Utility of christianity june 18-print

The Utility
of
Christianity
John Beasley

Copyright © 2011 John Beasley
All Rights Reserved.
ISBN-1456529307

DEDICATION 
To Svetlana,
thank you for everything

First Edition Copyright © 2011 John Beasley
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
sorted in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher,
except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976.
Library of Congress Catalog in Publication Number: 2011901700
Beasley, John, 1954 –
The Utility of Christianity, A Concise History
Includes index
ISBN 13: 978-1456529307 (pbk.)
1: History. 2: Religion. 3: Christianity.
I: Beasley, John. II: Title.
Publisher: Fireside Press, New York, New York.
www.utilityofchristianity.com
This book is printed on recycled acid-free paper. It meets the
guidelines for permanence and durability defined by the Committee
on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on
Library Resources.
Printed in the United States of America

The Utility of Christianity 
v 
 
CONTENTS 
  Acknowledgments     i 
1  Signs of the Times     8 
2  Christianity Vs. Materialism   12 
3  Second Temple Judaism and the Historical Jesus   31 
4  Paul: Apostle of Jesus Christ   37 
5  Roman Conquest and Christian Accommodation
(Call Me Pontiff Maximus)
  43 
6  Thomas Aquinas: Conqueror of Islam   55 
7  Luther, Gutenberg and God   68 
8  Press One for Reformation
Press Two for Enlightenment
  88 
9  Reformation for the Common People
(Laissez-Faire: The Economics of Reform)
109 
10  America: The Garden and the Serpent
(Reflections on the New Jerusalam)
125 
11  Who’s on First? 147 
12  Summary and Reflections 157 
  Index 164 
  Appendix A – Chronology 169 
  Bibliography 175

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
Professor Maine of BCC/UCF who, all those years ago, shared
his passion for Plato. Lucie Kline of BCC for allowing me to
participate in the religion seminar and give my talk on
Separation of Church and State. The many reference librarians
who helped track down historical sources and out of print
books. I cannot give thanks enough for the editorial advice of
Tama Westman, Jerry Newcombe and Gretchen Lupo. Also, all
the authors listed in the bibliography who took the time and
effort to share their knowledge, without whom this book would
not exist.
If anyone desires to provide commentary, critique, or editing to
better develop the thesis please email to:
johnbeasley1@msn.com.

John Beasley   
8 
Chapter 1
The Signs of the Times
A powerful segment of American society is attempting to
create a secular society.i A term we often hear associated with
this effort is separation of church and state. What Christians
often think of when they hear separation of church and state
is the right of the church to be independent from government
control. The current use of this term is almost exactly
reversed. Freedom of religion is being transformed into
freedom from religion. A segment of American society that
has considerable influence wants Christianity to play little or
no part in influencing the direction of society, despite the
estimate that 85% of Americans consider themselves to be
Christian.ii
A secular society devoid of a religious conscience is
something relatively uncommon in historical terms.iii Such
secular societies have only been attempted in a few countries,
perhaps over the past 150 yearsiv, most notably, in
Revolutionary France, Communist Russia, Communist
China, as well their satellite regimes and allies in Europe,
Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean.
For the past five thousand years of recorded history,v
societies had some idea of a creative force—what we typically
think of as God—a causal agent, a first cause, that influenced
the lives of people. People perceived that their actions carried
consequences with these deities. If they were pious, and
behaved in a particular way and observed a particular set of

9 
rules, that is to say if they were “good,” then their God or
Gods would favor them and perhaps intercede in the affairs
of men on behalf of the individual or the society.vi If they
failed to follow the providence of God, that is failed to be
“good,” God could be offended and would likely abandon
society to the fates, to chance. To be outside the providence
of God, was to be abandoned by God or the Gods and was
perceived to be the cause of misfortune and ruin of
individuals, cities, and empires.
The central question that is being debated is does
humanity have a purpose and dignity because it is the unique
creation of God or is all life—including humankind—the
result of time and chance and random forces? Is there such a
thing as universal good—and universal evil? Does behavior in
the way of moral and ethical conduct impart any advantage
to the individual or to society? Are there any consequences
for good or evil to one’s actions? Another way to frame this
debate is to ask do people’s actions have any purpose or
meaning beyond their own self-imposed purposes? How each
of us answers these questions has far reaching social
ramifications.
If there is a God and if God has a providential plan for
life, then all life is imbued with meaning and purpose from its
conception. Meaning and purpose are infused into the very
creation process, and derived from the creation process itself.
If there is no God or if God has no purpose for humanity,
then life is substantially meaningless until individuals are able
to create their own meaning and purpose. What if a person
fails to or ceases to be able to create meaning and purpose?
Does this imply that they are expendable because they are
incapable of contributing to their own well-being? If one
believes that God created life and has a purpose for each
existence, then all life is sacred, purposeful, and valuable

10 
from its conception and therefore each person has a right to
life as an expression of the providence or will of God.
If one believes that there is no God or no creative
intention, then life has no inherent value. Life is not created
with a preexisting purpose, and is not sacred; therefore to
destroy such a life is not inherently bad or evil. In fact, good
and evil released from the constraints of an inherent
preexisting purpose are potentially meaningless terms.
Throughout history governments have intervened in
religion to maintain their power, to control the people, and to
appease God or the Gods.vii As I write this book in the first
decade of the twenty-first century, some elements in
American Society are attempting to follow the example of
twentieth century European nations and create a secular
society that limits the ability of Christians to influence social
dialogue. Underlying this debate is the religious community’s
concern that the abandonment of traditional morals and
ethics will bring the wrath of God down upon American
society. Some Americans have assumed the position that
there is no God to placate, and therefore we have nothing to
fear as a result of our immoral and unethical behavior. The
moral and ethical foundation of American society, as
imperfect as it was, is being replaced with a mentality of
might makes right.viii If the Christian community is effectively
removed from the moral and ethical social debate then the
foundational Christian premise of right to life is open to
reassessment. It is important that we understand that the
debate between right to life and might makes right is not a
new social debate. Might makes right represents a
reemergence of a type of classical pre-Christian world-view
that is predominant in shame based cultures.
If we intend to address this issue of church and state
relations, we need to address the history of Christianity, and
what social contributions Christianity has made to the
western world. The Utility of Christianity endeavors to use

11 
utility theory, the materialists logic of choice to explain the
social utility of Christianity.
To understand Christianity in America we have to
understand the evangelical reformation of the church. To
understand evangelical Christianity we have to understand
Roman Christianity. To understand Roman Christianity we
have to understand primitive Christianity. To understand
primitive Christianity we have to understand the historical
Jesus (4 BC? - 30 AD?). To understand Jesus we have to
understand second temple Judaism. To understand second
temple Judaism we have to understand eschatology. To
understand an eschatological world-view, it might be
interesting to understand something of its origin in
Zoroasterism. This is central to a discussion of Christianity
because this is where the origins of a sin based society
emerges that ultimately replaces a shame based society in
Western Europe and the British north American Colonies. A
sin based society is a major social transition that should not
be ignored.
If one is going to debate the merits of a Christian world-
view, it is also important to understand empiricism and
materialism and compare and contrast these world-views to
idealism, Neo-Platonism, Christianity and their origins in
revealed truth. Chapter two presents this debate in a simple
and straight forward manner. That being said, this discussion
about the philosophy of religion is at once central to a
discussion of Christianity, and difficult to explain.
Understanding mysticism is fundamental to understanding
the function or usefulness of Christianity. The Utility of
Christianity presents an examination of Christianity from a
utilitarian perspective. Utilitarianism, or usefulness, is the
measure by which materialism establishes value.

12 
 
 
 
Chapter 2
Christianity Vs. Materialism
Part I
If as a nation we intend to abandon Christianity, which
Nietzsche insightfully called Platonism for the people,ix then
we probably need to look at the underlying structural nature
of Christianity to be aware of the philosophical framework
that Christianity imposes upon society. The question I would
ask is what structurex does Christianity impose upon society,
and indeed reality? If we are going to close that book and
stop using that system, we need to compare and contrast the
structural implications of the other systems that are presented
as replacements for Christianity.
Christianity imposes a number of important
conventions upon reality: One is that perception and reality
are not the same thing. The world as it appears to our senses
is not an accurate portrayal of what is occurring. A second
understanding is that the world appears to be based upon a
cyclical heliocentric pattern, the solar year, however
superimposed upon the cyclical pattern is a more important
linear pattern. If we are unaware of this subtle linear pattern
then we misunderstand the purpose of life. There are certain
consequences to looking at life as a linear progression, rather
than as a cyclical progression. To begin with if one believes in
a pattern that is not apparent to the senses, then one is forced
to abandon empiricism, that is the analysis of the obvious

13 
physical environment and to adopt some form of
conceptualism; reality as a theoretical construct.xi
Some of the ideas linearity imposes upon reality are a
unique perception of time, personal accountability which
leads to the idea of sin and seeking the good. Seeking the
good evolves into a concept of the willxii and the importance
of the individual due to unequivocal change caused by
willing, and progressxiii or a sense of movement toward
resolution. In Christian terms this movement toward
resolution is called the eschatological end times.xiv
Every culture and every philosophy does not embrace a
conceptual model of reality. In Eastern philosophy, such as
Taoism or Zen Buddhism,xv the initiate is advised to shed
conceptual reality, shed interpretive language,xvi and thereby
see ultimate reality, or one might say the unitive whole of
reality. Western philosophy and Western religion convey
something very nearly opposite. Platonism the fountainhead
of Western philosophyxvii contends that the world comes into
existence according to the conceptual story that explains
reality.xviii If one conceives of a new story, a new
interpretation, then a new world emerges from that
interpretation.xix In Eastern philosophy, physical reality
defines conceptual reality; in Western philosophy, conceptual
realityxx explains physical reality and thereby creates meaning
out of meaninglessness, or chaos, or the void.xxi The logos
imposes order upon chaos, which is to say chaos gives way to
story.xxii Indeed the first verse of the Gospel of John reads,
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God.”xxiii
We can take this insight a bit further with the life of
Jesus, and compare the empirical reality of his life, to the
conceptual story that explains and thereby vindicates his
short and troubled life. One of the many ways to understand
the life of Jesus is that his life exemplifies the victory of

