The Seekers: The Story of Man's Continuing Quest to Understand His World (16 page)

Institutions, too, seemed threatened by new forces. The old monastic orders withdrawn into their monasteries were being challenged by the new orders of mendicant friars. Now Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) and Dominic sought holiness in the world. And their attack did not go unchallenged. At the University of Paris the aggressive William of Saint-Amour (c. 1200-1272), dean of the theology masters, led the attack. His
Liber de Antichristo et ejusdum ministris
(Book of Antichrist and His Ministers, 1255) cast the Dominicans as the vanguard of the catastrophic age to come. Though Popes Alexander IV and Clement IV both defended the new orders, these remained centers of controversy—for their implied criticism of the Church hierarchy and their insistence on preaching and hearing confessions without episcopal consent. Thomas Aquinas, vigorous Aristotelian and leading Dominican, stood for the new.

It is not surprising then, that in a disputatious age, in new university communities which lived by the arts of disputation, the monumental works of theology should take the form that Thomas gave to his two Summae: Questions, Objections, and Replies to the objections. Taking nothing for granted, as we have seen, Thomas opens his
Summa theologiae
with the question “Whether, besides the philosophical sciences, any further doctrine is required.” The whole relevance of philosophy (including Aristotle, “The Philosopher”) to Christian doctrine depends on the distinction between philosophy and theology, at which Thomas is the master. He warns against trying to use philosophy (the agent of reason) to play the role of faith, and against testing faith by the rigors of reason. “In arguing with nonbelievers about articles of faith, you should not try to devise necessary arguments in behalf of faith, since this would derogate from the sublimity of faith, whose truth exceeds the capacity not only of human but also of angelic minds.” The ancient Greeks had assumed that philosophy included all knowledge—even knowledge of God. If theology must always govern the Christian mind, what then is the use of philosophy? The human mind needed faith, Thomas answers, even in things that could be discovered by reason “because only a few men come to rationally acquired truth about God, and this after a long time and with the admixture of error.”

We need theology, Thomas argues, because revelation gives us truths that cannot be arrived at by reason. To define the role of theology, Thomas draws also on Aristotle’s distinction between the practical and the speculative sciences. He assigns three roles to philosophy. First, to demonstrate “the preambles of faith, . . . (what things in faith it is necessary to know), those things about God which can be proved by natural argument, such as that God exists, that God is one, and the like.” Second, to find similarities among the articles of faith. And third, to combat objections to faith by showing them either false or unnecessary. Since religious belief concerns matters not accessible to natural reason, it cannot be replaced by knowledge. Since, for a Christian, philosophy and theology are necessarily compatible, he need not fear using philosophy to explain and reinforce articles of belief. And the study of philosophy (by which Thomas means Aristotle) must precede theology.

Thomas’s
Summa theologiae—
organized in its Questions, Objections, and Replies—was, of course, not intended to be an alternative to the Bible. It was only an aid to beginners, making clear, explicit, and defensible the doctrines implicit in Scripture. The First Part concerns God and the order of Creation, the Second and Third Parts concern the goal of human life in beatitude and the return of all things to God. What is generally considered Thomas’s most original contribution to theology is his exposition of the virtues and vices. The Third Part deals with Christ and the Sacraments as means to salvation. All along the way Thomas draws on Scripture, the Church Fathers, and Saint Augustine and Aristotle, among others. References to specific works of Aristotle provide a framework for his ideas. On some points, like Aristotle’s view that the world is eternal, Thomas takes issue with The Philosopher, while still insisting that the matter could not be decided by philosophy. And he freely disagrees with commentators. He defends Aristotle’s belief in the survival of individual souls after death against the “unicity” of intellect, the argument of the Spanish-Arabic Averroës, the Muslim interpreter, that there is only a single mind in which all souls participated.

