"Renaissance" (from the French) means "rebirth." It was a term first coined by 19th century historians who sought to describe the transformation in western society and culture brought about between the 14th and 16th centuries across the continent of Europe and which profoundly affected the Western Church both before and after the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century.

Rebirth ... but rebirth of what? Well, in the main, the Renaissance saw the rebirth of classical learning in philosophy art and, later, the natural sciences. This was first brought about by the recovery and translation of classical Greek and Latin texts which gave access to this learning, mainly by Italian scholars. The pioneer of this work, and arguably the father of the Renaissance, was a certain Italian writer named Francesco Petrarca. Petrarca had an enormous influence on European literature through which Renaissance humanism was spread.

Humanism, was the central idea of the Renaissance. It was believed that revival of classical learning would renew European civilisation made moribund by the "logic-chopping" of the intellectuals, (the schoolmen or scholastics), and the conservatism of the Church. Petrarca, however, was a Christian and a great defender of the Pope. At the time that he started writing the papacy went into its French captivity at Avignon and later split in two. Petrarca vigorously opposed the move to Avignon but perhaps he did not understand the forces he was unleashing through his popularisation of classical learning. Some later humanists did cherish their newfound freedom and began to oppose their insights to those of the Catholic Church and vice versa.

In the 14th and 15th centuries the Conciliar Movement sought to submit the ever-expanding power of the papacy to the decisions of Church Councils and this too was driven by Renaissance ideals. Orthodoxy had problems of its own with Turkish encroachment on the Eastern Empire but nonetheless sought political advantage in seeking western support for its defence. It felt better able to do that now that Rome seemed to be moderating the power of the papacy. It was not to be. This was indeed the time of that ill-fated Council of Reunion that sought to re-unite the Catholic and Orthodox Church, the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438 - 1445). Orthodox at this Council, together with the Western Conciliarists were essentially conned by the papacy that, cleverly, used the liberalisation of the Councils to reinforce its own continuing and unabated centralisation. In consequence, Renaissance humanism lost out to the papacy, (at least until the Protestant Reformation a little later), but it nonetheless profoundly affected the western religious spirit ... which is probably the more important point.

In understanding this, remember that the Renaissance was essentially a humanist movement and although the first Renaissance thinkers were Christians, many of the later ones were not. Renaissance humanists placed Man at the centre of all things, not God. In doing so they were consciously or unconsciously seeking to dethrone a "god" who had become a human irrelevance. An unholy alliance was developing between those secular thinkers who wanted Man to be liberated from theology and theologians who thought that human effort and culture were irrelevant to spiritual goals. Interestingly, the intellectuals did not see this divorce. These scholastic intellectuals, however, were rejected by humanists for narrowing the scope of human culture to reason. The Renaissance was about much more than mere reason. It both gave an emerging science the freedom it needed for a rational investigation of the natural world and it also secularised a Christian culture which had been long imprisoned by a theological framework which was, arguably, anti-human. This affected everything, including art and spirituality.

Whereas before the Renaissance, Rome had retained something of an Orthodox spirituality and iconography; after the Renaissance, this all disappeared. Icons changed gradually into religious paintings that were commissioned to adorn the new basilicas. These were designed not to evoke contemplation of objective spiritual truth but merely a carnal emotional response from the beholder drawn to the subjective view of painter. Christian art became an impermanent and fluid thing, a humanistic endeavour, overly sensitive to personalities, fashions, trends and schools. In spirituality, the Orthodox ecclesiology of the Church as the Community of the Resurrection changed into the collective piety of individuals who develop their own cruciform spiritualities ... the so-called "Devotio Moderna," best represented perhaps by Thomas a Kempis in his Imitation of Christ. Such individualism and subjectivity was later to provide fertile ground for the growth of the Protestant Reformation.

How, then, does Orthodoxy assess the Renaissance and its legacy? Well, there are positive and negative elements in this assessment. The Renaissance became necessary in the West to loosen the grip of the papacy and open up new potential for the human spirit. Unfortunately, it could only do this by reacting against Catholicism. Christian humanist scholars like Erasmus tried to combine Christianity with the new ways. The fathers of the Reformation looked to these early pioneers, but Rome was having none of it. The papacy understood the threat modernity posed to its own structures and ethos. Later, the Reformation was to react more definitively against Rome and could not resist the inexorable logic of a humanism which eventually lead to a new "Renaissance" in the West, the Enlightenment. Today we see yet another transformation of the Reformation beyond the Enlightenment into Post-Modernism where no single Great Idea can hold the key to anything anymore. The Renaissance has now indeed come of age and, curiously, it has disinvented itself!

Underlying all of these developments, however, is a fundamental distortion in the legacy of Western Christianity running now over 1000 years since the Schism. This distortion continues to generate new divisions between faith and reason, between authority and freedom, between experience and revealed truth. The distortion, the mother and father of all our problems is a failure to recognise the Human Face of God in Jesus Christ. Orthodoxy says that the ONLY way to become fully human, to become fully alive, is to be deified ... to be transformed inwardly and outwardly by the resurrection power of Christ. Let us be clear about this. Catholicism did not preach and live this fully before the Renaissance, neither did the Protestant Reformers, neither do non-Orthodox Christians today. To be fully human, both then and now, is somehow, for them a separate issue from Easter, a separate issue from paschal belief; it is a different thing altogether.

In short, the West has seen a secularisation of Christian Mind because it cannot stand "God" anymore! It cannot stand a "god" who deprives us of our humanity, a Calvinist "god" who rewards the elect and punishes the damned, foreordained from the foundation of the world. It cannot stand a "god" who sits remote from human life, a more or less benevolent despot who disposes from on high. It cannot stand a "god" worshipped in a cult of death; for that is precisely the form into which many western versions of the atonement degenerate. It cannot stand a "god" who is merely the deity of the tribe, the nation, the establishment totem. It cannot stand a "god" who is merely reasonable and rational. The Christian heart of the West yearns for something better than this, but which at the moment it cannot just yet quite see!

True, many, many western Christians have managed to grasp an Orthodox Christian vision of humanity transformed by the glory of God. Theirs are prophetic voices heard above the discordance of religious conflict and error. Praise God for Laud, for Andrewes, for Wesley, for Herbert, for Traherne, for Lewis and for many others. Such people have no need of the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, Post Modernism. They have no need of these things because they are not seeking to reform the irreformable. Theirs is a wider vision, a more or less "orthodox" vision, first articulated by St. Irenaeus ... "the end of Man is the Living God; the glory of God is Man, fully alive."