The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason

by Charles Freeman

  The Forms, Philo continued, had come into being at the same time as God but were organized by him through the divine power of reason (once again the word logos is used), which somehow acted as a directing force for the Forms, encapsulating them and ordering their work. It is not always clear from Philo’s writings whether he believed the logos to be an attribute of God employed for a specific purpose, or a separate entity acting under God’s control, but the distinction between God’s fundamental essence (ousia) and his power as manifested in the world was a crucial one. (It is paralleled in other Jewish writings, for example, in the Book of Proverbs 8:22 and 8:31, where it is said that Wisdom was created by God as “the oldest of his works” and “at play everywhere in the world delighting to be with the sons of men.”) For Philo the logos could actually appear in the world—he gave as an example the voice speaking to Moses from the Burning Bush—and it was the logos that organized the creation of the world in line with a blueprint that God had had in his mind from the beginning. (Philo makes an analogy with an architect who has a clear idea of the city he wishes to build before he commences work on it.) The Forms act as the ideals to which each entity in the material world aspires, in other words (as noted), a table in the material world can be judged as an imitation of the Form of Table, even if it is never likely to be so perfect. However, some tables will be closer to the ideal table than others, and the same can be said of men. Philo names some men, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for instance, as more “ideal” than others. What marked them out was their commitment to the Forms and God, a commitment implied through their desire for goodness and the avoidance of any emotion and sensuality that would draw them away from God.

  Philo knew nothing of Christianity, but he was to prove enormously important in bridging the gap between Judaism and Greek philosophy in representing God of the Old Testament as a Platonic God, thus enabling Greek philosophers to find a home within the Jewish and, later, the Christian tradition. Although no direct connection with Philo has been established, John’s use of logos, translated into English as “word” in the prologue to his Gospel (“And the Word was made flesh”), uses logos as a force which was both “with God in the beginning” and actively involved in the creation, as Philo and earlier writers suggest. Where John innovates is to see the logos becoming flesh in Jesus, an idea unique to Christianity and deeply troubling to traditional Platonists.

  The Middle Platonists who followed Philo maintained his view that God or “the Good” was a simple unchangeable unity with an intelligence that worked actively in the material world through the Forms. He was to be “reached” by reason rather than emotion and through asceticism rather than sensuality; Philo went so far as to argue that the ideal human being would be asexual. Much debate focused on the act of creation. Plato suggested that the universe had existed eternally but (in the dialogue Timaeus) left open the possibility of a divine craftsman intervening to create from an already existing chaos (a possibility that might be reconciled with the account given in Genesis). An alternative strand of thought suggested that God existed before matter. Greek thinkers found it difficult to conceive of the notion of non-existence—some even proposed an entity termed “that which is not” (!)—but one thinker, Basilides, expounded the idea of creation from nothing in the early second century, and it is found adopted by Christians by A.D. 180.

  The human race appears, of course, as part of God’s creation, although pagan philosophers disagreed as to whether it was created directly by God or through the agency of the Forms. Platonists continued to make a distinction between soul and body, and to place these within a hierarchy of creation. At the top of this was God (“the Good”), then the Forms, below which was the human soul, and finally the material world, including the human body. Here the human soul is the noblest part of the “material” world, but each level of the hierarchy is understood to be less divine and good than the one above it (rather as copies taken of copies gradually lose the quality of the original). Some argued that there would be a level in the hierarchy at which the original goodness of God was so diluted that evil would become part of that level, while others argued that the goodness of “the Good” or God could never, however diluted, become evil. It was human beings acting freely who created evil. Alternatively, others claimed that the human soul that had been good had been corrupted by the material world, or that it was still good but so deeply imprisoned in the material body (as “a divine spark”) that it was unable to show its goodness. This latter was the view put forward by of one important school of thinkers who drew on Platonism, the Gnostics. The Gnostics were dualists in that they saw the world as evil, the creation of an evil creator, but the human soul as good and imprisoned in it. (The body, the evil gaoler of the good soul, was to be despised, and many Gnostics were aggressively ascetic.) The soul was, however, capable of enlightenment (gnosis), possibly through a teacher, and could be released to be reunited with God. Jesus was adopted as one of the teachers able to release the soul, but the relationship between the Gnostics and mainstream Christianity (in so far as this existed in the early Christian centuries) was complex, and Christians eventually separated themselves from Gnosticism. (Gnostics accepted the possibility of there being many Christs, and it was as a rejoinder to this that Christian creeds later spoke of “one [my emphasis] Lord Jesus Christ.”)

  The most sophisticated of the Platonic thinkers, and the one who conventionally marks the beginning of Neoplatonism, was Plotinus (204–70). Plotinus was from Egypt and had set off eastwards, to Persia and India, in search of wisdom, but when his travels were thwarted, he headed instead towards Rome. He can be seen as a mystic—for Plotinus, the supreme desire of the soul is to be reunited with “the One,” and he describes the moment of reunion as one that could not be exchanged for anything else, even for the kingdom of all the heavens. Plotinus drew heavily on Plato (and, as scholars now recognize, on Aristotle) but developed an overtly spiritual philosophy. It was written up by his follower Porphyry and circulated as the Enneads in the early fourth century.

