To
Eusebius, the reign of Constantine meant victory—victory for the
Church,
victory for the Roman Empire, and victory for the truth.
There final pages of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical
History are about as optimistic in outlook as anything ever written
in
human history. And no wonder!
With Constantine, Rome seemed to be on track
to peace and prosperity. The
persecutions were at an end, and Christianity was now a favored
religion. And the combination of
scriptural truth with
the aid of all that human reason could add made it seem like mankind
had at
last awakened from an era of great darkness: and, in a certain sense,
it
had. Romans were freed from the
superstitious beliefs and practices of the old pagan tradition: a
dramatic and
unquestionably positive change.
Not
long after the death of Jerome (420) and Augustine (430), the western
portion
of the Roman Empire fell apart pretty much completely.
For centuries, the West had to struggle just
to hang on to what it could of the great Christian/classical legacy. There were few original contributions to
philosophy, theology, or literature.
Books were expensive and rare, and literacy rates were quite
low.
Benedictine monks spent hour upon hour copying manuscripts, salvaging
what
could be salvages of the achievements of the past.
But around 1000 AD, Europe enters a much
brighter period, the beginnings of what we call the High Middle Ages
(1000-1300).
[Notice
that I have just skipped six centuries here, and I have left
out some fascinating stories, and some potentially important apologetic
themes. St. Patrick’s account of his
endeavors among the Irish, and the Venerable Bede’s story of the growth
of the
church in England have important apologetic themes.
In the east, the scholars of the Byzantine
Empire continued to employ the classical/Christian synthesis in their
theological writings, and the confrontation with the Moslem led to the
exploration of new apologetic themes.]
Anselm
is most famous today for his
ontological proof of the existence of God. Anselm starts with a
definition of God: God is the greatest being you can think of.
What is
the greatest being you can think of? Well this being should have
every
good attribute imaginable. The being should be omnipotent and
omniscient,
loving and merciful, just and eternal.
Now
suppose we think of two beings,
one with all those characteristics that exists, and one with all those
wonderful characteristics that does not exist. Obviously, the
being that
does not exist is hardly the greatest we can think of! So that
can't be
God. God must be the being with all those wonderful
characteristics that
exists--by definition--since the greatest being we can think of must
exist--or
it's not the greatest being we can think of!!! Not only that, God
must
have all those other wonderful characteristics too, because a being
lacking any
one of them would not be the greatest being we can think of and hence
not God!
[See this site for more on Anselm
and the ontological proof for the existence of God]
Anselm’s proof is completely valid--at least, if one allows the
correctness of Plato’s assumption that the real world is the world of
ideas.
But
there is a lot more to Anselm
than intellectual proof: the ontological argument is only a very small
part of Monologium
and Proslogium. Both books read as devotional
texts—meditations on
the greatness of God. Throughout, Anselm is constantly asking for
God’s
guidance in exploring philosophical/theological question. Anselm begins
by
speculating on text, “The fool hath said in his heart there is no
God.” What he is looking at is the relationship of head to
heart. If our heart isn’t in the right place, we will use our
reason in
the wrong way. And if what’s in our heads is fuzzy, our heads
will
mislead our hearts. Anselm gets heart and head working together,
and the
result is beautiful.
[Note
that “humility”
didn’t turn Anselm into a wimp. He stood
up forcefully to the misdeeds of William II, and suffered exile twice. L. Russ Bush elaborates a bit on these themes
in his introductory comments in your “Classical Readings” book.]
Quite a few subsequent thinkers reject
Anselm’s approach to apologetics as a dead end: but equally important
philosophers and theologians use Anselm’s ideas as there starting
point.
His Cur Deus Homo (Why the
God-Man) offers an exceptionally convincing
explanation of the incarnation—though an explanation somewhat at
odds
with that of other Christian thinkers.
The
Middle Ages is rightly labeled
the Age of Faith, but it was definitely not of age of blind faith.
Socrates said an unexamined life was not worth living. The
theologians of
the High Middle Ages seemed to think tan unexamined faith is not worth
having. A great example of a thoroughly examined faith: Peter
Abelard.
