love1
THE PROBLEM OF LOVE
by Ray Shelton
Historical Analysis
Hesiod (c.8th cent. B.C.) introduced numerious philosophical or semi-philosophical concepts. His principle work is The Theogony where he attempts to work out in poetic form a system of gods based on biological relationships as reported in legend. He contrasted Order and Chaos, and held that Order came out of Chaos through the power of Eros who is a primal deity that brings order out of chaos. Each such concept is introduced as a divine being.
The belief that the past was better than the present has a strong claim on universality; but the universality, allowing us to conceive of a golden age in the past, was provided by Hesiod. He held to a succession of deteriorating ages beginning with the golden age, followed by ages of silver, brass, and iron.
Empedocles of Sicily (c.495-c.435 B.C.) introduced the complementary cosmic principles of Love (philia) and Strife (neixos) as forces governing the motion and development of the universe. Philia was merely a principle of attraction which produced all qualitative distinctions by the mixing of the elements (earth. air, fire, and water). Strife produces the separation of the elements. These twin forces of Love and Strife act alternately through a succession of four phases:
(1) the elements are in perfect mixture due the attractive force of love;
(2) strife enters and the partial separation of the elements takes;
(3) strife is dominant, and the elements are completely separated;
(4) love enters, and the uniting of the elements in the mixture takes place, leading to the first phase again.
Plato (428-348 B.C.) in the Symposium introduced the term eros, claiming, on the authority of the wise Diotima, that all love is love of beauty, its perfect form being the love of the abstract form or idea of beauty itself. Thus Beauty is added to the other Absolutes of Truth and the Good.
In his Republic, Plato distinguishes between instrumental (extrinsic) and intrinsic good (or value). Intrinsic goods are things good in themselves but instrumental goods have their value in making possible another good. Plato’s Republic begins with the social principle that the purpose of rulers is the good of the people ruled; this good is not just what the people want but is objective and real. This good is a just social order and Plato finds justice in the order of society where every person is doing the work for which he is suited, and making the maximum contribution to society. Plato conceived of law as the disposition of reason, ordering things according to their nature. Education is the means of finding the role that each man should play in society. There are three main classes of roles: artisans, soldiers, and rulers. Each of these classes goes farther in their education than the one preceding. The rulers are expected to have mastered all the sciences and philosophy, and to have demonstrated their adminstrative ability through fifteen years of practical experience in service to the state. And at the age of fifty these wise men become philosopher-kings and rule society. With each class there is associated a specific virtue: with the philosopher-kings it is wisdom, with the soldier it is courage, and with the artisan it is temperance. And with the whole state, when each one is doing the work for which he is suited, it is justice. In this way Plato is able to relate to society the four Greek cardinal virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. In the Republic, women are given equal role with men; they, like men, would find their appropriate place in the three classes.
The fundamental characteristic of Plato’s philosophy is its sharp dualism between the two worlds, the world of sense and the world of the Ideas. This dualism rests on rational grounds. This may be clearly seen by means of the line of truth, Plato’s famous twice-divided line. Truth is represented by a diagram of a vertical line that is divided into four parts. This vertical line is the line of truth and it is first divided into two divisions representing the basic divisions of truth into opinion (doxa) and knowledge (episteme). The lower division representing opinion (doxa) is further divided into two segments; the lower segment representing unsupported imagination and the upper segment representing perceptual belief, that is, partially warranted belief based the senses. The upper division of the line of truth representing knowledge (episteme) is also divided into two segments; the lower segment representing hypotheses, that is, semi-abstract ideas that are supported by logic and mathematics, and the upper segment representing universal abstract ideas based on reasoning about first principles. The mathematical entities in the lower segment show the influence of the Pythagoreans. The line of truth presents Plato’s view that the universal and abstract has more reality than particular and concrete things. The dialectic method is the movement up from the perceptual world to ultimate reality, the world of Ideas. This upward movement is a movement toward the theoretical. The corresponding downward movement is the application of the theoretical. This is art in a general sense of controlled and purposeful making and doing. The fine arts is a special case of the arts.
