A History of Christian Thought: From its Judaic and Hellenistic Origins to Existentialism
by
Paul Tillich,
Carl E. Braaten (Editor)
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Previously published in two separate volumes entitled
Paperback, 550 pages
Published November 15th 1972 by Touchstone
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URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tillich
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CHAPTER
III Trends in the Middle Ages
FIRST we shall present a
survey of the main ideas and trends of the Middle Ages from beginning to end,
and only after that take up a few of the leading figures.
The
basic problem of the Middle Ages, one which we find in all its periods, is that
of a transcendent reality, manifest and embodied in a special institution, in a
special sacred society, leading the culture and interpreting the nature. If you
keep this in mind, you can understand everything going on in the Middle Ages.
Without it you cannot understand anything, because then you would measure the
Middle Ages by your own standards of today. The Middle Ages do not permit this.
If you consider the distorted pictures of the Middle Ages, a common judgment is
that they were the "Dark Ages"; the implication is that we Jive in
the age of illumination, so we look back upon this period of terrible
superstition with a kind of contempt. But nothing of this sort is true. The
Middle Ages were one form in which the great problem of human existence in the
light of the eternal was solved. The people who lived during this thousand-year
period did not live worse than we live in many respects, and in other respects
they lived better than we do. There is no reason to look back upon the Middle
Ages with any form of contempt. On the other hand, I am not a romanticist; I do
not want to measure our own situation by standards taken from the Middle Ages
as romanticism does.
The
Middle Ages were not so uniform as our ignorance about them allows us to
believe. They were very much differentiated. We can distinguish the following
periods:
(I)
The period of transition, A.D. 600-1000. The year 600 marks the papacy of
Gregory the Great, a man -in whom the ancient
Trends in the Middle Ages 135
tradition was still
alive, but in whom the Middle Ages had already begun. During this period we
have the years of preserva-tion—as much as could be was preserved, which was
comparatively little—and of reception; the tribes which ruled Europe, the
Germanic-Romanic tribes, were taken in. It was the period of transition from
the ancient to the medieval world, a transitional period which is sometimes
called the "Dark Ages", particularly the ninth and tenth centuries.
But they were not so dark as they seem. Great things happened then which
prepared a new world out of which we all have come, even though we have
forgotten it.
(2)The early Middle Ages, A.D.
1000-1200. During this time new and original forms developed which were
decisively different from the ancient world. This is a creative and profound
period, represented by Romanesque art.
(3)The high Middle Ages, A.D.
1200-1300. Here all the basic motifs are elaborated and brought into the great
systems of the scholastics, of Gothic art, and of feudal life.
(4)The late Middle Ages, A.D.
1300-1450. From 1300 on we enter the period in which the Middle Ages
disintegrate. But if we speak of "disintegration" we do not wish to
depreciate the tremendous surge of new motifs which developed during this
period and which made both the Renaissance and the Reformation possible.
A. SCHOLASTICISM, MYSTICISM,
BIBLIcIsM
The first series of
problems we shall di,cuss are the main cognitive attitudes, or the main
theological attitudes. There were three of them that were always present and influential:
scholasticism, mysticism, and biblicism.
Scholasticism
was the determinative cognitive attitude of the whole Middle Ages. It is the
methodological explanation of Christian doctrine. This term is derived from
"school" and means "school philosophy"—philosophy as it was
treated in the school. Today "school" has connotations of separation
from life and "scholasticism" even more so. When we hear this word we
think of lifeless systems—"as heavy as a horse", as was said by one
of the scholastics. No one can read them, since they have nothing to do with
reality. Scholasticism became distorted in the late Middle Ages; but the real
intention of scholasticism was the
136 A
History of Christian Thought
theological
interpretation of all problems of life. We have an extremely rich scholastic
literature that had a tremendous influence on the spiritual life of the Middle
Ages.
There
was one limit to this: a scholastic education was given only to a small upper
class. All the scholastic books were written in Latin, a language which only
the educated of that time knew. Of course, the masses could not even read or
write. So the question was how to bring the message discussed in these
scholastic systems to the people. There were two ways: participation in the
church services, the liturgies, pictures, hearing the music, and receiving
other sense impressions, which do not require much intellectual activity but
give the feeling of the numinous and some kind of moral guidance. However, this
does not mean that these objective things were really personal experiences.
This is what mysticism meant in the Middle Ages; it introduced personal
experience into the religious life.
The
meaning of mysticism has been misinterpreted by Protestant theology which began
with Ritschl and is still alive in Barthian theology. It is misleading when
people identify this mysticism with either Asiatic mysticism of the Vedanta
type, or with Neo-Platonic mysticism (Plotinus). Forget about this when you
approach the Middle Ages. Every medieval scholastic was a mystic; that is, he
experienced what he was talking about as personal experience. This is what
mysticism originally meant in the realm of scholasticism. There was no
opposition between mysticism and scholasticism. Mysticism was the experience of
the scholastic message. The basis of the dogma was unity with the divine in
devotion, prayer, contemplation, and ascetic practices. If you know this, it
may be hoped that you will not fall into the trap of removing mysticism from Christianity,
which would mean to reduce the latter to an intellectualized faith and a
moralized love. This is what has happened since the Ritschlian school became
dominant in Protestantism. Do not make the mistake of identifying this type of
mysticism with the absolute or abstract mysticism in which the individual
disappears in the abyss of the divine. Mysticism—the Protestant Orthodox
theologians called it unio mystica—is the immediate union with God in
his presence. Even for the people of Orthodoxy this was the highest form of the
relationship to God. In the Middle Ages mysticism and scholasticism belonged
together.
Trends in the Middle Ages 137
The
third attitude besides scholasticism and mysticism is biblicism. Biblicism is
strong in the later Middle Ages and helps to prepare the way for the
Reformation. Biblicism is not something exclusively Protestant, for there were
always biblicistic reactions during the Middle Ages. These reactions were sometimes
very critical of the scholastic systems and also of mysticism. Usually,
however, these biblicistic reactions were united with mysticism, and often also
with scholasticism. Biblicism was an attempt to use the Bible as the basis for
a practical Christianity, especially a lay Christianity. Biblicism in the later
Middle Ages was predominant and made it possible for many laymen even to read
the Bible before the Reformation.
These
three attitudes, scholasticism, mysticism, and biblicism, were in most cases
united in the same person. They could also stand in tension with each other.
For example, scholasticism and mysticism were in tension in the conflict
between Bernard of Clairvaux and Abelard. But neither of these attitudes
prevailed. Both gave what they had to give to the medieval church. And the
biblicistic criticisms were simply appropriated as the biblical foundation of
the scholastic system and the mystical experiences. Scholasticism was the
theology of that time; mysticism was the personal experiential piety, and
biblicism was the continuous critical reaction coming from the biblical
tradition and entering the two other attitudes, finally overcoming both of them
in the Reformation.
B. THE SCHOLASTIC METHOD
Scholasticism had one
basic problem, that of authority and reason. What was the medieval authority?
It was the substantive tradition on which medieval life was based. Authority
was first of all the tradition of the church as it was expressed in the acknowledged
church fathers, in the creeds and councils, and in the Bible. When we hear of
"authority" today, we tend to think of it in terms of a tyrant, be it
a father, a king, a dictator, or even a teacher. We should not read this
meaning into the word auctori-tas (authority) when we see it in the
medieval sources; nor should we identify it with the pope at that time, which
is a much later development, toward the end of the Middle Ages. In the earlier
and high Middle Ages authority is the living tradition. The
138 A history of Christian Thought
question arose: What was
the relation of reason to the living tradition of the church in which everyone
was living? There was no other tradition. This living tradition was as natural
to them as the air we breathe is to us. This analogy may help us understand
what living tradition meant in the Middle Ages.
The
tradition, however, was composed of many elements, not all of which said the
same thing. Upon inquiry into them, it became necessary to choose from among
them. The Middle Ages experienced this first of all in the realm of practical
decisions, that is, of canon law. Canon law was the basis of medieval life; the
dogma was one of the canon laws, and this gave it its legal authority within
the church. Thus, practical needs created a class of people whose task it was
to harmonize the different authorities on the meaning of the canon laws, as
they appear in the many collections of canon law. This harmonizing method was a
dialectical method, the method of "yes and no", as it was called.
Reason in the Middle Ages was the tool for this purpose. Reason combines and
harmonizes the sentences of the fathers and of the councils, first practically
and then in the theoretical realm of theological statements. The function of
reason was thus to collect, to harmonize, and to comment on the given sentences
of the fathers. The man who did this most successfully was Peter the Lombard,
whose Four Books of Sentences was the handbook of all medieval
scholasticism. His Sentences were commented on by others when they wrote
their own systems.
The
next function of reason was to interpret the meaning of the given tradition
which was expressed in the sentences. This means that the contents of faith had
to be interpreted, but faith was presupposed. Out of this situation came the
slogan; credo ut intelligam, I believe in order to know. This means that
the substance of faith was given; it was something in which one participated.
In the Middle Ages one did not exert a will-to-believe. The creed was given
just as nature is given. Natural science does not create nature; instead, the
natural scientist calculates the structures and movements of the given nature.
Similarly, reason has the function of interpreting the given tradition; it does
not create the tradition. This analogy can help us to understand the Middle
Ages much better.
The
next step was carried through, less speculatively and very cautiously, by those
thinkers who took Aristotle into their theology,
Trends in the Middle Ages 139
especially
Thomas Aquinas. They held that reason is adequate to interpret authority. At no
point is reason against authority; the living tradition can be interpreted in
rational terms. Reason does not have to be destroyed in order to interpret the
meaning of the living tradition. This is the Thomistic position even today.
The final step was the separation of reason from authority. Duns Scotus
and William of Ockham, the nominalist, asserted that reason is inadequate to
the authority, the living tradition; reason is not able to express it. This was
stated very sharply in later nominalism. However, if reason is not able to
interpret the tradition, the tradition becomes authority in a quite different
way; it becomes the commanding authority to which we have to subject ourselves
even though we do not understand it. We call this" positivism". The
tradition is given positivisticlly; there it is, we simply have to look at it,
accept it, and subject ourselves to it as it is given by the church. Reason can
never show the meaning of the tradition; it can only show different
possibilities which can be derived from the decisions of the church and the
living tradition. Reason can develop probabilities and improbabilities, but
never realities. It cannot show how things should be. They are all dependent on
the will of God. The will of God is irrational and given. It is given in
nature, sio, we must be empiricists in order to find out how the
natural laws are. We are not in the center of nature. We are in the orders of
the church, in canon law, so we must subject ourselves to these decisions in a
positivistic way; we must take them as positive laws, for we cannot understand
them in rational terms.
In Protestantism both things came to an end, the authority of the church
and to a certain extent reason. Then reason elaborated itself completely and
became creative in the Renaissance. In the Reformation, tradition was
transformed into personal faith. But the Counter-Reformation tried to keep
reason in bondage to tradition, only this tradition was not so much living as
formulated tradition, tradition which became identical with the authority of
the pope. This is very important for our present situation. All of us have to
deal even today with the problem of living trodition. Living tradition is often
confused with authority, and this is wrong. Authority can be natural and factual,
without involving a break within ourselves, disrupting our autonomy and
subjecting us to a foreign law or heteronomy. In the early Middle Ages
140 A History of Christian Thought
authority was
natural, so to speak, as our relation to nature is natural. By the end of the
Middle Ages the situation was changed. Then that concept of authority arose
against which we must fight, an authority which demands subjection to one
tradition against other traditions. Today dictators even go to the extreme of excluding
all other traditions. The so-called "iron curtains" which we build to
a certaira extent by not admitting books from the East, etc., are attempts to
keep the people in one definite tradition and to prevent it from touching other
traditions, because every authoritarian system knows that nothing is more
dangerous for a given tradition than contact with other traditions. This places
the individual at the point of decision with respect to other traditions. The
"iron curtain" method was not necessary in the early Middle Ages
because there was no other tradition; one lived in this tradition as
naturally as we live in nature.
C. TiIENDS IN SCHOLASTICISM 1. Dialectics
and Tradition
The first form in which autonomous thinking arose in the Middle Ages was
dialectics. This word "dialectics" is difficult to use today because
of its innumerable meanings; its original meaning had been lost. The original
meaning in Creek is "conversation", talking to each other about a
problem, going through "yes and no", one representing the
"yes" and the other the "no". We have already mentioned how
the jurists, who represented the canon law, had to harmonize for practical
reasons the different authorities, councils, and theologians. Out of this need
there arose the method of dialectics, of "yes and no". This method
was applied to theological problems. However, the dialectical method of
"yes and no" is something of which the guardians of tradition are
afraid, because once a "no" is permitted, one cannot know where it
may lead. This is as true today, when you think of our fundamentalists and
traditionalists, as it was in the early Middle Ages.
The early Middle Ages were not able to stand many "no's", in
view of the primitive peoples to which they had to speak, in view of the fact
that the church tradition was the only one in which people lived at that time,
and in view of the fact that everything
Trends in the Middle Ages 141
was in the
process of transformation and consolidation. So the pious traditionalists arose
against the dialectical theologians. Here I am thinking, for example, of
Bernard of Clairvaux as the representative of the pious traditionalists, and of
Abelard's dialectics. The question was whether dialectics can produce something
new in theology, or was it to be used only for the sake of explaining the
given, namely, the tradition and the authorities?
2.Augustinianism and Aristotelianism
When dealing with Augustine we pointed out that Aristotle was missing in
his development. Now in the high Middle Ages the Augustinians came into
conflict, or at least into contrast, with the newly arising Aristotelians. The
Augustinians were represented by the Franciscan order; the Aristotelians were
represented by the Dominican order. We have Augustinians against
Aristotelians, or Franciscans against Dominicans. One of the heads of the
Franciscan order was Bonaventura, a cardinal of the church, who opposed Thomas
Aquinas, the great Dominican theologian. One of the fundamental problems of the
philosophy of religion was developed when Augustine and Aristotle, or when
Plato and Aristotle—sirice Augustine was Neo-Platonic in his thinking—met again
and continued their eternal conversation, a conversation which will never cease
in the history of human thought because they represent points of view which are
always valid and which are always in conflict with each other. We have
the more mystical point of view in Plato, Augustine, Bonaventura, and the
Franciscans, and the more rational, empirical point of view in the line from
Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas. From the point of view of the foundation of
religion and theology this is perhaps the most important of the trends
in the Middle Ages. Almost all the problems of our present-day philosophy of
religion were discussed in this conflict which was especially strong in the
thirteenth century.
2. Thomism and Scotism
A third contrast or conflict was between Thomism and Scotism. In a sense
this is a continuation of the other struggle, since Duns
142 A History of Christian Thought
Scotus was a Franciscan
and Thomas a Dominican. Yet, it was a new problem, also decisive for the modern
world, involving the conflict between intellect and will as ultimate
principles. For the Dominicans, for Thomism, that is, for the Aristotelian
rationality which Thomas introduced into the church, the intellect is the
predominant power. Man is man qua intellect. For the Augustinian line
which leads to Duns Scotus will is the predominant power which makes man
man, and God Cod. Cod is first of all will, and only secondarily intellect. And
will is the center of man's personality, and intellect is secondary. The world
is originally created by will and is for this reason irrational and to be taken
empirically. On a secondary level it is intellectually ordered, but this order
is never final and cannot be taken in by us in deductive terms. In the modern
world this same conflict goes on, for example, when thinkers like Henri
Bergson and Brand Blanshard of Yale present contrasting systems in terms of the
will and intellect.
4. Nominalism and Realism
The fourth of the conflicting trends is nominalism against the so-called
realism. In order to make this conflict understandable we must know what
realism is. If you want to understand what medieval realism was, then simply
translate it by "idealism". Medieval realism is what we call
idealism, if we are not thinking of idealism in a moral sense or in a special
epistemological sense, but in terms of the ideas or essences of things which
have reality and power of being. Medieval realism is almost the exact opposite
of what we call realism today, and realism today is almost identical with what
medieval people called nominalism. For medieval man the universals, the
essences, the nature of things, the nature of truth, the nature of man, etc.,
are powers which determine what every individual thing, such as a tree, or
every individual man will always become when he or it develops. This could be
called mystical realism or idealism. Universalia realia—the universals
are realities; this is medieval realism. Of course, the universals are not
things in time and space. That is a misunderstanding which makes it a little
too easy to reject universals by saying: "I have never seen manhood; I
have only seen 'Paul' and 'Peter." This is something medieval people knew
as well. However, they maintained, all "Pauls" and
"Peters" always have noses
Trends in the Middle Ages 143
and eyes and feet and
language. This is a phenomenon which can be understood only in terms of the
universal, the power of being, which we call manhood, which makes it possible
for every man to become a man with all these potentialities. These
potentialities may be undeveloped or even destroyed, but every individual has
them.
Nominalism
holds the opposite view: Only Peter and Paul, only this particular tree at the
corner of 116th Street and Riverside Drive exists, and not
"treehood", not the power of treehood, which makes it become a tree.
Here you have an example of the difference in feeling. If as a nominalist you
look at a tree, you feel: "This is a real thing; if I run against it, I
will hurt my head." But it is also possible in looking at it to be
astonished that with all the seeds sown in the soil, this particular structure
of a tree develops, shooting up and spreading its branches. Then in this big
tree you can see "treehood", and not just a big tree. And in Peter
and Paul you can see not only these particular individuals, but also the nature
of man, manhood, as a power which makes it possible for all men to have this
character. This is an important discussion which was carried on in
logical terms, and is still being carried on. There is hardly a day that I do
not fight against nominalism on the basis of my comparatively medieval
realistic kind of thinking, which conceives of being as power of being. That is
a sin against the "holy spirit" of nominalism, and thus also very
much against the "unholy spirit" of logical positivism and many other
such spirits. And I fight this fight because I believe that although extreme
realism is wrong, namely, that realism against which Aristotle was fighting in
Plato which regards universals as special things somewhere in heaven, there are
nevertheless structures which actualize themselves again and again. So I can
say, the power of being always resists non-being. For this reason I believe
that we cannot be nominalists alone, although the nominalist attitude, the
attitude of humility toward reality, of not desiring to deduce reality, is
something which we must maintain.
