LESSONS FROM HISTORY (4): Renaissance, Reformation, and Humanism
Photo by Lukas Meier on Unsplash
By Lee Dise
Fourth of a seven-part series.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Lee Dise is an accomplished trombonist and computer programmer, who also happens to know a great deal about things like philosophy, theology, history and related disciplines. He’s also a born-again Christian and in this multi-installment series appearing each day, starting this week on HillFaith, Lee will offer an insightful and provocative analysis of how we got from where we were to where we are today.
The Renaissance (roughly, 1300-1600 AD) was the transitional era in Western history during which medieval times metamorphosed into the modern era. At the beginning of the Renaissance, philosophy was pretty much imbued in Christian perspective; however, by the end, it was no longer God-centered.
No one person made this happen; it seems to have been simply precipitated by the flow of worldly knowledge. The Eastern Roman Empire finally crumbled before the Ottoman Turks in 1453.
Many Eastern monks fled to the West and brought with them the ancient Greek and Roman manuscripts that they had curated for centuries. These contained not just ancient philosophical treatises, but also ideas about mathematics, science, history, drama, and poetry. These ideas caught fire and spread to every corner of Europe.
The World History Encyclopedia describes the term “Renaissance humanism” as an umbrella for a litany of more specific ideas and ideals, including:
- A rejection of medieval scholasticism.
- An emphasis on the individual and moral autonomy.
- An interest in studying literature and art from antiquity.
- A belief in the importance and power of education to create useful citizens.
- The promotion of private and civic virtue.
- The encouragement of non-religious studies.
- A belief in the importance of observation, critical analysis, and creativity.
- A belief that poets, writers, and artists can lead humanity to a better way of living.
- An interest in what it means to be human.
The Renaissance humanists considered Scholasticism (Thomistic philosophy predicated on theological truths) to be too narrow and sectarian for general education purposes.
Education, in their view, should be useful for the general citizenry and not based simply on the church’s perspective. The meaning of humanism in this context is closer to the academic concept that today we call “the humanities” rather than to other philosophies that are often categorized, sometimes indiscriminately, as humanism. Nevertheless, this began the gradual and inexorable process of prying education away from the church’s control.
Photo by Christopher Czermak on Unsplash
Some scholars credit Petrarch (1304-1374), a devout Catholic and erstwhile priest, as having been the single most important thinker behind Renaissance humanism. He saw no conflict between having religious faith and exploring secular areas of knowledge.
But the Renaissance’s intellectual tsunami affected far more than just the church. It kindled new life into the arts, humanities, and sciences.
Dante (c. 1265-1321) wrote “The Divine Comedy” in the Italian vernacular, borrowing heavily from both Biblical and Greco-Roman traditions; it is one of the greatest works of Italian literature.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was a mathematician and inventor, as well as the artist of such paintings as Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) was the mathematical wizard who argued that the Sun, and not the Earth, was the center of the universe.
Composers such as Josquin des Prez (c. 1455 – 1521) and the Gabrielis at Venice’s St. Mark’s Cathedral wrote their music in a fluent polyphonic and (at least somewhat) orchestrated style.
Erasmus (1466-1536) played an important role in the spread of humanistic ideals through education. He used his influence to promote translating the Bible into vernacular languages. He also advocated starting new schools and developed curricula for them, aimed at spreading a practical sort of education for a broader audience than the traditional clerical universities.
In 1517, a priest named Martin Luther nailed his critique of Roman Catholic practices to the door of the All-Saints Church in Wittenberg, Germany. This ignited the Protestant Reformation, which spread throughout northern Europe and posed a threat to the Catholic Church’s theological and political power.
Erasmus, and his English friend Sir Thomas More, offered vigorous defenses of the Catholic Church against the Reformers’ criticisms. However, the Reformers’ assault was a frontal one, whereas Renaissance humanism affected both the Catholic Church and its Protestant offshoots in more infiltrative ways.
There were tough questions. What does it mean for the individual to have moral autonomy? Does it mean he is responsible for his own moral decisions, and how does that play with Reformed ideas such as predestination?
How should human reason interact with revealed wisdom and how far can we take it? One or more wrong answers to these questions relegates the church to a peripheral closet rather than a central pedestal.
By the end of the Renaissance, philosophy had become almost entirely man-centered, and theology was shoved into a corner. Learned thinkers became more and more confident that man possessed the necessary intellectual tools to seek truth on his own, without reliance on the church, and set forth optimistically on a quest to find unity.
This optimism would eventually turn to pessimism, but that would take a while longer. Remember from medieval philosophy that the problem of universals and particulars is resolved only by God’s omniscience.
Leonardo da Vinci had already figured out that math contained nothing but particulars and therefore was the answer to nothing. Others during the smugly-named “Age of Enlightenment” would soon enough be coming to similar conclusions.
Next: Man’s Reason on the Throne
Previously:
Sunday – “Christian Belief and the Consequences of Ideas”
Monday – “Western Civilization as Cultural Synthesis.”
Tuesday – “From the Fragments of Empire, a New Beginning”
Wednesday – “Late Medieval Philosophy and the Basic Questions”
Scholasticism isn’t a body of doctrines. It is a methodology. It’s a common misconception, especially among the followers of Van Til. The Thomistic school was one line of thought in Scholasticism. You also had Duns Scotus, representing a more pure Augustinian school of thought from Thomism. You also had the Ockhamists (nominalists at odds with both Scotus and Aquinas) and the Averroists (more Aristotelian than Thomas). Thus, to say that the Renaissance was all about “rejecting scholasticism,” begs the question, “which school of scholasticism?” Given that the Magesterial Reformers and Post-Reformed of the 17th Century who authored the great Protestant confessions continued to utilize scholastic methodology and continued to uphold doctrines of God in common with people like Scotus and Aquinas, it’s hard to say that they rejected either the method or doctrines wholesale of the Middle Ages. Ockham’s rejection of realism and Descartes’ retreat (rejections of commonly held Medieval and Protestant beliefs) bear far more responsibility for the decline of Christendom than Thomism.
One Van Til student, John Frame, is a theologian and a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary. Frame loves Aquinas and thinks much of the criticism leveled at him by some Reformers (specifically, by Francis Schaefer) to be unfounded.
The common hostility against Thomism among Reformed circles seems to be based on the notion that Aquinas elevated logic to the same level as scripture. I don’t know from my personal readings whether that’s true or just a slander.
I think Van Til’s position on Greek philosophy was that none of their mental tools, in which I include logic, could exist without God as anything more than abstractions. I’m not aware of any reason why Van Til or his followers would misunderstand what scholasticism was. I think it was the separation of scripture and philosophy that they would criticize.
I agree with your points on Ockham and Descartes.
I’m not sure I understand this sentence: “Remember from medieval philosophy that the problem of universals and particulars is resolved only by God’s omniscience.”
Is Mr. Dise stating that that distinction between universals and particulars is in fact a problem that medieval philosophy successfully resolved by reference to God’s omniscience? What exactly are we advised to remember?
As for da Vinci, he sought to unite the universal and the particular through the soul. “[N]ot the Christian soul; the soul is the universal — the soul, for example, of the sea or of the tree.” FWIW.