Philosophy Kept for Dessert

The one who truly knows is always occupied with what matters most. But if he ever has leisure, a break from what comes first, he takes up Greek philosophy ahead of any other recreation, enjoying it the way a man enjoys the sweets at the end of a dinner. He does not neglect what is better; he takes this in addition, and only as long as is proper, for the reasons I gave earlier. But those who give their minds to the unnecessary and superfluous parts of philosophy, and give themselves to nothing but quarrelsome word-tricks, abandon what is necessary and essential, and plainly chase the shadows of words. [a]

It is a fine thing to know everything. But a man whose soul does not have the capacity to become acquainted with many fields of study will choose only the chief and better ones. For real knowledge — which we say only the one who truly knows possesses — is a firm grasp of a thing, leading up through true and reliable reasoning to knowledge of the cause. And anyone who knows what is true about a given subject knows, as a matter of course, what is false about it.

It seems to me a proper question to put up for discussion: whether we ought to do philosophy at all. The terms of the question hang together. And if we are not to do philosophy — what then? No one can condemn a thing without first knowing what it is. So even in that case the conclusion is the same: we must philosophize.

That being so, the Greeks ought first to learn from the Law and the Prophets to worship one God only, and him alone as Master. Next they should be taught by the apostle that “an idol is nothing in the world,” since nothing among created things can be a likeness of God. And they should be taught further that not one of the images they worship can be a likeness of anything at all, since the race of souls is not shaped the way the Greeks shape their idols. Souls are invisible — not only the rational ones, but the souls of the other animals as well. And their bodies never become parts of the souls themselves. Bodies are instruments: partly seats, partly vehicles, and in other cases possessions of one kind or another. But not even the instruments can be copied accurately. If they could, a man could model the sun as it looks, and take the likeness of a rainbow in paint.

Once they have left their idols behind, they will hear the Scripture: “Unless your righteousness goes beyond the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees…” — men who counted themselves righteous by keeping clear of what was evil — so that, along with the perfection they showed, and “loving your neighbor,” you may be able to do good as well. Otherwise you will not be “kingly.”

For it is the heightening of the righteousness that the law requires that marks out the one who truly knows. So the man who is set in the head — the part that rules its own body — and who climbs to the summit of faith, which is knowledge itself, the thing every organ of perception exists for, will likewise obtain the highest inheritance.

The apostle shows anyone capable of thinking it through that knowledge comes first, writing to those Greeks at Corinth in these terms: “But we have hope that, as your faith grows, we may be greatly enlarged among you according to our rule, so as to preach the good news beyond you.” He does not mean stretching his preaching out over more territory: he says himself that faith was abounding in Achaia, and the Acts of the Apostles reports that he preached the word at Athens. What he is teaching is that knowledge, which is the perfecting of faith, goes beyond the instruction given to beginners, in keeping with the greatness of the Lord’s teaching and the rule of the church. That is why he goes on to add, “And if I am unpolished in speech, I am not so in knowledge.”

But let those who boast of having laid hold of the truth tell us whom they claim to have heard it from. They will not say from God; they will admit it was from men. And if so, then either they learned it lately from themselves, as some of them arrogantly boast, or from others like themselves. But human teachers speaking about God are not to be relied on, being men. A man cannot speak worthily of the truth about God: the feeble and mortal cannot speak worthily of the one who never came to be and never decays — the work, of the Workman. And if a man is incapable of saying what is true about himself, is he not far less to be relied on in what concerns God? Just as far as man is beneath God in power, so much weaker than God is man’s speech — even though he is not declaring God himself, but only speaking about God and about the divine word.

Human speech is by nature feeble and cannot utter God. I do not mean his name; naming him is common enough, and not to philosophers only but to poets too. Nor do I mean his being, for that is impossible. What speech can reach is the power and the works of God.

Even those who claim God himself as their teacher arrive at some conception of God only with difficulty, and only because grace helps them to the little knowledge they have — accustomed as they are to contemplate God’s will by the will, and the Holy Spirit by the Holy Spirit. “For the Spirit searches the deep things of God. But the man who has only soul does not receive the things of the Spirit.” So the only wisdom is the God-taught wisdom we hold, and on it hang all the springs of wisdom that make their guesses at the truth.

Certainly there were countless indicators of the coming of the Lord who has taught us — heralds, men who made things ready, forerunners — from the beginning, from the founding of the world, hinting beforehand by deeds and by words, prophesying that he would come, and where, and how, and what the signs would be. From far off the Law and Prophecy kept him in view in advance. Then the forerunner pointed him out as present. And after him the heralds point out by their teaching the power of his appearing.

The philosophers, however, chose to teach philosophy to Greeks alone — and not even to all of them: Socrates to Plato, Plato to Xenocrates, Aristotle to Theophrastus, Zeno to Cleanthes. Each of them won over only his own followers.

But the word of our Teacher did not stay in Judea alone, the way philosophy stayed in Greece. It spread over the whole world, over every nation and village and town, already bringing over to the truth whole households, and each man one by one who heard it from him, and not a few of the philosophers themselves.

And let any ruler at all forbid Greek philosophy, and it vanishes on the spot. But our teaching was forbidden at its very first announcement — by kings and tyrants together, by individual rulers and governors with all their hired men, and on top of that by countless men making war on us and doing all they could to stamp it out. And it flourishes all the more. It does not die the way a human teaching dies, and it does not wither like a fragile gift; no gift of God is fragile. It goes on unchecked, though it was prophesied that it would be persecuted to the end. So Plato writes about poetry: “A poet is a light thing, and a holy one, and cannot write poetry until he is inspired and out of his senses.” And Democritus says much the same: “Whatever a poet writes with the breath of God in him and a holy spirit is very beautiful indeed.” And we know what sort of things poets say. Then is no one to be amazed that the prophets of God Almighty became the instruments of the divine voice?

So, having modeled a statue, as it were, of the one who truly knows, we have now shown who he is, sketching in outline both the greatness and the beauty of his character. What he is when it comes to the study of the natural world will be shown later, when we begin to treat the making of the world.