The
immediate importance of nominalism was that it disrupted the
universals, which were understood not only in terms of abstract concepts but
also of embracing groups, such as family, state, friends, craftsmen, all groups
which precede the individual. At the same time, the danger of medieval realism
was that the individual was prevented from developing his potentialities.
144 A History of Christian Thought
Therefore,
nominalism was an important reaction, so important that I would say that
without it the estimation of the personality in the modern world—the real basis
of democracy—could not have developed. While I am usually critical of our being
nominalists, I do praise its emphasis on the fully developed individual and
his potentialities, which withstands any danger of our becoming Asiatic. In
face of such a danger medieval nominalism must be understood as positively as
medieval realism. Medieval realism maintains the powers of being which
transcend the individual; medieval nominalism preserves or emphasizes the
value of the individual. The fact that the radical realism of the early Middle
Ages was rejected saved Europe from Asiatization, that is, from
collectivization. The fact that at the end of the Middle Ages all universals
were lost resulted in the imposition of the power of the church on individuals,
making Cod himself into an individual who, as a tyrant, gives laws to other
individuals. This was the distortion which nominalism brought along with
itself, whereas the affirmation of the personal was its creative contribution.
Thus, when you read about nominalism and realism in text-books of logic, do not
be betrayed into the belief that this is in itself a basically logical problem.
Of course, it must be discussed in terms of the science of logic as well, but
it really has to do with the attitude toward reality as a whole which expresses
itself also in the logical realm.
. Pantheism and Church Doctrine
Partly connected with realism in the Middle Ages is pantheism, the
tendency toward the complete extinction of the individual. This was done in
different ways. First, it was expressed in what is called Averroism. Averroes,
the greatest of the Arabian philosophers, said that the universal mind which
produces culture is a reality in which the individual mind participates. But
the individual mind is not something independent. This was in line with
Asiatization, and Avenues was rejected. Secondly, pantheistic elements were
expressed in German mysticism of the type of Meister Eckhart. This was able to
dissolve all the concreteness of medieval piety, and led to the philosophy of
the Renaissance. The church rejected it in the name of the individual
authoritarian God.
Trends in the Middle Ages 145
D. THE RELIGIOUS FORCES
Next we shall consider
the religious forces of the Middle Ages. The greatest and most fundamental of
these religious forces was the hierarchy. The hierarchy represented the
sacramental reality on which the existence of the church, state, and culture as
a whole depended. It administered the Mass which was the central sacramental
event. Then the hierarchy carried through the work of educating the
Germanic-Romanic tribes which entered the church from their barbaric state. In
doing so the hierarchy tried to influence not only the individual through the
sacrament of penance, but also the social status of reality. The sacrament of
penance was the correlate to the sacrament of the Mass; the Mass is objective,
penance subjective. The ecclesiastical hierarchy wanted to control the world.
Civil powers, or the secular hierarchies with the emperor at the top, arose and
came into conflict with the church hierarchy. The emperor aspired to do the same
thing from the secular point of view which the church tried to do from the
religious, namely, to establish one body of Christian secular life, a life
which is always at the same time both secular and religious, instead of having
two separate realms as we do.
By
assuming secular functions the hierarchy was always in danger of becoming
secularized itself. Other religious forces resisted this tendency, one of which
was monasticism. Monasticism represents the uncompromising negation of the
world, but this negation was not a quietistic one. It was a negation coupled
with activity directed to transforming the world—in labor, science, and other
forms of culture, church architecture and building, poetry and music. It was a
very interesting phenomenon and has little to do with the deteriorated
monasticism against which the Reformers and humanists were fighting. On the one
hand, it was a radical movement of resignation from the world, leaving the
control of the world to the secular clergy, but on the other hand, it did not
fall merely into a mystical form of asceticism, or into a ritualistic form as
the Eastern church was in danger of doing; it applied itself to the
transformation of reality.
The
monks produced the great medieval aesthetic culture, and even today some of the
monastic orders represent the highest form of culture in the Catholic Church.
The Benedictines, in
146 A History of Christian Thought
particular, have
preserved this tradition until the present time. The monks were also the real
bearers of theological science, perhaps even of all science. The Franciscans
and especially the Dominicans produced the greatest theologians. Other monks
did agricultural work, irrigation of land, drying up swamps, and all sorts of
things needed in the newly conquered countries in central and northern Europe
where conversions had been made. These monastic groups were, as we might say
today, the active, ascetic vanguard of the church. They were free to perform
cultural activities and yet were bound to the fundamentals of the church. Later
on attempts were made to introduce this monastic spirit into other groups as
well. We can mention two groups, the knights and the crusaders. The knights
fought against the pagans and conquered eastern Germany. If you want a sweeping
historical statement, consider that these chivalric orders which fought for the
Christianization, and also Germanization, of eastern Europe a thousand years
ago have now been conquered in this twentieth century, with the help of the
Christian nations of the West. That is to say, the Slavic groups have retaken
what was taken from them by the military monastic orders of the Middle Ages,
and Christianity is now suppressed for the sake of the Communist form of a
non-Christian secularism. It was a great world-historical event, as great as
the baffles of the knights in the Middle Ages, when in the twentieth century,
especially in the Berlin Conference of 1945, eastern Europe was surrendered and
the Germanic population which had lived there for a thousand years was thrown
out. If this situation is seen in perspective, you see a little of the
importance of these medieval orders.
The
crusades, and the spirit of the crusaders, can be seen as the result of the
introduction of the monastic spirit into the lower aristocracy. They were to
conquer Palestine and the Byzantine Empire in the East. But in the end they
were also repelled.
Sectarianism
was another religious force; it should not be understood so much from a
dogmatic point of view, as is usually done. Of course, the sects sometimes did
have strange doctrines and for this reason left the church. But the real reason
was psychological and sociological and much less theological. Sectarianism is
the criticism of the church for the gap between its claim and its reality. It
is the desire of special groups to represent ideals of consecration,
sanctification, and holiness. It is an attempt to carry
Trends in the Middle Ages 147
through some of the
monastic radicalism in terms which are anti-hierarchical. To a certain extent
the sectarian movements were lay movements. As the word sectare means,
they "cut" themselves off from the body of the church. However, the
non-sectarian way of introducing monastic ideals, at least in part, into
secular life was through the so-called tertiarii, the "third
orders". There was a first order of St. Francis (the order for men), a
second order for women, the nuns, and later on a third order was created for
the laymen. They did not enter the cloister, nor were they celibate. They
subjected themselves partly to the discipline of the monastic orders, and as
such produced a kind of lay piety which became stronger toward the end of the
Middle Ages, and prepared the way for the Reformation.
Then
we must mention the great individuals of church history as bearers of medieval
piety. They were not great individuals in the sense of the Renaissance. Rather,
they were great individuals as representatives of something objective, namely,
of the "holy legend". The holy legend starts with the Bible and
continues through all the centuries. "Legend" does not simply mean
"unhistorical"; it is a mixture of history and interpretation,
involving stories which are attached usually to great individuals who themselves
had no connection with them. Thus, legendary history is a history of
representatives of the spirit of the church. This meant that the Catholic
Christian of the Middle Ages was aware of a continuity through all history,
going back to biblical times, even back to Noah and Adam in the Old Testament
period. This continuity in history was represented by great individuals who
are interesting, however, not as individuals but as representatives of the
tradition and the spirit in which the people lived. This seems to me more
important than the superstitious use of the individuals, for example, by
praying to those who had become saints. The holy legend was a reality which,
like nature, was something within which one lived. It is a reality in which the
living tradition expresses itself symbolically. Those who study religious art
will see that up to Giotto the great figures of medieval art are not so much
individuals as representatives of the divine presence in a special event or
form or character.
Another
of the religious forces was the popular superstitions of daily life. The forms
of daily life can be called superstitions, if by "superstition" we
have in mind the identification of a finite reality
148 A History of Christian Thought
with the divine. Such
superstitions permeate the entire Middle Ages; for example, the relics of the
saints, or from the life of Christ. Another superstition was expressed in the
ever-repeated miracles or in the attitude toward holy objects, which were used
not so much as pointers to the divine but as powers which contain the divine
in themselves. The positive side of this was that it consecrated the daily
life. Let me show you this by a picture. Take a medieval town, the town of
Chartres, for instance. Not only its cathedral is important—which you must look
at to understand the Middle Ages—but also the very way in which it stands on
the hill in the middle of a small town. It is a tremendous cathedral,
overlooking the whole surrounding country. In it you find symbols of the daily
life—the nobility, the craftsmen, the guilds, and the different supporters of
the church. The whole daily life is within the walls of the cathedral in
consecrated form. When people went into it, their daily life was represented in
the sphere of the holy; when they left it, they took with them the consecration
they had received in the cathedral back into their daily lives. This is the
positive side of it. The negative side is that all this is expressed in
superstitious forms of poor pictures, sculptures, relics, and all kinds of holy
objects.
Something
else of great importance in the daily life of the medieval man was the
experience of the demonic. This was a reality for these people. The vertical
line which leads up to the divine also leads down to the demonic. And the
demonic is a power which is present in the cathedral as something already
conquered. Exorcism, expelling the demonic, was one of the daily practices in
the cathedral. When entering the cathedral one sprinkled oneself with holy
water. This had the effect of purifying oneself from the demonic forces which
had been brought along from the daily life. Baptism was primarily exorcism of
the demonic forces before forgiveness of sins could be received. Demonic
figures are seen supporting the weight of the churches. This is perhaps the
greatest symbol—the power of the divine conquers the power of the demonic
within the daily life. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, when the Renaissance
brought in the demonic symbolism and reality of the later ancient world, the
demonic prevailed over against the divine in terms of anxiety. The church of
this period lived in a constant anxiety about the presence of the demonic
within itself and in others. This is the background
Trends in the Middle Ages 149
to the trials of witches
and in part also to the persecution of heretics. It is the basis for the
demonic persecution of the demonic; there is no better way to describe these
witchcraft trials. It is the feeling for the "underground" in life
which could erupt any moment in many individuals in terms of neurotic anxiety.
At first the churches were able to conquer it, but not at the end of the Middle
Ages. So they started the great persecu-tionsof sorcerers, which were even more
cruel and bloody than those of the heretics. As in every persecution fear was
behind this hostile attitude toward oneself and others, the tremendous anxiety
about non-being in terms of demonic symbols.
E. THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH
It is interesting that
in the systems of the medieval theologians there is no special place for the
doctrine of the church This indicates, among other things, that the church was
self-evident; it was the foundation of all life and not a matter of a special
doctrine. Of course, in the discussions about the hierarchy, the sacraments,
and the relation to the civil power, a doctrine of the church was implicitly
developed.
Our
first consideration is: What was the relation of the church to the kingdom of
God in medieval thinking? The answer to this question is the basis on which the
other questions about the relation of the church to the secular power, to
culture, etc., can be answered. The background to this is what we said about
Augus-tine's interpretation of history. We must review this in order to understand
the situation.
In
the Augustinian interpretation of history we have a partial identification and
partial non-identification of the church with the kingdom of God. They are
never completely identified because Augustine knew very well that the church
is a mixed body. It is full of people who formally belong to it but who in
reality do not belong to it. On the other hand, he identified the church with
the kingdom of God from the point of view of the sacramental graces present in
the hierarchy. Now, either this identification or this non-identification could
become the point of emphasis. This was always the problem of the Middle Ages.
The church, of course, tried to identify itself with the kingdom of God in
terms of the hierarchical graces. However, it is not
150 A History of Christian Thought
correct to think that
any medieval representative, whether theologian, pope, or bishop, identified
his own goodness or holiness with the kingdom of God, but always his
sacramental holiness, his objective sacramental power. The objectivity of this
sacramental reality is decisive for understanding medieval thought. On the
other hand, the actual church was a mixed body and the representatives of the
sacramental graces were distorted. So from this point of view it was possible
to attack the church. The discussion in the Middle Ages was carried on in
continuous oscillation between these two poles.
Parallel
to this there was in Augustine also a partial identification and a partial
non-identification of the state with the kingdom of earth, which was also
designated as the kingdom of Satan. The partial identification was based on the
fact that in Augustine's interpretation of history states are the result of
compulsory power. He called them "robber states", states produced by
groups of gangsters, who are not considered criminals only because they are
powerful enough to take the state into their own hands. This consideration,
which reminds one of the Marxist analysis of the state, is contrasted, however,
to the idea of natural law that the state is necessary to repress the sinful
powers which would lead to chaos if left unchecked.
Here
again the emphasis could be either on the identity of the state with the
kingdom of Satan, or at least the kingdom of the sinful world, or on the
non-identification of the two, stressing the possibility that the state has a
divine function to restrain chaos. All of this is understandable only in the
kind of period in which Augustine lived, when the Roman Empire, and later the
Germanic-Romanic kingdoms, were realms of non-Christian power. Even when
Constantine accepted Christianity, the power play was still going on, the
substance of the ancient culture still existed, and was not yet replaced by the
religious substance of the church. But then the situation changed. With the
expansion of Christianity westward the church became the cultural substance of
life, the power which determined all the individual relations, all the
different expressions of art, knowledge, ethics, social relations, relation to
nature, and all other forms of human life. The ancient substance was partly
received by Augustine and partly removed, and what was left in it was subjected
to the theonomous principles of the church.
Trends in the Middle Ages 151
In
such a situation one oould no longer say that the state is the kingdom of Satan
because now the substance of the state is the church. So a new situation arose
which had consequences not only for the relation of the church to the state,
but also for the state itself. How was the Germanic system related to the
church? Before the Germanic tribes were Christianized, they had a religious
system in which the princes, the leaders of the tribes, represented not only
the earthly but also the sacred power. They were automatically representing
both realms. This was continued in the Germanic states insofar as the clergy
belonged to the feudal order of these tribes. A rfian like Hinchmar, the great
bishop of Rheims in France, represented the feudal protest of a sacred
political power—political and sacred at the same time against the universality
of the church. The German kings, who had to give political power to the higher
feudal lords, also had to give power to the bishops as higher feudal lords. The
church called this simony, from the story of Simon who wanted to buy the divine
power. This was connected with the fact that these feudal lords had to give
something for what they received. All of this was bound up with the territorial
system of the Germanic-Romanic tribes, a system which stood in opposition to
the universality of the church.
Opposition
against the feudal bishops and the local kings or princes came from three
quarters: (1) from the lower clergy; (2) from the popes, especially Gregory
VII; (3) from the proletarian masses, which were anti-feudal, especially in
northern Italy. The pope used the lower bishops who were nearer to the lower
clergy than the pope himself, so in the name of the pope they could resist the
feudal clergy in their own territories. This was the situation which finally
led to the great fight between Gregory VII and Henry IV. Usually this is called
the struggle between church and state, but this is misleading.
"State" in our modern sense is a concept which comes from the
eighteenth century. Thus, when we speak of the "state" in Greece, in
Rome, or in the Middle Ages, we should always put it in quotation marks. What
did exist were legal authorities, with military and political power.
The
conflict was not due to the state's encroaching upon the rights of the church,
as was often the case later. It was a much more fundamental thing. Since the
church was the representative
152 A History
of Christian Thought
of the spiritual
substance of everyone's daily life, of every function, craft, business,
profession, there was no separation of realms as developed after the
Reformation. There was -one reality with different sides. Then the question
arose as to who should head this one reality. There must be a head, and it is
dangerous to have two heads. So both sides, the clergy and the princes or
feudal lords, claimed to he the head of this one reality. The "state"
represented by the feudal order was conscious of also representing the Christian
body as a whole, and the church represented by the pope was conscious of
playing the same role. The same position was claimed by both sides, a position
which embraced the secular as well as the religious realms. The king aspired
and claimed to represent and be the protector of all Christendom. This was
especially true when the king became the German emperor and as such the
continuation of the Holy Roman Empire. On the other hand, Pope Gregory VII
claimed the same thing from the hierarchical side. He made claims which
surpassed everything which had been done before. He identified himself with all
bishops as the universal bishop. All episcopal grace comes from the pope; in
him Peter is present, and in Peter Christ himself is present. There is no
bishop who is not dependent on the pope for his episcopal sacramental power.
The pope is the universal monarch in the church. But he even went beyond this:
the church is the soul of the body, and the body is the secular life. Those who
represent the secular life are related to him who represents the spiritual
life, as the limbs of the body are related to the inner self which is the soul.
As the soul shall govern the limbs of the body, so the pope shall govern the
kingdoms and all feudal orders.
This
was expressed by the famous doctrine of the "two swords". There are
two swords, the earthly and the spiritual. As the bodily existence is subjected
to the spiritual existence, so the earthly sword of the king and of the feudal
lords is subjected to the spiritual sword of the pope. Therefore, every being
on earth has to be subject to the pope at Rome. This was the doctrine of Pope
Boniface VIII, in whom the papal aspirations were radically expressed. The
emperors fought against this, and compromises were made, but generally speaking
the popes prevailed, at least as long as there was this one reality of
Christendom about which popes and emperors were fighting.
Trends in the Middle Ages 153
However,
new forces arose in the Middle Ages. First and foremost among them were the national
states. The national states claimed independence from both the pope and the
emperor. National feeling was behind them. The importance of Joan of Arc was
that in her French nationalism first arose and came into direct conflict with
the pope. At the end of the Middle Ages the national states had taken over much
of the papal power. Again France was leading: Philip the Fair took the papacy
to Avignon in France, and the resulting schism between the two popes radically
undercut the papal authority. The princes and kings, who gradually became
independent and who created the national states, were at the same time
religious lords. Thus in England the theory arose that the king represents
Christ for the Church of England, as the pope is the vicar of Christ.
