by Matthew Gaetano

Previous posts, especially those by Joshua Shaw, have touched on the major first-century Jewish thinker, Philo of Alexandria (here, here, here, and here). As we deal here with the long Augustinian tradition, it is fitting that we remember Augustine’s debts not only to Platonism, but also to those who, centuries before Augustine, both worshipped the God of Israel and found inspiration in the works of Plato and his followers.

Philo (d. c. 40-50 AD) deployed exegetical techniques for reading the Pentateuch – allegorical readings of Scripture – that inspired some of the Church Fathers. He also modeled an engagement with the Greek philosophical tradition that had an important place in the early centuries of Christianity. For Philo, Moses provided his readers with an education (παιδεία) that surpassed the schools of the Athenian philosophers. But this did not mean that the Greek philosophers were not worth reading; on the contrary, Philo had an impressive knowledge of the Platonic corpus and a “particular fondness” for Plato’s account of the origin of the world: the Timaeus.

Compare Philo’s approach to Augustine’s famous words in On Christian Doctrine 2.40.60:

Moreover, if those who are called philosophers, and especially the Platonists, have said anything that is true and in harmony with our faith, we are not only not to shrink from it, but to claim it for our own use from those who have unlawful possession of it. For, as the Egyptians had not only the idols and heavy burdens which the people of Israel hated and fled from, but also vessels and ornaments of gold and silver, and garments, which the same people when going out of Egypt appropriated to themselves, designing them for a better use, not doing this on their own authority, but by the command of God, the Egyptians themselves, in their ignorance, providing them with things which they themselves were not making a good use of; in the same way all branches of heathen learning have not only false and superstitious fancies and heavy burdens of unnecessary toil, which every one of us, when going out under the leadership of Christ from the fellowship of the heathen, ought to abhor and avoid; but they contain also liberal instruction which is better adapted to the use of the truth, and some most excellent precepts of morality; and some truths in regard even to the worship of the One God are found among them. Now these are, so to speak, their gold and silver, which they did not create themselves, but dug out of the mines of God’s providence which are everywhere scattered abroad, and are perversely and unlawfully prostituting to the worship of devils. These, therefore, the Christian, when he separates himself in spirit from the miserable fellowship of these men, ought to take away from them, and to devote to their proper use in preaching the gospel. Their garments, also — that is, human institutions such as are adapted to that intercourse with men which is indispensable in this life — we must take and turn to a Christian use.

The philosophers, especially Platonic philosophers, have gold and silver that Christians must employ in a better way. Augustine gives examples of those who did this very thing: Cyprian, Lactantius, Victorinus, Optatus, and Hilary. Even Moses himself “had done the same thing; for of him it is written that he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Acts 7:22). And then Augustine reads the Scripture typologically with reference to his own time: “For what was done at the time of the exodus was no doubt a type prefiguring what happens now. And this I say without prejudice to any other interpretation that may be as good, or better.”

I trust that we’ll have the opportunity to draw upon the works of Philo in the future, but one particularly fascinating passage comes to mind on this, the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time. In a number of Christian communities today, the reading from the Psalms was the glorious twenty-third Psalm: “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.” Philo makes much of this Psalm in his first-century reflection on Noah as a “husbandman” (Genesis 9:20). The work has a number of titles: De agricultura, A Treatise on the Tilling of the Earth by Noah, or On Husbandry. Philo seeks to distinguish the one who farms with some sort of knowledge or experience or techne from the unskilled laborer. He makes a similar distinction between a shepherd and one who is merely a “keeper of sheep” (p. 176, VI.27).

