As Philo understood the Jewish mission,
it was not merely to diffuse the Jewish God-idea, but quite as much to
diffuse the Jewish attitude to God, the way of life. Abstract ideas,
however lofty, can never be the bond of a religious community, nor can
they be a safeguard for moral conduct. Sooner or later congregations
must submit themselves to some law, be it a law of dogma, or be it a
law of conduct. Antinomianism, the opposition to the law, to which
Paul later gave powerful, even fanatical, expression, was a strong
movement at Alexandria in Philo's day. Preparatory to the spread of
Christianity, numerous sects sprang up there which purported to follow
a spiritual Judaism wherein the law was abrogated because, forsooth,
its symbolism was understood! In the extreme allegorists, whom Philo
attacks for their shallowness, one may discern the prototypes of the
Cainites, Ophites, Melchizedecians, and the rest of the heretical
parties that produced the religious chaos of the next centuries. From
that welter of opinions there at last emerged dogmatic Christianity.
The Christian reformers came to free man from the yoke of the law; but
their successors imposed on the mind the fetters of dogma, and, in
order to check the passions of the body, advocated renunciation and
asceticism. So that not only Judaism as a system of belief, but
Judaism as a system of life was lost in their handiwork.
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