Trojan Walls

Sealing with a sneeze

2007-08-22T21:17:00.000-05:00

While reading The Odyssey recently, I was surprised by an unlikely coincidence. The passage comes amidst the conversation between Penelope, wife of Odysseus, and Eumaeus, her most trusted slave, about the beggar who has come to their palace (i.e. Odysseus in disguise):

At her last words Telemachus shook with a lusty sneeze
like a thunderclap resounding up and down the halls.
The queen was seized with laughter, calling out
to Eumaeus winged words: "Quickly, go!
Bring me this stranger now, face-to-face!
You hear how my son sealed all I said with a sneeze?
So let death come down with grim finality on these suitors--
one and all--not a single man escape his sudden doom! (17: 602-609, bolding is mine)

To an American ear, there is nothing peculiar about the above passage. But having been born in Russia, I was struck by the idea that a sneeze (jokingly) symbolizes an affirmation of whatever was said immediately before the oral eruption: Penelope speaks, Telemachus sneezes, and Penelope then laughs at this prophetic confirmation of her speech.

This folk custom is found in exactly the same form in modern Russian culture! Frequently when I sneeze, my mom will say "Pravda!" ("Truth!") as though to verify whatever point is being made in the conversation. I always thought this was a quirk of Russian culture (as far as I am aware, no such "idiom" exists in American lingo) but apparently it dates back to at least Homeric times. It is a nice thought that such jokes can eke out a cultural existence through millennia, but better judgment would say that the sneeze of affirmation is an eccentric cultural coincidence.

Money before mind?

2007-08-06T00:52:00.000-05:00

Earlier in the week, an unlikely event occured to me: the working hypothesis for my senior thesis - my hunch - I found to have been already put forth (albeit in a limited form) by another historian. As I stated in a previous post, I am researching why some of the greatest ethicists in history lived within a hundred years of each other across the world (particularly in Greece, China, Israel and India) in the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. I noticed that coinage arose in those societies at around the same time or a couple of centuries before those philosophers. My hunch was that, with the introduction of coinage, something about the abstraction involved in thinking of wealth apart from useful goods (e.g. cows, land, vases) disharmonized the societies, prompting a similar philosophical response to congruous cultural conditions from the ethicists.

Last Wednesday, I was consulting with my undergraduate advisor, Prof. Marc Kleijwegt, who lent to me his book, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy by Richard Seaford. Judge for yourself how similar the following quote from the book's abstract sounds to my above hypothesis:

How were the Greeks of the sixth century BC able to invent philosophy and tragedy? In this book Richard Seaford argues that a large part of the answer can be found in another momentous development, the invention and rapid spread of coinage, which produced the first thoroughly monetised society. By transforming social relations, monetisation contributed to the ideas of the universe as an impersonal system (presocratic philosophy) and of the individual alienated from his own kin and from the gods (in tragedy).

I have not read Seaford's book yet, but I have a feeling it will be crucial to shaping the focus of my senior thesis. As he has "utilized" my ideas, I look forward to observing and perhaps utilizing the methodology he uses to explore Greek philosophy and then reapplying that to ancient Hebrew, Indian and Chinese thought. My senior thesis is shaping up to be a happy marriage between my two interests in college: ancient intellectual history and economics.

The ocean of beauty

2007-07-30T22:10:00.000-05:00

Having recently read Plato's Symposium, a phrase kept resounding repeatedly in my head - a metaphor I hardly noticed when reading the text - the words, 'the ocean of beauty', 'the ocean of beauty'. The sound of that pleased me and I began thinking about why I have been drawn to Plato's (and of course, Socrates') philosophy ever since reading the Republic 3.5 years ago. (I know disciplined scholars frown upon such emotional outpourings, but please indulge me, if you will, as I think the allure of these particular ideas is common to many who have "conversed" with Socrates). Below is an excerpt which serves to illustrate the promise of Plato - that is, the attraction of his and Socrates' ideas - from the discussion of love and beauty in the Symposium:

