The Religious Thought of the Greeks by Clifford Herschel Moore

Author:Clifford Herschel Moore [Moore, Clifford Herschel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anboco
Published: 2017-03-20T23:00:00+00:00

In the religious philosophies which we have thus far considered the reason and the will were the chief means by which security and happiness here or hereafter could be obtained. These systems taugh t that salvation was a matter of man’s own effort, and within his own power. Yet in Marcus Aurelius, for example, we have again and again clear evidence that the last great Stoic was conscious of the insufficiency of man to save his own soul unaided, and the philosophies to which we are now to turn recognize man’s weakness and make salvation an act of grace from God.

As we have remarked before, the last three centuries before our era among the Greeks were centuries in which their national life and culture decayed. Autocratic forms of government arose which cut men off from active participation in politics and turned their attention in upon themselves. There was a loss of creative power in literature, art, and speculative thought; and men were conscious of a failure of the sense which their forefathers had had, that this life could give them great satisfaction. These things, and the extremes of wealth and poverty, terror of the imperial power, the selfish greed and hopelessness of the mass of the people, all combined under the early Empire to fill the minds of the thoughtful with sadness and pessimism. We find these sentiments in every writer of the first two centuries of our era who deals with contemporary society. Seneca feels that the world is lost and helpless; that life itself is a fatal gift compared with which nothing is so deceitful and treacherous. Filled with ardour for his philosophy and with confidence in the efficacy of its moral teachings, he nevertheless at times loses heart. This is likewise tru e of the rest. As we read the pages of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, in spite of the inspiring words of that halting slave who in Nicopolis preached high fortitude to his hearers and of the Emperor who in distant camp among the Quadi on the banks of the Gran or in winter quarters at Carnuntum recounted his blessings and exhorted his own soul to endure, we have at times an inevitable sense of the hopelessness of the struggle. Furthermore, as has been frequently pointed out, the last centuries before our era had been marked by a feeling on the part of many of a separation from God and by a longing in some way to bridge the gulf between the human and the divine, to secure a revelation from heaven, and to attain to direct vision and knowledge of God. As the satisfactions of life, which the earlier, freer centuries had given, grew less, in weariness of spirit, conscious of his own weakness and lack of power to secure his soul’s freedom and happiness, man turned for help from outside himself. The reason and the will alone had failed. God’s grace was needed for salvation.

The conquests of Alexander had not only diffused Hellenic speech

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