Charles Victor on Religion

The mediaeval mind found the world a bio-sphere, a living entity, ruled by God, by divine regula-tion, a creature approachable, amenable, amendable, at least by prayerful intercession and miracle. When Newton found the world a machine, he had the depth of soul to see it still as God’s machine. Many contemporaries proved unable to rise up and peer through Newton’s hagioscope; they saw the world as merely an “it”, a tool to be used, a thing to be mined for profit or pleasure. Such “freethinkers” were numerous, and their number was reflected in abandoned pews and abandoned morals. Continue reading →

In the age of “science”, while the continental clerisy were delighting in knowing nothing except ideas in the mind, the British were revelling in knowing nothing except mental impressions made by the senses. To make sense of this Britannic intellectual inclination, we need to step back and consider the stage on which it unfolds. Continue reading →

The seventeenth century is customarily hailed the age wherein theorizing about knowledge (epistemology) supplants theorizing about being (metaphysics), scientific methodology supersedes speculation. There is truth here, but it ought not to be taken as a derogation of efforts past. Continue reading →

 The rise of humanism and science in the age we call the Renaissance was in no way a disavowal of Plato and Aristotle. Indeed, the ancient world, the “classic” world was experienced anew, in a new light, a new attitude. Architecture not only encloses and defines spaces, it also manifests the cultural lens through which a society understands itself and the world. Gothic architecture speaks of interiority and verticality; it is spiritual, inspirational. The classic styles of the ancients brim with claiming the solidity of the world, the exterior presence, the horizontal; they are human affirmations of power and prestige. The Renaissance is the cultic and cultural turning from the gothic to the classic. The ancient scholars are mined not for visions of god and soul, but for a new understanding of man and the functions of the world, to find in their speculations the justification for man as the centre of the world, to discover man not as the image of god, not inspired man, but expansive man, man the micro-cosmos, the microcosm, man conjoined with and in nature as the creative principle divine. In this emprise stoicism again raised its head and allowed vice to be valued on its own ground, as something removed from the constraints of traditional religion. Epicureanism excommunicated and exenterated the idea of heaven in favour of celebrating pleasure in the here and now. The ancient efforts of scepticism and eclecticism were likewise revisited. Continue reading →

Having read Spengler, and Toynbee, and referenced some others regarding the patterns in history, it strikes me someone ought to look at the evolution of the species in terms of intellectual diet. Thomas Aquinas seemingly provided a sound mixture of Christianity, Aristotle, and enough Plato to make for a well-rounded ingestion and digestion of all things past. As soon as he passes, the whole of Europe goes into a gurgitation of ideas, eructating all manner of noises, whining with centuries of costive cognitions and collywobbles, and swooning under the weight of silly speculations—academia gone mad. Continue reading →

In the thirteenth century the mediaeval world crested, and Thomas Aquinas, the scintillate scholastic resident at the University of Paris, was its intellectual apex. His great contribution was to enlist Aristotle, the newly re-discovered “pagan philosopher”, for the service of the Christian vision of God and the soul. Continue reading →

Whensoever any great light ceases to shine, be it a civilization, a time of grace, or some lesser force, there is experienced a deep darkness, but as our faculties of sight and insight adjust, we begin again to detect the tangible power of light. We look, we recognize shape if not colour, we see if but darkly. There comes perhaps a moment when our focus is not so much outward as upward, and we discover a heavens of infinite lights, or turn again, and become seduced by a world quietly shimmering in the lustre of a moon-glossed night. Not, thus, was everything in the so-called “dark ages” darkled or dormant. A great power had shed its brilliance, and much was disoriented therein. Nevertheless, the world, the luminous capacities of heart and mind remained, and much that had been overshadowed by that more potent presence became free to claim command. Continue reading →