Philosophy, and its Influence on the Church

An explanation of why philosophy influenced the Church: 

The thought of the Fathers of the Church in the first centuries of the Christian era is called Patristic speculation.  The Christians’ purpose is nei­ther intel­lectual nor theoreti­cal.  In spite of the extraordinary profundity of their writ­ings, St. John and St. Paul do not intend to create a philos­ophy;  it is another matter that philosophy must in­evitably concern itself with them.  But, little by little, speculative themes acquire a place in Christian­ity.  This was brought about par­ticularly by two stimuli of a polemi­cal[1] na­ture:  heresies and the intellectual reaction of pagan­ism.  The first cen­turies of the Christian era are those of the establishment of Christian dogma. [2] Orthodox interpreta­tion is accompanied by many heresies, which call for greater conceptual precision if the Church is to discuss them, repel them and convince the faithful of the authentic truth.  Dogma is formu­lated all during the struggle against the numerous heretical movements. On the other hand, the pagans pay belated attention to the religion of Christ. At first it seemed to them to be a strange and absurd sect, one which they did not clearly distinguish from Judaism; they con­sidered it a reli­gion made up by men who were al­most insane [emphasis mine], who worshipped a dead-and crucified- God, a religion of people who re­lated the most surprising and disagreeable stories.  When St. Paul speaks on the Areopa­gus to the refined and curious Athenians of the first century, who are only interested in saying or hearing something new, they listen attentively and courteously while he speaks of the unknown God whom he has come to announce; but when he mentions the resurrec­tion of the dead, some laugh and others say that they will lis­ten to him speak of that some other time, and al­most all of them leave him.  The al­most total igno­rance of Christianity on the part of even such a man as Taci­tus is well known.  Later, Christian­ity acquires greater influ­ence; it reaches the higher classes, and paganism begins to take notice of it.  Then the intellectual at­tacks begin, and the new religion must de­fend itself from them in like man­ner; to ef­fect this it must make use of the intel­lectual in­struments which it has at its command: the Greek philo­sophical con­cepts [emphasis mine].  In this way Christianity, which shows a total hostility toward reason in many of its earliest figures (the most famous example is Tertullian), ends by assimilating Greek philoso­phy in order to use it, in Apologist writings, in de­fending itself against attacks based on the point of view of Greek phi­losophy [emphasis mine].

Thus Christianity sees itself committed, first, to the intellectual formu­lation of dogma and, secondly, to a ratio­nal discussion with its hereti­cal or pagan enemies.  This is the origin of Patristic speculation, the pur­pose of which, I repeat, is not philosophical, and which can be consid­ered philosophical only in a limited sense. [3]

This view, that the early Church fathers used Greek philosophy to give the Christian faith credibil­ity with criti­cal intellects of their time is not exclu­sive, by any means, to this one particular author. 

I would like to mention at this point that I have relied heavily on Mc­Clintock’s and Strong’s Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theologi­cal, and Ec­clesiastical Literature  (a twelve volume set), and Philip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church (an eight volume set).  James Strong is the same individual known for Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible.  The authors of these sources are Trinitarian in their doctrine which should free me from suspicion of bias in the use of my sources. 

 I now cite a second author.

The contact between the Greek and the Hebrew worlds created a new problem, that of explaining and justifying the Hebraic religious view, and later the Christian outlook, in terms that would make sense to those who did not accept ei­ther the Old or New Tes­tament picture of the world.  As St. Paul discovered, the message of Christianity sounded like nonsense to the Greek philosophers.  When he spoke to them at Athens, they ridiculed him.  Jewish and Chris­tian thinkers began to try to state their re­ligious beliefs in terms that would be reason­able to someone schooled in Greek philosophy.  They attempted to show that the assertions of their religion were justi­fied on the standards employed by the Greek philosophers [emphasis mine]. Philo Ju­daeus, of the first century A.D., and the early Church Fathers Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 150?-220-?) and Origen (A.D. 185?-254?) argued that the re­ligion of the Bible was compatible with Pla­tonic phi­losophy [emphasis mine].  They contended that philosophical reasons could be given for accepting cer­tain religious views, and that various reli­gious contentions could be interpreted as ways of stating philosophical the­ses.  Over the next sev­eral centuries, many theories from the writing of the Greek philosophers were employed by theolo­gians to clarify or jus­tify their religious convictions [emphasis mine]. Proofs of the existence of God, and theories about His Na­ture were set forth to provide a rational justifi­cation for the religious knowledge-claims of the Judaeo-Christian tradi­tion [emphasis mine], and of the Mohammedan religion. [4]

