The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Greek Philosophy Reaches Summit of Pagan Thinking

I. Greek Thinking Exhausts Uninspired Speculative Reasoning

Centuries before the dawn of the Christian Era the Greeks developed a civilization surpassing all previous cultures. Their language was perfected into the most adequate vehicle ever devised for conveying human thought. Their religion, however, was a polytheistic personification of the powers of nature, based on a semipantheistic concept of the world. Their many gods embodied the baser, as well as the nobler, passions of the human soul. And there was little concept of God as a personality or of sin as an offense against a holy God and involving guilt. CFF1 529.1

From about 600 B.C. onward philosophy occupied an increasingly dominant place in Greek life, and began to undermine credence in the crude polytheism of the past. Such thinkers as Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno well-nigh exhausted the realm of uninspired speculative reasoning. The philosophy of the fourth century was dominated by SOCRATES (c. 470-399 B.C.); nevertheless he was executed by the Athenians for his “atheism.” His greatest pupil, PLATO (427-347 B.C.), founded the Older Academy. And ARISTOTLE (384-322 B.C.), pupil of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great, founded the Peripatetic (walking around) School, or Lyceum, in the grove of Lycus. These men personified the summit of pagan philosophy. Under them speculative thought provided the loftiest pagan philosophy of immortality to appear in all past time. CFF1 529.2

1. IMPRINTED IMMORTAL-SOULISM ON WORLD THOUGHT

Picture 1: Greek Thinkers:
At the Very Zenith of Greece’s Glory, Greek Thinkers Well nigh Exhausted the Realm of Uninspired Speculative Reasoning.
Page 529

That the Greeks left their impact upon the world of thought—as pertains to the nature, origin, and destiny of man—as no other people of the past have ever done, is beyond controversy. Both their ideas and their terminology have been heavily drafted upon by the makers of early North African Christian theology, and prior to that by Philo of the Jews, likewise of Alexandria. It should be borne in mind that when Christ came, Hellenic thought ruled the world, and that world was a Roman world. Its influence has persisted through the succeeding centuries. Such is the larger background. CFF1 530.1

The doctrine of the Innate Immortality of soul both in thought and in phrase, in teaching and in terminology, is thus derived directly from Greek philosophy. Never should it be forgotten that it was in Greece that the highest pagan development of the Immortal-Soulism concept took place. While the thought, but not the phrase, was found among the Egyptians, both the Platonic Greek teaching and the terminology reappeared in Judaism, before, as well as after, the appearance of Christ, and even more conspicuously among Christians from the second century onward. CFF1 530.2

2. FIRST CONFINED TO POETS AND PHILOSOPHERS; NEVER GENERALLY HELD

The concept of innate, indefeasible Immortality was the product of the poetry, mythology, and philosophy of Greece, however, rather than of its religion. It came through its bards and sages, not its priests and prophets. So while such speculative thought projected the theory of Immortal-Soulism, it never became general or popular, the masses holding to the old mythologies. They feared a fatal dissolution, either upon death or later. The philosophic presentation was too complex and too speculative for popular understanding or acceptance. CFF1 531.1

3. EARLY TEACHING PORTRAYS JOYLESS AFTERWORLD

The prevailing attitude was devoid of personal hope. The early Hellenic teaching was dim, fragmentary, uncertain, inconsistent. It affirmed a joyless afterworld wrapped in gloom, a dark shadow of this world, where men continued to exist as wretched shades of their former selves. The issue was, Is death a state of utter unconsciousness, or annihilation, or a migration to a better world? The ancient Greeks did not think of body and soul as did the Egyptians—with continuance of the latter as dependent upon the former. CFF1 531.2

The separate existence of the soul was the most primitive Greek conception. Vague in the time of Homer (ninth century B.C.), this conception was intensified under Aeschylus and Pindar (fifth century). The later doctrine of the transmigration of souls, widely held by other peoples, had no part in the concepts of the early Greeks, under Homer and Hesiod. The primitive concept of the soul, or ghost, defined it as a sort of fine matter, like smoke, which according to Homer separates itself from the body at death. The notions of immortality were vague, as were those of future rewards and punishments—a murky abyss with “gates of iron and floors of brass,” as one phrased it. Their search for immortal life after death was pathetic. CFF1 531.3

4. FIVE STAGES IN PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT

Philosophy in Greece passed through several periods, or stages: (1) The Scientific Period, with Heraclitus and Pythagoras (c. 510 B.C.); (2) the Period of Enlightenment, with transition to the study of man, under the Sophists (fifth century), and Socrates; (3) the Systematic Philosophers, with Plato and the Academy, with Aristotle and his Peripatetics; (4) the later Ethical Period, with Zeno of Citium (d. c. 263 B.C.) and the Stoics, Epicurus (d. 270 B.C.) and the Epicureans, Pyrrho (third century) and the Skeptics, and the Eclectics, with Philo (d. c. A.D. 47); and (5) finally Neoplatonism, beginning under Philo but developed largely under Plotinus (c. A.D. 205-270), and climaxing in the Alexandrian Philosophical School of the Church Fathers. We will trace these progressively or chronologically. (The accompanying Chart A on the opposite page will aid in following the sequence and grasping relationships.) CFF1 531.4

