And a crtitique of Rodney Stark's thesis ( from a Christian)..... " The Victory of Muddle "
The short version: One must distinguish Christian theology from Christian practice, and the Dark Ages from the Middle Ages, and capitalism from mere wealth; and one must be careful to define and carefully to consider what one means by 'Success' and 'Freedom' before writing a book like this. Unfortunately this book seems to do NONE of these things.
The long version: WhatEVER Anselm, Aquinas or others advanced in the schools, in the streets and lanes Albigensians were burned alive in their castles, peasants were murdered by thousands and God's support of the nobles' right to do it was upheld, not only the infidels of Islam but the inconvenient lapsed brethren of the Orthodox church were sacked and slaughtered in their tens of thousands, and those inquiring philosophically or theologically or scientifically were told what the limits of their inquiry could be. Documentary evidence for these and other matters so abounds that it seems purely pigheaded to act as though they do not.
An assertion whose truth is assumed but never proven is that the West left the rest of the world behind by the time of the Middle Ages, the height of churchly power in Europe. It is not examined and proven because it cannot be proven. The height of Western power over the rest of the world - of its comparative advancement over the rest of the world - - comes as Christendom falls apart and frays into the Enlightenment at home. It has been wondered whether, even now, the West is advanced over the rest of the world, if you look in fields other than military power. (Thus Gandhi, asked what he thought of Western civilization: "I think it would be a very good idea.") It was not even true militarily during the Middle Ages nor the earlier Dark Ages: Goths, Mongols and Muslims defeated, ravaged, and in part held Europe for centuries longer. It was not true in terms of cultural pluralism and tolerance. It was not true in terms of financing of public learning. It was not true in terms of scientific discoveries. It was not true in terms of standard of living. It was not true in terms of the form of government.
Statements to the effect that Christian theology is [a] very font of reason is true of Thomistic theology, which emerged in the 13th century, rather late in the Middle Ages. Other strands of Christian theology, both earlier and later, emphasized mystery (does not the Mass as recited to this day speak of the 'mystery of faith'? Do we not have the mystery of the Pope's ability to speak inerrantly ex cathedra? Mind you I have no problem with these, but am saying they are not obvious testimony for the triumph of reason), introspection (what else are mystics than masters of introspection?) and obedience (read Benedict's Rule lately?).
What was true of one strand or stratum of theology as taught in school doesn't cancel what was true in the parishes and pews of Europe. To jump anachronistically to the current day: the scandals that beset the Mother Church right now are caused by behavior that was never taught in schools.
The statement that Christianity alone embraced logic and deductive thinking would come as a great surprise at least to Muslims and Jews (I am not learned enough wrt Hinduism and other Far-Eastern religions to speak on it) - - both of these make an extreme point of reasoning things through, and that the Divine Word must make sense. Examples abound; there's no room to document them here.
The claim that there were no Dark Ages, as this period was the incubator of the West's future glories, is strange, as is the idea that, encouraged by Scholastics and embodied in the great medieval universities founded by the Church, faith in the power of reason permeated Western culture. (1) The Dark Ages could have been dark, and yet one could look back with benefit of hindsight and say that, however dark they were, we see born in their misery some strands that were carried forward over the subsequent thousand years; that is, the further evolution of ideas 'incubated' in the Dark Ages is no proof that the Dark Ages weren't Dark to those in them. (2) The usual dates for the Dark Ages are AD 450 or so(the fall of the Western Roman Empire) to 750 or 1000 (depending on whether you count them ending with the rise of Charlemagne's empire or the later spread of 'Romanesque' art and culture). During this entire period, there were no Scholastics - they're later; there WERE no great Christian universities - - with apologies to the gentleman's thesis, those arose in 11th-13th centuries, modeled on those founded by Muslims (e.g. at Cordoba) some centuries earlier, and maintained in the Middle East (e.g. at Alexandria) throughout the period in question.