  There is “a One,” the Ultimate Being, who is supernatural, above all material being, self-caused and absolutely good. Plotinus preferred the term “the One” to “the Good” because it emphasized that “the One” was above all values. From this Being processes nous, or Mind. The procession is continual (and has existed through eternity), and nous appears in a whole range of manifestations in what might be called “thoughts” or, in Platonic terminology, the Forms. These in their turn project outwards to a “world soul,” which exists as a composite of all animate beings in the world although appearing as an individual soul in each human being. Each of the three entities exists as “lower” than the one above, but “the One” does not lose anything of its goodness during the procession of nous— any more, said Plotinus, than the brightness of a lamp is diminished when it gives out light. “The One,” the nous and the world soul share a single substance (ousia), but each maintains its distinct nature, its hypostasis, or personality. Plotinus went on to argue that the “lower” states would always be attracted back to the “higher.” So the soul would be attracted to the nous and then back to “the One,” in the final moment of mystical reunion achieved (as always in Platonic thought) by a very few. The material world has to exist in order for the soul to have something to live in, but as inanimate things cannot think, the material world represents the very furthest one can get from “the One.” It is, in short, a state in which goodness is virtually nonexistent. While the soul’s natural orientation is “upwards” to the nous and “the One,” an individual soul can choose to turn “downwards” to the natural world. Thus, through its free choice, it can turn towards evil, a view shared by Christian theologians such as Origen, although it has to be stressed that Plotinus himself had no direct links with Christians and Porphyry actively opposed them.

  It is also worth stressing that Plotinus, mystic though he might have been, was wary of attributing powers to supernatural sources. A record survives of a c
onversation he had as an old man in the 260s in which he discusses whether illnesses can be cured by casting out demons through special prayers. First, he says, there are no such things as demons, and, in any case, “real” gods would not respond to such mundane things as spells. There is a sense here, found in other pagan philosophers and arguably also in the Gospel of John, that a true god, secure in his own being, would not need to prove himself by effecting miracles. If one actually looks at cases of fever, he continues, one finds there are normally definable causes: exhaustion, overindulgence or the wrong kind of diet. They should be cured through medicines and a disciplined way of life. Here Plotinus remains fully within the Greek tradition, in which reason and empirical evidence remain central and the material world operates according to its own ascertainable laws rather than in response to the interventions of the gods.21 Miracles, in short, have no place in sophisticated thinking.

  It is impossible to make any kind of assessment of how many adherents each of these movements and beliefs had. Most subjects of the Roman empire can hardly have had the time or the inclination to speculate about the nature of the spiritual world, and one can only assume that they continued with their traditional beliefs. Nevertheless, there clearly existed a wide range of spiritual possibilities, any of which could be followed without any sense of impropriety, and, even though there existed some degree of competition between the different movements for adherents, none excluded other beliefs. The traditional gods of the state might be offended by neglect, but they were not jealous of other cults. It is certainly too simplistic to argue, as many histories of Christianity have done, that spiritual life in the empire had reached some kind of dead end and that Christianity provided a solution all had been yearning for. In fact, studies of oracles in this period suggest that questioning, which had traditionally centred on personal affairs, was increasingly concerned with theological issues (such as what happens to the soul at death) that could be answered from within the very rich and varied pagan tradition and developed without inhibition.22 As we shall see, Christianity did provide for important spiritual needs, but it was one of many movements that attempted to do so, and it was by no means the most sophisticated.

  The Roman empire in the second century had reached the height of its maturity in that it was relatively peaceful, was able to defend itself and its elites flourished in an atmosphere of comparative intellectual and spiritual freedom. The empire had a sophisticated legal system, and the parameters within which justice was enforced, for instance, were clearly set out—although those who were actually Roman citizens (all subjects of the empire except slaves from A.D. 212) were better protected than others. “Good” emperors acted with reasonable benevolence, as did the more moderate governors. Those who were talented could rise far, particularly through service in the army.23 Yet this is an idealized picture. There was a streak of cruelty in the Roman make-up that to us is nauseating. Criminals were deliberately humiliated by public execution, on the cross or in the amphitheatre. Even the most apparently benign of emperors watched such proceedings without flinching—in fact, they prided themselves on laying on a good show of slaughter. In religion there were limits to what the Romans would tolerate. They always distrusted fervour, superstitio, and indeed Christianity was mocked by one principal governor as “a degenerate superstitio carried to extravagant lengths.”24 Although Judaism was accorded some respect for its ancient roots, there are many accounts of open mockery of Jewish customs, and at times there was outright insensitivity: Hadrian, in his attempt to encourage Hellenism, tried to ban circumcision. The result was the outbreak of the Jewish revolt of 132, which was put down with great brutality and resulted in the reconstruction of Jerusalem as a Roman colony. Nor were things necessarily better at a local level. There were major riots between Jews and Greeks in Alexandria in A.D. 38 and 66. Then there was the problem of those who actively rejected the gods of the state and who expected to proselytize for converts. Such were the Christians, who referred in their sacred writings to Rome as “the whore of Babylon.” Eventually a state-sponsored campaign of persecution was to be launched against them.

