Posted on 07/25/2016 10:51:24 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
Many books have been written about the success of the West, analyzing why Europe was able to pull ahead of the rest of the world by the end of the Middle Ages. The most common explanations cite the West's superior geography, commerce, and technology. Completely overlooked is the fact that faith in reason, rooted in Christianity's commitment to rational theology, made all these developments possible. Simply put, the conventional wisdom that Western success depended upon overcoming religious barriers to progress is utter nonsense.
In The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark advances a revolutionary, controversial, and long overdue idea: that Christianity and its related institutions are, in fact, directly responsible for the most significant intellectual, political, scientific, and economic breakthroughs of the past millennium.
In Stark's view, what has propelled the West is not the tension between secular and nonsecular society, nor the pitting of science and the humanities against religious belief. Christian theology, Stark asserts, is the very font of reason: While the world's other great belief systems emphasized mystery, obedience, or introspection, Christianity alone embraced logic and reason as the path toward enlightenment, freedom, and progress. That is what made all the difference.
In explaining the West's dominance, Stark convincingly debunks long-accepted "truths." For instance, by contending that capitalism thrived centuries before there was a Protestant work ethic---or even Protestants---he counters the notion that the Protestant work ethic was responsible for kicking capitalism into overdrive. In the fifth century, Stark notes, Saint Augustine celebrated theological and material progress and the institution of "exuberant invention."
By contrast, long before Augustine, Aristotle had condemned commercial trade as "inconsistent with human virtue"---which helps further underscore that Augustine's times were not the Dark Ages but the incubator for the West's future glories.
This is a sweeping, multifaceted survey that takes readers from the Old World to the New, from the past to the present, overturning along the way not only centuries of prejudiced scholarship but the anti-religious bias of our own time. The Victory of Reason proves that what we most admire about ourworld---scientific progress, democratic rule, free commerce---is largely due to Christianity, through which we are all inheritors of this grand tradition.
Christianity matters. Primarily because it saves the soul.
This book offers residual effects thereof.
But beware: we need not embrace Christ for His effects on society--for that is not a true embrace. Rather, we love Jesus because of His sacrifice for us.
I would note that Francis Schaeffer cover much of this topic brilliantly in his book “How then shall we Live”.
Reason still requires premises upon which to operate, just as bookkeeping needs to be about money.
The successes of Christian influence are a witness of Christ. Where we go from there depends upon whether our reason embraces earthly or heavenly premises. Earthly premises would tell us to employ Christians in order to improve our country, which can backfire if we get the “wrong” Christians or ones with a lopsided worldview. Heavenly premises would tell us to keep things in perspective and always speak of the successes of Christian influence in terms of a witness. Like C. S. Lewis put it, “[God] will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest chemist’s shop.”
From the title one gets the impression that the point of Christianity is capitalism.
Capitalism is a logical manifestation of Christian faith. The concept of capital, viewed as the worth that God bestows upon an investment, is not at all foreign to Christian faith. Even Jesus was a spiritual capitalist, buying men from every tribe and nation with His blood.
It takes an evangelical minded person to keep such works as this in context instead of seeing a recipe book for worldly goals. The ocean is wet; but not everything wet is the ocean.
Amazon bkmk
I read this book YEARS ago. Good book.
But one thing needs to be emphasized: the misnomer of the “Dark Ages”.
Dark compared to what? Compared to Rome. But comparing to actual Europe...they were getting out of their savage primitive level. Europeans were largely savage, let’s face it, and Rome and Christianity changed that greatly.
I challenge the assertion that Christianity is any more rationally based than other religions. It is not quite as mystical as say Buddhism or as esoteric as Daoism, for example, or eve Judaic Cabalism. But it certainly requires a suspension Reason in favor of Faith to believe in principles like the Holy Trinity, the Eternal Life, and even the Soul.
Not that that is a bad thing. Religions exist to answer questions for which there are no answers. Ultimately, ALL of them demand some element of Faith.