Plato’s treatment of beauty in the Symposium is parallel to this treatment of the twice-divided line of truth. The direction of the movement, empowered by eros, is from beautiful appearances and particular things to the beauty in more abstract enities such as laws and constitutions; this increasing abstraction leads finally to an intuition of beauty itself, eternal and unchanging, the Absolute Beauty. In Plato’s treatment of the good in the Republic and elsewhere – such as the dialogue Philebus – there is a similar upward movement with respect to the good. In the place of imagination we have pleasure, and at higher levels, leading to the highest and final one, we have ideas of moderate satisfaction of desire, intellectual pleasures, measure, proportion, completeness, and seasonableness. Over these may be discerned that Absolute Good which Plato describes as “the author of all things beautiful and right” and the “source of reason and truth in the intellectual world.” If the One in the Parmenides is combined with these, it is probably correct to say that Plato held that the Absolutes of Truth, Beauty, and the Good are identical in the One. These are the archetypes of the particulars of the world of sense. In a certain sense these universals “participate” in the things of the world of sense, or, more accurately, things “participate” in the universal Ideas; the universal Ideas do nothing. Plato held that the human mind is able to “participate” in these forms. He expressed this by his doctrine of recollection (anamnesis) which he propounded, mythically, that the human soul had known these forms before birth, but by the shock of birth they are driven from our memory. In a vague sort of manner, we know everything, and experience enbles us to recall this knowledge accurately. Some have interpreted Plato as here teaching the “innateness of ideas” and the transmigration of souls, metempsychosis, but this is a reading of these later doctrines into Plato’s doctrine. Plato does not explicitly teach either of them. Plato held that when man glimpses the universals in things, he is seized by the heavenly eros, the longing for the pure world of the Ideas. Eros is the upward tendency of the human soul for this ideal world; it is the love for the Good and the Beautiful. When Plato gives a clear definition of eros, he says that it is an intermediate state between having and not having. Obviously eros is desire, a longing, a striving. But man only desires what he does not have, and that of which he feels he needs. He can strive for that which he feels is valuable. Hence love, as Plato sees it, has two main characteristics; the awareness of a need and the effort to satisfy that need. Thus eros is acquisitive love; it seeks to acquire that which it does not have, and to possess it. Now eros-love is directed toward an object that is regarded as valuable. Love and value belong together; the one implies the other. Acquisitive love is motivated by the value of its object. But eros is not completely described as acquisitive love. For there is a kind of acquisitive love that drags the soul downward and only puts the soul in bondage to the world of senses; and that is sensual love. The Heavenly Eros by contrast is a love that is directed upward; it is soul’s longing and striving toward the heavenly world, the world of Ideas. The Heavenly Eros is not simply desire; it is desire for the Good and the Beautiful.
Aristotle expands Plato’s views of the good, giving it cosmic significance. This he does by converting Plato’s sharp metaphysical dualism between the world of sense and the world of the Ideas into a dualism of form and matter in every object of knowledge. Instead of two worlds, Aristotle has one world; and every body in that world is composed of form and matter; they are formed matter. For example, the soul of man is the form of his body. In a sense, form and matter are relative terms. What is in one sense formed matter at one level (for example, a block of marble) is in another sense matter for higher level (for the statue, a higher formed matter). Aristotle viewed the world as an hierarchy where the lower levels are matter for higher levels and the higher levels are form for the lower levels. At the bottom of this hierarchy is pure matter (“prime matter”) and at the top is Pure Form. By interpreting matter as potenitality and form as actuality, Aristotle explained change as the change of matter into form, the matter as potential at a lower level is actualize by form at a higher level, and so forth. The process of nature is viewed by Aristotle as a successive assent from matter to form, from imperfect to the more perfect form of being, from potentiality to actuality.
Aristotle distinguished three kinds of change;
“locomotion” or change of position,
“alteration” or change of quality, and
“growth or diminition” of change of quantity,
He found that there are four types of cause of change: efficient, formal, material, and final. Efficient cause is the manner in which one body acts another and produces locomotion. Formal cause provides the form for the change and material cause provides the matter for the change. Final cause is purpose or goal of the change and the last stage of its development. Pure Form is the ultimate final cause of all motion; it sets the whole process in motion and is the goal of all motion. It itself is unmoved, but moves all things. But how is it possible that which is completely unmoved causes motion? Aristotle answers, “it moves by being loved” [kinei hos eromenon]. Aristotle interpreted eros as the ultimate principle of all change. It sets things in motion in the same way that the beloved object moves the lover by desire that it awakens. Through eros, the desire for the object, the influence of Pure Form is exerted on all things and awakens in matter (potentiality) the change into form (actuality). Thus Aristotle turns Plato’s eros into a cosmic force.
According to Aristotle, the good is that which all things aim. For man, the good is that which is desired for itself, and that for which everything else is done. According to Aristotle happiness is this good. Aristotle held that man’s highest good (summum bonum) is happiness (eudaimonia). Now happiness is not passive state but an activity in accordance with virtue. There are two kinds of virtue: intellectual and moral. The highest intellectual virtue is wisdom. Moral virtues are many, and may be defined as the mean between excess and defect. Courage, for example, stands in between rashness and cowardice, temperance between insensibility and gluttony, and justice between deficiency of allowing one’s rights to be trampled on and the excess of trampling over the rights of others. Following the mean in all things leads to a life of maximum happiness. Aristotle wrote in Nicomachean Ethics,
“Virtue must have the quality of aiming at the intermediate…. Hence it is no easy task to be good. For in everything it is no easy task to find the middle, e.g. to find the middle of a circle is not for everyone but for him who knows; so, too, any one can get angry – that is easy – or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with right motive, and in the right way, that is not for every one, nor is it easy; wherefore goodness is both rare and laudable and noble.”
