History of ethics within organized Christianity

Front matter

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HISTOET OP ETHICS WITHIN OEGANIZED CHRISTIANITY

BY

Preface

In sending out this history, which has been the labor of several years, the author turns back in memory to the many who have aided him. It is impossible to thank all those by name to whom the author is deeply indebted. But a special word of thanks is due to my friend and colleague Dr. Marvin R. Vincent, who has read the whole volume in proof, and out of his ripe and broad scholarship offered many invaluable suggestions and corrections. Professor Charles A. Briggs made most helpful suggestions in the inception of the work, both as regards system and method. Indeed to each and all of my colleagues I return heartfelt thanks for most valuable suggestions and inspirations as I worked in a field that, of necessity, trenched on all the theological disciplines. To those in charge of the libraries which I have used I wish also to return thanks for uniform kindness and courtesy. Whether in Berlin or Oxford, in New York or London, I have found everywhere most self-sacrificing eagerness to aid me in getting the books I needed. But a special word of thanks I owe to Professor and Geheimrat Dr. Pietschmann of Gottingen for unnumbered signs of special interest in this volume, and great courtesy in granting me special facilities in the splendid library he so ably directs.

This book, if properly done, should prove exceedingly valuable, but as to whether it is well done others ueside the author must judge. He can only claim that he has gone directly and critically to the sources, and sought at first hand to understand the work of those whom he reviews. He has sought to estimate the ethical progress of the past as objectively and fairly as possible. That blunders have been made, that errors have crept in, that partial views have been taken is inevitable. For all corviii PREFACE

rections the author will be frankly grateful, and should the book find favor he will try to embody any such corrections in future editions.

One main purpose has sustained the writer throughout much weary plodding, and that was to understand and help others understand the essential message of Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ. One of the painful truths brought home to us by any study of history is the fact that the simplicity of Jesus' teachings has been obscured and overlaid by intruding elements. The simple things for which the Master stood, and which can be tried out in life we have deemed "impracticable," because "you can't change human nature." So ecclesiastical tradition has substituted theologies which cannot be tested in life, for ethics which may be. It has demanded belief in doubtfully true speculative and intellectual propositions, and called such assent "faith," where the Master demanded loving and trustful acceptance of simple canons of conduct, and identified such acceptance with loyalty to his purpose. The study of the history of ethics may lead, it is to be hoped, a chosen band to really resolutely insist upon putting in the foreground what Jesus put in the foreground, and relegating even true traditions to the background if they are of secondary importance for his purpose. We must as good Protestants complete the work of the Reformation and strip from historical organized Christianity the encumbering grave-clothes in which her life has been stifled. With good heart and hope the author puts forth his history of ethics within organized Christianity, knowing well that the prayers of the ages are yet to be answered and God's kingdom will come and his will will be done on earth even as in heaven.

700 Park Ave., New York, May, 1910.

Contents

PAGE

CHAPTEK

I. The Preparation for Christianity ... . lo

Introduction

I. However difficult it may be to define scientifically the great historic force in the world's history which men call Christianity, one note it has which separates it from all kindred movements: it is linked in the traditions of all its professed followers with the message of the man Jesus Christ.

This Jesus appears, however, in history, primarily as a new inspiration and vital force. We have no detailed and exhaustive account of his activity and no exact summary of his actual doctrine. For a biography of him we must depend upon the imperfect memories of loving interpreters, whose materials are given in such a way as to preclude accurate chronological rearrangement. At best such reordering is hypothetical, however attractive. Honest and devout men and women gave their explanations of what Jesus had taught, and interpreted him to the eager numbers who, after his death, became his followers. These questions they answered with a large freedom, so that it is now often quite impossible to say how far we have the words of Jesus and how far the commentary of the disciple.^ In some cases, as in the case of Paul, the claim was advanced for inward spiritual authority to speak in the name of Jesus even after his death.

Yet, in spite of the meagre records, the significance of this life has been simply overwhelming. No matter what men may yet

' Cf. especially the discourses of John's Gospel. For the literature that deals with the question whether Jesus was an historical personage at all, see under the heading, "The Ethics of Jesus," the literature there noticed, p. 49.

believe of Jesus, he has left immeasurable results for all the succeeding ages. This life is connected with a great upward movement. The religious feelings of men received new inspiration and direction. The standards of human conduct and judgment were purified and changed. That life still exercises its wonderful power, and is still the centre of a great, though incomplete, movement aiming at divine perfection. It is the ethics of this movement in its various phases that we set gup selves to study.

