MandM » Dark Ages

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).

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]

More on the “Dark Ages” and Other Propaganda

Matt — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 08:26:00 +0000

Those of you who have followed my discussions with Peter Cresswell on the history of Christianity and the relationship between faith and reason in the middle ages may find this abridged article by Dr James Hannam interesting. Dr Hannam has recently completed his PhD on the History of Science at the University of Cambridge.

UPDATE:
Dr Hannam emailed me to advise that this article is no longer available online (it had to be removed at his publishers insistence) but is available in full in the book, God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science, which is apparently now available in New Zealand. Bethyada will be interested to hear, “as one of the comments on your blog asked, I have included a discussion of the trebuchet and other weapons developed in the Middle Ages.”

Some reviews:

“A spirited jaunt through centuries of scientific development… captures the wonder of the medieval world: its inspirational curiosity and its engaging strangeness.” Sunday Times

“This book contains much valuable material summarised with commendable no-nonsense clarity… James Hannam has done a fine job of knocking down an old caricature.” Sunday Telegraph

Guess what I’m adding to my Christmas list? …Madeleine…

God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science

Rethinking Science in the Middle Ages
The most famous remark Sir Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) made is, “If I have seen a little further then it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” What most of us assume he meant is that his scientific achievements were built on the discoveries of his predecessors. In the same passage, he alludes to René Descartes (1596 – 1650), the French philosopher and mathematician, so presumably this is one of those whom he meant. Few people realise, however, that Newton’s aphorism was first coined in the twelfth century by the theologian Bernard of Chartres (d. c. 1130). Even fewer are aware that Newton’s science also has its roots embedded firmly in the Middle Ages.

This book will show just how much of the science and technology that we take for granted today has medieval origins.

….

During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church actively supported a great deal of science, which it also kept control of when speculation could impinge on theology. Ironically, by keeping philosophers focused on nature instead of metaphysics, even the limitations that the Church set may have benefited science in the long term. Furthermore and 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 most famous clash between science and religion was the trial of Galileo (1564 – 1642) in 1633. Academic historians are now convinced that this had as much to do with politics and the Pope’s ego as it did with science. I will examine the trial fully in the last chapter of this book when I will also explain how much Galileo himself owed to his medieval predecessors.

….

Popular opinion, journalistic cliché and misinformed historians notwithstanding, recent research has shown that the Middle Ages were a period of enormous advances in science, technology and culture. The compass, paper, printing, stirrups and gunpowder all appeared in Western Europe between AD500 and AD1500.

True, these inventions originated in the Far East, but Europeans developed them to a far higher degree than had happened elsewhere.

….

The development of printing and paper meant that an incredible 20 million books were produced in the first fifty years after Johann Gutenberg had published his printed Bible in 1455. This dwarfed the literary output of the ancient world. Printing probably had an even greater effect than gunpowder, which, like the stirrup before it, revolutionised warfare and allowed Europeans to dominate the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, the people of medieval Europe invented spectacles, the mechanical clock, the windmill and the blast furnace by themselves. Lenses and cameras, almost all kinds of machinery, and the industrial revolution itself all owe their origins to the forgotten inventors of the Middle Ages. Just because we don’t know their names, does not mean that we should not recognise their achievements.

They lived much tougher lives than we do and we are the ones reaping the rewards for their hard work.

Most significantly, the Middle Ages laid the foundation for the greatest achievement of western civilisation, modern science. It is simply untrue to say that there was no science before the ‘Renaissance’. Once medieval scholars got their hands on the work of classical Greeks, they developed systems of thought that allowed science to travel far further than it had in the ancient world. Universities, where academic freedom was guarded against all comers, were first founded in the twelfth century. These institutions have always provided scientific research with a safe home. Even Christian theology turned out to be uniquely suited to encouraging the study of the natural world because it was believed to be God’s creation. Thus, my own research over the last decade has led me to believe that it is a gross injustice to label the Middle Ages as ‘stagnant’, ‘barbaric’, or ‘uncivilised’.

….

