2
When Leibniz set out on the search for truth, he always armed himself with the principle of contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason, just as, in his own words, a captain of a ship arms himself on setting out to sea with a compass and maps. These two principles Leibniz called his invincible soldiers. But if one or the other of these principles is shaken, how is truth to be sought? There is something here about which one feels troubled and even frightened.35
—Lev Shestov
Euthyphro’s Dilemma
I am convinced that many misinterpretations of early Christian thinkers emerge from identifying their stance toward pagan philosophy with a general stance toward reason. I am convinced this identification is false. The relationship of Christianity to philosophy, and its relation to reason, are two entirely different things, not only in light of Saint Paul’s epistles, but also the works of Tertullian, Hippolytus, or Epiphanus. The question of the extent of humanity’s natural knowledge, especially whether people can come to know God on their own, cannot be reduced to the question of faith’s relationship to the positive historical instances of philosophy among the Greeks and Romans. Above all, the wonder caused by the discovery of truths scattered throughout the teachings of ancient sages put Christians face to face with the problem of natural knowledge, and only secondarily with the issue of the value of its fruits. Even though the assessment of natural reason constituted the bedrock of evaluating the philosophical heritage of the pagans (it precedes it in an obvious way), the evaluation of reason did not have to go hand-in-hand with an evaluation of the achievements of Plato, Socrates, Zeno, or Epicurus. One can be a Christian rationalist and still deprecate the philosophers for their meager use of reason. One can also have a critical evaluation of human knowledge and at the same time sincerely admire philosophy for its extraordinary achievements. This divergence will increase when we remember that the philosophies and the philosophers encountered by early Christians did not practice a purely theoretical enterprise. The schools required total engagement from their adepts. They called them to conversion and spiritual transformation (metanoia) and therefore they led to competing ways (agogai) of life. All of this resulted in competition between the philosophical schools, and eventually to competition between the philosophical schools and Christians.
It is already difficult to find an identification of reason and philosophy in Saint Paul.36 It is true that the immense power of the paradoxical phrases from 1 Corinthians—where the wisdom of God (the foolishness of the cross) is confronted with the wisdom of the world—inclines one to put the entirety of human knowledge under the shadow of an immense question mark (this applies equally to reason and its philosophical fruits).37 Yet, the assertions that there is no compromise between God’s wisdom and the wisdom of the world and that revelation is foolishness in the eyes of the wise of the world do not mean that all human wisdom is preemptively condemned by revelation. After all, such a stance would not only force us to ignore the philosophical tradition of paradox, but it would also require us to bracket off the theses of the Epistle to the Romans about the possibility of natural knowledge and the reliability of the summons of conscience, “For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them. Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made” (Rom 1:19–20). This was also written by Saint Paul, but in praise of natural reason, by utilizing standards of rationality that were the common property of nearly all ancient philosophy. And if that is not enough, he adds, “For when the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even defend them” (Rom 2:14–15). These passages from Saint Paul obviously leave no doubt that the apostle is speaking about imperfect knowledge and a voice of conscience so faint that it would be an improbable basis for even a relatively just life. The universal capabilities for reasoning and acting morally constitute a sufficient basis for taking responsibility for one’s acts, including for those individuals who have not been directly addressed by the Word of God, even if it is only the glory of the truth revealed in Christ that opens up the way toward perfection to humanity.
Are we not overvaluing the rationalist intentions of the Epistle to the Romans? Is such a tendency a sign of corruption by Hellenism, which is based upon giving reason rights that for many centuries made faith the prisoner of scholastic pride? Does not Paul merely say that the pagans have no foundations for expecting to be let off the hook? After all, they have wasted the natural gifts of reason and conscience. Does this gift have any value after Christ’s revelation of the fullness of truth? Is not the Christian teaching a call to religious sovereignty, an appeal to a faith that will cast its demands upon a reason which would like to entrap the Living Truth within a net of philosophical necessities? Is this not the starting point for the tradition that goes all the way to Peter Damian and later Ockham? It is a tradition that makes truth and the good dependent upon the will of God, a tradition that presents an irresolvable conflict between the truth of the faith and the dead truths of reason; the tree of life versus the tree of knowledge. Does not belief in God mean trusting God to such a degree that allows us to suspend all convictions and calculations? Is it not the true faith—as Kierkegaard wrote in Fear and Trembling while discussing the sacrifice of Isaac—an absurd path, not a reasonable one?38 It seems that faith in the omnipotence of God should lead us to conclude that the rules of reason are provisional. The very same rules that reason in its limitations posits as necessary and unchanging. After all, the rules of logic and ethical norms that are blasphemously regarded as universal and necessary cannot confine God. Is this not the teaching proclaimed by the great Christians to the world, Christians such as Tertullian who audaciously proclaimed certum est, quia impossibile [it is certain because it is impossible]? Was not this teaching undermined by the followers of Justin Martyr who were mesmerized by Greek philosophy? These are not vain questions, however, we must explore whether they are well put.
Asking about the competence of human reason clearly reopens one of the most important controversies that have accompanied Christianity from its birth. The following are at stake: on the one hand, the relationship between reason and nature, on the other, the relationship between God’s transcendence and omnipotence. These are the fundamental questions for defining the character of what we will call “Christian philosophy.”
