This is the fourth of a series of redirects from previous static web pages from which I had written book reviews. Wizard
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January 6, 2004: The Closing of the Western Mind - The Rise of Faith and The Fall of Reason by Charles Freeman.
Bear in mind while you read this review that I am an agnostic.
Charles Freeman has written a book about an extraordinarily important historical matter, one that is almost always glossed over in the history books. That question is, Why was it that Europe went through a 1000 year period known as the Dark Ages, and later the Middle Ages, between the Fall of Rome and the Renaissance?
Although I love reading history just as much as the next history buff over, I had never seriously considered what the real answer to this question might have been. For years, I assumed that a standard answer (if there is one) to this question would have been something like this: Rome was sacked in 410 A.D. (and again in 476 A.D.), and with it books were burned by a bunch of barbarians like the Huns, Goths, and Visigoths who were not accustomed to living a cultured life the way that the Greeks and Romans were. Ergo, the wealthy and civilized Roman Empire in the West faded into memory, and its cultural achievements were not appreciated by those who came thereafter, learning didn't pick up again for a 1000 years.
Buzzer goes off. AAAAA wrong!
Actually, I was kinda sorta close in a few regards. In his book, Freeman leads the reader through the classical Greek age of the competitive city states. He relates how the Greek civilization of the 5th century B.C fostered a remarkable culture and spirit of tolerating intellectual inquiry into every sphere of human interest. This went for the sciences, math, philosophy, rhetoric, religion, and architecture. Indeed, there was something of an atmosphere of one upsmanship and competitiveness amongst the Greek intellectuals which would accept the achievements of the great, while trying to improve on previous achievements.
Meanwhile, another aspect of Greek civilization and rationality asserted itself. The Greeks, especially Aristotle, denoted boundaries between what was knowable and would could not be known. They ascertained and denoted the ideas of deductive and inductive reasoning. They also tolerated inquiry while remaining pious to religious (and to remind the reader that the Greeks were pagan) tenants. There was tolerance between Muthos and Logos. This spirit of inquiry survived through the age of Philip of Macedonia and his son Alexander "the Great," and eventually spread to other areas of the classical world where Greeks eventually settled, such as Alexandria and Sicily.
The Romans picked up on this spirit of the Greeks when they conquered the Greek peninsula before the coming of Christ. I've read elsewhere the when the Romans encountered the classical Greek culture, they were definitely had their eyes opened. Some aspects of Greek life, such as participating in sporting events in the nude were abhorred, but Romans loved rhetoric (think Cicero), and added their own achievements, such as road building, public baths, and architecture. Scientists such as Ptolemy continued to make advances in fields such as astronomy.
Moreover, in the sphere of religion, the Romans were as tolerant as the Greeks about the faiths of conquered peoples. Deities were swapped and matched between faiths, and faiths such as Mithraism were widespread. However, one faith that was founded during this time was not tolerant of others - Christianity.
Freeman's book lays the downfall of inquiry and reason in the Roman world at the feet of Christianity. Mind you, it was not the teachings of Jesus Christ that were to blame for this. Jesus, being without sin, preached in his ministry the message of love, forgiveness, charity, and walked with sinners and the downtrodden. The stellar ethics of Jesus were those of Excellence. They were worthy of one whom could be a Son of God.
Freeman blames much of what turned into what we know of as Christianity today at the feet of the apostle Paul. He points out that Paul had a bit of a precarious position amongst the early Church leaders, as Paul did not have personal knowledge of Jesus the way that Peter and others had. Freeman characterizes Paul as someone who seems uncomfortable with sexuality, to which this day is still a hot button issue in both Protestant and Roman Catholic faiths. Also, Freeman believes that when Paul went on his ministry to spread the Good Word, he eventually reaches Athens, where Freeman thinks that Paul may have taken an intellectual beating at the hands of the wise and learned in the Great City. Freeman thinks that this leads to Paul articulating a strain of thought within Christianity that frowns on the thinking of human philosophers. Better to not strain the brain about the world around you. Place your trust in God as man will not profit from inquiring too harshly of the world around us. Indeed St. Augustine warns of and condemns the "dangers" of having a mind of curiosity in his Confessions, written some 400 years later.
Two other major developments warrant mention. The first is that eventually the emperor Constantine makes the decision to adopt Christianity as the state religion in the year AD 323. Freeman characterizes this decision as one of pragmatism on the part of Constantine, who is trying to keep the empire together. Indeed paganism continued to flourish for some time.