We have now discovered that the introduction of phi­losophy into Christian doctrine was made by the need to legitimize Christianity with Greek thinkers in order to make it more palatable to the pagan world. Since Christians were made to be fools in compari­son to the philosophi­cal thought of the day, some­thing had to be done to give Christianity a rational foundation.  To communicate to the pagans and give Christianity credibility, church leaders ar­gued that Christianity was not in conflict with the Greek phi­losophy that the pagans revered and re­spected.

The Word of God does not require human phi­losophy or  intellectu­alism to be valid.  God an­nounces His opinion of man’s wisdom in Isaiah 55: 7-8:  For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways , and my thoughts than your thoughts.  God’s Word stands whether it is accepted to be true or not.  If men do not honor God or His Word it does not detract from Him or make His Word any less true.

When the Word of God is interpreted in the light of human philoso­phy there can be only one result, the loss of an accurate understanding of what God was trying to communicate to us.  The perfect Word of God becomes contaminated.  This is illustrated in the damage that has been done to the monotheistic message of the Bible since the incorpora­tion of phi­losophy into Biblical interpretation.  It began a devi­ation from the absolute monotheism of God; a deviation which was never promoted or preached by the apos­tolic Church, and one that later Church leaders did not correct.

I make no attempt to ridicule or judge the Church fa­thers since I have no idea what the frustration of communi­cating the marvelous Gospel of Jesus Christ to cynical and sarcastic philosophers was like, but I do ques­tion their judgment.  I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt by personally thinking that their only desire was to allow pagans to benefit from the atoning sacrifice of Jesus’ blood.  Possibly, they hoped to bring the pagans to salvation by at­tempting to communi­cate with them in a jar­gon that they could understand.However, this is all specu­lation on my part. 

In order to understand how philosophy could be so completely blended into Christian doctrine, an under­standing of philosophical teaching must be grasped.  I will give a brief description of the teach­ing of the major philosophers and the contribution to Christian doctrine that scholars have credited them with.

Plato

427 B.C.- 347 B.C.

The question may be asked, Why is Plato, a philoso­pher that died before Jesus was even born, included in a discussion involving the in­fluence of the post apostolic church on modern doctrine?  Plato is con­sidered to be one of the most important of all Greek philosophers, and by far the most influential of all the stu­dents of Socrates.  The influence of Plato increased when Christianity was in its developing stages and facing oppo­sition from pagan beliefs.  Both sides used his philosophy to strengthen their arguments and they both submit­ted to his intellectual dominance.  Below is a synopsis of his theo­logical viewpoints and the effect it had on posterity.

Plato’s thoughts on God, which are among the most difficult to com­prehend, found their way into both the Christian religion [emphasis mine] and Western philosophy.  This could not take place how­ever, until the Idea of the Good of Plato had been transformed into the One of the neo-Platon­ists and adapted to the Chris­tian religion [emphasis mine] by St. Augustine, Origen, Diony­sius the Areopagite, John the Scot, and other key fig­ures of the Christian Church.  (p. 19)

Plato’s God is the cause of all that exists and all that transpires in the world, but his is a divine princi­ple–the Idea of the Good, for the fulfillment of which all things strive; a final purpose rather than a person or a com­pelling force or power; he is an ideal goal, the eternal, perfect type of exis­tence.  (p. 22)

One important result of this Platonic view of the world is that Mind as the principle of reasonableness, order­liness, harmoniousness, and perfectabil­ity, is woven into the very structure of Reality  and is so univer­sally dif­fused as to allow no particle of reality to remain unaffected by it.

 Mind or Reason is in control of the universe. And Plato invokes a principle, midway between Mind and the physical universe, the “Demiurge,” to create and fashion the world in imitation of the perfect, eter­nal Ideas or Forms….The divine Demiurge may be said to cor­respond in the nature of universal being to an artisan or craftsman in our physical world [emphasis mine].  Instead of a single specific idea which the human craftsman seeks to make objectively real, however, the divine craftsman–the “Demiurge”–makes manifest and gives embodiment to the most comprehensive of all Ideas, the Idea of the Cosmos, in all its multifar­ious being.