Chart A:
Pagan Greek Philosphers on the Immortality Issue
Chart A
Pagan Greek Philosophers on the Immortality Issue
Time Sequence, School of Thought, and Major Position on Origin, Nature, and Destiny of Man
1. Preliminary Stage—Poets, Cults, and Mysteries
Homer (c. 850 B.C.), epic poet—separate survival of depersonalized soul
Hesiod (8th cent.), epic poet—conscious activity of soul
Dionysiac cult (transmigration introduced)
Orphic mysteries (pantheism and reincarnation)
Eleusinian mysteries (souls must be released from body-prison)
2. The tonics (or Milesians)
Thales (c. 640-546 B.C.), founder—“water,” first principle
Anaximander (c. 611-547 B.C.)—“infinite,” first principle
Anaximenes of Miletus (c. 500-c. 428 B.C.)—“air,” first principle
Heraclitus (c. 544-c. 484 B.C.)—“eternal fire,” soul an emanated spark
3. The Pythagoreans
Pythagoras (c. 582-496 B.C.)—pre-existence and transmigration
Pherecydes (6th cent. B.C.)—eternal souls and pantheism
4. The Eleatics (Unity and Continuity); and Heraclitus (in Opposition)
Xenophanes (c. 570-c. 475 B.C.), founder—pantheism and reincarnation
Parmenides (c. 540-c. 470 B.C.)—pantheistic concept
Zeno of Elea (5th cent.)—pre-existence and alternating life
5. Tragic and Lyric Poets
Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.), tragic poet—judgment
Euripides (c. 480-406 B.C.), tragic poet—uncertainty
Pindar (c. 522-443 B.C.), greatest lyric poet—successive incarnations; interchangeable immortality
6. Compromise Philosophical Systems (5th cent.)
Empedocles (c. 500-430 B.C.)—dualism, purgation, transmigration
Anaxagoras (c. 500-428 B.C.)—dualism, dissolution of soul lamblichus (d. c. 333 B.C.)
7. The Atomists
Leucippus (fl. 500 B.C.)—philosophical materialism
Democritus (460-355 B.C.)—conscious existence disappears at death
8. The Sophists (halt speculative philosophy)
Gorgias (c. 485-c. 380 B.C.) and Protagoras (5th cent.)—dead may become nothing
9. The Systematic Philosophers
Socrates (c. 470-399 B.C.), founder, Socratic method
Plato (c. 427-347 B.C.), founder, Older Academy
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), founder, Peripatetics
10. The Stoics
Zeno of Citium (c. 355-c. 263 B.C.), founder, Stoic School (materialistic pantheism)
Cleanthes (c. 304/03-c. 233/32 B.C.), successor
Chrysippus (281 /77-208/04 B.C.)
11. The Epicureans-Ethical Period
Epicurus (c. 342-270 B.C.), founder—permanent cessation of life
12. The Skeptics
Pyrrho (c. 365-c. 275 B.C.), founder—undermines Immortal-Soulism
Plutarch (c. A.D. 46-c. 120), biographer and moralist
13. The Eclectics (and the Cynics)
14. The Neoplatonists
Plotinus (c. A.D. 205-270

5. THIS CHAPTER BASED ON RECOGNIZED AUTHORITIES

Scholars of note with no position to sustain and no cause to advocate (and not holding personally to Conditionalism) have thoroughly compassed the teachings of Greek philosophy and have come independently to similar conclusions, agreeing that the origin, nature, and destiny of man was one of Greek philosophy’s primary concerns. This teaching was interwoven as a distinctive thread all through the pattern of their thought. And these scholars have left their lifelong studies and analyses on record. With characteristic thoroughness such men as Rohde, Zeller, Ritter, Preller, Fairbairn, Draper, Charles, Grube, and others have written whole books, sets of books, or chapters dealing with this aspect of Greek thought. CFF1 533.1

Heidelberg University’s Dr. Erwin Rohde’s exhaustive study Psyche—The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality Among the Greeks ran through eight German editions. It is priceless as a reference. Berlin University’s Dr. Eduard Zeller’s two-volume A History of Greek Philosophy had four German editions. ¹ And his Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy had thirteen German editions and at least seven American printings. CFF1 533.2

Several chapters in Dr. Andrew Fairbairn’s Studies in the Philosophy of Religion and History (including two on “Belief in Immortality”), and Oxford’s great scholar, Dr. R. H. Charles, in his A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life, with its section “Doctrine of the Soul and the Future Life Among the Greeks,” are both highly valuable. Mention should also be made of sections in Alger, Salmond, and Hudson. Such is the cumulative expert evidence available. CFF1 534.1

For example, according to the penetrating analysis of John W. Draper, ² in History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Greek philosophy is tersely summarized as revolving around “four Problems: (1) Origin of the World; (2) Nature of the Soul; (3) Existence of God; (4) Criterion of Truth. ³ Such an analysis indicates the necessity of a preliminary survey of the various schools of philosophy leading up to Plato, who established the synthesized pattern that so profoundly influenced the Christian Church from the second and third centuries onward. These scholarly treatises of the past form the basis of this chapter. The positions here surveyed are therefore amply documented and cross-checked. CFF1 534.2

In view of the findings of the vast multiple research of these great Christian scholars, it is time that consideration be given to the impact that Plato and the antecedent Greek philosophers exerted upon the thinking and beliefs of the early, medieval, and modern Christian Church. CFF1 534.3