 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast brought to you with the support of King's College London and the Leverhulme Trust, online at www.historyoffilosophy.net. Today's episode, Please Accept Our Apologies. The Greek Church Fathers A boy sits cross-legged on the ground. It is the last night of October, and a chill seeps up from the ground through a layer of snaking vines. He does not notice, so keen is his sense of anticipation. He has chosen this place carefully, for its sincerity. If he has chosen well and his expectations are fulfilled, he will be rewarded with gifts, as will all the other good children of the world. But he will be alone to witness the appearance of the figure who will rise up out of the vines and prove once and for all that his faith is justified. He will be the first to behold the great pumpkin. The boy, of course, is Linus from the Peanuts comic strip, who each Halloween tries to convince Charlie Brown and the other children to await this Santa Claus-style figure. Every year he is disappointed, but he does not renounce his faith. Now pumpkins are not the most philosophical of vegetables. That distinction surely belongs to the tomato, because everyone thinks it is a vegetable, but actually it is a fruit. Nonetheless, the humble pumpkin has played an occasional role in the writings of philosophers. Seneca wrote a satirical attack on the Emperor Claudius called the apokolokentosis, which means something like pumpkinification. The title is a pun on the term apotheosis, applied to emperors when they become gods. More recently, the philosopher of religion Alvin Plantinga imagined an objection to his own views regarding the rationality of religious belief. Plantinga claimed that a Christian can rationally accept the existence of God without having proved it. The Christian could simply take this belief to be basic, the way you believe you ate dinner last night without needing any proof for that. Bonus points if you believe you had pumpkin pie for dessert. But if this is right, then couldn't someone like Linus rationally believe in the existence of the great pumpkin without giving any good reason for that belief? In fact, a careful reading of the Peanuts comic shows that Linus' belief is not a religious one. In one strip, he says, Pumpkinology, then, is different from religion, albeit equally controversial. If we go back closer to the time of Seneca, though, we do find pumpkins involved in a religious controversy. The context is the refutation of heresies by the church father Irenaeus, who wrote in the late second century. His targets are the so-called Gnostics, a group of thinkers who claimed to follow Christ but were, as far as Irenaeus was concerned, no Christians at all. Various Gnostics adopted various cosmologies. Indeed, Irenaeus was happy to emphasize the differences between them, like a skeptic pointing out disagreements among dogmatic philosophers. But all the Gnostics postulated a highest God who presides over a range of lower divine beings who receive names like Silence, Unity, Truth, Wisdom, and Life. In an uncharacteristically amusing passage, Irenaeus sarcastically suggests that they may as well believe in a divinity called kolokunthe, the Greek word for pumpkin. Some surviving Gnostic texts were discovered in Egypt, near the town of Naj-Hamaadi, in the mid-twentieth century. But we would know far less about them than we do without the refutations written by Irenaeus and the works of other church fathers who are sometimes called apologists because of their indefatigable defense of the new faith. As the fathers present them, the Gnostic theories indeed seem about as reasonable as Linus's faith in the great pumpkin. But notice that the Gnostics were taken seriously enough to provoke such refutations. They were also read by philosophers, notably in the next century in the school of Plotinus. In both cases, this may be because Gnostic views seemed too close for comfort. They drew inspiration not just from the Gospels but also from the philosophical tradition, their distinctive teachings echoing middle Platonic ideas. They believed that the cosmos was created not by the highest God, but by a more ignorant, lower deity. This explains why we don't live in a perfect world, free of suffering and evil. Accordingly, they disdained the material world and held that redemption lies in a purely spiritual life defined by certain knowledge. So far, so Platonist. A less familiar note was struck when they claimed that this life is available only to a select few. Jesus came for the sake of these elite and brought to them a new message about the highest God. The Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible, had according to them spoken only of the ignorant Creator deity. We saw that Plotinus was provoked by the Gnostics into defending the beauty and goodness of the physical realm despite thinking that matter is the principle of evils. The Church Fathers were likewise provoked, but why? Charlie Brown didn't believe in the great pumpkin, but he reacted to Linus with amused toleration, not the lengthy abuse offered by Irenaeus and other Church Fathers. Irenaeus would like us to think that he is motivated by moral indignation. He particularly resents the Gnostic claim to be an elite above the rest of the immaterial world. They compare themselves to gold immersed in filth. Already chosen by God for salvation, they have no need to perform good works to merit God's favor, as Christians like Irenaeus struggle to do. Instead, they feel free to