How Should We Then Live? (L'Abri 50th Anniversary Edition) E-Book

Francis A. Schaeffer

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 440

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2005

Beschreibung

As one of the foremost evangelical thinkers of the twentieth century, Francis Schaeffer long pondered the fate of declining Western culture. In this brilliant book he analyzed the reasons for modern society's state of affairs and presented the only viable alternative: living by the Christian ethic, acceptance of God's revelation, and total affirmation of the Bible's morals, values, and meaning.

Leseprobe

THE RISE AND DECLINE OF WESTERN THOUGHT AND CULTURE

HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE?

Francis A. Schaeffer

CROSSWAY BOOKS

WHEATON, ILLINOIS

Copyright © 1976 by Francis A. Schaeffer

Originally published by Fleming H. Revell, 1979

First trade paperback edition, Crossway Books, 1983

50th L’Abri Anniversary Edition, 2005

Publisher’s Foreword copyright © 2005 by Crossway Books

Published by Crossway Books

a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law.

Printed in the United States of America

Excerpts from the Francis Crick article “Why I Study Biology,” which appeared in the Spring 1971 issue of Washington University Magazine, are used by permission.

The Hans Arp poem “Für Theo Van Doesburg” is used by permission of Madame Marguerite Arp.

Excerpt from “The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot is used by permission of the publishers, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

Front cover photos: Raising of the Cross by Rembrandt.

Nude Descending a Staircase by Marcel Duchamp.

Original conception, overall book design, and coordination of research by Franky A. Schaeffer V.

Cover design: Josh Dennis

Twenty-ninth printing, 2005

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 83-70956

ISBN 13: 978-1-58134-536-0

ISBN 10: 1-58134-536-4

To my son,FRANKY SCHAEFFER

Who had the original vision for this project, both the book and the film, and who had much to do with every aspect of the hard work and heavy practical realities of carrying it to completion. This included his being the producer of the film and the overall coordinator of the production of the book. My only regret is that it has cost him two years away from his studio as a painter.

Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Publisher’s Foreword

Acknowledgments

Author’s Note

List of Illustrations

  1 Ancient Rome

  2 The Middle Ages

  3 The Renaissance

  4 The Reformation

  5 The Reformation — Continued

  6 The Enlightenment

  7 The Rise of Modern Science

  8 The Breakdown in Philosophy and Science

  9 Modern Philosophy and Modern Theology

10 Modern Art, Music, Literature, and Films

11 Our Society

12 Manipulation and the New Elite

13 The Alternatives

A Special Note

Chronological Index

Topical Index

Select Bibliography

Publisher’s Foreword

by Lane T. Dennis

Few Christians have had greater impact during the last half of the twentieth century than Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer. A man with a remarkable breadth of cultural interest and with penetrating insight into post-Christian, postmodern life, Schaeffer was also a man who cared deeply about people and their search for truth, meaning, and beauty in life. If there is one central theme throughout Schaeffer’s twenty-four published books (all of which are still in print), it is that “true truth” exists as revealed in the Bible by “the God who is there,” and that what we do with this truth has decisive consequences in every area of life and culture.

This book, How Should We Then Live? was Schaeffer’s nineteenth book and clearly among his most important. It grows out of Schaeffer’s lifelong study of Western thought and culture in light of biblical truth and the Christian worldview. It was written at a time—in the mid-1970s—when Christian and non-Christian leaders were trying to understand the cultural upheaval of the 1960s generation and to assess the implications of this for the future of the church and Western culture. Schaeffer’s thesis was that if we are to understand (as stated in the title) “how we should live” today, then we must understand the cultural and intellectual forces that brought us to this day. Schaeffer thus begins his penetrating analysis with the fall of Rome, followed by the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, while focusing in the twentieth century primarily on the influence of art, music, literature, and film.

Though written nearly three decades ago, Schaeffer’s basic analysis of Western culture has deeply influenced a generation of Christian leaders and is as relevant today as it was thirty years ago. Many of Schaeffer’s insights carry the prophetic ring of truth concerning the moral, spiritual, and intellectual upheaval of our day. Thus Schaeffer noted the devastating impact of the post-Christian consensus on “art, music, drama, theology and the mass media,” lamenting the tragic result that “values died.” Consequently, Schaeffer noted, people are left with no basis for meaning or truth, or hope in life, and instead have adopted the two impoverished values of “personal peace and affluence … regardless of what the result will be in the lifetimes of [our] children and grandchildren.”

Similarly, Schaeffer foresaw the postmodern breakdown of any basis for moral absolutes. One result is what Schaeffer called “arbitrary absolutes” imposed on the culture by a professional elite (e.g., abortion “rights” supported by the legal and medical professions). Another result is abolition of any basis for sexual ethics, with implications that are now being played out in the legal battle over “gay marriage.” Again, though written nearly three decades ago, the timeliness and significance of Schaeffer’s insights are remarkable—as is evident, for example, in Schaeffer’s critique of Alfred Kinsey in light of the recent Hollywood adulation of Kinsey as the liberator of sexual freedom, in the Academy Award-nominated movie Kinsey.

