Show description

3) as "the Only-begotten in the sphere of identity,'' that is, on the plane of permanent being. Among orthodox Christians, Clement speaks (strom. 4) of the real God who continues in identity of righteous goodness. Alexander of Alexandria refers to the one ingenerate Father, who owns no one as the cause of His being, immutable and invariable, always in the same identical mode of existence, and admitting neither progress 12 ELEMENTS OF THEISM nor diminution (ap. Thdt. e. 46). Epiphanius (ancor. 6.

So again in creation mankind, compounded of the dust of the earth, was "formed" by God by reference to Himself (Greg. Naz. or. 5. 3r). The meaning of all such speculations is clear when it is recalled that very great attention had been devoted in Greek thought to the distinction between form and matter. Matter is unknown to experience except in determinate forms, and forms, though they can be distinguished in thought from the matter to which they give shape and expression, are in practice only known to the human mind in association with that matter.

That conception was naturally repugnant to Christian thinkers, yet their thought was much nearer to the Stoic cycle of ideas than to the Epicurean, and, much as Christian philosophy owed to the schools of Plato and Aristotle, particularly the former, the contribution of Stoic tradition to the common stock of ideas is by no means negligible. Christianity was eclectic in its philosophy, though its choice was always controlled by Scriptural teaching and precedent. Allusion was made not tmsympathetically to the world-soul of the Stoics, without, of course, any approval of its materiality.