A.D. 381 heretics, pagans, and the dawn of the monotheistic state ( PDFDrive )

grasped through faith; that human beings are helpless; that God is essentially
punitive, ready to send even babies into eternal hell fire; and that one has a right,
even a duty, to burn heretics - challenges the whole ethos of the Greek
intellectual tradition, where competition between rival philosophies was intrinsic
to progress. Those like Aristotle and his followers in astronomy, medicine and
the natural sciences would have found it hard to comprehend Augustine’s
condemnation of their endeavours. Aristotle’s assertion that ‘while no one is able
to attain the truth adequately... everyone [sic] says something true about the
nature of things, and, while individually they contribute little or nothing to the
truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed’ would have been
anathema to Augustine. The freedom to speculate freely as an individual had no
place in his system: he was terrified by the idea that all might contribute to the
finding of truth. Augustine bequeathed a tradition of fear to Christianity, fear that
one’s speculations might be heretical and fear that, even if they were not, one
might still go to hell as punishment for the sin of Adam.
But why did Augustine’s views become so central to western Christianity?
There is no intrinsic reason why his thought should be so privileged, especially
as, in hindsight, one can see so clearly how his own pessimism shaped his
theology. One reason, already suggested, was that in an age of political, social
and economic breakdown, pessimistic theologies fitted the zeitgeist more
effectively. With the breakdown came the collapse in western Europe of the
conditions in which intellectual life could take place. When conditions
improved, several centuries later, the Church had integrated Augustine’s work so
successfully that he had become the gatekeeper of a closed world that remained
fearful of any expression of dissent. None of this would have been possible if
Theodosius had not set the precedent of establishing the ‘truth’ and condemning
all those who opposed it as ‘demented heretics’. Augustine, a natural
conservative and supporter of what had been decreed to be orthodox, articulated
the theological links between the emperor’s decrees and medieval Christianity.