Jesus did not, as far as we can see, give himself distinctly to the organization of a new community, or to the reconstruction of society, or to the development of a new religious philosophy. As has well been said, "He (Jesus) gathered about him a little circle of disciples. With them he ate and drank, and during his short activity they constantly accompanied him. They saw how he associated with men and heard what he said to them. He did not teach, he worked and felt before their eyes and inspired them to so work and feel. He did not consciously place his person in the foreground, he did not talk about the significance of his life and sufferings. In fact, however, the impression of his person went far beyond his teaching. He was more than a prophet: in Him the Word was made flesh." *

The influence of that person continues to be felt. No communal life can ever now escape that influence, and no philosophy can fail to take account of the teachings which rose up at once in response to that great personality.

It is true that no community has completely embodied the inspirations of Jesus, and that all so-called Christian systems of thought exhibit manifest weaknesses. So that a history of the ethics of our common Christianity is a history of approaches to a goal. Indeed this is the greatness of Jesus that his name is linked with a divine ideal so high that no church and no state can claim, with any pretence to truth, to have really incorporated that ideal.

' Wellhauscn, J.: " Israelitische und judische Geschichte," 4th ed., Berlin, 1901, p. 388.

INTRODUCTION S

If we simply seek to isolate the philosophic and ethical postulates of Jesus and his early disciples, and thus identify Christianity with these, we might well ask with Ziegler,* "Are we still Christian?" But this very question implies the common misconception of the significance of Jesus and Christianity which makes Ziegler's history often utterly misleading in spite of its attractiveness and ability. This misconception is, alas, all too common on the part of both friend and foe. Jesus did not bring primarily either a new philosophy or a new ethics. He brought a new ideal of life. And the transforming power of that ideal is no longer a matter of humble faith, but of historic experience. Indeed the history of the ethics of Christianity is the history of the influence of that great personality and the ideals which he brought, upon the most diverse philosophies and the most widely differing social structures.

II. Two fields of inquiry open up before us. On the one hand, the history of the ethics of Christianity might lead us to an attempted history of the morality of communities calling themselves Christian. Or, on the other hand, we might concern ourselves wholly with the theoretical approach to the definition of certain norms of conduct as distinctively Christian. It is this latter field to which we must turn; but at the same time realizing that the unfolding ideals of the Christian life are not matters of pure thought, but are born of the experience of the Christian thinker struggling to incarnate his ideals. It would be fortunate if we could always use the words "morality" and "ethics" to cover, the one the more especially objective and the other the theoretical aspects of our field, in some such way as Otto Ritschl - has suggested, but unfortunately that is not yet possible. Theories of conduct are not the product of our morality any more than morality is the product of pure theory. Theory and practice go hand in hand. To weigh these several factors is

* Ziegler, Theobald: "Geschichte der christlichen Ethik," 2d ed., Strasburg, 1892, p. 593.

'Ritschl, Otto: " Wissenschaftliche Ethik und moralische Gesetzgebung," Tubingen, 1903, p. 11.

i not always possible. To ignore either of them is fatal to all sound thought. We can no more separate permanently theories of ethics from the practice of morality than we can separate, save in thought, the mind from the body.

The history of the objective morality of historic communities is exceedingly difficult, and belongs more particularly to the field of the history of civilization. It is with the ethical theory and the ethical ideals we have in these pages to concern ourselves.

HI. A very serious question is raised for the historian of the ethics of Christianity by the confessedly relative character of all Protestant moral standards. Any thorough-going Protestantism must surrender all claim to the possession of a body of infallible rules of conduct whose explication is simply a matter of sincerity and shrewd candor. The actual rules of conduct must grow out of experience. What is right and what is wrong cannot be resolved into a matter of enactment, and legally formulated. Where, then, it may be asked, is there any difference between philosophical or speculative ethics and a modem Protestant-Christian ethics ? To this the only possible reply is that we maintain the reality of the Christian experience, and that out of Christian experience we may expect a body of conduct distinctly bearing the marks of its origin. No speculative system of ethics can therefore satisfy the Christian heart and conscience, when it takes no account of what to the Christian believer is the supreme reality of his experience. The Christian has seen God in Christ Jesus, and from thenceforth Jesus has for him the value of God. His experience of forgiveness of sin is attested by the outcome in appropriate conduct and in his fellowship with a brotherhood in forgiveness. The basis for a Christian ethics is therefore the forgiven life working itself out in a transformation of all ideals, a revaluation of all values, to accept the challenge of our fiercest critic, Friedrich Nietzsche. And the goal is distinctly set forth in the revelation of God in all human life. There is, therefore, no complete system of Christian ethics, nor can there be any such until human experience is completely under the sway of the Christian ideal. At the same time we hope to show that there are steady approaches to the ideal set before us as a formal principle, and that our task is the history of these approaches.