However, the early Christian Church was a church that was plagued with many internecine wars. These wars were due to the fact that an entire swath of ideas and versions of Christianity had sprung up in the centuries that followed the death and resurrection of Christ. Writings and movements, such as the Gnostic Gospels, Arianism, and Donatism all had wide followings. Eventually accusations of heresy were tossed between the followers of various Church movements, which threatened the stability of the Church and broader social stability within the Empire. Added to this potent stew of social unrest was the fact that after Christianity was adopted as the state religion, there was money to be made via patronage. Eventually, various emperors in the later days of the Empire step in to enforce their own version of orthodoxy in an effort to quiesce matters.
All of these matters combine eventually to stifle the atmosphere of tolerance that was needed to sustain the freedom of inquiry that is so crucial to progress in other forms of human endeavor. Reason was squashed in favor of Faith. In all, Freeman's book is a must read for non - academic students of history.
Addendum: In one of my earliest blog entries, I exchanged emails with Mr. Freeman, which he allowed me to publish.
Wizard.
As noted earlier, this blog entry is part of an ongoing redirection of old static web pages of book reviews. Wizard.
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Febuary 1, 2004
It took me about 2 weeks to get through Elaine Pagels' 1979 academic smash, The Gnostic Gospels. It wasn't because the book is long. At 151 pages, it isn't. It mainly had to do with the fact that I had other things going on, which made my reading of this book come in fits and starts.
Pagels, a professor of Religion at Princeton University, is famous for having written a series of book length studies having to do with the the discovery of the so - called, Nag Hammadi books, after the area in which these documents were discovered. Pagels starts off The Gnostic Gospels by telling the riveting story of how in December 1945, an Egyptian peasant named Muhammad Ali al - Samman discovered a meter high jar while out in the desert. Inside were 13 papyrus books that were bound with leather. He took them home and laid them on the ground next to the family's oven. His mother later admitted that she burned much of the papyrus in the oven along with straw to kindle fires.
Reading that fact makes one's heart sink after finding out what was on those rolls of papyrus. For indeed, amongst the texts were such priceless writings such as, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Phillip, the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel to the Egyptians, the Secret Book of James, the Apocalypse of Paul, the Letter of Peter to Phillip, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Gospel of Mary, the Secret Book of John, amongst many other texts. They were written in Coptic, the language of Egyptian Christians, and were probably translations of earlier Greek writings. Pagels later writes that scholar Frederik Wisse has suggested that monks in the nearby monastary of St. Pachomius may have had the Nag Hammadi texts within their Devotional library. In 367, when Athanasius, the Archbishop of Alexandria sent orders that "apocryphal books" should be purged, the St. Pachomius monks may have hidden the books and buried them on the nearby cliffs, only to be found 1600 years later.
Nearly as insane was the political and academic wars which were set off by the discovery of these texts. The Egyptian government claimed control of the texts, which had leaked onto the black market. Meanwhile, scholars battled for access to the Gnostic Gospels, which they recognized would make their careers. Reading this early part of Pagel's book easily beats anything found in a Hollywood film.
Pagels divides The Gnostic Gospels into six chapters, each pertaining to important questions which the Gospels raise about the early Christian Church. The texts raise questions over whether the death and resurrection of Jesus should be viewed historically or symbolically. There were battles over what the roles of an institutionalized church and its officially ordained bishops should play in guiding faith. There clashing views over the role of women in the faith and the church. The early members of the Church was often persecuted. Should believers be martyrs, or should they spare themselves? What is evil? Is the faith one of self knowledge and the pursuit of spiritual self discovery, or is it a faith where you share your beliefs and participate in a wider community? Pagels' book shows that there were many, many sharp dividing issues which split the Christian church in its first 400 years.
Pagels also believes that the institutionalized church is what preserved the faith. Otherwise, the teachings of Christ may well have fallen by the wayside, as have the teachings of so many other faiths throughout history. She goes on to give other reasons why the Catholic Church prevailed over the Gnostic teachings. Among them are ideas such as the issue that the Catholic faith was non - discriminatory in whom it taught, whereas some Gnostics were very judgmental in whom they believed were ready to receive teaching. Also, the Catholic faith tried to make the faith touch you, whereas the Gnostic teachings required more of an effort on the part of believers.
Pagels shows what kinds of heretical charges were tossed between Gnostics and the Catholics. She goes on with this issue, showing that it was quite probable that heretical charges - and what types of heretical charges - were often tied to the political and social situations in which theologians found themselves in.