What place does How Should We Then Live? have among Schaeffer’s published works? For the person who has never read Schaeffer, this book provides an overview of his best insights into biblical truth and its relationship to all of culture—and as such How Should We Then Live? provides an ideal introduction to Schaeffer’s thought and work. Beyond this, however, a number of Schaeffer’s other books continue to make a significant contribution. Especially noteworthy are: The Francis Schaeffer Trilogy (Crossway Books), which includes Schaeffer’s three foundational books The God Who Is There, Escape from Reason, and He Is There and He Is Not Silent. Likewise, True Spirituality (available from Tyndale House) provides in-depth insight into what it means to live out the Christian life in truth and reality. In addition to these volumes, twenty-two of Schaeffer’s books are available in a five-volume set of The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer (Crossway Books).

Lastly, we should mention that this new edition of How Should We Then Live? is published on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of L’Abri Fellowship—the worldwide work founded by Francis and Edith Schaeffer in Huémoz, Switzerland, in 1955. The remarkable story of L’Abri in its early years is told in the classic book L’Abri (Crossway Books) written by Edith Schaeffer. Today L’Abri has ten branches located around the world in Switzerland, England, the Netherlands, Sweden, Australia, Germany, Korea, and Canada, including two branches in the United States. For more information about L’Abri we would encourage you to visit the L’Abri website at www.labri.org. The new cover on this fiftieth anniversary edition is also noteworthy in its design and the selection of the two paintings it features, both of which were central to Schaeffer’s message. Thus the rise of Western thought and culture is depicted on the upper left corner of the cover with Rembrandt’s painting of the “Raising of the Cross,” and the decline is depicted by Marcel Duchamp’s painting of “Nude Descending a Staircase,” epitomizing the fragmentation of modern life and culture.

Schaeffer’s question to each of us—“How should we then live?”—is especially urgent in our own day as we see the growing disintegration and decline of truth and morality throughout our world. What then is the answer that Schaeffer offers in response? It is a commitment to God’s Word as truth. It is a compassion for a culture that is lost and dying without the gospel. It is a commitment to the costly practice of truth in the midst of the intellectual, moral, and philosophical battles of our day. It is living in the power and reality of the God who is there, bearing the witness of His truth across the full spectrum of life and culture. As stated by Schaeffer in his closing words: “This book is written in the hope that this generation may turn from … the paths of death and may live.” Few have articulated this message more clearly and demonstrated this message more consistently than Francis Schaeffer. And because of this, few will come to the end of this book without a new vision for how, indeed, we should live.

Lane T. Dennis, Ph.D.

President and Publisher

Crossway Books

February 2005

Acknowledgments

In July 1974 my son, Franky, came to me with a suggestion. The suggestion was that, given time, finances, and hard work by himself and others and by me, a major cultural and historical documentary film series and book could perhaps be produced. Using my study, over the past forty years, of Western thought and culture as a base, we could attempt to present the flow and development which have led to twentieth-century thinking, and by so doing hope to show the essential answers. After much thought, I agreed that we had the responsibility to try.

First of all, let me thank Billy Zeoli for his immediate recognition of the potential of this project and for his steadfast backing and support which made this project possible.

To begin with, I wrote the basic text as a foundation for both the film script and the book manuscript. This basic text was then divided into two separate projects: first, a film script, and second, an expanded version, this book. The book, of course, could utilize the full basic text and thus gives more substantiating material than was possible within the time limits of even a lengthy film series.

For both book and film episodes to succeed, however, careful research was necessary, and I am therefore especially grateful to Dr. Jeremy Jackson, who was our chief historical researcher, for the hundreds of hours of research that he did on the basic text and on the indexes and bibliography of this book. His help and timely suggestions were a constant source of inspiration.

Doctor H. R. Rookmaaker, my longtime associate in the work of L’Abri Fellowship and professor of art history at the Free University in Amsterdam, was our chief art researcher. His expert knowledge of art history and his consistent concern for the project were invaluable to both the book and the film.

It was a privilege to have Jane Stuart Smith as a staunch friend and supporter to whom to appeal on all aspects of the text related to music. Jane was our chief music researcher, and her knowledge on the subject was invaluable.

There was much research needed in areas not easily categorized, so it is with appreciation that I thank John and Sandra Bazlinton for the research they did as our general cultural researchers. Their suggestions often provided a source of clarification on many subjects.

Beyond these basic researchers there were a host of those who were involved in detailed areas of research, in typing and checking the succeeding versions of the text, in the thousands of details involved in the film, and in many other ways too numerous to be able to mention. Their time and effort were invaluable to the project, and I want to say “thank you” to them all.

As ever, James W. Sire was a great help on the editorial work of the book text; many thanks to him.

It was a pleasure working with all those at Fleming H. Revell Company; especially enjoyable were the friendship and support of Bill Barbour and Richard Baltzell. Richard Baltzell gave the final editorial touches to the book. He was also a great help in the final critical reading of the book manuscript, as were Udo Middelmann, Jeremy Jackson, and Franky Schaeffer.

I wish to express my gratitude to my co-workers at L’Abri Fellowship, whose work was increased during the two years I was working on this project, for the very practical help they often provided in addition to their moral support.

Acknowledgments would be totally incomplete without saying “thank you” to Edith, my wife. She was patient beyond words through my tense periods, both while writing and filming. Without her constant encouragement, I simply would not have made it through this project.

I trust that the work and the vision of the people named or mentioned above will be rewarded in their being able to see a tangible change for the better brought about in our day and age by this book and its film counterpart.

