Church schools among early Christians
Mosheim says: “There can be no doubt but that the children of Christians were carefully trained up from their infancy, and were early put to reading the sacred books and learning the principles of religion. For this purposeschoolswere erected everywhere from the beginning.”[59]
Training schools for missionaries
From these schools for children, we must distinguish thoseseminariesof the early Christians, erected extensively in the larger cities, at which adults, and especiallysuch as aspired to be public teachers, were instructed and educated in all branches of learning, both human and divine. Such seminaries, in which young men devoted to the sacred office were taught whatever was necessary to qualify them properly for it, the apostles of Christ undoubtedly both set up themselves, and directed others to set up.[60]St. John, at Ephesus, and Polycarp, at Smyrna, established such schools. Among these seminaries, in subsequent times, none wasmore celebrated than that at Alexandria; which is commonly called a catechetic school.[61]In addition, then, to home and church schools for children, the early Christian church established seminaries for the education of workers. In reading the history of the times the course of instruction is seen to adhere closely to the Scriptures, and to draw a sharp distinction between the science of salvation and the Greek and Oriental philosophy as taught in the pagan schools.
Pagans feared Christian schools
Christian education was often regarded as narrow and limited by those who loved to study the mysteries of Greek wisdom; but as long as they adhered to their simple studies, and made faith the basis of their work, there was a power in the truths taught by the students of these schools, which made the pagan world, with all its great men, tremble. It is an interesting fact that as late as the fourth century, after the Christian schools had lost much of their power through the mingling of pagan with Christian methods, and the adoption of some of the pagan studies, they were still regarded as the stronghold of Christianity. When Julian, theapostate, began to reign, an attempt was made to revive paganism throughout the Roman Empire. One of his first acts was toclose the schools of the Christians. “He contemptuously observes,” says Gibbon, “that the men who exalt the merit of implicit faith are unfit to claim or to enjoy the advantages of science; and he vainly contends that if they refuse to adore the gods of Homer and Demosthenes, they ought to content themselves with expounding Luke and Matthew in the church of the Galileans.
The public schools of Julian
“In all the cities of the Roman world, the education of the youth was intrusted to masters of grammar and rhetoric; who wereelected by the magistrates, maintained at the public expense, and distinguished by many lucrative and honorable privileges.... As soon as the resignation of the more obstinate teachers had established the unrivaled dominion of the pagan sophists, Julian invited the rising generation to resort with freedom to thepublic schools, in a just confidence that their tender minds would receive the impressions ofliterature and idolatry.If the greatest part of the Christian youth should be deterred by theirown scruples, or by those of their parents, from accepting this dangerous mode of instruction, they must, at the same time, relinquish the benefits of a liberal education.Julian had reason to expect that, in the space of a few years, the church would relapse into its primeval simplicity, and that the theologians, who possessed an adequate share of the learning and eloquence of the age, would be succeeded by a generation of blind and ignorant fanatics, incapable of defending the truth of their own principles, or of exposing the various follies of polytheism.”[62]
Julian can not be counted as a fool; for, wishing to make the world pagan, he proceeded to do so, (1)By closing the Christian schools where the “merit of implicit faith” was taught; (2)By compelling attendance of the public schools, taught by pagan teachers, andwhere literature and idolatry were combined.
As Gibbon says, he hadjust reasonto expect that in the course of a generation the Christians thus educated would lose their faith, cease to oppose paganism, and sink into insignificance. If a pagan emperor expected this in the fourth century, is it any wonder that Protestants to-day,allowing their children to remain in the public schools where precisely the same things are taught, in principle as Julian had his public instructors teach, should lose power and cease to beProtestants? From the words of Gibbon one would infer that in the days of Julian there were parents who refused to send their children to the public schools; some children who, “because of their own scruples,” refused to attend; and some teachers who ceased to teach rather than teach literature and idolatry in state schools.
The seminary at Alexandria
Special mention is made of the Alexandrian school, as it was located in an Egyptian city to which flocked many noted pagan scholars. Sad as it may be to do so, it is yet necessary to see how these schools, and especially this one at Alexandria, lost their simplicity as they came in contact with pagan scholars, and attempted to meet them on their own grounds.
