A CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WESTERN THOUGHT AND CULTURE

Introduction:
There are two views of western thought and culture; they are called
The One-root View and
The Two-root View.
The Two-root View is the Christian View of Western Thought and Culture.

I. The One-root View.

The usually accepted view of western intellectual history and culture is that
introduced by the French philosopher, Auguste Comte (1798-1857). Besides being
the founder of the philosophy called positivism and introducing the new science
of sociology for which he is called the "the father of sociology," Comte gave an
interpretation of Western intellectual history which may by way of contrast be
called the One-root View. Although it has been modified and elaborated by others,
this view essentially holds that Western intellectual history and culture has only
one root or source, the Graeco-Roman. According this view, Western intellectual
history originated among the Greeks and developed in a series of three stages: the
theological or religious stage, the metaphysical or philosophical stage, and the
positive or scientific stage.

The first of these stages was divided into three steps: animism in which
everything was believed to be alive with spirits, polytheism in which different
gods have control over different domains of the world like the sky, the sea or the
earth, and monotheism in which these many gods are fused into one supreme
deity. Religion evolved through these three steps during the theological or
religious stage. Among the Greeks, the animistic step developed very early into
the polytheistic step of the Homeric mythology and the popular Greek gods. This
step persisted until the coming of the monotheism of Christianity at the beginning
of the Middle Ages. Gradually the theological stage was replaced by the
metaphysical or philosophical stage in which the previous spirits or gods are
depersonalized and become abstract forces and ideas. This development began
among the Greeks in the 6th century B.C. with the Milesian philosophers, Thales,
Anaximander and Anaximenes, and came to a climax in Plato and Aristotle. After
a relapse into the theological or religious stage with Christianity during the Dark
Ages (5th century through the 13th century), Western thought moved forward
again into the metaphyical stage with the medieval scholastics. The third and
ultimate stage began with Copernicus in the 16th century. This scientific stage, in
which we now are, was called by Comte the positive stage because he believed
that in the scientific laws we have the only form of positive knowledge.

Because of the obvious historical inadequacies of this interpretation and its failure
to recognize and do justice to the other root or source of western intellectual
history and culture, the Hebrew-Christian root, we believe that this One-root View
should be replace with a more adequate Two-root View.
II. The Two-root View.
Western thought and culture, as we know it today, had its origin not only among
the Greeks but also among the Hebrews; it may be said to have two-roots or
sources: the Greek-Roman and the Hebrew-Christian. This Two-root View of
Western intellectual history and culture has three phases:
A. the origin of Western thought and culture in the two different views of
reality among the Greeks and the Hebrews in the Ancient World,
B. the attempted synthesis of these two views in the Middle Ages, and
C. the disintegration of this synthesis in the Modern Age.

Let us discuss these three phases in greater detail.

D. The Origin of Western Intellectual History.

Each of these two roots involved a fundamentally different and mutually
exclusive ultimate commitment. And associated with each of these
ultimate commitments is a characteristic world view or view of reality
which is grounded in and implied by these two distinctive ultimate
commitments. We shall summarize here these two views of reality in order
to bring out their differences and incompatiblity which arise from the
mutually exclusive ultimate commitments:
Hebrews-Christian world view and the
Greek-Roman world view.
1. The Hebrew-Christian view of reality.
This view of reality is grounded in an ultimate commitment to the
personal Creator God who manifested Himself in Jesus Christ and
reveals Himself by the Holy Spirit. This revelation is recorded in
the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. The personal God who
has revealed Himself in this way exists as three persons: Father,
Son and Holy Spirit. This triune personal Being exists independent
of the world and is its Creator. The Hebrew-Christian view of
reality makes a fundamental ontological distinction between the
Creator and the Creation; God is the sovereign Creator of all
things, of the world and man, and all things are His free creation.

Man was created by God and, in contrast to the rest of creation,

was created in the image of God, who is Jesus Christ, the God-man
(Col. 1:13-15; compare II Cor. 4:4). Man, as created by God, is a
personal being, a unity of spirit [person] and body (see Gen. 2:7),
having dominion over creation and fellowship with another equal
human being (woman). Man's existence as a person is also to be
found not in his reason but in his limited free will and decision.
And since decisions involve a reference to an ultimate criterion
beyond the self, to a god, the Bibical view of man is that he is a
religious animal, a being who must have a god.
The first man Adam and his wife Eve used their freedom to
disobey God and choose a false god, wisdom and knowledge; that
is, Reason. The basic sin is turning from the true God and to faith
in a false god of some kind; it is idolatry. Sin is any choice
contrary to ultimate allegiance or faith in the true God. The
consequence of Adam's sin was death: physical death (the
separation of their spirits from their bodies) and spiritual death (the
separation of their spirits from God). In other words, they lost their
fellowship with God and with each other and their dominion over
creation. But even though they have fallen from the image of God,
they still are persons and still have the freedom of choice.

The descendants of Adam are born not in the image of God but in
the image of Adam, the man of dust, the old man, and as such are
subject to death, physical and spiritual. Death has been inherited by
all men. And since they have been born into the world spiritually
dead, alienated from God, not knowing the true God, and since
they must have a god, an ultimate criterion of decision, they
choose a false god and thereby sin. The creation, man himself,
contains a knowledge about the true God which leaves them
without excuse for the sin of idolatry. But this knowledge is about
the true God and is not a personal knowledge of the true God
which comes from fellowship with God.

