulars may excuse, in varied degrees; but ignorance of 
the basic moral principles does not excuse. Everyone who is not blinded 
should know them. (Thus blinding can develop, as St. Paul explains in 
Romans 1). 

7. 2. Socrates said sin is ignorance, virtue is knowledge. Aristotle 
disagrees: the law does punish those who sin. Only an incontinent man 
thinks his behavior is not wrong, when his passion blinds him. 

3. 5. Negligence that is part of a man's character does not excuse: he is 
responsible for developing his character. Similarly ignorance coming from 
blindness does not excuse, e.g. , in a drunk who does not know what he is 
doing. 

3. 4. In the abstract or in general, we wish for the real good, not the 
apparent good. But in practice, we go for what seems good. If the one who 
acts is a man of sound judgment, the spoudaios, real and apparent good will 
match. 

3. 2. Decisions of will made after deliberation are a better indication of 
character than one's actions. Thus, a man may decide to rob a bank, later 
give the project up. But he is guilty for that decision. 

6. 2-7. The mind has five faculties to reach truth: 1) the mind looks at 
something, sees first principles, so basic they cannot be proved; this is 
nous. 2)comparing two items from #1 we can reach a further conclusion; this 
is episteme. 3)If we gather together all conclusions reached by the above 
process we have wisdom, sophia, which knows the highest most basic 
principles of everything. 4)For acting, we need practical wisdom or 
prudence, which picks the best means for the ends we aim at: this is 
phronesis. 5)In some kinds of acting, that is, in making things, we need 
know-how or art: techne. 

6. 8. Much experience is needed for prudence, and so young men are weak on 
it. There is a natural cleverness, which if developed fully becomes full 
virtue of prudence. The natural, undeveloped form of virtues can grow 
independently of each other, but in the full virtue all grow together and 
in proportion. They are bound together by prudence. 

8. 2. We all need friends for happiness. Love is required between friends, 
it must be mutual, and known by both. There must be an exchange of 
benefits.  To love is to will or wish good to another for the other's sake. 
So love is not a feeling: liking is an attitude of feeling, which is 
different from love. 

8. 3. There are three kinds of friendship, depending on the basis: real 
good, pleasure, utility. Only the first is real solid friendship. 

8. 7. There must be something like equality between the friends. If too 
much distance, no friendship is possible. So no friendship possible between 
a god and a man. 

8. 9. Friendship and the state both involve having things in common: 
koinonia, so each has claims and obligations. All forms of sharing are 
parts of the great sharing, which is the city-state polis. 

8. 10. There are three good, and three bad forms of constitutions of 
states: 1)monarchy is good if the ruler rules for the common good; it is 
tyranny if he rules for selfish ends. 2)aristocracy is good if the nobles 
rule for the common good; it is oligarchy if they rule for selfish ends; 
3)politeia, constitutional government when all have votes is good if the 
votes are used for the common good; otherwise if used for selfish purposes 
it is democracy. 

8. 11. In perverted forms of government there is little scope for 
friendship or justice, for rulers and subjects have nothing in common. It 
is more like the relation of a craftsman to his tool. A master could have 
friendship with a slave in so far as he is a man, but not inasmuch as he is 
a slave, a living tool. 

5. Politics: By this word Aristotle means the study of operating a state, 
or statecraft. He directed the writing of the constitutions of 158 Greek 
city-states. Probably not all were done before he wrote this work. He 
himself wrote only one extant part, the Constitution of Athens. 

The reason for existence of a state is to provide for things individuals 
cannot get alone. But it exists not only to provide for basic needs, but 
for the requisites of the good life. [This opens the way to great abuses, 
in the direction of totalitarianism as experience shows]. A state must have 
a moral aim. This distinguishes it from an alliance, which is only for 
mutual protection.

COMMENT: Building on this thought, he could have reasoned to a world state: 
just as nature wants men to form a state to provide for things individuals 
cannot provide for, so, when the world grows to such an extent that 
individual states cannot suffice for everything, e.g. , peace and 
elimination of terrorists - there should be a world state to the extent 
needed. However, though theoretically it is called for, in practice it is 
impossible. For no basis of distribution of power within it would be 
workable. For example, if power depended on population size, China would 
rule; if money, perhaps the Arabs would rule. Then others would stay out. 

States arose when several households formed a village, several villages 
formed a union (synoikismos) which became a city-state (polis). Man is by 
nature political. He alone forms societies. 

COMMENT: What of a bee hive?

Nature itself calls for the fact that some rule, others are ruled. Plants 
exist for animals, animals for man , man's body for his soul. Women are 
naturally subject to men, and slaves to masters. In 1. 5: "That some should 
rule and others be ruled is not only necessary but beneficial. From birth, 
some are marked out for subjection, others for rule." A slave can follow 
out rational plans, but cannot make them. Accidentally, some become slaves 
through war who should be free. 

A state is made up of persons dissimilar in birth, wealth, virtue, and yet 
it is a unity. The state should not try to level all differences. Good 
government needs the rule of law, as against the rule of men. Individuals 
can be swayed by emotions. The laws provide general rules: the magistrates 
should adjust or fill in on the details. Laws should be for the good of 
all, not just the ruling class. 

We already saw the several kinds of constitutions in Ethics 8. 10. Here he 
adds that the best constitution is one in which every man can act best and 
live in happiness. Happiness depends on virtuous (intellectual) activity. 
So the extent to which a man is capable of happiness , depends upon his 
capability for practicing virtue. Only citizens can practice the virtues of 
statesman and philosophers, and so only they can be happy. A child is not 
happy: at his age he is not capable of intellectual contemplation of truth. 

Aristotle does not look for the best imaginable state, as Plato did, but 
the best that would be workable. There should be a natural limit of size, 
no more citizens than can be addressed at a single assembly . [He has in 
mind direct, not representative democracy]. If the state became too large, 
metics, resident aliens, might get rights, would be hard to detect them. 
COMMENT: Citizenship depended on religion, and religion by birth. One could 
not be a citizen without being a member of the state religion. Not enough 
to be willing to be a convert. Very hard to get citizenship in a state 
where one was not born. He notes Greek states had a hard time controlling 
size. This led to poverty, revolution, crime. So he favors abortion and 
killing deformed children. 

The size of the land should be enough to produce all the state needs. Greek 
cities needed little but timber, stone and metal. It may export and import, 
but should not become a market center. It needs access to the sea. It 
should have a healthful climate and good water, and should face east. It 
should be fortified with walls heavy enough for the new siege machinery. 

Democracy and oligarchy are both in error. The democrats consider all are 
equal - when they are really equal only in free birth. Oligarchs think men 
are unequal in all because they are unequal in wealth. A state should take 
into account all qualities: wealth, birth, and especially moral and 
intellectual virtue. It should give favors and goods according to merit, so 
that those superior in virtue should get more. 

There are many functions within a state: Farmers for food; artisans and 
craftsmen for manufacturing; merchants for trade; soldiers for 
peacekeeping; well to do citizens for wealth; priests for religious 
services; prudent men to rule; serfs to provide leisure for others to 
engage in contemplation of the truth. 

Some occupations are incompatible with the life of a citizen: those of a 
farmer, artisan, trader. These occupations prevent the leisure needed for 
the good life. The best arrangement is that some should have functions at 
varied times of life: In physical prime, they can be soldiers; after the 
prime, can be rulers, who need wisdom, which comes only after physical 
prime. In old age they can be priests. Within the ruling class, they should 
take turns at power. 

Education is needed for the ruling class. He who is to rule must first 
learn to obey. Nature herself made the distinction. The young don ot mind 
being ruled or think self better: they will have the same privileges later 
in life. The state should set the age for marriage, physical condition of 
parents, should decide on exposure of infants, and the duration of 
marriage. 

There should be physical training from infancy, to make them fit for 
military service. Reading, writing, and drawing should be taught for their 
practical value. Gymnastics [The word stands for any form of bodily 
training; music means those things that pertain to the Muses. ] Music 
should be for recreation, but not just as amusement. Good also for moral 
discipline and rational enjoyment. It makes men better critics. But in ripe 
age, one should give it up. Men should not be professional musicians or 
learn difficult instruments. 

Some types of music are by nature adapted to promote various interior 
attitudes. The Dorian mode is best; the Phrygian is bad. The Lydian may be 
helpful. 

COMMENTS: 1. Dr. John Diamond, a New York psychiatrist, according to Twin 
Circle, July 22, 1979 studied more than 20,000 recordings of various types 
of music, and found that rock music with a stopped, anapestic beat could be 
stressful and depressing. He said it was found in over half the top record 
hits in any given week. It consists of two short beats and one long beat. 
He found that muscle strength drops more than half while a person listens 
to records with that rhythm. Also that beat interferes with brain wave 
patterns and causes mental stress. Sounds that are too loud can cause 
permanent damage to ears, which cannot be repaired. 

2. Aristotle shows limitations and narrowness from fourth century beliefs, 
when he says that slavery is natural, that the life of a farmer, craftsman 
or trader is not suitable for citizens. He shows bias against barbarians 
who naturally should be slaves. The actual city-state of the 4th century is 
his model. He has no world vision like Alexander. 

3. He did not foresee much progress in political institutions or in the 
crafts. In 2. 5 he said that almost everything has been found out. And in 
7. 9 he thinks that things have been invented several times over in the 
course of ages, but lost in great cataclysms. This reminds us of Plato, 
Laws 3. 677 which speaks of traditions of deluges. Herodotus in Histories 
2. 142 says that the Egyptian priests told him that in a span of something 
over 11, 000 years, the place of the rising of the sun had changed four 
times. This reminds us of I. Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision, who thought 
what is now the planet Venus was a celestial body that strayed into the 
solar system, made a close pass at the earth, causing its rotation to 
reverse, and finally settled down as a planet. 

4. The chief merit of his Politics is seeing how political science can be 
studied empirically, and stressing the fact that states exist for the 
common interest, and the need of moral character for states. In 1. 2 he 
said that man when perfected is the most noble of animals, but without law 
and justice man is the worst, the most unscrupulous and bestial of animals, 
going beyond other animals in lust and gluttony. 

5. He tended toward totalitarianism in his admiration of Sparta, and in 
saying in Ethics 1. 2 that the goal of the state is higher and more 
inclusive than that of individuals. Similarly in Politics 8. 1 he says, "we 
should not suppose that any one of the citizens belongs to himself. They 
all belong to the state, are part of it, and the are of each part is 
inseparable from the care of the whole." 

6. Physics and Metaphysics: (Because of the close connections, we will make 
a synthesis of his thought on both Physics and Metaphysics. The name 
Metaphysics was given by Andronicus of Rhodes, the first editor, who put 
the Metaphysics after the Physics, i. e, meta. -- We will indicate the 
source of each item with P for Physics, and M for Metaphysics). 

M 2. 1: The search for truth is in a way hard, in a way easy. No one gets 
it all, but collectively we do not miss altogether. It is difficult because 
our eyes are dazzled by what is in itself most evident, most true [the 
self-evident things]. 

M 1. 1: The joy we find in sensation shows we naturally desire knowledge. 
There are degrees of understanding: 1)Sense perception; 2)memory: memory 
plus sense perception makes animals more able to learn. In men, memory 
leads to experience; 3)Experience is formed in men out of repeated 
impressions. It leads to true knowledge, episteme. Animals instead must use 
imagination plus memories; 4)True knowledge, episteme, arises out of 
experience. It is a more general knowledge, speculative and practical; 5) 
art, techne is practical know-how, coming from many experiences. 

P 1. 1: There are two ways to begin to search: a) with what is most evident 
to us, the data of perception, or b) with what is most knowable in itself, 
the basic principles, self-evident things. He says he will chose the 
former, as most practical. Actually he chooses b. 

M 6. 1: There are three related sciences. Physics deals with all material 
things, all of which are capable of change. Mathematics deals with objects 
that are incapable of change, and that are only mentally, not actually 
separable from matter. Metaphysics has objects that are incapable of 
change, and are actually separable from matter. Note: He repeats this in M 
6. 1. and adds that to show what a thing is (its essence), is part of the 
same inquiry as to show that it is (its existence). Sadly, Aristotle did 
not follow up to see that essence and existence are related as potency and 
act - more on those soon. 

M 4. 2 and 5. 8: He is unclear and confused. He first says that the word 
being is used in several ways, in analogous senses to apply to substances 
or concrete things , modifications of substances, things on the way to 
being substance, corruptions or qualities or privations of substances, 
things productive of substance.  He adds that the word ousia [can mean 
either being or substance] has two chief senses: 1)the ultimate subject 
which cannot be predicated of something else; 2) whatever has individual 
and separate existence, having its own shape and form.  COMMENT: This is 
part of his problem coming from not having recognized that essence and 
existence are a special case of potency and act. He should have said: 
Everything that is, is being. Logically, there must first be the capacity 
for being (potency, essence) then could come the fulfillment of that 
capacity (act, existence). 

P 1. 8: Parmenides said all is one being, and there is no change. But he 
missed the distinction between a) absolute nonbeing, nothing and 
b)incidental nonbeing, which is privation, the lack of something that 
should be there. By this means Aristotle showed there is a difference 
within being, and implies the solution to the dilemma of Parmenides. 

P 4. 11: Time is a special kind of change. It is a measure of change, on a 
scale of before and after. 

P 1. 2: The basic principles of physical things are more than one, and 
their number is either finite or infinite. 
Physics takes for granted, from observation, that there is more than one 
being, and that there is change - against Parmenides. Also, if everything 
were one, there could be no principles, for principles cover many things. 
COMMENT: Here he clearly rejects pantheism, in which there is only one 
being, God. 

P 1. 4: The principles are pairs of opposites, such as hot/cold, wet/dry. 
This works well for the basic principles should not be derived from 
anything else, nor from each other, but all else should be derived from 
them. A pair of opposites fills this bill. Heat comes from cold; but 
cultured does not come from cold but from uncultured. 

P 1. 6: The basic principles cannot be infinite in number - then nature 
would be unknowable, but we do know it. [He misses a point. Our knowledge 
of nature is real but not entirely complete. So the principles are not 
infinite for that reason, not for the reason he gives]. So there is more 
than one principle, but the number is not infinite. It seems there should 
be more than two, for opposites, such as heat and cold, do not act on each 
other, but on a third thing, a substrate. [Here he is thinking of heat and 
cold as both positive, and does not think cold could be the privation of 
heat]. But we could also make them only two by saying there is a substrate 
plus heat, and make cold the privation of heat. [Here he shifts framework, 
and treats cold, rightly, as the privation of heat]. 
COMMENT: He has two ways of exploring - via pairs of opposites, as he has 
just done, or by the four causes and potency/act, which he now begins. 

P 2. 3: The four causes: [He uses the Greek word aitia, which covers 
whatever should be mentioned to give a complete explanation. English is 
narrower, would include only items 3 and 4, not 1 and 2).  1)Material 
cause: that out of which something is made, e.g. , the steel of a saw; 
2)formal cause, the distinguishing characteristics of a saw that are given 
to the steel. This cause generally includes all factors that make up the 
definition of a thing, i.e. , the saw shape; 3)efficient cause, the 
immediate propelling factor, which pushes or pulls, i.e. , the smith who 
makes the saw; final cause, the purpose for which it is made, a saw is made 
to cut wood. 

He notes further that causes can be mutual, can work on each other, but in 
different modes, e. g, health and exercise in which health is the goal or 
final cause, exercise is the efficient cause. 

Further, there are 3 pairs of causes: 1)prior or posterior: the more 
inclusive is prior, e.g. , expert is a more inclusive term than physician, 
who is one kind of expert; 2)essential or incidental: a statue is made 
essentially by a sculptor, i. . e, the man inasmuch as he is sculptor, not 
in as much as he is a man. As man he is the incidental cause. Essential can 
also be called proper; 3) actual or potential. A house is made by an actual 
builder, not by a potential builder. 

P 2. 7: Causes can coincide with each other. Formal and final causes can 
coincide, for the nature or form indicates what a thing can be used for. 
Efficient and formal causes can coincide in physical things, e.g. , a 
rabbit can beget a rabbit, since the rabbit has rabbit form. A rabbit never 
begets a chipmunk, for rabbit lacks chipmunk form. 

P 2. 4-6: Luck and Chance: Aristotle uses luck to mean something that 
serves a human purpose, or what would have been a human desire if thought 
of. Chance covers the same sort of thing in relation to the unconscious 
purposiveness of nature. Chance in Greek then always means a favorable 
outcome - in English it could be either favorable or unfavorable. 

Both chance and luck come from their causes incidentally, not properly, in 
the sense that there is no cause programmed to produce chance or luck 
events. 

M 6. 2. Accidentals: Somewhat similar is the accidental, that which just 
happens to happen. Accidental things do come from potencies, but there is 
no potency programmed to produce an accidental. That would have to be a 
random potency, and there is none. COMMENT: This implies a denial of 
causality: the accidentals have no cause, he would think. Einstein reacted 
against this sort of proposal, which quantum physics also makes, by saying: 
God does not roll dice. 

P. 2. 8: Nature does aim at a goal, hence it is called purposive or telic 
(Greek telos means purpose). Empedocles tried to say nature acts by
necessity, and is not aimed at a goal: rain falls because vapor rises, is 
cooled, falls back as rain. But rain may help or may ruin crops, and so, he 
says, nature is not aimed at a goal. Aristotle replies: there is still so 
much regularity and constancy in natural things that nature does aim, 
unconsciously, at a goal, even though there are some failures. Were 
Empedocles right, it would be a matter of random chance what would come up 
if we planted an apple seed. 

P 1. 7: Matter and form; substance and accident: there are two kinds of 
change , deep change or substantial change, and accidental or shallow 
change. In each, something stays, something shifts. In substantial change, 
first matter stays, substantial form is changed, e.g. , I eat hamburger 
which has cow form, the cow form is replaced by my form, but I keep the 
first matter. In accidental change substance stays, the accidents shift, 
e.g. , if we change the color of something. 

M. 9. 1: Potency and act: If we travel from one place to another, we first 
have the capacity, or potency; then if the trip happens, the potency is 
filled, fulfilled, actualized. But the same pattern shows when any change 
is made: first potency, then act or perfection of the potency. 

Potency and act are metaphysical components of things e.g. , in substantial 
change, first matter remains, but it keeps its ability to take on new 
substantial forms. Special cases are: a) first matter, which is 100% 
potency, with no actuality at all, and substantial form; b)substance, which 
is part potency, part act, and accidents, which fulfill the substance; 
c)essence or nature, the capacity to be something, and existence, its 
fulfillment. Thus Greeks thought of and described Centaurs, but that nature 
or essence never reached existence. 

He at times speaks of active potencies, which can produce change; passive 
potencies receive change. Above, and ordinarily, we mean passive potencies. 

P 2. l: Motion is the functioning of a changeable thing in actualizing the 
potency a thing has inasmuch as it is potency (or: qua potency). This is 
his language. It is simple: change or motion (he has one word for both) is 
the actualizing of a potency, inasmuch as it is still not fully actualized, 
or, is still potential. For there can be degrees of actualization. 

M 9. 9: There are good and bad potencies. A good actuality is better than a 
good potency. But in bad things, the actuality is worse than the mere 
potency to be bad. 

P 3. 1: A thing cannot be both actual and potential in the same respect at 
the same time, e.g. , a glass cannot be at the same time full and empty. 
But outside these limits, things can act on something, and at the same time 
be acted on by another thing. 

P 8. 3: Some things move at times, at times are at rest. Observation shows 
that not everything is always at rest, as Parmenides claimed. And 
observation shows that not everything is always changing, as Heraclitus 
said. An objection is raised by the followers of Heraclitus: some changes 
are too small to see, so there could always be change in spite of 
observation. Aristotle replies: We can see it when a stone dropped off a 
roof stops falling. 

