Adolf Harnack · 11 of 17

3. On the History of Ecclesiastical Science.. · Part 2

By theology little advantage, certainly, was derived from this in the fifteenth century. The Italian Humanists, the fathers of this European movement, practically took nothing to do with it — at the most they instituted some historical investigations, with the view of annoying the priests and monks (Laurentius Valla: favours from Constantine, origin of the Apostolic Symbol, writings of the Areopagite) — and even the Germans made no real contributions to progress. One could help all other sciences by going back upon antiquity, but not theology. What it could learn from Plato and the Neoplatonists it had learned long before. When men like Nicolas of Cusa sought to release it from the embraces of the Schoolmen, they themselves knew of no better form for it than that which had been given to it by Augustine and Mystics like Eckhart. But trial had been made of this form of long time. Just because it appeared unsatisfactory, and there was an unwillingness any longer to breathe in this fine fog, there had been, in course of time, a passing over to Nominalism. Now, there must be a reverting to the beginning — though it might be better understood. Another prescription was not offered. Theology seemed doomed to move helplessly in a circle; fundamentally it remained as it was; for the iron ecclesiastical authority remained. Then came the help, not from Aristotle, nor even from Plato and Augustine, but from the conscience of a Mendicant Monk.

But what the Renaissance and Humanism did indirectly for theology must not be ignored. While it was not really demolished by them, and still much less re-shaped, yet for the future re-shaping they certainly rendered most valuable services. The sources of history were gradually disclosed for it also, and the Humanist Erasmus not only laid the foundation of textual criticism of the New Testament and scientific patrology, but carried them at once to a high state of perfection. From a taste for the original, criticism grew up. What had died out in the Church with Origen, nay, in some measure even before Origen, or what — keeping out of view a few Antiochians — had never really developed themselves strongly, namely, historic sense and historic exegesis, developed themselves now. The Reformation was to reap the benefit of them; but by the Reformation also they were soon to be swallowed up again. For the history of theology, and of dogmas, in the strictest sense of the term, Humanism was otherwise quite unfruitful. Theology was put aside by it with a respectful recognition, or with an air of cool superiority, or with saucy ridicule. Scarcely anyone approached it with serious criticism. Erasmus aimed at giving it a humanistic ennoblement and freeing it from restrictions. When the Reformation dawned, he pronounced, among other things, the controversy about indulgences to be a monks’ quarrel, or a delightful dilemma for causing stir among the parsons. When things then grew serious and a decision had to be made, it became apparent that the Franciscan ideal, in peculiar combination with antique reserve and humanistic worldliness, with silent hatred of dogma and Church, and external submission, had a stronger hold on many aspiring souls than a liking for the gospel. The scholar, besides, would not let himself be disturbed by the din of the “Lutheran rogues.” Theological doctrine was held to be something indifferent: “Quieta non movere” — (let things that are at rest not bestirred) — or, at least, only in the form of a learned passage of arms. The avenger was at the door; the following 150 years showed the terrified scholars to a frightful extent that theology will not be mocked.

4. The Moulding of Dogma in Scholasticism.

In the Scholasticism of the thirteenth century the Latin Church attained what the Greek Church attained in the eighth century — a uniform systematic exhibition of its faith. This exhibition had as its presuppositions, first, Holy Scripture and the articuli fidei, as these had been formulated at the Councils; second, Augustinianism; third, the ecclesiastical (papal) decisions and the whole development of ecclesiasticism from the ninth century; fourth, the Aristotelian philosophy.

We have shown in the third and fourth chapters of Vol. V. how the old scheme of Christian doctrine had undergone a trenchant modification at the hands of Augustine, but how, in its ultimate basis — as regards the final aim of religion and theology — it did not lose its recognised validity, its form, rather, having only become more complicated. While Augustine described the influences of grace that operate in the Sacraments as the influences of love, he allowed the old view of the Sacraments to remain, namely, that they prepare for, and help to secure, the enjoyment of God. But he at the same time gave the most powerful impetus to a dual development of piety and ecclesiastical doctrine; for the forces of love that operate in the Sacraments establish also the “kingdom of righteousness” on earth, produce in this way the life in love that corresponds with the “law of Christ,” and qualify the individual for those good works which establish merit before God and create a claim for salvation.

