Over the last several years I’ve become a medieval man.
Let me explain: I’ve always read the Bible as God’s Word, but according to a more modernist metaphysic (=way of understanding the nature of reality) than the Bible’s own. There are two modernist metaphysics: First, the secular modern metaphysic can be described in terms of absolute historical progressivism, where time is the ultimate reference point for all that exists (including God), and history is progressing immutably more positively. That is to say that the world is, in its current form, smarter, more advanced, and overall, better than it ever has been (see Disney’s well-known Carousel of Progress for a popular example of this view.)
The Christian Version
We might say that absolute historic progressivism is, generally, a liberal and secular ideal. But there is a second version of this progressivist framework, usually held by conservatives/evangelicals. While most of us wouldn’t say that the current day is better than previous days, nevertheless we seem to believe (even if we don’t care to admit it) in a modified version of the theory where society peaked in the 1950s. This absolute peak of civilization is still seen on classic TV: Mayberry represents a societal pinnacle, the Beavers represent familial health, Lucy represents the peak of clean comedy, etc. Meanwhile most people during this time went to church. That was Christendom’s cultural peak. And that peak is the reference point from which to evaluate the health of any aspect of life. So, say many evangelicals, the societal collapse of the West is indicative of something greatly serious: It’s a sign of the times; we must be at the end. Things progressed historically until the 1950s, and since the 1960s we’ve been in a steady decline. We’re left in a sort of post-historical-progression-current-historical-regression where things seem to be headed toward their end, maybe rapidly (hence the end-times alarmist fortune of many Christian “teachers” over the last 75-80 years.)
So you see, both liberals and conservative evangelicals hold to a progressivist ideal, even if the peak is different: To secularists the peak is now; to conservative evangelicals the peak was 70 years ago. Hence the constant rage and lack of peace: Liberals, because there’s always some bad news, something wrong, and “we should know better by now”; evangelicals, because we need to get back to the way things used to be, and “why can’t people see it?”
This affects how one reads the Bible, or at least, how one approaches the Bible: Scripture is viewed less as a supernatural revelation of the one who is Supernature (God), and more as an end in itself. The main thing is not what it says and how it’s supposed to change us—not what’s read—but that it’s read. The main thing—again, if the American Christendom of the 1950s is the reference point—is being “Bible men” and “Bible women,” like men and women in western society used to be. My business cards in my first pastorate read “The Bible rules.” It was well-meaning, but indicative of this perspective: “Unlike other so-called christians who aren’t Bible people, we are.”*
Late vs. Early
So, what do I mean when I say I’m a medieval man? First, what I’m not: I’m not a late medieval man. In broad terms the late medieval era adopted a metaphysic that is contrary to that of Scripture itself. Late medieval thinking said that God is so other that we can’t really know him and his heart. The truth is, however, that whereas God is other (cf. Ps.50:21, Is.55:8-9), his otherness is not to be confused with detachedness; rather he is himself the fountain of life who sustains, provides, keeps, gives, and surrounds all of us at all points of time and space (Ps.36:7-9, Ac.17:25-28). That is, in him we live and move and have our being. We are not God. But we don’t exist apart from Him giving us our being at every moment: “All things exist for him and by him” (Col.1:16-17, cf. 1 Cor. 8:6). To theologize a familiar philosophical maxim, wherever we go, there he is (Ps.139:7-10). This is why Jesus had so much to say about worry and anxiety (i.e. Mt.6:25-34, Lk.12:22-32): God is at all points surrounding, providing for, and sustaining us. And he’ll never stop.
So I’m not a late medieval man. I’m an earlier medieval man, holding to a form of the type of metaphysic—described above—that men like Augustine, Anselm, Peter Lombard, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas held to. This framework says that we have no evaluative power apart from God’s logos (the Word) framing things for us, helping us, leading us, etc. Even if we rush headlong into atheism, it’s either because we’ve rejected the advances of the logos or because he’s hiding his face from us so that we’ll learn lessons that will bring us back to him (cf. Job 37:23). But you see, God is himself our ultimate context, all the time.
One might object that to believe as much is not to embrace a medieval idea as much as a biblical idea. And that might be true. But that is sort of my point. I’ve come to think, counter to the chronological snobbery of the modern day (as CS Lewis famously said), which I had embraced almost completely, that civilization is constantly ebbing and flowing in health, and that, therefore, the 1950s weren’t much better than any other era, and the current day isn’t much worse, or better. But the issue is always, whether at an individual or communal level, how we’re engaging with the God before whom we live and before whom are all of our ways (cf. Dan.5:23). Medieval days—contrary to its caricatures of being dark or merely middle—were days where God was thought of as present at every point. Today when people hear something like that they assume a mystical or escapist notion. That misunderstanding couldn’t make my point any clearer: To medieval thinkers connecting with God wasn’t getting in touch with mystical things or escaping reality; it was acknowledging that God is ultimate reality, and that all things are his things.
I think that medieval men and women thought like this. CS Lewis was a medieval man, and Flannery O'Connor was a medieval woman.** Part of the reason their works endure though a couple of generations past is that they breathed this air of God as ultimate reality. You read them and are encouraged because they learned to live and think in the way that you know you should, too (and that you will, as God leads you.)
