The One and the Many By R. J. Rushdoony
Copyright 1971, 2007 Mark R. Rushdoony Chalcedon / Ross House Books PO Box 158 Vallecito, CA 95251 www.chalcedon.edu/store All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise — except for brief quotations for the purpose of review or comment, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006926982 ISBN: 978-1-879998-46-9 Printed in the United States of America
To H. W. Luhnow whose thoughtful role in the furtherance of research, science, and scholarship is of major and central importance to this age.
Other books by Rousas John Rushdoony The Institutes of Biblical Law, Vol. I The Institutes of Biblical Law, Vol. II, Law & Society The Institutes of Biblical Law, Vol. III, The Intent of the Law Systematic Theology (2 volumes) Chariots of Prophetic Fire To Be As God Noble Savages The Death of Meaning Intellectual Schizophrenia Hebrews, James & Jude The Gospel of John Larceny in the Heart The Biblical Philosophy of History The Mythology of Science Thy Kingdom Come Foundations of Social Order This Independent Republic The Nature of the American System The “Atheism” of the Early Church The Messianic Character of American Education The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum Christianity and the State Salvation and Godly Rule Romans & Galatians God’s Plan for Victory Politics of Guilt and Pity Roots of Reconstruction The One and the Many Revolt Against Maturity By What Standard? Law & Liberty For a complete listing of available books by Rousas John Rushdoony and other Christian reconstructionists, click below: Chalcedon Catalog
Table of Contents I — The One and the Many 1. The Nature of the Problem 2. Attempts at a Solution 3. The Trinitarian Answer 4. The Unitarian Failure 5. Faith and Science 6. Political Perspectives 7. Implications for Education and Freedom 8. The Question of Authority II — The Ground of Liberty 1. Introduction 2. Liberty and Dialectics 3. The Enlightenment 4. The Crisis 5. The Libertarian Failure 6. The Christian Answer 7. Law and Liberty III — The Continuity of Being 1. Egypt 2. Mesopotamia 3. Persia 4. The Chain of Being 5. The Bible and the Concept of Being 6. Being and Society IV — The Unity of the Polis 1. Greece: The Humanist’s Homeland 2. Greek Science and Philosophy 3. The Chaos-Order Dialectic 4. The Esoteric State 5. The Polis as Cosmos 6. The One and the Many 7. Socrates and Plato 8. Aristotle V — Rome: The City of Man 1. The Priority of the State 2. Cicero and the Rule of Reason 3. Julius Caesar
4. Chaos Cults 5. Cicero and Revolution 6. Cicero and the State 7. Caesar and the New State 8. The New Perversity 9. Marcus Aurelius 10. Commodus 11. Last Hopes in Chaos VI — Christ: The World De-divinized 1. War Against the Gods 2. Mysticism 3. Gnosticism 4. Christianity and the Family 5. Abortion 6. Emperor Worship 7. Creation and History 8. History and God 9. Constantine the Great 10. Arianism 11. Nicaea 12. Constantinople I 13. The Orthodox Faith vs. Heresies 14. Ephesus 15. Chalcedon 16. Pelagianism and Asceticism 17. Deprecation of Matter and History 18. Augustine on the Pelagians 19. The Church as New Rome 20. Later Councils 21. The One and the Many VII — The Return of Dialectic Thought 1. Boethius 2. Scholasticism 3. Aquinas’ Task 4. Thomistic Dialecticism 5. Noetics and Ethics 6. Common Ground in Being 7. The One and the Many in Aquinas 8. The State VIII — Frederick II and Dante: The World Re-divinized
1. Medieval Civilization 2. Frederick II 3. Dante 4. Dante’s View of the State 5. The Witness of The Divine Comedy 6. Pope John XXIII 7. Pope Paul VI IX — The Immanent One as the Power State 1. Castiglione 2. Machiavelli X — The Reformation: The Problem Redefined 1. Luther 2. Against Erasmus 3. Luther and the One and Many 4. Calvin 5. Calvin on Law and Love 6. Richard Hooker XI — Utopia: The New City of Man 1. Humanism and Utopia 2. Thomas More 3. Francis Bacon 4. Campanella 5. Hobbes, Locke, Harrington XII — Autonomous Man and the New Order 1. Descartes 2. John Locke 3. Berkeley 4. Alexander Pope 5. La Mettrie 6. Hume 7. Rousseau 8. Immanuel Kant XIII — War Against the Beyond 1. Hegel 2. Feuerbach 3. Max Stirner 4. Karl Marx 5. Nietzsche
6. Sartre 7. Wittgenstein 8. Marcuse 9. Hammarskjold XIV — The Christian Perspective 1. Modernism 2. Van Til 3. At the End of an Age APPENDIX — Observations on the End of an Age 1. The End of an Age 2. The Religious Foundations of Culture The Author The Ministry of Chalcedon Endnotes
Chapter I The One and the Many 1. The Nature of the Problem One of the most basic and continuing problems of man’s history is the question of the one and the many and their relationship. The fact that in recent years men have avoided discussion of this matter has not ceased to make their unstated presuppositions with respect to it determinative of their thinking. Much of the present concern about the trends of these times is literally wasted on useless effort because those who guide the activities cannot resolve, with the philosophical tools at hand to them, the problem of authority. This is at the heart of the problem of the proper function of government, the power to tax, to conscript, to execute for crimes, and to wage warfare. The question of authority is again basic to education, to religion, and to the family. Where does authority rest, in democracy or in an elite, in the church or in some secular institution, in God or in reason? The implications of the problem are religious, as will be shown, but the fact that it is not discussed permits an ignorant equalization of various religions and diverse theologies. The differences between Christianity and atheism are basic, as are the differences between Buddhism and Christianity. Russian Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism each has its characteristic culture or consequence in the social and political action of its own presupposition. Failure to recognize the fact that all routes to God are not equally valid or relevant to the maintenance of historic Western culture, especially in the United States, has extensively clouded the possibility of an intelligible answer. The plea that this is a pluralistic culture is merely recognition of the problem—not an answer. The problem of authority is not answerable by reason alone, and basic to reason itself are pre-theoretical suppositions or axioms1 which represent essentially religious commitments. And one such basic commitment is with respect to the question of the one and the many.2 The fact that students can graduate from our universities as philosophy majors without any awareness of the importance or centrality of this question does not make the one and many any less basic to our thinking. The difference between East and West, and between various aspects of Western history and culture, rests on answers to this problem which, whether consciously or unconsciously, have been made. Whether recognized or not, every argument and every theological, philosophical, political, or any other exposition is based on a presupposition about man, God, and society—about reality. This presupposition rules and determines the conclusion; the effect is the result of a cause. And one such basic presupposition is with reference to the one and the many. This avoidance of the problem makes necessary a few elementary definitions as a prelude to a discussion. The one refers not to a number but to unity and oneness; in metaphysics, it has usually meant the absolute, the supreme Idea for Plato, the universe for Parmenides, Being as Such for Plotinus, and so on. The one can be a separate whole, or it can be the sum of things in their analytic or synthetic wholeness; that is, it can be a transcendent one, which is the ground of all being, or it can be an immanent one. The many refers to the particularity or individuality of things; the universe is full of a multitude of beings; is the truth concerning them inherent in their individuality, or is it in their basic oneness? If it is their individuality, then the many are ultimate
and the proper source of authority, and we have philosophical Nominalism. If it is their oneness, then the one is ultimate, and we have Realism. According to Realism, universals, which are terms applicable to all the universe and can be called real “second substances,” are aspects of the one Idea and exist within it. Egyptian, much Greek, and medieval scholastic thought has been “Realistic.” For “Nominalism,” abstract or general terms have no real existence and are mere names applied to aspects of reality; reality belongs to particulars, actual physical particulars, so that the truth of being is simply that individual things exist. Truth is not some abstraction concerning particular things but is simply the fact of particularity.
2. Attempts at a Solution The importance of these two philosophies becomes readily apparent if we analyze the presuppositions of dominant modern politico-economic theories. Nominalism has, since Occam, held extensive sway in modern history. Materialism and Empiricism have been essentially Nominalistic. Anarchism is the logical conclusion of such a philosophy. No truth or reality or law exists apart from particulars and individuals. God, law, government, church, and morality are abstracts which represent a tyranny to man; liberty means an unshackling of these chains and the affirmation of individuality as the essential aspect of reality. A logical champion of such Nominalism, as witness Thoreau and Robert LeFevre, is hostile to all religion and government and favors only a purely individual religion, if any, a self-government as the only true or possible government.3 The Realist affirms instead the reality of the one rather than the many; for Plato’s followers, the Idea, and the State, had a reality which particulars did not possess. For the Scholastics, as Aquinas, the Church, as the representative of the absolute reality and a continuation of the incarnation, had a reality above and beyond its every member. After Christianity lost its primary power in U.S. history, Nominalism took over and found expression in the thinking of the so-called “robber barons.” Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) reintroduced Realism in its pragmatic and non-religious form into American thought, and Dewey developed it extensively. In England, G. E. Moore (b. 1873) molded Fabian thought and thereby influenced America. The priority of the state to the individual, and the reality of the state as against the unreality of the individual, marked such thinking. For Dewey, the Great Community was the basic fact of history. Towards its actualization in history, all effort must be bent. But, for Dewey, the individual and the soul were invalid concepts; man was truly man, not as an individual, but, after Aristotle, in society and supremely in the state. True education thus for Dewey meant, not the development of the individual in terms of learning, but his socialization. Progressive education is “Realistic,” as is parochial education to a great extent. Most basic educators, however, are “Nominalists”: educate the individual in terms of the particular facts of the universe without reference to God, truth, or morality. Further instances of the implications of the one and many problem can be seen in art. In the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, art was Nominalistic and generally aimed at a photographic reproduction of subjects, so that in some instances the very warts on a man’s nose were religiously depicted. Reality belonged to a particularity, to individuals, and ideas were less important progressively than material facts. Medieval art had been dedicated to philosophical Realism, i.e., more interested in portraying universal ideas (faith, love, etc.) than persons, who were particulars and less real. Modern art is non-Thomistic Realism; it despises things, particulars, individuals, and is given to portraying the experience of unity. It is thus a pagan mysticism and not infrequently seeks the mystical experience in drugs
because of its hunger for the absorptive one. In Science, a clear instance of Nominalism is Kinsey, who, in his studies of sex, denied the validity of universals and affirmed the sole reality of particulars; sexual acts of any character are thus real, but moral laws are not. They are merely nominal, conventional, and alien to the nature of things. In much Far Eastern thought, as in Hinduism and Buddhism, the problem of the one and the many no longer exists in many circles, since centuries ago resolution was made in favor of the one. The goal of being is thus absorption into the one, and, since particularity is unreal or even an illusion, it follows that history is unimportant. Thus, the Buddhist Milarepa could declare: Because I see the self-face of the View, The thought of contrast by itself dissolves; How then can I have the Idea-of-Two — the self and others? The View is void of limit and discrimination. When in the Practice I become absorbed, Good and evil are reduced to self-liberation; How then can I have the Idea-of-Two — happiness and suffering? The Practice is devoid of limitary feelings and experience. When I adhere to the self-continuance of Action, Dislike is reduced to self-liberation; How then can I have the Impulse-of-Two — craving and aversion? The Action is free from limitary attachment. Since self-liberation is the Fruit, Both Nirvana and Samsara are reduced to it. How then can I have the Idea-of-Two— getting and Abandoning? Absence of fear and hope is The Fruit of this great Practice.4 Meaning disappears from such a system, since meaning imposes limits and requires discrimination, all of which are alien to the unity of the one. Since history is struggle and discrimination, history means a revolt against the undifferentiated unity of being. As a result, Far Eastern cultures in a sense abdicated from history when their philosophies so resolved the problem of the one and the many. Only as Western thought has infiltrated Asia has history again gained relevancy. By virtue of its predisposition to absorption into the great one, Eastern thought has been ready to accept such various forms of the one as the Communist International, the ecumenical church, and the United Nations. If meaning is accepted, it is the meaning of unity.
In the West, philosophy has usually been dialectical, i.e., holding two antithetical principles in tension, such as form and matter in Greek philosophy, nature and grace in Scholasticism, and nature and freedom in modern thought, as Dooyeweerd has shown.5 Because of this dialectical tension, it has been unable to rest content with a final solution as has the East. In the West, therefore, both “Realism” and “Nominalism,” the one and the many, have had their uneasy sway. The Enlightenment, Deism, and illuminist thought exalted the principle of the one at the sacrifice of the many. Alexander Pope, in his Essay on Man, stated this Enlightenment faith clearly: All are parts of one stupendous whole Whose body Nature is, and God the soul. This whole was for Pope present in every part, and the parts found their true being in the whole. As a result, the Enlightenment hope was in a social order, introduced by the scientific State, which would liberate man and unite him in that true world brotherhood which represented his only hope.6 This faith received a major setback in the American rebellion, a Christian counterrevolution, but it is again prevalent and has its great institutional formulation in the United Nations. The religious reduction of all reality to one is pantheism, or, in more sophisticated forms, existentialism and neo-orthodoxy. The political reduction of all humanity to one, with the obliteration of all differences, is the United Nations’ hope. It is a faith present in many forms. Thus, a state law barring a conservative Bible club from state colleges as divisive (because limited to fundamentalistic Protestants and excluding Jews, Roman Catholics, atheists, and others) presupposes unity as the one virtue. Divisiveness is by definition evil. It is thus apparent that both “Realism” and “Nominalism” are ultimately destructive of the idea of truth. “Nominalism” admits no reality in universals other than particularity, and “Realism” ultimately reduces all universals to one, unity, and, especially in nonreligious forms, is quickly hostile to any notion that truth and unity can be in conflict. The Protestant Reformation asserted the priority of truth to unity; Modernist Protestantism increasingly denies the possibility of their conflict—implicitly accepting authoritarian unity: truth is unity, and unity is truth. Ecumenicity (all churches in one) is of itself therefore deemed both good and necessary. Politically, the United Nations is also seen as both good and necessary. The possibility of improvement is admitted, but not the possibility of elimination, for both hope and progress rest in the development of the principle of unity. With respect to the United States, Van Zandt deplores the fact that the decisive liberal thinker, Jefferson, was a Nominalist, and hence given to an anarchistic individualism as expressed in his agrarianism. As a result, “America’s French Revolution has awaited the twentieth century,”7 but now the Realism of Peirce and modern thinkers is restoring the primacy of the one. From such a perspective, a oneworld order is a necessity. Ideas thus do have consequences. More than that, the presuppositions behind ideas have consequences. The differ-ence between presuppositions and intentions is an important one. With respect to foreign aid, the U. S. program has had a liberating and ostensibly Christian intention while actually resting on a thorough-going Marxian dialectical materialism, as Groseclose has ably pointed out.8 This presupposition, rather than its announced intention, has governed the outcome of foreign aid. A religious and philosophical consistency is thus important. Eclectic
systems, which lack systematic consistency and organization, are doomed. In facing the menaces of Marxism and anti-Christianity, we cannot succeed if our own premises or presuppositions carry concealed Marxist and anti-Christian axioms. The problem of the one and the many may be avoided in the classroom, pulpit, and press, but it cannot be avoided in life. The question remains: which has primacy and priority? Is the state more important than the individual, or does the individual have a reality which the state does not possess? What is the locus of Christianity, the believer or the church? Does marriage have a reality which makes its condition mandatory irrespective of the conditions of the husband and wife, or do the persons in the marriage take priority, in their wishes, over the idea of marriage? Is education to be geared to the development of the individual or to the welfare of society? Raising these questions immediately makes apparent the fact that our society does have opinions on the one and the many, and that both Nominalist and Realist have in the last century extensively influenced our education, religion, and legislation.
3. The Trinitarian Answer Orthodox Christianity has asserted another answer to the problem, and, to make clear that answer, certain elementary distinctions are necessary. Theology and philosophy distinguish between the ontological trinity and the economical trinity in speaking of God. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are each a personality, and together they constitute the triune and exhaustively personal, totally self-conscious God. God is totally self-conscious, meaning that He has no hidden, unknown aspects of His being, no unexploited potentiality. He is actuality, selfconscious and personal. Each person of the trinity is equally God. As Van Til has stated it, Each is as much God as are the other two. The Son and the Spirit do not derive their being from the Father. The diversity and the unity in the Godhead are therefore equally ultimate; they are exhaustively correlative to one another and not correlative to anything else.9 The trinity so described is called the ontological trinity, that is, the trinity in its relationship to itself, in terms of its own being. When the relationship of the triune God to His creation is discussed, the economical trinity is referred to, i.e., the trinity in its relationship to its activity with respect to the universe, creating, sustaining, or redeeming it. Our concern now is with the ontological trinity, God in His being. The being of God is infinite, eternal, unchangeable, and holy. Biblical thought differentiates between created being and uncreated being, whereas all nonChristian systems speak of being in general, one undifferentiated being shared, in various degrees, by God and man alike. In these non-Christian metaphysics, the idea of the great chain of being—of the ultimate oneness of God and man—is implicit or explicit. Evil is non-being, and man either moves downward into non-being or upward on the ladder or chain into absorption by, or full participation in, being. Salvation is thus metaphysical, a development of being, whereas for biblical faith it is ethical, involving a new life and a new relationship to God, a change from status as a covenant-breaker to status as a covenant-keeper. Because man is a created being, he is
totally under the government of God, and his thinking is true only as subject to God, whom he meets in every aspect of the universe because it is totally the creation of God. The main point is that if man could look anywhere and not be confronted with the revelation of God then he could not sin in the Biblical sense of the term. Sin is the breaking of the law of God. God confronts man everywhere. He cannot in the nature of the case confront man anywhere if he does not confront him everywhere. God is one; the law is one. If man could press one button on the radio of his experience and not hear the voice of God then he would always press that button and not the others. But man cannot even press the button of his own selfconsciousness without hearing the requirement of God.10 Thus, all factuality in the universe is created and understandable only in terms of the ontological trinity. Because He created it, its meaning is also created meaning, derived from Him who made it. This points us to the ontological trinity as the answer to the problem of the one and the many. Immediately we have a distinction which does not exist in non-Christian thought: we have a temporal one and many in the created universe, and we have an eternal One-and-Many in the ontological trinity, an absolute and self-complete unity. In Van Til we have a definitive formulation of the implications: Using the language of the One-and-Many question we contend that in God the one and many are equally ultimate. Unity in God is no more fundamental than diversity, and diversity in God is no more fundamental than unity. The persons of the Trinity are mutually exhaustive of one another. The Son and the Spirit are ontologically on a par with the Father. It is a well-known fact that all heresies in the history of the church have in some form or other taught subordinationism. Similarly, we believe, all “heresies” in apologetic methodology spring from some form of subordinationism.11 Since both the one and the many are equally ultimate in God, it immediately becomes apparent that these two seemingly contradictory aspects of being do not cancel one another but are equally basic to the ontological trinity: one God, three persons. Again, since temporal unity and plurality are the products and creation of this triune God, neither the unity nor the plurality can demand the sacrifice of the other to itself. Thus, man and government are equally aspects of created reality. The locus of Christianity is both the believer and the church; they are not independent of or prior to one another. The wishes of husband and wife do not take priority over marriage, nor does the institution of marriage have primacy over the partners to it; marriage indeed is a type of an eternal reality (Eph. 5:22-25), but man is himself created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-27). Education must be geared both to the individual and to society, but, above all, to God.
4. The Unitarian Failure It becomes apparent at once why Unitarianism has floundered between the one and the many, between anarchism and statism.
Lacking as it does any doctrine of the equal ultimacy of the one and the many in the ontological trinity, it has accepted, since its orientation is the temporal, either the ultimacy of man or of the state. Mohammedanism, because of its “unitar-ianism,” has been primarily a monolithic statist order, Islam. Its denial of free-will and espousal of rigid determinism is related to this theological premise. Since plurality has no ultimate reality in Mohammedanism, the freedom of the many is an academic question; the one will of Allah governs all reality. The tendency of Mohammedan thought, when not arrested by statist action, to run into mysticism is an obvious and natural one. Since the one alone has ultimate reality, the proper goal of the many is absorption into that one. Since the one alone has ultimacy, the one alone has freedom. There is no Reformed or Augustinian distinction between proximate and ultimate causes. Indeed, if two ingredients are lacking in a system of thought, i.e., the ontological trinity and a distinction between created and uncreated being, this distinction is bluffed, in that both proximate and ultimate causes, if the difference is made, are alike derived from a common well of being and are basically one. For Calvin, responsible proximate causes rested precisely on the total, all-comprehensive ultimate cause; that is, the Christian doctrine of free will rests on the eternal counsel of God, on predestination. As the Westminster Confession stated it, Although, in relation to the foreknowledge, and decree of God, the first cause, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly, Yet, by the same providence, he ordereth them to fall out according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.12 God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.13 In this perspective, liberty and law are not hostile factors but necessary aspects of one another, so that the one cannot exist without the other. The eternal One-and-Many is both unity and plurality, both totally free, being self-determined, and, being fully self-conscious, having also a total counsel, predestinating all things by His eternal decree. Law and liberty coincide in the ontological trinity; in the temporal one and many, the fulfilment of creation is in terms of the glorious liberty of the sons of God, their growth within the structure of God’s law (Rom. 8). By and large, the Unitarian influence in U. S. history has been statist. Very early, Unitarian thinkers led the country into a messianic view of the state as man’s source of salvation and of true order, and also into statist education. Even in so cautious a man as Emerson, some of these facets appear. In 1844, in Essays, Second Series, Emerson, in “Nominalist and Realist,” affirmed his support of Realism and saw Nature and natural process as the “incarnation and distribution of the godhead.” This meant that no part or particular in Nature could permanently express or incarnate the truth, which rested in process. Each man too is a tyrant in tendency, because he would impose his idea on others; and their trick is their natural defense. Jesus would absorb the race; but Tom
Paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power.14 In “The American Scholar,” an address of 1837, Emerson asserted an ostensibly extreme individualism which was actually a dissolution of the individual to give ground for the totalitarian conception of society. The common will he saw embodied in “representative men.” In 1838, in “An Address (Delivered in Divinity College, Cambridge),” Emerson declared, “The soul knows no persons. It invites every man to expand to the full circle of the Universe.” In “Literary Ethics,” he declared: The man of genius should occupy the whole space between God or pure mind and the multitude of uneducated men. He must draw from the infinite Reason, on one side; and he must penetrate into the heart and sense of the crowd, on the other. From one, he must draw his strength; to the other, he must owe his aim. The one yokes him to the real; the other, to the apparent.15
The man of genius is thus for his age the incarnation of Reality, but the people whom he serves are merely appearances, “the apparent.” This is a parallel development to the Hegelian and Marxist doctrine of the elite and the dictatorship of the proletariat. In writing on “History” in Essays, First Series (1841), Emerson stated that “There is one mind in common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same.”16 But since most men have only a meager participation in this great one, the common being, the great representative men become their voice and representative in that era. These men are the true state. To educate the wise man the State exists, and with the appearance of the wise man the State expires. The appearance of character makes the State unnecessary. The wise man is the State.17 While Emerson was ready to affirm with Jefferson that the least government was the best government, he laid the foundation for statism. The utilitarian belief in nature as the perfect mechanism working to effect the greatest good of the greatest number he transferred to the state: As we say in our modern politics, catching at last the language of morals, that the object of the State is the greatest good of the greatest number,—so, the reason we must give for the existence of the world is, that it is for the benefit of all being.18 It is no surprise then to learn that Emerson was in the second echelon of the Secret Six, a group dedicated to forcing statist and military action with respect to slavery and supporting John Brown.19 Emerson, in public addresses, seemed to regard Brown as the needed representative man of the hour.20 Just as in Nominalism universals become abstract universals, mere verbal generalizations without any meaning in themselves, so in Realism individuals tend to become mere abstract particulars, thin in being and meaningless apart from the great one. In Emerson, representative men (and the state) were the incarnation of that oneness for their particular era, occupying “the whole space” as true mediators of reality. This is the essential doctrine of ancient Babylonian statism and a continuing foundation of new Towers of Babel.
5. Faith and Science In the ontological trinity, we have a concrete universal and concrete particulars. Moreover, “In God’s being there are no particulars not related to the universal and there is nothing universal that is not fully expressed in the particulars.”21 This means that the trinity is totally self-contained and totally explicable in terms of itself. In turn, this means that the temporal one and many, having been created by God, is entirely and only explicable in terms of the ontological trinity, and that the non-believer’s knowledge of the universe is in terms of borrowed premises, for the logic of any other premise is, as Van Til has repeatedly shown, the denial of our experience and of reality. Nominalism ends by dissolving the world into an endless sea of unrelated and meaningless facts or particulars, whereas Realism progressively denies the validity of particulars, of the many, and absorbs them into an undifferentiated and shoreless ocean of being. At either end, definition, meaning, and truth disappear; at one end total relativism and anarchy, and, at the other, total authoritarianism. It is thus understandable why Van Til states that “the Christian should frankly begin his scientific work on the presupposition of the cotermineity of the universal and the particular in the Godhead.”22 This is the concealed premise whereby the unbelieving scientist operates; he assumes the validity of both particulars and universals, of both the one and the many, and their relationship, for otherwise he could formulate nothing. To assume the ultimacy of chance is to deny the possibility of science and of meaning. As Pei has observed, “Unless we choose to accept the doctrine of predestination, it is chance that makes history.”23 Van Til has summarized the matter clearly: Sinners use the principle of Chance back of all things and the idea of exhaustive rationalization as the legitimate aim of science. If the universe were actually what these men assume it to be according to their principle, there would be no science. Science is possible and actual only because the non-believer’s principle is not true and the believer’s principle is true. Only because God has created the universe and does control it by His providence, is there such a thing as science at all.24
6. Political Perspectives If God has truly and causally created all things and is himself sovereign, self-contained, and triune, then no fact is a fact apart from Him, nor can any fact have a valid interpretation in and of itself. God-created factuality means God-interpreted factuality.25 Apart from God, there is only the concept of brute factuality, facts in and of themselves and without any relationship or meaning in terms of one another, a sea of meaningless and unrelated particulars, or else the absorption of all facts into the ocean of being and their loss of both identity and particular meaning. The first means a world of anarchistic atoms or particulars, and the second means a totalitarian and obliterating unity. Much if not most anarchism escapes from its total isolationism and meaninglessness by discovering the whole as present in every part. In Simone Weil, anarchism thus ended in the tyranny of the one. A friendly scholar thus describes her Utopia:
Simone Weil’s utopia is essentially a system of production in which every worker would determine his own behavior by reason alone, without reference to any rules, with respect both to his own role in the productive process and the coordination of his role with the roles of all the other members of the community. In such a society, everyone would be in a position to control the entire life of the community, so community life would always be in conformity with the general will. Would this not put the whole society at the mercy of a single arbitrary act? The situation is excluded conceptually, because “there is only one single, identical reason for all men; they become foreign and impenetrable to one another only when they depart from it; thus a society in which the necessary and sufficient condition of all material life is that everyone exercises his reason would be completely transparent to every mind.”26 The similarity to Marxism is readily apparent, as is the reason why anarchism historically has worked so closely with socialism and communism. In orthodox trinitarian Christianity, the problem of the one and the many is resolved. Unity and plurality are equally ultimate in the Godhead, and temporal unity and plurality are on a basis of equal validity. There is thus no basic conflict between individual and community. The individual lives in community, and the community flourishes as the individual finds himself and grows in terms of consistently Christian faith. Instead of a basic philosophical hostility between individual and government, believer and church, person and family, there is a necessary co-existence. Neither the one nor the many is reducible to the other. They cannot seek the obliteration of the other, for that involves self-obliteration. The Augustinian and Calvinistic faith, by its hostility to subordinationism, holds, if developed, the possibilities for true social order, and, to the extent that Augustinianism and Calvinism have been followed, Western culture has developed both freedom and order. When christological subordinationism has set in, that is, the subordinate status of the second person of the trinity affirmed, statism has arisen, as in Byzantium Russia (with its docetic Christology), Anglicanism, and modernism, to cite but a few instances. The equal ultimacy of the one and the many is disturbed, and the order of revelation demoted. The Roman emperors were intensely aware of this fact, and, to promote statism, supported Arianism and other subordinationist views as essential to the maintenance of the state as the one true order in which man’s life was totally comprehended. The hostility to Athanasius rested on this premise. The Council of Chalcedon in 451, by affirming the full trinitarian faith, was thus the significant victory that led to what is called Western civilization. Reductionism is the outcome of a faulty Christology. Once the eternal One and Many is negated in its equal ultimacy, it ceases to be the framework of reference, and an immanent one absorbs the many. This immanent one the Roman, Byzantine, and Holy Roman Empires sought to be, as does the modern state, and now the United Nations. Instead of the focal point being a transcendental one and many, which no human order, as created being, could embody, the temporal order became the frame of reference. The eternal order was denied so that a human one could replace it. The divine emperors, and the divine right of kings, rested on this philosophical premise, and the Byzantine court developed a theology of the emperor and court. Modern statism is a descendant of this faith. Whether democracy, communism, or the United Nations, it sees the fulfilment of man in terms of the state, the true One and Reality of being. Man, after Aristotle, is seen as a social animal who ex-
ists truly only in the state. There is no law beyond the state, so that, whether in Russia or the United States, Christianity must be denied its role as the basis of law and be given at best toleration as a peripheral or non-essential factor in man’s history. Man is now defined as humanity rather than the individual, and this great one, humanity, to be truly a unity, must exist as one state. In this picture, any assertion of individuality, local or national independence, or the reality of races, is viewed with hostility and as a sign of mental sickness; it is an assertion of plurality which challenges the reality and unity of the universal. It is a “sick” shattering of the great oneness of being. But, since differences and distinctions are basic to all description and definition, meaning disappears as this universal triumphs. We have noted the bold derogation of all plurality and meaning in Milarepa. There are signs of a similar boldness in modern champions of this exclusive universal, humanity as a world state. Thus, Rimbaud, Ginsberg, Henry Miller, and others negate all other meanings in terms of the one reality, humanity, but humanity seen as totally divorced from Christian-ity, law, morality, and civilization. The tension between the one and the many, in non-Christian systems, means the exclusiveness of one or the other, with the end result being the total meaninglessness of categories, whether in Milarepa or Miller.
7. Implications for Education and Freedom Basic then to all cultures and civilizations is an answer to the problem of the one and the many. The fact that this century witnesses an organized philosophical, educational, religious, and practical evasion of the problem makes it only more urgent and our plight more serious. Formal education today is a tool for the systematic destruction of knowledge because it bypasses the basic questions. It is Alexandrian, learned but ignorant, and given to masses of detail without a focus. As at the end of the Middle Ages, the academic world again is plagued by a reign of dunces. A curious footnote to history is the fact that John Duns Scotus (1266 or 1274-1308), the father of the dunces, was followed in his Realism by the American Charles Peirce (1839-1914), who influenced James, Dewey, and Royce. But, irrespective of these men, the fact remains that their eras saw a rise of statism because the prevailing thought of the day moved towards an exclusive principle of unity. Duns Scotus indeed tried to give the individual place within the one, but the era as a whole tended either to a mystical absorption of the plurality by the one, or a shattering of all unity by the assertion of the autonomy of the many. In our day, when philosophy, economic theory, psychiatry, and politics question the idea of the soul, and at times even of the mind of man, concepts such as liberty are basically irrelevant. Where is man’s freedom in Freud, Marx, Keynes, or Dewey? The upsurge of mass-conditioning in this century has spelled the demise of the autonomous man who has been so enthusiastically proclaimed by liberal theorists. Autonomy may still be a reality for the small minority who operate the conditioning process — or who manage to escape it. But because the vast bulk of the community passively receives the attitudes which are implanted in them, it is necessary for us to recast our thinking about the “individual” in politics. If his mind is not “his own,” the notions which we have inherited from liberal theory must be overhauled, or even discarded. Conceptions such as “consent,” “obedience,” “obligation,” “leadership,” “public opinion,” “representative
government,” “majority rule,” and even “freedom” must take on new meanings. The traditional definitions which spring from liberal theory may perhaps still hold true for those who plan the conditioning of others. But they are gross malaprops for those whose minds are on the receiving end. And this latter group contains the vast majority of us.27 Such a perspective rests on a doctrine of man which is non-Christian and without any awareness of the trinitarian answer to the problem of the one and the many. Our anthropology, or doctrine of man, is a product of our theology, our doctrine of God. When the temporal one and many problem is viewed in non-trinitarian terms, either the anarchistic autonomy of man, the many, is asserted, or the totalitarian reign of the one, the State or some other total order. The problem cannot be evaded, and, to be met, the right questions must first be raised.
8. The Question of Authority The implications for the practical question of authority are now apparent. In Nominalism, sovereignty and authority rest with the many, with individuals, who are a law unto themselves. No law beyond themselves can have any binding power over them. The logic of Nominalism leads it into anarchy. Realism, however, renders sovereignty and authority into the hands of the one, whether bishop or caesar. There is no appeal beyond this powerful unity, and no right which can be logically asserted against it. As against this impasse, orthodox Chalcedonian trin-itarianism asserts the transcendence of sovereignty, which rests in the triune God. Temporal authority is ministerial or delegated power, subject to God and His law. Authority rests both in the temporal unity and in the plurality, and its true exercise requires this diffusion. Since there is an equal ultimacy of unity and plurality in the eternal One-and-Many, there is an equal delegation of authority in the temporal one and many. In civil government, to cite one instance of a temporal one and many, this means that there is a division of powers, a general diffusion of authority, and a balance of controls and powers throughout the entire structure of civil government, from citizenry on through all the diversified structure of their government. Both liberties and powers are alike limited, under God, and hence under law. Liberty is limited and power is limited because the temporal order is under God. The effect historically of this concept on Reformed church structures, on institutional life, and on civil government and constitutional theory is of major importance. Whatever other influences may have been at work, it is apparent that, in the shaping of the United States, a truly Christian concept of the one and the many was a decisive, if often unrecognized, presupposition. Restoration of this presupposition, and further development of its implications, is basic to man’s future in its every facet. We are still living on the unearned increment of past ages, reaping from fields we did not sow, and harvesting from ancient trees we never planted. This as of old is the road to Babylon and to captivity. Faced with such a threat, an ancient precedent should give us warning. Zedekiah tried every practical answer but avoided the essential one. His premise was basically Babylonian, and, as a result, his small Babylon in Judea fell before Nebuchadnezzar’s greater one. Then as now, we are no stronger than our foundations.
Chapter II The Ground of Liberty 1. Introduction Liberty has been a recurring factor in history, and has repeatedly been a commanding aspect of the human scene, only then to disappear into an order in essence and action radically hostile to it. It is important, therefore, to consider the root and ground of true liberty. Liberty has obviously been repeatedly accidental, as in medieval Moslem culture; it has disappeared with none to regret its passing as the inner logic of a culture has progressively manifested itself and dropped the procedural tensions which for a season gave rise to liberty. Liberty is thus comparable to happiness in that it is a result, not to be sought for as a primary end, but rather as the product of true order. And, even as a basically unhappy man can have happy moments, so basically antilibertarian cultures can have periods of liberty without any deviation from their fundamental nature. This point is especially relevant, in that current libertarian movements are radically premised on the same grounds as messianic statism, on the Enlightenment and its faith. The history of the West has seen, as Herman Dooyeweerd has analyzed it, four cultural motives, all based on radically religious premises.28 These premises are not always recognized; they often function as the unrecognized axioms of thought and are all the more powerful by virtue of the basically religious commitment to them. Moreover, these cultural premises have as their basis a philosophical tension. With the exception of the Christian motive, they are all dialectical in nature, which means that they are basically and intrinsically divided by an irrevocable religious and philosophical antithesis, “two central motive powers” in tension and conflict. In such a situation, liberty often arises as a by-product of dialectical imbalance, as was the case in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, only to disappear subsequently. As the recognition of the irrevocability of the tension becomes more and more clear, the culture collapses. This philosophical tension is, as Cornelius Van Til has shown, between the one and the many, between unity and diversity, universality and particularity.29 The question which haunts the dialectical culture is this: how to have unity without totally undifferentiated and meaningless oneness? If all things are basically one, then differences are meaningless, divisions false, and definitions are sophistications, in that the tyranny, or destiny, of oneness is the truth of all being. But, if all things are basically many, and if plurality is ultimate, then the world dissolves into unrelated particulars and becomes, as some thinkers insist, not a universe but a multiverse, and every atom is in a sense its own law and being. The first leads to the breakdown of differences and the liberty of atomistic individualism and particularity; the second is the breakdown of fundamental law into nihilism and the retreat of men and their arts into isolated and private universes. Our naïve experience testifies to the reality of both the one and the many. The history of thought and culture testifies to the continual shattering of cultures on the impossibility of their theoretical, religious, cultural, and political reconciliation apart from the premise of consistently biblical thought and faith. Operative in all these other philosophies, all apostate from the Christian perspective, is the presupposed autonomy of theoretical thought, i.e., reason playing the role of god and ultimate judge rather than reason as reason.
2. Liberty and Dialectics All this means that, at the very least, two questions are involved in any discussion of liberty. First, what is true liberty, liberty not as the accident of a culture but as an aspect and product of its essence? Second, is liberty worthwhile? The second question is an obvious one, but it needs to be recognized. Liberty is worthwhile only when it has an essential relation to the faith of a culture. A few years ago, Lin Yutang called attention to the change in Western culture since Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty or give me death!” Those words once electrified men. “The only whisper we can hear now is, ‘Give me security or give me death! Put me in a collectivistic jail if you want, but give me a meal ticket and an old-age coupon!’ What a comedown for a revolutionist! What an amazing contrast to the hope of man in the eighteenth century!” 30 The question of liberty is thus in a very real measure a question of faith. Man’s current problem in the economic realm is not that capitalism has failed but that man has failed. As a result, capitalism, liberty, and individualism all have an unpleasant and distasteful ring to man; their very success adds to their offense when man himself is a failure. What is it in Western culture that has produced this recurring revulsion for liberty? Why has it been so widely prevalent again in our day? We have cited its repeated abandonment in dialectical cultures; let us now examine the cultural motives of Western civilization in terms of this concern. The antithesis or dialectic of Greek culture came to be, as a result of a long development, the form-matter motive. The differences between Greek philosophers were differences of emphasis; the common presupposition of all was the form-matter motive.31 Two worlds were thus seen in mixture, but as basically alien to one another, one, the world of nature, or matter, of “hard reality” and atoms, and the other, the world of form, ideas, universals; the first is given to change and flux, the other is timeless, unchanging, and eternal. Reality, the real world, was thus made up in some fashion of two antithetical and irreconcilable elements. Naïve experience might see this all as one world, but theoretical thought understood it as an irrevocably dialectical existence. Accordingly, as theoretical thought dealt progressively with this problem, it became progressively aware that its dialectics was destroying rather than undergirding human faith and culture; it tended steadily to denegate or suppress one or another aspect of this dualistic interpretation of reality. If matter were stressed, then all things were reduced to atoms, all else in reality being dismissed as subjective and illusionary, with consequent cynicism and cultural collapse. If form or ideas were stressed, then mysticism became man’s escape from the false world of appearance or matter. Mysticism is always incapable of dealing with the problems of culture because it is a denial of their validity. The great one must absorb all reality, and individuation is an unhealthy separation. Neoplatonic mysticism permeated the Greco-Roman world, and it quickly infiltrated the church thinly disguised as Christianity. Thus Simon Stylites was under constant disapproval as far as the church was concerned, and his roots were in Neoplatonism and the Atargatis cult. The mystical contempt of the world, however, always has as its counterpart the materialistic contempt of law and meaning as subjective, relative, or irrelevant. Thus the Cynics, who came into prominence in Greece in the fourth century B.C. and continued to be prominent to the sixth century A.D., held that hedonism or happiness was the
only true goal for life, and that the wise man, furthermore, sought to decrease his desires as the wiser means of attaining happiness. Cynicism thus fathered Stoicism. (The Cyrenaic school differed in that it sought to increase the satisfactions.) The name of both schools was derived from Kyon, dog, and the name is revelatory. Since law and with it ethics had been excluded from the hard world of reality as subjective nonsense, the philosophers of this school often deliberately aped dogs (in shamelessness, begging, barking, and biting) and even copulated in public to express their contempt of any philosophy which would exalt man above his “animal reality.” Man being an atom in an atomic world, self-sufficiency became his goal, to be independent of any law outside of his own desires, and to be wholly dependent on his own inner resources for happiness. Thus Diogenes of Sinope (died shortly after 325 B.C.), who is well known for his pseudo-search for an honest man, demonstrated these doctrines very vividly. He was independent of housing. He held that the sexual urge was totally natural, and that to seek privacy in its satisfaction, or to be governed by prohibitions such as that against incest, was unnatural. (In our day, Kinsey has classified homosexuality and “animal contacts” with marital sex as alike normal, because natural, outlets.) Diogenes saw no reason to prefer one woman to another, or, if a woman were lacking, he prescribed open and public masturbation as a natural and prophylactic measure, stating that he wished all hungers were equally easy to satisfy. Likewise Diogenes saw no valid objection to cannibalism. Thus, Diogenes was ready to grant extreme license, and yet, by his contempt of anything destructive of atomism, he was at one and the same time given to fantastic ascetic practices to avoid dependence on others. The difference is not great; both mysticism and asceticism on the one hand, and materialistic atomism on the other, involve a denial of an aspect of reality and run into both a wild emotionalism and a ready castration of the whole man and his life. Thus, on the one hand, wealth and success were religiously reprehensible and dirty, whereas, on the other, as much later in the French and Russian Revolutions, and in Nazi thought, culture was a divisive and ugly thing, a pretension as against the hard world of material, political, and economic reality. The reported Nazi statement, “When I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver,” epitomizes the recurring temper of diseased societies. Modern music, art, and literature are at war against culture. The medieval Roman Catholic nature-grace motive retained the dialectical character of Greek thought. The natural world was a realm in itself, knowable by means of autonomous reason, which, while unable to penetrate the mysteries of the supernatural, was still self-sufficient in terms of the natural. Grace thus neither canceled nature nor superseded it, but rather perfected it, in terms of Scholastic thought. In the natural realm, no authority but reason needed to be acknowledged, although it was assumed that nature would not contradict grace. Indeed, it could not, since two separate worlds were involved. Man dwelt in one world as a perishable and material body, and in the other as an ostensibly rational and immortal soul. Here the Greek formmatter motive is seen in thinly Christianized terminology and form. Again, the same nemesis plagued it. The Nominalists simply denied the reality of the universals of the world of grace; the world again relapsed into atomism. If reason were sovereign in its realm, and reason knew nothing of this realm of grace with its law, then reason must conclude that this world of grace and law was not real. And, assuming the reality of the two worlds, what held them together? The result was cynicism and mysticism. Extravagant mystical and ascetic practices flourished. Various cults gave license to nudism and sexual promiscuity in the name of the new “Christianity.” Physical degeneration characterized the man of the late Middle Ages, and medieval historians have estimated that, at Luther’s coming, one third to one half of Europe was
infected by venereal diseases, then far more virulent than now. Churchmen themselves, often led by popes, gave expression to both radical cynicism and a frenetic immorality. As in the case of Greco-Roman culture, the decline was not without its sky-rocketing by-products, startling but eventually earth-bound manifestations of one facet or another. Thus, the Renaissance was dedicated to a materialistic atomism on the one hand, and a revival of Neoplatonism on the other. Both were equally sterile in the long run, and the atomism paved the way for the Renaissance tyrant by its destruction of the concept of fundamental law. Restraint was thus removed.
3. The Enlightenment The next great cultural motive, having roots in the two previous dialectics and in the humanism of the Renaissance, came to a sharp statement in the Enlightenment. The dialectical tension was now between nature and freedom. Man was the ostensible resolution of this dialectic. In Descartes, man became the focal point of these two worlds. Various devices were used to attempt to overcome the handicap of man’s previous dialectics. To avoid atomism in the natural order, the state was posited as a body created by social contract between autonomous and atomistic men. To avoid the collapse of the spiritual realm, the realm of freedom or value, the mind was credited with creative power in the religious sense. As Dooyeweerd has pointed out, Hobbes, in the foreword to his De Corpore, declared that the mind should first destroy the given world, and then, god-like, re-create it by theoretical thought, for, according to Hobbes, “logical thought should create, like God or like the artist.”32 Because the state was the creation of man, it was believed that, in a special sense, whereas by contrast the family was given and the church somewhat external to the natural realm, the state became all the more powerful, real, and “natural” precisely because it was man’s creation in the world of nature. Likewise, in the realm of value, man was creating his own contracts, laws, and standards and thereby asserting his autonomy. Rootlessness was conceived of as an intellectual virtue, in that the denial of the past, of history and of God, was essential to the true sovereignty and creativity of man. 33 In Immanuel Kant, the sovereignty of this autonomous man and his reason came to full focus, and hence to rapid dissolution as the dialectical tension became paramount. For him, the true self of man is identical with the law which man himself creates. Thus, man became truly sovereign, and, in Kant’s theoretical and practical reason, became the creator of his world and of his values. Kant sought also, as against Hume, to establish the validity of science. In the process of doing so, he also heightened the dialectical tension between nature and freedom. Indeed, a new set of expressions articulated this cultural motive. On the one hand, science and faith were seen as the two irreconcilable worlds of nature (science) and freedom (faith), and, on the other, the revealing terminology that came into usage at the same time saw it as a dualism of reality and value. As science came into increasing prominence, prestige, and power with the twentieth century, this dualism worked more sharply to drive a wedge between nature, science, and reality on the one hand, and freedom, faith, and value on the other. Kinsey has not been the only scientist to turn on freedom, faith, and value with all the dogged and determined scientism of the ancient Cynics. This dialectic is basic to modern thought, as almost any textbook gives witness. Thus, so influential a text writer as Edwin Arthur Burtt, in his Principles and Problems of Right Thinking, A Textbook for Logic, Reflective Thinking and Orientation Courses (1928), devoted a central chapter introductory to his concluding section to “Fact Versus Value.” But this very statement of the dialectic is its breakdown. Religion, freedom, value, morality, and law are seen as non-
factual, implicitly subjective and as merely pragmatic or relativistic. As a result of this breakdown, crisis again grips the West, already twice rescued by the entrance and revival of biblical faith. The reality which remains is either an atomistic and lawless particularity, or the undifferentiated and meaningless oneness of matter or energy in motion, in either instance hostile to value and to liberty.
4. The Crisis The dilemma is a very real one, and, in terms of the cultural motive, insuperable. Detach law, because it is an expression of value, from reality, and law as unreal and subjective disappears, as law in the integral sense has disappeared under pragmatic, relativistic, and historistic thinking. Attach law to reality as an aspect of matter or energy, it ceases to be a value and becomes a blind, deterministic force hostile to man’s liberty. Thus liberty is dissolved either into myth or into license, and if license, becomes anti-law in nature. In terms of the blind force of nature, liberty is no more than determinism and a myth. In terms of the world of value, liberty is again a myth: it has no reality or meaning because it is a part of that unreal world. In terms of atomistic particularity, liberty is anti-law. In terms of the oneness of reality, it is a divisive separation from the wholeness of the unity of being. With the collapse of the dialectic comes mysticism or cynicism. Occultist and mystical books are the unacknowledged (because undignified) best sellers of our day. Modern art and literature are extensively mystical, although not in the medieval sense; they are an openly pagan mysticism. They are dedicated to private and subjective worlds of meaning, and are built on the hatred of and flight from the material world and realism, into the vast ocean of unconsciousness considered as true value. The extent of open cynicism in our culture is apparent in such works as Lawrence Lipton’s The Holy Barbarians (1959). Ginsberg’s Howl was at its trial defended as religious and moral by university professors precisely because it denied all law and morality in favor of a new creed: the equal value or nonvalue and acceptability of all things. To this new gospel of cynicism Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and other works are dedicated. Today also, as in the days of the Roman circus, marked interest is shown in another “natural” levelling phenomenon, bestiality, and pornographic films showing trained dogs copulating with women are beginning to appear at “smokers” and “special showings.” When meaning is gone, and the exploration of reality in terms of fundamental meaning collapses, then the exploration of sensation takes its place. The process, in the Greek text of Romans 1:27, is described by Paul as the “burning out” of man.
5. The Libertarian Failure In the face of this, some libertarians have sought to revivify culture and reestablish liberty by returning to the eighteenth century formulation of the dialectic. Apart from the difficulty of giving life to a faulty and dying faith, this attempt is doomed to failure in that it fails to see the source of the cultural problem. By its limited although important concern, liberty, it overlooks the basic matter of faith and fails to recognize that the liberty it looks back to was a youthful accident of the humanistic dialectic, of which statism is the essence. However, more perceptive libertarians have attempted to keep up with the times by recognizing the death of values as such and seeking somehow to draw out a new kind of value from the world of science out of brute
factuality. These libertarians attempt to extract, from the great god nature, by means of science in the form of tests, measurements, or natural laws, some results to prove that nature does permit liberty. Thus much has been made of the physicists’ discovery of the principle of indeterminacy, to cite one example, i.e., the one most prominently used in this century. But scientific indeterminacy is not much more than chance variation. It is blind, impersonal, and purposeless. Statistical probability is not liberty. Moreover, this procedure merely underscores the subservience of man and of man’s illusory liberty to nature, a blind force or energy in motion. Furthermore, the essential point is missed, namely, that modern man is not primarily interested in liberty, and often is not interested in it at all. Above all else, as Dooyeweerd has stated it, “modern man has lost himself,”34 and he cannot grieve greatly over other things when faced with this primary loss, and with the sense of the total collapse of all meaning. When man finds himself, to use a characteristic expression of Van Til, on the frightening and vast shore of undifferentiated being, he has no standard by which to value himself or anything else in all creation. Liberty is thus inevitably irrelevant. The average libertarian fails to see this problem because he is often unaware of his own position of relative wealth. Having usually been reared in a Christian home, he lives on unearned increment and steadily lays waste his inherited capital, which he treats as a fact of nature rather than a past Christian victory. He assumes civilization, as Jose Ortega y Gasset said the typical “scientist” does, whom he described in “The Barbarism of ‘Specialisation’” as believing “that civilisation is there in just the same way as the earth’s crust and the forest primeval.”35 This fearful error is reinforced by the myth of evolution, which treats civilization and culture as natural products of man’s evolutionary development in the same basic sense as nest building is a part of the life of birds. Man’s blindness is thus doubly ensured. The libertarian contribution has been a splendid one in the narrow provinces of literary criticism and political and economic thought, but it has been oblivious to the larger issue. By avoiding the larger issue, it has been at times both marginal and parasitic; this is apparent in the hope of some libertarians for “another Burke,” i.e., for a man reflecting Christian tradition without being fully a part of it. Its hunger has too often been for God without God. This hope was well expressed in the title of one book, John Crowe Ransom’s God without Thunder: An Unorthodox Defense of Orthodoxy (1930).36 This purely sociological orthodoxy has its nemesis: since it is without true commitment, it is equally usable to justify statism, as notably in Machiavelli and Reinhold Niebuhr, and it still fails to answer the dialectical tension.
6. The Christian Answer As Van Til points out, in Christology and Barthianism, “all non-biblical thought is dialectical,” and all of it “expresses itself in the form of a religious dualism.” Moreover, as Van Til has pointed out in another context, all such thought is immanentistic and is dedicated to the principle of continuity. By its immanence philosophy, it insists that all power, purpose, and meaning must be inherent in the world of nature, so that it seeks “to envelop God in his cosmos.” By means of the principle of continuity, all things are reduced to a common being. 37 Modern thought, whether Marxist or libertarian, is alike established on the Enlightenment’s dialectic. This does not obscure the internal differences. But, even as the Nominalists and Realists of Scholasticism shared a common world and a common fate, so contemporary facets of the humanistic dialectic, however hostile, share a common destiny as the dialectical tension tears their world apart. No
late medieval Index or Inquisition could stem the decay; neither can Soviet tyranny and suppression, which only testify to the abiding and growing collapse of the dialectic; the Soviet intellectual does not believe in the cultural motives he is expected to champion. The Christian cultural motive has been, although mainly peripheral, nonetheless the vitality of Western culture since the fifth century, when the Council of Chalcedon, facing a world in disintegration, boldly asserted the Christology which is basic to true liberty.38 This motive has been described by Dooyeweerd as “the biblical theme of creation, fall into sin and redemption by Jesus Christ as the incarnate Word of God, in the communion of the Holy Spirit.” 39 According to Calvin, the ground and presupposition of self-knowledge is the knowledge of God. Accordingly, self-knowledge “transcends the theoretical attitude of thought.”40 This means that, because man is not self-created and because the universe is not man’s creation, man’s knowledge of himself and his world must be governed by the prior interpretation of the Creator. Man’s knowledge is thus not creative but, in the Christian sense, analogical. To follow Van Til, whose formulation here is the decisive one, the Christian motive is basically that of the ontological trinity as revealed in Scripture. God is eternal and uncreated being, and the universe is His creation and thus created being; it has meaning only in terms of Him since He is its creator and sustainer. This triune God is the eternal One-and-Many as distinct from the temporal one and many. “In God the one and the many are equally ultimate. Unity in God is no more fundamental than diversity, and diversity in God is no more fundamental than unity. The persons of the Trinity are mutually exhaustive of one another. The Son and the Spirit are ontologically on a par with the Father.” Moreover, “It is only in the Christian doctrine of the triune God, as we are bound to believe, that we really have a concrete universal. In God’s being there are no particulars not related to the universal and there is nothing universal that is not fully expressed in the particulars. It goes without saying that if we hold to the eternal one and many in the manner explained above we must hold the temporal one and many to be created by God.” “If the creation doctrine is thus taken seriously, it follows that the various aspects of created reality must sustain such relations to one another as have been ordained between them by the Creator, as superiors, inferiors or equals. All aspects being equally created, no one aspect of reality may be regarded as more ultimate than another.”41 The whole body of Van Til’s writings is given to the development of this concept of the ontological trinity and its philosophical implications. For our purposes, briefly stated, very important implications are clearly apparent. There is in this position no dialectical tension. Because of the Trinity, the equal ultimacy of the one and the many, we are not faced with the insoluble Scylla and Charybdis of all theoretical thought. We are not faced with a vast, undifferentiated and meaningless ocean of being which swallows up all things. Neither are we faced with an infinite and atomistic particularity, in which the many are without contact with one another. There is no need for the cultural yawing between a destructive collectivism and an atomistic particularity. Both the one and the many are equally created and hence equally concrete—and equally under the absolute law of the eternal One-and-Many. Instead of a cultural tension, for example, between state and man, there is a cultural unity as both are undergirded and have meaning in terms of the fundamental law of God, which governs and delimits all things.
7. Law and Liberty
A basic aspect of this meaning is law. Man’s liberty is rooted and grounded in this law, as Sir Walter Scott, in terms of his Calvinistic heritage, saw when he opposed to the French Revolution’s “Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality,” his own battle cry, written for the Scottish Dragoons, “Liberty and Laws.” Because the fulness of man’s meaning is discernible only in terms of his Creator and the creative purpose, it is impossible, if man is in harmony with God, for liberty and law to be in conflict. Even as a fish needs water to live in, because it is his environment or law-sphere, and “liberation” into air would kill him, so man finds his true liberty in God’s law, his environment. The law becomes a curse to apostate man, since it makes it clear that his course apart from God’s law sphere is death, but to the redeemed man, it is the environment of life.42 Man, created in the image of God, has a cultural mandate, i.e., to exercise the implications of that image, to be God’s king, priest, and prophet in, to, and over all creation, subduing it, i.e., bringing it under his dominion in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. The fall, redeemed man’s return to God and the development of his status under God, and fallen man’s developing apostasy, all these things and more are circumscribed by the eternal decree of God. They are a part of the permission and plan of God in order to further what Van Til calls epistemological self-consciousness, man’s self-awareness of the ground of his knowledge and being and the full development of the implications of his regeneration or of his apostasy. History, then, is the process whereby epistemological self-consciousness is brought to maturity. It has, therefore, a double maturation, as the parable of the tares and wheat makes clear (Matt. 13:24-30, 36-43), the maturation of both good and evil. Apostate man will become progressively more dialectical in his thinking and more and more given to the absolutizing of the relative, and the deification of his autonomy and his theoretical thought. Redeemed man, as God’s vicegerent living in terms of “the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21), will progressively develop the implications of his image in terms of his mandate to know and use creation in terms of the word of God. To subdue it as king under God, as Van Til has pointed out, man must interpret the creation as prophet under God, and represent God as priest and dedicate the world to Him. Man is “like God... but always on a creaturely scale.” He “was organically related to the universe about him. That is, man was to be prophet, priest and king under God in this created world. The vicissitudes of the world would depend upon the deeds of man.”43 Christ, as very God and very man, was the true prophet, priest, and king and man’s federal head and representative, reinstating him into communion with God and into standing with God by His representative and vicarious atonement for man’s violating of that law. Since, as Chalcedon saw clearly, the two natures were in Him without commingling or confusion, the confusion of the divine and the human which characterizes non-Christian thought was forestalled. This is the framework of liberty. Its biblical character has been the decisive factor in Western history, even though its nature has been only spasmodically apprehended. The Reformation set forth this motive, although Melanchthon quickly absorbed Lutheranism, and Beza, Calvinism, into the older and newer dialectics without clear recognition of the full nature of the Christian motive. The churches of today are radically infected either by the dialectics of Scholasticism or of pre- and post-Kantian humanism, by the presuppositions of the Enlightenment. At their very best, their witness is limited to soteriology in a fragmentary sense, and the broad cultural calling is bypassed by conservatism or associated with humanism and statism by religious liberalism. As
a result of this failure and also of the general cultural failure, van Riessen’s comment is an apt description of our time: “The disintegration of existence, i.e., the dissolution of coherence in the elements of existence, has reached an advanced stage for a great many people.”44 Men who find life itself meaningless or worthless usually find little value in attempts to recall past liberties. Liberty belongs for them to a dead world of meaning. That true world of meaning must first be restored if liberty is to be given its rightful place and respect.
Chapter Three The Continuity of Being 1. Egypt Apart from biblically governed thought, the prevailing concept of being has been that being is one and continuous. God, or the gods, man, and the universe are all aspects of one continuous being; degrees of being may exist, so that a hierarchy of gods as well as a hierarchy of men can be described, but all consist of one, undivided and continuous being. The creation of any new aspect of being is thus not a creation out of nothing, but a creation out of being, in short, a process of being. This conception of being in process, when seen in its cosmic aspect, can be either static or dynamic, the framework of reference being history. The process is static if it flows upward out of history, as in ancient Egypt; being in this perspective has achieved a desired earthly order and now exists to serve, magnify, and then move into the eternal order. The process is dynamic if it flows forward through history towards a final historical order, or if it merely flows forward as endless process, as in Mesopotamian thought. In both forms, a cyclic view is possible, and “eternal cyclic renovation” was an aspect of Egyptian Hermetic thought as well as of other philosophies.45 For Egyptian thought, god and man were of a common nature and alike products of a common being. As Wilson has observed, “Between god and man there was no point at which one could erect a boundary line and state that here substance changed from divine, superhuman, immortal, to mundane, human, mortal.” The Egyptian religious faith was not monotheistic but monophysite, not one god but one nature in common to gods and men. “It is not a matter of single god but of single nature of observed phenomena in the universe, with the clear possibility of exchange, and substitution. With relation to gods and men the Egyptians were monophysites: many men and many gods, but all ultimately of one nature.”46 This common nature was shared by the entire universe in varying degrees and set forth in various aspects of worship. Juvenal, in Satire 15, commented on the “garden gods” of Egypt: “It is an impious outrage to crunch leeks and onions with the teeth. What a holy race to have such divinities springing up in their gardens!”47 Both gods and men developed or evolved, and in a very real sense, battled their way out of the original chaos of being. According to Fontenrose, “The peoples of the Near and Middle East looked upon creation as a process of bringing order out of chaos.” This is both process and combat. “For the cosmos has been won from the chaos that still surrounds it, as a cultivated plot from the encompassing wilderness.”48 Chaos or darkness generates life; it is both the source of life and the enemy of life. “Life requires order, which means putting a limit upon action in certain directions. But an order that resists all change and further creative activity denies life and turns into its opposite: it becomes a state of inactivity and death.” Chaos and life are thus in a necessary tension: life without chaos becomes death, but life which surrenders to chaos and abandons order is also death. Life requires order, and order means death, the triumph of chaos. As Fontenrose notes, “This is only to say that both life forces and death forces are necessary in a properly balanced individual and world.”49 Here we have the dialectic of man in the ancient world: chaos and life, a dialectic which undergirds much of subsequent thought. Expressed in
worldwide myths of antiquity, it reappears as modern medical science in the psychoanalysis of Freud and his theory of Eros and Thanatos, life instincts and death instincts.50 Chaos and cosmos must thus coexist in balance in the ideal state. Cosmos means the world of the gods and the world of men, heaven and earth, and chaos is the underworld. The ideal state, the high point of being and “the center of the world,” is that society where the three levels of being—heaven, earth, and the underworld — are in communication, and “this communication is sometimes expressed through the image of a universal pillar, axis mundi,” which brings all three together.51 A state or empire which dominated the world scene of its day was especially sure that its society represented the center of the earth, the high point in the process of being to date, that order in which chaos, men, and the gods were in communication. Thus, in Assyria, the king officiated before a garlanded pole or tree which has been explained as “the ritual centre of the earth.”52 This communication was the basis of political and religious life: “reality is conferred through participation in the ‘symbolism of the Center’: cities, temples, houses become real by the fact of being assimilated to the ‘center of the world.’”53 This communication rested in a community of being, through participation in one common being, out of which the gods had germinated and developed, and from whom men were germinated. According to the Papyrus of Ani, The Osiris, the Scribe Ani, whose word is truth, saith: I flew up out of primeval matter. I came into being like the god Khepera. I germinated (or, grew up) like the plants. I am concealed (or, hidden) like the tortoise (or, turtle) (in his shell). I am the seed (?) of every god. I am Yesterday of the Four (Quarters of the Earth, and) the Seven Uraei, who came into being in the Eastern land. (I am) the Great One (i.e., Horus) who illumineth the Hememet spirits with the light of his body. (I am) that god in respect of Set. (I am) Thoth who (stood) between them (i.e., Horus and Set) as the judge on behalf of the Governor of Sekhem (Letopolis) and the Souls of Anu (Heliopolis). (He was like) a stream between them. I have come. I rise up on my throne. I am endowed with a Khu (i.e., Spirit-soul). I am mighty. I am endowed with godhood among the gods. I am Khensu, (the lord) of every kind of strength.54 This pride of achievement manifested by the god Osiris can be shared by men. Man is able, by works of righteousness, to become one with the gods. To become one with the heavenly beings, he must be able to affirm a confession, which, among other things, declared: ... I have not committed sin. I have not stolen. ... I have not slain men and women. ... I have not stolen the property of God. ... I have not committed adultery, ... I have not lain with men. I have made none to weep. ... I have not been an eavesdropper. ... I have not shut my ears to the word of truth. ... I have wronged none, I have done no evil.55
Having been judged innocent, the deceased becomes divine, declaring, “There is no member of my body which is not a member of a god. Thoth protecteth my body altogether, and I am Ra day by day.”56 Salvation is deification. Moreover, “It is not spiritual but physical salvation that is sought.”57 In the biblical faith, resurrection is an act of discontinuity and a miracle. In the Egyptian perspective, man, after death, manifested a continuity either towards chaos and destruction or towards deity and resurrection. The doctrine of the resurrection in Egypt was set in the context of a naturalistic, fertility cult perspective. The gods themselves “are not immortal but perennial.”58 The first creation arose out of the primeval waters of chaos, the gods and the primeval hillock or mountain arising and then becoming the source of subsequent being. Chaos is the ground of being, and the source of being, and an Egyptian papyrus declared: The All-Lord said, after he had come into being: I am he who came into being as Khepri. When I had come into being, being (itself) came into being, and all beings came into being after I came into being.59 The place of creation is the primeval hillock, mountain, or pyramid, arising out of the waters of chaos to establish order. This sacred mountain or tower is the meeting-place of heaven and earth, where communication is established between heaven, earth, and hell. It “is situated at the center of the world. Every temple, or palace—and, by extension, every sacred city or royal residence— is a Sacred Mountain, thus becoming a Center.”60 True social order requires peace and communication with both chaos and deity, and society either moves downward into chaos or forward into deification. The significance of the Tower of Babel is thus apparent: it denied the discontinuity of God’s being and asserted man’s claim to a continuity of being with God and heaven. The Tower was the gate to God and the gate of God, signifying that man’s social order made possible an ascent of being into the divine order. The Egyptian pyramid set forth the same faith. The gods arose out of chaos, and the primeval earth hill or pyramid is their fitting symbol. In relationship to eternity, the gods stand thus: . In relationship to man, the pyramid is inverted: . Man’s relationship to the gods and heaven is also symbolized by the pyramid, pointing upward. In later mystery religions, and in Kabbalism especially, the two pyramids, the inverted pyramid of the gods and the sky-reaching pyramid of man, were brought together to form a “star,” , the double pyramid, the union of the human and the divine, their coalescence in the war against chaos. Its first known Jewish use is in the third century A.D. In Egyptian thought, there is a continuity rather than a coalescence of human and divine, so that the relationship of the two pyramids can be perhaps described symbolically thus: ⧖. The meeting point of the two pyramids is the pharaoh. Ritually, “one of the highest sacraments consists in setting up a mound, or altar, which represents the world. The sacrificer by the ritual recreates the earth; but he recreates it by the same methods as were used by the original creator.”61 The ruler is thus also a priest as well as king, since he, as the apex of the pyramid, is the person who has contact with the gods. Indeed, he may be himself divine either in his person or office. The Egyptian pharaoh was both man and god, priest and king, the umbilical cord uniting society with the gods:
Worship King Ni-maat-Re, living forever, within your bodies And associate with his majesty in your hearts. He is Perception which is in (men’s) hearts, And his eyes search out every body. He is Re, by whose beams one sees, He is one who illumines the Two lands more than the sun disc. He is one who makes the land greener than (does) a high Nile, For he has filled the Two Lands with strength and life.... The king is a ka, (vital force... the other self which supported a man) And his mouth is increase. He who is to be is his creation, (For) he is the Khnum of all bodies, (Khnum... a god who fashioned mortals...) The begetter who creates the people.62 As the umbilical cord, the pharaoh was of necessity central to both political order and religious order. As Mercer noted, “The most fundamental idea of worship in ancient Egypt connected itself with the person of the god-manifesting pharaoh.”63 Similar concepts, traced together with the ancient Egyptian beliefs to “old and widespread Hamitic belief,”64 are present in Africa in the twentieth century, holding that “all the people are the slaves of the king,” who is “absolute lord and master of the land, and of the bodies and lives and possessions of all his people.”65 Common to these African cultures, as to those of the ancient Near and Middle East, is “the idea of a ladder, reaching from earth to heaven,”66 a form of the belief in the pyramid or tower. Atum, the first god, was bisexual, “that great He-She,” according to a coffin text, and “He was not only God but all things to come.” “Osiris is past and future — cause and potentiality.”67 These two aspects were opened to man by the pharaoh. “The king was the mediator between the community and the sources of divine power, obtaining it through the ritual and regularizing it through his government.”68 The king was necessary to social order, and he was essential to social salvation. “The king was recognized as the successor of the Creator, and this view was so prevalent that comparisons between the sun and Pharaoh unavoidably possessed theological overtones.”69 Kingship in this sense was basic to civilization, and the coronation of the pharaoh was “an epiphany.” The pharaoh represented order against chaos. His death was a temporary victory for chaos. Nature required kingship, for nature represented order as against chaos, so that nature was not conceivable apart from the pharaoh, who was not only the mediator between the gods and man, and between society and nature, but also the source of order as against chaos.70 Incest was an important aspect of Egyptian mythology,71 and, between brother and sister, common to the royal line.72 Although economic motives were present, such incest also had a deep-seated religious motive. It was a controlled act of chaos, an act in which order deliberately entered into chaos to make it fruitful for order. Plutarch’s Lives, in describing Julius Caesar at the Rubicon, reported “that the night before he passed the river he had an impious dream, that he was unnaturally familiar with his mother.” Suetonius reported the same dream, or a similar one, for an earlier date in Caesar’s life: The following night he was much disquieted by a dream in which he imagined he had carnal company with his own mother. But hopes of most glorious
achievement were kindled in him by the soothsayers, who interpreted the dream to mean that he was destined to have sovereignty over all the world, his mother whom he saw under him signifying none other than the earth, which is counted the mother of all things.73 This concept, somewhat dimmed in Caesar, prevails full force in some contemporary cultures, where incestuous unions, normally a horror and a terror, become obligatory in the invoked chaos of the festival.74 The king warred against and controlled chaos, and the duty of the people, as well as their privilege, was to be in subjection to the king in order to participate in the community of heaven, earth, and hell in the person of pharaoh. “One might say — though only metaphorically — that the community had sacrificed all freedom in order to acquire this certainty of harmony with the gods.” Harmony was central to Egyptian religion.75 Because of the centrality of the king to all things, the “great oath” in Egyptian courts of law was by the life of Pharaoh.76 For the Egyptians, “right conduct was ‘doing what the king, the beloved of Ptah, desired.’”77 Magic, man’s attempt to manipulate and control the powers of nature, was central to Egyptian society and life; the gods had used magic against chaos, and man must utilize the magical powers made available by the gods.78 The king was one of the gods and “the one official intermediary between the people and the gods, the one recognized priest of all the gods.”79 He was the Shepherd, a divine title, of the people, over “men, the flock of the gods.”80 The dialectical tension of Egyptian thought was between chaos and life, but chaos itself could appear in life, when social order collapsed or weakened.81 Chaos therefore could itself be in life, whereas order meant the unity and harmony of heaven, earth, and hell under the divine monarch. The one and the many were brought together in the person of the king. The Egyptian language had no word for “state.”82 For them, the state was not one institution among many, but rather the essence of the divine order for life and the means of communication between heaven, earth, and hell. Life, therefore, was totally and inescapably statist. In this perspective, anything resembling liberty and individuality in the contemporary sense was alien and impossible. Moreover, the cyclic view of nature and history which is basic to the Osiris faith and Egyptian religion made for a pessimistic worldview. The Isis temple inscription, reported by Plutarch, cited two aspects of this faith: “I am the female nature, or mother nature, which contained in herself the generation of all things.” “I am all that has been, and is, and shall be, and my peplum no mortal has uncovered.”83 First, a total immanence is asserted: deity does not transcend the being of humanity, it is a common being, generated first out of chaos and then out of the gods. Second, it has an unknown potentiality: its future is unknown, covered, and veiled. There is no eternal decree of law and order, based on an absolute and totally self-conscious potentiality. Instead, there is only a tenuous community against a background of chaos and an unknown potentiality which may include chaos. The only slim wall against this was the king, the divine monarch and the human apex of the risen mountain of order out of chaos. In his person, pharaoh was the identity of all being and the identity of unity and particularity. All men had to be under him to be in being. The official voices from Egypt affirmed the stability and permanence of this order; history has entered its emphatic dissent.
According to Anthes, for the ancient Egyptians, “Eternity is oneness,” and the “human goal after death is deification.”84 Deification was entry into the oneness of the divine order, and membership in the state in this life was similarly participation in the divine oneness manifested in the pharaoh and protection against the horror of chaos and meaningless particularity.
2. Mesopotamia In the Mesopotamian worldview, the tension between creation and chaos was also basic, but it was not viewed with the same confidence as in Egyptian thought. For the Egyptians, the order had arrived and had to be maintained. The Mesopotamian feared the nearness of anarchy. To the Mesopotamian, accordingly, cosmic order did not appear as something given; rather it became something achieved through a continual integration of the many individual cosmic wills, each so powerful, so frightening. His understanding of the cosmos tended therefore to express itself in terms of integration of wills, that is, in terms of social orders such as the family, the community, and, most particularly, the state. To put it succinctly, he saw the cosmic order as an order of wills — as a state.85 For the Mesopotamians, kingship had descended from heaven; the king was mortal, but his responsibilities were a part of the divine calling.86 The gods were “part of society,”87 and the struggle between cosmic order and chaos was a concern of gods and men alike. Man’s prospects in this struggle were bleak, in that chaos triumphed over him in the form of death. The Gilgamesh Epic portrays Gilgamesh as “man seeking immortality” and failing through no fault of his own. The epic lacked any sense of original sin; man is not a sinner but an innocent victim.88 Man’s life was comprehended and made comprehensible not through religion but through the state, for religion was in essence political theory. The state rather than God is thus the basic environment of man, and the ruler is beyond appeal in his authority, for there is no order which transcends the state. The gods of the state cannot be appealed to against the state. A crowd with no leader to organize and direct it is lost and bewildered, like a flock of sheep without a shepherd. It is also dangerous, however; it can be destructive, like waters which break the dams that hold them and submerge fields and gardens if the canal inspector is not there to keep the dams in repair.... Finally, a leaderless, unorganized crowd is useless and unproductive, like a field which brings forth nothing if it is not ploughed. Hence an orderly world is unthinkable without a superior authority to impose his will. The Mesopotamian feels convinced that authorities are always right: “The command of the palace, like the command of Anu, cannot be altered. The king’s word is right: his utterance, like that of a god, cannot be changed.”89
For destruction and chaos to overwhelm a state meant a like fate for its gods. Thus, the goddess Ningal is seen, in a “Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur” by Elamites and Subarians, as herself defeated and homeless.90 For the Sumerians, “a king was the vicegerent of god upon earth — ‘tenant-farmer’, they called him — and the god was the real ruler of the land.”91 The king was thus in a very real sense the god of this world in terms of his vicegerency. In the Akkadian Amarna letters, the monarch is addressed as, “the king, my lord, my pantheon, my Sun-god.”92 In biblical literature, God, by virtue of His transcendence and deity, is beyond exhaustive knowledge, but, by virtue of His total self-consciousness, is the source of certain knowledge; His word for men is clear-cut and knowable. The Mesopotamian gods, being involved in a being common to men and chaos, and involved in a cosmic struggle of questionable outcome, are neither totally sovereign nor fully self-conscious. They can be defeated, and they can be selfdefeating. The result for the worshiper is clearly moral confusion: how can he truly know gods who do not know themselves? Oh! that I only knew that these things are well pleasing to a god! What is good in one’s sight is evil for a god. What is bad in one’s own mind is good for his god. Who can understand the counsel of the gods in the midst of heaven? The plan of a god is deep waters, who can comprehend it? Where has befuddled mankind ever learned what a god’s conduct is?93 Akkadian man could only approach the gods in slim and dubious confidence of his own righteousness: “My clean hands have made a sacrifice before you.”94 For the Sumerians, “The primeval sea engendered the cosmic mountain consisting of heaven and earth united.” 95 The primeval sea, or chaos, was thus the source and ground of heaven and earth, and, despite all tensions, their ultimate governor. Sumerian religion, in particular Inanna or Ishtar worship, utilized “large numbers of eunuchs and perverts, hierodules, and other types of sacred prostitutes.”96 These represented religiously controlled chaos, but ultimately chaos overtook man and the state. Meanwhile, the mountain or primeval hillock or pyramid represented order as against chaos. The ziggurat, or temple-tower or stepped pyramid, was the religious expression of this faith from at least the days of Sumer. The ziggurat was a “link” or “bond” between heaven and earth in their common ascent in being and their war against chaos. Parrot has stated, “Thus, the ziggurat appears to me to be a bond of union, whose purpose was to assure communication between earth and heaven...for what is the ‘mountain’ but a giant stepladder by means of which a man may ascend as near as possible to the sky?”97 The mountain, then, was the bond between heaven and earth against chaos. Sumerian mythology identifies the mountain for us: “Your king is the great mountain, the father Enlil.”98 Man’s hope therefore is comprehended in the form of the state and the person of the king. There is here no concept of an area of freedom from statist control, because man has no area of transcendence to the state. His life and hope is the state. In this perspective, the alternative to total statism is not liberty under God but chaos, and the unhesitating choice for the state. Indeed, an alternative to the state does not exist to any real degree, if at all. “Your king is the great mountain, the father Enlil.” But the source and wellspring of that order is chaos, and hence the Mesopotamian pessimism.
The pre-Hittite Anatolian religion was naturalistic and shared in Ishtar worship.99 Hittite religion, with variations, clearly showed the same war against chaos.100 The title of the Hittite king was “the Sun.” When he died, he became a god.101 “The god was to his worshippers exactly what a master was to his slaves.” His representative was the king, who was “chief priest.”102 The access to the gods was thus mediated by the king. The state was thus again the order of existence and man’s entire world; man was a creature of the state, and theology was a branch or aspect of political science. The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi saw the authority of law in “an enduring kingship” which, like “the sun,” rose “to light up the land.” Nippur-Duranki, the cult-center of Enlil, set forth the bond of heaven and earth.103 Hammurabi saw himself as “the shepherd of the people, whose deeds are pleasing to Ishtar,” and as the ancient seed of royalty, the powerful king, the sun of Babylon, who causes light to go forth over the lands of Sumer and Akkad; the king who has made the four quarters of the world subservient; the favorite of Inanna am I.104 As Unger has pointed out, whereas Moses proclaimed law as the law of Jehovah (“Thus saith the LORD”), in the immanent religion and political theory of Babylon, Hammurabi proclaimed the law: “I establish law and justice.”105 In Hammurabi’s law, “the entire population is theoretically in slavery to the king.” 106 “Kingship was lowered from heaven” and the Assyrian monarchs proclaimed themselves “king of the world” because their order represented the true cosmic order, which the gods established, and made the king’s “shepherding... as agreeable to the people as (is the smell of) the Plant of Life.”107 The Assyrian monarch was not only the great shepherd and source of order, but he was also the source of chaos; he was usum-gal, the “Giant Snake” or “Great Dragon” and the source of terror: (I am) Shalmaneser, the legitimate king, the king of the world, the king without rival, the “Great Dragon,” the (only) power within the (four rims) (of the earth), overlord of all the princes, who has smashed all his enemies as if (they be) earthenware, the strong man, unsparing, who shows no mercy in battle.108 The Assyrian monarch therefore represented both chaos and order, and he was the incarnation of both. The fearful power of Assyria rested not only in its military might but also in its summation of the dialectic of chaos and creation in the terrifying person and activity of the Assyrian king. For the Assyrian, there was no escape from chaos into order, nor any escape from the total order of the state into chaos, since both chaos and order were summed up in the monarch and the state. We can agree with Oppenheim’s comment concerning the religion of the common man in Assyrian and neo-Babylonian cultures: “At bottom... his outlook was that of fatalistic resignation. There was no salvation.” 109 A prayer found in Assurbanipal’s library expresses this unhappy mood:
... O Lord, my transgressions are many; great are my sins. ... O god whom I know or do not know, (my) transgressions are many; great are (my) sins. ... The god whom I know or do not know has oppressed me; The goddess whom I know or do not know has placed suffering upon me; Although I am constantly looking for help, no one takes me by the hand; When I weep they do not come to my side. ................ Man is dumb; he knows nothing; Mankind, everyone that exists, — what does he know? Whether he is committing sin or doing good, he does not know. The monarch himself, who embodied both chaos and order, echoed this pessimism. A letter of Assurbanipal quotes two proverbs expressive of cynicism: “When the potter’s dog went into the oven, he even growled at the potter.” “A sinful woman at the gate of a judge’s house — her words prevail over that of her husband.”110 The “Cosmic Mountain” was basic to Babylonian thought as to all thought in the ancient world, “with various modifications, from Egypt to China.”111 The king, in the context of a ritual, was god. At times, he was “the link between the gods and the people whom they had created to do them service. He represented the people before the gods, and in turn was the pipeline through which the gods regulated the affairs of the state for the people.” Mankind was made from the blood of a slain god, and, in another myth, the gods declared to the goddess Mami, “You are the primeval womb, creatress of mankind.”112 There was thus a continuity of being between gods and men. This continuity of being was an important aspect of astrology then and now, since astrology was “based on the theory of correspondence between the earth and the sky.”113 This correspondence rested in a common being which, in its varying aspects, manifested a like power in the stars and in men. Babylonian omens saw chaos as the source of fertility and power. Thus, “If a man (in his dream) goes in (sexually) to a wild beast, his household will become prosperous.”114 Temple prostitution was present in Babylon,115 as it almost invariably is where chaos is an aspect of the religious dialectic. Jacobsen, in his discussion of “The Cosmos as a State” and “The Function of the State,” has called attention to an important aspect of Mesopotamian thought: The fact that the Mesopotamian universe was conceived of as a state — that the gods who owned and ruled the various city- states were bound together in a higher unity, the assembly of the gods, which possessed executive organs for exerting outward pressure as well as for enforcing law and order internally — has farreaching consequences for Mesopotamian history and for the ways in which historical events were viewed and interpreted. It vastly strengthened tendencies toward political unification of the country by sanctioning even the most violent means used toward that end. For any conqueror, if he was successful, was recognized as the agent of Enlil. It also provided — even at times when national unity was at a low ebb and the many city-states were, for all practical purposes, independent units — a background on which international law could work.116
Two implications are clearly apparent here. First, the universe was a state, and earth should be a state. Both Assyria and Babylon, under Nebuchadnezzar, sought to unify the world of their day, forcibly moving and dispersing recalcitrant peoples in order to break down old loyalties and to create a unified empire. Second, it was the successful conqueror, not the legitimate ruler, who was the agent of Enlil, the instrument of the gods. This placed a premium on force and violence, but, even more, it declared that the divine law and order was manifested in the most powerful force of the day, beyond which there could be no appeal, because the powers of heaven were manifested in it. Another and widely different power could manifest the divine agency tomorrow, but it always rested at the moment with the greatest existing power. Nebuchadnezzar, born into this faith, could ask incredulously of the three Hebrews, “and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?” (Dan. 3:15). For Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego to appeal to a god beyond Nebuchadnezzar for vindication was to him an incredible thing. Whatever the gods were and sought to be for that day was manifested in history in the person of Nebuchadnezzar. Tomorrow was an unknown factor, and Nebuchadnezzar could plead in prayer that his “descendants rule...forever over the black-headed,” with a strong sense of the instability of history,117 knowing that the king who was representing the gods today could tomorrow be their victim. Thus, whereas in the Egyptian view “the king was recognized as the successor of the Creator,” the Mesopotamian king was sometimes identified more clearly with the suffering god.118 Pessimism was close at hand in Mesopotamian thought.
