MandM » Christian History

Contra Mundum: Religion and Violence

Matt — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 04:38:39 +0000

On 1 May 2011 the world received the news that Osama Bin Laden was dead; gunned down in Pakistan by an elite team of US Navy Seals. Even before his death Bin Laden had become a legendary persona. Not only was he a terrorist leader responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocents but he functioned as a contemporary paradigm of the fanatical religious nutter who promotes hatred, violence and intolerance – much like the symbol Adolf Hitler was to earlier generations.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks reinvigorated a fear that has lain dormant in the western psyche since at least the 17^th century. This fear is encapsulated in an objection to belief in God known as the argument from historical atrocities. Many critics of religion refer to the religious wars that tore Europe apart during the 17^th century, citing events such as the Inquisition and Crusades — although lately the Taliban have been the image of choice.

Recently, whilst debating the viability of religious morality at the University of Notre Dame, best-selling author Sam Harris repeatedly cited the Taliban as a representative example of theological ethics. One need not read far into the literature of contemporary free thinkers to uncover this line of argument. Consider Jim Peron of the Institute for Liberal Values:

“To admit religion into the “public arena” is “dangerous.” And long term the results will be just as bloody and violent as they were in the past. … To put religion into that sector is to ignore centuries of history and return to the conflict-ridden, bloody world of the Dark Ages.”

Peron went on to refer to common motifs of the Inquisition: “crazy Puritans”, Servetus’ execution in Calvin’s Geneva and so on. Similar themes abound in the writings of Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens. The citation of historical cases is not in itself an argument so it is hard to discern the exact objection here. It appears to consist of two claims. Firstly, that some people who believe in God have committed atrocities against other people. Secondly, that if people who hold a belief commit atrocities then that belief is either false or should be avoided by liberal-minded people.

Historians Ronald Numbers and David Lindberg point to recent research having discredited the portrayal of the early Middle Ages as “the Dark Ages” brought about by Christianity. Similarly, research into Inquisition archives reveal that while such tribunals did exist, many popular beliefs are based on embellishment, exaggeration and propaganda rather than a sober assessment of facts. The picture of the Inquisition that emerges from these studies is significantly more benign than has popularly been thought. Similarly, historian Leland Ryken’s studies on the Puritans have questioned many of the popular stereotypes Peron referred to.

Take Peron’s allusion to the execution of Servetus. In his study on the life of Calvin, Oxford Theologian Alister McGrath argues that Calvin’s role in Servetus’ execution has been greatly exaggerated and contends that such heresy prosecutions were not typical in Geneva contrary to the image popularly peddled by rationalists. McGrath has also relentlessly exposed several cases of outright distortion and myth perpetuated about the so-called “dictator” of Geneva. This is not to say that atrocities did not occur, nor that such atrocities should be justified, but it is important to be accurate and fair. The evidence suggests that much of what people believe today about religious history is based on discredited 19^th century rationalist propaganda stereotypes and consequent cultural prejudice.

Perhaps more interesting is the second claim. While this claim is seldom made explicit, something like it is necessary if the existence of atrocities entails that belief in God is false or that religious belief and practice should be avoided.

Philosopher Glenn Peoples provides several counter examples to this claim. The belief that the atom could be split is one that has been used to kill thousands of people yet that belief is true and it is an important scientific discovery. The belief that theft is wrong has, in the past, led to the lynching of thieves. Does this show that theft is not really wrong and we should not oppose it?

Other examples illustrate the absurdity of this claim. The “reign of terror” during the French Revolution was justified by appeals to liberty, equality, fraternity and the rights of humankind; one victim of the guillotine famously remarked, “Oh, Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name”. Millions have been slaughtered by appeals to the greater good of society or the liberation of the oppressed classes and it is well known that people have defended wars on the basis of justice and social peace. Should we therefore avoid liberty, equality, opposing oppression, seeking justice and social peace?

A third problem with the “argument from atrocities” is that an analogous argument can be used against atheism and secular philosophies. Millions have lost their lives in wars fought in the name of secular ideologies such as Communism — wars far more brutal and total than those that occurred during the Middle Ages. Millions have been killed in socialist states in show-trials every bit as hysterical and rigged as any witch trials were. And, as some medievalists have noted, with irony, the Committee for Public Safety in Enlightenment France was, in numerous respects, much worse than the Inquisition. If the fact that Christians engaged in historical atrocities entails belief in God is false or that religious belief is to be avoided then parity of reasoning entails atheism is false and that secular belief systems should be avoided.

At this point the sceptic will start to make qualifications. One rejoinder is that whilst atheists like Pol Pot, Mao and Stalin committed atrocities, these were not done in the name of atheism or due to their atheist beliefs. Religious atrocities, however, were committed because of religious beliefs.

However, such rejoinders fail. As Peoples explained, Stalin and Pol Pot persecuted religious groups precisely because they were atheists and saw religion as socially pernicious — the very thing people who press the historical atrocities argument are trying to contend. Richard Wurmbrand, a victim of communist persecution in Romania, stated that “communist torturers often said there is no God, no hereafter, no life after death, we can do what we wish.” The fact that atheism was not the motivation for these actions seems to be news to those who actually witnessed them.

So, many atrocities were committed on the basis of atheism. The purported rejoinder also fails due to the fact that many atrocities cited by religious critics were not committed for religious reasons but for secular ones. Christopher Eberle and Terence Cuneo noted in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy that the religious wars of the 17th Century were caused not by the appeal to religious reasons, per se, but rather by the violation of religious freedom. They noted further that even in the 17th Century religious persecution was typically justified on secular grounds,

“When such rights have been violated, the justifications offered, even by religious believers, appeal to alleged requirements for social order, such as the need for uniformity of belief on basic normative issues. One theological apologist for religious repression, for example, writes this: ‘The king punishes heretics as enemies, as extremely wicked rebels, who endanger the peace of the kingdom, which cannot be maintained without the unity of the faith. That is why they are burnt in Spain.”

