[Image]  [Hi-Res Image]

Page 188

characteristically shown in the numerous writings of Tertullian, who had received a legal training, and where harsh nature drove him to an extreme ethical rigor; while his views were developed by Cyprian in the direction of a hierarchic ecclesiastical organization. A certain deepening of ethics was then introduced by Augustine, who, in opposition to the superficial and atomistic concept of morality as a whole, and of sin as well, based everything in Christianity on the grace of God. From the hierarchic Church with its outward signs he distinguished the invisible communion of saints as the Church to which the premises of God apply, although he did this in a sense and context which made it possible for him to hark back to popular Catholicism. For him also faith was merely the maintenance of the doctrine of revelation as true, so that it became a ground of righteousness in the eight of God only when proved by hope through love; while the essential work of grace was the magic inflowing of this love, or vindication in the sense of justification, whereby it became possible for man to perform works of righteousness, to follow the supererogatory counsels of monastic asceticism, and thus to merit eternal blessedness. These ethical views of Augustine were accepted by ecclesiastical theology, and appear tolerably complete, although slightly coarsened in the Moralia of Gregory the Great. They were likewise of fundamental importance for the ethics of scholastic theology and the later Roman Catholic Church. Since, however, it was necessary to prove that Augustine's doctrine of absolute predestination, together with the premises which led to his conclusions, could not be reconciled in the long run with the monastic and hierarchic principles represented by Augustine himself and further developed after him, these elements were interpreted in a Semi-PehLgian sense. The tendency toward an atomiatic ethical point of view was favored, moreover, by the establishment of the confessional, which, after the seventh and eighth centuries, called forth the rich literature of the penitentiaries (Libri pcenitentiales ; see PENITENTIAL Booxs), together with a casuistic ethics. Among the few systematic ethical treatises written during this period, special mention should be made of those of Aleuin (De virtulibus et vitiis and De anima rations).

The age of scholasticism, at its very beginning, sent forth the first works on ethics as a separate

science under its own name-treatises a. Scholas- which were philosophical rather than

moralis of Hildebert of Tours and the Ethics of Abelard. Of fundamental importance for later scholastic ethics was the ethical portion of Peter Lombard's great treatise on dogmatics, the Sententice. The second book treats of freedom, virtue, sin, the will, the seven deadly sins, and the sin against the Holy Ghost; while the third book includes the theological virtues; faith, love, hope, the four cardinal virtues, the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, the ten commandments, and the distinction between the Law and the Gospel. Among the many followers of Peter Lombard by far the

most important was Thomas Aquinas, who discussed ethics in systematic form in the second part of his Summa, treating of general ethical problems in the first section, and of specifically Christian morality in the second. The scheme of the concepts and the basis of this system, a mighty one of its kind, is Aristotelian; the superstructure contains essentially the ethics of Augustine. Thomas was opposed, in a sense, even in ethics, by Duns Scotus (Quest. iv. 49), who emphasized as the basis of morality not, like Thomas, the cognizable inner necessity of reason, but rather the divine and human freedom of the will in an entirely abstract sense. With scholastic ethics the moral system of medieval mysticism stood, generally speaking, not in opposition, but in close kinship. Both centered in Augustine and were influenced by Neo-Platonic concepts; so that both inclined toward a non-ethical concept of God; both served the Roman Catholic Church, except for certain thoroughly heretical divergencies; both were cultivated especially in the mendicant orders. They were even blended, as by Hugo of St. Victor; or were united in the same individual, as in Meister Eckhart, whose Latin writings reveal him as a scholastic, and his German as a mystic. Even where the representatives of mysticism laid aside scholastic dialectics, as did Johannes Tauler and Thomas A Kempis, their mysticism was but the popular and edifying amplification of the thought which forms the climax of scholasticism-the conception that the supreme end of man, which leads beyond Christian l.elief, Christian morality, and Christian knowledge, is that form of union with God which is gained through emancipation from the finite and negation of the ego. Only in the influence of mysticism on the religious life, which it rendered internally and actively pious, was there any preparation for the Reformation in the sphere of ethics.

Early Protestant ethics was dominated by the principles of the Reformation, which regarded the blessed conviction of justification by