He interpreted man’s happiness or well-being rationalistic; that is, since it is man’s ability to reason that separates man from the other animals, then the search for man’s happiness must include the development of his reason. Aristotle held that the complete development of anything is its highest good. Development involves the transformation of potentialities into actualities and the realization of its capacities. Since man is a rational animal and his reason is his highest part, then man’s goal is the development of his reason. Those capacities he shares with other animals (that is, eating and reproducing) should be also realized, since he is also an animal. But he is also a rational animal. Thus it follows that those capacities which man does not share with the other animals – those capacities that set him off from other animals – should be fulfilled in such a way that they will have priority and control over the development of man’s animal capacities. Thus moral virtue involves rational control of the desires. Thus he stressed the importance both of the intellectual and moral virtues, the former relating to reason and latter to the rational control of the sensitive and appetitive life. For Aristotle man’s soul has a rational as well as an irrational part. The rational part is the seat of the intellect, and may be divided into an active and passive part. The active intellect which makes all things is immortal and will survive the body. The passive intellect, which becomes all things, is the seat of individuality and does not survive the body at death. The irrational part of man’s soul is the seat of the appetites and desire. While one part of man’s rational soul has no relation to desire, the other part can exercise control on desire. This occurs through the development of habits, and leads to a moral will. The development of man’s rational soul leads to the intellectual virtues of wisdom and insight. The development of speculative wisdom (sophia), combining intuitive reason and rigorous knowledge of first causes and principles, is best exemplified by the discipline of Metaphysics. The development of practical wisdom (phronesis) is the development of the virtuous life by the finding the mean between extremes.
Epicureanism is the school of philosophy that was founded in Athens by Epicurus in 306 B.C. The school, stressing empiricism, atomic theory, and hedonism, was influencial in Greece and Rome from the time of Epicurus until the 4th century A.D. Epicurus was a Greek philosopher who was born in Samos in 341 B.C. and died in 270 B.C. He was influenced by Democritus who held the atomic theory of matter and the value theory of hedonism, that is, pleasure is the good to be sought and pain is the evil that is to be avoided. Epicurus held that the goal of life is happiness and happiness is ataraxia, the state of pleasure to be enjoyed in tranquility, free from mental or phyiscal pain. He held that prudence is the guide to happiness and the foundation of the virtues. Epicureanism with its doctrine that reality was composed of an infinity of atoms in void and that pleasure is the criterion of good and evil was outside the mainstream of Greek philosophy and it gradually lost its influence.
Stoicism is that Graeco-Roman school of philosophy that was founded by Zeno of Citium in 108 B.C. and developed great influence in the Roman Empire where at one time it became the dominant philosophy. Stoicism was a closely knit system of logic, metaphysics and ethics that won many adherents with its lofty, somewhat impersonal, moral ideal of overcoming the world by mastering oneself, living a life in accordance with nature (that is, the rational principle within man), and the botherhood of man.
The Stoics reacted vigorously against the Platonic dualism of the world of the Ideas apprehended by the mind and the world apprehended by the senses. Whatever exists, they argued, must be body, that which occupies space; the universe as a whole is material made up of bodies. They stressed the corporeal nature of things and held that bodies where composed of the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. Following the Heracliteans, they held that fire was the basic element, the stuff of all things. This fire is God, and the source from which the crasser elements, which make up the corporeal world, come forth from. The world is the body of God, and God is to the world, what the soul is to the body; God is the soul of the world. The Stoics drew a distinction within reality between active (to poioun) and passive (to paschon) principles. There is crude unformed matter, without character or quality, that is passive and there is active reason (logos) which acts upon it to form and organize it. They envisaged this active reason as spirit (pneuma) or fiery vapor; it was from this all-pervading fire that the cruder, passive matter emerged, and in the end it would be reabsorbed in a final conflagration. God is this Active Principle which contains within itself the active forms of all things that are to be; these forms being the logoi spematikoi (Rational Seeds). These “seeds” are the active forms, through the activity of which individual things come into being as the world developes. Thus Stoicism was a monism teaching that the Logos or God is the finer matter immanent in the material universe; it is a pantheistic materialism. Reason or God is totally immanent in the world; it permeates and controls every thing and every event. This lead to the strong Stoic belief in providence (pronoia), which is interpreted as fate (heimarmene). Logic as well as physics, they believed, supported this position. They argued that every proposition, for example, “Scipio will capture Numantia”, is either true or false. If it is true, the event must happen, and if it is false, it cannot happen. Thus every event is determined. This position was also supported by the belief in the cyclic character of the natural order, in which each cycle is identical to all the others. This determinism is an ordering of all things according to the universal reason or logos which is in control, apparently by reason of a pneuma [spirit] that animates and controls matter. The soul of man is a portion of, or an emanation from, this all-prevading divine fire which is the Logos. It is the spirit, or warm breath pervading the body and giving it form, character, and organization. The soul is the logos in man, and the Stoics made an important distinction between the “immanent logos” (logos endiathetos), which is his reason considered merely as present in him, and the “expressed logos” (logos prophorikos), which is his reason made known by the means of the faculty of speech and self-expression.
The Stoic conception of an universal reason (logos) ordering the physical universe led to the idea of an universal law for ordering, not only the physical universe, but human communities and the individual. An early Roman philosopher, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) introduced the idea of natural law, possibly suggested by Aristotle. Cicero pictured men living in harmonious universe controlled by a rational deity. The decisions of this being, built into the universe, constitute a natural law which stands above the positive laws of human societies, and giving them a norm or measure. Later Roman lawyers made the distinction between the jus gentium or law of the nations and jus naturale or natural law, the law which should order all nations. The determinism of the Stoics provided the most explicit support for this idea of natural law and the distinction between the jus gentium and jus naturale.