In this last turn of thought Augustine had subordinated (by means of the intermediate idea, “nostra merita dei munera” [our merits gifts of God]), his new view of divine grace as a gratia gratis data (grace freely given) to the old, chiefly Western, view of religion, as a combination of law, performance, and reward, and in the period that followed this subordinating process always continued to be carried further. Grace (in the form of the Sacraments) and merit (law and performance) are the two centres of the curve in the mediæval conception of Christianity. But this curve is entirely embedded in faith in the Church; for since to the Church (as was not doubted) the Sacraments, and the power of the keys dependent on them, were entrusted, the Church was not merely the authority for the whole combination, but was in a very real sense the continued working of Christ Himself, and the body of Christ, which is enhypostatically united to Him. In this sense mediæval theology is science of the Church (Ecclesiastik), although it had not much to say about the Church. But on the other hand, at least till Nominalism triumphed, this theology never lost sight of the fundamental Augustinian aim: “Deum et animam scire cupio. Nihilne plus? Nihil omnino” (I desire to know God and the soul. Nothing more ? No, nothing whatever), i.e., it never discarded the view that in all theology what is aimed at ultimately is exclusively the cognition of God and of the relation of the individual soul to Him. It was the intermingling of theology as ecclesiasticism with theology as nourishment for the soul that produced within mediæval theology its internal discords, and lent to it its charm. From this intermingling also there is to be explained the twofold end here set before the Christian religion, although to the theologians only one of the ends was consciously present: religion and theology must on the one hand lead the individual to salvation (visio dei or surrender of the will), but it must on the other hand build up on earth the kingdom of virtue and righteousness, which is the empirical Church, and bring all powers into subjection to this kingdom.

Augustine utilised in quite a new way the articuli fidei; for him they are no longer faith itself; but, re-shaping them in many ways, he builds up faith by means of them. Yet their authority was not thereby shaken, but in a certain way was still further increased, inasmuch as the external authority became greater in the degree in which the internal — that faith identified itself exclusively with them — became less. This was exactly how things continued to move on in the Middle Ages. It was solely the articles of faith of ecclesiastical antiquity that were, in the strict sense, dogmas. Only the doctrine of transubstantiation succeeded in winning for itself equal dignity with the old dogmas, by the quid pro quo that it is implied in the doctrine of the incarnation. When in this way the doctrine of transubstantiation took its place side by side with the old dogmas, everything really was gained; for by this link of attachment the whole sacramental system might be drawn up to the higher level of absolute Christian doctrine. This, too, afterwards took place, although, prior to the Council of Trent, the distinction was never made in detail between what belongs to dogma and what is simply a portion of theology, and even after the Council of Trent the Church wisely avoided the distinction. It is thus explained how, about the year 1500, no one except the most decided papists could affirm how far the province of necessary faith in the Church really extended.

