The Christian Universe -E.L.Mascall

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"To put the matter quite simply, I hope to show that the affirmations about God, man and Christ which the Christian Church has taught throughout it's history, and the manner of living which these affirmations imply, are more satisfying to our intellect, more enriching to our imagination and more fulfilling to our whole personality than either the secularist humanism which is so widespread today or the etiolated substitutes for orthodox Christianity which are frequently offered for our consumption. I hope, in short, to show that the faith which the Church has proclaimed throughout the ages is fuller, more interesting, more comprehensive, more demanding, more liberating, more satisfying, that it synthetises a wider range of human thought, embraces and co-ordinates a wider range of human experience, opens up more possibilities of human living and offers in the end a deeper and richer ecstasy of fulfilment than any alternate way of life and thought; that it is in every way grander, more inspiring and more fruitful." (10-11)


"What I have tried to show is that the world in which we live and of which we are part does not make sense of itself. So we are presented with this choice. We may, if we so decide, make the best of a world which is in the last resort a sensless and hostile desert, in which we must either bury our heads in the sands or make, each for himself our little private oasis. Or we may look for the world's meaning in some order of reality outside and beyond it, which can do for the world what the world can not do for itself." (45)


"...it is significant that the church has adopted the luxuriant nuptial imagery of the Song of Solomon as an analogy of the love of God for man and of man for God; for our enjoyment of God in heaven will be more, not less, ecstatic than the most passionate sexual experience on earth. And, if we want to acquire some remote understanding of the wonder and glory of the Christian God, we may well find the poets more helpful than the theologians." (53)


" "The true alternative", it has been well said, "is not mystery or clarity, but mystery or absurdity"". (65)


"...to penetrate to the heart of the truth of God, it is not enough to have been given it; you must love it, cling to it, and live by it." (71)


"Then there are men who are seeking the God they do not know, in shadowy imaginings; God is not far from men of this kind, for he gives to all men life and breath and all we have..." (73)


"He can either accept his dependence upon God and turn to God in gratitude and loving obedience, and by so doing he will be acting in accordance with his nature; or he can rebel against it and claim the right to self-sufficiency which he doers not in fact posses." (102)


"...two classic facts of Christian teaching stand out clearly: first, that sin is basically falshood, it is, as we say, "acting a lie"; secondly, it is frustration, for it is fighting against the law of our own being. Division between man and man, and division within our own selves, are the natural consequence of man's separation of himself from God." (103)

The God of Faith and Reason; Foundations of Christian Theology - Robert Sokolowski

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"To someone trained as a historian it might appear that the most urgent scholarly task in New Testament studies would be to determine the very words and actions of Christ and to distinguish them from additions and interpretations that others made later. This might permit us to reconstruct an original core for the Gospels and to measure the later modifications, as well as the later forms of Christian life, against what proceeded them. It would permit a criticism within the New Testament itself. Such a task is, of course, extremely difficult to carry out, but we may also ask whether it is desirable in principle. Christ did not speak and act by himself; he spoke and acted with and toward others. And no one speaks until he is understood; the understanding of Christ's words achieved by those who heard him and by those who thought about him after he left is the completion of the speaking of Christ. The disciples complete the words of Jesus by responding to them." (120)

Religion and the Rise of Western Culture -Christopher Dawson

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-Article:"Christ in History" by Gerald J. Russello

"But in spite of the contrast in spirit and institutions between Paris and Bolgna, they both contributed equally to the transformation of western education and to the formation of the professional intellectual classes which were henceforth to dominate Western culture. In the past the spiritual unity of Christendom had been realized in a common faith and a common moral or ascetic discipline which was the tradition of Western monasticism. it was only with the rise of the universities that Western culture acquired that new intellectual and scientific discipline on which its later achievements were dependent

It is true that this aspect of medieval culture was for centuries ignored or derided. The Humanist despised the Schoolmen for their bad Latin, and the scientists and philosophers attacked them for their degenerate and "vermiculate" Aristotelianism. It is only in recent times that men like A.N.Whitehead have recognized that modern science itself could hardly have come into existence had not the Western mind been prepared by centuries of intellectual discipline to accept the rationality of the universe and the power of human intelligence to investigate the order of nature.

Clearly the fact that the educated classes of Europe for centuries underwent a rigorous and elaborate training in the art of logical thinking must have left a mark on European culture, as was recognized a century ago by Sir William Hamilton and J.S.Mill. But I believe that we can go further than this, and see in the medieval scholastic discipline one of the main factors which have differentiated European civilization from the great religion-cultures of the East, to which the earlier medieval culture and that of the Byzantine Empire were so closely akin. No doubt the Roman tradition which survived in Western culture may have been responsible for the social activity and the constructive political sense that were distinctive of the Western Church since the days of St. Gregory or even St. Leo the Great, but this Roman tradition with its sense of the value of discipline and law and authority was essentially a conservative force. It was not thence that Europe derived the critical intelligence and the restless spirit of scientific inquiry which have made the Western civilization the heir and successor of the Greeks. It is usual to date the coming of this new element from the Renaissance and the revival of Greek studies in the fifteenth century, but the real turning point must be placed three centuries earlier in the age of the universities and the communes. Already in Paris in the days of Abelard and John of Salisbury the passion for dialectic and the spirit of philosophic speculation had begun to transform the intellectual atmosphere of Christiandom. And from that time forward the higher studies were dominated by the technique of logical discussion - the quaestio and the public disputation which so largely determined the form of medieval philosophy even in its greatest representatives. "Nothing" says Robert of Sorbonne, "is known perfectly which has not been masticated by the teeth of disputation", and the tendency to submit every question, from the most obvious to the most abstruse, to this process of mastication not only encouraged readiness of wit and exactness of thought but above all developed that spirit of criticism and methodic doubt to which Western culture and modern science have owed so much." (189-191)

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