The Impulse of Power: Formative Ideals of Western Civilization
Author: Michael W. Kelley
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Impulse of Power

Books by Michael W. Kelley

On Stone or Sand, the Ethics of Christianity, Capitalism & Socialism, ISBN 0-9636834-0-3

The Burden of God: Studies in Wisdom and Civilization

from the Book of Ecclesiastes, ISBN 0-9637768-0-0

The Impulse of Power:

Formative Ideals of

Western Civilization

Michael W. Kelley

Contra Mundum Books

Minneapolis

Copyright © 1998 Michael W. Kelley

All Rights Reserved

Published by:

Contra Mundum Books

PO Box 32652

Spring Lake Park MN 55432-0652

Set in Galliard, 10 points

Manufactured in the United States of America

ISBN 0-9637768-1-9

For:

Benjamin & Gretchen

“…understanding as an engagement is an exertion; it is the
resolve to inhabit an ever more intelligible, or an ever less
mysterious world.”

“To recall is not merely to lay side by side in present con-
sciousness rigid particles of past events, it is to organize
our present consciousness, it is to think, to judge, to con-
struct.”

– Michael Oakeshott –

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets
itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take cap-
tive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

– 2 Corinthians 10:5 –

6

Table Of Contents

Preface – 1

Part I • Ancient Man

“The First Enlightenment”

1• Homer: The Heroic Ideal – 9

1› The Roots of the West – 13

2› The Legacy of Greece – 17

3› Homer, the Theologian – 23

4› A World Fit for Heroes – 28

5› God-like Men and Men-like Gods – 36

2 • Plato: The Philosophical Ideal – 41

1› Plato versus Homer – 41

2› Hesiod and the Beginnings of Speculation – 52

3› Presocratics: Relocating the Divine – 55

4› Plato’s Agenda – 70

Part II •Medieval Man

“The Grand Synthesis”

3 • The Monastic Retreat: The Ascetic Ideal – 81

1› Christianity and the World of Late Antiquity – 83

2› Early Monasticism – 89

3› Essential Traits and Characteristics of Monasticism – 94

4› Pagan Sources of Influence – 100

5› Quid sit Christianum esse? Augustine - The Almost

Reformer – 106

4 • The Growth of Hierarchy: The Institutional Church Ideal – 115

1› Ecclesia Universalis – 118

2› The Church to Constantine, 2nd & 3rd Centuries – 125

3› The Constantinian Revolution – 139

5 • The University and Scholasticism: The Reason Ideal – 151

1› Purge of the Mind - Ascent of the Soul – 155

2› The Age of “Faith” – 166

3› The Triumph of Philosophy – 173

Part III • Modern Man

“The New Paganism”

6 • The Renaissance: The New Man Ideal – 189

1› The Meaning of the Renaissance – 189

2› The World of Urban Conflict and Renaissance Civic

Humanism – 197

3› The World of Elitist Values and Renaissance

Superstitions – 212

7 • The Enlightenment: The New Nature Ideal – 223

1› The Scientific Revolution – 223

2› The Second Book – 231

3› The Mechanized World of Enlightenment Man – 253

8 • Romanticism: The Revolution Ideal – 261

1› A Culture of Protest & Protest as Culture – 261

2› Proto-Romantics – 271

3› The Romantic Agenda – 281

Conclusion – 293

Bibliography – 311

Index – 319

Preface

We cannot combat the errors of our time if we cannot
recognize kindred errors in the past.... In every era, the
modernisms of the day have reshaped men’s views of the

Bible when in fact the Bible requires us to reshape our
world, our times, and ourselves in terms of the word of

God.

–R.J. Rushdoony

In his thought-provoking book, Christ the Meaning of His-
tory, Hendrikus Berkhof remarked: “Histor y is the study of man’s actions and decisions. It is the terrain on which man’s cultural mission is realized; along with this it is also the terrain of his self-realization.” (p. 17)

As the title indicates, Berkhof thinks it necessary to evalu-
ate the “terrain of man’s cultural mission” in terms of Christ. Is this conceivable? What can Christ possibly have to do with man’s

“cultural mission?” In our modern, secular age this scarcely
seems plausible. For some time now mankind has been busy
fashioning culture without the least reference to Christ. We
could even say that, at the present, mankind shows a decided
aversion to Christ, and not least in his cultural efforts. For most people, Christ means religion, and they dismiss religion as irrelevant to man’s life, his culture especially. Perhaps, we should qualify this. Most people object to any religion that presents the
demands of Christ, but not to a religion where their own inter-
ests receive top priority. Thus, in claiming that religion is irrelevant for culture, they do not mean all religion, only the Christian religion.

Berkhof ’s assertion that Christ is the meaning of history
might not make much of an impact on the thinking of the secu-
lar men of today – the elites who control the agenda of the institutions in which culture is discussed and fostered most especially 2

Preface

– but what effect does this thought have on those who call them-
selves Christians? Do Christians even imagine that there is any connection between Christ and history? Mind, we are not asking
what role Christ played in history, as if our concern were merely with the person of Jesus and his effect on the people of his day two thousand years ago. Nor are we asking what impact the

Christian religion has made on human history in the two thou-
sand years of its existence, although this is not irrelevant. That Jesus had a following in history, that he engaged the devotion
and beliefs of many throughout these two millennia is not in
question. Rather, what we are asking, as does Berkhof, is what is the meaning of Christ for history – history being the terrain of man’s “cultural mission?” Does Christ have any meaning for the
unfolding of man’s cultural mission? If so, do we have an obligation to evaluate man’s cultural mission in terms of Christ who is its meaning? Most especially, how do we understand Western
culture in the light of Christ, since Western culture is hardly
thinkable without considering that Christianity was essential to its formation and development?

Many, if not most, Christians do not even consider that
man has been given a cultural mission. Or if, perhaps, man does
have such a task to perform, they can scarcely imagine that God
had anything to do with it. For most Christians there is little, if any, connection between what they profess to believe and the
need to work out their faith in cultural form. In one sense this is understandable, since central to the Christian religion, as Scripture indicates, is its concern for the redemption of man from sin.

The chief intent of God’s revelation in Christ would seem to
have no other interest, so far as man is concerned, than this. But is this true? Does the sin of man have no impact on culture? And is the redemption of man from sin not intended to have an
impact on his culture as well? Can we assume that man’s cultural labors are neutral so far as sin and righteousness are concerned?

If not, then what bearing does Christ have on man’s cultural
mission? Does not redemption in Christ also possess a relevance
for the cultural labors of man?

History, indeed, is the terrain of man’s cultural mission. If

Preface

3

Christ is the meaning of history, then he is the key to the evaluation of man’s cultural mission. As Christians, therefore, we are compelled to scrutinize the cultural labors of man from the
standpoint of Christ who must have the central significance in all the work that man does under the sun. Our concern in what follows is to offer an evaluation of Western culture, for, as we mentioned, that is the cultural context in which Christianity has had the greatest impact. Has the Christianity embodied in that culture upheld the claims of Christ as it should have, or have other motives been at work, motives which have sought to drive Christ
from the lordship of man’s cultural mission? Have Christians
been faithful in struggling on Christ’s behalf against the intrusion of those other influences? If those other, non-Christian,
ideals have gained ascendancy, what has been their effect on

Western culture? We cannot answer these questions unless we
examine the legacy of Western cultural ideals in detail. Only then will it be possible to see if Christ has truly been at the center of that civilization.

For many Christians these questions and concerns will
likely seem irrelevant. With the arrival of the year 2000, there is perhaps little interest in looking into the past. Rather, all eyes are turned upon the immediate future when many Christians fer-vently expect Christ will come and finally set up his promised
millennial kingdom. History, the past, the record of man’s cul-
tural mission, are of little concern. At the very least, their perspective on Christianity is one that is shaped by a need to save souls and a go-to-heaven theology. Nothing else, they suppose, really matters. Thus, when it comes to man’s cultural mission,
most do not see the church’s missionary task to have any bearing upon it.

Everything depends, however, on what we understand by
the word Christ. Is it merely a name, or is it a title? If it is the latter, what does it say about him who is the bearer of it? The

Christian faith is Christian, after all, because it derives from Christ, not just Jesus. Consequently, all that pertains to the

Christian faith has Christ, and all that that title means, at its center. We as Christians ought not simply to confess Jesus Christ,

4

Preface
but that Jesus is the Christ, the one anointed to be the heir of all creation. Christ bespeaks not simply the person of Jesus, but his kingdom and lordship of the whole earth as well. It is the term
that designates his replacement of Adam as the head of the
human race. All that God determined for mankind at creation
now has its redemptive ground and purpose in him. Nothing
summarizes better the meaning of the word Christ than these words of the apostle Paul to the Colossian Christians: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. And he is the
head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the first-
born from among the dead, so that in everything he might have
the supremacy.” (1:15–18) Not only is Christ the meaning of
history, but nothing and no one else possibly can be. And if of
history, then he is the meaning of man’s cultural mission as well.

Paul’s words strongly suggest that Christ is now as he
describes and will not merely become so in the future. After all, he wrote these words nearly two millennia ago. If they were true then, they have remained true, and continue to be true today.

Since Christ is at the same time the “firstborn over all creation,”

and the “firstborn from among the dead,” then all that pertains
to creation, man’s cultural mission included, must have both its foundation and redemption in him. Consequently, as Christians,
we must evaluate the work of man in the light of Christ who
now has the supremacy over all things. Nothing that is part of man’s life in this world is outside of Christ. But we shall return to this thought in the conclusion.

The end of the second millennium is a good time to look
back on our cultural heritage and take stock. What value has

Christ had within that culture? How do we assess man’s activity
in terms of Christ as the Lord of history, the Lord of man’s cultural mission? This is what we propose to do in the following
pages. We will not cover everything. We shall merely highlight
those areas of Western culture which have stood out prominently
in the ideals of the makers and producers of that culture. That is, Preface

5
we shall but touch upon those various domains which have
received such great emphasis in the studies done on Western
man. Some may find this not to be worthwhile or, at the least,
tedious and not immediately practical. But, apart from the intrinsic need to appraise all that men do in terms of Christ who will one day bring all the works of man into judgment, so long as history continues, we, as Christians especially, must seek to understand what is involved in the phrase, Christ the meaning of
history.

6

Preface

Part I •Ancient Man

“The First Enlightenment”

8

1 • Homer

The Heroic Ideal

The name Western Civilization is more than a term of
geography. It refers to a cultural idea – a total civilizational project by which a portion of mankind endeavored over the
course of centuries to construct a viable philosophy of life and existence, and thereby gradually to propound a suitable concept
of rational, social and ethical order. It was Western because of where it sprang up and the nations which first embraced its
ideals, but it was not a vision of life and reality that was territorially limited. In time it came to be regarded, at least by those
within it, as the best that men anywhere were capable of achiev-
ing. Western civilization offered man an ordered concept of life that uniquely enabled him to realize his greatest potential and so give the highest positive significance to his essential humanity. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Western civilization has
gained such a commanding influence throughout the world and
achieved so widespread a benefit for larger numbers of people
everywhere.

By contrast, in nearly all non-Western civilizations, past
and present, the principal feature has been, and remains, that
they are cultures designed for, and limited in their usefulness to, ruling elites. By-and-large a powerful few chart the course and
enjoy the benefits of culture and civilization, and nearly always at the expense of the weak and passive many. In these cultures
knowledge, that essential stock of a civilization’s ideas about
itself and the world, has been controlled by, and restricted to, an aristocratic cadre who view it as a way to promote themselves and dominate others. Often their goal has been to preserve the
people’s ignorance and subordination by the superstitions of
noble character and superiority of inherited virtue of the rulers.

Such civilizations necessarily insist upon a sharp distinction
between the special few who have access to the gods and the unenlightened many who must submit to the superior wisdom

10

1 • Homer
and understanding of the privileged. This cultural mentality
maintains the fiction that only these specially high-bred persons are fully human for the reason that they are by nature and education more god-like in their capacities and abilities. Cultures like these are, and always have been, stagnant and moribund, neither
developing nor progressing in any beneficial way for the people
as a whole. The elites who dominate them have a strong interest
in maintaining the status quo. With their superiority in the social scheme, being, in their minds, a necessity of nature and not
merely the flattery of custom, naturally, they would stoutly resist all forms of change, regardless of whether or not it improves the moral and material condition of their alleged inferiors. Cultures and civilizations like these, being tightly dominated from the
top, tend to languish under the oppressive weight of semi-bar-
baric conditions, regardless of how stable or appealing they may appear to the outside observer. They constrict the human spirit
and prevent man’s natural talents and interests from being fully realized.

Compared to these non-Western cultural traits, Western
civilization came eventually to embody the belief that no men are innately superior to others. Though some possess outstanding
abilities and talents and may, for that reason, contribute more to the cultural edifice, this does not make them inherently more
human, nor are other, less gifted, persons incapable of appropriating the culture or of contributing to its progressive unfolding in history. This, in no small measure, is attributable to the influence of Christianity which saw in man a miniature reflection of
his Maker and therefore a creature upon whom his Creator pos-
sessed a preeminent claim. It was man’s duty to develop his inner nature including his talents and abilities so as to mirror the God who gave him life and all things besides. Under God all men
stood on an equal footing regardless of their place in society.

This encouraged a respect for human life and accomplishment
on a broad scale, and helped to reduce the deep impress of elitist superiority and aristocratic self-exaltation. Its effect was to open up culture to a wider participation than just for those who occupied the top rung of the social and moral ladder.

1 • Homer

11

What is more, only in the West did the notion of history,
as the record of a civilization’s advance or regression, self-consciously shape the way a people viewed itself and its accomplishments. Western man, for the most part, has not thought of his
culture as a finished product, but as an on-going enterprise in
which present achievements, although built on the accumulated
deeds of past generations, furnish but the opportunities for
greater benefits for tomorrow. Western culture was no static
ideal, but a dynamic and growing vision for future generations.

In this sense, Western culture is still an ideal to be achieved, still in process of formation.

However, as we arrive at the end of the twentieth century,
thoughtful persons ever ywhere generally acknowledge that

Western civilization appears to be mired in a profound crisis of identity. The cherished belief that Western culture stands superior to other forms of culture has come under sustained and ven-
omous attack. Its fortress walls are crumbling under intensifying assaults, and, most seriously, not so much from those on the outside as from those within! Faith in Western culture has been
eroded in the minds of the offspring whose ancestors were its
builders. Those who lead this attack have in mind not amend-
ment but replacement; often theirs is a simplistic belief that somehow out of the whirlwind of destruction something better will arise. Yet it is noteworthy that what appears to be the emerging alternative looks suspiciously like all non-Western types of cultures with which history and the present are replete. Elitism in the name of Man is once again making a vicious bid for control
of the cultural agenda, not to advance a new principle of civilization, but in a sheer drive for power in order to compel the multitudes to submit to the orders of the few who, self-assertedly, are possessed of superior moral vision and understanding.

Has Nietzsche triumphed? Has the “will to power”

replaced belief in principled order and civility? These questions elicit others that require reflection. Has Western civilization ever been devoid of elitist notions of its own? Has it been entirely free from the types of attitudes that have found expression throughout history in all non-Western cultures and civilizations?

12

1 • Homer

There is in man a strong sense that life means more than
mere animal existence; that man ought to shape and develop his
life so as to achieve an enduring quality, one that should result from systematic and thoughtful effort. In the Biblical view, man was created by God to “have dominion” over the earth and to
serve his Creator by building a kingdom that would come to
expression as a culture and civilization. By erecting civilization man would build himself up and bring to its fullest realization
the very essence of his manhood under God. By doing so, he
would accomplish God’s purpose for himself and, at the same
time, honor and glorify the God Who gave him life and culture
and every good thing in the first place.

Into this depiction of man’s purpose in God’s world a
deep shade intrudes. If Scripture speaks of man being given a
cultural task to perform, it also asserts that man was created to be God’s obedient servant, that he was to go about his civilizational labors in ethical submission to God’s will. Because man rebelled against this moral requirement, God cursed man with death and
his cultural endeavors with vanity. By acting in ethical disobedience against God man forfeited all claims to whatever benefits

God intended that man should reap in kingdom service to Him.

God brought light to bear on this darkness by establishing
a new foundation upon which men could hope once again to
realize a kingdom purpose. He would provide salvation for man from his moral corruption and disobedience and thereby grant
the basis of a new effort at a complete culture and civilization. At the same time, it was made clear that morality and culture were
inextricably intertwined, that the former would always be the
basis of the latter. God created man for a kingdom purpose, and
man will be bound by this fact. Man in rebellion insists that,
rather than God’s will standing at the ethical center of his cultural effort, it should be man’s moral self-interpretation that is to prevail. He will tr y to ignore or redefine God’s curse on his
endeavors in order to explain it away. There lies at the heart of man’s effort at civilization a conflict between those who recognize the essential sinful nature of man as Biblically defined and those who do not, between those who recognize that only God’s

1› The Roots of the West

13
method of redemption can avail man and his culture, and those
who persistently refuse to reckon with God and who reject his
salvation plan in the vain belief that man can realize his own salvation project. This ethical division of mankind inevitably affects culture and civilization, for man cannot cease to be a kingdom
creature.

Today Western culture stands perilously close to the brink
of collapse. If we should wish to know the reasons, we shall have to reckon with the ethical-religious dichotomy that lies at the
center of Western man’s endeavor. Moreover, it has long been
present at the core of Western culture. The terms which best
describe these antithetical viewpoints have been and remain

Christianity and Humanism. No others adequately explain the clash of viewpoints that lie at the root of Western civilization and can account for the strong polarity between what men today
have come to value or detest in Western civilization.

1› The Roots of the West

It is difficult to say exactly when Western culture and civili-
zation began. Since the humanist side of Western culture long
preceded the Christian side, scholars and students of Western
culture in recent centuries, especially in the nineteenth century, have not hesitated to claim that Western civilization began with the Greeks. Their reasons may vary: some are led by a desire to
justify an anti-Christian enlightenment faith in man and human progress initially unfolded in Greek ideas; others by a romantic longing for a cultural past unaffected by modern industrialism
and impersonal mass society. But recently open fissures have
appeared in Humanism. For the past three centuries Humanism
has been successful in eclipsing the Christian dimension of Western culture. But while still very much in control, Humanism is
now in process of breaking into opposing and irreconcilable
points of view. Rather than constituting a unified agenda,

Humanism has degenerated into an internecine struggle which
in the twentieth century, beginning first in Europe – the geo-

14

1 • Homer
graphical center of the West – but expanding into every region of the globe, has led to wars, revolutions, and brutalities on a scale not seen before in history. The very idea of Western civilization has been called into question, for many have come to believe
that the cherished ideals of Western culture, far from acting as a barrier against these devastating upheavals, are chiefly responsible for them. As a result, humanist elites, who took charge of
culture in order to expel Christianity and substitute a totally
humanist concept of order, have themselves lost faith in their
own agenda. In fact, they can no longer even define what that
agenda is. A fierce dispute has arisen between the older traditionalists who believe in the goodness of Western culture and the
newer multiculturalists who revile it as evil and oppressive. While the former seek to rejuvenate its core beliefs, the latter wish only to destroy it. For this reason, those who pay homage to the story of the West have made an effort to recall and reestablish the core ideals of Western civilization and to recapture the essential vision of order as first conceived and advanced in the classical Greek
world of thought. If Western civilization is to rediscover its pris-tine values, it is alleged, we must return to the fountainhead in ancient Greece. We can no longer merely attempt to patch up
the cracks, we must clear away the rubble down to the ground-
work and begin anew. There in the Greek mind we shall discover
the solid foundations upon which the architectural upper stories of Western culture and civilization had once been and may again
be laboriously and painstakingly constructed.

Those who espouse this rediscover y of classicism are
mainly the more conservative among humanists who still retain respect and adherence for Christianity in a cultural sense. However, they are not alone in defending this classical revival; they are joined by many Christians as well. Both are concerned to
reconstruct a classical model in education, since this has been the area of culture in which the breakdown of Humanism has
appeared to be the most devastating and the anti-Western
onslaught has made its greatest gains. Christians, especially,
fondly recall those medieval centuries when Christianity dominated the cultural agenda and when, as they read history, faith 1› The Roots of the West

15
and reason were willing and congenial partners in a common enterprise. They point to this era as a time when order prevailed and God and Church combined to hold in check the degenerative impulses of man’s irrational and sinful tendencies. Cultural order was viewed as divinely inspired, and while men might still act here and there with a crude lawlessness, nevertheless a general conception of good and evil predominated to hold down
man’s barbarous cupidity and bridle his passions so as to prevent an overthrow of civilization. Christianity was not a needless
impediment, still less an affront, to civilization, as it has come to be viewed by most contemporary humanists, but a necessar y
moral barrier to the innate savagery and capriciousness of men
for whom conquest, plunder, and ruinous blood-letting would
otherwise comprise the means to attain their goals of temporal
advantage. Conservative humanists, on the other hand, wish to
return to the models of ancient Greece only to re-discover the
basic ideas which gave bir th to the modern Enlightenment
when, as they see it, men organized their world on the principles of unbiased reason and natural law, and science, democracy, and
economic rationality were the result. Culture and civilization
which sprang therefrom, having lost their appeal in recent times, must be revived. Christianity may help in so far as it encourages those ideals thought by some humanists to be necessary to the
revival of rational civilization: open intellectual and scientific procedures and methods, suppression of fanatical tendencies,
and the fostering of manners and tastes considered to be insepa-
rable from civilized behavior and discourse, i.e., the code of the gentleman.

The problem with this more conservative brand of think-
ing, especially in Christian circles, is its failure to understand that while Christianity may have in the past acquired a tenuous dominance in questions of ethical behavior it was scarcely tied to a uniquely Biblical cultural agenda. In fact, Christians imbibed
many of their ideas of culture and civilization from the classical thinking of Greece and Rome. Thus, the idea of culture proved
to be a hybrid of Christianity with Humanism. Christianity was
viewed as merely supplying what was lacking in the humanist

16

1 • Homer
outlook, namely, a vision of the true God and faith in His salvation. Salvation in this conception, however, was reduced to one
of escape, an effective denial of a total kingdom ideal. Men were not taught that Scripture provides a cultural agenda of its own
and, if men are again to live properly in terms of God’s dominion purpose for man, they must learn it uncontaminated from that
source. Many at that time could not see that ancient classical
thought was a product of man’s covenant rebellion and served to further a total anti-God program for man. As a result, genuine

Biblical Christianity was compromised and could not sustain its
dominance in the West once men, attracted to Humanism, grad-
ually became aware that they could fashion the cultural agenda
on entirely Humanist grounds and declined to submit to what,
to them, was an alien and culturally irrelevant ethico-religious mind-set.

Today the confident faith of Humanism can be seen to be
a transparent delusion. Humanism’s control of the cultural
agenda is proving the death of culture and civilization. Western Man is morally rudderless on a vast ocean that is being swept by fierce gales, and the leaky vessel that constitutes his civilization shows alarming signs of breaking apart. All the while a struggle is being waged between the occupants over who is best fitted to
pilot the ship as well as where it should sail for the good of all.

Should they be heeded who suggest that the ideals of classical
man need to be recovered in order to revive the lost vision of
culture that made the West what it is in the first place? Should we accept the argument of those who wish to restore the displaced ideals represented by the medieval synthesis of Christianity and Humanism? Can such salvage operations succeed? Is it
possible to remake Western civilization on the same basis from
which it first sprang up? If so, why should one accept that it will turn out better the second time?

It is essential to re-think the entire project of Western civi-
lization, not because Western culture is irretrievably lost and
ought to be replaced by something else. Man cannot simply
invent cultures and civilizations at his will, for these unfold as products of histor y which, in the final analysis, is sovereignly 2› The Legacy of Greece

17
determined by God. However, man is responsible for his use of
the materials given him to shape into culture and for the choice of the proper ideals which should guide his endeavor. How has

Western man developed culture? Upon what standard has he
sought to erect it? There are but two options available: that
which comes from God in His revealed Word, or that which
arises from man’s sin-darkened imagination. No mixture or con-
fusion is possible at any time. All man’s attempts at synthesis
have inevitably led him to reject the former for the exclusive sake of the latter. At the outset, these were, we readily admit, the ideals of ancient Greek thinkers. Thus, in order to re-examine the
main ideals which have contributed to make Western culture
what it is and have helped to contribute to its present state of decline, it is necessary to start with the Greeks.

2› The Legacy of Greece

In the world of scholarship that has, since the Renaissance
certainly but more especially in the past two centuries, turned to a study of Greek culture and civilization in search of the roots of our own past and culture, it has become commonplace to speak
of something called “the distinctive character of the Greek
mind….”1 In other words, at any moment in the Greek past we
shall be presented with a common set of assumptions about life,
the world and what constitutes man’s place in it that formed the basis upon which a unique people passed from the stage of
migratory primitiveness to a settled and permanent way of living.

It was “Greek” because it differed from other cultural ideals, and it was “mind” because it resulted from reflective self-consciousness. The Greeks, allegedly, were the first to think of culture and civilization as a product of thought, more than mere accident,
the result of rational inventiveness. The Greeks, we are told,
came to see themselves as possessing the capacity to make culture 1. W.K.C. Guthrie, The Greeks and Their Gods, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), p. xii.

18

1 • Homer
after the pattern of ideas – ideas which, because they supposedly represented the nature of things, possessed immutability and
authority. This capacity for mental self-reflection, it is argued, has enabled the Greeks to become the founders of European, or

Western, civilization. Bruno Snell, for example, averred that

“European thinking begins with the Greeks. They have made it
what it is: our only way of thinking; its authority, in the Western world, is undisputed … we use this thought … to focus upon …

truth… with its help we hope to grasp the unchanging principles
of this life.”2

It is doubtless true that Greek ideals appear to us as a self-
conscious cultural and civilizational identity. In general and
throughout Greek history we can recognize a common society
which shares the same values and outlook on life. This Greek
cultural self-recognition and adherence reached its highest articulation with the formation of philosophy. Consequently, when
we think of Greek ideals, we think of Plato and Aristotle. There were others, but these two men far exceed them in notoriety and
influence. If philosophy forms the pinnacle of Greek cultural self-reflection, then Plato and Aristotle are the principal minds in the formation of philosophy. Other thinkers are always judged by
the canons of thought defined by these two surpassing geniuses.

The reason for the ascendancy of philosophy in the world
of Greek ideals can be found in the chief characteristic of Greek philosophy, the belief that a true social and civilizational order was conceivable as a “scientific” validity for all men.3 Man could construct a total culture that reflected a rationality inherent in his mind. The Greek mind believed passionately in man’s inborn
capacity to comprehend the total nature of reality, including
both its form and the processes which animate it. Such a com-
prehensive understanding of reality was necessary in order to
express fully the total life of man within the framework of that reality, to shape life in accordance with an ordered civilizational 2. Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature, (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1982), p. vi.

3. Eric Voegelin, The World of the Polis: Order and History, vol. II, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), p. 28.

2› The Legacy of Greece

19
program. It was in the development of philosophy that this

Greek faith in the ability of the mind of man to attain to such a

“comprehensive understanding” had reached its greatest intel-
lectual focus. In Western civilization to this day the belief in a totally scientifically constructed culture and society has remained a cardinal article of faith.

Still, though it is easily arguable that Greek ideals acquired
their most systematically intelligible conceptual and verbal form with the arrival of philosophy, it is far from true that those ideals were without expression outside philosophy proper. They are to
be found in poetry, drama, sculpture and architecture as well.

Any form in which Greek thought could take shape in verbal or
visual composition can be seen as an apt vehicle for Greek ideals.

Each area contributed in its own way to sustain the Greek vision of life. Each cultural feature sprang from generally accepted values and served to further a total common agenda. In every sense
the Greek mind sought to give expression to a uniquely Greek
civilizational and cultural ideal. It is in this notion of a total “paideia” that the Greeks, as Werner Jaeger characterized it, “constitute a fundamental advance on the great peoples of the Orient, a new stage in the development of society.”4 By this he meant that the Greeks, in distinction from ancient Babylon or Egypt, viewed culture as the product of a deliberate effort by man himself
rather than as a creation of the gods that required of man
unquestioned acceptance and submission. Here we arrive at the
religious and ethical center of Greek ideals which have meant so much to Western thinkers, namely, the emergence of an autonomous man, freed from superstition and in charge of his own des-
tiny. It is a vision of man who seeks to know the reason of things and from whom irrational forces and powers, dark designs of
nature and abstract and inaccessible deities slowly recede driven away by the light of human self-purpose and creative energies.

For the Greeks culture and civilization are not things to be taken 4. Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, vol. I, trans.

by Gilbert Highet, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1945),
p. xiv.

20

1 • Homer
on authority, but should be the end-results of consciously
applied human thought-process. Only then, they assumed, can
man be confident they belong to him and lift his essential
humanity above a fawning ser vility and degrading self-abase-
ment, elevate him, indeed, to the level of deity itself!

The essence, then, of what we take to be “the Greek leg-
acy” is to be found in this man-centered and man-originated cul-
tural ideal. This central religious starting-point is the connecting link between every expression of Greek culture. In epic or lyric poetry, tragic or comic drama, with philosophers from the Presocratics to Plotinus, or with the building of cities, their art and temples, we are confronted with man’s endeavor to define himself and his world by drawing from the depths of his own psycho-
logical resources. While the outward appearance in each of these aspects of their culture seem to suggest that the Greeks were
merely indulging a natural human propensity to understand the
nature of reality or to find pleasure in artistic creation, in fact, they were passionately motivated by an intense desire to articulate the meaning of man and to justify his existence, bounded as it is by finiteness and death, in a world in which human life is a struggle against an inscrutable and ultimately inexplicable Fate.

To them it seemed that precisely because he must live his life
against the background of an ultimate Fate, man alone can and
must provide a definition of himself and his endeavors, for no
other source of purpose and meaning was available but what he
himself, out of his own inner resources, determined upon. The

Greeks did not accept that man was created by a supernatural

Being or God and thus derived the justification of his existence from the Deity. Consequently, man was left to himself, and the

Greeks were confident that they had discovered the true ideal of man.

Now the knowledgeable student of Greek history and lit-
erature will at this point, no doubt, voice an objection. He will, understandably, insist that the ancient Greeks were, like their
neighbors to the East, deeply attached to a whole world of gods
and goddesses, and that Greeks everywhere, in the clear record
of their architectural remains (temples, statues, pottery), demon-2› The Legacy of Greece

21
strated a willing and eager devotion to divinities whose control of their lives and livelihoods seemed not to have the slightest
connection whatever to anything rational. He will detect in the
darker recesses of the Greek consciousness a superstitious attachment to chthonic powers whose presence they imagined to lie hidden in every occurrence of nature and whose appeasement
was required in order to insure the regular prosperity of crops, herds and flocks. For many Greeks, ignorant of the forces and
laws of nature as understood by modern science, their experience seemed to be actuated by mysterious spiritual beings to whom
man must give due satisfaction if he hoped to gain the favor of
their power and beneficence. How, it will be asked, can it be said that the Greeks felt any sense of freedom and self-determination as against the necessity to grovel before what we clearly know
was nothing more than credulous superstitions and primitive
fantasies?

One need not suppose that such an objection is misplaced.

We do not suggest that Greek ideals “sprang full blown from the
head of Zeus,” that is, were always present in mature form. Nor
do we claim that certain Greeks, whose endeavor to shape the
ideals in a self-conscious manner, did not have to strive against the popular religious assumptions of the people in general.

Indeed, the Greeks were a deeply religious people and were as
full of error in the object and content of their religious expression as were any peoples in the ancient world. Nevertheless, the Greeks were most deeply concerned to make even this most vulnerable area of their outlook as subject to a total cultural vision as possible; the place of the gods was recognized, but man was
elevated along side them. That is why the Greek mind invented
the Olympian religion. It was developed precisely in order to
bring man’s encounter with the greater powers of life and nature into a framework of rational order and so to justify man’s place in the scheme of things. Fate might continue to have the ultimate say, but man need not feel that his own limited existence
was any the less important for the fact that he must die than that of the gods who knew not death and who presumably treated
man, as in the East, as a mere object of utter indifference or con-22

1 • Homer
descending arbitrariness. For the Olympian gods were conceived
to be in need of man as much as man was dependent upon them.

The Greek ideal of culture was to bring the gods and men into
closer relationship in order ultimately to bring about a merging of the two.

The Greek mind is marked by the search for total cosmic
order. Such a vision of order was necessary to the Greek concep-
tion of culture and civilization, for they did not imagine, as does our modern age, that human life could make sense against the
background of an ultimately random meaninglessness. At the
same time, the Greeks were not satisfied merely to assume the
existence of order; theirs was a passionate desire to comprehend it conceptually, and thereby to bring it within the grip of man’s intellectual control. To do so meant to set man himself at the
center of that cosmic order, as the one for whom, in the last
analysis, that order existed.

In two significant ways the Greek mind contrasted with
modern views. First, the Greeks had a deep fear of chaos, of a
surrounding nature that was threatening and out of control.

Unlike modern men who view chaos as a generative power in and of itself, the Greeks saw chaos only as de-generative and destructive. Second, while the Greeks sought to achieve a rational comprehension of order, the causes and nature of order were
not, as with modern thinkers, an absolute creation of human rea-
son. Order was largely a given, a product of forces and factors
outside complete human control. Man, for the Greeks, was
dependent upon an order not altogether of his own making. The

Greeks, initially at least, did not think of the nature of order as impersonal, but as personal, a work of the gods, who were not
conceived as the creators of order, but merely regarded as necessary to its continued existence. The gods did not stand above,
but belonged with men within the same cosmic order, within the
same conception of culture and civilization. Resort to the gods
was necessary where man felt himself not totally capable of thinking and acting on his own. Moreover, even the gods were not
entirely above the threat of chaos, for they, too, exhibited dark passions which often set one against another in a contest of wills.

3› Homer, the Theologian

23

It must have reminded the Greeks how fragile was the nature of
the order that they so desperately hoped would serve the inter-
ests of man.

Greek ideals, like others that appear in human history, fol-
low the pattern of historical emergence, maturation, and decay.

They do not simply unfold in accordance with a uniform princi-
ple of development. There is an inner struggle between different points of view for domination of the cultural heritage. Nevertheless, while there are significant discontinuities, it is possible to highlight the essential themes in their development in such a way as to disclose their interconnections. We begin with Homer and
the Homeric contribution to Greek ideals. This is no arbitrary
starting-point, but the one that was recognized by the Greeks
themselves.

3› Homer, the Theologian

Homer, the name that stands for the author of those great
works of epic poetry, Iliad and Odyssey, is universally regarded as the founding-father of Greek cultural ideals. This was because

Greek cultural ideals were, more than anything, the product of
mind. To be Greek meant not so much to belong to a particular
ethnic group as it did to be educated in terms of a given and
rationally constructed set of ideas. A culture that views itself as the result of thought and learning necessarily places a great
emphasis upon literary education as the chief means by which
that culture is transmitted to its members. For Greeks, Homer
was the basis of their literature and thus their education. This was not simply because Homer was the oldest extant literature in the Greek system of learning, but because the Homeric poems
were the canon of orthodoxy for every learned Greek. H. I. Mar-
rou observed: “[T]hroughout its history Greek literary education kept Homer as its basic text, the focus of all its studies.”5 R.R.

5. H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. by George Lamb, (New York: A Mentor Book, 1964), p. 29.

24

1 • Homer

Bolgar has asserted no less by averring that “throughout Greek
history, but in particular during the golden age of Athens, they

[the Homeric poems] played the same role as the Authorized

Version later did in England.”6 Quite simply, Homer was the

Bible of Greek education. He provided the authoritative word for Greek culture as a whole, and not simply at the beginning or as
one part of Greek ideals. “Homer dominated Greek education
much more absolutely than Shakespeare did the English or

Dante the Italians.”7 Generations of cultivated Greeks could not imagine that one could be educated – could therefore even be

Greek! – without a thorough grounding in Homer. Nor did they
assume that Homer was useful simply for a period of formal
studies, but they regarded him as a living word, to be continuously consulted and meditated upon. “There are many testimo-
nies to the fact that ever y cultivated Greek had a copy of

Homer’s works at his bedside….”8 Clearly, for Greeks, Homer
was no passing fancy, nor a dead intellectual past. He stood at
the heart of what Greeks thought and believed. If Homer repre-
sented for Greeks the foundation of their thinking then he must
constitute the starting-point in any study of their ideals.

It would be a mistake, however, to think that Homer’s
value in the Greek idea of education lay in the aesthetic quality of his poetic constructions. We moderns would place Homer in our
category of literature. The Iliad and the Odyssey would interest us, then, principally as characteristic pieces of literary genius. We would examine them for their poetic form and artistic inventiveness. The elegant simplicity of verbal rhythm and cadence, the
word-play, the metaphors and stylistic devices are the sorts of
things that might occupy our attention. Otherwise, Homer is
but one more example of primitive mythological story-telling.

However, if we are to u nderstand the fundamen tal
assumptions of Greek cultural and civilizational ideals, we must view Homer as “something much more than a figure in the

6. R.R. Bolgar, The Classical Heritage and Its Beginnings, (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1954), p. 17.

7. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, p. 29.

8. Marrou, p. 29.

3› Homer, the Theologian

25
parade of literary history.”9 The long favor he enjoyed in the
ancient classical world was far more than literary-aesthetic. Value inhered in content. “It was not primarily as a literar y master-piece,” comments Marrou, “that the epic was studied, but
because its content was ethical, a treatise on the ideal.”10

Homer’s importance to the Greeks lay in the fact that he was

“the greatest creator and shaper of Greek life and Greek charac-
ter.” It was an attempt by a man without the true knowledge of

God to fashion a true explanation of man. In this respect, then,

“The Homeric epics contain the germs of all Greek philosophy.

In them we can clearly see the anthropocentric tendency of

Greek thought, the tendency which contrasts so strongly with
the theomorphic philosophy of the Oriental who sees God as the
sole actor and man as merely the instrument or object of that
divine activity.”11 What Homer taught, not how he taught it,
was the main concern of the Greeks.

Homer’s role as educator of the Greeks can be best
described as that of theologian. Although Greek ideals were to possess an “anthropocentric tendency,” never theless, they
emerged as the product of a theological point of view. Greeks, as was true of all men in ancient cultures, could not think of man
without reference to the divine world. The modern mind conde-
scendingly attributes this to ancient man’s primitive stage in the evolutionary process. Thus, it is said that “Homeric man has not yet awakened to the fact that he possesses in his own soul the
source of his powers … he receives them as a natural and fitting donation from the gods.”12 Modern enlightenment secularism
asserts that “primitive man feels that he is bound to the gods; he has not yet aroused himself to an awareness of his own freedom.”13 But, putting the matter this way distorts Homer’s
thinking. While it is true that in the epic the actions of men are regularly mixed together with the actions of gods, it is not simply 9. Jaeger, Paideia, p. 36.

10. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, p. 30

11. Jaeger, pp. 36 & 53.

12. Snell, The Discovery of the Mind, p. 21.

13. Snell, p. 31.

26

1 • Homer
because Homer lacked what modern man thinks is the essence of
man, namely, freedom. What ancient man sought – Homer and the Greeks especially – was an explanation of human existence
that would elevate him to god-like status. Freedom, as an
abstract quality, was not what mattered, but an ordered ideal of living that integrated man into the total cosmic harmony. Simply to get rid of the gods was inconceivable, but to imagine a world of gods and men arranged together in mutual dependence was of
the utmost importance. And for the Greeks Homer is the one
who, more than anyone else, satisfied this yearning.

While the gods figure prominently in Homer, the main
emphasis in his poetry is on the actions of men. In this he (and the Greeks) differs from the theomorphic cultures to the East
where the stories all speak of gods and almost nothing but gods.

Homer is concerned to stress the importance of man in the
scheme of things, but not man-in-general; Homer’s world was filled with great men, with warriors and heroes. Homer was no
egalitarian. Not the equality of man, but the glory of man was his chief interest. He lived in an aristocratic world, a world characterized by a king and his retinue. Naturally, his idea of man centered on the notion that some men are by nature and ability –
not to mention social necessity – simply superior to other men.

The primary feature of this world was not one of the mind and
contemplation, but one of activity, and especially competitive
activity. The ideal of man which Homer envisaged was achieved
by prowess, courage, and physical triumph in combat or games.

It was also a world run by a noble code of honor and self-glorification. Two aspects of this knightly ideal appear: the ideal man must be all-surpassing in the great contest of war, and he must
also exhibit great qualities of strategy and oratory. He must possess the ability to inspire confidence in his fellow warriors with words and speech. Needless to say, it was a world for whom
youth and vigor represented the best that life had to offer.

We should not imagine, however, that Homer’s heroes
simply conform to what in ou r u nderstan ding would be
described as a romantic tale of adventure. Homer’s heroes are
not romantic figures on a chivalrous escapade. When Homer, in

3› Homer, the Theologian

27
the Iliad especially, chooses as his subject matter an episode of war he does so with the intention of placing man’s life within a compelling context of agonizing suffering and cruel hardship
that exposes him to the terrors of painful and violent death and dying. It is a depiction of the life of man against the background of total chaos and disorder in which the failure to honor men
and gods is presented as the essential root of the problem in the cosmos. Here it might be added that it was principally the Iliad that attracted the ancient’s attention to Homer, and not so
much the Odyssey. For it was here that Homer’s concern to define the problem of disorder – rather, to what extent order and disorder interpenetrated one another – a problem that so deeply
disturbed the Greek mind in general, was to be expressed with
such acute anxiety. What is the source of evil? Is evil more ultimate than the good? These are the underlying questions that

Homer’s heroes are keenly desirous of resolving.

In Homer, then, to discover the key to disorder is to find
the solution to order. Perhaps the word “solution” is too strong a word, for any resolution to man’s problem – indeed, to the
basic disturbance in the cosmos – is not finally resolved in

Homer. At best, Homer seeks for a modus vivendi for man in the midst of an existence that teeters on a precarious brink. For if honor and self-glory constitute the core ethical ideals of gods
and men and are the only motives from which their actions can
aspire to any productive significance, then gods and men alike
will be quick to take offense whenever they feel the least bit
slighted in such weighty matters. When that happens war and its
attendant consequences are the inevitable result. Ironically, at the same time, Homer regards experience of the misery and cruelty of war as precisely necessary in order to offer the means by which heroic deeds can be given opportunity to triumph over
the dissolving powers of chaos and disorder. The war is a meta-
phor for the life of man as a whole, for man’s life is necessarily one of hardship, suffering, and all too quickly of old age and
death. If man is to achieve lasting value for himself he must hero-like confront his experience and leave a name and example to follow. He must muster courage, strength, and fearless resolve and

28

1 • Homer
not show weakness or timidity, which would be dishonorable
and shameful cowardice. He must deny death its true meaning as
the curse of God for sin and rebellion and view it with defiance and scorn.

From the theological point of view in Homer it is not a
simple matter to say that order resides in the Olympian deities, and disorder in man. Both alike are faced with the dissolving factor of disorder and chaos. However, the greater power of the
gods gives them a greater advantage in the maintenance of total
order in the threatening face of cosmic disorder. Not being
threatened by death or old age, they are less compelled to con-
sider the problem than is man. It is this certainty of death that raises so intensely the problem of order for man. What purpose
does life possess if it must end or man must experience during his brief existence such intensity of suffering and sorrow? Homer’s
solution to this problem is the hero. In the hero a more than ordinar y human quality can be seen to emerge and provide a
guidance and model in reaching for the sense of meaning to the
life of man. As Voegelin comments, “[t]he hero in the Homeric
sense can be defined as the man in whose actions a more-than-
human order of being becomes manifest.”14 Man must learn to
live in terms of an ideal of man that man must achieve for him-
self. The gods may assist, but they cannot replace the necessity of man to act on his own behalf.

4› A World Fit for Heroes

For Homer, as for Greeks in general, disorder, suffering,
and finally death were the fundamental problems confronting
man in the cosmos. If man wishes to find the key to order he
must seek for it in the causes of disorder. For Homer an explanation must be found that implicates man in the causes of disorder, but only in such a way that leaves man free of complete responsibility. Moreover, the causes of order must be such that man can

14. Voegelin, The World of the Polis, p. 104.

4› A World Fit for Heroes

29
be regarded as having the resources and ability, as much as any
god, in its ultimate realization. Man must be seen as necessary to both the breakdown as well as the re-establishment of true order.

In this way, man will be seen to be as essential to his own wellbeing in the cosmos as are the gods, for his creative powers and moral self-definition are as indispensable as theirs.

In Homer, the problem of disorder is defined on three lev-
els: first, as it arises between men and gods; second, as it confronts man on the social level; and, last, as it originates between individuals. In the Iliad all three aspects of the problem appear.

What is more, all of them are seen to be interrelated; the prob-
lem at one level gives rise to the problem on the other two levels.

The war attests to the existence of the problem, for the war
results from the breakdown of order. Had there been no distur-
bance in cosmic order, the war would not have arisen. However,
what seems to concern Homer the most is that the war itself, the behavior it gives rise to, occasions the most serious dimension of the problem. For in the Iliad, as Havelock mentions, “a grand quarrel, a major feud … is to provide the controlling theme for
his whole story….” It is Homer’s purpose to speak of “a conflict between two men of power, in whose passions and decisions the
fate of the whole group is involved…. Their acts and thoughts
disturb the conduct and affect the fate of the society in which
they move.”15 The Iliad is about the dissension between two heroes, their respective claims to the honor they believe is their due and the dishonor each has done to the other. This failure to give proper honor has led to disaster and is the cause for which they have gone to war, and the war which in turn was also a matter of honor, is imperiled with total loss. Unless the equal honor due to both can be properly restored disorder and destruction
threatens to engulf the whole of society.

Here, Homer is able to say, is a human problem of divine
proportions, but one in which the only solution available is
somehow to be found in man alone. It is a stor y intended to

15. Eric A. Havelock, Preface to Plato, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), pp. 65 & 66.

30

1 • Homer
point a moral: a failure to give proper honor to man is as much at the root of man’s problem as to dishonor the gods. Gods are not
the only beings who have a claim to be honored. In Homer’s
mind, man has an equal claim. Man’s esteem is thereby lifted to
the level of divinity so far as any ethical scope of reality is concerned, for to dishonor men is of no less an offense than to dishonor gods. And if indignity to men is the moral equivalent of
the indignity to gods then man is at least the ethical equal of the gods. Such a moral imperative is grounded in the fabric of existence which embraces both gods and men. Gods have no claim to
either priority or superiority over men in ethical terms.

It has been necessary to emphasize this point as most of us
have learned to think of the story of the Iliad as having simply to do with the fight for a woman, Helen, whom Paris, a prince of

Troy, has stolen (with Helen’s eager complicity) from her hus-band Menelaus, an Achæan noble. While this aspect of the story
is alluded to in the Iliad, Homer’s concern with this dimension of the problem is incidental. What is more, the alleged “trial of Paris,” in which three goddesses, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite,
compel him to choose which of them is the most desirable, while
also alluded to in the Iliad, is never actually mentioned. The principal issue of the epic is the clash of honor between Achilles and Agamemnon. Other incidents have importance only to the
extent that they permit Homer to place what he believes is the
central problem in a larger moral context.

However, in spite of not being mentioned, the “trial of

Paris” does represent the transcending moral dilemma in which
man symbolically appears in the background of the story as vic-
tim. In the trial Paris is confronted with a choice of goods. Each good is represented by a single divinity. Each particular good
conformed to what in the mind of most men would be deemed a
worthy possession for man. When Paris is approached by the
divinities we are given to understand that, on a symbolic level, man is necessarily bound to choose between ultimate goods, that
he cannot not choose, and that, finally, whatever choice he
makes will inevitably involve him in negative consequences. For
the choice for one will bring down on him the wrath of the

4› A World Fit for Heroes

31
others. Simply put “Paris had to choose between warlike disci-
pline, a life devoted to love, and sovranty [sic]; the first was Athene’s gift, the last Hera’s.” Each of the goddesses offered a specific gift: “Athene victory and heroism, Hera empire over Asia and Europe, Aphrodite the possession of Helen, daughter of

Zeus.”16 The gift he received depended upon which goddess he
judged to be the most beautiful. In prosaic terms, they offered
him cultural superiority (Athena), political power and domina-
tion (Hera), or a life of pleasure, leisure, and material satisfaction (Aphrodite).

In Greek ethical estimation such a choice of goods was
bound to lead to conflict since no one could possess all three
types of goods at once. Furthermore, it will not do to claim that a hierarchy of values emerges from this choice, for there is no
intrinsic reason why one should be viewed as superior to
another. Paris could not have avoided conflict by choosing a different good, since the wrath of the other two would always arise against him. The world of divinities was inevitably a source of
trouble for man because the jealousy of prerogative was built
into the very fabric of the cosmos. Gods, the highest beings,
were no less in opposition to one another than was the experi-
ence among men. The darker forces of chaos are necessarily let
loose on man regardless what ethical decision he makes. This is
simply to say that Homer’s Iliad presents a tragedy. Men collide with men because men collide with gods (man’s symbol for ultimate goods). War, or chaos, is not merely a breakdown of com-
munity and amicability on a purely hu man level; it is an
inevitable part of cosmic experience. Paris chose Aphrodite’s gift.

He angered Hera and Athena. This brought the next level of the
problem into existence, the confrontation between Achæans and

Trojans.

Paris’s reward for choosing Aphrodite was Helen. But

Helen already belonged to another. In order for her to become

Paris’s possession she must be taken from some one else. The

16. C. Kerenyi, The Heroes of The Greeks, (Thames & Hudson, 1981), pp. 316 & 317.

32

1 • Homer
moral symbolism is apparent. Not only must men choose
between ultimate divine goods, but the possession of those goods in earthly terms was bound to lead to conflict among
men, since in the Homeric (and Greek) economics for one to
possess an ultimate good meant to deprive another of it at the
same time. The fact that Helen was already one man’s possession
emphasizes the point that the value offered by Aphrodite was not of a lower order than those offered by the other goddesses. It
underscores the moral dilemma, namely, that men are necessarily
bound to conflict with one another over ultimate goods. In
order for one to possess a particular good, another must be
deprived of it. But men, no less than gods, do not take kindly to deprivation. They, too, will view it as a matter of honor and likewise demand vengeance.

Thus, what appears as a trivial matter – a war over a
woman – is misleading unless we grasp the moral lesson which
the episode is intended to symbolize. For Homer that lesson is
that man is impelled to live in a world in which honor, the highest moral requirement, inescapably drives men into confronta-
tion with one another. But it is not entirely man’s fault; the
gods, those representatives of the goods man requires in order to live the best life possible, force him to choose. Whichever god he chooses will rouse the anger of those he rejects. Disorder is the unavoidable result. Life is altogether a great tragedy, the necessary playing out of contradictions on a cosmic level.

This, then, is the background to Homer’s actual interest in
his narrative: the breakdown of order and the mounting disaster
which impends within the ranks of the Achæans (Homer’s pre-
ferred winners) when on an issue of honor its two greatest men
have come into confrontation with one another. It is a clash that derives from the fact of the larger problem, the war itself, for it emerges in the context of the proper division of the spoils of war.

Here, again, a dispute arises over possessions which leads to a
moral predicament.

The problem begins when Agamemnon, the king of the

Achæan contingent, claims as a prize of war a woman taken in
the successful capture of a Trojan-controlled city. She is the

4› A World Fit for Heroes

33
daughter of a revered priest of the shrine of Apollo, who in his grief dares to request of Agamemnon that his only daughter be
returned to him upon the payment of ransom. Agamemnon with
furious resentment refuses and, when the priest persists in his
request, threatens him with condign punishment. The priest
takes his case to Apollo with a prayer for vengeance upon the

Achæan leader. He is answered with divine wrath upon the

Achæans in the form of a deadly disease that ravages the army. As such a disaster promises to undo the gains of the war and perhaps even lead to defeat, someone must persuade Agamemnon,
king though he is, to reconsider his foolish decision to insult the god by treating his priest with contempt. But as kings rule by the authority of Zeus Most High it is a risky business to tell them
that they are in the wrong. Undaunted, Achilles, the Achæan’s
greatest warrior, steps forward and denounces Agamemnon’s
actions to his face and in the presence of the other nobles.

Agamemnon immediately senses his honor as king and the one
who has the first choice in the rewards of fighting to be at stake.

In bitter anger he agrees to release the girl, but in exchange for another who has become some other man’s prize. And since

Achilles has insulted him he demands that Achilles be the one to give him his greatest prize, a lovely girl who had been awarded to him on a previous occasion. This compounds the problem, for
now Achilles feels that he has been defrauded of his honor, and
he withdraws from the fighting and refuses further to take part.

With the loss of their greatest warrior the Achæans begin to lose the war. In battle after battle on the plains in front of the city of Troy, the Trojans, under the leadership of Hector, force the

Achæans back unto their ships. Unless Achilles can be persuaded
to rejoin his companions they are threatened with defeat at the
hands of the Trojans. Achilles remains adamant, his wrath is
unappeasable. He even induces his mother, the goddesses The-
tis, to persuade Zeus to bring defeat on the Achæans until they
remove the dishonor that Agamemnon has brought upon him.

Agamemnon, in his pride, refuses to give in to him until Achilles recognizes that the authority and privilege of kings, who hold
scepter from Zeus, are non-negotiable. He prefers to carry on

34

1 • Homer
the war without Achilles, but he soon learns that his decision is a fatal one. The war, so far as Achæans are concerned, takes a turn for the worse.

Homer offers no real resolution to this problem except,
perhaps, to say that the dark forces of chaos and wrath must simply exhaust themselves before order can be restored. For the
problem of disorder is not merely an affair in the external realm, but encompasses the very nature of man himself. It seems to rise up from the ver y depths of his being. Moreover, it is in the
nature of the moral imperative, the demand of honor, to require
vengeance on all who violate its code. But vengeance, not being
founded on any principle other than honor per se, easily and quickly takes on an uncontrollable nature of its own. It boils up as an unquenchable wrath! Nothing exists to assure that such anger is in accordance with any standard of justice, so that whenever an injustice has been rectified wrath no longer has any just reason to compel the behavior of men. In Homer’s world men
can live with any disparity or limitation but dishonor. Honor is the supreme due of gods and men alike.

Homer did not intend to say that when wrath is unleashed
it is the wickedness of man that is responsible. Man’s conduct in wrath is not characterized as guilt but insanity, which comes
from the gods. Homer calls it ate, and the god who brings it he terms “Folly.” In a sense, a man’s actions are his own. Thus,
when wise old Nestor upbraids Agamemnon by telling him that
he gave way to his pride and, in consequence, dishonored a great prince (IX. 116f) Agamemnon replies that he did indeed lose his
head and yield to black anger (IX. 130).17 But Agamemnon also
has his self-justification – “I am not to blame. Zeus and Fate and a nightmare Fury are, for putting savage Folly [ ate] in my mind in the assembly that day, when I wrested Akhilleus’ prize of war from him.” (XIX. 89-93). Still, wrath unleashed is not easily
recalled, especially when honor is at stake. The problem is how
to achieve the latter and at the same time overcome the former.

17. All references to the Iliad are from the Robert Fitzgerald translation, (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1974).

4› A World Fit for Heroes

35

Nor is the problem only Agamemnon’s; Achilles, too, has his ate

– he is proud, contentious, obdurate, given to haughtiness and
shows a contumacious attitude towards established authority and
to his fellow nobles. Achilles’ action in withdrawing from the
fight is intended to prove to the Achæans that they cannot win
without him, that unless he gets his honor restored he will not
help them. His wrath, however, soon proves to be a force
beyond his control for it leads to the situation that destroys his cherished friend, Patroclus. This serves only to arouse his wrath to a hotter flame. He is moved to war in total cosmic fury against every cosmic force that opposes him. Far from condemning such
action, Homer views it as the epitome of god-like behavior and
heroic ambition. It is Homer’s only way of saying that man can,
despite the overwhelming threat of chaos, raise himself to his
rightful place in the order of reality.

Here is the difficulty for heroes, men filled with great pas-
sions for glory and achievement, yearning to be superior to all
others and to have that superiority publicly recognized. On the
one hand, “to be robbed of a prize is to be dishonoured,” and
on the other, “to have great possessions is to have what a king
must have in order to be a king.”18 A world fit for heroes must
somehow reconcile these disparities, and yet, according to

Homer, it is precisely when these occur that the desired opportunities for heroic actions are made possible. Men need order, but just as equally men need chaos in order to compel them to exert
their powers to achieve greatness and “leave a name.” (Gen. 11:

4)

Much of the problem lies in Homer’s definition of the
character of man and the reason for his behavior. In Homer man
functions in terms of essentially non-rational qualities: thumos; phrene; kradie (desire/wrath; gut instinct/ wisdom; heart/ambition). No rational moral order was available to man to clarify
right or wrong behavior. Nor did the gods possess such an order.

If man seeks his own glory, on his own terms, it is only because 18. Jasper Griffin, Homer On Life and Death, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 27.

36

1 • Homer
he must. It is the only moral order he can truly know in a cosmos where disorder is the only alternative. And while disorder will
ultimately win out, it is possible by glorious deeds to acquire
everlasting fame, and so, in some sense, triumph in spite of all. A world fit for heroes is a world they have made for themselves.

5› God-like Men and Men-like Gods

With Homer man strives to emerge as more than merely a
pawn in a larger cosmic framework. Although the forces of the
cosmos, including the dark depths of his own inner nature,
would seem to over whelm and destroy him, nevertheless,
according to the Homeric moral vision, he need not suffer
abjectly or passively. He believes man possesses the requisite ability to confront his experience and, mortal though he be, accom-
plish a permanent glory for himself. With the example of heroic
deeds as exhibited in Homer’s Iliad, man is encouraged to see that, despite how utterly threatening the power of chaos appears to be, he can reach inside himself for those moral qualities that will permit him to fashion a culture and civilization that has lasting importance for human purpose. Even if human existence is
an ultimate tragedy, there is in man a power to transcend his limitations and show that human self-determination can acquire
god-like worthiness. Jasper Griffin has ably summed up the

Homeric contribution:

The Homeric poems do not tell us that the world was
made for man, or that our natural state in it is one of hap-
piness. They do say that it can be comprehended in human
terms, and that human life can be more than an insignifi-
cant or ignoble struggle in the dark. The human soul can
rise to the height of the challenges and the suffering which
are the lot of all mankind. That spirit, chastened but not
despairing, which sees the world without illusion and con-
fronts it without self-pity or evasion, was the gift of Greece

5› God-like Men and Men-like Gods

37
to the world, and it is the deepest element in the thought
of Homer.19

However, as we have already indicated, Homer’s thought
world was full of deities. How could man be so necessarily inde-
pendent in a world in which the capriciousness and interference
of gods was so commonplace a feature? Once again, Homer’s
answer is to be found in his concept of the hero. In the hero men and gods find their point of contact. The lowly and pitiable life of man is elevated to the divine level by means of the mediation of the hero whose extraordinary qualities are manifestations of
god-like powers and attributes. Certain choice individuals, not
men-in-general, because they possess greatness from the higher
powers and favors of the gods, must be seen as the natural lead-
ers in the struggle for ordered existence on earth. It is through them that the divine order in the cosmos extends to the life of
man. The Olympian order of Zeus is a cultural order and the
basis of civilization. Unless he can persuade us that gods and
men are bound together in one complex society and that a
means exists by which man can tap into the greater supernatural
powers which alone are able to check the destructive forces of
chaos towards which all things tend, Homer would have failed in
his attempt to show that human existence can rise above fated
mortality and achieve an eternal glor y. Heroic virtues are the proof of the presence of a divine ordering power among men.

But in Homer’s thought world it is not so much that man
reaches up as that the gods reach down to him. Homer’s legend-
ar y heroes lived in a time when “gods inter vened openly in
human affairs, and it is their passionate concern and personal
participation which marks heroic events as possessing signifi-
cance.”20 Unlike the theomorphic cultures of the East where the
gods are distant and, for the most part, disinterested in puny
man except to be ser ved by him in slave-like self-abasement,

Homer imagines a cosmos in which men are of great and direct
concern to the gods. Far from being unmindful of human

19. Jasper Griffin, Homer, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1980), p. 78.

20. Griffin, Homer on Life and Death, p. 81.

38

1 • Homer
goings-on, they are described as those who “watch” the feeble
doings of man. Most especially, men, in Homer’s perspective,
are “loved” by the gods. But they do not love men in general,
only great men, men of heroic quality. That is why in Greek
mythology the gods come near to humans and have intimate
relations with them. The gods mate with mortals and produce
offspring which are said to be “god-born,” and “god-nurtured.”

Hence, the gods are seen as ‘the source of specific gifts to certain individuals … good looks … graces of speech … size, strength …

good sense … prophetic power … technical skill … inspiration of
the poet…,” etc..21 By this reaching down to man, man is
endued with extraordinary qualities that, in turn, lift him up and enable him to confront the sinister power of fate and death. His mortal existence is suffused with those characteristics which are the endowment of the immortal ones. Thus, “throughout his
poems Homer has his gods appear in such a manner that they do
not force man down into the dust; on the contrary, when a god
associates with a man, he elevates him, and makes him free,
strong, courageous, certain of himself.”22

For Homer the powers of the Beyond were essential to the
realization of human purposes, but only to the extent that they
enabled man to think of himself as in possession of the necessary means to manage on his own. In the ideal of the hero there
appeared the god-like qualities needed to imbue human goals
with eternal value. While man must eventually die, his cultural
creations will achieve everlasting glory. Through heroic struggle with the forces of chaos man can realize an ordered life for the good of man. Man, in Homer, begins to think of himself and his
deeds as the product of the divine within himself, and although

Homer still thought of those god-like features as coming to man
from without, nevertheless he regarded them as innately human.

As a result, a humanistic vision of life was opened up to the

Greeks which, as its cultural ideals began to take on a more ratio-21. Mark W. Edwards, Homer: Poet of the Iliad, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), p. 129.

22. Snell, The Discovery of the Mind, p. 32.

5› God-like Men and Men-like Gods

39
nal (i.e., philosophical) character, led to an increasingly man-
centered definition of life and purpose. In time, Plato will seek to replace the hero with the philosopher. The latter, although he
plays the same role as the hero, as the cultural leader, will do so with less need to think of his powers as the product of an external divine source. The gods will recede farther into the back-
ground, if not disappear altogether, and man will emerge to
think and act in accordance with abstract and impersonal ideas.

Reason in man will assume the role of the divine in man and
become the power needed to order his life and world. Thus
begins the emergence of “the Greek legacy” and with it the
humanistic aspect of Western civilization.

40

1 • Homer

2 • Plato

The Philosophical Ideal

1› Plato Versus Homer

Homer’s influence in forming Greek cultural ideals and
their subsequent development can hardly be exaggerated. Begin-
ning early in Greek history, he left his imprint upon each generation of Greeks up to the final flowering of Greek culture in the Hellenistic period. Plato’s confession in his Republic (595c),

“I’ve had a kind of fascinated admiration for Homer ever since I was young,” is a sentiment which no doubt was true for nearly all Greeks, not only in Plato’s day but throughout ancient Greek
history.1 No Greek who had any sense of his own cultural iden-
tity could possibly feel that Homer was someone alien to him.

Homer was the source of everything he believed! Homer’s epic
poems were the principal tools in the education of the youth, as Plato testifies. Greeks everywhere, and at all times, could not
think of themselves as Greek without Homer.

It may seem surprising, therefore, that, despite his singular
importance and widespread popularity, Homer, and poetry in
general, came under sustained and lethal attack from within the
culture itself. Specifically, the attack came from that quarter of Greek thinking represented by philosophy, and, moreover, the
point-man in the assault was none other than Plato. Why is this?

The issue does not rest on Plato’s personal views about poetry in general or Homer’s epic poems in particular. It is much more
than a dispute with Homer over the aesthetics of his poetic style.

For Plato, the issue turned on the difference between the sub-
stance or content of poetry, Homer’s in particular, and that of
philosophy.

According to most modern thinkers, the difference

1. All references to Plato’s Republic are taken from the Robin Waterfield edition, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

42

2 • Plato
between Plato and Homer is the difference between science and
religion, reason and fantasy, truth and make-believe; in short,
between philosophy and myth. Homer’s world was a fanciful one
in which primitive man accounted for life as arbitrarily invaded by imaginary supernatural agents who capriciously determined
all that affected him. Because they lacked a true understanding of the causes of events, the men in Homer’s day ignorantly supposed that the incidents which affected them were due, in part,
to invisible divine powers in which they naïvely believed. Plato, so the explanation goes, broke with these superstitious beliefs
and sought to trace the causes of happenings in man’s world to
purely natural occurrences which have their bases in entirely rational explanations. He thereby freed the mind from credulity and ignorance, from believing in nonsense about supernatural
beings. From this liberation Western science and technology are
alleged to take their beginnings.