. . . the lover is turned to the great sea of beauty, and, gazing upon this, he gives birth to many gloriously beautiful ideas and theories, in unstinting love of wisdom, until, having grown and been strengthened there, he catches sight of such knowledge, and it is the knowledge of such beauty . . .
First, it always is and neither comes to be nor passes away, neither waxes nor wanes. Second, it is not beautiful this way and ugly that way, nor beautiful at one time and ugly at another, nor beautiful in relation to one thing and ugly in relation to another; nor is it beautiful here but ugly there, as it would be if it were beautiful for some people and ugly for others. Nor will the beautiful appear to him in the guise of a face or hands or anything else that belongs to the body. It will not appear to him as one idea or one kind of knowledge. It is not anywhere in another thing, as in an animal, or in earth, or in heaven, or in anything else, but itself by itself with itself, it is always one in form . . .
This is what it is to go aright, or to be led by another, into the mystery of Love: one goes always upwards for the sake of this Beauty, starting out from beautiful things and using them like rising stars: from one body to two and from two to all beautiful bodies, then from beautiful bodies to beautiful customs, and from customs to learning beautiful things, and from these lessons he arrives in the end at this lesson, which is learning of this very Beauty, so that in the end he comes to know just what it is to be beautiful.
Symposium 210d-211d

Plato (rather, the character of the wise woman Diotima) has described the dialectical ascent from loving a particular person's body to loving the beauty common to all bodies to loving all beautiful things to loving finally the beauty common in all things - the Beautiful itself apart from any worldly form. This is 'the great sea of beauty': just imagine what it would be like to behold with the mind or the soul such an infinite ocean! No, not the beautiful mountain scape or a vigorous young visage - no, the very element of delight taken from both, from every beautiful thing ever created, in fact, taken and unified. What could kindle more joy than seeing such a mindscape?

By no means do I mean to elevate Platonism to the level of a religion nor do I think that the Socratic method is flawless (in fact, my inclination is that Plato would have us, in the words of scholar J.M. Cooper, "constantly question everything that any speaker says . . . to engage a person effectively in the right sort of search for truth"). What I mean to say is that while some philosophers offer humanity castles of ideas molded on self-styled sandless foundations, or tempt men with promises of supermen status, or spell out liberation from some perceived oppressor, Plato's promise is pleasing in its simplicity: to see the Beautiful, to possess the Good, to understand Justice, to live a good life, a truly virtuous life.

In his essay titled "Platonic Love" in The Cambridge Companion to Plato, G.R.F. Ferrari writes of the relationship between love and the forms of the Beautiful and the Good:

In view of such passages as [Symposium] 201c and Phaedrus 250c-d, let us say that the beautiful is thought of as the quality by which the good shines and shows itself to us. We can then claim that the ascent to the Beautiful itself [i.e. the path of love described above] is indeed also an ascent to the Good itself, but described so as to bring out at every turn what it is about the good that captivates us. (260)

One can almost swim through these ideas, writhing and wriggling and almost tasting the succulent nature of things. How far, it seems to me, has modern scholarship - with its cutting-edge ideas and methodologies - diverged from Socrates' vision of inner ascent. Why make the mental effort, travel the road, without the promise of transcendant destinations?

I will rest this thought with a passage from the Judeo-Christian tradition, to which I am drawn even more than to Platonism but for similar reasons of promise, about Wisdom's banquet:

Wisdom has built her house,
   she has hewn her seven pillars,
She has slaughtered her animals, she
           has mixed her wine,
   she has also set her table.
She has sent out her servant-girls, she
           calls
   from the highest places in the town,
"You that are simple, turn in here!"
   To those without sense she says,
"Come, eat of my bread
   and drink of the wine I have mixed.
Lay aside immaturity, and live,
   and walk in the way of insight."
Proverbs 9:1-6

To believe or not to believe

2007-07-20T18:54:00.000-05:00

Reading The Economist kindled my thoughts (as commonly happens) a few days ago. A review of a new biography on Benito Mussolini ("The cruelest years", The Economist, 14 July, 2007) begins, "Ernest Renan, a 19th-century French philosopher, once famously observed that national identity requires a collective work of amnesia." Of course this article is suggesting that the Axis nations have struggled to forget their inglorious role in the Second World War in order to continue living with dignity. I began to wonder about collective amnesia in other societies.

It occurred to me that collective amnesia (or suspension of disbelief or even a noble lie to use Plato's terminology) is an understudied force in history. So many attributes of American society especially depend on noble lies such as that "all men are created equal", that all possess intrinsic rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", and that a wealthy, handsome and successful man is no better than a poor, ugly and miserable woman. This was not always so in history. Ancient Roman society had no such notions of equality and natural rights while birth, wealth and beauty meant everything for moving up the social ladder. The ancient Roman way is more intuitive - are not those gifted by nature more deserving of social goods as well? - while the American way demands feats of faith and imagination. And yet who would argue that the American way of equality and individualism is the worse of the two?