3. Persia In ancient Persian thought, the chaos-creation dialectic is also present, as it is in ancient India,119 but stated as a tension between darkness and light. The gods war against chaos or darkness in and from the heavenly realm, and the king wars on earth against darkness. Ahura Mazda is the great god...as the king of Eran is the great king...; Ahura Mazda has created heaven, earth, and mankind; these, therefore, are his property, but he only reserved for himself the domination over heaven, for earth he has made the king of Eran his substitute and his ONLY SUBSTITUTE; he, the king, holds for mankind Ahura Mazda’s place.120 Plutarch gives confirmation of this position of the Persian monarch in a statement of Artabanus to Themistocles, a Greek, giving the condition of audience with the Persian monarch. In Plutarch’s, “Life of Themistocles,” we read: Among our many excellent laws, we account this the most excellent, to honour the king, and to worship him, as the image of the great preserver of the universe; if then, you shall consent to our laws, and fall down before the king and worship him, you may both see him and speak to him; but if your mind be otherwise, you must make use of others to intercede for you, for it is not the national custom here for the king to give audience to any one that doth not fall down before him.
In Plutarch’s “Life of Artaxerxes,” we are told that this monarch regarded “himself as divinely appointed for a law to the Persians, and the supreme arbiter of good and evil.” Unlike Babylon, where the law was subject to the king, in Medo-Persia, the king was subject to the law. The king could not alter or change his decree; his law bound not only his subjects but also himself. Esther 1:19 and 8:8 record this power of the law, and Diodorus Siculus reported that Darius III found himself bound by the law, for, having sentenced Charidemos to death, he repented of it and felt that he had erred, “but it was not possible to undo what was done by royal authority.” This same inviolability of law is cited with respect to Darius the Mede inDaniel 6:8-9, 12, 14, 16-17. Some of the most important insights into the Persian concept of kingship are to be found in F. W. Buckler, although he tends to identify this concept as “Oriental” and “Eastern.” Its presence in European thought certainly is no less clear, although Christianity and Hellenic-RenaissanceEnlightenment strands have introduced other concepts as well. Thus, an act of Parliament under Queen Elizabeth of England spoke of royal absolutism in language that was not limited to the English scene but was common to the doctrines of state elsewhere: It was asserted that the queen inherited both an enlarging and a restraining power; by her prerogative she might set at liberty what was restrained by statute or otherwise, and by her prerogative she might restrain what was otherwise at liberty; that the royal prerogative was not to be canvassed, nor disputed, nor examined; and did not even admit of any limitation: that absolute princes, such as the sovereigns of England, were a species of divinity: that it was in vain to attempt tying the queen’s hands by laws or statutes; since, by means of her dispensing power, she could loosen herself at pleasure: and that even if a clause should be annexed to a statute, excluding her dispensing power, she could first dispense with that clause and then with the statute.121 This was more power than the “Oriental” Persian monarch could claim. John Dowland in 1600 wrote of Elizabeth: When others sing Venite exultemus! Stand by, and turn to Noli emulari! For Quare fremuerunt, use Oremus! Vivat Eliza for an Ave Mari!122 Lord North wrote of Elizabeth to the Bishop of Ely, saying, “She is oure God in earth; if ther be perfection in flesh and blood, undoubtedlye it is in her Majestye.”123 In different terminology, an even greater absolutism is now in process of being granted to the United Nations. “Oriental” monarchy is not alone in seeing the monarch or the state as “God on earth.” If the transcendental and discontinuous nature of the being of God be denied, then the god, gods, or powers of the cosmos are continuous with man and identifiable with him. To the extent that they are directly identified with man, to that extent the social order is absolute and a total power. In full-blown pantheism, the one and the many, and every aspect of being, are completely unified and totally identifiable one with another. The most minute particle, then, as fully incorporates being in itself as the greatest man or force, for being is one being and is totally and exhaustively present in all
things. No social order is possible in terms of such a concept, although anarchism is an aspect of this faith.
4. The Chain of Being The great chain of being concept moves towards this identity but definitely does not possess it. There is a hierarchy of being, with a thinness of being in most places and a concentration of being at other points. This greater immanence of being can be manifested in a monarch, in reason, or in a class or a people, or it can be manifested in the collective whole of humanity. But, wherever manifested, this being is law beyond appeal. It is possible for the future to see a further development of being, but for the present there is no appeal beyond the law of manifest power and being. The powers that be are a supreme court against which there is no appeal. Queen Elizabeth was declared to be beyond all law; the Persian monarch was bound by law, but it was his law, issuing only from him, so that he was bound to himself, to self-consistency. The concept of the continuity of being, therefore, is incapable of producing other than a totalitarian order, whether it be a monarchy, an aristocracy, or a democracy. The high point of being is manifested in the social order and is total law: apart from it men have no true being. They are outlaws, mentally sick, or socially maladjusted; they are seen as incomplete or deformed human beings whose only hope is conformity to the continuity of being in its present manifestation. The only hope such an outcast can have is that, however deformed he may be in terms of the present, the next development of being might be his vindication. Although the freak of today, he may be the standard form of being tomorrow. Thus, Aristotle was interested in freakish births for this reason, and, as Cornelius Van Til has pointed out, the Greeks were interested in Paul’s teachings on the resurrection for the same reason. They believed in “the mysterious universe”; they were perfectly willing therefore to leave open a place for “the unknown.” But this “unknown” must be thought of as the utterly unknowable and indeterminate.124 This same Greek concept, in a gnostic version, is the foundation of the thinking of Eric Voegelin, who reads history in terms of the concept of the continuity of being and sees progress in terms of “the leap in being.”125 This is, of course, a totally relativistic concept. Truth is what the incarnate or manifest being of the day determines it to be: it then changes with the next leap in being. Stalin was the incarnate truth for his day, and Khrushchev, with his variations, is the truth of being for his era. When Khrushchev criticized Stalin on February 25, 1956, a question quickly arose as to the infallibility of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the incarnation of manifest being, in view of these criticisms of Stalin. Was not the infallibility and authority of the Party endangered by this speech? This impression was subsequently corrected by Khrushchev: aspects of Stalin’s leadership which were incorrect for the present had their place in terms of Stalin’s day and must be seen in historical perspective. Accordingly, Khrushchev concluded, Stalin will take a due place as a dedicated Marxist-Leninist and stalwart revolutionary. Our party and the Soviet people will remember Stalin and pay tribute to him.126
This same concept of history was read into American history by the U.S. Supreme Court under Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose concept of the law saw law as the dominant mores of the people; truth, therefore, was pragmatic, democratic, and relative. Basic to this position was an acceptance of evolutionary thought, and evolution is simply a modern application of the concept of the continuity of being to the problem of origins. In the ancient Persian version, the kingdom of God is present on earth in the state, and the glory of God is possessed by the monarch, “The Great King personally represents God on earth.” He is both man and god, continuous with both deity and humanity, and it is important for men to be incorporated into his being by rites of unity, in particular the royal feast and the robe of honor.127 This concept of divine kingship has been a continuing aspect of Iranian history. 128 It is an important aspect of Akbar’s Decree of 1579, making him the Khalifah of the Faithful, one directly inspired of God, the rightful heir of the Kingdom of God, and the Khalifah of the Age.129 This ancient concept of the kingdom as one body of continuous being between God, the king and the state, and his people, is important, for in its modern form it is the doctrine of the corporateness and completeness of humanity. The high point of being in its development is man, and all law is of man and for man, according to this faith. Humanity, therefore, must be one and undivided, and no law can be imposed upon it save its own will, as manifested in an elite or in a consensus.130 Thus, the ancient empires of Egypt, Assyria, and other realms have their more modern and more thorough counterpart in the dreams of a one-world order.
5. The Bible and the Concept of Being Proponents of the social gospel and of social action by the churches are insistent in reading the Bible in terms of this continuity concept. The whole of the Bible, however, sharply militates against it. First, a sharp discontinuity between the sovereign, absolute, and omnipotent God and man, his creature, is declared. There can exist between man and God only an ethical, not a metaphysical, community, whereas the community of being prevails in the pagan concept of the kingdom. Second, because man is a sinner, the ethical community of life in the kingdom of God is limited to those who are regenerate in Jesus Christ. In both Old and New Testaments, the community is ethical, rests on a vicarious sacrifice (typical in the Old, Jesus in the New Testament), and is sharply divisive with respect to humanity, discriminating between the saved and the lost. In John 6, the multitude, on perceiving the divine powers of the Messiah, sought forcibly to make Him king on their terms, to control God thereby in terms of their own kingdom. Jesus, first, refused to accept their kingdom and crown, and, second, offered them participation and membership only in His perfect humanity. They could eat His flesh (partake of His perfect humanity, be one body with it) and drink His blood (accept His atoning and vicarious sacrifice as the ground of their salvation and new life). Thus, He denied any metaphysical continuity and made the ethical communion with Himself conditional upon their acceptance of Him as man’s redeemer.
Two texts are sometimes cited as contrary evidence, although wrongly so. The first is Christ’s use of Psalm 82 in John 10:34, “Ye are gods.” Psalm 82 is addressed to judges, or civil magistrates. According to Scripture, judgment and vengeance belong to God alone, to be exercised, if not directly, then through His duly constituted law and authority, in the home, church, and state. Man cannot take judgment into his own hands; he can exercise it only under God in a God-given office, as father, presbyter, and state officer, and in that office only within the bounds of the word of God. The use of the term “gods” in Psalm 82 and elsewhere has reference not to the person but to the function of the office, to fulfil God’s law. In Psalm 82, such officers are warned that their wickedness is known to God, who denounces them, concluding, “I have said, Ye are gods,” but, because of their treasonable iniquity, “Ye shall die like men.” Jesus cited the psalm to issue the same warning to the leaders of His day, with this difference: the test of their divine authority was not merely their conduct towards those suing for justice, but also supremely their relationship toward Himself. Because their office partook of the function (but not the person) of God in the exercise of justice, now that He, the true Son of God (in person, nature, and function), had come, He was the first and foremost test of their office. They had tried to use Scripture against Jesus, claiming, “thou, being a man, makest thyself God.” Jesus answered by declaring himself to be, not a man making himself God, but He whom the Father had sent into the world, His Son, God made incarnate. Again, John 3:6 is cited, “That which is born of flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Is a man born of the Spirit made divine? Is he not rather made into a new man ethically and accordingly brought into communion with God? The clear-cut meaning is a contrast of the two humanities. Those who are members of the fallen humanity of Adam are by nature sinners and humanists. Those who are born of the Spirit are born into the new humanity of the last Adam, Jesus Christ; they are now members of the kingdom of God and are sons of God by grace, not by nature. All paganism asserts, implicitly or explicitly, the natural divinity and sonship of man. This is emphatically rejected in the Bible. Man cannot become divine; he always remains man, saved man or lost man. Jesus Christ is the “only begotten” Son of God, and members of Christ’s new humanity share in His sonship by grace. Man’s communion with God in Christ is not one of substance but of life, not of nature but of grace. He is the recipient and partaker of God’s nature ethically, not metaphysically. The goal of man, therefore, is not metaphysical but ethical, not in terms of a unified order but in terms of a transcendental law.
6. Being and Society Wherever a society has a naturalistic religion, grounded on the concept of continuity, man faces the total power of the state. This is clearly true today, as it was in antiquity. The Scythians “worshipped the elements” and practiced veneration of ancestors, and the royal Scyths “ruled as despots.”131 The Parthians practiced a religion affirming continuity, and their monarchs had “nearly despotic” power and claimed the title of “Kings of Kings.” 132 The list can be extended at length. Where there is no transcendental law and power in a separate and omnipotent being, then power has a wholly immanent and immediate source in a state, group, or person, and it is beyond appeal. The state becomes the saving power and the source of law; it becomes the priestly agency of its own total power and the manifest power of its divinity. 133 Such a state becomes god walking on the earth, and its every tyranny is identified as liberty, because being and meaning
are both identifiable in terms of the state. Since it is held that there is no law beyond the state, meaning is what the state defines, and liberty is what the state provides. In this faith, for man to be free means to be in the state. More than that, for man to be, he must be a member of the state, for being is one and continuous, and salvation is a metaphysical unification of all being. In its older forms, this doctrine held that the power and will of being were manifested or incarnated in the king, who was the bearer of power and will in relationship to men and the recipient of it from the gods. “The idea of the good king who ensures the well-being of the world is practically universal.” The potency of being is manifested through him. “The king’s power, then, is no human might, but the power, the potency of the world; his imperialism is not covetousness, but an assertion of his world status, and his garb ‘the living garment of God.’” From the ancient kings to present empires and the United Nations, this motive is paramount: their imperialism is seen by themselves, in all sincerity, not as covetousness, but as an assertion of that order which they incarnate. “The king, then, is a god: indeed he is one of the first and oldest gods: Power has been embodied in a living person.... In a still more literal sense than he is a god, the king is the son of god; and in this also he is a saviour form.” The relativism we have previously noted is apparent in this godhood. Each king and state represent a divine order for their day; they pass away, and another truth and power succeed them. “Royal power, then, is world-power, but like that of the sun it is valid only for its own period.”134 The king has given way to a new focus for the potency of being, humanity, the new object of “adoration” since the Enlightenment, with the intellectual and “the philosopher its high priest.” Goethe declared, of the magical powers of humanity, that, “For all human failings, Pure humanity atones.” The cult has its Unknown Soldier, lighted at his grave by “the eternal flame,” and Mother’s Day, to celebrate pure humanity, and humanity is for many “the sole entity worthy of worship.”135 Unfortunately for this faith, humanity, instead of manifesting power, is revealing a radical impotence.
Chapter IV The Unity of the Polis 1. Greece: The Humanist’s Homeland The importance of Greek thought in Western history cannot be understood by a reading of the works of specialists in the field, because the prevailing approach is neither philosophical nor historical but religious. A conspicuous example of this is the more learned than wise study of Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture. The majority of scholars turn to Greek culture, not for its own sake, but to find a heritage and a homeland to buttress their antiChristianity. Thus, Greek scholarship is more often autobiography than history. Hence the inappropriate emphasis of many, and here we can exempt Jaeger, on Greek rationality, happiness, individualism, secularism, and democracy. In attempting to read their modern understanding of these terms into classical Greece, or to derive them from that culture, they are clearly guilty of wishful thinking. Greek culture was clearly and emphatically religious; its center of orientation was not the individual and his fulfillment but rather the city-state and its destiny; and, in its emphasis on face, and its long history as a shame culture,136 classical Greece was closer to the Japan of the samurais than to modern Western civilization.137 The concept of the continuity of being was basic to Greek thought, and the line of demarcation between the gods and men was not a difference of being but a difference of power and station. The gods and men avenged themselves on any who trespassed on their honor and position. Hubris, pride, was a sin in that it was a contempt of station and a contempt of a higher dignitary’s power and honor. To the Greeks, also, great honors are ascribed in the history of human thought. “The earliest school of rational thought, it is agreed by all authorities, arose at Miletus in the sixth century B.C.,” we are told.138 Another scholar assures us that The Greeks invented, among other things, science and philosophy. The first scientists and philosophers lived during the sixth century B.C. on the Greek coast of Asia Minor and in the Greek cities of southern Italy. Later, during the fifth and fourth centuries, the important center of thought was Athens. It would be an exaggeration to say that before the time of Thales of Miletus men were incapable of rational thought, but there would be some truth in the statement, since before his time it does not appear that anyone asked those precise questions out of which science and philosophy were to develop. The questions were “What is everything made of?... How do things come into being, change and pass away?,” “What permanent substance or substances exist behind appearances?”139 This is an amazing statement in view, for example, of Egyptian and Babylonian architecture, mathematics, and astronomy, and of the civilization of Mohenjo-daro. The Minoan culture which preceded Greek civilization gives extensive evidence of having reached stages of technological development never approached by the Greeks. Greek science, moreover, involved heavy borrowings from other cultures. Why, then, in view of these well-known facts, are the Greeks
given priority in the history of human thought? They were obviously not the equals of their Minoan predecessors. They had a long, ugly history of incessant warfare and persistent tyranny. Whereas the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians, to cite but three peoples, made excellent use of their natural resources and gave abundant evidences of scientific management of soil and water, the Greeks rapidly destroyed their future by gutting their country. The forests very early were ruthlessly stripped, and the marshes drained, and Greece was reduced to the barren and impoverished land which it has remained to this day.140 The inability of the Greeks to make intelligent use of their natural resources contributed heavily to their decline, and yet they did not lack examples of scientific conservation and the development of natural resources. Why, then, the curious exaltation of Greek science and rationality? Why the ascription of most desirable qualities in modern culture to a “Greek heritage”?141
2. Greek Science and Philosophy The answer appears in Benjamin Farrington, for whom “Greek science constitutes a veritable miracle.”142 Greek science did not, in any practical, working sense, surpass the science of some other ancient cultures, but what Farrington is looking for is theoretical, “evidence of an attempt to give a naturalistic explanation of the universe as a whole,” and this the other Near Eastern cultures lacked. The originality and scientific aspect of “the Ionian way of thought was that it sought to explain the mysteries of the universe in terms of familiar things.”143 For Farrington, science is thus more accurately to be defined as materialism, naturalism, and humanism, as anthropomorphic thinking. They might be said to have given an operational rather than a rational account of the nature of things. Their criterion of truth was successful practice. The exaltation by them of the practical knowledge contained in the techniques into a method of analysis of natural phenomena was the truly revolutionary step.... With the Milesians technology drove mythology off the field. The central illumination of the Milesians was the notion that the whole universe works in the same way as the little bits of it that are under man’s control.... The processes men controlled on earth become the key to the whole activity of the universe.144 It appears now what constituted Greek “philosophy” and “science.” Earlier cultures, in their legal codes, mathematics, and often remarkable calculations, indicated their high order of intelligence and rationality, but they were not “scientific” because they were not naturalistic. Thus, when Kitto, another worshiper of the Greeks, tells us that they “showed for the first time what the human mind was for,”145 he contributes nothing to our knowledge of the Greeks but much to our knowledge of his anti-supernatural, anti-Christian bias; he thus contributes nothing to our knowledge of the Greek mind but much to our knowledge of his mind. While there is an important element of truth in Farrington’s thesis, the fact remains that Greek thought was religious, and it was esoteric. However, the public philosophy was an exoteric presentation, whereas the “hidden” truth belonged to the members of the school only. The Greek philosophers were apparently the first to teach an exoteric philosophy as a means of enlisting followers into the expert, professional, and esoteric school. A man was initiated into a school of
thought and its concepts were property, jealously hoarded. This secrecy was both a principle and an early form of copyright and professional unionism. Today, professional, legal, scientific, and medical associations form often a closed corporation to protect the initiates of the profession; the protection has passed from the ideas to the profession of the practitioner, and there is often a legally enforced barrier to protect the initiates. Plato’s writings give evidence of hidden doctrines, and Farrington himself cites evidence of the same in Aristotle: When Alexander the Great, whose tutor Aristotle had been, heard a report that the subject matter of the morning lectures had been published he wrote to his teacher to protest. “If you have made public what we have learned from you, how shall we be any better than the rest? Yet I had rather excel in learning than in power and wealth.” Aristotle told him not to worry. “The private lessons,” he wrote, “are both published and not published. Nobody will be able to understand them except those who have had the oral instruction.”146 The religious and the esoteric aspects are pervasive in Greek thought. However, there is some validity to the ascription of naturalism to the Greeks. According to Mylonas, “the religion of the Prehistoric Greeks was a nature creed.” 147 For Greek mythology, “In the beginning was Chaos, ‘yawning void.’ Out of Chaos came the broad, flat Earth, the true mother of all things, gods as well as men.”148 The foundations of Greek thought were thus the same as the Egyptian and Babylonian, to name but two: the dialectic of chaos and order, and the concept of continuity. There was a oneness of being in the cosmos, but a difference of power. Pindar stated it clearly in “Nemea 6”: There is one race of men, one race of gods; both have breath of life from a single mother. But sundered power holds us divided, so that the one is nothing, while for the other the brazen sky is established their sure citadel forever. The cornerstone of all naturalism is this concept of the continuity of being, and every culture or religion based on that concept is either implicitly or explicitly naturalistic.
3. The Chaos-Order Dialectic The chaos-order dialectic stands against the background of continuity, so that ultimately the vision is one of unity. Chaos and order represent, not an ultimate dualism, but aspects of being and stages of growth. In a sense, chaos, as the womb of being, is the female principle, and order is the male principle. These concepts seem to have governed the Greek sexual outlook. Woman was the ground and the nurse, but not the parent of the seed. Apollo, in the Eumenides of Aeschylus, declared:
I will tell you, and I will answer correctly. Watch. The mother is no parent of that which is called her child, but only nurse of the new-planted seed that grows. The parent is he who mounts. A stranger she preserves a stranger’s seed, if no god interfere. I will show you proof of what I have explained. There can be a father without any mother. There she stands, the living witness, daughter of Olympian Zeus, she who was never fostered in the dark of the womb yet such a child as no goddess could bring to birth.149 For a similar concept of woman, see the laws of Lycurgus: Lycurgus allowed a man who was advanced in years and had a young wife to recommend some virtuous and approved young man, that she might have a child by him, who might inherit the good qualities of the father, and be a son to himself. On the other side, an honest man who had love for a married woman upon account of her modesty and the well-favouredness of her children, might, without formality, beg her company of her husband, that he might raise, as it were, from this plot of good ground, worthy and well-allied children for himself. And indeed, Lycurgus was of a persuasion that children were not so much the property of their parents as of the whole commonwealth, and, therefore, would not have his citizens begot by firstcomers, but by the best men that could be found; the laws of other nations seemed to him very absurd and inconsistent, where people would be so solicitous for their dogs and horses as to exert interest and to pay money to procure fine breeding, and yet kept their wives shut up, to be made mothers only by themselves, who might be foolish, infirm, or diseased; as if it were not apparent that children of a bad breed would prove their bad qualities first upon those who kept and were rearing them, and well-born children, in like manner, their good qualities. These regulations, founded on natural and social grounds, were certainly far from that scandalous liberty which was afterwards charged upon their women, that they knew not what adultery meant.150 Original creation was from chaos, even as man’s first birth is from woman, an inescapable fact. On coming to manhood, however, the male child must purge himself, through rites of initiation and purgation, from femaleness and chaos. Attention was called to this by Jane Harrison: In the case of the Kouros the child is taken from its mother, in the case of the Dithyramb it is actually re-born from the thigh of its father. In both cases the intent is the same, but in the case of the Dithyramb it is far more emphatically expressed. The birth from the male womb is to rid the child from the infection of his mother—to turn him from a woman-thing into a man-thing.151 Homosexuality had an important part in this “re-birth,” and in the education of the “reborn.” Xenophon declared, “I must now speak of pederasty, for it affects education,” and Plato, in the Symposium, set this perversion in a pedagogical and mystical context; he saw homosexuality, philosophy, and gymnastics as “inimical to tyranny.”152 According to Marrou, “‘Greek love’ was to provide classical education with its material conditions and its method. For the men of ancient times this type of love was essentially educative.... ‘Its aim is to educate’ as Plato says.” 153 It was
“an anti-feminine ideal of complete manliness.” It established a closer relationship, according to Plato, than between parents and children (an indication perhaps of initiation into a cult). Women were similarly educated into perversions by women, with Sappho an instance of the teaching woman.154 The triumph of order was the goal, and order could beget order, but in the fullest society, chaos was a necessary part of all things and continuous with order. Hence, the truest symbol of perfection was not Zeus as a male god, nor kings (“Zeuses the ancients used to call their kings”),155 but rather the hermaphrodite. Indeed, hermaphroditism was attributed “to a number of divine beings, as one of their several perfections.” It was “bound up with human aspirations to perpetual life.”156 As a result, Zeus himself was portrayed as a hermaphrodite.157 Chaos, according to Rufinus, “caused to emanate from himself a double form androgynous, made by the conjunction of opposites.” To simulate the perfection of androgynous being, women in ancient mysteries assumed male dress or wore a beard, and men castrated themselves in terms of this same perfection. “The bisexuality of the philosophers amounts to asexuality: spiritual man is completely freed from the bonds of the flesh.”158 The hermaphrodite ideal of perfection entered deeply into gnostic thought, and into the Talmud, which “drew the doctrine of primitive humanity as bisexual, which passed into Jewish mysticism, as well as into Arab esoterism, in which the unity Adam-Eve represents universal man.”159 There are connections between the concept of androgyny as perfection and the religious myth or performance of incest. 160
4. The Esoteric State Out of Chaos comes the androgyn; and, according to Plato in the Symposium, out of the splitting of the androgyn come the sexes, and whether a man is a lover of men or of women depends on what part of “that double nature which was once called Androgynous” they are derived from. 161 “Human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love.”162 The polis, or Greek city-state, has often been called a men’s club, and with reason, because in its gymnastics, games, music, and political order, it was a brotherhood of initiates into a divine wholeness. The city was a holy sanctuary, a sacred enclosure around an altar, “the religious abode of gods and citizens.”163 “The real religion of the fifth century was... a devotion to the City itself,”164 to the wholeness and unity it represented. Divinity could reside in men, an opinion held by Aristotle and Plato and claimed for himself by Empedocles. 165 Scholars have attempted to give noble reasons for the durability of the ancient city state.166 The Greeks themselves saw the homosexual aspect as a binding quality, as Marrou has pointed out. The citystate was an esoteric, mystical, and divine body with a kind of androgynous wholeness, and the religion of the city-state was basically a fertility cult. Justice was defined as the law of the city. According to Antiphon the Sophist, probably of Athens in the latter half of the fifth century B.C., “Justice, then, is not to transgress that which is the law of the city in which one is a citizen.” 167 There was thus no element of transcendence: no justice existed beyond the city-state because it was an entity with wholeness. According to Diogenes of Appollonia, from the same period as Antiphon the Sophist, “to sum up the whole matter.... all existing things are created by the alteration of the same thing, and are the same thing.”168 As a result, each city-state was in a sense a cosmos unto itself, with the full spectrum of being from gods to man and to the very earth, so that it was a unity against an outer and an inner chaos and an order for the continuing mastery
and use of chaos. Because it was a mystical wholeness, its religion, law, and philosophy were naturally esoteric, in their essence meant for the inner circle. As a result, because the modern, Enlightenment mind is insistent upon a neutral rationality, it quietly bypasses such earnest aspects of Pythagoras’ teaching as the injunction, “Do not eat beans,” and the declaration of Empedocles, “Wretches, utter wretches, keep your hands from beans!”169
5. The Polis as Cosmos Cosmos means order, and the city-state represented order in a wholeness due to its status as the mystical bond of heaven and earth. The polis or city-state wholly comprehended man’s life until mystical thought made for ascetic withdrawal. According to Jaeger, “The centre of gravity of Greek life lies in the polis.... Thus, to describe the Greek polis is to describe the whole of Greek life.” It means, therefore, to describe its theology and ethics as well. “Whatever helps the community is good, whatever injures it is bad.”170 The city-state was thus itself the cosmos, the order of being. Earlier, as Fustel de Coulanges, in The Ancient City, has pointed out, Greek culture was oriented to the family, and the basic religion was the family as the mystical bond of heaven and earth, as the cosmos. The family gave way to the polis, the city-state, as the true cosmos, and law was an expression of the nature of that cosmos. The city-state was an organic and religious entity. What fascism tried very faintly to do, to create a sense of the unity of the people of the state, Greece had in full measure. Because the city-state embraced the full spectrum of being in continuity, it included not only men and gods, but also athletes, leaders, and heroes who could become in some sense divine. Since being was seen as continuous, an elite could embody divinity or wisdom. Socrates clearly believed in his divine inspiration,171 and Plato, in The Republic, not only saw his philosopherkings and elite as wise, but also held that knowledge is infallible.172 The wholeness of the citystate made it the locale of the eliteness of being, and, when the city-state became an empire, it was the elite community governing the world, true order bringing chaos into fructifying submission. The United Nations today is the heir of this ancient city-state elitist concept. Both Plato and Aristotle held “that the polis should be economically self-sufficient. To them, Autarkeia, self-sufficiency, is almost the first law of its existence; they would practically abolish commerce.”173 Being a cosmos, this was a philosophical necessity. Anaximander held the cosmos to be “a vast community to which the gods as well as man belonged,” and Heraclitus stated that “the cosmos is the same for all and that neither one of the gods nor of men has made it, but that it was always.”174 Chaos, seen by Aristotle as “the unrealised possibilities of matter,”175 required the action of order to realize itself. According to one cult, the evil Titanic element in every man’s soul, and by analogy in the body politic must be subjected to the divine, Dionysian urge for order, deliverance, and salvation.176 Aeschylus, in the Oresteia, depicted justice as the move from chaos to order. The Furies still moved in terms of ancient family law as the principle of order and demanded vengeance, but, in the Eumenides, the Furies transfer the framework of order from the family to the polis, and to the
“gods of the younger generation.” They become “Eumenides,” “Kindly Ones,” and the polis emerged “as the pattern of Justice, of Order, of what the Greeks called Cosmos; the polis, they saw, was—or could be—the very crown and summit of things.”177 The Furies demanded “definite powers” before making the transfer, and Athene declared, “No household shall be prosperous without your will.” When the question was raised, “You guarantee such honor for the rest of time?,” Athene answered, “I have no need to promise what I cannot do,” a hint of the basic Greek pessimism, with its cyclic view of history. 178 Until that turn of history, however, it was believed that the prosperity and life of the people depended upon the total order of the state. Against this state or cosmos there was no appeal, no higher law. Man’s only recourse was either to be an outlaw or to join another cosmos, another city-state, and hence the readiness of many political losers in Athens, for example, to join with honor an enemy state; their lives required a religion and a cosmos, and if Athens cut them off, it was necessary to become a member of another body.
6. The One and the Many The Greek approach to the problem of the one and the many rested on this background of a chaos-order dialectic set in the context of the continuity concept. Both the early monists and the pluralists accepted this framework; they did not essentially alter the ideas of the original form of things, but they raised the question of centrality. What was wanted was an intellectual Archimedean lever for the universe. The Monists first addressed themselves to this question: Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes of the Milesian school; Xenophanes of Colophon; Elea, Parmenides, and Zeno of the Eleatic school; and Heraclitus at Ephesus. The Milesians assumed, first, one unchanging cosmic substance at the basis of the changes of nature, and, second, that moving matter is living matter. Xenophanes dealt with the first premise, as did the Eleatics, while Heraclitus accepted only the second. For Heraclitus (530-470 B.C.), change is the key and the reality. All things are in process of becoming and are continually in motion, passing away. “It is not possible to step twice into the same river.” Rest is in change, for all things flow, and “all things are one.” Reality is thus a perpetual becoming, energy in motion. Thus, the sun, in size “the breadth of a man’s hand,” is “new each day.” Fire “steers the universe.” Change is the harmonious interaction of opposites as a closed circle, a continuing and continuous dialectic: “God is day-night, winter-summer, war-peace, satiety-famine.” This dialectical tension is the true god: “War is both king of all and father of all,” and “The Hidden harmony is stronger (or, better) than the visible.... That which is in opposition is in concert, and from things that differ comes the most beautiful harmony.” Thus, a dialectical tension and a kind of relativity are basic to Heraclitus.179 Chaos and order are necessary, one to another, and male to female: this is the tension and motion which constitutes reality. For Parmenides of Elea (515-440 B.C.), identification of the cosmic substance was the key. This cosmic substance is Being, which is the same as thought. “For it is the same thing to think and to be.” Moreover, “One should both say and think that Being Is; for To Be is possible, and Nothingness is not possible.... Being has no coming-into-being and no destruction.... How could Being perish? How could it come into Being?” Furthermore, Being “is motionless” and it is spatial, so that Being is not only thought, but it is also at the same time matter.180
Heraclitus eliminated permanence, and Parmenides eliminated change. For Heraclitus, there was only process, but the process had a unity, a rhythmical law. To know justice, we must have injustice; all things are relative, and hence dialectical. For Parmenides, Being is an eternal, finite, motionless, and spherical solid body. The famous illustrations of Zeno, such as the flying arrow that remained at rest, were designed to demonstrate the truth of Parmenides’ system. However naturalistic their presuppositions were, these men were not scientific in their concern; rather, it was the theology of politics which concerned them. They were interested in the nature of the cosmos and the key or lever to its government. For Heraclitus, “the world is governed by a Logos, a Reason, a Law, and this is the fire itself.”181 According to Plato, Parmenides and Zeno sought “to disprove the existence of the many.”182 For him, Being had to be one and homogeneous. Because of this pantheistic oneness of all Being, one can perhaps assume that Parmenides may have been favorable to an equalitarian and democratic order. There is perhaps a curious hint of this in Fragment 18: When a woman and a man mix the seeds of Love together, the power (of the seeds) which shapes (the embryo) in the veins out of different blood can mould well-constituted bodies only if it preserves proportion. For if the powers war (with each other)when the seed is mixed, and do not make a unity in the body formed by the mixture, they will terribly harass the growing (embryo) through the twofold seed of the (two) sexes.183 The Being of Parmenides was equal throughout, without origin and without a future. Such a Being had no future, nor did such a philosophy. The pluralists offered another answer: Empedocles at Agrigentum, (or Acragus), Anaxagoras at Clazomenae, the later Pythagoreans at Thebes mainly, and Leucippus at Abdera. The pluralists assumed a permanence which became transposed rather than transformed. For Empedocles (495-435 B.C.), there were four elements, fire, air, water, and earth; and Strife and Love, repulsion and attraction, were responsible for change and motion. History is therefore cyclical, as Strife and Love create, first, an era in which Love reigns and all elements are totally mixed and indistinguishable; second, the era in which Strife enters in and the elements are separated, although with freakish combinations at times; third, Strife triumphs, and the four elements are totally separate, and life, as in the first era, is impossible; fourth, Love invades the separated, elemental world, and the resultant mingling again produces life. According to Empedocles, in Fragment 8, there is no birth nor death of substances but only “mixing and exchange,” and substance is the name applied to the combination. The elements are “uncreated.” Empedocles thus has a pluralism of elements and a unity of process because of the eternal and continuous tension of Love and Strife, attraction and repulsion. Love produces a chaos of undifferentiated mixture; Strife produces an order of sterile differentiation, and life is an impossibility under either total chaos or total order. The dialectical tension of the two is a necessity for life. Anaxagoras (500-428 B.C.) insisted on pluralism but with a required unity. He refused to limit the number of elements to four, but he also insisted that “in everything there must be everything. It is not possible (for them) to exist apart, but all things contain a portion of everything.” According to Warner, “He held the view that matter is a continuum, infinitely divisible and that, however much it may be divided, each part will contain elements of everything else.” 184 How
could this chaos of matter, infinitely divisible yet continuous, produce anything? To introduce motion, growth, and change, Anaxagoras posited a Nous or Mind, as a physical element, which is “infinite and self-ruling, and is mixed with no Thing, but is alone by itself.”185 Order is thus joined to chaos to make life possible. This dialectical tension of chaos and order (or matter and mind, form, or idea) continued to assert itself. The later Pythagoreans tended to fix this tension into a dualism. Pluralism in the form of atomism ostensibly came into its own with Democritus of Abderk (460-370 B.C.), who, we are told, interpreted reality mechanically rather than teleologically, in terms of atoms and the void, with worlds forming as atoms collide. The result, however, is the same, relativism, and a cyclical teleology is ultimately as relativistic as a mechanical atomism. For Democritus, “We know nothing in reality; for truth lies in an abyss” (Frag. 117). The facts and truths of men are conventions: “Colour exists by convention (usage), sweet by convention, bitter by convention” (Frag. 125). This same statement, found also in Fragment 9, continues, “atoms and Void (alone) exist in reality.... We know nothing accurately in reality, but (only) as it changes according to the bodily condition, and the constitution of those things that flow upon (the body) and impinge upon it.” Knowledge is thus in the main a knowledge of phenomena. However, according to Fragment 34, “Man is a universe in little (Microcosm).” Reality then appears to be not only atoms and the void, but also man, the little cosmos, a walking order. Democritus therefore favored democracy (Frag. 251), and his democracy was by implication not only political but also moral, with every man a walking law unto himself. Apparently, for Democritus, women were not a microcosm but, perhaps, a void! “A woman must not practise argument: this is dreadful” (Frag. 110). “To be ruled by a woman is the ultimate outrage for a man” (Frag. 111). The basic reason is that “Rule belongs by nature to the stronger” (Frag. 267). Slaves were to be used “as parts of the great body” (Frag. 270), functionally, and women were also functional in their nature. Man was the social atom, and his desires the social law.
7. Socrates and Plato The political focus of philosophy appeared more clearly in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, where we have more documentation of their position. Socrates, a statist and a homosexual, is the object of the most appalling idolatry. Kroner, in reading Plato’s dialogues, is reminded “of the gospel stories.” He agrees with Justin Martyr in comparing “Christ with Socrates.” Indeed, “Socrates was a Greek anticipation and counterpart of Jesus Christ. But one has to remember that such a Greek Christ was no Christ at all. Nevertheless, the human features of the two personalities can be compared without blasphemy.”186 For Voegelin, “The life and death of Socrates were the decisive events in the discovery and liberation of the soul.”187 Some scholars have been ready to point out, however, that Socrates was guilty as charged and merited the sentence of death.188 Socrates was a champion, not of “the rights of man but the rights of superman,” and his circle of friends and disciples were close to or involved in the imposition of a reign of terror in Athens four years prior to Socrates’ condemnation. Basic to his trial, although Plato did not mention it, was the political issue. Socrates expressed his contempt for the Athenian jury, comparing them to children trying a doctor on a cook’s charges. The esoteric background is close to the surface in Socrates, who in the Symposium, according to Fite, finds “the key to the universe... in the fact of
boy-love, or pederasty.”189 Plato shared the same opinion most of his life, only dropping it to a measure in his old age, in The Laws. Discussions of Plato usually concentrate on the Platonic doctrine of ideas or forms, and the result is a serious distortion, because, central to Plato, is not the doctrine of ideas but his concept of the city-state, of which the ideas are simply a central aspect. In Plato’s Gorgias, “some wise men tell us that friendship and community and orderliness (Kosmioles) and moderation bind together heaven and earth, gods and men, and that this whole is therefore called order (Kosmos), not disorder (akosmia).” The cosmos is a community of gods and men, and the city-state is such a cosmos. It embraces both the human and the divine, both matter and form, and controlled both chaos and order. Form (idea), order, mind, and the divine are related if not basically one. Justice is the subjection of all things to this divine-human order, and liberty is therefore the negation of justice. The Guardians or elite of the state represent “god-like wisdom,” and they must be obeyed. The citizens must be educated into accepting this wisdom of the elite as their own mind in order to obey voluntarily, but, if not, it must be imposed from without. Then, in order that such a person may be governed by an authority similar to that by which the best man is governed, do we not maintain that he ought to be made the servant of that best man, in whom the divine element is supreme? We do not indeed imagine that the servant ought to be governed to his own detriment, which Thrasymachus held to be the lot of the subject: on the contrary, we believe it to be better for every one to be governed by a wise and divine power, which ought, if possible, to be seated in a man’s own heart, the only alternative being to impose it from without; in order that we may be all alike, so far as nature permits, and mutual friends, from the fact of being steered by the same pilot.190 Justice, for Plato, means that, in the individual, reason rules over the will and the appetites, and in the body politic, it is the rule by the philosopher-king over all other men. “Justice is produced in the soul, like health in the body, by establishing the elements concerned in their natural relations of control and subordination, whereas injustice is like disease and means that this natural order is inverted.”191 There is thus no transcendental justice, no appeal beyond the guardian dictatorship which, in its person, incarnates the divine wisdom and the idea of justice. This is clearly demonstrated in the concept of truth. Since the state is the ultimate order, it stands above law. Men are responsible to the state, not the state to its citizens. Truth and falsehood are held to be only instrumental, comparable to “medicine,” and hence “must be kept in the hands of physicians, and... unprofessional men must not meddle with it.” These physicians who use truth and falsehood as social medicines are the rulers of the state. “To the rulers of the state, then, if to any, it belongs of right to use falsehood, to deceive either enemies or their own citizens, for the good of the state.”192 The “good of the state” as seen by its rulers is the highest law, and this means that the rulers are the embodiment of that law, or, at the least, its source of expression. Seen thus in the perspective of Plato, which is the perspective of the city-state, the basic ideas are philosopher-kings, guardians, or dictators “in whom the divine element is supreme,” as Socrates believed concerning himself, men in whom, to use Cornford’s translation, “a power of godlike wisdom” resides. Anaxagoras held that Mind was the physical element in the universe
and the principle of order. The young Socrates read Anaxagoras with enthusiasm and then disappointment, for his Nous or Mind promised much but stopped short of fulfilment. The Platonic idea, derived in part from Socrates, was more than matter; it was a kind of structure, it was order, soul, and universal; it was the one against or over the many, but it was clearly, above all else, the elite and ruling body of The Republic. The ideas of Plotinus cannot be read back into Plato. For Plato, the ideas are supremely manifested in the guardians, in them the order of being is manifested. To the extent that their ideas are bypassed, the state is threatened with chaos, for they are the order of the state. Plato’s Republic, in attaining its main purpose and function, justice, does not abolish war, nor is the abolition of war even hinted at. Economic selfsufficiency is required, but the abolition of poverty is not promised, and luxury is definitely condemned. In terms of modern Utopias, The Republic indeed promises very little, because its concept of “Utopia” is not the material fulfilment of the people but total government by the elite. Dictatorship by the intellectuals is, in fact, both the goal and the product of The Republic and its greatest appeal to the modern academician. The realization of the idea of justice, then, and the realization of every idea, means the triumph of the central idea, guardianship as the principle of order and oneness. Socrates, according to Plato, had declared, “And if I find any man who is able to see ‘a One and Many’ in nature, him I follow and ‘walk in his footsteps as if he were a god.’”193 Socrates and Plato thus summoned men to follow them, because The Republic was their “vision” of the answer. More specifically, as Voegelin points out, the true Philosophers see the “one” in the “many.”194 And this one, clearly, is the philosopher-ruler. The Republic needs no laws, no legal code of justice, because the guardians are the walking law, the idea incarnate. As Willoughby observed, “Plato’s republic is, therefore, to be a state without laws; one governed entirely by special ordinances issued by its rulers as occasion for them arises.”195 In every age, whenever and wherever these esoteric guardians arise, they are hostile to law because they themselves are the truest idea of law. Plato only wrote his Laws in his old age, as a suggestion for the secondbest state, and it is a society designed to be a palatable stepping-stone to the best. For Plato, ethics and politics were essentially the same,196 and if virtue is political, how else can it best manifest itself than in rulers who have knowledge and can best institute order? “We say that the one and many are identified by the reasoning power,” and “all things which are supposed to exist draw their existence from the one and many, and have the finite and infinite in them as a part of their nature.”197 The goal of education is to understand the harmonious order or cosmos of the whole world, and the goal of justice and the state is to attain to that order, and The Republic is the model of that order. The guardians indeed shall strive to set their country free, but this is freedom from foreign powers, not the freedom of the people; it is to be a free state, not a free people. Because education was seen as conditioning, the environment had to be totally controlled, and art was part of that environment.198 Death was the lot of the physically unfit, and children born without license should be disposed of.199 The guardians had to live under a material and sexual communism, and this was, in The Laws, recommended for all men as the ideal state.200 For Plato, consent of the governed meant that their best interests were served by the guardians: they became masters of themselves only when the guardians governed them totally and prevented the base nature of the people from prevailing. “Do you see that this state of things will exist in your commonwealth, where the desires of the inferior multitude will be controlled by the desires and
wisdom of the superior few? Hence, if any society can be called master of itself and in control of pleasures and desires, it will be ours.”201 Much has been said about the failure of the Greek city-states to unify, and yet the central point has been missed, despite the historical evidence. The Greek city-states, except briefly and to meet a military crisis, could not unify: their idea of unity came too close to obliteration, and, when applied at home, consistently meant social unrest; when applied to another state, it meant virtual death for that state. As a result, they fought until they all fell.
8. Aristotle We have noted, in Aristotle’s reply to Alexander the Great, his own esoteric orientation, and his works are often difficult because of their deliberate vagueness and circumlocution. This is usually dismissed by scholars as a problem of style, but Aristotle had no difficulty in writing plainly and directly when he so chose. Aristotle began as a disciple of Plato, but he later withdrew from some of the implications of that position. His orientation, however, is no less statist: the state is his cosmos. As Kitto notes, when Aristotle speaks of man as “a political animal,” “What Aristotle really said is, ‘Man is a creature who lives in a polis’; and what he goes on to demonstrate, in his Politics, is that the polis is the only framework within which man can fully realize his spiritual, moral and intellectual capacities.”202 Basic to Aristotle is the oneness of Being and Unity: “Unity is nothing distinct from Being.” Moreover, “no universal exists in separation apart from its particulars.”203 There is a continuity of being, and “the Divine pervades the whole of nature.” There is a great chain of being, and “the matter of every thing, and therefore of substance, must be that which is potentially of that nature.” It follows then, “if, as we said, the matter of each thing is that which it is potentially— e.g., the matter of actual fire is that which is potentially fire—then the Bad will simply be the potentially Good.” It follows, therefore, that man is totally comprehended in terms of an immanent structure of continuous being, and that, whatever he is potentially, that he can become actually only within the framework of that structure, the state. Thus, “Ethics or Morality” is a branch of “Political or Social science, and no other.” Anaxagoras had posited aNous or Mind as a physical entity and a mechanical device to make possible motion, growth, and change. Aristotle’s “god” or First Cause or Prime Mover is a similar mechanical device. If causes were infinite in number, then knowledge of causes and knowledge itself would be impossible.204 But the function of this First Cause is to guarantee knowledge, not to provide it. Things are still to be understood in terms of the continuum, not by reference to a First Cause. Thus, we are told in both Ethics and Politics, “man is a social (or political) animal.”205 For Aristotle, as with Plato, justice has an exclusively socio-political meaning. “For to do justice is to have more than one ought, and to suffer it is to have less than one ought.” Justice is “a mean,” not in relationship to extremes, but as “a permanent attitude of the soul toward the means.” The apportionment of property is the illustration used to define justice: “What he (the just man) will do is to give each his proportionately equal share, whether he is himself one of the parties or not.” 206 There is no transcendence here: justice is within the framework of nature (which the Christian, unlike Aristotle, holds to be fallen), and the high point of order and justice within nature is the state.
Men, of course, can “become gods by sheer nobility of character,”207 and there is an element of divinity in all men. If the intellect is divine compared with man, the life of the intellect must be divine compared with the life of a human creature. And we ought not to listen to those who counsel us, O man, think as man should, and O mortal, remember your mortality. Rather ought we, so far as in us lies, to put on immortality and to leave nothing unattempted in the effort to live in conformity with the highest thing within us.... 208 “Intellectual activity... forms perfect happiness for a man,” because it lives in terms of “something divine within us,” a “divine particle.”209 Aristotle, however, did not directly identify this life of intellect, this realized life, with politics. And he did recognize that, in a natural sense, “Nature has made man even more of a pairing than a political animal in so far as the family is an older and more fundamental thing than the state.” The purpose of marriage is not only procreation, but also “to provide whatever is necessary to a fully lived life” by a division of labors by man and wife.210 The priority of the family is a natural and historical rather than an ethical one, and the true realm of intellect is the state. Hence it is the state which best educates for goodness,211 and “the legislator must mould to his will the frames of newly-born children.”212 The right to live, as well as the right to educate, belongs to the state, which should limit its population. As to the exposure and rearing of children, let there be a law that no deformed child shall live, but that on the ground of an excess in the number of children, if the established customs of the state forbid this (for in our state population has a limit), no child is to be exposed, but when couples have children in excess, let abortion be procured before sense and life have begun; what may or may not lawfully be done in these cases depends on the question of life and sensation.213 Families, children, people, all are the property of the state, and the citizen should be “moulded to suit the form of government under which he lives.” Lest any misunderstand him, Aristotle stated plainly, “Neither must we suppose that any one of the citizens belongs to himself, and the care of each part is inseparable from the care of the whole.” Like the whole of man’s life, “That education should be regulated by law and should be an affair of state is not to be denied.” 214 The state is the “highest community” and “embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.” The state is thus man’s true church and his basic religious institution for Aristotle; it is man’s savior and his order of salvation. Although the family has a biological priority, philosophically, “the state is by nature clearly prior to the family and to the individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the part.” And “justice is the bond of men in states, for the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society.”215 “The end of the state is the good life,”216 but we can as easily say that the good life for Aristotle is life within the state, for his state is man’s only true god and church.
Aristotle, perhaps partly for political as well as for personal reasons, is fearful of the radical, communistic order of Plato’s Republic, which creates in the state, “such a degree of unity as to be no longer a state,” for “the nature of the state is to be a plurality” in unity. His purpose in calling for some plurality is to further the desired self-sufficiency. Aristotle is for a totalitarian but non-communist state, and his arguments against communism in property and women are based on practical rather than moral and religious considerations. The state “should be united and made into a community by education.” The socialism of Aristotle is thus neither material nor marital, but rather educational: man himself is to be socialized, “for it is not the possessions but the desires of mankind which require to be equalized, and this is impossible, unless a sufficient education is provided by the laws.”217 To understand what a state is, we must know what the citizen is, and the citizen is one who “shares in the administration of justice and in offices.” But “we cannot consider all those to be citizens who are necessary to the existence of the state.”218 We maintain that the true forms of government are three, and that the best must be that which is administered by the best, and in which there is one man, or a whole family, or many persons, excelling all the others together in virtue, and both rulers and subjects are fitted, the one to rule, the others to be ruled, in such a manner as to attain the most eligible life. We showed at the commencement of our inquiry that the virtue of the good man is necessarily the same as the virtue of the citizen of the perfect state. Clearly then in the same manner, and by the same means through which a man becomes truly good, he will frame a state that is to be ruled by an aristocracy or by a king, and the same education and the same habits will be found to make a good man and a man fit to be a statesman or king.219 This is Aristotle’s good state, but, since the state is the highest order of being, the good state is really what its philosophers declare it to be. There is no true transcendence. Aristotle’s definitions of things are pragmatic. “Virtue is a mean,” and therefore “the life which is in a mean, and in a mean attainable by every one, must be best.”220 It is this pragmatism which requires a balance and a pluralism in Aristotle’s state, not a matter of ultimate principle. And because Aristotle lacked a doctrine of man in the biblical sense, man as covenant-breaker, he hoped that self-interest would lead man to the rational choice of a pragmatically sound social order. Aristotle was philosophically committed to the ultimacy of the one; he hoped pragmatically to provide a place for the many.221 It was the power of the one which men best learned from Aristotle. De Gaulle has stated, and Max Lerner has assented, that, “At the root of Alexander’s victories one will always find Aristotle.”222 In Aristotle’s world, there was no appeal to a transcendental justice or law. His universe was not the creation of God, nor was his God man’s maker; rather, man posited a Prime Mover simply to guarantee the validity of his own, independent knowledge. Man was thus God’s maker, and God was a logical concept, not a reality. As Cornelius Van Til has noted, ...it remains to be proved that anyone of the Greeks ever thought of the universe as God’s creation. The term creation is used to be sure, but the connotation of the term creation in Greek philosophy is always determined by the fact that the
universe is thought of as having an eternal or semi-eternal existence alongside of the existence of God. And if such is the creation concept of Greek thought, it is impossible that the immanence of God in the universe could mean anything else than a sort of identity with the universe. The God of Greek philosophy is either exclusively deistic or exclusively pantheistic.223 As Van Til notes further, “God would not be truly independent of the world unless the world were dependent upon God. No one is absolutely independent unless he alone is independent. There cannot be two absolutely independent beings.”224 For the Greeks, the state was the highest order of being and man’s truest life. The state was a human-divine order in which the truth and oneness of being was most fully incarnated. Sallustius, who is cited together with Julian the Apostate by Gilbert Murray as the last protesting voice of the Greek tradition, declared that, “The rulers are analogous to Reason.”225 This was to a very extensive measure the first and last voice of Greek philosophy. Bowra, while seeing it in part as “a denial of the whole Greek conception of man,” cites another symbolic act in the decline of the Greek tradition. The ambitious Greek monarch of Egypt, Cleopatra, in her last hours, “clothed herself in her royal robes and put to her breast the asp, minister of the Sun-god Re, that she might be joined with him, her father, in death.”226 But, in spite of Bowra’s qualification, the Greek state had no other destiny, unless it denied itself. Cleopatra, on giving birth to Ptolemy Caesar by Julius Caesar, was in 46 B.C. hailed as the “Mother of Ra.” When her three-year-old son was raised to share her throne, he was called “Ptolemy Caesar, God, and Beloved Son of his Father and Mother.”227 The rulers were analogous to Reason and were the only effective gods Greek faith afforded. For the state and the rulers to act in terms of their inherent divinity was, in terms of Greek philosophical premises, an intellectual and political necessity. The only alternative to this divine unity under the ruler was the anarchy of Diogenes and the mystics, every man his own god and his own cosmos. Their only unity could be under a divine-human monarch’s order, and their only particularity could be in the chaos of anarchy. The two roads of Greek philosophy led equally to ruin.
Chapter V Rome: The City of Man 1. The Priority of the State The exaltation of Greece often goes hand in hand with a deprecation of Rome. Rex Warner, in The Greek Philosophers, for example, regards Roman thought as merely imitative of Greek philosophy and as a branch of it. Marrou has rightly observed that, “Modern historians have not always done justice to the greatness of the Roman achievement,”228 and C. N. Cochrane, in Christianity and Classical Culture, has done much to reestablish the importance of Roman thought as well as to indicate its failure. Certainly, humanists will find a better homeland in Rome than in Greece. Virgil clearly stated the Roman ideal: But thou, O Roman, learn with sovereign sway To rule the nations. Thy great art shall be To keep the world in lasting peace, to spare The humbled foe, and crush to earth the proud.229 Virgil’s words were written centuries after Rome was established, and before Rome fully became an empire, and yet they express clearly what was implicit in Rome from its origin.Greece began its history as families and clans which became city-states; its religion moved from the religious centrality of the family to the centrality of the city-state. Fustel de Coulanges, in The Ancient City, saw the same pattern in Roman origins, and certainly there is much to suggest it. There is, however, a strong body of evidence to affirm the contrary, the priority of the City of Rome to the Roman family and the creation of a strong family as an act of state. It is today a mark of intellectual respectability to treat ancient records as non-historical, but even an elementary respect for the Roman records points to rather startling conclusions. Two boys, abandoned twins, set out to found a city. Romulus ploughed a furrow as the first wall around the planned city, with the trench or furrow as the moat, and the overturned earth as the wall. By this act, he created his sacred city. His brother, Remus, expressed his contempt for the wall and moat by leaping across them into the City, whereupon Romulus killed him at once, declaring, “So perish all who ever cross my walls!” Rome thus began, first, with two boys abandoned by their family, and, second, with the murder of a brother as its first sacrifice. The priority of the City to the family is emphatically set forth. But this is not all. Third, the first citizens were not members of a common family or clan but neighboring shepherds, outlaws, and stateless people. The City made them Romans, not ties of family or of blood. Fourth, Roman family life and Rome’s first alliance began by an assault on the family, when the womenless men joined in the rape of the Sabine women, with an ensuing war against their fathers ending in peace and a very close alliance, when the Sabine women, who had been carried off by the Romans, interceded with their fathers to restore peace. A Sabine king, Titus Tatius, then shared the throne with Romulus. These stories, very much at odds with the origins of other peoples, embarrassing to many later Romans, and clearly hostile to the idea of the priority of the family, have the ring of truth. The family indeed was powerful in Rome, but it was the creature of the City; the City was not an outgrowth of the
family. Priority did not belong to the family or to race, although the later aristocracy tried to maintain such a thesis, but to the City, for Rome began as a city and then created the Roman people and the Roman family. Only the rigidity of evolutionary presuppositions has obscured this obvious fact from scholars. The family was the creature of the City, as was marriage, for the only legally recognized marriages in Rome were the marriages of citizens. The right to contract a legal union was — like the right to vote, eligibility for magistracy, and the right to serve in a legion — a right of citizens only. The same was true of the right to possess, acquire, and bequeath property, and originally most land was periodically re-allotted by the City. “The people” were of the City, and “the plebs” of the country.230 The function of Roman religion was pragmatic, to serve as social cement and to buttress the state.
2. Cicero and the Rule of Reason At a later date, Cicero expressed this quite frankly: So in the very beginning we must persuade our citizens that the gods are the lords and rulers of all things, and that what is done, is done by their will and authority; that they are likewise great benefactors of man, observing the character of every individual, what he does, of what wrong he is guilty, and with what intentions and with what piety he fulfils his religious duties; and that they take note of the pious and the impious. For surely minds which are imbued with such ideas will not fail to form true and useful opinions.231 This, of course, represented a self-conscious use of religion which, while in the Roman tradition, lacked the integrity of the earlier position. Grimal is correct, in speaking of Roman morality of the early period, that its “distinct aim” was “the subordination of the individual to the City.”232 This was true also of Roman religion. The meaning of the word “pietas,” descriptive of the religious man, is revealing. A man was “pious” if he recognized, admitted, and moved in terms of his subordination and obligation to god, man, family, and the state; he discharged his duty where duty was due because of sacred relationships.233 The framework for the religious and familial acts of piety was Rome itself, the central and most sacred community. Rome strictly controlled all rights of corporation, assembly, religious meetings, clubs, and street gatherings, and it brooked no possible rival to its centrality. One of the reasons for the later supremacy of the military bodies over Rome was the lack of any organized bodies within the state to provide a counter-balance to the two swollen bodies which became the rulers of the Empire: the army, and the abiding and growing civil service. The state alone could organize; short of conspiracy, the citizens could not. On this ground alone, the highly organized Christian Church was an offense and an affront to the state, and an illegal organization readily suspected of conspiracy. Pietas meant the observance of ritual and relationship “between beings anywhere in the universe; pietas is first and foremost a kind of justice on the immaterial plane, maintaining spiritual things in their due place.” A related verb is piare,which refers to “the act of wiping out a stain, an evil omen, a crime.” A man who violates the order of things, like a son striking his father, “is a monstrum, a prodigy contrary to the order of nature.”234
Closely related to this concept of piety was the idea of genius, “a divinity symbolizing the ‘spirit,’ the religious principle inherent in a being or a place, even in a ‘college.’”235 Basic to this belief was the concept of continuity, and the immanent divinity in all being. “The worship of the Emperor’s Genius was one of the many elements which led up to Caesar-worship.”236 From 195 B.C. on, the Dea Roma cult, begun in Smyrna, grew into “a new and potent abstraction, the idea of the Roman people and their city as a divine personality.” This idea was not foreign to Rome, in its developed concept of the god-king, “as may be seen in the old legend of the apotheosis of Romulus into the divine figure of Quirinius.”237 The discrediting of kingship in early Rome led to a dislike of the idea of a god-king but not to a rejection of its religious foundations. Power, wherever and however manifested, whether for good or for evil, was an indication of the presence of immanent divinity. Hence, diseases were raised, in times of plague, to the ranks of deity, temples built to them and sacrifices made, as Febris (fever), Mefitis, Cloacina, and Verminus (wormy, during a plague among cattle).238 The growth of the cult of Rome, and the rise of a cult of the god-king whenever a strong ruler appeared, were thus inevitable and logical outgrowths of the Roman faith. The conflict of Christianity with Rome was thus political from the Roman perspective, although religious from the Christian perspective. The Christians were never asked to worship Rome’s pagan gods; they were merely asked to recognize the religious primacy of the state. As Francis Legge observed, “The officials of the Roman Empire in time of persecution sought to force the Christians to sacrifice, not to any heathen gods, but to the Genius of the Emperor and the Fortune of the City of Rome; and at all times the Christians’ refusal was looked upon not as a religious but as a political offense.... Whatever rivalry the Christian Church had to face in its infancy, it had none to fear from the deities of Olympus.”239 The issue, then, was this: should the emperor’s law, state law, govern both the state and the church, or were both state and church, emperor and bishop alike, under God’s law? Who represented true and ultimate order, God or Rome, eternity or time? The Roman answer was Rome and time, and hence Christianity constituted a treasonable faith and a menace to political order. The Roman answer to the problem of man was political, not religious. This meant, first, that man’s basic problem was not sin but lack of political order. This Rome sought to supply, religiously and earnestly. Second, Rome answered the problem of the one and the many in favor of oneness, the unity of all things in terms of the state, Rome. Hence, over-organization, undue simplification, and centralization increasingly characterized Rome. Although he sees it as a yearning for their simple past, William Carroll Bark cites as one of the causes of Rome’s failure the fact that “they confused simplicity with strength, as if one could not exist without the other.”240 However real the differences of Rome from other ancient cultures, it still subscribed to the basic myth and dialectic ofchaos and order, and the republic was firmly committed to the primacy of order. The necessity of and the revitalizing powers inherent in chaos were recognized, and hence the festival, the Saturnalia, with its controlled, limited, and ostensibly revivifying chaos. When order was in crisis, and endangered, the amount of chaos permitted was increased. Thus, cults such as the Bacchanalia were permitted in Rome as a consequence of the devastating challenge to the Roman order by Hannibal. In the court case brought about by Aebutius, it was held that almost half the population was involved in the Bacchanalia, which required total defilement as a condition of entrance, the systematic violation of all moral laws as their law. “The holiest article of their faith was to think nothing a crime.” The cult was not only involved in sexual perversions,
but also, like all such cults then and now, aimed at political power and control and was involved in murder, falsifying evidence, and forging signatures and wills. The senatorial decree of 186 B.C. abolished the Bacchanalia from Italy except for minor local cults. Julius Caesar may have reintroduced it; it reappeared certainly in connection with other foreign cults of chaos in the days of the emperors.241 Although the Roman festivals were often expressions of the chaos faith, they were so thoroughly controlled by order, the Roman state, that chaos had to use foreign forms, rather than the historic Roman myths, when it gained its ascendancy. Hence the extensive presence of “oriental” cults in the empire.242 The Romans tended to identify chaos with the body and its appetites, and reason with order. The roots of Western asceticism are extensively bound up in this dialectic rather than biblical Christianity, which is hostile to asceticism. To submit to the pleasures of the flesh, however enticing, was to submit to chaos and to dethrone order. The older Romans were thus distrustful of sex. Of Marcus Cato, Plutarch wrote, Manilius, also, who, according to the public expectation, would have been next consul, he threw out of the senate, because, in the presence of his daughter, and in open day, he had kissed his wife. He said that, as for himself, his wife never came into his arms except when there was great thunder; so that it was for jest with him, that it was a pleasure for him, when Jupiter thundered.243 When Cato and other Romans like him kissed their wives without thunder, it was “for the purpose of detection, so that, if they had been drinking, the odour might betray them.” The women fought back at this by drinking “spiced wine” in which the smell of spices would be stronger than the smell of alcohol.244 While Cato may have been more rigorous than most, he was definitely in the Roman tradition, regarded as old-fashioned in his day but truly Roman. Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) was in the same tradition, a Roman conservative, that is, a champion of Reason against chaos. For him, the equation was a simple one: knowledge meant order, and error meant disorder.245 For Cicero, order meant law, and law meant reason. “True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions.” “Law is the highest reason, implanted in Nature.... This reason, when firmly fixed and fully developed in the human mind, is Law.... Law is intelligence.... the origin of Justice is to be found in Law, for Law is a natural force.” For Cicero, nature was not fallen but normative and hence the source of justice. The world of nature, the cosmos or order of being, includes both God or gods and men, and they share in a common reason. “Therefore, since there is nothing better than reason, and since it exists both in man and God, the first common possession of man and God is reason. But those who have reason in common must also have right reason in common. And since right reason is Law, we must believe that men have Law also in common with the gods.” This order, which is basic to both divine society and human society, makes them one world. “Hence we must now conceive of this whole universe as one commonwealth of which both gods and men are members.”246 This law or order is given and ultimate. “Law is not a product of human thought, nor is it any enactment of peoples, but something eternal which rules the whole universe by its wisdom in command and prohibition. Thus they have been accustomed to say that Law is the primal and ultimate mind of God.”247 Although men had been “accustomed to say” God, Cicero was basically committed to saying Law or Reason. In “Scipio’s Dream,” Cicero wrote, “Know, then, that you are a god, if a god is that which lives, feels, remembers, and
foresees, and which rules, governs the body over which it is set.... an immortal spirit moves the frail body.”248 If Cicero was a god, then why not Caesar? In the spring of 54 B.C., Cicero indeed wrote to Julius Caesar in Gaul, “You will see from this letter how convinced I am that you are a second self to me.”249 The gods gave an especially high place to the “saviours of state”: All men who have saved or benefited their native land, or have enhanced its power, are assigned an especial place in heaven where they may enjoy a life of eternal bliss. For the supreme god who rules the entire universe finds nothing, at least among earthly objects more pleasing than the societies and groups of men, united by law and right, which are called states. The rulers and saviors of states set forth from that place and to that place return.250 The true order, pleasing to whatever gods may be, is thus the state. This means that time, history, is the central and determinative arena of being, and the state is the locale of its meaning as it becomes incarnate. There is no eternal decree emanating from God to make eternity determinative of time. The gods and men are both subject to chance, and “it is not in the power even of God himself to know what event is going to happen accidentally and by chance.”251 Cicero was ready to accept divination as a religious exercise of state, as a necessity in keeping the populace religiously respectful of authority, but in practice he disbelieved it utterly. 252 When he wrote the Republic, Cicero favored maintaining the rites of augury and of auspices because of their historical part in Rome, “because of his belief in obedience to law and because, as a member of the aristocratic party, he thought augury and auspices the best means of controlling the excesses of democracy.”253 The area of determination and destiny was time and history, and, more specifically, the state. And, in answer to the question, “What is a state?,” Cicero made it clear that a true state is reason, and the law and order which flow from reason. Accordingly, he could say of his exile, in 58 B.C., during the Clodian upheaval, “I was not exiled from the state, which did not exist,” because it had forsaken reason.254 Cicero’s answer to the question, “What is freedom?,” was this, “The power to live as you will,” but the only man who truly “lives as he wills” is the “one who follows the things that are right.”255 Thus, if the state be ruled by reason, or by philosopher-rulers, then, however totalitarian its law, its citizens are for Cicero free men. The issue between the aristocrats and the People’s Party (led also by aristocrats like Caesar) was not liberty but power. For the aristocrats, at their best, as in Cicero, freedom was the rule of reason as represented in the old order. For the democrats, freedom was the triumph of force, power, of planned overturning or chaos. Cicero had been ready to grant extraordinary powers to Pompey, involving possible innovations, to preserve order.256 His readiness briefly to see some good in Julius Caesar was grounded in the hope that Caesar would champion rational order. Dickinson maintained that Caesar represented instrumentalism, and Cicero constitutionalism.257 The distinction is a thoughtful and a valid one if we avoid reading the modern connotations into instrumentalism and especially constitutionalism. Constitutionalism for Cicero meant reason, and instrumentalism for Caesar meant the creative force of sheer power. Power could crush, forgive, and regenerate. Power, not reason, was the life-blood of the state for Caesar, who saw the conservative senators as unrealistic fools.
Both parties were moving towards a showdown, and towards an incarnation of their faith. Cicero earnestly saw his standard of reason as the hope, and himself as representative of reason, and looked back fondly to the time when he had been hailed “Saviour of the country.”258 Later, he was able to hail Octavian hopefully as “this Heaven-sent young man.”259 Cicero spoke of knowledge as more exalted than God, and hence he could call the learned “Plato, the god of philosophers.”260 Everything in his thinking called for an incarnation of reason as head of state, but the times created instead an incarnation of power as head of state. And in this Cicero had a hand, as did others before him, as they stripped religion from reason and left no moral obstacle to the democratic demand for chaos. The controlled use of chaos in festivals Cicero recognized as a valid part of Roman life. Interestingly, he defended Gnaeus Plancius before a jury in 54 B.C., declaring, You say that he raped a ballet-girl; we hear that this crime was once committed at Atina by a band of youths who took advantage of an old privilege allowed at the scenic games, especially in country towns. What a tribute to the propriety of my client’s youthful days. He is reproached with an act which he was permitted by privilege to commit, and yet even that reproach is found to be baseless.261 But now the rape of the Roman Republic was in process, “violence becoming a means to omnipotence.”262 Cicero, as we have seen, held that reason, law, “is a natural force,” a very real power, and the true means to omnipotence and true order should be reason. But, even as the body could be ruled by sensuality and its chaos rather than by reason, so could the body politic. The wise man, and Cicero believed himself to be wise, controlled his sensuality by reason, governing the power of chaos by the power of divine intellect. He regarded sensual indulgences not as sins but as surrenders to chaos, as abandonments of the true order of reason. Sex was thus to be distrusted and used with care, under the control of reason. Chaos, vice, when set in motion, could not be stopped. “He therefore who looks for a ‘limit’ to vice is doing much the same as if he were to think that a man who has flung himself headlong from Leucas can stop his fall when he will.”263 And thus, in spite of all his persistence in hoping and in trying to reestablish the republic, he feared Rome was done. After the murder of Caesar in 44 B.C., when a friend, more respectful of Caesar than Cicero, said “there is no way out of the mess,” Cicero was inclined to agree. Six or seven weeks later, he observed, “I was a fool, I now see, to be consoled by the Ides of March. The fact is we showed the courage of men, the prudence of children.”264 He persisted in trying and was in the end beheaded, one of his executioners being a man whom Cicero had defended in court against the charge of murdering his own father.265 Cicero, as a champion of the order of reason, feared sex religiously, not as a sin but as a revolt against reason whose overindulgence meant overturning order. The atheistic philosopher-poet, Lucretius, shared the same horror of sex. Sexual passion was a chaotic and destroying power, from his perspective: Yet fly such phantoms, from the food of love Abstain, libidinous; to worthier themes Turn, turn thy spirit; let the race at large
Thy liberal heart divide, nor lavish, gross, Over one fond object thy exhausted strength, Gend’ring long cares, and certain grief at last. For love’s deep ulcer fed, grows deeper still, Rank, and more pois’nous; and each coming day Augments the madness.266 The fearful and chaotic power of sex spelled for Lucretius both devastation and slavery. Then, too, his form consumes, the toils of love Waste all his vigour, and his days roll on In vilest bondage.267 He counselled, as one means of escape, the studied contemplation of all the woman’s physical defects, and the frailties of flesh lest her “humid kisses” mislead him. Every hour, man should remember the defects of the woman, lest he be “in the silly net led captive” and become as shameless as the dogs which copulate in the streets.268 Cicero, too, feared sensuality and counselled his son against it, advising training in toil and endurance “of both mind and body, so as to be strong for active duty in military and civil service.”269 The service of the state was thus paramount for Cicero. Sensuality destroyed reason and hence virtue. “For sensual pleasure, a most seductive mistress, turns the hearts of the greater part of humanity away from virtue; and when the fiery trial of affliction draws near, most people are terrified beyond measure.” 270 Not even in retirement, said Cicero, “did I surrender myself to a life of sensual pleasure unbecoming to a philosopher.”271 Like Sophocles, he felt that a great advantage of old age was deliverance from sex. “We come now to the third ground for abusing old age, and that is, that it is devoid of sensual pleasures. O glorious boon of age, if it does indeed free us from youth’s most vicious fault!”272
3. Julius Caesar Cicero avoided sensuality; Julius Caesar courted it religiously. He was, according to Suetonius, “extravagant” in his sexual intrigues with women, and his soldiers, in his Gallic triumph, sang of his homosexual exploits with King Nicomedes. Brutus may have been Caesar’s son, for his mother, Servilia, and possibly his sister, Tertia, had been Caesar’s mistresses. His sexual interest was in men and women of power, including queens. Curio the elder called him, in a speech, “every woman’s man, and every man’s woman.”273 Cicero’s conceptions of power were oriented to the rule of reason, a thorough dictatorship but a coldly rational one. Caesar’s idea of power was bluntly sexual. Suetonious reported: “Transported with joy at this success, he could not keep from boasting a few days later before a crowded house, that having gained his heart’s desire to the grief and lamentation of his opponents, he would therefore from that time mount on their heads,” a term used in a double sense, one being fellatio.274 Cicero’s dreams were the dreams of reason and of order. Caesar’s dreams, seen as good omens, were the dreams of chaos, and his religious associations were in terms of this. Early in his career, in Spain, he dreamed of incest with his mother, and the soothsayers “interpreted the dream to mean that he was destined to have sovereignty over all the world, his mother whom he saw under him signifying none other than
the earth, which is counted the mother of all things.”275 Before crossing the Rubicon some years later, we are told that he had a similar dream of incest with his mother.276 And, as has been noted, Caesar may have restored the Bacchanalia to Rome. Certainly his triumph marked a newly religious era in Rome, a hope in the revitalization of chaos, the very “over-indulgence” feared by Lucretius and Cicero now seen as the new source of social vitality and power. Lucretius and Cicero represented the decline of the religion of order and of reason; Julius Caesar represented to the people of Rome political renewal and religious revival. Lucretius, who died a suicide, saw the world as declining and dying: “And thus, even now, the age of the world is debilitated, and the earth, which produced all races of creatures, and gave forth, at birth, vast forms of wild animals, now being exhausted, scarcely rears a small and degenerate offspring.”277 Lucretius also gave a vivid picture of the “crudity” of Roman religion in his day, of the rash of all kinds of superstitious cults. There is no reason to doubt his testimony. Romans were agreed that it was the end of an era, and new vitality was needed. Caesar met this religious hunger with his own participation in the faith in chaos, in revolution as the means to social regeneration. There is extensive evidence of this. Because modern historians are secular in their approach, they strip history of its religious framework. But Julius Caesar moved always in a religious context and appeared as its fulfilment. As Grimal has pointed out, “The Roman games were essentially religious functions. They represented a ritual that was necessary for maintenance of the necessary good relations between the City and its gods.” In origin, they were in part Etruscan. The chaos faith was apparent in the games. At the Games of Flora, it was the custom for the courtesans of the City to display themselves naked in lascivious dances. The meaning of this rite is clear; its purpose was to restore full vigour to the forces of fertility in the springtime, and no one would have dared to suppress this indecent spectacle, for fear of making the year barren.278 This was in the days of the republic, when the games were a part of the social order and represented controlled chaos, chaos under the jurisdiction of reason. With Caesar, chaos became the primary source of social energy, and hence the games gained a new prominence and a religious and social centrality. Mannix states, “Julius Caesar might be called the father of the games because under him they ceased to be an occasional exhibition of fairly modest proportions and became a national institution.”279
4. Chaos Cults The mythology of chaos cults involved extensive bestiality, and it became an important aspect now of the revived cult. Women, representing the human world of reason and order, were, in exhibitions under the stands or in the arena, subjected to rape by animals representing chaos and its fertility — by lions, leopards, wild boars, zebras, cheetahs, chimpanzees, bulls, and giraffes. Sometimes small boys were assaulted by men dressed as satyrs. 280 It is customary for scholars to seek a non-religious reason for all this in sadism, and sadism it certainly was, but it was not the cause but rather a result of a religious faith. The older Romans had been more inclined to humane actions than many another nation of antiquity. Now they had swung from asceticism to
sadism for religious reasons. Their asceticism represented a religious dislike for the disturbing, chaotic effect of sex and a reverence for reason as the principle of order. Their sadism represented a religious asceticism against reason and order, an assault against all that stood for it, in the name of social regeneration, the renewing power of chaos. In Apullius’ Golden Ass we have, according to Grant, “a story of sin and redemption, symbolizing the greater redemption of the world to come.”281 But the redemption is in terms of the chaos cult. Apullius described the passion of a rich noblewoman for an ass, and he also reported a similar public sexual act in the amphitheatre, preceded by the Greek Pyrrhic dance and an allegorical religious performance concerning the gods. Bestiality as a religious act has a long religious history and a ritual role, as in ancient Egypt, where men mated with the sacred crocodile. C. S. Sonnini and Burton reported the continuing existence of such acts in nineteenth century Egypt, where, as “the sovereignest charm for rising to rank and riches,” men drove off the male, leaving the female crocodile turned on her back and helpless, “to supplant him in this frightful intercourse.”282 The prohibitions of the Mosaic law against sexual relations with animals were religious prohibitions, directed in terms of an environment in which these things, both in Egypt and especially in Canaan, were religious acts. And, significantly, Cicero, in his laws on religion, which are exclusively concerned with ritual and the protection of the sanctuaries from profanation and theft, includes this law: “The pontiffs shall inflict capital punishment on those guilty of incest.” As for the religious law concerning games, Cicero called for “moderation.”283 Chaos as revitalization has a long and continuing history in Western civilization, and, with the French Revolution, it gained a new vitality as revolution and sexual chaos became the means to social regeneration. In the world of art, the creative artist came to be identified as of necessity with a social and sexual anarchist, and in popular thinking, order and morality came to mean monotony and devitalizing, enervating palls, whereas lawlessness meant liberty and power. The middle-aged “fling” and sexual license came into being as a grasping after renewal, and Negress prostitutes came to be used as “a change of luck” device, an especial sin against order as a means of a recharging of luck and power. Basic to all these manifestations, from ancient Egypt through Caesar to modern man, is one common hope: destroy order to create order afresh, or, even more bluntly, destroy order to create order.
5. Cicero and Revolution Cicero saw what was coming: Wherefore if it is the duty of a good consul, when he sees everything on which the state depends being shaken and uprooted, to come to the public, to plead for the loyal support of the citizens, and to set the public welfare before his own; it is also the duty of good and courageous citizens, such as you have shown yourselves to be at every crisis in our history, to block all the approaches of revolution....284 “To block all the approaches of revolution,” this was his hope. This he attempted to do with reason and integrity, as an honest soldier and consul, as a dedicated proconsul of Cilicia, where he placed the welfare of Rome and the province above enriching himself, and as a defender of the republic unto death. There were not many like him. Marcus Junius Brutus, another republican
leader, respected in his day for integrity, still saw nothing unusual in lending the city of Salamis a large sum of money at forty-eight percent a year interest and then pressuring the provincial governor to use troops to collect the debt.285 Most “republicans” were now of this kind of “integrity.” Cicero’s education was directed to the solution of this national crisis. He despised ivory-tower scholarship and held “that our countrymen have shown more wisdom everywhere than the Greeks, either in making discoveries for themselves, or else in improving upon what they have received fromGreece,” because the Roman criterion was practical and pragmatic, not theoretical.286 He recognized the reality of Rome’s decay: “Men reckon that our courts of law have no strictness left, no conscience — nay, by now, no existence worth the name. The result is that we are contemned and despised by the people of Rome. We have been groaning, and that for many years, under a heavy load of infamy.”287 More than mere oratory was involved in his intense concern over bringing Verres to justice, in convicting crime “engendered by greed, nourished by lust, and finally completed by cruelty.”288 The republic was at stake. And Cicero was always concerned with present reality: his republic was not, like Plato’s, an ideal concept, but a present political battle. And the reality was not good. On January 20, 60 B.C., he wrote to Atticus from Rome, “There is not a ghost of a statesman in sight. The man who could be one, my friend Pompey..., sits silently contemplating the triumphal cloak awarded him. Crassus never utters a word that could make him unpopular.” In June of the same year, he referred to Rome as “Romulus’ dunghill.”289 But none of this compared to the flagrant overturning of morality which was to come with the revolutionists. His Philippics, especially the second, cite the debauched nature of Mark Antony. His answer, as De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum made clear, was morality, the morality of reason. Moral goodness, as he told his son, in De Officiis, “depends wholly upon the thought and attention given to it by the mind.” Moreover, “neither ought we to do anything for which we cannot assign a reasonable motive; for in these words we have practically a definition of duty.”290 How many even of the aristocracy could follow so refined a conception of morality? Of course, for the common people, as Grant has pointed out, Cicero devised in his Laws a legal structure “for the employment of religion to control the people.”291 And what social vitality was there in a system which commended itself only to a few philosophers? “All the appetites must be controlled,” said Cicero, but what agency of control was there, when reason carried little authority with most?292
6. Cicero and the State Cicero’s state was as all-absorbing and total as Caesar’s; the difference rested in the source of power. For Cicero, it was reason, and for Caesar, the army and raw power. Cicero declared, “This, then, ought to be the chief end of all men, to make the interest of each individual and of the whole body politic identical.”293 What freedom then remained to man? Cicero’s rational state was a total and all-absorbing One, and the “free” man, a Stoic of sorts, is the Many, whose freedom is entirely an inner thing, restricted to rational acceptance of the Ciceronian state as the true order of being. Cicero saw the state’s existence as conditional upon rational law, but the
state, being the one and all powerful, could function without Cicero’s kind of law to exile and execute Cicero. All Cicero could say about this was that death was freedom for the mind.294 Man was outwardly at the mercy of the state, and, according to De Fato, of chance. Thus, as against necessity or fate, Cicero chose a world of chance as his way of asserting man’s free will. He sacrificed the idea of the gods, moreover, to make man free. But Cicero’s “free” man was now the slave of the state, of circumstance, heredity, and all things else. Man, therefore, had been surrendered, as well as the gods, because Cicero’s one basic reality was the state. Cochrane was right in commenting that, “for Cicero no less than for Virgil, salvation is not individual, but marks the achievement of purposes which are to be realized only in the corporate life.”295 This corporate life, the Roman state, was everything for Cicero. However much he talked about reason in nature, for him the reality could truly exist only in the state. In classical thought, Greek and Roman, an abstract, non-temporal universal, the idea, logos, or reason of being, inevitably became temporal and concrete in a dictator or ruler because time was central and determinative, not eternity. Men posited the ideal in eternity to give themselves room for growth, to make room for process and for the reality of history and development, but, because time was central and not eternity, the idea inevitably gravitated to the center of the stage and became historical in a ruler. Everything in Cicero’s thought called for an incarnate reason to save the Roman state. He sought, by advocating the composite state in his Republic, to save Rome, but Rome had been a composite state and was now collapsing. As Cicero admitted to his son, “our republic we have lost forever.”296 He himself, together with the aristocracy before him, had reduced their Roman order to their fiat will by denying the validity of religion except as a social instrument to keep the people in subjection.297 Cicero saw the revolutionists as barbarians, but in truth his party was the truer barbarian element. “A society that gives everything for material wealth, that shrinks from nothing in the pursuit of power, is barbarous, however great its mastery of nature.”298 Aristocratic, republican Rome had become barbarian in this sense, despite Cicero, and moved only in terms of power. It was inevitable that the army should be used as the surest road to power, and Caesar used it. And Cicero himself was not untainted and was charged by Brutus with opportunism,299 a charge some historians also make. He has also been accused of simply having tried to make the world safe for property. At any rate, Caesar’s coming to power had all the manifestations of a religious revival.