Although this modern explanation contains a grain of
truth, still the conflict between philosophy and poetry was much more than a contest between science and religion, or reason and
myth. It was a dispute between two different religions, two different myths, within the same cultural mindset. Plato and Homer, because they belonged to the same humanistic world of

Greek ideals, shared the same vision of reality. Homer’s man-
centered outlook was not something against which Plato stood
opposed. The idea that man could rise up hero-like and redeem
his existence was for Plato not in doubt. That order could some-
how triumph over disorder was a view he likewise shared with

Homer. How, then, are we to account for Plato’s virulent attack
on poetry and Homer? The answer lies in the struggle between
two different humanistic points of view. In Plato’s mind, Homer did not develop a fully humanistic account of man and society, and of the nature of order and disorder. Homer made life too
much dependent upon gods! that is to say, upon external or non-human factors ultimately beyond man’s control. Since Plato
wanted man fully in control of himself and his society, he
believed that he must refine the humanism of the inherited

Homeric culture from one in which man lives by an order that is

1› Plato Versus Homer

43
largely the product of unseen and unknown outside agents to one in which order is clearly seen to be the result of human endeavor alone. This is no change from religion to science. It is the
attempt to establish the religion of humanism on a more certain
foundation.

Plato’s attack, far from being an attack on the poetic style,
was an attack on Homer himself as the universally accepted
spokesman for humanistic Greek ideals. Plato knew that Homer
was reckoned to be more than a great artist; he was recognized as

“the educator of the Greeks.” The Greek humanistic world-view
was framed by Homer, who was the source of revelation integrating the Greek cultural vision. As Havelock points out,

Homer “controlled the culture in which he lived for the simple
reason that his poetry became and remained the only authorized
version of important utterance.”2 It is Homer’s control of the culture that Plato means to challenge. His authority in the formation of culture must be overthrown, and his role as educator
of the Greeks transferred to Plato. Plato, that is philosophy, must become the new “authorized version of important utterance.”

Plato believed that Homeric education did not sufficiently stress the “rational faculty in which alone lies hope of personal salvation and also of scientific assurance.”3

Havelock’s comment, while helpful, requires further eluci-
dation. First, the use of the expression “rational faculty” is a prejudice of modern psychology. Plato did not simply pit one faculty of the mind over against another. For him, the issue was the concept of the mind as such, and the central role it must play in the fundamental struggle for order against chaos. This is why, second, as Havelock correctly observed, replacing poetry with phi-
losophy was, for Plato, a matter of “personal salvation.” Homer’s idea of salvation through the gods was no salvation at all. He made man dependent upon something or someone other than
himself. For Plato, order established by the gods is not one
which can guarantee man absolute certainty, that is, can provide 2. Havelock, Preface to Plato, p. 145.

3. Havelock, p. 26.

44

2 • Plato
him “scientific assurance.” So long as man remains dependent
upon the gods he is at the mercy of forces that, because they are unknown, cannot be relied upon or controlled. The Olympian
order must be replaced by self-generated order, which arises
from the depths of man’s own being. The source of that order
must be found in the mind or soul, that is to say, the reason and nowhere else.

The fundamental question for Greeks, we may recall from
the last chapter, was “what is the explanation of order?” And
related to this question was a second, “what are the causes of disorder?” The desire to resolve these questions, far from being
abstract and academic in nature, was tied to the belief that, by knowing the answers to them, man would then be in a position
to take control of his life and be able to build a culture and civilization that would promote and secure the best life possible for
man. The need to do so could not be a matter of indifference or
neglect. Identifying the ground of order was viewed with the
greatest urgency, for the salvation of man from chaos and barbarity were dependent thereon. Without the key to order man
lives constantly under the threat of disorder.

From a Christian view, the longing in man, whether past
or present, to know the causes of order and disorder is not something man thought up on his own. It was in the nature of man,
as first created, to possess an inner inclination to know the order of the world in which he lived. Man was deeply and ineradicably
endowed by his Creator with the need to understand the truth
about himself and his external surroundings. But it was also
made clear to him that he could only know the truth in this
respect so long as he acted in obedience to his Creator. Should
he disobey, he would be punished and his knowledge taken
away. Man did, in fact, disobey, his disobedience stemming from
having listened to (i.e., obeyed) another voice than that of God, the voice of a would-be god, whose explanations were false,
indeed, lies. Because man chose to listen to that other voice, his punishment bears the hallmark of enslavement to that other
voice and its lies. At the same time, that other voice proclaimed that man could be his own authority in the matter of all explana-1› Plato Versus Homer

45
tions concerning himself and his life in the world. Under its
influence man has come to believe that the source of truth lies
within himself.

Man was deceived and his life and world were cursed.

Scripture speaks of man as having fallen into sin and of his world being reduced to disorder as a result. For this, man alone is
responsible. What is more, man is in no position to correct the
problem by himself. Man has become confused, he no longer
understands the true explanation of order, nor does he admit
that the causes of disorder lie in his ethical rebellion against the only true God. Yet, because he remains man, created in the
image of his Maker, he cannot escape the need to know the truth
about order and disorder. The ancient Greeks are testimony to
fallen man’s innate desire to solve this problem, but their wish to know the truth in this respect is a manifestation of fallen man’s confidence that he can discover it on his own and so proclaim his own endeavors as the solution.

Homer’s principal contribution to this humanistic ambi-
tion can be found in his attempt to explain the “causes of disorder,” as well as the basis of order, as made possible only “under the gods.”4 In a way, this is to be expected of men who stood
fairly early in the history of the race, for at this early date the sense of dependence with which man had been created to live
under God was not to be easily effaced from his conscience.

While man wanted to be the locus of truth in all questions which pertained to his life and world, much, however, eluded his grasp and the experience of disorder seemed too great for man to control on his own. If some order did exist, it appeared as something which came to him from without. Some power or powers greater
than man must be responsible. Still, order did not come ready
made from the gods. Their actions, too, were at times the causes of disorder. Somehow man and gods must strive together to
fashion order. Homer never meant to claim that order came
from the gods whereas disorder was from man. His gods were
not absolute. In some sense, man, too, must be the source of

4. Voegelin, The World of the Polis, p. 71.

46

2 • Plato
order, even as in some sense, he was responsible for disorder. But Homer could not imagine that just any men could perform so
exalted a task; his world of thought required that great men,
heroes endowed with divine attributes, be the natural leaders in the struggle to save man from the abyss of chaos. In later Greek intellectual development, Homer’s notion of the role of heroic
human agents would continue to inspire thought, but their con-
nection to a world of invisible divinities would come under
severe attack. To complete this attack, the nature of heroic
action would have to be transformed. This, not the impulse of
science, inspired the rise of philosophy. Or, rather, Greek philosophy and science were imbued with a deeply religious motive.

Thus, while Homer talked of order as something which
involved gods in its establishment, he was concerned to show that man was needed as well. This humanistic component, while historically a part of early Greek ideals, did not satisfy later Greek thinkers who began to purge all features from their world view
that did not leave matters exclusively in man’s control. All

Greeks believed that order must be divine, but divine order as explained in Homer was insufficient by itself to reveal that order to man who must himself inwardly grasp and reconstruct that order, thereby making the soul the true source of order. Furthermore, Homer did not explain the causes of disorder such that
man could know their principles. Without a proper understand-
ing of disorder, it would be impossible to set the explanation of order over against it. No gospel of salvation could be proclaimed against chaos and degeneration if one did not know their exact
causes. With Homer, human thought had not yet reached auton-
omy, that is, had not yet reached the stage of independence from other than self-justifying motives. It was not yet the sole source of all truth about itself and its world. If we are to understand anything about Greek philosophy, especially Plato, we must recognize that central to the salvation of man and society is the belief that the “[r]estoration of order could only come from the soul that had ordered itself by attunement to the divine measure.”5

It has been said that “Homeric man has not awakened to

1› Plato Versus Homer

47
the fact that he possesses in his own soul the source of his own powers [but instead] he receives them as a… donation from the
gods.”6 Homer did not grasp the role of the logos, the reason, which, according to philosophy, is the essential nature of the
soul. He saw only the passions of both gods and men, that neither could be explained according to some standard of rational
conduct. The only controlling motive was, as we mentioned, the
need to be honored. But this was not something like an absolute
truth in Homer, or an inviolable principle of conduct. Both men
and gods are possessed of this ambition, but it does not repre-
sent a universal standard of just behavior. Consequently, no
internal or mental power acts in either man or gods to enable
them to see or adhere to an invariable order of things. That
being so, philosophy was bound to ask, why should man look to
the gods as a higher aid to order in his life? If man does not have the power in his own inner self to erect order, justice and a common social life for man, and the gods are devoid of it as well,
why should he expect any help from the gods? And if man does
have the power, as philosophy came to believe, why should the
gods be necessary? At no point do the gods constitute a transcendent order, therefore a definitive rule for human purpose and action. But if man needs some standard of action, where is it to be found? If it does not come from the gods, it can only come
from man. Homer’s concept of the hero produced the first stan-
dard in Greek ideals. From their great self-esteem and desire to achieve glory they provide a model that man can relate to and
imitate. But Homer’s heroes, lacking the logos, do not comprehend that order must first be apprehended by the mind before it
can be achieved by means of the will-to-act. This is what philosophy seeks to clarify.

For the most part, Plato carried out his attack on Homer
in Books III & X of his Republic. Early in that work Plato has Socrates, his spokesman, endeavoring to define what is considered to be the most important question having to do with order,

5. Voegelin, The World of the Polis, p. 43. (emphasis mine) 6. Snell, The Discovery of the Mind, p. 21.

48

2 • Plato
the question of what is justice. Unless he can answer this ques-
tion to complete satisfaction, all attempts to create a world for man to live in, he believes, are foredoomed to failure. Socrates proposes that the best way to discover the answer to this question must lie in an attempt to erect a social community, for only then will it be possible to see what justice truly is. Justice, the proper ordering of life, can exist in human society, but not in just any society, only when the best kind of society is conceived. That type of society is made possible when a clear distinction is shown to be necessary between rulers and ruled. Justice, in Platonic
thought, is more a matter of organization and social arrange-
ment than of law or principle. Everything depends, then, entirely upon fostering the right relationship between those who should
be the natural masters and those who should be the natural
slaves. Some men, according to Plato, are by nature the right
men to give commands, whereas others, for the same reason, are
best fitted to obey. Justice will be found when the best and wis-est are put in charge of everyone else.

However, Plato believed that it was more than a matter of
putting the right men by nature in charge of the community, for
these sorts of men do not appear from nowhere. Rather, philoso-
phy was needed to insure that what nature produced was prop-
erly cultivated for the task of governing. Consequently, these
men, whom he called the guardian class, must also undergo a
rigorous education, so that they will rule by reason of superior insight into the good of the whole and not solely by reason of
brute force. Their rule, in other words, must be in accordance
with knowledge, not merely according to the threat of violence.

Nor, presumably, must it redound to their own aggrandizement,
rather it must be exercised for the good of society. That is, they must rule on behalf of the state, not private interest. The question, then, is how are they to be educated? What models must
they pattern their actions after? At this point the nub of the issue between Plato and Homer comes to the forefront. Homer and
the poets had long been the accepted educators of rulers. In the Republic, which is Plato’s treatise on the education of rulers, he intends to show them as having failed to educate rulers for their 1› Plato Versus Homer

49
proper role by alleging that the traditional models they used did not lead to a correct understanding of the state nor inspire rulers to love the state and its good over all private good including
their own. They were unable to do so because, in fact, they
taught that personal honor and glory were the highest motives by which both gods and men could possibly act. To live by such
selfish ideals was to offer us rulers who were no better than the ruled whose only interest was to satisfy their senses and appetites.

Such behavior in time leads to conflict and the breakdown of
order. Rulers must be educated to live and act according to that which lies beyond the material and therefore not subject to
change or decay. They must live and rule in accordance with
things only perceived by the mind, namely, the Ideas, or as Plato called them, the Forms.

If Plato believed that justice, that is order, would be found
when the rulers were properly educated, he did not think it nec-
essary to educate the people. The well-ordered state is made possible only when the right kind of rulers are in charge. It is
irrelevant, even dangerous, to permit the people any responsibility for the concerns of the state. Because they are chiefly interested in their private material well-being, they cannot be
expected to take a disinterested view of the good of the state.

Only men (and women) who have been carefully selected and
properly bred to the job of ruling will know how to act for the
good of the whole, for they will have been purged from all sub-
jective motives in deciding and acting, and will rule in accor-
dance with superior knowledge of the Forms.

To educate the rulers they will need “exercise for the body
and cultural studies for the mind.” ( Republic, 376e) The physical exercises were secondary, or so Plato would have us believe. In
fact, only rulers would be in physical condition. They must be
strong and capable of taking concerted military action against
any threat. Presumably that threat was external. But Plato also
believed that it must be used against the people themselves if
necessary. The people must be kept unarmed and untrained for
combat in case they were to rebel against the rulers.

Education was also to be literary, that is, by means of

50

2 • Plato
stories. Plato asserted that there were two kinds of stories: true and untrue kinds. (377a) Rulers must only be taught the true
kind. Homer and the poets have all taught untrue kinds. Plato’s
most serious charge is that they have given “a distorted image of the nature of the gods and heroes….” (377e) Thus, Plato attacks

Homer for presenting lies about those who were responsible for the maintenance of order and culture. Plato deplored the fact
that the stories about gods presented them as immoral and irra-
tional, “figh tin g and sch eming and bat tling against one
another….” (378c) How could they be models of culture if their
behavior indicated that they, too, were subject to the forces of chaos and corruption? It showed that gods were themselves subject to change and becoming. Far from being above temporality, they were, like men, moved by the lower impulses of the body and emotions. In Homer, and all the poets, time and motion
took precedence over rest and eternity. Accordingly, the gods do not represent permanent standards. Heroes who imitate them
are moved more by selfish interests than by universal norms, which means that man is not truly in control of himself or his
world. Men will be easily driven by motives that lead to conflict and disputes. Consequently, rulers must be taught to believe
that God is always good, that is to say, that he never changes and is always what he is, namely, perfect. (379a & 381b)

It would be easy to conclude that this dispute between

Plato and Homer was simply a matter of saying the right things
about the gods as if both were in agreement on what was meant
by the word gods. But that is far from the case. When Plato says that God must “always be portrayed as he really is” (379a), he has changed from the use of the plural to that of the singular. He means to redefine the nature of divinity while continuing to use the traditional word. But he does not accept the gods, he
believes in God, that is, in an invisible world of permanent things which are accessible only to the mind. God, in his view, does not change and, therefore, is always good. Furthermore, He must
not be understood as responsible for everything, only for a small portion. As Plato states, “[h]e and he alone must be held responsible for the good things … [and] responsibility for bad things

1› Plato Versus Homer

51
must be looked for elsewhere.” (379c) What Plato means is that
the world of Forms, the good things, is not the reason for the
existence of the other side of things, namely, matter which
affects us adversely. The Forms are permanent, which is to say,
eternal, whereas matter and physical reality (the bad things) are constantly subject to change. The world of mind alone is good,
the realm of matter is always bad. Nevertheless, it is by means of the good things (Forms) that matter is brought under control
and subjected to order and purpose, for by means of the perma-
nent things which the mind grasps is the changeable realm of
matter made to submit. Rulers, therefore, must be educated in
the good things of the mind and learn to shun the things of the
body and material reality. Then they will learn the right way to build and govern a perfect world, for they will have patterned
their thinking in accordance with the perfect and unchanging

God.

Homer explained the gods as if they were persons like
men, thereby giving a personal attribute to everything that hap-
pened in the realm of external phenomena.7 Plato disposed of
the personal character of the gods and transformed them into an
impersonal God. The struggle to control the humanistic agenda of Greek cultural ideals required that the only personal being be man himself. All else must be impersonal so that man can then
impress his personality upon it. Plato meant to offer a new edu-
cational program for training the rulers, one which would
require them to act in terms of impersonal ideas as the “divine
measure.” Once they attune their souls to that measure by means
of a rigorous dialectical procedure, they will intellectually merge with the world of the Forms and become one, and thereby realize through themselves the only gods that men will ever need.

Plato’s attack on Homer and poetry is the culmination of a
long struggle by philosophy to achieve control of the formation
of humanistic culture in the ancient world. Far from initiating

7. W.C.K. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. I, The Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans, (Cambridge: Cambridge Universtiy Press, 1988), p. 26.

52

2 • Plato
the conflict, Plato himself avers that the opposition between philosophy and poetry is “an ancient quarrel.” (607b) It is no aca-
demic dispute, for the prejudices of the masses are deeply
involved. Their minds have been deformed by the false explana-
tions of those who, like Homer, have fed them representations of the mere images of reality but not the truth, not reality itself.

People listen to the poets and believe what they say because they appeal to what is base and gratifying to their senses and feelings, what Plato calls “their irrational side.” (605b) In so doing, the poets destroy the rational part. They teach that man is essentially a bundle of emotional responses to the world around him and
represent the truth of man and his relationship to the world as

“far from intelligence.” (603a,b) People are easily deceived by
the poets because they are especially skillful in making “us feel particularly strong feelings.” (605d) Far from teaching men to
rise above their passions and subjective feelings, which are due to our sensual, bodily nature, the poets reinforce the people’s prejudices by appealing to their appetites and desires. Consequently, the poet stirs the wrong motives, rousing men to extremes rather than teaching them to be in control of themselves and their
world. “When the part of us which is inherently good has been
inadequately trained in habits enjoined by reason, it relaxes its guard over this other part, the part which feels….” (606a) In

Plato’s view, “poetic representation … irrigates and tends to
these things when they should be left to wither, and it makes
them our rulers when they should be our subjects, because oth-
erwise we won’t live better and happier lives, but quite the opposite.” (606d) To replace poetry with philosophy is an urgent
matter, for the foundation of order, and the good of man’s life, depend upon it.

2› Hesiod and the Beginnings of Speculation

Before we can discuss the outgrowth of philosophy in the
period prior to Plato, that of the so-called Presocratics, we must notice that the Greek mind, even in the heyday of the poets, had 2› Hesiod and the Beginnings of Speculation

53
always sought to frame the world along some sort of rational
line. While the world was filled with gods, it was never thought that truth about the gods, and hence about human social order,
was a matter of revelation from the gods. At the very least, the poet regarded himself as possessing within himself the requisite explanatory power to articulate matters as he saw fit. The Greeks, more than any other people in the ancient world, firmly believed that man’s ability to speculate on the nature of reality was essential to the formation of truth and order. While the Greek mind
was intensely religious, its deepest concern was to discover the key to the nature of the cosmos as the product of rational introspection. Everything in man’s world, including the gods, must
conform to man’s interpretation. This is perhaps nowhere more
apparent then in the works of that other great poet of antiquity, Hesiod.

Although we have not mentioned Hesiod, his importance
to ancient Greeks (and Romans) was nearly as great as that of

Homer. Cicero, for example, in the Tusculan Disputations, when he discusses the comparison between Roman and Greek poets,
and why the latter were for so long superior to the former, men-
tions Homer and Hesiod together as if they were equal in the
formation of Greek poetry, as if, in other words, like Romulus
and Remus, they were viewed as co-founders. And Plato, who
mentions Homer by name repeatedly, mentions no other poets
specifically except Hesiod. What is more, Hesiod is mentioned
along side Homer as if, once again, they represent a duo. Clearly, Hesiod, too, deserves credit for helping to shape Greek ideals.

While Hesiod also looked at the world and man through
the myth, that is, through the gods, he did so only as the myth itself had been systematically and rationally organized. Hesiod
presented the world of the gods, not so much as actors in the
affairs of man, but as an ordered species of living beings. He
arranged them according to their proper groupings like a mod-
ern biologist seeks to classify living organisms. Hesiod, more-
over, provided something that Homer was not so clear about,
namely, an explanation of the origin of the gods and why the Olympian order exists as necessarily good for men. In this,

54

2 • Plato

Hesiod shows the first inclination in the evolving humanism of
the need not only to understand the nature of order, but of the
belief that the solution to the order-disorder problem depends
upon the mind of man knowing absolutely the origin or begin-
nings of all things. It was not the Presocratic thinkers who first purported to explain origins, it was Hesiod. What Hesiod
showed was that man could know the truth of the matter merely
by the resources of his own intellect. With Hesiod begins the
humanist tradition of belief in the mind of man to be able to
speculate on ultimate questions and to know with confidence the
secrets of the universe.

Hesiod, then, although a poet, represents the first step in
the direction of philosophy by his attempt to discuss the role of the gods in an abstract and systematic manner. In his Theogony

“the myth is submitted to a conscious intellectual operation,
with the purpose of reshaping its symbols in such a manner that a

‘truth’ about order with universal validity will emerge.”8 In
other words, Hesiod is not merely interested in recounting the
deeds of gods and heroes, he intends to step back, as it were, and by the powers of his own intellect set the explanation of ultimate truth into a formula conducive to the reason of man and agree-able to his needs. How important this is can be understood from

Hesiod’s personal interest in the victory of the Olympian order
of the gods over the older nature divinities, a triumph of dike (justice) and ethical order over savagery and demonic cruelty
represented by the Titans. The final order of the world, won in
war by Zeus and his followers, represents a cosmos and is a retribution against the forces of chaos and darkness whether they
arise from gods or men. Consequently, Hesiod can confidently
use the threat of transcendent vengeance against his brother who has defrauded him of his property.

This first step in the direction of philosophy was no ivory
tower affair, but it derived from an urgent desire to establish a world in which man was able to find the key to social and ethical order, and offer a guarantee against the forces of chaos as exem-8. Voegelin, The World of the Polis, p. 126.

3› Presocratics: Re-locating the Divine

55
plified by injustices and wrongs which men experienced from
other men. Hesiod’s importance lies in his having empowered
the intellect of man as the chief means by which the nature of
order and disorder could be interpreted, and so lifted man above the necessity of fate and placed him in a position to define for himself the reality that he alone would approve of and submit to.

Next to the order of the gods Hesiod set the order of the mind. It would become the task of the Milesian thinkers to continue this
line of development.

3› Presocratics: Re-locating the Divine

If the origins of Western speculative thinking, how ever
tentative, can be traced to the Greek poets, Hesiod especially,
nevertheless it was not until the rise of early Greek philosophy, we are told, that its true dimensions began to appear. The Presocratics, those so-called early Greek naturalists, were the first to explain the mysteries of the world entirely in rational terms. They are said to have discovered the principles of reason which have
enabled us to know with confidence the uniformity of nature and
the causes of events, rather than, like their superstitious fore-bears, assigning them to the capricious wills of supernatural
agents. No longer would they accept an explanation of the rea-
son for order from other than what was observable to sense per-
ception and explainable by man’s intellect. They spoke of the
realm of nature as an autonomous realm. That is, “[n]ature was to be explained in terms of nature itself, not of something fundamentally beyond nature, and in impersonal terms rather than by
means of personal gods and goddesses.”9 “[It] is,” furthermore,

“the recognition that natural phenomena are not the products of
random or arbitrary influences, but regular and governed by
determinable sequences of cause and effect.”10

9. Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View, (New York: Ballan-tine Books, 1991), p. 20.

56

2 • Plato

This explanation of the rise of philosophy is by now the
standard one. The replacement of man-made gods with a world
that has some basis in logic, governed by principles which the
mind can know with accuracy and assurance, is universally taken
to be the first step in the direction of Western knowledge and
science, and the foundation of its intellectual culture. Every-
where it is agreed that early Greek thought derived from the
wish to unfetter understanding from the clutches of religious
fable and legend, the root causes of irrational fear and oppressive credulity, the bane of mankind. Early Greek thinkers, driven by a newly awakened aspiration to know the workings of the world as
an intrinsic facet of human interest, set Western man on the
course of progress and civilization, of which we today are the
heirs and beneficiaries

This explanation of the rise of Greek philosophy, while it
possesses a grain of truth, should not be seen as a product of
man’s normal curiosity to understand why things are as they are
or work in the way that they do. Moreover, it was more than just a struggle between science and religion. Their interest was to
shift the locus of ordering power from the gods to the mind of man, so that the mind of man becomes the source of order and is
able to govern reality according to principles innate in the reasoning power of man alone. No order truly exists, they taught,
until the power of human logic discloses that order to man’s
searching gaze. Of course, the Greek thinker often imagines that he derives his principles from a source outside the mind of man, from such things as Plato later called the Forms or Ideas. These immaterial entities were alleged to exist in reality and not just in the mind. But they long remained hidden from view, behind the
outward material and sensible phenomena, until the philosopher
penetrated to their inner essence and showed them to be the
conclusion of his reason. Man’s control of his world depended
upon a theoretical grasp of these ideas, for no power over nature was thought possible without total comprehension of the invisi-10. G. E. R. Lloyd, Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1970), p. 8.

3› Presocratics: Re-locating the Divine

57
ble essence of all that exists. On the surface, order might appear to be in the world, but no order has any usefulness unless and
until it is made correlative to the reason of man. The Presocratics shifted divinity from gods to man, but not just to man in general, rather to intellectual or philosophical man! Science did not mean freedom from religion, but a new religion of intellectual
man who replaces the gods and orders reality in accordance with
his reason.

The forerunners of Plato (and Aristotle), the founders of

Western humanistic thought, inhabited the eastern and western
fringes of the ancient Greek world. The Greeks, living near the
sea, were a venturesome and colonizing people. History records
that they were often cramped for space and thus compelled to
disperse abroad in order to find more habitable room. They
moved in both a westerly and easterly direction and founded new
cities on distant shores. However, they continued to maintain
contacts with the homeland and retained their Greek identity.

On these opposite shores Greek civilization first took hold and
flourished. Too, it was here that the Greeks’ love of new ideas also began to dawn. Beginning with the Ionians (East), but soon
followed thereafter by confident innovators in southern Italy

(West), philosophy eventually replaced the gods as the source of order in the world.

In Ionia, on the shores of Asia Minor, the so-called Mile-
sian (all citizens of Miletus) thinkers were the first to attempt an explanation of the world as due to entirely naturalistic causes.11

Their names are Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes. All were
known to each other, for each was the teacher of the next. We
have, then, in these Milesian thinkers something of a school of
thought. In their day Miletus was a thriving and wealthy metrop-
olis, the leading city of its day, followed by Ephesus. It had wide contacts, extending from Mesopotamia and Egypt to South Italy
and beyond. As a center of trade it had ready access to material goods and resources inland which it shipped abroad. Its magnifi-11. The ideas of the Milesian thinkers are to be found in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Bk. A.

58

2 • Plato
cent harbor transformed it into the greatest export-import entre-pot on the coast of Asia Minor. But it was also a leading
manufacturing city whose finished products were the envy of the
nations.

Like all Greek cities of its time, its leading citizens were
aristocrats. However, rather than living the knightly ideal typified by Homer’s audience, the aristocracy in Miletus had become
enamored of luxury and material comforts. Although they con-
tinued to dominate public affairs, a growing bourgeois citizenry whose wealth gave them a greater voice in government helped to
break down the tribal mentality of earlier centuries and loosen
the grip of power and prestige that was for so long associated
with rigid class divisions. These political and social transformations in turn furthered changes at the level of traditional customs and beliefs, giving vent to a new broad-mindedness and skepticism regarding the official dogmas of the city’s religion. For
many the visible wealth of the city and the high standard of living were seen to be the result of human energy and initiative. In this context, it is not surprising, traditional religion declined and a more worldly and materialistic attitude prevailed. When it came
time for the new thinkers, men originally from the aristocratic
classes, to take stock, naturally they tended to reflect less on the role of the gods and more on the world of nature which had so
obviously yielded up its wealth and secrets to human labor and
ingenuity. At the same time, the new wealth supplied the oppor-
tunity for the leisure to think and reflect on the nature of things and on man who has exercised his own skill and brought forth
such wealth.

“Philosophy and science” declares Guthrie, “start with the
bold confession of faith that not caprice but an inherent orderliness underlies the phenomena… the explanation of nature is to be sought within nature itself.”12 This remark, though prejudi-cially modern, nevertheless ably summarizes the new attitude
which Greek humanists, beginning with Thales, were wont to
proclaim. In this outlook one can observe that in exchange for

12. Guthrie, The Earlier Presocratics, p. 44.

3› Presocratics: Re-locating the Divine

59
faith in the gods as the source of order there is substituted a new faith in an inherent order, one not in need of extra-human personalities to make it possible. It is order that is non-personal and altogether unconnected to the decisions or wills of an ordering
mind, at least any mind other than man’s. Nature, in this per-
spective, gets its order from nature and from nothing else. This is the part that modern man likes to emphasize most in the Presocratics, nature as self-ordering. Furthermore, natural order is
inherently intelligible, which enabled nature to be viewed as an order that could be rationally penetrated by man’s mind. The

Greek philosophers might continue to speak of order as divine, but divinity in this sense was a theoretical construct and altogether abstract. Divine meant nature as a permanent, unchange-
able, eternal and completely rational order in and of itself. Still, nature’s order, although innate in nature itself, would seem to
require some explanation of its ordering principle. How did
nature act as the cause of nature? Even if nature were an inherent order, the Greek mind could not rest content with the mere
claim. They wanted especially to know and explain its cause.

Thales’ proposal that water should be the source of natural
order, the cause of all things, has usually been received with a smile. His student, Anaximander, was perhaps somewhat less
puzzling with his claim that a “boundless,” or “unlimited”

( apeiron) was the arche or first principle from which all else has descended. Then along came Anaximenes, his younger contemporary, who said that air constituted the creative principle of all things, and once again we think “how odd” and quickly move
on. However, given the assumption that nature is the reason for
nature, the thinker must seek for something innate in nature to
explain the cause of its existence. To all appearances nature is physical and material. Therefore, the cause of its existence must be material as well. And that cause must be some one thing, for
nature is one, a unity. That is what defines it as an order, it all fits together. So only one ordering principle can be the cause of
nature, and it must come from nature. Besides, many gods would be a source of disorder. Consequently, each gave as his explanation some one thing in nature that seemed best suited to fulfill 60

2 • Plato
the role of the first or ordering principle.

In truth, these early Milesians needed to explain the ori-
gins of life, of man’s life especially. This accounts for the peculiar choices selected to act as ultimate causes. Water is necessary to living things, a sustainer of life, apart from which living things die. Water teems with life and is an abundant source of life for man. Of natural things that were indispensable to the life of man and animals none seemed more so than water. This would seem
especially so for the Greeks who were inclined to be a sea-faring people. Would it not be natural to put faith in water as the ultimate cause of natural order and life? Much the same could be
said for air. Air was associated with breath which higher living things need and possess. With Anaximenes, it would seem that
ridding thought of an entirely personal divinity (living and
breathing) was not easy, especially when it came to explaining
the existence of other living beings. Life must at least be the
cause of life. And as life is associated with the soul and the soul is similar to air, then air must be the ultimate cause of both living and non-living things.

But what should we make of Anaximander’s “boundless?”

It must be said that while he along with the other two strongly
desired an explanation of nature that derived from nature itself, still he could not convince himself that the order he experienced in nature was altogether caused by nature. For how could that which is caused (natural order) at the same time be the cause? As caused, nature was bound or limited to what it is. But the principle o f all that is caused must itself be un caused, that is, unbounded. It must also be beyond man’s physical perception, for what is caused is material and matter cannot be both the
cause and what is caused at the same time. Yet, man must be able to grasp it with his reason, other wise man is left with the
unknowable and unpredictable, that is, he is back with the gods.

Anaximander, consequently, cleverly invented an explanation
that would seem to satisfy the mind of man that life and order
have a cause, but at the same time placed it beyond the possibility of discovery by the senses of man, thereby relieving him of
the need to invent odd material explanations like water or air. It 3› Presocratics: Re-locating the Divine

61
also exalted the man of reason, for only he would understand the concept of a “boundless” and why it was necessary to the ordering of nature.

To the Milesians the formation of the cosmos was the key
to explaining the order that man needed in order to live in the
world. They wanted no order that would be at the mercy of will-
ful and arbitrary supernatural agents. They only believed in an
order that nature gave to herself. Nature had self-producing
powers. To discover the order of nature it was only necessary to study nature and she would reveal her secrets to man’s inquiry.

Man would see that the self-generation of nature required no
hiatus or unnatural intrusions in nature. Instead, nature revealed itself as an order that fit neatly with the reason of man. Nature was logical. When it came to the origin of nature, the Milesians were the first in a long line of Western humanist thinkers to insist that “the causes operating in the beginning were to be regarded
as the same kind as those which we see operating now.”13 Oth-
erwise, natural order would resist rational control, and that is what was desperately demanded.

Still, to rely upon a concept of nature as a self-generating
order laid open the idea that nature works without any purpose
or design, something that, however capricious, could at least be attributed to the gods. Every explanation of the formation and
working of natural order was reduced to abstract causation
devoid of intrinsic purpose. Purely mechanical causation leaves
the basis of moral order in doubt. How could man build civiliza-
tion without a moral order? How could the impersonal produce
the personal? Where do morality and society fit in with this view?

Life reduces to a matter of the strong oppressing the weak, a
seemingly natural occurrence. The early Milesian thinkers had freed man from the gods but had failed to find the basis for a civilization constructed solely by and for man, an order in which
justice triumphed over injustice. Perhaps it was for this reason that early Greek philosophy took a decidedly different direction with the rise and spread of Phythagoreanism.

13. Guthrie, The Earlier Presocratics, p. 140.

62

2 • Plato

Pythagoras lived at the opposite end of the Greek world in

South Italy (Magna Graecia), a man who, if he is mentioned at
all, is recalled for his unique discoveries in the realms of math and music. Who after all, in the study of triangles, has not
learned the “theorm of Pythagoras?” Most, then, have wanted to
see him merely as an inventor of rational mathematical and har-
monic theorems and nothing more. However, his interest in
numbers and scales had no scientific purpose as understood by modern man. As Guthrie correctly obser ved, “[T]here is no
ground for separating the religious from the philosophical or scientific side in a system like the Pythagorean. In contrast to the Milesian tradition, it undertook philosophical researches with the conscious purpose of making them ser ve as a basis for religion.”14 Pythagoras, in other words, used philosophy as a tool
for teaching man how to live.

At the heart of Pythagoras’s inquiries and teaching was the
belief that philosophy was about nothing more nor less than dis-
covering and living the best life possible. He shifted philosophy away from speculative questions concerning origins, or the order of nature by itself, to an exclusive interest in man and man’s well-being. However, he was no simple mystic, he saw philosophy, as
rational inquiry, to be necessary. But philosophy’s usefulness lay in what it taught about man, in particular, what it taught of the nature of the soul and its role in the cosmos. Philosophy was
seen as a means to teach the truth about man as nothing less
than man’s salvation, for philosophy showed that the order of truth in reality was, at the same time, an order of truth in the soul of man. By discovering the one, man would be assured of
discovering the other. Philosophy was the means to cultivate the soul so that it would become one with the truth of reality, and in so doing achieve a higher life on an eternal plane.

For Pythagoras it was the soul, the inner nature of man,
that had central importance. How could the soul find the key to
the triumph of life over the dissolution of death? The soul was
the spirit in man, but much more besides. Its nature as an order-14. Guthrie, The Earlier Presocratics, p. 152.

3› Presocratics: Re-locating the Divine

63
ing power through rational penetration of the order of reality gave it precedence over everything else in man’s life. In fact, it was Pythagoras who first insisted that all material reality, including the body of man, was of no value to the best life possible.

Only the soul, because it was immaterial, mattered. Further-
more, matter was a cause of impurity (ignorance) in the soul.

Philosophy was needed to purify the soul from the taint of mat-
ter. The goal of the philosophical life must be to escape from the world of matter and to reconnect with the world-soul, an existence in which the harmonious mind meets with a total rationality and logical coherence and becomes incapable of perishing or
error.

In order to cultivate the soul it was necessary to seek for an
understanding of the governing structures of the divine cosmos.

One must engage the intellect in a study of the relevant fields
that correspond with the realm of order in the cosmos: number-
theory, geometry, music and astronomy. But knowledge of these
matters was no idle curiosity. Rather, the soul, by having
acquired such knowledge, would undergo a transformation,
enabling it to achieve conformity with the divine. Philosophy (science), in Pythagoras’s view, is the means to the divinization of man. When the soul, through much labor, has at last gazed
upon the harmony and order of the divine cosmos, it will itself
become harmonious and ordered, a belief that will re-emerge at
the outset of the modern world with the Renaissance.

Pythagoras did not promote his ideas as if they had no
connection to man’s life here and now. Indeed, he believed that
those who cultivated their souls ought also to be put in charge of all human affairs, especially the state. As Eduard Zeller comments, “[T]he Pythagoreans felt themselves called to the spiri-
tual guidance of their fellow-countr ymen – i.e., to rule.”15

Pythagoras himself had at one time been the undisputed leader
of Croton, his adopted city. And Pythagoreans continued to
insinuate themselves into positions of rulership in other cities.

15. Eduard Zeller, Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy, (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1980), p. 32.

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2 • Plato

They formed in many respects a secret society, like modern day

Freemasons, with ambitions to take control of human society
and construct it in accordance with their peculiar vision of perfect rational order. It was not enough that they aspired to an
individual salvation, they felt compelled to save society as well.

None of the early Presocratic thinkers will leave a more lasting impression on Plato’s own thinking than Pythagoras. Pythagoras
was the first to speak of intellectual elites being put in charge of shaping society in accordance with a rational plan that they have devised for themselves. Their legacy to the West has been profound.

No discussion of early Greek philosophy can fail to men-
tion Heraclitus and Parmenides. Others might perhaps be con-
sidered, but these must be included. For they, more than most,
helped to shape Plato’s own thinking and, hence, played a
greater role in the formation to Western humanistic intellectualism in general. Of the two, Heraclitus came earlier. However,

Parmenides’ solution to problems introduced by Heraclitus were
even more instrumental in the inspiration of Plato’s distinct
philosophical agenda, which was, namely, to find permanence
and order in the midst of continual change and degeneration.

Therefore, we start with Parmenides.

Parmenides came from a wealthy and noble family of Elea
in southern Italy. His outlook on life was shaped by his class
background, but also by Xenophanes under whom he studied
and by the ideas of the Pythagoreans. Xenophanes became
famous for his denunciation of Homer and Hesiod for their
anthropomorphic representations of the gods. He undoubtedly
convinced Parmenides that the traditional gods were mainly the
invention of the popular imagination, and that one could not
truly believe that man’s life must depend upon such unreliable
fables. The way of truth must be found in philosophy, that is, in man’s ability to contemplate the nature of things with his mind
unfettered by superstitions or preoccupied with worldly con-
cerns. Xenophanes taught that nature and Deity are interchange-
able and inseparable. Divinity is identical with the being of all things which only the enlightened mind can see without preju-3› Presocratics: Re-locating the Divine

65
dice.16 Parmenides also learned of philosophy as the higher life of elite wisdom from his friend Ameinias, the Pythagorean, who
taught that by acquiring knowledge of the numerical and har-
monic forms of things Parmenides would be best fitted not merely to order his own life well, but society’s, too. Knowledge was the key to power and government.

Parmenides is probably the first real philosopher in the
ancient world since he is the first to free thinking from every-
thing that is not thought, that is, from sense perception. He is the first, in other words, to view reality as the product of a theoretical reflection, as an intellectual abstraction. For Parmenides the order of the world is an order of Being which exists only
when and as the mind of man specifically thinks of it. Being is
what is and cannot be obser ved by ordinary everyday sensual experience which is too much influenced by empirical things.

Being only appears to the reflecting mind when man severs his
thought from all sensuous experience, for the senses perceive
many things which come and go and these do not truly exist.

Being, however, does not change or come and go, but remains
what it is. It alone is real, because it is not subject to beginning or end, coming into existence or passing away. Being is not this or that, but is simply existence in general. All things have a share in Being because they are products of Being. Here was Parmenides’ answer to the Milesian’s attempt to explain the origin
of all things. He proclaimed Being as the source of what is but
which itself is “uncreated and imperishable.”17

Since Being is known only by means of a philosophical
reflection, it is to the extent it is conceived.18 That is, Being is correlative to the nous or mind of man. Being is what thought perceives when all thinking has been purified of all non-intellectual influences, that is, when sense perception is neither required nor present. Because what is sensed seems to come to man from
something outside himself, or at least is caused by external

16. See, e.g., Guthrie, The Earlier Presocratics, pp. 373–383.

17. See, e.g., G.S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1975). p. 273.

18. Kirk & Raven, p. 277.

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2 • Plato
things, it is such as not to be relied upon. Man cannot be certain of anything that is not wholly his own. Nous or mind, however, is his own, and his reflection upon the Being of things does not begin from an external source but arises in his reason and therefore alone is reliable. Anything that is not absolutely certain to the mind of man is a source of all that is not true or erroneous.

Truth, then, is in the mind of the philosopher who alone is able to see Being. Parmenides was laying the groundwork for what in the West would take on the aura of the autonomy and infallibility of science. In other words, critical speculation is the sole legitimate means to the discovery of Truth and the mind need submit
to nothing but its own logical processes.19 We might say that

Parmenides was a Cartesian before Descartes.

Being, then, has no predicates which might describe it, for
then it would be seen to be like material things. These latter
begin and end, change and die, can be divided or become what
they are not. Men who live in terms of changeable things are easily fooled and led astray. Ho wever, Being is immovable,
unchangeable; it cannot be anything other than what it is. It is eternal and beyond time, that is, “it is without beginning or
end”.20 Thought which grasps it is also beyond time and error.

In the nous or logos (reason) of man resides the possibility of achieving an eternal state, one that is freed from all temporality and passing away, and also from ignorance and deception. Being
for Parmenides was the ens realissimum (supreme reality): nothing lay beyond Being. Since thought is correlative to Being,
thought too participates in its supreme, unchanging reality.

“Thought is not different from Being; for it is only thought of

Being.”21 By reason of the nous (mind) or logos (reason) man becomes divine. Now he who is divine is he who orders the cosmos.

Voegelin writes, “In the medium of speculation the philos-
opher reproduces Being itself; the well-rounded sphere of Being

19. See, e.g., Voegelin, The World of the Polis, pp. 207–214.

20. Kirk & Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, p. 276.

21. Zeller, Outlines, p. 50.

3› Presocratics: Re-locating the Divine

67
becomes the well-rounded sphere of speculative order. Philo-
sophical speculation is an incarnation of the Truth of Being.”22

Not any man, therefore, acquires the status of orderer of the cosmos, only the philosopher (scientist). Confirmed in this belief, Parmenides set up a dichotomy between the truth of Being as
grasped by the reason of the philosopher and the untruth of what he called the doxai (opinion or beliefs) of the masses, a distinction that would be even more fundamentally upheld by Plato.

Those who see the Truth by the mind do not erroneously con-
clude that order is a product of generation from non-order. The
realm of Being is not material and physical and so not subject to change and decay, but precedes material things and is the source of their existence. Nor does Being have any of the distortions of the passions or desires of sensate creatures. Being, as ultimate reality, is eternal and without the possibility of becoming other than what it is. Because the order of Being is at the same time
the “sphere of speculative order” of the philosopher, then the
philosopher does not err in his thinking, but understands the
truth of reality perfectly and can reproduce that reality in his thinking. He alone is in a position to be able to order the life of man, because he, with his reason, stands in the light whereas
others are always in the dark and do not see correctly. Because
the order of reality is the order of the mind of the philosopher and none but the philosopher, others must be in subjection to
his authority and power for their own good.

With Heraclitus we return to the East, for he was a descen-
dent of the royal and priestly rulers of Ephesus, a city whose preeminence replaced that of Miletus after the Persians had
destroyed it. As a member of a long-standing noble family Hera-
clitus was raised to see himself as morally and otherwise superior to those beneath his station, an outlook he apparently embraced
without demur. By all accounts he was of a haughty nature and
seems to have gone out of his way to display his contempt not
only for the lower orders but for nearly the general run of man-
kind. That he was gifted intellectually only served to encourage 22. Voegelin, The World of the Polis, p. 213.

68

2 • Plato
his arrogance and condescension toward others and fuel his dis-
dain for people who seemed to him like idiots. He especially
hated the new democratic ideas that were spreading among the

Greeks of his day, and considered the people stupid and incapa-
ble of running the affairs of government. Heraclitus withdrew
from society into a world of purely intellectual interests. He left behind little written material, and what we have is not likely to encourage study, for Heraclitus had a reputation for obscurity.

“He delighted in paradox and isolated aphorisms, couched in
metaphorical or symbolic terms.”23 He was an odd-ball, to say
the least.

Yet, while he viewed most everyone around him with cor-
dial disdain and took no active interest in civic affairs, nevertheless Heraclitus was no recluse nor dispassionate proponent of
ideas for their own sake. He was nothing more nor less than a
preacher of truth, who wrote and spoke as a prophet, as one who had himself journeyed to the light of day and therefore deemed
himself especially chosen to enlighten his fellow man. Heraclitus believed serenely in philosophy as the true path of salvation for man and society.

Heraclitus, in opposition to Parmenides, saw change as
ultimate, that all things come into being and just as readily pass away and that this continuous process was the central law of reality. Heraclitus’s main purpose, however, was to disclose the
knowledge of this general law of the cosmos which produces
change as the principal truth of all things. What ordering principle maintains the cosmos in the midst of seeming chaos and
incessant change? In particular, how does man, who is born and
dies, fit into the reason of things? Does the world have a purpose and does man play a central role in it?

Heraclitus, along with Parmenides, believed that there
were two types of men: those who achieve understanding by rec-
ognizing and living in terms of a higher wisdom, and those who
live only by what they experience and perceive moment by
moment. For Heraclitus the issue of truth turned on the mean-

23. Guthrie, The Earlier Presocratics, p. 410.

3› Presocratics: Re-locating the Divine

69
ing of man and how he could achieve the status of the former.

Man only becomes true man when he has ascended from the
manifold of visible and tangible appearances of things to the
invisible and intangible essence of the whole or One. In order to grasp the world process, he must rise beyond mere sensations to
a new principle of order – the logos.24 The inner principle of ultimate reality, which exists beyond the constant flux of outward
change, and which governs the nature of all things in accordance with a hidden agenda, is to be found in something called the

“world-order.”25 The world-order is the driving force of change, the divine (i.e., “everlasting”) “fire,” from which through strife and confrontation the order or cosmos of the world is repeatedly achieved and guaranteed. Man is a participant in this process
because he possesses in himself the nature of soul or reason as a spark of the world-order. When by means of great intellectual
exertions he has thrown off all superfluities of body and matter and has ascended to the One he will then be able to live in terms of the higher reality of ordered life, this despite the imperma-nence of all material things.26 Heraclitus taught that only that life is worth living in which man has cultivated the self and thereby become a part of the ordering power of Reason. That
man will then be in a position to return to the world of mundane affairs in order to arrange ever ything in accordance with his
superior insight.

Voegelin indicates what this will mean for Plato: “In Hera-
clitus the idea of an order of the soul begins to form which Plato unfolds into the perennial principle of political science that the right order of the soul through philosophy furnishes the standards for the right order of human society.”27 But what was true of Heraclitus was equally true of all the Presocratics leading up to Plato. The idea of a standard of truth which the soul grasps by means of an innate and autonomous intellectual power became
the fundamental basis upon which a new humanist order could

24. Kirk & Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, pp. 187, 188.

25. Kirk & Raven, p. 199.

26. Kirk & Raven, p. 207.

27. Voegelin, The World of the Polis, p. 227.

70

2 • Plato
be made possible. The mediator of that truth to society was to be none other than the philosopher who has with his thinking penetrated the mystery of nature and discovered the logos or reason of all reality. There could be no other truth available to mankind but that discovered and expounded by the philosopher. Man had
achieved the chief place in the cosmos.

4› Plato’s Agenda

As it was said that all roads in the ancient world lead to

Rome, so, too, in the realm of Greek thought all avenues lead to Plato. Plato is no mere contributor to the edifice of Greek ideas; he is the culmination of Greek thinking, the summation of all
those who have preceded him. All the various strands of earlier
ideas are woven together in his thinking; yet, at the same time, they are transformed by Plato into a tapestry that represents a
final maturation of their point of view and a clearer indication of the inner humanism that Greek thinkers were striving to achieve.

Platonism is the logical outworking of the philosophical ideal.

Plato, for example, was thoroughly in agreement with

Milesian naturalism about the formation of the cosmos. The world, he too believed, was a natural order which had the basis
of its existence and structure within itself. If he departed from them on account of their crude materialism it was only because he came to believe, from other sources, that nature as an ordered system was something more than mere matter. It was primarily
idea, a product of mind or intellect. Not what was visible could be accounted nature, but only that which was invisible and comprehensible to reason could be called nature, for order did not
derive from matter but was to be found in the form of material things. This Plato learned from the Pythagoreans and Parmenides who spoke of ultimate reality as lying beyond the
appearance of things, a reality discovered only by abstracting
from the world of matter. The mind or reason alone was able to
penetrate to the real nature which lies obscured behind the outer physical image perceived by the senses. All truth was to be found 4› Plato’s Agenda

71
there and nowhere else. Only those who have pursued the way of
philosophy would ever come to know the true reality of all
things.

The preeminence of philosophical knowing over other
types of knowing therefore also led to the belief that philoso-
phers were superior to other men and should be responsible for
ruling them for their own good and the good of society. While
some thinkers seemed to withdraw from worldly affairs in order
to engage in undistracted reflection, nearly all of them had nothing but contempt for the masses who spent their lives chasing
after material comforts and pleasures, being aroused only by
their passions and desires which led to continual disputes. They were constantly bestirred into factions, intrigues, wars, and jealous strife. Rather than being in control of themselves and living in harmony and peace in their communities, they were always
quarreling and fighting. How could they possibly govern them-
selves lacking as they do a true knowledge of the nature of all
things? Since only philosophers possessed such knowledge, it was only natural that they should be in charge of civic and social
affairs. Plato acquired this notion that philosophers should rule in society primarily from Pythagoras who also maintained that
philosophers should not be held accountable to the ruled. Their
unquestioned grasp of the truth was enough, for true knowledge
was necessarily shrouded from any but philosophers, it being too recondite for ordinary people.

Finally, Heraclitus taught that reality was a product of
constant struggle, that, from the material standpoint, the world and man’s experience was a flux, random and meaningless, a process of perpetual decay and degeneration. It was always a trou-
bling thought to ancient Greeks to contemplate the idea of the
triumph of chaos over order. The fact that all around us there is constant change, that man, in particular, is born, grows old, and dies would seem to indicate that chaos was at least equal, if not superior, to order. Nevertheless, Heraclitus believed that order stands preeminent over the seeming flux of all things for the reason that all change is determined by a law or principle which
compels change to take place in such a way that order constantly 72

2 • Plato
and eternally issues from it. There is a principle of order governing the flux. What is more, the philosopher can discover that law and employ it as an ordering principle for human affairs. Inspired by this, Plato confidently believed that, how ever bad or rotten society was in his day, it would nevertheless be possible to find the key to the salvation of society along lines that were more in tune with the law of ultimate reality and hence with perfect
truth. In other words, Plato believed it possible to arrest change which to him meant corruption only and thereby realize the perfect (i.e., changeless or incorruptible) human society.28

Plato was clearly imbued with the ideas of earlier Greek
thinkers. One other thinker, traditionally thought to be the most important of the influences that shaped Plato’s agenda, was

Socrates. Socrates represents a different current of thought,
namely, that of moral reform. The issue was far from academic,
for Socrates and Plato, his younger contemporar y, lived in
tumultuous times. The period saw the Greek city-states plunged
into internecine war – the Peloponnesian War. Plato, especially, was deeply disturbed by the social upheaval and political instability that he came to witness in his native Athens as a result. He needed, like Homer, to be able to diagnose the causes of disorder and, if possible, to discover, a cure for the moral disease that he believed was the reason for the malady afflicting the society in which he lived. For Plato, philosophy took on an importance
beyond the wish to understand the world as a kind of intellectual curiosity. Rather, philosophy was the key, the only possible
means, to put the socially and morally fragmented humpty-
dumpty back together again. As Plato expressed it in his Republic; “[u]nless political power and philosophy coincide … there can be no end to political troubles… or even to human troubles
in general … there is no other way for an individual or a commu-
nity to achieve happiness.” (473d,e) Philosophy had immediate,
practical consequences and an urgent task to perform. Plato saw
the philosophical enterprise as having to do with the restoration 28. Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. I, The Spell of Plato, (Princeton: Princeton Universtiy Press, 1971), pp. 18–56.

4› Plato’s Agenda

73
of political order, as a message of salvation, through a well-regulated “love of wisdom.”29 This program of philosophy Plato
received, in part, from Socrates.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to understand Socrates and
his self-appointed Socratic mission unless we know something of the times in which he lived and the condition of the society

(especially in his native Athens) of which he was a part. How-
ever, an adequate explanation is beyond the scope of this work.

Suffice it to say that Socrates lived at a time when, as we said, Athenian society was experiencing turmoil. The politics of the
city was controlled by the demos, ostensibly an elected body of citizens who were responsible for all decisions of government
and policy. Rather than being under the absolute authority of
one man, or group of men, the people themselves, by democratic
means, decided upon ever ything that concerned the life and
good of the polis. While this democratic ideal allowed the people a say in government, at the same time it opened the door to
intense political rivalries between various ambitious individuals who wished to influence the direction of state and persuade the
people that they could best lead them for their own good. Such
rivalries gave rise to factions which, in order to achieve their aims, would often resort to almost any means available with little consideration for the moral consequences. Needless to say, the
consequences were what we might expect, a breakdown of order
and a str uggle for power. In the minds of those who, like

Socrates, saw the moral corruption to which democracy seemed to lead, this raised serious questions over whether or not some
kind of reform was possible in order to save society. Would it be possible to discover a set of principles that would act as a standard of right and wrong? principles which were grounded in the
nature of things and not the product of human and social con-
vention? Or, was moral truth merely a matter of custom as the

Sophists declared and, therefore, bound to the needs of the
moment, being neither absolute nor permanent? In other words,

29. Eric Voegelin, Order and History, Vol. 3, Plato and Aristotle, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983), p. 5

74

2 • Plato
did men have no standards by which to live other than the stan-
dard of self-indulgence; and, if so, then how is it possible to
escape the degeneration of social order and the collapse into
chaos? How could men truly achieve the good for themselves if
there was no agreement on what constituted the good, or if the
good was merely what each decided for themselves? Would soci-
ety simply become a struggle by one group to impose its will on
others by force? These were the great moral dilemmas facing

Socrates who believed himself especially called to disturb the
complacency of his fellow Athenians and expose their peril
should they fail to solve the problem of the moral relativism that was undermining the social fabric.

Socrates maintained that the problem of moral behavior
was an intellectual one. He believed that men do not commit
immoral acts because they want to, or because it is in their nature to do so. Rather, they act strictly from ignorance of what is truly for their own good. All men, he also believed, act for the purpose of some good they hope to gain by so acting. The problem
is that what men usually think is for their own good actually
turns out to be bad. This is especially true in regard to injustices which their actions produce in society. If men’s actions promote injustices, it is because they do not clearly know what is a just act. For many people, justice meant getting whatever you
wanted regardless of the consequences. Injustice, then, is being deprived of what you think is your due. Consequently, justice is not about motives or character, but only about achieving what
one wants. But Socrates taught that justice is not about the fulfillment of momentary desires, but has to do primarily with what we are by nature. If men are properly taught justice as prescribed by natural order, they will become just in their natures, and, consequently, will never commit unjust acts. For Socrates the matter was clear-cut; to be just is to do what is just. The solution to the ills of society depended upon all men acquiring knowledge of the moral good, for those who know the good would always do the
good. Socrates was a great optimist in the matter of moral
reform. Education, a basic premise which he inherited from his
predecessors, was the great resolution to the regeneration of

4› Plato’s Agenda

75
men and societies afflicted with moral corruption.

Here we encounter something called the “Socratic prob-
lem.” Socrates believed that moral enlightenment was the only
means to the moral reform of society. Socrates also believed that each man possessed in his own rational soul the singular source
of enlightening power. “Each man is to live a rationally ordered life, to deliberate and decide and act according to the dictates of his decisions.”30 None could compel another to accept what was
not at all acceptable to his own autonomous rationality. To
achieve this aim, it was necessary, therefore, to use a special kind of persuasion, called elenchos, the art of refutation. Socrates would enter into a dialogue or verbal argument with any who
showed a willingness to put his convictions on any ethical matter to the test. Socrates had little doubt that his method of discuss-ing and analyzing all types of thinking would necessarily act as an effective means of teaching the people to think for themselves.

When they learn to do so, they shall undoubtedly act in accor-
dance with their true good rather than the false good by which
they used to behave before they had, with Socrates’ assistance,
undergone a process of enlightenment. Everything depended
upon getting the people to turn to their innate rationality and, by this inner light, achieve the moral knowledge that will then
produce good moral actions. Socrates believed it not only possi-
ble but necessary for all men to acquire enlightenment, for all men have the same rational nature.

Socrates believed that his task was to enable his fellow

Athenians “to waken … to the importance of caring for their
souls, or caring for virtue.”31 Each individual must realize the need to engage in a process of self-criticism as the sole means by which to discover those moral principles that will govern their
lives, and would do so only under the guidance of one whose
own soul had already been nobly formed, that is, by Socrates himself. Socrates would act as midwife to those who possessed

30. George Klosko, The Development of Plato’s Political Theory, (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd), p. 31

31. Klosko, p. 166.

76

2 • Plato
the spark of truth in their own souls, but which was smothered
by the prejudices of the demos, the people. He would proceed by means of a program of one-on-one, for Socrates does not believe
it possible to persuade the people en masse. Thus, he neither addresses the people as a whole nor expresses the belief that
moral reform can be achieved by reforming society first, in other words, by the enactment of political programs to compel the
people to live in accordance with the moral good. This is chiefly why Plato presents Socrates in the dialogue format; he meant to
show how Socrates believed philosophy was to be bred in noble
souls. One noble soul, by means of the dialogue format, would
guide the next to an understanding of philosophical truth. It
takes one conversion at a time, for the discovery of moral knowledge was neither simple nor easily gained.

Would it be possible to carry out such a task given the
strong prejudices of the people? Is it conceivable that each individual could be freed from the false opinions that shaped the
masses as a whole given the assumption that the people were
incapable of knowing what was truly good for themselves? Was

Socrates, perhaps, not a little too optimistic that he could achieve his goal by addressing each person individually? Plato, for one, did not share Socrates’ optimism when it came to converting all the people. Of course, he did believe along with Socrates that
reason could achieve the dominant rule in man and thus enable
him to control his appetites. But it was too much to expect that everyone could reach it. Furthermore, Plato was too class-conscious to believe that each individual possessed an equal spark of true knowledge within his own soul. Rather, he believed that

“the most exalted truths are accessible to man, but only to the
highly privileged few. Since only the philosopher can reach such heights, the many must be enslaved to the few if they are to par-take at all of divine intelligence.”32 The Socratic ideal that each individual must care for his own soul must be discarded. In its
place Plato erects a state-system in which a few carefully bred and nurtured souls will be put in charge of all that concerns man’s

32. Klosko, The Development of Plato’s Political Theory, p. 166.

4› Plato’s Agenda

77
relationship to his fellow man. As Klosko explains:

While Socrates envisioned a collectivity of free, autono-
mous souls, with each individual seeking for himself the
knowledge that is virtue, Plato sees a tightly controlled city
of people having virtue imposed upon them from without.

In the ideal state, only philosophers possess moral auton-
omy, and even in their case this is possible only because
they too are subjected to rigorous conditioning in their
youths.33

Plato’s agenda entailed the belief in philosophy as the
intellectual tool by which an elite few will be trained to rule
absolutely over the ignorant many for the presumed good of
social order. Philosopher-rulers will have correct moral knowl-
edge because they, and they alone, will see its “permanent and
unvarying nature.” (479e) “[G]iven that philosophers are those
who are capable of apprehending that which is permanent and
unvarying, while those who can’t, those who wander erratically
in the midst of plurality and variety, are not lovers of knowledge, which set of people ought to be rulers of a community?” (484b)

For Plato the answer was only too obvious. Philosophers must
rule, and the people must be ruled. Sometimes Plato even goes
so far as to call the latter slaves of the philosopher-rulers. Unless philosophers rule there will be no end to difficulties, to corruption and disorder. Philosophy alone can insure the salvation of man and society. Reason in those who are properly educated and
taught scientific knowledge of the whole of reality (475b) will be in a better position to erect order and prevent chaos.

With Plato “the Greek legacy” at last comes into its own.

Plato severed the last links to the gods, that is, to any source of order for man and society other than man’s inherent rational
powers. At the same time, he placed man and society in subservi-
ence to new gods, namely, to the scientifically or philosophically bred elites who, because they possessed true knowledge of ultimate reality, that is, the idea or form which lies hidden behind all 33. Klosko, The Development of Plato’s Political Theory, p. 129.

78

2 • Plato
that appears, must be put in charge of creating the utopian con-
ditions which no chaos or corruption could destroy. Presumably,

Plato had great faith that his philosopher-rulers, who grasp the invariable truth, would then impose that truth on the world and man with an interest in the Good for its own sake and not for
reasons of personal gain. It is, however, an optimism no less misplaced than that of Socrates, yet this ideal of the rule of reason by means of specially chosen and cultivated agents would take deep
roots in the consciousness of Western men. For many in Western
history reason-as-power would return again and again to inspire confidence and shape the processes of culture.

Unquestionably some will strenuously object to the notion
that the culmination of the Greek legacy is reached with Plato.

After all, what about Aristotle? What is more, who could ignore
the later developments of Stoicism, Epicureanism, and finally,

Neoplatonism? There is, to be sure, more to the Greek legacy
than Plato. However, while major differences crop up in philo-
sophical detail between Plato and, especially, Aristotle, it is not possible to assert that a fundamental distinction exists in the
philosophical ideal itself. Aristotle, it is true, was dissatisfied with problems in Plato’s thinking, but he does not differ with him on the basic premise that philosophy or science should be the source of order for man and his world. Aristotle would in time distinguish between the theoretician and the politician, the thinker
and the actor, but he would not question the need of the latter
to be governed by the ideas of the former. For both Plato and

Aristotle the world must be constructed by the intellect of man if it is to be suitable for the life of man. Other divinities are relegated to the world of conceptual necessity. That is, any god, if he exists, merely provides a theoretical starting-place in the scheme of causal origins of natural order. But such a god is a mere limit-ing concept, needed only to explain the necessary starting-point.

After that, however, the intellect of man takes over and renders reality intelligible by the powers of abstracted ideas. For all

Greek thinkers the speculative order was the order of reality and vice versa, a fact that would prove to be of no small consequence to the further unfolding of Western civilization.

Part II - Medieval Man

“The Grand Synthesis”

80

3 • The Monastic Retreat

The Ascetic Ideal

In a study of the main ideals of Western civilization, the
single most important factor to be observed in Late Antiquity is

“the rise of Christianity.”1 One might even argue that until the triumph of Christianity over its pagan rivals was complete, Western civilization does not emerge in any true sense. This chapter examines the nature of the Christianity that developed and which came, in so remarkably short a span of time, to dominate the
ethos of Western Society, from Emperor to slave. It was not until the fourteenth century Renaissance that a new humanistic ethos arose and struggled to usurp the dominance of Christianity as
the prevailing religion of Western man.

Christianity was born into a society and culture that was
thoroughly in the grip of the ideals of Classical Man. If we consider the account given in Acts 1:15 of the believers gathered
together with the disciples shortly after the Ascension, we are
amazed to find that from the core number of about 120 persons
huddled together in fear of the Jewish authorities the Church
grew with such rapidity, not only in numbers but in social influence, that by the fourth century a succession of Roman Emper-
ors (with the exception of Julian the Apostate, 361–363 AD)

appeared who claimed, at least nominally, to be Christians. While it is necessary to begin with the New Testament narrative in
order to understand the origins of the Church and the first
spread of Christianity, we do not have a clear picture of the type of Christianity that came to dominate the West for over a millennium until evidence emerges in the historical record of the sec-
ond centur y AD. This account may be discovered and pieced
together principally from the sub-apostolic literature as well as 1. The most extensive English language account can be found in

W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984). A shorter, but no less valuable, version is his The Early Church, (Phil.: Fortress Press, 1982).

82

3 • The Monastic Retreat
from the works of certain noteworthy authors, e.g., Polycarp,

Ignatius, Justin and Irenaeus, and especially the two Alexan-
drines, Clement and Origen. The purpose of their writings was
to defend Christianity against attacks from Jews and pagans and
to provide the faithful with useful arguments in the face of what proved to be a far greater threat to Christianity than the persecuting opposition of Jews or Romans, namely, the manifold her-
esies of Gnosticism.2 Clearly, Christianity did not achieve success without a struggle against attempts to eliminate it from without and to subvert it from within. Christianity did not arise merely as one religion of man in a world immersed in religious movements
and steeped in a variety of cultic attachments. It came as a doctrine, as the certainty of Truth – a certainty founded upon Divine revelation and the authority of Scripture – as it pertained to God, man, the world, sin and redemption. It necessarily opposed each
and every belief and concomitant life-style as these were trace-
able to the superstitions of ancient man and practiced every-
wh er e b y p ag a n s . B y d e fi n i ti o n , a r e li g io n o f Tr u th i s uncompromising. It cannot tolerate different religious viewpoints. Truth is one and indivisible, and those who are convinced must persuade others as well. Christianity was bound to conflict with what on its terms were false religions and beliefs.