14 
conceptual reality over physical reality. To some people,
Jesus sees the ultimate forms that comprise reality, such as
heaven and the father, and he defines these forms for those of
us who cannot see them. For others, Jesus rather imagines a
world that does not exist and he wills it into existence. In
either event, Jesus sides with his conceptual vision over
against physical empirical reality, and ultimately something
of his vision of reality prevails in European society for over a
thousand years.
A second understanding is that the world appears to be
based upon a cyclical pattern, however superimposed upon
that cyclical pattern is a more important linear pattern. If we
are unaware of this subtle linear pattern then we
misunderstand the purpose of life.
The linear pattern emerges out of the belief in an
eschatological end times when God intervenes in history to
rectify injustice and wickedness. If there is no end times, then
there is no logical reason to perceive reality as linear or
progressive. The lack of an intentional major transformation
occurring in history certainly throws the concept of linearity
and progress into doubt. Also, if there is no accountability,
then there is no real importance to choice making. Even if
one does not or cannot disprove willing or choice making,
then certainly the importance of such choice making is
thrown into question if there is no accountability, i.e. no God,
no reference point, to evaluate the better choice. The
implications of this train of thought should be rather obvious.
The absence of a better choice implies that all choices are
potentially of equal value. This begs the next question, if
there is no good and evil, then what is the basis for social
order?
To address this question we need to revisit the Persian
prophet Zoroaster. In Western culture current opinion holds
that the Persian prophet Zoroaster is generally recognized as

15 
the originator of this dualistic system of good and evil.xxiv
The prophet Zoroaster, priest to his God Ahura Mazda,
postulated a dualistic struggle between the Good God,
creator of the universe, Ahura Mazda; the God of fire and
light, and the evil demigod Angra Mainyu. Angra Mainyu
had turned on his creator, Ahura Mazda and was battling for
control of the world. It was up to wise people to choose the
ways of the good God Ahura Mazda. At some point, this
battle between these Gods would escalate and there would be
an eschatological end-time of world history.xxv The faithful,
the good, had to choose Ahura Mazda, and it isn't clear if this
was to help insure God’s victory or simply to be on the
winning side in this titanic struggle against evil. Central to
this developmental process is the appearance into history of a
succession of three Saoshyant’s, or saviors who would each
usher in a new age, or new axial period. The saviors would
be born of virgins, and the final savior, (Astvatereta) or the
final revelation of the savior spirit would usher in a
transfigured world.xxvi The dead would rise and all living
creatures would become immortal. The people who chose the
ways of good, the ways of Ahura Mazda were assured of his
blessing which would equate to a better quality of life, and
the possibility that one might obtain eternal life and join in
the final triumph.xxvii
The effect of Zoroastrianism was to cause the faithful to
begin to reexamine their behavior. If you will, they split their
conscious wholeness into two,xxviii and began to monitor their
own behavior to a much more extreme degree than was
previously customary. These Zoroastrians became
intentionally self-regulating, by internalizing a moral
conception of good and evil. This turning inward to control
oneself as the predominant social behavioral model was a
new phenomenon. This in turn forms the emergence of a
new type of culture that we term a sin or guilt-based
culture.xxix The traditional cultures were what we call shame-

16 
based cultures,xxx force was the primary means of social
control; might makes right.xxxi In the emerging sin-based
cultures, the members of society to a greater degree regulate
themselves. By internalizing a shared moral or ethical
conception of good and evil, they became their own
taskmasters.xxxii The degree to which individualsxxxiii
internalize a moral or ethical conviction of good and evil
largely determines how much freedom they can be trusted
with,xxxiv moreover the amount of exterior force that will be
necessary to maintain social decorum, law, and order.
Schweitzer identifies this cultural change as a transition from
nomadic society to an agrarian society.xxxv The emergence of
a sin based society typically does not completely replace the
underlying shame based social mechanisms.xxxvi
The Zoroastrian religious tradition is revolutionary. In
earlier social traditions, time is viewed as being circular, as it
was in pre-Socratic Greece.xxxvii Circular notions of time are
based on the repetition of the solar or lunar year, which
allows one to predict the agricultural growing cycle; indeed
such a world-view perceives eternity itself as an endless circle;
to borrow a metaphor from the pre-Socratics that was echoed
by Nietzsche, it is an eternal reoccurrence. In circular notions
of time, an individual's actions have little or no consequence;
people are trapped within a repeating system, a wheel within
a wheel, which uses them as pawns in a cosmic scheme.xxxviii
The individual loses importance in a circular world-view.
In the Zoroastrian tradition, time is linearxxxix, because
the God intervenes in time during the eschatological end
times to begin his reign of truth, justice, and light for
humanity. Therefore, within a Zoroastrian notion of linear
time, the events of individual human lives take on new
meaning and purpose. In a linear conception of time, events
have greater importance, as they are all part of God's plan to
unfold the eschatological end times and the future golden
age. Since the world is moving inexorably toward a

17 
resolution, events in ones life, the choices a person makes take
on a new importance. This notion of time as linear leads to
the importance of the ego that wills, or, more simply, the
importance of choice making. This leads to the conception of
sin, or to miss the better choice.
Judaism was heavily influenced philosophically by
Zoroastrianism during the Babylonian captivity of 586 BC.
The unique qualities of Judaism that distinguish it from the
Greek or Indian philosophical traditions are monotheism, a
linear notion of time, therefore personal accountability
reflected in the Mosaic legal code, and a heightened sense of
individual value.xl Judaism also provides a process for
implementing a relationship with God within, which was also
central to the Platonists, Stoics and Neo-Platonistsxli that
influenced Christianity.
Christianity inherits the Jewish philosophical tradition
and then Christian scholars build upon that foundation in the
first through fifth centuries. What early Christianity provided
in Paul the Apostle (? - 64/67 AD) in the first century and
Augustine (354 – 430) the Bishop of Hippo in the fifth
century was an analysis of the process of choice making
within a Christian context. The process of choosing or willing
good over evil, and the psychological hurdles that one has to
negotiate to arrive at what Plato (428/27 BC - 338/347
BC)xlii called “the Good.”xliii
Willing leads to the idea of freedom of conscious. The
idea of freedom of conscience and social freedom, as modern
western culture understands it, largely did not exist in most
world cultures before the Christian era.xliv In Paul's epistles
to the Romans and Galatians and in Augustine's Confessions, a
dialogue ensues on the means available to accomplish the
goal of choosing the Good. They both conclude that the law,
the knowledge of good and evil, convicts, and reveals one’s
failings, and that only grace, or love as charity allows one to

18 
do the Good.xlv So, the quality of character that is necessary
to allow one to achieve the moral and ethical prerequisites
necessary to usher in the Kingdomxlvi of Heaven is love.xlvii
This is arguably the first historical record of the idea of
the will as an inner activity that stands in contrast to the
thinking mind and dominates and controls one's life.xlviii In
the classical pre-Christian, and one might add pre-Stoic
world, freedom was a physical state, not an intellectual state.
One might say that intellectual freedom only exists or is only
recognized in a conceptual society. With the ascendancy of
Pauline Christianity, the function of the will becomes one of
the central themes of philosophy for the next two thousand
years. The central question is can people really choose? Do
people have the capacity to act in a way that is unnatural and
deliberate, or is this process of willing a mental illusion? Are
we rather existentially trapped in the physical world and
within our cultural envelope?
What we need to see is that the prospect of God
intervening in history changes the conception of time, and
our requirement to make a choice for God and a choice for
the good changes the individual and the social institutions of
every society that believes in that story. When we review
what is happening with Zoroasterism, Judaism, and
Christianity we need to see that the world is being literally
transformed by ideas about the nature of the world. What is
changing is how people understand what is happening in the
world, and this understanding in turn is transforming society.
With the appearance of sin based cultures what is
emerging are two different world-views. The one world-view
that was decidedly the prevailing world-view is defined as
empirical, or materialist and is delineated by the social
mechanism of physical force, might makes right. The
emerging world-view of the Zorasterians, Jews, and
Christians is something of a conceptual idealist world-view.

19 
In the conceptual world-view the empirical evidence alone
does not provide sufficient information to understand the true
nature of reality. These conceptual cultures tend to be
defined by mercy, or some sort of derivation on right to life, if
you will a mediation on the doctrine of might makes right. It
may be fair to say that when a society chooses a conceptual
or spiritual model over a materialist agenda it is choosing the
individual and the free expression of the individual over the
collective will of society. When a society chooses materialism
over spiritualismxlix it is subordinating the individual to social
dogma.l
Part II
Once one accepts conceptual reality as a possibility for
the replacement of empirical, or observed reality, this opens a
door to what is called mysticism, or interpretive or
interpreted reality. Mysticism typically perceives reality as an
allegory and symbolism.li I would argue as well that
mysticism is yet another sequence or method for using ones
mind.lii It is a turning inward on the mental process itself,liii
perhaps triggered by the need to control oneself, and is not
specifically a flight into fantasy. The teachings of Plato,liv
Jesus and Buddha challenge us to use our mind in a different
method from the method that reveals an empirical materialist
reality. The problem with mysticism is that European society
and particularly American society is pragmatic, and therefore
inclined to ask of mysticism, does it pay? The answer in the
West is typically no, because it is an alternative process for
valuing and evaluating information. Furthermore, it can take
years to learn to interpret and traverse this nocturnal world
within.lv The reason it is imperative that we broach the
origins of mysticism is that Idealism, Neo-Platonism and
Christianity are founded upon the ability to use the mind in
this specific manner, or at least to appreciate the fact that
others can use their minds in this specific manner. For the
purposes of this book, the mechanics of mysticism are

