Philosophy should have endeavoured to comprehend into a 

 system the results of the different sciences with the results of reli- 

 gious life and belief, that would have been its proper task. Theo- 

 logy would still have had its important part to play. But to make 

 philosophy subordinate to theology, to make it the servant, even 

 slave, of theology, was a most unfortunate procedure, one quite 

 similar however to that which the Epicureans and Stoics had 

 followed, but fraught with much more lamentable results. A 

 proper philosophy cannot be predominantly an ethical philosophy, 

 neither can it be predominantly a religious philosophy. In the first 

 period of Graeco-Roman thought, however, philosophy was the 

 former, in the second period it was the latter. This second period 

 included, as has been said, the work of the Neoplatonists, Gnostics 

 and early Church Fathers. 



Neoplatonism is decidedly a religious philosophy. Its most 

 prominent representative was Plotinus, 205-270 A.D., who made a 

 last supreme effort to withstand Christian thought. His aim was 

 to formulate the chief doctrines of Greek and Hellenistic speculation 

 into one religious system. But Neoplatonism failed as a religious 

 system, and failed, too, as a philosophy, failed as a religious 

 system, because of the overwhelming success of Christianity, and 

 failed as a philosophy, because it committed the error, common to 

 its day, of building a world-theory upon too narrow a basis of fact. 

 The failure of Neoplatonism left Christian theology free and un- 

 trammelled. It was a dangerous freedom however, because it was 

 to lead to a calm serenity and self-confidence and contentment 

 which, later, permitted stagnation and decay. It meant, too, the 

 utter subversion of the true function of philosophy. Certain of the 

 early Church Fathers, Tatian and Tertullian for example, were 

 induced to show a violent aversion to philosophy, because of the 

 rather alarming growth of Gnosticism, but the majority of them 

 assumed an entirely different attitude. Philosophy, in the hands 

 of Justin Martyr and the apologists generally, and later with Cle- 

 ment and Origen, became a valuable adjunct to theology. By its 

 help and with its terminology, the Church Fathers were enabled 

 to formulate their creeds. Now, that philosophy may be of assist- 

 ance to theology is not to be denied, but to conceive its function 

 as that of an assistant, a hand-maiden only, is to misunderstand its 



63 



