In order to understand how we got to this point in the history of ideas, one must first discard the notion that humankind has always thought the same. Yes, instinctually–one can say man’s fallen nature is synonymous with what is often called “instinct,” namely the base, animal nature of man–human beings have changed very little. However, in the history of ideas and beliefs, contemporary man (notice that I did not say “modern man”, because we’ve entered a period in history that is perhaps better labeled with the nomenclature “postmodern”) does not perceive the world in the same way as our progenitors–the Medievals and, certainly not, the Ancients. In order for the Church to better bear witness to the Kingdom, we need to have a basic understanding how ideas evolved over the ages. We do not live in a vacuum. We as human persons are products of our culture, whether we like it or not, whether we are aware of it or not. The more we are cognizant of this the better we can communicate the Gospel to this generation.
What the Renaissance did in paving the way for the Age of Reason, the Reformation did for modern Christianity. Often we take the status quo for granted: things have always been this way, my conception of God is the same as a medieval person. This is not always the case. Beliefs, ideologies, worldviews all change. We are at an advantage. We’re able to look back on millennia of “progress”–ostensibly the ebb and flow of ideas throughout the steady flow of history. We can say that the return to classicism in the late Middle Ages led to the humanism of the Renaissance, which led to the scientific revolution. Going further back we can say the influx of Islamic culture in Europe, especially in Spain, brought Aristotle and mathematics, which in turn sparked interest in classicism, which led to observation of the external world. Even though this is simplified for didactic purposes, one can not deny the slow changes through history.
The High Middle Ages and the Renaissance
The modern narrative, which has been formed by science and the notion of history as progress, looks back at the Middle Ages with scorn and criticism. It is often said that this period of history is nonintellectual, superstitious, and oppressed by the Roman Catholic Church–thus the term “Dark Ages.” Anyone who reads and studies deeply the great works of this period will be faced with the reality that the Middle Ages was marked with great beauty and harmony of thought. Yes, this is the age before modern medicine and heliocentricism, and, yes, the Western Roman Empire fell to barbarians and the glory of Rome lost its luster; however, that does not mean that the West lived in abject ignorance awaiting the savior of science to liberate them from the shackles of institutional religion.
Many things contributed to the shift from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age, for our purposes we will look at three things that pushed society into the Modern Age.
The Black Death
What is commonly called the Black Death was the second wave of plague that spread across Europe. Killing upwards to 200 million people, it caused social, economic and religious upheaval. Many people concerned themselves more with earthly well being over spiritual well being. Parenthetically, I will add if one wants to see the tensions between religion and social order played in narrative form, watch Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece the The Seventh Seal. The concern for health and survival became paramount, and because the Catholic Church seemed unable to provide answers other than judgement and doom, the people began to lose trust in the institution. The social consciousness was ripe for science to reshape the imagination.
From Cosmos to Universe
The Ptolemaic model of the cosmos was undisputed for over a millennium. Based on Aristotle’s teaching, Ptolemy’s explanation of the cosmos conceived earth at the center with the moon and known planets revolving around the earth following a series concentric paths. Beyond the planets were the fixed stars, and beyond that the Primum Mobile, which God, the Unmoved Mover, acted upon, setting all things into movement. Regardless of this geocentricity, God was still the immutable fixed point, the first cause, that brought all things into being and gave them movement. In Boethius’ words, “the heavens are less wonderful for their foundation and speed than for the order that rules them.” This order has its origin in God Himself. As we know from St. Maximus the Confessor, God is the origin and end of all things set in motion by Himself, and the aim of the Christian life is to return to the Origin.
Before science changed our understanding of the cosmos, our predecessors in the faith observed a world of order, goodness and beauty which was created and sustained by God Who was beyond all being. In The Hexameron of St. Basil the Great, our father among the saints ends the first homily thusly:
Let us glorify the supreme Artificer for all that was wisely and skillfully made; by the beauty of visible things let us raise ourselves to Him who is above all beauty; by the grandeur of bodies, sensible and limited in their nature, let us conceive of the infinite Being whose immensity and omnipotence surpass all the efforts of the imagination. Because, although we ignore the nature of created things, the objects which on all sides attract our notice are so marvelous, that the most penetrating mind cannot attain to the knowledge of the least of the phenomena of the world, either to give a suitable explanation of it or to render due praise to the Creator, to Whom belong all glory, all honour and all power world without end. Amen.
The last great work composed with this geocentric model was the Divine Comedy, then Copernicus changed everything when he discovered that the planets revolved around the Sun, this began, as Charles Taylor points out, the gradual shift from cosmos to universe. Once a belief that things were beautifully ordered by God with mankind having a unique place in the cosmos, now all of that came into question. The Tychonic system was an interesting attempt at combing both geocentric and heliocentric models. It finally culminated with the Galileo affair.
In 1616, Galileo caught the attention of the Inquisition, which eventually ended with his condemnation and the banning of all of Copernicus’ books. On February 25 he was told to “abstain completely from teaching or defending this doctrine and opinion or from discussing it; and further, if he should not acquiesce, he is to be imprisoned.”