IV. Strangely enough, the history of Christian ethics has had no adequate treatment by an English-writing student. The two volumes by F. D. Maurice on "Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy," although abounding in learning and suggestion, are too diffuse and too unhistorical in method to be of the highest value as history. The historical volume of Wuttke's " Christian Ethics" is translated from the German into English (Edinburgh, 1873; New York, 1875), but the original is defective in method and the translation is harsh. The translation (Clark's Foreign Theological Library) of Luthardt's "History of Christian Ethics," in two volumes, is well done, but Luthardt's pronounced Lutheran dogmaticism gives the whole history a bias that robs an otherwise valuable work of its greatest usefulness. In Germany the history of Christian ethics has always received more attention than with us. Staiidlin's (C. F.) "Geschichte der Sittenlehre Jesus" (4 vols., 1 799-1823) is indeed out of date, but contains a great mass of material from which all subsequent historians have borrowed. The same may be said of Marheinecke's (Ph.) "Allgemeine Geschichte der christlichen Moral in der deutschen Reformation vorangehenden Zeiten" (Sulzbach, 1806). Nor is the volume of Wuttke, already mentioned as translated, of much present value. A. Neander's "Vorlesungen liber Geschichte der christlichen Ethik, herausgegeben von David Erdmann" (Berlin, 1864) marks a distinct advance in historical method. And W. M. L. de Wette's "Lehrbuch der christlichen Sittenlehre" (Berlin, 1833) has much material, treated, however, from the distinctly philosophical stand-point of de Wette.

The most recent works, apart from Luthardt's volumes, already mentioned as being translated, are Bestmann's "Geschichte der christHchen Sitte (2 vols., 1880-1885), which is full of most valuable detailed research, but is lacking in central organizing view-points. Gass's "Geschichte der christlichen Ethik" (3 vols., 1881-1887), which remain beyond doubt the most valuable modern history, is especially good in the treatment of the Middle Ages and the early history. Ziegler's " Geschichte der christlichen Ethik " (2d ed., 1892) fails to always bring out the fundamental meaning of Christianity, and is often too lacking in sympathy with the movements described to do them full justice. At the same time the book has high merit, and is always brilliant if often hasty in judgment and somewhat superficial in its estimates, and leaves upon the theological specialist the impression that a competent authority in another field felt he had to fill out his work by dealing with a subject for which he had no special qualification. Apart from histories of distinctly Christian ethics, there are sketches of the history of ethics as a speculative science of marked value. Among these is the admirable little sketch by Sidgwick, "Outlines of the History of Ethics for English Readers" (4th ed., 1896). In Wundt's "Ethik" there is also a brief but interesting history of ethics. In 1845, Fr. Ehrenfeuchter published his "Entwickelungsgeschichte der Menschheit, besonders in ethischer Beziehung" (Heidelberg), and it is a great pity that more work along the lines he then laid down, but with the greater abundance of accurate references to savage life now accessible, is not being attempted.

Emil Feuerlein's " Die philosophische Sittenlehre in ihren geschichtlichen Hauptformen" (2 vols., Tubingen, 1856- 1859) contains valuable historical material. The most notable historical work along the ethical line has been done by Jodl (Friedr.), whose "Geschichte der Ethik der neueren Philosophic" (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1882-1889, and a new ed. of vol. I in 1906) is by all means the fullest and most satisfactory exposition known to the writer. But the chapter on "Christian Ethics" is sadly wanting. Karl Kostlin has written on the " Geschichte der Ethik des klassischen Alterthums" (vol. I., "Die griechische Ethik bis Plato," 1887). Upon this Luthardt has also written in his "Die antike Ethik in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickelung" (Leipsic, 1887). An older work by C. Mciners, "Allgemeine kritische Geschichte der Ethik (alteren und neueren) oder Lebenswissenschaft" (Gottingen, 1800-1801, 2 vols.), has largely lost its value. Martineau's "Types of Ethical Theory" (2d ed., 1886) is largely valuable for its brilliant though too ornate style. The analysis of the historic systems is lacking in historical objectivity and their classification cumbersome and defective. Some historical examination is found in the pages of James Mackintosh's "Dissertation upon the Progress of Ethical Knowledge" (edited by Whewell, 3d. ed., Edinburgh, 1862), but on the whole it is not now serviceable.