Watermills had existed in the ancient world but the Greeks and Romans never adopted them in large numbers. In the Early Middle Ages, they became increasingly common and the Domesday Book lists over 5,000. Tidal mills were adopted on suitable estuaries where a dam harnessed the high tide and released it through a channel containing a watermill. Finally, the first recorded European windmill sprouted in Yorkshire during the twelfth century and the idea quickly spread all over those parts of northern Europe where suitable rivers or estuaries were not available.
Taken together, these improvements in agriculture led to a population explosion. Estimates for the population of France and the Low Countries rise from three million in 650AD to 19 million just before the arrival of the Black Death in 1350AD. For the British Isles, the equivalent figures are 500,000 people and five million. In Europe as a whole, the population increased from less than 20 million to almost 75 million. These figures must be estimates, if not guesstimates, but the upward trend is clear. For comparison, at the height of the Roman Empire about 33 million people lived in Europe. Well before 1000AD, the population far exceeded what is was when the continent was ruled by Rome and remained above that level even after the Black Death had killed a third of the inhabitants of Europe in the fourteenth century.

….

In some ways, the medieval worldview was closer to ours than we sometimes imagine. For example, Gerbert and all his fellow men and women of any education in 1000AD were perfectly well aware that the Earth was a sphere. They also knew that the universe was very large compared to the Earth. As Boethius wrote in his Consolation of Philosophy:
It is well known and you have seen it demonstrated by the astronomers, that in comparison to the extent of the heavens, the circumference of the earth has the size of a point. That means that, compared to the heavenly sphere, the earth may be thought of as having no size at all.
Comments we hear today about people in the Middle Ages inhabiting a ‘poky little universe’ or believing that the Earth is flat are born of modern rather than medieval ignorance.

….

Another modern misconception about the medieval worldview is that people thought the central position of the Earth meant that it was somehow exulted. In fact, to the medieval mind, the reverse was the case. The universe was a hierarchy and the further from the Earth you got, the closer to Heaven you came. At the centre, underneath our feet, the Christian tradition placed Hell. Then, second worse only to the infernal pit was our Earth of change and decay. Above us, acting as a boundary between the earthly and the heavenly, was the sphere of the Moon. This marked the dividing line between the perfect unchanging heavens and the transient sub-lunar region containing ourselves, doomed to die. Next, there were the crystalline spheres of the seven planets – the Moon, the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – eternally orbiting with uniform circular motion. The spheres were thought to be made of a transparent and imperishable fifth element called ether or quintessence. Above them were the fixed stars whose positions relative to each other never appeared to change. Above even them was the firmament and beyond that, Christians like Gerbert imagined, was the realm of God. This hierarchical system gave people absolute directions of up and down, one towards the heavens and one down to Earth at the bottom of the celestial ladder. To move the Earth away from the centre of the universe was not to downgrade its importance but to raise it up towards the stars.

The “Dark Ages” and Other Propaganda

Matt — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:15:00 +0000

Perhaps I am a glutton for punishment, but I have been having an interesting dialogue with Peter Cresswell about the history of theology.

To sum up PC follows the 20th century novelist Ayn Rand. Rand’s followers view Aristotle as the “father of the enlightenment,” they appear to hold a view of history that is extremely common in popular history. The story goes like this: prior to the rise of Christianity was the “classical period” where science and reason flourished among the ancient Greek thinkers (of which Aristotle is the par excellence). This learning was extinguished by the rise of Christianity, which hated reason and science in favour of a superstitious faith. This brought about a period called the ‘dark ages’ where all progress and science were suppressed. The discovery of Aristotle’s works in the late middle ages changed this, people began following reason again and as a result liberated themselves from the shackles of dark age superstitions most notably Christianity. It was this liberation from religious superstition that brought about the rise of science, a rise contested unsuccessfully by the Church, which resulted in the enlightenment where secularism prevailed. Such things as liberty and freedom come from the enlightenment, not from Christianity, which opposed it.

I have maintained for some time now that this story is mistaken and based on simplistic and often caricatured readings of the history of theology. PC on the other hand demurs, he thinks this is clearly true and anyone who thinks otherwise is simply spouting religious propaganda. The exchange is below. PC’s comments are in italics my responses follow each one.

1. You see, at the root of the Enlightenment was the knowledge that reason is capable of explaining existence — that is, that reason is our means of acquiring knowledge, and it is knowledge of this world, not of the next one. Knowledge of nature, not of “super-nature,” is that promotes life on earth.

Actually, no. Many of the major enlightenment figures did not limit reason to nature. Descartes’ defended the ontological argument, Locke, defended Christianity and theism and in fact his epistemology was motivated by the desire to be able to come to correct conclusions about God (this is according to what his friend wrote on one of the earliest manuscripts of Locke’s essay). Berkley was a theist who wanted to refute materialism, Hume’s religious affinities are a matter of debate but many view him as a theist or deist. Reid was a Presbyterian minister who wanted to use reason to fight skepticism about religion. Berkley defended the ontological and cosmological arguments and used reason to develop a theodicy. Kant wanted to make room for faith and immortality and defended the moral argument. Newton’s preface states that his basis for adopting the scientific method was theological (and anti-Aristotelian btw) and he developed his physics, in part, to defend the existence of God. I could go on.

