There is a striking contrast between two traditions of humanism which
have challenged each other throughout the course of the history of Western
culture, and indeed of Hellenic culture before that. One of these sees
man as the highest form of existence in the universe. The other sees man
and his culture as linked to Transcendent Divine Realities. The conflict
between these two views has been especially sharp in the last two
centuries of Western civilization, and nowhere has the conflict expressed
itself with greater force than in the different interpretations given to
Greek culture and its relationship to Christianity.
What, then, is the significance of the development of Greek culture?
Is it toward a humanism based upon man and his self-sufficient powers, or
man as recognizing a Divine Center for all of human life and its
activities? The character of the Greek achievement, the fact that it was
the first culture to provide for the formal development of philosophy and
science, the greatness of its language and literature, its creation of
political theory and literary criticism, the influence of its architecture
and sculpture, and its development of astronomy, mathematics and physics
during its later Hellenistic period--all of thesehave made it important
for Greek culture to give support to one's own outlook upon life.
It is only natural that a secular conception of life and the universe
should look back to the Greeks for the origins of a man-centered view of
reality. There is much in the Greek development which is in accord with
that ideological position. The earlier Greek belief in the gods and the
myths seems to have been replaced by a scientific interpretation of nature
as the first fruits of the rise of Greek thought and philosophy. The line
runs from Thales to Democritus, who concluded that all of reality was
nothing but atoms moving around in the void. There is also the
development of the agnostic rationalism of the Sophists in Athens in the
latter half of the fifth century, and the fact that Pericles himself, the
ruler of Athens during its Golden Age, seems to have shared their views.
In addition, a good deal of the Greek lyric poetry which has survived
accepts as its basic premise the idea that this life and its flowering in
youth, is the only thing of real value. The Greek idea of achieving glory
in battle through outstanding heroism was so that one might be remembered
after his death by future generations.
Moreover, the appeal which is made to Greek culture in periods of
anti-Christian reaction in the history of Western civilization, as with
the Averroists of the thirteenth century and their later influence, or
with the pagan humanists of the Italian Renaissance, or with the
philosophes of the Enlightenment, tends to reinforce this view of the
essentially anthropocentric character of Greek humanism. In fact, one of
the most long-lasting elements in the Renaissance heritage is that
conception of history which contrasts the barbarism and credulity of the
Middle Ages with the civilization and enlightenment of the classical
world. In this conception, the coming of Christianity and its belief in a
supernatural world, led to a thousand year interregnum of darkness and
superstition. But, then, the Renaissance came to the rescue of man who was
bound in the chains of intellectual obscurantism and childish fantasy. In
however modified or diluted a form, this idea still survives as the
background for the thought of most secular interpretations of history.
One of the most persuasive and influential of nineteenth-century
historians who promoted a secular-humanist view of the Renaissance was
Jacob Burckhardt, whose Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy appeared
in 1860. Of enormous influence on other scholars and on the writing of
textbooks for students, this view may be seen in the following passage of
Burckhardt's work:
"In the Middle Ages both sides of human consciousness--that
which was turned within as that which was turned without--lay
dreaming or half-awake beneath a common veil. The veil was woven
of faith, illusion, and childish prepossession, through which
the world and history were seen clad in strange hues. Man was
conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party,
family, or corporation--only through some general category. In
Italy this veil first melted into air; an objective treatment
and consideration of the State and of all the things of this
world became possible. The subjective side at the same time
asserted itself with corresponding emphasis; man became a
spiritual individual, and recognized himself as such. In the
same way the Greek had once distinguished himself from the
barbarian....[Thus] there arose a new spiritual influence which,
spreading itself abroad from Italy, became the breath of life
for all the more instructed minds in Europe." (London, 1921). p.
129.
A more extreme statement of this view was made by John Addington
Symonds, English disciple of Burckhardt, who shows the way in which the
conception was most likely to get into the textbooks in the
English-speaking countries:
"During the Middle Ages man had lived enveloped in a cowl. He
had not even seen the beauty of the world, or had seen it only
to cross himself, and turn aside and tell his beads and
pray;...humanity had passed, a careful pilgrim, intent on the
terrors of sin, death, and judgment, along the highways of the
world, and had scarcely known that they were sightworthy or that
life is a blessing...ignorance is acceptable to God as a proof
of faith and submission...," etc., etc.
As Douglas Bush, Harvard professor of English literature, remarks
about this sort of evaluation, "At least Chaucer wore his cowl with a
difference, even if he did not enjoy life like Savonarola and Calvin!"
HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM
But let us take a more balanced statement of this kind of contrast
between Greek humanism and Christian culture than either Symonds or even
Burckhardt is able to give us. What we are especially concerned with here
is the conflict thought to exist between the mature rationalism of the
Greek heritage and the limited intellectual horizons imposed on mankind by
the Christian religion. Matthew Arnold, outstanding English poet and
critic of the later nineteenth century, and not unsympathetic to
Christianity although he was agnostic in viewpoint himself, makes the
following distinction between what he terms Hebraism and Hellenism. (He
sees Christianity, we might add, as the more universal development of the
Hebraic view of life.)
"The uppermost idea with Hellenism [Arnold says] is to see
things as they really are; the uppermost idea with Hebraism is
conduct and obedience. Nothing can do away with this
ineffaceable difference...the bent of Hellenism is to follow,
with flexible activity, the whole play of the universal order,
to be apprehensive of missing any part of it, or sacrificing one
part to another....An unclouded clearness of mind, an unimpeded
play of thought, is what this best drives at. The governing idea
of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness; that of Hebraism,
strictness of conscience.
"Christianity changed nothing in this essential bent of Hebraism
to set doing above knowing" (Culture and Anarchy, 1869, chap.
1V).
Now the triumph of Hebraism over Hellenism by the conversion of the
ancient world to Christianity is not seen by Arnold, the humanist
sympathetic to Christianity, as being a bad thing, as being merely the
enchainment of the human mind, as many secularists like to portray it.
Christianity was necessary for that particular stage in human development
which had been reached by the end of the ancient world, as manifested by
the decline of the classical culture and the influx of the barbarians; it
was needed as a kind of purification and disciplining ofhumanity by the
rigors of the Hebraic spirit so that it would later be ready for a revived
Hellenism. This revival would come to its first flowering at the time of
the Renaissance, but reach its full maturity about the time of the later
nineteenth century in which Arnold himself lived. Now that Christianity
had disciplined the will and the affections, the treasures of the mind
which Hellenism had held in store could again be placed before Western man
for his proper use of them. One wonders what Arnold would have made of
our hedonistic Western culture today, with the mass media's constant
titillation of our sensual appetites. Would he feel that he had been
premature in getting rid of Christianity and its discipline of man's
passions, and that the participation in Hellenism must be indefinitely
postponed? Here is the way Arnold expresses his view of the meaning of
the triumph of Hebraism over Hellenism when the Roman Empire was converted
to Christianity:
"The indispensable basis of conduct and self-control, the
platform upon which alone the perfection, aimed at by Greece can
come into bloom, was not to be reached by our race so easily;
centuries of probation and discipline were needed to bring us to
it. Therefore the bright promise of Hellenism faded, and
Hebraism ruled the world." (That is, in the form of
Christianity.)
Now it seems to me that one can accept the essentially Hebraic
character of Christianity--the Church as the New Israel, the New Testament
as the fulfillment of the Old, Christ as the culmination and transcendence
of the teaching of the Hebrew Prophets--without ignoring the way in which
Christianity has appropriated the heritage of Hellenism. Christian
culture has been built, almost from the very first, on a double
foundation, that of both Hebraism and Hellenism, to use Matthew Arnold's
terms; and it was precisely the development of Greek culture toward
certain religious and philosophical ideas which made this possible. The
ultimate development of Greek culture was not away from religion toward
rationalism; it was toward an ever more intense searching after the
Unknown God.
Let us now examine more closely the validity of that contrast between
Hellenism and Christianity drawn by Matthew Arnold. Let us test it
especially in relation to the encounter of the two in the early centuries
of the Christian era.
In examining that subject, we shall first of all rely upon the
scholarship of Werner Jaeger, a German Protestant scholar who emigrated
from Germany in the mid-1930's and, after giving the prestigious Gifford
Lectures in Scotland, became professor of classics at Harvard until his
death in 1961. Jaeger's most important work is a three-volume study of the
ideals of Greek culture called Paideia, which is generally regarded as the
most penetrating examination of the Greek cultural development which
classical scholarship has achieved in the twentieth century. He has a
kind of summary of his conclusions from Paideia, in a lecture which he
delivered at Marquette University in 1943 called "Humanism and Theology,"
which is an excellent means to become acquainted with Jaeger's basic
conception of the historical development of Greek culture and its relation
to Christianity.
What does Jaeger see to be the relationship between Hellenism and
Christianity in this early Christian period to which Matthew Arnold makes
reference? Arnold's claim is that there was a basic incompatibility
between these two cultures, that "Nothing can do away with this
ineffaceable difference by which Christianity", as the inheritor of the
Hebraic attitude toward life, "set doing above knowing," and thus set
herself against the Hellenic approach to reality. (See Culture and
Anarchy, chap. 1V.)