Salvation is the restoration of fellowship and communion with God

through the historical death, bodily resurrection and exaltation of
Jesus Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit. God in His love for
man has sent His Son into the world to become a man - Jesus
Christ. He is the image of God, the perfect man. But He came not
just to be what man should have been or to give man a perfect
example but to give them life and restore them to the image of
God. He did this by entering into their condition of spiritual and
physical death on the cross. So that as Christ was raised from the
dead, they might be made alive with Him in His resurrection. That
is, Christ's death was their death and His resurrection is their
resurrection. That is, salvation is basically from death to life. Also,
Jesus Christ was exalted to the right hand of God as Lord to
become their Lord and their God. God has sent the Holy Spirit to
save man from death and sin by revealing Him personally to them
in the preaching of the gospel, the good news of what God has
done for man in Jesus Christ's death and resurrection, of Jesus
Christ as their Savior who died for them and as their resurrected
and living Lord. When a man responds to this revelation by turning
from his false gods (repentance) and turning to the true God,
acknowledging Jesus as his Lord (faith) he is saved from sin. And
since in this decision of faith he receives the living Christ as his
 life and identifies himself with the death and resurrection of Christ,
a man is also saved from spiritual death, being made spiritually
alive to God in Christ. Thus man is now being restored to the
image of God.

But this restoration is not now yet complete. At the second coming
of Jesus Christ (Acts 1:9) the believers' bodies will be resurrected
if they die before He comes (I Thess. 4:14-17), or will be
transformed into bodies like His resurrected body if they are alive
at His coming (I Cor. 15:51-52; Phil. 3:20-21; I John 3:2). Thus
physical death will be replaced with physical life just as spiritual
death was replaced with spiritual life when they first believed.
What was begun at conversion will be brought to completion (Phil.
1:6) at Christ's coming. Spiritual life will become eternal life -
eternal fellowship with the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit
(heaven) (Rev. 21:3). Thus will man be restored to the image of
God. And their salvation is from death (both spiritual and physical)
unto life, from sin (idolatry - trust in false gods) unto righteousness
(trust in the true God), will be completed.

2. The Greek-Roman view of reality.

This world view is grounded in an ultimate commitment to
Reason, the universal and necessary. This religious foundation of
classical Greek philosophy is usually denied or ignored by most
writers and philosophers. [1] But Greek philosophy like all
philosophy is involved with, grounded in, and carried on
consciously or unconsciously from within a religious commitment.
And this is essentially what classical Greek philosophy involved.
Even though it was a rejection of the popular Homeric polytheistic
religion, this does not mean that Greek philosophy is non-religious.
"Greek thought did not cease to be religious when it became
philosophical." [2] The interest of the pre-Socratic philosophers
was not, or not primarily, scientific but theological. They
abondoned the myths of the Homeric poets and rejected the then
popular Homeric polytheistic religion, not because these were
unscientific but because they presented an unworthy picture of the
Divine. "The Being or Nature which philosophy sought to reach
was thought of as a worthier conception of the divine than that
presented by the anthropomorphic gods." [3] The religious
language and the concepts of the pre-Socratics are not just relics of
the pre-scientific way of thought, not yet outgrown, but the
expression of their fundamental religious orientation. As Werner
Jaeger says in his Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers,
"Though philosophy means the death of the old gods, it is itself
religion." [4] And this religion is a religion of Reason. This became
explicit in the teaching of Socrates. Socrates lived and taught the
ultimacy of Reason and was executed in 399 B.C. for nothing less
than the crime of rationalism - an act of destroying the gods by
reason. [5] But he was only substituting for faith in one set of gods
faith in another god - Reason. Plato was inspired by his teacher
Socrates to the same faith.

The divine, according to the Greek conception of reality, is that

which is not subject to change, decay or death; the gods in Homer
are "immortals." The divine, therefore, cannot be known through
the senses because that which is known through the senses is a
world characterized by change, decay or death. But since the
objects of reason are always and everywhere the same, the divine
can be known through reason. This eternal, unchanging realm of
the Ideas, the Universals, the objects of Reason, are the divine.

"Plato does not hesitate to use religious language of this knowing.

He says that both reason in man and the objects of reason are
divine,
and speaks of the kinship of one with other." [6]

With this conception of the divine, Aristotle is basically in

agreement
but without the use of the religious language. He says,

"For while thought is held to be the most divine of things

observed by us, the question how it must be situated
in order to have that character involves difficulties." [7]

After discussing these difficulties, he concludes,

"Therefore it must be of itself that divine thought thinks

(since it is the most excellent of things)
and its thinking is a thinking on thinking." [8]

This self-thinking thought is the divine. Thus both Plato and

Aristotle held reason to be divine. God is the divine or eternal
realm of the Ideas in Plato's philosophy, or he is a self-thinking
thought of Aristotle's philosophy.

According to the Greek thinkers, Reason is the divine or God. But

since the concepts of God and man are correlatives, the Greek
concept of man reflects the image of this god. Since reason is god,
man viewed in the light of this god, is a rational animal. Reason is
the divine part of man. Aristotle says,
"It would seem, too, this (reason) is the true self of every man,
since it is the supreme and better part. It will be strange, then,
if he should choose not his own life, but some other's...
What is naturally proper to every creature
is the highest and pleasantest for him.
And so, to man, this will be the life of Reason,
since Reason is, in the highest sense, a man's self." [9]

This is not the Bibical view of man or of God. God is not Reason.
God is a person (or more accurately, three persons) whose
existence is not in His reason but in His unlimited sovereign free
decision and will; man is also a person (or more accurately, a unity
of spirit [person] and body - see Gen. 2:7) whose existence is also
to be found, not in his reason, but in his limited free will and
decision. And since decisions involve a reference to an ultimate
criterion beyond the self, to a god, the Bibical view of man is that
he is a religious animal, a being who must have a god. Reason is
not the divine part in man but is a function of the will of the
person. To be is to choose, not to think or to know. Knowledge and
reason depend upon a prior decision as to what is real.