The task of Scholasticism, so far as it was dogmatic theology, was a threefold one. Following Augustine, it had to shape the old articuli fidei so that they would adjust themselves to the elliptic line drawn round the sacrament and merit; it had to revise the doctrine of the Sacraments, which had come to it from Augustine in an extremely imperfect form; and it had to gather from observation the principles of present-day Church practice, and to bring these into accord, on the one hand with the articuli fidei, raised to the level of theology, and with the doctrine of the Sacraments, and on the other hand with Augustinianism. This task became more complicated from the fact that the Schoolmen — at least the earlier — uniformly combined dogmatics with philosophy of religion, and thus introduced into the former all the questions of metaphysics, as rising out of the general state of knowledge at the time. But this great task was really faithfully carried out by mediæval theology. That theology fulfilled the claims that were made upon it; indeed, there has probably never been a period in history when, after hard labour, theology stood so securely in command of the situation, i.e., of its age, as then. At the same time it knew how to maintain for itself until the fifteenth century the impression of a certain roundedness and unity, and yet left room, as the contrast between the Franciscan and Dominican dogmatists shows, for different modes of development. Yet on the other hand it must not be denied that the opinion here expressed by no means applies when we deal with the relation between piety and theology. In the case of Thomas, it is true, the claims of the latter and former still coincide, although not so perfectly as in the Greek Church at the time of the Cappadocians and of Cyril. But from the close of the thirteenth century piety and theology manifestly held an increasingly strained relation to each other. The former recognised itself always less clearly in the latter. They were one, it is true, in their ultimate ground (finis religionis, authority of the Church); even the most devoted piety was not really able to free itself from these bonds. But starting from the common basis, theology unfolded a tendency to treat the holy as something authoritative, external and made easy by the Church, and this tendency piety viewed with growing suspicion and annoyance. In the doctrines of the Sacraments and of grace, as Scholasticism gave fuller shape to them — developing germs which were not wanting even in Thomas — the strain between theology and piety reached clearest expression. The Augustinian reactions from the middle of the fourteenth century, at one time noisy in their course, at another time moving on silently and steadily, were the result of this strain. The official theology of the fifteenth century must be recognised only in a relative way as the expression of the true Catholic piety of the period. This applies even to Tridentine Catholicism, and holds true to the present day. The doctrine, as it is, is not the sphere in which vital Catholic faith lives. But because its foundations are also the foundations of this faith, the faith lets itself in the end be satisfied with this doctrine.

As we have not to do with the philosophy of religion, we must confine ourselves in what follows to describing the scholastic revision of the old articuli fidei, the scholastic doctrine of the Sacraments, and the scholastic discussion of Augustinianism as related to the new Church principles, which led finally to an entire dissolution of the Pauline Augustinian doctrine. With regard to the first of these points the statement can be quite brief, seeing that in the revision of the old articuli fidei theological doctrines were dealt with which, as scientifically unfolded, never acquired a universal dogmatic importance, and seeing that this revision leads over at many points into the philosophy of religion.

