Philosophy as Preparation

About these notes of mine, which take in Greek opinions wherever the argument calls for them, I have this much to say to the people who are fond of finding fault. First: even if philosophy were useless, showing that it is useless would itself do good — so it is useful after all. Then again, no one can condemn the Greeks who knows their opinions only by hearsay and has never gone through them in detail, field by field, in order to be acquainted with them. A refutation grounded in firsthand experience can be trusted entirely, because the fullest proof of a thing comes from knowing what it is you are condemning. Many things that contribute nothing to the finished work still equip the craftsman. Besides, wide learning recommends the man who sets out the most important teachings so as to persuade his hearers; it makes those he teaches admire him, and it leads them to the truth. And persuasion of that kind carries conviction, since by it people who love learning come to admit the truth. So philosophy does not ruin life by fathering false practices and base deeds, whatever some have said against it. It is a clear image of truth, a gift of God to the Greeks. Nor does it drag us away from the faith, as though we were under the spell of some trickster’s art. Rather — if I may put it this way — it takes a wider road around, and so gives us a shared exercise that demonstrates the faith. And setting teachings side by side and comparing them keeps the truth safe, and knowledge follows from that. [a]

Philosophy did not come into being for its own sake, but for the good we get from knowledge: by knowing the things the mind takes in, we come to a firm conviction that our perception of what is true is sound. I will not even mention that these Stromata, being a body of mixed learning, mean to keep the seeds of knowledge artfully hidden. Just as a man fond of hunting takes his game only after seeking, tracking, catching the scent, and running it down with dogs, so the truth, when it is sought and won with effort, turns out to be a sweet thing.

Why, then, you will ask, did I think such an arrangement right for my notes? Because there is great danger in handing the secret of the true philosophy over to people whose delight it is to speak against everything, and unfairly at that — who fling out every sort of name and phrase without decency, deceiving themselves and misleading those who stick with them. As the apostle says: “The Hebrews ask for signs, and the Greeks look for wisdom.”

There is a large crowd of people like this. Some of them, slaves to their pleasures and willing enough to disbelieve, laugh at a truth that deserves every reverence, and make sport of it for coming from barbarians. Others puff themselves up and try to find slanderous objections to what we say. They serve up trick questions; they are hunters after trivial slips, practicers of shabby devices, wranglers, dealers in knotty problems — as the man from Abdera puts it: [c]

And again:

Inflated with this art of theirs, the wretched sophists babble away in their own jargon. They spend their whole lives on the dividing up of names and on the nature of how sentences are composed and joined together, and they show themselves greater chatterers than turtledoves, scratching and tickling — not in a manly way, to my mind — the ears of people who want to be tickled. A river of silly words, and not a drop. It is like an old pair of shoes: everything else is worn out and falling to pieces, and only the tongue is left. Solon of Athens puts it best of all, and writes:

This, I think, is what the Savior’s saying points to: “Foxes have holes, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” For it is on the believer alone, the man who is set apart entirely from the rest — and the rest are the ones Scripture calls wild animals — that the head of the universe rests, the kind and gentle Word, the one “who catches the wise in their own craftiness. For the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are worthless.”

Scripture is giving the name “the wise” to men who are skilled in words and in the arts — that is, sophists. This is why the Greeks too applied the words “wise men” and “sophists” to anyone expert in anything. So Cratinus, having listed the poets in his Archilochuses, said:

And in the same way Iophon the comic poet says, in Flute-playing Satyrs:

Of men like these, and of all who give their attention to empty words, the divine Scripture says it best: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the intelligent.”

Homer calls a craftsman wise. And of Margites — if that poem is his work — he writes: [l]

Hesiod went further and said that Linus the musician was “skilled in every kind of wisdom,” and he does not hesitate to call a sailor wise, seeing that he writes:

And Daniel the prophet says: “The mystery the king asks about is not in the power of the wise men, the magi, the diviners, or the Gazarenes to tell the king; but there is a God in heaven who reveals it.” Here he calls the Babylonians wise.

