How Medieval Christian Thought Contrasts with Greek Philosophy - Essay Example

Many elements of modern Western world views are inherited from the Greco-Roman and late antique and medieval Christian philosophies. Schools of thought within them, however, did not develop separately but rather since the 1st century A.D. they were mingling together and combined old traditional world views with a newer world outlook. The history of the Christian thought serves as a good example of such intermingling and differentiation that defined its course of development and caused similarities and contrasts between the Christian thought and the Greek philosophy. Let us try to see what these similarities and contrasts were between them on example of the role that was played by the dichotomy that separated the world into opposing realms, such as ideas and matter in the Greek philosophy, and spirit and flesh or faith and reason in the Christian thought. In general, for the formation of the Christian thought probably the most important was its early period when this presently dominant religion was searching to define itself. The Romans widely propagated Greek culture and in this way Christianity found itself in the Greco-Roman society amidst pronounced philosophical and religious confrontation. It was integration of competing philosophies and of the rich Hellenistic philosophical heritage into the Christian world view that served as a winning strategy for the Christian religion. Before the first statements regarding the general doctrine of the church were made in the 4th century, philosophical theology was becoming more important than direct revelation in determining the essential Christian doctrines. At the same time, not all of the early church scholars had the same view on the available heritage of secular knowledge, which was mainly Greek. For instance, Tertullian in 2nd century treated the secular knowledge as unnecessary in comparison to scriptures, but his coeval Clement of Alexandria defended the usefulness of the Greek secular heritage, and of philosophy in general, as a proper addition to the gospel. In the 3rd century Origen of Alexandria went even further and claimed that there actually was a philosophical school that through reason confirmed the gospel. For Origen this school was represented by the philosophy of Neoplatonists - the further development of Platonic philosophy initiated by Plotinus - with its views on the essence of God and divine relation to the world and man. In the end, this position of Origen prevailed and thus Neoplatonism assumed the role of the basic philosophical theory that to a large degree would define the initial development of the Christian theology. To this school religious and mystical aspects are attributed which distinguish it from the traditional form of metaphysical dualism of Plato, who laid the basis for dualistic perception of Idea and Matter so that the surrounding reality was viewed as a mere image of a higher truth, which in its turn was the abstraction (Plato 1999). Plotinus did not think he presented a new version of Platonic philosophy, and maintained that he was actually interpreting original Platonic doctrines. Still, in the process of such interpretation he created almost completely new philosophy. Neoplatonism absorbed some Aristotelian elements and notions from other traditions, and in the end turned out to be deeply religious, because it confronted the spirit and the flesh, which can be related to Platos more general distinguishing between Idea and Matter, because via notions of the nous and the world soul it introduced the metaphysical proposition of mediating agents which pass the power from the divine One, and because it called for rejection of the sensual world through a severe asceticism. All this was appealing to the Christian church and Neoplatonism entered the Christian theology of the Roman empire. In this way, the Christian theology absorbed the Greek vision of passionless philosophical God reminiscent of the transcendental Neoplatonic concept of One, and the Christian Platonists were employing elements of Platonism to defend the rationality of the Christian religion and to attack competitive world views. However, after some time Christianity differentiated itself in some aspects from the Greek heritage. In this regard, we can compare Greek philosophy with views of a later prominent Italian scholar Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), who lived at a pivotal period for the Western philosophy when the return of the Aristotelianism combined with scholasticism, which aimed to reconcile ancient classical philosophy with the medieval theology, to reignite debates about the correlation between reason and faith. Aquinas studied with a scholastic philosopher Albertus Magnus who worked on restating of the Aristotelian heritage. This study greatly influenced Aquinas and turned him into an erudite scholar devoted to the Aristotelian method. In general, scholastics of that time promoted empiricism and voiced support for policies and doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. They stood in opposition to Christian mysticism, to concepts of dualism of mind, and of the evil nature of the world promoted earlier by Plato and St. Augustine. The contribution of Aquinas in this ideological opposition was his attempt to offer a practically applicable theory of natural law. To better understand it we must point out that for Aquinas philosophy was a general term related to a set of sciences. Aquinas sees a difference between acts of a man and human acts, as the former acts can be also seen in non-human agents, while human acts stem from knowledge and will and always aim at a known good. But Aquinas points out that as a certain good is not the same as the goodness itself, then what holds together all the human actions is what he terms as the overarching goodness which is the ultimate end. Therefore, any human action is directed towards the ultimate end. Thus, the view that morality stems from the nature of the world and of the human beings forms the essence of the natural law moral theory. For Aquinas, main morality-generating principle of human nature is its rationality, for instance manifested in human pursuit of a certain good, which underlies any moral law. Therefore, as humans are born rational, it is morally right to behave in correspondence with our rational nature, and natural law now means the involvement of humans in the postulated higher eternal law, which in its turn governs the nature of an eternal universe. Humans are not free to choose their good as such as: "the natural law is altogether unchangeable in its first principles" (Sigmund 1987, p. 51). Instead, we are free only to choose whether to follow or not this true end. What is important is that Aquinas connects his understanding of the natural law with the practical realm, where there is also a basic concept represented by the good, akin to the concept of being in the theoretical realm. The good signifies that which is pursued as a source of fulfillment, so the first rational practical judgement becomes to pursue the natural human good to which we are inclined, like existence, food, family, etc, and to avoid evil. Here, Aquinas can already deal with the correlation between morality and law, because as there is no clear difference between norms of law and moral notions, laws draw their authority not from some prior human agreement, but are logically related to natural moral norms. Simply put, some standards are obligatory because of their moral truthfulness, even though there is no particular convention that legitimized them. We can conclude that on the matter of discussed dualistic dichotomy the late antique and medieval Christian thought was in a constant, albeit equivocal, dialogue with the Greek philosophical heritage. On one hand, the influence of elements of Platonic philosophy adopted by the Christian thought is hard to overestimate as Neoplatonic doctrines were very helpful for the Christian church in the early period of its formation. On the other hand, closer to the Middle Ages the accents within the Christian thought shifted and the Neoplatonic heritage became opposed, so the Christian theology began to differentiate from those elements of Greek philosophy to which it was initially attracted. That scholasticism aimed to reconcile the classical philosophy with theology of medieval Christianity did not mean that this time Christianity was again borrowing from the Greek philosophy. By this time there already were numerous fixed Christian doctrines in place, so Christianity was selective in its attitude to the Hellenistic heritage. The example of Aquinas shows that in his attempt to find more practical connections between the realm of eternal and the worldly order he had to reject some Greek doctrines. But ironically, the Greek philosophy still remained a factor of influence as can be seen from the mentioned return to Aristotelianism, so the philosophical exchange between the Greek philosophy and the Christian thought was not over. Sources Plato. Phaedo. Oxford University Press, 1999. Sigmund, Paul. St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics. W. W. Norton & Company, 1987. Read More