Comment: Yes, it would be lovely if we agreed this should be the first of our "traditional doctrines." St. Justin Martyr knew Greek philosophy very well, and the philosophical schools all hold "reason," "logos," in high regard in one way or another (it becomes an especially important technical term among the Stoics), Plato being the first to make a direct association between human beings' mental faculties and the transcendent. And of course this celebration of the practice of using our heads, doubting, questioning, exploring, speculating, judging, evaluating, being "critical" in the correct sense of that Greek-origin word, is not much in evidence in the biblical tradition.

Rufinus quotes one of the Desert Fathers he interviewed, giving an excellent Platonic answer to a question about the origin of the virtues: "The mother of all the virtues is diákrisis," that word meaning discernment, discretion, and discrimination, all at once.