God used Greece, Rome and Israel to prepare for Christ's advent
Through the convergence of the ancient Jewish religion, Greek intellectual culture and Roman order, the world was prepared for the advent of Christ and his Church.
Through the convergence of the ancient Jewish religion, Greek intellectual culture and Roman order, the world was prepared for the advent of Christ and his Church.
Editor’s Notes
This is the third part of the first chapter of Fr Henry James Coleridge’s Preparation of the Incarnation, in which he talks about the progressive degradation of the world after the fall of Man, and why God waited for so many centuries to redeem mankind through the incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
In the Advent Ember Week, focused on prophecies of Christ’s coming, this is very important reading.
In this piece, Fr Henry James Coleridge tells us…
How Greece’s intellectual and artistic legacy was indispensable for preparing the world, but failed to answer humanity’s deepest questions and needs
How Rome unified diverse nations under her law and governance, creating the conditions for Christ’s advent and the establishment of His Church.
How the Jews, dispersed across the ancient world, prepared the world for the Gospel through their witness to monotheism, morality, and the prophecies of redemption, and becoming
He shows us that these three civilisations—each of whose languages appear on the Cross—were used in the work of Providence, which unfolded the coming of Christ at the appointed time under the universal dominion of Rome.
Previous parts:
How God used Israel, Greece and Rome to prepare for Christ's coming
From
The Preparation of the Incarnation
Fr Henry James Coleridge, 1885, Ch. 1, pp 24-35
Poetry and philosophy of Greece
If we see the conscience of the race struggling against its degradation in the plaintive poetry of the Greeks, we see also the vain efforts of human reason to find some criterion of truth, to settle on some solid and enduring basis the best traditions of the past, and the most aspiring hopes of the future, in the mournful history of the philosophy of the same nation. The intelligence of the world took refuge in Athens, and there made its fight against the encircling hosts of doubt and despair. But it made its fight in vain.
We find among the philosophers many fine characters, many noble sentiments, many bold guesses, but one thing we do not find, whether in Pythagoras or in Socrates, in Plato or in Aristotle, in the disciples of the Porch or of the Garden or of the Academy. We do not find any answer to the perpetual questionings of the mind and heart about truth, and virtue, and God, and man, the present and the future.
The history is a long one, and it required many centuries to let it run out its course. Yet till that course was run, there was one element lacking to the fulness of time, in this its largest sense. And when the human mind had exhausted itself in its efforts, it was trained, by the process, to receive the truth for which it had learned to long.
Office of Greece in the training of humanity
But although the result of the philosophy and literature of Greece was to be so comparatively small, in the direct relief of the mental distress caused by the unsatisfied cravings for truth of the human soul, it would be a mistake to suppose that that very literature and philosophy were without their great service to the human race.
It may be most truly said, on the contrary, that the Providential work of the Greek mind was as important in the preparation of the world for its redemption as that of any other race, the Jews alone excepted.
It was a work which was, in its way, indispensable in the counsels of God. Greece could not satisfy the questionings of the human intelligence, but it was her office to train that intelligence, to discipline thought, to register the laws of reasoning, to lay the foundations of solid philosophy, to perfect language and style, and to raise the most imperishable monuments of the achievements of the human intelligence in poetry, in history, in art, in all that makes life intellectually beautiful and cultivated and noble. Greece in all these matters was the schoolmistress of the world, and the time has not yet come, nor will it ever come, when she will be supplanted in this great work.
Greece did more than this. It was for the armies of Rome, as we shall see presently, to do the great work of making the world one united whole in polity and government, and thus secure one of the most essential requisites for the spread of the Gospel.
But it was first of all the conquests of Alexander and the Greek Empire founded on them, which prepared the way for the last great Empire and made the famous ‘Pax Romana’ possible. The armies of Alexander did this, not by the power of the Macedonian phalanx, but because they carried with them the civilization of Greece and the literature of Athens.
It was Greece in this sense that first united East and West, Europe and Asia, and it was the influence of her literature, commerce, and civilization, that penetrated with one harmonious spirit the otherwise heterogeneous masses out of which the Roman Empire was built.
It was Greece that first unlocked the treasures of the Sacred Scriptures to the heathen world, and that scattered over the face of the earth those colonies of Jewish sojourners who, with the proselytes that gathered round them everywhere, furnished in great measure the first germs of the first Churches.
Greek and Roman literature
Thus the historical mission of Greece was as noble and as unmistakable as that of Rome herself. Wherever her influence was felt, it softened and raised the rest of the pagan world by its philosophy and poetry, in which so many of the grandest moral truths which were the heritage of man were encased as in a setting of the most exquisite workmanship.
It quickened thought, intelligence, speculation, it taught men to think, to reason, to argue, to study, to speak, and to write with accuracy and judgment. Greece prepared men to listen to St. Paul; Rome trained them to live under the rule of St. Peter.
And this mission, as has been said, will in a most true sense, last till the end of time. The Roman literature, in many respects so noble, is not original. It is but an offshoot from the literature of Greece. The greatness of the scholar shows the pre-eminence of the mistress.
Heathen though these literatures be, they are more human than heathen. Though they fall short in so many important points, though they are stained here and there, with so many dark spots which betray the corruption in which their authors and their readers were steeped, they will remain forever the textbooks of mental cultivation.
We do not say whether it will be an evil day when Greece is deposed from this, as we think, truly Providential position. For if it be Providential, that day will never come. Nor in any case could the place of her literature be supplied by any other, that was not, in the strictest sense of the word, its offspring.
But what about the Roman Empire and Israel?
The rest of this commentary is for members.
Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader:
Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel
His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible
He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages.
If more Catholics knew about works like Fr Coleridge’s, then other works based on dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.
But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.
Will you be a part of this project and hit subscribe?