Augustine and Medieval Theology

Transcription

1 Augustine and Medieval Theology CH511 LESSON 21 of 24 Scott T. Carroll, PhD Experience: Professor of Ancient History, Cornerstone University Hello again. How are you doing? I hope all is going well with you as you are pursuing your work in this course and your other courses that are set before you. I hope the Lord is richly blessing you and you are seeking His face as you pursue Him in preparation with your training and school. Also, I hope that you re finding blessings with your family and friends and fellowship so that you might enjoy the time as you re on this arduous academic pilgrimage. It s good to be with you again. We have some very interesting things to discuss today, and I m eager to get on top of it. Let s begin with prayer, as our habit s been, and call out together to our God. Father in heaven, we come to You humbly, as Your servants. We seek Your face, and we pray that You might help us to keep a watchful eye on You as we think about pursuing those servants of Yours who have served You so effectively in the past like Augustine. We re grateful for the work of grace that You ve had in their life, and we pray that in some small way and in a small measure we might as well find both satisfaction and joy and a sense of accomplishment in ministry as we follow in the steps of this great saint who you worked in so powerfully. But, Father, above all we pray that our eye might be watchful to keep its gaze on You, that we would not be conformed to the mere graven image of even the best of your servants, but that we might be transformed into the image of the God-Man, Your beloved Son. Now we commit ourselves, our study, and our work into Your hands. We pray that You might smile on our efforts as we contemplate this material together. We ask these things in the name of our Intercessor. Amen. We re in transition. We spent a lot of time looking at Augustine s life, and we ve looked at his major works, but now we re going to look forward into the Middle Ages. We re going to look successively, the next four times together, at Augustine s influence, profound influence on the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and Reformation, and even the post-reformation years. We ll be continually going back and drawing from the works that he s written and the ministry that he had, and we ll see how he becomes a real cornerstone, a foundation stone for medieval Catholicism and for the Reformation movement and other movements afterward. 1 of 12

2 You ll recall that we ve looked together at his works. In the most recent past, we ve looked at the fabulous work, City of God, and we ve thought about the influence that it s had, and we ve thought about the ideas that he unpacks in it that related to a Christian view of history. We ve thought about how history is, in fact, God s story and to think from the Bible to God s role in the human tragedy with calling out people unto Himself and with the focus on the advents of Christ, His intervention in the tragic course of human events, and his incarnation and cross work and the resurrection and kind of reconciliation that those of us who have tasted of His grace and love can experience. But not to stop merely there, but to look forward to the culmination of things as Augustine looked from beginning to end in the Second Advent and to look to see how God has His hand on the wheel, so to speak, steering human history to the ultimate, which is His goal. And we ve thought about that. We ve thought about the influence that it had on certain figures in the Middle Ages and some contemporary influences in our own day and age. Today what we re going to do is begin now our pilgrimage looking at the medieval world first, and I d like to look with you at the earliest period of medieval history and of the first couple centuries, and we ll ask the question, What kind of influence did Augustine have on the sixth and seventh centuries? My objections will be summarize this age for you, to provide some kind of a historical context, and to provide an account of the prominence that Augustine had in the succeeding centuries after death. I want to look at his most important contributions to that early development of the medieval church, and I hope that in some ways, finally, it will help us to understand medieval theology, which to many people coming from an evangelical context is kind of a black hole, and to help us understand the emergence of the Catholic tradition. I hope, as well, it will help us understand later developments and even in some way to understand those who are around us and our own selves. So those are my objectives. Let s begin, and what we ll do is look at this early era of medieval history and we ll after an introduction look at it through the lens of Augustine s works and begin by means of his works to unpack some of the medieval developments. Let s begin with an introduction and try to set a historical setting for you. You may be aware of the drama that unfolded after the fall of Rome. When we talk about the Middle Ages, we have to be careful to make a distinction between what geographical region we might be looking at, and in the case set before us, we re looking, in fact, at western Latin-speaking Europe. 2 of 12