Francis A. Schaeffer

Author’s Note

In no way does this book make a pretense of being a complete chronological history of Western culture. It is questionable if such a book could even be written. This book is, however, an analysis of the key moments in history which have formed out present culture, and the thinking of the people who brought those moments to pass. This study is made in the hope that light may be shed upon the major characteristics of our age and that solutions may be found to the myriad of problems which face us as we look toward the end of the twentieth century.

List of Illustrations

1     The Gladiator, Capitoline Museum, Rome

2     Detail, Arch of Constantine, Rome

3     Ruins at Pompeii, Italy

4     Catacomb frescoes in Rome

5     Typical Byzantine mosaics, Rome

6–7 Fourteenth-century reliefs, Campanile in Florence

8     Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good and Bad Government

9     Film crew with the author

10    Carolingian carvings in ivory

11    The Chapel of St. John in the White Tower of London

12    Chartres and Saint-Denis Cathedrals, France

13    Thomas Aquinas

14    Raphael’s The School of Athens

15    Giotto’s Last Judgment

16    Dante

17    Cathedral dome in Florence, designed by Brunelleschi, and bell tower by Giotto

18    The architect Leone Battista Alberti

19    Adoration of the Lamb by van Eyck, Cathedral of Saint Bavon, Ghent, Belgium

20    The Red Virgin by Fouquet

21    One of the four statues in The Captives by Michelangelo

22    David by Michelangelo

23–25 Sketches by Leonardo da Vinci

26    Michelangelo’s Prophet Jeremiah and pagan prophetess of Delphi in Sistine Chapel, Vatican

27    Statue of Farel in Neuchâtel, Switzerland

28    Martin Luther by Cranach, Poldi Pezzoli Museum, Milan, Italy

29    Organ built during the time of Johann Sebastian Bach

30    The Owl and Rhinoceron by Dürer

31    Raising of the Cross by Rembrandt

32–33 Rembrandt etchings

34    Two still lifes by Pieter Claesz, and the author filming

35    Justice Lifts the Nations by Paul Robert, old Supreme Court Building, Lausanne, Switzerland

36    Independence Hall, Philadelphia

37    Water power and steam power

38    The Oath of the Tennis Court by David

39    Symbolic engraving of the terror of the guillotine

40    The Berlin Wall

41    Sir Isaac Newton by Freeman, and Blaise Pascal by Philippe de Champagne

42    Michael Faraday conducting a public experiment

43    Assembly of a satellite at Kennedy Space Center

44    Charles Darwin

45    Adolf Hitler

46    Rouseau and Voltaire statues in Ferney, France

47    Whence .… What .… Whither? by Paul Gauguin

48    The Sacrament of the Last Supper by Salvador Dali

49    Kali

50    Poplars at Giverney by Claude Monet

51    Bathers by Cézanne, and the author filming in the National Gallery, London

52    Les Demoiselles d’Avignon by Picasso, and author with film crew, Museum of Modern Art, New York

53    Nude Descending a Staircase by Marcel Duchamp

54    Duchamp’s “ready-made” called Bicycle Wheel

55    Reenactment of one of Jackson Pollock’s methods of painting “by chance,” and Convergence by Pollock

56    Movie posters from Blow-Up, Silence, and Hour of the Wolf

57    Drug taking

58    News photos of Woodstock

59    Prague, 1968

60    Ilond Troth at her trial

61    Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C., and the author with film crew

62    Media reporting on events

1 Ancient Rome

There is a flow to history and culture. This flow is rooted and has its wellspring in the thoughts of people. People are unique in the inner life of the mind—what they are in their thought world determines how they act. This is true of their value systems and it is true of their creativity. It is true of their corporate actions, such as political decisions, and it is true of their personal lives. The results of their thought world flow through their fingers or from their tongues into the external world. This is true of Michelangelo’s chisel, and it is true of a dictator’s sword.

People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize. By presuppositions we mean the basic way an individual looks at life, his basic world view, the grid through which he sees the world. Presuppositions rest upon that which a person considers to be the truth of what exists. People’s presuppositions lay a grid for all they bring forth into the external world. Their presuppositions also provide the basis for their values and therefore the basis for their decisions.

“As a man thinketh, so is he,” is really most profound. An individual is not just the product of the forces around him. He has a mind, an inner world. Then, having thought, a person can bring forth actions into the external world and thus influence it. People are apt to look at the outer theater of action, forgetting the actor who “lives in the mind” and who therefore is the true actor in the external world. The inner thought world determines the outward action.

Most people catch their presuppositions from their family and surrounding society the way a child catches measles. But people with more understanding realize that their presuppositions should be chosen after a careful consideration of what world view is true. When all is done, when all the alternatives have been explored, “not many men are in the room”—that is, although world views have many variations, there are not many basic world views or basic presuppositions. These basic options will become obvious as we look at the flow of the past.

To understand where we are in today’s world—in our intellectual ideas and in our cultural and political lives—we must trace three lines in history, namely, the philosophic, the scientific, and the religious. The philosophic seeks intellectual answers to the basic questions of life. The scientific has two parts: first, the makeup of the physical universe and then the practical application of what it discovers in technology. The direction in which science will move is set by the philosophic world view of the scientists. People’s religious views also determine the direction of their individual lives and of their society.

