The concept of perfection has a long history. It began in the sixth
century B.C. among the Greek Eleatic philosophers.
- XENOPHANES.
Philosophically the concept of perfection has its origin implicitly
in the teaching of the Greek philosopher Xenophanes (570-c.470
B.C.), who taught that God is a changeless being with the attributes
of omnipresence and omniscience. Therefore, God does not move from
place to place, and does not have any sense organs nor any physical form.
God is unmoving, changeless, all-knowing, homogeneous, and ruler of all.
He is the unity of the universe and its reality. This implied that
change and movement in the universe are to some extant an illusion.
He attacked the anthropomorphic Greek gods, and substituted in their
place, "One god, the greatest among Gods and men, neither in form like
unto mortals, nor in thought", who "abideth ever in the self same place,
moving not at all, nor doth it befit him to go about now hither now
thither." In his Metaphysics Aristotle tells us that Xenophanes,
"referring to the whole world, said the One was god." That is, Xenophanes
was a monist, and not a monotheist, making him the forerunner of the Eleatic
school of Greek philosophers.
- PLATO.
Plato (428-348 B.C.) explicitly taught that God is a perfect
being, and hence incapable of change, since change involved imperfection,
changing from less perfect to more perfect, or vice versa. As
the perfect being, God is the Good and the cause of good. This
description of God as the Good relates God to the changeless realm
of the Ideas, and separates God from the world of change. This
gives to God the interpenetrating absolutes of Good, Truth, and
Beauty. This unchanging perfection of God lead logically in later
Platonism and Neoplatonism to the identification of God with the
principle of unity: God is One. Since Plato thought of change
as a quality foreign to Reason, the universal and the unchanging,
this lead him to the view that man is a dualism of rational soul
and body, the body as "the tomb of the soul". Plato's emphasis
on the changelessness of the rational is seen in his claim that
the soul is non-composite, hence simple. And since the soul is
a simple entity (no parts), the soul cannot be destroyed, hence
the soul is immortal.
- ARISTOTLE.
Aristotle's (384-322 B.C.) analysis of perfection carried
Plato's concept of perfection as the unchanging to its completion
and related it to the world of change. Aristotle analyzed change
into the transition from the potential to the actual. He identified
potentiality with the matter of a thing and actuality with the
form of a thing. "Prime matter" is utterly formless
potentiality for becoming a "this" or "that."
"Pure form" at the other extreme is pure actuality,
without matter, without any potentiality, hence without any change.
This pure changeless form is God. All other things are a composite
of form and matter; they are the actuality of lower potentiality
and the potentiality for higher actuality. God as this pure unchangeless
form is perfect Being and every other things being both potentiality
and actuality are imperfect. This perfect Being is pure actuality,
without any change.
Aristotle does not make a radical dualism of mind and body that
Plato does. In fact, for Aristotle the soul has a rational as
well as irrational part. The rational part is the seat of intellect
and it may be divided into an active and passive part. The active
intellect which makes all things survives the body at death and
is immortal. The passive intellect is the seat of appetites and
desires. Man's active intellect has no relation to desire, but
his passive intellect can influence and exercise control of the
desires. This occurs by the developments of habits, and leads
to a moral will. Aristotle considers will as the actualization
of desire. The appropriate development of man's affective nature
leads to moral virtue based on moral norms. On the other hand,
the development of the active intellect leads to intellectual
virtues of wisdom and insight. This wisdom (Sophia) is
speculative and combines intuitive reason and rigorous knowledge
of first causes and principles. Reason is the faculty of apprehending
the universals and first principles in all knowledge. This knowledge
depends upon sense perceptions but is not limited to the concrete
and sensuous; it can grasp the universal and the ideal. The discipline
of physics acquires this knowledge, and the wisdom and insight
is best accomplished by the discipline of metaphysics ("after
physics"). Aristotle's Metaphysics is an example of the
results of this discipline.
In terms of practical action, the virtuous life is the doing of
the right thing in the right way to the right person to the right
degree; that is, it involves the ability to find the mean between
the extremes. The development of practical wisdom (phronesis)
leads to the discovery of the Golden Mean. This mean lies between
the extreme of deficiency and the extreme of excess. Aristotle
remarks that the mean most often lies closer to excess than deficiency.
As examples, courage, a virtuous state, lies between the deficiency
of cowardice and the excess of foolhardiness. Temperance lies
between insensibility and gluttony, friendship between obsequiousness
and contentiousness, justice between the deficiency of letting
one's rights be trampled on and the excess of trampling on the
rights of others. Following the mean in all things is human perfection.
- NEOPLATONISM.
Neoplatonism carries Plato's concept of perfection as the
unchanging in a different direction than Aristotle did. As the
name suggests Neoplatonism starts from the philosophy of Plato,
and interprets it a special way. This interpretation identifies
God with the principle of unity, making God completely transcendent
to the world of the many, but related to the world by a series
of intermediaries, which are derived from the One by a principle
of emanation. In this view reality is a graded series from the
perfection of the One to the imperfection of the many of world.
Man is a dualism of the divine and the material, who longs for
union with the divine. This is the philosophy of the Egyptian-Roman
philosopher Plotinus (A.D. 205-270). Plotinus attempts
to explain how out of the One, the eternal principle of unity,
the many of the intellectual and physical world could have arisen.
The One is the undifferentiated divine out of whose being the
other parts of reality are derived by emanation, which is logical
and not temporal, that occurs due to the refulgence of the One.