3 Augustine s influence would be both to the East and the West, but what happened was that what began as a political split by Diocletian as a way of consolidating his empire in the late third century. It was a way of being more streamlined in collecting taxes and keeping tabs on people and so forth, and a more efficient way of providing a succession of emperors. This division followed the geographical lines but also linguistic lines, and we ve seen already that there have been developments in the Greek-speaking church and in the Latin-speaking church, and these two bodies are going to increasingly drift apart. There are theological reasons for this. They re political, economic, they re geographical, they re social. There are a wide variety of reasons to explain this, and as a point, a footnote to this, I ve had a number of students that I ve had the joy of teaching the early church today, and some of them are on a pilgrimage of their own looking for the true church, looking for something that would be more satisfying than where they find themselves, and my point of caution would be that as we go back to investigate the earliest church that regrettably things hopelessly divided early on. The notion of ideal ecumenicism found as one spiritual body in Christ as His joyful Bride will be ultimately fulfilled in eternity, and because of a variety of factors, one has to make a choice if you re going to go back to an apostolic tradition. The true church is found in those things that are held in common by each of these traditions. So just a footnote to something that many people struggle with, I think. But when we look at the early Middle Ages, things were drifting further and further apart between East and West. Underneath different political structures, increasingly involved in theological debates over various things, customs, the liturgy over issues that relate to theology and dogma, and over canon and Scripture, so a number of issues came up. One to add in even a little bit later would be the whole question of Christian aesthetic and art and whether one is able to depict God or not, and these things would divide the two traditions. And so when we re talking about this era, we re going to be looking at the West, but we re also going to note that Augustine had also an important influence in the East. Increasingly in the West it became more and more rare for one to have both Latin and Greek as languages. As the churches split apart, there were intentional policies to stifle the learning of Greek and, in fact, even to discourage it. This would not turn around until the Renaissance with the fall of Constantinople and again the availability of Greek texts and Greek teachers and so forth in the West. 3 of 12

4 When Rome fell, it found itself in hopeless disarray and politically tried to reconsolidate in the fourth and fifth centuries, but increasingly the focus of Western European history was shifting away from Italy to the north, and the stage would be dominated by these masses of what were once called barbarian peoples who now find themselves consolidating and taking their customs and developing around them indigenous and more stationary cultures. And this was a major goal of the church to evangelize these people and it was not only the orthodox church but also the Arians and Pelagians. All had their inroads to a variety of these communities. This was a kind of transition that was taking place. Increasingly you had the adaptation of barbarian kinds of customs. There was a power vacuum when political Rome collapsed, and this power vacuum was naturally filled by the church itself, which was arranged and developed around a hierarchy and very easily fit that vacuum. And so the church would provide a kind of sense of leadership and a kind of patriarchal statesmanship and guidance and protection and care for the people in a place where a decentralized government was unable to do that. What happened in this transition period is that Augustine will play very important role, his writings and works, and we have to think about how that comes about. You realize that it s the works that are in circulation that are of influence, and these works are in Latin, and again that s the ecclesiastical language of the West, and it is clear that Augustine s works were zealously copied and distributed. The kinds of catalogues that survived from monastic libraries make it clear that his works were very popular and were read and were in high demand. We ve got to take a look then at what kind of influence it had on the developing church, so that s given you a little bit of the historical background and economic background. Let me say something briefly about some of the developments in terms of the introduction here and some of these are more philosophical. The first thing is that we refer to this era as the Middle Ages, that somehow it s the bridge between the classical or ancient world and the modern world and that this kind of filled the gap. At times it s referred to as the Dark Ages, implying that there was no Renaissance or revival of culture or imaginative developments or achievements, and that reflects a bias that has been overturned by historians. It s something that s debated, and there are those who support and those who oppose, but there was from my vantage point a lot of lively culture in the Middle Ages and reflected in the realm of religion in particular. 4 of 12

5 And so when we look at the kind of intellectual developments, it s in the church that one might look; and the artistic ones, it s in the church; and the marvelous architectural achievements and so forth. This era s been called an Age of Faith, and rightly so. So what we call Middle or Dark or Medieval if we want to be a little more politically sensitive to the period, they themselves, the people who lived at this time, considered themselves to be modern people living in a modern era. And, in fact, as they moved more closely to the date 1000, they felt that they were at the end of times. By the way, that s a tradition with the passing of any century. There seems to be in and around the approach of that date a greater kind of fanaticism about prophecy and prediction of end times, but everyone realized that they were in the last days, even the people in the Middle Ages who were absolutely modern in every sense that they could understand. Another thing, we ve called this period an Age of Faith, and we should go back to define what we mean by faith. Faith to someone from an evangelical context might mean an assent of belief. In the medieval sense, there was a different nuance to that word. Faith had the idea of doctrine, of teaching, so when one talks about having the faith of the Catholic Church, it means possessing a teaching that has been fleshed out and passed along to someone, and so it doesn t have the same kind of subjective sense that faith would have particularly in an American evangelical setting. It had a much more historical, objective sense to it. One should keep that in mind. Doctrine is distinct, however, from dogma. Dogma is a term that is used in a philosophical sense often, and this is doctrine. There would be a real emphasis, particularly at this time, the sixth and Seventh centuries, on preaching and exposition of the Word. The reason is that they re in an evangelistic and missionary mode. The people who are writing are writing in Spain and in England and in France and in Germany, and they re working with kings who are first-generation converts who are trying to work with their people and see them converted and to understand the benefits that the church and Christ can bring to their kingdom. It s an exciting time period, but exposition of the Word would be important. Doctrine in terms of a teaching of the Word would be a major emphasis here. We use the word catholic or catholicity, and we ll use that quite a bit today. It means universal, and the idea is that it s something that s universally accepted. We ve thought about this over against maybe an American evangelical idea of faith and religion being a very individualistic experience. 5 of 12

