Christ; Jethro, the priest of Midian; Rahab, the Canaanite woman and hostess of Joshua and Caleb;
Ruth, the Moabitess and ancestress of our Saviour; King Hiram, the friend of David; the queen of
Sheba, who came to admire the wisdom of Solomon; Naaman the Syrian; and especially Job, the
sublime sufferer, who rejoiced in the hope of his Redeemer.^66
The elements of truth, morality, and piety scattered throughout ancient heathenism, may be
ascribed to three sources. In the first place, man, even in his fallen state, retains some traces of the
divine image, a knowledge of God,^67 however weak, a moral sense or conscience,^68 and a longing
for union with the Godhead, for truth and for righteousness.^69 In this view we may, with Tertullian,
call the beautiful and true sentences of a Socrates, a Plato, an Aristotle, of Pindar, Sophocles, Cicero,
Virgil, Seneca, Plutarch, "the testimonies of a soul constitutionally Christian,"^70 of a nature
predestined to Christianity. Secondly, some account must be made of traditions and recollections,
however faint, coming down from the general primal revelations to Adam and Noah. But the third
and most important source of the heathen anticipations of truth is the all-ruling providence of God,
who has never left himself without a witness. Particularly must we consider, with the ancient Greek
fathers, the influence of the divine Logos before his incarnation,^71 who was the tutor of mankind,
the original light of reason, shining in the darkness and lighting every man, the sower scattering in
the soil of heathendom the seeds of truth, beauty, and virtue.^72
The flower of paganism, with which we are concerned here, appears in the two great nations
of classic antiquity, Greece and Rome. With the language, morality, literature, and religion of these
nations, the apostles came directly into contact, and through the whole first age the church moves
on the basis of these nationalities. These, together with the Jews, were the chosen nations of the
ancient world, and shared the earth among them. The Jews were chosen for things eternal, to keep
the sanctuary of the true religion. The Greeks prepared the elements of natural culture, of science
and art, for the use of the church. The Romans developed the idea of law, and organized the civilized
world in a universal empire, ready to serve the spiritual universality of the gospel. Both Greeks and
Romans were unconscious servants of Jesus Christ, "the unknown God."
These three nations, by nature at bitter enmity among themselves, joined hands in the
superscription on the cross, where the holy name and the royal title of the Redeemer stood written,
by the command of the heathen Pilate, "in Hebrew and Greek and Latin."^73§ 12. Grecian Literature, and the Roman Empire.(^66) Even Augustine, exclusive as he was, adduces the case of Job in proof of the assertion that the kingdom of God under the
Old dispensation was not confined to the Jews, and then adds: "Divinitus autem provisum fuisse non dubito, ut ex hoc uno
sciremus, etiam per alias gentes esse potuisse, qui secundum Deum vixerunt, eique placuerunt, pertinentes ad spiritualem
Hierusalem." De Civit. Dei, xviii. 47.
(^67) Rom. 1:19, το–ῒ –ͅϊγνωστὸντοῦ θεοῦ. Comp, my annotations on Lange in loc.
(^68) Rom. 2:14, 15. Comp. Lange in loc.
(^69) Comp. Acts 17:3, 27, 28, and my remarks on the altar to the θεὸς ἄγνωστος in the History of the Apost. Church. § 73, p.
269 sqq.
(^70) Testimonia animae naturaliter Christianae.
(^71) Λόγος ἄσαρκος , Λόγος σπερματικός.
(^72) Comp. John 1:4, 5, 9, 10.
(^73) John 19:20.
A.D. 1-100.