Moreover, one of the major problems with the epistemology of the enlightenment (known as classical foundationalism) is that it had trouble providing a basis for knowledge of an external world. This is a central issue in Descartes through to Locke, Berkley, Hume, Reid, etc. Locke believed that much of what we perceive are secondary qualities, created by our mind. Hume took the skepticism to its conclusion. Berkley, Reid and Descartes appealed to theology to solve these skeptical problems. Kant used this skepticism to defend theology.

2. The fact is that since the rediscovery of Aristotle’s writings, the Church has sought to reconcile reason and mysticism, and to appropriate the pagan Aristotle as some sort of patron saint.

Actually the project of using reason to defend, develop and refine faith predates Aristotle and goes all the way back to Philo of Alexandria. Then there are the early Church fathers like Justin (a Greek philosopher), Origen, Athanasius, Augustine, Athenagoras, Clement, Gregory of Nazianius, Basil, to name a few. Moreover, classical Greek philosophy and learning was promoted prior to Aquinas by people like Boethius, Isidore, Anselm, Bede, Peter Damian, Abelard and so on. Some early Christian thinkers were hostile to Greek Philosophy or hostile to it in certain contexts but many were not and the suggestion that the anti-philosophy camp was main-stream is simply false.

3 Aristotle’s method of observation-based rationality was so utterly at odds with the religionist thinking that had dominated the Dark Ages, and was responsible for those Ages being Dark, that they struck even religious thinkers like a bombshell when they were rediscovered after a millennia of darkness.

Wrong again, Numbers and Lindberg note that recent historical research suggests that this portrayal of the early middle ages as “the dark ages” is a caricature. (David C Lindberg “The Medieval Church Encounters the Classical Tradition: Saint Augustine, Roger Bacon and the Handmaiden Metaphor” in When Science & Christianity Meet, ed. David C. Lindberg & Ronald L. Numbers (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003) 7-8). A conclusion shared by the studies of Henri Pirenne (A History of Europe from the End of the Roman World in the West to the Beginning of Western States, (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1958)) and Marc Bloch (Feudal Society, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1961)) and Richard Hodge (“The Not So Dark Ages,” Archaeology 51 (September/October 1998).

Contemporary encyclopaedias bear this out; the 1975 New Columbia Encyclopaedia states that the term “dark ages” is no longer used by historians because this period is “no longer thought to have been so dim.’ Similarly the Encyclopaedia Britannica states the term “dark ages” is “now rarely used by historians because of the unacceptable value judgment it implies,” the term “dark ages” incorrectly implies this was “a period of intellectual darkness and barbarity.”

3 [W]hen the works of Aristotle—the master of natural science and secular philosophy—were rediscovered in 12th-century Islamic Spain, it is no mystery that Western European thinkers—after centuries of suppression and penury.

Actually the suppression of heretical views rarely occurred in the, so called, dark ages. The early church supported freedom of religion until the fifth century when Augustine reluctantly supported suppression of the dontatists. Some Roman emperors put in place laws against heresy which were enforced sporadically in the late roman period (often with protests from the church) but these laws fell out of use and were not enforced in the period mistakenly called the dark ages.

It was not until after the ‘dark ages’ that heresy was suppressed by Inquisitional courts. In fact it was the heavily Aristotelian Dominican order which carried this suppression out and who justified it. This is all well documented in Joseph Lecler Toleration and the Reformation, trans. by TL Weslow (New York: Association Press, 1960); Edward Peter’s, Inquisition, (London: Collier Macmillan, 1981) and also by Stark (For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

4. In fact the the scientific revolution came about because of a rejection of the Church’s intellectual domination.

The thesis that the Church for centuries consistently suppressed science and prevented its flourishing (known as the conflict thesis) originates in two works, John Draper’s History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874) and Andrew Dickson White in his book A History of The Warfare Between Science and Theology in Christendom. The conflict thesis is now widely rejected by historians of science. Several people such as Stanley Jaki, (The Road to Science and the Ways to God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)); Alfred Whitehead, (Science and the Modern World (New York: Macmillan, 1925); Peire Duhem, (L’Aube du savoir: épitomé du système du monde (histoire des doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic), ed. Anastasios Brenner, Paris, Hermann, selections from Duhem 1913-59). Michael Foster (“The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the rise of Modern Natural Science,” Mind 43 (1934), 446–468 “Christian Theology and Modern Science of Nature (I)” Mind 44 (1935) 439–466; “Christian Theology and Modern Science of Nature (II)” Mind 45 (October, 1936), 1–27. Also, Reijer Hookykaas (Religion and the Rise of Modern Science (Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans, 1972) and Stark have all called this thesis into question and argued that Christian ways of understanding lead to the rise of Science.

Other’s, most notably Numbers and Lindberg, while not wanting to defend the claim that Christianity fostered the rise of Science, also question the conflict thesis. In an anthology they edited, entitled God and Nature, Numbers and Lindberg suggest a more nuanced thesis; that the relationship between theology and science has been too complex over the ages for either generalisation to be correct.

However both schools, as far as I can tell, reject Whites work as a piece of propaganda. As Collin Russel 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.” (“The Conflict of Science and Religion” in The Encyclopedia of the History of Science and Religion, New York 2000). John Hedley Brooke, the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford, writes in Science and Religion – Some Historical Perspectives (1991), “In its traditional forms, the [conflict] thesis has been largely discredited”. Similarly, Edward Grant Professor Emeritus of the History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University writes, “If revolutionary rational thoughts were expressed in the Age of Reason [the 18th century], they were only made possible because of the long medieval tradition that established the use of reason as one of the most important of human activities” In the same vein Steven Shapin Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego writes, “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.”

5. Need I mention Galileo? That Galileo saw Aristotle as an adversary was wholly due to the Church’s appropriation of The Philsopher, but in evey important respect Galileo’s method of observation-based rationality was Aristotle’s, whether Galileo knew it or not.

Actually the Galileo example does not fit PC’s picture. As William Shea notes Galileo was part of a Platonic revival in Florence. (“Galileo and the Church” in Ronald Numbers and David Lindberg (eds). God and Nature Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science ( Berkley: University of California Press, 1986) 124). He rejected an Aristoleian view of science in favour of a more Platonic view. As a result, Stillman Drake (Galileo (Oxford: Oxford University Press)) notes that Galileo’s strongest opponents were supporters of Aristotle and it was more his calling into question Aristotle that got him into trouble than his disagreements with the Church.

Interestingly, the Copernican theory that the earth revolves around the sun originates with fourteenth century theologians Burdian and Nicolas d’Oresme; their theories were based in part on Theological condemnations of Aristotelian Philosophy that had occurred in the previous century.

Finally Galileo in developing his views followed the teachings on religion and science propounded by “dark age” writer Augustine of Hippo.

Its amusing to see PC cite a Platonist anti-Aristotelian thinker persecuted by the Aristotelian scientists for following the views of science and religion expounded by a “dark age” philosopher as evidence that Aristotelian ways of thinking liberated science from the shackles of platonist and “dark age” theologians.

6. Newton is not revered for his mystic rambklings or his alchemy; he is revered because his physics integrated and explained such a wealth of actual observations of reality.

Newton’s physics in fact were based on the theological voluntarism of the late middle ages which rejected Aristotelian theories on the ground that God, being sovereign, freely choose the create the world. This is evident from the preface of Newton’s Principia.

7. Locke is revered not for wanting to exclude Catholics from the throne and supporting the suppression of atheists, but for explaining that the protection of individual rights is the only legitimate job of governments, and explaining and integrating the method by which individual rights are best protected.

Actually Locke’s argument in the The Two Treatises of Government is very different from this. Unlike so many Libertarians I encounter I have actually read the book several times. Locke, in fact, grounds rights not in the sovereignty of the individual but in the sovereignty of God. Moreover, his moral theory is based on the voluntarist accounts of natural law which were developed in opposition to Aristotelian natural law theory and which were based on theological concerns about Aristotle limiting God’s freedom and omnipotence.

8. Ockham and Scotus and Albertus Magnus are properly revered not because they were Christians, but for their enormous contributions to the popularisation of logic and reason in an age of Christian darkness.

Actually none of these thinkers lived in the so called “dark ages;” the first two you mention lived in the the later Middle Ages. Moreover, Scotus and Ockham in fact were voluntarists. Voluntarism was a movement based in part on the theological condemnations the Church had made of Aristotle. As Edward Grant notes, in many cases what we see is not Aristotle bringing light to a superstitious church but a Church offering theologically based objections to Aristotle and the scientific progress being the result of attempts to find theologically acceptable alternatives to Aristotle.

9. Aquinas is revered not because he was part of the newly founded the Dominican Order set up to combat heresy in Europe, but because he opened the door to intellectual freedom in the west, however inadvertently.

