Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/137

 VI] PHILOSOPHY AND DOGMA 119 gians were Hellenic in spirit and wrote Greek j while the Latin Fathers reset in Latin and juristic phrase the definitions which the East had evolved. An illus- tration is afforded by the Latin juristic word personay which represents — it does not translate — the Greek word vTToWacri?. The Latins had to render the three vTroo-Tao-eis of the Greeks; and "three somethings," tria qiLoedanij was too loose, as Augustine says. Hence, the legal word persona was employed, al- though its unfitness was recognized.^ Of course it received new meaning from its use in the Creed. The loose beliefs of paganism felt no need to formulate themselves, except externally in cults. But Greek philosophy from its beginning was formulation of knowledge and opinion, and might discard what- ever religious belief it deviated from. Christ's gos- pel was definite revelation; the Christian faith was too strong to surrender its elements whenever they seemed inconsistent with the knowledge of the time. It could only advance to further definiteness, using human knowledge and reason to promote and sub- stantiate definitions of itself. 'Unquestionably the Catholic formulation operated to preserve Christian- ity from errors and corruptions;* and if it veiled, 1 See Angnstine, De Trin., VII, Sec. 7-12. vwoaraois, literally, is 9uh»tantia^ the word used by the Latins to represent the Greek ovatA, of which the equivalent would have been essentia, had that word been in use. 3 AthanasiuB shows how Arianism tended to pagan polytheism ; see, e.ff.. Discourses against the Arians, III, rxv, 16. There was pagan pride, as well as Gnostic tendencies, in Arianism ; see, e.g., the Fragments of Arius' Thalia, and of. Athanasius, Discourses, etc., U, ztU, 24-26. «