P 8. 1: Eternal motion: Aristotle thinks the stars and other things in the 
sky are attached to various (about 50 of them) spheres in the sky, which 
always have been moving and always will be moving. So his use of the word 
eternal is different from ours, his use implies time. Our use of eternal 
means the condition of God in which all is present to Him, no change, and 
so no past, and no future. 

First proof: We imagine two slides projected. In the first, we see no 
beings - they are nonexistent. In the second we see beings in existence and 
changing. Where is the first change? It might seem to be in frame 2. But 
no, before frame two the cause that is behind the motion must have started 
to produce the change. So there is a cause before the first cause - which 
is absurd. So some beings have always been in change. COMMENT: Instead of 
saying there would have to be a cause before the first cause, we should 
change the numbers and call the two stages first and second stages. So his 
proof is worthless. 

Second proof: All thinkers - except Plato - agree time is eternal. But, 
time is either motion or the measure of motion. So motion is eternal. 
COMMENT: He tries to use an argument from authority - which is inadmissible 
in philosophy. And he leaves out the greatest authority of the time period!

Third proof: Time is a now or includes a now. But a now presupposes 
something before and after it - and so on ad infinitum. COMMENT: A now , a 
moment, need not have anything before it. Time, the measure of change, 
started when change started, with creation - of which Aristotle knows 
nothing. 

P 8. 7: Eternal motion must be locomotion: There are three   kinds of 
motion or change: change of quantity, change of quality, change of place 
(locomotion). Quantitative change presupposes change of quality, as in the 
assimilation of food. Qualitative change presupposes that the moving cause 
comes closer. This is locomotion. 

P 8. 9: Eternal motion must be locomotion in a circle: We consider: 
rotation, rectilinear motion, or a combination. Of course, the combination 
presupposes the two others. But rectilinear motion cannot continue without 
many turnings back, for a straight line cannot be infinite, since the 
diameter of the spherical universe is finite. Therefore rotation is 
logically presupposed to the other two. So eternal locomotion is rotation, 
motion in a circle, as in the spheres in the sky. 

M 2. 2: No infinite regress: There cannot be an infinite chain of causes 
behind things: 1)Material causes: if a thing is made out of something, 
there must be an ultimate thing out of which such things are made; 
2)Efficient causes: if #1 is moved by #2 and #2 by #3 and so on there must 
be an ultimate cause to support the movement. COMMENT: This could lead to 
proof of existence of God. Aristotle does believe in God, but does not 
reach it this way. We could do it thus: "Since when a potency is 
actualized, some emptiness or capacity is filled or fulfilled, there is 
more being at the end or top of the process. If I cause a change, where did 
I get the added being that appears? Perhaps I had it some where within me, 
but if so: where did that part of me get it? So I look outside myself for a 
source. I may find a long or short chain of sources/causes, but if each had 
to get up from potency to act, we must still ask: Where did that cause get 
the added being? No one lifts self off the floor by pulling up on 
shoelaces. We cannot give ourselves what we do not have. So we have to come 
to a Cause that does not have to get up to actuality: it is Pure Act. This 
is God. 3)Final causes: If there were not really a final final cause, there 
would be no intermediate causes, for their goodness and attractiveness have 
to come from the final final cause. The means are means to the end, which 
that final final is. 4)Formal causes: The formal cause is also the essence. 
And a full definition will list all the things that make up the formal 
cause. So we can say: since the first definition in a series is the fuller 
and the truer, if there were no such definition, there would be no later 
ones. COMMENT: Commentators disagree on what he means by the fuller 
definition. 

P 8. 5. There is an Unmoved Mover: This means a Mover that does not travel 
or undergo any sort of change in causing change. So, when an agent moves, 
it is either the ultimate responsible agent or not. There cannot be 
infinite regress, as we just saw. So there must be an ultimate mover, 
needing no other mover as source of its motion. That is the Unmoved Mover, 
the First Cause, God. 

M. 12. 6: Nature of the Unmoved Mover: Something potentially moving would 
not account for eternal motion, for a potency may not be actualized. 
Something merely moving as a matter of fact is not enough, if it contains 
any potency - for the potency may not be actualized. Therefore the Unmoved 
Mover must have no potency, must be Pure Act. COMMENT: This is true. We 
used a better way to reach it above in our addition to his ideas on no 
infinite regress in efficient causes. We saw it had to be Pure Act, no 
potency at all in it. We add now: a being with no potency is without limit, 
for potency is not only capacity but also limit. So the Unmoved Mover is 
Infinite. Again, since matter is potency, and the Unmoved Mover has no 
potency, He must be spiritual, not material. Further, since time is a 
measure of change, and He is incapable of change - potency is needed for 
change - therefore He is outside time, and all things a present to Him: no 
past, no future. He is in eternity in the strict sense, not the loose sense 
Aristotle uses, of something that always has moved, always will move. 

Sadly, Aristotle next raises a difficulty: Everything that functions has a 
potency, but not everything that has a potency functions. So, potentiality 
is logically presupposed to actuality, and so there need not be any reality 
at all. He tries to reply by saying: If we accept the statements of Hesiod, 
who says all came from Night, or Anaxagoras, who says all came from chaos, 
there would be no actual cause for motion. COMMENT: This is pitiful, he 
drags in even a poet Hesiod, and has no answer. Really, he should have 
said: The only being whose existence is necessary is God - all else is 
contingent, would not have to exist. But God decided to create. Aristotle 
knew nothing of creation, although his arguments showing no infinite 
regress in material causes could have led him to it (we saw it from M. 2. 2 
recently above). 

M 12. 7. He continues replying to the objection he raised in the second 
part of 12. 6: So, our answer must be right, otherwise we would have to say 
things came out of night, chaos, or nonbeing. COMMENT: Yes, things did come 
out of nonbeing, were created out of nothing. Here he rejects the 
possibility of creation. But then he continues: So there is something 
eternally moving, in unceasing circular motion. That which produces this 
motion is itself in motion, and so is the intermediate , not the ultimate 
mover. But since there is no infinite regress, as we saw above, there must 
be an Ultimate Mover, which is without motion or change - otherwise we 
would have to regress further. COMMENT: Here he is quite right, there is an 
Ultimate Mover, which is God. But he will get into trouble when he now 
continues:

How does it cause movement? It does so as an a object of desire and 
thought. It is the final cause, the goal. COMMENT: Here is a sad mistake. 
He needs something to account for the movement of everything else, he says 
it is the Ultimate Mover. But he has been speaking of efficient causes. 
Only they turn wheels, cause change or movement. But he jumps the track, 
and says the Ultimate Mover is a final cause. Why did he do this? Because 
in his world, he could not find or imagine anything that could cause change 
or movement without undergoing some movement or change itself at the same 
moment. Even if he could have pictured a God who could cause 
movement/change by merely willing it, Aristotle would probably have said: 
There are two moments: first the Mover has not yet willed to cause 
motion/change; second, He does will it. So there is a change in Him. Hence 
Aristotle could not have accepted this idea. But we can do what he could 
not do. God can indeed cause things by merely willing it. But there are not 
two moments in Him, He, having no potency, cannot change, and so is not in 
time - for time is a measure of change/motion . So, all the acts or 
decisions of His will are always there, eternal, identified with His being. 
He can order something to happen at any point He wills on the time scale. 
But His act of will simply IS, eternal, without change. He adds a fine 
sentence:

The life of this Mover is like the best, which we have only at times. For 
He is always in the state of contemplation of truth, thought. Further, 
thinking deals with what is best in itself, and the highest kind of 
thinking deals with what is best in the highest sense, which is thought. 
So, thought is the object of His thought. He thinks about thinking! 
COMMENT: Sad again, then God would know nothing outside of Himself. But in 
M 12. 10 he adds that the order in an army depends on the General. This 
would imply that the order in the world depends on God, so He would know 
all things in the world. Aristotle never resolved this difficulty. -- 
Historically, when people try to find out HOW God knows things, they run 
into foolish conclusions. Thus Plotinus says that the One is unconscious: 
if He had a thought, there would be a duality, He and His thought. Some so-
called Thomists says God cannot know anything except by causing it. But 
that would make Him like a blind man, who knows a chair is moving only if 
and because he is moving it. St. Thomas Aquinas knew better. When he asks 
how God can know future contingents, things involving a free decision, he 
always recurs to eternity, to make the future free decisions present. For 
as future, they have no existence in advance, nor are there causes lined up 
to intersect and cause the decision - then it would not be free. Now there 
would be no need to explain carefully that eternity makes things present if 
all Thomas would have had to say was: God knows the future because He plans 
to cause it. For a full discussion, and the actual texts of St. Thomas, 
with analysis, see Wm. G. Most, New Answers to Old Questions, St. Paul 
Publications, London, 1971, §§ 458-479. 

Really, we must just say God is transcendent, above and beyond all our 
categories and classifications. 

P 8. 6. The Unmoved Mover is eternal, otherwise there would not be eternal 
motion. But: Could a series of beings, coming in and out of existence 
suffice? He says: No, a cause would be needed to make them, and they would 
not account for the continuity of movement. COMMENT: Yes, God the Unmoved 
Mover is eternal, but not in the sense Aristotle has in mind, which is a 
time sense: always has been moving, always will. God simply IS, no past, no 
future. He continues:

There is probably only one Unmoved Mover, since if a finite explanation 
suffices, it is better. COMMENT: This is sad again. He did not know the 
Unmoved Mover is infinite, and so there could not be two, they would 
coincide. He was also affected by astronomy, for he says also in M. 12. 6 
that the number of movers should be investigated by the aid of that branch 
of mathematics which is closest to philosophy, i.e. , astronomy. Astronomy 
in his day held for many spheres in the sky, onto which the sun, moon, 
stars and planets are attached. It is not easy to be sure what number 
Aristotle held for, probably 55, perhaps 49. With the requirements has laid 
down for an Unmoved Mover - must not undergo any movement or change in 
causing movement - he should have seen that the spheres in the sky are not 
Unmoved Movers. 

P 8. 10. Does the Unmoved Mover have Size? He says he cannot have infinite 
size, for there is no such thing - he thinks he proved that in Physics 3. 
5. But it cannot have finite size either, for a finite agent would not be 
able to exert unlimited force, or keep things in motion for unlimited, 
eternal time. So the Unmoved Mover must have no size, be indivisible, 
without parts. COMMENT: He is very close here to seeing that the Unmoved 
Mover is spiritual. We can see that by noting that He has no potency. But 
matter, first matter is pure potency. With no potency, He has no matter, is 
spiritual. 

7. Beyond Aristotle in Physics and Metaphysics: Aristotle's principles are 
very fruitful, and can even help in the understanding of Scripture. Here 
are some further developments beyond what he was able to see:

a)Distinction of Potency and Act: Aristotle did not bring out that they are 
really, not just mentally, distinct from each other. For a passive potency, 
a capacity, limits what perfection it can receive. Now if potency and act 
were really identical, then the more perfect or actual a thing would be, 
the more limited it would be. That is nonsense, for act is perfection and 
potency is limit. 

b)God is Infinite: With the above conclusion in mind, we can see that God 
is Infinite. We say, and Aristotle saw it too, that He is Pure Act, no 
potency. So, no limit, infinite. 

c)Essence and Existence: Aristotle saw two special pairs of potency-act, 
namely, matter-form; substance-accident. But he missed the important pair: 
essence-existence. (He once had a hint of it in Metaphysics 6. 1, as we saw 
above). Essence is the whatness of a thing, approximately, its nature. But 
does that essence reach actual existence? In all creatures, since they do 
not have to exist - their existence is not necessary - essence need not 
reach existence, e.g., the case of a centaur. 

But a Being that is necessary, that has no potency, will have 
identification of essence and existence: its essence or nature is to exist. 
We think of the words of God to Moses in Exodus 3. 14: "I am."

d)First Cause is Efficient, not just Final: We saw above that Aristotle 
left his reasoning incomplete in speaking of the chain of efficient causes. 
He did see that a creature-cause that acts must get its power to act from 
another, for it is not the ultimate source of that power. (In other words: 
there is a rise from potency to act in which new being appears. Where does 
the extra come from? It is really from creation). So we come to a First 
Cause, which is the Ultimate Source. Sadly, he made it a final cause 
instead of an efficient cause. But a final cause turns no wheels. We saw 
above how to correct Aristotle's deficiency. 

e)Dependence: All creatures need this Pure Act to actualize their potency 
for existence, e.g. , to bring them into existence. 

f)More Dependence: When any creature acts that is, as we saw, a passage 
from potency to act. But we add: there is a passage from potency to act for 
the movements of heart, lungs, etc. The same holds for getting a good 
thought. 

g)Free Decisions: When I make a free decision of my will, that too is a 
rise from potency to act, which must depend, ultimately, on the movement 
from Pure Act. 

Is this compatible with freedom? Yes. We could explain this way: Suppose a 
movement from Pure Act is offered me (directly or through a chain of 
causes) to move my free will to a decision. I cannot make an act of 
acceptance - that involves a rise from potency to act. But experience shows 
I can reject it, can do wrong. (More on how this happens presently). 

So here is the way to visualize things: A movement from the First Cause 
causes actualizes the potency of my mind to see something He would like to 
lead me to do or accept. At the same time, almost automatically, it 
actualizes the potency of my will, not as far up as a decision, but as far 
as a favorable attitude. But when this is in place, suppose I simply do 
nothing against it, in the precise juncture when I could reject? Then the 
Pure Act orders the movement to go into phase 2. In it, it is producing the 
free decision of my will, yet in such a way that I am acting along with it, 
by power being received at the same instant from the movement.  

So I do control the outcome, but I do it by means of a metaphysical zero, 
by non-rejection. Some object: This is the same as a good decision. But no: 
a positive decision involves a rise form potency to act - non-rejection 
does not. It is merely the lack of a decision, an ontological zero. 

We return to the matter of rejecting, which experience shows is in my 
power. But there is a problem. To reject has to involve a decision, a 
movement from potency to act. For this I need the First Cause, Pure Act. 
How can that be done?

Let us recall the picture. At the start, the movement from Pure Act 
actualized the potency of my mind to see something as good, and actualized 
the potency of my will, not up to a decision, but only to a favorable 
attitude. Suppose then, when this has been done, and I see it, it does not 
please me? Then the favorable attitude collapses, in other words, the 
actualization of my will as far up as a favorable attitude collapses, falls 
down to potency . This is enough to serve as a critical condition. If it 
appears, the First Cause will actualize the potency of my will to reject. 

h)Help in understanding Scripture. Many translations weaken 2 Cor 3. 5 and 
Phil 2. 12-13. They should be rendered, in 2 Cor: "Not that we are 
sufficient to think anything by ourselves as from ourselves; our 
sufficiency is from God"; and in Phil 2. 12-13: "Work out your salvation 
with fear and trembling, for it is God who works [produces] in you both the 
will and the doing." As to the good thought, we saw it needs the First 
Cause to cause the rise from potency to act. So too for the good decision 
of will. God will cause this decision in us provided we non-reject,  as 
explained above. 

The first part of Phil 2. 12-13 urges us to work out our salvation "with 
fear and trembling". That phrase, "fear and trembling" is stereotyped, as a 
comparison with other NT passages shows. It merely means "with great 
respect."

Why with great respect? Because when we do good, we are using God's own 
power to act. But, more frightening, when we do evil, we also need the 
movement of the First Cause. We are actually using His power to do evil. 
The evil does not come from Him. He provides the power, we provide the 
specification to evil. 

Incidentally the Second Council of Orange in 529 AD, in canons 4 and 7 (DS 
374 and 377) defined the sense of these two passages of St. Paul. It was a 
local Council, but because of the special approbation by Pope Boniface II, 
its canons are equal to those of a General Council. Most modern 
translations simply ignore the Canons of this council. 

7. Psychology: Aristotle means here the study of soul, different from the 
matter of modern psychology. 

1. 1: Why study soul? We study soul because all knowledge is beautiful, and 
especially that which is more exact and deals with more excellent objects. 
Study of soul rates high on both counts. It is the principle (arche) of 
animal life. 

We want to know under what class of things soul falls, is it a particular 
substance, quantity, quality or something else. Are all souls of the same 
kind? Is there one definition for all souls?

1. 5: Is soul made up of the four elements? The soul is not composed of the 
four elements, earth, air, fire, water. Some think it is, saying that since 
like is known by like, the soul needs something of all four elements. But 
Aristotle replies: Yes, but the soul also knows combinations and 
proportions of elements, so it should have all these, including a stone and 
a man. COMMENT: His argument is invalid, for a color TV tube, having 
electron guns for the primary colors, can make all colors. That "principle" 
that like is known by like is false, but it must have been around in his 
day. He probably does not hold it himself. 

2. 2: What is life? Life connotes intelligence, sensation, spatial 
movement, and ability to take on nutrition. If any of these is present, we 
call things alive. COMMENT: He knows what "connotes" life, but does not try 
to define life itself. 

2. 3: Levels of soul: There seem to be various levels of soul: plants have 
only nutrition, other things add sensation, animals have at least one sense 
(if only one, it would be touch). (When he tries to specify which is most 
basic, he sometimes mentions ability to take nutrition, sometimes speaks of 
reproduction). 

1. 1: Survival after death: (We return to this chapter for very different 
matter). It seems that in most cases soul neither acts nor is acted upon 
without the involvement of the body. If there is an exception, it is 
thinking. But if thinking needs mental images, it too will depend on the 
body. If it needs the body for everything, then the soul might be 
comparable to the straightness of a line, which cannot exist without the 
line. (In 1. 4 he will add: If the soul could be destroyed, it probably 
would be destroyed by the feebleness of old age. But what really happens in 
old age seems parallel to what happens to eyes in old age. If an old man 
could get new eyes, he would see as well as a young man. This seems to 
imply the soul is ageless). COMMENT: Here he is making an approach to 
survival after death: is there something the soul can do without the body? 
But if images are needed, body will be needed. In 3. 7-8 he will return to 
the point, and say that both speculative and practical thought need images. 
This would imply no survival is possible. He does not draw the conclusion.  
He is right that practical thought, aimed at action, needs images, e.g. , a 
diver taking off from the board must have an image of what he intends to 
do. But no image is needed for abstract concepts, such as that of justice, 
truth, goodness, or even that of dog. 

2. 1. Soul is the form of the body: There are three kinds of things: 
matter, form, and the combination of the two. Matter is potentiality; form 
is actuality. Every natural body has both matter and form. So it is evident 
that the body is the matter, the soul is the form. So: Soul is the 
substantial form of a natural body which has the potency for life. Soul 
actualizes that potency and so makes it alive. COMMENT: 1) He does not take 
up the question of whether soul is a different and independent substance 
from that of the body. If the two differ as potency and act, however, they 
would seem to be rather different. 2)There is a problem here. First matter 
has no characteristics at all. But in conception, two living things, ovum 
and sperm, unite, and each does have characteristics. Only this union 
brings human life. Could there be one form for the matter following upon 
another?