As we try to learn lessons about the primary dilemmas which we now face, by looking at the past and considering its flow, we could begin with the Greeks, or even before the Greeks. We could go back to the three great ancient river cultures: the Euphrates, the Indus, and the Nile. However, we will begin with the Romans (and with the Greek influence behind them), because Roman civilization is the direct ancestor of the modern Western world. From the first conquests of the Roman Republic down to our own day, Roman law and political ideas have had a strong influence on the European scene and the entire Western world. Wherever Western civilization has gone, it has been marked by the Romans.

In many ways Rome was great, but it had no real answers to the basic problems that all humanity faces. Much of Roman thought and culture was shaped by Greek thinking, especially after Greece came under Roman rule in 146 B.C. The Greeks tried first to build their society upon the city-state, that is, the polis. The city-state, both in theory and fact, was comprised of all those who were accepted as citizens. All values had meaning in reference to the polis. Thus, when Socrates (4697–399 B.C.) had to choose between death and exile from that which gave him meaning, he chose death. But the polis failed since it proved to be an insufficient base upon which to build a society.

The Greeks and later the Romans also tried to build society upon their gods. But these gods were not big enough because they were finite, limited. Even all their gods put together were not infinite. Actually, the gods in Greek and Roman thinking were like men and women larger than life, but not basically different from human men and women. As one example among thousands, we can think of the statue of Hercules, standing inebriated and urinating. Hercules was the patron god of Herculaneum which was destroyed at the same time as Pompeii. The gods were amplified humanity, not divinity. Like the Greeks, the Romans had no infinite god. This being so, they had no sufficient reference point intellectually; that is, they did not have anything big enough or permanent enough to which to relate either their thinking or their living. Consequently, their value system was not strong enough to bear the strains of life, either individual or political. All their gods put together could not give them a sufficient base for life, morals, values, and final decisions. These gods depended on the society which had made them, and when this society collapsed the gods tumbled with it. Thus, the Greek and Roman experiments in social harmony (which rested on an elitist republic) ultimately failed.

In the days of Julius Caesar (100–44 B.C.), Rome turned to an authoritarian system centered in Caesar himself. Before the days of Caesar, the senate could not keep order. Armed gangs terrorized the city of Rome and the normal processes of government were disrupted as rivals fought for power. Self-interest became more significant than social interest, however sophisticated the trappings. Thus, in desperation the people accepted authoritarian government. As Plutarch (A.D. 507–120) put it in Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, the Romans made Caesar dictator for life “in the hope that the government of a single person would give them time to breathe after so many civil wars and calamities. This was indeed a tyranny avowed, since his power now was not only absolute, but perpetual, too.”

After Caesar’s death, Octavian (63 B.C.–A.D. 14), later called Caesar Augustus, grandnephew of Caesar, came to power. He had become Caesar’s son by adoption. The great Roman poet Virgil (70–19 B.C.) was a friend of Augustus and he wrote the Aeneid with the object of showing that Augustus was a divinely appointed leader and that Rome’s mission was to bring peace and civilization to the world. Because Augustus established peace externally and internally and because he kept the outward forms of constitutionality, Romans of every class were ready to allow him total power in order to restore and assure the functioning of the political system, business, and the affairs of daily life. After 12 B.C. he became the head of the state religion, taking the title Pontifex Maximus and urging everyone to worship the “spirit of Rome and the genius of the emperor.” Later this became obligatory for all the people of the Empire, and later still, the emperors ruled as gods. Augustus tried to legislate morals and family life; subsequent emperors tried impressive legal reforms and welfare programs. But a human god is a poor foundation and Rome fell.

It is important to realize what a difference a people’s world view makes in their strength as they are exposed to the pressure of life. That it was the Christians who were able to resist religious mixtures, syncretism, and the effects of the weaknesses of Roman culture speaks of the strength of the Christian world view. This strength rested on God’s being an infinite-personal God and his speaking in the Old Testament, in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, and in the gradually growing New Testament. He had spoken in ways people could understand. Thus the Christians not only had knowledge about the universe and mankind that people cannot find out by themselves, but they had absolute, universal values by which to live and by which to judge the society and the political state in which they lived. And they had grounds for the basic dignity and value of the individual as unique in being made in the image of God.

Perhaps no one has presented more vividly to our generation the inner weakness of imperial Rome than has Fellini (1920–) in his film Satyricon. He reminds us that the classical world is not to be romanticized, but that it was both cruel and decadent as it came to the logical conclusion of its world view.

A culture or an individual with a weak base can stand only when the pressure on it is not too great. As an illustration, let us think of a Roman bridge. The Romans built little humpbacked bridges over many of the streams of Europe. People and wagons went over these structures safely for centuries, for two millennia. But if people today drove heavily loaded trucks over these bridges, they would break. It is this way with the lives and value systems of individuals and cultures when they have nothing stronger to build on than their own limitedness, their own finiteness. They can stand when pressures are not too great, but when pressures mount, if then they do not have a sufficient base, they crash—just as a Roman bridge would cave in under the weight of a modern six-wheeled truck. Culture and the freedoms of people are fragile. Without a sufficient base, when such pressures come only time is needed—and often not a great deal of time—before there is a collapse.