The later Stoicism preached by such men as Seneca (c.4 B.C.- A.D. 65), Epictetus (c. A.D. 55-138), and Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 121-180) was a definite and distinct system of thought, but it put the emphasis on conduct and ethics. There is a clear movement away from the traditional materialism. Seneca, for example, so stresses the divine perfection and goodness that he comes close to the conception of God as transcendent being. Marcus Aurelius also divides human nature into three parts: body, animal soul (psyche), and intelligence (nous); and expicitly states that the last of these, the ruling part in man, is not derived, as the other two parts are, from the four elements which constitutes matter (fire, air, water, earth). It is an offshot (apospasma) from God, a spiritual substance of higher origin than matter.
The Stoics defined virtue as the end or perfection of a thing. Man becomes virtuous through knowledge, which enables him to live in harmony with nature and thereby achieve a profound sense of happiness (eudaimonia) and freedom from emotion (apathia) which will insulate him the vissitudes of life. In connection with their determinism, they taught resignation or apathia as the important virtue, and to view this as a reflection of the ultimate reason of things. The Stoic temper differs radically from the Epicurean, giving rise to the English connotations of those adjectives. This may be seen from some of the detailed advice for everyday living. For example, the Stoic wise man will take part in politics (in fact, Stoicism both directly and indirectly contributed to Roman law); he will marry and raise a family; he will not groan under torture, and in general he will suppress emotion as irrational, neither showing pity nor as a magistrate relaxing the penalties fixed by law; and, since one falsehood is just as false as any other, it follows that all sins are equally great, and all men who are not perfectly wise are arrant knaves. However, if life grows too burdensome, he may commit suicide.
Gnosticism was a philosophic-religious movement that developed during the first three Christian centuries. The beginnings of Gnosticism are unknown, but certain gnostic “tendencies” appeared here and there throughout the Orient long prior to the rise of any definite system or teacher. Gnosticism existed as a religion in its own right, apart from other religions, as is shown from such writings as the Corpus Hermeticum and the Oracula Chaldaica. But during the first century A.D. it began to gradually intermingle with other religions such as Judaism and later with Christianity. At its Jewish stage, Gnosticism is represented by Simon Magus, a Jewish heterodox teacher from Gitta in Samaria, who considered himself as the magical incorporation of the great power of God (Acts 8:9-10). Gnosticism reaches its fully developed form in relation to Chrisitianity. It claimed to be more profound and truer interpretation of Christianity. Gnosticism as a Christian heresy was attacked by Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus and others of the early Church Fathers. It expressed itself in a number of different systems or “schools.” Four of these at least are known from the writings of the early Church Fathers. Bishop Westcott in his Introduction to the Study of the Gospels gives the following fourfold classification:
A. Judaizing Gnosticism. Cerinthus and the Ebionites are examples of an extreme Jewish party in the church who considered the writings of Matthew and James in the New Testament as containing the true Christian doctrine. Cerinthus, the contemporary of the Apostle John, taught that Jesus was no more than a righteous man endowed with the Spirit of God. The Ebionites, further, considered that Jesus did not become the Christ until the Holy Spirit descended on him at his baptism. They claim to find this distinction between the man Jesus and the Aeon Christ in a writing called the Gospel to the Hebrews. Judaizing gnosticism may also be found in the so-called Clementine writings: two of these pseudepigraphal works which are ascribed to St. Clement of Rome, the Homilies and the Recognitions, are Christian romances belonging to the first half of the second century. Jesus is represented as the eighth greater teacher, only greater in degree than his seven predecessors — Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. The creation of the world is due to the expansion of the Monad into Dual, i.e. God and His Wisdom. In this way successive pairs are multiplied, the first or male element being superior down to the time of the creation of man. After that the order is reversed, the second principle being stronger and truer.
B. Doceticism. This form of gnosticism taught that the incarnation of Christ was not real but only an appearance. (Doceticism comes from the Greek verb dokein which means “to seem,” or “to appear.”) One Docetic school held that the Christ-spirit came upon Jesus at the baptism and left him again at his crucifixion. This, according to the Docetic Gospel of Peter, was the meaning of Jesus’ cry of dereliction, which it renders in the form “My power, my power, why hast thou forsaken me?” Another variety of Doceticism represents Jesus’ humanity as being a complete phantom, so that those who crucified him were deceived; an alternate docetic idea was that it was really Simon of Cyrene who was crucified, while Jesus looked on from a place of safety. According to Bishop Westcott the Docetics preferred the Gospel of Mark and were examples of the extreme followers of the school of St. Peter.
C. Marcionites. Marcion of Sinope, the son of a bishop of Sinope, in Pontus, was born about A.D. 120. He came to Rome to propagate his opinions and there became acquainted with a teacher like-minded as himself, one Cerdon a Syrian, who had according to Irenaeus taught in the imperial city during the pontificate of Hygenius (139-142 A.D.). He tried in vain to induce the clergy of Rome to receive him into communion, and upon being refused founded a separate church. Marcion taught that
1. God as portrayed in the Old Testament is not, to all appearances, the same God described by Christ in the Gospels; and that
2. absolute justice is incompatible with perfect love. The God of the Old Testament governed the world with strict and undeviating justice, of the kind which Aristotle contrasts with equity, and consequently he only regards with favor those men who observe the just though imperfect law given to his chosen people. Those who had not attained to the righteousness which is by the Law lay under the displeasure of the God of this world, although they were no less capable of good than the so-called just persons.
