Rcl. Stud. 14, PP. 305-3I3 REM B. EDWARDS ProJessor of Philosoph2, (Jniuersit2 of Tennessee THE, PAGAN DOGMA OF THE ABSOLUTE UNCHANGEABLENESS OF' GOD In lris Edif2ing Discourses, Soren Kierkegaard published a sermon entitled 'The Unchangeableness of God' in which he reiterated the dogma which dominated Catholic, Protestant and even Jewish expressions of classical supernaturalist theology from the first century e.o. until the advent of process theology in the twentieth century. The dogma that as a perfect being, God must be totally unchanging in every conceivable respect was expressed by Kierkegaard in such ways as: He changes all, Himself unchanged. When everything seems stable (for it is only in appearance that the external world is for a time unchanged, in reality it is always in flux) and in the overturn of al[ things, FIe remains equally unchanged; no change touches Him, not even the shadow of a change; in unaltered clearness FIe, the father of lights, remained eternally unchanged.l No, in a manner eternallv unchanged, everl'thing is for God eternally present, always equally before Him. . . For the unchangeable clearness of God is the reckoning, complete to the last detail, presen'ed by Him rvho is eternally unchangeable, and who has forgotten nothing of the things that I have forgotten, and who does not, as I do, remember some things otherwise than they really were.z The doctrine of the utter unchangeableness of God set severe limits upon the understanding of other divine attributes such as God's activity, omniscience and eternity in classical supernaturalism. God was required to knorv a changing rvorld in an utterly unchanging way, to act upon a temporally developing rvorld of nature and human history in a totally atemporal way, and to be so far removed from time that he contained the entire past, present and future of the universe within himself simultaneously rather than successively. lVhat I wish to point out in this article is that all of these variations on the theme of the unchange ableness of God originated in Greek philosophy. None of them originated in Biblical religion, though they har-e been read into the Bible for so long that we still suffer from the delusion that ther. originated in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Classical supernaturalism is not identical with Biblical religion. It resulted from the fusion of selected Biblical motifs with Greek notions of divine perfection by Philo and the early church fathers who followed his lead. Biblical religion presented God as interacting with nature and human history as they develop I Soren Kierkegaard, Edif2ing Discourses (New York, Ifarper & Row, I95B), p. 256. 2 lbid. p. z6z. 306 REM B. EDWARDS in time and it norvhere suggests that this is only a misleading human view to be dismissed as metaphorical once we realize that from God's own point of view the entire drama of the world takes place simultaneously and timelessly rather than successively. The Biblical understanding of the eternitv of God is that of one who self-sufficiently exists from everlasting to everlasting, without beginning and without end;1 but nowhere in the Bible is it stated or suggested that God's eternity consists in the simultaneity of the past, present and future all at once in God. True, this can be read into the Bible, but it cannot be extracted from it. In the Bible, even God's knoivledge and will are modified in response to human decisions which are made in time, though when we read the Bible rvith the preconceptions of classical supernaturalism, we are not even able to recognize this when we are confronted ttith it. Later I shall illustrate this point. The most obvious objection to the position outlined in the preceding paragraph will be that in both the Old and New Testaments it is clearly stated that God does not change. Kierkegaard's sermon on 'The Unchangeableness of God' tookJames r: r7-2r as its text, though it is onh- \-erse r7 which speaks of 'the Father of lights u'ith n'hom there is no r-ariation or shadorv due to change '. He just as easih'could har-e taken \Ialachi 3:6 as a rext- 'For I am the Lord, and I change not', u'hich is the text n'hich Aquinas took when he discussed the immutability of God.2 Classical theologrhas always read a meaning into these verses rvhich cannot be estracted from them, however. There are really two logically independent r-ierr s of the unchangeableness of God which should never be confr.ued rrith one another, though classical theology has fused them for nearlv tu'o thousand years. There is an infinite conceptual difference betlyeen rhe claim that (r) God does not change witlt respect to his goodness or rigltteousness (which was the Biblical view of the perfection and unchangeableness of God) and the claim that (z) God does not change in aryt