Heroic values in a Christian culture The values of the pagan Greek and Roman world focused on man, mind, and state. Man was seen as a wonderful, beautiful creature, the measure of all things. Man with his incredible intellect could work out his problems and find answers to life’s dilemmas. In order to do this, the proper place for man to express himself and find his full worth was within the city-state. This famous quote from Sophocles’ Antigone is one of the most succinct statements of this idea. Numberless wonders Terrible wonders walk the world but none the match for man— that great wonder crossing the heaving gray sea, driven on by the blasts of winter on through breakers crashing left and right, holds his steady course and the oldest of the gods he wears away— as his plows go back and forth, year in, year out with the breed of stallions turning up the furrows. And the blithe, lightheaded race of birds he snares, …the tribes of savage beasts, the life that swarms the depths— with one fling of his nets woven and coiled tight, he takes them all, man the skilled, the brilliant! He conquers all, taming with his techniques the prey that roams the cliffs and wild lairs, training the stallion, clamping the yoke across his shaggy neck, and the tireless mountain bull. And speech and thought, quick as the wind and the mood and mind for law that rules the city— all these he has taught himself and shelter from the arrows of the frost when there’s rough lodging under the cold clear sky and the shafts of lashing rain— ready, resourceful man! Never without resources Never an impasse as he marches on the future— Only Death, from Death alone he will find no rescue But from desperate plagues he has plotted his escapes. Man the master, ingenious past all measure past all dreams, the skills within his grasp— he forges on, now to destruction now again to greatness. When he weaves in the laws of the land, and the justice of the gods that binds his oaths together he and his city rise high— but the city casts out that man who weds himself to inhumanity thanks to reckless daring. Never share my hearth, never think my thoughts, whoever does such things. In the Christian world the values changed to a focus on God, soul, and church. Man was not the measure of all things; God was the measure of all things. Life’s goal was heaven. Salvation of the soul was all that mattered; after all “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his immortal soul?” (Mark 8:36) The keys to heaven were not through the state but the church. St Augustine most articulately expressed the new values in his City of God. I have already said, in previous books, that God had two purposes in deriving all men from one man. His first purpose was to give unity to the human race by the likeness of nature. His second purpose was to bind mankind by the bond of peace, through blood relationship, into one harmonious whole. I have said further that no member of this race would ever have died had not the first two, Adam and Eve, merited this death by disobedience. The sin which they committed was so great that it impaired all human nature—in this sense, that the nature has been transmitted to posterity with a propensity to sin and a necessity to die. When a man lives, “according to man” and not “according to God” he is like the Devil. When man lives according to himself, that is to say, according to human ways and not according to God’s will, then surely he lives according to falsehood. Man himself is not a lie, since God who is his Author and Creator could not be the Author and Creator of a lie. Rather, man has been so constituted in truth that he was meant to live not according to himself but to Him who made him—that is, he was meant to do the will of God rather than his own. It is a lie not to live as a man was created to live. Man indeed desires happiness even when he does so live as to make happiness impossible… The happiness of man can come not from himself but only from God, and that to live according to oneself is to sin, and to sin is to lose God. Moreover, our first parents Adam and Eve only fell openly into the sin of disobedience because, secretly, they had begun to be guilty. Actually, their bad deed could not have been done had not bad will preceded it; what is more, the root of their bad will was nothing else than pride. For “pride is the beginning of all sin.” And what is pride but an appetite for inordinate exaltation? Now, exaltation is inordinate when the soul cuts itself off from the very Source to which it should keep close and somehow makes itself and becomes an end to itself. This takes place when the soul becomes inordinately pleased with itself, and such self-pleasing occurs when the soul falls away from the unchangeable Good which ought to please the soul far more than the soul can please itself. Now this falling away is the soul’s own doing, for, if the will had merely remained firm in the love of that higher immutable Good which lighted its mind into knowledge and warmed its will into love, it would not have turned away in search of satisfaction in itself and, by so doing, have lost that light and warmth. And thus Eve would not have believed that the serpent’s lie was true, nor would Adam have preferred the will of his wife to the will of God…. This life of ours—if a life so full of such ills can properly be called a life—bears witness to the fact that, from its very start, the race of mortal men has been a race condemned…From this all but hell of unhappiness here on earth, nothing can save us but the grace of Jesus Christ, who is our Savior, Lord and God. How does Roland exemplify the new values of God, soul, and church? Pick out specific examples from the story to illustrate these points. Although he exemplifies the Christian warrior hero, in what way is Roland like Achilles? In what way is he like Aeneas?
