Adolf Harnack · 15 of 20

2. Gregory the Great.

2. Gregory the Great.

The doctrine of grace taught by Pope Gregory the Great (590 to 604) shows how little Augustinianism was understood in Rome, and how confused theological thought had become in the course of the sixth century. A more motley farrago of Augustinian formulas and crude work-religion (ergismus) could hardly be conceived. Gregory has nowhere uttered an original thought; he has rather at all points preserved, while emasculating, the traditional system of doctrine, reduced the spiritual to the level of a coarsely material intelligence, changed dogmatic, so far as it suited, into technical directions for the clergy, and associated it with popular religion of the second rank. All his institutions were wise and well considered, and yet they sprang from an almost naif monastic soul, which laboured with faithful anxiety at the education of uncivilised peoples, and the training of his clergy, ever adopting what was calculated by turns to disquiet and soothe, and thus to rule the lay world with the mechanism of religion. Because Gregory, living in an age when the old was passing away and the new presented itself in a form still rude and disjointed, looked only to what was necessary and attainable, he sanctioned as religion an external legality, as suited to train young nations, as it was adapted to the Epigones of ancient civilisation, who had lost fineness of feeling and thought, were sunk in superstition and magic, and did homage to the stupid ideals of asceticism. It is the accent that changes the melody, and the tone makes the music. Gregory created the vulgar type of mediæval Catholicism by the way he accented the various traditional doctrines and Church usages, and the tone to which he tuned Christian souls is the key we hear echoed by Catholicism down to the present day. The voice is the voice of Gregory, and also of Jerome, but the hands are Augustine’s. Only in one respect he was not Augustine’s disciple. Akin to Cyprian and Leo I. and well versed in jurisprudence, he laid stress on the legal element in addition to the ritual and sacramental. Through him the amalgamation of doctrine and Church government made a further advance in the West.

A few lines are sufficient to depict the emasculated Augustinianism represented by Gregory. Reason, science, and philosophy, are more strongly depreciated by him than by Augustine (Evang. II. hom. 26); miracle is the distinguishing mark of the religious. Reason can, indeed, establish the existence of God, but it is only “by faith that the way is opened to the vision of God” (per aditum fidei aperitur aditus visionis dei; Ezech. II. hom. 5, following Augustine). The doctrine of angels and the devil comes to the front, because it suited popular and monastic piety. We can call Gregory the “Doctor angelorum et diaboli.” As regards the angels, he took particular delight (see Evang. II. hom. 34) in working out their ranks (under the influence of Greek mysticism), in glorifying Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael—the hero of miracle, the great messenger and warrior against the spirits of the air, and the medicine-man—in the exact division of angelic tasks and the idea of guardian spirits; he held that angels watched over men, as the latter did over cattle. He who thought so little of Græco-Roman culture sanctioned its most inferior parts in his doctrine of the angels. His monkish fancy dealt still more actively in conceptions about the devil and demons, and he gave new life to ideas about Antichrist, who stood already at the door, because the world was near its end. As the Logos had assumed human nature, so the devil would be incarnate at the end of the world (Moral. 31, 24; 13, 10). Before Christ appeared, the devil possessed all men of right, and he still possesses unbelievers. He raged through the latter; but as regarded believers he was a powerless and cheated devil. The doctrines of redemption, justification, grace, and sin show an Augustinianism modified in the interests of miracle, sacred rites and monachism. The God-man—whose mother remained a virgin at and after the birth—was sinless, because he did not come into the world through fleshly lust. He is our redeemer (redemptor) and mediator—these titles being preferred—and he especially propitiated the devil by purchasing men from him with his death, and he abolished the disunion between angels and men. It is also remarked incidentally that Christ bore our punishments and propitiated God’s wrath. But, besides redemption from the devil, the chief thing is deliverance from sin itself. It was effected by Christ putting an end to the punishment of original sin, and also destroying sin itself, by giving us an example. This amounts to saying that Christ’s work was incomplete, i.e., that it must be supplemented by our penances, for it transformed the eternal punishment of original sin into temporary penalties, which must be atoned for, and it acts mainly by way of example. In fact, in Gregory’s teaching, Christ’s death and penance appear side by side, as two factors of equal value.