20 
provided to assure the reader that mysticism is simply that, a
learned process that some people excel at better than others.
It is not hocus-pocus, or mental illness, or imagination. It is a
thinking process that probably anyone who is inclined to do
so can learn. The definitive summary of mysticism remains
Evelyn Underhill’s, Mysticism.
To approach a discussion of mysticism is difficult, as
one has to choose an audience and use Christian terms or
psychological terms. Christians often think of psychology as
psychobabble, when they hear terms like subconscious mind
and collective unconscious, and an encounter with the
numinous. Psychologists sometimes do not understand
Christian terms such as a way to God, or a word from the
Holy Spirit, or to have an anointing. Interestingly each group
is referring to the same mental processes. The Christian
understanding of mind has the distinction of being passively
learned and functional. It is in the interest of Christians to
learn psychological terms, because typically Christians excel
at the ability to use their minds in the way defined by Plato.
Plato was not only the father of philosophy; he is still
considered one of the most brilliant people who ever lived.
So this psychological debate is one that the Christian
community can engage with great confidence. With that, we
turn to an admittedly difficult analysis of mysticism.
Every religion has its own methodology for making this
mystical sojourn, and every religion has its own terminology,
as do many philosophies for that matter. Most of these
mystical traditions are themselves symbolic and therefore
difficult to interpret. For the most part the intent is to present
the experience in itself. The objective is to describe one
means for negotiating the mystical experience, the kingdom
within,lvi while not intentionally excluding any other potential
understandings of mysticism. The reason we are examining
mysticism is that we want to understand the difference
between conceptual idealism, reality as an idea or concept,

21 
and empirical materialism, reality as an examination of
external observations.lvii Furthermore we want to understand
mysticism on something of a structural or physiological level,
rather than on a purely conceptual or allegorical level. It is
probably best to begin with an allegory, to see the difference
between allegory and a physiological explanation of
mysticism.
By way of an allegory, this is a paraphrase of my
recollection of one of Father Anthony DeMello’s allegories.lviii
A man is walking in the countryside and he decides to lie
down at the edge of a meadow covered with deep green grass
and flowers and watch white clouds passing slowly overhead.
It is a perfectly beautiful day with bright blue skies and long
golden rays of sunshine glistening on the trees. He is lying
there watching cloud shapes forming in the sky when he
begins to drift off to sleep. Just when he is about to fall asleep
he hears a woman crying in the woods. He gets up and goes
to investigate. He finds a lovely young golden haired woman
sitting in front of a very small cottage crying. He asks her
what is wrong? She says she has been abandoned here in the
little cottage by her family and she is lonely. As they are
talking the man notices a tapestry on the back wall of the
cottage. It looks very expensive and out of place in a small
cottage. He asks if he can look at it, and the girl agrees. As he
is examining the tapestry he discovers that there is a large
wooden door behind the tapestry. He opens the door and
realizes that the door leads into a huge mansion. The young
woman has been living in the foyer of her family’s mansion.
He comes back out and looks and discovers that the mansion
is covered in vines and ivy and has large trees hiding it. He
explains to her that she doesn’t live in a small cottage at all,
but in a huge mansion. She is beaming at him, the light in
her eyes penetrating into him, and she has a smile, and then
he awakens. Lying on the deep green grass with the soft white
clouds drifting overhead, he wonders if this was a dream,

22 
when he hears a woman in the woods crying. This is an
allegory of an encounter with the unconsciouslixmind,lx which
is our entrance into mysticism.
To understand the experience of mysticism, let us ask,
what happens when we go to sleep? Obviously, we close our
eyes. We stop identifying threats and opportunities in our
exterior environment. Ones awareness wanders and typically
one begins to see pictorial exchanges between various centers
of the mind that are classified as dreams. The experience of
sleep is considered necessary for health and survival. Sleep is
seen to be a renewal, an essential inward adventure that
sustains our outward adventure.lxi
As in sleep the first intent is to defocus the eyes. A
simple solution is just to close the eyes, but then one runs the
risk of the conscious mind shutting down, and falling asleep:
That won't do at all. A person can focus their eyes on a point
on the floor, a blank wall, a light bulb, or a candle flame, or
as Einstein did, go single-handed sailing on a large body of
water, so that the eyes truly have nothing to focus upon and
the pupil of the eyes dilates.
When the eyes are focused, as when concentrating on
reading, a person is typically using the cones in the eyes:
When a person defocuses their eyes they begin to use the rods
in the eyes for peripheral vision or night vision. The rods in
the eyes are connected to the right side of the brain, which
allows one to see pictorial sequences from the unconscious.lxii
As with Moses and his burning bushlxiii, the experience is
often most readily recognized out of the corner of the left eye.
Once a person learns to dilate their eyes with some practice
they typically begin to see dream sequences. Dreams, as we
call them occur twenty-four hours a day.lxiv If one sees their
dreams while they are awake people tend to refer to them as
daydreams or hallucinations. I would suggest that dreams,
daydreams, and hallucinations are all different attributes of

23 
the same experience, the same phenomenon of a pictorial
interchange of information between various centers in the
brain.lxv The cerebral cortex, cerebellum, and brain stem
communicate in pictorial forms, rather than in linguistic
abstractions.lxvi
The next hurtle on this journey is to still the conscious
mind,lxvii to stop the cerebral cortex from exercising its
protective pursuit of endlessly searching out threats and
opportunities. This can be accomplished by repeating any
treasured word or mantra for an extended time, or just
whistling or chanting or humming. Such activities have the
effect of occupying the attention of the frontal lobes,
persuading the brain into feeling it is safe, and thus lowering
ones brain wave activity. Another way to accomplish this feat
is to make oneself vulnerable, and if one is not set upon and
attacked in this state of intentional vulnerability, then the
mind concludes that of necessity it must be safe, and brain
wave activities subside. By realization, instant understanding,
or with some practice, if a person defocuses the eyes and
chants a word after some time many people begin to
experience their dreams in a waking state. I would argue that
what the person is watching is the pictorial communication
between various centers of the brain.
If one practices this activity that operates under the
name of prayer or even meditation,lxviii and watches these
dream sequences, it is important to begin to notice the quality
of the dream sequences. Notice that some dreams are very
elaborate almost like Hollywood movies. Some dream
sequences are cryptic and have a convoluted logic that takes
some time to puzzle out. Some dreams are crude and
inclined toward cartoons or hieroglyphics. Conversely, one
might notice that some dreams have the theme of becoming,
which seems to be motivational. Some dreams have a theme
of being, and they seem to be intended to make one come to
a realization. Finally, some dreams are just doing, like

24 
playing and appear to lack purposeful intent, and yet they are
creative, working out some design. A person may have a
perception of timelessness, again because some sections of the
brain do not have a facility for time.lxix This is an interesting
phenomenon of learning to use the brain, many sections of
the brain lack receptors for such common perceptions as
time, space, bodily sensations, and similar sensory
functions.lxx
The above meditative type activity should be practiced
for some time until the individual is able to once again
discern with some degree of accuracy their internal reality
from their external reality. At this point, in Zen practice, the
mind is said to be like a swinging door. The reason this is
difficult is because the exterior world is presented to us in the
same form as the interior world, largely through visual
representations. Suffice it to say, learning to use the mind in
this way can be seen as a reversion to a medieval world-view
or at least a diversion from the current ‘climate of opinion’lxxi
about the prescribed manner for using the mind. The
enlightenment made what Nietzsche called to “gehen unter,”
or to go below into the unconscious something of a crime or
at the very least a social Faux Pas because this was the source
of intuitive revelation and revealed truth. This was the way to
God. Modern psychology has termed this process a
regression to a lower state of existence, or even mental illness.
It is worth noting that Dante’s world-view as expressed in The
Divine Comedy, was exemplary writing by the ‘climate of
opinion’ of the Christian Middle Ages, but by modern
standards his going into the underworld and to paradise and
discovering some sort of peopled conceptual world accessible
or imaginable through his mind presents a problem. For us in
what we term the modern world, Dante presents a complete
work of fiction, not a portrait of the Platonic process for using
the mind. We do not understand Dante in the way a
Christian of the Middle Ages could have understood Dante.

25 
The aspect of this dialogue that makes it so interesting is that,
in theory, the members of the enlightenment are what Kant
termed ‘free thinkers.’ We free thinkers perceive that we have
transcended the narrow thinking of the Christian Middle
Ages to arrive at the pinnacle of intellectual liberty.
However, modern culture has prohibitions against how one
can use their brain. Modern culture has prohibitions against
going down into the unconscious. Modern culture has
prohibitions against using deductive logic. Modern culture
has prohibitions against faith, which is termed ‘bad faith,’lxxii
because it implies dependence upon an imagined form of
assistance. Why is the assistance imagined? Because we are
not supposed to go down into the unconscious, the way to
God, and verify that source of faith. One might ask, what is
instinctual knowledge that all animals possess if it is not
revealed information or revealed truth? One might ask, does
instinctual knowledge from the unconscious work in the
animal kingdom? One might further reflect that faith is a
reflection of belief in ones world-view. If a person lacks faith,
even if it is faith in facts, or faith in science, then it can be
argued that their world-view is not doing its job. The modern
era is not free from the Christian medieval world-view as
nearly as it is a direct confrontational response to the
Christian medieval world-view. This argument between
Christendom and the modern world-view can be compared
to entering adulthood. We often reject the council and
conclusions of our parents in order to discover ourselves. It is
only later, often much later, that we can look back at their
solutions and realize they were often as good if not better
than our own. The fault was in the ownership of those ideas,
they were their answers and their solutions and not ours.
Even though it has been over five hundred years since the
break with the medieval world-view, we as a society have yet
to make that reconciliation. This suggests that there has been
a lack of what G.W.F. Hegel called synthesis, between these
two world-views. That perhaps speaks to a certain degree of

