Recently I wrote a piece about how the secular developments in the Roman Empire, viz a viz the reign of Constantine, opened the way for the development of the Christian faith as we have come to know it. Now I would like to discuss yet another time when this dynamic played a crucial role, namely with the invention of the printing press by one Mr. Gutenberg around 1500. This invention enabled those who were now in charge of translating the Bible to print numerous copies of it for wide distribution.
Thus, when Martin Luther, in 1517, triggered the Protestant Reformation, which brought the Bible to play a central role in the transformation of Western society, Gutenberg’s secular invention came to play a central role. Now lay people could read the Bible, which was translated into German and French as well as English. This single secular invention opened the way for the plethora of Protestant denominations with which we are familiar today to populate geometrically.
First, of course, there were Lutherans, following the criticisms and insights of young Martin Luther, followed by what we call Episcopalians, the Church of England initiated by King Henry the 8th so he could divorce his wife and marry another, one Anne Boleyn. There was also John Calvin, who held forth in Geneva and not only spread his version of the Christian Faith throughout Western Europe but helped it be imported to the Americas largely as Presbyterians, Baptists, Lutherans, and Methodists.
At the same time fresh interpretations of the Christian faith were being introduced by what are today called “Anabaptist” traditions, including Baptists, Methodists, and Congregationalists. This tradition has been labelled “Anabaptist” because by and large its followers practiced adult baptism rather than infant baptism. “Ana” is the Greek word for “again”, meaning that even if a child had been baptized by some more traditional Church, it would need to be baptized again when it was old enough to know what it was doing.
When this tradition reached the Americas, it quickly spread all over both continents, through revivalist movements and missionary-minded explorers. Over the decades the Roman Catholic Church continued to spread as well, especially among recent immigrants who had brought their faith with them from Europe. Then, around 1900 in a small congregation in Southern California the Pentecostal version of the Christian Church, involving the speaking in ecstatic tongues, came into being. This brand of the Christian Faith spread throughout denominations both North and South America.
While the denominations named in the first part of this piece have remained as the dominant versions of the Christian Faith in the Americas, those mentioned more recently above have spread and grown the fastest. The former, more formal denominations have established themselves with strong hierarchical organizations and involvements in the political and cultural life of their respective nations, while the latter have generally bypassed such concerns, remaining largely independent while out-numbering the more traditional denominations in membership.
In more recent decades an off-spring of the main line denominations has arisen, namely the contemporary phenomenon of the “Mega-Church.” These are huge, independent congregations which embrace people from all traditions who have largely given up on the standard denominations. These independent churches have no denominational ties and have congregations of many thousands. They are usually focused around a particular charismatic personality.
This mega-church movement is limited almost exclusively to North America, tend to be very rich, and are generally very conservative politically and culturally.

Around 1200 CE there was a renowned scholar named Albert the Great. Up until that time the thought of Plato had dominated the philosophical and theological world. Oddly enough, the works of Aristotle had been pretty much ignored by scholars. Indeed, they were hardly ever translated from Greek into Latin, French, and German. On the other hand, Arab thinkers such as Avicenna and Averroes, had been studying and translating the works of Aristotle for a number of years immersing themselves in Aristotle’s philosophy and applying it to their own Muslim thought.
Albert thought that a Christian philosophy based on Aristotle’s philosophy might make an excellent way for Christian thinkers to engage with, indeed perhaps even convert, Muslim thinkers to Christianity. Then along came young Thomas Aquinas who signed up to study with Albert, whom I like to call “Big Al”, and he took up the challenge to develop a Christian philosophical theology based on the thought of Aristotle. Aquinas produced many volumes of what we call today “Catholic Theology” even though the distinction between Protestants and Catholics had not yet been developed.
Aquinas’ theology laid the foundation for all subsequent Catholic thought, which was seriously challenged by the Protestant theology developed by Martin Luther and John Calvin a few centuries later. In many ways Aquinas developed Catholic thought quite in accord with the philosophy of Aristotle, but he saw to it that his development thereof coincided with traditional Christian theology as well. The “invention” of British Anglicanism under Henry the Eighth sought to unite these two strands of Christian theology, but only resulted in the Anglican Church.
Aquinas distinguished between “natural theology” and “revealed theology”, the former based on pure human reason and the latter based on faith alone. The church, according to Aquinas, defined and dispensed the latter, while pure philosophical reason was responsible for the former. One of the chief difficulties with which Catholic thought has had to wrestle is the conceptual problems which derive from this sort of bifurcation, whereas Protestant thought has largely relied upon faith and the scripture with which to work out the ramifications of its views.
One place where it is possible to see the clear-cut influence of Aristotle’s philosophy on Thomas’ thought, and thus on Catholic theology, is in relation to our understanding of God. Whereas many if not most Protestant theologians would say that Christian belief is based on faith and/or the Bible, Catholic thinkers argue that it is possible to base Christian belief on pure reason alone. The arguments they use to accomplish this are borrowed directly from Aristotle.
Aquinas offered five proofs of the existence of God based on Aristotle’s thought. The first “proof” is a causal one: God is the first Cause behind all other causes. The second is a proof from motion, all things move from potentiality to actuality, and it is God who accomplishes this. The third proof is that of efficient cause, God is the actual moving force behind all motion. Next, there is the proof from degrees of perfection. God is that which is pure perfection and thus defines all modes of perfection. Finally, there is the proof from the hierarchical order of being, which implies an “ultimate orderer” being, namely God.
Thus, according to Aquinas, we can know that God exists by pure reason alone. But we can only know who God is by the revelation of scripture. We can also know something of God’s nature, according to Aquinas, by means of analogy. That is, by noting the degree to which human beings resemble God’s nature. Thus, Catholic thinkers rely more on the role of human reason than do most Protestant thinkers, all because of the radical reflections of one Albertus Magnus.