Alexandria adopts philosophy of Plato
Mosheim says: “This philosophy [of Plato] was adopted by such of the learned at Alexandria as wished to be accounted Christians, andyet to retain the name, garb, and the rank of philosophers.In particular, all those who in this century presided in the schools of the Christians at Alexandria ... are said to have approved of it. These men were persuaded that true philosophy, the great and most salutary gift of God, lay in scattered fragments among all the sects of philosophers; and therefore that it was the duty of every wise man, and especially of a Christian teacher, to collect those fragments from all quarters, and to use them for the defense of religion and the confutation of impiety.”[63]
Result of adopting worldly methods
The lesson so dear to Paul—that the gospel of Christ is the “power of God unto salvation”—was lost sight of when these Christian teachers assumed the philosopher’s garb, and used the philosopher’s vocabulary to confute impiety. “I have somewhat against thee,” writes the divine historian of this age, “because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, anddo the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place.”[64]The heaven-littaper of Christian education in its purity was beginning to grow dim. Its flame must have a constant supply of truth, or, like the candle without oxygen, it burns low, and finally goes out. Paul, writing to the Corinthians who were placed in circumstances similar to those of the school at Alexandria, that is, pressed upon all sides by pagan philosophy, said: “I came toward you with weakness and fear and great timidity. And my thought and my statement was not clothed in captivating philosophical reasons; but in demonstrated spirit and power, so that your trust might notbe in human philosophy, but in divine power.... What we speak is not in an artificial discussion of a human philosophy, but by spiritual teachings, comparing spiritualities with the spiritual.”[65]
Dialectics versus the Scriptures
Again, “Dialectic,” or logic, was that science of which Aristotle, the disciple of Plato, boasted as being the father. Says a writer of the church after the decline was well begun, it “is the queen of arts and sciences.In it reason dwells, and is manifested and developed.It is dialectic alone thatcan give knowledge and wisdom;it alone showswhat and whence we are, and teaches us our destiny[human philosophy and evolution]; through it we learn to know good and evil. Andhow necessary is itto a clergyman, in order that he may be able to meet and vanquish heretics!” Men have more than once reverted to logic to vanquish heretics, but it was only when the Spirit of truth was lacking.
The educational question caused a division
Error was rapidly creeping into the church, and it came principally through these schools, as has already been seen. However, truth was not abandoned for error without a struggle. Mosheim says: “The estimation in which human learning should be held was a question on which the Christians were about equally divided. For while many thought that the literature and writings of the Greeks ought to receive attention,there were others who contended that true piety and religion were endangered by such studies.”[66]People then, as now, looked to the leaders in the church for guidance; and it was hard, when these studies were popular, for the conscientious to withdrawentirely to what the others called a narrow, limited education. It often led to contention among members of the same church, and often even parents and children failed to agree on the subject.
Wrong methods retained
“But gradually,” continues Mosheim, “thefriends of philosophy and literature acquired the ascendency. To this issue Origen contributed very much; for having early imbibed the principles of thenew Platonism,he inauspiciously applied them to theology, and earnestly recommended them to the numerous youth who attended on his instruction. And the greater the influence of this man, which quickly spread over the whole Christian world, the more readily was his method of explaining the sacred doctrines propagated.”
Origin of the papacy
The days when the papacy should be recognized as the beast of Revelation 13 were fast approaching. Such experiences in the history of education in the Christian church show how rapidly the life of the Master, the Spirit of truth, was giving place to the form of godliness which denied the power thereof. One reading thus the pages of history can not fail to see that the papacywas formed in the minds of men,was propagated in the schools, and really took birth in the educational system then developed. The political power, which was called upon to help the church, simply carried out at the point of the sword those principles which were developed in the schools. The two streams—paganism and apostate Christianity—united; and in the mad current which flowed from their confluence, men’s souls were lost forever.
Christian Educationis the pure water of life, clear and sparkling, which flows from the throne of God; but when mingled with the turbid waters of the valley, it is lost sight of, and the current is evil. The part played by Platonic philosophy can not be overlooked. The foundation had already been laid in the third century for the scholasticism of the Middle Ages, and that “noontide of the papacy which was the world’s moral midnight” was fast approaching.
Previous chapters have revealed these facts: 1. That the Jewish nation was set as a light to the world. This light was to shine by means of education, and the Jews were to be teachers of the nations. 2. The Jewish nation lost its position as leader in educational reform, and, consequently, in all other particulars, because it departed from the pure system of education delivered to the Fathers, and mingled with the heathen, especially with the Greeks and the Egyptians.