conceiuable respect whatsoeuer (u'hich was the Greek view of the nature of divine perfection). Taken in context. Malachi and James affirm only the first of these propositions; the former afifirming merely that God is unchangeably a God ofjustice rrho rrill judge evildoers (z: 17 through 3:6) and the latter affirming no more than that God can be relied upon totallrnot to tempt us to er-iI but to besrou,good and perfect gifts (I: I3-r7). True, proposition 'z' above can be read into these verses in spite of the fact that the contert pror-ides no rvarrant rvhatsoever for doing so; yet to do so is to read into the Bible a pagan r-ieu' of the perfection and unchangeableness of God. Before discussing the Greek origins of the idea of the utter unchangeableness of God, it should be pointed out that those who claim to find the idea 1 See for example Psalm 90: r-4, Psalm 9Zi 2, Isaiah 4o zB.2 Anton C. Pegis, ed., Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Nerv York, Random House, rg45), r, 70. GOD,S UNCHANGEABLENESS A PAGAN DOGMA? 3o-7 in the Bible must do so at the price of ignoring or somehow dismissing those many passages in rvhich the Bible affirms the changeableness of God, not rvith respect to his righteousness of coursel but with respect to his erperience and his decisions. I concede that it is extremely difficult to find a clear example of anvthing in the Bibte, but God's decision not to destroy Nineveh after the repentance of its inhabitants in spite of his instructions to Jonah to prophesl'' Nineveir's destruction in forty days seerns to be as clear a case as oue could rvant. Jonah r,vas infuriated when God changed his mind, and that God did change his mind is clearly affirmed in Jonah 3: ro. '\\-hen God saw what they did, horv they turned from their evil way, God repented of the evil which he had said he would do to them, and he did. not do it.' Although I do not wish to vouch for its accuracy, the translation in the vulgar Liaing Bible (verses 3: ro and 4: r) makes it even plainer that God changed his plans in response to human decisions made in and learned about in time, not in eternity: 'And lvhen God saw that they had put a stop to their et il ways, he abandoned his plan to destroy them, and didn't carrv it through. This change of plans made Jonah very angry., Supernaturalists who affirm the utter unchangeability of God in every conceivable respect have acknowledged that the Bible normally speaks of God in terminology which attributes to him temporality, passivity, unactualized potentiaiitr-. complexity. and real compassion. To reconcile all this lvith their preconceptions, therhave resorted to the deyice of dismissing all such speech (which is most of rvhat the Bible says) as merely human and. woefully inadequate and misleading figurative speech having no real application to God in himseif. Typical of this effort to reconcile such passages of the Bible rvith Greek preconceptions was that of St Thomas Aq,rinas who rt'rote that 'As God, although incorporeal, is named in Scripiure metaphoricall)' b) corporeal names, so eternity, though simultareorsly whole, is called by names implying time and succession.'2 He admitted thatchangeability seemed invoh-ed in James +: B ' Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you,' but he insisted that 'These things are said of God in Scripture metaphorically.'3 To presen-e the Aristotelian (not the Biblical) idla of divine impassivity,4 St Anselm had to deny any real feelings of love and compassion in God himself, maintaining that although lve experienced God as compassionate, there was no real compassion in God himself. 1 Even here the Bible may not be entirely consistent. One might get a doctrine of the moraeducability of God from Genesis rB: ez-33rand Kierkegaard got a'dociine of a divine t"r.orogi.;r suspension of moral righteousness from iir. ebrufrair.y in Genesis zz. I claim only that thoseBiblical writers rvho affirm God's unchangeableness do so only with respect to his righteousness or goodness. 3 Pegis, r, 75.3 lbid. pp. 7t, 72. r .Aristotle spoke of divine substances as'impassive and. unalterable'. RichardIUcKeon, ed.rThe,^f rtrrrrnt d Aristotle (New york, Random Iiorr., r94r), p. BBl. RES 14 308 REM B. EDWARDS FIow, then, art thou comiassionate and not cornpassionate, O Lord, unless because thou art compassionate in terms of our experience, and not compassionate in terms of thy being. Truly, thou art so in terms of our experience, but thou art not so in terms of thine own. For, when thou beholdest us in our wretchedness, we experience the effect of compassion, but thou dost not experience the feeling. Therefore, thou art both compassionate, because thou dost save the rvretched, and spare those rvho sin against thee; and not compassionate, because thou art affected by no sympathv