Josiah Ober, a classicist at Stanford University, observes similar suspensions of disbelief in ancient Athens in his book Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens. Ober argues that the masses' exposure to theatrical drama trained the citizen-assemblymen to suspend their disbelief when the predominantly upper-class and educated leaders of the assembly spoke negatively about wealth and likened themselves to the common masses. A kind of symbolic rhetoric developed which on the one hand was fraught with imaginative inconsistency, but on the other hand also preserved for several generations an unlikely society, one founded on ideals of equality and direct democracy in a time of tyranny and rigid stratification.

So, in the best of societies - those founded on democracy and respect for the individual - we observe ideals accepted on faith which otherwise run against the grain of observable reality. Students of history, it seems to me, would do well to study those imaginative ideals popularly believed for the greater good and the manner of their unlikely acceptance.

Thesis thoughts

2007-07-18T00:52:00.000-05:00

Since I may reference it in future posts, I am replicating below the abstract for my senior thesis research project in history titled, Age of Wisdom: The Rise of Genius Ethicists in Greece, China, Israel, and India in the 6th and 5th Centuries B.C. Please humor me and tolerate my generalist tendencies.

As the classical period was dawning in Greece, the Zhou dynasty was decaying in China, the Babylonian conquest was looming in Israel, and the "great kingdoms" were reigning in India, there arose thinkers from these nearly isolated societies whose social commentary has profoundly influenced their respective cultures.* In the spirit of exploring the intellectual bedrock of these important civilizations, this project will study their great thinkers of the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. - Socrates and the Presocratics in Greece, Confucius and Lao Tzu in China, the Babylonian Captivity-era prophets of Israel, and the Buddha in India - and the societies from which they emerged. This project will seek to critically analyze commonalities between the compared thinkers' ideas in their historical and cultural context. The Greeks and Chinese will be closely compared because of their secular answers to man's dilemmas, while the Hebrews and Indians will be paired as examples of religious responses. What in each society allowed for the cultivation of genius? What characterizes a 'golden age' of thought? How do developing civilizations solve cultural problems? These are main areas of inquiry along which this project will proceed.

*The ancient historian Chester Starr once wrote, "Historians have often noted in amazement that the Buddha, Confucius, some of the major Hebrew prophets, and the first Greek philosophers all lived within a century of each other...these four outlooks are among the greatest forces which have molded subsequent civilization." See Chester Starr, A History of the Ancient World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 143-144.

Plato paraphrased

2007-07-12T14:51:00.000-05:00

As much as Socrates is my Superman, this spoof of The Republic (Digested) on the Philosophers' Magazine blog was too good to not split my sides with laughter:

A funny thing happened on the way to the agora. I bumped into that Socrates. He was having a chat about justice with all and sundry.
“I bet you know all about that!” asked Polyasskiss.
“I know nothing at all,” replied Socrates. “Which actually makes me considerably cleverer than you.”
“Indeed.”
“Now, to justice. Do you think justice is simply the most powerful getting their way?”
“Of course.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Anything you say, Socrates.”
“You’re all wrong because you’re like monkeys brought up in a cave who don’t know the difference between reality and shadows.”
“I’m a monkey brought up in a cave who doesn’t know the difference between reality and shadows.”
“That’s why you should be ruled by philosophers.”
“But aren’t philosophers rubbish politicians who end up getting condemned to death?”
“How simple and foolish you are, my simian friend. The fact that philosophers get killed rather than crowned kings proves how suited they really are to rule.”
“Ahhhh! I get it! Actually, I don’t.”
“Well, think of it like this. Take a vertical line, divide it in two, one third of the way down, then divide each of the remaining parts further into two according to the same ratio. Call the top segment intelligence, the next one reason, the next one belief and the last one total cobblers. Is that clear?”
“Certainly Socrates.”
“Now, a just person is like a just state.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was just coming to that.”
“Sorry. I just wanted to keep the pretence of a dialogue going.”
“What I mean is, you can make all sorts of analogies between things and if you do it cleverly enough you can build a whole philosophy on dubious comparisons and no one will notice.”
“God, you’re wise.”
“I’m not God, my friend, but yes, I’m very, very wise, but also ignorant, so therefore supremely modest really.”
“Is this chat going to go on much longer? I’ve got some shopping to do.”
“Every person has an excellence and they should stick to doing what they do well. We’re men and no one talks crap better than us. So leave the shopping to wives and slaves.”
“I think that more or less sums it up, Socrates.”
“Now, come back tomorrow and I’ll explain why somewhere in the heavens there is a perfect form of the kebab.”