7. Caesar and the New State The religious excitement was marked. Cicero, in all his writings, made no mention of what Dickinson called “this orgy of hysteria,” which “reached its pitch when two men were offered up for human sacrifice on the Campus Martius under the presidency of the pontiffs and the High Priest of Mars.”300 Caesar’s professed policy of clementia was a religious one. Clemency, mercy, forgiveness, and judgment are with modern man purely personal attitudes, but in origin and truest meaning they are religious concepts and juridical in framework. The profession of clementia was by Caesar a religious and regal profession, an expression of royal status. According to Stauffer, “He wanted power in order to practice goodness, in order to heal the world by clementia. Julius Caesar believed in a policy of clemency.”301 His clemency was not
always consistently applied, but it was in the main his policy and became the program of the People’s Party.302 Caesar thus was fulfilling a religious and a divine function. And the way had been prepared for a divine ruler. Philosophers of note had already received their apotheosis, Plato from Cicero, and Epicurus from Lucretius, and Cicero in two speeches referred to P. Lentulus Spinther, the consul responsible for Cicero’s return from exile in 57 B.C., as the “god of his fortunes.” “The way was thus prepared and Julius Caesar was ready to take advantage of it.” Statues declared him to be a “demi-god,” and “god invincible,” and he was given his own flamen or priest for his worship.303 Caesar was thus a deified man, to whom divine honors were paid. His face appeared on coins where previously the effigies of gods had been figured.304 Caesar avowed himself to be “the unconquered god,” and coins proclaimed him the “Pater Patriae,” whose divine Clementia was itself the object of worship.305 The claim of divinity was not the problem or stumbling block for Rome; it was a new step, but it had ancient Roman roots. The problem was the move towards kingship, which, because of the deep-rooted antipathy towards kings, excited opposition which divine honors did not.306 But Roman clementia was mercy and forgiveness without grace; it altered nothing and, for all Caesar’s hopes, regenerated neither man nor empire. It was a forgiveness and mercy which in effect tolerated and subsidized sin.307 And Caesar began to take his divine role very seriously. Warned of conspiracies, and against being too “open-hearted,” he responded by dismissing his whole bodyguard. Ferrero has described this period vividly: Meanwhile, he made promises of all sorts, possible and impossible, to every one who came near him, and no longer even attempted to stop the wholesale pillage of public money which his friends were conducting under his very eyes. The Dictatorship was degenerating into a senile and purposeless opportunism that recalled the feeblest expedients of the old republican government.308 The expectations and emotions of the people were messianic and revolutionary. The age of gold was to return, and all things were to be made new. All this while Italy was as distracted as ever with the problem of debt, and the middle class was still feeling the pinch of the prevailing crisis, while among the poor population of Italy and Rome there was a strange recrudescence of vague revolutionary propaganda which was becoming daily more alarming to the property-owning classes. The wildest dreams were bandied about in the streets of Rome and over the Italian country side. Caesar, with his colonies and his Parthian War, would bring back the age of gold; the tyranny of the rich and powerful was drawing to its close, and a newer and better government was at hand. The memories of the great popular revolution became so lively in men’s minds that a certain Erophilos, a native of Magna Greecia, a veterinary surgeon by profession and no doubt more or less weak in the head, passed himself off as the grandson of Marius and immediately became the hero of the hour. Associations of workmen, colonies of veterans and even municipalities chose him as their patron, and he actually formed a sort of court around him and dared to treat Caesar and the
aristocracy on terms of equality. Afraid to embroil himself with the people, Caesar did not dare to remove him; and the utmost he would do was to turn him out of the metropolis.309 In popular fancy, in the fantastic new games and ritual battles, in the new scope given to sexuality, in economic and political expectations, the religion of chaos and of revolution was running with free course. The assassination of Julius Caesar did not stem the fervor of this religious movement but rather demonstrated how unrealistic the conspirators were. As Stauffer has observed, The Roman people glorified the dead Caesar in a unique passion liturgy, which echoes the ancient eastern lament for the death of the great gods of blessing, and many of whose motifs show an astonishing connexion with the Good Friday liturgy of the Roman mass. “Those whom I save have slain me,” they sang in the name of the murdered man. And Antony declared before the temple of Venus, where the son of the goddess lay in state: “Truly the man cannot be of this world whose only work was to save where anyone needed to be saved.”310 The now divinized Caesar had given a new direction to Roman history. Augustus Caesar was to be more discreet in his ways, more bent on maintaining the forms of the republic to placate the aristocrats, and more business-like in government, but his reign was heralded as a messianic one on his coins. The symbolic meaning is clear: a new day is dawning for the world. The divine saviour-king, born in the historical hour ordained by the stars, has come to power on land and sea, and inaugurates the cosmic era of salvation. Salvation is to be found in none other save Augustus, and there is no other name given to men in which they can be saved. This is the climax of the Advent proclamation of the Roman empire.311
8. The New Perversity The religion of chaos had, as we have noted, a new morality. Augustus was, although himself flagrantly adulterous, anxious to revive, by law and punishment, traditional Roman moral standards. The rising immorality was notoriously present in his own family. All his efforts were futile. The old Roman morality had been based on the asceticism of reason, and this foundation was now gone. The sensuality of chaos was the new rationale, and essential to chaos is perversity. Roman sexuality thus went from asceticism to passionate perversity. Catullus (84?-54 B.C.) had already charted the essential nature of this new temper in the previous generation. Catullus had to love what he despised, and to despise whatever he loved. Perversity and degeneracy drew him like honey. I hate and love. And if you ask me why, I have no answer, but I discern,
can feel, my senses rooted in eternal torture.312 This temper was now basic to love. He was wildly in love with a woman, probably a Lesbian, a murderess of her husband, and faithless even to her lovers. Yet he loved her “more than himself and all things he ever owned or treasured,” and he grieved that Lesbia’s “body’s given up in alley-ways, on highroads.”313 A homosexual,314 he wrote with savage hate of Gellius, to whom he was drawn, accusing him of incest with his mother, sister, and aunt, and “gymnastic fornication” with himself.315 It was with full knowledge of these things that Catullus became involved with Gellius in “this evil, disastrous love that conquered me.” Catullus deluded himself that Gellius would, because of their “love,” “check your crimes,” only to find himself linked to further sins. Catullus’ accusation against Gellius is equally valid of Catullus: “you enjoy, better than all things on earth, love that is stripped of love and is merely, crime.”316 This was the essence of chaos, and the essence of Catullus’ poetic inspiration. In the second century A.D., Juvenal reported bitterly, “If you want to be anybody nowadays, you must dare some crime that merits narrow Gyara (a prison island) or a gaol; honesty is praised and starved. It is to their crimes that men owe their pleasure grounds and high commands, their fine tables and old silver goblets with goats standing out in relief.”317 Men actually went through wedding ceremonies with men.318 The old morality of Cicero was echoed by Seneca, who wrote of honesty and courage, and became Nero’s servile and immoral attendant, declaring of Nero, “He restores to the world the Golden Age.”319 For Seneca, man, divine in that he is in part mind and thus shares in divine mind,320 was apparently under no obligation to be a man in simple matters of moral integrity. The chaos cult was exemplified in Nero’s life, and although the legions finally revolted, the mob in the main remained faithful to Nero and believed in fact that he was not dead, or, if dead, would return to lead them and to destroy his enemies, according to Suetonius. There was a systematic manner to Nero’s debauchery: rape, incest, perversion, the desire to overturn every moral law characterized his activity. Significantly, Nero, according to Suetonius, “utterly despised all cults, with the sole exception of that of the Syrian goddess,” the Atargatis cult, a fertility cult of chaos, only to surrender it for another like faith. 321 The Liber Pater effigy (identified with Bacchus and Dionysus, chaos cults), 322 appeared most frequently on his coins, and his associates were apparently close to various chaos cults, Otho following Isis. When Nero died, those who continued in the tradition of Cicero and Brutus hoped to revive the Roman republic. Significantly, they attempted this, not in the name of reason, but in the name of the chaos cult. The Phrygian liberty cap of Liber Pater was adopted as the emblem of their hopes, revolutionary cries raised in the streets, and the senate was persuaded briefly to proclaim the return of the republic.323 Their only rationale for power was anti-republican. Nero’s faith was closer to the hearts of the people. Arthur Weigall’s Nero (1930) was right in one respect: Nero was popular with the mobs of Rome. As the parade of emperors began, with their frequent and usual debaucheries, and at times madness, the army raised up new emperors on their shields and then also destroyed them. It is easy to see all this simply as a long nightmare which only the consistent work of the Roman civil service overcame in order to preserve the empire. The empire did have its problems, and its long economic crisis was its central problem; its eventual collapse was a combination of economic decline and a breakdown of meaning. But, in the process, the instability of the emperial office was not the distressing fact to the peoples that it is to the modern mind. Their faith, after all, was
in the regenerating power of chaos, in revolution. To see ordinary soldiers and foreigners rise up through the ranks to command the empire, preside at the games, possess women at will, shower gold on favorites, and ride in triumph, was exciting and heartening to many. It was the world they demanded, where, although men could fall suddenly, they could also rise suddenly. The Romans had become gamblers, and the empire was itself a gamble. They were not Ciceronian moralists. The Atargatis cult from Syria had brought with it an ancient partner of fertility cults, the usurers, who had been in disrepute in republican Rome but were used in the empire of the republic to subjugate peoples.324 The Syrian money-lenders now spread throughout the empire.325 The chaos of debt was added to the moral chaos. Only one element of order of major significance remained in the empire, the Christians. But their adherence was not to Roman order or peace but to God’s order and peace. The Pauline epistles warned against revolutionary activity and hopes: the Christian confidence was neither in chaos nor in Roman order but in God’s regenerating power in and through Jesus Christ.
9. Marcus Aurelius There were attempts, of course, to restore ascendancy to reason in the reason-chaos dialectic. Most notable of these efforts was the reign of the philosopher-king, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (originally Marcus Annius Verus), A.D. 121-180. The republic was dead and gone; the empire could be ruled by the reason of Stoicism. The messianic hope of the Caesars could be realized by reason. To his wife, Faustina, he wrote in 175: “For there is nothing that can commend an emperor to the world more than clemency. It was clemency that made Caesar into a God, that deified Augustus, that honoured your father with the distinctive title of Pius.”326 Marcus Aurelius held to the old asceticism of reason, and, in his Meditations, was grateful “that I kept unstained the flower of my youth; and that I did not make trial of my manhood before the due time, but even postponed it.”327 He had an ascetic dislike of the body and its care. “As your bath appears to your senses — soap, sweat, dirt, greasy water, all disgusting — so is every piece of life and every object.”328 “The key-note of Stoicism was Life according to Nature, and Marcus was converted to the pursuit of this possibility by Sextus the Boeotian. By ‘Nature’ was meant the controlling Reason of the Universe.”329 For the emperor, God and man were aspects of one universe, “For there is both one Universe, made up of all things, and one God immanent in all things, and one Substance, and one Law, one Reason common to all intelligent creatures, and one Truth, if indeed there is also one perfecting of living creatures that have the same origin and share the same reason.” The “gods” and men are “fellow-citizens” of the universe.330 Deity is thus immanent in all men, and all men participate in divine reason.331 Men’s minds come from the one mind of the universe, their bodies from the earth. Hence, as Farquharson noted, “Mind transcends particularity, bridging the gulf which in appearance divides men (with their individual persons, wills, ends, senses) from one another by means of the reason which they have in common.”332 Mind is thus the One, and divine, and bodies and things material are the many, and earthy. The preeminence of the One is thus very apparent. It represents the true commonwealth of man. The philosopher-king was for Marcus Aurelius the binding quality whereby the oneness
of being was brought together in terms of reason. “The sentence of Plato was ever on his lips: Well was it for states, if either philosophers were rulers or rulers philosophers.”333 The world of the senses had a monotonous similarity; particularity had little meaning for him. His view of the games was not one of moral horror but of ascetic boredom and disdain: As the shows in the amphitheatre and such places grate upon thee as being an everlasting repetition of the same sight, and the similarity makes the spectacle pall, such must be the effect of the whole of life. For everything above and below is ever the same and the result of the same things. How long then?334 He was not the cold rationalist Cicero had been. Both Marcus Aurelius and Fronto believed in dream-cures.335 But he prized “the ruling Reason”; all else in him was “mere flesh and a little breath.”336 The asceticism of reason was more developed than in Cicero. Reason, neither in man nor in the universal mind of nature, is omnipotent, and it is wholly good and free of evil: The Universal Substance is docile and ductile; and the Reason that controls it has no motive in itself to do wrong. For it hath no wrongness and doeth no wrong, nor is anything harmed by it. But all things come into being and fulfil their purpose as it directs.337 It is curious that scholars have seen, as did some churchmen, a semi-Christian in Marcus Aurelius, when Christianity holds to the fallen, covenant-breaking nature of the total man. Man, said Marcus Aurelius, is body and soul: “To the body indeed all things are indifferent, for it cannot concern itself with them. But to the mind only those things are indifferent which are not its own activities; and all those things that are its own activities are in its own power.”338 What, then, is the power of this good, free, and sovereign mind? It faces an alien world, and, to all events, it must say, “This has come from God, and this is due to the conjunction of fate and the contexture of the world’s web and some such coincidence and chance.”339 History, moreover, is cyclical; “change is the universal experience,” “a perpetual transformation, and in some sort, decay,” personal and universal.340 The physical world must decay and change,341 but all “The parts of the Whole — all that Nature has comprised in the Universe — must inevitably perish, taking ‘perish’ to mean ‘be changed.’”342 If the gods are not concerned about the universe, “an impious belief,” still, “if it be so, I say, ... it is still in my power to take counsel about myself, and it is for me to consider my own interest.”343 Marcus Aurelius knew his function: “Revere the Gods, save mankind. Life is short. This only is the harvest of earthly existence, a righteous disposition and social acts.” The social goal, the One, Rome, was as paramount for Marcus Aurelius as for his early Roman forebears. The alternative as he saw it was either oneness or anarchy: “But art thou discontented with thy share in the whole? Recall the alternative: Either Providence or Atoms! and the abundant proofs there are that the Universe is as it were a state.”344 The alternative was either a universal state, a whole which absorbed all and moved through a repetitious cycle of growth and decay, or universal anarchy and particularity. It was for him a choice between law and no law. In this picture, the individual was nothing in the whole. “Thou has subsisted as part of the Whole. Thou vanish into that which begat thee, or rather thou shalt be taken again into its Seminal Reason by a process of change.” Therefore, “Cease not to think of the Universe as one living Being, possessed of a single Substance and a single Soul; and Now all
things trace back to its single sentience; and how it does all things by a single impulse.” 345 There is “scarcely anything stable” in being, “for all substance is as a river in ceaseless flow.” This is small comfort, but the choice is either anarchy or this, “a unity and a plan and a Providence.”346 There was a universe, and a void or chaos surrounding this area of order, and the power of mind or reason is in its ability to “trace” the plan of all this and comprehend “the cyclical Regeneration of all things.”347 Mind or reason therefore understood the dialectic of chaos and order and had the power of preferring order. Marcus Aurelius has been described as “a good but very worried man.”348 The brutally empty nature of his Stoic faith has been tellingly summarized by Cochrane in his comparison of the Meditations with Augustine’s Confessions: “the work of Augustine was addressed to God, that of Aurelius was addressed to himself.”349 In his dying words to his family, his son Commodus, and his friends, he urged that his son be given good advice in terms of the philosophy he had laid down, for “it is difficult to check and put a limit on our desires when Power is their minister.”350
10. Commodus Commodus (161-192) had already been regarded as a philosopher, together with his father, and Athenagorus the Athenian, a Christian philosopher, had addressed A Plea for the Christians, “To the Emperors Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and Lucius Aurelius Commodus, conquerors of Armenia and Sarmatia, and more than all, philosophers.”351 Commodus, who came to power in 180, was philosopher enough to see no hope in his father’s philosophy. His gilt-bronze bust in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London shows him wearing the Phrygian liberty cap of chaos, “the cosmic cap with the seven stars.” This star-spangled cap designated the Shepherd of the Stars; it was common also to Mithras-worship, which Commodus also favored. On Commodus it meant clearly world domination.352 Commodus appeared in a procession of the Isis cult as an image bearer.353 Commodus exemplified the regenerating power of chaos in his life; he maintained a double harem of three hundred boys and three hundred women and took a commanding part in the games. He assumed the name of the “blessed Commodus,” and Eastern cities, probably taking their cue from Rome, expressed their delight with a coin carrying the inscription, “Under the reign of Commodus the world experiences an age of blessing.” Later, he portrayed himself as “Hercules redivivus, the strong man sent from heaven and armed with superhuman powers to set the poor world free from the powers of destruction.”354 Finally, his apparently Christian favorite wife, Marcia, arranged for his assassination. The horror for Commodus felt by Gibbon and other historians cannot altogether conceal the fact of his popularity. It was necessary, in order to prevent disorders, to state that Commodus had died of an apoplexy and that the senator, Pertinax, “had already succeeded to the throne.”355 The senate reviled the dead Commodus, and Pertinax sought to institute ancient ideas of reform. The son of a freed slave who had become wealthy, Pertinax had bought his way to the throne, and now he sought to reform it and to avoid a continuous bribery. He issued coins, declaring himself to be emperor “Through the Providence of the gods.” The army assassinated him in the same year and sold the throne to General Didius Julianus, whose coins realistically proclaimed the source of chaos and revolution: “Through unanimous resolution of the army (chosen emperor).”356 Commodus had been assassinated on the first day of 193; by June 1, 193, Pertinax and his successor Didius Julianus had both been killed by the army. When Septimius Severus, of Punic
ancestry and speaking Greek and Latin with a Punic accent, became emperor later in the same year, he declared himself an Antonine by adoption and claimed Commodus as his brother.357 Whatever the senate felt and modern historians believe concerning Commodus, he was clearly a popular figure. Septimius Severus had power, which was sufficient for legitimacy, and senate approval as well. His “relationship” to the popular Commodus was needed to establish him with the people. The triumph of the religion of chaos in Rome under Julius Caesar had served to unite Rome more firmly with the empire and to pave the way for the empire to triumph over Rome itself. Septimius Severus had represented such a triumph over the feeble tradition of the senate, and many an emperor rose to power because of his relationship to the cult of chaos. It is not enough to say that the army began to name the emperors, because the army did not always or by any means limit itself to naming military men. Religious enthusiasm was a major aspect, as in the fervor generated in the army when it saw the fourteen-year-old Elagabalus, “looking like Bacchus,” preside as pontiff of Ela-Gabal at Emesa, and was then easily won over to proclaiming him emperor against Macrinus.358 The quick disillusionment with Elagabalus does not alter the original religious (and then monetary) loyalty to him.
11. Last Hopes in Chaos The messianic attempts to save Rome continued. Gallienus (253-268, sole emperor after the capture of his father Valerian, 260-268), issued a coin of most ambitious design, which included a portrayal of himself with the wreath of Ceres, yet wearing a beard: This can only mean that he looked upon himself as the universal god in human form. Even the conflict between the male and the female principle, which separated the gods of Olympus, has been vanquished. All that god and the worship of god meant in heaven and on earth was concentrated in him. The reverse (side).... The ancient conflict between West and East has been overcome, and all strife on earth is over. That is the meaning of the high-flown inscription, UBIQUE PAX, “Peace on Earth.” This coin, then, proclaims a twofold gospel to the nations, blessing of the earth and world peace. It is the culmination of the imperial philosophy which lies behind this gospel. In the emperor the conflict between heaven and earth, between West and East, between male and female, between power and blessing, has been overcome. In the emperor the fulness of the godhead dwells bodily, and gives life and peace to the universe in the year of salvation.359 The import is very plain. Not only is time and history the determinative force in the universe, but all meaning can be and is decisively incarnate in the Roman state and its emperor. There is no other way of salvation and no other area of determination. Here the true One is fully present, and this is the true area of its manifestation. Meaning and incarnation are truly and even exhaustively temporal.
It was the theoretical triumph of the idea of Rome, but it was also its defeat. The sick and decaying empire mocked the claims of its philosopher-rulers. In republic and empire, chaos and reason had both become “incarnate” over and over again, and they had failed wretchedly. Men were looking to another incarnation and, in spite of savage persecutions, turning to Him. For some generations now, the real enemy of Rome had been neither the advocates of republic nor of empire, of reason nor of chaos, but very clearly Jesus Christ. It was Christ or Rome, and the emperors knew it. Not even the later compromise with Christianity could obscure that fact. And, in the fifth century, when the barbarian invasions began, Treves petitioned “its Emperor for restoration, not of its walls, but of its arena” and games.360 According to Salvian, the people had been shouting themselves hoarse at the games while that city was being taken in 406. He described the nude and torn bodies of both sexes in the streets, “torn to pieces by birds and dogs,” and “the deadly stench of the dead brought death to the living.” Yet “a few nobles who survived destruction demanded circuses from the emperors as the greatest relief for the destroyed City.”361 Those who point to the early death of the Roman gods forget that the intensely religious exercises of the games survived to the end and were, with the cult of the emperor, the essential religious manifestation of Roman life.
Chapter VI Christ:The World De-divinized 1. War Against the Gods The essence of the ancient city-state, polis, and empire was that it constituted the continuous unity of the gods and men, of the divine and the human, and the unity of all being. There was thus no possible independence in society for any constituent aspect. Every element of society was a part of the all-absorbing one. Against this, Christianity asserted the abso-lute division of the human and the divine. Even in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the human and the divine were in union without confusion, as Chalcedon so powerfully defined it. Thus, divinity was withdrawn from human society and returned to the heavens and to God. No human order or institution could claim divinity and thereby claim to represent total and final order. By de-divinizing the world, Christianity placed all created orders, including church and state, alike under God. By denying divinity to all, and by reserving divinity to the triune God, all created orders were freed from one another and made independent of each other and together interdependent in their dependence on God. Church and state were alike required to be Christian, but neither was able to be total Christian order. The hostility to Christianity sprang from this obvious assault on the divinity of this world waged in the name of the triune God. As even Voegelin has noted, “What made Christianity so dangerous was its uncompromising, radical de-divinization of the world,” and Celsus saw this as the “language of sedition.”362 Greek and Roman culture rested on the foundation of this continuity of being, whereby divinity was an especial aspect of the created and human order. It is customary to trace ideas of divine kingship to “Oriental” influences (a vague and meaningless term), but it is not explained why the divine claims were perhaps even stronger in Greek and Roman cultures than elsewhere. Certainly, the concept of continuity was prevalent everywhere, and there was an interaction of influences in terms of this common faith. The Near Eastern and North African cultures which ostensibly influenced Rome, and the influence did exist, were, however, themselves heavily Hellenized and Romanized. Even Judea was, by the time of Christ, an outpost of Greek culture. The Hellenization of Palestine had been briefly arrested by Antiochus Epiphanes, who refused to accept the steady growth of syncretism and demanded total Hellenization and thereby precipitated the Maccabean struggle. Josephus noted that Greekinfluenced education was strong in Jerusalem. Alexandria shared honors with Jerusalem as a Jewish center of thought, and Alexandrian Jewish thinking was heavily Hellenized. There is a tradition that, at the time of Christ and previously, the ability to speak Greek was required as a qualification for a seat in the Sanhedrin.363 The quarrel with Rome was primarily nationalistic, not religious. Jewish messianic dreams of Israel as the divine and imperial race were at war with the Roman messianic order. Not only of the Greeks, but also of the Romans and all other peoples, it could be said, as Van Til has noted, “In their gods the Greeks indirectly worshipped themselves.”364 But with equal justice it can be noted that, in their gods, they enslaved themselves. By divinizing themselves, their rulers, state, or human order, they created an immediate and total power, a god on earth, whose slaves they inevitably were. One can live among men as a free man, but one cannot live in a
god’s domain except as a slave, and the divine states assured their freedom by enslaving their subjects. The state is either the servant of the transcendental God or the master of man. The only solution and conclusion of Greek philosophy was the total state. Greek philosophy “had been unable to solve the basic problems of being and of knowledge.”365 As a result, Roman philosophy, based on the failure of Greek philosophy, was pragmatic and political, in the main. This relativism ended, as in Greece, in failure. The collapse of the dialectic in Greece and Rome led, first, to atomistic individualism, in which the individual, as a law unto himself, became ultimate and beyond good and evil. Second, it led to intensified claims for the divine manifestation of the one. Men were promised more and more by the state and emperor in attempts to revivify the dying power of the one. The ruler increasingly claimed to be a god in history, ending history.
2. Mysticism But mysticism also sought to give an answer in terms of the one. Mysticism and asceticism, which appeared in Jewish, Syrian, Greek, Egyptian, and Roman cultures before invading Christianity (Julian the Apostate was a pagan ascetic and mystic), made history and man’s soul both determinative. The omnipotent One had two all-absorbing faces, nature and history, before which man was helpless, and the great Soul, into which man must be absorbed. Then, finally, both arms of the dialectic would be absorbed, as the cycle ended and history began another round in its endless cycle, with man helpless in the face of this grim reality. Such mysticism ran helplessly between the Scylla and Charybdis of monism and dualism, between the shattering rock of a divided universe and the deadly whirlpool of the sucking maws of the all-absorbing one. Such a philosopher was Plotinus, who sometimes made Matter “The Other-than-Being.”366 The dialectical warfare was basic to reality for Plotinus: But why does the existence of the Principle of Good necessarily comport the existence of a Principle of Evil? Is it because the All necessarily comports the existence of Matter? Yes: for necessarily this All is made up of contraries: it could not exist if Matter did not. The Nature of this Kosmos is, therefore, a blend; it is blended from the Intellectual-Principle and Necessity: what comes into it from God is good; evil is from the Ancient King which, we read, is the underlying Matter not yet brought to order by the Ideal-Form.367 This would appear to leave man in a hopeless situation. How is unity possible when Plotinus’ god cannot achieve it? The Absolute One is known and attained in the inward experience of the individual. Matter, which is evil and yet permeated by the divine, is united to intelligence by the human soul. Thus, man, even as he enters the all-absorbing one, suddenly reappears as himself that one! Van Til has observed: When we have found this unity it is not we who have found it; it is that Unity that has found itself through us. And yet this Unity has not even thus found itself for it is no self. If it were a self it would not have found itself, and if it has found itself
it is no longer itself. Thus the Absolute as well as we must run off in opposite directions simultaneously. It must be pure act and to be pure act it must act in still greater heights of separation from all contact with temporal plurality. On the other hand it cannot thus be active in the direction of pure negation if it is not, at the same time, active in the direction of pure affirmation. But this affirmation is affirmation of pure temporal individuation and as such is at the same time negation of pure unification by negation and separation.368 In these philosophies, the fate of this all-absorbing one is to destroy itself. Meaning is derived from the creative act and thought of man. By absorbing all, the one destroys all meaning, in that it nullifies every distinction and order before its imperial philosophical and political sway. All things are equalized before and into the one, so that no meaning exists except oneness, unity. When truth is reduced to unity, nothing can then exist or be true except unity, when the logic of this position presses relentlessly forward in its total claims. All law, order, and meaning are thus eroded, and there remains only the omnipresent unity and a now anarchistic and lawless individual who shatters that unity in the name of his own ultimacy. Atomistic individualism is the handmaid and consequence of totalitarian unity.
3. Gnosticism This ancient, cynical, nihilistic atomism found several forms of expression, one of them being an early form of existentialism known as Gnosticism.369 Gnosticism has been viewed in terms of its two types of dualism, first, the Syrian, in which the dualism is derived “from the one and undivided source of being,” and, second, the Iranian type, “a dualism of two opposed principles,” with man’s destiny seen in terms of “mixing and unmixing, captivity and liberation.” 370 Also important is the analysis of Gnosticism in terms of the concept of time. Hellenism saw time as cyclical and circular, perpetually repeating itself. In biblical thought, “Time is rectilinear, it is a scroll unrolling itself irreversibly from the creation straight on to the end of the universe.” For the Gnostic, time is a defilement to be escaped; the gnosis is a progressive restoration which leads to an escape from time.371 But Gnosticism can also be seen as a philosophy of self-deification, whereby man ascends, out of his fall into matter, beyond time, matter, good, and evil into his divinity. 372 According to the Poimandres of Hermes Trismegistrus, “This is the good end of those who have attained gnosis: to become God.”373 Even as for the modern existentialist theologian the starting point of thinking is “the death of God,”374 so for Gnosticism, this was, either explicitly or implicitly, the starting point. In language resembling that of Paul Tillich today, some spoke of the God beyond Being.375 Hippolytus cited Basilides’ use of the doctrine of the non-existent or non-being God.376 In this scheme of things, the Sonship of Christ is the pattern of the sonship or deification of all men. A Gnostic hymn portrayed Jesus, representing Mind, as the one who led man away from Chaos, enabling the Soul to escape from Chaos by Gnosis.377 Gnosticism survives today in theosophy, Jewish Kabbalism,378 occultism, existentialism, masonry, and like faiths. Because Gnosticism made the individual, rather than a dualism of mind and matter, ultimate, it was essentially hostile to morality and law, often requiring that believers
live beyond good and evil by denying the validity of all moral law. 379 Gnostic groups which did not openly avow such doctrines affirmed an ethic of love as against law, negating law and morality in terms of the “higher” law and morality of love. Their contempt of law and of time manifested itself also by a willingness to comply with the state. Marcion, having for a time been an orthodox Christian, was an exception here, the Marcionites refusing to worship the emperor.380 The usual attitude was one of contempt for the material world, which included the state, and an outward compliance and indifference. A philosophy calling for an escape from time is not likely to involve itself in the battles of time.
4. Christianity and the Family When Christianity entered into this Roman world, its impact was primarily as a people rather than as an institution. The church, for at least the first century of the Christian era, was apparently without property, meeting, as the New Testament states, in homes. It was not an institution but a Christian people whom Rome encountered in terms of the context of their daily lives. The church met in homes, and families were the basic Christian institution. In early Greek and Roman cultures, paternal power was religious power, a power continuous with all being and essentially divine, requiring duties of the father and conferring him with authority. The father, as Fustel de Coulanges has shown, in The Ancient City, was under law; but, it must be added, he was not only under law but also a part of that law and continuous with it in the chain of being. He was thus to a degree the law incarnate, in that he possessed a measure of the ultimate law in his person. This manifestation of law moved steadily from the father to the state, so that the state, originally the creature of the family and of the fathers, made itself the father, and the source of law, with the family turned into its creature. Progressively, as man became a creature of the state, the family lost its meaning and its status. Meaning was now statist, not familistic, and hence the family as an institution was especially prone to atomistic and eroding influences. Zimmerman has analyzed Roman life in the second century, A.D., as reflected in The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius (A.D. 117-180). According to Zimmerman, the family conditions reflected are these: 1. Considering its attendant annoyances, marriage and rearing a family is exceedingly difficult and only the religious or strong-minded man has the fortitude necessary to do so (Book I, 6; II, 23). 2. Family virtue among the upper and middle classes is such that in a book for children he can speak most casually of Demosthenes and Lais and state that the reason Demosthenes did not have an affair with the courtesan was either price (10,000 drachmas) or disease (“regret”) (Book 1, 8; II, 23; V, 11; X, 23). 3. Children are judging the reasonableness of a parental request or command, in a frame of reference in which obedience is purely the individual prerogative of nonage (Book II, 7).
4. The Augustinian laws on having children are “ancient history” (Book II, 15; XVI, 10). 5. The general use of the plural of child (children) is amusing (Book II, 13; IV, 2; XIII, 23). 6. Trust in friends and relatives is “idle and vain” (Book II, 29). 7. Divorce is laughable and not to be taken seriously (Book III, 2; IV, 3). 8. Sexual abnormalities are the subject of everyday conversation. Hermaphrodites, once “prodigies,” are now “instruments of pleasure” (Book III, 5; IV, 1; IX, 4; XVI, 7; see also Juvenal and Martial on perversions). 9. The vestal virgin and the wealthy prostitute are both successful persons, but in different professions (Book VII, 7; IX, 5). 10. The sex life and morals of early Roman and Greek public characters must be shown at their worst (Book VII, 8, 9; X, 6; XI, 9; XVII, 18; XV, 14; XII, 12). The good is unusual (Book XV, 12). 11. The practices of abortion, having children nursed and reared by slaves, and general neglect of children by parents were common. The use of wet nurses from the ranks of slaves and the servile classes had become a disease hazard. Popular conception held that “nature gave women nipples as a kind of beauty spot” (Book II, 1). 12. The avenging of kin-murder, even by relatives of the first degree (parentchild), was an unusual crime and could be excused only in severe cases and by fiction. “Kin” no longer had meaning (Book XII, 7, 8; XIII, 3). 13. The problem of dissipation of the idle upper-class youth is still prominent (Book XV, 11).381 At first glance, Zimmerman’s analysis seems grossly overdrawn and unfair to Aulus Gellius; a far stronger case could be made by the use of Juvenal, Martial, Catullus, and others. Why this use of the kindly and inoffensive Aulus Gellius? Gellius was not always in agreement with what he reported; he believed himself to be a good man and a worthy citizen. But it is precisely because Gellius reflected Roman dignity and character that the world he echoes appears more deadly than the world of Catullus. There are no real commitments in Gellius, no basic faith. The basic issues of life are barely touched on by Gellius, and then only casually. The question of fate versus free will is reported with the same detached curiosity as are items of popular gossip. 382 Basically, Gellius was in agreement with Chrysippus, On Providence, that our perspective must be dialectical: good and evil require one another, for good could not exist if there were no evil, for, according to Chrysippus, “since good is the opposite of evil, it necessarily follows that both must exist in opposition to each other, supported as it were by mutual adverse forces; since as a
matter of fact no opposite is conceivable without something to oppose it.”383 This means that good and evil are not ethical facts, moral acts of obedience or disobedience to God, but, rather, like God, metaphysical facts, varying aspects of being and necessary phases of life. And to make evil a metaphysically ultimate fact is in a very real sense to justify it. It is not surprising that a moral imperative is lacking in the kindly Gellius. Gellius’ real concern lies in two other directions. First, there is an antiquarian interest in the past and a gossipy report of Roman and other customs. Two examples of this can be cited as indicative both of Gellius’ charm as a writer and his lack of concern in his reporting: Those who have written about the life and civilization of the Roman people say that the women of Rome and Latium “lived an abstemious life”; that is, they abstained altogether from wine, which in the early language was called tematum; that it was an established custom for them to kiss their kinsfolk for the purpose of detection, so that, if they had been drinking, the odour might betray them. But they say that the women were accustomed to drink the second brewing, raisin wine, spiced wine (Flavored with myrrh-ed.) and other sweet-tasting drinks of that kind. And these things are indeed made known in those books which I have mentioned, but Marcus Cato declares that women were not only censured but also punished by a judge no less severely if they had drunk wine than if they had disgraced themselves by adultery. I have copied Marcus Cato’s words from the oration entitled On the Dowry, in which it is also stated that husbands had the right to kill wives taken in adultery: “When a husband puts away his wife,” says he, “he judges the woman as a censor would, and has full powers if she has been guilty of any wrong or shameful act; she is severely punished if she has drunk wine; if she has done wrong with another man, she is condemned to death.” Further, as to the right to put her to death it was thus written: “If you should take your wife in adultery, you may with impunity put her to death without a trial; but if you should commit adultery or indecency, she must not presume to lay a finger on you, nor does the law allow it.”384 Gellius is genuinely fond of the old Romans and proud of them. Nevertheless, his interest is antiquarian and at points humorous. The picture of the wives of old Romans drinking heavily spiced wine to cover the smell of alcohol is clearly amusing. Human foibles rather than moral questions appeal to Gellius. His report “About the strange suicides of the maids of Miletus” is again indicative of this. Plutarch in the first book of his work On the Soul, discussing disorders which affect the human mind, has told us that almost all the maidens of the Milesian nation suddenly without any apparent cause conceived a desire to die, and thereupon many of them hanged themselves. When this happened more frequently every day, and no remedy had any effect on their resolve to die, the Milesians passed a decree that all those maidens who committed suicide by hanging should be carried to the grave naked, along with the same rope by which they had
destroyed themselves. After that decree the maidens ceased to seek a voluntary death, deterred by the mere shame of so disgraceful a burial.385 This is Gellius, a kindly, curious observer who views virtue with friendly eyes and a ready humor, and vice with a kindly awareness that it is a condition of life. Because good and evil are metaphysically ultimate for him, a crusade against evil is an exercise in futility. In this perspective, it is inevitable that social ethics becomes a matter of poise and manners rather than good and evil. Second, when religion wanes, words lose their basic context of meaning, which is theological, and semantics takes over in a futile attempt to provide meaning. It is not surprising that Gellius is more interested in the meaning of words than in morality.386 The basis of community and communication is a common world of faith and meaning. When that religious structure is eroded, language, too, is eroded, and semantics embarks on the sterile task of trying to salvage or analyze words rather than the religious, metaphysical, epistomological, and ethical task of establishing a new world of meaning. Gellius’ antiquarianism and semanticism were thus different aspects of a single factor and were equally ineffectual. The Julian family law was, for similar reasons, mainly impotent with respect to Rome; it could not replace by law what had been removed by unbelief, cynicism, and relativism. The Augustan and Julian legal program387 was far more influential in subsequent Christian states than in Rome. The Christian family in the Roman Empire was clearly an alien institution. Living within a totalitarian, unitary state, it moved in terms of a law which had no standing in Rome, God’s law as revealed in the Old and New Testaments. Rome recognized various national traditions and legalized them as subordinate aspects of imperial law. Christian family life, however, respectful of Roman law, moved clearly in terms of a law claiming priority to Rome and, indeed, granting tolerance by way of commanding obedience to it (Rom. 13). Christians could defend their position as an obedient, law abiding people, but their defense was obviously offensive. Rome claimed the right to establish the gods and religions, but the Christians obeyed because they declared their God had established Rome and commanded obedience to civil authorities. A more direct assault on the fundamental principle of Roman law is hard to imagine. Whether the God of the Christians commanded obedience or rebellion, the principle of the priority of His law, and His right to ordain and to recognize, was clearly treasonable, and many emperors felt that persecution for obliteration was necessary in order to remove this threat to their power and position. It is possible, too, that Lewinson’s comment may have been true, in its account of the Roman reaction: The moral teaching of the Christian missionaries sounded like a criticism of the private life of the Imperial family, an attack on Roman law and on the morals of Roman society. The upper classes did not, indeed, let it worry them, but since this foreign sect won certain adherents among the proletariat, the police smelt a rat. Persons propagating and accepting such doctrines were capable of anything, even of deliberate subversion of the Roman Empire. The inquisition set on foot against the Christians after the burning of Rome in July A.D. 64 yielded no evidence that
they had been responsible for the fire, but they were, as Tacitus reports, found guilty of “hatred against human-kind.” This was ground enough for organizing a massacre of them.388 It should be noted that Tacitus suspected Nero of ordering the fire. “Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace.” An “immense multitude” of the Christians “was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred of mankind.”389 The hatred of the Christians is apparent in Tacitus’ paragraph, and their separateness is the ground of their offense as haters of humanity. The Christian concept of law as revealed in its simple family life made it clear that true Christians could not be assimilated into the empire.
5. Abortion This Christian law with respect to the family appeared very quickly with respect to abortion. Plato had sanctioned abortion when conception took place past the age-limits of the statecontrolled procreation, because it was “an offense against religion and justice, inasmuch as he is raising up a child for the state.”390 As this statement clearly shows, religion and justice are set in the context of the state and its desires. Aristotle also required abortion when state-allowed births were exceeded.391 In Rome, Septimius Severus and Antoninus prohibited abortion, not as intrinsically immoral or as murder, but on the ground that it defrauded the husband. For Plato and Aristotle, it was a matter of state law entirely. Rome saw abortion in the context of the father’s right to an heir, so that the validity of abortion stood or fell in terms of that right. 392 The condemnation of abortion as murder was quickly in evidence in Christian circles. In a collection of rules and comments, we read, “Thou shalt not slay thy child by causing abortion, nor kill that which is begotten; for ‘everything that is shaped, and has received a soul from God, if it be slain, shall be avenged, as being unjustly destroyed’ (Ex. 21:23, LXX).”393 Tertullian declared, “To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed.”394 The Church Councils repeatedly dealt with abortion. Canon XXI of the Council of Ancyra stated: Concerning women who commit fornication, and destroy that which they have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs for abortion, a former decree excluded them until the hour of death, and to this some have assented. Nevertheless, being desirous to use somewhat greater lenity, we have ordained that they fulfil ten years (of penance), according to the prescribed degrees.395 It is not our purpose here to analyze the development of the penitential system, or the changing ideas of it within the church, but simply to note that the law of murder with respect to abortion was applied severely to converts who had been prostitutes and abortionists and barred them from full communion for ten years. Basil of Caesaria in Cappadocia, in his Canons, held to the same requirement. Basil called abortion murder, and declared also, “That a woman being delivered of
a child in a journey, and taking no care of it, shall be reputed guilty of murder.” 396 In the Quinisext Council of 692, Canon XCI declared, “Those who give drugs for procuring abortion, and those who receive poisons to kill the foetus, are subjected to the penalty of murder.”397 Abortion was murder, suicide was murder, and self-mutilation was murder. Anyone who mutilated himself was subjected to excommunication if a layman, and deposition as well if a clergyman.398 For the Christians, the only open question here was administrative: God’s law was final and absolute. A man’s life was not his own, nor his body, nor the life of his unborn child. To tamper with these things was to sin against God. It meant attempting to play God with life, and all life and all creation was subject to man only under God’s infallible word and law. The Roman conception of the priority of the state was hence anathema: it was a part of that sin from which men were to be saved, the attempt to be gods. The Roman position has since revived among sociologists, politicians, and modernist clergymen. A sociologist has written: A demand for abortion is frequently viewed as a type of social deviance, and indeed most responsible physicians insist it should be satisfied only as a last resort. Yet social engineers should realize that at times abortion can be a vital instrument of social control — preventing serious family disorganization, economic hardship and diminution of physical health. Recognition of this possibility by legislators may play an important role in fostering social and economic reform.399 The key clause in this statement is this: “social engineers should realize that at times abortion can be a vital instrument of social control.” This precisely pinpoints the difference: social control by man, playing at god, is the goal on the one hand, and obedience to God’s law is the requirement on the other. For this reason, the priority of God and His word, the Christian family, while sharply stronger than the non-Christian families in its environment, by no means resembled the conservative family of old Rome, or of any other area. The loyalty was not to the family, and to the authority of the father, but to God. This was clearly apparent in the first eyewitness account of Christian martyrdom, the death in the arena of a young woman, Perpetua, on March 7, 203, at Carthage. Perpetua was a young mother of twenty-two, of a noble family, with an infant son at her breast and her breasts heavy with milk. We have her own account of the trial: Then my turn came. And my father appeared on the scene with my boy, and drew me down from the step, praying to me, “Pity thy child.” Then Hilarian the procurator, who at that time was administering the government in the place of the proconsul Minucius Timinianus, deceased, said, “Spare thy father’s grey hairs; spare thy infant boy. Sacrifice for the safety of the Emperor.” And I replied, “I do not sacrifice.” “Art thou a Christian?” asked Hilarian; and I said, “I am.” And when my father persisted in endeavouring to make me recant, he was ordered down by Hilarian and beaten with a rod. And I felt it as keenly as though I had been struck myself; and I was sorry for his miserable old age.400 Much as she loved her father, husband, and son, her God rather than her family came first in this situation.
6. Emperor Worship The question of emperor worship is central here. The statement of Hilarian to Perpetua is an interesting one: “Sacrifice for the safety of the Emperor.” It would be absurd to maintain that at any time Rome feared for its safety in the threat of a Christian uprising. On the contrary, the excellent character of the Christians was, despite some slanders, well recognized by the emperors. The danger was religious and philosophical: the entire theoretical and legal foundation of the emperor and the empire was threatened by the Christian de-divinization of this world. The imperial sacrifices represented the recognition, whatever other gods one held to, of the centrality of the emperor and the Roman state in the divinity of being. The central direction and intelligence of being moved in the development, power, and authority of the emperor and Rome. As Perowne has noted, “Refusal to sacrifice amounted to a refusal to obey an order of the emperor, and as such was accounted as treason, for which the punishment was death. The object of the state was not to eradicate the Christians, but to reform them,”401 or, failing to reform them, then to exterminate them. The excellence of the Christian character marked them all the more as a dangerous and powerful alien power within the state. The slanderous stories invented concerning Christians reflected not only hatred and malice but also the firm belief that a people who denied the divinity of emperor and state were probably such wild anarchists that they also practiced incest and cannibalism. But the Christians, “while they were ready and anxious to pray for Caesar, and, as their Master had taught them, to render unto him the things which were his, they refused to pray to him.”402 The imperial cult was ready to be syncretistic, ready to absorb other religions into itself and into the framework of the empire. Orthodox Christianity was militantly hostile to any compromise in principle. Divinity in the Roman faith was, first of all, continuous with all being, and thus it could be manifested everywhere and in diverse forms. Second, it was being in process, developing steadily and evolving; receptivity to new movements was hence a religious necessity, the new movements being evaluated, digested, and put to use in terms of their utility to the idea of Rome. The reason for the long survival of Rome was precisely this readiness to adopt each new movement or “revolution” as a part of the meaning of Rome. As a result, Rome underwent a series of revolutions from monarchy to republic to empire, and, thereafter especially, was in continual revolution as an empire, all of which left Rome sometimes in great self-contradiction to its yesterdays but faithful to eternal, divine, and evolving Rome. Rome destroyed Carthage as a state in 146 B.C., but in time a Punic emperor, Septimius Severus, proud of his ancestry and speaking Greek and Latin with a Punic accent, came to rule Rome. He disdained to take even a Roman woman to wife, marrying rather Julia Donna, of his own race and the daughter of a prince-priest. He was by adoption made an Antonine, and he was steadily promoted by the Romans, who a few centuries before had destroyed his country, but he was now a part of the ever-new and yet eternal Rome. Rome was continually transforming itself while remaining always divine Rome, ready also to absorb the Christians and use them, if they would be absorbed. But the orthodox Christians rejected all compromise. Their God, the ontological trinity, being sovereign, omnipotent, and transcendent, needed nothing to complete himself. As uncreated Being, all the universe, as created being, was His handiwork; creation could not exist without God, or apart from Him, whereas God made it clear that He needed nothing to complete himself.
Man could contribute nothing to Him, nor could man contribute to his own salvation: God created, sustained, and redeemed man. Sovereignty being entirely transcendental, no human order could claim any authority apart from or beyond God’s sovereign word. And God being perfect, complete, and totally self-conscious, His Word was accordingly final, infallible, and sufficient for man’s salvation. Man’s reason, therefore, is not creative but analogical, thinking God’s thoughts after Him. Man’s works cannot save him nor can they add anything to God. This is true of the elect: how much more so the works of an unbelieving empire? Man must render God obedience and give Him all glory, acknowledging that in Him all power, glory, and dominion reside. There was no lack of Christian philosophy, but there was a rejection of a “mottled” or syncretistic philosophy. When such “mottled” philosophies appeared, the philosophers were not always aware of their compromise: they were trying to defend the faith and assert the antithesis. Their Greek and Roman education often colored their apologetics, but their purpose was to assert an antithesis, and even Origen was ready to endure persecution for that antithesis. Tertullian, in a famous passage, sharply stated this faith in the sufficiency of the Scripture, the rejection of compromise, and the rejection of “dialectics, the art of building up and pulling down; an art so evasive in its propositions, so far-fetched in its conjectures, so harsh in its arguments, so productive of contentions — embarrassing even to itself, retracting everything, and really treating of (in the sense of conclusively settling) nothing!” Thus, declared Tertullian, a line of division must be drawn between this pagan philosophy and the Christian faith: What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? what between heretics and Christians? Our instruction comes from “the porch of Solomon,” who had himself taught that “the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart.” Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after enjoying the gospel! With our faith, we desire no further belief. For this is our palmary faith, that there is nothing which we ought to believe besides.403 This passage was not without a lengthy history in the church and an extensive influence on minds of a very different perspective than Tertullian. Thus, Robert South (1633-1716), in his sermon of November 9, 1662, at St. Paul, “Of the Creation of Man in the Image of God,” declared, All those arts, rarities, and inventions, which vulgar minds gaze at, the ingenious pursue, and all admire, are but the relics of an intellect defaced with sin and time. We admire it now only as antiquaries do a piece of old coin, for the stamp it once bore, and not for those vanishing lineaments and disappearing draughts that remain upon it at present. And certainly that must needs have been very glorious, the decays of which are so admirable. He that is comely when old and decrepid, surely was very beautiful when he was young. An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, when he was young. An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens, but the rudiments of paradise.404 Tertullian recognized Christian philosophy, because it came from “the porch of Solomon,” but he rejected all others, specifying especially the Stoics, Platonists, and Aristotelians, (“dialectic
composition”). This uncompromising perspective required not only a surrender by pagan philosophies but also a surrender to God by the pagan state. Neither a divine nor an autonomous existence was permitted to any man or institution: all must recognize themselves to be a part of the created order, dependent upon God, and subject to His Word. This submission was mandatory for all, for church, state, school, home, and for every person and institution; every knee must bend to the triune God or be judged by Him. This was a treasonable faith to Rome; Rome claimed to be that canopy under which all institutions and beings within its jurisdiction found themselves and from whence they derived their legal existence. In Rome, “Whoever or whatever was capable, and being subject to, rights was a persona,” or legal person, whether an individual or a group. Thus, Rome decreed who or what was a person and had rights. But the church claimed to be the body of Jesus Christ and to have rights derived directly from God and not subject to the jurisdiction of the state. Every Christian family insisted on exercising rights with respect to worship and obedience to God in their everyday lives which were not subject to state jurisdiction because these rights were derived from God and His Word. The Christian, as an individual and in his institutions, claimed to be a person in virtue of God’s Word. He insisted on obedience to the state within the framework prescribed by Scripture, so that he derived right and person not from Rome but from God, and Rome’s right and person were themselves derived from God and His Word. Thus, even in their obedience, the Christians had struck a death-blow against Rome and the idea of Rome. The church and the individual Christian, as independent realms alike under God together with Rome, and the Christian under God only, in obedience to God, represented an empire within an empire. Rome very quickly recognized this challenge to its existence.
7. Creation and History The sharp difference between the Christian and the non-Christian perspectives rested extensively and basically on the doctrine of creation. All non-biblical cosmogonies, according to Keil and Delitzsch, “are either hylozoistical, deducing the origin of life and living beings from some primeval matter; or pantheistical, regarding the whole world as emanating from a common divine substance; or mythological, tracing both gods and men to a chaos or world-egg. They do not even rise to the notion of a creation, much less to the knowledge of an Almighty God, as the Creator of all things.”405 The consequences of this non-biblical perspective are far-reaching. In this concept, being is evolving and is in process. Because being is in process, and being is seen as one and undivided, truth itself is tentative, evolving, and without finality. Since being has not yet assumed a final form, since the universe is in process and not yet a finished product, truth itself is in process and is continually changing. A new movement or “leap in being” can give man a new truth and render yesterday’s truth a lie. But, in an order created by a perfect, omnipotent, and totally self-conscious Being, God, truth is both final, specific, and authoritative. God’s word can then be, and is inevitably, infallible, because there is nothing tentative about God himself. Moreover, truth is ultimately personal, because the source, God, is personal, and truth becomes incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ and is communicated to those who believe in Him. Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, as the way, the truth, and the life, is also the Christian principle of continuity. The Christian doctrine, therefore, involved a radical break with the pagan doctrine of the continuity of being and with the doctrine of chaos. It also involved a break with the other aspect of the dialectic, the pagan, rationalistic concept of order. Order is not the work of
autonomous and developing gods and men but rather the sovereign decree of the omnipotent God. This faith freed man from the sterile autonomy which made him the helpless prisoner of Fate, of the relentless workings of a blind order. Even so weak a Christian thinker as Tatian the Assyrian saw this, declaring, “But we are superior to Fate, and instead of wandering demons, we have learned to know one Lord who wanders not; and, as we do not follow the guidance of Fate, we reject its lawgivers.”406 The result was a radically new philosophy of history, one in which all creation, physical and human, is governed by the personal laws of the personal God. Cochrane has described this new concept of history thus: But if this be history, it is history in a sense wholly without parallel in secular literature. For it is neither economic nor cultural nor political, local and particularist or general and cosmopolitan; it deals neither with problems of war and peace nor with those of competition and co-operation; and it does not concern itself in the least with the “search for causes.” What it offers is an account of human freedom, its original loss through the first Adam and its ultimate recovery through the second. This it presents in the form of a cosmic drama: but the drama is not Promethean, it tells no story of “virtue” in conflict with “chance” or “necessity.” For, with the disappearance from Christian thought of the classical antithesis between “man” and the “environment,” there disappears also the possibility of such a conflict. The destiny of man is, indeed, determined, but neither by a soulless mechanism nor by the fiat of an arbitrary or capricious power external to himself. For the laws which govern physical, like those which govern human, nature are equally the laws of God.407 The Greco-Roman view of history was cyclical. The order of history periodically returned to chaos in order to effect a new beginning, and the entire order of the universe also made this periodic return to total chaos in order to begin again its ascent to order. The energy of being required the regular, cyclical refreshing of rest and revitalization in chaos in order to begin anew its upward strain into order. These cycles, in Augustine’s words, “will ceaselessly recur” as “a constant renewal and repetition of the order of nature.” The soul of man, with “a ceaseless transmigration,” is also subjected to this cycle. No true believer can accept this cyclical view of history. History moves, as The City of God was written to demonstrate, in terms of God’s predestination, in terms of His plan. Our problem is not history’s cycles but sin. And, because “Christ died for our sins,” a once and final act, the dominion of sin and death is broken. “The wicked walk in a circle,” but it is not a cycle of history, but rather the circle of “false doctrine.” “What wonder is it if, entangled in these circles, they find neither entrance nor egress?” There was a beginning to creation, and a beginning to time, in terms of the sovereign decree and act of God. Moreover, Augustine held, the movements “which are the basis of time, do pass from future to past.”408 This is a concept of momentous importance. The past is chronologically prior to the future, but it is not logically so. Since God is the totally self-conscious and omnipotent Creator of all things, He knows and ordains the end and the beginning. As was declared at the Council of Jerusalem, “Known unto God are all his works, from the beginning of the world” (Acts 15:18). The events proceed from the determined ends and purposes of God, so that the movement of time is from future to past. This fact has been well stated by a modern writer:
Never does yesterday turn back in its flight and become to-day, or to-day become to-morrow. Never does the past pass into the present, or the present into the future. No. It is the other way. To-morrow becomes to-day. To-day becomes yesterday. The future becomes the present. The present becomes the past. The future is the source, it is the reservoir of time which will some day be present, and then past. The present is the narrow strait, it is the living instant, it is the flashing reality, through which the vast oncoming future flows into the endless receding past.... The Future is logically first, but not chronologically.... The Past issues, it proceeds, from the Future, through the Present.... 409 The direction of this chronological movement and its purpose is made known to us by God, who decreed it, in His Word, in which, Salvian declared, “God testifies that He Himself performs and ordains all things.” This fact is for Salvian the “full explanation” of reality, for “Just as God is greater than all human reason, in like manner it should mean more to me than reason that I recognize that all things are done by God. There is no need to listen to anything new on this point. Let God alone, the Creator, be sufficient over the reasoning of all men.” God’s Word is sufficient for Salvian as he seeks to understand history. “When we read that He rules all things He has created, we prove thereby that He rules, since He testifies that He rules.” Scripture speaks with clarity; and “the very words of Holy Scripture are the mind of God.”410
8. History and God Thus, the genius of history, i.e., its tutelar deity in the Roman sense, was not Caesar but Jesus Christ, whose Word declared the purpose of history. When the Roman officials demanded, as they did of Polycarp and other Christian martyrs, an offering of incense to the emperor, declaring, “Swear by the genius of Caesar; repeat and say, Away with the Atheists,” they were declaring that the god and in a sense almost the fortune of Rome was the emperor. To deny him worship was to deny Rome and the meaning of its history and existence. An atheist was one who disbelieved or denied Caesar as this genius. Polycarp’s answer was to say, “raising his eyes toward heaven,... ‘Away with the Atheists.’”411 For Polycarp, the real atheists were these persecuting Romans: they denied history in denying Christ, for “All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:3). History, according to Paulus Orosius, is the record of progress, despite its occasional declines from the human perspective, because it moves in terms of God, who makes all things work together for good unto His elect, “and all of Whose acts (even those that they have thought evil) they have found to be good.”412 For Orosius, creation means providence and the government of God: “It follows, too, that if we are the creation of God, we are also properly the object of His concern.”413 The Roman Empire and the Roman peace were created by Christ to prepare the world for His coming.414 Christ is “the Judge of the centuries” and Judge over Sodom and Rome.415 Man can understand history only through the Word of God, because man’s own perspective is that of a creature, and, if he has no criterion outside of himself, his perspective is,
even to his own mind, an obviously limited one, because what man knows and feels most sharply is the present: A man who is annoyed by fleas at night and unable to sleep may happen to recall other wakeful hours that he once endured from burning fevers. Without doubt he will bear far less patiently the restlessness of these hours than the recollection of his earlier experience. Everyone on the basis of his own experience can testify that the time element does introduce a new consideration here. But will anyone come forth and assert, whatever his pain, that fleas cause greater suffering than do fevers?416 Man is subject, in his knowing, to the limitations of time, to the fact of his sin, which places him in rebellion against God and God’s truth, and to the fact that man’s own being is still extensively unknown to himself, in that his creaturely potentiality is not yet fully realized. He is therefore changeable. But God is, as Tertullian emphasized, unchangeable and eternal. Moreover, God “neither ceases to be what He was, nor can He be any other thing than what He is.”417 As Williams has summarized it, “The concept of potentiality cannot be applied to God.”418 This God has total command of Himself and of all His creation, and He therefore both speaks and acts with perfection. True and consistent revelation and knowledge are thus possible, whereas, among the non-Christian philosophers of the New Academy, their “basic principle was that probability in the realm of knowledge is all that man can hope to attain.”419 As Marrou has aptly observed, “Christianity is an intellectual religion and cannot exist in a context of barbarism.”420 The uneducated it must educate, and the learned it must challenge and overcome by the unrelenting apologetics of biblical faith. In the conflict with the Roman Empire, the Christian thinkers carried the day, and Rome found that its only effective argument, which finally failed, was persecution. And, the more fanatically the Roman emperors sought to advance salvation, economically, politically, and religiously, through their genius, the more obvious their failure became. Their “salvation,” for all Romans, more closely resembled oppression. Clearly, the non-Christian Romans themselves, who were not bound to pray for those in authority as were Christians, were at times more in a mood to swear at the genius of the emperor than by it.
9. Constantine the Great The issues with respect to the Christian doctrine of the one and the many came to focus in the struggles leading to the creeds.421 The first great creed came from the Council of Nicaea in 325, called by Constantine the Great. There is no question that Constantine has been savagely treated by historians, who find it hard to forgive him for ending the persecution of Christians. It is becoming common to omit the historic designation, “the Great,” from his name, although historians indulge in no such post mortems with respect to Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, Peter the Great, or Frederick the Great. He is regularly set down as a murderer because of the executions of several members of his family, with no consideration given to the fact that evidence for judgment is lacking. It may have been murder, and it may have been morally as well as legally valid in terms of the various
conspiracies so common to the day. Certainly, Percival was right in calling attention to the fact that Constantine’s character was outstanding in comparison to the character of his predecessors, and, in itself, was not without clearly commendable aspects and strength.422 A good case can be made for the moral stature of Constantine the Great, as well as for his greatness as a ruler. Religiously, the sincerity of his faith need not be doubted; delayed baptism was not uncommon in his day. It is in the realm of theology that Constantine must be found wanting. He respected Christianity deeply, and, at the Council of Nicaea, was deeply moved at the sight of the maimed, blinded, and crippled veterans of the persecutions. Christianity represented strength, and Constantine believed in strength; it represented the power of God, and Constantine believed in the power of God as a Roman. As Constantine saw it, the function and calling of the church was to revivify the Roman Empire and to establish on a sound basis the genius of the emperor. Constantine was respectful, kindly, and patient with the church, but in all this he still saw the church as an aspect of the empire, however central a bulwark. The evidence indicates that he saw himself somewhat as Eusebius of Caesarea saw him. Even as God was sovereign and monarch over all in heaven, so Constantine was sovereign and monarch on earth. Eusebius wrote, “Thus, as he was the first to proclaim to all the sole sovereignty of God, so he himself, as sole sovereign of the Roman world, extended his authority over the whole human race.”423 Constantine stated, in a letter to Alexander the Bishop and Arius the Presbyter, that his purpose was twofold with respect to the empire, the second a military goal, the first, intellectual: “My design then was, first, to bring the diverse judgments formed by all nations respecting the Deity to a condition, as it were, of settled uniformity; and, secondly, to restore to health the system of the world.” However patient he was with the theological struggle, it seemed to him “trivial” as compared to the virtue of unity, and he was dismayed because the churchmen “wrangle together on points so trivial and altogether unessential.”424 For Constantine, the fine points of the doctrine of Christ were “unessential” because it was the welfare and the unity of the empire which were essential to him. The Form of Prayer given by Constantine to his soldiers is indicative of this: it was a prayer which pagans could use as readily as adherents of other religions: its central faith and hope is in the imperial victory: We acknowledge thee the only God: we own thee as our King, and implore thy succor. By thy favor have we gotten the victory: through thee are we mightier than our enemies. We render thanks for thy past benefits, and trust thee for future blessings. Together we pray to thee, and beseech thee long to preserve to us, safe and triumphant, our emperor Constantine and his pious sons.425 On one occasion, Constantine, in Eusebius’ hearing, said to a company of bishops, “You are bishops whose jurisdiction is within the Church: I also am a bishop, ordained by God to overlook whatever is external to the Church.”426 How Constantine saw his episcopal office is best revealed in the church he had built in memory of the apostles at Constantinople. In anticipation of his own death, “He accordingly caused twelve coffins to be set up in this church, like sacred pillars in honor of the apostolic number, in the center of which his own was placed, having six of theirs on either side.”427 This construction openly and obviously invited comparison to Christ. Constantine had trouble following the Christological controversy, which, despite his patience, he found “trivial,” but he did not find it difficult to define his own christological status as emperor, savior, pontifex maximus, and bishop of God.
This is not to deny that Constantine believed in the reality of the biblical God but rather to affirm it. Moreover, however Roman his outlook, his God was still the Christian God, and, as Constantine declared, “it is God’s work to guide everything to the best fulfilment, and it is for man to be obedient to God.” The state was not man’s savior, nor was the emperor a deity. Stauffer’s comment is to the point: “Constantine promised no golden age, as the emperors and court prophets of the past had done, but an age of grace, an empire which practised forgiveness, because it was founded and depended upon God’s forgiving act.”428 This is an important fact: an age of grace is markedly different from an age of messianic emperors. The critical question comes with respect to the administration of the age of grace. Is there one earthly administrator, even as there is one heavenly Christ, and, if so, who is he? The loyal bishop, Eusebius, in his Oration, in speaking of the Christ, answered this question: This is he who holds a supreme dominion over this whole world, who is over and in all things, and pervades all things visible and invisible; the Word of God. From whom and by whom our divinely favored emperor, receiving, as it were, a transcript of the Divine sovereignty, directs, in imitation of God himself, the administration of this world’s affairs.429 The emperor, then, was the vicegerent of God and of Christ. It was an age of grace, and Rome was the focal point of that grace. The Roman Empire, once viewed as the world order born of chaos, was now viewed as the world order ordained by God. Old Rome was now linked with the New Jerusalem, and the pagan polis was baptized into a Christian polis. For many churchmen, as well as for Constantine, this was the correct order: Rome had strayed because she had lost contact with the divine order. That relationship with the divine order had now been reestablished, and the fact of central importance was not the person of Christ and doctrines concerning it, but the person of the empire, its unity and strength. Priority belonged to the temporal order and to the empire, not to the eternal order and the divine-human Christ. Hence, the orthodox doctrine of Christ was a menace, in that this Christ was clearly lord of time and eternity and denied priority to the temporal order. The orthodox Christ was a final and only Christ, and this was a denial of a determinative history and potentiality to the temporal order.
10. Arianism This heretical doctrine found expression in Arius (c. 260-336) and Arianism. In Thalia, Arius struck out sharply against the idea of a final and only Christ and mediator between God and man: “Many words speaketh God; which then of these are we to call Son and Word, Only-begotten of the Father?” Athanasius, in citing this, called it “anything but Christian!,” and rightfully so.430 The god of Arius was a god with no certain or final word. He spoke many words, and hence his truth was at least a changeable word and at best an evolving truth. The possibility of an absolute truth was destroyed, and the priority of eternity was destroyed. Arius’ god, like man, was seeking expression in history and working towards true order. Arius professed to have, as do Barth and others today, a high doctrine of the “otherness” of God, but his god was incomprehensible, not because of his transcendence, but because he was a god who did not comprehend himself. How then could man know this god of “many words”? The god of Arius has a real kinship to Chaos. He is “ineffable,” and “the Unbegun,” not only to all men, but also, as Arius wrote, in Thalia,“To
speak in brief, God is ineffable to His Son. For He is to Himself what He is, that is, unspeakable. So that nothing which is called comprehensible does the Son know to speak about; for it is impossible for Him to investigate the Father, who is by Himself.”431 The resemblance to the god of Kantian and post-Kantian thought is very real. How can a Son know a god who “is to Himself... unspeakable,” who cannot know himself? Of necessity, Arius must say, “Many words speaketh God,” not one Christ but many christs, because, not knowing himself, he cannot speak a final word or an authoritative one. Instead of an eternal Word, Arianism held to a changing word: “Accordingly, when someone asked them, whether the Word of God can possibly change as the devil changed, they were not afraid to say that He can; for being something made and created, His nature is subject to change.”432 The issue of this, Athanasius said, is “polytheism.”433 A god with many words and many potentialities is not one but many, closely resembling Chaos and the gods arising out of Chaos. The Arian god needed the many words, who were not gods and yet like many gods, in order to have any relationship to the world. As a result, the Arian “monotheism” ended up as a vindication of pagan polytheism.434 As Athanasius stated it, Rather then will the Ario-maniacs with reason incur the charge of polytheism or else of atheism, because they idly talk of the Son as external and a creature, and again the Spirit as from nothing. For either they will say that the Word is not God; or saying that He is God, because it is so written, but not proper to the Father’s Essence, they will introduce many because of their difference of kind (unless forsooth they shall dare to say that by participation only, He, as all things else, is called God; though, if this be their sentiment, their irreligion is the same, since they consider the Word as one among all things). But let this never even come into our mind. For there is but one form of Godhead, which is also in the Word; and one God, the Father, existing by Himself according as He is above all, and appearing in the Son according as He pervades all things, and in the Spirit according as in Him He acts in all things through the Word. For thus we confess God to be one through the Triad, and we say that it is much more religious than the godhead of the heretics with its many kinds and many parts, to entertain a belief of the One Godhead in a triad.435 The Arians, believing history to be the determinative realm, were thus partial to any order which offered salvation in and through the control of history. They were, accordingly, statists, hostile to the independence of the church, zealous for the power of the emperor, and deriving their main power from state support. As Athanasius said, “they prop up the heresy with human patronage.”436
11. Nicaea The Council of Nicaea was called by Constantine to unify the church as a part of the movement to strengthen and unify the empire. Constantine sought unity, was impatient of doctrine, but was also studiously patient with what seemed to him to be “trivial” points of doctrine. With Nicaea, the civil punishment of Christian heresy began. Much has been made of this fact by historians, who have used it to belabor the church. They have not stated, however, that, first, this was simply a continuation of Roman imperial policy respecting religion. The state cult had to be
accepted by all, whatever else they also believed. The state cult was now a form of Christianity. Second, the state cult then and in the following centuries was usually a pseudo-Christianity or a defective Christianity, which, like Arianism, was subservient to the state. The state, concerned with its own power and welfare, usually favored that church group which best rendered prior allegiance to Caesar rather than to Christ. The persecution of orthodox Christianity continued: it was often seen as the enemy of the state, a situation no less true in the twentieth century. But the Council of Nicaea, called by Constantine with the religious welfare of the empire in mind, and its civil and religious unity, was used by the church to unify itself against heresy and against doctrines leading to a surrender of the church to the state. As Leith has noted, against Arius, Nicaea “insisted that God has fully come into human history in Jesus Christ” and declared “the finality of Jesus Christ.” Moreover, “The cultural significance of the Nicene theology is revealed in the disposition of the political Imperialists to be Arians. Imperialism as a political strategy was more compatible with the notion that Jesus Christ is something less than the full and absolute Word of God.” The Nicene Creed declared: We believe in one God, the Father All Governing (pantokratora), creator (poieten) of all things visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father as only begotten, that is, from the essence (reality) of the Father (ek tes ousias tou patros), God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not created (poiethenta), of the same essence (reality) as the Father (homoousion to patri), through whom all things came into being, both in heaven and in earth; Who for us men and for our salvation came down and was incarnate, becoming human (enanthropesanta). He suffered and the third day rose, and ascended into the heavens. And he will come to judge both the living and the dead. And (we believe) in the Holy Spirit. But those who say, Once he was not, or he was not before his generation, or he came to be out of nothing, or who assert that he, the Son of God, is of a different hypostasis or ousia, or that he is a creature, or changeable, or mutable, the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes them.437 In a famous footnote, Gibbon expressed his contempt for Christian doctrine as defined at Nicaea: “I cannot forbear reminding the reader that the difference between the Homoousion and Homoiousion is almost invisible to the nicest theological eye.”438 The difference which triumphed at Nicaea was a momentous one: the issue was Christ or Caesar, a final and authoritative Christ, or a statist order as the expression of the truth of history. The whole of Gibbon’s work is a longing for the old Roman totalitarian state. The Nicene Creed asserted that Christianity can only mean an authoritative, final, and only-begotten Christ, and the priority of eternity to time. The state was dethroned from its pretension to be the divine order. By denying that Christ is Lord and Savior, Arianism, first, had made the state man’s lord and savior, and the Arians were dedicated statists. The emperor, not Christ, His Word, and the church, was central to the Arians. Second, the Arians denied the Christian answer to the problem of the one and the many. Arius insisted on the primacy of unity: the one was all-important. Arius made history
more determinative than eternity. This unity in the determinative realm is the state, the Roman Empire. The orthodox Christians, by affirming one God of three equal persons, affirmed the equal ultimacy of the one and the many, and, by their doctrine of God, they affirmed His perfection, power, eternal decree or determinative role, and they thereby de-divinized both the state and history or time. The god of Arius was a philosophical abstraction, a chaos with polytheism added. The only person on man’s horizon was the emperor, and the emperor’s hearing and power were better and more immediate than God’s. The issue, contrary to Gibbon, was not the letter “i,” but the liberty of man under God. Because Athanasius (299-373) led the orthodox forces, the forces of hostility were aimed against him. Twice, intruders, state appointed and subservient bishops, were forced onto his see to replace him. Athanasius was exiled five times. His life was often in danger, and he spent six years in the desert with hermits. He was falsely accused of a wide variety of offenses, including murder and sexual immorality. His real offense was his orthodoxy, his refusal to allow the doctrine of a final and ultimate Christ to be replaced by beliefs which left the door wide open for the revival of Roman polytheism and statism. This is not to say that Athanasius’ position was flawless. The defect in Athanasius’ thinking is apparent in his statement, often repeated, “For He (Christ) was made man that we might be made God; and He manifested Himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and He endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality.”439 For Athanasius, this deification of man was not “by nature” but “given to man by grace,”440 and he objected to the Arian doctrine as conducive to a natural deification. In spite of his qualification, Athanasius’ concept here was a departure from the faith, and a dangerous one. It was an open door to paganism which Chalcedon emphatically closed.
12. Constantinople I At the First Council of Constantinople, in 381, the Nicene Creed was affirmed and sharpened, so that the authentic deity of the Holy Spirit as well as of the Father and the Son was affirmed. In the Council’s “Synodical Letter” of 382, “the true faith....the ancient faith....the faith of our baptism,” is defined: According to this faith there is one Godhead, Power and Substance of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost; the dignity being equal, and the majesty being equal in three perfect hypostases, i.e., three perfect persons. Thus there is no room for the heresy of Sabellius by the confusion of the hypostases, i.e., the destruction of the personalities; thus the blasphemy of the Eunomians, of the Arians, and of the Pneumatomachi is nullified, which divides the substance, the nature, and the godhead, and super-induces on the uncreated consubstantial and coeternal Trinity a nature posterior, created and of a different substance. We moreover preserve unperverted the doctrine of the incarnation of the Lord, holding the tradition that the dispensation of the flesh is neither soulless nor mindless nor imperfect; and knowing full well that God’s Word was perfect before the ages, and became perfect man in the last days for our salvation.441
The implications of the orthodox position were steadily becoming explicit, and it is not merely rhetoric that led them to call their opponents atheists and unbelievers. The logic of their position required them to define theism as trinitarian theism, with no subordination of persons in the ontological trinity. Monism is essentially pantheistic; instead of making man a creature of God, it makes man a participant in the very being of God, the only differentiation being in the degree of participation. Dualism simply divides divinity into conflicting and dialectical spheres: it is equally given to divinizing man. Can a non-Christian theism exist? The orthodox fathers saw Christ in New Testament terms, present as God the Son, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, in the whole of the Old Testament. Theism had always been trinitarian; no other kind of theism was possible. With a supposedly one-person God, no communication and mediation was possible, nor any salvation feasible.442 Jesus had denied that any man could come to the Father but through Him (John 14:6). Moreover, “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). There was no other God than this triune God, and hence no other theism was possible.
13. The Orthodox Faith vs. Heresies One God, three persons: this was the orthodox faith. Every attempt to weaken this faith had been also an attack on theism. Monarchianism had said that God the Son was indeed equal with the father, but it had denied that He was a separate or distinct person in the Godhead. This was the position of Paul of Samosata. The Logos existed in God just as human reason exists in man. The Logos was an impersonal power. This impersonal power of God was present in all men but most present in the man Jesus, whom it gradually deified through a union of will rather than of essence. In the modalistic Monarchianism of Sabellius, the Son and the Spirit were simple modes of the Father in His self-expression, developments, as it were, in His coherence. To avoid this, said Athanasius, “then is a true Word essential,” and, according to Scripture, “neither is the Word separated from the Father, nor was or is the Father ever Wordless.”443 Monarchianism had thus two alternatives, first, the adoptionist or dynamic view, whereby Christ was a mere man to whom the single person God, of single being, attached himself by a union of wills. This opened the door to other such attachments, so that God could enter history repeatedly to divinize it by His union with men, movements, emperors, or states. This was paganism again, and history was made the arena of God’s activity. The divine will did not issue an eternal decree and create and govern history from eternity; instead, the divine will worked in and through a fluid history by uniting His will with the will of a great man or movement to effect a desired end. Time and man become determinative, and the best god is the one who captures the dynamic union in history. For the second group, the Modalists, Christ was truly divine and one person with the Father, being simply a mode or manifestation of the divine being. There was no real incarnation. But, to preserve any reality to the Christ, it was necessary to ascribe to the being of the single person, God the Father, all that befell the Christ in history, including birth, suffering, and death. Thus, this supposedly transcen-dental being was made a creature of time and a subject of it, so that again the temporal arena became decisive over eternity, or, at the very least, it became an area which eternity and God must struggle, with frequent or possible setbacks, to conquer. Man and God are thus together struggling against the universe and time, warring against chaos. A version of this early doctrine appeared after Nicaea in Marcellus of Ancyra, who held that the eternal and impersonal Logos, immanent in God and itself the divine energy, became personal at
the incarnation, and, after the incarnation, was reabsorbed into the Godhead. Athanasius pertinently commented of Marcellus, “This perhaps he borrowed from the Stoics, who maintain that their God contracts and again expands with the creation, and then rests without end.” 444 The pagan concept of being was clearly in evidence: an aspect of God’s energy becomes personal in time, where it becomes powerful and commands history, and then, passing from history, returns to a contracted and lower state. History is again the central arena, and God comes to a fuller selfconsciousness in history. Thus, every departure from the orthodox trinitarian faith, however seemingly an exaltation of God and His transcendence, was a destruction of theism. The perfection and omnipotence of God were in effect denied, and eternity ceased to be determinative of time. History became the focal point of the universe, not the throne of God, and, to be effectual or even fully self-conscious, God had to enter history and link himself with determinative man. God had to find himself in man and in history! This was not theism but humanism. It was bluntly called atheism by the orthodox fathers. As they recognized, the only possible theism was orthodox trinitarian theism, three persons, equal and without subordination, one God, omnipotent, unchangeable, and wholly self-conscious and determinative.
14. Ephesus This same question, in another form, was dealt with by the Council of Ephesus in 431. Was Christ born a common man of the Virgin Mary, and did God then unite himself to this perfect man in moral fellowship and communion? Was it a case of a perfect coexistence and coworking of the human and the divine? In this opinion, the two natures continue as two natures, but in full communion rather than union. This opinion, commonly called Nestorian, was opposed by Cyril of Alexandria. At Ephesus, twelve Anathematisms were issued against the Nestorian position. The Second Anathema declared, “If anyone shall not confess that the Word of God the Father is united hypostatically to flesh, and that with that flesh of his own, he is one only Christ both God and man at the same time: let him be anathema.” The Third Anathema continued, “If anyone shall after the (hypostatic) union divide the hypostases in the one Christ, joining them by that connexion alone, which happens according to worthiness, or even authority and power, and not rather by a coming together, which is made by natural union: let him be anathema.” 445 The Third Anathema made clear the pagan doctrine which had been opened up by this heresy: a worthy man, with power and authority, could effect a common operation with God and become the manifestation of God for his age. The uniqueness of Christ would be destroyed, and the door left wide open to divine rulers and emperors. In this perspective, Christ was, as the Fifth Anathema pointed out, only “Theophorus,” that is, Godbearing man, instead of “very God” as well as very man. Again, the door was open to other God-bearing men. Jesus becomes, as the Seventh Anathema stated, merely a man “energized by the Word of God.” Can others then not claim to be also energized? Is not this the implication of this heresy? Nestorius, in keeping, as he hoped, God and man separate, had actually opened the door to their continual non-Christian, pagan union of wills. In his own words, he wanted to give “to God that which is God’s, and to man that which is
man’s,”446 but by his departure from the orthodox doctrine he had given the divine initiative to a man who had effected a union of power with God. The Council of Ephesus also issued a condemnation of the Messalians, also known as Euchites, a group of heretics with a thinly veiled dualism which resembled Manichaeanism. They believed that two souls existed in man, one good and the other evil. They despised physical labor, moral law, and marriage, and asserted that prayer alone would drive out the evil spirit or soul. They held to a changing divinity who united himself to man. Christ’s body was held to be infinite but was originally full of demons. Man could attain perfection to the point of equalling the deity in virtue and knowledge; perfection meant impassibility. Their infiltration of monasteries was especially extensive. The group survived and was on the medieval scene as the Bogomiles as well as the Messalians. Here, more openly but with the same tenacity, the issue was orthodox Christian theism vs. anti-Christianity.
15. Chalcedon Nestorianism having been dealt with at Ephesus, the Monophysite danger had yet to be faced, and, at the Council of Chalcedon, in 451, the problem was dealt with. More than that, a theological wall was erected against divinization. An important part of the Council’s history is the Tome of Leo. St. Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, in a statement sent to the Council, asserted the reality of the two natures in Christ: “For each of the natures retains its proper character without defect; and as the form of God does not take away the form of a servant, so the form of a servant does not impair the form of God.” God the son did not unite himself with a man already in existence but in fact put on humanity: What was assumed from the Lord’s mother was nature, not fault, nor does the wondrousness of the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, as born of a Virgin’s womb, imply that his nature is unlike ours. For the selfsame who is very God is also very man; and there is no illusion in this union, while the lowliness of man and the loftiness of Godhead meet together. For as “God” is not changed by the compassion (exhibited), so “Man” is not consumed by the dignity (bestowed). Moreover, there is no confusion of the two natures: “And as the Word does not withdraw from equality with the Father in glory, so the flesh does not abandon the nature of our kind.”447 That this statement should have come from St. Leo is of great importance, because, as a biographer has noted, “Leo was no heresy hunter.”448 Although “his personal contributions contained little that was strictly original,” St. Leo’s role is an unusual one, since “Neither before nor after him was there any Pope who actually took the initiative motu proprio in a controversy in which a purely doctrinal issue was at stake.”449 St. Leo was primarily a pastor and an administrator, but he was able to see that the life of the church was at stake in this controversy. Man’s salvation, as he repeatedly emphasized in letters and sermons, is at stake in the doctrine of the two natures.450 “For if there is not in Him true and perfect human nature, there is no taking of us upon Him, and the whole of our belief and teaching according to this heresy is emptiness and lying.”451 The two natures are in union without confusion.452 Man had sinned against God,
and through man must be made the perfect obedience and atonement, but man himself cannot render it. The incarnation changed all the possibilities of man’s existence. At this point, Leo shared Athanasius’ error: “the descent of God to man’s estate became the exaltation of man to God’s.”453 As with Athanasius, this was by grace, and Leo tended to see it as a communion, a sound view, rather than a heretical union. He saw that virtually all heresies stemmed from a failure to believe in the reality of the two natures in the one person of Christ.454 He insisted on the equality of the three persons of the Trinity, whose “substance admits of no diversity either in power or glory or eternity.”455 Christ must be “Himself True GOD, possessing unity and equality with the Father and with the Holy Ghost” in order to be our Savior, and He must be very man of very man as well as very God of very God: “If it is only man’s nature which is to be acknowledged, where is the Godhead which saves? if only God’s, where is the humanity which is saved?”456 Nestorius could accept Chalcedon in his own sense, but not Chalcedon and Ephesus as the unity they were. The Monophysites could accept Ephesus, but Chalcedon presented problems. Since Chalcedon stood firmly on the foundation of Ephesus and in unity with it, no partial interpretation or any deviation could stand approved. The Definition of Chalcedon thus preserved the reality of the eternal and electing God, and the reality of the incarnation. The Definition declared: Following, then, the holy fathers, we unite in teaching all men to confess the one and only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. This selfsame one is perfect (teleion) both in deity (theoteti) and also in human-ness (anthropoteti); this selfsame one is also actually (alethos) God and actually man, with a rational soul (psyches logikes) and a body. He is of the same reality as God (homoousion to patri) as far as his deity is concerned and of the same reality as we are ourselves (homoousion hemin) as far as his human-ness is concerned, thus like us in all respects, sin only excepted. Before time began (pro aionon) he was begotten of the Father, in respect of his deity, and now in this “last days,” for us and on behalf of our salvation, that selfsame one was born of Mary the virgin, who is God-bearer (theotokos) in respect to his human-ness (anthropoteta). (We also teach) that we apprehend (gnoridzomenon) this one and only Christ — Son, Lord, only-begotten — in two natures (duo physesis); (and we do this) without confusing the two natures (asunkutos), without transmuting one nature into the other (atreptos), without dividing them into two separate categories (adiaretos), without contrasting them according to area or function (achoristos). The distinctiveness of each nature is not nullified by the union. Instead, the “properties” (idiotetos) of each nature are conserved and both natures concur (suntre-chouses) in one “person” (prosopon) and in one hypostasis. They are not divided or cut into two prosopa, but are together the one and only and onlybegotten Logos of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus have the prophets of old testified; thus the Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us; thus the Symbol of the Fathers (N) has handed down (paradedoke) to us.457
The two natures were thus declared to have been united in Christ unchangeably, inseparably, and unconfusedly. This Definition became the touchstone of orthodoxy. Its implications were important. First, it sharply separated the Christian faith from non-Christian concepts of nature and being. Syncretism was thereby condemned. There could be no legitimate fusion between Christianity and non-Christian religion and philosophies. Second, by denying the confusion of the human and the divine even in Christ, it denied its possibility in any other person or institution. The divinization of the state, the ruler, or the state office was undercut. The gap between the uncreated being of God and the created being of man could not be nullified. Even the incarnation, which was final and unique, was without confusion of the two natures. The persistent pagan attempts to divinize man and his order were denied any toehold in orthodox Christianity. Third, the doctrine of the Trinity was underscored: three persons, one God, all three perfect and equally ultimate and powerful in all things. Thus the equal ultimacy of the one and the many was further defended. The truth about life was neither unity nor particularity, neither social atomism nor totalitarianism, but rather the equal importance of both the one and the many. The Trinity, three persons, one God, made impossible any legitimate Christian totalitarianism or atomism: the one and the many are equally ultimate in the triune God. Significantly, in the same year, 451, the forces of Persian dualism were halted in their westward religious and military march by the Armenians, who, while out of touch with Chalcedon, nevertheless fought a similar battle. At the crucial battle of Avarair, Vartan Mamigonian, hero of the Armenians, while losing his life and the battle in a bloody stand, still halted the Persian march.
