In
some of its principles, indeed, the message of Jesus was the message
of Philo, emphasizing, as it did, the broad principles of morality and
the need of an inner godliness. But it was fundamentally
differentiated by a doctrine of God and the Messiah which was neither
Jewish nor philosophical, and by the breaking away from the law of
Moses, which cut at the roots of national life. Whatever the moral
worth of the preaching of Jesus, it involved and involves the
overthrow of the Jewish attitude to life and religion, which may be
expressed as the sanctification of ordinary conduct, and as morality
under the national law. To this ideal Philo throughout was true, and
the Christian teachers were essentially opposed, and however much they
approximated to his method and utilized his thought, they were always
strangers to his spirit. Philo's philosophy was in great part a
philosophy of the law; the Patristic school borrowed his allegorizing
method and produced a philosophy of religious dogma! Those who spread
the Christian doctrine among the Hellenized peoples and the
sophisticated communities that dwelt round the Mediterranean found it
necessary to explain and justify it by the metaphysical and ethical
catchwords of the day, and in so doing they took Philo as their model.
They followed both in general and in detail his allegorical
interpretations in their recommendation of the Old Testament to the
more cultured pagans, as the apology of Justin, the commentaries of
Origen, and the philosophical miscellany ([Greek: Stromateis]) of
Clement abundantly show.
Pages:
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255