The Nag Hammadi texts have reopened an entire Pandora's box of questions regarding the followers and teachings of Christ. Pagels points out that it is rather extraordinary that these texts were found in our time, which is one of atheism, agnosticism, and belief in man's power. It would have been an entirely different story if these texts had been found 1,000 years ago. In all, Pagels has written an admirable introductory book to subject that should fascinate all open minded people, the subject of the foundations of Christianity.
I am wishing everyone out there a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
The Wizard is celebrating some of his 2007 Christmas by doing a bit of site clean up. Notably some static web pages that I have had hanging out there for years, and which look as though they were created in 1997, are being redirected to my blog page. Hence, the next 5 entries to be found here are redirects from elsewhere.
Enjoy!
March 27, 2004
Some time in 2002 or 2003, I was at home one evening watching The History Channel on television, when a curious television program came on. The program was entitled A History of God. Broadly speaking, the program was essentially about how our ideas of God have taken shape over time and what forces may have been involved in how the process took place. Being the history buff that I am, I was absolutely spell bound by both the subject matter and by the things that some of the people who appeared on the program had to say. In particular, there was one dignified British woman by the name of Karen Armstrong who enunciated some fascinating thoughts about the matter of God, and how our concepts of the Divine have both stayed stable and how they have evolved. The program mentioned that Ms. Armstrong, a former nun but who is now practicing writer / journalist, was the author of a book called "A History of God," so I wrote down this information and promptly headed over to a nearby bookstore to hunt down the book.
As for the book itself, I've read a lot of books in my life, but A History of God is a challenge to read. The paperback version of Armstrong's tome tops off at 399 pages, with another 60 pages of definitions, citations, notes and bibliography thrown in for good measure.
The book is composed of 11 chapters. The book's first 5 chapters start, as one might imagine, at the beginning of faith, and take the reader through the time of Muhammad. All of this was worth reading. However, in chapters 6 - 7 (and part of chapter 8), she writes about how God became the God of the philosophers and mystics during the era of the Middle Ages. This part of the book proved to be rather difficult to read because there are a few times where she - in a sense - repeats herself because by this time, many of the ideas of God that our ancestors had are now familiar to the reader. The book does pick up towards the end when in the last 2 - 3 chapters, she starts to approach more recent centuries. She begins to write about the rise of human rationalism and science. Topics like the "death of God," what ideas may we have about God in the future, or whether God even has a future are examined.
This is a difficult book to review, not because the topic is difficult, but because it is hard to distill so many ideas and thoughts into a relatively short review that touches on the many topics and ideas in this book. I may find that I might rewrite this book review sometime in the future in order to encompass matters I might have missed, or to extend the review so that I write more about the last half of the book.
I should clarify what I mean by the book being a challenge to read. The book is in fact quite readable and quite extraordinary. Ms. Armstrong has a gift of being able to delineate and get to the root of some complicated matters involving monotheism (the book does touch on Buddhism and Hindu ideas too), and do so in a way that a layman can grasp. Where the book becomes a challenge is that the reader has to make sure that he / she is staying alert and following along with the vast, ongoing train of Ms. Armstrong's great story. Readers encounter many personages, nation states, conceptual ideas, and conflicts that Ms. Armstrong covers in the course of this book. For example, at different times in history, men of different times and places have reached similar ideas about God, but in order to remember who had reached these ideas before, one has to look back at who had reached such conclusions before and why they had come to these conclusions. I found that in order to really get the most out of this book, I had to reread the book a second time and take notes in order to keep track of everything.
Armstrong starts the book off with her own story of her religious and spiritual journey. She clearly had some experiences that I think most people can smile at. For example, she writes about how easy it is for most people to conceive of Satan, but how are we to conceive of God? Or, for that matter, isn't the majesty of God supposed to be inconceivable to begin with?
I myself went to a parochial school growing up and I had to chuckle at Ms. Armstrong's efforts to "find God" when she was a nun. We all know full well that Satan is a red colored fellow with horns, but are we supposed to think of God as some huge, old, bearded fellow with a book that has everyone's name in it. Doesn't God look down on us from the heavens, waiting for us to die so that He can look at our report card and check off whether we are allowed into Heaven? Well gentle readers, things are not quite so simple in this world, and I'm sure things aren't so simple in the next one either!
There have been many theories about the origins of religion, but Armstrong writes about the idea that the ancients may have had ideas about religion because they may have been trying to deal with issues of the Unseen. She writes that what makes religious belief come alive for people is that religion works for them. Ideas and thoughts that may be relevant at one point in time might very well make little sense years later. People are spiritual animals, Armstrong points out that there are other ways in which we can have deeply meaningful experiences other than those experienced by religious belief.