Another
theory arose which was directed against the pope. The bishops of these
developing national states did not want to be simply subjects of the pope; they
wanted to regain the position the bishops had at the time, let us say, of the
Council of Nicaea. They developed the Idea of conciliarism; the council
of bishops is the ultimate authority of the church. This idea is in contrast to
curialism (from curia, the papal court); the papal court is the
monarchic power over church and state. Thus, in alliance with the nationalist
reaction against empire and papacy, conciliarism was a radical movement which
threatened the pope. In the long run, however, the pope finally had the power
to destroy the reform councils in Basle and Constance, where conciliarism had triumphed
for a while. The national separations and splits of all kinds, plus the desire
of the later Middle Ages to have a unity in spite of everything, made it
possible for ecclesiasticism and monarchism to prevail in the Roman Church.
There
were also important movements of criticism against the church, the sectarian
and lay movements at the end of the Middle Ages. The greatest critic of the
church in the theoretical realm was William Ockham, who fought for the German
national state against the universal monarchy of the pope. But the most effective
was Wyclif of England. Wyclif criticized the existing church in a radical way
from the point of view of the lex evangelica, the evangelical law,
which is in the Bible. He translated the Bible and fought against the hierarchy
with the support of the national king. Already at that time the relationship between
the king of
154 A History of Christian Thought
England and the pope
became very precarious. The pope did not succeed in inducing the king to
persecute Wycif and his followers.
Finally
the hierarchy (i.e., as a universal reality) came to an end in the
revolutionary movement of the Reformation. The Protestant churches took the
form of the territorial church which had long before been prepared under the
princes. With the power of the pope and the hierarchy vanishing it happened
that the church no longer had a backbone. So the prince received the title of
"highest bishop". This means that he replaced the hierarchical,
sacramental bishops, and became the highest administrator within the church,
as a lay member at that; he was the predominant lay member who could keep the
church in order. In this way the Protestant churches became subjected to the
earthly powers, and to this day they have this problem. In Lutheranism it was
the problem of the church's relation to the princes, their cabinets, and
authoritarian governments. in the Calvinist countries, and also in America, it
is the socially
ruling classes which are decisive for the church and make up its administrative
backbone.
F. THE SACRAMENTS
From the point of view
of the actual religious life the sacraments were perhaps the most important
thing in medieval church history. When we discuss the sacraments in the Middle
Ages, if we are Protestants,
we must forget everything we have in our immediate experience of the
sacraments. in the Middle Ages the sacraments were not things which happened at
certain times during the year and which were merely regarded as comparatively
solemn acts. The preached word did not need to accompany the sacraments. Thus
Troeltsch could call the Catholic Church the greatest sacramental institution
in all world history.
Previously
we have said that the Middle Ages were dominated by one problem, namely, to
have a society which is guided by a present reality of a transcendent divine
character. This is different from the period in which the New Testament was
written, where the salvation of the individual soul was the problem. It is
different from the period of Byzantium (ca. 450-950) where mysteries interpret all
reality in terms of the divine ground, but not much is changed. It is different
from the post-Renaissance period, end‑
Trends in the Middle Ages 155
ing in the nineteenth
century, in which the world is directed by human reason, by man as the center
of reality. It is different also from the early Greek period in which the mind
was looking for the eternal Immovable. All of these periods had their particular
problem. The problem of the Middle Ages, accordingly, was the problem of
the world (society and nature) in which the divine is present in sacramental
forms. In the light of this we can ask: What does "sacramental" mean?
It means all kinds of things in the history of the church. It means the deeds
of Christ, the sufferings of Christ (the stations of the cross); it means the
Gospels, which can be called sacraments; it means symbols in the Bible; it
means the symbolic character of the church buildings, and all the activities
going on in the church, in short, everything in which the holy was present.
This was the problem of the Middle Ages—to have the holy present.
The
sacraments represent the objectivity of the grace of Christ as present in the
objective power of the hierarchy. All graces—"graces" may be
translated as substantial powers of the New Being—are present in and through
the hierarchy. The sacraments are the continuation of the basic sacramental
reality of God's manifestation in Christ. In every sacrament there is present a
substance of a transcendent character. Water, bread, wine, oil, a word, the
laying on of hands—all these things become sacramental if a transcendent
substance is poured into them. This substance is like a fluid which heals. One
of the definitions of a sacrament is: "Against the wounds produced by
original and actual sin, God has established the sacraments as remedies."
Here in medical symbolism what is meant is clearly expressed: the healing power
is poured into the substances.
The
question often raised in Protestantism is how many sacraments there are. Up to
the twelfth century there were many sacramental activities. It was always more
or less clear which of them were the most important, namely, baptism and the
Lord's Supper. It took more than a thousand years of church history to discover
that seven sacraments are the most important. After this discovery the term
"sacrament" in a special sense became reserved for just these seven
sacraments. This is unfortunate for the understanding of what a sacrament is.
We must keep in mind the universal concept of the sacrament: the presence of
the holy. Therefore, sacramentalia are being performed in the
churches all
156 A History of Christian Thought
the time; these are
activities in which the presence of the divine is experienced in a special way.
The fact that there are seven sacraments has many reasons behind
it—traditional, practical, church-political, psychological, and many others.
There are seven sacraments in the Roman Church; for a long time there were
five. In Protestant churches there are two; in some groups, at least, of the
Anglican Church there are actually and theoretically three sacraments. But the
number does not matter. The question is: What does sacramental thinking mean?
This is what Protestants have to learn; they have forgotten it.
In
the Roman Church the main sacraments are baptism and the eucharist; but there
is also penance as the center of personal piety. There is ordination which is
the presupposition for the administration of all the other sacraments. There is
marriage as the control of the natural life. Confirmation and extreme unction
are supporting sacraments in the life of the individual. Thus, we see that the raison
d'être for some of the sacraments is "biographical", while other
sacraments stem from the establishment of the church.
Now
what is a sacrament? A sacrament is a visible, sensuous sign instituted by God
as a medicament in which under the cover of a visible thing the power of God is
hiddenly working. The basic ideas are: divine institution, visible sign,
medicament (the medical symbol is very important), the hidden power of God
under the cover of the sensuous reality. A sacrament is valid if it has a
material substance, a form, that is, the words by which it is instituted, and
the intention of the minister to do what the church intends to do. These three
elements are necessary. The sign (we would say, the symbol) contains the
matter. Therefore, the sacrament has causality; it causes something in the
inner part of the soul, something divine. But it does not have ultimate
causality. It is dependent on God as the ultimate causality. The sacraments
mediate the grace. "Grace" should always be translated as divine
power of being, or power of New Being, which justifies or sanctifies—these two
words being identical in Catholicism, while in Protestantism quite distinct
from each other. Grace, or the divine power of the new being, is poured by the
sacraments into the essence of the soul, into its very innermost center. And
there is no other way to receive justifying and sanctifying grace than through
the sacraments. The substance
Trends in the Middle Ages 157
which is poured into the
center of the soul has effects upon the different functions of the soul, or
mind, as we would say. The intellect is driven toward faith by the sacramental
grace; the will is driven toward hope; and the whole being is driven toward love.
The
decisive statement is that the sacrament is effective in us ex opere
operato, by its mere performance, not by any virtue. There is only one
subjective presupposition, namely, the faith that the sacraments are
sacraments, but not faith as a special relationship to God. It is a
"minimum" theory; those who do not resist the divine grace can
receive it even if they are not worthy, if only they do not deny that the
sacrament is the medium of the divine grace. The theory of ex opere operato (by
its very performance) makes the sacrament an objective event of a
quasi-magical character. This was the point at which the Reformers were most
radical.
The
whole life stood under the effects of the sacraments. Baptism removes original
sin; the eucharist removes venial sins; penance removes mortal sins; extreme
unction removes what is still left over of one's sins before death;
confirmation makes a person a fighter for the church; ordination introduces one
into the clergy, and marriage into the natural vocation of man or wife.
However, above them all is the sacrament of the Mass. This is the sacrifice of
Christ repeated every day in every church in Christendom, in terms of the
transubstantiation of bread and wine into body and blood. This sacrifice is the
foundation of the presence of the divine and of the sacramental and
hierarchical power of the church. This was, therefore, the sacrament of sacraments,
so to speak. Officially it was a part of the Lord's Supper, but objectively it
was and is the foundation of all sacraments, for here the priest has the power
to produce Cod, facere deum; making God out of the bread and wine is the
fundamental power of the church in the Middle Ages.
Penance
was in a kind of tension with all the others. It was the sacrament of personal
piety. There was much discussion about it. What are the conditions of the
forgiveness of sins in the sacrament of penance? Some made them very easy,
some more heavy. All believed that a person's repentance is necessary—light or
heavy—and, on the other hand, that a sacrament is necessary. But no scholastic
gave an answer as to how the sacrament and the personal element are related to
each other. It was just at this
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of Christian Thought
point that the medieval church
exploded, that is, by the intensification of the subjective side in the
sacrament of penance. This was the experience of Luther and, therefore, he
became the reformer of the church.
G. ANSELM OF CANTERBURY
Next we shall take up two men of
the twelfth century, Anseim of Canterbury and Abelard of Paris. The basis of
Anseim's theological work was the same as for all the scholastics, the
assertion that in the Holy Scriptures and their interpretation by the fathers
all truth is directly or indirectly enclosed. His phrase credo Ut intelligam (I believe in order to understand,
not I understand in order to believe) must be understood in the light of
how he understood faith and tradition. Faith is not belief as a special act of
an individual, but is participation in the living tradition. This living
tradition, the spiritual substance in which one lives, is the foundation, and
theology is interpretation built on this foundation.
The
content of eternal truth, of principles of truth, is grasped by the subjection
of our will to the Christian message and the consequent experience arising from
this subjection. This experience is given by grace; it is not produced by
human activities. Here the term "experience" becomes important.
"Experience" must be distinguished from what we mean by it today, if
we mean anything at all, since the term is used so widely that it has become
most questionable and almost meaningless. In any case, at that time experience
did not mean "religious" experience, generally speaking; such a thing
did not exist then. Rather, experience meant participation in the objective
truth implicit in the Bible and authoritatively explained by the church
fathers. Every theologian must participate in this experience. Then this
experience can become knowledge, but not necessarily so. Faith is not dependent
on knowledge, but knowledge is dependent on faith. Again we can use the analogy
we have used before: Natural science presupposes participation in nature, but
participation in nature does not necessarily lead to natural science. On this
basis reason can act with complete freedom to transform experience into
knowledge. Anseim was a great speculative thinker at a time when the word
"speculation" did not yet have the meaning
Trends in the Middle Ages 159
of gazing into the clouds; instead, it meant analyzing the basic structures of reality.
Knowledge based on experience leads to a system. Here we come to one of
the features of all medieval thinking. The medieval thinkers knew that in order
to think consistently, you must think systematically. In the term
"systematic theology" which we use in our teaching there is a remnant
of this insight that knowledge must have the character of a system in order to
be consistent. On the other hand, people are often attacked today when they use
the word "system", just because they want to think systematically,
and not sporadically and fragmentarily. But the church cannot afford—as an
individual thinker can—to have here an insight and there an insight which have
nothing to do with each other or even contradict each other. What would be bad
in systematic theology is the derivation of consequences from principles which
have no foundation in experience. But this is not the meaning of
"system". Its meaning is the ordering of experience cognitively in
such a way that the contents of experience do not contradict each other and the
whole truth is reached. As Hegel rightly said, the truth is the whole.
Thus, reason can elaborate all religious experiences in rational terms.
Even the doctrine of the trinity can be dealt with by reason on the basis of
experience. In other words, autonomous reason and the doctrine of the church
are identical. Again this is to be compared with our relationship to nature
when we say that mathematical structure and natural reality belong to each
other. Mathematical reason is able to grasp nature, to order and to make
understandable natural movements and structures. In the same way theological
reason is able to make understandable and to connect with each other the
different religious experiences. This is the courageous way in which Anselm
attacked the problems of theology. In saying that even the trinity can be
understood in rational terms, he is following the Augustinian heritage. We can
call it dialectical monotheism, a monotheism in which movement is seen in God
himself. God is a living God; therefore, there is a "yes" and a
"no" in himself. There is not a dead identity of God with himself,
but a living separation and reunion of his life with himself. In other words,
the mystery of the trinity is understandable for dialectical thought. This
mystery is included in reason itself and is not against reason. How could it
be, since,
160 A History of Christian Thought
according to
classical theology, God has reason in himself as his Son, the Logos? Reason,
therefore, is valid so far as God and the world are essentially considered.
Autonomy is not destroyed by the mystery. On the other hand, autonomy is
not empty and formalistic. It does not empty the mysteries of the divine life, but
only points to it in dialectical terms. The content, the substance and the
depth of reason, is a mystery which has appeared in revelation.
This means that Anseim was neither autonomous in an empty formalistic
sense, nor heteronomous in subjecting his reason to a tradition which he did
not understand, which was almost a magical mystery. Anseim's attitude is
what I call theonomous. This is a concept I often use in my own writings and
discussions. Whenever you are asked, "What do you mean by theonomy?"
then you can answer, "Anseim's way of philosophizing, or Augus-tine's way,
or. .."--now I hesitate to say it—" Hegel's". I mention Hegel in
spite of all my criticism of him. This tlieonomous way means acknowledging the
mystery of being, but not believing that this mystery is an authoritarian
transcendent element which is imposed upon us and against us, which breaks our
reason to pieces. For this would mean that God would be breaking his Logos to
pieces, which is the depth of all reason. Reason and mystery belong together,
like substance and form.
There is one point, however, at which I deviate from Hegel and go along
with Anselm. Actually, it is more than a point, but a total turning of the
whole consideration: the Logos becoming flesh! This is not a matter of
dialectical reason. This is not only dialectical, not only mystery, but
paradoxical. Here we are in the sphere of existence, and existence is noted in
the freedom of God and man, in sin and grace. Here reason can only acknowledge
and not understand. The existential sphere, reason itself, is ruled by
will and decision, not by rational necessity. Therefore, it can become
anti-reason, anti-structure, anti-divine, anti-human. This means that it is not
mystery and revelation which place a limitation upon rational necessity. The
mystery of being is preserved by good dialectics, and destroyed by bad
dialectics. But beyond mystery and dialectics there is something paradoxical.
This means that although man has contradicted himself and always does so, there
is a possibility of overcoming this situation because a new reality has
appeared under the conditions of
Trends in the Middle Ages 161
existence, conquering
it. This is the Christian paradox! It is a matter of serious concern that we do
not create a gap between the divine mystery and the divine Logos. Again and
again the church has affirmed that they belong together. If one denies that the
structure of reason is adequate to the divine mystery, he is completely
dualistic in his thinking; then God would be split in himself.
Anseim's
theonomoiis thought is expressed in his famous arguments for the existence of
Cod, or as I like to say, his so-called arguments for the so-called existence
of Cod, because I want to show that they are neither
"arguments" nor do they prove the "existence" of God. But
they do something much better than this. There are two arguments, the
cosmological and the ontological. The cosmological argument is given in his Monologion
and the ontological argument in his Proslogion. I want to show that
these arguments are not arguments for the existence of an unknown or doubtful
piece of reality, even if it is called "Cod". They are quite
different from this.
The
cosmological argument says: We have ideas of the good, of the great, of the beautiful,
of the true. These ideas are realized in all things. We find beauty, goodness,
and truth everywhere, but, of course, in different measures and degrees. But if
you want to say that something has a higher or lower degree of participation
in the idea of the good or the true, then the idea itself must be presupposed.
Since it is the criterion by which you measure, it is not itself a matter of
measure and degree. The good itself, or the unconditionally good—being or
beauty—is the idea which is always presupposed. This means that in everything
finite or relative, there is implied the relation to an unconditioned, an
absolute. Conditionedness and relativity imply and presuppose something
absolute and unconditioned. This means that the meaning of the conditioned and
the unconditioned are inseparable. If you analyze reality, especially your own
reality, you always discover in yourself elements which are finite, but inseparably
related to something infinite. This is a matter of conclusion from the
conditional to the unconditional, yet it is a matter of analysis which shows
that both elements correspond to each other. Reality by its very nature is
finite, pointing to the infinite to which the finite belongs and from which it
is separated.
That is the first part of the
cosmological argument. So far it is
162 A History
of Christian Thought
an existential analysis
of finitude, and to this extent it is good and true, and the necessary
condition for all philosophy of religion. Actually, it is the philosophy
of religion. However, this idea is mixed with a metaphysical realism which
identifies universals with the degrees of being. As we discussed before,
medieval realism attributes power of being to the universals. In this way a
hierarchy of concepts is constructed in which the unconditionally good and
great, and being, is not only an ontological quality, but becomes an ontic
reality, a being besides others. The highest being is that which is most
universal. It must be one, otherwise another one could be found; it must be
all-embracing. In other words, the meaning or quality of the infinite suddenly
becomes a higher infinite being, the highest or unconditionally good and great
being. The argument is right as long as it is a description of the way in which
man encounters reality, namely, as finite, implying and being excluded from
infinity. The argument is doubtful and yields a conclusion which can be
attacked if it is supposed to lead to the existence of a highest being.
In
the Proslogion Anseim himself criticizes this argument because it
starts with the conditional and makes it the basis of the unconditional. His
criticism is right with respect to the second part of his argument, but not
with respect to the first, for in the first part of his argument he does not
base the infinite on the finite, but analyzes the infinite within the finite.
But Anseim wanted more than this; he wanted a direct argument which does not
need the world in order to find God. He wanted to find God in thought itself. Before
thought goes outside itself to the world, it should he certain of Cod. This is
what I really mean by theonomous thinking.