The divine craftsman makes Reason or Mind manifest in creation. (p. 32)

 Plato:  “The father and maker of this Universe is be­yond discovering, and even if we did find him, to tell of him to all men would be impossible.” (Theat)(p. 40)  [5]

Please take special note of the first paragraph describ­ing the influ­ence of Plato on the Christian re­ligion and how his Idea of the Good was trans­formed into the One of the Neo-Platonists.  The cre­ation of the “Demiurge” as the me­diator between the Mind or Reason, created to create and fashion the world is a significant point to remember in the con­text of how the fourth century church interpreted the Logos of John 1:1-14.  This “Demiurge” is built upon and refined by future philosophers and church leaders.

An explanation of Plato’s  Demiurge:

Yet though God is distinctly and habitually acknowl­edged as the father and creator of all things, all things were not directly framed and regulated by the Supreme Divinity.  For the government of the sensible universe he created a subordinate de­ity, and placed it in the material cre­ation [emphasis mine] Timaeus, p. 34.  This guiding spirit, or Demiur­gus, was a mixture of the ideal and of the material  of the one and of the many, that be­ing intermedi­ate, it might communicate with both.  [6]  

Philo Judaeus of Alexandria

B.C. 20? – A.D. 50?

Philo was born in Alexandria, Egypt where he lived his entire life.  Alexandria was the center of Hellenistic (Greek) and Christian philoso­phy, the metropolis of the learned world  in Philo’s lifetime.  In fact one dictionary defines Alexandrian school as “the school of Christian philosophers and theolo­gians at Alexandria during the first five centuries A.D., that  sought to combine Christianity and Greek philosophy.”  [7] 

Philo was a Jew, and it is asserted by the Jewish histo­rian Jose­phus, Eusebius, Jerome and others that he was a member of the sacer­dotal (priestly) family.  Some believe he was a Pharisee.  In addition to a knowledge of Jewish theology, he pos­sessed an exten­sive compre­hension of Greek philos­ophy, especially Platonic. Philo is therefore de­clared to be the first and most impor­tant Neo-Platonic philosopher.  Since Philo was alive dur­ing the life of Jesus, a crossing of their paths may be ex­pected but no mention of this is made.

The following quote is taken from the introduc­tion of a ten volume set of Philo’s own writings.  It serves as an overview of Philo’s contri­butions to both philosophy and Chris­tianity.

But the ruling side of his [Philo’s] theology is that while God is ab­solutely removed from us, in­comprehensible and only known as absolute be­ing [emphasis mine], He is also in­finitely close to us, in fact at once transcendent[8] and immanent.[9]  As is well known, Philo solved this antinomy[10] by postulating, as in­termediaries between the uncreated and the created, the Lo­gos or Divine Reason, and also “Powers” or “Potencies,” the two chief of which are goodness and sovereignty repre­sented in the Old Testament by the names of “God” and  “Lord” respectively.  Of these intermedi­aries, the Logos has attracted more atten­tion than any other Philonic question, mainly, no doubt, be­cause of the similar­ity–and dissimilarity–of Philo’s concep­tion to that of the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel…..If Philo is a link between Ju­daism and Hellenism, he is also a link be­tween Judaism and Christianity [emphasis mine], and that in two different ways.  In the first place, quite apart from the relation of his Logos to the Johannine there is a certain affinity between Philonism and the New Testament, which will at once attract and disappoint the student.  Philo’s con­ceptions of Conscience as the inward Judge, of the Spirit, of Faith, of Sonship, of Immortality, and many other conceptions of the same kind, are suffi­ciently like the uses of the same terms in the Epistles to make compar­ison fruitful.  But except perhaps in the case of the first-named, where his attitude shows a great advance above his Stoic predecessors and a re­markable approximation to the Chris­tian view, there are differences which to many will seem to out weigh the likeness…….So far the conexion[sic] be­tween Philo and Christian thought is one that springs from their common heritage and atmosphere, and their common ideals and temperament.  There is no di­rect contact or con­scious borrowing.  But when the first century or so of Christianity is passed we find some­thing more.  Philo becomes some­thing of a power in the Church [emphasis mine].  It is true that the Christian mind eager to find in the Old Tes­tament figures and types of Christ could not alto­gether welcome his kind of exegesis, and indeed Au­gustine, while acknowledging his acuteness, deplores his deficiency.  Still otherwise his treatment of the books made a great impression on some of the Fa­thers, and his Logos doctrine was superficially at least, sufficiently like that of the Fourth Gospel to suggest that his was an “anima natu­raliter Christina [natural Christian principle].”  His influ­ence is probably to be seen in Justin, and is obvi­ous in the two great liberal Christians of Alexandria, Clement and Origen.  Among the Latin Fathers, Ambrose uses him con­siderably [emphasis mine].  Doubtless this feeling of his affinity to Christianity helped preserve his works, when so much of the post-Aristolelian phi­losophy has perished.  [11]

