Part 4 (1/2)
PELAGIUS. While these events were transpiring in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, the spirit that had produced them was displaying itself in the West. A British monk, who had a.s.sumed the name of Pelagius, pa.s.sed through Western Europe and Northern Africa, teaching that death was not introduced into the world by the sin of Adam; that on the contrary he was necessarily and by nature mortal, and had he not sinned he would nevertheless have died; that the consequences of his sins were confined to himself, and did not affect his posterity. From these premises Pelagius drew certain important theological conclusions.
At Rome, Pelagius had been received with favor; at Carthage, at the instigation of St. Augustine, he was denounced. By a synod, held at Diospolis, he was acquitted of heresy, but, on referring the matter to the Bishop of Rome, Innocent I., he was, on the contrary, condemned. It happened that at this moment Innocent died, and his successor, Zosimus, annulled his judgment and declared the opinions of Pelagius to be orthodox. These contradictory decisions are still often referred to by the opponents of papal infallibility. Things were in this state of confusion, when the wily African bishops, through the influence of Count Valerius, procured from the emperor an edict denouncing Pelagins as a heretic; he and his accomplices were condemned to exile and the forfeiture of their goods. To affirm that death was in the world before the fall of Adam, was a state crime.
CONDEMNATION OF PELAGIUS. It is very instructive to consider the principles on which this strange decision was founded. Since the question was purely philosophical, one might suppose that it would have been discussed on natural principles; instead of that, theological considerations alone were adduced. The attentive reader will have remarked, in Tertullian's statement of the principles of Christianity, a complete absence of the doctrines of original sin, total depravity, predestination, grace, and atonement. The intention of Christianity, as set forth by him, has nothing in common with the plan of salvation upheld two centuries subsequently. It is to St. Augustine, a Carthaginian, that we are indebted for the precision of our views on these important points.
In deciding whether death had been in the world before the fall of Adam, or whether it was the penalty inflicted on the world for his sin, the course taken was to ascertain whether the views of Pelagius were accordant or discordant not with Nature but with the theological doctrines of St. Augustine. And the result has been such as might be expected. The doctrine declared to be orthodox by ecclesiastical authority is overthrown by the unquestionable discoveries of modern science. Long before a human being had appeared upon earth, millions of individuals--nay, more, thousands of species and even genera--had died; those which remain with us are an insignificant fraction of the vast hosts that have pa.s.sed away.
A consequence of great importance issued from the decision of the Pelagian controversy. The book of Genesis had been made the basis of Christianity. If, in a theological point of view, to its account of the sin in the garden of Eden, and the transgression and punishment of Adam, so much weight had been attached, it also in a philosophical point of view became the grand authority of Patristic science. Astronomy, geology, geography, anthropology, chronology, and indeed all the various departments of human knowledge, were made to conform to it.
ST. AUGUSTINE. As the doctrines of St. Augustine have had the effect of thus placing theology in antagonism with science, it may be interesting to examine briefly some of the more purely philosophical views of that great man. For this purpose, we may appropriately select portions of his study of the first chapter of Genesis, as contained in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth books of his ”Confessions.”
These consist of philosophical discussions, largely interspersed with rhapsodies. He prays that G.o.d will give him to understand the Scriptures, and will open their meaning to him; he declares that in them there is nothing superfluous, but that the words have a manifold meaning.
The face of creation testifies that there has been a Creator; but at once arises the question, ”How and when did he make heaven and earth?
They could not have been made IN heaven and earth, the world could not have been made IN the world, nor could they have been made when there was nothing to make them of.” The solution of this fundamental inquiry St. Augustine finds in saying, ”Thou spakest, and they were made.”
But the difficulty does not end here. St. Augustine goes on to remark that the syllables thus uttered by G.o.d came forth in succession, and there must have been some created thing to express the words. This created thing must, therefore, have existed before heaven and earth, and yet there could have been no corporeal thing before heaven and earth. It must have been a creature, because the words pa.s.sed away and came to an end but we know that ”the word of the Lord endureth forever.”
Moreover, it is plain that the words thus spoken could not have been spoken successively, but simultaneously, else there would have been time and change--succession in its nature implying time; whereas there was then nothing but eternity and immortality. G.o.d knows and says eternally what takes place in time.
CRITICISM OF ST. AUGUSTINE. St. Augustine then defines, not without much mysticism, what is meant by the opening words of Genesis: ”In the beginning.” He is guided to his conclusion by another scriptural pa.s.sage: ”How wonderful are thy works, O Lord! in wisdom hast thou made them all.” This ”wisdom” is ”the beginning,” and in that beginning the Lord created the heaven and the earth.