V. The field is so vast that it is impossible to attempt even a fairly complete bibliography of the primary and secondary sources. The range covers the fields of philosophy, dogmatics, and general history. Indeed, some of the most useful ethical literature carries no real indication of its character in the assigned purpose of the book. For the early canonical period we have only the canon itself, and for the early church we must depend upon literature given up in the main to polemic or dogmatic exposition. Even the Old Catholic or Bishop's church was so insistent upon doctrine as the basis of life, that formal ethics has but a secondary place. The ethics of the militant church, educating the north of Europe and intrenching itself in the places of political power, is to be found mingled with canon law and with ecclesiastical institutionalism. Even when the scholastic period is reached it is still the dogmatic and cosmological interest that dominates, and the ethics of an Anselm or Dun Scotus must be reconstructed by the historian from materials gathered for dogmatic exposition. It is therefore impossible in such a history to do more than gather from the literature such typical forms as may illustrate the steady progress of the Christian conception of God in Christ Jesus and the region of thought about conduct. After the critiques of Kant we find ethics no longer possible as an authoritative system. From his day on, philosophical ethics and the ethics of organized Christianity cannot be separated, and the content of ethics is based both within and without organized Christianity upon experience. Hence, as we shall see, our history really terminates with the new Protestantism made necessary by the critical philosophy, and the last chapter of our book is therefore only a summary of the situation thus produced.

Chapter I The Preparation For Christianity

Note of Introduction. — I. The Grecian (Classic) Contribution — II. The Hellenistic Preparation — III. The Roman Preparation — IV. The Old Testament Preparation: Propheticism; The Early and Later Priestly Development; The Deuteronomic Synthesis; The Contribution of Hellenized Judaism.

NOTE OF INTRODUCTION

That the ethics of Christianity represent a synthesis into which elements entered from the most various quarters can no longer be seriously denied. A certain type of Judaism had succeeded in keeping itself relatively untouched by the changes going on in thought all about it. So that the early New Testament literature, although written in Greek, is yet thoroughly Jewish in thought and fundamental feeling. At the same time even within the period of the New Testament writings — say 45 to 125 — the whole world was profoundly affected by elements that appear in the pages of the later writings of the canon, and we cannot understand the canonical writings without some understanding of the ranges of thought amid which they had their origin. In the beginning the Christian church had its following from among the most extreme types of Jewish thought and feeling, namely, the zealots of Galilee and the middle class thinking of Jerusalem. It was Paul who introduced it to the larger world of aristocratic Judaism and the cultivated circles of Hellenism. In this Hellenism Christianity found too much that was congenial to pass it by. We must then rapidly review the various elements that alTected Christianity, and deal with them as they affected her. These elements were classic Greek speculation, the Hellenized world of thought, the Roman Empire, and more particularly the Old Testament in its various phases.

THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY ii

I. THE GRECIAN (CLASSIC) CONTRIBUTION

Strictly speaking, it was Hellenism rather than the classic Greek philosophy (Democritus, Plato, Aristotle) that supplied the intellectual forms for the use of early Christianity. The unorganized character of the Jewish intellectual and artistic life made it inevitable that the early church should seek elsewhere than in the Old Testament for the means of systematic expression of her life and purpose. Judaism itself felt the lack and turned in the same way to Greece for help. Josephus and Philo show how inevitably the thoughtful turned to the classic models.

The books of the Old Testament could supply content and inspiration for the apologetic preaching of the early church, but for dialectic and rhetorical method, for training in systematic and logical thinking, the early defenders of the faith had to look to the Greek and Roman schools.

It is impossible at this point to do more than very briefly point to some of the main elements of that classic thought which at once gave form to the ethical thinking of the early church.