Some of the Church fathers were greatly im­pressed and influenced by the writings and teaching of Philo.  The primary question during the time of Justin Martyr, Clement, and Origen was How can God be alone in His reign and Jesus be divine, with­out the devastation of monothe­ism?  Philo’s doctrine of the Logos, with its close similarity to John 1:1-14 (prologue of John) offered the perfect solution. 

Let us read a second opinion.

The Fathers of the Church do not have a definite and precise system.  They take from Hellenic thought the ele­ments which they need at that par­ticular mo­ment.  One must also bear in mind that their knowl­edge of Greek phi­losophy is very incomplete and faulty.  In general, they are eclectics:  they se­lect from all the pagan schools what seems to them most useful in ob­taining their goals [emphasis mine].  We find a formal declaration of eclecticism in the writings of Clement of Alexan­dria (Stromateis [Miscellanies],I,7).  But the ma­jor philosophic source which nourishes the Fa­thers is, of course, Neoplatonism, which is to influence the Middle Ages so greatly [emphasis mine], especially until the thirteenth cen­tury, when its in­fluence will di­minish before Aristo­tle’s prestige.  The Fa­thers come to know Plato (in a rather imprecise way) through the Neoplatonic philosophers (Plotinus, Por­phyry, etc.), and they look for analogies to Christianity in Pla­tonic thought [emphasis mine]….

The questions which most concern the fathers of the Church are the most important problems created by dogma.  As a general rule, philosophic problems are created by reli­gious, revealed truths which require rational interpreta­tion, and this is the case in the Mid­dles Ages.  Thus, reason is used to clarify and formulate dogma, or to defend it.  The Creation, God’s re­lationship with the world, evil, the soul, the meaning of life and of re­demption–these are the major problems with which the early Fathers of the Church con­cern themselves. And alongside these prob­lems we find strictly theological questions, such as those that refer to the essence of God, the Trin­ity of divine persons [emphasis mine], and so on…[12]

In addition to the “Logos,” philosophers con­tributed a concept that God was impassible, which means that they believed he was un­touchable, unreachable, incapable of feelings, unable to experi­ence pain and invulnerable.  This concept of the im­passibility of God is passed down to the Church fa­thers and is illustrated later in the history of the Church when “patripassianism (explained on page 59)” is condemned.The concept of impassibility is intro­duced in the preceding reference stating God is abso­lutely removed from us, and is expanded in the fol­lowing reference.

How close was Philo’s teaching of the Logos of God to the teaching of the so-called orthodox Chris­tian Church?  I will pass that judgment onto the reader after this next pas­sage is considered.

How does the Highest Spirit, the eternally Perfect One, en­ter into the finite world?  He creates ideals from himself, says Plato.  He introspects himself, and thus perfection is produced; but this perfection impresses itself upon more subordinate [emphasis mine] existencies, and thus it de­scends from immedi­ate causes to intermediate causes, until the real ob­jects spring into existence, and creation becomes manifest to us; God, the eternal exis­tence, the eternally perfect is the highest cause, but the eter­nally Pure One does not immedi­ately come into contact with the impure [emphasis mine]–only by means of manifold[13] emana­tions[14] and concatenations[15], the earthly grows into existence.  Such views afforded the philosophic Jew a happy means of preserving the theory of the in­fallibility and inconceivableness of God, and yet of accepting the different figurative expressions concern­ing God in the Bible, because they could refer to the subordinate beings.  ….tenaciously adhered to, and whenever it ex­pressed entities too directly, it had to yield to forced inter­pretations. To such also the Bible was frequently subjected [emphasis mine].  Narratives and com­mands were forcibly driven from their nat­ural simplic­ity into artificial philosophemes, in the belief that their value would thus be en­hanced [emphasis mine].  The figurative expressions and events in connection with God were referred to such subordinate spir­its as had evolved themselves from God.  In the writ­ings of Philo that in­termediate agency is com­prised in the Lo­gos [emphasis mine].