26 
denial. If one is in denial then typically that is a refusal to
accept a situation: One is saying no.
If one can learn to think outside of the modernist box,
by whatever means necessary, such as Tao or Zen or yoga, or
the spiritual exercises of Ignatius Loyola and become
comfortable with the meditation process, begin to look for
white dots in the dream sequences, almost like flaws in old
scratched silent movie films. If one is able to focus upon one
of these white dots, it will seem as bright as the sun. One clue
that this experience is about to happen, is that ones eyes will
become very sensitive to light, probably because the pupils
are dilated. There will be a connection made between the
conscious and unconscious mind.lxxiii Plato and Plotinuslxxiv
said to look inwardlxxv to see this experience, while
Augustinelxxvi advises one to look inward and up to realize
this experience.lxxvii This experience can completely
overwhelm the conscious mind as the conscious mind tries to
absorb all the information available in the unconscious,
which does not work.lxxviii Mysticism is something one does,
it is not something that one can get by reading about it.lxxix
Interestingly, Christians seem to do these mental gymnastics
naturally or as a function of a conversion experience.
Christians get the benefits of this type experience without
actually having knowledge of the experience, or they simply
recognize it differently. Christians become connected to God,
to the infinite, just as Plato suggested.
This experience is arguably presented in Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales in the Knights Tale, as well in Geothe’s
Faust,lxxx and a materialist understanding of the experience is
presented by Joseph Campbell in A Hero with a Thousand
Faces.lxxxi My favorite analogy of the process is a Zen pictorial
called the 10 Bulls.lxxxii

27 
Part III
Now let us take this information about how to learn to
recognize the unconscious mind, the way to God, and apply
this to a study of philosophy. I am going to argue that there
are two primary orientations for using the mind, one is to
discover a source of information within the mind.lxxxiii The
other is to recognize primarily external activity and perceive
oneself as independent of that external activity and somehow
able to judge it objectively.
The internally validated philosophies contend that
there is a source of information within each of our minds that
is valuable, at least as valuable as anything that is external to
us. These internal schools of thought lead to expressions of
mysticismlxxxiv and the relevance of revelations, intuition or
revealed truth. The externally focused philosophies contend
that whatever is inside of us is at least secondary to what is
outside of us, and therefore our primary focus needs to be
external.
Socrates and Platolxxxv are credited with founding the
philosophical school of Idealism.lxxxvi Idealism asserts that
there is an idea or an archetypal formlxxxvii of every creation
and that this archetypal form is perfect in design. All external
expressions of this perfect form are imperfect copies of this
perfect archetypal form.lxxxviii Forms might be said to exist in
the conceptual realm as pure potential in the mind of God.
So, for idealists such as Socrates and Plato, ultimate reality,
or perfected reality is accessible through an inward
journey.lxxxix What is important for our discussion is that all
philosophies that go within the mind and find therein some
source of validation, or intuitive or revealed information are
reminiscent of idealism in this respect: They agree that there
is particular value in this internally located information that
can be beneficial to living ones life.

28 
Aristotle was a student of Plato, he fully expected to be
appointed the headmaster of Plato's school the Academy
upon Plato's death, but he was passed over. We do not know
if Aristotle was incapable of making the internal journey
required by Idealism, or if he simply found no value in the
endeavor. What we do know is that Aristotle turns away from
Socratic and Platonic Idealism and founds his own school,
the Lyceum on an analysis of the exterior world. Aristotle's
renunciation of the Platonic philosophical method was by
way of example. Aristotle's departure from Platonism
provides an extraordinary defense of externally focused
natural philosophy. Aristotle does not provide an analysis of
how to use the unconscious portions of the brain. He does
not go on this inward journey,xc in-fact for Aristotle his
primary focus is external, or worldly. This is principally the
blank sheet that John Locke would employ in An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding that during the Enlightenment
would divide believers in innate ideas from believers in the
outer world.xci
These are examples of two primary methods for seeing
the world. One is to look internally and to find meaning from
within oneself and the second is to look externally and to find
meaning outside of oneself. These are seemingly two very
divergent ways of looking at the world.xcii
In conclusion, I am going to argue that the primary
debate among philosophy is the same as the primary debate
between Christianity and the post Christian community
typified by the scientific community. The debate is primarily
a debate between those who experience the unconscious
mind as having a tremendous impact on the conscious mind,
and those who feel the unconscious mind has little or nothing
significant to contribute.xciii
Now we have within the Christian tradition a perfect
example of this dichotomy between these two types of

29 
personalities. That dichotomy is presented to us in the
portrayal of Paul the Apostle. In the beginning Paul is a
deliberate rational empiricist who has absolutely no use for
emanations from the unconscious portions of the brain. Paul
takes great pride in hunting down these heretical mystical
Christian types, and even having them put to death. Then
Paul is traveling the Damascus Road and he has an
experience of a blinding bright light confronting him, and
something of an encounter with Jesus.
I am going to argue that Paul was alienated from his
unconscious mind, and that on the Damascus Road his
conscious mind was completely overwhelmed by emanations
from the unconscious portions of his mind.xciv So much so
that his conscious mind was unable to function, he was
blinded for three days. When Paul comes out on the other
side of this experience he becomes a proponent of
mysticismxcv and develops an intuitive relationship with God.
Perhaps because he could see the choice so clearly, Paul does
a 180 degree turn around. Most people come comfortably to
one or another of these orientations to life, and it is seldom
that they have a major reorientation or conversion
experience of the magnitude that Paul experienced.
The unconscious mindxcvi permeates the conscious
mind, whether the conscious mind is aware of this association
or not.xcvii The challenge for our culture is not so much to
agree as to the content and potential of the unconscious
portions of the mindxcviii so much as it is to recognize that the
unconscious mind exists and then find a means to integrate
this unconscious agenda, this way to God, into our cultural
process through Platonic idealism, or some similar passive
processxcix that favors functionality.
Conversely, if we are successful in ignoring and denying
the unconscious portions of the mind, how are we going to
avoid having our conscious intentions sabotaged by the

30 
unconscious?c Regarding this process, I would repeat the
words of G.W.F. Hegel (1770 - 1831), that this world has an
agenda of its own, and we ignore that agenda at our own
peril,ci or as Arthur Lovejoy terms it when speaking of
Platonism, “this world comprehends us.”cii

31 
Chapter 3
Second Temple Judaism
And
The Historical Jesus
One reason this linear eschatological social model is
important to Christianity is that it sets the stage for the
philosophical framework for the second temple Jewish
prophets. The prophets Daniel, Ezekiel, Enoch, Baruch, and
Ezra all work out of an eschatological end time theology in
which God will intervene in history and send a savior, a
messiah, a son of man, to the Jewish people to end their
oppression under the gentiles. It is important to understand
that for roughly 400 years the Jews were anticipating the
arrival of messiah, the renewal of the Kingdom of David ciii
which represented for them a return to independent self
government.
The Book of Job serves as an excellent metaphor for how
Jewish people saw their predicament during the second
temple historical period. They were God’s chosen people,
they were following the laws of Moses, and still they were
oppressed by the pagan gentile nations that did not honor
Yahweh. Hundreds of years of oppression left Jews desperate
for a resolution to foreign tyranny.

32 
Judaism splintered into various confessions of the faith.
The Sanhedrin was Hellenic.civ To some degree this priestly
class were materialists and empiricists, as the Greeks and
Romans were inclined to be. The Pharisees were pious
reformers.cv Their response to social oppression was to try
harder to please God. The Essences were more dissident and
withdrew from the pollution into communal life where they
could await and prepare for the coming of messiah.cvi The
Zealots, usually comprised of the lower
classes,cviiunderstandably took a more confrontational stance
as revolutionaries. These diverse confessions of the Jewish
faith were conceived as reasonable responses to gentile
oppression. The Jews hoped that if they got it right they
could move God to intervene for their benefit and set them
free from the yoke of the gentiles.cviii
Each Jewish prophet had slightly different visions about
how the end times would occur.cix Generally, there was to be
a great persecution of the holy people and then God would
send Messiah who would in the Day of Judgment, the terrible
day of the lordcx destroy all the unholy people. Thereafter all
the holy people, both dead and alive would be raised up
supernaturally,cxi and God would institute a new kingdom on
earth ruled over by Messiah or rather the son of mancxii as he
would be called after being supernaturally transformed.cxiii
Jesus was born into this second temple tradition and into
the anticipation of the coming messiah. John the Baptist
heralds the coming of the Kingdom of God, cxiv and
proclaims the Kingdom of Heaven to be at hand.cxv John
baptizes people as a form of repentance and as a remission of
sincxvi in anticipation of the arrival of the eschatological
Kingdom of God. For some Jews the arrival of Messiah
seemed imminent, even at the door.cxvii What the Jews were
waiting for was the restoration of the nation of Israel.cxviii

33 
According to the later prophets, Daniel, Enoch, Baruch,
and Ezra, the Messiah would come as a person, in the lineage
of the house of David.cxix He would be born in Bethlehem
cxxand raised in Galilee.cxxi He would be persecuted by the
priesthood as they had done to the prophets,cxxii and then he
would either have to suffer deathcxxiii and resurrectioncxxiv or
God might intercede and spare him death as he had done for
Elijah. The messiah would be supernaturally transformed
from natural to supernatural. The supernatural messiah or
son of mancxxv would then be able to defeat even angels, such
as Lucifer, who had manipulated the fate of humanity.
As Jesus compared himself to the revelations about
messiah,cxxvi he believed that he was messiah.cxxvii What we
have to consider is that Jesus and the apostles were on the
other side of revelation. They did not know how it would
happen. Jesus anticipates events,cxxviii even predicts events,
but they have not yet happened. To make it come true, to
make it lived out; Jesus had to participate in this drama to see
it to its conclusion. Only after the events were lived out could
one conclude that Jesus fit the prophetic expectations.cxxix
Jesus’ ministry is in some respects a response to the
baptismal ministry of John the Baptist and John’s call to
repentance.cxxx Another way to understand repent, might be
relent, to let the other person up, to extend a helping hand, to
restrain oneself from dominating ones neighbor. To live as if
power were not the determining factor in social relationships.
Jesus advised that power should be subjugated to lovecxxxi as
the motivation for ones actions. Perhaps this is the entrance
into the Kingdom of God that Jesus saw dawning during his
lifetime.cxxxii Perhaps Jesus envisioned a transition from a
materialist world-view that resulted in legalism, to an
emotion or feeling based world-viewcxxxiii that resulted in love
as the foundation for social organization.