A. The Revision of the Traditional Articuli Fidei.

1. The article “de deo” (on God) was the fundamental and cardinal article. In the strictly realistic Scholasticism the Areopagitic Augustinian conception of God was held as valid: God as the absolute substance. Where this conception was adhered to, its absolute necessity for thought was also asserted (Anselm’s ontological proof,) and a high value was ascribed to the proofs for God. Through the acquaintance with Aristotle, however, the Areopagite conception of God was restricted, which had developed itself in Scotus Erigena, Amalrich of Bena and David of Dinanto, as well as among the adherents of the Averrhoistic Aristotelianism, into pantheism. The cosmological proofs, to which preference was more and more given, led also to a stricter distinguishing between God and the creature, and Thomas himself, although the Areopagite Augustinian conception of God is still for him fundamental, stoutly combated pantheism. Following Anselm, Thomas also linked the conception of God as the absolute substance with that of self-conscious thought, adopted, still further, from Aristotle the definition of God as actus purus, and thus gave the conception a more living and personal shape. But he had at the same time the very deepest interest in emphasising absolute sufficiency and necessity in God; for only the necessary can be known with certainty; but it is on certain knowledge that salvation, i.e., the visio dei, depends. Thomas accordingly now conceived of God, not only as necessary being, but also as an end for Himself, so that the world, which He creates in goodness, is entirely subordinated to His own purpose, a purpose which could realise itself indeed even without the world. Yet Duns already combated (against Richard of St. Victor, see also Anselm, Monolog.,) the notion of a necessary existence due to itself, and thereby really abandoned all proofs of God: the infinite is not cognisable by demonstration, and hence can only be believed in on authority. Occam made as energetic an attack on the “primum movens immobile” (prime immovable mover) and likewise fell back on authority. But with the impossibility of demonstrating the infinite, and of giving life by speculation to the notion of the “necessarium ex se ipso,” there disappeared also for Nominalism the conception of the necessity of the inner determinedness of the infinite Being, of whom authority taught. God is not summum esse (supreme being) and summa intelligentia (supreme intelligence) in the sense in which intelligence belongs to the creature, but He is, as measured by the understanding of the creature, the unlimited almighty will, the cause of the world, a cause, however, which could operate quite otherwise from the way in which it does. God is thus the absolutely free will, who simply wills because He wills to, i.e., a cognisable ground of the will does not exist. From this point of view the doctrine of God becomes as uncertain as, above all, the doctrine of grace. Occam went so far as to declare monotheism to be only more probable than polytheism; for what can be strictly proved is either only the notion of a single supreme Being, but not His existence, or the existence of relatively supreme beings, but not the one-ness. Accordingly the attributes of God were quite differently treated in the Thomist and in the Scotist schools. In the former they were strictly derived from a necessary principle, but only to be cancelled again in the end, as identical in the one substance, in the latter they were relatively determined; in the former — in accordance with the thesis of the summum esse — a virtual existence of God in the world was assumed, and in the last analysis there was no distinguishing between the existence of God for Himself and His existence for the world, in the latter — as the world is a free product of God’s will, entirely disjoined from God — only an ideal presence of God is taught. As can easily be seen, the contrast is ultimately determined by different ideas of the position of man and of religion. For the Thomists, the idea is that of dependence on God Himself, who comprehends and sustains all things, for the Scotists the idea is that of independence in relation to God. It certainly meant an important advance upon Thomas when God was strictly conceived of by Duns as will and person, and was distinguished from the world; but this advance becomes at once a serious disadvantage when we can no longer depend upon this God, because we are not permitted to think of Him as acting according to the highest categories of moral necessity, and when, accordingly, the rule holds, that the goodness of the creature consists in surrender to the will of God, of which the motives are inscrutable, while its content is clearly given in revelation (so Duns). The view that contemplates God as also arbitrariness, because He is will, becomes ultimately involved in the same difficulties as the view that contemplates Him as the all-determining substance, for in both cases His essence is shrouded in darkness. But the narrow way that leads to a sure and comforting knowledge of God, the way of faith in God as the Father of Jesus Christ, the Schoolmen would not follow. Therefore their whole doctrine of God, whether it be of a Thomist or of a Scotist cast, cannot be used in dogmatic. For on this point dogmatic must keep to its own field of knowledge, namely, the historic Christ, and must not fear the reproach of “blind faith” (“Kahlerglaubens,” collier’s faith,) if it is blind faith that God can be felt and known only from personal life — and, in a way that awakens conviction, only from the personal life of Christ. This does not exclude the truth that Thomistic Mysticism can warmly stir the fancy, and gently delude the understanding as to the baselessness of speculation. How far, as regards the conception of God, mediæval thought in Nominalism had drifted from the thought which had once given theological fixity in the Church to the articulus de deo, can best be seen when we compare the doctrine of God of Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, or John of Damascus with that of Duns or Occam. But the whole of dogmatic is dependent on the conception of God; for that conception determines both the view of salvation and the view of reconciliation. Finally, it must be pointed out, that mediæval theology strongly emphasises the conception of God as judge, though this conception was not introduced by it into speculations as to the nature of God.