Thomas had begun his first introduction to theology, his
Summa contra gentiles
(1258-64), in Paris. Then after 1259 he spent some peripatetic years in Italy, first at the papal court, then in several Dominican houses, and there he began his
Summa theologiae,
which he continued on his return to Paris in 1269. After Thomas’s death in 1274, Albert returned to Paris to defend his disciples’ teachings, which were under attack. The defense was surely needed. The 219 propositions condemned by the theology masters of Paris in 1277 included at least twelve of Thomas’s own. But after Thomas’s canonization in 1323, the condemnation was canceled, and as new generations of Thomists arose his influence increased with the years. By the time of the Council of Trent (1545-63) the leading Catholic theologians were Thomists. The twentieth century has seen another revival of Thomist thought wittily espoused by G. K. Chesterton’s praise of the “dumb ox.” Thomas has become the Pope’s exemplar of Catholic openness to truths from any source. The first monument of the modern university, our self-styled institution of “free enquiry,” was a defense of Catholic doctrine. Perhaps, as Bertrand Russell suggests, the systematic wholeness of Thomist theology meant that “the yoke of orthodoxy was not so severe as is sometimes supposed; a man could always write his book, and then, if necessary, withdraw its heretical portions after full public discussion.”

Varieties of the Protestant Way: Erasmus, Luther, Calvin

As they succeeded, the three thriving institutions—the Church, the monasteries, and the universities—that emerged from the European Middle Ages became not only communities of Seekers but targets for Christians seeking control of their own lives and thought. The Church, no longer a mere agent of the state, became a competitor for worldly power and for the treasure of believers. Monasteries, while claiming the moral superiority of withdrawal from the world and from the burdens of wealth, prospered, acquired the odium of riches, and flouted their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. And universities, elaborating the ways of disputation, developed a pedantic arrogance that overshadowed the simple messages of faith and Scriptures.

It is not surprising that the passions of Christian Seekers could not remain confined and channeled in these institutions. Their ardor would be expressed in countless independent ways. Three enduring spokesmen give us clues to their range and variety: Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466-1536), the Dutch apostle of moderation, spokesman of Christian humanism; Martin Luther (1483-1546), outspoken German advocate of “justification by faith” alone, founder of the Protestant Reformation; and John Calvin (1509-1564), French creator of a Reformed Church. They followed divergent paths of classical scholarship, biblical exegesis, dogmatic theology, and reforming zeal toward conflicting views of the higher truths and how to reach them. Fueled by the passions and resentments of others less eloquent and more violent, their dissension would make Western Europe a battleground and cemetery of contesting Christians. How they disagreed over the meaning and contours of Christianity and ways of seeking salvation is not impossible to recount. What remains puzzling is why so many acolytes of a reputed God of Love should have been willing to kill—or be killed—over a theological nuance. Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries became a chaos of faith and persecution.

A Protestant Humanism: Erasmus

Moderation, praised by moralists, has seldom had its due from history. But if the spirit of Erasmus had prevailed, the history of Europe in the early modern era would have been quite different. “Prince of humanists” and godfather of the Protestant reformation, he remains a subject for scholars, historians, and novelists. His contemporaries, Luther and Calvin, would be founders of thriving sects and become household names in the Christian West.

The birth of Erasmus in Rotterdam about 1466 was clouded by mystery and the stigma of illegitimacy. Erasmus himself reported that his father, Gerard, had had a secret affair with his mother, Margaret, “in the expectation of marriage.” When Gerard’s parents opposed the marriage, he fled, leaving Margaret to bear his child. Later in Rome, where Gerard was employed as a copyist, he received word from his family that Margaret was dead. Out of grief he became a priest. When Gerard returned home he discovered the deception, but he still did not marry her, and stayed by his priestly vows. This saga became the basis of Charles Reade’s popular historical romance,
The Cloister and the Hearth
(1861). The cloud of illegitimacy haunted Erasmus all his life.

His mother sent him as a boy with his brother to a school in Deventer in eastern Netherlands dominated by a “Modern Piety” movement of the Brethren of the Common Life. The most famous of these brethren, Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471), had expressed their spirit in his
Imitation of Christ
when he urged, “Trinity is better pleased by adoration than by speculation.” The sect’s founder, Gerard Groote, had urged study of the ancient classics, such as Seneca and Cicero, as pagan preparations for the Gospel, but his movement emphasized inwardness. The lack of printed texts still encouraged memorizing as the avenue to literature, and Erasmus learned Horace and Terence by heart. “An occult force of nature drove me to the humanities,” he wrote. At sixteen, apparently attracted by their library, Erasmus joined the Augustinian Canons at Steyn, and at the end of his novitiate year, he took the vows of the strict order.