This
is the argument; it is difficult to follow because it is extremely scholastic
and far from our modes of thought. AiseIin says: "Even the fool is
convinced that there is something in the intellect than which nothing greater
can be thought, because as soon as he (the fool) hears this, he understands it;
and whatever is understood is in the understanding. And certainly, that than which
nothing greater can be thought cannot be only in the intellect. If, namely, it
were in the intellect alone, it could be thought to be in reality also, which
is more. If, therefore, that than which nothing greater can be thought is in
the intellect alone, that than which nothing greater can be thought is some‑
Trends in the Middle Ages 163
thing than which
something greater can be thought. But this is certainly impossible. Therefore,
beyond doubt, something than Which nothing greater can be thought exists in
intellect as well as in reality. And this art Thou, our Lord." Now, this
last sentence is remarkable because I have not read such a sentence in any of
our logical treatises in the last few hundred years. After going through the
most sophisticated logical argumentation, it ends with "And this art Thou,
our Lord." This is what I call theonomy. It is not a thinking which
remains autonomous in itself, but a thinking which goes theonomously into the
relationship of the mind to its divine ground.
I
shall now attempt a point-by-point analysis of the meaning of this argument.
(1)Even the fool—the fool of Psalm
53, who says in his heart, "there is no God"—understands the meaning
of the term "God". He understands that the highest, the
unconditional, is conceived of in the term "God".
(2)If he understands the meaning of
God as something unconditional, then this is an idea which exists in the human
mind.
(3)But there is a higher form of
being, that is, being not only in the human mind, but being in the real world
outside of the human mind.
(4)Since being both within and
outside of the human mind is higher than being merely in the intellect, it must
be attributed to the unconditional.
Each
step in this argument is such that it can be easily refuted, and refutations
were given already in Anseirn's time. For instance, the refutation is that this
argument would be equally valid for every highest thing, say, for a perfect
island. It is more perfect for it to exist in reality than only in the mind.
Moreover, the term "being in the mind" is ambiguous. It means
actually being thought, being intended, being an object of man's
intentionality. But "in" is metaphorical and should not be taken
literally.
To
the first criticism Anselm answered that a perfect island is not a necessary
thought, but the highest being, or the unconditioned, is a necessary thought.
To the second criticism he could argue that the unconditional must overcome the
cleavage between subjectivity and objectivity. It cannot be only in the mind;
the power of the meaning of the unconditional overcomes subject and object,
embracing them both. If Anselm had answered in
184 A History of Christian Thought
this way, the fallacious
form of the argument would have been abandoned. Then the argument is not an
argument for a highest being, but an analysis of human thought. As such the
argument says: There must be a point at which the unconditional necessity of
thinking and being are identical, otherwise there could be no certainty at all,
not even that degree of certainty which every skeptic always presupposes. This
is the Augustinian argument that God is truth, and truth is the presupposition
which even the skeptic acknowledges. God is identical, then, with the
experience of the unconditional as true and beautiful and good. What the
ontological argument really does is to analyze in human thought something
unconditional which transcends subjectivity and objectivity. This is
necessary, otherwise truth is impossible. Truth presupposes that the subject
which knows truth and the object which is known are in some way in one and the
same place.
However,
it is impossible to conclude from this analysis to a separate existence. This
touches on the second part of the argument. At this point we cannot follow
medieval realism. The so-called ontological argument is a phenomenological
description of the human mind, insofar as the human mind by necessity points to
something beyond subjectivity and objectivity, and points to the experience of
truth. If you go beyond this, you are open to a devastating criticism, as the
whole history of the ontological argument proves. The history of this argument
is dependent on the attitude toward form or content. If the content of
the argument is emphasized, as all great Augustinians and Franciscans until
Hegel have done, the ontological argument is acceptable. If the argumental form
is emphasized, as equally great thinkers from Thomas Aquinas to Kant have
done, the argument must collapse. It is very interesting that this is an
argument which has continued from Plato to the present. And its most classical
formulation is that of Anselm.
How
is it possible for the greatest of thinkers to be divided on this argument? One
can hardly say that Thomas was more clever than Augustine, and Kant more clever
than Hegel, or vice versa; they are all supreme minds, and yet they contradict
each other. How can the phenomenon be explained that this argument is passionately
accepted and rejected by the greatest thinkers? The reason can only be that
each side is looking at something different. Those who accept the argument look
at the fact that in the
Trends in the Middle Ages 165
human mind, in spite of
its finitude, something unconditional is present. The description of this
unconditional element is not an argument. I am among those who affirm the
ontological argument in this descriptive sense. On the other hand, people like
Thomas, Duns Scotus, and Kant reject the argument because they say the
conclusion is not valid. And certainly they are right. I try to find a way out
of this world-historical conflict—whose consequences are greater than indicated
by the scholastic form of it—by showing that these people are doing different
things. Its advocates have the correct insight that the human mind, even before
it turns to the world outside, has within itself an experience of the
unconditional. Its opponents are right when they say that the second part of
the argument is invalid because it cannot lead to a highest being who exists.
Kant's argument that existence cannot be derived from the concept is absolutely
valid against it. So one can say: Anseim's intention has never been defeated,
namely, to make the certainty of God independent of any encounter with our
world, and to link it entirely to our self-consciousness.
I
would say that at this point the two ways of the philosophy of religion part
company. The one type looks at culture, nature, and history theonomously, that
is, on the basis of an awareness of the unconditional. I believe this is the
only possible philosophy of religion. The other type looks at all
this—nature, history, and the self—in terms of something which is given
outside, from which through progressive analysis one might finally come to the
existence of a highest being called God. This is the form which I deny; I
think it is hopeless and ultimately ruinous for religion. In a religious
statement I could say that where God is not the prius of everything,
he can never be reached. If one does not start with him, one cannot reach him.
This is what Anseim himself felt when he realized the incompleteness of the
cosmological argument.
Anselm
is famous in theology also for the application of his principles to the
doctrine of the atonement. In his book, Cur Deus Homo? (Why a God-man?),
he tries to understand the rational adequacy of the substitutional suffering of
Christ in the work of salvation. The steps in the doctrine are as follows:
(1)
The honor of God is violated by human sin. It is necessary for the sake of his
honor for him to react in a negative way.
166 A
History of Christian Thought
(2)There are two possible ways to
react, either by way of punishment, which would mean eternal separation from God,
or by way of satisfaction, giving satisfaction to God so that he can overlook
the sins. This is the way in which God in his mercy has decided to solve the
problem.
(3)Man is unable to fulfill this
satisfaction because he has to do what he can do anyhow, and he cannot do more.
Besides, his guilt is infinite, which makes it impossible by its very nature
for man to solve the problem. Only
Cod is able to give satisfaction to himself.
(4)On the other hand, because man is
the sinner, it is man, not God, who must give the satisfaction. Therefore,
someone who is both God and man must do it, who as God can do it and who
as man must do it. The
God-man alone is able to do this.
(5)But the God-man could not make
satisfaction through his deeds, since he had to do these anyhow out of
full obedience to God. He could do it only through his sufferings, because he
did not have to suffer; he was innocent. Thus, voluntary suffering is the work
through which Christ makes satisfaction to God.
(6)Although our sin is infinite,
this sacrifice—.-since it is made by God himself—is an infinite one; it
makes it possible for God to give Christ what he now deserves because of his
sacrifice, namely, the possession of man. Christ himself does not need
anything; what he needs and wants to have is man, so God gives him man.
Behind
this legalistic, quantitative thinking there is a profound idea, namely, that
sin has produced a tension in God himself. This tension was felt. Anselm's
theory became so popular because everyone felt that it is not simple for God to
forgive sins, just as it is not simple for us to accept ourselves. Only in the
act of suffering, of self-negation, is it possible at all. Here lies the power
of this doctrine of the atoning work of Christ. The church has never dogmatized
Anselm's theory. It has wisely restricted itself from doing so, because there
is no absolute theory of atonement. Abelard, as we shall see, and Origen as
well as others have had different theories of the atonement. The church has
never decided, but it is obvious that it liked Anselm's most, probably because
it has the deepest psychological roots. This is the feeling that a price must
be paid for our guilt, and that since we cannot pay it, God must do it.
Then the question arose: How can
man participate? To this the
Trends in the Middle Ages 167
juristic mind of Anseim
had no answer. At this point Thomas Aquinas said: It is the mystical union
between head and members, between Christ and the church, which lets us
participate in all the steps of Jesus himself.
H. ABELARD OF PARIS
We have discussed Anselm
of Canterbury as a typically theo-nomous thinker, theonomous in the sense that
he does not crush reason by heteronomous authority, and theonomous in the sense
that he does not leave it empty and unproductive, but filled with the divine
substance as it is given through revelation, tradition, and authority. Anseim
represents the more objective pole in medieval thought, objective in the sense
that the tradition is the given foundation, but not exclusive of an intensive
personal kind of thinking and searching. On the other hand, in Ahelard of Paris
we have a representative of the subjective side, if "subjective" does
not mean willful but taking into the personal life, as subjective reality. It
is unfortunate that the words "objective" and "subjective"
have become so indefinite and distorted in all respects. We should not think
that if something is objective, it is real and true, whereas if it is
subjective, it is willful. "Objective" here refers to the reality of
the given substance of the Bible, tradition, and authority.
"Subjective" refers to something which is taken into the personal
life, and as such experienced and discussed.
Abelard
was a philosopher and theologian in the twelfth century, who lived in the
shadow of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Subjectivity, which
characterizes his spiritual attitude and character, is visible in the following
points:
(1)
Abelard was enthusiastic about dialectical thinking, showing the
"yes" and "no" in everything. He was full of contempt for
those who accept the mysteries of the faith without understanding what the
words mean through which the mysteries are expressed. He did not wish to derive
the mysteries from reason, but to make them understandable to reason. Of
course, there is always the danger that the mystery will be emptied, but this
danger is inherent in thinking itself. Thinking unavoidably destroys the
immediacy of life, once it is begun. The question is whether a higher immediacy
can be re-established. This is also true of the theological lectures you hear
here. To hear them means
168 A History of Christian Thought
being endangered. This
is the reason some of the more funda-mentalistic people would be very much
afraid if their future theologians would be educated in a place like Union
Theological Seminary in New York, which likes—as Abelard did—dialectical
thinking. But if this danger is not risked, faith can never become a real
power.
(2)Abelard represents the type of
jurisprudential thinking which was introduced into Western Christianity by
Tertuflian. He was, so to speak, the lawyer who defended the right of the
tradition by showing that the contradictions in its sources—which no one can
deny—can be solved. In doing this he was supporting the church; but, of course,
the same dialectics which have the power to defend also have the power to
attack. Some of the traditional theologians sensed this danger in dialectics,
even before the danger became actual. This is also the reason some more or less
orthodox theologians do not like apologetics; the same means by which you
defend Christianity can be used to attack it.
(3)Abelard was a person of strong
self-reflection. This was almost a new event in a period which was so objective
in the sense of being related to the contents and not to oneself. In Abelard
there was not merely a commitment to truth or goodness, but at the same time
to a reflection about his being committed. We all know about this; we have a
feeling of repentance and we reflect on having this feeling. We have an
experience of faith and we reflect on this experience. This is
characteristically modern, and it first appeared in Abelard. From this
perspective we can understand his famous autobiography, Historia
Calami-tatum (History of My Misfortunes). The title is in line with
Augustine's Confessions, but the important difference is that his
self-analysis is not made in the face of God, as with Augustine. The
self-analysis is done in relation to himself, in relation to what he has
experienced. The title reveals the danger in which we all live as modern men.
When Augustine spoke of confessions, he related himself to God as he looked at
himself. If we speak of "misfortunes" or "calamities",
there always remains a feeling of resentment, and resentment is a sign of
subjectivity. This in Abelard was supported by his tremendous ambition, his
lack of consideration for others, for instance, his teachers, and his continuous
attacks on authorities.
(4)This subjectivity is visible also
in the realm of feeling.
Trends in the Middle Ages 169
Abelard was one of those
who discovered this as a special realm. An example of this was his romance with
Heloise, an event with all the tragedy and greatness of the romantic form of
love, although this was much earlier than its development in the period of
romanticism. It represents the discovery of eros against two things
which had been predominant, first, paternalistic authority, and secondly,
simple sexuality, which has nothing to do with the personal relationship, but
which the church had allowed and limited and which was used as an element in
the paternalistic family. Instead of this, we have in the romance of Abelard
and Heloise a relationship in which the sexual and the spiritual dimensions
are united. This was something new and threatening in a period in which the
barbaric tribes were just becoming educated and receptive of the Christian
gospel. Abelard was, so to speak, ahead of his time.
Abelard's
book Sic et Non (Yes and No) used a dialectical method which was older
than Abelard. It came from the canonistic literature (the sacred law
literature) in ecclesiastical jurisprudence. The papal lawyers tried to
harmonize the decrees of the various popes and synods. The practical problem
was that the pope and his advisers had to make decisions, and they wanted these
to be based on the tradition of law. So the law had to be harmonized. However,
the dogmatic decisions of the popes and synods were a part of canon law, so
they too had to be harmonized through "yes and no". When Abelard
wrote his book, he tried to harmonize the doctrines, not to show dogmatic
differences in order to arouse doubt and skepticism. On the contrary, he wanted
to show that a unity is maintained in the tradition which can be proved by
methods of harmonization. This was also accepted by the church authorities
because they needed it; in fact, all scholastics accepted the "yes and
no" method of Abelard. They asked questions, put opposing views against
the answers, discussed the opposing views, and finally came to a decision.
The first step in this method is
the attempt to deal historically with the texts of the fathers, the synods, the
decrees, and the Bible. The question whether the texts in question are
authentic had to be raised. Further, one had to show in what historical situation
and under what psychological conditions these texts were written. Any changes
in the texts had to be examined. The sphere and the configuration in which
these changes occur in the
170 A History of Christian Thought
same author had to be investigated
and described. If all this has been done, then it might be shown that what
seemed to be contradictions are not such at all, but only different forms in
which the very same idea is expressed. It happens often in the history of
thought that statements contradict each other only when taken as isolated
statements out of the Gestalt, the structure, to which they belong.
While appearing contradictory, they may actually say one and the same thing.
The
second step is the elaboration of the literal meaning of a word—the
philological task. This may lead to the discovery of different senses of a
word, even in the same writer. In my lectures I continuously discover that the
semantic problem is predominant, that if we use words like "faith" or
"Son of Cod", they have as many meanings as there are people in the
room, each with a different nuance. Now, if we ask ourselves: Is there any
danger in this method of semantic analysis, or more widely, to what degree can
logical calculus, semantic purification and reduction, be applied to the
contents of the Christian message?—then I would say there is no absolute
possibility of applying it, because when we deal with the existential things of
life, every word has an edge which makes it what it is, which gives it its color
and power; if that is removed, you leave a bone—a conceptual bone—without flesh
and skin. This is why I am not convinced by the criticisms of logical
positivists, in spite of my interest in semantics, because I believe that if
they have their way completely, all words in realms like theology, metaphysics,
ontology, art theory, or history will lose their full meaning and be reduced to
mathematical signs from which the real power and meaning of such words escape.
The
application of the authority of the Bible as the ultimate criterion is the next
step. This sounds very Protestant, like so much biblicism in the Middle Ages,
but it really is not. It was not a new experience of the Bible out of which
Abelard spoke, as was the case with Luther. It was rather the application of
the Bible as a law, as the ultimate legal judge. This is quite different from
the Protestant interpretation of the Bible as the place where the message of
justification can be found. The legal relationship to the tradition in Abelard
is different from the creative traditionalism of Anseim. Though he was less
dialectical than Abelard, Anseim was more creative and even more courageous,
and at the same time more sensitive to the substance of the tradition.
Trends in the Middle Ages 171
Abelard
shows subjectivity in all his doctrines, ethical and theological. His doctrine
of ethical autonomy is connected with the subjective reason. He was a
predecessor of Kant, in spite of the tremendous difference in time and
situation. He taught that it is not an act in itself that is good or bad, but
the intention makes it so. Kant expressed the same idea—nothing is good except
a good will. So for Abelard the act itself is indifferent; only the intention
is decisive. "In the intention consists the merit." Therefore, what
makes us sinful is not nature itself, not even the desire itself, but the
intention, the will. The contents of a moral system are not the important
thing, but whether or not the conscience follows them. The contents of the
moral system are always questionable when applied to a concrete situation. They
can never be taken as absolutes, but the conscience must be the guide. The
perfect good, of course, is an exact correspondence between the objective norm
and the subjective intention, provided the conscience shows what is actually
right. But often this is not the case. When it is not, it is better to follow
our conscience, even if it is objectively wrong. He says: "There is no
sin except against our conscience." In one sense even Thomas Aquinas accepted
this notion. Aquinas said: If a superior in my order, to whom I have sworn
obedience, asks me to do something which is against my conscience, I shall not
do it, although I am obliged to be obedient to him. The conscience was regarded
as ultimate judge, though it may be objectively erroneous. The Protestants and
Kant were anticipated by these formulations, but in Abelard's time they could
not work, because he neglected the educational element. If the uneducated
masses are told that they should follow their conscience, but they have no
sufficiently strict objective norms, they will wander and go astray. In this
respect, as in so many others, Abelard anticipated ideas which later became
actual, for example, in eighteenth-century France.
Abelard
denied that in Adam all have sinned. Sin is not sensuality, but an act of the
will. There is no sin without an agreement of the will, and since we did not
agree with our will when Adam sinned, it is not sin for us. Here we see how
subjectivity, exactly as in the eighteenth century, dissolves the doctrine of
original sin, because this doctrine shows the tragic side of sin, the objective
and not the personal, subjective side.
In christology Abelard emphasized
the human activity of
172 A History of Christian Thought
Christ, and denied in a
radical way that Christ was a transformed God or Logos or higher divine being.
For him the personal activity of Christ is decisive, not his ontological origin
in God.
