Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/134

 116 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. made is Wisdom, as the divine truth declares, the true philosopher is a lover of God." ^ Augustine's Chris- tianity does not exclude profane knowledge, rather has scope for all knowledge. But woe unto that knowledge, or seeming knowledge, which leads from knowing God : " Wretched that man who knows all philosophies, and knows not Thee ; blessed is he who knows Thee, though ignorant of all those matters." ^ The apostolic period was scarcely passed when the need came upon the Christian communities to define their faith in terms suited to the understandings of the multitude of intelligent men who were, or might become. Christians. This involved a formulation of its teachings in prevalent ways of thinking. Such a formulation was in itself a process of reasoning; it proceeded from the needs of man as a being who must reason and apprehend through reason; it involved a statement of the grounds of its own validity ; it was stimulated and forced onward by the necessity of sustaining the gospel against pagan arguments and of suppressing religious error among Christians. Men can reason only with the knowledge and con- ceptions they possess. Hellenic philosophy held the sum of knowledge in the Empire, in the Latin West as well as the Hellenic East. From no other source could come the elements of knowledge constituting the categories of rational apprehension in which Chris- tianity could be formulated. There was, however, another terminology wherein men might reason, which had its basis in the Roman temperament and its chief 1 Civ. Dei, VIII, 1; citing " Wisdom," vii. 24-27; Heb. i. 2, 3. 2 Confessions, V, 7 ; cf. ib., X, 54-67.