1. 1: Body-soul relationships: (Still another, related, problem about 
soul/body relationship). It seems that all the "affections: [modifications, 
pathe] of the soul - anger, fear, pity, etc. are always accompanied by 
bodily counterparts. Evidence: when the body is not aroused or worked up, a 
thought that might bring fear or anger may cause little or no arousal; but 
when the body is already worked up, perhaps by a different emotion, small 
causes may bring emotions.  COMMENT: 1)Modern psychology knows there are 
two elements to an emotion, the bodily changes (chiefly biochemistry) and 
the mental interpretation. Very similar or same biochemistry may serve for 
two emotions, such as fear and anger. But the mental interpretation makes 
the difference: If I see before me something that is threatening, the 
interpretation is fear; if something outrageous, the interpretation is 
anger. So Aristotle can say that when strong chemistry is already present, 
a small stimulus may bring a large effect, e.g. , if someone is very angry, 
he may more easily fall into fear if the stimulus for fear appears. 
2)Modern psychology also knows of somatic resonance: because we are made of 
two things, body and soul, and the two are so closely joined as to add up 
to one person, therefore if there is a condition on either side, there 
should be - for normal running, not just for survival of the thing - a 
parallel on the other side, which is called a resonance. When the resonance 
is on the bodily side (most usual) it is called somatic resonance. For 
example, love is in the spiritual will, a desire or will for the well-being 
of another for the other's sake. But normally in human affairs, feeling or 
chemistry will be the somatic resonance; any feeling from the nonsexual 
response of parents to their own children, to the overtly sexual response 
of mates. Aristotle seems to sense something of this sort of relationship 
too. More on this in the section below on Beyond Aristotle in Psychology. 

1. 4: Can the soul be moved? (We return to this chapter for still different 
matter). He asks: Can the soul be moved? [First he has in mind locomotion, 
for his word for movement covers both locomotion and other kinds of 
change]. He says no, the soul does not go from place to place. At most it 
moves from place to place incidentally, like the color on a ball when the 
ball is thrown. 

[Then he asks about other kinds of changes, and becomes a bit confused, for 
he does not distinguish feelings from other changes. He says the soul 
itself does not become angry. But then he asks about thinking, loving, etc. 
He says these are not movements of the soul but of the organism that has a 
soul. We reply that since love is an attitude of a soul, willing good to 
another for another's sake, yes the soul can be changed or moved in that 
sense]. 

One of the two information gathering powers: sensation (the other is 
intellect):

2. 12: Sense and sense organ: In sensation we receive the sensible form 
without receiving the matter, a wax tablet takes the imprint of a gold 
signet ring without taking the gold. The sense organ is that which has a 
potency to receive sense impressions. Sense organ, and sense potency are 
one in reality, but mentally we distinguish them. The organ takes up space, 
and is a compound of potency and act, the potency is mere potency, takes up 
no space. 

This potency comes from a certain ratio (logos) in the organ. It is really 
a balance (mesotes, ) in a middle position between opposite qualities. The 
potency is not determined in any direction. If it were, it would color what 
is received. The sense stimulus is like a harmony in relation to the ratio. 
So, excesses in the objects of sense can damage the sense organ. 
Excessively loud sounds do damage hearing. 

3. 2: Common actualization of two potencies: The potency of the sense to 
perceive, and the potency of the object to be perceived share a single 
common actualization. 

2. 6: Three kinds of sense objects: 1)Objects special or proper to a 
particular sense, e.g. , color to sight. Perceived directly and properly, 
not just incidentally. [A thinks there is a one to one correspondence, each 
sense has one proper object, and no other sense can pick that object up 
properly, only incidentally]. 2)The common sensibles, which are perceptible 
to all the senses, but not proper to any one of them: common to all. These 
include: movement, rest, number, figure, size etc. They are perceived 
properly and directly, not just incidentally, not by each individual sense, 
but by the complex of the work of several senses. 3)Incidental objects: 
these are not perceived directly, e.g. , the fact that this white object 
which we perceive is the son of Socrates. Sonship is not perceived directly 
and properly, but only incidentally. 

Each sense in judging its own proper object is not deceived. [in 3. 3. he 
will say: there is a minimum of error]. The proper sensibles are the most 
strictly perceptible, being adapted each to a special sense. 

3. 1: How we know the common sensibles? We register them only incidentally 
through each individual sense acting alone. We register them properly 
through the complex of the five senses. Yet there is no proper organ for 
the common sensibles. If there were, we would violate the one to one 
correspondence. But there is an aisthesis koine, a common or joint 
functioning of the senses. He means not an organ, but a process. The data 
seems to be integrated by a center. In his small work, On Youth and Old Age 
4692) he seems to say the center is in the heart. 

2. 5: In sensation is like known by like? To see if this is true, we ask: 
Why do we not perceive the senses themselves, i.e. , why do they not cause 
sensation without an external object - for, according to that theory, they 
contain fire, earth etc. Reply: the faculty of sensation if we consider it 
as a potency rather than as an organ, has no actual, only potential 
existence. So just as fuel does not burn by itself without an external 
kindling agent, so these senses need an outside object. While a thing is 
being acted upon, it is unlike the thing that acts on it. When it has been 
acted upon it is like, not just that both are actual or even that they 
share a common actualization (as in 3. 2) but that the sense takes on the 
form of the object. COMMENT: Aristotle is a bit confused here. We can 
consider the power of sensation either as organ or as potency or as both. 
If we choose for a time to think of only one, of potency, this does not 
destroy the reality that there are both. Really, he should have said: This 
like known by like theory should result in the senses buzzing all the time, 
since they have the 4 elements in them. They do not do that, so the theory 
is false. 

When we deal with an object proper to two senses, e.g. , a sweet white 
pill, two senses each handle their proper objects. The data is fed into the 
soul. 

3. 2: How do we perceive that we perceive? That is, how do I see that I 
see, etc. ? Aristotle says we see that we see either by the sense of sight, 
or by some other sense. So it must be that we do it by the sense of sight, 
otherwise two false things would follow: (1) We could have two senses each 
with the same proper object - Aristotle thinks this cannot be. (2) or we 
would need an infinite regress, i.e. , something to see that we see that we 
see, and so on to infinity. So we conclude: We see that we see by the sense 
of sight. COMMENT: His argument is a disjunction, but his list is not 
complete, it lacks the other possibility: We see that we see by the fact 
that we have reflex consciousness, since we have a spiritual soul. It can 
as it were bend back on itself and see itself seeing. 

3. 3: Error in sense perception:
1)As along as a sense registers its own proper objects, perception is true, 
or with a minimum or error. 2)When we go further, and perceive that this 
white object is e. g, , the son of Socrates, there is a chance of error, 
for this is incidental perception. 3)When we perceive the common sensibles, 
error can readily occur. 

The other information gathering power: intellect:

Two preliminary comparisons:

3. 3: Comparison of thought and sensation: Some think thought is just a 
higher degree of sense perception. But those who say this overlook the 
problem of error: the soul spends much of its time in it. More positively, 
we can show that thinking is not the same as sense perception:(1) All 
animals have sensation, but not thinking; (2) perception by sense is always 
true, or with a minimum of error; but thinking is more easily in error. 
COMMENTS: 1)As to the second point, if thought were merely a higher form of 
sensation, it could be more difficult, and so more error. As to (1) it 
needs sharpening. The example we gave above about a concept of dog or 
justice etc. is the real means of showing. The dog in my concept is not 
high or low, long or short, etc. So if I hired the best possible artist, 
gave him a choice of media, he could not make an image - for no material 
can hold that concept. So that in me which holds it is not material but 
spiritual. 

3. 3: Comparison of thought and imagination: (Note: Imagination in Greek 
means the power of making and keeping images. English usually implies 
making up out of nothing. The Greek does not). We see differences: 1)We can 
imagine things when and as we wish; but we cannot make just any judgment we 
wish, we must keep to the truth. We could imagine the house is on fire, but 
not believe it at will. 2)When our mind judges something dreadful is true, 
we are disturbed. But if we merely imagine it, we may not be disturbed. 

3. 4: The passive intellect: This is the intellect inasmuch as it can take 
on the form of anything whatsoever without taking on the matter, like the 
impression of a signet ring in wax. So the passive intellect must be 
unmixed with everything, otherwise it would slant perceptions. And it must 
have no nature but the capacity to receive. So it must not be mixed with 
the body. It must be at zero on the scale from potential to actual.  When 
the passive mind has taken on many forms or actualizations it still has 
indefinitely large potential to take on more.  When it has become 
actualized to some extent in this way, self-knowledge become possible. 

Overstimulation weakens a sense's power to perceive; but when the mind has 
been reflecting on highly intelligible things, it is not weakened. COMMENT: 
Right after thinking, there may be fatigue, but in the long run much 
thinking will not dim the power of the mind to perceive, will more likely 
develop it. 

3. 5: The active intellect: In all nature we find two things, the matter 
which potentially can take on the form of all things, and the active cause 
that makes it take on the form. Mind in the passive sense becomes all 
things; in the active sense it makes all things - as light makes potential 
colors actual. 

Mind in this active sense is separable from the body, it is impassive, is 
unmixed. It is essentially an activity (energeia). 

Only when separated from the body is mind its true self; this alone is 
immortal and everlasting. We do not remember such a state, because active 
mind cannot be acted on, and so cannot receive impressions, and the passive 
mind is not separable from the body. COMMENT: We do not know what state he 
has in mind. Cannot be Plato's world of Ideas, for after being in it, the 
soul can be led to remember it again, so it did take on impressions. We 
will speculate further in the Beyond Aristotle section. 

Mind does not think intermittently, so that at one time it thinks, at 
another time not. COMMENT: 1)This seems to be true of the subconscious 
mind. Aristotle must have had experience of its work in solving problems. 
But otherwise we are not sure what he means here. 2)Does Aristotle think 
each one has an active intellect, or does God do the work for us? His 
friend and successor Theophrastus said he did mean we each have one. That 
should settle it. Yet Alexander of Aphrodisias (2-3d cent. A. D. early 
commentator on Aristotle) said there is only one active mind for all, which 
is God Himself. - When Aristotle says the mind is pure activity, someone 
might take it to mean it is God, since God is Pure Act. But we must recall 
that active mind has two aspects, as organ, and as activity. As organ, it 
is a compound of potency and act, and so not identified with God. 

3. 6: How error is possible in thinking: Just as sight is infallible in 
seeing color, but can be wrong in thinking that this particular white thing 
is Socrates, similarly the mind cannot err when simply perceiving the 
essence of a thing, but can err when there is a compounding, when the 
object is not indivisible e.g., propositions always involve putting things 
together, so as to say in effect: This is that sort of thing. In this, 
error is possible. Also if thinking refers to past or future, time is an 
element, and so error is possible. 

8. Beyond Aristotle in Psychology:

a)In regard to soul and body as form to matter: We already saw above the 
modern concept of somatic resonance. We can see many applications: 

(1) In the aged who are somewhat broken down, the bodily debility may 
damage somatic resonance to judgment. Something similar happens in young 
children when too tired. 

(2)Teenagers usually starting late in High School may find temptations to 
doubt their faith. There are two reasons: first, the deep physical changes, 
especially glandular, put somatic resonance to faith (and other things too) 
into an unstable condition. Second, in addition, they are in the period of 
changeover from the childhood pattern of accepting things because the 
elders said so, to the adult pattern where one should be able to give sound 
reasons for things including faith. Here apologetics is much needed. Many, 
sadly, never make this crossover completely. 

(3) Spiritual growth lies basically in the complete alignment of one's will 
with the will of God. But that development needs a parallel development in 
somatic resonance. Somatic resonance grows in a step-graph pattern, not on 
a continuous line going up. A corollary: Negative mortification, since it 
affects the body, is helpful to make larger changes in somatic resonance. 
The same is true of severe trials that affect body and soul, if one accepts 
them generously as the will of God. (4) In Ethics 8. 2 we saw that love is 
an attitude of the spiritual will, willing good to another for the other's 
sake. There is a normal somatic resonance to that in feelings. These 
feelings are the somatic resonance to love, and so tend greatly to bring 
love with them. Further, the feelings that arise automatically from the 
hormones cast as it were a rosy light on someone else, making them seem 
wonderful. That is a starter for the attitude of love in the will. But this 
splendid process can be frustrated either by masturbation, which turns one 
back again to the selfish attitude of babies; or by premarital sex, in 
which two persons use each other for sensory gratification. They think they 
have love, great feelings of warmth, tenderness. But that may be only 
chemistry. And if they are sinning and putting each other into mortal sin - 
that could result in never being happy again, if death should catch them - 
real love is very unlikely to develop. But it will seem like love, and so 
they may be led into marriage, and afterwards find out they had no real 
love at all, just chemistry. 

(4)Science News, Dec. 30, 1972, p. 424 reports research showing a tendency 
to suppose that physical beauty means beauty of character. 

(5)Scientific American, Feb. 1974, pp. 84-91 shows low levels of Serotonin, 
a neurotransmitter, predispose to high sexual activity and difficulty in 
sleeping. 

(6)Science News, July 16, 1983, pp. 45-46 shows biochemistry can predispose 
to anxiety. Issue of Nov. 10, 1990, p. 301 reports suicide victims show 
abnormal levels of serotonin and norepinephrine. 

(7) Science News, August 20, 1983, pp. 122-25: A chemist from Argonne 
Laboratories went to Stateville Prison in Illinois, got hair samples from 
violent criminals, found high correlation between highs and lows of certain 
trace elements and criminal behavior. This does not mean no freedom, but 
does mean a predisposition. Since it is bodily, it could even be inherited. 

b)Active intellect apart from the body: Aristotle said in 3. 5 that only 
when separated from the body is the mind fully itself. He does not say in 
what way. Let us explore. 

Since we in this life can hold abstract concepts , e.g. , justice, goodness 
, etc. in memory, we have a spiritual memory. This memory comes along with 
the soul after separation. 

In the present life, the power to know that is natural to the spiritual 
soul is held down because it is tied to the material component of the 
brain, a marvelous thing, but yet far inferior to a spiritual intellect. 
But at death that link is broken, and so the natural power of the spiritual 
intellect asserts itself. So the lights go on. The data about God we carry 
over will be understood far more clearly then - and there will be no 
distractions from the senses then - and so the lights go on. The soul 
intensely wants God. 

If the will is in accord with God's will, eventually that vision can be 
had. If the will is turned against Him, the soul will both intensely want, 
and intensely flee Him - a sort of twisted state that must be permanent, 
since no substantial change is possible after death. Scripture speaks of 
fire in hell. The most recent declaration of the Doctrinal Congregation, 
May 17, 1979 says that hell will have a "repercussion on the whole being of 
the sinner." The pain in addition to the loss of God must be of an 
intensity comparable to what fire would give in this life. 

To reach the vision of God, two things are needed in addition to the state 
of grace: 1)complete purification of the soul, of its power to see. If not 
done fully in the present life, it must be done then; 2)what the soul 
should have done towards being like Christ in the rebalancing of the 
objective order after sins will have to be completed then. Thank Heavens 
there is a means to do this, Purgatory. Otherwise the soul could never 
reach the vision of God. 

There is no time in the next life. We are full of changes (metabolism) and 
on a planet that spins and travels constantly. Time is the measure of those 
changes - ahead is a moment we call future, it changes to present, changes 
to past. This goes on in the present life without stop. But at death that 
movement is stilled. If a soul goes directly to heaven, it waits only one 
instant for resurrection, for there is no change. Similarly for a soul in 
hell. But a soul in purgatory must have the two developments just 
mentioned, which we assume may be in stages - so there are some as it were 
markers. Some private apparitions of souls from Purgatory - the Church does 
not guarantee these, but we may believe if we wish - have souls reporting 
many years in Purgatory for even small faults. We can picture it this way: 
imagine a graph with two lines on it, above and below. The higher line 
represents aevum , the duration in Purgatory. The lower line represents 
time. We might as it were draw a line from a point on the aevum line, and 
see where it reaches the line for time. In that sense a soul might speak of 
e.g. , 50 years in Purgatory. 

The suffering in Purgatory comes essentially from the frustrated desire to 
see God. Yet there is immense consolation, for the soul is certain of its 
own salvation, and does love God greatly. 

The Church teaches that we can and should pray for the souls in Purgatory. 
They cannot merit or help themselves, but we can help them. Then they pray 
for us.  They would know in general from alleviation that someone is 
praying, and then be moved to pray for the one who helped them. God 
probably gives them information on who it is. 

When we know things in the present life, we do not take these objects into 
us, only an image of them. An image can represent them well enough, for 
images are finite, but so are the objects we see. But no image could make 
the Infinite known in what S. Paul calls face to face vision (1 Cor 13. 
12). So it must be that the divinity will join itself directly to the human 
soul or mind, without even an image in between - the divinity performs the 
work an image would do. The soul is as it were a finite receptacle, trying 
to take in the Infinite. So it never becomes dull. Further, St. Augustine 
says that souls in heaven participate (we note the Platonic language) in 
the eternity of God, in which there is no change (City of God 10. 7). Just 
as God simply IS, so the soul in heaven simply IS unutterably fulfilled and 
happy. It does not really go on and on and on - it IS. Similar comment for 
a soul in hell. 

Within the Holy Trinity we might say there are streams of infinite 
knowledge (resulting in the Son) and infinite Love (resulting in the Holy 
Spirit). Only a being part divine (cf. 2 Peter 1. 4) can as it were plug 
into those streams. Grace now makes us radically capable of that vision in 
the world to come.


VI - The Secularized Philosophy of the Hellenistic Age

It might have seemed that an ideal combination was at hand. Aristotle, as 
we saw, became the tutor of young Alexander the great. A great mind, and 
great power, might have accomplished so much. Yet there seems to have been 
small interaction. Aristotle's eyes were limited by his vision of the city-
state; Alexander had a vision of empire, and achieved it. 

The Greek world and all the Near East was permanently changed. So this age 
is called the Hellenistic Age, in contradistinction to the Hellenic Age 
that had gone before it. 

The freedom of the city-states was in practice about gone. After 
Alexander's death, his successors - often called the Diadochi, their Greek 
generic name - fought for power. At first there were 5 empires, then 4, and 
finally it settled down into three: Macedonia, Egypt, and Syria as the 
Romans called the latter. Today we often refer to it as the Seleucid 
Empire. 

Literature took a very different color - no works of the stature of the 
greatest earlier ones were produced. Religion was affected by widespread 
disbelief in the old myths, which began around the end of the 5th century 
among the more intelligent people. (The same thing happened in Rome around 
the end of the 1st century B.C.)

New philosophies did arise in this age, but there were no minds comparable 
to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, until Plotinus, several centuries later. 

Alexander captured and put into circulation the great Persian treasury. The 
result was an inflation of everything except wages, and a financial 
instability. A man might be financially up one day, down the next. People 
looked for something to rescue them. Some turned to religion. They saw that 
chance seemed to rule all, and they already had a goddess of chance, Tyche. 
So some worshipped Tyche to gain stability. 

But others looked to philosophy. They wanted philosophy to offer a supreme 
good, a Summum bonum, which would make a man completely satisfied, which 
could be had even in this life, by one's own efforts alone, without the 
help of any man or god. 

Chiefly three philosophies tried to fill this request: Cynics, Epicureans, 
and Stoics. 

The Cynics:

Cynics had already been around for some time. They went back to Antisthenes 
(c. 445 - c. 365). He rejected Plato's ideas, is said to have said: "O 
Plato, I see a horse, but I do not see horseness." He held that virtue is 
wisdom, but the wisdom consisted chiefly in "seeing through" the values of 
most humans. Riches, passions etc. are not really good, nor is poverty, 
contempt really evil. Independence is the true good. 

Diogenes of Sinope, who died about 324, is noted in the Hellenistic age. He 
said Antisthenes had not lived up to his own ideas. He spent most of his 
life in Athens and later in Corinth. He called himself "Dog" and said 
animals are models for mankind. From this comes the name Cynics, for Greek 
kyon means dog. Living on so low a level, one cannot be blown over by the 
stormy blasts of fortune. 

The Epicureans:

Epicurus was born about 342 at Samos. He made pleasure the supreme good. 
But he did not mean by it what later Epicureans would mean. For him it was 
the absence of pain plus gentle satisfaction. If someone had asked him to 
come to happy hour and get drunk, he would have said: "That would be fun. 
But think of my head tomorrow! Seneca, the later Roman Stoic, reports 
Epicurus lived a rather ascetic life, thinking that long-running 
satisfaction was to be had that way. 