At the same time, it is of overwhelming importance to rec-
ognize that Christianity’s eventual triumph over the ancient
pagan world was tragically undermined by an opposing develop-
ment, the incursion into the life of Christianity of a deeply
rooted pagan outlook that took hold as Monasticism. Far from
being a fringe movement attached to Christian soil, Monasticism
arose as the principal expression of Christian culture and dominated its civilizational agenda throughout the period of its predominance in the West. In this respect a false Christianity

2. In the 2nd Cent. AD Gnosticism, as Kurt Rudolph has men-
tioned, was already turning out a vast literature and gaining
adherents over wide areas of the eastern Roman Empire. Kurt

Rudolph, Gnosis: The Nature & History of Gnosticism, trans. and edited by Robert McLachlan Wilson, (Harper: San Francisco,

1987), p. 25.

1› Christianity and the World of Late Antiquity

83
appeared along side true Christianity, the two virtually indistinguishable for centuries. Not until the Reformation of the six-
teenth century did a genuine Biblical Christianity finally begin to emerge from the baleful influence of so deep-seated a corruption of its true nature.

What Monasticism represented it is possible to recite; why
it triumphed over Christianity at the same time that Christianity gained victory over ancient paganism it is difficult, if not impossible, to explain. But if we hope to understand what came to have
decisive significance for Western civilization we cannot leave

Monastic Christianity out of account or fail to provide some possible explanation of its advancement. We begin by recalling
the essential vision of the Classical heritage, for, as we said, Christianity entered the world at the time when that heritage
had reached its zenith.

1› Christianity and the World of Late Antiquity

Edward Gibbon, that connoisseur of prolixity and style,
enthused:

If a man were to fix the period in history of the world dur-
ing which the condition of the human race was most
happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name
that which elapsed from the death of Domitian [96 AD] to
the accession of Commodus [180 AD]. The vast extent of
the Roman empire was governed by absolute power, under
the guidance of virtue and wisdom.3

He believed the Roman empire at this moment in its his-
tory had reached the culmination of its greatness, that it is obvious at least to us rationally enlightened modern men that no
greater condition of human goodness and beneficence was to be

3. Edward Gibbon, The History of The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire, Vol. I, ed. J.B. Bury, (New York: The Heritage Press, 1946) p. 61.

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3 • The Monastic Retreat
found in the history of mankind than in that time of Rome’s cli-
max. Were that true, we ought to ponder what enormous trans-
formations occurred in Rome and in the rationale undergirding
its institutions, following this pinnacle century, built as they had been on the Classical heritage, that two centuries later (in the late summer of 390) a Christian bishop, Ambrose, could demand
of an emperor, Theodosius, that he repent publicly in accor-
dance with Christian moral precepts for malevolent deeds which
he, as supreme power and sole authority, had ordered carried
out. Clearly a significant change had come about in Western
society and in the concept of Rome that still stood at the heart of its vision, not so much in the external nature of things as in the realm of ideals and values. As Frend points out, “A vital principle of Western society had … been established. A Christian moral
order stood above the will of the ruler or any reason of state.”4

Henceforth an authority higher than the will of the emperor
commanded submission and obedience. The elevation of a new

Divine authority over all earthly power removed the last vestiges of divinity associated with Caesar. The idea Princeps legibus solu-tus est, that the ruler is above the law, was confronted not for the last time. Christianity, perhaps, made no greater contribution to the transformation of the ancient Classical world than this.

But in the second century AD Rome was still viewed as the
hope of the world, still believed by the vast majority of her subjects to be the salvation of man from chaos and disorder. Her
emperors were venerated as the bringers of social peace and eco-
nomic prosperity, the protectors against sub-human barbarians
lurking with savage designs just beyond the limes. Divine Rome was the pride and longing of thousands from Spain to Syria,
from Gaul to Africa. In the second century, “There was no wide-
spread discontent in the empire that would lead to a questioning of the benefits derived from traditional gods and ways of life.”5

Gibbon’s evaluation of this century, it would seem, was not altogether fanciful. But historical changes were soon to disturb the 4. W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity, p. 625.

5. Frend, p. 167.

1› Christianity and the World of Late Antiquity

85
tranquility of Roma Aeterna and render hollow the Classical ideal that lay at its root.

Christianity entered the world at precisely that moment
when Augustus had established and secured the principle of

“Caesarism.”6 Caesarism was the fulfillment in Roman garb of
the Classical heritage, which derived from the Greeks. As

Cochrane noted, “for centuries … unique associations were to
cling to the reign of Augustus as the claim of a new and better
epoch for humanity.”7 Augustus had triumphed over the forces
of social and civil disorder; he had re-established Rome on the
principle of public power over the divisive private powers of parties and factions that were the principal sources of the Civil Wars of the first century BC. The power of the previously dominant
noble gens (family/clans) gave way to the power of monarchy. In truth, the power of one party destroyed all competing parties for control of the public auctoritas. It was the party of Caesar, or the party of the people, that broke the power of the aristocrats.8

Every revolution demands legitimation, requires a basis on
which it can be justified. Since order was religiously defined in the ancient world, any change of order must be vindicated by an
appeal to religion. The new Caesarism sought to explain itself as the necessary outworking of the religious and philosophical principles inherent in Greco-Roman ideals. That system of thought
conceived of order as the descent and association of the gods
with man through some particular human agency. Indeed, the
ancients had ever longed for the appearance of a god in human
form. “For,” as Stauffer explained, “where the deity moves as a
man among men, the dream of the ages is fulfilled, the pain of

6. No better discussion on this subject is available than in Charles Norris Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957). “Caesarism” is dealt with in the first three chapters.

7. Cochrane, p. 27.

8. The best account is to be found in Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960). See, also, Lily Ross Taylor, Party Politics in the Age of Caesar, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961).

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3 • The Monastic Retreat
the world is scattered, and there is heaven on earth.”9 It was natural, then, to see in Caesarism the principle of divinity at work in the world as the final hope for mankind.

What Caesarism inherited from the Classical world of ideas
was the belief in salvation through politics, that the rightly
ordered state offered the embodiment of the defeat of the forces of chaos and the permanent realization of order and prosperity.

It was the highest form of salvation envisioned by ancient man,
for beyond this life nothing remained but the everlasting dark-
ness of the Stygian gloom. Besides, this life, too, was sufficiently threatened with dissolution and the forces of anarchy. Classicism, as a product of the distillation of centuries of Greek
thought passed on to Rome, was a Herculean effort “to rescue
mankind from the life and mentality of the jungle, and to secure for him the possibility of the good life … it was envisaged as a struggle for civilization against barbarism and superstition.”10

For the Greeks this conception was first associated with the polis, the city-state. However, when it was dealt a severe blow in the
crisis of the Peloponnesian War and finally demolished when the
might of the kingdom of Macedon subjected the independent
city-states of Greece to its absolute power, the concept in this form perished. All the same, belief in the triumph of civilization as conceived by the Greeks persisted and, in time, was transferred to the emerging concept of the res publica of Rome. Here, at last, was the hope of political salvation.

Caesarism sought justification, then, in the older religious
conception of Roma Aeterna, a concept of social justice, peace, and harmony. Its religious ideal was “that of an order which professed to satisfy the permanent and essential requirements of
human nature….”11 It assumed, of course, that a correct insight
into the “essential requirements of human nature” was clearly
obtainable. It was not sheer power that Caesarism stood for, but a power bent to the service of order, justice, and right living.

9. Ethelbert Stauffer, Christ and the Caesars, trans. by K. and R.

Gregor Smith, (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955), p. 36.

10. Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, p. 160.

11. Cochrane, p. 74.

1› Christianity and the World of Late Antiquity

87

Caesarism meant power to apply superior divine wisdom to a total civilizational project. Caesar, so it was thought, represented the possession of such knowledge and capability. And as Roma Aeterna stood for the divine embodiment of law and order so, beginning with Augustus, “law was to be the gift of the Caesars
to the world.”12

The idea of Roma Aeterna was deeply indebted to the

“vision of Hellas,” a belief in “the excellence of man as man.”13

The latter affirmed the possibility of the realization of the good life by virtue of capacities intrinsic to human nature. Human
nature was viewed as being fully in accord with a cosmic princi-
ple of order and goodness, and needed only to be rationally
internalized in order for man to live well. To discover the Reason or Mind of that order was the essential commitment of the Greek spirit of inquiry. Plato and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Aristotle confidently believed that the highest application of that principle was made possible in civic association. Man was a political animal, and could only hope to realize the essence of what it means to be human in political society. The city alone held out the hope of escape from the dark forces of chaos and flux.

There was, however, a disturbing dimension to Classicism
that tended to upset the placid confidence it had in the esteemed capability of the cultivated virtue of man. It was the problem of Fortune or Fate. Here was a power in the cosmos to which even
the gods were subject. It could, and often did, nullify virtue and reduce order to chaos, war, revolution, and social upheaval. It
might, at times, support the cause of virtue, but it might equally counteract it and bring it to naught. Men would sometimes feel
powerless and helpless in the face of overwhelming disasters of
nature, and in civil affairs, instead of a man close to the gods sitting on the throne, Fortune or Fate might cast up one who was
more like a devil. To place hope in human saviors, as Caesarism
came to represent, could easily lead to disappointment. And the

Caesars themselves, even if they were relatively benign, could

12. Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, p. 23.

13. Cochrane, p. 75.

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3 • The Monastic Retreat
easily lead people to expect results which, because Fate inter-
vened, they could not accomplish. If the belief was firmly main-
tained that Caesarism would defeat the hidden power of Fate in
the cosmos, then the cure could sometimes be worse than the
disease. What Caesarism came to mean was the tyranny of the
political over the whole of life. Everything was subject directly to Caesar who possessed ultimate power to grant or withhold benefits as he wished. In the end it led to what Cochrane has
described as “the tragedy of the Caesars.” “It was, in a word, the tragedy of men who, being required to play gods, descended to
that of beasts.”14 When virtue fails or is thwarted all that remains is raw power. Large numbers of people, at the same time they
tenaciously clung to the ideal of Rome, increasingly sought a refuge from the grim realities of its outworking in history. To find escape, they turned to the mystery religions and orientalism.

Mystery cults were nothing new in the Classical context.

They had existed for centuries. Virtually all were derivations of one sort or another from ancient chthonic religion, or religion of the cycle of life and death, and fertility.15 The Olympian religion associated with the concept of the polis and of the rational ordering of life according to nomos did not completely eliminate the powerful attraction of these earlier mystical attachments. A significant expansion of their influence occurred following the conquests of Alexander the Great (334–323 BC) which effected the
demise of the city-state and ushered in the Hellenistic kingdoms.

The movement of Greeks into the east during this period
brought about a closer contact with oriental influences and
hence a major revival of mystery cults.

The myster y religions offered a new form of personal
devotion and an immediate sense of the divine which helped to
satisfy a craving for purpose and destiny in a world that for many could not be achieved by mere political salvation. Thus, beginning in the time of the Hellenistic kingdoms, but not reaching a 14. Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, p. 129.

15. See, e.g., Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults, (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1987).

2› Early Monasticism

89
peak until the vast conquests of Rome, the myster y religions
came to mean a broad-based rebellion against salvation by means
of political power and order. What the orient contributed to this growing counter-culture was an anthropological and cosmical
dualism whereby a retreat from the total realm of the material in all its associations and a complete absorption in the domain of
spirit took hold as the only means to escape from what was
regarded as confinement in a world of evil and miser y.16 But
every counter-culture offers itself as a culture and is presented with a philosophical justification. The term that best describes this development is gnosis or what we have learned to speak of as Gnosticism. Far from appearing as one more idealism among
many, Gnosticism developed as a sub-culture, in time extensive
enough to challenge, if not eventually to displace, the political culture of Greco-Rome. For vast numbers in the east it was the
very air they breathed. It was in this cultural world that Christianity first made its appearance. And this cultural world seeped into Christianity! This influence needs to be kept in mind as we proceed to examine the nature of Monasticism in the early

Church, for Monasticism was deeply infected with the dualistic
ideology so culturally pervasive in the centuries of its emergence and growth. A cultural cancer on the organ of the Classical
world provided the basis of Monasticism.

2› Early Monasticism

Although histories have been written about Monasticism
and the personalities behind its advance, there really is no one cause or inventor of Monasticism. It is one of those murky developments that seems suddenly to appear after a previous, largely
hidden, period of gestation. It is an already existing attitude
waiting for some particular character to provide it with notoriety.

That person would appear to be Anthony, an Egyptian who
made the name of hermit a Christian badge of honor.

16. Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis, p. 283.

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3 • The Monastic Retreat

Anthony (251–356 AD), a Coptic Christian, born into a
wealthy family of Christian farmers in upper Egypt, not far from Memphis, has been called the first of the Desert Fathers. It seems that both his parents died around 270, leaving Anthony the heir
to a prosperous estate. Upon hearing a sermon one Sunday on
the text of Matt. 19:21 – “Go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and come follow me and you will have treasure in
heaven” – Anthony immediately complied. He sold the lot,
placed his sister in some sort of nunnery, and headed straight
into the inhospitable desert to practice until his dying day the most abstemious asceticism imaginable. We can scarcely conjecture why Anthony thought it necessary, in order to follow the Lord’s injunction, to live in solitary confinement and to deprive his body of the least possible comfort, unless we realize that a whole attitude about the realm of matter and the flesh had long
been asserted by the Church. As Peter Brown has observed:

“Anthony and the monks of the fourth century inherited a revo-
lution; they did not initiate one.”17

The Church had been encouraging the notion that the
body and everything associated with it was evil and a hindrance
to realized perfection (not simply positional perfection in Christ) without which it was impossible to get into heaven. This fact is more easily understood when we consider that Anthony was
merely the first in what was to become a virtual flood of followers. Throughout the next few centuries thousands turned to the
harsh asceticism of Monasticism in order to escape every aspect
of life in society and to retreat into a self-absorption of heroic deprivation and denial. As the vast majority of this army of hermits and monks were of similar social circumstances to Anthony,
it is inaccurate to see in this movement a protest of the poor and down-trodden, the dregs of society, against a social system that had excluded or oppressed them.18 It was a freely chosen way of
life. Most came from well-off circumstances and turned in delib-

17. Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p. 208.

2› Early Monasticism

91
erate rejection from anything having to do with life in this world.

What Anthony and those who emulated his way of life initiated
can be called the first liberation movement in Christendom. “To enter the Desert” as Robert Markus comments, “was to assert
one’s freedom to extricate oneself from the suffocating bonds of that society, from the claims of property relationships, of power and domination, of marriage and family, and to re-create a life of primal freedom, whether in solitude or in an alternative and
freely chosen social grouping.”19 Far from being a Biblical attitude this was a humanistic gospel of salvation by meritorious
accomplishment and an assertion of a religion of self-will in
opposition to the grace of God. At the same time, it evidenced a per verse ingratitude toward the Creator and Lord of all life,
including that of the body.

Anthony’s brand of eremetic asceticism conflicted with the idea of the Church as a community, a people gathered together
to form the basis of a new humanity. This contradiction did not
engender misgivings about Monasticism per se; others simply conceived it in terms of organized social groups. A second type
of Egyptian Monasticism, styled cenobitic, emerged under the influence of one Pachomius (290–345 AD). With him “we may
discern the beginnings of a more ordered community asceticism
which was to extend its influence throughout the Greek world,
and ultimately provide a model for monasteries in the West.”20

Pachomian monasteries sprang up throughout Egypt and in Pal-
estine and attracted thousands of devotees. The ideal continued
to be one of withdrawal from life in society, but now to form a
society apart based upon iron discipline and organized regimen-
tation. There was at least some recognition that Christians had a reason for their existence beyond mere self-flagellation. In these communities some obligations were required in the way of work.

18. “…the founders of the monastic movement and their recruits
were not oppressed peasants.” Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, (New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1971), p. 101.

19. Robert Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 165.

20. Frend, The Early Church, p. 192.

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3 • The Monastic Retreat

But Monasticism, by its very nature, conceived of work as a dis-
traction from a higher calling. Not for the last time in history would toil be viewed as an obstacle to piety and inner fulfillment.

About the only work most of these monks cherished was hours spent in prayer, rote memorization of Scripture, and days and
nights of rigid fasting from food and sleep.

Completely independent of Egyptian Monasticism there
sprang up in Syria and its environs the most virulent strain of

Monastic asceticism. In Syria, a crossroads of east and west, the dualistic temper reached a peak of expression. In Syria were also to be found the worst excesses of anarchic rebellion against all earthly institutions and societal forms, in which individuals went to great lengths to display utter contempt of normality. It was

Syria that would produce the likes of Simeon Stylites, men with a penchant for exhibition and studied theatrics. But precisely
because Syrian Monasticism had reached such outlandish pro-
portions was it taken with utter seriousness by many in society.

For how could such persons not possess great powers for man’s
benefit who possessed such power over themselves? Men capable
of such feats as sitting on pillars for decades must, indeed, be in contact with heavenly powers. Might not one beseech them for
intercession with such forces on behalf of more down-to-earth
humans? In Syria Monasticism produced the concept of the holy man, a man to be reckoned with, a man capable of bringing upon the surrounding communities, and on the great cities,
blessings or curses. Superstition and divination continued to be practiced in the name of Christianity. Brown summarizes these:

“Syria was the great province of ascetic stars … Egypt was the cra-dle of monasticism… the holy men who minted the ideal of the
saint in society came from Syria, and, later, from Asia Minor and Palestine – not from Egypt … the holy man in Egypt did not
impinge on society around him in the same way as in other prov-
inces.”21

A third form of Monasticism has been associated with Asia

21. Peter Brown, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), p. 109.

2› Early Monasticism

93

Minor and the name of Basil the Great (c. 330–379 AD). It has
often been said that it was Basil, his brother Gregory of Nyssa
and their close friend Gregory of Nazianzus – the Cappadocian

Fathers – who were responsible for laying the foundations of

Byzantine or Eastern Orthodox Christianity. It was certainly
these three who, because they all were steeped in Classical cul-
ture (graduates, we might say, of the university of Athens!),
helped to produce that combination of classical learning and

Christianity which allegedly combined piety with intellectual
rigor to foster that ideal which came to be known as the contemplative life. They were not, of course, the first to encourage this sort of development – the Alexandrines, Clement and Origen,
had already shown the way. But under Basil’s influence this
notion of a philosophical Christianity was introduced into the Monastic context. For, as Frend has observed, with Basil, “the
ideal of the hermit was replaced by that of the Christian-Platonist spiritual brotherhood.”22 His purpose, apparently, was to combine asceticism with philosophical reflection and to erect Monastic communities along such lines. Basil, moreover, was among
the first to bring order, method, and purpose into Monasticism;
it was primarily his legacy that was carried over into the West. A Benedictine long before Benedict, he organized Monastic life
along societal lines in accordance with a rule. Those who entered must submit to the rules and live as they prescribed. The times of the day were arranged for varying activities, some for work, some for prayer, some for study of Scripture, but also for the Classical authors. Moreover, Basilian monks were not to be so self-absorbed and withdrawn that they engaged in no forms of ser-
vice to the community. To prevent this Basil established monas-
teries in towns and cities as well as in the country. His monks
were not to despise the institutional Church, but to promote it
and offer dedicated service to those who were compelled to live
in ordinary society.

Basil’s system might appear to be a considerable improve-
ment over the morbid strains of Monasticism that were associ-

22. Frend, The Rise of Christianity, p. 631.

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3 • The Monastic Retreat
ated with Egypt and Syria. In fact, the combination of Classical culture with Christianity had the effect of subordinating Christianity to Classical culture, of making Christianity merely the
addendum of faith to the reason of things as determined by non-Christian man. Further, the establishment or the institutionalizing of Monasticism in accordance with rules devised by man and
with the intention to produce holiness, when combined with
clericalism and ecclesiastical hierarchicalism, eventually destroyed the authority of Sola Scriptura and reduced genuine faith to the customs and commands of human agents and institutional prescriptions.

We have no idea how extensively Monasticism was prac-
ticed; it certainly was not the whole of Christianity during the first few centuries. But it was unsurpassed in influence as the
ideal Christian life. While other Monastic traditions were to
evolve in the course of Western history, the core of its concept and practice was already fully determined by the fourth century.

3› Essential Traits and Characteristics of Monasticism

In the growth of the Monastic concept three features
stand out with peculiar prominence: (a) Monasticism as ethical
martyrdom; (b) the cult of virginity; and (c) the cult of the holy man with power to work miracles.

Among the essential contributions of Monasticism to

Christianity as it arose in the West, and as in other contexts is still influential in the present day, was the unbiblical assumption of two types of Christian faith and ethic: one for higher Christians, and one for average Christians. Monasticism, of course, meant to follow the stricter pathway of superior sanctity, whereas ordinary Christians, those who had not the faith to renounce all worldly
associations of family, work, property relationships and general mundane affairs, must be content to live in terms of a lesser holiness. This whole concept developed in the wake of the legitima-
tion of Christianity under Constantine in 313 AD. A Church that
was granted a relative peace with the pagan world of persecuting 3› Essential Traits and Characteristics of Monasticism

95
opposition longed for the good old days of the martyrs when a
forced absorption in the Militia Christi ideal fostered a purer devotion to heavenly life and a willingness to let go of this
world’s goods. “With the ending of the age of persecution,” as

Markus points out, “monasticism came to absorb the ideal of the
martyr. Like the martyr, the monk freed himself from the world
for God and found the fullness of freedom in his death.”23 Not
for the last time would the Church set its sights by the dead hand of the past rather than march forward with a Biblical agenda for the future. But, then, the Church under the influence of Monasticism was incapable of shaking off the pagan conceptions that
dominated it. Like Classical man Monasticism shared a hanker-
ing for a golden era of heroes, for, as Markus also observes, “the age of the martyrs retained something of the flavour of a heroic age….”24 The concept of the hero easily supported the ideal of
perfection that Monasticism sought to achieve. Thus, “the mar-
tyr was the human image of perfection, a model to follow. To be
persecuted for the Lord’s sake was the hall-mark of the true

Christian.”25 The accomplishment of great feats of self-immola-
tion was the core ideal of sainthood. In the eyes of later Christians “martyrs were idealized as athletes and prizefighters in a supernatural combat.”26 Here were super saints indeed! What
champions of spiritual warfare against this world and all its evil associations! “The martyr’s rewards were believed to exceed
those of any other Christian overachiever. His death effaced all sin after baptism; pur e an d spo tless, he went straight to
heaven.”27 The problem for Monasticism was how to emulate
this behavior and so achieve the same outcome. It would be
accomplished by means of a similar, though bloodless, endeavor

– by ethical martyrdom. “The emotional energies previously absorbed by the duty to rise to the demands made on a perse-23. Markus , The End of Ancient Christianity, p. 71.

24. Markus, p. 24.

25. Markus, p. 92.

26. Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, (New York: Alfred A.

Knopf, Inc., 1986), p. 436.

27. Fox, p. 435.

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3 • The Monastic Retreat
cuted Church were largely re-directed towards disciplined ascetic living.”28 The mantle of the martyr was assumed by the monk –
the saint as hero.

To practice ethical martyrdom required an intense com-
mitment to depriving the body of each and every form of sensual
gratification and denying it the urges which it insistently
demanded whether these were conceived as legitimate or not.

Naturally, the most persistent and vehement of the body’s pas-
sions was to be found in the dimension of sexuality. Here was an impulse of the flesh that must be overcome at all cost. The struggle between spirit and matter reached its quintessence at pre-
cisely this point. Nothing represented for the seeker after higher sainthood the enemy of the body quite so unmistakably as the
sexual impulse. The cult of the martyr-hero was given added
impetus by the cult of virginity.

The Monastic mindset could conceive of no place in God’s
purpose for the body, except to view it as a form of punishment
for man’s sin. Man’s true destiny was heaven, there to live as
angels do in complete perfection of bodiless existence. Here on
earth his calling was to be saved from the body and all its associations. To be saved from sin meant the same as to be saved from
the body. If anything gave prominence to the body, if any part of man could divert his attention from his true destiny, nothing did so with greater tenacity than the sexual impulse. The Monastic
ideal called for resistance to sex as a vulgar and ignoble desire and the suppression of this normal feature of human nature.

Sex, of course, is a human desire that, like any other, is sus-
ceptible of moral abuse and perversion. The Biblical view was,
and is, that God created man, male and female (Gen. 1:27), that
man was given a sexual nature at the very beginning. Moreover,
to satisfy properly the desire that accompanied that nature God
instituted marriage (Gen. 2:20–25), the bonding of man and
wife. All this is mentioned in Scripture as having been done
before any sin entered into man’s experience. It is only when sin entered the world that the sexual impulse took on the character-28. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, p. 70.

3› Essential Traits and Characteristics of Monasticism

97
istic of a lust which man would satisfy as he pleased and in whatev er c ircu mst an c e h e saw fit . Ins te ad o f de fen di ng a nd promoting a Biblical view, Monasticism simply stood in the grip
of a profoundly pagan conception that insisted on a sharp dual-
ism of matter and spirit; as matter was the source of evil, so
escape to the realm of spirit meant true salvation.

The concept of virginity as a higher spiritual and ethical
ideal is not easy to trace historically. Early in the post-apostolic period marriage was not thought to be alien to the Christian life, but decent, honorable and acceptable. It had been the purpose
of the early Church to insist on decorum and orderliness in the
conduct of man’s life here on earth, to restrain his passions and lusts as is proper for Godliness and holiness. The marriage state took on the added dimension of bringing that most unruly passion of all into control and subjection to the will of God. Indeed, marriage was the only legitimate outlet for the sexual urge and
not just for procreation or the producing of children. However,
it very quickly developed that sex even within marriage was con-
sidered “to be a clear second best to no sex at all.”29 The mar-
ried state came to be viewed as second-rate holiness. Couples
were urged, and numerous spouses took it upon themselves, to
practice sexual abstinence within marriage. In the second century a widespread consensus arose which spoke vociferously against
marriage and idealized the virginal state. It was even suggested that married couples could, by giving up sex within marriage,
return to the purity of virginity. At this time the Church also
began to teach that second marriages, after the death of one of
the spouses, ought not to be contracted. They were positively
forbidden for the clergy (and soon first marriages as well). This had the effect of creating a large number of widows who, unless
they were wealthy, became wards of the Church. If they were
wealthy they became the object of solicitation by bishops and
clerics who hoped to entice their wealth for the Church. “By idealizing virginity and frowning on second marriage, the Church
was to become a force without equal in the race for inherit-

29. Fox, Pagans and Christians, p. 355.

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3 • The Monastic Retreat
ance.”30 The family, it would seem, as a covenant institution in God’s purpose had little place in the thinking of many in the

Church, nor was promotion of that institution in accordance
with Biblical directives seen as a feature of genuine holiness.

By the end of the second century there was little concern
to distinguish between sexual promiscuity and proper conjugal
sex. For those who adopted monasticism, the one was no more
acceptable than the other. Origen (186–253/4 AD), clearly the
greatest speculative mind whose theology was to dominate the

Church’s thinking for the next two centuries, simply looked at
the sexual nature of men and women as if it had no bearing upon
human personality, as if in the present it simply did not matter and could therefore be dispensed with. He shrank from the very
concept of gender in man. However, for Origen, to reject sexual-
ity meant far more than simply suppressing the sexual nature.

Rather, it meant the reassertion of a primal freedom so basic as to dissolve all distinctions of bodily existence. There was apparently nothing normal in sex whatever, not even procreation.

Body gender represented an intrusion from an alien sphere. Sen-
sual experiences of this sort, or of any sort for that matter, were destructive of true human personality, whose delights and pleasures exist in another world. Virginity alone could reunite man
with his true personality, it was the original link between heaven and earth.31 Origen’s legacy to Monasticism is profound.

The third essential characteristic of the culture of Monasti-
cism that left its imprint deeply etched in Western Christianity was that of the monk as holy man. Although we have touched on this already, a few comments are added to fill in the main features of this aspect of the Monastic ideal.

As mentioned, the idea of the monk as holy man origi-
nated principally in the Syrian context, but eventually spread
beyond merely local manifestations. Basically, the idea arose concurrently that the monk besides having acquired remarkable free-
dom from the contamination of the realm of matter and having

30. Fox, Pagans and Christians, p. 310.

31. Brown, The Body and Society, pp. 171–175.

3› Essential Traits and Characteristics of Monasticism

99
the characteristics of an ascetic overachiever, at the same time, came into possession of mysterious powers. Such powers meant
more than just the indefatigable stamina to suppress one’s own
bodily appetites and pour contempt upon all worldly interests;
they came to be viewed as the ability to work miracles and won-
ders. The holy man became more than just a model of stern piety
and disciplined resolution; he was a veritable agent of great
power to work marvels on behalf of the community. Here was
the ancient pagan world of “oracles and divination” refitted for Christian consumption. “The rise of the holy man as the bearer
of objectivity in society is” as once again Brown comments, “a
final playing out of the long history of oracles and divination in the ancient world. The ‘god-bearing’ hermit usurped the position of the oracle and was known to have done so.”32

The ancient world-view was possessed of the notion that
what affects this life, whether for good or evil, had its source in what took place in the invisible world where a plethora of spirits and dæmones was responsible for everything that happened. Especially in an agricultural society where the prosperity or adversity of life was so hazardous an affair, and where life often teetered on the brink of ruin, poverty, or disease and starvation, people were eager to secure assistance against the demonic powers
whose control of the elements of nature was unquestioned. Who
better to aid them than the local holy man whose ability to intervene with the power of Heaven was not in doubt? Accordingly,

“The idea of the holy man holding the demons at bay and bend-
ing the will of God by his prayers came to dominate Late

Antique society … it placed a man, a ‘man of power’, in the cen-
tre of people’s imagination….”33 The holy man perched on his
column out in the desert became the object of visitations by a
regular procession of crowds, from peasants to court officials and imperial representatives, anxious to solicit his support for every conceivable exigency, whether it be concern for the crops or
matters of state. The holy man acquired the status of an arbitra-32. Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity, p. 134.

33. Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, p. 145.

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3 • The Monastic Retreat
tor or mediator between Heaven and earth. In doing so, he
added new meaning to the Roman idea of the patronus, a man of prominence in the community on whose help large numbers
depended in everything from healing to advice on legal matters.

The holy man provided the historical background to what would
emerge as the concept of the patron saint, a role that virtually undermined Christ as sole mediator between God and man.

4› Pagan Sources of Influence

As we have already indicated, Monasticism derived prima-
rily from non-Christian sources and attitudes. What were the distinctive and fundamental features of these significant influences?

As mentioned, the most pervasive influence came from the
thought-world of what today is referred to as Gnosticism. Gnos-
ticism in Late Antiquity was more a religious-cultural mindset
than a particular school of thought or movement. To discover its origins has been for scholars an almost impossible task. About
the most certain thing one can say is that it was the product of that special concoction called Hellenistic syncretism, a mixture of Greek, Iranian, and Jewish speculation. And like most composite
ventures it offered itself in a variety of forms with peculiar
emphases. There was no one thing called Gnosticism, any more than today there is any one thing called Rationalism. And yet there is a common mental framework that can be traced through
each and every specific type. It is this shared perspective that gives it a unique cultural appearance, much as secularism today, although made up of endless traits, nevertheless exhibits general characteristic beliefs. With these alone are we concerned.

Above all, Gnosticism holds to a deep-seated dualistic
world-view. “[A]t the base of Gnosis” explains Kurt Rudolph “is
a dualistic view of the world which determines all its statements on a cosmological and anthropological level….”34 There are two
sides to reality, namely, one of matter and the other of spirit.

34. Rudolph, Gnosis, p. 57.

4› Pagan Sources of Influence

101

Furthermore, these two dimensions of things are profoundly and
completely alien to one another. They are as opposed to one
another as good is to evil. Basically, the realm of spirit is good, whereas matter is evil. It is not that matter has become evil; it is rather that matter per se is evil, and its very existence is due to an evil Being who brought it into existence. The significance of this doctrine is important so far as man is concerned, for man is a
spiritual being who lives in an alien material body. This fact alone explains the cause of evil in man and in the world and leads to
the conclusion that so long as man dwells in the body he is
unavoidably contaminated with an evil that is antithetical to his true spiritual nature. The great problem, then, is to discover the way that will deliver man from matter and release him for his true spiritual existence.

Gnosticism’s chief concern, then, was to offer a gospel of
redemption from the realm of matter. To do so it had to explain
the origin of matter and spirit as deriving from two separate
divine sources, a good God and an evil God. Thus, not only is
man as a spiritual being opposed to his material existence, but
the true and good God is equally opposed to the realm of mat-
ter. In fact, in most Gnostic systems, spirit as such is God, and, since man himself is spirit encased in matter, he shares in the
divine substance. If he seems not to know this it is because of an original ignorance which led him far away from his true divine nature. It is through Gnosis, or knowledge that man can recover his true self and return to his true home in the world of light and harmony. Accordingly, Hans Jonas writes, “Equipped with this
gnosis, the soul after death travels upwards, leaving behind at each sphere the psychical ‘vestment’ contributed by it: thus the spirit stripped of all foreign accretions reaches the God beyond the world and becomes reunited with divine substance.”35

Gnosticism represented a revolt against creaturehood. It
hated the idea that man was finite and mortal. It did not wish to recognize that man was responsible for the evil that encompassed 35. Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, (Boston: Beacon Press, revised edition, 1963), p. 45.

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3 • The Monastic Retreat
his life in this world. Its God possessed no personality; he simply stood for the possibility of liberation from finitude and creature-liness. The Gnostic concept of redemption was one of liberation
from matter and time, not restoration of the whole of existence
from sin and guilt. Under the influence of Gnosticism Christ
came to play the role of one who liberates man by showing him
the way. Christ was a model of how it could be done, a perfect
exemplar of triumph over this world. Death, not resurrection,
was the preeminent means of liberation and escape from the con-
fines of the body. Much of this explains why Monasticism was
supportive of a docetic Christology. A Christ who merely
appeared in bodily form was more favorable to an outlook deeply antipathetic to the body than a Christ who actually became man
in real fleshly terms.

The direct impact of Gnosticism on Christianity came
through Judaism, for, without a doubt, “the majority of Gnostic
systems came into existence on the fringes of Judaism.”36 This
explains why Gnostic writings are so pervaded with Biblical
themes and ideas. And if we keep in mind that the early Church,
the Church in the time of the apostles, was predominantly Jew-
ish in make-up, then we can understand so much of what the
writers of the New Testament meant when they spoke so force-
fully against heresies that even then were causing great upheavals in the various churches. Thus, in I Cor. 15:12 Paul writes, “But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” It is this last phrase that stands out. “No resurrection” meant for many no literal resurrection, for Christ was merely raised in spirit, as he never possessed true bodily existence, surely the suggestion of Gnostic ideas. Paul had to combat this false resurrection doctrine which Jewish Christians were getting from outside

Jewish sources. Again, Paul had to combat a “deceptive philoso-
phy,” that apparently was enticing Colossian Christians, with the strong assertion that “in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form…”(2:9) and that they should not be deceived “by

36. Rudolph, Gnosis, p. 277.

4› Pagan Sources of Influence

103
fine-sounding arguments.”(2:4). Furthermore, Paul berated
those who made great cause and show of piety with “their false
humility and their harsh treatment of the body,” which was

“without any value in restraining sensual indulgence”(2:23).

Paul tells Timothy that he is to “command certain men not to
teach false doctrines any longer nor to devote themselves to
myths and genealogies” (I Tim.1:3,4). Gnosticism was full of
this sort of thing. Concerning false doctrines that will be the
product of “deceiving spirits,” Paul says that “They forbid peo-
ple to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods…”(I

Tim.4:3). This, too, was true of Gnostic teaching and, as we saw, became a central feature of the Monastic life-style. Other examples could be provided, but with these we can at least discern
something of the influence that a Gnostic-Judaistic presence had on the first century Church. Unquestionably, by the second century, with the beginnings of Monasticism, this pagan religion
was starting to burrow deep into the conscience of the Church.

Asceticism, which in the main derived from the oriental
culture of Gnostic dualism, stood firmly opposed to the classical concept of virtue as the assertion of the excellence of man in and through the world. For Classical man the world was not an altogether alien place, but was the product of a rational order, and man was fitted with the ability to discover the reason of that
order and so to live in harmony with nature. This was especially true of the Stoic mind, the denouement of Classical culture. Of
course, classical man, beginning with Plato, made a sharp dis-
tinction between spirit and matter, but classical man did not
think that the latter, though recalcitrant, was necessarily alien to the higher spiritual ideal of life. Man was capable of making the material submit to the power of spirit or mind. The passions
could be brought under the control of reason and compelled to
obey the inner man in his pursuit of Paideia or ordered culture.

Not so for Gnosticism. The realm of matter was viewed with
complete hostility. The only option available was to be rescued
from it through a fierce inner resolve to suppress every area of its insistence. This sharp contradiction between radically opposite
cultural ideals would seem to exclude the possibility of any syn-104

3 • The Monastic Retreat
thesis between them. We might be surprised to learn, then, that
a type of Monastic Christianity developed which, in fact, sought to combine aspects of both ideals and was to leave its legacy on the development of Christian culture in the West, in the Middle

Ages especially, as the final stage of Monasticism. With the emergence in the late second and early third century of the Alexan-
drine school of theology we encounter for the first time the rise of an ascetic classicism as the form of a Christianity that would remain the essence of its ideal until modern times. To be sure, it was an alliance that was not easily, nor at all times, maintained, but, in general, it continued to assert itself against all attempts to dissolve it completely. Only when the Renaissance and Reformation came along did it finally collapse as a predominate cultural ideal.

The classical ideal conceived the life of the mind, of intel-
lect and reason, to be the highest form of human activity. To
contemplate the form of things, to grasp the logic of relationships, to transcend mere sensation and feeling to that higher
realm of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty was not merely the great-
est realization of what it means to be man, it was to rise to the level of god-like behavior. Connected with this activity was the idea of self-mastery and the inner formation of soul or character as the essence of what it means to be human and to live the
happy life. He who attained this outcome was considered to be
wise and was styled philosopher. To achieve this goal required a withdrawal from the world of ordinary concerns and an escape
from mundane affairs. All preoccupation with practical matters
and with things that concerned the needs of the body must be
reduced to a minimum. How natural, then, for Monasticism to
appreciate this aspect of the Classical world of thought! In the first place, it adopted the essential negation of the body and the realm of matter in general from Gnosticism. But mere negation
was not enough; some sort of activity must take place, some kind of living in the world was required. What positive quality must
one see in, especially, Christian living? It was Clement (c. 150–
c.215) and Origen, the Alexandrine theologians, who, in the sec-
ond place, brought to bear on the Monastic ideal the Classical

4› Pagan Sources of Influence

105
concept of the contemplative life of the mind. Here was the
beginnings of the Christianae vitae otium, the concept of the Christian life as one of intellectual leisure and undisturbed contemplation.

Clement, as the older of the two, and having been Ori-
gen’s teacher, may be responsible for fostering this development in the first place. He was the first to combine the emphasis on

Gnosis of the Gnostic schools with the Stoic idea of contemplation and cultivation of mind. He liked the idea of a deeper understanding, but disdained the notion of it as non-intellectual. He did not hesitate to view Christianity in the language of higher
enlightenment. For him Christianity was true Gnosis. The goal of the true believer was to rise above mere faith to the purer regions of knowledge and direct contemplation of God. Faith was a mere way station on the pathway to greater certitude and comprehension of the myster y of things. However, like Classical man,

Clement thought of this task in elitist terms. Only a special few could ever hope to achieve such an exalted state in this life. Here was nurtured the concept of the expert theologian to whom the
simple or ordinary believer must defer in order to solve the riddles and enigmas of God, man, and the world. This was espe-
cially so when it came to understan din g the meaning of

Scripture. Scripture was viewed as possessing metaphysical and
ethical truths that the ordinary believer could not hope to com-
prehend. Only those who had acquired Gnosis, who had pene-
trated its recondite message were enlightened as to its true
meaning.

If Clement initiated this trend, it was Origen who devel-
oped it as an art form. In Origen’s mind Christianity meant con-
version “from ignorance … to enlightenment.”37 The real
meaning of Scripture was as a source of deeper, hidden meanings
made available by a process of interpretation leading beyond the literal and moral levels to the spiritual meaning that was of a higher and different order of knowledge. Origen began with the
notion that “every word of Scripture meant something, other-

37. Frend, The Early Church, p. 90.

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3 • The Monastic Retreat
wise it would not have been written….”38 But what it meant was
not its redemptive-historical meaning, nor was it concerned to
trace the re-establishment of God’s authority over man, a mes-
sage about sin and redemption and covenant renewal. Its mean-
ing lay beneath the surface of its language in an arcane search for the process of purification of soul from ignorance and irrational-ism. Its message was about a Christ whose chief responsibility
was to educate mankind in the proper way to rise above the
world and to enter into sublime unity with God. Man was free to
follow the lead of Christ, the embodiment of Logos, and so rise
above his primitive existence to a higher culture of the mind,
there to meditate on God in unobstructed spiritual ecstasy. Biblical Christianity was replaced with Platonic Christianity. The
result was the incalculable devastation of a genuine Biblical culture in the formation of the West.

5› Quid sit Christianum esse?

Augustine – The Almost Reformer

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430 AD), otherwise known to
history as St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo in North Africa, is
without a doubt, the greatest Christian theologian and church-
man of Late Antiquity. His greatness, however, lies not so much
in his towering intellect which is demonstrated with such fasci-
nating skill in his voluminous writings, but, far more impor-
tantly, in that he came to a clearer Biblical recognition of the falsity of the Monastic ideal and hence of the truth concerning

God, man, and the world. With Augustine was inaugurated a
theological tradition, appropriately designated the Augustinian tradition, which took hold in the West and provided a powerful countercurrent to the strong false Christianity which had virtually absorbed the church and threatened to drown it in the
depths of an erroneous pagan outlook. We can only guess what
might have been the result for Western Christianity apart from

38. Frend, The Early Church, p. 92.

Augustine – The Almost Reformer

107
the influence that this tradition made possible through this
man’s careful devotion to Scripture as the source of Christian
faith and life. The wide differences that came to separate Catholic Christianity from Byzantine Christianity provide but one
example of the enormous legacy which Augustinianism has left behind. Another is the fact that the Reformation, which broke
once and for all with the predominant Monastic culture, as well
as with the deadening humanistic hierarchicalism that flowered
alongside it, was made possible on the foundation of a revived
and purified Augustinianism. Clearly, this man’s thinking has left no negligible mark on the West.

Our concern is not with the details of his life and thought,
but with the painstaking reconsideration by Augustine of what it means to be Christian. That reevaluation was away from Monasticism and in the direction of a more faithful Scriptural under-
standing. This re-direction of thinking, because it was nothing
less than seismic in scale, should not be underestimated. And,
yet, we must add a word of caution. Although Augustine rede-
fined the nature of Christianity, it is no little disappointment to consider that he failed to break as completely with the dominant Monastic ideal in his own life and actions. In the end, he merely checked its excesses; he did not attack its essential idea, and thus Monasticism continued to plague the church throughout the

Middle Ages. It may have done so in any case: but equally it is
just as possible that had he made a clean break and renounced it altogether he might have initiated a reformation as early as the fifth century. But, alas! Augustine pulled back from taking that momentous step. As a result, he leaves to us the legacy of a man whose place in the Church was that of an almost Reformer.

Most students of the history of church and doctrine are
familiar with Augustine’s personal pilgrimage to faith. The story is well-known of his upbringing under a pious mother whose
ardent concern for her son’s salvation was to meet with a youth-
ful self-will and flesh filled worldliness on his part. After a long digression into the Classical heritage in order to find answers for his restless soul, he at last succumbed to her wishes that he join the Church and become a Christian. Of course, looking back

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3 • The Monastic Retreat

Augustine could rightly say that it was not because of his
mother, though her prayers and tears were certainly instrumental in his conversion, but it was due to the mysterious workings of
grace that God was pleased through the entreaties of his mother
to effect in him a transformation of heart. Once he had made his choice in this respect he never turned back, and his life and
thinking are a testimony to a man who advanced continuously in
the direction of bringing every thought into submission to his

Lord and to His Word.

However, at the beginning, it is well to remind ourselves,

Augustine’s assumptions were deeply colored with the central
notions of the type of Christianity which by his day was univer-
sally accepted. The influence of Platonic thought and the con-
cepts of Gnosticism as Augustine encountered them in the

Manichees who were present everywhere, especially in North

Africa, would shape his mind and behavior for years to come.

Indeed, though he progressed beyond them to purer Biblical
notions, the broad idea of Monasticism as the essence of what it means to be Christian, at least for those called to a higher perfection, never entirely left him. It was the Christianity that he first came to know, and nothing anywhere represented an alternative.

How else was he to conceive it? And yet, in time, through closer contact with Scripture, he matured in his understanding to the
point where he very nearly cast off its false assumptions com-
pletely. The catalyst in this change in his thinking was a certain monk, Pelagius, a man whose name came to stand for the greatest heresy in Christian doctrine until it was replaced by that of Arminius.

At the time that Augustine converted to Christianity he
was already of the persuasion that the ascetic-classical synthesis best expressed the truth so far as the good of man was concerned. He accepted the notion that the best for man consisted
in a life that aimed to liberate mind or reason from enslavement to sensuality and the fetters of subjection to bodily appetites and material concerns. Influenced by Platonist ideas, Augustine
believed it possible to practice a morality of detachment and to experience an inner freedom from the body and its desires by

Augustine – The Almost Reformer

109
means of an innate rational power. When he became a Christian
he began to recognize the erroneousness of this position, for no such rational power exists in man to lead him into the truth and right conduct. Augustine had learned the truth about sin. Man’s achievement of the good through mere rational resources was no
longer the essence of his faith. Instead, Augustine came to
understand that man needed God’s grace and initiative in salva-
tion for the whole man, for the power of sin was too great for
man to be able to overcome its ravaging effects on the whole of
life. Sin, a deep-seated perversion in the inner man, was seen by him to be the fons et origo of corruption in the life of man against which no solution was available but what God himself had provided through Christ. Only by faith in God and what He has
done did he come to know deliverance from sin’s corroding
power.

It was Pelagius who may be credited with spurring Augus-
tine on towards redefining Christianity more in terms of this central Biblical teaching concerning the priority of God’s grace for the restoration of moral health to man. Pelagius’s chief concern was to teach the reformation of morals for the benefit of reforming society. But Pelagius did not regard the problems of society to lie in some shared human corruption called sin; rather, man’s problem was bad habits which could be corrected by means of an
inner resolve to be virtuous. Once he had willingly decided to
pursue this course God would then assist him with grace and favor. Pelagius believed that man’s body was a drag on his inner spirit which was basically good. But he was also confident that
spirit in man was capable – it had the power – of constraining the body to be morally upright, perfect, in fact. Pelagius, and with him the entire Monastic-Classical world of thought, Augustine
believed, was mistaken in its optimism about man. He was com-
pelled to reevaluate this entire outlook in the light of Scripture.

What he found there was a major departure from what had until
this time held Christianity in a strong grip of error.

Augustine’s great contribution to Western Christianity lay
in a better understanding regarding the creation, including the
whole material realm and the place of the body, and the cause of 110

3 • The Monastic Retreat
evil in the world and the means to be saved from it. He denied
the prevailing dualism of body and spirit which viewed the body
as evil per se and regarded escape from it as the solution to man’s problem. He also called into question the ascetic notion of the
pursuit of perfection by means of harsh treatment of the body as the essence of holy living.

Augustine saw from Scripture that the whole world,
including matter and the body, were products of God’s creation.

Matter and body were not something evil in themselves, nor did
they cause man to do evil. God had a purpose for man in the way

He made him and therefore to treat the body as alien was false.

As Augustine wrote in The City of God: “A man’s body is no mere adornment, or external convenience; it belongs to his very
nature as a man.”39 More than this, the body as gender-defined
was also quite normal. “For Augustine sexuality was without
question part of man’s created nature. Sexuality was part of what it meant to be human.”40 The Biblical view that male and female was as God intended it and that, furthermore, the bond of marriage was basic to His purpose for man from the beginning re-
emerged as basic to Christian culture.

There is, of course, a disturbance at the center of life and
the world, but it is not caused by desires of the body as such.

Rather, the appetites of the body are themselves affected by this disturbance which Augustine recognized to be the result of a
perversion in the soul of man inherited from an original disobe-
dience of Adam in paradise. Sin has entered into man’s experi-
ence for which man alone is responsible. By an act of will he
brought upon himself the curse of disobedience. The body is
stained with the pollution of soul and has come under the power
of lust. Augustine would assert that “the corruption of the body, which weighs down the soul, is not the cause of the first sin, but its punishment. And it was not the corruptible flesh that made
the soul sinful; it was the sinful soul that made the flesh corrupt-39. Henry Bettenson, trans., Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, (New York: Penguin Books, 1972), Bk I, Ch. 13, p. 22.

40. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, p. 60.

Augustine – The Almost Reformer

111
ible.” (Bk XIV, Ch. 3, p. 551) The spirit, as was long asserted, was not contaminated by the body; rather, the spirit itself was
the reason for the contamination of the whole man, body and
soul. No solution was to be found in attempts to deny the body
its proper place in God’s creation.

Augustine saw the problem to be in the will of the crea-
ture. What he meant by the will is what today we would call the heart. An inner rebellion against God, a disobedience in the heart, is the reason for the moral perversion of man. What is more, man possesses no resources in himself to rectify this situation. His will is enslaved to the lusts of the flesh, and all attempts to free oneself by ascetic practices or rational self-control are entirely fruitless. Augustine recognized the absolute need of a
power which was unavailable to man within his own experience.

The power of God’s grace alone could restore man to moral
health. We receive this grace by faith and not by merit. Further, we do not simply need it as assistance, but as complete necessity.

Nor is faith merely for novices who leave it behind for a higher Gnosis. No Christian at any time is without the need to walk by faith and rely upon the grace and power of God alone to keep
him in the right way.

The consequences for Monasticism were significant. The
grounds for a distinction between a life of renunciation for super saints and an ordinary piety for average Christians became untenable. “In the last resort Augustine could admit only one division, that between those destined to be saved and the reprobate …

Mediocrity and perfection were no longer opposite sides of a
great divide that cut through the Christian community, creating
a two-tier Church.”41 As all were saved by grace, there was no
longer reason to claim any superior value in the ascetic practices of those who sought perfection as a distinguishing mark of the

Christian. For Augustine, the perfection of faith was a goal
which all Christians must pursue, but which in this life they may never expect to achieve. Since none can be perfect in this life, there is no claim to anything special for monks, nor should one

41. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, p. 65.

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3 • The Monastic Retreat
believe they are capable of that which lay persons were not. No
special group had a monopoly on faith or the grace of God. The
goal of redemption is to restore man to a right obedience in life, not to seek release from it. Whatever was a part of man’s life in the creation remained as much a part of it in redemption. To
deny the body its rightful place in God’s purposes, in both cre-
ation and redemption, did not make a man holy. Instead, holi-
ness was something a person must first receive as an unmerited
gift of grace. By means of it alone could a man start once again to make some progress in faith and obedience to God’s will in all areas of man’s life. Augustine had shifted the ground upon
which the Monastic ideal had sought firmly to plant itself.

Augustinianism, in contradistinction from morose asceti-
cism, encouraged an express affirmation of life. However,

Augustine refused to surrender the idea of Monasticism fully to a richer Kingdom vision for Christianity. He could not imagine
that Scripture offered, indeed enjoined, a comprehensive civilizational program, a total cultural project for man. He could not
conceive that such an outlook was basic to its gospel. For Augustine this life was good and to be received with thanksgiving. But he still believed that those who left it for the life of the monastery and the Church in general chose a better calling than those who remained in the world. Marriage was all right, but it was essentially for weaker brethren. Life in the world in general, like commerce, work, civic duties, and so forth, were acceptable, but basically necessary evils. If one could, that is, if one possessed the faith, one should leave these behind for the cloister and the pursuit of “the community of the Heavenly City.”42 Augustine rec-
ognized that not everyone possessed such faith and so must live
ordinary lives in the world.

Augustine, then, continued to adhere to the Monastic
ideal, but stripped it of its ascetic excesses. It was a life that still required the renunciation of property, the practice of strict celibacy, and some obligations to fast but not so as to cause harm to oneself. He saw it in the context of the Christianae vitae otium –

42. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, p. 79.

Augustine – The Almost Reformer

113
communal living for the pursuit of wisdom. Monasticism existed
to foster fellowship and a community of seekers after God. Why the concept of community was viewed by Augustine as only
made possible on a Monastic basis is not easy to answer. He
could not conceive of a Christian society as possible on any other basis. Augustine could not find the key to social formation and
structure in Scripture. Like all his contemporaries who derived
their ideas of society from pagan philosophy, Augustine basically adopted the Stoic ideal of friendship as the form of society most suitable for earnest Christians to live.43 Its conception centered on a retreat from the world of material interests in order to live with like-minded companions in a life of leisured detachment
and simplicity of devotion to learning and training in wisdom
and virtue. Because Augustine shrank from completely renounc-
ing Monasticism, he failed to break through the concept of a Church within a Church. He could not grasp a Church within the Kingdom of God.

43. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, p. 80.

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3 • The Monastic Retreat

4 • The Growth of Hierarchy

The Institutional Church Ideal

Monasticism, which governed much of the faith and prac-
tice of Christianity for nearly a millennium and a half, was a
major influence in shaping Western civilization. Having begun in the second century of our era, it endured throughout the Middle

Ages, the period when Christianity’s predominance in the West
was unquestioned. Although it first appeared in the Greek East,
its peculiar vision of the Christian life soon spread rapidly into the Latin West and eventually settled with consummate success
in the Frankish and Germanic lands of north-western Europe. By
the time of the High Middle Ages (1050–1300), hundreds of

Monastic houses dotted the landscape of Europe, and thousands
had renounced all in order to take refuge within their walls and practice the stringent asceticism demanded by the Monastic
ideal. The history of Christianity’s influence in the West cannot be properly understood without appreciating how Monasticism
fashioned its life and creed.

But despite Monasticism’s widespread success, it was not
the only part of Christianity’s cultural stamp to leave its imprint upon the formation of Western society. The development of the
institutional church had an impact as great as that of Monastic withdrawal, for in the West the church developed as more than
just one institution in society. When Christianity had attained religious domination, the church, as its organizational framework, emerged with a purpose to determine the shape of all
aspects of society.

It would be a mistake, however, to view the history of

Christianity in the West as indistinguishable from the history of the institutional manner in which it sought to express itself. The formation and growth of the church did not necessarily flow
from nor abide by the essential contents of the Christian faith, but quite often deviated from it. Many Christians were frequently at odds with the organized church which could appear

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4 • The Growth of Hierarchy
remote and formal, and grew to be bureaucratic and domineer-
ing. These contentions arose primarily because the idea of church in Western civilization often has had little to do with anything taught in Scripture and much to do with pagan notions of social
organization as these were conceived of by men whose aspira-
tions and ideals derived from ancient imperial Rome. If the
development of Monasticism can be traced back to pagan dualis-
tic influences that derived from the Gnostic counter-culture of the ancient world, the ideas which gave shape to the institutional church were borrowed from the other end of the spectrum, from
the dominant imperial and aristocratic ideals of institutional
order that were the social cornerstone of Roman civilization.

The church adopted, without much dissent, the governing
methods that were the hallmark of the political system of the Roman empire, and, in so doing, embraced the aristocratic and
hierarchical idea of rule that had been the ideological prop of

Roman social control throughout its history. It was when Chris-
tianity had become a legally permitted religion of the Empire at the conversion of Constantine in the early fourth century, and subsequently gained undisputed sway as the sole legitimate religion at the end of that century during the reign of Theodosius,
that it undertook major steps in this direction. In time, the
church came to be viewed as the New Rome, with all the ambi-
tions of the Old Rome, whose purpose was to govern, that is, to
rule, the “total society” of the world – the Universitas Christian-orum.1 And like the Old Rome, a governing elite – the clergy, especially the bishops – would view themselves as possessing the natural prerogatives of leadership.

An empire needs an emperor. Since the capital of an
empire determines where the emperor resides, and since Rome
was itself the venerable capital of an ancient empire, now taken over by Christianity, then by such reasoning, the bishop of Rome should be seen as the highest authority over Christendom. The
church in the West, under the influence of Rome, would mani-

1. The term is found in Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity, (New York: Atheneum, 1976).

4 • The Growth of Hierarchy

117
fest its power and prestige in the growth of a “papal monar-
chy.”2

However, before advancing this claim, two qualifications
must be admitted: First, although the church sought to fashion
itself institutionally after the image of imperial Rome, it did so at a time when an older Rome, in the traditional, secular, sense still existed. And while later emperors might view themselves, ostensibly at least, as Christians, they also saw themselves to be not so much in the church as over the church. The governing authority belonged to the secular order, not the spiritual order. The emperor was the head and all the clergy were his servants. There remained no room for a clerical emperor or pope. For many, this sentiment remained strong well into the Middle Ages. Consequently, when the church endeavored to erect a papal monarchy, a tense struggle ensued between the two sides – spiritual and secular – regarding who or what was to be the highest ruling power
over all of society. As a result, the idea of a total society ruled by the church, that is, by the clergy-bishops at the head of which
was the pope in Rome, never quite achieved the goal as it was
intended. All the same, the ideal remained an article of faith and was fiercely pursued to the end of the Middle Ages.

Second, the idea of the church as a total society ruled by
an aristocratic clerical elite, to the extent it was achieved at all, was only gradually realized over centuries. It was principally from the time of the Carolingian revolution – begun in the middle of the eighth century with the anointing of Pippin as king by pope Stephen II, but reaching its truest proportions only with the
crowning of Charlemagne as emperor on Christmas day, 800 –
that we are able to observe the widespread establishment of a
clerical class, on vast feudal estates, being granted baronial status with its attendant administrative, judicial, and political duties, and accorded the honors and wealth associated with these. Nevertheless, the seeds of this development can already be found
germinating nearly as far back as the church’s beginning. From

2. Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050–1250, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).

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4 • The Growth of Hierarchy
its early years, many, and certainly her anointed spokesmen, conceived of the church as an agency of rule and regarded universal obedience to the church as the highest ideal to which every true Christian ought to submit.

This story is far too complex and tangled to recount in so
short a space as a single chapter. Yet some attempt to explain
why the church became so politically powerful and sought to
dominate the whole of society for so many centuries must be
included in any analysis of Western culture and history. We seek to capture some sense of the early history of this development
and how it was expressed in the minds of those personalities who acted, or sought to act, in terms of the church as an agency of
rule.

Having said this, however, we must keep in mind that his-
tory alone is not sufficient to explain the vision of the church in the minds of its ruling elites. It is also necessary to consider that we are dealing with an ideology. Ideologies are rarely the products of history as such, rather they are more the attempts to give shape to history according to some mental image constructed in
advance, as something to which the actions of men and times are
made to conform as to a pre-devised plan. For “Ideology,” as

Georges Duby perceptively observes, “is not a reflection of real life, but a project for acting on it.” And when, as he also comments, it concerns the church the language that fashioned its
project was nothing less than “the rhetoric of power.”3

1› Ecclesia Universalis

Before tracing the origins of the church as a total society
ideal that took shape in the West, we shall first need to consider the ideology of society as it had reached its fullest development in 3. Georges Duby, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined, trans.

Arthur Goldhammer, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,

1982), pp. 8 & 9, 92. No understanding of the ideal which
shaped the nature of the church in the middle ages could be
complete without a careful reading of this indispensable work.

1› Ecclesia Universalis

119
the High Middle Ages; for that ideology, far from making a sud-
den appearance, was but the final out-working of a type of thinking that had taken centuries to realize. By observing its mature formulation we can better understand the direction the development of the concept took from the outset.

From the confrontation in the High Middle Ages between
the spiritual and the temporal powers regarding who should possess the highest authority over all of society, the issue of the church became an intense focus of theoretical reflection. While
no doubt it may be presented as a dispute of equal concern to
both sides, the actual conflict itself was provoked primarily by those of the clerical class (including the Monastic elites) who saw their interest in defending the papal primacy against that of the so-called secular emperor. A battle, then, was fiercely waged between pope and emperor over who held final authority to rule the total Christian society. Often this issue has been made to
appear as a struggle between church and state. Such thinking,
however, is anachronistic. The dichotomy of church and state
belongs to a later period of history. It is out of place in the medieval view of things. Instead, the dispute was over which side –
clerical or laical – of the Ecclesia Universalis had been granted the Divine right legally, morally, even politically, to regiment the life and behavior of each and every member, and to decide upon
the uses to be made of every institutional arrangement of that
society. The ideology that emerged from this contest, dominated
as it was intellectually by clerics, was fashioned primarily to serve their interests as a group and ultimately the pope, the chief cleric and the highest power and authority in all of Christendom.

Since it was the clerical class who had for centuries pos-
sessed a monopoly of learning, we should not be surprised to
find that it was they who first conceived of the church as an ideal of authority and power that favored their interests as a ruling
order. At the same time, the basic features of that learning came from the classical world which, since the days of Origen and

Clement in the late second and early third centuries, had continued to shape the thinking of those who attained leadership in the churches. By far the most influential pagan mind was Plato, but

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4 • The Growth of Hierarchy
primarily as he was interpreted through the lenses of Neopla-
tonism.4 Down to and including the High Middle Ages it was

Neoplatonism that influenced the way men thought of the
church along with the gradations of authority and power that
were visualized to exist within it. While much came from Scrip-
ture when men spoke formally concerning the church, substan-
tive thinking was already shaped for the most part by a cosmic
vision of order thought up on a Neoplatonic basis. Thus, the
concept of the church did not derive so much from Scripture as
from a pagan philosophy that sought to define the total nature of all existence and the relationship of higher beings to lower
beings in a descending order of arrangement. Along with these
metaphysical premises an idea of authority was posited to con-
form to the same essential hierarchical structure. To be sure,
under Christian influence, the language of this philosophical perspective underwent a transformation, thereby adapting it to cer-
tain Scriptural principles. Nevertheless, the basic philosophical idea remained. We can observe the basic traits in this outlook
from various statements in one of the most seminal studies on
this period – Otto Gierke’s Political Theories of the Middle Ages.

Gierke noted that all thinking on the nature of society, on
the church in particular, began from a reflection on the Whole
and descended to the Part which was conceived of as a derivative of the Whole. Every matter was shaped within the framework of
a “divinely ordered Universe” from which followed the notion

“of a divinely instituted Harmony which pervades the Universal

Whole and ever y part thereof. To every Being is assigned its
place in that Whole, and to every link between Beings corre-
sponds a divine decree.”5 Such philosophical thinking is bound

4. See, David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought; second edition, ed. D. E. Luscombe and C.N.L. Brooke, (London:

Longman, 1991), pp. 18, 27, 28. It is not actually until the 13th centur y that Plato was replaced by Aristotle as the dominant
pagan mind in the thinking of medieval men, and only then after
considerable “official” opposition had finally been overcome.

5. Otto Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Ages, trans. F. W.

Maitland, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) p. 8.

1› Ecclesia Universalis

121
to stress the Oneness of all things. Hence, Gierke comments,

“Now the Constitutive Principle of the Universe is in the first
place Unity.” Unity, then, was the dominant theme, unity not
merely in mind, but unity of organization, in law, in govern-
ment, indeed in every department of social life. Such unity determined the nature of the Ecclesia Universalis regardless of the particular part played by each individual and each communal
type. Unity in every respect was the predominate ideal of the
church. Everything must be subordinated “to the aim and object
of…the Principle of Unity.” Whatever threatened unity was
viewed as the worst of evils. Since God is One, therefore the
world, as a perfect reflection of the Oneness of the being of God, must be One. The microcosm of the world mirrors the macrocosm of God who created it, and every part of the world is a further microcosm of the macrocosm of the world itself. All
plurality must reflect the harmony of the Divine Reason which
permeates the Universe.6

Of course, the world, of man’s life especially, is many-
sided and diverse. In particular, several orders or classes of men exist in society and each has its own special function to perform.

Besides unity, then, there exists plurality. But in the Christian-Platonic philosophical perspective unity takes priority over plurality. “Everywhere the One comes before the Many.” More to
the point, “all Order consists in the subordination of Plurality to Unity ( ordinatio ad unum), and never and nowhere can a purpose that is common to Many be effectual unless the One rules
over the Many and directs the Many to the goal.”7

These twin notions of Unity and Subordination underlie
the concept of the church as a total society in the medieval mind.

Nowhere was this more true than in the social arrangement of
mankind. Every particular must find its goal and norm in the service it renders to the ruling unity. This unity is the church. In order to achieve its aim it must possess one governing authority.

But it is precisely at this point that matters become complicated, 6. Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Ages, p. 9.

7. Gierke, p. 9.

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4 • The Growth of Hierarchy
for running through this twofold principle of unity and subordi-
nation is a more pervasive duality. It, too, would bear upon the way medieval men viewed the organizational nature of their society as well as the locus of rule or government that would insure that unity took priority over plurality. And it bore in particular upon the way the clerical class understood its own place in the
imagined hierarchy.