"...whatever evidence one accepts,

whether that of experience or that of logic,
will depend upon neither logic or experience alone,
but upon a decision by the individual concerned
in favor of the one or the other." [10]

It is upon decision that any knowledge finally depends. Reason is

not the ultimate criterion but the sovereign will of the Creator who
made all things and has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. This
basic incompatibility between the Greek and Biblical view of God
and man explains the conflict between Greek philosophy and the
Christian faith and the failure of the attempted synthesis of these
divergent points of view by Augustine and Aquinas. All attempts to
synthesize the classical Greek view of God and man with the
Biblical view will fail. Worst of all, the Biblical view of God and
man will be obscured and misunderstood.

a. The Eleatics.
The Greek-Roman view of reality had its origin with the
Eleactic school of early Greek thinkers who lived during
the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. at Elea in southern Italy. The
oldest of the Eleatics was Xenophanes, a wandering
rhapodist, who was born about 570 B.C. at Colophon in
western Asia Minor, on the Aegean Sea, and migrated to
Elea in southern Italy probably because of the Persian
invasions in about 546 B.C. He died about 470 B.C.. Little
is known of his philosophy; he wrote several poems of
which only 108 lines have surived. He rejected the Greek
polytheism, attacking the anthromorphism of the Greek
gods. He sets forth the doctrine that there is only one
ultimate reality, "One god, supreme among the gods and
men, and not like mortals in body and mind." This being
does not have sense organs like men's, but "the whole of
him sees, the whole of him thinks, the whole of him hears."
He sets in motion all things by the power of his mind; he
always remains in the same place, moving not at all; he is
ominpresent, not needing to move.

The true founder of the Eleatic school is not Xenophanes,

but Parmenides of Elea (c. 515 B.C.- c. 450 B.C.). He is
probably the most important philosopher before Socrates,
being the first to focus on the central problem of
metaphysics, the problem of being. He held that "thought
and being are the same thing," and that "being is and it is
impossible for it not to be; it is impossible that non-being
is." That is, being exists and non-being does not exist.
Being is ungenerated and indestructible. It cannot come
into being out of what does not exist. Neither can it cease to
be, since being is not non-being. Hence being is eternal.
Change is impossible; for if anything changes, it ceases to
be what it is and becomes what it is not; and since being
cannot cease to be and non-being does not exist, change is
impossible. And also movement is impossible; for if
anything moves, it must occupy empty space where it was
not; and since empty space is non-being and does not exist,
movement is not possible. And there can only be one being;
for if there were more than one thing, they would have to
be separated by empty space; since empty space is non-
being and does not exist, they cannot be separated and thus
must occupy the same space; thus the many are one and
being is one. Finally being is homogeneous, not having
parts; for if it has parts, then it would be many; but since
being is one, it has no parts and thus is homogeneous. From
this Paramenides argued that being is finite, like the surface
of a sphere it is "perfected on every side," equally distance
from its center at every point. Paramenides' student,
Mellisus of Samos (5th cent. B.C.), rejected his teacher's
conclusion that being is finite. Mellisus argued that being
must be spatially and temporally infinite. For if being is
finite, then beyond it there would be empty space; but since
empty space is nothing, non-being, it does not exist and
 thus being occupies all space. Thus being is spatially
infinite. Mellisus, like Parmenides, rejected a void or
vacuum, empty space, as impossible and non-existent, "for
what is empty is nothing. What is nothing cannot be."
Another philosopher, Zeno of Elea (c. 490-430 B.C.) was a
firm adherent to Parmenides's ideas and tried to show that
they are true by showing their opposites are impossible and
absurd (reductiones ad absurdum). By this form of
argument, he attempted to show that pluralism (that reality
is many, not one), empty space, time and motion are
impossible. These famous arguments are known as Zeno's
Paradoxes.

b. Platonism.
Plato (428-348 B.C.) in his dialogue Parmenides describes
a meeting in Athens of Parmenides, Zeno, and Socrates.
Though the meeting is probably fictitious there is no reason
why the issues discussed should be ignored. In this
dialogue Plato discussed the concept of the One, ostensibly
without conclusion. In one passage, he asserts
hypothetically that if the One existed, it would be ineffable
and unknowable. Whether this assertion was supposed to
reveal the contradictory and, therefore, unacceptable
character of the One, or to express Plato's acceptance of
this assertion about the character of the One, is debatable.
In the dialogue the Sophist, the problem of negative
judgments is handled in such a way that it is not possible to
make Parmenides' mistake of supposing that what is not
does not exist. In his dialogues, Plato divides all reality into
the realm of forms or ideas (intelligibles) and the realm of
sensibles, treating the intelligibles alone as that which
really is (Greek, ousia, "being") and implying that they are
eternal and unchanging. One of these ideas, the idea of the
Good, Plato elevated above the others, calling it "beyond
being" (Greek, epekeina ousias). He compares it to the sun
as the source of being and knowledge of all beings. In a
lecture (or course of lectures), Plato seems to have
identified the Good with the One. As to the realm of the
sensibles, Plato in his dialogue Timaeus explains the origin
of the cosmos in the form of a myth as the work of a divine
artisan or demiurge (Greek, demiourgos, "craftsman") who
uses the realm of Ideas, forming out of them something
Plato calls the "receptacle," which is void of any qualities.
Then the ideas in some way enter this void and by so doing
form the rudiments of the four elements. In addition to the
formation of the physical world, the demiurge also forms a
 cosmic soul and the immortal part of individual souls. Both
of these consist of a mixture of the same ingredients, on
which mixture the demiurge imposes a numerical and
geometrical structure.
c. Neo-Platonism.
Neo-Platonism, as the name suggests, begin with teachings
of Plato and develops it in distinctive manner. It holds that
Being is God, the One, an eternal principle of unity. The
One is completely separated from all things, the many, but
is the source of all things as being. This transcendent being
is related to all things by a series of imtermediaries, which
are derived from the One by the principle of emanation. In
this view, reality is a graded series from the divine One
being to the material world and man, who has in him some
part of the divine and thus longs for union with the eternal
source of things. The Egyptian-Roman philosopher
Plotinus (A.D. 205-270) interpreted these emanations as
logical, not temporal, progressions from the divine One into
non-being and occurs by the refulgence of the original
principle. According to him there are three levels of
emanation:
(1) Nous (Mind or Intellegence), in which is Plato's realm
of Ideas or forms, which is the reflection of the One into
multiplicity;
(2) Psyche or Soul, which, like Plato's divine artisan, the
demiurge, who is the principle of life and active
intelligence, uses the forms as the patterns on the formation
of the world;
(3) Hyle or Matter itself, which, when devoid of form, is
next to nothing or non-being. The evil in world and in man
is due to this material principle.
Man, combining in himself the material and spiritual
principles, is in a uncomfortable position. He longs for the
eternal forms and for the One, but is imprisoned in a body.
He looks for liberation in comtemplation, both intellectual
and spiritual, and by a mystical union with the divine.