Medievalist Régine Pernoud argued that heretics were burnt or tortured during the 12^th Century due to the revival of Roman Law, which allowed torture to gain a confession and burning as punishment for treason. The torture and burning of heretics had as much to do with ancient Roman legal customs as it did with biblical exegesis. In fact, the Inquisition used torture more sparingly, passed death sentences more rarely and had more humane prisons than most secular courts of the same time. This suggests inquisitors actually moderated already accepted harsh Roman practices. Now, this does not justify such practices but it does question the thesis that religious reasons were the driving motivation for them or the thesis that they would not have occurred if a more secular context had prevailed. In a similar vein the Crusades were originally called to protect pilgrims from attack, to recover annexed territory and to protect the eastern Roman Empire from invasion — all secular reasons that could have been utilised to justify war quite independently of any religious rationale. Was World War II not fought to recover annexed territory, protect innocent people and protect Europe from invasion? How many millions were killed for that?

When these qualifications fail it is contended that not all atheists support these practices. This is true. It is also true that not all religious people support the practices cited by these sceptics. In fact, historically, some of the most important criticisms of religious persecution and defences of religious tolerance, such as those proposed by John Locke and Pierre Bayle, appealed to explicitly theological grounds.

Yale Philosophy Professor, Nicholas Wolterstorff, notes that “many of the social movements in the modern world that have moved societies in the direction of liberal democracy have been deeply and explicitly religious in their orientation.” Wolterstorff cites examples such as the abolitionist, civil rights and other resistance movements as examples.

So the appeal to historical atrocities, on examination, seems often based on a fairly selective analysis of the evidence. The Bin Ladens and Hitlers of this world are clearly dangerous but so too are the Stalins, Pol Pots and secular groups like the Tamil Tigers who pioneered the practice of suicide bombing before Al-Qaeda came on the scene. People fight and kill for a number of reasons; sometimes these are religious, more often they are secular – sometimes both. When people care deeply about something, sometimes they will kill to protect it. Religion is not an exception.

Bin Laden is dead; however, as commentators incessantly tell us, the legacy of religious terror he represents will continue. What also will continue are the prejudices of some secular groups who use his example to stereotype and smear all religions as dangerous and fanatical. It is far easier to kill a terrorist than it is to kill irrational prejudice but at least one can expose it for the shallow line of thought that it is.

I write a monthly column for Investigate Magazine entitled “Contra Mundum.” This blog post was published in the June 2011 issue and is reproduced here with permission. Contra Mundum is Latin for ‘against the world;’ the phrase is usually attributed to Athanasius who was exiled for defending Christian orthodoxy.

Letters to the editor should be sent to:
editorial@investigatemagazine.DELETE.com

Waitangi’s Christian Heritage

Matt — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 02:50:05 +0000

It is Waitangi Day in New Zealand today; the day where we remember the signing of the treaty of Waitangi in 1840.

This morning at church I had the privilege of hearing a very interesting talk from my Pastor, Rev. Dr Stuart Lange about the lead up to the Treaty signing. Stuart is a church historian and something of an expert on the history of Christianity in New Zealand. When he is not being a pastor at Massey Presbyterian Church he lectures in Church History at Laidlaw College where he used to be Vice Principal.

Stuart looked at the role of missionaries in NZ society. He pointed out some interesting facts, such as: the relationship between early missionary Samuel Marsden and William Wilberforce, the famous evangelical reformer who spearheaded the abolition of the slave trade in England; and that prior to the Treaty being signed, large numbers of Maori converted to Christianity; he touched on the role of Missionaries in brokering peace between warring tribes, and how these conversions lead to Maori tribes liberating their slaves who then carried the gospel back to their homes. He also noted that, in many respects, prior to 1840 Christianity was more prevalent amongst Maori than the colonial settlers, many of whom were fairly unscrupulous and had little time for serious evangelical commitment.

He noted also the theological and pastoral motivations of the missionaries in pushing for the Treaty; they were concerned to see that, with colonialists arriving in great numbers, the indigenous people they worked with were protected. He also noted the role of several missionaries in speaking out against early violations of the Treaty.

Stuart is apparently giving a 90 minute lecture on these issues at Congress 2011: 2020 Vision – The Gospel in the Decade Ahead, a Christian leadership conference in Wellington later this month – check it out if you’re in Wellington. This was a very brief snippet of that talk but it was thoroughly interesting and it was delivered with Stuart’s characteristic humour.

I have posted on some of the moral issues around the Treaty before and I plan in the future to write some more on this topic but now I also plan to look into some of the theological history as I found this talk fascinating.

Anyway happy Waitangi Day fellow kiwis! Let us today all pause, consider and celebrate our country’s heritage and future together – take up Pat Brittenden’s idea and have a Waitangi Day barbeque! Kia kaha.

Tim McGrew’s Library of Historical Apologetics: Rediscovering Forgotten Defenders of the Faith

Madeleine — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:12:00 +0000

Last year Timothy McGrew, Professor of Philosophy at Western Michigan University (and reader of and occasional commenter on this blog) was kind enough to ship us a hard-drive from the US filled with thousands of old theological works on the historical argument for the truth of Christianity. It is truly a gold-mine of information, which Matt gets himself routinely lost in and for which visitors to our home have been known to arrive carrying their own portable hard drives so as take away a copy.

At the time Tim told us he was aiming to get this material online so that everyone could access it. Along with his advisory board of William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, Craig Hazen, Robert Stewart, it seems he has made some progress as the Library of Historical Apologetics is now live and open for browsing and is really worth checking out.