Reflections worth reading

2007-07-11T19:59:00.000-05:00

I was at a library book sale this spring and chanced upon a modest-looking paperback book titled, Reflections on History and Historians (1986) by Theodore S. Hamerow. The author was a retired professor who had taught for many years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a pleasant discovery for a Badger like myself. I read the book in the following few days, immensely enjoyed it, and have decided to write a bit about it here (a cursory glance on JSTOR revealed two mediocre academic reviews of Hamerow’s work in the late 1980s, of which I liked the one in The Public Historian much more than the one in The Journal of American History).

Although he is reflecting on the decline of his profession at the end of a distinguished personal career, Hamerow is able to supplely illustrate “the crisis in history” by reserving judgment and giving each voice its due expression. He narrates well the rise and decline of the historical profession (a painful journey for an aspiring historian like myself) from the days of amateur aristocrats like Edward Gibbon, to the giddy professionalization of the craft in the late 1800s, through the failed (but valuable) experimentation after the Second World War, and up to the present epistemological dilemmas of the field today. After allowing due time for all other opinions to be heard (the pessimists and the optimists, the cliometricians and the traditionalists) Hamerow offers his own insight into the future of history departments at universities around the globe:

It certainly does not imply that history is about to disappear from the college curriculum, the way theology or rhetoric disappeared. But it does seem that history as an academic discipline is approaching the position reached by the classics sixty years ago or by philosophy forty years ago, that is, branches of knowledge, once regarded as essential, which are still included among the course offerings of any respectable college as evidence of a commitment to higher learning, but no longer with a wide appeal to students and teachers. Such disciplines gradually come to perform a ceremonial rather than a practical function in the academic community, a little like caps and gowns worn in commencement processions. History is beginning to move in this direction, and while it still has a long way to go before it reaches the exoticism of Greek and Latin, the similarity to the process by which the classics arrived at their present situation is too close for complacency. (28)

Hamerow comments further that the humanities, by becoming the status symbol of the dominant class in earlier centuries, doomed themselves in the contemporary world which no longer sees “learning as a means of achieving personal cultural fulfillment but of pursuing collective social justice” (31). History pales in comparison to social sciences like sociology and economics at playing the new game.

Hamerow’s greatest insight, though, is one which seeks to explain the raison d’être of history. That is, Hamerow frees us from the unnecessary marriage of historians to institutions:

That is what Handlin meant in reminding us that “the historian . . . will find something to say as a historian only through the creative tension that arises from exercising the full power of his imagination and understanding against the unyielding evidence that survives the past. He can continue to do so as an individual even if the crisis in the discipline should leave him without a community of investigators of which to be part.” In the present winter of their discontent, historians would do well to ponder that. (204)

In other words, the chauvinism that academic historians frequently show towards popular amateur writers of history is generally unfounded: history—truthful stories about the past—have always and will always exist to fulfill the instinctual yearning of human communities to remember years gone by. Institutions are only secondary.

I also enjoyed and took into consideration Hamerow’s comment that “[m]ost members of the profession do not concern themselves with theory, and those who do are generally no better historians than those who do not” (205). It is a pleasant and, after consideration, intuitive idea that “the nature of historical learning . . . [is] spontaneous, almost instinctive.” The last paragraph of the book reads like a manifesto for the discipline of history which can be carried as a standard soundly into the 21^st century. In the closing sentence, Hamerow evokes for the final time the father Herodotus’ justification of history:

Our ultimate purpose in studying it, however, will remain one expressed long ago at the first dawning of historical consciousness: that the deeds performed by men shall not be blotted out by time, and that the great and marvelous works of Greeks and barbarians shall not be without fame. (243)

To a young student of the past, at least, Theodore Hamerow’s articulate, funny and insightful reflection on the vocation of history is as refreshing as it is sobering.

Epicurus and the gods?

