Philosophy-RAG-demo/transcriptions/HoP 109 - Spreading the Word - the Latin Church Fathers.txt

 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of King's College London and the Leverhulme Trust, online at www.historyoffilosophy.net. Today's episode, Spreading the Word, the Latin Church Fathers. I suppose that all of us have a few guilty pleasures. I've admitted several times to a weakness for amen quaissence, and this series of podcasts has provided mounting evidence that I cannot resist a good pun, or indeed a bad pun. But how many of us are helpless to resist the great works of Latin literature? This was the guilty pleasure of the 4th century church father, Jerome. He was raised on a diet not of amen quaissence, but of Latin eloquence, with Cicero and other pagan authors on the menu. As he became more and more serious about his Christianity, this became a matter of increasing spiritual discomfort for Jerome. He flirted with the idea that the Scriptures might offer their own kind of eloquence, but more often he extolled their very lack of polish. These were rough, simple texts, and engaging with them could be seen as a discipline, an ordeal as real as the fasting and abstinence of the Desert Fathers. Or so claimed Jerome. And he ought to have known. He was himself something of a Desert Father, albeit one who retreated to isolation armed with a large library and a squad of scribes to help him with his research. To steal a joke that I rather like, his cave must have been unusually large. His ascetic practice included not only submitting to the unadorned, even crude, prose of the Bible, instead of the elegance of Cicero, but also learning to read the Bible in Hebrew. He consulted Jewish scholars, and translated the Bible into Latin directly from Hebrew, instead of the Greek Septuagint. In some of the many dozens of letters Jerome wrote to his patrons, friends, and rivals, Jerome claimed a nearly unique interpretive privilege on this basis. I have returned to the Hebrew source, he would say, and returned with insights about God's Word that have been obscured by translation. We might suppose it obvious that going back to the original language of a text is a good idea, but Jerome's use of Hebrew was controversial. After all, the Greek Septuagint was believed to be a divinely assisted translation. Jerome debated the value of the Hebrew original with no less a personage than Augustine. In all of this, Jerome was carrying on the work of Origen, often literally. He drew not only on consultation with Jewish scholars, but also on his extensive acquaintance with the works of Origen. In a previous episode, I mentioned that Origen's multi-column edition of the Hebrew Bible, the Hexapla, has not been preserved for posterity, but Jerome was still able to use it. He gives us a clue into why the Hexapla did not survive when he complains about the eye-watering price a copy would demand. This is also relevant to Jerome's feelings of guilt over the pleasures of literature and scholarship. In the ancient world, books were luxury items in every sense, expensive to buy, and properly appreciated only by those who had an expensive education. No wonder that Jerome had mixed feelings. He was inspired not only by Origen's scholarship, but also by his ascetic side, and by the example of desert fathers like Anthony the Great. Indeed, one of Jerome's own works was a biography of the desert father Paul the Hermit. Jerome's career thus embodies attention, on the one hand emphasizing the spiritual importance of self-restraint and voluntary poverty, on the other ennobling the image of the Christian scholar whose education and library were the ancient equivalent of elite private schooling and sports cars. This helps explain why so many ancient Christian heroes started out wealthy but voluntarily gave up their riches. They pursued a life of poverty, study, and seclusion, but only after they had been educated to an elite level. Usually, the better-known Christian ascetics had their cake before they started refusing to eat it. Why in this philosophy podcast am I bothering you with this tale of ancient Christian neurosis? The clue is an author I've already mentioned several times, Cicero. We've seen that philosophy was part and parcel of elite education and the canon of classic literature for readers of late antiquity. That's obviously true for the Greek tradition, which looked to Plato as a paragon of both literary and philosophical excellence. But it's also true for readers of Latin. The most significant church fathers who wrote in Latin—Tertullian, Lactantius, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine—were all well-educated and all admired the great Latin stylists like Ovid, Virgil, and Cicero. How annoying that all these authors were pagans, and how especially annoying that Cicero, often taken as the greatest of the classical Latin authors, also happened to be the primary route through which pagan Hellenic philosophy had reached readers of Latin. This point is illustrated particularly well by Lactantius. His fame relies on a work called the Divine Institutes, written at the dawn of the fourth century in response to the great persecution under the Emperor Diocletian. In the Institutes, he says explicitly that his aim is to use such rhetorical gifts as he has to attack pagan belief and uphold Christianity. We