QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

salvation of every human soul. In front of Him, ordinary people, the simple and the sick, were of
just as much importance as the powerful and the successful. Everyone was a part of God’s
creative plan, which gave clear meaning and purpose to mankind and its actions. 139
Even though the Christian religion highlighted the value and freedom of the individual, its
central significance was ethical and ecclesiastical. Most important was each individual’s personal
connection with transcendence. When trying to understand the deeper meaning of things, belief
was the first factor. Proper knowledge required illumination coming from God and reason was
not as important. This was also emphasised by Augustine (354-430 BC), who is widely accepted
as being the most influential character in western theology and who gave the church an overall
Christian perspective on all things human and divine. Born in Thagaste, a town in modern-day
Algeria, Augustine renounced his earlier Manichaeian view of religious issues after he became
acquanited with Neo-Platonist texts. He taught that the soul could lead the way to eternal truths.
While Plotinos had changed Plato’s eternal Ideas into the eternal thoughts of Nous, the godlike
world order, Augustine went a step further. Eternal truths corresponded to eternal consciousness,
absolute reason. The human spirit was part of the divine thinking which formed the foundation
for the certainty of our knowledge. To Augustine, doubt, which Descartes later proposed as the
path to certain knowledge, was the opposite of faith and knowledge. Correct knowledge required
belief, i.e. that humans had a proper relationship with God. If this was not the case,
investigations driven by reason would not lead in the right direction. 140
In religious practice, individual personal knowledge and experience had anyway to yield in the
face of doctrine, which was defined by an authority external to the individual. Religious
positioning often began to mean the complete subjugation of one’s own judgement to the
requirements of revelation. With Christianity, the natural world became a stage for the drama of
salvation. To Christians of the Middle Ages, God and the Devil, the Virgin Mary and the
kingdom of heaven, sin and salvation were not merely abstract beliefs. They were more the
world than just a world-view, they were self-evident, living and palpable reality in the same way
as mythical reality was to the ancient Greeks or the self-determining, objective material world is
139 Tarnas 1989, 104-105, 129. Greek philosophy was exclusive and elitist: equality between people was not
recognized either in theory or practice. The fact that the Christian god was interested in saving all people was
considered revolutionary by the ruling class. With Christianity, suffering, sacrifice, humility and universal anthropy
- already Stoic virtues - attained increasing cultural influence. Thesleff and Sihvola 453.
140 Nordin, 1995, 155-160. Aspelin 1995, 172. Thesleff and Sihvola 1994, 447. The thoughts of Augustine are still
a living heritage in Christianity. See for example Augustine 1948. His Confessions is a classic text highlighting the
problems of faith and doubt. See Augustine 1960.
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