Friends: Perhaps historians have that “Dark Ages” thing backwards; the light of Christ was and is always there. See the column below.  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #899

February 6, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

History’s Fog Lamp

By Bob Walters

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” – Jesus, John 8:12

“But men loved darkness instead of light ...” – Jesus to Nicodemus, John 3:19

History’s “Dark Ages” may not have been all that dark; it’s just that “darkness,” rather than light, grabbed the dominant publicity in Europe after the Middle Ages.

And believe it or not, it was the Apostle Paul who was, and to some extent still is, frequently blamed for the “darkness.”  How? Let’s just say, the fog was not Paul’s fault.

There are different ways to express it, but here is a good one: Paul, in the first century, did such a thorough job of explaining Christ and nascent Christianity that the dominant paganism and contemporary philosophies of both the Greek and Roman eras stumbled in the face of the newly-found and growing Christian church.  Faith in Christ and the power of the Church, in those middle centuries, superseded man’s own understanding of humanity.

Jesus, after all, brought the good news of restored relationship with God through personal faith in Jesus as God’s Son. The Holy Spirit, at Jesus’s ascension, arrived among humanity for our spiritual strength and faithful understanding. Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection – and His eternal message – compose the most important, paradigm shifting, and philosophically delineating point in human history.

The Greek academy and civilization following Alexander the Great (approximately 400-200 B.C. to the time of Christ … the “Intertestamental Period” for us Bible folks) set a centuries-long course for the Hellenization – Greek intellectual and cultural dominance – in all quarters of the Mediterranean basin: Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, Arabia, Egypt, Carthage, and the northern rim of Africa.  This foggy philosophical “light” of man was merely the human-focused wisdom of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian thinkers and writers. The One God, for many, was unwelcome

The Jews were not the only ones to take exception to the teachings of Jesus: He who redefined the true light of life from God’s Law and man’s own ideas to the truth of a one-for-all God.  In the Old Testament we see God calling the Jews as His own; in the New Testament, Paul explains the truth that Jesus – by His own words – was now the ascendant light and truth of all that was knowable. The Greeks taught “proof,” Jesus the Son of God taught love and faith.

So how did this “Dark Ages” identity happen to the “Medieval” / “Middle Ages” era (roughly 600-1400 A.D.)? The Italian poet, scholar, and early humanist Petrarch (article link), in the mid-1300s, took vigorous exception with the cultural and intellectual dominance of Christianity in general, and the Roman Church in particular. He interpreted the Christian faith as merely an unprovable mysticism that had interrupted the progress of his favored human-centric Greek and Roman philosophies of antiquity.  Evidently hating the light – or at least loving man’s knowledge – Petrarch pronounced centuries of Christian faith to be “The Dark Ages.”  It stuck.

G.K. Chesterton noted in his 1908 classic Orthodoxy, that it was the Church that brought the true light of Christ through those ages, and guarded Greek literature as well. Darkness? No.

Admittedly, Rome of Petrarch’s era was a corrupt, theological mess which led to Martin Luther’s 16^th century Protestant Reformation.  The concurrent “Renaissance” age of art (Michaelangelo, Da Vinci), literature (Shakespeare), technologies (the printing press), and thinking (Descartes) renewed focus on man’s capacities. The secular Renaissance competed with the Bible-based Reformation.  The world’s tendency and preference for powers of theological darkness – i.e., humanism – clashed with Christ’s divine, eternal guiding light.

It is an enduring clash, casting a fog over humanity hiding divine light that truly exists.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) considers the Enlightenment to be mainly more fog.