16. Pelagianism and Asceticism Since Chalcedon had blocked one avenue of incursion by paganism into Christianity, other avenues had to be used. The doctrine of God and of Christ had been defined: the new approach was made through the doctrine of man. Already, before Ephesus, Pelagianism had allied itself with Nestorius in 429, and the Council of Ephesus in 431 linked in condemnation “the opinions of Nestorius and Celestius,” Celestius (or Coelestius) being a Pelagian leader. Pelagianism was pagan moralism and philosophy, comparable to eighteenth century Deism in many respects. Warfield has correctly stated, “The real question at issue was whether there was any need for Christianity at all; whether by his own power man might not attain eternal felicity,” the only function of Christianity being to help man in this self-salvation. The origins of Pelagianism were monastic and ascetic, and they were philosophical.458 It is important to note the equation of asceticism with philosophy. As Richardson noted, philosophy meant virginity, and, in its earlier usages, did “not refer to Christian virginity, but primarily to philosophical celibacy.... The Neo-Platonic philosophy of the times, through its doctrine of the purification of the soul by its liberation from the body or sensuous things, taught celibacy and ascetic practices generally. So Plotinus (d. A.D. 270) practiced and taught to a degree, and Porphyry (d. 301+) more explicitly.”459 As Prestige noted, pagan mystics “prayed to be delivered from the flesh rather than sin.”460 Hellenized Jewish hermits appeared well before Christian hermits in the Egyptian desert, and there was a Hellenized Jewish colony of hermits near Lake Mareotis. From the second century B.C., the “immured ones” of Serapis lived incarcerated in cells near their god, receiving food through small windows and living and dying in their holes.461 This pagan asceticism, deeply rooted, infiltrated into Christianity.
Asceticism is of two varieties. First, monistic asceticism holds to the oneness of all being with gradation and variation. Thus, particularity is an illusion, and unity is the goal and truth of being. Spirit is high on the scale of being, while matter is a thinness of being, so that spirit has more substantiality than matter. The holy man seeks to ascend on this ladder of being from the nothingness of evil and matter to the substantiality and holiness of pure spirit. For Dante, the depth of Inferno is locked in ice and darkness and is motionless, close to non-being, whereas the ultimate vision of heaven is the fulness of light, energy, and motion, pure spirit as against pure matter. Second, dualistic asceticism sees reality divided into two hostile camps, spirit versus matter. These two worlds are in confusion: the way of holiness is to disentangle the two worlds and affirm the good world, the world of spirit. Man must therefore surrender, negate, or destroy in himself all that which would affirm the evil world of matter. This can be done either by ascetic practices or by debauchery, by treating the flesh as outside the world of law or morality and hence open to any use, ascetic or sensual, which treats it with contempt. Biblical revelation is radically hostile to both forms of asceticism. Matter and spirit are both created by God, both fallen in Adam and under the curse, and both objects of saving grace and the resurrection.462 The church, following the Scripture, began by condemning the practice and theory of asceticism: If any bishop, or presbyter, or deacon, or indeed any one of the sacerdotal catalogue, abstains from marriage, flesh, and wine, not for his own exercise, but because he abominates these things, forgetting that “all things were very good,” and that “God made man male and female,” and blasphemously abuses the creation, either let him reform, or let him be deprived, and be cast out of the church, and the same for one of the laity.463 Nonetheless, however, asceticism of both kinds crept into the church and brought with it a high view of man and his ability to save himself. As Scott noted, asceticism, already “fully developed” in the empire among the pagans, crept into the church with monasticism, and “The monk needs no Saviour; he is a self-redeemer like the Stoic or any other moralist.”464 As Pickman noted: In this faith there was nothing specifically Christian: pagan priests and philosophers had held their prestige by similar methods, and even the physicians of that day were expected to be chaste and abstinent during a stated period before administering their cure. A canon of the Council of Tours held much later, in 461, shows that this conception was never eradicated: Priests and deacons are urged to be always chaste: for at any moment they may be called upon to perform some holy office, as to say mass, baptize, etc. (Canon No. 1).
Evidently asceticism’s popular appeal in those days was less on account of its psychological effect on the ascetic himself, than of its physical effect on those to whom he ministered. It was the chosen weapon of the humanitarian. That is why before long a physician who did not become a monk lost his practice.465 More than humanitarianism, it was humanism, a belief in the ability of man to divinize himself by ascent on the scale of being. As Polycarp Sherwood has summarized the teaching of St. Maximus the Confessor, “Deification is the ultimate fulfilling of human nature’s capacity for God.... In actual historical fact deification and salvation are the same.” This is qualified by the statement that it is possible through Christ and by grace, so that “deification is wholly a gift of God and is not attainable by nature’s nude powers,” but the deification still stands, and the human powers are extensive.466 In Lactantius, the basic premise of asceticism appeared clearly: ... those things which belong to God occupy the higher part, namely the soul, which has dominion over the body; but those which belong to the devil occupy the lower part, manifestly the body: for this, being earthly, ought to be subject to the soul, as the earth is to heaven. For it is, as it were a vessel which this heavenly spirit may employ as a temporary dwelling.467 The soul thus belongs to the enduring One, and the body to the transient Many. Salvation is thus not so much in Jesus Christ as in man’s soul. According to Lactantius, Knowledge in us is from the soul, which has its origin from heaven; ignorance from the body, which is from the earth: whence we have something in common with God and with animal creation. Thus, since we are composed of these two elements, the one of which is endowed with light, the other with darkness, a part of knowledge is given to us, and a part of ignorance. Over this bridge, so to speak, we may pass without any danger of falling; for all those who have inclined to either side, either towards the left hand or the right, have fallen.468 The balance Lactantius had in mind is between divine philosophy and natural philosophy: it means keeping informed on both sides. But the gap between the soul, from God, and the body, from the earth, cannot be balanced: the soul is far greater and more important than the body, for it is that which we have “in common with God.” When Leo the Great opposed Manichaean asceticism and dualism, he did it at times with almost monistic rather than Christian weapons. In denying the Manichaean view of evil, he answered that “evil has no positive existence,” i.e., it is not a metaphysical substance but rather “a penalty inflicted on substance.” Evil thus existed in men not as a substance but as a penalty thereon.469 But, more than that, evil is not a metaphysical but rather an ethical condition, not so much a penalty but rather a moral act and condition which brings on the penalty of God’s wrath and of death. Fasting in the Bible appears on a limited scale as a voluntary act and as an expression of concentrated grief or repentance. It now became a good work, a self-restraint which led to spiritual pleasures.470 It was a means of vanquishing the Enemy, an armor in the warfare against
the devil. It was and is required in Lent.471 Lenten fasting is a means of restoring purity.472 St. Leo’s ascetic tendencies, however, were relatively mild, and his general stand was resolutely Christian. In Salvian, regrettably, we find the weakening of the body required, “for the health of the body is inimical to the soul.” The soul is “an attribute which is divine,” and the body “an enemy which is of the earth.”473 For Gregory the Great, asceticism was a prerequisite to authority.474 Sacerdotal celibacy was of central importance to him.475 In terms of this ascetic perspective, matter was equated with a lower and temporal reality, with a negligible particularity, and the spirit was equated with a good and eternal reality and unity. This position varied in emphasis from a Neoplatonism to a neo-Manichaeanism. Its consequence was a tendency to despise things temporal in favor of things eternal. But, for orthodox Christianity, matter and spirit are alike created by God, alike fallen, and alike redeemed. The life of holiness is not living in terms of the spirit and eternity, but obeying the word of God, living under God both materially and spiritually. Time and matter are not to be despised; like spirit and eternity, they are good or evil only in their relationship to God and His word. Augustine, coming out of Platonism and Manichae-anism, and at first showing their traces, struck out against this false view of matter: “it is sin which is evil, and not the substance or nature of flesh.”476 Moreover, There is no need, therefore, that in our sins and vices we accuse the nature of the flesh to the injury of the Creator, for in its own kind and degree the flesh is good; but to desert the Creator good, and live according to the created good, is not good, whether a man choose to live according to the flesh, or according to the soul, or according to the whole human nature, which is composed of flesh and soul, and which is therefore spoken of either by the name flesh alone, or by the name soul alone. For he who extols the nature of the soul as the chief good, and condemns the nature of the flesh as if it were evil, assuredly is fleshly both in his love of the soul and hatred of the flesh; for these his feelings arise from human fancy, not from divine truth.477 The origin of sin is not in nature but in will, and sin is contrary to nature, which was created good, “and whose property it was to abide with God.” Sin is not metaphysical but ethical. “In Scripture they are called God’s enemies who oppose His rule, not by nature, but by vice having no power to hurt Him, but only themselves.”478 Sin is disobedience, rebellion, living for oneself, as one’s own god. Adam’s sin as act was preceded by an evil will. “The devil, then, would not have ensnared man in the open and manifest sin of doing what God had forbidden, had man not already begun to live for himself.”479
17. Deprecation of Matter and History This deprecation of matter and time, against which Augustine spoke, meant also the deprecation of history. In Greek terminology the idea was important, not the matter. In Gnostic and heretical
writings and apocryphal books, history was often casually treated and rewritten because it was unimportant: it merely illustrated an eternal verity. As applied to the life of Christ, within the fold of the church, this deprecation of history meant that the atoning death of Christ on the cross gave way to the sacrament, which now was the source of atonement rather than the historical event it was to commemorate. In the Nestorian teacher, Narsai, this appeared very clearly. Concerning the elements of the Lord’s Supper, he declared, “And He commanded them to receive (and) drink of it, all of them, that it might be making atonement for their debts for ever.” 480 Each celebration of the sacrament is comparable to the creative act of Genesis 1: He (the priest) summons the Spirit to come down and dwell in the bread and wine and make them the Body and Blood of King Messiah.... The Spirit descends upon the oblation without change (of place), and causes the power of His Godhead to dwell in the bread and wine and completes the mystery of our Lord’s resurrection from the dead.... Towards the height the priest gazes boldly; and he calls the Spirit to come and celebrate the Mysteries which he has offered. The Spirit he asks to come and brood over the oblation and bestow upon it power and divine operation. The Spirit comes down at the request of the priest, be he never so great a sinner, and celebrates the Mysteries by the mediation of the priest whom He has consecrated (or, who has consecrated). It is not the priest’s virtue (or, his virtuousness, moral goodness) that celebrates the adorable Mysteries; but the Holy Spirit celebrates by His brooding. The Spirit broods, not because of the worthiness of the priest, but because of the Mysteries which are set upon the altar.... without a priest they (sc. the Mysteries) are not celebrated for ever and ever.481 Power thus has flowed, and centrality also, from the historical event to the memorial symbol and to the church which guards and celebrates that symbol. Forgiveness of sins and salvation are now attributes of the symbol rather than the act of atonement, and the worshiper “receives in his hands the adorable Body of the Lord of all; and he embraces it and kisses it with love and affection.” The church’s proclamation during distribution is plain spoken: Lo, the Medicine of life! Lo, it is distributed in Holy Church. Come, ye mortals, receive and be pardoned your debts. This is the Body and Blood of our Lord in truth, which the peoples have received, and by which they have been pardoned without doubt. This is the Medicine that heals diseases and festering sores. Receive, ye mortals, and be purified by it from your debts. Come, receive for naught forgiveness of debts and offences through the Body and Blood which takes away the sin of the whole world.482 Not only does the symbol take over the function of the act, but the representative, the priest, “bears in himself the image of our Lord in that hour.”483 So great is the power of the priest that people need to be reminded, that when “the priest receives the Sacrament,” he takes it “that he may teach the people that even the priest himself stands in need of mercy.”484 The priest “is a mediator between God and men.”485 He thus has assumed the role of Christ. In Baptism, “He calls and entreats the hidden Power to come down unto him and bestow visible power to give life. The waters become fruitful, as a womb; and the power of grace is like the seed that begets
life.”486 Indeed, it can be said that “A mortal holds the keys of the height, as one in authority; and he binds and looses by the word of his mouth, like the Creator.”487 The priest has taken the place of the emperor as the great mediator and the source of continuity between the divine and the human. Even Gabriel and Michael “bow beneath the Will that is concealed” in the priest’s administration of the Mysteries: And if spiritual impassible beings honour thine office, who will not weave a garland of praises for the greatness of thine order? Let us marvel every moment at the exceeding greatness of thine order, which has bowed down the height and the depth under its authority. The priests of the Church have grasped authority in the height and the depth; and they give commands to heavenly and earthly beings. They stand as mediators between God and man, and with their words they drive iniquity from mankind. The key to the divine mercies is placed in their hands, and according to their pleasure they distribute life to men.... The debt of mankind the priest pays by means of his ministry; and the written bond of his race he washes out with the water and renews it (sc. his race).488 This saving role — this authority over “heavenly and earthly beings,” and this mediatorial status and power over evil — represents the continuation in the priesthood of the emperor’s redemptive office. These concepts, which steadily crept into the church, became the cornerstones of sacerdotalism and of papalism. The church, the body of Christ, i.e., of His perfected humanity, came to regard itself as a continuation of the incarnation, so that the confusion prohibited by Chalcedon with respect to the person of Christ was accomplished in the church, the redeemed humanity becoming now the continuing incarnation.
18. Augustine on the Pelagians It is not surprising, then, that Pelagianism spread so readily. Although clearly a novelty in the church, it had the advantage of conformity to the pagan presuppositions of men. According to Warfield, “the central and formative principle of Pelagianism” was “the assumption of the plenary ability of man.”489 The Pelagian accusation against orthodoxy seemed a persuasive one: first, predestination, or sovereign grace, was a denial of free will. Second, a denial of free will was fatalism, immoralism, and a destruction of history. Augustine, in meeting this attack, was, first of all, resolved to be strictly biblical: “For whenever a question arises on an unusually obscure subject, on which no assistance can be rendered by clear and certain proofs of the Holy Scriptures, the presumption of man ought to restrain itself; nor should it attempt anything definite by leaning to either side.”490 Man’s creaturely reason must submit to God’s infinite wisdom as declared in Scripture: “But we must first bend our necks to the authority of the Holy Scriptures, in order that we may arrive at knowledge and understanding through faith.”491 Second, sovereign grace, which is proclaimed through all Scripture, means predestination: “between grace and predestination there is only this difference, that predestination is the preparation forgrace, while grace is the donation itself.” 492 If there is a
sovereign God, it is impossible for there to be anything but predestination, which is merely another way of saying that God is sovereign, that God is the first cause as well as the sustainer of all creation. The alternative to predestination is not free will but chance. Therefore, it follows, third, that it is predestination and grace which establish free will: Do we then by grace make void free will? God forbid! Nay, rather we establish free will. For even as the law by faith, so free will by grace, is not made void, but established. For neither is the law fulfilled except by free will; but by the law is the knowledge of sin, by faith the acquisition of grace against sin, by grace the healing of the soul from the disease of sin, by free will the love of righteousness, by love of righteousness the accomplishment of the law. Accordingly, as the law is not made void, but is established through faith, since faith procures grace whereby the law is fulfilled; so free will is not made void through grace, but is established, since grace cures the will whereby righteousness is freely loved.493 Man is a creature: thus, he is a secondary cause, not the primary cause. His free will is not the absolute freedom of God but the freedom of the creature. The freedom for man claimed by Pelagianism is the freedom of God, a plenary power, and it is a manifest impossibility. The freedom of the creature is possible only through grace, which reestablishes the lost liberty of the creature by its victory over the slavery of sin. Thus, faith establishes the law, and grace establishes free will. Wherefore the free choice of the human will we by no means destroy, when the Grace of God, by which the free choice itself is helped, we deny not with ungrateful pride, but rather set forth with grateful piety. For it is ours to will: but the will itself is both admonished that it may arise, and healed, that it may have power; and enlarged, that it may receive; and filled, that it may have.494
19. The Church as New Rome The church, however, gradually moved towards semi- Pelagianism, despite some early stands against it in Africa. The Council of Orange, in 529, affirmed at best only a moderate Augustinianism.495 The decline after that was steady. As a result, both asceticism and sacerdotalism continued to develop and flourish. The church now became a rival to the empire as the heir of old Rome. Political importance was the principle of ecclesiastical importance, and hence the basis of the Roman see’s claims to central authority. Peter established many churches: why was Rome so central, assuming that he established it? The early councils established the eminence of sees in terms of their political role, and this was plainly apparent in Canon XXVIII of Chalcedon, when the bishop of New Rome, Constantinople, was granted the same honor as the bishop of Old Rome, on account of the removal of the empire: “For the Fathers rightly granted privileges to the throne of old Rome, because it was the royal city.”496
The church increasingly became the new Rome, but there were tendencies towards a revival of the same concepts in the empire. The position of Justinian II apparently was that “Christ as King of Kings is the supreme power,” but “He rules through the rulers of the earth, rather than directly over each individual human being.” This was a concept related to the Greco-Roman idea of Zeus-Jupiter as “pambasilius.” Later, Christomimesis came to be a part of the Byzantine imperial ceremonial, so that the emperor represented, in his golden costume, “insofar as it is possible for a mere human being to do so, Jesus Christ Himself!”497 The later developments within the papacy have been sharply summarized by Buckler: The Pope claimed that he was the source of all authority, spiritual and secular, and, forgetting his vicegerency of Christ, claimed to be the vicar of God on earth, and the vicar of the Apostle of God on earth. These were the titles claimed by the Abbasid Caliphs of Baghdad. The Pope had, in reality, become the supreme Prince of this World, and his pretensions resemble the claims set forth to our Lord on the Mount of Temptation (Luke, iv. 5). In his claim to be the absolute source of all law and justilia, to hold it in his breast, and to be in himself a Theos Epiphanes, he had become the Hellenistic monarch within the Church, and the son of man was once more his slave, condemned to a servile righteousness.498 Meanwhile, also, another threat to Christianity was reviving in the form of natural law. The Institutes of Justinian clearly perpetuated the Roman doctrine and transmitted it to the centuries to come.499 The universal sovereignty and government of God was restricted to the realm of grace and revelation, and nature became the universal government rather than God. This appeared clearly in a statement of Orosius: “Among Romans, as I have said, I am a Roman; among Christians, a Christian; among men, a man. The state comes to my aid through its laws, religion, through its appeal to the conscience, and nature through its claim of universality.”500 Augustine had declared that unity is transcendental because God is transcendental; the unity and center of the City of God is in eternity, and hence it cannot surrender to a this-worldly authority and purpose.501 This emphasis was formally maintained but increasingly compromised. Nature was steadily to be given authority and universality over creation and over reason, and Christ was to be steadily restricted to eternity and faith.
20. Later Councils To return to the Councils and their development, the Second Council of Constantinople (553) reaffirmed the position of Chalcedon and, in The Capitula, sharpened the definition in detail.502 The Third Council of Constantinople (680-681) dealt with the Monothelites. Since the twonature doctrine was entrenched now as the hallmark of orthodoxy, the argument shifted from nature to will. The Monothelites held to one will only in Christ, charging the orthodox party with a destruction of the unity of Christ’s person. The term “will” was used not only in the sense of the ability of choice, self-determination, and volition, but also to apply to appetites, desires, and affections. Was Christ capable of fear, suffering, and shrinking from death? The Duothelites, the orthodox party, charged that the one-will doctrine destroyed the incarnation and gave only a
docetic character to Christ. The Letter of Pope Agatho to the emperor clearly affirmed the orthodox position: “And we recognize that each one (of the two natures) of the one and the same incarnated, that is, humanated (humanati) Word of God is in him unconfusedly, inseparably, and unchangeably, intelligence alone discerning a unity, to avoid the error of confusion. For we equally detest the blasphemy of division and of commixture.”503 The pagan principle of continuity had to be denied; there could be no confusion of natures or of wills. The discontinuity, metaphysically, of God and man must be maintained. But the Christian principle of continuity is God’s sovereign and total government of all His creation and His redeeming power as manifested in the incarnation and atonement. This, clearly, is not a metaphysical continuity. This Christian principle of continuity closes the door to the pagan principle, and, at the same time, it bars a pagan deism which would isolate God from the world by its limitations on God while permitting the upward and divinizing ascent of man. The Letter of Agatho and the Roman Synod of 125 Bishops, a letter of instruction to their legates, stressed the perfect union without confusion of the two natures and two wills “in one Person and one Subsistence, not scattered or divided into two Persons, nor confused into one composite nature.... Wherefore, as we confess that he truly has two natures or substances, viz.: the Godhead and the manhood, inconfusedly, indivisibly and unchangeably (united), so also the rule of piety instructs us that he has two natural wills and two natural operations, as perfect God and perfect man, one and the same our Lord Jesus Christ.”504 The Council’s Definition of Faith, in the course of its statement, affirmed both the discontinuity and the unity, as well as the purpose of the Christian principle of continuity, the salvation of the race: Preserving therefore the inconfusedness and indivisibility, we make briefly this whole confession, believing our Lord Jesus Christ to be one of the Trinity and after the incarnation our true God, we say that his two natures shone forth in his one subsistence in which he both performed the miracles and endured the sufferings through the whole of his economic conversation, and that not in his appearance only but in very deed, and this by reason of the difference of nature which must be recognized in the same Person, for although joined together yet each nature wills and does the things proper to it and that indivisibly and inconfusedly. Wherefore we confess two wills and two operations, concurring most fitly in him for the salvation of the human race.505 By the time of the seventh ecumenical council in 787, the Second Council of Nicaea, the earlier theological sharpness was blurred. The cause of the council was the Byzantine iconoclastic controversy. The hostility of the iconoclastic emperors was not against icons as such, but against icons of the church, because the imperial icons were the true representations of Christ’s government. As Ladner has pointed out, The Byzantine emperors certainly did believe in the Incarnation, but they did not accept the following two consequences: the absolute supremacy of the Church in spiritual matters and the terrestrial representation of the celestial world in Christian imagery. Many historians have stated that the iconoclastic controversy
developed from a rather ritual question to a fundamental contest between Church and State, that is to say the emperor. But the truth is that iconoclasm was from its beginning an attack upon the visible representation of the civitas Dei on this earth. Not only because the images had such an important place in the Byzantine Church, theologically and liturgically, that an attack against them was ipso facto an attack against the Church but also and still more because, as we shall see, the emperors showed unmistakably that even in maintaining the belief in the supreme, supernatural government of Christ, they did not wish to permit on this earth any other but their own image or more exactly the imagery of their own imperial natural world. They wished even more ardently than their predecessors and than most of the occidental emperors to be the Christian, the sacred emperors. “I am King and Priest,” wrote Leo III to Pope Gregory II, following the old caesaropapistic theory — but they understood this in such a way that only their sacred empire was to be the material form of Christendom in the terrestrial world; the Church would be only the liturgical function of the empire. Accordingly the supernatural should remain abstract, Christ and his heavenly world should not and could not be expressed visibly in images.506 Byzantine caesaropapism was long linked to various heresies which challenged the orthodox doctrine of Christ, monophysitism, Arianism, Nestorianism, and monotheletism, as well as others. These heresies, by “narrowing the extension of Christ’s government in the human world widened the extension of the emperor’s rulership.”507 Thus, the question at issue was whether the state or the church was the highest expression of the divine life on earth. Both church and state were thus claiming to be the institution whereby Christ re-divinized the world, or, at the very least, maintained his divine manifestation on earth. The basic premise of Chalcedon had therefore been set aside: fusion and confusion had become basic to the faith. The human order could be transubstantiated by the divine order, and the argument was over the question of which order received this position. Was the new polis or divine empire the church, or was the Christian state? Earlier, churchmen had not only condemned images but ridiculed their use by the Romans. Lactantius dealt with the Roman excuse that they worshiped heavenly beings and merely venerated their images, precisely the argument later used by the church: But, they say, we do not fear the images themselves, but those beings after whose likeness they were formed, and to whose names they are dedicated. You fear them doubtless on this account, because you think that they are in heaven; for if they are gods, the case cannot be otherwise. Why, then, do you not raise your eyes to heaven, and, invoking their names, offer sacrifices in the open air? Why do you look to walls, and wood, and stone, rather than to the place where you believe them to be?508 Augustine classified the “many worshippers of tombs and pictures” together with those who, in the name of grief and religion, are gluttonous or drunk at funerals. He saw them alike as an offense to the faith.509 The Second Council of Constantinople (553) in condemning Nestorianism, declared that the worship of a Christ who began as a man “and became worthy of
Sonship, and to be worshipped out of a regard to the Person of God and the Word (just as one worships the image of an emperor) is anathema.”510 The Definition of the “Iconoclastic Conciliabulum,” held in Constantinople in 754, condemned images. This council, attended by 338 bishops, the largest church assembly to that date, although neither Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, nor Jerusalem sent representatives, has been condemned by church historians.511 Let us examine the Definition of this council, as it defines the faith and images. After we had carefully examined their decrees under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we found that the unlawful act of painting living creatures blasphemed the fundamental doctrine of our salvation — namely, the Incarnation of Christ, and contradicted the six holy synods. These condemned Nestorius because he divided the one Son and Word of God into two sons, and on the other side, Arius, Dioscorus, Eutyches, and Severus, because they maintained a mingling of the two natures of the one Christ. The Councils forbid “that one may imagine any kind of separation or mingling in opposition to the unsearchable, unspeakable, and incomprehensible union of the two natures in the one hypostasis or person.” The name Christ represents the union of God and man. To represent Christ is “a double blasphemy — the one in making an image of the Godhead, and the other by mingling the Godhead and manhood.” When blamed for depicting the Godhead, many iconophiles took refuge in the excuse: “We represent only the flesh of Christ which we have seen and handled.” But this is a Nestorian error, to hold to the possibility of their separate existence. Any attempt therefore to make images and claim for them either a part in the unique incarnation or a representation thereof, or merely a representation of Christ’s humanity, falls into heresy at every turn: Whoever, then, makes an image of Christ, either depicts the Godhead which cannot be depicted, or mingles it with the manhood (like the Monophysites), or he represents the body of Christ as not made divine and separate and as a person apart, like the Nestorians. The only admissible figure of the humanity of Christ, however, is bread and wine at the holy Supper. This and no other form, this and no other type, has he chosen to represent his incarnation. The only permissible representation or sign is that which Christ himself has appointed. The council went on to define an early statement of that doctrine which came to be known as transubstantiation. All images were decreed barred by the Council: “Christianity has rejected the whole of heathenism, and so not merely heathen sacrifices, but also the heathen worship of images.” Thus, imperial images were implicitly forbidden also. The council grounded its position in “the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers.” It barred not only images but also the robbing of churches by “prince or secular official... under the pretext of destroying images.” The council believed it had “more
firmly proclaimed the inseparability of the two natures of Christ” and “banished all idolatry,” and, among its anathemas, it declared: (10) If anyone ventures to represent the hypostatic union of the two natures in a picture, and calls it Christ, and thus falsely represents a union of the two natures, let him be anathema! (11) If anyone separates the flesh united with the person of the Word from it, and endeavors to represent it separately in a picture, let him be anathema! (12) If anyone separates the Christ into two persons, and endeavors to represent Him who was born of the Virgin separately, and thus accepts only a relative union of the natures, let him be anathema! (13) If anyone represents in a picture the flesh deified by its union with the Word, and thus separates it from the Godhead, let him be anathema!512 The purpose of the Second Council of Nicaea, in 787, was to overturn the iconoclastic council and to make icons essential to the faith. It was ratified by 350 bishops. In Henry R. Percival’s words, “The council decreed that similar veneration and honour should be paid to the representations of the Lord and the Saints as was accustomed to be paid to the ‘laurata’ and tablets representing the Christian emperors, to wit, that they should be bowed to, and saluted with kisses, and attended with lights and the offering of incense. This was defined as ‘the veneration of honour and affection’ rather than worship.”513 The council expressed no condemnation for the imperial cult; it simply rated the ecclesiastical icons as more important and called iconoclasm “the worst of all heresies, as it subverts the incarnation of our Saviour.”514 The council held to the continuity of the incarnation in the church; hence it could not see iconoclasm in the church as anything but a denial of the incarnation. Images could be more influential on the faithful than the Scripture, for St. Gregory of Nyssa read the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac many times apparently without weeping, “but when once he saw it painted he wept.”515 Significantly, the council, in defining its position and affirming its faith in Christ, did not at all refer to Christ’s two natures without confusion.516 It did affirm its faith in the intercession of saints, a new form of the pagan continuity concept. It affirmed Christ’s “two natures, recognizing him as perfect God and perfect man, as also the Council of Chalcedon hath promulgated,”517 but again it did not say that the two natures were without confusion. The two wills were also affirmed, and the Third Council of Constantinople, but again without citing that crucial phrase: without confusion. Since this question of confusion had been extensively cited by the Council of 754, the Second Nicaean Council in 787 left itself especially vulnerable in failing to answer the charges made, and, in its reaffirmation of the six ecumenical councils, in avoiding so critical an aspect of their faith. It recalled minor aspects of past councils, such as the condemnation of “the fables of Origen, Evagrius, and Didymus” in the Fifth Council, but, while coming close to the Chalcedonian statement, side-stepped the crucial question. Confusion was now the catholic faith. And, although in the West, the Council of Frankfort (794) and the Convention of Paris (825) were hostile to icons, the veneration of images became identified with the faith in the West as well as the East. The battle in Christendom was to be the
warfare of church and state in their claims to best represent the divine continuity on earth. The re-divinization of earthly orders was in process.
21. The One and the Many Meanwhile, through asceticism, heavily imbued with Hellenic thought, a non-Christian concept of sin made increasing headway. Evil came to be seen as the wilful attachment to things temporal rather than things eternal. The non-Christian attempt to save history by divinizing it had again become a flight from history. The Christian doctrine of creation, by denying divinity to man and by making time rather than eternity his earthly habitat, had made history central to man. The universe, time, and man had been created by God, and the time of their end would eventually come, when time should be no more. But, meanwhile, history is important precisely because it is determined by the omnipotent and sovereign God and is an area of valid secondary causes rather than fortuitous events. Because the universe and history are created by the triune, absolutely selfconscious and self-sufficient God, it is totally predestined and governed by Him, since nothing can be unknown to Him or exist apart from His decree. Hence, the world of time and space cannot be an atomistic and meaningless world of independent particularity. Neither can it be a world with its own independent universals and plans, because it was created in total accord with and in terms of the plan or the universal of God. The one and the many, the universals and the particulars, cannot exist in history in independence of God or in independence of one another. They are interdependent upon one another since they are from a common and equally ultimate creative act, and hence they are both derivative from His decree. In God, the One and the Many are equally and absolutely ultimate. History, therefore, is completely meaningful. Not a sparrow falls, nor even a hair (Matt. 10:29-30), apart from this total decree. History and man are rescued from the “blind alley of the absolute particular” (to use Van Til’s phrase), and also from the meaningless ocean of undifferentiated being, from the abyss of unity in the chaos of being. According to Van Til, “The ontological trinity will be our interpretative concept everywhere. God is our concrete universal; in Him thought and being are coterminous, in Him the problem of knowledge is solved.”518 This biblical doctrine has been extensively compromised, and it was to be subjected to further attempts to fit it into a Hellenic mold. Its impact was nonetheless great, and its course of influence and sway only just begun.
Chapter VII The Returnof Dialectic Thought 1. Boethius In the philosopher Boethius (d. 525), an early example of the scholastic method and framework can be seen. In his Theological Tractates we have a spirited defense of the orthodox Christian faith; in The Consolation of Philosophy, written in prison awaiting death, we have an expression of a faith in the face of death which never refers to Jesus Christ or to Christianity. The gap between the two sets of documents is not as great as it would appear. Boethius defended the doctrines of the Trinity and the two natures of Christ; he was theologically committed to the orthodox faith, but he was philosophically committed to the old form-matter dialectic, and this latter commitment was decisive in his thinking. When faced with death, he turned to that philosophy. For Boethius, God is Form. “But the Divine Substance is Form without matter, and is therefore One, and is its own essence.”519 So then if God be predicated thrice of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the threefold predication does not result in plural number. The risk of that, as has been said, attends only on those who distinguish Them according to merit. But Catholic Christians, allowing no difference of merit in God, assuming Him to be Pure Form and believing Him to be nothing else than His own essence, rightly regard the statement “the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, and this Trinity is one God,” not as an enumeration of different things but as a reiteration of one and the same thing, like the statement, “blade and brand are one sword” or “sun, sun, and sun, are one sun.”520 It is not our concern here to analyze Boethius as a theologian, but to call attention to his basically philosophical orientation and concern. As Boethius further stated of God, “Again, concerning His Form, we have already shown that He is Form, and truly One without Plurality.” 521 It is already apparent that “the Faith” Boethius was most zealously defending was Hellenic, and the “Trinity” he championed was outwardly Christian but inwardly Greek. “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau” (Gen. 27:22). There was no lack of earnestness and sincerity on the part of Boethius; the new faith seemed an admissible means of expression and a true representation of the old philosophy. Accordingly, for Boethius, God was the great universal, the true One, but God did not represent plurality or particularity, because God is not Matter, and plurality and particularity are attributes of matter.522 In De Fide Catholica, Boethius affirmed the doctrine of creation, because he was recounting the biblical narrative.523 But, in dealing with the same question philosophically, his answer is radically different:
VI. Everything that is participates in absolute Being through the fact that it exists. In order to be something it participates in something else. Hence that which exists participates in absolute Being through the fact that it exists, but it exists in order to participate in something else. VII. Every simple thing possesses as a unity its absolute and its particular Being. VIII. In every composite thing absolute and individual Being are not one and the same. IX. Diversity repels; likeness attracts. That which seeks something outside itself is demonstrably of the same nature as that which it seeks.524 In this thoroughly Hellenic perspective, the distinction between the divine being of God and the created being of the universe and of man is lost; there is instead one common Being in which all things participate. Their particularity is their individual being; their absolute Being is God. This is the Hellenic rationalism which characterized scholasticism. The theology of Boethius, moreover, is not biblical theology; it is at all times rational theology, and the defense of orthodoxy is to be undertaken on rational grounds.
2. Scholasticism It is this characteristic that has led scholars to describe Boethius as the first scholastic.525 The scholastics, moreover, had an academic orientation, which brings them closer to the twentieth century era than to any other age. Intellectual inquiry was directed primarily to the analysis and critique of what other scholars had to say about any question rather than to satisfying either the questions of the naïve mind or of practical living. The inquiry could be rationalistic, empirical, and theoretical or practical, but it was always academically oriented. 526 Moreover, the scholastic, as well as much of the medieval world, were marked by the eminence of youthfulness. Pieper has well described this aspect of medieval thought: We happen on another surprising element in the history of medieval philosophy when we consider Abelard and Bernard: namely, how young these writers and magistri were when they began their public activity. Nothing is wider of the mark than the image of white-bearded monks sitting in cells remote from the bustle of the world and penning on parchment their tractates. Boethius was all of twenty years old when he wrote the first of his books which were to influence so many centuries to come. He began the commentaries on Aristotle at twenty-five. At thirty Anselm of Canterbury was prior in Le Bec. Bonaventura, already a university teacher at twenty-seven, was called at the age of thirty-six to be General of a Franciscan order that had already spread through the entire West. Duns Scotus wrote his principal work, the enormous Opus Oxoniense, at the age of thirty-five. And William of Ockham was only twenty-five when he turned his back for good upon his distinguished career in science and letters.527
Youthfulness flourishes in a deeply rooted culture which has vitality and communicates it readily and early to its sons. A dying culture, or a new one, is often dominated by age, by older men, in that it takes men longer, amid the shaking foundations and rubble, to develop roots and to establish their thinking in terms of them. Despite their asceticism at times, and their celibacy, medieval students and masters were far more at home in the world than are twentieth century humanists. Some, indeed, feared that they were too much at home in the world. With many, however, there was instead a progressive extension of the claims of Christian man in the world and over the world. St. Thomas Aquinas (1224 or 1225 - 1274) clearly represented this approach. In 1263, Pope Urban IV, a champion of this concept, reminded scholars that the decree of 1231 of Pope Gregory IX, while it forbade the teaching of Aristotle as mediated by the Arabs, called for scholars to examine and interpret Aristotle for the faith. William of Moerbeke and Thomas Aquinas were summoned to the papal court to assume the task of assimilating Aristotle into the Christian world of thought. Aquinas’ purpose reflected a supreme confidence, a confidence shared by many, that an establishment of Christian truth upon the foundation of the reason of autonomous man was possible. The reason of autonomous man could, it was held, establish the truths of revelation out of sense experience and by the empirical method.
3. Aquinas’ Task It should be noted that it was the truths of revelation which Aquinas sought to establish. Far more than the Arminian Protestant thinkers who are his philosophical heirs, Thomas was dedicated to maintaining the truths of Scripture and affirming biblical theology. He held to the orthodox theology, to the eternal decree of predestination, to the centrality and authority of revelation for faith, and to the doctrine of creation, but he also believed that these doctrines could to a large degree be confirmed by the reason of autonomous man. He could declare, as he often did, that “The authority of Scripture suffices,”528 but it was not his concern to begin on the foundation of Scripture but to move upward to God from sense experiences and deductions made from them by an independent, autonomous reason. From this foundation of autonomous man, Aquinas hoped to demonstrate Romans 1:20, “for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.” Let us examine the implications and consequences of this Thomistic approach in its most conservative phase, its application to theology, its defense of the faith.
4. Thomistic Dialecticism The basic approach of Aquinas is dialectical, and the two aspects he is intent on reconciling are nature and grace. Nature and grace are, for Aquinas, not two hostile worlds, but rather in close and integral relationship. It is on this foundation that he is confident that autonomous natural reason will lead directly to the truths of revelation, which is its perfection. Rightly used, reason leads to revelation. “Since therefore grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it, natural reason should minister to faith as the natural inclination of the will ministers to charity.”529 As Anne Freemantle has pointed out, “St. Thomas’ philosophy is based on the premise that knowledge and being are correlative, ‘In so far as a thing is, it is knowable, and in this resides its ontological
truth.’”530 The method of this premise is the analogia entis, the analogy of being, which bypasses both rationalism and irrationalism for analogy. Since knowledge and being are correlative, God, as true being, is what the analogous concept, thought, signifies, and much, much more. The analogy of reason makes known what being signifies, and the super-analogy of faith makes known the infinite reaches of being which the analogy of reason cannot extend to. Man’s reason works from below and extends upward. It can extend upwards with assurance both because of its correlativism with being and because of its freedom from the taint of the fall, for “the intellect is always true as regards essence,” according to Aquinas. This is true for both men and angels, although with differences.531 As Cornelius Van Til has pointed out, The analogia entis idea rests finally on the notion that man can interpret himself in terms of himself. The God of the analogia entis idea is wholly beyond and therefore wholly meaningless, or else He is wholly within and therefore wholly useless. In this respect it is outdone by nothing more thoroughly than by Barth’s analogia fidei. The historic Protestant idea of God’s revelation in Christ through Scripture, rather than Barth’s analogia fidei, is the true answer to the analogia entis idea.532 “The principle of intellectual operation” is “the soul of man,” and “the intellectual soul itself is an absolute form, and not something composed of matter and form.” Moreover, “We must assert that the intellectual principle which we call the human soul is incorruptible,” for “being belongs to a form, which is an act, by virtue of itself. And thus, matter acquires actual being according as it acquires form; while it is corrupted so far as the form is separated from it. And therefore it is impossible for a subsistent form to cease to exist.533 Being is good, although “in idea being is prior to goodness.” “Every being, as being, is good.” Evil is not to be ascribed to being but is a lack of being: “No being is said to be evil, considered as being, but only so far as it lacks being. Thus a man is said to be evil, because he lacks the being of virtue.... As primary matter has only potential being, so is it only potentially good.”534 As Hebert has noted, “We can rightly speak of the ‘being’ of the Devil as Good; for the Devil must ex hypothesi be sustained in being from moment to moment by God.” More, “The idea of evil is contrary to that of the First Cause, in that only that which really is, and therefore is good, can be a cause at all.” “St. Thomas’ thesis is, Good and Being are really one; hence, all that has being is good.”535 In Aquinas’ words, “every being is good.... omne ens est bonum.”536 Evil is therefore a lack of being, a deprivation or a negation. “The very nature of evil consists in the privation of good; therefore evil can be neither defined nor known except by good.” 537 “Evil is known by God, not through its own likeness, but through the likeness of good. Evil, therefore, has no idea in God, neither in so far as an idea is an exemplar, nor so far as it is a likeness.”538 “God does not will evils.”539 The opposite to the notion of being is non-being.540 Evil is simply the absence of good; it is “neither a being nor a good. For since being, as such, is good, the absence of being involves the absence of good.” Evil is privation, and no privation has or is a being, and “neither therefore is evil a being.”541 How then is evil caused, since “even matter, as a potentiality to good, has the nature of a good.”? It “is caused by reason of the defect of some principle of action, either of the principal or the instrumental agent.” Rather than being a deliberate covenant-breaking by man the sinner, seeking to dethrone God and become as God,
evil is basically accidental and passive, a by-product of good. “Hence it is true that evil in no way has any but an accidental cause. Thus good is the cause of evil.”542 Since all being is good, the tendency and the goal of being is perfection in the good, in God. “God alone is good essentially.” The goodness of men is not creaturely obedience by faith to the revealed word of God, but “by way of participation.” “Everything can be called good and a being inasmuch as it participates in the first being by way of a certain assimilation, although distantly and defectively.”543 Instead of the biblical distinction between the uncreated being of God and the created being of man, Aquinas held to the Hellenic concept of a common world of being, although “God is self-subsisting being itself,” and “all beings other than God are not their own being, but are beings by participation.” Although Aquinas emphatically affirmed the doctrine of creation, his philosophy better described God as the source rather than the creator of other beings. “A thing is being by participation,”544 rather than by creation, for all beings other than God “are beings by participation.”545
5. Noetics and Ethics It is apparent that, by speaking of intellect in general as both form and as incorruptible, Aquinas was refusing to “distinguish between the intellect of the regenerated and the intellect of the nonregenerated man.”546 The moral differences between men have no epistemological significance for Aquinas; his concept of the intellect was one which ascribed neutrality to it. In this respect, he was clearly a partisan of the Arabic and Jewish Enlightenment of that era. He saw the intellect as a passive power.547 Aquinas followed Aristotle in holding that the intellect “is like a tablet on which nothing is written.” “The origin of knowledge is from the senses.”548 There is no knowledge apart from sense impressions, although the understanding of material things comes “as they are abstracted from matter and from material images, namely phantasma.”549 In this process, “the intellect is always true.” Where one is deceived, there is no right understanding. “The proper object of the intellect is the quiddity in a thing,” i.e., the very entity of the thing. “The intellect is not in error concerning this quiddity,” but with respect to composition or division, and in “the process of reasoning.” Thus, “the intellect cannot err in regard to those propositions which are understood as soon as their terms are understood,” as with first principles. “But in the absolute consideration of the quiddity of a thing, and of those things which are known thereby, the intellect is never deceived.”550 In analyzing this position, it is necessary to note that there are two basic approaches to the problem of noetics and ethics, the relationship of knowing to morality. First, it is often held that man’s autonomous reason is able to discern and to know reality without reference to his ethical status, i.e., whether or not he be a sinner. This is a position common to Hellenic thought, to Thomism, to the Arab and Jewish medieval Enlightenments, to Kantianism, to neo-orthodoxy, and to existentialism, as well as to other philosophies. Man’s basic problem is held to be metaphysical or epistemological. It is either a question of finitude or of knowledge. Rationality is assumed to be neutral, and sin is stupidity or uninformed reasoning. All rational men will, with clear-cut argumentation, be brought to true knowledge. Hence, debate is basic to social process in order to bring forth truth, and the ideal of the university expresses this faith. The United Nations must further this necessary dialogue. Summit meetings between the great powers are
necessary, since it is held that ultimately the Communists will listen to reason. This is, for example, the premise of Erich Fromm, who stated in 1962 that a dialogue with Hitler would have been impossible “because he was lacking in sanity,” but “it seems quite clear that the Russian leaders of today are sane and rational people”; the leaders of the Soviet Union “are realistic men of common sense.”551 Fromm advocated unilateral disarmament by the United States as a means of establishing a situation of trust and hence of rational negotiations. 552 A premise of the U. S. foreign aid program is that demonstrated good will can further diplomacy, or sound reasoning. The Lutheran, Karl Francke, in discussing the noetic effect of sin, sees man’s renewal, in Van Til’s words, “in the fact that the ‘natural’ is after all quite powerful for good because he always remains a rational creature, and no rational creature is ever quite helpless.” 553 Thus, in every realm, political, theological, or epistemological, it is held that man’s autonomous reason can have valid and true knowledge without any determinative noetic effect by sin. The second basic approach to the relationship of knowledge and morality is the biblical faith that man’s knowledge rests on a common religious premise with his ethical concepts. Man is either a covenant-keeper, or a covenant-breaker, with God. If man is a covenant-breaker, his whole outlook, noetic and ethical, is colored and shaped by his rebellion against God. He refuses to accept as his basic premise the sovereignty of God and God’s eternal decree as revealed in Scripture. Instead, he asserts his own sovereignty and sees a world of brute factuality which can only be ordered ultimately by his creative interpretation and progressive control. For the one man, God is ultimate, for the other, his own rationality. For biblical faith, man’s basic problem is not metaphysical but ethical, his apostasy from God, and man’s epistemological problem is also basically ethical. Man suppresses or holds down the truth in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18). Apostate man suppresses the truth about reality because it witnesses to God and seeks to reduce factuality from a God-created, God-testifying reality to a position of neutrality, of brute factuality. A neutral reality, a world of brute factuality, is then a world in which sovereign man can exercise his ultimate control, his predestinating power and decree. For the biblical perspective, as summarized by Augustine, men are divided into two camps, the City of God and the city of man, and the differences are religious, moral, noetic, and epistemological. Between these two camps, warfare exists. The opposition, the city of man, must be either converted or fought. The premises of the unregenerate man must be challenged, and the autonomy of his reason exposed as a lie. Man is not neutral, nor is his mind a blank tablet or clean paper, for man is a sinner against God and is bent on twisting all reality to conform to his rebellion. But Aquinas, following Aristotle, held that man’s intellect “is like a tablet on which nothing is written.”554 This means that the mind, as it confronts nature, is passive to nature epistemologically and morally, as well as psychologically. It is, to use a modern term, a question of stimulus and response. In consistency with this position, evil is a privation, a lack, not an active and aggressive power. Man’s sin is thus a privation, a lack of love, or of certain advantages, and to supply these lacks is to overcome this “evil.” In any perspective of evil as passive, moral responsibility is implicitly weakened or destroyed, in that the necessary ingredient to goodness is the supply of a lack, whether of being or of material advantages. A passive man is more sinned against than sinning. Man is passive also in his knowledge; he receives sense impressions and reacts to them, so that his epistemology has problems of privation of data or of faulty process rather than an active reasoning to establish a lie. In this perspective, man is essentially passive to nature because, in its every facet, this philosophy sees man as basically a
creature of nature. If man is a product of nature, he will of necessity be passive towards nature; he is nature’s product and therefore totally subject to nature. But this same man will be creative towards God, active towards God, since he is not essentially God’s creature but nature’s. God is known only through sense experience and the deductions man makes from these data. According to Aquinas, “the existence of God can be proved in five ways.” The first argument is from motion, which is “the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality.” The second is “from the nature of efficient cause.” The third is “from possibility and necessity.” The fourth “is taken from the gradation to be found in things,” and the fifth “is taken from the governance of the world,” which shows design rather than chance.555 These proofs are another way of stating that knowledge and being are correlative, but it becomes apparent now that this means that man’s knowledge and being are correlative; this is the premise rather than an assertion that God’s knowledge and the universe of created being are correlative. In terms of this equation, “Socrates and Aristotle regarded all wickedness as due to ignorance.” For Aquinas, “Being is Pure Act. God alone, Who is Being, is Pure Act.”556 “A creature is nothing but a limited participation in the Act of Existing of God, and its essence marks off the measure of that participation. In all created things, therefore, there is a real distinction between essence and act of existing.” Man’s intellect cannot “penetrate the Act of Existing which is God.” As a result, man can “have no positive knowledge of God as He is in Himself, but only as He is represented in creatures.” Man’s own unity rests in “his act of existing,” which has primacy over essence. 557 In a sense, Aquinas pointed forward to existentialism. His God was the necessary postulate to human thought, to the correlation of knowledge and being. In later eras, the God of Aquinas was increasingly reduced from reality simply to this postulate, and then not entirely a necessary one. The problem has been well illustrated by an incident cited by Anne Freemantle: When the philosophers William James and Henri Bergson met, on May 28, 1905, there were several instants of silence and then James asked Bergson straightway how he envisaged the problem of religion. It is good to believe, but is the experience of God or of oneself? Is the revelation, James asked, our own revelation of God to ourselves, or is it the revelation of God to us? This most central of all questions — did God make us or we Him — worried St. Thomas not at all.558 The fact that Aquinas, with his very earnest and dedicated faith, did not worry over this problem does not obliterate the fact that his philosophy, by transferring the starting-point and the given from the ontological trinity to the autonomous mind of man, made the problem unavoidable. Moreover, since it is man’s thought which is independently correlative to being, man’s intellect is therefore active as it relates to God. In subsequent thinking, it was increasingly to assume the prerogatives of God while denying the responsibilities of man by its passivity to the world of nature. In thought, creative, in morality and psychology, passive, this is the result of St. Thomas’ incorporation of Aristotle into Christian thought. Aquinas held to the predestination of God, but he also prepared the way for the predestination by man, total planning and control by man as man makes his knowledge correlative to being by controlling evolution, society, and the entire social order.
6. Common Ground in Being
For Aquinas, there is a common world of God and man, for “being is found to be common to all things, however otherwise different.” From “one principle of being” all things have their existence.559 The Archimedean point in this one world of being is the intellect of man, and the correlativity of knowledge and being. In Nygren’s words with respect to the medieval idea of love, so the Thomistic perspective “recalls a Gothic cathedral, where the massive stone rests firmly on the earth and yet everything seems to aspire upwards.”560 Nature, thus, is the starting point, the foundation, and, as we have seen, “grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it.”561 Thus, “For Aquinas the natural is inherently defective; it partakes of the nature of non-being. Hence sin is partly at least to be ascribed to finitude. For Kuyper the natural as it came from the hand of God was perfect,” although liable to an ethical fall as well as to development.562 Aquinas substituted for the Greek form-matter dialectic, not the Christian view, but a similar dialectic of grace and nature. In this tension, one or the other had to be sacrificed. For Thomism, “The two foundational tenets of this system were the positing of the autonomy of natural reason in the entire sphere of natural knowledge, and the thesis that nature is the understructure of supernatural grace.”563 Aquinas’ attempt to reconcile a Greek dialectic to Christian theology created insuperable problems: The Greek form-matter motive in all its different conceptions excludes in principle the Idea of creation in its Biblical sense. The sum total of Greek wisdom concerning the Origin of the cosmos is “ex nihilo nihil fit” (from nothing nothing can originate). At the utmost, Greek metaphysical theology could arrive at the Idea of a divine demiurg, who gives form to an original matter as the supreme architect and artist. Therefore, the scholastic accommodation of the Aristotelian concept of God to the Church-doctrine of creation could never lead to a reconciliation with the Biblical ground-motive. The unmoved Mover of Aristotelian metaphysics, who, as the absolute theoretical nous, only has himself as the object of his thought in blessed self-contemplation, is the radical opposite of the living God Who revealed Himself as Creator. Thomas may teach, that God has brought forth natural things according both to their form and matter, but the principle of matter as the principle of metaphysical and religious imperfection cannot find its origin in a pure form — God. Nor could the Aristotelian conception of human nature be reconciled to the Biblical conception concerning the creation of men in the image of God. According to Thomas, human nature is a composition of a material body and a rational soul as a substantial form, which, in contradistinction to Aristotle’s conception, is conceived of as an immortal substance. This scholastic view has no room for the Biblical conception of the radical religious unity of human existence. Instead of this unity a natural and a supernatural aspect is distinguished in the creation of man. The supernatural side was the original gift of grace, which as a donum superadditum was ascribed to the rational nature.564
Man, a composite, finds his principle of individuality in matter, whereas the intellectual principle is the form of man. “This means a fundamental deprecation of individuality, since in the Aristotelian view matter is the principle of imperfection.”565 Thomas Aquinas seeks the principium individuationis in a “materia signata vel individualis” (Summa Theologiae III, qu. 72, 2) a conception that frankly contradicts his scholastic Christian view of individual immortality of the rational soul as form and substance. In order to save the latter he had to take refuge in the hypothesis of formae separatae that were individualized by their having been created in proportion to a material body.566
7. The One and the Many in Aquinas This means that Aquinas had a problem in maintaining any proper relationship between the one and the many, since particularity was an attribute of matter. First of all, Aquinas tended to separate his universals from God, and he held that in God there is neither universal nor particular.567 For Aquinas, the one precedes the many. “Hence Plato said that unity must come before multitude; and Aristotle said that whatever is greatest in being and greatest in truth is the cause of every being and of every truth, just as whatever is the greatest in heat is the cause of all heat.”568 This is the basis of Thomas’ doctrine of “creation,” the one as the cause of the many because the many must by definition originate in the one. For Aristotle, this made man a creature of the state, the social one, and the universe the creature of chaos, the cosmic one. The source for Aquinas is the one, and the goal is also the one, unity, in which the many find their perfection. He did, of course, try to maintain a balance between the one and the many, between universals and particulars, holding, that, to have real existence, the universals must exist in the particulars as their essence, not as abstractions beside them. He sought to maintain this balance in every area.569
8. The State In accepting Aristotle, Aquinas “was prepared to accept the doctrine that man was a political being whose potentialities could only be fulfilled in political society.”570 The “Christian Revolution” of the early centuries had been a great one “where the matter of sovereignty is concerned. In the days before Christianity the world knew of one sovereignty only, that of the State, which exercised its sway alike on religious and civil life, on the spiritual and on the temporal. With the advent of Christianity this unity was destroyed.”571 Augustinianism placed church and state alike under the sovereignty of God. Aquinas, by holding to the perfection of nature by grace, made the church the perfection of the state and the superior authority. The state had an autonomy in the natural sphere, but at every point, this natural sphere pointed to and was perfected in the sphere of grace. Hence, at every point the state, while independent of, was subordinate to the church. What Lecler called the “Christian Revolution” was, according to Dooyeweerd,
the death blow to the Aristotelian view of a perfect community. The latter implied a transformation of the divine world order into a metaphysical order of reason and, in its theory of the substantial form of human nature, it arrested the transcendental societal Idea of mankind in the Idea of a rational and moral perfection, attainable in the State alone. The Christian view did not place a new community (the Church in its transcendent religious sense) on a parallel with, or if need be, above all temporal relationships, as a merely higher level in the development of human perfection. Nor did it project a cosmopolitical temporal community of mankind beyond all boundaries of families, races and States, in the Stoic fashion. Instead, it laid bare the religious meaning-totality of all social relationships, each of which ought to express this meaning-totality according to its own inner structure. Without this insight into the radical spiritual foundation of human societal life, the differentiation of structural principles of temporal society cannot be understood in its true meaning.572 By reviving this Aristotelian concept, Aquinas did two things. First, he made the Church the true state of man in the ultimate sense, as the perfection of nature. Second, he gave to the state a freedom from the Christian doctrine of the state and a rationale for its revived assertion that man’s true life and community are attainable in the state alone. His Aristotelianism destroyed medieval Augustinianism and furthered two counter-claims to total power, the state and the church each claiming to be the order of true reason and of man’s perfection. A further danger was created by Thomism. The dialectical tension between nature and grace led to a desire by some to shave off the ostensibly superfluous world of grace and leave to nature a world of anarchic plurality, whereas others so infused the world of nature with the divine being that a virtual pantheism was created. The result was a cultural collapse. Aquinas had earnestly sought a new weapon for the faith in the Aristotelian thought of the Arabic and Jewish Enlightenment of the Middle Ages. The immediate result was a new and broader claim to power for the church. But, by introducing a non-Christian foundation into the structure of the church, the Scholastics also introduced this same pagan foundation into the university, into the state, and into all of man’s life. In terms of this foundation, non-Christian and anti-Christian motives and directions were built into every area of late medieval life, to the destruction of Christian order.
Chapter VIII Frederick II and Dante:The World Re-divinized 1. Medieval Civilization Humanists, Roman Catholics, and Protestants commonly err in their accounts of “medieval” civilization in that they ascribe to it a modern perspective with regard to the papacy and then either condemn or approve the “Middle Ages” in terms of their attitudes towards the claims of the papacy. Their historical perspective is thus conditioned by their reactions to an ecclesiastical dogma rather than by an examination of a culture. Because it was a Christian era, the humanists wrongly ascribe to it a lack of scientific and intellectual vigor. Because it was Catholic, Protestants ascribe to it a lack of biblical zeal and interest. But Thomas Aquinas was more conscientious and faithful in his adherence to Scripture than are most Protestant Arminians and modernists, whose faith is simply a degraded Thomism, lacking in Aquinas’ faith and intelligence. The failure of Aquinas was not in ignorance of the Bible but in the importation of Aristotelian thought into his apologetics. In twelfth century England, in the diocese of Worcester, a preacher had quoted poetry rather than the Bible in his sermon, and the congregation held an indignation meeting after church and compelled him to recant the following Sunday.573 Much earlier, before the Norman Conquest, one can find, in a major document, wherein the primacy of the papacy is affirmed, a thoroughly biblical and “Protestant” doctrine of the nature of the church as stated in Matthew 16:15-19, wherein Christ defines the “rock” on which He will build His church. It is difficult to find as clear a statement in most Protestant commentaries: Jesus then said, “What say ye that I am?” Peter answered him, “Thou are Christ, the living God’s Son.” The Lord to him said for answer, “Blessed art thou, Simon, dove’s child,” &c.... Bede the expounder unveils to us the deepness of this lesson.... The Lord said to Peter, “Thou art rocken” (Note: Literally stonen, having the same relation to stone as rocken to rock, golden to gold, earthen to earth, &c.) For the strength of his faith, and for the firmness of his confession, he received that name; because he joined himself with steadfast mind to Christ, who is called a Rock by the apostle Paul. “And I will build my church upon this rock”; that is, upon the faith which thou confessest. All God’s convocation is built upon the rock; that is, upon Christ; because he is the ground-wall of all the structures of his own church.574 The Roman Catholic approaches the so-called “medieval” era believing that it possessed a modern papal unity and authority which did not then exist. It was, indeed, the very struggle for that unity which destroyed the culture and led to the chronic conflicts of succeeding eras. The earlier unity of Christendom had been a religious unity, a Christian unity which was a reality in a
decentralized civilization. The basic localism of feudal culture governed both church and state. The struggle of both the papacy and the empire was directed against one another, but it was also directed against feudalism, and both papacy and empire worked to subjugate church and state to their own authority. They used feudalism to destroy feudalism. When the ultimacy of the particulars, of the many, becomes progressively more and more immanent, and less and less transcendent, then unity is denied as both bondage and fiction to the same degree as particularity is affirmed. Conversely, when unity moves from a transcendental to an immanent reality, particularity becomes an oppressive violation of true order, and the suppression of particularity becomes a necessity for the realization of social order. The validity of the immanent one and many, and of the creaturely one and many, is maintained only when the reality, primacy, and ultimacy of the transcendental one and many are clearly and sharply maintained, upheld, and defined. With Innocent III (1198-1216), the papacy asserted the supreme authority of one sphere over all other spheres. In his consecration sermon on St. Peter’s Sunday, February 22, 1198, Pope Innocent spoke on Matthew 24:45, “Who thinkest thou is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath appointed over his family, to give them meat in due season?” The sermon “is the key to his statesmanship in the sixteen years to come,” according to Clayton. Pope Innocent declared himself to be “under God yet above man, less than God but greater than man... appointed to judge all men but to be judged by none.” You see then who is the servant placed by His Lord over His household — he is the vicar of Jesus Christ, the successor of Peter, the anointed of the Lord God of Pharaoh, one set as an intermediary between God and man, under God yet above man, less than God but greater than man. He is Peter in the fullness of his power, appointed to judge all men but to be judged by none, since as the Apostle has said “He that judgeth me is the Lord” (I Cor. iv, 4).575 But the monarchs, and the emperor as well, increasingly made similar claims for themselves. Their sacramental consecration made them rex et sacerdos, whereby the ruler not only became “the chosen mediator between clergy and people, but also imposed on him the duty of ‘ruling’ his church.... The king did not need to ally with a church which was tied to him by proprietary and sacerdotal bonds: it was his church and he was its divinely appointed ruler.” 576 One clergyman ascribed primacy to the king. The Anonymous of York held the bishops of the realm to be subordinate to the king, as it was held that the Son is to the Father, a definitely subordinationist Christology. According to Tellenbach’s summary of this position, For him the king embodies the divine, the priests the human nature of Christ. Christ was both king and priest, but the king in him was the higher; the Church is the Bride not of Christ as priest, but of Christ as king; and he even dares to point out that the Church is called Queen not Priestess.577 According to Williams, “The prevailing imagery is royal rather than sacerdotal. Christ as rex et sacerdos is divinely King and only humanly a Priest.”578
In earlier thinking, the concept of sovereignty was reserved to God alone. It was this absence of sovereignty that was revived in colonial America and in the constitutional settlement to make of the United States a Protestant feudal restoration.579 Christian Europe, after the fall of Rome, developed a social order which reserved sovereignty to God. According to Kern, Certainly, the monarchical principle even in this form precluded any idea of popular sovereignty; the people in the Middle Ages were no more regarded as “sovereign” than was the monarch. If we wish to use this inappropriate expression at all for the Middle Ages, we may only say: God is sovereign, and the Law, which binds both the monarch and the community, is equally sovereign, so long as it does not run counter to God. The monarch on the one hand, and the community on the other, are joined together in the theocratic order in such a way that both are subordinate to God and to the Law. This fundamental conception will be fully discussed later; the point here is that in the Middle Ages the monarchical principle (or the monarch’s divine mandate) had not yet freed the monarch from dependence upon popular will as the later theory of Divine Right freed him. The monarchical principle was, indeed, strong enough to hinder the emergence of a democratic principle at a time when even the head of a local community was conceded some measure of self-sufficiency in the exercise of his functions, when he was entrusted with a mandate for which he was responsible only to God, with a “guardianship.” But the monarchical principle was an ideal concept rather than one of positive law. It did not relieve the individual possessor of power from the particular legal obligations which he assumed towards the community at the time of his admission to office or afterwards. There was a transcendental element in government as such, but the individual holder of power, whether in a small community or in a monarchy, could not base his personal and subjective claim to rule upon this entirely general principle; a particular legal title was essential, and such a title could, in the early Middle Ages, be obtained only from the people.580 In addition, “It is the individual’s task to protect the law against all, even against the State.”581 The concept that all men were subordinated to one infallible, supreme, and super-human justice manifested on earth, whether in church or empire, was alien to Christian Europe. Church, state, and empire introduced this concept to the degree that Aristotelian and other pagan thought infected their thinking. Some thinkers ascribed a redemptive function to the state. John of Jandun held that the promotion of the good life is the concern of the state.582 Both churchmen and monarchs began to identify themselves very closely with God and Christ. Not only in their order but also in their disorder they believed that they manifested God. Of Henry II (1154-1189) of England, Heer says: Henry II (who threw himself to the ground and bit the carpet in his rages) said on more than one occasion: “The displeasure and wrath of Almighty God are also my displeasure and wrath.” “By nature I am a son of wrath: why should I not rage? God Himself rages when He is wrathful.”583
2. Frederick II In Frederick II (1194-1250), Hohenstaufen, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Sicily and Jerusalem, we see the statist expression of the dream of unity as it manifested itself in the empire. Frederick, who, among other things, denied the virgin birth and life after death, is held to be a “freethinker” by many, but he clearly believed in his own divinity. Church order was a necessity to him in order to maintain imperial order, and Frederick took from Innocent III the idea of the Inquisition and put it to his own use to protect the ecclesiastical arm of the empire. In every area, his insistence on imperial control was relentless. The dictum Frederick II placed over his symbolic statue on the Capuan Gateway characterizes his mental temper at the time, Quam miseros facio quos variare scio. “I shall make miserable those who are variable in spirit.”584 Frederick could speak so openly because he was confident of his divine ordination to enforce unity in terms of imperial justice. A man of great intelligence and practical abilities, he was known as “the wonder of the world,” thus combining his sense of divine calling with the power to further it.585 Frederick, whose name meant “rule of peace” (Germanic, fride, “peace” and rik, “rule”), saw himself as the one called to institute a new world order of peace. At his birth, Frederick was hailed as the fulfilment of prophecy, as savior and world-ruler, king of all the world. After he was Emperor, Frederick sang the praises of his birthplace in a remarkable document. He called Jesi his Bethlehem, and the Divine Mother who bore him he placed on the same plane as the Mother of our Lord.586 The background to this thinking was the work of Abbot Joachim of Flora (died 1202), a remarkable figure, possibly of Jewish descent, who grew up in Greek southern Italy, whose influence was extensive in the “medieval” world, and on Columbus, whose writings were printed in Venice during the Renaissance and Reformation eras, and who influenced the modern era through Lessing. The modern usage, “Middle Ages,” probably reflects Joachim’s influence. Joachim held to a philosophy of history which was nominally trinitarian but actually antiChristian. History was seen in three ages, one for each member of the trinity. The first, the Age of the Father, represented the Old Testament and pre-Christian world. The second or middle age, the Age of the Son, represented the then rapidly waning Christian era. The first was the age of creation, the second of redemption, the third of universal peace and brotherhood, the Age of the Spirit. Frederick announced himself as the one come to fulfil the law, to usher in the age of peace. It was Frederick’s calling to reduce to peace the peoples “by the might of Justice.” Frederick saw himself as Justice Incarnate and as “the expected Messianic King.” His letters, when wooing the populace of Rome, are full of the belief that the fulness of time is at hand and the world is about to be renewed. Renewal would mean reconstruction of the world in exactly the state in which it stood at the moment of the Redemption in the days of Augustus. The
Messiah-Emperor who is expected and who shall set up an Empire of Justice must show himself the revivifier of the ancient Roman Empire, the reincarnation of Augustus, Prince of Peace, restoring imperial Rome to her old position in the world.587 The papacy dreamed of the unity of the world under its dominion. St. Francis preached what closely resembled the gospel of the third age in that it reduced the church to a spiritual role and to a poverty that almost implied a surrender of the world to the state, a position some heretical Franciscans later took. Frederick saw the world renewed under the unity of the empire. He saw himself in continuity with the Christian era but as the creator of the new post-Christian world of peace and unity. His coins, the golden Augustales, had not the slightest Christian sign or symbol: “independent of the Christian God there reigns here a Divus who summons men to faith in him, like a new Caesar Augustus.”588 Frederick saw himself as the image of God and mediator of Justice between God and man and as the Logos of Justice: “The Emperor must therefore be at once FATHER AND SON, LORD AND SERVANT of Justitia,” infallible in law as the pope was infallible in matters of faith.589 Phrases that Frederick applied to God were applied to Frederick by his courtiers, as though he were incarnate god, “Who bindeth the corners of the earth and ruleth the elements.” “Thy power, O Caesar, hath no bounds; it excelleth the power of man, like unto a God.” “Wear the crown that beseems thy supernatural position.” An imperial governor wrote, “Our forefathers looked no more eagerly for the coming of Christ than we do for thine.... Come to free and to rejoice us.... Show thy countenance and we shall find salvation! This it is for which we groan, this for which we sigh: to rest under the shadow of thy wings.” He was hailed as “a harbour of salvation to them that believe.”590 He was “Law incarnate upon earth,” and his law code rested on this premise.591 The Emperor taught that the State herself daily begets afresh the only true and valid Law of God; that the living law of the temporal world is the Living God himself. That the Eternal and the Absolute must themselves adapt and change with time if they are to remain living. This was a decisive break with the past.592 This meant that God’s primary area was again the immanent world and that the world of time was the great arena of being, the area of determination. “The Eternal and the Absolute must themselves adapt and change with time if they are to remain living” because the truest and fullest presence of God is in time, in the state and in the person of the emperor. God is in time, and in time God is best expressed in the emperor. The Third Age was the age of this incarnation, and hence the era of peace, because eternity was reconciled with time and the world united under the great messiah-king, the emperor. To deny the empire was to deny world peace and order, it was to deny justice, because the eternal order was contingent upon the temporal order, and eternity was determined by time. This Joachimite concept was widely held. “The thirteenth century awaited daily, as no other had ever done, the end of the world, and the prophecies foretold: the end of the world should be middle and beginning, should be alike redemption and creation.”593 A part of this hope was the idea that the renewal of Rome was necessary for the end of the middle age and the renewal of time and beginning of the third age. The emperors were the first to seek the renewal of Rome, but they soon had two rivals, the papacy and then the Romans. “The Caesar-Popes of the Middle
Ages felt themselves to be the successors of the Roman Divi, just as much as did the Emperors,” basing their claim on the forged Donation of Constantine.594 Frederick’s state ended in total tyranny, and he became less and less the new Christ and more and more the anti-Christ. The papacy won, only to fall victim to its own departure from its mission and the attendant destruction of Christian Europe. The triumph of immanent power is the death of meaning. God is “He Who Is,” beyond definition because He is himself the definer and the source of all meaning. The world has meaning because He created it and is separate from it. To the extent that the world is absorbed into God, and to the extent that God is absorbed into the world and sovereignty is transferred to the world, to that extent the world loses meaning and becomes undefinable and a mystery. The total triumph of immanence would be the total loss of meaning.
3. Dante The demand that the church be purely “spiritual” was not only a demand that the church abdicate its responsibilities but also that the church retreat to what the critics held to be the determined rather than determining realm. If “the Eternal and the Absolute” are determined by time and the “living law of the temporal world,” then to relegate the church to that spiritual realm is to relegate it to the subordinate and determined world. However, the attempt of the church to dominate the world in the same manner attempted by the empire meant that the church had accepted the same non-Christian premises concerning the priority of time and the temporal world. Such a position was more readily criticized in the church than in the state, and men could weep crocodile tears over the apostasy of the church simply because they found it a hindrance to the apostasies of state. One such weeper and rager was the poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), who succeeded where Frederick failed and made statist heresy an adornment of Western culture and literature. According to scholar Giuseppe de Sanctis, “Dante is a modern man.” Bishop Giovanni Fallini, also speaking at the 700-year anniversary of Dante’s birth in Florence, Italy, April, 1965, at the Palazzo Vecchio, said, “He worked for a united world foreshadowing the United Nations by over 600 years.”595 The framework of Dante’s Divine Comedy was rich in Catholic piety, but the substance was subversive and modern, belonging to the “third age.” The fires of heresy burn more brightly in Dante than do the flames of Inferno. An historian has cited some of Dante’s variations as they appear in his treatise on Monarchy: Dante makes favorable allusions to the Averroist doctrine of the collective immortality of the soul, which stand in strange contradiction to his view of personal immortality upon which The Divine Comedy is based. He debates the traditional papal interpretation of the Petrine Biblical text, claiming that from Christ’s words to Peter “it does not follow that the pope can loose or bind the decrees of the empire.” He denies the validity of papal claims based on the Donation of Constantine because “Constantine had no power to alienate the imperial dignity, nor had the church the power to receive it.” Most significant of all is Dante’s argument for imperial authority, not only on the basis of tradition, law, and Biblical texts but also from a simple and radical doctrine of pragmatic necessity: the welfare of the human race, he says, is best advanced under
monarchical rule. This represents a new departure in medieval political thought. The implication of Dante’s argument is that political power is based on the sanction not only of divine and natural law but also of social necessity.596 Heer comments that “there is scarcely a ‘heretic’ of his times whose message he [Dante] ignores.”597 Gilson granted that Dante’s thought at points represented “a form of Averroism” but held this to be “purely formal and devoid of content.”598 Dante’s philosophy, Gilson maintained, differed clearly from Aquinas.599 Papini asserted that Dante, who believed that some men are “almost as gods,” “almost certainly... believed himself to be one of these men ‘most noble and divine,’ that is, almost God.”600 Dante’s debt to Islamic thought has also been demonstrated as at least formally important.601
4. Dante’s View of the State In De Monarchia, Dante’s argument for imperial authority was, as has been noted, based on pragmatism: the ultimate goal of human civilization as a whole required this unity of power. Dante wrote that “There is an ultimate goal for which the eternal God, by his art, which is nature, brings into being the human race in its universality.” This ultimate goal is summarized by Wicksteed: “It is the goal of civilization to realise all the potentialities of humanity by developing in peaceful co-operation all the several capacities of individuals, families, races, and so forth.”602 The basic and first requisite for the realization of the goal of human civilization is for Dante not faith but peace: “It is evident that in the quiet or tranquillity of peace the human race is most freely and favorably disposed to the work proper to it.... Whence it is manifest that universal peace is the best of all those things which are ordained for our blessedness.”603 This separation of the faith from the realization of the goal of human civilization is not accidental. Dante radically separated man’s spiritual goal, “the celestial paradise,” from the political goal, “the terrestrial paradise,” as “two utterly different goals of the human race,” to cite Kantorowicz’ judgment. There was thus a “human” perfection and a “Christian” perfection, for Dante “took the ‘human’ out of the Christian compound and isolated it as a value in its own right.” The political paradise could be attained by man through his own devices, through natural reason and the four cardinal virtues alone. Against that totality of mankind which fell guilty potentially in the first man, Dante set the totality of mankind which potentially can regain “its own dignities” and paradise as well. It can achieve, by its own power and through the intellectual virtues, its own actuation in the terrestrial paradise whence Adam had been expelled, who, in the state of innocence, himself was the actuation of humanitas without restriction. Dante reversed, as it were, the potentialities: just as Adam potentially bore mankind and sin in his limbs, so did mankind in its totality bear Adam and his perfection, his status subtilis (if we may say so), in its limbs.604 This thesis is basic also to the Divine Comedy. Christ is made irrelevant to this world: He is good medicine for dying but not for living. The political order is the true path to the one-world paradise under one monarch.
