Christianity and Greek Philosophy: or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His ApostlesCocker, B. F. (Benjamin Franklin)
Religion
Christianity and Greek Philosophy: or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His Apostles
Cocker, B. F. (Benjamin Franklin)
Christianity; Church history -- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600; Philosophy, Ancient
It is equally obvious that humanity can never relegate itself from a
supernatural origin, neither can it ever absolve itself from a permanent
correlation with the Divine. Man feels within him an instinctive
nobility. He did not arise out of the bosom of nature; in some
mysterious way he has descended from an eternal mind, he is "the
offspring of God." And furthermore, a theocratic conception of nature,
associated with a pre-eminent regard for certain apparently supernatural
experiences in the history of humanity, becomes the foundation of
governments, of civil authority, and of laws. Society can not be founded
without the aid of the Deity, and a commonwealth can only be organized
by Divine interposition. "A Ceres must appear and sow the fields with
corn." And a Numa or a Lycurgus must be heralded by the oracle as
"Dear to Jove, and all who sit in the halls of the Olympus."
He must be a "descendant of Zeus," appointed by the gods to rule, and
one who will "prove himself a god." These divinely-appointed rulers were
regarded as the ministers of God, the visible representatives of the
unseen Power which really governs all. The divine government must also
have its invisible agents--its Nemesis, and Themis, and Diké, the
ministers of law, of justice, and of retribution; and its Jupiter, and
Juno, and Neptune, and Pluto, ruling, with delegated powers, in the
heavens, the air, the sea, and the nethermost regions. So that, in fact,
there exists no nation, no commonwealth, no history without a Theophany,
and along with it certain sacred legends detailing the origin of the
people, the government, the country itself, and the world at large. This
is especially true of India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Their primitive
history is eminently _mythological_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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