This prevalent duality was that between Heaven and Earth.

In medieval thinking this entailed the distinction between the
realm over which God rules and the realm over which man rules.

To be sure, medieval man, because his thinking was influenced
by Scripture, thought of God as the ruler over all things, of heaven and earth alike. God was the universal monarch over the
whole of creation. Once again, Gierke states, “The Middle Age
regards the Universe itself as a single realm and God as its Monarch. God therefore is the true Monarch, the one Head and
motive principle of the ecclesiastical and political society which comprises all Mankind.”8 But the idea of how God rules was
attached to concepts borrowed from pagan antiquity. It is not
through His Word and Spirit that God rules, but through analo-
gous institutions in the earthly realm. God rules by conferring
rule on a like human monarch. Such an earthly ruler stands in the place of God and exercises His authority over the whole of
society in an analogy of God’s rule over the whole of creation.

Here we have what Walter Ullmann termed the “descending
thesis of government.”9 It was a theocratic theory in which all
power and authority was granted directly to a single officer who was responsible to God alone and all others were placed in
unquestioned subjection to his authority.

Thus, while God ruled over everything, His rule over the
lower order of the world was indirect. Here He bestowed His
rule on a particular individual who acted in His place over the
affairs of men. Consequently, “there was,” says Gierke, “a ten-

8. Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Ages, p. 30.

9. Walter Ullmann, A History of Political Thought: The Middle Ages, (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1965), p. 13.

1› Ecclesia Universalis

123
dency to exalt the person of the Ruler. In his own proper person he was thought of as the wielder of an authority that came to
him from without and from above. He was set over and against
the body whereof the leadership had been entrusted to him. He
was raised above and beyond the Community.”10 The earthly
monarch stood in the place of God and was responsible to no
one but God. Furthermore, whatever he decided or decreed was
to be obeyed with unquestioned devotion as if one were obeying

God directly. In other words, a chain of command existed and
the thought that man should obey God by believing and obeying

His Word played almost no role in the medieval theory of rule.

Man was obedient if he submitted to the institutional arrange-
ments of society and to the persons or person who occupied
positions of power at the top.

In such a scheme there could be only one person who
occupied the supreme power to rule the “total society” in God’s
place. As there was one monarch in heaven, so there could be
but one monarch, as the incarnation of Divine power and
authority, on earth.

It is at this point that a serious problem arises. For to
whom, or to what institution, was such absolute rule to be
granted? We can appreciate the difficulty involved only when we
consider further the two-sided nature of man’s existence in the
world. For, “along with this idea of a single Community com-
prehensive of Mankind, the severance of this Community
between two organized Orders of Life, the spiritual and temporal, is accepted by the Middle Age as an eternal counsel of God.”11 Here we find the distinctions, so pervasive in medieval
thinking, between sacred and secular, clergy and laity, priest and king, sacerdotium and regnum, internal and external order. Both are aspects of the Ecclesia Universalis. Together they make up the total order of society. There was a third order, the peasantry, but they did not count all that much. They certainly played no
role in the conception of rule.12 That was solely a prerogative of 10. Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Ages, pp. 33 & 34.

11. Gierke, p. 10.

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4 • The Growth of Hierarchy
the other two orders (peasants were not even considered a part
of the laity or the secular order). But the mere fact of these two orders created a problem for the ideal of unity, for upon which
order was the higher rule conferred? From which order came the monarch to be God’s plenipotentiary on earth? He could only come from one. Consequently, one order or the other received
the primacy over the total Christian society. In the medieval
mind all other social issues and problems turned upon this most
crucial of questions.

While the clerical class accepted the firm distinction
between the two orders, the hierocratic logic insisted that the
spiritual order be set over the temporal order, and that the head of the spiritual order, the pope, stood as God’s earthly monarch.

From God, through the pope, through the church-spiritual,
through the church-temporal, was the line of the descent of
authority and power to be properly traced. In this way unity was assured. This was God’s eternal arrangement, so it was maintained, for the social life of man.

Such, then, was the ideology of the church as it came to
shape Western civilization. It was conceived of as an imperium or a total governmental order, a top-down society. Only a pervasive sense of Christian morality and charity prevented it from exercis-ing complete totalitarian powers. Furthermore, the rise of feu-
dalism as a system of mutual obligations and rights worked as an effective check against the total centralization of power. The
reality did not often resemble the theory. The temporal power,
represented by the emperor-idea, which took its origins in the
medieval west from the crowning of Charlemagne, but which
went even further back to Constantine, always acted as a brake, a counter-ideology, to the notion of the priority of the spiritual 12. Duby, The Three Orders. “…first, there were those in possession of ‘authority,’ responsible for waging spiritual warfare; second, possession of ‘power,’ responsible for waging temporal warfare;
and third, all those who did not carry the sword, the emblem of
power, and yet did not pray, whose only right was to keep silent, and whose only duty was to obey, passive and abject: the ‘serfs’

or ‘slaves’ – servi.” (p. 80)

2› The Church to Constantine, 2nd & 3rd Centuries.

125
order over the temporal order. In time, many would even reverse
their relationship and claim the supremacy of the secular authority over the total society. That claim would be given a sinister twist when the humanistic aspect of thought in medieval thinking broke free from its synthesis with Christianity and began to chart the course of Renaissance and, eventually, of Enlightenment. Still, for centuries the church idea was rooted in the
attempt to establish an institutional arrangement in which clerical authority was the source of order, and obedience to the
church meant submission to the bishops, especially to Rome and
the pope.

2› The Church to Constantine, 2nd & 3rd Centuries.

The formation of the church-idea cannot be studied like
other doctrinal issues that confronted Christianity in the early centuries of its existence. For instance, unlike the great controversies surrounding the doctrine of the Trinity or the two
natures of Christ, no life and death battles were fought over the doctrine of the church in terms of its institutional organization.

Consequently, no significant body of writing about the church
in any specific sense came into existence as a permanent record of the thinking of the early centuries on the nature of its institutional idea. At best, we can piece together a notion of the church primarily from those who occupied prominent positions in it and
who sought to give expression to a principle of authority
thought to be inseparable from it.

One thing is certain: Christianity, everywhere it spread in
the early years of its existence, can be seen to have taken shape in some type of church community manifesting a principle of leadership and authority, with organized and regularized forms of
assembly and worship. Much of what is known in this respect
derives from the post-Constantinian years and emerges from
those great city churches that were most involved with the doc-
trinal and moral issues of the day, churches like Alexandria, Antioch, Carthage, Rome, and eventually Constantinople. Others

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4 • The Growth of Hierarchy
come into view from time to time, but with less frequency and
overall historical significance. Even so, what the men of these
early centuries thought about the idea of church can be grasped
not so much from any specific teaching or writing on the subject as by observing what procedures they followed and what administrative practices they applied. The concept of the church, which only solidified ideologically in men’s minds when Christianity
became the dominate religion of the Roman Empire, was more
the product of how the church actually functioned than of it ever having derived from a carefully thought-out doctrinal (i.e.,

Scriptural) point of view.

Though much of what is known of the structure and orga-
nization of the church is post-Constantinian, nevertheless it can be said that earlier traces of the formation of the church are not altogether lacking. This is apparent from roughly the mid-second century when information about the church and its activities, following the apostolic period, first emerges into the light of history. Almost as soon as we can study anything with some depth
the church already appears pretty much as it will remain for the next several centuries. That is, the institutional structure of the church, wherever we meet with it, looks to be a settled affair and, with the exception of heretical counter-churches, especially those of the Marcionite persuasion, almost no objection is voiced concerning whether or not the church is properly following Biblical direction. Everywhere it is assumed to be so. The only problem
confronting the church was the question of the true church versus the false church as these were held to exist where orthodoxy and proper episcopal authority were maintained or subverted by
heresy.

In the second and third centuries, the church did face the
problem of persecution from the pagan Roman world, particu-
larly from its ruling elites, and as a result experienced a difficult crisis in maintaining itself in any institutional guise whatsoever.

No doubt, the experience of persecution helped to contribute to
an idea of the church. The pressure of these events would have
convinced many that in order to survive it was necessary to band together and rally to some leader who could defend the sub-2› The Church to Constantine, 2nd & 3rd Centuries.

127
stance of the faith before the hostile ruling powers. When the
churches finally did emerge from this experience the authority of the bishop as the organized leader was considerably enhanced.

However, the rule of the bishop was not the product of
this experience alone. It had already arisen as the principal form of rule in the churches which looked to the example of the secular idea of authority in the ancient world of Rome in general.

Already in the second century, before persecution became an
official response to the spread of Christianity, the church in every location had begun to pattern itself after the administrative
example of Roman governing practice. In the words of A.H.M.

Jones, eminent scholar of late Roman antiquity, “The basic orga-
nization of the church had been formed long before the Great

Persecution. Each Christian community, or church in the nar-
rower sense, was ruled by a bishop whose powers were auto-
cratic.” Furthermore, as we shall see, “The church in the
ecclesiastical organization normally corresponded to the city in the secular administrative scheme.”13 The seeds of a hierarchical church formation were planted early. Explaining the causes,
however, poses no small difficulties.

It is clear from the pages of the New Testament that the
evangelistic work of the apostles in the mid-first century was
geared to the founding of churches in various locations.

Churches were often described by the name of the city where
they were begun: Corinth, Ephesus, Rome. But, not always! It is
difficult, for example, to know exactly where the Galatian
churches were located. And writers like James or John (I, II, III) are even less clear about whom they were addressing. Still, it
seems evident that the goal of the spread of the gospel was to
plant churches. We are even given to understand that such
churches were to exhibit certain characteristics of organization, including a principle of leadership, so as to present an effective witness and to insure proper worship and instruction in Scripture.

13. A.H.M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284–602, Vol. II, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), pp. 874 & 875.

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4 • The Growth of Hierarchy

A major feature of modern scholarship regarding this phe-
nomenon has been to aver that the early church was initially a
type of Jewish synagogue with oversight by a group of elders.

Perhaps, so. It does not imply, however, that the church thought it could organize on just any basis. The apostles were keen to
provide authoritative direction in the matter of the institution of the church. They knew that their own time was limited but that
the church would last until the end of history. They were, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, intent on leaving an organization in existence that, by God’s grace, would continue to multi-
ply and be transmitted to whatever future generations God had
purposed to bring into existence. That the church assumed a
permanent, institutional form only as a result of a changed
expectation by primitive believers in the immediate return of

Christ and the eschatological end of the world is a fancy of the modern critical imagination.

When we leave the New Testament era we encounter a
nearly sixty-year evidence gap referred to as the sub-apostolic
period. It extends from the Jewish uprising and destruction of

Jerusalem in 70 AD to the second Jewish war and destruction of

Jerusalem in 135 AD.14 When we emerge on the other side we
begin to discern the lineaments of a church order that are essentially what will develop during the next several centuries. That is, we discover the existence of well-organized gatherings run by a
clerical order over which the bishop, as the principal leader, possessed vast power. Under the bishops, one finds presbyters and deacons as a distinct sub-class of a clerical system that is beginning to look like a professional group set apart from the laity as a whole. It is weak by comparison with what it will become, but an unmistakable change has occurred.

One of the chief reasons for this transformation was a shift
in the composition of the members of the church from being
predominately Jewish-Christian in character to almost exclusively Gentile-Christian. This alteration also marked a change in the
cultural thought-patterns that influenced the vision of the nature of the faith and especially the meaning of Scripture as a total covenant word. For with the transmission of Christianity to a larger 2› The Church to Constantine, 2nd & 3rd Centuries.

129

Gentile world there entered into the thinking of many church-
men much that reflected the older pagan cultural milieu. This
was especially evident in the kind of church-idea that began to
emerge. The church began to assume an organizational form
that was patterned on the type found in the secular Roman
world. It reflected the belief in a natural ruling aristocracy as a top-down principle of command and control. Gradually the
bishop became less a pastor or minister, a servant of the church, and more a bureaucratic voice of power. This development was
uneven and not entirely without some warrant in the face of
attacks coming from outside the community of the faith. How-
ever, it would not be accurate to claim that the church developed its system of government solely in response to external pressure.

In the area of organization certain ideas, those which held that Roman governing methods were the best given their success in
the secular empire over which Rome ruled, were too ingrained
and taken for granted in the absence of a cogent insightful
understanding of Scripture.

14. There seems to be a singular exception in this case. As Elaine Pagels indicates, a letter is attributed to a cer tain Clement

(Bishop of Rome, c.90–100) who, in writing to the Corinthians,
denounces them for having removed certain of their leaders from
office. In Clement’s eyes this is “‘a rebellion’ and [he] insists that the deposed leaders be restored to their authority.” For Clement, rebellion against leaders in the church is rebellion against God.

Why so? Pagels gives the following explanation: “Clement argues
that God …alone rules all things: he is the lord and master whom all must obey…. But how is God’s rule actually administered?

…God, he says, delegates his ‘authority to reign’ to ‘rulers and leaders on earth.’ Who are the designated r ulers? Clement
answers that they are bishops, priests, and deacons. Whoever
refuses to ‘bow the neck’ and obey the church leaders is guilty of insubordination against the divine master himself.” She goes on
to claim that in this letter for the first time “we find here an argument for dividing the Christian community between ‘the clergy’

and ‘the laity.’ The Church is to be organized in terms of a strict order of superiors and subordinates.” See, Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), pp. 34, 35.

Segments include references to Clemens Romanus, I Clement 3.3

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4 • The Growth of Hierarchy

To appreciate better why the church in the Gentile com-
munities developed as it did we need to understand something
of the broader society into which Christianity entered. Roman
society in the period of late antiquity (from about AD 200 and
even earlier) was increasingly an urban society. The vast majority of the population lived in major city centers which at this time were swelling in numbers. A movement from the countryside to
the city had been going on for some time, but in this period
increased substantially.

It is in this urban context that Christianity first took hold
and swiftly spread. It was especially among the new immigrants,
who were often poor and propertyless, that Christianity initially made rapid gains. Many of these people were par t of the
unplaced and displaced segments of a social order that was
undergoing tremendous upheaval. Rome had always been an
aristocratically dominated society. It continued this way well into late antiquity. However, since the reorganization under Augustus, the participation of not only the plebes but the patricians in the governing affairs of the empire declined and was replaced primarily by a permanent bureaucracy appointed by and solely
responsible to the emperor. At the same time that changes were
taking place politically, there was also a widespread shift in economic conditions. As fewer people could directly benefit from
the cultural heritage of Rome, so too, for many, particularly the traditional small landholders, the means of livelihood became
impossible to sustain. Wealth moved increasingly in the direction of the great estates, and a widening gulf opened up between the
rich few and the many poor. This mass movement to the cities
was for some a desperate attempt to find a new life in the grow-
ing commercial enterprise zones and mercantile world that were
fast becoming the chief characteristics of the great urban centers.

The growth of the cities produced a large underclass, one
that was rootless and lacking in a sense of traditional community or close ties of family and friendship. From a strictly sociological viewpoint, Christianity attracted great numbers of these people
precisely because it filled this void. It offered a new sense of community and attachment. It would be improper, however, to infer

2› The Church to Constantine, 2nd & 3rd Centuries.

131
that this was the only reason that Christianity gained many con-
verts among these classes. Throughout histor y mankind has
manifested a strong desire for religious certainty and some sort of salvation, and Christianity’s strength undoubtedly lay in the truth in contrast to the pagan religions of old Greece and Rome.

At the same time, it contributed a new idea of community. It
especially ripened in the urban centers as church, for it was in the cities that the characteristics of the church concept began to take shape.

In various locations these churches found themselves the
objects of hatred and suspicion, sometimes from a claque of the
people, at other times from public officials who regarded the
new faith as undermining civic morale and traditional values.

Often the church in a city was viewed as a dissident society
against which actions needed to be taken to halt its expansion
and harmful influence. The church needed to assuage hostility
against itself. It needed a spokesman who could deal with the
unfriendly authorities and who could articulate the faith in clear and concise terms. Naturally, that person was almost always the
local bishop. Out of this experience, a traditional Roman custom that carried over into the church community acquired new life,
the tradition of dependence on a great man – a patronus – who could intervene with the government to secure benefits which
the ordinary subject could not hope to get on his own. In turn,
the patron would expect loyalty and devotion to his status and
power. Thus, as Judith Herrin writes, “From this humble begin-
ning as the nominee of a particular community, the position of
bishop developed into a more exalted one, with special rank in
the hierarchy of the whole community of Christians.”15

Thus, a direction was set early. In time the bishop assumed
still greater prominence. Eventually, “The communal nature of

Christian groups … was replaced … by a ranked society … [with]

various stages of office advancing to the episcopacy.” At the
same time, the church began to organize itself in imitation of the 15. Judith Herrin, The Formation of Christendom, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 58.

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4 • The Growth of Hierarchy
secular government. That is, “this urban and episcopal character created an ecclesiastical government in parallel with the secular one….”16 Bishops took charge of city and provincial territory
which was coextensive with that of the secular authorities. They came to have jurisdiction over a diocese in which many churches were established. During the course of this development the
nature of the bishop’s task changed from that of pastor over a
particular congregation to that of administrator of a district. This idea of the bishop as an administrator offered a greater appeal to the governing and aristocratic classes of the Roman world and
thereby brought more members of them into the church, along
with their wealth. When this occurred the church began slowly,
but ineluctably, to acquire landed property together with its rev-enue. This trend brought the church into greater prominence
politically, for its trained clergy were beginning to appear as useful for more than just pastoral duties. The church began to take an interest in the preservation of ancient patterns of social organization, for it reflected those patterns itself.

At first, the church used its growing wealth for ostensibly
charitable and welfare purposes. At this early period, the church would not have accepted the need for rich adornments and
splendid church buildings. Its wealth must be used to assist the poor, the suffering, the helpless. Its success in this endeavor was another major reason for its rapid increase in numbers and influence. Still, the method of organization that gained sway would
grow to manifest a different purpose from its original aim to
spread the gospel, convert the heathen and perform works of
mercy. Herrin notes, “Due to its urban environment and admin-
istrative responsibilities, the episcopal church was destined…to grow further and further away from the Christian teaching of
poverty and the denial of worldly goods. It became more like an
additional arm of secular administration….”17 Much of this lay
in the future, but already the second, and particularly the third, centur y saw movement in this direction on a scale, perhaps,
greater than we may imagine.

16. Herrin, The Formation of Christendom, p. 59.

2› The Church to Constantine, 2nd & 3rd Centuries.

133

While a strong leader and an eloquent spokesman, around
whom the faithful could rally in the face of opposition from the pagan world, helped make possible a type of church organization
that tended to concentrate power and authority at the top with
the bishop, while the growing administrative requirements of a
church, which began to acquire property in land and to govern territories in which many small churches resided, also worked to elevate the status not only of the bishop but of a growing clerical professional class, still another contributing factor in the development of a hierarchical church was the widespread influence of

Gnosticism.

We have already had occasion to speak of Gnosticism in
the previous chapter with respect to the rise of Monasticism. No less important is the direct bearing that Gnosticism had upon the nature of the organized church as it became necessar y for
churches in various areas to respond to the Gnostic threat. Gnosticism was a ver y seductive heresy, which those not well-
grounded in Scripture could easily be tempted to follow. It was
clever in its use of Scripture and offered a type of redemption for many who found themselves cut loose from their traditional
moorings. Gnostic communities often competed with the church
for the loyalty and devotion of many people so affected. Within
the church they competed against the bishops for the loyalty of
the members, until they were driven out. The churches found
themselves in a quandary as to how to deal with this threat.

Instead of combating this heresy by developing an effec-
tive argument grounded in Scripture, the churches responded by
declaring the problem to be one of the proper recognition of the authority of the church. Those who wandered off to follow after
heresy were leaving their obedience to the true church. But the
authority of the church was the authority of its local bishop.

Thus, the two were equated, and the bishop became the focus of

17. Herrin, The Formation of Christendom, p. 59. We ought to question, of course, whether the “Christian teaching” on “poverty”

and “worldly goods” is Scripturally accurate or merely reflects
pagan ascetic notions. Much of what passed for Christian teach-
ing in this period was quite suffused with un-Biblical influences.

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4 • The Growth of Hierarchy
unity in doctrinal matters. The argument, then, was that in order to counter false Gnostic thought Christians needed to maintain
unity with the true bishop and his authority in doctrine. By such reasoning, the earlier notion that the bishop was God’s representative on earth acquired even greater weight. His authority was

God’s authority, and submission to his proper authority was
equivalent to submission to the truth. To bolster this idea
another notion was advanced. The bishop possessed his author-
ity by reason of having inherited it from the apostles. He suc-
ceeded to the place of authority in the location where they had
founded it. As the apostles had received their authority originally from Christ, so those who succeeded them, who sat in their
seats, derived their authority from them. Only by maintaining
unity with a bishop in his inherited office was the church assured of being the true church.

The important element in this line of reasoning is that the
notion of inherited authority takes its place alongside that of Scripture itself. Here was introduced the concept of tradition that rose to equal the Bible as authority for the church. Tradition originally meant succession to apostolic authority. This authority was exactly the same as that of the apostles. In Chadwick’s
description we see something of what this implied: “The succes-
sion argument carried the implication that the teaching given by the contemporary bishop of, say, Rome or Antioch was in all
respects identical with that of the apostles.”18 The bishops of
these and other churches were in possession of the exact same
authority the apostles themselves possessed during their time on earth. Their words carried the same weight and required the
same obedience as that of the apostles.

At first, what they proclaimed generally followed Scrip-
ture, so there was no basic conflict between what the apostles
said and what a bishop said on his own. But there was nothing in the succession theory to prevent him from adding his own doctrinal words to those of the apostles when it seemed suitable and 18. Henry Chadwick, The Early Church, (Penguin Books, 1990), p.

42.

2› The Church to Constantine, 2nd & 3rd Centuries.

135
then claiming obedience to these to be the mark of the true
church! If the bishop’s authority is as direct from God as was
that of the apostles, the idea of a closed canon of Scripture is readily diminished in his thinking and speaking. In response to
the need to counter the widespread influence of Gnostic ideas a
concept of authority in the church was introduced which in time
would rival and even replace that of Scripture.

An important factor that contributed to this development,
one that also emerged from the sub-apostolic period, was the
need the church felt to distinguish and separate itself from Judaism to which it seemed related in the eyes of many. As both were based upon a large portion of the same Scripture, Christianity
was seen as a mere splinter from Jewish thought and religion. As Pelikan indicates, “What was offensive about Christianity in the eyes of Gentiles was, to a considerable extent, what it had inherited from Judaism.”19 To the Roman governing authorities the

Jewish devotion to the law of Moses was viewed as a source of
political trouble, the reason for their persistent rebellion against imperial control. Since Christianity reverenced these writings as well, it was viewed with equal suspicion. Christians were concerned, then, that they not be viewed as a Jewish sect.

While Christians and Jews shared a portion of Scripture,
their respective approaches to it were entirely different. For,
besides the Old Testament, Christians had the New Testament,
which fundamentally altered their understanding of the Old Tes-
tament Scriptures. They saw it as a grand prophecy of the com-
ing of Jesus Christ, who was the fulfillment of all that it taught, a view vehemently rejected by pious Jews. Since the Christians presented a threat to the Jewish faith (and to Jewish nationalism)

with these claims, and since they were suspect by the Roman
authorities, Jewish communities everywhere, but especially in the east, did much to stir up trouble for the church. And because the Jews possessed such hatred for the claims of Christ and Christianity, many Gentile believers were filled with no little revulsion 19. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–

600), (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 14.

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4 • The Growth of Hierarchy
for Jews. Many of the writings of the early apologists contain
acrimonious criticism of Jewish ideas and religious beliefs.

This confrontation between Jews and Christians had, at
least for Christians, serious repercussions for the authority of Scripture, particularly the Old Testament. Not wanting to be
identified with Judaism, and thinking to bolster their assault on Jewish unbelief and, at the same time, appeal more favorably to
the pagan mind, Christians went to considerable lengths to deny
the validity of the Mosaic law in its totality. Rather than seeing how the authority of Moses carries over into the New Testament era which began with the apostles, the church instead originated a seriously erroneous doctrine, one that has afflicted it for nearly two thousand years. It rejected the validity and authority of the law in Scripture, consequently denying that Scripture has any
sense of law at all. The effect was a weakening of the authority of Scripture in general. The church had to construct a total outlook on life from the New Testament alone, particularly from the
writings of the apostles. Although the church did retain a formal authority for the Old Testament, quite often it interpreted its
content essentially allegorically, or, less seriously, typologically.

Rarely, however, did it view its content covenantally.

When the problem of authority began to crop up in the
church during the second and third centuries, many, not being
able to rely upon the total authority of Scripture as a self-sufficient covenant word, gave credence to the notion of the authority of the church in general, and soon the authority of the bishop in particular. The way was opened to an authority for the church
other than God’s word. “Whenever antinomianism abounds in
history,” as Rushdoony comments, “the church’s power is vastly
enhanced.”20 Coupled with the adoption of Greek philosophical
concepts as a means to demonstrate the truths of revelation and
convince pagan Gentiles of the superiority of Christianity, it
becomes understandable why the church lost its Scriptural moor-
ings and developed in the West as a total society ideal, inwardly 20. Rousas John Rushdoony, Law and Society, Vol. II of the Institutes of Biblical Law, (Vallecito: Ross House Books, 1982), p. 334.

2› The Church to Constantine, 2nd & 3rd Centuries.

137
formed as a Monastic culture but outwardly ruled by a clerical
elite. In time the church would seek to take over the older

Roman imperial vision of a unified and top-down control.

Although the early church set aside the validity of the law
in order to distance itself from Judaism, it did retain from the Old Testament the idea of the priesthood, that also remained a part of the Jewish heritage. In the Old Testament the Levitical
priesthood was a special office conferred upon Aaron and his
male descendants. They alone were endowed with the privilege
of approaching the holy sanctuary and offering sacrifices. They, and their Levitical relatives, were in charge of instructing the people in the lawful requirements for life and worship. The priest necessarily occupied, at least in later thinking, both Jewish and Christian, a ranked status, one that was not only superior in the social sense, but also stood higher in terms of direct communion with God. The people could not expect to achieve the same
degree of intimacy and contact. As the priesthood in the Old

Testament mediated between God and His people so, too, the
bishop, as the New Testament equivalent of the Levitical priest, must mediate for the people.

This thinking misunderstood the special limited place of
the Aaronic priesthood in redemptive histor y. It was only to
serve in a temporary capacity until the final priest, Jesus Christ, should come and perfectly accomplish God’s purposes for His
people. Moreover, the priesthood, while it required a special
office under the older testamental system of redemption, was not ultimately what God had intended. For Moses, in transcribing

God’s own words, declares to Israel as a whole – “…you will be
for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Ex. 19:6) But it is the New Testament church in particular for whom the priesthood covenant ( holy nation) becomes especially realized. As Peter wrote, speaking of the whole church, “you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood….” (I Pet. 2:5) The whole church is a priesthood, and
every member a priest. There is no longer a special office to be designated by the term priest. Consequently, no mediatorial role between God and the people belongs any longer to a special

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4 • The Growth of Hierarchy
human agent. The only mediator is Christ in heaven. And only

His word and Spirit rule the life and faith of the believer.

But the early church adopted the notion of the Levitical
priesthood, in its strictly Old Testament sense, in order to give greater prominence to the special place and authority of the
bishop. No better example of this sort of thinking could perhaps be found in the pre-Constantinian church than in the writings of Cyprian, bishop of Carthage (circa 248–258), who was one of
the earliest to speak of the Christian clergy as if it was a Levitical priesthood. The bishop was above the people and through him

God imparted His grace to the church. There could be no
church without a designated bishop, and no church could
appoint its own bishop.21 Only other bishops could elect a fel-
low bishop. No bishop not properly ordained can be legitimate
and thus no church without a properly ordained bishop is a true
church. Everything began to turn on the authenticity of the
bishop. As the bishop was God’s special priest, so no real contact with God and with his salvation was possible apart from submission to His priest. The bishop alone interpreted the Scriptures; he alone could administer the sacraments. In short, “The bishop
is in the church, and the church is in the bishop.” The final purpose of the bishop is to insure unity and to guarantee institu-
tional ecclesiastical integrity. The result of this doctrinal
development was to exalt the church institution and its clergy, to

“limit God’s redemptive and sanctifying workings in history to
the institution.”22 All other areas of life – the family, the state, 21. Cyprian writes: “Hence you should know that the bishop is in the Church, and the Church in the bishop, and that if anyone is
not with the bishop he is not in the Church; and that those peo-
ple are vainly beguiling themselves who, not being at peace with the priests of God, creep up stealthily, and trust by underhand
means to enter into communion with certain persons: seeing that
the Church is catholic and one, and may not be sundered or
divided, but should assuredly be kept together and united by the glue which is the mutual adherence of the priest.” Henry Bettenson, ed., The Early Christian Fathers: A Selection from the Writings of the Fathers from St. Clement of Rome to St. Athanasius, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 266.

3› The Constantinian Revolution

139
work, technology, learning – except where they came within the
pur view of the institution of the church and the needs of its
clergy, were all but excluded from any broader implication for
covenant and dominion service under God.

Cyprian, however, was no innovator. His thinking was
shared by others. What is more, Cyprian, like his fellow bishops, saw the existence of bishops as a collectivity. As yet an emperor figure or supreme priest was missing. However, in the line of apostolic succession a special niche was already being carved out for Rome. For the church there was founded by the greatest of
apostles, Peter and Paul. To the extent that they obtained pri-
macy over the other apostles, this particular church acquired a
preeminent position. Though this notion was already expressed
in the second and third centuries it is dealt with more properly in the post-Constantinian context.

3› The Constantinian Revolution

The rise to power of Constantine as emperor (307–337) of

Rome brought about a dramatic change in the status of Chris-
tianity within the empire. The nature and extent of this transformation is far more apparent to us today than to those who lived
through it, for we are in a far better position to understand the impact of the legalization of Christianity and what it has meant for the development of Western civilization. Paul Johnson does
not exaggerate when he asserts: “The so-called ‘Edict of Milan’, by which the Roman Empire reversed its policy of hostility to

Christianity and accorded it full legal recognition was one of the decisive events in world history.”23

At the time, all that the church understood was that it was
to be no longer officially persecuted for the faith it practiced.

Few could guess that Constantine intended not simply to permit
one more religious sect the same freedom accorded to dozens of

22. Rushdoony, Law and Society, pp. 340 & 342.

23. Johnson, A History of Christianity, p. 67.

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4 • The Growth of Hierarchy
others, openly to practice its worship so long as it remained obedient to Roman authority, but to found the Roman empire upon
an altogether new and vibrant religion. The pagan gods had all
but lost their grip upon the heathen world, and the vision of Rome that was the chief feature of their religious devotion was losing its moral hold on the consciences of its citizenry. Constantine wanted earnestly to redefine the idea of Rome in terms of a religious faith that was alive and on the move, not dead and
decaying. In his eyes, Christianity was that religion. It was not enough merely to legalize it; he was determined to identify it as the official policy of the empire and to merge the church with
the imperial system of rule, with himself as its head and monarch.

Christianity was about to become a state religion. It is this
remarkable change in the circumstances of the church that gives

Johnson’s remark such poignancy.

However, while this change in status was not expected –
certainly not in the sense that Christianity was to be given standing as the official religion of Rome – it was soon embraced by
many Christian writers with nearly unbounded enthusiasm. It
brought about a major theological shift in Christian thinking
about Rome and a transformed ideological outlook regarding
the society of which it was now a part. Christianity had been
viewed by official Rome as an outcast, if not an outlaw, religious faith, and Christians had perceived themselves as in perpetual
opposition to pagan Rome, the product of Satan and therefore
evil, the Beast of the book of Revelation. The Beast sought only to devour the church and destroy the faith. Persecution in this
life was all that Christians could expect. Furthermore, Christians could not be a part of the official Roman world, for service to

Rome required attendance at public functions and participation
in pagan religious ceremonies which only profaned a person’s
faith. One had to swear undying devotion to Rome. Such an
oath would place a person’s commitment to Christ in dire jeop-
ardy, for Rome was jealous of its divine prerogatives. Christ and Rome could not both be Lord and master. No compromise was
conceivable. There could be no mixture of Christianity with

Rome in any sense other than to hope for peace from the tyranny

3› The Constantinian Revolution

141
of its persecuting authorities and emperors.

However, when Constantine fundamentally transformed
the relationship between Christianity and Rome, he concurrently
provoked a refashioning of the idea of Rome in Christian think-
ing. For with the passing of persecution many were quick to
change their minds about Rome. Although Christianity did not
become the enforced official religion, and paganism outlawed,
until the end of the century during the reign of Theodosius, nevertheless a great change in viewpoint had already been brought
about under Constantine. Rome was now given a more favorable
place in Christians’ estimation. The pax Augusta in particular was seen more positively as having “an important place in the
divine plan of salvation.”24 No longer was the empire simply the Beast and therefore merely the work of Satan. Instead, it received a new theological definition as belonging to God’s purposes for
the world and for Christianity especially. The thought emerged
that Rome and the Church did not constitute implacable ene-
mies, but were two sides of the same reality, and therefore
should be part of the same polity. A new vision of the Church, combined with the older Roman imperial ideal as the product of
the divine plan for history, took shape and gave impetus to the
concept of the Church as a total governing society and God’s
intended agency for world-dominion.

The numbers grew rapidly of those who were captivated
by this change in outlook. Fulsome praises were offered not only for the abrupt turnabout in circumstances of those who professed the faith, but more significantly for a Christianity redefined as the new imperial religion and a Christianized Rome as the instrument of God’s salvation purposes. Perhaps none was as
adulatory in this respect as the ecclesiastical historian, Eusebius of Caesarea. In his mind, not only Rome, but Constantine in
particular, acquired a special place in the divine program of
redemption.25 Constantine was God’s instrument of change and

24. R.A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine, (Cambridge: At The University Press, 1970), p. 50.

25. Timothy D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 249 & 254.

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4 • The Growth of Hierarchy
the one entrusted with divine authority to rule the new “Chris-
tian times.”26 The Constantinian revolution was to bring about
a blending of politics with the church, a gradual transformation of the church into a new instrument of political administration.

One consequence was to elevate the bishop’s office as an agency
of political power and bureaucratic control.

What this great change meant for the rise of the church at

Rome in particular has now become apparent. Upon no other
church did Constantine lavish such attention and good will as he did that of the church at Rome.27 Constantine was not responsible for the primacy that the bishop of Rome began to claim for himself, but he did defer to the belief, already current in the second centur y, that Rome occupied a special place among the
churches based upon the fiction of apostolic succession, and the claim to possess the keys of St. Peter, the greatest privilege in Christendom. By the third century, the see of Rome had begun
to acquire property and was beginning to have a reputation for
being well-endowed. With Constantine the grants of largess to

Rome went far beyond anything previously experienced by the
church. Almost overnight the church at Rome became one of
the largest, if not the largest, landowners in Italy, certainly in the environs of Rome itself.

This material prosperity was to affect the role of the clergy,
since the needs of the administration of properties compelled a
broadening of the meaning of clergy. Addressing the growing problems of administration demanded the creation of a whole
series of minor orders. Under the bishop ranked presbyters, dea-
cons, sub-deacons, acolytes, exorcists, readers and doorkeepers.

The clergy became a vast civil service in which one made one’s
way through advancement and promotion. At the same time, the
clergy was elevated above the people and came to reflect the
older Roman ideal of an elite aristocracy with its attitude of condescension and self-assured dignity. People were expected to
treat the bishop especially with awe and reverence, to stand up

26. Markus, Saeculum, passim.

27. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, p. 49

3› The Constantinian Revolution

143
when he entered and left. The church became more absorbed
with formal liturgy and a system of penitence, both of which
were closely guarded preserves of the clergy. Cyprian had already advanced the notion that a lay person’s sins could only be
absolved by one of the higher clergy. One must seek penitence and forgiveness from the clergy. There was no longer direct
access to the Lord of the church. The church at Rome expanded
this concept with consummate success.

Constantine also gave the clergy, especially at Rome, a
greater part in the secular jurisdiction as civil magistrates.

Church courts acquired legitimate judicial status in civil matters.

This prompted prospective young clerics to seek training more in keeping with forensic expertise than with Scripture and theology.

Those were sought out for clerical posts who possessed this kind of learning, and such occupations appealed to the aristocratic
classes as established careers to which their sons might aspire for other than exclusively religious reasons.28 For many, ecclesiastical office would become the goal of worldly status and social
influence.

In the ancient world buildings and architecture were spe-
cifically designed and erected to symbolize the power and pres-
tige of ruling nations or empires. The glory of the earthly city of man was displayed outwardly by means of impressively constructed edifices such as temples, forums, monuments or by
other public works, whether purely symbolic or more immedi-
ately practical, such as amphitheaters, roads and aqueducts. As
the church gained in stature and worldly prominence in the post-

Constantinian decades, it, too, sought to reflect its new-found
prestige in symbolic form. Thus, began the construction of the
basilica. The church building would provide solid evidence of the church’s new and exalted institutional standing and an
enduring representation of its power and authority. “Early Christian architecture” claims Herrin, “was clearly designed to
impress, and to this end the use of different coloured marbles,
stone, brick, fresco, mosaic, and painted sculpture were judi-

28. Chadwick, The Early Church, p. 174.

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4 • The Growth of Hierarchy
ciously combined.”29 This emphasis upon church architecture
would soon substitute for the words and deeds of faith. The
grandiose scale on which these buildings were erected suggests
that they were far from having a merely functional task to per-
form. They were carefully planned to emphasize to the populace
the preeminence of the church, and of the clergy who governed
it. They symbolized the fusing of the church with Rome that the

Constantinian change had brought about.

In the fourth and fifth centuries definite voices can be
heard to exalt the special place and importance of the Roman
primacy, the sound of whose words is scarcely distinguishable
from the praises heaped upon the ancient empire of the same
name by her pagan spokesmen.

Damasus (Pope, 366–384) was perhaps the first to revel in
the majesty of a papal splendor that would illuminate the pages
of history for centuries to come.30 His single aim, it would seem, was to present Christianity as the true imperial religion and to declare Rome to be the capital of a Christian empire. Not only did he undertake great building projects in the city, he also
implemented an annual civic festival in honor of Peter and Paul, who were now regarded to be the protectors of the Christian

Rome. This imitation of the pagan past (a new Romulus and

Remus) was designed to elevate Rome, along with her bishop, to
prominence over the whole church. As pope, Damasus lived in
personal pomp and luxury, and it was largely with him that popes in Rome began to live in the kind of palatial grandeur which
would be expected of a monarch. Damasus moved in high soci-
ety and hob-nobbed with the aristocratic and patrician ranks; he regarded his office of bishop as possessing noble stature worthy of high honor.

It was about the time Damasus was pope that bishops at

Rome began to wear an episcopal dress which was a conscious
attempt to imitate traditional senatorial garb. Under Damasus

29. Herrin, The Formation of Christendom, p. 114.

30. This account is taken mainly from Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity, pp. 99-102.

3› The Constantinian Revolution

145
the weekly Eucharist acquired an exalted ritual and formal cere-
monial which came to dominate the worship service, for as with
architecture and apparel, the external symbols of the worship service were beginning to take priority over the word of God. It is also from about this time that one begins to see “a spectacular
explosion of colour in the vestments and hangings, the use of
gold and silver vessels and elaborate marble piscinae, silver cano-pies over the altar, a multitude of wax candles, and an elaborate censering with incense.”31 And it was then that the practice
began of erecting a screen, or iconostasis, in order to hide all the operations on the altar from the laity and thereby to emphasize
the separation between clergy and laity.

Damasus is probably best remembered today for his having
been the pope who, in 383, commissioned the Latin translation
of the Scripture known to us as the Vulgate, and predominant in
the West for centuries. It was his secretary, Jerome, the later
famous church father and Hebrew scholar, whom he specifically entrusted with this responsibility. The Vulgate was to increase

Roman authority and prestige in the West, for to translate means to interpret, and Rome’s stature would be vastly enhanced by the claim to have provided a Scripture which her own resources,
granted by her founding apostles, could alone make possible.

Accordingly, with Damasus Rome begins to intervene on a regu-
lar basis in the affairs of other Western churches. His letters

“were written in the style of the imperial chancery.”32 From this time Rome increasingly spoke with the voice of superior authority, as the mouthpiece of the apostle Peter to whom had been
given the keys (authority) of the whole church, an authority not only over other churches, but even over church councils.

Perhaps the most celebrated of all those who occupied St.

Peter’s see in late antiquity was Gregory the Great (Pope, 590–

604). Some have seen in Gregory the first of the medieval popes, for he typified much that was characteristic of the later papacy.

Gregory was in every respect an administrator. More than any

31. Johnson, A History of Christianity, p. 102.

32. W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity, p. 628.

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4 • The Growth of Hierarchy
before him, he expanded the church bureaucracy in order to
manage the affairs of the papal estates, known as the patrimony of St. Peter. As bishop, “we find him employing his considerable energies on such matters as horse-breeding, the slaughter of cat-tle, the administration of legacies, the accuracy of accounts, the level of rents and the price of leases. He took a direct part in the running of estates scattered throughout Italy, and in North

Africa, Sardinia and Sicily.”33 One wonders that he ever found
time to preach and teach!

It was Gregory who organized the clergy into colleges (the
basis of the Cardinalate) according to grade and required the
wearing of clothes to befit each rank. He greatly expanded the
business of the papal chancery and staffed it with scribes and letter-writers, for Gregory spent the bulk of his time corresponding with officials, bishops and abbots, and men responsible for the
vast ecclesiastical estates. As Gregory was a descendent of one of the illustrious Roman patrician families, it would seem only natural that one of its offspring should carry on the honor of the family name and his class responsibility for the conduct of the res publica.

It is indisputable that Gregory was among the most influ-
ential voices to be taken as authoritative tradition throughout
both the Carolingian period (9th–10th centuries) and the later

High Middle Ages. Next to Augustine and the Pseudo-Diony-
sius, Gregory clearly deserves mention as the most read and con-
sulted of the fathers from whom guidance in the construction of the Christian centuries was sought. It is certainly with Gregory that the church at Rome was able to provide the degree of leadership needed to deal with the Germanic nations, then undertak-
ing to settle down in the former Roman west, and to organize a
program for their conversion to orthodox Christianity. The hope
was that by such means the way would be opened to extending
the authority of Christian Rome over that part of the Roman empire that had slipped out from under the control of the secular emperor whose residence had been, since Constantine, in Con-33. Johnson, A History of Christianity, p. 133.

3› The Constantinian Revolution

147
stantinople. The bishop of Rome was, by his day, the only

Roman authority of any stature left in the west.

Gregory shared the Eusebian vision of the fusion of Rome
with Christianity and all that that meant for the church and her clergy. In one important area, however, Gregory departed from
the Eusebian formula. He no longer accepted the idea of the sec-
ular emperor as the sole head of the church. Two centuries of development, particularly since the emperors in the east were
either too preoccupied with political problems or were incapable of providing assistance to the west, had left the leadership in the west increasingly in the hands of the bishop of Rome who, in
many respects, assumed responsibility for high matters of state as well as for settling doctrinal issues in the churches. Naturally, this increased confidence in, and added to the ideological argument
for, the primacy of Rome over the affairs of the church. It even provided support for an altered idea of authority over the total society. No longer should the Ecclesia Universalis be viewed as having one head, but now the concept of two heads, or powers, began to take hold. Even so, one must take precedence over the
other. The church was beginning to think of a priestly authority as the highest authority in Christendom.

Nearly a century before Gregory, Gelasius (Pope, 492–96)

had sought to articulate what was to become famous as the

“doctrine of the two powers.” On the one hand, there stood the
heavenly power represented by the clergy, especially the bishop of Rome; on the other hand, there was the earthly or temporal power which rested on the secular emperor and the officials who
served him to protect the empire and the church from enemies
without and within, especially heretics. In this way the activities of those who have high positions in the church would be properly delimited as to their rightful jurisdiction. However, Gelasius did not have in mind some irreconcilable dualism – he thought
in terms of hierarchy. By claiming a duality of spheres, he was in fact attempting to define a whole new system of rule for the

Ecclesia Universalis, that of the primacy of the priestly order over the whole society, and the primacy of the bishop of Rome, especially, as the true monarch or emperor. Accordingly, he wrote to 148

4 • The Growth of Hierarchy
the emperor Anastasius as follows:

…Two there are, august emperor, by which this world is
chiefly ruled, the sacred authority of the priesthood and
the royal power. Of these the responsibility of the priests is
more weighty in so far as they will answer for the kings of
men themselves at the divine judgment … who have charge
of divine affairs…. And if the hearts of the faithful should
be submitted to all priests in general who rightly adminis-
ter divine things, how much more should assent be given
to the bishop of that see [Rome] which the most High
wished to be pre-eminent over all priests….34

He went on to make the claim that the two powers neces-
sarily accord with two realms of affairs: the temporal realm,
which is the business of the royal power, and that having to do
with divine matters, the prerogative of the priestly class. Neither should interfere in the business of the other, except when it is necessary, of course, to bring superior divine authority to bear on the conduct of princes by those given the chief responsibility in these matters, namely, the priests.

Salvation matters and spiritual concerns, on the one hand, were being divorced from this temporal world and from any Biblical kingdom agenda. On the other hand, by the claim that
divine matters were spiritual concerns, and hence matters for the priestly class, the way was opened to a divine authority that
would be exercised less as a Biblical authority and more as that which served to advance the interests of the clerical order and the pope. A Manichean dualism long distorted the concept of the
church together with the type of Christian society ideal that
accompanied it, and was the principal cause of a power struggle
at the center of further civilizational development.

This Gelasian theory of the two powers became, in fact, the doctrine of the church, a doctrine based upon a presumed divi-34. A segment of Gelasius’s letter can be found in Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church & State, 1050–1300, (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1964), pp. 13, 14.

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sion of jurisdictions over the whole world, and indicating what
class of elites was accorded rulership responsibility. More than this, it pointed to that person who in particular held from God
supreme imperial authority and to him who had absolute power
over the entire Ecclesia Universalis.

With Gelasius’s theory itself, however, a certain ambiguity
was present. For the so-called distinction between temporal
affairs for which the royal or secular power was responsible and divine matters which belonged only to the clergy would inevitably cause confusion and confrontation. After all, the distinctions themselves derived from a God-ordained order for the world.

Would they not both belong to divine matters? Would they not both need to be brought together at some higher level in order
to maintain the unity of God’s Ecclesia? Theory needed a way to harmonize what clearly seemed irreconcilable.

In Gelasius’s mind, as in that of all bishops at Rome espe-
cially, there was little doubt that unless one monarch ruled over all aspects of the Ecclesia Universalis then a conflict could not be avoided between the sacred and the secular realms of life. Since God rules over all in heaven, his designated monarch must have
complete authority over both dimensions on earth. And since
the sacred is clearly of greater worth than the secular – because sacred things belong to the eternal realm, whereas earthly matters, while of some importance here and now, must eventually
pass away – therefore, the chief power and authority under God
on earth must be the bishop of Rome, the heritage of St. Peter
to whom had been given the keys. The pope, then, must be the supreme power and authority on earth for all matters that pertain to the Societas Christianae. He alone must rule the temporal as well as the sacred realm.

The history of the church up to the High Middle Ages was
a long and intense struggle to realize the goal of this papal and clerical vision of power and authority. It was not easy, for all that the church (i.e., the clerical order) had to fight with were words, whereas the secular arm of society had real arms and just as exalted a view of its own prerogatives in the total Christian society as that of the priestly class. But the highly trained and vastly 150

4 • The Growth of Hierarchy
better educated clergy’s words proved to be extraordinarily effective, particularly when ignorant and credulous multitudes were
superstitiously persuaded that such words, coming as they did
from such divinely elevated personages, possessed the power
either to cast into hell or to open the gates of heaven. The clergy had done a masterful job of convincing many that it, and it
alone, had been given a divine dispensation to absolve sins or to exercise a final judgment upon them. It soon convinced many
that the only security for their souls lay in absolute, unqualified, and unquestioned obedience to the clergy, and especially the
pope.

The Gelasian doctrine led eventually, over a rough and dif-
ficult terrain – for the bringing of the secular world of kings and emperors to submit to such papal overlordship was hardly to be
expected without fierce resistance – to the twelfth century doc-
trine of the plenitudo potestatis – the fullness of power – of the pope. This doctrine claimed that in the pope alone resided all law and justice which came to him as God’s vice-regent on earth,
and to no other. He therefore “rules and disposes of all things, orders and governs ever ything solely as he pleases …. He can
deprive anyone of his right, as it pleases him … for with him his will is right and reason; whatever pleases him has the force of
law.”35 At that point the popes no longer thought of themselves
as the vicar of St. Peter, they were now the vicar of Christ. Their authority on earth was total and direct. Scripture was only useful for what it could provide in the way of support for this exalted ideology of power.

35. Friederich Heer, The Medieval World: Europe 1100–1350, trans.

Janet Sondheimer, (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company,

1962). p. 275

5 • The University and Scholasticism

The “Reason” Ideal

Men in the Middle Ages were accustomed to looking at
life in terms of distinct categories or classifications. Everyone and everything, it seemed, must belong in the proper place, fit the
proper rank, and behave according to the proper function. Only
when the world appeared in its correct arrangements could medi-
eval men be confident that everything was as it should be. Each
man has his ordained place and purpose and the responsibility
not to violate God’s design and order. At the same time, medi-
eval men longed passionately to see the unity of all things. While life must divide into several compartments, they accepted that
these distinctions ought to be somehow joined at a higher level, where the antagonisms so apparent in politics and society
throughout much of this period could be overcome and a more
basic harmony be realized.

The most serious conflict resulted, as already indicated,
from the partition into Sacerdotium on the one hand and Regnum or Imperium on the other; that is, from the difference that was posited to exist between things spiritual and things temporal. In the Middle Ages this drive for unity of the separate and opposite categories was fought out as a struggle over authority.

Which side of the church had been granted the highest authority, the power to rule over the entire Christian Society? On the
sacred or spiritual side stood the clerical aristocracy led by the vicar of St. Peter, the pope in Rome; on the secular or temporal side was the lay aristocracy, the knights and barons who, theoretically at least, were subject to the king or emperor as their
supreme authority. Ideologically it was not an even fight.

Although kings and emperors might claim the status of the

Lord’s anointed, because they were not only crowned but conse-crated with holy chrism, they were not qualified to perform such rites upon themselves; they must receive their ordination to office from hands more sacred, more blessed, than theirs could

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ever hope to be. Only the clergy could anoint lay rulers. The
pope in particular claimed this prerogative, which thereby ele-
vated him above all sacred and lay power. If the pope was higher than the emperor, should not the unity of society be centered in the pope? Should we not look for the harmony between Sacerdotium and Imperium in a hierarchical relationship between the
two? This was the theory, if not always the reality.

Although Western medieval society was principally domi-
nated by a struggle for control between clerical and lay orders, it became complicated by the emergence of a third order – the Studium, what has been termed the university.1

It may seem strange to speak of the university as a new
order coming to exist along side that of the previous two orders, for was not the university made up largely of clerics? Even
though the university would in time become the breeding
ground for that new civil official, the trained lawyer, whose chief responsibility was to serve the needs of the new secular state that was also beginning to emerge in the late Middle Ages, did not
the university and the curriculum of learning remain largely an
instrument of the church? Should we not think of it as primarily promoted by the church in order to provide the learning necessary to qualify candidates for high office in the clerical order?

With education in the Middle Ages limited to a narrow
curriculum of study when compared with that of today, and with
theology the dominant subject, it might seem valid to conclude
that the university was an aspect of the clerical world, a sub-sec-tion of the Sacerdotium. But this is only partly true, for the Studium came to represent an entirely new order the center of
whose intellectual vision would chart the course of Western his-
tory out of the Middle Ages and in the direction of the humanist Renaissance and Enlightenment. Although it was initially closely associated with Christianity and the Church, the university generated a mentality increasingly hostile towards the Church and

1. “The universities came to form in effect a third public force, standing beside the ecclesiastical and secular hierarchies.” Alexander Murray, Reason and Society in the Middles Ages, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), p. 284.

5 • The University and Scholasticism

153
the rule of the Sacerdotium. In time, it supplied the ideological support for a new secular ideal – reason as man’s highest order.

The university as it exists today is a medieval invention.

“In its final perfection,” writes David Knowles, “it was to be one of the most important original contributions that the medieval
centuries made to the civilized life of Europe, and it has proved one of the most valuable of legacies left to modern times by the medieval past. For the University, in the sense of that word now current, was wholly a medieval creation.”2 Although some have
thought it possible to trace the origins of the university as far back as Plato’s Academy or Aristotle’s Lyceum, there was actually very little similarity between the university as it gradually took shape in the Middle Ages and the methods of learning
employed in the classical Greek past. The ancient world knew
nothing of an organized body of certified masters and students
who engaged in a course of instruction that led, by a long and
searching process of examination, towards a degree which admit-
ted one to privileges within a carefully guarded corporation or
which opened doors to greater professional opportunities. This
was the product of the age of the guilds – the Middle Ages.

The university in the Middle Ages reflected medieval
man’s passion for embodying his ideals in institutional form.

Everywhere, in trade or commerce, arts or crafts, on the land or in the cloister, men were setting up structures to give durability and permanence to their cultural efforts. This was, in part at
least, a legacy of the Christian belief that civilization advances by organized effort and careful construction. But it sprang just as much from a fear of competition and a desire for protection
against the encroachments of others. According to the prevailing outlook, the world was inevitably a threat to life and goods. Men were wont to organize around some common interest, to form a
guild to prevent others from poaching on their domain. The
guild mentality is at heart a cartel mentality. Learning, knowl-
edge, and education – the properties of the mind – were just as
likely to become a closely guarded preser ve of an elite few.3

2. David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought, p. 159.

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5 • The University and Scholasticism

Whatever the word Studium might connote in late Medieval culture, the educational ideal that it came to represent was not
meant to benefit an expanding populace, but only a privileged
small number.

The rise of the university was, in a sense, accidental. It
sprang up as an offshoot of the intellectual revolution of the
twelfth century, a consequence of the new scholastic culture in
the realm of learning. This cultural development represented a
new confidence in the mind of man to reason about everything
in his experience, not only to understand himself and his world
but God as well by the mere instrument of his logic. It was nothing less than the urge to explain everything by means of an inherent intellectual power which would provide man with a rational comprehension of all there is to know. Scholasticism is a mark of the beginning of Western man’s attempt to turn back from an
unduly mystical contemplation of, and preoccupation with, that
other spiritual world to a greater immediate concern with and appreciation for this one. To a great extent, it was done under a dominant Christian impulse, yet because the instr uments
employed for this end were taken from the non-Christian world
of thought, from Aristotle especially, it would eventually have
the effect of splitting man’s world into opposing realms of nature (knowledge) and grace (faith). In time, even the traditional
authority of Scripture, to the extent it was seen as applicable to life, would recede before a new secular ideal by which man, from the resources of his reason alone, would seek to build his world.

Reason independent of revelation would come to represent the
new authority in the modern world.

It is important to ask, however, whether the idea of learn-
ing and knowledge in the Christian West was ever wholly
founded upon an exclusively Scriptural basis. Was it not infected 3. “Among the aims of these corporations were self-government
and monopoly – which amount to control of the teaching enter-
prise.” David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 208.

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with non-Christian assumptions from the beginning? Much that
passed for learning in the centuries that followed after the apostles and the early church was a combination of Scripture and

Greek philosophical speculation. Scholasticism, which sought to
synthesize Christian truth with the pagan Greek mind, was far
from initiating the type of intellectual endeavor that dominated its agenda. The infection of Christian thinking with non-Christian presuppositions was not something that suddenly cropped
up in the High Middle Ages; it can be seen lurking in the inner
assumptions of learning long before this time. Scholasticism was the long working out of these disparate points of view at a time when men had regained confidence in man’s ability to bring
order into their world by the power of the mind.

1› Purge of the Mind – Ascent of the Soul

From its beginning Christianity was an intellectual religion, for it was supremely a religion of the Book – the Scriptures.

Rather than a religion of mystical release or semi-philosophical introspection, it was founded upon the words of God written.

Knowledge and understanding of the written word of God was
an indispensable requirement for becoming a Christian and liv-
ing according to the faith which set one apart from all other religious points of view. Christianity could not exist in a context of utter barbarity, where reading or writing were virtually non-existent. Some measure of literate culture was an unavoidable neces-
sity. Always, then, the first order of business whenever and
wherever early Christian missionaries penetrated heathen lands
where no knowledge of letters was available was the translation
of the Scriptures and the organization of methods of teaching
reading and writing.

Since any book religion requires the application of the
mind to the study of its content, in time a system of doctrine is built up. The transmission of Christianity to new generations of converts, or to sons and daughters of earlier converts, would
require them to have some knowledge not only of the essential

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5 • The University and Scholasticism
contents of Scripture but of this system of doctrine as well. To believe the gospel came to mean more than simply accepting
some facts about what Jesus said or did while on earth, it would also involve some knowledge of who Jesus is and the nature of
his relationship to God. Moreover, one needed to understand
how men could be saved by this Jesus, that is, how salvation was appropriated, what it involved as a way of life, and why Christianity’s explanation was unique in these respects. More was
involved, but the point is that much was needed to be taught
and learned, efforts that would require the application of intellect.

Christianity was a religion of truth; it was also a religion
which demanded a new obedience. Not only was it necessary to
know the way of salvation, but Christianity required a moral
transformation as well. The moral behavior it proclaimed was
formulated in rules and regulations which new converts would
then be required to learn. Naturally, these, too, would be
recorded in literary form so as to insure universal recognition and acceptance.

Christianity was bound to attract opponents, sometimes
from other religious viewpoints, but also from those who
accepted some of its features but perverted its doctrines. Thus, an apologetics against false religions and heresies would add still more thought-content to be learned. Christianity spread in the
early centuries not only in a spatial and geographical sense, but it also grew as a body of ideas and teachings.

Because Christianity was an intellectual religion, teaching
its truths raises the question of the need for schools in order to instruct future generations. In this respect Marrou has offered an important, if perhaps somewhat debatable, observation: “One
would have expected the early Christians, who were adamant in
their determination to break with a pagan world that they were
constantly upbraiding for its errors and defects, to develop their own religious types of schools as something quite separate from
the classical pagan school. But this, surprisingly, they did not do….” This was primarily true of the Greco-Latin cultural world
in which Christianity first dawned. There Christians encountered 1› Purge of the Mind – Ascent of the Soul

157
a strong educational tradition already long in existence that
proved difficult to supplant or discredit. “Never throughout the whole of antiquity,” Marrou goes on to say, “except for a few
particular cases, did Christians set up their own special schools.

They simply added their own specifically religious kind of
training … on to the classical teaching that they received along with their non-Christian fellows in the established schools.”4

Knowles makes a similar claim:

The Christian Church in the West was for long recruited
principally from the lower, unleisured strata of society.

When in the fourth century it began to win the educated
classes there was no opposition or rival system to the old

Roman primary education based on grammar and the clas-
sics. Christian children attended the schools of non-Chris-
tian masters, while Christian masters taught all comers
according to the old curriculum.5

Thus, when it came to the most important assumptions,
such as how, or in terms of what, the mind should be educated,
or what presuppositions should control man’s view of himself
and his purpose in the world, many Christians seemed not to
have been especially disturbed by what the established pagan
schools taught and whether or not they would undermine the
doctrines of Christianity in those respects. They did not entirely grasp that no neutrality was possible between pagans and Christians on the fundamental ideas of man, the world, and the
understanding of truth which the mind sought to comprehend.

Perhaps this indifference in the early Church may be
explained by the evident fact, signified by many, that the Christian religion was thought of primarily as a matter of personal or inner salvation, which meant by and large a salvation of the soul.

At the same time, its corollary was expressed in the goal of salvation which did not so much include the renewal of life here and
now but the achievement of the after-life in heaven. Such a con-

4. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, pp. 422 & 424.

5. Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought, p. 59.

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5 • The University and Scholasticism
cept of salvation naturally held little consequence for man’s life in this world. It implied almost no connection to any cultural
idea nor application to the management of life on this earth.

These matters, if necessary, apparently could be safely learned
from non-Christians. In much of Christian literature little was
said of man’s broader relationship to God, that he was created to be God’s dominion servant and that all his culture and civilization were either products of submission to God or rebellion
against God. That God was to be Lord over all man’s life and that His redemption of man was meant to restore His rights as
man’s Lord in all areas of his life was neither fully nor firmly grasped. Thus, it was easy for Christians to assume that the culture in which they lived was legitimate and normal for Christians to adopt, and they accepted the category of “Hellenistic humanism as ‘natural’ and self-evident….”6 This humanism, it was
accepted, taught one how to be a man, and it was believed that
one must first know how to be a man before he can become a Christian. As a result, Christians sought merely to graft a supernatural act of grace on to an already defined human nature.7

From the beginning, a dualism took root in Christian thinking.

In a telling comment Knowles indicates what this dualism
meant for Christianity in its history both in the period of Late Antiquity and in the Middle Ages:

Christianity, in its origins and pre-history, had little kin-
ship with Greece, but what we call Christendom, for more
than a thousand years from the conversion of the emperor

Constantine, was almost exclusively a society of peoples
deriving their intellectual discipline and the habits of rea-
soning directly or indirectly from the Greco-Roman cul-
ture of the ancient world. It would consequently be
scarcely an exaggeration to say that the philosophy of

Christendom in those centuries is so deeply impregnated
with the methods and ideas of Greek thought, and with
the doctrines of non-Christian and more particularly of

6. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, p. 425.

7. Marrou, pp. 425 & 426.

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159
pre-Christian philosophers, as to be in a very real sense a
direct extension or prolongation of ancient philosophy.8

Here we approach the essence of the matter. Christianity
developed on the foundation of the “habits of reasoning” and

“the methods and ideas of Greek thought” which were supplied
to her by the culture in which she grew up. This created enor-
mous tensions, for Christianity and this pagan culture were
deeply at odds, not simply due to the fact that this classical world of thought was a product of the old polytheism and Christianity
was monotheistic, but because they had contradicting explana-
tions on just about everything, most especially the claims to possess so lutio ns to the pr oblem o f h uman existe nce.9 Fo r Hellenistic man the solution to man was to be found in becoming cultured and learned, to triumph over barbarism and igno-
rance. The cultivation of mind and the achievement of sacred philosophy were the means to overcome the debilitating influence of matter and the body which were responsible for produc-
ing personal and social disorder. The Greeks, as we discussed
earlier, believed that man – at least certain elite men – could truly rise to the level of divinity, that mind, although hindered somewhat by matter, was not basically corrupted or sinful as the

Christians maintained (or ought to have). Man’s problems were
within man’s capability to manage, and his reason could act as a reliable guide in his endeavor to achieve true humanity in culture and civilization. How is it, we may wonder, that so many in the
early church were thus attracted to Greek ideas and teaching?

On the one hand, because Christianity knew itself to be
different from pagan culture and since no culture existed but the pagan one which surrounded it, and Christians failed to recognize they had one to offer themselves, it was easy to take the view that culture as such was evil, the only real alternative being to retreat into Monasticism as the denial of culture per se. On the other hand, a large number maintained contact with the world,
but in so doing did not ask how or whether a specifically Chris-

8. Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought, p. 3.

9. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, p. 426.

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5 • The University and Scholasticism
tian idea of culture could be possible. Most accepted the Greek
definition as far as it was conceivable to do so without severing connection to Christianity altogether. As a result, Christians did not altogether remove their children from pagan schools nor
insist that the classical heritage compromised the essential nature of the Christian religion. A Christian upbringing was merely
superimposed upon a humanistic education. This meant that the
intellectual faith of Christianity was early and pervasively suffused with non-Christian assumptions, and the significance of this condition for the rise of scholasticism and the university should soon become apparent.

Throughout the early Middle Ages – certainly from about

600 up to the twelfth century renaissance – the figure who most influenced the definition of Christian learning was Augustine. In the words of R.W. Southern, “The most comprehensive syllabus
of Christian studies which was available to scholars at the end of the tenth century was the plan sketched by St. Augustine in his
treatise on Christian learning, De Doctrina Christiana.”10 Two others who helped to shape the educational ideal, if to a somewhat lesser extent, were Origen, whom we have already men-
tioned, and Boethius whom we shall briefly mention later.

Augustine’s imprint was more deeply etched than any other,
chiefly because his works were more readily available, but also
because Augustine, who was a greater systematic thinker than
any other, endeavored to integrate the Christian faith with the
present world to which the Christian, he rightly believed, some-
how belonged. However, as we also mentioned, Augustine’s leg-
acy would long act as a prop to the Monastic ideal of culture and thus to an ideal of learning and knowledge that meant little
beyond the framing of speculations and metaphysical abstrac-
tions for the sake of pious contemplation and devotional exer-
cises. His conception of learning did involve genuine intellectual activity, for Augustine understood that no advance in the faith
was truly possible without real understanding of its content. Yet, 10. R.W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), pp. 170 &171.