Hence, as a consequence of his setting apart of humanitas from Christianitas, of virtutes intellectuales from virtutes infusae, terrestrial paradise from celestial paradise, Dante had to set apart also Adam from Christ and make the return to man’s original image on earth independent of man’s transcendental perfection in Christ by grace. In other words, Dante had to cleanse man from the peccatum originale in non-sacramental fashion.605 In the realization of this earthly paradise with its total unity under a ruler, the one is greater than the many, and the part exists for the sake of the whole, for “the part is related to the whole as to its end and supreme good.”606 The world must be under one monarch even as the universe is one under God as its monarch, and it is God’s purpose that this universal order be approximated in the human order by being unified. It is man’s created function to be in God’s image, “But the human race is most likened to God where it is most one; for it is in him alone that the absolute principle of the one exists.”607 Although Dante affirmed the doctrine of the trinity, his assent was defective, in that he exalted unity over multiplicity instead of affirming equal ultimacy. Man’s true freedom is in unity, according to Dante, since, “the more universal a cause is the more fully has it the nature of a cause.... And the more a cause is a cause the more does it love its effect.” As a consequence, “since the monarch is the most universal of mortal causes of the well-being of men (since the other princes... are so through him), it follows that the good of men is more loved by him than by any other.”608 In other words, the more total the power of the world ruler, the more impartial and loving his power, and the greater man’s freedom is as a result! In The Banquet,Dante affirmed the imperial office to be the promotion of “the perfection of human life,” adding, “it is the director and ruler of all our operations, and justly so, for however far our operations extend themselves, so far the Imperial Majesty has jurisdiction, and beyond those limits it does not reach.”609 Beyond that, how could it reach? Its goal and province is “the perfection of the Universal Union of the Human Race.”610 This total unity must be of a radical sort. For Dante, “It is clear, then, that everything which is good, is good in virtue of consisting in unity. And since concord, as such, is good, it is manifest that it consists in some unity, as in its proper root.” This concord or unity requires the unity of human wills under one ruler. This is thorough totalitarianism, the unmitigated tyranny of the one. Wicksteed commented, “it is only in their unity that things really exist” for Dante’s philosophy.611 The world order Dante defended was a continuation of the Roman Empire. For him, ancient pagan Romans were “a most Holy Race” and a chosen people, and its many heroes had, he maintained, “Divine inspiration.” “And certainly I am of the firm opinion that the stones which remain in her walls are worthy of reverence; and it is asserted and proved that the ground whereupon she stands is worthy beyond all other that is occupied by man.” Rome for Dante was “that holy City.”612 His philosopher was Aristotle, who “is most worthy of faith and obedience,” and whose “words are a supreme and chief Authority.” “Aristotle is the master and leader of Human Reason in so far as it aims at its final operation.”613 History was the proof of Roman eminence, and this meant Nature. “And what Nature has ordained, it is right to maintain.”614 Rome was invested with a messianic role by Dante; he cited Psalm 2, the messianic psalm concerning the world conspiracy against the Messiah, and applied
it to Rome as Messiah.615 The authority, righteousness, and justice of Rome was upheld by Dante and affirmed to have been confirmed in the execution of Jesus Christ. Pilate punished the sin of Adam in crucifying Christ, so that, in Wicksteed’s summary, “the rightful authority of the Roman empire is essential to the whole scheme of salvation.” In Dante’s words, “if the Roman empire was not of right, the sin of Adam was not punished in Christ.”616 The same point was emphasized in The Divine Comedy: “As for the penalty, then, inflicted by the cross, if it be measured by the Nature taken on, never did any other bite as justly.”617 The enemy of the empire is the church and the clergy. The goal of the empire, and of the monarch, is the perfection of the human race, and with this perfection the empire becomes obsolete and withers away. Man then needs neither ecclesiastical nor imperial guidance or authority, for “Such regimens, then, are remedial against the infirmity of sin.” As a result, “if man had remained in the state of innocence in which he was made by God he would have no need of such directive regimens.” “These regimens exist to direct men to certain ends,” and they are then no longer needed.618 Hence, when Dante in The Divine Comedy reached the entrance of the Garden of Eden, Virgil declared, “I do crown and mitre thee over thyself.”619 According to Wicksteed, “in Dante’s opinion man would not have needed the Church, as an organized institution, any more than the Empire, had he not fallen from the state of innocence. Accordingly, when he recovers that state he is absolved from the spiritual as well as from the temporal rule.”620 Dante placed an affirmation of communism in Virgil’s counsel: “for by so many more there are who say ‘ours,’ so much the more of good doth each possess, and the more of love burneth in that cloister.” This is grounded in the doctrine of God’s nature, whereby His love continually gives, and those who receive it, reflect it by their love.621 His Inferno has an unfavorable reference to Fra Dolcino, who taught the community of goods and women.622 The reference to Fra Dolcino does not condemn his communism but rather includes him in the category of those creating disorder, sowers of scandal and schism. Lindsay’s opinion is justified, that “In Book XV of the Inferno Dante expressed his belief in the Golden Age. And he states explicitly that the principle of social progress was the actualisation of communism to the greatest extent possible at each stage.”623 Until that day, the emperor was Dante’s earthly Christ and Savior. In “Epistola VII,” written to the emperor, Dante said he had raised the hopeful messianic question, “Art thou he who should come or do we look for another?” Dante answered in faith: Yet although long thirst, as it is wont, in its frenzy turneth to doubt (just because they are close at hand) even those things which are certain, nevertheless, we believe and hope in thee, averring that thou are the minister of God and the son of the church and the promoter of Roman glory. And I too, who write for myself and for others, have seen thee, as beseems imperial Majesty, most benignant, and have heard thee most clement, when that my hands handled thy feet and my lips paid their debt. Then did my spirit exult in thee, and I spoke silently with myself, “Behold the Lamb of God! Behold him who hath taken away the sins of the world.”624
5. The Witness of The Divine Comedy
The universe for Dante is a great cosmic state governed by justice, and true love is true justice. This cosmic Justice is thus more closely connected to a world state than to a universal church. The subject of The Divine Comedy is not ecclesiastical and theological but rather historical and political. “The three parts of the Commedia represent justice under three aspects.” 625 Dante’s universe is the universe of the great chain of being. “Everything in existence strives to return to its source. As fire by nature is drawn upwards, so the human soul is drawn to God.”626 This upward movement is not mystical but political. The world state is the agency until man becomes perfected and deified, when anarchism and communism take over. “The blessed are made deiform.... The heavenly bliss is to participate in the Godhead, and the soul becomes a partaker of divine nature.”627 To summarize The Divine Comedy briefly, Dante is “lost” and in deep distress. The disorders of the world, its political decay and his own sufferings and despair on that account, have grieved him and led him astray. “In the moment, it seemed, of his final defeat he was confronted with Virgil, historically his ideal poet, the model and inspiration of his verse, and symbolically his reason and conscience, the primal authority for man’s earthly life.” Virgil is “at once the prophet of the Roman Empire and the supposed foreteller of Christ, who foretells the coming of a deliverer of the world from the power of covetousness, the wolf that came so persistently against Dante.”628 The savior whom Virgil foretells is the Veltro. As Gilbert noted, “Deliverance will come through the mysterious hound, the veltro, which is the opposite of the wolf in freedom from avarice, and devotion to wisdom, love and virtue. The veltro is obviously also a political deliverer who will save Italy.”629 The journey through hell is a journey through a world where sins are sins against unity and wholeness, inordinate loves of the partial or particular as against the one and the true object of love. They are more sins against order than against the person of God, and the framework of reference is Italy and the empire. It is unnecessary to know the Bible to read Dante intelligently; it is necessary to know imperial and Italian history, or else have a well-documented text of The Divine Comedy as a guide. At the beginning of the journey, in Canto 2, the issue of the relationship of Aeneas and Paul, of empire and church, is raised. Dante does not give us any of the old answers: his is to be a new one, and he is the new Aeneas, journeying through the underworld to give a fresh answer. In giving this answer, Dante, for all his professed humility, claimed the authority of Virgil, prophet of empire, ostensible foreteller of Christ, and symbol of the power of natural reason. He also claimed the power of Beatrice, the power of divine wisdom and illumined reason, Beatrice, whom he had hailed in one poem of the VitaNuova as salvation.630 Beatrice will lead Dante, together with Virgil, to true order, and to the “‘in Godding of the self,’ the taking of the self into God.”631 Beatrice is not only sent by Mary, she is also “a type of Mary,” and, “in her analogical sense, a type of the Church Triumphant.” 632 This by no means exhausts the meaning of Beatrice. What is clear is that the persons and symbols of the church are stripped from the church and piled onto the empire. St. Lucy, “this spirit of enlightenment... the medium between grace and revelation,”633 is also on the side of Dante and the empire. Very early we begin to meet churchmen in hell, beginning in Canto 3, in the class of the Trimmers, with one commonly identified as Pope Celestine V. The goal of being is the realization of potentiality and unity in the great chain of being. Hell is the perfection of the disruption of this cosmic unity. “Every Circle is the perfection of a sinful power.... The perfection of a sinful power is its tyranny over other powers.... Every sinful soul
can find an ideal kingdom in the Inferno for the perfect tyranny of its sinful power. This is the irony of perfection in Hell.”634 Every soul is in hell voluntarily and remains out of desire, Dante stressed, in Canto 3, 124ff.: “they are eager to cross the river, for divine justice so spurs them that fear turns to desire.” Hell is the perfection of the partial and the limited, of individuality and of particularity. It is also the perfection of matter: in hell, the damned have bodies; in purgatory and paradise, they are pure spirit.635 Dante damned churchmen for their materialism and placed the church on the side of materialism, and the empire on the side of spirit and idealism. The Donation of Constantine is denounced in hell as an instrument of hell. When Dante, in Canto 19, denounced the Donation, Virgil, the voice of reason, at these “words of truth,” took Dante “in both his arms.” In this Canto, Dante sets forth the “public wrong” of Simony, but he includes in this sin the claims of the church against the political order as a kind of simony, a worship of gold and silver, a heathenism. A singular and significant feature of the canto is that Dante is not merely led and instructed by Virgil here as elsewhere, but, after an ardent declaration of his discipleship, he is carried down to Nicholas and up again and the narrative stresses Virgil’s carefulness in the act. For here peculiarly Dante claims to be identified with reason which is not merely his own reason but reason itself. Virgil, besides, represents the Empire, the righteous ordering of the earthly life of humanity; and authority under God and its high obligation to guard the frontiers of its jurisdiction against ecclesiastical encroachment were fundamental in Dante’s thinking and are the main matter of the De Monarchia.636 The deeper Dante takes us into hell, the more political the sins become: those who make traffic of public office (Barrators), the sowers of scandal and schism, rebels and traitors, and the like. The offenses are all either against the great unity or in favor of the particular and the limited, the divisive. The Arch-Traitor Satan represented the uttermost depth of hell for his rebellion against God, and Satan was joined by Judas, Brutus, and Cassius. The sins of Satan and Judas were against the kingdom of God, those of Brutus and Cassius against the divinely chosen instrument for the restoration of the earthly paradise, Rome. According to Sinclair, in speaking of Canto 28, and citing Dante’s belief in “the essential organic unity of men,” Dante condemned “fiercely these makers of discord” because he saw providence and every divine purpose working for the unity of mankind.637 Each portion of The Divine Comedy ends with the word “stars,” for the stars mean for Dante all the good that is beyond the world, all the perfect order and the working providence of God, and it is into obedience to that order and assurance of that providence that all his experience and all the leading of Virgil and the memory and the hope of Beatrice are bringing him.638 Having shown us the hell that churchly politics leads to, and all divisive movements, whether based on personal lusts or political opposition, Dante now depicted purgatory, i.e., the world restored, paradise regained, the Garden of Eden and primeval anarchism reestablished, by means of the world state. Wicksteed’s summary of the central idea of Dante’s Purgatoriois to the point:
Therefore, when man fell he forfeited immediately the perfect earthly life, and ultimately the perfect heavenly life. His first task, then, must be to recover the life of the Earthly Paradise: and as purgation, or recovery from the fall, consists primarily in regaining Eden, the mountain pedestal of the Garden of Eden becomes by a necessity of symbolic logic the scene of purgation. Physically and spiritually man must climb back to the “uplifted garden.” Hence the key-note of the Purgatorio isprimarily ethical, and only by implication spiritual. Cato, the type of the moral virtues, is the guardian of the place; Virgil, the type of human philosophy, is the guide; and the Earthly Paradise, the type of the “blessedness of this life” (De Mon, iii. 16) is the immediate goal. Beatrice is only realized by Dante as he had known her in the Eden-like “new life” of his youth, and by no means as the august impersonation of revealed truth. She appears to him in due course, surrounded by her escort, when he has reached the state of earthly perfecton; and the vacancy of that region of earthly bliss is explained to him by the Vision of false and confused government, wherein is portrayed the failure of Church and State to bring man back to the life of Eden. To the Church as an earthly organization, or regimen, the grace of God has committed by anticipation such revealed truth as is necessary to help the enfeebled will of man to recover the state of Eden. But the Church, as a regimen, is not to be confounded with Revelation (Beatrice) herself. The proper office of the Church, as a regimen, ends when the proper office of Beatrice begins. See De Monarchia, iii. 4.639 The choice of Cato, a pagan, as the guardian of purgatory and the road to the earthly paradise is a most significant one. Cassius and Brutus are in hell for killing Caesar. Cato, another great enemy of Caesar, is given high honor because he committed suicide, an act, according to Dante, of supreme devotion to liberty.640 It was also in a sense an act of surrender to Caesar; Caesar cannot be resisted, in Dante’s thought. Cato is the philosopher of the Roman state and of civic virtue, and it is civic virtue in terms of the world empire that will lead men to the earthly paradise. The culminating vision of the Purgatorio in Canto 33 is of a political messiah who shall establish the proper relationships of church and state and purge them both of their errors. Frederick II shall have a true and holy heir: “Not for all time shall be without heir the eagle that left the plumage on the cart, whereby it became a monster and then a prey.”641 We have noted that in De Monarchia, Canto 3, line 5, Dante stated that church and state were both products of the fall. The goal of both must be to undo the fall, which means to undo themselves, and to abdicate, so that man, without church and state, will, by his own will, live the perfect life, the life of happiness, for The chief good and final end of Man is happiness, which has been compared to a tower consisting of Moral Virtue as the base, Intellectual Virtue as the spire, and the Act of Contemplation as the crowning point, final end and realisation of the whole structure. It is possible that such an idea may be represented in the spheres assigned respectively to Virgil, Matelda and Beatrice, the trinity of teachers in the Divine Comedy.642
When Dante reached the goal of purgatory, the Garden of Eden, Virgil, symbol of the empire, declared, No more expect my word, nor my sign. Free, upright, and whole, is thy will, and ‘twere a fault not to act according to its prompting; wherefore I do crown and mitre thee over thyself.643 The meaning is obvious: the restored man, restored by the empire, by Virgil and Cato, no longer needs either church or state; he is his own church and state. Dante’s Paradiso is the paradise of this restored humanity. All things are reconciled within it, Francis and Dominic, Aquinas and Siger, Christian and pagan, and many others.Joachim of Flora is also present. In this third stage of mankind, all coexist, or almost all, for the Apostle Peter himself is chosen, in Canto 27, to denounce the papacy. They are “in garb of pastors ravening wolves.” Peter declared that the papacy had made his burial place a sewer for “the blood and filth by which the perverse one,” i.e., Satan, finds relief, in that the papacy is “like a second and worse Fall,” to use Williams’ phrase.644 Very plainly, the church was doing the devil’s work, in Dante’s opinion. As Canto 15 made clear, unity is the goal of being, and absorption into God (Canto 14, 29). The orthodox doctrines of heaven are given lip service, but the heathen are given ground for hope of moral perfection and heaven apart from Christ in Cantos 19 and 20. Aristotle’s philosophy is given high status and authoritative character in Cantos 24, 26, and 28. In the Inferno, we meet the perverse form of Homo Dei as Cerberus; in the Purgatorio, Canto 23, the germ of the celestial eagle is on the face of every penitent. In the Paradiso, Canto 18, “the Celestial Eagle is the perfected form of the Homo Dei.”645 This is the symbol of Roman law and justice. According to Swing, the Trinity is represented by Dante’s guides: “Virgil is the symbol of the Son, Beatrice is that of the Holy Spirit, and St. Bernard is that of the Father.” The function of the Son is to show how to die and be buried in sin and how to be reborn in grace. Virgil shows Dante the way into the underground world of sin and takes him down to the bottom of perdition. It is Virgil who wrenches Dante from the bottom of the sinful grave and takes him out to the world of grace. Virgil’s function is to show Dante the way of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. Virgil wishes to make a veiled announcement of his function, when he tells Dante at his initial appearance that he was born sub Julio (Inf. i. 70). His birth sub Julio is meant to help us to conceive his function in the light of the visible mission of the Son, Who “sub Pontio Pilato passus, et supultus est. Et resurrexit tertia die, secundum Scripturas” (The Nicene Creed). Christ rose again on the third day; Virgil emerges with Dante out of Hell on the third day. On seeing Christ after His Resurrection, the disciples “came up and embraced his feet and worshipped Him” (Matt. 28:9). On meeting Virgil in the Purgatorio, his disciples in poetry try to embrace his feet and worship him.646 If this be true, then the Paradiso involves Christ as a foundation, as is also the empire, but both are transcended to achieve the glory of the great unity. The culmination of the Paradiso,in Canto 33, strongly resembles the unity of mystical thought, for “substance and accidents and their
relations, as though together fused, after such fashion that what I tell is of one simple flame.” Dante clearly shared this perspective. His goal of unity involved deification as the goal of man’s freedom. ... this freedom (or this principle of all our freedom) is the greatest gift conferred by God on human nature; for through it we have our felicity here as men, through it we have our felicity elsewhere as deities.647 Dante used the façade of Catholic faith; the church wisely recognized his hostility to it and quickly placed De Monarchia on the Index as well as recognizing the heresy in The Divine Comedy. Papini was correct in observing of Dante’s Divine Comedy, “He proposes, in a way, to write a new gospel intended to complete the redemption of mankind. And therefore he dares to make himself the herald of a new manifestation of the Divinity who comes to save,” the Veltro.648 But Dante’s faith came gradually to be equated with true faith. On April 30, 1921, the 600th anniversary of Dante’s death, Pope Benedict XV, in his encyclical In Praeclara, “repeatedly cited with praise the De Monarchia, that work which for so many centuries languished on the Index.”649
6. Pope John XXIII Dante had many allies now — modernism, modern Judaism, free masonry, illuminism, and many other movements — all aiming at creating paradise on earth on the foundation and in the power of men of good will. The end of the Christian world was openly desired by many, and a postChristian era called for. It was with great rejoicing that such forces hailed the encyclical of Pope John XXIII, April 10, 1963, addressed, among others, “to all men of good will, on establishing universal peace in truth, justice, charity and liberty.” In Part IV of the encyclical, Pope John declared modern states insufficient to ensure the universal common good. More was clearly needed. But his answer was not Christian law in these modern states, but rather a world community: As is known, the United Nations Organization (U.N.O.) was established on June 26, 1945, and to it there were subsequently added intergovernmental agencies with extensive international tasks in the economic, social, cultural, educational and health fields. The United Nations Organization had as its essential purpose the maintenance and consolidation of peace between peoples, fostering between them friendly relations, based on the principles of equality, mutual respect, and varied forms of cooperation in every sector of human society. An act of the highest importance performed by the United Nations Organization was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved in the General Assembly of December 10, 1948. In the preamble of that declaration, the recognition and respect of those rights and respective liberties is proclaimed as an ideal to be pursued by all peoples and all countries.
Some objections and reservations were raised regarding certain points in the declaration. There is no doubt, however, that the document represents an important step on the path towards the juridical-political organization of the world community. For in it, in most solemn form, the dignity of a person is acknowledged to all human beings. And as a consequence there is proclaimed, as a fundamental right, the right of free movement in the search for truth and in the attainment of moral good and justice, and also the right to a dignified life, while other rights connected with those mentioned are likewise proclaimed. It is our earnest wish that the United Nations Organization — in its structure and in its means — may become ever more equal to the magnitude and nobility of its tasks, and that the day may come when every human being will find therein an effective safeguard for the rights which derive directly from his dignity as a person, and which are therefore universal, inviolable and inalienable rights. This is all the more to be hoped for since all human beings, as they take an ever more active part in the public life of their own political communities, are showing an increasing interest in the affairs of all peoples, and are becoming more consciously aware that they are living members of a world community.650 The Pope’s concern was the “world community,” not the Christian community, and his hope was for a just world order based on man as man rather than Christian man. The echoes of Joachim, Dante, modernism, and Masonic ideas were clearly in evidence. The Pope denied that an ongoing historical movement such as a state and its history could be equated or identified with its false doctrine. The comment of Father J. F. Cronin, S.S., on this passage, was that “Pope John notes that even in Communism there are elements of truth and idealism.”651 Pope John did not refer to the U.S.S.R., although his generalization very clearly included it, and his statement implied more than Fr. Cronin stated: It must be borne in mind, furthermore, that neither can false philosophical teachings regarding the nature, origin and destiny of the universe and of man, be identified with historical movements that have economic, social, cultural or political ends, not even when these movements have originated from those teachings and have drawn and still draw inspiration therefrom. Because the teachings, once they are drawn up and defined, remain always the same, while the movements, working on historical situations in constant evolution, cannot but be influenced by these latter and cannot avoid, therefore, being subject to changes, even of a profound nature. Besides, who can deny that those movements, in so far as they conform to the dictates of reason and are interpreters of the lawful aspirations of the human person, contain elements that are positive and deserving of approval? It can happen, then, that a drawing nearer together for a meeting for the attainment of some practical end, which was formerly deemed inopportune, is useful.652
It is not surprising that “the major Communist parties of Western Europe greeted the Pope’s call for peace and disarmament” and regarded it with “immense satisfaction.”653 A little later, Cardinal Suenen “represented Pope John at the United Nations in early May by presenting Secretary General U Thant a copy of the pope’s encyclical, Pacem in Terris....”654
7. Pope Paul VI Pope Paul VI, on August 6, 1964, in his encyclical Ecclesiam Suam, declared that “the Church must be ever ready to carry on the dialogue with all men of good will within and without its own sphere.”655 The pope saw concentric circles around himself; the first is humanity at large: 101. Wherever men are trying to understand themselves and the world, we can communicate with them. Wherever the councils of nations come together to establish the rights and duties of man, we are honored when they allow us to take our seat among them. If there exists “a soul which is naturally Christian,” we desire to show it our respect and enter into conversation with it.656 These are words Dante would have rejoiced in. This circle includes “atheistic communism,” and its denial of God. Pope Paul declared, “We shall, therefore, resist with all our strength the assaults of this denial.” The hostility came from communism, not from the pope: 105. It could be said that it is not so much that we condemn these systems and regimes as that they express their radical opposition to us in thought and deed. Our regret is, in reality, more sorrow for a victim than the sentence of a judge.657 Communism insisted on an antithesis; the pope did not. He reaffirmed Pope John’s hope: 109. Accordingly, bearing in mind the words of our predecessor of venerable memory, Pope John XXIII, in his encyclical Pacem in Terris to the effect that the doctrines of such movements, once elaborated and defined, remain always the same, whereas the movements themselves cannot help but evolve and undergo changes, even of a profound nature, we do not despair that they may one day be able to enter into a more positive dialogue with the Church than the present one which we now of necessity deplore and lament.658 The second circle includes all monotheists, as the pope classified them, and Paul assumed that the God of Judaism and of Islam, and “of the great Afro-Asiatic religions,” is the same God as the God of Scripture: 111. Then we see another circle around us. This, too, is vast in its extent yet it is not so far away from us. It is made up of the men who above all adore the one, supreme God whom we too adore. We refer to the children, worthy of our affection and respect, of the Hebrew people, faithful to the religion which we call that of the Old Testament. Then to
the adorers of God according to the conception of monotheism, the Moslem religion especially, deserving of our admiration for all that is true and good in their worship of God. And also to the followers of the great Afro-Asiatic religions. Obviously we cannot share in these various forms of religion nor can we remain indifferent to the fact that each of them, in its own way, should regard itself as being the equal of any other and should authorize its followers not to seek to discover whether God has revealed the perfect and definitive form, free from all error, in which He wishes to be known, loved and served. Indeed, honesty compels us to declare openly our conviction that there is but one true religion, the religion of Christianity. It is our hope that all men who seek God and adore Him may come to acknowledge its truth. 112. But we do, nevertheless, recognize and respect the moral and spiritual values of the various non-Christian religions, and we desire to join with them in promoting and defending common ideals of religious liberty, human brotherhood, good culture, social welfare and civil order. For our part, we are ready to enter into discussion on these common ideals, and will not fail to provide every opportunity for such discussion, conducted with genuine, mutual respect, where it would be well received.659 The third circle Paul cited is Christianity, and here the dialogue is “ecumenical.” The position of Pope Paul came close to being a pan-Deism, and pan-Deism is the logical development of the virus of Hellenic thought. It was not surprising, therefore, that Pope Paul, in his journey to India, declared that all men must “begin to work together to build the common future of the human race.” The pope asked, “Are we not all one in this struggle for a better world, in this effort to make available to all people those goods which are needed to fulfill their human destiny and live lives worthy of the children of God?”660 Dante’s dream was now the papal hope. In responding to his welcome, Pope Paul declared, We come here as a pilgrim, a pilgrim of peace, of joy, of serenity and love. We extend our greeting to all the nations of Asia, to every nation in the world. May they always remember that all men are brothers under the fatherhood of the divinity. May they learn to love one another, to respect one another, to avoid violating the natural rights of others. May they even strive to respect these rights in truth, in justice and in love.661 It was not surprising, moreover, that Pope Paul sent a personal representative and a message to the Convocation of Religion for World Peace in San Francisco, Sunday, June 27, 1965, a union
service of all religions celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the United Nations Organization.662 The logic of his position called for it. Centuries earlier, Frederick II had succeeded in electing a friend to the papacy, only to find in Innocent IV, whom Kantorowicz has called “Frederick’s most remarkable pupil,” almost his most ruthless enemy. In shocked dismay, Frederick exclaimed, “No Pope can be a Ghibelline!”663 To a degree, Frederick was right. No pope can be a Ghibelline, a champion of a world empire as the door to an earthly paradise, if he is a knowing champion of the orthodox faith, or if he be interested in protecting or advancing the power of his office and of the church. But a sincere idealist, implicitly pan-Deist in faith, deeply concerned with the problems of the world and of time, can be a Ghibelline pope, and Dante’s Ghibellines have at last triumphed. The world is being re-divinized.
Chapter IX The Immanent One as the Power State 1. Castiglione Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529), courtier, diplomat, soldier, and author, wrote, in The Courtier (written 1508-1516, first printed in 1528, four years before Machiavelli’s The Prince), a classic statement of the ideal Renaissance man. The influence of The Courtier on European standards has been very great. Very quickly translated into English, “it became famous as the perfect guide for young members of the English Establishment practically until Edward VII’s times.” Castiglione himself represented the standard he taught: he “became a man of varied accomplishments, in all of which he was good but in none of which he was uncouth enough to excel.”664 Castiglione’s courtier is a man of the world, urbane, sensitive, and responsive to every wind of influential opinion and observation. He is formally for all things — church, state, family, and society — but substantially he is only for himself, not in any crude, egoistic sense, but in the sense that the true universal is not to be found in religion or in the state, but in the individual man. Similarly, he shall seek in a woman, not a particular person or gross sensual satisfaction, but again a realization of a universal: And therefore, to come out of this so narrow a room, he shall gather in his thoughts by little and little so many ornaments that mingling all beauties together he shall make a universal concept, and bring the multitude of them to the unity of one alone, that is generally spread over all the nature of man. And thus shall he behold no more the particular beauty of one woman, but a universal, that decketh out all bodies.665 The Romantic movement, centuries later, was one of the products of this Neoplatonic idealization; men were in love with love and idealized the woman as the concrete realization of all ideal qualities; for the Romantic, the beloved woman of the moment was the incarnate universal. This meant, of course, that on the masculine side the Romantic lover was his own incarnate universal, so that his love, passion, and grief had cosmic significance. For Castiglione, the prince or ruler should set the pattern by becoming himself an incarnate universal. The prince should in every respect make himself the model man. And that in thus doing he should not only be beloved, but, in a manner, worshipped of his subjects; neither should he need to commit the guard of his person to strangers, for his own, for the better safeguard and profit of themselves, would guard him with their own person; and each man would willingly obey the laws when they should see him to obey them himself, and be, as it were, an uncorrupted keeper and minister of them; and so shall he make all men to conceive such an assured confidence of him, that if he should happen otherwhile to go beyond them in any point, every one would know it were done for a better
intent. The selfsame respect and reverence they would have to his will as they have to the laws.666 What is involved is thus more than being an example to the people: it means the prince must be a living universal. Moreover, the prince should seek to avoid extremes of wealth and poverty in the citizenry as destructive of social order. The citizens should be of moderate means, for the best way to avoid sedition, “the most surest way is universally to maintain a mean.” 667 The prince, too, to attain universality, must seek to attain this mean course, to avoid the extremism of intense commitment to any vice or virtue, which means the subordination of himself to something rather than the subordination of virtues (and vices) to himself. But you must understand that if he be not skilful in that I have said he ought to have a knowledge in, and have not framed his mind in that wise, and bent it to the way of virtue, it shall be hard for him to have the knowledge to be noble couraged, liberal, just, quick-spirited, wise, or to have any other of those qualities that belong unto him. Neither would I have him to be such a one for any other thing, but to have the understanding to put in use these conditions; for as they that build be not all good workmen, so they that give be not all liberal; for virtue never hurteth any man; and many there be that lay hands on other men’s goods to give, and so are lavish of another man’s substance. Some give to them they ought not, and leave in wretchedness and misery such as they be bound to. Others give a certain ill will, and as it were, with a despite, so that it is known they do it because they can do none other. Others do not keep it secret, but they call witness of it, and, in a manner, cause their liberalities to be cried. Others foolishly at a sudden empty the fountain of liberality, so that afterward they can use it no more. Therefore in this point, as in all other matters, he must have a knowledge and govern himself with the wisdom that is a companion unto all the other virtues which, for that they are in the middle, be nigh unto the two extremities that be vices. Wherefore he that hath not knowledge runneth soon unto them.668 In Castiglione’s Neoplatonistic perspective, the prince, or monarchy, best represents “nature” or God, because it is unitary, “more like unto God’s, which one and alone governeth the universal.” The prince should embody “the law of reason, not written in papers or metal, but graven in his own mind, that it may be to him always not only familiar but inward, and live with him as a parcel of him.” The prince should be just, and “on the care of justice dependeth the zeal toward God” of prince and people.669 The world of Castiglione has as its background the Christian world of the church, but its reality is not the binding law of God handed down to man, but rather the incarnating structure or form of being materializing itself in the courtier and moving the world forward and upward. “Nature’s intent is always to bring forth things most perfect,” and this perfection is not found in a materialistic fulfilment of lusts, in “thinking it the true happiness to do what a man lusteth,” nor is it found in asceticism, but in the mean, in an incarnation of form with matter, of ideals into the times, and of purposes into the social realities of the moment.670 Even in speaking, the courtier should avoid the coarse absorption in the rude language of the day, and also avoid archaic language, or language out of touch with the idiom of the day. “And truly it were no small travail for me, if I should use, in this communication of ours, these ancient
Truscan words that are not in use among Truscans nowadays, and, besides that, I believe every man would laugh at me.” Excellent words, now somewhat shop-worn, should be avoided. To fall short in these matters is a cause for “travail.”671 Some philosophies view the world as a struggle between good and evil, in which evil must be destroyed and abolished. Castiglione’s thinking is closer to the yang-yin philosophy, which sees the contraries as complementing one another and necessary to each other: But, methink, they do full ill scan the cause of this difference, and they be fond persons, because they would have all goodness in the world without any ill, which is impossible. For since ill is contrary to good, and good to ill, it is, in a manner, necessary by contrariety and a certain counterpoise the one should underprop and strengthen the other, and where the one wanteth or increaseth, the other to want or increase also; because no contrary is without his other contrary. Who knoweth not that there should be no justice in the world, were it not for wrongs? No stoutness of courage, were there not fainthearted? No chastity, were there not unchastity? Nor health, were there not sickness? Nor truth, were there not lies? Nor happiness, were there not mischances?672 For an age to excel it is required that both good and evil be present. To seek the one to the exclusion of the other is to diminish or abolish the thing sought: Therefore may it be lawful for us to follow the custom of our times, without controlment of these old men, which going about to praise themselves, say: “Now children are not so soon crept out of the shell, but they know more naughtiness than they that were come to man’s estate did in those days.” Neither be they aware, in so saying, that they confirm our children to have more wit than their old men. Let them leave, therefore, speaking against our times as full of vices; for in taking them away, they take also away the virtues. And let them remember that among the good men of ancient time, whenas the glorious wits flourished in the world, which in very deed were many most mischievous, which if they still lived should have excelled our ill men so much in ill, as those good men in goodness, and of this do all histories make full mention.673 Castiglione, however, fights shy of a real commitment to the philosophic premises of such a position: “you harp too much upon your extremities.”674 It is not a philosophy but a man that is the goal of Castiglione’s thinking, a universal man. And such a man depends less on a philosophy than on “a certain wisdom and judgment of choice.”675 Such a man follows a mean in terms of all things, including philosophies. The purpose of the courtier is social, not philosophical: he must “give a good imprinting of himself.”676 Castiglione does not, of course, condone evil. As a Neoplatonist, he sees the centrality of the good, the true, and the beautiful, and he sees a correspondence of each of these to the other. Moreover, man is a microcosm in which the macrocosm reveals itself: “Think now of the shape of man, which may be called a little world.”677 Castiglione’s beatific vision is of man, not of God, and he concludes Book IV with this vision of man as the incarnation of the good, the true, and the beautiful.
But how is man to be judged successful in this quest for incarnating the universals in himself? Since the beatific vision is of man, not of God, it is not a vision governed by the word of God but rather by the word of man. The audience and the judge of man’s performance is man, not God. Even in war, the courtier must be aware of his audience: ... by our rule it may be also understood that where the Courtier is at a skirmish, or assault, or battle upon the land, or in such other places of enterprise, he ought to work the matter wisely in separating himself from the multitude, and undertake his notable and bold feats which he hath to do with as little company as he can in the sight of noble men that be of most estimation in the camp, and especially in the presence and, if it were possible, before the very eyes of his king or great personage he is in service withal; for indeed it is meet to set forth to the show things well done.678 John S. White has called Castiglione’s position “aesthetic individualism.” The individualism of Benvenuto Cellini and of the princes was “autarchic individualism,” an activism in practice. The prince’s motto was “First my will, then the right.” But, noted White, “In the courtier, this energetic activism is sublimated into a passive aesthetic individualism.” This aesthetic “individual needs society, as a resonance box.... He is, in a word, tied to his society, to his class. The medieval saint was virtuous in the desert also. The invisible eyes of God hovered above him. Universal Man needs society in order to display his virtues. His realm is only of this world.”679 But this need for society is not limited to the aesthetic individualist, although he reveals the need most plainly. If God’s supernatural court and judgment are denied, then men require a worldly court and judgment for their defense and vindication. They will create then a rigid and absolute judgment seat out of society. This is as true of the anarchist as it is of the socialist. The collective vengeance of anarchism is no less total simply because the state has been abolished; it simply lacks due process of law. Collectivism in some form is the alternative to Christian theism. The assertion of anarchistic individualism is the necessary condition for the creation of collectivism. When the atomistic individual has denied God and has broken the bonds of the family, he has thereby removed power from the supernatural and from the family and rebased it on the state. Power is an inescapable reality; its denial in one area leads to a concentration of all power in another area. When sovereign power is denied to God, it does not disappear; it is merely relocated from eternity to time. When the power of the family is broken, parenthood is then transferred to the state, however ineptly. Atomistic individualism, because it denies all power to the supernatural, and rebels against the family, claims for itself both sovereignty and power. But, because the atomistic individual is anarchistic only with reference to God’s law, and family law, his need for a framework of reference is concentrated on men at large — collective man, the state. The state becomes his “resonance box,” his stage. Atomistic man calls the totalitarian state into existence as his source of morality, religion, sovereignty, and power. The atomistic individualism of every era, whether in antiquity, the Renaissance, or in the twentieth century, has called into being the omnivorous power of the state as its destroyer, for social atomism is inescapably suicidal. By affirming the totally immanent one, the individual, it creates the greater concentration of immanence and oneness, the totalitarian state.
2. Machiavelli Thus, the counterpart to Castiglione was the Italian statesman, Niccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469-1527). Machiavelli’s The Prince (Il Principe, or De Principatibus) was first written in 1513 and was printed in 1532. His Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius are also, like The Prince, concerned with the theory of civil government. According to Lerner, “Machiavelli sought to distinguish the realm of what ought to be and the realm of what is. He rejected the first for the second.”680 The temporal world was to Machiavelli the real world. Man’s necessities are governed by that world, however appealing and compelling ideals may be. A semblance of conformity to any ideal world men may believe in is advisable, but the temporal world has its necessities, and man must observe them. Machiavelli noted, “Prudent men make the best of circumstances in their actions, and, although constrained by necessity to a certain course, make it appear as if done from their own liberality.”681 The basic and essential reality, then, is the temporal world. Machiavelli was formally respectful towards the church but personally contemptuous. He was not formally an atheist because he was too indifferent to God for such a stance. The basic reality of Machiavelli’s temporal world is not God but power. Sovereignty and power are inescapable realities of any system of thought. If they are denied to God, they are not thereby eliminated. Like all the attributes of God, sovereignty and power, when denied to God, are simply transferred to the human order because they are inescapable aspects of reality. Whether formally or informally, some aspect of the human order is divinized. For Machiavelli, then, human power and sovereignty are the realities which must govern man. The human problem is the conflict of diversity, the disunity of states in Italy, the conflict of men struggling for power. This is Machiavelli’s “many.” The source of unity is thus power, power concentrated in able hands, and the mechanics of power are necessary knowledge if unity is to be gained. As Machiavelli observed, “A sagacious legislator of a republic, therefore, whose object is to promote the public good, and not his private interests, and who prefers his country to his own successors, should concentrate all authority in himself.”682 “The public good” is social order, prosperity, and power. The “Virtues” Machiavelli’s prince should cultivate are the virtues of power wisely administered and retained. Machiavelli agreed with Francesco Vettori that “All forms of Power have their roots in usurpation.”683 To move in terms of “right” is to move in terms of a myth: the reality is power. Because the ideal, Christian morality, influences men, it must be formally upheld and formally conformed to, but the true basis of power is power, neither good nor evil, but simply power wisely used and wisely furthered. Hence Machiavelli’s admiration for Cesare Borgia: “Reviewing thus all the actions of the duke, I find nothing to blame, on the contrary, I feel bound, as I have done, to hold him up as an example to be imitated by all who by fortune and with the arms of others have risen to power.”684 Machiavelli was fully aware of all the facets of Cesare Borgia’s career, but to him the results were the criterion: Cesare Borgia was considered cruel, but his cruelty has brought order to the Romagna, united it, and reduced it to peace and fealty. If this is considered well, it will be seen that he was really much more merciful than the Florentine people, who, to avoid the name of cruelty, allowed Pistola to be destroyed.685
Terrorism to gain and consolidate power was thus sometimes very necessary. Machiavelli did not call terror good: he simply stated that it was a necessary evil towards a good end, a unity productive of power and the unity and prosperity of power. The Borgia terror had to be weighed against the Borgia gains: After four years, the results of Cesare’s labors were unveiled. It was then revealed that no Pope had ever been as powerful a secular prince as Alexander VI. True, his successor to the throne of Peter cursed the memory of the Borgias. Nevertheless, these Borgias had given the Church a gift which lasted for three centuries. The walls of her cities, and the valleys, rivers and hills of her territories remained. They had liberated the Church from the dread of being driven out of her own land. Father and son had won new successes for the papacy. In Rome, the Colonnesi and Orsini had been broken. The baronial houses had been humbled and subordinated. The rulers of ecclesiastical territories — the lord of Urbino, Faenza, Rimini, Camerino, Perugia, Imola, Forli, Pesaro and Piombino — had either been expelled or murdered. And never before had the College of Cardinals and the Curia been such willing tools in the hand of the Pope.686 This concept of the use of terror has been extensively condemned and as extensively used in subsequent history. Lenin openly recommended Machiavelli in Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder, and the Communist use of terror is well known. Machiavelli very early, as a clerk in the Florentine bureaucracy, learned the uses of power and loved it. He clearly recognized the power inherent in a bureaucracy, and, instead of being a lazy clerk, his one fear was that his excessive zeal for his work might awaken jealousies and malice. The position of these Florentine clerks, low as it was, gave them a certain superiority. For they had their own desks, and they could drive rich men to desperation by repeated examination of their tax-reports; they could make men of prominence wait for permits and withhold powder and pay from celebrated generals. These bureaucrats could release a plague of malice against any individual or against the mass of non-officeholders. They were the tiny inkstained Saints guarding the vestibule of Power — the indispensable muck of sovereignty! The Great Council, the Standard-bearer of Justice, the Eight of the Guard, the Six of the Board of Trade, the Ten of Liberty and the numerous commissions and subcommissions made decisions and changes. But in the end, they were themselves dependent upon the indolence, indifference, and malice of an anonymous office. For already a man had two lives in Florence, his personal and his documental life. And the life on paper was capable of destroying the individual behind it.687 Machiavelli saw two ideas in conflict: “the way men live and the way they ought to live.” But, “A man who always and everywhere would act according to a perfect standard of goodness must, among so many who are not good, eventually be undone.”688 The reality is “the way men live,” in terms of evil, but men like the façade of the good. Machiavelli did not call evil good, but he
did not struggle against evil; he merely recognized and used it as the basic fact about man and as an essential ingredient of power. The three basic aspects of life are necessita, virtu, and fortuna, and power involves a recognition and combination of all three. Since evil rather than good is the “truth” about life, the basic hypocrisy of Renaissance man was to claim power by ascribing more evil to himself than he possessed. A vast realm of boasting concerning the ability to lie, fantasies of sexual prowess in adulterous relations, murders committed, and, so on, developed among Renaissance men. Machiavelli himself wrote, “In hypocrisy, I have long since received baptism, confirmation, and communion. In lying I even possess a doctor’s degree. Life has taught me to temper falsehood with truth and truth with falsehood.”689 Basically, however, Machiavelli’s position was one of honest and forthright pragmatism, and his pragmatism was less pretentious and more consistent than the formal pragmatism of John Dewey, and without Dewey’s pious cant. Machiavelli did not clothe his goal with the moralism of “the Great Society.” He wanted a successful and working order for Italy, and wished the same for any state, without any pretensions of paradise or of morality. His counsel was simple and direct: Therefore, a prudent ruler ought not to keep faith when by so doing it would be against his interest, and when the reasons which made him bind himself no longer exist. If all men were good, this precept would not be a good one; but as they are bad, and would not observe their faith with you, so you are not bound to keep faith with them. Nor have legitimate grounds ever failed a prince who wished to show colourable excuse for the non-fulfilment of his promise. Of this one could furnish an infinite number of modern examples, and show how many times peace has been broken, and how many promises rendered worthless, by the faithlessness of princes, and those that have been best able to imitate the fox have succeeded best. But it is necessary to be able to disguise this character well, and to be a great feigner and dissembler; and men are so simple, and so ready to obey present necessities, that one who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived. I will only mention one modern instance. Alexander VI did nothing else but deceive men, he thought of nothing else, and found the occasion for it; no man was ever more able to give assurances, or affirmed things with stronger oaths, and no man observed them less; however, he always succeeded in his deceptions, as he well knew this aspect of things. It is not, therefore, necessary for a prince to have all the above-named qualities, but it is very necessary to seem to have them. I would even be bold to say that to possess them and always to observe them is dangerous, but to appear to possess them is useful. Thus it is well to seem merciful, faithful, humane, sincere, religious, and also to be so; but you must have the mind so disposed that when it is needful to be otherwise you may be able to change to the opposite qualities. And it must be understood that a prince, and especially a new prince, cannot ob-
serve all those things which are considered good in men, being often obliged, in order to maintain the state, to act against faith, against charity, against humanity, and against religion. And, therefore, he must have a mind disposed to adapt itself according to the wind, and as the variations of fortune dictate, and, as I said before, not deviate from what is good, if possible, but be able to do evil if constrained. A prince must take great care that nothing goes out of his mouth which is not full of the above-named five qualities, and, to see and hear him, he should seem to be all mercy, faith, integrity, humanity, and religion. And nothing is more necessary than to seem to have this last quality, for men in general judge more by the eyes than by the hands, for every one can see, but very few have to feel.690 It is “necessary” for a ruler “to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the case.”691 Machiavelli, despite his cutting insight, had democratic leanings. For him there was truth in the saying, “The voice of the people is the voice of God,” for “it would almost seem as if the people had some occult virtue.”692 But Machiavelli was more prone to such idealism in dealing with the ancient Rome he admired than in observing Italian realities. A wise ruler, he held, who had “the public good” in mind, “should concentrate all authority in himself.” However, to maintain this concentrated power, the one should involve the many in the administration of it to gain their support: “it will not endure long if the administration of it remains on the shoulders of a single individual; it is well, then, to confide this to the charge of many, for thus it will be sustained by the many.”693 Involvement binds men. “It is the nature of men to be as much bound by the benefits that they confer as by those they receive.”694 Fortune governs men extensively. The origins of various forms of political order are in “chance,” and before states began, men lived “like beasts.” Instead of a goal or meaning, the basic aspect of man’s life is “perpetual movement,” i.e., change or flux. Religion is important, not because it provides meaning, but because it is social cement: it binds the body politic into a firm and workable unity. Machiavelli thus strongly approved of Roman religion, because it was a department of state and an instrument of social order. The “fear of the gods... greatly facilitated all the enterprises which the Senate or its great men attempted.” Moreover, “religion served in the command of the armies, in uniting the people and keeping them well conducted, and in covering the wicked with shame.” It was this use of religion which gave Rome social cohesion, good law and order, and success in all its enterprises.695 The one thus had become fully immanent, and all power revolved around the one, the power state. Power in the state had no transcendental critique, no God in judgment over it. Its only test was historical and pragmatic: did it succeed? And power thus was power only if it maintained itself to its own satisfaction and to the satisfaction of the subjects of the state. Since a truly wise power in the state controlled, by the judicious use of forms and of controls, the opinions of the people, power was thus truly power when, with the uses of terror, religion, good, evil, and all things else, it maintained itself successfully. This, then, was a philosophy for the power state and a political philosophy for the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
Chapter X The Reformation:The Problem Redefined 1. Luther With the Reformation, the problem of the one and the many was shifted from the arena of philosophy to the arena of theology. Moreover, the locale of the determinative power was shifted from time to eternity. The shift came dramatically, and the dissatisfaction with the reigning answer came in Luther’s reaction to Tetzel’s preaching. The Dominican Tetzel was the vendor of the indulgences proclaimed by the pope. People were urged to buy indulgences to save their suffering parents and loved ones from the pains and torment of purgatory. Tetzel declared, “Remember that you are able to release them,” for As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, The soul from purgatory springs.696 There are those who hold to the theory that Luther’s opposition to the indulgences was not at first a radical theological break with Rome but that rather, as the debate was carried on, Luther was led, step by step, to the point of departure. Such a position is defective, in that it disregards the radical break implicit in the very nature of Luther’s opposition to indulgences. Warfield’s analysis of the significance of the Ninety-Five Theses of Luther pointed out that It was one of the attractions of the indulgences which Tetzel hawked about that they gave the purchaser the right to choose a confessor for himself and required this confessor to absolve him. They thus made his immunity from all punishment sure. Marvellous to say, the vendors of indulgences were not satisfied with thus selling the justice of heaven; they wished to sell the justice of earth, too. Luther, it is true, in a passage in his “Resolutions” denies that “the Pope” “remits civil or rather criminal penalties inflicted by civil law,” but he adds that “the legates do this in some places when they are personally present”; and in another place he betrays why he wishes to shield “the Pope” from the onus of this iniquity, saying that “the Pope” cannot be supposed to have the power to remit civil penalties, because in that case “the letters of indulgence will abolish all gibbets and racks throughout the world” — that is to say, would do away altogether with the punishment of crime. In point of fact the actual as distinguished from Luther’s ideal Pope did issue indulgences embodying this precise provision, and those sold by Tetzel were among them. Henry Charles Lea remarks upon them thus: The power to protect from all secular courts “was delegated to the peripatetic vendors of indulgences, who thus carried impunity for crime to every man’s door. The St. Peter’s indulgences, sold by Tetzel and his colleagues, were of this character, and not only released the purchasers from all spiritual penalties but forbade all secular or criminal prosecution.... It was fortunate that the Reformation came to prevent the Holy See from rendering all justice, human and divine, a commodity to be sold in open market.”697
In this important analysis, Warfield presented dramatically and clearly the inescapable conclusion of the Scholastic philosophy: the determination of history had been shifted from eternity to time, from God to man, so that the world of eternity was subject to the control of man. The “fact” of this controlling power was not and is not denied by Roman Catholic apologists; the form of the sale of this power is in their perspective the error. Tetzel’s sales thus brought to focus the philosophical implications of Scholastic philosophy. What Aquinas taught in the classroom was now put on the level of the simplest peasant: man could control God, and time could govern or overrule eternity. Tetzel may have been personally distasteful to his more philosophical Dominican brethren, but his philosophy was simply the concrete application of what the order and the church taught. Luther’s opposition was theological; if Luther had not opposed the pope and indulgences, there would have been, and already was arising, civil opposition. The state was claiming the right to govern time and eternity, and its quarrel with Rome was basically a family quarrel. The Reformation did not bring the monarchs and national states into a new power. On the contrary, it sought, as against papacy, empire, and crown, to restore sovereignty to God, to place crown and mitre under God. Modern Lutheranism, deeply imbued with heresies, often derives civil authority from below, from natural law. But Holl rightly noted, “because Luther derives the state, not from below, but exclusively from above, from God’s plan of salvation, he insists on its distinct character as a state whose essence is authority.”698 Whether or not Luther knew how far his Ninety-Five Theses would carry him is beside the point. His opponents recognized their radical nature. The entire authority of Rome had been challenged. The whole world-order of Scholasticism was denied by Luther. By denying that the power of the church extends beyond the grave (Thesis 13: “Death puts an end to all claims of the church....”), and by denying that the church and pope have anything but ministerial authority, and no power to do more than declare what God’s word allows (Theses 6, 27, 28, etc.), Luther was clearly challenging every aspect of Scholasticism and of the existing church. Luther’s intellectual pilgrimage began with his inability religiously to find grace and forgiveness in the temporal church. Salvation, spiritual health, meant, he knew, a good conscience before God, but how could fallen man have a good conscience before God? The remedies the church provided he found futile: sinful man was offering sinful substitutes for what God alone could give. If the law came from man, then man could forgive offenses against the law, but because God gave the law, God alone could forgive the sin against the law. For Luther, neither God nor the law could be set aside. As he wrote later in his Small Catechism, in Question 90, The Law has a threefold purpose: First, the Law checks to some extent the coarse outbursts of sin and thereby helps to keep order in the world. (A curb.) Secondly, the Law shows us our sins. (A mirror.) Thirdly, the Law teaches us Christians which works we must do to lead a Godpleasing life. (A rule.)699
Luther’s conscience vindicated God’s law as against the law of the church; accordingly, he sought a theology to vindicate God and His law. This he found in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. It is commonplace to speak of the subject of Luther’s Romans as justification by faith alone; in this there can be no quarrel, provided that it is also made clear that for Luther this meant establishing God’s law. It was precisely because the law that man sins against was for Luther God’s law that God’s salvation is alone efficacious. Thus, commenting on St. Paul’s statement, “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law,” Luther said: We establish the law (3:31). The Law is made void if its validity and authority are denied, so that it is no longer obligatory and men may transgress it. The carnally minded might have accused the Apostle of making void the Law, since he said that sinners are not justified by the Law, but that the righteousness of God is manifested and imparted without the Law. On the other hand, the Law is established and confirmed when its demands or injunctions are heeded. In this sense the Apostle says: “We establish the Law”; that is: We say that it is obeyed and fulfilled through faith. But you who teach that the works of the Law justify without faith, make the Law void; for you do not obey it; indeed, you teach that its fulfillment is not necessary: The Law is established in us when we fulfill it willingly and truly. But this no one can do without faith. They destroy God’s covenant (of the Law) who are without the divine grace that is granted to those who believe in Christ.700 There were times when Luther reflected the older blurring of law and love, and he replaced law with love.701 Calvin also at times underrated the law, calling it “coarse rudiments.”702 Calvin also expressed a preference for “the common law of nations, as against “the polity of Moses.”703 Despite these wretched statements and tendencies, both Luther and Calvin undergirded the sovereignty of God’s law as against the laws of men and nations both by their emphasis on justification by God, and also by their emphasis on God as Creator. In Calvinist circles, the Puritans in particular gave prominence to God’s law. Luther struck out sharply against Aristotle’s doctrine of origins, and against the influence of Greek thought on Christian thinkers. He strongly defended the doctrine of creation. 704 The doctrine of creation, faithfully held, leads directly to the doctrines of predestination and also to justification by God alone. If the triune God is indeed the Creator of all things by His sovereign decree, then all things are ordained by God, and salvation is entirely the work of God because man is entirely the creature of God. Man’s liberty, the liberty of the Christian man, is, therefore, in God’s law and His grace, and in submission to God’s decree. By virtue of the sovereignty of God, man is freed from slavery to man; by virtue of the law-word of God, man serves men in obedience to the word that requires him to obey God by means of his duties to neighbors and masters. This is the ground of Luther’s “two propositions concerning the liberty and the bondage of the spirit”: A Christian man is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian man is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.705
Because God is sovereign, reason was denied its Scholastic autonomy by Luther and placed in submission to God. Reason was, for Luther as for Calvin, important as reason; it was reason as a god sitting in judgment over God that was denied: Dr. Henning asked: “Is reason to hold no authority at all with Christians, since it is to be set aside in matters of faith?” The Doctor replied: Before faith and the knowledge of God, reason is mere darkness; but in the hands of those who believe, ’tis an excellent instrument. All faculties and gifts are pernicious, exercised by the impious; but most salutary when possessed by godly persons.706 Luther was replacing the pseudo-god of Aristotle and the autonomous man and reason of Greek philosophy with the living God of Scripture. The absolute priority of God was both a theological foundation for Luther and a personal experience. Very early in his struggle with Rome, Luther observed, “God alone is in this business; we are seized so that I see we are acted upon rather than act.” Luther’s activism was derived from this faith: man, being an instrument of God, could not choose to be a spectator.707
2. Against Erasmus It was in his debate with Erasmus that Luther’s thinking came to its sharpest focus. Erasmus, in his Diatribe or Sermon Concerning Will, approached the subject moralistically, pragmatically, and anthropologically.708 The approach of Erasmus was also Pelagian. It was not exegetical: Erasmus was not concerned with accepting what Scripture taught and faithfully interpreting it; his concern was to “save” the freedom of the will. As against Luther, he declared, “it is not at all true that those who trust in their own works are driven by the spirit of Satan and delivered to damnation.”709 Erasmus held that “there are several places in Scripture which obviously ascribe contingency to God, yes, even a certain mutability.”710 Moreover, in his “Preface,” Erasmus, the ostensible champion of free will and reason, attacked propositional truth; he spoke of his great “dislike of assertions,” which he declared to be so great “that I prefer the views of the sceptics wherever the inviolable authority of Scripture and the decisions of the Church permit.” Erasmus felt that “Holy Scripture contains secrets into which God does not want us to penetrate too deeply, because if we attempt to do so, increasing darkness envelops us, so that we might come to recognize in this manner both the unfathomable majesty of divine wisdom and the feebleness of the human mind.”711 This humble language concealed the reality: because for him God had both a contingency and mutability, there was thus no certain knowledge, because a conditional and changeable God could not have estab-lished an absolute decree and certain knowledge. Propositional truth, “assertions,” must give way to hypotheses because the universe is not the total handiwork of an absolute God. Packer and Johnston stated it succinctly when they described free-will in Erasmus’ sense as “an inherent power in man to act apart from God.”712 Luther’s answer to Erasmus, On the Bondage of the Will (De Servo Arbitrio, 1525), is clearly Luther’s greatest work, and one of the greatest documents in the history of thought. Luther met Erasmus’ attack on propositional truth head-on: the assertion in question, he pointed out, is “the
assertion of what has been delivered to us from above in the Sacred Scripture.” Moreover, “Take away assertions, and you take away Christianity.” As for Erasmus’ preference for the skeptic’s position, “What Christian could talk like that?”713 The absolute God of Scripture speaks with perspicuity in Scripture. As for Erasmus’ definition of free-will, Luther declared: This is the kind of definition that the Sophists call vicious — that is, one in which the definition fails to cover the thing defined. For I showed above that “free-will” belongs to none but God only. You are no doubt right in assigning to man a will of some sort, but to credit him with a will that is free in the things of God is too much. For all who hear mention of “free-will” take it to mean, in its proper sense, a will that can do and does do, God-ward, all that it pleases, restrained by no law and no command; for you would not call a slave, who acts at the beck and call of his lord, free. But in that case how much less are we right to call men or angels free; for they live under the complete mastery of God (not to mention sin and death), and cannot continue by their own strength for a moment.714 The issue was God or man. Does man have an autonomy from God to any degree, or is man totally God’s creature, and entirely under God’s government? When Erasmus spoke of free will, he did not mean what is commonly understood by that term, i.e., that man is a responsible creature. Instead, he meant, as do all the tiresome intellectuals who trumpet “free will,” the autonomy of man from God, a radically different concept. Luther bluntly and discerningly cited the implications of Erasmus’ position: Erasmus informs us, then, that “free-will” is a power of the human will which can of itself will and not will the word and work of God, by which it is to be led to those things that exceed its grasp and comprehension. If it can will and not will, it can also love and hate; and if it can love and hate, it can in measure keep the law and believe the gospel. For, if you can will and not will, it cannot be that you are not able by that will of yours to do some part of a work, even though another should prevent your being able to complete it. Now, since death, the cross, and all the evils of the word, are numbered among the works of God that lead to salvation, the human will will thus be able to will its own death and perdition. Yes, it can will all things when it can will the contents of the word and work of God! What can be anywhere below, above, within or without the word and work of God, except God Himself? But what is here left to grace and the Holy Ghost? This is plainly to ascribe divinity to “free-will”! For to will the law and the gospel, not to will sin, and to will death, is possible to divine power alone, as Paul says in more places than one. Which means that nobody since the Pelagians has written of “free-will” more correctly than Erasmus! For I have said above that “free-will” is a divine term, and signifies a divine power. But no one to date, except the Pelagians, has ever assigned to it much power. The Sophists, whatever their views, certainly do not say anything like this! Why, Erasmus far outdoes the very Pelagians; for they
ascribe this divinity to the whole of “free-will,” while Erasmus ascribes it to half only! The Pelagians posit two parts of “free-will,” a power of discernment and a power of choice, attributing the one to the reason and the other to the will; and the Sophists do the same. But Erasmus sets aside the power of discernment and exalts the power of choice alone. Thus he makes a lame “half-free will” into a God! What do you think he would have done had he set out to describe the whole of “free will”?715 To all practical intent, the “god” of Erasmus’ Diatribe was simply another name for “that idol, Chance, under whose sway all things happen at random.” Luther pointed out that the divine freedom implies human necessity. The primacy of determination is absolutely and wholly God’s, “Yet God does not work in us without us; for He created and preserves us for this very purpose, that He might work in us and we might cooperate with Him, whether that occurs outside His kingdom, by His general omnipotence, or within His kingdom by the special power of His Spirit.”716
3. Luther and the One and Many Now, let us analyze the implications of this for the problem of the one and the many. The determination of eternity by time, as dramatically evidenced by Tetzel, had reduced the triune God to a position of subordination, and even to no more than a limiting concept. By restoring the priority of God, Luther again both restored the determination of time and history to God, and placed the ultimacy of the one and the many in the triune God. With respect to the doctrine of the sacraments, Luther endangered his position by retaining the confusion and intermingling of the divine and the human in the sacrament of the Lord’s Table, after the Roman Catholic pattern. Ephesus and Chalcedon had barred the door to the confusion of the divine and the human, but Luther retained the Catholic doctrine to a large degree. The doctrine of the real presence is distinct from and does not require either transubstantiation or consubstantiation. Luther, whose reasoning against his opponents was usually so sharp and telling, at this point regularly fell back on dogmatic denunciations and an appeal to experience: “They imagine that they contribute a great piece of wisdom when they submit the learning of their nursery and declare that water is not fire. But if they ever experienced the power and effect of Baptism, of the Sacrament, or of the oral Word, they would indeed keep their mouths shut.”717 There was an element of the doctrine of economic appropriation, as formulated at Ephesus, present in Luther’s doctrine of the Lord’s Table, but, even more, as Brilioth notes, in his favorable account, Luther, in his view of the sacrament, was “treating the sacrament as a symbol of the incarnation.”718 This is precisely Luther’s error: the sacrament is not a symbol of the incarnation, but it is a sign of the atonement. To render it a symbol of the incarnation is radically to alter its meaning in the life of man, and also to alter the doctrine of the incarnation. The failure of Lutheranism to develop the implications of Luther’s position for the doctrine of the one and the many rests not only with Lutheran scholars but also with Luther himself. If the sacrament setting forth the atonement is a symbol of the incarnation, then incarnation itself is an act of atonement, and a dangerous door is opened wide, leading to mysticism, pietism, and humanism.
4. Calvin The work of reformation begun by Luther was carried forward by John Calvin. The two men were fully agreed on essentials, and both insisted on the sovereignty of God and His absolute predestination of all things. Calvin’s work was in Geneva, a city which turned to the reformers, not out of any desire for the reformation, but simply because the old order had collapsed, and architects were needed to restore and rebuild social order. Because social order was seen as essentially religious, it was religious leadership which Geneva sought. Geneva, an important trade center, faced moral and social anarchy. But Geneva, even at Calvin’s death, was not on the whole converted to the new faith, or to any faith. Cadier was right in stating that “the masses had not been won over.”719 The doctrines of the Libertines were closer to the tastes of Geneva, but such doctrines the practical people saw also as leading to anarchy. The Libertines, who were inclined towards pantheism and atheism, were also communists. They taught a community of goods and of women.720 The whole of Europe was honeycombed with secret and semi-secret fraternities or societies dedicated to spreading scepticism and “enlightenment,” and Geneva had a generous share of such causes.721 Central to Calvin’s strength and the vigor of his position was his doctrine of the Trinity. Warfield listed three theologians as the great orthodox theologians of this doctrine — Tertullian, Augustine, and Calvin.722 Calvin came to the subject with a firm faith in the infallibility of Scripture and the divine sovereignty.723 With reference to God, Calvin wrote: But he also designates himself by another peculiar character, by which he may be yet more clearly distinguished; for while he declares himself to be but One, he proposes himself to be distinctly considered in Three Persons, without apprehending which, we have only a bare and empty name of God floating in our brains, without any idea of the true God.724 There is no God but the God of Scripture, the triune God, and any and all Unitarian, Arian, or subordinationist views express no faith but “only a bare and empty name of God floating in our brains, without any idea of the true God.” To deny the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is to fall into at least subordinationism, as Arminianism did, and to entertain subordinationism is to deny God’s sovereignty, as every subordinationist faith, including Arminianism, has done.725 Theism without orthodox trinitarianism quickly becomes no more than a limiting concept. Calvin saw the thrust of subordinationism: it was covert atheism. For anyone to deny God the Father, and to reject God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, was to stand openly condemned as a heretic and an atheist. But, by demoting Christ, the determination of history could be transferred from eternity to time. The man Jesus was confused in the union with God the Son, and humanity mingled with deity, and this union then lowered towards earth. Such men as profess this doctrine of Christ, “Since they cannot openly rob him of his divinity, secretly steal from him his
eternity.”726 This is one of Calvin’s most perceptive sentences: he was aware of the nature of subordinationism in all its history, from the early church to his day. God is beyond time and also beyond the mind of man: How can the human mind, by its own efforts, penetrate into an examination of the essence of God, when it is totally ignorant of its own? Wherefore let us freely leave to God the knowledge of himself. For “he alone,” as Hilary says, “is a competent witness for himself, being only known by himself.”727 Man does not discover and know God; God reveals himself to man; this revelation is true and propositional knowledge, but it is not exhaustive knowledge, nor can man have such a knowledge of God. The philosophy of Servetus thus, while formally retaining God, in actuality replaced God with man and all creation. But the most execrable blasphemy of all is, his (Servetus’) promiscuous confusion of the Son of God and the Spirit with all the creatures. For he asserts that in the Divine essence there are parts and divisions, every portion of which is God; and especially that the souls of the faithful are coeternal and consubstantial with God; though in another place he assigns substantial Deity, not only to the human soul, but to all created things.728 “The bare and empty name of God floating in our brains, without any idea of the true God,” attaches itself to man and to creation. The name of God without the biblical doctrine of the Trinity is no God at all, but rather another name for man and his world. The true God, said Calvin, is distinguished from all fictitious ones by the creation of the world.729 By His creation of all things out of nothing, God is Lord and Sovereign over all. In Jesus Christ, there is a true union of God and man without confusion. In explaining that union, Calvin echoed the doctrine of economic appropriation of the Council of Ephesus.730 The error of Eutyches, the absorption of Christ’s humanity into His divinity, had become the Lutheran error in their doctrine of the Lord’s Table. The doctrine of the real presence had been confused with the doctrine of unity, and union with unity: There are two words commonly used, Union (unio) and Unity (unitas); the first is applied to the two Natures, and the second to the Person alone. To assert the unity of the flesh and of the Divinity, those would be ashamed to do, if I am not deceived, who yet inconsiderably adopt this absurdity; for, except the flesh differs and is distinct in its own peculiar properties from the Divine Nature, they are by blending together become one.731 The Lutheran doctrine of “ubiquity” and communion of properties confused the two natures; it read union as unity, and it fell into ancient and deadly heresies:
I speak not of the Romanists, whose doctrine is more tolerable, or at least more modest; but some are so carried away with the heat of contention, as to affirm that, on account of the union of the two natures in Christ, wherever his Divinity is, his flesh, which cannot be separated from it, is there also; as if that union had mingled the two natures so as to form some intermediate kind of being, which is neither God nor man. This notion was maintained by Eutyches, and since his time by Servetus. But it is clearly ascertained from the Scriptures, that in the one person of Christ the two natures are united in such a manner, that each retains its peculiar properties undiminished. That Eutyches was justly condemned as a heretic, our adversaries will not deny; it is surprising that they overlook the cause of his condemnation, which was, that by taking away the difference between the two natures and insisting on the unity of the person, he made the Divinity human and deified the humanity. What absurdity, therefore, is it to mingle heaven and earth together.... ... It is a distinction common in the schools, and which I am not ashamed to repeat, that though Christ is every where entire, yet all that is in him is not everywhere. And I sincerely wish that the schoolmen themselves had duly considered the meaning of this observation; for then we would never have heard of their stupid notion of the corporeal presence of Christ in the sacrament. Therefore, our Mediator, as he is every where is always near to his people; and in the sacred supper exhibits himself present in a peculiar manner, yet not with all that belongs to him; because, as we have stated, his body has been received into heaven, and remains there till he shall come to judgment.732 All the gains of the Reformation could be lost, Calvin saw, in this mingling of heaven and earth together. The confusion of man and God would restore determination and sovereignty to man: man as a part of the union with God, by virtue of man’s union with Christ, could thereby govern God. Worldly sovereignties, divine monarchs could then again rule the earth as little gods. The church of the incarnation would be a church governing eternity as well as time; it would be a church with authority of a godlike nature. The confusion of the natures in the Roman Church had given the pope authority over heaven: Who can now wonder that the Pope claims primacy over every description of mortals, since he here makes himself the president of angels also?733 Christ in His incarnation was still as God the Son reigning in heaven. 734 For Calvin, God was not exhausted in the incarnation; that is, God the Son was truly incarnate in the flesh, but he was not exhaustively incarnated: Nor do we, as they pretend, imagine two kinds of seed in Adam, notwithstanding Christ was free from all contagion. For the generation of man is not naturally and originally impure and corrupt, but only accidentally so, in consequence of the fall. Therefore we need not wonder, that Christ, who was to restore our integrity, was exempted from the general corruption. But what they urge on us as an absurdity, that if the Word of God was clothed with flesh, it was therefore confined within
the narrow prison of an earthly body, is mere impudence; because, although the infinite essence of the Word is united in one person with the nature of man, yet we have no idea of its incarceration or confinement. For the Son of God miraculously descended from heaven, yet in such a manner that he never left heaven; he chose to be miraculously conceived in the womb of the virgin, to live on the earth, and to be suspended on the cross; and yet he never ceased to fill the universe, in the same manner as from the beginning.735 It is for this reason, among others, that modernism and neo-orthodoxy are so hostile to Calvin: his doctrine of Christ cannot be absorbed into their systems. Neo-orthodoxy exhausts God in His revelation, so that God is humanized and time triumphs over eternity, but not so in Calvin’s doctrine. He spoke sharply against this “alchemy” as “cursed blasphemies”: Here again the devil tries to stir up the coals of strife by perverting or disguising the doctrine which St. Paul teaches us. For there have been heretics who have endeavored to maintain that the majesty and Godhead of Jesus Christ, His heavenly essence, was forthwith changed into flesh and manhood. Thus did some say, with many other cursed blasphemies, that Jesus Christ was made man. What will follow hereupon? God must forgo His nature, and His spiritual essence must be turned into flesh. They go on further and say Jesus Christ is no more man, but His flesh has become God. These are marvelous alchemists, to make so many new natures of Jesus Christ. Thus the devil raised up such dreamers in old times to trouble the faith of the church; who are now renewed in our time.736 Thus, Calvin, by his doctrine of the incarnation and of the Trinity, retained the integrity of the doctrine of God. The one and the many are maintained in their equal ultimacy in the triune God, and man is barred from participation in that ultimacy. Calvin’s doctrine of the Lord’s Table strictly maintained the real presence while denying either confusion or any absorption or assimilation of man into the Godhead. The sacrament sets forth the membership and participation of the believer in the new and redeemed humanity of Jesus Christ, the last Adam. In his comment on John 6:51, “The bread which I shall give is my flesh,” Calvin delighted in the fact that through Christ, flesh, humanity, which once conveyed death to us, now conveys life. It is not the humanity or flesh of Christ which in itself or intrinsically conveys life to us, but it is the humanity of Christ, which, by union with the divinity of Christ, makes us partakers of the divine nature, its righteousness, which is life itself: But an objection is brought, that the flesh of Christ cannot give life, because it was liable to death, and because even now it is not immortal in itself; and next, that it does not all belong to the nature of flesh to quicken souls. I reply, though this power comes from another source than from the flesh, still this is no reason why the designation may not accurately apply to it; for as the eternal Word of God is the fountain of life (John 1, 4) so his flesh, as a channel, conveys to us that life which dwells intrinsically, as we say, in his Divinity. And in this sense it is called life-giving, because it conveys to us that life which it borrows from another
quarter. This will not be difficult to understand if we consider what is the cause of life, namely, righteousness. And though righteousness flows from God alone, still we shall not attain the full manifestation of it any where else than in the flesh of Christ; for in it was accomplished the redemption of man, in it a sacrifice was offered to atone for sins, and an obedience yielded to God, to reconcile him to us; it was also filled with the sanctification of the Spirit, and at length, having vanquished death, it was received into the heavenly glory. It follows, therefore, that all the parts of life have been placed in it, that no man may have reason to complain that he is deprived of life, as if it were placed in concealment, or at a distance.737 Calvin’s doctrine of the sacrament thus barred a metaphysical doctrine of salvation: man was not made God by his redemption; he was renewed as a man. Salvation is an ethical, not a metaphysical, fact. And the sacrament celebrates an ethical, not a metaphysical, change. A change of substance in the communion elements means a change of substance in man: a metaphysical concept of salvation is attested in such a doctrine. This Calvin firmly denied. The whole Christ is in a sense given in the sacrament,738 but it is not in any sense other than an ethical one. Jesus Christ communicates to us by His atoning work, celebrated in the sacrament, the righteousness of God unto salvation. The Lutheran doctrine, as Calvin noted, calls for “participation” in all of Christ, in His deity as well as His humanity: We say, that though Christ is in heaven, yet through the hidden and incomprehensible power of his Spirit, this favour comes to us — that His flesh becomes life to us, so that we become flesh of his flesh and bones of his bones (Eph. v. 30). By them, on the contrary, it is maintained, that except Christ comes down on earth, there is no participation. That they may, however, get rid of the absurdity of a local presence, it has been found necessary to fabricate the strange notion of ubiquity; which, if we think it not possible to reconcile to the principles of faith, we must beg them at least to pardon our ignorance. Here we follow not our own understanding; but according to the knowledge given us from above, we cannot comprehend that it is at all agreeable to Scripture to say that the body of Christ is everywhere. Both Christ himself and His Apostles clearly show that the immensity of God does not belong to the flesh; a personal union is what they teach; and no one, except Eutyches, has hitherto taught, that the two natures became so blended, that when Christ became man, the attributes of Deity were communicated to his human nature.739 The humanity of Christ, being made ubiquitous, shares the attributes of His divinity and is everywhere! And the believer, in the sacrament, literally partakes of a body that is mingled with divinity. From ethics to metaphysics, from biblical salvation to deification, such is the direction of this doctrine. But for Calvin, from first to last, salvation is an ethical act, and the purpose of the sacrament “is to have part and portion in all the graces which he purchased for us by his death”: Moreover, if the reason for communicating with Jesus Christ is to have part and portion in all the graces which he purchased for us by his death, the thing requisite
must be not only to be partakers of his Spirit, but also to participate in his humanity, in which he rendered all obedience to God the Father, in order to satisfy our debts, although, properly speaking, the one cannot be without the other; for when he gives himself to us, it is in order that we may possess him entirely.740 Some, however, seeking a metaphysical doctrine of salvation, misread the words of Peter (2 Peter 1:4) concerning being made “partakers of the divine nature” in a metaphysical rather than an ethical sense. Calvin condemned this “delirious dream.”741 In commenting on the phrase, Calvin wrote: But the word nature is not here essence but quality. The Manicheans formerly dreamt that we are a part of God, and that after having run the race of life we shall at length revert to our original. There are also at this day fanatics who imagine that we thus pass over into the nature of God, so that his swallows up our nature. Thus they explain what Paul says, that God will be all in all (I Cor. xv. 28) and in the same sense they take this passage. But such a delirium as this never entered the minds of the holy Apostles; they only intended to say that when divested of all the vices of the flesh, we shall be partakers of divine and blessed immortality and glory, so as to be, as it were one with God as far as our capacities will allow. This doctrine was not altogether unknown to Plato, who everywhere defines the chief good of man to be an entire conformity to God; but as he was involved in the mists of errors, he afterwards glided off into his own inventions. But we, disregarding empty speculations, ought to be satisfied with this one thing — that the image of God in holiness and righteousness is restored to us for this end, that we may at length be partakers of eternal life and glory as far as it will be necessary for our complete felicity.742 Calvin underscored the sovereignty of God in his great writings on predestination. The doctrine of predestination is in particular associated with the name of Calvin, although it was Luther, in reply to Erasmus, who gave the first and great Reformation statement of the doctrine. The unity of the Godhead, the reality of the three persons, and the absolute God as the absolute and only first cause of all things was strongly affirmed by Calvin. To allow any liberty with respect to first causes to the creature is to erect a god out of the creature and to “make, like the Manichees, two ruling principles.”743 Either God’s will is the absolute and only first cause, or else two or more ruling principles or gods are admitted into one’s faith. Men seek to void God’s sovereignty, Calvin pointed out, in the name of asserting their reason and their justice in judgment over God. “Yet, on this hinge turns the whole question: Is there no justice of God, but that which is conceived by us?” In reply to Pighius, Calvin wrote: Marvellous, indeed is the madness of man! who would more audaciously set himself above God than stand on equal ground with any Pagan judge! It is intolerable to you, and hateful, that the power and works of God should exceed the capacity of your own mind; and yet you will grant to an equal the enjoyment of his own mind and judgment.744
Thus, with respect to the doctrines of God and man, Calvin blocked the door to any temporal power, or to any temporal one, as well as a temporal many, seizing ultimacy and sovereignty. The weak link in Calvin came elsewhere.
5. Calvin on Law and Love We have seen how Calvin at times underrated the law, as did Luther also, and that Calvin expressed a preference for “the common law of nations” as against “the polity of Moses.”745 With this, without realizing it, Calvin reopened the door to natural law, and also to common grace, a concept he would not have recognized. The idea of common grace has become, however, the chief doctrine of modern neo-Calvinism, and the state is grounded on common grace as its sphere.746 Moreover, Calvin saw man as “the subject of two kinds of government”; an inner one, relating to eternal life, is the province of the church; the other is civil government, “which relates to civil justice, and the regulation of the external conduct.”747 For this outer world, virtually all the world, Calvin rejected biblical law.748 The world was thus in effect sundered from God and at this point given its own sovereignty and independence. But Calvin did not apply these ideas. Instead, he surpassed Luther and insisted that the state must enforce both tables of the law, that the state, in short, must be Christian, not “natural” or “neutral,” a possibility he denied. Civil government, he held, must enforce God’s law. 749 For Calvin, “the rule of life” which God has given us is “His law.”750 At the same time, Calvin strongly emphasized the duty of love. Men are so used to reviling Calvin for his belief in predestination that they fail to notice the very heavy emphasis he placed on loving and doing good to all men. Thus, Calvin wrote: Whoever, therefore is presented to you that needs your kind offices, you have no reason to refuse him your assistance. Say that he is a stranger; yet the Lord has impressed on him a character which ought to be familiar to you; for which reason he forbids you to despise your own flesh (Isaiah lviii. 3). Say that he is contemptible and worthless; but the Lord shows him to be one whom he has deigned to grace with his own image. Say that you are obliged to him for no services; but God has made him, as it were, his substitute, to whom you acknowledge yourself to be under obligations for numerous and important benefits. Say that he is unworthy of your making the smallest exertion on his account; but the image of God, by which he is recommended to you, deserves your surrender of yourself and all that you possess. If he not only has deserved no favour, but, on the contrary, has provoked you with injuries and insults, — even this is no just reason why you should cease to embrace him with your affection, and to perform to him the offices of love. He had deserved, you will say, very different treatment from me. But what has the Lord deserved? who, when he commands you to forgive men all their offenses against you, certainly intends that they should be charged to himself. This is the only way of attaining that which is not only difficult, but utterly repugnant to the nature of man to love them who hate us (Matt. v. 44), to requite injuries with kindnesses, and to return blessings
for curses (Luke vii. 3, 4). We should remember, that we must not reflect on the wickedness of men, but contemplate the Divine image in them; which, concealing and obliterating their faults, by its beauty and dignity allures us to embrace them in the arms of our love.751 This is virtually a doctrine of unconditional love; it has a vein of antinomianism in it. It is close to the position of modern liberals who believe in salvation by love. This undue and disproportionate emphasis on love appears at times in Calvin. Combined with the inconsistent attitude on law, it gave ground for the development of a liberalism out of Calvin. On the one hand, some English and American Puritans used one element of Calvinism to develop a concept of society grounded on God’s sovereignty and biblical law. On the other hand, however hopelessly in error Fairchild’s theology is, his point is well taken that Calvinism in England also led to sentimentalism and a naturalistic humanism.752
6. Richard Hooker And England had little to counteract this trend, since the semiofficial position of the Church of England came to be Erastian, Arminian, and heretical. Richard Hooker (1553-1600) was clearly subordinationist and Arian in his Christology. Hooker wrote: Seeing therefore the Father alone is originally that Deity which Christ originally is not, (for Christ is God by being of God, light by issuing out of light,) it followeth hereupon that whatsoever Christ hath common unto him with his heavenly Father, the same of necessity must be given him, but naturally and eternally given, not bestowed by way of benevolence and favour, as the other gifts both are. And therefore where the Fathers give it out for a rule, that whatsoever Christ is said in Scripture to have received, the same we ought to apply only to the manhood of Christ; their assertion is true of all things which Christ hath received by grace, but to that which he hath received of the Father by eternal nativity or birth it reacheth not.753 However much Hooker tried to claim the church fathers for his position, it was clearly heresy. Hooker, while trying to emphasize grace as the ground of man’s deification in Christ, still defied Chalcedon to insist that in Christ “man is really made God”: The union therefore of the flesh with Deity is to that flesh a gift of principal grace and favour. For by virtue of this grace, man is really made God, a creature is exalted above the dignity of all creatures, and hath all creatures also under it.754 When challenged by a Calvinist to prove how his position differed from that of Arius, Hooker’s answer was: The Godhead of the Father and of the Sonne is no way denied but granted to be the same. The only thing denied is that the Person of the Sonne hath Deitie or Godhead in such sort as the Father hath it.755
Having introduced man into the Godhead, Hooker plainly made man God’s associate in the government of all things. Thus, the British monarchy now had indeed a divine right of amazing dimensions. As Hooker stated the doctrine of man’s divinity, Finally, sith God hath deified our nature, though not by turning it into himself, yet by making it his own inseparable habitation, we cannot now conceive how God should without man either exercize divine power, or receive the glory of divine praise. For man is in both an associate of Deity.756 It is not surprising that the British monarchs loved their Mr. Hooker! Hooker introduced man into the Godhead, subordinated British subjects firmly to an absolute monarch on religious grounds, and saw the monarchy, and the English church-state, as a divine order. The monarch, as head of the church as well as head of the state, had a vast power over the lives of his subjects. Had not the Puritan commonwealth altered the course of the monarchy, England’s lot would have been a fearful one. The divine one and many had been denied in favor of a divine-human order. Hooker no less than Loyola represented a form of Counter-Reformation.
Chapter XI Utopia:The New City of Man 1. Humanism and Utopia The Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and every other movement of the modern mind have one common characteristic: anti-Christianity. As Santillana observed of early and later Renaissance figures, “What came under criticism was the central dogmatic complex built around original sin, inherited corruption, and divine atonement.”757 The humanism which had saturated the church manifested itself in numerous ways. When Nicholas of Cusa (b. 1401) dreamed of reconciling Christianity with Mohammedanism, he was simply applying the logic of the age. Paracelsus (1493?-1541) saw a great “becoming” unfolding itself in man. As Santillana wrote: The religious emotion of Paracelsus centers on growth and delicate unfolding from the womb of time; he teaches “respect for the divinely appointed moment,” for the “hour of God” that the physician-alchemist alone can discern. It is only in such a scheme, on the other hand, that things can be conceived as really independent beings, having their reason and their principle of growth in themselves. Gone is the neat hierarchy of intelligible causes, ending up in the already achieved design in the mind of the Unmoved Mover. There is here a true “becoming” and also protean metamorphosis. In the Great Chain of Being, God and Man are mystically equivalent. “I under God in his office, God under me in mine.” This might sound like satanic pride, but it is a mystical intuition which is to be more strongly and paradoxically expressed later by Angelus Silesius in many of his doggerel couplets: “I know that without me God could not live a second — Turned if I were to nothing, He’d give up the ghost in despair.”758 Basic to the Renaissance perspective was the concept of a finite God, limited and nondeterminative in nature. The corollary of this premise was a belief in an infinite universe. As Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) wrote, “I hold the universe to be infinite, as being the effect of infinite divine power and goodness, of which any finite world would have been unworthy.”759 The reference to “infinite divine power” met the requirement of logic and science: the infinite universe was the product of an infinite divine power, a source or cause commensurate with its effect. But beyond this formal presence, the divine power had no role. With some, it was absorbed into its effect; with others, as with later Deism, it remained as a now obsolete cause. An infinite universe means that man, the crown of the universe, is infinite also. Renaissance man saw himself as a new god in process of becoming. Chapman’s Bussy D’Ambois felt shock at the realization that he could die and was dying: Is my body, then,
But penetrable flesh? And must my mind Follow my blood? Can my divine part add No aid to th’ earthly in extremity?760 In any other era, for a man to express amazement at his mortality would be ridiculous; in this Renaissance play, it is thoroughly credible and in keeping with the temper of the day. The Bussy D’Ambois type man of the Renaissance has been accorded the veneration his philosophy called for. His “genius” has been the subject of adulation, and his egoism has been taken at face value. A telling example of this is the pathetic and impotent figure of Leonardo da Vinci. A chronic dabbler and procrastinator, Leonardo found it difficult to finish anything. His notes occasionally record good observations, his jottings of the comments of wiser men, but he was unable to bring these gleamings to focus. His one area of real ability was painting, or, more accurately, drawing, but here his total production was limited and haunted by the specter of his weakness and impotence. But, because of his singular avoidance of any personal religious expression, this man has been especially highly esteemed, although, amusingly, the experts find it difficult to establish what was great about him!761 But, Renaissance man being by self-definition a species of divinity, it was impossible to regard his actions as folly; what had been folly was now tragedy. The dramatic concern for tragedy, most notable in England, is a telling illustration of this fact. Chapman’s Bussy D’Ambois is one of many examples, more explicit than most. For a man’s “divine part” to follow his blood into death or disgrace was tragedy now, not sin or folly. The Renaissance also planted the seeds of Romanticism. If a man is a god, then his loves must be god-like. As a result, the Renaissance poet converted his love into a goddess, the divine Laura, Cynthia, or Jane. Thus, Michelangelo could declare, “The pow’r of one fair face spurs me to heaven,” in a sonnet, and of his love-filled thinking, he could add, “my conceptions high become divine.” The woman he called, “fair lady, proud and heavenly,”762 a description made necessary by his own self-exaltation, for how can a man shot through with Neoplatonist divinity love anything other than a woman who is “heavenly” or divine? Later, Shelly and Byron were to call every slut they took up with a goddess, until they left her, when she became a witch. A witch, after all, represents a kind of supernatural power also! Shakespeare, in his sonnets, equates his love’s favor (and there are indications that both a man and a woman were the objects of his love)763 with a religious experience which lights up his life and makes him rich. Sonnets 29, 30, 66, 106, and others reveal this plainly. Another aspect of man’s new “divinity” was Utopianism. Christian orthodoxy produces no utopian dreams or plans: in God’s law-word, the believer already has God’s purposes for the future declared, and the way thereto, faith and God’s law-word, are plainly set forth. The believer moves towards God’s predestined future with confidence. But the new god, man, must create his own decree, and predestine his own future, and, as a result, he must draw up plans for a utopia. Utopianism is thus a renunciation of God’s sov-
ereignty and eternal decree in favor of a new god, man, and a new decree, man’s plan. The new city of man is set forth, and the power is then sought to institute this decree.
