When
I was working on a Masters at Washington University in St. Louis, I took a
seminar entitled “Athens and Jerusalem.” It was taught by a member of the
faculty of the Classics
Department,
Dr. George Pepe, who is still
teaching some 30 years after I took the course.
Pepe is a specialist in Greek and Roman philosophy and Latin prose, and
he took the name of the course from a quotation: “What has Athens to do with
Jerusalem, or the Academy with the Church?”
The
quotation is from the early Church father Tertullian (circa 155 to
240 A.D.), one of the first to write in Latin as opposed to Greek. He was an
apologist for the Christian faith, writing work after work making logical
mincemeat of the arguments of the pagan writers and the official policies of
the Roman Empire. (One of his best known observations, still quoted today, is
“The blood of the martyrs is seed.”)
In
our seminar, we had a number of assigned readings in Tertullian. Since this was
pre-Amazon and few if any bookstores carried the writings of the early Church fathers,
the assignments meant I spent a lot of time in the Washington University
library, in a study carrel tucked among rows of very dusty old books. Few
students were enrolled in Classics courses, but the books on the shelves didn’t
seem to mind my intrusions.
Reading
Tertullian was a revelation. Even in English translation and some 1800 years
after his death, the passion and the mind of the man were clear. In his
arguments against the pagans, Tertullian took no prisoners. He pointed out all
of the inconsistencies and contradictions of classical beliefs and practices,
including all of the less-than-admirable traits and personal histories of the
Greek and Roman gods. Yet he was more than an apologist; he was also one of the
first theologians to tackle the question of the Trinity. Eighty-five years
after his death, his works influenced the Council of Nicea and St. Augustine
even later.
Aside
from his passion, what struck me most about Tertullian was how contemporary his
arguments sounded. Substitute “science and technology” for “Classical thought”
or “The Academy,” and you have a very similar debate, a similar clash of
worldviews. And in the 30 years that I’ve read, that debate has come only more
to the fore.
The
debate between worldviews is older than Tertullian, of course. Eight-hundred
years before him, the prophet Daniel and his three friends Shadrach, Meshach
and Abednego faced a very similar clash but in more severe circumstances. The
church in Tertullian’s time faced on-again, off-again persecution; Daniel and
his friends existed solely at the sufferance of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.
Despite what they faced in their day-to-day life in a sometimes viciously
polytheistic culture, the four remained faithful.
In
Against the Flow:
The Inspiration of Daniel in an Age of Relativism, John Lennox describes that faithfulness. And
he draws a parallel to contemporary society.
“Babylon’s
philosophy,” Lennox says, “resonates with the scientism to today that
encourages us to look for both meaning and salvation in science and technology.
But scientific analysis and explanation does not yield to us the meaning for
which we as persons long. Babylon will leave you empty.” This was the argument
against classical culture that Tertullian made as well.
Tertullian,
despite his influence, was never canonized. It’s believed he became associated
with the Montanists, considered heretical by the Church for their
emphasis upon the continuing influence of the Holy Spirit (some scholars
suggest that the Montanists have a spiritual descendant in pentacostalism).
But what
he argued for is as important today as it was in his own time. Our culture,
too, has embraced gods with clay feet, gods who cannot answer the truly
important human questions or needs. “Athens or Jerusalem?” remains a vital
question for all of us.
For the
past several weeks, I’ve been discussing John Lennox’s Against the Flow. It is so packed with insight that I can only
highlight a few things in each post, but it is well worth reading and
re-reading.
Illustration: A 16th century representation of
Tertullian. We really don’t know what he looked like.
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