If revelation reveals the necessary order of reality (one that exists objectively) and if this order is not fully knowable naturally, then the rules of Christian teaching cannot be proven, yet they are absolute, that is, unchanging and universally binding. It is a given that some part of revelation, which Christians label as a mystery, always remains paradoxical to human reason. Here paradox is strictly defined as inaccessible to human reason, rather than contrary to the absolute laws of thinking and acting that are available to us. The paradoxicality of mystery is a sign of our finitude, rather than a sign of the provisional character of the rules of thinking and acting available to reason. Independently of how deeply paradoxical and unintelligible the mystery of God’s love shows itself to be in the sacrifice of Christ, or, in the mystery of the Trinity, its truth in no way disturbs the moral and logical laws known through purely natural means. This means that it is not the mystery that is unintelligible, instead our reason is not capable of knowing the mystery, which can be only fully explicated in the light of knowing the knowledge of the fullness of the absolute order, which remains inaccessible to us.
The Christian can direct his life according to pointers that he does not comprehend, yet still be convinced that he is living rationally. However, he need not make a sacrifice of reason, because he believes that he is properly using reason, and is inching ever closer to its proper goal.
Conversely, conceptions of revelation that cross out nature, a God who proclaims to humanity laws that contradict the ones presiding over human thinking and being, destroys any correlation between natural reason and the divine will. The discontinuity that appears between God and the world in such theologies is permanent. They do not allow for talking about the boundaries of knowledge, the problem is no longer finitude, but the radical alterity of God’s wisdom toward human reason. The matter is rooted in an understanding of God’s nature and transcendence, and is best expressed in the question: should God be constrained or limited by the laws ruling reality, or conversely, are these laws completely dependent on his will? In some cases the positing of God’s radical alterity is transformed into an obligation of sacrificing reason (sacrificium intellectus) and all the laws that govern knowledge and thinking. If God decides that 2 x 2 = 5, or, that murder and denouncing one’s parents is laudable, then it will be so. When the laws revealed by God are dependent upon God’s will, then they simultaneously stop being necessary and unchanging, however, in concert with the sovereign will of their Creator, they are both real and binding. According to the proud opponents of necessity this formulation solves the dilemmas of Plato’s Euthyphro—does God love what is good or is what God loves the good?
Tertullian’s Rationalism
The understanding of transcendence presented in this way is often attributed to the thinker who—this is significant—passes as the father of Latin theology. It is difficult to doubt that some of Tertullian’s statements play into this assumption. Tertullian’s well-known statements forcefully contrast philosophy and Christianity as two mutually exclusive realities. In the famous phrases from the Apology he denies all similarities and any commingling between the philosopher and Christian, the pupil of Greece and the student of heaven, the friend of error and his enemy.39 In the Prescription Against the Heretics these antinomies are filled out with two more, Athens versus Jerusalem and the Academy versus the church.40 The stereotyping of Tertullian as a Christian who tends toward annihilating reason by stressing the paradoxicality of revelation is also borne out by a popular fragment from De carne Christi, where the Carthaginian derives the authenticity of the Son of God’s death through its absurdity and the certainty of the resurrection through its impossibility.41 Yet, one needs the blindness of a Shestov to not notice that philosophy, Greece, attachment to error, Athens, and the Academy need not be (and they are not!) synonyms for natural reason, but rather historical examples of its compromise. Being anti-philosophical is not the same as being anti-rational.42 Tertullian, with all of his considerable conviction, merely says that philosophy, only up to his day, represents falsehood. That emphatically does not mean that reason cannot even touch a sliver of the truth. Furthermore, he adds in The Soul’s Testimony that positive historical philosophy does not represent nature at all. In the mind of Tertullian there is no quarrel between revelation and nature.43 If there is any quarrel proclaimed by Tertullian, it is the conflict between nature and positive historical philosophy. Tertullian makes war against a philosophy that falsifies nature; he makes war in the name of both reason, nature, and revelation.
Pure nature is in its essence Christian, that is, we discover within it an order that is not contrary to revelation. And so Tertullian, just like his intellectual contemporaries, is ready to treat the kosmos as a proof for the existence of God.44 The position Paul expressed in the Epistle to the Romans is upheld by Tertullian—reason is not the object of his critique, but the use philosophers have made of reason.45 However, we should add that Tertullian’s Christian contemporaries added very little to the ideas of the great Diogenes of Apollonia that were developed by the Platonists and Stoics.46 Clement, bishop of Rome, in a letter dated to the end of the first century reveals the majestic order of all things in a hymn that proclaims the greatness of the Creator as an example truly worthy of imitation for Christians.47 We should note that this hymn is intended as a spiritual exercise for believers in a Corinth torn apart by theological controversies. Contemplation of the order visible in the cosmos in which God’s might realizes itself is meant as a medicine for the soul and an example of the order and unity that should reign between those who follow Christ.48 There is no better argument for the non-contradiction of nature and revelation.