God doesn’t exist because I can prove He does; He either exists or He doesn’t. So the question becomes less “Does He exist?” than “Do you BELIEVE that He exists?” And that belief, that Faith, owes nothing to Reason. Nor should it.
"Ideas have consequences"(Weaver), already has been suggested.
In 2016, we should remember that the ideas of 1776 came out of a set of ideas consistent with liberty.
We tend to forget, or have never considered, that other world views existed then, as now.
Unless today's citizens rediscover the ideas of liberty existing in what Jefferson called "the American mind" of 1776, we risk going back to the "Old World" ideas which preceded the "Miracle of America."
There are those who call themselves "progressives," when, in fact, their ideas are regressive and enslaving, and as old as the history of civilization.
Would suggest to any who wish an authentic history of the ideas underlying American's founding a visit to this web site, at which Richard Frothingham's outstanding 1872 "History of the Rise of the Republic of the United States" can be read in its entirety on line.
This 600+-page early history traces the ideas which gave birth to the American founding. Throughout, Richard Frothingham, the historian, develops the idea that it is "the Christian idea of man" which allowed the philosophy underlying the Declaration of Independence and Constitution to become a reality--an idea which recognizes the individual and the Source of his/her "Creator"-endowed life, liberty and law.
Is there any wonder that the enemies of freedom, the so-called "progressives," do not promote such authentic histories of America? Their philosophy puts something called "the state," or "global interests" as being superior to individuals and requires a political elitist group to decide what role individuals are to play.
In other words, they must turn the Founders' ideas upside-down in order to achieve a common mediocrity for individuals and power for themselves.
You don’t need to reject reason to believe in Christianity.
You do (however) have to reject reason to believe in - for instance - Islam, as their ‘god’ is arbitrary and incoherent.
And a major part of the success of Europeans is the ability of Jews and Christians to do business on trust with people who are not kin. In almost all if not all other cultures there is no trust outside of family and clan. A Jew or Christian has been able to make a deal with another Jew or Christian and both sides of the deal have a reasonable expectation that the other will do what he has promised to do. In Japan and Korea and Vietnam it is the Christian portion of the population that has become the business class. In Japan that Christian population was entirely sub rosa for centuries but it existed in some numbers in Nagasaki and other places and formed the business class there.
Which is why I offered the caveat at the beginning of the thread.
Bmk...
Capitalism as we know it is a spinoff of Judaeo Christian ethics and morals and the resulting ability to trust one another out of sight.
Just bought it on Kindle, thanks!
Your faith cannot — by its very nature — be rooted in reason. It exists only because it exists, not because there’s any good reason for it to exist. And not because there’s any NEED for a good reason.
Sorry, but all of us use faith every moment of every day. It’s called playing the odds based on the evidence. Right now, you have faith that you are correctly reading my words. You have faith that your house is not going to collapse on you. You have faith that your chair will hold you up. You have faith that your food is not poisonous when you eat it. When you drive your car, you have faith that it will get you to where you want to go. You have faith that other drivers will not run into you. I could go on and on. ALL of us use faith ALL of the time because NONE of us are omniscient. We ALL have to play the odds based on the available evidence. That includes you.
I've used it as a reference in a blog or two regarding sovereignty in the people.
We can hardly understand today how Puritans, Quakers, Presbyterians, and Catholics posed a threat to the English monarchy. We blessed that they did their best to implement biblical principles in the American wilderness.
There’s a difference between faith and Faith. I’m using the word in the Biblical sense of “evidence of things unseen.” Your examples are all based on observations that transmute into predictions. That’s fine, and I agree with you that that kind of faith governs our daily lives. But I believe there is a different kind of belief that does not rest upon observation and that needs no pattern or history — or reason — to exist.
It exists simply because you choose for it to exist. You believe simply because you choose to believe.
Wow, good points. Thanks. I really appreciate that insight! sff
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