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Augustine intuitively clung to the Greek definition that man was essentially rational in his nature; using this understanding as the image of God in man he would then define the cultivation of the
intellect as the noblest of all tasks for Christian men.

For Augustine the primary goal of Christian learning was
to know the Scriptures. It was no simple matter, for faith
required long and painstaking effort to understand that which it professed to be true and believed to be man’s highest good.

More importantly, Augustine did not believe that the knowledge
of Scripture was an end in itself, rather it was the means to attain to a knowledge of what the heart of man deeply thirsts for,
namely, to know God the Trinity as the author and founder of
the universe and He Who cares for His creatures through the
truth.11 Yet, what is of interest to us, and what influenced the idea of learning for so long in medieval man’s outlook, is what, in Augustine’s mind, constituted the process by which knowledge of the truth is acquired as well as what it meant concretely for Christian activity in the world. In both respects, Augustine showed himself vulnerable to non-Christian notions.

In the first place, that process by which we might hope to
arrive at the knowledge of the truth Augustine characterized as a journey or voyage. Specifically, it was a journey by which the mind is cleansed or purged of anything that prevents the soul of man from seeing the immutable light of God. Man is described
as having wandered far from God, a characterization depicted by
means of a geographical analogy called man’s “native country.”

If he would know the truth which is God and enjoy the blessed-
ness of Him Who lives immutably, man must leave behind his
changeable world and return to his spiritual home-land. Such a
process was, if anything, a type of ascent of the soul from the material present which weighs man down to that realm of eternal
contemplation of God and His truth.

Augustine did not hesitate to say of temporal things that 11. Saint Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robertson, Jr., (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1958), p.

13.

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5 • The University and Scholasticism
they are such that we should “run through them quickly that we
may be worthy to approach and to reach Him who freed our
nature from temporal things….”12 This was the essence of the
matter for Augustine when it came to the idea of Christian learning. The Christian’s chief responsibility was to undergo an intellectual process of purging his mind of the influences of this
temporal world so that he might ascend to God. According to

Augustine this was achieved principally by means of the study of the Scripture which he took to be superior to mere ascetic withdrawal. Still, it would seem, learning the Scripture did not mean that we were studying God’s kingdom agenda for man in this world, nor from it did we learn to know God by knowing His
will for all areas of life. The study of Scripture for Augustine and for early medieval men was intended more to erase man’s connection to this world and to teach him primarily how to achieve
the next than it was to teach him how to live and serve God in all aspects of life in this world. This program of education, therefore, did not have in mind a specifically Christian idea of civilization which was to be proclaimed and inculcated. It was intended
for purely personal and internal soul-building.

We have seen and mentioned repeatedly that Neoplatonic
thinking, ancient pagan man’s last attempt to retain his grip on the control of culture and civilization, had pervaded Christian
thought. It continued to shape the outlook of Christianity
throughout the Middle Ages, for, as Knowles rightly avers,

“Neoplatonism … appears throughout late antiquity and the

Middle Ages as the principal ingredient of Christian philosophi-
cal thought and theological speculation.”13 In the context of
education it invaded the West largely through Augustine whose
thinking had been early influenced by many of its assumptions.

In Neoplatonism, as we saw, the great problem for man was mat-
ter, especially the body. The body was viewed as a drag on the
spirit or soul and the cause of evil in the world. The chief purpose of man was to free himself from the entanglements of the

12. On Christian Doctrine, p. 30

13. Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought, p. 28.

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body and of the material world around him. He must ascend to
the home of spirit in the great cosmic Spirit above all change and flux. This was achieved essentially by great intellectual discipline and purification of the mind from thoughts that distract man
from contemplating eternal verities. What made Neoplatonism
appealing was its accent upon the mind and the reason. It offered the hope of philosophical certainty and a rational satisfaction
which could neither be affected nor controverted by the move-
ment of time and things.

While Augustine played down the disparagement of the
body as the source of evil, nevertheless he did appreciate the concept of learning as one which essentially involved purging the
mind of temporal things and of the soul ascending intellectually to God in order to contemplate His Being and Truth. And
though he centered the achievement of knowledge on the study
of Scripture, he did not sufficiently grasp its covenantal purpose for the entire life of man in God’s world.

In the second place, because his program was genuinely
intellectual Augustine was compelled to take the whole realm of
learning into account in order to explain how Christians ought
to acquire the mental tools they needed even to gain the truth of God. But that realm of learning was controlled by the pagan
consciousness, for the classical world had defined the problems
to be studied as well as the methods that were to be employed in thinking about them. They had already stipulated what were the
sciences. How to absorb their achievements without becoming deceived by their agenda was the issue to be resolved. Augustine had to struggle against positing a dualistic outlook, because for him truth must be one and unified. There could not be truth as
taught by pagans and another taught by Scripture. It was his
undoubted conviction, therefore, that “every good and true

Christian should understand that wherever he may find truth, it
is his Lord’s.”14 Still, it cannot be said that Augustine succeeded in overcoming this problematic dualism for the basic reason that 14. On Christian Doctrine, p. 54.

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5 • The University and Scholasticism
he never found a sufficient point of integration for all of life in God’s word.

Thus, he maintained that among the things of life some
are there to be enjoyed, while others are merely to be used.

“Those things which are to be used help and, as it were, sustain us as we move toward blessedness in order that we may gain and
cling to those things which make us blessed.”15 On what Scrip-
tural basis did he introduce these distinctions? How does the

Scripture define the useful? And why posit a difference between things to be merely used and other things to be enjoyed? And
why should blessedness lie beyond the things that are either used or enjoyed, even though these might assist one to arrive at that goal? Augustine cannot be said to have provided any Biblical
explanation for his assertion.

One thing is certain: among the things that Augustine
deemed useful was the whole realm of the sciences known to the pagan world. His intention was to find their use for a Christian curriculum. Scripture, after all, required interpreting, and the task of interpretation was no simple matter, but a scientific endeavor. It was a difficult job searching the mysteries of the
faith; the best equipment was needed. Augustine found that
equipment available in the pagan method of intellectual training.

He saw its use as an ancillary preparation for studying the truths and doctrines of Scripture. As Knowles states, “he desires to
explain and interpret the nature of God and of the soul with all the means at his command, whether he finds help in philosophers of the past, and in the Scriptures and teachings of the

Church, or whether he presents the results of his own reasoning
and religious experience.”16 This pagan science and learning,
however, was acceptable so long as it remained merely in the category of the useful, and did not pretend to lead to the blessed life. Still, he allowed, in its proper place its usefulness was
undoubted.

Thus, from the start there was always a loose connection

15. On Christian Doctrine, p. 9

16. Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought, p. 33.

1› Purge of the Mind – Ascent of the Soul

165
between divine and secular learning. So long as man’s essential religious purpose was one of escape from this world, the pagan
world of thought as an acceptable explanation of man and his
world would be kept in subordination to divine learning. But
when men became more earnest about this world, as began to
occur in the late eleventh century, eventually the secular world of thought would not be content to play the role of the merely
ancillary or useful to that with which it had no intrinsic connection. If Christians could not integrate the useful and the blessed on a strictly Scriptural basis, then any attempt to combine the
non-Christian useful with the Christian blessed would eventually show the Scriptures to be lacking in all that man needed in order for him to be truly man and the world to be a legitimate realm
for his endeavors. These he would increasingly find from non-

Christian thought, pushing Scripture and its spiritual agenda from the center to the periphery of culture and civilization.

In the concept of learning that was to take shape in the

Middle Ages, Origen’s importance is second only to that of

Augustine. His primary contribution lay in the method of inter-
preting Scripture and the ends for which Scripture ought to be studied. Ber yl Smalley offers here an appropriate summar y:

“Scripture for him [Origen] was a mirror, which reflected the
divinity now darkly, now brightly; it had body, soul, and spirit, a literal, moral, and allegorical sense, the first two for ‘simple believers’ who were ‘unable to understand profounder meanings’, the third for the initiates, the Christian gnostics, who were able to investigate the wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom of God.”17 Thus, learning was determined by the capacity one had for penetrating into the supra-rational mysteries of God, apparently a capability limited to a select few. Not only that, but those who could benefit from such insights need not concern themselves with whether or not they should seek to inculcate a similar understanding among the mass of believers in order to build up a common Christian enterprise, for the average believer was not 17. Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, (University of Notre Dame Press, 1964), pp. 8 & 9.

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5 • The University and Scholasticism
capable of receiving such knowledge limited as it was to those
who not only had the inclinations to study them but the requi-
site training to appreciate their obviously esoteric quality. The effect was to promote an elitism in the realm of knowledge, a
development that would preclude any covenantal/civilizational
understanding of truth. It would also aid the growth of mere
credulity among the masses as they would not be expected to
understand Scripture on anything other than a simplistic level,
consequently making them easy prey to control by those with
power, especially the clerical aristocracy in whose hands all learning would become a guarded preser ve. As with the Greeks,
medieval Christian learning would foster a distinct social atti-
tude, namely, the notion of culture and civilization as something from which only a privileged few could or should possibly benefit. “The educated,” comments Murray, “were an elite, set above
the herd of ordinary men.”18

2› The Age of “Faith”

With the passing of Late Antiquity we move into the early
and central Middle Ages. Historians have sometimes defined
these centuries – from approximately 600 to 1050 AD – as the

Age of Faith. Often they have thought that this was the quintes-
sential time in histor y when men believed unquestioningly in

God, when faith and religious phenomena of all kinds were the
great preoccupations of Western man. The term age of faith separates an era of pious credulity from the present time when men
no longer give credence to myths and fables, when science and
knowledge have liberated us from superstition and the need to
seek solace in withdrawal and other-worldly contemplation. The
accent on the word faith as depicted by modern historians tends to fall upon the inner man, upon his subjective disposition, and they are apt to regard the object of medieval man’s faith as something unworthy of consideration.

18. Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages, p. 241.

2› The Age of “Faith”

167

While this portrayal is to some extent true, it is not entirely
accurate. For the term age of faith ought not to emphasize the act of believing as an inner experience so much as faith primarily

“in the sense of that which is believed. A synonym for such

‘faith’ would be ‘doctrine’….”19 The Middle Ages as an age of
faith, then, was an age of doctrine as a body of thought which
men were taught to believe and not to question. It was especially a time when Christian doctrine became set by the authority of
tradition and was upheld by the consensus of the orthodox
teachers of the church. What men believed was the catholic faith, as it was the one and universal or catholic church in which true doctrine had been delivered once and for all and had been transmitted by apostolic tradition.20 The age of faith was synonymous with the age of the church, an age when loyalty to the truth
would be seen as indistinguishable from loyalty to apostolic tradition as this was embodied in the councils and fathers of the
church. The church, through her clerical, especially pontifical, office holders, maintained a complete control over the subject
matter of learning and knowledge. This being so, all learning not only became a matter of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, it was fostered only to the extent that it served ecclesiastical interests.

As mentioned, the chief architect of this church-domi-
nated idea of learning, at least initially, was Augustine. He was considered to be the father of the church’s doctrine par excellence. This meant that his idea of learning, the nature of which first required preparatory study of the non-Christian classical
methodology of thought to be completed by applying its tech-
nique to the content of the Scripture, came to be the accepted
practice in the church. But it also meant that the church adopted Origen’s idea of one kind of knowledge for the elites and
another kind for the simple believers. A third person left his legacy upon church-controlled education in the Middle Ages,
namely, Boethius (c. 480–524) whose importance lies upper-

19. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Growth of Medieval Theology (600-1300), (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 4.

20. Pelikan, p. 6.

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5 • The University and Scholasticism
most in his great skill as a translator and preserver of much of the classical heritage that the medieval world possessed. In particular, “Boethius was the first to apply Aristotelian methods to
theological problems and to the elucidation of dogmatic state-
ments.”21 Ver y quickly, then, Aristotle’s syllogistic approach
became chiefly responsible for the way questions and problems
were to become formulated and resolved.

While it was Aristotle who first fascinated medieval men
with the power of reason, the metaphysics, that is, the concep-
tual content, came essentially from Augustine. As long as this
was so, the rational methodology of Aristotle was kept subordi-
nate to the Christian control of culture. But when in the twelfth centur y the remaining corpus of Aristotle was introduced,
including especially his metaphysics, then the Christian outlook, which was in truth a church outlook, began to crumble. The
intellectuals and scholars of the thirteenth century who fully
embraced the complete Aristotelian system as the essence of

Christian truth could not be aware of how far they had moved

Christian thought away from its Augustinian presuppositions.

What they did, however, in inheriting the whole corpus of Aris-
totelian ideas was “to erect a system of thought covering the
whole of human experience without reference to the truths of
faith … [a] development … greatly assisted by the contemporary
tendency amongst theologians to separate the spheres of nature
and grace, of reason and revelation.”22

Aristotle’s logic, along with the system of doctrine of the
church fathers, particularly Augustine, had been the main subject of intellectual development throughout much of the early and
central Middle Ages. And as Augustine’s mind had been influ-
enced by the metaphysics of Neoplatonism, the primary purpose
of medieval study, using Aristotelian logical categories, was to give ascent of the soul and the purge of the mind a seemingly scientific or rational grounding. As long as men believed that the purpose of the Christian life was to escape materiality, the use of 21. Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought, p. 48.

22. Knowles, p. 81.

2› The Age of “Faith”

169

Aristotelian logic only served to give that goal a rational basis, and would always remain in a subservient and somewhat artificial role. But when medieval thought began to shift slowly away
from this Monastic ideal, when belief in an exclusively non-material and non-bodily end to life began to be doubted, Aristotle’s philosophical method would suddenly become the means to
achieve independence for human thought which would eventu-
ally replace the church’s control of learning with the authority of autonomous reason.

The problem of the relationship between the secular Aristotelian logic and the supposedly Christian Neoplatonic meta-
physics can perhaps be explained as the problem of trying to
connect a view of life that had little room for the natural world as a realm of Christian activity, indeed as a place for man at all, with a system of rational investigation that could only view the realm of nature as all that was available for man to realize and perfect his humanity. In this period, so far as Christianity was concerned, the natural world had no intrinsic place in God’s purpose for
man; it was simply a means to a spiritual end. As Jonathan Riley-Smith has commented: “The natural world, itself miraculous
since it stemmed from God’s act of creation, was important only
in so far as it gave men signs of what was in reality happening
behind it, revealing to them the significance of these supernatural events. Nature was to be interpreted, not explained.”23 If
learning and knowledge had any place in the Christian cultural
ideal of this period it was to be able to interpret nature and the natural world, but with some loftier goal of disclosing its spiritual message. Aristotle was deemed useful in that he provided a mental instrument for engaging in that enterprise. His logic was employed for the sake of a scientific interpretation. But to explain nature so that Christians might be able to exercise dominion over it under God and so labor for His kingdom on earth (i.e., in the natural world) was not the primary purpose of 23. Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusad-ing, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), p.

11.

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5 • The University and Scholasticism
learning and education. Yet, by adopting the Aristotelian logic as the principal tool for the purposes of religious interpretation, the natural world would soon begin to intrude, but it would not be a natural world built from the outset upon a Scriptural viewpoint.

When the medieval outlook shifted from one of interpretation to
one of explanation the intellectual process would already be seen as having been cut loose from Scriptural authority.

The high point of the central Middle Ages, so far as the
development of the Western school and idea of learning is con-
cerned, was the so-called Carolingian Renaissance. Beginning
with the reforms of Charlemagne in the early ninth century the next two and a half centuries saw the establishment and spread of schools and a fixed educational curriculum that in time would
become the seeds of the universities of the High Middle Ages.

Initially, it was in association with the monastic houses and the Monastic reform movement that schools emerged. Because for
some time the monasteries were the chief seats and agents of
education these centuries are generally referred to as the monastic or Benedictine centuries.24 A few of the more famous monas-
tic centers were St. Gall in France and Fulda and Reichenau in

Germany. It was in these locations that the great collections of the classical past were gathered and copied. It was also here that the formation of a curriculum slowly took shape based primarily
upon the study of letters and rhetoric. The goal of learning was to acquire the necessary skills for reading, writing and especially speaking, for the needs of the church were centered upon knowledge of the Scripture and the Latin Fathers with the capacity to teach and preach from them. The basic curriculum in this context became known as the Trivium, for it included three parts, grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. The latter, the portion having to do with dialectic, was the study of Boethius’s Aristotle, but in the monastic context was of limited value.

A second type of school also made its appearance during
these centuries – the so-called cathedral school. The cathedral
schools were located at the great cathedral cities and were placed 24. Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought, p. 70.

2› The Age of “Faith”

171
under the jurisdiction of the bishop. Among the most famous
were Chartres, Tours, Rheims, Laon, and, of course, Paris. Here
schools were established for the sake of educating the young
clerks. Here, too, the principal course of study was Scripture and the Fathers. But it was in the cathedral schools that the great
theological ideas were studied as well and consequently a greater need was felt for the development of the powers of reasoning in
order to be able to comprehend the intricacies and nuances of
those questions about God the Trinity and the person of Christ
that had been on Christians’ minds for centuries. Because a
greater demand was placed upon the training of the intellectual
faculty than in the monastic houses where the goal of learning
was set more in the context of withdrawal, contemplation and
lectio divina, or the reciting of Scripture and the Fathers, then naturally the tools for developing the mind, such as dialectic,
took on a greater importance. Alongside were added studies in
those areas also thought to be necessary for developing one’s
intellectual abilities – music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, the core courses of the Quadrivium, the second part of the medieval curriculum. Since the goal of this learning was to
become theologically astute, the purpose of these courses was no more than means to that end. Still, they did require some comprehension of matters not primarily of spiritual value. In time they would begin to tantalize men’s minds with ideas for their
own sake, not necessarily for the sake of the church or the faith.

They would encourage a new confidence in the faculty of reason
to investigate problems and issues without reference to estab-
lished orthodoxy or the church’s accepted tradition.

During these centuries, but especially around the end of
the tenth and early eleventh centuries, the study of dialectic or logic in the cathedral schools gained an enormous appeal. Students and intellectuals became increasingly fascinated with what they believed was the most important instrument for the organization and arrangement of the totality of man’s experience. Here was a power in the mind of man to discover all truth, to rectify all injustices, to clarify all problems and resolve all dilemmas of
man’s existence in the world as well as his relationship to God

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5 • The University and Scholasticism
and eternity! Logic was viewed as a mental power capable of dis-
covering order in what otherwise seemed like a confused world.

Again, in the words of R.W. Southern, “The world of nature was
chaotic – a playground of supernatural forces, demoniac and oth-
erwise, over which the mind had no control. The world of poli-
tics was similarly disordered, intractable to thought.” However, man would turn to logic as the means to confront this disorder,
for it was passionately believed that “logic… opened a window
on to an orderly and systematic view of the world and of man’s
mind.”25 Men were determined to place everything in its proper
classification – genus, species, differentia, property, accident.

Nothing must remain that could not be fit into its logical cate-
gory – quantity, quality, relation, position, place, time, state, action and affection. Great amounts of time and mental energy
were spent seeking to explain everything in terms of these sys-
tematic arrangements. The apparent beneficiary of all this sys-
tematizing was theology, that intellectual realm which, at first, seemed the least amenable to logical ordering. Here everything
accepted as orthodox was precisely classified – seven deadly sins, seven sacraments, seven virtues, seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, not to mention the exact nature of the Trinity, the precise relationship between the Lord’s body and blood in the bread and
wine of the Eucharist, and so forth. Nothing, it would seem, was examined but that it was not immediately transformed into a

“chain of syllogisms.”26 More and more, however, the world of

Aristotelian thought would displace that of Augustine at the center of the Christian idea of learning and knowledge in the Mid-
dle Ages. With it would emerge what scholars at present have
referred to as medieval humanism. This was bound to occur when the study of logic led to the triumph of philosophy over
the study of Scripture and the Fathers of the church.

25. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages, pp. 179 & 180.

26. Southern, p. 182.

3› The Triumph of Philosophy

173

3› The Triumph of Philosophy

In the latter half of the eleventh centur y noticeable
changes were beginning to make themselves felt in nearly every
area of medieval life and society. In the first place, the period witnessed a considerable literary renascence. Vast new quantities of previously unavailable materials had been brought to light,
thereby stirring an eagerness in men’s thinking to absorb new
ideas and re-evaluate old ones. Secondly, and more importantly,
that which contributed most to this literary revival was the rapid economic change taking place, stimulated as it was by renewed
large-scale commercial activity and the burgeoning prosperity
brought about by the growth of trade, especially with the Islamic east. Heretofore unimaginable wealth and opulence suddenly
made their appearance in the urban centers which were also the
locations of the cathedral schools. An accompanying feature of
this new prosperity was a growth in the population, bringing
about a natural increase in the number of youths eager to imbibe the new learning. But perhaps the most important change of all
had to do with the new attitude that learned minds were begin-
ning to entertain with respect to the powers of reason and logic.

Everywhere a new confidence was being expressed, namely, that

“there seemed no limits to the field which the human mind
could master, and all arguments that were not strictly logical and formal seemed worthless.”27 Reason, employed under the spell
of the new Aristotelian logic, became the new mistress and judge, acquiring a new authority.28 Men were beginning to think that
nothing lay beyond the capability of the mind to arrange or
order by means of a total systematic rationality. From this sort of optimism would come the Summa, the complete compendium
on all knowledge in any given field of thought. This desire for a complete organization of knowledge made the institutionaliza-tion of study in a university curriculum a growing necessity.

27. Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought, p. 86.

28. The new Aristotelian logic derived from the recent discovery of the Metaphysics of Aristotle.

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5 • The University and Scholasticism

Along with Aristotle’s logic a number of other factors also
contributed to give rise to medieval humanism. Following Southern we may say that the emergence of humanism in the

Middle Ages was the result of three symptoms. (1) From the concentration upon the Classical thinkers a new sense of the dignity of human nature began to appear – a new belief in the nobility of man despite his fallen state. It was accompanied by the belief that human nature was capable of development in this
world and that man’s reason was the principal instrument for his advancement. (2) It was closely accompanied by a new sense of
the dignity of nature, a belief that “if man is by nature noble, the natural order itself, of which he forms part, must be noble” as
well.29 (3) These naturally led to a new sense of the importance of the natural and physical as over against the merely supernatural and spiritual. Medieval men began to regard the world here
and now as intelligible and accessible to human reason and pur-
pose, that nature was orderly and conducive to human endeavor
and was not simply the means to a supernatural end. For the first time, it seemed, men were beginning to feel at home in this
world and were no longer content to escape the realm of matter
and view the body as an alien sphere. For a long time man’s link with the heavenly realm alone provided order and dignity.

Because of man’s sinfulness he was the least dignified of crea-
tures. Only through religious exercises (prayers, pilgrimages, penances, touching of relics) could he possibly hope to achieve
any sense of purpose or order. While this link was not immedi-
ately broken it was beginning to be relegated to a mere part of
what it means to be human. Nature was starting to emerge as a
realm independent of Grace and Salvation.

Ironically, the monastic atmosphere itself did much to
contribute to the new nature outlook that had emerged. One
need not suppose that this refers to the monasteries exclusively.

For Monasticism was much more than something practiced by a

29. The discussion of these matters is taken from a collection of essays by R.W. Southern entitled, Medieval Humanism and

Other Studies, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970). The quote is from one of the essays of that title, p. 31.

3› The Triumph of Philosophy

175
few, it was the very definition of Christianity, and all who sought inclusion in its world would have regarded a measure of monastic activity as necessary to its life and faith. Consequently, even among the clerics of the church, and in the cathedral schools, it is possible to find similar attitudes and tendencies.

One crucial factor in monastic thinking and behavior had
been to concentrate intensely upon the soul, to seek for God in
the inner self. This focus upon the experience of God and the supernatural could easily lead into speculation upon the inner
workings of the consciousness and its relationship to its sur-
roundings. Consequently, one of the influences of this monastic
psychology of self-absorption was that it “seemed to show that
men could find new truths of the greatest general importance
simply by looking within themselves.”30 If man could find God
in his soul, so it was thought, then man was a sufficient starting-point not only for religious truth but for truth in general. At the same time, the self-knowledge that was gained from this discovery was bound to produce a greater sense of self-importance or
self-worth. Finally, if experience was an acceptable road to God, then experience might not be bad after all. Perhaps the practice of asceticism was not all that was normal for man.

In both the monastic and cathedral schools a new sense of
community also took hold. In the context of learning men were
given the opportunity to discuss and debate ideas and to com-
pare points of view with one another. A critical spirit displayed itself in a new questioning of traditional dogma and standard
church orthodoxy. Knowledge began to be seen not as some-
thing deposited once for all, but as a goal toward which one
ought painstakingly to strive, as a quest to be pursued wherever reason might lead. The give-and-take of this new intellectual and social contact encouraged the belief that the knowledge available from experience was sufficient to become a standard of truth for broader societal concerns. Knowledge could be applied to the
problems of society and need not be seen merely as a personal
route to heaven. In fact, learning itself was a way to deal with the 30. Southern, Medieval Humanism and Other Studies, p. 33.

176

5 • The University and Scholasticism
effects of sin in all aspects of man’s life, not simply a way to escape this world. However, the learning that inspired this belief was not the traditional theology but the new liberal arts. To be sure, theology remained the principal field of knowledge and
learning in the Middle Ages, but it was coming to be increasingly believed that it was possible only with the aid of a propaedeutic, that one first needed a grounding in philosophy in order to
advance to the knowledge of theology. Philosophy, of course,
meant the Greeks, especially Aristotle!

At about this time – late eleventh and early twelfth century

– a new type of man made his appearance on the medieval land-
scape. He has often been referred to as a Goliard, a “wandering clerk,” who, as an “escapee” from the cloister and the world of
strict ecclesiastical control, migrated to the towns in search of the new learning.31 His was a more worldly attitude, representing a
new and restless spirit no longer satisfied with the world he knew and was coming to despise. He longed to break out of the
cramped medieval world and saw in the new learning an oppor-
tunity for doing so. Le Goff describes him: “Those poor students who had no fixed home, who had no prebend, no stipend, thus
set out on an intellectual adventure, following the master who
pleased them at the moment, hastening toward the one currently
in fashion, going from city to city to glean the teachings being offered at the moment.”32 Apparently, these sorts could be
found in increasingly larger numbers as the century progressed.

It was because of these restless spirits and their thirst for learning that schools independent of the cathedrals also began to appear
at this time, schools where the new intellectual problems con-
cerning the soul and its relationship to the world of universals was strictly the subject of interest.

The Goliard was the anti-establishment figure of his day.

No longer satisfied with a world imposed by the church and tra-
dition, such men sought freedom in a new libertine attitude

31. For here and the comments to follow one should see Jacques Le Goff, Intellectuals in the Middle Ages, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan, (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1993), pp. 24–35.

32. Le Goff, p. 26.

3› The Triumph of Philosophy

177
towards customs, dogmas, and standards. They would seek
emancipation from their bondage by means of a supposedly
intellectual liberation. Many who were weary of the sterile world of theology and its vast assortment of esoteric queries found
deliverance in a turn to nature and the senses. Specifically, they found release through poetry and song – many were traveling
musicians, the jongleur or court troubadours, who sang the tunes and stoked the flames of the romantic ideals of knighthood and chivalry. Often in their music they dared to attack the representatives of the established order. They especially hated and
despised that part of Christianity which had for so long “rejected the earth, which embraced solitude, asceticism, poverty, celibacy, and which could even be considered a renunciation of the fruits
of the mind.”33 They exhibited all the usual prejudices of the
city against the countryside that upstart cultivated youth tend to show. That is, they loved nature, but disdained rural occupations and stigmatized the peasantry. They displayed the intellectual’s customary contempt for physical labor and exalted the mind as a
thing of nobility. They wished to see in the mind and the reason a new and superior source of natural values. They looked to reason to produce a general system of morals free from the dictates of Church and Cloister.

We have mentioned these characters because the rise of
scholasticism and the university would scarcely have been possi-
ble without them. Their attitudes and aspirations helped to
shape an altogether new outlook on the world and man’s place
in it. They inspired an independence from the old autocratic canons of thought and encouraged a new confidence in the powers
of the human intellect to peer inside itself, there to discover the intrinsic powers necessary to understand and erect a world no
longer fettered by indiscriminate, external authority. They would accept only a thinking about the world in which the mind, freed
from all authority besides its own, was capable of organizing
everything to its own satisfaction. The rise of scholastic philosophy was due not merely to a newly awakened intellectual curios-

33. Le Goff, Intellectuals in the Middle Ages, p. 32.

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5 • The University and Scholasticism
ity in response to a growing awareness of a fresh body of
previously unheard ideas flooding into the West, but to a whole
new mental and moral disposition stemming from a yearning to
break with church-imposed dogma and the Monastic culture
which controlled it. In this respect, authority meant ever y authority which hindered the mind’s search for truth and knowledge on its own. Thus, even the authority of revelation, associated as it was with church and Monasticism, would no longer
suffice to explain man and his world unless it, too, be subjected to the demands of logic and questioning. The Greeks and Aristotle had taught that more and perhaps better truths – certainly in the sense that they were more intellectually satisfying – were
available. The Goliard was a man who saw in these the means to
challenge, if not to escape, the static world in which he lived.

The most famous of these itinerant sophists, the man who
would be called the founder of the scholastic methodology, was

Abelard (d. 1142). His was a clever, self-assured young mind
which exhibited all the usual impatience for those who could
not, or would not, see intellectual problems on his level. Abelard was not merely a brilliant thinker, but a cantankerous disputer. It was a basic trait of his nature always to pick intellectual fights.

While others went off on geographic crusades, Abelard spent his
energies on intellectual ones. He saw himself as on a mission to found the basis of a new and liberated culture of the mind, and
he could ill tolerate any who stood in his way. The world of his day had erected too many false and stupid idols which he
believed it his duty to demolish. For too long the reasoning
powers of the mind had lain in the clutches of dogmas, customs,
habits and mysticism. His intent was to free reasoning from ser-
vitude and submission to theology, to enable it to soar to the
realms of philosophy. For this reason Abelard has been called

“the first great modern intellectual figure;” his outlook was
closer to the modern Enlightenment than it was to the medieval
world of thought.34

What Abelard’s faith in humanism came to mean for the

34. Le Goff, Intellectuals in the Middle Ages, p. 35.

3› The Triumph of Philosophy

179
rise of scholasticism went much deeper than the desire simply to free thought from the institutional control of the church. His
humanism stood for the belief that through reason man acquired
a new freedom from God. His faith in the power of logic
extended to the moral sphere where he came to represent the
new, anti-Augustinian, moralism. For him, man was capable of
achieving a true self-knowledge by his own inner lights, out of
which he could discover the means by which it was “up to us to
accept or reject the contempt for God which constitutes sin.”

Man has the power to choose or refuse the uprightness of the
moral life. In Abelard’s estimation, sin was nothing more than
the failure to acquire the necessary knowledge by which to make
a rational choice. His, and that of all subsequent scholastic thinkers, was an incipient Socinianism. And like those later rationalists, Abelard stood for a humanism that was the sum of human
thought regardless of the differences of faith, mores, and traditions. “He aimed to discover the natural laws which, beyond religions, would enable one to recognize the son of God in all
men.”35

Prior to the rise of the school of Paris, Chartres was the
preeminent center of the humanist revival. Scholars often speak
of something they call the Chartrian spirit, a new outlook on learning bolstered by the influx and absorption of Greco-Arab
knowledge. In the twelfth century, along with renewed contact
between east and west, primarily with Constantinople, rediscov-
eries of long unknown classical materials, especially Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Ethics, began to appear in the learning hungry

West. Even more important were the interchanges taking place
in Moorish Spain between Western scholars and Jewish scholars
who possessed manuscripts of Arab commentators on Aristotle.

A new world of ideas suddenly became available to thinkers in
the cathedral schools as the result of this contact. No center of learning was more affected or transformed by this inflow than
was the school at Chartres. It was here more than elsewhere that the new humanistic learning took hold. Students flocked to

35. Le Goff, Intellectuals in the Middle Ages, pp. 46 & 47.

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5 • The University and Scholasticism

Chartres eager to absorb the new philosophy of the Arabs and

Aristotle.

The central concern of the Chartrian system of learning
was to define man and his place in the new realm of nature.

Nature did not exist simply to provide allegorical insights into the spiritual realm, but possessed its own legitimacy. More important, the key to nature was man, who has the means to
unlock the secrets of nature; the world stands open to his reason and logical penetration. Nature was looked upon as a cosmos in and of itself. It was inherently rational and organized by a system of laws which the mind could study independent from the
authority of revelation. For Chartrians, God was pushed beyond
the realm of nature which He had created, but which He now
respects as a semi-independent realm or order. In fact, as Le Goff states, “Chartrian rationalism was a belief in the all-powerfulness of Nature. For the Chartrian, Nature was first and foremost a
life-giving power, perpetually creative, with inexhaustible
resources, mater generationis.”36 This new secular outlook on nature bred a new man-centered activism, for man himself was a
part of this new nature ideal. He was looked upon as having the
natural ability to re-work and re-shape his world as he wished it to be. Man’s purpose was no longer merely to contemplate
heaven and God by means of nature, rather it was to work in the
world as a place submissive to his will. The outcome of this attitude was to foster the notion that life, especially social life, was not something to be merely received from God. Instead, it was
something that man was capable of molding for himself.

It might seem that this new nature outlook of medieval
man represented a type of Romantic absorption in the senses and the feelings. However, this would be to misconstrue what nature
meant in this medieval context. Nature was merely that realm of
existence which stood over against the supernatural, the world of God, saints, and angels. It concerned the here and now and
whether or not the material existence of man possessed any logic or reason other than to provide a place of pilgrimage to the next 36. Le Goff, Intellectuals in the Middle Ages, p. 50.

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181
world. It should not be thought that men believed the material
realm of nature to be somehow superior to the so-called spiritual realm. Their approach to questions of truth in the realm of
nature was very much a matter of idea and not of sensation which was no source of knowledge whatsoever. Yet ideas were somehow connected to the things the mind receives by means of the
senses. What was that connection, and how did the mind get
beyond the merely sensed to the more certain understanding of
the universal that lay hidden behind or beyond the material object? Here was introduced the great problem of the soul and
of cognition that occupied thinkers and scholars nearly to the
exclusion of all else.

The problem stemmed from medieval thinkers having
accepted the Greek view which looked at matter and spirit as
more or less antithetical. Moreover, spirit, as the essential nature of man, was equated with Mind. Man was primarily reason or
intelligence. His greatest problem was to find a way to ascend
from the flux of perceptual experience to the world of intelli-
gences where understanding was no longer distracted by his
material nature and the sensations of his body. Knowledge was
only of the forms, the universals. How does the mind know these
logical entities since man must make his first approach to them
via sensation? Knowledge was looked upon as made possible by the active agency of the mind, whereas sense impressions were viewed as merely passive, as material that was inchoate until reworked in cognition. Medieval man, under the strong influence of Aristotle, did not wish to conceive of learning and
knowledge as a merely receptive capacity, but as something over which the mind possessed constructive powers.

Framing the problem this way helped to open the door to
a great distinction between the realms of reason and revelation.

The human mind was bounded by the visible world to which it
came in contact by the senses. Knowledge, however, was achiev-
able by means of contact with the external world, for human rea-
s on was e n t ir e ly c a p a b le o f a b st r a c ti n g fr o m t h e se n s e impressions which the external world makes upon us and thus of
forming the conceptual content that is knowledge. In this world

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5 • The University and Scholasticism
of man’s experience reason was adequate for grasping the truth
of things, causes, and events. Revelation was reserved for those things of faith which the unaided reason could not grasp on its own. From this distinction arose what became known as the double truth theory: that something could be true in the realm of philosophy and nature which was entirely opposed to the truth
in theology and grace, and vice versa.37 The authority of reason was pitted against the authority of faith, yet somehow they
formed a unity.

The thirteenth century was the high tide of the medieval
synthesis. It was the century of Bonaventure, Albert the Great,
and especially of Thomas Aquinas. Thomas, under the predomi-
nant influence of Aristotle, maintained “a resolute separation of the spheres of reason and revelation, the natural and the supernatural [and] recognized the autonomy of human reason in its
own field….”38 That is, “he accepted human reason as an ade-
quate and self-sufficient instrument for attaining truth within the realm of man’s natural experience” without any reference to
faith.39 Thomas believed that the order of reality was such that man’s reason could know it without the need to submit to any
authority but the power of reason itself. But, in fact, Thomas
accepted Aristotle’s explanation of that natural realm as authoritative. In effect, he gave support to the idea that reason in general was not affected by the power of sin and corruption, as

Augustine had maintained; rather, he claimed that man pos-
sessed a “natural light” which enabled him to grasp fully the
truth of the natural realm on its own, without need of the transforming power of Divine grace. In the words of Gilson, “From

37. For example, Aristotle taught the eternity of the world, which, in the realm of natural obser vation, was entirely philosophically acceptable. But, what was acceptable to reasoned analysis was unacceptable to the teachings of faith which asserted that God created the world and, thus, the world had a beginning in time
and so was not eternal. However, since the things of reason and
those of faith belong to different spheres, their contradiction
need not be considered upsetting.

38. Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought, p. 236.

39. Knowles, p. 239.

3› The Triumph of Philosophy

183
the time of St. Thomas we are henceforth in possession of a nat-
ural light, that of the active intellect … capable, on contact with sensible experience, of generating first principles, and, with the aid of these, it will gradually build up the system of the sciences.”40 With Thomas, it is believed possible to “reason from
the existence of contingent beings and conclude to the existence of a necessary being.”41 In other words, one could arrive at a
knowledge of God and divine things by a process of extrapola-
tion from created things. Indeed, without doing so, no knowl-
edge of God could be truly attained.

The thirteenth century was also the century in which the
full-blown university began to make its appearance. The whole
realm of academics and learning was coming to stand for the
belief that the mind of man was free to pursue the reason of things, certainly in the realm of nature, to the exclusion of the authority of revelation. It looked to Aristotle, not Scripture, as the starting-point for the mind’s investigation of problems and
questions. But, however much thinkers like Thomas maintained
a harmony between the things of reason and the things of revela-
tion, the tendency was to push them farther and farther apart.

No amount of optimism could prevent the triumph of philoso-
phy over theology. So long as the new scholastic method, in
which all traditional sources of knowledge were to be ques-
tioned, maintained control of the new brand of learning in the
universities, all areas of knowledge would be dominated by the
belief that reason was sufficient to pose problems and seek resolutions without reference to anything outside the mind of man.

Nature was coming to be viewed as an autonomous, rational
entity, which operates without interference according to its own principles or law.

By the late Middle Ages, Nominalism, in many ways the
final form of scholasticism, would assert the notion that if anything could be truly known by the powers of the intellect, it was 40. Etienne Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, (University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), p. 140.

41. Gilson, p. 258.

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5 • The University and Scholasticism
limited to what the mind of man could discover by means of a
combination of reasoning and perception alone. In other words,
questions of God and His relationship to the creation, as well as the soul and matters of faith, were said to lie beyond the limits of reason. And what was beyond reason was beyond knowledge in
the strict sense of the word. If one thought it possible to arrive at the truth of natural religion by means of the demonstrations of reason, then one was mistaken. Here one had only the intuitions
of faith to go on. Reason must be left behind. Thus, for example, in speaking of Ockham, David Knowles writes; “The truths of

‘natural’ theology, which had formed the chains binding the dic-
tates of reason to the declarations of revelation, melted into thin air. Neither the existence of God, nor the immortality of the
soul, nor the essential relation between human action and its
ethical worth, could be held as demonstrable by the reason.”42 A dual world was coming into being, one in which faith and reason
were pitted against one another. And as reason provided the only access to the natural realm, faith was increasingly driven from
having any role to play in understanding the world of man’s
experience. The result would be to divide the truth of religion
from the truth of science and eventually to claim that only the
truth of science possessed knowledge. However, this would only
occur more explicitly in the next stage of Western Culture, the

Renaissance.

Among the legacies of medieval learning, certainly of scho-
lasticism, is the belief, descended from the Stoics, that “right reason was the source of all virtue.”43 The Studium represented a new nobility, one that would challenge the idea of nobility associated with both Sacerdotium and Imperium, namely, the nobil-
ity of the mind. Henceforth, nobility was not so much a product
of a correct social order and established hierarchy, but “rested in the man who particularly cultivated his mind, alias the educated man.”44 Such a view presented a challenge to all constituted

42. Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought, p. 299.

43. Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages, p. 273.

44. Murray, p. 274.

3› The Triumph of Philosophy

185
authority, whether clerical or lay. What is more, it was a chal-
lenge presented on behalf of reason alone. To the clergy, it was manifested “in the usurpation of a canonical distinction,” in that it erected “a rival magisterial authority in ‘philosophers.’”45 Reasoned analysis stood pre-eminent over dogmatical pronuncia-
tion, no matter whether those proclamations asserted the claims
of Divinity or not. To the lay nobility which was based upon
birth or wealth, it simply proclaimed the superior virtues of the educated man to the accidents of nature or the advantages of
possessions. The “Reason” Ideal would brook no inferior status.

In time, it would suffer no rivals.

45. Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages, p. 281.

186

5 • The University and Scholasticism

Part III - Modern Man

“The New Paganism”

188

6 • The Renaissance

The New Man Ideal

1› The Meaning of the Renaissance

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the study of
the past underwent considerable modification with the introduc-
tion of so-called scientific history, with the result that the world of learning witnessed a vast outpouring of research and interpretations based, it was supposed, upon more objective and rationally reliable analyses of the past than had until now been possible.

This development had important implications for Western his-
tory in particular, for in conjunction with this more rigorous
approach to the study of the past, the history of Western civilization was increasingly subjected to sharp re-evaluations of the
periods into which it had been divided. The usual broad catego-
ries – ancient, medieval, modern – might still apply, but as scholars examined the past in ever more detail, these divisions seemed to them quaint and conventional. Consequently, along with a
proliferation of new insights and re-interpretations allegedly
based upon rational procedures and standards, many sub-divi-
sions within these wider classifications began to appear which
seemed to require a new understanding of each historical era.

Sometimes a segment of history would seem to overlap two peri-
ods, making it more difficult to decide where the division
between eras should be recognized. Earlier demarcations, it was
often claimed, lacked clarity and scientific accuracy.

Of course, those who had lived the history had not been as aware of discontinuities as we are who must endeavor to provide
an account of past events. The past would possess no meaning
for us as history were there no changes to observe, no transforma-tions to evaluate, no developments to record. We are aware, for
example, that great intellectual, social and material differences separate the modern world from the medieval world. Nevertheless, there are great distinctions between the ancient and medi-

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6 • The Renaissance
eval periods as well. Every period contains characteristics which make it unique, despite the existence of features which might
seem notable departures from the overall temper of the times.

Nevertheless, it can be cause for great controversy when a
portion of history seems, apparently, to defy period classification.

The Renaissance has come to be viewed this way. An interested
student of the period is struck by the fierce debates that have
become a feature of Renaissance studies over the definition of its period concept. Rarely does any work appear in print without its author pressing his opinion. Does the Renaissance in its cultural manifestations represent primarily a Christian-medieval outlook, or is it more properly part of the modern era, in which pious
asceticism and other-worldliness have become less attractive and man, glowing with a new Promethean self-confidence, radiates
enthusiasm for the life of here and now? Such questions crop up
repeatedly.

Some seek a middle ground and are mindful that certain
times ambiguously compose transition periods and exhibit features of two eras, retaining much of the old while showing an
inclination towards the new. For many, this characterization of
the Renaissance seems the most satisfactory. As a transition
period, then, it is synthesis or mixture, understood to be fluid and showing a tendency towards realignment. Transition periods, like this one, lack hard boundaries and solid parameters.

Despite its supposedly transitional nature, we believe that
the Renaissance ought to be treated as part of a definite historical era, the modern one, because the Renaissance is primarily modern secular-humanist in its core ideals. The term modern recognizes a major redefinition of man away from the dominant

Christian-medieval, and Augustinian worldview and towards a
new, more pagan, anti-Christian outlook, with a new idea of cul-
ture and civilization. Although much of the surface remains
medieval, the appearance should not obscure the true moral-reli-
gious change in Renaissance man.

The Renaissance includes mainly the fourteenth through
the sixteenth centuries. During the first two, the Trecento and

Quattrocento, it was in Italy that the essential ideals of the

1› The Meaning of the Renaissance

191

Renaissance arose and found cultural expression. By the six-
teenth century the Renaissance ideal was no longer merely Ital-
ian, nor even primarily Italian, but had become a European-wide
phenomenon. Its center had shifted from south to north, espe-
cially to the Netherlands, France, and England. In this period,
styled the high Renaissance, the last vestiges of the medieval past gave way before the first full flowering of a world that was to
continue up to the present day.

Our primary concern in this chapter is not with the Renais-
sance in its historical movements and phases, nor with its cultural residue that is still remarkably visible today. Most people think of the Renaissance primarily in terms of great works of art. Painters, sculptures, architects, poets and dramatists have left behind a
wealth of examples of their genius. We have been taught to view
their lofty creations as representative of a time when the human spirit, freed after centuries of sterile asceticism and other-worldliness, emerged to emphasize a new self-confidence. Renaissance
artists are said to have shown a new appreciation for nature in all its variety, especially human nature in its uniqueness and manifold complexity. Their works, we are told, celebrate life by proclaiming a new freedom to explore novel ideas, to challenge old
dogmas, to take charge of one’s destiny, to glory in humanity
and man’s superiority over nature and his surroundings. They
eloquently testify to the coming of age of man.

However, rather than create a new culture, these justly cel-
ebrated artists only sought to give aesthetic expression to the
new cultural and religious temperament. Far more important
were the thinkers, writers and statesmen who chiefly formulated
the ethos that was central to the Renaissance, and it was during the Italian phase of the Renaissance that the most articulate form of that ethos can be seen to flourish. Their enduring legacy to
modern culture was wrought in a moral and religious transfor-
mation which, as we shall see, entailed a new ideal of power.

We may divide the Italian Renaissance into two phases: the
first from the early pioneers at the beginning of the fourteenth century up to the 1450s; the second, from around 1450 until the
end of the century when Italy became the battleground of the

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6 • The Renaissance
major European powers. Early in the first stage one city, Flo-
rence, became the birthplace and principal center of the Renais-
sance. From Florence emerged three figures to lead the way,

Dante, Petrarch, and Bocaccio. Petrarch would leave the deepest
impression. By the end of the fourteenth century, Florence and

Florentine ideas stood at the center of what has been called the civic humanism phase of the Renaissance, a period, defined by a new vision of the humanities, and of republicanism and civil liberty, which was marked by appreciation of the models of ancient

Athens and Republican Rome. In time, Florence and her ideas
would be challenged by the sinister power of the Visconti of

Milan who represented a different type of Renaissance man. For
men of this type, the Renaissance ideal was to be found in great men of power such as the Caesars, who knew how to impose
their will by force and to resolve all disputes and conflicts, thus to achieve the well-ordered society as well as wealth and glory for themselves. This type of Renaissance man would triumph over
the earlier sort by the mid-fifteenth century. Even Florence
would bow to the power of the Medici. Thus began the second
phase of the Italian Renaissance, when philosophers like Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, with the help of a new variant
of ancient paganism, Egyptian Hermeticism, propagated a con-
cept of man as a magus, one who claims the ability to tap the power of the universe to achieve every human ambition.

The term Renaissance means rebirth. Rebirth of what? For the principal thinkers, rebirth meant a reawakening after a barren time. The new age was a new enlightenment, an emergence from
darkness and ignorance. That which was reborn was that which
had been lost or smothered by the preceding age. Renaissance
men saw themselves as having rediscovered the knowledge that
was “needed to overcome [man’s] alienated condition and create
a perfect society.”1 The age of darkness, a concept invented by

Petrarch (1304–1374), to whom we shall return, referred to the

1. Stephen A. McKnight, Sacralizing the Secular: The Renaissance Origins of Modernity, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), p. 1.

1› The Meaning of the Renaissance

193

Middle Ages, an age of credulity and superstition which had
been preceded by a classical age of wisdom and understanding.

The possibility of rebirth lay in recovering that luminous ancient legacy and bringing it to the forefront of learning. The Renaissance, like all cultural revolutions, would hardly have succeeded without control of the educational agenda. The new program of
learning, the Studia Humanitatis, would become the chief means to inculcate a new idea of man and society inspired by the classical period. By means of this recovery, man would be in a
position to control his life and circumstances, to create for himself the good life. Thus, while the Renaissance drew from the past, its orientation was towards itself and its vision of knowledge as the means to forge new and better conditions for man and
society. Stephen McKnight writes:

The most distinctive feature of modernity is the underlying
conviction that an epochal break separates it from the pre-
ceding ‘dark age.’ Integral to this epochal consciousness is
a new confidence in man’s capacity for self-determination,
and this in turn derives from the conviction that an episte-
mological breakthrough provides man with the capacity to change the conditions of his existence.2

Such comment makes clear why the Renaissance belongs
more to the modern era than to the Middle Ages.

How does this Renaissance view differ from the outlook of
the Middle Ages, if the earlier era also based its educational curriculum, as we indicated earlier, largely on ancient classical
authors? Were not medieval men cognizant of antiquity? Did
they not know or appreciate what the pre-Christian pagan think-
ers taught about man and the nature of his experience? The
answer, of course, is that they did indeed know, and accepted,
much from ancient pagan authors. This was true throughout the

Middle Ages, but especially in the High Middle Ages after the
discovery and study of new materials on Aristotle from the Mos-
lem world. Indeed, men in the Christian Middle Ages were 2. McKnight, Sacralizing the Secular, p. 9. (emphasis mine) 194

6 • The Renaissance
eager to learn much from the classical sources and to synthesize that learning with the heritage of the fathers of the church and the doctrines of the faith.

Here is the reason the Renaissance exploitation of the clas-
sical past differed fundamentally from that of the medieval
period: Renaissance man no longer was interested in synthesiz-
ing the ideas of classical man with the intellectual tradition of the fathers and the faith. For medieval man, the classical heritage was useful so long as it bolstered an essentially Augustinian faith and theology, whereas Renaissance men wanted to replace the

Augustinian-medieval view with an altogether different faith, one based upon the ancient pagans alone. Furthermore, the metaphysical features of the Augustinian and medieval view, ideas of a God-imposed hierarchy and imperially structured system of rule
and order, were jettisoned in favor of a concept of man-made
civil society as the product of civic virtue and social engineering.

In the new Renaissance cosmology, it is not God who stands at
the center, but the universe, infinite, mysterious, a vast play-
ground for human will and self-purpose.

In many ways the outlooks of the Middle Ages and the

Renaissance appear similar, but only if the comparisons are
superficial. A great gulf separates the Augustinian-medieval view of man as he confronts the world and the ultimate reality of God from the Renaissance view which sees man solely in his relationship to the universe. Frances Yates encapsulates the differences in a comment that, while concerned with her diagnosis of the second phase of the Italian Renaissance, in fact could apply to the entire period: “What has changed is Man, now no longer only
the pious spectator of God’s wonders in the creation, and the
worshipper of God himself above the creation, but Man the
operator, Man who seeks to draw power from the divine and natural order.”3 In the Renaissance view, divine and natural blend imperceptibly into one another, and man sees himself as con-3. Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979), p. 144.

(emphasis mine)

1› The Meaning of the Renaissance

195
fronting this reality solely to extract its power and tap into its resources, thereby to advance man’s own cause and self-purpose.

Jacob Burckhardt made the central feature of his interpre-
tation of the Renaissance a new attitude about the human indi-
vidual.4 There is a new and boundless aspiration on the part of
the individual to seek for earthly fame. Man ceases to feel the
need to hold in check his ambition as an affront to God and a
threat to eternal salvation. Instead, he yearns to achieve glory and distinction as laudable goals here and now, and to be recognized for his accomplishments and their intrinsic worth while he lives. Man refuses to see all activity here as merely preparation for the hereafter, but accepts it as having inherent value and an
immediate benefit for himself. This new vision of man no longer
sees him as passive and receptive, but as supremely active and
creative. The world and man are what man makes of them.

Unlike medieval men, who accepted the conditions of life as pre-
ordained in the transcendent counsel of God, therefore not to be questioned or doubted, Renaissance man looked at life and society as the arena for the realization of man’s innate potential. The flowering of art and artistic achievement during this period is a reflection of this attitude, and served to promote the ideal of
individual fame, both for artists themselves and their patrons.

Hence, as Mebane writes: “The concept of the self as a work of
art, an idea which became central to Renaissance culture,
expresses the tendency of the period to allow ‘art,’ in the broad sense of ‘human creative activity,’ to compete with divine grace as the shaping force in human life and destiny.”5

In the Renaissance, man looks at himself as having God-
like power to recreate a world that conforms to his own wishes.

At the very least, being similar to God Himself, man is called
upon to assist God in His work of perfecting the world and man.

4. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Vol. I, (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1958) pp. 143–

174.

5. John S. Mebane, Renaissance Magic and the Return of the Golden Age: The Occult Tradition and Marlowe, Jonson, and Shakespeare, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), p. 11.

196

6 • The Renaissance

Man does not sit idly by, nor does he pass through life as a pilgrim bound for another world, but sets himself to imitate and
support God in His goal of bringing all things to completion.

That means, “[t]o realize our divine potential we must, like God, exercise our powers in creative acts through which we reproduce
in the external world the perfection we have come to see within
our own minds.”6 The standard of man’s activity is his own inner nature which is essentially divine, but which awaits man’s bringing it to fulfillment.

This implies, in turn, that unlike medieval man, men in the

Renaissance do not wish to be confronted with any preconcep-
tions, conventions or traditions that would foreordain their
actions or behavior. They want no external authority to impose limits upon their activity if it would be perceived as hindering the realization of their potential. Man must be seen in his primal freedom, denying any and all barriers to the shaping of his divine destiny. The world is open before him as an object to be brought under his control. Nothing must stand in his way or pre-define
his agenda. Man must be free to take the pathway which suits
him and to discover his potential in any area he wishes to investigate. The Renaissance fascination with antiquity was not merely
a curiosity to discover new ideas, but was also a way of affirming that nothing that any man had ever said or done at any time or
place should be considered as untrustworthy knowledge for man.

Whatever men have thought or asserted, because it is innately
human, is a possible source of wisdom and truth, and to be
accepted at face value. It was the Renaissance man’s way of
claiming that the Christian Middle Ages had no monopoly on truth; in fact, that era had only promoted ignorance. A real
insight into things human was to be found in consulting the
authors of the classical past, whose ideas, it was often asserted, were more Christian than those of the medieval thinkers.

The Renaissance embraced the classics of antiquity on
their own terms and for their own intrinsic merit, and not as
requiring any re-adjustment for a Christian framework. They

6. Mebane, Renaissance Magic, p. 11.

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197
viewed Greco-Roman civilization as a golden age of creative
genius and great accomplishments by and for men alone. They
looked to revive that ancient culture in order to transform their own world-view into one in which the per fecting of man
becomes the chief preoccupation. In turn, they viewed this
rebirth as so epochal in significance, so profound in its renewal of man’s confidence in himself and his capability to find his own
meaning and to further his own purpose, that, set next to the
dark ages of Christianity, as McKnight comments, “The only
suitable language to describe the epochal breakthrough is that of conversion and salvation.”7

If anything marks the character of the modern age, begin-
ning with the Renaissance, it is its anti-Christianity. Nevertheless, it is dependent upon concepts essential to Christianity, but these are invested with profoundly new meaning. For the conversion implied by the Renaissance meant a turning away from the Christian heritage, and the salvation looked to by Renaissance men was a new spiritual reality in which man was freed from any

God other than his own potential, unrivaled divinity.

2› The World of Urban Conflict and Civic Humanism

Although the Renaissance marks a sharp break with the
medieval-Augustinian world-view, it was nevertheless spawned in
the late Middle Ages in northern Italy and forged amidst the
struggle between Sacerdotium and Imperium, whose unresolv-able clash seemed to compel men to look elsewhere for an idea
of social order and for solutions to the disorder that followed
their encounters. It is one legacy of the false institutional and cultural ideas of Christian monasticism and hierarchicalism that, when men were ready to break definitively from their mold, no
real Christian-Biblical alternative was available to direct Western civilization into more genuinely Christian pathways. This void
allowed men to turn back enthusiastically to the ideas of ancient 7. McKnight, Sacralizing the Secular, p. 15.

198

6 • The Renaissance
pagan Greece and Rome, almost emptying the developing cul-
ture of anything discernibly Christian. Perhaps it is too generous to think that much real Christianity had prevailed even in the
previous period.

Life in the upper Italian peninsula had never quite con-
formed to the medieval pattern of rule. Since Roman times this
region had had numerous flourishing cities. Despite the invasion of the Goths in the late fourth century, the Roman way of life
was not totally disrupted. Not until the more barbarous Lom-
bards (Langobardi) arrived in the sixth centur y did this area
undergo social and political upheaval. Even so, a measure of
order was soon restored when control was wrested from the

Lombards by the invading Carolingian Franks. Once again cities,
though on a smaller scale, re-emerged as the chief social characteristic of the region.

Italy was part of the new Western empire, and in theory
the will of the emperor was the law of the land. Under the Carolingians, the area was governed by counts and viscounts installed by the King, but the distance from the center of imperial power
allowed these local rulers considerable liberty of action. They
quickly entrenched themselves as seigneurs – landed aristocrats –
and behaved like petty feudal barons, yet maintained ties with
the cities and their growing commercial and trading interests.

The church, of course, was also present, but in northern Italy
was less powerful in feudal terms than elsewhere in Europe.

When the Carolingian world disintegrated in the ninth century
the entire region was left a congeries of independent powers with no clear subordination to either secular or sacred authority. This fragmentation of power was a boon to the cities which discovered that, for the most part, they were left to develop commer-
cially and to govern themselves, free from outside interference or taxation, a fact which histor y records as the reason for the
growth and power of the great Italian city-states.

By the late tenth century, during the reign of the Otton-
ians, the German empire had recovered enough to reassert its
claims of authority in most of its eastern imperial lands, including northern Italy, although the exercise of power was more prob-2› The World of Urban Conflict and Civic Humanism

199
lematic.8 To regain a measure of control the Ottonian emperors
tried to use bishops as a means of governing the region. Their
authority was often checked by strong local interests and by the cities themselves, which were little inclined to submit to outside powers. Secular lords increasingly joined their interests with the quickening economic life of the cities, and found they were compelled to share political power with new men of wealth. This
combination promoted local civic interests over imperial inter-
ests. In some places the bishops were absorbed into this social
realignment. It was, for example, a Visconti bishop who estab-
lished the power of the Visconti in Milan.

The burgeoning wealth of the Italian city-states aroused
the covetous ambitions of imperial aspirants. Starting with Frederick Barbarossa in the mid-twelfth century, repeated unsuccess-
ful attempts were made to compel the region’s submission to
armed force. With great energy the cities of Lombardy and Tus-
cany resisted every effort by imperial armies to impose royal-
appointed rulers over them. Nevertheless, because of jealousies
and fierce rivalries between the cities themselves, imperial ambitions were able to make headway with some factions. The propo-
nents of the imperial party became known as the Ghibellines.

During the same period, the papal struggle for the control of
ecclesiastical investiture of bishops and elimination of simony

(the purchasing of church office) in ecclesiastical appointments, a reform begun nearly a centur y earlier, would, but for almost
entirely political reasons, give rise to an opposing faction called the Guelphs. In Italy “the Guelph party shattered … the last
props of German feudal and imperial dominance.”9 As real
power became entirely local, northern Italy became a political
chaos in which city-states warred with one another in a ruthless struggle for regional control.

Amid the turbulence of the eleventh and twelfth centuries

8. A condensed discussion of this history can be found in Malcolm Barber, The Two Cities: Medieval Europe, 1050–1320, (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 251ff.

9. Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy, (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1988), p. 48.

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6 • The Renaissance
important social changes were taking place. There was rapid
growth in the birth rate, and the sudden surge in population
caused scarce land for the small and mid-sized peasant to become even scarcer. To live off the land became increasingly difficult, since Italy was not a region with large stretches of arable land.

Steady movement to the cities swelled urban populations. Major
land values soared. However, the productivity of agriculture rose rapidly as well, and trade and manufacture mushroomed, absorbing the influx populations from the land into the growing craft
industries and trades. This change increased the influence of the cities in the politics of the region, and shifted the balance of power from the land to the commercial centers.

The effect of this social change was to raise the demand by
cities for self-government, and a system of communes, government by locally chosen nobles and respected citizens, emerged.

However, the local nature of government fostered intense atti-
tudes of self-interest, and cities became bitter rivals for the control of local advantage. Implacable conflicts over tolls, customs, riverways, seaways and the traffic of commerce and trade became
endemic.10 Each city viewed its neighbors with jealous suspicion.

Each commune claimed monopoly over certain manufactured
items and deeply resented competition from other communes.

Instead of developing commercial ties, they fought fiercely with one another for control of territories and exclusive rights to economic resources.

Even more threatening to social order than the feuds
which cities carried on with their neighbors were the distur-
bances suffered as competing factions within the city fought for control of communal affairs. Mercantile interests grew up around prominent families which vied with one another over the direction of policy, especially as policy chiefly concerned the need
constantly to raise taxes in order to wage the necessary warfare with the neighboring community. These families and their many 10. Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), p. 22.

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201
dependents often gained control of a district where they exer-
cised a monopoly of power. The leaders formed consorteria and went through the streets with armed retainers for their own protection and to intimidate rival families. The streets became battlegro unds. Each family, to secure greater control of its
neighborhood, erected towers from which to keep watch on enemies, and to gain advantage in attack or to protect against one.

Against this background of civil turmoil merchants and
craftsmen formed into guilds to protect themselves in the envi-
ronment of fractious communes. It became impossible to carry
on any trade or occupation without joining one of these organi-
zations. Economic privileges and success were dependent upon
political power. In the words of professor Martines: “Guilds
were not just casual and friendly occupational organizations….

They burst upon the scene to satisfy urgent needs. Many turned
themselves into armed groups. They sought the control of their
craft and product, but the route often lay through politics and
some form of violence.”11

The result of this experiment in self-government followed
the usual historical pattern. The breakdown of order seemed to
demand more centralized power. To check the fractious rivalries, communal government in the thirteenth century gave way to
centralized government – the podesta – a council with a strong executive. This change occurred in typical historical fashion, as an urgent demand of the people. Workers, artisans, small manu-facturers combined with the petty nobility and ruling elites to
put an end to neighborhood divisions. Some prominent families,
out of a sense of rank, privilege, and self-esteem tried in vain to resist including the populo in the counsels of government. However, the people, to succeed, had to rely on the paid services of some powerful man or group of men. The effect nearly everywhere was the defeat of popular government and the creation of
government by the strongman, forerunner of the condottiere.

This was the signoria, government by a powerful nobleman with the backing of rich merchants, bankers, and money men. In

11. Martines, Power and Imagination, p. 40.

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6 • The Renaissance
some cases – Florence being the most noteworthy – government
remained in the hands of a strong bourgeois assembly with a lim-
ited executive power. The same might be said of Venice despite
its oligarchical character. Elsewhere power fell into the hands of strong individuals. This was especially true in Lombardy where
the increased power of the Visconti of Milan eventually led to

Milanese domination of the region.

During these centuries, in this context of intense inter-city
rivalries, a moral transformation gradually occurred. The city had become the fundamental social fact for Renaissance Italians. It
became the principal moral fact as well. Men were proud of their cities and regarded themselves especially fortunate to have been born or brought up in one.12 Loyalty and devotion to one’s city
was taken for granted as the paramount moral ideal, promoting a
secular definition of human nature and society. Man’s dominant social experience was no longer to be seen in medieval terms as
contained within the three orders and shaped by obedience to the church. Man’s existence was not predetermined according to some divinely ordained social hierarchy which was said to be
because of sin and necessary for salvation. Instead, the basic fact of urban life was that men lived in a social context that was fostered and maintained by a moral commitment to public concerns which derived entirely from the exigencies of public need: the need for safety; the need to realize that personal welfare was
founded upon the increase and promotion of the public welfare.

This sense of public consciousness had no connection to reli-
gious salvation and did not stem from some higher obligation to
contain sin and evil, but was said to derive entirely from man’s innate impulse to gain public recognition and honor for his
accomplishments, the satisfaction that comes from the approval
of his fellow citizens. It was from this sense of public consciousness, with its belief that the city was the milieu in which human nature was formed and towards which man’s efforts should be
chiefly directed, that the ethos which has come to be known as

Renaissance humanism would sprout.

12. Martines, Power and Imagination, p. 72

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203

Humanists, like the ancient Sophists, spoke to the men of
the new urban societies and offered an educational curriculum
that would enable them to shape their ideals as men whose pri-
mary concern was public affairs, principally, their administration.