The statement that the rise of capitalism was also a victory for church-inspired reason raises a number of difficulties, e.g. (a) per Adam Smith and more recent exponents of capitalism and the market, there is no central reasoned control of the market (contra socialism and other forms of planned economy) but rather a set of forces which operate somewhat mysteriously and independently of any particular reasoning and acting being or body, balancing the self-interested pursuits of those beings (b) particularly in its errors such as the despoilation of the earth, it is clear that capitalism can operate in anti-rational ways (c) in other errors such as the elevation of the few plutocrats at the expense of the laboring many (see Lincoln Steffens et. al.) it seems to operate quite often in an anti-Christian manner - - if the core earthly tenet of Christianity is to love your neighbor as yourself.
The celebration of the great monastic estates as centers of capitalism is quite wrong, since we know that these were communities, and the practice of thrift, industry and economic success there seems a better argument for spiritually-inspired socialism (like that of Acts 2 and 4) than for capitalism. It is true that, as the middle class began to evolve, altogether after the Dark Ages, monasteries did act as trading partners with it and in part as the breeding-ground for it. It is also true that the monasteries grew rich through industry, but you can't claim that mere accumulation of what we now term 'capital' makes one a capitalist; else EVERY wealthy entity is capitalist and most economic systems would turn out to be sub-species of capitalism, which would be nonsense. The possession of wealth says nothing about the means used to acquire it or the views of the person or group holding it.
To say that the myths are put to bed, that Muslim Arab civilisation kept the flames of civilisation burning while Europe languished in the Dark and Middle Ages, is problematic. One review of this book summarizes that Islamic scholars kept ancient Greek and Roman learning alive, but that their culture did nothing with it. All this concedes the point that the so-called 'myths' all make: that it was Islamic scholars who kept this learning alive. "Thank you very much for making my point." But even a cursory inspection of Islamic universities' curricula, of architecture and engineering under Islam (say, in Spain), etc., will show many ways in which Muslims not only rehearsed but used and extended the learning that they had acquired.
It will also be an uphill battle, if the Dark Ages are dated correctly, to show technological innovation during them. In the Middle Ages when things DO get moving, contact with the Islamic Middle East and the Far East, for which the Church can hardly be given credit, becomes a force driving innovation.
It is also claimed that Christian ideas about personal freedom and individual rights led to abolition of slavery and the enshrining of property rights in the Magna Carta. But when was slavery was abolished in the Christian nations of Europe? And whose property rights were enshrined in the Magna Carta (the common citizen's??)? Feudalism arose in Europe by means of the Visigoths, during the Dark Ages, but it is not obvious that it can be advanced with a straight face as an advance in 'rights' - - especially compared to the Greek and Roman systems which it superseded. (Not that either Greeks or Romans would have recognized universal suffrage or any such; but Romans had, e.g., the right of 'citizenship', which conferred a host of rights not dependent on one's lordly birth or property holdings.)
The claim that Italian city-states in the late Middle Ages, and not England and Holland in their Protestant period, were the cradle of capitalism and representative government, is not proven. They used money - but so did many another non-capitalist system. They were wealthy - but as stated above, possession of what we call capitalism doesn't make one a capitalist. In Italy it was the city-state itself and the great noble houses who had, accumulated and used economic and religious power (think of the Borgias). It was with the coming of Protestantism that the legitimacy and necessity of the individual spiritual and economic actor comes to the fore, and that ONLY the accumulation of capital (whatever one's association with noble houses, the church, etc.) qualified one to be a player in the economy. This is the emergence of capitalism.
While there did begin to be elections in city-states of Italy and some other parts of Europe in the late Middle Ages, bear in mind that a number of them elected the Virgin Mary as mayor for decades and in some cases centuries. Who minded the store on behalf of the Holy Virgin? Surely some non-elected earthly vicar. NOT representative government as we know it.
I wouldn't say that the West has a hatred of its Christian past, nor that it ignores the influence of the Church on Western development, but rather only that it reads a more checkered history there than this one-sided, special-pleading account. I would say that the West has a debunking suspicion of those who have, in the name of building the Lord's city here on earth, feathered their nests and imposed controls on the minds and lives of others (through their schools, their Inquisitions and intolerance, their alliance of church power with state power, their conquests and repressions)
As a Christian I don't see that it does any good to muddle and misrepresent things so catastrophically. As one of my seminary professors used to say, "It is not clear that muddle-headedness advances the cause of Christ!" |
