Faith Comes First

Scripture has called the Greeks thieves of the barbarian philosophy. What has to be considered next is how that can be shown, and shown briefly. We will not only show that they imitated and copied the wonders recorded in our books. We will prove besides that they stole the chief teachings they hold and falsified them — our writings being the older, as we have already shown — teachings about faith and knowledge and systematic learning, about hope and love, and about repentance too, and self-control, and the fear of God: a whole swarm, in fact, of the virtues of truth. [a]

Whatever the explanation of the matter in hand calls for will be taken in, and above all what lies hidden in the barbarian philosophy: the department of symbol and riddle. Men who have made a systematic study of the teaching of the ancients have gone in for this, as being useful in the highest degree — in fact necessary — for the knowledge of truth.

Besides that, it will make a fitting sequel, in my view, to defend the beliefs the Greeks attack us for, using a few passages of Scripture; and perhaps the Jew as well may listen, and may be able to turn quietly from what he has believed to the one he has not believed in. Then the honest men among the philosophers can properly be taken up, with a friendly exposure both of the life they lead and of the new doctrines they have come up with — not to get our own back on the men who run us down, for that is far from the mind of people who have learned to bless those who curse them, even when they let fly words of blasphemy at us for no reason — but with a view to their turning around. Perhaps these experts in wisdom may feel ashamed, brought to their senses by a barbarian’s demonstration, and may see clearly at last what sort of learning it is that they cross the seas to fetch.

What they have stolen is to be pointed out, so that their conceit can be pulled down; and as for the things they pride themselves on having discovered by their own inquiry, the refutation will be supplied. It follows that we must also treat of what is called the general course of study, and how far it is useful; and of astrology, and mathematics, and magic, and sorcery. All the Greeks boast of these as the highest sciences. “The man who reproves openly makes peace.”

We have said often already that we have neither practiced writing pure Greek nor made a study of it. That suits people who are drawing the crowd away from the truth. True philosophical demonstration will do good not to its hearers’ tongues but to their minds. In my opinion a man who cares about truth should not shape his language with art and pains, but should only try to say what he means as best he can. People who are particular about words and spend their time on them let the things themselves run away from them.

It takes a gardener to pluck the rose that grows among the thorns without damaging it, and a craftsman to find the pearl buried in the oyster’s flesh. And they say that fowls have the best-tasting meat when they are not supplied with plenty of food and have to scratch with their feet and pick out their living with difficulty. So if a man reasons along the same lines and wants to arrive at the truth that lies among the many Greek plausibilities — the real face under the masks — he will have to hunt it out with a great deal of trouble. For the power that appeared to Hermas in his vision said: “Whatever can be revealed to you will be revealed.”

“Do not be lifted up over your own wisdom,” say the Proverbs. “In all your ways know her, so that she may make your ways straight, and your foot may not stumble.” By these words he means to show that our deeds ought to agree with reason, and to make clear besides that out of the whole of general learning we should pick out and keep what is useful. The ways of wisdom are many, and they run straight to the road of truth; and faith is that road. “Your foot will not stumble” is said with an eye on certain people who seem to set themselves against the one divine ordering of providence. That is why it adds, “Do not be wise in your own eyes” — meaning the irreverent notions that revolt against God’s ordering. “But fear God,” who alone has power. From which it follows that we are not to set ourselves against God. What comes next teaches it plainly, that the fear of God is turning away from evil, since it says, “and turn away from every evil.” That is what the discipline of wisdom is — “for the Lord disciplines the one he loves” — causing pain in order to produce understanding, and restoring a man to peace and to immortality. [h]

So the barbarian philosophy, the one we follow, is in fact perfect and true. This is why it says in the book of Wisdom: “For he has given me the unerring knowledge of the things that are, to know the structure of the world,” and so on, down to “and the powers of roots.” In all of that he takes in natural science, which deals with everything that appears in the world of the senses. Then, going on, he points to the things grasped by the mind alone in what he adds: “And whatever is hidden and whatever is plain, I know; for Wisdom, the craftsman of all things, taught me.”

There, in short, is the declared aim of our philosophy. And the learning of these branches, when it is pursued alongside a right way of life, leads through Wisdom, the craftsman of all things, to the Ruler of all — one who is hard to catch and hard to take hold of, always drawing back and withdrawing from the man who chases him. And yet the one who is far off has come very near. What an unspeakable wonder! The Lord says: “I am a God who draws near.” In his being he is remote — for how could what has come into being come close to what never came into being? But he is very near through the power that holds all things in its embrace: “Will a man do anything in secret, and I not see him?” For the power of God is always present, in contact with us, watching over us, doing us good, and teaching us.

That is why Moses, convinced that God is not to be known by human wisdom, said: “Show me your glory.” And he pressed to go into the thick darkness where God’s voice was — that is, into the thoughts about Being that cannot be reached or seen. For God is not in darkness, and not in a place, but above space and time and the qualities of things. So he is never in a part of anything, either as containing or as contained, neither by being bounded nor by being divided. The Lord asks: “What house will you build for me?” In fact he has not even built one for himself, since he cannot be contained. And though heaven is called his throne, not even so is he contained; he rests there, delighting in the thing he made.

