The God of the philosophers, however, who was left over, was not regarded by the ancient world as having any religious significance but as an academic extrareligious reality. To leave only him standing and to profess faith in him alone and in nothing else seemed like lack of religion, as a denial of religion, as atheism. The suspicion of atheism with which early Christianity had to contend makes its intellectual orientation, its decision against religio and custom devoid of truth, its option in favor of the truth of Being clearly apparent.
