Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy

by Jostein Gaarder

  “You are right in that St. Augustine’s theology is considerably removed from the humanism of Athens. But St. Augustine wasn’t dividing humanity into two groups. He was merely expounding the Biblical doctrine of salvation and damnation. He explained this in a learned work called the City of God.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “The expression ‘City of God,’ or ‘Kingdom of God,’ comes from the Bible and the teachings of Jesus. St. Augustine believed that all human history is a struggle between the ‘Kingdom of God’ and the ‘Kingdom of the World.’ The two ‘kingdoms’ are not political kingdoms distinct from each other. They struggle for mastery inside every single person. Nevertheless, the Kingdom of God is more or less clearly present in the Church, and the Kingdom of the World is present in the State—for example, in the Roman Empire, which was in decline at the time of St. Augustine. This conception became increasingly clear as Church and State fought for supremacy throughout the Middle Ages. There is no salvation outside the Church,’ it was now said. St. Augustine’s ‘City of God’ eventually became identical with the established Church. Not until the Reformation in the sixteenth century was there any protest against the idea that people could only obtain salvation through the Church.”

  “It was about time!”

  “We can also observe that St. Augustine was the first philosopher we have come across to draw history into his philosophy. The struggle between good and evil was by no means new. What was new was that for Augustine the struggle was played out in history. There is not much of Plato in this aspect of St. Augustine’s work. He was more influenced by the linear view of history as we meet it in the Old Testament: the idea that God needs all of history in order to realize his Kingdom of God. History is necessary for the enlightenment of man and the destruction of evil. Or, as St. Augustine put it, ‘Divine foresight directs the history of mankind from Adam to the end of time as if it were the story of one man who gradually develops from childhood to old age.’ “

  Sophie looked at her watch. “It’s ten o’clock,” she said. “I’ll have to go soon.”

  “But first I must tell you about the other great medieval philosopher. Shall we sit outside?”

  Alberto stood up. He placed the palms of his hands together and began to stride down the aisle. He looked as if he was praying or meditating deeply on some spiritual truth. Sophie followed him; she felt she had no choice.

  The sun had not yet broken through the morning clouds. Alberto seated himself on a bench outside the church. Sophie wondered what people would think if anyone came by. Sitting on a church bench at ten in the morning was odd in itself, and sitting with a medieval monk wouldn’t make things look any better.

  “It is eight o’clock,” he began. “About four hundred years have elapsed since St. Augustine, and now school starts. From now until ten o’clock, convent schools will have the monopoly on education. Between ten and eleven o’clock the first cathedral schools will be founded, followed at noon by the first universities. The great Gothic cathedrals will be built at the same time. This church, too, dates from the 1200s—or what we call the High Gothic period. In this town they couldn’t afford a large cathedral.”

  “They didn’t need one,” Sophie said. “I hate empty churches.”

  “Ah, but the great cathedrals were not built only for large congregations. They were built to the glory of God and were in themselves a kind of religious celebration. However, something else happened during this period which has special significance for philosophers like us.”

  Alberto continued: “The influence of the Arabs of Spain began to make itself felt. Throughout the Middle Ages, the Arabs had kept the Aristotelian tradition alive, and from the end of the twelfth century, Arab scholars began to arrive in Northern Italy at the invitation of the nobles. Many of Aristotle’s writings thus became known and were translated from Greek and Arabic into Latin. This created a new interest in the natural sciences and infused new life into the question of the Christian revelation’s relationship to Greek philosophy. Aristotle could obviously no longer be ignored in matters of science, but when should one attend to Aristotle the philosopher, and when should one stick to the Bible? Do you see?”

  Sophie nodded, and the monk went on:

  “The greatest and most significant philosopher of this period was St. Thomas Aquinas, who lived from 1225 to 1274. He came from the little town of Aquino, between Rome and Naples, but he also worked as a teacher at the University of Paris. I call him a philosopher but he was just as much a theologian. There was no great difference between philosophy and theology at that time. Briefly, we can say that Aquinas christianized Aristotle in the same way that St. Augustine christianized Plato in early medieval times.”

  “Wasn’t it rather an odd thing to do, christianizing philosophers who had lived several hundred years before Christ?”

  “You could say so. But by ‘christianizing’ these two great Greek philosophers, we only mean that they were interpreted and explained in such a way that they were no longer considered a threat to Christian dogma. Aquinas was among those who tried to make Aristotle’s philosophy compatible with Christianity. We say that he created the great synthesis between faith and knowledge. He did this by entering the philosophy of Aristotle and taking him at his word.”

  “I’m sorry, but I had hardly any sleep last night. I’m afraid you’ll have to explain it more clearly.”

  “Aquinas believed that there need be no conflict between what philosophy or reason teaches us and what the Christian Revelation or faith teaches us. Christendom and philosophy often say the same thing. So we can frequently reason ourselves to the same truths that we can read in the Bible.”

  “How come? Can reason tell us that God created the world in six days or that Jesus was the Son of God?”