Plotinus was born in Egypt and studied in Alexandria under

Ammonius Saccas. After accompanying the emperior
Gordian on a campaign in the East, he settled in Rome
about 244, opening his own school. He wrote essays for his
students about their philosophical discussions. His pupil,
Porphyry, collected these and arranged them systematically
into six Enneads [groups of nine], that are the major source
of Plotinus' philosophy. Porphyry published the Enneads
after A.D. 300 with an accompanying Life of Plotinus.
 Prophyry reports that Plotinus had a mystical experience of
union with the divine on four occasions, which union is
described in the Enneads and is one of classics of
mysticism.

In the fourth and fifth Christian centuries, Neoplatonism

provided the philosophical basis for pagan opposition to
Christianity. Prophyry, in addition to his numerious
philosophical treatises, wrote a massive fifteen volume
work, now lost, Against the Christians. The Roman
emperor, Julian, in addition to decrees against Christians,
wrote Against the Galileans, which can be reconstructed
from Cyril of Alexandria's refutation of it. In addition to
providing the philosophical basis for this opposition,
Neoplatonism also provided the philosophical framework
for the thought of several Christian theologians: Gregory of
Nyssa, Victorinus, Ambrose, Augustine, and later
Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. The influence of
Neoplatonism continued in both the Western and Eastern
churches. Even in the twentieth century, elements of it has
appeared in the thought of Paul Tillich.

d. Aristotelianism
According to Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), a student of Plato,
"first philosophy" investigates being. It is the science of
being as being. The special sciences investigate particular
parts of being; zoology, for example, deals with animals
and physics with the motion of bodies. But "first
philosophy," later called ontology (literally, "the study of
being") has being in general as its subject matter, without
primary reference to some particular kind of being.
Aristotle says,

"There is a science which investigates Being as Being

and the attributes which belong to this in virtue of its own
nature.
Now this is not the same as any of the so-called special
sciences;
for none of these treats universally of Being as Being.
They cut off a part of Being and investigate the attributes of
this part."

Aristotle divides being into two kinds:

(a) immutable or changeless being and
(b) mutable or changing being.
The study of the second kind, mutable being - which,
according to Aristotle, is the only kind we see in the world
about us - belongs to the subject matter of the philosophy
of nature or physics [Gr. phusis, "nature"]. The study of the
first kind of being, immutable being, belongs to the subject
matter of metaphysics [Gr. meta, "after", and phusis,
"nature"; that is, "after or beyond physics"] and theology;
for there is only one being "eternal and immovable" and
that is God.

Aristotle derived this dual classification of being from his

teacher, Plato, who held that "true being" was something
not subject to change and decay. According to Plato, our
world of the senses displays only becoming; everything in
it is coming into being and going out of being; nothing
really is. Only that which is changeless is real, thought
Plato; reality is permanent and immutable. Plato held that
these two primary modes of being, permanence and change,
that are separate and distinct from each other. The
permanent is the realm of Ideas or forms, apprehended by
the mind only, and the changing is the realm of the
sensibles, apprehended by the senses.

Aristotle rejected this dualism of being, but accepted the

distinction between the two kinds of being. Aristotle
combined these two kinds being in the concept of
"substance." He introduces the distinction between
"substance" and "accident"; a substance or thing has
relatively independent being from other things, whereas
accidents or qualities have no independent being, but exist
in a substance. Blue and hard are not like houses and rocks.
These qualities must "inhere" in a substance; they qualify
the substances. Now substances, in some fundamental way,
remain the same, although their qualities may change; that
is, substances retain their identity through change. A house
may be white or red, but even if the color of house changes,
the house remains a house; its identity is perserved through
the change. Substance, then, represent the relatively
permanent side of reality and qualities the changing side.
Instead of separating the permanent from the changing, as
Plato did, Aristote unites them in things as substances and
their accidents or qualities.

But how is change possible, if the permanent is primary,

more important, "realer," while change is secondary, less
important, less real? Aristotle attempts to solve this
problem by introducing the distinct between "form" and
 "matter," in which he interprets "matter" as potentially and
"form" as actuality. According to Aristotle, change is the
process of going from potential to actual. The block of
stone is potentially a statue and the statue is the
actualization of this potential. Matter is potentiality and
form is actuality. Aristotle combined form and matter in a
series from prime matter to pure form; the form of a lower
level is the matter of the higher level. At the top of this
hierarchy of form and matter is pure form, pure actuality,
pure being, God.