Armstrong writes about the influence of Babylonian and Sumerian gods and their influence on monotheism. The Babylonians (and later the Greeks) thought that gods were not distant, unaccessible, or shut off from humanity. Ergo there was not any need for revelation. Faith wasn't something intellectual, or organized into Dogmas. Rather faith for the ancients was something that was held because the God Yahweh (or any other belief that was held) made good on his / her promises. Because of this view about faith, the Israelites had quite a struggle trying to let go of their old deities like Baal, and embrace Yahweh.
The God Yahweh was, as many Christians know, a jealous God. He (Armstrong traces how God became a "He"), also is a partisan God. Yes, Old Testament incarnations of Yahweh were later to be a source of frustration and consternation to later Jews and Christians. Similarly, the Unmoved First Mover of Plato and Aristotle seemed to many to be elitist. Later admirers of Greek thought, including educated Muslims and Jews, were to admit this. There must be some kind of Anthropormophism in religion, because we won't be able to identify with any faith that doesn't have such an element in it.
Religious faith needs to be effective in order to be successful, writes Armstrong. We watch while as the Israelites are overrun and exiled to Babylon, Yahweh makes a transformation. Yahweh becomes a Mover of History. Even enemies of the Israelites are His instruments. And yet, God relies on Man to act in the world, which became an important idea in Judiasm.
Later, we see the encounter of Greek philosophy with the Jewish faith. Armstrong devotes an entire chapter to the coming of the New Messenger, Jesus of Nazareth. She writes about the slow development of the concept that Jesus was Divine, which takes place over the next four centuries. She writes about the theological struggles that took place in early Christianity as Christian thinkers from all over the Roman empire battled to come up with a "workable" theology of The Trinity, which could encompass the story of Jesus and how Jesus the Man could also Divine.
Some interesting issues that Armstrong writes about were about how Jews, who used to be proselytizers of their faith, stopped doing so. This was because groups of monotheists, called God Fearers, who did not want to adapt all of the "baggage" of Judiasm, such as diet and various Laws, eventually convert to the new Christian faith. Jews became much more suspicious of converts. There were many converts to the new faith, but in the early centuries, such people were often slaves or lower classed people. What Armstrong believes brought "socially better off" people towards Christianity was the impressive social welfare efforts of the Church, as well as the intellectual efforts on the part of some educated Romans to expound on the new faith. Eventually of course, Constantine makes Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire.
Armstrong also delves into the difficult legacy that St. Augustine left Christianity, especially regarding the roles of women and sexuality. Of course, this was only part of St. Augustine's legacy. St. Augustine was having to deal with the world shaking fact that Rome herself had been sacked by barbarians in the year 410 A.D. This event literally marked the end of the empire, and nobody knew what was going to come next. His great polemic, The City of God, was partly written to answer the charge made by pagans that Rome had abandoned her earlier gods, which had protected her for over 1100 years. It was when the new God had been adapted, so went the thought, that Rome fell.
Another strong area of the book revolves around the story of Muhammad. She writes about the changes that were going on in Muhammad's world, and about how the Last Prophet, who had never read the Bible, nor had ever heard of any of the Patriarchs, ended up having a story that nearly parallels the stories of all of the previous Prophets and Messengers of God. She writes about the political genius of Muhammad, who managed to weave together a workable faith that synthesized the traditional laws and customs of Arabian tribes, along with a strong element of togetherness. His message was that all men were the same before the One God. All peoples of God, including Jews and Christians, were to be seen as brothers. This chapter is a must read for anyone.
The story of Muhammad reminds me that one of the strongest points of this book is that it gives just enough insight into the character of each and every person who makes an appearance to make the book nearly as much a history of religious figures as it is a history of God. There are many more figures in the later half of the book. I will not write about the last half of the book because that would make this review twice as long as it already is. I hope that reading this review will give you enough of a feel about what the book is like to read. I may add a "part II" to this review in the future.
If that is not enough for you, I will end this book review with one last story. I purchased two additional copies of this book for two co - workers who were the type of people who I thought would be interesting in reading Ms. Armstrong's book. One of my co - workers was a girl, a college student in her early 20's, who happens to be from a practising Muslim family. She told me that this book just absolutely blew her away and that this was one of the best books she has ever read! She told me that her father, who is a highly educated man, saw her copy of this book and immediately stole the book out of her backpack! She told me that her father was so amazed and enthralled by this book that he would not give the book back to her so she could finish it. This book was a New York Times best seller and the Wizard highly recommends that you find yourself a copy and see for yourself why this is so.
Wizard.