In all honesty, we should also note that for members of the early church the ability to intellectually see the face of God in nature and the laws created by him—laws that simultaneously govern human life and all of nature—was considered to be an insight that was not necessarily accessible universally. I believe Clement himself would incline toward the understanding that only Christians possess this view of nature in full, and that revelation is a precondition for natural knowledge of God.49 However, the later statement of Saint Theophilus, “Consider, O man, His works”50 was generally taken to be an expression of the confidence in the universal capability of human reason to discover the existence of the Creator and the laws of a righteous life. Minucius Felix takes up precisely that position in his Octavius in chapters 17 and 18. We should also remember his attack upon up the mechanistic and atomistic positions of Democritus when we read him. Then we will not be surprised by the fact that his contemporaries gave him the nickname Cicero, especially when we read fragments such as this one, “[T]hey who deny that this furniture of the whole world was perfected by the divine reason, and assert that it was heaped together by certain fragments casually adhering to each other, seem to me not to have either mind or sense, or, in fact, even sight itself.”51
Tertullian, who was accused of extremism, not only approves, but creatively develops a way of thinking that confirms the substantial unity of the natural and revealed, that is, God’s whole order. “Would you have the proof from the works of His hands, so numerous and so great, which both contain you and sustain you, which minister at once to your enjoyment, and strike you with awe; or would you rather have it from the testimony of the soul itself?”52 asks the Carthaginian in the seventeenth chapter of his Apology. In his argument taken from the “testimony of the soul” Tertullian leans upon a whole arsenal of medical metaphors, which had an obvious philosophical provenance in his time, and have served from time immemorial to underscore the difference between nature and the fallen, therefore unnatural, everyday experience. The soul whose testimony is the basis for Tertullian’s argument was once flabbergasted, but recovered its health as if from an illness. The testimony is framed by commonplace sayings such as, “What God gives,” “God sees,” “I commend to God” that reveal for Tertullian the presence in the soul of knowledge that is essentially in accord with Christian teaching, even if for the most part this knowledge is usually obscured by our “illness.” The soul is, as Tertullian claims, naturaliter christiana, meaning, it is naturally oriented toward God, “O noble testimony of the soul by nature Christian! Then, too, in using such words as these, it looks not to the Capitol, but to the heavens. It knows that there is the throne of the living God, as from Him and from thence itself came down.”53 This concept of the soul’s testimony, which was developed during the writing of The Apology, seemed to be so profitable to Tertullian that he wrote a whole separate work upon it. One must admit that reading this text forces one to revise one of the most stubborn prejudices about early Christianity: the picture of Tertullian as the incarnation of the conflict between revealed faith and natural reason.
The following list from Tertullian’s The Apology details some of the main causes and symptoms of the illness that disfigure the soul’s knowledge: crushing imprisonment by the body, the limitations caused by a bad upbringing, dissolution through sensuality, desire, and serving false gods.54 In The Soul’s Testimony the accusations are directed against philosophy itself, which is singled out as the main corrupter of natural knowledge. Tertullian calls the soul to the witness stand in order to vouch for the truth of the Christian claim, “[S]tand forth and give thy witness. But I call thee not as when, fashioned in schools, trained in libraries, fed in Attic academies and porticoes, thou belchest wisdom. I address thee simple, rude, uncultured and untaught, such as they have thee who have thee only; that very thing of the road, the street, the work-shop, wholly. I want thine inexperience, since in thy small experience no one feels any confidence.”55 One can clearly see the ideal of an intelligent noble savage did not originate in the mind of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In Tertullian this idea certainly corresponds with his concept of a universal, foundational, unwritten, and universal natural law passed on to every human being through Adam and Eve, who received it before the fall (original sin is the breaking of this law).56
The very idea of a witness of a pure soul might have been suggested by the famous experiment of Psammetichus. The future king of Egypt conducted an experiment that would help him discover what the natural or first language might be. He put a newborn child in the care of a nanny whose tongue was cut out to make sure that the first word uttered by the child would not be one it came to know aurally.57 Tertullian must have taken to the idea of a natural language, because in his discussion of this episode in the first book of Ad Nationes he merely questions the methods used in the macabre experiment, rather than the possibility of reaching the origins.58
We should abstract from the textual sources by noting that Tertullian is referring to a certain intellectual tradition that presupposes the existence of an undisturbed, primary, and therefore fundamental, experience of reality written into language. We can see this in Plato’s Cratylus in the myth of the name-givers (onomatothetai) who gave things their proper names by adequately describing their natures through their given names.59 According to the myth time has corrupted both the language and our ability for direct knowledge. Therefore, the work of the name-givers hidden within the original words is our only access to the real nature of things. This theory was adopted and given a biblical background by Philo of Alexandria. The myth of an original language is expressed by him in a passage elaborating the existence of an authentic language that was used by Adam and Eve in Eden. Its epistemological essence is expressed by the scene in Genesis where Adam names all the animals paraded before him by God. These were names that “reveal[ed] in an excellent fashion the individual characteristics of their subjects.” Philo’s discussion assumes this pure knowledge as not contaminated by the consequences of original sin: “After all, the rational nature in his soul was still uncorrupted, and not a single weakness or disease or passion had found its way in. So he took in wholly unblemished impressions of things material and immaterial, and made appellations that were accurate, taking aim in excellent fashion at what was revealed, so that their natures were pronounced and understood at the very same time.”60 In Herodotus this tradition appears in the form of a myth about an original and natural language that allows one to identify the most authentic of all existing languages. Whereas in Tertullian the problem of uncontaminated knowledge—one of the ultimate questions of philosophy—leads to a critique directed at philosophy.
This originarity and primacy is twofold. First of all, the colloquial speech of simple people is inscribed with the original knowledge of the soul, which is, above all, natural and therefore true. Second, this language is, as we would say today, pre-cultural. This means it owes nothing to culture or philosophy (after all, it is the source of both), but it also constitutes the proper measure of their value. The agreement between this language and revelation confirms its rationality, but also the naturalness of revelation, what is more, it undermines the value of any philosophy that contradicts it.