In substantiation of this fact we have these words of Neander: “The Jews, completely imbued with the elements of Hellenic culture,endeavored to find a mean between it and the religion of their fathers, which they had no wish to renounce. To this end they availed themselves of the system most in vogue with those who, in Alexandria, busied themselves with religious matters—that of thePlatonic philosophy, which had alreadyacquired a mighty influence over their own intellectual life.... On the one hand, they firmly adhered to the religion of their fathers.... On the other hand, their minds were possessed by a philosophical culture at variance with these convictions. They were themselves not unconscious of the conflicting elements that filled their minds, and must have felt constrained to seek some artificial method of combining them into a harmonious whole. Thus they would be involuntarily driven to intercalate inthe old records of religion, which for them possessed the highest authority, asense foreign to their true spirit, supposing all the while that they were thereby really exalting their dignity as the source of all wisdom.”[67]3.This intercalation of Greek philosophywith the truth delivered to the Jewish nation brought the schools of the Hebrews to such a position that the Son of man, when receiving His education, avoided them altogether, and in His public teaching warned His people against the schools of the doctors, who for the Word of God taught the traditions of men.This mingling of education then meant the crucifixion of Christ and the ruin of the Jewish nation.4. The early Christian church, composed of memberscalled out from the Jewish schools and from the purely pagan doctrines, at first taught their children truths based upon the Scriptures; but before the close of the first century, the tendency to commingle Christian teachings and heathen philosophy was already noticeable. Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, referring to this fact, said, “Themystery of iniquitydoth already work.”
Papal education sophistry
This tendency, seen in the days of Paul, grew into a habit; and as Christian youth prepared for gospel work by attending the schools at Alexandria and elsewhere, an entire change took place.
It now becomes our duty to follow this changed system of education, which is indeed but a mixture of Christian and pagan, and hence not a separate and distinct system at all. It was designated by the apostle to the Gentiles as “the mystery of iniquity.” As found in the third century, Mosheim described it thus: “It is necessary, however, to observe that the methods now used of defending Christianity, and attacking Judaism and idolatry, degenerated much from the primitive simplicity, and the true rule of controversy. TheChristian doctors, who had beeneducated in the schools ofthe rhetoricians and sophists, rashly employed the arts and evasions of their subtle masters in the service of Christianity; and, intent only upon defeating the enemy, they were too little attentive to the means of victory, indifferent whether they acquired it by artifice or plain dealing. This method of disputing, which the ancients called economical, and whichhad victory for its object, rather than truth, was, in consequence of the prevailing taste for rhetoric and sophistry, almost universally approved.”[68]
The effect of the Christian schools’ teaching Greek literature, sophistry, and rhetoric was bearing its fruit in an unmistakable way. The simplicity of the gospel and of the man of God, who was thetruth, was fast passing away. Even at this early date we find the germ of the order of Jesuits, who, in the Middle Ages, carried out the theory of the Platonists, and asserted “that it was no sin for a person to employ falsehood and fallacies for the support of truth, when it was in danger of being borne down.” It was at this time, and under the influence of these same doctors andteachers, that there arose the practice of attributing the writing of certain books to illustrious authors; “hence, the book of canons, which certain artful men ascribed falsely to the apostles, ... and many other productions of that nature, which, for a long time, were too much esteemed by credulous men.”[69]How far men had departed from the simplicity of the gospel is evident.
Error introduced by teachers
The spread of ideas contrary to the purity of the gospel was almost universally begun in the schools professing to be Christian; and teachers were, almost without exception, the leaders in these intellectual moves, which in reality form the basis for every change in government or religion. Throughout the history of the centuries, men have arisen who were noted for their intellectual prowess, men of strong mind, who were searching for truth. By tracing the work of a few representative teachers through the first three or four centuries,we see the papacy appearing as the direct result of educational principles.
In order to make this clear, let us begin with the teachings of Clement in the school of Alexandria. It may be hard to distinguish between truthand error, as we trace the intricate windings of philosophy in the days of the early church; but it is necessary to find the origin of those leading principles of the papacy against which the Reformation contended. In order to do so, we go to the source of the stream, which is usually found at Alexandria, in the schools conducted by Christian teachers, or doctors, as they are often called. The foremost, the all-absorbing doctrine of the papacy, is the substitution of works for faith. Christ’s one lesson, illustrated in hundreds of ways, to the multitudes and to the few, was wisdom by faith, eternal life by faith. The early church was founded upon this principle, and faith in God’s Word was the first maxim in the home school, in the church school, and in the seminaries of the early Christians. Faith gives the hearing ear, as in the case of Solomon; this gives the ability tostudy, which brings true wisdom.
