Knowledge in Scripture

             In one of our last classes we discussed The Tree of Life, and I wondered whether we need to follow this mystical path to be saved. Of course the answer is ‘no’, but then why should we care about it at all? Bonaventure often cited Aristotle – why should we care about Aristotle, or knowledge in general, if none of this is needed to be saved?

            Perhaps it is no coincidence that one of the first professors at the first ever madrasa, al-Ghazali, grappled furiously with this issue; later in life, he reflected about when

            “I pondered my professional duties, the best of which were tutoring and teaching, and found that I was engaged in inconsequential sciences, which were of no benefit when it came to the pursuit of the afterlife. After that, I reflected upon the intention behind my teaching and found that it was not done in the service of God Almighty, but rather that its entire motivation was the pursuit of fame and the impetus behind it was the enhancement of reputation. I became certain that I was on the edge of a dangerous precipice and on the verge of hellfire, if I did not devote myself to rectify my situation.”[1]

 

            So what purpose does knowledge serve? In fact, the Fall tells us a bit more about this:

            “For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil.”[2] 

            Universal knowledge and universal power are the same thing; or, if we want to be more precise, we can say that they are two different expressions of the same thing. This should be fairly obvious, but we can elucidate this point a bit more if necessary.

            The modern west does not understand this fact explicitly, but rather implicitly. The emblematic example is given by Laplace: “perfect knowledge of an object’s position and momentum and the forces acting on it in the present will yield perfect knowledge of all its future permutations”.[3] The implication of this knowledge is clear: if we know ‘all future permutations of an object’, then we can control it, and can profit from its behavior, either materially or politically. Suppose, for example, that we know with total certainty how a politician thinks and behaves at any time – this information could be exploited. This is the type of knowledge that Aristotle and Machiavelli want to teach us. Indeed, it became the endeavor of the west to achieve this species of knowledge during the Enlightenment, and thus the implications: it realized itself first in Napoleon, in his endeavor to transform the universal unity of knowledge in Paris (the Encyclopedie, etc.) into the university unity of political control in Europe, and then, probably more importantly, in the Victorian era, i.e. in the transformation of universal worldly knowledge into universal worldly control. The most important thing here is in understanding that universal knowledge is only comprehensible when it involves universal power.

            We know that only God is actually capable of achieving this species of knowledge or power. Human beings can nonetheless attain certain similitudes of it, for example in Aristotle or Alexander. Let’s note that the only thing Alexander ever did was implement the teachings of Aristotle; or, let’s say that he achieved the transformation of universal knowledge into universal power. Each of them only achieved a similitude of the universal. This is clear to us; but they, at least, had largely believed that they actually achieved it.

            Now, consider the passage from one of the Latin histories:

            “To Aristotle, in order that he might be able to write with greater knowledge of the nature of animals, Alexander ordered all Greece and Asia to be obedient, as well as all men who gained a livelihood by hunting, fowling, or fishing, or had attained some skill in those pursuits … A hundred years after his time stags were caught with golden collars, which he had put upon them in order that future generations might know how much belief could be given to the reports which were made of the long life of those animals. Also in the loftier sciences which are called acroatic, or acroamatic, we have testimony to his knowledge in a letter of his to Aristotle, in which he complains that Aristotle had profaned their majesty by making his instruction generally known. And Aristotle excused himself by saying that those books had been given to the public in such a way that no one would be able to understand them who had not learned beforehand what was contained in them. Also when Alexander asked for his Rhetoric, he expressly forbade Aristotle to allow it to come into the hands of others; for he desired to surpass all men not less in the noble arts than in power.”[4]

            So it is clear that the Latins understood what was meant by universal knowledge in relation to the realization of power. The Greeks had a characteristically deeper understanding of the issue; we see it in Thucydides (the Athenians over the islanders) and also in Plutarch, including in his own history of Alexander, although it is much more subtle.[5]

            Of course, the Latins generally accepted the task given by Aristotle to Alexander – to complete universal knowledge by transforming it into universal power – and made it their burden. The Greeks, on the other hand, understood both the task itself and the deeper problem that it posed, but they lacked a solution (Thucydides, Plutarch, Sophocles, especially Ajax). There is an attempt in Plato, which is probably successful, but is ultimately primitive compared to Scripture. Once the solution is given (‘The Prince burns in hellfire’, let’s say), then the picture changes dramatically, for example in Dante:

 

            “People I saw up to the chin imbrued,

            ‘These all are tyrants,’ the great Centaur said,

            ‘Who blood and plunder for their trade pursued.

            Here for their pitiless deeds tears now are shed

            By Alexander, and Dionysius fell,

            Through whom in Sicily dolorous years were led.”[6]

 

            But why, then, did Dante put Aristotle in Limbo? Apparently because he also failed to see the necessary relationship between student and teacher, and thus between universal knowledge and the achievement of universal power. So how can we be sure that it is there? Thankfully it is stated explicitly, not in Genesis, but in the Gospels:

            “At that hour the disciples came to Jesus, saying: Who thinkest thou is the greater in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus calling unto him a little child, set him in the midst of them, and said: Amen I say to you, unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, he is the greater in the kingdom of heaven.”[7] 

            This is straightforward: the ‘greater in heaven’ is whoever humbles himself as ‘a little child’. But this retrieval of the child’s world extends not only to humility, but also to wonderment; to the purity of faith that all children have in general, in one thing or another:

            “And he that shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me. But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.”[8] 

            We should retrieve not only the child’s humility, but also his faith, and ‘become as little children’. The key thing is that the child does not have ‘knowledge of good and evil’, at least not like adults do. We all know the Fall personally because we all, at some point, went from being children, with pure humility and pure faith, to adults, with ‘knowledge of good and evil’; and many of us have apparently placed more faith in knowledge than in God, and apparently have set out on the search for universal knowledge. This is exactly the trap that caught al-Ghazali; he eventually realized that his pursuit of knowledge was nothing more than a quest for fame and power, and that he was “on the edge of a dangerous precipice and on the verge of hellfire”. He was reading too much Aristotle. 

            In the end, this universal knowledge is only a similitude of the true universal knowledge – God – and the universal power that it implies is only a similitude of the true universal power – God. So apparently this searching after power is a deception: the snakes are Aristotle and Machiavelli and the fruit is their work, which makes us less like children and more like Adam; the Rhetoric, which teaches us to control men; and The Prince, which teaches us to control nations.           

 “Again the devil took him up into a very high mountain, and shewed him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, and said to him: All these will I give thee, if falling down thou wilt adore me. Then Jesus said to him: Begone, Satan: for it is written, The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and him only shalt thou serve.”[9]

 

Henry Stratakis-Allen

 

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[1]    Al-Ghazali, Al-Munqidh min al-Dalal, 78.

[2]    Genesis 3:5.

[3]    In The Rigor of Angels.

[4]    Quintus Curtius Rufus, 8-9.

[5]    Plutarch, 241-244.

[6]    Dante, The Inferno.

[7]    Matthew 18:1-4.

[8]    Matthew 18:5-6.

[9]    Matthew 4:8-10.