How Should We Then Live Part 2: The Middle Ages

This episode struck me as in some respects the most confused of the series. Schaeffer vacillates between praise and condemnation of The Middle Ages and in several places entangles himself in a series of non sequitirs and incongruencies.

Given the time restrictions he can perhaps be forgiven for a rushed and not always coherent account of the fall of Rome and the reasons for it. On the one hand he lauds the cultural awakening that takes place during the Medieval Period and lavishes considerable praise on the monastic communities who preserved ancient texts and by implication the legacy of ancient civilisation, as well as what some have called the Carolingian Renaissance. He decries the later Renaissance labeling of the period as being a Dark Age and yet misses the opportunity to explain why Protestants long viewed the period in such terms. It was reference not only to the cultural degradation and chaos of the centuries following the fall of Rome but to the fact that in terms of the gospel there was a real and potent darkness as the testimony of the Apostles and the New Testament was obscured and almost eradicated. The period from roughly 500-1000 was truly in many respects a dark age.

He gives examples of Medieval craftsmanship and yet most art historians and commentators would certainly draw sharp distinctions between the improved but still largely inferior art and architecture of the Carolingian period with what would come later during the period that is sometimes called the High Middle Ages, the period which emerged in full force by the 11^th century and was in conjunction with the rise of cathedral building and so forth. Schaeffer points to Romanesque and Gothic architecture and seems to embrace a narrative of progress, a narrative that on a theological level could be questioned and in many ways runs in contradiction to his accompanying narrative regarding the Church of the period and theological decline.

Schaeffer places great emphasis on the paradigm of reason vs. non-reason and the idea of knowledge being wed to tangible, even empirical content. There's an irony here that will be revisited throughout the series. He rightly despises the Enlightenment and yet insists on Christianity being understood in Baconian-Empiricist and almost rationalistic terms. A creature of the Protestant Scholasticism and Confessionalism, in many respects (from a Biblicist perspective) he runs the risk of falling into the very traps he seeks to identify and expose. These are issues that will re-emerge in later episodes.

He views Christianity as having what might described as a This World-ness understanding, what ironically in terms of Church history would be described as a secular focus, a focus on the temporal. This is juxtaposed or contrasted with the mystical or any type of epistemology rooted in mystery or that which transcends or confounds the capacities of reason.

He contrasts realist art with symbolic depiction and makes a certainly contestable argument regarding early Christian art vis-à-vis later developments. I don't agree with his 'realist' assessment of art in the catacombs which while real and rather simple or basic in its depictions was nevertheless laden with symbolism, not to mention rooted in a theology quite different than the 'Sacred Art' approach of the medieval era, an ethos Schaffer embraces at least in part. It would seem that his particular grief is with regard to developments in the East and its tendency toward a deliberate non-realism in the realm of art. The Orthodox theology was hostile to realism believing that three-dimensional art in terms of sculpture and in realistic painting would detract from and ultimately misrepresent heavenly realities, in addition to being in violation of Divine commandment.

Now of course I would say their two-dimensional iconic style is also in violation of Scriptural command however I will say this – if I were to embrace the notion of Christian or Sacred art (concepts which should be rejected), then I would be inclined toward the Orthodox view which seeks to depict heavenly realities in terms that are deliberately otherworldly and meant to be contrasted with the everyday. There's a theology at work, that while flawed is nevertheless interesting and can make just as potent a Christian claim as can the realist-oriented legacy of the Latin West.

His commentaries again are somewhat muddled in this regard. It's not always clear just what point he's trying to make. He talks about music in terms of Ambrose and hymnody and of course Gregory's famous chant. On the one hand he revels in the artistic legacy of the West... it's hard not to when you live in Europe and drink of its cultural waters... and yet his criticism seems to focus primarily in terms of a hostility directed toward any kind of otherworldliness or incorporation of mystery in the realm of epistemology. For the person who would closely adhere to the doctrine of the New Testament there are serious problems with not only the Roman Church of the medieval period but with monasticism and some of the epistemological tendencies and theological methodologies of the era and yet I find Schaeffer's assessment to be just as problematic. As he moves on through the period this becomes even more evident.

Drawing contrasts between the over-worldliness of the Papacy with the other-worldliness of monasticism, Schaeffer is critical of the Roman Church and yet can't help but praise its attempts to Christianise society. He appreciates the 'advances' of civilisation and constantly speaks in terms of progress and improvement even while expressing doubt regarding some of the economics of the period and the flawed social foundations as he sees it. For Schaeffer it's almost as if Medieval Roman Catholicism could have been great and it had good inclinations but it was torn apart by tensions and inconsistencies.

He speaks of God's law vis-à-vis the state and yet largely glosses over the tensions within Christendom with regard to this matter, a major theme and struggle of the period. Again, he's trying to condense a massive amount of material into a short video, so this can perhaps be excused on one level. Clearly in favour of Christendom as a basic concept and its identification with the Kingdom of God, he ignores what the New Testament actually says about such questions and whether or not it is a Christian calling to transform society and through the power of the state promote and enforce such values. It's a critical question he simply takes for granted. Were he to actually grapple with the text of the New Testament his commentary and attitude toward Rome and the Middle Ages would be forced to change and take an entirely different posture, one of marked hostility and rejection.