Corruption took place gradually
How or where faith was lost can not be stated in positive terms. As wood, under favorable conditions, changes, bit by bit, into solid stone, one atom of wood giving place to a grain of sand, and so on till the form of the tree, once an embodimentof life, now lies a hard and lifeless stone, retaining, however, each scar of branch and leaf, each crack or wrinkle of the bark, yea, even the annual marks of growth and the grain of the wood; so faith in God’s Word was lost, atom by atom, and the lost faith was replaced by human philosophy. Alexandria was to the Christian school what the marsh is to the fallen tree. Much Greek philosophy contained elements of truth; many truths were by the Greeks put in brilliant settings. God himself had evidently revealed to the minds of men, such as Plato, Pythagoras, Aristotle, and others, principles of truth; but it was not supposed that men to whom had been opened the treasures of wisdom and knowledge through His word and through His Son should ever find it necessary to search for a few gems of truth amidst a mass of error. Turning from the pure light to search for these stray thoughts in Greek philosophy,men lost their faith in God, failed to give His word its proper place, and erelong the living, fruit-bearing tree was but an image of its former self, molded in stone.
That the reader may see that this mingling of truth and error was adopted in place of the pureword, he is referred to Neander’s description of Clement and his quotations of that eminent scholar’s reasoning.[70]
Clement’s school work
Without taking the space necessary to give this quotation, we pass to the thought that Clement introduced this Greek philosophy into the school he was teaching, and through his disciples paved the way for the papacy in its power. Of the Alexandrian school we read: “What was the original aim of the school itself? Was it at the outset merely an institution for communicating religious instruction to the heathen, or had there long existed in Alexandria a school for educating teachers for the Christian church—a sort of theological seminary for the clergy?... We find that originally a single person was appointed by the bishop of Alexandria to hold the office of catechist, whose business it was to give religious instruction to the heathen and probablyalso to the children of the Christians in that place.... Men were required for this office who possessed a perfect acquaintance with the Grecian religion,and most especially must they have received a philosophical education, so as to be able to converse and to disputewith any learned pagans, who, after long investigation on other questions, might turn their attention to Christianity.
“It was not enough to teach here, as in other churches, the main doctrines of Christianity....With these enlightened catechumens, it was necessary to go back to the primitive sources of the religion in Scripture itself, and to seek to initiate them into the understanding of it—for such required a faith which would stand thetest of scientific examination.”[71]
In order to meet the demands made by pagans and Greek philosophers the school stooped from its exalted position of teaching a wisdom acquired by faith, and substituted a course of study which “wouldstand the test of scientific examination.”
Clement and higher criticism
Clement, one of the earliest teachers in this school, “points out the need of high and rich talents in the holder of the catechetical office at Alexandria.” “The range of instruction imparted by these men,” says Neander, “gradually extended itself, for they were the first who ... attempted to satisfy a want deeply felt by numbers—the wantof ascientific exposition of the faith, and of a Christianscience.” Here is perhaps the best place for one to attribute the change from faith to a scientific demonstration of the truths of the universe. Here is marked the time, so far as one is able to point it out with definiteness, of the transit from education by faith to education of the senses, from the spiritual to the intellectual and the physical. The fruit and the utter folly of the wisdom of the Greek and Egyptian sages (?) of this intellectual system are seen in its ripened state in the Dark Ages.
Christian students fed on pagan ideas
The same paragraph in Neander continues: “To their school were attracted not only those educated pagans, who, having by their teaching been converted to Christianity, and being seized with a desire to devote themselves and all they possessed to its service, chose ... the Alexandrian catechists for their guides, but alsothose youths, who, having been brought up within the Christian pale, were thirsting after a more profound knowledge, in order to prepare themselves for the office ofchurch teachers.”[72]
Opposing voices
This school did not find its pathway always strewn with roses; for there were church teachers of the primitive class “who looked chiefly to the practical and real, ... and who were in continual dread of a corruption of Christianity by the admixture of foreign philosophical elements,” and these offered some opposition to the transit from an education of faith in God’s Word to one of scientific investigation and reason.
