First Period. FROM THE APOSTOLIC AGE TO 320. CHAPTER I. FACTORS IN THE DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE PERIOD. SECTION I.-PHILOSOPHY. It was a just discrimination which led early Christianity to seek, especially in the great middle era of Greek culture, for a congenial philosophy. The philosophical developments beginning with Socrates and ending with Aristotle have at the same time the greatest intrinsic worth and the highest interest from the Christian standpoint. In the pre-Socratic philosophies there was little that was suited to engage the appreciation of a Christian writer of the first centuries. Their spirit and content were in general remote from a truly theological vein. The drift of their investigation was neither toward God as a moral sovereign, nor toward man as the subject of a moral dominion. The great problem with them was to find out the element or principle underlying the phenomenal world. In some instances the attempt was made to explain the universe by physical analogies, and first principles of a material nature were assumed. This was the case with the Ionian school. In other instances speculation tended to idealism, and first principles of a metaphysical nature were adopted. This was the case with the Pythagoreans and the Eleatic school. In individual instances a recognition was given to both orders of principles. This was especially the case with Anaxagoras (an important forerunner of Socrates), who made a clear distinction between the world of mind and the world of matter. An occasional reference, of a worthy character, to a Supreme Being, may no doubt be found in these early philosophies; but in the main they paid little tribute to that which is of the highest concern in Christian thought, to God as the centre of moral excellence and dominion, to man's relations with God, and to the farreaching import of moral conduct. The post-Aristotelian philosophy, also, as represented by the Epicureans and the Stoics, had little which might claim the appreciation of Christianity. Both of these schools, indeed, assumed to be practical. In contrast with the speculative cast of the pre-Socratic philosophies, they were mainly concerned with the life, and sought an ideal standard for the regulation of individual conduct. The leading problem with them was how to master and to utilize the conditions of this present world. The age naturally fostered such an inquiry. It was an age of political decline, of uncertainty, of turmoil and disruption. Outward circumstances could not be trusted. Hence there was an occasion to think upon life, and to lay hold of some definite rule for its conduct, some standard by which its experiences might be estimated. At the same time, a degenerate age was likely to be far from apprehending the normal, healthful rule. In essential contrast with Christianity, Epicureanism made pleasure the standard. It taught that every pleasure is in itself a good, and that it becomes an evil only as it stands in the way of a greater pleasure. It pointed the individual to no immutable standard of right, to no God who requites conduct. To such phantom-like gods as it chose to recognize, it assigned no interest whatever in the affairs of this world. Its panacea against all fear of death and the future was the dogma that there is nothing after death. In fine, the best principle of Epicureanism was nothing higher than a certain prudence in the choice of pleasures. "With coarse and energetic minds the doctrine of Epicurus would inevitably lead to the grossest sensuality and crime; with men whose temperament was more apathetic, or whose tastes were more pure, it would develop a refined selfishness, a perfect egoism, which Epicurus has adorned with the name 'tranquillity of mind.'" Cocker, Christianity and Greek Philosophy.) (B. F. Stoicism was much more healthful in tone. It made virtue, or a life conformed to reason, the supreme good, taught the doctrine of the brotherhood of the race, and laid great stress upon resignation to one's lot in life. Nevertheless, Stoicism had but little kinship with Christianity. Its view of God and the world was pantheistic rather than theistic, and it was only by an inconsistency that it could give any place to divine providence or to human freedom in the proper sense. Whatever scope it may have allowed to a life after death, it denied the immortality of the soul. Its doctrine of a universal brotherhood was little else than an empty theory, there being joined with it no deep and tender love for man as man. The resignation, too, of which it made so much account, was not the Christian virtue of the same name; the resignation of the Stoic was a determined will repressing murmurings, rather than the submission of a meek and lowly heart casting itself upon Eternal Love. Indeed, the marked tendency of Stoicism was to nurture the antichristian spirit of pride and self-sufficiency. Epictetus and some others may not reveal this tendency; still it was inherent in the system. Of the two great authors who represent the crowning era of Greek philosophy, both were by no means equally qualified to receive a welcome within the circle of early Christianity. While Aristotle had his special pre-eminence, destined to a special recognition in the age of Scholasti |