are here in the territory of apologetics, which we have already explored with the Greek fathers Clement and Justin Martyr. Clement though was far less apologetic about his love for the classical tradition than Lactantius, or after him, Jerome. In fact, the Institutes of Lactantius slides casually from attacking pagan religion to attacking pagan philosophers in a way that would have appalled Clement. Even the noble Socrates is not spared, as Lactantius sneers at his dying request to sacrifice a rooster to the god Asclepius. As for Plato, Lactantius can provoke his audience's scorn by simply mentioning the Republic's idea that women should be shared among men in the ideal state. Sometimes Lactantius's mockery of the philosophers is unintentionally comic, as when he makes fun of the philosopher's belief that people could live on the far side of the earth without falling into the sky. Australians hang in there, we're sending help. Yet Lactantius can't help admiring certain philosophers, in particular Cicero. He loves Cicero above all as the paradigm of Latin eloquence. So, although he attacks several passages from Cicero in the course of the Institutes, he does so with some degree of respect. He seems to think Cicero should really have known better. And of the various philosophical traditions to come through the Greek tradition, in part through Cicero's Latin writings, it seems to be Cicero's own preferred school of skepticism that has made the biggest impression on Lactantius. He deftly wields the classical skeptical strategy of emphasizing disagreement amongst his opponents. He also thinks the skeptics were right when they admitted that perfect knowledge is beyond the capacity of mankind, Stoick claims to the contrary notwithstanding. On the other hand, dogmatic skeptics go too far when they claim that we know nothing. That, as Lactantius points out, would be self-defeating, because we would at least know that we know nothing. Rather, humans can have partial knowledge that falls short of the full understanding we might honor with the name of wisdom, in Greek sophia, and in Lactantius's Latin sapientia. At best, philosophy done with human resources can be only what its name promises, love of wisdom but not wisdom itself. For that, we must turn to a source higher than mankind, namely God. Thus, Lactantius argues that wisdom is inextricably linked to religion. Interestingly, he seems to assume that the Hellenic philosophy that inspired Cicero was not religious. He even says that a pagan would never be able to engage in philosophy and religious ritual at the same time. For Lactantius, philosophy still means Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic schools, which is unsurprising given that Cicero was such an important source for knowledge of philosophy in Latin. He seems unaware of Neoplatonism, and especially figures like his contemporary Iamblichus who fused Platonism with pagan religion. Ironically, though, Lactantius is playing much the same game as Iamblichus. He appeals to a learned audience that still includes many pagans, offering a wisdom built on revealed texts. Lactantius tends to quote pagan authorities even more than the Bible, even the Hermetic texts so beloved of Iamblichus. This is precisely because he is not preaching to the converted, literally, but aiming his critique of paganism at a broad literate readership. At least one Christian reader, Jerome, was more impressed by this critical project of Lactantius than by his positive exposition of Christian doctrines. There's no doubt that the most memorable parts of the Institutes are those where he chuckles at the irrationality of pagan belief and pokes holes in philosophical pretensions. But as the work goes on, Lactantius does provide an innovative ethical teaching to replace philosophical theories about virtue. He rejects the Socratic and Stoic notion that virtue is the same thing as knowledge. It is possible, indeed common, for us to know what we should do and lack the will to do it, a point that will be developed by Augustine. And where knowledge is something that comes to us from the outside through learning, virtue is a state of character that must come from within. He also objects to the philosophical claim that virtue is the highest good for humankind. No, virtue is at best a means to our highest good, which is an immortal life together with God. This makes sense of a passage earlier in the Institutes where Lactantius has argued that one must accept the presence of vice and suffering in the world, since without these, virtue would be pointless. Lactantius would agree with Irenaeus that this life is given to us as a trial and tribulation so that we can earn salvation the hard way. Thus, virtue for Lactantius consists largely in fortitude, in bearing whatever slings and arrows outrageous fortune sends our way. If we are virtuous, we will achieve the promised immortality in the hereafter. For now, the perfect human life in this world will have two aspects, just like the contemplative and practical aspects of happiness in the Aristotelian tradition. But Lactantius gives both aspects a new twist. Instead of rational contemplation, we should dedicate ourselves to worship of God. And instead of a life of heroic practical activity or political engagement, as praised by Aristotle and Cicero, we should help our