34 
Jesus’ early ministry in Galilee meets resistance, even
though it is sometimes referred to as the happy period.cxxxiv
Church officials and Jesus’ family try to dissuade him from
his ministry.cxxxv Jesus responds by holding camp meetings as
John the Baptist had done, but rather than baptizing,cxxxvi
Jesus feeds the people in something of a Eucharistic
feast,cxxxvii and then he sent his twelve disciples out to
announce to all of Israel that the Kingdom of God was at
hand cxxxviii and that this was the time to repent and to
prepare for the day of the lord.
When the temple priests heard someone preaching the
day of the lord,cxxxix this was a message that God was going to
intervene in history to rescue the people of Israel.cxl Such a
message as this, while it was not overtly revolutionary, could
easily cause people to rise up in revolt in anticipation of the
day of the lord, and the coming of the Kingdom of God.
There was certainly potential for Jesus’ message to cause civil
disobedience. The Roman position, based on the philosophy
of might makes right, was to battle down and kill anyone who
resisted, and spare those who submitted to Roman rule.cxli If
the Jews rose up and resisted, as they would later do in 66 to
70 AD, the Romans would destroy them.
Rather than Jesus backing down when the religious
Pharisees confronted him,cxlii Jesus takes his ministry to
Jerusalem and there he confronts the temple priesthood.cxliii
As Albert Schweitzer phrased it, Jesus “terrorizes” the temple
priesthood by confronting the priesthood’s materialist
concessions to secular culture.cxliv In the early period of his
ministry Jesus called into question the piety of the
Pharisees,cxlv and then in the latter period he called into
question the materialist Hellenistic tendencies of the
Sanhedrin temple priesthood.cxlvi

35 
During this period Jesus realized that as messiah he must
suffer, as it was written,cxlvii and then through a supernatural
transformation he would arise as the son of man,cxlviii having
fulfilled the prophetic requirements of messiah.cxlix
Jesus either had knowledge from God or he came to
believe that if he offered himself up as a sacrifice that God
might accept him and spare the living the need to endure
persecution during the tribulation end times. Jesus believed
himself to be the messiahcl that is evident. Jesus either hoped
that there were other options available to him, or he was not
certain how God would work out all the details. He did not
know if he would have to die or if God might intervene to
spare him as he had done for Elijah.cli When Jesus tells his
disciples to wait for him after the crucifixion so he can lead
them back to Galilee,clii it certainly indicates that Jesus
anticipated resurrection. This is the tradition and
environment out of which primitive Christianity was born.
From a Jewish point of view the ministry of Jesus was a
disaster. Jesus was a blasphemer.cliii He did not free the Jews
from gentile oppression. Jesus did not solve the Jewish
problem of gentile domination of the Holy Land, nor restore
the Kingdom of David, nor cause a thousand years of Jewish
rule over the gentile nations. On the other hand, Jesus was
responsible for the European gentile world coming to confess
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for over one thousand
years. Some expression of Yahweh won, but not a rational
legalistic worship of Yahweh, which would favor educated
and wealthy members of society. Rather a Yahweh that
expressed love and compassioncliv as the highest expression of
moral and ethical behavior. This was a Yahweh that was
accessible to the common people, the average person, the
people of the land.clv This was a Yahweh freed from his
intellectual entourage.

36 
Jesus turned God over to the common people and in so
doing he disrupted the social stratification first within Jewish
culture and then within Roman culture. If one is unwilling to
grant Jesus any supernatural endowment, one point that must
be conceded to Jesus is that he figured out how to unravel
and thereby reorient the social structure of his culture.
Jesus’ victory needs to be understood within the context
of Greek and Roman culture. Roman culture was built upon
Greek culture the way American or Australian culture is built
upon British culture. Not unlike our times, the Greeks and
Romans tried to make sense of fortune and greatness. The
question the Greeks were wrestling with was how do you
account for greatness? Also, the Greeks spent sometime
considering what constituted a great life. To die at the
pinnacle of life was for the Greeks to have lived the best
possible life. From a providential Hellenic perspective, if a
person rose to greatness, then that person was blessed by one
of the Gods. His victory was his God’s victory. Hellenic
culture called the most blessed among men, such as
Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar, the son’s of God: So
great was their glory. So, if Jesus’ vision won, then by the
logic of his day Jesus was a Son of God. He was one who
God blessed and gave glory to on earth. The greatness of his
victory revealed the greatness of the victory of his God over
the ambitions of the other Gods. By Hellenistic standards, if
they could have seen a thousand years into the future, the
success of Jesus ranks him as one of the greatest son’s of God
to have ever walked the earth. His astonishing victory ranks
his God as the greatest God to have ever existed. The fact
that Jesus died at the pinnacle of his life served to underscore
Hellenistic social theory. By the Roman standards of his day,
Jesus was the son of his God. His God was a great God.

37 
Chapter 4
Paul, Apostle of Jesus Christ
The social revolution that Jesus sparked that delivered
God to the common people was championed by the apostles
of Jesus, notably among those who preached to the gentiles
were Peter and Paul. The central message of Christianity
remains relevant, because it continually supports the
common people’s right to human dignity. Paul’s ministry of
love,clvi arguably based upon the public ministry of Jesus of
Nazareth,clvii remained true to the theme of favoring an
emotion, love over rational knowledge, intellectual
legalism.clviii Paul like Jesus said that it is inappropriate to sit
in judgment of ones fellow man, because judging does not
address the problem.clix To address the many issues of social
or communal dysfunction, one must respond with the
emotion of love as charity and caring, while maintaining
communal relationship. One should not extend justice but
rather mercyclx to the afflicted and forgiveness to the
oppressors.clxi It is important to recognize that one does not
require an education to love, but one does need educational
training to judge critically. Therefore, legalism is going to
favor an educated class, while emotional appeals to charity
have the potential to transcend economic and class statures.
It is often said that Paul invented Christianity.clxii This
theory follows that Jesus had no intention of separating from

38 
Judaism and that Jesus would have rejected any theology that
departed from Judaism. We will never know if that is true. In
any event the Judaism that Jesus knew and wrestled against
ceased to exist with the destruction of the Second Temple in
70 AD less than forty years after his crucifixion. A new
confession of Judaism emerged founded upon the Talmudic
tradition at roughly the same historical period as New
Testament Christianity.
From what references we have, we can make some
inferences about the ministry of Jesus. The ministry of Jesus
was a ministry of inclusion and a ministry of love. For Jesus
and later Peter and Paul, the emotion or feeling of love or
caring was the central element that fulfilled the law, not
rationalism or logic. Jesus’ vision of Judaism extended table
fellowship and inclusion to social outcasts.clxiii Jesus seemed to
conclude that the way to reform someone’s character is to
bring that person into community and to love them.
Interestingly this is much the formula that Paul would use
within the gentile Roman world to make Christian
converts.clxiv The gentile Greeks and Romans were given
inclusion into the Christian community.clxv They came to
worship the Jewish God Yahweh, just as Abraham had done,
through faithclxvi not through acts of obedience.clxvii
From the source documents that comprise the New
Testament, what we see happening with the ministry of Paul
the Apostle is that he is coming to terms with Jesus’ vision of
the eschatological end times. He is describing, entering into
a Midrashclxviii or hermeneutic with the ministry of Jesus. It is
fair to say that the ministry of Jesus and the ministry of Paul
were rejected by the mainstream Jewish community. The
members of this Jewish sect, the followers of Jesus the messiah
tended to be Jewsclxix who were predisposed to entertain an
eschatological message. Finally, the ministry of Jesus began to
be taught to gentiles.clxx This cultural transition presents a

39 
new problem for understanding the life of Jesus the Messiah
and to understanding the ministry of Paul to the gentiles.clxxi
Recall that Jesus was understood by his apostles and
followers as fulfilling the Jewish expectation of the coming of
messiah,clxxii the son of David.clxxiii As such he was to be
supernaturally transformed into the son of man, which would
initiate the thousand-year reign of Gods kingdom on
earth.clxxiv A primary function of the Messiah, in Jewish
minds was to end their oppression under the gentiles.
When Paul began to explain the life and ministry of Jesus
to the gentiles they were going to hear something significantly
different from what the second temple Jewish community was
hearing. This is because they came out of a completely
different culture.clxxv Arguably, when Greeks and Romans
heard about the life and ministry of Jesus the savior they
apply it to their own culture. Jesus the redeemer comes to
provide social salvation to the oppressed in the Roman
Empire. Who was oppressed in the Roman Empire?
Womanclxxvi who had no social standing in Greek or Roman
cultures, widows, infants who could be killed without
justification,clxxvii children, orphans, the elderly,clxxviii the
weak, the crippled, maimed, the poor, the powerless.
Slaves,clxxix who represented twenty-five percent to fifty
percentclxxx of the Roman population. Everyone who was
powerless under the materialist Roman policy of might makes
right were potential converts to this new religion. This new
brotherhood of social inclusion, a brotherhood of mercy.
It is important to realize that these early Christian
communities that Peter and Paul established were also social
enclaves within the greater society that provided some degree
of a social and economic safety net.clxxxi For these new gentile
converts, the harshness of the Jewish law could be equated to
the brutality of Roman law.clxxxii The eschatological end
times, which would usher in the reign of Christ, also meant