According to Marcion Christ appeared suddenly — the record of his birth was pure fiction — in the synagogue of Capernaum in the fifteenth year of Tiberius and proclaimed the true God of love. The God of this world, being angry, stirred up the Jews to crucify Christ. Christ’s appearance on earth was entirely unreal; He did not actually die, though his seeming suffering had a purpose in teaching mankind to despise death and pain. After his resurrection Christ taught the truth to the Demiurge and to Paul, the only preacher of the genuine gospel. According to Marcion redemption consisted of the imparting of this higher knowledge; redemption was not from sin but from ignorance. Marcion like other Gnostics divided humanity into spiritual, psychical or natural, and carnal. But unlike some of his gnostic predecessors he insisted upon the rigid purity of life and regarded martyrdom with at least as much reverence as the orthodox teachers of the Church. Since about two-thirds of the New Testament was opposed to Marcion’s doctrine, he rejected all except the writings of Luke and Paul. But even these he did not accept all as genuine but subjected them to a thorough revision and rejected the Pastoral Epistles as not genuinely Pauline.
D. Pure Gnosticism. Pure Gnosticism, unlike the other forms of Gnosticism, was a radical dualism of mind and matter, light and darkness, good and evil. This radical dualism gave the theology, cosmology, anthropology, soteriology and ethics of Gnosticism a distinctive character.
1. Theology. According to the gnostic doctrine of God, God is absolutely transcendent. He (or It) is utterly alien in nature to the world, which he neither created nor governs (absolutely no immanence). God is the complete antithesis to the world as light is the opposite of darkness. This absolutely transcendent God is totally hidden from all creatures and is unknowable by natural concepts. Knowledge of God requires supernatural illumination, and even then can hardly be expressed except in negative terms.
2. Cosmology. The world, according to Gnosticism, is the work of lowly powers who do not know the utterly transcendent God and who obstruct the knowledge of Him or It in the cosmos over which they rule. The gnostic conception of the universe is roughly what we might call Ptolemaic. Around and above the world are the cosmic spheres (most often seven, but sometimes multiplied to vast numbers) arrange like concentric enclosing spheres. The significance of this cosmic architecture is that everything which intervenes between here and the beyond serves to separate man from God. The celestial spheres are the seats of the Archons (rulers), especially the seven planetary gods borrowed from Babylonian astrology. The Archons collectively rule over the world and each individually in his sphere is like a warder of a prison, each celestial sphere like a ward of the prison, and earth like the inner-most ward or dungeon. Their tyrannical world-rule, called Destiny or Fate, is physically the law of nature and morally the law of “justice” as imperfectly exemplified in the Mosaic law which issued from the “world-creating angels” (Jehovah) for the enslavement of man. As guardian of his sphere, each Archon bars the passage to the souls who seek to ascend after death in order to prevent their escape from the world. The Archons are sometimes presented as the creators of the world although more often under the influence of Platonic philosophy (especially that of Plato’s Timaeus) from which the doctrine is borrowed that the Demiurge (artificer) is responsible for the creation of the world.
3. Anthropology. Man, according to Gnosticism, is composed of body, soul and spirit. The body and soul are the product of the cosmic powers, which shaped the body in imitation of the divine Primal Man and animated it with their own psychical forces: these together make up the astral soul of man, his psyche. Through his body and soul man is a part of the world and subject to destiny or fate. Enclosed in the body and soul is the spirit, or pneuma, a portion of the divine substance which has fallen into the world. In its cosmic exile, thus imprisoned in the soul and body, the “inner man” as an alien element is unconscious of itself, stupefied, asleep or intoxicated by the poison of the world; in brief, it is “ignorant.”
4. Soteriology. The spirit of man imprisoned in the soul and body, and ignorant from whence it came finds salvation from this condition in two stages. In this present life salvation is an awakening which is affected through “knowledge.” Salvation is by knowledge and hence the name of this movement — Gnosticism — which is derived from the Greek word gnostikos, one who has gnosis, “knowledge.”. This knowledge is not ordinary or scientific knowledge but a special and higher kind of knowledge about the transmundane God and about man himself. This knowledge has been withheld from man by his very situation, since “ignorance” is the essence of mundane existence. Hence the necessity of divine illumination or revelation. The bearer of this divine revelation is a messenger from the world of light who penetrates the barrier of the spheres, outwits the Archons, awakens the spirit from its earthly slumber, and imparts to it the saving knowledge “from without.” (In the Christian Gnosticisms this savior-messenger is identified with the Christ.) Equipped with this saving gnosis the “inner man” or the spirit of man is prepared for the second stage of its salvation, the liberation from the bonds of the world at death and the return to its own native realm of light. The gnosis is the potent formula for overcoming the “gate-keepers” who would hinder the soul after death on its journey to the realm of light. As it travels upward the spirit leaves behind at each sphere the psychical “vestment” contributed by it on the spirit’s downward flight at birth: thus the spirit is stripped of all foreign accretions such as individual personal identity until it reaches God beyond the world and becomes reunited with and absorbed into the divine substance.
