en a fluid concept like [Greek: theos]. St.
Augustine no doubt gives us the current Alexandrian philosophy in a
Latin dress; but this part of his Platonism never became acclimatised
in the Latin-speaking countries. The Teutonic genius is in this matter
more in sympathy with the Greek; but we are Westerns, while the later
"Greeks" were half Orientals, and there is much in their habits of
thought which is strange and unintelligible to us. Take, for instance,
the apotheosis of the emperors. This was a genuinely Eastern mode of
homage, which to the true European remained either profane or
ridiculous. But Vespasian's last joke, "_Voe! puto Deus fio!_" would
not sound comic in Greek. The associations of the word [Greek: theos]
were not sufficiently venerable to make the idea of deification
([Greek: theopoiesis]) grotesque. We find, as we should expect, that
this vulgarisation of the word affected even Christians in the
Greek-speaking countries. Not only were the "barbarous people" of
Galatia and Malta ready to find "theophanies" in the visits of
apostles, or any other strangers who seemed to have unusual powers,
but the philosophers (except the "godless Epicureans") agreed in
calling the highest faculty of the soul Divine, and in speaking of
"the God who dwells within us." There is a remarkable passage of
Origen (quoted by Harnack) which shows how elastic the word [Greek:
theos] was in the current dialect of the educated. "In another sense
God is said to be an immortal, rational, moral Being. In this sense
every gentle ([Greek: asteia]) soul is God. But God is otherwise
defined as the self-existing immortal Being. In this sense the souls
that are enclosed in wise men are not gods." Clement, too, speaks of
the soul as "training itself to be God." Even more remarkable than
such language (of which many other examples might be given) is the
frequently recurring accusation that bishops, teachers, martyrs,
philosophers, etc., are venerated with Divine or semi-Divine honours.
These charges are brought by Christians against pagans, by pagans
against Christians, and by rival Christians against each other. Even
the Epicureans habitually spoke of their founder Epicurus as "a god."
If we try to analyse the concept of [Greek: theos], thus loosely and
widely used, we find that the prominent idea was that exemption from
the doom of death was the prerogative of a Divine Being (cf. 1 Tim.
vi. 16, "Who _only_ hath immortality"), and that theref