Plotinus identified three great levels of emanation from the One.
- The first emanation is that of the Nous or Intelligence.
This is Plato's realm of the Ideas or forms. Plotinus interpreted
the Nous as a multiplicity reflection of the unity of the
eternal One.
- The second emanation is that of the Psyche or World-Soul.
This is the principle of life and active intelligence. It exists in
contemplation of the Nous. It is like the demiurge of Plato
by which the forms become the patterns of the material world. For
Plotinus this World-Soul contains the world as its body.
- The third emanation in the series is the Hyle or matter itself,
which is devoid of form and is as such the closest approach to non-being.
The evil in the world, and in man, is due to the privation of
Being and the Good.
Whatever exists is an "overflow" of the One, and pervading
all reality, at its different levels, and has an ardent longing
for union with what is higher, and ultimately with the One itself.
Thus in the human soul, fired by the heavenly Eros, the love
of the perfect, of which Plato spoke in his Symposium,
is driven to undertake an ascent to the One. According to Plotinus,
man combines in himself the spiritual and material orders. In
this position man is uncomfortable; he has a longing for the eternal
forms of the Nous and for the perfect eternal One, and
yet he is caught within an imperfect body. According to Plotinus,
salvation is liberation from the multiplicity of the material
to the unity of the rational and spiritual by means of contemplation,
both intellectual and spiritual at once. The first stage of liberation
is purification: the soul must free itself from the body and the
beguilements of senses. At the second stage it rises to the level
of Mind and occupies itself with philosophy and science, retaining
his awareness of the self. The final stage is a mystical union
with the One by means an ecstatic experience in which there occurs
a lost of the awareness of the distinction between subject and
object. This state of ecstasy is rarely, if ever, attained in
this life and is usually short-lived. This liberation may take
more than one lifetime.
- AUGUSTINE.
Augustine (354-430 A.D.) accepted the Neoplatonic concept
of perfection. He accepted the Neoplatonic concept of God's being
as One and unchanging but rejected the Neoplatonic theory of emanations;
God is creator of the world out of nothing. With Neoplatonism,
Augustine affirmed the perfection of the nature of God: His eternity,
infinity, and incomprehensibility, His simplicity and unity, His
essentiality without accidents. God is a being so different from
all others that apparently contradictory statements can be true
of Him simultaneously, that is, for example, He is eternal, timeless,
yet containing all time, or in knowing His own Nature He can know
the total future without depriving man of his freedom of choice.
These statements that would be contradictory for any other beings
than God's Being, are true of God's Being. But God's Being transcends
our understanding. This Neoplatonic concept of God's Being was to
become the standard for Christian theology for more than a thousand years
after Augustine's time.
Augustine also accepted the Neoplatonic concept that evil is a
privation, the negation of the good. Anything insofar as it is,
is good. So evil, being the negation of the good, is the lack
of being. God as Being is the Good. To this concept of perfection
Augustine added the concept of sinlessness. God as perfect Being
never does anything that violates the law of His nature; He never
sins because His nature is sinless. But man sins since the fall
of Adam because his nature has been corrupted; man has a sinful
nature and sins because of his sinful nature. The Greek conception
of the imperfection of man's being as subject to change (birth
and death) had now become the imperfection of man's sinful nature,
"not able not to sin" (non posse non pecarre).
But this doctrine of human nature was opposed by the austere British
"monk", Pelagius (the question whether or not he was
actually a monk has been raised, but his contemporaries referred to
him as monachus). Sometime between A.D. 384 and 409, he had come
to Rome and was teaching a view of human nature diametrically opposite
to that taught by Augustine. By A.D. 397 Augustine was already putting
forth his conception of mankind as a "lump of sin", totally
unable to save himself by good works because of his sinful nature, and
wholly dependent upon God's grace to enable him to do the good
works necessary for salvation. Pelagius was primarily a moralist,
and was concerned with right conduct. As a fashionable teacher
at Rome, who exhorted his hearers to do good works, he was shocked
when he heard Augustine's prayer, "Give what Thou commandest,
and command what Thou wilt" (da quod iubes et iube quod
vis), for it seemed to suggest that man was incapable, apart
from God's grace, of doing good works to earn salvation. This
was just the opposite of Pelagius' whole system of ethics which was
based upon the assumption of unconditional free will and responsibility.
He held that God in creating man, unlike other creatures who
were subject to the laws of nature, had given man the unique ability
of being able to accomplish the divine will by his own choice.
Pelagius rejected the idea that man's will has any intrinsic
bias toward wrong-doing as a result of the Fall of man. He believed
that each soul is created immediately by God, and it cannot have
come into the world tainted by original sin transmitted from Adam
through its parents. Pelagius opposed the traducian theory that
souls, like bodies, are generated from the parents, and thus have
inherited from their parents a corrupt or sinful nature. Pelagius
considered that this theory is tantamount to Manichaeism. He
argued that if this theory is true, then the offspring of baptized
parents would be free from the taint of original sin since baptism
washed away the taint of original sin from the parents. Pelagius
held that Adam's trespass had disastrous consequences for human
race; it introduced death, both physical and spiritual, into human
race, and it set forth a habit of disobedience which was propagated,
not by physical descent, but by custom and example. These wrong
customs and bad example are overcome by God's grace which was
given at the soul's creation; this grace of creation was
- free will itself, or the possibility of not sinning which
God endowed the soul at its creation; and
- the revelation, through reason, of God's law, instructing
us what we should do and showing what would be consequences if
we did not do those commands.