e. Stoicism.
E. The Attempted Synthesis in the Middle Ages.
As Christianity spread thoughout the Roman world, the Biblical view of
reality came into conflict with the Greek view of reality. Attempts were
made to resolve this conflict by trying to synthesize these two views of
reality.
There were two major attempts at this synthesis:
the Augustinian synthesis by Aurelius Augustine (A.D. 354-430) in the 5th
century and
the Thomistic synthesis by Thomas Aquinas (A.D. 1225-1274) in the 12th
century.
Hebrew-
Medieval Synthesis Greek-Roman
Christian
God Creator Supernatural - Grace The rational
World Created Natural - Nature The non-rational
spirit (moral) & soul mind (rational) &
spirit (person) &
Man (rational) & body (non-
body
body (animal) rational)
1. The Augustinian Synthesis (5th to 12th centuries).
Augustinianism is the philosophy of Aurelius Augustinus, better
known at Saint Augustine, and of his followers. He was born at
Tagaste in the Province of Numidia of North Africa on November
13th, A.D. 354; his father, Patricius, was a pagan and his mother,
Monica, was a devoted Christian; she brought him up as a
Christian but his baptism was deferred, as was the practice of the
time. He learned the rudiments of Latin and arithmetic and a little
Greek. In A.D. 370, the year his father died after becoming a
Christian, Augustine began the study of rhetoric at Carthage and
broke with Christian teaching and morals, taking a mistress, with
whom he lived for ten years and by whom he had a son in his
second year at Carthage. He became a follower of the teaching of
the Manicheans. The Manicheans, founded by a Persian named
Mani, taught a dualism of two ultimate principles, a principle of
good that is the light, God or Ormuzd, and a principle of evil that is
the darkeness, Ahriman. These principles are eternal and are
engaged in an eternal strife, which is reflected in the world and in
man. Man's soul is composed of light, the principle of the good,
while the body, composed of grosser matter, is the work of the
principle of evil, darkness. This religio-philosophic system
commended itself to Augustine because it seemed to explain the
problem of evil and because of its materialism, since he could not
yet conceive how there could be an immateral reality. Although the
Manicheans condemned sexual intercourse and the eating animal
flesh and prescribed various ascetic practices, such as fasting, for
the "elect," but not for the "hearers," Augustine did not follow
them, being only a "hearer." Eventually Augustine became
dissatisfied with Manichean when it was not able to answer his
questions and difficulties with its teachings. After returning to
Tagaste in A.D. 374, he taught rhetoric and Latin Literature for a
year. He then returned to Carthage to open a school of rhetoric; but
becoming frustrated with his students, he went to Rome in A.D.
383 and started another school of rhetoric. Although giving up
belief in the teachings of Manicheans, being attracted to Academic
skepticism, he retained an outward adherence to Manicheanism,
still accepting its materialism. Having obtained a position at Milan
of municipal professor of rhetoric in A.D. 384, he moved to Milan
and finally broke with the Manicheans through the influence of his
new friends in Milan, the Bishop Ambrose and the circle of
Christian Neo-Platonist around him. He got the answers to his
questions about Manichean doctrine, and encountered a more
satisfying interpretation of Christianity than he had previously
found in the simple, unintellectual faith of his mother. The Neo-
Platonic teaching of evil as privation, non-being, rather than as
second kind of being, showed him how the problem of evil could
be solved without recourse to the Manichean dualism. In this
Christianized Neo-Platonism, he believed he found the truth and he
began to read the New Testament, particularly Paul's letter to the
Romans. After a intense moral struggle, in the summer of A.D.
386, while he was sitting in the garden of his friend Alypius' house,
weeping, he heard a child's voice outside singing the words, "Tolle
lege! Tolle lege!" [Take up and read! Take up and read!]. He picked
up the New Testament and, opening it at random, his eyes lighted
on Romans 13:13b-14:

"not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chanbering and wantonness,

not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof."

He tells us later,
"No further would I read, nor had I any need; instantly,
at the end of this sentence, a clear light flooded my heart
and all the darkness of doubt vanished away."

On Holy Saturday of A.D. 387 Augustine was baptized by Bishop

Ambrose and soon after returned to North Africa in A.D. 388. He
was ordained a priest in A.D. 391 and was consecrated Bishop of
Hippo in A.D. 396. He wrote extensively against the Donatist and
the Pelagains. He died on August 28th, A.D. 430.

Although Augustine wrote against pagan philosophy, he still

showed a strong predilection for Neo-Platonism. There is a
depreciation of sense-objects in comparison with eternal and
immaterial realities; a grudging admission of practical knowledge
as a necessity of life; the insistence on "theoretic" contemplation
and purification of the soul and liberation from the slavery of the
senses. Philosophically this predilection is shown in the Platonic
and Neo-Platonic view that the objects of the senses, corporeal
things, are inferior to the human intellect, which judges them with
reference to objective standard as falling short. These standards are
the immutable and eternal universal ideas or forms. The standards
of goodness and beauty, for example, correspond to Plato's first
principles or archai, the exemplary ideas, and the ideal geometrical
figures correspond to Plato's mathematical objects, ta
mathematika, the objects of the dianoia.

To the question, which was asked of the Platonic Ideas, "Where are
these ideas?", Augustine answers that they are in the mind, the
Nous, of God, they are the thoughts of God. The Neo-Platonics
made this suggestion and Augustine apparently accepted it as the
answer to the question: Where are they? Augustine does not accept
the emanation theory of Neo-Platonism, where the Nous emanates
from the One as the first hypostasis. But the exemplar ideas and
eternal, immutable truths are in God. This theory must be accepted,
Augustine argues, if one wishes to avoid having to say that God
created the world unintelligently. Thus creation is like Plato's
formation of the sense-world by the divine artisan, the demiurge,
except that there is no pre-existent matter; God created it out of
nothing.

