In Exodus 12:35-36, as the Israelites are leaving Egypt the Bible tell us this,
35 The people of Israel had also done as Moses told them, for they had asked the Egyptians for silver and gold jewelry and for clothing. 36 And the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. Thus they plundered the Egyptians.
As the Israelites were being delivered from the chains of slavery, they were taking the earthly treasures of the Egyptians. Augustine calls back to this story when he writes about appropriating pagan works for our own use as Christians in On Christian Doctrine Book Two, Chapter 40,
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.1
He acknowledges that even outside of Holy Scripture and far from the church, certain wise men were able to discover nuggets of truth. God is the ultimate source of all truth in this world, and He gave us Scripture as a deeply valuable, infallible source of that truth which is sufficient for the life of the Christian. However, it would be naive to say that truth can only be found in Scripture. God created humans as rational beings with a desire for Him which leads to a desire for truth. Throughout history, God has shared common grace with wise men and allowed them to share some of these truths with the world.
Augustine was following a tradition that was laid out earlier in the writings of Clement of Alexandria and Justin Martyr. In his First Apology, Justin Martyr when referring to the similar teaching between Moses and Plato says the following,
And hence there seem to be seeds of truth among all men; but they are charged with not accurately understanding [the truth] when they assert contradictories.2
He is sharing a similar sentiment to Augustine, that certain men through the grace of God were able to see glimpses of the truth of the Gospel though they could not always understand or fully develop those truths. He then goes even further and says this,
But by the agency of the devils death has been decreed against those who read the books of Hystaspes, or of the Sibyl, or of the prophets, that through fear they may prevent men who read them from receiving the knowledge of the good, and may retain them in slavery to themselves; which, however, they could not always effect. For not only do we fearlessly read them, but, as you see, bring them for your inspection, knowing that their contents will be pleasing to all. And if we persuade even a few, our gain will be very great; for, as good husbandmen, we shall receive the reward from the Master.3
Martyr lists the writings of the Old Testament prophets along with Hystaspes and Sibyl. Now Hystaspes was likely a Persian Sage or King to which are attributed a number of apocalyptic writings similar to Revelation. The Sibyl was the title of a Greco-Roman priestess who also had many prophecies about a coming messiah and apocalypse. Thus Justin is admitting that these Pagan prophecies at least partially contained the same truth that we see in Christian prophecy.
Martyr goes on to say that it is demonic forces that scare people from reading these prophecies and being exposed to the truth. This demonic interference is also very important and something you will see in other writings on this topic. Basically, as humans strove for truth and goodness and ultimately God, they often fell short because of the suppression of demons. This led their writings and religions to have nuggets of truth obscured and fragmented by falsity. The earlier writings are therefore often described as echos of the coming truth revealed by Christ.
Clement shares similar views in his Stromata,
Philosophy is not then false, though the thief and the liar speak truth, through a transformation of operation. Nor is sentence of condemnation to be pronounced ignorantly against what is said, on account of him who says it (which also is to be kept in view, in the case of those who are now alleged to prophesy); but what is said must be looked at, to see if it keep by the truth.
And in general terms, we shall not err in alleging that all things necessary and profitable for life came to us from God, and that philosophy more especially was given to the Greeks, as a covenant peculiar to them — being, as it is, a stepping-stone to the philosophy which is according to Christ — although those who applied themselves to the philosophy of the Greeks shut their ears voluntarily to the truth, despising the voice of Barbarians, or also dreading the danger suspended over the believer, by the laws of the state.4
He is clear that philosophy is not inherently false and we must not commit a genetic fallacy in stating it to be false based on its source. We should evaluate all things based on the teachings themselves and determine what is truthful and what is not. He does also state clearly that what we have received in Scripture from God is sufficient for Christian living, and I would agree with this. Philosophy, he says, was useful for the Greeks as a stepping stone to the truth of the Gospel.