He
is best known to Protestants and most often quoted for his idea of salvation.
As we have seen, Anseim in his doctrine of atonement makes a deal between God
and Christ, out of the situation produced by human sin. He describes atonement
in quantitative terms of satisfaction. For Abelard, however, it is the love of
God which is visible in the cross of Christ; this produces our love. It is not
an objective mechanism between transcendent powers which enables God to
forgive, as it is in Anselm, but it is the subjective act of divine love which
evokes in us a love for him. Salvation is man's ethical.—in the sense of
personal—res-ponse to the forgiving act of divine love. This is one of the
types of the doctrine of atonement. It is a doctrine of atonement in the
personal center. The mechanism of atonement through substitutionary suffering
is ruled out. Anselm's doctrine lies in the mythological realm in which God
and Christ trade with each other; Christ sacrifices and gets something back
from God in return. In this respect Abelard is pre-Protestant and
pre-autonomous. This is subjectivity in the sense of reason and centered
personality. Many of these ideas in Abelard were rejected; he was too early for
the educational situation in which the church found itself. For instance, if
you tell someone whom you want to educate that the act of confession (i.e.,
repentance) is valid only if it arises out of love toward God, and not from
fear, then you undercut the educational effect of the preaching of the law.
Abelard as a theologian did not think in terms of what is good for the people,
but in terms of what is ultimately true, and what is good for those who are
autonomous. Although some of his doctrines were rejected, he became one of the
most influential people in the development toward scholasticism, because of the
greatness of his dialectical method.
I. BERNARD OFCLAIRVAUX
Bernard of Clairvaux, a
man of the same century as Abelard, fought with him over the possibility of
applying dialectics to Christian beliefs. Bernard is the most eminent
representative of Christian mysticism. As the foe of Abelard he succeeded in
Trends in the Middle Ages 173
bringing Abelard before
a council which rejected him. let, it is only half-true to call him an
adversary of Abelard, because Bernard was also in favor of the
subjective side, subjectivity in terms of mystical experience. He wanted to
make the objective Christian doctrines, the decisions of the fathers and the
church councils, matters of personal appropriation. The difference was that
while Abelard did this in terms of reason, Bernard did it in
terms of mystical experience.
This experience is based on faith, as with every medieval theolcgian, and faith
is described as an anticipation of the will. This is Augustinian voluntarism
which Bernard is expressing. Faith is daring and free, an anticipation of
something which can become real personally only through full experience.
Certainty is not given in the act of faith; it is a daring anticipation of a
state to which one may attain. Faith is created by the divine Spirit, and the
experience which follows confirms it.
However,
Bernard's mysticism was even more important and influential than these ideas
which foreshadow the Franciscan school and much of later medieval thought about
faith. In a seminar on Christian mysticism we have dealt with the question,
"Can mysticism be baptized?" Can it be Christian? Mysticism is much
older than Christianity, and much more universal. What about the relation of
Christianity to mysticism? In our seminar we have come to the conclusion that
mysticism can be baptized if it becomes a concrete Christ-mysticism,
very similar to the way it is in Paul—a participation in Christ as Spirit. This
is just what Bernard of Clairvaux did. The importance of Bernard is that he is
the "baptizing father" in the development of Christian mysticism.
Whenever it is said, as some Barthians do, that Christianity and mysticism are
two different things, that either one is a Christian or a mystic, that the
attempt of almost two thousand years to baptize mysticism is wrong, then
one must point to Bernard in whom a mysticism of love is expressed. Only if you
have a mysticism of love can you have a Christian mysticism.
Mysticism
has two types of content in Bernard. First, there is the picture of Jesus as it
is given in the biblical record, through which the divine is transparent. The
stress is on participation in his humility, not on an ethical command, although
this follows after it. We participate in the reality of God in Jesus. The
mystical following of Jesus is participating in him. When we read about
174 A Histor!, of Christian Thought
how Francis of Assisi
and Thomas a Kempis tried to follow Jesus, we should never forget that this was
not the way in which a Jew follows Moses; it was not another law, but it was
meant as a participation in the meaning of what Jesus is. In this way the
mystics of the Middle Ages overcame a legal interpretation of obedience to
Christ. We cannot really follow him exctpt we participate in him mystically.
This participation is dynamic, not static and legalistic. This concrete, active
mysticism of love to Christ is the presupposition of the second type of content
in Bernard's mysticism. This is the abstract mysticism; it is called
"abstract" because it abstracts from anything concrete. It is a
mysticism of the abyss of the divine. This side of the mystical experience is
that which Christian mysticism has in common with all other forms of mysticism.
There are three steps, according to
Bernard:
(1) Consideration (you look at things
from outside; they remain objects for your subjectivity).
(2) Contemplation (participating in
the "temple", going into the holiness of the holy).
(3) Excessus (going outside oneself, an
attitude which exceeds the normal existence, one in which man is driven beyond
himself without losing himself, it is also described as raptus, being
grasped).
In
the third stage man goes over into the divinity, like a drop of wine which
falls into a glass of wine. The substance remains, but the form of the
individual drop is dissolved into the all-embracing divine form. One does not
lose one's identity, but it becomes a part of the divine reality.
These
two forms of mysticism must always be distinguished: concrete mysticism, which
is mysticism of love and participating in the Savior-God, and abstract
mysticism, or transcending mysticism, which goes beyond everything finite to
the ultimate ground of everything that is. When we examine these two forms, we
can say that at least for this life Bernard's mysticism stands within the
Christian tradition. As for the second type, we can say that this makes love in
eternity impossible. But then we must add that Paul said something similar in his
statement that God will be all in all. This means that when we come to the
ultimate, we cannot think simply in terms of separated individuals, although we
must still think in terms of love. And this is no easy task. In any case,
Trends in the Middle Ages 175
the decisive thing is
that in Bernard there is something different than in Pseudo-Dionysius, and this
is his concrete mysticism, Christ mysticism, love mysticism. It is still
mysticism, because mysticism is participation, and participation involves
partial identification.
In
coming to the end of this discussion on the early Middle Ages, we must briefly
consider Hugh of St. Victor, the most influential theologian of the twelfth
century. More than Anselm, Abelard, or Bernard, he was a fulfiller of
systematic thinking. He wrote a book, On the Sacraments of the Christian
Faith. The term "sacrament" is used in the broadest sense; all
the works of God and everything in which the divine becomes visible are
sacraments. He distinguishes two groups of the works of God. He calles them the
opera conditionis, the works of condition, and the opera
reparationis, the works of reparation. This offers a deep insight into
medieval life. All things are visible embodiments of the invisible ground
behind them. Nevertheless, this does not lead to a pantheistic form of
theology, because although all the works of God are sacraments, they are
concentrated into seven sacraments. If not only bodily realities, but also
activities of Cod are called sacraments, then the idea of sacrament becomes
full of dynamism. Thus, we have an interpretation of the world in dynamic
sacramental form, centered around the seven sacraments of the church,
particularly around the Mass and penance.
J. JOAC}{IM OF FLORIS
In Joachim of Floris we have
an interpretation of history which became extremely influential upon the Middle
Ages as well as upon modern thought. Joachim was an abbot of a monastery in
Calabria in southern Italy. He wrote a number of books in which he developed a
philosophy of history which became an alternative to the Augustinian
interpretation of history and formed the background to most of the
revolutionary movements in the Middle Ages and in modern times. Augustine's
interpretation of history was the basis for most conservative movements during
the same time. I want to confront the Joachimist interpretation of history with
the Augustinian.
The
Augustinian view places the reign of Christ, the thousand-year period, in the
present time and identifies it with the control
176 A History of Christian Thought
of this period by the
hierarchy and its divine graces. The sacramental power of the hierarchy makes
it the immediate medium of Christ, so that the thousand-year period, the
monarchy of Christ, is the monarchy of the church. Since this is the
last period, according to Daniel, there is no future any more; the thousand
years are here and we live in them. Criticism can only be directed to the
church so far as it is a mixed body, not to its foundation, which is final. In
this way Augustine removed the threat of millenari-anism—the doctrine of the
thousand years—which holds that the millennium is still to come in the future,
and in the light of which the church and its hierarchy could be criticized.
Joachim
renewed the idea of the thousand years of Christ which still lie in the future.
He spoke about the three dispensations which unfold in history and which are
characterized by historical figures. The first period runs from Adam to John
the Baptist, or to Jesus Christ; it is the age of the Father, This age is
overcome by the very fact of the Christ. The second period runs from King
Uzziah (Isaiah 6) to the year A.D. 1260. This way of figuring is arrived at by
the fact that according to the genealogies of the Old Testament, this age is
supposed to embrace forty-two generations. The third dispensation runs from
Benedict in the sixth century after Christ, when Western monasticism started;
it is called the age of the Spirit. It has twenty-one generations after Christ,
which lead up to the year 1260.
This
construction seems to be very artificial. The ages overlap; the second overlaps
with the first age from King Uzziah to the birth of Christ, or to John the
Baptist. The second is overlapped by the third from Benedict to 1260. What does
this overlapping mean? It represents a profound insight into historical developments.
Historical periods never start sharply but always unfold with some overlapping.
There is no such thing as "the end of the Gothic period" and
"the beginning of the Renaissance", no "end of the
Renaissance" and "beginning of the Baroque", no "end of the
Baroque" and "beginning of the Rococo", etc. Every new
period is conceived and born in the womb of the previous one. No one was more
aware of this than Karl Marx when he constructed his interpretation of
history, describing how each new period was prepared in the womb of the
preceding one—for instance, the socialist in the womb of the bourgeois period,
and the latter in the womb of the late feudal period. It is like birth,
Trends in the Middle Ages 177
there is a certain
period in which mother and child are together in the same body. According to
this idea of overlapping, the germs of the new period are prior to what he
called fructificatio (fructification), mature realization. A period is
never mature when its first beginnings become visible. In this trinitarian
scheme applied to history, the succeeding period is always present for a
certain amount of time in the preceding one. In this way Christ is one moment
in the three periods of history, and history goes beyond him. This is the same
problem we have in the Fourth Gospel, whether or not the Spirit goes beyond the
Christ. The Fourth Gospel decides in a double way: on the one hand, it decides
partly for the Spirit going beyond the Christ when it says that many things
cannot be said now, but the Spirit will come and help you; and, on the other
hand, the Spirit does not take of its own but from Christ, who is present in
the second period, the period of the Son.
These
ideas about the meaning of historical development should be taken seriously.
They should not be rejected just because of these names in the Old Testament,
which are certainly arbitrary. Every historian knows about the arbitrariness of
every periodization of history. Historians will tell you that the period which
we call the "Renaissance" was shared in by only a few people—artists,
scholars, and politicians in Italy, and later by some people in England,
Holland, and Germany. The masses of people still lived under the conditions
which had prevailed for the past century.
What
are the characteristics of these stages? Being a profound observer Joachim knew
that the first stage was to be determined sociologically. This is a
period in which marriage is the decisive sociological form, work and servitude
(slavery, feudalism, etc.) are economically decisive, and which religiously can
be identified as the period of law. In the second period the clergy and the
organized church are decisive. The sacramental reality makes the law unnecessary;
because of grace it is a time for faith instead of good works. It is not an age
of autonomy, but one in which the clergy represent for everyone the presence of
the divine. The third period is monasticism, when the monastic ideal will grasp
all mankind and the birth of new generations will cease. This is, therefore,
by necessity the last period. The graces given by the Holy Spirit in this
period are higher than the sacramental graces
178 A History of Christian Thought
of the second period,
and still higher than the law of the first period. Whereas the second period
was prepared already in Judaism, which had some sacramental graces, the third
period was prepared in church history, with the foundation in monasticism. The
inner part of this period is freedom, that is, autonomy, not being subject any
more to state or church authorities. The appropriate attitude is contemplation
instead of work, and love instead of law.
So
we have here a sociological understanding of the different periods of history,
but sociology is not the "cause" of everything, as it is in Marxism
but it is a necessary condition. At the same time it is an interpretation of
religion which shows the difference between works (under the law), grace
accepted by faith, and autonomous freedom in contemplation and love. The scheme
is trinitarian; the dynamic element which is always implied in trinitarian
theology has become horizontal, transferred to the movement of history. It is
the historization of the trinitarian idea: Father, Son, and Spirit have
different functions in history. Of course, all three are always present—God
cannot be divided—but they are present with a different emphasis. This means
that something is still ahead. The perfect society, the monastic society, will
still come, and when measured by it not only the Old Testament society but
also the New Testament society, the church, must be criticized.
Another
idea is that truth is not absolute, but is valid for its time—bonurn
et necessarium in suo tern pore—the good and necessary according to its
time. This is a dynamic concept of truth, the idea that truth changes in
history according to the situation. The early church had to apply this
principle always to the Old Testament. The truth of the Old Testament is
different from that of the New Testament, and yet it also is the divinely
inspired Word of God. To account for this theologians spoke about dispensations
or covenants. The idea of the kairos was used, which means that as the
time is different, so the truth is different. This idea was placed against the
absolutism of the Catholic Church, which identified its own being with the last
period of history, that is, with the ultimate truth. For Joachim there is a
higher truth than that of the church, namely, the truth of the Spirit. From
this it follows that the church is relative. It is inter utrumque, between
both the period of the Father and the
Trends in the Middle Ages 179
period of the Spirit.
Its shortcomings are due not only to distortions, but also to its relative
validity. In this scheme the church is relativized. Only the third period is
absolute; it is not authoritarian any more, but autonomous. Every individual
has the divine Spirit within himself. This means that the ideal for
Christianity lies in the future and not in the past. He called it intellectus
spiritualis and not literalis, that is, a spiritually formed
intellect and not an intellect dependent on literalistic laws.
From
this it follows that in the future the hierarchy as well as the sacraments will
come to an end. They will not be needed because everything will be directly
related to God spiritually, and no authoritarian intervention will be
necessary. Joachim spoke of a papa angelica, an angelic pope, which is
more a principle than a man. It is a pope who represents the presence of the
Spirit without authority. The hierarchy will be transformed into monasticism,
and so will the laity. When this happens the last period will have been
reached. In this third stage there will be perfection, contemplation, liberty,
and Spirit. This will happen in history. For Augustine the final end is only
transcended; nothing new will happen in history any more. For Joachim the new
is in history.
Joachim
also spoke of the "eternal gospel", which is not a book. The gospel
is the presence of the divine Spirit in every individual, according to the
prophecy of Joel, which is often used in this context. It is a simplex
intuitus veritatis, a simple intuition of truth which all can have without
intermediate authority. Freedom means the authority of the divine Spirit in
the individual. This is theonomy, not rationalistic autonomy, theonomy which is
filled with the presence of the divine Spirit. History produces freedom in the
course of its progress. The idea is progressivistic; the goal is ahead.
These
were revolutionary ideas which understattdably Thomas Aquinas fought against in
the name of the church. The church has its classical period in the past,
not in the future. The classical period of the church is the apostolic age. The
church is based on history; history has brought the church about, but the
church is itself not in history. It is beyond it because it is at the
end of history. Joachim's ideas are important because they had a dynamic,
revolutionary, explosive power. The extreme Franciscans used his prophecies and
applied them to their own order, and on
180 A History, of Christian Thought
that basis they revolted
against the church. Many sectarian movements, including the sects of the
Reformation on which much of American life is dependent, were directly or
indirectly dependent on Joachim of Floris. The philosophers of the
Enlightenment who taught that there will be a third period of history in which
everyone will be taught directly by the inner light—the light of reason —were
dependent on Joachim's ideas. The socialist movement rests on the same idea
when in its classless society everybody will be directly responsible to the ultimate
principles. It is not the case, of course, that all these people knew Joachim
and his ideas directly, but there was a tradition of revolutionary thinking in
Western Europe, some of the fundamental ideas of which first appeared in
Joachim. Much of American utopianism must be understood in the light of this
movement in the West. So far as I know none of this revolutionary thinking can
be found in the Eastern religions, because by definition they are
non-historical religions. In Joachim a new insight into the dialectics of
history appeared. His influence was mediated by the radical Franciscan monks.
K. THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
The thirteenth century
is the high point of the Middle Ages. The whole destiny of the Western world
was decided at this time in a very definite way. All the scholastics were
dependent on Peter Lombard, whom we have not yet discussed, although he belongs
to the twelfth century. He was not as original as the others, but he represents
the systematic, didactic type of the Middle Ages. He organized the statements
of the fathers in a book entitled The Four Books of Sentences, which
became the text-book of the Middle Ages, if there ever was a text-book. Every
great scholastic started by writing a commentary on Lombard's Sentences.
The
thirteenth century can be described theologically in three steps, represented
by three names: Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus. There are others
between them whom we will mention occasionally. Duns Scotus was the greatest of
them all as a scholar, and he was also the starting point of new developments
on which the whole modern period is dependent. Thomas Aquinas is the classical
theologian of the Roman Church, and was established as such again in modern
times by the pope.
Trends in the Middle Ages 181
Bonaventura represents
the spirit of Augustine and St Francis, in his being, in his mysticism, and in
his theology.
What
are the presuppositions of the thirteenth century which made it the high point
of the Middle Ages? First, I want to mention the crusades, not because of their
political and military significance but because they brought about the
encounter of Christianity with two highly developed cultures, the original
Jewish and the Islamic cultures. One could perhaps even say that a third
culture was encountered at that time, namely, the classical culture of ancient
Greece, which was mediated into the medieval world by the Arabian theologians.