fellow man. Lactantius places charity at the core of ethics, another idea that will be embraced by Augustine. For Lactantius, charity and all other practical virtue presupposes piety, because we become charitable in order to imitate God and his mercy. He develops his view in part by attacking the radical skeptical philosopher Carnaides. As you might recall, Carnaides famously came to Rome and gave speeches in praise of justice and then against justice. In the second speech against justice, he gave the vivid example of a wise man and a foolish man drowning at sea, with only one plank between them. The wise man would fight for the plank to save his life, justice be damned, because his life is more valuable. Lactantius first responds, what is this supposedly wise man doing on a ship? A reminder that in the ancient world, seafaring was a danger usually faced only to fight wars or make money. More to the point, he adds that the real wise man would fear sin much more than death, sin being any act that harms one's neighbor rather than helping him. And so it is that, thanks to Lactantius, charity begins at Rome. Like I say, when it comes to puns, I just have no self-control. In this case, I should perhaps have tried a bit harder, since neither Lactantius nor the other Latin church fathers were actually based in Rome. They came from and lived in various locales in the Western Empire and even in the East. North Africa in particular produced several theologians, including Lactantius, Tertullian, and Augustine himself. This only stands to reason. In late antiquity, the city of Rome was no longer the center of empire. In the 4th century, the emperors had relocated to the more easily defended Milan. And by the 380s, the emperor Valentinian II wasn't even the most powerful man in Milan. On more than one occasion, he had to yield to the bishop of that city, Ambrose. Like his contemporaries, the Cappadocians, Ambrose was deeply embroiled in theological controversies, in his case especially with the Arians. Ambrose was reluctantly installed as bishop at the demands of a near-riotous mob, an event that would be regretted in due course by the emperor Valentinian and his mother Justina, who favored the Arians. In 385, when Valentinian tried to seize a basilica in the city for use by Arians, Ambrose and his supporters faced them down. It wasn't Ambrose's only successful confrontation with imperial authority. Years later, another emperor, Theodosius, authorized a massacre of thousands at Thessalonica. Outraged, Ambrose withdrew the sacraments from Theodosius until he performed a humiliating public repentance. Around the same time, Ambrose used his deft political skills to prevent pagans from restoring the altar of the goddess Victory near the senate in Rome. When you're winning battles against Victory herself, you know you're on a roll. Ambrose is thus frequently cited as the first Christian leader to exert the power of the church as an autonomous political force, which could on occasion thwart emperors or put them firmly in their place. Of course, this achievement echoes down the centuries through the medieval age. As a result, Ambrose is better known for his political machinations than his philosophy. Even historians of philosophy probably think of him in the first instance as a formative influence on Augustine rather than for his own thought. But like Lactantius, Ambrose contributed significantly to the emerging tradition of Christian ethics. His best-known work, called De Officiis, or On Duties, is a Christian answer to a treatise of the same title by Cicero, that man again. Indeed, you might think of Ambrose's On Duties as a Christian reworking of Cicero, sometimes simply illustrating originally Ciceroian ethical points with examples drawn from the Bible. He tells us how Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac at God's command displayed all four classical Greek virtues—wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. In one particularly striking juxtaposition of sources, he compares Plato's story of the Ring of Gyges from the Republic, which asks whether anyone could resist acting unjustly if they acquired a ring of invisibility, with the virtue of David in the biblical Book of Samuel. David refrained from killing an enemy king who was asleep, even though he could have gotten away with it. As this suggests, Ambrose is in full agreement with Greek church fathers like Clement of Alexandria in holding that the truths found in Greek philosophy were already proclaimed earlier by Old Testament prophets. Moreover, Ambrose insists that only the Christians have made good on the aspirations of Plato, the Stoics, and other more-or-less right-minded Hellenic thinkers. He agrees with Plato that our ethical goal should be the subordination of desire to the rule of reason. But he thinks that all the pagan philosophers still thought too much in terms of what is advantageous to each of us in this life. Even the Stoics, for all their ethical stringency, admitted that one might prefer to be materially comfortable so long as it would not impede virtue. For Ambrose, as for Lactantius, even virtue itself is merely a means to the end of eternal life. Thus, he condemns wealth and other external goods as being actively harmful to the pursuit of our good, and praises poverty as a path that leads to salvation. It