  This was also a society which depended heavily on slaves and operated few effective controls over their treatment. Indeed, in the requirement that the evidence of slaves was admissible only after torture, the state participated in the cruellest of subjections. Although the Stoics preached the need for respect for slaves (“Remember, if you please, that the man you call slave springs from the same seed, enjoys the same daylight, breathes like you, lives like you, dies like you . . . ,” wrote Seneca in one of his letters), and individual slaves were often released for good behaviour or on the death of their master, slavery was so deeply embedded in Roman society (as it was also in Greek) that even Christians did not challenge it. 25 At the same time there was continual low-level violence, banditry and the threat of overreaction by the authorities. The Golden Ass provides vivid descriptions of life in the less wealthy provincial towns, where the local youth ransack the town on an evening out and valuables have to be protected by servants in the very centre of the house. When suspects are arrested, torture is freely used. This is the wider context within which must be set the undoubted achievements of the Roman empire at its height.

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  THE EMPIRE IN CRISIS, THE EMPIRE IN RECOVERY Political Transformations in the Third Century

  The immortal gods in their providence have so designed things that good and true principles have been established by the wisdom and deliberation of eminent, wise and upright men. It is wrong to oppose these principles, or desert the ancient religion for some new one, for it is the height of criminality to try and revise doctrines that were settled once and for all by the ancients, and whose position is fixed and acknowledged.

  THE EMPEROR DIOCLETIAN, A.D. 3021

  Despite the energy of emperors in their role as protectors of its frontiers, the Roman empire was always vulnerable to attack. The distance from the mouth of the Rhine to that of the Danube was no less than 2,000 kilometres, while the shortest marching route between the Black Sea and the Red Sea was 3,000. The borders of the provinces of Africa ran for 4,000 kilometres, often across empty desert. While small raids could be dealt with by local troops, any efficient invader who could rely on overwhelming numbers or surprise could easily break through. Once inside the empire, its fine road network brought the raiders quickly within reach of opulent and undefended cities.

  Often the peace could be kept through diplomacy. It was essential to keep the many German tribes who jostled with each other along the northern borders disunited. (“May the tribes ever retain, if not love for us, at least hatred for each other,” as Tacitus put it.) Their leaders could be offered gifts of money, or special protection against their rivals. The sons of chieftains could be brought up within the imperial court and then sent back as “Romans” keen to maintain contact with the empire. “Germans” could serve in the Roman armies as mercenaries. There was thus a surprising amount of contact across the borders, as Roman merchants travelled among the neighbouring peoples and Roman money or support was used by local rulers to build their own prestige. However, a growing awareness of the riches of the empire was unsettling, especially as the population of the German tribes appears to have been growing in these centuries and their resources became increasingly stretched. Tensions between tribes caused shifting coalitions, some temporary, some forged by charismatic leaders into something more coherent and long-lasting. Peoples amalgamated. So there emerged on the central part of the German border in the early third century A.D. a loose confederation known as the Alamanni (“all the men”), and then to the north another people known as the Franks. On the Danube border a merging of migratory peoples with the local inhabitants of the Black Sea area produced the Goths. In their struggles with another tribe, the Sarmatians, a nomadic people from Asia, the latter were pushed towards the Roman border. None of these peoples could prevail in a direct confrontation with a Roman legion, but raids over the border cause
d considerable disruption. The problem for the Romans was that the barbarians could never be successfully and definitively defeated, as there was no way of controlling so many rival groups whose leaders depended on the prestige of war and the plunder of raids. The Romans tried everything—buying off tribes, stationing legions across the border so that raiders could be dealt with before they reached the frontier, using one tribe against another. None of these tactics brought lasting stability, and by the third century a new wave of raids began. 2

  It was unfortunate that these raids coincided with the emergence of a powerful new state in the east, that of the Sassanids. Its predecessor, the Parthian empire, had often been at war with Rome, but the campaigns of the 160s and the 190s had been successful. In 197, the emperor Septimius Severus had even sacked the Parthian capital, Ctesiphon, and extended the empire as far as the Tigris. The defeats were evidence of the decline of the Parthian empire after some 400 years of success, and in the 220s the Parthians finally succumbed to the Sassanids, a fiercely nationalistic people who claimed to be reviving the glories of the Achaemenids (the Persian empire that had been overthrown by Alexander). Under Shapur I (who ruled 239–70) the Sassanids claimed the ancient borders of the Achaemenid empire, the western of which were, by now, deep in Roman territory.