We shall now return to The Soul’s Testimony. The analysis of further examples demonstrates their striking convergence with Christian teaching. The spontaneous utterances are treated as an expression of a natural knowledge that is present in the human soul, they confirm the identity of natural knowledge with the many truths revealed by the Creator. This is not only the case with regard to the existence of God. Tertullian says to the soul, “Nor is the nature of the God we declare unknown to thee.”61 Natural reason rejects the indifferent and non-salvific God of the philosophers62 for the living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Against philosophy the soul confirms further truths of Christian teaching: the goodness, omnipotence, omniscience of God, and the anger that all human sin awakens in God; the soul knows of Satan’s tricks, it also knows of the last judgment, the possibility of either reward or punishment, or even the truth of the resurrection!63
How did the soul come to possess this knowledge and what to make of it? These questions pivot upon two words that have played a decisive role in the history of Christian thought: witnessing (testimonium) and the witness (testis). In these teachings the soul is a witness in a trial of Christian teaching; this witness witnesses about God, but above all, it witnesses about nature—while simultaneously being a part of nature and a representative of nature. We could say that the witness to some degree identifies with what she witnesses for. Tertullian, just like any other enthusiast of teleology, presupposes that coming to know nature is inextricably tied with coming to know its goal and function—it also indirectly means that knowing the nature of the human soul automatically reveals to us some part of God’s plans. “These testimonies of the soul are simple as true,” says Tertullian, “commonplace as simple, universal as commonplace, natural as universal, divine as natural. I don’t think they can appear frivolous or feeble to any one, if he reflects on the majesty of nature, from which the soul derives its authority. If you acknowledge the authority of the mistress, you will own it also in the disciple. Well, nature is the mistress here, and her disciple is the soul. But everything the one has taught or the other learned, has come from God—the Teacher of the teacher.”64 Toward the end of the treatise Tertullian presents a concept that leads the reader to two sources and three witnesses. The witness of the soul is augmented by the witness of the scriptures and those witnesses of the philosophers that were in harmony with the witness of scriptures. These two sources (scripture and nature) ultimately draw from one source; the Bible draws directly from God, whereas philosophy proper draws from nature, which in turn also draws from God: “Believe, then, your own books, and as to our Scriptures so much the more believe writings which are divine, but in the witness of the soul itself give like confidence to Nature. Choose the one of these you observe to be the most faithful friend of truth. If your own writings are distrusted, neither God nor Nature lie.”65
Upon closer inspection it appears that it becomes increasingly difficult to pigeonhole Tertullian as a thinker who saw revelation as essentially paradoxical, instead Tertullian seems to be closer to seeing revelation as being in accord with the natural knowledge of the soul.66 However, all of this needs to be nuanced. Everything turns upon evaluating the competence of the soul’s testimony. The answer needs to be very much in the spirit of Saint Paul. It seems that these witnesses have a purely theoretical valor, that is, they do not allow one to reach the fullness of perfection. Furthermore, they are incomplete and uncertain (they often contradict each other), especially when one compares them with the revealed truth. Such a judgment about the soul is consistent with Tertullian’s attitude toward historical manifestations of philosophy. He considers many of its judgments in harmony with Christian teaching, however, when one takes philosophy in general into consideration then its judgments are so internally contradictory that it is improbable that one would want to use it as a guide toward happiness for the soul. The main value of the soul’s testimony lies in its proving the comprehensibility, or at least the non-absurdity of revelation. It can also constitute the starting point for the transformation that can only be fully realized through obedience to Christ. The witness of the soul is not negated, rather, it can only be realized through obedience to Christ. The witness of the soul is not abolished but must be completed by revelation. This is how the soul returns to nature and truly develops. The soul is really naturally Christian, but this only designates a certain orientation of the soul—its natural orientation toward development. In order to become fully perfect it needs to actualize this potential. This is what Tertullian has in mind when he says that the soul is not usually born Christian, but instead becomes Christian.67 Without the aid of revelation man is exposed to the traps of hybris, pride, which misleads reason, and this is most obvious when we consider the results of pagan philosophy. The example of the philosophers, the students of Greece, teaches us that without revelation the philosopher becomes a collaborator with error. Therefore, the witness of the soul can only constitute a starting point, “But, that we might attain an ampler and more authoritative knowledge at once of himself, and of his counsels and will, God has added a written revelation for the behoof of every one whose heart is set on seeking Him, that seeking he may find, and finding believe, and believing obey.”68
As we can see, for Tertullian there is contradiction between the statement that Christianity is a philosophy, and that Christianity and Greece are antagonistic realities, and finally, that one of the qualities of truth is its absurdity if it is measured by the corrupt categories of Athens. The portrait of Tertullian as an irrationalist is the effect of identifying philosophy with natural knowledge. But can we really call him a rationalist? We can, but only in a very narrow sense of the word. The portrait of Tertullian as a rationalist should not sidestep the deep sense of God’s transcendence in his writings and the absolute peculiarity of “heaven’s pupil” who not only should not be, but is not, capable of fully understanding the mysteries of God.
Justin’s Logos
We are always stuck between two undesirable options whenever we do theology. On the one hand, there is a danger of erasing the difference between revelation and human knowledge. On the other hand, we run the risk of evacuating nature and making revelation totally irrational while making logical and ethical laws hang upon the will of a fickle God. But let us not get sidetracked from the heart of the question. The stance of Justin Martyr is perceived as an example of complete openness toward philosophy which goes so far that it risks the loss of Christian identity. However, the question that constitutes the starting point remains the same: what is the reason behind the existence of elements of authentic (in harmony with revelation) teachings and just living among pagans? While reading Justin we encounter yet another surprise for those who identify philosophy with reason. This is because it appears that Justin (also known as the Philosopher) seems to attribute a much smaller role to natural reason than Tertullian, who is mostly known for his aversion to Athens.
