The historical character of revelation points to certain ascending themes: not only to the concept of a demystified nature which releases man's powers of scientific investigation, but to the doctrine of man's free-will and responsibility in a space where God cannot be taken for granted but must actively be sought. This brings empowerment, through the exercise of moral choice, to the humblest of human beings, and not, as in the mythological dispensation, only to those outwardly favoured by the gods. This idea is amplified by the second great theistic principle — of the redemptive covenant. God's covenant to mankind through Israel is framed more or less in these terms. God says: "Be faithful to me and to my teaching and I will be faithful to you in my promise of redemption." Thus a God who is transcendent and perfectly capable of acting with arbitrary power has instead, by declaring his law will not change, the redemption will come, his promise will be fulfilled, bound himself and, in effect, imposed a limit on his own transcendence. As a result, man is raised to the dignity of a full partner in the work of creation: he is made in the image of God (Genesis 1.27), granted dominion over the world and all creatures within it, and given the task of helping to repair a fractured world by pursuing justice (Deuteronomy 16.20). Thus a Biblical vision which on the one hand proclaims the descending idea of an all-powerful and all-loving God who creates, rules and redeems the world, on the other hand endorses a countervailing ascending idea according to which human will, human capacity and human need is empowered to exercise sovereignty within its own sphere of influence. If the Bible highlights the dramatic tension between ascending and descending ideas, it was not until much later, and in particular not until the rediscovery of the philosophy of Aristotle in the Middle Ages that theologians felt compelled to deal with this tension in a more thorough and systematic way. Three thinkers in particular, Maimonides, Aquinas and Francis Bacon, stand out as figures of huge importance for the subsequent development of Western culture. Each of these in turn came to articulate certain key distinctions which are needed to reconcile the respective claims of the descending and ascending principles. What follows is an all too perfunctory sketch of their views, but we cannot possibly grasp the fragile tension that in many ways defines the character of Western thought, without having some appreciation of the intellectual synthesis which these thinkers helped to establish, and which to this day, underpins a confident self-evaluation of Western culture.

Maimonides wished to assert that God had to be seen as both transcendent and immanent. He used Aristotle's rationalism to attack all forms of spiritual agency which contradicted the pure doctrine of a transcendent God. This meant a polemic against superstition, astrology and all anthropomorphic conceptions of the Godhead, which Maimonides regarded, at best as a debased, and at worst as an idolatrous form of religion. God's actions in the world, however, including his revealed law as transmitted by the authority of the rabbis, could be shown to rest on rational foundations, and was an aspect of God's immanence. This distinction had immense significance for the subsequent development of Western thought. Reason was now being adduced as an alternative basis for authority, which Maimonides, as a committed theist, insisted did not contradict but rather supported the traditional authority of the rabbis. 

Aquinas built further on Maimonides's insight. His system aimed at nothing less than a thorough reconciliation of Christianity with Aristotelianism: Man, Aquinas affirmed, following Aristotle, had status and dignity by virtue of his natural and human qualities, and could now be seen as governed by natural law, as well as by the eternal law of God. Two important consequences followed: first of all, religious identity ceased to be the one exclusive and all-encompassing identity that mattered; man's possession of a natural identity now allowed his activities to be discerned according to a wide variety of different norms and postulates (political, religious, moral, economic, and so on). Secondly, Aquinas's concept of natural law allowed the emergence for the first time of the modern idea of the State, and of the distinction between Church and State. The State was a product of nature, a self-sufficient and living organism, pursuing aims which were inherent in its natural essence, which was the wellbeing and welfare of its members. Crucially, for the working of the State, no divine or supernatural elements were necessary; the state was simply, according to Aquinas's definition "the congregation of men"; and this was in contrast to its supernatural counterpart, the Church which was the "congregation of the faithful". St Paul had said that by virtue of his baptism, man was made "a new creature" and had shed "the man of nature". The papal and theocratic doctrines had made much of this distinction, asserting that the reborn creature by the grace of God had superseded the merely natural creature. But Aquinas was having none of this dichotomy: nature and grace were not opposites but rather represented two different but hierarchically placed orders, complementing and dovetailing into one another; for as he famously expressed it, "Grace does not do away with nature but perfects it."