Christianity has been a constantly evolving religion since its
inception. It has been full of new ideas and thoughts that have
molded modern Christianity into what it has become today. These
thinkers have created themes and moods that have been picked up on
and modified for 2000 years. In this paper, I will discuss seven of
these important thinkers and their impact on Christian thought
through the ages. I will also discuss how and in what ways has
Christianity been both an influence on and a consequence of the social
and intellectual history of the West.
Origen (185 - 254) is the most important
theologian prior to Augustine. Much to his fame, he had the
misfortune of doing a great deal of scholarship prior to Nicea.
Doctrine passed down at Nicaea went against Origen. His works are
condemned as heretical, but not him. His works are studied through
the medieval period up to Aquinas. Origen was one of the most
controversial scholars of his time, saying that even the devil
could be saved.(1) Origen began his
theological career at age eighteen when he assumed control of the
catechetical school of Alexandria. He first began to raise the ire
of the church bureaucracy while in Egypt, where he preached as a
layman.(2) The bishop there was trying to
get church control of the area and was not too happy that Origen
was "spiritualizing biblical interpretation."(3) Origen responded to those
who took the Bible literally by saying that the Bible was an
allegory. This was a new system of Biblical theology, where the
word of the Bible was inspected for hidden meanings, and
metaphors. Before then, most theologians took the Bible
literally. Origen said in First Principles that it was possible
to get explanations for every aspect of the world.(4) The Bishops of Jerusalem
and Caesarea welcomed his interpretations, and he spent his last
18 years there.
Origen felt that it was important to have
an accurate Biblical text because it would help him with his
discussions with Jewish and Gnostic scholars. (5) To this end, he
created the Hexapla. This book consisted of an outline of
six books of the Old Testament in Hebrew, then from Hebrew to
Greek, and then four other Greek translations of four other
important texts. In this same text were also commentaries where
he explained parts of the Bible in 3 ways, literal, moral and
allegorical. In his lifetime, he produced 2,000 works. Most of
these were commentaries on the Bible. One of his other important
works is called On First Principles. In this book, he was
defending the principle of exegesis. He uses Scripture both as
example and explanation. (6) Origen's First
Principles was a summary of everything that the apostles
taught. He talks about the soul, free will, the creation of the
universe and other important topics.(7) He also admitted though,
that nothing was said about how the sun and the moon were
created. Origen said that the world did not begin as an
accident, but as God's way of getting back lost souls. God would
do this by education and training.(8) Souls got lost by letting
their love for God lapse. These souls began as astral bodies,
whom God gave free will. A whole hierarchy developed as the
souls developed. The world, then, was an intermediate place
where the trial and judgement took place.
Origen believed that God manifested himself
in three ways: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. This is a concept today
known as the Trinity. He also believed that the Father and the Son
were coequals, because he thought that to be a Father, one must
have a Son. He believed also that the Son did not just temporarily
exist; he just manifested himself from the Father. In these ways,
he solves the Number and Duration problems that existed at that
time. These two problems were two of the things that were addressed
at Nicea. The number problem was important because it addressed the
problem: was Jesus a manifestation of God, or a separate entity
from God? The Duration problem described how in a linear time
model, did the son always exist? If there is a father, there must
be a time where the son was not, as the son must come after the
father. There are two answers to that. The first answer given is
that God made Jesus, the second is that Jesus is part of God, who
is eternal. Origen does not believe in reincarnation, but he did
philosophize about souls existing before birth. He also said that
it was the love of God that would provide salvation. (9). This is close to the
predestination concept for Luther and Calvin.
Ambrose told Origen to write the Contra
Celsus, a response to Celsus' attack on Christianity.
(Triumphant, 85) Origen liked to use philosophy, geometry, physics,
astronomy and the words of the prophets to bring his students to
God. Origen also wrote a paper on the defense of martyrdom, the
Exhortation to Martyrdom, where he said to be baptized in
blood was more important than to be baptized in water. He argued
that you could be baptized and sin again, but if you are martyred,
you cannot sin again.(10) This gives many people
incentive later to die in the Crusades when the church tells them
if they die in battle, all their sins will be forgiven.