40 
an end to the Roman Empire. Interestingly this is the same
promise it held for the Jewish community.
Jesus’ ministry is undeniably transformed as Paul takes it
outside of its cultural Jewish context. Arguably, the central
question of Pauline Christianity is, how do we connect the
Jewish eschatological ministry of Jesus to the Jewish
eschatological ministry of Paul as he explained that ministry
to gentiles. How do the gentiles transform Paul’s
understanding of Jesus into what became primitive
Christianity?clxxxiii How does primitive Christianity connect
Jewish ministry to Greek and Roman culture? This is a
problem that will not easily be resolved. It would result in a
number of heresies, or diverse confessions of the faith for the
first six hundred years of church history.
Some of the hearers of Paul’s word tried to understand
what Paul was saying within the context of Stoic
philosophy.clxxxiv Others translated Jewish mysticism into
Platonism,clxxxv while still others equated it to Gnosticclxxxvi
ideas. Marcion’s theology of love,clxxxvii tried an early
redaction of the New Testament based on Paul’s writings as
the core of this new cannon.clxxxviii There were also a number
of religions that employed mysticism, such as the Egyptian
and Greek mystery religions as well as the Mithras.clxxxix
Jewish mysticism could be understood allegorically compared
to these other religions.
For the purposes of this book, what is important in the
Pauline doctrine is that he was building a bridge between the
Jewish community and the emerging Christian community.
As well this new community assumed a dissident stance
toward the Roman Empire. If one considers early
Christianity to be a confession of Judaism then it was an
expression of Judaism that had to struggle against second
temple Judaism for its’ survival. To say that Paul invented
Christianity potentially presents the wrong frame of

41 
reference.cxc Paul’s ministry to the gentiles certainly reframes
Jesus’ ministry, as well as the ministry of Peter, but as with
any religion that is exported out to another culture it must be
stripped down to universal core beliefs.cxci This is what Paul
accomplished in translating Jewish eschatological mysticism
for the Greek community. He explained Jesus’ message in its
essence so that it could be understood within Greek and
Roman culture. The Jewish eschatological message of supra-
natural salvation resounded among the gentiles.
Judaism was a dissident religion within the Roman
Empire, which means that they pursued their own economic
agenda and the Jews tended to produce their own social
enclaves throughout the empire. Primitive Christianity as a
confession of Judaism followed many of the Jewish social and
economic strategies that allowed the Jewish community to
maintain a distinct and successful social identity from the
time of the Egyptian Empire through the Roman Empire
period and into the current era.
Perhaps the most important element in the early Church
period is that followers of Christianity began to disassociate
themselves from the greater economic endeavor of the day,
and to await the return of Christ.cxcii Many early hermits
went out into the wilderness alone, while those who could not
take the solitude began to form Christian communities.
Christians often lived in a communal setting where they
shared their resources.cxciii A major function of the Bishop of
the church was to provide money to the very poor, widows,
and orphans.cxciv
Christians often would not serve as magistrates or serve
in the Army.cxcv They were opposed to capital
punishment.cxcvi They practiced sexual restraint, martial
fidelitycxcvii and occasionally even practiced celibacycxcviii
within marriage. They strongly opposed infanticide,cxcix both

42 
in abortions and exposure of infants.cc Many of these infants
and orphans were brought to the Christian communities and
raised as Christians. These Christian communities became
economic enclaves that were passive critics of the social and
economic agenda of the Roman Empire. It is important to
see that the early Christians were social dissidents in that they
expressed social values that were at odds with the dominant
Pagan Roman culture. Christians were undermining the
social ethic of the Roman Empire. A good parallel to what
the Christians were doing in the Roman period can be
compared to Henry David Thoreau’s Essay on Civil
Disobedience. Furthermore, civil disobedience would find
renewed expression throughout Christian history.
Paul is often accused of inventing Christianity. Paul, like
Augustine, Luther and Calvin, is often criticized for not doing
a better job of imitating Christ. If one considers Jesus to have
had no supernatural dispensation, no extra ordinary gifts,
then Paul’s, Augustine’s, Luther’s and Calvin’s inability to
imitate the life of Jesus represents a personal failure, a
character flaw that they resolve through a rather pathetic
faith in Jesus. If Jesus did have a supernatural dispensation,
did have extra ordinary gifts from God, then Paul’s,
Augustine’s, Luther’s, and Calvin’s self honesty in admitting
their inability to imitate the life of Jesus, identifies and pays
homage to the exemplary life of Jesus. Furthermore, the
inability of these great men to adequately imitate the life of
Jesus in some way validates the claim that Jesus was
significantly superior to even these extraordinary people.
A summary of this debate is covered well by Albert
Schweitzer in The Quest of the Historical Jesus and Paul and His
Interpreters. In the last analysis, Paul was not the redeemer.
Paul was a witness. Paul was coming to terms with the life of
Jesus as it applied to Jewish prophecy about messiah and the
implications for the coming eschatological end times.

43 
Chapter 5
Roman Conquest
and
Christian Accommodation
Christianity was born in the best of times and the worst
of times. Rome was the undisputed world power.
Unimaginable prosperity stood in sharp contrast to the
brutality that it rested upon. The bridge between rich and
poor, powerful and powerless, underscored that this beautiful
age rested upon victory. Rome had come a long way since
her humble beginnings, transformed in the process into a
nation that its founding citizens would probably have
boarded ships and fled.
The early republic (res publica, the common good) was
based on a collection of common farmers and laborers who
joined together in a more or less necessary endeavor to
defend and protect their city-state. In the early era, social
standing was more or less equal based upon their right of
equal access to the public forum, the comitia and classical
jurisprudence.cci The city-state of Rome became more
successful and expanded their landed area in an attempt to
consolidate their victories and obtain fresh troops to man
their military legions. The defensive territorial expansion
intended to secure Roman borders led to the necessity of a
professional military class and a professional political or
managerial class. Success brought with it a quality of life and
a standard of living unparalleled in world history.ccii The

44 
managerial class began to amass great fortunes as the method
for the acquisition of wealth shifted away from agriculture
and labor and favored government contracts, military
materials supply, speculation, lending of capital, and
management and disposition of the peculiarcciii assets
obtained as booty in military engagements.
In the early period of the res publica law and order,
social decorum was maintained to some extent by social peer
pressure among the vox populi. Much as in colonial America
the social imperative of the Protestant reformation served the
dual function of regulating social discourse as well as personal
behavior. Like the colonists of North America, the Romans
of the early res publica period courted the favor and
providence of the God(s). The psychological motivation for
their devotion has been debated among later Greco-Roman
philosophers, not to mention modern scholars. Regardless, if
their religious devotion to the Gods was a reflection of
genuine faith or fear and superstition, the reality was that the
course of their lives was perilous to the extent that they could
not afford the luxury of offending the Gods. The Romans
wanted the victory, they were hungry for social and economic
ascendency, and as the Carthaginians would learn in 146 BC,
perhaps the Romans had no other options available to them
except total victory. This point is alluded to in Virgil’s (70 BC
- 19 BC) Aeneid. Perhaps it is fair to make the analogy that
the Romans had to prevail or be destroyed like their Trojan
progenitors. As such the Romans of the res publica era
courted the favor of the God(s) because in such faith enough
seeds of hope could be planted to vanquish fear.
By the time Augustus secured power between 27 BC and
31 BC the early republic no longer functioned as it had in the
early centuries of the city-state. Wealthy senators,
contractors, investors, bankers, speculators and military
leaders used their vast wealth to fundamentally subvert the

45 
traditional Roman republican political process. The
traditional system of law and order that was built upon
personal integrity forged in the furnace of pious peer pressure
among theoretical social equals was subverted by the
extraordinary wealth made available by military conquest in
the name of empire. Empire provided the basis for the
emergence of a cosmopolitan managerial class as well as their
attendant bureaucratic entourage. Only fools and dullards
stayed down on the rural farming plantations earning a living
by the sweat of their brow when there were easy fortunes to
be had in finance, speculation and provisioning, not to
mention the possibility of glory occasioned by a successful
military command. It should come as little surprise that the
general interests, the greater good, of the Roman city state
and the interests of the vox populi were subverted in favor of
every variety of scheme that promised to generate more
wealth for the managerial class.
The legendary integrity of Roman officials could not
resist the corruptive influence of the tsunami of fortunes
being generated by empire. There were those, like Cato, who
envisioned a restoration of the res publica, that time when
honor, valor, integrity and piety defined the Roman
character that was exemplified during the period of the res
publica commonwealth. Others, such as Cicero, promoted a
vision of a restored commonwealth based upon integrity
while remaining mired in the political corruption of his day.
The early cultural compromise that had been agreed
upon by the Roman citizens was labeled the Pax Romana. It
was a frugal pragmatic farmers view of the world. The
Roman res publica reflected a farmer’s discipline and a
blacksmith’s fortitude. Farmers knew that despite all their
hard labor, they were not in control. They were in
relationship and as such, a number of factors could turn
against them despite their best efforts. These early Romans

46 
brought the precarious nature of the farming life to the task
of establishing a government and political relations. This
cultural understanding lasted until the defeat of Carthage.
Perhaps, the greatest misfortune to befall the Romans was to
have no nemesis to define themselves against.cciv Having
destroyed their cultural opposite - their cultural shadow, the
Romans were freed to drift into a relaxed debauchery of
Epicurean delights.
Lucretius, who interpreted Epicurus into the common
Roman vernacular in the volume, The Nature of Things,
presented a logical view why religion was the cause of much
evil, suffering and social strife. People tried to conform their
behavior to win the favor and avoid the wrath of the Gods. It
was this social pressure that brought many social evils. The
resolution to the problem was to abandon all such conceptual
stories and return to nature, the natural life. The Romans
having defeated their external enemy, the Carthaginians,
were left with the cultural or psychological mechanism that
had allowed them to maintain self discipline for hundreds of
years. The solution was to abandon the entire process in
favor of a clear and simple return to nature. The religious
stories that had guided the nation successfully for so many
centuries, so long as their foe lived, now presented a distorted
view of “ultimate reality.”ccv The solution to discovering the
real meaning and purpose of lifeccvi was to abandon theories
of good and evil, abandon religion, and return to a natural
mechanical view of the world and live for today. This period
of history Cicero called the height of scientific materialism,ccvii
which philosophy he considered to be absurd. Some
problems with Epicureanism and materialism that Cicero
noted was that the issue of personal freedom was developed
independently of any social responsibility. This resulted in
what Charles Cochrane has translated as a “cult of
selfishness.”ccviii Naturalism provided an opportunity for
people to reveal their true character unbridled by carefully