The fact of an encounter with another, if it is serious enough, always
involves a kind of self-reflection. Only if you encounter someone else are you
able to reflect on yourselves. As long as you go ahead without resistance, you
are not forced to look back upon yourselves. When you encounter resistance,
you reflect. This is what Christianity had to do. It began to reflect on itself
in a much more radical way. The second presupposition was the appearance
of the complete Aristotle in his genuine writings, and with him the appearance
of a scientific philosophical system which was methodologically superior to the
Augustinian tradition. Thirdly, there was the rise of several new types of
monastic orders, the preaching and mendicant orders, which both intensified and
popularized the religious substance. They produced world-wide organizations
through all countries and contended with each other theologically. Since they
were not nationally provincial, they could compete on a world-wide scale and
produce theological systems of the highest significance in conflict with each
other. Since the thirteenth century these two orders became the bearers of the
theological process. They both used Aristotle, but they used him differently.
They used the new knowledge of Judaism and Islam, but they used it differently.
This
leads us to a description of the two types of orders, the Franciscan and the
Dominican, named after two personalities, Francis of Assisi and Dominic.
Francis continued the monasticism of Augustine and Bernard. Like them he
emphasized personal experience, but he introduced the idea of the active life
in contrast to the contemplative life. From the beginning this was always
nearer to the Western mind than to the East. Francis also produced a new
relationship to nature; not only human
182 A History of Christian Thought
hierarchical orders, but
also sun and stars and animals and plants belong to the power of the divine
life. The best thing to do to understand him is to look at the pictures of
Giotto, who painted almost nothing else than the story of St. Francis, who had
become the new holy legend. Thus, Francis became the father of the Renaissance;
by his feeling of fraternity with all beings, he opened up nature for religion.
He opened up nature with respect to its ground of being, which is the same as
it is in man.
Francis
introduced also the idea that the lay people must be brought into the circle of
the holy. In the sacramental system the clergy and the monks were the real
representatives, while the laymen were only passive. To bring the laity into
the circle he created the so-called "third order", the tertiaries.
The first is the male order, the monks; the second is the corresponding
female order, the nuns; the third is the laymen who remain married and subject
themselves to some of the principles of the monastic orders. All of this was
placed by Francis under the authority of the pope. Giotto's famous picture, in
which Innocent III, the greatest pope, and Francis, the greatest saint of the
Roman Church, met each other, depicts a classical moment in world history.
Nevertheless, this represented a threat to the hierarchical system. The danger
became actual in the revolution of the Franciscan radicals who tried to unite
Francis and Joachim, and who became the prototypes of many later
anti-ecclesiastical and anti-religious movements. The lay principle was also
dangerous because it could spell the end of the absolute authority of the
hierarchy. Dangerous also was the new relationship to nature and the vision of
the divine ground in it which in the long run would undermine Catholic
supernaturalism. Generally speaking, Francis belonged to the
Augustinian-Anselmian-Bernardian tradition of the mystical union of
Christianity with the elements of culture and nature.
In
contrast to Francis, Dominic was not such an original personality. He assumed
the task of preaching to the people and of defending the faith. This was
something new—defending either by mediation or by conversion or by persecution,
that is, either in terms of apologetics or in terms of missions or in terms of
church power. In all three ways the Dominicans became the order of the
Inquisition and of the Counter-Reformation until, at a later
time, the Jesuits took over. The Dominican order pro‑
Trends in the Middle Ages
duced the classical
system of mediation, of apologetic theology that of Thomas Aquinas, and the
greatest preachers, among whoff
was Meister Eckhart. More than
any other school, they brought Aristotle into the West. Their instrument was
the intellect, even in their mysticism, whereas the Franciscan-Augustinian
tradition laid stress more on the will. Finally, the voluntarism of the Franciscans
broke down the intellectualism of the Dominicans, thus opening the way for Duns
Scotus, Ockham, and the nominalists.
This
was the spiritual background for the tremendous development of the thirteenth
century. Without constant reference to these movements, the theology of this
period cannot be understood. When we think of Thomas Aquinas, we must
understand him as a mediating theologian. He understood, better than anyone
else, the mediating function of theology. In German theology the term Vermittlungstheologie
has been used of the nineteenth century in a derogatory sense. I have come to
its defense by saying that all theology is mediation, the mediation of the
message of the gospel with the categories of the understanding as they exist in
any given period of history.
The
dynamics of the high Middle Ages are determined by the conflict between
Augustine and Aristotle, or between the Franciscans who were Augustinians and
the Dominicans who were Aristotelian. This contrast, however, should not be
taken too exclusively. For all medieval theologians were Augustinian in
substance. And since the thirteenth century they were all Aristotelian with
respect to their philosophical categories. Yet, these schools did have
different emphases which have been reflected ever since in the philosophy of
religion.
Let
us make clear what Aristotle meant for the Middle Ages the moment he was discovered
at the beginning of the thirteenth century, with the help of the Arabian
philosophers.
(1)
Aristotle's logic had always been known, but it was used as a tool and had no
direct influence on the content of theology. When the whole work of Aristotle
was rediscovered, it was found to be a complete system in which all realms of
life were discussed—observations about nature, politics, and ethics. It
represented an independent secular world-view, including a system of values and
meanings. The question was: How could a world which had been educated in the
Augustinian ecclesiastical tradition deal with this secular system of ideas and
meanings? It
184 A History of Christian Thought
was similar to the
question theology has raised in recent centuries: How can the scientific
revolution since the seventeenth century be mediated with the Christian
tradition?
(2)Aristotle offered basic
metaphysical categories, such as form and matter, actuality and potentiality.
He came with a new doctrine of matter, of the relation of God to the world, and
on this basis an ontological analysis of reality.
(3)Perhaps the most important thing
he gave was a new approach to knowledge. The soul has to receive impressions
from the external world. Experience is always the beginning in Aristotle,
whereas in the Augustinian tradition immediate intuition was the point of
departure. The Augustinians stood, so to speak, in the divine center, and
judged the world from there. The Aristotelians looked at the world, and
concluded to the divine center.
The
whole movement of Augustinianism in relation to Aristotelianism must be viewed
in the light of this question of knowledge. The question is: Is our knowledge a
participation in the divine knowledge of the world and himself, or must
we on the contrary recognize God by approaching the world from the outside? Is
God the last or the first in our knowledge? The Augus-tinians answered that the
knowledge of God precedes all other knowledge; it comes first and we must start
with it. We have the principles of truth within ourselves. God is the presupposition
even of the question of God, as he is the presupposition of every quest for
truth. "He is", says Bonaventura, "most truly present to the
soul and immediately knowable." The principles of truth are the divine or
eternal light within us. We start with them; we begin with our knowledge of
God, and from this we go to the world, using the principles of the divine light
within us, This divine light or these principles are the universal categories,
especially the transcendentalia, those things which transcend everything
concrete and given, such as being, the true, the good, the one. These are
ultimate concepts of which we have immediate knowledge, and this knowledge is
the divine light in our soul. Only on the basis of this immediate knowledge of
the ultimate principles of reality can we find truth in the empirical world.
These principles are present in every act of knowing. Whenever we say what
something is, whenever we make a logical judgment about something, the ideas of
the true, of the good, of being itself,
Trends in the Middle Ages 185
are present. Bonaventura
can say: "Being itself is what first appears in the intellect", and
being itself is the basic statement about God. This means that every act of
cognition is made in the power of the divine light. The Franciscans said that
this divine light and these principles within us are uncreated, and we participate
in them. Somehow this means that there is no such thing as secular knowledge.
All knowledge is in some way rooted in the knowledge of the divine within us.
There is a point of identity in our soul, and this point precedes every special
act of knowledge. Or, we could say that every act of knowledge—about animals,
plants, bodies, astronomy, mathematics—is implicitly religious. A mathematical
proposition as well as a medical discovery is implicitly religious because it
is possible only in the power of these ultimate principles which are the
uncreated divine light in the human soul. This is the famous doctrine of the
inner light, which was also used by the sectarian movements and by all the
mystics during the Middle Ages and the Reformation period, and which in the
last analysis underlies even the rationalism of the Enlightenment. The
rationalists were all philosophers of the inner light, even though this light
later on became cut off from its divine ground.
This
attitude we call theononious. The Franciscans tried to maintain a theonomous
outlook in spite of the fact that they had to use such Aristotelian concepts as
form and matter, potentiality and actuality. So from Augustine to Bonaventura
we have a philosophy that is implicitly religious, or theonomous, in which God
is not a conclusion from other premises, but prior to all conclusions, making them
possible. This is the philosophy which in my article, "The Two Types of
Philosophy of Religion" (in Theology of Culture), I call the
ontological type; it can also be called the mystical type, the type of
immediacy. I also like to call it the theonornous type in which the divine
precedes the secular.
The
opposite type is the Thomist philosophy of religion. Thomas Aquinas cuts off
the immediate presence of God in the act of knowing. Of course, he acknowledges
that God is the first in himself, but he is not the first for us. Our knowledge
cannot start with God, although everything starts with him; but our knowledge
must reach him by starting with his effects—the finite world. In starting with
the effects of God we can conclude to
186 A History of Christian Thought
their cause. In other
words, man is separated from being itself, from truth itself, and from the good
itself. Of course, Thomas could not deny that these principles are in the
structure of man's intellect, but he calls them created light, not uncreated
light. They are not the divine presence in us; instead, they are the works of
God in us; they are finite. Thus, in the act of knowledge, we do not have God,
but with these principles we can attain to God. It is not that we start with
the divine principles in us and then discover the finite world, as the
Franciscans; but we start with the finite world and then perhaps we can
discover God in our acts of cognition.
In
opposing this Thomist theory the Franciscans said that this method which must start—in
a good Aristotelian way—with sense experience is good for scientia (for
"science" in the broadest sense of the word) but it destroys sapientia,
wisdom. Sapientia means the knowledge of the ultimate principles,
the knowledge of God. One of l3onaventura's followers made the prophetic
statement that the moment you pursue the Aristotelian-Thomist method and start
with the external world, you will lose the principles. You will gain the
external world—he agreed with that because he knew that empirical knowledge can
be acquired in no other way—but you will lose the wisdom which is able
to grasp intuitively the ultimate principles within yourself. Thomas answered
that the knowledge of God, like all knowledge, must begin with sense experience
and reach God on this basis in terms of rational conclusions.
The
divergence between these two approaches to the knowledge of God is the great
problem of the philosophy of religion, and, as I will row show, it is the
ultimate cause of the secularization of the Western world—I am using
"cause" in the cognitive realm, for there are other causes too. The
Aristotelian method is placed against the Augustinian, and gradually this
method of starting with the external world prevailed. Thomas knew that the
conclusions reached in this way, though they are logically correct, do not
produce a real conviction about God. Therefore, they must be completed by
authority. In other words, the church guarantees the truth which can never be
fully reached merely by an empirical approach to God. The situation is clear:
In Bonaventura we have a theonomous knowledge in all realms of life; we have no
knowledge whatsoever without beginning with God. In Thomas
Trends in the Middle Ages 187
we have autonomous
knowledge, reached by the scientific method, as far as it goes. But Thomas knew
that it does not go far enough, so it must be completed by authority. This is
the meaning of the heated struggle between the Augustinians and the
Aristotelians in the thirteenth century. There was a gap in the Thomist
approach, but at that time the gap was not yet visible. By his genius, his
power to take in almost everything, his power to mediate, his personal, even
mystical, piety, Thomas was able to cover the gap, but the gap was there and
had consequences reaching far beyond what Thomas himself realized. This came
out in Duns Scotus,
Dims
Scotus was not a mediating but a radical thinker. He was one of those who tear
up what seems to be united. He fought against the mediations of Thomas Aquinas.
On the other hand, he did not follow his own Franciscan predecessors. He
followed Thomas by accepting Aristotle, but he realized the consequences which
Thomas was able to cover. For Duns Scotus there is an infinite gap between the
finite and the infinite. Therefore, the finite cannot reach God cognitively at
all, either in terms of im-mediacy—as the older Franciscans wanted—nor in terms
of demonstrations, as Thomas and the Dominicans wanted. He criticized—and
insofar as you are nominalists, you will like this criticism—even the transcendentalia,
the ultimate principles. He says: Being itself (esse ipsum) is only
a word; it points to an analogy between the infinite and the finite, but only
an analogy. The word "being" does not cover God as well as the world.
The gap is such that you cannot cover both of them with one word, not even in
terms of the verum, bonum, unum (the true, good, and one), and that
means in terms of being itself. Therefore, there is only one way that is open
to receive Cod, the way of authority, the way of revelation received by the
authority of the church.
The
result is that in Duns Scotus we have two positivisms: the religious or
ecclesiastical positivism, which means that we must simply accept what is given
to us by the church since we cannot reach God cognitively, and the positivism
of the empirical method, which means we must discover what is positively given
in nature by the methods of induction and abstraction. Now the gap of which I
spoke has become visible. In Thomas it was closed; in Duns Scotus it was opened
up and has never been
188 A History of Christian Thought
closed again. It is
still our problem, as it was the problem of the thirteenth century.
The
gap opened up by Dims Scotus became very large a century later in Ockham, the
real father of nominalism. In his view God cannot be approached at all through
autonomous knowledge; he is out of reach. Everything could be the opposite of
what it is. Therefore, God can be reached only by subjecting ourselves to the
biblical and ecclesiastical authorities. And we can subject ourselves to them
only if we have the habitus, the habit, of grace. Only if grace is
working in us can we receive the authority of the church. Cultural knowledge,
the knowledge of science, is completely free and autonomous, and religious
knowledge is completely heteronomous. The original theonomy of the
Augustinian-Franciscan tradition has been broken into complete scientific
autonomy on the one side, and complete ecclesiastical heteronomy on the other
side. This is the situation which prevailed at the end of the Middle Ages.
Since the Middle Ages were based on a system of mediation, they came to an end
when these mediations broke down.
If
we compare these positions on the traditional question of reason and
revelation, we can say: In Boriaventura reason itself is revelatory insofar as
in its own depths the principles of truth are given. This does not, of course,
refer to the historical revelation in Christ, but to our knowledge of God. In
Thomas reason is able to express revelation. In Duns Scotus reason is unable to
express revelation. In Ockham revelation stands alongside of reason, even in
opposition to it. At the end of the Middle Ages the religious and secular
realms are separated, but not in the way in which they are today, for
the Middle Ages still wanted to maintain its traditional unity. Therefore, the
church developed its radical heteronomous claim to rule over all realms, and
thus to control them from the outside. Then the desperate fight between
autonomous secularism and religious heteronomy developed. The late Middle Ages
should not be confused with the earlier Middle Ages. As long as the tradition
retained its force, the Middle Ages were not heteronomous; they were theonomous.
But by the end of the Middle Ages, an independent secular realm became established.
This led to the question whether the church could control this independent
realm. The Renaissance and the Reformation were the means by which the church
was deprived of this power.
Trends in the Middle Ages 189
The
theory of double truth appeared at this time. Some people seriously
believed—they were not merely being diplomatic, to hide themselves—that in
reality a statement on the same matter can be both theologically true and
philosophically false, and vice versa. Thus, they could accept the whole
heteronomous system of the church and, at the same time, continue to develop
their autonomous thought. If a philosophical proposition conflicted with the
theological tradition, they could take refuge in the "double truth"
theory. For many this was a way of evasion, but it was also a belief that these
realms are so separated that you can say in one realm the opposite of what you
say in the other.
We
have been dealing with the epistemological problem, but behind it there is the
problem of God. The
medieval idea of God has three levels.
(1)The first and fundamental level
is the idea of God as primum esse, the first being, or prima causa, the
first cause. The word "cause" here is not meant in the sense of
"cause and effect" in the realm of finitude. And the word prima does
not mean first in a temporal way, but in the sense of the "ground" of
all causes. So the term "cause" is here used more symbolically than
literally. God is the creative ground in everything, creatrix urzi-versalium
substantia, the creative substance of everything that is. This is the first
statement about God. God is the ground of being, as I like to express it, or
being-itself, or the first cause; all these terms point to the same meaning.
(2)This substance cannot be
understood in terms of the inorganic realm—as fire or water, as the ancient
physicists did—nor in the biological realm as a life process. It must be
understood as intellect. The first quality of God as the ground of being is
intellect. Intellect does not mean intelligence; it means the point in which
God is for himself subject and object at the same time; it means God knowing
himself and knowing the world as that which he is not. The ground of being, or
in other words, the creative substance, is the bearer of meaning. The
consequence is that the world is meaningful; it can be understood in words
which have meaning. The logos, the word, can grasp it. To understand
reality, we must presuppose that it is understandable. Reality is understandable
because its divine ground has the character of intellect. Knowledge is possible
only because the divine intellect is the ground of everything.
190 A History of Christian Thought
(3)
The third point is that God is will. This comes from the Christian Augustinian
tradition, whereas the emphasis on intellect comes from the Greek Aristotelian
tradition. If the concept of will is applied to God and the world, it refers to
the dynamic ground of everything, not to the psychological function which we observe
in ourselves. Will is the productive power of the ground of being. This will
has the nature of love—in good Augustinian tradition. The creative substance of
the world has meaning and love; it is intellect and will, symbolically
speaking. Just as we said that God knows himself, so now we must say that God
wills or loves himself as the absolute good, indeed, as the ultimate aim of
everything. He loves the creatures in giving them in a graded way the good of
which he is the ultimate ground. Therefore, all the creatures long for him; he
is the object of their love, the love toward that in which every being sees its
ultimate good.
That
is the medieval idea of God. This God is not called a person. The Word "person"
was never applied to God in the Middle Ages. The reason for this is that
the three members of the trinity were called personae ("faces"
or "countenances"): the Father is persona, the Son is persona,
and the Spirit is persona. Persona here means a special
characteristic of the divine ground, expressing itself in an independent
hypostasis. Thus, we can say that it was the nineteenth century which made God
into a person, with the result that the greatness of the classical idea of God
was destroyed by this way of speaking. Of course, this personal
structure, including being, intellect, and will, is analogous to our
experience of our own being, so if we call ourselves "persons", we
must also speak of God as "person". But this is quite different from
calling God a person. First of all, he is being itself; he is the ground
of being in everything. The personal side is expressed in intellect and will,
and their unity. But to speak of God as a person would have been heretical for
the Middle Ages; it would have been to them a Unitarian heresy, because it
would have conflicted with the statement that God has three personae, three
expressions of his being.