5. Ethics. In this life, the general principle of gnostic conduct is hostility toward the world. The world and the body are evil and the source of the ignorance and the cause of the slumber of the soul. From this principle two contrary ways of ethical conduct could and have been drawn: the ascetic and the libertine. The ascetic way deduces from the possession of the gnosis the obligation to avoid further contamination by the world and therefore tries to reduce its use and contact to a minimum. The libertine way derives from the same possession the privilege of the absolute freedom: to the spiritual all things are permitted, since the law as representing the will of the Demiurge does not obligate the spirit, which is “saved in its nature” by the possession of saving knowledge and can neither be soiled by its conduct nor frightened by the threat of archontic retribution.
Because of the similarity of language but not the spirit, the pure gnostic considers the writings of the Apostle John as expressing the true interpretation of Christianity. In the period of the early church this pure form of Gnosticism as a Christian heresy is found in the writings and teachings of Basilides and Valentinus.
In his apologetic writings, Tertullian (c. A.D. 155-c. 222) opposed the blending of Greek philosophy and Christianity (“What has Jerusalem to do with Athens, the Church with the Academy, the Christian with the heretic?”). He held that reason and revelation are contradictory (“I believe because it is absurd.”), and vigorously attacked the Greek philosophy, as well as Gnosticism in particular, and paganism generally. In this Tertullian differs from the strategy of most Christian Apologists who emphasized, in greater or lesser degree, a harmony between Greek philosophy and the Christian faith. On Tertullian’s view, that the Son of God died is to be believed because it is a contradictory, and that he rose from the dead has certitude because it is impossible. This opposition to Greek philosophy may come from his opposition to its idealism. Tertullian clearly saw that there is a fundamental difference between Greek idealism and Christianity. The fundamental characteristic of Greek idealism is its dualism of mind and matter and to regard man as in essence a rational being who is in bondage to matter. Salvation then means spiritualisation, that is, the deliverance of the rational part of man from its captivity in matter and sense. Against this idea of salvation and this whole conception of God, man and the world, Tertullian, in the name of Christianity, objected. In his doctrine of the relationship of the body and soul, and of God and the world, he adopts a Stoic materialism where both God and the soul are view as spiritual matter.
“Everything which exists is a bodily existence sui generic. Nothing lacks bodily existencebut that which is non-existence”; “for who will deny that God is a body, although ‘God is a Spirit’? For Spirit has a bodily substance of its own kind, in its own form”.
Tertullian seems here to be maintaining a materialistic doctrine and holding that God is really a material being, just as the Stoics considered God to be material. Some, however, have suggested that by “body” Tertullian often meant simply substance and that when he attributes materiality to God, he is really simply attributing substantiality to God. On this explanation, when Tertullian says that God is a corpus sui generis, that God is coprus and yet spiritus, he actually means that God is a spiritual substance; his language would be at fault, while his thought would be acceptable. One is certainly not entitled to exclude this explanation as impossible, but it is true that Tertullian, speaking of the human soul, says that it must be a bodily substance since it can suffer. In his Apology he gives as a reason for the resurrection of the body of the wicked that “the soul is not capable of suffering without the solid substance, that is, the flesh”. It is probably best to say that, while Tertullian’s language often implies materialism of a rather crass sort, his meaning may not have been that which his language would often imply. When he teaches that the soul of the infant is derived from the father’s seed like a kind of sprout, he would seem to be teaching a clearly materialistic doctrine but this “traducianism” was adopted partly for a theological reason, to explain the transmission of original sin, and some later writers, who are inclined to this same view, did so for the same theological reason, without apparently realizing the materialistic implications of the doctrine. Tertuallian’s materialism provided a reasonable explanation for this “traducianism”.
Of all of early Christian writers, the background of the ideas of Tertullian was Stoic, and he regarded the divine spirit as a highly rarified species of matter. In his defense of the Trinity, he uses a crudely materialistic language and says that “the Father is the whole substance, while the Son is derivation from and portion of the whole.” The context makes it clear that “portion” (portio) is not be taken literally as implying any division or severance. When he sums the subject up, Tertullian dismisses the idea that the three Persons can be three in “status” (that is, fundamental quality), substance or power; as regards these the Godhead is indivisibly one, and the threeness applies only to the “grade” (gradus = Greek taxsis), or “aspect” (forma), or “manifestation” (species) in which the Persons are presented. Under the influence of Stoicism Tertullian held to the conception of the human soul as material. Though simple and more subtle, he regards soul as a body intimately united with and occupying the same space as the physical body to which it belongs. Here Tertullian is rejecting the Greek idealistic division of human nature into mind and body. He held firmly to the Old Testament view that God had created the whole man, body and soul; and because of the Fall, the whole man is lost; and to the primitive Christian teaching is that Christ came to save not merely a part of man, but the whole man; and in the resurrection the whole man will eternally live with God. The soul and body are so intimately united that it is impossible to speak of the soul without a body. Hence, when he speculates about the soul’s origin, he can reject the current theories of pre-existence (see Origen). He had equally little use for the view that it was created by God at birth when the body came into existence (creationism). In contrast he held to a thoroughgoing “traducianist” view, that each human soul is derived along with the body with which it is united from the parent; the whole man, soul as well as body, is produced by one generative act, and the parental germ is not merely a portion of the father’s body, but is charged with a definite soul-stuff. Thus all souls, along with the germ of the body, were contained in Adam, since they must all be ultimately detached portions of original soul breathed into him by God. Every soul, as Tertullian expressed it, is, as it were, a twig cut from the parent-stem of Adam and planted out as an independent tree.