47 
inculcated religious inhibitions. The result was “theft, forgery,
poisoning, assassination,” and lust for power.ccix It is
interesting that in the religious orientation, the focus was
generally upon self control and promoting self control in
others. While in the emerging materialist culture the project
of self control is neglected in favor of controlling others.
Perhaps, the classical use of the term holiday best
describes this transition from the Pax Romana into the times
of troubles. Holliday in many European societies represented
a social break with everyday. Characterized in such events as
the German October Fest or French Mardi Gras. A classic
example is the scene in The Hunchback of Notre Dame written by
Victor Hugo in 1831. The carnival crowd masquerades
Quazimoto, the deformed hunchback, through the streets
raised up on a chair as if he were King.
Holiday was a world turned upside down. It was an
escape from the bondage of everyday. It was a literal and
psychological reprieve from the pressures of everyday life. In
some sense, upon defeating the Carthaginians the Romans
escaped into a cultural holiday, a lost weekend. The
characteristics of the Romans of the commonwealth, hard
manual labor, frugality, piety, and pragmatism gave way to
an easy cosmopolitan multiculturalism. The similar direction
had been taken by the Athenian Greeks hundreds of years
earlier after the defeat of their arch rival the Persians. It
became unfashionable in Rome to require great and
successful people to be bound by the cultural traditions that
had defined Roman character. It was considered unrealistic
to require cosmopolitan individuals to profess and adhere to
the austere provincial beliefs and rituals of the peasant
farmers who’s values had characterized the res publica
commonwealth that defined the Pax Romana.

48 
The individuals and families who were the most taxed by
the burden of maintaining the national social facade, such as
the Skipo family who had carried the Roman standard since
the Punic wars, seemed the most ready and willing to
abandon the old responsibility. Under the banner of
liberalism and social inclusion citizens were able to slip the
shackles of personal responsibility. This time of drift between
the culmination of the Pax Romana and what was to emerge
as the Pax Augustus was a period of social anarchy and acute
materialism. It was reflected at the personal level by an
almost total abandonment of the trait of self control. Self
discipline was the hallmark of the Roman citizens of the res
publica commonwealth period. It’s demise was shocking and
lamentable, especially to those who excelled at such virtues.
The examples of personal corruption reported by virtuous
citizens was defended as just reward by those shrewd enough
to arrange a payment for themselves. What was the point of
building an empire after all? It is worth reflecting that many
historians and poets such as Herodotus, Thuscydides, and
Plutarch suggested that such vices constituted pollution,
which is somewhat comparable to our use of the word sin.
This social pollution was deemed by them to be the source of
familial discord, intergenerational affliction and ultimately
communal misfortune.ccx To return to the point at hand,
Rome lacked a purposeful unifying social imperative.
Dictatorships were associated in the Roman mind with
middle eastern cultures. It was these types of intolerable
cultural differences between European culture and middle
eastern cultures that allowed Roman citizens to galvanize
their resolve to battle down their traditional etiological foes.
The Greeks and Romans had developed a tradition of
government that at some level rested upon the consent or
agreement of the governed to the primary social agenda.
Julius Caesar (100 - 44 BC) set out to remedy the issue of a
lack of cultural purpose, exhibited by personal acts of

49 
decadence, social chaos and civil strife, by imposing a
dictatorship. Julius Caesar’s break with Roman republican
tradition was too abrupt and he was murdered for attempting
to impose order from the top down, at the expense of
traditional social discourse. The challenge presented to
Augustus, the nephew of Julius Caesar, was how to impose a
tenable direction upon the political process while paying
respect to the traditions that characterized the Roman
commonwealth. He would have to restore order by reining
in the opportunism of the managerial class while extolling the
agrarian virtues of honor, valor, integrity, piety, hard work,
and pragmatic empiricism.
Roman Civilization had no reservations about taking
human life.ccxi Their society was built upon military victory
that yielded slave labor, and as such they had to be willing to
kill anyone who resisted their power. Depending upon the
source, it is estimated that between twenty-five and fifty
percent of the population of the Roman Empire were
slaves.ccxii Christianity allowed the socially oppressed an
opportunity to passively resist authority, and even allowed
them to be martyred for the cause of Jesus Christ.
Martyrdom in Christian circles, and suicide in stoic circles
was not the desired response the Roman government was
trying to invoke. Roman society was sustained by terrorizing
and exploiting the labor of the slave population. The Roman
propensity to kill slaves was acted out literally and
symbolically in coliseums and amphitheaters across the
Empire on a weekly basis. If the slave population did not
respond to terror with obedience, then the economic
foundation of the Roman Empire was in peril. The imminent
historian Edward Gibbon (1737 - 1794) considered this
Christian response to Roman power to be one of the critical
factors in the fall of the Roman Empire.ccxiii

50 
In 312 A.D. Constantine assumed control of the Roman
Empire and issued the Edict of Milan giving Christians the
right to worship in Rome. By 325, the Roman propensity for
bringing law and order to every endeavor was brought to
bear upon Christianity. The Council of Nicaea was convened
at the request of the Emperor Constantine to codify and
define Christianity. The adoption of Christianity by the
Roman Empire transforms both the Roman Empire and
primitive Christianity. Eventually the Christian priests
assumed the attire of the Roman civil servant and they were
assigned two attendants. The robes of the Roman civil
servant defined his social standing. One of his servants
walked ahead of him waving incense to mitigate the stench in
the gutters. The other rang a bell to clear traffic. It was
against Roman law to impede the progress of a Roman
official.
It is amazing that Constantine allowed the bishops a free
hand in defining Christianity during the Nicene Council.
When the bishops define the trinity as coequal and coexistent
they are defining Jesus and by extension his church, the
mystical body of Christ in the world, as having a superior
relationship to all created beings.ccxiv This in effect places the
government in an inferior position to the Church. In the
context of church and state relations, the trinity makes the
church a personal creation of God, while the state is an
implied creation of God owing to their social standing. The
state is a creature of God and is subject to the creator. The
creator is the trinity. A Trinitarian understanding of the
world at least creates a theocracy. A triune God provides the
opportunity for the Church to assert its superiority over the
civil government.
Conversely, if Christ was not of one essence
(homoiousios), or was created by God then Christ does not
hold a position that is significantly superior to the position of

51 
any other creation of God. If Jesus was eternally begotten of
God, true God from true God, one in being with the father
(homoousios), then Jesus is God and therefore superior.
Succeeding emperors, such as Constantius, would side
with other understandings of Christ, such as the Arian, that
did not place the civil government at a disadvantage relative
to the church. The church for its part would seek to enhance
the Trinitarian advantage by claiming that the priesthood,
upon ordination receives a special dispensation of Grace
from the Holy Spirit that sets the priestly class above all other
people. How one defines Jesus very much defines the relation
between church and state.
Once the Christian Church was adopted by the Roman
Empire as its official religion, something important changes
relative to Christianity’s function within society. For the first
three hundred years Christianity served the function as a
social critic of the Roman Empire. A social critic that was
awaiting the Roman Empire to be replaced by the
triumphant return of the Messiah and the Kingdom of God.
Once Rome converts to Christianity Rome is awaiting the
return of Christ to bring-about the transformation of the
Roman Empire into the supra-natural Roman Empire. As it
turns out Jesus will not replace the Roman Emperor when
the eschatological end-times come.ccxv
Interestingly, Roman culture begins to be
transformed,ccxvi just as Peter and Paul’s small Christian
communities had been transformed by the ministry of Jesus
Christ. The Christian values that had been dissident values,
such as thrift, passivity, chastity, charity, right to life, slowly
become cultural attributes of the Roman Empire. The
transformation of Roman society from an empirical
materialist society based primarily upon power to an idealist
conceptualist society based upon power mitigated by charity
and right to life represents a substantial cultural change. As

52 
Gibbon pointed out, this transformation probably did
contribute to the downfall of the Roman Empire, because the
Christian ethic was servile, effeminate, humble, meek,
passive, and otherworldly.ccxvii Romans were no longer as
ruthless as their competitors.
When the oppressed masses within society conceive of a
supra-natural escape from their social predicament, that is
understandable, perhaps predictable. When an entire culture
begins to conceive of a supra-natural escape, that speaks of
an alienation toward this world. That speaks to an inability to
cope with the realities of this world.ccxviii True the Roman
Empire was pressed on every side by barbarians such as the
Vandals, Visagoths, Ostragoths, Lombards, and Huns, as
well as historic foes such as the Persians. Primitive Christian
passivity had to accommodate the Roman need for military
power, and ideas such as a just war had to emerge.ccxix
The Nicene Creed was also a doubled edged sword. The
intent was to unify Christianity, however the Nicene Creed
effectively excluded a number of confessions of the faith. The
result was that the adoption of the Nicene Creed caused a
significant segment of the Christian community across the
expanse of the Roman Empire to be reproached as heretical.
For 250 years, many of these monks and priests who would
not profess the Nicene Creed were exiled into the Syrian
Desert where they could do no harm.ccxx The Syrian Desert
borders on and encompasses much of what we now call
Saudi Arabia. By the year 632 the prophet Mohammad
combining local Arabic tribalismccxxi with Syrian and
heretical Christian viewsccxxii and arguably the sectarianism of
Arian and Syrian Christianity reinvents itself as Islam and
overruns the Mediterranean basin.
Arguably the Roman government’s intention was to use
the Nicene Creed to unite the empire, and in the process the
repression of various confessions of primitive Christianity