Paraphrasing and splicing bits together from the Collection page:

The collection contains both one of the world’s largest catalogs of works in historical apologetics, the branch of apologetics dealing with the authenticity and credibility of the scriptures and particularly of the New Testament. The authors come from various denominational and educational backgrounds and would not agree with each other on all points of theology. Some are profound works of research and scholarship; others are brief works addressed to a non-specialist audience. But each makes a distinctive contribution to the literature of historical apologetics.

In addition to the library, the site features:

Annotated Bibliography: Short descriptions of selected works.
Spotlight Articles: Published monthly, these two page articles describe an author, book or apologetic theme [Very cool!]
Quotation of the Week: Significant and pithy excerpts that make a poignant point and illustrate the subject matter of a particular author.

All works available at the library are in English and are part of the public domain.

HT Tim McGrew

Freedom, Science and Christianity: A Response to James Valliant Part II

Matt — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 22:01:48 +0000

Recently Peter Cresswell published a guest post by James Valliant, which originally appeared on SOLO. In Freedom, Science and Christianity: A Response to James Valliant Part I, I addressed Valliant’s claims that science and freedom of religion were unanimously opposed by Christians and the success of science and freedom of religion in Europe was solely due to the influence of pagan ideas which the church sought to suppress. Then in The Theological Foundations of the Enlightenment Philosophers, I further documented how Enlightenment defences of freedom of religion were grounded in earlier theological writings. Here I will continue my critique of Valliant’s article.

3. Valliant contends that it is absurd to suggest that “the US declaration of independence is based on Judeo-Christian ideas.” His reasons, however, are once again based on ignorance of Christian intellectual history.

First he ridicules the idea of Christian influence, “We are asked to believe that it took a mere 1,776 years of reading that darned Bible before any of those great and learned Christian scholars figured out its true political implications!” Valliant seems blissfully unaware that many ideas expressed in the declaration were expressed by Christian writers sometimes hundreds of years prior to 1776.

The claim that there is a creator and that this is self-evident, are ideas that go back centuries in Christian theology. Moreover, the contention that people are created equal is found in the book of Job and would not have been contested by many medieval or patristic theologians. Mark Murphy has noted that the idea of ‘consent of the governed’ was also accepted in political thought of the Middle Ages.[1] In fact, a form of ‘consent of the governed’ was actually a key feature of feudalism; under this system the monarch was elected or chosen by the land owners and could be deposed by the land owners.[2] Nicholas Wolterstorff has documented that the notion of natural rights had its origins in medieval canon law and theological reflections of the middle ages.[3] Many of the ideas expressed in the declaration were defended centuries earlier by Calvinist tracts such as Lex Rex and Vindicae Contra Tyrannos. In fact, medieval theologians criticised absolute monarchy, debated the question of just revolutions and so on resulting in the birth of the Magna Carta.

The declaration simply repeats the argument for liberty, put forward by John Locke in his Two Treatise of Civil Government. Locke’s argument occurred in the context of an exegetical debate with Robert Filmer about whether or not the bible supported absolute monarchy. Locke’s main argument was that because human beings are created by God, they have an inalienable right to life and liberty and so could not licitly sell themselves or give another person arbitrary or total power over them. In making this argument, Locke actually appropriated an ancient rabbinical argument against slavery which was alluded to by the Apostle Paul (1 Cor 7:23) and is implicit in the Torah (Lev 25: 42). Paul’s appropriation of this argument was the basis for the Christian abolition of slavery in the early Middle Ages. Valliant’s ignorance about what Christians did not support or write about prior to 1776 does not mean that these texts do not exist.

Valliant continues with the claim that Paul told Christians “to just ‘obey’ the governmental ‘authorities’ placed over us, because God has appointed them, by St. Paul himself, who likely wrote during the reign of the monster Nero.” This again is a caricature, as I have pointed out elsewhere, the context (which Valliant ignores) qualifies Paul’s command. Moreover, the passage Valliant cites was written during the early part of Nero’s reign when Nero was strongly influenced by Seneca the Younger and Barrus and his rule was widely considered to be competent and relatively enlightened. When Nero later degenerated into a monster the scripture, rather scathingly, describes Nero as a satanic beast whom Christians are required to resist – not obey!

Valliant also seems blithely unaware of the fact that Paul wrote as a prisoner of Rome and was himself executed by Nero for refusing to pay homage to Nero (as were many other Christians). His picture then of Paul as a proponent of advocating unqualified obedience to Nero is simply inaccurate.

4. Valliant similarly quotes Paul’s admonition to slaves to obey their masters in contrast to the US Framers who “thought slavery was evil, too, and it was this belief that provided the basis (e.g., see the Gettysburg Address) for later abolishing it” as evidence that abolitionist ideas originate from ancient Greek/Aristotelian thought and not Christian theology. Apart from the fact that Jefferson was himself a slave owner, Valliant’s understanding is extremely selective.

First, opposition to slavery in various forms has a long history in Christian thought and practice. It predates the American Founding by hundreds, maybe, thousands of years. Early Christians advocated emancipating slaves, a practice exhorted by several leading theologians and early church councils. W.E.H. Lecky contends that early Christian saints such as Melania, Ovidius, Chromatius, and Hermes, between them liberated almost 20,000 slaves.[4] Later, in 315, Constantine made it a capital offence to steal a child and bring it up as a slave. Justinian, in the 6^th century, abolished earlier roman laws prohibiting the freeing of slaves. Similarly St Bathilde, a runaway slave who became the wife of King Clovis II in the 9^th century, campaigned against the slave trade as did other notables, St Patrick in the 5^th century, St Anskar in the 9^th century and St Wulfstan, St Anselm in the 11^th century. Rodney Stark notes that Christian opposition to slavery in the lead to its effective abolition within in Europe during the Middle Ages. Stark goes on to document that Pope Eugene IV (1431-1447), Pope Pius II (1458-1464), Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484), Pope Paul III (1534-1549), Pope Urban VIII (1623-1644) issued papal bulls against slavery. In addition, the Roman Inquisition condemned slavery on 20 March 1686.

