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Section: 4A - Philosophy.

Number of quotes: 340

A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 35

Section: 3C2,4A

Homoousios was, however, a word with a difficult history. For a start, it was not biblical, which meant that the council was proposing to talk about the nature of the Godhead in terms that were philosophical or conceptual rather than in language drawn directly from the Scriptures.

Quote ID: 141

Time Periods: 4

Apologetic Discourse and the Scribal Tradition
Wayne C. Kannaday
Book ID: 26 Page: 35

Section: 4A

The Earliest Christian Apologists: Quadratus and Aristides. Quadratrus, the earliest known of these defenders of the faith, is barely known to us at all.

Quote ID: 488

Time Periods: 2

Apologetic Discourse and the Scribal Tradition
Wayne C. Kannaday
Book ID: 26 Page: 36

Section: 4A

Finally, Quadratus declares that the effect of Jesus’ miracles was an enduring one. According to him, in fact, there were still persons alive when Quadratus penned his defense of the faith who could testify to Jesus having healed them.

Quote ID: 489

Time Periods: 2

Apologetic Discourse and the Scribal Tradition
Wayne C. Kannaday
Book ID: 26 Page: 38

Section: 4A

That Justin after his conversion continued to clothe himself in the pallium, the symbolic cloak of a philosopher, is highly appropriate in view of his apologetic style and strategy. Among Christians, he was the first serious writer to attempt to link the proclaimed elements of the fledging faith with the well-entrenched and highly respected tenets of Greco-Roman philosophy. Indeed, much of what we label Christian apologetic writing was modeled after Socrates’ own defense at his trial, an apologia in which he attempted to demonstrate the rationality of his position. The First Apology employed stylized features from Plato’s works, and Justin’s Second Apology invoked the name of Socrates several times, including a comparison of him with Jesus to the advantage of Christ (Ap. II.10). Justin himself called his work a προσφώνησις, “an address,” a term borrowed from Hellenistic rhetoric and defined by Menander as “a speech of praise to rulers spoken by an individual.”

Quote ID: 492

Time Periods: 2

Apologetic Discourse and the Scribal Tradition
Wayne C. Kannaday
Book ID: 26 Page: 45

Section: 4A

Before proceeding, however, a brief word about his biography is in order. A pupil of Justin, Tatian too was born of pagan parents. He was reared somewhere in Assyria, traveled widely, and received a conventional Hellenistic education steeped in rhetoric and philosophy. In the autobiographical account of his conversion (Or. 29), he indicates that, after experiencing myriad cults and mystery religions and studying the Greek philosophers, he came to believe through his encounter with the sacred scriptures that Christian doctrine was the only true philosophy. Although in this he sounds much like his master, Tatian denounced Greek philosophy in its entirety. Indeed, there is a sense in which Discourse to the Greeks reads, in the words of J. Quasten, “not so much as an apology for Christianity as it is a vehement, immoderate polemic treatise which rejects and belittles the whole culture of the Greeks.

Quote ID: 493

Time Periods: 2

Apologetic Discourse and the Scribal Tradition
Wayne C. Kannaday
Book ID: 26 Page: 59

Section: 4A

Tertullian captured the prevailing sentiments of many in the Greco-Roman world when he wrote, “That which is truer is prior.” Claim to antiquity instantly afforded religious cults and philosophical schools the badge of legitimacy. Conversely, novelty was viewed with suspicion, if not disdain.

Quote ID: 494

Time Periods: 2

Apologetic Discourse and the Scribal Tradition
Wayne C. Kannaday
Book ID: 26 Page: 69

Section: 4A

Where Origen could effectively answer his criticism with factual correction or allegorical exposition, Porphyry anticipated both responses. It was precisely their own data he was using against them, and he refused to accept allegory as an answer. Therefore, where the text was vulnerable to pagan critique so was the faith and so were the faithful. The text, therefore, was a battlefield.

Quote ID: 496

Time Periods: 23

Apologetic Discourse and the Scribal Tradition
Wayne C. Kannaday
Book ID: 26 Page: 199

Section: 4A

In the earliest years of the Christian movement, the Roman attitude toward followers of Jesus appears to have been marked by casual indifference. Most of the residents of the Empire were, in the words of T. D. Barnes, “either unaware of or uninterested in the Christians in their midst.”

T.D. Barnes, “Pagan Perceptions of Christianity,” in Ian Hazlett, ed., Early Christianity: Origins and Evolution to AD 600 (London: SPCK, 1991), 232. Despite the fact that Christians were present in Rome at least by the time of Claudius, Barnes points out, no clear reference to them can be located in the extant pagan writers of the first century, including Martial, Muvenal, Dio Chrysostom, and Plutarch.

Quote ID: 501

Time Periods: 1

Apology of Aristides on Behalf of the Christians: From a Syriac Ms. Preserved on Mount Sinai, The
Aristides Translated by J. Rendel Harris
Book ID: 423 Page: 8

Section: 4A

...followed by another introduction which cannot be anything else than a part of the primitive apology. It runs as follows:

...Caesar Titus Hadrianus Antoninus, Worshipful and Clement, from Marcianus Aristides, philosopher of Athens.

The additional information which we derive from this sentence is a sufficient guarantee of its genuineness; we have the first name of the philosopher given, as Marcianus; and we have the name of the emperor addressed given at length. To our astonishment this is not Hadrian, but his successor Antoninus Pius, who bears the name of Hadrian by adoption from Publius Aelius Haadrianus.

Quote ID: 8630

Time Periods: 2

Apology of Aristides on Behalf of the Christians: From a Syriac Ms. Preserved on Mount Sinai, The
Aristides Translated by J. Rendel Harris
Book ID: 423 Page: 35

Section: 4A

PJ NOTE: Aristides calls Hadrian “king” at least 17 times.

Quote ID: 8631

Time Periods: 2

Apology of Aristides on Behalf of the Christians: From a Syriac Ms. Preserved on Mount Sinai, The
Aristides Translated by J. Rendel Harris
Book ID: 423 Page: 48/49

Section: 4A

Now the Christians, O king, by going about and seeking have found the truth, and as we have comprehended from their writings they are nearer to the truth and to exact knowledge than the rest of the peoples.

….

…they honour father and mother; they do good to those who are their neighbors, and when they are judges, they judge uprightly….

….

…and from the widows they do not turn away their countenance and they rescue the orphan from him who does him violence and he who has gives to him who has not, without grudging; and when they see the stranger they bring him to their dwellings, and rejoice over him as over a true brother; for they do not call brothers those who are after the flesh, but those who are in the spirit and in God but when one of their poor passes away from the world, and any of them sees him, then he provides for his burial according to his ability, and if they hear that any of their number is imprisoned or oppressed for the name of their Messiah, all of them provide for his needs, and if it is possible that he may be delivered, they deliver him.

And if there is among them a man that is poor and needy, and they have not an abundance of necessaries, they fast two or three days that they may supply the needy with their necessary food.

Quote ID: 8634

Time Periods: 23

Arnobius, ANF Vol. 6, Fathers of the Third Century
Edited by Alexander Roberts
Book ID: 659 Page: 467

Section: 4A

Our opinion on the subject is as follows: —that the whole divine nature, since it neither came into existence at any time, nor will ever come to an end of life, is devoid of bodily features, and does not have anything like the forms with which the termination of the several members usually completes the union of parts. {5} For whatever is of this character, we think mortal and perishable; nor do we believe that that can endure forever which an inevitable ends shuts in, though the boundaries enclosing it be the remotest.

But it is not enough that you limit gods by forms: —you even confine them to the human figure, and with even less decency enclose them in earthly bodies.

PJ footnote reference: Arnobius, Against the Heathen, III.12–13.

Quote ID: 9470

Time Periods: 34

Arnobius, ANF Vol. 6, Fathers of the Third Century
Edited by Alexander Roberts
Book ID: 659 Page: 468

Section: 4A

What, then, some one will say, does the Deity not hear? does He not speak? does He not see what is put before Him? has He not sight? He may in His own, but not in our way.

PJ footnote reference: Arnobius, Against the Heathen, III.18.

Quote ID: 9471

Time Periods: 34

Arnobius, ANF Vol. 6, Fathers of the Third Century
Edited by Alexander Roberts
Book ID: 659 Page: 473

Section: 4A

Men worthy to be remembered in the study of philosophy, who have been raised by your praises to its highest place, ….

PJ footnote reference: Arnobius, Against the Heathen, III.35.

Quote ID: 9473

Time Periods: 23

Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 23

Section: 4A

It was in Alexandria that a vigorous attempt to correlate Judaism with Graeco-Roman culture, especially in philosophy, was made;......

Quote ID: 592

Time Periods: 234

Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 52

Section: 4A

When we consider the Christian mission at the end of the second century and the beginning of the third, we must remember the difference between the administrators like Irenaeus, who was conscious of living among barbarians and taught a traditional theology, and the more modern theologians, especially at Alexandria, who made use of all the resources of Graeco-Roman culture they could baptize.

Quote ID: 593

Time Periods: 23

Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 85

Section: 4A

A woman converted to Christianity came to be alienated from her husband and finally divorced him. He thereupon denounced her as a Christian; she presented a petition to the emperor, asking for time to settle her affairs before presenting her defense. This request was approved; Justin says nothing about the outcome. Meanwhile her husband denounced her Christian teacher Ptolemaeus, who was cast into prison and tortured presumably so that he would recant. Finally he was brought before the uran prefect Q. Lollius Urbicus, former legate in Britain and builder of the Antonine wall.{6} Urbicus asked only whether or not he was a Christian, and then sentenced him to death. Another Christian in court protested the decision on moral grounds. “It seems to me,” said the judge, “that you too are one of them.” The Christian’s confession, followed by that of another bystander, immediately resulted in the death penalty. The only question, as Justin rightly pointed out, was that of the name “Christian”. Justin and other apologists attacked this procedure as immoral, but it followed the precedent in existence before Trajan and Hadrian.

[Footnote 6] Prefect by March 146: W. Huttl, Antoninus Pius (Prague, 1933), I, 370.

Quote ID: 599

Time Periods: 2

Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 89

Section: 4A

Several later apologies had the same function. Melito of Sardis described his own work as a petition, and Eusebius rightly called it libellus.{7} Toward the beginning of the so-called “embassy” of Athenagoras we find verbs related to nouns for petitions, and it too was therefore a libellus.

[Footnote 7] Eusebius, H. E. 4, 26, 5-6.

. . . with these apologies or, rather, libelli, we encounter the first moves made by Christians to try to change the legal and administrative circumstances under which they were suffering the death penalty.

. . . Christians alone are punished simply because of their name;

If an investigation were to be made it would show that their ethical outlook is far superior to that of pagan religions or of Gnostic groups which are not Christian. It would also show that they are loyal to the best philosophical traditions of the empire. They refuse only to worship false gods or human beings such as emperors.

Quote ID: 602

Time Periods: 2

Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 91

Section: 4A

#2)
Melito explicitly argues for official recognition of Christianity. It is a philosophy which at first flourished among barbarians: what he has in mind must be Judaism as the forerunner of Christianity. The philosophy appeared in the empire during Augustus’ reign and clearly aided the growth of the empire. Church and state grew up together.

Quote ID: 605

Time Periods: 2

Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 92

Section: 4A

#3)
The third apologist was Athenagoras, perhaps an Alexandrian, who wrote between 176 and 180 and lavished extravagant praise upon the emperor and his son.

Such praises of Roman rule were reiterated and even intensified by Athenagoras. Athenagoras was the most outlandish of these early "apologists" who claimed to speak on the behalf of the church. He wrote his love letters to the emperor sometime between 176 and 180. He "lavished extravagant praise upon the emperor and his son. Such praise of rulers was common enough in the Roman world, as elsewhere. . . ." But Athenagoras "reiterated and intensified" such praises of Roman rule."

PJ note: In other words, he was "worse than the heathen" in his sycophantic praise of men. "Having men’s persons in admiration for advantage."

In speaking to the emperor, Athenagoras calls earth "your inhabited world". His effusive, gushing adulation of the emperor mirrors exactly pagan panagyrics to emperors.

Quote ID: 606

Time Periods: 2

Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: xi

Section: 1A,3A4A,4A

3A4A

As early as 150 a Roman apologist found the cross typified in the standards of the Roman legions, and a generation later several bishops in Asia Minor explicitly asserted the compatibility of Christianity with the Roman state.

. . . .

4A

At the same time, in spite of official church objections, Christian theologians continued a vigorous effort to interpret Christianity in terms derived from the leading philosophies of the day.

. . . .

1A

In spite of various vicissitudes and individual deviations from the general pattern, it is clear that during the third century Christians were making ready for the time when the church would be recognized by the state and there would be an empire at least nominally Christian.

Quote ID: 578

Time Periods: 23

Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 102

Section: 4A

Under these circumstances, the apologetic movement of the second century, with its attempt to work out the relationships between Christianity and Graeco-Roman culture, was bound to have more effect within the Christian communities than upon the government officials to whom the apologies were usually addressed.

No matter how an apologist like Justin might point to Heraclitus, Socrates, and Musonius Rufus as pre-Christian Christians, the leaders of the state were not convinced.

Quote ID: 613

Time Periods: 2

Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 104

Section: 4A

The apologetic movement as such really got under way when circumstances demanded its appearance.

Hadrianic Hellenism was bound to result in a Christian response, for his program brought him into headlong collision with the Judaism out of which Christianity had arisen. Like Antiochus, who in the second century B.C. had tried to unite his kingdom on the basis of Greek culture and religion, Hadrian favored the worship of Zeus (Hypsistos) in Samaria and of Zeus (Capitolinus) at Jerusalem, where he proposed to rebuild the destroyed city and name it Aelia Capitolina, in honor of himself and/or Zeus.

Pastor John’s note : Why a response needed?

Quote ID: 614

Time Periods: 1

Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 105

Section: 4A

Another attempt at apologetic writing is to be found in the work which Marcianus Aristides of Athens apparently addressed to the emperor Antoninus Pius early in his reign (138-161). This work, extant in full in a Syriac version along with some Greek fragments, begins with a philosophical definition of God, essentially Middle Platonist in origin.

Quote ID: 615

Time Periods: 2

Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 112

Section: 4A

What Justin had done when he moved from philosophy to Christianity was to discover a new religious sanction for his inherited and acquired culture. God and the philosophers were to some extent replaced by God and the prophets.

Quote ID: 619

Time Periods: 2

Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 114

Section: 4A

Justins basic acceptance of the rightness of Roman power is clearly indicated, as Henry Chadwick has pointed out,{14} in his statement that the cross, symbolized in all nature, is represented by the vexillae and trophies of the Roman legions, symbols of Roman power and of divine power at the same time (I, 55).

[Footnote 14] Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 47 (1965), 275-97.

Quote ID: 621

Time Periods: 2

Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 115

Section: 4A

If such a parent happened to encounter the Oration of the Christian critic Tatian, his worst fears would be confirmed. Tatian took positive delight in his own alienation from society and claimed that it was essentially Christian. “I do not wish to rule, I do not wish to be rich, I despise military honors . . .”{15} Christians like him regarded philosophy and rhetoric as meaningless compared with knowledge derived from revelation and personal experience.

[Footnote 15] Or. II; cf. Hippolytus, Apost. Trad. 16, 17-19.

Quote ID: 622

Time Periods: 2

Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 117

Section: 4A

A similar emphasis on resurrection occurs in the first book Ad Autolycum, composed by Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, around 180. All three of Theophilus’ books reflect the attempted fusion between Christianity and culture which was being made in his time.

During this era, there was an attempt at a fusion of the faith with the Graeco-Roman culture (PJ Note - which was not limited to the philosophical realm. see pg. 118b).

Quote ID: 623

Time Periods: 2

Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 118

Section: 4A

the acute Hellenization of Christianity occurred on all sorts of levels during the second century.

Quote ID: 624

Time Periods: 2

Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 135

Section: 4A

Other writings of Apollinaris clearly show that he was loyal not only to the Roman church, whose date for Easter he accepted against the usual Asian custom, but also to the Roman state. In an apology now lost he told the story of a legion miraculously victorious after Christian soldiers had knelt in prayer.{16}

[Footnote 16] Ibid., 5, 5, 4.

Quote ID: 628

Time Periods: 4

Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 142

Section: 2D3A,4A

Christian leaders had taken great pains to argue that the revelation was in harmony with philosophy at its best because philosophers had in part been inspired by the Logos.

What underlay the symptoms, however, was the Montanists’ basic concern. They were reviving the apocalyptic eschatology, based on Jewish and Jewish-Christian documents, from which the churches had gradually been turning away. Their revival of primitive Christian concerns was basically irrelevant for the leaders of late second-century Christianity and for their followers as well. The church was now coming to terms with Graeco-Roman culture and finding a place for itself in the world.

COPIED

Quote ID: 631

Time Periods: 234

Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 220

Section: 4A,4B

All these examples illustrate the close correlation of third-century Christianity with the philosophical and governmental world of the time.

At the end of the third century, Christians had spread geographically, but were also steadily climbing upwards on the Graeco-Roman social ladder.

Quote ID: 650

Time Periods: 3

Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 34

Section: 4A

Throughout the late classical period, philosophers were at one and the same time admired and mocked by their contemporaries for practising a form of hyper-individualism. Though often a man of high status and culture, the philosopher presented himself as a person pointedly free from power. He had rejected office, in his city and at court, and the accumulation of wealth that invariably went with the opportunities for self-enrichment associated with the exercise of power.

Quote ID: 691

Time Periods: 0

Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 34

Section: 4A

The philosopher lived by his free logos alone. He did not feel bound, as the majority of unthinking persons of his own class felt themselves to be bound, by the heavy restraints of nomos – by respect for traditional custom and for the obligation imposed by traditional civic ritual. If a philosopher made religious choices, he was expected to justify and to communicate these without peremptory commands and without slavish appeals to common custom.

Quote ID: 692

Time Periods: 0

Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 36/37

Section: 4A,4B

Yet one only had to look at a professional philosopher such as Themistius to know that he was not for real. Themistius was a past-master at the art of ostentatiously rejecting the marks of power. When dining with the emperors, he was always careful to wear his philosopher’s dark tribonion. He even eschewed an official salary.19 But it was impossible not to notice that Themistius usually made his appearance when the emperor was intending to back down from a course of action that had proved unfeasible or unpopular.

Quote ID: 693

Time Periods: 4

Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 37/38

Section: 4A,4B

The philosopher moved in a basically conformist upper-class world. I do not mean conformist only in the pejorative sense. In the Roman empire, young men of the upper classes were socialised, from childhood up, to reverence ancestral custom, to value solidarity, and to appreciate and use power. To his peers, the philosopher was an invaluable safety-valve. He was a licensed maverick in an otherwise deadly serious class of persons.

Quote ID: 695

Time Periods: 4

Barbarians within the Gates of Rome
Thomas S. Burns
Book ID: 37 Page: 83

Section: 4A

Many have seen in Themistius an important philosophical bridge between the purely pagan world of traditional Hellenistic philosophy in its Roman form and the Christian outlook rapidly taking over men’s minds.

Rather, Themistius stands early in the process by which Hellenism found a safe niche in East Roman and later Byzantine Christian society.

Quote ID: 750

Time Periods: 4

Basilica
R.A. Scotti
Book ID: 39 Page: 19

Section: 4A

The ideas of Aquinas and his Scholastics derived from the philosophy of Aristotle.

Quote ID: 825

Time Periods: 7

Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 307

Section: 2C,4A

[RE: Seneca] His pessimism, his condemnation of the immorality of his time, his counsel to return anger with kindness ,{54} and his preoccupation with death{55} made Tertullian call him “ours,”{56} and led Augustine to exclaim, “What more could a Christian say than this pagan has said?”{57} He was not a Christian; but at least he asked for an end to slaughter and lechery, called men to a simple and decent life, and reduced the distinctions between freeman, freedman, and slave to “mere titles born of ambition or of wrong.”{58}

Quote ID: 903

Time Periods: 12

Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 613

Section: 4A

In Egypt the growth of the Church was slower, and its early stages are lost to history; suddenly, late in the second century, we hear of a “Catechetical School” in Alexandria, which wedded Christianity to Greek philosophy, and produced two major fathers of the Church. Both Clement and Origen were well versed in pagan literature, and loved it after their own fashion; if their spirit had prevailed there would have been a less destructive break between classical culture and Christianity.

Quote ID: 911

Time Periods: 2

Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 86

Section: 4A

Justin set out to prove Christianity’s association and consonance with ancient Greek philosophy.