The following day the council declared:
[…]in the name of His Holiness the Pope and the whole Congregation of the Holy Office, ordered and enjoined the said Galileo, who was himself still present, to abandon completely the above-mentioned opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing; otherwise the Holy Office would start proceedings against him. The same Galileo acquiesced in this injunction and promised to obey.
Then on May 26:
He [Galileo] has only been notified of the declaration made by the Holy Father and published by the Sacred Congregation of the Index, whose content is that the doctrine attributed to Copernicus (that the earth moves around the sun and the sun stands at the center of the world without moving from east to west) is contrary to Holy Scripture and therefore cannot be defended or held.
The Catholic Church’s dogmatic refusal to accept Copernicus’ discovery–along with any scientific teaching that was incongruous with church doctrine–provided reason for the imminent Enlightenment thinkers to reject any Christian belief that didn’t hold up to scientific scrutiny.
Nominalism
The simplest way to understand nominalism is that it is a metaphysical theory that rejects universals and abstract objects. Depending on the philosopher will depend on which of these is rejected. William of Ockham (1287 – 1347) is one of the more well known Medieval nominalists who opined that all abstractions and universals only exist within the mind, and only individuals exist. This can be understood as a more extreme form of Aristotelianism that argued against the Platonic Forms (Ideas), and that universals exist in individuals. William’s epistemology is often labeled conceptualism because any perceived commonality between like objects is really just a conceptualization. One can with relative ease draw a line between William through Descartes and Locke to Kant. The rationalists and empiricists of the Enlightenment era borrowed heavily from William of Ockham and Duns Scotus, and especially one can see the indebtedness to nominalism in Kant’s a priori categories. What this does is eventually lead to a rift between language and reality and, as one finds in Hegel, the apotheosis of reason.
Orthodoxy presupposes realist epistemology and metaphysics, or more specifically, a sacramental and symbolic understanding of creation. Words correspond with objects, and universals exist not simply as conceptions or categories of the mind. In the theanthropic mystery universal humanity is assumed. Sacramental language presupposes that the symbol is real–that the symbol is a convergence or unifying of two levels of ontological reality. If one believes a symbol merely represents something which is absent, or is an arbitrary, empty sign, one is not Orthodox.
In Orthodox theology, universals are important for understanding the order of the cosmos and the aforementioned movement of beings. St. Maximus the Confessor explicates in Ad Thalassium 2 the relationship between universals and particulars. He opens with, “God, as he alone knew how, completed the primary principles (λόγοι, logoi), of creatures and the universal essences of beings once and for all.” He continues:
Even now in his providence he is bringing about the assimilation of particulars to universals until he might unite creatures’ own voluntary inclination to the more universal natural principle of rational being through the movement of these particular creatures toward well-being, and make them harmonious and self-moving in relation to one another and to the whole universal. In this way there shall be no intentional divergence between universals and particulars.
For St. Maximus, this movement is to “deify the universe.” Inextricable to this movement is apophaticism and asceticism. Each Christian’s journey is purgation of passions and illumination of the nous, only then will one have knowledge of the inner essences of created things (logoi). The Orthodox ethos is inseparable from this understanding of movement towards harmony with universals, which is movement towards eternal well-being, the End and Origin of all things–God Himself.
However, why did the Orthodox East and the Catholic West diverge concerning their understanding of universals? The nominalist-realist debate has ancient origins, yet it was rekindled in the Middle Ages due to the West’s focus on the rational and reasonable, whereas the East focused on spiritual knowledge (experience) of the Uncreated, the nous returning to the heart, noetic prayer. Reason in the West is what Orthodox would call dianoia, which is understood as the discursive and logical faculty in man, which in the later philosophers was reduced to the brain. This focus on reason led some Scholastics to insist on the need to retain the sovereignty of God. Charles Taylor points out that human nature/universals and telos limit God’s power and sovereignty because it required God to conform His will to these principles. This had consequences for human knowledge as well. If one discarded the belief in essences of things (logoi), then one also does away with the final cause, and is left with the efficient cause. At this point the world has become mechanistic.
Dawning Modernity: René Descartes
We come to the end of the Renaissance period–for many this was a period of rebirth–which is the twilight of the Middle Ages and Christendom. Modernity is on the horizon. However, the Middle Ages were a time of beauty, order and harmony, markedly different from our own time. The Renaissance was not so much a rebirth as, René Guénon writes, it was the “death of many things.”
This takes us to the Modern Age and to Descartes, who can be seen as the fruition of the Renaissance and the birth of modernity, he truly personifies the paradigm shift. He is often pinned with the appellation “Father of Modernity.” From an Orthodox perspective he is the culmination of Scholastic thought sieved through science. He attempted to find an irrefutable point that all people can agree upon regardless of religious belief and scientific theory. He professed to be Roman Catholic, I don’t believe that he had any malevolent intentions, but ultimately his philosophical method led to a monumental shift from the Church controlled/defined society to the modern era where science and reason reigned supreme and the Church was relegated to private belief and devotion. How this happened will be detailed in part two of this series.