6 Well, the benefit was seen at this time in something being universally shared, in common by everyone no matter where you looked. In some ways that was a sign or a seal of the voracity or truthfulness or genuineness of the experience. When we think of the idea of catholicity, we think of it more than in merely a geographical sense. I mean, we can think of universal meaning everywhere, but it also means at all times, and so you ve got this two-dimensional kind of understanding of this word. One is very geographical, and the other transcends time, both in the past and in the future, and when these people thought of accepting that which has been accepted by everyone, they mean everyone, and so they stand together as witness to the truth. These people had a great interest in the past. They were interested in what the world was like in the times of Augustine. They were not that far removed from the time of Christ, but they had limited sources, and they passed these sources along as compilers. Their manuscripts are going to begin compiling commentaries and quips and notes that accompany the Scripture. They will take excerpts from the great theologians of the early church like Augustine and include those excerpts in expositions, and these things will be passed along that way. But it s not done blindly. It s not done without some kind of an interaction with the text and critical thinking. These compilations in commentaries are called catenae [Latin (singular), catena, chain ], and they re common with Greek manuscripts, for instance, where the church fathers comments are kind of collected alongside the text. Later in the medieval church this would develop into different standards of glosses that were then passed along and then even after that printed. The writers, however, were engaged in the study of the text. The text itself was critically studied, and they had a kind of critical reflection on these texts as they passed them along. That was part of the obligation of the scribed as they engaged the text and wrote it and transmitted it, and for those who read the text. We know this because of the kinds of notes that we see that accompany this, and we know editions that people will add to it. These texts were passed along sometimes without attributing who they come from, and so you hear people in the tenth century who will be quoting something with great confidence, not quite sure where it comes from or thinking it comes from one source when it fact when we look at it carefully, it s coming from Augustine himself. Augustine s thought, his vocabulary dominated this period and defined what the catholic faith meant. We re going to look at some great medieval theologians like the Venerable Bede in England and Alcuin from York he and his disciples had such great influence 6 of 12

7 on Charlemagne and the Carolingian kingdom and Germany and France. We ll look at developments in Spain with people like Julian of Toledo and Isidore and a person named Ildefonsus, all of whom were prolific writers and show their dependency on Augustine and his marvelous prolific works that he wrote and his great mind and his committed faith. So, let s now take a look and through several lenses look at some of these medieval developments, and we ll try to show the kind of impact that Augustine had and at the same time help us understand medieval Catholicism as it was emerging in the Western church. Let s begin with a word that we ve tossed around here a lot. We ve talked about it. We ve defined it. It s an important term. And that s the term orthodoxy. What I d like to do is look at how the early medieval church defined orthodoxy, and next to that, let me give you a work of Augustine s that would be very influence in this realm, and that s his work On Faith and the Creed. These two are related orthodoxy and faith and the creed. You see, this is a day and age where high primacy was placed on catholic faith. One of the fathers said, Whoever wants to be saved, it s necessary above all, that that person holds to the catholic faith. This idea of holding to the catholic faith, that is, to that universal teaching that has been passed down through a major conduit of that would be Augustine and his works. This is fundamental to understanding the early medieval church. That idea of defining this universal teaching, we would look back to the Athanasian Creed in 327. This very language that in order to be saved, it s necessary to hold to the catholic faith is articulated in the Athanasian Creed. It s restated again in 633 at the Fourth Council of Toledo. At the Second Synod of Autun in 670 it s almost stated again verbatim that if you want to be saved, you must above all other things hold to the catholic faith. It also is stated in the preface to a series of sermons attributed to a person named Boniface, who was a missionary to the Germans, and in the preface to these sermons, he talks about importance of clinging to the universal teaching that s been passed along by orthodox people of the faith. Augustine s Faith and Creed would be a mature articulation of that, and it was read and loved and oftentimes quoted, and quoted by other church fathers and then passed along to these early medieval fathers. In defining what the catholic faith is, there are a couple of things that we have to look at. We have to look at what is known as the rule of faith and truth. This rule of faith and truth or canon or measurement of what constitutes faith and truth is identified not with one creed or with one church father but with a lot of different creeds and church fathers. It s what they hold in common that is essential. 7 of 12