for wretchedness.l Theologiars have a tendency to say strange things to one another when they retire to their seminaries and cloisters that they do not sav to their parishioners on Sunday morning ! Most clergymen leave their parishioners r,r'ith the impression that God in himself really is 'all compassion, pure unbounded love'; but classical supernaturalism always must add the qualification that it really is not so in order to preserve intact the pagan dogma of the absolute unchangeability of God. Even the language of love must be dismissed as misleading figurative speech since such sensitivities imply passivities, unactualized potentialities and changes in God as he is affected by our woes. The problem is, rvhere did Anselm, Aquinas, and all the rest get the criterion by which they decide that the Scriptures are speaking literallrwhen they deny change in God and merely figuratively or metaphorically when they attribute change, complexity and real compassion to God? The criterion certainly did not come from Scripture itself, for Biblical writers \vrote just as confidently and as unselfconsciously about the changing experiences and decisions of God as he interacted with the lvorld of his creating as they did of his unchanging goodness and righteousness. The truth of the matter is that the criterion was derived from Greek ideas of perfection which were superimposed upon the interpretation of Biblical religion first by Philo, the Jewish theologian in Alexandria in the first century A.D. who created the conceptually unstable supernaturalistic theology by fusing (or confusing) Greek with Hebraic notions of divine perfection, then by many early Church Fathers such as Justin. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Ambrose, etc. who uncriticalh' accepted Philo's position. By the time of Augustine, Philo's belief in the utter unchangeability of God had been crystallized into infallible, unquestioned dogma. The Greek roots of the dogma of the absolute unchangeability of God are easy to trace. What agonies and confusions Western theology rnight have been spared if the earliest church fathers had not followed Philo in fusing and confusing two quite distinct and basically incompatible ideas of 1 Sidney Norton Deane, tr., S, Anselm (LaSalle, Open Court Publishing Co., r954), Pp. r3-r4. See also St Thomas Aquinas' insistence that God'loves without passion' (Pegis, r,2t6, and that .Mercy is especially to be attributed to God, provided it be considered in its effect, but not as an affection of -passion...To sorrow, therefore, over the misery of others does not belong to God' (Pegis, r, zz6). GOD,S UNCHANGEABLENESS _ A PAGAN DoGMA? 3o9 perfection, one dynamic and Biblical, and the other static and Greek. The classical supernaturalistic belief in the pure unchanging simplicity of God rvas the triumph of the Parmenidean notion of the One as a pure undifferentiated and unchanging unity, and of his dismissal of becoming and plurality as illusions, over Biblical views of God as rich in real attributes and dyrrarric in his interaction rvith the created rvorld. Other roots of the Greek view of perfection as static lie in the Pythagorean table of opposites witir its association of 'one' lvith 'right', ' male', 'rest', 'straight', 'light ,, and , good , oir the one hand and of ' many' with'left'r'female,r, motion,r,crooked,, 'darkness', and 'bad' on the other.l Value judgments of ,right, and ,good., versus 'wrong' and 'bad' applied to all the items in this table of opposites, and such evaluations \\iere pregnant with possibilities for the development of a theoiogicai notion of monistic and static perfection. BY the time of Plato, earlier Greek philosophical prejudices against passir-it1' and change in ultimate perfection had derreloped to full fruition. Irr the second book of the Republic, Plato stated the Greek concept of the perfect as the utterly unchanging which has dominated classical supernaturalism through the centuries, despite tlie fact that it is norvhere to be found in Biblical religion. Plato maintained that the most perfect things are the most self-sufficietrt, thus ruling out the possibility that perfection gould be changed branvthing outside itself (and thus ruiing out tire possibility that a perfect being could be affected in any lvay b,v the world, though not that it could have effects upon the l-orld). Further, God rvho is ,in .rr.iy way perfect'could not be changed even from within by himself because: If he *1"s. at all he. can only change for the worse, for we cannot suppose himto be deficient either invirtue or beauty...It is impossible that God should. ever be $-illing to change, being, as is supposed, the faireJt and best that is conceivable, every God remains absolutely and for eve. in his own 1brm.2 Aristotle accepted the same static