indulge in scandalous behavior, seducing young women with promises of initiation. But sorry, Irenaeus, I'm not buying it. No amount of sexual misbehavior could explain the detailed exposition and refutation of Gnostic theory presented by Irenaeus. Instead, I suspect, Irenaeus attacked the Gnostics because he feared they might appeal to his own audience. They were that most dangerous of opponents, the enemy who agrees with you just enough to seduce your friends. And they were also a convenient opponent, in that Irenaeus' own views on God, creation, and mankind were brought into sharp relief by the contrasting views of the Gnostics. Refuting the Gnostics was an opportunity to defend the one true God, conceived not as a remote first principle followed by other principles, but a single creator who reigns supreme. So, Irenaeus does not just rename the Gnostics principles after vegetables. He hopes that by rooting out their heresy, he will plant the seeds of truth in his readers' minds. For instance, he points out that if there are inferior divinities that act contrary to God's will, as the Gnostics claim, then these divinities must be more powerful than God. How else could they defy his will? Instead, we should say that all things are subject to God's volition. Again, if the ignorant principles came from God, then God too must be ignorant, for causes share their natures with their effects. So we must reject the idea of an ignorant, lower-creating God. Yet again, regarding Gnostic dualism, the idea that there is a source of evil outside of God's power, he points out that if God is to be separate from the lower evil principle, there must be some third power in between them, keeping them apart. Indeed, once we abandon the idea of a single God, there is no reason to stop it too. We will wind up with an indefinite multiplicity of divinities, filling gaps between other divinities. Here, Irenaeus is remarkably prescient, describing in advance the sort of opulent metaphysical scheme espoused by the pagan philosopher Proclus several centuries later. This is appropriate because for Irenaeus the vine of heresy is rooted in pagan philosophy. He is happy to use philosophical premises in his invective against the Gnostics. For instance, we just saw him deploying the Platonist principle that causes and effects share a nature. But philosophy usually appears as the raw material that has been woven into the fabric of Gnosticism. Indeed, he compares the heresy to a garment sewn together from the old rags of Greek philosophy. He finds parallels between the Gnostics and the Hellenic schools. Their shameless behavior is reminiscent of the Cynics. The number symbolism they associate with their principles sounds suspiciously Pythagorean, and so on. Even Plato has been hijacked for their nefarious ends. They present lower principles as images of higher ones, borrowing the Platonic understanding of particular things as images of forms. Irenaeus seems to be objecting to this in part because he admires Plato, at least to some extent. Certainly, Plato is far preferable to the Gnostics, even if he did make the occasional error, for instance by believing that after death human souls pass into the bodies of animals. Nothing else divides Irenaeus from both the Gnostics and the philosophers. They are confident that humans can in principle attain perfect knowledge. We know that this possibility was a fundamental commitment of the Stoics, and the idea is fundamental to the Gnostics' elitism. By contrast, Irenaeus denies that men can know everything, and gives examples of questions that lie beyond our ken. We can make only plausible guesses as to what makes the Nile River rise, or what causes rain and other kinds of weather. At a more exalted level, how can humans know what was God doing before he created the world? Later, Augustine will raise this same question and be unable to resist quoting a joke answer he's heard, God was preparing hells for people who ask impertinent questions like this one. Irenaeus agrees with the spirit of that joke, going so far as to say that anything unexplained in Scripture should be left to God. One might assume that all the Church Fathers shared Irenaeus' attitude, and at best saw philosophy as a weapon to be used in refuting opponents. But that assumption is itself refuted by another second-century figure, the apologist Clement of Alexandria. The of Alexandria part of his name already helps to explain his enthusiasm for Hellenic philosophy. Whereas Irenaeus came from the eastern edge of the Roman Empire in Asia Minor, and wound up in the west as Bishop of Lyon, Clement resided in the intellectual center of the empire. As we've seen, Alexandria housed the greatest library and research institute of the ancient world, and was the headquarters of Middle Platonism in the generations leading up to Clement's lifetime. Notably, Philo of Alexandria, one of Clement's major influences, had lived there around the time of Jesus. Later on, Plotinus will study there, and it will be the home of the last school of Neoplatonists. As for Clement himself, he served as the instructor of Christian converts in this sophisticated city. It's no wonder that he sought to show how the ancient educational curriculum, from grammar to rhetoric and, especially, philosophy, could be a faithful friend to Christianity. Clement's pedagogical outlook is indicated by the title of one of his works, the Pedagogis, or Teacher. The title is a reference to Christ, who is here portrayed as a teacher who cures his students