Five Key Developments
PATH THREE
The Recovery of Knowledge of God Lost in the Fall
But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So . . . she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.
GENESIS 3:4-7
Each one of us has a longing to know—to know right from wrong, to know the ultimate destiny of our life, to know how we can make a meaningful contribution with our gifts and abilities. We want to know where we were born, how we were raised and what we will do in the future. We want to know that we are part of something greater than ourselves. Ultimately, we want to know that we belong to God. This knowledge never comes about quickly or completely; it must develop over time as we deepen in understanding our life with God.
To understand this part of our Christian life, we need to consider the spiritual life as the recovery of knowledge of God lost in the Fall. This is the path that will stretch our intellects the most. To clarify our thinking, three legendary personalities will guide us: Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther and John Calvin.
Despite the presence of faithful Christians, the two hundred years leading up to the thirteenth century saw growing corruption in the church and increasing disdain from the prevailing society. These tensions started to produce fault lines around settled understandings about life with God. For nearly nine centuries Christians had believed that monasticism expressed the highest degree of love and devotion to God. But this understanding was about to change.
As the thirteenth century opened, new and vigorous approaches to life with God emerged. Amid increasing pressure to break free of the monastic cloister, Francis of Assisi emerged and advocated the right to minister freely and broadly in the world. His approach gained momentum as news of dramatic results poured in. Several other significant movements also began to unfold, including five that are especially noteworthy.
Five Key Developments
The first development was an increase in biblical literacy. Thirteenth-century believers were becoming more interested in reading and understanding the Bible apart from the editorial additions of the monastics. During the Middle Ages, monks would spend much of their day listening to the “master” teacher and writing in the spaces between passages of Scripture. These “glosses” became the texts from which they would then preach and lead their congregations.
Over time, the glosses had become increasingly narrow in scope and heavily influenced by philosophical movements of the day. Duns Scotus and William of Occam, for example, emphasized a rational approach known as nominalism that narrowed the active work of the Holy Spirit and Scripture. As a reaction to these and other trends, people began to seek a more robust role and purpose for Scripture. This in turn led to a recovery of interest in earlier thinkers who focused on both the literal and the allegorical senses of Scripture and diminished the influence of philosophers who had wandered off from the pages of Scripture to construct their own systems of thought.
This same period also witnessed a rise of spiritual theology. As formal theology became increasingly isolated and specialized, the general church rebelled and began to doubt the validity of any system that did not result in a deeper love for God. This reality is best expressed in the tension between the formal theology of Thomas Aquinas and the spiritual theology of Bonaventure. They lived and worked at the same time, at the same university, and they were two of the most remarkable thinkers in the history of the church. However, they differed greatly in their approach to and ultimate conclusions about our life with God.
A third and exciting development was the emergence of women as church teachers and advocates for life with God. Hildegaard of Bingen in the twelfth century and Mechthild of Magdeburg in the thirteenth were but two of the many women who exploded onto the scene, casting a long and impressive shadow across the face of Christian spirituality. Because of the obvious power of their words and the evident work of the Holy Spirit in their lives, they were empowered by the church to teach their new and provocative insights into the Christian life.
Another significant development was the modification of the goals of spiritual formation. Earlier, the focus had been on cultivating eternal contemplation of God, a focus that would continue for centuries, albeit in diminished form. In the thirteenth century, a twin track was added that recovered an earlier emphasis on personal communion with God. This spiritual approach was exemplified by the “Brothers of the Common Life,” a movement whose best advocate, Thomas à Kempis, emerged in the fourteenth century. His classic text on the subject is The Imitation of Christ.
A fifth and final shift was the growing interest in the education and training of the general public. This movement took on renewed seriousness as people committed to learn the deeper meanings of Scripture. But it carried broader implications as well. As the masses became literate, they availed themselves of the transforming power of Scripture in ways that forever changed the known world. They became more interested in self-governance. They espoused open air meetings, mass revivals and universal literacy. All of these developments contributed to the germination of the seeds of renewal and change that were blossoming across Europe.
Together, these five developments reflect a massive shift that changed the church. As more and more individuals developed their own understandings of God, the authority of the church began to shift from institution to individual, a shift that would culminate in the Protestant Reformation. It was in this context that Thomas Aquinas emerged in the thirteenth century to write one of the greatest theological works ever penned, the Summa Theologica, a work that continues to influence the theological perspective of millions of Christians.