view of divine perfection. His God was the ultimate mover of the u,orlc, but he rvas himr.lf ,.r-oved, the Unmoved Mover. And in his unchanging perfection he thought only about his own unchanging thinking in an unchanging way, but not about the changing $'orld. Aristotle's Divine Thinker on Thinking 'thinks of that which is most dir-ine and precious, and it does not change; for change woulcl be change for the \r'orse'.3 1 See Nlilton C. \ahm, ed., Selections ifrom Earl1,, Greek Philosolth1 (New. york, Appieton-Century- }o.ftt,. l964), p. 55. Ciassica-l theology did not follow the Pythagoreans in associating,good., with'finite', and 'bad' rrith 'in{inite'. holvever. But their usrociutiJn of 'good, and other attributes above with 'male' and 'evii' rvith 'female' shorvs that male chauvinism has some of the samehistorical roots as does classical theology. -As John Cobb, Jr. and David GritEn have poipted out,God in classical theology 'seems to bi the archetype oitt e dominant, inflexible, unemotional.completely independent [read "strong"] male. P.o..s theology denies the existence of this God.., John B' Cobb, Jr. and David Griffin, -Pritttt Theolog (Philadelpiia, The lVestminster pr.ess, r976),p. ro. See also pp. 6r-z and r33-5. I B. Jorvett, *., The Dialogues of Ptato (New york, Random House, tgzil, r, 645.3 N{cKeon, p. BBS. 3rO REM B. EDWARDS The notion that it would be.a change for the worse if a perfectly moral, good and righteous God changes with respect to his moral character is perfectly well taken; and Biblical writers would have agreed wholeheartedly with this point. But Plato and Aristotle had all types of change in mind and wished to rule out changes in experiences and decisions as well as changes in goodness. In his own creation'myth'in the Timaeus, Plato conceded that the creative activity of the Demiurge had been presented mythologicall.v in a temporalistic form which included a succession of Divine experiences and decisions, but we are warned that all this is merely figurative speech and is not to be taken as properly applying to God at all. Plato stated the criterion of Biblical interpretation actuallyused byJudaeo-Christiansupernaturalists ne ar the end of his following famous discourse on the relation of time and eternit,v: When the father and creator saw the creature which he had made moving and living, the created image of the eternal gods, he rejoiced, and in his joy determined to -ik. the copy still more like the original; and as this u'as eternal, he sought to make the universe eternal, so far as might be. Nor,v the nature of the ideal being was everiasting, but to bestorv this attribute in its fulness upon a creature was impossible. Wherefore he resolved to have a moving image of eternitl', and rvhen he set in order the hearren, he made this image eternal br-rt moving according to number, while eternity itself rests in unity; and this image rve call time. For there were no days and nights and months and years before the heaven was created, but when he constructed the heaven he created thern also. They are all parts of time, and the past and future are created species of time, which we unconsciously but wronglylransfer to the external essence; for we say that he'tvas', he'is', he'rviil be',6ut the truth is that'is'alone is properly attributed to hirn, and that'rtas' urd'rvill be'are only to be spoken of becorning in time, for they are motions, but that which is immovably the same cannot become older or younger by time, no-r ever did or has become, or hereafter rn,ill be, older or younger, nor is subject at all to any of those states which affect moving and sensible things and of which generation is the cause.l Jr,lwhere does the tsible itself state (a) that it speaks improperly rvhen it speaks temporalty of God. The supernaturalist criterion of biblical interpretation which requires that we say that temporal notions are 'n-rongly' transferred to God is pagan, not Biblical in origin, here being clearly stated by Plato. Where in the Bible is there a counterpart for the claim (b) that 'its' alone is properly attributed to God? Supernaturalists har-e believed that they had a text for (b) in Exodus 3: r+ - 'I am rvho I am.' But even assltming that it is legitimate to find any ponderous metaphysics in this verse, it dehnitely does not say 'l merelt am.' So to construe it is surely to read something into it that is not there. Furthermore, we now knor'v that the words meaning'to be'in this text can just as accurately be translated as 'to become'rz and. mod.ern translations give'I will be what I rvill be'in I Jowett, II, r9., j. C.Rylaaridam, 'Exodus, fntrod.uction', The Interpreter's Bible (Nerv York, AbingdonCokesbury Press, Ig52), l, B3B. GoD,S UNCHANGEABLENESS _ A PAGAN DoGMA? 