stone. By plundering the Egyptians, all the elements of classicalpaideiawere
brought under the power of the Word of God, with a new, bold, profound, and
overarching scope: that of making a human being, a human being in the image
and likeness of God.
There is one other aspect of this plundering of the Egyptians which should
be noted, and that is that the reverse side of this plundering meant that the
early Christians could, in turn, and retrospectively, see Christ at work in all.
Thefirst person to reflect on this is Justin Martyr, the‘philosopher’, active in
Rome in the mid-second century. He held that the Word of God is in all
creation, as the‘sowing Word’(λόγοςσπερματικός) spreading‘seeds of the
Word’(σπέρματοῦλόγου) in all. The Word of God, as theLogos spermatikos,
implants in human beings a seed, asperma, which enables them to think and
live in accordance with the Logos. Such a seed of the Word gives them a dim
perception of‘the whole Word’, the Son, so that some, like Plato and Socrates,
were enabled to live and think according to the Word. As such, Justin can
claim that Christ was partially known even by Socrates:
For whatever either philosophers and lawgivers have at any time uttered well or
found was achieved by them with hardship according to afinding and observing
of reason [κατὰλόγου] but since they did not know the whole of the Word which
is Christ, they often contradicted....For what each of them proclaimed was good,
when he saw from a part of the divine spermatic logos what is connatural to it.
But when they contradict themselves in their principal teachings they are shown
not to have secure understanding and infallible knowledge. Therefore anything
good that has been said by anyone belongs to us Christians....For through the
presence of the implanted seed of the Logos, all these writers were able dimly to
see what actually is.^24Interestingly, Justin also specifies that if the philosophers and poets have
received seeds of the Word, that is, have received some insight into truth, it
is because they had read Moses.
And everything whatever that the philosophers and poets said concerning
the immortality of the soul or punishments after death or contemplation of
heavenly things or similar teachings, they were enabled to understand and they
have explained because they took their starting points from the prophets [παρὰ
τῶνπροφητῶντὰςἀφορμὰςλαβόντες]. And so there seem to be seeds of truth
amongst all.^25Reading Scripture, which for Justin was the primary text, the arche-text for all
true culture, enabled the philosophers and poets to receive the truth, but only
as seeds, for they did not fully understand what they read and so often fell into
self-contradiction. Whatever one might make of the possibility of the Greek
(^24) Justin Martyr,2 Apol. 10, 2–3; 13. (^25) Justin Martyr,1 Apol.44.9–10.
Patristic Humanism: The Beginning of ChristianPaideia 31