Tag Archives: Greek philosophy

A sketch toward a seminar on Christian humanism

Posted on August 21, 2022 | 1 comment

Michelangelo, “The Creation of Adam,” ca. 1511; wikimedia commons, public domain

Some friends and I are beginning to plan a multi-day seminar on Christian humanism to be given to a group of scholar-teachers from across the country next spring. As we consider themes that might prove both interesting and helpful to such a group, I’ve framed some elements (still well short of an outline) as follows:

Nascent learning outcomes

  • Definitions:  What, simply defined, is Christian humanism (hereafter, “CH”)?
  • Warrants
    • Scriptural warrants:  What are some key scriptural foundations of CH?
    • Doctrinal warrants:  In what key Christian doctrines has CH been grounded?
  • Chronological scope, depth in the tradition:  How has CH been present and active in all periods of Christian history?
    • Patristic roots and forms:  How were the Church Fathers Christian humanists?
    • Medieval roots and forms: How were the scholastics and renaissance thinkers Christian humanists?
    • Reformation roots and forms:  How were the Reformers Christian humanists?
    • 20th century:  CH as a tradition reclaimed during times of crisis:  What social circumstances and intellectual contexts led WW II – era thinkers to attempt to reclaim facets of CH for their time? Are there parallels between the crisis of that era (to which some thinkers responded by looking to re-excavate CH) and our own moment of multifaceted crisis?
    • 21st century:  Application today:  If CH is appropriately considered as a “crisis philosophy” that has something to say to our moment, then do we need to recapture CH today – particularly in contemporary North American culture?
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Christian foundations of science and technology innovation, part III

Posted on June 19, 2022 | 1 comment

Justin Martyr (Wikipedia)

. . . continued from part II

2.   Reason is a gift too, and an important part of God’s image in us

A second important fact for the historical Christian engagement in scientific and technological pursuits is that from the earliest years, Christians have understood human reason as a second gift, along with creation. This positive understanding of reason flourished, again, from the earliest years of the church. As historian Jaroslav Pelikan puts it, “When the Christian gospel came into the world, it succeeded in converting the most rational of men, the Greek philosophers, to its message; this was proof that the gospel was not to be dismissed as irrationality and ‘insanity.’”

Among those converted philosophers were such key early Christian leaders as Athenagoras of Athens, Justin Martyr, and Clement and Origen of Alexandria. Such thinkers continued to function as philosophical teachers, and in that role, they forged systematic Christian understandings of God, humanity, and the world – a tradition of Christian thought that has continued to today.

Now you may suspect that when I say this tradition of careful Christian thought about things “continued to today,” I’m passing too lightly over the medieval Church critiqued by Condorcet. Wasn’t that Enlightenment skeptic right? Weren’t medieval people ignorant haters of knowledge who were sitting around waiting for the Enlightenment to happen so they could finally crawl out of the darkness and into the clear light of reason? That is what we so often hear.

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Christian asceticism (spiritual disciplines, self-denial): What’s up with that?

Posted on October 25, 2013 | Leave a comment

So . . . many . . . temptations . . .

So . . . many . . . temptations . . .

In this second post from the monasticism chapter of my forthcoming Medieval Wisdom: An Exploration with C S Lewis, we come to the “inner logic” of asceticism. What is it about our experience as human beings that requires us to engage in “askesis,” which means “training,” in order to live well with and for God?

In the last post I reminded us of what we already know–that the desires and goods of our embodied lives are also so darn distracting. They so easily lure us in with the siren song that, after all, our real fulfillment lies in them and not in God.

Now I want to add that this fact about us explains the behavioral strictures that modern American holiness and fundamentalist believers have insisted upon: no dancing, drinking, movies, and so forth. These have been misunderstood by critics as “legalism,” a term with Lutheran roots that means the attempt to earn God’s favor through rule-following (the sort of thing that Jesus scorned in the Pharisees). Rather, they have a singular purpose: Continue reading →

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The world returning to Paganism? Perhaps a good thing, said C S Lewis

Posted on August 7, 2012 | 2 comments

A representation from the 1500s of the Muses d...

