Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/133

 VI] PHILOSOPHY AND DOGMA 115 was completely diraOy^ (passionless, without suffering, unmoved, insensible). The true yvojo-TiKos is free from emotion and passion ; he is not courageous, because he fears nothing, and nothing can sever him from his love of God; he has no common affections, but loves the Creator in His creations.^ Thus Clement's philosophy- causes him to apply the term iLiraOrj^ to Him who was moved to indignation, who wept at Lazarus' grave, whose soul was exceeding sorrowful in Gethsemane. The Alexandrians approached the gospel through philosophy. Whatever their shortcomings, they pre- sented the thought to the Christian world, that Christ's gospel was the sum of knowledge, and all true knowl- edge could not but conduce to a fuller understanding of it. This principle was recognized by Augustine. More strongly than Clement or Origen, he felt the limitations of human rational cognition;* while he, as well as they, saw that whatever human knowledge might comprehend could be included in the compass of Christ's revelation. Augustine had found in his own case that reason did not reach to the proving of the truth of Christ, and in the end he believed through faith. But it was along the paths of human knowl- edge, in lihris saeculana sapientiae, that he had approached Christianity.' He had been a lover of wisdom, a philosopher; now he raised his love toward wisdom's self : " If God through whom all things are 1 Strom., VI, 9. little help to the nndentanding of God from studying Aristotle's Ten Categories ; for within them one cannot conceive Qod. s See Corfe9nonif V, 6, 8, 0.
 * For example, be Htys, ConfesHons, TV, 29, that he had found