All of the above occurred hundreds of years prior to the US Founding Fathers.[5] In fact, evangelical Christians, such as William Wilberforce, had brought about the abolition of slavery peacefully in the British several decades before the US fought a civil war over it. Moreover, Stark’s analysis shows that the earliest abolitionist tracts within the US were whttp://www.mandm.org.nz/wp-admin/post-new.phpritten by Puritans – actually by one of the judges at the Salem witch trials. The abolitionist movements in the US were overwhelmingly religious in orientation.[6] The suggestion then that opposition to slavery was without Christian precedent and was a novel idea proposed by the revival of pre-Christian ideas in the Enlightenment is implausible. The issue of slavery is a particularly bad example to substantiate Valliant’s thesis given that in the pre-Christian pagan world slavery was widely practiced and accepted. In fact Aristotle, Valliant’s pre-Christian Greek hero, famously defended slavery (in three chapters no less) contending the enslavement of other races was natural.[7]

Valliant’s reading of scripture is also questionable. While it is true that Paul exhorted slaves to obey their masters, this by itself does not entail support for slavery anymore than my paying my taxes constitutes my agreement with taxation laws. Moreover, Valliant ignores the numerous other things both the scriptures and Paul stated about slavery, which contradict and condemn the practice of slavery that existed in America. In fact, the enlightenment philosopher who most influenced the US, John Locke, appealed to these very texts both explicitly and implicitly, to condemn slavery. Once again, Valliant ignores crucial facts of Christian intellectual history to come to his stereotypical conclusions.

[1] Mark Murphy “Natural Law, Consent, and Political Obligation” Social Philosophy & Policy 18 (2001) 70-92.
[2] Regine Pernoud, Those Terrible Middle Ages : Debunking the Myths (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000) 128-129.
[3] Nicolas Wolterstorff Justice Rights and Wrongs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).
[4] W.E.H. Lecky History of European Morals: From Augustus to Charlemagne (New York: D. Appleton, 1921) 2:69.
[5] Rodney Stark For the Glory of God: How Monotheism led to Reformations, Science, Witch-hunts and the end of Slavery (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).
[6] Ibid.
[7] Aristotle The Politics Bk I iii, iv, v.

Freedom, Science and Christianity: A Response to James Valliant Part I

Matt — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:02:38 +0000

Recently Peter Cresswell published a guest post by James Valliant, which originally appeared on SOLO. The following series is a critique of this piece.

Valliant’s basic thesis is that,

Both science and freedom came about among European Christians despite the best efforts of pious Christians to prevent their development, and only on a foundation of pagan, pre-Christian ideas, and with conservative Christians fighting each and every step of the way.

Like other Randian’s he erroneously thinks of Aristotle’s philosophy as a paradigm of the pagan ideas in question. Valliant’s post contains numerous errors. His uncritical acceptance of literal reading of Genocide passages, his claim that the Bible teaches sex is bad, his assertion that it teaches people will be tortured forever for not believing in Christ and numerous other things means there are far to many errors for me to address in a short post and this one is long enough as it is! Here I will focus on those errors most relevant to his main thesis. [I have inserted hyperlinks on the less relevant errors where I have previously blogged on the issue - also see the related posts at the end.]

1. Valliant appears to accept the now discredited conflict thesis. He states that the Church “imprisoned scientists” for challenging its authority and that that “Western science only got going again following the rediscovery of pre-Christian Greek ideas, starting with Aristotle’s.” Valliant cites Copernicus as an example, claiming that he “got his ideas about the earth and the sun from an ancient, pagan source, one that he suppressed upon publication.” This is all questionable at best, as James Hannam’s recent study shows, “During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church actively supported a great deal of science.” Hannam goes on to document that, contrary to popular belief, the Church, “never supported the idea that the earth was flat, never banned human dissection, never banned zero and certainly never burnt anyone at the stake for scientific ideas.” The one exception to this, he notes, is the case of Galileo in the 17^th century, who was placed under house arrest for teaching Copernican cosmology as true (as opposed to a hypothesis).[1] The Catholic Church’s opposition to Copernicus, of course, is the sole case Valliant alludes to but a single case does not substantiate a trend.

Valliant’s allusion to the views of Copernicus is similarly questionable. Copernicus’ heliocentric cosmology constituted a rejection of the standard Aristotelian cosmology accepted by the ancient Greeks. Stillman Drake notes that Galileo’s strongest opponents were supporters of Aristotle and it was more his calling into question Aristotle and the pressure by Aristotelians to silence him, that lead to his condemnation from the church than merely interpreting a psalm figuratively.[2] Nor is it correct to suggest that Copernicus got his “ideas about the earth” from suppressed Greek scientists. In fact, the thesis that the earth moves had already been suggested by 14th century theologians Jean Buridan and Nicole d’Oresme and had been openly discussed in medieval universities for centuries prior to Copernicus. Edward Grant notes the positions of Buridan and d’Oresme were based in part on Theological condemnations of Aristotelian Philosophy that had occurred in the 13 century.[3] The Copernican position then was already being debated openly in theological circles before Copernicus and was a repudiation of Greek cosmology motivated, in part, by theological concerns about God’s sovereignty.