3I I their margins as a perfectly accurate and acceptable rendition of the Hebrew words. Since becoming and the futurb tense do not apply to God in classical theology but do apply to him in process thought, this bulwark of supernaturalism is thus turned into a text to support process theology ! Centuries before Kierkegaard wrote his sermon on'The Unchangeableness of God', Philo had written a treatise entitled 'On the Unchangeableness of God' (fuod Deus Immutabilis Sit)1 in which he insisted that Biblical expressions seeming to attribute temporality, complexity, passion and passir-ity to God were at best only metaphorical and at worst were 'mythical fictions of the impious'.2 Why did he regard temporalistic language as figurative? The answer is contained in his own rhetorical question: ,For what greater impiety could there be than to suppose that the Unchangeable changes?'3 Where did he get such a notion of p.ife.tion and piety? His deep and ob'u'ious indebtedness to Plato's Timaeus disclosed itself as he wrote: But God is the maker of time also, for He is the father rrf time's father, that is of the universe, and has caused the movements of the one to be the source of the generation of the other. Thus time stands to God in the relation of a grandson. For this universe, since we perceive it by our senses, is the youngeso1 of God. To the elder son, I *g.l the intelligible universe, He assigned thJ place of the firstborn, and purposed that it should remain in His orun ke"eping. So this vounger son, the world of our senses.. u'hen set in motion, brouglit tliat "entity we cail iime to the -brightness of its rising. And thus rvith God thire is no future, since He has made the bound.uTi.., of the ages subject to Hinrself. For God's life is not a time, but eternity, which is the archetr-pe and pattern of time; and in eternity there is no past noi frtr.e, but only present existince.a Though he refused to follorv Plato in attributing everlasting becoming to the nraterial rvorld (as a moving image of eternity), regarding it as c.eated oui of nothing at some point in the finite past, he nevertheless did follow Plato preciselrrvith respect to the crucial question of the absolute unchangeabilin' of God. This comes out also in many of his other writings, as for example in his commentaries on Genesis where he dismissed the dimension of temporalitv in the storv of the six days of creation with the admonition that'we must think of God as doing all things simultaneously,,E and where he proclaimed that For he that thinks either that God belongs to a type, or that I{e is not one, or that He is not unoriginate and incorruptible, or that-He is not incapable of cha.rge, wrongs himself not God . . . for we mnst deem that He belongs to no type, arrd tf,ut He is One and incorruptible and unchangeable. He that-does not so conceive infects his orvn soul rvith a false and godlesJ opinion.o The truly amazing thing is that even Tertullian, who among tfte early church fathers was most zealous in rejecting those Greek ideas which he 1 F' H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker, trans., Piilo (Nerv York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, r93o), rrr,II-IOI' 2lbid.\r,4t. slbid.p.rg.I lbid. pp. z6-27. 6 lbid. r, 13. 6 lbid.-p. ,Zg. 3r2 REM B. EDWARDS believed to be incompatible with Scriptural religion, failed to escape entirely from the Greek concept of static perfection. Tertullian asked: 'What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there ILtetu,'een the Academy and the Church?...Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition ! '1 fn Tertullian's defence, it should be said first that he almost made it ! For example, he frequently defined God's eternity in the Biblical sense of everlasting, without beginning or end,z not in the Greek sense of the simultaneity of the past, present and future in God all at once. Further, he wrote of God's 'repentance' of his intentions to destroy Niner-eh after its inhabitants turned from their w'icked ways that 'it will have no other meaning than a simple change of a prior purpose'.3 Unfortunately, he also insisted u,ith Philo, Plato, and the Greeks that there was no real change or temporality in God. He was not quite zealous enough in his resistance to Greek ideas, for he accepted the most crucial one of all, the idea of the perfect as the utterly simple, atemporal, and unchanging in every' conceivable respect. To do this, even he had to dismiss all contrary'Biblical suggestions as merely figurative speech having no real application to God in himself, Tertullian's superimposition of the Greek idea of perfection upon his interpretation of scriptural religion comes out in such passages as: On the contrary, living and perfect Deity has its origin neither in novelty nor in antiquity, but in its own true nature. Eternity has no time. It is itself