8 You may have heard me say here before and it s something that is an important ideal for me to keep in mind and to live by and my students know it well it s an adaptation of a saying that s attributed to Chrysostom and other church fathers. I ve adapted it to say something like this: In the essentials, unity; in the nonessentials, liberty, but in all things love. And so you see the rule of faith and truth was what the church defined as essential. It s identified with a number of creeds. The idea was that these essential teachings should be the things that are emphasized in the missionary efforts. They should be emphasized in teaching new converts in their catechetical training, and this was something that was a dilemma for the church in this period. What do we teach them? How do we keep them all moving along? What s essential for them to know? These are things also that Augustine struggled with as he worked in the pastoral role as a preacher and teacher though trying to train new converts and teach young people to do the work of the ministry. The solution to this is found going back to the apostles, what the church did, Augustine and others said, What did the apostles teach? What does the Scripture tell us that they taught? What was important to them? What was passed along to them? What did their disciples teach? And how should we follow that? I have a great appreciation for historical-grammatical study of the text. I oftentimes wonder if it s not though driven by a lust for knowledge, by a fascination with minutiae, and somehow gets several steps removed from the most important things, to love one another. You think about apostolic teaching. What did the early church and the medieval church through Augustine, what did they understand to be the most important things that were taught by the apostles? They are really defined as three things. First is a strong teaching on the Trinity. Second was a strong teaching on the unity of the church, both unity in belief and practice, and third is a strong teaching surrounding the entire mystery of Christian doctrine: that would be the cross work of Christ, the virgin birth, the incarnation, the resurrection, these themes that are central to the salvation of the elect. This became an important aspect in the missionary literature and to the Germans, Spanish, England, and France, and these themes reoccur over and over again and find their source ultimately in apostolic doctrine and so forth. But it s through Augustine that they re getting these things. The major things that the church will be admonishing missionaries to teach new converts are twofold. 8 of 12

9 They see all these ideas, Trinity, the unity of the church, the mystery of the Christian religion, summarized in the apostolic preaching and in the exposition of the Lord s Prayer, and as the missionary or the teacher is teaching these things, unfolding these important early teachings for new converts, they re preparing them for catechism and teaching them things, to memorize the Lord s Prayer and to meditate on these things. Again, Augustine s exposition of these Scriptures would be of great usefulness to these people and would have been in circulation and clearly was in the terms of the ideas that they re coming up with. They are not original. They are ones that have been passed along by tradition. Another aspect related to this, when we talk about this idea of defining orthodoxy, so it s defined in terms of content of teaching, we have to think in terms of heresy again, and I ve told you before that heresy means a choice, actually, and it was a benign term at first. The three chief opponents of the church in the sixth and seventh centuries were heathens, were heretics, and were hypocrites, and they still seem to be the opponents of the church today. Well, you have a sense for the original meaning of heretic. A heretic was someone who came out from the body of Christian teaching. They left the orthodox church, and they went their own way, and as the church reflected on that, particularly because of the lingering influences of Arianism and Pelagianism and other groups in Spain, the church would understand the catholic faith not only as being universal but as being walls to a universal building, walls of protection, and would refer to the walls of faith of the church, of the doctrines of the apostles, and that somehow these heretics have left those walls. They ve left the locus of the church and have gone out, and they re found outside. As a result of this, there are certain dangers to avoid that were pointed out by the early medieval fathers, and these ideas are coming out in part because of Augustine s work and his conflict and controversies with various heretical groups as well. One thing that they ll emphasize is that doctrine and deeds, lifestyle, go together, that knowledge without practical experience leads to arrogance. The practical experience without knowledge leaves one useless. And so the two have to be bound together, and we ve certainly seen that it was in the life of Augustine. The practice, lifestyle, is the basis for theory, and so good theology develops out of practical living. As well, Bede will recognize, Venerable Bede, that these things are universally recognized and will emphasize that. Isidore will say that an orthodox teacher is one who believes correctly and who lives as he believes, so they re going to demand this, and they re going to demand an orthopraxy. 9 of 12