Now Scripture gives the one name “wisdom” to every worldly science and skill — and there are other arts and sciences besides, invented over and above these by human reasoning — and it also shows that inventive craftsmanship comes from God. This will be clear if we bring in the following passage, where the Lord said to Moses: “See, I have called Bezalel son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the divine spirit of wisdom and understanding and knowledge, to design and to carry out every kind of work: to work in gold and silver and bronze, in blue and purple and scarlet, in the cutting of stone and in the craft of woodworking” — and, indeed, in “all works.” Then he adds the general reason: “And to every understanding heart I have given understanding” — that is, to everyone able to acquire it by effort and practice. And again it is written expressly in the name of the Lord: “And speak to all who are wise in mind, whom I have filled with the spirit of perception.”

Those who are wise in mind have some quality of their own by nature, and those who have shown themselves capable receive from the Wisdom above a double measure of the spirit of perception. For the men who practice the ordinary arts are highly gifted in whatever belongs to the senses: in hearing, the man we commonly call a musician; in touch, the man who molds clay; in voice, the singer; in smell, the perfumer; in sight, the engraver who cuts designs on seal-stones. Those who are occupied with instruction train the sensibility in the same way — the sensibility by which poets are open to the influence of meter, sophists take hold of expression, dialecticians take hold of syllogisms, and philosophers become capable of the contemplation of which they themselves are the objects. For it is sensibility that finds and invents, since it urges a man persuasively to apply himself; and practice will increase the application whose end is knowledge.

So the apostle had good reason to call the wisdom of God “many-sided,” wisdom that has shown its power “in many parts and in many ways” — by art, by knowledge, by faith, by prophecy — for our benefit. “For all wisdom is from the Lord, and is with him forever,” as the wisdom of Jesus says.

“For if you call out for wisdom and knowledge with a loud voice, and search for them as for treasures of silver, and eagerly track them down, you will understand reverence for God and find the knowledge of God.” The prophet says this over against the knowledge that belongs to philosophy, which trains us to investigate in a large-minded and noble way, for our progress in reverence for God. So he sets against it the knowledge that is taken up with reverence for God, and speaks like this about knowledge: “For God gives wisdom out of his own mouth, and knowledge together with understanding, and he stores up help for the righteous.” For to those who have been counted righteous by philosophy, the knowledge that leads to reverence for God is laid up as a help.

So then, before the coming of the Lord, philosophy was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness. And now it works toward reverence for God, being a kind of preparatory training for those who arrive at faith by way of proof. “For your foot,” it is said, “will not stumble, if you refer what is good — whether it belongs to the Greeks or to us — to Providence.” For God is the cause of all good things: of some primarily, as with the Old and the New Testament, and of others as a consequence, as with philosophy. Perhaps philosophy was even given to the Greeks directly and primarily, until the Lord should call the Greeks too. For philosophy was a schoolmaster bringing the Greek mind to Christ, as the law brought the Hebrews. So philosophy was a preparation, paving the road for the man who is brought to completion in Christ. [u]

“Now,” says Solomon, “take wisdom’s side, and it will lift you high; it will shield you with a crown of delight.” For once you have walled wisdom about by means of philosophy, and paid what the work costs, you will keep it beyond the reach of the sophists. The way of truth is therefore one; but streams flow into it from every side, as into a river that never fails. So it has been said by inspiration: “Hear, my son, and take in my words, so that the many ways of life may be yours. For I teach you the ways of wisdom, so that the springs may not fail you” — springs that gush up out of the earth itself. He did not only count up several ways of salvation for any one righteous man; he added many other ways belonging to many righteous men, when he spoke like this: “The paths of the righteous shine like the light.” The commands, and the modes of preparatory training, are to be counted as the ways and the equipment of life.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I have wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks!” And “Jerusalem,” when the name is interpreted, means “a vision of peace.” So he shows prophetically that those who look upon holy things in peace are trained for their calling in many ways. What then? He “wanted” to, and could not. How often, and when? Twice: through the prophets, and by his own coming. So the phrase “how often” shows that wisdom has many forms. In every measure and every manner it does save some, in time and in eternity. “For the Spirit of the Lord fills the world.”