Quote ID: 992

Time Periods: 2

Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 90

Section: 4A

“... far from there being an antagonism between Greek philosophy and Christian doctrine. . .” Clement felt that philosophy had prepared the Greek world for the gospel, just as the Hebrew scriptures had prepared the Jews for it.

Quote ID: 993

Time Periods: 2

Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 91

Section: 4A

Tertullian in his Apology, makes the famous remark to the effect that every human souls by nature Christian.

Quote ID: 995

Time Periods: 2

Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 92

Section: 4A

But Tertullian countered with the famed and penetrating question, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What has the Academy to do with the Church? . . . . Away with all attempts to produce a philosophic Christianity! We want no curious disputation, once we have possessed Jesus Christ, no inquisition after receiving the gospel. When we believe we desire no further belief. For the first article of our faith is this: that there is nothing beyond this that we need believe.”

Quote ID: 996

Time Periods: 2

Cambridge Ancient History Vol. XII: The Imperial Crisis and Recovery A.D. 193-324
Edited by S. A. Cook, F. E. Adcock, M. P. Charlesworth, and N. H. Baynes
Book ID: 325 Page: 480/481

Section: 4A

The real value of Clement’s writing, apart from his citations of other authors, sacred and profane, consists in the picture that he unconsciously draws of a paganism attracted by the Christian system and willing to accept it if it can be shown to be not inconsistent with a cultivated and enlightened view of the universe, and on the other hand of a Christianity willing to express its beliefs in a way consistent with the best Pagan culture.
- quoting the late Prof. Burkitt (Cambridge Ancient History, XII, p. 480).

Quote ID: 7778

Time Periods: 2

Christian History Magazine: Defending the Cannibals, Issue 57 Vol. XVIII No. 1
J. David Cassel
Book ID: 370 Page: 15

Section: 4A

The empire’s “best allies”

Christians among the elite, usually philosophers and writers, vigorously refuted the charges against their religion. They are known as apologists, from the Greek apologeo meaning “to defend.” Once they established their defensive position, however, apologists took the offensive, arguing that Christianity was the only true philosophy.

Quote ID: 8203

Time Periods: 2

Christian History Magazine: Defending the Cannibals, Issue 57 Vol. XVIII No. 1
J. David Cassel
Book ID: 370 Page: 15

Section: 4A

Justin Martyr, a convert from paganism who became the best known of the early apologists, went a step further, arguing that Christians should not be condemned unless factual evidence proved they were criminals. A close examination of the facts, he said, will prove that Christians are morally, upright, and law-abiding citizens who are the empire’s “best allies in securing good order.”

Quote ID: 8204

Time Periods: 2

Christian History Magazine: Ordinary Saints at First Church, pp. 18-20, Issue 57 Vol. XVII No. 1
E. Glenn Hinson
Book ID: 377 Page: 18/19

Section: 4A,3A3B

The example of Christians’ high moral standards and their practice of offering charity to all, regardless of social status, also made a deep impression on unbelievers. Galen (129-199), the Greek physician, in commenting on those “people called Christians,” wrote, “They include not only men but also women who refrain from cohabitating all through their lives, and they also number individuals who, in self-discipline and self-control in matters of food and drink, and in their keen pursuit of justice, have attained a pitch not inferior to that of genuine philosophy.”

Quote ID: 8247

Time Periods: 2

Christian Initiation and Baptism in the Holy Spirit: Evidence from the First Eight Centuries
Kilian McDonnell and George T. Montague
Book ID: 53 Page: 301

Section: 4A

Aphrahat seems to have been isolated enough as to be unaware of both Arianism and the Council of Nicaea (325), though he was still writing in 345. Ephrem probably knew little or no Greek. While he did not completely reject Greek culture, he did say “Happy the man who has not tasted of the Greek poison.”{13} More specifically, the poison was pagan Greek influence on theology.

Quote ID: 1195

Time Periods: 2

Christian Initiation and Baptism in the Holy Spirit: Evidence from the First Eight Centuries
Kilian McDonnell and George T. Montague
Book ID: 53 Page: 302

Section: 1B,4A

Brock divides the process of the hellenization of Syriac culture into three periods.{17} Aphrahat and Ephrem, both fourth-century writers, belong to the first period. Both represent a Christian culture which is still Semitic in its vision and style, Ephrem alone showing the beginnings of some borrowings.

Quote ID: 1196

Time Periods: 4

Christian Topography: Flat Earth
Cosmas Indiopleustes
Book ID: 368 Page: 63

Section: 1B,4A

…the scope of his words includes, though but darkly, the Roman empire, which made its appearance {147} contemporaneously with the Lord Christ. "For while Christ was yet {71} in the womb, the Roman empire received its power from God as the servant of the dispensation which Christ introduced, since at that very time the accession was proclaimed of the unending line of the Augusti by whose command a census was made which embraced the whole world. The evangelist certainly indicates that this enrollment {142} was first made in the days of Augustus Caesar, when the Lord Christ was born, and deigned to be enrolled in a country subject to Roman dominion, and to pay tribute thereto.

The empire of the Romans thus participates in the dignity of the Kingdom of the Lord Christ, seeing that it transcends, as far as can be in this state of existence, every other power, and will remain unconquered until the final consummation, for he says that it shall not be destroyed for ever.

Quote ID: 8196

Time Periods: 12

Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 69

Section: 4A

So an illiterate hermit might “philosophize” or a pious nun be called “philosopher”.

Quote ID: 1468

Time Periods: 2

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 66

Section: 4A

The apologists sought to present Christians as pious and god-fearing by the standards of Greco-Roman society.

Quote ID: 4553

Time Periods: 2

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 67

Section: 4A

By the middle of the second century, however, a Christian apologist such as Justin Martyr, who was well aware that Christianity was being viewed as a superstition, had begun to make the counterclaim. “We cultivate piety, justice, philanthropy, faith, and hope.” This passage could have been written by the Roman moralist and philosopher Seneca.

Quote ID: 4554

Time Periods: 2

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 77

Section: 4A

Nevertheless, precisely at the time that Galen and Celsus were writing against Christian fideism, exclusive reliance in religious matters upon faith, with consequent rejection of appeals to science or philosophy, a number of Christian thinkers had begun to revise and correct this view of Christianity.

Quote ID: 4557

Time Periods: 2

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 83

Section: 4A

In the middle of the second century, Melito, Bishop of Sardis in western Asia Minor, spoke of Christianity as “our philosophy” (Frag. 7), and Justin Martyr, another early Christian apologist writing about the same time, presented his conversion to Christianity as a conversion to philosophy.... He found “this philosophy [Christianity] alone to be sure and profitable” (Dial. 8).

PJ Q: Who is “he” in the second quote? A: Justin Martyr

Quote ID: 4558

Time Periods: 2

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 94

Section: 4A

Until the last half of the second century all our information about Roman and Greek attitudes toward the Christians could be written in a few pages. But about the year 170 C.E. a Greek philosopher by the name of Celsus wrote a major book devoted solely to the Christians.

Quote ID: 4559

Time Periods: 2

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 98

Section: 4A

Celsus is the first critic to call Jesus a magician and charge the Christians with practicing magic. It may be that this view was already adumbrated in Suetonius, who spoke of Christianity as a “new and criminal (maleficus) superstition.” The term maleficus can mean “magical”, and used as a noun it designated a magician. {8} If so, Suetonius foreshadows what later became a common charge. {9} Celsus is, however, explicit. “It was by magic that he Jesus was able to do the miracles which he appeared to have done” (c. Cels. 1.6).

[Footnote 8] Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark (Cambridge, 1973), 234; also, Jesus the Magician (New York, 1978), 45-67.

[Footnote 9] See, for example, the writing of Hierocles, governor of Bithynia, comparing Jesus to Apollonius of Tyana. Hierocles’s treatise is lost, but a good idea of the work can be gained from Eusebius’s response. Text and English translation in F. C. Conybeare, Philostratus: The Life of Apollonius of Tyana (Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, 1969), 2: 484-605.

Quote ID: 4560

Time Periods: 2

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 99

Section: 4A

The practice of magic was a criminal offense in the Roman Empire and the word magician a term of opprobrium and abuse.

Quote ID: 4561

Time Periods: 2

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 129

Section: 4A

Porphyry, however, was not impressed by Origen. He was put off by the “absurdity” of Origen’s efforts to reconcile the Greek intellectual tradition with the new religion that had arisen in Palestine. Comparing Origen to another contemporary Greek philosopher, Ammonius, Porphyry said:

"Ammonius was a Christian brought up in Christian ways by his parents, but when he began to think philosophically, he promptly changed to a law-abiding way of life. Origen on the other hand, a Greek schooled in Greek thought, plunged headlong into un-Greek recklessness; immersed in this, he peddled himself and his skill in argument. In his way of life he behaved like a Christian, defying the law; in his metaphysical and theological ideas he played the Greek, giving a Greek twist to foreign tales." [Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 6.19]

Quote ID: 4572

Time Periods: 23

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 134

Section: 4A,4B

Porphyry and his Christian opponents shared many moral and religious values.

Quote ID: 4573

Time Periods: 23

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 136

Section: 2B,4A

Porphyry presents an elaborate discussion of the theology of the various ancient peoples - Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Chaldeans, even the Hebrews - to show that these ancient beliefs were similar to the philosophical religion accepted by many educated people in the third century. He does this by showing that the “oracles” of the traditional religions could be used as a source for belief in the One Supreme Being. His strategy was to provide a way to incorporate Christianity, which also claimed to believe in the one high God, into the religious framework of the Roman world.

Quote ID: 4574

Time Periods: 23

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 137

Section: 4A

Porphyry responded directly to this new development by arguing that Daniel could not be read as a prophecy of the future, as Christians were inclined to interpret it, but as a history of events in the author’s own time.

Quote ID: 4575

Time Periods: 23

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 148

Section: 2B,2B1,4A

If all that was known of Porphyry’s attack on Christianity were what we have discussed thus far, it would be hard to imagine why his work was so feared by Christians. This is* precisely the conclusion to which a recent writer on Porphyry’s Against the Christians has come. “That its burning should have been thought necessary as late as 448 is sufficient evidence of its power to move men’s minds. Yet when we look at the undoubtedly genuine fragments it is difficult to see why such a fear existed if they are indeed characteristic of the whole.”{11}

[Footnote 11] Meredith, 1136.

Porphyry was feared because he also wrote another book, the Philosophy from Oracles, and this work sets forth more fundamental criticism of Christianity. In it Porphyry provided a sympathetic account and a defense of the traditional religions of the Greco-Roman world, and he sought to make a place within this scheme for the new religion founded by Jesus of Nazereth.

....sophisticated thinkers such as Porphyry or Celsus believed that though there was one supreme God this did not prevent people from believing in other lesser gods. The term divine designated a category of being stretching from the one high God down through the Olympian gods, the visible gods (e.g., the stars), the daimones, and finally to heroes or deified men. The supreme God presided over a company of gods.

PJ: Three in one.

Quote ID: 4580

Time Periods: 23

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 151

Section: 4A

For over a century, since the time when the Apologists first began to offer a reasoned and philosophical presentation of Christianity to pagan intellectuals, Christian thinkers had claimed that they worshipped the same God honored by the Greeks and Romans, in other words, the deity adored by other reasonable men and women. Indeed, Christians adopted precisely the same language to describe God as did pagan intellectuals. The Christian apologist Theophilus of Antioch described God as “ineffable...inexpressible....uncontainable....incomprehensible....inconceivable...incomparable...unteachable....immutable...inexpressible...without beginning because he was uncreated, immutable because he is immortal” (Ad Autol. 1.3-4). This view, that God was an immaterial, timeless, and impassible divine being, who is known through the mind alone, became a keystone of Christian apologetics, for it served to establish a decisive link to the Greek spiritual and intellectual tradition. As late as the fifth century, in Augustine’s City of God and Theodoret of Cyrus’s apology, The Curing of Greek Maladies, apologists continued to argue that Christians and pagans worshipped the same supreme being. Porphyry’s strategy was to sever the link between Christianity and Hellenism by showing that Christians had abandoned worship of this God in favor of the worship of Christ.

Quote ID: 4583

Time Periods: 23

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 152

Section: 2B2,4A

As an example of such an oracle, Augustine mentions one quoted by Porphyry from Apollo: “In God, the begetter and the king before all things, at whom heaven trembles, and earth and sea are hidden depths of the underworld and the very divinities shudder in dread; their law is the Father whom the holy Hebrews greatly honor.”

Quote ID: 4584

Time Periods: 23

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 152

Section: 2B2,4A

“What I am going to say", says Porphyry, "may certainly appear startling to some. I mean the fact that the gods have pronounced Christ to have been extremely devout, and have said that he has become immortal, and that they mention him in terms of commendation;...."

Quote ID: 4585

Time Periods: 23

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 152

Section: 4A

Porphyry cites one oracle from Hecate that described Jesus as a “very pious man” and another which said: “The wise men of the Hebrews (and this Jesus was also one of them, as you have heard from the oracles of Apollo, quoted above) warned religious men against these evil demons and lesser spirits, and forbade them to pay attention to them, telling their hearers rather to venerate the gods of heaven, but above all to worship God the Father. But this is what the gods also teach; and we have shown above how they advise us to turn our thoughts to God, and everywhere bid us worship him...” (Civ. Dei 19.23).

Quote ID: 4586

Time Periods: 23

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 153

Section: 4A

Why pagans should honor Christ can be seen from some of their philosophers - for example, Porphyry - who “consulted their gods to discover what they should respond about Christ and were compelled by their own oracles to praise him” (De cons. 1.15.23).

Quote ID: 4588

Time Periods: 23

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 154

Section: 2B,2B2,4A

On the basis of Augustine’s writings, Porphyry’s discussion of Christianity in the Philosophy from Oracles included the following: (1) praise for Jesus as a good and pious man who ranks among the other sages or divine men, for example, Pythagoras or Hercules, venerated by the Greeks and Romans; (2) criticism of the disciples, and of those who follow their teaching, because they misrepresented Jesus and inaugurated a new form of worship; (3) defense of the worship of the one high God; (4) praise of the Jews for worshipping this one God.

In his Adversus Nationes written in 311 C.E., Arnobius says that he is at a loss to explain why the pagans attack and the gods are hostile to the Christians. “We have,” he writes, “one common religion with you and join with you in worshipping the one true God. To which the pagans reply: ‘The gods are hostile to you because you maintain that a man, born of a human being.....was God and you believe that he still exists and you worship him in daily prayers’” (Adv. Nat. 1.36).

Quote ID: 4589

Time Periods: 23

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 161

Section: 4A

Like Galen and Celsus, Porphyry charged Christians with promulgating an “unreasoning faith” (Eusebius, Praep. Evang. 1.3.1).

Quote ID: 4596

Time Periods: 23

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 183

Section: 3C2,4A

For several decades Christian thinkers had been debating whether the son was “ungenerated” or “generated.” If the son was generated - that is, came into existence - then he could not be divine. Only God is ungenerated, for he exists eternally without change.

Quote ID: 4604

Time Periods: 4

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 201

Section: 4A

Julian......he impugned the Christians for deserting the gods. In the Roman world this charge was not simply a matter of “our gods” against “your God.” The gods were part of an entire social world into which Christianity could not be fitted.

Quote ID: 4614

Time Periods: 4

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 205

Section: 4A

When one observes how much Christians shared with their critics, and how much they learned from them, it is tempting to say that Hellenism laid out the path for Christian thinkers. In fact, one might convincingly argue the reverse. Christianity set a new agenda for philosophers. {3} The distinctive traits of the new religion and the tenacity of Christian apologists in defending their faith opened up new horizons for Greco-Roman culture and breathed new life into the spiritual and intellectual traditions of the ancient world.

Quote ID: 4615

Time Periods: 2

Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, LCL 268: Cicero XIX
Translated by H. Rackham
Book ID: 354 Page: 5

Section: 4A

…Protagoras declared himself uncertain, and Diagoras of Melos and Theodorus of Cyrene held that there are no gods at all.

Quote ID: 8132

Time Periods: 0

Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, LCL 268: Cicero XIX
Translated by H. Rackham
Book ID: 354 Page: 5

Section: 4A

And until this issue is decided, mankind must continue to labour under the profoundest uncertainty, and to be in ignorance about matters of the highest moment.

Pastor John’s note: both footnotes are in the i section! Ref. From Nature of the Gods, I.i. (Book I, section i)

Quote ID: 8133

Time Periods: 0

Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, LCL 268: Cicero XIX
Translated by H. Rackham
Book ID: 354 Page: 471/473

Section: 4A

In fact, if there is truth in the praise of philosophy that occupies a certain volume{b} of mine, it is obvious that its pursuit is supremely worthy of all persons of the highest character and eminence, and only precaution that need be observed by us whom the Roman nation has placed in this rank is to prevent our private studies from encroaching at all upon our public interest.

Quote ID: 8138

Time Periods: 0

Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance, The
John Hale
Book ID: 202 Page: 198/200

Section: 4A

‘Surely the first place is due to holy scripture’, wrote Erasmus in his widely read dialogue The Religious Banquet, ‘but sometimes I find some things said or written by the ancients, by pagans and poets, so chaste, so holy, so divine, that I am persuaded a good genius enlightened them. Certainly there are many in the communion of saints who are not in our catalogue of saints.’{18}

….

Calvin was shaped by and endorsed humanistic studies and also – as long as the texts were carefully chosen and the teaching of them vigilant – the classics-based school curricula that were becoming standard in Europe for the preparation of ministers as well as merchants, courtiers and lawyers.

Quote ID: 4626

Time Periods: 7

Civilizations of the Middle Ages: A Completely Revised and Expanded Edition of Medieval History, The
Norman F. Cantor
Book ID: 203 Page: 50

Section: 3C,4A

To the western Christians their Greek-speaking fellows were trying to define the indefinable - the trinity of God, Son, and the Holy Spirit. The deeply philosophical problems that were of such overriding importance to the easterners gave way in the West to more pragmatic problems of church administration and consideration of the relationship between the deity and man.

Quote ID: 4665

Time Periods: 4

Clement of Alexandria, LCL 092
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 140 Page: 49

Section: 4A

Exhortation to the Greeks - Chpt. II

. . . the term atheist has been applied to Euhemerus of Acragas, Nicanor of Cyprus, Diagoras and Hippo of Melos, with that Cyrenian named Theodorus and a good many others besides, men who lived sensible lives and discerned more acutely, I imagine, than the rest of mankind the error connected with these gods. Even if they did not perceive the truth itself, they at least suspected the error; and this suspicion is a living spark of wisdom, and no small one, which grows up like a seed into truth. One of them thus directs the Egyptians: “If you believe they are gods, do not lament them, nor beat the breast; but if you mourn for them, no longer consider these beings to be gods.”{c} Another, having taken hold of a Heracles made from a log of wood- he happened, likely enough, to be cooking something at home- said: “Come, Heracles, now is your time to under-take this thirteenth labour for me, as you did the twelve for Eurystheus, and prepare Diagoras his dish!” Then he put him into the fire like a log.

Quote ID: 3016

Time Periods: 0

Clement of Alexandria, LCL 092
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 140 Page: 241

Section: 4A

Exhortation to the Greeks - Chpt. XI

And it is only necessary to live according to piety, in order to obtain eternal life; whereas philosophy, as the elders say, is a lengthy deliberation, that pursues wisdom with a never-ending love.{a}

Quote ID: 3031

Time Periods: 2

Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 209

Section: 4A

One of the pioneers of these attempts to harmonise Christianity with pagan philosophy was Justin (p.206), though this did not save him from martyrdom at Rome, where he had taught during the wave of anti-Christian feeling under Marcus Aurelius (c. 165/7). {10}

Quote ID: 4751

Time Periods: 2

Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 210

Section: 4A

. . .Clement of Alexandria . He was a convert from paganism, like so many of these apologists – whose writings were thus a personal defense of their own life’s choice. Justin and men of his persuasion, known as the Greek Apologists, had sought to commend their faith to educated pagans and Jews.

. . . .

Clement was not satisfied with faith alone, which he regarded as a summary of urgent truths suitable for people in a hurry. He wanted to endow the New Testament with a rationalist basis: to use knowledge and learning to build a faith that was scientific, employing philosophy as ‘an evident image of the Truth, a divine gift to the Greeks’—though a somewhat esoteric gift (in the Gnostic traditions), . . .

. . . .

Like Justin, he saw Christ as the final expression of the Hellenic Word or Divine Reason, and Plato as Attic Moses and fore-runner of Jesus. Yet Clement expressed his Christian idea of the function of philosophy with jubilant vigour.