10 Technically you may know that orthodoxy is technically one who is correct in how he gives glory to God, and so it becomes a nice expression of that that one s teaching and life fit together and they re not hypocritical. A hypocrite is not orthodox because they can t in their life give glory to God. Their teaching and their life do not match. That quote is attributed, by the way, that one who is correct and how he gives glory to God is attributed to Isidore again. Catholic, the idea of catholic is synonymous with this notion of being universal. Universal can also mean general or generally accepted or commonly accepted. Later the idea of catholic would come to mean according to everyone or according to the whole, and this became a forcible way to argue against these kinds of idiosyncrasies that were defined as heresies. See, it s in American Christianity we have this room for innovation. Innovation and novelty are condemned in the medieval church. When you hear someone say, I ve thought of something that no one else has ever thought of. I view this passage differently than anyone else, I ve seen that happen before. I ve heard people say that despite the fact that hundreds of people for two thousand years have defined a certain passage a traditional way, they now have a new way of understanding this. A kind of arrogance that goes behind that; the arrogance that everyone else is wrong and God has revealed this just to me is the arrogance that one expects to find in a heretic or false teacher. Alcuin of York also contemplated these things and would go so far as to say of tradition that there s no salvation outside of the catholic church, that there s no room for innovation. Alcuin practiced self-effacement as he studied the past. Although he was critically involved with it, he placed himself at the feet of those great teachers who had lived and died, and I would encourage that we all do that. Actively involved. Didn t cash the mind in, but at the same time, suppressed the heart and the pride. For Alcuin this tradition, this catholic orthodoxy is a kind of royal road that if you diverge off of it, you fall prey to all kinds of criminals and wild beasts, but if you stay on it, it s the road for the elect pilgrim to the celestial city. If we were to ask ourselves what kind of works were these people reading, how do we know that Augustine is an important piece in this puzzle of tradition that was read and accepted by these early church fathers, we ve expressed that one of the most important ways as we run up a catalogue is to look at the manuscripts that survived in the different monastic libraries or that were once in the monastic libraries, now they re no longer, which is another possibility. 10 of 12

11 Second, we look at quotations and works both attributed and nonattributed and can see that Augustine rises to the top as certainly the most influential church father in the West in these areas. A number of church fathers are intermediate between the seventh and eighth centuries and Augustine s time, and you ve got people like Gregory who will write works, compile works, and take directly from Augustine without attributing to Augustine. Consequently, Gregory is quoted, and it is in fact Augustine who is being quoted above all. These are not only in theological works, but it s also homiletical, exegetical kinds of works. There s Bede s allegorical exposition of the Song of Solomon. His ideas come directly from Augustine, and so we ve got expositions, we ve got expositions on prayer, we have all kinds of things, and it falls in line with this whole notion of a prohibition on any kind of theological novelty. People didn t want to go off that road, outside the walls, so to speak, as quickly as people do today, for instance. The orthodox fathers were orthodox not because they were educated and had all kinds of great insight, but because they were loyal to the apostolic tradition. In fact, in the Vulgate in 1 Timothy 6:20, the Latin text condemns novelties of terminology. People come up with new terms that define things, and they place a debate around their words and language in such a way that they redefine the wheel along their own terms rather than those terms traditionally laid down by Christ and His followers. The real deceptive thing that they realized in the medieval period, and Augustine did as well, is that heretics oftentimes mingle honey with their poison, and so they seem so right, but they re so wrong. I hope that your study of church history will help you to have a keener ear for what is right and what is wrong and to be discerning and to be a person who is loyal to a tradition that glorifies God in our life and in our practice. So if we look then at the main content of this catholic faith, apostolic teaching, we see several themes. We see the Trinity. We talked about the unity of the church, the mystery of the Christian dogma. There are two important things that relate to the Godhead: the exposition of the Trinity and the exposition of the incarnation. The exposition of the Trinity, Augustine s work is still the classic definition of the Trinity today, and so his work was heavily drawn upon and used. I should even point out that that even includes the blind acceptance of idiosyncrasies in his works. Certain things in his exposition on the Trinity and other Trinitarian works are kindly passed along. I ll give you one example. 11 of 12

12 Augustine is the person who provides the kind of Western language for the idea of the Filioque, which we ve talked about, the notion that the Spirit descended, emanated both from the Father and from the Son, rather than from the Father only. This was passed along uncritically in some ways. There are other examples of these kinds of things, and this one in particular is of interest because it became a sticky point of one of those many things that divided the church both East and West. As we look at the incarnation, the Trinity is one thing to pass along, clearly relying on our friend, Augustine, with the incarnation as well, and the next time that we meet together, we re going to talk about the incarnation and how it influenced how these people saw themselves to behave as Christians, and again relying directly on Augustine. Until we meet again, God bless you. I look forward to seeing you soon. Christ-Centered Learning Anytime, Anywhere 12 of 12