2. Thomas More The term, utopianism, comes, of course, from Thomas More’s ideal society. More was made a saint in 1935 by the Church of Rome, an ironic fact, in that few “saints” have been more subversive towards the church. Santillana’s comment is to the point: Men like Erasmus, Colet and More were first and foremost apostles of Culture, the reformers of the educational system, and the founders of the modern English school system, of which St. Paul’s was the first example. More compared the school to “the wooden horse in which were concealed armed Greeks for the destruction of barbarous Troy”; but the Troy that these new Greek scholars were bent on wrecking was the stronghold of medieval learning.764 It is not surprising, when More’s works are examined, that Roman Catholic scholars tend to discourage too close an analysis of More. We are told that, “in a certain sense,” More is “unknowable.” Moreover, we are told that “Men like More are a threat and a scandal to the singlemindedly earnest, to the ‘true believers,’” and to “the single-minded absolutists.” This should intimidate weak-minded scholars from calling attention to More’s inanities! Moreover, to prevent us from taking More at his word, we are told that his work represents subtle “wit and irony” as well as satire.765 More to the point is van Riessen’s comment on Utopia and its intense and absurd earnestness: “One is amazed that the pen of More, noted for its spirited wit, did not drop from his hand from sheer tediousness.”766 More’s Utopia was also dishonest: the book is devoted to a passionate plea for the abolition of private property and the adoption of communism; the book, however, concludes with a vague disclaimer of this position. In brief, More wanted the liberty to preach a doctrine without any penalty, in case such should ensue. More’s “wit” is not in evidence in his writings; it was often remarkable in his speech. His death was noble and truly heroic, but, at this point we must agree with Greene: “His death was a heroic gesture in defense of the autonomy of conscience.”767 Precisely: More died as the authentic humanist “saint” rather than as a Christian martyr. More’s Utopia is clearly anti-Christian as well as hostile to the church. For More, the normative is derived, not from God, but from nature. In Utopia, “they define virtue to be a life ordered according to nature.” The phrase is derived from Cicero’s De Finibus, Bk. 4.768 But the nature More has in mind is not the nature the Romantics later had in mind: it is nature governed, molded, and totally controlled by statist man. Manuel’s analysis is to the point: The order of happiness is within human capacity but it is not innate. Thus Utopian man is not natural — he has been fashioned by institutions — but the result is not unnatural since the founders of Utopia utilized benign instincts and repressed harmful ones through education and the dictates of the law. In contrast to our contemporary absorption with the problem as a major source of dolorous psychic disturbance, the utopian conception of repression envisages a process that is
neither very painful nor very complicated. As a consequence, the social environment in which every new-born utopian first sees the day is uniformly pleasurable and his whole existence will be passed in the same mild emotional climate. Tranquillity is the highest good. Since only moderate pleasures are deemed to be pleasures at all, there is nothing to disrupt the order of calm felicity, once it has been instituted, as long as the world endures. More’s utopia is not even subject to the natural decay that Plato considered inevitable for his Republic.769 More was thus a very modern figure: his god and nature was the state, man’s recreator, preserver, and providence. More absorbed man into a totally immanent one, the state. Thus unity was for him the supreme virtue, and serenity in that oneness. His Utopia was a communist regime in which man was manipulated into place, and the thought of any division in terms of religious faith was anathema. In terms of this, More’s hatred of anything that made for separatism was intense. Himself hungry for wealth, he hated wealth in others. In his Utopia, he wrote of gold, “But they make chamber pots and other common vessels for both their dining halls and homes out of gold and silver.”770 From this passage, Lenin derived his famous idea of using gold to build public urinals in the Marxist utopia. But what of More’s own death for autonomy of conscience? How does this jibe with his totalitarianism? More, like most humanistic intellectuals, saw himself as one of the elite rulers of the total order. After all, Edward Bellamy (1850-1898), in Looking Backward (1888), called for an equal annual income of $4,000 per person, so that the ablest of men as well as the least received an equal amount. One exception was made by Bellamy: the writer, who could name his own royalties and live in wealth! More denied the citizens of Utopia the right to treat religion seriously enough to divide over it, but he retained the right for himself to die for conscience’ sake. He had not been inconsistent earlier in burning Protestants at the stake, nor in defending the practice.771 His unitary state, England, failed him in that the monarch used the unitary powers for his own ends. Earlier, More had warned a devoutly Catholic Henry VIII from too great an obedience to the pope; but he could not prevent Henry from following his royal will. Henry, the great hope of Renaissance scholars, was, for better or worse, his own man.
3. Francis Bacon Francis Bacon (1561-1626), perhaps more than any other man, influenced the new view of science. In his Novum Organum, Aphorism 124, he wrote: Truth therefore and utility are here the very same things; and works themselves are greater value as pledges of truth than as contributing to the comforts of life.772 Bacon denied the primacy of ideas; instead of approaching the world from the perspective of a philosophy, a worldview, or a theory, Bacon proposed that the new science let the “facts” determine science, and a pragmatic concept of “truth” then be forthcoming as the theory.
Bacon’s position, the priority of factuality, and the pragmatic standard of truth, represented no less a philosophy than the Scholasticism he opposed. Plato had held to the priority of the idea: Aristotle had tried to maintain a dialectical tension between form and matter, idea and brute fact; Bacon stood Plato on his head and asserted the priority of the fact, and derived, ostensibly, his truth from the fact. All three positions are equally philosophical. The idea that facts are both prior and self-interpreting is as much a form of faith as Plato’s, Aristotle’s, and Aquinas’ positions had been. Like them, Bacon tried to remake the world in terms of his own idea. In philosophy, Bacon clearly pointed out the direction for Comte and Dewey. In science, his position led to the Royal Society.773 No less than Descartes, Bacon’s position was governed by philosophical presuppositions which he termed “science.” Thus, in Bacon’s New Atlantis, the world of religion is left largely undisturbed, as are economic and social questions. Bacon was not interested in the communistic extravagances of other utopians. His hope for man’s future rested in science, or, more accurately, in a state-controlled science. Bacon, in fact, was clearly critical of More’s morality, speaking critically of “a feigned commonwealth, where the married couple are permitted, before they contract, to see one another naked.”774 The heart of Bacon’s utopia was Solomon’s House, the College of the state scientists, a state created and state controlled scientific body. The purpose of this body is stated thus: The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motion of all things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible.775 As Lewis Mumford observed, “Long before all the components of the Invisible Machine were consciously assembled, Francis Bacon, in his New Atlantis, was quick not merely to anticipate its benefits, but to outline the conditions for its achievement: the application of science to all human affairs, ‘to the effecting of all things possible.’”776 According to Frye, Bacon, in his New Atlantis, “anticipates Marx by assuming that the most significant of social factors is technological productivity.”777 Polak sees a direct strain which “leads on from Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (from which the Royal Society in England descended in a straight line) towards ideals of technical progress which later blended with the American Creed and finally may lead to an enslaving technocracy.”778 Sears observes, Beginning with Bacon’s New Atlantis, or perhaps earlier, there has been a significant change of emphasis in the visions of utopia. The older writings, as we have noted earlier, concerned themselves heavily with moral and political factors. Gradually there has been an increasing preoccupation with man’s ability to manipulate his environment and rely upon technological devices. At one extreme, this has resulted in the absorbing faith in science as a guarantee against any emergency we may create for ourselves. At the other, there has developed an impressive literature of satire and disillusionment, at least some of whose writers are better versed in science than the uncritical optimists.779 These discerning comments help bring to focus a central aspect of Bacon’s utopianism and of a great strand of thought after him. The one great One is now totally immanent; it is mankind organized as the state; its instrument in issuing a new ultimate decree, a new predestination for
man and nature, is technology and science. Science is thus cast into a messianic role and becomes progressively basic to utopianism.
4. Campanella Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639), a Dominican monk more interested in physics than in theology, was, in his City of the Sun, still more concerned with politics than science, although the scientific aspect was present. Andrews wrote, of the City of the Sun, “it formulated for the first time a complete socialistic system on a scientific foundation, and, in France especially, furnished a model for later ideal communities.”780 In Campanella’s ideal order, all things are socialized or communized, including marriage, which is completely governed by the state in terms of scientific breeding. The historic biblical pattern of marriage is condemned, as is private property, as leading to “self-love.” “But when we have taken away self-love, there remains only love for the state.” Crime is abolished by abolishing traditional marriages and private property. “Moreover, the race is managed for the good of the commonwealth and not of private individuals, and the magistrates must be obeyed.... For children are bred for the preservation of the species and not for individual pleasure, as St. Thomas also asserts.” “And thus they distribute male and female breeders of the best natures according to philosophical rules.”781 And why not? For Campanella said, “The world is a great animal, and we live within it as worms live within us.”782 Campanella was, curiously, imprisoned by the state and defended by the church. The king of Spain imprisoned him for twenty-seven years; Pope Urban VIII defended him and later gave him refuge for a time.783 The basic form of utopianism was now shaped for modern man to apply to the social order: the state, or better, the scientific socialist state, is the great and ultimate order, the order of unity and man’s savior. Because the one is now totally immanent, there is no escape from its “truth” nor appeal against it. Truth being incarnate and present in the form of the state, man in any conflict with the state can only be evil.
5. Hobbes, Locke, Harrington Hobbes’s utopianism made this point. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) wrote his Leviathan (1651) as “a vindication of the absolute rights of whatever government happens to be in power.”784 The state incarnates true order. In Hobbes’s words, “the Law of Nations, and the Law of Nature, is the same thing.”785 The state comprehends all orders, so that “a Church, such a one as is capable to Command, to Judge, Absolve, Condemn, or do any other act, is the same thing with a Civil Commonwealth.”786 Nothing can exist outside of this One, the state. The great condemnation of heresy for Hobbes was that it is “a private opinion, obstinately maintained, contrary to the opinion which the Publique Person (that is to say, the Representative of the Commonwealth) hath commanded to be taught.” Moreover, “Haeretiques are none but private men, that stubbornly defend some Doctrine, prohibited by their lawfull Soveraigns.”787 The state in Hobbes’s order is the only good; man is virtually nothing.
Hobbes brings us to the brink of total environmentalism. John Locke placed man within that realm by his psychology. Locke (1632-1704), in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, with his tabula rasa concept, reduced the mind to a passive blank sheet on which an elite planner or teacher could write the future. Man was now a passive creature, acted on rather than acting, and the state became progressively the active, creating agent. Another major contribution to utopianism had come already in the concept of economic man, and economic determinism, a note which appeared in James Harrington (1611-1677), in his Oceana. Its fundamental thesis was simple: “Dominion is property.”788 Oliver Cromwell recognized the basic secularism of Harrington’s thesis.789 Harrington held that power is property; hence, society should be reordered in terms of a realistic recognition of this “fact.” In terms of this, Harrington wanted a “government of laws, not of men.”790 There was nothing new in Harrington’s thesis, as Baxter pointed out.791 Men have always known of the power property gives; the issue for some centuries was this: would power be governed by the higher power of God? The whole concern of Christendom had been the subjection of all powers to Christ. The novelty in Harrington’s thesis was that power was again being paganized, freed from the restraint of the higher power of the triune God. A new higher power had come into the picture: the sovereign power of the scientific socialist state which itself moves eventually to possess property and become the focal point of all power. The road to utopia led straight to the Marxist hell.
Chapter XII Autonomous Manand the New Order 1. Descartes The Hellenic form and matter dialectic had a continuing influence on Western thought as an undercurrent and rival to Christian thought. In Rene Descartes (1596-1650) there was a scientific effort to avoid the dialectic by recourse to a dualism of two substances, mind and body. These two substances were to be kept in unity by still a third substance, God. Descartes was a devout Roman Catholic and believed that his work would undergird the faith. However, he approached the problems of philosophy, not as a philosopher, but as a scientist. Although he is often classified as a rationalistic philosopher, his intention was scientific. His scientific credentials were good. In mathematics, he was the discoverer of analytical geometry and the first to represent powers by exponents. In physics, he stated in trigonometrical form the principle of the refraction of light, explained the rainbow, and weighed air. Truth, for Descartes, meant empirical science. How then could an empirical scientist be the fountainhead of modern philosophical rationalism? Cushman’s comment on Descartes gives us the clue: “The philosophical proclamation of Descartes was characteristically French, for he demanded the same return to an uncorrupted nature for the understanding that Rousseau many years later demanded for the heart.”792 For Descartes, the mind of man is normative; instead of holding, in terms of Christian faith, to a fallen man, corrupt in all his being, including his mind, Descartes has no provision for the fall in his philosophy and science. He begins and ends with the autonomous mind of man, an autonomous mind which is neither fallen nor corrupt. But the philosophy of Descartes is not without its contradictions. For Descartes, there are three substances, the Self, God, and matter. God is the primary substance, and matter and the Self or Soul (or mind) are created or relative substances. And God is very necessary to Descartes’ system, because without God the two worlds of mind and matter fall apart into a radical dualism. But, necessary as God is to Descartes, God is neither scientifically nor rationally prior to the autonomous mind of man. Priority clearly belongs to the autonomous mind, to the uncorrupted and capable reason of man: hence Descartes’ rationalism. But this autonomous mind must make contact with other minds, and also with that other world of substance, matter. To verify empirical knowledge, to give Descartes a valid epistemology, God becomes necessary. Autonomy and priority belong to the mind of man; validation of knowledge belongs to God, who provides Descartes’ system with a built-in insurance policy. Both empiricism and rationalism presuppose autonomous man. Their methodology in providing knowledge for this autonomous man varies, but in both cases the presupposition is the autonomous ability of man. The quarrel between empiricism and rationalism is a family affair; they are together allies at war against a Christian epistemology. Descartes’ purpose in his Discourse on Method (1635-1637) was scientific, not philosophical. This again is of particular importance. It was not with the logical analysts that philosophy
renounced its own territory for science; logical analysis and positivism generally renounced the historic disciplines of philosophy for a role as handmaiden to science, but with Descartes philosophy began to rethink its grounds scientifically. For Descartes, philosophy had produced nothing but doubt; “there is not a single matter within its sphere which is not still in dispute, and nothing, therefore, which is above doubt,” whereas science he saw as productive of verifiable knowledge, unless they “borrow their principles from philosophy.”793 In order to attain a valid scientific knowledge, Descartes saw as the valid method a studied rootlessness: “The single design to strip one’s self of all past beliefs.”794 Descartes looked to logic, geometrical analysis, and algebra for guidance and formulated a four-point method: The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt. The second, to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution. The third, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex; assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence. And the last, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted.795 In the first of these four points, Descartes’ rationalism is apparent in the demand for clear and distinct ideas, but it is a rationalism linked to the scientific temper: nothing is to be accepted unless it is fully and clearly understood. The next three points 296 The One and the Many are directly linked to the new concern for science: valid knowledge requires dissection, atomization, and an analysis in terms of dissection and atomization. These four points immediately limit true knowledge to that which the mind of man can clearly grasp and understand in terms of its own autonomous laws. Revelation is clearly excluded. God is also clearly excluded by implication, because who can fully and clearly grasp the idea of God, or how can God be dissected and atomized into component parts for analysis by a scientist? But Descartes, in his system, clearly and distinctly needs God to link the two substances of mind and matter, and to provide a first cause. In this sense God enters into Descartes’ science; later philosophers, on Descartes’ premises, dropped the idea of God. Moreover, because, as Descartes wrote, “I resolved to commence, therefore, with the examination of the simplest objects,”796 the foundational facts for Descartes were the most elementary facts, not God but the amoeba and the atom. In evolutionary terms, reality begins with the atom and works upward. The key to understanding is thus not God but the atom. It is not surprising that the new philosophy was usually more prone to favor the individual than society, and then the atom rather than man. Social atomism was extensively promoted, and there began the exaltation of the commonest man by aristocrats who in daily life
despised the peasants they knew. The search for truth turned downward, and the atom came to outrank God. In the course of his search, Descartes “formed a provisionary code of morals.” “The first was to obey the laws and customs of my country, adhering firmly to the faith in which, by the grace of God, I had been educated from my childhood.” The ground Descartes gave for adhering to Christian faith was expediency. Whatever his personal feelings, his expressed ground was pragmatic: “although there are some perhaps among the Persians and Chinese as judicious as among ourselves, expediency seemed to dictate that I should regulate my practice conformably to the opinions of those with whom I should have to live.” Next, said Descartes, My second maxim was to be as firm and resolute in my actions as I was able, and not to adhere less steadfastly to the most doubtful opinions, when once adopted, than if they had been highly certain.... We ought to act according to what is most probable, and even although we should not remark a greater probability in one opinion than in another, we ought notwithstanding to choose one or the other, and afterwards consider it, in so far as it relates to practice, as no longer dubious, but manifestly true and certain, since the reason by which our choice has been determined is itself possessed of these qualities.797 Then “My third maxim was to endeavor always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world.”798 There is more than pragmatism in evidence here: this is the scientific posture, the ostensible concern with working hypotheses rather than truth. The way was being paved for Comte’s sociology. This general approach was already in evidence in Descartes’ Rules for the Direction of the Mind (1629). His Rule 6 called for the study of data from the simple to the complex, as did Rule 9 and others; the approach was clearly to be from atoms upward. But more was involved in the Cartesian methodology. St. Anselm said: I believe, in order that I might understand. Descartes, to the contrary, held: I doubt, in order that I may understand. Although Descartes’ “proof” of God from the idea of perfection has a superficial resemblance to that of St. Anselm, they are radically different. St. Anselm began with the autonomous God, Descartes, with man’s autonomous mind. In Part 4 of the Discourse on Method Descartes stated his well-known starting point: cogito, ergo sum — I think, therefore I am the autonomous consciousness of man. Although both philosophical necessity and piety later led Descartes to introduce God, at the starting point Descartes’ concept of the mind is of an autonomous entity which in its essence is an independent thinking mind. Descartes defended this autonomy: The first objection is that it does not follow from the fact that the human mind reflecting on itself does not perceive itself to be other than a thing that thinks, that its nature or its essence consists only in its being a thing that thinks, in the sense that this word only excludes all other things which might also be supposed to pertain to the nature of the soul. To this objection I reply that it was not my
intention in that place to exclude these in accordance with the order that looks to the truth of the matter (as to which I was not dealing), but only in accordance with the order of my thought (perception); thus my meaning was that so far as I was aware, I knew nothing clearly as belonging to my essence, excepting that I was a thing that thinks, or a thing that has in itself the faculty of thinking. But I shall show hereafter how from the fact that I know no other thing which pertains to my essence, it follows that there is no other thing which really does belong to it.799 In his “Reply to the Fourth Set of Objections” to his Meditations, Descartes stressed the concept of mind as a complete substance: “thinking substance is a complete thing.” He spoke also of the body as a separate substance.800 As Descartes noted, in “The Seventh Set of Objections with the Author’s Annotations,” I established also by reasoning the fact that these two things are substances really distinct from one another. One of these substances I called mind, the other body; and if my critic doesn’t like these names he can invent others, and I shall not mind.801 Thus Descartes has two substances which must be linked but cannot, in and of themselves, be linked. For this linkage, God is necessary, so that a third substance is added to Descartes’ “science.” Another reason requires that God be posited: Descartes had not abandoned the idea of causality, which was still basic to science. Because of this scientific requirement, God was needed as a first cause, and, to avoid “regression into infinity,” a perfect and necessary first cause was necessary. The God of Descartes’ philosophy was not the God of Scripture but the necessary God of Cartesian science.802 Thus, while the mind and the body were made derivative from God, it was a causal derivation which pointed ahead to Deism, to an absentee God, who, having performed His scientific causal function, quietly retires to the sidelines to let man and nature take over. Here again the argument for God’s existence from the idea of perfection is radically different from Anselm’s argument: Descartes’ argument has a scientific function, to further scientific knowledge; Anselm’s argument is a philosophical exploration of a religious presupposition. Descartes gave to the mind an innate idea of God. This again is a significant fact. The knowledge of God comes, not from God’s revelation, but from the mind’s revelation of itself. Existentialism was thus assured a birth: the transcendental and absolute God could on such a presupposition be dropped in favor of an autonomous mind which is itself the god it innately knows and reveals. God was thus, in Descartes’ system, a scientific presupposition, or perhaps simply a hypothesis, which, however necessary for the science of an age, could thereafter be discarded as having served its purpose. Descartes’ analysis of God is a significant one: For in order to know the nature of God (whose existence has been established by the preceding reasonings), as far as my own nature permitted, I had only to consider in reference to all the properties of which I found in my mind some idea, whether their possession was a mark of perfection; and I was assured that no one
which indicated any imperfection was in him, and that none of the rest was awanting. Thus I perceived that doubt, inconstancy, sadness, and such like, could not be found in God, since I myself would have been happy to be free from them. Besides, I had ideas of many sensible and corporeal things; for although I might suppose that I was dreaming, and that all which I was or imagined was false, I could not, nevertheless, deny that the ideas were in reality in my thoughts. But, because I had already very clearly recognised in myself that the intelligent nature is distinct from the corporeal, and as I observed that all composition is an evidence of dependency, and that a state of dependency is manifestly a state of imperfection, I therefore determined that it could not be a perfection in God to be compounded of two natures, and that consequently he was not so compounded; but that if there were any bodies in the world, or even any intelligences, or other natures that were not wholly perfect, their existence depended on his power in such a way that they could not subsist without him for a single moment.803 There are a number of important assumptions and implications in this statement. First, for Descartes, God is one, of a single nature or substance. God is not a composition of mind and body, for “all composition is an evidence of dependency.” Since “the intelligent nature is distinct from the corporeal,” God has no body and is not matter. The implication, thus, is that, second, God is mind, a higher, uncreated mind than man, but still mind. For Descartes, there are three substances, mind, body, and God, and of these two, mind and God, have something in common, intelligence. But, third, as Cushman noted, with respect to the implications of consciousness for Descartes, “For Descartes reality lies within the Self; and the next question before him is how to get out of the Self.” Even more, “The existence of God is an implication of human consciousness.”804 From this, it is not too great a step to calling God an aspect of human consciousness, to moving from an absolute God to an absolute man. Ultimately, the given of a philosophy, the presupposition of a viewpoint, is the total world of that philosophy. A philosophy beginning with the ontological Trinity is a philosophy which is by presupposition inclusive of all that the triune God is and does. Similarly, a philosophy whose given or presupposition is the autonomous mind of man finds itself either with no God and world but only the mind of man, or else with a God and world which are merely aspects of the mind of man. The given is the total world of any philosophy and its comprehending order. Modern philosophy having begun with Descartes’ autonomous consciousness has been driven to reducing reality to that autonomous consciousness. Fourth, the influence of Descartes was very great, and it made possible the strong reintroduction of pagan evolutionary concepts into Western culture. Descartes’ philosophy was forbidden at Oxford, placed on the Index by Rome, and proscribed by the Calvinists of Holland, but it still reshaped the outlook of Western culture. As Cushman noted, It spread over Europe in a somewhat similar way to the Darwinian evolution theory in modern times. Its success was immense, many standard men rallied to its support, and everything before Descartes was considered to be antiquated.805 Descartes looked to the simple for the key, not to the complex, to the primitive, not the developed. The key to origins thus came to be sought downward, not upward, in the atom, not in
God. The acceptance of Cartesian premises made necessary finally the acceptance of social and biological evolution. Truth lay in dissection downward to the simplest component. Fifth, this all had great repercussions on the problem of the one and the many. Instead of a transcendental one and many, a purely immanent one and many was again enthroned. Moreover, because Descartes emphasized the autonomous consciousness of man as his scientific and social atom and as his given, the necessary emphasis of social philosophy came to be individualistic and atomistic. Man in society was seen as a prisoner in chains. Kings, powers, and authorities had to be overthrown, as well as God and priestcraft, because Cartesianism had atomized the world. The immanent many, man, became the new ultimate of creation, and any form of unity, of the one, came to be seen as tyranny. But, when the Cartesian autonomy of the many, of autonomous men, began to run into serious problems, the alternative now was simply an immanent one, a collection of autonomous men into an omnipotent state. Men and society have been reshaped by Descartes’ philosophy.
2. John Locke John Locke (1632-1704), in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, laid down the basic principles of the Enlightenment which dominated philosophy through Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, which in turn has dominated philosophy ever since. Locke indeed has been called the father of the Enlightenment, and the fact of his personal piety cannot alter the implications of his philosophical premises. Cushman’s comment is to the point: “The Essay differs from any previous modern philosophical writing. Man and not the universe is the subject. For the first time we find an examination of the laws of mind, and not of the laws of the universe.” 806 Man was now the center of things, but Locke’s free man emerged as a greatly reduced man. What appeared at first to men as a new bible and a new hope for man soon came to be a startling problem, as man and man’s knowledge began to show signs of following God into the limbo of oblivion created by the Enlightenment. To return to Locke, the mind of man rather than the mind of God was now the key to the universe. A few years earlier in England, The Westminster Confession had begun with the Scriptures (God’s word) and the eternal decree (God’s plan) as the key to all things. The Confession had been approved in 1647 by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and ratified by Act of Parliament in 1649. By 1690, a new document, Locke’s Essay, had come into existence as a kind of new confession and standard for Enlightenment man. In Book 1, Chapter 1 of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, titled “Neither Principles nor Ideas Are Innate,” Locke denied that either the “first principles” of knowledge and science are innate or any other “speculative maxims.” The same is true of religious principles and moral rules: they are acquired, not innate, ideas. Conscience is no proof of any innate moral idea or rule. Men come to moral rules by experience and reason, or by “their education, company, and customs of their country; which persuasion, however got, will serve to set conscience at work; which is nothing else but our own opinion or judgment of the moral rectitude or pravity of our own actions; and if conscience be a proof of innate principles, contraries may be innate principles; since some men with the same bent of conscience prosecute what others avoid.”807
The idea of God is not innate either, and is absent in many cultures, Locke stated.808 If the idea of God is not innate, then how can any idea be innate? Ideas, Locke held, are not a given factor, not innate to the mind, but rather a product of the mind and its thinking. He used his famous image (original probably with Aquinas, who used it before him by implication), of the mind as “white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas,” deriving its “materials of reason and knowledge... from EXPERIENCE. In that all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself.” The “two fountains of knowledge” are thus sensations and reflections, i.e., our sensory experiences and our thinking about them.809 Some French followers of Locke reduced knowledge to sensations and the mind to a radical passivity. Those who defend Locke against the charge of passivity ascribe it to the French misinterpretations; Locke held to the power of the mind to reflect and to operate on its experience or sensations. This explanation does not absolve Locke’s doctrine from the charge of passivity; the mind reacts rather than acts; ideas are reflex phenomena, and Locke’s very word is reflection. Locke plainly stated that “The mind thinks in proportion to the matter it gets from experience to think about.” “I conceive that ideas in the understanding are coeval with sensation; which is such an impression or motion made in some part of the body, as produces some perception in the understanding.”810 Locke’s universe was thus one of the individual minds without innate ideas all receiving impressions or sensations and 304 The One and the Many then reflecting on them, a world in which the particulars are primary and central. Not surprisingly, great attention was therefore paid to the liberty of the particular or the individual, and one of Locke’s most notable works was his A Letter Concerning Toleration, followed by the Second and Third Letter Concerning Toleration. But Locke’s world is not Hume’s universe; Locke still assumed God as the one who gives unity and order to the world of sensations, so that Locke posited a one as counterbalance to his many. God is simply assumed by Locke as creator; the beginnings of Deism are clearly apparent; a unified world of experience requires a creator, whose basic function is to insure the validity of experience. This judgment is somewhat unfair to Locke’s personal faith and intentions, perhaps, but it is just to the practical outcome. Since Locke’s concern is man, he is thus interested in man’s happiness. “What is it moves desire? I answer, — happiness, and that alone.”811 Locke’s man is thus implicitly good or wise, in that he desires pleasure, not pain. Man the sinner, masochistic and sadistic, is not in Locke’s world at this point or at any time.812 Locke’s man is rational and sensible even in egoism. The egoism of men, the particulars, thus produces the welfare of the whole, or the one, society; the foundations of laissez faire were thus established: “The necessity of pursuing true happiness [is] the foundation of liberty. As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness; so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty.”813 Thus we have a correlation between the true happiness and the true liberty of man in terms of the egoism of man. In his own way, Locke was affirming the same doctrine as Leibniz, despite their real differences: pre-established harmony. Leibniz objected to a hint of dualism in Locke, but they were together in assuming pre-established harmony.814
Briefly to summarize Locke’s thinking in relation to the problem of the one and the many, first, for Locke the particulars, the many, are prior, and these particulars are men. Second, in spite of their priority, these particulars are passive in their reaction to the natural world and the sensations derived from it. Book 4 of the Essay, “Of Knowledge and Probability,” makes this quite clear. The mind, Locke said, is like a dark room, and sensory experiences are like windows letting light into that dark room from the natural world.815 Third, Locke posited a unified world of nature, created by God, as formally required by his philosophy to make experience and hence the ideas produced by experience valid. The one was thus a formal but necessary addition to his system. Fourth, Locke’s priority of the many made for a philosophy of individualism, or modern liberalism, but, fifth, because his individual is passive, a determining agency creating experience was necessary, and this the state, the enlightened despots of the Age of Reason, provided. The state became the immanent one, and liberalism moved from individualism, by revolting against old authorities, to statism, by requiring a new one, the immanent unity of the state.
3. Berkeley George Berkeley (1685-1753) built on the foundation of Locke’s empiricism. Although an empirical idealist rather than a materialist, he was still an empiricist. For him as for Locke, all knowledge was derived from sense perception, and he accepted Locke’s empirical psychology. Berkeley, in “An Essay Toward a New Theory of Vision” (1709), took Locke’s premises “far out of the common road,” as he observed, in his dedication to Sir John Percivale. In this amazing document, written when Berkeley was only twenty-four, Berkeley taught that all we see is our sensations: “For all visible things are equally in the mind, and take up no part of the external space....”816 From this premise, Berkeley went on in 1710 to write his “A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge Wherein the Chief Causes of Error and Difficulty in the Sciences, with the Grounds of Scepticism, Atheism, and Irreligion, Are Inquired Into.” The full title is important in that it reveals Bishop Berkeley’s religious concern; he became a bishop (of Cloyne in Ireland) in 1734, and he was a hard-working prelate. His purpose in this latter work is to teach that all that exists is knowledge. In Locke’s system, God was the insurance agent who certified and guaranteed knowledge, but the real source of knowledge was the natural world. Berkeley saw the implications of this: nature was preempting God’s position, and he eliminated nature to retain God as the source of knowledge. Moreover, he recognized what Hume was later to develop, that a radical destruction of the possibility of knowledge was latent in Locke’s empiricism. He wrote, It is a hard thing to suppose, that right deductions from true principles should ever end in consequences which cannot be maintained or made consistent. We should believe that God has dealt more bountifully with the sons of men, than to give them a strong desire for that knowledge which he had placed quite out of their reach.817 The difficulties, he felt, “are entirely owing to ourselves. That we have first raised a dust, and then complain we cannot see.”818 The creative mind of Locke, however passive, was ultimately man’s only world, Berkeley recognized; the natural world was possibly no more than one of the mind’s ideas or abstractions. In such a case, all that remains is Lockean man, the mind of man
and his knowledge. It was important, therefore, to Berkeley, to retain that knowledge, for his starting point was Lockean man, but to ascribe the source of that knowledge to God. Berkeley, amidst the Enlightenment confidence, saw its Achilles heel: The ideas imprinted on the senses by the Author of nature are called real things: and those excited in the imagination being less regular, vivid and constant, are more properly termed ideas or images of things, which they copy and represent. But then our sensations, be they never so vivid and distinct, are nevertheless ideas, that is, they exist in the mind, or are perceived by it, as truly as the ideas of its own framing. The ideas of sense are allowed to have more reality in them, that is, to be more strong, orderly, and coherent than the creatures of the mind; but this is no argument that they exist without the mind. They are also less dependent on the spirit, or thinking substance which perceives them, in that they are excited by the will of another and more powerful spirit: yet still they are ideas, and certainly no idea, whether faint or strong, can exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving it.819 Berkeley denied, not the reality of knowledge, but the reality of matter, as his solution: “The only thing whose existence we deny, is that which philosophers call matter or corporeal substance.”820 The sun, moon, and stars still remained real for Berkeley, but not material, nor did he see the old, materialistic conception of the world as necessary to science. Berkeley did not deny the reality of material objects, but he did deny that matter as substance existed behind or in those material objects. Material objects existed apart from the mind of man in the mind of God. Locke’s position was that a dualism existed of spiritual substance, the mind or soul of man, which is passive, and material substance, which is active. These two substances are linked by ideas in the mind, and their link is made possible and its veracity assured by positing God as their creator. Locke’s position was thus clearly dualism, a new variation on a Greek theme. Berkeley recognized the danger in Locke’s system while accepting it. He retained the spiritual substance, dropped material substance, and retained God as the linking power between ideas and reality, reality now being the mind of God. For both Locke and Berkeley, man is a soul, and represents freedom as against nature, the world of necessity. Berkeley recognized that dualism was hostile to biblical faith.821 He failed, however, to overcome dualism, because he began with Lockean man as his presupposition. The mind of man now had radical autonomy which Berkeley, and Hume after him, only underscored. Because of man’s autonomy, there was now a dualism between ideas and the process of knowing. Man was set apart from the world like a god, but unlike God, was not the creator of his world and therefore could not comprehend the world as his idea and law-order. Thus man, by asserting his autonomy, asserted also a radical dualism between himself and reality which could be overcome only by either denying that reality, or by making that reality a part of himself, his own idea. This step was later to be taken. Berkeley retained that reality by positing “that ETERNAL INVISIBLE MIND which produces and sustains all things.”822 God was Berkeley’s one, but his many, the race of man, was his true
presupposition and starting point. Autonomous man needed God, not as Savior, but as his mainstay in epistemology to retain true knowledge. As a result, the given for Berkeley was the mind of man and man’s ideas, not God.
4. Alexander Pope The primacy of man appeared extensively in the literature of the age. Thus, Alexander Pope (1688-1744), in his “An Essay on Man,” wrote what he called “a general map of MAN.”823 Pope’s “Essay on Man” has been called superficial and half-digested philosophy, but it is important in its echoes of the age’s thought. The “chain of being” concept was revived by Pope.824 This chain of being included God and man, as well as all nature, in one common being: All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the Soul.825 This unified world of being, therefore, has no fall; it is normative, and it is one. All nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; A partial evil, universal good: And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite, One truth is clear, WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT.826 Infallibility was thus transferred from God to the entire chain of being: that which is, is inevitably right because it is a part of that perfect whole. Man, thus, is not a sinner; he is right as he is. And because he represents a high point of the great chain of being, “The proper study of mankind is Man.” Vice still existed in Pope’s world, by way of contradiction, but there was no fall, only an upward growth. “The God within the mind” guides man.827 “The chain of love” works to bring all the world together and upwards. But “self-love” works to fulfill the glorious purpose of the whole also.828 Pope concluded, I turn’d the tuneful art From sounds to things, from fancy to the heart; For wit’s false mirror held up Nature’s light; Show’d erring pride, WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT; That REASON, PASSION, answer one great aim; That true SELF-LOVE and SOCIAL are the same; That VIRTUE only makes our bliss below, And all our knowledge is, OURSELVES TO KNOW.829 Pope’s philosophical self-satisfaction and superficial optimism characterized much of the Enlightenment; with God simply an insurance agent, man was free to go his own way in a world where nothing can go wrong, because “whatever is, is right.”
5. La Mettrie But not everyone could rest in this self-satisfaction. Julien Offray de la Mettrie (1709-1751) took the new philosophy and subjected it to an operation similar to that performed by Berkeley, except that La Mettrie dropped spiritual substance. He held to a great chain of being, entirely material or mechanistic, evolving upwards.830 Man is a machine, and no other substance than matter exists. By this means, La Mettrie, far less profound or able, still did not succeed in avoiding Berkeley’s problem: the dualism between ideas and the knowing process remained. La Mettrie chose to ignore God and to drop any spiritual substance. By this means, he solved his own desire to abolish a segment of reality, but he offered no solution to the problem of knowledge.
6. Hume David Hume (1711-1776) carried the Enlightenment philosophy towards its logical conclusion in An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), a reworking of his earlier and fuller Treatise on Human Nature, written between 1734 and 1737 and published in 1739-1740. Hume did not deny material substance; he simply acted on the basic premise of the Enlightenment, that the autonomous mind of man deals with ideas and not reality, and held philosophy strictly to that fact. As a strict empiricist, Hume wiped out every factor incompatible with strict empiricism; ideas are copies of impressions. There are no innate ideas, no direct knowledge of any material substance, nor of spiritual substance. There are simply impressions and their fainter copy, the ideas. “All ideas, especially abstract ones, are naturally faint and obscure: the mind has but a slender hold of them: they are apt to be confounded with other resembling ideas; when we have often employed any term, though without a distinct meaning, we are apt to imagine it has a determinate idea annexed to it. On the contrary, all impressions, that is, all sensations, either outward or inward, are strong and vivid.”831 Man, therefore, can affirm neither the reality of spiritual substance nor of material substance; all he has are impressions and ideas. Hume thus limited the known world to the mind of man with its impressions and ideas. Ideas are related to one another by the three laws of association: resemblance, contiguity in time and space, and causation. But how are these laws derived from impressions, which must be the case, or else empiricism cannot be maintained? These three, resemblance, contiguity, and causation, “are the only bonds that unite our thoughts together.”832 Contiguity association has to do with outer impressions and descriptive sciences, causation association with inner impressions and metaphysics, and resemblance association with inner impressions and mathematics. Because impressions continually conjoin, we believe in a necessary cause, i.e., that water is wet and that fire will burn. Continual repetition of experienced impressions leads to the conclusion of necessity, but the necessity is in the mind, not in the outside world. Mathematics deals with resemblances within the mind and is thus valid unless it claims to be valid for an outside world. Contiguity association rests on a conclusion from the order and relationship of impressions, but any order can occur, so that there is at best a probability concept available, not a law concerning
outside reality. “There is certainly a probability, which arises from a superiority of chances on any side.”833 In Hume’s strict empiricism, there is no place whatever for God, and only a slim place for science in terms of probability concepts, not laws. There is no place either for the self of man as a spiritual substance; instead of the self, there are only perceptions. “I never can catch myself at any time with a perception, and never can observe anything but the perceptions. When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep, so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist.”834 In view of these things, it is not surprising that Hume found less reason to believe in miracles than in a material world. Hume did not deny belief; he denied the validity of the objects of belief. As a result, he was ready to commend an ethics which furthered certain social qualities, and he thus laid the foundations for the utilitarian and the pragmatic ethics of later eras.835 Virtue for Hume was simply “every quality of the mind which is useful or agreeable to the person himself or to others.”836 In terms of his own definition, Hume was a moral man. Since Hume could give no objective validity to science, he could give none, of course, to God, for, as he noted, “While we cannot give a satisfactory reason, why we believe, after a thousand experiments, that a stone will fall, or fire burn; Can we ever satisfy ourselves concerning any determination, which we may form, with regard to the origin of the worlds, and the situation of nature, from, and to eternity?” The “only objects of the abstract science or of demonstration are quantity and numbers, and... all attempts to extend this more perfect species of knowledge beyond these bounds are mere sophistry and illusion.”837 The only valid sciences are those of quantity and number, but this does not mean that these sciences reach an outside world. Thinking must be firmly rooted in impressions. “If we reason a priori, anything may appear able to produce anything.” The foundation of thinking about God is “faith and divine revelation,” and of ethics as grounded upon such a faith the same must be said. Morality, like beauty, is really a question of taste. Hume concluded, When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.838 The humanistic faith of Hume thus ended as a principle of bookburning. Hume rejected a priori thinking, he felt, but did he? There is an a priori assumption at the heart of Hume’s system, the presupposition of the autonomy of the mind of man. This a priori characterizes modern philosophy. It is at the heart of Descartes’ “I think therefore I am.” At the end, with Hume, this a priori is almost all that remains. The “I” of Descartes has been greatly reduced; it is no longer a soul, a spiritual substance; there is neither spiritual nor material substance, but only thinking. This thinking can be divided, or must be, into two aspects — impressions and ideas — so that a dualism remains, between ideas and the knowing process.
There is no longer even a formal one, only the particulars, autonomous men; hence the individualism of Hume. The world of man is greatly reduced, however; man is little more than a nexus of ideas. The world of nature is also reduced; it is now only a series of impressions. Freedom is associated with autonomous man, but how significant is the liberty of a mind without substance and without contact with anything else? Hume’s world is one of a reduced particular and a reduced unity, and, like his world, Hume himself was a reduced man. Hume’s application of his philosophy to politics is revealing. His politics was somewhat conservative, but his political philosophy was not. In his study, “Of the Original Contract,” Hume pointed out that there are basically two kinds of political philosophy. The first school traces civil government directly to God, the second to “the consent of the people,” assuming some kind of original social contract. Pragmatically, Hume saw virtues in both; realistically, he saw no evidences for either origin in existing states: “Almost all the governments which exist at present, or of which there remains any record in story, have been founded originally, either on usurpation or conquest, or both, without any pretence of a fair consent or voluntary subjection of the people.”839 This is very true, but is usurpation and conquest the truth of the matter, or is there a true order, or is there no truth at all in any social order? Hume’s answer is important: We shall only observe, before we conclude, that though an appeal to general opinion may justly, in the speculative sciences of metaphysics, natural philosophy, or astronomy, be deemed unfair and inconclusive, yet in all questions with regard to morals, as well as criticism, there is really no other standard, by which any controversy can ever be decided.840 The inclusion of moral questions is of note. The truth of politics and morality is thus derived from “general opinion.” The humanism of such a philosophy is of course transparent. Hume’s a priori is here also the autonomous mind of man. Because Hume’s humanism was so radical, he was dubious of the social contract idea; it meant a binding law from the past. Similarly, Hume was skeptical of pure reason; it implied some kind of law and knowledge from the mind basic and innate within man. Hume’s free, autonomous man has no ties on him from the past and only the impressions of his own experience from the present. In one sense, this is a severe limitation and a very narrow world, but, in another, within these narrow walls, man, bound by neither reason nor the past, is his own god, ruling in proud autonomy in a nonexistent realm.
7. Rousseau This world was the world of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), who essentially denied natural law,841 was dubious of the social contract idea while using it, and strongly denied reason. The opening words of Rousseau’s “A Dissertation on the Origin and Foundations of the Inequality of Mankind” are fitting for all his writings: “It is of man that I have to speak.” Better known is his first sentence in Chapter 1 of “The Social Contract”: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” How can a man be born free if he is in chains? Here an unresolved problem appears, much debated by scholars. Rousseau did not want to ascribe man’s freedom to any source other than man, because he believed in man’s autonomy. Thus, the state of nature is not entirely trusted by Rousseau: his confidence is in man, not nature. Hence his trust in the will of man, and,
in social orders, in the general will of man. This concept of the general will clearly has led to the democratic totalitarianism of the French and Russian Revolutions, of fascism and national socialism, and of democratic socialism. The general will of the people is sovereign; it is sovereign for all and is indivisible and inalienable. Since sovereignty is a theistic idea, to ascribe sovereignty to the general will is to make the locale of the general will the god of the order. Since infallibility is an aspect of the doctrine of God, it is not surprising that Rousseau ascribes a like doctrine to the general will: “the general will is always right and ever tends to the public advantage.” Not all deliberations of “the People” are inerrant. “There is often considerable difference between the will of all and the general will.” Thus, the general will and pure democracy are not equivalent. To avoid leading “the will of all” into errors alien to the general will, “it is essential that there be no subsidiary groups within the state.”842 The new inerrant God is thus for Rousseau the democratic state; it is the immanent and absolute one and many, and the particulars or individuals in that unity have no freedom to withstand the inerrant general will, the one. Rousseau was the hero of his day, despite his moral degeneracy, because he made man the moral center and arbiter of the universe.
8. Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) not only acknowledged his debt to Rousseau but also hung Rousseau’s picture on his study wall and declared that Rousseau was the Newton of the moral world. This moral primacy belonged to Rousseau because he had made man the new absolute of the universe; God might exist, and He might be a beautiful character, but He was no longer primary or even relevant in Rousseau’s universe. Kant gave philosophical props to Rousseau’s position. For Kant, God and all those unknown things-in-themselves are Noumena,whose reality need neither be affirmed nor denied and who are not a part of the realm of knowledge. Philosophy had worked to this point to eliminate the a priori; now, with Kant, it was ready to introduce a new a priori; since both spiritual and material substances had been eliminated from the realm of valid knowledge, and only the mind of autonomous man left, the a priori could now be relocated firmly in man’s reasoning without any reference to God. Man could now have knowledge, but he did not need God for this new kind of Kantian knowledge. Kant’s concern was “a system, based on no data except reason itself, and which therefore seeks, without resting on any fact, to unfold knowledge from its original germs.”843 Kant thus sought a new foundation for knowledge, one neither dependent on spiritual or material substances, nor dependent either on God or on sense impressions as representations of things-inthemselves. Kant was working towards cutting the umbilical cord which bound man to God and the universe. Kant’s new a priori involved a new conception of what is universally and necessarily true: Pure Mathematics, and especially pure geometry, can only have objective reality on condition that they refer to objects of sense. But in regard to the latter, the principle holds good, that our sense representation is not a representation of things in themselves but of the way in which they appear to us. Hence it follows, that the propositions of geometry are not the results of a mere creation of our poetic
imagination, and that therefore they cannot be referred with assurance to actual objects; but rather that they are necessarily valid of space, and consequently of all that may be found in space, because space is nothing else than the form of all external appearances, and it is this form alone in which objects of sense can be given. Sensibility, the form of which is the basis of geometry, is that upon which the possibility of external appearance depends. Therefore these appearances can never contain anything but what geometry prescribes to them. It would be quite otherwise if the senses were so constituted as to represent objects as they are in themselves. For then it would not by any means follow from the conception of space, which with all its properties serves to the geometer as an a priori foundation, together with what is thence inferred, must be so in nature. The space of the geometer would be considered a mere fiction, and it would not be credited with objective validity, because we cannot see how things must of necessity agree with an image of them, which we make spontaneously and previous to our acquaintance with them. But if this image, or rather this formal intuition, is the essential property of our sensibility, by means of which alone objects are given to us, and if this sensibility represents not things in themselves, but their appearances: we shall easily comprehend, and at the same time indisputably prove, that all external objects of our world of sense must necessarily coincide in the most rigorous way with the propositions of geometry; because sensibility by means of its forms of external intuition, viz, by space, the same with which the geometer is occupied, makes those objects at all possible as mere appearances.844 This remarkable passage, like every work of Kant’s on knowledge, makes it clear that it was not Kant’s concern to “save” knowledge. Rather, Kant followed after Hume in seeking the destruction of historic rationalism and empiricism, because they were still linked to God and to things-in-themselves. In their place, Kant sought to introduce a new kind of knowledge, together with a new kind of rationalism as well as a new kind of empiricism. Space and time were for Kant mental realities rather than either illusions or objective realities. “My doctrine of the ideality of space and of time, therefore, far from reducing the whole sensible world to mere illusion, is the only means of securing the application of one of the most important cognitions (that which mathematics propounds a priori) to actual objects, and of preventing its being regarded as mere illusion.” Kant thus espoused a transcendental or critical idealism. “My idealism concerns not the existence of things (the doubting of which, however, constitutes idealism in the ordinary sense), since it never came into my head to doubt it, but it concerns the sensuous representation of things, to which space and time especially belong.”845 “It never came into my head to doubt” the existence of things, Kant said; then why the systematic separation of knowledge from things-in-themselves? Again, the answer is that God is bypassed thereby, and the autonomous mind of man is enthroned as the fountainhead of a new kind of knowledge and science, one which a priori rejects God insofar as any necessary connection to knowledge is concerned. Kant said that therefore, “The understanding does not derive its laws(a priori) from, but prescribes them to, nature.”846 For Calvin, God is the source and principle of the interpretation of all things. For Kant, the autonomous mind of man is the source and principle of the interpretation of all things and of the laws of being. A Kantian interpretation of religion is
thus inescapably and radically humanistic. Having first replaced God with Nature, enlightenment man was now replacing Nature with Man. The old metaphysics was thus as obsolete for Kant, in the face of his critique, as alchemy is in relationship to chemistry.847 A new “objectivity” was claimed by Kant: not what the mind of God has decreed, but what the mind of man reveals a priori as the objective truth. In Kant’s words, “we shall be rendering a service to reason should we succeed in discovering the path upon which it can securely travel.”848 This path must exclude God, of course, and reason’s dependence on things-in-themselves. Where God is concerned, “I have found therefore it necessary to deny knowledge, inorder to make room for faith.”849 Instead of being made complementaries, faith and knowledge are given separate domains, so that faith by definition is not grounded on, nor a form of, knowledge. Knowledge must be purged of God, and it must also be purged of any necessity of corresponding with objective reality, with thingsin-themselves. Only then is it pure: If, therefore, we seek to discover how pure concepts of understanding are possible, we must enquire what are the a prioriconditions upon which the possibility of experience rests, and which remain as its underlying grounds when everything empirical is abstracted from appearances. A concept which universally and adequately expresses such a formal and objective condition of experience would be entitled a pure concept of understanding.850 We are often told that Kant spoke to a crisis in the problem of knowledge. This is true, but not in the usual sense; the crisis was this: is knowledge possible without God? Philosophy was trying to eliminate the God-concept inherited from biblical theism, but not very successfully. The importance of Kant was that he gave a new answer to the problem: true knowledge was defined in terms which eliminated the old problem. God and all things-in-themselves were now irrelevant to man, whereas autonomous man was made totally relevant. Kant called his position “transcendental philosophy,” because he held that man himself, by virtue of the universal rules of the autonomous mind, transcended himself, and man was able to escape the dilemma of verification of knowledge. Its advantage “is due to the fact that it deals with concepts which have to relate to objects a priori, and the objective validity of which cannot therefore be demonstrated a posteriori, since that would mean the complete ignoring of their peculiar dignity.”851 Kant thus turned philosophy upside down. Having “freed” the mind from God, Kant logically worked to free man’s morality from God also. This meant affirming the autonomy of the will by means of the concept of freedom. Freedom was “presupposed,” and the word is Kant’s, as a “property of the will.”852 The fundamental act of faith no longer has reference to God but rather refers to man. As a result, the moral ought, the moral law, is now derived from man, not from God. The nature of moral issues was thus revolutionized by Kant. The generations which followed Kant may have been ignorant of his philosophy or even his name, but, increasingly, they reflected Kant’s revolution. In a Stanford University sit-in, Friday, April 18, 1969, one speaker was Paul Bernstein, graduate student in political science from New York City. Striking a dramatic pose, naked to the waist, and bearded, Bernstein declared:
We should not keep talking about anything, but we should look inward to ourselves. But it is not enough merely to look inward. The whole purpose of this movement has been not only to get us to look inward, to realize what our moral concerns are, but to call upon us not to sit with those moral concerns, but to take action — so that we can still respect ourselves as human beings.853 What the Stanford students proudly believed was their young revolution was the tail-end of an old revolutionary tradition which had a classic formulation in the hands of Immanuel Kant. “We should look inward to ourselves,” Bernstein said. Long before, Kant wrote, “It is a priori (morally) necessary to produce the summum bonum by freedom of will.”854 In The Science of Right, Kant therefore defined the right in terms of man’s autonomy rather than God’s nature: “Act externally in such a manner that the free exercise of thy will may be able to coexist with the freedom of all others, according to a universal law.”855 Thus, when twentieth century humanists defend the morality of any acts of perversion between consenting adults because no coercion is involved, they are reasoning from Kantian premises, logically and consistently. Kant eliminated from philosophy a transcendental one and many. Autonomous man was now his own lord and universe. As a result, the one and the many had to be relocated in history. This relocation was not utopian; it had no reference to a future order but rather represented an ostensibly present reality. History, therefore, progressively was to become a clash between atomistic, anarchistic man and the totalitarian state, two rival gods alike at war with the triune God and with each other. Descartes’ autonomous man still needed the props of spiritual and material substances, and God as well, but Kant’s autonomous man needed none of these things and, indeed, found them more than irrelevant; they presented a problem to the new knowledge rather than a need. Truth, for Descartes, meant empirical science. Truth, for the pragmatism of post-Kantian man, is what works, that which satisfies. Truth, defined by Scripture as God the Son, now has come to mean the mind of man. The new one and many provided for post-Kantian man the principle of meaning.
Chapter XIII War Against the Beyond 1. Hegel After Kant, philosophy began to develop the implications of his radical humanism. It quickly became evident that a new reign of dunces had begun, i.e., brilliant minds working a progressively mined-out vein in search of wealth. Kant had set the temper of the new philosophy very plainly: Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But all attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge.856 This was, of course, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s (1770-1831) starting point: the real is the rational. But Kant had left confusion in his wake. He had established a new concept of knowledge, but he had left, still dangling in an intellectual limbo as an affront to man, things in themselves. Although unknowable, they were there. This was a logical inconsistency. The total decree of God permits nothing to exist in and of itself. All factuality is God-created and therefore Godinterpreted factuality. For humanistic man, God’s decree had been replaced by man’s decree. Even as God permits nothing to exist in and of itself, so man now took the same stand. In terms of man’s total decree, in terms of man’s independence and sovereignty, things in themselves must not exist. Thus, it became imperative for the new philosophy to eliminate them: things in themselves must be bludgeoned to death. Kant’s toleration of them was intolerable and represented an element of immaturity in his system. Hegel desired to eliminate the thing in itself.857 It left philosophy with an unhappy dualism. Hegel’s answer to it was Spirit or Mind, the only reality: That the truth is only realized in the form of system, that substance is essentially subject, is expressed in the idea which represents the Absolute as Spirit (Geist) — the grandest conception of all, and one which is due to modern times and its religion. Spirit is alone Reality. It is the inner being of the world, that which essentially is, and is per se; it assumes objective, determinate form, and enters into relations with itself — it is externality (otherness), and exists for self; yet, in this determination, and in its otherness, it is still one with itself — it is selfcontained and self-complete, in itself and for itself at once.858 Since this great social spirit or mind is evolving and developing, it follows that history is of central importance. Indeed, Maier could speak of the Hegelian philosophy putting “history
forward as that new substance....”859 The Kantian dualism was overcome by Hegel’s concept of mind: He takes the Kantian dictum that all knowledge begins with experience but does not arise from experience, and carries it to its ultimate conclusion. He builds the philosophy of consciousness to its apogee. His contention is that since it is preposterous to say anything at all about an object that can have no relation to our consciousness, in other words, to speak of a reality apart from a subject, the mind (rational subjectivity) must itself be proclaimed the ultimate unconditioned reality, the only true and real being.860 This Mind, Spirit, or social mind is “God” struggling to find himself in history; it is also man realizing himself in freedom, as he struggles from necessity to freedom. It is also called “the world-spirit” by Hegel. Hegel saw this world-spirit working or evolving in his day to realize itself in “the Protestant principle,” which in reality had little to do with Luther or Calvin but meant “placing the intellectual world within one’s own mind and heart, and of experiencing and knowing and feeling in one’s own self-consciousness all that formerly was conceived as a Beyond.”861 The Protestant principle means overcoming that dualism between man and the Beyond which Kant failed to overcome. As Hegel described the plight of philosophy, The present standpoint of philosophy is that the Idea is known in its necessity; the sides of its disremption, Nature and Spirit, are each of them recognized as representing the totality of the Idea, and not only as being in themselves identical, but as producing this one identity from themselves; and in this way the identity is recognized as necessary. Nature, and the world or history of spirit, are the two realities; what exists as actual Nature is an image of divine Reason; the forms of self-conscious Reason are also the forms of Nature. The ultimate aim and business of philosophy is to reconcile thought or the Notion with reality.862 It was Hegel’s self-imposed task to overcome this dualism, and he saw it as the duty of philosophy and the demand of history to do so: This is then the demand of all time and of Philosophy. A new epoch has arisen in the world. It would appear as if the World-spirit had at last succeeded in stripping off from itself all alien objective-existence, and apprehending itself at last as absolute Spirit, in developing from itself what for it is objective, and keeping it within its own power, yet remaining at rest all the while. The strife of the finite self-consciousness, with the absolute self-consciousness, which last seemed to the other to lie outside of itself, now comes to an end. Finite self-consciousness has ceased to be finite; and in this way absolute self-consciousness has, on the other hand, attained to the reality which it lacked before. This is the whole history of the world in general up to the present time, and the history of philosophy in particular, the sole work of which is to depict this strife. Now, indeed, it seems to have reached its goal, when this absolute self-consciousness, which it had the work of representing, has ceased to be alien, and when spirit accordingly is
realized as spirit. For it becomes such only as the result of its knowing itself to be absolute spirit, and this it knows in real scientific knowledge.863 Hegel maintained a façade of “religion” and “conservatism.”864 This was necessary for the promotion and position he desired. In his early writings, Hegel had been openly anti-Christian as well as bitterly hostile to Judaism. He saw the task of philosophy as one of establishing “a new religion.”865 He strongly preferred Socrates to Christ as the more rational man. Although in his later writings the anti-Christianity is not openly stated but rather thinly disguised, Hegel’s thought moved progressively to the left even when his activities sometimes moved pragmatically to the right. Hegel’s radicalism was developed fragmentarily by his heirs. Marx developed one facet, the revolutionary political aspect. From Kierkegaard through Sartre, the existential facet was steadily developed and exploited. The pragmatism of Hegel’s philosophy was clearly set forth in Dewey, the philosophical concern with the analysis of contemporary meanings in the school of logical analysis, the priority given to history, in a wide spectrum of followers, and so on. Hegel’s radical humanism made man ultimate and freed him from the past as well as from the Beyond. Development or evolution is central to Hegel’s thought. Hence his major concern with history. His philosophical works are in part historical commentaries. This is true not merely of his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, and of thePhilosophy of History, but also of his other works as well. His Phenomenology of Mind cannot be properly understood except as a historical commentary. In his Science of Logic, Hegel viewed language as the expression of man’s form of thinking and thus again approached his subject from an evolutionary or historical perspective, as he did also in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy. His Philosophy of Right is declared to be “the science of the state.” There is nothing in Hegel to suggest “a final philosophy.” Hegel saw all philosophy historically, as stages in the growth of man’s freedom. The growth of geist, mind, man, God, spirit, or world-spirit is towards freedom, not towards a system. This freedom means the eradication of the Beyond and the radical independence of man as himself true and total being. In his early writings, Hegel made clear “his prime concern,” to quote Kaufmann’s phrase. Hegel stated it plainly: it was “to restore the human being again to his totality.”866 Something of Hegel’s own spirit is best seen in Heinrich Heine’s Confessions (1854): It was easy for me to prophesy which songs would be whistled and twittered one day in Germany, for I saw the birds hatched that later sounded the new tunes. I saw how Hegel, with his almost comically serious face, sat as a brooding hen on the fatal eggs, and I heard his cackling. To be honest, I rarely understood him, and it was only through subsequent reflection that I attained an understanding of his words. I believe he really did not want to be understood; hence his delivery, so full of clauses; hence perhaps also his preference for persons whom he knew would not understand him and on whom he bestowed the honor of his familiar company that much more readily.... Altogether, Hegel’s conversation was always a kind of monologue, sighed forth by fits and starts in a toneless voice. The baroqueness of his expressions often startled me, and I remember many of them. One beautiful starry-skied evening, we two stood next to each other at a window, and I, a young man of twenty-two who had just eaten well and had good coffee,
enthused about the stars and called them the abode of the blessed. But the master grumbled to himself: “The stars, hum! hum! the stars are only a gleaming leprosy in the sky.” For God’s sake, I shouted, then there is no happy locality up there to reward virtue after death? But he, staring at me with his pale eyes, said cuttingly: “So you want to get a tip for having nursed your sick mother and for not having poisoned your dear brother?” — Saying that, he looked around anxiously, but he immediately seemed reassured when he saw that it was only Heinrich Beer, who had approached to invite him to play whist.... I was young and proud, and it pleased my vanity when I learned from Hegel that it was not the dear God who lived in heaven that was God, as my grandmother supposed, but I myself here on earth. This foolish pride did not by any means have a corrupting influence on my feelings; rather it raised them to the level of heroism. At that time I put so much effort into generosity and self-sacrifice that I certainly outshone the most brilliant feats of those good Philistines of virtue who merely acted from a sense of duty and obeyed the moral laws. After all, I myself was now the living moral law and the source of all right and sanctions. I was primordial Sittlichkeit, immune against sin, I was incarnate purity; the most notorious Magdalens were purified by the cleansing and atoning power of the flames of my love, and stainless as lilies and blushing like chaste roses as they emerged from God’s embraces with an altogether new virginity. These restorations of damaged maidenhoods, I confess, occasionally exhausted my strength.... 867 Hegel wrote on January 23, 1807, to one of his best students, stating, “Science alone is the theodicy,”868 an idea common to his works. Science, by its study of development or evolution, can best enable man to understand and develop his freedom. Philosophy as a science must investigate the history of philosophy and of all thought to trace the growth of concepts. The selfconsciousness of mind in its sense of autonomy and its development therein is its freedom. Hegel wrote that The development of Mind lies in the fact that its going forth and separation constitutes its coming to itself. This being-at-home-with-self, or coming-to-self of Mind may be described as its complete and highest end; it is this alone that it desires and nothing else. Everything that from eternity has happened in heaven and earth, the life of God and all the deeds of time simply are the struggles for Mind to know itself, to make itself objective to itself, to find itself, be for itself, and finally unite itself to itself; it is alienated and divided, but only so as to be able thus to find itself and return to itself. Only in this manner does Mind attain its freedom, for that is free which is not connected with or dependent on another.869 To express this better, the activity of Mind is to know itself. I am, immediately, but this I am only as a living organism; as Mind I am only in so far as I know myself.870
Philosophy is the thought of its time, standing only above it in its critical analysis. “In as far as Philosophy is in the spirit of its time, the latter is its determined content in the world, although as knowledge, Philosophy is above it, since it places it in the relation of an object. But this is in form alone, for Philosophy really has no other content.”871 There is a progressive evolution of truth, but the truth is more than the final result, if the word final can be allowed: “The truth is the whole.” The “result” is the “Absolute,” but “the truth is the whole.” Moreover, “it is the very nature of understanding to be a process; and being a process it is Rationality.”872 Clearly, Reason is important to Hegel, since by the exercise of independent reason man knows his autonomy and knows that Mind is both subject and object. “Reason is the Sovereign of the World.” Moreover, “man is an object of existence in himself only in virtue of the Divine that is in him — that which was designated at the outset as Reason;which, in view of its activity and power of selfdetermination, was called Freedom.”873 Spirit, Mind, Reason, and Freedom are closely identified: Matter possesses gravity in virtue of its tendency toward a central point.... Spirit, on the contrary, may be defined as that which has its centre in itself. It has not a unity outside itself, but has already found it; it exists in and with itself. Matter has its essence out of itself; Spirit is self-contained existence.... Now this is Freedom, exactly. For if I am dependent, my being is referred to something else which I am not; I cannot exist independently of something external. I am free, on the contrary, when my existence depends upon myself.874 Quite naturally, Hegel saw the “Jealous God” of Scripture (although he ascribed him to “Judaism”) “as the negation of the Individual.”875 But reason is not the goal, nor is the life of reason. For Hegel, reason is a stage of mind, not merely a function of mind.876 It is man’s self-consciousness as a self-contained existence which is the goal. “I am I in the sense that the I which is object for me is sole and only object, is all reality and all that is present.”877 Meanwhile, “the shape which the perfect embodiment of Spirit assumes [is] — the State.” In fact, “The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on Earth.” The reason for this importance given to the state is that the state in the modern age has been the instrument whereby humanistic man has declared his progressive independence from God. “Substantial freedom is the abstract undeveloped Reason implicit in volition, proceeding to develop itself in the State.” The state is thus a stage, like reason, in the development of freedom; in the state “Freedom has found the means of realizing its Ideal — its true existence. This is the ultimate result which the process of History is intended to accomplish.”878 Hallowell’s analysis of Hegel’s statement is able and to the point,879 but it must be added that the state is not a final institution but simply a stage in the development of freedom. The state can give way, as Marxism was later to declare, to a newer form of freedom, anarchism, for example. Meanwhile, “Morality is a political affair,”880 and ethics is “the science of the state.”881 “The State is the actuality of the ethical ideal,” because it is man’s creation, a product of the activity of self-consciousness.882 True personality is the goal, man knowing himself “as something infinite,
universal, and free.” Personality is not our awareness of finitude or of dependence, “but rather man’s consciousness of himself as a completely abstract ego in which every concrete restriction and value is negated and without validity.”883 Thus, Hegel’s concern lies beyond politics, with “the living Spirit, the concrete human soul.”884 Meanwhile, man suffers from alienation due to his knowledge of good and evil, to his consciousness: Consciousness occasions the separation of the Ego, in its boundless freedom as arbitrary choice, from the pure essence of the Will — i.e., from the Good. Knowledge, as the disannuling of the unity of mere Nature, is the “fall,” which is no casual conception, but the eternal history of Spirit. For the state of innocence, the paradisiacal condition, is that of the brute. Paradise is a park, where only brutes, not men, can remain. For the brute is one with God only implicitly (not consciously). Only Man’s Spirit (that is) has a self-cognizant existence. This existence for self, this consciousness, is at the same time separation from the Universal and Divine Spirit. If I hold to my abstract Freedom, in contraposition to the Good, I adopt the standpoint of Evil. The Fall is therefore the eternal Mythus of Man — in fact, the very transition by which he becomes man. Persistence in this standpoint is, however, Evil....885 Both Marx and Freud were spiritual heirs of Hegel. The real world for Hegel was the world of consciousness, but this world of consciousness was essentially a developing, struggling, evolving, and contradictory world. The one was the Spirit, the world mind, but the Spirit was also the many. Both the one and the many for Hegel were essentially descriptive, historical terms. Because Hegel was at war with the Beyond, determined to obliterate it, there was for him no transcendence, only pure description. His effort to introduce a note of transcendence by making freedom the direction of history meant little, because a descriptive philosophy can only analyze historically. Freedom for Hegel meant the state; for medieval man, it probably meant the church and his faith. For post-modern man, the definition may again change. What meaning does freedom have then? At this point, Hegel was insistent: freedom meant autonomy for man; it meant man’s self-consciousness of himself as infinite, universal, and free, as his own god, in brief. It was the sovereignty and the eternal decree of the triune God which Hegel insistently excluded. This autonomy is the essence of spirit, mind, freedom, and reason; but it is also this autonomy which makes man incapable of more than bare description, and that bare description fails, because all factuality, being God-created, collapses into brute, meaningless data apart from Him. Hegel laid the foundations for revolution for revolution’s sake, not for a world of meaning. Hess expressed the spirit of Hegel ably in his call to revolution: The point is that revolution today — coming as it does after a long development of democratic governance — not only does not require a goal, in the established sense, it could not tolerate such a goal. Any such goal — of simply making government more democratic — would be, actually, counter-revolutionary and not revolutionary at all.
Revolution today must be against such goals. Revolution today must be against the state and not for any form of the state. Revolution today must have as its goal the abolition of every agency of power which can or would be able to force standards, goals, or any arbitrarily normative values upon persons who do not voluntarily hold or seek such values, standards, or goals. (Persons in such a concept would not renounce self-defence or self-control, just coercion.)886
The 1969 heirs of Hegel were only beginning to develop the radicalism of their master.
2. Feuerbach The radicalism of Hegel was veiled; that of the post-Hegelians was open. Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach (1804-1872)brought out into the open the veiled anti-Christianity of his day in The Essence of Christianity, which was translated into English by the novelist George Eliot (Marian Evans). Feuerbach, in writing a preface to the second edition, observed that, “The basic ideas of my book — though not in the form in which they are expressed and had to be expressed under present circumstances — will certainly some day become the property of all mankind.”887 Feuerbach had rightly understood the reception of his book among intellectuals: its ideas would be taught by the schools and universities for some generations to become “the property of all mankind.” His thesis was a simple one, namely, the anthropological essence of religion. It was not God who made man, but man who made God. “The object of a subject is nothing else than this subject’s own nature objectified. Such as are a man’s thoughts and moral character, such is his God.”888 It follows, therefore, that God’s attributes are simply projections and purifications of man’s attributes: For the “divine Being” is nothing else than the nature of Man, i.e., human nature purified, freed from the imperfections of the human individual, projected into the outside, and therefore viewed and revered as a different and distinct being with a nature of its own. All the attributes of the “divine Being” are therefore attributes of man.889 Thus man, while he apparently humiliated himself to the lowest degree, is in truth exalted to the highest, for in and through God, man aims at himself.890 Briefly stated, “God is the mirrored image of man.”891 Feuerbach thus saw religion as an illusion and a dream. Marx and Freud were later to develop these concepts of religion as the opium of the masses and an illusion. For Feuerbach, “To live in projected dream-images is the essence of religion. Religion sacrifices reality to the projected dream: the ‘Beyond’ is merely the ‘Here’ reflected in the mirror of imagination.”892 Feuerbach
openly abolished the Beyond; Hegel had done it in veiled terms, but Feuerbach bluntly stated his practical conclusion: If the nature of Man is man’s Highest Being, if to be human is his highest existence, then man’s love for Man must in practice become the first and highest ethics. THIS IS THE TURNING POINT OF WORLD HISTORY.893
3. Max Stirner Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity was published in 1841; in 1844, there appeared Max Stirner’s The Ego and His Own, which showed how religious Feuerbach and the other left-wing Hegelians still were! The communists exalted “society” and Feuerbach exalted “Man.” In Erdmann’s summary words, From their superstitious standpoint they forgot the main thing, the individual. It is not Feuerbach’s “Man,” which is just such another spectre as the God of the orthodox, but this one Ego that is what is true. Therefore, long live the Egoist! Whoever respects anything, unless his respect has been bought, has a soft place in his head. To set up ideals, but also to set up any kind of community, is to be religious. The communists, therefore, are “common” men. The egoist is the only man.894 Max Stirner (pseudonym of Kaspar Schmidt, 1805-1856), in The Ego and His Own, gave a classical expression of anarchism. Instead of agreeing with those who said, “Shame on the egoist who thinks only of himself!,” Stirner made it clear that this was his proud position, for “All things are nothing to me,” for “Nothing is more to me than myself!”895 Feuerbach had said, “Man is to man the supreme being,” and Bruno Bauer had declared, “Man has just been discovered,” i.e., as independent of God. Well, then, said Stirner, let us look more carefully at this supreme being and be sure we see him without religious presuppositions from the past. Stirner turned his contempt on the ideas of God, spirit, law, and morality. If there is no God, then there is no law; if man is the supreme being, then man is his own law. For man to continue obedience to the old morality is to practice idolatry. Stirner stated his case plainly and bluntly: Take notice how a “moral man” behaves, who today often thinks he is through with God and throws off Christianity as a bygone thing. If you ask him whether he has ever doubted that the copulation of brother and sister is incest, that monogamy is the truth of marriage, that filial piety is a sacred duty, etc., then a moral shudder will come over him at the conception of one’s being allowed to touch his sister as wife also, etc. And whence this shudder? Because he believes in those moral commandments. This moral faith is deeply rooted in his breast. Much as he rages against the pious Christians, he himself has nevertheless as thoroughly remained a Christian — to wit, a moral Christian. In the form of morality Christianity holds him a prisoner, and a prisoner under faith. Monogamy is to be something sacred, and he who may live in bigamy is punished as a criminal; he
who commits incest suffers as a criminal. Those who are always crying that religion is not to be regarded in the State, and the Jew is to be a citizen equally with the Christian, show themselves in accord with this. Is not this of incest and monogamy a dogma of faith? Touch it, and you will learn by experience how this moral man is a hero of faith too, not less than Krummacher, not less than Philip II. These fight for the faith of the Church, he for the faith of the State, or the moral laws of the State; for articles of faith, both condemn him who acts otherwise than their faith will allow. The brand of “crime” is stamped upon him, and he may languish in reformatories, in jails. Moral faith is as fanatical as religious faith! They call that “liberty of faith” then, when brother and sister, on account of a relation that they should have settled with their “conscience,” are thrown into prison. “But they set a pernicious example.” Yes, indeed others might have taken the notion that the State had no business to meddle with their relation, and thereupon “purity of morals” would go to ruin. So then the religious heroes of faith are zealous for the “sacred God,” the moral ones for the “sacred good.”896 This passage probably explains why Nietzsche, who cited many authors, did not cite Stirner: he himself may have been involved in an incestuous relationship with his sister Elisabeth and had no desire to make his kinship with Stirner’s philosophy an open acknowledgement.897 To return to Stirner, he concluded logically that, if there is no God, there can be no moral law. How then dare we use a moral law to judge a Nero? “After the annihilation of faith Feuerbach thinks to put in to the supposedly safe harbor of love.” Feuerbach has only changed gods, exchanging “love to the superhuman God,” for “love to the human God,” so that “Feuerbach’s proposition, ‘Theology in anthropology,’ means only ‘religion must be ethics, ethics alone is religion.’”898 The result is simply another form of self-renunciation instead of self-affirmation. Like the Christians, Feuerbach is trying to deliver us, to save us, from ourselves. Where is man and man’s freedom in all this? To live for an idea is clericalism, even if it appears in non-Christians like Robespierre and St. Just. As against all these priests and representatives of ideal interests “stands a world of innumerable ‘personal’ profane interests. No idea, no system, no sacred cause is so great as never to be outrivaled and modified by these personal interests.” The ego will always assert itself against the ideal.899 The communist, by saying that “Power is theft,” has “put a brand on property” and assumed a priestly role, asserting that “theft is always a crime, or at least a misdeed.” “Man and justice are ideas, ghosts, for love of which everything is sacrificed.” Persons alone exist, not man as an idea, or justice, law, and theft. The revolutionists, by serving Man, “cut off the heads of men.”900 The law of these non-Christian revolutionists is more absolute and tyrannical than that of the old Christian monarchs: The monarch in the person of the “royal master” had been a paltry monarch compared with this new monarch, the “sovereign nation.” This monarchy was a thousand times severer, stricter, and more consistent. Against the new monarch there was no longer any right, any privilege at all; how limited the “absolute king”
of the ancient regime looks in comparison! The Revolution effected the transformation of limited monarchy into absolute monarchy. From this time on every right that is not conferred by this monarch is an “assumption”; but every prerogative that he bestows, a “right.” The times demanded absolute royalty, absolute monarchy; therefore down fell that so-called absolute royalty which had so little understood how to become absolute that it remained limited by a thousand little lords.901 The purpose of the French Revolution was simply to replace an old and limited Establishment with a new and absolute Establishment.902 The new absolutism of the liberals and socialists left no room for man. Because it defined Man in terms of its ideal, it denied the status of man to the individual and ruthlessly destroyed him to make way for its ideal. Stirner ably summarized the steps in the liberal and radical syllogism since Rousseau: First, the individual is not man, therefore his individual personality is of no account; no personal will, no arbitrariness, no orders or mandates! Second, the individual has nothing human, therefore no mine and thine, or property is valid. Third, as the individual neither is man or has anything human, he shall not exist at all; he shall, as an egoist with his egoistic belongings, be annihilated by criticism to make room for Man, “Man just discovered.”903 The destruction of men is thus the logical conclusion of this worship of Man. The Hegelians had abolished God, the God of Christianity, but they had not abolished the Beyond. A new and more deadly Beyond had been created in ideal Man, an immanent and perfect one who obliterated the immanent but imperfect many. As against this, Stirner held, “there is no right outside me.” It follows, therefore, that “Every State is a despotism, be the despot one or many, or (as one is likely to imagine about a republic) if all be lords, i.e., despotize one over another.” There is a way of changing this: “Only by recognizing no duty, i.e., not binding myself nor letting myself be bound. If I have no duty, then I know no law either.” No law, truth, person, or thing can be higher than the individual. “For me there is no truth, for nothing is more than I! Not even my essence, not even the essence of man is more than I!”904 In 1846, The Realm of Understanding and the Individual, probably written by a clergyman, Dr. Karl Schmidt, according to Erdmann, held that “Max Stirner is the one who really represents the culminating point of the tendency begun by Hegel. In him the self-consciousness of the egoist has the highest place, and to this self-consciousness all abstractions have to yield. What now, if the egoist, described by a nomen appellativum, were, just for this reason, an abstraction himself!”905 Stirner logically denied the Beyond of God and of Man in terms of Hegel; he denied any idea or ideal as belonging to this mythical Beyond. He was thus left with nothing by way of definition for man. The starting point of Descartes’ philosophy and of the modern age, I am, was now its conclusion also, but, between Descartes and Stirner, because the whole world of God and
meaning had been declared null and void, neither I nor am had any meaning! The one and the many had been brought down to earth, then the one abolished, and the many made meaningless. Stirner concluded his work with these words, “All things are nothing to me,” or, literally, “I have set my affair on nothing.”906 All things being nothing to Stirner, then his ego was logically nothing also. Perhaps Stirner’s most vitriolic critic was Marx. In a long section usually omitted now from editions of The German Ideology, Marx unleashed a rambling attack on Stirner’s work. “Saint Max” had identified Hegel’s “spirit” with the individual and had disposed of the world. For Marx, this meant a deprecation of history which was intolerable. The individual, instead of being the center of the world, is for Marx the product of history: “the changing of oneself coincides with the changing of circumstances.”907 This does not mean that Stirner is right, Marx declared, in charging that communists seek to abolish the individual in favor of the general, self-sacrificing man.908 The reason for Marx’s savage attack on Stirner thus is seen. Both Stirner and Marx were competing Hegelians seeking to identify the true revelation of Hegel’s “spirit.” Both saw the world basically as a realm of change. Neither had any valid principle for asserting the ultimacy of anything in the face of that change and chance. Both consequently asserted a purely arbitrary and personal priority for their concepts. Marx thus had to overwhelm Stirner with abuse in order to assert his own thesis. His critique is accordingly essentially abuse plus a restatement of the communist thesis. As against Christianity, Marx could assert the ultimacy of change and thereby rule God’s sovereignty an impossible concept. This same principle left him no ground for countering the rivalry of another philosophy of chance. As against “Sancho’s” ego or individual, Marx asserted that the communist organization of society would best effect the domination of chance and circumstances by the individual: The transformation of the individual relationship into its opposite, a merely material relationship, to distinction of individuality and chance by the individuals themselves, as we have already shown, is a historical process and at different stages of development assumes different, even sharper and more universal forms. In the present epoch, the domination of material conditions over individuals, and the suppression of individuality by chance, has assumed its sharpest and most universal form, thereby setting existing individuals a very definite task. It has set them the task of replacing the domination of circumstances and of chance over individuals by the domination of individuals over chance and circumstances. It has not, as Sancho imagines, put forward the demand that “I should develop myself,” which up to now every individual has done without Sancho’s good advice; it has instead called for liberation from one quite definite mode of development. This task dictated by present-day conditions, coincides with the task of the communist organization of society.909 To all practical intent, the central difference between Stirner and Marx is one of choice. Chance is ultimate at present, but man must dominate chance and circumstances with his own decree. For Stirner, the method is the individual’s radical autonomy; for Marx, the method is “the communist organization of society.” Marx did not disprove Stirner’s anarchism; he denied its utility for the humanist’s goal.
4. Karl Marx Stirner was not as radical as he believed himself to be. Stirner had denied God, Man, law, and spirit, but he had not denied logic. His whole exercise of reason was a logical development of the implications of Hegel. But why should logic be any more binding on man than God? Stirner had simply created a new Beyond in terms of which he appealed to all men. Why should reason compel men? If the compulsions of God be denied, then the compulsions of reason can be equally denied as alien to man’s will. In terms of this, Karl Marx (1818-1883), in his many writings, simply bypassed Stirner. In his “Theses on Feuerbach,” he gave his reason: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”910 Logic was thus irrelevant as a binding force; logic and reason are merely tools, instruments of man as he changes the world. Action is thus basic, not thought. Stirner belonged to Feuerbach’s world; in Gary North’s words, “it conceived of man as a plastic, observing creature, totally subject to the material reality about him.” In striking at Feuerbach, whose work Stirner and Engels had welcomed, Marx struck at all philosophy. Marx’s “truth” was not in man nor in philosophy: it was in history. Hegel had brought the Beyond down to earth; Stirner placed the Beyond in reason and logic; Marx followed Hegel more closely, in that he placed meaning in history.911 Above the individual man was now the Beyond of history, history as the source of meaning and of authority. The creation of a new society is the goal: to that purpose, reason is instrumental. Marx was a pragmatist in this respect. John Dewey (1859-1952) saw reason and man in instrumental terms. Dewey’s Beyond was “The Great Community.” He differed from Marx only in methodology. For Dewey, “the Public will remain in eclipse,” i.e., man will not truly be man, until the Great Community arrives; “the public will remain shadowy and formless.”912 Man is not truly man until the planners achieve their purpose. Dewey’s works underlined the truth of Stirner’s analysis of the liberal and radical Syllogism.913 Stirner had denied an ultimate or immediate one; Marx and Dewey denied the many. For Marx, it was the duty of philosophers to chart the necessary course of action, and for the proletariat to execute that action. The requirement for action by the proletariat was simply this: since the proletariat had nothing at stake, it would assent most readily to the total dissolution of existing society by revolution.914 In his call to revolution as historical action, Marx said, “Let us revolt against the rule of thoughts.”915 The purpose of this revolt is freedom. Here the ghost of Hegel again prevails. Hegel’s goal was the freedom of the individual from jealous Jehovah, and history was for Hegel the new area of determination. Marx was faithful to this aspect of Hegel; he simply stripped Hegel’s verbiage from Hegel’s goal. In the process, however, he also dropped the world of Christian meaning with which Hegel cloaked his terms. Like Stirner, Marx now had a problem of meaning. What is freedom? North has brilliantly exposed Marx’s embarrassment over this problem: Marx, after struggling with the problem of the meaning of freedom, could only lamely conclude: “The shortening of the working day is its fundamental premise.”916 North’s comment on this answer is telling:
The paucity of the answer is staggering, incredible! If so much misery had not been launched by Marx’s labors for the forces of revolution, and if so many lives had not been destroyed in the name of Marx, that answer would be amusing in its pathetic quality.917 Marx denied the rule of reason in favor of historical action. As a result, because all reasoning is class conditioned for Marxists, the use of logic is futile against Marxists. “What use is it to go and say to a Marxist, ‘Your ideas don’t make sense’? One might as well talk to a deaf man.”918 Talk to a Marxist of freedom, and he redefines freedom to fit the needs of the Marxist regime.919 But God having made man, it is God’s definition which lingers in men’s hearts in the Soviet Union, not that of Karl Marx. Marxist freedom has meant longer working hours — and a meaningless life.