Quote ID: 4752

Time Periods: 2

Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 210

Section: 4A

In Origen (d. 254/5), the most prolific author of antiquity, the church for the first time found a theologian who had really mastered Greek thought and particularly Plato, and had been in close contact with the head of a philosophical school.

. . . .

His sophisticated refutation of Celsus, whose Platonism had been anti-Christian (p. 226), is second only to Augustine’s City of God as a landmark in the struggle with paganism.

Quote ID: 4753

Time Periods: 23

Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 211

Section: 4A

Philosophers, pagan and Christian alike, were now in fashion; and in the latter half of the third century, just as pagan sarcophagi pictured the after-life in terms of philosophical tranquility (p. 190), so too their Christian counterparts show Jesus in the guise of a philosopher.

Quote ID: 4754

Time Periods: 3

Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 212

Section: 4A

First, there was much vigorous hostility to the whole philosophical approach, for example from Tertullian (p. 227) and his fierce fellow-African Arnobius (c. 305). {17}

Quote ID: 4756

Time Periods: 2

Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 226

Section: 4A

It was perhaps in the later second century that Minucius Felix, apparently a north African, wrote the first extant defence of Christianity in Latin.

Quote ID: 4767

Time Periods: 2

Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 240

Section: 4A

This feeling had ancient roots. Before the official recognition of the church, many Christian writers had detested not only the Roman state but the whole philosophical education in which the Apologists had tried to dress Christianity’s Jewish doctrines (p. 210). For instance, the easterner Tatian in the second century had gloried in Christian ‘barbarity’. {107} And he was echoed by Tertullian, who after initially attacking all deviations from official doctrine (c. 197) {108} had later identified himself with their most extreme version, Montanism.

Quote ID: 4775

Time Periods: 2

Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 73

Section: 2B,4A

If Plato was right and the Forms existed eternally, then others living before Plato might have been able to grasp them. Philo went so far to argue that Moses had been a Platonic philosopher who had understood the Forms in the way Plato had hoped his followers would. Moses’ Old Testament God was none other than “the Good” of Plato. (The later Platonis Numenius second century A.D. went so far as to claim, “Who is Plato, if not Moses speaking in Greek?”)

Quote ID: 4807

Time Periods: 2

Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 74

Section: 4A

Philo knew nothing of Christianity, but he was to prove enormously important in bridging the gap between Judaism and Greek philosophy in representing God of the Old Testament as a Platonic God, thus enabling Greek philosophers to find a home with the Jewish and, later, the Christian tradition.

Quote ID: 4809

Time Periods: 12

Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: xv

Section: 4A

If the sun rises every day of our existence, we might assume that it will always rise, but there is no certainty of this. The Greeks recognized this as well as grasping that theories must always be the servants of facts. Describing what he has observed about the generation of bees, Aristotle notes that “the facts have not been sufficiently ascertained, and if they are ever ascertained, then we must trust perception rather than theories.”

Quote ID: 4778

Time Periods: 0

Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 142/143

Section: 4A

Christian Justin Martyr (c. 100-c. 165), a Platonist by training, was among the first to argue that Christianity could draw on both scriptures and Greek philosophy and could even appropriate philosophy for its own ends. “Whatever good they the philosophers taught belongs to us Christians.” He was echoed by Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-c. 215), who claimed that God had given philosophy to the Greeks as “a school-master” until the coming of the Lord as ... a preparation which paved the way towards perfection in Christ.”

Quote ID: 4817

Time Periods: 2

Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 144/145

Section: 4A

Platonism became entwined with Christianity.

This was a question of grafting Platonism onto Christianity rather than the creation of a new philosophy. One problem lay in reconciling the Hebrew concept of God with the single pure unity of the “the Good” of Plato. Imaginative thinking was needed.

Quote ID: 4818

Time Periods: 23

Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 183

Section: 3C2,4A

The clergy lost all their exemptions, and in 362 they were forbidden to teach rhetoric or grammar. It was absurd, declared Julian, for Christians to teach classical culture while at the same time pouring scorn on classical religion--if they wished to teach, they should confine themselves to teaching the Gospels in their churches.

Quote ID: 4854

Time Periods: 4

Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 189

Section: 4A,3C1

The Cappadocian Fathers are an attractive trio. All were steeped in classical philosophy, Gregory of Nazianzus declaring that Athens, where he and Basil had studied, was “a city truly of gold and the patroness of all that is good.”

Quote ID: 4862

Time Periods: 4

Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 189

Section: 4A

Their works, orations and letters present a fascinating example of the way in which classical philosophy could be yoked to Christian theology to formulate doctrine.

Quote ID: 4867

Time Periods: 2

Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 272

Section: 4A

The first significant theologian to write in Latin was Tertullian, the son of a centurion, born in the north African trading city of Carthage.

Quote ID: 4973

Time Periods: 2

Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: xvii

Section: 4A

The Greek intellectual tradition did not simply lose vigour and disappear. Rather, in the fourth and fifth century A.D. it was destroyed by the political and religious forces which made up the highly authoritarian government of the late Roman empire.

Quote ID: 4780

Time Periods: 4

Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: xvii

Section: 4A

The imposition of orthodoxy went hand in hand with a stifling of any form of independent reasoning. By the fifth century, not only has rational thought been suppressed, but there has been a substitution for it of “mystery, magic and authority,”

Quote ID: 4782

Time Periods: 5

Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 206 Page: 57

Section: 4A

Political (and military) life at this period 200 A.D. was so intolerable (and, let us face it, boring) that many turned to quite other matters . . .

But one of the most widely read writers of the period seems to have come from Egypt. This was the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus (AD 205-269/70) (See Figure 2).

Quote ID: 5033

Time Periods: 23

Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue A Study in the Origins of Antisemitism, The
James Parkes
Book ID: 207 Page: 14

Section: 4A

The first thing which attracted outside attention was naturally their religion. Theopharstus, Clearchus and Hermippus, writers of the third century, consider them to be a race of philosophers. The first, after an extremely mixed and inaccurate description of Jewish sacrifices, says that the most interesting thing is that, ‘being by nature philosophers, during the sacrifice, they discuss the divine nature with each other’. Clearchus relates that in India philosophers were called ‘Calani’ (presumably Brahmins), and in Syria, ‘Jews’. Hermippus considers that Pythagoras learned his philosophy from the Jews.

Quote ID: 5060

Time Periods: 3

Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 85

Section: 4A

Origen treated philosophy as a preparation for theology: with his pupil he read widely in the Greek philosophers, pointing out what was useful and true, and finally he read with him the Bible, which he interpreted as the repository of all truth and wisdom.

Quote ID: 1573

Time Periods: 23

Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 86/87

Section: 4A

The strength and attractiveness of Origen’s theology lay in his knowledge and use of contemporary philosophy: he read the recent philosophers on whom Plotinus lectured at Rome, he entered into the philosophical debates of his own day, and he achieved a far more detailed synthesis of Platonism and Christianity than any earlier Christian thinker.{56}

Quote ID: 1575

Time Periods: 23

Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 87

Section: 4A

And again, like his contemporaries, Origen blends his Platonism with what he considered best in other systems; in particular he takes much of his logic, ethics, and psychological vocabulary from Stoicism. Thus Origen could argue with pagan philosophers on equal terms and speak with authority, and thus, too, the fundamentals of his thought remained attractive for philosophical theologians of the fourth century, who, like Origen, set their Christianity in a Middle Plantonic mental framework. {58}

[Footnote 58] J. M. Rist, Basil of Caesarea: Christian, Humanist, Ascetic, ed. P. J. Fredwick (Toronto, 1981), 137 ff.

Quote ID: 1576

Time Periods: 23

Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 134

Section: 3C2,4A

From the middle of the second century onward, Eusebius asserts, Christianity was universally recognized as a sober and respectable philosophy against which no one dared to revive the ancient calumnies. {44}

[Footnote 44] HE 4.7.

Quote ID: 1583

Time Periods: 4

Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 178

Section: 1B,4A

Like Celsus in the second century, Porphyry presented Christians as apostates, both from Greco-Roman religion and culture and from Jewish religion and culture, who forsook the established cults of city and country, patronized by kings, lawgivers, and philosophers, for atheism and impiety. {108} Christians had first made common cause with the impious Jews, the enemies of all mankind, and then abandoned even the Jews for something newfangled and irrational. Such men deserved brutal punishment - and between 303 and 313 many of them received brutal punishment. {109}

Quote ID: 1595

Time Periods: 234

Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 196/197

Section: 4A,4B

A Platonic philosopher writing in Alexandria about 300 prefaced a critique of Manichean doctrines with some observations on the state of Christianity which presumably reflect conditions in that city. He characterized Christianity as a simple philosophy, chiefly devoted to ethical instruction, which tells ordinary people how to behave and thus inculcates genuine virtue, piety, and desire for the good. He complained, however, that Christianity lacked a proper theoretical basis, either for theology or in ethics. Since they had no agreed basis for deciding theological issues, the leaders of sects sought novelty for its own sake, thereby converting a simple philosophy into something hopelessly complicated and ineffectual. {58}

Quote ID: 1603

Time Periods: 23

Constantine the Great
Michael Grant
Book ID: 66 Page: 177/178

Section: 2B2,3C,4A

...Constantine used to hold a regular ’salon’, a sort of religious-philosophical debating society (the members of which, in so far as they were pagans, must have found his interest in Christianity ridiculous and perhaps humiliating). His encouragement of higher education also implied a continued toleration of paganism. He called his friend Strategius ’Musonianus’, after the Muses. He even gave his churches at Constantinople the names of Greek personifications, such as Eirene (Peace) and Sophia (Wisdom), and the town itself was sometimes called ’Platonopolis’, owing to his admiration of Plato. Constantine also at times described the Christian clergy and monks as ’philosophers’.

Quote ID: 1760

Time Periods: 4

Constantine’s Bible
David L. Dungan
Book ID: 67 Page: 32/33

Section: 4A

For instance, it is during the middle of the second century that Christian philosophers wrote the first dialogues defending the Christian philosophy against Jewish and pagan critics. Public defenses of the faith, apologiai in Greek, began to appear, setting the Christian philosophy in as favorable a light as possible and appealing for a fair hearing from indifferent and hostile outsiders. A good example of the tone and attitude adopted in these apologies/public defenses is the Apology for the Christian Faith, addressed to the emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180) by Melito, the second-century orthodox bishop of Sardis.

Note the interchangeable use of the terms philosophy and religion in his statement:

Our philosophy became a good omen to your Empire, for from that time [of Augustus Caesar] the power of Rome has increased in size and splendor. You are now his happy successor and shall be, along with your son, if you protect the philosophy which grew up with the Empire and began with Augustus [namely, Christianity]. Your ancestors held it in honor together with other religions.

Quote ID: 1793

Time Periods: 2

Continuity and Change in Roman Religion
J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz
Book ID: 313 Page: 198

Section: 4A

Under the empire, Greek philosophy, above all Stoic philosophy, assumed a much greater role in the lives of the upper classes. This was a development of private rather than public religion, but among its causes perhaps the most important was the new form of government. The principate was accepted, but only with reservations. It was very widely agreed that the monarchical system was morally inferior to the republic that it had replaced. Submission to the authority of one man was felt to be inevitably degrading and demoralizing.

Quote ID: 7612

Time Periods: 2

Continuity and Change in Roman Religion
J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz
Book ID: 313 Page: 261

Section: 4A

… in contrast to earlier apologists, Lactantius is indifferent to the charges that were made against the Christians. By and large he passes them over with contempt, and concentrates on proving the truth and even the ‘Romanism’ of Christianity.

Quote ID: 7614

Time Periods: 23

Continuity and Change in Roman Religion
J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz
Book ID: 313 Page: 265

Section: 4A

Naturally Lactantius made the most of this. He points out that Christianity combines two activities which were traditionally separate, philosophy and worship.

Quote ID: 8176

Time Periods: 23

Continuity and Change in Roman Religion
J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz
Book ID: 313 Page: 267/268

Section: 4A

In the same way, Lactantius quotes oracles of Apollo{8} and the Oracles of Hystaspes{9} when it serves his purpose. Lactantius was the first Christian apologist to do this. His action is understandable in an age when there were many fringe Christians, and when the persecutors had exploited oracles against the Christians. But citation of pagan oracles implies that they possess genuine inspiration. This Lactantius can afford to do because of the traditional Christian identification of pagan gods with evil spirits.

….

Quote ID: 7619

Time Periods: 23

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 121

Section: 4A,4B

Further, the rise of Rome to power set higher and higher values on practical gifts, on the administration of things as they were rather than on the interpretation of things. As the scope of philosophy narrowed till it became almost entirely ethical, it naturally tended to use religious sanctions....

Quote ID: 1950

Time Periods: 0123

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 173

Section: 4A

Any philosophy of the time set up a standard of values different from those of the world outside and could serve as a stimulus to a stern life, and therefore to something like conversion when it came to a man living carelessly. It is said that Polemo when drunk and garlanded went into Xenocrate’s lecture room, was moved to abandon his earlier ways, and devoted himself so eagerly to philosophy that he became next head of the school.

Quote ID: 1965

Time Periods: 2

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 175/176

Section: 4A

Thirdly, philosophy produced some of the most striking ideal types, the saints of antiquity. Around all the prominent figures who founded or developed schools there grew not only anecdotes but also haloes. Plato received cultus almost immediately after death and soon could be spoken of as Apollo’s son; Pythagoras acquired a legend which grew continually; Epicurus is to Lucretius a god; Diogenes is to Cercidas, a century after his death, ‘the heavenly dog’. Apollonius of Tyana soon becomes superhuman, Epictetus a pagan saint.

Quote ID: 1966

Time Periods: 0

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 177

Section: 4A

Only a limited number could go to Athens or one of the other famous centres: but a great many heard some philosophy, for there were many private teachers scattered over their world and it is known that some of them were men of standing in their cities: further, we are told that there were not a few impostors in the profession, a fact which suggest that the demand was considerable: in the later Empire the profession waned but in the first century of our era it was at its height.

A lecture might have on any of these men the effect which it had on Polemo: we must recall the prominence in popular philosophic teaching and writing of declamation against luxury and vice. A man who heard Musonius Rufus or Epictetus at Rome was doing the thing most nearly equivalent to hearing a Christian sermon later: the technique was in fact inherited.

Quote ID: 1967

Time Periods: 0

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 178

Section: 4A

Again, a striking feature of the early Empire is the presence in rich households of philosophy.....these men were, as has been remarked, the equivalent of domestic chaplains: we find them at death beds, as for instance Demetrius the Cynic at Thrasea’s (Tacitus, Annals, xvi 34).

Quote ID: 1968

Time Periods: 0

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 179

Section: 4A

We can here use the word conversion for the turning from luxury and self indulgence and superstition (another frequent object of philosophic criticism) to a life discipline and sometimes to a life of contemplation, scientific or mystic. Plato spoke of the object of education as a ‘turning around of the soul’ (Republic, 518 Dff.) The word epistrophe, later used by Christians of conversion, is applied to the effects of philosophy, meaning thereby an orientation or focusing of the soul, the turning of men from carelessness to true piety.

Quote ID: 1969

Time Periods: 02

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 184

Section: 4A

So much for the direct contact with the philosophers. There is one famous instance of conversion by a book. St. Augustine (Confessions, iii 4) says:

‘Among these people, being not yet in manhood’s strength, I was learning books of eloquence, in which I wished to shine with a purpose flighty and to be condemned, in the joy of human vanity. In the usual order of studies I had come to a book of a certain Cicero, whose speech is admired by almost all though his heart is not. But that book contains his exhortation unto philosophy and is called Hortensius. Now that book changed by affections and turned my prayers to Thee thyself, O Lord, and made my wishes and desires quite other. Suddenly all vain hopes grew cheap in my eyes and I yearned for the immortality of wisdom with a burning zeal which passes belief and I began to rise that I might return unto Thee’.

He was eighteen at the time.

Quote ID: 1971

Time Periods: 24

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 185/186

Section: 4A

Sporadic indications of conversion to religion in antiquity. Against them we can set a far greater body of evidence for conversion to philosophy. A mystery evoked a strong emotional response and touched the soul deeply for a time, but philosophy was able both to turn men from evil and to hold before them a good.

Quote ID: 1972

Time Periods: 0

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 185/186

Section: 4A

When Julian initiated his attempt to revive paganism he used the one thing which could conceivably have given to it the power to hold its own, and that was the way of philosophy....on the other side, Christianity did not disregard these values, and Ambrose could use his Cicero, just as earlier, Philo and the Apologist, while regarding pagan religion as unworthy and untrue, were eager to reconcile pagan philosophy and their own teaching.

Quote ID: 1973

Time Periods: 24

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 194

Section: 4A

Socrates again, in Plato’s Apology, p. 29 c, makes the explicit statement:

‘If you should say to me, O Socrates, at the moment we will not hearken to Anytus, but we release you on this condition, that you no longer abide in this inquiry or practise philosophy––and if you are caught still doing this, you will be put to death, if then you would release me on these conditions, I should say to you, you have my thanks and affection, men of Athens, but I will obey the god rather than you and, while I have breath and power, I will not desist from practising philosophy.’

Pastor John’s Note: Socrates, a turning point

Quote ID: 1977

Time Periods: 02

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 194

Section: 4A

The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church: the death of Socrates created the type of wisdom and virtue standing in heroic opposition to a world which can kill but which does not have the last word.

Pastor John’s Note: philosopher martyrs

Quote ID: 1978

Time Periods: 02

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 250

Section: 4A

The effectiveness of early Christian propaganda as we know it turns largely on two further points. First, the apologists were without exception men who were not the sons of Christians but had been converted to Christianity themselves. The apologia of each of them was therefore in a measure an apologia pro vita sua. Secondly, they all represented Christianity as something which had come not to destroy but to fulfil. They maintained that its essential principles were what humanity at its best had always held or sought. They went back to their Jewish sources, but they claimed that Plato drew from these same sources. For them the whole wisdom of the past was in support of their position, even if few went as far as Justin and held that all who had lived with reason (logos) were Christians.

Quote ID: 1993

Time Periods: 2

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 258

Section: 4A

The substance of the book which Arnobius wrote shows proportions very different from those of earlier apologist. The weight is thrown on an exposure of the errors of paganism...but it is clear that Christianity was for him a deliverance from what had been burdensome and stupid and unworthy.

Quote ID: 1995

Time Periods: 23

Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 327

Section: 4A

After having him captured and executed, the bishop of Le Puy forced the alleged Mary to confess that this ‘Christ’ led minds astray by devilish artifices.

Quote ID: 5174

Time Periods: 7

Daily Life in Ancient Rome
Jerome Carcopino
Book ID: 72 Page: 109

Section: 4A

Vespasian had banished the philosophers from Rome and excluded them everywhere from the privileges reserved for grammarians and rhetoricians; {34} and the study of philosophy in Rome had never recovered from the ancient interdict pronounced against it by the Senate in 161 B.C., when in defiance of the diplomatic immunity which they enjoyed, it expelled from the city the academician Carneades, the Stoic Diogenes, and the peripatetic Critolaus. {35} Philosophy had never ceased to excite suspicion and sarcasm at Rome.

Quote ID: 2004

Time Periods: 01

Daily Life in Ancient Rome
Jerome Carcopino
Book ID: 72 Page: 138

Section: 4A

What contributed henceforth to increase their progress was not so much the series of their Apologiae, inaugurated by Quadratus in the reign of Hadrian, nor yet the heroism of their martyrs, as the power of their Credo and the Christian gentleness in which their life was steeped.

Quote ID: 2016

Time Periods: 2

Documents of the Christian Church
Edited by Henry Bettenson & Chris Maunder
Book ID: 74 Page: 5/6/7

Section: 4A

a. The ‘Liberal’ View – ‘The Light that lighteth every man’ Justin, Apology (c.150), I. xlvi. 1-4

. . . .

We are taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have shown above that He is the reason (Word) of whom the whole human race partake, {4} and those who live according to reason are Christians, even though they are accounted atheists. Such were Socrates and Heraclitus among the Greeks, and those like them. . . .

. . . .

b. The Negative View- ‘The Wisdom of This World’ Tertullian (c.160-240), De praescriptione haereticorum (c.200), vii

. . . .

What is there in common between Athens and Jerusalem? What between the Academy and the Church? What between heretics and Christians? . . . Away with all projects for a ‘Stoic,’ a ‘Platonic’ or a ‘dialectic’ Christianity! After Christ Jesus we desire no subtle theories, no acute enquiries after the gospel. …

c. Another ‘Liberal’ Clement of Alexandria (c.200), Stromateis, I.V. 28

. . . .

