Pastor Glenn McDonald: Light in the Dark Ages

Each day this Lent we’re looking at major “turning points” in Christian history – moments or seasons in which the story of God’s people took an important and often unexpected turn.  

Who is the greatest basketball player of all time?

Your answer will depend, to some extent, on when you were born.

The current GOAT conversation swirls around Michael Jordan and LeBron James, two absurdly gifted athletes whom many fans under the age of 50 have had the privilege of seeing live and in person.

Then there’s that guy whose career came to an end in 1973, and whose numbers are almost incomprehensible. Wilt Chamberlain stood just over seven feet tall and played in the National Basketball Association for 14 years. He was routinely on the court every minute of every game (the opposite of today’s “load management” strategy for superstars) and is the only player to score 100 points in a single game.

His ultimate achievement probably happened on March 18, 1968. While playing for the Philadelphia 76ers against the Los Angeles Lakers, Chamberlain scored 53 points, grabbed 32 rebounds, dished out 14 assists, had 24 blocks, and made 11 steals. Just one of those totals, in any of the five categories, might represent a career best for any other player. Wilt accomplished all five in just 48 minutes.

So why isn’t he universally acclaimed as the greatest basketball player of all time?

One of the answers to that question is Recency Bias. Sports fans are like everyone else: We’re immensely impressed by what we have just seen, or what we have personally experienced.

The 14th century Italian scholar and poet Petrarch was no exception. As one of the earliest Renaissance humanists, he was captivated by the recent revival of interest in the classical literature of Greece and Rome. To Petrarch, the 800 or so years between the fall of Rome and his own time were barbaric, backward, and artistically stunted. He called them the Dark Ages.

The name stuck. The intellectuals who followed Petrarch were so impressed by the brilliance of their own speculations that they heralded their age as the Enlightenment – the long-awaited time when the bright candle of human reason finally banished the cultural darkness of Christendom.

It’s taken a very long time for historians to discover that the Dark Ages were anything but.

Historians are now almost universally agreed that the period roughly corresponding to the years 500-1300 saw great strides in math, art, architecture, trade, education, and agriculture. The Gothic architectural style, which brought to the world such gems as the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, is just one evidence of the artistic vitality that regularly surfaced during medieval times.

Another evidence would be the crowning intellectual achievements of Christian scholars like Thomas Aquinas.

As we noted in a reflection last year, Thomas’ classmates would never have voted him Most Likely to Succeed.

He pressed the scales at something like 300 pounds. He was shy and spoke slowly, if he happened to speak at all. His fellow students mocked him in Latin as bos mutus, “the dumb ox.”

His mentor Albert (who would go down in history as Albertus Magnus, “Albert the Great”), had a different take. “You may call him a dumb ox, but I say his bellowing will be heard around the world.”

Albert was right. Thomas Aquinas, who was born in 1225 and died 49 years later, was unquestionably the most important philosopher of the Middle Ages. His perspectives, generally known as Thomism, represent one of the few “living philosophies” that have endured for centuries without being tossed onto the scrapheap of intellectual history. In that regard, his work represents a crucial hinge point in the story of how Christ-followers understand the cosmos and their place in it.

What makes Thomas such an extraordinary figure?

He was inclusive. Aquinas honored both Christian faith and human reason without pitting them against each other. He collected everything “good, true, and beautiful” into a single system, happily borrowing from secular and non-Christian religious sources. Few people have ever undertaken such a project. Thomas is one of the very few who actually seem to have succeeded.

Without question, he was a literary savant.

Thomas’ mind was so nimble that he could dictate four different manuscripts to four different scribes simultaneously. He personally scratched out more than 50,000 pages, all with a quill pen. We’re talking about something like 10 million words, or the equivalent of 50 fair-sized books.

His masterpiece, Summa Theologica – which touches on virtually every philosophical issue known to humanity – runs to about 4,000 pages in modern editions.

Thomas rarely wrote “drafts.” When he committed his thoughts to paper, they usually arrived in final form – ready for publication and scholarly discussion (even nine centuries later).

At every step, he avoided extremes. He pursued a centrist position with regard to controversial questions, exuding clarity, simplicity, and directness of style. His writing still seems profound.

After enrolling as a Dominican friar, he became a professor of theology at the newly established University of Paris. The rest is philosophical history.

Thomas loved to walk. He chose not to ride donkeys, the preferred mode of transportation of his day, wishing to spare those gentle beasts the challenge of his great bulk. One day, as he came over a crest, the sun came out and illuminated the magnificent valley that lay just ahead. His traveling companion sighed, “Wouldn’t it be great to be the owner of everything you see?”

In reply Aquinas sighed, “I’d rather be the owner of that one missing page of Aristotle.”

Boston University professor Peter Kreeft points out that Thomas believed, deep in his heart, that one page of truth outweighed everything he could see.

Well, maybe not everything that he could see.

Something happened to Thomas in 1265 that changed his life. While in the midst of working on his Summa Theologica, he had a powerful personal encounter with the risen Christ.

No one knows what Thomas saw. It seems to have been a mystical experience that transcended his powers of description. What we do know is that he put down his scholarly pen, never to lift it again – which is why the Summa, arguably the greatest theological work in the history of Christianity, remains unfinished to this day.

“Compared to what I have seen,” he later said, “everything I have ever written looks to be straw.”

Thomas kept things in perspective. 

We can get so excited about the things that Jesus provides – his mercy, his forgiveness, his friendship, his grace, and our chance to share such things with others – that it’s possible to forget that Jesus himself is the One True Gift.

Thomas knew that in the depths of his soul.

Which is why he still shines as one of the brightest lights of any age.

Would you like to explore previous reflections, and learn more about this ministry?  Check out glennsreflections.com.