Humanism, therefore, was not for the masses, but for ruling
elites and men of great abilities. The humanist agenda was
directed at whoever was responsible for the business of the city –
to noblemen, rich bourgeoisie, princes, prelates, oligarchs – to provide instruction for men who ruled, to foster a course of
instruction that would produce the best ruler. When they looked
to the ancient poets of Greece and Rome, humanists did not do
so simply for the sake of literar y pleasure or personal moral
advice, but to find moral examples to serve as guides for proper public leadership for men of their own day. Their study of history had a strictly utilitarian interest, to teach great men the way of greatness and powerful men how to exercise power. The
humanist educational ideal stressed proficiency in language as a tool to be used by men of power. Rhetoric – refined eloquence –
was necessary to persuade the citizens to act for the public interest, to guide the passions of the people and inspire them to make sacrifices for the glory of their city. The program of humanism
had politics as its primary goal.

In a telling comment on the humanists of the period pro-
fessor Martines writes: “The humanist attitude toward history
was emphatically selective, elitist, self-congratulatory, and fixed to a criterion of worldly success.” Too often we have been led to believe that the humanism of the Renaissance was merely a disinterested study in all aspects of human experience for the sake of enriching our understanding and expanding our ideas of what it
means to be truly educated. But the humanists of the period were not pursuing some disinterested study of classical thought
simply to open the mind to an insight into things valuable for
human experience in general. They meant to find the basis for
the new belief in politics as the highest form of human activity and the successful ruler as the ideal type of man. The humanists

“saw first and saw deepest into the grounds of praise for the
earthly city: praise for politics, for men in civil society, for secular 204

6 • The Renaissance
histor y, riches, worldly accomplishments, and the pursuit of
glory.”13 The highest worldly good was to be found in outstand-
ing political activity, which meant that all other goods were secondary to and derivative of politics. The program of humanism
was very much an upper class phenomenon, as only prominent
men would benefit from a humanist education. The humanists
had contempt for any but ruling elites and great men. They
despised the crowd and “affected disdain for all ‘mercenar y’

trades, from petty shopkeeping to medicine and even the prac-
tice of law.”14

It would be natural to expect humanists to have a firm
interest in redefining the moral basis of human behavior. They
would not be content to hold the medieval-Augustinian view
which says that man needs government in order to check his
impulse toward evil, and would have little use for a concept of
social order as merely necessary to prevent men from transgress-
ing against God’s established order. The criterion that govern-
ment was necessary because men were sinful and needed to fear a
power that would act with a just retribution against their wicked behavior was one that Renaissance men for the most part came
to despise. Social order and temporal power, rather than being
necessary for some other-worldly benefit, were the means for
realizing legitimate human aspirations for social and civic happiness. Man desires to live the best life possible, and rather than being essentially sinful, he possesses a natural reservoir of virtue.

Against the background of the city-state wars and internal urban strife, the humanists endeavored to promote the idea that man
could control his passions and channel them into constructive
and socially beneficial ends. They found the basis for this optimism in the works of classical authors, particularly those who
accepted and taught the Stoic doctrine of the naturalness of social and political organization.

In St o ic t ho u g h t m an was b y n a tu r e vi r t u ou s b ut unformed. If he would live in accordance with virtue, he must

13. Martines, Power and Imagination, pp. 198 & 206.

14. Martines, p. 207.

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205
cultivate his mind, control his passions and act for the good of humanity. At least in the Roman republican period, this doctrine had been used to promote the idea of Rome and of the citizen
who sacrifices himself upon the altar of the public welfare. Rome was regarded as the fount of good and its moral customs as superior to others. Its past was a rich lesson in great men who had set aside worldly self-interest so that they might better serve the
greater good of Rome.15 They were examples to be followed.

The Stoics believed that the best kind of life was the one lived by virtuous men in a well-ordered and harmonious commonwealth.

Stoic doctrine furthered the idea that government, far from
being a mere bulwark against evildoers, was an agent for positive good.16 It was not only good in itself but enabled men to become good through service to civic well-being.

In like manner, Renaissance thinkers came to believe in the
secular city as a natural, self-sufficient political organism requiring no justification other than the advantages it provided for its citizens. They accepted no theological justification for the idea of the state, because Christian theology contradicted their fundamental belief in the natural virtuousness of men to foster their own happiness, and because it restricted the actions of men to a social arrangement not of their own making. Politics was, for

Renaissance men, not simply a given state of affairs descended
from heaven to which men were required to subordinate them-
selves as best they could, but was an on-going process in which

15. Livy, the famous Roman historian of the first century BC, wrote in the first book of his monumental History of Rome: “The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings … for I do hon-estly believe that no country has ever been greater or purer than ours or richer in good citizens and noble deeds….” The Early History of Rome, Bks I–V, translated by Aubrey De Selincourt, (Penguin Books, 1986), p. 34

16. For here and what follows see George Holmes, The Florentine Enlightenment, 1400–1450, (Oxford: The Clarendon Press,

1992), pp. 150–167.

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6 • The Renaissance
shifting imbalances became opportunities for virtuous men to
employ their talents and energies in the generating of new poli-
cies that would enhance the civic welfare and redound to their
own glory and reputation. In this context, there could be no a priori rules of behavior, no pre-ordained order. Men must be free to act as they see fit in order to shape a society that accords with their wisdom and foresight. The humanists had great confidence that they could educate rulers and other elites in the proper virtues using great examples from the past. Men so taught would always rule in the best interests of the commonwealth.

The transition from the fourteenth to the fifteenth century
was a momentous time in Renaissance Italy, which saw a great
struggle between the Visconti tyrants of Milan and the republic of Florence that extended forty years into the century. By the
end of the fourteenth century most of the independent cities had been absorbed by one regional power or another. A policy of
aggressive domination had been actively pursued by the Visconti, who ruled in Milan with absolute power. At the same time, the
free cities of Tuscany had all been brought under the suzerainty of the city of Florence. Ostensibly a republic, Florence had nevertheless embarked on an expansionist policy of her own to pre-
vent cities such as Pisa, Lucca and Siena from pursuing policies contrary to her interests. Everywhere power consolidated around
a strong center. By the end of the fourteenth century there were five regional powers in Italy: Lombardy, ruled by Milan; Tuscany, under Florentine control; Venice, which was territorially
confined mainly to its lagoon; the Romagna, the centuries-old
patrimony of St. Peter; and the kingdom of Sicily in the south.

Each would like to have had total control in Italy, but none had the means to achieve that goal. Despite limitations, the Visconti pursued an aggressive policy of expansion southward toward

Tuscany. Florence, to sur vive as a free and independent city-
state, would have to contend against an enemy who coveted her
wealth and hated her institutions.

Florence had been the home of humanist ideas before this
time, but the need to arouse the citizenry to patriotic fervor to resist aggression required the evocation of a moral ideal which

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207
would move the people to defend their city. They must be
brought to see that the issue was not simply one of life and property, but a choice between freedom or slavery, between a life in which full human potential was allowed to realize itself or one in which all human effort was subordinate to the dictates of absolute power, every man’s capacity for good subjected to the will of one man. The period saw the efflorescence of civic humanism, which viewed the contest between Milan and Florence in stark
contrast and sought to promote a vision of a public order, forged in the struggle between light and darkness, that with the guidance of the humanists would give birth to a new society of free
men. Florence, the Athens on the Arno, would become the home of republicanism and the center from which would emanate a
growing opposition to monarchy, that most medieval of institu-
tions.

Florentines saw themselves as waging a campaign not
merely against immediate danger but against centuries of igno-
rance and inhumanity. They sought to raise the issue beyond the
need for self-protection to one which included a new vision of
man and society, a vision of men who freely and self-consciously shape their society to achieve the best life possible here and now.

To find the agenda for building such a society of the future they searched the ancient literary remains of Greece and, especially, Rome, with something of a “militant dedication to antiquity,” to discover the ideals of republicanism and the notion that men are most virtuous under republican regimes and most full of vice and corruption under one-man rule.17 The Visconti represented the
odious alternative, and were made to symbolize all that was evil in monarchy. Florence would become the center of a type of

Renaissance civic humanism which sought not merely to with-
stand the pressures of tyranny but to foster a new outlook which would make possible the constitution of a society that overcomes man’s tendency towards this most virulent of political vices. In 17. Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and

Tyranny, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), p. 4.

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6 • The Renaissance
anticipation of modern democratic liberalism, the thinkers of

Renaissance Florence confidently saw in state-building a program for making men good and their societies happy and contented.

Among the many figures of the time, perhaps none repre-
sented the new current of thought more than Leonardo Bruni

(1374–1444), whose writings proclaimed the active political life as the highest and most virtuous that men can lead. He had been
trained by Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), a dominant figure of
his day in the counsels of government as well as the founder of
the Florentine circle of humanist scholars who were to represent the new generation of educated civic leaders. For Bruni, politics was no mere necessity imposed upon men so that their lives and
relationships might be less subject to acts of injustice, thus free-ing them for higher pursuits. Rather, for him, politics was the highest activity, the art which made all others possible, the
means to overcome the power of fortuna in the circumstances of life, to improve and enrich the commonwealth and to change
men for the better. In his introduction to Aristotle, Bruni
asserted that “among the moral doctrines through which human
life is shaped, those which refer to states and their governments occupy the highest position. For it is the purpose of those doctrines to make possible a happy life for all men….” 18 But politics meant republican politics, politics pursued by men who stand free from every power but the power of moral and intellectual
persuasion and have the liberty of will to shape their own destiny and to triumph by means of their own virtue and greatness.

When Bruni thought of republican politics he did not
think of institutional arrangements so much as he contemplated
grand moral visions. He did not think of government ever being
an oppressor of its people except in its monarchical form. Republican government was, almost by definition, free from the possi-
bility of corruption and from tyrannizing over its people, because republican governments are made only by virtuous men. It,

18. Quoted in Eugenio Garin, Italian Humanism: Philosophy and Civic Life in the Renaissance, trans. by Peter Munz, (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1965), p. 41.

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209
therefore, requires the right kind of men for republics to thrive or survive. How are such men found? Here Bruni drew upon the
resources of his humanist education. Such men are not found so
much as taught. They are men who have studied how to be vir-
tuous. They are men who have the knowledge of virtuous deeds mentally and spiritually before them. Where do such men find
such knowledge? The answer came from Petrarch, who believed
that it came from the examples of great men in the classical past.

Petrarch has been acclaimed the father of the new human-
itas, the first to state unequivocally the belief that the educated man was only made possible through dialogue with the great
masters of the ancient past. “These masters alone had under-
stood the full importance of the soul….”19 That is, they under-
stood human nature, what makes it good and what makes it bad.

They possessed a remarkable knowledge of what was needed to
cure the bad and produce the good. They were not mere teach-
ers of dead abstractions, like the hated scholastics, but had supposedly gained real insight into human experience.

Humanists such as Petrarch turned to antiquity because
they wanted to know about man and believed that the scholastic
methodology with its logical and grave discourses about God
and the intellect could tell them nothing. They disdained any
pre-established intellectual order which imposed authority on the mind of man and restricted his ability to study human nature as
an ongoing creative process. This attack on scholasticism also implicated Divine revelation, which presented a definitive interpretation of man, explaining man entirely in terms of his rela-
tionship to God. This theological interpretation of man did not, so they felt, take sufficient account of real human experience.

Furthermore, it devalued human experience by always seeing it
through the prism of sin and salvation. Worst of all, it kept men in subjection to political tyranny and subordination.

Petrarch was the first to look at human achievements in
past and present primarily as examples of human exertion and
experience which were valuable for their own sake apart from any 19. Garin, Italian Humanism, p. 19.

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6 • The Renaissance
pre-conceived theological mental order. He believed that man’s
deeds could be explained on a purely human level, as the product of his passions, ambitions, goals, struggles and accomplishments, without reference to anything beyond man himself. By studying
the experiences of men of the past one could learn to know one-
self and discover the means to overcome the vicissitudes of for-
tune in the lives of men and societies. Petrarch came to represent a new brand of education, that acquired by the study of human
experience and of other men’s explanations of that experience.

Armed with the moral lessons of this education, the humanists,
following Petrarch, believed it possible to achieve the best civilization for man.

Bruni, and others after Petrarch, expressed a bold confi-
dence in the will of man to accomplish great things on man’s
behalf. Real power was at man’s disposal through his willingness to take hold of it. Man can change his circumstances; he can elevate virtue over vice and thereby defeat whatever fortune sends
his way. In the face of the threat of tyranny great men can tri-
umph. What is more, they can achieve a type of society in which
men are free from this scourge. The means was the moral emula-
tion of the ancients, for as Petrarch in the preface to his De viris illustribus so assuredly proclaimed: “…through the remem-brance of virtue we censure vice.”20

It would be possible to complete our discussion of the
civic humanism phase of the Italian Renaissance, with its confi-
dent belief that virtue would always triumph over vice and so
enable man to realize the good society, were it not necessary to take account of the thought of one of the last of the civic
humanists – Lorenzo Valla (1407–1457). Valla introduced an
important feature of humanism, one that, despite his belief to
the contrary, would simply undermine the foundations upon
which the humanists of the time had naively taken their stand.

It has been said that Valla merely represented the belief in

20. Quoted in Donald R. Kelley, ed., Versions of History from Antiquity to the Enlightenment, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), p. 227.

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211
the value of this life and all that pertains to it. More especially, he stood for the view that nature was normal, and the corollary that the body was a legitimate means of enjoyment which should be
accepted and not suppressed. In fact, he went so far as to main-
tain that pleasure and the senses should be valued as “the goal
and prize of action.”21 Man should seek what is pleasurable for
its own sake and should not hold something that is deemed plea-
surable to be either abnormal or shameful; nor should the plea-
surable be confined to non-bodily (i.e., spiritual) things. More importantly, Valla denied that pleasure of any sort should be
viewed as the product of good behavior or the outcome of
rightly applied morals, but should be sought after and accepted
simply because it pleases.

Valla, of course, hated monasticism and the abstention of
the flesh which undergirded its outlook. To him, there was no distinction or opposition between flesh or spirit in the medieval dualistic sense. There was only one nature, and nothing that was natural was antithetical to it in any way. Men should not try to live contrary to nature, but in conformity with it. The pleasures of this life in every bodily sense are entirely appropriate and natural. There is no virtue in the denial of the body, neither does any moral code pre-exist to demand that the body be used or
enjoyed in accordance with its dictates. Valla believed that men and women could, without any guilt whatever, pursue the goal
of pleasure in accordance with only one rule, the rule of primal nature.

A program of such action would not long remain compati-
ble with the triumph of virtue over vice as the civic humanist so ardently believed. With no moral code but primal nature, who is to say what is virtue or vice? More importantly, a real knowledge of human nature, which Augustine better understood from

Scripture, clearly shows that the pursuit of pleasure in whatever guise it appears removes any restraint on human behavior and
ultimately destroys every social order. If men are not restrained by any moral code but the wish to satisfy the senses, they will

21. Garin, Italian Humanism, p. 51.

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6 • The Renaissance
soon come into conflict with one another. Whenever this occurs,
social order must be enforced by those strong enough to impose
their will upon others. Indeed, by the mid-fifteenth century little remained of the earlier ideal of civic humanism, for powerful
men ruled absolutely. A different type of humanism would
emerge.

3› The World of Elitist Values and Renaissance Superstitions Near the mid-point of the Quattrocento the idea of
humanitas underwent a considerable transformation, impelled mainly by the defeat of civic humanism and the end of the
republican period. The war between Florence and Milan brought
to an end the Florentine experiment with republican political
institutions, though not by reason of military defeat. Though

Florence was hard pressed, especially when nearby cities with
their own special interests allied with the Visconti in concerted attack, the Florentine armies frequently showed superiority over the enemy forces. Nevertheless, the need to provide for military force, its maintenance and deployment, was a major cause of
stress in the economy, the social structure and the politics of the state which led to the functioning end of the republican system.

In order successfully to resist Milanese aggression the Flo-
rentines found it necessary increasingly to rely on powerful generals who would be willing, for the right material inducement, to lead their armies in the field and, when it was convenient,
arrange truces and broker treaties with the enemy. Such military commanders would demand great leeway in making decisions
and acting. The independence required for taking initiative in
the field was bound to disturb the always fragile nature of republican institutions and practices, especially if the generalissimo proved successful. On such occasions the people would support
him even if it meant a diminution of their liberties. By the 1430s one family, the Medici, whose prominence stemmed originally
from banking, had begun to play a leading role in the affairs of the city. The Medici were no lovers of popular government or of

3› The World of Elitist Values and Renaissance Superstitions 213
municipal assemblies of any sort. To the contrary, they admired
the strongmen, especially the Visconti (soon to be replaced by
the Sforza), and believed firmly in social order ruled by a single powerful individual. But they did not believe in mere power; at
least, they did not wish to appear to do so. Instead, they believed that one should rule, or seem to rule, from an insight into the total nature of reality and man. Few could possibly hope to
achieve such an objective. The people must be made to rely upon
superior men and minds. The Medici came to stand for a kind of
enlightened despotism as the only solution for social and political disorder.

Florentine merchants, originally enthusiastic about the
war, which they hoped would guarantee their monopolies of
trade and commerce, grew wear y of the struggle and simply
wanted it to end. Their interests in the ideals of republicanism and civic virtue waned. The sacrifices and costs were beginning
to prove too much to bear, they wished only to be left free to
pursue their commercial and industrial activity and were ready to cede power and control to the Medici. Florence, the bastion of
civic humanism, suffered moral exhaustion, and fell into the
hands of domineering individuals who, to provide an argument
for the legitimacy of their rule, supported the cause of a different type of humanism.

It was no accident that as civic humanism lost ground the
moral example of great men faded as the principal humanist edu-
cational ideal. In the earlier phase of humanism great interest was shown in the poets and writers of ancient Rome whose works
provided the lessons of virtue to be imitated. In this program, little thought initially was given to the Greeks with the exception, of course, of Aristotle. But this would change. From around the
beginning of the fifteenth century, Greek literature began to
attract the attention of many humanists who were no longer
content to study only what was known of the classical past from

Latin sources. There was a growing desire to read more in the
ancient Greek philosophers, especially Plato. But knowledge of
the Greek language was neither thorough nor widespread and
instruction in the language was not readily available. That, too, 214

6 • The Renaissance
was soon to change. Excellent teachers became available when

Greek scholars from Byzantium, fleeing the Turkish peril, landed in Italy. Among the more famous were Manuel Chrysolaras and

Cardinal Bessarion. They also brought with them previously
unavailable dialogues by Plato, as well as works by Plotinus,

Xenophon, and Isocrates. Much that was previously unknown
about Greek ideas suddenly emerged to inspire a great revival of interest in ancient Hellenic culture. By mid-century it dominated the humanist educational program.

Above all, the Greeks meant philosophy! Or, we might
say, metaphysics! Earlier, because of their disgust with the rigors of hair-splitting Scholasticism and its association with Aristotle, the promoters of humanism had shown no patience for philosophy or speculative metaphysical questions. They were eager to
replace the Augustinian-medieval world-view, but had been
unable to find the conceptual basis for doing so. To a great
extent they had succeeded with a moral redefinition of human
nature. However, they became increasingly aware that in order
totally to supplant the medieval-Christian outlook they would
need more than a new moral vision; they needed a new explana-
tion of the existence and nature of reality, one that placed man at the center of all things and gave him the stature and power he
needed to shape that reality to please himself and to advance the goals of the new humanist ideas of order. They would need a
philosophy.

As this growing interest in things Greek opened new doors
into ancient Greek thought, out stepped Plato, as we indicated,
to show the way that humanism should take. Until the end of
the Renaissance, his philosophical ideas would control thinking
and discussion of all substantive issues. But while Plato was
seized upon to give new direction, he would not stand alone: he
would be accompanied by the newly discovered esoteric religious
source known as Hermeticism. It was by means of this combination of Platonism and Hermeticism that Renaissance humanists
would at last discover the philosophy that would help man
reclaim his potential divinity and enable him thereby to attain to a new consciousness of his exalted place in the scheme to things.

3› The World of Elitist Values and Renaissance Superstitions 215

The man who arose to lead this new humanist assault was

Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), the greatest philosopher to
emerge in the Renaissance. Ficino, born near Florence, was the
son of a physician who regularly treated the Medici. He was
extremely gifted, and his father expected him to study medicine.

But in the course of his studies at the University of Florence,

Ficino discovered a passion for philosophy which led him down a
different path. At age 23 he began the study of Greek and dem-
onstrated an uncanny ability to master the language. His great
desire was to use this skill to study the Greek thinkers. He was deeply attracted to the life of contemplation, but not as it was understood by monasticism which saw it as a means to mortify
the flesh. Ficino believed in the mind and the purification of the soul as the chief means by which to arrive at that stage where the philosopher is enabled to see into the unity and truth of all
things. He was especially attracted to Plato, for Plato did not
think in terms of logical abstractions and categories as did Aristotle, but in terms of grand metaphysical visions of reality, in which were revealed the links between all aspects of existence, especially that between man and God. Ficino taught a new ideal of knowing, one that involved a total comprehension of all things, which thereby enabled man to have total control of his surroundings.

This sort of thinking had great merit with Renaissance rul-
ers. Cosimo de Medici, in particular, found in the new Platonism a program for building a humanist society to be run by elites like himself. These types alone would know how to bend reality to
their advantage. Consequently, it was necessary for them to be
absolutely in charge, for the people as a whole would have nei-
ther the time nor inclination to grasp the nature of reality, and would be incapable of doing so in any event. They would need
to rely upon others to guide and order their world for them.

Renaissance rulers looked to the new philosophy to produce the
justification for the sort of rulership that Plato himself had taught

– philsosopher kings. The good society could only be produced when select minds, who possessed greater mental resources as
well as a better knowledge of the good of the whole community,
were put in charge. Ficino wrote under the rising eminence of

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6 • The Renaissance

Medici who wanted their prominence to be based upon the pos-
session of greater knowledge of the mysteries of reality and thus a better understanding of how society should be ruled for its
own good. This is the chief reason why Cosimo commissioned

Ficino to translate the whole of the Platonic and Neoplatonic
corpus. He was not merely interested in advancing the cause of
learning; he wanted to be seen as making available the word of truth by which superior men live and with which they establish and maintain order.

What made Plato attractive to Ficino was his notion that
reality in its essence is Intellectual, a product of Reason or Mind.

Plato’s concept that transcendent Forms underlay all aspects of

Nature supposedly insured the unity of all things and determined everything according a single rational plan. However, Ficino was influenced in his understanding of Plato by the thought of Plotinus who conceived of the cosmos as a Logos or Soul whose true
spiritual-rational reality lay hidden behind the appearances of external nature. The Platonic Forms or Ideas, being Divine in
nature, act as the “vivifying forces which unite with their opposite, matter, through the mediation of the rational soul.”22 In
this instance, the rational soul meant the philosopher, who has
cultivated the highest part of his soul (intellect) in order that he might grasp the reason of things in their eternal truth. To Ficino reality was primarily Rational, but only to a mind that had awakened itself to see the Form of all things. Although truth abides in all of Nature, it can only become truth for men when they conjure it from its external appearance. Man can disclose the Reason of the world because he is essentially a participant, by means of his mind, in the Divine Logos. “Humanity is the center of the
cosmos and the mediator between the eternal and temporal
worlds….”23 Man is a microcosm of the Macrocosm, and as such
is not only capable of knowing the rational plan of the world, but of actually taking part in its life-giving creativity. As Ficino stated in Five Questions Concerning the Mind: “by means of mind 22. Mebane, Renaissance Magic, p. 22

23. Mebane, p. 22.

3› The World of Elitist Values and Renaissance Superstitions 217
we shall ourselves have the power of creating mind….”24 In other words, man not only observes the order of the cosmos, he
actually cooperates in creating and perfecting it. Man is a little god who, through human knowledge and action, shares with the
big God the power of fashioning and redeeming the world.

Platonic thought was not the only source of inspiration for

Ficino in the construction of his Renaissance philosophy of man
and the world. In 1462, after Ficino had already commenced
translation work on his first Platonic manuscript from Cosimo,
he was interrupted by something that would play an even larger
role in his thinking. Cosimo, it seems, had come into possession of a Greek text containing the discourses of what would become
known as the Corpus Hermeticum. It supposedly recorded the thought of one Hermes Trismegistus who was considered at the
time to be the most ancient source of pagan divine knowledge.

His ideas were said to parallel closely the thought of Moses and later Plato. But his ideas were older, more ancient, than theirs, and since there were parallels between him and both Moses and

Plato, then the latter two must have borrowed notions from

Hermes. Here was an ancient wisdom more venerable than any-
thing that anyone then possessed, closer to the truth because
closer to the beginning of all things. Ficino must stop work on

Plato and translate it!

These Hermetic writings aided Ficino in the formulation a
radical new conception of humanity, for one of the central
thoughts in these documents maintained that before the Fall

“[h]umanity possessed godlike creative powers and was closely
akin to the Son of God, the Logos who created the visible
world.”25 Primal man shared, in other words, in the nature of divinity and had received great creative powers and knowledge of the whole cosmos by which he was then able to construct a
microcosmic social order. “Man was originally a type of terres-
trial god capable of creating an earthly paradise.”26 Mankind,

24. Quoted in The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed. by Ernst Cassirer, et. al., (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1948), p. 194. (emphasis mine)

25. Mebane, Renaissance Magic, p. 18.

218

6 • The Renaissance
however, experienced a descent from this exalted status and
underwent a corruption into matter and lost connection to his
divine beginnings. The purpose of these Hermetic materials was
to offer instruction for a select few who sought the way of regeneration, which meant the regaining of the lost godlike power and knowledge. Through a radical self-transformation man could
recover his lost estate and once again become the “Son of God”

with power and knowledge to remake reality into a new paradise.

In Corpus Hermeticum XI Hermes declares: “unless you make yourself equal to God, you cannot understand God…by a bound
free yourself from the body; raise yourself above time, become

Eternity; then you will understand God. Believe that nothing is
impossible for you, think yourself immortal and capable of
understanding all, all arts, all sciences, the nature of every living being.”27 Such sentiments deeply influenced the mind of Ficino,
and through him and others penetrated to the core of Renais-
sance ideals.

This vision of man as recovering his lost creative powers
would give birth to the notion that there lies embedded in
human nature qualities on the order of magic. Man was a magus who could penetrate with his knowledge to the spiritual core of all reality and there discover the means to make that same reality bend to his indomitable will. Mankind need not live in passive
dependence upon the order of the cosmos. Rather, his spiritual
nature which participates in the Spiritual Nature of the world
gives him the advantage of knowing, or of being able to know,
the secrets of existence. Armed with such insight he would then
be in position to transform Nature to suit his own interests.

Indeed, to have this knowledge and not to use it to transform
and recreate social utopia would almost be a dereliction of duty.

Man must extend his powers and apply his knowledge, otherwise

26. McKnight, Sacralizing the Secular, pp. 41-43.

27. Hermetica: The Ancient Greek and Latin Writings Which Contain Religious or Philosophic Teachings Ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus, Trans. & Ed. Walter Scott, (Boston: Shambhala, 1993), p.

221. I, however, have used the translation as provided in Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, p. 32.

3› The World of Elitist Values and Renaissance Superstitions 219
he lives at the mercy of his circumstances and does not control
his fate. It would be unworthy of so divine a being as man not to be “satisfied until he is complete master of his destiny with no dependency on any other being.”28

For Ficino this combination of Platonism and Hermeti-
cism provided the foundation of a new religion, a new faith. He
believed passionately that reality is Reason and Reason is reality, and that man’s mind is of a piece with this reality and therefore inclines towards it with a natural affinity. We may be weighed
down by matter and body, but the intellect has had placed
within it the power to move towards the infinite as towards a
familiar object. Reality is transparent to the searching gaze of the intellect in its striving for the truth and of the will in its striving for the good. Though truth and goodness may appear hidden to
the mass of the people burdened with matter and sense, and sat-
isfied with particular transient objects, the mind of the philosopher, because he sees clearly, converses only with the universal and everlasting reason of things. He alone ascends the steep
slopes to the realm of God and returns with God’s thoughts as
his tools for the transformation of the world.

At this juncture the humanist agenda looks quite like some
mystical experience. And knowledge appeared to be similar to
magic, for it lacked the later scientific and rigorous technological overtones that would give the new humanist religion a more rationally mundane character. But a decisive shift had occurred.

Ficino had introduced a new vision of man as a new god able to
create a world by means of a regenerated intellectual power. The world is no longer merely a given fact, it is now a product of
human creative action. “In mathematics, music, and architec-
ture, in exploring the inner workings of nature, and in poetry
and oratory we reveal our participation in the God-head.”29

More importantly, man has the ability to imitate the heavenly

28. McKnight, Sacralizing the Secular, p. 56. “…the perfection of one’s own knowledge brought with it the power, as well as
responsibility, to transform the outside world.” Mebane, Renaissance Magic, p. 29.

29. Mebane, p. 25.

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6 • The Renaissance
realm in his creation of civil order and human government. Little wonder that this brand of humanism appealed to rulers and
elites. This was no medieval view; we are on the doorstep of the modern age.

Next to Ficino stood Pico della Mirandola to give addi-
tional support to this new humanist outlook. Pico, too, was fascinated with the notion that man was God-like in nature and
capable of learning the total secrets of nature in order to use that knowledge to construct human society. Pico was, perhaps, less
interested in the nature of reality than he was in redefining
human nature in keeping with the new exalted status that

Renaissance philosophers attributed to him. The phrase the dignity of man has perhaps come to describe the program of the Renaissance more than that of any other. While the phrase was
first used in the fourteenth century by Giannozzo Manetti, it was Pico who made it famous as an epitaph of the Renaissance by the
title of his most famous work, Oration on the Dignity of Man.

What Pico desired to convey in that book was that, if man was
truly God-like, then he is the cause of his own nature and is free to work his own will. Not only does he create the external conditions of his existence, but he creates his own self in the same act.

Man is not a given, pre-determined nature; he does not receive
his nature from an external source, but he alone produces what
he is, and he is free to remake himself without constraint or limitation. In Pico’s fictional account of the origin of man we read these oft-repeated words:

Neither a fixed abode nor a form that is thine alone nor
any function peculiar to thyself have we given thee, Adam,
to the end that according to thy longing and according to
thy judgment thou mayest have and possess what abode,
what form, and what functions thou thyself shalt desire….

Thou, constrained by no limits, in accordance with thine
own free will, in whose hand We have placed thee, shalt
ordain for thyself the limits of thy nature.30

30. Pico, On the Dignity of Man, quoted in The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed. by Ernst Cassirer, et. al., pp. 224 & 225.

3› The World of Elitist Values and Renaissance Superstitions 221

Elsewhere Pico made his view even more clear:

Man alone has no nature which determines him and has no
essence to determine his behaviour. Man creates himself
by his own deeds and thus he is father of himself. The only
condition he is subject to is the condition that there is no
condition, i.e., liberty. The compulsion he is subject to is
the compulsion to be free and the compulsion to choose
his own destiny, to build the altar of his own fame with his
own hands or to forge his own chains and convict him-
self.31

Of course, like Ficino, Pico never imagined that just any
man was so freely in charge of his own destiny. He, too, believed that only men who have learned the secrets of philosophy, who
have cleansed their souls of ignorance and vice, and who have
become illuminated by the bright light of reason are then pre-
pared to “ordain” for themselves the limits of their own nature.

Those others who remained steeped in darkness and the realm of
the senses are fit only to be led by the wisdom of the philoso-
pher. He who has been initiated into the Palladian order of the
mind and well taught therein is best equipped to descend to
earth, there to build whatever world he would choose for us to
live in.

It has been said that Pico, like Renaissance men in general,
simply desired the liberation of man from every concept of external compulsion, authority, or limitation. He wanted nothing but
a radical freedom for man. He wanted no pre-defined order such
as had been prescribed in the Augustinian-medieval view. In this respect, he viewed man as Fallen only if he failed to live in accordance with his own original calling to ordain his own limitations or choose his own destiny. At the same time, it was possible for man to regain his original divine status by a self-will, by choosing to take the higher pathway of philosophy. Philosophy was truth wherever it was to be found – in Plato, in Moses, in Jesus, in

31. On the Dignity of Man, quoted in Garin, Italian Humanism, p.

105.

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6 • The Renaissance

Hermes Trismegistus, in the Jewish Cabbala. In the end, it was
entirely up to man, but Pico was not in doubt that man would
choose to follow holy philosophy if and when great minds, like himself, showed the way and promised the rewards.

The Renaissance was clearly a watershed moment in West-
ern culture and civilization. It represented a new confidence in man and the belief that man was free to determine his place in
the universe and that he possessed an incomparable power for
self-transformation. Man was no mere creature, but he was God-
like; and being God-like he did not go through life passive and
resigned to his circumstances. He rose up and confronted them;
he grasped the truths of reality and thereby changed his circum-
stances to meet with his satisfaction. The goal of man’s life was not some higher spiritual plane, some angelic non-bodily existence, but it was to create paradise here and now. Man as a sharer in the Divine Nature could not rise any higher than he already is.

While this outlook remained somewhat fuzzy and mysterious in
the time of the early to mid-Renaissance, by the late Renaissance man’s increasing fascination with mathematics and science would
eventually provide him with the means to cast off what was left
of his medieval and Augustinian heritage.

7 • The Enlightenment

The New Nature Ideal

1› The Scientific Revolution

If the Renaissance was the first to unbolt the gate of the
modern secular age, the Enlightenment thrust it wide open. The
eighteenth century – the century of Enlightenment – marks that
period often distinguished as the high water mark of rational man. It was, purportedly, a time when man, fully assured of his innate and boundless powers of reason, confidently ventured
forth to construct a world in which truth as discovered and proclaimed by science becomes the fulcrum upon which he hinges
all his beliefs, actions, and decisions. Enlightenment-through-science embraced the confidence that man would thereby find the answer to all his questions and overcome every difficulty which
blocked his path. Ignorance, the root of all error, underlay every fault and failing of the human race. But in human reason lay vast, and hitherto untapped, powers to vanquish the foes of ignorance
and stupidity. Properly cultivated, it would lead mankind to the promised land of knowledge, virtue and happiness. With the
arrival of the Enlightenment not a few dared to believe that man stood on the verge of Divine-like perfection and achievement.

The route from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment
optimism of the eighteenth century lay through the Scientific

Revolution of the seventeenth century. Without the intervention
of this great intellectual and cultural force, the rise of modern humanism scarcely is imaginable. Though the Enlightenment is
first thought to have brought into vogue many of modern man’s
secular beliefs and ideals, these were made possible on the basis of assumptions which began to be put forth during the late

Renaissance in connection with changes that were then taking
place in science and the knowledge of the workings of nature –
changes which, although connected with the Scientific Revolu-
tion, were not intrinsic to it, nevertheless, by making certain

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7 • The Enlightenment
inferences from the new type of thinking it brought to light,
emerged to produce the real impetus toward modern secular
humanism of which the Enlightenment became the first great
expression. As this secular humanism remains firmly embedded
in our Western culture, it would be well to reflect back on the
source from which it sprang.

The Scientific Revolution made possible an understanding
of the natural world that differed markedly from all that had
been previously known, the differences being so great as to war-
rant the notion that what man came to understand of the work-
ings of nature did not amount to a progressive improvement in
continuous line with past ideas, but instead catapulted him onto an entirely different track of comprehension. We wish to stress
this, for there has been a propensity of late to see the Middle

Ages as a time of considerable scientific and technological
advancement. However, while we might not dispute that medi-
eval men were technically proficient in many things so far as it went in a time when men generally were taken up with concerns
other than the material betterment of living conditions or who,
for the most part, lacked the curiosity to know the secrets of
nature for reasons other than spiritual allegor y, nevertheless modern scientific methods were not being practiced in the Middle Ages. Quite simply, medieval men would not have under-
stood them. Moreover, the technology of the Middle Ages,
while certainly useful for constructing cathedrals and castles or grinding grain into flour and so forth, did not bring about the
sorts of changes which differed all that much from previous cen-
turies. It was not a type of knowledge that, in time, would invent the automobile or computer. This required an altogether new
way of thinking about natural phenomena, which the Scientific

Revolution provided.

The Scientific Revolution, however, proved radical in ways
far beyond our mere understanding of the workings of natural
processes or the technological improvements that followed
therefrom. How ever extraordinary were the changes wrought in
the wake of the Scientific Revolution and continuing in no less
remarkable ways up to the present, so far as these have affected 1› The Scientific Revolution

225
man’s external environment, the transformation in the way man
thinks about himself and how he sees his place and purpose in
the cosmos has been of even greater importance. The arrival of
modern science was, in the words of Alexandre Koyre, accompa-
nied by a “radical spiritual revolution.” That is, there occurred along side this new type of understanding a profound “secularization of consciousness … [a] turning away from transcendent
goals to immanent aims … [a] replacement of the concern for the
other world … [with a] preoccupation with this life … [a] substitution of the subjectivism of the moderns for the objectivism of the medievals and ancients….”1 Whereas ancient and medieval
men looked upon nature as something to be contemplated for its
spiritual (ideational) value, and therefore for the faith that it served to confirm, modern men from the time of the Scientific

Revolution only wanted to dominate and master nature. This
change, despite antecedents which led up to and prompted it,
occurred as no gradual process, but was an abrupt and definitive historical transition. It involved the complete elimination of one way of thinking and its replacement by an altogether different
way. Koyre’s comment, once again, expresses the radical charac-
ter of the thinking which accompanied this transformation:

The scientific and philosophical revolution … can be
described roughly as bringing forth the destruction of the

Cosmos, that is, the disappearance, from philosophically
and scientifically valid concepts, of the conception of the
world as a finite, closed, and hierarchically ordered
whole… and its replacement by an indefinite and even infi-
nite universe which is bound together by the identity of its
fundamental components and laws, and in which all these
components are placed on the same level.2

Modern humanist man, especially, ceased to think of the
realm of nature in terms of harmony, form, perfection, meaning

1. Alexandre Koyre, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, (New York: Harper and Brothers, Publisher, 1958), p. 3.

2. Koyre, p. 4.

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7 • The Enlightenment
or goal. Instead, he preferred to look at the world strictly in
terms of facts and functions which he claimed was devoid of
intrinsic purpose or meaning. If value or purpose belonged any-
where, it was said to be merely an aspect of man’s subjective
psyche and no longer inhered objectively in things. Besides a
new understanding of the workings of nature, there also was fos-
tered a changed outlook on the idea of nature as an object of thought and a realm of activity, one which, supposedly, provided man with a new confidence and a new agenda – to master the
laws and principles of nature, thereby to control her with the aim of improving the material existence of man.

The new scientific point of view was based upon the idea
of bodies in motion, both in heaven and on earth, and was
grounded upon the direct observation of their movements by
mechanical and mathematical principles which were sought for
their application to industrial and technological needs. In other words, the new science sprang from a strong utilitarian motive.

Man discovered that he could control, or at the very least accom-modate, the forces of nature, and in so doing improve his lot.

Not surprisingly, the new science quickly found support within
learned circles in the early modern era as a result of the uses for material betterment to which its promise of rational knowledge
could be applied. That science could relieve the hardship of life and reduce the drudgery of man’s labor was obvious. But of even
greater importance, as a type of knowledge, it proved to be superior to all forms of previous knowledge, especially that of the
scholastic world of arid and speculative disputations. Hence-
forth, all knowledge that failed to meet the criterion of the practical, tangible improvement of the human condition was viewed
as suspect, and, by the time of the Enlightenment, as nothing
less than credulous ignorance or fallacious nonsense. This new
type of knowledge steadily gained allegiance in every area of
thought and endeavor.

The seventeenth century clearly marked an epoch break in
the course of Western civilization, ushering in an age in which
the dominant ideas were no longer theological but anthropolog-
ical. The primar y emphasis in knowledge had to do with the

1› The Scientific Revolution

227
implementation of concrete and immediately earthly goals, made
available to man from the resources of his own intellect and reason. Knowledge, then, did not have any connection with God,
nor did it reflect His truth in the world, but it was strictly an instrument in man’s material improvement, a tool for mastering
the heretofore dimly understood workings of a capricious nature.

As a new conception of knowledge, the Scientific Revolution
unleashed the forces of humanism in ways that the ancient

Greeks could only have imagined, for the new thinking suppos-
edly enabled man to build a world of his own choosing and elim-
inate from consideration every voice or authority but that of his own mind and will.

A specific feature of the new mental universe was the pas-
sionate desire to find truth as the goal of a rational quest, a truth which would bear the capacity to save mankind from doubts and controversies, from differences of religious or moral opinions
and put all to rights again in eternal peace and harmony. It is
simply impossible to understand the faith of the modern human-
istic world unless we see that knowledge to it is an instrument of salvation, a means to erect a unified humanity and to do away
with all that sets men at conflict with one another. For the past three hundred years men have believed that truth, as the product of scientific methods, would act as a new law over “everything from nature to society and art.”3 Rejecting revelation, man
looked to a new “master principle” to order his world.4 The
modern mind vigorously condemns all “external” authority;
none but the mind of man exists for modern men.5 God is vehe-
mently denied, or, at most, reduced in stature, whereas man, set next to Him, is exalted and divinized. At the very least, man’s 3. Franklin L. Baumer, Modern European Thought: Continuity and Change in Ideas, 1600–1950, (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1977), p. 35.

4. See, Rousas John Rushdoony, Systematic Theology, Vol. I, (Vallecito: Ross House Books, 1994). The first two chapters are especially relevant.

5. E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1954), p. 17.

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7 • The Enlightenment
mind is made to be on a par with God’s and the law of truth, which man supposedly discovers through his science, is said to be the same for both.

The knowledge which the new thinking was said to have
discovered was mechanical, having no other purpose but to
observe the movement of bodies in time and space which are
subject to strict rules of cause and effect. In conjunction with this, reality was severed into mind and matter, sometimes referred to as thought and extension. Knowledge was said to be only concerned with matter or extension, for it was all that was real or knowable. Mind or spirit was eliminated from every consideration of knowledge, as were all those characteristics of man which appertained to mind or soul and which, therefore, cannot be made quantifiable. The world of man’s experience was split,
then, into subjective and objective categories, with the pretense that truth belonged only to the objective, mechanically determined natural realm and was knowable only to those who pos-
sessed the key to knowledge, namely, mathematics. Everything that could not be objectively measured or numbered was viewed
as an intrusion from an alien sphere. In his quest for knowledge, man must eliminate all that is subjective and non-material. This included God, for God is not someone or something that comes
within the realm of tangible obser vation. The only place God
retained in the thought of modern scientific man, and this lasted until the rise of evolution in the nineteenth century, was the
hypothetical place He was thought to occupy in the necessary
order of cause and effect.

The rise of modern science and scientific methods based
upon strict mathematical calculation and the mechanical move-
ment of material bodies according to universally necessary laws
of cause and effect has enabled the humanistic tendency of West-
ern man to thrive as never before. It has supposedly given the
mind of man interpretative control of all reality, and being in
possession of that sort of mental sovereignty has encouraged the belief that man can bend reality to his will and fashion a world according to his wishes. He has come to believe that science and scientific methods can be applied to every facet of life and exist-1› The Scientific Revolution

229
ence with the same positive results. It has emerged as an article of faith that modern Enlightenment man will, by means of further progress in knowledge as directed by scientific methods,
arrive at the goal of a total or exhaustive rational understanding, and that such a complete comprehension will then give him the
power to correct every defect of the human condition. This has,
perhaps, been no more obvious than in the arena of politics and
social policy where the Enlightenment faith has become most
apparent.

Although the Scientific Revolution greatly influenced the
growth of Western humanism, even leading it to become the
dominant faith of our day, we would not wish to leave the reader with the impression that we think modern science is a product of humanism per se and therefore opposed to a Biblically grounded faith and world-view. Modern science would not have arisen at
all if it had not been for the fact that Christianity in Western culture had utterly transformed man’s understanding of nature.

This is particularly true with regards to the doctrine of creation and the way it changed his view of the principle of matter. The
material make-up of reality and of man’s experience in the world gradually ceased to be viewed, as it had been in Greek thinking, as an alien realm from which his chief purpose was to seek escape or as a part of his nature which he ought above all to suppress.6

At the same time, Christianity de-divinized nature and set it in its proper place as distinct from the God who created and governs it by His providence and will. This revolutionized man’s approach
to nature and led him to see it not as something to be supersti-
tiously feared, subject to a mysterious and arbitrary supernatural agency, but as a cosmos, an order predetermined by God and, because maintained by His providence, a proper place for human
endeavor. Nature under Christian influence was seen as subject
to man because man was placed over nature and called of God to

6. An excellent discussion of this idea can be found in an essay by M.

B. Foster, “The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the Rise of

Modern Natural Science” which was published in Creation: The Impact of an Idea, ed., Daniel O’Connor and Francis Oakley, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969), pp. 29–53.

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7 • The Enlightenment
exercise a responsible use of it for the benefit of man. While
nature has become disturbed because of the intrusion of man’s
sin it has not ceased to be an ordered arena of human labor and
an object upon which man can legitimately employ his powers of
intellect to gain knowledge for the good of his life here and now.

It is simply that man must remember that he is God’s servant,
and that nature serves man only to the extent that man serves

God according to His will as revealed in Scripture. When man
refused to study the workings of natural order with his heart and mind under God, only then did he seek to use science as an
instrument of humanistic purpose.

This soon becomes apparent in any study of the history of

Western culture. Modern science was seized by a strong human-
istic impulse that began, as we indicated, during the Renaissance.

While much derived from Christianity’s impact on man’s think-
ing, nevertheless a powerful pagan element laid hold of early
modern science which came to have a direct and significant effect on the rationale of his pursuit of knowledge. As mentioned, the
rediscovery of Platonic and Neoplatonic ideas, with their belief in the essential notion a World-Soul or Reason as the ultimate
nature of reality of which the mind of man was a spark, contrib-
uted subsequently to the new scientific outlook. It was a way of saying that all things were essentially rational and naturally open to minds who share an affinity with rationality and logic. It was accompanied by the emergence of a new Hermeticist religious
belief in man as a Magus, that is, a magician with latent occult powers to penetrate the hidden depths of the meaning of all reality and thereby to become a creative force, who brings reality to its greatest divine-like purpose. That purpose, allegedly, was to re-unite man with his essential divinity which had been lost in a primal Fall into ignorance. The goal was to recover man’s lost wisdom and therewith his power to erect paradise on earth. What is more, the Renaissance saw a great revival of the ancient

Pythagorean theor y of numbers and mathematics. Reality’s
secrets lay hidden in mathematical forms which represented the

“numinous order emanating from the supreme intelligence.”7

By mastering the principles of number theory man could thereby

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decode nature’s cryptic meaning and thus conjure from her all
her veiled intelligence. He would then acquire the necessar y
infallibility to manipulate reality for his own self-appointed goals and move the world in which ever direction he chose. These

Renaissance ideals stood at the center of early modern science
and influenced its agenda in ways we are scarcely any longer
aware of.

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The cosmology with which we are familiar is scarcely more
than three centuries old. A cosmology is a total picture which a person holds of the realm in which he exists: it includes everything from the planet that he inhabits to the vast reaches of outer space. Mainly, it entails a conception of the universe as an
orderly system. What, the inquirer seeks to know, is the nature of its order, and how did come about? Can order be said to inhere
in the cosmos or does order derive from some outside source? If
man can have knowledge of this order, how does he come to
know it? And is the order he discovers an absolutely dependable
order, that is, does it conform unmistakably to his thought, and his thought to it? In other words, can he be confident that what he knows is true and unerring, and that he is not deceived? In
the wake of the new science, many questions of a philosophical
nature began to intrude.

It has justly been professed that “[i]n the last analysis it is
the ultimate picture which an age forms of the nature of its world that is its most fundamental possession.”8 In this respect, modern humanist man has formed a picture of our age that has derived from his preoccupation with the problem of epistemology.

That is, his chief concern is whether or not he truly knows the
world in which he lives and also himself as the knowing mind.

Only a world that yields total understanding to the human intel-

7. Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind, p. 218.

8. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, p. 17.

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7 • The Enlightenment
lect in its quest for scientific knowledge interests him. The knowledge man seeks must, in his view, be certain knowledge, otherwise it will be thought that he cannot know anything at all.

No doubts or reservations may be admitted, nor must we permit
man to consult any source in his search for knowledge other than his reason, for then man cannot be sure he knows anything, for
knowledge of the world and himself would in that case depend
upon something other than his own intellect, and for modern
man that would be intolerable because it would not fit his definition of knowledge. The order of the world, not being a product
of his reason, would not be completely in his control. In the
modern world, the purpose of knowledge is to give man power
over his natural environment. Where knowledge is lacking or
unachievable, man feels helpless and frustrated. He can only feel confident that he possesses true knowledge if he constructs it
himself and is completely certain of what builds. His world-pic-
ture must conform to the standard of his reason and not be ques-
tioned.

In the Middle Ages man had accepted a picture of the
world that was framed by a combination of Aristotelian meta-
physics and Biblical revelation. In other words, his world-view
was, by and large, a product of a mixture of speculative philosophy and divinely revealed tr uth. Taken together, man had
accepted as true not what he had acquired by way of empirical
investigation into nature itself so much as what had been taught him merely as a doctrine of belief. In other words, he took his
point of view as a given, as handed down from a higher, external authority to which he was required to give his unquestioned
assent. In this medieval outlook, truth was thought to derive
from a single source, namely, God, either by way of Aristotle,

God’s chosen pagan philosopher, or Scripture, which was God’s
way of completing the truth that the pagan mind could not be
expected to know on its own. Either way, there was only one
source of knowledge on all questions of cosmology, an external
source, that was principally theological in character because all truth was shaped by questions of faith and morals which concerned man’s relationship to God above all else.

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In this respect, man in the Middle Ages looked at the
world around him not in the categories of time, space, mass,
energy, etc., as did modern man, but in those of substance,
essence, matter, form, quality, and quantity. The purpose of the natural world was, for the most part, to offer man vast symbols of spiritual and moral meanings. The attention he paid to nature
certainly did not go much beyond this. When man approached
this world he did so from the perspective of a seeker after Divine things, which meant essentially heavenly things and things of the soul. Although man lived in this world, the world was not ultimately man’s goal. Rather than seeing his purpose as defined in
terms of this world, he saw it more in terms of the next. If man became interested in questions about this world it was mainly in order to know the divinely appointed destiny of all things. The
cosmology of this perspective, we might say, was a matter of
place and purpose. Man and his world were under God and, in relation to God, small and finite. The world, and everything in it, had its proper, God-appointed location and aim. Man, for example, occupied the center of the world. All other things were seen as tending towards man, and man towards God in Whom all
things reached their perfect destiny. Thus, man studied nature in order to know God. His chief purpose was to grasp how all
things pointed towards God and ser ved man’s highest good
which, on earth and eventually in heaven, was to ascend to the
highest pleasure of intellectual contemplation of God.

The study of nature in the Middle Ages was thus part of a
higher purpose. That being so, there was but one source of truth deemed necessary – one book of knowledge – to lead to God. It
was preeminently revelation or Scripture, but in the Middle

Ages, as previously mentioned, the truth of revelation hardly
stood alone. The content was suffused with Greek presupposi-
tions making it difficult for us to decide just what was really

Christian and what was vitiated by alien pagan ideas. When the attack from early modern science came, we should see it as
directed more at the false suppositions of medieval thought on
nature as these were derived from Greek philosophy than at a
true Biblical understanding. This needs to be kept in mind lest

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7 • The Enlightenment
we think that Christianity and modern science must somehow be
completely at odds with one another.

On the other hand, many early modern thinkers came to
view science as a source of knowledge and truth by itself.

Because it appeared to arise independently of any concern for
faith and ethics, they thought it must necessarily have no root in Divine revelation, that is, Scripture. Indeed, they soon believed that there were two sources of revelation, each having its own autonomous claim to impart a knowledge of Divine things. Just as there was a Book of Scripture from which to learn of things
which pertained to spiritual matters, so, too, there exists a Book of Nature from which to learn of the phenomena of matter.9

Most essentially, these two Books remain distinct and separate as sources of truth and knowledge. What this came to mean was
that theology, as the study of Scripture, must never interfere in, or pretend that it can intrude into, questions in the domain of
natural knowledge. Here only the qualified scientist may speak, and his speaking is not to be bound by any limitation or stipula-tion other than what his mind fathoms from the Book of Nature.

The other Book, the Book of Scripture, is of no concern to him
as a scientist. In fact, as a source of the study of nature it is of no use whatever. The Book of Nature is all that matters. The catalyst for this changed perspective was to be found in what Frank-
lin L. Baumer described as the “space revolution.”10

Modern science was first produced as a new conception of
space. Traditionally, the date assigned for when this conception first appeared in history is 1543. That year saw the publication of 9. “Baldly stated two major conceptions evolved during the course of the seventeenth century about the possible relations of science and religion in European society. One can be subsumed under
the broadly used metaphor of the two books, the Book of Nature
and the Book of Scriptures, both considered equal sources of

Christian knowledge, both leading to truth but remaining sepa-
rate, with distinct languages, modes of expression, institutional arrangements, and areas of specialization.” Frank E. Manuel, The Changing of the Gods, (Hanover and London, University Press of New England, 1983), p. 3.

10. Baumer, Modern European Thought, pp. 54 & 55.

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one of the most seminal works in the history of the West, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres ( De Revolutionibus). The author, who died within months of its publication, was Nicholas

Copernicus (1473–1543). The impact of Copernicus’s book was
not immediately felt, but there is little doubt that, from the
moment it first appeared, man’s thinking concerning the cosmos
would undergo a profound transformation. By the time Isaac

Newton completed the work of the “space revolution” in 1687
with the publication of another highly important book, De Prin-cipia Mathematica, the Copernican Cosmography had become the established orthodoxy. What impact did the new cosmography have on man’s cosmology? What role did it play in the shap-
ing of modern humanistic thinking? To find answers to these
questions we must re-examine the meaning of the Copernican

Revolution.

To make sense of the changes which Copernicus’s discov-
eries first brought about, three factors must be mentioned. The
first concerned the very important concept of place which lay at the center of the medieval world-view. Specifically, it had to do with the place of the earth, and hence man, in the total cosmos.

The second, which is related to the first but slightly separate, involved the ear th’s relationship to heaven. Medieval man
thought in terms of a duality, of heaven and earth. The effect of Copernican thought was to eliminate this duality. And, third, we shall need to understand the Copernican use of the new algebra.

The method by which Copernicus solved problems of astronomy
opened up a whole new understanding of man’s approach to
questions of knowledge and truth. The first two points, while
distinguishable, are closely connected to one another. The last, however, is less intrinsically associated with the other two and can be considered more or less independently of them.

Doubtless it is well-known historically that “[a]t the heart
of the Copernican system lies the point which required the most
carefully reasoned argument: the attribution of motion to the

Earth.”11 For a long time it had been an undisputed truth that
the earth was fixed and stationary at the center of the universe.

This commonplace assumption derived from a number of tenets.

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7 • The Enlightenment

In the first place, from the perspective of normal, daily experience the earth did not appear to move, whereas everything else
in the astronomical realm did. The sun traversed the sky from
morning till night each day. At night the moon could be
observed to appear in different parts of the sky, certainly at different times of the month and year. The same could be said for
the stars and planets. It was clear that movement took place in
the heavens. Secondly, this view was provided with a plausible
scientific explanation by the Greek astronomer, Ptolemy (AD

127–48). Ptolemy’s Almagest was the standard textbook on astronomy in the Middle Ages. According to it, the earth occupied the center of the cosmos and all the planets, including the sun, revolved in perfect circular motion around the earth. It was a clear and orderly presentation with exposition backed up by an array of mathematical and geometrical theorems and diagrams
that by and large accounted for both the movement and the
position of the various celestial bodies reasonably well.

But, in the third place, perhaps the most persuasive reason
derived from the metaphysics of the Middle Ages, a peculiar concoction, as we said, of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian theology. For Aristotle, the earth belonged at the center because it was a heavy element composed chiefly of matter, and matter
always descends to its natural place. Moreover, the cosmos was a circle, the shape of absolute perfection and wholeness. According to Aristotle, heavy matter always sought the center whereas the
lighter, more ethereal substances tended towards the outer cir-
cumference. It was natural for the earth to be at the center,
whereas the sun, stars and planets, being of lighter material
would seek to ascend towards the outer reaches of the cosmos.

This explanation was equally important to Christian thinkers
who reckoned the earth to be at the center because it had to
occupy the pivotal place in God’s scheme of creation. “[I]f the

Earth were not at the center, what happened to the dignity of
man? Had not God created the universe for man’s enjoyment,

11. Marie Boas, The Scientific Renaissance, 1450–1630, (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1962), p. 78.

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and put the Earth at the center to prove it?”12 The exalted place and purpose of man was seen to be in question in medieval
thinking if he occupied any place in the creation other than the center. Furthermore, the earth must remain stationary and all
other celestial bodies move in order to demonstrate that God’s
principal concern was with man and the place he inhabited.

Finally, the hierarchical ideology at the heart of the medieval
vision of man and society would have been overthrown and

Christian truth subverted without a stationary earth-centered
cosmos.

In this medieval scheme a sharp distinction was made
between earth and heaven. The terrestrial realm, being matter of one sort, was viewed as involving problems of movement and
change which could not apply to the celestial realm, being mat-
ter of a different sort. In fact, the planetary and astral bodies were understood less as matter and more as lights attached to crystalline spheres which rolled around in place like gigantic con-centric glass balls. The outermost sphere was the region of the
stars. Beyond that limit existed the heaven of heavens, the realm of God and angels. The cosmos may be more or less large in
scale but it was finite and fixed. The realm of God and the angels alone was infinite and eternal. In medieval thinking the entire
cosmos was the world of which the earth was but the center.

Although astronomical studies were beginning to appreciate that
the planets at least were somewhat similar to the earth, nevertheless they were not totally of the same type of material, otherwise they would fall ( descend) to the earth.

Now it is well known that Copernicus, in order to solve
certain discrepancies with respect to the movement of the plane-
tary bodies, replaced the earth with the sun at the center of the cosmos. In other words, the earth itself moved and the sun stood still. This changed perspective was far-reaching in importance. If the earth moved like any other celestial body what did this mean for the centrality of the earth, and therefore for man, in the
metaphysics of Christian thought? More importantly, if the earth 12. Boas, The Scientific Renaissance, p. 87.

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7 • The Enlightenment
moved, then it was no different from other celestial bodies and
the distinction between heaven and earth seemed no longer ten-
able. It came to be assumed that the earth and other planets were the same in substance and so far as their dynamical problems
were concerned precisely equivalent. The earth occupied no spe-
cial place. The distinction between higher and lower was no longer justifiable, and with it the societal notions which Christian thought had based thereon.

Copernicus undermined, and was recognized to have
undermined, the traditional hierarchical cosmic world-order that was necessary to the theological system of medieval Christian
thought. In time, humanist thinkers would seize upon Coperni-
can ideas to attack the church and the message of redemption
and order for which, despite the thick overlay of Aristotelian
influence, it for so long had stood. If the Christian scheme was wrong at one point, so the reasoning went, then it could be
wrong at every point. If man could dispense with its cosmology,
then he could equally disregard its moral and religious beliefs.

The humanism of the Renaissance now had the science it needed to eliminate the last vestiges of Christianity and a solid reason to expect that all areas of man’s life especially could be redefined along lines of his own choosing. Copernicanism held out great
appeal for radical thinkers everywhere who wanted to undermine
the ecclesiastically dominated social order and replace it with a secular civic order conceived in accordance with ancient Greco-Roman designs.

It must be said, however, that Copernicus’s sun-centered
solar system, with its removal of the earth from the center, did not by itself affect to bring about a new humanistic outlook. It is often claimed that simply by removing the earth from the center
of the universe man lost the high sense of his own importance
and dignity in the scheme of God’s creation. In fact, in the medieval view of things, although the earth was at the center of the world, it was there not so much because it represented some
position of honor and esteem, but because, being material, it was at the lowest place in the hierarchy of value. As Lovejoy perceptively observed, “[T]he geocentric cosmography served rather

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for man’s humiliation than for his exaltation….”13 Indeed, so far as Copernicus himself was concerned, he merely wanted to solve
certain vexing astronomical problems which he believed were
not adequately accounted for in the Ptolemaic system. It was not his intention to overthrow the entire medieval world-view and
reduce man’s life to a pitiless irrelevance. It actually never
occurred to most people, any more than it occurred to Coperni-
cus, that man’s dignity was dependent upon his place in the cos-
mos. Rather, if anything, man was unique because he possessed
what no other creature possessed, namely, a soul that reflected the image of his Maker. What is more, he alone, among all God’s
creatures, was the object of God’s redemptive purposes. Coper-
nican theory did not by itself undermine this. Though the world was no longer the center geographically, it was still within a
totally limited universe which contained no creatures of higher
value in God’s purposes than man.14 Copernicus’s world-view
was still a finite one; he continued to believe in the celestial orbs and crystalline heavenly spheres.

Copernicanism did, however, introduce a distinction
between what is and what appears as motion in the sky, thereby introducing a feeling of relativity of place and motion from the standpoint of the observer.15 If man lived in a world that was relative from man’s observation, perhaps other things were a matter of perspective as well. Thus, for example, how did the Christian doctrine of “ascension into heaven” fit into a cosmological perspective in which up could no longer have any absolute meaning?

What science taught and what common sense perceived came
into conflict, and men who sought for a ground of certainty in
thought must soon despise the language of common sense. In
time, the idea of the spheres, with the connotation of limitation 13. Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of The History of an Idea, (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1960), pp.

101 & 102.

14. In the Copernican world of thought the earth became the world and the cosmos became the universe. This change did not necessarily derive from Copernicus, but was due to the input of others.

15. Lovejoy, p. 107.

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7 • The Enlightenment
and finiteness that their notion implied was shattered and, at the same time, it destroyed the idea that the universe had a center to it in any sense. There was then introduced the further idea that perhaps given the topography of a limitless universe man was not the sole rational being to have exclusive claim to be God’s
unique creature and, therefore, the crown of his creation. This
notion, however, came from philosophy, not the science of
astronomy. But before we can say more on this point let us first understand the last implication of Copernican thought, namely,
the use of abstract mathematical reasoning in calculating the new formula of a sun-centered solar system.

Because Copernicus proved to be such a threat to the

Church’s theology, since the latter had based its vision of truth and order on an earth-centered cosmology, naturally opposition
to his new ideas quickly flared up. But we should not think that resistance to him was solely a matter of theology. There were
many solid rational (i.e., scientific) objections as well.16 The Ptolemaic cosmos was no mere philosophical convenience. Many
celestial phenomena were accounted for with great accuracy by

Ptolemy’s explanations. Indeed, Copernicus accepted most of it,
but felt that perhaps certain of its unexplained problems could
make better sense by simply having the earth and sun trade
places.17 In this, Copernicus succeeded. However, in order to
accomplish his purpose, Copernicus needed to approach astro-
nomical phenomena from a point of reference other than the
earth. To do this, he must mentally abstract from observed expe-
rience and make his calculations based solely upon an ideal perspective. This was made possible on the basis of the new algebra which “freed men’s minds from dependence on spatial representations in their mathematical thinking….”18 Copernicus had dis-

16. See, especially, Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, pp. 36 & 37.

17. I make no comment upon what is sometimes alleged, namely,
that Copernicus was influenced by the Neoplatonic-Hermetic
belief in the divinity of the sun and for this reason wished to see the sun at the center of the cosmos rather than the earth.

18. Burtt, p. 42.

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covered a tool which would allow him to re-draw the map of
reality without having to depend upon his senses. This, more
than the idea of a sun-centered solar system, is what makes

Copernicus the founder of the Scientific Revolution.

The sixteenth century had witnessed a great revival of
mathematics. It first emerged from the demands of technical
problems of engineering, navigation and, especially, warfare. But its use in the re-definition of spatial conceptions is what proved to be its most important legacy to Western civilization. For
mathematics detached itself from dependency upon sense aware-
ness and geometrical depiction. By means of algebraic symbols,
men began to examine geometrical ideal space rather than the spatial relationships that appeared from the standpoint of the
spectator. In other words, thought no longer needed to see real objects. So far as the motion of celestial bodies was concerned, thought was set free from an earth-bound perspective. The effect was to relativize man’s perspective, and the perspective of one
body to another, within the whole spatial system. Instead of having to look at the phenomena from the standpoint of the earth,
ideal objects could be looked at from outside the phenomena.

There no longer was a fixed starting-point for thought, having
no center or periphery. What is more, Copernicus appeared to
have accomplished this without reference to anything but his
own reasoning. In other words, he did not rely upon revelation
or any outside authority whatever. The possibilities for man’s
intellect were seen to be truly radical and liberating.

From this beginning, the new relative mathematical per-
spective encouraged the belief that all phenomena could be ultim a t e l y r e d u c e d t o t h e i r m a t h e m a t i c a l p r o po r t i o n s .1 9

“Mathematics reflected the unchanging reality behind the flux
and uncertainty of the world of the senses… to study nature was
to search for the mathematical laws which govern the world.”20

All knowledge, then, becomes mathematical knowledge, and
nothing that could not be grasped mathematically could be

19. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, p. 53.

