The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason

by Charles Freeman

  What seems to have marked the turning point is Constantine’s appreciation that the authority of the bishops could be used in support of the empire. However, he failed to appreciate how intractable the doctrinal disputes between the bishops had become, and his hope of having the church as a united body brought into the structure of the state by patronage, tax exemptions and toleration soon proved to be a fantasy. “You [the bishops] do nothing but that which encourages discord and hatred and, to speak frankly, which leads to the destruction of the human race,” he fumed. Hence his initiative in calling the Council of Nicaea to define and enforce a common doctrine. The theological history of the fourth century is largely one of the emperors, under immense pressure from invaders, attempting to achieve a foundation of orthodoxy so that they could preserve a united society. The embattled Theodosius eventually enforced Nicene orthodoxy by imperial decree and then, unlike his predecessors, moved vigorously to crush those Christians and others who continued to oppose it. Here politics won over theology.

  In short, the argument is first that despite attempts by Christians to use reason, it was not an appropriate way of finding theological truths. The frustrations which followed led to arguments becoming personal and bitter. The texts of a Jerome or an Athanasius are marked by invective at the expense of reasoned argument. This was not only deeply unfortunate for Christianity but became a major hindrance to a state which was hoping to use a docile church to support its authority. Hence the imposition of authority, an imposition which, backed by Christian suspicions of scientific argument, crushed all forms of reasoned thinking.

  Why was the suppression of reasoned argument so important? Reason is a means of finding truths through deductive and inductive logic. These truths may be valuable in themselves in helping us understand who we are (the theory of evolution), but they have also, through medicine, for instance, transformed human life. We are free to apply the fruits of reasoned thought to some of our greatest needs, in many areas with enormous success. Yet built into a tradition of rational thought is the necessity for tolerance. It is the only way in which it can progress. Reason also provides external standards of truth, often, for instance, from empirical evidence. This helps take personal animosity out of debates in that disputes over the interpretation of external evidence are normally less abrasive than those between human beings struggling to assert or maintain their personal authority. History suggests that conflicts between religions tend to be more destructive than those between scientists! In this sense, the price to pay for the assumption that there can be doctrinal certainty has been a heavy one.

  Philosophically, therefore, it becomes crucial to define the areas where certainty is possible and those where it is not. This was another of the intellectual achievements of the Greeks. Pace Plato, they understood that the nature of the divine, if such spiritual force exists, cannot be grasped when there is no external evidence for it. The troubles described in this book come not from the teachings of Jesus or from the nature of Christians themselves (though arguably one can trace them to Paul), but from the determination to make “certain” statements about God. Tragically, the pressures to do so, many of them politcal and economic, were intensified by the introduction of the concept of an afterlife, in which most would be punished eternally for failure to adhere to what was eventually decided to be orthodox. If there is no external standard by which one can define God, then figures who have the authority to define him for others have to be created and this authority given ideological support. This invariably means the suppression of freedom of independent thought. It was unfortunate that Christianity became embroiled in historical circumstances which made this such a dominant issue.

  One important theme which has run through this book is the linking of belief in rational thought with a belief in free will. Because rationalism has in so many fields enriched humanity’s understanding of itself and improved human life, rationalists have every right to believe in further progress. Those who have decried the possibility of rational thought or denigrated it do seem to have a much more pessimistic view of human existence. That was why I preferred to end this book with Aquinas rather than Augustine! Yet at the same time we do have a spiritual and emotional nature, and without it rational thought in itself would be arid. It is a healthy balance between the two which seems the goal.2

  In conclusion, it is worth asking why the political dimension to the making of Christian doctrine has been so successfully expunged from the history of the western churches. It is virtually ignored in most histories of Christianity. (The important role of the emperors and their successors has been more readily accepted by the Orthodox churches.) It is understandable, of course, that the churches wished to claim control over their own history, but the disappearance is also a symbol of Plato’s greatest triumph, the successful integration of his thought into Christian theology. Plato argued that his Forms were realities which existed eternally and independently of whether or not they were grasped by the reasoning mind at any historical moment. The context, the time or place or particular historical circumstances, in which orthodox doctrine (if it was given the same status as a Platonic Form) was formulated was immaterial. As we have seen, Eusebius assumes that doctrinal truth was known from the beginning of time and had to be protected from novelties introduced by heretics. The church councils were simply markers in the process of protecting the truth. So one could disregard the role of the emperor in calling or influencing the outcome of councils.