This grace overcomes the obscuring of the Law of Moses and the
teaching and example of Christ through evil custom and bad example .
This grace also bestowed forgiveness of sin in baptism and penance.
But this grace of God does not bestow any special favor upon some,
the elect, since God was no "acceptor of persons". By merit
alone men advances in perfection, and God's predestination operates
strictly in accordance with the quality of the lives that He foresees
they will lead.
With these presuppositions Pelagius did not shrink from the logical
implication that "a man can, if he will, observe God's commandments
without sinning". He argued, Was it not written in the Bible,
"Ye shall be holy, for I am holy" (Lev. 19:2), and "Be
ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matt. 5:49)?
It would be impious to suggest that God, the Father of all justice,
enjoins what He knows to be impossible. Thus Pelagius argued
for the possibility of sinless perfection. Of course he recognized
that some will not live such a life from childhood to death. But
he envisage a state of perfection that could be attained by strenuous
efforts of the will and which can be maintained only by steadily
increasing application. Pelagius held that perfection was attainable
in this life, otherwise, if it was not attainable, why did God
command it?
For Augustine salvation by grace was an absolute necessity. Without
God's enablement, man cannot carry out the prescriptions of the
law. The grace of God was not just an external aid to the keeping
of the law that the Pelagians allowed. The grace of God must
work internally, within us. It is an "internal and secret
power, wonderful and ineffable", by which God works in men's
heart. For Augustine the power of the grace of God is in effect
the presence of the Holy Spirit. The letter of the law kills
unless we have the life-giving Spirit to enable us to do what
it prescribes. Augustine says, "It is the Spirit Who assists
our infirmity." For Augustine the Christian life was
Spirit-empowered law-keeping. He distinguishes four kinds of grace.
- There is "prevenient grace" (from Psa. 59:10: "His
mercy goes before [in Latin, praevenient] me."), by
which God goes before and initiates in our souls whatever good
we think or aspire to or will.
- Then there is "co-operating grace", by which God
assists or co-operates with our will once it has been bestirred.
- There is also "sufficient grace" (adiutorium
sine quo), which is the grace which Adam possessed in Paradise
and which placed him in the position, subject to his using his
free will to the end, to practice and preserve in virtue.
- Then there is also "efficient grace" (adiutorium
quo), which is the grace granted to the saints predestined
to God's kingdom to enable them both to will and to do what God
expects of them.
Grace of whatever kind is God's free gift: gratia dei gratuita.
The divine favor cannot be earn by good deeds of men for the
simple reason that those deeds themselves are the effect of grace:
"grace bestows merit, and is not bestowed in reward for them."
No good act can be performed without God's help, and even the
initial motions of faith are inspired in our heart by Him. This
view of the grace of God led to Augustine view of predestination.
Since grace takes the initiative and apart from it all men form
a massa damnata, it is for God to determine who
shall receive grace and who shall not. Augustine believed on the
basis of Scripture that God has done this from all eternity. The
number of the elect is strictly limited, being neither more than
nor less than that required to replace the fallen angels. Then
Augustine twisted the Scripture text, "God wills all men
to be saved" (I Tim. 2:4) making it to mean that God wills
the salvation of all the elect, among whom are men from every
race and of every type. God's choice of those to whom grace has
been given in no way depends on God's foreknowledge of their future
merit. For whatever good deeds they will do will themselves be
the fruit of grace. As far as foreknowledge is involved, what
God foreknows is what He Himself is going to do. Then how does
God decide to save this man rather than another? Augustine answers
that can not be known by man since God has not revealed it. God
will have mercy upon those whom He wishes to save and He will
harden those upon whom He does not wish to have mercy. If this
looks like favoritism, then let us remember that all are justly
condemned. All are condemned because they all have sinned in
Adam's sin and because they all have personally sinned by the
sinful nature they inherited from Adam. And that if any are saved
at all, it is an act of ineffable compassion. This inscrutable
decree is a mystery; man does not know who will be saved. Augustine
was prepared to accept that certain people are predestined to
eternal death and damnation; and they may include decent Christians
who have been baptized, but have not received the grace of perseverance
by which they will be enabled to finally earn eternal life. But
Augustine spoke mostly of the predestination of the saints which
consists of "God's foreknowledge and preparation of the benefits
by which those who are to be delivered are most assuredly delivered".
These alone have the grace of perseverance, and even before they
are born they are sons of God and cannot perish.
Augustine response to Pelagius optimistic view of human nature
that all men are able to obtain sinless perfection was a pessimistic
view of human nature such that no man can obtain sinless perfection
in this life, even if they receive the grace of perseverance.
Only if the merits of the good works which grace enables them
to do, outweighs the demerits of their sins, then that one will
be rewarded with eternal life at the last judgment. Augustine
denied that sinless perfection is obtainable in this life and
it will only be the state of the elect in eternity. Even the
elect still have a sinful nature until their physical death and
it will only be removed in eternity.
- THE THREE LADDERS OF AUGUSTINE.
Augustine accepted the Neoplatonic steps of salvation, but insisted
that the grace of God makes it possible for man to ascend to God.
To the problem of how man is to raise himself from the sense-world
to the pure spirituality of God, Augustine proposed a three-fold
mode of ascent: by the ladder of Virtue, of Speculation, and of Mysticism.
- The ladder of Virtue is by human merit (meritum).
But this merit can be earned by man's good works only by the
grace of God which enables him to do the good works. "When
God crowns our merit, it is nothing but His own gifts that He
crowns." Grace is on the one hand that gift which man receives
by grace, and on the other hand it is the "fulfilling of
the law" and sum of all virtue. Therefore the ascent by Virtue
or Merit is nothing more but ascent by the grace of God.
- The ladder of Speculation is by human reason. God has
made for us a ladder of created things by which we can mount up
to Him. On the basis of Romans 1, Augustine worked out a complete
Natural Theology (theologia naturalis). He held that God
has arranged the universe as a great "order of nature".
By its aid, man can transverse His works from the lowest to the
highest and so finally to reach the Creator Himself, to whom all
these things point him. According to Plato, it is the beauty
of things that arouses Eros in man and drives him to reach out
longingly toward that which is in itself the Beautiful. Augustine
also sees in the beauty of created things that leads us to look
up their Creator and kindles our love for Him. At this point
man must decide to turn his attention either downward to the corporeal
world, or upward to God. Since God is not a corporeal being,
man must choose to turn his attention upward, which is the right
direction. If we are to find God, we must not seek Him here below
in corporeal things but turn our attention upward, and ascend
by meditation above everything that belongs to the corporeal world.
But the ascent is not finished here even when we have transcended
the corporeal world and reached the spiritual world. God is a
spirit but not a mutable spirit. If we are to ascend to God,
we also must not only ascend above the corporeal world, but also
ascend above the world of mutable spirits. Augustine expresses
this stage of the ladder of Speculation with the following command:
"Transcend the body and taste the spirit; transcend the spirit
and taste God."
- The ladder of Mysticism is ascent to God by means of
a ecstatic union with God. The ladder of Speculation points in
this direction, but this union cannot be reached by human reason, by one's
intellect. How is this union with God to be accomplished? Augustine's
answer is that man must find God within himself. Here Augustine
enters upon the path advocated by all forms of mysticism in all
ages, the introspective way to God. At the beginning of this
road stands the sign, "Know thyself" (gnothi seauton).
By entering into ourselves and examining one's own nature, Augustine
thinks that we can pierce through and into the mystery of the Holy Trinity.
To know oneself is to know God; to abide in oneself is to abide in God.
Following the injunction, Augustine finds three distinct elements
within himself and within man in general: memory, understanding, and will.
These are closely united, and are "of one and the same substance",
that is, they are "one essence", nevertheless they are
"three inasmuch as they are related to each other",
"not merely each to each but each to all... the whole of each
is equal to the whole of each, and... to the whole of all together"
(Trinity, x.18).
Though these ladders are similar to Neoplatonic way of salvation,
Augustine is careful to distinguish these from it. Augustine
is opposed to the view that the spirit of man is divine; man is
not a disguised divinity. Augustine is very concerned to keep
the distinction between God the Creator and man as His creature.
God is God and man is man. Augustine is always conscious of
the distance between God and man. He expressly rejects the interpretation
of the Old Testament creation story of man, which makes it mean
that God breathed into man part of His own divine Spirit. The
spirit that God breathed into man was not God's own spirit, but
a created spirit. Augustine also rejects the Hellenistic interpretation
of the goal of the third ladder is a mystical absorption of the
human soul into God, where the distinction between God and man
is abolished. The distinction between God and man is never abolished;
even at the highest point of the Christians spiritual life, the
distance between God and man is preserved. The goal of the Christian
life is the dwelling of the Triune God in us, but "the Trinity
is in us as God in His temple, but we are in Him as the creature
of its Creator."
- ANSELM.
Anselm (1033-1109 A.D.) made the ontological concept of
perfection the basis of his ontological argument for the existence
of God. God as perfect being, "that than which nothing greater
can be conceived," must necessarily exist because a perfect
being would not be perfect if it did not exist. Anselm's formulation
of this argument in terms of that which "can be conceived"
open his ontological argument to the criticism in Anselm's time by
Gaunilo, who claimed that on the same ground it can be argued
that a perfect island must exist, since a perfect island can be
conceived. Anselm answered this criticism by reformulating his
argument without any reference to the conceiving of it.
- THOMAS AQUINAS.
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 A.D.) argued from the grades
of perfection in the world that God as a perfect Being existed.
In experience we recognize degrees of truth, goodness. In order
for our judgments of this sort to be meaningful there must exist
in a supreme way truth, goodness, thus perfection. Thus there
must be a Supreme Being who is truth, goodness, and perfection.
Aquinas called these supreme concepts "transcendentals",
terms that go beyond any genus, and apply to everything that is;
they are attributes of everything. He identified six of these
transcendentals: ens, res, unum, aliquid,
verum, bonum (being, thing, unity, distinction, true, good).
All beings ens are things (res) with unity (unum),
distinguished (aliquid) from what is not themselves.
All things are what they are, hence in relation to knowledge,
are true (verum). And all things tend toward their ends,
or goals which is their good (bonum). These six transcendentals
define the concept of perfection. These transcendentals are applied
to God by the principle of analogy to determine God's nature.