2. Valliant makes the historical claim that “The burning of thousands and thousands at the stake for no reason other than their heretical faith, the torturing of thousands and thousands more in order to get them to confess to any deviation from the Bible … is all a matter of historical record.” He asks,

If Christians, in the name of their faith, did horrible things in the more remote past, had they simply misunderstood the Bible that they were poring over in such detail and with such devotion? Did they finally get clear on the meaning of their true doctrine only after the better part of two millennia?. No, it was the horrible institution of Christian persecution, century after century, which inspired sensitive minds to first consider the idea of freedom of conscience, and, again, only with a good deal of philosophical help from those ancient, pagan sources, from Aristotle to Cicero.” [Emphasis added]

Valliant appears to think that religious persecution as existed in the Inquisition was due to Christian theology and that the notion of freedom of conscience was the result of pagan ideas. The facts, however, are not so simple. Valliant’s argument contains several false assumptions.

First, Valliant is mistaken that Christians for the better part of two millennia both engaged in and supported the activities he refers too. In fact, for the first four hundred years of Christian history, the Church fathers supported and defended a right to freedom of conscience; it was only in the 5th century, due to the influence of Augustine, that suppression of heresy was supported. Even in this instance there was not unanimity. Many theologians such as Ambrose and Pope Siricius protested heresy executions in the late Roman Empire. Forced baptisms did occur under Charlemagne in the 8^th century but were criticised by leading theologians of the time such as Alcurin. From Charlemagne till the 12th century, some 400 years, there were no inquisitions.[4] The Inquisition arose in Western Europe in the 12th century in response to a particular political crisis.

Interestingly both Canon Law and Medieval Theology developed a notion of freedom of conscience in the Middle Ages, drawing from earlier patristic sources and exegesis of Paul’s comments on freedom of conscience in Romans 14.[5] In fact, the defences of religious tolerance, proposed by enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, Pierre Bayle and James Madison are often simply repetitions of the arguments of early Christian theologians such as Lactantius and Tertullian, which had been known to Christian theologians for over a thousand years. These facts also show that is mistaken to suggest defences of freedom of conscience were only developed after hundreds of years of Christian persecution.

Second, Valliant’s attempt to equate religious tolerance with pagan antiquity is equally dubious. The pre-Christian Athenian democracy Valliant champions executed Socrates for heresy, around 400 years before Christ. Plato and Aristotle also experienced periods of exile from Athens – Aristotle fled precisely to avoid sharing Socrates fate. Greek Philosophers, including Plato, defended censorship of religious books and execution of those who denied the existence of the gods. For 300 years prior to the Christianisation of Europe the roman state persecuted and executed Christian believers. Eusebius records that thousands of men, women and children – sometimes whole towns – were martyred by Rome for their beliefs.[6] David Lindberg sums the evidence up,

Intolerance is and was (and is) a widely cultivated trait, shared about equally by pagans and Christians. Moreover, each party was capable of employing coercive measures when it gained the political power to do so; Christians, in fact appear to have done so less often than Pagans.[7]

Valliant’s contention that “freedom” was based on “pre-Christian” Aristotelian ideas “with conservative Christians fighting each and every step of the way” also ignores the obvious fact that the Inquisition came into Europe around the same time as the rise of Aristotelianism and was in fact defended and carried out by the Dominican order – the very same order that promoted and defended Aristotle in European universities. The facts, therefore, do not fit the generalised picture Valliant paints.

Third, Valliant’s comments appear to assume that the torture and execution of heretics was justified solely by an appeal to the Bible. However, nowhere does the Bible mention executing or torturing heretics nor was it typically taken to teach this. Christopher Eberle and Terence Cuneo note that suppression of heresy was frequently punished, not on religious grounds per se, but on broader secular grounds,

Religious believers have employed coercive power to violate the right to religious freedom, they themselves rarely have done so in a way that violates the [Doctrine of Religious Restraint] … when such rights have been violated, the justifications offered, even by religious believers, appeal to alleged requirements for social order, such as the need for uniformity of belief on basic normative issues. One theological apologist for religious repression, for example, writes this: ‘The king punishes heretics as enemies, as extremely wicked rebels, who endanger the peace of the kingdom, which cannot be maintained without the unity of the faith. That is why they are burnt in Spain’. [8]

Régine Pernoud points out that reason heretics were burnt or tortured is because the 12th century saw the revival of Roman law which allowed torture to gain a confession and punish treason with burning.[9] Hence contrary to Valliant, the torture and burning of heretics had as much to do with ancient pagan roman legal customs as it did with biblical exegesis. In fact, the evidence suggests that unlike secular courts, the Inquisition used torture sparingly, more moderately and rarely executed those who came before it, suggesting that it in fact moderated and softened the harshness of roman practice.[10]

In my next post in this series, Freedom, Science and Christianity: A Response to James Valliant Part II, I address Valliant’s claims that the writers of the Declaration of Independence were not influenced by Christianity and his claims around freedom and slavery.

In the meantime see this update: The Theological Foundations of the Enlightenment Philosophers

[1] James Hannam God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science (London: Icon books, 2009) 2-3.
[2] Stillman Drake Galileo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
[3] Edward Grant “Science and Theology in the Middle Ages” in David C Linberg and Ronald L Numbers eds God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Religion and Science (Berkley: University of California Press, 1986) 49-75.
[4] Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages: Debunking the Myths (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000) 120.
[5] See Joseph Lecler Toleration and the Reformation trans. by TL Weslow (New York: Association Press, 1960).
[6] Eusebius Ecclesiastical History.
[7] David Lindberg “Science and the Early Church” in David C Linberg and Ronald L Numbers eds God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Religion and Science (Berkley: University of California Press, 1986) 22.
[8] Christopher Eberle and Terence Cuneo “Religion and Political Theory” (2008) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
[9] Pernoud, above n 4, 128-129.
[10] See, for example, Edward Peters Inquisition (London: Collier Macmillan, 1981); also Henry Kamen The Spanish Inquisition: A Revisionist History (New Haven Conn: Yale University Press, 1998).

