Patristics
150 – 450 c.
The centuries in which a religion decided whether it needed philosophy at all, and concluded that it did.
- Active
- 150 – 450
- Where
- Alexandria, Antioch, Cappadocia and Carthage
- Status
- extinct as a period
- Tradition
- Christian
The claim
Revelation and reason have the same author, so a truth found by a philosopher cannot conflict with a truth found in scripture — and where they seem to, one of the two has been misread.
What it held
The first Christian generations had no philosophy and did not obviously need one. What forced the question was argument: with Jewish interlocutors, with educated pagans who found the whole thing vulgar, and above all with other Christians whose accounts of Christ's nature could not be reconciled with theirs.
Justin Martyr made the opening move by identifying the Logos of John's gospel with the Logos of the philosophers, so that Socrates could be counted as having lived by it. Clement and Origen at Alexandria built that into a full programme, reading scripture allegorically and treating Greek learning as preparation. Tertullian took the opposite line — what has Athens to do with Jerusalem — and lost the argument decisively enough that the phrase survives mainly as the position that was rejected.
The Cappadocians did the hardest technical work, distinguishing ousia from hypostasis so that three could be one without contradiction. That is philosophical vocabulary being invented under doctrinal pressure, and it worked well enough to hold for sixteen centuries.
How it argued
Exegesis on several levels at once, plus polemic. Doctrine was largely hammered out in argument against a named opponent rather than developed from first principles.
What it was arguing against
Gnosticism, on whether the material world and its maker are evil; Arius, on whether the Son is created; Manichaeism; and the pagan critics Celsus and Porphyry, both answered at length.
Where it disagreed with itself
How far allegory may go — Origen's readings were eventually condemned. Whether pagan learning is preparation or contamination, which was never settled so much as decided by practice.
Common misconceptions
That the fathers hellenised a simple faith. They were arguing in Greek with Greek-speaking opponents, and the alternative to using philosophical terms was losing the argument. And Tertullian's Athens and Jerusalem line is a rhetorical question in a specific context, not a manifesto.
How it began
Persecution and controversy rather than leisure. Most of this literature is occasional: an apology addressed to an emperor, a letter against a heresy, a sermon.
What became of it
Closes with the great councils and with Augustine in the West. What follows is commentary on what was settled here.
Lasting influence
Everything downstream in Christian theology, and through it the vocabulary of person, substance, nature and will as European philosophy uses them.
Why it still matters
It is the best-documented case of a religion acquiring a technical philosophy under argumentative pressure, which is a process rather than a decision.
Put another way
A defence lawyer learning the prosecution's language mid-trial and finding it useful afterwards.
Where to start
Justin's First Apology. It is short and you can watch the move being made.
The surprising bit
Origen wrote so much that Jerome listed around 800 titles, and much of it was destroyed after his condemnation three centuries after his death — for opinions the church had not yet ruled on when he held them.
In their own words
Whatever things were rightly said among all men are the property of us Christians.
What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?
Connections
- Answers
- Middle Platonism
The verdict
The period in which Christianity chose its intellectual equipment, largely by arguing with people who already had some.