Clement’s justification
Those were days of lively debate, and the defenders of Christian education more than once contended for its principles. “‘Thus much,’ observes Clement, ‘I would say to those who are so fond of complaining: if the philosophy is unprofitable, still the study of it is profitable, if any good is to be derived from thoroughly demonstrating that it is an unprofitable thing.’” This argument is indulged in at the present time by those who espouse the cause of modern education, and wish to defend the study of the classics and the doctrine of evolution.
The words of Clement in his arguments sound doubly striking, when we remember that to-daythe feeling that the education of the senses will ultimately tend to the grasping of eternal truth by faith is just as firmly held as then, notwithstanding the fact that a careful investigation shows that this can never be the case, and that the only avenue totruthis through faith, first, last, and all the time. He says: “Perhaps the latter [philosophy] was given to the Greeks in a special sense, as preliminary to our Lord calling the Gentiles, since it educated them as the law did the Jews, for Christianity; and philosophy was a preparatory step for those who were to be conducted through Christ to perfection.”[73]
Clement lost his faith
Accordingly, we find Clement perpetually verging toward the gnostic or platonic position. “With an idea of faith which flowed from the very essence of Christianity, there was associated in his mind the still lingering notion, derived from the Platonic philosophy, of an opposition between areligion of cultivated minds, and arrived at by the medium of science, and a religion of the many, who were shackled by the senses and entangled in mere opinion.”[74]
Birth of the papacy
Here is distinctly seen the beginnings of that system of education which elevates the few and holds the masses in subjection. Herein lies the wellspring of a monarchical government and a papal hierarchy. It was the propagation of the system of education introduced into the Alexandrian school by Clement that formed the papacy. We are not surprised to read in history of the contest between the churches of Alexandria, Constantinople, and Rome. Rome as arbiter was called to decide between the Greek Catholics and the Alexandrians; and from the downfall of both her rivals she gained the pontifical throne; but it was only to crown the educational ideas of the Alexandrian school, and sway the world by the enforcement of the principles of that system of instructionwhich substitutes scientific research for faith.
God had once called his people out of Egypt; but the church, forsaking the purity of the gospel, returned thither for its education. The Reformation was its second call, and to-day the third call is sounding. Having followed with some care the ideas first introduced by Clement, and finding that the result of the position taken by this teacher wasthat faith was destroyed and scientific reason substituted, we turn to the further development of this educational idea as advocated by one of Clement’s most noted pupils and his successor in the Alexandrian school. I refer to Origen.
Origen
Origen was born 185A.D., in Alexandria; he received a most liberal education, and was initiated at an early age into Hellenic science and art; the principles of Christianity were instilled into his mind by such teachers as Clement of Alexandria.[75]“He says himself that it was an outward motive that first led him to busy himself with the study of Platonic philosophy, and to make himself better acquainted generally with the systems of those who differed from himself.The moving cause was his intercourse with heretics and pagans who had received a philosophical education.”
“Attracted by his great reputation, such persons” came often to him, and he thus defends himself for bestowing his time on the Greek philosophy: “When I had wholly devoted my time to the promulgation of the divine doctrines, and the fame of my skill in them began to be spread abroad, so that both heretics and others, such ashad been conversant with the Greek sciences, and particularly men from the philosophical schools, came to visit me, itseemed to me necessary that I should examine the doctrinal opinions of the heretics, and what the philosophers pretended to know of the truth.”[76]
These facts concerning Origen are given because the argument is strikingly similar to that used by many ministers and teachers of the present day, and because it shows how the Platonic philosophy gained such a foothold in so-called Christian schools, and grew into the papacy.