Contra Mundum: The Flat-Earth Myth

Matt — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:53:57 +0000

A while back I made a passing comment on my blog criticising an advertisement which claimed that, prior to Columbus, the Church taught that the world was flat. In response I received the following email from a high-school student in the US,

I’ve been studying Christopher Columbus in my history class and my history books say that prior to Columbus everyone did think the world was flat……..I don’t know if it was a mistake in the history book or your mistake…..but anyway….I guess I have some things to learn! God bless ~ Katie

We have all heard the story behind this. Prior to Columbus, the Church and its theological scholars taught that the world was flat. For this reason they opposed Columbus’ proposed voyage in 1492 as they believed he would sail off the edge of the earth (or that he would prove them wrong and they would lose standing in society). Despite this Columbus sailed anyway and his rejection of the Church’s position was vindicated, he scored a victory for science and reason.

My correspondent is correct. They do teach this in high school text books. I was taught it at both primary and high-school. In fact, not too long ago Prentice Hall published claims to this effect in their middle school textbook Prentice Hall Earth Science.

At a philosophy conference at Otago University, shortly after I graduated, I recall one speaker using the example of “medieval flat-earthers” in his paper as an example of an irrational belief. Almost everyone in attendance nodded their heads in agreement; no one contested the historical assumptions implicit in the example. More recently Victoria University ran a slick television campaign stating that in the 14th century most people believed the world was flat. The ad showed a picture of a boat sailing across the sea only to fall over the side of the earth and concluded “It makes you think.”

You might have gathered from obvious clues like the title and from the way I have set this article up that I dispute the veracity of much of these historical claims. If I state this publicly there are very few settings where this admission does not at least earn me an incredulous stare (as if I were, in fact, asserting that the earth was flat). Invariably some comment follows, “come on Matt, everyone knows this story is true, didn’t you learn this at school? Haven’t you read any history textbooks?”

It is true that I did learn this story at school and that I have read it in more than one history textbook but because I took the time to research the history of theology when I was at university I know that this story is fiction. It is a slanderous fabrication invented by opponents of Christianity in the 19th century and has been thoroughly debunked by contemporary historians of science.

The definitive study is undoubtedly that of Jeffrey Burton Russell in Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians. Russell summarised his findings, in a paper presented to the 1997 American Scientific Affiliation Conference, as follows,

[W]ith extraordinary few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat. A round earth appears at least as early as the sixth century BC with Pythagoras, who was followed by Aristotle, Euclid, and Aristarchus, among others in observing that the earth was a sphere. Although there were a few dissenters—Leukippos and Demokritos for example–by the time of Eratosthenes (3 c. BC), followed by Crates(2 c. BC), Strabo (3 c. BC), and Ptolemy (first c. AD), the sphericity of the earth was accepted by all educated Greeks and Romans.

Nor did this situation change with the advent of Christianity. A few—at least two and at most five—early Christian fathers denied the spherically of earth by mistakenly taking passages such as Ps. 104:2-3 as geographical rather than metaphorical statements. On the other side tens of thousands of Christian theologians, poets, artists, and scientists took the spherical view throughout the early, medieval, and modern church. The point is that no educated person believed otherwise.

Russell traced the story about Columbus and medieval flat-earthers back to the 19^th century; it originated in a fictional novel by Washington Irving The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus I (1829). Later it was picked up by two influential books, John Draper’s History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874) and Andrew Dickson White’s book A History of The Warfare Between Science and Theology in Christendom. These books famously used the Columbus story plus many others to defend the thesis that the Church, for centuries, suppressed science and worked to prevent its flourishing; this is known as the conflict thesis.

These books and the conflict thesis they spawned, are highly influential in popular science and media coverage of theological and scientific issues today despite most historians rejecting them as propaganda. In The Encyclopedia of the History of Science and Religion, Collin Russell notes,

Draper takes such liberty with history, perpetuating legends as fact that he is rightly avoided today in serious historical study. The same is nearly as true of White, though his prominent apparatus of prolific footnotes may create a misleading impression of meticulous scholarship.

Steven Shapin wrote in the same vein in The Scientific Revolution,

In the late Victorian period it was common to write about the “warfare between science and religion” and to presume that the two bodies of culture must always have been in conflict. However, it is a very long time since these attitudes have been held by historians of science.

Numerous other specialists in the field of the history of science and religion concur that the existence of medieval flat-earthers is a myth. Numbers and Lindberg noted in a journal article, “there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference.” In his study of medieval cosmology, God and Reason in the Middle Ages, distinguished historian Edward Grant noted that,

All medieval students who attended a university knew this. In fact any educated person in the Middle Ages knew the earth was spherical, or of a round shape. Medieval commentators on Aristotle’s “On the Heavens” or in the commentaries on a popular thirteenth century work titled “Treatise on the Sphere” by John of Sacrobosco, usually included a question in which they enquired “whether the whole earth is spherical”. Scholastics answered this question unanimously: The earth is spherical or round. No university trained author ever thought it was flat.

Draper’s and White’s books remain widely cited despite being debunked as historically inaccurate. In fact, the kinds of textbooks Katie mentioned have been subject to scathing criticism precisely for making the aforementioned claims. Lawrence S. Lerner, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at California State University who is a member of the panel that wrote the 1990 framework for science education in California’s public schools criticised Pretence Halls history text denouncing it as “ignorant fakery.” In an article entitled “Fake ‘History’ That Is Flatly Wrong,” Lerner described the flat-earth claims as a “popular piece of pseudo historical folklore” he added that it “remains popular today among people who have had little education. These evidently include the people who produce ‘science’ books for Prentice Hall.”

The historical facts are difficult to dispute. During the, so called, “dark ages” Boethius (480-525) cited a well known and accepted ancient Greek cosmological model that affirmed the sphericity of the earth in the Consolidation of Philosophy. Isidore of Serville (560-636) affirmed a round earth in the Etymologies. Bede (672-735) in The Reckoning of Time taught the earth was round; as did Rabanus Marcus in the ninth century.