Origen's teachings become the basis for
many future Christian thinkers, especially for another Christian
thinker known as Augustine. Augustine (354 - 430) was born in
Tagaste, in northern Africa. He had a pagan father Patricius and a
Christian mother by the name of Monica, who exhorted him constantly
to become a Christian. He has a mistress by 17 and a son by 18. He
was a lecturer, a very good one, which helped him in his future
theological career. His mother wanted him to convert to
Christianity, but he choose a life of hedonism. Augustine was
seduced by the rhetoric of Ambrose, according to
Augustine.(11) He met with Ambrose in
Milan, where Ambrose had been the governor and was now the bishop.
Ambrose was a big fan of Origen. Origen tells Augustine not
to take the Bible literally, but to use it allegorically.
<(12) Augustine became ashamed
of all the hedonistic things he had done, and went to a garden
to sort it all out. He heard a voice telling him to read
the Scriptures. He opened the book to a random page, a common
divination process known as bibliomancy, and happened across a
passage from Romans 13:13ff that says "let us conduct ourselves
becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not
in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and
jealousy. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for
the flesh, to gratify his desires." Augustine wrote his book
Confessions about his sinful life and his relationship
with his mother Monica. It also talks about how he wrestled with
his sinfulness and turned to Christianity. It also talks about
his efforts to avoid the sexual impulse.
He had been following Manicheeism up to the
time that he listened to Ambrose. He had been a Manichee for about nine
years at this point, although not a very serious one. (13) He liked Manicheeism because
it said to take nothing on faith.(14) Manicheeism taught that the
body was evil, and was a prison that the soul was put in by an evil
demiurge. Augustine could not understand how there could be evil in
a place that a good God created. To explain this, he developed the
concept of original sin.(15) The Nicene Creed does
not mention it, although other authors of and before the time
developed the concept. Augustine was the first to bring it into
standard Christian thought. Augustine thought that evil was a lack
of knowledge.(16) He believed that
the first evil act was a rejection of God's will and an approval of
the will of the individual person. He saw himself in this
description, especially his earlier years, where he followed his
own will and not the will of God. (17) He wrote City of
God. This was a social model that took into account all his
beliefs, especially where the will of the human struggles with the
city of God.
Augustine says we are all damned anyway,
but God chooses to save a few, and decides to pour his grace
down on certain ones. Augustine believes in salvation through grace.
God decides who is saved, but we aren't going to know. You'll see
it in how their life goes. Pelagius said that there are no sinful
people, just sinful acts. He was excommunicated for this. This
same concept of predestination and visible signs was picked up on by
Luther, and helped to found capitalism and secularization in the
West.
The Donatists at this time were complaining
that any priest who fell rendered his future actions invalid. The
Donatists were saying that some priests who have been ordained gave
some holy books to the persecutors of the Christians, and wanted
those priests' ordinations declared invalid. Augustine strongly
disagreed with the Donatists. Augustine said it only mattered that
the fundamental nature of the religion is intact, and because the
sacraments do not belong to the priest to give, but to Christ
himself, therefore the sacraments are still pure. The Donatists were
causing a problem at this time, and the state was in a quandary as
to what to do with them. Augustine says that the state has the right
to come in and control the Donatists. If the intentions are pure,
there is a right to use force. This is the Just War theory.
Augustine said that the church could use force because the state
did, and since the church's problems were greater, the church had
the prerogative to use force. He used as one of his arguments for
this a phrase from Luke 14:23 saying "compel them to come in."
(18)
Augustine lived to see the sack of Rome. The
Romans said this sack happened because they let the Christians in
and did not perform the sacrifices. Attila the Hun also came
in, as did the Goths. The Pope could have raised an
army to stop the Huns and the Goths, but refused to sell the gold
in the treasury to get mercenaries to fight the war. Augustine
started to answer the people who are complaining about Rome.
Augustin said that it was not the Christians' fault, and wrote 22
apologetic books with arguments as to why the Christians did not do
this. Augustin said everyone deserves their nation. Christians
should tolerate imperfect governments and obey those governments.
Augustine helped to shape the social history
of the West in that his just war theory was carried out by many
church fathers and theologians. They would use this theory for the
next 400 or so years to justify the killings of millions of people.