  History still has to be rewritten in the west, but the process is complete by the time of Gregory the Great. His immediate concern was to establish his own authority over the remains of an empire in which traditional imperial authority had disintegrated. There was no one to prevent him from rewriting the history of Christian doctrine as if the emperors had never played a part in it, and so he did. Drawing on the precedents set by Ambrose, the popes were now assumed to have control over emperors, a reversal of the political realities of the fourth century. It is only recently that scholars have begun to appreciate the extent to which the emperors actually made, in the words of Hilary of Poitiers, the bishops their slaves. It is simplistic to talk of the Greek tradition of rational thought being suppressed by Christians. It makes more sense to argue that the suppression took place at the hands of a state supported by a church which it had itself politicized (and, in the process, removed from its roots in the Gospel teachings).

  The history of Christianity is often presented as if it had a natural coherence. The evidence suggests that this is not true. The church of Constantine and his successors, embedded as it was in the stressed environment of the late empire, was radically different from that of earlier times. It was in this context that the suppression of rational thought took place, for reasons which I hope this book has made clear. Likewise, after the collapse of the empire, the medieval church in western Europe developed new roles and strategies to cope with a society in which a number of weaker political authorities (the early states of Europe) were emerging in competition with each other. The battle to defeat the classical intellectual tradition was, for the moment, a thing of the past, and the church could turn itself to new and different challenges. Gregory is the linchpin. There is no doubt that he is one of the greatest spiritual leaders the west has ever produced, not least in terms of his restoration of moderation and moral integrity to the Christian tradition after the obsessional ascetic narcissism and destructive invective of the fourth and fifth centuries.

  I would reiterate the central theme of this book: that the Greek intellectual tradition was suppressed rather than simply faded away. My own feeling is that this is an important moment in European cultural history which has for all too long been neglected. Whether the explanations put forward in this book for the suppression are accepted or not, the reasons for the extinction of serious mathematical and scientific thinking in Europe for a thousand years surely deserve more attention than they have received.

  Notes

  1

  1.
It is now known to be of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, but the mistaken belief that it was of Constantine led to it being spared when pagan statues were being destroyed by Christians. It was later moved to the Capitoline Hill and can now be seen under cover there in the Palazzo Nuovo.

  2. The information used in this chapter comes from the fine study of the fresco by G. Geiger, Filippino Lippi’s Carafa Chapel: Renaissance Art in Rome (Kirksville, Mo., 1986), chap. 5, on which my own text is based.

  3. The text itself is from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, 1:19, where it is related back to earlier scripture. In the subsequent verses Paul goes on to place God’s wisdom above human wisdom. The consequences of this condemnation of pagan philosophy are a major theme of this book, although, as will be argued later, Paul appears to have known very little of the philosophical tradition which he was attacking.

  4. Filippino Lippi was the son of the Florentine Fra Filippo Lippi, an important painter of narrative scenes, and, between 1488 and 1493, a student of Botticelli. The chapel—the only commission known to have been undertaken by Filippino in Rome—was undertaken at the behest of Cardinal Oliviero Carafa (1430–1511), cardinal protector of the Dominicans and a staunch upholder of papal authority. Carafa was a man of action who led a crusade against the Turks in the 1470s. (The Porta Ripa Grande is probably included in the fresco because it was from here that he embarked for the crusade.)

  5. The concept of “faith” will be explored in different contexts in this book. For some of the philosophical problems involved see chap. 9, note 14. The words “all will be well” come from the writings of the Christian mystic Julian of Norwich and refer directly to the peace and serenity brought by Jesus.