of sin. As we'll see, this is a theme that will be explored later by St. Augustine. Another work is called Stromates, meaning a patchwork of fabric. This recalls Irenaeus' dismissive description of Gnostic doctrines as a ragbag of philosophical influences. But Clement's quilt is, as he tells us, stitched together from the best parts of Hellenic philosophy and will help the reader to reach an understanding of Christian truths. Certainly, he admits that some pagan thinkers traded in falsehoods. He gives obvious examples, like Epicurean atheism and Stoic materialism. But truth too can be found in the Hellenic philosophers, especially Plato. Just as a coin retains its value no matter who handles it, so truth can be used to procure happiness even if it is unearthed in pagan soil. In fact, at one point Clement says that for him the very term philosophy means not just whatever the Hellenic thinkers have said, but only the true part of what they said, like a nut extracted from its shell. This kernel of philosophy is sent by God, first to help pagans to live better than they otherwise would have, and now, for Christians, to prepare the way for salvation. Clement claims that he is not just taking truth from the philosophers, he is taking it back. He provides a detailed chronology to show that Moses lived many generations before even the earliest Hellenic philosophers. This lends historical plausibility to his claim that Plato's political ideas, for instance, derive ultimately from the Old Testament. Indeed, Moses handed down truth in all the major departments of philosophy—politics, ethics, physics, and metaphysics. As a whole, the Scripture instructs us in that most philosophical of skills, dialectic, by which Clement means the ability to extract the true from the false. So it turns out that the best bits of philosophy, these snippets worth bringing to Clement's Christian quilting bee, come ultimately from the Bible. Of course, this is something of a backhanded compliment. Clement is telling us that the Greeks stole what wisdom they possessed, but at least had the good sense to steal from the best. In that case, though, why not dispense with philosophy and follow the advice of Irenaeus, seek the answers to all our questions in Scripture, and if we do not find them, reconcile ourselves to ignorance. Clement's answer will be repeated by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim philosophers for the next millennium and more. We use philosophy to prepare ourselves for faith, to understand more fully what we believe by faith, and to defend the faith against its enemies. Those who proceed straightaway to faith without study are like those who want to harvest pumpkins without first caring for the patch, if I may adapt an agricultural image used by Clement. This may sound strange to the modern ear, since we nowadays tend to think of religious faith and philosophical or rational argument as mutually exclusive paths. Faith surely is nothing other than belief that takes no heed of reason. Well, not for Clement. He carefully analyzes the Greek term pistis, which can be rendered into English as faith, but also as trust or conviction, translations which might be less misleading in the present context. Clement does use the word pistis to describe religious belief in the absence of philosophical reflection, but he also uses it for the attitude one takes towards the very things that are demonstrated in a philosophical argument, for instance the conclusion of an Aristotelian syllogism. Furthermore, pistis describes the belief we have in the case of first principles, the undemonstrated foundations of philosophical knowledge according to Aristotle. What do these three kinds of belief have in common? Clearly pistis, or faith, is not applied specifically to religious as opposed to secular beliefs. Nor does it pick out things believed immediately, without giving any rationale for the belief. That would apply to unreflective religion and first principles, but not to demonstrated conclusions. Rather, pistis is distinctive because of one's level of commitment. When we have faith, we believe with confidence, even certainty, because what we believe has become evident to us, as he puts it. Thus, Clement contrasts faith to mere opinion, where one's belief is still open to doubt. He adds though that faith is not just what we helplessly find ourselves believing. To have faith involves an act of the will, so that we are responsible for what we believe. Here, Clement seems to be drawing on the Stoics. Remember that Stoic thinkers like Epictetus likewise insisted that our ascent is under our control, and our control alone. Clement combines this with Aristotelian ideas about belief and knowledge to forge a new notion of pistis suitable for use by Christianity. When we have this sort of secure belief in God, then we have attained what Clement pointedly calls gnosis. This word means knowledge, which is why the intellectualist elitists attacked by Irenaeus were known as Gnostics. Clement is reclaiming the word gnosis for the true faith, just as he is reclaiming philosophy from the pagans. Actually, some scholars have claimed to find common ground between Clement and the Gnostics, because he too portrays human fulfillment in a highly intellectualist way. Also reminiscent of Gnosticism is his conviction that the scriptures are symbolic texts that need to be decoded through the use of philosophy. But on both scores his real model is not the hated Gnostics, but Philo of Alexandria. Clement follows Philo in