The late middle-ages are no different. Hemannus Contractus (1013-155) measured the circumference of the world. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) taught the world was round as did John of Sacrbosco (1200-1256) and Peire d’Ailly (1350-1420). Dante’s Divine Comedy portrays the earth as a sphere. In the Summa Theologicae Thomas Aquinas wrote,

The physicist proves the earth to be round by one means, the astronomer by another: for the latter proves this by means of mathematics, e.g. by the shapes of eclipses, or something of the sort; while the former proves it by means of physics, e.g. by the movement of heavy bodies towards the center, and so forth.

Even medieval textbooks taught the world was round. Both the Elucidarium of Honorius Augustodunensis, a twelfth century manual for educating clergy, and On the Sphere of the World, the standard cosmological textbook of medieval universities in the 13^th century, taught that the world was round.

As I have delved into religious history further I have found that this had not been the first or only instance where I was fed false propaganda about Christianity. I could document several other false versions of history; the flat-earth story will suffice for now. As New Zealand blogger Contra Celsum wrote, “the flat earthers are those who think they existed.”

I write a monthly column for Investigate Magazine entitled Contra Mundum. This blog post was published in the December 09 issue and is reproduced here with permission. Contra Mundum is Latin for ‘against the world;’ the phrase is usually attributed to Athanasius who was exiled for defending Christian orthodoxy.

Letters to the editor should be sent to: editorial@investigatemagazine.DELETE.com

Guest Post: Dan Brown’s History of Science

Matt — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:02:20 +0000

This guest post was submitted by Dr James Hannam. Dr Hannam is a UK based historian with degrees in physics and history from the Universities of Oxford and London and a PhD in the history of science from the University of Cambridge. He blogs at Quodlibeta.

The film adaptation of Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons was released this year and, on top of Brown’s new novel, appears to have done a roaring trade. Reports suggest that this is a better effort by director Ron Howard than his The Da Vinci Code, although most critics would feel that making a worse film would have been a stiffer test.

For those lucky enough to be unfamiliar with the book, Angels and Demons is set in Rome where hunky Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, played by Tom Hanks, is trying to prevent the Illuminati from detonating an anti-matter bomb. According to Dan Brown’s alternative view of history, the Illuminati are a secret society of scientists (Copernicus and Galileo were, of course, members) who were persecuted by the Catholic Church. After a great purge in the seventeenth century, we learn, the society went underground and plotted revenge. For some reason, it has taken them over three hundred years to get their act together.

The Da Vinci Code launched the literary careers of a whole faculty previously-obscure professors of New Testament Studies. Admittedly, they had good reason for wanting to put the record straight about Brown’s distortions of early Christian history. This time, it’s historians of science who might be upset by Brown’s misrepresentation. Because his contention that the Catholic Church has spent the last two millennia holding back the advance of science is as wrongheaded as the story that Mrs Jesus retired to the south of France with her kids.

Of course, it’s not just Dan Brown who believes in the battle between science and religion. While few people think that the Illuminati really were a group of scientists suppressed by the Church, the perception of an eternal conflict between reason and faith is widespread. It’s true that the Church did make a single significant mistake in 1616, when it banned Copernicus’s opinion that the earth orbits the sun. But the subsequent trial of Galileo over the issue had more to do with papal self-esteem than astronomy. And even in this case, the Catholic Church was siding with the scientific consensus of the time. Still, you can’t manufacture an eternal conflict from a single example, so proponents of the hypothesis have had to resort to a different strategy – inventing the evidence.

For example, in the book of Angels and Demons, Brown alleges that the Church had Copernicus murdered for his heliocentric model. While this is a more extreme allegation, there is a general belief that Copernicus feared persecution for his ideas. It’s widely thought that he refrained from publishing them until he was on his deathbed. In fact, he had circulated a pamphlet outlining his theory decades before he died. This was favourably received by senior churchmen and he was urged to publish by a cardinal. He even dedicated his great book, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, to the Pope.

Alas, as long as the likes of Dan Brown sell far more books than historians of science, this is a myth that is unlikely to go away.

James Hannam’s book God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science is published by Icon. The best price we could find for it from a New Zealand bookseller, with free delivery, was through The Nile Online Bookstore at the above link. International readers can buy it through Amazon. As I have previously stated elsewhere, it would make a good Christmas gift…

Common Historical Myths About the Church

Matt — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:46:33 +0000

This post is part update, part recycle.

Earlier on in this blog’s life, I ran a small series of posts last year on common historical myths about the Church that are so pervasive in society that most Christians fall for them. Anyway, after receiving some correspondence, I have updated this post, More on the “Dark Ages” and Other Propaganda.

[I hope I am being mysterious enough to make you want to check it out - especially you Bethyada]

Weight Watchers and the Historical Atrocities Argument

Madeleine — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:12:00 +0000

We’ve all heard the slogan that atheism is superior to theism because of all the atrocities committed in the name of religion. If you flick through the pages of the new-atheist publications by the likes of Dawkins, Hitchens, Loftus, Harris, et al you’ll probably find some version of this assertion in each.

Setting aside the dubious factual claims and the fact that I could list a stack of atheist atrocities that could outnumber the theist ones just from the last century alone, there is another way of addressing the slogan. If a person joined Weight Watchers, got the points book, the pamphlets explaining how the program works and began attending weekly meetings to fellowship with others on the same journey but instead of following the instructions began to bend the rules, invent new ones and ignore others and as a result began to gain weight, could that person justifiably claim that Weight Watchers made them fat? That Weight Watchers should be rejected as a weight-loss program, in fact, attempting to lose weight in and of itself is a bad thing, because this person gained weight whilst ostensibly being a follower of the program?