The Epicureans of course liked the thought of Democritus, according to 
whom, as we saw above, everything fell together by chance, will fall apart 
again, so there is no survival, and no need to fear the gods - just have 
fun! It was promoted specially by Lucretius (91-51 B. C. ) who popularized 
the ideas of Democritus in his De rerum natura , which includes, especially 
in book III, numerous arguments to prove there is no survival. When life is 
over it is like leaving the table after having a good meal. There is 
nothing more to come. 

The Stoics:

Zeno of Citium in S. E. Crete was born about 336 BC. He was the founder of 
the Stoic school, which gets its name from the Stoa or porch where he 
lectured. 

Stoicism borrows its cosmology from Heraclitus, especially the doctrine of 
the Logos and of Fire as the world-substance. But he took some things from 
Plato and Aristotle too. His idea of logoi spermatikoi seems to have been a 
transposition of the theory of Ideas to the material plane. These were the 
active forms of all things that are to be, which unfold themselves as 
individual things as time goes on. St. Augustine used this idea to explain 
how God stopped creating after 6 days, and yet new individuals arise (City 
of God 11. 9). 

Natural beauty in the universe points to a principle of thought, God. But 
the Stoic God was material. The crasser elements come from God and finally 
are resolved into Him again, so that all that exists is either the original 
Fire, that is God in Himself, or God in His different states. While the 
world exists, God is its soul. But there is an unending series of world-
constructions and world-destructions - an eternal cycle. 

Fate and Providence are just different aspects of God. So there is no human 
freedom. Liberty for Stoics meant doing consciously, with assent, what one 
would do anyway. Thus people would as it were accept God's will. 

In Ethics, they held that no act is evil in itself. It is the intention, 
the moral condition of the doer that makes a thing evil. The act as a 
physical thing is indifferent. (This sounds like Consequentialism or 
Proportionalism today!) Life according to nature means life according to 
the principle that is active in nature, the Logos, a principle in which the 
human soul shares. 

But as to the Supreme Good - it is to live habitually according to reason 
for reason's sake. This is not only the highest good, it is the only good. 
So there is only one evil, the opposite of that. All else is indifferent. 

This resulted in a marvelous example of painting one's self into a corner. 
They exalted reason to such an extent that it was impossible to act 
reasonably. For if I see three courses open to me, I can make a list of the 
good and bad things about each, and then see the best pattern. But the 
Stoic cannot make such a list: everything is indifferent except to live by 
reason: so it makes no difference if one is sick or well, rich or poor, 
even dead or alive. So they were allowed suicide. In fact, if things 
contrary to nature would be more weighty, one can be praised for suicide. 
St. Augustine (City of God 19. 4) laughs at Stoic pretentions. After 
starting out to make it possible to reach the supreme good by one's own 
means even in this life, yet the point may come where it is better to 
commit suicide! 

To live according to nature is not positively good, is strictly 
indifferent, yet some things are preferable or relatively choiceworthy: 
proegmena , and some are even to be avoided: apoproegmena. 

Now since emotions interfere with reason, they cannot be tolerated. So the 
wise man is without passions. So he is in this way second to none, not even 
second to Zeus (if one believed the stories about Zeus in mythology, a 
decent man would be far better). 

All virtues are bound together: so one either is or is not virtuous: there 
are no degrees. 

Romans having a more practical mind, saw that their great Roman heroes of 
the past would not measure up to this ideal, and so would be fools. So they 
wisely tempered it. And Cicero says that to uproot all feeling would be to 
pull up all humanity by the roots (De amicitia 13. 48). Yet the sternness 
of Stoics did agree with traditional Roman temperament, especially before 
200 B. C. 

The Fathers of the Church were at times influenced by the Stoic sternness 
and lack of feeling, e.g. , St. Augustine felt a bit guilty for having wept 
for his Mother's death. The problem was that Christian detachment might 
seem to go that far. Clement of Alexandria (Stromata 6. 9. 71. 2) said 
Christ was apathes, without emotion. W. A. Jurgens (The Faith of the Early 
Fathers, Collegeville, 1970, I. p. 186, note 17 thinks he meant only the 
lack of immoderate emotions. St. Hilary of Poitiers (De Trinitate 10. 23) 
said Jesus had no interior reaction of pain. 

Scepticism:

Appears in a number of authors. Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360 - c. 270) seems to 
have been influenced by the ideas of Democritus and the relativism of the 
Sophists. So he said we can only know how things appear to us, not their 
interior nature. The same thing may appear differently to different people. 

Sextus Empiricus (c. 250) argued against the possibility of proving any 
conclusions syllogistically. He said there would be a vicious circle if we 
argued: "All men are mortal" and then tried to conclude "Socrates is 
mortal" - we would first have to know that Socrates is mortal before we 
could state the first premise, "All men are mortal." This means he accepted 
only inductive proof - not deductive proof. In deductive proof we would say 
that all are made up of two parts, body and soul, and so the two can come 
apart, and that is what it means to be mortal. 

The Middle Academy founded by Arcesilaus (315-242) was also sceptic. 
Arcesilaus, according to Cicero, is supposed to have said he was certain of 
nothing, not even of the fact that he was not certain of anything. 

The New Academy was founded by Carneades of Cyrene (214 - 129 B.C.) He went 
with Diogenes on an embassy to Rome in 156. He held that knowledge is 
impossible, that there is no criterion of truth. Cicero spoke with some 
respect of the New Academy. 

St. Paul of Tarsus met Greek philosophers in Athens (Acts 17. 16-34) and 
after arguing with them also gave a discourse on the Areopagus. He quotes a 
few lines of Greek poetry - which need not mean he had a Greek education. 
Jews would in general be averse to that. He said he had seen an altar on 
going up the Areopagus inscribed "to an Unknown God". Paul said he would 
tell them about that god. He did not know what they really meant. They 
believed the gods were jealous, and if someone omitted proper sacrifice to 
one even by accident, there would be punishment, as we see in the myth of 
the Calydonian hunt. So that latter really was a way of saying: "In case we 
forgot someone, please accept this". Paul also tried to preach the 
resurrection - which did not please the Platonists, who hoped to get 
finally free of a body. 

In chapter 1 of Romans Paul says atheists are inexcusable, since the 
existence of God is so evident from creation. He then went on the describe 
in vivid language the progressive degradation of idolaters, who fell into 
all sorts of sins, the centerpiece of which is homosexuality. In the last 
verse of the chapter he says that some who used to know these things 
deserve death, now are so far gone that they not only do such things, but 
approve of doing them: they say sin is good. 

It is very true that a person can enter onto a sort of spiral in the bad 
direction, which feeds on itself and gets larger as it goes out farther. 
Imagine someone who has never been drunk before, but tonight he gets very 
drunk. Since this was the first time, the next day he will have guilt 
feelings, from the clash of the voice of his beliefs, and the voice of his 
actions. Something has to give. If he does not reform, his beliefs will be 
pulled into line with his actions, so that if we tell a confirmed drunk he 
should not do it, he will not grasp the fact. Not just that belief, but 
other interconnected beliefs will give way, until finally the person is 
quite blind, and thinks sin is good.  There is also a spiral in the good 
direction. If someone lives vigorously in accord with faith, which tells us 
the things of this world are of scant value compared to eternity, then his 
ability to understand spiritual things grows more and more. 

The picture St. Paul gives in Romans 1 has often been misunderstood. Many 
scholars recognize Paul is painting the Greeks much worse than they really 
were. This is evident from his own words in 1 Cor 6. 11. After giving a 
smaller list of great sins and sinners, he says: "Certain ones of you were 
these." That he said to Corinth, one of the most licentious cities in 
Greece. 

Could we avoid the error by saying Paul is only expressing tendencies, that 
not all were guilty of all the things he mentions? Some commentators try 
this. But for two reasons it will not work: 1)The chief thrust of Paul's 
argument in the first chapters of Romans is to show that all are hopeless 
if they try for justification by keeping the law - so they must turn to 
faith. So, if he merely said there was a tendency, or that only some were 
guilty, there would be gaping holes in his argument. 2)At the start of 
chapter 2, Paul says that "for this reason" anyone who judges another is 
guilty "of the very same sins." Commentators have done poorly here. They 
ignore the connector "for this reason" saying it is a colorless Greek 
particle. There are such things, but the word used here is not such, it is 
dio, which means "for which reason." It is strong. Secondly, they say 
merely that anyone who judges is a sinner in general. They cannot explain 
how Paul can say the man is guilty "of the very same sins." As we said, 
since Paul has to call everyone guilty of the very same sins, it is implied 
that everyone is guilty of every sin. How this can be we will explain in\ 
the next paragraph. 

We are not charging St. Paul with error. No, there seems to be a remarkable 
pattern in his writing, in which, especially in regard to the Law, he can 
take two kinds of views. We could call one of these the focused view (cf. 
e.g. , Gal 3. 21; 3. 10; 1 Cor 15. 56; 2 Cor 3. 6 and 9), the other, the 
factual view (cf. e.g. , Rom 3. 2; 7. 12 and 14 and 9. 4) In the focused 
view it is as though we are looking through a tube, and can see only what 
is framed by the circle of the tube: the Law makes heavy demands - it gives 
no strength - so one must fall and be spiritually dead. But in the factual 
view, the limit of the circle is removed, and we see the whole horizon: the 
Law still makes heavy demands, and gives no strength - but off to the side, 
in no relation to the Law, there is divine help, grace, available even 
before Christ. If one uses this, he will not fall and be dead. Rather, he 
is enabled to avoid the penalties that are part of the very nature of 
things (cf. St. Paul 1 Cor 6. 12. For the idea in general, cf. Wm. G. Most, 
"Focusing in St. Paul" in Faith & Reason II. 4, fall, 1976, pp. 47-70). 

We can, when convenient, call the focused view also a system as system 
view: the setup of being a gentile what does it do? It lets one know what 
is right and wrong (anthropology as we saw earlier shows primitives do know 
that rather well). But that knowledge gives no strength. So they must fall. 
Then in order to let St. Paul say everyone is guilty of "the very same 
sins" we add: "Each major precept of the law makes a heavy demand, gives no 
strength, so everyone falls, is guilty of "the very same sins". 

Paul needs this, as we said, to work out his argument: everyone is hopeless 
if he tries to seek justification by keeping the Law - so, we must turn to 
faith for justification. 

But in 1 Cor 6. 11, Paul uses the factual view, in which not everyone, not 
even in licentious Corinth, is guilty of every sin. 

We would add that the Romans were not so bad as the Greeks. Cicero quotes 
Ennius, the oldest Roman hexameter poet, saying, as against the Greek way, 
"The beginning of crime to bare bodies in public" (Tusculan Disputations 4. 
33. 70). Cicero also tells us (De officiis 1. 35. 120), that according to 
the custom of his time, once a boy in the family reaches puberty, the 
father no longer goes to the public baths with him. Still further, 
Suetonius, writing around 110 AD the lives of the first 12 Emperors, has a 
section in each biography for the virtues, and another for the vices. He 
accuses many of them of homosexuality -- but it is always listed among the 
vices. Even Athens in 5th century B. C. had a law against homosexual acts, 
though it was probably not enforced. Cf. K. J Dover, Greek Homosexuality, 
Harvard University Press, 1978. 


VII - Classical Philosophy as a Preparation for the Gospel

Greek philosophy helped prepare the way for the Gospel in two ways: 1) The 
positive work starting with Socrates, helped people to see that there are 
things above sense; 2) This however still left a desire for more. 

Clement of Alexandria, in his Stromata 1. 5, written about 208-11 AD) said: 
" Before the coming of the Lord, philosophy was necessary for justification 
to the Greeks; now it is useful for piety... for it brought the Greeks to 
Christ as the law did the Hebrews." This reminds us of St. Paul in 
Galatians 3. 24 saying the Law was the slave that took the Hebrews towards 
Christ. Clement added in Stromata 1. 20: "Philosophy of itself made the 
Greeks just, though not to total justice; it is found to be a helper to 
this [perfect justice], just as the first and second steps for one 
ascending to the upper part of the house, and like the elementary teacher 
for the [future] philosopher." It means that philosophy could lead to 
justification, the state of grace, for the Greeks, but would not take one 
to the higher levels of spiritual development. We will see presently that 
S. Justin the Martyr proposed the very same thing much earlier. 

We already indicated that the Fathers liked and used Plato. Thus St. 
Augustine (City of God 8. 5) says all other philosophies must give way 
before Plato. 

It seems the Fathers on the whole knew little of Aristotle. For example, a 
careful study, Elizabeth A. Clark, Clement's use of Aristotle (E. Mellen 
Press, NY, 1977) concludes that we cannot be sure Clement knew any work of 
Aristotle directly. If any, it would have been his Ethics. Other ideas of 
Aristotle he could have picked up through Middle Platonism, which had taken 
over some positions of Aristotle (cf. also, for the period up to Nicea, 
Jean Danielou, Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture, tr. John A. Baker, 
Westminster, Philadelphia, 1973). 



Chapter III. The Revealed Wisdom of the Hebrew Prophets

Was there philosophy among the Hebrews? If we define philosophy as the body 
of knowledge that seeks the answer to the most basic and large questions of 
life and existence, using human reason as the tool - then we would say 
there is no philosophy among the Hebrews, or in the New Testament either. 
But if we were to define philosophy as thinking within a religious faith, 
yes, there is a great philosophy, and one which reaches the true answers to 
the great questions, which so often the greatest philosophers had failed to 
reach. 

The commanding figure among the early Hebrews is of course Moses. There is 
debate as to whether and to what extent he can be called the author of the 
Pentateuch. The tendency today is to deny that he is, even though the first 
edition of the Jerome Biblical Commentary (I. p. 5) had said: "Moses is at 
the heart of the Pentateuch, and can, in accord with the common
acceptance of the ancient period, correctly be called its author." The 
Biblical Commission on June 27, 1906 had said the same. It admitted there 
can be modifications in the original work of Moses, that he used sources 
written or oral, that Moses may even have given his ideas to secretaries 
and let them do the actual work of composition. And of course in the 
ancient Near East author's rights did not amount to much: a later hand 
would feel free to change, to add, to subtract, and still leave it under 
the name of the original author. 

To Moses God revealed His name, (Exodus 3. 14) :
"I am He who IS". Later philosophers would call Him ipsum esse subsistens, 
with the same meaning. 

There are three kinds of knowledge. We know about sense knowledge and 
intellectual knowledge; Plato and Aristotle have helped us on these points. 
But there is something higher, the light God gives to a prophet. There is 
even a higher kind of light which comes when a soul is given the direct 
vision of God, the beatific vision. 

In the great covenant of Sinai God had promised (Exodus 19. 5):"If you 
really hearken to my voice, and keep my covenant, you will be my special 
people." There was at least an implication that refusal to obey could lead 
to the opposite result. So Moses is reported as telling the people in 
Deuteronomy 30:15-20 that he was setting before them a blessing and a 
curse: a blessing, if they would obey, a curse if they disobeyed. This 
dichotomy would be dominant in the teaching of the early Church, and also 
in the teaching of the Church today. 

Still further, there was a quality about the ancient Hebrew understanding 
of history that differed from so many others. Mircea Eliade, in The Myth of 
the Eternal Return (tr. W. R. Trask, Princeton, 1954, pp. 104, 143) said 
that the Hebrews were the first to discover the meaning of history as the 
manifestation of God, a concept taken over by Christianity. He said: "For 
Christianity, times is real because it has a meaning - the Redemption - 
which orients all of history". This is in contrast to the cyclic theory 
found in many other ancient thinkers: Anaximander taught an unending cycle 
of destructions and restorations of the world. Aristotle says Empedocles 
and Heraclitus held such a theory. (Cf. Aristotle, On the Heavens 1. 10. 
279 B). The Stoics had similar views. Even an early Christian writer, 
Origen, seems to have held cyclic views (Cf. J. Quasten, Patrology (Newman, 
Westminster, 1953, II, pp. 87-92). 

The Hermeneutical Function of Philosophy

Very early, this understanding that history was working towards a goal 
appears in the prophecies of the Messiah. Some have said we cannot get much 
from these without hindsight, i.e. , by seeing them fulfilled in Christ. 
But that is an error, for we have Aramaic Targums, ancient Jewish versions 
- free, and with fill-ins - of the Old Testament, made by those who did not 
use hindsight, for they hated Jesus. Further Jacob Neusner of Brown 
University, perhaps the greatest Jewish scholar of today, in his book, 
Messiah in Context (Fortress, Philadelphia, 1984) made a great survey of 
all Jewish literature from after the fall of Jerusalem up to and including 
the Babylonian Talmud (500-600 A. D). He found no interest in the Messiah 
up to the Talmud. Then interest returns, but speaks only of the fact he 
should be of the line of David. In contrast, the Targums see numerous 
Messianic forecasts in the prophecies. These are the chief ones: Genesis 
49. 10; Isaiah 7. 14 (the Targums as we have them today miss this, but 
since they say Isaiah 9. 5-6 is Messianic, and since all admit the child is 
the same in both, indirectly they admit 7. 14 is Messianic. Neusner 
reports, on p. 174 that Hillel, one of the two great teachers at the time 
of Christ, saw 7. 14 as Messianic, naming Hezekiah as the Messiah. Later, 
Neusner reports, on p. 190, when the Jews saw Christians using the text, 
they began to deny it was messianic); Isaiah 11. 1-3 and 53; Micah 5. 1. 

The prophecy of the dying Jacob in Genesis 49. 10 said that the scepter 
would not be taken from Judah until the time of the Messiah. This came true 
graphically, for the first time some sort of ruler (had they not been so 
unfaithful, the fulfillment would have been more glorious) from Judah was 
lacking, for then Rome imposed Herod on them in 41 BC as Tetrarch, in 37 as 
King. Herod was not from the tribe of Judah, though nominally a Jew by 
religion. By birth he was half Idumean, half Arab. 

The Old Testament even spoke of all peoples coming to the knowledge of the 
true God. The Jews seem to have thought this meant all would join the 
Jewish religion. They did not see the more glorious fulfillment in Christ. 
But a Scriptural writer, being an instrument in the hands of Divine 
Providence, could write more than he might understand, for the chief 
Author, the Holy Spirit, could intend much more. In this way all nations 
would be blessed in Abraham (cf. Genesis 12. 3). The Messiah would indeed 
be a light to illumine the nations, as Simeon would later foretell (Luke 2. 
32). 



Chapter IV - Jesus the Divine Teacher

Jesus as a Teacher in Israel

It helps much to know what the Jewish background of culture and thought was 
of His time, for He grew up so normally that when in His public life He 
began to manifest His power and wisdom, the people of His home town, 
Nazareth, found it too much for them. In Matthew 13. 54-57 when he preached 
in the synagogue at Nazareth they said: "Where did He get this wisdom and 
these marvels? Is He not the carpenter's son?" So He must have refrained 
from showing His wisdom and power until the start of His public life, 
except for the brief flash among the teachers in the Temple at age 12. 

