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The reaction against Islam by its violent rejection to the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed published in some western media, has served to attack religion hard and, above all, Christianity. It has been accused of being responsible for all the ills of mankind, to go against the progress, to curtail the development of the personality and of human intelligence. The following could be an answer. |
| The idea that the success of the West has depended on having exceeded the religious barriers to progress is “complete nonsense,” says the author of a new book. Rodney Stark defends this thesis on “The Victory of Reason: How Christianity led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success” (Random House) Stark, a professor of sociology at Baylor University, argues that, in contrast to other beliefs that accentuate mystery and intuition, Christian theology focuses on reason. This factor – not the geography, nor a more productive agricultural system, nor the protestant reformation – is behind the rise of the West, he maintains.
The author notes that this view is in contrast with the position of many western intellectuals of the 20th century. These have maintained that the West was put ahead of other cultures precisely because of their capacity to overcome religious barriers to progress. The credit that they give to religion was limited to recognize the contribution of Protestantism, as if the fifteen centuries of Christianity had little importance, said Stark. In a chapter on the connection between reason and theology in Christianity, Stark starts by disagreeing with these intellectuals. The rise of the West, he maintains, has been based on four primary victories of reason: – Faith in progress within Christian theology; – The transmission of this faith in progress to technical and organizational innovations, many of them encouraged by the monasteries; – Reason has informed political theory and practice, allowing for personal liberty; – Reason was applied to the trade, resulting in the development of capitalism. From the first centuries of Christianity, the Fathers of the Church taught that the reason was a gift from God and the means to increase the understanding of scripture and revelation. The eastern religions, on the other hand, lacked the figure of a conscious and Almighty God, that could be the subject of theological reflection. Judaism and Islam had the concept of a God enough to sustain the theology. But within these religions, the tendency was toward a constructionist posture who conceived the writing as something to understand and apply, not as the basis for a subsequent investigation. Christianity considers God a rational being and the universe as created by Him. In this way, the human understanding awaits a rational structure. And to pose the challenge were the theologians of the Catholic Church, who for centuries were involved in a careful reasoning that led to the development of the Christian doctrine. First-order thinkers such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, explains Stark, celebrated the use of reason as a means to penetrate into the divine intentions. So, when the scientific revolution in the 16th century took place, there was no sudden onset of secular thinking. Rather, it emerged from centuries of systematic progress of the medieval scholastic thinkers, and it was sustained by a Christian invention of the 12th century, universities. Stark devotes a chapter to shoot down the idea of “Dark Ages.” Much before the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, European science and technology had far outpaced the rest of the world. The idea that the medieval era was a period of stagnation “it’s a caricature created by the intellectuals of the 18th century, anti-religious and bitterly anti-Catholic,” writes Stark. It was in these centuries when the energy from the water and the wind was developed, allowing enormous progress in the manufacture of goods. And the remarkable advances in agricultural technology, increased crop fields that allowed to feed the cities. Far from opposing such technical advances, Christianity welcomed and promoted them. On the other hand, both the Ottoman Empire as China opposed the construction of mechanical watches, for example. Nor did the economic activity have to wait for Protestantism to thrive, says Stark. The monastic orders created a kind of proto-capitalism. Stimulated by increases in productivity due to technological advances, the monasteries diverted the tendency from a subsistence economy toward a system of specialization and trade. This, in turn, facilitated the growth of a cash economy, as opposed to bartering, and the creation of credit and money lending. The monasteries also developed the work ethic and an appreciation for the value of the economic effort long before the arrival of Protestantism. In addition, Catholic theologians redefined ideas related to the charge of interest and the fair prices of assets – essential elements for the development of capitalism-. Stark also devotes ample space to emphasize the development of capitalism in the Italian city-states, which stimulated prosperous economies centuries before the Lutheran Reformation. Although the conditions for the development of capitalism have existed in some countries, sometimes they lacked the essential element of freedom, thus preventing economic progress. Freedom, says Stark, is a victory for reason and was supported by the Christian theologians who have long theorized about the nature of equality and individual rights. In fact, the work of the secular political theorists of later times, such as John Locke, are often based on ideas developed by scholars of the Church. The Christian in general teaches the value of the individual and highlights the importance of personal responsibility in moral decisions. Linked to this is the consent of free will. This was a radical change compared to the past, something evident, for example, in literature. Stark suggests to compare the Greek tragedies, where the characters are captives of fate, with Shakespeare, where the protagonists are clearly accountable for their actions. Stark also argues that the birth of democracy in western Europe owes its origins, not to the retrieved Greek philosophy, but to Christian ideals. The classical world provided examples of democracy, but these did not take root by not assuming the equality of all citizens. The Ideals taught in the New Testament, however, laid the basis for asserting the fundamental equality of all people. The rights of property, another vital precondition for capitalism, also owe their origins to Christianity. Both the Bible and the most important theologians defend private property. Thomas Aquinas argued that the own property is inherent in human nature. The Christian teaching also contributed much to the concept of separation between church and state, and the limitation of the powers of the sovereign over the citizens. These two factors have allowed the West to avoid a deadlock of the political system that would lead to arbitrary and unlimited use of the political authority, which is an obstacle to the development of a modern economy. |