And in many ways Schaeffer marks a cultural change within the Evangelical world which took place in the 20^th century. He was not the sole instigator of this change and yet played a considerable part in the softening of Evangelical attitudes toward Rome. This is despite the common perception among many that he was overly critical of Rome. Compared to the polemics of previous generations, Schaeffer's commentary is almost a case of rapprochement and such vital ecumenical relationships would develop within a decade of his death and in some cases were fostered by those that deliberately saw themselves as walking in his footsteps and taking up his mantle.

Finally we come to a core theme in the series, Schaeffer's contrast of the Humanistic Renaissance with the Protestant Reformation, a point he will elaborate and revisit in subsequent episodes. Here he lays the groundwork and yet it is at this point that his already dubious narrative runs into its most serious difficulties.

First he begins with Thomas Aquinas and rightly points out that the Scholastic theologian had a low or incomplete view of the fall that viewed the intellect as intact and able to reason autonomously, in terms Schaeffer repeatedly refers to as humanistic, a suggestion that man is the measure of all things. Of course not a few defenders of Aquinas would contest this interpretation. I for one am very critical of Aquinas and yet Schaeffer's comments leave me somewhat baffled. While he would not embrace Thomistic conceptions of man and human experience as the starting point for knowledge and would (at times) question the notion that reason is employed to take man from earthly knowledge through a course of natural law and theology to the point of knowing God, he nevertheless believes that once man accepts Scripture in terms of an axiom or perhaps on an a priori basis, at that point reason for Schaeffer is certainly vivified, sanctified and more than capable of deducing and constructing vast systems of thought that range well beyond the scope of Scriptural revelation. Once again the critic of the Enlightenment is not as distant from it as he pretends and his polemics are often deeply rooted in Empiricism and the ethos of Scottish Realism.

He launches into a critique of Scholasticism in terms of the problem of universals and paints Aquinas as something of a Nominalist, one who only believes in or exclusively focuses on the particulars and is unable to form or recognise universals or coherences. This is a very strange line to take because it does not represent Aquinas but rather someone like William of Ockham. Additionally it was Nominalism and the Via Moderna which in most commentaries is contrasted with the Scholasticism represented by Aquinas. Indeed in many respects it laid the groundwork for the fall of Scholasticism and one wonders if Schaeffer is unaware of Luther's praise of Ockham in this regard.

Now to be fair, on another level Nominalism could be said to be the logical consequence of Scholasticism and the outworking and consistent application of Aristotelian thought. I am sympathetic with that argument, that it (Aristotelian Scholasticism) in the end self-destructs. However Nominalism and the rejection of universals is certainly beyond what Aristotle argued and that is equally true with regard to Thomas Aquinas. To argue that the author of the Summa Theologica, the man most representative of Scholasticism didn't believe in universals, in coherence in what could be called a system – is to misunderstand the period and the salient questions on a pretty substantial scale.

Schaeffer ties in his flawed Aristotle-Aquinas-Humanistic Scholasticism-Nominalist narrative in with the Renaissance and this is even more strange as most scholars view the Renaissance as a reaction to the Scholasticism of Aquinas. Indeed on another meta-narrative level the Renaissance was (at least in part) something of a Platonic correction to the Aristotelian trajectory of medieval scholastic thought. One could also argue that the Renaissance in another sense generated a crisis that was worked out in the Age of Reason, in the developing philosophical battles between Rationalism and Empiricism and that Aristotelianism (in the broad strokes) regained the ascendancy during the Enlightenment which provoked yet another Platonic-like reaction in the Anti-Enlightenment (as some would have it) instigated by Kant. This played out into the twentieth century in the Analytic-Continental divide and later in the debates over Modernism and Post-Modernism.

That's one narrative, the 'Western Philosophy is but a series of footnotes to Plato' argument which has some credence. On another level one can see a direct line of continuity between Scholasticism, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the Post-Kantian era. It was (when framed as such) all part of a philosophical trajectory in which human reason triumphed over superstition and purely religious epistemology.

There are ways to frame these narratives and most contain elements of truth but at the same time they can easily become very misleading, over-generalised, reductionist and manipulated. However I must say that with all the framing and narrative options that are available, Schaffer's modeling in particular doesn't work. It doesn't reflect actual events or the development of ideas. This is rather stunning when one considers the impact of this series and its effect on its audience.

Additionally his constant contrasts between Renaissance and Reformation are misleading as many view the latter as a subset or outworking of the former. If he means to contrast the Enlightenment with the Reformation, that can be done but in terms of this grand Western Civilisational narrative, he's drawn connections and inferences that just aren't there and in many ways undercuts his own claims.

And then somehow he leaps from this confusion into a series of statements regarding Rome's notion that salvation was to merit the merit of Christ. While that's one way to describe Rome's doctrine his arguments regarding the particulars and humanism are disconnected from this sudden pivot into soteriology, let alone his subsequent and somewhat misleading statements regarding Wycliffe, Hus and their connection to his previous philosophical musings as well as their actual context.

He concludes with a reference to the need for absolute truth and contrasts this with the tendency toward relativism and autonomous thought. These are worthy sentiments but his means of extracting this statement from his narrative regarding the Middle Ages is one gigantic glaring non sequitir. I'm afraid one is left with the impression that he wants to connect the events, corruption, debates and ultimately instability of the Middle Ages with the crisis of modern Western life and yet it must be said he fails to do so in any kind of coherent or credible manner. Trying to comment on the cultural and philosophical sweep of nearly a thousand years in so short a time proves impossible and while more could have been accomplished Schaeffer just isn't up to the task.

Continue reading Part 3