The Roman Empire was great in size and military strength. It reached out over much of the known world. Its roads led over all of Europe, the Near East, and North Africa. The monument to Caesar Augustus at Turbi (just above modern Monte Carlo) marks the fact that he opened the roads above the Mediterranean and defeated the proud Gauls. In one direction of Roman expansion the Roman legions passed the Roman city Augusta Praetoria in northern Italy which today is called Aosta, crossed the Alps, and came down the Rhone Valley in Switzerland past the peaks of the Dents du Midi to that place which is now Vevey. For a time the Helvetians, who were Celtic and the principal inhabitants of what is now Switzerland, held them in check and made the proud Romans pass under the yoke. The Swiss painter Charles Gleyre (1806–1874), in a painting which now hangs in the art museum in Lausanne, has shown the conquered Roman soldiers, hands tied behind their backs, bending to pass under a low yoke. All this, however, was temporary. Not much could hold back the Roman legions, neither difficult terrain nor enemy armies. After the Romans had passed what is now St. Maurice and the peaks of the Dents du Midi, and as they flowed around Lake Geneva to modern Vevey, they marched over the hills and conquered the ancient Helvetian capitol, Aventicum, today called Avenches.

I love Avenches. It contains some of my favorite Roman ruins north of the Alps. Some have said (although I think it is a high figure) that at one time forty thousand Romans lived there. Today the ruins of Roman walls rise from the blowing wheat in the autumn. One can imagine a Roman legionary who had slogged home from the vastness of the north, mounting the hill and looking down on Avenches—a little Rome, as it were, with its amphitheater and its theater and temple. The opulence of Rome was at Avenches, as one sees by the gold bust of Marcus Aurelius which was found there. Gradually Christianity came to Roman Avenches. We know this by studying the cemetery of that time—the Romans burned their dead, the Christians buried theirs. One can find many monuments and towns similar to Turbi, Aosta, and Avenches all the way from Emperor Hadrian’s wall, which the Romans built to contain the Scots (who were too tough to conquer), to the forts of the Rhine and North Africa, the Euphrates River, and the Caspian Sea.

Rome was cruel, and its cruelty can perhaps be best pictured by the events which took place in the arena in Rome itself. People seated above the arena floor watched gladiator contests and Christians thrown to the beasts. Let us not forget why the Christians were killed. They were not killed because they worshiped Jesus. Various religions covered the whole Roman world. One such was the cult of Mithras, a popular Persian form of Zoroastrianism which had reached Rome by 67 B.C. Nobody cared who worshiped whom so long as the worshiper did not disrupt the unity of the state, centered in the formal worship of Caesar. The reason the Christians were killed was because they were rebels. This was especially so after their growing rejection by the Jewish synagogues lost for them the immunity granted to the Jews since Julius Caesar’s time.

We may express the nature of their rebellion in two ways, both of which are true. First, we can say they worshiped Jesus as God and they worshiped the infinite-personal God only. The Caesars would not tolerate this worshiping of the one God only. It was counted as treason. Thus their worship became a special threat to the unity of the state during the third century and during the reign of Diocletian (284–305), when people of the higher classes began to become Christians in larger numbers. If they had worshiped Jesus and Caesar, they would have gone unharmed, but they rejected all forms of syncretism. They worshiped the God who had revealed himself in the Old Testament, through Christ, and in the New Testament which had gradually been written. And they worshiped him as the only God. They allowed no mixture: All other Gods were seen as false gods.

1 The Gladiator, Capitoline Museum, Rome. “Rome was cruel .…” Photos by Mustafa Arshad.

We can also express in a second way why the Christians were killed: No totalitarian authority nor authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge that state and its actions. The Christians had that absolute in God’s revelation. Because the Christians had an absolute, universal standard by which to judge not only personal morals but the state, they were counted as enemies of totalitarian Rome and were thrown to the beasts.

As the Empire ground down, the decadent Romans were given to a thirst for violence and a gratification of the senses. This is especially evident in their rampant sexuality. For example, in Pompeii, a century or so after the Republic had become a thing of the past, the phallus cult was strong. Statues and paintings of exaggerated sexuality adorned the houses of the more affluent. Not all the art in Pompeii was like this, but the sexual representations were unabashedly blatant.

Even though Emperor Constantine ended the persecution of the Christians and Christianity became first (in 313) a legal religion, and then (in 381) the official state religion of the Empire, the majority of the people went on in their old ways. Apathy was the chief mark of the late Empire. One of the ways the apathy showed itself was in a lack of creativity in the arts. One easily observed example of the decadence of officially sponsored art is that the fourth-century work on the Arch of Constantine in Rome stands in poor contrast to its second-century sculptures which were borrowed from monuments from the period of Emperor Trajan. The elite abandoned their intellectual pursuits for social life. Officially sponsored art was decadent, and music was increasingly bombastic. Even the portraits on the coins became of poor quality. All of life was marked by the predominant apathy.

As the Roman economy slumped lower and lower, burdened with an aggravated inflation and a costly government, authoritarianism increased to counter the apathy. Since work was no longer done voluntarily, it was brought increasingly under the authority of the state, and freedoms were lost. For example, laws were passed binding small farmers to their land. So, because of the general apathy and its results, and because of oppressive control, few thought the old civilization worth saving.

2 Detail, Arch of Constantine, Rome. “In poor contrast to its second-century sculptures .…” Photo by Mustafa Arshad.

3 Ruins at Pompeii, Italy. “And Rome gradually became a ruin.” Photo by Mustafa Arshad.

Rome did not fall because of external forces such as the invasion by the barbarians. Rome had no sufficient inward base; the barbarians only completed the breakdown—and Rome gradually became a ruin.

