Late Middle Ages (13th-15th Centuries)

I envision the late middle ages commencing with the life and work of Thomas Aquinas and concluding with the life and work of Marin Luther. It is beyond the scope of this blog to adequately summarize and analyze the works and influence of Aquinas and his relationship to Augustine. I can say that Scholasticism eventuated in a novel and formal separation between hermeneutics and homiletics as the former increasingly became the purview of the academy and was thus increasingly approached as a science rather than as a spiritual discipline. As for the Bible, “Before the twelfth century, the Bible had been a monastic text; now it became a professional text for clergy and their teachers” (Chris Ocker, in McKim, 20).

This unfortunate development combined with the development of natural theology, spelled disaster for the Scholastic movement, and to some extent for the church. Without going into the details, the influence of Aristotle upon Aquinas led him to advance the already extant idea of the division between nature and grace such that, by means of general grace, the natural world and philosophy became valid sources of revelation right alongside the Word of God and theology. “Aquinas recognized that salvation was dependent upon revelation, but he also fixed the relationship of theology to natural philosophy” (Goldsworthy, 112). So, this idea was not new with him, but it became entrenched through his work.

One of the implications of this teaching was what Aquinas called the analogia entis (analogy of being) by which he and the Scholastics argued that the Creator and his creation, particularly humanity, are bound in an ontological union so that the knowledge of God, in some senses, does not require revelation. Because of the effects of sin, this knowledge must be aided by grace but, for Aquinas, human beings remain fundamentally united with God. This does not mean that we have no need of salvation through Christ, but it does mean that human thought has the potential of being a valid source for revelation (see Goldsworthy, 101-119).

In this way, the Catholic Church came to believe in, and promote, a “twofold way of grace and nature in virtue of revelation on the one side and of a ‘profound structural similarity between nature and supernature’ on the other, i.e., through the operation of a twofold alliance, the one set up by the participation of the creature in being and the other by the restitution effected in the reconciliation in Jesus Christ” (Jacques de Senarclens in Goldsworthy, 113).

This teaching formed an ideal launching pad for the Renaissance and the humanism that was endemic to it. The belief that humanity was not hopelessly fallen but instead capable of being conduits of revelation gave rise to a spirit that may have seemed liberating and joy-producing, but was in fact a form of idolatry and rebellion (see Goldsworthy, 101-119). And this spirit did in fact relegate the Bible to a secondary place in western culture such as had not been seen since the days of Constantine. The veneer was there but the core was rotting.

Yet God is faithful, and along the way he sent many servants to seek his face, love his Word, and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ with joy, boldness, and good effect. Among them were the early Mendicant Friars, John Wycliffe, John Huss, and Girolamo Sirvonarola each of whom was used of God, in one way or another, to “punch holes in the darkness” of this era (Larsen, 128; see also, 95-139; Brown, 3-31).