We should like to examine this view in terms of the actual historical
development of the Christian religion. Did Christianity result in the
removal of the Hellenic spirit and Hellenic thought from the culture of
Christian antiquity, once its triumph in the Roman Empire had been
assured? If this was not the case, but Hellenism continued to exist as a
vital element in Christian culture, then the contrast between the two
cannot be as absolute as Arnold makes it out to be. One might recognize a
difference in relative emphasis without finding the one so exclusive of
the other that they could not continue to exist in some kind of fruitful
interaction and dynamic tension. In fact, any culture which manifests a
great deal of creative vigor is likely to be based on just such a tension
of competing elements.
Jaeger has this reference to the relationship between Christianity
and Greek culture in describing the subject matter of his most important
work:
GREEK PAIDEIA AND CHRISTIAN PAIDEIA
"...the transformation of Hellenistic Greek paideia into
Christian paideia is the greatest historical theme of this work.
If it depended wholly on the will of the writer, his studies
would end with a description of the vast historical process by
which Christianity was Hellenized and Hellenic civilization
became Christianized. It was Greek paideia which laid the
groundwork for the ardent, centuries-long competition between
the Greek spirit and the Christian religion, each trying to
master or assimilate the other, and for their final synthesis"
(Paideia, 11, xi).
That, it seems to me, is a more accurate statement of what actually
took place with the conversion of the ancientworld to Christianity: not,
as Arnold claimed, that "Hebraism ruled the world" with the result that
"the bright promise of Hellenism faded," but rather that the Hellenic
achievement was incorporated into Christian thought and culture and deeply
influenced the intellectual formulation of Christian teaching. To quote
Jaeger again, this time from his Marquette lecture:
"In order to become the universal or Catholic religion,
Christianity took over the rational form of theology and dogma
from Greek philosophy."
And he speaks also of the danger which this incorporation of
Hellenism might represent to Christianity and its Hebraic tradition--if
Hellenism were not checked and counterbalanced by other elements. This
danger was in fact recognized by one of the great Greek Fathers of the
fourth century:
"Nothing is so characteristic of the Greeks, says St. Gregory of
Nyssa, one of the outstanding Christian Platonists of the fourth
century, as the belief that the essence of religion lies in the
dogma. He sees clearly the danger of overrating this aspect and
neglecting what he calls the real strength of Christianity: the
mysteries of the faith and the venerable traditions of the
Church. The three elements ought to be kept in a perfect
balance."
And, in sharp divergence from the Arnold view that there was an
irreconcilability between the Hebraism of Christianity and the spirit of
Hellenism. Jaeger sees quite another meaning to the relationship between
the two:
"Beyond the general intellectual affinity between Christian
dogmatic thought and Greek philosophical theology, there was
also a deeper kinship of their spirit. It was so close that, as
St. Augustine in his Confessions tells us, he received the
first impulse to his conversion from reading not the Scriptures
but a book in which Cicero had reproduced a platonizing work of
the young Aristotle, the Exhortation to Philosophy. There were
many who came to Christianity in this way" (pp. 60-1).
Christopher Dawson points out that, by the fourth century of the
Christian era, there was another religious humanism besides Christianity
which claimed to be the true representative of the heritage of Greek
thought. Note that this humanism was not man-centered, as with the
Sophists. Instead the passage of some seven or eight centuries from the
age of Pericles had radically altered the Greek view of life. That view
was deeply influenced by Oriental elements, and thus, in Dawson's
conception of it, was much less faithful to the authentic ideals of
humanism than were the Christian Fathers of the Church. The latter had
built a strong bridge between the Christian Gospel of the crucified Christ
and the goals which Hellenic thought had been striving to attain.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY DEEPLY ORIENTOLIZED
In the following passage Dawson sees Julian the Apostate, who tried
to overthrow Christianity, as the representative of a Greek philosophy
which had been deeply orientalized and had thus departed from the emphasis
on the value of man which was characteristic of earlier Greek philosophy.
Dawson speaks of a "bastard Hellenists syncretism," and then implies that
this was the route which Julian and his associates were following:
"The religion of the Emperor Julian and his Neoplatonist
teachers,in spite of their devotion to the Hellenic past, was
actually more impregnated with oriental elements than was that
of the Christian Fathers, such as Eusebius of Caesarea, Theodore
of Mopsuestia, Theodoret, Basil and the two Gregories.
"For the writings of the latter, in spite of their avowed
hostility to the Greek religious tradition, were characterized
by a genuine spirit of humanism, for which there was little room
in the spiritualistic theosophy of Julian and Maximus of Tyre.
Their whole apologetic is dominated by the conception of Man as
the center and crown of the created universe. The first book of
the Theophany of Eusebius is a long panegyric of humanity, --
man, the craftsman and artist, the builder of cities and the
craftsman of ships, -- man, the scientist and philosopher,who
alone can foretell the changes of the heavenly bodies and knows
the hidden causes of things, -- man, a God upon earth, the dear
child of the Divine Word'."
"So, too, St. Gregory of Nyssa sees in man not only the god-like
image of the archetypal beauty,' but the channel through which
the whole material creation acquires consciousness and becomes
spiritualized and united to God"....
Because this intended Divine harmony of creation,with man as its
crown,had been ruptured by man's rebellion against God in Original Sin,
with the consequences this had for successive generations of mankind, God
acted to restore man's integrity. Dawson points out, following Gregory of
Nyssa:
"This is what has happened in the actual history of humanity,
and, therefore, it has been necessary for the Divine Nature to
unite itself with mankind in a second creation which will
restore and still further develop the original function of
humanity. Thus, the Incarnation is the source of a new movement
of regeneration andprogress which leads ultimately to the
deification of human nature by its participation in the Divine
Life. The life of the Divine Trinity externalizes itself in the
Church as the restored humanity, and the purpose of creation
finds its complete fulfillment in the Incarnate Word.
This presentation of the Christian doctrine of man and the
Incarnation is a conscious attempt to express the new Christian world view
in a form accessible to the Greek mind. It is a genuine synthesis of the
Christian and the Platonic traditions, and one which in spite of Harnack's
criticism, is in entire agreement with the spirit of St. Paul himself."
Progress and Religion (1929) pp. 157-159.
A NEW FLOWERING OF THE HELLENIC SPIRIT
Thus, the significance of these early Christian centuries did not
consist simply in the triumph of Christianity and, through this, "a
triumph of Hebraism and man's moral impulses," as Arnold asserts. That
would be far too one-sided a view of the nature of Christian culture.
Rather it consisted in a general conversion of ancient culture and the
Greek mind to Christianity, and through this in a new flowering of the
Hellenic spirit. This found expression in religious thought and in a more
personal religious experience than had been possible under the various
systems offered to men by Greek philosophy.
One has only to compare the richness and depth of St. Augustine's
thought and religious experience with that of Marcus Aurelius to see that
Hellenism has suffered no diminishment through being united with
Christianity, but rather the reverse. Take, for example, the key
Augustinian concept of a Universal law which is seen as the expression of
God's wisdom and Providence for all things, and realize that it is, in
origin, as Dawson points out, "derived from purely Hellenic sources. It
is the characteristically Greek idea of cosmic order which pervades the
whole Hellenic tradition from Heraclitis and Pythagoras to the latter
Stoics and neo-Platonists" (St. Augustine and His Age, 1930). Only, in
Augustine's hands it acquires a much greater depth and beauty as the
"Hebraic" element of direct personal relationship with God transforms the
idea.
And on the other hand, consider the Stoic philosophy of Marcus
Auralius and the melancholy it produces in him, the unsatisfied longing
for something more than Hellenism has to offer:
"In brief, the things of the body are as unstable as water; the
things of the soul, dreams and vapors; life itself, a warfare or
a sojourning in a strange land. What then should be our guide
and escort? One thing, and one only -- Philosophy. And true
philosophy is to observe the celestial part within us,...and at
all timesawaiting death with cheerfulness, in the sure knowledge
that it is but a dissolution of the elements whereof every life
is compound....It is in harmony with nature, and naught that is
evil can be in harmony with nature....
"For, if God exists, to depart from the fellowship of man has no
terrors -- for the divine nature is incapable of involving thee
in evil. But if He exists not, or, existing reck not of
mankind, what profits it to linger in a godless, soulless
universe? (Meditations.)
Even Matthew Arnold sees Aurelius as a soul awaiting the coming of
Christianity -- "We see him wise, just, self-governed, tender, thankful,
blameless; yet, with all this, agitated, stretching out his arms for
something beyond -- tendentemque manus ripae ulterioris amore." Reaching
out his hand in desire toward the ulterior shore -- is not this a fitting
symbol of Hellenism's relation to Christianity, and why it was that
conversion fulfilled its aspirations and implicit purpose? For in the
words of St. Augustine, who made that journey from Hellenic philosophy to
Christian faith, "Thou hast made for Thyself, O God,and our hearts are
restless till they rest in Thee" (Confessions,I,I).
Taken from the Summer 1993 issue of "The Dawson Newsletter." For
subscriptions send $8.00 to "The Dawson Newsletter", P.O. Box
332, Fayetteville, AR 72702, John J. Mulloy, Editor.