Thus the world of creatures reflect and manifests God, even if it

does in a very inadequate way. The order and unity of creatures,
their positive reality, reveals the goodness of God and the order
and stability of the universe manifest the wisdom of God. But God,
as the self-existent, eternal and immutable Being, is infinite and, as
infinite, is incomprehensible. God is His own Perfection and is
 "simple," without parts, so that His wisdom and knowledge, His
goodness and power, are His own essence, which is without
accidents. God, therefore, transcends space in virtue of His
spiritually and simplicity, as He transends time in virtue of His
eternity.

"... He is above all things.

So too He is in no interval nor extension in time,
but in His immutable eternity he is older than all things
because He is before all things and younger than all things
because He is after all things."

From all eternity, God knew all things which He was to make. He
does not know them because He has made them, but rather the
other way around. God first knew the things of creation before they
came into being in time. The species of created things have their
ideas or rationes seminales or "seminal reasons" in the things
themselves and also in the Divine Mind as rationes aeternae, as
"eternal reasons" or ideas. God from all eternity saw in Himself, as
possible reflections of Himself, the things which He could create
and would create. He knew them before creation as they are in
Him, as the Exemplar, but He made them as they exist, that is, as
external and finite reflections of His divine essence. Since God did
nothing without knowledge, He foresaw all that He would make,
but His knowledge is not distinct acts of knowledge, but "one
eternal, immutable and ineffable vision." In virtue of this eternal
act of knowledge, of vision, to which nothing is past or future, that
God sees, "foresees," even the free acts of men, knowing them
"beforehand." This exemplarist doctrine passed into the Middle
Ages and was taken as characteristic of Augustinianism.

2. The Thomistic Synthesis (A.D. 13th to 15th centuries).

The Medieval philosopher-theologian, Thomas Aquinas (A.D.
1225-1274), attempted to bring Aristotelian philosophy into the
framework of the Christian faith. He was born in the vicinity of
Naples, Italy. After studying under both the Benedictines and the
Dominicans, he joined the Benedictine order in 1243. He studied
with Albertus Magnus (1206-1280) in Paris (1245-1248) and in
Cologne (1248-1252). Albertus Magnus, or Albert the Great,
translated Aristotle from Greek and Arabic manuscripts and wrote
commentaries in which he interpreted Aristotle to the Christian
Western mind. In fact his interpretation of Aristotle was an attempt
to fused Aristotelianism and Neo-Platonism, which had dominated
Christian Western thinking since Augustine. In 1252, Thomas
Aquinas returned to Paris to studied at the faculty of theology in
the University of Paris, where in 1256 he was given the licentia
docendi in theology and he taught theology until 1259. From 1259
to 1269 he was advisor to the papal curia or court in Rome. He
returned to the University of Paris in 1269 to stem the tide against
Averroism.

Averroism was that form of Aristotelian philosophy based on the

commentaries of Aristotle written by the Arabic philosopher
Averroes (Mohammed ibn Roshd) (1126-1198), whose Latin name
was a corruption of Ibn Roshd. His commentaries became known
to Western scholars in their translations by Michael Scottus,
Hermannus Alemannus, and others at the beginning of the 13th
century. Albertus Magnus relied heavily on Averroes'
commentaries on Aristotle, while noting certain difficulties. The
teachings of Averroes became the basis for a whole school of
philosophers, represented first by the Faculty of Arts at the
University of Paris, among whom the most prominent was Siger of
Brabant. No philosophy was more often condemned in the Middle
Ages by church leaders and councils than Averroism. It was
condemned in 1209, 1215, 1240, 1270, and 1277. It was
condemned for its teachings that held that
(1) matter is eternal (God and the world are co-eternal),
(2) the absence of personal immortality (the numerical identity of
the intellect of all men), and
(3) the doctrine of double truth (that a proposition may be true in
philosophy and false in theology).

Aquinas, relying on the translation of Aristotle by William of

Moerbecke, criticized Averroes' interpretation of Aristotle.

On the first point, Thomas argued that there is no

philosophical proof, either for the co-eternity of God and
the world or against it; but the creation of the world is an
article of the faith.
On the second point, Thomas argued that the unity of the
intellect of all men should be rejected, since it is
incompatible with the true concept of person and with
personal immortality.
On the third point, it is doubtful whether Averroes
himself held to the double truth theory; but it was taught by
the Latin Averrosts, who, not withstanding the opposition
of the Roman Church and the Thomistic philosophers,
gained great influence and soon dominated many
universities, especially in Italy at the University of Padua.
Thomas and his followers were convinced that they had
interpreted Aristotle correctly and that the Averroists had
misinterpreted Aristotle; Aristotle did not teach the double
 truth theory. Truth is one, but there are two ways to
discover it: by revelation of it in the Bible and by reason in
the writings of Aristotle. Where the two are contrary to
each other, the truths of revelation are to be accepted and
the results of reason are to be modified to conform to the
truths of revelation.

From 1272 Aquinas taught at the University of Naples. He died on

March 7, 1274 on the way to the Council of Lyons. Aquinas was
canonized in 1326, made a Doctor of the Church in 1567, and Pope
Leo XIII (Aetrni Patris) gave his philosophy official status in
1879.

At the heart of Aquinas' philosophy is his concept of being. And to

understand being, reason must use the principle of analogy to fix
the appropriate meaning of the term. And since there are certain
"transcendental" terms that go beyond any genus, and apply to
everything that is, they are attributes of everything. These
transcendentals are ens (being), res (thing), unum (unity), aliquid
(distinction), verum (true), bonum (good). All beings (ens) are
things (res) with unity (unum), distinguished (aliquid) from what is
not themselves. And since all beings are what they are, in relation
to knowledge, they are true (verum). And since all beings tend
toward their ends or goals, they are good (bonum). When the
principle of analogy is applied to these transcendentals, human
reason can begin to understand, within limits, the nature of God.
The kind of analogy to be used here is the analogy of
proportionality; that is,

The properties of x The properties of y

are to as are to
x's being y's being

By the use of this analogy of proportionality, human reason can

begin to understand how God's being exceeds any other being by
comparing the properties of being. Since there are five properties
of being, there are five ways to establish this comparison. From
this comparison, there arises the idea of a perfect being, God. God
is perfect and unchanging being, utterly simple (without parts) and
unitary, hence indestructible, absolute truth and goodness, not
related to the world, yet everything in the world related to Him.
Since the divine mind contains the archetypes of all things, simply
in knowing Himself God is able to know at once all that is, was, or
will be. In His self-knowledge, all time is concentrated in an
eternal moment, in a totum simul. Aquinas argued that while God
is the primary cause of all things, there are secondary causes and
among these secondary causes some are necessary and others are
contingent. Thus free will is compatible with God's foreknowledge
and God's causation of all things.

