icene writers
toward a possible knowledge of God, it will readily be anticipated that
the forms of the theistic argument used by Plato and by Aristotle will
find no place in their system. St. Clement of Alexandria, in a passage
already referred to,[60] shows that any Ontological or Idealogical
argument can only lead us to an "Unknown," which may be "understood" and
given meaning "by the Word alone that proceeds from Him;" and he and
others of the early Christian writers seem to hint at that distinction
between Epistemology and Ontology which has always been the chief enemy
of any purely rational theistic argument. The Aetiological argument,
too, is not explicitly stated by them; and, though Lactantius does, in
opposing atheistic atomism, ask the question, "Whence are those minute
seeds?" yet the casual character of the inquiry shows the small emphasis
he placed on it, and the silence of the other writers, even when there
was every opportunity for calling attention to such an argument, gives
evidence to their estimate of its usefulness.

It is the more "practical" and "common-sense" forms of the theistic
argument--the Cosmological, the Teleological, the argument from common
consent, and mixtures of these types--that the early Christian writers
use most frequently, and in this they do but conform to the general
tendency of their age, as well as to the practical spirit of
Christianity. As we have seen, the more artificial and abstract
arguments of Plato and Aristotle did not take much hold upon others than
their originators or formulators, and the distinct tendency of the
theology of the later Greek and Latin schools of philosophy was toward
the more concrete forms of the theistic argument. And this inclination
would be emphasized in the early Christian writers, so far as they make
use of the argument at all, by the eminently simple and common-sense
attitude of Christianity toward all such problems, and also by the
peculiar work which the primitive Church had to do in the conversion of
the "common people," to whom an abstract argument would have been a
waste of words.

But we should expect that to men, upon whom a close perusal and study of
the Old Testament Scriptures had impressed the idea of God as the
Creator, Law-Giver and Governor of the universe, the Cosmological
argument would appeal strongly. Moreover, the strong Stoic influence
which is seen in their works, particularly in their treatment of
questions of morals