2 The Middle Ages

With the breakdown of Roman order and the invasions came a time of social, political, and intellectual turmoil. The artists of the Middle Ages forgot many technical things, such as the use of that type of perspective which the Romans employed in their paintings and mosaics. Roman painting had been full of life. In the early days Christian art was also full of life. One can think of the catacombs where the figures on the walls were realistically though simply portrayed. For all the limitations of the visual means, the people were real people in a very real world.

A parallel can be drawn between the “living” quality of this early Christian art and the living Christianity of the early church. Leaders like Ambrose of Milan (339–397) and Augustine (354–430) strongly emphasized a true biblical Christianity. Later in the church there was an increasing distortion away from the biblical teaching, and there also came a change in art. Interesting examples of a carry-over of the earlier, more living Christian art are the mosaics in the Arian Church of St. Lorenzo in Milan. These mosaics are probably from the mid-fifth century. The Christians portrayed in these mosaics were not symbols but real people.

Michael Gough in The Origins of Christian Art (1973) writes of the change from “the acceptance of an element of naturalistic realism to a preference for the fantastic and unreal.” He also points out that by the mid-sixth century “the last vestiges of realism were abandoned.” The Byzantine art became characterized by formalized, stylized, symbolic mosaics and icons. In one way there was something good here—in that the artists made their mosaics and icons as a witness to the observer. Many of those who made these did so with devotion, and they were looking for more spiritual values. These were pluses. The minuses were that in the portrayal of their concept of spirituality they set aside nature and the importance of the humanity of people.

Since A.D. 395 the Roman Empire had been divided into eastern and western portions. The Byzantine style developed in the east and gradually spread to the west. This art had a real beauty, but increasingly only religious themes were given importance, and people were depicted not as real people but as symbols. This came to its climax in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. The portrayal of nature was largely abandoned, and even more unhappily, the living, human element was removed. This, we should stress once more, was in contrast to the early Christian catacomb paintings in which, though simply portrayed, real people lived in a real world which God had made.

Ravenna was a center of the Byzantine mosaics in the west, a center brought to its greatness by the eastern Emperor Justinian, though he never visited it. Justinian, who ruled from 527 to 565, built many churches in the east, the most famous being Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, which was consecrated in 537. These new churches of the east stressed the interior, placing an emphasis on light and color.

During this time there was a decline in learning in the west, though the growing monastic orders, gradually organized around the rule of Benedict (480?–547?), provided a depository for many of the things of the past. Benedict himself had built a monastery on Monte Cassino near the main road from Naples to Rome. In the monasteries the old manuscripts were copied and recopied. Thanks to the monks, the Bible was preserved—along with sections of Greek and Latin classics. The old music, too, was sometimes kept alive by constant repetition. Some of the music came from Ambrose, who had been bishop of Milan from 374 to 397 and who had introduced to his people antiphonal psalmody and the singing of hymns.

Nevertheless, the pristine Christianity set forth in the New Testament gradually became distorted. A humanistic element was added: Increasingly, the authority of the church took precedence over the teaching of the Bible. And there was an ever-growing emphasis on salvation as resting on man’s meriting the merit of Christ, instead of on Christ’s work alone. While such humanistic elements were somewhat different in content from the humanistic elements of the Renaissance, the concept was essentially the same in that it was man taking to himself that which belonged to God. Much of Christianity up until the sixteenth century was either reaction against or reaffirmation of these distortions of the original Christian, biblical teaching.

These distortions generated cultural elements which mark a clear alternative to what we could otherwise call a Christian or biblical culture. Part of the fascination of medieval studies is to trace the degree to which different aspects of the complex Western cultural inheritance were emphasized or deemphasized according to the moral and intellectual response of people to the Christian God they claimed to worship. It would be a mistake to suppose that the overall structure of thought and life was not Christian. Yet it would be equally mistaken to deny that into this structure were fitted alien or half-alien features—some of Greek and Roman origin, others of local pagan ancestry—which at times actually obscured the outlines of the Christianity underneath.

This was not and is not a peculiarly medieval problem. From the earliest days of the Christian church, when Christianity was a small minority movement, believers had struggled with their personal and corporate response to Christ’s prayer that they be in the world but not of it. On one level, this challenged Christians in their attitude toward material possessions and style of living. Not only in the time of Peter and Paul but for generations after, believers were noted for openhanded generosity. Even their enemies admitted it.

On another level, this raised the issue of God’s law as against the will of the state, especially when the two came into conflict. During the persecutions of the Christians under the Roman emperors, the action of the Roman military commander Maurice is a good example of a possible response. When he received an order to direct a persecution of Christians, he handed his insignia to his assistant in order to join the Christians and be killed as a fellow believer. This action took place in the Rhone valley in Switzerland about A.D. 286, against a giant cliff just under the peaks of the Dents du Midi. It is for him that the little town of St. Maurice is now named.

4 Catacomb frescoes in Rome. “… real people in a very real world.” Photos by Mustafa Arshad.

5 Typical Byzantine mosaics, Rome. “The last vestiges of realism were abandoned.” Photo by Anderson.

Finally, on the intellectual level, Christ’s prayer posed the problem of whether or not it was edifying to read or quote the non-Christian classical authors. Tertullian (160–240) and Cyprian (2007–258) decided not, but they proved to be in the minority. It is interesting that in the area of music a strict view did prevail. The reason for the disappearance of the traditions of Roman musical practices in the beginning of the Middle Ages was that the church looked with indignation on the social occasions and pagan religious exercises connected with them. And thus the old Roman musical traditions disappeared.

In the Middle Ages proper, which everyone defines his own way but which we will call the period from about 500 to 1400, we can trace in general terms the continuing response to these same issues. Concerning material possessions, the pendulum swung back and forth between utter disregard of the command to live modestly (caring for the poor, orphaned, and widowed) and a razor-sharp application of these same injunctions (the early monastic ideal to have no money). Thus, at one extreme one could have a papal court popularly rebuked for its material lust. The twelfth-century Gospel According to the Mark of Silver pictured the pope egging on his cardinals to fleece litigants at the papal court, using phrases deliberately mimicking Christ’s teachings: “For I have given you an example, that ye also should take gifts, as I have taken them,” and “Blessed are the rich, for they shall be filled; blessed are they that have, for they shall not go away empty; blessed are the wealthy, for theirs is the Court of Rome.” John of Salisbury (1115?–1180), friend of Thomas à Becket and no enemy of the church hierarchy, told a pope to his face that people thought that “the Roman Church, which is the Mother of all Churches, behaves more like a stepmother than a mother. The Scribes and Pharisees sit there placing on men’s shoulders burdens too heavy to be borne. They load themselves with fine clothes and their tables with precious plate; a poor man can seldom gain admittance.…” In the midst of all this, Saint Francis (1182?–1226), recognizing the corrupting effect of this emphasis on wealth, forbade his followers to receive money at all.

Even if its upper echelon was far from pure, the church did make an effort to control the destructive effects of exorbitant moneylending by first prohibiting it and later trying to limit the interest rate on loans to an accepted market level. With further support of secular rulers, the church also sought to enforce just prices, by which it meant prices which did not exploit human beings through selfish manipulation or through hoarding goods during scarcity. However much one may argue about the success of these attempts at economic control in the name of love for one’s neighbor, it would be false to assume no difference between a society which at least makes repeated public efforts to control greed and economic cruelty and a society which tends to glorify the most expert economic manipulators of their fellow citizens.

Even beyond this, the medieval economic teaching was not wholly negative. It exalted the virtue of honest, well-executed work. This is no better illustrated than in the beautiful late-medieval Books of Hours, private prayer books in which typical occupations are depicted as month succeeds month. The most famous of such books belonged to Jean, duc de Berry, and was executed by the Limbourg brothers in 1415. An earlier illustration of the same thing was the series of reliefs from the early fourteenth century on the Campanile in Florence. And if age or infirmity precluded work, the church provided society with an impressive network of hospitals and other charitable institutions. One in Siena is still in working order. The downstairs women’s ward, just through the main entrance, has a fifteenth-century display of frescoes illustrating what went on in a medieval hospital. If twentieth-century patients are grateful for modern medical advances, they can at the same time admire the superior artistic taste of the old Sienese interior decorators. Nowadays we expect the state to provide hospitals or deal out charity, and this expectation underlines a vast change in the powers of the modern state as against its medieval counterpart. But the state, strong or weak, has always posed a problem to the church, especially when it concerns questions of moral principle. To this area we must now turn.

6–7 Fourteenth-century reliefs taken from the Campanile in Florence. “It exalted the virtue of honest, well-executed work.” Photo courtesy of F. Alinari.

The medieval situation was at the same time easier and more complex than it had been for the Roman officer Maurice. It was easier insofar as Europe was regarded as Christ’s kingdom—Christendom. Thus, Christian baptism was not only spiritually but socially and politically significant: It denoted entrance into society. Only a baptized person was a fully accepted member of European society. A Jew was a non-person in this sense, and for this reason he could engage in occupations (such as moneylending) which were otherwise forbidden. But if the church baptized or consecrated the state, this only made more complex the problem of conscience, because a government which is to all appearances in tune with society can, for that very reason, betray society with the greatest impunity. This, of course, was and is true of the church as an organization, too.

Probably the greatest artistic study of this subject produced in the medieval era is Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s (c. 1290–1348) Allegory of Good and Bad Government, painted in 1338 and 1339 for the council chamber in the great Palazzo Pubblico (town hall) in Siena. Lorenzetti clearly distinguishes between good and bad government, showing on one side the devil presiding over all those vices which destroy community, and on the other side the Christian virtues from which flow all those activities—including honest toil—which manifest oneness between men under God. Considering our own day, it is interesting that one of the marks which is shown characterizing good government is that it is safe for a woman to walk alone in the streets, while under bad government she is subject to being attacked, raped, or robbed. However, as the painter knew well enough from Siena’s own turbulent city politics, if the sources of good and evil were distinct, the effects were humanly mixed together in a more or less jumbled heap of good and bad intentions.

Looking at medieval reality, one observes the same mixed record with respect to state power in financial matters. The church, though often indeed furnishing models of effective economic and political management, was so involved with other medieval institutions that it was frequently difficult for it to be salt to its society. For example, estate management and various types of agricultural pioneering were most notably enterprised by the selfsame monastic orders which, in their infancy, were dedicated not to profit but to poverty. Also, if we are looking for a model of effective centralizing monarchy guided by an efficient bureaucratic apparatus, we need travel no farther than the church court in Rome. The pope—who was called the Servant of Servants—was, by a choice irony, the most effective medieval monarch at the height of papal power between 1100 and 1300.

