It would, I think, be unfair to construe this passage into an absolute condemnation of all the results of human activity, arrived at without any conscious dependence on what we mean by revelation. We must remember, too, what “philosophy” was in the world into which St. Paul was born. It was no longer the golden age of philosophic activity—with the exception of Stoicism, there was hardly a school which exerted any elevating moral influence. Besides, the “philosophy” of which St. Paul was especially thinking when he wrote the passage cited (Col. iii. 8, 9) was hardly worthy of the name. It was one of the earliest forms of Gnosticism, and among other practices inculcated worship of angels, i.e. of created beings—“Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers.” See Col. i. 16–18; Eph. i. 20–22. Such “philosophies,” falsely so-called, would tend to bring philosophy in general into disfavour with the teachers of the Church. Yet we find Eusebius, in the fourth century, calling the Faith “the true philosophy” (H. E. IV. 8). The adoption of the term to denote what St. Luke called “the way” (Acts xix. 23) appears to have been due to the action of apologists like Justin Martyr, who set themselves to meet the wise of this world with their own weapons, on their own ground.