THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREAT TRADITION

A student at a Christian university who has not encountered the proposal of the Christian intellectual tradition—from Paul to Augustine, from Irenaeus to Dante, Aquinas, Luther, Milton, and moderns such as Lewis and Polanyi, along with those who have challenged and now challenge that tradition—such a student has been grievously shortchanged in his or her University education. This true for students majoring in theology, philosophy, or the liberal arts. It is true, to varying levels of intensity, for all students. If, that is, the Christian in the claim to be a Christian University refers to conviction and not merely to a hangover of historical accident.

Richard John Neuhaus, “A University of a Particular Kind,” First Things (2007)

The emphasis on biblical interpretation as foundational for serious Christian thought and engagement was important not only for the Antiochenes but also for the greatest doctors of the church, Jerome (ca. 341–420) and Augustine (354–430). Jerome was a more able linguist and translator than any of his colleagues in the early church. His eclectic model for interpreting Scripture combined what was best in both the Alexandrian and Antiochene Schools. Without question Jerome ranks as a biblical interpreter of the first order, a reputation that endures even to this day.1 Yet, it was Augustine who advanced Christian thinking in most significant ways.

AUGUSTINE: THE FATHER OF THE CHRISTIAN INTELLECTUAL TRADITION

For Protestants, Augustine serves as the dominant figure in the history of Christian thought and biblical interpretation between the time of the apostles and the sixteenth-century Reformation. For Roman Catholics, Augustine’s influence during this period is rivaled only by that of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). In the history of philosophy, Augustine is only slightly less important; he was the most influential philosopher between Plotinus, in the third century, and Aquinas. In this regard, Augustine’s work has shaped the best of the Christian intellectual tradition like few others during the two-thousand-year history of the church.

Augustine’s life serves as an important key to understanding his thought. As described in his Confessions, Augustine in his youth seldom lost an opportunity to pursue one sin or another.2 He took a mistress when he was seventeen and fathered an illegitimate son before he was twenty. About the same time, he began a relationship with a dualistic religious and philosophical system known as Manichaeism, which taught that two principles—Light and Dark, God and Matter—are eternal. Augustine claimed that Manichaeism appealed to him intellectually because it appeared to offer a superior answer to the problem of evil than what he had discovered in his mother’s Christianity. Also, Manichaeism made fewer moral demands upon him. When he gradually realized through the study of the liberal arts, particularly philosophy, the inconsistency of the religion of Mani, Augustine did not take up with this movement or any other religion, “because they were without the saving name of Christ.”3 Instead, he fell into the temptation of skepticism, with academics at the helm of his life.

The road to his conversion began at Milan with the preaching of Ambrose (ca. 339–397), which dispersed the Manichaean difficulties and provided the key for the interpretation of the Old Testament with the use of allegorical hermeneutics. Under the influence of Ambrose, Augustine’s difficulties about the Bible began to be resolved, and the process was accelerated by the discovery of Neoplatonist philosophy, in which he could find confirmation of much that he found in the Gospel of John.

Augustine’s conversion took place in AD 386, at which time he authored Against the Skeptics. He was appointed as coadjutor bishop and was consecrated as bishop of Hippo Regius in 395. His numerous writings included polemical works against the Manichaeans, the Donatists, and the Pelagians, in addition to significantly important theological works such as The Trinity and The City of God. During this time a steady stream of biblical commentaries also flowed from his pen.

Augustine was among the first to recognize the importance of one’s presuppositions when interpreting Holy Scripture. He was perhaps the greatest of the Christian Platonists. The integration of biblical data and Platonic philosophy can be seen in Augustine’s famous maxim: Credo ut intelligam (I believe in order that I may understand). Augustine derived the biblical foundation of this principle from the Latin version of Isaiah 7:9 (Unless you believe, you shall not understand) and from the Platonic notion of innate first principles.

Long before the insights of contemporary semiotics or semantics, Augustine recognized that things in the created world could function as signs or symbols through which God was understood. Understanding is possible because of the illumination afforded by the uncreated light of God. Augustine believed that for the mind to see God, it must be illumined by God, and this results in: (1) a faith that believes that what we look for, when seen, ought to make us blessed; (2) a hope that is assured that vision will follow right looking; and (3) a love which longs to see and enjoy.4

The goal of biblical interpretation should prioritize the love of God and neighbor (see Matt. 22:37–39), the ordering of the Christian life toward its heavenly home. Augustine’s reading of Holy Scripture emphasized the canonical meaning of a text within the context of the entire biblical canon, the priority of faith, the significance of signs, the goal of love, and both the historical and allegorical meanings. He did not limit the Scripture to just one sense; when he approached the Bible, he tended to prioritize theological issues over historical ones.5

Similar to Jerome, in the course of his theological development, Augustine began to emphasize more strongly the literal and historical sense of Scripture, though, for Augustine, the theological was always primary. From this framework, Augustine not only became the most articulate advocate for the Christian intellectual tradition but advanced it as had no one before him. In doing so, he gladly upheld the authority of the rule of faith thus shaping the confessional tradition that we will explore in chapter 4. Excesses in Augustine’s interpretation or theologizing were thereby modified by his concern for a catholic interpretation of Scripture, faithful to the authority of both church and creed.6 Thus Augustine’s genius could hold together creativity and creed; author, text, and interpreter; the historical and the figurative/allegorical, as well as faith and reason.

In holding together faith and reason, Augustine provided a model for thinking Christianly about the world, stressing the priority of faith for understanding God’s revelation to humanity in creation and experience and ultimately in Jesus Christ and Holy Scripture. In doing so, Augustine always stressed that biblical interpretation and Christian thinking about all aspects of life should encourage love for God, for the church, and for neighbor. Augustine’s influence on the shape of the Christian intellectual tradition has been, in many ways, incalculable. Some would even suggest that the contributions to this tradition over the past fifteen hundred years are best understood as a footnote to the work of Augustine.

THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION: FROM AUGUSTINE TO AQUINAS

The seven great ecumenical councils of the church (325–787) took place during turbulent times. As the church expanded and matured, it also faced new and greater challenges concerning the church’s beliefs. How should the Trinity be believed and proclaimed? If Jesus Christ is fully God, how can he simultaneously be fully human? If Jesus Christ is one person, how do we understand his two natures and two wills? What is meant by the phrase “the Holy Spirit, the lifegiver”? Questions regarding the Trinity, the incarnation of Jesus Christ, and the nature and sinfulness of humanity ushered in and characterized the years known as the medieval period. These were years during which the barbarians were chipping away at the borders of the Roman Empire, conquering large portions of it. Also, it was a time when the church’s understandings of its leadership and organization were developing into their hierarchical form. The Christian intellectual tradition during this time was challenged, expanded, and strengthened, particularly through the work of Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Thomas Aquinas.

Anselm (1033–1109) served as archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. In his book Proslogion, Anselm, through the use of reason, made a case for the existence of God through what is known as the ontological argument. He argued that since God nothing greater than God can be conceived, there must be a supreme being. Therefore, because humans can conceive of God, God must exist. If he did not exist, he would not be the greatest conceivable being. Since men and women can think of God, it is implied that there must be a God. Anselm’s contribution to the Christian intellectual tradition was his attempt to show that men and women were capable of using reason to explore the things of God. Anselm appealed to Scripture and to tradition, but his efforts attempted to bring together the roles of reason and faith.

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) was a faithful...