is this difference, Ambrose says, that justifies his decision to write anew on duties, to supplant that of the pagan Cicero. This pattern of using and also criticizing Greek philosophy, which, like my penchant for puns, is becoming increasingly familiar as we go along, goes back to the earliest great Latin father Tertullian, who wrote in the second century. He is well known for asking, what has Athens to do with Jerusalem? This rhetorical question suggests that he wanted to sweep aside the whole Greek intellectual tradition in favor of the new Christian revelation. And no doubt Tertullian and other fathers were tempted to toss philosophy aside entirely, following St. Paul's warning, But, if we turn to a work Tertullian wrote on the subject of the soul, we see that he is in fact steeped in philosophical knowledge, and even well read in medical literature. He finds the medical text particularly useful because, unusually, within the patristic tradition, he wants to see the soul as a physical substance. Again, he is taking his lead here from a biblical source, the book of Genesis, which says that God breathed life into Adam. This leads Tertullian to ally himself with Stoics and medical authors who describe the soul as a sort of pneuma or breath. A more abstract theological motive is revealed midway through the work, when he criticizes Plato's claim that the soul is ungenerated and immaterial. In that case, says Tertullian, why not just call the soul God? Yet, Tertullian does not rely only on theological argument or scriptural citation. He gives powerful philosophical arguments, for instance, that if the soul were immaterial, it could not causally influence the body. This, of course, is still a chief argument for physicalist theories in the philosophy of mind today. Tertullian even resists the temptation to grant immateriality to the higher faculties of soul, such as the intellect. Instead, Tertullian sees intellect as a mere function of a soul that is in itself physical. How else, as he points out, could the intellect be influenced by the senses and learn from them? Tertullian seems almost to be criticizing in advance the theory that will, in the coming generations, be defended in Alexandria by Origen. Origen's explanation of sin and the cosmos will revolve around the claim that the soul pre-exists the body. Tertullian wants nothing to do with that idea. He associates it not only with Plato, but with the hated Gnostics, who we saw being refuted by other second-century theologians like Irenaeus and Justin Martyr. Like them, he traces the Gnostic heresy to the influence of Platonist philosophy. This idea that Hellenic thought is a source of heresy helps explain why we so often find Church Fathers expressing hostility towards Plato and other pagan thinkers, even as they reproduce arguments from these same philosophers. Here's a particularly ironic example. Tertullian thinks that Plato was right to argue in the Phaedo that the soul was immortal on the basis that it is simple. Of course, this means for him not that the soul is immaterial, but rather a uniform physical substance. Yet, at the beginning of this same work, he sarcastically questions whether Socrates was really untroubled when he took the Hemlock. Tertullian believes that no one could manage this without faith in God. If Tertullian could feel this conflicted about the merits of Platonist theories of soul in the second century, how would things be in the fourth century when theologians were grappling with the arguably heretical theory of Origen? This brings us full circle back to Jerome. In his biblical scholarship, he was influenced by Origen as by no other author. Yet, he also became a leading critic of Origenism. A heated dispute broke out between Jerome and his childhood friend Rufinus over the orthodoxy of Origen's works. Each of them produced a Latin translation of Origen's On Principles, Jerome's trying to bring out its outrageous features, Rufinus trying to minimize them. For Jerome, Origen went too far in the direction of Platonism, depicting the soul as a pre-existing, purely rational entity and thus reducing all human goodness to intellectual perfection. Jerome's contrary position brings together several strands of the Latin patristic tradition. Tertullian's insistence that the soul is created and not eternal, Lactantius's rejection of knowledge as man's highest end, and Ambrose's more moderate Platonic ethics, which implore us to restrain desire by reason but still leave a place for appropriate emotion in the good life. The so-called Origenist debate between Jerome and Rufinus was only one of several heated theological disputes in the fourth century. We've already looked at confrontations over the Holy Trinity and the nature, or natures, of Christ. Next, we're going to turn to a man whose career extended into the fifth century but was still shaped by these and other theological debates. This next church father displays his own hesitations and psychological frailties as no other ancient author. Yet, he spent his later years combating heresy with a sense of unshakable certainty. In the process, he laid down doctrines that would become authoritative for the next thousand years and more. In the meantime, we will finally turn to the true confessions of Augustine, here on The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps.