Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM I 3 Iof such knowledge, amounted in fact to a revolution.This has been virtually admitted by those who datefrom this time a third, which forms the last period ofGreek philosophy.Now the whole mind of Philo was filled withthe thought that a complete revelation had been givento his people, and that this was the only well-springof true knowledge. Not less earnestly did he holdthat the participation in such knowledge depended onthe religious O and moral state of the man.Let us turn to that which rules the whole religiousand philosophical system of Philo, his conception of God.And first it is derived to him from the theology ofthe Old Testament; it comes to him as a gift fromabove, not as an elaboration of his own mind. Almostall his treatises are comments on the sacred writings,and it is in so commenting that he draws out his conceptionof God. The effect is remarkable. If Plato 1had declared that the Maker and Father of this universewas hard to find, and when found impossible toutter to all, Philo's mind on the contrary ran overwith the thought of God, and disclosed His attributeswithout stint, from the ground of that tradition whichhe inherited as a Jew. Moreover, the sense of Godwas wrought into his inmost being by the specialrelation in which God stood to his own people. Thecontrast between this strong conception of Philo andthe abstract relationless impersonal neuter which theGreek philosophy up to his time called "The Divine," *is most striking. It is expressed most vividly byPhilo's own often-repeated name, " the living God,"for truly, in comparison with it, that philosophicalabstraction is a dead thing.1 Tirnaus, sec. Q.