For philosophy was a ‘schoolmaster’ to bring the Greek mind to Christ, as the Law brought the Hebrews. Thus philosophy was a preparation, paving the way towards perfection in Christ.

Quote ID: 2057

Time Periods: 2

Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 69

Section: 4A

Philosophy 2nd Century

The pagan religious revival tended to coalesce with the renewed interest in philosophy.

Quote ID: 5266

Time Periods: 2

Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 123

Section: 4A

Convinced that ‘the way of truth is one, but into it, as into a perennial river, streams flow from all sides’, Clement sought a synthesis of Christian thought and Greek philosophy.

Quote ID: 5286

Time Periods: 2

Early Christian Doctrines
J. N. D. Kelly
Book ID: 428 Page: 83/84

Section: 2B,4A

These ideas derive almost exclusively from the Bible and latter-day Judaism, rarely from contemporary philosophy. Echoes of later Stoicism, however, are audible in Clement’s references{9} to God’s ordering of His Cosmos. When we pass to the Apologists, the infiltration of secular thought is even more obvious.

*John’s note: “These ideas….” About God being one, in the earliest post-apostolic writers*

Quote ID: 8700

Time Periods: 2

Early Christianity - Origins and Evolution to AD 600
Ian Hazlett (Editor)
Book ID: 77 Page: 138

Section: 4A

…the second-century apologists initiated the tradition and set the fundamental patterns of defense against criticism and slander.

Quote ID: 2124

Time Periods: 2

Early Christianity - Origins and Evolution to AD 600
Ian Hazlett (Editor)
Book ID: 77 Page: 138

Section: 4A

Justin Martyr, who donned the philosopher’s garb and set up as a teacher in Rome, seeing Christianity as the fulfilment of the philosophical quest for truth.

Quote ID: 2125

Time Periods: 2

Early Christianity - Origins and Evolution to AD 600
Ian Hazlett (Editor)
Book ID: 77 Page: 175

Section: 4A

By the second century, Christian writers had begun to restate their faith as a coherent theology, drawing largely upon Greek thought, which was by far the most important intellectual influence on the Roman Empire.

Quote ID: 2126

Time Periods: 2

Early Christianity - Origins and Evolution to AD 600
Ian Hazlett (Editor)
Book ID: 77 Page: 234

Section: 4A

Christians had long been regarded as immoral as well as impious, but Fronto’s charges of Thyestean feasts and Oedipodean intercourse added precision to the general distrust. The first Christian apologist to answer these specific charges is Athenagoras, who probably presented his Legation on behalf of the Christians to Marcus Aurelius in Athens in 176. (14)

Quote ID: 2130

Time Periods: 2

Early Christianity - Origins and Evolution to AD 600
Ian Hazlett (Editor)
Book ID: 77 Page: 234/235

Section: 4A

Lucian comments that Christianity accept all the injunctions of ‘that crucified sophist’ without rational demonstration, including his command that they all be brothers and share everything: as a result any sharp operator can quickly make himself rich from them.

Quote ID: 2131

Time Periods: 2

Early Church, The
Henry Chadwick
Book ID: 215 Page: 66

Section: 4A

It inhered in the nature of the church’s existence that from the start it was engaged in debate with critics, and that the formulation of its doctrines was hammered out in an intellectual dialogue.

. . . .

It is no accident that the most substantial extant work by a second century Christian is the Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, written by Justin Martyr about 160.

Quote ID: 5376

Time Periods: 2

Early Greek Philosophy, LCL 526: Early Greek Philosophy III
Translated by Andre Laks and Glenn W. Most
Book ID: 429 Page: 285

Section: 2C,4A,4B

R77 (≠ DK) Justin Martyr, Apology

….

And those people who have lived with the Word were Christians, even if they were considered to be atheists, as for example, among the Greeks, Socrates, Heraclitus, and those men similar to them, and, among the barbarians, Abraham […].

Quote ID: 8711

Time Periods: 2

Early Greek Philosophy, LCL 526: Early Greek Philosophy III
Translated by Andre Laks and Glenn W. Most
Book ID: 429 Page: 287

Section: 4A,4B

Clement cites Heraclitus [PJ: c. 535 BC– c. 475 BC] often.

Quote ID: 8712

Time Periods: 023

Early Liturgy: To the Time of Gregory the Great, The
Josef A. Jungmann
Book ID: 216 Page: 5

Section: 2A4,4A

The most important of the liturgical sources made known at the earlier period are the following:

(1) Justin, the philosopher and martyr, who wrote his first Apology about 155 A.D. This contains, in chapters 65-67, some precious information about divine service.

Quote ID: 5378

Time Periods: 2

Early Medieval Europe 300-1000
Roger Collins
Book ID: 78 Page: 10

Section: 3B2,4A

The ideology was represented in art, above all by the elimination of elements of individuality in the portraiture of the rulers. Thus in the coins of these emperors only the inscriptions indicate which of the rulers is being portrayed. The styles vary from mint to mint but the individual rulers are given identical features. {24} The quintessential imperial image of this period may be found in the three-dimensional porphyry sculptures of the four emperors, now embedded in the wall of the Church of San Marco in Venice.

Quote ID: 2133

Time Periods: 34

Ecclesiastical Authority And Spiritual Power
Hans von Campenhausen
Book ID: 79 Page: 160

Section: 4A

For no more than the Church did ancient philosophy know of a communication of teaching without the idea of a community within which this could take place, or at least a personal contact between the earliest figure and his successors. Exactly as in the later lists of bishops these philosophical diadochoi {60} are, when occasion requires, numbered by their ‘generations’ from the founder of the school,{61} and the term diadoche no longer signifies (as paradosis does) the content of the teaching, but instead the link created by the process of handing on and receiving, and so the philosophical school itself Greek word. There is an analogous development in the Church, when the idea of diadoche or successio (the Latin rendering) is used later to denote both the sequence and the actual lists of bishops.

Quote ID: 2156

Time Periods: 02

Etruscans: How Did the Etruscans Shape Roman History and Society?
Daily History https://dailyhistory.org/How_did_the_Etruscans_shape_Roman_history_and_socoety3F
Book ID: 444 Page: 4

Section: 4A,4B

The Tarquin kings the Etruscans exposed the Romans to Greek culture. Many Roman nobles would send their sons to schools in Etruscan cities and here they learned Greek and read its literature and philosophy.{12} Greek thought and literature enriched Roman culture.

Quote ID: 8816

Time Periods: 014

Eusebius, Church History, IV.iii.1. NPNF2, Vol. 1
Philip Schaff
Book ID: 695 Page: 387

Section: 4A

“We find no mention of Quadratus and Aristides before Eusebius, and of the apology of Quadratus we have only the few lines which are given in this chapter…. Quadratus and Aristides are the oldest apologists known to us. Eusebius does not mention them again.”

*PJ Footnote: Eusebius, Church History, IV.iii.1, n2*

Quote ID: 9823

Time Periods: 2

Eusebius, Church History, IV.iii.1. NPNF2, Vol. 1
Philip Schaff
Book ID: 695 Page: 387

Section: 4A

1. “After Trajan had reigned for nineteen and a half years Ælius Adrian [Hadrian] became his successor in the empire. To him Quadratus addressed a discourse containing an apology for our religion, because certain wicked men had attempted to trouble the Christians. The work is still in the hands of a great many of the brethren, as also in our own, and furnishes clear proofs of the man’s understanding and of his apostolic orthodoxy.

2. He himself reveals the early date at which he lived in the following words: “But the works of our Saviour were always present, for they were genuine:— those that were healed, and those that were raised from the dead, who were seen not only when they were healed and when they were raised, but were also always present; and not merely while the Savior was on earth, but also after his death, they were alive for quite a while, so that some of them lived even to our day.’ Such then was Quadratus.[3]”

*PJ Footnote: Eusebius, Church History, IV.iii.1–2*

Quote ID: 9824

Time Periods: 2

Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 87

Section: 3C,4A

But although it is clear that we are new and that this new name of Christians has really but recently been known among all nations, nevertheless our life and our conduct, with our doctrines of religion, have not been lately invented by us, but from the first creation of man so to speak, have been established by the natural understanding of divinely favored men of old.

Pastor John’s footnote reference: Eusebius, Church History, I.iv.

Quote ID: 9520

Time Periods: 24

Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 117

Section: 2E2,4A

First of all they renounce their property. When they begin the philosophical mode of life, he says, they give up their goods to their relatives, and then, renouncing all the cares of life, they go forth beyond the walls and dwell in lonely fields and gardens, knowing well that intercourse with people of a different character is unprofitable and harmful.

Pastor John’s footnote reference: Eusebius, Church History, II.xvii.

Quote ID: 9523

Time Periods: 23

Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism
Rosemary Radford Ruether
Book ID: 88 Page: 25

Section: 4A,4B

In addition, Jewish religious thought in the Diaspora and even in Palestine appropriated many Hellenistic elements, and Jewish Hellenistic apologists, such as the author of Aristeas’ letter, Josephus, and Philo, went far in the direction of presenting Judaism in the dress of Greek philosophy.

Quote ID: 2334

Time Periods: 012

Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism
Rosemary Radford Ruether
Book ID: 88 Page: 120

Section: 4A

The Christians’ opponents are the Jews of Christian imagination. The most elaborate of such dialogues is Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, which purports to be an informal conversation with a learned Jew.

Quote ID: 2338

Time Periods: 2

Final Pagan Generation, The
Edward J. Watts
Book ID: 384 Page: 160

Section: 4A

In 365, he responded to a letter sent by the bishop Eusebius of Caesarea that summoned him to a synod. Gregory thanked the bishop for the invitation but claimed that he could not “tolerate the insult that came, and which still comes, from your reverence against the most honorable brother Basil, whom from the beginning I have adopted and still have now as a partner in life, word, and the most exalted philosophy—and I find nothing at fault in my own judgment of him.”{88}

Quote ID: 8321

Time Periods: 4

Final Pagan Generation, The
Edward J. Watts
Book ID: 384 Page: 161

Section: 2E2,3A1,4A

Parents sometimes charged sons who entered the episcopacy with a betrayal of their obligations to their families.

Pg.163 4A, 2E2- …from 358 until 362 and had built up a substantial family fortune.{107} While Urbanus lived, his son “bid complete farewell to his studies in the schools” and retreated to the mountains to pursue “Christian philosophy.”

Quote ID: 8322

Time Periods: 4

Final Pagan Generation, The
Edward J. Watts
Book ID: 384 Page: 164/165

Section: 4A,4B

By the 380s, the growing interest in ascetic circles and Episcopal service among young Christians created two subgroups of curial and senatorial figures over whom imperial officials had limited influence.{117} The young men who entered church offices remained somewhat engaged with the wider world. They were uninterested in offices and honors defined by the imperial system, but they remained plugged into elite social and cultural networks. They also depended on imperial resources and approval in order to effectively do their jobs.

….

These were the first elites of the fourth century who immunized themselves against the rewards that imperial officials could offer and the punishments they could inflict.{118}

….

As more people came to accept the authority that these young Christian bishops and ascetics claimed, the Roman social and administrative system needed to find ways to contain their influence and direct their energies. As the 380s will show, the empire was not always successful.

Quote ID: 8324

Time Periods: 4

Fragment II, ANF, Vol. 8, The Twelve Patriarchs, Excerpts and Epistles
Melito
Book ID: 693 Page: 758

Section: 4A

For the philosophy current with us flourished in the first instance among barbarians; and, when it afterwards sprang up among the nations under thy rule, during the distinguished reign of thy ancestor Augustus, it proved to be a blessing of most happy omen to thy empire. For from that time the Roman power has risen to greatness and splendor. To this power thou hast succeeded as the much desired possessor; and such shalt thou continue, together with thy son, if thou protect that philosophy which has grown up with thy empire, and which took its rise with Augustus; to which also thy more recent ancestors paid honor, along with the other religions prevailing in the empire. A very strong proof, moreover, that it was for good that the system we profess came to prevail at the same time that the empire of such happy commencement was established, is this-that ever since the reign of Augustus nothing untoward has happened; but, on the contrary, everything has contributed to the splendor and renown of the empire, in accordance with the devout wishes of all.

*PJ note: Roberts, Alexander and James Donaldson, eds. The Twelve Patriarchs, Excerpts and Epistles, The Clementina, Apocrypha, Decretals, Memoirs of Edessa and Syriac Documents, Remains of the First Ages. Vol. 8 of Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Writings of the Fathers Down to AD 325. Chronologically arranged, with notes, prefaces and elucidations, by A. Cleveland Coxe. American reprint. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994. First published New York: Christian Literature Publishing, 1886.*

Quote ID: 9821

Time Periods: 2

Fragments of Numenius of Apamea
Robert Petty, Translation and Commentary
Book ID: 329 Page: 5

Section: 4A

…Numenius the Pythagorean who is many places in his writings sets forth the words of Moses and the prophets, and not unconvincingly allegorizes them….

From Wikipedia: "his object was to trace the doctrines of Plato up to Pythagoras, and at the same time to show that they were not at variance with the dogmas and mysteries of the Brahmins, Jews, Magi and Egyptians." Last half of second century.

Quote ID: 7802

Time Periods: 2

Fragments of Numenius of Apamea
Robert Petty, Translation and Commentary
Book ID: 329 Page: 19

Section: 4A

"For what is Pluto but Moses speaking Greek?"

PJ: Numenius of Apamea

Quote ID: 7803

Time Periods: 2

From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought
Oliver O’Donovan and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan
Book ID: 92 Page: 8

Section: 4A

The earliest Christian reflection on the nature of society and its political and its politics, after that of the New Testament itself, arose in the context of apologetics - that is, in the course of the young church’s struggle for toleration by a suspicious and antagonistic pagan society.

Quote ID: 2374

Time Periods: 2

From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought
Oliver O’Donovan and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan
Book ID: 92 Page: 8

Section: 4A

Justin, from modern Nablus in Palestine, who died a martyr around A.D. 165, illustrates one pole of the apologetic endeavor: Christians are described as philosophers, a category of independent- minded citizens well recognized within Hellenistic society.

….

…he came to Christianity as the “only reliable and helpful philosophy.” It was also congenial to the moment in political history at which he was writing. For the successors of Trajan attempted to consolidate the empire on the basis of a program of philosophic enlightenment.

Quote ID: 2375

Time Periods: 2

Galen on Jews and Christians
Richard Walzer
Book ID: 410 Page: 2

Section: 4A

Reference 4

From the same work, Galen, De differentiis pulsuum (=On the pulse), ii, 4.13

Walzer’s translation:12

…in order that one should not at the very beginning , as if one had come into the school of Moses and Christ, hear talk of undemonstrated laws, and that where it is least appropriate.

Quote ID: 8561

Time Periods: 2

Galen on Jews and Christians
Richard Walzer
Book ID: 410 Page: 3

Section: 4A

Reference 6

from Galen’s lost summary of Plato’s Republic – Walzer, 15

Date uncertain, but before 192. – Walzer, 15

Arabic author: "Most people are unable to follow any demonstrative argument cosecutively; hence they need parables and benefit from them"—and he (Galen) understands by parables tales of rewards and punishments in a future life–—[I assume this part is from Galen] "just as we now see the people called Christians drawing their faith from parables [and miracles], and yet sometimes acting in the same way [as those who philosophize]. For their contempt of death [and of its sequel] is patent to us every day, and likewise their restraint in cohabitation. For thery include not only men but also women who refrain from cohabiting all through their lives; and they also number individuals who, in self-discipline and self-contrul in matters of food and drink, and in their keen pursuit of justice, have attained a pitch not inferior to that of genuine philosophers."

Richard Walzer, Galen on Jews and Christians, 15.

Richard Walzer, Galen on Jews and Christians

Oxford University Press

London, Geoffrey Cumberlege, 1949

Quote ID: 8564

Time Periods: 2

Galen on Jews and Christians
Richard Walzer
Book ID: 410 Page: 3

Section: 2C,2D3B,4A

Ibn al-Qifti, History of Learned men (published after 1227 AD) had a version of the passage. Unfortunately no English translation is available.

….

Bar Hebraeus, Chronicum Syriacum, and the same material also in the abbreviated Arabic version, Historia Compendosia Dynastiarum. 25 Budge’s translation of the Chronicum Syriacum:24 And in his time Galen flourished. …And he saith also in his exposition of Plato’s Book of Pedon (Phaedo), ‘We have seen these men who are called “Nazraye” (Nazarenes), who found their Faith upon Divine indications (or, inspirations) and miracles, and they are in no wise inferior to those who are in truth philosophers. For they love purity (or, chastity), and they are constant in Fasting, and they are zealous in avoiding the committal of wrong, and there are among them some who during the whole course of their lives never indulge in carnal intercourse. I say that this is a sign of the monastic life which became famous after the Ascension of our Lord, during the period of one hundred years’. (Budge)

Quote ID: 8565

Time Periods: 2

Galen on Jews and Christians
Richard Walzer
Book ID: 410 Page: 12

Section: 4A

Reference 2

Me:

from the lost work, De usu partium,

"discussing the various length of eyelashes." – Walzer, p. 11

composed "between the death of the emperor Lucius Verus and the return of Marcus Aurelius from the German wars, i.e., between 169 and 176 AD." – Walzer, p. 11

"It is precisely (καὶ) this point in which our own opinion and that of Plato and of the other Greeks who follow the right method in natural science differs from the position taken up by Moses. For the latter it seems enough to say that God simply willed the arrangement of matter and it was presently arranged in due order; for he believes everything to be possible with God, even should He wish to make a bull or a horse out of ashes. We however do not hold this; we say that certain things are impossible by nature and that God does not even attempt such things at all but that He chooses the best out of the possibilities of becoming."

Quote ID: 8560

Time Periods: 2

Galen on Jews and Christians
Richard Walzer
Book ID: 410 Page: 14/15

Section: 4A

Reference 3
Me:from De differentiis pulsuum. Date: unknown, but later in life (176–180?). "One might more easily teach novelties to the followers of Moses and Christ than to the physicians and philosophers who cling fast to their schools."
"... in order that one should not at the very beginning, as if one had come into the school of Moses and Christ, hear talk of undemonstrated laws, and that where it is least appropriate."

Me:

from a lost work against Aristotle’s theology – Walzer, 14.

Date uncertain, but probably before AD 192, Walzer, 15.

….

"If I had in mind people who taught their pupils as the same way as the followers of Moses and Christ teach theirs—for they order them to accept everything on faith—I should not have given you a definition."

Quote ID: 8562

Time Periods: 2

Galen on Jews and Christians
Richard Walzer
Book ID: 410 Page: 43

Section: 4A

But Galen is, as far as I can see, the first pagan author who implicitly places Greek philosophy and the Christian religion on the same footing. Former references to the Christians are quite different. Pliny the Younger admitted their morality (Epist. x. 96. 7), but was, like Horace when he looked at the Jews, shocked by their superstitio prava immodica:{3} ‘I had no doubt that, whatever it was they admitted, their pertinacity and stubborn obstinacy ought to be punished.’{4}

Quote ID: 9784

Time Periods: 12

Galen on Jews and Christians
Richard Walzer
Book ID: 410 Page: 43

Section: 4A

That Galen or his predecessors may have dealt with Jewish apologists is, as we have seen, not unlikely. That Roman Christians also could introduce themselves as philosophers to an eminent pagan author like Galen is quite obvious from the earliest remnants of Christian apologetic—which in its turn may be following some Jewish pattern, just as, almost at the same time, Clement of Alexandria and after him Origen established a highly developed type of real Christian philosophy while imitating the achievement of their Jewish compatriot Philo.

Quote ID: 9785

Time Periods: 12

Galen on Jews and Christians
Richard Walzer
Book ID: 410 Page: 72

Section: 4A

…Alexander of Lycopolis, who writes about A.D. 300 against the Manicheans. He no longer contends, like Galen, that the Christians are no genuine philosophers, but describes their doctrines unreservedly as a philosophy.

….

The philosophy of the Christians is described as simple. It cares primarily for the moral character of man [GREEK}, giving only enigmatic hints of a more exact pronouncement about God. But their main theological doctrine would probably be accepted by everybody, for they regard the efficient cause as the most esteemed and most important and as being the cause of the existing things; moreover, in matters of Ethics they neglect the more difficult matter, such as the definition of moral and intellectual virtue or the discussion of moral characters and affections; they busy themselves only with exhortation….