2007-07-10T20:31:00.000-05:00

I have lately been perplexed about questions related to the nature of pleasure and pain and have turned to several sources in this inquiry, among them the Greek philosopher of hedonism: Epicurus. An enjoyable website, which models itself as “a modern on-line version of the Garden” writes that Epicurus helped “lay the intellectual foundations for modern science and for secular individualism... His world-view is an optimistic one that stresses that philosophy can liberate one from fears of death and the supernatural... [emphasis added].” In other parts of the website, the author writes that future Epicurean thinkers like John Locke and Isaac Newton reverted to “intellectual contortions... to make room for God in their metaphysical systems”, in opposition to “modern science and modern social organization” which do away with deity altogether. The author of this website assumes that, even if Epicurus himself was not an atheist, then his philosophy naturally lends itself and evolved into secular humanism and that the Master would surely agree with such progress.

Admittedly, I have not read all of the primary sources concerning Epicurus, but his own Letter to Menoeceus does not suggest to me that Epicurus would approve of modern secular humanism. The first thing Epicurus writes after exhorting Menoeceus to follow his teachings is, “believe that God is a living being immortal and blessed, according to the notion of a god indicated by the common sense of mankind.” Epicurus continues, “it is that the greatest evils happen to the wicked and the greatest blessings happen to the good from the hand of the gods, seeing that they are always favorable to their own good qualities and take pleasure in men like themselves, but reject as alien whatever is not of their kind.” Finally, towards the end of his letter, the first thing that Epicurus suggests a “superior” man possess is “a holy belief concerning the gods” and that he be “altogether free from the fear of death.” So, according to this letter of Epicurus’, God (or the gods) does exist though “the multitude” might not have correct beliefs about him, he punishes the ungodly and upholds the pious, and the ideal man must correctly understand God.

Hence I am puzzled that the author of the above website, as well as perhaps other contemporary Epicureans, sees Epicurus as the harbinger of atheistic/agnostic secular humanism. Even the entry in the Oxford Classical Dictionary perplexes me, which states that in the Epicurean system the gods “take no thought for this cosmos or any other” and that men should not “[expect] favours or punishments from them.” Epicurus’ own Letter to Menoeceus seems to say something different.

Research interests

2007-03-14T01:43:00.000-05:00

As I am considering options for graduate school in history, I have been reflecting on what exactly interests me about the ancient world. After a bit of brainstorming, I wrote a statement which generally describes my research interest:

" I am interested in the ideas of antiquity and also how they have been transmitted and interpreted through history. The influences on and formation of early Christian ideas I find particularly fascinating, especially the role of Greek and Roman philosophy and Near Eastern religion, as well as the exchange of ideas between ancient civilizations. Finally, I believe the study of ancient history can inform that of American history—especially in the realms of politics and ethics—as our country has harkened back to ancient ideas since colonial times. "

‘The Movement of the Mind’: History as Communal Memory

2007-03-10T13:59:00.000-06:00

The following is a recent essay I wrote for an history scholarship discussing the relevance of studying history-in particular, ancient history-to contemporary life. Please feel free to comment on or disagree with my characterization of the discipline and its practitioners:

" Americans, pragmatic as we are, struggle to see the meaning in studying history. Henry Ford, a most American entrepreneur, once said that “the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history that we make today.” In our age of assembly lines, silicon chips, and personal digital assistants, is there any use in studying the past? Yes, there is! Studying history has overtly practical purposes, such as understanding other societies in order to form foreign policy and also becoming familiar with the context of famous works of art, literature, and law. This essay, though, is going to focus on a different light that history sheds on contemporary life. Apart from purely pragmatic uses, the study of the past offers us a well of tradition and ideas to shape our cultural identity. The historian, then, serves as a preserver of this well of communal memory among otherwise disconnected generations of people.

" Before the 20^th century, history was studied and taught to educate citizens in the cultural inheritance and morals of their land. In the mid-20^th century, postmodern philosophy prompted historians to condemn such “metanarratives,” stories by inevitably biased authors that consciously or unconsciously sought to convert hearers to some belief system of the author’s. This—how to separate meaning from the person conveying the content—is an epistemological dilemma which modern historians have yet to resolve. As it were, that modern historians shy away from telling meaningful stories about the past as they once had done has had the effect of diminishing the historical identity of our culture and leading to a cynical disjointedness of modern people from their ancestors.