2. Stormy debates on the right way of understanding, and the right way of mentally representing the doctrine of the Trinity, had already run their course, when the Mendicant Orders made their appearance in science. The bold attempts to make the mystery more intelligible, whether by approximating to tritheism (Roscellin), or by passing over to Modalism (Abelard), were rejected in the period of Anselm and Bernard (against Gilbert). Where Augustine’s treatise De trinitate was studied and followed, a fine Modalism introduced itself everywhere, and it was easy for any one who wished to convict another of heresy to bring the reproach of Sabellianism against his opponent who was influenced by Augustine. Even the Lombard was charged with giving too much independence to the divina essentia, and with thus teaching a quaternity, or a species of Sabellianism. The lesson derived in the thirteenth century from these experiences was to guard the trinitarian dogma by a still greater mustering of terminological distincions than Augustine had recourse to. The exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity continued to be the high school of logic and dialectic. In Thomism the doctrine still had a relation to the idea of the world, in so far as the hypostasis of the Son was not sharply marked off from the world-idea in God. Thomism was also necessarily obliged to retain its leaning to Modalism, as the conception of God did not at bottom admit of the assumption of distinctions in God, but reduced the distinctions to relations, which themselves again had to be neutralised. The Scotist School, on the other hand, kept the persons sharply asunder. But this school, especially in its later period, could equally well have defended, or yielded submission to, the quaternity, or any other doctrine of God whatever. But before this the whole doctrine had already come to be a mere problem of the schools, having no relation to living faith. The respect that was paid to it as the fundamental dogma of the Church was in flagrant contrast with the incapacity to raise it in theological discussion above the level of a logical mystery. Like Augustine in his day, the mediæval theologians let it be seen that they would not have set up this dogma if it had not come to them by tradition, and the decree of the Lateran Council (see page 182, note 7,) which places behind the persons a “res non generans neque genita nec procedens” (a thing not begetting nor begotten nor proceeding) really transforms the persons into mere modalities κατ᾽ ἐπινοίαν (existing for thought), or into inner processes in God. Or is it still a doctrine of the Trinity, when the immanent thinking and the immanent willing in God are defined and objectified as generare and spirare (begetting and breathing)? But in Nominalism the treatment of this dogma grew no better. The Thomist School was certainly still regulated by a concrete thought, when it sought to make the Trinity more intelligible by means of analogies; for according to these the finite world, and especially the rational creature, show traces of the divine nature and the divine attributes. But this idea Scotism had set aside, emphasising the threefold personality as revealed fact. Its “subtle investigations,” even Schwane confesses, “went astray too much into a region of formalism, and came to be a playing with notions.”

3. The doctrine of the eternity of the world was universally combated, and the creation from nothing adhered to as an article of faith. But only the Post-Thomist Schoolmen expressed the temporality of the world, and creation out of nothing, in strict formulæ. Although Thomas rejected the pantheism of the Neoplatonic-Erigenistic mode of thought, there are still to be found in him traces of the idea that creation is the actualising of the divine ideas, that is, their passing into the creaturely form of subsistence. Further, he holds, on the basis of the Areopagite conception of God, that all that is has its existence “by participating in him who alone exists through himself” (participatione ejus, qui solum per se ipsum est). But both thoughts obscure the conception of creation. Hence it is characteristic of Thomas, who elsewhere, as a rule, finds strict necessity, that he refrains from showing that the world’s having a beginning is a doctrine necessary for thought; Summa., P. I., Q. 46, Art. 2: “It is to be asserted that the world’s not having always existed is held by faith alone, and cannot be proved demonstratively: as was asserted also above regarding the mystery of the Trinity . . .that the world had a beginning is credible, but not demonstrable or knowable. And it is useful to consider this, in case perhaps some one, presuming to demonstrate what is of faith, should adduce reasons that are not necessary, thus giving occasion for ridicule to infidels, who might think that on the ground of such reasons we believe what is of faith.” If only Thomas had always taken to heart these splendid words, which, moreover, were directed against Bonaventura and Albertus Magnus, who undertook to prove the beginning of the world in time a doctrine of reason! Duns Scotus and his school naturally followed Thomas here, in so far as they held the temporality of the world as guaranteed simply by the authority of faith. Yet the view of Albertus certainly survived at the same time in the Church. The purpose of the creation of the world was taken by all the Schoolmen to be the exhibition of the love (bonitas) of God, which seeks to communicate itself to other beings. Even Thomas, correcting the Areopagite conception of God, declared the creation of the world no longer a necessary, but only a contingent, means, whereby God fulfils His personal end. Yet he certainly represented the personal end of God, which is freely realised in creation, as the supreme thought: “divina bonitas est finis rerum omnium” (the divine love is the end of all things), i.e., God’s willing His own blessedness embraces all movements whatever of that which exists, His willing it by means of creation of the world is His free will; but as He has so willed to create, the end of the creature is entirely included in the divine end ; the creature has no end of its own, but realises the divine end, which is itself nothing but the actualising of the love (bonitas). In this way the pantheistic acosmism is certainly not quite banished, while on the other hand, in the thesis of Thomas, that God necessarily conceived from eternity the idea of the world, because this idea coincides with His knowledge and so also with His being, the pancosmistic conception of God is not definitely excluded. In the Scotist school, the personal end of God and the end of the creature are sharply disconnected. As regards divine providence, from the time of Anselm and Abelard onwards, all the questions were again treated which were formerly dealt with by Origen; but from the time of Thomas they were added to in an extraordinary degree, so that quite new terminology was here created. To the question whether this world is the best, Thomas gave a negative answer, after Anselm had answered it in the affirmative; yet even Thomas thinks this universe cannot be better; God, however, could have created other things, which would have been still better. As a consequence of his fundamental view, Thomas assumes that God directs all things immediately; yet the greater the independence was that was attributed to the world, the stronger became the opposition to this thesis. In the theodicy, moreover, which was vigorously revised in the thirteenth century in opposition to the dualistic sects, Thomas attached himself more closely to Augustine. He did not shrink from the thought that God produces “quasi per accidens” (as it were accidentally) the corruptiones rerum (corruption in things); for the “perfection of things in the universe requires that there shall be not only incorruptible, but also corruptible entities” (“perfectio rerum universitatis requirit, ut non solum sint entia incorruptibilia, sed etiam corruptibilia”); but from this it follows that the perfectio universi requires beings that can fall from the good, “ex quo sequitur ea interdum deficere” (from which it follows that they are sometimes defective). In these doctrines, too, greater caution came to be exercised, as the distinction came to be more sharply drawn between God, and the creature as endowed with its own volitional movement.