Quote ID: 9787

Time Periods: 34

Gods and the One God
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 426 Page: 91

Section: 4A

…at every turn Christian Alexandria was closely related to currents in pagan thought.

Quote ID: 8677

Time Periods: 234

Gods and the One God
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 426 Page: 147

Section: 4A

In Tertullian’s Montanist treatise On Ecstasy “he criticized Melito’s mind as elegant and rhetorical and said that he was considered a prophet by many Christians.”{46} Obviously the Montanists did not so regard him.

Quote ID: 8682

Time Periods: 23

Gods and the One God
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 426 Page: 158

Section: 2B1,4A

This is to say that in beginning to develop the doctrine of the Trinity Christians made use of the methods already worked out among Platonists and Pythagoreans for explaining their own philosophical theology, in harmonious accord with pagan polytheism.

Quote ID: 8683

Time Periods: 34

Hadrian
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 103 Page: 138

Section: 4A

Alexandria, ever since its foundation by Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C., had been the hearth and home of Hellenism. It was also the centre of a large Jewish community, who had become so imbued with the Greek atmosphere of the city that they even used a Greek version of their scriptures. Some of their teachers, such as the eminent Philo, went farther, and tried to evolve a system which should reconcile the law of Moses with Greek philosophy.

Quote ID: 2576

Time Periods: 2

History and Literature of Christianity, The: From Tertullian to Boethius
Pierre De Labriolle
Book ID: 601 Page: 116

Section: 4A

But even in Octavius, there is only a “roundabout, ambiguous, almost equivocal manner in which Octavius makes allusion to Christ. (Then, he references xxix.2, cf. ix.4.)”

Quote ID: 9332

Time Periods: 12

History and Literature of Christianity, The: From Tertullian to Boethius
Pierre De Labriolle
Book ID: 601 Page: 117

Section: 4A

Labriolle quotes a “M. Boisier” as asking, “What is (Octavius) doing, that in an apology for Christianity, he has been unwilling to pronounce the name of Christ?”

“In fact, this is surprising: we should however remember––a fact which is too often ignored––that among there apologist of the IInd century, Aristides, Justin, and Tertullian are the only ones who have uttered the name of Jesus Christ.”

Quote ID: 9333

Time Periods: 12

History of Dogma
Adolph Harnack, translated by Neil Buchanan
Book ID: 432 Page: 45

Section: 4A

If again we compare the Church about the middle of the third century with the condition of Christendom 150 or 200 years before…

….

We now really find a new commonwealth, politically formed and equipped with fixed forms of all kinds. We recognize in these forms few Jewish, but many Grӕco-Roman features and finally, we perceive also in the doctrine of faith on which this commonwealth is based, the philosophic spirit of the Greeks. We find a church as a political union and worship institute, a formulated faith and a sacred learning; but one thing we no longer find, the old enthusiasm and individualism…

Quote ID: 8722

Time Periods: 3

History of Dogma
Adolph Harnack, translated by Neil Buchanan
Book ID: 432 Page: 113/114

Section: 4A

3. Neither Philo’s philosophy of religion, nor the mode of thought from which it springs, exercised any appreciable influence on the first generation of believers in Christ.

….

Philo’s philosophy of religion became operative among Christian teachers from the beginning of the second century{1}….

Quote ID: 8736

Time Periods: 2

History of Dogma
Adolph Harnack, translated by Neil Buchanan
Book ID: 432 Page: 128

Section: 1A,4A

Greek philosophy exercised the greatest influence not only on the Christian mode of thought, but also through that, on the institution of the Church. The Church never indeed became a philosophic school: but yet in her was realised in a peculiar way, that which the Stoics and the Cynics had aimed at. The Stoic (Cynic) Philosopher also belonged to the factors from which the Christian Priests or Bishops were formed.

Quote ID: 8744

Time Periods: 2

History of Dogma
Adolph Harnack, translated by Neil Buchanan
Book ID: 432 Page: 128

Section: 4A

But this Platonic ideal has again obtained its political realization in the Church through the very concrete laws of the Roman Empire….

Quote ID: 8746

Time Periods: 2

History of Dogma
Adolph Harnack, translated by Neil Buchanan
Book ID: 432 Page: 224

Section: 4A

The view of the Old Testament as a document of the deepest wisdom, transmitted to those who knew how to read it as such, unfettered the intellectual interest which would not rest until it had entirely transferred the new religion from the world of feelings, actions and hopes, into the world of Hellenic conceptions, and transformed it into a metaphysic.

Quote ID: 8752

Time Periods: 2

History of Dogma
Adolph Harnack, translated by Neil Buchanan
Book ID: 432 Page: 225

Section: 4A

But once the intellectual interest was unfettered, and the new religion had approximated to the Hellenic spirit by means of a philosophic view of the Old Testament, how could that spirit be prevented from taking complete and immediate possession of it, and where in the first instance, could the power be found that was able to decide whether this or that opinion was incompatible with Christianity?

Quote ID: 8753

Time Periods: 2

History of Dogma
Adolph Harnack, translated by Neil Buchanan
Book ID: 432 Page: 226/227/228

Section: 4A

…the Gnostic systems represent the acute secularizing or hellenising of Christianity, with the rejection of the Old Testament,{2} while the Catholic system, on the other hand, represents a gradual process of the same kind with the conservation of the Old Testament.

….

They are therefore those Christians who, in a swift advance, attempted to capture Christianity for Hellenic culture and Hellenic culture for Christianity, and who gave up the Old Testament in order to facilitate the conclusion of the covenant between the two powers, and make it possible to assert the absoluteness of Christianity.

Quote ID: 8754

Time Periods: 2

History of Dogma
Adolph Harnack, translated by Neil Buchanan
Book ID: 432 Page: 229

Section: 4A

But that is only in keeping with the stage which the religious development had reached among the Greeks and Romans of that time.{2} The cultured, and these primarily come into consideration here, no longer had a religion in the sense of a national religion, but a philosophy of religion. They were, however, in search of a religion….

….

{2} The age of the Antonines was the flourishing period of Gnosticism. Marquardt (Rӧmische Staatsverwaltung. Vol. 3, p. 81) says of this age: “With the Antonines begins the last period of the Roman religious development, in which two new elements enter into it. These are the Syrian and Persian deities, whose worship at this time was prevalent not only in the city of Rome, but in the whole empire, and, at the same time, Christianity, which entered into conflict with all ancient traditions, and in this conflict exercised a certain influence even on the Oriental forms of worship.

Quote ID: 8755

Time Periods: 2

History of Dogma
Adolph Harnack, translated by Neil Buchanan
Book ID: 432 Page: 296/297

Section: 4A

Justin vouches for the existence of Jewish Christians, and distinguishes between those who would force the law even on Gentile-Christians, and would have no fellowship with such as did not observe it, and those who considered that the law was binding only on people of Jewish birth, and did not shrink from fellowship with Gentile Christians who were living without the law.

….

The very fact that Justin has devoted to the whole question only one chapter of a work containing 142, and the magmanimous way in which he speaks, shew that the phenomena in question have no longer any importance for the main body of Christendom.

Quote ID: 8758

Time Periods: 2

History of Dogma
Adolph Harnack, translated by Neil Buchanan
Book ID: 432 Page: 359

Section: 4A

It must no doubt be admitted that Christianity itself was already profoundly affected by the influence of Hellenism when it began to outline a theology; but this influence must be traced back less to philosophy than to the collective culture, and to all the conditions under which the spiritual life was enacted.

Quote ID: 8765

Time Periods: 234

History of Dogma
Adolph Harnack, translated by Neil Buchanan
Book ID: 432 Page: 361/362

Section: 4A

The question why Neoplatonism was defeated in the conflict with Christianity, has not as yet been satisfactorily answered by historians. Usually the question is wrongly stated. The point here is not about a Christianity arbitrarily fashioned, but only about Catholic Christianity and Catholic theology. This conquered Neoplatonism after it had assimilated nearly everything it possessed. Further, we must note the place where the victory was gained. The battle-field was the empire of Constantine, Theodosius and Justinian.

Quote ID: 8766

Time Periods: 34

Hyperides: Funeral Oration
Judson Herrman
Book ID: 113 Page: 55

Section: 4A

In addition, if death is similar to not existing, then they are released from sicknesses and suffering and the other things which trouble mortal lives. If there is consciousness in Hades and the dead enjoy the care of the divine, as we suppose, then it is likely that those who defended the honors of the gods when they were under attack will receive the utmost attention and care from the divinity.

Quote ID: 2711

Time Periods: 0

Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, The
Edwin Hatch
Book ID: 341 Page: 1

Section: 4A

It is impossible for any one, whether he be a student of history or no, to fail to notice a difference of both form and content between the Sermon on the Mount and the Nicene Creed.

Dupe of 7734

Quote ID: 7872

Time Periods: 4

Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, The
Edwin Hatch
Book ID: 341 Page: 1

Section: 4A

The one belongs to a world of Syrian peasants, the other to a world of Greek philosophers.

Dupe of 7734

Quote ID: 7873

Time Periods: 4

Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, The
Edwin Hatch
Book ID: 341 Page: 1/2

Section: 4A

…the question why an ethical sermon stood in the forefront of the teaching of Jesus Christ, and a metaphysical creed in the forefront of the Christianity of the fourth century, is a problem which claims investigation.

It claims investigation, but it has not yet been investigated.

Quote ID: 7874

Time Periods: 4

Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, The
Edwin Hatch
Book ID: 341 Page: 5

Section: 4A

…the Nicene Creed rather than the Sermon on the Mount has formed the dominant element in Aryan Christianity.

Quote ID: 7875

Time Periods: 4

Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, The
Edwin Hatch
Book ID: 341 Page: 32

Section: 4A

…Philosophy. It was the highest element in the education of the average Greek of the period.

Quote ID: 7880

Time Periods: 0

Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, The
Edwin Hatch
Book ID: 341 Page: 69

Section: 4A

Just as the Greek philosophers had found their philosophy in Homer, so Christian writers found in him Christian theology.

Quote ID: 7882

Time Periods: 24

Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, The
Edwin Hatch
Book ID: 341 Page: 124

Section: 4A

The earliest forms of Christianity were not only outside the sphere of Greek philosophy, but they also appealed, on the one hand, mainly to the classes which philosophy did not reach, and, on the other hand, to a standard which philosophy did not recognize.

Quote ID: 7883

Time Periods: 12

Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, The
Edwin Hatch
Book ID: 341 Page: 125

Section: 4A

It is therefore the more remarkable that within a century and a half after Christianity and philosophy first came into close contact, the ideas and methods of philosophy had flowed in such mass into Christianity, and filled so large a place in it, as to have made it no less a philosophy than a religion.

Quote ID: 7884

Time Periods: 12

Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, The
Edwin Hatch
Book ID: 341 Page: 323

Section: 4A

There was a recognized school—on the type of the existing philosophical schools—for the study of philosophical Christianity. Its first great teacher was Clement. He was the first to construct a large philosophy of Christian doctrine, with a recognition of the conventional limits, but by the help and in the domain of Greek thought. But he is of less importance than his great disciple Origen.

Quote ID: 7896

Time Periods: 123

Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity, The
Edwin Hatch
Book ID: 321 Page: 1

Section: 1A,4A

It is impossible for anyone, whether he be a student of history or no, to fail to notice a difference of both form and content between the Sermon on the Mount and the Nicene Creed. The Sermon on the Mount is the promulgation of a new law of conduct; it assumes beliefs rather than formulates them; the theological conceptions which underlie it belong to the ethical rather than the speculative side of theology; metaphysics are wholly absent. The Nicene Creed is a statement partly of historical facts and partly of dogmatic inferences; the metaphysical terms which it contains would probably have been unintelligible to the first disciples; ethics have no place in it. The one belongs to a world of Syrian peasants, the other to a world of Greek philosophers.

Quote ID: 7734

Time Periods: 4

Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity, The
Edwin Hatch
Book ID: 321 Page: 48

Section: 4A

This is the feature of the Greek life into which Christianity came to which I first invite your attention. There was a complex system of education, the main elements in which were the knowledge of literature, the cultivation of literary expression, and a general acquaintance with the rules of argument. This education was widely diffused, and had a great hold upon society. It had been at work in its main outlines for several centuries. Its effect in the second century of our era had been to create a certain habit of mind. When Christianity came into contact with the society in which that habit of mind existed, it modified, it reformed, it elevated, the ideas which it contained and the motives which stimulated it to action; but in its turn it was itself profoundly modified by the habit of mind of those who accepted it. It was impossible for Greeks, educated as they were with an education which penetrated their whole nature, to receive or to retain Christianity in its primitive simplicity.

Quote ID: 7739

Time Periods: 2

Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity, The
Edwin Hatch
Book ID: 321 Page: 207

Section: 2B,4A

We may sum up the result of the influence of Greece on the conception of God in His relation to the material universe, by saying that it found a reasoned basis for Hebrew monotheism. It helped the Christian communities to believe as an intellectual conviction that which they had first accepted as a spiritual revelation.

Quote ID: 7748

Time Periods: 234

Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity, The
Edwin Hatch
Book ID: 321 Page: 310

Section: 3A2,4A

...under the influence of contemporary Greek thought, the word Faith came to be transferred from simple trust in God to mean the acceptance of a series of propositions, and these propositions, propositions in abstract metaphysics.

Quote ID: 7749

Time Periods: 2

Jerome, NPNF2 Vol. 3, Theodoret, Jerome, Gennadius,

Book ID: 672 Page: 368

Section: 4A

“Aristides, a most eloquent Athenian philosopher, and a disciple of Christ while yet retaining his philosopher’s garb, presented a work to Hadrian at the same time that Quadratus presented his. The work contained a systematic statement of our doctrine, that is, an Apology for the Christians, which is still extant and is regarded by philologians as a monument to his genius.”

PJ footnote: Jerome, Lives of Illustrious Men, XX.

Note: This is not Aelius Aristides.

Quote ID: 9631

Time Periods: 12

Julian’s Against the Galileans
R. Joseph Hoffmann
Book ID: 123 Page: 59

Section: 4A

I put this down as "2C" because of the title of the work.

Porphyry’s Questions: (Section 6) How is it that some (planetary) gods are givers of good things, but others of evil?

Iamblichus’s Replies: These things arise from a misunderstanding of astrology, which talks of benefits and malefics. All the gods are good, but material conditions may distort that which emanated from the divine in a state of harmony and lead to conflict (53-57). (1-18)

Porphyry’s Questions: (Section 8) What is the difference between gods and daemons?

Iamblichus’s Replies: The governance of the gods is all-embracing and unrestricted. That of the daemons limited in time and place; daemons do not completely transcend that which they rule (63-64). (1, 20)

Quote ID: 2835

Time Periods: 2

Julian’s Against the Galileans
R. Joseph Hoffmann
Book ID: 123 Page: 87

Section: 3A1,4A

The Council of Ephesus meeting in 431 does not mention Julian’s work but condemns Porphyry’s to be burned, …

Quote ID: 2836

Time Periods: 5

Julian’s Against the Galileans
R. Joseph Hoffmann
Book ID: 123 Page: 91

Section: 4A

I propose therefore to deal with what they consider their primary teachings. And I should say at the start that if my readers wish to refute me, the way to do so is to proceed as though this were a case at law.

Quote ID: 2838

Time Periods: 4

Julian’s Against the Galileans
R. Joseph Hoffmann
Book ID: 123 Page: 93

Section: 4A

It is not by teaching{273} but by nature that humanity possesses its knowledge of God, as can be shown by the common yearning for the divine that exists in everyone, everywhere—individuals, communities, and nations.{274} Without having it taught to us, all of us have come to believe in some sort of divinity, even though it is difficult for all to know what divinity truly is and far from easy for those who do know to explain it to the rest.

Pastor John’s note: Father

Quote ID: 2839

Time Periods: 24

Julian’s Against the Galileans
R. Joseph Hoffmann
Book ID: 123 Page: 94

Section: 4A

44A: Of course, the Greeks concocted their stories about the gods, those incredible and terrible fables.

Quote ID: 2840

Time Periods: 24

Justin Martyr, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 674 Page: 163

Section: 4A

For even one of the ancients somewhere said, “Unless both rulers and ruled philosophize, it is impossible to make states blessed.”

PJ footnote: Justin Martyr, The First Apology of Justin, III.

Note: Soon after Antinous’ death in AD 130 – see chapter XXIX. AD150? XLVI

Quote ID: 9653

Time Periods: 2

Justin Martyr, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 674 Page: 164

Section: 4A,2C

…on the other hand, if we be found to have committed no offense, either in the matter of thus naming ourselves…

….

For of philosophy, too, some assume the name and the garb who do nothing worthy of their profession….

PJ footnote: Justin Martyr, The First Apology of Justin, IV.

Quote ID: 9655

Time Periods: 2

Justin Martyr, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 674 Page: 165

Section: 4A

…and in order that we may follow those things which please Him, choosing them by means of the rational faculties He has Himself endowed us with, He both persuades us and leads us to faith.

PJ footnote: Justin Martyr, The First Apology of Justin, X.

Quote ID: 9657

Time Periods: 2

Justin Martyr, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 674 Page: 167

Section: 4A

Brief and concise utterance fell from Him, for He was no sophist, but His word was the power of God.

PJ footnote: Justin Martyr, The First Apology of Justin, XIV.

Quote ID: 9661

Time Periods: 2

Justin Martyr, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 674 Page: 178

Section: 4A

We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have declared above that He is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably 5 are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them; and among the barbarians, Abraham, and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, and Elias, and many others whose actions and names we now decline to recount, because we know it would be tedious.

PJ footnote: Justin Martyr, The First Apology of Justin, XLVI.

Quote ID: 9670

Time Periods: 2

Justin Martyr, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 674 Page: 191

Section: 4A

And those of the Stoic school – since, so far as their moral teaching went, they were admirable, as were also the poets in some particulars, on account of the seed of reason the Logos implanted in every race of men – were, we know, hated and put to death,

PJ footnote: Justin Martyr, The Second Apology of Justin, VIII.

Quote ID: 9672

Time Periods: 2

Justin Martyr, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 674 Page: 191

Section: 4A

For whatever either lawgivers or philosophers uttered well, they elaborated by finding and contemplating some part of the Word. But since they did not know the whole of the Word, which is Christ, they often contradicted themselves. And those who by human birth were more ancient than Christ, when they attempted to consider and prove things by reason, were brought before the tribunals as impious persons and busybodies. And Socrates, who was more zealous in this direction than all of them, was accused of the very same crimes as ourselves.

PJ footnote: Justin Martyr, The Second Apology of Justin, X.

Quote ID: 9673

Time Periods: 2

Justin Martyr, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 674 Page: 192/193

Section: 4A

and I confess that I both boast and with all my strength strive to be found a Christian; not because the teachings of Plato are different from those of Christ, but because they are not in all respects similar, as neither are those of the others, Stoics, and poets, and historians. For each man spoke well in proportion to the share he had of the spermatic word,1 seeing what was related to it. But they who contradict themselves on the more important points appear not to have possessed the heavenly 2 wisdom, and the knowledge which cannot be spoken against. Whatever things were rightly said among all men, are the property of us Christians.

PJ footnote: Justin Martyr, The Second Apology of Justin, XIII.

Quote ID: 9674

Time Periods: 2

Justin Martyr, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 674 Page: 195

Section: 4A

“I will tell you,” said I, “what seems to me; for philosophy is, in fact, the greatest possession, and most honourable before God, to whom it leads us and alone commends us; and these are truly holy men who have bestowed attention on philosophy.

PJ footnote: Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, II.

Quote ID: 9675

Time Periods: 2

Justin Martyr, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 674 Page: 196

Section: 4A

“ ‘Does philosophy, then, make happiness?’ said he, interrupting.

“ ‘Assuredly,’ I said, ‘and it alone.’

PJ footnote: Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, III.

Quote ID: 9676

Time Periods: 2

Justin Martyr, ANF Vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 674 Page: 288

Section: 4A

And you may in part easily learn the right religion from the ancient Sibyl, who by some kind of potent inspiration teaches you, through her oracular predictions, truths which seem to be much akin to the teaching of the prophets.

PJ footnote: Justin Martyr, Address to the Greeks, XXXVII.

Quote ID: 9692

Time Periods: 2

Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 165a

Section: 4A

Augustine was deeply influenced by the pagan philosopher, and in Book XII of his Confessions seeks to reconcile Plato’s view of creation with the Biblical revelation.

Quote ID: 6166

Time Periods: 45

Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 165b

Section: 4A

The Academy (at Athens) was closed in 529. But its influence was ubiquitous.