20. Boas, The Scientific Renaissance, p. 198.

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7 • The Enlightenment
judged knowledge. Knowledge was true knowledge only if it was
certain knowledge, and no other form of so-called knowledge than what is discovered by mathematical reasoning could possibly fit that description. The realm of God, the soul, and matters of the spirit could no longer be described as having any place in modern science’s vision of knowledge. All concerns of morals
and religion in general were relegated to matters of faith which had nothing in common with the ideal of certainty in the new
mathematical epistemology. Furthermore, in the realm of nature,
the tool of mathematics alone was sufficient to examine and
know its workings. The things of faith were outside the province of nature and natural knowledge. In the end, truth attached only to knowledge derived from mathematically based scientific methods. The mind of man had acquired a new “master principle”

thereby giving him a new and autonomous sovereignty over the
world of his experience.

Copernicus, however, accounted for only one side of the

“space revolution.” As Baumer also mentions, there was another
side which had no intrinsic connection to Copernicus but which,
when attached to Copernican astronomy, became a potent com-
bination that would then provide modern humanism with the
weapon it needed to discard Christianity. On the one side, “the
truly radical innovation introduced by the Copernican cosmol-
ogy [was] its destruction of the old dualism of earth and
heavens … [along with its reduction of] all nature to one system, homogeneous in substance, and subject to the same [mathematical] laws.” But on the other side was to be found the belief in a universe conceived as spatially infinite and infinitely populous.21

This conception did not originate in the work of science, but
owed its idea to an earlier revival of ancient Greek philosophy

(Pythagorean) in the Renaissance. It was only after Copernicus
had published his theories that men with such speculative
notions in mind were able to seize upon them and suffuse them
with their own profane assumptions. The man most responsible
for articulating this second side of the space revolution was Gior-21. Baumer, Modern European Thought, pp. 54 & 55.

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dano Bruno (1548–1600). However, even before Bruno, Nicho-
las of Cus a (1 40 1–1 46 4), a pr om inen t e cclesiastic who
eventually became a cardinal, had already adopted the new spec-
ulative thought on behalf of Christian doctrine.

With the revival of Neoplatonic speculative ideas regarding
a World-Soul as the spiritual essence of all material being, many ecclesiastics and so-called Christian thinkers were eagerly
attracted to the possibilities that such conceptions might have for Christian doctrine. It enabled some to introduce an idea of God
that would liberate Him from the confines of the role He played
in scholastic thought. In the latter, God was more an object of
thought, whose place in the realm of being was at the top, than a personal deity whom man worshipped and adored. Moreover, it
was claimed that He stood at the conclusion of man’s chain of
reasoning, thereby ensuring that the goal of all man’s thought
would conform in all respects to the highest reaches of the hierarchy of being. Man’s destiny was to ascend to an intellectual
knowledge of the truth which he then contemplates in its undi-
luted purity. Knowledge in this scheme meant a knowledge of
the truth of being, and God was the highest form of being.

Hence, knowledge of God was truth of the highest order. But
what practical value did such a knowledge possess? What good
could be found in it for man other than merely to satisfy his
intellectual curiosity? More importantly, is it even possible to think that God could be thought of so easily? Was God not
vastly beyond man’s mind to know? Indeed, who is man that he
should even pretend to have knowledge of so great a being as

God?

Nicholas of Cusa, along with others, came to the conclu-
sion that it was highly suppositious, erroneous even, to believe that God could ever be an object of human thought. God was
infinite and therefore beyond man’s puny intellectual resources.

But Nicholas went even farther. He claimed that all God’s works
of creation are equally infinite. He reasoned that God, being infinite, could not limit his actions in creating the universe to something that was less than his own nature. At the very least, the
universe is boundless or indeterminate, having no fixed center

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7 • The Enlightenment
and no final resting point for movement or life. Man, then, does not represent anything more than one of God’s creatures and the
earth is nothing more than one world among an infinity of
worlds populated with similar creatures. In an infinite universe all is relative and no distinction exists between an earthly realm and a heavenly realm, for with an infinite universe no such distinction is possible or necessary. Cusa did not arrive at his view by means of the science of astronomy, but borrowed his ideas
from Neoplatonic speculation. He then sought merely to give
them a Christian veneer. We may never know precisely why he
thought this way. Perhaps he thought it was more pious to think
of God, and hence of creation, in such a manner as to leave man
a puny creature in an ocean of infinity, but, whatever the reasons, his brand of thinking was of revolutionary significance. The
implications for a new view of man were not lost on someone
like Giordano Bruno.

Bruno, who began his young life as a dedicated Dominican
monk, soon abandoned his order and the Christian faith entirely
in order to become a preacher of a new gospel of the liberation of man from the confines of a predetermined cosmological arrangement and set out to convince any who would listen that man,
because he lived in an infinite universe, was infinitely free to pursue whatever pathway suited his fancy. What is more, God was
nothing but an infinite power which man could infinitely imitate as a creator of a limitless world of possible meanings. Bruno can hardly contain his enthusiasm at the thought of what an infinite God means for the possibilities of human endeavor:

Thus is the excellence of God magnified and the greatness
of his kingdom made manifest; he is glorified not in one,
but in countless suns; not in a single world, but in a thou-
sand, I say, in an infinity of worlds. Thus not in vain the
power of the intellect which ever seeketh, yea, and achie-
veth the addition of space to space, mass to mass, unity to
unity, number to number, by the science that dischargeth
us from the fetters of a most narrow kingdom and pro-
moteth us to the freedom of a truly august realm, which

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freeth us from an imagined poverty and straineth to the
possession of the myriad riches of so vast a space, of so
worthy a field of so many cultivated worlds. This science
does not permit that the arch of the horizon that our
deluded vision imagineth over the Earth and that by our
phantasy is feigned in the spacious ether, shall imprison
our spirit under the custody of a Pluto or at the mercy of a

Jove. We are spared the thought of so wealthy an owner
and subsequently of so miserly, sordid and avaricious a
donor.22

Bruno’s language is guarded, but clear. He appears to
want to free God from confinement, indeed from being bound
in any way, but it is really man he secretly intends to liberate.

When he speaks of “the power of the intellect,” he does not
mean God’s intellect so much as he means man’s. The cultiva-
tion of many worlds is actually meant to refer to the limitless cultivation of this world, again by man. The references to Jove and Pluto are references to heaven and hell. The notion of the world as bound and finite served a constricting theology of other-worldliness. With the elimination of the need for other worlds than this one, since it is sufficiently large in size and open to endless possibilities, why give credence to anything that would distract man from pursuit of the only world that exists? In the name of God and Christianity, Bruno emptied the Christian message
of anything having to do with sin and salvation. That message, at its core, was one of needless deprivation for man, hindering and constricting his accomplishments here and now. Instead, Bruno
employed the concept of an infinite universe to promote the
agenda of an infinite progressive transformation of man’s world, by and for man. “There are no ends, boundaries, limits or walls
which can defraud or deprive us of the infinite multitude of
things.”23 This was Bruno’s bold claim and the faith he sought
to promote.

22. Giordano Bruno, De l’infinito universo e mondi, quoted in Koyre, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, p. 42.

23. Bruno, De l’infinito universo, Ibid, p. 44

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7 • The Enlightenment

By means of a new speculative cosmology, Bruno, and
soon others, opened modern thought to the concept of an infi-
nite universe, and, although it diminished man to a relative
importance opposite other living things, nevertheless, it served as the means to liberate man from the dogma of a pre-given order
of things. Since God could not create anything less than an infinite universe filled with infinite worlds populated with infinite individual beings, it may therefore be assumed that man ought
not to think of himself as special, either one way or another. Man does not represent God’s highest creation and has no greater significance in God’s scheme of things than any one of a countless
number of other creatures. Consequently, he need not concern
himself with whether or not God has any great interest in him.

His only concern should be with cultivating his own God-like
abilities in order the better to know and fashion the only world he possesses. The goal, then, of this second side of the “space
revolution” was to serve the interests of men who sensed a new
exhilaration and power in a universe which had no final purpose but which lay infinitely open to man in providing endless possibilities to remake his world along lines of his own choosing. Man felt a new power to master nature for the good of man and to do
so without reference to anyone other than himself.

The combination of the Copernican cosmography and the
belief in an infinite universe has left a profound impact upon the thinking of modern man. More, however, was involved than just
positing the idea of an infinite universe. The “space revolution”

required an epistemological basis in order to provide humanists with the autonomy from God that they so desperately sought.

This was made possible by the belief that the universe was a perfect and intrinsic mathematical harmony and that, at bottom, all genuine knowledge is mathematical. Without a knowledge of
mathematics it was impossible to know nature in any true sense.

Two thinkers who helped to promote this belief were Johannes

Kepler (1571–1630) and Galileo Galilei (1564–1642).

Kepler claimed that all reality, both celestial and terrestrial, was one vast mathematical form and that the observed facts of
this natural system, so far as knowledge of it was concerned,

2› The Second Book

247
reduced to one of quantitative characteristics only, all differences being differences of number alone.24 “Quantitative features are
the sole features of things as far as the world of our knowledge is concerned.”25 Furthermore, the knowledge in question is dis-coverable by the common light of reason and is universally applicable to all quantitative entities regardless of any other apparent differences. In this respect, Kepler distinguished between what
he termed primary and secondary qualities in man’s experience of nature. The former alone were objects of true knowledge; the
latter were mere subjective impressions and therefore unreliable so far as a knowledge of things was concerned. Secondary qualities may attract man’s non-intellectual or emotional interests,
but they do not constitute objects of genuine knowledge. Only
what is quantifiable and countable qualifies as knowledge and,
hence, as truth. The world of man’s experience was divided
between what man felt and what he understood. Faith, and other
religious concerns may adhere to the former, but knowledge
alone belonged to the latter, and no connection existed between
them.

Galileo, while accepting this view, took it one step further.

Nature was not merely a mathematically caused entity; it was an

“orderly system, whose every proceeding is thoroughly regular
and inexorably necessary.”26 Not only is nature not subject to
any other ordering principle than that of mathematics, but by
means of it alone does it possess a rigorous inevitability. Nature cannot be moved off its course, nor can it be fundamentally
altered by other than what is mathematically determinable. The
system of nature is eternally what it is. No miraculous or non-
natural interventions can interrupt or thwart the workings of
nature’s necessary movements or arrangements. The only recog-
nizable miracles that one may discover in nature are those of mathematical demonstrations which furnish man with the key to
unlock the secrets of nature for the sake of improving the quality 24. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, p. 67.

25. Burtt, p. 68.

26. Burtt, p. 74.

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7 • The Enlightenment
of man’s life here and now.

It can be justly claimed that Galileo is the first modern
man. His statement in The Assayer (1623), regularly quoted in works that cover the rise of the modern world, certainly represents the credo of modern humanistic scientism:

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe,
which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book
cannot be understood unless one first learns to compre-
hend the language and read the letters in which it is com-
posed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand
a single word of it; without these, one wanders about in a
dark labyrinth.27

Here every postulate of modern humanism is summarily
articulated. The “grand book” is a metaphor for revelation,
hence the fount of all truth and knowledge. But, of course, it has nothing to do with God, for He is not mentioned in the quote,
nor is His written word, the Scriptures. It refers to nature as a self-contained world of meaning (philosophy) which man may
know and master entirely by means of an autonomous “lan-
guage” of its own. Mathematics is the secret of nature, its mysterious code by which all its truth is unlocked. To “wander about
in the dark” is to lack the knowledge of this code or principle of nature and nothing more. It is strictly a problem of knowledge
which confronts man in his task of subduing nature. No other
religious or moral aspects of man’s being have any bearing on
questions of truth and knowledge. The issue is entirely epistemological, a failure to learn mathematics.

Galileo, accordingly, was bound to divide reality, like

Kepler, into two dimensions, that of primary and secondar y
qualities. As Burtt notes, “Galileo makes the clear distinction

27. Galileo, The Assayer, in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, Still-man Drake (trans.), Doubleday & Co., Garden City, New York.

pp. 237–238. The quote is taken from Baumer, Modern Euro-
pean Thought, p. 50.

2› The Second Book

249
between that in the world which is absolute, objective, immuta-
ble, and mathematical; and that which is relative, subjective, fluc-tuating, and sensible. The former is the realm of knowledge,
divine and human; the latter is the realm of opinion and illu-
sion.”28 The ghost of Plato reappears with the advent of modern
thought. All problems of truth are matters of discovering the
abstract, absolute reality behind the outer sensed world of material and bodily experience. If man is deceived, if he is lost and confused, it is only because he regards his senses as trustworthy and fails to see their illusive features. Man’s basic problem is how to overcome the uncertainty of knowledge. All the issues of his
life turn upon his ability to grasp the mathematical object (number, figure, magnitude, position, and motion) which rests con-
cealed underneath the sensed object. However, in man’s reason
there lies the power to decode and penetrate to the real world of objective and absolutely certain knowledge of all that exists. He need consult nothing but the language of the grand book of
nature.

Along with a new definition of reality, Galileo introduced
a new definition of God that alone was acceptable to the new scientific-mathematical mind. God, for Galileo, is essentially a great geometrician who fashioned the entire world by means of mathematical concepts. These concepts are the exact same ones dis-
cover ed by man. If any dif feren ce o btains in the sor t of
knowledge which God possesses and man seeks to possess, it lies
only in the nature of complete and incomplete knowledge. That
is, God’s is finished and perfect, whereas man’s is inconclusive and partial. However, this difference between man and God in
the matter of knowledge is merely a quantitative one. God has
more of it. But man is gradually closing the gap. Even so, what
man does know he knows with as equal degree of truth and cer-
tainty as God. Thus so far as Galileo was concerned, as Burtt
mentions, “God knows infinitely more propositions than we, but
yet in the case of those we understand so thoroughly as to per-
ceive the necessity of them, i.e., the demonstrations of pure

28. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, p. 83.

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7 • The Enlightenment
mathematics, our understanding equals the divine in objective
certainty.”29 Only mathematical knowledge is certain knowl-
edge, and man’s knowledge in this respect is a good as God’s.

In Galileo’s thought “the real world must be the world
outside of man; the world of astronomy and the world of resting
and moving terrestrial objects. The only thing in common
between man and this real world was his ability to discover
it….”30 In other words, man’s connection to the world in which
he exists does not go beyond his ability to disclose its hidden
mathematical meaning. Reality possesses no other purpose for
human life. In philosophical terms, Galileo abandons all notions of final causality as a principle of the explanation of nature, whether we mean the outer environment or human nature specifically. The world does not manifest any purpose for which it
exits beyond an intrinsic mathematical necessity. Aim or design, the language of final causality, cannot be understood from the
categories of space and time which Galileo took to be fundamen-
tal. Moreover, since these also cannot be comprehended in the
movement of objects in nature, they have no meaning in the lan-
guage of science. Only what has measure and number pertains to
the real world of mathematically reducible motions. What is
more, motion in this real world is theoretically infinite in duration and extension so that mathematical calculations never arrive at anything like a final goal, whether at the end or at any particular juncture. In other words, the world does not have any desti-
nation or end, only an infinitely continuous mathematical
activity.

Not surprisingly man, with his time as lived, becomes a
great problem. What does being alive mean other than to function and exist? The movement of time, since it conforms inexora-
bly to mathematical necessity, stands indifferent to human
purpose or endeavor. Man is nothing more than an irrelevant
spectator of the vast mathematical system of the universe. Even if man can justify his existence as one who thinks the thoughts of

29. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, p. 82.

30. Burtt, pp. 89 & 90.

2› The Second Book

251
the universe, and thereby translate that thought into man-
enhancing or improving goals, the question why he should do so
cannot be answered with any greater satisfaction than that it will supposedly add to his stock of material well-being, how ever that may be defined. Beyond this, explaining the nature of man’s
well-being itself becomes a problem once it becomes clear that
the world of mathematical necessity can as easily detract from as add to it, with no particular reason for doing so one way or the other. But these considerations only began to perplex the modern mind at a much later date. In the meantime, we should not
fail to understand where modern humanism began, namely, with
the assertion of reality as mathematically determined.

If there is no final causality for the world, if movement in
nature has no goal or purpose, then what role does God play? He
plays, in Galileo’s estimation, a purely scientific role, that is, He fills in as the necessar y first cause. Something or someone is needed to start the process of motion according to mathematical
necessity in operation. After that, however, God ceases to retain any usefulness for scientific thought. In fact, His usefulness in this respect, which will become clearer as modern science develops, is limited to the time when God was still needed to supply
the gap in man’s knowledge of the origins of things. He will be
discarded as soon as man happens upon an explanation more
suitable to his humanistic fancy. Once again, Burtt indicates
what this means: “God … ceases to be the Supreme Good in any
important sense; he is a huge mechanical inventor, whose power
is appealed to merely to account for the first appearance of the atoms, the tendency becoming more and more irresistible as
time goes on to lodge all further causality for whatever effects in the atoms themselves.”31

No doubt, Galileo thought that by installing God in the
role of first cause he thereby retained the necessar y Christian conception of God as the Creator. However, to speak of God as
merely the first cause was simply to make plain that He was
needed to fill in the gap in man’s reason. It did not make His

31. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, p. 99.

252

7 • The Enlightenment
role as Creator any the less problematic, for a Creator implies the nature of personhood, and personhood implies a purposeful
intelligence to His actions. But purpose is precisely what cannot be discovered in the world of primary qualities. It would violate the character of motion and change as mathematically necessary.

It would also mean that God’s mind transcends man’s in so far as knowledge is concerned and thereby renders man’s thought
devoid of total logical control. Just how God created all things would escape rational explanation. That would mean, then, that
truth involves taking a great deal on faith and hence from an
authority other than man’s mind. Science would not achieve the
desired autonomy for man, something that was unacceptable to
modern humanism. Thus it quickly became clear that man must
discover a principle of causation that was entirely independent of the idea of God. In time, evolution would be invented for that
purpose.

Galileo was a great believer in the idea of the Book of

Nature, and that man possessed an unqualified ability to read
that Book correctly. In fact, “[o]f the two books, science is the nobler expression of God.”32 Scripture, on the other hand, was
less reliable because it was primarily addressed to a primitive people who lacked the capability to see the workings of nature scientifically. It is as if he almost meant to say that once mankind had reached the stage of scientific knowledge he stood less in need of Scripture. He was certainly among the first in a long line of modern thinkers to assert that, even though there be two books, the truth about nature could be expounded only by science. He
would even go so far as to claim that should any discrepancies
arise in what each has to say concerning matters of the natural
world, then Scripture ought to be interpreted in the light of
modern science. In other words, should something in Scripture
happen to conflict with the rules of mathematical reasoning,
then statements in Scripture must be explained in such manner
that they do not do violence to the autonomy of human
thought.

32. Manuel, The Changing of the Gods, p. 10.

3. The Mechanized World of Enlightenment Man

253

3. The Mechanized World of Enlightenment Man

The importance of the new algebraic geometry for acquir-
ing logical control of the forces of nature is based upon the idea that geometry provided an ideal picture of natural occurrences
against which actual events could be measured. Modern science
thus created a dualistic world: one was the real world of material happenings and changes; the other was a mathematically perfect
world which became the standard knowledge by which real
events were to be checked. By the time of the Enlightenment,
science had become the respected form of thinking not merely
because it produced spectacular results, but because all non-
mathematical modes of thought were viewed as incapable of pro-
viding the rational control man desired. Non-scientific thought
was reduced to superstition and fantasy.

The new science triumphed in Western culture “from the

1680s to the 1720s.”33 It was accompanied by a new high culture which distinguished itself from the so-called culture of the people. It displayed a vigorous and zealous rationalism as a new weapon to be used against all authority other than science. The
new science was deemed to be a new truth which must necessar-
ily overthrow all previous truth because the latter was based
upon error, deception, or deliberate falsehood. All thought that cannot be submitted to the test of science must be dismissed as
illusory and useless. It was from this time on that men began to show a new confidence and faith in science to lead to a constant progress and improvement in the human condition. No area of
man’s life and activity could escape the need to be grounded
upon firm scientific assumptions and demonstrations. All inquiry must, at the same time, be free of any and all censorship – free, that is, from all prohibiting dogmas that do not meet the standards of scientific credibility, regardless of the moral and social ramifications.

Science, however, as the only certain knowledge available

33. Margaret C. Jacob, The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), p. 105.

254

7 • The Enlightenment
to man, needed to be grounded in the certainty of the selfhood
of man if man was not to be deceived as to the truth of his
knowledge. He must know without a doubt that his thoughts
are none other than his own and that they are based entirely
upon his own power to think, and that his thinking does not
error. A philosophy of the human self as the absolute starting-
point of all thought would have to be made available if modern
man was not to fall back upon any external source of truth,
whether that source be viewed as God or the common prejudices
of men. Each individual must be able to stand upon the truth as

“clear and distinct” in his own mind without the need to rely
upon anyone or anything but what emerged from his own
thought-processes. Enlightenment meant principally self-
enlightenment which banishes every possibility of uncertainty
and skepticism that must undoubtedly arise from other than
mathematical modes of thinking. And, most importantly, it must
be able to account for all areas of man’s life and behavior. René Descartes (1596–1650) has rightly been regarded as the first to
articulate a complete philosophy based entirely upon the belief
that the new science could be founded upon the certainty of the
individual thinking self.

From closely obser ving what seemed to many to be
unbridgeable chasms in the thinking and the society of his day,

Descartes felt that if truth was to preserve man from the chaos of disputes and contentions, then it would need to be grounded on
some absolute and undoubted foundation. It must be such that
all would recognize the truth and give to it their unquestioned
allegiance. For this to become possible, a type of knowledge
must be found which is not susceptible of error or dispute, and
which must compel the assent of all. Despite having rejected all external authority, especially that of revelation, nevertheless, Descartes believed it was necessary to establish some authority, otherwise how could the knowledge which science claims to provide be other than one man’s opinion against the next? After all, it was not easy to isolate the purely quantifiable in nature, since it lay embedded in what man sensed and experienced. Confusion
was apt to reign because the senses were liable to confound the

3. The Mechanized World of Enlightenment Man

255
sensed object with the real object which bore solely the property of extension and number. He needed, so he thought, to establish
the authority of the mind which thinks as well as the certainty of its mental operations. Since for modern man the great problem
was the problem of his knowledge, and since knowledge can only
be achieved by a mind which thinks, it is absolutely necessary to be able to found the starting-point for knowledge in an infallible mind. But for Descartes there can be no universal or transcendent Mind; there is only the radically subjective individual mind.

Yet, knowledge must be general and universal, otherwise it is
nothing more than conjecture. It would lack logical necessity
and remain purely subjective, thereby ending in skepticism and
complete lack of certainty. How to guarantee the truth of knowl-
edge and at the same time protect the independence and auton-
omy of the thinking self was the issue to be resolved.

Science, under the influence of Descartes, came to mean a
type of knowledge in which the individual thinker was the highest authority. To confirm this, Descartes, at the beginning of the modern era, set out upon a philosophical quest wherein he
sought for an unerring method that would guarantee the abso-
lute certainty of the thinking self. It was a method which, as he proudly proclaimed in his Discourse on Method, would examine all known bases of knowledge, whether these meant the inherited tradition of the ages or the practical activities of contemporary peoples and customs, only thereafter to conclude that each
and every opinion and belief, while interesting or perhaps useful, was insufficient to provide the ground of truth which the thinker required if he was not to be deceived or dependent on other than what he could be absolutely certain. All so-called claims of truth or knowledge which men have offered for whatever reason are,
in Descartes’s method, to be swept completely away until he has
been able to establish the certainty of his own mind and there-
with the power to subject all truth-claims to its radically independent authority.34 In Descartes’s view, as Professor Jacob has
shown, “[o]nly the self, more precisely, the thinking mind – ‘I
think, therefore I am’ – can be taken as given. The first obligation of the scientific person is to embark on an intellectual odys-256

7 • The Enlightenment
sey that begins in doubt and ends with the affirmation of self.”35

Once the “radical charter” of the individual sovereign self has
been ratified in this journey of self-discovery, then all knowledge, from whatever source, must justify itself before the authority of the potentate of the mind.

Descartes found his answer, so he thought, in the belief
that while it was possible to doubt the existence of everything
else, it was not possible for the thinker to doubt his own existence. For even to doubt his own existence was to confirm it, for one could not doubt if one did not exist. So much must be certain – the existence, and therewith the certainty of his thought, of the thinker who cannot eliminate his existence from his own
thinking. Descartes now had the absolute starting-point in the
self that he desired for all truth claims.

It became a cardinal doctrine of Enlightenment humanism
to claim that each man could be the judge of what was true and
what was false. It was assumed that he could examine all propositions with an infallible science and know beyond doubt every
claim to be either the one or the other. The certainty lay within himself because, as Descartes had shown, whatever else may be
subject to questioning and uncertainty, one thing remained
beyond doubt, namely, the thinking existence of the individual
self. That much being certain, it was possible to accept that the mind’s ideas about the world and man were at least as certain as the person’s knowledge of his own existence. If man can reason
truly about himself, then he can reason truly about the world.

The hidden agenda in this philosophical program was the belief
that man did not have to regard anything as true if it did not
conform to the standard of his own mental processes. What came
to him as authoritative outside his own mind he may naturally
regard as nothing but an opinion which he may treat with indif-
ference or outright denial. Specifically, this meant that any truth said to come from God may be dismissed until the mind estab-34. The Philosophical Works of Descartes, Vol. I, trans. Elizabeth S.

Haldane and G. R. T. Ross, (Cambridge: At The University

Press, 1973), pp. 83–91.

35. Jacob, The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution, p. 60.

3. The Mechanized World of Enlightenment Man

257
lishes the truth of God’s existence and veracity. Of course, Descartes liked the idea of a God because it was to him a guarantee of his own thoughts. But should man decide that the truth of his thoughts does not require any external guarantee, as was to
become the case in the further unfolding of Enlightenment
ideals, then all such notions would be readily dismissed, even
attacked with hostility. No criterion of truth stands higher than the thinking self.

The influence of Cartesianism for Enlightenment ideals
was its proclamation, then, of “the self as the first arbitrator of knowledge….”36 It gave out that scientific knowledge was the
only way to think for oneself as over against accepting anything on the basis of external authority, custom or tradition. What man’s science could not confirm with certainty must be consigned to
primitive superstition and the vulgar imagination of uncultured
savages. It was supposed that, in the past, men were driven by
fear and an untutored ignorance evoked by strange cataclysms
and frightful natural disasters which made them imagine that
nature was arbitrarily manipulated by a frightful Deity who was
responsible for the calamities which overtook them. In time,
there arose a power ful elite to bind men’s conscience with
priestly religion and spoil their natural optimism with respect to nature’s order and coherent goodness. Cartesianism looked to
free man’s mind from such a primitive residue and thereby
encourage the belief that man could direct his life by means of
his own thoughts which, being “clear and distinct” as based
upon correct scientific thinking, would alleviate the need to rely upon any authority but himself. Man must be willing to start
with himself and rely upon his own judgments in all questions of truth and knowledge. What is more, only man the individual is
true reality. All other associations and agencies are merely conventional or habitual and must be deemed obstacles in the quest
for truth and knowledge. The individual must be bound only to
himself and the certainty of his own thoughts. This Cartesian
legacy would be promoted whenever and wherever anyone felt

36. Jacob, The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution, p. 57.

258

7 • The Enlightenment
the need to proclaim the individual’s radical liberation from all suffocating influences of culture and civilization, especially if it concerned matters of religion and ethics.

In the new mathematical science nature became a self-
determined system. The only concern of science was to know the
law of causality in nature thereby to grasp its intrinsic necessity and its movement as a continuous and predictable occurrence.

Nature and causality in nature were one and the same, and were
purely objective phenomena that could be explained on the basis
of an impersonal mathematical model. This being so, nature pos-
sessed no intrinsic purpose; or, rather, purpose must be imputed to nature and man’s mind, as Cartesianism had supposed, is the
only instrument for doing so. The man most responsible for
divining that purpose and giving to modern humanism its sense
of calling was Francis Bacon (1561–1626).

For Bacon, the only purpose which nature possessed for
men was their mastery of nature. Baconian thought “gave rise to

[the] characteristically modern belief in the unlimited human
ability to conquer nature by rational methods combined with an
unshakable confidence in a state of universal happiness that
would follow from this conquest.”37 As Bacon ardently pro-
fessed, “[T]he real and legitimate goal of the sciences, is the
endowment of human life with new inventions and riches.”38

For Bacon, truth meant science, and science meant power over
nature in order to benefit mankind. Knowledge meant a type of
salvation, not only from ignorance, but also from hardship and
the life of mere animal existence. Clearly, “Bacon’s call for
unlimited control over nature rested on the assumption that
nature possessed no purpose of its own…. [Consequently,] he
eliminated final causality from scientific investigation … [and]

placed the entire responsibility for conveying meaning and pur-
pose to the world entirely on the human person, the only crea-

37. Louis Dupre, Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 73 & 74.

38. Novum Organum, in The World’s Great Classics, (New York: The Colonial Press, 1899), p. 339.

3. The Mechanized World of Enlightenment Man

259
ture endowed with purposiveness.”39 Nature existed to ser ve
man according to man’s desire for self-satisfaction. A knowledge of nature which did not achieve practical results to this end was less than useless; indeed, it was positively harmful.

In Baconian thinking, then, the technical imperative of
knowledge summons the expertise of the goal-defining human
agent. Once again, the method for accomplishing this end is by
reducing all experience to purely abstract, quantifiable dimen-
sions. However, Bacon added another factor to this program,
namely, the need to be rigorously experimental. In this peculiar English contribution to Enlightenment thought the scientist
proceeds to the study of nature not simply by the method of
deductive analysis, but by an equally inductive empirical investigation of the physical and material properties of natural objects.

The result of this approach to nature has been to define nature’s movements and properties along the lines of mechanical operations which are the only features of nature which knowledge can
discover for endowing human life with “inventions and riches.”

Nature becomes a vast machine which functions in accordance
with an inexorable regularity. Even the life of man himself is subject to the same law of mechanical constancy and uniformity.

This being so, knowledge not only meant power over the forces (a Newtonian term) of nature, but power over men and society.

Even as man can engineer the workings of nature to benefit his
life, so, too, he can superintend the workings of society to create better order and harmony between human beings. Indeed, in the
new Enlightenment faith, the two were viewed as being neces-
sarily interrelated. Baconian optimism allowed modern man to
think that he could erect culture and civilization from a blueprint discovered in nature by an infallible method of reasoning. It was simply a matter of searching for the facts and piecing them
together with the logic of his mind.

However, if society could be engineered, what did this
mean for the autonomous individual? And if man was machine-
like in his physical properties, which were the only ones which

39. Dupre, Passage to Modernity, p. 72.

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7 • The Enlightenment
had any meaning so far as genuine knowledge was concerned,
what did this mean for the freedom and creative initiative of the sovereign individual? It was questions such as these which would to return to haunt Enlightenment man in the next stage of Western history known as the Romantic period.

In the meantime, let us carefully understand that the

Enlightenment inherited the Renaissance belief in man as a cre-
ative power in nature. Indeed, he alone gives value or meaning
to the total realm of being. In this respect, man does not just
give to nature what is intrinsic to nature, but he recasts nature to conform to human want and aspiration. Man becomes the controlling agent. But, in order to accomplish this design, nature
must be remade into a means of human cognitive control. In the
end, nature becomes increasingly mechanical and impersonal, a
strictly objective phenomenon upon which the mind of man
operates with a purpose supplied entirely by the mind itself.

Inwardly, man thinks of himself as free and sovereign, but externally he is determined by the realm of compulsion. Eventually,
man comes to feel closed in by an external environment which
functions according to unbreakable laws that do not exempt
man. The requirements of epistemology, in order that man may
be a creative agent, seems to lead to the conclusion that, in order to know nature, it must become totally self-contained and predictable. As it turned out, a predictable nature became the
enemy of freedom and power. The solution of this problem was
then sought in Romanticism with its cult of mystery and the irrational.

8 •Romanticism

The Revolution Ideal

1› A Culture of Protest & Protest as Culture

For I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes

The still, sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue. And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean, and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still

A lover of the meadows and the woods,

And mountains … well pleased to recognize

In nature and the language of the sense,

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

Of all my moral being.

– Tintern Abbey, Wm. Wordsworth

It has been justly remarked that whereas “science dictated
the ‘outer’ cosmology: the character of nature, man’s place in the universe, and the limits of his real knowledge,” it was the role of Romanticism “to inspire the West’s ‘inner’ culture – its art and literature, its religious and metaphysical vision, its moral
ideals….”1

262

8 •Romanticism

This comment portrays for us an important fact of human-
ism’s development in the modern world: its dualistic and anti-
thetical character. Up till now we have attempted to show that it was Plato’s central ideal of power-through-reason, as it was thought to be manifest in certain naturally endowed individuals, that has come to dominate Western humanism’s aspirations for
culture and civilization. While in the vision of Homer reason
appeared to be initially absent, and in the ideals of Monasticism it looked as though it were sublimated or suppressed, nevertheless, in both, men were inspired by the conception of a culture
formed by an especially privileged elite whose strength of pur-
pose and will, being divinely infused, would act as the locus of all real power and order in the cosmos. Even so, by the eighteenth
century it was Plato’s agenda – the program of scientia, science!

– which would appear to have totally triumphed. But precisely at that moment, when victory seemed assured, a new cultural force
came on the scene, one that at times appeared to compliment,
while at other times to act as a destructive solvent to, Western humanistic scientism, namely, the protest culture of Romanticism.

It has not been an easy matter to decide exactly when and
where this thing called Romanticism first appeared. Some claim
it began in Germany, others in England, mainly among poets in
the late eighteenth century. A third opinion, however, has not
hesitated to assert that one man, in particular, has been not only the first but, perhaps, the most important of all the Romantics, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.2

With this latter opinion, we find it hard to disagree. It is
not that Romanticism failed to show peculiar propensities among
others, it certainly did; we wish merely to point out that it was Rousseau who first gave vent to the modern Romantic faith.

Moreover, he did so not, as is usually thought, in his 1761 novel, 1. Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind, p. 11.

2. “Jean-Jacques Rousseau is the first of the Romantics …with the publication in 1761 of La nouvelle Heloise, the original romantic novel.” Maurice Cranston, The Romantic Movement, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994), p. 1.

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Heloise, but in 1750 in The First Discourse on Inequality for which the young Rousseau won first prize in a celebrated essay
competition. In this regard, we may emphasize a general feature
illustrative of the movement in Rousseau, to wit, that “[r]oman-
ticism began … as a protest of youth against the standards of their elders … a revolt against classicism, which seemed … to stifle all that was creative and spontaneous in artistic expression….”3 A
chief feature of Romanticism, one that will be a continuing trait right up to the present, can be found in its character as a “protest of youth,” a “revolt” of the young against all that went before as the considered principles of truth, goodness and cultural order.

Rousseau (1712–1778) typifies not simply a revolt of
youth against one’s immediate elders. Much more importantly
he stands for a radical departure from the faith which humanism
had sought to discover, from the Greeks up to his day, as the
master principle of reason that would enable the mind of man to acquire the control of reality, making it possible for him to
become the source of all order in the world and the sole deter-
miner of his civilization. This faith, as we pointed out in the last chapter, had achieved a significant break-through with the Scientific Revolution and came to expression in the eighteenth cen-
tury as Enlightenment. However, far from having arrived at the goal, the Enlightenment for many rather marked simply the
beginning. For, supposedly, the new science of mechanics, along
with the mathematics on which it was based, was only just start-
ing to emerge from the darkness of ignorance and religious
superstition. Great progress, of course, had already been made,
but even greater was expected in the future to lead mankind
unto the goal of perfection. And science would be the only
instrument to guide them in that direction. Man’s happiness
would increase in proportion to his increase in knowledge and
control of the forces of nature. It was over this Enlightenment
faith in progress through science that Rousseau first cast a huge shadow of doubt.

3. Gordon A. Craig, The Germans, (New York, A Meridian Book, 1991), p. 191.

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8 •Romanticism

For Rousseau, as for others who would follow in his path,
the whole reason enterprise, as it had reached its nadir in man’s supreme confidence in science and the culture he had produced
by means of it, was nothing more than a colossal absurdity at
best and a contemptible deception at worst. Modern scientific
culture, far from having lifted man to greater heights, had in fact degraded and perverted him. For, says Rousseau, in his First Discourse, “our souls have been corrupted in proportion to the advancement of our sciences and arts toward perfection.”4 In
other words, the growth of civilization, in particular the growth of knowledge, had led not to man’s betterment, but to his
debasement. What Rousseau implied was not that earlier cul-
tures, whether medieval or ancient, had any advantage over the
modern era in this respect. Rather, he meant to say that the
primitive and pre-civilizational state of mankind, in which man
had existed in some remote past long before he ever set out on
the quest for discovery and learning, was far better and certainly a happier one than when men first began to acquire the rudi-ments of knowledge and civilization. Thus, Rousseau introduced
what would become an abiding truth for Romantic idealists,
namely, the superiority of man in the state of untrammeled
nature, man without the artificiality of culture and society which have only served to spoil and vulgarize him with contrived conventions and outwardly imposed social mores. “One cannot
reflect on morals,” laments Rousseau, “without delighting in the recollection of the simplicity of earliest times. It is a lovely shore, adorned by the hands of nature alone, toward which one incessantly turns one’s eyes and from which one regretfully feels oneself moving away.”5 It was, in his view, a land of innocence and virtue, a time when men were wont to live together in harmony
and peace unaffected by the tumult of feverish wants and the
insatiable ambitions which have become the lot of men in the
modern world. What Rousseau ignited with this revision of val-

4. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The First and Second Discourses, ed.

Roger D. Masters, (New York: St. Marten’s Press, 1964), p. 39.

5. First Discourse, pp. 53, 54.

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ues among those who came afterwards in the Romantic era was a
longing to cast off the culture of the West and to seek for a new freedom in a strange new and mysterious world of primal nature.

Not progress toward the future, but revolt would come to
intrude upon the agenda of Western man.

Nothing captures the spirit of Romanticism quite like the
yearning of men to be free. Here we do not mean free in some limited political or, perhaps, merely academic sense, but rather a total freedom. On the negative side, it meant a freedom from all restricting social and moral conventions and arrangements, all
traditions and established or accepted dogmas of religion or of
the intellect in general, all confining relationships of whatever sort that were not conducive to an individual’s self-decided personal happiness. However, the Romantic idea of freedom, far
from being solely negative, at the same time, implied a positive desire to be free to re-make all things according to a vision which would emanate from the inner depths of man’s soul. It was
thought that anything external to the will or desire of man could only impede the soul’s longing to achieve total self-authenticity.

Only when man is completely autonomous can he then find and
recover his true self and in the same act achieve a world of happiness on his own behalf. This legacy of Rousseau has become a
chief feature of Romanticism and remains a foremost article of
faith among many, if not most, cultural humanists of the present day.

This longing for freedom was felt in Western culture well
before the Romantic period. As we shall see, Romanticism, in
many respects, simply stirred the embers of an ideal which had
long been smoldering and oft-times flared up, but which seemed
to have been nearly extinguished by the time of the Enlighten-
ment. In Western culture, it was Christianity which first kindled the flame of freedom, for it stood for the possibility of a radical freedom from sin which was viewed as the primary agency in the enslavement of men and nations. However, in the fur ther
unfolding of its idea, the Christian message was often influenced by the older pagan and neo-pagan ideas of freedom as meaning
the escape from creaturehood and finite materiality. As a result, 266

8 •Romanticism
the Christian component in this mixture was almost entirely
obliterated. In the meantime, we should understand that

Romanticism, in its view of the freedom of man, had deep roots
in this earlier world of thought. Yet, it appeared in a much more humanistic guise and more positively as offering an agenda of its own and not simply as propounding a doctrine of escape. Freedom for Romantics was a call for a new world-order and was
seen as the power of the will to produce it.

An agenda or program that is built on so radical a notion
of freedom from all given order is difficult to define. The very concept of an agenda implies an order itself. Romantics meant to construct an order of their own while at the same time that they rejected all so-called order as a denial of freedom. Undismayed, they reveled in this mysterious contradiction and clung resolutely to the belief that freedom was its own order, albeit not a given order, rather a permanently on-going achievement. Freedom can
never be a given or conclusive state; one lives constantly in the attempt to attain it. Without a final order to characterize freedom, it is only possible to speak of it as an act, as something
toward which we ought invariably to strive. In the end, freedom
can mean nothing positive, it is merely negative. Freedom must
be found in a perpetual rebellion from all previous order. Permanent revolution becomes the only program that Romanticism
can espouse despite whatever else it might claim to believe in.

This thought is best expressed by the not-so-well-known
nineteenth century Russian anarchist, Michael Bakunin, who
noisily declared: “Let us trust the eternal spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternally creative source of all life. The joyful passion of destruction is a creative passion.”6 It is the same as to say that life is made possible through death, a tenet no doubt also borrowed from Chris-
tianity but with a thoroughly different message to it. For death meant to Romantics not the death of the self to its lusts and evil 6. The quote is taken from Eric Voegelin, From Enlightenment To Revolution, ed. John H. Hallowell, (Durham, Duke University Press, 1975), p. 198.

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desires but the death of all that stood in the way of total personal self-fulfillment. Consequently, while Romanticism is often portrayed as a revolt against rationalism, in another sense it is the culmination of rationalism in that it derives from the same urge to master and control reality, and to bring to completion the
quest for Gnosis as a superior grasp of the totality of existence in order to realize a paradise for man. Only the Gnosis sought after was not so much to be found in the intellect as it reflects on an objective reality as in the will and the deeper stirrings of the heart out of which would arise the only reality that was admissible.

From a historical perspective, Romanticism has been said
to contrast with the classical view. Classicism, as noted, is the term most often used to describe the culture of the Enlightenment. The latter represented a vision of culture that conformed
to unvarying standards as first propounded in the artistic accomplishments of the classical heritage of Greece and Rome but
which had been transformed by the Enlightenment’s obsession
with geometrical exactness. It emphasized a supposedly objec-
tive, whether divine or rational, order which it is the responsibility of all men to study, submit to, and obey. In classicism
knowledge of the truth was sought in universal, idealized form.

Lovejoy has captured the essential characteristic of this outlook: For in nearly all the provinces of thought in the Enlightenment the ruling assumption was that Reason … is the same
in all men equally possessed by all; that this common rea-
son should be the guide of life; and therefore that universal
and equal intelligibility, universal acceptability, and even
universal familiarity, to all normal members of the human
species, regardless of differences of time, place, race, and
individual propensities and endowments, constitute the
decisive criterion of validity or of worth in all matters of
vital human concernment….7

“The Enlightenment was, in short, an age devoted, at least
in its dominant tendency, to the simplification and the standard-7. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, p. 289.

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8 •Romanticism
ization of thought and life….”8 With the outgrowth of modern
science in this period a vigorous effort was made to transform all knowledge into quantitative forms. It was believed that, by
doing so, thought would be freed from all subjective distortions, that is, from all ethical, aesthetic, emotional, imaginative or
intentional qualities of human experience. Such was deemed nec-
essary if man was to achieve the goal of perfect and certain
knowledge. But the result was that “a certain spiritual nobility seemed to have departed from it [man’s knowledge]” and man
felt a profound impoverishment of soul. To the Romantics,

“[t]he new universe was a machine, a self-contained mechanism
of force and matter, devoid of goals or purpose, bereft of intelligence or consciousness, its character fundamentally alien to that of man.”9

Against this externally rigid and mechanical, not to men-
tion universally objectively standardized, world-view of the

Enlightenment, along with the classical culture spawned by it,
the Romantic movement passionately revolted. All that the

Enlightenment had stood for in its deification of the intellect, its utilitarian prejudices, and its faith in technological efficiency, as well as its optimistic belief in progress was to be rejected. In place of its emphasis on the idea of a universal truth and the primacy of the intellect as the highest goal of human endeavor,

Romanticism substituted the emotions, insisting on the priority of experience over thought. Reality was not something to be discovered in the reason but was to be conjured up “through feel-
ing, sentiment, imagination, instinct, passion, dream and
recollection.”10 What is more, it arises in the consciousness of man in a purely spontaneous and unprescribed manner and is not
the result of abstract reflection on some pre-determined order of truth. When it came to nature, whereas science saw it merely as
an object to be studied, experimented upon, explained and tech-
nically controlled, the Romantics viewed it as an animating force, 8. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, p. 292.

9. Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind, pp. 326, 327.

10. J. L. Talmon, Romanticism and Revolt: Europe 1815–1848, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1979), p. 139.

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269
full of myster y and spiritual meaning, to be approached with
ecstatic wonder.

This Romantic view of nature is the flip-side of its view of
freedom. Not being content to oppose the geometrical spirit, along with the empiricism, of Enlightenment science, Romantics viewed nature as more than a mere mechanism: it was life, power
and mystery. The analogy of the machine was replaced by that of
a biological organism. “In contrast with the spirit of the Enlightenment,” observes Tarnas, “the Romantic vision perceived the
world as a unitary organism rather than an atomistic machine,
exalted the ineffability of inspiration rather than the enlightenment of reason, and affirmed the inexhaustible drama of human
life rather than the calm predictability of static abstractions.”11

Romantics were inclined to describe “nature as naturans, that is, animated by a living principle, as opposed to natura naturata, that is, finished and dead product.”12 Nature, in this view, was combined with God, or at least with Spirit, and was seen as a life-force, a source of creativity in and through man. Nature does not so much exist as becomes, evolving into new and higher forms.

This evolutionary thesis was to have strong repercussions in the nineteenth centur y when, through the influence of Lamarck,

Lyell and, especially, Darwin, it penetrated to the core of scientific thought itself.

The so-called “quest for ‘nature’” in Romantic ideology
was the search not for certainty or law but for whatever elicited awe and feeling. They looked upon nature not as a habitation
from which man conjures inventions, fabricated and artificial
products to increase his comfort and happiness, but as a tran-
scending totality in which all manner of experiences offer them-
selves to the quest for authenticity and freedom. Nature was
implored not for its order and normality but for its uncommon
features, its rugged, uncultivated and inscrutable phenomena
which are to Romantics the well-springs of meaning and life.

Unless this be understood we cannot rightly grasp, for example,

11. Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind, p. 367.

12. Baumer, Modern European Thought, p. 281.

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8 •Romanticism
what lies at the root of the modern environmental, “back-to-
nature,” movement. Man, in Romantic belief, cannot achieve
freedom and true humanity, unless he replaces all scientific and rationalist approaches to nature with a view of it as a fount of spiritual regeneration.

The opposition of Romanticism to the Enlightenment’s
worship of science and the reason is easily understood. Reducing reality to a quantitative datum of purely mechanical movement
in time and space according to an inviolable natural law
amounted to the loss of a complex and varied human experience.

Man was said to have forsaken a sense of integration with his
world, with life in general which seemed to shrivel against the
vast, impersonal machine of the universe. Man’s purpose,
though he was eulogized by the Enlightenment as the great
thinker of the thoughts of the cosmos, had become that of a
mere cog in the machine. The promise of the Renaissance had
been to realize a divine status for man; the Enlightenment had
shown that the new mathematically prescribed order of reality, in the end, rendered that hope null and void. Seeing the dilemma
in which things now stood, the Romantic movement sought to
recover the divinity of man in an altogether different direction, one that, for the most part, could not be found in the intellect but in the depths of the emotions and senses. Deeply deploring
the formalization and objectivization of life as it was alleged to have become under the influence of modern science, they called,
instead, for a new freedom against all order and purpose that do not arise entirely from man’s experience and will. Theirs became the voice of the counter-culture with its vehement rebellion from all culture and civilization which seeks in any way to delimit
man’s actions or impose an external order on his psyche and
morality. We should not be surprised if “[t]he revolt against the standardization of life easily becomes a revolt against the whole conception of standards.”13 And in the West, we should not hesitate to mention, the most imposing of all standards had been
that of Christianity. Behind the apparent revolt against scientism 13. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, p. 312.

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271
the Romantic movement was a reaction against the Christian
heritage with its belief in man as God’s creature living in God’s world bound by His order, and also in man’s sin and God’s
requirement of a salvation through submission of man’s will to

God’s. Romantics would accept no order but their own and sub-
mit to no one but themselves. In order to safeguard this intent, however, Romantics needed to make a god of experience per se.

2› Proto-Romantics

Although Romanticism is often treated as a movement in
the modern period that was antagonistic to the mind-set of the

Enlightenment, in fact, much of what is representative in its
character had antecedents in the past, especially the medieval
past. In this respect, Romanticism had an affinity with certain
features of Christianity although it rejected the latter’s essential content. However, what Romantics found attractive in the

Christian medieval past derived primarily from what was by and
large a corruption of the Christian faith and life, namely, its
asceticism and mysticism, features which do not constitute the
core principles of Biblical teaching but were borrowed from
pagan sources. Nevertheless, because there were significant par-
allels between Romantics and medieval ascetics, and because

Romantics were self-conscious in their wish to revive the values of that earlier mystical outlook, it would be worthwhile to glance back and see exactly what that legacy entailed as well as what
effect it came to have on modern Romantic thought.

Western Christian mysticism was a product of the monas-
tic world and its search for spiritual release. As we mentioned, Christianity was early affected by the in-roads of Gnostic dualistic thinking in which a heavy emphasis was placed upon the
antithesis of matter and spirit, body and soul. The Christian doctrine of salvation from sin by many became quickly transformed
into the belief that this meant a deliverance from all materiality and earthly existence. To achieve this goal a strict regime of
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8 •Romanticism
on its adherents as the essence of the Christian life and conduct.

At the same time, as a corollary of this practice, its devotees were led into the realms of mysticism. Abstention from this world was only a part of the program; the other part was to experience,
while burdened here on earth with time and matter, a mystical
union ( unio mystica) with heaven and God, thereby to undergo a foretaste of rapturous blessedness. In time, it became a part of official church doctrine to speak of something called the beatific vision, a sort of brief, but intense, glimpse into a perfect seeing and experiencing of God in His immediate and unhidden divinity. It was taught as something that was only possible for certain, privileged individuals who had dedicated their lives to a total
ascetic withdrawal and absorption in a complete knowing of

God. It might, or might not, happen to some great saint. This
vision was a uniquely mystical experience which could not be
explained or described in this life, but which marked its recipient as one highly favored for his or her devotion to nothing but the love of and desire for God. An overwhelming experience, then,
of something that was beyond the confines of the ordinary and
mundane left an indelible imprint on Western culture through

Christian mysticism and would return again to inspire Romantic
aspirations, only then it would be seen not so much as a vision of God as of the self as god.

Although mystical asceticism had been a part of the so-
called Christian faith for centuries, it became especially pro-
nounced in the High Middle Ages. And while the church had
accorded it a legitimate place in its official teaching, yet by the mid-twelfth century it was to proliferate not only on the fringes of church control but, more precisely, as a serious protest movement against all forms of established authority, regardless
whether it was Scriptural, Ecclesiastical or Philosophical (i.e., Scholasticism).14 All types of external authority were deeply
resented and opposed. As a result, a new non-church sanctioned

14. Andrew Weeks, German Mysticism: From Hildegard of Bingen to Ludwig Wittgenstein, (Albany: The State Universtiy of New York Press, 1993), p. 12.

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273
mysticism became widespread, although in the main it was usu-
ally attached to one of the many so-called heretical movements.

Perhaps the most formidable of these was something called the
heresy of the Free Spirit.

Free Spirit mysticism, it is said, sprang “from a craving for
immediate apprehension of and communion with God.”15 Its
adherents exhibited a passion for ecstatic experiences which, as it resulted from an immediate encounter with the divine, soon
encouraged the belief that no authority existed for them outside their own experiences. Accordingly, they regarded the church
with its forms and functions to be, not merely an obstacle, but an enemy of true religious salvation. We should not be surprised if their program was productive of a certain self-conceit. As Cohn
remarked; “The core of the heresy of the Free Spirit lay in the
adept’s attitude towards himself: he believed that he had attained a perfection so absolute that he was incapable of sin.”16 So certain were they, in fact, of having achieved such a state that they no longer considered it necessary that their conduct should be
regulated by any moral norms, instead they were free to pursue
every activity with utter abandon. In other words, they were free to do whatever had been thought of as forbidden. Moreover, not
to act with a complete indifference or even contempt of moral
requirements was to be enslaved to them, hence, neither free nor perfect. Rather than feeling the need to restrain the impulses of the flesh, they were at liberty to indulge in a total carefree sensuality which to them “possessed above all a symbolic value as a
sign of spiritual emancipation….”17 That soul which has been
thus absorbed into God was free to act as if his actions were of no account. If one participates in God, so they reasoned, then
he, too, like God, exists above all laws. As God is free to do
whatever He pleases, then so are those who have become com-
pletely one with Him. Nothing was taken over by the Romantic
mind quite as thoroughly as this self-proclaimed liberation from 15. Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 150.

16. Cohn, p. 150.

17. Cohn, p. 151.

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8 •Romanticism
all moral constraint.

Among the many factors contributing to this so-called

“crisis of authority” was one having to do with the growing

“humanization of the image of God,” whose greatest proponent
at this time was perhaps none other than Bernard of Clairvaux. It began when Bernard shifted the emphasis in Christian thinking
about Christ and redemption away from the Christus Victor
theme, so prominent in the early Middle Ages, to that of “the
man of sorrows.” Not Christ in his triumph over death and his
enemies, but Christ in his humble human form as the suffering
servant became more powerfully stressed. It was meant to elicit a greater awareness of and sympathy for the human side of Christ’s nature and thereby to arouse a keener appreciation of the close
union between man and God in general. Its effect was to narrow
the “perceived distance between the divine and human” and to
generate a desire for a deeper experience of God than mere intellect could provide.18 Consequently, it played heavily upon the
emotions, a fact of considerable importance to the masses who
perceived only a ritual sterility in the ordered cultus of the official church. Not surprisingly, it drew many in the direction of the
heresy movements who promised to satisfy their needs in this
respect.

One of the important outcomes of this humanization of
the divine was to be seen in a rebellion by some against the Biblical-Augustinian teaching on the distinction between the Cre-
ator and creature. It apparently came to expression from the
longing “to bridge the chasm between the eternal world in God
and the created world in time.”19 Thus, the idea of creation ex nihilo came under severe attack: it implied too sharp a difference between God and the world. One wanted to see creation as a
process, not as a finished product, the world as a development,
with the temporal and the eternal representing alternating poles of one single and indivisible reality. God and the soul was
another pole of reality to be seen as gradually coalescing into one 18. Andrew Weeks, German Mysticism, p. 40.

19. Weeks, p. 30.

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275
another.

In the early fourteenth century this doctrine of the Free

Spirit was presented as an intricate philosophical and theological system. The framework of its conception was Neoplatonic, especially as the latter tended to foster a pantheistic outlook. To see and experience everything as an aspect of God was the chief feature. The idea of having emanated from God and of the longing
to reunite with (be re-absorbed into) God was particularly
emphasized. The desire to escape creaturehood had long been an
ambition of man, as we mentioned. Real life and power were
held to lie in becoming divine and of inhabiting the realm of
eternity. However, the Free Spirit zealots were not ones to grant such recognition of divinity to any but their own number. Furthermore, it was no onetime experience, such as was taught by
the church’s official doctrine of the unio mystica, but a permanent and everlasting condition.

The foremost proselytizer of this way of thinking was

Meister Eckhart (c.1260–1329) who, after Abelard, was perhaps
the greatest mind to be condemned as a heretic in the Middle

Ages. Eckhart, in 1302, in his early forties, had achieved what
was regarded by those in medieval academic circles to be the pinnacle of success: he was appointed professor of theology at the
most prestigious university of the time, the University of Paris.

Like Thomas Aquinas before him, he, too, belonged to the

Order of Preachers, the Dominicans, and was famous in his day
as an outstanding sermonizer. It was actually more from his pro-
lific preaching than from his academic lectures that he came to
the notice of the ecclesiastical authorities. They would soon
denounce his ideas as unorthodox, and with good reason.

It is not an easy matter to understand the thinking of Eck-
hart, for although he used the language of orthodoxy, he never-
theless imported a foreign content strongly influenced by Greek
philosophical ideas. One thing seems clear: he was a man who
possessed a deep-seated distrust of what we might call the literal sense of Scripture. As far as he was concerned, its language was merely a gateway to profounder, hidden meanings. Being thus
influenced by especially Neoplatonic assumptions, he willingly

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8 •Romanticism
read their meaning into the text of Scripture.

Scholastic thought had taken the view that man and God
together participated in a common Being and that each therefore
possessed their own static share of a common reality. According
to its program, everything turned upon an intellectual grasp of
that reality. In the Scholastic mind, Being came before knowing
and the latter activity must conform to the former. The issue of truth, in this view, was made to depend upon the correct logical connection, for the order of Being predisposed the order of
knowing. In the end, all that was thought knowable became
more and more abstract and static. To know God in such a man-
ner, Eckhart felt, left the stirrings of man’s heart devoid of any deeper communion with God. Against this program of learning

Eckhart lodged a protest, as Romantics would later do against
the Enlightenment which had reduced everything to its mathe-
matical proportions.

By way of contrast, Eckhar t reversed the relationship
between Being and knowing, especially as it concerned God’s
being. In this way, what God knows is the same as what he is.

And what He knows is the world! Thus, God is not external to
the world, but in knowing it, He creates it and it, in turn,
becomes an expression of Himself. Because knowing is an eternal
act, so too, creating is an eternal act, not a mere onetime event.

In this way, so Eckhart thought, God becomes the idea of all
things, their inner essence.20 The two poles of reality – God and world – are more intimately fused and conform to a dynamic pattern rather than a static relationship of a strict logical association.

On the other hand, Eckhart spoke of creatures, man in
particular, as existing “in tension between nothingness and infinite divinity.”21 Somewhere in between is slavery (affinity with nothingness) and freedom (affinity with divinity). Man, caught in the middle, lives in the complete possibility of moving in either one direction or the other. It is Eckhart’s supreme purpose to

20. Frank Tobin, Meister Eckhart: Thought and Language, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), p. 57.

21. Tobin, p. 64.

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277
urge men to seek freedom by means of achievement of equality
with divinity which he believes it is in all men’s power so to do.22

This is made possible by what he described as the “birth of the

Son” in the soul, an act of self-accomplishment on the order of
the incarnation which for Eckhart was a symbol of what can be
realized in all seekers after the divine. Furthermore, this operation occurs, not as an action of God’s will, but by reason “of
activity arising necessarily out of the infinite dynamism and perfection of God” of which man is an active participant.23 On the
one hand, it is an action by which God necessarily becomes man
and, on the other, by which man necessarily becomes God. God
and the soul merge together in a mystical embrace, thereby
enabling man to rise from nothingness to the being which is God.

The so-called Christian message becomes one of metaphysical
transformation, not ethical renewal, a mysterious overcoming of
creaturehood. Romantics were greatly impressed with this sort of thinking, albeit without the medieval Christian overtones.

Of even greater influence on Romantic thinking was Jacob

Boehme (1575–1624), a man who became the voice of a radical
pietistic Christianity in the period of the late Reformation. Not much is known of Boehme’s early life. We know that he grew up
in an area of Germany called Silesia, a territory permeated with Anabaptist and Free Spirit activism. The heavy emphasis that was placed upon the need for a totally transforming spiritual experience by this sect left a deep impression on the multitude of peasants and small shopkeepers of the region from among whom

Boehme was to rise to prominence. In 1600, Boehme alleges to
have had a divine visitation which compelled him to leave off his work (shoe-cobbler) and to go out to contemplate nature and
therein to discover its divine indications ( signatures). Boehme claimed that his spiritual rebirth had given him an illumination of nature’s secrets that were not accessible to scientists or discoverable by any known rational means.

A peculiar feature of Boehme’s thinking was his belief that

22. Tobin, Meister Eckhart, p. 94.

23. Tobin, p. 101.

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the entire cosmos expresses but a single divine process at work.

No distinction exists between creation and redemption. They are
one and the same and constitute an on-going operation. Fur-
thermore, the world-process represents a gradual unfolding of
the divine within it. This activity of God in creating/saving the world is an action of self-recognition and self-realization on His part. The eternal is seen in the temporal as light in darkness.

However, it cannot be seen by any but the true believer who has
undergone the miracle of rebirth. To believe meant that one was translated from a world of ordinary concerns into a higher eternal world of a fathomless mystical beauty.24

Boehme seems to have been profoundly influenced by the

Renaissance hermetic belief that man could acquire a knowledge

( gnosis) of God which entailed a deeper apprehension of His necessary way with the world which thereby enabled man to become
privy to the secrets of the movement of time and history, giving him the key to the why and wherefore of all things. What is
more, he who acquired such knowledge stood at the center and
gazed out upon the world not only with greater understanding
but with a greater power to “play a more active and deliberate
role in bringing about the divine perfection of all things.”25 The whole vision of God in Boehme’s conception was what it meant
for mankind’s salvation in history. Salvation becomes a radically immanent fulfillment in which man arrives at the final state of
perfection in time. Whereas Eckhart still thought in terms of
translation from the temporal into the eternal, Boehme thought
more in terms of the eternal becoming fully manifest in the tem-
poral. While both ideals were paramount for Romantic revisers
of this medieval Christian mysticism, it was in fact Boehme’s ideal of “innerwordly fulfillment” that achieved greater prominence in Romantic thought, especially in its conception of the
movement of history as a process of self-salvation towards a state of paradise within time. We may mention here, in passing, its

24. Tobin, Meister Eckhart, pp. 179, 182.

25. David Walsh, The Mysticism of Innerworldly Fulfillment: A Study of Jacob Boehme, (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1983), pp. 12, 13.

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particular influence on Hegelian and Marxian thinking in the
nineteenth century.

Boehme was undoubtedly the most important source of

Romanticism’s nature mysticism. They clearly drew from him the
idea that nature is a living witness, a realm of meaning that went far beyond the intelligence of the observer or scientist. It possessed secrets hidden beneath the outer appearance. The world
cannot be truly known apart from a deeper intuitive grasp (expe-
rience) of its mystery. It is a riddle demanding an interpretation of its signatures from those who have entered into a profound sympathy with its obvious enigma. At the same time, they also
took from him a secularized vision of man as possessing a total
knowledge of the movement of time in the direction of a state of perfection. Man is not just a viewer, however, but is co-united
with God/Nature in His/Its seeking of its own self-manifesta-
tion in immanent reality. Being a spark of the divine spirit

(nature) unfolding himself within time, the consequences were
that man should realize a state of finality within the framework of temporal, earthly reality. “At the heart of this conception of
innerworldly reality as the agonistic process of God’s self-revelation is a crucial presupposition that has become equally central to the whole of modern thought: the notion that the will is prior to being.”26 Indeed, the world is what man makes of it: he wills it into existence. Romanticism reaches its conclusion with

Nietzsche’s “will to power,” in which man is said to live “beyond good and evil.”

We should, perhaps, mention one last figure from the
medieval past who has also been a source of inspiration for

Romantic and pietistic idealism: Hildegard of Bingen (1098–

1179). Not the least of her importance has to do with the fact
that she was a woman, and modern Romantics and counter-cul-
ture types in general have seen in her a symbol of the liberation of women as a peculiar feature of liberation in general. She
achieved a remarkable status in a man’s world and has continued
to serve as a role model for the Romantically inspired freedom of 26. Walsh, The Mysticism of Innerworldly Fulfillment, p. 16.

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8 •Romanticism
women from especially male oppression throughout modern
times.

Hildegard was deeply influenced by the spread of Free

Spirit thinking which promoted the idea that one could have
direct revelations from God in the form of voice or visions.

Those who had experienced such ecstatic communions, as

Hildegard alleges to have had, also claimed to have an authority from God that excelled all traditional sources of authority,
whether ecclesiastical or lay. Theirs being a more immediate
access to divine truth they were not hesitant to demand that the established authorities should submit to their words. Hildegard
achieved renown for her boldness in corresponding with power-
ful rulers, often chastising or rebuking them in the name of a
divine authority granted to her direct from God. This belief in
the mystics’ superiority over long recognized earthly powers was a chief factor in their influence on later Romantic writers and
thinkers. They, too, came to believe that they possessed an
insight into the truth of all things which far exceeded ordinary souls whose lives were shaped by mere mundane and present
concerns. Romantics were not content to have had experiences
that transcended that of others, theirs was an elitist attitude
which demanded that their insights and interpretations be the
only acceptable ones. This outlook was reinforced by another
that mystics like Hildegard also promoted.

Hildegard, as did all Free Spirit adepts, distrusted any
forms of mediation between the individual soul and God.

Instead, she sought to encourage the idea that the only contact
between God and the soul was that of love, a deep, emotional attachment that derived not at all from any considerations of
either vice or virtue. Love of God was not a love of the ways of God as that of Truth and Righteousness, but was solely a personal experience that excluded all thought of duty or responsibility. It bred the notion of a noble soul filled with undiluted and non-calculating personal devotion to the One who has filled it so utterly with warmth and tender affection. Such a direct access to God stood not at all in need of any means, whether from Church
or Scripture, to instruct or guide the devotee in such matters.

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The so-called external aspects of the faith were increasingly
deemed useless, even harmful to a true heart religion.