For Justin there seems to be no controversy over the field marked out by the theses in the Epistle to the Romans. The Apologists had no problem agreeing about the extent of the most basic knowledge that was made available to people before the advent of revelation (existence of God, his righteousness, the intuition of fundamental moral principles).69 “[Souls] can perceive that God exists, and that righteousness and piety are honorable,”70 says Justin. He also adds, in concert with Saint Paul, “it is in the nature of man to know good and evil.”71 According to Justin, this universal ability is the result of participation in the seeds of logos (spermata tou logou) sowed among men. The question as to how the seeds of the word are related to God’s Word and how human reason participates in God’s Logos, are some of the most contested questions in the research upon Justin’s theology.72
“We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have declared above that He is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers.”73 This is the reason why all those who lived in accord with the gospel, even before the coming of Christ, “are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists.”74 Thanks to “the seed [sperma] of reason implanted in every race of men”75 we can consider Socrates, Heraclitus, Abraham, Ananias, and Elijah believers.76 Justin does not run the risk of abolishing the difference between philosophy and revelation even though he grants a lot of leeway to Stoics, some poets,77 and he even considers the teaching of Plato not so much as different from the teaching of Christ, but rather, not quite completely identical with it.78
For Justin every philosopher only saw a small portion of the Logos germinating within them and was only able to express that small portion of the truth.79 The philosophers and lawgivers looked into things in a purely human way,80 but they owed the truth they uncovered to what they partially found and saw of the Word.81 Even though the truths known to philosophers seem to considerably exceed what Saint Paul countenanced in Romans, still Christian teaching, in an obvious way, goes beyond all human learning, “Our doctrines, then, appear to be greater than all human teaching; because Christ, who appeared for our sakes, became the whole rational being, both body, and reason, and soul.”82 The relationship between Christianity and what is authentic in philosophy is analogous to the relationship between the whole and its parts. Whatever is in philosophy is only relative and partial. Whatever does not give full understanding and unshakable knowledge, what causes contradictions in even the most minute matters,83 becomes the fullness of the Word in Christ. Justin always strongly stressed one very substantial difference: the philosophers never possessed the fullness of the truth. There is a difference between the seed planted by nature, which allows for a very germinal imitation of the Word, as in a mirror darkly, “and quite another is the thing itself, of which there is the participation and imitation according to the grace which is from Him.”84 Christians, “live not according to a part only of the word diffused [among men] but by the knowledge and contemplation of the whole Word, which is Christ.”85
Famously, according to Harnack, Justin’s equating of the Logos with Jesus Christ constituted the starting point of Christianity’s Hellenization. Yet, for early Christians there was a widespread belief (even present in Tertullian) that the harmony between the laws of nature discovered by reason and God’s revealed laws does not cancel out the supernatural, or lead to the naturalization of the Christian truth. Even if the description of the relationship between reason and revelation as the relationship between a part and the whole can seem quite unsatisfactory,86 it certainly does not undermine the belief in the uniqueness of the Christian claim, nor does it obscure the decisive difference between Christianity and the philosophy of the pagans. If we do not simply identify the approval of natural reason and conscience with an approval of the positive philosophies of the Greeks and Romans, then Harnack’s question whether revelation needs rationality87 can also be put to Saint Paul. And Paul is the concrete inspiration for Justin and the other Apologists when they say that revelation is above reason, but does not contradict it. If that is not the case then revelation would abolish nature, and then nobody could possibly judge the morality and relevance of anything that remains outside of Christ. The need for revelation was obvious (or, as I will argue, decisive) even for enthusiasts of Greek thought like Justin, yet, there were serious disagreements about how much wisdom and virtue could be found in pagan wisdom. This is because for the fathers rationality, in the strictest sense of the word, requires faith: “But pray that, above all things, the gates of light may be opened to you; for these things cannot be perceived or understood by all, but only by the man to whom God and His Christ have imparted wisdom.”88
This brings up a whole series of questions. Is natural reason the sole source of truth whose resonances in Stoic ethics and Platonic theology are a cause of wonderment for us? Or, is it thanks to the seeds of reason within human nature that Socrates and Heraclitus could be Christians before Christ? Is it true that the identification of the Logos with Christ really permits Justin to gesture toward a life in accord with revealed teaching as the ultimate realization of the philosophical ideal of a life lived in accord with reason? First of all, when Justin identifies the Logos with Jesus he does not say that Christ-Logos and the seeds of the logos dispersed throughout nature are wholly identical. We can assume that Justin is talking about two different logoi, that of Christ (the Logos) and that of reason (spermata tou logou). If the second logos is the gift of a basic knowledge, given to all people by God, and thanks to its universality acknowledged as natural, then participation in the first logos is a kind of special pre-Christian revelation, which only pertains to very few sages such as Socrates or Heraclitus (and in turn explains the unusual depth of their intuition and the perfection of their lives, even if their knowledge of the Word before the incarnation was only partial). It is only when we analyze the relationship between the scattered seeds of the logos and the Logos of Christ that we can answer the question whether, as Eusebius put it, Justin wearing the cape of a philosopher proclaimed the Word of God,89 or, as Harnack would have it, Justin was philosophical to the core and there was not even a scrap of theology in him. We must be very careful in our analysis of the analogies so that we do not end up saying something Justin did not say. Justin did indeed clearly say that “He is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers.”90 What is more, “on account of the seed of reason [the Logos] implanted in every race of men”91 the Christ “is diffused among men.”92 Justin even goes as far as saying that the ability for moral discernment that originates in the Logos is part of the nature of humanity93 and that the seeds of the logos are in humans thanks to nature putting them there.94 The Logos is related to the logos-reason just as the whole is related to the part, which greatly complicates the transcendence of the Logos, but it does elevate the significance of reason.95