But His Mother knew all along who and what He was. As soon as the Archangel 
told her that her Son would reign over the house of Jacob forever, she 
could not help knowing that He was to be the Messiah. For most Jews then 
believed the Messiah, and no one else, would reign forever. Then all the 
Old Testament prophecies would open up to her, if not that same moment, at 
least while she was "pondering in her heart." And from the words of the 
Archangel telling her He would be conceived when the Holy Spirit would 
"overshadow" her, she would recognize that word as the one used to describe 
the Divine Presence filling the ancient Tabernacle in the desert (Exodus 
40. 34). And the angel told her that "for this reason" her Son would be 
called Son of God - a strictly unique reason. At this point she almost 
certainly knew His divinity. She would at least in pondering in her heart 
relate this to Isaiah 9. 5-6, which the Targums knew was Messianic, and see 
that the Messiah was called in it "God the Mighty". (The Jews had trouble 
with that verse because of the monotheism hammered into them, and so 
probably tended to distort it. But she, full of grace, would not labor 
under that obstacle. And there were other texts which the Targums 
recognized as Messianic, such as Jeremiah 30. 11 in which God said; "I am 
with you to save you." Or Jeremiah 23. 3 where God said: "And I myself 
shall gather the remnant of my sheep." Similarly, in Ezekiel 34. 11 God 
said: "Behold I, I will search out my sheep and seek them out". 

Jesus as a Prophet in Israel

Jesus had not only the light the prophets had, but His human soul, from the 
first instant of conception, saw the vision of God, in which all knowledge 
is contained. We know this because of repeated teachings of the Popes, 
especially the explicit words of Pius XII in his Encyclical on the Mystical 
Body in which the Pope taught that because of this vision, from the first 
instant of conception, He knew individually every member of His Mystical 
Body. In fact, even without the help of the Popes, theological reasoning 
should show us the same thing. For we know that any soul in the state of 
grace will have the beatific vision if the divinity joins itself directly 
to the soul without even an image in between, since no image could 
represent God. Now in Jesus this was inevitable, because not only His human 
mind and soul, but His whole humanity was joined even more closely to the 
divine nature in the hypostatic union, so that there was only one Person 
present, a Divine Person. No wonder then that the crowds were in 
admiration, as Matthew 7. 28-29 says, for His teaching was with authority, 
not like that of the scribes. The scribes in a plodding manner said that 
Rabbi A said one thing, but Rabbi B said another, and so on. But Jesus told 
them: "You have heard it was said to them of old... but I say to you... . 
."

Jesus' Doctrine Concerning God

He taught that the first and greatest commandment was to love the Lord God 
with all their heart, with all their soul, and with all their mind (Mt. 22. 
37-40). But He added that the second commandment is like to the first: "You 
shall love your neighbor as yourself". Leviticus 19. 18 had commanded love 
of neighbor, but the Jews did not understand that meant everyone, they 
tended to think of it as including only fellow countrymen. 

He spoke often of God as "your Father", but never included Himself in the 
group by saying "Our Father" except when He taught them to use those words 
in prayer. For He was gradually revealing who He was, by the mysterious 
title of Son of Man, which would evoke the figure of Daniel 7. 13-14; by 
accepting the title of Messiah at times, by claiming to have authority over 
the sacred Torah - a thing no prophet had dared to claim - by saying He was 
greater than Jonah, than Solomon, than the Temple, by claiming authority to 
forgive sins - again, a thing no prophet would have dared to claim - by 
saying He was to be the eschatological judge. Finally, near the end, as it 
seems, He openly said: "Before Abraham was, I AM, (John 8. 57). No Jew 
could miss the import of the words "I am".  He also said "I and the Father 
are one. (John 10. 30)."

He proved He had such powers by means of miracles worked in special 
frameworks, that is, with a tie between the miracle and the claim, as when 
in Mark 2 he cured the paralytic and asked: "Which is easier to say, your 
sins are forgiven, or take up your bed and walk. He meant obviously they 
could not check to see if the sins were forgiven, but they could see the 
man take his bed and go - so He did the one to prove He had done the other. 

Jesus' Apostles and their Worldwide Mission

Jesus had a smaller circle on the crowds that followed Him -we would expect 
that. And He spoke more to them of course, and told them to continue His 
work, His teaching - we would expect that too. Still further, He promised 
God would protect that teaching, e.g. ,"He who hears you, hears me, he who 
rejects you rejects me; he who rejects me rejects Him who sent me." Some 
Protestant commentaries try to devalue this text saying that Jesus 
identified Himself with the poor, and this is more of the same. Now it is 
true, He did identify with the poor, but He identified with them as poor. 
With His teachers He identified with them as teachers. He also said in 
regard to teaching correct morals: "If he will not hear the church, let him 
be to you as a heathen and a publican" (Matthew 18. 17). Really, since we 
know He was a messenger sent from God, it is to be expected He would 
provide this sort of protection to keep His Church the way He founded it, 
the way He intended it to teach. Surely he would not allow it to teach a 
false way to salvation throughout most of 15 centuries, as Luther claimed!

Some Protestants argue that this commission was only for one generation. 
Strange that God would become incarnate and go so far for just one 
generation!. His promise to Peter that the gates of hell would not prevail 
against it (Matt 16. 18) implies continuity to the end of time. In Matthew 
28. 20 He explicitly said He would be with them all days, even to the end 
of the world. The parables of the weeds and of the net clearly imply the 
same. 

The Church from the start understood that He was the Suffering Servant 
foretold in Isaiah 53 . And they understood His command at the Last Supper, 
"Do this in memory of me." For they began to carry it out at once.  

That was the making of the New Covenant, foretold by Jeremiah 31. 31-33. In 
the covenant of Sinai, there were two features, a People of God was 
created, who were to receive favor on condition of obedience (Exodus 19. 
5). The same was true of the making of the New Covenant, in which His 
obedience to the will of the Father that He should die on the morrow, was 
expressed by the seeming separation of body and blood in the two species. 
The next day He fulfilled the pledge thus made. 

This New Covenant is also a sacrifice. In every true sacrifice, there are 
two things, the outward sign, and the interior dispositions. The outward 
sign is there to express, and perhaps even promote, the interior. The 
interior was obedience, for obedience was the covenant condition. Hence 
Vatican II in LG § 3 said "by His obedience He brought about redemption." 
St. Paul said the same in Romans 5. 19. The outward sign on Holy Thursday 
was, as we said, the seeming separation of His body and blood;, on Friday, 
it was the physical separation of the same. Today in the Mass the sign is 
the same as on Holy Thursday. The interior disposition of His heart was 
obedience on that Thursday evening. That obedience continued on Friday. It 
continues even today, for death makes permanent the attitude of soul with 
which one leaves this world. The outward sign is multiplied with each Mass, 
but the interior is not multiplied as far as the offering of Christ the 
Head is concerned, it is merely continued. However, the members of Christ 
are called on to join their obedience to His at the moment of the twofold 
consecration. This is the essential participation. If one has only the 
exterior, in answering prayers, singing etc., God might well say what He 
once complained through Isaiah 29. 13: "This people honors me with their 
lips, but their hearts are far from me." Right after that, God announced 
that because of this emptiness, wisdom would leave the wise. A frightening 
thought!

Thus we have a sort of fulfillment of the words of the prophet Malachi 1. 
11, that from the rising to the setting of the sun, a clean oblation is 
offered to His name everywhere. 



Chapter V - The Teaching Church

The fact that there was a "deposit of faith" to be transmitted is already 
clear in what is probably the first book of the New Testament to be 
written, in 1 Thessalonians 2. 13: "We give thanks to God without ceasing, 
for when you heard and received the word of God from us, you welcomed it 
not as the word of men, but, as it really is, the word of God." Shortly 
after that, 2 Thessalonians 2. 15 urges: "Then, brothers, stand firm, and 
hold the teaching you have learned, by word, or by our letter." Second 
Timothy 1. 13-14 says: "Hold to the form of sound teaching which you have 
heard from me... . Guard the good deposit through the Holy Spirit who 
dwells in you." Provision for oral transmission is clear in 2 Timothy 2. 2: 
"The things you have heard from me through many witness, entrust to 
trustworthy men, who will be able in turn to teach others."

When the earthquake broke open the jail at Philippi (Acts 16. 25-34) the 
jailer asked: "What must I do to be saved?" Paul answered: "Believe in the 
Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, and all your household." (Not much of an 
RCIA!) Paul baptized the family at once. Similarly in Acts 8. 26-38 Philip 
gave an instruction to the official of Queen Candace in rather short time, 
beginning with the passion prophecy of Isaiah 53, and then the convert 
said: "Look, here is some water, what prevents me from being baptized?' So 
Philip did baptize him at once. 

We must comment on that word saved . It never has in Scripture the meaning 
used by foolish sect members who ask: "Brother are you saved?" They mean: 
Have you taken Jesus as your Personal Savior, so you can be infallibly 
saved, no matter how much you have sinned, are sinning, and going to sin in 
the future, as Luther made clear in his Epistle 501 to Melanchthon: "Even 
if you sin greatly, believe still more greatly." Kittel's Theological 
Dictionary of the New Testament. In its article on salvation, does not even 
mention so foolish a notion. Rather, the word save has three senses in 
Scripture: (1) Rescue from dangers in this life (cf. Mt. 8. 25); (2)Entry 
into the Church: e. g, Romans 11. 14. Paul knows that anyone could be saved 
without formally entering into the Church (Rom 2. 14-16). So this must mean 
entry into the Church. This become seven clearer in Romans 10. 9-10: "If 
you with your mouth confess the Lord Jesus [i. e, that Jesus is Lord, is 
divine] and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you 
will be saved. For by the heart one believes [leading to] justification; 
with the mouth one confesses [makes a profession of faith] leading to 
salvation [entry into the Church." (3)Final entry into heaven: e.g. , 1 Cor 
3. 15. 

Rufinus in his commentary on the Apostles' Creed, at the end of the 4th 
century gives a charming story (PL. 21. 337). Before the Apostles dispersed 
they agreed on a creed. In the 6th century we even meet with the tale that 
each of the Apostles composed one of the twelve articles (PL 39. 2189-90). 
We can be sure that the content of the Creed goes back to the apostolic 
age. Hippolytus in the Apostolic Tradition gives us this creed (DS 10): "I 
believe in God the Father almighty, and in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, 
who was born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary, and was crucified 
under Pontius Pilate, and died and was buried, and rose on the third day 
alive from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand 
of the Father. He will come to judge the living and the dead. And I believe 
in the Holy Spirit and the holy Church, and the resurrection of the dead ."

Tertullian at the end of the second century was already familiar with this 
early Roman creed, and it probably goes back much farther. All the 
doctrinal elements that are found in the Apostles' Creed appear already 
near the end of the first century in the varied and numerous formulas of 
faith to be found in early Christian literature. 

St. Justin the Martyr in his First Apology 61 says that in his day, those 
who were convinced of the truth of Christianity and pledged themselves to 
live by it were taught in prayer and fasting to ask God for forgiveness. 
The others would pray and fast with them. Then they would go to a place 
where there was water, and were baptized. So there must have been some sort 
of instruction then, but we do not know the details. (Cfr. J. Danielou, 
Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture , tr. J. A. Baker, Philadelphia, 
Westminster, 1973, pp. 157-94). 

By the end of the second century, the catechumenate seems to have been well 
organized. Tertullian charges heretics with disregarding it: "It is [with 
the heretics] unclear who is the catechumen, and who is the faithful. Both 
come, both hear, both pray." He adds that catechumens among the heretics 
are initiated before being instructed (De praescriptione 41). Christianity 
had spread extensively by the day of Tertullian, who boasts in his 
Apologeticum 37: "We came just yesterday, but we have filled the world and 
everything: the cities, islands, fortresses, towns, marketplaces, the very 
army camps... . We leave nothing to you [pagans] but the temples of your 
gods." He adds that if they wanted to band together, they could easily 
overcome the pagans, for the Christians fill every place. 

We are fortunate in having also complete texts for final instructions by 
St. Cyril of Jerusalem in his Catecheses, given during Holy Week of 350 A. 
D. to those who were to be baptized on Holy Saturday. There are also 5 more 
instructions, given to the newly baptized in the week after Easter. These 
last five are thought to be by someone other than Cyril, probably John, his 
successor. We have these since they were taken down in shorthand by a 
listener. 

Interestingly, St. Cyril still seems to be observing the ancient Disciplina 
arcani, the secrecy about some major doctrines. In the second century, 
there ere three kinds of popular charges against Christians: atheism [not 
worshipping the gods of the state], sex orgies, and cannibalism. The last 
was of course based on garbled reports of the Eucharist. Tertullian in his 
Apologeticum 2 ridicules this charge saying: "What a glory it would be for 
a governor who had found someone who had already eaten a hundred infants!"

To return to St. Cyril, he tells those who are soon to be baptized that if 
some catechumen, who is not yet to be baptized, tries to get out of them 
what was said inside: "Tell nothing, for he is outside the mystery we have 
revealed to you... Do not let anyone convince you saying: "What harm is 
there is I should know too?" Of course, there would be a good psychological 
reason for the continuation of the old discipline: by making things secret, 
he increased the appetite of the listeners. 

By the time of St. Augustine, the catechumenate was very thoroughly 
organized, as we can learn from his major work De catechizandis rudibus. 
The rudes were those merely seeking admission to the catechumenate. 



Chapter VI - The Patristic Origin of Christian Philosophy


1. Pagan Attacks on Christianity: Paganism was aggressive. Vile
rumors were rampant. There were chiefly three charges popularly made 
against Christians: atheism, sex orgies, and cannibalism. 

Atheism had a different meaning then: it meant refusal to worship the gods 
of the state. The modern idea of separation of Church and state would have 
been incomprehensible to pagan Greeks and Romans. They would reason thus: 
1) I as an individual need the help of the gods for myself, so I worship 
them. 2)The state as a state also needs the help of the gods: so the state 
must worship the gods. Christians are traitors, for they refuse to do what 
is needed for the well-being of the state. We Romans have hundreds of gods; 
we are broadminded. We might even worship Christ if Christians were not so 
narrow. The Greeks had the same notions, only still more narrow. One could 
not be a citizen of a Greek city state without having been born into that 
religion. It would not be enough to become a convert. 

In passing: Vatican II really endorsed this type of thinking. If we 
substitute the real God for gods in the above reasoning, we would say that 
the state as a state needs the help of God, and so the state should worship 
God. And if God makes known in what way He wishes to be worshipped, we must 
follow it. 

This would mean an established Church. It would not have to suppress other 
religions, but would be supported by the state, and the state as such would 
worship through it. Vatican II, in the Declaration on Religious Liberty, 
said in § 1: "It [the Council or document] leaves untouched traditional 
Catholic teaching about the moral obligation of people and societies 
towards the true religion and one Church of Christ". When that document 
taught religious freedom, it defined it narrowly. It did not say anyone has 
a right to be wrong - some at the council wanted to say that, but it was 
rejected. And rightly. For a right is a claim, ultimately coming from God, 
to have, to do, or to call for something. God gives no one a claim to be 
wrong. But He does give them the right not to be executed or imprisoned for 
being wrong. That is all Vatican II taught. It added they may do this 
individually or in groups, and even in public "within due limits". 
Headhunters think their gods command them to cut off heads. Vatican II 
would say that is beyond due limits.  Pius IX in his Quanta cura had said 
the best condition of society is not "one in which there is no recognition 
of the duty of the state to repress those who use violence against the 
Catholic religion." He wanted the state to do more than just enforce public 
order. But Vatican II also wanted more, for in the Declaration § 4 it said 
that other churches must abstain from any action that would involve 
"improper persuasion aimed at the less intelligent or the poor." and in § 7 
it said the state must exercise "due custody for public morality." So 
Lefebvre is very wrong in charging that Vatican II contradicted Pius IX (we 
chose his strongest text). 

Tertullian in his Apologeticum , written in 197 AD before he became a 
Montanist,  wrote in 2. 5 that torture was used to try to force Christians 
to confess terrible crimes, e.g. ,"how many acts of incest a person has 
committed in the dark? what cooks and what dogs were on hand?" He reflects 
the pagan charge of sex orgies: Christians, they said, would gather in a 
large place after dark, with light only from one torch on a lampstand. They 
would tie a dog to the stand by a leash, and then throw a piece of meat in 
front of the dog, but so far out he would have to pull the stand over to 
get the meat. Then the light would go out, and an orgy would follow. The 
obvious answer is: Why bother to go to such trouble to have sex? And why 
have a fire hazard?

The third charge was cannibalism - clearly coming from garbled reports 
about the Eucharist. 

Such were the popular charges which the first apologists undertook to 
answer. Inasmuch as they sometimes argued by reason alone, without appeal 
to Scripture, they were sometimes working in philosophy. However often 
enough they did appeal to Scripture, especially using the Messianic 
prophecies of the Old Testament. 

But learned pagans also attacked by writings. Lucian of Samosata in his De 
morte peregrini, about 170 AD. decried brotherly love and the Christians' 
contempt of death. Fronto of Cirta, a teacher of Emperor Marcus Aurelius 
wrote an oration against the Christians. Greatest was the Platonist Celsus, 
who published his True Discourse, about 178 AD. We have many fragments of 
it, preserved in the reply to it by Origen. Celsus thought Christianity was 
a hodgepodge of superstition and fanaticism. 

2. Quadratus: He must be mentioned because he is the very first of the 
apologists.  We know of him only from Eusebius, Church History 4. 3. 1-2,  
where he says Quadratus wrote to Emperor Hadrian - that would have been 
about 123 AD - and Quadratus said that in his day there were some still 
alive who were healed  by Christ, and raised from the dead by Him. This 
need not have been in 123, but it surely would cover the period 80-90 in 
which many think Matthew and Luke wrote. So there would have been prime 
eyewitnesses to Jesus still alive at that time. 

3. St. Justin the Martyr: He, the greatest of the second century 
apologists, was born at Flavia Neapolis, formerly Sichem in Palestine, of 
pagan parents. 

At the start of his Dialogue with Trypho, chapters 2-8 he tells us how he 
came to Christianity. He looked into the Stoics, Peripatetics, and the 
Pythagoreans. None of them satisfied him. Stoics gave no explanation of 
God's being. The Peripatetics (descended from Aristotle) wanted him to pay 
tuition in advance. The Pythagoreans wanted him to first study music, 
astronomy, and geometry. After this, Plato pleased him, but he met an old 
man on the sea shore who told him of the prophets. This led him to 
Christianity, though he never again saw the old man. The heroic character 
of Christians impressed him greatly. In Second Apology 12 he said that at 
one time he liked the teachings of Plato and enjoyed hearing evil spoken of 
Christians. But when he saw they showed no fear in the face of death and 
other things, he decided they could not be vicious and pleasure loving. 
Honest searching after truth, and humble prayer led him to accept 
Christianity. 

He was probably converted in Ephesus . He spent the rest of his life in 
defending the faith. He wore the pallium, the traditional cloak of 
philosophers, and traveled about teaching. During the time of Emperor 
Antoninus Pius (138-612) he came to Rome and founded a school. He was 
finally beheaded, probably in 165 AD. Among his pupils was Tatian, founder 
of the heretical Encratites. 

We have three authentic works left - though we know he wrote others too - 
two apologies, and the Dialogue with Trypho. He criticizes the judicial 
process: it is senseless to punish someone for the name of Christian 
without proving crimes. He shows the Christians not guilty of the 
calumnies. He makes much use of the prophecies of the Messiah, both in his 
First Apology and in the Dialogue with Trypho (supposedly a learned Jew). 

He worked, then, both by reason, like a philosopher, and by Scripture, as a 
theologian should. 

Quasten, Patrology I, 208, thinks Justin holds that the Father lives above 
the sky and does not appear in the world. But the passages Quasten cites do 
not prove that. He appeals chiefly to Dialogue 60 and 127. But in the 
latter, Justin says that the Father "is uncontainable by place and by the 
whole world." Really, Justin seems to hold a view common enough among the 
Fathers, that all appearances of God in the Old Testament were really those 
of the Son, the Divine Logos. This view is tied to the fact that Justin 
says the Father is so transcendent that a bridge is needed between Him and 
us: the Logos. Some, including Quasten I. 209, think Justin tends to 
subordinate the Logos to the Father - a move in the direction of Arianism. 
But really, it seems Justin and others were trying to state two things, 
without knowing how to reconcile them: 1)God is transcendent, that is, 
above and beyond all our categories. No words can express Him. E.g. , St. 
Augustine said in De Doctrina Christiana 12. 6. 6 that "we should not even 
call Him inexpressible, for when we say that word, we say something". (A 
number of the Fathers speak similarly. The truth is that when we use the 
same word to refer to both God and creatures, we use it in an analogous 
sense, i.e. , the meanings in the two uses are partly the same, partly 
different. But the sense is mostly different. ) 2)God does communicate 
through His Word, the Logos. 

