TimCallahan
Philosopher
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2009
- Messages
- 6,293
Having recently posted on the thread about Tony Blair's attack on atheists, I was reminded of a number of books rwritten in the past few years by Christian intellectuals asserting that Western Civilization owes most of its character to its Christian heritage. Among these are Dinesh D'Souza's What's So Great About Christianity and Rodney Stark's The Victory of Reason, subtitled How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success. Between them, these two books assert that everything from separation of church and state - allowing religious freedom and secular disciplines free from religious dogma, science, democracy, capitalism and even romantic love are hallmarks of Western Civilization because of Christianity.
Both authors have a point in that capitalism and the free market did come from western and central European civilization, as did modern science, and this culture was, up until the twentieth century, basically Christian. However, I think that contingency, such as the effects of geography, played a far greater part in the development of Western Civilization. I can link two of the supposed Christian heritages to such contingencies.
One of these is separation of eclesiastical and temporal power, which ultimately became interpreted as separation of church and state, and which enabled the creation of secular states. This certainly did not happen in the Islamic world, nor did it happen in China, and the failure to separate secular concerns from religious oversight was certainly detrimental both to the Islamic world and the nations of the far east. However, the separation of ecclesiastical and temporal power was, I believe, the result of happenstance, and it was by no means implicit in Christian culture. The latter assertion is easily demonstated, in that there was no separation of ecclesiastical and temporal powers in either the Byzantine Empire or Czarist Russia, both of which were Christian cultures.
The reason we have separation fo these powers, in fact, is that the Western Roman Empire fell, while the Eastern Roman Empire remained intact. Thus the Pope in Rome found himself without a protector until the time of Charlemagne, but also without a master. By that time the Pope had become an independent authority, and the basis for a society with two parallel power sructures was the result of the papacy's partnership with the Carolingian kings.
Democracy in Europe is a product of geography. It is not a coincidence that the earliest rrepublics outside the Italian city states were geographically isolated: England was on an island; Switzerland was ringed with mountains; and Holland was separated from it Spanish Hapsburg masters and bordered by France, a nation that would benefit from Dutch independence. Physical isolation, particularly that created by being on an island, obviates the need for a standing army, which is costly to maintain. Not having a standing army at his disposal, a king cannot impose his will by main force. Hence the rise of the first republics in places of geographic isolation. Even the Italian city states were somewhat isolated from the power of the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire.
The reason Europe was not unified into a universal empire, as Islamic Civilization frequenly was, in fact, the reason Europe developed as a plethora of small independent states, was that the many barriers - rivers, small mountain ranges, seas - made it difficult for would-be empire builders to unify the sub-continent. It was not for want of desire that imprialists failed to unify Europe, thereby putting an end to both democracy and diversity in Wesern Civilization. In fact, European political history from the end ofthe middle ages has been one cycle of wars after another, in which an imperial power bent unifying Europe under its control was opposed and eventually defeated by an alliance of disparate nations.
Thus, neither the separation of ecclesiastical and temporal powers and the rise of representative forms of government in Western Civilization owed anything to Christianity.
Both authors have a point in that capitalism and the free market did come from western and central European civilization, as did modern science, and this culture was, up until the twentieth century, basically Christian. However, I think that contingency, such as the effects of geography, played a far greater part in the development of Western Civilization. I can link two of the supposed Christian heritages to such contingencies.
One of these is separation of eclesiastical and temporal power, which ultimately became interpreted as separation of church and state, and which enabled the creation of secular states. This certainly did not happen in the Islamic world, nor did it happen in China, and the failure to separate secular concerns from religious oversight was certainly detrimental both to the Islamic world and the nations of the far east. However, the separation of ecclesiastical and temporal power was, I believe, the result of happenstance, and it was by no means implicit in Christian culture. The latter assertion is easily demonstated, in that there was no separation of ecclesiastical and temporal powers in either the Byzantine Empire or Czarist Russia, both of which were Christian cultures.
The reason we have separation fo these powers, in fact, is that the Western Roman Empire fell, while the Eastern Roman Empire remained intact. Thus the Pope in Rome found himself without a protector until the time of Charlemagne, but also without a master. By that time the Pope had become an independent authority, and the basis for a society with two parallel power sructures was the result of the papacy's partnership with the Carolingian kings.
Democracy in Europe is a product of geography. It is not a coincidence that the earliest rrepublics outside the Italian city states were geographically isolated: England was on an island; Switzerland was ringed with mountains; and Holland was separated from it Spanish Hapsburg masters and bordered by France, a nation that would benefit from Dutch independence. Physical isolation, particularly that created by being on an island, obviates the need for a standing army, which is costly to maintain. Not having a standing army at his disposal, a king cannot impose his will by main force. Hence the rise of the first republics in places of geographic isolation. Even the Italian city states were somewhat isolated from the power of the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire.
The reason Europe was not unified into a universal empire, as Islamic Civilization frequenly was, in fact, the reason Europe developed as a plethora of small independent states, was that the many barriers - rivers, small mountain ranges, seas - made it difficult for would-be empire builders to unify the sub-continent. It was not for want of desire that imprialists failed to unify Europe, thereby putting an end to both democracy and diversity in Wesern Civilization. In fact, European political history from the end ofthe middle ages has been one cycle of wars after another, in which an imperial power bent unifying Europe under its control was opposed and eventually defeated by an alliance of disparate nations.
Thus, neither the separation of ecclesiastical and temporal powers and the rise of representative forms of government in Western Civilization owed anything to Christianity.