  2

  1. Aristotle, Metaphysics II. 1 993a30–34, trans. W. D. Ross.

  2. The story is told in book 5 of the Odyssey. A recommended translation is that by R. Fagles (London and New York, 1996). Examples of “heroes” consciously using rational thought to decide on a course of action can also be found in Homer’s Iliad. In book 17, lines 101–21 (trans. R. Fagles, Harmondsworth, 1991), Menelaus, “deeply torn, as he probed his own great heart,” weighs up whether to fight Hector in single combat or to withdraw from battle. In an important article, “The Epic Cycle and the Uniqueness of Homer” (Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 97 [1977], pp. 39–53), Jasper Griffin compares Homer’s epics, the Odyssey and the Iliad, with an epic cycle that survives from the same period. In the epic cycle heroes are immortal and there are monsters and miracles, while Homer’s is a cosmos where even heroes cannot escape death and the natural world is presented as it really is. (Animals cannot change shape or form, for instance.) In Homer’s world, of course, the gods still hold some power, as in the passage here, but over the next centuries the development of rational thought was to diminish their role in the natural world. Homer can thus be seen to have made an important contribution to the transition from a world of magic and miracles to one of reason.

  3. The evolution of the city state can be traced in O. Murray, Early Greece, 2nd ed. (London, 1993), and R. Osborne, Greece in the Making, 1200–479 B.C. (London, 1996).

  4. For an introduction to Greek religion see S. Price, Religions of the Ancient Greeks (Cambridge, 1999).

  5. Quoted ibid., p. 79.

  6. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 3:82, trans. R. Warner, Penguin Classics.

  7. Homer’s epics already include some appreciation of an underlying natural order. In this extract, the gods themselves act to impose it. Poseidon, the god of earthquakes, helped, significantly, by Apollo, the god of reason among other things, gets rid of the intrusive settlement made by the Greeks along the coastline outside Troy.

  The earth-shaker himself, trident locked in his grip,

  led the way, rocking loose, sweeping up in his breakers

  all the bastions, strong supports of logs and stones . . .

  He made all smooth along the rip of the Hellespont

  and piled the endless beaches deep in sand again

  and once he had levelled the Argives’ mighty wall

  he turned the rivers flowing back in their beds again

  where their fresh clear tides had run since time began.

  So in the years to come Poseidon and the god Apollo

  would set all things to rights once more.

  Trans. R. Fagles, The Iliad, Penguin Classics. The “Argives” are the Greeks.

  8. Translation by O. Murray.

  9. As an overview of the “scientific revolution,” see C. Kahn, “The Origins of Greek Science and Philosophy,” in A. Bowen, ed., Science and Philosophy in Ancient Greece (New York and London, 1993). The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, ed. A. A. Long (Cambridge, 1999), has articles on the main pre-Socratic (that is, those practising before Socrates, late fifth century) philosophers. For a broad survey of Greek thinking in general, see J. Brunschwig and G. E. R. Lloyd, eds., Greek Thought: A Guide to Classical Knowledge (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 2000), and the chapter “Philosophy” by B. Williams, in M. I. Finley, ed., The Legacy of Greece: A New Appraisal (Oxford, 1984).

  10. Lloyd’s case for the relationship between politics and philosophy is argued most strongly in his Magic, Reason and Experience (Cambridge, 1979). See especially chap. 4, “Greek Science and Greek Society.”

  11. M. West, “Early Greek Philosophy,” in J. Boardman, J. Griffin and O. Murray, eds., The Oxford History of the Classical World (Oxford, 1986).

  12. For Aristotle a particularly good introduction is J. Barnes, Aristotle (Oxford, 1982). Chap. 7, “Logic,” deals with syllogisms. A more advanced survey is J. Lear, Aristotle: The Desire to Understand (Cambridge, 1988).

  13. Quoted in P. Hoffman, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers (London, 1999), p. 113. A good introduction to Greek mathematics is to be found in M. Kline, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times, vol. 1 (New York and Oxford, 1972). Euclid and Apollonius are given full treatment in chap. 4.

  14. Herodotus used to be derided by commentators for his continuing use of myth and uncritical use of oral evidence, in contrast, it is argued, with the more “scientific” Thucydides. Recently, however, R. Thomas, in her Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion (Cambridge, 2000), has argued that Herodotus deserves to be placed in the forefront of intellectual developments of the fifth century.

  15. From Sacred Disease, attributed to Hippocrates, VI 352, 1–9L; 364, 9–15; 366, 5–6L. Trans. J. Longrigg; quoted in his Greek Medicine: From the Heroic to the Hellenistic Age. A Source Book (London, 1998), p. 21. Sacred Disease is considered at some length by G. E. R. Lloyd, in his Magic, Reason and Experience (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 15–29.

