This Eclectic attitude of the Fathers, and their deprecation of any abstraction or partial statement usurping the place of the truth, explains to some extent their treatment of the theistic argument.

In the first place it led them to distrust and reject any argument for the existence of God which proceeded on the basis of reason alone, apart from any content furnished by sensibility. While the Fathers do not make any explicit and scientific distinction between Epistemology and Ontology, such as has in modern times been the bane of any attempted natural theology, yet they seem to have made a pretty constant practical separation between the two. St. Clement of Alexandria, as we have seen, holds that by a method of abstraction of specific characteristics we can arrive only at an "Unknown," to which meaning can be given only by combining with this rational process some content furnished directly by the senses or, indirectly, by testimony, and he further states that God is not a subject for demonstration—i.e., the science that depends on primary and better known principles—for "first principles are incapable of demonstration."[94] This position seems to be tacitly assumed by the patristic writers throughout, and even where they speak of Plato with gratitude and admiration they never seem to be at all inclined to make any use of his "Idealogical" argument or anything related thereto. They seem to take a common-sense stand for the testimony of the whole man, as well as for the whole truth, and to instinctively distrust any rational concept in the formation of which sensuous content had been ignored.

The Eclectic character of the patristic thought is seen also in the frequency with which they use the different forms of the theistic argument in conjunction, or present it in mixed forms. The Greek philosophers, as we have seen, each selected some one of the forms of the argument, and by means of it, attempted to establish the sort of an {Arche}, to which such a course of reasoning would lead, ignoring, or attacking the forms in use by their rival school. Thus early, however, as in modern times, Christian theology, in contrast with the attempts of rational theology, began to emphasize the interdependence of these different forms of the theistic argument, and the cumulative character of their evidence. Each one of itself could bring no conviction, nor even high degree of probability, and furthermore, even if all its claims be admitted, would lead to a result far short of theism—a mere indefinite first cause, an Architect of the universe, etc. Each one, however, adds its quota to a great cumulative argument, which, taken in its entirety, raises an exceedingly high presumption, which amounts to "moral" though possibly not intellectual proof. And, after all, "probability is the guide of life."

And this is all that the Fathers, or Christian apologists, generally, would claim for the theistic argument. It is a practical, not a theoretical proof, and it is in this way that the early Christian writers seem to regard it. They resort to it most frequently to show that the Christian doctrine of God is not contrary to reason nor inconsistent with the nature of things, and to demonstrate that such a conception is demanded by man's very nature. In a word, their use of the argument is confirmatory and explanatory rather than by way of absolute proof and demonstration.

This attitude towards and use of the theistic argument, so radically different from that of the Greek philosophers, perpetuated itself in the post-Nicene literature of the Christian Church, and, in its main features, remained unaltered, until the time when men who had abandoned the faith in the Word which had been the main stay of the ante-Nicene writers, and who yet were unwilling to abandon the great theistic idea for which the world was indebted to Christianity alone, sought to justify this idea on the basis of reason. It took the scepticism of a Hume and the criticism of a Kant, and the re-adjustment of all their followers to bring us back at the close of this nineteenth century into substantial agreement with the common-sense estimate placed upon the theistic argument by the ante-Nicene Fathers.

FOOTNOTES:

[92] History of Philosophy, Vol. I, Sec. 4.

[93] Burnet: Early Greek Philosophy, p. 25.

[94] Stromata, II, iv.



VITA.

The writer was born April 24, 1869, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He attended the Ann Arbor Public Schools and the Ann Arbor High School. In 1892 he received the degree of A. B. from the University of Michigan. In 1895 he graduated from the General Theological Seminary, New York, and was awarded the degree of B. D., which was formally conferred in accordance with the rules of the Seminary one year later. In 1896, he received the degree of A. M. from the University of Michigan. He pursued studies in Philosophy at Harvard University during the first term of the year 1896-7, and at Columbia University from February, 1897, to February, 1898. He has been the post-graduate scholar of the Church University Board of Regents from July, 1895, to the present time.

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