" In just over a hundred years, everyone living today will not be walking the earth. In two hundred years, people we will never meet in our lifetimes will be taking care of our homes, farms, businesses, libraries, gardens, and ideas. Generations of people come and go and there is only one reason why we call ourselves by the same name “Americans” as the colonists called themselves two hundred years ago: memory. Not only the memory of neurons and synapses, but, given the duration of time, the memory of storytelling and books: communal memory. Scholar Fr. Pat Reardon, in a recent lecture at the University of Wisconsin, pointed out that the correct answer to the question of ‘who am I?’ is, “I am who I am because I remember who I am.” If one has no recollection of their past—their upbringing, experiences, and relationships—then they can not testify to who they are (witness patients of amnesia). What holds on the personal level also applies to society at large. G.K. Chesterton once wrote of communal memory, “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” And herein is the crux of why history is important to person and culture: our predecessors were people much like ourselves who have transmitted to us tools for living and gems of understanding which our society can choose to ignore at the same peril of an individual who chooses to forget his memories. In this way, as it always has, history can shed light on the present.

" If we are to accept history as communal memory, then what is the job of the historian? Renowned scholar of antiquity Chester Starr once wrote, “It is the conviction of the present writer...that the historian must always come back to the movement of human emotions and the human mind in his deepest probings of the forces moving man’s history.” Historians are the preservers and conveyers of old emotions and ideas; they are the mouthpiece for the dead in Chesterton’s democracy. History today is enriched by relatively new disciplines such as archaeology, statistics, and computer science. While these fields primarily observe the material remains of human life, it would be a mistake for historians to not deepen their inquiry into the most important forces behind the story of man: ideas. As beautiful as the Parthenon is to behold, humanity would not suffer its loss as much as it would the erasure from its collective memory of ancient Greek ideas about democracy; as marvelous and venerable as the Old City in Jerusalem is, it is not comparable to the enduring treasures within the Hebrew Scriptures.

" Robert Putnam writes in his book about the decline of American communities, Bowling Alone, that “fewer and fewer of us find that the League of Women Voters, or the United Way, or the Shriners, or the monthly bridge club, or even a Sunday picnic with friends fits the way we have come to live.” Whether the cause of the fragmentation and isolation of American communities is a lack of historical identity or something else, our society could profit from the deep well of communal memory that has sustained it for many generations until today. To this end, historians should not shy away from telling good and truthful stories of ancient ideas that can continue to inspire. Even the pragmatic carmaker, who we should remember regardless of his advice on history, could have appreciated a good idea. "

Heresy, schism and Holy Spirit

2006-08-25T21:57:00.000-05:00

"The first Christians were Jews." So begins Henry Chadwick's classic book, The Early Church. This post will briefly outline the history of the ancient Church as presented in Chadwick. The time span of interest ranges from the apostolic times of the first century A.D. to the Muslim invasions of the seventh century A.D., but the dating and naming of eras (which, I must mention, are my own poor inventions) are oversimplified for convenience. There are three prominent themes in Chadwick's history: response to heresy, interaction with paganism, and separation of the Greek East from the Latin West. This outline will focus on these topics, and I hope it may prove of use to others as it will to me in seeking the significance of this formational period of the Church.

The primary debate of the apostolic age (30-70) was over the continuity of the Christian Church with Israel, especially whether to continue with Jewish customs like circumcision. St. Paul the Apostle, in his mission to the Gentiles, appealed to the Greek mind by emphasizing the wisdom of God rather than Christ's fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, the main impetus for Jewish conversion. The outcome of the continuity debate was a middle way embodied in the Pauline doctrine: the Jews were the race chosen by God to prepare the way for his Son, Jesus Christ, and while the New Testament fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament, the latter remained important as a pedagogical aid to understanding the fullness of God's revelation.

The sub-apostolic age (70-140) witnessed three trends. First, the center of Church activity moved from Jerusalem to the Gentile world: Asia Minor, Greece, Rome. While many Gentile Christians respected the Roman empire as a just earthly government keen on upholding law and order, the first empire-wide persecution of Christians began as early as 64 when Nero found a scapegoat for a fire that ravaged Rome. The Church went underground. The final trend during this time was the emergence of the first great heresy: Gnosticism. More a collection of diverse teachings than a doctrine, Gnostics generally believed in a dualist reality where the material world (including the human body) counted for nothing compared to the knowledge of spirit (gnosis) reserved for an elect elite. Such dualism gave the Gnostics license to forego a moral code (antinomianism) and engage in debaucherous rites, while orthodox Christian clergy fought hard to extinguish the heresy.