5. Nietzsche In Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900), philosophy very definitely abandoned the clouds of the Beyond for the practical considerations of the present, and for eleven years of insanity. Nietzsche observed, “As I have written, If there were Gods, how could I endure it to be not God! Therefore there are no Gods.”920 Nietzsche was here quoting a fundamental sentence and concept from Thus Spake Zarathustra. In that work, he went on to say, “what would there be to create if there were — Gods!”921 The point is an important one: it is not the truth about God that matters, but simply that Nietzsche cannot tolerate the God-concept unless he himself is god. Even more than Marx, Nietzsche has no use for reason and logic. Why ascribe meaning and truth to reason and logic and thereby establish a new Beyond over man? Accordingly, Nietzsche, to express bluntly his break with traditional religion and philosophy, affirmed the pragmatic value and utility of what was regarded as a lie or as falseness: The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing; and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgment a priori belong), are the most indespensable to us; that without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely imagined world of the absolute and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers, man could not live — that the renunciation of false opinions would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life. To recognize untruth as a condition of life: that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil.922 Truth is thus irrelevant; more than that, it is a nuisance, in that man needs a lie to live and to realize himself as god. To live, this is the goal, and to live without God means to will to be god. Thus, the life-force is the will to power, the will to be superman, more, to be god. As Foster, in his admiring study of
Nietzsche recognized, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is hard, egotistical, knowing neither love nor justice. “He knows but one law; and that law is his own law, the law of his own force, the law which is at once its own sanction and its own delimitation.”923 Ostensibly, now, the Beyond is abolished, and God is dead. Man is freed from truth and can be himself, without regard to either the absolute of truth or the new absolute of history. But no, Nietzsche has introduced another Beyond, a most ruthless one who promises only destruction to man: “I teach you the Superman. Man is something that is to be surpassed. What have ye done to surpass man?”924 A choice is given to men: would they “rather go back to the beast than surpass man?”925 Nietzsche was thus the prophet of a new order, or, as his friend Lou Andreas-Salome stated it in her diary, “the prophet of a new religion.”926 If man must be surpassed, then man has a hard and ruthless Beyond breathing down his neck and decreeing his destruction. But what ground was there for this belief? Nietzsche had followed the Hegelians in outlawing truth, reason, and the Beyond. He himself wrote, with respect to “The Starting-Point of Epistemology”: The hypothesis that, at bottom, things proceed in such a moral fashion that human reason must be right, is a mere piece of good-natured and simple-minded trustfulness, the result of the belief in Divine truthfulness — God regarded as the Creator of all things, — These concepts are our inheritance from a former existence in a Beyond.927 In such a case, what Beyond makes Nietzsche’s opinions right? If everything is beyond good and evil, beyond truth and untruth, what criterion of judgment is left? Nietzsche wrote: “The value of life.” — Every life stands by itself; all existence must be justified, and not only life, — the justifying principle must be one through which life itself speaks. Life is only a means to something: it is the expression of the forms of growth in power.928 Clearly, a Beyond is governing life, but it is an illegitimate Beyond. There is no ground left for assuming that life is better than death, or that the life of tomorrow (superman) is better than the life and man of today. Nietzsche admitted that “The ‘conscious world’ cannot be a starting-point for valuing: an ‘objective’ valuation is necessary.” Nietzsche is here sneaking in a disguised God and a veiled Beyond. In fact, he denies that man or man’s consciousness can be normative, or that “happiness, intellectuality, or morality, or any other individual sphere of consciousness” can be “the highest value.”929 If we wished to postulate an adequate object of life it would not necessarily be related in any way with the category of conscious life; it would require rather to explain conscious life as a mere means to itself.
The “denial of life” regarded as the object of life, the object of evolution! Existence — a piece of tremendous stupidity! Any such mad interpretation is only the outcome of life’s being measured by the factors of consciousness (pleasure and pain, good and evil). Here the means are made to stand against the end — the “unholy,” absurd, and, above all, disagreeable means: how can the end be any use when it requires such means? But where the fault lies is here — instead of looking for the end which would explain the necessity of such means, we posited an end from the start which actually excludes such means, i.e., we made a desideratum in regard to certain means (especially pleasurable, rational, and virtuous) into a rule, and then only did we decide what end would be desirable.... Where the fundamental fault lies is in the fact that, instead of regarding consciousness as an instrument and an isolated phenomenon of life in general, we made it a standard, the highest value in life; it is the faulty standpoint of a parte ad totum, — and that is why all philosophers are instinctively seeking at the present day for a collective consciousness, a thing that lives and wills consciously with all that happens, a “Spirit,” a “God.” But they must be told that it is precisely thus that life is converted into a monster; that a “God” and a general sensorium would necessarily be something on whose account the whole of existence would have to be condemned.... Our greatest relief came when we eliminated the general consciousness which postulates ends and means — in this way we ceased from being necessarily pessimists.... Our greatest indictment of life was the existence of God.930 In this passage Nietzsche flails at the opposition every time his own bankruptcy becomes apparent. He needs a criterion, but he will not, of course, accept God. He denies the individual consciousness, and he also denies the collective consciousness. He wants to avoid creating a God as judge over man, but he cannot accept any criterion from individual or collective man. The criterion is thus not in man nor beyond man, nor in God. Nietzsche, moreover, denies the concept of Being in favor of Becoming, but a Becoming which is eternal process, never reaching a final state. I should like to have a concept of the world which does justice to this fact. Becoming ought to be explained without having recourse to such final designs. Becoming must appear justified at every instant (or it must defy all valuation: which has unity as its end); the present must not under any circumstances be justified by a future, nor must the past be justified for the sake of the present. “Necessity” must not be interpreted in the form of a prevailing and ruling collective force or as a prime mover; and still less as the necessary cause of some valuable result. But to this end it is necessary to deny a collective consciousness for Becoming, — a “God,” in order that life may not be veiled under the Shadow of a being who feels and knows as we do and yet wills nothing: “God” is useless if he wants nothing; and if he does want something, this presupposes a general sum of suffering and irrationality which lowers the general value of Becoming. Fortunately any such general power is lacking (a suffering God overlooking
everything, a general sensorium and ubiquitous Spirit, would be the greatest indictment of existence). Strictly speaking nothing of the nature of Being must be allowed to remain, because in that case Becoming loses its value and gets to be sheer and superfluous nonsense.931 Neither thought nor existence has value or meaning; indeed, nothing does. Nietzsche, in The Will to Power, was both affirming nihilism and trying vainly to transcend it. He affirmed a cyclical view of history, an eternal recurrence, as he did extensively in Thus Spake Zarathustra, as the alternative to God’s meaning and eternal decree, but this eternal recurrence is a blind, destroying monster, although Nietzsche tried to give it meaning.932 In the concluding words of The Will to Power, Nietzsche admitted his inability to find meaning: he could only describe. “This world, do you want a name for this world? A solution for all its riddles?... This world is the will to power — and nothing more. And you yourself are this will to power and nothing more.” Van Riessen comments: That this will is not free, that this infinity of circular processes is a speculation, that it is difficult to see how man, driven by these processes, can ever move forward, or how he can desire such processes — all this only emphasizes that nihilism, no matter what motif it takes up to save itself — can end only in a decadent ruin. But the most important thing is that Nietzsche did find in his last motif a cultural principle which would be followed in actual practice. He expected that it would bring victory over decadence and passive nihilism. We have seen this “victory” in our present century. It is the worship of power, the value-less activism, always restless, driven by the fear of meaninglessness, and finally pouring itself out in annihilation and self-annihilation.933 Nietzsche saw the consequences of his ideas: he regarded himself as “a Man of Destiny” whose works would shake and rearrange the world: “All the mighty forms of the old society are blown into space for they all rest on falsehood: there will be wars, whose like have never been seen on earth before. Politics on a grand scale will date from me.”934 Van Riessen’s comment is very much to the point, when he observes that When Nietzsche comes to the root of the question, he knows that he must choose between Jesus and himself. And then he becomes the prophet of the Antichrist; then he wants to become the Antichrist himself. He applies Ecce Homo, Behold the Man, to himself. It would thus appear as if Nietzsche concerned himself only with Jesus. While he parodied him and sought his opposite, still Nietzsche was in fact nothing else than a parasite feeding on the gospel. Brom has rightly remarked that Zarathustra would be unthinkable without the Bible. The framework, the use of language, the comparisons, the didactic questions, the walks, the search for solitude, the frequent use of texts (literally, paraphrased, or transposed) — all these things which help make of Zarathustra the opponent of the gospel are borrowed from that same gospel.
Nietzsche demolished everything, so that he would not have to capitulate. And when he set about building, he could build nothing new, nothing else than a heterogenous mixture of that which Jesus had been and the negation thereof.... Gide says, and with good grounds, that Nietzsche can never be understood without considering his jealousy of the gospel.935 Thus Nietzsche, who sought to create a new religion, could only ape the old one. Instead of a brave new world, he ended with none at all. There was no meaning left in his world, no one, no many, only negation and nihilism. He had tried to affirm life, but he ended by affirming nihilism and death. He claimed to hate God in the name of man, but he waged war against man also in the name of the superman. A system which denies God will then deny man: no God, no man. The boastful Nietzsche, who spoke of the need of taking a whip to women, was humbled even in his prime: Lou Salome harnessed Paul Ree and Nietzsche to a cart, sat in it with a whip, and had the scene photographed!936 There was thus no superman, either; indeed, there was scarcely a man. In Nietzsche’s own, honest but self-pitying words, What I tried to do was to stand on my own shoulders, to superimpose nature upon nature, denying a Creator God, insisting that the world lives on itself; feeds on its own excrement, as I say somewhere among my notes. Where did Titanism of defiance lead me? To the same pit as Schopenhauer’s Titanism of denial — to moral and spiritual exhaustion, to the nothingness of the Abyss!937 Levi’s description of Nietzsche’s “will to illusion which he exalts almost into a metaphysical instance,” is most telling.938 Levi sees this will to illusion as a strand in modern thought, citing Otto Rank, the Freudian, as an example of the same temper. According to Rank, “It is to the effect that our seeking the truth in human motives for acting and thinking is destructive. With the truth one cannot live. To be able to live one needs illusions.... The more a man can take reality as truth, appearance as essence, the sounder, the better adjusted, the happier will he be. At the moment when we begin to search after truth we destroy reality and our relation to it.”939 The appeal of Nietzsche rests on a will to illusion. One of Nietzsche’s most revealing passages touches on the reason for the “murder” of God: But he — had to die: he looked with eyes which beheld everything, — he beheld men’s depths and dregs, all his hidden ignominy and ugliness. His pity knew no modesty: he crept into my dirtiest corners. This most prying, over-intrusive, overpitiful one had to die. He beheld me: on such a witness I would have revenge — or not live myself. The God who beheld every thing, and also man: that God had to die! Man cannot endure it that such a witness should live.940 Nietzsche, a pathetic, boastful figure, decreed God’s “death” because he could not bear to have an omnipotent God see into his heart and know his sin and “ugliness.” By this step Nietzsche
doomed himself: there was soon no other side to him than sin and “ugliness.” Nietzsche had decreed his own death. The “death” of God was an illusion; the collapse and death of Nietzsche was the reality.
6. Sartre With Jean-Paul Sartre (b. 1905), a relative of Albert Schweitzer,941 we find ourselves in the world of radical existentialism. The extent to which Sartre has sought to be consistent in his existentialism appears strikingly in the title of his major work, Being and Nothingness. Why not, one may well wonder, “Being and Freedom,” since so radical an urge to freedom governs his philosophy?942 Again, why not title the work “Being and Essence,” or “Existence and Essence,” since a sharp separation of the two is so important a starting-point for Sartre? The reason for Sartre’s title rests with Sartre himself, but perhaps an aspect of his title choice was a bypassing of the traditional aspects of philosophy. “Nothingness” for Sartre is given; it is “at the heart of Being.” Sartre wants no dualism of being and non-being, or of being and nothingness. “Man presents himself... as a being who causes Nothingness to arise in the world, inasmuch as he himself is affected with non-being to this end.” In brief, “Non-being exists only on the surface of being.”943 Sartre’s doctrine of nothingness is a parallel to the biblical doctrine of creation out of nothing. If man as the new god is to create his own essence, then he must do so out of nothingness. As Reinhardt noted, Christianity teaches not only that everything that is was created out of nothing but also that everything would sink back into nothingness the moment God were to withdraw His all-sustaining creative power. This is why Nietzsche’s or Sartre’s “man without God” moves in a meaningless void which he vainly and desperately tries to populate with the still born creatures of his own whims and fancies. And since in Christianity, as in no other religion, man’s existence is absolutely grounded in God, the atrophy of faith in God must of necessity lead to the most horrible experience of the abyss of annihilation and nothingness.944 Nothingness is thus a necessity for Sartre’s being in order to ensure man’s freedom to be god, but it also haunts being and is a continuing plague to it. Sartre’s philosophy seeks to be realistic in terms of man in the modern world. In regarding with approval Castro’s Cuban Revolution, Sartre titled a chapter, in part, “Death to Abstract Principles!”945 These words echo, in part, the temper of the modern mind, and Sartre’s existentialism. But the reality is that a new set of abstract principles prevails. Sartre’s being is one of these new abstractions. Sartre introduces a Cartesian dualism between Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself. Being-in-itself is the self-contained being of a thing, whereas being-for-itself “is coextensive with the realm of consciousness, and the nature of consciousness is that it is perpetually beyond itself.”946
Add to this the fact that existence precedes essence. As Sartre points out, Atheistic existentialism... states that if God did not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a 352 The One and the Many being who exists before he can be defined by any concept, and this being is man, or, as Heidegger says, human reality. What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be. Thus, there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it. Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust toward existence. Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. Such is the first principle of existentialism.947 Sartre defines existentialism as the belief “that existence precedes essence, or, if you prefer, that subjectivity must be the starting point.” “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”948 Because man is alone in the world, man is both totally free and totally responsible, in that he is the new maker of himself: Dostoievsky said, “If God didn’t exist, everything would be possible.” That is the very starting point of existentialism. Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to. He can’t start making excuses for himself. If existence really does precede essence, there is no explaining things away by reference to a fixed and given human nature. In other words, there is no determinism, man is free, man is freedom. On the other hand, if God does not exist, we find no values or commands to turn to which legitimize our conduct. So, in the bright realm of values, we have no excuse behind us, nor justification before us. We are alone, with no excuses. That is the idea I shall try to convey when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet, in other respects is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. The existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never agree that a sweeping passion is a ravaging torrent which fatally leads a man to certain acts and is therefore an excuse. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion.... Ponge, in a very fine article, has said, “Man is the future of man.” That’s exactly it.949 To maintain this radical freedom and responsibility, Sartre denied the validity of the concept of the unconscious and of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory.950 It cannot be true, because “man is
freedom,” not a product of the id. Man is freedom because there is no God who created him, determined man’s nature and history, or established a law over man. The freedom of man is his urge to be God, to be his own maker and determiner. “Thus the best way to conceive of the fundamental project of human reality is to say that man is the being whose project is to be God.”951 To be man means to reach toward being God. Or if you prefer, man fundamentally is the desire to be God. It may be asked, if man on coming into the world is borne toward God as toward his limit, if he can choose only to be God, what becomes of freedom? For freedom is nothing other than a choice which creates for itself its own possibilities, but it appears here, that the initial project of being God, which “defines” man, comes close to being the same as a human “nature” or an “essence.” The answer is that while the meaning of the desire is ultimately the project of being God, the desire is never constituted by this meaning; on the contrary, it always represents a particular discovery of its ends.... The only being which can be called free is the being which nihilates its being. Moreover we know that nihilation is lack of being and can not be otherwise. Freedom is precisely the being which makes itself a lack of being.952 The threat is clearly seen by Sartre: to say that “man is the being whose project is to be God” is in effect to ascribe a nature or essence to man. Only by placing a nothingness between man and his goal, the desire to become God, does Sartre escape rather dubiously from giving man a nature. For Sartre, “Man makes himself man in order to be God.”953 Sartre is at great pains to avoid giving man a nature. Because man is in process of making himself, it becomes difficult to affix responsibility to this ostensibly totally responsible being. The man guilty of a crime yesterday is not the same man who we face today. If it is demanded that a homosexual frankly admit that he is one in the name of sincerity and truth, have we not identified an act and the man? “The critic asks the man then to be what he is in order no longer to be what he is. It is the profound meaning of the saying, ‘A sin confessed is half pardoned.’ The critic demands of the guilty one that he constitute himself as a thing, precisely in order no longer to treat him as a thing.” Thus, bad faith and sincerity are for Sartre not very different.”954 There is thus freedom, and there is responsibility, but no guilt, since man is responsible to himself. Instead of an antithesis between good and evil, there is a Hegelian synthesis as the road to freedom realized as God. Not surprisingly, Sartre found a hero or saint in a criminal who denied guilt and affirmed his freedom in acts against God’s order.955 God in Christian philosophy is the principle of definition because He is the sovereign lord and creator. All facts being created facts have their true meaning only in and through God. Sartre’s man, like God, is the principle of definition. This means that man cannot define himself because of his freedom. Much of Sartre’s painstaking labor in Being and Nothingness is his attempt to analyze man without defining him, to know man without ascribing a nature or essence to man.
God’s freedom is that He is the sovereign God; He has an absolute, perfect, uncreated, and unchanging being and essence. Man’s freedom in Sartre is negative in essence. Man’s freedom is from God for Sartre; this freedom leaves man without essence, without meaning, with only being. There is, therefore, no possibility of definition. Medieval philosophy sought with precision to define the nature of God. Sartre seeks the same precision to understand man without defining him, an amazing effort. Sartre’s Being and Nothingness is “the theology of man” spelled out with precision, if the word precision can be used for the undefined. Significantly, Part 1 is titled, “The Problem of Nothingness.” The old question, “How many angels can dance on the head of a needle?,” is more relevant than much of Sartre’s philosophy. Significantly, as Sartre deals with man’s nature without calling it a nature, he considers shame in reference, not to God, but to “the Other”: “Shame is by nature recognition. I recognize that I am as the Other sees me.”956 The other is, of course, other men, here designated and capitalized as “the Other.” Man’s freedom is arbitrary; man’s only responsibility is to himself. In Spier’s summary words, “Man is the only measure of all value and all truth” in Sartre. Since every man has this same arbitrary freedom, the freedom of the Other is a threat to man’s freedom, and a man’s neighbor is his greatest problem and threat.957 At the same time, the Other can cause man to know shame, and in this sense is like the God of Scripture, who brings man to shame with the self-knowledge of his nakedness before God. Sartre’s Individual is a being in process of making himself God. Until that process is realized, “the Other” functions as man’s God and devil. Man’s being is without essence for Sartre, and there is no Beyond; God, if he exists, is irrelevant, because man’s being is still by definition without essence, i.e., uncreated and undetermined by that God.958 Sartre’s man cannot know himself, because he has no essence or nature. He is in process of becoming God, but in that process he is still beyond definition. How then can man even know that he is in process? At this point, “the Other” enters as the new god, in effect, the new principle of definition, insofar as any definition can exist: The philosophies of Descartes and Kant to the contrary, through the I think we reach our own self in the presence of others, and the others are just as real to us as our own self. Thus, the man who becomes aware of himself through the cogito also perceives all others, and he perceives them as the condition of his own existence. He realizes that he can not be anything (in the sense that we say that someone is witty or nasty or jealous) unless others recognize it as such. In order to get any truth about myself, I must have contact with another person. The other is indispensable to my own existence, as well as to my knowledge about myself. This being so, in discovering my inner being I discover the other person at the same time, like a freedom placed in front of me which thinks and wills only for or against me. Hence, let me at once announce the discovery of a world which we
shall call intersubjectivity; this is the world in which man decides what he is and what others are. Besides, if it is impossible to find in every man some universal essence which would be human nature, yet there does exist a universal human condition. It’s not by chance that today’s thinkers speak more readily of man’s condition than of his nature. By condition they mean, more or less definitely, the a priori limits which outline man’s fundamental situation in the universe.959 God is no longer the condition of man’s existence; “Others” are. Man does not have a “universal essence which would be human nature”; he does have a condition, i.e., his “fundamental situation in the universe.” It would be easy to say that this condition imposes limitations and governments on man, internally and externally, so that a nature of man can be spoken of, but let us grant Sartre his intense desire to escape a nature or essence. Let us also grant him his meaning for man’s freedom and responsibility: The essential consequence of our earlier remarks is that man being condemned to be free carries the weight of the whole world on his shoulders; he is responsible for the world and for himself as a way of being. We are taking the word “responsibility” in its ordinary sense as “consciousness (of) being the incontestable author of an event or of an object.”960 It is strange that this man who is “condemned to be free,” and whose freedom it is to become God, should find “the Other” so great a threat: “The appearance of the Other in the world corresponds therefore to a fixed sliding of the whole universe, to a decentralization of the world which undermines the centralization which I am simultaneously offering.”961 As Streller summed it up in his analysis of Sartre, “The Other robs me of my world.”962 It is through the individual that the world exists, but this is not true of “the Other.” “Human reality remains alone because the Other’s existence has the nature of a contingent and irreducible fact. We encounter the Other; we do not constitute him.”963 The world exists through me, but “the Other” alters that world, for “the Other’s look as the necessary condition of my objectivity is the destruction of all objectivity for me. The Other’s look touches me across the world and is not only a transformation of myself but a total metamorphosis of the world. I am looked-at in a world which is looked at.”964 All this is not surprising. Having removed God as the Beyond of his philosophy, Sartre has a new and immanent “beyond” to threaten and determine him, to fill him with shame and selfconsciousness. Sartre cannot escape into a world where he is not looked at. How much “the Other” is a threat to Sartre appears in his treatment of sex. Sex is not for him a harmless matter. Again, the man-woman relationship is not seen in Christian terms, with the woman as man’s helpmeet in his calling. The sexual act is loaded with a desire for communication which is metaphysical; in common with much modern thought, Sartre is in quest of cosmic coition. But the act is dangerous. “The hole” is a nothingness to be filled with man’s flesh; it calls for a sacrifice of a man’s body to bring into existence the plenitude of being. In Sartre’s words,
It is only from this standpoint that we can pass on to sexuality. The obscenity of the feminine sex is that of everything which “gapes open.” It is an appeal to being as all holes are. In herself woman appeals to a strange flesh which is to transform her into a fullness of being by penetration and dissolution. Conversely woman senses her condition as an appeal precisely because she is “in the form of a hole.” This is the true origin of Adler’s complex. Beyond any doubt her sex is a mouth and a voracious mouth which devours the penis — a fact which can easily lead to the idea of castration. The amorous act is the castration of the man; but this is above all because sex is a hole. We have to do here with a pre-sexual contribution which will become one of the components of sexuality as an empirical, complex, human attitude but which far from deriving its origin from the sexed being has nothing in common with basic sexuality, the nature of which we have explained in Part III. Nevertheless, the experience with the hole, when the infant sees the reality, includes the ontological presentiment of sexual experience in general; it is with his flesh that the child stops up the hole and the hole, before all sexual specification, is an obscene expectation, an appeal to the flesh.965 In No Exit, Sartre has Garcin declare, “Hell is — other people!” As Levi has very aptly observed, Hell is other people for Sartre because in his quaint universe of appropriation and domination (a kind of Hobbesian state of nature where the stakes are not the externals of wealth and deference but purely internal states of consciousness like nausea, shame, pride, and alienation) all contact with the Other implies a latent contest.966 In order to eliminate God, Sartre makes nothingness prior to being. In a basic sense, nothingness is the given, and it ultimately governs his philosophy. The attempt of man to be God is a futile one. Sartre concludes, in a famous passage, Every human being is a passion in that it projects losing itself so as to found being and by the same stroke to constitute the In-itself which escapes contingency by being its own foundation, the Ens causa sui, which religions call God. Thus the passion of man is the reverse of that of Christ, for man loses himself as man in order that God may be born. But the idea of God is contradictory and we lose ourselves in vain. Man is a useless passion.967 Sartre’s philosophy gives us no reason for staying alive, and no reason for suicide either. Not only his man but also his philosophy is a futile passion. His individual is the one and the many in a strange sense. Sartre’s man is the one in existence, and the one as against the many “Others.” But Sartre’s man is also the many in that he has no essence; he is a miscellaneous collection of anguish and agony seeking to be God, and all of it a useless passion.
7. Wittgenstein
It is difficult to comment on Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), not only because of the difficulty of understanding his disorganized jottings, but also because his many followers, a strange swarm of eunuchs, buzz angrily if anyone differs with what Veatch has called “the precise esoteric interpretation that a thorough Wittgensteinian would want to place” upon the text.968 Wittgenstein’s concern was not with existence but with language, and his famous slogan was, “The meaning is the use.” As Barrett has summed it up, Bertrand Russell, in analyzing language, felt that, “To exist is to satisfy a propositional function... i.e., satisfy the equation.” As a purist in logic, Wittgenstein sought to separate existence and logic, although with poor success.969 Wittgenstein’s requirements of language were hard and precise. He would have agreed with Sartre’s rejection of the unconscious. For Wittgenstein, 5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. 5.61 Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits. So we cannot say in logic, “The world has this in it and this, but not that.” For that would appear to presuppose that we were excluding certain possibilities and this cannot be the case, since it would require that logic should go beyond the limits of the world; for only in that way could it view those limits from the other side as well. We cannot think what we cannot think; so what we cannot think we cannot say either. 5.62 This remark provides the key to the problem, how much truth there is in solipsism.For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest.The world is my world; this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of language which alone I understand) means the limits of my world. The world and life are one.970 For such a philosophy, the traditional problems of philosophy are irrelevant, and the questions troubling existentialism are also irrelevant. True, Wittgenstein speaks of objects and facts,but these terms have no reference, as Levi pointed out, to an outside world: So quixotic is this usage that it is not always easy to remember that Wittgenstein is not talking about a material but a logical space, and that this universe has more in common with Leibniz’ universe of logical possibilities than with a Newtonian universe of spatio-temporal actualities. Only such a distinction permits us to recognize that the efforts of the Tractatus are not directed toward the establishment of specifications for an adequate ordinary language, but for an artificial language analogous to that of Principia Mathematica.971 Wittgenstein himself made this clear: “Laws like the principles of sufficient reason, etc., are about the net and not about what the net describes” (6.35). In fact, “All propositions are of equal value” (6.4). However, Wittgenstein recognized that “The sense of the world must lie outside the world” (6.41). However, that “sense,” if the term can be used, lies outside and beyond the world to the point of being irrelevant: “And so it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics.
Propositions can express nothing of what is higher” (6.42).972 The charge of mysticism, accepted by some and rejected by other Wittgensteinians, rests on this assumption. Wittgenstein stated that his propositions were steps to be transcended to “see the world aright” (6.54) and then enter, apparently, into “silence” (7).973 Wittgenstein’s philosophy is thus not concerned with truth but rather with “a pursuit of meaning and sense,” to cite Maslow’s phrase.974 Wittgenstein worked to limit the scope of language and to make it precise within those limits. Engelmann’s statement of that achievement, intended as favorable, is especially telling: The “positive” achievement of Wittgenstein, which has so far met with complete incomprehension, is his pointing to what is manifest in a proposition. And what is manifest in it, a proposition cannot also state explicitly. The poet’s sentences, for instance, achieve their effect not through what they say but what is manifest in them, and the same holds for music, which also says nothing.975 It is true that Wittgenstein’s insistence on a logical language makes it militate, as High pointed out, against the verbal games played by neo-orthodox theologians.976 But it must be added that it militates even more against the language of Christian orthodoxy and its insistence on propositional truth. In no sense can Wittgenstein be seen as congenial to Christian orthodoxy. Wittgenstein’s hand is raised against all those champions of truth who are “blessed possessors,” who have a deposit of truth as their foundation. According to Wittgenstein, “At bottom the whole Weltanschauung of the modern involves the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are explanations of natural phenomena” (6.371).977 This he restated in the Tractatus: “The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.”978 According to Wittgenstein, “There are two godheads, the world and my independent I.”979 Thus, a basic dualism appears, but it does not trouble Wittgenstein; the dualism he has worked to overcome is, “that there are abstract entities called meanings which exist above and over the words that express them and the people who utter them.”980 The world and man exist independently, both without any truth. Wittgenstein’s interest is not in truth but in language, and “Language is an instrument” (569). In fact, “Look at the sentence as an instrument, and at its sense as its employment” (421). Just as a hammer, pliers, saw, and other tools each has its function, so all words have their varying functions.981 But what is their function? It is not truth but rather meaning and sense. But what meaning and sense exist without truth? “Language is an instrument.” But for what purpose? Granted his original premises, the paranoid patient of a mental institution is strictly logical, and his language is instrumental to his presuppositions. In Wittgenstein, philosophy ended in a sick monologue; “the Other” is no threat. The gate to “the Other” and to the Beyond has been shut, and man remains inside himself, sick and dying. Wittgenstein apparently saw this himself: On the flyleaf of Moritz Schlick’s copy of the Tractatus Wittgenstein wrote, “Jeder dieser Satze ist der Ausdruck einer Krankheit” (“Every one of these propositions is the expression of an illness”). My guess is that this Frankheit was due, at least on the philosophical level, to the conflict between Wittgenstein’s growing positivistic convictions and his metaphysical tendencies. In the background of his pithy pronouncements one hears not only the clear voices of
Frege and Russell but the muffled voices of Kant, Schopenhauer, Plato, and even St. Augustine. And this conflict is reflected even in Wittgenstein’s vocabulary.982 Maslow pointed out that, for Wittgenstein, a significant language means simplicity, simple elements and atomic facts, but Wittgenstein provides no satisfactory criterion for simplicity. The only criterion of simplicity is one “established by ourselves, not found in the world.”983 Wittgenstein’s “my independent I” reigns all alone, over nothing. But his success is due precisely to the fact that his philosophy “is the expression of an illness.” In the modern world, there are many sick minds. In 1918, Sherwood Anderson observed of Edgar Lee Masters, author of Spoon River Anthology, “I got the notion fixed in my mind that his [Masters’] successes had been founded on hatred.”984 Not only Masters’ success, but also that of many others since, has been founded on hatred and illness. In the world of the sick, the sickest are kings.
8. Marcuse Herbert Marcuse deserves attention very briefly for his comments on Hegel. As a radical and leftist, Marcuse is closer to Hegel than most commentators. In a telling Preface entitled “A Note on Dialectic,” Marcuse began, This book was written in the hope that it would make a small contribution to the revival, not of Hegel, but of a mental faculty which is in danger of being obliterated: the power of negative thinking. As Hegel defines it: “Thinking is, indeed, essentially the negation of that which is immediately before us.” What does he mean by “negation,” the central category of dialectic?985 The “power of negative thinking,” what does this mean? What is it that must be negated? “The world contradicts itself.” Negative thinking is the tool by which the contradictions are resolved. “Dialectical thought invalidates the a priori opposition of value and fact by understanding all facts as stages of a single process — a process in which subject and object are so joined that truth can be determined only within the subject-object totality.”986 More plainly, the determinism of the world contradicts man’s belief in his freedom, and negative thinking institutes a negation of thought and action against the world to bend it to man’s revolutionary reason. After Hegel, the real is the rational; that is, it is “progress in the consciousness of freedom” (Hegel’s phrase) as it remakes the world to conform to man’s freedom. This means revolution. “Dialectical thought starts with the experience that the world is unfree; that is to say, man and nature exist in conditions of alienation, exist as ‘other than they are.’” Reason or thought sees the contradictory nature of reality and transforms it. Because “Freedom is the innermost dynamic of existence,” it is essentially negative towards an unfree world and works to master alienation. “For the history of mankind, this means attainment of a ‘state of the world’ in which the individual persists in inseparable harmony with the whole, and in which the conditions and relations of his world ‘possess no essential objectivity independent of the individual.’ As to the prospect of attaining such a state, Hegel was pessimistic,” but Marcuse is not. It means shattering the present world order to create a totally man-made world and order which has “no essential objectivity independent of the individual.” Thus, dialectical philosophy, entering a world it did not create, is of necessity destructive in thought and action. It looks ahead to a “whole” which is “beyond
good and evil, truth and falsehood,” i.e., beyond God. The Reason of the free man, the man who declares his autonomy from God, is in effect Marcuse’s messiah. Marcuse’s two meaningful propositions describing our situation are, “the whole truth is the truth, and the whole is false.” A new whole must be established beyond good and evil.987 Man is defined by Marcuse after Hegel in terms of reason; freedom presupposed autonomous reason, and autonomous reason presupposes freedom, but freedom, and reason especially, “exists only through its realization, the process of its being made real.” 988 This means remaking the world; the process is revolution. Of the social order Marcuse writes, And, Hegel continues, that which persists in this “merely empirical manner,” without being “adapted to the idea of reason,” cannot be regarded as “real.” The political system has to be destroyed and transformed into a new rational order. Such a transformation cannot be made without violence.989 The first sentence is an accurate report of Hegel’s position; the second is Marcuse’s conclusion. But Marcuse’s conclusion follows logically from Hegel’s premise and is more faithful to Hegel than the formally correct statements of timid professors who cite Hegel’s words but not his meaning. Because there is no essence to man, and “Being is a continuous becoming,” not a state (“Every state of existence has to be surpassed”),990 “truth” is a process and cannot be stated as a proposition. Hence, falsehood, bondage, and irrationality are themselves “essential parts of the truth.”991 The goal is a world of truth created by man: The world is an estranged and untrue world so long as man does not destroy its dead objectivity and recognize himself and his own life “behind” the fixed form of things and laws. When he finally wins this self-consciousness, he is on his way not only to the truth of himself but also of his world. And with the recognition goes the doing. He will try to put this truth into action and make the world what it essentially is, namely, the fulfillment of man’s self-consciousness.992 This means total war against God’s Beyond in the name of man’s beyond, the revolutionary world order. Man’s instrument is the power of negative thinking and revolutionary destruction. Is it any wonder that the world is given over to destruction? Marcuse, having denied an essence in order to strike at God’s order, reveals here a new essence implicit in his negative thinking. The world is already “essentially... the fulfillment of man’s selfconsciousness.” The war has been newly declared, and Marcuse is dividing the spoils before the battle! King Ahab, for all his evil, had better sense: “Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off” (1 Kings 20:11). A final note: there is no one and many in Marcuse, because there is no truth, only process. Neither the oneness or unity of things, nor the particularity or individuality of things, is of any importance. All alike are committed to a process of destruction. The one and the many apply to life. Philosophy, from Hegel to Marcuse, applies to death and invites it.
9. Hammarskjold Although modestly and philosophically worded, man is the new god of philosophy. Not surprisingly, politics in the modern world has increasingly assumed a messianic character. In Dag Hammarskjold, late Secretary-General of the United Nations, this messianic note came prominently to the fore after his death and was duly commended. Hammarskjold (d. 1961)was a homosexual.993 He may have been responsible for his plane’s crash by his suicidal urge. 994 For Hammarskjold, as a modern man, life was meaningless: “What I ask for is absurd: that life should have a meaning.”995 It was therefore necessary for him to provide the meaning: “You are your own god.”996 Hammarskjold cited Scripture extensively in terms of this identification of himself with “God”: “Not I, but God in me.”997 It should be noted that he recognized no God out there, no God beyond himself.998 In a famous and central passage, Hammarskjold wrote, Your responsibility is indeed terrifying. If you fail, it is God, thanks to your having betrayed Him, who will fail mankind. You fancy you can be responsible to God; can you carry the responsibility for God?999 He spoke of “the holiness of human life, before which we bow down in worship.”1000 Hammarskjold’s faith was existential. “His modern-day prophet was Martin Buber, whose book, I and Thou, expressed almost his own view.”1001 Goldman felt that Hammarskjold “confused himself with God,” but gave the Markings on the whole a friendly review,1002 as did most reviewers. One of the harshest criticisms came from a man who said, “His Christ is not Christianity’s Saviour, the Son of Man who died for our sins, but rather a brother who had gone ahead of Hammarskjold along the same path.” This same critic (Bartels) said that Hammarskjold saw himself as a saviour-figure who desired to sacrifice himself for mankind through death.1003 Norden’s study documented this latter charge. In the face of Hammarskjold’s statements in Markings, which records his views up to the time of his death, an associate of Billy Graham assured the world that Hammarskjold was a Christian! Writing a review of Henry P. Van Dusen’s Dag Hammarskjold: The Statesman and His Faith (1967), Wirt declared, This is a moving book about a great spirit of our time. As far as I know, only one man was fully aware of Dag Hammarskjold’s secret faith before the appearance of the spiritual diary he kept for thirty years. That man was Billy Graham. The evangelist had learned in private conversation what none of the personnel of the United Nations secretariat, over which Hammarskjold presided for nearly a decade, had apparently discovered: that the lonely Swede had a strong personal faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. This fact was brought out in Graham’s statements at the time of the African plane tragedy, when the evangelist’s tribute,
unlike others from around the world, referred to Hammarskjold’s deep devotion to Christ.1004 With these words, we conclude our analysis of the war against the Beyond. As Wirt’s words make clear, it is also a war against truth, and against meaning. This is the way the world goes, both with a bang and a whimper.
Chapter XIV The Christian Perspective 1. Modernism The history of religious thought after Kant is largely an echo of Kant. The extensive success of men like Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, Tillich, and others has been largely due to their manifestation in theology of the principles of modern philosophy. They give us variations on a common theme; their difference lies in the concerted attempt to force modern philosophy onto the biblical message. The fundamental principle of modernism has been to express the spirit of the age and to adapt Christianity to it. A changing theology has been accepted because of a basic belief in an evolving truth. Modernist liberalism in the church has presented itself as the “spirit of open-minded investigation of facts, without any prior assumptions or commitments. The method is defined as the empirico-inductive method of science, which is sharply contrasted with the alleged dogmatic, deductive method of the conservative theology.” Its basic aspect is “humanism.”1005 The decline of the naïve modernism of the pre-World War I era did not mean a return to orthodoxy. Cornelius Van Til rightly termed it The New Modernism in his study of that subject, calling attention to the identity of the basic premises of modernism and neo-orthodoxy: ... the Theology of Crisis is to be classified with modern theology rather than with orthodoxy in its choice of fundamental distinctions. Both Modernism and Dialecticism hold to the existence of two equally original worlds: the world of brute factual existence and the world of meaning. The differences between them... are such as to leave this basic distinction untouched.1006 In the 1960s, the theologians began to write about “the death of God” theology, as though a new day had dawned. According to Altizer, Hopefully a new day has dawned for theology, a revolutionary day in which the gradual but decisive transformation of faith that has occurred in the modern world will be recognized, even though doing so may promise the end of most if not all of the established religious forms of the West. At the moment, and for perhaps well into the future, the most radical theological revolution is promised by the death of God theology, a theology grounded by one means or another in the death of the Christian God.1007 Altizer and his “death of God” associates are more than a century or two behind the times. Philosophy had long before them proclaimed the “death of God,” and Nietzsche’s work was an insane dance of premature jubilation. Altizer has not entered into the world’s “new day,” nor is he the witness to a new dawn. Like C. S. Lewis’ inhabitants of hell in The Great Divorce, who
confuse the grey of coming eternal night with the coming of dawn, so the “death of God” school of theology is likewise confused. They have entered the day of man in its twilight. Nietzsche’s new day was madness, and the new day facing the world of modernity is a day of reckoning. There have, however, been other voices whose philosophy, because it has run against the grain of modernity, has not been as widely publicized as have been the preachers of humanism; but their influence has still been very important. The school of presuppositionalists, including H. Dooyeweerd, D. H. Th. Vollen-hoven, K. Schilder, and others, has been notable in its work and influence. Our concern here is with its leading American thinker, Cornelius Van Til, whose work, The Metaphysics of Apologetics (1931), was written prior to Vollenhoven’s The Necessity of a Christian Logic or Methodology.1008
2. Van Til Cornelius Van Til (b. 1895) presents us with a systematic and rigorously biblical philosophy. In terms of this biblical commitment, Van Til’s philosophy begins with certain clear-cut presuppositions. First, the sovereignty of the triune God and His ultimate decree are presupposed rather than the autonomy of man and man’s mind. There is no less a given, a basic faith and presupposition, in modern philosophy than there is in Van Til. As Van Til, Dooyeweerd, and others have shown, a basic pre-theoretical and religious faith is the presupposition of every philosophy. Every philosophy is a development of the premises of its particular faith. Van Til’s premise is the God of Scripture. Van Til makes clear the significance of this fact: That issue may be stated simply and comprehensively by saying that in the Christian view of things it is the self-contained God who is the final point of reference while in the case of the modern view it is the would-be self-contained man who is the final point of reference in all interpretation. For the Christian, facts are what they are, in the last analysis, by virtue of the place they take in the plan of God.1009 Facts are inseparable from a principle of interpretation; the facts we know are interpreted facts. The question is this: is the principle of interpretation the triune God of Scripture, or is it the autonomous mind of man? The mind of man is not neutral; man is either a covenant-keeper or a covenant-breaker. Man has an “axe to grind,” and as a result the covenant-breaker man is “anxious to keep from seeing the facts for what they really are,” God’s handiwork. For nonChristian philosophy, “all predication that is to be meaningful must have its reference point in man as ultimate.”1010 We thus have “two mutually exclusive systems, based upon two mutually exclusive principles of interpretation.” If man assumes himself to be ultimate rather than created, he will work to undercut God-given factuality: And in our day the non-Christian principle of interpretation has come to a quite consistent form of expression. It has done so most of all by stressing the relativity of all knowledge in any field to man as its ultimate reference point. It would seem to follow from this that Christians ought not to be behind in stressing the fact that
in their thinking all depends upon making God the final reference point in human predication.1011 The sovereign God and His ultimate decree are thus basic. Second, Van Til’s premise is the God of Scripture because Van Til accepts the Bible as the infallible word of God. “The self-contained God is self-determinate. He cannot refer to anything outside that which has proceeded from himself for corroboration of his words.”1012 The word of God must, therefore, be our appeal and authority. The non-believer claims to be a new man by virtue of his independence from God and his declaration that he is his own reference point.1013 He therefore opposes his word to God’s word. Each position has a radically different epistemology. As Van Til sums it up, It is now apparent in what manner we would contend in our day for the philosophical relevance of Scripture. Such philosophical relevance cannot be established unless it be shown that all human predication is intelligible only on the presupposition of the truth of what the Bible teaches about God, man and the universe. If it be first granted that man can correctly interpret an aspect or dimension of reality while making man the final reference point, then there is no justification for denying him the same competence in the field of religion. If the necessity for the belief in Scripture is established in terms of “experience” which is not itself interpreted in terms of Scripture it is not the necessity of Scripture that is established. The Scripture offers itself as the sun by which alone men can see their experience in its true setting. The facts of nature and history corroborate the Bible when it is made clear that they fit into no frame but that which Scripture offers. If the non-believer works according to the principles of the new man within him and the Christian works according to the principles of the new man within him then there is no interpretative content of any sort on which they can agree. Then both maintain that their position is reasonable. Both maintain that it is according to reason and according to fact. Both bring the whole of reality in connection with their main principle of interpretation and their final reference points. It might seem then that there can be no argument between them. It might seem that the orthodox view of authority is to be spread only by testimony and by prayer not by argument. But this would militate directly against the very foundation of all Christian revelation, namely, to the effect that all things in the universe are nothing if not revelational of God. Christianity must claim that it alone is rational. It must not be satisfied to claim that God probably exists. Nor does it say that Christ probably rose from the dead. The Christian is bound to believe and hold that his system of doctrine is certainly true and that other systems are certainly false. And he must say this about a system of doctrine which involves the existence and sovereign action of a self-contained God whose ways are past finding out.1014
Because God is the sovereign, not man, it is the word of God which governs our thought rather than the word of man. Our presupposition, then, is that, “whatever Scripture teaches is true because Scripture teaches it.”1015 For the modernist, the ultimacy of the autonomous mind of man leads him to deny in principle the possibility of an infallible word of God, his frame of reference being himself, not God. In the last analysis every theology or philosophy is personalistic. Everything “impersonal” must be brought into relationship with an ultimate personal point of reference. Orthodoxy takes the self-contained ontological trinity to be this point of reference. The only alternative is to make man himself the final point of reference.1016 Third, in terms of the doctrine of the sovereign, uncreated God and His infallible word, Van Til affirms the doctrine of creation. Instead of one great chain of being, there is, rather, the uncreated being of God on the one hand, and created being on the other. The doctrine of creation means that God as creator of all things is therefore of necessity the only true principle of interpretation for all things. Creationism means a different doctrine of immanence and transcendence than we find in non-biblical thought.1017 Fourth, the doctrine of the trinity is fundamental to orthodox Christianity and to Van Til’s philosophy. “The three persons of the trinity are co-substantial; not one is derived in his substance from either or both of the others. Yet there are three distinct persons in this unity; the diversity and the identity are equally underived.”1018 God is thus ultimate, and the three persons of the Godhead have equal ultimacy. Fifth, it follows that, because all ultimacy is ascribed to God by the doctrine of creation, and equal ultimacy to the triune Godhead, the answer to the problem of the one and the many is to be found in God: In the first place we are conscious of having as our foundation the metaphysical presupposition of Christianity as it is expressed in the creation doctrine. This means that in God as an absolutely self-contained being, in God as an absolute personality, who exists as the triune God, we have the solution of the one and the many problem. The persons of the trinity are mutually exhaustive. This means that there is no remnant of unconsciousness of potentiality in the being of God. Thus there cannot be anything unknown to God that springs from his own nature. Then too there was nothing existing beyond this God before the creation of the universe. Hence the time-space world cannot be a source of independent particularity. The space-time universe cannot even be a universe of exclusive particularity. It is brought forth by the creative act of God, and this means in accordance with the plan of the universal God. Hence there must be in this world universals as well as particulars. Moreover they can never exist in independence of one another. They must be equally ultimate which means in this case they are both derivative. Now if this is the case God cannot be confronted by an absolute particularity that springs from the space-time universe any more than He can be confronted by an absolute particularity that should spring from a potential aspect
of His own being. Hence in God the One and the Many are equally ultimate which in this case means absolutely ultimate.1019 Because God is the creator of all things, the temporal one and many can never exist either in isolation from or in contradiction to one another, nor in isolation from or in contradiction to the triune God, the ultimate one and many. The exclusive ultimacy of the one and the many is in God. Because of the fact of creation, the temporal one and many are not essentially alien things. In non-Christian thought, the one and the many are alien and are held in dialectical tension lest the one reduce the other to nothing and itself to meaninglessness. The temporal one and many are absolutely under God and His law and absolutely subject to His creative purpose. Sixth, there is no tension between the temporal one and many because they are alike under God, and because of the equal ultimacy of the eternal one and many in the triune God. The plurality and the unity of the Godhead are both equally ultimate. God is one God, three persons, and equal ultimacy is to be ascribed to both God’s unity and particularity. The doctrine of the ontological trinity thus brings to an end the tension between the one and the many. It is not the one nor the many which is more important, and ultimacy is not the attribute of one alone; it is, rather, the equal ultimacy of the one and the many in the triune God. Non-Christian thought seeks to hold the one and the many in dialectical tension; failing this, it falls into dualism or monism. Van Til, distinguishing between the eternal One-and-Many and the temporal one and many, points to the fact that Christian philosophy is thus able to give a comprehensive and unified picture of reality without doing any injustice either to unity or particularity, or ascribing ultimacy to man and history: Using the language of the One-and-Many question we contend that in God the one and the many are equally ultimate. Unity in God is no more fundamental than diversity, and diversity in God is no more fundamental than unity. The persons of the Trinity are mutually exhaustive of one another. The Son and the Spirit are ontologically on a par with the Father. It is a well-known fact that all heresies in the history of the church have in some form or other taught subordinationism. Similarly, we believe, all “heresies” in apologetic methodology spring from some sort of subordinationism. It may be profitable at this juncture to introduce the notion of a concrete universal. In seeking for an answer to the One-and-Many question, philosophers have admittedly experienced great difficulty. The many must be brought into contact with one another. But how do we know that they can be brought into contact with one another? How do we know that the many do not simply exist as unrelated particulars? The answer given is that in such a case we should know nothing of them; they would be abstracted from the body of knowledge that we have; they would be abstract particulars. On the other hand, how is it possible that we should obtain a unity that does not destroy the particulars? We seem to get our unity by generalizing, by abstracting from the particulars in order to include them
into larger unities. If we keep up this process of generalization till we exclude all particulars, granted they can all be excluded, have we then not stripped these particulars of their particularity? Have we then obtained anything but an abstract universal? As Christians we hold that there is no answer to these problems from a nonChristian point of view. We shall argue this point later; for the nonce we introduce this matter in order to set forth the meaning of the notion of the concrete universal. It is only in the Christian doctrine of the triune God, as we are bound to believe, that we really have a concrete universal. In God’s being there are no particulars not related to the universal and there is nothing universal that is not fully expressed in the particulars.1020 The doctrine of the trinity thus provides the key to the problem of the one and the many. In the trinity, both particularity and unity are equally ultimate and equally concrete. The temporal one and many are created by God out of nothing, or better, “God created the universe into nothing.” Non-being is to be viewed as “the field of God’s possible operation” by man, whereas “for God non-being is nothing in itself.” The doctrine of creation means that the temporal one and many are under the determination of the eternal one and many. “Creation, on Christian principles, must always mean fiat creation.”1021 Thus, there are no possibilities outside of God, nor any determination except from Him, who is the creator, determiner, and sustainer of all things. Seventh, this means that the created one and many as God’s creation is entirely and absolutely under God and His law. As Van Til summarizes his philosophy on this point, If the creation doctrine is thus taken seriously, it follows that the various aspects of created reality must sustain such relations to one another as have been ordained between them by the Creator, as superiors, inferiors or equals. All aspects being equally created, no one aspect of reality may be regarded as more ultimate than another. Thus the created one and many may in this respect be equal to one another; they are equally derived and equally dependent upon God who sustains them both. The particulars or facts of the universe do and must act in accord with universals or laws. Thus there is order in the created universe. On the other hand, the laws may not and can never reduce the particulars to abstract particulars or reduce their individuality in any manner. The laws are but generalizations of God’s method of working with the particulars. God may at any time take one fact and set it into a new relation to created law. That is, there is no inherent reason in the facts or laws themselves why this should not be done. It is this sort of conception of the relation of facts and laws, of the temporal one and many, imbedded as it is in that idea of God in which we profess to believe, that we need in order to make room for miracles. And miracles are at the heart of the Christian position. Thus there is a basic equality between the created one and the created many, or between the various aspects of created reality. On the other hand, there is a relation of subordination between them as ordained by God. The “mechanical”
laws are lower than the “teleological” laws. Of course, both the “mechanical” and the “teleological” laws are teleological in the sense that both obey God’s will. So also the facts of the physical aspect of the universe are lower than the facts of the will and intellect of man. It is this subordination of one fact and law to other facts and laws that is spoken of in Scripture as man’s government over nature. According to Scripture man was set as king over nature. He was to subdue it. Yet he was to subdue it for God. He was priest under God as well as king under God. In order to subdue it under God man had to interpret it; he was therefore prophet as well as priest and king under God.1022 Eighth, because the world is totally under God and is absolutely determined by Him, it is therefore a world with purpose and meaning. History is rescued from meaninglessness. It is no longer brute factuality, meaningless and uninterpreted facts. It is no longer a matter of abstract particulars and abstract universals. It has purpose, meaning, and direction because God created it in terms of His ultimate decree and purpose. As Van Til has stated, The philosophy of history inquires into the meaning of history. To use a phrase of Kierkegaard, we ask how the Moment is to have significance. Our claim as believers is that the Moment cannot intelligently be shown to have any significance except upon the presupposition of the Biblical doctrine of the ontological trinity. In the ontological trinity there is complete harmony between an equally ultimate one and many. The persons of the trinity are mutually exhaustive of one another and of God’s nature. It is the absolute equality in point of ultimacy that requires all the emphasis we can give it. Involved in this absolute equality is complete inter-dependence; God is our concrete universal. We accept this God upon Scriptural authority. In the Bible alone do we hear of such a God.1023 When man seeks to find the meaning of history in history, he ends up denying the validity of history. When he seeks to explain the one and the many in terms of history, he ends up negating one or both, and destroying meaning in either case. Concrete thinking means a positive approach. The ontological trinity will be our interpretative concept everywhere. God is our concrete universal; in Him thought and being are coterminous, in Him the problem of knowledge is solved. If we begin thus with the ontological trinity as our concrete universal, we frankly differ from every school of philosophy and from every school of science not merely in our conclusions, but in our starting-point and in our method as well. For us the facts are what they are, and the universals are what they are, because of their common dependence upon the ontological trinity. Thus, ...the facts are correlative to the universals. Because of this correlativity there is genuine progress in history; because of it the Moment has significance.1024
History is rescued from meaninglessness and man from its despair by means of this biblical philosophy. Such a philosophy differs sharply in kind from its rivals. It is not another variation on a common theme, nor another form of idealism. Here is neither nominalism nor realism nor a combination of the two. Here is thinking done on the basis of the self-authenticating revelation of God. Here is a theology in which the primacy of faith over reason means that reason or intellect is saved from the self-frustration involved in the denial, virtual or open, of such a God and of such a Christ. Only those who know that they are not infallible, but are, by virtue of ever present sin within them in spite of their regeneration by the Holy Spirit, inclined to suppress this revelation, also know that they need such a God, such a Christ and his infallible word to tell them the truth which alone can set them free. For theirs is the knowledge that only by having such a God as their personal God does their search for knowledge have any meaning.1025 The premises of such a philosophy are thus clearly and radically different than those of all nonbiblical philosophy. It means a radical break and division also as far as non-biblical attempts at theism are concerned, for such attempts “can allow for nothing that is not in principle penetrable to the human mind.” Such a view “implies that we, as human beings, are to be our own ultimate judges.”1026 If the facts which face man are already interpreted by God man need not and cannot face them as brute facts. If the facts which man faces are really Godinterpreted facts, man’s interpretation will have to be, in the last analysis, a reinterpretation of God’s interpretation.1027 The new theology gives us a so-called sovereignty of grace which creates a “sovereignty that is common to God and man.”1028 It tries to give us a Jesus who is separated “from the all-inclusive providence of God.”1029 The new theology culminates in the death-of-God theologians, who can rightfully claim Kant as their father, as can liberal theologians before them: We have set ourselves free from the God who is transcendent, but to do so we have had to make ourselves transcendent. To keep the transcendent God from hemming us in through the laws of the created universe we must ourselves take the place of that God by acting as the source of all law in that universe. We must speak the language of freedom, of creation, of sin, and of ethical advance of the individual and of the race in terms of our own free self, that is, in terms of our self as wholly transcendent. We have now to learn to speak two languages, the language of faith and the language of science. We have to speak the language of pure indeterminate ethical freedom and the language of pure determinate science.1030 Because of their rejection of the triune God, of the eternal one and many, the new theologians find themselves, despite their vaunted liberation, still boxed in by the dialectical tension of nature and freedom, the universal and the particular. They have not advanced the problem towards any solution.
Rene Descartes tried to explain how he himself was the final source of predication when he said “Cogito ergo sum.” But soon enough he found that he could say nothing about himself except in terms of God and the world which he had first excluded. Mindful of this failure of Descartes, Kant sought for his self-identity by asserting his freedom from all dependence upon the laws of the space-time world or of the laws of morality as revealed by God. But then he found that his freedom was merely a negative freedom. As a result he could not find himself. His noumenal man is free but free in an unintelligible vacuum. When, after that, Kant, too, sought for a renewed relationship of his free self with God and the world, it was in both cases at the expense of his freedom. The famous aphorism of Goethe, the great German poet, illustrates the predicament of the free self who wants to be free by being a law unto himself. Goethe said, “When the individual speaks it is, alas, no longer the individual that speaks.”1031 These men have denied metaphysics in the name of a new metaphysics. In ethics, “In the place of Christ, they have substituted the assumption that right is right because man, as ethically autonomous, says it is right, and that wrong is wrong because man, as ethically autonomous, says it is wrong.”1032 The issues have been made sharper and clearer by the writings of the death-ofGod theologians: All reasoning and all verification in which any man engages rests ultimately either on the authority of man himself as autonomous, as ultimately self-interpreting, or upon the authority of the Christ of the New Testament who says that he alone knows whence he came and whither he is going... The self-attesting Christ is the presupposition of all intelligible predication. The God-is-dead theologians have helped us to see this fact more clearly than ever. Their negations negate themselves. Or, we may say that their negations cannot even negate themselves because they have nothing to stand on when they make their predications. The Christ of the Scriptures as the Son of God upholds them in his hand even as they deny him.1033 Society does not speak of the matter of the one and the many; most people are ignorant of the problem, even though it is basic to all life and thought. But because of man’s failure to solve the problem, society is caught in the continuing tensions of alternating anarchy and totalitarianism, between anarchic individualism and anarchic collectivism. Philosophy has in recent years abandoned the battlefield for the academic sterilities of logical analysis. If there is to be any kind of Christian reconstruction, then, in every area of thought, the philosophy of Cornelius Van Til is of critical and central importance.
3. At the End of an Age
Philosophy at the end of an age reveals a characteristic exhaustion in that it works its mined-out vein of thought into ever-receding corners of philosophy. Today there is an extensive surrender of the historic disciplines and problems of philosophy because of this exhaustion. The era of humanism or modernity, the belief in the present moment as its own truth and in man as his own ultimate, is rapidly facing radical collapse. As against this, the Christian philosopher must assert the doctrine of the triune God as the only answer to the problem of the one and the many and to every aspect of man’s life. Every attempt to answer the problem on any other premise not only confuses and compounds the problem but also denies the common facts of life and experience. Apart from God, as Van Til pointed out, man negates himself; man as a law unto himself has then neither a law nor any identity nor any principle of identity.
APPENDIX Observationson the End of an Age 1. The End of an Age A cartoon by Von Riegen tellingly sums up an aspect of the modern mood. A bearded and unhappy prophet of doom is pictured walking the sidewalk with a picket sign bearing this grim message: “We’re doomed! The world will not end!”1034 The humor of this lies precisely in the fact that the end of the world is no longer a frightening fact, whereas the continuation of the present world order is. This is a mood which characterizes men at the end of an era. Faith in the ability of that civilization to maintain the necessities of a bearable life, let alone fulfil its promises, is lost. The Presbyter Salvian, writing in the fifth century A.D., gives a vivid picture of the collapse of Roman morality and morale. Because of the decay of Rome, its citizens lost all desire to defend it. Higher and higher taxes, ever-increasing welfarism, the steady centralization of power, the lack of justice and of morality, all these things more and more led the people increasingly to lose all desire to defend Rome. The very people who could have defended Rome, the healthy element within the empire, finally felt they had nothing left to defend. As Salvian described it, But what else can these wretched people wish for, they who suffer the incessant and even continuous destruction of public tax levies. To them there is always imminent a heavy and relentless prescription. They desert their homes, lest they be tortured in their very homes. They seek exile, lest they suffer torture. The enemy is more lenient to them than the tax collectors. This is proved by this very fact, that they flee to the enemy in order to avoid the full force of the heavy tax levy. This very tax levying, although hard and inhuman, would nevertheless be less heavy and harsh if all would bear it equally and in common. Taxation is made more shameful and burdensome because all do not bear the burden of all. They extort tribute from the poor man for the taxes of the rich, and the weaker carry the load for the stronger. There is no reason that they cannot bear all the taxation except that the burden imposed on the wretched is greater than their resources.1035 The Roman world was given to a sick appetite for amusement. As Salvian observed, “It is dying, but continues to laugh.” The Roman theatre and circus catered increasingly to a depraved taste, and “the impurities of the theatre,” Salvian noted, “are singular in that they cannot be honestly denounced in public.” Salvian was an eyewitness to the fall of Trier, and he saw the crowds continuing to cheer at the games while the raped and dying cried out in the streets. But their “madness” was such that, “A few nobles who survived destruction demanded circuses from the emperor as the greatest relief to the destroyed city.”1036 Bark, in citing Salvian’s observations, has called attention to their essential accuracy: Few observers of this period of history can have failed to ponder the fact that millions of Romans were vanquished by scores of thousands of Germans.
According to Salvian, it was not by the natural strength of their bodies that the barbarians conquered, nor by the weakness of their nature that the Romans were defeated. It was the Romans’ moral vices alone that overcame them (VII, 108). Narrow as it is, this judgment by one very close to the event remains respectable. As for the men of more exalted position, the well-educated noblemen, who fled to the barbarians in order to escape the persecution and injustice that prevailed among the Romans (V, 21, 23), it is clear that they, like their poorer compatriots, had given up hope of obtaining justice and protection from the Roman state and its laws. Their flight confirms the fact that in large areas of the Western Empire public spirit and public justice had disappeared, and that men were obliged to act privately and locally in matters that had formerly been regulated by central governmental authority.1037 Rome thus was a society oppressed by welfarism, without faith, over-taxed, immoral, and without sufficient will to defend itself properly. Are these and other marks of the end of an age with us today? But, first of all, what is the spirit of the modern age, and why is it failing? The modern age reveals itself in no small measure by its name, modern. The concept of modernity is not common to all history. It is a belief in the relativism of all truth, coupled with an evolutionary concept of man and history. Modernity means that the present moment is its own truth, and that true freedom requires that the spirit of an age and of the people of that era be free to fulfil itself without reference to past laws and truths. Octavius Brooks Frothingham (18221895), Unitarian and Transcendentalist, defined this humanistic faith in these terms: The interior spirit of any age is the spirit of God; and no faith can be living that has that spirit against it; no Church can be strong except in that alliance. The life of the time appoints the creed of the time and modifies the establishment of the time.1038 Thus, for Frothingham, the spirit of an age is the god of that age, and its spirit is beyond judgment by that age, being infallible and inspired because of its modernity. The roots of this faith in Hegel’s philosophy are obvious, as well as its connection with modern existentialism. Existential philosophy, according to von Fersen, Determines the worth of knowledge not in relation to truth but according to its biological value contained in the pure data of consciousness when unaffected by emotions, volitions, and social prejudices. Both the source and the elements of knowledge are sensations as they “exist” in our consciousness. There is no difference between the external and internal world, as there is no natural phenomenon which could not be examined psychologically; it all has its “existence” in states of the mind.1039
Modernity thus exalts the moment; because it is thereby hostile to the past, and to any higher law, it is also characterized by the religious “spirit of transgression,” to use Bataille’s phrase. 1040 This means perpetual revolution as the means to paradise. To illustrate this modernity, let us examine again a statement made on Friday, April 18, 1969, at Stanford. A mass meeting was called by the student body president to discuss the nine-day sit in, and more than 8,000 students and faculty “overflowed Frost Amphitheater.” Paul Bernstein, graduate student in political science from New York City, was one of the speakers. Bernstein, bearded, long-haired, naked to the waist, began as follows: We should not keep talking about anything, but we should look inward to ourselves. But it is not enough merely to look inward. The whole purpose of this movement has been not only to get us to look inward, to realize what our moral concerns are, but to call upon us not to sit with those moral concerns, but to take actions — so that we can still respect ourselves as human beings.1041 This is a clear expression of modernity. Look within, not behind or above, for the law. The interior spirit of the age is the law for that age. Truth and moral law mean “the spirit of transgression” in faithfulness to “the moment.” The modern era, which can also be called the age of humanism, has been rich in its promises to man: cradle to grave security, equality, a rich life for all, the abolition of poverty, ignorance, war, disease, and even death itself. Year in and year out, modern man has had the message of nearing Utopia dinned into his ears. He has believed it. Man has become impatient with respect to all problems, and a revolutionary rage at delays is increasingly in evidence. This impatience is not helped by the growing collapse of the humanistic age. Material progress there has been, but man finds himself increasingly engaged in deadlier wars with the world and himself, facing deadly problems of air, earth, food, and water pollution, and progressively suicidal in his own impulses.1042 The increasing prominence of psychology is an important sign of the times. When man becomes a problem to himself, psychology comes into its own. As man’s inner problems grow, his ability to cope with the outer world and its problems declines. Thus, a psychology-oriented age is an age in decline, unsure of itself, and incompetent in the face of its responsibilities. It is significant that modern man talks so much about “alienation”; his position of modernity isolates him from God and man and leaves him a prisoner of his isolated ego. Because of this “alienation” created by modernity, modern man reacts violently in his effort to reestablish “communications,” another key word. Much is said about the “communications gap,” about the failure of old and young to communicate, and of the inability of any man to find common ground with other men. Again, this loss of communication is a sign of the end of an age; the essential faith of an age, which binds man to man, has then lost its cohesive power, and, as a result, communication is lost.
A popular reaction to such a crisis is the dropout reaction. The dropout is in a very real sense a true-believer in his age, but he is bitter against it for its failure to deliver on its promises. As a result, he shows his bitterness by conspicuous acts of offense and non-participation in order to register his protest. At the end of the “medieval” era, the dropouts became non-students, commuting from university to university as a hostile force. The Goliards developed their own “folk songs” to register their cynicism with respect to Christian law and order, and Christian morality. Similarly, today the dropouts are emphatically involved in registering their protest against the Modern Establishment. The drop-out is still an intense part of the Modern Establishment, in spite of his intense protest. First, it is the real stage for him, so that he acts at all times with reference to that Establishment. He demonstrates against it; he haunts the university and political world, because this is the important world to him. If he creates a colony in the woods, he publicizes it, invites the Life photographer in, in order to pose for pictures,1043 and makes sure again that the world of modernity is aware of him. Moreover, his philosophy of dropping-out is simply modernity carried to its logical conclusion. As Levi observed of Sartre, “The heart of Sartre’s strategy for freedom is an attempt to destroy the decisiveness of the past.”1044 This means simply to cut off and drop out with respect to the past, including its institutions. The dropout is thus more modern than the Modern Establishment; he is very much a part of and child to the very thing that he hates. The dropout would resent being called past-oriented and being described as a part of the Establishment, but this is the reality concerning him. He is ridden by his past, the dream of modernity, and he is a child of the Modern Establishment, demanding that the house be reordered by the child and heir. In contrast to the drop-outs, the drop-ins are those children of modernity who are eager to cash in on its promises and resent any rocking of the boat. A major spokesman for the drop-in mentality is Playboy. Playboy believes in the Utopia of modernity, and Hugh Hefner feels himself to be evidence of its reality. It offers a world of irresponsible sexuality, no ties of family and faith, the prospects of a lush, rich life for all, and a world of endless play and preening. The obvious success of this magazine makes it clear that a large number of people want to be drop-ins, to cash in on the promises of modernity, but it is equally obvious that the magazine appeals to daydreamers who have none of these things. The non-pictorial content of Playboy is alternately conservative or radical as is needed to defend the dream. Playboy is hostile to orthodox Christianity, to legislation against non-marital sexuality, and to other similar causes which would infringe upon its dream of a sexual and social utopia; this is the radical aspect of Playboy. Its conservative phase is apparent in its hostility to higher taxes, to controls by the civil government, to inflation, and to any other restrictive acts against its economic liberty. Both phases or aspects of Playboy’s editorial policy are basically in agreement, in that a utopian dream is demanded by means of either emphasis. The drop-in in effect tells the modern age to deliver on its promises and then get out of the way. But the order being created by modernity is more than a delivery-boy order: it is a drop-in order, one which delivers only to claim everything. Not the dream of liberty but slavery to the state is the end result of the drop-in’s irresponsibility.
Meanwhile, the economic, political, religious, ecological, and educational crises of the modern world are increasing. Every age has its problems, and many eras have had more difficult problems than the modern age, but the test is the ability of a culture to cope with its problems. The modern age has lost even one of the most elementary abilities of any culture, namely, the ability to discipline its children and maintain its authority. Without this elementary ability, a culture is very soon dead. The modern age gives every evidence of approaching death. This is a cause, not for dismay, but for hope. The death of modernity makes possible the birth of a new culture, and such an event is always, however turbulent, an exciting and challenging venture. The dying culture loses its will to live.1045 A new culture, grounded in a new faith, restores that will to live even under very adverse circumstances.
2. The Religious Foundations of Culture In 1954, Bernard Baruch found the modern mentality increasingly evidencing fears concerning the future. “Everywhere we look we find further evidences of this dread of breakdown.”1046 No era lacks its fears and problems, but, when the fears of an age outweigh its hopes and confidence, then that culture is in process of disintegration. Every culture is a religion externalized, a faith incarnated into life and action. The mainspring of every culture is its basic faith, its religious beliefs which undergird its hopes, action, and perspective. When that faith begins to decay, the culture decays. St. Paul cited the meaning of hope: We were saved with this hope ahead. Now when an object of hope is seen, there is no further need to hope. Who ever hopes for what he sees already? But if we hope for something that we do not see, we wait for it patiently (Rom. 8:24-25, Moffatt translation). But we wait patiently for our hope only as long as we have faith in that hope. When the faith perishes, the hope is gone. This makes clear the nature of the growing internal crisis within the Soviet Union, among the Communist elite. Both Communist students and leaders are losing hope because they are disillusioned with Marxism. The 1969 defection of one of the most prominent writers of the Soviet Union gave evidence of this. Anatoly Kuznetsov left the Soviet Union, his mother, son, and wife, as well as a position of affluence and prominence, to seek asylum in England. To indicate the meaning of this step to him, he took a new name, A. Anatol, to signify a new life. In his public statement, he declared: You will say it’s hard to understand. Why should a writer whose books have sold millions of copies, and who is extremely popular and well-off in his own country, suddenly decide not to return to that country, which, moreover, he loves?
The loss of hope: I simply cannot live there any longer. This feeling is something stronger than me. I just can’t go on living there. If I were now to find myself again in the Soviet Union, I should go out of my mind.... So long as I was young, I went on hoping for something.... Finally, I have simply given up.... I came to the point where I could no longer write, no longer sleep, no longer breathe.1047 The mood of flight is a major one; no sane man wants to remain in a burning building. As a result, many Americans and Europeans also look for a country to run to: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, all these and more are cited, but all prove to be a part of the same general conflagration. It is not surprising that the moon-flight of 1969 commanded so wide and popular an attention. Many of the remarks made were revealing: “No life there, but no riots either!” This general disillusionment is caused by the failure of the age to sustain man spiritually. The faith of the modern age is humanism, a religious belief in the sufficiency of man as his own lord, his own source of law, his own savior. Instead of God and His law-word as the measure of all things, humanism has made man the measure of reality. Humanism has had a measure of success because it preempted Christian civilization; it captured an existing culture and claimed the fruits thereof as its own. In terms of orthodox Christianity, man is under God’s law, and man’s only true liberty is under God’s law. For humanism, man is not under law but over or beyond law as his own source of law. Liberty in humanistic terms is from law, in particular, in deliverance from God’s law. As a result, humanism rapidly erodes a culture as the implications of humanism develop and come to maturity. Humanism calls for perpetual revolution, because, with every man his own law, and with evolution producing new heights each generation, freedom from the past is a necessity. But this perpetual revolution is the deliberate destruction of the capital of a civilization, and its consequence is the ultimate impoverishment of all. “A faith for men to live by” is the necessity and need of every race and nation. This faith must give meaning to man’s life, to his past, present, and future. Man requires a world of total meaning, and humanism, as it comes to flower, gives instead a world of total meaninglessness. Orthodox Christianity, with its faith in the triune God and His sovereign predestinating decree, alone gives that total meaning. The church can depart from that faith only at the risk of its life. If a religion is isolated from its world and is confined to its church or temple, it is irrelevant to that world because it is not its motive force. The religion of a culture is that motive force which governs human action in every realm and embodies itself in the life, institutions, hopes, and dreams of a society. Christianity has ceased to be the motive force of society. Not only has Christianity been opposed by humanism, but also, from within its ranks, false eschatologies — premillenialism and
amillenialism — have led to a retreat from the world and a denial of victory therein. This is a surrender of culture to the enemy. However, if the religion of a culture cannot maintain order in the institutions of its societies, then that religion is finished. The established or accepted religious faith of a society must undergird it with the necessary social order to make progress and communication possible. Modern culture, however, is seeing the radical erosion of church, state, school, family, and all things else, so that very obviously the humanistic faith of modernity is ceasing to provide a workable faith for society. Thus, in this day and age, Christianity, the older religion of the West, is irrelevant, and humanism, the present faith, is collapsing rapidly. Humanism in its every form — Marxist, Fabian, democratic, republican, monarchist, or otherwise — is in radical decay and unable to further a culture. Christianity, in its biblical declaration a world religion calling for world dominion in terms of Jesus Christ, is now unwilling to think in terms of dominion. Schilder has called attention to those Christians who, to use Vriend’s summary of Schilder, believe that they have no higher task than to eat the crumbs that fall from the cultural tables of the unregenerate.1048 Crumb-pickers are content to let the devil attempt to establish a culture but refuse to believe that God requires it of His people. The stern warning of one prominent clergyman against all attempts at establishing Christian reform leading to a Christian culture is this: “You don’t polish brass on a sinking ship!” If, indeed, the world is a sinking ship, then all brass-polishing is futile. But if the world is destined to fulfil all the prophecies of Isaiah, and of all Scripture, and culminate in a glorious peace (Isa. 2:4) and a joyful reign of Christian law and order, then crumb-pickers are opposing Jesus Christ. Culture has been defined very simply as “the way of life of a society.” When that way of life sees life as meaningless, then society either stagnates and declines, or it collapses. To see life as meaningless is to make death your “way of life.” Oriental societies adopted philosophies of world and life negation; they declared that nothingness and meaninglessness are ultimate. The consequence for them was stagnation and ultimate conquest by the West, first by Islamic forces, then by Christian powers. The luxury of stagnation is now gone; history’s more rapid pace brings swifter judgment to those who fail. As a result, when the culture, the way of life of a society, is unable to provide either order or meaning to life, its destiny is death. Facing, thus, the end of an age, particularly one which deserves to die, the Christian must again reassert Christianity as a total way of life. This means that the Christian and the churches are derelict in their duty if they do not rethink every field of life, thought, and action in terms of Scripture. Christian schools are an excellent beginning, but no area of thought can be permitted to remain outside of the dominion of Christ. To the extent to which the churches and Christians pursue a crumb-picking operation rather than an exercise of dominion, to that extent the world will flounder in its own decay and ruin before renewal comes. Henry Van Til has given an able statement of Schilder’s view of Christ as the key to culture: Since the Christian is one who partakes of the anointing of Christ (Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 12), his concern with culture is inescapable. For, by his anointing Christ was declared the legitimate heir of the first Adam and commissioned as God’s officer of the day to do the work which our first father failed to
perform, namely, to glorify God in his handiwork. But Christ was not only empowered, he was also enabled by the Spirit. His anointing was the guarantee of achievement, for he came to reconcile all things to the Father (Col. 1:20). As such Christ does not bring something altogether new, but he restores what was from the beginning, and actually brings to pass what God designed from the first. Adam as a living soul was indeed the father of human society, but Christ is the life-giving spirit, who calls men into his fellowship and fashioned them for the fulfillment of the obligation given at creation to the first Adam. The latter must be seen primarily as image-bearer and consequently office-bearer of God, a servant-son who as prophet, priest and king received the cultural mandate to cultivate the ground, to replenish the earth and have dominion over it. This was for man the service of God, true religion. This was the original cosmic order, in which the idea of vocation, of being commissioned and called was determinative for the nature of culture. But man rebelled and denied his relationship to the Father, becoming an ally of God’s enemy, the Devil. As part of the created world of nature man had both consciousness and conscience, was both letter and reader (interpreter) in God’s book. He was called to cultivate the good earth and to bring to expression what was implicit, to fruition what was latent, and thus to be a co-worker with God, the creator. For although God pronounced his creation good, it was not a finished product; there was to be an evolution and a development abetted by the cultural activity of man. And only thus the sabbath of God’s eternal rest would be ushered in.1049 Until there is Christian reconstruction, there will continue to be radical decline and decay.
The Author Rousas John Rushdoony (1916-2001) was a well-known American scholar, writer, and author of over thirty books. He held B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of California and received his theological training at the Pacific School of Religion. An ordained minister, he worked as a missionary among Paiute and Shoshone Indians as well as a pastor to two California churches. He founded the Chalcedon Foundation, an educational organization devoted to research, publishing, and cogent communication of a distinctively Christian scholarship to the world at large. His writing in the Chalcedon Report and his numerous books spawned a generation of believers active in reconstructing the world to the glory of Jesus Christ. He resided in Vallecito, California until his death, where he engaged in research, lecturing, and assisting others in developing programs to put the Christian Faith into action.
The Ministry of Chalcedon CHALCEDON (kal-see-don) is a Christian educational organization devoted exclusively to research, publishing, and cogent communication of a distinctively Christian scholarship to the world at large. It makes available a variety of services and programs, all geared to the needs of interested ministers, scholars, and laymen who understand the propositions that Jesus Christ speaks to the mind as well as the heart, and that His claims extend beyond the narrow confines of the various institutional churches. We exist in order to support the efforts of all orthodox denominations and churches. Chalcedon derives its name from the great ecclesiastical Council of Chalcedon (AD 451), which produced the crucial Christological definition: “Therefore, following the holy Fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man....” This formula directly challenges every false claim of divinity by any human institution: state, church, cult, school, or human assembly. Christ alone is both God and man, the unique link between heaven and earth. All human power is therefore derivative: Christ alone can announce that, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18). Historically, the Chalcedonian creed is therefore the foundation of Western liberty, for it sets limits on all authoritarian human institutions by acknowledging the validity of the claims of the One who is the source of true human freedom (Galatians 5:1). The Chalcedon Foundation publishes books under its own name and that of Ross House Books. It produces a magazine, Faith for All of Life, and a newsletter, The Chalcedon Report, both bimonthly. All gifts to Chalcedon are tax deductible. For complimentary trial sub-scriptions, or information on other book titles, please contact: Chalcedon Box 158 Vallecito, CA 95251 USA (209) 736-4365 www.chalcedon.edu
Endnotes 1
Pre-theoretical suppositions or axioms are religiously held and unproved propositions which are assumed to be so true in a culture that it is ridiculous to question them or to attempt their proof. They exist as the very ground and premise of thought. They are religiously held but are prior to any formal religious thinking as well as philosophical speculation. 2
The one and many is perhaps the basic question of philosophy. Is unity or plurality, the one or the many, the basic fact of life, the ultimate truth about being? If unity is the reality, and the basic nature of reality, then oneness and unity must gain priority over individualism, particulars, or the many. If the many, or plurality, best describes ultimate reality, then the unit cannot gain priority over the many; then state, church, and society are subordinate to the will of the citizen, the believer, and of man in particular. If the one is ultimate, then individuals are sacrificed to the group. If the many be ultimate, then unity is sacrificed to the will of many, and anarchy prevails. 3
See Must We Depend Upon Political Protection? Yes, Edmund A. Opitz; No, Robert LeFevre (Colorado Springs, CO: The Freedom School, 1962). Modern libertarian movements are extensively influenced by Nominalistic, anarchistic philosophies. 4
Garma C. C. Chang, trans. and annotator, The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, vol. 1 (New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1962), 212. 5
See Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, 4 vols., 1953-1958; and In the Twilight of Western Thought, 1960, both Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., Philadelphia. 6
For an account of the implications of the Enlightenment, see Louis I. Bredvold, The Brave New World of the Enlightenment (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961). 7
Roland Van Zandt, The Metaphysical Foundations of American History (The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton, 1959), 72. 8
See Elgin Groseclose, “Diplomacy of Altruism?,” in James W. Wiggins and Helmut Schoeck, eds., Foreign Aid Reexamined, A Critical Appraisal (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1958), 25-42. 9
Cornelius Van Til, Apologetics (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1953), 8. 10
Cornelius Van Til, A Letter on Common Grace (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1955), 40-41. 11
Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1955), 42; published also, rev. and abr., in paperback, 1963, see page 25. 12
Chap. 5, sec. 2.
13
Chap. 3, sec. 1. For Calvin’s statement, see Henry Cole, ed., Calvin’s Calvinism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1950). 14
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Complete Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York: Wise, 1929), 309-310. 15
Nature Addresses and Lectures, in ibid., 57.
16
Ibid., 125.
17
“Politics,” Essays, Second Series (1844), in ibid., 302.
18
“Character,” Lectures and Biographical Sketches, in ibid., 974.
19
J. C. Furnas, The Road to Harpers Ferry (New York: Sloane, 1959), 7.
20
Emerson, Boston and Salem Speeches, in Complete Writings, 1202-1206.
21
Van Til, Defense of the Faith, 43; 26 in 1963 ed.
22
Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co, 1947), 40. 23
Mario Pei, The Story of English (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1952), 11.
24
Cornelius Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1953), 193. 25
See R. J. Rushdoony, By What Standard? (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1959), 23ff. 26
Roy Pierce, “Sociology and Utopia: The Early Writings of Simone Weil,” Political Science Quarterly 77, no. 4 (December 1962): 519. The quotation from Weil is from her Oppression et Liberte, 131-132. 27
Andrew Hacker, “Dostoievsky’s Disciples: Man and Sheep in Political Theory,” The Journal of Politics 17, no. 4 (November 1955): 613. 28
See Dooyeweerd, Transcendental Problems of Philosophic Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1948); A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, 4 vols., 1953-1958, and In the Twilight of Western Thought, 1960, both Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., Philadelphia.
29
See Van Til, The Metaphysics of Apologetics, 1931; A Christian Theory of Knowledge, 1954; The Defense of the Faith, 1955; Some Issues in Contemporary Thought, 1962, all Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., Philadelphia. 30
Lin Yutang, Between Tears and Laughter (Garden City, NY: Blue Ribbon Books, 1943), 179.
31
The implicit statism of all Greek thought is rarely noted. For an important study, see Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956). For a study of Plato in this respect, see Warner Fite, The Platonic Legend (New York: Scribners, 1934). 32
Dooyeweerd, In the Twilight of Western Thought, 67.
33
See Louis I. Bredvold, The Brave New World of the Enlightenment (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961), 111 ff. 34
Dooyeweerd, In the Twilight of Western Thought, 175.
35
Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (New York: W. W. Norton, 1932), 126.
36
See William Raymond Smith, “Presume the Rest: The Conservative Argument?,” Modern Age 6, no. 1 (Winter 1961-62): 67-80. 37
Cornelius Van Til in Westminster Theological Journal 17, no. 2 (May, 1955): 182.
38
See R. J. Rushdoony, The Foundations of Social Order (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1968), 63-82. 39
Dooyeweerd, In the Twilight of Western Thought, 42; Transcendental Problems, 67ff.; A New Critique, vol. 1, 61ff. 40
Dooyeweerd, A New Critique, vol. 1, 57.
41
Van Til, Defense of the Faith, 42-44.
42
For a popular presentation of this, written by a former student of both Van Til and Dooyeweerd, see H. Evan Runner, “The Relation of the Bible to Learning,” Christian Perspectives (Pella, IA: Pella Publishing Co., 1960), 83-158. 43
Van Til, Defense of the Faith, 29-30.
44
H. Van Riessen, The Society of the Future (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1957), 225. 45
W. M. Flinders Petrie, Personal Religion in Egypt Before Christianity (New York: Harper, 1909), 166.
46
John A. Wilson, “Egypt,” in Henri Frankfort, etc., Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (n.p.:Penguin Books, 1951), 74-75. 47
G. G. Ramsay, trans., Satire XV, Juvenal and Persius, Satire XV, 11. 9-11 (London: William Heinemann, 1930), 289. 48
Joseph Fontenrose, Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959), 218-219. 49
Ibid., 473.