It is simply excellent theological method to hold two conclusions (after 
rechecking of course) which seem to clash completely, in the hope that 
sometime someone will find how to put them together. For it is not strange 
to find mysteries in divine things. 

More importantly, Justin uses his teachings on the Logos to answer in 
advance a claim that Celsus was to make a bit later. Celsus asked: "Did God 
then, after so long a time, think of making just the life of men, but 
before He did not care?" (cited from Origen, Against Celsus 4. 7). Really 
the question was a good one. St. Paul had asked much the same question, and 
answered it, in Romans 3. 29: "Is He the God of the Jews alone? Is He not 
also the God of the gentiles?" St. Paul means that if God had made 
knowledge of Judaism essential for salvation, He would have acted as if He 
were not the God of all. But He is the God of all. So Paul says that God 
did make provision, in justification by faith. 

St. Justin answers the problem by saying, in First Apology 46: "Christ is 
the Logos, of whom the whole race of men partake. Those who lived according 
to Logos are Christians, even if they were considered atheists, such as, 
among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus." To follow this we compare what 
Justin wrote in Second Apology 10;8: "Christ... was and is the Logos who is 
in everyone, and foretold through the prophets the things that were to 
come, and taught these things in person after becoming like to us in 
feeling."

J. Danielou, in Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture (tr. J. A. Baker, 
Philadelphia, Westminster, 1973, pp. 41-44) thinks Justin the philosopher 
is borrowing a notion from the Stoics, who said that in each man there is a 
"seed of the Logos" coming from the action of the Logos, which gives to 
each one the capacity to form moral and religious conceptions." So Socrates 
and Heraclitus really did know the Logos, even if dimly. 

We would suggest sharpening the concept with the help of St. Paul, Romans 
2. 14-16: "When the gentiles who do not have the law [revealed religion] do 
by nature the things of the law, they, not having the law, are a law for 
themselves. They show the work of the law written on their hearts." 
According to whether or not they accept this law, their conscience will 
either defend or accuse them at the judgment. 

In other words: The divine Logos writes the law on their hearts (cf. the 
prophecy of the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31. 33). That is, the Spirit makes 
known to them interiorly how they should live (modern anthropology, as we 
saw, does show that pagans do have a remarkable knowledge of the moral law, 
if they have not yet blinded themselves by extensive habitual sin). They do 
not know that it is the Spirit of the Logos telling them this, but yet it 
is. So if they follow it, objectively they are following the Logos, and so 
Justin could call them Christians. For in Romans 8. 9 Paul says that if one 
does not have and follow the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to 
Christ. Then if he does have and follow that Spirit, the person does 
"belong to Christ" or: is a member of Christ or is a "member of the Church. 
Not by formal adherence, but substantially. (For much more on this 
including other Fathers and Magisterium texts, cfr. Wm. G. Most, Our 
Father's Plan , pp. 241-69).  - Interestingly, Vatican II, in LG § 49 seems 
to reach the same conclusion: "All who belong to Christ, having His Spirit, 
coalesce into one Church."

We see, Justin's training in philosophy led him to use terminology and 
images from Plato, probably already in circulation through Middle 
Platonism. But the content is strictly Christian, not Platonism. In this 
way Justin and others tried to bridge the gap between Plato and 
Christianity. In Second Apology 13, Justin says that whatever all men have 
said correctly belongs to us Christians, for they got it by "the implanted 
seed of the Logos engrafted in them, through which they could see the truth 
darkly." Going back further, he claims in First Apology 44 that Plato 
borrowed thoughts from the prophet Moses, since Moses is more ancient than 
all Greek authors. In that day the attitude was the opposite of what is 
found often today. They said if a thing is ancient it must be good; we tend 
to say the opposite. (Cf. Danielou, op. cit pp. 107-27). 

St. Justin is the earliest Father to teach the New Eve theme: Just as the 
first Eve really contributed to the damage of original sin, so Mary, the 
New Eve, contributed to reversing the damage: Dialogue 100. Very many of 
the major Fathers pick up this theme. They stress chiefly her obedience and 
faith at the annunciation. 

Because it took time for the Church to penetrate more deeply into some 
doctrinal matters, Justin, and a number of other Fathers, think angels have 
bodies. In Dialogue 58 he thinks they have food in the heavens - thinking 
apparently of Psalm 78. 25 which said that men ate the bread of angels. 
Justin and the others at this period did not know of the use of literary 
genres in studying Scripture. 

3. Athenagoras of Athens: He certainly wrote a Plea for the Christians, 
probably in 177, addressed to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. In it he shows a 
profound knowledge of Greek philosophy and literature. 

His authorship of On the Resurrection is disputed. It has a definite 
philosophical character. He tries to prove the resurrection by reason 
alone: God's wisdom, omnipotence and justice do not conflict but agree with 
the resurrection. It is needed for human nature, since man is created for 
eternity; and also, since man is made of body and soul, this unity, 
destroyed by death, should be restored by the resurrection; still further, 
the body as well as the soul should be rewarded or punished, since both are 
subject to the moral order. 

4. Minucius Felix: One of the first, if not the first, of the Latin 
apologists (debated whether he or Tertullian wrote first). We know he was a 
lawyer at Rome, probably early in third century. We have a rather 
philosophical type of dialogue from him, the Octavius. It is a dialogue in 
which Caecelius, a pagan, passionately defends paganism and attacks 
Christianity. He is answered by Octavius a Christian. It is very 
interesting for showing the very specific intellectual arguments used 
against Christianity, and the replies. 

Caecilius says everything is doubtful: we get only probability, not truth 
[New Academy]. The disorder in the physical and moral world is against a 
providence. Chance rules all. So it is better to accept the teachings of 
our elders and adore the gods. Our elders won a great empire. The world is 
formed by chance combinations of elements [Democritus]. The gods have often 
shown their power by prodigies. People will not allow an attack on the 
gods. The morals of Christians are bad: they come from the dregs of 
society, they worship the head of an ass, and do horrible sex crimes. Their 
faith is absurd. They think there is only one God, present everywhere - but 
He could not prevent the subjection of the Jews to Rome. Christians hope 
for an immortal reward, but their present evils foretell what awaits them 
in the future. We should stop investigating the secrets of heaven and 
earth, and say with Socrates: That which is above us, does not concern us. 

Octavius replies: One should not object if poor and unlearned Christians 
discuss these matters. All men are able to reason. The rich are inclined to 
value money more than spiritual things. The order and beauty of the 
universe prove that God made it and governs it. There is only one God, as 
shown by the government of the world, His infinite perfection, and the 
evidence of poets and philosophers. The pagan religion is false; the elders 
easily believed fables. The pagan gods really were originally men, first 
idealized, later divinized. [COMMENT: The Sacred History of the pagan Greek 
Euhemerus, written c 300 B. C. , said precisely that, that the gods were 
once just men, first idealized, then divinized. In those days one could see 
the tomb of Zeus in Crete]. The mystery rites are full of absurd, immoral 
things. Youths are corrupted by the stories of the gods. [COMMENT: 
Xenophanes in the 6th century B. C. said the same thing. So did Plato and 
many other ancient pagan writers]. Images, of vile material, are thought to 
have divine nature from dedication. Their rites are often laughable, 
sometimes wretched. The empire was founded and spread not by religion but 
by crime and violence. Any truth there may be in the auspices etc. comes 
from the demons. On the contrary, Christian morals and cult are 
praiseworthy: the pagans do the things they charge Christians with. As to 
the Jews, God had threatened them with disaster if they kept on sinning: 
they did. Christian belief in the future and the resurrection agree with 
the opinions of philosophers, with nature, with right reason. Christians 
scorn philosophers who admit they know nothing [the New Academy, which was 
skeptic]. Christians have real wisdom. 

Oddly, Minucius does not once quote any passage of Scripture, and never 
uses the name of Christ, though he does use the word Christian. The reason 
was to convince educated pagans, by a philosophical approach. 

Hence at the end, when Caecilius announces his conversion, he does not say 
he accepts Christ. He congratulates Octavius, says he acknowledges 
Providence, agrees on the concept of God, and recognizes the moral purity 
of the religion he is accepting. 

5. Tertullian: Was born at Carthage around 155, of pagan parents. His 
father was a centurion in the proconsular cohort. He studied philosophy, 
literature, medicine, but especially law. He earned a reputation at Rome as 
a lawyer. Was converted in 193, and settled in Carthage. He became a 
Montanist, probably around 205 or 207. After some time, his extremism led 
him to become head of a special sect within the Montanists, the 
Tertullianists. That sect lasted at Carthage until the time of Augustine, 
and even had a basilica there. 

He was a man of great will power, which turned into hard and bitter 
stubbornness. He was a fighter by temperament, and so most of his works are 
controversial - they show closely knit logic, sarcasm, and irony. At times 
he tries to prove too much. 

The most important of his works is his Apologeticum, written in 197 before 
he became a Montanist. It is a masterpiece of controversial writing, but 
uses biting sarcasm: in the opening part he says that the reason Christians 
are hated is ignorance. Then, the procedure in Roman courts is wrong, it is 
illogical, e.g. , evildoers try to hide, Christians do not. They readily 
confess being Christian. The procedure is illegal: Christians alone are not 
allowed to say something to clear their name. It is inconsistent: Trajan 
wrote back to Pliny that Christians should not be sought out, but punished 
when brought to court. Also, when ordinary criminals are brought to court, 
torture is used to force them to confess - Christians are tortured to force 
them to deny. 

But he insists Christianity is not a philosophy but a noble religion. The 
best teachings of philosophers are just garbled versions of the truth - he 
thinks they probably got much of what good they had from the Old Testament. 
He ends with the famous line: "We become more numerous every time we are 
cut down by you; the blood of Christians is the seed."

In a unique work, The Testimony of the Soul, he notices that two methods 
used by apologists have not been very successful. (They try to show 
Christianity is in agreement with many pagan philosophers and poets. Pagans 
do not accept the argument. Still less is it any use to use Scripture on 
them. [COMMENT: If they used scientific apologetics before using Scripture, 
a great impact could be made].  He says that people often in a very natural 
way exclaim: "Great God, Good God, May God grant it, etc." He thinks these 
things show the soul is "naturally Christian."

In The Prescription of Heretics he argues that one can use Scripture only 
if he can show that the doctrines he holds come down in unbroken line from 
the Apostles, who got it from Christ. Later, when he became Montanist, of 
course he could not hold this, it would destroy his heresy. So in De 
Pudicitia (On Modesty) he says the power of the keys belongs not to the 
hierarchy, but to the spiritual. He attacks a "peremptory edict" of some 
bishop, probably Pope Callistus, that says adultery and fornication can be 
forgiven. Tertullian thinks these cannot be forgiven - as also murder. 

He contributed much to the development of Latin theological terminology, 
especially in his work Against Praxeas. This is the most important 
contribution to the doctrine of the Trinity before Nicea. He taught one 
Person in Jesus, but two natures, which remain distinct. Thus he 
anticipated the conclusions later reached by the Council of Chalcedon in 
451. Some charge him with subordinating Christ to the Father, but this is 
probably only the methodology of dealing with two seemingly contradictory 
conclusions, which we saw in connection with St. Justin. 

His extremism shows in his work On the Flesh of Christ in which he tries to 
prove too much. To show that Christ was really born he denies Mary's 
virginity in giving birth, and says the body of Christ was ugly. In his On 
Idolatry he says a Christian may not serve in the army, be an astrologer, 
mathematician, schoolmaster, teacher of literature, trainer of gladiators, 
seller of frankincense, enchanter, magician, or hold any state office. 

In his work On the Soul, he likes the Stoic notion that the soul is 
material, a bodily substance. 

6. St. Cyprian of Carthage: He was probably born around 200 AD at Carthage, 
from a family of some social standing and wealth. He became a famous 
rhetorician and got friends who had political power. He became Christian 
about 245-46 under the influence of the elderly priest, Caecilian. He 
started a life of celibacy and gave away to the poor at least most of his 
wealth. Soon he became a priest, and probably within about a year, in 248 
or 249 was elected Bishop of Carthage. There was some opposition to his 
election from the clergy, but the people prevailed. 

In January of 250 soon after the edict of Decius that all must sacrifice to 
the gods, and have a certificate proving they did so, he went into hiding. 
He seems to have felt that he, as a man of distinction would have been a 
focus for pagan hostility to Christians. He tried to manage his church by 
letters. The persecution did not last long, but it seems a large number of 
Christians did sacrifice, or bought certificates saying they had done so. 

He wanted to reconcile the lapsed only after suitable penance, but some lax 
priests were taking them back soon. A letter from the clergy of Rome 
undermined his position, charging him as a hireling for going into hiding . 
He seems to have modified his position on the reconciliation: those 
severely ill and having letters from confessors saying they would offer 
their sufferings for the lapsed one, led him to allow reconciliation of all 
who were sick. But then positions hardened and feelings ran high. He could 
not return to Carthage until after Easter of 251. 

Cyprian supported Pope Cornelius against the schismatic Novatian, but 
quarreled with Pope Stephen I. The latter held, correctly, that baptism 
received from heretics should not be repeated. Cyprian argued that the 
heretics could not give the faith they did not have. They did not know that 
when anyone baptizes, Christ baptizes (St. Augustine, Tracts On John's 
Gospel 6. 1. 7, cited by Vatican II, On Liturgy § 7). Before the quarrel 
was resolved, both the Pope and Cyprian became martyrs. 

His letters are of special interest for the history of the persecutions and 
beyond. In his De mortalitate he answered those who thought it bad to die 
in the plague - wanting to wait for martyrdom after it. He wrote of the 
need to do the will of God. He also wrote a very famous line by line 
commentary on the Lord's Prayer.  Another major work was On the Unity of 
the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, he later softened the appeal for unity 
under Rome by revision of chapters 4 and 5. He seems to have given the Pope 
only a primacy of honor, not of jurisdiction. 

In his Epistle 73. 21 he took an extreme interpretation of the saying, "No 
salvation outside the Church". He said that even if a heretic died for 
Christ, he would go to hell. Contrast this with the true doctrine we saw in 
considering St. Justin the Martyr. 

7. Clement of Alexandria (c 160-215) was head of a great catechetical 
school at Alexandria. However it was not like modern catechesis. Rather it 
was a school for deeper penetration into the faith. Clement hoped in this 
way to counter the snob appeal of the Gnostics. He attempted a great 
synthesis of doctrine in Protreptikos, Paidagogos, and Stromata. 
Unfortunately, he was not the right type of mind for a great synthesis. He 
used allegorical interpretation of Scripture much, and, especially in book 
II of the Paidagogos, tried to give detailed rules for every facet of the 
life of a Christian - sometimes citing wisdom books of the Old Testament 
without recognizing the genre. 

8. Origen (c. 185-c. 251): He was one of the first scientific exegetes in 
the Church, a prolific scholar. He meant to be completely sound in his 
doctrine, but followed Plato excessively and as a result taught, in his 
Peri archon (On First Principles) that we all existed in a world of spirits 
before coming into this world; according to the varied merits of souls, 
some became angels, some devils, some stars in the sky, some human beings. 
Hell was very long lasting, but not permanent, for all the enemies of 
Christ must eventually be put under His footstool, and so hell will be 
emptied. Even so, this work, Peri archon is a remarkable synthesis of 
doctrine. 

Plotinus: the Last Great Pagan Philosopher

He was born in Egypt about 203 or 204. He attended lectures of various 
philosophers, was finally pleased with those of Ammonius Saccas. Stayed 
with him until 242, when he joined the Persian expedition of Emperor 
Gordian - wanted to get to know Persian philosophy. But the expedition 
ended when Gordian was assassinated. Plotinus went to Rome, arriving at 
about age 40. 

When he was 60 he accepted Poryphry as a pupil, who later wrote the life of 
Plotinus, and also arranged the writings of Plotinus in systematic form, 
six books of nine chapters each: Enneads, 

At Rome he was a sort of spiritual director for many. H e took into his 
house orphaned children. Made many friends, and no enemies. His personal 
life was ascetic. Prophyry (Life 232, 138) says Plotinus reached ecstatic 
union with God four times in the six years in which he studied with 
Plotinus. Died 269/70. 

Plotinus never mentions Christianity; Porphyry attacked it. 

God is The One, and is absolutely transcendent. He is beyond being - i.e. , 
the word being as applied to others and as applied to Him is part same, but 
mostly different (Enneads 5. 4. 1). This of course resembles the words of 
Plato in Republic 509 b 9 where he says that the Good is beyond being - 
Plato probably identifies the Good with God. So Copleston says (I. 464-65 
citing Enneads 3. 8. 8): "The One cannot be identical with the sum of 
individual things... . if the One were identical with each individual thing 
taken separately, then each thing would be identical with every other and 
the distinction of things, which is an obvious fact, would be illusion. 
'Thus the One cannot be any existing thing, but is prior to all existents. 
'" So it is quite clear: Plotinus is at all a pantheist. 

Sadly, Plotinus says that we cannot legitimately attribute thought or will 
or activity to the One, for these would imply a distinction between the One 
and his thought, his will, his activity: Enneads 3. 8. 8. We comment: Other 
thinkers have had trouble dealing with the knowledge of God. Aristotle said 
that He "thinks of thinking": Metaphysics 12. 9. Some who think they are 
following St. Thomas Aquinas make God like a blind man: He could know only 
what He causes. We saw above that this is not true, for then Aquinas would 
not need to have recourse to eternity, which makes things present to Him, 
to explain God's knowledge of future free decisions. He would simply say: 
He knows them because He intends to cause them. 

How do things come from God? We cannot attribute activity to Him, as we 
saw. But creation would be an activity. So they come from Him by emanation, 
which does not mean that He in any way becomes less through the process of 
emanation. Plotinus uses words like rhein and aporrein [flow, flow away] 
for emanation. 

The first emanation form the One is Thought or Mind: nous, which is 
intuition, with a twofold object: the One, and itself. In the Nous exist 
the Ideas, not just for classes of things,  but even for individuals: 
Enneads 5. 7 1. All Ideas are in the Nous: Enneads 5. 9. 9. So it is in 
Nous that multiplicity first appears. For the One is above all 
multiplicity, above even the distinction of noein and noeton. Nous is 
eternal and beyond time. Time only mimics that eternity: Enneads 5. 1. 4. 

From Nous proceeds Soul, which is like the World-Soul of Plato's Timaeus. 
The World-Soul is incorporeal and indivisible. But it is the connecting 
link between the world that is beyond the senses, and the sensory world. 
Plotinus, unlike Plato, held for a twofold World-Soul. The higher is nearer 
to Nous, and has no immediate contact with the material world; the lower is 
the real soul of the phenomenal world. The lower can be called physis. 

Individual souls come form the World-Soul, and have two elements: a higher 
element that belongs to the sphere of Nous, and a lower element directly 
connected with the body. The soul existed before its union with the body, 
which is a fall. It survives the death of the body, but seems not to have 
memory of the time of its existence on earth. So there is transmigration of 
souls. This does not mean a denial of personal immortality. 