Plato rather than Aristotle has been chiefly influential in most periods of the church's life. Even when, as in the Middle Ages,

Literature. — Schmidt, L. : "Die Ethik der alten Griechen"; 2 vols.; Berlin, 1882. — Zeller, Eduard: "Die Philosophie der Griechen"; 5 vols, (in various editions); Leipsic, 1889-1903. — Windelband, W. : "Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie"; i vol., 4th ed., Tubingen, 1907; pp. 20-218; English translation, New York, 1901; pp. 23-262. — Grote, George: "History of Greece"; 10 vols.; London, 1888 (especially vol. VIII). — Weber, A.: "History of Philosophy"; translated by Thilly; New York, Scribner's, 1903; pp. 17-53. — Ueberweg-Heinze: " Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie"; loth ed.; 4 vols.; Berlin, 1901-1906 (especially full citations of literature). — Ziegler, Theobald: "Die Ethik der Griechen und Romer"; Bonn, 1881 (vol. I of his "Geschichte der Ethik). — Kostlin, Karl: "Die Ethik des klassischen Altertums (i. Die griechische Ethik bis Plato)"; Leipsic, 1887 ("Geschichte der Ethik," vol. I).— Luthardt, C. E.: "Die antike Ethik in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickelung"; Leipsic, 1887. — Rohde, Erwin: "Psyche, Seelenkult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen"; 2 vols.; 4th ed.; Tubingen, 1907. — MahafiFy, J. P.: "History of Classical Greek Literature"; 3 vols.; 2d ed.; London, 1883, 1889. — Jowett, B.: "Dialogues of Plato," with notes; 5 vols.; 3d ed.; New York and London, 1892. — Schaubach, E.: "Das Verhaltniss der

Aristotle was the avowed master of all minds, the religious character of the Platonic philosophy was indirectly, in mysticism, in devotional books, and in a thousand phrases and terms of thought, even more influential than the Organum. Of course Plato's works were only very uncritically known. Some of his leading doctrines are to this day confounded with conceptions entirely strange to his thinking. He was used to support an intellectual dogmatism that would have been wholly opposed to his artistic longing for intellectual freedom. And yet a dogmatic teaching church found in the Socratic identification of wisdom with goodness and knowledge with salvation, as Plato developed it, a great source of strength and comfort. The church came revealing, and, "If a man know all good and evil, and how they exist, and have existed, and will be brought forth, would he not be complete and wanting in no virtue, whether justice or self-control or holiness? He would possess them all, and he would know those (situations) which were dangerous and which were not, and would guard against them whether they were supernatural or natural." * The Platonic thinking lent itself to an appeal to supernatural enlightenment. The "demon" or "spirit" (Satfioviov) of Socrates was itself an expression of highest ethical faith. "You have heard me speak of an

Moral des classischen Alterthums zur christlichen in Theologische Studien und Kritiken"; 1851; vol. XXIV, pp. 59-121.— Neander, A.: "Ueber das Verhaltnissder hcllenischen Ethik zur christlichen"; pp. 140-214; in his " Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen"; edited by J. L. Jacobi; Berlin, 1851.— Caird, E.: "The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers" (Gifford Lectures, 1900-1901, 1901-1902; 2 vols.; Glasgow, 1904. — Hatch, Edwin: " The Organization of the Early Christian Churches" (Bampton Lectures, 1880); London, 1881; and "The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church"; edited by A. M. Fairbairn; 2d ed.; London, 1891 (Hibbert Lectures, 1888). — Friedliindcr, L. : "Darstcllungen aus der .Sittengeschichtc Roms in dcr Zeit von August bis zumAusgangdcrAntonine"; 7th ed.; Leipsic, 1901. — Siebeck, Herm.: "Plato's Lehre von der Materie," in his "Untersuchungen"; 2d ed.; Freiburg, 1888. — Harnack, A.: "Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte"; vol. I.; 2d ed.; Introduction; Freiburg, i. B., 1888; English translation.