The period of early theological formation (140-250) witnessed greater debates between Christian and pagan thinkers and the popularization of Christianity: paganism was on the defensive. One of the first great Christian thinkers was Justin Martyr. Trained in the schools of Greek philosophy, Justin came to regard Christianity as 'the true philosophy', wore the costume of a teacher of philosophy, and created the Logos theology: the Father was God transcendent while the Son was God immanent, the two being different yet the Word (Logos in Greek, implying Jesus Christ) being derived from the Father. Another theologian of this era - one of my favorites - was a man named Origen from Alexandria whose teachings were later condemned by the Church. A scholar devoted to the ascetical life almost to the point of folly and self-mutilation, Origen had great knowledge of the pagan classics and of the Old Testament, saw Christ as the connection between the Old and the New Testaments, and believed that an allegorical interpretation of the Bible (as opposed to a literal or moral one) could reveal eternal truths. This period witnessed several new heresies: Quartodecimanism, simply a refusal to change the date of Easter from the date of the Jewish Passover to the Sunday following it; Montanism, a following of a man and woman in Asia Minor who claimed to have been possessed by the Holy Spirit and demanded recognition (the Church reacted to this movement by declaring that the age of miracles and revelation had already passed); and Monarchianism, an attempt to protect monotheism at the cost of denying independence to the Son in the Trinity.

The great age of the Greek East (320-410) witnessed the legitimization of Christianity in the Roman Empire as well as the golden era of the Greek Fathers. After converting to Christianity and ending the persecution of Christians, the Roman emperor Constantine held the first ecumenical (all-church) council in Nicea in the year 325. The council heralded two achievements: condemnation of the heresy of Arianism, which held that the Son was a creature, albeit divine, and creation of the Nicene Creed, the enduring statement of faith for all orthodox churches to this day. The Creed went as follows:

"I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible;
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten, Begotten of the Father before all worlds, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, Begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father, by whom all things were made:
Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man;
And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried;
And the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures;
And ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of the Father;
And He shall come again with glory to judge the quick and the dead, Whose kingdom shall have no end.
And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, and Giver of Life, Who proceedeth from the Father, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, Who spake by the Prophets;
And I believe in One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins.
I look for the Resurrection of the dead.
And the Life of the world to come. Amen."

The Roman emperor Julian the Apostate (361-3) was educated as a Christian and in the classics, but adopted paganism, outlawed Christianity, and began another empire-wide persecution of the religion. Only two years into his reign, Julian was assassinated by a soldier's lance. Before expiring, the emperor is said to have flung blood from his wound into the sky, exclaiming to the pagan sun-god, "Be satisfied" (a more suspect Christian version of the story goes that Julian rather shouted, "Galilean [Jesus Christ], you have conquered"). After Julian, the Roman empire again became Christian, but paganism in its various forms lingered, including the outcropping of new sects like the Manichees, a Middle Eastern version of a universalist religion combining elements of Buddhism, Gnosticism and Zoroastrianism. This era in Church history was the heyday of the Greek Fathers: men like St. John Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople, who preached the Gospel with passion enough to displease local authorities, who had him exiled. The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom still remains the main worship service in every Eastern Orthodox church around the world. Additionally, the tradition of monasticism reached fruition during this time. The rigorous discipline of the apostolic era-Church was officially abandoned by Rome in 251, so ascetic Christians withdrew from society. The formational period of monasticism was a turbulent one, as the temptations towards seclusion for sinning's sake or self-mortification were great until men like St. Benedict developed rules for harmonious monastical life. Finally, two more Church conflicts arose during this time: Apollinarianism, a heresy which held that Christ did not have complete manhood because the Logos is unchangeable, and Donatism, a schism over whether traitorous bishops could still confer the Holy Spirit.