We must remember this, or we may assign too high a value to another line of thought. Gregory regards Christ’s death as an offering (oblatio) for our purification: Christ presents it constantly for us, ever showing God his (crucified) body. But this apparently high pitched view after all means very little. It has risen from the observance of the Lord’s Supper. What was constantly done by the priest has been transferred to Christ himself. But both oblations, related as they are to our “purification,” possess their sole value in the mitigation of sin’s penalties. Still another consideration was at work in this case, one that, though relying on Biblical statements, sprang in reality from wholly different sources. It is the conception of Christ’s continual intercession. But this intercession must be combined with the whole apparatus of intercessions (of angels, saints, alms and masses for the dead, which were conceived as personified forces), to see that we are here dealing with a heathen conception, which, though it had indeed long been established in the practice of the Church, was only now elevated into a theory—that of “aids in need.” Gregory’s candid avowal that the death of Christ was not absolutely necessary, showed how indefinite was his view of the part it played in this mediation. As God created us from nothing, he could also have delivered us from misery without Christ’s death. But he willed to show us the greatness of his compassion by taking upon himself that from which he desired to deliver us; he willed to give us an example, that we should not dread the misfortune and miseries of the world, but should avoid its happiness; and he sought to teach us to remember death. Nor has Gregory yet sketched a theory of Christ’s merit—after the analogy of the merits which we can gain. That was reserved for the Middle Ages; but he has examined Christ’s work from the point of view of masses for the dead and the intercession of saints.

In the doctrines of the primitive state, original sin, sin, faith and grace, the Augustinian formulas are repeated—after the Canons of Orange, without irresistible grace and particular election. But a very real significance was attributed to free-will, which Augustine had abstractly admitted. Here we have the fully developed doctrines of free and prevenient grace, of the primitive state and original sin; (the carnal lust of parents is the cause of our life, therefore the latter is sinful; the “disobedience” or “disorderliness” of the genital organs is the proof of original sin; intercourse in marriage is never innocent). And side by side with all this, we have a calm statement of the doctrine of the will, which is merely weakened, and of free choice (liberum arbitrium) which must follow grace, if the latter is to become operative,—and yet grace is first to determine the will to will. From the first two powers co-operate in all good, since free-will must accept what grace offers. It can therefore be said “that we redeem ourselves because we assent to the Lord redeeming us.” Predestination is simply reduced in the case of sinners and elect to prescience, while at the same time it is maintained in other passages that it rests on God’s free power and grace. The latter assumption was necessary, because Gregory also adhered to “a fixed and definite number of the elect”—to supply the place of angels; but ultimately all belong to that number whose perseverance in faith and good works God knew beforehand.

After all, everything spiritual is reduced to the rites of the Church. As in the East, these come to the front; but they are regarded in a different way. In the East more scope is given to religious sentiment, which exalts itself and luxuriates in the whole of the Cultus as a divino-human drama; in the West, as befitted the Roman character, everything is more prosaic and calculating. Man accomplishes and receives; submissive obedience is the chief virtue; merits are rewarded, but on the humble a merit not his own is also bestowed: that is grace. Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and penance are the central points in the legal process of grace. We are baptised: thereby inherited guilt is expiated, and all sins committed before baptism are blotted out; but original sin is not obliterated, and the guilt of later sins remains. It must be cancelled or atoned for. For this there are numerous means, which are as necessary as they are uncertain. A man must make himself righteous; for righteousness is the supreme virtue (radix virtutum). He is instructed to pray, give alms, and mourn over life. But he is further told: “Those who trust in no work of their own run to the protection of the holy martyrs, and throng to their sacred bodies with tears, entreat that they may merit pardon at the intercession of the saints.” This practice of resorting to saints and relics had existed for a long time, but Gregory has the merit of systematising it, at the same time providing it with abundant material by means of his “Dialogues,” as well as his other writings. A cloud of “mediators” came between God and the soul: angels, saints, and Christ; and men began already to compute cunningly what each could do for them, what each was good for. Uncertainty about God, perverse, monkish humility, and the dread entertained by the poor unreconciled heart of sin’s penalties, threw Christians into the arms of pagan superstition, and introduced the “mediators” into dogmatics. But in terrifying with its principle: “sin is in no case absolved without punishment” (nullatenus peccatum sine vindicta laxatur), the Church not only referred men to intercessors, alms, and the other forms of satisfaction, to “masses for the dead,” which obtained an ever-increasing importance, but it even modified hell, placing purgatory in front of heaven; it thereby confused conscience and lessened the gravity of sin, turning men’s interest to sin’s punishment. Gregory sanctioned and developed broadly the doctrine of purgatory, already suggested by Augustine. The power of the Church, of prayers, and intercessors extended, however, to this purgatory of his.