If, however, we accept that the Logos that inspired Socrates and Heraclitus remains transcendent to nature, then we must admit that Justin concedes much less to natural reason than, for example, Tertullian. The wisdom of the pagans so admired by Justin, only revealed to the select, is a revelation that is incomplete, but still supernatural, just like the revelation of Christ.96 If that is the case then there can be no talk of affirming the natural possibilities of reason. Reason not inspired by the Logos is not capable of more than an intuition of God’s existence and a jumble of the most basic moral tenets. Once more, although from a different perspective, we can see that the early Christian attitudes toward ancient philosophers cannot be applied to their evaluations of natural reason.97 In the instance of Justin this can be untangled by considering the relation of the seed-logos and the Logos of Christ in his writings.98 If a radical discontinuity reigns there, then Tertullian with his witness of the soul goes much further than Justin toward Christian rationalism. This rationalism finds its ultimate expression in the writings of Anselm of Canterbury, who considers it possible to prove nearly all Christian dogmas through natural reason.
I do not want to discuss Anselm’s position here. What I have said should only serve as a warning against the urge to attribute to the Apologists positions that are not found in their texts, that is, the medieval definition of the relationship of faith to reason. It cannot be found in either Justin or Tertullian, but it also cannot be found in Paul, and, after all, the Epistle to the Romans is one of the core texts of Christianity. Looking at things from the perspective that was most important for the ancients, that is from the perspective of effects, natural knowledge is related to knowledge through faith just as uncertain knowledge, often contradictory and partial, is related to full and true knowledge. When we remember that both faith and reason are supposed to serve the attainment of perfection, then the superiority of faith seems obvious.
In agreement with the tradition of Jewish Hellenism, many Christians will admit that natural knowledge is weighed down by the fact that it is not direct knowledge.99 Even if, as the apostle says, creation makes visible the invisible attributes of God, it is still burdened with all the defects and dangers inherent in making judgments about the original while only having access to its shadow. The different areas of reach are explained by the different object of direct knowledge. Knowledge of God mediated through the knowledge of the senses inevitably marks the knowledge gained through this approach with the defective properties of sublunar reality. The world weighs down the knowledge of God gained through its mediation with its own mutability, that is, uncertainty and impermanence.100 From this point of view religious knowledge is not only fuller, but also more certain. Even if faith rooted in revelation (in its certainty, immutability, and reach) later makes way for direct knowledge face to face, its sources lie in an act of unmediated knowledge, an act described with metaphors such as “seeing” or “touching” God. Yet, these are the summits that can be only reached by way of a long journey during which reason and faith must support each other mutually.
The complementarity of faith and reason is already inscribed into the Pauline formulation of a possibility of knowing God in his works. The knowledge that is given through the mediation of revelation and natural knowledge possesses different degrees of certainty, different sources, and different reaches, but they are both indubitably in accordance with reason. Independently of how far the earthly ladder can take reason within its purely natural boundaries, this ladder is most certainly propped against the gates of heaven, therefore it is also the same ladder revealed truth uses to descend toward the earth. The propositions of the Apologists, which stress the transcendence of God and the final goal of humanity, point toward a considerable convergence between nature and revelation. Even though Christians obviously modified the Greek concepts of nature and reason, that is, they were well acquainted with the difference between the God of the Christians and the God of the philosophers (as Tertullian put it), they did not create some totally new rationality that “tear[s] out from our being all the postulates of our ‘natural knowledge’ and our ‘natural morality.’”101 Here the goal of humanity lies beyond the nature that can be comprehended by reason and as such it is in some way unknowable. That is to say, humanity is not capable of fully understanding the paradoxical rules of Christian life revealed by Christ. However, human nature can only fully realize itself by striving toward this goal, which is given in a life ordered toward God and in accord with revealed principles. Sanctity is a perfection of those who are absorbed in a transcendence that goes beyond reason and nature. For all the differences between the several possible articulations of this position, this much is always in accord. And yet reason is not an asylum for people who are dispirited and overawed by revealed mysteries, instead, it is a talent that should not be buried. The reply to mystery should be humility caused by the consciousness of the limits of one’s reason, rather than an escape into rationalism.
Paradoxically—and surprisingly enough this is probably most important to Tertullian among all early Christian thinkers—the Christianity of fideists, a Christianity that proudly turns the other cheek after the beating it has received from haughty reason, is a deeply pitiful sight.
35. Shestov, Athens and Jerusalem, 50–51.
36. I discuss this more thoroughly on pages 31–61 of the Polish edition of The Archparadox of Death. A translation of this book by Artur Sebastian Rosman is forthcoming via Peter Lang Publishers.
37. “For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with the wisdom of human eloquence, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its meaning. The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the learning of the learned I will set aside.’ Where is the wise one? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made the wisdom of the world foolish? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not come to know God through wisdom, it was the will of God through the foolishness of the proclamation to save those who have faith. For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:17–24). The New American Bible will be used throughout this volume [—trans.].
38. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 65: “He believed on the strength of the absurd, for there could be no question of human calculation.”
39. See: Tert., Ap. 46.18.
40. See: Tert., Praescr. 7.9. See: Hier., Epist. 22.29, NPNF 2.6, 35: “For what communion has light with darkness? And what concord has Christ with Belial? (2 Cor 6:14–15) How can Horace go with the Psalter, Virgil with the Gospels, Cicero with the apostle?”
41. See: Tert., Carn. 5.4.
42. Osborn, while discussing the above lists from the Prescription and from On the Flesh notes that, “These two claims have become slogans in fideist alternatives to the Enlightenment where they have each acquired a meaning which is foreign to Tertullian. . . . [It is] necessary to show that Tertullian was not a fideist. Not only did he never say ‘credo quia absurdum,’ but he never meant anything like it.” Osborn, Tertullian, 27–28.
43. Osborn, The Emergence of Christian Theology, 233–34.
44. See: Tert., Ap. 17.1–4.
45. Shestov’s polemics with Gilson set out a brave thesis, namely, that in Paul and Tertullian we are not so much dealing with a rejection of reason, but with a rejection of Greek reason and the proclamation of a radically new model of rationality. “Yet if Isaiah and Saint Paul are right, Tertullian’s declaration [this obviously must be On the Flesh of Christ, 5—D.K.] must serve as the introduction or prolegomena to the organon of the Judeo-Christian philosophy, which was called to proclaim to the world the new notion, completely ignored up until then, of ‘created truth.’ We must, before everything else, reject the basic categories of Greek thought, tear out from our being all the postulates of our ‘natural knowledge’ and our ‘natural morality.’” Shestov, Athens and Jerusalem, 288. The most standard hermeneutic methods will always lead us to the conclusion that Tertullian’s conceptions of nature and reason reject the shackles imposed upon them by the Greeks.
46. Armstrong and Markus, Christian Faith and Greek Philosophy, 9.
47. See: Clem. Rom., Epist. 19.2—20.11.
48. Jaeger, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia, 12–25.
49. The following fragment in Clem. Rom., Epist. 36.2, ANF 1, 14–15, leads us to this conclusion: “By Him we look up to the heights of heaven. By Him we behold, as in a glass, His immaculate and most excellent visage. By Him are the eyes of our hearts opened. By Him our foolish and darkened understanding blossoms up anew towards His marvelous light. By Him the Lord has willed that we should taste of immortal knowledge, who, being the brightness of His majesty, is by so much greater than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.” When reading this fragment we should remember that Clement is not actually discussing the topic of the possibility of a theoretical discovery of God’s existence through his works. Instead he is discussing eternal wisdom, that is, one that requires a total conversion of human existence. For readers of the Old Testament (in the Greek version) faith as a condition of knowledge is nothing new: “If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not understand at all” says Isaiah (7:9).
50. Theo., Ad Autol. I.6.1, ANF 2, 90.
51. See: Min. Fel., Oct. 17.3, ANF 4, 182. See: Arist., Apol. 1. In the work The Nature of the Gods Cicero wrote “I am thinking for instance of the fallacious theory of Democritus—or was it his predecessor Leucippus?—which would have us believe only in minute particles, some rough, some smooth . . . and that from these particles have been created the heavens and the earth, not by any natural force but merely by a sort of accidental collision!” Cic., Nat. deor. I.24.66, 95–96.
52. Tert., Ap. 17.4, ANF 3, 32.
53. Ibid. XVII.5, 32.
54. Ibid. XVII.5, 32.
55. Tert., Test. 1, ANF 3, 175.
56. See: Tert., Iud. 2, ANF 3, 152–53 where we read: “For why should God, the founder of the universe, the Governor of the whole world, the Fashioner of humanity, the Sower of universal nations be believed to have given a law through Moses to one people, and not be said to have assigned it to all nations? . . . For in the beginning of the world He gave to Adam himself and Eve a law, that they were not to eat of the fruit of the tree planted in the midst of paradise. . . . For in this law given to Adam we recognize in embryo all the precepts which afterwards sprouted forth when given through Moses. . . . In short, before the Law of Moses written in stone-tables, I contend that there was a law unwritten, which was habitually understood naturally, and by the fathers was habitually kept. For whence was Noah ‘found righteous,’ if in his case the righteousness of a natural law had not preceded? Whence was Abraham accounted ‘a friend of God,’ if not on the ground of equity and righteousness, (in the observance) of a natural law? . . . Whence we understand that God’s law was anterior even to Moses, and was not first (given) in Horeb, nor in Sinai and in the desert, but was more ancient; (existing) first in paradise . . . .” On the content of the law see: Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, 32 and Osborn, Tertullian, 138, 155.
57. Supposedly the Phrygian word bekos (bread) was the first word uttered by the baby.
58. See: Tert., Nat. 1.8 where he proves that the nanny could in no way survive the removal of her tongue. In a version recorded by Herodotus [The Histories, II.2, 96] the children were raised by two shepherds who remained silent, “the Greeks have various improbable versions of the stories,” here Herodotus probably has Pindar and Hecataeus in mind, “such as that Psammetichus had the children brought up by women whose tongues he had cut out.”
