RESULTS OF THIS PHILOSOPHICAL HANDLING OF THE BIBLE

As will be seen at a glance, the teachings of Clement and Origen could result in nothing else than the lessening of the authority of the Bible upon the people. Their teaching substituted their own opinions and fancies for the simple instruction of the Scriptures. When the people were taught by their most eminent teachers, in whom they had confidence, that the Bible did not mean what it said, that many impossible things were inserted on purpose to deceive the ignorant, and that even those portions which might be understood literally had also a mystical meaning which was far more important than the simple meaning, and which could be explained only by those who were specially endowed by their training in philosophy, the inevitable result must have been that they would not attempt to read and understand the Bible for themselves, but would take just what their instructors gave them. And that is exactly what did happen, as we see in the Catholic Church to-day. Few, however, realize that this withholding of the Bible from the common people began in the third century, not by expressly forbidding them to read it, but by making them feel that it was useless for them to do so.SOOCC 57.1

Let it not be forgotten that these teachers to whom the people were thus led to leave the entire work of Bible instruction, were men who were insanely devoted to heathen philosophy and to its methods. As is clearly shown by the quotations from Clement and Origen, the two most noted teachers, they did not at all believe the Bible, but only the fancies of their own darkened and disordered mind. The fact that a thing was commanded in the Bible did not give it any weight with them, for they freely attributed falsehoods even to the law. Contrariwise, the prohibitions of the Bible would not stand in the way of their doing anything which their “reason” should teach them was necessary. In short, the Bible, even as early as the third century, became only a plaything in the hands of these men. Its name only was used to give sanction to whatever theory or practice those professedly Christian philosophers devised out of their own hearts.SOOCC 58.1

Thus the way was open for the introduction of any heathen custom. When the people were deprived of the light of the Bible, they had no protection against error. Jesus said: “The light of the body is the eye; if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” Matthew 6:22, 23. Christ left his word—the holy Scriptures—to be the light of the body, the church. If the church had walked in its light, it would have been full of light, and would itself have been the light of the world. But when the heathen philosophers, whom it allowed to become its teachers, turned the Bible itself into darkness, perverting it to support their vagaries, how great was the darkness of the body!SOOCC 58.2

With the Bible practically taken out of the hands of the people, there was no way in which they could distinguish the difference between Christianity and paganism. Added to this was the fact that those who, through “philosophy and vain deceit,” had taken the Bible from them, were setting forth that there was no difference between Christianity and paganism, that they were different parts of one system, and that the study of pagan philosophy was actually necessary to an understanding of the gospel. See the account already given of Ammonius Saccas and Neo-Platonism. Is it any wonder, then, that “it came to pass that the greater part of these Platonists, upon comparing the Christian religion with the system of Ammonius, were led to imagine that nothing could be more easy than a transition from the one to the other, and, to the great detriment of the Christian cause, were induced to embrace Christianity without feeling it necessary to abandon scarcely any of their former principles.”—Mosheim, Commentaries, century 2, section 32, note 2.SOOCC 59.1

This did not occur without a protest. “All Christians were not agreed as to the utility of philosophy and literature. Those who were themselves initiated into the depths of philosophy, wished that many, and especially such as aspired to the office of bishops and teachers, might apply themselves to the study of human wisdom, for the purpose of enabling them to confute enemies of the truth with more effect, and of rendering them better fitted for the guidance and instruction of others. But a great majority thought otherwise; they wished to banish all [human] reasoning and [pagan] philosophy out of the confines of the church; for they feared that such learning might injure piety.... By degrees, those obtained the ascendency who thought that philosophy and erudition were profitable, rather than hurtful, to religion and piety, and laws were at length established, that no person entirely illiterate and unlearned should be admitted to the office of teacher in the church. Yet the vices of the philosophers and learned men, among other causes, prevented the opposite party from ever being destitute of patrons and advocates.”—Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History, century 2, part 2, chapter 1, section 13.SOOCC 60.1

This voice of protest would naturally become weaker and weaker as the philosophizing party grew larger. Although there never came a time, even in the darkest of the Dark Ages, when God did not have men who had not bowed the knee to Baal, yet they soon became so few, in proportion to the multitude, and were so obscure and despised, that their voice was not heard. As Mosheim says: “By the Christian disciples of Ammonius, and more particularly by Origen, who in the succeeding century [the third] attained to a degree of eminence scarcely credible, the doctrines which they had derived from their master were sedulously instilled into the minds of the youth with whose education they were intrusted, and by the efforts of these again, who were subsequently for the most part, called to the ministry, the love of philosophy became pretty generally diffused throughout a considerable portion of the church.”—Commentaries, century 2, section 27. Farrar (“Lives of the Fathers,” volume 2, p.249) says that “half the sermons of the day were borrowed, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, from the thoughts and methods of Origen.” And so, with the knowledge of this flood of pagan philosophy, pagan thought, and of pagan men who thought it not necessary to change their principles, we are prepared to beholdSOOCC 60.2