There Erasmus wrote
On Contempt of the World,
a rhetorical exercise on the virtues of monastery life. Then, before he was twenty, he wrote his
Antibarbari
(Against the Barbarians) defending the value of pagan learning. Just as the Church had not rejected the Old Testament despite its plea for obedience to laws that Christians had discarded, so, Erasmus said, the Church should not abandon the classics because they celebrated pagan gods. “You tell me that we should not read Virgil because he is in hell. Do you think that many Christians are not in hell whose works we read? It is not for us to discuss whether the pagans before Christ were damned. . . . either they are saved or no one is saved. If you want to give up everything pagan you will have to give up the alphabet and the Latin language, and all the arts and crafts.” So he began his lifelong championing of the ancient classics. He was ordained a priest in 1492.

The bishop of Cambrai sent Erasmus to Paris to study theology at the Collegia Pauperum of the Collège de Montaigu. This was the Paris of “Stygian darkness” that Rabelais ridiculed, and Erasmus too was troubled by the scholastic dogmas, quibbles, and intolerance. The masters of theology were fiercely quarreling. “You say you do not want to be called a Platonist or a Ciceronian,” he had argued, “but you do not mind being called an Albertist or a Thomist.” To support himself as a scholar, Erasmus sought pensions, gifts, and pay for the flattering dedications in his books. Despite his love of classical moderation in philosophy and theology, he was an extravagant sycophant where it brought him the money he needed. To draw on the wisdom of the ancients, he made a collection of proverbs from the Bible and Greek and Latin authors. His first edition of
Adagia
in 1500 offered some eight hundred proverbs, but later editions exceeded five thousand. These included many expressions that would become familiar in the West—“Leave no stone unturned,” “Where there is smoke there is fire,” “A necessary evil,” “The mountain labors and brings forth a mouse.” His
Colloquies
used the ancient dialogue form for models of Latin conversational style, spiced with Erasmus’s own wit.

First Speaker:
From what coop or cave did you come?
Second:
From the Collège de Montaigu.
First:
Then I suppose you are full of learning.
Second:
No, lice.

Invited to England in 1499 by the young and charming Lord Mountjoy, Erasmus formed friendships with aristocrats and leading philosophers and clerics of the age, especially John Colet and Thomas More. To his own surprise he was captivated by the English delights of hunting, and “that most admirable custom of kissing at every turn.” He had some knowledge of Greek before going to England, but English scholars persuaded him to master the language. While the philosophers were enthusiastic Neoplatonists, Erasmus was wary of obscurantism. He never claimed a religious ecstasy, and remained the steadfast advocate of classical humanism.

On leaving England to return to France, Erasmus was stripped of his meager funds by Henry VII’s agents at Dover enforcing the ban on exporting currency. He fled from the plague in Paris and at Orléans, then in the Netherlands he immersed himself in studying Greek until 1505. He had started on an edition of Saint Jerome for which he needed Greek. And he was also editing Cicero. When Erasmus discovered a manuscript of Lorenzo Valla that annotated the New Testament as if it were by some classical author, it reminded him that Holy Scriptures, like other ancient books, could be given textual scrutiny. This suggested, of course, that Saint Jerome’s translation of the New Testament into Latin might require revision.

Appealing to Pope Clement V’s earlier directive to study the ancient languages, Erasmus opened the path of modern biblical scholarship. He had found the perfect convergence of his classical and his Christian interests. Then with his
Enchiridion Militis Christiani
(Handbook of the Christian Soldier) he became a spokesman for Catholic reform. Cautioning against the mere externals of religion, he praised the spirit of Saint Paul and “a warm love for the scriptures.” And by discounting the outward forms of religion, Erasmus invited the suspicion of both Catholics and Reformers.