At the heart of Aquinas' ontology is the real distinction between

essence and existence in all finite beings. Aristotle distinguished
between actuality and potentiality, but he applied this to form and
matter, not to the order of being. Aquinas argued that only God is
pure being, pure actuality (actus purus), with no potentiality
whatsoever. That is, God's being is from Himself, not from another.
He has aseitas in contrast to those beings that have derived their
being from another. Thus God is necessary being, because God's
essence (what He is) and existence (that He is) are identical, hence
He cannot fail to exist. In finite creatures, their essence (what they
are) is separate from their existence (that they are). Aristotle does
not make or use this distinction between essence and existence;
Aquinas introduced this distinction because it allowed him to
explain the difference between God and the angels. Angels are pure
forms like God, but their essence and existence are not identical,
unlike God whose essence and existence are identical. According
to Exodus 3:14, God revealed Himself as the "I am". Aquinas
interpreted this to mean that God alone is Being (I-Am-ness).
Everything else has being. God's essence is identical to His
existence; that is, it is of His essence that He exists. Thus God is a
necessary being, not a contingent being like everything else; He
cannot not exist. Neither can God change, since He is without
potentiality to be anything other than he is. Likewise, God is
eternal, timeless, since time implies a change from a before to an
after. But as the I-am, God has no before and no after. God is also
simple (indivisible), since He has not potential for division. And he
is infinite, since pure act as such is unlimited, having no
potentiality. Thus God is perfect Being.

Aquinas views reality as a hierarchical pyramid of being. Like

Aristotle, he viewed the lowest level of reality as pure matter,
without form, that is, prime matter, and the highest level as pure
form, without matter, that is, God. God is regarded as pure
actuality, Prime matter, on the other hand, is viewed as pure
potentiality. But Aquinas also held that since prime matter cannot
exist by itself, it is dependent upon form for its existence in a
concrete individual substance. Since form, on the other hand, is not
dependent upon anything for it to exist, it can exist from itself and
indeed as pure form it must exist. But in Aquinas' view, prime
matter does not exist; it has only the potentiality of existence. God,
on the hand, does exist and cannot avoid existing. Like Aristotle,
Aquinas held that between these extremes there are to be found
various levels of formed matter, the order of nature. Concrete
individual substances are constituted of the abstract metaphysical
elements of form and matter. Aristotle described substance as the
union of form and matter. For example, man is the substantial
union of form (mind or intellect) and matter (body).

By contrast the Augustinians of the thirteenth century held that

man is the union of two different substances, the intellectual soul
and the material body; a man is a soul in a body. That is, there is
gap between the intellectual soul and the material body, which for
Bonaventure is the guarantee of the soul's spirituality and its
immortality. Albert the Great somewhat closed the gap by asserting
that there is one substantial form between the soul and the body,
the form of corporeity. The soul, he tells us, can be viewed either
in itself, as an intellectual substance, or as a form exercising the
function of animating a body. The first view, defining the soul's
very nature, he attributes to Plato; the second, describing one of its
external and accidental functions, he attributes to Aristotle. Here
Albert was simply following the Arabic philosopher Avicenna
(980-1037), who had already tried to reconcile the two Greek
philosophers in this way. What neither Avicenna nor Albert could
see by considering the soul as a substance in another substance
such as the body, was the relation between them is purely extrinsic
and accidental. Now this view did safeguard the independence of
the soul from matter and its immortality; but it is difficult to see
how, under these circumstances, man is anything more than an
accidental aggregate of soul and body. Thomas Aquinas saw this
problem. The view of the Aristotelians and Averroism, on the one
hand, threatened the independence of the soul from the body and
the immortality of the soul; but, on the other hand, the view of the
Augustinians and the Avicennians threatened the unity of man.

Albert the Great considered soul and body as radically distinct

because he thought of each as an essence which by definition
differs from each other. The Avicennian world is composed of
essences of this sort, each of which corresponds to a definition and
includes only what is contained in its definition. Whatever is
outside the definition is accidental to it. For example, when we
define man as a rational animal, nothing is said about his
individuality and universality; these are accidental to the essence
of man as such, so that it can be individual in Peter and Paul and
universal in the concept we form of it in our mind. In addition,
although the definition of a thing tells us what it is, it does not say
whether it exists or does not exist. That is, existence itself is not
included in the essence of a thing but is accidental to it. This is true
of everything except God, whose essence includes his existence.
William of Auvergne (1180-1249) adopted from Avicenna this
view of the accidentality of existence and used it to explain the
contingency of created being. For, he reasoned, if essence of God
is existence, all other things must receive existence as an accident
of their essence. Existence, then, is given them as a gift and they
are contingent in their very being. Albert the Great expressed this
same view, but Aquinas transformed and used it for his own
purposes.