Quote ID: 6167

Time Periods: 6

Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 165c

Section: 4A

“Platonic ideas overlapped and coincided in many respects with Xn ones.”

Quote ID: 6168

Time Periods: 2

Legacy of Greece, The
Edited by R. W. Livingstone
Book ID: 469 Page: 29

Section: 2C,4A

If Nietzsche was right in calling Plato a Christian before Christ, I do not therefore regard him as an unhellenic Greek. Rather, I trace back to him and so to Greece, the religion and the political philosophy of the Christian Church….

Essay by W. R. Inge (on Religion)

Quote ID: 9127

Time Periods: 2347

Legacy of Greece, The
Edited by R. W. Livingstone
Book ID: 469 Page: 31

Section: 4A

…the second-century apologists appeal for toleration on the ground that the best Greek philosophers taught very much the same as what Christians believe. ‘We teach the same as the Greeks’, says Justin Martyr, ‘though we alone are hated for what we teach.’ ‘Some among us’, says Tertullian, ‘who are versed in ancient literature, have written books to prove that we have embraced no tenets for which we have not the support of common and public literature.’ ‘The teachings of Plato’, says Justin again, ‘are not alien to those of Christ; and the same is true of the Stoics.’ ‘Heracleitus and Socrates lived in accordance with the divine Logos’, and should be reckoned as Christians. Clement says that Plato wrote ‘by inspiration of God’. Augustine, much later, finds that ‘only a few words and phrases’ need be changed to bring Platonism into complete accord with Christianity.

Quote ID: 9033

Time Periods: 2347

Logos: Philosophy and Theology
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “logos”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 Jun. 2023
Book ID: 610 Page: ?

Section: 4A

Philo “taught that the logos was the intermediary between God and the cosmos, being both the agent of creation and the agent through which the human mind can apprehend and comprehend God.”

Quote ID: 9342

Time Periods: 01

Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
Bart D. Ehrman
Book ID: 420 Page: 165

Section: 4A

According to Justin Martyr, living in mid-second-century Rome, Simon became entirely persuasive in his claims that he was a divine being. Justin notes that the Romans set up a statue to Simon on the Tiber island, with a Latin dedicatory inscription that read, “Simoni Deo Sancto, “ meaning “To Simon, the Holy God” (Apology 1.26). Unfortunately, Justin appears to have gotten things muddled. As it turns out, the inscription was discovered many centuries later, in 1574. It actually read, “Semoni Sanco Sancto Deo.” What a difference a word makes. Semo Sancus was in fact a pagan deity worshipped by the Sabines in Rome, and this was a statue dedicated to him. Justin mistook the inscription as referring to the Holy Simon.{5}

Quote ID: 8604

Time Periods: 27

Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 179

Section: 4A

Thus, Casey has wisely commented in his study of early Gnosticism, ‘However much philosophy may have softened the blow, conversion to Christianity involved submission to the Jewish way of conceiving the origin of the universe and much of the history of mankind’.{12}

Quote ID: 7667

Time Periods: 2

Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 247

Section: 4A

Less immediately destructive to the martyr-idea, but ultimately guiding the Church into ways of thought which would render it superfluous except in rare crises was the teaching of the Greek Apologist. Their appearance, at the same time as the Gnostic leaders, from the end of the reign of Hadrian onwards was a further sign of the change which was taking place in Christian thought.

Quote ID: 7671

Time Periods: 2

Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 248/249/250

Section: 4A

Of the first of the Apologist, Quadratus, writing in Asia in the reign of Hadrian,{73} we may record simply that he was the first who attempted to argue with the heathen instead of mentally abandoning them to the flames or worse. The Apology of Aristides, written perhaps circa 145, marks a transition.{75} Its approach to the heathen is eirenic in form though not in content, but it is still entirely in the tradition of Jewish apologetic.

. . . .

Justin, however, writing his two Apologies, circa 150 and 155 respectively,{87} carries this argument a stage further.{88} His was an outlook not moulded in the first place by Judaism, but by a long study of the current philosophies, and especially Platonism, before he adopted Christianity. It is not surprising that he claimed that Christians were following the lead of Plato, the greatest of the Greek philosophers.

Quote ID: 7672

Time Periods: 12

Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 251

Section: 2C,4A

His claim that some of the philosophers were ‘Christians before Christ’, prepared the way for the more generous assertion of Clement that ‘philosophy was the schoolmaster to bring the Greek mind to Christ, as the Law brought the Hebrews’,{97}…

Quote ID: 7673

Time Periods: 2

Melito, ANF Vol. 8, The Twelve Patriarchs
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 474 Page: 758

Section: 4A

FRAGMENTS OF MELITO

Quote ID: 9051

Time Periods: 2

Melito, ANF Vol. 8, The Twelve Patriarchs
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 474 Page: 758

Section: 4A

For the philosophy current with us flourished in the first instance among barbarians;{11} and, when it afterwards sprang up among the nations under thy rule, during the distinguished reign of thy ancestor Augustus, it proved to be a blessing of most happy omen to thy empire. For from that time the Roman power has risen to greatness and splendour. To this power thou hast succeeded as the much desired{12} possessor; and such shalt thou continue, together with thy son,{13} if thou protect that philosophy which has grown up with thy empire, and which took its rise with Augustus; to which also thy more recent ancestors paid honour, along with other religions prevailing in the empire. A very strong proof, moreover, that it was for good that the system we profess came to prevail at the same time that the empire of such happy commencement was established, is this—that ever since the reign of Augustus nothing untoward has happened….

P. 759 -4A/2- …the senseless habit which prevails of taking things on hearsay, flowed down to our own times.{1}

Quote ID: 9052

Time Periods: 2

Melito: St. Melito
Andrew MacErlean. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol.10
Book ID: 511 Page: 1

Section: 4A

“ Many spurious writings have been attributed to Melito in addition to the "Melitonis clavis sanctae scripturae" already mentioned e.g., a "Letter to Eutrepius,” "Catena in Apocalypsin", a manifest forgery compiled after A.D. 1200; "De passione S. Joannis Evangelistae" (probably not earlier than the seventh century), "De transitu Beatae Mariae Virginis" (see Apocrypha in I, 607).

Quote ID: 9120

Time Periods: 7

Minucius Felix, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
C. Francis Higgins
Book ID: 600 Page: ?

Section: 4A

As DeLabriolle indicates, “amongst the apologists of the IInd century, Aristides, St. Justin and Tertullian are the only ones who have uttered the name of Jesus Christ” (117). . . . But his orthodoxy cannot be attested to, since he is intentionally vague on specific doctrinal matters. It would be counterproductive to swamp potential converts with the esoteric aspects of Christianity at the outset; Minucius instead presents and defends the exoteric image of the church. And while drawing heavily from ancient authors and historical events, Minucius never once uses scripture as an illustration of a point or concept.

Quote ID: 9330

Time Periods: 12

Minucius Felix, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
C. Francis Higgins
Book ID: 600 Page: ?

Section: 1B,4A

In Octavius: In his dialogue, Minucius displays an antipathy towards the Roman policy of expansion: “all that the Romans hold, occupy, and possess is the spoil of outrage” (XXV.5)

Quote ID: 9331

Time Periods: 12

Minucius Felix, Octavius, LCL 250: Tertullian, Minucius Felix
Minucius Felix
Book ID: 332 Page: 371

Section: 2B,4A

Octavius: Almost all philosophers of any marked distinction designate God as one, though under great variety of names, so that one might suppose, either that Christians of today are philosophers, or that philosophers of old were already Christians. Octavius XX.1

Quote ID: 7823

Time Periods: 23

Minucius Felix, Octavius, LCL 250: Tertullian, Minucius Felix
Minucius Felix
Book ID: 332 Page: 371

Section: 4A

For Plato, in the Timaeus, God is by virtue of his name the author of the universe, the artificer of soul, the constructor of all things in heaven and earth; hard to discover, as he declares, by reason of his incredible and extraordinary power, and, when discovered, impossible to describe in popular terms.

“The position is pretty much the same as our own; we too recognize God, and call him the parent of all; yet avoid popular expositions except when questioned.

“I have now cited the opinions of almost all philosophers of any marked distinction, all designating God as one, though under great variety of names, so that one might suppose, either that Christians of to-day are philosophers, or that philosophers of old were already Christians.

“But if the universe is ruled by Providence, and directed by the will of a single God, we must not allow an ignorant tradition, charmed or captivated by its pet fables, to hurry us into the mistake of agreement.

. . .

Our ancestors were so ready to believe in fictions, that they accepted on trust all kind of wild and monstrous marvels and miracles;

Quote ID: 8095

Time Periods: 023

Minucius Felix, Octavius, LCL 250: Tertullian, Minucius Felix
Minucius Felix
Book ID: 332 Page: 419

Section: 4A

“The philosophers, you observe, use the same arguments as we; not that we have followed their footsteps, but that they, from the divine predictions of the prophets, have borrowed the shadow of a garbled truth.

Quote ID: 8105

Time Periods: 023

Minucius Felix, Octavius, LCL 250: Tertullian, Minucius Felix
Minucius Felix
Book ID: 332 Page: 433

Section: 4A

....we think scorn of high-brow philosophers

Quote ID: 8108

Time Periods: 23

Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom, The
Candida Moss
Book ID: 386 Page: 105

Section: 4A

Despite its brevity, however, there’s a great deal of interpretation and rhetoric in the presentation of these saints. In his description of Ptolemy, Justin is interested in depicting him as a kind of Christian philosopher. He twice notes that Ptolemy confessed to being a Christian, although the explanations for why Ptolemy did this are philosophical. Justin writes that Ptolemy confessed to being a Christian because he was a “lover of truth”, a term similar to “philosopher,” or “lover of wisdom,” and had come to a knowledge of “the good” through the “school of divine virtue.” These references to truth, instruction, virtue, and “the good” are all references to philosophical principles.

Quote ID: 8334

Time Periods: 2

Numenius
George Karamanolis
Book ID: 611 Page: 15

Section: 4A

Numenius wanted to show that the Jewish nation must be counted among the ancient ones that have a share in logos and also that Moses had a conception of the first principle similar to that of Plato, since both identified God with being (see Burnyeat 2005, 155-156).

Quote ID: 9343

Time Periods: 2

Origen: Contra Celsum
Henry Chadwick
Book ID: 164 Page: ix

Section: 4A

The contra Celsum stands out as the culmination of the whole apologetic movement of the second and third centuries. ....

The Apologists have in view two closely related objects. They hope to assure the Roman authorities that Christians are not a pernicious and unpatriotic minority group with seditious tendencies and immoral rites; and they want to present Christianity to the educated classes as something intellectually respectable.

Quote ID: 3431

Time Periods: 23

Origen: Contra Celsum
Henry Chadwick
Book ID: 164 Page: 212

Section: 4A

In these remarks the well-read and learned Celsus, who accuses both Jews and Christians of ignorance and want of education, clearly shows how accurate was his knowledge of the dates of each writer, Greek and barbarian. He really imagines that Hesiod and thousands of others whom he calls inspired were earlier than Moses and his writings, Moses, who is proved to have lived long before the Trojan war. It was not, therefore, the Jews who composed a most improbable and crude story about the man born of earth, but the men who according to Celsus were inspired, Hesiod and his thousands of others,

Quote ID: 3443

Time Periods: 23

Ovid: Metamorphoses, LCL 043: Ovid IV, Books 9-15
Translated by Frank Justus Miller
Book ID: 304 Page: 423

Section: 4A

Thou thyself mayst enter the abode of the three sisters. Thou shalt there behold the records of all that happens on tablets of brass and solid iron, a massive structure, tablets which fear neither warfare in the heavens, nor the lightning’s fearful power, nor any destructive shocks which may befall, being eternal and secure.

Quote ID: 7535

Time Periods: 01

Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety
E.R. Dodds
Book ID: 167 Page: 92

Section: 4A

There is a well-known testimony to this in Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho, where the author describes such a quest-after seeking in vain to learn about God from a Stoic, an Aristotelian and a Pythagorean, he finally attends the lectures of a Platonist, who at least gives him the hope of seeing God face to face, ‘for this’, he says, ‘is the aim of the philosophy of Plato’. {1}

Quote ID: 3508

Time Periods: 02

Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety
E.R. Dodds
Book ID: 167 Page: 105

Section: 4A

The ‘Apostolic Fathers’ had written only for their fellow-Christians. Now the ‘Apologists’ emerge from their ideological ghetto and for the first time state the case for Christianity to the world of educated pagans--not so much in the expectation of converting them as in the hope of persuading them to call off the intermittent local persecutions from which the Church at this period suffered. And it was also in the latter part of second century that a pagan intellectual for the first time took Christianity seriously. What to Pliny the Younger had been only a tiresome administrative nuisance, what to Lucian and even to Galen was no more than a psychological curiosity, appeared to Celsus as an actual menace to the stability and security of the Empire: with remarkable prescience he saw the Church as a potential State within the State, whose continued growth threatened in his opinion to disrupt the bonds of society and would end by letting in the barbarians. {1}

Quote ID: 3509

Time Periods: 23

Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety
E.R. Dodds
Book ID: 167 Page: 105/106

Section: 4A

The second phase extends from 203, the year in which the youthful Origen began to teach at Alexandria, to 248 or thereabouts, when as an elderly man he published his Contra Celsum. For the people of the Empire it was a time of increasing insecurity and misery; for the Church it was a time of relative freedom from persecution, of steady numerical growth, and above all of swift intellectual advance. Clement of Alexandria had perceived that if Christianity was to be more than a religion for the uneducated it must come to terms with Greek philosophy and Greek science; simple-minded Christians must no longer ‘fear philosophy as children fear a scarecrow’ {1}

Quote ID: 3510

Time Periods: 23

Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety
E.R. Dodds
Book ID: 167 Page: 108/109

Section: 2E3,4A

It was in this interval, probably in 270, that Porphyry produced his bitter book Against the Christians, which found many imitators in the following years but also provoked many replies from the Christian side. In it he expressed the alarm which was now felt by all religious-minded pagans. He speaks of Christianity as a doctrine which is preached in the remotest corners of the world; he notes how at Rome the cult of Jesus is replacing that of Asclepius; and he notes also a new sign of Christian confidence and Christian wealth--they are building themselves large churches everywhere. {1}

Quote ID: 3513

Time Periods: 3

Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety
E.R. Dodds
Book ID: 167 Page: 120

Section: 4A

Celsus finds Christian ethics banal: they ‘contain no teaching that is impressive or new’; the advice about turning the other cheek is old stuff, better expressed by Plato. And Origen for his part does not deny this: the difference, he says, is that the Christian preachers ‘cook for the multitude’, whereas Plato is read only by the learned--Christianity, he seems at times to suggest, is Platonism for the many.

Quote ID: 3517

Time Periods: 23

Pagan Christianity: The Origins of Our Modern Church Practices
Frank Viola
Book ID: 168 Page: 92

Section: 1A,4A

The sermon is a sacred cow that was conceived in the womb of Greek rhetoric. It was born into the Christian community when ex-pagans-now-turned-Christians began to bring their oratorical styles of speaking into the church. By the third century, it became common for Christian leaders to deliver a sermon. By the fourth century it became the norm. {115}

Christianity has absorbed its surrounding culture. {116} When your pastor mounts his pulpit wearing his clerical costume and delivers his sacred sermon, he is playing out the role of the ancient Greek orator.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that the sermon does not have a shred of Biblical merit to support its existence, it continues to be uncritically admired in the eyes of most modern Christians. It has become so entrenched in the Christian mind that most Bible-believing pastors and “laymen” fail to see that they are affirming and perpetuating an unscriptural practice out of sheer tradition.

Quote ID: 3543

Time Periods: 234

Pagan Christianity: The Origins of Our Modern Church Practices
Frank Viola
Book ID: 168 Page: 250/251

Section: 4A

In Alexandria, we have the beginning of the institutional study of Christian doctrine. {15} Origen (185-254), one of the school’s early teachers, was deeply influenced by pagan philosophy. {16} He was the first to organize key theological concepts into a systematic theology. {17}

Of this period Will Durant has observed: “The gap between philosophy and religion was closing, and reason for a thousand years consented to be the handmaiden of theology.” {18} Edwin Hatch echoes these thoughts saying, “Within a century and a half after Christianity and philosophy first came into closest contact, the ideas and methods of philosophy had flowed in such mass into Christianity, and filled so large a place in it, as to have made it no less a philosophy than a religion.” {19}

Quote ID: 3598

Time Periods: 23

Pagan Christianity: The Origins of Our Modern Church Practices
Frank Viola
Book ID: 168 Page: 254

Section: 4A

Concerning the seminary, we can say that Peter Abelard laid the egg and Thomas Aquinas hatched it. More than any other figure, Aquinas has had the greatest influence on modern theological training. In 1879, his work was endorsed by a papal bull as an authentic expression of doctrine to be studied by all students of theology. Aquinas’ main thesis was that God can be known through reason. He borrowed this idea from Aristotle.

Quote ID: 3600

Time Periods: 7

Pagan Christianity: The Origins of Our Modern Church Practices
Frank Viola
Book ID: 168 Page: 264/265

Section: 4A

Both Plato and Socrates taught that knowledge is virtue. Good depends on the extent of one’s knowledge. Hence, the teaching of knowledge is the teaching of virtue. {97}

Herein lies the root and stem of modern Christian education. It is built on the Platonic idea that knowledge and spirituality are the same. Therein lies the great flaw.

Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle (both students of Socrates) are the fathers of modern Christian education. {98} To use a Biblical metaphor, modern Christian education, whether it be seminarian or Bible college, is serving food from the wrong tree: The tree of knowledge of good and evil rather than the tree of life. {99}

Quote ID: 3601

Time Periods: 027

Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 2

Section: 4A

Christians received the death sentence simply because of their name.

Quote ID: 3605

Time Periods: 23

Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 3

Section: 4A

“Why is a mere name odious to you? Names are not deserving of hatred, it is the unjust act that calls for penalty and punishment.”

Quote ID: 3608

Time Periods: 2

Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 3

Section: 4A

Tertullian, the Carthagenian lawyer and Christian (160-220), also discussed the Romans’ treatment of the Christians.

….

From his writings it is clear that twenty years after Athenagoras plea (and thirty years before Justin’s death) the situation had not changed at all.

Quote ID: 3609

Time Periods: 2

Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 4

Section: 4A

...This is the teacher of Asia, the father of Christians, and the overthrower of our gods, he who has been teaching many not to sacrifice, or to worship the gods.” It appears that the second-century Christian apologists oversimplified matters when they asserted that the people associated nothing bad with the Christian name. Polycarp’s case brings to surface the real accusation: He was an overthrower of the gods, and he encouraged many people not to sacrifice or to worship the gods. This, then, is the real reason why he was executed; the multitude assumed that by professing to being a Christian he had confessed to luring the people away from their ancient gods, thus upsetting the prevailing social order.

Quote ID: 3611

Time Periods: 12

Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 42

Section: 4A

We know that the Christian apologists Justin Martyr (ca. 114-165), Miltiades (dates unknown), Apollinaris (around 172), Melito (bishop of Sardis in Lydia, ca. 190), and Athenagoras (around 177) addressed some of their writings explaining Christianity to Marcus Aurelius, but whether the emperor actually read any of them is more than questionable.

Quote ID: 3645

Time Periods: 23

Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 46

Section: 4A

If Peregrinus indeed combined Christian principles and philosophy, he was not alone. During this same period, Justin Martyr in Rome preached Christianity in a philosopher’s garb.

Quote ID: 3646

Time Periods: 2

Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 46

Section: 4A

Tatian, a pupil of Justin’s, became a Christian extremist, and around 172 moved away from Rome and back to his native East where he found a sect, called the “Encratites,” or “Abstinents.” This sect embraced strict rules of self-discipline. . . .

Quote ID: 3647

Time Periods: 23

Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 143

Section: 4A

Indeed, many Christian intellectuals wished to present Christianity exactly as Galen understood it, namely as a philosophical school. These were the Christian apologists who attempted to explain Christianity to persons of Greco-Roman education and background by making use of the intellectual resources of the Greco-Roman world. {8}

Quote ID: 3667

Time Periods: 2

Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 144

Section: 4A

Justin was introduced to Christianity and accepted it as the true philosophy. Thus it was a quest for philosophical truth that led Justin to Christianity, and he understood Christianity to be a philosophical system comparable and superior to other contemporary philosophies. {10}

….