Abelard
was a teacher in Paris,
and absolutely loved by his students—in one case, too much loved.
The
student who loved him too much was a young woman named Heloise.
In
addition to his usual teaching
assignments, Abelard was paid to be Heloise’s private tutor. She was 19, he 20 years older: and they
developed the kind of close relationship that the precocious student
and the
brilliant teacher often have. But then
the relationship got too close. They
ended up having an affair, and Heloise got pregnant. They then got
married, but
this was not enough for Heloise furious guardian. He sent thugs
to beat
up Abelard, and they ended up castrating him as well.
Still
in love, but not with no
future in married life, Abelard became an abbot while Heloise became
the abbess
of a sister convent. Astrolabe, their son, was raised by Abelard’s
sister.
Abelard
and Heloise carry on a long
and fascinating correspondence, and they never lose their love for one
another. In his last letter, Abelard wrote, “I hope you are
willing,
when you have finished this mortal life, to be buried near me.”
Well,
they were buried together, and
on their tombstone was this epitaph:
Here
under
the same stone, repose, of this monastery the founder, Peter Abelard,
and the
first abbess, Heloise, heretofore in study, genius, love, inauspicious
marriage, repentance, now, as we hope, in eternal happiness united.
How
romantic! But even this
wasn't enough for 19th century admirers of the couple. In the 19th
century,
their remains were dug up and burned. Their ashes
were mingled
together, and they were reburied.
Well,
back to Abelard's
teaching. Abelard is most famous for his book Sic et Non
(Yes and
No), a book that deals with 156 questions on which church authorities
seemed to
disagree. Here are some of these
questions:
Was
exploring such questions a
problem, a source of doubt? Some of his contemporaries thought
so, and
Abelard had to defend himself against charges of heresy. But
Abelard
himself believed that exploring such questions leads to more solid
faith, and I
am inclined to agree. But even better, when one finds satisfactory
answers for
one's questions, and that's something medieval theologians did
exceedingly
well. As an example: St. Thomas Aquinas.
[See
this site for more on Peter
Abelard]
St. Thomas Aquinas came from a privileged background. He was
closely
related to the Emperor, and his parents wanted him to be (perhaps)
bishop or
even pope. He chose instead to join the Dominican order as an
ordinary
monk. As a Dominican, he was free to study and travel. He was a
student
at the University of Paris, and later a teacher there. He ended
up
writing lots and lots of important things, the two most important of
which are
the Summa Contra Gentiles and the Summa Theologica.
The
first is a great defense of the Christian faith, one of the best ever
written. Aquinas systematically explains why Christianity is more
likely
to be true than any alternative religion or philosophy. The
other, the
Summa Theologica, is a great work of systematic theology, an attempt to
bring
all the teachings of scripture into a coherent whole and to show us how
we
ought to apply those teachings.
Unlike
most important theological and philosophical works, the works of
Aquinas are
very easy to understand and follow. He uses the method of
Aristotle,
stating a proposition, stating possible objections, and then answering
the
objections. It's nice and clear and systematic: no wonder so many
great
minds ever since read these works and adopt the philosophy of Aquinas
for their
own.
Clear,
systematic—and exhaustive. Once again, the Table of Contents is
essential to
seeing where the writer is going. Here’s
a very edited selection of topics from Book III:
[More here on St. Thomas Aquinas and his Summa
Theologica and
Summa Contra Gentiles]
Now
all this is enormously
impressive, and Aquinas would have had reason to be proud of all he had
accomplished. But, like Anselm, Aquinas
stands out for his humility. He was so quiet and humble that his
classmates called him the "dumb ox," not realizing that he was
probably the most brilliant man tey would ever meet. Eventually,
though,
people saw his brilliance. Kings, emperors, and high church
officials asked his advice. But Aquinas view of all this?
"All
straw," he said, all just things that would be burned up. What
counts? At the end of his life, Aquinas was writing on the Song
of
Solomon which—among other things--is an allegory of God’s love for his
people
and the way they should return that love. And that's what counts,
says
Aquinas. Loving God, and resting in His love.
I wish I had a brain like Aquinas. Even more, I wish I had a
heart like
his.