Romantics, of course, did not believe in God, but they did
believe in nature, and sought to emphasize the same approach to
it as earlier mystics had done with respect to God. One enters
into a profound love for and communion with nature wherein
one achieves a state of inner nobility that allows one to act in the external realm with little regard for forms or rules. Romantics
were great flaunters of established mores and patterns of social and ethical behavior. In particular, they felt free to explore all avenues of sensual and emotional stimulation simply because to experience was the greatest good for man. And since they were moved by a total and uninhibited love, and not from necessity or any imposing requirements, their actions were without any sense
of sin or wrong-doing. As Cohn once more comments: “What
distinguished the adepts of the Free Spirit from all other medi-
eval sectarians was, precisely, their total amoralism. For them the proof of salvation was to know nothing of conscience or
remorse.”27 In a like manner, and for similar reasons, Romantics believed that they had arrived at a level wherein sin was abolished and, hence, one was free to do whatever one pleased. For them
to practice free love was to affirm one’s emancipation from all conditions of moral dependence, as well as from guilt or the fear of punishment.

3› The Romantic Agenda

Because it is a central truth of Romanticism that man is
culturally repressed and must be delivered from such an execra-
ble state of affairs, Romantics therefore meant to show him how
he could do so. They would not be content simply to describe
man’s pitiful plight, they must offer him a way of salvation. Man cannot be truly himself unless he achieves a total freedom from
all external and traditional institutions and authorities, from all 27. Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, p. 177.

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8 •Romanticism
dogmas of truth and knowledge, ethics and religion. However,
the goal of Romanticism is not merely one of annihilating all culture in general; indeed, they wish to furnish a program or agenda of their own, one that gives full satisfaction to the urge of man to be free, and yet, presumably, achieves a complete order which
man might be willing to submit to as a standard of life, thought, and behavior. Culture must be re-made as Romantic culture,
man must be re-made as Romantic man.

It will undoubtedly be a difficult task. Man’s self-pro-
claimed ideal of freedom from all but his own will and imagina-
tion does not easily fit with an idea of culture. For culture – any culture – inevitably demands sacrifice and self-denial on the part of those who seek to advance it if it is to achieve any permanence or durability. There must be a greater good for which every individual is willing to give up some of his own if he wishes to see it realized. Culture implies a willingness on the part of those who seek it to forego immediate benefits for longer term ones. Culture is not something that one may take for granted as if it will form and grow without deliberate and thoughtful effort. To
have and enjoy the benefits of culture demands that we set priorities, adhere to and promote mutually recognized values, under-
stand the importance of shared goals and the means to achieve
them and, finally, that we be willing to relinquish purely personal gratification in the interest of greater social and moral stability –
in short, to seek my neighbors good as well as my own. All these requirements, however, are completely at odds with the goals of
personal freedom and self-fulfillment as represented by the
agenda of Romanticism. To seek freedom must surely mean to
deny any obligations other than the singular one of freedom!

Yet, Romanticism in the modern age has stood for the belief that freedom is culture, that the attainment of the one quite simply means the accomplishment of the other. It requires a faith of no paltry proportions to disregard this contradiction. And if this
were not enough, we might reflect on what modern history has
recorded of the many attempts to create cultural order from the
pursuit of freedom as proclaimed by Romanticism.

The Romantic agenda is not a simple program; it does not

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283
offer a mere method or a precisely defined set of principles to
instruct its disciples in the correct course of action. At least this was true in its initial phases. Once Romantics became politically inspired, however, they would be provided with a carefully constructed formula for success: the seizure of the state and the forc-ible and radical transmutation of all aspects of life into socialist order. This would become visible in history when the revolt from cultural oppression became associated with the need to rebel
against all perceived political oppression. But, at the outset,

Romanticism followed a more individualistic pathway and
sought merely to retreat from all externally imposed forms of
human society in general. They began with the view that they
should opt out from any concern but that of the soul alone.

The Enlightenment’s passion for mathematical exactness
and standardized uniformity was perhaps nowhere more appar-
ent than in its vision of society. A feature of its belief in this respect was its acceptance of the Stoical idea that life should be lived in accordance with virtue and not with pleasure. Thus,

“[t]he aim of a good life is not pleasure but control, conformity to cosmic law, resignation to the will of the gods, duty, and self-abnegation that scorns riches and sinks itself into some larger
civic good.”28 One should strive to achieve an inward compo-
sure that harmonized with things as they are and to avoid those
emotional impulses which sought satisfaction in the fleeting and unstable senses. It is the purpose of the wise man to possess tran-quillity in the face of all stresses and discomforts and to subordinate oneself to the universal law of nature and reason. He looks to duty more than self-interest; he accepts self-restraint, self-discipline and perfect calm in all circumstances. He seeks, then, the civic good over all private and personal good. In this respect, he sees as the proper motivation for actions and beliefs the promotion of something called the universal rights of man. Enlightenment so cial thought was center ed o n th e need to create
conditions of political equality and to transform men into

28. Howard Mumford Jones, Revolution and Romanticism, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), p. 135.

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8 •Romanticism
responsible citizens. This could be achieved by finding the cor-
rect legal forms and subordinating all selfish desires to the rule of abstract law. In Enlightenment social thought man lives for the
goal of the good society and not merely for the good life of the individual, for without social order no good in any sense would
be possible.

Romantics, however, could not be satisfied with this pro-
gram. To them it meant the subordination of real human beings
to an artificial and external collectivity. It insisted that man the individual suppress his natural inclinations and predilections for the sake of intellectual abstractions and impersonal constructs.

Instead of man shaping his own life in accordance with the pecu-
liarities of his own individual nature, he was forced to submit
himself to an agenda that was prescribed for him and which
remained purely outside his intrinsic pursuits. Consequently,

“romantic individualism was not satisfied with the merely civic
interpretation of man.”29 For it, a program of purely political equality meant nothing more than a stifling conformity. Simply to be a citizen was to lose sight of the special characteristics, even eccentricities, of each unique individual personality. Political liberalism merely produced the unknown and faceless member of
society. As far as Romantics were concerned “it was less impor-
tant that a human being be a citizen than that he be a soul.”30

The qualities that make man a man and endow him with genuine
purpose were simply smothered in the crowd. It was not rights that mattered but the achievement of authentic selfhood. Thus, a social order governed merely by law was beneath their contempt.

The true individual was superior to such trivial matters as social forms and conventions. If necessary, he must realize his potential at the expense of legalities and customs.

Initially, then, Romantics sought the goal of the Romantic
vision outside of the realm of the political. They turned to the arts and the artistic imagination. It was there that Romantics
became inspired by something called the creative genius. In this 29. Jones, Revolution and Romanticism, p. 231.

30. Jones, p. 232.

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285
respect, Romanticism was not advocated as a movement for the
masses, but as a program for the unique individual who stood
apart from the ordinary and who created a world based upon a
deeper revelatory insight into the emotions and feelings. Two
areas especially were to be seized upon to give expression to this ideal: music and literature.

Believing as they did that art and artistic genius were the
true motive forces of creative energy, Romantics were especially apt to see in music, because it stimulates so profusely the non-intellectual dimensions of the psychic emotions, the purest
source of the soul’s liberation. As Talmon commented: “The
incomparable power of suggestion possessed by music, its ability to work on the mind directly without the mediation of words,
and yet to convey an infinite range of impressions, feelings and thoughts, made it the ideal art of Romanticism.”31 The Romantics’ preference for music was very much the product of their
belief that reality is shrouded in mystery and that meaning lies below the threshold of conscious intellectual processes. Music
conveyed the impression that the depths of experience could not
be adequately reflected upon, let alone articulated or objectively analyzed. If anything, music stirred the soul’s own vitality without the need to consider whether or not it conformed to some
external order. The purpose was to arouse in the soul – the inner self – its own internal forces and passions whose legitimacy was not dependent upon whether or not they were felt or expressed
in accordance with some objective or necessar y truth. It was
enough that music produced the stimulus needed by the soul to
project itself and create a reality in conformity with its own experience.

Music has always been a tool in culture formation. In the
ancient world music was connected to the life of the community
whose realities were shaped by legends of great ancestors who
performed deeds of heroic accomplishment and by the gods
against whom men were to compare themselves in their desire to
live the best life possible. In the time of Homer, the poet who

31. Talmon, Romanticism and Revolt, p. 147.

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8 •Romanticism
recounted these stories was at the same time a bard who con-
veyed his message in song. Music gives to the story-teller a powerful means to elicit from his audience an emotional sense of
attachment to the myths that were alleged to inspire their own
actions and interests. Also, in the Middle Ages, the Christian
message of withdrawal from the world was reinforced by means
of music that led one into the interiorities of the soul where one could more easily focus one’s attention on the spiritual realm with its attendant mysteries. The monastic world was filled with the music of the chant which solemnized the devotion of the
soul in deeper ways than words alone could possibly express.

Music has long been used as an inducement to the ideals for
which men have sought to live and for the world they have
yearned to realize. In this respect, Romanticism was no excep-
tion.

The purpose of music was to kindle the energies of the
spirit, to transport the soul from the tedium of the ordinary to the heights of wonder and imagination, to awaken in consciousness the dark and hidden forces of the unconscious core of one’s being wherein lie the creative powers of man. Music was a means
to excite as well as the very product of the artistic genius. In the Romantic world, the artist was a man above men, a veritable
messiah-type. Romantics saw in the artist the light of the world, the salt of the earth, the image of divinity, the reveler of the secrets of God, the interpreter of nature, prophet, priest, and
king. All the symbols of the religious past, as re-worked in the Romantic mind, coalesced in the soul of the artistic genius.

Genius cannot be produced by culture or civilization, it is neither taught nor learned, it supersedes all known methods of achievement. “Genius flashes, genius creates, genius does not contrive
anything, because it is. It is something not manageable. Its character is revelation, not reason…. Genius is super-nature, super-
art, super-learning, super-talent.”32 Like their Free Spirit fore-bears, Romantics placed the genius above all conventions and
authorities: he communed directly with God, or, in the case of

32. Jones, Revolution and Romanticism, p. 284.

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287
the Romantics, with nature. The genius is not measured by some
external truth, but is a truth unto himself.

As in music, so also in literature, the Romantics exalted the
power of the imagination. In their minds, reality was not uni-
form and static, but alive and undergoing perpetual transforma-
tion. To speak as if one could know with certainty the truth of all that pertained to the real world in which man lived was pure fantasy. There is no one meaning or truth to be discovered, but only endless variety, with each new moment revealing something altogether unique. The goal of man should not be to get hold of
some final and permanent knowledge of a given reality, but to
pursue the endlessly novel in experience. Man’s relationship to
his world should not be one of understanding, but of encounter-
ing the vast range of heretofore unfamiliarities of the senses and feelings. Tarnas has clarified the matter thus:

To explore the mysteries of interiority, of moods and
motives, love and desire, fear and angst, inner conflicts and
contradictions, memories and dreams, to experience
extreme and incommunicable states of consciousness, to
be inwardly grasped in epiphanic ecstasy, to plumb the
depths of the human soul, to bring the unconscious into
consciousness, to know the infinite – such were the imper-
atives of Romantic introspection.33

In short, it is not the world outside that is the principal
concern to the Romantic temperament, but the one inside.

There alone can be found the materials for making a world con-
ducive to human habitation.

When the Romantic turned to this inner world what he
saw was a state of radical indetermination. Everything was in
flux. However, he also believed that he could bring order out of this indefiniteness. He would create in literature the archetypal hero, the man (or woman) who shapes his world by an act of
self-will. In the melodrama of the novel the Romantic would
project himself in the persona of the main character who disdains 33. Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind, p. 368.

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to submit to the conventions of society and, instead, behaves in accordance with his own chosen values which are dictated solely
by his desires and longings. Simply put, “[h]e had to will into
existence a fictive drama into which he could enter and live,
imposing a redemptive order on the chaos of a meaningless uni-
verse without God.”34

Dramatic fiction in the modern era became the principal
means by which Romanticism endeavored to promote its ideals.

However, the principal actor in this imaginative drama was more
the anti-hero than hero as his actions were less in terms of obeying than in challenging the social mores that Romantics saw as so stifling in their own world. His purpose was not to accept, but to smash through the confines of the mundane and ordinary, boldly
defying society’s standards of conduct and credence. In this, he acts the part of the tragic hero who dares to oppose what to the ignorant masses appears to be the settled order of nature. As he cannot conform, so he must be destroyed. But therein he
exposes his role as the martyr-hero who shows the way to a
higher, nobler calling. His martyrdom makes atonement for all
the ills of this life and opens the world of the commonplace to
the possibility of a better and divine experience. Romantics
would not accept the world in fact: they preferred a world in narrative fable. In terms of truth, the real was the fictional and the fictional was the real. It is a legacy still pursued by vast numbers of our own day.

The rebel-hero of Romantic literature, while presented in
an idealized form, was in fact the Romantic’s way of proclaiming his own deep dissatisfaction with the prevailing conditions of
mankind. The Romantic liked to identify himself with the toil-
ing, suffering masses. It reinforced his own belief that man was a victim of great forces outside him which conspired to overwhelm
and crush him with a merciless indifference. The rise of modern
industrial society, with its replacement of personal bonds with
purely contractual relationships of an impersonal, calculating
nature, filled Romantics with a revulsion of hatred and stoked

34. Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind, pp. 370-371.

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289
the flames of a powerful revolutionary agenda. Cultural repres-
sion was soon seen quintessentially as political oppression, of the poor by the rich, the weak by the strong. Society was rent by the fierce antagonisms between exploiter and exploited, between the
owner of the means of production and the worker who owned
nothing but his labor which he could sell for mere slave’s wages.

Romantics quickly became fired by what to them seemed
to be grave injustices. No longer would they simply distance
themselves from society’s concerns; instead, they became ani-
mated by a vision for a radical new social utopia. They saw the
need to destroy all existing social order and to reconstruct society in accordance with a program that would free mankind from
every form of exploitation. The principal means to accomplish
this goal would be to apprehend by violence the control of the
state and through it to transform all existing relationships into a totally socialist system. All property would be seized by the state and the state would remit to every man the things he has need of for life and happiness. In this way, every man would cease to live and act in pursuit of his own private interests and, instead, would be made to submit to the higher good of the state. In this latter respect, the Romantic view differs little from the Enlightenment view which also sought, by means of Stoic universalism, to transform the actions and pursuits of individuals to fit with its vision of civic and social good. It is simply that in the Enlightenment view this would be accomplished by means of education and science, whereas the Romantics thought less in terms of the use of
reason as the means and more in terms of the use of compulsion
and force.

In the nineteenth century it was Marxism that first cap-
tured the imagination of the discontented with anything like a
serious possibility for achieving these ends, but other, less overtly radical, systems of thought were no less attractive. And despite the failure of Marxism, or other socialist programs, to achieve
their stated goals completely, nevertheless a major change in
opinion concerning the centrality of the role of the state has
become deeply embedded in the thinking of most people in the
modern world. Wherever the activist state exists, regardless of its 290

8 •Romanticism
degree of domination over all areas of contemporary social life, there the Romantic spirit is still to be found alive and instrumentally at work.

At this juncture we may wonder, what is the present status
of Romanticism? Do we sense a change in the wind? Are people
beginning to reject the influence of Romanticism in their cul-
tural ideals? Is it not apparent, at least politically, that vast numbers are coming to regard the state not so much as a means of
social utopia but as a wrenching tyranny? Has socialism, in all its forms, not been discredited? Is there not everywhere a struggle
going on to rid ourselves of the intrusive presence of govern-
ment with its powerful bureaucratic and regulatory strangulation of our lives and labors? Has statism really produced the freedom and happiness that was promised on its behalf?

It is, perhaps, true that for increasingly greater numbers of
people on the planet the hope of salvation by the state has
greatly waned. The eighty years in which half the world lived
under the Marxist inspired communist systems, if anything, has
exposed its Romantic assumptions for the myths that they are.

But does that mean people have begun to see an alternative to
the central role of the state? In the West especially, which has been our chief concern throughout this study, one is reluctant to concede that Romantic ideals have disappeared. A very large segment of society still puts great faith in the state. Certainly intellectuals and thinkers have not abandoned that hope. How does
one explain this? The chief reason for this would seem to lie in the fact that the other side of Romanticism, the side which
emphasized the complete freedom of the individual to indulge in
all sorts of experiences, to stimulate his senses and feelings with little or no regard for anyone or anything but his own wishes and desires, has continued to control the center of Western man’s
ideal of culture and civilization. Whether we think of drugs, popular music, or sexual experimentation, everywhere we can see
frantic multitudes urgently pursuing self-fulfilling gratifications.

And the elites insist that it is every person’s right to enjoy whatever libertinism any person may fancy. At the same time, many
pander to the notion that come what may it is the state’s respon-3› The Romantic Agenda

291
sibility to pick up the tab. Thus, unless and until Romanticism is obliterated in its entirety, Western culture will remain mired in its present situation.

However, another perspective on this matter is equally
appropriate. Romanticism, let us recall, began as a distant voice of protest, first spoken by literary and philosophical thinkers and writers against a world that seemed to them oppressive and alienating. It has grown, in the space of three centuries, to include the masses and to offer them a moral directive for personal and social order. Romanticism thrives on the notion that the world has no
meaning and that life is devoid of intrinsic value or purpose.

Things such as truth, justice, right, wrong, or good and evil,
have no absolute meaning, but are only subjective and, at best,
relative to social convention. Still, man must have order to live, especially to live in society. Life would otherwise be impossible given the harsh reality of man’s natural environment, and the
long-recognized propensity of man to plunder and destroy his
fellow man. Thus, despite the longing for freedom and auton-
omy, and the belief that all men are driven by the same impulse, the romantic spirit is thoroughly contemptuous of any who think
that men should simply be left to pursue life on their own terms and for their own ends. Rousseau, who especially exalted the life of primitive over civilized men, who believed that men were
more in harmony with nature and with one another before they
were seized with the itch to accumulate material wealth and
social status, nevertheless, knew that mankind neither would nor could return to his original state of innocence voluntarily. Consequently, he believed that man must necessarily, and for his own deepest good, be compelled by force to be free. In other words,
the good society, a society in which man regained his lost original unity, could only be made possible by a deliberate political act. All individual wills, he maintained, must be coerced into
submitting to “the general will.” It was only when men had been
corrupted by each man’s desire to act and live according to his
own private will that they became tempted by selfish ambition
and personal gain at the expense of equality and unity. And since no overarching moral order exists to govern the life of men in

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8 •Romanticism
their relationships to other men, the only solution is to create order by political power. At the same time, the elite thinkers,
motivated by Romantic ideals, were under no illusion about who
should be the orderers and who should be the ordered, who
should do the coercing and who should be coerced. They alone
belonged in the first group, all others in the second. In this
respect, Romanticism still shares the Enlightenment faith in
superior knowledge as the means to govern and arrange men and
things. Western governments have come increasingly to rely on
this notion to give legitimation to their policies and practices. If the general societies of Western man seem little inclined to
object, it is only because they have sacrificed any idea of moral order as Divine order and, instead, have accepted the alternative of man’s order as all that is available for personal and social
behavior.

With Romanticism, Western civilization has arrived at the
present stage of the impulse to power. And, yet, it is a vision of man and society still deeply indebted to the Greek, especially

Platonic, goal of an elitist control of man by certain specially endowed persons whose idea of the Good provides the only
acceptable standard of truth, justice and order. In other words, the contest between the Humanist and the Christian dimension
of Western civilization appears to have concluded with the ascendancy of the former and the decline of the latter. While this
might be cause for concern, especially when it can be seen that it leads increasingly to the growth of tyranny, it at least has had the merit of compelling many Christians, who might retain some
concern for the culture of man and the life of creation, to realize that the long attempt to combine the two can no longer be carried through. Only when Christians learn to consider that they
must base their ideas of culture and civilization on uniquely Biblical grounds will it be possible to take positive steps in the genuine recovery of the heritage of the West.

Conclusion

One may readily surmise that the above reflection on the
cultural themes of Western civilization, like so much that passes for modern erudition, is meant to serve as an indictment of our
cultural patrimony. It may seem that it is meant to cast serious doubts upon the superiority of Western culture and, therefore,
should be joined to the list of scholarly productions designed to foster a less chauvinistic attitude and invite a more sympatheti-cally multicultural point of view. However, any such misunder-standing must be firmly laid to rest. It has not been my intention to encourage the view that, because the tenor of the preceding
analysis has sounded a critical note, Western culture is less than the greatest culture that history so far has known. The heritage of the West is not one we may easily disparage or gainsay. Yet,
while we may treasure our past with affection and gratitude, we
may not study it with an uncritical eye to its blemishes and, more seriously, to its absorption of ideals and values which have troubled its course of development and have led to its present state of spiritual decline.

To be sure, at the present time, one hears the loud din of
attacks coming from those whose singular aim is to trash the cultural heritage of the West. Some, no doubt, would wish to show
all things Western only in a negative light. This antipathy has
been met with great approval by those in the universities who
have been encouraged to think of the West as a white, male cul-
ture of oppression. Such self-righteous opinion has become
ingrained in the minds of our cultural elites. In spite of this, however, one should not take the view that every criticism of

Western history derives from the same malicious intent to under-
mine its accomplishments, or to substitute in its place a cultural relativism based upon the notion that no culture is intrinsically or historically more advanced, better, or more to be desired than
any other. That has not been our purpose at all. Nevertheless, we maintain that it is impossible to get at the roots of today’s pessi-294

Conclusion
mism and cultural relativism unless we acknowledge that West-
ern culture has long born within itself the seeds of its own
destruction. Should we fail to see this, we are apt to deceive ourselves as to the truth of our cultural heritage and, therefore, will not be in a position to offer a remedy to the deplorable state at which our civilization has arrived at the end of the second millennium.

From a Christian perspective, each and ever y cultural
endeavor of man, Western man included, must be subjected to a
careful scrutiny based upon what does not derive from culture
itself, indeed, does not derive from man in any sense.1 That is, the Christian perspective on all human life and endeavor must
ultimately rest upon what can only be described as the Divine
point of view, in other words, on revelation! Emil Brunner’s words, in this respect, are apropos: “According to Christian
faith, the meaning of life is not in man – neither in his rational nature nor in his rational or cultural work – but comes to him as a divine gift, as the Logos, which is the revealed Word, and as
that Word which is the self-revealing God.”2 Indeed! The Chris-
tian ought not to accept that man is or can be other than what

God says he is or can be. This is equally true for everything he does. “The self-revealing God” has told man in His “revealed

Word” that man was made in God’s image and given the gift of
life by God. What is more, man should use his life in the service of God by cultivating those talents and abilities with which God has endowed him so as thereby to bring forth culture and civilization. God, in the Christian view, is the original author of culture. He gave it to man in the first place as a gift, and then

1. For a fuller and more systematic explanation of the Christian perspective that I have in mind, I would ask the reader to consult my other two books: The Burden of God, (Minneapolis: Contra Mundum Books, 1993), pp. 1–25; and, On Stone or Sand, (Carson, ND, Pleroma Press, 1993), Part I. I am aware that this is not
altogether fair of me, but I fear that it would not only require me tediously to repeat myself but would burden the present work
unnecessarily.

2. Emil Brunner, Christianity and Civilization, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948) Vol. I, p. 71.

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295
required it of him as a task to be completed. Most importantly,

God gave it to man as a stewardship, as an entrusted responsibility, to be exercised only in service to Him and his Kingdom. Far from having invented culture or conceived it on his own, man
was created by God to act as a cultural agent, thus to work for
and accomplish God’s will by fulfilling his calling and responsibility to realize culture. In his very nature man is a cultural creature. It is an inescapable fact. Furthermore, man has been this
from the beginning of the world.3 Man can only truly act in this capacity by knowing that his meaning as man is only made possible by consciously recognizing that it lies rooted in God and not in himself. Thus, when we take up the study of man’s cultural
efforts, we are required to evaluate them in the light of God’s
purpose and truth. This is especially true of Western culture for the following reasons.

First, Western culture is the most intellectually self-aware
of all the world’s cultures. Western man has, more than any
other, sought to develop his culture as a product of a rational
analysis which has also involved the effort to reflect philosophically upon the Self as an agent of analysis. In other words, not only does Western man seek to act in and know the world
around him at the instigation of his reason, but he seeks, at the 3. This truth, of course, is denied by modern humanistic men who subscribe to the evolutionary model in explaining the origins of man. For them, man derived originally from an animal and lived
for a long period as a primitive cave-dweller with little or no culture to speak of. It was only gradually that man, usually by external compelling circumstances, learned various cultural ways of
acting. Man acquired the habits of culture from his need to adapt to his surroundings which, because they were harsh and indifferent to all life, man’s included, enabled him to overcome his animal existence and rise to a more human level of existence.

Human culture, then, is nothing more than the long-acquired
ability of man to meet the exigencies of the cold and difficult
environment of this planet. Culture, and its attendant civiliza-
tion, on this scheme, is entirely a product of man’s animal urge to survive and thrive against the natural cruelties of his chance existence.

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Conclusion
same time, to ground all things in himself as the rational source of truth and knowledge. Western man firmly believes that the
discovery of knowledge lies at the basis of culture, and that self-discovery lies at the basis of knowledge. Culture is not an accident of nature or product of chance, nor does it come as if it fell ready made from heaven. Rather, it is the result of a deliberate and conscientious endeavor by man to apply his reason to an
investigation of the workings of the natural world and of himself as a creature who works to achieve goals. In the West, man has
become supremely aware of himself as a being who not only has
the capacity to live a civilized existence, but of having within himself a power to conceive of such an existence and, thus, to plan or deliberate intellectually on it in advance of its formation.

By means of this internal power, man is in a position to transform the outer realm of existence in such a way, and to such a degree, as to improve himself and the conditions of his life. By the use of his reason, man can seize control of his world and
direct it unto whatever goals he imagines or desires. Man need
not live a primitive and savage existence, buffeted about by a
hostile, or, at the very least indifferent, environment.

Second, because Christianity was itself an integral part of

Western culture, there is an intimate connection between the

Christian faith and the culture of Western man. Such a link is
more than just adventitious, or merely external in character.

Western culture was shaped by a potent religious force which
was Christian. It certainly was not Muslim or Hindu, and it was
the sole religion in the West to replace on any large scale the centuries of pagan devotion to a vast array of divinities and superstitious powers. At the very least, the West was formed by the
impact of the church which institutionalized the ethical program of the Christian faith. Men were generally taught to think of
themselves and their world as not only created by God but as
duty-bound to submit to God and His will in all their conduct.

Certainly this was true formally. Although men were not always
obedient, there were not many, at least throughout the Middle

Ages, who sought to question its general validity. And if men did not always submit to God, then they gave the appearance of

Conclusion

297
doing so by submitting to the church as presumably God’s cho-
sen instrument of command and control. The point is that Chris-
tianity, far from being an addendum to Western culture, was one
of its principle shapers. It affected a civilizing influence by fostering a less self-serving and a more charitable behavior among
men, provoking a greater respect for justice and mercy, and
encouraging a God-fearing responsibility in all aspects of life and society. The Christian faith, despite the negative side which we have mainly stressed herein, promoted an active participation in the world as a proper arena of human endeavor, not to be
despised as something un- spiritual. Men gradually came to realize that, besides being a thinker, God also created man to be a doer, one who should take up all forms of legitimate human endeavor as a service to God and a good to man. This inspired
man with the cultural enterprise and Western civilization would
scarcely have accomplished much of what it has without this

Christian motive acting in man, whether he believed in the

Christian faith or not.

Finally, Western man has a more highly developed histori-
cal consciousness. Culture, as we said, does not come ready-
made; it has to be formed and shaped, and man is uniquely fitted to fulfill that purpose. This is a work that cannot be completed in a single generation, or even in a hundred generations. Each generation adds its own labors to the already accumulated reserves
of previous generations. No generation can begin, or make its
contribution, without first absorbing the work of those who
have come before. No generation, in other words, can simply
begin at the beginning, but each must start with the resources
capitalized by fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers. The realization of this simple truth produces a unique type of outlook on life, one that has been described by the term historical consciousness. Histor y is often merely thought of as the past. But such a view is simplistic and naïve. History is not just any past, or anything that belongs in the past. Rather, history is the account of those things in the past which have had a peculiar impact on
the formation of a cultural heritage. Something is historical if it has ser ved to advance or impede the workings of man who

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Conclusion
endeavors to realize through his labors a cultural permanence.

Events and persons can only act as historical agents when it can be seen that what they do in some way affects the total “accumulated reserves.” Western man has not only brought forth a spec-
tacular cultural heritage, he has done so by self-consciously
building on the deeds and words of previous generations. Thus,
he has been productive of an outlook in which man is keenly
aware that his work is but the on-going effort of those in the past who have provided him with the resources to advance a little further into the future and thereby to deposit a legacy for coming
generations. Western man is shaped by the need to transmit the
past to the future as part of an educational agenda meant to serve the interest of a higher life for the good of mankind, who is more than an animal driven by immediate and material urges but who
possesses the spiritual nature of a creature made to realize his purpose as a cultural being.

These three facts must have an inevitable bearing upon the
study of Western history and culture. Since this is so, we cannot avoid the question, “How do these facts appear in the light of a genuine Christian analysis?” If man gets his definition as a cultural creature from God, then he also gets his standard of cul-
tural activity from God . Cu ltur e possess an unavo idable
religious-moral character and motivation. Man’s urge to cultural activity and meaning derives from a deep-seated faith, and
springs from a spiritual desire to act in imitation of his Creator in whose image he has been made. “Wherever spirit expresses
itself,” comments Brunner, “there is civilized life; but what kind of spirit creates that civilization or culture is another question.

Culture is an expression of the spirit, a formation by spiritual impulse…” But, as Brunner goes on to say – and this is a crucial qualification – “…this spiritual impulse can originate from the
most different sources….”4 By this, he means emphatically that
it can derive from different religious motives. In other words,
man may act in a God-serving manner, or he may act in a God-

4. Brunner, Christianity and Civilization, Vol. II, p. 129.

Conclusion

299
defying manner. Man’s culture will necessarily follow the direc-
tion of his faith.

Although man was created with an innate cultural nature,
one which destines him to act in the world after the example of
his Creator, in the Biblical view it is clear that man has not
wished to do so from any self-conscious desire to please God by
conforming to His righteous prescriptions. At least, that was true from the moment of man’s rebellion in the Garden of Eden.

From that time to the present, man has only wished to please
himself. That is, he has given expression to himself – he has
developed his physical, mental, artistic, and other creative abilities – not from God-glorifying motives, but from purely self-
idolizing motives. Man has replaced God with man as the central
spiritual impulse to cultural activity. The Christian student of culture is necessarily required to acknowledge that this change in the motive direction of man’s culture is due to sin and must not neglect to take this into consideration when he seeks to reflect on the cultural product that is the result of man’s thinking and acting. Far from depriving man of the cultural urge, however,
the Christian will recognize that all man’s cultural ideals and valuations must stem from an apostate influence which then con-
trols his incentive to produce culture and, in turn, directs the ultimate goal of culture. This has been no less true of Western
culture, despite the presence of Christianity in its formation and progression, than of any of the world’s cultures. What motive,
then, has been at work throughout much of Western culture?

What religious impulse can be seen at the back of its formation and development? And what impact has this motive had on the
formation of Western culture, especially as it has come to bear
upon the three principal factors of Western culture?

We said that Western culture was the most intellectually
self-aware of the world’s cultures, that it was here that man
endeavored to apply the use of his reason as the principal tool in the formation of culture, and that man sought to ground all his
rational labor in himself in order to deepen his awareness of his own meaning in the process. It was necessary, in order for man
to know the world around him, to apply his reason to a careful

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Conclusion
analysis of the workings of the natural world. This by itself is not the issue. That man was created with the capacity to reason, and that he ought to use it to achieve the goals of culture and civilization ought not to be seen as the cause of the humanistic motive that has had such a dominant hold on Western man.

There are not a few Christians, especially, who think that the
rational nature of man is itself a product of the Fall of man into sin. At the least, they sometimes assume that a critical application of reasoned analysis, more often than not, is the complete antithesis of faith, or that the philosophical task which has arisen in the wake of man’s reasoned reflection on the world of his existence is an enemy per se of the Gospel of salvation in Christ. As a result, they tend to see faith and reason as two opposed cognitive
departments of the human mind which can only be reconciled
with great difficulty, if at all. And because faith has to do
supremely with religion, and reason is the tool of culture, they tend to regard religion and culture as having little or no relationship to one another. But we do not subscribe to this view, nor
do we maintain that the priority of reason in Western culture is something to be deplored. That man was meant to apply his reason to a study of his world and of himself, we take to be God’s
purpose for man. However, if we want to understand the
humanistic motive of culture in the West, we are compelled to recognize that man has elevated his reason to the place of God.

In other words, human reason has become an instrument of
apostasy and self-idolatry. And it is this application of the use of his reason that Western man has brought with him to the task of
culture. A humanistic motive predominates because man seeks
the cultural task entirely from and within himself, without reference to God, and is resolved to believe that his reason is sufficient unto itself to grasp the truth and to form life in terms of it.

Those in the grip of this motive believe that man’s explanation of the world around him, as well as of his own place and purpose in it, is to be founded upon his reason alone, which is to say upon himself alone, and that man does not need to consult any source
but himself in the pursuit of life and culture. As we have endeav-Conclusion

301
ored to point out in our study, a perspective such as this has been productive of distinct cultural consequences.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the role that

Christianity has played in the formation of Western culture,
while it has had a positive moral impact, has not been altogether untainted by humanistic influences. In three areas especially, this humanism has been apparent: monastic asceticism, ecclesiastical
hierarchicalism, and scholastic intellectualism which became a
legacy of higher education in Western universities. Monasticism
was a false piety based upon the notion that the material aspect of reality was the cause of the corruption of the spiritual aspect.

Accordingly, it was thought necessary to achieve salvation by
retreating from, and vehemently denying, all things pertaining to the body and man’s material interests. It was a viewpoint heavily influenced by pagan Gnostic notions which theoretically divided
reality into two antithetical dimensions: the higher and good
spiritual side from the lower and wicked material side. Further-
more, it encouraged a false spiritual distinction between those who practice a withdrawal from life into the monastery and all
others who live ordinary lives in the world. For the most part, it entailed a piety devoid of practical consequences for what Scripture calls the Kingdom of God, or the total governance of man’s
life by God’s word in all areas of life and endeavor. Then there was the church, which became the principal institution of Christian importance. However, it was shaped and run more by pagan
political ideals than by Biblical prescriptions. It involved an
agenda which sought to bring all life under the control and
domination of the church instead of encouraging all life to be
lived in obedience to God. Finally, in the realm of intellect and learning, Christianity lost touch with its own presuppositions
and adopted Greek theoretical concepts and ideals of reason as
fully legitimate for the development of an understanding of man
and his world. This led to a shaping of a worldview around the
distinction between faith and reason, with the things of faith
gradually reduced to a small religious area of thinking while reason was presumed free to explore and construct the world of
man’s experience with little or no concern for revelation from

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Conclusion

God. In these ways, Christianity presented a compromised point
of view. At the dawn of the Enlightenment, with the rise of
modern science, Christianity was attacked as a quaint supersti-
tion and dispelled from all man’s interests and concer ns.

Humanism had gained compete control of man’s thinking in the
modern world.

Lastly, we may remind ourselves of the consequences of
humanism for the historical consciousness. With the complete
triumph of humanism in the modern world a void has opened in
the realm of ethics. For with the jettisoning of Christianity, man has gone in search of an alternative moral point of view. He has sought it in Romanticism which has placed all emphasis upon the
rejection of historical accomplishment. A great effort has been
made to find unity and meaning in the subjective selfhood of
man in mere existential inwardness. Romanticism denounced the
role of the reason as understood by the Enlightenment and has
exalted the inward feelings as the source of truth and outward
order. More particularly, it rejected God’s standard of ethical
behavior for a form of freedom conjured from the depths of human psychology. At the same time, it sought to give shape to
a new ideal of man, one that would deliver him from the per-
ceived oppression of inherited norms and structures, by calling
upon him to revolt from the past in favor of a new totalitarian
social ideal. Such a humanistic point of view has seen its consequences in the rise of the modern state as an absolute power over all human life and labor.

Given the imprint of these developments, how ought we
as Christians to view the ideals which have done so much to
shape Western culture? If such a strong humanistic impulse has
been at work in motivating Western culture, are we simply to
take the view that culture per se is unredeemable? What perspective can we offer that would enable us to place culture once again on a properly God-centered foundation? These questions, far
from being academic, are of vital importance in our day given the existing state of crisis at the moral and religious center of the West. If we are to halt the slide into decadence that is everywhere in evidence, we must offer more than the usual pieties about the Conclusion

303
need to recover a lost tradition, a sort of golden past, as if our past alone was sufficient to offer answers for the moral chaos of our times. We need, instead, a more Biblically conscious understanding of man as a cultural agent, and of what is the basis of a righteous culture as opposed to an unrighteous one. Our goal,
then, should not be to jettison the cultural task, but to establish cultural activity once again in its correct, God-glorifying framework.

This work is certainly not the place to enter into a discus-
sion of this sort in any but a most cursory manner. My intention has been mainly to concentrate upon the humanistic aspects of

Western culture, in order that we may get a clearer image in our minds of the religious motive that has done so much to shape
our heritage. However, in fairness, we shall offer, by way of a
brief summary, a depiction of what a Christian perspective ought to entail for man as a cultural being. We shall do so by presenting the Christian view of man as such, one that accords with the Biblical idea and is therefore free from humanistic influences,
ancient or modern. It is not inaccurate to claim that this Christian view has rarely been understood, much less declared, by
those who claim to be Christians, now or in the past. We should
not be surprised, then, if it has failed to make much of an impact on the formation of Western culture. Whether of not it can pull

Western man, in his present state, back from the brink of the
abyss is a question that we cannot answer. But whether it can or not should not be our main concern. Rather, we are bound to
further the cause of genuine Christianity, for it is the only answer that can and must be given to a world whose cultural efforts are in vain if they are not founded upon the truth.

In his astute, and now much neglected, work, The Calvin-
istic Concept of Culture, Reformed Christian philosopher and student of culture, Henry R. Van Til has written: “Man … lives in covenantal relationship to the Creator…. As such, he is morally
responsible for his actions and duty-bound to seek the good; he
is also rationally able to comprehend the meaning of life and
duty-bound to function in the realm of truth; he is a cultural
creature, one who is able and is called to re-create, to re-pro-

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Conclusion
duce, to form artistically and to mould creation to his will, duty-bound to function in the realm of power … to have dominion
over the earth.”5 A number of observations from this statement
call for comment.

To begin with, we should take special note of the phrase

“covenantal relationship to the Creator.” In defining man as
made in the image of God, the Christian view must explain that
this definition not only implies something about the nature of
man, but also involves something that determines the directed-
ness of his life. Man was not only made like God, or similar to

God, he was made to live a God-directed purpose. Man stands
related to God in a special way, described as “covenantal.” It
means that man exists for the purpose of serving his Creator, that is, of acting in the world on His behalf. To be made in God’s
image automatically includes this purpose. Man is not made in

God’s image and then given the option of living his life for God or not as he wishes. Rather, he must live and think as a creature who is bound to please and serve God. The nature of his being
inescapably entails this responsibility. To deny this is to deny that man is made in God’s image.

It follows from this that man, although he lives in the
world and shares in the material reality of all things therein, does not live as determined by the world or for anything in the world.

He was meant to live solely in relationship to God, the Creator.

Of course, he should do so in the world, but not as if the world provided him his meaning and purpose. It is merely his arena of
activity. The agenda of his life cannot come from himself or his world. This further involves the notion that man cannot discover his purpose or meaning by other than consulting with the God
who made him. Neither can he realize his purpose by seeking it
apart from God. In all his activity, man is not only dependent
upon God directing his life, but man must consciously seek that
direction by turning to God and obeying His commands. In the

5. Henry R. Van Til, The Calvinistic Concept of Culture, (Philadelphia: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company,

1959) p. 30.

Conclusion

305

“covenantal relationship” God sets the agenda, but man also
seeks to know the agenda and to conform with it in every area of life. There is, then, a “duty” or obligation placed upon man to
bring every area of his life and thought into conformity with this God-determined purpose.

Thus, to be made in God’s image means much more than
just to exist in a certain way, it also means to act or behave in accordance with a stipulated purpose. This implies that man is

“morally responsible for his actions.” But, morally responsible to whom? Certainly not to man, for man, not being the source of
his own being, cannot be the source of his own morality. As he
derives his moral nature from God as part of the image of God in him, so he gets the principles of moral conduct from God as
well. He is responsible, then, for what God tells him. In other
words, his moral conduct is dependent upon revelation! In the Christian view, the Bible is itself the record of that revelation.

Man must, therefore, be governed in his thinking and acting by

Scripture. This is true of all that man does, his effort at culture included. The Bible is not just a source book for his soul, or how to achieve heaven, but it is concerned with his life; and it is concerned with all of man’s life, his culture as well as his person, society as well as the individual. To disregard or deny this fact is to treat God’s creation order with disdain. And to pretend that
man can engage in the cultural task apart from a faith which governs his activity, or that he can exercise a faith that has no conseq u en c e for c u lt ur e , i s e n ti r el y o u t o f ke e pi n g wi th t h e

“covenantal” nature of the relationship between God and man.

Therefore, to conjure up ideas of meaning and purpose, or to
embark on civilizational or cultural goals without reference to

Scripture, or in contradiction to Scripture, is altogether inappropriate so far as Scripture is concerned. The Christian, therefore, must look at the matter differently.

The moral responsibility of man implies more than just the
need to do what God says in his personal life. It also requires that man act in conformity with God’s purpose for him in all that he
does to enhance and build life. Man is a “duty-bound” creature,
one who must function in especially three areas if he is to fulfill 306

Conclusion
his purpose as a man. He is, first, “duty-bound to seek the
good.” However, not knowing what the good is, because of sin,
he must consult God’s word. He must find out from God what
is truly good. He may not imagine that he has the capacity to see or declare what is good by simply examining his own experience
or the general experience of the race. He must begin by accept-
ing the Biblical view that man is without any good in himself, or in anything he does, unless and until it conforms with God’s definition of it. Thus, for example, he may not assume that certain social arrangements, or certain ways of thinking, are good if they ignore or eliminate from consideration God’s standard of just
dealings between men or if they encourage men to understand
his world and himself in ways that undermine the authority of

God and His truth. Furthermore, man may not construct a view
of the material universe that reduces God either to a mere
observer of events or ejects him from consideration altogether.

Any and all attempts to promote an ideal of life and purpose
merely from the standpoint of man’s sensate experience and per-
ception is necessarily bound to distort his understanding. Man
must seek what is good on God’s terms and oppose all man-cen-
tered ideals and valuations.

Second, man is “duty-bound to function in the realm of
truth.” Man is not a mere animal with appetites and desires. He
is made to learn about the world he lives in, to understand it
with his mind, and to know himself as responsible to God for
what he knows. He is “duty-bound” to apply his reason to a
study of his total earthly existence. He may not neglect his intellect, for it is the chief means by which he forms his nature as a man. But, once again, the truth must first of all be told to man who, because of sin, has lost all contact with the truth. Man may not simply imagine things to be true. For example, he may not
say that the world is self-existing or eternal in nature, as the Greek thinkers did. Nor may he claim that the world came into
existence on its own, without God having created it. He may not
suppose, therefore, that life, man’s life especially, is the product of chance or fate, and it is left to man to make of it what he will, God or no God. He must think of himself and his world as the

Conclusion

307
product of God, and he must explain himself and all things as
existing to fulfill a God-decreed purpose. Furthermore, he must
study his world to know it in its complete unity and not artifi-
cially divide it into false categories like form and matter, or
thought and extension. He may not then assume that his reason
can know only what is form or extension and is incapable of
knowing anything about what cannot be touched or seen. Thus,
he may not reduce religion to a category of his thinking and
make science an independent authority. Man is, in all his think-
ing, a “covenantal” creature, one whose thought on every sub-
ject is religious through and through. For God does not just
occupy man’s faith interests while his reason is free to draw conclusions about everything else. Though man may discover the
laws that govern the operations of nature, he may not take the
view that such laws are independent of God and his purpose. If

God is not the central fact in man’s search for the truth, then
that search is on the wrong track from the start, and man is
bound to distort the truth.

Finally, man is “duty-bound to function in the realm of
power.” Knowledge of the truth, or the good, while necessary to
man’s purpose, by themselves can do nothing. Unless man is

“empowered” to act in terms of them, they can do him no good,
and he can achieve no results whatsoever. Power, then, is funda-
mental. Man must be able to fulfill his purpose as a man, and
that purpose is “to have dominion over the earth.” Without the
power to accomplish that goal, man would just be another living
biological creature, no different from the animals. But even as his Creator has endowed him with the capacity to seek and find
both the true and the good, so, too, He has endowed man with
the power to bring to fruition what truth and goodness demand.

He is given the ability, then, “to mould creation to his will.”

And, what is more, he is “duty-bound” to do so. Not to produce
culture and civilization is not an option. Man was not only con-
stituted a culture-making creature, but he was charged with the
obligation to conform his life to this God-ordained purpose. So, then, it is in man’s “covenantal” nature and responsibility to seek to build up culture, to explore the world he lives in, to explain it, 308

Conclusion
to improve it; in short, to exercise power over it for himself, but especially for God.

Power, then, is of central importance to the life of man. It
is what sets him over the world he lives in. But even as truth and goodness require the addition of power in order for them to
come to realization, so also man must exercise power in accor-
dance with truth and goodness. For just as man was empowered

“to mould creation to his will,” yet his will must be in subjection to God and to God’s creation order. In other words, he may not
suppose that his will was free to mould or form as he wished or
imagined, for man is not the Creator, but at most he can only

“re-create,” or “re-produce” what God had already made. It was
intended that man should use his power to “think the thoughts
of God” by learning to know God’s works in accordance with

God’s supreme will. It is here that we approach the nub of the
issue and its consequences for culture and cultural analysis.

“The cultural urge, the will to rule and to have power is
incr eat ed .”6 We mig h t say t ha t man h as a n at ur al-b or n

“impulse” to power. It is basic to his nature as man to seek to
exploit this God-given power for the sake of producing culture
and civilization. However, it must not be forgotten that man has fallen into the darkness of sin. A religious and moral perversion of his nature has now come to have control of all he is and does, including the “cultural urge.” Man does not thereby lose the
driving impulse of his nature, but it becomes an instrument of
his rebellion against God. He still seeks the fulfillment of the cultural agenda, but now no longer on God’s terms, or on God’s
behalf. Instead of developing his power, which is to say his talents and abilities, from a love for God and his purpose, he seeks rather to form his nature and his world solely from the motive of self-love. This religious change of direction will have undoubted consequences for his perspective on culture. He will interpret the discoveries of the natural world, along with his place in it,
entirely in terms that suit himself. Rather than clinging to God’s interpretation of his life and activity as revealed in God’s word, 6. Van Til, The Calvinistic Concept of Culture, p. 34.

Conclusion

309
man prefers to follow the promptings of his rebellious nature.

He may think that he is merely following the dictates of reason, but he is simply using his powers of reasoning to conjure a world of meaning from self-justifying motives – motives based upon a
changed religious directive.

Based upon creation, man has been given the power to
realize culture. But, as Brunner pointed out, man can exercise
that power under the guidance of vastly different spiritual
impulses. He can seek for and act on the basis of different, even opposite, religious motives. Indeed, the Christian, who studies the history of man’s cultural endeavors, will undoubtedly recognize that a humanistic religious motive, as opposed to a Godly religious motive, has played a prominent role in the formation of human culture. This is true of Western culture as well, although Christianity influenced the development of the West. In looking
back on two millennia of Western culture, it is possible to con-
clude that man’s impulse to power, i.e., the urge to form culture, has given shape to a cultural product that bears more the stamp
of man, the covenant-breaker, than of man, the covenant-keeper.

And it is equally apparent that that culture is in a serious state of spiritual and moral crisis as a result. Whether or not Western culture is to continue into the next millennium will depend very
much upon man becoming the cultural agent that God originally
intended. This, in turn, will depend upon Christianity becoming
a force for culture in a way that it has not been so far.

310

Conclusion

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319

Index

A

Augustine 106–113, 146,

Aaron 137

160–165, 167, 172, 182,

Abelard 178–179, 275

194, 204, 211

Achilles 30, 33–35

Augustinian tradition 106,

Adam 4

274

Agamemnon 30, 32–35

Augustus 85, 87, 130

Age of Faith 166
pax Augusta 141

Albert the Great 182
autonomy 19–20, 43, 46, 57,

Alexander the Great 88

66, 69, 75, 77, 256, 291–

Alexandria 125

292

Ambrose 84

B

Ameinias 65

Bacon, Francis 258–259

Anabaptists 277

Bakunin, Michael 266

Anastasius 148

Basil the Great 93

Anaximander 57, 59–60

Baumer, Franklin L. 234,

Anaximenes 57, 59–60

242

Anthony of Egypt 89–91
beatific vision 272
antinomianism 136

Benedict 93

Antioch 125, 134

Berkhof, Hendrikus 1

Aphrodite 30–32

Bernard of Clairvaux 274

Apollo 33

Bessarion, Cardinal 214
apostolic succession 134
bishop, office of 116, 127–

Aquinas 182–183, 275

129, 131–134, 136–138,

Aristotle 18, 57, 78, 87, 120,

142

154, 168–170, 172–174,

Bocaccio 192

176, 178–183, 193, 208,

Boehme, Jacob 277–279

213–215, 232, 236

Boethius 160, 167, 170

Lyceum 153

Bolgar, R.R. 23

Arminius 108

Bonaventure 182

Arno 207

Book of Nature 234, 249,
art 19–20, 24, 52, 177, 191,

252

195, 219, 284–285, 287

Brown, Peter 90, 92, 99

Asia Minor 92

Bruni, Leonardo 208–210

Athena 30–31

Brunner, Emil 294, 298, 309

Athens 24, 72–73, 93, 192,

Bruno, Giordano 243–246

207

Burckhardt, Jacob 195

320

Burtt, E.A. 248–251

Commodus 83

Byzantium 214

Constantine 94, 116, 124,

C

139–143, 146, 158
caesarism 85–88

Constantinople 125

Cappadocian Fathers 93

Copernicus, Nicholas 235,

Carolingian period 146

237–242

Carolingian Renaissance 170

Corinth 127

Carolingian revolution 117

Corpus Hermeticum 217

Carthage 125

Cosimo de Medici 215–217
cathedral schools 170–171,
covenant 16

175
creative genius 285

Chadwick, Henry 134

Croton 63
chaos 22, 27–28, 31, 34–37,
cult of the holy man 94, 98–

43–44, 46, 54, 71, 74, 86–

100

87
cult of the martyr 96

Charlemagne 117, 124, 170
cult of virginity 94, 96–98

Chartres 171, 179–180
cultural impulse 12, 44

Christ 1–5, 90, 100, 274
cultural mission 1–4, 12

Christianae vitae otium 105,

Cyprian 138–139, 143

112

D

Christus Victor 274

Damasus 144–145

Chrysolaras, Manuel 214

Dante 24, 192
chthonic powers 21, 88

Darwin 269
church and state 119
democracy 15, 68, 73
church buildings 132, 143

Descartes, Rene 66, 254–257

Cicero 53
descending thesis of

Clement of Alexandria 82,
government 122

93, 104–105, 119

Desert Fathers 90

Clement of Rome 129

Domitian 83
clergy 94, 97, 116, 123, 125,
double truth theory 182

129, 143–145, 147–148,

Duby, Georges 118, 124

150, 152, 175, 185

Dupre, Louis 258
clerical order 117, 119, 124,

E

132, 149, 151–152, 167

Eastern Orthodox
as priesthood 137–138

Christianity 93
colleges 146

Ecclesia Universalis 118–
ranks of 142

119, 121, 123, 147, 149
sub-apostolic 128

Edict of Milan 139

Cochrane, Charles Norris 85
education 14, 23–25, 41, 43,

Cohn, Norman 273, 281

48–49, 51, 74, 106, 152–

321

167, 170–171, 176, 184,

Frend, W.H.C. 84, 93

193, 204, 209, 214, 289,

Fulda 170

293, 301

G

Egypt 90–92, 94

Galatian churches 127

Elea 64

Galileo Galilei 246–252
elenchos 75

Gelasian theory 148, 150
elites 1, 9–11, 14, 64, 71, 76–

Gelasius 147, 149

77, 116–119, 142, 153,

Germany 262

159, 166, 204, 290, 292–

Ghibellines 199

293

Gibbon, Edward 83

England 191

Gierke, Otto 120–122

Enlightenment 15, 125, 152,

Gilson, Etienne 182

178, 223–224, 226, 229,
gnosis, Christian 105, 111,

253–254, 256–257, 259–

165

260, 263, 265, 267–271,
gnosticism 82, 89, 100–104,

283–284, 289, 292, 302

108, 116, 126, 133–135,

Ephesus 57, 67, 127

267, 271, 301

Epicureanism 78

Goliard 176, 178
ethical martyrdom 94–96

Great Persecution 127
ethics 2, 9, 12–13, 15, 25, 27,

Greek mind 17–19, 52–53

30–31, 35, 45, 54, 61, 72,

Gregory 146–147

74, 156, 206, 211, 258,

Gregory of Nazianzus 93

264, 281, 296, 302, 305

Gregory of Nyssa 93

Eusebius of Caesarea 141

Gregory the Great 145

F

Griffin, Jasper 36
fall of man 12, 44, 174, 221,

Guelphs 199

230, 300
guilds 153
fate 20–21, 34, 87–88

Guthrie, W.K.C. 58, 62, 68

Ficino, Marsilio 192, 215–

H

221

Havelock, Eric A. 29, 43

Florence 192, 202, 206–208,

Hector 33

212–213, 215

Hegel 279

France 191

Helen 30–32

Frederick Barbarossa 199

Hemeticism 278

Free Spirit 273, 275, 277,

Hera 30–31

280–281, 286

Heraclitus 64, 67–69, 71
freedom 21, 26, 38, 91, 98,

Hermes Trismegistus 217–

108, 207, 244, 253, 265–

218, 222

266, 270, 273, 276, 282,

Hermeticism 192, 214, 218–

289–291, 302

219, 230

322

Herr, Friederich 150

Jesus 3–4, 221

Herrin, Judith 131–132, 143

Jews, conflict of church with

Hesiod 52–55, 64

82, 135

High Middle Ages 115, 119–

John 127

120, 146, 149, 155, 170,

Johnson, Paul 139

193, 272

Jonas, Hans 101

Hildegard of Bingen 279–

Jones, A.H.M. 127

280

Jones, Howard Mumford
historical consciousness 11,

283–284, 286

297

Jove 245

Homer 23–38, 41–43, 45–47,

Julian the Apostate 81

50–53, 58, 64, 72, 262, 286

Justin 82
humanism 13–14, 16, 38, 42,

K

45–46, 51, 54, 152, 158,

Kepler, Johannes 246–248

160, 178–179, 203–204,
keys of St. Peter 142, 149

210, 214, 229, 262, 300,

Kingdom of God 12–13, 16,

302

112–113, 148, 295, 301
civic 207, 212–213

Klosko, George 75–77
classical 15

Knowles, David 153, 157,
conservative 14–15

162, 164, 184
medieval 125, 172, 174

Koyre, Alenandre 225
modern 242, 248

L
naturalistic 61

Lamarck 269

Renaissance 202

Laon 171
secular 190, 224
law 48, 87, 273, 284

I
of Moses 135–136
ideology 118–119, 150

Le Goff, Jacques 176, 180

Ignatius 82
lectio divina 171
image of God in man 10

Lindberg, David C. 154
institutional church 115–
literature 24

116, 125, 128

Livy 205

Irenaeus 82

Lombardy 199, 202, 206

Italy 190–191, 198–199, 206,

Lovejoy, Arthur O. 238,

214

267, 270

J

Lucca 206

Jacob, Margaret C. 255, 257

Lyell 269

Jaeger, Werner 19

M

James 127

Manetti, Giannozzo 220

Jerome 145

Manuel, Frank E. 234

Jerusalem 128

Marcion 126

323

Markus, Robert 91, 95

Netherlands 191

Marrou, H.I. 23, 156

Newton, Isaac 235, 259

Martines, Lauro 201, 203

Nicholas of Cusa 243–244
martyrs 95

Nietzsche 11, 279

Marxism 279, 289–290

Nominalism 183

McKnight, Stephen A. 193,

O

197

Ockham, William 184

Mebane, John S. 195

Olympian religion 21–22,

Medici 192, 212–213, 216

28, 37, 44, 53–54, 88

Meister Eckhart 275–278

Origen 82, 93, 98, 104–105,

Memphis 90

119, 160, 165

Menelaus 30

P

Milan 192, 199, 202, 206–

Pachomius 91

207, 212

Pagels, Elaine 129

Miletus 57–58, 67
paideia 19, 103

Militia Christi 95

Palestine 91–92
monasticism 82–83, 89–90,

Paris of Troy 30–31

92–94, 97–98, 100, 102–

Paris, city of 171

104, 107–108, 111–113,

Paris, trial of 30

115–116, 133, 159–160,

Parmenides 64–68, 70

170, 174, 178, 197, 211,
patrimony of St. Peter 146

262, 271, 286, 301

Patroclus 35
cenobitic 91
patron saints 100

Egyptian 92
patronus 131
eremetic 91

Paul 4, 102–103, 139, 144

Syrian 92

Pelagius 108–109

Moses 137, 217, 221

Pelikan, Jaroslav 135
multiculturalism 14, 293

Peloponnesian War 72, 86

Murray, Alexander 152, 166

Peter 137, 139, 144–145
mystery cults 88

Petrarch 192, 209–210

N

Pico della Mirandola 192,
natural law 15

220–222
natural order 21, 59, 61, 69–

Pippin 117

70, 174, 177, 180, 183,

Pisa 206

216, 225, 229, 253, 258,

Plato 18, 39, 41–43, 46–52,

269, 288

56–57, 64, 67, 69–72, 76–

Neoplatonism 78, 120, 162–

78, 87, 103, 119–120,

163, 168–169, 230, 243–

213–217, 221, 249, 262,

244, 275–276

292

Nestor 34

Academy 153

324

Platonism 70, 93, 219

Rome 86, 89, 116–117, 125,

Plotinus 20, 214, 216

127, 129–130, 134, 139–

Pluto 245

147, 149, 192, 198, 203,

Polycarp 82

205, 207, 213, 267
pope 116, 119, 125, 144, 151

Romulus 53, 144
papal monarchy 117, 124

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
prerogative of 152

262–265, 291
primacy of 119, 144, 147,

Rudolph, Kurt 82, 100

149–150, 152

Rushdoony, Rousas John 1,

Popper, Karl 72

136

Presocratics 20, 52, 54–55,

S

57, 59, 64, 69

Salutati, Coluccio 208

Pseudo-Dionysius 146
salvation 2, 4, 12–13, 16, 43–

Ptolemy 236, 240

44, 46, 62, 64, 68, 73, 77,

Pythagoras 62–64, 71

86, 88–89, 91, 96–97, 102,

Q

106, 109, 112, 131, 141,

Quadrivium 171

148, 156–157, 174, 195,

Quattrocento 190, 212

197, 202, 227, 258, 271,

R

278, 300–301

Reformation 83, 104, 107,
scholasticism 155, 160, 177,

277

179, 183, 209, 214, 272,

Reichenau 170

276

Remus 53, 144

Scientific Revolution 223–

Renaissance 17, 63, 81, 104,

224, 227, 229, 241, 263

125, 152, 184, 190–197,
secular order 117, 119, 123–

202, 205–208, 210, 214,

125, 147–148, 151, 161

217–218, 220–223, 230–

Sforza 213

231, 238, 242, 260, 270,

Shakespeare 24

278

Sicily 206
revelation 2, 16–17, 43, 136,

Siena 206

178, 182–184, 209, 227,

Silesia 277

256, 294, 305

Simeon Stylites 92

Rheims 171
sin 2, 12, 15, 28, 96, 109–110,

Riley-Smith, Jonathan 169

179, 202, 204, 271, 300
ritual 145

Smalley, Beryl 165

Roma Aeterna 86–87

Snell, Bruno 18

Romagna 206

Socinianism 179

Romanticism 260–261, 263,

Socrates 47–48, 72–76, 78

265–268, 270–271, 281–

Socratic problem 75

286, 288, 290–292, 302

Sola Scriptura 94

325

Southern, R.W. 160, 172,

Visconti 192, 199, 202, 206–

174

207, 212–213
spiritual order 117, 119,

Voegelin, Eric 28, 66, 69

123–124, 147, 151, 180

Vulgate 145

St. Gall monestary 170

W
state 48–49, 73, 76, 84, 86,

Walsh, David 279

99, 152, 208, 283, 289–

Wordsworth, William 261

290

X

Stauffer, Ethelbert 85

Xenophanes 64

Stephen 117

Xenophon 214

Stoicism 78, 113, 184, 204–

Y

205, 283

Yates, Frances 194

Studia Humanitatis, 193

Z
synagogue 128

Zeller, Eduard 63

Syria 92, 94, 98

Zeus 31, 33–34, 37, 54

T

Talmon, J.L. 268, 285

Tarnas, Richard 55, 268–

269, 287–288

Thales 57–59

Theodosius 84, 116, 141

Titans 54

Tours 171

Trecento 190

Trivium 170

Troy 33

Tuscany 199, 206

U

Ullmann, Walter 122

Universitas 116
university 152–154, 160, 177,

183

University of Florence 215

University of Paris 275
urbanism 58, 87, 130, 198–

200, 202

V

Valla, Lorenzo 210–211

Van Til, Henry R. 303

Venice 202

Document Outline

The Impulse of Power

The Impulse of Power: Formative Ideals of Western Civilization

Michael W. Kelley
Contra Mundum Books
Minneapolis
ISBN 0-9637768-1-9
For: Benjamin & Gretchen
Table Of Contents
Preface
Part I •Ancient Man “The First Enlightenment”

1 • Homer

- 1› The Roots of the West
- 2› The Legacy of Greece
- 3› Homer, the Theologian
- 4› A World Fit for Heroes
- 5› God-like Men and Men-like Gods

2 • Plato

- 1› Plato Versus Homer
- 2› Hesiod and the Beginnings of Speculation
- 3› Presocratics: Re-locating the Divine
- 4› Plato’s Agenda

Part II - Medieval Man “The Grand Synthesis”

3 • The Monastic Retreat

- 1› Christianity and the World of Late Antiquity

- 2› Early Monasticism

- 3› Essential Traits and Characteristics of Monasticism

- 4› Pagan Sources of Influence

- Augustine – The Almost Reformer

4 • The Growth of Hierarchy

- 1› Ecclesia Universalis

- 2› The Church to Constantine, 2nd & 3rd Centuries.

- 3› The Constantinian Revolution

5 • The University and Scholasticism

- 1› Purge of the Mind – Ascent of the Soul
- 2› The Age of “Faith”
- 3› The Triumph of Philosophy

Part III - Modern Man “The New Paganism”

6 • The Renaissance

- 1› The Meaning of the Renaissance

- 2› The World of Urban Conflict and Civic Humanism

- 3› The World of Elitist Values and Renaissance Superstitions

7 • The Enlightenment

- 1› The Scientific Revolution

- 2› The Second Book

- 3. The Mechanized World of Enlightenment Man

8 •Romanticism

- 1› A Culture of Protest & Protest as Culture

- 2› Proto-Romantics

- 3› The Romantic Agenda

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- Q
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- W
- X
- Y
- Z

Table of Contents

- The Impulse of Power

- The Impulse of Power: Formative Ideals of Western Civilization

- ISBN 0-9637768-1-9
- For: Benjamin & Gretchen
- Table Of Contents
- Preface

- Part I •Ancient Man “The First Enlightenment”

- 1 • Homer
- 1› The Roots of the West
- 2› The Legacy of Greece
- 3› Homer, the Theologian
- 4› A World Fit for Heroes
- 5› God-like Men and Men-like Gods
- 2 • Plato
- 2› Hesiod and the Beginnings of Speculation
- 3› Presocratics: Re-locating the Divine
- 4› Plato’s Agenda

- Part II - Medieval Man “The Grand Synthesis”

- 3 • The Monastic Retreat

- 1› Christianity and the World of Late Antiquity

- 2› Early Monasticism

- 3› Essential Traits and Characteristics of Monasticism

- 4› Pagan Sources of Influence
- Augustine – The Almost Reformer
- 4 • The Growth of Hierarchy
- 1› Ecclesia Universalis

- 2› The Church to Constantine, 2nd & 3rd Centuries.

- 3› The Constantinian Revolution
- 5 • The University and Scholasticism
- 1› Purge of the Mind – Ascent of the Soul
- 2› The Age of “Faith”
- 3› The Triumph of Philosophy
- Part III - Modern Man “The New Paganism”
- 6 • The Renaissance

- 2› The World of Urban Conflict and Civic Humanism

- 3› The World of Elitist Values and Renaissance Superstitions

- 7 • The Enlightenment

- 2› The Second Book

- 3. The Mechanized World of Enlightenment Man

- 8 •Romanticism
- 2› Proto-Romantics
- 3› The Romantic Agenda
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- C
- F
- I
- N
- Q