Love, Joy, and Peace, and Their Sources
Practically, this means that one learns to stop saying whether things are good or bad before pursuing practically the love, joy, and peace that come from knowing that God is good and he’s in all things. Indeed, love, joy, and peace are the first fruit of the Holy Spirit, from which all other fruit flow (Gal.5:22). The Spirit takes the Father and Son’s attributes—love, joy, peace—and gives them to us. Thus the only way to perfect peace, according to Isaiah, is to have one’s mind stayed on God (Is.26:3). To the believer God is ultimate reality; all else goes as it goes with him. But if there are hard times, it’s simply the grace of God’s sanctifying care to conform believers to the image of his son (Heb.12:4-12), and demonstrate his glory in ways that please him.
Ephraim Radner, a leading North American theologian and philosopher, has articulated well this late patristic, early medieval way of thinking in five brief points. I think that Radner’s correct that medieval men and women thought with these assumptions when they approached life and biblical interpretation. What follows is my own summary of Radner’s points so that they’re (hopefully) easier to understand:
1. The fact of God as ex-nihilo Creator (that is, he created all things out of nothing) means that temporal, material, and chronological points of reference don’t apply to him. That is, he created temporal reality and chronology, so he is subject to neither. This doesn’t mean we can’t relate to him, but that there is a distinction between Creator and creature. It’d be foolish to say “Here’s some hardship, God must not be present,” as though the things of life determine him. Life doesn’t occur apart from him!
2. The Incarnation of God the Son in the man Jesus Christ gives the basis for us to learn to define the distinction of 1 above. In other words, Christ is the vehicle through which we learn how we relate to and connect with the God who isn’t subject to the same rules of subsistence that we are.
3. Humans must, somehow, by Christ, span the gap between ourselves and God. But the fact that Christ came means we can do so, by him. Hence Jesus said “I’m the way…to the Father” (Jn.14:6), being himself the subject of “the righteous (suffering for) for the unrighteous that he might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18). Yes, God being eternal, is other; but in Christ God identifies with us to bring us to himself.
4. God’s eternal nature suggests that there will be oddities in our engagement with him and his Scripture. We’ll note, for instance, that while God “regrets” things (1 Sam.15:10) and “changes his mind,” yet there is properly no change in God (Num.23:18, 1 Sam.15:29, Mal.3:6, James 1:17), such that his “regret” is unlike man’s (more below).
5. Patristic and medieval interpretive methods, whether typology, allegory, tropology, or anagogy, weren’t technical tools for biblical interpretation as much as attitudes of perception responding to the oddities, listed above, of relating to and hearing from God. In other words, Augustine would allegorize and Aquinas would do typology not because they just wanted to and liked it, but because they understood that God is eternal, we’re not, and Christ who brings us to God, not time and space, is our first point of reference.*^ One example is, again, whether God regrets or changes his mind. Under a historical metaphysic, clearly he does change his mind (for, just look at how he seems to feel about the world in Noah’s time and about Saul as king.) But if we understand that he’s eternal and unchanging, it must mean that he didn’t change his mind like we who are bound by time as a succession of moments do. Hence Samuel says “God” (who earlier regretted making Saul king) “is not like man, to have regrets”: He regretted making Saul king, but not in the same way that we regret a poor decision. God doesn’t make poor decisions. So here his regret is different from ours.^^ It is likely, thus, that his regret is a gracious condescension to explain something about his holiness and how he will not tolerate sin.
Enchantment
I guess what I’m trying to say is this: Medieval men and women were so enchanted by God that the things of this life were only enchanted insofar as God’s presence, working, and grace could be found in it. These folks weren’t enchanted with the world as it is, and thus they wouldn’t last long in discontentedness at the wrongness of things or the inferiority of things compared to earlier days. They knew that it was foolish to say “Why were former days better than these?” (Ecc.7:10) They also knew how foolish it was to suggest that the world is so much smarter now than it past days, because if one thinks he knows anything, he knows not as he ought (1 Cor. 8:2). Rather God is our life (cf. Deut.30:20), and creation reflects and derives its being and nature from him so that whatever is happening, he is present, accomplishing his purpose. Medieval men and women learned with Paul to be content in all things (Phil.4:11), and take both the good and bad because both come from God (Job 1:21, 2:10). This is, I think, what it means to have treasure in heaven (Matt. 6:19f.): To treat God like he’s your treasure. And if he is, you possess all else, too.
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*Hence how so many Christians still enjoy watching old Billy Graham sermons and reformed evangelicals love David Martyn-Lloyd Jones. Whereas I love them both, we probably love the time in which they lived and ministered more than we care to admit.
**On Lewis, see Jason Baxter's The Medieval Mind of CS Lewis; on Flannery O'Connor, see portions of her The Habit of Being, and how much she loved Aquinas' Summa Theologia.
*^See Radner's Time and The Word, 57-58.
^^I'd also ask you to consider Deuteronomy 31:17. There God has Moses tell Joshua that the later generations will forsake God, at which point his anger will be kindled against them and he'll judge them. God is here in control of his wrath and response to sin. It's decreed. His "regret" and "repentance" are thus different from ours.