”But,” he adds, ”some one may ask, 'What was G.o.d doing before he made the heaven and the earth? for, if at any particular moment he began to employ himself, that means time, not eternity. In eternity nothing transpires--the whole is present.'” In answering this question, he cannot forbear one of those touches of rhetoric for which he was so celebrated: ”I will not answer this question by saying that he was preparing h.e.l.l for priers into his mysteries. I say that, before G.o.d made heaven and earth, he did not make any thing, for no creature could be made before any creature was made. Time itself is a creature, and hence it could not possibly exist before creation.
”What, then, is time? The past is not, the future is not, the present--who can tell what it is, unless it be that which has no duration between two nonent.i.ties? There is no such thing as 'a long time,' or 'a short time,' for there are no such things as the past and the future. They have no existence, except in the soul.”
The style in which St. Augustine conveyed his ideas is that of a rhapsodical conversation with G.o.d. His works are an incoherent dream.
That the reader may appreciate this remark, I might copy almost at random any of his paragraphs. The following is from the twelfth book:
”This then, is what I conceive, O my G.o.d, when I hear thy Scripture saying, In the beginning G.o.d made heaven and earth: and the earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep, and not mentioning what day thou createdst them; this is what I conceive, that because of the heaven of heavens--that intellectual heaven, whose intelligences know all at once, not in part, not darkly, not through a gla.s.s, but as a whole, in manifestation, face to face; not this thing now, and that thing anon; but (as I said) know all at once, without any succession of times; and because of the earth, invisible and without form, without any succession of times, which succession presents 'this thing now, that thing anon;' because, where there is no form, there is no distinction of things; it is, then, on account of these two, a primitive formed, and a primitive formless; the one, heaven, but the heaven of heavens; the other, earth, but the earth movable and without form; because of these two do I conceive, did thy Scripture say without mention of days, In the beginning G.o.d created the heaven and the earth.
For, forthwith it subjoined what earth it spake of; and also in that the firmament is recorded to be created the second day, and called heaven, it conveys to us of which heaven he before spake, without mention of days.
”Wondrous depth of thy words! whose surface behold! is before us, inviting to little ones; yet are they a wondrous depth, O my G.o.d, a wondrous depth! It is awful to look therein; an awfulness of honor, and a trembling of love. The enemies thereof I hate vehemently; O that thou wouldst slay them with thy two-edged sword, that they might no longer be enemies to it: for so do I love to have them slain unto themselves, that they may live unto thee.”
As an example of the hermeneutical manner in which St. Augustine unfolded the concealed facts of the Scriptures, I may cite the following from the thirteenth book of the ”Confessions;” his object is to show that the doctrine of the Trinity is contained in the Mosaic narrative of the creation:
”Lo, now the Trinity appears unto me in a gla.s.s darkly, which is thou my G.o.d, because thou, O Father, in him who is the beginning of our wisdom, which is thy wisdom, born of thyself, equal unto thee and coeternal, that is, in thy Son, createdst heaven and earth. Much now have we said of the heaven of heavens, and of the earth invisible and without form, and of the darksome deep, in reference to the wandering instability of its spiritual deformity, unless it had been converted unto him, from whom it had its then degree of life, and by his enlightening became a beauteous life, and the heaven of that heaven, which was afterward set between water and water. And under the name of G.o.d, I now held the Father, who made these things; and under the name of the beginning, the Son, in whom he made these things; and believing, as I did, my G.o.d as the Trinity, I searched further in his holy words, and lo! thy Spirit moved upon the waters. Behold the Trinity, my G.o.d!--Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost Creator of all creation.”
That I might convey to my reader a just impression of the character of St. Augustine's philosophical writings, I have, in the two quotations here given, subst.i.tuted for my own translation that of the Rev. Dr.
Pusey, as contained in Vol. I. of the ”Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church,” published at Oxford, 1840.
Considering the eminent authority which has been attributed to the writings of St. Augustine by the religious world for nearly fifteen centuries, it is proper to speak of them with respect. And indeed it is not necessary to do otherwise. The paragraphs here quoted criticise themselves. No one did more than this Father to bring science and religion into antagonism; it was mainly he who diverted the Bible from its true office--a guide to purity of life--and placed it in the perilous position of being the arbiter of human knowledge, an audacious tyranny over the mind of man. The example once set, there was no want of followers; the works of the great Greek philosophers were stigmatized as profane; the transcendently glorious achievements of the Museum of Alexandria were hidden from sight by a cloud of ignorance, mysticism, and unintelligible jargon, out of which there too often flashed the destroying lightnings of ecclesiastical vengeance.
A divine revelation of science admits of no improvement, no change, no advance. It discourages as needless, and indeed as presumptuous, all new discovery, considering it as an unlawful prying into things which it was the intention of G.o.d to conceal.
What, then, is that sacred, that revealed science, declared by the Fathers to be the sum of all knowledge?
It likened all phenomena, natural and spiritual, to human acts. It saw in the Almighty, the Eternal, only a gigantic man.