It was front page news the Wednesday before Thanksgiving on Houston's paper of note that Archbishop Daniel DiNardo will be vested into the College of Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church. Somehow it seems appropriate that the good Father will receive his appointment into the august body the weekend after that most American of holidays.
I was raised in a house of Protestant Lutherans. I was an occasional church goer as a kid, but I've had many people tell me that despite my cranky acerbic attitude towards a lot of things that I really am a sweet heart. So my religious upbringing might have done some good after all.
But one thing that attending 9 years of Lutheran school, nor 4 years of public high school tell me was that all that schooling really didn't give me a truly rounded understanding of things like faith and how religious beliefs had riveted human societies from time immemorial. It wasn't until I had gone through some long conversations with some of my school friends (who were raised Catholic), had watched some amazing History Channel programs, had traveled to other parts of the world, and done an enormous amount of reading on the ideas and doctrines of religious faith that I truly began to understand what the Roman Catholic Church meant to the world and why it is the way it is today. So I write this entry about Archbishop DiNardo's elevation to the Cardinal hood as a somewhat interested outsider, a wide ranging and curious layman if you will.
I have no special insider knowledge of the the ideas, troubles, or counsels of the Catholic Church of today. For some, most likely very secular lawyers, the Church has been only of interest when the some sexual abuse scandal erupts. For others the Church is a target of historical anger, whether because of forced conversions to the Catholic faith from their own indigenous beliefs or because of the Crusades it led to recapture the Holy Land. But what many people short change or overlook is the quiet piece of mind the Church has given literally billions of people over the past 2,000 years. It may never cross the minds of the Church's detractors of the countless newborn or infant children who were left abandoned to die by anguished parents, but were rescued by the Church believers. Even to this day, by the Church's own account the American branch of the faith alone assists more than 7 million people. Despite what many readers of this blog might imagine, I would far rather have dinner with someone like Cardinal DiNardo than with any computer programmer or politician.
So what to make of the Archbishop's promotion to the College of Cardinals? Well, what is of interest is that the College itself was expanded by Pope John Paul II when he was alive to 120 members (others say 180). The Catholic Church of America has some 70 million members, but already has 13 ordained Cardinals. Considering that this hoary Church has over 1 billion adherents, and that it becomes quickly clear that America is overrepresented in the College of the Cardinals and Europe is even more so.
Does this lack of democratic representative fairness matter? Well, one could argue both yes and no. The Cardinals choose who shall be the Pope, who in turn chooses who shall be in the College of the Cardinals. The yes side of the democratic fairness argument says that the Eurocentric focus of the Cardinals detracts from where the attention of the church should be, while the no argument says that Pope Benedict has made it expressedly clear that a substantial focus of his papacy is going to be to shine a light on the - if you will - spiritual impoverishment and to combat what he sees as the dangers of moral relevantism of today's Europeans and Americans. As such, who said we were talking about having a Democracy here anyway, given that that Church was a European faith whose aspirations were universal? What was interesting is that when Pope John Paul passed away, it did not take very long for the Cardinals to choose Cardinal Ratzinger as the new Pope. That could be seen as a signal that Church leaders were largely united in their deliberations on where they wanted to go and focus their energies on. DiNardo's appointment can be seen as a continuation of the struggle against moral relativism and as a nod to the fact that Hispanics in America are often Catholics. I attended the funeral of the mother of a Hispanic former co-worker last year, who was given Catholic rites, including a rosary.
I've traveled to Brazil, the Phillipines, Argentina, and to France, all of which are nations with substantial populations of Catholics. I've been inside some cathedrals in places like Rio de Janeiro which are hundreds of years old and are nothing short of works of art. Despite all of the concerns about the affairs of the West, it would have been interesting to see the election of a Brazilian Pope, or a Pope from Africa or Asia. I suggested this to a Catholic girl I used to work with who was from Trinidad. She went bananas, telling me that it wasn't right that a Pope be anyone but from Europe.
To me, what made John Paul so successful was that he was seen as an every man's Pope; a man who came from a modest background and whose life was colored by the fact that his homeland was under the thumb of Communism. People from all over the world loved him. A successful Pope has to not only have convictions, but also has to have a kind of identifiable charisma which John Paul had in spades. So far, Benedict seems not to have that magic touch that his predecessor had.
So I suppose one might say that yes, in the larger scheme of things, DiNardo's appointment makes some kind of sense. If the church allows some creativity for DiNardo's role, one could see him as a kind of ambassador for Americans to those south of our borders, strengthening the bonds of the Church throughout the Americas.
Enough musings for now about the affairs of the world's largest religious faith. I'm watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade as I finish this. Y'all have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Wizard