If you can see how ridiculous it would be to blame Weight Watchers and to abandon the pursuit of weight loss because someone who cheated on the program had a bad outcome then why can’t you see it when the same reasoning is applied to atrocities committed in the ‘name of’ Christianity

H/T Rodney Lake at Thinking Matters Tauranga

John Loftus on Madeleine Flannagan and Women and Other Red Herrings

Matt — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:11:00 +0000

A few days ago I posted, Sunday Study: Slavery, John Locke and the Bible; in this post I defended an argument proposed by John Locke that the Bible does not support slavery. In that article I quoted from John Loftus’ book “Why I Became an Atheist” as an example of what is typically meant by slavery when sceptics claim the Bible supports slavery. John Loftus runs the blog Debunking Christianity, is a former preacher and student of William Lane Craig, turned new-atheist. On page 231 of his book, Loftus cites an eyewitness description of a malicious, brutal and bloodthirsty whipping of a female slave that took place in the antebellum south. Immediately after this he asks, “Why didn’t the Christian God ever explicitly and clearly condemn slavery?”

Now by juxtaposing this question next to the description of the beating, Loftus insinuates, that the scriptures explicitly or implicitly condone these sorts of practices. In his book, Loftus reinforces this by noting that,

the Bible was still used by Christians to justify the brutal slavery in the American South. Distinguished Princeton professor Charles Hodge defended American slavery in a 40 page essay written in 1860, just prior to the Civil War.

Here Loftus suggests that Hodge supported the “brutal slavery in the American south” which he had just described, on the same page only a few lines earlier, with his graphic account of a female slave being beaten. In the same paragraph Loftus also refers to the book Slavery Sabbath and War, which summarises various pro-slavery theological arguments to the same effect and then he states, “The Catholic Church didn’t condemn slavery until the year 1888, after the Civil War and after ever other Christian nation had abolished it.” This again suggests that the writers in Slavery Sabbath and War, along with the Catholic Church, all condoned and failed to condemn the practices he refers to.

Now in my post I pointed out that Loftus’ claim that the Bible does not explicitly condemn the kind of practices he describes is mistaken. In the comments thread I also noted his suggestion that Hodge did is also mistaken. Hodge did defend the existence of slavery an as institution, but on page 831 of Cotton is King, the book Loftus himself referred me to, Hodge states that if the bible is used to argue that “slavery as it occurs among us [in the US south]” is sinful, then “he has no objection.” Hodge only objects to the idea that all forms of slavery, including the ebed in scripture, are unjust. On the same page, he states that laws allowing people to beat, harm, kill and starve their slaves are condemned by scripture. A point, Loftus conveniently missed. On the next page, page 832, Hodge again states that it is very plain that the institution which existed in the US was condemned by scripture.

The same is true if one looks at Slavery Sabbath and War. Many of the pro-slavery theologians Loftus referred to, in fact, criticised the abuses that were occurring in their day and suggested these should be condemned.

It is also worth noting, at this juncture, that Loftus’ claim about the Catholic Church has been shown to be false by Rodney Stark. Stark notes that “[the Catholic Church repeatedly condemned slavery] … beginning in 1435 and culminating in three major pronouncements against slavery by Pope Paul III in 1537.” He notes that Pope Eugene IV (1431-1447), Pope Pius II (1458-1464), Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484), Pope Paul III (1534-1549), Pope Urban VIII (1623-1644) issued bulls against slavery; in addition, the Roman Inquisition condemned slavery on 20 March 1686. These condemnations were largely motivated by concerns about new world slavery.

In addition to weighing into the comments, Loftus responded with a post on his own site, Nitpickers Have Started to Attack; this response led with aspersions about my education and intelligence concluding that my comments were “nitpicking” and did not address the real issue. This lead to a response by Glenn Peoples, Skeptics and the annoyance of the little things…. like facts. Glenn noted.

Apparently it’s just in poor taste and really just skirts around the edges to point out that contrary to the claims that some skeptics love to make, the Old Testament does not endorse what we call slavery. But I daresay that annoyance has clouded John’s vision, for what has been shown is that in fact God did condemn kidnapping and/or mistreating people, the very things that Loftus is concerned about and which he is calling “slavery.” it may be irritating to have the rug ripped out from under your argument, but getting annoyed and demanding that people deal with the “main” argument by pretending that the rug is still there (for the sake of your argument and nothing else) is a bit of an ask, don’t you think? Why not just graciously thank the other person for their helpful explanation and remove the argument from your repertoire?

Glenn wasn’t the only person to ask Loftus to respond to the main argument and address the factual claims I had called him on. Loftus’s response to this pressure was to single out the only woman who’d criticised him along the same grounds, Madeleine. He dedicated a post to her, Madeleine Flannagan is Happy to be Treated as Women Were in the Bible!, publicly ridiculing her as “backward thinking,” “incredibly ignorant” quoted her out of context and finished with an aspersion on our marriage:

Here’s exhibit “A” of the backward thinking of some Christians. This is incredibly ignorant:

“So yes, I…am happy to be treated the same way women were in the Bible.” Link

How much more ignorant can someone be? Although, her husband probably likes it!

Of course in the actual comment Madeleine qualified her statement (as the “So yes” will tell any observant reader) and of course Loftus pasted it without this qualification into his own contextual understanding which assumes that his take on the Bible and on its teachings on gender is correct and is what Madeleine meant.

I write this post to demonstrate how some people who pass themselves off as free-thinkers or rationalists are often dogmatic proponents of a secular party-line who will happily ridicule and attack other people personally who question the orthodoxy that they expound even if the facts get in the way.

Madeleine asks that even though Loftus hefted a stone at our marriage that commenters refrain from doing the same in turn.