50
Ibid., 474. See R. J. Rushdoony, Freud (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1964). 51
Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane., trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), 37. 52
Eric Burrows, “Some Cosmological Patterns in Babylonian Religion,” in S. H. Hooke, ed., The Labyrinth: Further Studies in the Relation between Myth and Ritual in the Ancient World (London: SPCK, 1935), 63n. 53
Mircea Eliade, Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1959), 5. 54
E. A. Wallis Budge, trans. and intro., The Book of the Dead (New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1960), 552-553. On Osiris, see Sir James George Fraser, Adonis, Attis, Osiris (New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1961). On the centrality of Osiris, see Sir Wallis Budge, Egyptian Religion (New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1959). 55
Budge, Book of the Dead, 576-580.
56
Ibid., 608.
57
E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris: The Egyptian Religion of Resurrection, vol. 1 (New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1961), 276. 58
Jane E. Harrison, “Introduction” to Budge, Osiris, v.
59
James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, second edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955), 6; in reference to the primeval hillock, see, 3. 60
Eliade, Cosmos and History, 12. See also Henri Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 151ff. 61
A. M. Hocart, “The Life-Giving Myth,” in Hooke, The Labyrinth, 266.
62
Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 431.
63
Samuel Alfred Browne Mercer, “The Religion of Ancient Egypt,” in Vergilius Ferm, ed., Ancient Religions (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950), 37. 64
C. G. Seligman, Egypt and Negro Africa: A Study in Divine Kingship (London: George Routledge, 1934), 60. 65
Budge, Osiris, vol. 2, 162.
66
Ibid., 168.
67
R. T. Rundle Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt (New York: Grove Press, 1959), 41, 157. 68
Ibid., 121. See also Wilson, “Egypt,” 73.
69
Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods, 148.
70
Ibid., 3ff., 33, 101, 212.
71
Ibid., 168-169, 177-180.
72
Immanuel Velikovsky, Oedipus and Athnalon: Myth and History (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 96-102. 73
Suetonius, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars (New York: Book League, 1937), 6.
74
Roger Caillois, Man and the Sacred, trans. Meyer Barash (Glenco, IL: The Free Press, 1959), 117. 75
Henri Frankfort, Ancient Egyptian Religion (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), 58.
76
Margaret A. Murray, The Splendour That Was Egypt (New York: Philosophical Library, 1961), 78. See Genesis 42:16, Joseph’s oath, “By the life of Pharaoh surely ye are spies.” For Murray on the pharaoh as a god, see 174ff. 77
E. O. James, The Ancient Gods (New York: G. P. Putman’s Sons, 1960), 261.
78
Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, Amulets and Talismans (New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1961), xv-xvi. See also Budge, Egyptian Magic (New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, n.d.). 79
Wilson, “Egypt,” 73.
80
Nora E. Scott and Charles Sheeler, “Instructions for King Mery-ka-Re,” Egyptian Statues (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1945). 81
See “A Dispute Over Suicide,” in Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 405-407.
82
Frankfort, Ancient Egyptian Religion, 30.
83
James Bonwick, Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought (Indian Hills, CO: Falcon’s Wing Press, 1956), 145, 149. 84
Rudolph Anthes, “Mythology in Ancient Egypt,” in Samuel Noah Kramer, ed., Mythologies of the Ancient World (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1961), 41, 51. 85
Thorkild Jacobsen, “Mesopotamia,” in Frankfort: Before Philosophy, 139-140.
86
Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods, 237.
87
Thorkild Jacobsen, “Formative Tendencies in Sumerian Religion,” in G. Ernest Wright, ed., The Bible and the Ancient Near East: Essays in honor of William Foxwell Albright (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961), 274. 88
Sebatino Moscati, Ancient Semitic Civilizations (New York: Putman’s Capricorn Books, 1960), 71-74. See Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 72ff. 89
Jacobsen, in “Mesopotamia,” 218.
90
Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 455-463.
91
Sir Leonard Wooley, Ur of the Chaldees (n.p.: Penguin Books, 1938), 102. On the “Mythology of Sumer and Akkad,” see Kramer, Mythologies of the Ancient World, 93-137; Kramer, “Sumerian Literature, A General Survey,” 249-266, and Jacobsen, “Formative Tendencies in Sumerian Religion,” 267-278. 92
Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 484; cf. 483-490.
93
Ibid., 435, “Akkadian Observations on Life and the World Order.”
94
Ibid., 337.
95
S. N. Kramer, History Began at Sumer (n.p.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959), 84. First published as From the Tablets of Sumer (Indian Hills, CO: Falcon’s Wing Press, 1956); 78 in this edition. 96
S. N. Kramer, “Sumerian Religion,” in Ferm, Ancient Religions, 52-53.
97
Andre Parrot, The Tower of Babel, trans. Edwin Hudson (New York: Philosophical Library, 1955), 64. 98
Kramer, History Began at Sumer, 96; in Kramer, From the Tablets of Sumer, 89.
99
Seton Lloyd, Early Anatolia (n.p.: Penguin Books, 1956), 124.
100
See Hans Gustav Guterbock, “Hittite Mythology,” in Kramer, Mythologies of the Ancient World, 139-179; H. G. Guterbock, “Hittite Religion,” in Ferm, Ancient Religions, 81-109, 139ff; O. R. Gurney, The Hittites (n.p.: Penguin Books, 1954). 101
Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 203; the king, “the Sun Mursilis,” spoke of his father’s death as the time “when my father became god.” 102
Gurney, The Hittites, 65, 157.
103
Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 164. On “Mosaic Laws and the Code of Hammurabi,” see Merrill F. Unger, Archaeology and the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1954), 154-157. 104
Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 167.
105
Ibid.; Unger, Archaeology, 155-156.
106
Cyrus H. Gordon, Hammurabi's Code: Quaint or Forward Looking? (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1957), 11. 107
Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 265, 274-275, 281; from an inscription of Adad-nirari III, 810-783 B.C. 108
Ibid., 276; Shalmaneser III, 858-824, B.C.
109
A. Leo Oppenheim, “Assyro-Babylonian Religion,” in Ferm, Ancient Religions, 78.
110
Albert Champdor, Babylon, trans. Elsa Coult (London: Elek Books, 1958), 88.
111
H. W. F. Saggs, The Greatness That Was Babylon (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1962), 33; cf. 354-358. 112
Ibid., 361, 416-417.
113
Ibid., 454.
114
Ibid., 192.
115
Ibid., 348-351.
116
Jacobsen, “Mesopotamia,” 210.
117
Robert Francis Harper, ed., Assyrian and Babylonian Literature (New York: Appleton, 1904), 150. 118
Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods, 148, 286.
119
For the concept of kingship in India, see Charles Drekmeier, Kingship and Community in Early India (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962). See also A. M. Hocart, Kingship (London: Humphrey Milford, 1927), 106. 120
Eugen Wilhelm, Kingship and Priesthood in Ancient Eran (Bombay, India: Education Society’s Steam Press, 1892), 10. On the religion of ancient Persia, see M. J. Dresden, “Mythology of Ancient Iran,” in Kramer, Mythologies of the Ancient World, 330-364. See also Richard N. Frye, The Heritage of Persia (Cleveland, OH: World Publishing Co., 1963). The antiPersian hostility of many of the ancient Greeks is shared by many modern scholars, who regard Persia as the Oriental East, decadent and luxurious, as against the virile, spartan and youthful West; see Herbert J. Muller, The Loom of History (New York: Mentor Books, 1961). The Aryans of Persia and India were a part of the ancient West, which may have extended into China. The Sumerians, a non-Semitic and non-Indo-European people, had linguistic affinities with Chinese. See Gordon, Hammurabi's Code, 1, and C. H. Gordon, Before the Bible: The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 47. 121
David Hume, The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Abdication of James the Second, 1688, vol. 4, rev. ed. (New York: Harper, 1852), 336-337. 122
Elkin Calhoun Wilson, England's Eliza (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939), 4-6, 201-207. Wilson herein discusses contemporary comparisons to the Virgin Mary. 123
Ibid., 406.
124
Cornelius Van Til, Paul at Athens (Phillipsburg, NJ: Grotenhuis, n.d.), 4.
125
Eric Voegelin, Order and History, vol. 2, The World of the Polis (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1957), 1-24, etc. In vol. 3, Plato and Aristotle (1957), the same concept prevails, and there is also the characteristic terminology of “the anxiety of the fall from being,” 62. Nothing more clearly demonstrates the bankruptcy of much ostensible conservatism than its approval of Voegelin. 126
Leo Paul S. de Alvarez, Sino-Soviet Ideological Relations: 1956-1957 (Unpublished Study, 1959), 52. 127
F. W. Buckler, The Epiphany of the Cross; or, The Kingdom of God on Earth and the Faith of the Church (Cambridge, England: W. Heffer and Sons, 1938), 4-6.
128
F. W. Buckler, “Firdausi’s Shahnamah and the Genealogia Regni Dei,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Supplement no. 1 (September 1935): 1-21. 129
F. W. Buckler, “A New Interpretation of Akbar’s ‘Infallibility’ Decree of 1579,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (October 1924): 606. 130
For the educational philosophies of this faith, see R. J. Rushdoony, The Messianic Character of American Education (Nutley, N J: The Craig Press, 1963). 131
Tamara Talbot Rice, The Scythians (New York: Praeger, 1957), 52-55, 84-90.
132
George Rawlinson, The Sixth Great Oriental Monarchy...Parthia (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1872), 86-88, 398-401. 133
See R. J. Rushdoony, “The Modern State: The Sociology of Justification by Law,” Westminster Theological Journal 24, no. 1 (November 1961): 29-37. 134
Gerardus Van Der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation: A Study in Phenomenology, trans. J. E. Turner (New York: Macmillan, 1938), 118-122. 135
Ibid., 271.
136
See Eric Robertson Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957). Note Dodds’ chapter on “The Fear of Freedom,” 236-269. Note also the comment, 31, “Men knew that it was dangerous to be happy.” 137
Ibid., 17. Dodds cites the emphasis on face and public honor: “Homeric man’s highest good is not the enjoyment of a quiet conscience, but the enjoyment of time, public esteem.” 138
Kathleen Freeman, God, Man and State: Greek Concepts (Boston: Beacon Press, 1952), 11.
139
Rex Warner, The Greek Philosophers (New York: New American Library, 1958), 9.
140
See C. M. Bowra, The Greek Experience (Cleveland, OH: World Publishing Company, 1957), 4; and H. D. F. Kitto, The Greeks (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1964), 34, 37. Plato, in the Critias, called attention to the fact that once forested mountains “now only afford sustenance to bees,” and, “in comparison of what then was, there are remaining in small islets only the bones of the wasted body, as they may be called; all the richer and softer parts of the soil having fallen away, and the mere skeleton of the country being left”; B. Jowett, trans. and ed., The Works of Plato, vol. 4 (New York: Tudor, n.d.), 384. 141
A curious and strained effort to link even Hebrew civilization to the Greeks is Cyrus H. Gordon’s Before the Bible: The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), a work which strains credulity in its attempt to find common factors.
142
Benjamin Farrington, Greek Science: Its Meaning for Us, vol. 1, Thales to Aristotle (n.p.: Penguin Books, 1949), 13. 143
Ibid., 29, 77.
144
Benjamin Farrington, Head and Hand in Ancient Greece (London: Watts, 1947), 3.
145
Kitto, The Greeks, 7.
146
Farrington, Greek Science, 2, 15-16.
147
George Emmanuel Mylonas, “Religion in Prehistoric Greece,” in Vergilius Ferm, ed., Ancient Religions (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950), 164. See also Axel W. Perkson, The Religion of Greece in Prehistoric Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1942). 148
Kitto, The Greeks, 109.
149
David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, eds., The Complete Greek Tragedies, vol. 1, Aeschylus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), 158. 150
Plutarch, “Lycurgus,” The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (New York: Modern Library, n.d.), 61. 151
Jane Ellen Harrison, Epilegomena to the Study of Greek Religion and Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion (New Hyde Park, N. Y.: University Books, 1961), 36. 152
Irwan Edman, ed., The Works of Plato (New York: Modern Library, 1930), 345.
153
H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. George Lamb (New York: New American Library, 1964), 54-55. 154
Ibid., 55-62. Dodds cites, as two telling examples of Greek “wish-fulfillment,” the desire to “thrash your father,” and “mother-incest,” “the Oedipus dream,” citing Aristophanes and Plato respectively; E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, 47. These motives are not without a link to homosexuality. 155
A statement by the Byzantine scholar Tzetzes, Epilegomena.
156
Marie Delcourt, Hermaphrodite: Myths and Rites of the Bisexual Figure in Classical Antiquity (London: Studio Books, 1961), xi, 42. 157
Ibid., plate 7, facing 37.
158
Ibid., 69, 101.
159
Ibid., 72. Joan of Arc wore masculine dress but did not give a utilitarian reason for it, but rather a religious justification, 94. 160
Ibid., 4.
161
Edman, Works of Plato, 355-356.
162
Ibid., 357.
163
Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956), 141. 164
Gilbert Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955), 72. 165
Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, 238, 242, 259. Empedocles declared to the citizens of Akragas, “I go about among you, an immortal god, no longer a mortal”; Eric Voegelin, Order and History, vol. 2, The World of the Polis (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1957), 223. 166
See John W. Snyder, “The Ancient City State: Some Reasons for Its Durability,” The Classical Journal 54, no. 8 (May 1959): 363-371. 167
Kathleen Freeman, trans., Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), 147. 168
Ibid., 87.
169
Warner, The Greek Philosophers, 21, 33.
170
Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, vol. 1, trans. Gilbert Highet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1945), 78, 92. 171
Edman, Works of Plato, 63, 76-77 (Apology), 92, 105-106 (Crito), 113 (Phaedo).
172
Francis Macdonald Cornford, trans. and ed., The Republic of Plato (New York: Oxford University Press, 1945), 180, 184ff. 173
Kitto, The Greeks, 161.
174
Richard Kroner, Speculation in Pre-Christian Philosophy (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956), 53-54. For the Heraclitus statement in full, see Freeman, Ancilla, 26, Fragment 30. 175
Freeman, God, Man and State, 57.
176
George Emmanuel Mylonas, “Mystery Religions of Greece,” in Ferm, Ancient Religions, 178-179. 177
Kitto, The Greeks, 77.
178
Grene and Lattimore, Complete Greek Tragedies, vol. 1, 166-167.
179
Freeman, Ancilla, 24-34.
180
Ibid., 41-46.
181
Gordon H. Clark, “The Beginnings of Greek Philosophy,” in Vergilius Ferm, ed., A History of Philosophical Systems (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950), 73. 182
Jowett, “Parmenides,” Works of Plato, vol. 4, 315.
183
Freeman, Ancilla, 46.
184
Warner, The Greek Philosophers, 38.
185
Freeman, Ancilla, 84.
186
Kroner, Speculation in Pre-Christian Philosophy, 134. Kroner taught at Union Theological Seminary from 1948 to 1952. See also 147, where, on some counts, Kroner finds “Socrates... in complete agreement with the spirit of Jesus.” Kroner states further that “Socrates was an inspired thinker... perfectly and exclusively human, and yet a man of God. Unless we assume that God inspired and commanded Socrates to prepare for the coming of his Son, on the level and in the language of Greek philosophy, Socrates demonstrated, by his personality and conduct, that the human mind has resources enabling it to approach by its own effort, the truth revealed in the Bible,” 151. 187
Eric Voegelin, Order and History, vol. 3, Plato and Aristotle (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1957), 43. 188
For a discussion of some aspects of the case, see M. I. Finley, “Was Socrates Guilty as Charged?,” Horizon 2, no. 6 (July 1960): 100ff. 189
See Warner Fite, The Platonic Legend (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934), 97-112, 162. 190
John Llewelyn Davies and David James Vaughan, The Republic of Plato (London: Macmillan, 1935), 332. Cornford translates the last clause, “for we allow them to go free only when we have established in each one of them as it were a constitutional ruler, whom we have trained to take over the guardianship from the same principle in ourselves,” Republic, 318; in other words, the citizens are free only when completely brainwashed.
191
Republic, 443-444, Cornford trans., 143.
192
Republic, 389; Davies and Vaughan trans., 79-80.
193
Edman, “Phaedrus,” Works of Plato, 312.
194
Voegelin, Plato and Aristotle, 66.
195
Westal Woodbury Willoughby, The Political Theories of the Ancient World (New York: Longmans, Green, 1903), 103. 196
Jowett, The Laws, in Works of Plato, vol. 4, 419.
197
“Philebus,” in ibid., 360, 362.
198
Republic, 395, 401; Cornford, trans., 83, 90, etc.
199
Ibid., 410, 461; Cornford trans., 100, 161.
200
Jowett, Works of Plato, vol. 4, 434.
201
Republic, 431; Cornford trans., 125.
202
Kitto, The Greeks, 78.
203
Hugh Tredennick, trans., Aristotle: The Metaphysics, Books I-IX (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956), 151, 393. 204
Hugh Tredennick and J. Cyril Armstrong, trans., Aristotle's Metaphysics, Books X-XIV, Oeconomica, and Magna Moralia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 163, 265, 289, 447; Tredennick, The Metaphysics, Books I-IX, 93. 205
J. A. K. Thomson, trans., The Ethics of Aristotle (n.p.: Penguin Books, 1958), 37. Benjamin Jowett, trans., and Max Lerner, intro., Aristotle’s Politics (New York: Modern Library, 1943), 54. 206
Thomson, Ethics, 154-155.
207
Ibid., 193.
208
Ibid., 305.
209
Ibid., X, vii, 304-305.
210
Ibid., 251-252.
211
Ibid., 311-312.
212
Jowett and Lerner, 314.
213
Ibid., 316.
214
Ibid., 27ff; 320-21.
215
Ibid., 51, 55.
216
Ibid., 144.
217
Ibid., 80-92, 99.
218
Ibid., 126, 134-135.
219
Ibid., 167.
220
Ibid., 190.
221
Ibid., 139ff., 179, etc.
222
Ibid., 9.
223
Cornelius Van Til, Metaphysics of Apologetics (Philadelphia: Westminster Theological Seminary, 1931), 18. 224
Ibid.
225
Gilbert T. Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion, 3rd ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1955), 202. 226
Bowra, The Greek Experience, 190.
227
Ethelbert Stauffer, Christ and the Caesars, trans. K. and R. Gregor Smith (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955), 61, 63. 228
H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. George Lamb (New York: New American Library, 1964), 391. 229
Theodore C. Williams, trans., The Aeneid of Virgil (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1908), 218. C. Day Lewis translates it, “Remember, Roman, To rule the people under law, to establish The way of peace to battle down the haughty, To spare the meek. Our fine arts, these, forever.” Cited in Michael Grant, The World of Rome (Cleveland, OH: World Publishing Co., 1960), 50-51.
230
Pierce Grimal, The Civilization of Rome (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963), 221, 227, 438. 231
Cicero, De Republica, De Legibus trans. Clinton Walker Keyes (London: Heinemann, 1959), 389. 232
Grimal, Civilization of Rome, 100.
233
R. H. Barrow, The Romans (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1964 [1949]), 22.
234
Grimal, Civilization of Rome, 103.
235
Ibid., 457. Barrow, The Romans, 19-21.
236
Cyrus Bailey, Phases in the Religion of Ancient Rome (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1932), 52. 237
Ibid., 137-138.
238
Walter Addison Jayne, M.D., The Healing Gods of Ancient Civilization (New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1962), 399-400. 239
Francis Legge, Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity, From 330 B.C. to 330 A.D., vol. 1 (New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1964), xxiv-xxv. 240
W. C. Bark, Origins of the Medieval World (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1960), 144. 241
Otto Kiefer, Sexual Life in Ancient Rome, trans. Gilbert and Helen Highet (New York: Dutton, 1935), 118-123. 242
See Franz Cumont, Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism (New York: Dover, 1956).
243
Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (New York: Modern Library, n.d.), 424. 244
John C. Rolfe, trans., The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, vol. 2 (London: Heinemann, 1927), 279. 245
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, trans. J. E. King (London: Heinemann, 1927), 419, 423, 441447. 246
Cicero, De Republica, De Legibus, 211, 317, 319, 321, 323.
247
Ibid., 381.
248
Ibid., 279, 281.
249
L. P. Wilkinson, Letters of Cicero: A New Selection in Translation (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1949), 60. 250
Cicero, On the Commonwealth, trans. and ed. George Holland Sabine and Stanley Smith (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1929), 258-259. In the Keyes edition, 265, 267. 251
Cicero, De Senectute, De Amicitia, De Divinatione, trans. William Armistead Falconer (London: Heinemann, 1922), 389. 252
Ibid., 511-539.
253
Falconer, in ibid., 216.
254
Cicero, De Oratore II, III, De Facto; Paradora Stoicarum; De Partitione Oratoria, trans. H. Rackham (London: Heinemann, 1948), 279. 255
Ibid., 285-293.
256
Cicero, The Speeches: Pro Lege Manilla, Pro Caecina, Pro Cluentio, Pro Fabiro, Perduellionis, trans. H. Grose Hodge (London: Heinemann, 1927), 60, 71. 257
John Dickinson, Death of a Republic: Politics and Political Thought at Rome, 59-44 B.C., ed. and intro. George Lee Haskins (New York: Macmillan, 1963). 258
Wilkinson, Letters of Cicero, 31.
259
Cicero, Philippics, trans. Walter C. A. Ker (London: Heinemann, 1926), 299.
260
Cicero, De Natura Deorum, trans. Francis Brooks (London: Methuen, 1896), 91, 150.
261
Cicero, The Speeches: Pro Archia Poeta, Post Reditum in Senatu, Post Reditum ad Quirites, De Domo Sua, De Haruspicum, Responsis, Pro Plancio (London: Heinemann, 1923), 445, 447. 262
Ibid., 75. Cicero’s speech, on his return from exile, was probably delivered on September 5, 57 B.C. 263
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 371.
264
F. R. Cowell, Cicero and the Roman Republic (n.p.: Penguin Books, 1956), 263.
265
Wilkinson, Letters, 191.
266
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, trans. Hohn Selby Watson (London: George Bell, 1884), 184.
267
Ibid., 186.
268
Ibid., 187-189.
269
Cicero, De Officiis, 125.
270
Ibid., 205.
271
Ibid., 171. Cicero spoke of the body’s “natural functions” with distaste, and said of sex, “To beget children in wedlock is indeed morally right; to speak of it isindecent...let us follow Nature and shun everything that is offensive to our eyes or our ears,” 129, 131. 272
Cicero, De Senectute, etc., 49. A parallel to the Salome-John the Baptist incident, which New Testament scholars would do well to note, is cited by Cicero: “It was a disagreeable duty that I performed in expelling (in 184 B.C.) Lucius Flamininus from the senate, for he was a brother of that most valiant man, Titus Flamininus, and had been consul seven years before; but I thought that lust merited the brand of infamy. For when in Gaul during his consulship, at the solicitation of a courtesan at a banquet, he beheaded a prisoner then under condemnation for some capital offense”; cf. Livy XXXIX 42.7, 43.2. The reference to Sophocles is in Plato’s Republic: “I remember someone asking Sophocles, the poet, whether he was still capable of enjoying a woman. ‘Don’t talk in that way,’ he answered; ‘I am only too glad to be free of all that; it is like escaping from bondage to a raging madman’”; Francis Macdonald Cornford, trans. and ed., The Republic of Plato (New York: Oxford University Press, 1945), 329. 273
Suetonius, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars (New York: Book League of America, 1937), 31.
274
Ibid., 14.
275
Ibid., 6.
276
Plutarch, Lives, 874.
277
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, 96.
278
Grimal, Civilization of Rome, 318-319; cf. 330ff, 456.
279
Daniel P. Mannix, Those About to Die (New York: Ballantine, 1958), 35.
280
Ibid., 53ff., 117-118.
281
Grant, World of Rome, 174.
282
Sir Richard Burton, Love, War and Fancy: The Customs and Manners of the East (New York: Ballantine, 1964), 227.
283
Cicero, De Republica, De Legibus, 397.
284
Cicero, Speeches, 455.
285
H. J. Haskell, The New Deal in Old Rome (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1939), 120.
286
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 3-4.
287
Cicero, The Verrine Orations, vol. 1 (London: Heinemann, 1959), 109-110.
288
Ibid., 383, cf. vol. 2, 283.
289
Wilkinson, Letters of Cicero, 33-35.
290
Cicero, De Officiis, 81, 103.
291
Grant, World of Rome, 156.
292
Cicero, De Officiis, 105.
293
Ibid., 293.
294
Cicero, De Republica, De Legibus, 519, Fragment 1 of The Laws.
295
Charles Norris Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture: A Study of Thought and Action from Augustus to Augustine (London: Oxford, 1944), 48. 296
Cicero, De Officiis, 197.
297
Cicero, De Republica, De Legibus, 398.
298
Harold Mattingly, Roman Imperial Civilisation (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1959), 132-133. 299
Wilkinson, Letters, 185.
300
Dickinson, Death of a Republic, 236.
301
Ethelbert Stauffer, Christ and the Caesars, trans. K. and R. Gregor Smith (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955), 44. 302
Cowell, Cicero and the Roman Republic, 248-249, 256-296.
303
Bailey, Phases, 139-140.
304
Cowell, Cicero and the Roman Republic, 256ff.
305
Dickinson, Death of a Republic, 225-226; Stauffer, Christ and the Caesars, 50-51.
306
Dickinson, Death of a Republic, 364-365.
307
For an example of this, see Frank O. Copley, trans., Plautus: The Haunted House (Mostellaria) (Indianapolis, IN: Liberal Arts Press, 1955), 62-63. 308
Guglielmo Ferrero, The Greatness and Decline of Rome, vol. 2, Julius Caesar,trans. Alfred E. Zimmern (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908), 335. 309
Ibid., 339.
310
Stauffer, Christ and the Caesars, 52.
311
Ibid., 88.
312
Horace Gregory, trans. and ed., The Poems of Catullus (New York: Grove Press, 1956), no. 85, 151. 313
Ibid., no. 58, 74.
314
Ibid., no. 56, 72, etc.
315
Ibid., nos. 88-90, 152-156.
316
Ibid., no. 91, 157.
317
G. G. Ramsay, trans., Juvenal and Persius (London: Heinemann, 1930).
318
H. R. Hays, The Dangerous Sex, The Myth of Feminine Evil (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1964), 99. 319
Stauffer, Christ and the Caesars, 139.
320
Sir Roger L’Estrange, ed., Seneca’s Morals (New York: Burt, n.d.), 384.
321
Suetonius, Lives, 279.
322
Grimal, Civilization of Rome, 427, 447.
323
Alexander De Mar, Roman and Moslem Moneys (Washington, DC: Square Dollar Series, n.d.), 28. 324
97. Cato, when “asked what was the most profitable feature of an estate,... replied: ‘Raising cattle successfully.’ What next to that? ‘Raising cattle with fair success.’ And next? ‘Raising
cattle with but slight success.’ And fourth? ‘Raising crops.’ And when his questioner said, ‘How about money-lending?’ Cato replied: ‘How about murder?’” Cicero, De Officiis, 267. 325
Cumont, Oriental Religions, 107-109.
326
C. R. Haines, trans., The Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto, vol. 2 (London: Heinemann, 1920), 319. Fronto was Marcus Aurelius’ tutor, to whom Marcus Aurelius wrote, in A.D. 162, that he loved him “passionately” (33), and to whom Fronto had written, A.D. 145-147, when Marcus was Caesar, “What is sweeter to me than your kiss? That sweet fragrance, that delight dwells for me in your neck, on your lips” (vol. 1, 221). 327
C. R. Haines, trans. and ed., The Communings of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Emperor of Rome, Together with his Speeches and Sayings (London: Heinemann, 1916), 21. 328
A. S. L. Farquharson, trans. and ed., The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1944), 155. For Farquharson’s comments, see 283, 370. 329
Haines, in intro. to Communings, xxii, 153.
330
Ibid., 169, 261.
331
See Farquharson’s comments, Meditations, vol. 1, 281, 291ff., 419.
332
Ibid., 321.
333
Haines, Communings, 361.
334
Ibid., 157.
335
Ibid., 25; Haines, Correspondence, vol. 1, 253.
336
Haines, Communings, 27.
337
Ibid., 131.
338
Ibid., 129.
339
Ibid., 61.
340
Ibid., 243, cf. 93.
341
Ibid., 253; clearer in Farquharson, Meditations, vol. 1, 185, 187.
342
Haines, Communings, 155.
343
Ibid., 145-146.
344
Ibid., 69.
345
Ibid., 75-81.
346
Ibid., 133.
347
Ibid., 293.
348
Mattingly, Roman Imperial Civilization, 341.
349
Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, 386.
350
Haines, Communings, 357.
351
Pre-Nicene Fathers, The Writings of Justin Martyr and Athenagoras (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1874), 375. 352
Grant, World of Rome, 146-147, 169, 177, 180, 243-244.
353
Legge, Forerunners and Rivals, vol. 1, 54.
354
Stauffer, Christ and the Caesars, 222-223.
355
Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. I (New York: Modern Library, n.d.), 86. 356
Stauffer, Christ and the Caesars, 225.
357
Stewart Perowne, Caesars and Saints: The Evolution of the Christian State, 180-313 A.D. (New York: Norton, 1963), 52, 75. 358
Ibid., 114-155.
359
Stauffer, Christ and the Caesars, 239-240.
360
Mattingly, Roman Imperial Civilisation, 196.
361
Salvian, “The Governance of God,” in Jeremiah F. O’Sullivan, trans., The Writings of Salvian, the Presbyter (New York: Cima Publishing Co., 1947), 178; cf. 12. 362
Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics: An Introduction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1952), 100-101. 363
J. Westbury-Jones, Roman and Christian Imperialism (London: Macmillan, 1939), 50.
364
Cornelius Van Til, Christianity in Conflict: A Syllabus, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: 1962), 83.
365
Ibid., 25.
366
Stephen Mackenna, trans., Plotinus: The Ethical Treatises, vol. 1 (London: Warner, The Medici Society, 1917), 94, 97, 148. 367
Eighth Tractate, “On the Nature and Source of Evil,” in ibid., 100.
368
Van Til, Christianity in Conflict., vol. 2, 33; cf. Richard Kroner, Speculation and Revelation in the Age of Christian Philosophy (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956), 100. In Plotinus, “Man, by the sheer effort of his thinking mind, redirects the downward movement of the One and leads the cosmos back to its divine origin.... The human soul can thus redeem itself.” 369
Hans Jonas, “Epilogue: Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism,” The Gnostic Religion, 2nd ed., rev. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), 320-340. 370
Ibid., 236-237.
371
Jean Doresse, The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics: An Introduction to the Gnostic Coptic Manuscripts Discovered at Chenoboskion (New York: Viking Press, 1960), 110-115. 372
See G. R. S. Mead, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Gnostics: A Contribution to the Study of the Origins of Christianity (New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, n.d.), 223, 303, 329, 381, 487-488; cf. 470; originally published 1906. 373
Jonas, Gnostic Religion, 153.
374
See Thomas J. J. Altizer, Miraca Eliade and the Dialectic of the Sacred (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963); Gabriel Vahanian, The Death of God: The Culture of Our PostChristian Era (New York: George Braziller, 1961); “Christianity,” Time, 25 December 1964, 4549. 375
Mead, Fragments, 256ff., 547ff.
376
H. Macmahon, trans., Ante-Nicene Christian Library: The Refutation of All Heresies by Hippolytus, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1870), 274-275. 377
Mead, Fragments, 205-206.
378
Ibid., xv, 361ff.; Doresse, Secret Books, 285ff.
379
See Wayland Young, Eros Denied: Sex in Western Society (New York: Grove Press, 1964), 252-279, for a brief survey of such cults in Western history; Mead, Fragments, 229ff. 235-236,; Jonas, Gnostic Religion, 270ff., 274, for what Jonas called “sin as the way to salvation,” “the
idea that in sinning something like a program has to be completed, a due rendered as the price of ultimate freedom...a positive prescription of immoralism”; Doresse, Secret Books, 16. 380
Peter Holmes, trans., The Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. unknown, The Five Books of Quintus Sept. Flor. Tertullianus against Marcion (Edinburgh: T. & T Clark, 1868), 53. 381
Carle C. Zimmerman, Family and Civilization (New York: Harper, 1947), 421-422.
382
John C. Rolfe, trans., The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, 3 vols. (London: William Heinemann, 1927-1928); see vol. 2., 95-101. 383
Ibid., vol. 2, 91.
384
Ibid., 277-279.
385
Ibid., vol. 3, 85-87.
386
See ibid., vol. 1, 151ff., 163, etc.
387
For the five main steps, see Carle C. Zimmerman, in Carle C. Zimmerman and Lucius F. Cervantes, S.J., Marriage and the Family (Chicago: Regnery, 1956), 59. 388
Richard Lewinson, M.D., A History of Sexual Customs (New York: Harper, 1958), 83.
389
Tacitus, Annals in A. J. Church and W. J. Brodribb, trans., Complete Works of Tacitus (New York: Modern Library, 1942), 380-381. 390
Plato, The Republic, 461-462.
391
Benjamin Jowett, trans., and Max Lerner, intro, Aristotle’s Politics (New York: Modern Library, 1943), 16. 392
See R. J. Rushdoony, “Abortion,” in The Encyclopedia of Christianity, vol. 1 (Wilmington, DE: National Foundation for Christian Education, 1964), 20-23. 393
James Donaldson, ed., “The Apostolical Constitutions,” in Anti-Nicene Christian Library, vol. 17, The Clementine Homilies: The Apostolical Constitutions (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1870), 179. On the “Apostolic Constitutions,” see Edward F. Hills, in Edwin H. Palmer, ed., Encyclopedia of Christianity, vol. 1, 373-374. 394
“Apologeticus,” in A. Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. 11, The Writings of Tertullian (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1872), 71-72. 395
Henry R. Percival, The Seven Ecumenical Councils, vol. 14 of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1956), 73.
396
Ibid., Canons II, VIII, XXXIII, 604-606.
397
Ibid., 404.
398
Ibid., “Apostolical Canons” XXII-XXIV, 595.
399
Edwin M. Schur, “Abortion and the Social System,” in E. M. Schur, ed., The Family and the Sexual Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964), 379. Reprinted from Social Problems 3 (1955), 94-99. 400
R. Wateverille Muncey, trans., with intro. and notes, The Passion of S. Perpetua (London: Dent, 1927), 34-35. 401
Stewart Perowne, Caesars and Saints: The Evolution of the Christian State, 180-313 A.D. (New York: Norton, 1963), 139. 402
Ibid., 85.
403
“On Prescription Against Heretics,” in Peter Holmes, trans., The Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. 15, The Writings of Tertullian, vol. 2, (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1874), 9-10. 404
Robert South, Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Sorin and Ball, 1845), 25. 405
C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Pentateuch, vol. I (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1949), 39. 406
“Address of Tatian to the Greeks,” in B. P. Protten, Marcus Dods, Thomas Smith, trans., Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. 3, The Writings of Tatian and Theophilus; and the Clementine Recognitions (n.p.: Clark, 1875), 14. 407
Charles Norris Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Cultures: A Study of Thought and Action from Augustus to Augustine (London: Oxford, 1944), 368. 408
Marcus Dods, trans., The City of God, by Saint Augustine (New York: Modern Library, 1950), 393-397. 409
Nathan R. Wood “God, Man and Matter,” The Secret of the Universe (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1955), 43-45. 410
Salvian, “The Governance of God,” in Jeremiah F. O’Sullivan, trans., The Writings of Salvian, the Presbyter (New York: Cima Publishing Co., 1947), 68-69. 411
Eusebius, “Church History,” in A. C. McGiffert, trans., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1952), 190.
412
Irving Woodworth Raymond, trans. and ed., Seven Books of History Against the Pagans: The Apology of Orosius (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), 397; see also 31, Dedication. 413
Ibid., 72.
414
Ibid., 120.
415
Ibid., 51.
416
Ibid., 152.
417
Holmes, “Adversus Praxean,” Writings of Tertullian, 397.
418
Robert R. Williams, A Guide to the Teachings of the Early Church Fathers(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1960), 115. 419
Sister Mary Patricia Garvey, trans., in intro. to Saint Augustine: Against the Academicians (Contra Academicos) (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1957), 1. 420
H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. George Lamb (New York: New American Library, 1964), 421. 421
On the creeds, see Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, 2 vols. (New York: Harper, 1919); Percival, The Seven Ecumenical Councils; John H. Leith, ed., Creeds of the Churches (Chicago: Aldine, 1963); F. J. Badcock, The History of the Creeds, 2nd ed. (London: SPCK, 1938); J. Armitage Robinson, ed., Texts and Studies, vol. 7, no. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909); J. F. Bethune-Baker, The Meaning of Homoousios in the ‘Constantinopolitan’ Creed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1901); etc. 422
Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, 423-435.
423
Eusebius, The Life of Constantine, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, 505.
424
Ibid., 516-517.
425
Ibid., 545.
426
Ibid., 546.
427
Ibid., 555.
428
Ethelbert Stauffer, Christ and the Caesars, trans. K. and R. Gregor Smith (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955), 275. 429
“The Oration of Eusebius,” in ibid., 583.
430
Athanasius, “De Decretis, or Defense of the Nicene Definition,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4, 160. 431
Athanasius, “De Synodis, Councils of Arminum and Selencia,” pt. 2, in ibid., 458.
432
Alexander’s “Deposition of Arius,” in ibid., 70.
433
Athanasius, “Four Discourses Against the Arians,” in ibid., 429.
434
Archibald Robinson, “Prolegomena,” in ibid, xxv; H. M. Gwatkin, The Arian Controversy (London: Longmans, Green, 1891), 1-15. 435
Athanasius, “Four Discourses Against the Arians,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4, 402. 436
Athanasius “Four Discourses,” in ibid, 371.
437
Leith, Creeds of the Churches, 29-31.
438
Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1 (New York: Modern Library, n.d.), 719. 439
Athanasius, “De lncarnatione Verbi Dei,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4, 65.
440
Athanasius, “Four Discourses Against the Arians,” in ibid., 403.
441
Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, 189. For a clarification of erroneous opinions regarding the Constantinopolitan Creed, see Bethune-Baker, the Meaning of Homoousios. 442
See R. J. Rushdoony, The Foundations of Social Order: Studies in the Creeds and Councils of the Early Church (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1968). 443
Athanasius, “Four Discourses,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4, 434.
444
Ibid., 437.
445
Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, 211-212.
446
Ibid., 216.
447
Ibid., 255-256.
448
Trevor Jalland, The Life and Times of St. Leo the Great (London: SPCK, 1941), 420.
449
Ibid., 423.
450
Charles Lett Feltoe, trans., Leo the Great, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 12 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1956), 44ff., 69-70, 91ff., 130, 135, 139ff., 142ff., 165ff., 180ff., 190ff., 201-202. 451
Ibid., Letter LXXXVIII, 69.
452
Ibid., Letter CXXIV, 93.
453
Ibid., Sermon XXVII, 140; cf. Sermon LXXII, 184.
454
Ibid., Sermon XXVIII, 142.
455
Ibid., Sermon LXXV, 190.
456
Ibid., Sermon XCI, 202.
457
Leith, Creeds of the Church, 35-36.
458
Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, 225ff., 229, 230; B. B. Warfield, “Introductory Essay on Augustin and the Pelagian Controversy,” in Saint Augustin, Anti-Pelagian Writings, vol. 5 of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1956), xiv, xxi. 459
Ernest Cushing Richardson in Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1952), 546n. 460
G. L. Prestige, Fathers and Heretics (London: SPCK, 1940), 76.
461
Jacob Burckhardt, The Age of Constantine the Great, trans. Moses Hadas (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956), 100, 139, 318. 462
See R. J. Rushdoony, “Asceticism,” in Encyclopedia of Christianity, 432-436.
463
“The Apostolical Constitutions,” in Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. 17, 264.
464
Hugh M. Scott, Origin and Development of the Nicene Theology (Chicago: Chicago Theological Seminary Press, 1896), 250. 465
Edward Motley Pickman, The Mind of Latin Christendom (London: Oxford, 1937), 457.
466
Polycarp Sherwood, trans. and ed., St. Maximus the Confessor: The Ascetic Life; The Four Centuries on Charity (Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1955), 71. 467
William Fletcher, trans., “The Divine Institutes,” The Works of Lactantius, vol. 1, in AnteNicene Christianity Library, vol. 21 (Edinburgh: Clark, 1871), 122. 468
Ibid., “Institutes,” in ibid., 147.
469
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 12, 22.
470
Ibid., Sermon XIX, 127-128.
471
Ibid., Sermon XXXIX, 152ff.
472
Ibid., Sermon XLII, 156ff.
473
O’Sullivan, Writings of Salvian, Letter VI, 251-252.
474
James Barmby, trans., St. Gregory’s “Pastoral Rule,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 12, 7. 475
Ibid., 56ff., 91, 152, 158-159. It should be noted here that very serious misrepresentations of the patristic views of sex, women, and marriage abound. Cervantes has cited examples of this. Thus, in Stromata, Bk. 2, chap. 2, Clement, in speaking of drunkenness among men and women, wrote, “For nothing disgraceful is proper for the logical male; much less is it for the women to whom the very consideration of what she is (i.e., drunken) brings shame.” A prominent writer, widely quoted, has rendered this sentence: “Every woman ought to be filled with shame at the thought that she is a woman.” See Zimmerman and Cervantes, Marriage and the Family, 657658; cf. 504, 754. 476
Marcus Dods, trans., The City of God, by Saint Augustine (New York: Modern Library, 1950), 328. 477
Ibid., 446.
478
Ibid., 361, 382.
479
Ibid., 461.
480
Dom R. H. Connolly, trans., Homily XVII (A) in Texts and Studies, vol.8, no. 1, The Liturgical Homilies of Narsai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909), 16. 481
Ibid., 20-21.
482
Ibid., 29.
483
Ibid., 4; cf. 21-22.
484
Ibid., 27.
485
Ibid., Homily XXXII (D), 65.
486
Ibid., 66; cf. 32ff.
487
Ibid., 68.
488
Ibid., Homily XXI (C), 48.
489
Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield, Studies in Tertullian and Augustine (New York: Oxford, 1930), 291. 490
Augustine, “A Treatise on the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants,” in Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, vol. 5, 68. 491
Ibid., 26.
492
Augustine, “On the Predestination of the Saints,” in ibid., 507.
493
Augustine, “On the Spirit and the Letter,” in ibid., 106.
494
Augustine, “On the Good of Widowhood,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1956), 449-450. 495
See Leith, Creeds of the Church, 37-45.
496
Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, 287; see also 14, 178-179, 288ff., 302ff., 321ff., 326, 382-383, 537-538, 580. See also Jalland, Life and Times of St. Leo the Great, 18, 320, 328, 411, 424. See Henry Edward Symonds, The Church Universal and the See of Rome (London: SPCK, 1939); B. J. Kidd, The Roman Primacy to A.D. 461 (London: SPCK, 1936), etc., for various accounts of the development of Roman authority. 497
James D. Breckenridge, The Numismatic Iconography of Justinian II (685-695, 705-711 A.D.), Numismatic Notes and Monographs no. 144 (New York: The American Numismatic Society, 1959), 51, 56-57, 92. 498
F. W. Buckler, The Epiphany of the Cross (Cambridge: Heffer, 1938), 53.
499
Thomas Collett Sanders, trans. and ed., The Institutes of Justinian, (London: Longmans, Green, 1905), 7-8. 500
Raymond, Seven Books, 209.
501
Marcus Dods, trans., The City of God, by Saint Augustine (New York: Modern Library, 1950), 696. 502
Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, 312-314.
503
Ibid., 330.
504
Ibid., 340-341.
505
Ibid., 345-346.
506
Gerhart B. Ladner, “Origin and Significance of the Byzantine Iconoclastic Controversy,” in Mediaeval Studies, vol. 2 (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1940), 134-135. 507
Ibid., 135.
508
Fletcher, Works of Lactantius, 74.
509
Augustine, “On the Morals of the Catholic Church,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4, 62. 510
Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, 315.
511
Augustus Neander, General History of the Christian Religion and Church, vol. 3 (Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1855), 214-221. 512
Percival, Seven Ecumenical Councils, 543-546.
513
Ibid., 526.
514
Ibid., 535.
515
Ibid., 539.
516
Ibid., 540-542.
517
Ibid., 549. For a critique of the Iconoclastic Conciliabulum, see Rushdoony, Foundations of Social Order, 148-160. 518
Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1947), 64. 519
H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand, trans., “De Trinitate,” Boethius: The Theological Tractates (London: William Heinemann, 1918), 11. 520
Ibid., 15.
521
Ibid., 19.
522
Ibid., 7.
523
Ibid., 53-71.
524
“Quomodo Substantiae,” in ibid., 43.
525
Josef Pieper, Scholasticism: Personalities and Problems of Medieval Philosophy (New York: Pantheon Books, 1960), 36-38. 526
Ibid., 125.
527
Ibid., 78-79.
528
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, Q 69, A 1; Q 70, A 1, A 2; Q 71, A 1; etc.
529
Summa Theologica, I, Q 1, A 8.
530
Anne Freemantle, The Age of Belief: The Medieval Philosophers, 149.
531
Summa Theologica, 1, Q 58, A 5.
532
Cornelius Van Til, “Analogia Entis,” in The Encyclopedia of Christianity, vol. 1 (Wilmington, DE: National Foundation for Christian Education, 1964), 201. 533
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, Q 75, A 2, A 5, A 6.
534
Ibid., Q 5, A 2, A 3.
535
A. G. Hebert, Studies in St. Thomas (London: SPCK; Macmillan, 1936), 37, 83.
536
Summa Theologica, I, Q 5, A 3.
537
Ibid., Q 14m, A 10.
538
Ibid., Q 15, A 3.
539
Ibid., Q 19, A 15.
540
Ibid., Q 25, A 3.
541
Ibid., Q 48, A 1, A 2.
542
Ibid., Q 49, A 1.
543
Ibid., Q 6, A 3, A 4.
544
Ibid., Q 44, A 1.
545
Ibid., Q 61, A 2.
546
Cornelius Van Til, Metaphysics of Apologetics (Philadelphia: Westminster Theological Seminary, 1931), 59. 547
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, Q 79, A 2.
548
Ibid., Q 84, A 3, A 6.
549
Ibid., Q 84, A 7, Q 85, A 1.
550
Ibid., Q 85, A 6.
551
Erich Fromm, “Explorations into the Unilateral Disarmament Position,” in John C. Bennett, ed., Nuclear Weapons and the Conflict of Conscience (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962), 135. 552
Ibid., 126.
553
Cornelius Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge (Philadelphia: Westminster Theological Seminary, 1954), 137. 554
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, Q 84, A 3.
555
Ibid., Q 2, A 3.
556
E. Crewdson Thomas, History of the Schoolmen (London: Williams and Northgate, 1941), 276-277. 557
Armand Maurer, “Revived Aristotelianism and Thomistic Philosophy,” in Vergilius Ferm, ed., A History of Philosophical Systems (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950), 207-209. 558
Freemantle, Age of Belief, 149-150.
559
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, Q 65, A 1.
560
Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, pt. 2, vol. 2 (London: SPCK, Macmillan, 1939), 432.
561
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, Q 1, A 8.
562
Cornelius Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge, 157.
563
Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, vol. 1, The Necessary Presuppositions of Philosophy, trans., David H. Freeman and William S. Young (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1953), 179. 564
Ibid., 180-181.
565
Ibid., vol. 3, The Structure of Individuality of Temporal Reality (1957), 17.
566
Ibid., vol. 2, The General Theory of Modal Spheres (1955), 419.
567
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, Q 30, A 4.
568
Ibid., Q 44, A 1.
569
See Sister Mary Fredericus Niemeyer, The One and the Many in the Social Order According to Saint Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1951), 26-27, 73ff. 570
Norman F. Cantor, Medieval History: The Life and Death of a Civilization (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 514. 571
Joseph Lecler, S.J., The Two Sovereignties: A Study of the Relationship Between Church and State (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1952), 9. 572
Dooyeweerd, New Critique, vol. 3, 215.
573
Roger Lloyd, The Golden Middle Ages (London: Longmans, Green, 1939), 237.
574
E. Thomson, ed., Select Monuments of the Doctrine and Worship of the Catholic Church in England before the Norman Conquest (London: John Russell Smith, 1875), 95-96. It is interesting to note that the old English version of the creed, in affirming belief in the Catholic Church and the communion of saints, literally declared, “And I beleue on the Holy Ghost. And the holy Congregation. And of the saintes the societie,” 86. 575
Joseph Clayton, Pope Innocent III and His Times (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce, 1941), 43.
576
Geoffrey Barraclough, Mediaeval Germany, 911-1250, vol. 1 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1938), 64. 577
G. Tellenbach, Church, State and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest, trans. R. F. Bennett (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1940), 149. 578
George Huntston Williams, The Anonymous of York (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1940), 149. 579
See R. J. Rushdoony, This Independent Republic and The Nature of the American System (both Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1964 and 1965 respectively). 580
Fritz Kern, Kingship and Law in the Middle Ages, trans. S. B. Chrimes (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1939), 10. 581
Ibid., 194.
582
Friedrich Heer, The Medieval World: Europe, 1100-1350, trans. Janet Sondheimer (Cleveland, OH: World Publishing Co., 1962), 284. 583
Ibid., 288.
584
W. R. Valentiner, The Bamberg Rider: Studies of Mediaeval-German Sculpture (Los Angeles: Zeitlin & Ver Brugge, 1956), 139. 585
See Lionel Allshorn, Stupor Mundi: The Life and Times of Frederick II, Emperor of Sicily and Jerusalem 1194-1250 (London: Martin Secker, 1912); Gertrude Slaughter, The Amazing Frederic (New York: Macmillan, 1937). 586
Ernst Kantorowicz, Frederick the Second, 1194-1250 (New York: Unger, 1957), 5.
587
Ibid., 425; see also 395ff.
588
Ibid., 226.
589
Ibid., 231-232.
590
Ibid., 521ff; see also 534. For Frederick as the source of Justice and Law, see 231, 256ff. For Frederick’s self-deification and his “unquestionable” belief in it, see 250ff.; for the fact that “Frederick had allowed his followers to worship him as the Son of God,” see 663-664; for Frederick as the Messiah of the Third Age, see 259-260, 505, 513, 520-521; as Defender of the Faith, 263-264, 607ff; for Frederick, heresy was treason, 264-265; as “Son of God” and “Son of Earth” see 443. 591
Ibid., 233.
592
Ibid., 244.
593
Ibid., 225.
594
Ibid., 441.
595
“Vehement Soul,” Newsweek, 10 May 1965, 121.
596
Norman F. Cantor, Medieval History: The Life and Death of a Civilization(New York: Macmillan, 1963), 552. 597
598
Heer, Medieval World, 303-304.
Etienne Gilson, Dante and Philosophy, trans. David Moore (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1963), 303.
599
Ibid., 119-120.
600
Giovanni Papini, Dante Vivo, trans. E. H. Broadus and A. Benedetti (New York: Macmillan, 1935), 273. Papini’s reference is to “Convivo,” canto 4, st. 20, lines 3-4. 601
Miguel Asin, Islam and the Divine Comedy (London: John Murray, 1926).
602
A. G. Ferrers Howell and Philip Wicksteed, trans., De Monarchia: Translation of the Latin Works of Dante Alighieri (London: Dent, 1940), 131, 135. 603
Ibid., 138.
604
Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, 474; cf. 458-473. The De Monarchia reference to the two paradises is canto 3, st. 16. 605
Ibid., 485.
606
Howell and Wicksteed, 142.
607
Ibid., 146.
608
Ibid., 154.
609
Elizabeth Price Sayes, trans., The Banquet of Dante Alighieri (London: Routledge, 1887), 195. 610
Ibid., 174.
611
Howell and Wicksteed, 168-170.
612
Sayes, The Banquet, 176-180.
613
Ibid., IV, vi., 182-183.
614
Howell and Wicksteed, 198.
615
Ibid., 173-176.
616
Ibid., 222.
617
Carlyle and Wicksteed, trans., “Paradiso,” in The Divine Comedy (New York: Modern Library, 1932), 444. 618
Howell and Wicksteed, De Monarchia, 238; see Wicksteed’s note, 240.
619
Carlyle and Wicksteed, trans., “Purgatorio,” in The Divine Comedy, 358.
620
Ibid., 360.
621
Ibid., 284-285.
622
“Inferno,” in ibid., 153.
623
Jack Lindsay, A Short History of Culture (London: Victor Gollancz, 1939), 293.
624
Howell and Wicksteed, De Monarchia, 324-325.
625
Allan H. Gilbert, Dante’s Conception of Justice (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1925), 180; cf. 21, 34, 43, 165, 181. 626
Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, pt. 2, vol. 2 (London: SPCK, 1939), 399.
627
T. K. Swing, The Fragile Leaves of the Sibyl: Dante’s Master Plan (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1962), 107, 384, 401-402, 407. 628
John D. Sinclair, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, with translation and comment (London: John Lane, 1939), 31-32. 629
Gilbert, Dante’s Conception of Justice, 69.
630
Charles Williams, The Figure of Beatrice: A Study in Dante (London: Faber and Faber, 1943), 21-22, 26-27; cf. 218, 184ff. 631
Charles Williams, Religion and Love in Dante: The Theology of Romantic Love(Glasgow: Dacre Press, Westminster, n. d., c. 1940s), 32. 632
John Chydenius, The Typological Problem in Dante: A Study in the History of Medieval Ideas; Commentationes Humanarum Litterarun, vol. 25, (Helsingfore, Denmark: Societus Scientiarum Fennica, 1960), 143. 145. 633
Sinclair, The Divine Comedy, 45.
634
Swing, Fragile Leaves, 82.
635
Ibid., 90, 111-114, 116ff.
636
Sinclair, The Divine Comedy, 245-246.
637
Ibid., 356.
638
Ibid., 432.
639
Carlyle and Wicksteed, The Divine Comedy, 189-190.
640
“Convivo,” canto 3, line 5; Howell and Wicksteed, De Monarchia, canto 2, line 5.
641
Carlyle and Wicksteed, The Divine Comedy, 392-397.
642
Rachel Blanche Harrower, A New Theory of Dante’s Matelda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926), 25. 643
Carlyle and Wicksteed, “Purgatorio,” 358.
644
Williams, Figure of Beatrice, 217.
645
Swing, Fragile Leaves, 271.
646
Ibid., 391. The perspective of Swing’s excellent study is not that of this writer.
647
Howell and Wicksteed, De Monarchia, 158.
648
Pappini, Dante Vivo, 154.
649
Heer, Medieval World, 304.
650
New York Times, Western edition, 11 April 1963, 7.
651
Fr. J. F. Cronin, S.S., “New Encyclical and Marxism,” Monitor (San Francisco), 26 April 1963, 3. 652
New York Times, ibid.
653
Gerald Miller, in an Associated Press dispatch from Vatican City, “Reds Give Praise to New Encyclical,” Oakland (CA) Tribune, 12 April 1963, 5. 654
National Observer, 10 June 1963.
655
Pope Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam, with commentary by Gregory Baum, O.S.A. (Glen Rock, NJ: Paulist Press, 1964), 57-58. 656
Ibid., 59.
657
Ibid., 60.
658
Ibid., 62-63.
659
Ibid., 63-64.
660
George W. Cornell, “All One: Pope, Asian Leaders Talk,” Palo Alto (CA) Times, 3 December 1964, 21. 661
“Pope Paul Gets Biggest India Welcome Ever,” Palo Alto (CA) Times, 2 December 1964, 1.
662
“The Pope’s Message,” San Francisco (CA) Chronicle, 28 June 1965, 14; cf. Christian Beacon, Thursday, 8 July 1965, 4-5. 663
Kantorowicz, Frederick the Second, 580.
664
Luigi Barzini, The Italians (New York: Bantam Books, 1965), 86.
665
Baldassare Castiglione, The Courtier (II Cortegiano), trans. Thomas Hoby (n.p.: National Alumni, 1907), 359. 666
Ibid., 320-321.
667
Ibid., 321.
668
Ibid., 328-329.
669
Ibid., 305, 310, 319.
670
Ibid., 209, 290.
671
Ibid., 43, 48.
672
Ibid., 92-93.
673
Ibid., 95.
674
Ibid., 97.
675
Ibid., 98.
676
Ibid., 141.
677
Ibid., 348.
678
Ibid., 199-200.
679
John S. White, Renaissance Cavalier (New York: Philosophical Library, 1959), 7-9.
680
Max Lerner, in intro. to Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince and the Discourses (New York: Modern Library, 1940), xlvi.
681
Machiavelli, ibid., 243.
682
Ibid., 138.
683
Valeriu Marcu, Accent on Power: The Life and Times of Machiavelli, trans. Richard Winston (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1939), 254. 684
Machiavelli, ibid., 29.
685
Ibid., 60.
686
Marcu, Accent on Power, 119.
687
Ibid., 91-92.
688
Ibid., 46.
689
Ibid., 281-282.
690
Machiavelli, The Prince and the Discourses, 64-66.
691
Ibid., 56.
692
Ibid., 263.
693
Ibid., 138-140.
694
Ibid., 41.
695
Ibid., 91-94, 112, 129, 145-149, 277-281, 380-383.
696
Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1950), 78. 697
Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, “The Ninety-Five Theses in their Theological Significance,” Studies in Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1932), 497-498. 698
Karl Holl, The Cultural Significance of the Reformation (New York: Meridian Books, 1959),
51. 699
Dr. Martin Luther’s Small Catechism (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1943),
85. 700
Martin Luther, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, trans. J. Theodore Mueller (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1954), 64.
701
See, for an example, Jaroslav Pelikan, Daniel Poellot, eds., Luther's Works, vol. 9, Lectures on Deuteronomy (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1960), 70. 702
John Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses in the Form of a Harmony, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1950), 265. 703
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 2, trans. John Allen (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, 1963), 787-788. 704
Luther’s Works, vol. 1, Lectures on Genesis 1-5 (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1958), 1-6.
705
Martin Luther, “A Treatise on Christian Liberty,” in Vergilius Ferm, ed., Classics of Protestantism (New York: Philosophical Library, 1959), 41. 706
Thomas S. Kepler, ed., The Table Talk of Martin Luther, no. 69 (New York: The World Publishing Co., 1952), 49. 707
Cited in John M. Headley, Luther's View of Church History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963), 1-2. 708
See the comments of Ernst F. Winter, ed., Erasmus-Luther: Discourse on Free Will (New York: Ungar, 1961), x. 709
Ibid., 45.
710
Ibid., 36.
711
Ibid., 6, 8.
712
J.I. Packer and O.R. Johnston, trans., “Historical and Theological Introduction” to Martin Luther on the Bondage of the Will (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1957), 52. 713
Ibid., 66-68.
714
Ibid., 137.
715
Ibid., 140-141.
716
Ibid., 199, 216-218, 268.
717
Luther’s Works, vol. 24, Sermons on the Gospel of St. John, Chapters 14-16 (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1961), 109. 718
Ingve Brilioth, Eucharistic Faith and Practice, Evangelical and Catholic (London: SPCK, 1939), 101.
719
Jean Cadier, The Man God Mastered (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1960), 181.
720
William Childs Robinson, “The Tolerance of Our Prophet,” in Jacob T.Hoogstra, ed., John Calvin: Contemporary Prophet (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1959), 45. 721
Albert-Marie Schmidt, Calvin and the Calvinistic Tradition (New York: Harper, 1960), 58.
722
Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, Calvin and Calvinism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1931), 284. 723
John Murray, Calvin on Scripture and Divine Sovereignty (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1960). 724
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 1, trans. John Allen (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, 1936), 138. 725
See R. J. Rushdoony, Foundations of Social Order (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1968).
726
Calvin, Institutes, vol. 1, 146.
727
Ibid., 163.
728
Ibid., 165.
729
Ibid., 177-201.
730
See Rushdoony, Foundations of Social Order, 50-51, 54, 57-59, 61-62, 144-145.
731
“Dedication to Prince Frederick,” in John Calvin, Commentaries on the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, vol. 1, trans. John Owen (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1950), xx. 732
Calvin, Institutes, vol. 2, 683-684.
733
Calvin, “Remarks on the Letter of Pope Paul III,” in Tracts Relating to the Reformation, vol. 1, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1844), 281. 734
See Ronald S. Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Word and Sacrament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1957), for an excellent analysis of Calvin’s position here. 735
736
Calvin, Institutes, vol. 1, 525-526.
Calvin, “The Mystery of Godliness,” Sermon on 1 Timothy 3:16, in The Mystery of Godliness and Other Selected Sermons (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1950), 19.
737
John Calvin, Commentary on the Gospel According to John, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1949), 262-263. 738
Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine, 201.
739
Calvin, “Dedication to Prince Frederick,” xvii-xviii.
740
John Calvin, “Short Treatise on the Lord’s Supper,” in Calvin’s Tracts and Treatises, vol. 2, trans. T. F. Torrance (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1958), 170. 741
Calvin, “Last Admonition to Joachim Westphal,” in ibid., 381.
742
John Calvin, Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1959), 371. 743
Calvin, “The Secret Providence of God,” in Calvin's Calvinism, trans. Henry Cole (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1950), 282. 744
Calvin, “The Eternal Predestination of God,” in ibid., 32-33. Before Calvin’s work on free will appeared, Pighius died. Calvin expressed his annoyance at being unable to speak plainly and bluntly about Pighius’ foolishness with one of the deftest insults in controversial literature: “Shortly after my book on free-will appeared, Pighius died. And that I might not insult a dead dog, I turned my attention to other serious matters” (ibid., 25). But the cream of responses in the controversies came two centuries later, in Toplady’s controversy with the Arminians with respect to personal election: “One day an Opponent of the doctrine said to him, ‘Would you, if you were God, create any being to misery,’ ‘When I am God,’ Toplady said, ‘I will tell you’”; see Thomas Wright, Augustus Toplady and Contemporary Hymn Writers (London: Forncombe and Sons, 1911), 21. 745
Calvin, Institutes, vol. 2, 787-788.
746
H. Henry Meeter, Calvinism, 2nd ed., rev. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, n.d., c. 1948), 168.
747
Institutes, vol. 2, 770.
748
John T. McNeill, “John Calvin on Civil Government,” in George Hunt, John T. McNeill, eds., Calvinism and the Political Order (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1965), 35. 749
William A. Mueller, Church and State in Luther and Calvin (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1965), 128. 750
Calvin, “Catechism of the Church of Geneva,” in Tracts and Treatises, 56.
751
Institutes, vol. 1, 758-759.
752
Hoxie Wale Fairchild, Religious Trends in English Poetry, vols. 1-4 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939-1962). 753
The Works of Richard Hooker, vol. 2, Keble ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 232-233.
754
Ibid., vol. 2, 233.
755
Ibid., 1, lxxxii; cited in Keble’s preface.
756
Ibid., 2, 235.
757
Giorgio de Santillana, ed., in into. to The Age of Adventure (New York: Mentor Books, 1956), 29. 758
Ibid., 193-194.
759
Ibid., 249.
760
George Chapman, “Bussy D’Ambois,” act 5, scene 4, in Hazelton Spencer, Elizabethan Plays (Boston: Little, Brown, 1940), 555. 761
See Morris Philipson, ed., Leonardo da Vinci: Aspects of the Renaissance Genius(New York: George Braziller, 1966). 762
Santillana, Age of Adventure, 155.
763
Edward Hubler, “Shakespeare’s Sonnets and the Commentators,” in E. Hubler, etc., The Riddle of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (New York: Basic Books, 1962), 13-16; Northrop Frye, “How True a Twain,” in ibid., 28-29, 37, denies the homosexual element; Leslie A. Fiedler, “Some Contexts of Shakespeare’s Sonnets,” in ibid., 59, 62, 65, 71-72, 77, 82-84, 87-88. 764
Santillana, Age of Adventure, 90.
765
James J. Greene, in intro. to James J. Greene, John P. Dolan, eds., The Essential Thomas More (New York: New American Library, Mentor-Omega, 1967), 11, 13, 16. 766
H. van Riessen, The Society of the Future (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1957), 42. 767
Greene, The Essential Thomas More, 1, 17.
768
William Dallam Armes, ed., The Utopia of Sir Thomas More (New York: Macmillan, 1912), 134, 286. 769
Frank E. Manuel, ed., Utopias and Utopian Thought (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), 75.
770
Greene and Dolan, The Essential Thomas More, 66.
771
Ibid., 208ff.
772
Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, in Saxe Commins, Robert N. Linscott, eds., Man and the Universe: The Philosophers of Science (New York: Random House, 1947), 148. 773
See Margery Purver, The Royal Society: Concept and Creation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1967). 774
Charles M. Andrews, ed., Famous Utopias (New York: Tudor Publishing Co., n.d.), 260.
775
Ibid., 263.
776
Lewis Mumford, “Utopia, The City, and The Machine,” in Manuel, Utopias and Utopian Thought, 21. 777
Northrop Frye, “Varieties of Literary Utopias,” in ibid., 26.
778
Frederick L. Polak, “Utopia and Cultural Renewal,” in ibid., 289-290.
779
Paul B. Sears, “Utopia and the Living Landscape,” in ibid., 147.
780
Charles M. Andrews, Famous Utopias, viii.
781
Ibid., 282, 291-292.
782
Ibid., 316.
783
Henry Morley, Ideal Commonwealths (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1885), 8.
784
A. D. Lindsay, in intro. to Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London: J. M. Dent, 1937), ix.
785
Ibid., 189.
786
Ibid., 252.
787
Ibid., 316.
788
James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1887), 18. 789
H. F. Russell Smith, Harrington and His Oceana: A Study of a 17th Century Utopia and Its Influence in America (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1914), 75-76. 790
Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana, 42.
791
Smith, Harrington and His Oceana, 108.
792
Herbert Ernest Cushman, A Beginner's History of Philosophy, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), 70. 793
Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method, pt. 1, in Saxe Commins and Robert N. Linscott, Man and the Universe: The Philosophers of Science (New York: Random House, 1947), 164. 794
Ibid., pt. 2, 169.
795
Ibid., 171-172.
796
Ibid., 172.
797
Ibid., pt. 3, 175-177.
798
Ibid., 177.
799
Descartes, Spinoza’s Works (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952), 71.
800
Ibid., 99, 120, 154.
801
Ibid., 248, annotation 4.
802
“Meditations,” in ibid., 87-88.
803
Descartes, Discourse on Method, pt. 4, 184-185.
804
Cushman, History of Philosophy, vol. 2, 72, 75.
805
Ibid., 80.
806
Ibid., 154.
807
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, bk. 1, chap. 2, sec. 8.
808
Ibid., bk. 1, chap. 3, secs. 8-18.
809
Ibid., bk. 2, chap. 1, sec. 2.
810
Ibid., bk. 2, chap. 1, secs. 22-23.
811
Ibid., bk. 2, chap. 21, sec. 42.
812
According to Locke, “No one chooses misery willingly, but only by wrong judgment,” ibid., bk. 2, chap. 21, sec. 64. 813
Ibid., bk. 2, chap. 21, 52.
814
G. W. Leibniz, Theodicy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952); Ruth Lydia Saw, Leibniz (Hammondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1954). 815
Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, bk. 2, chap. 11, sec. 17.
816
George Berkeley, “An Essay Toward a New Theory of Vision,” in The Works of George Berkeley, vol. 1 (London: Richard Priestly, 1820), 292. 817
George Berkeley, “A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge,” in ibid., 4.
818
Ibid.
819
Ibid., 38-39.
820
Ibid., 40.
821
Ibid., 648.
822
Ibid., 71.
823
Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Man,” in The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope (New York: Crowell), 146. 824
Ibid., ep. 1, st. 8-9.
825
Ibid.,ep.1, st. 9.
826
Ibid., ep. 1, st. 10.
827
Ibid., ep. 2, sts. 1 & 4.
828
Ibid., ep. 3, sts. 1 & 6.
829
Ibid., ep. 4, st. 7.
830
Julien Offray de la Mettrie, Man a Machine (La Salle, IL: Open Court Publishing Co., 1943), 103. 831
David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, sec. 2, para. 17.
832
Ibid., sec. 5, pt. 2, para. 41.
833
Ibid., sec. 6, para. 46.
834
David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature, bk. 1, pt. 2, sec. 6.
835
We are so assured of the sterling character of Hume that it is worth noting that, in 1734, Agnes Galbraith was subjected to church discipline by the Rev. George Home (David Hume’s uncle) for being with child out of wedlock: she named David Hume as the father, and despite attempts to shake her story, maintained it. The obese bachelor, Hume, did little in his life to give any substance to the sterling character attributed to him by his proponents. 836
David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, bk. 9, pt. 1, sec. 226.
837
Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 130-131.
838
Ibid., sec. 12, pt. 3, para. 132.
839
David Hume, “Of the Social Contract,” in Sir Ernest Barker, ed., Social Contract: Essays by Locke, Hume and Rousseau (London: Oxford, 1 1958), 215-216. 840
Ibid., 235.
841
See ibid., xxxviii, Barker’s intro.
842
Rousseau, The General Contract, in ibid., 274-275.
843
Dr. Paul Carus, ed., Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1955), 24-25. 844
Ibid., 40-41.
845
Ibid., 47, 49.
846
Ibid., 82.
847
Ibid., 140.
848
Norman Kemp Smith, trans., Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (London: Macmillan, 1934), preface to 2nd ed., 11. 849
Ibid., 22.
850
Ibid., 81-82.
851
Ibid., 106.
852
Immanuel Kant, “Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals,” in Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason; The Critique of Practical Reason, and Other Ethical Treatises; The Critique of Judgment (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952), 280. 853
“The Issues Behind the Sit-in,” Stanford Observer, May 1969, 3.
854
Kant, “Critique of Practical Reason,” in Critique of Pure Reason, etc., 340.
855
Kant, “The Science of Right,” in ibid., 398.
856
Norman Kemp Smith, trans., Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason(London: Macmillan, 1934), preface to 2nd ed., 16. 857
Josef Maier, On Hegel's Critique of Kant (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), 5-6, 43ff. 858
G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J. B. Baillie, 2nd ed. (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1961), 85-86. 859
Maier, On Hegel’s Critique of Kant, 71.
860
Ibid., 37.
861
G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 3, trans. E. S. Holdane and Frances H. Simson (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1955), 24, 191. 862
Ibid., 545.
863
Ibid., 551-552.
864
J. N. Findlay, Hegel: A Re-examination (New York: Collier Books, 1962), 131.
865
G.W.F. Hegel, On Christianity: Early Theological Writings, trans. T. M. Know and Richard Kroner (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), 38. 866
Walter Kaufmann, Hegel: Reinterpretation, Texts, and Commentary (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), 60. 867
Ibid., 358-359.
868
Ibid., 318.
869
Hegel, History of Philosophy, vol. 1, see intro., 23.
870
Ibid., 32.
871
Ibid., 54-55.
872
Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind, 70-71, 81, 115; cf. 18.
873
G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1901), 52, 81. 874
Ibid., 62.
875
Ibid., 181.
876
Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind, 271-280.
877
Ibid., 273.
878
Hegel, Philosophy of History, 61, 87, 164, 171.
879
John H. Hallowell, Main Currents in Modern Political Thought (New York: Henry Holt, 1959), 254-277. 880
Ibid., 124.
881
G.W.F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Know (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952), 6. 882
Ibid., 80.
883
Ibid., 21.
884
Hegel, Philosophy of History, 552; cf. 408, 425ff., 414-415.
885
Ibid., 411-412.
886
Karl Hess, “The Act of Revolution,” Libertarian Connection, 10 February 1969, 8.
887
Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, ed. and abr. E. Graham Waring and F. W. Strothmann (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1957), 3. 888
Ibid., 10.
889
Ibid., 12.
890
Ibid., 17.
891
Ibid., 30.
892
Ibid., 40.
893
Ibid., 65.
894
Johann Eduard Erdmann, History of Philosophy, vol. 3 (London: Swan Sormenschein, 1880),
97. 895
Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own, trans. Steven T. Byington (New York: Modern Library), 3, 5. 896
Ibid., 45-46.
897
Friedrich Nietzsche, My Sister and I, trans. and intro. Dr. Oscar Levy, ed., The Complete Works of Nietzsche (New York: Bridgehead Books, 1954). 898
Stirner, The Ego and His Own, 60-61.
899
Ibid., 80-81.
900
Ibid., 82, 84.
901
Ibid., 107.
902
Ibid., 116.
903
Ibid., 145.
904
Ibid., 198, 204-205, 374.
905
Erdmann, History of Philosophy, vol. 3, 100.
906
Stirner, The Ego and His Own, 387.
907
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 330, 357. 908
Ibid., 267.
909
Ibid., 482-483.
910
Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” in K. Marx and F. Engels, On Religion (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House), 72. 911
Gary North, Marx's Religion of Revolution: The Doctrine of Creative Destruction (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1968), 40, 44, 91.
912
John Dewey, The Republic and Its Problems (New York: Minton, Balch, 1930), 142.
913
For an analysis of Dewey’s “Great Community,” see R. J. Rushdoony, The Messianic Character of American Education (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1968), 144-161. 914
Karl Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” in T. B. Bottomore, trans. and ed., Karl Marx: Early Writings (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 58-59. 915
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (New York: International Publishers, 1947), preface, 1. 916
Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 3 (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1909), 55.
917
North, Marx’s Religion of Revolution, 117.
918
Jean Ousset, Marxism Leninism (Quebec: International Union of Societies for Civic Education, 1962), 44. 919
See the case of Russian wives of foreign persons in Lewis B. Sohn, ed., Cases on United Nations Law (Brooklyn, NY: Foundation Press, 1956), 670-692. 920
Nietzsche, My Sister and I, 171.
921
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, in The Philosophy of Nietzsche (New York: Modern Library), 99. 922
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, in ibid., 4.
923
George Burman Foster, Friedrich Nietzsche (New York: Macmillan, 1931), 189.
924
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, 27.
925
Ibid.
926
H. F. Peters, My Sister, My Spouse: A Biography of Lou Andreas-Salome (New York: W.W. Norton, 1962), 123. 927
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power in Science, Nature, Society & Art (New York: Frederick Publications), 5. 928
Ibid., 175.
929
Ibid.
930
Ibid., 176-177.
931
Ibid., 177-178.
932
Ibid., 107.
933
H. Van Reissen, Nietzsche (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1960),
45. 934
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, in The Philosophy of Nietzsche, 134.
935
Van Riessen, Nietzsche, 50-51.
936
In Peters, My Sister, My Spouse., after 160.
937
Nietzsche, My Sister and I, 213.
938
William Albert Levi, Philosophy and the Modern World (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-versity Press, 1959), 40. 939
Ibid., 186.
940
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, 267.
941
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications, 1966), 5-9.
942
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Hazel E. Barns (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), 599. 943
Ibid., 16, 22, 24.
944
Kurt F. Reinhardt, The Existentialist Revolt, new enlarged ed. (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1960), 155. 945
Jean-Paul Sartre, Sartre on Cuba (New York: Ballantine Books, 1961), 61.
946
William Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962), 245. 947
Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism, trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947), 18. 948
Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957), 13, 15. 949
Ibid., 22-23.
950
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 50-51.
951
Ibid., 566.
952
Ibid., 566-567.
953
Ibid., 626.
954
Ibid., 64-67.
955
Jean-Paul Sartre, Saint Genet (New York: Mentor, 1964).
956
Ibid., 222.
957
J. M. Spier, Christianity and Existentialism, trans. David Hugh Freeman (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1953), 60, 66. 958
Sartre, Existentialism, 61.
959
Ibid., 44.
960
Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions, 52.
961
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 255.
962
Justus Streller, Jean-Paul Sartre: To Freedom Condemned; A Guide to His Philosophy (New York: Philosophical Library, 1960), 39. 963
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 250.
964
Ibid., 269.
965
Ibid., 613-614. The reference to the child has to do with thumb-sucking as a means of filling the hole of the mouth. 966
Levi, Philosophy and the Modern World, 240.
967
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 615.
968
Henry Veatch, “For a Realistic Logic,” in John Wild, ed., The Return to Reason (Chicago: Regnery, 1953), 183. 969
970
Barrett, Irrational Man, 300-301.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. P. Pears and B. P. McGuinness, intro. Bertrand Russell, 115.
971
Levi, Philosophy and the Modern World, 465.
972
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 141, 145.
973
Ibid., 151. On Wittgenstein’s mysticism, see Alexander Maslow, Study in Wittgenstein's Tractatus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961), 159-160; see also Paul Engelmann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, With a Memoir (New York: Horizon Press, 1967), 114, 135. “Wittgenstein passionately believes that all that really matters in human life is precisely what, in his view, we must be silent about,” 97. 974
Maslow, Study in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, 137-138; cf. 147.
975
Engelmann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, 83. It is of interest to note that Wittgenstein applied this attitude towards religion. According to Engelmann, “The idea of a God in the sense of the Bible, the image of God as creator of the world hardly ever engaged Wittgenstein’s attention... but the notion of a last judgment was of profound concern to him,” 77. On one occasion, when Wittgenstein was toying with the idea of suicide, he wrote, “Of course it boils down to the fact that I have no faith!,” 351.Wittgenstein, in his Notebooks, 1914-1916, ed. G. H. von Wright and G. E. M. Anscombe, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: Harper, 1961) wrote, “How things stand, is God. God is, how things stand,” 79c. 976
Dallas M. High, Language, Persons, and Belief: Studies in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and Religious Uses of Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967). 977
Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 72c.
978
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 143.
979
Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 74c.
980
Morton White, The Age of Analysis (New York: Mentor Books, 1955), 227.
981
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1966), 6e, 11e, 126e, 151e. 982
Maslow, Study in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, x.
983
Ibid., 17-18, 38.
984
Anthony Channell Hilfer, The Revolt from the Village, 1915-1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 147. 985
Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (Boston: Beacon Press, 1960), vii. 986
Ibid., vii-viii.
987
Ibid., viii, ix, xii-xiv.
988
Ibid., 9.
989
Ibid., 51.
990
Ibid., 136.
991
Ibid., 100.
992
Ibid., 113.
993
Eric Norden, “The Strange Death of Dag Hammarskjold,” Fact 2, (March-April 1965): 4. The matter is also hinted at by Auden in his introduction to Dag Hammarskjold, Markings, trans. and ed. Leif Sjoberg and W. H. Auden, translators and editors of Dag Hammarskjold, Markings (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), xiv. 994
Norden, “Strange Death,” 3-11.
995
Hammarskjold, Markings, 86.
996
Ibid., 15; cf. 69.
997
Ibid., 90.
998
Ibid., 56; cf. 165.
999
Ibid., 156.
1000
Ibid., 99.
1001
J. R. Hestenes, review of Sven Stolpe, Dag Hammarskjold: A Spiritual Portrait, in Book News Letter of Augsburg Publishing House, October 1966, 6. 1002
Eric F. Goldman, in “Book Week,” San Francisco Examiner, 18 October 1964, 1, 23.
1003
Hestenes, Book News Letter, 6.
1004
Sherwood E. Wirt, “A Statesman’s Secret Faith,” Christianity Today, 31 March 1967, 664.
1005
Andrew K. Rule, “Liberalism,” in Lefferts A. Loetscher, ed., Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1955), 660.
1006
Cornelius Van Til, The New Modernism: An Appraisal of the Theology of Barth and Brunner (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1946), 7. 1007
Thomas J. J. Altizer, ed., Toward a New Christianity: Readings in the Death of God Theology (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967), 1. 1008
Van Til’s Metaphysics of Apologetics was republished in 1969 under the title, A Survey of Christian Epistemology, by the Den Dulk Christian Foundation. 1009
Cornelius Van Til, intro. to Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, ed. Samuel G. Craig (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1948), 18. 1010
Ibid., 22-23.
1011
Ibid., 25.
1012
Ibid., 36.
1013
Ibid., 24.
1014
Ibid., 37-38.
1015
Ibid., 49.
1016
Ibid., 66.
1017
Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1955), 27. 1018
Ibid., 28.
1019
Cornelius Van Til, Psychology of Religion: Syllabus (Philadelphia: Westminster Theological Seminary, 1935), 49-50. 1020
Van Til, Defense of the Faith, 42-43.
1021
Ibid., 43.
1022
Ibid., 44.
1023
Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1947), 7-8. 1024
Ibid., 64.
1025
Cornelius Van Til, The Case for Calvinism (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1964), 24.
1026
Cornelius Van Til, Christianity and Idealism (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1955), 67. 1027
Ibid., 72.
1028
Cornelius Van Til, The Confession of 1967: Its Theological Background and Ecumenical Significance (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1967), 109. 1029
Cornelius Van Til, The Theology of James Daane (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1959), 31. 1030
Van Til, Is God Dead? (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1966), 5.
1031
Ibid., 36.
1032
Ibid., 38-39.
1033
Ibid., 40-41.
1034
True, August 1969, 88.
1035
Salvian, “The Governance of God,” in Jeremiah F. O’Sullivan, trans., The Writings of Salvian, the Presbyter (New York: Cima Publishing Co., 1947), 138. 1036
Ibid., 156-157, 178, 187.
1037
William Carroll Bark, Origins of the Medieval World (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 184-185. 1038
Octavius Brooks Frothingham, The Religion of Humanity, 3rd ed. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1875), 7-8. 1039
Sigmar von Fersen, “Existential Philosophy,” in Dagobert D. Runes, ed., Dictionary of Philosophy, 15th ed., rev. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1960), 102-103. 1040
Georges Bataille, Death and Sensuality (New York: Ballantine Books, 1969), 112-113.
1041
“The Issues Behind the Sit-in,” Stanford Observer, May 1969, 3.
1042
See Samuel J. Warner, The Urge to Mass Destruction (New York: Grune and Stratton, 1957). 1043
See Life, 18 July 1969.
1044
Albert William Levi, Philosophy and the Modern World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1959), 421. 1045
See R. J. Rushdoony, The Myth of Over-Population (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1969), 39-51.
1046
Bernard M. Baruch, A Philosophy for Our Time (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), 4.
1047
“I Could No Longer Breathe,” Time, 8 August 1969, 30.
1048
John Vriend, “Christ and Culture,” review of K. Schilder, Christus en Cultuur, in Torch and Trumpet 1, no. 1 (April-May 1951): 11. 1049
Henry R. Van Til, The Calvinistic Concept of Culture (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1959), 138.