Below the sphere of soul is the material world. Light proceeds from the 
center, passes outwards, getting gradually dimmer, until it shades into 
total darkness, which is matter. Matter is the privation of light: Enneads 
2. 4; 3. 67; 6. 3. 7. But matter in a way is not complete darkness, for it 
is illumined by form, and enters into the composition of material objects. 
- Here we se a combination of Aristotelian and Platonic themes. Matter is 
the substrate of form. 

He also took on the Orphic and Neo-Pythagorean notion of matter as the 
principle of evil. At the lowest grade, an unilluminated privation, it is 
evil itself. But this is not a dualism, for matter is a privation, and not 
a positive principle. He was opposed to the Gnostic contempt for the world, 
and instead praised the world as the work of the World-Soul. 

The individual soul is rooted in the intelligible world, but it is 
contaminated with matter insofar as it enters into real union with the 
body. So there is need for an ascent whose goal is likeness to God, even as 
Plato had taught. The first stage of the ascent is katharsis, purification, 
freeing self from the dominion of the body and the senses, so as to rise to 
the practice of the four cardinal virtues, which Plotinus calls politikai 
aretai. Secondly, the soul needs to rise above sense-perception, turning 
towards Nous. Now the soul is occupying self with philosophy and science. 
In the third stage the soul rises above discursive thought. Here the soul 
still keeps its self-consciousness. But the final stage is mystical union 
with the One, in an ecstasy in which there is no such separation from the 
One. In this life, such an ecstatic union is brief, but it can be permanent 
in the future, when we are freed from the hindrance of the body, as Dodds 
poetically translates it, in the "flight of the alone to the Alone": 
Enneads 6. 9. 11. 

It is obvious that this ascent is far above the so-called ascent in Plato's 
Symposium, which begins with homosexuality. This too seems higher than the 
contemplation St. Augustine had at Ostia - which we will discuss later. 
This ascent may have included infused contemplation, especially since 
Plotinus lived a very noble life, with much asceticism, which forms a 
receptivity to such a grace - which God gladly gives when a soul is 
prepared. 

St. Augustine and Christian Philosophy

He was born at Tagaste in the Province of Numidia, in North Africa, on 
November 13, 354. His father was a pagan, Patricius, of slender means, but 
a member of the local senate. His mother, Monica, was a Christian, who 
later would be St. Monica. She did not at first display special sanctity, 
Rather she postponed baptism for him as was so commonly done then - without 
the Church's approval. But he was made a catechumen. 

When young he became dangerously sick, and seemed likely to die. Monica 
arranged to have him baptized, but the danger passed, and baptism was not 
given. 

It is interesting to trace the early influences of his life, and their 
development later on. From his mother he learned a belief in God, and a 
love of the name of Christ that was practically irrational - in view of 
some later things as we shall see, for he considered no book satisfactory 
if it did not have the name of Christ, yet for so many years he lived with 
a mistress. His intellectual situation was this: He could not picture to 
himself anything that was not corporeal, bodily, and so for him, even God 
and the soul were corporeal, and evil was positive - it really is a 
privative negative, i.e. , the lack of something that should be there, 
considering the type of being. On the moral side, he had no satisfactory 
code of conduct. In his Confessions 1. 11. 18 he tells us that when other 
saw him sinning, they would say: "What difference does it make? He is not 
yet baptized." Even so, his mother did not arrange a marriage for him: she 
feared it might hinder his profession of rhetoric: Confessions 2. 3. 8. 

He learned the essentials of Latin from a schoolmaster at Tagaste, but he 
preferred play to study. He hated Greek. He did learn some of it, but not 
enough to read the Greek Fathers easily. This had enormous consequences, 
for most of the Latin theologians up to that time were in contact with the 
thought of the Greek Fathers who were more advanced. Thus be broke the 
continuity, and, being a very original mind, the break was made even 
greater. 

In about 365 he went to the town of Madaura, where he learned Latin 
literature and grammar. Madaura was a pagan city, and the general 
atmosphere there and his study of the Latin pagan classics helped detach 
him from the faith of his mother. this detachment was made worse by a year 
of idleness at Tagaste in 369-70 - while funds were gathered to send him on 
to further schooling. His father died in 370, after becoming Catholic. Then 
Augustine began the study of rhetoric at Carthage, the largest city he had 
yet seen, which he described as a sartago (frying pan) of vices. It was a 
great port and center of government. He also would see there the obscene 
rites of the cults imported from the East. So before long he took a 
mistress, and lived with her for more than ten years, and had a son, 
Adeodatus, in his second year at Carthage. 

In spite of this, he was a very successful and brilliant student. He did 
not neglect his studies, though in his Confessions he often speaks with 
disdain of rhetoric as the wordy school. 

At age 19 at Carthage he came upon Cicero's Hortensius (now lost). It 
contained a great exhortation to philosophy. So he developed an interest in 
philosophy, but yet was not satisfied with Cicero's works on philosophy, or 
other pagan sources, for he did not find the name of Christ there, a 
strange attachment for a man living with a mistress. 

He thought the word philosophy meant love of wisdom. That is true. But 
Augustine added that Christ is the wisdom of the Father (cf. 1 Cor 1. 24) 
and so philosophy was really love of Christ. This was very unfortunate, for 
to say that rubs out the line between philosophy and theology. Both seek 
the answers to many of the basic, great questions, but they work with vary 
different tools: philosophy uses only human reason (so that authority is 
not to be employed); theology uses the sources of revelation, as 
interpreted by the Church (if one is Catholic - otherwise, as understood by 
private interpretation). 

Since the books without the name of Christ did not satisfy him, he turned 
to Scripture. But he was offended by the poor language of the existing 
translations, and he considered them crude. These were older Latin versions 
before St. Jerome's Vulgate, not yet made at the time. They used rather 
slavish translation, thinking respect for the sacred text called for that. 
So they would use even Greek constructions in Latin , e.g., the genitive 
absolute instead of the ablative absolute, the genitive of comparison 
instead of the ablative. Further there were even a few very unfortunate 
things in them. In Isaiah 58. 8 after Isaiah had urged the corporal works 
of mercy, he then promised rewards, and said: "Tunc erumpet temporaneum 
lumen tuum, et vestimenta tua cito orientur." It meant: "Then your light 
shall break forth early, and your garments shall rise up swiftly". This was 
nonsense - though Augustine later, in Confessions 13. 8. 9,  would find an 
allegorical way to make sense of it - with allegory anything is possible. 

Further, his bad spiritual state left him in poor condition to understand 
Scripture. He was far on the way to spiritual blindness because of his 
habitual grave sins. 

Precisely at this point he found the Manichees, whose ideas fit him like a 
glove. Both he and they believed God is corporeal, and evil is positive. 
Also, they flattered his pride by saying that they would prove everything 
and not call for faith (cf. his De Utilitate credendi 1. 2). They also 
taught we have two souls, one good, one evil. When we sin, it is to be 
blamed just on the bad soul. Again, this fit his bad habits. 

We get a lot of information on the Manichees from his writings.  Today some 
original Manichean works have been discovered: C. Schmidt, Manichäische 
Handschriften der Staatlichen Museum , Berlin. In Kephalaia 1. 16 Mani 
says: "... the holy church to which I was sent from the Father... . No one 
of the Apostles has ever done such... . [When his] disciples had heard all 
this from him, they were glad. Their mind was enlightened and they said in 
joy: 'We thank thee... we have... believed that you are the [Paraclete] who 
(come) from the Father, the Revealer of all mysteries." Did he mean he 
really was the Paraclete? The quotation seems to have the disciples saying 
it that way, and Mani does not correct them. Further, in Kephalaia 67. 165-
66 Mani says he is like the sun, and the Elect, the rays, and that he will 
not allow any of the Elect to go into darkness, that his wisdom is anointed 
upon them all. Augustine in his Acta cum Felice Manichaeo 1. 9 quotes Felix 
as saying: "This we believe, that he is the Paraclete." Cf. also R. Cameron 
and A. Dewey eds. and trs. The Cologne Mani Codex: "Concerning the Origin 
of His Body" (Missoula , Scholars Press, 1979). 

Mani was born on April 14, 216 in southern Mesopotamia. At age 12 Mani 
claimed revelations from his "heavenly twin". Visions led him to question 
the baptismal practices of the sect to which he belonged. He disputed with 
the elders, and at age 24, on April 19, 240 he received a heavenly call to 
become the "Apostle of Light."

At first he got some support form the Persian royal court, but when Bahram 
I came to the throne (274-77) a Zoroastrian priest got persecution started 
against him. He was imprisoned and died a martyr in the spring of 276, 

Manichaeism responded to persecution by christianizing its structure. 

The Manichees held that God is corporeal, evil is positive, and they 
promised to prove everything. They did speak of Christ. 

Their teaching is the following: In the beginning there were two kingdoms, 
that of light and of darkness, each eternal, each infinite except in one 
direction where they border on each other. The God of Light rules the one 
kingdom: incorruptible, unchangeable, holy, magnificent in power. He is 
surrounded by a bright array of countless eons. 

The ruler of the kingdom of darkness is Hyle (matter). Augustine sometimes 
charges they had two gods. In this kingdom there are five provinces, 
corresponding to the five evil elements: darkness, evil water, evil wind, 
evil fire, and smoke. But some inhabitants looked up and saw the kingdom of 
light, and decided to attack. God saw the five evil elements and their 
forces and was terrified. He sent out Primal Man (not the same as Adam) who 
was part of the divine substance, and had as armor the five good elements. 
God permitted Primal Man and the five good elements to be beaten, 
imprisoned in matter, for a greater victory later - which never came. 

At the request of Primal Man, God sent out the Friend of Lights, who evoked 
the Great Architect, who evoked the Living Spirit. The latter rescued 
Primal Man, and took him back to the kingdom of light. But he had lost some 
of his light, and good elements were now mixed with evil elements. So, to 
recover the lost light, it was necessary to make a universe. The Living 
Spirit and his five sons formed ten heavens and eight earths out of the 
mixture of good and evil elements. Everything in it is arranged, higher or 
lower, according to the amount of light it has. The sun is of pure fire, 
the moon is of limpid waters. Since the sun emanated from God it is to be 
adored. The sun and moon are light ships, and contain holy virtues. These 
virtues can assume either male or female appearance to attract others. Thus 
concupiscence is aroused, and the light of the soul which is held captive 
in matter can be set free. Light ships can then carry it back to the 
kingdom of light. That is why the moon varies, depending on the load of 
light it is carrying. 

Below the heavens are eight earths, four of them filled with darkness , 
four with a mixture. 

The large animals on earth originated thus: in the land of darkness there 
are five caves, containing evil elements. Within each element trees sprang 
up. From the trees came the bodies of the princes of the caves. The ruler 
of the cave of darkness is a dragon, from whom come serpents and all 
creeping things. The ruler of evil water resembles a fish, and from him 
come all swimming things. The king of evil wind resembles an eagle, and is 
the origin of flying things. The king of evil fire is like a lion, and is 
the source of all four footed animals. The cave of smoke is the source of 
all bipeds, including man. 

Females in the dens were pregnant when the third phase of the war started. 
Then the Third Messenger (the Exalted One, of the Second Father) came to 
war, and set in motion the three wheels of Rex Gloriosus (one of the five 
sons of the Living Spirit). The motion caused the females to abort. Their 
offspring fell down onto the earth, was not killed, but propagated, and 
thus imprisoned more light in their flesh. The large animals have rational 
souls, since there is a part of the divine substance (light) in them. So it 
is wrong to kill them

The smaller animals are made by an evil mind in the Kingdom of Darkness, as 
also things that have roots in the soil. Each plant has a part of God in it 
(light), as indicated by color and brightness. So they can feel pain, so 
plants must not be harvested, or fields weeded. 

Man originated in the den of smoke: when the third phase of the war 
started, and the Third Messenger (the Exalted One) came, Sin was captivated 
by the beauty of the Exalted One (Sin had sprung from the evil archons). So 
Sin made a tree, came forth from it as its fruit. In the fruit was the 
image of the Exalted One. The light of this image was given to one of the 
evil princes, Saclas who was the father of Adam and Eve. So Adam was made 
in the image of the Exalted One. Adam and Eve had more light in them than 
people today, and so lived longer. Man has a body of matter, which is evil. 
He also has two souls, one from God, which is good, the other from the 
Kingdom of Darkness. All sins are due to the evil soul. 

There is a twofold Jesus: 1) The Jesus of the Gospels. He had no real 
flesh, was not really born , only appeared to be crucified. So the 
genealogies in Matthew and Luke are false. So the Manichees made little of 
Easter, but they did exalt the feast of the Bema, the day on which Manes 
was killed. For he really was killed, though Jesus was not. On a platform 
was put the chair of Manes, representing his teaching. 2) The suffering 
Jesus. This is that part of God which is held bound and defiled in demons, 
animals, vegetables, and is cleansed in the meals of the Elect. The earth 
conceives and brings forth this suffering Jesus, the salvation and life of 
men, hanging from every tree. 

At the end of the world there will be a final conflagration: all evil will 
be bound up in a globe of fire. The outer part of the globe will be 
whatever parts of God have not been liberated by then. So the greater 
victory will never come. 

The Manichees attacked the Old Testament. Faustus, a Manichee Bishop, 
called its God "a demon of the Jews and no God." Faustus said if you 
consider the Old Testament sacred, you must accept Jewish ceremonial law. 
He said the misdeeds of some of the great men of the Old Testament proved 
the book could not be of God. 

There is a Manichean hierarchy. There were two general classes of 
Manichees, the Hearers and the Elect. Among the Elect there were twelve 
called Masters, and a thirteenth, their Chief. Next were 72 Bishops 
ordained by the Masters, plus Priests, ordained by the Bishops, and also 
Deacons. But they did not think it any good to baptize anyone. The Elect 
were expected to be perfect, to live out all moral laws, including no 
marriage, no planting or harvesting of crops. They would starve, but the 
Hearers were not expected to be perfect. They could even eat meat and have 
wives. They furnished vegetable food for the Elect. Then the Elect, in 
eating these things, set free gods, light particles. Augustine said in 
Confessions 3. 10: "Gradually and little by little I was led to such 
nonsense as to believe that a fig weeps when it is picked, and that its 
mother tree sheds milky tears. But if some (Manichaean) Saint would eat 
that fig - plucked not by his fault, but by another's - he would mix it 
with his entrails, and breathe forth from it angels, or rather, particles 
of God as he groaned and burped in prayer. These particles of the supreme 
and true God would have remained bound in that fruit, unless set free by 
the tooth and stomach of a Holy Elect one... . . But if someone who was not 
a Manichee in hunger would ask for the fruit, it was like condemning it to 
capital punishment to give it to him."

Augustine returned to Tagaste in 374 both morally and intellectually not 
accepting Christianity. He taught grammar and literature for a year, then 
opened a school of rhetoric at Carthage. He lived with his mistress and 
child there. During this time he won a prize for poetry and published his 
first prose work, De pulchro et apto. He stayed at Carthage until 383. 

But Augustine began to read books on astronomy and saw they did not fit 
with the Manichean tale of the phases of the moon. So he consulted the 
local officials. They could not solve the problem, but told Him Bishop 
Faustus would come. For nine years he waited. Then he found Faustus had 
read some classics, less than Augustine himself, but Faustus admitted he 
could not solve the problem. 

So Augustine decided to go to Rome. The students at Carthage were ill-
mannered, and he heard things were better in Rome. In Rome he stayed with 
some Manichees, and he opened a school of rhetoric, but although the 
students behaved well, they would   desert him just before the fees were 
due. 

During this period he came into contact with the New Academy, who professed 
Skepticism. Augustine thought that was only a false front. If one would 
join, they would reveal their true ideas. But providentially - for he did 
not know what to believe then - he did not join them. 

At Rome he became dangerously ill - he later said his recovery was due to 
the prayers of his mother. 

Symmachus, the pagan Prefect of Rome, received an application to furnish a 
professor of rhetoric for Milan, with a public salary. Augustine applied, 
and with the help of Manichee friends, got it. 

At Milan he went to listen to St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, for 
professional reasons, for he heard Ambrose was a fine speaker. He found 
Ambrose was, though less so than Faustus. But in hearing Ambrose, gradually 
he began to see that the Manichean objections to the Old Testament could be 
answered. We read in Confessions 6. 4. 6: "Joyfully I used to hear Ambrose 
saying in his sermons to the people, as though he were most diligently 
teaching a rule: 'The letter kills, but the spirit gives life' (2 Cor 3. 6) 
- when he opened up in a spiritual [allegorical] sense ... those things 
which, taken literally seemed to teach perversity." St. Paul really was not 
urging allegory. He meant the old regime of the Law brings only death, 
while the new brings life. So the reasoning of Ambrose on these things was 
invalid, but yet served the purpose of getting Augustine out of the 
Manichean objections to the Old Testament. However, he still held his early 
errors: God, the soul, and evil are bodily. (Later on, in his De mendacio 
10. 24 he would say: "What Jacob did at the urging of his mother, so as to 
seem to deceive his father, if we consider it diligently and faithfully, is 
not a lie, but a mystery." He meant: Jacob putting on goat skins stood for 
Christ taking on our sins. (More examples in his Contra Faustum 22. 1-98). 

Augustine wanted a long talk with Ambrose, but found it hard to see him. 

But it was at Milan that he came onto certain "Platonic works" translated 
into Latin by the famous rhetorician Victorinus. Most probably it was the 
Enneads of Plotinus. Reading this solved his remaining intellectual 
difficulties: he gained the concept of a spiritual substance. God is 
spiritual, so is the soul, and evil is a privation. He admits in 
Confessions 8. 5 that all his intellectual difficulties were gone. But his 
bad habits of sex held him back. 

No intellectual arguments could bring him across that line: grace, working 
through good example did it. He heard first from an old Priest, 
Simplicianus, of the conversion of the famed rhetorician Victorinus, who 
lost his position as rhetor when Julian the Apostate Emperor ordered 
Christians to give up teaching rhetoric. Augustine began to read St. Paul. 
One day a friend, Ponticianus, came to see him, and noticed the copy of St. 
Paul. That led Ponticianus to speak openly. He told Augustine of St. 
Anthony and the monks of Egypt, and of a monastery near Milan, and how he 
and three other imperial agents had been walking two by two near Trier. Two 
of them came upon hermits cells. They gave up their position at court at 
once, to follow the life of hermits. 

Hearing this raised an immense emotional storm in the soul of Augustine. 
Alternating sets of images began to float before him. On the one hand, 
these heroic men and women: they, uneducated people, took heaven by storm: 
he with all his learning, could he not do what they did? The other images 
were those of his old girl friends: could he do without them forever?

He got up from where he was, leaving his dear friend Alypius, and began to 
weep. Then he heard a child singing, "Pick it up and read, pick it up and 
read." He recalled there was no child's game in which they would sing that. 
So he took it as a sign from heaven. He went back to the copy of St. Paul, 
opened it at random, saw the verse: "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in 
chambers and debauchery, not in quarrels and jealousy, but put on the Lord 
Jesus, and make no provision for the flesh and its desires." He read no 
more. The darkness of doubt was gone. He went in and told his mother: her 
tears were changed to joy. 

It was really her prayers and penances that had gained this grace for him, 
which came by way of the heroic examples. For he was spiritually hardened. 
Only an extraordinary grace, one comparable to a miracle, could rescue him. 
But his mother's heroic, extraordinary work gained that for him. Otherwise 
he would be in hell today. 

He resigned his position as professor of rhetoric - it was not needed, but 
Augustine was an extremist, and always seemed to have had misgivings about 
the permissibility of teaching rhetoric, which included teaching how to 
argue dishonestly - which could be used to unmask errors. 