The golden age of the Greek churches was followed by the great age of the Latin West (410-500). Before this time, Rome and the western Church lagged intellectually behind Constantinople and the theological tradition of the eastern Church. Jerome was the first great western theologian. He wrote caustic polemics against western heretics, had great command of the Latin classics, and infused his writings with references to them, setting the tone for the dialect of Western Christian theology (Jerome even once had a dream that he was before the Judgement Seat and heard the damning pronouncement, "You are a Ciceronian [a follower of Cicero], not a Christian"). After Jerome came St. Augustine of Hippo, perhaps the greatest western theologian of all time. Augustine came slowly to the faith, only accepting canonical Christianity in his early 30s and only beginning to seriously study the Bible in his early 40s. In his autobiography titled Confessions, Augustine addressed a prayer to God in the style of a Psalm, which described the suffering of a soul until it returns to its God. While his belief in predestination and his disapproval of the East's doctrine of the Trinity further estranged the theology of the West from the East, Augustine's work The City of God - a response to Plato's Republic and the sack of Rome in 410, which asserted that God's Church in heaven is separate from the fate of earthly empires - was a masterpiece. Also during this era, the idea of the papacy - the primacy of the bishop of Rome above all other clergy - reached fruition. The popes Leo I and Gelasius I epitomized the doctrine of the pope as first among equals and successor of St. Peter (the scriptural argument for Roman supremacy comes from the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus says, "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it"). There were three main heresies in this era: Nestorianism, which held that there were two separate persons in Christ; Monophysitism, which believed that there was one nature in Christ, not two (while the ecumenical council of Chalcedon in 451 estranged the Monophysite Oriental Orthodox Church from the rest of Christendom to this day, modern theologians agree that the controversy was due more to poor politics and linguistics, not theological differences); and Pelagianism, which claimed that man can take the initial steps to salvation without the grace of God.

Finally, the age of separation (500-750) witnessed the conclusive parting of ways between the Greek East and the Latin West short of the East-West Schism in 1054. Barbarian invasions in the west dismantled what was left of the once-great Roman empire (Rome fell in 410, Carthage in 439) and by the time of Pope Gregory the Great (590-604), the Roman Church saw its destiny more in missionary work with barbarians than in diplomacy with Constantinople. At this time, John of Damascus (675-749) summarized the achievements of the fathers of the Greek East. Pope Gregory and Saint John were the last church fathers of the West and the East, respectively. While Rome turned West towards the barbarians, the Muslim invasions which rocked the eastern empire (Jerusalem fell in 637, Antioch in 638, Egypt and Alexandria in 641, while Constantinople only thwarted disaster by the use of 'Greek fire') turned the attention of Constantinople to the East.

Henry Chadwick also includes a chapter on early Christian worship, art and music, an intriguing aesthetic history. In his conclusion, Chadwick writes, ". . . Eusebius was no doubt right in seeing the successive controversies as making much of the stuff of church history, and most of the main issues then faced by the church in its formative period have remained virtually permanent questions in Christian history - questions which receive an answer but are then reiterated in a modified shape in each age." What a fascinating idea: new theological problems are ancient questions in voguish clothing. Can it be the case that, for instance, contemporary absolvement of the body from moral laws is a resurgence of a neo-Gnostic philosophy? Or, is it the same spirit of naive universalism which moves modern fad religions and philosophies as once inspired the Manichees? To what extent can we look to the past for insight into solving present dilemmas? One of the best reasons for studying the thought of the Church fathers comes from the Hebrew Scriptures, where Bildad the Shuhite says to his ailing friend Job, "For enquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers; for we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow. Shall not they teach thee, and tell thee, and utter words out of their heart?" Indeed, if we look to the past, we will encounter dozens upon dozens of generations of people who have left spiritual roadmaps for the modern man.

Purpose of this blog

2006-08-08T19:29:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Trojan Walls, a blog focusing on the ancient Mediterranean world. My names is Alex Leites, and I am an undergraduate studying at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in my junior year. I am 20 years old and majoring in history, economics and the classics. Why have I created this blog?

Since I was in elementary school, I have been fascinated by ancient civilizations. I remember my favorite childhood computer game - which I would play for hours and hours - was Sid Meier's Civilization II. As I grew older, my interests wandered elsewhere until my senior year in high school, when a philosophy teacher introduced me to Homer and Plato. As I entered university, I had discovered a set of questions which I could tirelessly ponder with joy. Naturally, these questions were about antiquity:

How did the ancient mind think? The ancient Greeks believed that in the harmonies of music one can discern a microcosm of the laws of the universe! What a fascinating idea and yet how foreign to our ears.
Who were the Hebrews? Who were the Greeks? Who were the Romans? Who were the Christians?
What should moderns recover that the ancients once knew and practiced? I have an inclination that despite his technology and material comforts, modern man has lost the vision of beauty, justice and design that sustained the ancient soul.

These are some questions that I often think about. Hopefully, with the help of this blog and the people that contribute to its discussions, I will attain some insight into those inquiries. Postings to this blog will be sparse, since I have neither time nor prowess for quick thinking. Also, I must mention that I am quite an amateur scholar. If one were to draw an allegory that compared scholarly knowledge of the ancient world to the colossal collection in the Library of Alexandria, I would know about as much as survived the great fire. I always hope to learn more.