Euripides and Christianity

Extract

The problem of the just pagan has haunted the imagination of Christendom. It troubled Dante. It raises for us the question—What is the relation of all that is noble in the pagan world to the Christian faith? How far was the mind of that world prepared by its past to receive that faith ; how far was that preparative element the outcome of chance or of Divine purpose? And as we regard history in the light of a mere record of human activity or of the unfolding of that purpose, so will our answer be.

In the De Civitate Dei, Saint Augustine gathers together the history and the faculties of man and relates them to the Will of God. Eusebius entitled one of his books the Prœparatio Evangelica. Clement of Alexandria wrote in the second century, “To the Jews was given the Law, to the heathens Philosophy, to guide them to Christ.” And later in the same book, “Greek philosophy prepares the soul for receiving faith on which the truth builds knowledge” ( ). And Augustine himself asserts in his Retractations that “what we now call the Christian religion existed among the ancients and was from the beginning of the human race until Christ Himself came in the flesh ; from which time the already existing true religion began to be styled Christian.”