  16. The Ionian physician Alcmaeon (Ionian, fifth century B.C.) transfers the concept of stability being achieved through the union of opposites, surely a concept taken from notions of “the ideal city,” to the human body.

  Alcmaeon holds that what preserves health is the equality of the powers, moist and dry, cold and hot, bitter and sweet, and the rest—and the supremacy of any one of them causes disease, for the supremacy of either is destructive. The cause of disease is an excess of heat or cold, the occasion of it surfeit or deficiency of nourishment: the location of it, marrow or the brain. Disease may come about from external causes, from the quality of water, local environment or toil or torture. Health, on the other hand, is a harmonious blending of the qualities.

  Longrigg, Greek Medicine, p. 31. For Galen’s attempts to find a mathematical base for scientific demonstration, see G. E. R. Lloyd, “Demonstration in Galen,” in M. Frede and G. Striker, eds., Rationality in Greek Thought (Oxford, 1996), pp. 255–78.

  17. This is how Aristotle defended the spherical nature of the earth:

  (i) If the earth were not spherical, eclipses of the moon would not exhibit segments of the shape they do . . . (ii) Observation of the stars also shows not only that the earth is spherical but that it is of no great size . . . we do not see the same stars as we move to the N
orth or South . . . For this reason those who imagine that the region around the Pillars of Heracles [Straits of Gibraltar] joins on to the regions of India, and that in this way the ocean is one, are not, it would seem, suggesting anything incredible.

  From On the Heavens, trans. W. Guthrie, Loeb Classical Library, 1939, 297b25–298a10.

  18. For introductions to Greek science, see T. E. Rihill, Greek Science (Oxford, 1999), and G. E. R. Lloyd, Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle (London, 1974), and Greek Science After Aristotle (London, 1973). For astronomy there is Michael Hoskin, ed., The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy (Cambridge, 1999).

  19. Barnes, Aristotle, is excellent on all this.

  20. These examples are taken from Aristotle’s Historia Animalium and De Partibus Animalium, which are discussed in G. E. R. Lloyd, Aristotelian Explorations (Cambridge, 1996), chap. 3. When Aristotle was absorbed into Christianity (see chap. 20 of this book), his readiness to question was played down, and it was only fully recognized again in the twentieth century.

  21. G. E. R. Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom (Berkeley and London, 1957), p. 153.

  22. Ibid., p. 57.

  23. It is easy to pick up, from Paul’s letters and from Christian thought in general, the idea that rational thinking is somehow an arrogant enterprise, trespassing on what belongs to God. However, in so far as rational argument is subject to public scrutiny at every stage, the opposite is the case. A mathematician or scientist can be humiliated by his peers when his arguments are shown to be invalid. As E. R. Dodds put in in his well-known study The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley and London, 1951): “That honest distinction between what is knowable and what is not appears again and again in fifth-century thought, and is surely one of its chief glories; it is the foundation of scientific humility [sic]” (p. 181). The real problem, as Dodds suggests, lies in taking rational thought in directions where it cannot go—in cases where there are no firm axioms from which the argument can begin. This is, arguably, the problem with Plato. Plato believed that the ultimate truth about everything from “the Good” to beauty and justice could be solved by the use of rational thought. The difficulties this led to will be discussed in the next chapter and at other points in this book. There was an important strand in Greek thought—known usually as Pyrrhonist Skepticism, after its supposed founder, Pyrrhon (c. 365–275 B.C.)—that used rational argument to delineate the problems in making rational argument. The Greeks were also aware of how the value of materials or concepts may be relative to their context. Heraclitus, inventive as ever, noted, “Sea: purest and most polluted water, for fish drinkable and life-sustaining, for people undrinkable and death-bringing,” suggesting in other words that what may appear to have value in one context may lack it in another. See the article “Skepticism” by J. Brunschwig and G. E. R. Lloyd, eds., Greek Thought: A Guide to Classical Knowledge (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 2000), and R. Mortley, From Word to Silence: The Rise and Fall of Logos (Bonn, 1986).