Representatives of three systems
There are three individuals who stand as representatives of three systems of education.Platopersonifies heathen philosophy;Christsaid of Himself, “I am the ... truth;”Origenpersonifies the mixture of the two,—truth and error,—and hence stands, from an educational standpoint, asthe father of the papacy, which is the mystery of iniquity. It behooves us now to follow carefully the work of this man. After doing so, one can more readily understand why the beast is represented as having several heads.[77]
Faith displaced by speculation
I quote extensively from Mosheim: “The principal doctrines of Christianity were now explainedto the peoplein their native purity and simplicity, without any mixture of abstract reasonings or subtile inventions; nor were the feeble minds of the multitude loaded with a great variety of precepts. But theChristian doctorswho had applied themselves to the study of letters and philosophy, soon abandoned the frequented paths, andstruck out into the devious wilds of fancy. The Egyptians distinguished themselves in this new method of explaining the truth. They looked upon it as a noble and glorious task to bring the doctrines of celestial wisdom into a certain subjection to the precepts of their philosophy, and to make deep and profound researches into the intimate and hidden nature of those truths which the divine Saviour had delivered to his disciples.Origen was at the head of this speculative tribe.This great man, enchanted by the charms of thePlatonic philosophy, set it up as the test of all religion, and imagined, that the reasons of each doctrine wereto be found in that favorite philosophy, and their nature and extent to be determinedby it. It must be confessed that he handled this matter with modesty and with caution; but he still gave an example to his disciples, the abuse of which could not fail to be pernicious, and under the authority of which, they would naturally indulge themselves without restraint in every wanton fancy. And so, indeed, the case was; for the disciples of Origen, breaking forth from the limits fixed by their master,interpreted, in the most licentious manner, the divine truths ofreligion according to the tenor of Platonic philosophy. From these teachers thephilosophical or scholastic theologyderives its origin.”[78]
Beginning of higher criticism
Mosheim says: “Origen unquestionably stands at the head of the interpreters of the Bible in this century. But with pain it must be added, he was first among those who have found in the Scriptures a secure retreat for all errors and idle fancies.As this most ingenious man could see no possible method of vindicating all that is said in the Scriptures against the cavils of the hereticsand the enemies of Christianity,provided he interpreted the language of the Bible literally,he concluded that he must expound the sacred volumein the way in which thePlatonists were accustomed to explain the history of their gods.”[79]
Higher criticism is Platonism
Murdock, in his notes, says: “Origen perversely turned a large part of Biblical history into moral fables and many of the laws into allegories. Probably he learned this in the school of Ammonius, which expounded Hesiod, Homer, and the whole fabulous history of the Greeks allegorically. The predecessors of Origen, who searched after a mystical sense of Scripture, still set a high value on thegrammatical, or literal, sense;but he often expresses himself, as if he attached no value to it. Before him allegories were resorted to, only to discover predictions of future events and rules for moral conduct; but he betook himself to allegoriesin orderto establish the principles of his philosophyon a Scriptural basis.... His propensity to allegories must be ascribed to the fertility of his invention,the prevailing customof the Egyptians,his education, the instructions he received from his teachers, and the exampleboth of the philosophers, of whom he was an admirer, and of the Jews.... He hoped, by means of his allegories, more easily to convince the Jews, to confute the gnostics, and to silence the objections of both. But we must not forget his attachment to that system of philosophy which he embraced.This philosophy could not be reconciled with the Scriptures; ... and therefore the Scriptures must be interpreted allegorically, that they might not contradict his philosophy.... As the body is the baser part of man, so the literal is the less worthy sense of Scripture; and as the body often betrays good men into sin, so the literal sense often leads us into error.”
Here is reason above faith
Mosheim himself tells us how Origen determined when a passage should be interpreted literally and when allegorically: “Whenever the words, if understood literally, will afford a valuable meaning, one that is worthy of God, useful to men, and accordant with truth and correct reason,then the literal meaning is to be retained; but whenever the words, if understood literally, will express what is absurd,or false, or contrary to correct reason, or useless, or unworthy of God, then the literalsense is to be discarded, and the moral and mystical alone to be regarded. This rule he applies to every part both of the Old Testament and the New.” This reasoning is sufficiently strong for any of our modernhigher critics. If it led directly to the removal of the Word of God from the common people of the Middle Ages, because teachers adjudged no minds but their own capable of determining whether a certain passage should be interpreted literally or allegorically, to what will the same treatment of the Scriptures now lead? And if the disciples of Origen lacking the caution of the great teacher, were led into the gross licentiousness of the heathen, how much of the wickedness of modern society should be attributed to the spirit of higher criticism, echoed from the pulpit, and breathed from the schoolroom?
Minds prepared for the papacy
Mosheim continues: “He [Origen] assigns two reasons why fables and literal absurdities are admitted into the Sacred Volume. The first is, that if the literal meaning were always rational and good, the reader would be apt to rest in it, and not look after the moral and mystical sense. The second is, that fabulous and incongruous representations oftenafford moral and mystical instructions which could not so well be conveyed by sober facts and representations.”