Hitler himself would even base his killings on some of this theory, saying
that he was only finishing what the churches started with their
wars of religion.
Thomas Aquinas ( 1224-1274) helped shape
the medieval doctrines of the Church. Aquinas came from a noble
household in Italy.(19) His mother came from an
aristocratic Neapolitan family and his father was a baron under
Frederick II. He had 3 brothers and 5 sisters. In 1231 he was
sent to a Benedictine monastery to learn. He used to annoy his
teachers by asking "What is God?"(20) At that time, the
tradition of the monasteries was to have biblical commentary and
ask questions. This is much like rabbinic teaching. In 1239,
Aquinas went to the University of Naples. This was a unique
university at the time in that it was independent of
the church. During this time, he became exposed to the writings
of Aristotle. In 1242, he joined the Dominicans. The study of
Aristotle to the full extent of his teachings was forbidden until 1252. Around this period, Aquinas
decided that he was going to merge Aristotle with Christian philosophy.
When they discuss his dialectic today, they
call it Thomist. He brings up 5 arguments for God's existence.
These 5 arguments are as follows:(21)
- Since the world moves, and there
is cause and effect, there has be someone doing the moving and the
changing.
- There also has to be a first cause.
- There has to be
something non-changing or nothing in the world would exist.
- Since
we decide things are good, better, and best, the best thing must be
God.
- Last, since all ends have a means, the means must be God.
Aristotelian logic says one can defend God through reason and
one can define reason through faith. He also asks what
is real, and what is truth, and how are faith and reason
related. In his Summa Theologica, Aquinas also says that
reason can lead to faith. This has been a debate through many
traditions. The Scholastic answers to these arguments is
that reason can lead to faith. Scholastics defended the faith
through reason rather than through authorities.
Aquinas says that one cannot argue with a
person who makes a faith claim. This is a good policy that should
be followed even today; however, the Christian church argued with
and killed anyone with a different faith claim for many more years.
To a believer, the beliefs are truer than true, so Aquinas sees no
point in arguing. For Aquinas, faith and reason were not mutually
exclusive. Reason deals with natural knowledge through sense,
perception and intellection. Faith deals with revealed knowledge
through feeling and will.(22)
Aquinas's ideas are still used today. He
says existence and essence are one in God. Things exist; so it is
truer of God to say that he exists than he does not exist. He sees
philosophy like religion without God. Aquinas sees God as the
"First Cause." He is the cause of everything else, and is present
everywhere. He is the ground of being. However, Aquinas does not
say that God is responsible for sin.
Aquinas says that even though humans
are less than perfect, one can develop oneself into either
habitual virtues or habitual vices. This is very similar to what
Pelagius says. There is no predestination in Aquinas' theories; in
fact, he is trying to get away from predestination. He does say
that one has a will and that one can choose to do or not to do
these things. Aquinas says that the church is the vehicle of grace
and the means to grace are the sacraments. The Seven Sacraments are
Baptism, Eucharist, Penance, Confirmation, Ordination, Marriage, and
Extreme Unction. Why seven sacraments? There are seven virtues and
seven vices. The seven virtues are truth, justice, courage,
temperance, faith, hope, and love. The seven vices are pride,
sloth, greed, envy, wrath, gluttony and lechery. Grace is a force
from God. It makes one light and pleasing to God. Aquinas stresses
that grace makes you do good things and meritorious works. One can
earn more meritorious grace than one needs. The church gives the excess back through indulgences. Aquinas was a
Dominican monk, and according to Aquinas, the best way to get merit
is to be a monk. Like Augustine, Aquinas agrees with the just war
theory.
Aquinas believed that the scriptures were
divinely inspired by God. However, he believed that with all the
heresy going around, it was necessary to supplement the
scriptures. This is how the councils, creeds, and the Pope
became necessary. It is the Pope's job to be the final authority and
decide the final definition of faith. (23)
From all Aquinas' work,
there were two books created. The first was called Summary of the
True Catholic Faith Against the Gentiles. This was meant as a
handbook for missionaries. The second was the Summa
Theologica. This was a synthesis of all of his theories. This
book was not finished at his death, and had to be finished by
another person, Reginald of Piperno.