Thomas Aquinas saw that solution to the problem of the unity of

man was, not to consider essence as primary in the understanding
of being, but existence. Instead of the world being composed of
forms or essences, Aquinas viewed the world as consisting of
individual acts of existing (esse). Existence has the primacy in the
concept of being. The form of each being is that whereby it is what
it is; it is the principle that specifies and determines it to be a
certain kind of being. But in addition to form there is a further and
ultimate act[uality] that makes it to be or to exist. This is the act of
existing, which Thomas describes as "the actuality of all acts" and
the "perfection of all perfections". It is the most profound in any
being, its ontological nucleus, so to speak, the source of all its
perfections and its intelligibilities.

The soul when looked at from the point of view of essence or

nature, it appears deficient and in need of the body, for it is only a
part of the complete essence of man. But from the point of view of
existence, this is not true. As a substantial form the human soul has
a complete act of existing (esse), and since it is a spiritual form, its
act of existing is itself spiritual. When it informs the body it
communicates to it that act of existing so that there is but one
substantial existence of the whole composite. For Thomas,
therefore, the unity of man does not consist in a combination or
assemblage of various parts or substances, but in his act of
existing. This is the reason that Aquinas denied the presence of
several substantial forms in man. If a substantial form gives
substantial existence, several forms of this kind would give man
several existences and his unity as a substance would be destroyed.

Aquinas upheld this doctrine of being in the face of wide spread

opposition from his contemporaries. On the one hand, philosophers
like Siger of Brabant wished to return to the Aristotelianism of the
Averroes. Siger reminded Thomas that Aristotle had written about
form and matter and composition of the two in substances; he had
never mentioned an esse distinct from them. On the other hand, he
faced the opposition of those who admitted esse as a distinct
principle of being but simply treated as an accident of essence.
This had been the view of William of Auvergne and Albert the
 Great, who traced the concept to Avicenna. For Thomas this was
still to view being as primarily essence or form and to reduce the
role of existence to an accidental determination of essence.
Thomas stood alone in his century and indeed in the whole Middle
Ages for the doctrine of existential being.

B. The Disintegration of the Medieval Synthesis in the Modern Age.

Because of the basic incompatibility between the Greek and Biblical view
of God and man, the two syntheses of these divergent views of reality
attempted by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas disintegration in the Modern
Age.
The disintegration took the form of two revolts.
1. First Revolt (15th to 19th century).

a. Renaissance (15th & 16th century) -

attempted to get back to the Classical Greek view before
and apart from the Biblical view.
b. Reformation (16th century) -
attempted to get back to the Biblical view apart from the
Classical Greek view. Luther turned against Scholastic
Philosophy.
c. Modern Physical Sciences (16th to 20th centuries) -
rejected Greek view of physical world.
• Pre-Newtonian (16th & 17th) -
there was a revolt in astronomy against Aristotelian-
Ptolemaic view of the universe by Copernicus,
Kepler, and Galileo
and against Aristotelian physics by Galileo and
Isaac Newton.
• Newtonian (18th) -
the Newtonian physics lead to the reign of
mechanism.
• Atomism (19th) -
the development of atomic theory in chemistry was
a revolt against Aristotelian continuous view of
matter.
d. Modern attempts at synthesis (17th to 19th century)

ι.In religion:
• Protestant Scholasticism (17th & 18th
centuries).
• Pietism - reaction to Protestant
Scholasticism.
• Deism (18th & 19th century).
• Protestant Liberalism (19th & 20th century)
 • Fundamentalism - reaction to Protestiant
Liberalism.
ιι.In philosophy:
• Modern rationalism (17th century)
• Modern empiricism (18th century)
• Common Sense Realism (18th & 19th
century)
• Kantian critical idealism (18th & 19th
century)
• Absolute idealism (19th century)
ιιι.The Enlightenment or The Age of Reason (18th
century)
reasserted the rationalism of the Greek view of reality
combining it with Newtonian science.
• Modern rationalism (17th century)
• Mechanism
• Determinism
• Materialism
• Atheism
• Moralism
ιϖ.Idealism reasserted the Greek view of reality.
2. Second Revolt (19th - 20th century).
a. Romanticism (19th century) - revolt against rationalism
and mechanism of the Age of Reason.
b. Darwinian Evolution (19th century) - revolt against
Biblical view of the world as God's creation.
c. In the Physical Sciences - revolt against mechanism and
determinism.

• Maxwellian Field Physics (19th) -

the rise of field physics and the decline of
mechanism.
• Relativity and Quantum Mechanics (20th) -
revolt against mechanism and determinism.
b. Pragmatism (20th) - rejected modern versions of the
Greek view for a practical test for truth.
c. Naturalism (20th) - rejected modern versions of the Greek
view and also the Biblical view for the evolutionary view.
d. Logical Empiricism or Positivism (20th) - rejects modern
versions of the Greek view for a empirical test for meaning
or truth.
e. Existentialism (20th) - rejects modern version of Greek
view

ι. Christian Existentialism - and for the Christian

view.
 • Soren Kierkegaard.
• Neo-Orthodoxy - Barth and Brunner.
• Neo-Protestantism - Niebuhr and Tillich.
ιι. Non-Christian Existentialism - rejects the Christian
view.
• Martin Heidegger.
• Karl Jaspers.
• Jean-Paul Sartre.

ENDNOTES

[1] cf. John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (New York, 1930).

[2] Michael B. Foster, Mystery and Philosophy

(London: SCM Press Ltd., 1957) p.32.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Werner Jaeger, Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers

(Oxford: The Claredon Press, 1947), p. 72.

[5] William Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy

(New York: Doubleday & Co., 1958), p. 72.

[6] Forster, Mystery and Philosophy, 32.

[7] Aristotle Metaphysics 12. 9. 1074b16, in vol. 8 of Great Books of the Western World
ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), p.605.

[8] Ibid., 12. 9. 1074b34.

[9] Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 10. 7. 1178a2-7, quoted in Barrett, Irrational Man, p.
78.

[10] Cherbonnier, "Biblical Metaphysics," p. 372.