53 
helped create a more pronounced schism between
Christianity and its renegade progeny Islam. In the end,
about one half of Christendom fell to Islam, and the even
more passive and benevolent Buddhists were largely
annihilated in the near east.
We need to try to come to terms with the Emperor
Constantine. Historians often say he adopted Christianity so
that he could unify the empire. That does not ring entirely
true. Christianity was a religion of the oppressed lower
classes, so it would have alienated the managerial ruling
classes, causing social instability. Alienation is not normally a
prescription for unity. Let’s try to reconstruct the events of
that day. Constantine was a lower class person from the
Greek providences by the Aegean Sea. He rose up through
the military ranks. When this poor boy was faced with a
battle for control of the Roman empire, he had a vision. A
sign that God, the Christian God, would lead his troops to
victory. It worked. God delivered. This outsider became the
Emperor of the Roman Empire. This soldier became the
most important man in the world. If you have ever watched
the Pope make his entrance into St. Peters Square this is how
Constantine and all the Caesars presented themselves before
the Roman people. Imagine, Constantine coming before the
Roman people dressed in shining white robes glimmering
with golden trim. The people of Rome would have accepted
Constantine as a son of God because of his phenomenal
success. The Romans understood success as the favor of the
God’s. So, for Constantine to have attributed his success to
the Christian God was in keeping with Roman tradition.
Even if it was not a Roman God. On the other hand there is
a degree of humility exhibited when Constantine calls himself
a bishop in the world, or the Pontiff Maximus. So great was
his fame, that it was within reason for him to call himself the
son of God. He does not, and furthermore he raises up his
God, the God of the poor and downtrodden. What we seem

54 
to be seeing in Constantine is an individual who was not
strictly speaking a Roman, in a cultural sense. Constantine
was not one of the good old boys from an old patrician
family. Constantine was no Julius Caesar, or Cicero.
Constantine was championing something of a populist
movement when he legalized Christianity. Coming from the
Greek Macedonian region, he was also an outsider. Even his
taking the resources of Rome and employing them to build a
splendid new capital in the Greek eastern empire speaks to
his estrangement from the establishment in Rome. In modern
terms, this could well be termed a colossal redistribution of
wealth. On the other hand a case that is often made is that
the wealthiest mining provinces were in the east. The logic
follows that Constantine’s move east serves to protect those
financial assets.

55 
Chapter 6
Thomas Aquinas,
Conqueror of Islam
When we look back at the Middle Ages and ask, what
changed between the Middle Ages and the Modern Era, the
typical answer is that the Europeans abandoned a reliance
upon Biblical revelation and began to re-appropriate
Classical Roman and Greek history and culture. In a sense
that is a fair assessment, but it does not adequately define the
mechanism for that transition. If the late Middle Ages can be
characterized as posing one primary question, that question
might be, is Jesus ever going to return? There is a rather
pragmatic idiomatic expression that says, “Actions speak
louder than words,” and in this sense the Renaissance and
the Reformation can be characterized as a manner of
response to that implied question, is Jesus going to return?
This question was made all the more poignant because the
Muslims pressed the point that there is no God but Allah,
and he has no son. The Muslims had demonstrated that they
were willing to destroy every vestige of European civilization
to settle this point. Some imagined, without looking any
closer, that an easy resolution to this cultural conflict could be
found in abandoning Jesus.

56 
It is tempting to say that the abandonment of faith in the
return of Christ occurred during the Enlightenment in the
eighteenth century. However, many pieces of information,
that with 20/20 hindsight suggests that the foundation of that
abandonment of faith had its origins centuries earlier.ccxxiii
Some of the elements were the failure of the messiah to
return. The publication of deists tracts, and even Scholastic
Thomism can be seen as a venture away from classical
Christian Neo-Platonism.
Arguably Thomismccxxiv is an attempt to convert
Aristotelian philosophy to the service of Christianity. This
need to control Aristotelian philosophy is arguably a response
to Islam’s championing of Aristotelian philosophy and the
extraordinary success Islam was having in commanding this
world. By comparison, the Christians were seeking to
command the high ground in the next world, and, as a result,
were literally losing ground in this world.
Since Jesus had not returned and there did not seem to
be any mechanism within the Church’s control to cause his
return, the church was faced with a dilemma. Rather than
changing their theology or abandoning hope in the eventual
return of Christ, Church officials chose to change their
response to being ‘in the world.’ The option the Church
chose was to redefine the nature of its mission. Thomism fit
the bill wonderfully. Aristotelian Thomism provided a useful
alternative for how to live successfully in this world, arguably
without addressing the issue of the return of Christ. The shift
away from an anticipation in the imminent return of Christ
had begun within the lifetime of the Apostle Paul some fifteen
or twenty years after the death of Jesus. Steadily from that
time on, the possibility that Jesus would provide a reprieve
from the brutality of this world seemed an increasingly
remote possibility.

57 
Western Church philosophy since the fifth century had
relied upon Neo-Platonism such as Augustine and Pseudo
Dionysius for its foundational mystical logic. Augustinianism
supposes a turning inward and upward to find a relationship
with the infiniteccxxv that Augustinianism relates to as being
an expression of God, what the Christians term Christ within.
By contrast, Aristotelian philosophy is a pragmatic
empiricism, founded on analyzing and anticipating the
physical world around them.
What we need to consider is that Aristotelian Thomism
in some sense anticipates, if not precipitates, the
Renaissanceccxxvi and Enlightenment by providing a
philosophical world-view that focuses upon becoming
engaged in this world. The mendicant orders such as the
Franciscans and Dominicans instead of retreating from the
world into isolated cloistered monasteries in the countryside,
got right into the thick of the new mercantile, urban, hustle
and bustle.
This Aristotelian reliance upon anticipating and
controlling this world is a critically important orientation if
one were skeptical about the timing of the return of Christ.
Some would conclude that Thomism represents a heresy
because it focuses upon this world at the expense of the
traditional otherworldly pursuit characteristic of Neo-
Platonic Augustinian Christianity. It is interesting that both
the humanists and the evangelical Reformersccxxvii use a
rejection of Scholastic Thomism to define their own very
different social agendum. Suffice it to say, Christianity had
drifted a long way away from the humble patristic fathers of
the early Church.
In contrast to the Renaissance and Enlightenment, the
evangelical Reformation of the Christian Church might be
described as a reaction against Aristotelian Thomism and as
an attempt to revert to Augustinian Neo-Platonism. This is

58 
not to suggest that Thomism was bad, it was logical and
pragmatic, however it represented a new orientation that
afforded the Neo-Platonists and the humanists an
opportunity to present their own modified agendum.ccxxviii So,
broadly characterized, one faction of the Roman Catholic
priesthood presented Thomism, while another faction
presented Christian humanism as a compelling alternative to
Thomism. The evangelical Reformers of the Church rejected
both of these alternatives and favored a continued reliance
upon Paul and Augustinianism. The Reformation chose to
wait for the triumphant return of Christ and as such they felt
that the mission of the Church was not open to debate or re-
negotiation. The Protestant Reformation ties the Church
perpetually to its historical mission by reliance upon the
Scriptures, the cannon that presumably God favored as the
sole authority for the Christian Church. Whether one sides
with Christian humanism or Thomism or the evangelical
Reformers, in some real sense, one must conclude that the
early medieval guiding vision of the Western Christian
Church was in transition and an unsettled vision of
Christianity.
Viewed in this manner, the history of Europe from the
Middle Ages to the Modern Era can be seen as a predictable
dialectical process working itself out within European society.
Some within European society were living on the edge of
doubt,ccxxix and some were coming to terms with the fact that
indeed Jesus might not ever return. Furthermore, if Jesus had
not returned for 1000 or fifteen hundred years, then what
was to keep him from waiting another 1000 years? If Jesus is
not going to return for another 1000 years, in what way is a
discourse concerning his intentions in establishing his
kingdom on earth relevant?
The fact that Jesus had not returned for fifteen hundred
years by the time of the evangelical Reformation (1517-1541)
begs the next logical question, how does God interact in this

59 
world? If Jesus has been gone for fifteen hundred years, how
involved is God in the day-to-day activities of this world?
Such a dialogue opens the door to a revaluation of Christian
dogma. This is substantially what the Church had done in
principally adopting Aristotelian Thomism. This type of
speculation was troubling to many Europeans who were not
ready or willing to abandon the internal soul-searching that
discovered Christ within and promised to reveal signs of his
triumphant return to the Mount of Olives.ccxxx One could
argue that Thomas Aquinas, a mystic himself, might well
have had trouble accepting a materialist interpretation of his
works.
In some sense to convert from Neo-Platonic
Augustinianism to Aristotelian Thomism is in essence to
concede a great deal to the Islamic philosophical position.
This philosophical concession should not be confused with a
theological defeat, but rather viewed as a logistical move on
the part of Christendom. The pragmatic naturalism of
Aristotle allowed Islam, better than Christianity, to reconcile
their otherworldly anticipation of the eschatological return of
the arisen Isa (Christ) with daily life in this world.
It is understandable how some Christians, particularly
Augustinian monks like Martin Luther, might see combining
worldly pursuits such as the mendicant orders with the
preferred Islamic philosophical orientation as corrupting the
Christian Church. Interestingly, the Roman Catholic Church
found itself in the unenviable position of being pressured to
move decisively to confront their arch-rival Islam, and, on
the other hand, the Church was being pressured by the
conservatives for abandoning the Neo-Platonic Christian
tradition. The Christian humanist school was working to
rediscover the purity of primitive Christianity. There was also
a contention on the fringe of intellectual society that was
willing to concede this point to Islam in the hope of avoiding
or mitigating a confrontation.

Utility of christianity june 18-print

Utility of christianity june 18-print

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