Why did two Christian thinkers see human nature so differently?

Details

Human nature is a question that many people contemplate during their lives. This comparative essay examines ideas of human nature among Renaissance Christian humanists and late Medieval Christian mystics.

It compares Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s (Pico’s) The Oration on the Dignity of Man, presented as an insight into a Renaissance humanist’s thinking, with Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ, presented as illustrating the thought characteristic of a late Medieval Christian mystic.

Pico believed that humans are a great miracle, with the nature and capabilities to become something great in the world, just below the level of God. By contrast, à Kempis believed that human nature had been corrupted by humanity’s fall in the Garden of Eden, as in Genesis.

In à Kempis’s writings, human nature is detrimental to the individual and should be controlled by calling on God’s grace. The essay traces the two writers’ differing views to their sources of inspiration.

In writing The Imitation of Christ, à Kempis drew his inspiration only from the Bible.

Pico, like many other Renaissance humanists, sought truth about human nature not only in the Bible but also through classical works, including those of the ancient Greeks and Arabs. The abstract cites Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), and Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (Chicago: Moody Press, 1958).