I think this is still true today. Humans are still looking for truth outside of Christianity and sometimes I think they do see glimpses of truth in modern culture and modern philosophy or religion. It is beneficial to the evangelist and apologist to be aware and knowledgeable of the culture in a way that lets them find truth and use it to bring people to the fullness of truth that is Christ. I will also still defend the study of ancient philosophy like Aristotle and Plato and the Stoics as there are many people that still study and follow these ideas. We can better evangelize to them by meeting them where they are at. Further, western culture is in many ways built upon the ideas of the ancient Greeks and whether they know it or not, many people’s morality is shaped by those ancient ideas. I also think that studying philosophy provides better ways to demonstrate and speak about God, morality, and the Gospel by seeing how Pagans have tried to discover those things for themselves.
I want to elaborate on that last point briefly. I think philosophy in specific is beneficial because of the new ways it lets us see moral truths and even the nature of God. Aristotle is incredibly important for his arguments for a God that Christian apologists still rely on today. He also had simple ways of explaining morality that can be helpful advice for Christians trying to live morally. The Stoics had a way of looking at life that relied on accepting what happens to us and only trying to control what we can. I think this is very much a Christian idea. Ultimately, we must trust in the providence of God for the things that happen to us and be responsible for following Christ in what we do. And these are just a few examples of the guidance these men provide, there are many philosophers that have wrestled with morality and God and can provide us with helpful advice as we do the same. Of course, we must take care to check their words with Scripture, but to me it is no different than accepting advice from a therapist or even a friend.
So now Augustine spoke broadly of heathen works, Justin Martyr spoke of Pagan prophecy, and Clement spoke of philosophy, but what about Pagan literature or mythology. Well C.S. Lewis speaks on this point in many of his writings, and he often defends non-Christian literature and mythology for the value it can provide us. His view can be summed up in this quote from a letter to Arthur Greeves on October 18, 1931,
…the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call ‘real things’.5
C.S. Lewis often talked about the genre of myth and how Christianity is a myth with it differing from all the pagan myths in one important way, it’s true. He did not deny that truth could also be found in fragments in other myth, and he believed that these myths could be valuable in the life of a believer. We all ingest fiction and myth through the books we read and the TV we watch, and I think often times we are drawn to fiction that reflects truth to us and that we can learn from even if only subconsciously. It is no different when looking at these ancient or modern works of philosophy and literature. If we subject everything we ingest to the infallible truth of God revealed through Scripture then there can be moral, spiritual, and evangelistic benefit to ingesting the small pieces of God’s truth in philosophy and literature.
To wrap this all up, let’s look at the best example of using Pagan culture, wisdom, and philosophy as a a tool for evangelism, Paul. In Acts 17:28, Paul clearly does this when he says,
28 for
“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
as even some of your own poets have said,
‘For we are indeed his offspring.’“
Here when speaking to the Areopagus, Paul quotes Epimenides of Crete, a greek philosopher-poet, and a poem of Aratus. So, as he speaks to a Greek crowd, Paul seeing the hidden truth, quotes their philosophers and poets to point them to Christ. He is setting an example for how we should use the obscured truths of culture and philosophy to bring people to ultimate truth of Christ.
For further study on this topic I would look more into the works of C.S. Lewis as he frequently wrote on these ideas, Eusebius’s Praeparatio Evangelica, and Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. Beothius is another great example of these ideas as he was in many ways the last of classical philosophers and also a devout Christian. His work Consolation of Philosophy is in itself an interpretation of Greek philosophy through a Christian framing and a great read that I (and C.S. Lewis) would highly recommend.
- Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, book 2, chap. 20, trans. J.F. Shaw, New Advent, accessed October 6, 2025, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/12022.htm.
- Justin Martyr, The First Apology, chap. 44, trans. Marcus Dods et al., New Advent, accessed October 6, 2025, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm.
- Ibid.
- Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata (Miscellanies), book 6, chap. 8, trans. William Wilson, New Advent, accessed October 6, 2025, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/02106.htm.
- C.S. Lewis, letter to Arthur Greeves, October 18, 1931, in They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914–1963), ed. Walter Hooper (New York: Macmillan, 1979), Internet Archive, accessed October 6, 2025, https://archive.org/details/theystandtogethe0000lewi_p0k5/mode/2up.