4. The history of Christology was similar to that of the doctrine of the Trinity. In the twelfth century there was still much keen discussion with regard to the former, as the satisfaction was not general with the Greek scheme that had been framed in opposition to Adoptianism (Abelard’s Nestorian Christology was a protest against the doctrine of John of Damascus and of Alcuin, and continued to extend its influence). Even the Lombard, although, with Alcuin, he denies that the Logos assumed a human person, still gravitated — certainly in a very peculiar way — to a Nestorian thought, in so far as he denied, in the interest of the immutability of God, that by the incarnation God “became” something, the humanity rather being for him only like a garment. But against this doctrine, described as Nihilianism, and adopted by the dialecticians (Christ was, as man, non aliquid [not something]), a strong opposition was raised in the period of Alexander III., especially by German scholars (Gerhoch); there was asserted, in opposition to it, the most complete and real interpenetration of deity and humanity in Christ (see Alcuin), and the Lombard’s doctrine was even publicly described as dangerous. With this “nota” against “Nihilianism,” the doctrine of the two natures came to the great Schoolmen, and the problem of the “hypostatic union” now became as much the field of contest for the acutest thought as the problem of the Trinity. At the same time the view all took of the communicatio idiomatum implied that the thought must be excluded of a human person as existing for himself in Christ. But here, also, there resulted important differences between the Thomists and Scotists; for Thomas made the greatest effort to give such predominance to the divine factor that the human became merely something passive and accidental; as he was influenced by the Areopagite, he continued also, in a very real way, the Greek Monophysite Christology; nor was there wanting to him the Areopagite background, that the Logos entered into just the same relation to human nature as a whole, into which he entered with the human nature of Jesus. Against this Scotus made an effort, in a very modest way, and with a profusion of confusingly complicated terminology, to save something more of the humanity of Christ. But in return for this, he has to hear the verdict of modern Catholic theologians of dogma, that “he won for himself no laurels; that what he did, rather, in this field, with his critical censures (of the Angelic Doctor) was mostly a fiasco.” His effort to attribute existence even to the human individual nature of Christ was disapproved. His mild attempts, likewise, were repudiated to fix certain limits to the human knowledge of Christ, and to deduce the sinlessness of the human will of Jesus, not from the hypostatic union, but from the “plenissima fruitio quam habuit Christus” (fullest enjoyment that Christ had), i.e., from his perfect surrender of will. On this field Thomism continued victorious. The Scotists did not succeed in securing the recognition of a special mode of being for the individual human nature of Christ.