After Christ the ‘word’ of God spread westwards through the beginning of the first millennia and the Dark Ages. The key figures of philosophy during this time were arguably St Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. I don’t want to dwell on these two long but I do want to look at them both briefly.

The key defining point of all philosophy during the Dark Ages and Medieval Period stemmed around that of Christianity. Everyone during this period took it as granted that Christianity was the final and absolute truth to existence. The question therefore that looked at was whether it was possible to approach the Christian Truth with the use of reason? In what way could the Greeks be related to what the Bible said? Are belief and knowledge compatible, or better still can the Bible sit in a non-contradictory position to reason?

St. Augustine was the first of these philosophers. Augustine lived from 354 to 430AD during the period from late antiquity into the Middle Ages. Although he was finally a Christian, Augustine studied many different religions and ideas in his lifetime. For a time he was a Manchian, whose doctrine was half religion and half philosophy. They assert that the world consisted of a dualism between good and evil, light and dark, spirit and matter. Augustine was however preoccupied with what he called ‘the problem of evil’, and his principle learning was that of Platonic thought.

Although it may seem strange, Augustine believed that there was no contradiction between Platonic thought and that of the Bible. He pointed out that there were limits to the length reason could go in answering questions of religion. Augustine unlike the Greeks believed in the notion that God had created the world from the void. However, he also argued that before God created the world, the ‘ideas’ were in the Divine mind. So what he did essentially was locate the key notion of the world of immutable ideas with the world of God and preserved the Platonic view of the world. In this way Augustine ‘christianised’ Plato.

This is pretty much how the view of philosophy combined with the Church went through the Medieval Period. Plato was assimilated by the Church and his thought was able to continue in line with that of the Bible and the notion of God. It was not until the time of Thomas Aquinas that the ideas of the other great Greek, Aristotle, were brought into line with the Church.

Thomas Aquinas lived from 1225 to 1274. He came from the little town of Aquino, between Rome and Naples, and taught at the University of Paris. In honesty he was more a theologian more than a philosopher, but he still considered a key player in the history of ideas. Aquinas is considered this was because he realized that Aristotle’s thought had to have a place in the world, specifically the world of science. Arguably he created the great synthesis between faith and knowledge.

Aquinas believed that there need not be a conflict between reason and faith. For Aquinas faith and philosophy often say the same thing. So we can frequently reason ourselves to the same truths that we can read in the Bible. Aquinas argued that there were, existing in the world, a number of ‘natural theological truths’. By this he meant truths that could be reached both through the Christian faith and through reason. For example, the truth that there is a God. Aquinas said that this could be found through faith and the Christian Revelation or it could be found through reason and the use of the senses. This example may seem odd, but if we look at what Aquinas meant it becomes clearer.

Aquinas saw that Aristotle’s philosophy only went part of the way down the rode of reason towards proving there was a God. The reason for this seemed simple to Aquinas. Aristotle did not know of the Christian Revelation. Only going part of the way is not in itself wrong Aquinas argued. A good example of this would be as follows. It is not wrong to say Paris is in Europe, but nor is it particularly precise. This was how Aquinas saw Aristotle, and was also how Aquinas showed that what Aristotle tells us through his philosophy is not in conflict with the Christian Revelation or faith. And let us not forget that Aristotle’s thought also made the assumption that there was a God in his formal cause. This was how Aristotle became ‘christianised’ by Thomas Aquinas.

The most important part of this period of philosophy is not that new ideas about the way the world worked were found, but how Augustine and Aquinas successfully built a bridge between the new faith and the old ideas. Without them the ideas may have become lost to antiquity.