Smithies of the Soul
They forged a new religion - Christianity - that would enchain Christ's moral vision to power, dogma and punishment. But who were they?
This is Who made our minds?, my Thursday essay probing the greatest, cruellest and most beautiful minds of the past 5,000 years. Join my journey, from the ancient world to the age of artificial intelligence…
Next Thursday: The great Origen (sixth of seven essays on Christianity)
SAINT PAUL’S INTELLECTUAL HEIRS were the blacksmiths of the Christian soul.
Their tools were sermons, hymns, prayers and epistles.
Their molten metals were the consciences of gentile and Jew, out of which they shaped their image of the ideal Christian and forged a new covenant with God in the name of Jesus Christ.
These men were the Church fathers, the earliest Christian theologians and philosophers - Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Syriacs and North Africans who lived in the four centuries after the crucifixion.
The early patriarchs were the inventors and moulders…