It is clear, then, that the truth has been kept hidden from us; and if one example has shown it already, we will establish it a little later with several more. How thoroughly they deserve approval, the men who are both willing to learn and able — able, as Solomon puts it, “to know wisdom and discipline, to understand the words of understanding, to take in the twists of speech, and to perceive true righteousness.” True righteousness, because there is another kind as well, not according to the truth, the kind the Greek laws teach and the rest of the philosophers. “And to set judgments straight,” it says — not the judgments handed down from a bench: he means that we must keep the power of judging that is inside us sound and free of error — “so that I may give shrewdness to the simple, and to the young man perception and understanding.” “For the wise man” — the man who has been persuaded to obey the commands — “will hear these things and become wiser” through knowledge, “and the man of understanding will gain the art of steering, and will understand a parable and a dark saying, the words of the wise and their riddles.”

For what men inspired by God bring forward, and the men won over by them, is not counterfeit words; nor is it the traps most of the sophists tangle the young in, spending their days on nothing true. But those who have the Holy Spirit “search the deep things of God” — that is, they take hold of the secret that is in the prophecies. Handing out holy things to the dogs is forbidden, so long as they stay beasts. People who are full of envy and confusion, whose conduct is still that of unbelievers, and who bark shamelessly at inquiry, ought never to dip into the divine and clear stream of the living water. “Do not let the water from your spring run over, and let your water pass through your own streets.”

For not many people understand the things they come across, or know them even after being taught, though they think they do — so the excellent Heraclitus says. Does he not seem to you to be blaming the people who do not believe? “But my righteous one will live by faith,” the prophet said. And another prophet says, “Unless you believe, neither will you understand.” For how could the soul ever take in the high contemplation of such matters while unbelief about the very thing to be learned was fighting inside it?

But faith — which the Greeks run down as empty and barbarian — is a preconception freely arrived at, the assent of reverence toward God: “the substance of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen,” as the divine apostle puts it. “For by this,” above all, “the elders were well spoken of. And without faith it is impossible to please God.” Others have defined faith as an assent that unites us to what is unseen — just as the proof of a thing not known is plainly an assent. If, then, faith is choice, and choice reaches out after something, the reaching-out here is of the mind. And since choice is the beginning of action, faith turns out to be the beginning of action: the foundation of reasoned choice in a man who lays out for himself, through faith, the demonstration that comes first. To follow what is useful of one’s own will is the first principle of understanding. So a choice that does not waver gives a man considerable momentum toward knowledge.

The practice of faith becomes knowledge straight away, since it rests on a firm foundation. Knowledge, then, is defined by the sons of the philosophers as a settled state that reason cannot overturn. Is there any other true state of that kind except reverence toward God, whose only teacher is the Word? I think not. Theophrastus says that sense perception is the root of faith, since from perception the first principles reach out to the reason that is in us and to the understanding. So the man who believes the divine Scriptures with settled judgment receives, in the voice of the God who gave the Scripture, a demonstration that cannot be disputed. Faith, then, is not established by demonstration. “Blessed, therefore, are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” The Sirens’ songs showed a power beyond anything human; they charmed the men who came near and won them over, almost against their will, to accept what was being said.

The followers of Basilides take faith to be natural, though they also trace it to choice: on their account it finds ideas by an act of the mind, without demonstration. The followers of Valentinus assign faith to us, the simple people, but will have it that knowledge springs up in themselves — for they are saved by their nature — through the advantage of a seed of superior quality; and they say that knowledge stands as far from faith as the spiritual stands from what is merely of the soul. The followers of Basilides go further and say that faith, like choice, belongs to each level according to its own interval; that because of a choice made above the world, a faith belonging to this world goes along with every nature; and that the free gift of faith matches the hope proper to each. But then faith is no longer the direct result of free choice, if it is an advantage a man is born with. [v]

And on that account the man who has not believed will not meet with what he deserves, since he is not the author of his unbelief; and the man who has believed is not the cause of his believing. The whole distinctive character of belief and unbelief, and the difference between them, will fall under neither praise nor blame, if we think it through, since a prior natural necessity coming from the Almighty is attached to it. And if we are pulled about like lifeless things on the strings of natural powers, then willingness and unwillingness — and the impulse that comes before both — are so much surplus. For my part I am simply incapable of conceiving of a living creature whose appetites are moved by causes outside it and held under the rule of necessity.

And what room is left, on their account, for the repentance of a man who was once an unbeliever — the repentance through which forgiveness of sins comes? On that showing baptism makes no sense, nor the blessed seal, nor the Son, nor the Father. And God, as I see it, turns out to be nothing more than the handing out of natural powers to people — a scheme that does not have faith freely chosen as the foundation of salvation.