The Muses dancing–an image from the 1500s.         (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yes, Lewis really did think, in this post-Christian world, that it would be a step forward if we returned to at least some forms, some values, of Paganism. A Classicist by temper and training, he argued this in some writings with great seriousness, but in the following poem with a wink:

Cliche Came Out of its Cage

1

You said ‘The world is going back to Paganism’.
Oh bright Vision! I saw our dynasty in the bar of the House
Spill from their tumblers a libation to the Erinyes,
And Leavis with Lord Russell wreathed in flowers, heralded with flutes,
Leading white bulls to the cathedral of the solemn Muses
To pay where due the glory of their latest theorem.
Hestia’s fire in every flat, rekindled, burned before
The Lardergods. Unmarried daughters with obedient hands
Tended it By the hearth the white-armd venerable mother
Domum servabat, lanam faciebat. at the hour
Of sacrifice their brothers came, silent, corrected, grave
Before their elders; on their downy cheeks easily the blush
Arose (it is the mark of freemen’s children) as they trooped,
Gleaming with oil, demurely home from the palaestra or the dance.
Walk carefully, do not wake the envy of the happy gods,
Shun Hubris. The middle of the road, the middle sort of men,
Are best. Aidos surpasses gold. Reverence for the aged
Is wholesome as seasonable rain, and for a man to die
Defending the city in battle is a harmonious thing.
Thus with magistral hand the Puritan Sophrosune
Cooled and schooled and tempered our uneasy motions;
Heathendom came again, the circumspection and the holy fears …
You said it. Did you mean it? Oh inordinate liar, stop.

2

Or did you mean another kind of heathenry?
Think, then, that under heaven-roof the little disc of the earth,
Fortified Midgard, lies encircled by the ravening Worm.
Over its icy bastions faces of giant and troll
Look in, ready to invade it. The Wolf, admittedly, is bound;
But the bond will break, the Beast run free. The weary gods,
Scarred with old wounds the one-eyed Odin, Tyr who has lost a hand,
Will limp to their stations for the Last defence. Make it your hope
To be counted worthy on that day to stand beside them;
For the end of man is to partake of their defeat and die
His second, final death in good company. The stupid, strong
Unteachable monsters are certain to be victorious at last,
And every man of decent blood is on the losing side.
Take as your model the tall women with yellow hair in plaits
Who walked back into burning houses to die with men,
Or him who as the death spear entered into his vitals
Made critical comments on its workmanship and aim.
Are these the Pagans you spoke of? Know your betters and crouch, dogs;
You that have Vichy water in your veins and worship the event
Your goddess History (whom your fathers called the strumpet Fortune).

Clive Staples Lewis

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Thanks, Da Vinci Code . . . for sending us back to Christianity’s founding fathers

Posted on March 20, 2010 | Leave a comment

Once in a while, a book or movie comes along that presents its own twisted version of the Christian faith or of events from Christian history, and the faithful rise up to object. And sometimes, the faithful also dig into our history to find out “what really happened.” This was the case with Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, first published in 2003:

Thanks, Da Vinci Code …
… for sending us back to Christianity’s “founding fathers”—and the Bible we share with them.
Chris Armstrong

It’s been a while since Christian History got an online response to rival the emails that poured in after last week’s “Behind the News”. We enjoyed reading your responses to staff writer Collin Hansen’s fact-checking piece on Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code.

One thing that encouraged us about your letters is this: In the face of spurious claims from a man who poses himself as a historian even as he writes a novel (“All descriptions of … documents … in this novel are accurate”), some of you turned to the apostles and church fathers, to see what they and their Bible really had to say about the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Anything that leads people back to those dynamic early centuries of the church can only help the Christian cause. Obviously no human untruth can obscure the truth of the Gospel. And the first thing you notice when you read the early “church fathers” is that they are completely convinced Jesus is God himself. I’m talking about those bishops and teachers from the 100s and 200s too—long before the Nicean council (Brown claims) enforced on the church the supposedly minority position of Christ’s divinity. Continue reading →

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