Another apologist, Athenagoras, in his plea for fair treatment of Christians, written around 177, also urged that they be judged by the standards applied to any group of philosophers. {11} Yet, another, Melito, the bishop of Sardis, addressed an Apology to Marcus Aurelius in which he touched on essentially the same theme. Tracing the development of Christianity, he asserted: “Our philosophy formerly flourished among the barbarians; but having sprung up among the nations under thy rule, during the great reign of thy ancestor Augustus, it became to thine empire especially a blessing of auspicious omen. . . .” Therefore, he concluded, if the emperor wished to continue to rule successfully he must guard the Christian philosophy, “that philosophy which thy ancestors also honored along with the other religions.” {12}

. . . .

Galen did regard the church in this light, thus marking a major change in the pagan attitude toward Christianity. For Galen, Christians were neither dangerous conspirators nor abominable cannibals, but they were rather adherents of a philosophical school. As a result, Galen (although not the general public) accorded Christianity a certain among of respectability, and Christians became socially acceptable.

Quote ID: 3668

Time Periods: 2

Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 145

Section: 4A

Nevertheless, despite this criticism Galen was a sympathetic observer of Christianity. Although he criticized the Christians’ lack of philosophical training, he appreciated their moral virtues. He praised their contempt of death, their acceptance of physical deprivation, and their continual pursuit of justice. According to Galen, in spite of their shortcomings Christians acted like philosophers.

Quote ID: 3669

Time Periods: 2

Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 146

Section: 4A

Tertullian believed that only the original tenets of Christianity were true, and that innovations were heresies. {20} According to him, Christians should avoid philosophy, because it led nowhere, and should rely instead on faith. “What has Jerusalem to do with Athens, the Church with the Academy, the Christian with the Heretic.

Quote ID: 3670

Time Periods: 23

Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 147

Section: 2D3A,4A

So Tertullian fulminated against heretics. No doubt many of the Christians whom he castigated would be considered church members in good standing today, but Tertullian sensed that the church was seeking a peaceful coexistence with, and a place in, Greco-Roman society. For him this meant an abandonment of primitive Christian values. He began to look toward the faction in which the memory of early Christianity was most assiduously cultivated, namely Montanism. More and more in his writings Tertullian advocated and approved of Montantist principles, he extolled martyrdom as the highest and most glorious deed, he urged Christians to abstain from taking part in the secular life and instead to wait for “the fast approaching advent of our Lord,” the second coming. {22} By 207 he was openly a Montanist, repudiating military service and attacking the laxity of the church and the evolution of new practices. Tertullian was convinced that his fight was for the truth; indeed the word veritas appears time after time in his polemics against heretics and pagans, people who in his judgment did not possess the truth. But Tertullian’s veritas was also judged heresy by the church, and his stubborn refusal to adjust his faith to the demands of the times was a rather annoying anachronism.

During Tertullian’s lifetime Clement (died ca. 215) used and adopted Greek philosophy in the pursuit of theology, and when his successor, Origen (died ca. 253-4), took over the Catechetical School not even the best educated pagan could call Christian philosophy substandard.

COPIED

Quote ID: 3671

Time Periods: 23

Pagan Rome and the Early Christians
Stephen Benko
Book ID: 169 Page: 158

Section: 4A

The end of the second century was a period of serious clashes between paganism and Christianity. It was during this period that pagan suspicions about Christians surfaced and found expression in savage attacks and sarcastic remarks. But at the same time, on a different plateau, a meeting of the minds began to occur. Justin Martyr and the Apologists, on the Christian side, made the first steps in this direction. Galen and Celsus, on the pagan side, accepted the challenge. Christianity may owe much to these two pagans because they helped to clarify many issues, and they prompted educated Christians to redefine their position and arguments.

. . . .

But in Alexandria the cool and serene figure of Clement began to radiate a new light. Greek philosophy, he wrote, is a training for the soul to receive faith, and thus scholarly study for Christian teachers is not sinful but desirable.{78}

. . . .

But a new era for Christian theology had started, and Christians began to see themselves in a new light. {79}

Quote ID: 3673

Time Periods: 23

Paganism in the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 171 Page: 3

Section: 4A,4B

pagans thinking only of other pagans affirm exactly similar views. “Such is the chief fruit of piety,” says Porphyry, “to honor the divinity according to one’s ancestral custom.” {12}

Porphyry indicates one reason anyway for saying what he does: the impious man wrongs his own forebears as well as the deity. {13}

Quote ID: 3693

Time Periods: 34

Paganism in the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 171 Page: 3

Section: 4A

“New” was a term of disapproval, used in that sense both in and beyond the debates between pagans and Christians; {15} “old” was good. In the apologies written by Christians, the reader is struck by the emphasis, through position near the front of the works or through length and frequency of discussion, accorded to proving the religion of the Jews, Moses, and the Pentateuch older than Hellenism, Homer, and the Iliad, or to proving the priority of Jewish ethical positions over Platonic.

Pastor John’s Note: Romans then, Xns now

Quote ID: 3694

Time Periods: 23

Paganism in the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 171 Page: 40

Section: 4A

For most people, meat was a thing never eaten and wine to surfeit never drunk save as some religious setting permitted. There existed – it is no great exaggeration to say it of all but the fairly rich – no formal social life in the world of the Apologists that was entirely secular. Small wonder, then, that Jews and Christians, holding themselves aloof from anything the gods touched, suffered under the reputation of misanthropy!

PJ: Used last phrase only

Quote ID: 3710

Time Periods: 2

Paganism in the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 171 Page: 63

Section: 4A

In contrast, Porphyry declares “the one who loves god cannot love pleasure or body; but the latter sort of man will love money and so be unjust, and the unjust man is unholy, both toward god and his ancestors, and a criminal in his conduct toward other. So he may sacrifice hecatombs and adorn the temples with a myriad offerings, but he remains impious and godless and, in true calling a sacrilegious person.” {10}

Quote ID: 3718

Time Periods: 34

Paganism in the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 171 Page: 72

Section: 4A

That was the test: ridicule. Fully to sense the meaning of Constantine’s preposterous pontification, he must be imagined speaking at Plutarch’s table. There, his views would have produced delighted grins; likewise, no doubt, in the company of Lucian or Apuleius. Lucian knew of opinionated ignoramuses in very high places indeed,

Quote ID: 3719

Time Periods: 234

Paganism in the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 171 Page: 72

Section: 4A

Another hundred years pass, and gullibility is no longer a target for ridicule. In the most educated circles that the Empire has to show, enchantments, trances, and wonder-working raise no laugh; rather, fear and awe. It is rationalism, as we would call it, that now must defend itself; and it is easily put to rout by Constantine. Most of his listeners – not all, for such large changes come about very gradually – no doubt shared his views.{39}

Quote ID: 3720

Time Periods: 4

Paganism in the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 171 Page: 75

Section: 4A

It needs no demonstration, of course, that Christians were wholly of the world around them – of what other can they be supposed? – and drew in its everyday assumptions with their very breath; that those among them who engaged in debate with pagans had had the same schooling beneath or in step with the catechetical; and that in such debate they could best hope to win by anchoring their assertions to points of common conviction. Hence their free characterizing of beliefs as “absurd,” “irrational,” “folly,” “incredible,” “outrageous,” and the like, without need of refutation step by step. All parties shared the same preconceptions.

Quote ID: 3723

Time Periods: 23

Paganism in the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 171 Page: 77

Section: 4A

The sacred had lost its story when its enlightened critics finished with it.

Quote ID: 3725

Time Periods: 34

Paganism in the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 171 Page: 78

Section: 4A

The stories of Kronos eating his young bewildered and revolted anyone who stopped to think of them; but they could suggest cryptically that mind turns in upon itself. So says Sallust the philosopher.

Quote ID: 3726

Time Periods: 4

Paganism in the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 171 Page: 78

Section: 4A

Reinterpretation had a long history before the period of our study. The art found favor among Jews and Christians as well as pagans. Seneca thought it nonsense, Dio Chrysostom scorned its exculpations of Homer; but their respective contemporaries Cornutus and Plutarch made frequent, reverential use of it in defense of existing religion – even Egyptian.{19}

Quote ID: 3727

Time Periods: 12

Pagans and Christians: Religion and the Religious Life from the Second to Fourth Century A.D.
Robin Lane Fox
Book ID: 173 Page: 18

Section: 2E2,4A

In Alexandria, Hilarion’s schoolmasters are said to have admired his gift for rhetoric, but before he could follow the usual career as a pagan speaker and public figure, he abandoned his school. Aged fifteen, he is said to have struck into Egypt’s desert to find Antony, the Coptic-speaking Christian hermit. After two months in Antony’s company, he is said to have returned to his home village and promptly given away his property.

Quote ID: 3825

Time Periods: 4

Pagans and Christians: Religion and the Religious Life from the Second to Fourth Century A.D.
Robin Lane Fox
Book ID: 173 Page: 95

Section: 4A,4B

To “follow pagan religion” was generally to accept this tradition of the gods’ apeasable anger. A few philosophers argued against it, but the vast majority ignored them, and it was precisely this fear which impelled people to persecute Christian “atheists,” dangerous groups who refused to honour the gods.

Quote ID: 3856

Time Periods: 123

Pagans and Christians: Religion and the Religious Life from the Second to Fourth Century A.D.
Robin Lane Fox
Book ID: 173 Page: 199

Section: 3C2,4A

As Emperor, Julian took up the office of prophet at Didyma, and also stepped into its intellectual legacy. Like Theophilus, he believed that Apollo was the “master-founder of philosophy,” ….

Quote ID: 3863

Time Periods: 4

Pagans and Christians: Religion and the Religious Life from the Second to Fourth Century A.D.
Robin Lane Fox
Book ID: 173 Page: 244

Section: 4A

Lucian tells a brilliant story of the beginnings of the prophet’s fraud. Alexander “the false prophet,” he said, had left home as a young man and drifted through a dubious study of medicine and sham philosophy. When his good looks faded, he fetched up with Cocconas, a wretched songwriter from Byzantium, the first known melodist, then, in that city’s musical history. Together, they tricked a rich Macedonian woman, bought a huge, tame snake at Pella and decided, after a quarrel, that Abonouteichos was the best place for a fraud.

. . . .

The earlier scenes in this story are probably pure satire: the Macedonian episode was devised to ridicule the prophet Alexander, namesake of Alexander the Great.

Quote ID: 3867

Time Periods: 2

Pagans and Christians: Religion and the Religious Life from the Second to Fourth Century A.D.
Robin Lane Fox
Book ID: 173 Page: 260

Section: 2B,4A

While art and the ancient cult statues continued to define people’s sense of the gods, philosophy continued to discuss the concept of a Supreme god, his qualities and relation to the other divinities. Oracles then made this language the language of gods themselves: ….

Quote ID: 3869

Time Periods: 2

Pagans and Christians: Religion and the Religious Life from the Second to Fourth Century A.D.
Robin Lane Fox
Book ID: 173 Page: 305

Section: 4A

In the early second century, the picture changes importantly.{37} A Christian, Aristides, addressed an “Apology” to the Emperor Hadrian and described himself specifically as “the philosopher from Athens.”

Quote ID: 3870

Time Periods: 2

Philo: Works of Philo, The
Translated by C. D. Yonge
Book ID: 279 Page: 3

Section: 4A

(8) But Moses, who had early reached the very summits of philosophy, 1and who had learnt from the oracles of God the most numerous and important of the principles of nature, was well aware that it is indispensable that in all existing things there must be an active cause, and a passive subject; and that the active cause is the intellect of the universe, thoroughly unadulterated and thoroughly unmixed, superior to virtue and superior to science, superior even to abstract good or abstract beauty;

Quote ID: 7000

Time Periods: 12

Philo: Works of Philo, The
Translated by C. D. Yonge
Book ID: 279 Page: 25

Section: 4A

(3) When, therefore, Moses says, “God completed his works on the sixth day,” we must understand that he is speaking not of a number of days, but that he takes six as a perfect number. Since it is the first number which is equal in its parts, in the half, and the third and sixth parts, and since it is produced by the multiplication of two unequal factors, two and three. And the numbers two and three exceed the incorporeality which exists in the unit;

Quote ID: 7001

Time Periods: 12

Philo: Works of Philo, The
Translated by C. D. Yonge
Book ID: 279 Page: 247

Section: 4A

(146) And even if there be not as yet any one who is worthy to be called a son of God, nevertheless, let him labour earnestly to be adorned according to his first-born word, the eldest of his angels, as the great archangel of many names; for he is called, the authority, and the name of God, and the Word, and man according to God’s image, and he who sees Israel.

Quote ID: 9345

Time Periods: 12

Plato, Complete Works
Edited by John M. Cooper
Book ID: 436 Page: 100

Section: 4A

…these were his last words―”Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius;{19}make this offering to him and do not forget.”

Quote ID: 8788

Time Periods: ?

Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 4

Section: 4A

….the system of education that went by the name of paideia.

Quote ID: 4008

Time Periods: 023

Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 4

Section: 4A

In the last decades of the fourth century, bishops and monks showed that they could sway the will of the powerful as effectively as had any philosopher.

They were, in many ways, disturbingly new protagonists. But they had been able to make their debut on the stage of late Roman politics because contemporaries needed them to act according to scripts that had been written, in previous centuries, by men of paideia.

. . . .

They were “true” philosophers. They played the ancient part of the courageous and free-spoken man of wisdom, but in playing this ancient role they invested it with a heavy charge of novel meaning.

Quote ID: 4009

Time Periods: 234

Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 5

Section: 4A

The emperor’s willingness to listen to bishops, as he had once listened to philosophers, implied his recognition of new forms of local power. This power could wear a sinister face: its non-Christian victims spoke of it, accurately enough, as a “usurped authority.”{2} The unauthorized demolition of major shrines of the old religion, unpunished attacks on Jewish synagogues, and, finally, the lynching of a leading member of the prestigious town council of Alexandria, the woman philosopher Hypatia, in 415, were acts of violence that showed that the cities themselves had changed.

Quote ID: 4010

Time Periods: 45

Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 62

Section: 4A

Parrhésia, therefore, was devolved to another, notoriously eccentric, figure—the philosopher. He was a well-chosen spokesman. He almost always belonged to the notable class and shared in their paideia to a high degree.

Quote ID: 4039

Time Periods: 234

Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 62

Section: 4A

But the philosopher’s way of life was pointedly different. He was held to owe nothing to ties of patronage and friendship. He was a man who, by a heroic effort of the mind, had found freedom from society. For that reason, he carried his right to parrhésia in his own person.

Quote ID: 4040

Time Periods: 234

Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 62

Section: 4A

In the earlier centuries of the empire, the tranquil, bearded figure of the philosopher, with bare chest and simple cloak, carrying a leather satchel and a staff, had been the focus of clearly defined and stable expectations: owing nothing to any man, the philosopher acted as the privileged counterpoint to those who exercised power.{138} In late antiquity, this image of the philosopher had remained alive; ….

Quote ID: 4041

Time Periods: 234

Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 63/64

Section: 4A

Hence the fourth-century image of the philosopher was double-sided. The philosopher was a man free from society. He owed nothing to his peers and positively avoided those who exercised power. If he enjoyed wealth, culture, and social status (as many did), he did not allow these material advantages to compromise his freedom.

. . . .

But it was precisely in a self-created solitude that the philosopher developed the intelligence and strength of character which enabled him to intervene in the world around him. The fact that many philosophers were quite content with solitude did not mean that others did not feel obligated, even tempted, to undertake the occasional venture into public life.

. . . .

Only the philosopher, a man who had overcome anger and fear in himself, could stand in the way of the anger of others. He could brave the menacing power of the great and ensure that his voice was heard in their councils. He was expected to bring amnesty for those caught in the toils of a political system in which, as we have seen, anger was ever-present. For this reason, we find philosophers continually admired for their ability to mingle with the celsae potestates, the emperor and his entourage, as few notables would have dared to have done.

Quote ID: 4042

Time Periods: 234

Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 65

Section: 4A

Furthermore, the philosopher, precisely because he was known to be fearless, brought to bear the decisive quality of parrhésia, candid speech and good counsel offered without fear or favor. In the world we have described, this was an infinitely precious social elixir. Galen had been convinced that no civic notable, ….. could be trusted to tell the truth; …

Quote ID: 4045

Time Periods: 234

Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 70

Section: 4A

The conversion of Constantine to Christianity in 312 had little effect on a style of rule still based on collaboration with the local elites. When in 388 the emperor Theodosius I left Constantinople to conquer Italy from the Gallic usurper Maximus, he acted in the traditional manner. The venerable Themistius, now approaching seventy, was among those left in charge of the education of Theodosius’ son, the young prince Arcadius.

. . . .

Theodosius would soon have to deal with a former provincial governor now entering his fifties, Ambrose, Catholic bishop of Milan: the encounter was to prove more drastic than any he had experienced in his dealings with the urbane Themistius. A new type of “philosopher” had emerged.

Quote ID: 4047

Time Periods: 4

Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 71/72

Section: 4A

The monks, in reality, came from a wide variety of social backgrounds and were far from averse to reading and producing books.{3} But Christian writers consistently presented them as men untouched by paideia. The monk was the antithesis of the philosopher, the representative of the educated upper classes. Anthony had been a farmer’s son, ignorant of Greek and taught by God alone.{4}

Quote ID: 4048

Time Periods: 234

Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 72

Section: 4A,2E2

The rise to prominence of Christian monks was a warning signal.

Quote ID: 4049

Time Periods: 4

Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 73

Section: 4A,2E2

The monks could utter the gros mots that broke the spell of paideia. As tutor to the sons of Theodosius I, Arsenius would have known the aging philosopher Themistius, his colleague at the court. He fled from the palace of Constantinople to Egypt, to save his soul. Over a decade later he emerged from the hermitages of the Wadi Natrun...

Quote ID: 4050

Time Periods: 4

Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
Peter Brown
Book ID: 183 Page: 73

Section: 4A,2E2

He had once represented the prestige of paideia at the imperial court. Now he hung on the words of his spiritual guide, an elderly Egyptian: “I knew Greek and Latin learning. But I have not yet learned the ABC with this peasant.”{11}

Quote ID: 4051

Time Periods: 4

Religious Toleration And Persecution In Ancient Rome
Simeon L. Guterman
Book ID: 187 Page: 122

Section: 4A

Juster also brings into line the manoeuvres of the Christian apologist who were ever trying to prove that Christians were the true Jews, Christianity the true Judaism. According to him they were trying to obtain for themselves the protection accorded to the Jewish nation. But it was the protection of the religio licita, as well as the natio, for which the Christians were striving.

Quote ID: 4133

Time Periods: 2

Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus, The
R. M. Ogilvie
Book ID: 390 Page: 3

Section: 4A

Ancient religion was tolerant and non-sectarian.

….

Since Roman religion offered no dogmas about the universe, there was nothing for people to contradict or to argue about. Philosophers, on the other hand, had elaborate systems which they defended to the last detail with grotesque ingenuity.

There was, however, one religion in the ancient world which was stubbornly exclusive—Judaism (and, later, Christianity). The Jews believed that there was only one God and only one acceptable form of worshipping that God.

Quote ID: 8359

Time Periods: 01

Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus, The
R. M. Ogilvie
Book ID: 390 Page: 3/4

Section: 4A

It was only when Christianity, the successor to Judaism, became, about A.D. 250, a powerful force in the Roman world and absorbed a Greek philosophical system that bigotry and persecution began in earnest.

Quote ID: 8360

Time Periods: 3

Rome in the Dark Ages
Peter Llewellyn
Book ID: 191 Page: 103

Section: 3G,4A

This attitude prevailed: Pope Honorius in the seventh century, embroiled by the easterners in the questions of Christ’s will, declared that the whole debate was one for grammarians, and his own answers show a parable-like approach, one that was pastoral and not purely academic. He, or his secretary John, later Pope John IV, compared philosophers to croaking frogs.

Quote ID: 4311

Time Periods: 7

Sentences of Sextus, The by Henry Chadwick
Translated by Henry Chadwick & C.H. Dodd
Book ID: 270 Page: 107

Section: 4A

Part II: Studies 2. The Evidence of Origen

The earliest testimony to the existence of the Sextine collection comes from Origen, writing in the late forties of the third century A.D. On two occasions he cites from the maxims explicitly naming Sextus as their author. We shall shortly see that these two occasions are not the only instances where Origen can be shown to be quoting from the collection.