The whole life even of the baptised being still stained at least by small sins, their constant attitude must be one of penitence, i.e., they must practise penance, which culminates in satisfactions and invocations to “Aids in need.” Gregory systematised the doctrine of penance in the exact form in which it passed over into the Middle Ages. Penance included four points, perception of sin and dread of God’s judgments, regret (contritio), confession of sin, and satisfaction (satisfactio). The two first could also be conceived as one (conversio mentis). The chief emphasis was still held to fall on “conversion,” even penance was not yet attached to the institution of the Church and the priest; but “satisfaction” was necessarily felt to be the main thing. The last word was not indeed yet said; but already the order of penance was taking the place due to faith; nay, it was called the “baptism of tears.” And the Lord’s Supper was also ultimately drawn into the mechanism of penance. In this case, again, Gregory had only to accentuate what had long been in use. The main point in the Lord’s Supper was that it was a sacrifice, which benefited living and dead as a means of mitigation (laxatio). As a sacrifice it was a repetition of Christ’s—hence Gregory’s development of the ceremonial ritual—and it is self-evident that this was conceived altogether realistically. In this rite (eucharistia, missa, sacrificium, oblatio, hostia, sacramentum passionis, communio), the passion of Christ; who “is entire in the single portions” (in singulis portionibus totus est), was repeated for our atonement. Yet even here the last word was not yet uttered, transubstantiation was not yet evolved. Indeed, we find, accompanying the above, a view of the Lord’s Supper, which lays stress on our presenting ourselves to God as the victim (the host), in yielding ourselves to him, practising love, rendering daily the sacrifice of tears, despising the world, and—daily offering the host of the body and blood of Christ.

What has been left here of Augustinianism? All the popular Catholic elements which Augustine thrust aside and in part remodelled have returned with doubled strength! The moral and legal view has triumphed over the religious. What we see aimed at in Cyprian’s work, De opere et eleemosynis, now dominates the whole religious conception, and the uncertainty left by Augustine as to the notion of God, because his ideas regarding God in Christ were only vague, has here become a source of injury traversing the whole system of religion. For what does Gregory know of God? That, being omnipotent, he has an inscrutable will; being the requiter, he leaves no sin unpunished; and that because he is beneficent, he has created an immense multitude of institutions for conveying grace, whose use enables the free will to escape sin’s penalties, and to exhibit merits to God the rewarder. That is Gregory’s notion of God, and it is the specific conception held by the Roman Catholic Church: Christ as a person is forgotten. He is a great name in dogmatics, i.e., at the relative place; but the fundamental questions of salvation are not answered by reference to him, and in life the baptised has to depend on “means” which exist partly alongside, partly independently of him, or merely bear his badge. From this standpoint is explained the whole structure of Gregory’s theory of religion, which once more sets up fear and hope instead of faith and love, and for the grace of God in Christ substitutes not an improved, but merely a more complicated doctrine of merit. And yet Augustine could not have complained of this displacement of his ideas; for he had left standing, nay, had himself admitted into his system, all the main lines of this theory of religion. Even the manifest and grave externalisation of sin, the direction that we must be ever bathed in tears, while at the same time zealous and watchful to escape the penalties of sin, the perversion of the notion of God and sin, as if God’s sole concern was to be satisfied, since he was the requiter—all these thoughts have their points of contact in the range of Augustine’s conceptions. The darkest spot in mediæval piety, the fact that it commanded constant contrition, while at the same time it incited the penitent to make calculations which deadened the moral nerve and changed regret for sin into dread of punishment—this source of evil, which makes religious morality worse than non-religious, was from this time perpetuated in the Catholic Church of the West.

But in the case of Gregory himself this system of religion is traversed by many other ideas gained from the Gospel and Augustine. He could speak eloquently of the impression made by the person of Christ, and describe the inner change produced by the Divine Word in such a way as to make us feel that he is not reproducing a lesson he has learnt from others, but is speaking from his own experience. “Through the sacred oracles we are quickened by the gift of the Spirit, that we may reject works that bring death; the Spirit enters, when God touches the mind of the reader in different ways and orders.” The Spirit of God works on the inner nature through the Word. Thus, many of Augustine’s best thoughts are reproduced in Gregory’s writings. Again, in his Dogmatics he was not a sacerdotalist. If, as is undeniable, he gave an impetus to the further identification of the empirical Church with the Church, if all his teaching as to the imputed merit of saints, oblations, masses, penance, purgatory, etc., could not but benefit the sacerdotal Church, and favour the complete subjection of poor souls to its power, if, finally, his ecclesiastical policy was adapted to raise the Church, with the Pope at its head, to a supremacy that limited and gave its blessing and sanction to every other power, yet his dogmatic was by no means mere ecclesiasticism. We wonder, rather, that he has nowhere drawn the last, and apparently so obvious consequences, in other words, that he did not rigidly concentrate the whole immense apparatus in the hand of the priest, and give the latter the guidance of every single soul. Already this had been frequently done in practice; but the thought still predominated that every baptised person was alone responsible for himself, and had to go his own way in the sight of God and within the Church, by aid of penance and forgiveness. It was reserved for the mediæval development first to set up dogmatically the demand that the penitent, i.e., every Christian from baptism to death, should depend wholly on the guidance of the priest.