On
the question of the relationship between intellect and will in God the same
controversy took place as on the epistemological problem. For the Thomist
tradition, intellect is characteristic of God and man. Thomas argues that man
can be distinguished from an animal only because he has intellect. An
Trends in the Middle Ages 191
animal would be
human if it could intellectually place purposes before the will. But the animal
only wills without purposes, in the sense in which we ascribe that ability to
man. Thus, for Thomas it is the intellect which makes man human, and which is
the primary characteristic of God. Intellect is the power of insight into the
universally true and good. Duns Scotus opposed this doctrine. For him God and
man are will. Will is universally creative. There is no reason for the divine
will other than the divine will itself. There is nothing which determines the
will. The good is good because God so wills it. There is no intellectual
necessity for the world to be as it is, that salvation should happen as it
does. Everything is possible for God except that he cease to be God. Duns
Scotus spoke of God's potentia absoluta, the absolute power of God. God
uses his absolute power only in order to create a given world in which there
are definite orders. On this level he spoke of God's potestas ordinata, the
ordered power of God. He distinguishes these two things. The world as we know
it, as well as the plan of salvation as we know it by revelation, is not necessarily
as it happens to be; it is as it is by the ordered power of God. Implied in
this distinction is something threatening. The world is not as it is from
eternity; there is no real necessity that it be as it is. The absolute power of
God stands threateningly behind the ordered power, and may change everything.
Duns Scotus did not believe that this would happen, but it could happen.
What does such an idea mean? It means that we have to accept the given,
that we cannot deduce it, that we have to be humble toward reality. We cannot
deduce the world or the process of salvation in terms of necessity. Compare this
to Anselm's doctrine of atonement, in which he tried to deduce in terms of
necessity the way of salvation between God and Christ and man. Duns Scotus
would say there is no such necessity; instead, this is a positive order of God.
In this idea of the absolute power of God we have the root of all positivism,
in science as well as in politics, in religion as well as in psychology. The
moment that God became defined as will—determined by his will and not by his
intellect—the world became incalculable, uncertain, unsafe. So we are
compelled to subject ourselves to what is positively given. All the dangers of
positivism are rooted in this concept of Duns Scotus. So I consider him the
turning point in the history of Western thought.
192 A history of Christian Thought
L. THE DOCTRINES OF THOMAS
AQUINAS
We shall discuss a few
of the most important doctrines of Thomas Aquinas. The first is his
doctrine of nature and grace. His famous statement reads: "Grace does not
remove nature, but fulfills it." This important principle means that grace
is not the negation but the fulfillment of nature. The radical Augustinians, or
more exactly, the Manichaean distorters of Augustine, would not accept this
statement. They would say that grace removes nature. For Thomas Aquinas, with
whom I am in agreement on this point, nature and grace are not two
contradictory concepts. Grace contradicts only estranged nature, but not
nature as such. But now Thomas says that nature is fulfilled in supernature,
and super-nature is grace. This is the structure of reality which has
existed from creation. God gave to Adam in paradise not only his natural
abilities, but beyond these a donum superadditum, a gift added to his
natural gifts. This is the gift of grace by virtue of which Adam could persist
in a state of union with God.
This
a point at which Protestantism deviated completely from Thomas Aquinas.
Protestantism said that the perfect nature does not need any additional grace;
if we are perfect in our created status, there is no need for any grace
to come from above. Therefore, Protestantism removed the idea of a donum
superadditum. This sounds like a mythological story about whether Adam did
or did not get this grace, but that is not the interesting point. These
mythological stories express a profound vision about the structure of reality.
In Thomism the structure of reality has two levels. For Protestantism creation
is complete in itself; the created forms of reality are sufficient. God does
not need to add anything to them. This is the same basic feeling toward life
that we find in the Renaissance, which sees creation as good in itself, with
man and his created potentialities in the center, without a supernatural gift
added to him. Thomas has two degrees, nature and super-nature. Protestantism
says that only because nature is distorted by man's fall, by his estrangement
from God, is there a need for another power, the power of grace, whose center
is forgiveness. Forgiveness is the restitutio ad integrum, the
restitution of nature to its full potentialities. This idea is ultimately
monistic. The created world is perfect in itself; God does not need
Trends in the Middle Ages 193
to give additional
graces to his fulfilled creation. Yet, God must come down into existence to
overcome the conflicts in it, and this is what grace does. So in Protestantism
grace is the acceptance of that which is unacceptable. In Catholicism grace is
a substance, which stands in analogy to the natural substances.
The
Thomist principle is valid also for the relationship of revelation and reason.
Revelation does not destroy reason but fulfills it. Here again I agree with
Thomas. I believe that revelation is reason in ecstasy, that in revelation the
depth of reason breaks into the form of reason, driving it beyond itself
without destroying it. But I would not accept the Thomist form of the doctrine
in which reason exists in one realm and revelation in another realm in which
reason is completed. Thus we have two forms here. The Catholic world-view is
essentially dualistic—nature and supernature. Catholicism defends
supernaturalism with all its power. Protestantism, on the other hand, is united
with the Renaissance in the monistic tendency—monistic in the sense of having
one divine world and having salvation and regeneration (one and the same
thing) as the answer of God to the disruption of this world. But this answer is
not the negation of the created structure of this world.
In
some sense the Protestant dualism is deeper, but it is not a dualism of
substances. It is a dualism of the kingdom of God and the demonic powers which
stand against it. It is not an identification of the created with the fallen world.
The fallen world is the distortion of the created world. Therefore, the new
being is not another creation, but the re-establishment of the original unity.
One of the consequences of this is that in Protestantism the secular world is
immediate to God. In Catholicism the secular world needs the mediation through
the supernatural substance, which is present in the hierarchy and their
sacramental activities. Here again you have a fundamental difference.
Protestantism is emphatically for secularity. This is clearly expressed in
Luther's words about the value of the housemaid's work in contrast to the
monk's. If it is done in fear of God, the maid's work is more valuable than the
asceticism of the monks, even if that is done in the fear of God. Here the emphasis
is on the secular act as such, which is the revelation of God if done in the
right way. One does not have to become a monk, but if in trying it one claims
to be in
194 A History of Christian Thought
a supernatural realm,
this contradicts the paradox of justification, that as a sinner you are
justified.
From
his epistemology it follows that Thomas would reject the ontological argument
for the existence of God. The ontological argument holds that in the center of
the human mind there is an immediate awareness of something unconditional.
There is an a priori presence of the divine in the human mind expressed
in the immediate awareness of the unconditional character of the true and the
good and of being itself. This precedes every other knowledge, so that the
knowledge of God is the first knowledge, the only absolute, sure, and certain
knowledge, the knowledge not about a being, but about the unconditional
element in the depths of the soul. This is the nerve of the ontological
argument. However, as I said in connection with Anselm, the ontological
argument was also elaborated in terms of a rational argument which concluded
from this basis to the existence of a highest being. Insofar as this was done,
the argument is not valid, as all its critics—Thomas, Scotus, Kant—have clearly
shown. As an analysis of the tension in man between the finite and the
infinite, it is valid; it is a matter of immediate certainty.
Thomas
Aquinas belongs to those who reject the ontological argument because he saw
that as an argument it is invalid. The same is true of Duns Scotus. But now in
order to fill the empty space created by the collapse of the ontological
argument and of the immediate awareness of the divine in man, Thomas had to
find a way from the world to God. The world, although not the first in itself,
is the first which is given to us. This is just the opposite of what the
Augustinian Franciscans said: the first which is given to us is the principle
of truth in us, and only in its light can we exercise the function of doubt. So
Thomas had to show another way, the way of the cosmological argument.
According to this way, God must be found from outside. We must look at our
world and find that by logical necessity it leads to the conclusion of a
highest being. Thomas had five arguments for it, which appear again and again
in the history of philosophy.
(1)
The argument from motion. Motion demands a cause. This cause itself is moved.
So we have to go back to an unmoved mover, which we call "God". This
is an argument from movement in terms of causality. To find a cause for the
movement in the world, we must find something which itself is not moved.
Trends in the Middle Ages 195
(2)There is always a cause for every
effect, but every cause itself is an effect of a prior cause. So we go back
from cause to cause, but to avoid an infinite regression, we must speak of a
first cause. This cause is not first in a temporal sense, according to Thomas,
but it is first in dignity; it is the cause of all causes.
(3)Everything in the world is contingent.
It is not necessary that something is as it is. It might have been otherwise.
But if everything is contingent, if everything that is can disappear
into the abyss of nothing, because it has no necessary existence, this must
lead us back to something which has ultimate necessity, from which we can
derive all the contingent elements.
(4)There are purposes in nature and
man. But if we act in terms of purpose, what is the purpose? When we reach
that, we must again ask what that is for. So we need a final purpose, an
ultimate end behind all the means. The preliminary purposes become means when
they are fulfilled. This leads to the idea of a final purpose, of an ultimate
meaning, as we would perhaps say today.
(5)The fifth argument is dependent
on Plato. It says that there are degrees of perfection in everything that is.
Some things are better or more beautiful or more true than others. But if there
are degrees of perfection, there must be something absolutely perfect by which
we can distinguish between the more or less of perfection. Whenever we make
value judgments, we presuppose an ultimate value. Whenever we observe degrees,
we presuppose something which is beyond degree.
In
all these arguments there is the category of causality. They conclude from
characteristics of this world to something which makes this world possible. I
believe that these arguments are valid as analysis. Each of them is true as
long as it is not an argument but an analysis. In the doctrine of the arguments
for the existence of God we have probably the most adequate analysis of the
finitude of reality that has appeared in the writings from the past. They
include the existential analysis of man's finitude, and as such they have
truth. Insofar as they go beyond this and establish a highest being which as a
being is infinite, they draw conclusions which are not justified.
In Thomas Aquinas we have the
concept of predestination which combines several motives. Predestination was an
Augustinian idea taken over by Thomas on the basis of his principle of
196 A History of Christian Thought
intellect, which
understands the necessities, and can by necessity derive consequences from
what has preceded. On the other hand, Duns Scotus emphasized the will so much
that the divine as well as the human will become ultimate realities,
ontological ultimates, not determined by anything other than themselves. So
Thins Scotus and the Franciscans introduced the element of free-dom—the
Pelagian element. These Franciscan Augustinians introduced a crypto-Pelagianism
into medieval theology, whereas Thomas Aquinas, on the basis of his
intellectualism, thought in deterministic terms. This shows that Thomas was
religiously much more powerful than the Protestant criticism of Scholastic
theology admits. It seems that Luther did not know Thomas Aquinas 'at all. He
knew the late nominalistic theologians, who can rightly be said to have been
distortions of scholasticism. So Luther fought against them. But he could have
found both his and Calvin's predestinarian thinking in Thomas Aquinas.
The
ethical teachings of Thomas Aquinas correspond to his system of grades, as do
all the realms of his thought. In his ethics there is a rational substructure
and a theological superstructure. They are related to each other exactly as nature
and grace are related. The substructure contains the four main pagan virtues,
taken from Plato: courage, temperance, wisdom, and the all-embracing justice.
These produce natural happiness. Happiness does not mean having a good time or
having fun, but the fulfillment of one's own essential nature. In Greek the
word for happiness is eudaimonia, and there is a philosophical school
called eudaemonism. Christianity has often attacked it on the grounds that
happiness is not the purpose of human existence, but the glory of God is. I
think this is a completely mistaken interpretation of eudaimonia. This
is exactly what Christian theology calls blessedness, except that this is
blessedness on the basis of the natural virtues, and Thomas knew this.
Therefore, Thomas was not anti-eudaemonistic. Eudaimonia is derived from
two Greek words, eu and daimön, meaning "well" and
"demon"—a divine power which guides us well. (Cf. Socrates' daimon.)
The result of this guiding is eudaimonia, being led in the right way
toward self-fulfillment.
According
to Thomas Aquinas, the four natural virtues of philosophy can give natural
blessedness, eudaimonia in the Greek sense. Virtue was not a term with
the bad connotations it has
Trends in the Middle Ages 197
today, for example,
abstinence from sexual relations. It meant what the Latin term indicates: vir,
meaning "man", hence, manli‑
ness, power of being. In all
these different virtues power of being
expresses itself, the right power
of being, the power of being which is united with justice. What Thomas did was
to combine
Christian ethics with
the ancient ethics of self-fulfillment, with its natural virtues: the courage
to be, the temperance which expresses the limits of finitude, the wisdom which
expresses the knowledge of these limits, and finally the all-embracing justice
which gives to each virtue the right balance in relation to the others.
On
this natural basis the Christian virtues of faith, love, and hope are seen.
They are supernatural, because they are given not
by nature but by grace. So
Thomas' ethical system has these two
stories, the natural ethic and
the spiritual ethic. This is something more than a theoretical speculation; it
was an expression of the
sociological situation.
The acceptance of the virtues of Plato and
Aristotle meant that a city
culture had developed. The pagan and the Christian virtues had been combined in
the period in which
the orders of the
knights developed, and they had a great influence on the high Middle Ages.
They united pagan courage with Christian love, pagan wisdom with Christian
hope, pagan moderation with Christian faith. Humanistic and classical ideals
were taken in and developed within the universally Christian culture.
The
ethical purpose of man is the fulfillment of what is essential for him. For
Thomas what is essential for man is his intellect,
which means his ability
to live in meanings and in structures of reason. Not the will but the intellect
makes him human. Man has the will in common with animals; the intellect, the
rational structure of his mind, is peculiar to man.
Thomas
combined ethics with aesthetics. He was the first one in the Middle Ages to
create a theological aesthetics. "The beauti‑
ful is that kind of the good in
which the soul rests without pos‑
session." You can enjoy a
picture without possessing it. By their sheer form you can enjoy the woods or
ocean or houses or men
depicted in pictures without
having to possess them. In art, also in music, there is disinterested enjoyment
of the soul. Beautiful is that which is pleasurable in itself. This is a motif
which leads in the direction of humanism, but it is not an autonomous humanism,
but one which is always but the first step toward something which transcends
human possibilities.
198 A History of Christian Thought
In
similar fashion he dealt with the problem of church and state. There are the
values represented by the state, and the higher, supernatural values embodied
in the church. The church has authority over the states, the different national
governments, because it represents something higher. If necessary the church
can ask the people to he disobedient. The Thomistic ethics which we have been
discussing have been fully as influential in the Western world as his dogmatic
statements. They can be found in the second part of the second section of his Summa
Theologica.
M. WILLIAM OF OCICRAM
William of Ockham is the father
of nominalism. The conflict between nominalism and realism was the destiny of
the Middle Ages and is still today the destiny of our own time. Today it
continues, at least in part, as a conflict between idealism and realism,
whereby realism today is what nominalism was in the Middle Ages, and idealism
is what medieval realism was. Ockham criticized the mystical realism of the
Middle Ages for regarding the universals as real things, as having an independent
existence. If the universals exist apart from things, they simply reduplicate
the things. If they exist in the mind only, they are not real things.
Therefore, realism is nonsense. Realism is meaningless because it cannot say
what kind of reality the universals have. What is the reality of
"treehood"? Ockham says it is only in the mind, and so has no reality
at all; it is something which is meant, but it is not a reality. The realists
of that time said the universal "bee-hood" which directs every tree
in a special way is a power of being in itself. It is not a thing—no realist
ever said that—but it is a power of being. The nominalists said that there are
only individual things and nothing else. It is against the principle of economy
in thinking to augment the principles (cf. Ockhm's razor). If you can explain
something like the universals in the simplest way, for instance, by saying that
they are meant by the-mind,
h&mind, then you should not
establish a heaven of ideas as Plato did.
This
criticism was rooted in the development toward individualism which became
increasingly powerful in late medieval life. It was a change from the Greek and
medieval moods. The Greek feeling toward the world starts with the negation of
all
Trends in the Middle Ages 199
individual things; the
medieval subordinates the individual to the collective. So this was not simply
a logical game which the nominalists won for the time being. Rather, it
represented a change of attitude toward reality in the whole of society. You
will find nominalism and realism discussed in books on the history of logic,
and rightly so, but that does not give the full impact of what this controversy
meant. This was a debate between two attitudes towardlife. Today these
attitudes are expressed in terms of collectivism and individualism. However,
the collectivism of the Middle Ages was only partly tiotali nan; it was
basically mystical. This mystical collectivism—basically the church as the
mystical body of Christ—is different from our present-day colt lectivism. Yet,
it was collectivism. The realists fought for it, while the nominalists
dissolved it. And as soon as nominalism became successful, this was the actual
dissolution of the Middle Ages.
Now,
if only individual things exist, what are the universals, according to Ockham?
The universals are identical with the act of knowing. They rise in our minds,
and we must use them, otherwise we could not speak. They are natural. He called
them the universalia naturalia. Beyond them are the words which are the
symbols for these natural universals which arise in our minds. They are the
conventional universals. Words can be changed; they exist by convention. The
word is universal because it can be said of different things. Thus, these
people were also called "terminists" because they said the universals
are merely "terms". They were also called "conceptualists"
because they said the universals are mere "concepts", and have no
real power of being in themselves. The significance of a universal concept is
that it indicates the similarity of different things, but that is all it can
do. All of this boils down to the point that only individual things have
reality. Not man as man, but Paul and Peter and John have reality as
individuals. Not treehood, but this particular tree on the corner has reality,
and all other particular trees. We call them trees because we discover some
similarity between them.