Quote ID: 6805

Time Periods: 23

Sentences of Sextus, The by Henry Chadwick
Translated by Henry Chadwick & C.H. Dodd
Book ID: 270 Page: 113

Section: 4A

Part II: Studies 2. The Evidence of Origen

Gwynn challenges the notion that Origen regarded Sextus as a pagan writer. Commenting on the passage in the Contra Celsum he observes: ‘It is not easy to avoid the conclusion that a book quoted thus to yield evidence on a matter of Christian teaching the usage—a book which “most Christians” (oί πολλοί, not merely many) knew familiarly—must have been a Christian work.’ And discussion the text in the Commentary on St Matthew he remarks that Origen ‘here distinctly classes Sextus as a writer held in repute among many Christians, as one of the teachers by whom enthusiastic spirits were in danger of being misled in this matter; a fact which surely leads, as before, to the conclusion that he knew him as a Christian writer’. {1}

Quote ID: 6809

Time Periods: 23

Sentences of Sextus, The by Henry Chadwick
Translated by Henry Chadwick & C.H. Dodd
Book ID: 270 Page: 114

Section: 4A

Part II: Studies 2. The Evidence of Origen

Accordingly, he continues, ‘I gladly profess the opinion uttered by a wise and believing man which I often quote: “It is dangerous to speak even the truth about God.” For not only false statements about him are risky; there is also danger to the speaker in true statements if they are made at an inopportune time.’ {1}

. . . .

The Christian teacher is none other than Sextus, and the maxim quoted is no. 352.

Quote ID: 6810

Time Periods: 23

Sentences of Sextus, The by Henry Chadwick
Translated by Henry Chadwick & C.H. Dodd
Book ID: 270 Page: 115/116

Section: 4A

Part II: Studies 2. The Evidence of Origen

Origen’s remark that this aphorism was a favourite of his reminds us how much of his work has failed to survive. I have been able to discover only one other occasion in his extant writings where the same maxim is quoted, this time in company with yet another from the Sextine collection. The two citations occur in the preface to Origen’s Commentary on the First Psalm. This has not survived in the manuscript tradition, but is extant only in a short citation from the preface given by Epiphanius ….

. . . .

And in tracking out the scripture we have not disregarded the fine sayings ‘When you speak about God you are judged by God’, and ‘There is no small danger in speaking even the truth about God’. {2}

These citations from Sextus (22 and 352) are not recognised by the erudite editor of Epiphanius, Karl Holl. The cause of this failure on the part of both Holl and Harnack to identify these quotations in Origen may conjecturally be attributed to the continuing prevalence of the notion that Origen did not regard the Sextine maxims as a Christian work. {1} Sextus has not therefore been even considered as offering a likely hunting-ground. It is noteworthy, for example, that in Holl’s invaluable collection of all the citations from ante-Nicene writers preserved in the Sacra Parallela of John of Damascus, he deliberately excludes from the scope of his book the quotations therein drawn from Sextus on the ground that as a theologian he is only interested in the Christian writers, and therefore the Sextine maxims are none of his concern—‘they belong to the philologists’. {2} It is no doubt this mental attitude which has led students of the Fathers to neglect one of the more remarkable monuments of second-century Christian piety.

Pastor John notes: John’s note: Origen!! (near the section with ‘And in tracking out the scripture….’)

Pastor John notes: John’s note: Wow, Wow (for section ‘he deliberately excludes from the scope of his book….’)

Quote ID: 6811

Time Periods: 23

Sentences of Sextus, The by Henry Chadwick
Translated by Henry Chadwick & C.H. Dodd
Book ID: 270 Page: 147

Section: 4A

Part II: Studies 4. Internal Evidence

Here again Sextus agrees with the Pythagorean maxims against Porphyry in having ἀνθρώποις at the end, {1} although at 3 he has a related form of the saying which is in agreement with Porphyry on this point. On the other hand, Porphyry and Py. agree against Sextus in the verb.

Quote ID: 6815

Time Periods: 23

Sentences of Sextus, The by Henry Chadwick
Translated by Henry Chadwick & C.H. Dodd
Book ID: 270 Page: 147

Section: 4A

Part II: Studies 4. Internal Evidence

Py. and Po. Agree against S in having σοφός. Clearly Sextus has changed σοφός to the Christian πιστός. S and Po. Agree against Py. in not having an appended second clause.

Quote ID: 6816

Time Periods: 23

Sentences of Sextus, The by Henry Chadwick
Translated by Henry Chadwick & C.H. Dodd
Book ID: 270 Page: 153

Section: 4A

Part II: Studies 4. Internal Evidence

The parallels in order between Porphyry and Sextus are striking:

Po. 9 contains S 205, 207, 208a, 202.

Po. 11 contains S 35, 49, 36, 97.

Po. 12 contains S 303, 113, 114, 122, 124, 125, 126.

Po. 34 contains S 274, 273, 472, 74, 75a, 75b.

Po. 35 contains S 335, 232, 345, 371.

Sextus seems to have taken over his selected aphorisms mainly in the order in which he found them in his source. His collection is in any event remarkable for its apparent formlessness and inconsequentiality. {1}

Quote ID: 6817

Time Periods: 23

Sentences of Sextus, The by Henry Chadwick
Translated by Henry Chadwick & C.H. Dodd
Book ID: 270 Page: 160

Section: 4A

Part II: Studies 4. Internal Evidence

Ethical exhortation runs to neutrality and Sextus was not the first, as he was certainly not the last, to adapt the highest heathen morality to Christian use. Ambrose had only to make small, though admittedly significant, changes in Cicero to produce his De Officiis. The Enchiridion of Epictetus circulated in two Christian recensions. {4}

Quote ID: 6818

Time Periods: 234

Sentences of Sextus, The by Henry Chadwick
Translated by Henry Chadwick & C.H. Dodd
Book ID: 270 Page: 162

Section: 4A

Part II: Studies 4. Internal Evidence

Accordingly the ultimate question that is raised by the Sextine collection is a variant of the controversy between Rufinus and Jerome, namely, whether the ascetic and mystical ideal of the Neopythagorean sages has been an influence for good or for evil upon the spirituality of Christendom, and whether this process of incorporation did not tend to blur distinctions which might better have been kept more clearly in view.

Quote ID: 6819

Time Periods: 234

Sentences of Sextus, The by Richard Edwards
Translated by Richard A. Edwards and Robert A. Wild, S.J.
Book ID: 271 Page: 41

Section: 4A

Line (218) To a philosopher a philosopher is a gift from God.

Quote ID: 6822

Time Periods: 23

Sentences of Sextus, The by Richard Edwards
Translated by Richard A. Edwards and Robert A. Wild, S.J.
Book ID: 271 Page: 41

Section: 4A

(Line 219) If you honor a philosopher, you will honor yourself.

Quote ID: 6823

Time Periods: 23

Sentences of Sextus, The by Richard Edwards
Translated by Richard A. Edwards and Robert A. Wild, S.J.
Book ID: 271 Page: 43

Section: 4A

(Line 227) Let the philosopher not think of anything as his own property.

Quote ID: 6824

Time Periods: 23

Sentences of Sextus, The by Richard Edwards
Translated by Richard A. Edwards and Robert A. Wild, S.J.
Book ID: 271 Page: 43

Section: 4A

(Line 229) Whoever does not esteem the philosopher is ungrateful to God.

Quote ID: 6825

Time Periods: 23

Sentences of Sextus, The by Richard Edwards
Translated by Richard A. Edwards and Robert A. Wild, S.J.
Book ID: 271 Page: 45

Section: 4A

(Line 259) Do not allow a philosopher to be slandered.

Quote ID: 6826

Time Periods: 23

Sentences of Sextus, The by Richard Edwards
Translated by Richard A. Edwards and Robert A. Wild, S.J.
Book ID: 271 Page: 53

Section: 4A

(Line 315) Consider your reason to be the essence of humanity.

Quote ID: 6829

Time Periods: 23

Sentences of Sextus, The by Richard Edwards
Translated by Richard A. Edwards and Robert A. Wild, S.J.
Book ID: 271 Page: 53

Section: 4A

(Line 316) Where your reason is, there is your good.

Quote ID: 6830

Time Periods: 23

Sentences of Sextus, The by Richard Edwards
Translated by Richard A. Edwards and Robert A. Wild, S.J.
Book ID: 271 Page: 53

Section: 4A

(Line 319) After God, honor the philosopher as a servant of God.

Quote ID: 6831

Time Periods: 23

Sentences of Sextus, The by Richard Edwards
Translated by Richard A. Edwards and Robert A. Wild, S.J.
Book ID: 271 Page: 65

Section: 4A

(Line 384) A believer who is fond of learning is a doer of truth.

Quote ID: 6835

Time Periods: 23

Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 81/82

Section: 4A

Clement of Alexandria, born in c. 150 - probably at Athens - of pagan parentage, became a convert to Christianity.

....

Clement, although serene and optimistic, underwent a good deal of criticism. This was partly because of his extensive knowledge of Greek literature, since he was said to have introduced too much Hellenism and humanism into his Christianity.{22} Yet his writings mark an epoch in early Christian intellectual development.

Quote ID: 8071

Time Periods: 2

Tertullian, ANF Vol. 3, Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian
Edited by Philip Schaff and Alan Menzies
Book ID: 678 Page: 246

Section: 4A

What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? what between heretics and Christians? Our instruction comes from “the porch of Solomon,”{23} who had himself taught that “the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart.”{24} Away with{25} all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after enjoying the gospel! With our faith, we desire no further belief. For this is our palmary faith, that there is nothing which we ought to believe besides.

Tertullian, The Prescription Against Heretics, III.

Quote ID: 9726

Time Periods: 2

Tertullian, Apology and De Spectaculis, LCL 250
Translated by T.R. Glover
Book ID: 134 Page: 93

Section: 4A

chapter XIX

[Footnote d] Extreme antiquity gives books authority. For Moses was the first prophet.

Quote ID: 2957

Time Periods: 02

Tertullian, Apology and De Spectaculis, LCL 250
Translated by T.R. Glover
Book ID: 134 Page: 95

Section: 4A

chapter XIX

Much follows; and other prophets older than your literature. For the very last who sang was either a little antecedent to your sages and legislators, or at any rate of the same period.

Quote ID: 2958

Time Periods: 23

Tertullian, Apology and De Spectaculis, LCL 250
Translated by T.R. Glover
Book ID: 134 Page: 95

Section: 4A

chapter XIX

So it can be seen that your laws and your studies alike were fertilized from the [Hebrew] law and teaching of God; the earlier must be the seed. Hence you have some tenets in common with us, or very near us.

Quote ID: 2959

Time Periods: 23

Tertullian, Apology and De Spectaculis, LCL 250
Translated by T.R. Glover
Book ID: 134 Page: 199

Section: 4A

chapter XLVI

Still, while every man recognizes our truth, meanwhile unbelief (conceived though it be of the goodness of our school, which experiences an intercourse by now have established) counts our school no divine affair at all, but rather a variety of philosophy. “The philosophers,” says he, “they teach the same things, make the same professions – innocence, justice, patience, sobriety, chastity.” Then why, if, so far as teaching goes, we are compared with them, why are we not put on an equality with them in freedom and impunity of teaching? Or why, since we are all on one level, why are not they compelled to discharge those duties, our refusal of which brings us into danger? For who compels a philosopher to sacrifice, or to take an oath, or to set out silly lamps at midday? Not a bit of it! They openly destroy your gods, they attack your superstitions in their treatises, and you applaud. Yes, and many of them bark against the Emperors too, and you sustain them. You are more ready to reward them with statutes stipends than to condemn them to the beasts. Quite right too! Philosophers is what they are called, not Christians. The name of “philosopher” does not drive out demons.

Quote ID: 2970

Time Periods: 23

Tertullian, Apology and De Spectaculis, LCL 250
Translated by T.R. Glover
Book ID: 134 Page: 205

Section: 4A

chapter XLVI

But someone will say that in our case too there are some who desert the rule of our teaching. Then they cease to be counted Christians among us; but those philosophers, despite deeds such as those mentioned, continue in all the name and fame of wisdom among you. But then what have philosopher and Christian in common, - the disciple of Greece and the disciple of heaven, - the business of the one with reputation, of the other with salvation, - the man of words and the man of deeds, - the builder and the destroyer, - the friend and the foe of error, - the man who corrupts the truth, and the man who restores it and proclaims it – the thief of truth and its guardian?

Quote ID: 2971

Time Periods: 23

Tertullian, Apology and De Spectaculis, LCL 250
Translated by T.R. Glover
Book ID: 134 Page: 211

Section: 4A

chapter XLVII

Now whence, I ask you, do the philosophers and poets find things so similar? Whence, indeed, unless it be from our mysteries? And if from our mysteries, which are the older, then ours are truer and more credible when the mere copies of them win credence. If they invented these things our of their own feelings, then our mysteries must be counted copies of what came later – a thing contrary to nature. For the shadow never exists before the body, nor the copy before the truth.

Quote ID: 2972

Time Periods: 23

Tertullian, Apology and De Spectaculis, LCL 250
Translated by T.R. Glover
Book ID: 134 Page: 295

Section: 4A

Philosophers have given the name “pleasure” to quiet and tranquillity; in it they rejoice, take their ease in it, yes, glory in it.

Quote ID: 8082

Time Periods: 23

Tertullian, Apology and De Spectaculis, LCL 250
Translated by T.R. Glover
Book ID: 134 Page: 299

Section: 4A

And the magistrates who persecuted the name of Jesus, liquefying in fiercer flames than they kindled in their rage against the Christians! those sages, too, the philosophers blushing before their disciples as they blaze together. . . .

Quote ID: 8083

Time Periods: 23

Theodora: Empress of Byzantium
Paolo Cesaretti
Book ID: 281 Page: 107/108

Section: 4A

An actress without a stage in Apollonia, she claimed the daring “freedom of speech before the powerful” that the ancient Greeks had granted to philosophers alone, {7} Christianity had extended the same right to monks, who had recently evolved from philosophers….

Quote ID: 7031

Time Periods: 56

Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 48

Section: 4A

It was, of course, important to define the nature of Christ (insofar as this was permitted to finite minds), and to settle the faithful in a clear and distinct doctrine, but it is unlikely that these hydra-like arguments did much to comfort the simple Christian. What they did was offer a field-day to the inveterate Greek love of philosophical dispute, which had its revenge on the shackles of Christian dogmatism by opening a Pandora’s box of chimerical and unedifying Christological disputes that racked the Church for centuries.

Quote ID: 7086

Time Periods: 4

Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 48

Section: 4A

As the famous visitor to Constantinople observed this is a city where every slave and artisan is a profound theologian. Ask one of them to change some silver and he explains instead how the Son differs from the Father. Ask another the price of a loaf of bread and he replies that the Son is inferior to the Father. Ask a third if your bath is ready and he tells you that the Son was created out of nothingness.{5}

Quote ID: 7087

Time Periods: 4

Theophilus, ANF Vol. 2, Fathers of the Second Century
Ante Nicene Fathers
Book ID: 22 Page: 97

Section: 4A

Chap. IX – THE PROPHETS INSPIRED BY THE HOLY GHOST. - Book II

But men of God carrying in them a holy spirit and becoming prophets, being inspired and made wise by God, became God-taught, and holy, and righteous….And there was not one or two, but many, at various times and seasons among the Hebrews; and also among the Greeks there was the Sibyl; and they all have spoken things consistent and harmonious with each other, both what happened before them and what happened in their own time, and what things are now being fulfilled in our own day….

Quote ID: 406

Time Periods: 2

Theophilus, ANF Vol. 2, Fathers of the Second Century
Ante Nicene Fathers
Book ID: 22 Page: 112

Section: 4A

Chap. VI – OTHER OPINIONS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS. - Book III

And regarding lawless conduct, those who have blindly wandered into the choir of philosophy have, almost to a man, spoken with one voice. Certainly Plato, to mention him first who seems to have been the most respectable philosopher among them….

Quote ID: 409

Time Periods: 2

Theophilus, ANF Vol. 2, Fathers of the Second Century
Ante Nicene Fathers
Book ID: 22 Page: 116

Section: 4A

Chap. XVI – UNCERTAIN CONJECTURES OF THE PHILOSOPHERS. - Book III

….by Apollonius the Egyptian. And Plato, who is esteemed to who have been the wisest of the Greeks, into what nonsense did he run? For in his book entitled The Republic, we find him expressly saying: “For if things had in all time remained in their present arrangement, when ever could any new things be discovered?....

Quote ID: 412

Time Periods: 2

Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, The
Rodney Stark
Book ID: 277 Page: 7

Section: 4A

Leading Christian theologians such as Augustine and Aquinas were not what today might be called strict constructionists. Rather, they celebrated reason as the means to gain greater insight into divine intentions.

Quote ID: 6955

Time Periods: 47

Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, The
Rodney Stark
Book ID: 277 Page: 10

Section: 4A

The Christian commitment to progress through rationality reached its heights in the Summa Theologica of Saint Thomas Aquinas, published in Paris late in the thirteenth century. This monument to the theology of reason consists of logical “proofs” of Christian doctrine and set the standard for all subsequent Christian theologians.

Quote ID: 6956

Time Periods: 7

Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, The
Rodney Stark
Book ID: 277 Page: 11

Section: 4A

...Saint John Chrysostom noted that even the seraphim do not see God as he is. Instead, they see “a condescension accommodated to their nature. What is this condescension?

Pastor John notes: John’s note: what?

Quote ID: 6957

Time Periods: 4

Victory Of The Cross, The
Desmond O’Grady
Book ID: 278 Page: 113

Section: 4A

But Octavius argued cogently in asserting Christianity’s superiority. More remarkable still is his Romanness. He seems closer to Cicero than to Paul of Tarsus; if he, rather than Paul, had to preach on the Acropolis, he would have tried to convince the Greeks of Jesus Christ’s supreme reasonableness. He prized Christianity for its moral impact. Christ, the Cross and the New Testament are downplayed. Christianity has been grafted effortlessly onto classical Rome as a surer moral guide than Stoicism.

. . . .

Minucius Felix, who wrote at the end of the second or the beginning of the third century, was the first Christian author in Rome, and perhaps the first of all, to write in Latin rather than Greek.

Quote ID: 6985

Time Periods: 23

Vigilantius and His Times
William Stephen Gilly
Book ID: 284 Page: 3

Section: 1A,2D3B,4A

In fact, the close of the fourth century is the epoch from which we date the time, when, to use the words of bishop Van Mildert, ‘a system of Paganism was engrafted on Christianity;’ when the simplicity of the Gospel was sacrificed, in a fearful degree, to pious sophistries; and when the forms of the Pantheon were fatally introduced into the Christian sanctuary.{*}

[Footnote *] These men, by taking the Greek philosophers to their assistance, in explaining the nature and genius of the Gospel, had unhappily turned religion into an art, and their successors the schoolmen, by framing a body of theology out of them, instead of searching for it from Scriptures, soon after turned into a trade. - Warburton

PJ note: Vigilantius, (fl. c. 400), the presbyter, celebrated as the author of a work no longer extant, against a number of Catholic practices, which called forth one of the most violent of St Jerome’s polemical treatises.

Quote ID: 7193

Time Periods: 345

Way to Nicaea, Formation of Christian Theology, The, Vol. 1.
John Behr
Book ID: 431 Page: 144/145

Section: 4A

The next, more turbulent, round of debates in Rome is described in the ninth book of the Refutation of all Heresies and concerns similar issues but approached from the opposite direction. Besides all their other points of contention, Zephyrinus and Callistus accused the author of the Refutation of being a “ditheist” (Ref. 9.11.3, 12.16), and he retaliated by claiming that their teaching, that the Father and the Son were the same, derived from a certain Noetus, and, though unknown to his opponents themselves, was ultimately based on Heraclitus, “the Obscure” (Ref. 9.8.1). In large measure, this debate turned upon the appropriateness of a theology, already outlined by Justin Martyr, which understood the Word of God as functioning in a similar manner to the second god of Middle Platonism, the assimilation of the Stoic logos and the Platonic demiurge, who bridged the gap between the completely transcendent God and the realm of Creation, {7}….

Quote ID: 8719

Time Periods: 234

Why on Earth Did Anyone Become a Christian in the First Three Centuries?
Larry W. Hurtado
Book ID: 393 Page: 119/120

Section: 4A

Justin says that, having spent time with teachers of various Roman-era philosophical traditions, which left him still searching for a satisfactory philosophical stance (Dial. 2.1-6), he then had an encounter with a venerable man (Dial. 3.1) who directed him to the OT writings and their proclamation of God’s Son, the Christ (Dial. 7.3). In these texts and in the fellowship of “those who are friends of Christ,” Justin says that he found “this philosophy alone to be safe and profitable” (Dial. 8.1).

Quote ID: 8395

Time Periods: 2

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