With his mother, his brother Navigius, his son Adeodatus, his good friend 
Alypius and a few others, he retired to a country villa owned by a friend 
Verecundus at Cassiciacum. It was the end of the summer of 386. On the next 
Holy Saturday he was baptized by St. Ambrose. 

During this sort of retreat he wrote On the happy life, Against the 
Academics, On Order.  About the same time he wrote his Soliloquies.  In his 
Confessions 9. 4 he said these works were "still panting from the school of 
pride."

After Baptism he started to return to Africa. While waiting at Ostia to 
sail, he and his mother one day had a special experience of contemplation. 
As he describes it it could not have been infused contemplation. Still less 
did it resemble at all Plato's ascent as in the Symposium. It resembled 
more some things in Plotinus. 

His mother died at Ostia. He felt guilty about weeping a bit for her - 
influence of Stoicism. 

Then in the fall of 388 he went back to Africa. His illegitimate son 
Adeodatus soon died. He set up a monastic community of laymen, in which he 
lived for three years. But his fame was spreading. One day on a visit to 
Hippo, the people seized him and insisted he be ordained, in 391. For 5 
years he was a helper to Bishop Valerius, preaching in his place, working 
in controversies with heretics, especially the Donatists. (In the 
persecution of Diocletian, some clergy had handed over sacred books to the 
persecutors. Donatus said they were traitors, and claimed sacraments were 
invalid if given by an unworthy minister. Also said only holy persons are 
members of the Church). Augustine's struggle with the Donatists took up 
much of his time until the Conference of 411. Soon after, Donatism died 
out. Through all this he continued his monastic life so far as possible. 

In 395 he was consecrated Auxiliary Bishop to Valerius. Valerius died the 
next year, and Augustine became Bishop of Hippo. He still continued a 
monastic life. 

Detractors who remembered his wicked youth tried to smear him. To answer 
them, and to correct the exaggerations of his admirers, and to praise God, 
he wrote his Confessions , which was published by about 400 AD. In them he 
stresses seeing the hand of Divine Providence in his own life, and the need 
of humility. 

In 410 Alaric and the Goths took Rome. The cry went up that the lack of 
pagan worship caused it. Augustine decided to answer it, wrote his City of 
God, between 413 and 426. In it he pictured two cities, that of God, and 
that of the world, each including both angels and people. He was not just 
following Plato's Republic , for in it there was only an earthly, ideal, 
imagined, city. Nor did he follow the two kingdoms of the Manichees, of 
which one is evil by nature. 

About the same time the British monk Pelagius sought the help of Augustine. 
Pelagius greatly exaggerated the role of the human will in salvation, and 
minimized that of grace. He denied original sin. At first, Augustine was 
occupied with the Donatists. But after that he turned attention to 
Pelagius, and wrote many works against him. These were the chief source of 
his theological fame, and his title of Doctor of Grace. We will examine his 
theology of grace presently. 

Another work of major importance was his fifteen books On the Trinity, 
begun in 400, completed in 417. 

In 426, sensing that he had not much time left to live, Augustine recalled 
that the Gospel says we must give an account of every idle word. He had 
written so many, so he made a great critical review of them, in his 
Retractations, in which only small part consisted of retracting ideas. 
Basically it was a review of all his works except his letters and sermons.

In 429 Genseric led the Vandals from Spain into Africa. In late spring or 
early summer of 430 the Vandals laid siege to Hippo. Augustine died during 
that siege, on August 28, 430. 

His literary output was immense. Against the Manichees he wrote: On the 
Morals of the Catholic Church and the Morals of the Manicheans; Disputation 
against Fortunatus the Manichean; Acts (of public debate) with Felix the 
Manichaean; Against Faustus the Manichean, 33 books; On Free Will; On Two 
Souls; On the Nature of Good (This latter is the best summary of his 
writing against the Manichees). 

Against the Donatists he wrote: Psalm against the Party of Donatus; Against 
the Epistle of Parmenianus; On Baptism. 

Against the Pelagians he wrote, in the first phase: 411-418: On the Merits 
and Remission of Sins; On the Spirit and Letter; On Nature and Grace. 

Then against the Pelagian Bishop Julian of Eclanum he wrote: 419-30: On 
Marriage and Concupiscence; Against Julian; Uncompleted Work against 
Julian. 

Against the Semipelagians he wrote: On Grace and Free Will; On Correction 
and Grace; Letter to Vitalis; On the Predestination of the Saints; On the 
Gift of Perseverance

He also wrote many works outside these groups. We have already mentioned 
Confessions and City of God , and On the Trinity. Besides that, of special 
importance is his work On Christian Doctrine, and On Catechizing the 
Ignorant. There were also many commentaries on Scripture. 

St. Augustine's Theory of Knowledge

We noticed earlier that Augustine telescoped theology and philosophy in 
saying that philosophy really is love of Christ. In this broad trend he has 
much company in the writers of this period. They tend to look at man as a 
whole, and to say that both reason and faith have a role to play. Reason 
has a role to play in bringing one to faith, i.e. , in apologetics, in 
showing that it is reasonable to have faith. Then reason has a further role 
in helping to penetrate more deeply into the truths of revelation, as we 
indicated above, and saw specially in using the principles of Aristotle to 
understand better human interaction with grace. 

There is a very special example of this sort of thing in his theory of 
knowledge. Augustine noted, rightly, that we manage somehow to know that 
some things not only happen to be true, but are necessarily and eternally 
true. This happens not because a man sees the divine essence. Rather, 
Augustine takes his start from Matthew 23. 10 where Jesus said: "One is 
hour teacher, Christ." Hence in his Retractations 1. 12 he wrote: "In this 
we find that there is no teacher who teaches men knowledge except God, 
according to that which is written in the Gospel: 'One is your teacher, 
Christ. '"

There have been many debates about what he means here. The chief proposals 
are these:: 1)The Divine Word is the giver of the forms, that is, it is the 
separate active intellect which supplies intelligible species to the mind 
on the occasion of sensation. -This view is clearly false, for Aristotle, 
as we did see above, did believe we each have our own active intellect. 2) 
All intelligible things are known in God, through an immediate vision of 
God Himself. - Again, very false. We do not see God in this life. 3) The 
illumination is just the creation of the human mind with its ability to 
confer intelligibility upon the contents of sensation. 4) God in some may 
that is not clear, enables the mind to discern the elements of necessity, 
immutability and eternity in the relation between concepts. - This seems 
more likely what he meant. Copleston, II. 67, says well: "... it does not 
seem possible to obtain a definitive interpretation of his thought which 
would adequately explain all the statements he made."

Actually, we see the necessity of necessary truths by way of abstraction. 

St. Augustine's Theory of Grace and Predestination

He is rightly called the Doctor of Grace because of his great achievement 
in seeing our total, utter dependence upon God, far more than other 
writers, more than the Eastern Fathers. He arrived at this in his debates 
with the Pelagians. He did make a splendid advance, but at the same time, 
fell into a regrettable error. We shall see both facets. 

There are two distinct questions: 1) human interaction with grace; 2) 
predestination. 

First his work on predestination. Predestination means an arrangement of 
Divine Providence to see either that a person reaches heaven, or reaches 
full membership in the Church. Sadly, we must admit that Augustine and the 
other Fathers, and theologians for centuries later, tended to telescope the 
two questions. This has led, historically to a dreadful impasse. 

Scripture seldom uses the word predestination. When it does it means always 
and only predestination to full membership in the Church. Never does it 
speak explicitly of predestination to heaven, or reprobation to hell. It 
does, however contain implications in this second sense. We mean to explore 
Augustine's thought on that subject. 

Later theologians use terms that are helpful, even if Augustine did not 
employ them. They say predestination to heaven could be decided either 
before or after God's looking at human merits and demerits. Of course, the 
words before and after do not apply: there is no time in God. Yet there is 
a real sense: it means: Does God decide predestination or reprobation with 
or without looking at the merits or demerits of a person?

All theologians have taken for granted - wrongly - that if God makes the 
favorable decision, predestination, without looking, He must also make the 
unfavorable, reprobation, without looking. As we shall see, this is not 
true. We can separate the two. However, Augustine did not see this fact. 

His basic position was that both predestination and reprobation are decided 
by God blindly , without looking at merits and demerits. We shall see the 
details presently. 

Factors that predisposed Augustine to his solution:

a)Allegorical interpretation :We already saw that he was much impressed 
with Ambrose's use of allegory. Really, most Scripture scholars then used 
it. It is really arbitrary: this stands for this, and that stands for that. 
One can make things mean almost anything. In the matter of predestination, 
Augustine looked at the comparison of the potter in Romans 9, and said that 
the large mass of potter's clay on the table stands for the whole human 
race. By original sin, it became a massa damnata et damnabilis. God could 
throw the whole race into hell, without waiting for anyone to sin 
personally. This is, of course, horribly untrue. 

b)Augustine wiped out the line between the ordinary and the extraordinary, 
both in the natural and in the supernatural order. In On John's Gospel 1. 
6. 1: "Because... His miracles, by which He rules the whole world... had 
become commonplace by constant experience... . He reserved to Himself 
certain things which He would perform at opportune times, beyond the usual 
course and order of nature, so that they for whom the daily things had 
become commonplace, might be amazed in seeing not greater, but unusual 
things." And similarly (Sermon 142. 1. 1): "That so many men who were not, 
are born daily, is a greater miracle than that a few rose [from the dead] 
who had existed [before]."

In the supernatural order (Sermon 141. 1. 1): "... who would dare to say 
that God lacked a way of calling, in which even Esau would apply his mind 
to faith, and join his will [to that] in which Jacob was justified?" He 
means that from Romans 9 he sees that God hated Esau before he was born, 
and destined him to hell. God could have sent a grace that would have saved 
Esau. God did not do that, because He did not want to save Esau. We 
comment: The passage in Romans has a very different meaning: it deals with 
the question of who will or will not get the special advantage of being a 
full member of the people of God. And God did not hate Esau at all: it is a 
Hebraism really meaning: God loved one more and the other less. But even if 
we stay within Augustine's framework of thought, which is false, we would 
still say: If God gave Esau plentiful graces of the ordinary kind, which 
could save Esau, then God cannot be said to not want to save Esau. To not 
give Him an extraordinary grace, a miraculous type, does not show God did 
not want to save Esau. The text from Enchiridion 103, to be cited below, 
shows the same error coming from the erasure of the line between ordinary 
and extraordinary. 

c)His views on God's salvific will: This refers to 1 Tim. 2. 4: "God wills 
all men to be saved." We have just seen that Augustine was driven by his 
lack of the right distinction to think God does NOT want all to be saved: 
(1)Enchiridion 103: "When we hear and read in sacred Scripture that He 
wills all men to be saved, we must... so understand [it]... as if it were 
said that: no man is saved except whom He wants [to be saved].... Or 
certainly, it was so said... not that there is no man whom He is unwilling 
to have saved, He who was unwilling to perform the wonders of miracles 
among those whom He says would have done penance if He had done them: but 
in such a way that we understand 'all men' to mean the whole human race, 
distributed into various categories: kings, private citizens, nobles, 
ordinary men, lofty, lowly, learned, unlearned...." COMMENT: Here Augustine 
offers two interpretations of 1 Tim 2. 4, both of which reverse its 
meaning. The second one refers to the passage of Matthew 11.20-24 where 
Jesus said that if the miracles He worked in Bethsaida, Corazin, and 
Capernaum had been worked in Tyre and Sidon, they would have done penance 
in sackcloth and ashes. Here again is the fatal lack of distinction of 
ordinary and extraordinary. (2) De correptione et gratia 14. 44: "And that 
which is written that 'he wills all men to be saved, and yet not all are 
saved, can be understood in many ways, of which we have mentioned some in 
other works, but I shall give one here. It is said in such a way... that 
all the predestined are meant; for the whole human race is in them." 
(3)Ibid 15. 47: "That 'God wills all men to be saved' can be understood 
also in this way: that He causes us to wish [that all be saved]."

The massa damnata theory: The basic thought is this: By original sin, all 
men are a massa damnata. God could throw the whole mass into hell without 
waiting for anyone to sin personally. But He wills to show mercy, and so 
rescues a few; to show justice, He lets the rest go to hell. Now since to 
love is to will good to another for the other's sake, in this theory God 
would not love any one - He would merely use some to make a point. So, to 
say He does not will all to be saved is to deny God's love. In several 
places, such as Sermon 294. 3. 3 he follows his logic relentlessly, and 
says unbaptized infants go to hell. (We will see the true solution later 
on) a)Explicit texts: (1) Ad Simplicianum 1. 2. 16: "Therefore all men 
are... one condemned mass [massa damnata] of sin, that owes a debt of 
punishment to the divine and supreme justice. Whether it [the debt] be 
exacted or whether it be condoned, there is no injustice." (2) City of God 
21. 12: "Hence there is a condemned mass of the whole human race... so that 
no one would be freed form this just and due punishment except by mercy and 
undue grace; and so the human race is divided [into two parts] so that in 
some it may be shown what merciful grace can do, in others, what just 
vengeance can do... . In it [punishment] there are many more than in 
[mercy] so that in this way there may be shown what is due to all."

b)Exclusion of foreseen merits: (1) On the predestination of the saints 17. 
24: "Let us, then understand the call by which the elect are made [elect]: 
[they are] not [persons] who are chosen because they have believed, but 
[they are persons] who are chosen so that they may believe. For even the 
Lord Himself made this [call] sufficiently clear when He said: 'You have 
not chosen me, but I have chosen you. '[John 15. 16] ... . This is the 
unshakeable truth of predestination and grace. For what else does that 
mean, that the Apostle says, 'As He chose us in Him before the foundation 
of the world. [Ephesians 1. 4]. For surely if it was said [that they were 
chosen] because God foresaw that they would believe, [and] not because He 
Himself was going to make them believers - the Son speaks against that sort 
of foreknowledge, saying: 'You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you. ' 
[John 15. 16]. So they were chosen before the foundation of the world by 
that predestination by which God foreknew His own future acts: they are 
chosen out of the world by that vocation by which God fulfilled that which 
He had predestined. 'For those whom He predestined, them also he called" 
[Romans 8. 29]. 

COMMENTS: 1) Augustine here takes texts out of context, and thus changes 
their meaning. John 15. 16 was said to the Apostles: They had not chosen to 
be His Apostles: He chose them. It has nothing to do with predestination. 
Ephesians 11. 4 and Romans 8. 29, if read in context, mean God's call or 
predestination to make some full members of His Church -not to 
predestination to heaven. We speak of full membership, since there is a 
lesser, but substantial membership, of which we spoke in connection with 
St. Justin Martyr. 

2)He does well in stressing our total dependence on God. But this does not 
lead to massa damnata. Rather, God offers grace to all: those who do not 
reject it, get it, including faith. 

(2)Enchiridion 99: For grace alone distinguishes the redeemed from the 
lost, whom a common cause from [their beginning] had joined into one mass 
of perdition... ."

An Implicit Rejection of Massa Damnata in Augustine: Augustine never 
explicitly abandoned his massa damnata theory. In the last years of his 
life, he still referred readers to the text of Ad Simplicianum 1. 2. 16: 
cf. De dono perseverantiae 21. 55. 

However he did imply a contrary theory, that is one that rejects 
reprobation without consideration of demerits. There are six such texts. We 
will consider only the first here, from On 88 Different questions 68. 5:" 
For not all who were called wanted to come to that dinner, which as the 
Lord says in the Gospel, was prepared, nor would they who came have been 
able to come if they had not been called. And so neither should they who 
came attribute [it] to themselves, for they came being called; nor should 
those who were unwilling to come attribute [it] to anyone but themselves, 
for in order that they might come, they were called in free will." COMMENT: 
We note that they must attribute their loss only to themselves: in the 
massa damnata the first decision that sends them to ruin is made by God, 
not by themselves. Other texts are to be found in: De correptione et gratia 
13. 42; De peccatorum meritis et remissione 2. 17. 26; De Actis cum Felice 
Manichaeo 2. 8; Tractatus in Ioannis Evangelium 53, 6; and De Catechizandis 
rudibus 52. 

These texts are written at intervals over practically the entire span of 
his writing career: 395; 398; 399;411; 413-18; 426. So there was no change 
of mind. We already mentioned that late in life he referred back to one of 
his first works on this topic. 

A Note on the Other Fathers on Predestination

The Greek Fathers before and after Augustine all disagree with him: they 
firmly reject reprobation without considering demerits. So also do the 
western Fathers before Augustine. He found little support after writing , 
much opposition. St. Prosper of Aquitaine is often said to be his great 
backer, but even he rejected the massa damnata. For example, in his 
Responsiones ad capitula obiectionum Gallorum 3: "They [those reprobated] 
were not deserted by God so that they deserted God; but they deserted and 
were deserted and they were changed from good to evil by their own will, 
and as a result... they were not predestined... by Him who foresaw them as 
going to be such." For fuller details on Augustine and all the other 
Fathers cf. Wm. G. Most New Answers to Old Questions, London, 1971, §§ 183- 
213. That book drew many favorable reviews in European journals, only one 
unfavorable one, which used objections already answered. 

St. Augustine on Human Interaction with Grace

It is here that he did great service, by showing our total dependence upon 
God. 

1)De Gratia Christi 15, 16: "For God not only has given our ability and 
aids it, but also, He 'works both the will and the performance' [Phil. 2. 
13]. Not that we do not will, or that we do not act, but that without His 
help, we neither will nor do any good."

2)Epistle 194. 5. 19: "What then is the merit of a man before receiving 
grace, in accordance with which he receives grace, since it is only grace 
that makes every good merit of ours, and since when God crowns our merits, 
He crowns nothing other than His own gifts."

If we ask HOW grace fits with human will, Augustine has a theory of the 
delectatio victrix , the victorious delight. If God gives us greater 
pleasure in a good thing than temptation offers, we go for the good thing. 
On this cf. his On John's Gospel 26.4. 

The deficiency is that Augustine speaks only of the goal or final cause 
that attracts. But such a cause gives no internal power. That would take an 
efficient cause.  Further, when temptation comes, the pleasure it offers is 
often stronger than what grace offers, yet often enough, a person resists 
the temptation. 

New Proposals to Solve the Above Problems

In the work mentioned above, New Answers to Old Questions, in §§284-306 and 
§§344-357, new answers are proposed:

On predestination: There are three logical steps in God's decrees:

1)He strongly wills all to be saved

2. He looks to see who resists His grace gravely and persistently (to such 
an extent that he cannot be saved). These He lets go, in negative 
reprobation, in view of such demerits. 

3)All others not reprobated in step 2 are predestined. Not because of 
merits, which have not yet appeared, not even because of the lack of 
resistance, but because that is what He wanted in step 1, and the soul is 
not blocking Him. 

Therefore we have predestination without merits (which Augustine also held) 
and reprobation in view of demerits. 

The Father analogy in the Gospel shows the same thing: 1)In the normal 
human family, the parents want all the children to turn out well; 2) The 
children do not say: I must help around the house, and so I will get them 
to give love and care. No. They get that because the parents are good, not 
because the children are good = Predestination without merits. 3) Yet a 
child could be punished for being bad, and if bad enough long enough could 
be disinherited: = reprobation in view of demerits. 

Hence our Lord said: "Unless you become like little children, you will not 
enter the kingdom of heaven": Matthew 18. 3. 

On human interaction with grace: A grace comes to me. Without my help it 
causes me to see something as good (2 Cor 3. 5) and makes me favorably 
disposed, but there is still no decision. At this juncture where I could 
reject, if I instead make no decision against grace, then it goes into 
phase two, and in it two things run in parallel: It works in me both the 
will and the doing (Phil. 2. 13), and my will, with power being received at 
the same instant from grace, really cooperates. 

We saw this in a philosophical form in the section on Beyond Aristotle in 
Metaphysics. 

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