On October 31st, 1517, Martin
Luther (1483 - 1546) posted his 95 theses to the door of the church
in Wittenberg. At a superficial level, Luther's work was
influenced by a religious practice known as indulgences. Luther saw
this practice as an example of excesses of the church. Indulgences
were a check written on the excess grace and good works of the
church. At the time, the church believed that one could store grace
and give it to others. This theory was from Aquinas, who believed
that grace brought one closer to God and that one could get excess
grace.
Luther believed that the church had strayed
from the Bible. This is a common statement of most of the
philosophers in Christianity. Luther feels that the
church was organized in a way that prohibited lay people from
participating in religious life. In the structure of the Roman Catholic
Church, the priests are intermediaries between God and man. At the
time, it was forbidden to translate the Bible into a vernacular
language. This kept the peasantry from getting the text and
ministering to the laity. Luther was very concerned about where the
laity fit in and why the Bible could not be translated into a language
that the common man might understand. Luther felt that the church
prevented full participation in religious life unless one were a
priest. What Luther wanted was a priesthood of all believers instead
of a select clergy. In the time of Paul, everyone participated in
the religious services, and that is what Luther wanted. In a famous
assertion, he promised to take back all he had said if they could
prove him wrong by the Scripture. He never took it back.
Luther preferred faith and visible signs over
the reason and knowledge of the Scholastics. (24) Luther believed that they
only two real authorities should be the Bible and one's
conscience. He said that one's conscience was necessary to
interpret the Bible correctly. Luther believed that only faith
would save, as God would give forgiveness in faith, not in good works done throughout life. He believed one should do
good works to say thanks to God instead of to save oneself from
Hell.
Unlike Aquinas, Luther believed the Pope
was unnecessary. He believed that the Bible itself was the only
source for information, and the Pope and the whole church hierarchy
was completely unnecessary. He was furious at the practice of
indulgence, and believed that it circumvented God's authority.
(25) This is why
he started to write the 95 Theses. The 95
Theses were a listing of everything that he saw as being
wrong with the church. He nailed the theses to the Wittenberg
door because it had many relics of the church that the church
said would heal and forgive, again, circumventing God.
The church was furious with Luther for
criticizing its choice of funding. The only reason that Luther did
not get killed was that he had the protection of the German
princes. The princes liked the idea that they did not have to give
money up to Rome. It also gave the princes more power and took it
away from the church. The Pope tried multiple ways to silence
Luther, but none of them worked.
With previous theologians, being a monk or
an ascetic was the most important and sacred thing one could do.
Luther said that every profession is sacred, and that no one is more
important than another, because everyone contributes to the good of
the community. Luther's two sacraments were Baptism and
Communion. He said these were the only ones that Christ did.
The others were created by the church, so they were
invalid.
The Lutherans were also an innovative
religion as they were the first to ordain women. They ordained
Barbara Andrews in 1870.(26) This set a precedent for
the ordination of women in other religions as well.
John Calvin (1509 - 1564) was a lawyer.
Calvin took Luther and his principles of the Reformation and used
them for a system of government in Geneva, Switzerland. Calvin uses
the principle of representative democracy to run Geneva. Geneva
became very prosperous from this venture. Calvin was a very strict
ruler. If one didn't show up for church, they came over to find out
why. He also killed people for falling asleep in church. However,
he did sanction private economic enterprise, which made this
branch of Calvinism very successful.
Calvin said that God saves through grace
alone. Like Augustine, he believes that all humans are sinful and
deserve to burn. However, God selects a few people, who he calls
the elect, and saves them. Election even comes before
faith.(27) The main question for
Calvin and his followers was how to tell if one was elect.
Calvin said that one could tell through visible signs. Visible
signs meant that an elect person would be more financially
successful if he were elect. However, he admitted, there was no
way to truly know, so everyone had to hear the word of God.
What began in 1517 kept going. The Amish,
Mennonites, Anglican, Baptists, and other religions all got their
start here. In 1648, the Thirty Years' War ended. The Thirty Years' War was
fought over religion, and when it was over, people believed that it
was not worth it to fight over religion. This, as well as Luther
and Calvin's principles, ended the domination of religion in Europe.
Christianity was no longer the center of life in Europe.