And if anyone insists on forcing the text and says that Greek learning is what is meant when it says, “Pay no attention to a bad woman, for honey drips from a prostitute’s lips,” let him listen to what comes next: “who for the moment oils your throat.” But philosophy does no flattering. Who, then, is he pointing to as the one who has committed sexual immorality? He adds it plainly: “For the feet of folly lead those who make use of her, after death, down to Hades; and her steps get no firm footing.” So take your way far away from stupid pleasure. “Do not stand at the doors of her house, or you will hand your life over to others.” And he testifies: “Then you will be sorry in old age, when the flesh of your body is used up.” That is where foolish pleasure ends. That is how the matter stands. And when he says, “Do not spend much time with a strange woman,” he is warning us to make use of secular learning, certainly, but not to linger with it and spend our lives there. For whatever was given to each generation for its good, and at the right season, is a preliminary training for the word of the Lord.

“Some men have already been trapped by the charms of the serving girls and have thought little of philosophy, their lawful wife; they have grown old, some of them in music, some in geometry, others in grammar, and most of them in rhetoric.” “But just as the standard course of studies contributes to philosophy, which is their mistress, so philosophy itself works toward the getting of wisdom. For philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom, and wisdom is the knowledge of things divine and human, and of their causes.” So wisdom is queen over philosophy, as philosophy is queen over the preparatory studies. For if philosophy “sets out to control the tongue, and the belly, and the parts below the belly, it is to be chosen for its own sake. But it appears more worthy of respect, and worthy to come first, when it is pursued for the honor and the knowledge of God.”

And Scripture will bear witness to what has been said, in what follows. Sarah, Abraham’s wife, was barren for a time. Having no child, she assigned her slave — an Egyptian woman named Hagar — to Abraham, in order to get children. So wisdom, who lives with the man of faith (and Abraham was reckoned faithful and righteous), was still barren and childless in that generation, since she had borne Abraham nothing akin to virtue. And she thought, as was right, that he, being now at the stage of making progress, should first have relations with secular learning — by “the Egyptian” the world is meant figuratively — and afterward should come to her, as divine providence directed, and father Isaac.

And Philo takes “Hagar” to mean “living abroad.” That is why the words are set beside it: “Do not spend much time with a strange woman.” “Sarah” he takes to mean “my rule.” So the man who has had the earlier training is free to come to wisdom, who is sovereign, and out of her the race of Israel grows up. These things show that the wisdom Abraham reached can be gained through instruction, since he passed from the contemplation of heavenly things to the faith and the righteousness that are according to God. And “Isaac” is shown to mean “self-taught,” which is also why he turns out to be a figure of Christ. He was the husband of one wife, Rebecca, whose name they translate “Patience.” Jacob is said to have lived with several wives, and his name is interpreted “Trainer”; and training is carried on by means of many and varied teachings. That is also why the man who really is “given the power of seeing” is called Israel — a man of much experience, and fit for training. Something else may also have been shown by the three patriarchs: that the sure seal of knowledge is made up of nature, of education, and of training.

You may find another image of what has been said in Tamar, who sat by the road and gave the appearance of a prostitute. Judah, the diligent man — his name is interpreted “powerful” — who left nothing unexamined and uninvestigated, looked at her and turned aside to her, while keeping his profession toward God. That is also why, when Sarah was jealous at Hagar being preferred to her, Abraham, choosing only what was profitable in secular philosophy, said: “Look, your slave is in your hands; deal with her as it pleases you.” He plainly meant: “I embrace secular learning as something young, and a servant; but your knowledge I honor and revere as my true wife.” And Sarah ill-treated her, which comes to the same thing as correcting and warning her. So it has been well said: “My son, do not think lightly of the discipline of God, and do not lose heart when he corrects you. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and whips every son he accepts.”

The passages just cited, examined in other connections, will be seen to hold other mysteries as well. Here we assert only this much: that what marks philosophy out is investigation into truth and into the nature of things — this is the truth of which the Lord himself said, “I am the truth” — and, again, that the training which prepares a man for rest in Christ exercises the mind, wakes up the intelligence, and breeds a shrewdness that keeps asking questions, by means of the true philosophy. Those who are initiated possess it, having found it, or rather having received it, from the truth itself.