Tertullian not only attacked the Greek idealism as it expressed itself in Gnosticism, but the Christian heresy of Marcion. Both Gnosticism and Marcion had rejected and attacked the Old Testament. Gnosticism rejected the Old Testament doctrine that God is the Creator of heaven and earth. Gnosticism held that the Highest God has nothing to do with the world of sense. This world of sense is produced by a lower being, the Demiurge. This being is imperfect and the best proof of this is the world that he has created; material, uncouth, impure. It is this demigod who is worship by the Jews as their God, and the Law is the expression of his will. He threatens with a curse all who transgress his will, but he is instead himself “the accursed God.” This is the title that the Gnostic sect, the Ophites, applied to the Creator of the world, the God of the Jews. The Serpent which seduced men to fall from the Creator, did man a kindness; he taught them to know the distinction between good and evil and unmasked for them the real character of the Creator-God. Therefore the Ophites named their sect after the Serpent (ophis). Marcion, on the other hand, rejected the Old Testament because the God of the Old Testament is not the God revealed by Christ. The Old Testament belongs to the Jewish God, and the Christians have now no use for it; the “legal” relation to God was antiquated through Christ. Marcion held that something absolutely new and undreamed had entered the world through Christ without warning it comes as an astounding revelation from above. In sublime language, Marcion describe the miracle of Divine love.
“O miracle above all miracles, rapture, might, and wonder, so that we can say nothing at all about the Gospel, nor think anything about it, nor compare it with anything!”
Marcion connects this idea of the absolutely newness of Christianity with his basic idea of the difference between the God who created man, and the God who in Christ effected man’s salvation. This world we live in bears clear testimony to the weakness and imperfection of its Maker; it is crude and impure. Marcion, like the Gnostics, has nothing but contempt for it. But Marcion goes beyond the Gnostics; what is true of the world in general applies equally to man; he too, body and soul, is a work of the Creator-God, and their weakness and infirmity are convincing evidence of their Maker’s inferiority. In addition this Creator is also a God of Law, who holds men prisoner under his commandments and ordinances. It is against this background that the great and amazing miracle takes place. The Highest God is seized with sympathy for the misery of men, and descends Himself in Christ to bring them deliverance. In compassionate love He wills to save what another, not Him, had created. In abounding mercy He adopts the children of another. Being the Stronger, He vanquishes the Creator-God, despoils him, and lead his oppressed children to a new and better home. Marcion sees the relationship of the Old Testament to the New, not as of co-ordination, but one of conflict. It is not a question of two different stages, as held by the early church, in which the earlier is included in the later, and the later is the fulfillment of the earlier, but their relationship is purely antithetical. Marcion carried this distinction into the New Testment; he recognized as genuine Christian writings only ten Pauline letters and the Gospel according to Luke, after purging these of supposed Judaising additions. Marcion found in these writings, and above all in Paul’s attack on “the Law” the basis for his interpretation of Christianity. The God of the Old and the God of the New confront each other, the “righteous God” (ho dikaios theos) against the “good God” (ho agathos theos), the God of Law against the God of Love. Since “no man can serve two masters”, we must refuse faith and obedience to the Creator, the God of Law, and give ourselves wholly to the “good God.” The age of Law is past, and age of the Gospel has come with the rule of love. Away, then, with the Old Testament! And away with its inferior ethical principle: “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth!” Only the principle of love is true. In his opposition of the Old Testament, Marcion could make common cause with the Gnostics, and his arguments against the Creator and the God of the Jews are largely those which Gnosticism used. It is not surprising that the Early Church Fathers regarded him as a Gnostic pure and simple. More recent study of them has shown that this view of Marcion is not true. Tertullian was mistaken in lumping Marcion with the Gnostics and treating him as a Gnostic.
But Marcion’s views of the God of the Old Testament needed to be opposed. But in opposing Marcion, Tertullian goes to the other extreme in complete acceptance of “the Law” and the interpretation of Christianity as the New Law. Both Testaments stand for Tertullian on the same level, seemingly unaware that the New Testament has something new, over and above the Old, to say about the Way of Salvation. He defends the Old Testament by defending it as a “Legal” relation to God and the “Legal” Way of Salvation. Marcion had asserted that Highest God acts soley on the principle of love and goodness, and that the Creator-God is solely a God of retributive justice. Tertullian replies that there is no God but the Creator, and that He is both good and just. But when there is a tension between the love and justice, God would always take the side of justice. Against Marcion, Tertullian writes,
“Eye for eye does our God require; but your God does an even greater injury, when he prevents an act of retaliation. For what man would not repeat a blow, if he were not struck in return?”
Tertullian is oblivious that this is a criticism, not only of Marcion, but of Jesus, who says:
“An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, resist not him that is evil” (Matt. 5:38).