Perhaps this is enough to show that scholasticism, or a philosophical interpretation of the Scriptures had its origin in the Christian schools. By this it is plain why these youth became papists, instead of followers of the meek and lowly Galilean. There was no other theory which could, so effectually as this, have stamped out faith. No other teaching than this same higher criticism could have more truly developed that power which “speaketh great words against the Most High, and thinketh to change times and laws.” It formed the beast in the third century; it is forming the image to the beast in the present century. Students under such instruction had received ample preparation for a belief in the right of the church to interpret Scripture, and a belief in the infallibility of the pope.
Scholasticism and higher criticism
We have seen the origin of two of the streams which, uniting, helped swell the torrent of the papacy. There are still other tributaries to this mighty river. Each rises somewhere in heathendom,flows with a devious course, but finally, as if in accordance with some great natural law, unites with those other currents in forming the mystery of iniquity. Each stream is an educational principle, opposed in itself to Christianity; but instead of being lost in the depths of the main channel, it seems to develop greater power of doing evil, and brings its adherents into more complete degradation after the mingling than before.
Mysticism
The third principle which presents itself for analysis is known asmysticism. Both the teachings of Clement and the scholasticism of Origen exalted reason above faith. Mysticism was advocated by Origen and later by Augustine. It is defined as “that faculty of reason, from which proceeds the health and vigor of the mind, ... an emanation from God into the human soul, and comprehended in it the principles and elements of all truth, human and divine.”[80]There is a spark of divinity in every man. It is the object of Christian education to develop the image of Christ in the human being; but with the mystics, it was maintainedthat “silence, tranquillity, repose, and solitude, accompanied with such acts of mortification as might tend to extenuate and exhaust the body, were the means by which the hidden and internal word was excited to produce its latent virtues and to instruct men in the knowledge of divine things.”
Education continues to decline
It is not so much with the doctrine as with the results which were wrought by the teachings of such doctrine, that we are concerned. From an adherence to this method of reasoning arose the whole monkish system; for, says Mosheim, “This method of reasoning produced strange effects, and drove many into caves and deserts, where they macerated their bodies with hunger and thirst, and submitted to all the miseries of the severest discipline that a gloomy imagination could prescribe.” Egypt soon swarmed with these fanatics, and the whole history of the Dark Ages circles around them. They broke the bonds of family affection, overturned governments, and seated popes. Draper, speaking of the monks, says: “It is said that there were at one time in that country [Egypt] of these religious recluses not fewer than seventy-six thousand malesand twenty-seven thousand females. With countless other uncouth forms, under the hot sun of that climate they seemed to be spawned from the mud of the Nile.” “From Egypt and Syria monachism spread like an epidemic.” “It was significantly observed that the road to ecclesiastical elevation lay through the monastery porch, and oftenambition contentedly wore for a season the cowl, that it might seize more surely the miter.”[81]
Monks control schools
We shall need to study the monastic system as the repositories of learning in the Dark Ages, and therefore give but a passing glance at the origin of the order in the doctrine of mysticism. Its evils can not be portrayed without a blush, and it was against this system, taking as it did into its clutches the education of the masses, that the Reformation thrust its weight. We have seen truthstrugglingagainst error. It was in theschoolsofthe early Christiansthat wisdomby faithwas taught. It wasinto these same schoolsthat pagan philosophy crept. It was the teacher who espoused this philosophy, and again a teacher who opposed it. Students imbibed the ideas ofthe leading educators, and became church teachers. The strongest minds, turning from the Word, and that alone, became expounders of philosophy and the sciences.
Schools of the Dark Ages
Gradually error prevailed, until in the schools, almost entirely in monastic hands, truth was so covered that D’Aubigné’s description of the work of the schoolmen of the Dark Ages is striking. He says: “These industrious artisans of thought had unraveled every theological idea, and of all their threads had woven a web, under which it would have been difficult for more skillful persons than their contemporaries to recognize the truth in its pristine purity.”
It is not the province of this chapter to deal with theological controversies in themselves. It is only as these controversies took possession of and molded the courses of study in the schools; only as they found their strongest supporters in the persons of teachers, and were carried to the world by students, that our attention is drawn to another line of argument, which, as it were, clenched the work of the papacy, and gave it its power over the minds of men.