Unfortunately, again the facts do not support this. During the “dark ages” the official policy towards Jews pagans and heretics was de facto tolerance. As I noted most of the early church supported freedom of religion. It was the later middle ages which saw the establishment of Inquisitions to prosecute heresy. Interestingly, Aquinas supported these Inquisitions and used his Aristotelian reason to defend them. However, Aquinas did support tolerating Jews and non-believers citing the authority of “dark age” theologians for support of his position.

***

Ironically when I broached some of these issues, one of PC’s supporters has stated that people like me are analogous to “communists” and not worth reasoning with. I leave my readers to ponder who here represents the stereotyped categories of “the dark ages” versus the “enlightenment.”

The Flat Earth Myth

Matt — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 22:17:00 +0000

A few days ago I got sent the following message 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 Joy~

This was in response to a comment I made online, I had I criticised the popular claim that prior to the time of Columbus, the Church taught the world was flat. In another post on this blog I have criticised Victoria University for making a similar claim as part of it’s advertising campaigns.

For our overseas visitors, last year Victoria University had a slick advertising campaign where it is stated that in the 14th century most people believed the world was flat. It then showed a picture of a boat sailing across the sea only to fall over the side of the earth.

We have all heard the story behind this; prior to Columbus, the Church and it’s 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.

Katie is correct; they do teach this in high school text books. I was taught it repeatedly at primary and high school. In fact not too long ago Pretence Hall published claims to this effect in a middle school textbook Prentice Hall Earth Science. I have heard the story repeated ad nauseam. Normally when I contest it’s veracity I get an incredulous stare (as if I were, in fact, asserting that the earth was flat) “Come on Matt, everyone knows this story is true, didn’t you learn this at school?”

Well, yes I did learn it but I also took the time to research the history of theology when I was at university. What they don’t tell you in high school is that this claim is false. 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, he summarises his findings here. However, the same thing is uttered in many studies on medieval science. For example, Edward Grant in his work notes that “there is no mention of a flat earth in any medieval writings, except for a few references to refute it.”

Even Wikipedia, not known for its ability to rise above popular anti-religious prejudice, concedes,

Today essentially all professional medievalists agree with Russell that the “medieval flat Earth” is a nineteenth-century fabrication, and that the few verifiable “flat Earthers” were the exception.

Interestingly, Wikipedia does not point to a medieval scholar who was one of these “verifiable “flat earthers” and its section on the Middle ages ends with the following conclusion.

A recent study of medieval concepts of the sphericity of the Earth noted that “since the eighth century, no cosmographer worthy of note has called into question the sphericity of the Earth. Of course it was probably not the few noted intellectuals who defined public opinion. It is difficult to tell what the wider population may have thought of the shape of the Earth – if they considered the question at all.

Yes, what the school textbooks teach is wrong. In fact the kinds of textbooks Katie mentions have been subject to scathing criticism in the literature. Lawrence S. Lerner a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at California State and director of The Textbook League University and a member of the panel that wrote the 1990 framework for science education in California’s public schools criticised Pretence Halls text denouncing it as “ignorant fakery.” He goes on state,

The flat-Earth story quickly became a popular piece of pseudo historical folklore, and it remains popular today among people who have had little education. These evidently include the people who produce “science” books for Prentice Hall.” [we kiwis can add that it includes the advertising staff at Victoria university]

The facts are very different. Here are just a few: during the so called dark ages Boethius (480-525) in the Consolidation of Philosophy cited a well known and accepted ancient Greek cosmological model which affirmed the sphericity of the earth. Isidore of Serville, (560-636) published in the Etymologies, affirmed a round earth. Bede (672-735) in his, The Reckoning of Time, taught the earth is round; as did Rabanus Marcus in the ninth century.

The late middle ages are no different. Hemannus Contractus (1013-155), in fact, 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 in 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.

In fact, medieval textbooks taught the world was round. 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 thirteenth century both taught that the world was round.

When I began studying philosophy and theology at University I was literally shocked to discover this. One of the reasons I despise public schools is because they repeated lied to me about things like this. This is not the first or only instance where I was fed false propaganda about Christianity at high school. I could document several other instances; the flat earth story will suffice for now. The point is that state institutions affirm falsehoods about the history of religion and teach propaganda for history.

The fact that a state University, like Victoria, should perpetuate discredited slander as part of its advertising campaign to obtain higher learning about the arts is appalling. One would have thought this institution imparts knowledge, not fraudulent anti-Christian propaganda.