Philo offered a solution in that idea of a Logos, or Word of God, divin­ity articulate, speaking and act­ing in time and space, and therefore by suc­cessive acts, and so do­ing in time and space the will of the timeless and spaceless Father, the abysmal and eternal Being, of whom he was the perfect likeness.  In call­ing this person the Logos, and mak­ing him the source of all human reason, and knowledge of eternal laws, he only translated from Hebrew into Greek the name which he found in his sacred books, “The Word of God.”  Of God himself, Philo teaches that he is incorpo­real[16], invisible, and cognizable[17] only through the reason; that he is the most universal of beings, the Being to whom alone being, as such, truly per­tains; that he is more excel­lent than virtue, than sci­ence, or even than the good per se and the beautiful per se.  He is one and simple, imper­ishable and eter­nal; his ex­istence is absolute and separate from the world [emphasis mine]; the world is his work…

God is not in contact with matter; if he were he would be defiled [emphasis mine].  He who holds the world itself to be God  the Lord has fallen into er­ror and sacrilege.  In his essence God is incomprehen­sible; we can only know that he is, not what he is….In creating the world, God employed as instruments incorporeal poten­cies or ideas, since he could not come in contact with pol­luting matter.

…….Philo describes the Logos, therefore, as the first-born before all ex­istence, as the perfect reflection of God…..he calls him God’s vicegerent in the world: he gives him the office of mediator be­tween God and the universe……Hence he is the high priest of the world, the advocate for the defects of men with God and gener­ally the revealer of the di­vine nature to the universe [emphasis mine].  The Logos is the archetype of the reason, which is formed not after the Absolute himself, but after the Logos.  He is the rev­elation of Absolute in the reason, is the image of God after which man, according to Genesis, was cre­ated.  In this connection he calls the Logos the ideal man; and allud­ing to a Jewish mystical idea, the orig­inal man.  In the Logos is the unity of the col­lected revelations of the Divine Being which is indi­vidualized in man.  In general, everything is traced back to the distinction between the Divine Being  as he is in himself and his revelation in the Logos….But this Logos by Philo is only a sort of intermediate be­ing be­tween God, who is in his nature hidden, sim­ple, without at­tributes, and the eternal, shapeless, chaotic matter.  It is the reflection, the first-born Son of God; the second God [emphasis mine]; the sum of the ideas, which are the origi­nal types of all exis­tence; the ideal world itself;  the medium through which the actual, sensible world is created and upheld [emphasis mine];  the inter­preter and revealer of God; the archangel, who de­stroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, spoke to Jacob and to Moses in the burning bush, and led the people of Israel through the wilderness; the high priest, and advocate, who pleads the cause of sinful humanity before God, and procures for it the pardon of its guilt [emphasis mine].  We can see an ap­parent affinity of this view with the christology of St. Paul and St. John, and thus it proba­bly came to exert no small influence with the early Church fathers in the evolution of their doctrine of the Lo­gos…..Alexandrian ideas formed a bridge to Christian­ity.  [18]

A final quotation concerning the Logos, from the same source, only un­der the heading of NEO-PLATONISM, states:

The highest of all the divine forces is the Logos,  in which the world of ideas finds its place.  The Lo­gos is the image of God, and the type after which the world is formed, and the manifestation of the Deity, making and ruling the world, and serving as the Me­diator between God and man.  The conception of an incarnate Logos was, however, impossi­ble to Philo, who regarded matter as impure [emphasis mine].  This conception forms one of the fundamental doctrines which separate Christian­ity from the Alexandrian theosophy.[19]  [20]

Plotinus

A.D. 205-A.D. 270

Plotinus is the last philosopher we will present as strictly a philoso­pher.  After Plotinus, all the individ­uals discussed may still be consid­ered to be philosophers, but their primary role is that of Church Fa­thers.  The influence of Plato, Philo, and Plotinus on the Christian Church is not the result of their involvement in the Church; their influ­ence on the Christian Church is the result of the impact that their teach­ing had on the forthcoming Church lead­ers.