pursuing philosophical exegesis of the Bible, and even quotes some of Philo's allegorical readings. Gnosticism's role in forming Clement's approach is that of a competitor, not an inspiration. He seeks to show that Orthodox Christianity too can make use of traditional learning and match Gnosticism in its sophistication. Clement and Irenaeus were struggling not just to defend Orthodoxy, but also to define it. In this era, Orthodox Christian belief had several competitors, not just pagans and Gnostics, but also Jews. In the first century after Christ, the boundaries between Christianity and Judaism had been contentious, as we saw last time. Now in the second century, Clement could point to the Hebrew Bible as the root of all that is good in philosophy and draw gratefully on the Jewish thinker Philo, yet Christians also needed to differentiate their religion from Judaism and explain why it should be preferred. No text sums up this problematic relationship so well as the Dialogue with Truffaut, written by another apologist, Justin Martyr. Like a Platonic dialogue, it dramatically presents an encounter between a sage and an interlocutor. The sage, Justin's mouthpiece, describes himself as a philosopher who dresses in a philosopher's distinctive garments. He debates with Truffaut, a possibly fictitious Jew, trying to convert him to Christianity. The speaker himself, presumably describing Justin's own conversion, tells how he was originally trained in philosophy, only to encounter a Christian who showed him the incoherence of various philosophical teachings. For instance, he at first accepted Plato's doctrine of the immortal soul, but was then persuaded that something subject to change and moral failure, like the soul, cannot possibly be ungenerated. That can apply to God alone. Soul is not then essentially alive, as Plato had argued in the Phaedo. Rather, God creates the soul and bestows life upon it. If the soul lives on after the death of the body, this is because eternal life is given to it as a gift that goes beyond its intrinsic nature. Nonetheless, Justin shares with Clement the idea that genuine philosophy is whatever is true, and therefore goes so far as to claim that Christianity itself is the true philosophy. From a philosophical point of view, though, the interest of Justin's dialogue wanes after the initial pages. Most of the text is dedicated to exegesis of the Old Testament, attempting to show that it prefigures and justifies Christian belief. The Jewish character Truffaut is mostly a passive straight man, though he is given an occasional chance to fight back, for instance by suggesting that the doctrine of the virgin birth is plagiarized from myths about Zeus. And though the conversation is depicted as a polite one, Justin really shows little respect for the Jewish faith. He includes a rather unedifying diatribe in which the Christian spokesman claims that circumcision and dietary laws are punishments laid upon the Jews for crucifying the Son of God. Even in the midst of this disturbing material, we do find passages of philosophical interest. The spokesman pauses to comment on the possibility of free will, which must be possessed by the Jews if God is to be just in punishing them for their evil misdeed. This mention of free will and evil brings us back to Irenaeus and his refutation of the Gnostics. You may have noticed that the Gnostic teaching could claim a distinct advantage over the Orthodox Christian one. By invoking an ignorant secondary God and the baseness of matter, the Gnostics could explain why the world is full of evil and sin. As we saw when we looked at Plotinus, this is much more difficult to explain in a system that recognizes only a single entirely good first principle. For Irenaeus and the other Fathers, the difficulty is even more, well, difficult. We've already seen Irenaeus insisting on the untrammeled freedom of God, and in coming generations Christians will reject the Neoplatonist's claim that all things proceed from the first principle necessarily. But if God is free and all-powerful, then why does He allow evil and suffering? Irenaeus's suggested solution would not prevail in the tradition, though it has found admirers among contemporary philosophers of religion. He begins from the Platonist-sounding assumption that, if souls are created, they must be changeable and imperfect. They begin in a condition like that of children, who need to develop to acquire wisdom and virtue. The Gnostics say that some are by nature bad and others by nature good. For Irenaeus, by contrast, it is up to each soul to become good. Suffering is the consequence of our inevitable imperfection, but we can strive to perfect ourselves through the exercise of our freedom of choice. Instead of blaming God for not creating us as gods like Himself, we should thank Him for calling us to perfect ourselves and giving us commands we can follow along the way. It's remarkable to see here how the imperfection of mankind is explained through metaphysical necessity rather than the doctrine of original sin expounded by Augustine. This is a road that Christianity could have taken but did not, at least not in the long run. In the short run, we find a breathtakingly radical version of Irenaeus's proposal in another apologist who happens to be the most philosophically interesting early Church Father. Join me as we continue to look at the origins of Christian philosophy with the Christian philosophy of origin, next time on the History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps.