Copyright © 1995, R.J. Kilcullen.
Christianity has had, still has, an important influence in politics and in political thought; and in the part of this course from Augustine to Locke we need to talk about it. In this course I do not assume that you all know about Christianity; some of you are Jews or Muslims, or non-religious. So when I talk about it I will try to explain from scratch. I believe I present Christianity sympathetically, but let me say that I am an atheist, and I reject some of the essential Christian beliefs as false.
In the lecture Philosophy from Aristotle to Augustine I sketched out the various schools of philosophy between Aristotle and Augustine. This was the intellectual world into which Christianity came. How did its message sound to the philosophers? Paul went to Athens: 'Some also of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers met him... So Paul, standing in the middle of the Areopagus said: "Men of Athens..."' - and went on to suggest that he had come to tell them of the unknown God, who made the world, takes a close interest in the doings of mankind, and will judge the world, through a man (i.e. Jesus Christ) whom God has vouched for by raising him from the dead (alluding to the Christian belief that after death Jesus arose again alive from the dead). 'Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked; but others said, "We will hear you again about this".' (Acts 17:16-34.)
Paul elsewhere refers to Greek philosophy, the wisdom of the Greeks, in ironical contrast with 'the foolishness of God': what the Christians believe, especially perhaps about the resurrection of the body, seems foolish to the philosophers. Cf. 1 Cor. 1:17- 2:13, 3:19, 15:12-20 ('How can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?').
So the belief that the body will rise again was one important difference between the doctrine of the Christians and that of the various schools of philosophy. The Epicureans held that body and soul are collections of atoms, finally dispersed at death (or shortly afterwards). The Stoics also were materialists; they held that after death the body becomes earth, and the soul returns to the central fire. The Platonists held that the soul is immortal; the Christians held that the whole human being is immortal, that the body will rise again - which to philosophers of all Schools sounded either ridiculous, or like a possibly interesting innovation.
Let us list some other points about Christianity that invite comparison with Greek philosophy:
Christianity indicated the possibility of a worthwhile and even happy existence for slaves, the weak, the poor, the ugly, people Aristotle and Plato would not have regarded as capable of a happy life. In this respect it resembled Stoicism. According to the Stoics, if you act in accordance with nature and reason, you live a happy life, a good life. For 'in accordance with nature and reason' substitute 'in friendship with God', or 'in accordance with the will of God'. This amendment a Stoic could easily accept - for the Stoics nature is God. But the Christians meant something different. According to them God is personal, i.e. in significant respects like a human person. The Epicureans had taught that the gods do not care, but human beings should be friends; according to the Christians God does care, and human beings can live in friendship with one another and with God. And those who live that way are living a worthwhile life, no matter how unfavourable their external circumstances are.
But according to the Christians the worthwhile life will also lead to happiness, if not in this world then in the next, in the life after death. The Stoics told, for example, slaves, that a slave who acts in accordance with nature is happy even on the rack, even if he is crucified; but death is the end - the happiness of doing the right thing is the only happiness he will achieve. See Augustine's City of God, XIX.3-20, esp. 3-4, for a Christian criticisms of Stoic (or Old Academy) views of the good life. (See below, on Augustine, City of God.) The Christians said that a Christian slave who acts as the friends of God should act is living a worthwhile life, though perhaps not a happy one, and will eventually be happy: and not just as a disembodied soul, but as a whole human being.
According to the Christians God is just and merciful, and takes an interest in each human being individually. Contrast the pictures of Greek religion of the gods as arbitrary and envious, and the Epicurean doctrine that the gods do not care. The Stoics held something like the Christian doctrine - they held that God exercises providence, i.e. provides for, looks after, the individual parts of the universe. Other Greek philosophers held mostly that God does not even know human beings individually. According to Aristotle, for example, the only fitting object of God's thought is himself.
Another difference is in their picture of history. The philosophers mostly thought of the world as eternal - it never began, it will never end. According to the Stoics the universe goes through alternate phases of expansion and contraction for ever - from fire it expands into cooler and denser bodies, and then contracts again to fire, and this goes on eternally. According to the Aristotelians the world has always existed and always will, and God did not create it. According to some of the Aristotelians the universe is like a big clockwork machine in which after a very long interval all the parts come back to the same positions, and the same sequence of events then happens again, over and over eternally; human beings and their actions are part of the clockwork, so everything in human history has already happened an infinite number of times already, and will happen again an infinite number of times in the future. According to the Christians God created the world a relativly short time ago, exercises continual providence in human history, and will eventually end it, perhaps in the not too distant future, and conduct a grand accounting. Life after death will go on for ever, but life on earth takes place within a fixed and relatively short timeframe, with a beginning, a middle and an end.
The Epicureans, Cynics and Stoics were much occupied with the problem of security. How can you define a worthwhile life not subject to chance? Christianity also offered security. It offered salvation. Salvation from what? From what are Christians saved? From whatever anyone needs saving from. The wrath of God, from temptations to sin, from evils of all sorts (since there is a life after death).
The points of comparison so far are in favour of Christianity. Let me mention a few minuses.
Greek speaking Christians of the first few centuries developed doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation which have always been a stumbling block for philosophers. According to popular Greek religion the gods are many; Plato and Aristotle held that God is one. Christians held that God is one, but taught that the one God is three persons - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - and that one of these persons became a man and suffered death (though the philosophers held that God cannot undergo any change). Christians used the concepts of Aristotelian philosophy to formulate this doctrine, but to philosophers it has always seemed to be nonsense, or to be philosophically opaque (a 'mystery').
Latin Christians, Augustine first, developed doctrines of Original Sin, Grace and Predestination, which are not easy to reconcile with the doctrine that God is just and merciful. According to Augustine, the sin of the first pair of human beings was passed down to all of their descendants; that for this sin every human being is liable to just punishment; that one form this punishment may take is ignorance and weakness of will, which make further sins inevitable; that God gives help only to some to overcome these evils; that he gives it only to those whom he has eternally predestined to salvation, apart from any merit of theirs. In other words, God chose some from the beginning for salvation, and rejected the rest. To some this Augustinian doctrine seems to make God an arbitrary tyrant.
Finally, there are questions about how the death of Jesus saves mankind from anything. One traditional explanation: that by his death Jesus gained merit with God, which is then transferred to men as grace, enabling them in part not to sin, and also to obtain forgiveness if/when they do. But the intelligibility of this is compromised by the doctrine that Jesus is God: how can he gain merit with God? And note what this explanation implies about God - God requires someone to die for the sins of mankind, and accepts the death of an innocent man.
So as a philosophy of life Christianity has pluses and minuses. On the reaction of non-Christian philosophers to Christianity see M.V. Anastos, 'Porphyry's Attack on the Bible', in his Studies in Byzantine Intellectual History (London, Variorum, 1979), [DF/531/.A5]; and P. Courcelle, 'Anti-Christian Arguments and Christian Platonism: From Arnobius to St Ambrose', in A. Momigliano (ed.), The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (BR/205/.M6).
It produced something like the Stoic attitude of political activity with detachment. The serious Christian will insist on doing the right thing, whatever it is, and whatever the consequences for him- or herself. Caution, compromise, tact may be the right thing, but once they think that confrontation and conflict are necessary, then seriously believing Christians, like the Stoics, will not easily be deterred by threats.
Happiness becomes a much less important topic in political thought. Christians like Augustine scorned the Stoic concept of the happy life as inadequate, and proclaimed that in the next life true happiness will be found. But they did not say much about what it would be like. It is as if they were content to leave it to God - we can be sure that whatever is required to make human beings happy will be provided. They were not much interested in theorising about happiness in this life, because not everyone can achieve it, it is not important to achieve, it is not of much significance in comparison with the happiness of the next life. So one of the most prominent concepts of Greek political theory drops out of sight until the 18th century. (Medieval Aristotelians theorised about the happiness of the next life, adapting Aristotle's ideas for the purpose: the happiness of heaven consists of intuitive knowledge of God himself.)
So Christians concentrated on saying what human beings should do in this life, and had little to say about happiness in this life or in the next.
According to Plato and Aristotle the city exists for the sake of the good and happy life of its citizens. Aristotle says very explicitly that it does not exist merely to keep peace among citizens while they trade and exchange (Politics III.9, 1280 a35). Augustine does not think that the earthly city can secure for its citizens anything but a minimal peace, and the minimal happiness that results from such peace. The elect, those predestined to happiness in the next life, and the reprobate, can live in some sort of peace, because they have some common interests, corresponding pretty well to the security and trade that Aristotle says is not enough to constitute the good life. According to Augustine the earthly city at its best is simply an alliance for security and trade.
After Augustine among Christians in western europe there were two competing ideas. One that the city of man even at its best will be nothing more than a peace-keeping organisation, keeping peace in the minimal sense that the elect and the reprobate can agree upon. At its worst it will be latrocinium (robbery), and that is what it usually is. Pride and desire for honour are the best motives likely to operate; from a religious point of view pride is damnable, but it may foster civil peace. This is the explanation of what is best in Roman history; at their best the Romans sought honour, reputation, and for that reason often did what justice and virtue would also require (cf. Republic, 363).
The other idea, competing with this, is the Platonic notion of government by philosophers, which came into western Europe as embodied in the ethics and politics of Aristotle. The philosophers now are the religious experts - after God's revelation, human wisdom has been superseded by wisdom based on this revelation. So the leaders of the Christian Church should play the role in which Plato cast the philosophers. Theology, Christian wisdom, is architectonic in relation to politics. Salvation is the work of God and the Church, and the civil government cannot directly contribute to this work; but it can indirectly, by repressing outward sin, repressing rival religions and philosophies, contributing funds and supplies, and so on. So to say that religion is architectonic in relation to politics means that it is up to the Church to determine what contributions the state can and should make to religion, and that carrying out these determinations is the overriding duty of the civil ruler.
These two competing ideas run through medieval political thought - that the state exists to keep the peace, minimally defined, and that it exists to further the salvation of its subjects, as far as that can be secured by the state under the direction of the Church. Medieval writers on political philosophy were theologians, and you might expect them to favour the second idea, that religion directs the state. Many of them did. But many of them defended the other view, that the state exists for this- worldly purposes, which it pursues autonomously. The conflict between these two views is the chief topic of part 2 of the course.
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