To leave off the discussion here, however, would be to caricature the church-state situation. For, if the church provided a model for absolute power, it also generated an impressive though eventually thwarted challenge to personal monarchy. Many people are familiar with the parliamentary assemblies in the Middle Ages; most are less aware that the Conciliar Movement in the late-medieval church was another potent force for decentralization. The Conciliar Movement stood for a revival of the idea that real authority in the church is vested not in one bishop, the pope, but in all the bishops together—in a council. Thus the Council of Constance (1414–18) deposed three rival popes, thereby ending a scandalous epoch in church history, while at the same time declaring that the council’s authority came directly from Christ and that all men, including the pope, were subject to its authority in questions of faith and church reform. The Conciliar Movement, however, was destined to wither and disappear; the principle of monarchy rather than of representative government would triumph within the Roman church.

Meanwhile, paradoxical as it may seem, the church, through its frequent tussles with secular rulers over the boundary between church power and state power, had encouraged the evolution of a tradition of political theory which emphasized the principle of governmental limitation and responsibility. There was, in other words, a limit—in this case, an ecclesiastical one—on worldly power; and the theme of kingship balanced by priesthood and prophetic office is important in the statuary of Chartres and many of the great Gothic cathedrals.

To complete our analysis we must also consider the relationship between Christian and classical thought in the Middle Ages. The writings of Greek and Roman thinkers who had such an impact upon Renaissance and post-Renaissance culture were in many cases available to be read because their works had been preserved, read, and discussed by medieval intellectuals. So how did the Middle Ages handle its pagan culture heritage? It is important to assert that although early Christians like Cyprian (d. 258) and Tertullian (d. c. 230) had a strictly negative attitude toward classical Greek and Roman learning, Paul had not been so inhibited. When it was to his purpose, he cited Greek authors just as he at other times employed the subtle rabbinic lines of reasoning which he had mastered as a pupil of the great Rabbi Gamaliel (d. pre-A.D. 70), grandson of the yet greater Rabbi Hillel (70 B.C.?–A.D. 10). Ambrose (339–397), Jerome (347–419) and Augustine (354–430), following Paul rather than Tertullian, learned to appreciate and utilize classical learning. Indeed, they set out thoroughly to domesticate it within the context of a majestic curriculum of Christian education which became the general model followed right up to the Renaissance. But if a robust Christian faith could handle non-Christian learning without compromising, it was all too easy for Greek and Roman thought forms to creep into the cracks and chinks of a faith which was less and less founded on the Bible and more and more resting on the authority of church pronouncements. By the thirteenth century the great Aquinas (1225–1274) had already begun, in deference to Aristotle (384–322 B.C.), to open the door to placing revelation and human reason on an equal footing.

8–9 Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good and Bad Government and film crew with the author. “… on one side the devil … on the other side the Christian virtues.” Photos by Mustafa Arshad.

We will consider this in detail later, but first we must conclude this whirlwind tour through the medieval centuries by looking at some of its most outstanding artistic achievements—achievements, in the main, of the church. Remembering that this church was universal in its European context, we should not be surprised that it worked along with society as a whole, particularly the leaders of society, to produce its greatest artistic monuments. This is very well emphasized in one of the founder-figures of the Middle Ages, Charlemagne (742–814), and in Carolingian culture as a whole.

Charlemagne, son of Pippin, became king of the Franks in 768 and was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III in Rome on Christmas Day of 800. He was a formidable man with colossal energy. He was also a great warrior and constantly on campaign. After he gained control over much of the western European territory formerly in the Roman Empire, his coronation by the pope as a Roman-style emperor followed easily. In return he strengthened the church in many ways, giving the pope a strong land base in Italy and also supporting the Anglo-Saxon missionaries in the areas he conquered, especially among the Germanic tribes. Charlemagne made tithing compulsory, and this supplied funds for the establishment of church administration. He also built impressive churches, including the Palatine Chapel, consecrated in 805 at Aachen (located in what is now West Germany), the home of his old age.

Under Charlemagne, the church became a more general cultural force. Church power became coextensive with state power, and culturally the two spheres fed one another. Scholars were encouraged, and though their work was not very original, there was a restirring through sheer industry, enthusiasm, and systematic propagation. Scholars came from all over Europe to Charlemagne’s court; for example, Alcuin (735–804) came all the way from York in northern England when he was fifty years old. He became Charlemagne’s advisor, head of the palace school at Aachen, and attracted a constellation of scholars to join him there. Charlemagne invited singers from Rome to his court and founded a school of song which he personally supervised. In short, Charlemagne and his scholar-courtiers laid a base for the unity of ideas throughout western Europe. This unity was certainly aided by the invention of the beautiful Carolingian minuscule script, a handwriting which was widely copied. But, note carefully, all of Charlemagne’s scholars were clergy. Learning was not general. We still remember those days in our English language—our word clerk is related to the word cleric, that is, a member of the clergy. It seems that, though Charlemagne himself learned to read, he never learned to write.

With the scholarly revival of the Carolingian Age, there also came an artistic revival. People in later centuries wondered at the costly and exquisite jewels, religious objects, and books. Most of these—like a talisman of Charlemagne which contained a relic, and an ivory bookbinding of the crucifixion—emphasize the religious orientation of the artistic revival of that time.