need of reform. This would square with the year 1537.
To the opposite side of the Pope's column is a square column in the full light of day. There is a chip in it and possibly a face, a I don't know. The column represents, I think, truth discovered by reason's native power. It represents Luther's Sola Scriptura but also the humanists' discovery of ancient Greece and Rome - The Renaissance. It anticipates modern science, modern philosophy, and modern history.
It was Aquinas (d 1274) who realised that within the realm of nature, the human intellect had the power of concluding to what is, to being. Hitherto such power had been closely associated with and seen in dependence on the d:vine working in the soul and mind. So gradually a structure ascends which is man's natural achievement. It is quite distinct from the pillar of truth and here is a problem for Christendom. How is natural truth to be related to divine revelation and the inscrutable ways of God? Is man destined to forget the pillar of truth and live in a world simply ef his own constructions? Can this apply even to his own salvation, and is this the meaning of Sola Scripture?
The point is that, following Aquinas, this column is going to be ongoing. At the end of his life, Aquinas declared he would write no more. Compared with God, his writing was straw. I personally wonder whether he did not see that the column of naturally known truth would not grow and overwhelm the pillar of truth. Straw burns. Disaster, The Gulag Archipelago, Jewish murder in concentration camps, the dismissal of revelation lies ahead.
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