all time. It actsl it cannot then suffer. It cannot be born, therefore it lacks age. God, if old, fbrfeits the eternity that is to come; if new, the eternity which is past. The nerrness bears witness to a beginning; the oldness threatens an end. God, moreover, is as independent of beginning and end as He is of time, u'hich is only the arbiter and measurer of a beginning and an end.a Eternitv, horvever, cannot be lost, because it cannot be eternity, except by reason of its immunity from loss. For the same reason also it is incapable of change, inasmuch as, since it is eternity, it can by no Ineans be changed.s For it is consistent rvith Deity to regard as accomplished facts u,hatever It has determined one, because there is no difference of time with that Being in u,hom cternitl' itself directs a uniform condition of seasons.6 If Tertuliian and company had only asked 'What does Elea have to do with Jerusaiem?' ! It rvas Parmenides of Elea who frst introCuced the Greek notion of eternitl'as ali time all at once u,hen he rvrote of his One that 'what it is uncreated and imperishable, for it is entire, immovable and without end. It u,as not in the past, nor shall it be, since it is now, all at once, one, corrtinuous.'? If only the early church fathers had been sfficientQ on guard against Athens, they might actually, have avoided producing a 'mottled 1 Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, trans., The Ante-Nicene Fatlters (\eu' York, Charles Scribner's Sons, rge5),nt,246. 2 lbid.PP.273,276,497. 3 lbid. p. 316. 4 lbid. p. 276. 6 lbid. p. 4B+. 6 lbid, p. 324. ? G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (.Cambridge University Press, 196z), p.273. GOD,S UNCHANGEABLENESS _ A PAGAN DOGMA? 3r3 christianity'. unfortunatery, they were seduced by the pagan dogma of the absolute unchangeableness of God. The resulting tr,.oiog"y now must die, for the price which the rvestern world has had to pay for it has been too high. The history of this pagan idea of God could easily be traced through Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and even Muslim theology up to the twentielh centuryibut enough has been said already to sutstantiate Nicolas Berdyaer,'sjudgment that: The static conception of God as actus puru-.s having no potentiality and completelyself-sufficient is a philosophical, AristtteHu.r, u.i not a biblical conception. TheGod of the Bible, the God of the.revelation, ls by no means an actus purus:He hasaffective and emotiolal states, dramatic de,relopments in His inner life, inrvardmovement but all this is revealed exoterically. it is extraord;;t how limited isthe human conception of God. NIen are afraicl to ascribe to Him inner conflict ancltragedy characteristic of all life, the longingfor His'other,, fo. tfr. birthofman,but ha'e no hesitation in ascribing t" Hi-" anger, jealousy, vengeance and otheraffective states u'hich, in man, u..i.gu.ded as i.p.Lh.rrriue. rn"ere is a profoundgulf benveen the idea of perfection in man ,.ri i, God. Self-satisfaction, self-suffi-ciency, stony.imlgbjlity, pride, the demand for continual submission arequalities which the Christian religion considers vicious and sinful, though itcalmly ascribes them to God. It becomes impossible to follow the Gospel injunction,'Be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven ir p..f..1.1 Thu, rvhich in God is regardecJas a sign of perfection, in man is considered. an imperfection, a sir., It is important to notice u-hat I har'e not claimed in this article. I havenot claimed that all Greek ideas and ideals are unacceptable to reasonable persons in the twentieth centur)', merei,v that the one idea of the utterunchangeability of God is so. other theological emphases drarvn largely though not entirely) from Greek philosophy,"such as that man rvas made in th-e rational image of God I find most palatable, though even this depends onu-hat \\-e mean b)"rational.'Further, I have not claimed that the idea ofGod as chan-{ing in his decisions and experiences and urrchanging withrespect to his e-rxtence and righteousness is true merely because it is Biblical.\Iy real reason for rejecting the classical idea of the atsolute unchangeableness of God is that it is incoherent, inconsistent, and irreverent, not that it isGreek. Horvever, I rearize that there are and have l:een many curtured despisers of paganism such as Tertuilian, Luther, Kierkegaard, Brunnerand Barth rt ho ]rave believed that the pedig.ee of an iclea has something todo with its truth or falsity and who ,.u..th.less have fusecl arrd confusedGreek with Biblicat notions of Divine Perfection in spite of their own bestinsights' It is to these cultured despisers of paganism ihat the main body ofthis essay has been addressed. 1 Nicolas Berdyaev, The Destinlt of Man (London, Geoffr-ey Bles, lg54), p.uB.