LAST week we closed our study of the “falling away” with these words: “In view of these things it will readily be seen that between paganism and this kind of Christianity it soon became difficult to distinguish, and the third century only went to make any distinction still more difficult to be discerned.”PTUK January 23, 1896, page 53.1

In the latter part of the second century, there sprang up in Egypt a school of pagan philosophy called the “Eclectic.” The patrons of this school called themselves “Eclectics,” because they professed to be in search of truth alone, and to be ready to adopt any tenet of any system in existence which seemed to them to be agreeable to their ideas of truth. They regarded Plato as the one person above all others who had attained the nearest to truth in the greatest number of points. Hence they were also called “Platonists.” “This philosophy was adopted,” says Mosheim, “by such of the learned at Alexandria as wished to be accounted Christians, and yet to retain the name, the garb, and the rank of philosophers.”PTUK January 23, 1896, page 53.2

In the end of the second century, and especially in the first forty-one years of the third, there flourished in Alexandria one of these would-be philosophers—Ammonius Saccas by name—who gave a turn to the philosophy of the Eclectics, which caused his sect to be called the New Platonists. The difference between the Eclectic and the system founded by Ammonius was this: The Eclectics held, as above stated, that in every system of thought in the world there was some truth, but mixed with error, their task being to select from all systems that portion of truth which was in each, and from all these to form one harmonious system. Ammonius held that when the truth was known, all sects had the same identical system of truth; that the differences among them were caused simply by the different ways of stating that truth; and that the proper task of the philosopher was to find such a means of stating the truth that all should be able to understand it, and so each one understand all the others. This was to be accomplished by a system of allegorising and mystification, by which anybody could get whatever he wanted out of any writing that might come to his notice.PTUK January 23, 1896, page 53.3

One of the earliest attachés to espouse this philosophy from among those who professed to be Christians, was Clement of Alexandria, who became the head of that kind of school at Alexandria. These philosophers, says Mosheim, “believed the language of Scripture to contain two meanings; the one obvious, and corresponding with the direct import of the words; the other recondite, and concealed under the words, like a nut by the shell. The former they neglected, as of little value, their study chiefly being to extract the latter; in other words, they were more intent on throwing obscurity over the sacred writings by the fictions of their own imaginations, than on searching out their true meanings. Some also, and this is stated especially of Clement, accommodated the divine oracles to the precepts of philosophy.”PTUK January 23, 1896, page 53.4

The close resemblance between the pagan philosophy and that of the New Platonists is illustrated by the fact that but one of the classes concerned could tell to which of them Ammonius Saccas belonged. The pagans generally regarded him as a pagan. His own kind of Christians counted him a good Christian all his life. The genuine Christians all knew that he was a pagan, and that the truth of the whole matter was that he was a pretended Christian “who adopted with such dexterity the doctrines of the pagan philosophy, as to appear a Christian to the Christians, and a pagan to the pagans.” He died A.D. 241.PTUK January 23, 1896, page 53.5

Clement is supposed to have died about A.D. 220, and the fame and influence which he had acquired—and it was considerable—was far outshone by Origen, who had been taught by both Clement and Ammonius. Origen imbibed all the allegorical and mystifying processes of both Ammonius and Clement, and multiplied upon them from his own wild imagination. He was not content with finding two meanings in the Scriptures as those before him, but took the secondary sense, the hidden meaning, and added to it four additional meanings of his own. His system then stood thus: 1. All Scripture contains two meanings, the literal and the hidden. 2. This hidden sense has within itself two meanings, the moral and the mystical. 3. The mystical has within it yet two other meanings, the allegorical and the anagogical.PTUK January 23, 1896, page 54.1

The Scriptures are of little use,” taught Origen, “to those who understand them as they are written.” With such a system as a basis, it is logical enough that the Catholic Church should forbid the common people to read the Scriptures. For Origen is one of the chiefest fathers of the Catholic Church; and “from the days of Origen to those of Chrysostom,” says Archdeacon Farrar, “there was not a single eminent commentator who did not borrow largely from the works of” Origen. “He was the chief teacher of even the most orthodox of the Western Fathers.”PTUK January 23, 1896, page 54.2

By such a system as this it is evident that anyone could find whatever he pleased in any passage of the Scripture, and that the Scripture could be made to support any doctrine that was ever invented by the wildest fancy of the veriest fanatic. Even though the doctrine might be flatly contradictory to the Scripture, the Scripture could be made fully to agree with and teach the doctrine.PTUK January 23, 1896, page 54.3

From this sketch of Platonism as held by Origen, the essential truth of the following passage will be readily seen:—PTUK January 23, 1896, page 54.4

“This new species of philosophy, imprudently adopted by Origen and other Christians, did immense harm to Christianity. For it led the teachers of it to involve in philosophic obscurity many parts of our religion, which were in themselves plain and easy to be understood; and to add to the precepts of the Saviour no few things, of which not a word can be found in the Holy Scriptures.... It recommended to Christians various foolish and useless rites, suited only to nourish superstition, no small part of which we see religiously observed by many even to the present day. And finally it alienated the minds of many, in the following centuries, from Christianity itself, and produced a heterogeneous species of religion, consisting of Christian and Platonic principles combined.”PTUK January 23, 1896, page 54.5

On the part of real Christians, those who loved the truth as it is in Christ, there was strong opposition from the first to this whole system of philosophy with its mystification and allegory. “But the friends of philosophy and literature gradually acquired the ascendency.”PTUK January 23, 1896, page 54.6

A. T. JONES.

January 16, 1896

January 30, 1896