Tertullian is quite unable to conceive of fellowship with God except on the basis of justice. The only motive, in his opinion, that can surely bind man to God is fear of punishment and the hope of reward. If God is pure love and shows His goodness even to the undeserving, then there is no incentive to do good. The righteous has no advantage over the sinner. Tertullian can attach no meaning to an immediate rejection of sin, which needs no mediate, egocentric motivation, but arises directly out of the experience of God’s grace. But this does not mean that Tertullian has no place for love; for Tertullian love and goodness are the primary attributes of God. Out of love God created the world; and love must always be our first word in speaking of God as He is in Himself. Owing to the Fall, He has been forced to bring another side of His nature to the fore, that is, His judging and retributive justice. but His goodness never ceases, for He defers the restoration of man and the annihilation of the devil. Originally man succumbed to the devil because the devil managed to get man’s free will on his side; but now God in His goodness leaves time and space for a continued struggle, to give man opportunity in a fresh contest to defeat the enemy by the use of that same freedom of the will, which was the means of his undoing before. Thus God shows His love in giving man an opportunity, through a victory of his own, “worthily to recover his salvation.” Even God’s retaliatory justice is an expression of His love. Punishment serves the ends of goodness, for it deters man from evil; and that is best for him. Would not all take the evil way if they had nothing to fear? But however much Tertullian may talk in this way of the goodness of God, it is law and retributive justice that has the last word.
Tertullian’s view unites this legalistic interpretation of the Old Testament with Roman moralism and jurisprudence. The result is a theology of merit whose influence on later Christianity is calamitous. The idea of retributive justice is central to his interpretation of Christianity. Nothing, he says, can more become God, as the good and righteous judge, than to elect and reprobate men according to their deserts. God simply cannot disregard man’s merit; He cannot condemn those who have not deserved it, nor refrain from rebrobating those who have sinned. The Law is the proper Way of salvation. As a condition of salvation, God requires man to have fulfilled His will as revealed in the Law; He requires man to give Him complete “satisfaction” (satisfacere deo). By doing what is well pleasing to God, man has in the strictest sense of the word to merit his salvation; and the best means to this is an ascetic life. By good works man can make God his debtor. The highest degree of merit attaches to highest conceivable achievement, martyrdom. To the martyr who following His Lord takes up his cross, the following words apply: “The whole key to Paradise is thine own blood.” Christianity thus has been transformed into a religion of law. But even though Tertullian’s outlook has affected the Western interpretation of Christianity to a high degree, he has been excluded from the Church, owing to his attachment to Montanism, and his influence has been limited.
Montanism was a second century A.D. movement that was led by a recent convert to Christianity named Montanus, who in A.D. 156 announced at Ardabau in Mysia near the Phrygian border in western Asia Minor that the dispensation of the Holy Spirit had begun, and he was to be its vessel. He claimed that the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, dwelt in him and employed him as an instrument for guiding and purifying the Christian Church. His followers believed that the gifts of the Holy Spirit, especially prophecy and tongues, were restored to the Church as of great importance. The Montanists also practiced an austere strictness of life in preparation for the physical return of the Lord. The movement had as its goal higher standards of morality than those generally required in the Church, especially with respect to obligations concerning marriage, fasting, and martyrdom. It exemplified many of the characteristics of Modern Pentecostalism.
Montanus selected two small towns in Phrygia, named Pepuza and Tymion, and there established a religious community waiting for the coming of Lord. Along with Montanus, two women, Priscilla (Prisca) and Maximilla, were regularly moved by the Spirit, revealing to others commandments for holiness. These prophetesses affirmed the end of the world was at hand, and that Heavenly New Jerusalem was about to be established in Phrygia, wither the believers should betake themselves. In preparation for the fast-approaching consummation, the most strenuous asceticism should be practiced, celibacy, fasting, and abstinense from meat.
For twenty years the movement spread slowly through Phrygia and nearby areas. In A.D. 177, a general persecution of Christians began throughout the Roman Empire. This was interpreted as a sign that the end of world was at hand. And the movement of Montanus suddenly became Montanism, a movement that spread throughout the Roman Empire. The movement was otherworldly, stressing the importance of martyrdom, and the awaiting the coming of the Lord.
During this period, the churches of Asia Minor, surrounding the area of Phrygia where the movement began, had gone over to Montaniam except for the larger churches controlled by bishops. The churches of Gaul sent a letter to Rome asking that communion with the Montanist churches be maintained. According to Tertullian, the Pope Eleutherus was considering the move until he was persuaded against it by Praxeas, a vigorous opponent of the movement in Asia Minor. In those critical days, the Church would not permit a movement of this character to take over. Because the Montanists would not accept the authority of the Church as a whole and the bishops, they were forced to split off. In churches ourside Asia Minor, cell groups of Montanists appeared, dedicated to quickening the faith. Tertullian belong to one such groups in Carthage. By A.D. 207, he had decided that the Church had entered on a path of seculatism from which it could not be turned. Then about A.D. 200, Tertullian left the Church to become a Montanist. He was attracted to Montanism chiefly by its ascetic demands. He bitterly criticized the “Catholic” Church and in protest he apparently found a little sect of his own.
In A.D. 230, the movement was virtually excommunicated: the Synod of Iconium refused to recognize the validity of Montanist baptism. Montanism continued as an underground movement, chiefly as a protest against growing formalism and worldliness of the official church. The Church reacted against the extravagances of the movement by condemnation of the movement. The Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381 declared that the Montanists should be look upon as pagans. In Phrygia, Montanist communities continued to exist into the 4th century. The movement was strongest in Carthage and Eastern lands. In Carthage, a sect called Tertullianists was in existence in the year A.D. 400. By then the influence of the movement had subsided. As their enthusiasm degenerated into arrogance, their asceticism into legalism, the movement died out.
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