Philo makes use of the notion of the art of farming or shepherding in his account of the ethical life. He compares the sheep to the “whole multitude of the parts of the soul” and the shepherd to the mind or nous (p. 177, X.44; XI.48):

But is it not well worth praying for, that the flock which is akin to each individual of us, and of so much value, may not be left without any superintendent or governor, so that we may not, through being filled with a love of the worst of all constitutions, an ochlocracy [mob rule], which is a base copy of the best form, democracy (δημοκρατίας), pass our lives for ever amid tumults, and disorders, and intestine seditions? Certainly it is not anarchy alone that is an evil, through being the parent of ochlocracy, but also the insurrection of any lawless and violent force against authority. (p. 178, XI.45-46)

Philo’s remarkable claim that democracy is the best form of government is perhaps less central to his case than his attack on anarchy and mob rule. The shepherd, the mind, needs to govern the soul to prevent such a terrible result for the “constitution” of one’s very self. Mind or nous must be the king of the soul and the body: “the race of poets has been accustomed to call kings the shepherds of the people; but the lawgiver gives this title to the wise, who are the only real kings, for he represents them as rulers of all men of irrational passions, as of a flock of sheep” (p. 177, X.41). It is remarkable that this argument, resonating with Socrates’s discussion of the philosopher-king in the Republic, does not lead Philo to argue for kingship as the best form of government.

Perhaps one reason that Philo does not push in the direction of monarchy here is his view that God is the true shepherd and king:

But the providence of God is the principal and almost the only cause that the divisions of the soul are not left entirely without any governors, and that they have met with a blameless and in all respects good shepherd. … Thus, indeed, being a shepherd is a good thing, so that it is justly attributed, not only to kings, and to wise men, and to souls who are perfectly purified, but also to God, the ruler of all things; and he who confirms this is not any ordinary person, but a prophet, whom it is good to believe, he namely who wrote the psalms; for he speaks thus, “The Lord is my shepherd, and he shall cause me to lack nothing.” (p. 178, XII.49-50)

God is the true shepherd of the soul and of all things; purified souls, wise men, and kings merely share in the divine reality of good shepherding. Philo’s political philosophy, though, is less remarkable than his cosmic vision of the teachings of Moses and David:

Let every one in his turn say the same thing[: The Lord is my shepherd], for it is very becoming to every man who loves God to study such a song as this, but above all this world should sing it. (p. 178, XII.50)

Another translation (Loeb):

It well befits every lover of God to rehearse this Psalm. But for the Universe it is a still more fitting theme.

The word translated universe here is κόσμῳ or cosmos. Philo develops the thought of the whole cosmos signing “The Lord is my shepherd”:

For land and water and air and fire, and all plants and animals which are in these, whether mortal or divine, yea and the sky, and the circuits of sun and moon, and the revolutions and rhythmic movements of the other heavenly bodies, are like some flock under the hand of God its King and Shepherd. … Let therefore even the whole universe, that greatest and most perfect flock of the God who IS, say, “The Lord shepherds me, and nothing shall fail me.” Let each individual person too utter this same cry, not with the voice that glides forth over tongue and lips, not reaching beyond a short space of air, but with the voice of the understanding that has wide scope and lays hold on to the ends of the universe. For it cannot be that there should be any lack of a fitting portion, when God rules, whose wont it is to bestow good in fullness and perfection on all that is.” (Loeb, XII.51-53)

The vision of the whole cosmos – from the elements to the heavenly bodies – singing Psalm 23:1 is stunningly beautiful. Philo nonetheless adds to this account the idea of God’s Logos as His viceroy in the government of the universe:

This hallowed flock He leads in accordance with right and law, setting over it His true Word and Firstborn Son Who shall take upon Him its government like some viceroy of a great king; for it is said in a certain place: “Behold I AM, I send My Angel before thy face to guard thee in the way” (Exodus 23:20) (Loeb, XII.52).

Philo, a deeply learned Jewish thinker writing in Hellenistic Egypt and an older contemporary of Jesus, Paul, and John, saw God’s Word or Logos as a Firstborn Son (λόγον καὶ πρωτόγονον υἱόν). God’s Logos guards not only the people of God but also the whole cosmos.

I’ll never think about Psalm 23 in the same way again. Buona domenica!