Plotinus was, like Philo, a Neo-Platonist.  He was a fellow disciple of Origen (a later Church Fa­ther) under the teaching of Ammonius.  He, in turn, was the teacher of Porphyry.  Plotinus was the first of the Neo-Platonists to document his beliefs about God in an organized method.  Below is a small sam­ple of his philosophy of God.

A fundamental principle of the philosophy of Ploti­nus is the identity of the subject and the object, of the cogniser[21] and thing cognised.  The office of philoso­phy should be to gain ” a knowledge of the One…[“….” part of quo­tation]..the essence and first prin­ciple of all things,” not by a process of thought or reasoning, but by an immediate intuition.  This One is variously styled by the Being, the One, the God.  The three elements of being are Unity, or the One, described as original pure light, per­vading space; Intelligence, the nous [nous] emanating from the One, and con­templating it in order to comprehend it; the World-Soul, an emanation from the Nous.  These constitute the Trinity of Plotinus.  [22]

It is necessary to evaluate and summarize the data that has been pre­sented thus far, before continuing.  Plato’s concept of God revolves around God not being a person, but an Idea of the Good.  Plato’s god is in control of the universe; he is the indirect cre­ator of all.  Plato’s god is not the creator of all because a being, called the “Demiurge,” was created by the supreme god and placed between him­self and the physical universe to act as a mediator.

Philo expanded on the philosophy of Plato.  In Philo’s theosophy the mediator was called the Lo­gos. Mediation between god and man was manda­tory; it was impossible for God to have personal re­lationships with humanity be­cause He would be de­filed upon contact with physical matter.  God him­self, is imperishable and separate from the world; he cannot suffer, he cannot be seen, he cannot be un­derstood (incomprehensible).  The Logos is the im­age of God in the world.  It was the Logos that cre­ated the world, spoke to Moses in the burning bush, destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.  The Logos could be touched, seen, and un­derstood to a degree.  But Philo could not imagine the Lo­gos becoming a man; to him, this was impossible. 

Plotinus went one step further by creating a three-tier god that was still one being.  Plotinus docu­mented his be­liefs in a systematic manner.

[1] Definition: controversial

[2] Definition: A doctrine or system of doctrine

[3] Julian Marias, Translated from the Spanish by Stanley Appelbaum and Clarence Strowbridge, History of Philosophy.  (Dover Publications Inc. New York © 1967)

1. 107, 108

[4] Avrum Stroll and Richard H. Popkin, Introduction to Philosophy, third edition.  (Published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, ©1979) p.342.

[5] Max Fishler, What the Great Philosophers Thought About God   (University Book Publishers,  Los Angeles CA, © 1958), pp. 19, 22, 32, 40.

[6] John McClintock and  James Strong,  Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological , and Ecclesiastical Literature, (First published by Harper and Brothers, 1867-1887, Reprinted by Baker Book House Company, 1981) Volume VIII, p.  286.

[7] The Readers Digest Great Encycolpedic Dictionary, Including Funk and Wagnells Standard College Dictionary (Pleasantville, New York© 1969)

[8] Definition:  above and beyond the universe.

[9] Definition:  penetrating all creation.

[10] Definition: self-contradiction.

[11] Philo, with an English translation in ten volumes.

F.H. Colson, M.A. and Rev. G. H. Whitaker, M.A., translators.  T.E. Page, LITT.D., E. Capps, Ph.D., LL.D.,  W.H. D. Rouse, LITT.D.,  Editors (The Loeb Classical Library.  Published by London:  William Heineman Ltd., New York:  G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1929).   Volume I, Introduction, pp.ix-xxii.

[12] Marias,  p. 109

[13] Definition:  many types of

[14] Definition:  to flow forth from a source

[15] Definition:  the act of linking together.

[16] Definition:  of or pertaining to non-material things; spiritual.

[17] Definition:  capable of being known.

[18 McClintock and Strong, Volume VIII, pp. 112, 113.

[19] Definition: a system of religious thought claiming a mystical insight into the divine nature.

[20] McClintock and Strong, Volume VI, p. 940.

[21] Cogniser Definition: a form of cognizant, cognizant or aware of a fact or a specific piece of information; possess knowledge or information about

[22] McClintock and Strong, Volume VI, p. 941.