This nominalistic
approach was applied also to God. God is
lled
by Ockham ens s'ingulczrissimum., the most single being. This means that
God himself has become an individual. As such he is separate from all other
individuals. He looks at them and they look at him. God is no longer in the
center of everything, as he was in the Augustinian way of thinking. He has been
removed
200 A History
of Christian Thought
from the center to a
special place at a distance from other things. The individual things have
become independent. The substantial presence of God in all of them has no more
meaning, because such a notion presupposes some kind of mystical realism.
Hence, Cod has to know things, so to speak, empirically, from the outside.
Just as man approaches the world empirically, because he is no longer thought
to he in the center, so also God knows everything empirically from the
outside, not immediately by being the center in which all reality is united.
This is a pluralistic philosophy in which there are many individuals, of which
God is one, although the most important one. In this way the unity of all
things in God has come to an end. The consequence of their individual
separation is that they cannot participate in each other immediately in virtue
of their common participation in a universal. Community, such as we have in the
Augustinian type of thinking, is replaced by social relations, by society. As a
consequence of this nominalism we live today in a society in which we relate
to each other in terms of co-operation and competition, but neither of these
has the meaning of participation. Community is a matter of participation;
society is a matter of common interests, of being separated from each other and
working with or against each other.
We
do not know each other except by the signs, the words, which enable us to
communicate and to have common activities. This was an anticipation of our life
in a technological society which developed first in those countries in which
nominalism was predominant, as in England and America. Attitudes concerning the
relations between man and man, and between man and things, are nominalistic in
America and in the traditions of American philosophy, as is largely the case in
England and in some West European countries. The substantial unity which was
preserved by realistic thinking has disappeared. This means that we have
knowledge of each other not through participation but only by sense
perceptions—seeing, hearing, touching. We deal with our sense perceptions and
the reflections of them in our minds. This, of course, produces positivism; we
have to look at what is positively given to us.
Many
things follow from all this. A rational metaphysics becomes impossible. For
example, it is impossible to construct a rational psychology which proves the
immortality of the soul, its
Trends in the Middle Ages 201
pre- or post-existence,
its omnipresence in the whole body, etc. If such things are affirmed, they are
matters of faith, not of philosophical analysis. Similarly all aspects of
rational theology become impossible. God does not appear to our sense
perceptions. He remains unapproachable since we have no direct or immediate
relationship to him, as we do in Augustinian thought. We cannot have direct
knowledge of God. We can have only indirect reflections, but they never lead to
certainty, only to probability of a lower or higher degree. This probability
can never be elevated to certainty; instead it is very doubtful. It is
quite possible that there is not one cause of the world, but many causes. The
most perfect being—the definition of God—is not necessarily an infinite being.
A doctrine like the trinity which is based on mystical realism—the three personae
participate in the one divinity—is obviously improbable. These things are
all matters of irrational belief. Science must go its way and faith must
guarantee all that is scientifically irrational and absurd.
If
this is the case, it is easy to see that authority becomes the most important
thing. Faith is subjection to authority. For Ock-ham the authority he has in
mind is more the authority of the Bible than that of the church. Ockham
dissolved the realistic unity not only in thought but also in practice. He
sided with the German king against the pope. He produced autonomous economics as
well as autonomous national politics. In all realms of life he was for the
establishment of independent spheres. This means that he contributed radically
to the dissolution of medieval unity.
N. GERMAN MYSTICISM
Meister
Eckhart was the most important representative of German mysticism. What did
these mystics try to do? They tried to interpret the Thomistic system for
practical purposes. They were not speculative monks sitting alongside of the
world, but they wanted people to have the possibility of experiencing what was
expressed in the scholastic systems. Thus, the mysticism of Meister Eckhart
unites the most abstract scholastic concepts—especially that of being—with a
burning soul, with the warmth of religious feeling and the love-power of
religious acting. He says: "Nothing is so near to the beings, so
intimate to them, as being-itself. But Cod is being-itself."
The identity of God and
202 A History of Christian Thought
being is affirmed. "Esse
est deus"—being-itself is God. This is not a static concept
of being. When I have used the concept of being, I have often been attacked for
making God static. This is not even true of Meister Eckhart's mysticism. Being
is a continuous flux and return; he calls it Fluss und Wiederfiuss, a
stream and a counter-stream. It always moves away from and back to itself.
Being is life and has dynamic character.
In
order to make this clear he distinguishes between the divinity and God. The
divinity is the gound of being in which everything moves and counter-moves. God
is essentia, the principle of the good and the true. From this he can
even develop the idea of the trinity. The first principle is the being which is
neither horn nor giving birth; the second is the process of self-objectivation,
the Logos, the Son; the third is the self-generation, the Spirit, which creates
all individual things. For the divinity he uses the terms of negative theology.
He calls it the simple ground, the quiet desert. It is the nature of the
divinity not to have any nature. It is beyond every special nature. The
trinity is based on God's going out and returning back to himself. He
re-cognizes himself, he re-sees himself, and this constitutes the Logos. The
world is in God in an archetypical sense. "Archetype" is a word which
has been revived today by Jung; it is the Latin translation of the Platonic
"idea". The essences, the archetypes of everything, are in the depths
of the divine. They are the divine verbum, the divine Word. Therefore,
the generation of the Son and the eternal creation of the world in God himself
are one and the same thing. Creaturely being is receiving being. The creature
does not give being to itself; God does. But the creature receives being from
Cod. This is a divine form of being. The creature, including man, has reality
only in union with the eternal reality. The creature has nothing in separation
from God. The point in which the creature returns to God is the soul. Through
the soul what is separated from God returns to him. The depths of the soul in
which this happens Eckhart called the "spark", or the innermost
center of the soul, the heart of the soul, or the castle of the soul. It is the
point which transcends the difference of functions in the soul; it is the
uncreated light in man. In this way the Son is born in every soul. This
universal event is more important than the particular birth of Jesus.
However, all this is in the realm
of possibility. Now it must be
Trends in the Middle Ages 203
brought into the realm
of actuality. God must be born in the soul. Therefore, the soul must
separate itself from its finitude. Something must happen, which he calls entwerden,
the opposite of becoming, going away from oneself, losing oneself. The
process of salvation is that man gets rid of himself and of all things.
Sin
and evil show the presence of God, as everything does. They push us into a
situation of awareness of what we really are. This is an idea which Luther took
over from Meister Eckhart. Cod is the nunc aeternum, the eternal now,
who comes to the individual in his concrete situation. He does not ask that the
individual first develop some goodness before he will come to him. Cod comes to
the individual in his estrangement. To receive the divine substance, serenity
or patience, not moving, is needed. Work is not the means of coming to God; it
is the result of our having come to him. Eckhart fought against making the
religious relationship a matter of purposing. All this is a strange
mixture between quietism—being quiet in one's soul—and a tremendous activism.
The inner feeling must become work, and vice versa. This also removes the
difference between the sacred and the secular worlds. They are both expressions
of the ground of being in us.
This
mysticism was very influential in the church for a long time, and is still
influential in many people. This Dominican mysticism is a counter-balance to
the nominalistic isolation of individuals from each other. One could say that
in the religious realm the impulses of German mysticism prevailed. In the secular
realm the nominalistic attitude prevailed. Both nominalism and German mysticism
were to some degree preparations for the Reformation.
0. THE PRE-REFORMERS
The period prior to the
Reformation is quite different from the high Middle Ages. During this period
the lay principle becomes important and biblicism begins to prevail over church
tradition. Perhaps the most important expression of this situation is the
Englishman, John Wyclif. He had a large number of ideas which the Reformers
used, and he certainly prepared the soil in England for the Reformation. What
the pre-Reformers all lacked was the one fundamental principle of the
Reformation—Luther's
204 A History of Christian Thought
breakthrough to the
experience of being accepted in spite of being unacceptable, which in Pauline
terms is called justification by grace through faith. This principle
does not appear before Luther. Almost everything else in the Reformation can be
found in the so-called pre-Reformers. Thus, when we speak of the pre-Reformers,
we have in mind mainly those critical ideas applied against the Roman church
which were later also used by the Reformation. If it is argued that they should
not be called pre-Reformers, what is meant is that they lacked the main
principle of the Reformation, the real breakthrough to a new relationship to
God.
Wyclif
was dependent on Augustine, but also on Thomas Brad-wardine in England who
represented an Augustinian reaction against the Pelagian ideas connected with
nominalism. Thomas Bradwardine was an important link between Augustine and the
English Reformation. The title of his book is characteristic, Dc
Causa Dci contra Pelagium, which means the cause of Cod against Pelagius,
not the Pelagius who was Augustine's enemy, but the Pelagianism which he found
in nominalistic theology and in the practice of the church. Against this he
followed Augustine and Thomas Aquinas with respect to the doctrine of
predestination. He says: "Everything that happens, happens by necessity.
God necessitates whatever act is done. Every act or creature which is morally
evil is an evil only accidentally." This means that God is the essential
cause of everything, but evil cannot be derived from him. From this it follows,
as for Augustine, that the church is the congregation of the predestined. The
true church is not the hierarchical institution of salvation. This true church
is in opposition to the mixed body in the church, to the hierarchical
institution which, as it now exists, is nothing else than a distortion of the
true church. The basic law of the church is not the law of the pope, but the
law of the Bible; this is the law of God or of Christ. These ideas were not
meant to be anti-Catholic. Neither Bradwardine nor Wyclif thought of leaving
the Roman Church. There was only one church, and even Luther needed much time
before he separated himself.
There
were dangers for the Roman Church in the Augustinian principles. After
Augustine a semi-Pelagianism removed the dangers of Augustinianism from the
Roman Church. Now these dangers appear again in the name of Augustine, as
represented
Trends in the Middle Ages 205
by Thomas Bradwardine
and John Wyclif. The idea of predestination means that many people are not
predestined, many of the hierarchs, for example. This provides a basis for
looking for symptoms in the hierarchy which show that they are not predestined.
These symptoms are discovered by applying the law of Christ, such as the Sermon
on the Mount, or the sending of the disciples—all ideas and laws which are
dangerous in an organized hierarchical church.
From
his criticism of the hierarchy Wyclif revised the doctrines of the church and
its relationship to the state. This also has a long tradition. Since the twelfth
century there had been in England a movement represented by one who was called
the Anonymous of York, a man who wrote on behalf of the king, making the king
the Christ for the British nation. There was an anti-Roman tendency which
favored having a British territorial church, similar to the Byzantine
situation. The king is the Christ for the nation, depicted in hymns and in
pictures as the Christ, just as Constantine in Byzantium was the Christ for the
whole Eastern church. These analogies are preparations for the revolt of the
crown of England against the pope.
Wyclif
differentiated between two forms of human domination or government, the natural
or evangelical domination, which is the law of love, and the civil
domination, which is a product of sin and a moans of force for the sake of the
bodily and spiritual goods. On the one hand, we have the natural law, which in
the classical tradition is always the law of love, and all that it includes.
This is the law which should rule. On the other hand, there is unfortunately a
need for civil government, which is necessary because of sin. Force and
compulsion are inescapable means to maintain the goods of the nation, bodily
and spiritually. The first law, the law of love, is sufficient for the
government of the church. Since the church is the body of the predestined, force
is not needed here. Its content is the rule which Jesus gave, the rule of
serving. The law of Christ is the law of love, which expresses itself in
service. From this it follows that the church must be l)00r; it must not be
economically and politically in control. It must be the church which is poor,
the church as it was anticipated by the radical Franciscans and originally by
Joachim of Floris.
The church, however, is
not entirely holy. For ministers to be
206 A History of Christian Thought
wealthy is an abuse
which should be removed, by the power of the king, if necessary. If the
church responds with excommunication, the king should not fear this, for it is
impossible to excommunicate a man unless he has first excommunicated himself.
The real excommunication of a Christian is severing himself from communion with
Christ. This means that the hierarchy has lost its chief power; it can no
longer decide about the salvation of the individual. It can be criticized when
it acts against the law of Christ, which is the law of poverty, the law of
spiritual rule. From this it follows, further, that there is no dogmatic
necessity to have a pope. This was also in the line of Joachim of Floris, who
spoke of a papa angelica, an angelic pope, which is really a spiritual principle.
Wyclif says that if we are ruled by a spiritual principle, it is all right to
have a pope, but not necessary. These ideas are in line with the sectarian
protest against the rich and powerful church, yet they remain on the whole
within the framework of official doctrine. They are not the same as the
Reformation protest, because they are based on the principle of law—not the
law of the church but the law of Christ—and not on the gospel.
Since
the basis of Wyclif's attack was the law of Christ as given in the Bible, he
developed the authority of Scripture against that of the tradition and against
the symbolic interpretation of the Bible. He even reaches the point, also on
biblical grounds, that the predicatio verbi, the preaching of the Word,
is more important than all the ecclesiastical sacraments. The transition in
the Middle Ages from realism to nominalism is accompanied by a transition from
the predominance of the eye to the ear. In the early centuries of the Christian
Church the visual function was predominant in religious art and in the
sacraments. Since Duns Scotus, and even more since Oekham, the hearing of the
Word becomes most important, and not the seeing of the sacramental embodiment
of the reality. Even before the Reformation the emphasis on the word develops;
it came to the foreground in nominalism. Why? Because realism sees the
essences of things. "Idea" comes from idein, "seeing".
Eidos, "idea", means picture, the essence of a thing which we
can see in every individual thing. Of course, this is an intuitive spiritual
seeing, but it is still seeing, and it is expressed in the great art. The great
art shows the essence of things, visible to the eye. In nominalism we
Trends in the Middle Ages 207
have individuals. How
can they communicate? By words. Therefore, if God has become the most
individual being, the ens sin gulari ssi mum in Ockham's
language, then we receive a communication from him not through a kind of
intuition of his divine essence, as expressed in all his creations, but by his
word which he speaks to us. Thus, the word became decisive in contrast to the
visual function. The importance of the word as over against the sacraments
appears already in Wyclif. This is not yet Reformation theology, because here
the word is the word of the law; it is not yet the word of forgiveness. This is
the difference between the Reformation and the pre-Reformation.
If
there is to be a pope, he must be the spiritual leader of the true church, the
church of the predestined, otherwise he is not really the vicar of Christ, the
spiritual power from which all spiritual power is derived. But the pope is a
man who falls into error. He is not able to give indulgences; only God can do
that. This is the first statement against the system of indulgences—before
Luther's Ninety-five Theses. If the pope is not living in humility, charity,
and poverty, he is not the true pope. When the pope accepts the dominion over
the world, as he has done, then he is a permanent heretic. The pope did just
that by means of the "Donation of Constantine", which was the great
foundation of the political power of the pope, making him the prince of Rome
and sovereign over the Western half of the empire, in spite of the fact that
this document was historically a falsification. It is heretical for the pope
whose power is spiritual to become a prince. If he does this, he is the
Antichrist. This is a term which comes from the Bible and was used during the
Reformation. It has been used in church history especially by sectarians in
their criticism of the church. They said that if the pope claims to represent
Christ, but is actually a ruler of this world opposed to Christ, then he is the
Antichrist.
I
once spoke with Visser 't Hooft, general secretary of the World Council of Churches,
about, the Hitler period in Holland. He said: We Dutch people, and many other
Christians, at first had the feeling that Hitler might be the Antichrist
because of all the anti-divine things he did. But then we realized that he is
not good enough to be the Antichrist. The Antichrist must maintain at least
some of the religious glory of the real Christ, so that it would be possible to
confuse them and to adore him. But Hitler
208 A History of Christian Thought
had none of
this. Then we knew, he said, that the end of time had not yet come, and Hitler
is not the Antichrist.
This was not a question about a dogma concerning the Antichrist. In
these ideas Visser 't Hooft was standing in the real tradition of the sectarian
movements. Today if we call someone the Antichrist, it is understood simply as
name-calling. But when Luther called the pope the Antichrist, he was not
name-calling, but speaking dogmatically; that is, in the very place where
Christ is supposed to be represented, everything is done which stands against
Christ.
The church's involvement in big business is further evidence of its
Antichrist character. The Vatican had become the banking house of the world,
especially in Luther's time, but before also. The bishops were bankers in a
lesser way, but all this, Wyclif insisted, must he abolished. Even the monks
had lost their ideal of poverty and accommodated themselves to the general
desire of the church to be wealthy.
These criticisms brought Wycif to even more radical conclusions. He
attacked transubstantiation by saying that the body of Christ is, spatially
speaking, in heaven. He is actually, or vir-tualiter (i.e., with his
power) in the bread, but not spatially. This contradicts the idea of
transubstantiation completely. When the church rejected him, although he knew
he was right on biblical grounds, he came to realize that the official church
can err with respect to articles of faith. This was also Luther's great experience,
that the church rejected a true criticism of its errors. On the basis of the
Bible as the real law of Christ, he was able to criticize any decision of the
church which was unbelievable. He criticized the number of sacraments and
particular sacraments, such as marriage. He criticized the idea in Catholicism
that the sacraments have the character indelebilis (indelible
character), according to which a special character which cannot be lost adheres
to those who are baptized, confirmed, or ordained. He even criticized the
celibacy of the priests. He criticized the idea of the treasury of the saints,
and the superstitious elements in the popular religion. Monasticism should be
abolished because it introduces division in the one church. There should not be
a division in the status of Christians. There should be a communis religio, a
common religion, to which everyone belongs. What the Catholic Church calls
monastic counsels, such as love of the
Trends in the Middle Ages 209
enemies, should be
fulfilled by all Christians. In terms of the negative side, one could say that Wyclif
anticipated nearly all the positions of the Reformers. He was supported by the
king, because the English crown had for a long time opposed the interference
of Rome in the affairs of the nation, not only religiously but also
politically. Wyclif was attacked very much, but always protected. After his
death his movement slowly ebbed away, but the seeds were in the soil and became
fertile when the real Reformation broke through.
This
shows that the Roman Church could not be reformed on the basis of a sectarian
criticism, radical as it was in Wyclif. A reform could occur only by the power
of a new principle, the power of a new relationship to God. And this is what
the sixteenth-century Reformers did.