The analogy that Thomas used is the analogy of proportionality,
which can be expressed as follows:
The properties of x The properties of y
-----are to-------- as -------are to------
x's being y's being
When applied to God's being, we are led to expect that in the
measure as God's being exceeds ours so will the properties of
His being exceeds ours. In relating God's Being to the transcendentals
we gain other properties: eternity or timelessness, omnipresence,
omniscience, omnipotence, etc. From all of this emerges the classical
concept of a perfect being that is the synthesis of ideas of Plato,
Aristotle, Augustine. God is perfect being, unchanging, utterly
simple and unitary, hence indestructible, absolute truth and goodness,
not dependent on the world, yet everything in the world is dependent
on God.
Regarding man's soul, Aquinas following Aristotle distinguishes
between the intellectual, volitional, and appetitive functions
therein. When considering the goods that satisfy the senses,
the appetite is said to be concupisciple, and the passions related
to this function include love, desire, delight, hate, aversion,
and sorrow. When considering the goods that satisfy the intellect,
called the rational appetite (or will), a second kind of love
relates to this function of the soul. The function of the intellect
is to understand, and includes apprehension, judgment, and reasoning.
The intellect abstracts universal meaning from sense experience
by means of phantasms standing for the species of the perceived
things. For Aquinas this requires the division of intellect into
two functions: the passive intellect (intellectus possibilis)
which receives the phantasms, and the active intellect (intellectus
agens) which grasps the abstracted meaning.
Aquinas follows quite closely Aristotle's ethical theory. But
to the virtues gained by the Aristotelian analysis there must
be added and complemented by the "theological" virtues
of faith, hope, and love, justifying grace being the basis. Thus
Aquinas follows a natural law ethics or an ethics of natural reason.
The basic principle of this ethics is that good should be done
and evil avoided. Law is "an ordinance of reason promulgated
for the common good." Right action is an action which "precedes
to its end in accord with the order of reason and of eternal law."
Thus the concept of the "right" emerges from the notion
of "good" through the medium of order and law. Ethics
rests on the principles of practical reason where science rests
on the principles of theoretical reason. Prudence, that is, right
reason about things that must be done, likewise rests on the practical
reason.
The same kind of law that directs man with respect to right and
wrong in daily life, directs man with respect to the common good
of society. This law is called natural law or jus naturale.
Just as there are laws implanted in physical nature, which are
natural laws, so there are laws implanted by the Creator in human
nature and discernible by man's reason. The only difference between
these laws is that man is able to disobey the moral laws of his nature.
Aquinas distinguishes four interrelated types of law: the divine
or eternal law, natural law, the law of nations, and positive
or civil law. For Aquinas the basis of all law is jus divinum,
or eternal law in the mind of God. This law is given to man in part
by revelation and another part of it is implanted in man, and is
available through the use of human reason. This is natural law or
jus naturale. This natural law finds expression in the two
further types of law: civil law or jus civile, and the law of
the nations or jus gentium. Civil law is the set of laws
governing a particular society. Aquinas finds that since societies
differ from each other and are in different situations, the precepts
of natural law must be particularized to fit the contingent circumstances
of each society. The law of nations is a set of laws on which all
societies agree. It would be a body of international law. This set
of laws could also be drawn from natural law; but its determination
is by way of deduction, as conclusion drawn from premises.
In his theology of salvation, Aquinas followed Augustine's theology
of grace. But in his interpretation of original sin Aquinas believed
that Adam lost his original righteousness and the result in all
men is a disordered disposition. All Adam's descendants lack this
original righteousness but the nature of man is not changed, and
the natural inclination to virtue is diminished. Original sin
is a disordered disposition due to the lack of this original righteousness.
Actual sins, which are to be distinguished from original sin,
vary from person to person in both nature and extent. Both original
and actual sins cause weakness and ignorance; all powers of the
soul are "left to some extent destitute of their proper order".
Sin also results in physical death. In the view of Aquinas physical
death is not natural to man. The corruptible body of man God
has adapted to its form, the rational soul of man, and to its
end, eternal happiness.
- THE THREE LADDERS OF AQUINAS.
Thomas Aquinas adopted as did Medieval theology the three ladders
of Augustine. Medieval theology thought it self-evident that
if man is be saved he would have to ascend to God's level. The
salvation of the soul is its ascent from the imperfect world to
the perfection of God. And there are, in particular, three ladders
to heaven for the soul's ascent: (1) the ladder of Merit; (2)
the analogical ladder of Speculation; (3) the anagogical ladder
of Mysticism.
- The ladder of Merit is not opposed to grace. Medieval
theology is a theology of merit; but this does not mean it is
not a theology of grace. The New Testament (particularly the writings
of Apostle Paul) and the Reformation saw these as opposed to each
other. But Medieval theology since the time of Augustine saw
these as complementary if not one. The way to God and blessedness
is by means of human merit. As Thomas Aquinas writes, "Man
attains blessedness by a series of acts which are called merits."
But this does not exclude Divine grace or make salvation by man
alone. On the contrary, Aquinas most emphatically rejects the
idea that man might acquire blessedness by his own strength.
For Aquinas there is not a contradiction between the idea of merits
and the idea of grace; each is the condition of the other and
they are complementary. Merit is required of man, but he cannot
achieve this merit apart from the Divine grace and unless Divine
grace comes to his aid: without grace no merit. This is generally
true of Medieval theology and it had its origin in the theology
of Augustine and faithfully upholds the Augustine principle:
"When God crowns our merit, it is nothing but His own gifts
that He crowns."
- The analogical ladder of Speculation is the specific
form that the ladder of speculation took in the theology of Aquinas.
By the ladder of religious speculation, since the time of Augustine,
Medieval theology has ascended from the world of sense to the
spiritual world of God. The relation between the world and God
was primarily conceived upon the principle of causality, that
for every effect of a change there is adequate cause. Since God
is "the first and the universal Cause of all being",
it is possible to find in everything, in so far as it is a being,
likenesses to God. It is the task of theology to find these Divine
"traces" in the universe and to rise by their aid to
a contemplation of God Himself in His majesty. Of course, within
the created world there is no absolute likeness to God. But everywhere
in creation, from the lowest to highest, there are analogies to
the Divine Being, clearer at higher, fainter at the lower levels.
By observing these analogies and working back from the effect
to the first cause (via causalitatus), by negating the
imperfect (via negationis), and positing the perfect (via
eminentiae) which the effect implies, one can reach a true,
never exhaustive, but adequate knowledge of the nature of God.
- The anagogical ladder of Mysticism is the way of inner
ascent [anagoge] to union with the Divine. In the soul
of man there are those divine and uncreated elements. These are
the peaks that the soul must climb if he is come in contact with
God. The mystic seeks the point within himself where he can make
contact with God. It is the Neoplatonic One [hen] in man,
which makes possible unity [henosis] with the One divine
Being [to theion hen]. But this height is not reached
without thorough preparation. Here the old ordo salutis
of mysticism, with its three steps of purification, illumination
and union, must be used. Medieval mysticism made reference
to Christ's ascension as a pattern for the ascent of the soul.
This is expressed clearly by Bernard of Claivaux, who says:
"When our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ wished to teach us
how we might ascend to heaven, He Himself did what He taught:
He first descended, and as His simple divine nature, which can
neither lessened nor increased nor undergo any other change, did
not permit Him either to descend or ascend, He took up into the
unity of His person our nature -- that is, human nature. In this
He descended and ascended and showed us the way by which we, too,
might ascend."
Bernard sees in the upright form given to
man at creation an evidence that he is meant by God to direct
his desire upward. But the natural man in his attempt to raise
himself up, takes a false path of pride and presumption, and sinks
even deeper down. He can only be rescued when Christ shows him
the right way. We are called to be followers of Christ. In this
life we are to follow Him in lowliness and humiliation. But that
is not all. Our "Imitatio Christi" [Imitation
of Christ] is to include both humiliation and exaltation. We
are to follow Christ in everything, not only when He descends
in His Incarnation, but also when at His Ascension He ascends
into heaven. To both Bernard applies the words of Jesus in Luke
10:37: "Go, and do thou likewise." On these lines Bernard
interprets the Sermon on the Mount. The eight Beatitudes signify
eight rungs on the mystical heavenly ladder, whose foot is here
below while its top reaches up to heaven. On this ladder we must
ascend above ourselves and above everything in the world. Only
then can our spirit reach the higher world and come to full and
immediate union with God. But during this life, this highest
happiness is granted to man in isolated and fleeting moments.
Aquinas believed that final perfection and the beatific vision
of God was reserved for the life to come after death, but in this
life he believed that by contemplation a perfect vision of God
and a perfect knowledge of the truth could be had. For Aquinas
perfection involved the disparagement of the world and the desires
of the flesh, which he considered the source of evil. Elimination
of bodily desires was a prerequisite for obtaining perfection;
thus perfection was for Aquinas renunciation. Associated with
the obtaining of this perfection was human merit; to obtain perfection
one had to do good works by which to acquire merit that would
be rewarded in the after life with the beatific vision of God.
For those imperfect there was a treasury of merits of the saints
from which the imperfect could draw at the discretion of the Church.
In order to obtain perfection Aquinas set up a hierarchy of states
of perfection to which corresponded the levels of the religious
orders. Although he did not deny the possibility of perfection
for all persons, he believed that religious vows were certainly
a meritorious aid to perfection. He thus perpetuated the spiritual
dichotomy between clergy and laity.
- THE PROTESTANT REFORMERS.
The Reformers, both Lutheran and Calvinist, rejected the
three ladders, the ladders of Merit, of Speculation, of Union,
by which one could obtain perfection. But they retained the Augustinian
understanding of man as having a sinful nature and that consequently
man cannot obtain perfection in this life. This original sin
remains with man until death, even in those who are declared righteous
by the imputation of Christ's merits through faith. These believers
are regenerated receiving a new nature, but the old nature is
still there in the believer. The experience of chapter 7 of Romans
is interpreted as the conflict between these two natures. The
Christian life is characterized as struggle with the sinful nature
to keep it under control, subject to God's law. Because of this
sinful nature, spiritual perfection is impossible in this life.
Lutheran theology saw the believer both simultaneously a saint
and sinner. Calvin says that while the goal toward which
the pious strive was to appear before God without spot or blemish,
the believer will never reach that goal until the sinful physical
body is laid aside in death. He saw the physical body as the
residence of the depravity of concupiscence. Thus perfection
and the physical body are mutually exclusive.
- MARTIN LUTHER.
Luther saw the sinful nature expressed in man's ego-centric
love of the self. This stands in contrast to real love which
is other centered, does not seek its own, but gives and sacrifices
itself. This is the love that God has for man and was demonstrated
in the incarnation, sufferings and death of Jesus Christ for all
men. This perfect love is the perfection that Jesus commanded
in His Sermon on the Mount, "Be ye therefore perfect, even
as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matt. 5:48).
Thus perfect love stand in contrast with human love which is centered
on the human self. Man loves because of the benefit that this
love gives himself. Man loves the lovable. Luther brands selfishness,
self-love, as sin and as the essence of the sinfulness of sin.
He knows no acceptable self-love. The commandment: "Thou
shalt love your neighbor as thyself", Luther interpreted,
not as approving of love of self, but as a rejection and condemnation
of all self-love whatsoever. He rejects Augustine's interpretation
that this command is actually a commandment to love one's self.
On the basis of John 12:25: "He who loves his life loses
it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal
life", Luther puts forth the fundamental principle: "To
love is the same as to hate one's self." Luther states this
principle in direct opposition to the universally accept axiom
that "ordered love begin with oneself", and the immense
authority of Augustine. According to Luther this one idea has
done most to lead away from real love. In commanding man to love
his neighbor as himself, God has in no way commanded man to love
himself. Self-love is a vicious love ["vitiosus amor"]
that must be destroyed. But it can serve as a pattern for the
right kind of love to our neighbor, but not as a command to love
one's self nor as approving of self-love. Luther sees this self-love
as essence of the sinful nature. Real love, God's love, is other
centered. "Love seeketh not its own." Sin is the opposite
of this; the essence of sin is that man seeks its own. By this
standard, the whole of human life is under the dominion of sin.
And since this a universal character of man, sin is completely
universal in its extent. Sin has its seat, not just in man's sensible
nature, but it embraces the whole of man. This means that all
of the acts of man, no matter how great and praiseworthy the act,
is penetrated by sin and sin is inherent in everything human.
God alone in His love is totally other-centered and seeketh not
His own. This is the perfection of God and the perfection that
God has commanded and that man should seek. True perfection does
not consist in celibacy or mendicancy. Luther rejected the distinction
between clerical and lay perfection, and stressed that correct
ethical behavior is not found in renunciation of life, but in
selfless love of one's neighbor.
- PIETISM.
Toward the end of the seventeenth century in Lutheran German church,
there arose a movement that came to be known as pietism.
The movement arose in protest to the cold and sterility of the
established church forms and practice. Many ministers seemed
to be more interested in theological and philosophical wrangling
and rhetorical disputation than in the exhortation and encouragement
of their congregations. And the devastating Thirty Years War (1618-1648)
fought between the Lutheran and Roman Catholic states of Germany
had created a dissatisfaction with the Lutheran church's involvement
in political and military matters. There was also a dissatisfaction
with the formalism and deadness of the church and the insincerity
of the church leaders. There arose a call for reform, some from
outside of Germany from Calvinistic Holland and Puritan England.
Within the German-speaking reformers, the call for reform in the writings
of such men as Johann Arndt, whose True Christianity
(1610) strongly influenced the later leaders of pietism.
It was the work of Philipp Jakob Spener (1635-1705), often
known as the father of pietism, that began the movement known as
pietism. He was born in Rappoltsweiler, Upper Alsace, and died
in Berlin. He received a strict, pious upbringing and took his university
training in Strasborg (1651-1659), where he concentrated on Biblical
languages and historical studies. The professors at Strasborg
stressed spiritual rebirth and ethical concerns, which became
important factors later in Spener's preaching. After graduation
he served in pastoral positions in Strasborg (1663), Frankfort-on-Main
(1666), Dresden (1686), and Berlin (1697). When he was called
to be senior minister in Frankfort-on-Main, he called for reform
in the city. He had initiated a far-flung correspondence which
eventually won him the title of "spiritual counselor of all
Germany". He thus promoted a major reform in the practical
life of the churches. In a sermon preached in 1669, Spener mentioned
the possibility of laymen meeting together, setting aside "glasses,
cards, or dice", and encouraging each other in the Christian
faith. The next year Spener himself instituted such meetings
which he called a collegia prietatis ["pious
assembly"] to meet on Wednesday and Sunday evenings to pray
and discuss the previous Sunday's sermon, and to apply passages
of Scripture and devotional writings to their individual lives.
From his name of these meetings the name of the movement, pietism,
was derived. In 1675 Spener took a major step toward reviving
the church when he was asked to prepare a new preface for the
collection of sermons of Johann Arndt. The result was the famous
tract Pia Desideria ["Pious Wishes"], in which
Spener examines the sources of spiritual decline in Protestant Germany
and offered proposals for reform. This tract was an immediate sensation.
In it Spener criticized the nobles and princes for exercising
unauthorized control of the church, ministers for substituting
cold doctrine for warm faith, and lay people for disregarding
proper Christian behavior. Positively, he called for a revival
of the concerns of Luther and the early Reformation, even altering
slightly Reformation teachings. For example, Spener regarded
salvation more as regeneration (new birth) than justification
by the imputed righteousness of Christ, even though the Reformers
laid greater emphasis on the latter.
Spener offered in his Pia Desideria six proposals for
reform, which became a short summary of pietism.
- There should be "a more extensive use of the Word of
God among us". The Bible, Spener said, "must be the
chief means for reforming something."
- There should be a renewal of "the spiritual priesthood",
that is, the priesthood of all believers. Here he cited Luther's
example in urging all Christians to be active in the general work
of the ministry.
- There should be a seriousness about holy living and that
more time should be spent in following God's law, spreading the
gospel, and providing aid for the needy. Spener argued that Christianity
is more than a simple knowledge; Christians should practice what
they believed.
- There should be more restraint and charity in religious controversies.
