Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 92:365 (Jan 1935)
Article: Socratic Anticipations of Christianity
Author: Frederick T. Tapscott

BSac 92:365 (Jan 35) p. 58

Socratic Anticipations of Christianity

Frederick T. Tapscott

Rightly considered, all pre-Christian history, Jewish and Gentile alike, was an anticipation of our Saviour’s advent, and a preparation for it. For His elect nation that advent had undoubtedly a special significance-“to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made”-and there is no epoch in the covenant life of that chosen people that was not at once a prophecy of and a preparation for the Coming One. But quite outside the pale of Judaism, the great and wise of pagan peoples were, all unconsciously, casting up a highway for the coming of Him who is the Desire of all nations. Jewish law and Gentile philosophy alike prefigure the Gospel. Socrates, in much the same way as Moses, was a schoolmaster to bring mankind to Christ. Moses taught the Jew that “by the deeds of the law no flesh living shall be accounted righteous in God’s sight”; Socrates evidenced to all succeeding ages that “the world through its wisdom knew not God.” There is an unutterable pathos in the thought of this old Athenian endeavouring to read his genius backward from the world of sense to his original presupposition-the

BSac 92:365 (Jan 35) p. 59

Logos preincarnate-all unconscious that his self-confessed failure had been leading him forward toward the true goal-the Logos incarnate. The Hebrew patriarch “longed to see Christ’s day,” the pagan philosopher too, groping in the darkness of a rayless night longed for some Λόγος Θεῖος (some divine revelation) to pierce the gloom.

It is a well known fact that the post-Apostolic Fathers, especially of the Eastern Church, claimed that Socrates was endowed with a measure of Divine inspiration. Even so recently as the sixteenth century we find Erasmus crying ”Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis.” (We should be on our guard, however, not to attach too much significance to this enthusiastic and affectionate outburst).

The occasion for this erroneous impression is not far to seek. Socrates began his mission in the 430th year before the Christian era, the year which witnessed the death of Malachi, the last of the prophets. This coincidence and the frequent and startling approximations of his teachings to those of Christianity gave rise to the belief that philosophy had been Divinely accredited to fill the gap between the prophetic period and the Advent of the Redeemer. This belief received additional weight from Socrates’ own claim to Divine impulses and Divine guidance. This claim is best stated in his own words in his address to his judges: “You have often heard me speak in times past of an oracle or sign that comes to me, and is ‘the Divinity’ which Meletus ridicules in the ind...