spread belief in an siμaguévŋ, an unalterable necessity which controlled even the gods, presented an obstacle to the doctrine of a πρόνοια. The Stoical system spoke indeed of a πρόνοια, but the doctrine stood here in connexion with Pantheism; it corresponded to the unalterable laws of the Universe to which everything was subservient, every individual life was sacrificed, so that nothing was left but Zeus. In Platonism we must distinguish the more popular religious view and the logical system of Plotinus. The point of view of the latter is opposed to the Christian govola; from the Absolute down to the utmost verge of existence, an unconditioned necessity of development prevails ; so that as little can be said of a conscious divine Providence as of a Creation formed for a special end; there is nothing but a necessity of immanent reason. From this standpoint Plotinus not only combats the scheme of the Gnostics, but, equally with that, the strictly Christian view. In the Gnostic view of Providence, we again meet with the relation of the Demiurgos to the Supreme God; those who made the former an unconscious organ of the latter, could also admit a Providence unconsciously administered by him; on the other hand, those who placed him in a hostile position to God, must admit one agóvoa of the Demiurgos and another of the Supreme God. Each would care for his own; the Supreme God only for the Pneumatici, while the rest were beyond his pale. Many Gnostics ascribed to Fate a limited. influence;* in the kingdom of the Demiurgos the decree of the Spirits of the Stars was absolute, till by Redemption the Thus Bardesanes supposes three Factors by which Man is determined-Nature, Fate, and Free Will. What is similar, and takes place in all of us, proceeds from Nature; what is dissimilar is from Fate; and Free-Will leads us as we may wish. Fate has not power over all things; for what we call Fate rests on a co-operation of the higher powers (i. e., the Spirits of the Stars) and the elements, regulated by God. See the "Book of the Laws of the Lands," which W. Cureton has published in Syriac and English in his "Spicilegium Syriacum," containing remains of Bardesan, Meliton, Ambrom, and Mara bar Serapion: London, 1855. It is the same work of which Eusebius, in his Præpar. Evang. vi. 10, gives a fragment, and to which he affixes the title Tepi siμapuévns. See his Hist. Eccles. iv. 30. That in its present form it was written by Bardesanes himself is not so probable as that one of his pupils gave this account of his doctrines in a dialogue form. Compare Jacobi Deutsch Zeitschr. f. Chr. Wiss. u. Chr. Leb. 1856. N. 15. [JACOBI.] THE DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 125 Pneumatici were committed to the Providence of the Supreme God. This aristocratic preference for the Pneumatici is not found in Marcion, but there is another mixture of error and truth. He makes Providence relate to believers in Christ, and thus adopts the idea of providentia specialissima. There is truth in it so far, that in order that the design of God in training and forming men for his kingdom might be fulfilled, resignation to it in faith is required; but Marcion makes out of the subjectively conditioned, an objective distinction; all those who do not enter into communion with the Redeemer he places under the dominion of the Demiurgos. On the other hand, among the first-named class of Gnostics, BASILIDES is worthy of special notice for his ideas on this subject. He represents the agóvora as implanted in created beings at their Creation. This might harmonize with the Platonic idea according to which Providence appears not as the conscious procedure of divine love in training men's souls, but as an immanent necessity of Reason; but this was not the meaning of Basilides. He supposes a connexion between the original creation and the divine government of the world, and attributes to the Demiurgos the checks to its developments. Indeed, the divine government could not be carried on, unless laws are presupposed which were implanted in creatures at Creation, but neither can * Clem. Strom. iv. p. 509. —ἡ πρόνοια δε, εἰ καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἄρχοντος, ως φάναι, κινεῖσθαι ἄρχεται, ἀλλ' ἐγικατεσπάρη ταῖς οὐσίαις σὺν καὶ τ τῶν οὐσιῶν γενέσει πρὸς τοῦ τῶν ὅλων θεοῦ. Hippolytus, in his representation of the system of Basilides, states this especially the great Archon rules and governs the Firmament as far down as the Moon; in the region of the Moon, and of the Starspirits, the lower Archon governs, who takes the place of the Worldformer. Over the lower stages of the Tavoεрuía, our own, there is no overseer, manager, or former, but the law of rational thought implanted by God suffices, according to which the What, the When, and the How of all that is becoming, is determined (p. 237, ed. Miller). But that this does not imply an absolute exclusion of the agency of the lower Archon, but that even for the lowermost region the Star-spirits exert an influence determining the development, and, indeed, that this influence is included in the divine principle of things is evident from the assertion that Christ's birth and work of redemption were determined by the stars; ἦν γὰρ, φησὶν, αὐτὸς ὑπὸ γένεσιν ἀστέρων καὶ ὡρῶν ἀποκαταστάσεως ἐν τῷ μεγάλα προλελογισμένος σωρῷ (i. e, τῇ TаvoжEpμia). This note is in answer to the objections in Uhlhorn's Essay, p. 24. I have not asserted that the lowermost stage had an Archon or former of its own [JACOBI.] these laws be efficient unless everything is guided by the superintending agency of a personal, omnipresent God. The Church Teachers had, accordingly, to develope the idea of govora in opposition to the Gnostics. Many important questions arose respecting the relation of Providence to human freedom, and the harmony of the freedom of the creature with the divine Prescience. Origen devoted his special attention to these inquiries; he canvassed the Sophism common among the Heathen of the so-called λóyos ágyós-God foreknew thisconsequently it was necessary,-consequently there can be no such thing as Freedom, and all motive to action is taken away. Origen exposes the confusion of ideas in this argument, and distinguishes between knowing simply in itself and determining -between absolute and hypothetical necessity; he regards foreknowledge not as the cause of an event, but as conditioned