59. See: Kaczmarkowski’s introduction to the Polish edition of Plato’s Cratylus, 7–32.
60. Phil. Al., De opif. 149–50 [English translation: Philo of Alexandria, On the Creation of the Cosmos according to Moses, 86]. See also: Phil. Al., Leg. alleg. II.15–18, where he defends the thesis of Adam’s authorship of the names given to things against the thesis of the Greek philosophers, which gave priority to the sages.
61. Tert., Test. 2, ANF 3, 176.
62. Tertullian takes this up while conducting a polemic against Marcion, a gnostic. See: Tert., Marc. II.27.6.
63. See: Tert., Test. 3–4.
64. Ibid. 5, ANF 3, 178.
65. Ibid. 6, ANF 3, 179.
66. See: Tert., Iud. 2 where the passage from the universal natural law to the law of Moses, and then Christian revelation is understood not as an abolishing, but as an elaboration (by its Author) of the original order, or completion of a work (any change that occurs pertains only to the temporary statutes of the Lawgiver, such as keeping the Sabbath or circumcision). See: Iud. 4.1.
67. Tert., Test. 1. See: Tert., An. 39; Osborn, The Beginning of Christian Philosophy, 85.
68. Tert., Ap. 18.1–2, ANF 3, 32.
69. Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, 32.
70. Iust., Dial. 4.7, ANF 1, 197.
71. Iust., Apol. II.14.2, ANF 1, 193.
72. My analysis is mainly drawn from the following: Daniélou, Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture, 40–44. See: Holte, “Logos Spermatikos: Christianity and Ancient Philosophy according to Saint Justin Martyr’s Apologies,” 109–68; Osborn, The Emergence of Christian Theology, 268–70.
73. Iust., Apol. I.46.2, ANF 1, 178.
74. Ibid. I.46.3, ANF 1, 178.
75. Ibid. II.8.1, ANF 1, 191.
76. Ibid. I.46.3.
77. Ibid. II.7.1.
78. Ibid. II.13.2.
79. Ibid. II.13.3.
80. Ibid. II.10.4.
81. Ibid. II.10.2–3.
82. Ibid. II.10.1, ANF 1, 191.
83. Ibid. II.13.3, II.10.3.
84. Ibid. II.13.5, ANF 1, 193.
85. Ibid. II.8.3, ANF 1, 191.
86. See: Armstrong and Markus, Christian Faith and Greek Philosophy, 170.
87. Adolf Harnack, History of Dogma, 100–101.
88. Iust., Dial. VII.3, ANF 1, 198.
89. Eus., HE IV.11.8.
90. Iust., Apol. I.46.2, ANF 1, 178.
91. Ibid. II.7.1, ANF 1, 191.
92. Ibid. II.7.3, ANF 1, 191.
93. Ibid. II.14.2.
94. Ibid. II.13.5–6.
95. Henry Chadwick observes that for Justin—who combined the distinction between the Father and the Son with the Platonic distinction between God in himself and God in relation to the world—the Father signifies the transcendent God, while the Son signifies the immanent God [Philo and the Beginning of Christian Thought, 163]. As Daniélou notes, while reading Justin, we are obviously dealing with a contrast between the transcendent and invisible Father and the Son who is understood as the instrument of God’s activity in the world (Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture, 345). J. N. D. Kelly rightfully alerts us to the dangers inherent in applying later post-Nicean conceptions, especially the fully developed doctrine of hypostases, to the Apologists (Early Christian Doctrines, 101–3). This is why it makes more sense to side with Osborn when he says, “the nature of the Logos is both exalted, transcendent, omnipresent, and immanent.” Eric Osborn, Justin Martyr, 35.
96. This confirms Justin’s understanding of philosophy as a gift (Dial., II.1–2).
97. When answering the question of the origins of Greek wisdom, Clement of Alexandria makes a distinction between the natural reason available to all human beings (koinos nous), which only gives access to the most elementary knowledge about God, and inspiration (proanafonesis, sinekfonesis), given to the chosen (Str. I.XVI.80.5; LXVIII.94.1–4; VI.VII.55.4; VI.XVII.158, 1–2). For example, among the Greeks Homer, Pythagoras, and Plato (ibid. V.V.29.4; V.XIV.116.1; VI.XVII.154.4) had it, although Clement does not limit it to the Greeks only (ibid. I.XV.71.3). It is obvious how much this distinction diminishes natural reason, which might seem shocking in a thinker who is generally considered to be a great friend of pagan philosophy. It is yet another proof that respect for philosophy did not go hand in hand with acknowledging wide possibilities for reason. Philosophy is mainly understood as a gift analogical to the Law given to the chosen people (ibid. VI.VI.44.1; VII.II.10.2–11). Both in Clement’s and Justin’s eyes, the splendor of philosophy (much like the Law) comes from it being merely one part of the divine economy of salvation, rather than the triumphal history of reason (ibid. I.V.28.1–3; VI.V.42.3). Clement even goes as far as calling philosophy a testament (diatheke) (ibid. VI.VIII.67.1). With regard to this matter: Daniélou, Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture, 48–73. Daniélou emphasizes how especially pessimistic Clement was about the abilities of unaided reason and how much his attacks owed to the skeptics who loved to point out the contradictions and disagreements between philosophers (70). See: Osborn, The Philosophy of Clement of Alexandria, 123.
98. See: Osborn, The Beginning of Christian Philosophy, 80.
99. Phil. Al., Leg. alleg. III.99–100.
100. Ibid. III.101.
101. Lev Shestov, Athens and Jerusalem, 288.