Spener asked his readers to love and pray for unbelievers and
the erring, and adopt a moderate tone in disputes.
- There should be a reform in the education of ministers. Spener
urged that there be a stress on a training in piety as well as
on academic subjects.
- Lastly, ministers should preach edifying sermons, understandable
to people, rather than technical theological discourses in which
few were interested and could even understand.
These proposal for reform and renewal ran into two major difficulties.
- First, many clergymen and professional theologians opposed them,
some out of concern for their traditional status, but others out
of a genuine fear they would lead to rampant subjectivism and
anti-intellectualism.
- Second, some lay people took Spener's proposals as permission
to leave the established church completely, and start their own
churches. Spener himself opposed these separatist conclusions
drawn from his proposals.
Spener left Frankfort in 1686 for Dresden and from there he was
called to Berlin in 1691. His time in Dresden was marked by controversy.
But while he was in Dresden he met his successor, August Hermann
Francke. In Berlin Spener helped to found the University
of Halle, to which Francke was called in 1692. Under Francke's
leadership the University of Halle showed what pietism could mean
when put into practice. Very quickly, Francke opened his own home
as a school for poor children, he founded a world-famous orphanage,
he established an institute for training teachers, and later he
helped found a publishing house, a medical clinic, and other institutions.
Francke had experienced a dramatic conversion in 1687, which was
source of his lifelong concern in evangelism and missions. Under
his leadership Halle became the center of Protestantism's most
ambitious missionary endeavors up to that time. The university
established a center for Oriental languages and also encouraged
the translation of the Bible into new languages. Francke's missionary
influence was felt directly through the missionaries who went
from Halle to the foreign fields and indirectly through groups
like the Moravians and an active Danish mission which drew inspiration
from the leaders of pietism.
Spener and Francke inspired other varieties of German pietism.
The head of the renewed Moravian Church, Count Nikolas von Zinzendorf,
was Spener's godson and Francke's pupil. Zinzendorf organized
refugees from Moravia into a kind of collegia pietatis,
within German Lutheranism, and later shepherded this group in
reviving the Bohemian Unity of the Brethren. These Moravians,
as they were later called, carried the pietistic concern for personal
spirituality almost literally around the world. It was a group of
Moravian missionaries that John Wesley met during his voyage to Georgia
in 1735. Wesley was so impressed by their behavior then and what
he heard of their faith that after returning to England he was
led to his own evangelical awakening.
The pietists rejected the pessimism which the Lutherans and Calvinists
viewed the quest for perfection. Pietism was marked by the quest
for personal holiness and by an emphasis on spiritual devotion
rather than doctrine by such leaders as Spener and Francke, who
stressed personal holiness marked by love and obedience. But some
of the fears of its earliest opponents that pietism could lead
to subjectivism and emotionalism; that it would discourage scholarship
and intellectual pursuits, that it could fragment the church through
its separatism; that it could establish new codes of legalistic
morality; and that it could underrate the value of Christian tradition,
have taken place.
- QUAKERS.
George Fox (1624-1691), the founder the Society of Friends,
better known as the Quakers, in 1647 had a profound religious
experience that changed the direction of his life. Later in 1652
he relates that he had a vision at a place called Pendle Hill,
and from that point on he based his faith on the concept that
God could speak directly to any person. He began to preach that
the truth is to be found in God's voice speaking to the soul;
those who listen to God's voice, Fox called the "Friends of
Truth", later shortened to just "Friends". In 1649
he was arrested and jailed for interrupting a Nottingham church service
with an impassioned appeal from the Scripture to the Spirit as the
authority and guide. In 1650 he was imprisoned as a blasphemer,
and at the trial the judge, Justice Bennet of Derby, nicknamed the group
"Quakers" after Fox exhorted the magistrate to "tremble
at the Word of God". Fox later describes the church service
where the term was used;
"The priest scoffed at us and called us Quakers.
but the Lord's power was so over them,
and the word of life was declared with such authority and dread to them,
that the priest began trembling himself;
and one of people said, 'Look how the priest trembles and shakes,
he is turned a Quaker also'."
Fox was born at Leicestershire and was apprenticed to a shoemaker.
He apparently had no formal schooling. In 1643 he left his family
and friends in search of enlightenment. After a painful search,
he came to rely on what he called the "Inner light of the
living Christ".
Fox taught both personal responsibility for faith and freedom from
sin in his doctrine of the inner light. He declared a doctrine
of real holiness rather than imputed righteousness. Fox believed
that as a result of the new birth into Christ by the Spirit, the
believer was freed from actual sinning, which he defined as transgression
of the law of God, and is thus perfect obedience to God. This
perfection is relative in that it dealt with victory over sin
rather than absolute moral development. But this perfection did
not remove the possibility of sinning, for the Christian must
needs constantly to rely on the inner light and must focus on
Christ as the center of faith. Fox contended that the Christian is
restored to the innocency of Adam before the fall. Not all later
Quakers agreed with him on this point. Fox emphasized that center
of perfection was in the cross of Christ. The cross was no dead
relic but was an inner experience that changed the believer into
perfect love. Fox refused to be preoccupied with sin as the Puritans
were with their pessimism over the profound sinfulness of man.
Fox also distrusted all external means of grace such as the sacraments.
The meeting of the believers had no ritual and was a waiting
in silence upon God, for the Spirit to speak in and through them.
The "Inner Light" was as important as the Scriptures;
sacraments, ceremonies, and clergy was abandoned.