' Laches 199 L. The translations here and elsewhere are in the main those of Jowett, with only a few departures for special reasons in favor of a more literal even if more clumsy rendering.

oracle or sign which comes to me, and is the divinity which Meletus ridicules in the accusation. This sign I have had ever since I was a child," says Socrates. "The sign is a voice which comes to me, and always forbids me to do something which I was going to do, but never commands to me do anything." *

The development of this conception of an immediate intuitional inhibition by Plato into the doctrine of immediate vision and ethical insight is most interesting, and gives at once room for a religious interpretation of common ethical experience.^ The cult and the mystery have more in common with Plato than with Aristotle, and the religiously ethical character of the speculative insight becomes more and more prominent in his teaching.^ So that we may say that the ethics of Christianity has been profoundly and directly influenced by several elements in Plato's philosophy. The Platonic doctrine of the immaterial immortal character of the soul, with its contact on the one side with the Eternal and unchanging Being in the vision of ideas, and on the other with the changing life of action and suffering, is wholly foreign to the ranges of thought out of which Christianity came, but was at once in crude outline accepted, and remains to-day as the basis of nearly all Christian eschatology. Any one has only to try and fit the early Christian teaching of the resurrection of the body, which was the fundamental postulate of the Jewish eschatology, into the Platonic framework to see how distinctly the conception of the soul as it is taught in the Phaedrus differed from the Jewish faith. But as. between the two notions it is Plato that has triumphed. Although, again, it must oe remembered that Plato's doctrine has also received serious modifications. Ethically Plato's doctrine of the soul laid emphasis upon the immediate and individual judgment at death. Communal and national judgment, such as Prophetism and the

• Apology 31. Cf. also Xenophon Memor. IV, 8 and I, 4, 15, and the Phaedrus 246 ff.

= Cf. Windelband, W.: "Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophic," 4th ed., Tubingen, 1907, p. loi; English translation, New York, 1901, p. 123.

' Cf. Phaedrus, 250.

Apocalyptic books had proclaimed, gives way, even in the New Testament, to individual and immediate decision/ The transposition of the emphasis from the national and communal to the individual responsibility for guilt cannot, of course, be traced entirely to Plato, but his doctrine of the immortal soul lent itself in a peculiar way to the new personal ethics of the Christian community.

The Platonic teaching of the idea was directly connected with his ethical interest. Indeed its development was designed to secure a permanent and unchanging foundation for conduct amid the confessedly changing circumstances of the sensible existence.'

The idea (IBda) has with Plato a twofold function, whose connection it is not always easy to trace. On the one hand it is the unchanging essence, the eternal type of the temporal and the changing including in this the psychical and non-corporeal.' On the other hand the idea is conceived of as possessing a dynamic character, so that the idea of the "good" is not only the type of goodness, but is the creator of all good things in so far as they are good.* Plato's ideas are not simply spirit as over against material things. The distinction is not, as in the later and corrupted thought, that of body and soul. The idea expresses the highest being apart from all body, a reality only known in conception, giving unity to the manifold.

Both these conceptions appear again and again in the ethical constructions of Christianity and in all shades of comprehension. More particularly in the orthodox thought of God do we find attempts to express the incommunicable nature of his transcendental holiness in terms that recall Plato's teaching, and in the "Logos" doctrine the Platonic idea as a dynamic force appears in all shades of Hellenistic and Neoplatonic corruption.

' Cf. Luke i6 : 19-31 and 23 : 43; cf. the "Republic," book X.

^ Cf. Wundt: "Ethik," 1886, p. 239, and VVindelband: "Lehrbuch der Geschichtc der Philosophic," 4th ed., 1907, p. 95. English translation, New York, 1901, p. 118.

* Phxfio, 78-80; Farm., 135; " Republic," VT, 507-510; Tima>us, 28 (placed on the lips of Tiinaeus).

* Phado, 97-101; "Republic," VI, S°l ff-

We shall also have occasion to notice the distinctly metaphysical interest that attaches itself to the relative monotheism of Plato as contrasted with the purely ethical interest of Old Testament monotheism. Here again it is hard to escape the conviction that Plato has outweighed the prophets. The way in which as, for instance, in the Timaeus, the metaphysical and ethical interests are linked with cosmological speculations,* suggests the method of all early Christian theology. The cosmogony of Genesis has little or no metaphysical interest. Its message is religious and ethical. For Plato the metaphysical was in the last analysis the only guarantee of the ethical. The value of God is that he is the foundation for all being, including of course as chiefly important the ethical verities. This intellectualism is fundamental to classical Greek ethics.^ It has most profoundly influenced all Christian thought. Our estimate of this influence may be that of Professor Harnack ' or that of Professor Pfleiderer,* but the facts are quite beyond dispute. The origin of metaphysical monotheism is to be sought, not in the prophets or even in Paul, much less in Jesus, but in Plato.