  “No, those so-called verities of faith are only accessible through belief and the Christian Revelation. But Aquinas believed in the existence of a number of ‘natural theological truths.’ By that he meant truths that could be reached both through Christian faith and through our innate or natural reason. For example, the truth that there is a God. Aquinas believed that there are two paths to God. One path goes through faith and the Christian Revelation, and the other goes through reason and the senses. Of these two, the path of faith and revelation is certainly the surest, because it is easy to lose one’s way by trusting to reason alone. But Aquinas’s point was that there need not be any conflict between a philosopher like Aristotle and the Christian doctrine.”

  “So we can take our choice between believing Aristotle and believing the Bible?”

  “Not at all. Aristotle goes only part of the way because he didn’t know of the Christian revelation. But going only part of the way is not the same as going the wrong way. For example, it is not wrong to say that Athens is in Europe. But neither is it particularly precise. If a book only tells you that Athens is a city in Europe, it would be wise to look it up in a geography book as well. There you would find the whole truth that Athens is the capital of Greece, a small country in southeastern Europe. If you are lucky you might be told a little about the Acropolis as well. Not to mention Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.”

  “But the first bit of information about Athens was true.”

  “Exactly! Aquinas wanted to prove that there is only one truth. So when Aristotle shows us something our reason tells us is true, it is not in conflict with Christian teaching. We can arrive successfully at one aspect of the truth with the aid of reason and the evidence of our senses. For example, the kind of truths Aristotle refers to when he describes the plant and the animal kingdom. Another aspect of the truth is revealed to us by God through the Bible. But the two aspects of the truth overlap at significant points. There are many questions about which the Bible and reason tell us exactly the same thing.”

  “Like there being a God?”

  “Exactly. Aristotle’s philosophy also presumed the existence of a God—or a formal cause—which sets all natural processes g
oing. But he gives no further description of God. For this we must rely solely on the Bible and the teachings of Jesus.”

  “Is it so absolutely certain that there is a God?”

  “It can be disputed, obviously. But even in our day most people will agree that human reason is certainly not capable of disproving the existence of God. Aquinas went further. He believed that he could prove God’s existence on the basis of Aristotle’s philosophy.”

  “Not bad!”

  “With our reason we can recognize that everything around us must have a ‘formal cause,’ he believed. God has revealed himself to mankind both through the Bible and through reason. There is thus both a ‘theology of faith’ and a ‘natural theology.’ The same is true of the moral aspect. The Bible teaches us how God wants us to live. But God has also given us a conscience which enables us to distinguish between right and wrong on a ‘natural’ basis. There are thus also ‘two paths’ to a moral life. We know that it is wrong to harm people even if we haven’t read in the Bible that we must ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ Here, too, the surest guide is to follow the Bible’s commandment.”

  “I think I understand,” said Sophie now. “It’s almost like how we know there’s a thunderstorm, by seeing the lightning and by hearing the thunder.”

  “That’s right! We can hear the thunder even if we are blind, and we can see the lightning even if we are deaf. It’s best if we can both see and hear, of course. But there is no contradiction between what we see and what we hear. On the contrary—the two impressions reinforce each other.”

  “I see.”

  “Let me add another picture. If you read a novel— John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, for example ...”

  “I’ve read that, actually.”

  “Don’t you feel you know something about the author just by reading his book?”

  “I realize there is a person who wrote it.”

  “Is that all you know about him?”

  “He seems to care about outsiders.”

  “When you read this book—which is Steinbeck’s creation—you get to know something about Steinbeck’s nature as well. But you cannot expect to get any personal information about the author. Could you tell from reading Of Mice and Men how old the author was when he wrote it, where he lived, or how many children he had?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But you can find this information in a biography of John Steinbeck. Only in a biography—or an autobiography—can you get better acquainted with Steinbeck, the person.”

  “That’s true.”

  “That’s more or less how it is with God’s Creation and the Bible. We can recognize that there is a God just by walking around in the natural world. We can easily see that He loves flowers and animals, otherwise He would not have made them. But information about God, the person, is only found in the Bible—or in God’s ‘autobiography,’ if you like.”

  “You’re good at finding examples.”

  “Mmmm...”

  For the first time Alberto just sat there thinking— without answering.

  “Does all this have anything to do with Hilde?” Sophie could not help asking.

  “We don’t know whether there is a ‘Hilde’ at all.”

  “But we know someone is planting evidence of her all over the place. Postcards, a silk scarf, a green wallet, a stocking ...”

  Alberto nodded. “And it seems as if it is Hilde’s father who is deciding how many clues he will plant,” he said. “For now, all we know is that someone is sending us a lot of postcards. I wish he would write something about himself too. But we shall return to that later.”

  “It’s a quarter to eleven. I’ll have to get home before the end of the Middle Ages.”

  “I shall just conclude with a few words about how Aquinas adopted Aristotle’s philosophy in all the areas where it did not collide with the Church’s theology. These included his logic, his theory of knowledge, and not least his natural philosophy. Do you recall, for example, how Aristotle described the progressive scale of life from plants and animals to humans?”

  Sophie nodded.

  “Aristotle believed that this scale indicated a God that constituted a sort of maximum of existence. This scheme of things was not difficult to align with Christian theology. According to Aquinas, there was a progressive degree of existence from plants and animals to man, from man to angels, and from angels to God. Man, like animals, has a body and sensory organs, but man also has intelligence which enables him to reason things out.

  Angels have no such body with sensory organs, which is why they have spontaneous and immediate intelligence. They have no need to ‘ponder,’ like humans; they have no need to reason out conclusions. They know everything that man can know without having to learn it step by step like us. And since angels have no body, they can never die. They are not everlasting like God, because they were once created by God. But they have no body that they must one day depart from, and so they will never die.”

  “That sounds lovely!”

  “But up above the angels, God rules, Sophie. He can see and know everything in one single coherent vision.”

  “So he can see us now.”

  “Yes, perhaps he can. But not ‘now.’ For God, time does not exist as it does for us. Our ‘now’ is not God’s ‘now.’ Because many weeks pass for us, they do not necessarily pass for God.”

  “That’s creepy!” Sophie exclaimed. She put her hand over her mouth. Alberto looked down at her, and Sophie continued: “I got another card from Hilde’s father yesterday. He wrote something like—even if it takes a week or two for Sophie, that doesn’t have to mean it will be that long for us. That’s almost the same as what you said about God!”

  Sophie could see a sudden frown flash across Alberto’s face beneath the brown cowl.

  “He ought to be ashamed of himself!”

  Sophie didn’t quite understand what Alberto meant. He went on: “Unfortunately, Aquinas also adopted Aristotle’s view of women. You may perhaps recall that Aristotle thought a woman was more or less an incomplete man. He also thought that children only inherit the father’s characteristics, since a woman was passive and receptive while the man was active and creative. According to Aquinas, these views harmonized with the message of the Bible—which, for example, tells us that woman was made out of Adam’s rib.”

  “Nonsense!”

  “It’s interesting to note that the eggs of mammals were not discovered until 1827. It was therefore perhaps not so surprising that people thought it was the man who was the creative and lifegiving force in reproduction. We can moreover note that, according to Aquinas, it is only as nature-being that woman is inferior to man. Woman’s soul is equal to man’s soul. In Heaven there is complete equality of the sexes because all physical gender differences cease to exist.”

  “That’s cold comfort. Weren’t there any women philosophers in the Middle Ages?”

  “The life of the church in the Middle Ages was heavily dominated by men. But that did not mean that there were no women thinkers. One of them was Hildegard of Bingen...”

  Sophie’s eyes widened:

  “Does she have anything to do with Hilde?”

  “What a question! Hildegard lived as a nun in the Rhine Valley from 1098 to 1179. In spite of being a woman, she worked as preacher, author, physician, botanist, and naturalist. She is an example of the fact that women were often more practical, more scientific even, in the Middle Ages.”

  “But what about Hilde?”

  “It was an ancient Christian and Jewish belief that God was not only a man. He also had a female side, or ‘mother nature.’ Women, too, are created in God’s likeness. In Greek, this female side of God is called Sophia. ‘Sophia’ or ‘Sophie’ means wisdom.”

  Sophie shook her head resignedly. Why had nobody ever told her that? And why had she never asked?

  Alberto continued: “Sophia, or God’s mother nature, had a certain significance both for Jews and in the Gr
eek Orthodox Church throughout the Middle Ages. In the west she was forgotten. But along comes Hildegard. Sophia appeared to her in a vision, dressed in a golden tunic adorned with costly jewels ...”

  Sophie stood up. Sophia had revealed herself to Hildegard in a vision ...

  “Maybe I will appear to Hilde.”

  She sat down again. For the third time Alberto laid his hand on her shoulder.

  “That is something we must look into. But now it is past eleven o’clock. You must go home, and we are approaching a new era. I shall summon you to a meeting on the Renaissance. Hermes will come get you in the garden.”

  With that the strange monk rose and began to walk toward the church. Sophie stayed where she was, thinking about Hildegard and Sophia, Hilde and Sophie. Suddenly she jumped up and ran after the monk-robed philosopher, calling:

  “Was there also an Alberto in the Middle Ages?”

  Alberto slowed his pace somewhat, turned his head slightly and said, “Aquinas had a famous philosophy teacher called Albert the Great...”

  With that he bowed his head and disappeared through the door of St. Mary’s Church.

  Sophie was not satisfied with his answer. She followed him into the church. But now it was completely empty. Did he go through the floor?

  Just as she was leaving the church she noticed a picture of the Madonna. She went up to it and studied it closely. Suddenly she discovered a little drop of water under one of the Madonna’s eyes. Was it a tear?

  Sophie rushed out of the church and hurried back to Joanna’s.

  The Renaissance

  …O divine lineage in mortal guise…

  It was just twelve when Sophie reached Joanna’s front gate, out of breath with running. Joanna was standing in the front yard outside her family’s yellow house.

  “You’ve been gone for five hours!” Joanna said sharply.

  Sophie shook her head.