by it. From the Christian standpoint he attempts further to prove that the doctrine of an unconditional predestination contradicts the whole analogy of biblical doctrine, the admission of a divine judgment, and what Paul says of the necessity of our own exertions (1 Cor. ix. 24). In these discussions he also examines the difficult passages in the Pauline Epistles on which the doctrine of absolute Predestination is founded. The Gnostics, moreover, made use of expressions in the Old Testament in order to inculpate the God of the Old Testament; and many uneducated persons within the Church, as Origen says, made unworthy representations of God, by taking passages in their most literal sense, as if he were an arbitrary tyrant. From these he distinguishes others who do not decide on such passages, who avoid erroneous representations, and reserve difficulties for future solution. The Church Teachers in general were shy of carrying things to an extreme, and always endeavoured to maintain the freedom of the creature. They agreed in this that instead of confining themselves to single passages torn from their connexion, they aimed at knowing all that the Scriptures taught of the Love and Righteousness of God. Irenæus thus explains the hardening of Pharaoh's heart-that the operation of the events brought to pass by God, is transferred to God himself,—the Mediate is represented as Immediate. Thus we say of the Sun that it blinds, while this effect depends on the relation of the eye to the sunlight.* Origen propounds *Adv. Hær. iv. c. 29, 30. a peculiar theory connected with his system. He brings the divine guidance of rational beings on earth into connexion with a secret earlier existence. It belongs to this guidance that God places them in such situations that the slumbering evil is brought into consciousness, and its final cure is effected. Thus a wise physician allows the hidden morbid matter to break forth in order to heal the malady.* 5. THE THEODICY. The doctrines of Creation and Providence are necessarily connected with a Theodicy. In the controversy with the Gnostics, Creation out of nothing and an all-comprehending Providence could only be maintained by repelling the objections which are founded on the existence of Evil. They always asserted that a Creation out of nothing carried back the causality of Evil to God; and as to the distinction between permission and causation, they rejoined that if God could have prevented Evil and did not prevent it, he must be the cause of it. But the manifold gradations in existence and the diversities among men appeared to them proofs that the world in its present form could not have proceeded from the perfect God. As they divided men into three classes: first, the iλzoí, xoxoí, driven by blind impulses and destitute of all moral elements; secondly, the TVEUμarıxoí, in whom a divine principle of life shows itself; and thirdly, the uxinoí between the other two, governed by the rational element, depending on the faith of authority-standing between good and bad, determined by fear and hope, but who are not able to attain the intention of perfect Truth,-so, parallel to these three classes, they assumed three principles of existence: the Supreme God; the Demiurgos; and the Hyle, according to one view, the kingdom of Ahriman, according to another, a blind power of Evil and its representative, Satan. Irenæus directed his attention to what was of practical importance. Men will go on most safely, he says, if they distinguish what is certain to simple Faith from what we cannot explain, and God himself has kept back. He regards as important and certain that God foreknew the fall of his * Пɛρì áрxv, iii. p. 19, ed. Redep. + Clem. Strom. i. p. 310.—οἶδα πολλοὺς ἀδιαλείπτως ἐπιφυομένους ἡμῖν καὶ τὸ μὴ κώλυον αἴτιον εἶναι λέγονταςᾧ γαρ κωλῦσαι δύναμις ἦν, τούτω καὶ ἡ αἰτία τοῦ συμβαίνοντος προσάπτεται. creatures, and from the beginning ordained its punishment, but the causes why some remained faithful and others apostatized from God, we cannot determine.* Yet he was disposed to attempt at least to explain the divine permission of Evil. He found it in this, that by contrast the essential quality of Evil must appear with so much greater clearness, and the Good would attain greater constancy in goodness.† But this would lead to the conclusion that Evil is a necessary step in development, and would nullify the idea of freedom. LACTANTIUS was really inclined to regard Evil as necessary, for he says it is nothing but the foil of goodness (interpretamentum boni). The contrast of Good and Evil corresponds to that which pervades the Universe between spirit and body, light and darkness; everywhere there exists a concordia discors, a Harmony in opposites. As a principal passage for his dualistic theory is wanting in many manuscripts, it has been taken for a Manichean interpolation, but it agrees exactly with the views of Lactantius, § which on this point are strikingly in unison with those of the Clementines. HERMOGENES Zealously combated this theory; he would not admit as valid his argument for the necessity of Evil; Good, he asserted, was something independent, and which required no contrast to make it conspicuous. He was only confirmed in his own view, that evil resulted from the opposition of the λn to the divine formative power. In the system of ORIGEN, the Theodicy occupied an important position, for he made use of it to justify the doctrine of the Monarchy in the Creation of the World. He con *Adv. Hær. ii. c. 23.-Similiter autem et causam propter quam, quum omnia a Deo facta sint, quædam quidem transgressa sunt et abscesserunt a Dei subjectione, quædem autem, immo plurima, perseverarunt et perseverant in subjectione ejus qui fecit: et cujus naturæ sunt quæ transgressa sunt, cujus autem naturæ quæ perseverant, cedere oportet Deo, etc.-Nos super terram, quemadmodum et Paulus ait (1 Cor. xiii. 9) ex parte quidem cognoscimus et ex parte prophetamus. † Adv. Hær. iv. c. 39.-Mens per utrorumque experimentum disciplinam boni accipiens firmior ad conservationem ejus efficitur obediens Deo: inobedientiam quidem primum respuens per pœnitentiam, quoniam amarum et malum est; deinde ex comprehensione discens quale sit quod contrarium est bono et dulcedini, ne tentet quidem unquam inobedientiam gustare Dei. Instit. Div. vii. 5. § Ibid. ii. 12, vi. 13. Пepi ȧpxwv, i. 8, § 2. Cf. c. Celsum vi. 44. |