Secularization took the place of religion. There was more of an
emphasis placed on economics and education. It was the
economic institution that was the driving force. Calvinism's
principle of visible signs was instrumental in this as well,
because the need to be successful drove people to go into business
to make money.
After Calvin came the period of the
Enlightenment. Philosophers of this time were saying that religion
was not important. Also, with the Industrial Revolution, religion
went to the wayside as the pursuit of money became important.
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768 - 1834) believed that feeling,
rather than the dogma of the church, was the basis of religion.
He believed that religion was one of the most important
things that humans could study. Schleiermacher was a hospital
chaplain in Berlin and later became a professor at the University.
Schleiermacher wrote his books responding to those from the
Enlightenment period who thought that religion was a waste of time.
The first book that he wrote was On Religion, Speeches to Its
Cultured Despisers. The book was to dispute those who thought
that religion should have been put away as if it were something old
and outdated. The next book he wrote was called The Christian
Faith. In this book, he developed his beliefs and dogma. In
this, he postulated that there was a dependence on a higher power.
He called this the God-Conciousness.
Schleiermacher was arguing for religion in a
time when people were just getting out from under the terror of
enforced religion. Schleiermacher argues that religion is not
a philosophy, nor an abstract thought, nor a science, nor
an adherence to dogma. He said that it is a sense and taste for the
infinite. He made a point that was antithetical. He said
that belief and action are secondary. He said to transcend religion.
One does not need an organized structure to do that. This was a
compromise to those who were still wary of organized religion.
Schleiermacher said that knowledge of the
soul and knowledge of God are inseparable. Human blessedness means
strengthening the God consciousness. Sin is the obscuring of the
consciousness. He said that through one's experience of the
finite, one begins to depend on the infinite ground of
all things. Human blessedness comes through the God consciousness.
Jesus was unique in the strength of his God consciousness. He
believed that sin was allowing oneself to break one's relationship
with God. He also said that a church was a group of people working
to build the God consciousness in each other. He agreed with the
election theory of Calvin, but did not see it as necessary to
ignore a part of the country. (28) This allowed more people to
come into the religion.
Each of these theologians influenced the
next with their ideas and philosophies; like a pyramid, each
theologian built upon each other in some way to develop their
philosophies. In some cases, this was built on agreement and in
other instances, complete distaste.
Works Cited
Manschrek,
Clyde; A History of Christianity in the world, Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc, 1985
Ferguson, Everett. Encyclopedia of Early
Christianity. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. 1990
Evans, G.R. The Medieval
Theologians. Oxford, England: Blackwell Publishers Ltd,
2001
Johnson, Paul. A
History of Christianity, New York: Simon and Schuster,
1995
www.alabaster-jars.com (12/5/2001)
Hinson, Glenn. The
Church Triumphant, Macon, Georgia: Mercer Press,
1995
Class Notes for
History of Christianity Class, Fall 2001 Semester, University of
South Florida.
(1) Clyde L.Manschreck, A
History of Christianity in the world,( Upper Saddle River,
NJ, Prentice-Hall Inc, 1985) 49
(2) Ibid
(3) Everett Ferguson,
Encyclopedia of Early Christianity,( New York, Garland
Publishing, Inc, 1990) 667
(4) Johnson, 59
(5)Manshreck, 49
(6)Ferguson, 668
(7)Glenn Hinson, The
Church Triumphant, (Macon, Georgia, Mercer Press, 1995),
137
(8) Manschrek, 50
(9) Ferguson, 668
(10) Hinson, 155
(11) Ferguson, 121
(12) G.R. Evans, The
Medieval Theologians (Oxford, England, Blackwell Publishers
Ltd, 2001), 4
(13) Ferguson, 121
(14) Evans, 4
(15) Ferguson, 122
(16) Ferguson, 122
(17) Ferguson, 123
(18) Paul Johnson, A
History of Christianity,;(New York, Simon and
Schuster, 1995), 121
(19) Evans, 201
(20) Ibid
(21) Manschrek, 156
(22) Manschrek, 136
(23) Manschrek, 139
(24) Manschrek, 166
(25) Manschrek, 169
(26) www.alabaster-jars.com
(27) Manschrek, 189
(28) Johnson, 375
Linked and reformatted by Lord Brawl and mirv, 22/03/03